The jasmine in our backyard

Day 3

Jhansi – Nagpur: 594 km

Distances and midway points

Jhansi – Lalitpur – Sagar: 202 km

Sagar – Narsinghpur – Seoni: 265 km

Seoni – Nagpur: 127 km

(From the diary of my Delhi to Kerala motorcycle ride, December 2019. The third day was the coldest and the longest leg of the six-day run along the most wintry, desolate stretches.

 ‘I left a foggy Jhansi where the Betwa flowed in clouds early morning. By the time I reached Narsinghpur, my whole body was juddering and my boots dripping wet. Stopping at a wayside restaurant for breakfast, I ate sitting so close to the chulha that rotis were flicked directly from the tawa to my plastic gimcrack plate.’

Each day’s entry starts with the route as I needed to be sure about the towns and distances between them which meant filling up points – a knowledge that comes handy when you go full throttle on a 13.7 litre tank, 648 cc engine. #dillipalai, #interceptour, #DelhitoKerala)

The return of the short excursion

Consider it a break from all the planning. You don’t have to worry about distances, availability of gas stations and access to food joints or overnight accommodation facilities. Short trips – excursion tourism, if you must – are becoming increasingly relevant today. Cooped at home with our travels circumscribed, let’s use the corona outbreak to open our eyes to the beauty in our own neighbourhoods.

The long and short of it

Intrigued by some of my travel photographs on social media, a friend asked me the other day how often I took off. Once a year? Six months? Clearly the frequency of my posting, especially the past few years, had escaped her and she sounded astonished when I said I travelled most months. They might be short weekend trips or shorter day trips but I just had to hit the open road. I needed it to clear my head, regain composure, forgive people, make plans and shelve some, hold on to sanity, forget troubles, get over hurt, feel on the edge, feel alive. It was boringly existential. The usual, brighter reasons like seeing new cultures, meeting people, eating new food, having new experiences, wild on the rebound etc. were the bonus.

For my friend it was her dog and the many hats she wore which kept her from long duration travels. Then most people tend to equate travel with lengthy spells out there – as a matter of maxing out on the money or just using up all the accrued leaves from office. It could also be that perfect window with no festivals, weddings, work commitments, PTA meetings, with probably just your birthday. Then, you don’t have to worry too much if you can rework your priorities a bit: more is not always better. Accord premium to what you do over how many. It is not the duration or the number of items you have crossed out on the checklist but the experience and the manner you went through it that counts. That’s the only way it will come up as a smile cutting across the wrinkles or a twinkle in the rheumy eyes decades later. Never postpone a trip because something else came up. Or you realised you needed the money for more urgent things. Rework your plan to fewer days, or a day even. But take off, nevertheless.

Remember, only travel is real and the rest are all incidental.

Seeing with new eyes

Then and now

Wars and famines, calamities and economic depressions have always paralysed travel and choked tourism to the point of near extinction. But they always wobbled back as day trips to nearby destinations. Weekend cottages were built to cater to this trickling community with the same day travel gradually contributing to reviving travel habits. Many of the sites where such cottages and playgrounds came up half a century ago are destinations of renown today. Most states have departments entrusted with the task of developing such urban or peri-urban centres which draw the day trippers. In Kerala, there is the district tourism promotion council which currently is making a mess of these responsibilities. They seem to merrily mistake development with pouring concrete over wiped out woodland and then erecting ginormous steel atrocities over them and calling them ‘view points.’

With some foresight and of course aesthetics, these excursion tourism sites can be developed into potential world-class destinations. It could be a few hills with a verdant valley and/or a tarn in between, paddy fields that expand till the horizon, a little glade within a community forest, a trekking trail in a tucked away little island, a stream falling off a cliff or wriggling through boulders. It could be any of these but well within a daytime distance. The exceptional natural conditions or any other novelty makes it stand out. Why you overlooked them is merely because they didn’t come under your purview of travel – where you pack a suitcase, calculate distances, budget sizeable monies, negotiate with HR and leave plants and dog with the neighbour.

Start looking, its splendid. (Thanneermukkom Bund)

The lake, in a new light

It’s easy to wax eloquent on excursion options in a state like Kerala where around every second bend lies a vista. The past few years I have been coming down every month from Delhi where I work and a weekend is for day trip with folks. The toddy shops of Kumarakom, backwaters and houseboat in Alleppey, beaches of Cherai, Varkala and Kovalam, wildlife trails of Thekkady, undulating tea estates of Munnar, rolling hills of Vagamon, art galleries and cafes of Fort Kochi…there is still more for years to come.

Since the contagion and lockdown, our first short trip was to the Thanneermukkom Bund, a saltwater barrier across the Vembanad Lake about 40 km from my hometown Pala. Along the way, darkest marshlands alternated with the lushest verdure typical of the Kuttanad region. The bund itself was built to prevent saltwater from seeping into this below sea-level region known as the ‘rice bowl of Kerala’ and divides the Vembanad waters into two – one brackish and the other fresh. There are ecological issues but the bund, functional since 1976, serves the farmers.

Back to tripping. With folks.

Little landfills jutting out on both sides have some cars parked, malacophonous chatter over music and I crane my neck, a few anglers sit unmoving, the mandatory inebriated assiduously trying to extricate his chappal from the swamp next to the lake and an ice cream seller with his lone customer declaiming on the futility of current regiments across the world. Quite illuminating like a Chomsky reading. Then in Kerala everyone is a political maven. 

A guy with a gimbal camera walked around keeping an eye on the skyline. We finished our coffee and snacks and packed away the cups and flasks in the picnic basket. I passed the hand sanitiser to my folks. Conversations petered out as aureate streaks appeared across the sky announcing the sunset. A lad who had just arrived on a motorcycle doffed his helmet without taking his eyes off the horizon. Soon a resplendent union got underway of the shimmering gold waters and quivering periwinkle skies. Brilliant clouds billowed around in delight. From the magical palette, newer hues kept emerging – of hope and promise.

And we had new eyes.

The jasmine in our own backyard lacks fragrance. (An old Kerala proverb.)