We set off early, the motorbike turned out to be a pink Honda Moped due to my financial constraints, but it would do. Rastham told me of a forest, not too far past the falls, where he had seen wild elephants while hanging out with his friends. “We were very fast reversing, not stopping. If they run at us, we would die for sure.” Sound reasoning. So exactly why we decided to go out looking for elephants on a town scooter is beyond me, but at the time it seemed like the sensible thing to do.
Although I had rented the bike, I wasn’t too keen on taking on India’s highways without getting warmed up first, so Rastham took the first shift. I was glad he did,the roads were even more harrowing than I’d imagined. We swung in and out of traffic without looking, blaring the horn all the while. Glued to the white line, we passed a large highway maintenance truck just as an even larger vehicle came hurtling towards us in the oncoming lane. Inches separate successful maneuvers from human jelly here. Rastham shouted back to me, “My friend, I feel that you are very much afraid of my driving. Relax!” I was reminded of a conversation I’d had on a bus a few days earlier, as we fished tailed around a dusty corner a gentleman smiled and said, “Indians are experts at bad driving... you don’t need to worry.”
Perhaps the expertise was not equally distributed after all, we soon encountered a car crash. In India, it seems, drivers are not content with a single voyeuristic glance while passing by a wreck. Instead, where ever humanly possible, drivers pull over to gawk at the carnage. A motorways worth of bikes had come to a halt on- and on both side of- a bridge, leaning over the barrier to get better looks below. An unfortunate soul had swerved off, landing upside down in a field about 15 feet below. The car was twisted, the top crumpled in completely. Rumours of the cause of the accident and the extent of the injuries had begun to circulate among the ever growing crowd. For my part, I maintained that surely no one could have survived. Rastham beckoned for me to get on the bike, and drove us around to where we could get a better view of inside the window. A little uneasily, I followed him to vantage point, but still could not see anyone in the car. We exchanged words with a man who said he’d been there from the beginning. He pointed out two old men stood next to the wreckage, staring philosophically while holding the hems of their lungis- “They escaped ok, only minor injury.” Choosing to believe this fantastical explanation, we left the scene.
Now it was my turn. I started slowly, determined to bring my famously calm and measured approach to life to these hostile roads.It was in vain. Within minutes, I was honking, speeding, swerving, cursing, tailgating and undercutting. I could get used to this.
I drove for two hours, until Cochi’s sparse palm trees were long gone and we had begun to climb winding mountain roads. Rastham wanted me to try the local coconut beer, so we stopped off at a local tavern. Now, this was out in the sticks, and midday drinkers in outback bars are fairly similar the world over. An old man swayed in the door way, smiling broadly at me. He started to shout to his friends who had already seen me. “They don’t see many foreigners here,” Rastham explained. Taking my first sip of the thick warm liquid, I noticed all the men in the bar had turned their chairs to watch me. Once you got over the smell, it wasn’t actually to bad, a little salty perhaps but they assured me it was much sweeter in the monsoon season. Either way, it washed down the goats liver I had been served (so much for being a Vegetarian while in India!) rather perfectly. We enquired about elephants and the owner rushed to show us his copy of the local Malayalam language newspaper. “3 House Broken,” read the headline, with a picture of elephants below. They had charged, destroying everything in their paths, exactly where we were headed.
The waterfalls in Athirapally are stunning, three powerful torrents of water cascade down the stark rock face into a pool before setting off along the valley in a wide formation, interrupted by countless tree covered archipelagos. A sudden transformation from pure force to serene tranquility. We climbed over boulders to get a better view, watching in awe as the river’s full force landed in front of us.
At the top of the falls crowds of swimmers and paddlers took a welcome respite from the afternoon heat. Athirapally is inexplicably off the Western tourists’ map, and hope it stays this way as it would be a shame to see the innocence of local holiday making bullied out by European bikinis and the obligatory law enforcement to protect them. My favorite days here have been at similar locations, popular with Indians with only the rare European face. Crowds of swimmers and paddlers tackled the clear moving waters. Families splashed together, fathers and mothers taking turns holding infants above the water. The men were bare chested in lungis or shorts, the women fully clothed- saris no obstacle to fully submerged enjoyment. Young lovers flocked here for a brief embrace out of the gaze of the morality police. Crowds of teenage boys swagger with bravado, high on good times. Girls giggled and pretended not to look at the guys flexing for them. A group of pretty-boys in trilby hats and polo shirts wanted to borrow my glasses for a their photo shoot (they had brought at least 6 photographers with them, so perhaps they were famous), I consented and they asked me to get in some pictures. I wondered if I’d ever find out if my image appeared in their calender.
Rastham and I dove into pools and clambered up rocks, sitting in perfectly carved seats in the a small waterfall. The cold water poured over us, head to toe part of the river. I told him that next time I came back, I would buy a Royal Enfield Bullet and ride up and down the continent for as long as I could, and my friend agreed to come along. Thus I began my first biker gang.
Refreshed, we rode further up the mountain pass, watching as the river became thinner closer to its source. When we reached the gates to the Kerala state forest, Rastham had an animated conversation with the guards- it was only much later, in Fort Cochi Hospital, that I found out they were trying to convince him it was too dangerous to enter the woods on a moped. When they reluctantly opened the gate, we jumped onto our 100cc safari scooter and sped off in pursuit of elephants.
Broken trees and brutal clearances indicated that they had been near by, but the piles of dung on the road were sun dried and old. We drove for a long time, nearly to Tamil Nadu, and didn’t see anything. A jeep came from the opposite direction, it’s driver leaning out to yell at me. “He shouted Sype at you, that is Malayalam for foreigner.” Rastham explained. I wondered what had given me away.
Beginning to concede defeat, we pulled over and stood on a bridge, listening quietly- perhaps the angry wasp buzz of the Honda was scaring away the beasts. The wind rustled through the bamboo, the air was full of bird calls. I would estimate that I heard between fifteen and twenty different species of birds, or at least different bird songs. Monkeys howled across the forest. Something moved in a bush. It was just after 5 (the point when the guards stop letting vehicles into the forest due to increased wildlife activity) and I was suddenly anxious to start back. We had quite away to go and I didn’t want to be in the forest after dark.
In the dim early evening light,everything had changed. Monkeys jumped in the tree tops above us, brightly coloured birds swooped onto the road . Peacocks and roosters were everywhere, stupidly waiting to be eaten. The forest was alive.
We came to a small fallen tree which hadn’t been there on our outward journey. Next to it was a beautifully moist pile of mammoth shit. Eureka! An elephant had been here with in the last half hour, we were close! Eyes and ears pealed, on full alert we began to consider our position if we did encounter one or more elephant. Run. That’s what we decided. Swing the bike around and head into the heart of darkness. Our scooter would be unlikely to out run stampeding elephants (let alone a tiger) but it seemed our best bet.
As we rounded a corner, our heads full of hypothetical threats, we came across a real one. “SNAKE!!!” we screamed in unison. He was big and crossing the road right in front of us in pursuit of those suicidal peacocks. It was too late. If I tried to stop we would come to a halt right next to it and I didn’t like that thought. The snake was about 6 foot long, but at the time seemed to be twice that, his scales somewhere between khaki and clay in colour. He looked poisonous. Real poisonous. I hit the throttle and tried to get as far from the head as possible on the single track road. The snake turned square on with us and seemed to be keeping pace. is head- big and solid with black beady eyes and the meanest looking mouth I’ve ever seen- was getting closer to my ankle. He had the meanest looking mouth I’ve ever seen. He began to raise his head, inches from me now, was this it?
That’s the last I saw of him. I was flying. The problem with keeping your eyes glued on an attacking snake (it’s impossible not too, they are hypnotizing) while riding a bike is that your gaze is suddenly down and to your side instead of where it should be. The Road.
I was sliding along the gravel, in flip flops, shorts and a t-shirt, picking up half of the stones with my skin along the way. Above me I could see Rastham, who had been thrown, feet high above his head. He landed hard on his chin and rolled. I was still sliding.Instincts prevent us from getting into these kind of situations through the fear of pain, but what instincts don’t ant you to know is you don’t feel anything at first. Later, it hurts a it at a time until everything aches and burns and throbs- but in the moment it pure adrenaline stops all sense. I leapt up straight away, more concerned about the where abouts of the snake than our condition. It was gone. Perhaps frightened by the crash or maybe not wanting to waste any of his venom on two injured idiots.
We took stock of our situation, there was a lot of blood but we seemed ok. In someways this was the best possible result. It seemed that the crash had quickly propelled us up and out of the snake’s range. We had been very fortunate to be thrown onto the road, if we had been launched down the steep incline slope to the side, our best case scenario would have been tryouts for our respective nations’ Murderball squads.
We rode in stunned silence, dust from the road clinging to our wounds. We met a crew of work men, the foreman approached us and on hearing our story shook his head. “Sype, he said sadly, “Sype”.
At the gates, our bloodied return was greeted by “told you so” laughter from the guards. When we described the snake, however, they stopped laughing. We hadn’t dared guess what it was, but they told us for the first time- in Malayalam, but I saw Rastham turn pale. They directed us to a shop that provided first aid, a couple of miles away by the temple.
The shopkeeper was a kind old lady with a weary smile. She sat us down and applied several liquids (each significantly more painful than the last) to our wounds. Drums beat frenetically in the temple, and from all directions local people emerged from the forest to attend the ceremony. My impression of South Indian people has been incredibly friendly and always inquisitive, and this proved to be so here. Everyone who walked by came up to see the sorry spectical of the two battered riders. I heard it in English then. “what you saw was the King Cobra,” a man told me. Apparently, National geographic a had visited the area recently as that stretch of woods had so many of them. A pretty young lady, who had just arrived on the back of her boyfriend’s bike scolded me in sing song English, “You will see snakes every where in Kerala, Drive Carefully!”
Epilogue...
Rasthad's cut was bad, so when we got back to Fort Cochi we visited the hospital. It looked a lot like a WWII era British clinic, which I guess it was. The nurses listened wide eyed to our story , but I would be flattering myself to say they were impressed. Not fully familiar with the terms of my hastily arranged travel insurance I declined all medical assistance. While Rastham was being attended to (6 stitches to his a chin and a large stone had to be removed) I went to the pharmacy and bought supplies: Rubbing Alcohol, Iodine, Tweezers, Cotton Wool, Gauze and 20 Valium.
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