Mysuru
In a few weeks I was strong enough to carry a suitcase and I planned a trip to the nearby old capital of Karnataka, Mysuru, which used to be called Mysore. Having failed to negotiate the train station I looked for other ways to get there and ended up taking a taxi. It was expensive but the convenience and speed made it worthwhile. Yuvraj warned me to take care the driver didn’t rip me off. He was suspicious of the company I was using and had a lengthy conversation with the driver as we prepared to leave. He was right too, I ended up paying a lot more than the quoted price but I was out of the city and happy to put my feet up somewhere more relaxed.
I had trouble finding a nice place to stay in Mysuru but eventually came to a guesthouse run by a Yorkshireman called Mark who had married an India woman. The house was fairly old with a vibe of comfortable prosperity and that timeless feeling one sometimes finds on the subcontinent where people move slowly and calmly without any pressure to achieve anything in the near future. The old, solid fittings and comfortable furniture were reassuring. There were some grand buildings in the vicinity and also the humble eateries and general stores I preferred.
On a trip into town I was waylaid by a rickshaw driver who offered to show me around the local sights for a small fee. It seemed a nice offer so I hopped in. Then the detours began. He wanted to take me to an incense factory, a clothes shop and finally a coffee shop. I didn’t realise that ‘coffee shop’ was code for a marijuana den. This rickshaw driver even told me he was a violin repairer and would fix the instrument for me. I sometimes struggle to believe how gullible I am but I took his phone number and made arrangements to see him again. We hadn’t time for the coffee shop but I picked up something else from him.
That evening in the guesthouse there was dinner for everyone and I sat with the others, two Australian women and the lady of the house who was employed to cook and clean and otherwise live a life of leisure. I had a sniffle, a runny nose that wouldn’t dry up and I started to suspect I had caught a cold. A new strain of covid was spreading across India and when I looked at the list of symptoms I realised that was probably what I had. This was extremely inconvenient as Mark was preparing to attend a Christmas party as Santa Claus in a few days and the other guests were also vulnerable. I informed him the next morning, by text message, and he realised it was a serious situation. I had to immediately isolate in my room. Fortunately it had an attached bathroom and someone would bring me food.
Mark got some tests from a chemist and confirmed that I had covid, and fortunately everyone else was clear. I was ropeable when I found that the symptoms which were very minor cleared up the next day but I still had to isolate until I tested negative for the virus. I was in there for a few days, only emerging when the place was empty to have a smoke up on the roof. During this time I found a small house for rent online and decided to stay there, alone, for a while. I hired a rickshaw and wore a mask on the way over. No one else caught the bug from me, in fact people had stopped testing or bothering about covid in any way. It was surprising that this wave didn’t seem to have any serious casualties and did not spread that widely, unless it was so mild that no one new they had it. I certainly wouldn’t have thought twice about my runny nose if it hadn’t been in the news.
I was in touch with Australian media and world news. From Australia the news continuously seemed pretty bad. Drownings, car accidents, assaults, murders and homelessness. Alice Springs in disarray, the north, as I knew since I had lived there for years, was out of control but the southern media seemed to avoid the subject. Who would believe there were weekly street brawls in some towns and the police were bystanders? I relly began to wonder if things weren’t going too far. In other words I was worried that Australian society was breaking down as if it suffered some deep illness. Division and intolerance were rife. It was clear that approximately half the people believed nothing they saw in the mainstream media. It looked like a societal mental disorder to me, if there is such a thing.
The new place was not great. It was in a poor Muslim area and the people I came across were friendly and helpful, while having little English. I was warned not to wander around at night, when the sounds of noisy motor bikes and hoons filled the air. I wondered what they were doing but they didn’t bother me and I was happy inside, alone. I bought a pile of food and cooked up a dahl with vegetables but I used too much oil and had diarreah for a few days. I wasn’t having much luck with my health but I recovered well and soon found online that there was a nicer locality called Gokulam where sourdough bread was available from a local bakery and there were other facilities for foreigners.
Sourdough was something I had started to yearn for. The bread in Nepal was very ordinary and sourdough had a taste and ingredients in it that you knew were delicious and healthy. That it was available in this Gokulam was a sign that that place was worth exploring and I found through my rickshaw driver a nice apartment nearby in an old brick building run by two old ladies and booked it for a month, after which I would return to Nepal.
The rickshaw driver asked me one day, as I was paying him over a thousand rupees for a few hour’s driving around town most days, whether I would consider lending him fifty thousand rupees to buy a second hand rickshaw to save him the hire of his present vehicle. I had noticed it was a bit flash with a more powerful motor than was standard with a deep throaty growl when he accelerated past the competition. I though about it for a moment. He would pay me back in six months, he reckoned. I told him I would let him know.
The rickshaw driver was becoming a hassle. I decided not to lend him the money after ascertaining that fifty thousand wouldn’t pay for decent vehicle. He was fudging the figures a bit and I expect he was a bit of a fantasist. He could have cut his expenses in half just by hiring a slower, more economical rickshaw but he was aiming at the big market; foreigners. He started getting upset if I thought of hiring another driver and one day he marched into my apartment and demanded to know why I didn’t need him that day. These were standover tactics. He acted like he had powerful contacts and I knew, by this time, there was an underworld where these drivers identified ‘marks’ (people like me) and let the other drivers, dealers etc, know that I belonged to that driver. If anyone else worked for me or sold me anything they would have to pay him a percentage.
Travels to Nepal 