Vizakhapatnam to Lanjigarh Weirder and Weirder...
...the day gets. So I finally board the flight from Kolkata to Vizag, the second to last leg of the long journey. All I need to to is arrive in V, meet the driver and then I can sleep through the final leg, the marathon 6hr drive to Lanjigarh. After 48 hours of travelling I am ready to kick back for a few hours before the job starts.
So thats the plan, and I arrive in Vizag still in the game. But then a slight hiccup, there is no driver waiting to meet me. An hour later and still no driver. There are some other drivers there waiting to pick up passengers and they are asking me where I am going, and one offers to call my contact Satish for me. I speak to him: the car is on its way I'm assured. Anyway I give the guy one of the kangaroo pins for his trouble, and all of his mates as well. Quite a run on 'roo pins.
So the car eventually arrives and they all know the driver. I get escorted over there and we leave in great style. First he has to stop at his office and get gas. OK, but we're away at last. The view progresses from the city to lush green countryside.
Sensory overload. So many sights. A man washing a waterbuffalo. Someone carving elephants from huge chunks of stone. A staircase to nowhere. Roadside pharmacy. The 'medical research center' in the middle of nowhere. The cricket stadium and a game in progress. Fixing a tire with the car propped up on a lump of timber. A political rally, with rows of cars and buses full of supporters blocking traffic. All in the space of about fifteen minutes as we are getting out of town. If this keeps up for more than a few hours my head will explode. Dorothy, we're not in Kansas anymore.
Then the driver's phone rings. A short discussion then he passes the phone to me. Its Satish. There's been a strike, not letting traffic through. The unions getting bolshy I think, so what. I can go back to Vizag and wait in a hotel and maybe travel later in the afternoon. OK, whatever. Then it begins to sink in as the driver explains. 'Strike' is actually a terrorist attack. The maoists are active in these parts, tribal issues. The driver explains there were 50 killed in an attack just recently. The road has been closed.
So we turn around and head back to the city. I'm now parked in the Park, right on the beach, living in luxury for the time being. Your basic beachfront hotel, with tennis court, swimming pool and all. There looked like some reasonable waves, but the sea is very rocky, swimming in it would be out of the question. And there is a guard standing at the entrance to the beach. And come to think of it the beach doesn't look that inviting. A couple of scrawny mongrel dogs doesn't quite fit the image of the tropical beach.
The hotel pool lifeguard is packing an automatic weapon.
Looking at the hotel brochure. The restaurant has a "live pasta station". The mind boggles. I have visions of a seething mass of worms or something. Or just a tank with live shrimps and things that you add to the pasta. Live.
On the wall in the lobby there is a display of paintings. A little sign reads "Works of Art by Few Articulate Guests who stayed with us". Articulate? Few? We seem to have a communication breakdown here. I suspect they meant "Artistic", but why are there so few of them?
They're doing some concreting. Now where I come from, when you want to pour concrete, you just call up a truck load of the stuff which has a cement pump, and you use a long boom to deliver it to where you want it. Or at worst you borrow your mates mixer and mix up a load. Here it is rather more labor intensive. A line of women with bowls of the dry cement comes down to the beach. They toss their load into a pit in the sand. Another woman stands there with hose and a shovel, wetting and mixing. Another line of women is waiting, and get their bowls filled. They balance these on their heads and track back up the path to the hotel. Concreting: a womans job apparently. Except for guy plastering it on the roof.
Scaffolding is interesting. Just a lot of pieces of sapling, lashed together with rope. It doesn't look that safe, but I suppose there is a good safety factor built in. Or plenty of spare bodies.
Dinner last night was in the beachfront restaurant. They were having a Hyderabad food festival. Special menu for the week. Very spicy curries. Prawns done in tamarind. Chicken Murgh. Yum. A couple large kingfishers to wash it all down. Its likely the last I'll have of civilization for a few weeks, make the most of it.
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