"Are you Christian?" yet another grinning and immaculately-dressed young Indian was asking me, at seven in the morning. Since he was bearing that elixir of life, coffee, as well as breakfast (two slices of stale white bread) I was required to answer as politely as I could manage. Our squeaky-clean hotel seems to double as a local hotbed of Christendom. God only knows how the Good News penetrated into this godforsaken place. It makes you wonder about the persuasive powers of whoever it was that converted them (a Mormon?). Whatever were they thinking? Getting out of town was a piece of cake.
We headed out the same way we came in, past the bustling port, and then into the hills. The ride was great, on a reasonable road with lots of local color. All the other vehicles seemed to be the multi-hued tractor-buses so favored in this part of the world, carrying villagers in high Gujarati drag. The women looked gorgeous in their bright saris and glistening jewelry, while the men's gold earrings, huge mustaches and white outfits gave them a distinguished, exotic look. The weather was excellent and our day's destination --the only place in the world boasting wild Asiatic lions, a species I never even knew existed before---was only a few hours away.
We stopped in the biggish town of Talala, which had a Timbuktu air to it --a bustling yet uncrowded trading outpost possessing a palpably multicultural flavor. With everyone in their traditional garb, it looked like the Halloween parade in Greenwich Village. Strangely, a lot of the villagers here were obviously of African decent. I'd noticed a few yesterday in Veraval and elsewhere, but here they represented a significant segment of the population. How the hell did they find their way to this backwater? The 7-11 *wallah* here was even more inquisitive than most. "What is your religion?" he wanted to know, and was eager to use his very good English.
"Do you have money from your country?" he asked. I pulled a crumpled old dollar out of my bag, told him its worth and got change in rupees. While munching on the bananas we bought, a cow wandered up and chomped down the skins that we fed her with incredible alacrity. Beyond Talala we had the road all to ourselves. It climbed through jungle-covered hills interspersed with pastureland. I kept an eye open for errant lions, who are said to kill more than fifty villagers a year. There are more than five hundred of the beasts in the area, and you'd think that people might prefer living somewhere else.
We passed through the gates of the national park and sanctuary and not long afterwards we had arrived in Sasan Gir village, which is basically a little roadside way-station catering to lion-watching tourists. Since the downmarket, state-run accommodation was full, we followed the long driveway to Gir Lodge, run by the Taj group of hotels and one of the swankest places to stay in all of Gujarat. \--Which isn't saying much. The room was pretty ordinary and obscenely overpriced, but the setting was gorgeous and the manager was so charming we couldn't resist. After cutting us a reasonable deal on a room-and-board package, he invited us to tea in the Englishy garden out back.
He was from Rajasthan originally and had many questions and suggestions regarding our route. One of the bellmen was also very keen on questioning us, as he had ridden his bike from Gir all the way to Jaipur once. After a less-than-spectacular lunch, which we ate in the cavernous dining room all by ourselves, we hit the road to visit the lions. The manager had told us of a preserve-within-the-preserve, a sort of safari park, where one was almost guaranteed to see lions. It was a beautiful ride out there, on a deserted road over ruggedly rolling hills. We jumped through the usual bureaucratic hoops to book seats on a bus, where all the other tourists were Indians.
Our driver was Indian too, even though he looked African. I wondered again how the majority of brown Indians interact with the tiny minority of black ones. The bus penetrated a series of high gates and we were inside the fenced-in reserve, a surprisingly vast area. The driver sped around a series of dirt roads at an alarming speed, reminding us of our experiences at Ranthambore. This "safari" was more high-tech, however, in that the drivers/rangers communicated via radio to let each other know where the lions were. Our lions were spotted right at the perimeter fence, which made for an experience (not to mention photo) akin to seeing them in an ordinary zoo.
We did spot some other critters though, including a smaller "jungle cat", lots of sambhar and spotted deer and a magnificent nilgai --a sort of giant antelope. After the tour we met a group of bureaucrats from nearby Rajkot who were about to enter the preserve on foot. The leader of their group boasted that as state employees they had "connections" which allowed them the privilege. "But isn't that dangerous?" I asked, flabbergasted, recalling that even the bus we had taken featured thick iron bars on all of its windows. The stout little man responded with a sly look: "A little, but if you walk quietly and know how to behave there is actually very little danger.
And seeing the lions on foot is really the best way." The ride back to "town" was even more beautiful in the golden light of late afternoon. It was one of those days where you're convinced that cycling is really and truly the best way to see the world. Back at the hotel we played backgammon on the lawn and watched the sunset. We snuck down a little bottle of Indian whisky we'd bought in Diu to mix in with soda water we'd ordered from the bar. Shortly after we'd poured our third round, a handsome young guy marched out to talk to us.
"Did you see any lions?" he asked out of sheer politeness, before giving us a little lecture on the fact that alcohol is forbidden in Gujarat state. "If any police saw you drinking they could shut us down," he said sternly. "We thought we were being discreet," I said in feeble defense of our crime. "It was quite evident sir," said our officious friend, in a tone usually reserved for speaking to children. So we slunk upstairs with the remainders of our illegal cocktails and freshened up for dinner. Back downstairs we were greeted by the same guy who had reprimanded us earlier.
We were surprised to learn that this obviously educated person had moved here from Delhi to work as a cook --and not a very talented one at that. I figured he might be a good source of information on the local black population and asked him about their origins and place in society. "There are two theories as to how they got here, actually. One is that they were imported as retainers for the powerful nawab of Junagadh, and the other is that this part of Gujarat --it is known as Saurashtra--- broke off from the African continent long ago." "So long ago that homo sapiens didn't exist as a species yet,"
I discounted the more preposterous of the two theories, "isn't it possible that the Portuguese brought them to Diu from one of their colonies in Africa?" "No; that is not what happened," he stated severely, as if my hypothesis was utterly ludicrous. "And how are they accepted in Indian society?" "Unlike in your country, there is no problem of racism in India. Basically these black people keep to themselves, though they speak Gujarati and have adapted our customs entirely. But they are only good for digging ditches or taking care of animals, as they are not dependable and quite lazy and ignorant."
This is not at all the first time we've encountered hypocritical discourse in India. I can't even count the number of times we've heard tautological or oxymoronic statements like "We Indians are a tolerant people, except for the Muslims, who are pigs." When our cook friend disappeared into the kitchen to rustle up a barely palatable dinner, we turned our attention to the only other people in the vast room (and the only other guests in the hotel, it turns out), a middle class family from Bombay. The father worked for an American shipping concern, the mother was obviously extremely well-educated and their nine-year-old son was adorable.
They told us how they had seen both lions and panthers on their first safari, and invited us to share a jeep with them bright (or rather still dark) and early the following morning. Falling asleep I heard what sounded like the roaring of a nearby lion. Was I already dreaming?