In search of Saraswati…

Mysore Adventures:

Last weekend, Bobby, Lizzy, Nabeellah, Nerrel, Shaun and I took a train down to Mysore, Saturday morning. When we got to Mysore, we headed straight for lunch at the restaurant, Indra Café’s Paras, recommended in the Lonely Planet. Afterwards, we spent a good hour or two wandering around the impressive Delaraja Market directly opposite the restaurant. (I‘ve posted some photos featuring the various market delights, to www.flickr.com/libbyswan soon.) After the market, we took an auto to the base of the 1000 stairs that wind their way up to the top of Chumundi Hill.

As I have a habit of doing with such physically intense activities, I steam-rolled ahead and got the 1000 stairs out of the way before I could even think about them. Shaun stayed with me for most of the journey, while the others meandered along and some even debated continuing. We all made it, eventually.

Once everyone (bar Nabeelah and Nerrel) were at the top, we sat down with our recently purchased, hard-to-come-by-in-India sodas (Mountain Dew and Diet Coke) and began to admire the view over Mysore and the temple behind us, while some of the local boys (who seemed to know the capital city of every country) hassled and entertained us as they tried to sell us postcards for “their school”.

Then Nabeelah and Nerrel arrived, and that’s when the drama started to unfold. As Nerrel climbed the stairs with shouts of joy over her recently purchased Diet Coke, two monkeys ran up to her; one grabbed at her leg and the other went in for a bite. The “postcard sellers” quickly ran to her side and scarred them away. Given none of us could see any holes in her clothing , we were all pretty shook up (can you imagine how Nerrel must have felt?) but feeling OK, as it appeared the monkeys hadn’t punctured her skin.

We walked around the outside of the temple for a bit before I decided to inspect the area on Nerrel’s leg that the monkeys had gone for, and where she was feeling some pain. Although there wasn’t an open or bleeding wound, we could both see three distinct red marks, kind of like blood blisters. This frightened us a little. But we were frightened even more when another group of monkeys decided to go after the group of us. Why? Bobby was holding a bag containing food. BIG no, no. No one was attacked this time but it was enough to shake some of us (Nabeelah, Nerrel and I) off our ledges and scramble to get off the hill, this time via bus.

We eventually all got back to the hotel where Bobby, Lizzy, Nerrel and Shaun were checked into for the night. It was another drama to get into the room without a key, followed by an entertaining call with the i-to-i in-country coordinator; “Oh my God!” is not the response you want to hear in such a situation. Shaun checked in with his GP Dad in Scotland and it was decided that Nerrel would be taken to the hospital in Mysore to get an anti-Rabbies shot that night.

Nabeelah and I said our goodbyes and boarded the train for Bangalore, leaving the others to embark upon their hospital adventure. I later found out that they had the fabulous experience of having to find a chemist for the Rabbies shot that the hospital would then administer, in a power-outage. We’ve all become quite accustomed to power-outages here, but sometimes they’re really, bloody, inconvenient!

The Ayurvedic Massage:

When I woke up Sunday, after having said goodbye to Nabeelah a few hours before (she left for the airport around 2am Sunday morning) I walked from Shirley’s guesthouse to MG Rd, consuming a somasa or two along the way, before making my way back to New Tippasandra with the help of an auto. When I got back to Tippasandra Road I decided to take myself for an Ayurvedic massage. What an experience that was!

When I entered the massage room that the facility’s host directed me to, I was greeted by a fairly frail lady in her 70s, or potentially even 80s. The room was kind of dingy with two massage tables – one padded, one not – and a gas-burner of some sort in between. (I quietly prayed that I’d be instructed to lie on the padded massage table and not the metal one.) The little old lady, who later introduced herself to me as “Patmina” (I think) instructed me to get undressed and, unlike they do in the Western world, she did not leave the room as I did so.

Once I’d striped down to my undies and sports bra she pointed at both items and gestured that they should come off also. She then instructed me (with hand gestures) to sit (stark naked) on a little stool before she poured oil down my hair part and started massaging my head. I was then instructed to lie face-up on the massage table – the padded one, luckily – and I watched her poor a strange-smelling oil (something that began with “N” and ended with “…juana”) into a bowl. As I watched her hold the bowl with metal clamps over the flame of the gas-burner, I observed her shaky, early-signs-of-Parkinsons grip, and I hoped that I wasn‘t about to experience the pain of hot oil on my skin. When the first drop of oil hit my skin, my fears subsided – it was comfortably warm.

The hour long massage proceeded. It was very relaxing and I noticed myself drifting off a few times. Every time I started to drift Patmina seemed to sense it and said something that I could not understand; either way it brought me back to consciousness. By the end of it, I was covered in approximately 2 inches of oil, head to toe, front to back.

Once the hour was up, she asked if I wanted to bath. I had to say “yes”. I was literally soaked in oil and there was no way I was about to dress myself in that state. So, she gave me a small bar of soap and a small package of shampoo (which she nipped at the corner with a pair of scissors) before walking me (stark naked) to the traditional Indian style bathroom where a bucket was being filled with warm water. She stood at the door as I began the process of washing myself. I guess she was intrigued as to whether or not a foreign, white woman would wash herself in the same way she would. Did I wash down as far as “possible”, then up as far as “possible”, as my father would say? She left me to do my thing after a few awkward moments. I guess my washing procedure wasn’t that much different than hers.

I did my best to dry myself with the two towels she left me. They were more like cotton tea-towels/dish-cloths, than thick, Western-style, bath towels. When I got back to the massage room, she looked at me and chuckled, sat me down on the same little stool I had my head massage on, grabbed another tea-towel like cloth and proceeded to manually dry my hair with enthusiastic vigor. I don’t think someone’s dried my hair like that since I was five.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Friday, July 4th, 2008 at 5:46 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.