Mountains and Temples

Once in Chikmagalur I found my driver, with the always helpful description “I have a blue backpack.” When I arrived at the homestay, the owner greeted me over a fresh glass of buttermilk from the plantation’s cows, and shared how his family acquired the 100 year old British estate after independence, his heritage as a 6^th generation coffee grower, and his recent 1 year anniversary at the end of the month to his wife.

Except for the company of their four cats that begged me for chicken curry, I ate lunch in the courtyard alone. Afterwards the owner had the house servant walk me through the 400 acres of coffee plants, over foot trails carved by the estates laborers, as the family called them. They floated through the coffee plants silently and would disappear. I briefly lost the servant and turning down one path, saw a lady with a jug of water in the distance, made eye contact and then turn and I lost her amongst the forest.  

On returning I found the owner’s bachelor friends from Bangalore all circled around in the courtyard. I accepted the owners offer to join them for a beer saying “Just one” and he told the servant “bring him two.” The friends were rising government players, traders and one a Kannada actor, that I did not believe until he showed me video clips. Soon the owners uncle joined and a niece, some of their nine dogs, and I tried to follow as I best I could to a good natured political debate spoken in Kannada with sprinklings of English.

After not having slept on the bus, my second cup of coffee gave me a second wind. Later that evening, they asked if I wanted to join them for drinks at their hangout, an outdoor roadside shack isolated on a mountain ridge. “How many beers should I pack you?” the owner asked. Just x would be good. “No, no I’ll bring you more.” We took two separate cars and I rode with him and his beautiful young wife who once in the passenger seat, turned around to introduce herself and ask questions about my travels, family, love status, and the peculiarities that strike many Indians around a solo traveler. “We Indians like to travel and be in big nosey groups, you are only the second solo guest we have had.”  

“You like spicy food?” she asked surprisingly as I ate from the side dishes we ordered over drinks, as more of their friends from neighboring estates joined us on wooden stump seats. “Of course, I’m Mexican!” I said, later feeling a heat rise in the side of my mouth where I was chewing, and mixed with the cold mountain air, left my jaw feeling like it had been shot off and was just hanging by a few tendons.

The party spilled into the parking lot, and when the yellow lights from the shack cut, and we all were standing there with just the light of the moon and one or two estates on the opposite side of the valley. In the car the wife sang a song perfectly in the direction of her husband as he swerved around the mountain roads with one hand on the steering wheel and another pounding the roof of the car to the music. I sat in the back, riding the rollercoaster brought on by the road, drinks, and closing my eyes, I laughed. At the estate gates we found his alcoholic guard slumped over and the owner playfully scolded him that he needed to quit. “He can’t support a wife and his thirst on his allowance” he later told me. This was but one of many impassioned speeches he went into, one preceding being to his friend who had an accompanying servant/driver/body guard with him and his friends need to recognize his worth. That this man was an extension of him he said, and he owed his livelihood to him, just as the man owed his to him. I stood there as an observer to that one, the owner, the government friend, his servant and myself. Together with a conversation about the lives of the laborers on his property, an intimate insight into notions of servitude, workers and caste that I had long observed without insider commentary.  

Over a fire in the courtyard, the drinking continued with his bachelor friends and those that followed us back from the shack. The friends were happy to welcome me in, and on a comment on one’s gratitude for the surprise in having met me, another’s on the path that was leading me to this place, the owner launched into another speech, this one aimed at dispensing wisdom to me. About concepts of Hindu beliefs in fate, friendship, the guest is god, the necessities of a man in his twenties (with the playful disapproving looks his wife sent us), advice and commentary on the parts of my story I had shared with him earlier, responsibilities he has to those who depended on him, and that we are but simply playing out our lives. It was planned our paths would cross. Though drunk I listened intently as I starred at the fire. Thoroughly convinced in all parts, if in part owed to the high spirited energy and mood of that night.

“My wife will accompany you to dinner,” he broke off and I don’t remember what he said before that. “You have a long day ahead.” And so away from the party and fire, we sat over dinner talking. In the shack there was but one light from the roof that cast all our shadows about. In front of the fire I could only partially see faces shown briefly by the flickers of flames. Now as I sat with her I could see all of her face. I imagine this is what it likes to feel like a don juan on a hacienda, I drunkenly thought. She was happy that I liked the dessert she had made and after a glass of water from their spring, I went up to bed. 

The next morning after coffee and idly dosas, I hired a driver and Mahindra Indian Jeep. He grew up in Chikmangalur, left for Bangalore in his twenties for a job and quit within a week “I can have money or I can have peace, I want peace.” Through the trees, past fruit and overhead birds I have never seen and did not know, we drove through coffee estates and their accompanying villages of 10- 20 buildings that housed the laborers. They were all working and empty now except for a few elders, running kids and dogs. .

The first stop was a waterfall. He dropped me off at a trailhead that wove in and out of a path wrought by runoff and erosion. Convinced I was lost after sometime and having not seen a single soul except a few curious monkeys above, I finally heard screams and laughs ahead, and then the waterfall. I returned with a photographer I met on the trail and bracing a tree and extending his tripod, helped pull me up an embankment. He showed me how to eat the ripe coffee cherry  skin and tossing the tan seed. “We use to add salt to this as a kid, never concerned with the value of the seed.”

I trekked Mullayyanagiri next, the highest peak of the state, and part of the Western Ghats that stretched from Mumbai to the backwaters of Kerala . Atop was a temple. As customary, I took off my shoes. The approach to the temple was slow as I tried to navigate the rocks barefoot. Inside the temple I sat on the cold stone floor and listened as adults rang the bell before the diety and children added to the sounds running around, sending their anklet chimes ringing.    

I spent the rest of the day touring the quiet hill station with my driver, before ending with a swim in a lake at the base of Mullayyanagagiri. On the way back to the homestay we picked up a couple going our direction, and the three us rode in the back as the jeep climbed a rock face for sunset. On the way back the sounds of the night bugs reached a fervor, and against the wind and roar of the jeep, we sat in the backseat. We abandoned our attempts at conversation and sat listening contently quiet.

Another party with the bachelors ensued that night. Exhausted from the day and perfectly happy, in predictable manner I followed. One showed me that before drinking it was customary to dip three fingers in the night’s first drink and cast the drips to the ground, “to stave off the three vices.”

“What are those I asked?”

“It all depends on you. They are your three demons.” I immediately saw mine.

Guests came again and I recognized one from last night who had talked of his estate in the interior, and soon he invited to move the party there. Deep into the tiger reserve. With the mention of a night hike there, this little part of tigers was lost on me, especially when someone had said there is the chance to stumble upon sleeping elephants. I must have also missed the part about boar hunting too because as soon as some from the party opted to join and we piled into a jeep, British surplus rifles and double barrel shotguns were loaded.

The second time I had been involuntarily dragged into a hunt. Though the idea of boar bacon did seem like an appealing addition to my meat diet of chicken and goat.

We went deeper into the interior and the trees grew larger and all their roots that cut across the dirt path and gripped boulders, looked of snakes that were waiting to wrap around our jeep. The sound of the bugs drowned out everything and the only light came from the headlights and the pair of lights behind us from another jeep that joined us.

At the estate we waited and drank. I was not sure of the legality of what we were planning, much less was I sure what was even unfolding. I simply heard sleeping elephants and jumped in the car. We were waiting for it to get later, it be safer they said. But shortly after 2 am forest department officers came. Shots had been heard earlier and they were looking for poachers. They searched the owner’s property for registered guns, and when they found a pair of antlers in one of the laborer’s homes, an argument began between the accused, his pleading wife, the liable homeowner and the plumb forest officials.  He was taken away for questioning and the homeowner was obliged to attend.

Five of us were left alone in the house. Soon the power cut and sent us all into darkness. The dogs went beserk and we sat in silence. Tiger! I thought. They went out for a smoke soon after and I followed. I made way to the edge of the property, along the cement clearing where the coffee seeds dried up in the sun dropped off to the mountain face below. I sat there with the company of one of the dogs, and resting his head on my lap, we watched the moon through the trees. 

The bachelors and I were dropped back at the homestay around 4 am. That night, as the night before I listened to the intermittent calls of peacocks coming from the sloped coffee grounds around me. I imagined that blue moon and the colors of their feathers in that light, as they slipped and silently darted in and out of the plants, their plumes shaking the coffee leaves and cardamom spices.

The owner and his wife left for business in town before I woke but left me a message. I hired a driver to take me down the mountain, through the valley where the coffee was roasted, and to stop in the temple cities of Belur and Halebid before dropping me off for the night in Hassan. He spoke very little English but sitting in the front seat with him, through points and words of “corn” “ginger” “wheat” “sugarcane,” he identified the fields we passed over. He was 24, a student, lifelong resident of these parts. He accompanied me through the temple grounds of the twin city and as we exited each, helped navigate me back to the car amidst the rush of sellers that would greet us.

“Look look! See see!” One man who managed to stop me by jumping in front of me and blocked my path said, pointing to an open page of the Karma Sutra. “Hair hair!” he shouted, with his long pointed finger highlighting the depiction of a man pulling a woman’s hair while in the act.

“Yes, yes. Nice, nice.” I took off my glasses and looked to my driver and we both just started laughing. 

At dusk we made our way through the small villages to my night stop in Hassan. I motioned him to stop for bhutta, roasted corn, and we ate while learning on the hood of his car. I dozed off after and woke up in Hassan. We spoke about a hundred words that whole day together, but for some unexplained reason I felt it hard to say goodbye.

Within fifteen minutes of my hotel room I was restless so with the 250 rupees I had left, wandered around looking for food but found a bar first. On the way back I passed street stalls and stopped to watch the clamor of shouting orders, extended hands, and the preparation of dosas and scoops of rice from the ping of stainless steel vats. The commotion excited me and I was joined in shouting “Dosa dosa!” to place an order. A man next to me noticed and helped me. Despite not speaking a shared language, we managed a small conversation of parts. To my animated objections, he paid for my plate. As we pushed through the throngs of people I motioned for him to sit with me on the side of the road over our dinner. He pointed to his car and his waiting wife. I understood he had to go.

I walked back and stopped at another quieter stall. I was still hungry. As I sat with the other three men on our stools surrounding the cart, a family pulled up. “The pretty girls are always with their families” I remembered a coworker saying. We made eyes a dozen times as we sat there eating our dinner in silence but for the sounds of the street, clanking of the vendor’s pots, and soft talk of the standing men smoking that blocked my sight once or twice. A path cleared and we stopped breaking away and finally I got to see those brown eyes. I motioned to the vendor I wanted to pay and how much, and he did not understand me. She overheard, spoke to him in Kannada and he turned to me and said “30.” I paid him and turned to her and said thank you, she simply nodded. As I was walking away, her family passed in their ride, I looked up just in time and we both gave each other the biggest smiles we had never given to anyone else. Mine complete with a gap and rice all over my shirt. I looked down and had to bite my lips from breaking into a childish giggle.  

In the morning I threw my stuff together, slapped some sambar into a chapati, rolled it up into a banging burrito, grabbed the paper, ran to wave down a rickshaw, gave him my remaining rupees, caught a bus and headed back to Bangalore. 

Lights and Fire

Well I guess the shark and squid teamed up with the goat and quail because a few days after my return from Puducherry I became ill. I ignored it at first as the flu but my boss suggested I see a doctor, so a friend took me to the hospital. Despite my body aches and pain I was giddy to go, experiencing another country’s healthcare system struck me as a chance for a case study. Admittedly if I destined to the emergency room or for a surgery I might not have had the same sentiment. After a payment for the entire bill that equaled my co-pay at home and an examination, the doc said I likely got a bacterial bug from something I ate. I tried to pinpoint which street side stall, shack or restaurant was the culprit. Weak western guts.  

Take this, this and this and get some rest. I was relegated to my apartment that weekend. Being sick is never fun but especially when you are far away from home. Lounging about in the rain, in my moment of sickness and weakness, I had my first acknowledgements of homesickness. Disarmed and alone, I wrestled with these thoughts as I tried to sleep over the body aches and sweats. My bedroom became a battleground.

Well timed calls from friends and Facetime sessions with my family jolted me, quieting my restless mind and allowing me respite to heal. Feeding off their support and finding the strength to do so much more than just kick a stomach bug. And when everyone you have ever known is asleep somewhere far off, the company of the muses. The song from Fleetwood Mac that reminds you of childhood camping trips to the Sierra with your family, serenading the landscapes of the Southwest, as you sit in the backseat feeling safe and secure surrounded by baggage with your Gameboy and blanket. The song from Crosby, Stills and Nash that represents the dream your parents had when they settled down and created a family, and how everything that has been revealed is greater than that dream could have ever imagined. The song from Van Morrison that was the song to this past summer and evenings on the porch with your mom, dad or whoever had stopped by that evening, and over a cold beer you could close your eyes and still smell the coastal sage brush from your beach trip, hike or bike ride.  They, along with a makeshift army of carefully arranged stones, the sentinels of your soul.

And about my apartment, the mementos of true love and support that allows you to jettison off into a future unknown, and in the face of momentary lapses of self-doubt and withdraw, continue on renewed. The realization those pillars that I built my life on will be there to greet me when I return and share our stories. The ceremonious letter my nana has written for me, before each move whether heading back to school, moving to Denver. The picture of my niece by my bed stand. Pictures of smiling friends and family on my walls. Drawings from the students of Annunciation. I miss my Cardinals.

I spent a lot of time on the balcony and when the sun broke through the clouds and I felt stronger than my body aches, walking around the village for tea and bakery treats. And the never-in-a-hurry sit on a cinder block, watching people in the street or games of cricket in the empty lot. And doing the things I kind of lost track of before India, playing (loose word) my guitar, writing and reading (I blame that in part to one or two god awful books that started my year).

“When many gather in the sky and circle about, we believe it is going to rain” someone had told me of the hawks over Bangalore, and almost every evening they did and it rained for a week. And from my balcony I dutifully watch them. Gliding above the neighboring courtyard and its sole tree in the center. Twisting and turning through clothing lines and the fluttering sheets on the neighboring rooftops. Diving and spinning in dogfights with other birds. Circling above unfinished skyscrapers popping up everywhere. I have long since known a porch or balcony is the most valuable place in a house.

My health improved and coincided with the gathering festivities surrounding Diwali. In every doorway were draped ribbons or marigold and jasmine, cars adorned with palms, and markings of thanks given to the items in life that we owe our livelihoods to. These blessing were a tribute to Lakshmi, Vishnu’s wife and goddess of prosperity. In every profession and age, people marked the tools that sustained them, kept them safe, and fed them, with a blessing of thanks and wish for future prosperity. The front car lights that illuminate our way, the office doorway that provides families a living each time we walk into work, the food seller’s street cart that allows him to display his offerings of nourishment to others . In the evenings oil lamps were lit in windows and doorways to guide Lord Rama home, and in the final days the fireworks competed with colorful balcony and rooftop lights for attention in the skies of Bangalore. And if your neck got tired from looking up, at the feet of doorways the beautiful Ragoli sand designs crafted by older women bent over in their saris, accented with pedals and lamps.

To an American it was a mix of Fourth of July and Christmas. Families in homes and festivities in the streets.

At night some of my coworkers joined me at my apartment to shoot off the fireworks I had purchased on the outskirts of town, where they were manufactured and then sold in the temporary buildings that popped up to unload a year’s worth of firework stock for the four day holiday.

As we ran up the flights of stairs, each exploding firecracker made us run faster and skip steps, eager not miss anything and excited for the pending show of our own. From the unlocked rooftop we had a view for miles of fireworks bursting over Bangalore, and immediately set up our poured out beer bottle for a stand and lit the smaller ones first with candles. Flower pots and sparkles, crackers and butterflies. We got bolder as our stock grew smaller and boyish laughs got louder. Taking one of the remaining butterfly firecrackers (called this because they changed colorful and flew through the air in random changing directions, making a fluttering sound of wings) I lit it and just when I went to toss it off the roof, it caught in my hand and shot backwards towards everyone else gathered. We killed over laughing. With tears in my eyes I examined the blacks of my hand. We saved the largest rockets for last, the ones marketed like some sort of Indian scud missiles. After a few that just exploded on the ground, we got a good fly off the last one.

On the final night of Diwali, on the backseat of a friend’s Royal Enfield, my kurta and ears catching the night air, we went flying through the streets under the exploding skies of Bangalore. Shot off from roofs, sides of the road, and alleys. I stupidly asked how fast this thing goes and we picked up speed. Faster and faster. Festival of lights and of hope.

I’m back.

Challo bye. 

Indian Roadtrip

Our last stop in Bangalore was to buy jasmine from sellers gathering before sunrise for the weekend market, to adorn the statue of Ganesha on the dashboard in well wishes of a “safe journey.”  It was just after 3 am when we started off and exited the city limits and shortly after crossed into the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu. A Tata truck with neon lights, equivalent to our 18 wheelers that traverse the interstates at night, flew towards us flashing their high beams and blaring their sequenced horns. This wouldn’t be unusual, to see an oncoming 10 ton truck in your lane except that we were on the national highway. There are rules here! Cones, dividers, if not speed limits at the very least signs that read “Speed thrills but kills.”

“Um can he do that?” I asked after I sat up alert in the backseat and the lights and noise passed and before us returned the darkness and silence of the highway.

“It’s India” my coworker friend said, “Incredible India.” We laughed and the music continued and the four of them joked in their mother tongue and I just smiled, a real smile. My first Indian road trip. The nation with the largest stretch of road second only to America. Eisenhower highways, the road leads West, Grapes of Wrath, Route 66, roadside diners, ghost towns, the car. I wondered what this would reveal about India. And that maybe, as at least I interpreted, that look some give you when on the road, the one that conveys the same message you have seen on faces elsewhere scattered across the Southwest, is universal. Where are you coming from? Where are you going? A look from the ones who dream of mobility in faraway towns and villages, even in the big cities you pass through. Not a look concerned to find an answer to who are you? The need to move isn’t an exclusive tenant of some American “exceptionalism.”  

I realize in writing this a few weeks after the fact is a disservice to my recollection. But after such a long writing hiatus in general, I accept infrequency as a side effect of my return. But I disclosed that to you in my first post, that my sharing might be sporadic. And, as in the following retelling of the trip, I will also call upon the transparency clause of my first post. For many reasons. When I return home I can share with you over some laughs the parts that even after a few weeks of not putting down in paper, I won’t soon be able to forget about this trip and the entirety of my stay in India.

Alas (because you never get to say that enough unless you are Tolkien or Whitman, but the latter is a prick) we continued driving into the night and soon passed what was to be the sole McDonald’s (or any Western fast food joint for that matter) we would see on a 13 hour road trip.

I had my knees bracing against the backs of the driver and passenger seat, since there were no seatbelts in the back. Going 135 kmph, this little useless precaution made me feel safe. “Do you want the corner seat belt?” my friend asked when he noticed my peculiarity. “No its okay, my life isn’t any more valuable than yours” joking and we laughed.

I did my best to stay awake, but woke up to a roadside pit stop. It was just after sunrise and through the fog, a village was waking and a few in the distance were already walking through their mango groves and sugarcane fields. After an extended visit to Vellore and the Golden Temple, we picked the last brick buildings on the outskirts of town to eat, before the road again gave way tropical forests of green, only to break into the clearings of rice paddy fields and isolated inhabitants. At a three walled blue building we sat outside next to an open fire and metal slab that turned out hot dosas we dipped in even hotter sambar and chutney. As soon as we got inside the car and not a second later my friend reached under his seat and threw me a beer (because it’s legal-ish for passengers). Cold beer is not a necessity they told me. I had one and immediately passed out from exhaustion, waking up half an hour later to be instantly handed another.

The roads led through forests and farms, until villages turned into trading hubs were we would stop at crossroads. At each we pulled over and asked directions to Pondi, take an unmarked turn, and were back on green stretches, stopping only for fresh pressed lemonade or sugarcane juice.   

By the time we reached Pondicherry I was feeling excited, immediately though I sobered up when seeing a commotion on the side of the road. A crowd of people was attempting to lift a car off a calf that was trapped underneath. It came bolting out full of adrenaline and small streaks of blood on its white coat. I sunk back in my seat processing that image, just as we passed the sign welcoming us to the union territory of Pondicherry. The greeting humidity and lack of sleep set me into a gentle delirium, but that was soon calmed with a gentle stroll down French quarters and Goubert Avenue that ran alongside the Bay of Bengals. Over pineapples from the fruit carts, we spent the rest of the evening on the boulders overlooking the sea.

On the first full day and after a good night’s sleep, we headed out to an island of Puddacherry full of dragonflies. After volleyball and beers under a shack, we headed back to the mainland to sample some Indian seafood, a spread of masala crab, minced shark, and curry squid in a dimly lit restaurant. The usual food coma set in, mixed with that blissful post-beach exhaustion. After eating we drove outside the French quarter to an open beach head to swim. I had apparently lost some weight since summer and had to use one hand to hold up my trunks. I can only guess it lends itself to being cut-off cold turkey from craft beer and tortillas. However my exploratory addiction to sweets here and the revelation of an expansive world of Indian breads beyond the naan will likely counter the issue. Think roti, chapatti, parathas, poori, all in different types of finishing adornments, cooking methods and regional flare.

                I asked my friends to come out deeper and join me bobbing out in the murky water, but they all confessed to not being able to swim, a reality I often forget growing up by the sea. I never understood how American inlanders could travel miles to a beach vacation to just sit on the shore and read, to deny the euphoria of the waves and summers past, forgetting not knowing how to swim is a damn good reason. I stayed out there till I spotted a red jelly and came back to shore. We left shortly after, not before eating fried fish from the seafront stalls and drinking them down with coconuts, sitting amongst the painted fishing row boats beached on shore.

                That evening again we spent like I imagine brisk weekend nights of French Rivera would be spent. French heard drifting through the air from vacationers and residents helped. The pastel yellows, blues of whites of the colonial buildings all stood silently facing the sea, with families and lovers walking down the yellow lit boardwalk. The slight humidity and faces under swaying coconut trees reminded you weren’t in Europe, but somewhere far far away. We went for drive later, past the old French administrator buildings, churches and residences, across the canal and into the Tamil Nadu quarter with narrow streets of concrete and steel, painted signs and billboards, and metal storefront doors and roofs. The streets were abandoned except for the laying oxen near empty carts and occasional orbs of red light that would appear down a narrow alley as someone struck a match to smoke.

                We had plans to sleep on the beach under an awning but with the cyclone advisory for the neighboring northern state, we were content with the room. One by one we feel asleep until it only a friend and I were awake, with another snoring in the middle of us. We got to talking over beers about our perceptions of each others’ countries but also of a shared and I presume somewhat universal goings of 20 somethings. How when answering what were some things that intrigued me of Indian culture, I answered a reverence for the family and the measure of restraint and duty people seem to govern their lives by. This was something missing in the cities he said, the fluid definition of family, how when he would go home everyone comes by your parents house to see you through open doors, to hear your stories and share in your victories. Things were shifting, demands that had driven people from the villages to the concrete cities of Bangalore, amidst a great backdrop of changing norms of the individual, love, faith, and obligation, playing out in the lives of millions. He got to telling me a religious story from childhood, how the humble Chipmunks got its stripes, adding he did not know if people really believed it. I nodded saying I was not sure not if believing that story or maybe even others was the point, but rather what the story represents. A connection to our roots, the families we left back home, our communities that sustain us and a framework instilled since childhood that determines how we see, interact and make sense of this world. It’s written on our foreheads, he added at the end of one the stories shared where it can be hard to make sense of it all. A reference to How Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver and Shiva the Destroyer have marked you with an ineligible destiny.

                On our last morning we took our time. We stopped at a roadside stall for vada, idli, sambar and coconut chutney, down a cobblestone corridor that fed into the sea. The ocean breeze channeling down the walls kept the rising temperature at bay. After we strolled alongside the sea one last time, passing the weekend carts selling trinkets on the sand. We found the old man who was shouldering a hundred pounds of necklaces over his neck, shoulders, elbows and wrists that we had spoken with last night, with his wife carrying their baby. She talked me into a red coral necklace for my sister. Our last stop was to the liquor store to stock up on alcohol in the union territory where taxes were suspended, but limits strictly enforced at border checkpoints. We held our breathes as we crossed the border from Pondicherry back into neighboring Tamil Nadu and when passed, laughed and drove off fast.

                We took a different route home and found the national highway, stopping in a town known for leather. We quietly ate biryani and deep fried quail on palm leaves, to the sound of clanking metal bowls in the open kitchen and the call to prayer from the adjoining white mosque. It had been sometime since I have heard the call to prayer, but hearing it an enclave of town where India’s largest minority was the majority, added with the heat of food and atmosphere, and commotion of foot traffic and motorcycles that had become my white noise, seemed to heighten its impact. A feeling of serenity and affection for strangers around me, the normal act of a roadside lunch turned transcendental communion.

                And that all too common “I don’t know what I am eating exactly but damn this is good.”

                After lunch we stopped in leather shops (the byproduct of anything but the revered cow) and sampled shoes and belts in one basement level shop. The power cut, stopping the single fan that cooled the storage container-sized store, the fan that I had been standing under sipping my lemon soda. I returned to street level to walk around. Soon after we piled into the car and onto the highway, catching the sunset before it cast the valley into increasing darkness.