Author Bio:
Keith Jones is the founder of Baja Jones Adventures, Jones Adventures, Tigress Tours in Thailand African Safari Tour and Butanding Tours in the Philippine Islands and has led thousands of people to Mexico and other interesting locations around the world. He specializes in gray whale tour, blue whale tour, gray and blue whale combo tour, giant panda bear tour, walk a tiger tour, shark tour, African safari tour, African gorilla trek, arctic narwhal tour and Magdalena Bay whale watching tour. He also writes about Baja travel and gray whales. Keith Jones is the author of Gray Whales My Twenty Years of Discovery.
A missed train ride results in a secretive photo session
inside a secluded village harem.
I wasn’t having fun until I missed the damn train. I read the ticket and thought it said 8:55 AM
departure, but it really said 7:55. This
was a first for me; I had never missed a train, plane or boat before.
My first reaction when the security guy told me that the
train had already left was to tell him to get it back. It couldn’t just leave without me! So I just stood there for a minute wondering
what to do next. The scrawny porter was
still holding my large blue Samsonite hard shell case on his head. While I ran through my options, the security
guy suggested I get out of the way and let the other people who hadn’t missed
their train, pass me by. Chagrined at my
selfish attitude, I stepped from the line and scratched my head, thinking about
what my next move should be.
Finally I took a clue from the Amazing Race TV show that I
had seen recently. Following in some of
those competitor’s footsteps I walked across the street from the train terminal
to one of the many hole in the wall travel agents. These agents specialize in just this sort of
thing. The agent I went to was up a
flight of stairs so narrow that the porter had to turn my big blue case
sideways to get it up the stairs. As I
climbed the narrow stairway my shoulders rubbed against both walls.
The door at the top of the stairs was open. Behind the open doorway was a room so small
the desk almost filled the available space. A small 3 legged stool with a seat
about half the size of my butt was to be my seat. For the moment I leaned against the wall, and
placed one foot up on the stool. The
porter stood outside the doorway on the tiny stair landing. There wasn’t space
inside the office for my suitcase and me.
There was an aged man behind the desk. He wore a gray business suit with a
brilliantly colored patterned tie. The
red, yellow and green of the tie were so bright I found myself looking at the
tie instead of the man. He was smiling
and stuck his hand out to give mine a typical limpid Indian style handshake
when I finally glanced up at his face.
Still smiling he introduced himself.
“I am Mister Singh, your convenient ticket agent.”
I then gave him my ticket and asked if he would check for
other trains departing for Sawai Mondepohr.
“I missed my train and need to get to Sawai Mondepohr” I said. He pointed with a sweep of his hands,
indicating I should sit on the stool.
Gingerly I sat on the stool which was so short my eyes barely cleared
the top of the desk.
“Meester Keee” he said, “Lucky you because there are two
more trains today.” Calm and a feeling
of relief washed over me. This
experience was proving to be a bit stressful and worrisome. I smiled with relief. Then Mr. Singh my convenient ticket agent
continued, “Sir is unlucky for u - today is birthday of Hazarat Ali” I stared
at him with a blank look on my face as he tapped at the computer keyboard. “Who’s Hazarat Ali?” I asked.
He finished tapping at the keyboard and looked up. “This is a big National Holiday weekend
here. So unlucky for you! All trains today and tomorrow are completely
full. Also all air flights are sold out,
no tickets available.” I frowned. India wasn’t turning out to be much fun.
So far since my arrival yesterday at 2:00 AM I haven’t
really had any fun at all. The tuk tuk
driver named Sambu, who drove me around the city for four hours was interesting
enough. But it was just a four hour ride
from one temple to the next. Temples are
interesting when accompanied by fiestas or celebrations, but on their own, well
for me they are just another place of worship.
I just wasn’t finding Delhi exciting. Dirty, you bet. Crowded, uh huh. But fun?
All the women are covered head to ankle in yards of silk or rayon, so
girl watching isn’t a good option here.
I’m not the temple and museum kind of guy. So all the dead people exhibits and really
old temples just hadn’t outweighed the dirt and the poverty I have seen
everywhere in Delhi. Hundreds of men
sleeping on the sidewalks and on the hard concrete floors of so many of the
businesses gave me a bad first impression.
The really good Indian food I’ve eaten didn’t tip the
balance either.
Sitting in the travel agents office, pissed off because my
eyes don’t work like they used and I can’t even read a train ticket, I decided
to get out of India. Missing my train
felt like an omen of bad things to come.
I asked the travel agent to try and change my flight date to
Bangkok. I would just stay longer at the
Tiger Temple in Thailand.
I sat quietly while the travel agent tapped gently on a
keyboard that was taped together with small pieces of peeling silver duct
tape. After mumbling a few phrases in
some language that couldn’t have been English, he looked up and said, “Mister
you have no luck today. Your Air India
ticket cannot be changed without very big fee.”
He smiled as he said this, perhaps counting his tiny commission from the
very big ticket fee. Thankfully that
idea didn’t work out either. It was
lucky for me all the flights from Delhi to Bangkok were booked full for the
next week. Otherwise I would have missed
a great trip.
The travel agent quoted me $240 U.S. dollars for a car and
driver to drive me to Ranthambhore. This
was only about twice the price of my first class train ticket. Since I couldn’t
get to Bangkok, I decided to stick with the original plan and do the Indian
Tiger safari in Ranthambhore.
Reluctantly I booked the car and driver with Mister Singh who as things
had turned out really was my convenient travel agent.
Fifteen minutes after signing the contract and handing over
my pile of rupees, I was loaded into the backseat of a very tiny, but nearly
new car. Saleem, my driver, said he had
to stop at his home and pick up a few things to take along. He left me outside, standing at the car while
he went inside his house. I grabbed my
camera and snapped a couple shots of the pedal style tricycle rickshaws parked
next to the car.
As soon as I started taking photos a couple kids popped up
near me, smiling. I pointed to the
camera asking if they wanted their picture taken. . . . Of course they
did. Every kid I come across wants to
have her picture taken. The two kids
quickly doubled to four and then finally stabilized at around 10 or 12 laughing
children. I snapped half dozen pictures,
showed the kids the photo on the camera screen and laughed along with them as
they pointed and laughed at one another.
That’s when I knew missing the train was the best thing to
happen to me so far. Now I was doing
what I like to do. Meeting the local
people and just having fun. While I was
shooting the kids, some adults came over to us.
They were shy and sort of edged up, wanting to see the pictures, but too
shy to ask.
When I showed them, it set off a chain reaction and soon I
had a crowd of maybe a dozen adults and the dozen kids. Some were the tricycle
drivers who had been lazing on their tricycles and others appeared to be the
spouses of the drivers. We were just
getting comfortable with one another to the point where the adults had about
worked up their nerve to ask me to photograph them, when Saleem returned. He threw his bag in the backseat and I
climbed into the passenger seat up front with him. Without ceremony I waved at the crowd as we
headed off to Ranthambhore.
The hole in the wall travel agent Mr Singh had told me it
was a 5 hour drive to Ranthambhore. We
started at around 9:30 and actually arrived around 5:00 PM. But that was really okay because I had a
great day along the way thanks in part to a couple unscheduled stops. On a journey like mine it really is the
journey itself, not the destination that makes the trip worthwhile.
Camels, water buffalo and exotic women carrying all sorts of
stuff balanced on their heads made for an interesting drive. Some of the bags these women carried looked
like they might weigh 50 or even 100 pounds.
These women just walk along, hips swaying rhythmically side to side in
counterpoint to the load on top of their head.
After 3 or 4 hours on the road I was starting to get
hungry. I had skipped breakfast because
I wanted to be sure of the toilet facilities on the train before I took a
chance on eating anything. Saleem
mentioned that he wanted to stop at his wife’s family home and village, which
just happened to be on our way to Ranthambhore.
I agreed to the detour.
We turned off the narrow two lane highway onto a one lane
paved road, then onto a narrower one lane semi-paved road. Five or ten minutes after leaving the highway
we pulled up to a complex of buildings that Saleem said were all owned by
relatives of his wife.
Saleem suggested that I sit on the chamboy (a bed like
structure with woven cane netting that is the standard Indian bed and sofa)
under one of the open sided patio-like structures, while he let everyone know
he was there. By then several children
had already gathered around us. I pulled
out the camera and the fun started. With
each photo, the crowd of kids (and adults) grew larger. Eventually swelling to about twenty or
thirty.
Saleem finally dragged me away to sit with his father-in-law
in the shade of a structure that seems part patio and part outside
bedroom. There was a narrow window
opening in the rear of this patio wall through which a private courtyard was
visible. Saleem pointed through the
window and suggested I go look around.
Looking through the window opening I saw two women staring back at me. When they noticed I was looking at them, they
pulled their veils across their faces and turned away, giggling.
I walked around the building through an arched doorway set
in the whitewashed adobe mud wall and entered the courtyard. The two young women again pulled veils across
their pretty faces. I glanced around the
courtyard, thinking wow, just like in an Arabian Nights fairtale. Half a dozen private rooms opened onto the
courtyard. Each room was a private
sleeping area for someone. I think I was
inside Saleem’s uncle in laws’ harem.
I pointed at a three year old and gestured I wanted to take
a photo. The mother was shy and didn’t
want her photo taken. I indicated that I
would only shoot the child. She pushed
him forward and I took the photo, and then showed her the image on the digital
camera screen. She smiled and pulled me to
the second young woman so she could also see the photo.
Next thing I knew, the shy mom dropped her veil and pulled
the kid over to stand next to her. Then
she bent down and gestured for me to shoot them together. I did, I showed them the photo and then we
shared it with the other woman who was still sitting with a baby in her
arms. The baby was all swaddled in soft
silk fabric.
We repeated this shoot and look action a few more times,
when suddenly the second mom – the one with the baby - pulled her veil from
across her face. She gestured for me to
take her photo. She was still sitting on
the chamboy with her baby in her arms. I
took the photo, but was unprepared for what happened next.
I leaned over and showed her the photo. Then the mom sat up straighter on the bench
and nestled her infant to her sari clad bosom.
Quicker than an eye blink, she pulled her sari up, exposing a milk
swollen golden brown breast. The purple
tipped nipple jutted out at me like the barrel of 45 caliber pistol. I started to sweat. My eyes darted around the courtyard,
searching for any angry male relatives who might be spying on my activity in
this modern day harem. But there was
only the other young woman and her baby.
After what seemed like an hour, but was only a split second the mom
thrust her breast to the baby so it could begin nursing. She smiled up at me and asked me to take that
photo.
If the penalty for looking at a woman without a veil is a
public beating, what penalty could I expect for photographing her exposed
boob. (I think the Muslims here in India
are more tolerant than in the Arab world, so public emasculation probably isn’t
the penalty for sneaking a peak here, but I was feeling stressed.) All I can say is thank heaven (or Allah or
Ganeesh) none of the men lazing in the front saw what I was up to here behind
their backs.
The mother’s brown nipple stared at me, while mesmerized I
snapped a dozen fast photos of her breast before, during and after she pulled
the baby tight to nurse.
To this day, that experience remains as a taunting video
clip, burned onto the forefront of my brain.
I can just imagine the torrid gossip that would have raced through this
tiny village if any of the male relatives had chanced upon this innocent photo
session.
I took the last shot as fast as possible. But it did take a bit of maneuvering because
I was distracted by my first view of what lies beneath the yards of
multi-colored fabric that most Indian woman wear. I eventually showed her the image of her baby
nursing on the view screen. I took her
seductive smile as my reward (and warning to scram). I beat a hasty retreat out of that much too
private courtyard. I can’t say that I
ran out of there, but I did break a sweat and probably set a new record for the
5 meter dash.
Saleem saw the sweat running down my forehead and asked if I
was hot and did I want to sit in the shade?
I said no, I thought I would go take some more kid pictures on the other
side of the village.
Walking away, I couldn’t help looking back to get one last
glimpse of my Madonna model. Sure
enough, there she was peeking around the courtyard wall, the tiny white diamond
glistening on the side of her nose, her veil pulled way back behind her ears, and
her bare, but stylishly hennaed feet exposed so I could see the silver anklet
and toe rings she displayed with obvious delight. She laughed as I tumbled over a short brick
wall landing on my ass with a thud and a swirl of yellow dust. Still laughing she then gave me one last wave
before I turned toward the horde of young Indian children patiently waiting to
see what the funny Gorah (white man) would do next.
All I wanted to do was to get away from that exotic and
dangerous courtyard before that Muslim beauty told the entire village about our
impromptu modeling session.
But it wasn’t like I could hide out. By the time Saleem and I finally left this
village with no name, I had at least 100 people gathered around, waiting for me
to take their photo. And when I finally
did leave they all crowded in front of me while Saleem took a group photo.
It was certainly a surprising lunch stop. And one that I won’t forget anytime
soon. Imagine all the fun I would have
missed if I hadn’t been late for my train ride.
Keith E. Jones
