Mon, 28 Nov 2005
Nagarjuna Sagar
The Transporter asked if I would like to take a road trip this weekend to see Nagarjuna Sagar. I knew sagar meant lake, but I didn't know what Nagarjuna was. He explained in a bit of broken English that it was the where Buddha was from. At Nagarjuna I'd see Buddha's home. Well, it wasn't actually Buddha's birthplace, but I didn't think the Transporter was trying to mislead me.
He told me to eat a big breakfast and get the hotel to pack me a sandwich and we'd head out. He said it would take a while to get there because sometimes "the highway" was busy. It turned out to be about a three hour drive down a (barely) two lane road. It was actually pretty thrilling because The Transporter kept trying to open up the Chevy and he got to practice his evasive maneuvers around slower traffic- and even oncoming traffic at times (why do trucks and busses like driving at oncoming cars?). Eventually we got to practice high-speed livestock aversion driving. It was kind of interesting to finally see the countryside. There were a few villages on the way and I knew that the language had changed from mostly Hindi and some Telegu to exclusively Telegu- even the road signs changed. We finally got to the area we wanted to go to and it is a huge lake. I thought for some reason it would be like the lake between Hyderabad and Secunderabad, Hussain Sagar. But no, this was a huge lake that looked manmade. There was a big earth dam that we couldn't drive across so we went around it to an even bigger dam. That's how they made the lake on the Krishna River. We parked the car and took a boat out to the island out in the middle of the lake where the museum was. It was about a 30-45 minute boat ride, and I got to hear from some passengers who wanted to practice their English with me more about the lake, the dam and the museum. The conversation was a bit surreal though:"This boat ride is nice and serene no? It takes us to the important place for Buddhists." [Captain suddenly turns on some Hindi disco cd and eardrum-bursting levels]
"This lake was made on Krishna River by the dam. It is very important as the Krishna River is one of the holy rivers of India. It is holy to all the people of India" [The guy standing behind us eating chips wads up his bag and tosses it into the lake] Eventually we got our trash-tossing boat to the dock at the island where the passengers who were waiting to take the boat back were blocking both the dock and the steps up to the island. The security guards do a remarkable job of crowd control. Somehow we got off and made it up to the island and up towards the museum. The museum there is really nice and worth the trip. They have a lot of carvings that were excavated from the stupas that were nearby. But then I realized why they were excavated. Despite the cultural importance of the area, the dam flooded the whole valley. Supposedly the residents of the area were told two days before the area would be flooded that they had to get out. I don't know if that's true or not, but that's what some of the people there told me while we looked at the model of the valley before the dam went up. One of the guard/docents explained the significance of some of the statues to me also- well, really to The Transporter who would then translate for me. For the most part I had the run of the place to myself (and the guard/docents) because all of the tons of other people from our boat (and the others from other boats) basically hauled ass through the museum, spent about .5 seconds on each item (if they even looked) then went out for picnics in the shade or to sit by the water (and then throw trash in it). We eventually made our way out to the water to hang out for a bit in the sun and The Transporter decided to jump in, clothes and all. There were some guys swimming near us and they tried to convince me to go in as well, but I was having fun just chilling in the sun. It turned out the guys were Tibetan monks except for one of them who was from Ladakh (I had to look up where that is). They had come a long way to see the museum and the area and had brought one of their teachers (who was sitting in the shade up by the tea area). They were enjoying the swim because they said they got to take a break before going back in to the museum (they had been there since the morning) for more classes with their teacher and to see the local artifacts. The guy from Ladakh explained the actual history of the area and corrected most of the things I had heard about it. It was a bit rushed so I'll have to look up more of the history of the area. But they were there to hear about one of Buddha's disciples who had preached in the area and were reviewing some of his teachings. After they dried off they said they had to go and help the teacher inside as he was quite old and needed a wheelchair. As you can imagine, most of this area isn't very accessible for the disabled. The monks and the guy from Ladakh seemed to be the most amped-up about being there. As a random aside, the area were you walk to the steps to get in the water is carved rock and has some algae on it. It looked slippery. But that didn't stop one guy from goofin' off on it. He then fell and hit his head on the rock. A little blood was coming out his ear nshit. It wasn't pretty. Unfortunately I couldn't take pictures of the wall carvings from the stupas or the big Buddha statue on the inside of the museum. But I did take a bunch of pictures on the outside of the museum. Hopefully they'll be in my typical blurry-kenny style for everyone's enjoyment. After walking all over the island and seeing some of the reconstructed ruins, we started to head back to the dock to catch one of the returning boats. It was a nice ride back. The fifty or so school kids who had been on the island and were returning en masse on our boat behaved themselves for the most part too which was a plus. None of them fell off the boat or out one of the holes in the upper hull either, so it was all good. The boats at times made me think of those horrible headlines about ferries flipping over in SE Asia. And they like to pack on the passengers, so that's why I was wondering if the kids would fall overboard or not. But like I said it was a nice ride the sun was setting and it was cool out on the water and the sun was going down. We started to head back as the sun was setting and started to drive back, first through the hills, around the hairpin turns without the lights on, through the 'crocodile zone' and back to the 'highway'. As The Transporter started to open up the Chevy Four-banger and get us back to the big city, I started to wonder how he would see the goats and cows on the road as they don't normally have blinkers. Well, somehow on the Cannonball Run Hyderabad Edition, cows and goats are just collateral damage in the time trial. No, we didn't hit any, but we almost did. The only lights on the road were ours, once they were turned on (and set on high- aka the brights), so it made the CRHE very tough going. Oh, and then we got to the on-coming traffic and their hi-beams staring back at us. Good lord. Playing chicken with busses and trucks for THREE hours on a Sunday night was not my normal idea of fun. I just tried to sit still and enjoy the ride while I could. Maybe I had learned something about Buddhist patience from the monks? Probably not, I chewed off most of the fingernails on my right hand. I just kept thinking, hrm, I hope we don't get in a wreck or get run off the road- obviously for many reasons, but also because there was no mobile phone signal where we were, so no ambulance if we needed one, and the grass by the side of the road was snake infested. If we ran off the road, I'd be on the lookout for cobras in a second. I'd have to get all Riki Tiki Tavi on their asses. I did enjoy the breaks in playing chicken with the busses (and tractors) when we got to the various villages. Somehow The Transporter kept us on target and under time as we hauled ass through the unlit villages and narrowly avoided the pedestrians. We got to stop for tea/chai though in one village, and again, it was damn good stuff. I think I'm addicted to it now. Actually, it was kind of funny, we really needed to stop to clean the windshield. On the road, there was a cow pattie the size of my head in the middle of the road. An oncoming bus or truck hit it perfectly on the side launching it towards our car. It exploded on the window and the side of the car with such force that I wondered if the side of the car and the windshield could withstand that shitshower. They did though, it just required some cleaning on the way back so we could see through the windshield. Once we got the windshield cleaned up it was back to the road for the Cannonball and back to the city. But you know what- it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed both the museum and the ride- it was a good weekend.
28 Nov 03:02 | /travel/india | 0 comment(s)
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