Bears and Baked Bananas

Mount Abu, !8th December 2010

Snakes, cormorants and terns were sunning themselves on the rocks in the middle of Nakki lake when we passed them in our rowing boat yesterday morning. Earlier this year a crocodile from Bernard’s Tank, elsewhere in the hills, came on a six-week holiday here, scaring away all the happy boating holidaymakers. From our hotel we can see the lake and the rocky hills all around. We’re about 1700m up but it feels a world away from the hot, dusty and busy plains. It’s almost quiet here – I say ‘almost’ because we are still in India and nowhere in this exciting place is really quiet.

Before coming here Mount Abu (for Wolfdad) was about the spectacular Jain temples at Dilwara, a few kilometres out of town, that despite repeated trips to India (and now teaching a course on the Indian temple) I’d never seen. So the girls and I took a jeep up the hill to see them. I’m delighted to discover they are every bit as wonderful as anticipated. Muni Sri Vijayant Vijayi, author of my temple guide, writes that “the marble has yielded itself with a loving docility to fastidious chiselling” and we couldn’t agree more. After chai drunk from the saucer in good Gujerati fashion and a ‘mangolicious’ carton of juice, we then walked back a few miles downhill to Nakki lake and home, where the youngest member had been catching up on some sleep and WM her novel (Freedom by Jonathon Franzen – highly recommended).

Today we got up early and, fortified by porridge against the chilly dawn, hopped in another jeep with ‘Charles’ (Mahendradan), a young local guide, who had arranged to lead us on a hike through the surrounding countryside. The forested hills all around the town of Mount Abu have been declared a nature reserve and are home to sloth bears, leopards, jackals, deer and jungle fowl. Cool in the shade, warm in the rising sun we walked off along a path used by local villagers out hunting with spectacular views over the hills to the plains far below. The peaks have long been home to rishis and other religious seekers, but I didn’t know about the bears.  Our group not being the quietest, we had no close encounters.  All sensible bears were undoubtedly sleeping in the shade.

I’m going to have a moment of parental pride explaining how our 3 little wolflings trekked 12km (including W @ 4 and 2 months now), no carrying or cajoling needed, including terrain that was steep, treacherously rocky and in patches dense with thick bamboo forest and mossies.  Real adventure walking. Charles said the kids were his youngest ever customers and was impressed, telling the forest rangers about how well they’d done.  Probably the highpoint was reaching a halfway chai stop where we made a campfire in the shade of a local nomad shrine.  We also walked through a deserted summer village for one of the local semi-nomad communities who practice transhumance.  Our kids were (briefly)thoughtful after seeing how whole families, including their buffalo, live, sleep, cook in the small bamboo huts.

L: Our guide said we were going to be in the newspaper.  He said we would be in it because he kept taking photos. We had a campfire. We cooked chai and banana splits. I got to put the masala in the tea. I went in my second jeep. We found some bear poo (black and full of berries) and leopard scat (it was white and furry; leopards like to eat dogs and langur monkeys). We saw wild cucumbers.  The walk was exciting.

WD: Abu's charms fade for grown-ups once we'd been hiking and seen the temples. The children were all ready to stay for weeks (M: 'This is my favourite place yet - can we stay the whole five months and not go back to Delhi?'). We did think of going boating again to try out the swan-peddalo and we might also have spent a happy 20 minutes dressing up as Rajasthani women in the park and having out photos taken. But we decided to move on: the train from Abu Road station to Jodhpur beckons tomorrow (Sunday 19th), then back to Delhi briefly before we fly to Cochin in Kerala on Friday 24th.

WM: Although all the cues are wrong, we are counting down to Christmas... Fewer and fewer doors and challenges left in the advent calendars and the candle is almost stumpy.  W argues with his sisters about how many days are left - we are having really rubbish arguments (particularly L and W - about who can ask for the bill, who is the most tired, who sleeps where....).  The signal for recognising and trying to terminate this is armpit itching.  As we appear to be quite itchy and scratchy generally, we may need to develop another non-verbal.  Anyway, we are stitching our own felt stockings ‘cos we know Father Christmas is coming to good children in Kerala.  And the children  are practicing their carols loudly and making up their own version of the 12 days of Christmas ('On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me a tiger in a palm tree').  In case we don't post before Christmas, much, much festive happiness and joy and peace and inner warmth to you all particularly those in the freeze and without much heating oil.