Wanderlust

Green grass

In the early eighties, we lived on the sultry Deccan plateau deep in the heartland of Maharashtra in a place called Kolhapur.

Couple of times a year, I would hear the lazy drone of an airplane overhead. I would drop whatever it is that I was doing and rush out. I would stand on the concrete driveway hopping from one foot to another as the searing terra firma roasted the naked soles. Neck craned at an obtuse angle, hand curved against the forehead forming a visor, I would squint into the sun to locate the gleaming noisy dot. I would wonder who were the lucky people in there. Where were they going? Could they see me? Will I ever sit in one?

Fast forward twenty years and several hundred thousand airline miles.

Every time I am in a cramped seat of an overcooled cabin soaring at 30,000 feet, I cannot resist the temptation to press my forehead against the oval porthole to see if I can spot anybody down there. Now that I am sitting up here, I wish I were the lucky unshod kid with a naked soul down there.

Seattle to Cairo

Christmas Day, 2006, Day 1in Egypt

I like the dude in the flight safety videos.

He is so cool in the face of calamity. He manages to find the life vest under the seat (my furtive gropes have perpetually failed to locate this life saving device), and gets the clasps in the right hoops as the airplane is crashing into the water. He then jumps on to the raft confident that the vest will self-inflate once it comes in contact with water.  In case it does not, he is confident that he will find the tiny rubber tube on the shoulder and blow enough air effortlessly, while navigating choppy seas, to displace his own weight.

He should simply rip off his clothes to display the large yellow S on the blue tights and fly off.

The GPS tracker embedded in the back of the headrests is a fantastic invention especially with kids around. The "Are we there yet?" can be met with "Sweets, when this little airplane goes across all this blue and then over that green and brown and meets this triangle, we will be there."

Rhea gawks at the LCD goggle-eyed. I guess not being able to say AWTY takes away half her pleasure of travelling. The other half depends on how many surprises Gayatri and I have managed to secret away in her little carry-on.

Tracking the plane on the LCD over Europe is exhilarating as exotic sounding places - Dusseldorf, Cologne, Hague, Naples, Geneva, Luxemburg, Dortmund - all seem just a (parachute) drop away.

Rhea travels well. Comfortable, self assured, goes with the blow, does not resist, takes as it comes, sleeps easily. Good for her.

 

We change from United to Lufthansa at Frankfurt and the difference in the flying experience is immediately apparent. The German Lufthansa airplanes are so ergonomic designed. A little hook to hang (the wife’s) purse, A little glass holder that allows you to nurse a drink without having to put the tray down.

We landed in Cairo after 15 hours of flying. Rhea's first words as she walks out are, "Papi,  I am pretending this is India...". She stole my thought. The air was thick and warm air. A thousand odors simultaneously invaded the nostrils. Multilingual no-holds-barred loud hubbub met the ears. An explosion of smiling brown faces, it does feel like India. 

The hotel is situated on the Giza plateau. There is a a high profile garish wedding happening in it foyer, attended by local glitterati and a loud singing band. The hotel has 5 restaurants and not one of them, to our disappointment, authentic Egyptian. So we stepped out to find some food. and inadvertently notice the limestone clad Khafre on the horizon. Khufu's silhouette soon became apparent and excited Rhea.

We stumbled upon a Egyptian hole-in-the-wall where we had our first cups of bitter and muddy Turkish coffee.

We also ran into our first Egyptian smooth-talking salesman who tried to sell us perfumes made using recipes allegedly found in king Tut's tomb. Frankly we all liked the perfume though the thought of shelling out Egyptian pounds without looking around did not appeal to our senses. We promised to return later and suddenly Ashref was no longer smooth talking.

20 scary minutes with the Peruvian Customs

Cusco Airport 2007

We are sitting in a LanAir 737 that promises to take us to the Amazonian jungles of Puerto Muldonado in southeast Peru. All the passengers are in their seats, the engines have been running for the past 10 minutes, but the flight is still in its bay. Rhea, Gayu and I are in a row towards the front of the plane, Vijay and Preeti are sitting across the aisle.

We are still soaking in the four beautiful days in Cusco and Machu Picchu. In a way, the highlight of the Peru trip is behind us. What awaits us is a quiet wind-down in a rain forest, before we are back to the rain in Seattle and all the other routines of life.

A slight man in uniform gets into the plane. He walks down the aisle with a little piece of paper in his hand. He stops next to me to confirm if I am me. He wants me to step outside to confirm our luggage.

He is not taking me back through the retractable passageway that snakes back to the boarding gate, which is a bit surprising. He heads out of the opposite door, climbs down a steel staircase and is on the tarmac. Plane side luggage check probably? I follow him obediently.

The “uniform” points to a lone dilapidated building on the edge of the concrete runway a few hundred meters away.

It is early morning, but the concrete is already hot. The heat is seeping  up through the soles of my hiking shoes as I head towards the shanty. I notice that the uniform is now walking two steps behind me. I slow down a bit. He slows down a bit. He wants to stay two steps behind me, I reckon.

I reach the building, duck into a room. It is a small, windowless and fetid. Tables laid along the walls. One or two chairs vagrant. A door on my left that leads somewhere deeper into the building. On top of the tables is our luggage, unopened.

I sense five-six people in the room. Four within my field of vision. A couple more behind me. These is a huge Alsatian K9, sedate besides a towering mountain of a man in army fatigues. I smell hostility in the air. Just like that. The hair on the nape of my neck prickle.

I am asked if these are my bags. Yes, they are. What is inside? I am subconsciously rattling the riff-raff a Joe Normal travels with. My conscious mind, however, is definitely worried. I have seen uncountable movies, read umpteen accounts of tourists ensnared in intricate third world criminal webs.

A man I have not noticed yet is stepping forward. Slightly built. Craggy face. Unshaven. Loose civilian clothing. I wouldn’t look at him twice out there in the street. Years of experience reading people tells me he is the lead dog in this hot and humid room. My muscles bunch up.

“Do you have contraband?”, he is asking in crisp accent less English. “Coke?” He adds innocuously. “The only Coke I have ever touched comes as a fizzy drink”, a whacky part part of my brain, the one that gets me into trouble all the time, prompts. Thankfully my vocal cords are sensible. I don’t say it.

I shake my head confirming a negative.

“Are you sure?” he asks.

I remember a question Gayu asked while climbing the Inkan steps to Wayna Picchu. Are we were allowed to carry back coca leaves to US? (Coca leaves are ubiquitous in Peru. They are everywhere the way candy is in US, saunf in India. Coca has helped Gayu dampen soreche. She likes coca leaves). I had made it amply clear to her that coca cannot legally cross an international border. What if she has packed herself a little Ziploc for the Amazon? After all, we are not crossing a border.

Coca is after all not coke says my limited knowledge of drugs. I would like to confide the possibility that I might have some coca in the bag, instead I find myself saying “Yes, I am sure. No coke. No drugs”. 

“In that case, are you okay if we open the bags and check?”

Beautifully done, chief! He makes a legal request to inspect my bags a logical extension of a normal conversation. If you don’t have drugs in the bag, you should not be worried us inspecting, huh? But that’s not how it works. Once I permit him, anything he finds in the bag becomes admissible evidence.

So say, I refuse. Will they detain me till they get a warrant? Deplane Gayu and Rhea ? Vijay and Preeti as well?  Take us to a police station?  Will I need a lawyer? (Am I allowed a lawyer in Peru?) Not only do I not know a lawyer in Peru, I do not know a criminal lawyer anywhere in the world. Refusing is a losing variation.

So I smile what I think is my easy smile and ask them to be my guest.

The mountain-of-a-man is carefully opening all our bags. No gloves, I notice. I brace myself, expecting to see a neatly laid bed of little polythene bags of white powder. Fortunately, none.

The mountain-of-a-man is bending down and whispering to the dog. The reticent k9 comes to life and leaps effortlessly onto the table.  The dogs sniffs the handle of the first bag then looks up at me accusingly. Then the second bag. Then the third. Each bag punctuated by the same disparaging glare. At the fourth bag, he goes beyond the handle.

He literally enters the big red bag. His front paws thrust into the neatly folded clothes, he sticks his nose deep inside as if intent on taking a drug dealer home. The dog then quietly leaps down from the table and assumes his Buddha like demeanor.

I am about to sigh with relief when the men surge forward.

As four pairs of hands meticulously reach out inside our bags, I am panicking. There is a flurry of activity. I am not able to keep an eye on all of them simultaneously. I am more worried about them putting something in than them finding anything.

One by one, they back off. Miraculously, the bags do not look too disheveled. The hostility in the room has clearly changed to disappointment. Me, I feel like I have cheated a prison cell that I did not deserve anyway. The innocent has been acquitted.

I come out in the sunshine. The plane is waiting for me. This time I am walking alone. I cannot resist running the last few yards.

I settle back into my seat, buckle myself up. Rhea and Gayu look up from their books. Seems I have been away for less than 20 minutes.

“Nothing”, I play it down. “Just identifying our luggage”. The excited conversation can wait for later.

I take a sip of water. What’s a trip without a bummer, they say.

I hope THAT was THE bummer.

Rhea, Preeti and Gayu after landing at Puerto Mudonado.