Mondaugen's Law

Treading the Path of Life with Wild Elephants Up Ahead

My intended post on Indian beer will have to wait. There’s also one concerned with odd Indian trees. That one must wait too. You see, yesterday I was almost trampled to death by a wild bull elephant. As I sprinted in the opposite direction down a muddy forest path, screaming “RUN!” to the students in my care, I thought to myself, “gee, this will make excellent material for a blog, if I survive….”

Vilpatti at 6:30 am

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It all began with volunteering to lead the hike from Vilpatti to Palani. This is the school’s official description:

“Initially road and farm trail past terraced fields, small farms and coffee plantations to Palar Waterfall, the route then moves into jungle and wilderness with steep cliff views, glimpses of the spectacular 2nd Palar Waterfall and possibility of wild elephant sign, though the thick forest makes sightings rare. A detour upstream to a weir provides a swim option, then the trail out walks on an irrigation ditch wall through a stately teak plantation, emerging at the bas of the Palani Ghat (2 hr. drive back)”

When our hiking coordinator writes “wild elephant sign” she means “old poo.” Hiking for a whole day down to the plains to see old poo didn’t appeal much. But there were other attractions. The Palar Falls are truly spectacular. And some forest swimming would be good fun. And I hadn’t been on this hike. Who knew what else there was to see?

From Vilpatti into the dawn hills

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The hike from Vilpatti to Palar Falls was just as the description predicted. We found an Indian gooseberry tree and sampled (horribly sour as they were no where near ripe). We jumped over small streams and admired the surrounding hills. We stopped for breakfast on an old bridge and soaked in the gentle morning light. We met local farmers and said “vannakam.”

Upper Palar Falls

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At the upper Palar Falls, we stopped for a second breakfast. The Palar Falls are spectacular, a huge drop down into a cleft of black rock. We sat on the rocks above the falls and looked around. The sky was bright, the weather warm. Everyone was happy. Roomba sandosum, in Tamil.

“Look, elephants.” Said Suaresh, our guide. He pointed across the valley. Students gathered next to him to follow his pointing arm and try to spy them out.

“You means those little dots?”

“I can’t see them.”

“Yes, I saw one move, I think.”

I peered at the glade Suaresh indicated and couldn’t see a darn thing. The glade was a long way off, over a mile away, perhaps two, and I didn’t have my glasses on.

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Play 'find the elephants' if you will. Center frame bright green glade. Look for black dots. Zoom in.

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So I took photos with my inferior digital camera. If you want to play “find the wild elephants,” explore the thin strip of bright green glade just left of center frame. The black blobs that move in each subsequent shot are elephants.

The experience was more frustrating that a first stab at “Where’s Waldo?”

I had heard there was only one herd of elephants in elephant valley. We had seen them and they were on the other side of the valley in the opposite direction of our trail. No chance of seeing any more. Bummer.

We hiked off along the trail down the valley and began to notice many “wild elephant signs” on our trail. In fact, the stuff was everywhere and hard not to step in. It was all at least several days old. Nothing to write home about (though I guess that’s what I’m doing).

It was hard to imagine elephants using the same trails as we did. Elephants are somewhat larger than human beings. Yet we even had trouble on the paths. They were single-file for us, with many obstacles, sharp rocky inclines and bushes on every side. They certainly pushed vegetation out of their way, but what did they stand on? Perhaps these wild elephants were smaller than the temple elephants I had met. If they weren’t, it really seemed impossible for them to move across this angular landscape.

Lovely lower Elephant Valley

And lower Palar Falls

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The view of the surrounding peaks and lower Palar falls distracted from the contemplation of elephants. We moved laterally along a slope that alternated from mild to severe. We moved across hot grasslands and through cool forests down the valley. These were the Palni Hills at their most beautiful.

King Kong's Island?

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Hiking in an angular world

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Then we found a relatively fresh footprint. Suaresh pointed it out. It didn’t look like much: as if a flat dinner plate had been pressed on the ground. He hushed the group. We got very excited.

Down the trail a little farther we found brand new “wild elephant signs.” They couldn’t have been more than ten minutes old, these signs. Suaresh hushed us again and started walking more slowly down the path. We all got very, very excited. Perhaps we really would get to see wild elephants.

I know, but I had to include it. OK, you're right. I didn't.

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“If you come across wild elephants,” our hike director had told me a year ago, “move slowly and quietly and make a small noise so they become aware of your presence.” This seemed to make good sense. “Surprising them is dangerous. So just let them know you’re there and all should be fine.”

We crept along the trail, peeking around corners before proceeding, keeping quiet. With luck get a quiet peek.

But no luck.

Not too much farther down the trail, we came to a rocky stream. Muddy dinner-plate footprints were everywhere. Water had been splashed all over the rocks. Elephants had bathed and drank here, not long before. So we stopped and took our lunch, bathing in the same pools (but not drinking).

Elephant's Garden Under the the Mountain (not by the Beatles)

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An hour of relaxation was enough for all. We gathered up and got back on the trail. Within minutes, storm clouds gathered. We stopped to get our gear on.

The first big drops pelted down as I realized Suaresh and I were together and most of the kids had continued along the trail. Feeling responsible, I headed up to see how they were doing. I found the largest group huddled under a overhanging rock pulling out their jackets and panchos.

William ran up looking really excited.

“Mr Purdy! Elephants ahead! I saw them!”

I continued up to the front of the group and found Bala and another kid.

“They’re right around the corner!”

Wow, what a chance—to see elephants. The rain started to come down in torrents. And my camera isn’t waterproof. I muttered something unprintable.

Stepping around Bala and the kid to get ahead was difficult. We had to grab tree branches and sort of shimmy around one another. How on earth did elephants walk on this? They must be miniature.

I pulled the camera out and started walking very slowly ahead on the trail, pausing before corners and trying to look around them.

There they were! I saw the rear end of an elephant move out of sight just up ahead maybe 50 feet. Only Bala and William were following. The rest of the group was way back on the trail still fitting their gear, though the news of “elephants ahead” had reached them.

I walked up a little farther and came around another corner. I saw what looked like two elephants, one in profile, about 50 ft. up the trail. A big one was in profile. He was even bigger than the temple elephants. He was huge. How on earth could he even stand on the trail? I raised my camera very slowly…..

“FROOOOOOOOOMMMP!” The bull had trumpeted.

Then I saw something that I have yet to digest. The bull was facing me, his head bobbing up and down, and he was getting closer and closer. He was charging.

“OH SHIT. RUN! RUN!”

I spun around on the muddy trail and ran back as fast as I could, shouting back down the trail. William and Bala had disappeared. Perhaps they hadn’t followed me? A thousand half-formed thoughts run through your head at this point. Do I jump off the trail? Will the elephant pursue me down the slope? Do I climb a tree? Do I just keep running?

Then I saw Elinor down the slope off the trail. She was frantically trying to climb back up the slope. I stopped and reached down to her, but not before looking back to see where Mr. Elephant was. He wasn’t.

I helped Elinor up and calmed her down. She had fallen off the trail when the elephant began his charge. She however, had seen him stop, turn around and go back. I hadn’t seen that.

We moved back down the trail to find the rest of the group and found they had climbed to higher ground. We joined them and waited. It seemed a sensible thing to do, wild elephants up the trail a way. Give them some time to make tracks.

Was this a teachable moment? What could I glean from the encounter? On the path of life, it’s a good idea to hesitate when wild bull elephants are up ahead. Was this an analogy for picking your fights in life?

I looked at the students’ faces. They were wet. Elinor was still shaking. Most looked excited. Not the time for a teachable lesson. It really wasn’t one.

How lucky we were. In the garden of forking paths, which other paths led to a trampling death? Which to no encounter at all? Had I waited to gather the full group of hikers to proceed down the path, the bull might have charged us as a group. We’d all have turned and bumped into one another. If William had kept going and not come back to tell me of the elephants, might the bull have charged him? How lucky we were.

The rain pelted down heavily as we waited. Then I moved up to the front to join Suaresh. He had gone ahead parallel and above the path to see what he could see. We approached the trail cautiously and found the elephant tracks took a downward course along another path. They had chosen another route. We might proceed carefully on our way.

When the rain stopped, I took out my camera and looked to see what images I got. There was only one shot and a very blurry one. I think it shows the rear of an elephant on the trail, about the middle of the frame, but it’s hard to say. I think I took this photo when I first saw the elephants. National Geographic will never hire me.

Yeah sure that's an elephant.....

At Rest in Poombari

About an hour’s drive West of Kodiakanal, along a road that winds through forests and fields, is the town of Poombari. It’s set in the terraced fields of the hills along the Kerala border, where wild elephants and tahr still roam.

Poombari is a tranquil town, as few vehicles pass through. ‘Poo’ means flower and ‘bari’ means rock in Tamil. The town is literally where the flowers grow on the rocks. Or perhaps the town itself is the metaphorical flower.

If I’m getting sappy, it’s for good reason. I consider Poombari a most lovely town. Each visit confirms this opinion. Under heavy cloud cover it looks mysterious. Under clear blue infinity, it looks joyous. In the dry season, the surrounding sere grass gives the view a variety. After monsoon, the lush green terraced fields fill Poombari with life. These memories are Monet’s cathedrals to me.

I’ve never noticed if the flowers in Poombari are natural or planted.

Sadly, death comes even to Poombari. On the edge of town, behind a hillock that hides it from view, is the town cemetery. The hiking path to Palangi passes through the cemetery, so I’ve visited many times and on each occasion there is a fresh grave, and the edge of the cemetery is pushed a little closer to the edge of the hill.

It had been my long understanding of cemeteries that they can be solemn and beautiful but never joyous. They can be triumphant or sad, but never irreverent. The metaphors that ease life end at the gate, and metaphors that seal it come to life.

I’ve never much liked cemeteries. They make me thoughtful and quiet, though I never have a thought worth remembering.

But the graves of Poombari speak a different language, and a very foreign one to my sense of memorials.

Is this one a helicopter or a plane? Is it a child’s airplane toy? Is a pilot buried underneath? A mechanic? A stewardess? The twin planes hover over a husband and wife, that much is certain. Did they both work for Tata?

But perhaps suggesting the airplanes defined their lives is the wrong approach. Perhaps neither worked for the airlines. Poombari is an out of the way town. Perhaps they lived and farmed in Poombari all their lives. The airplanes, instead, might represent wishes beyond the grave. In their next lives they want to fly, or work for Tata. Or the planes represent their souls flying up to heaven. There metaphor is difficult to suss. The inscription is mute.

Perhaps there is no metaphor: they simply could afford to have airplanes made on top of their graves.

The lotus on the side is much more traditional, representing purity and beauty that hovers above a muddy pond. Perhaps the connection is to be made with modern flying machines, the airplane-helicopter here that hovers above the world.

A slumber did my spirit seal.

The lotus on the side of the grave, I realised is a ‘poombari,’ a flower on a rock (well, concrete) grave. Reading it too literally? A coincidence? Perhaps the graves themselves are the flowers on the rock.

Other graves are not so ornate, or permanent as concrete airplanes. This one was recent, a day, perhaps two, old.

Buried in earth, covered in flowers and tears. Meals brought on banana leafs. A tender coconut. I should be so lucky.

Other graves offer a comic view of death. Please bury me in a tower painted like a circus ride. Or decorate my grave with my favourite sport—a cricket bat and ball. But what’s the matter with children’s room motifs? We are move into the life after death as a newborn babe.

Perhaps they’re children’s graves.

Other graves are covered with porcelain tiles. They truly look like inside-out shower stalls.

My eye simply does not associate bathroom tiles with death. There is nothing noble about them. There is nothing triumphant about a bathroom tile. Nothing sad or solemn about them either. They are not mournful or beautiful. They’re just bathroom tiles. Their function is to be impermeable, to keep water out of the walls, to send it all down the drain. Impermeablility is not a concept I associate with death.

A voice tells me the builders of these graves find the tiles beautiful. They also know their shininess doesn’t fade quickly, unlike paints and metals. They are immortal decorations. That’s what I read. The Western mundane is an Eastern eternal?

In the end, the idea of an Indian cemetery is itself an oxymoron. Hindus cremate. Christians and Muslims bury.

Offense and Defense

They say the best defense is an offense. So as I don't mean to be offensive, I will defend my writing before attacked.

The Coolie Ghat Hike blog is a slight departure: I've introduced a character or two, students and faculty, and fictionalized bits to avoid jail time.

I assure all interested parties that none of these characters are real. Even the Mr. Purdy is made up to some extent. I had no real faculty or students in mind when written. I plucked them malformed from my imagination.

Coolie Ghat Hike

Until the 1940's, the only way up Kodai mountain was by foot. Mind you, this didn't have to be your own foot. You could, with a bit of money, hire a palanquin or a pony to carry you. The foot (or hoof) requirement was simply due to the road, a path following sharp switchbacks up impossibly steep slopes, paved with irregular stones knocked from the hillside. It simply could not accommodate anything with wheels.

It was called the 'Ghat' or Forest Road, for obvious reasons. Most of the mountain was still wild, covered in a combination of grassy slopes and small dense forests called sholas, filled with odd, twisted Dr. Seuss-like trees. But as the 19th and 20th centuries progressed, people arrived in ever greater numbers and transformed the mountainsides into farms, houses, villages and cities. Much of the Ghat Road ceased to pass through ghats.

Eventually in the 1940's a paved road, passable by motor vehicles, was built from Batlagundu to Kodaikanal. That road is still in service today. While the surface has been periodically repaved, what remains of the stonewall guardrail is original. Only one other road, the Palani Ghat, has been added since. Literally, there are only two roads off the mountain.

Even before the drivable roads up the mountain were built, Kodaikanal had a small population of cars. With a few nice paths through town, and one around the lake, the delights of motoring could not be resisted. So the wealthy simply had their cars carried up the old Ghat Road--in pieces mind you. In the school archives there's a photo of a brand new Chevrolet Woody parked by the lake. No one can tell if it was among the first cars to drive up the brand-new ghat road, or was disassembled in Batlagundu, carried up the 50 kilometer-long ghat road, and put back together in a school garage. I wonder how many parts were left over.

Two men carrying a Chevy engine block up a mountainside. A wheel balanced on another's head. A frozen snake of exhaust pipe over the shoulder of another. Conversation in Tamil cursing out their white employers as the aches and pains mounted in their shoulders and arms carrying a car up a mountain side. American missionary wives and children packed into palanquins to be carried up the mountain by coolies. There are stories that the coolies would sing songs in Tamil as they carried the palanquins up, songs that detailed the excessive weight and ugliness of the women they carried, and other things they dared not say in English. It must have been something to see.

But this is a long wind-up to a hike. Apologies. I'll get on with it.

Out of the gate at 7:15 am and into town, I had a group of 25 high-schoolers following with two other faculty chaperones, June and Mabel. We were right behind a Middle School group that had left a minute before. Oddly, the chaperones on the other hike didn't know the way and we were supposed to show them.

Our destination: a section of the old Coolie Ghat, an 'A' level hike, the easiest of all. We'd be there and back in about 3 hours, with a good 30 minutes to soak in the view down to the plains from the end point of the hike.

"We should probably hike through their group soon" started June. "We'll be faster than them, and they'll hold us up. And they don't know the way. They shouldn't have left before us. Why did they do that? Someone should tell them to stop and wait. Then we can..." she continued, and I nodded in response as I moved away. June could carry on like this endlessly, audience attentive or not, reciting her exact train of thought without any critical interference.

Moving away from school and into the town, I thought through the problems of getting in front of the other group. Hikers would get confused which group they were hiking with. We�d lose students.

"We might lose students if we don't keep good track of them."

"Thank you, June. Keep your eyes peeled and I will too."

Losing a hiker isn't a rare event especially at the beginning of the season when many kids aren't used to the rules. Some simply dawdle at the back and the chaperones lose track. Others look for an opportunity to sneak off. Some join other hikes by mistake. And some simply decide part way though that they've had enough, find a road and hail a taxi back to school. The trouble is they never inform the chaperones of these plans. As there's always a chance, however remote, that they've been abducted by Naxalite terrorists or been run over by a gaur, the chaperones have to take every 'missing student' seriously. Somehow we have to find them, and that takes time, effort and bother.

The beginning of the hiking year also has other problems. While many of the kids are in far better shape than I'll ever be, some have never walked more than the distance between their house and a car. These are incredibly out of shape for their age and will start huffing on the short distance between their dormitories to the front gate of the school. Getting back from a hike without carrying them can be a serious challenge.

But I hike because it's fun. I have to remember that. I hike in spite of these challenges. No, I hike because of the challenges. Few experiences are as intense as slinging a weeping ninth-grader over your back and climbing up a steep slope for a few kilometers. Serious adrenaline rush, that. Oooh haaa.

"Are you sure it's this way? I remember we went down the other way the last time and that was when Susie was with us and she hikes this every year..." June broke my concentration, but it was just as well. My mind was spiraling away from the moment.

"Yes, yes, it's this way. We go through the town first."

"Oh." June was easily persuaded. Mabel was at the end of the group, taking in the scenery.

We descended the budge road into metropolitan Kodaikanal, the recent sunrise lighting up the closed shop fronts with a warm orange glow. Kodai businesses don't open until 10 am (they close at 8pm). The streets were nearly empty except for a stray cow facing a stone wall, a few lazy dogs lying on their sides and one or two youths leaning on their motorbikes. It was a strong contrast with the daytime crowds, filled to overflowing with honking cars and jeering tourists. It was silent. No cars threatened. No horns sounded. No dogs barked. And the wind didn't rush. For the first time ever, I physically enjoyed walking in the Budge. I was glad to know it on these terms.

Oh damn. I left my camera at home.

We came to the edge of town and took a trail through outlying houses, descending all the time, ever steeper. Mothers in bright saris washed clothes on door steps. Small, dirty naked children froze and stared at us. Big sisters in torn polyester frocks waited at the public water taps for their jugs to fill. Men in lunghis and undershirts brushed their teeth, heavy foam at their mouths. They all smiled at us as we passed, except the youngest children, who just stared. We moved through their world, an exotic line of rich kids in Iron Maiden T-shirts, Von Dutch caps, Ralph Lauren accessories, gelled haircuts, EMS backpacks and brand-new white Nikes on their way to experience nature in India.

"Vannakam," greetings, I would say occasionally, catching eyes, and reaching the fuzzy limits of my Tamil. "yanake konjam konjam Tamil teriadze" I don't speak a little bit of Tamil.

After a steep descent down a stairs-like path, we came upon the Middle School hike resting. Here was the chance to pass through. I looked back and counted our numbers. We were two people short.

"We're two hikers short" I quietly informed the other chaperones. "We need to figure out who they are and perhaps where they've gone."

"I didn't see anybody leave the hike and I've been keeping my eye on them all, and they must have sneaked off and..." said June in far too defensive a tone for this time of the morning. Mabel seemed preoccupied with a green tangerine she found in the breakfast provided by the school. She had been at the rear of the hike.

"Mabel?"

"Yes?" she asked a little too casually.

"Never mind." Why couldn't I be the totally irresponsible one?

I made a full roll call and got the names of the missing culprits, two new girls in the 11th grade.

"Oh, them," said someone under his breath from the back of the crowd. I wondered if he knew something I should know, and if I should press for further details. The students looked glum. On some hikes this spelled the end. Some chaperones would march everyone back to school in search of the missing students. If they were found, the hike could resume. If not, well, that meant they didn�t get credit for the hike and all sorts of other disasters.

"Does anyone have a cell?" I called at the group of students. I didn't have one.

Ten students pulled cell phones out of their pockets and offered them. Mabel took one, called the watchmen's bunk at the school gate, where returning students know they have to sign in.

"Yes? Hello? Yes, I'm calling to see if two students signed in. Yes. Signed in from a hike. Yes. I know the hike isn't back yet. Yes. They should be on the hike, but they're not. Yes. We're trying to see if they returned or not. No? But could you look to see if they signed in? Yes, please look at the sign in sheet. Are there any signatures there? No? No signatures for the Coolie Ghat High School hike. The students names? Yes, It's Elizabeth Canton and Akansha Rajanapaul. Oh, they've returned? Yes, they're there? But they didn't sign in? Yes they did sign in? Are you sure? Yes? Ok, so you say they're back at school? Yes. OK, good. Thanks."

"Well," said Mabel with a small smile, "Sreekumar assures me they've returned to school," while her tone indicated otherwise.

"Thanks, Mabel" I said with little conviction. I looked back up the steep path. The responsible option was grim--to head back and look for them. That meant canceling the hike.

"OK great. They're back at school, safe and sound" I announced. "Let's go." And we got up.

"The students aren't supposed to bring cell phones on the hike, Strother" June hissed at me. I sighed audibly in response and contemplated an elaborate ceremony in which she was crowned Hike Leader, handed a scepter, draped in a robe, and crowned with a brick.

The Middle School hike subsequently taken off and was out of sight. The path turned sharply steeper down and ended in a field of prickly lanthanum. We followed a cowpath down, through a particularly muddy stretch, littered with pats.

"Oh My God!" screamed Shenika, in excellent Bombay accent which turns each vowel into a wavering diphthong. She had stepped in a fresh cow pat, a large one, and completely buried one white sneaker and ankle. On second thought, the Bombay vowels waver so much, they're really triphthongs, even quaphthongs.

"Oh my God!" is really a form of throat-clearing or signal for attention among the more fashionable high school girls. They begin most sentences with it.

"Oh my God that was a hard test."
"Oh my God the dean is unfair."
"Oh my God this is a stupid hillside"
"Oh my God my shoes are ruined!"

Shenika pulled her foot out, wailing with considerable volume, but got going again.

The whole hillside rang with "Oh my Gods" as the group descended. But the girls' chatter turned to screams as the path became even steeper and difficult to navigate. They were slipping, sliding, falling on their rear ends, laughing, crying and requiring the steady hand of a chaperone, or boy, to get down. The boys were as silent as the girls were loud, though not much better at getting down the hill without grinding dirt into their pants. If anyone was still trying to sleep in the neighborhood, they were surely kept from it.

When I reached the bottom of the hill, I looked back up and noted a village girl of about 12, with a full 5-gallons water jug on her head, descending the hillside along the same path. Silently, she moved through our struggling group. Her footing was precise, delicate and flawless from a lifetime of practice. She was there, then gone.

This patch of hillside that took the lead hikers about two minutes to descend, took the gaggle of girls close to twenty. Most of their energy was spent on screaming, clutching arms, laughing, sliding, cursing, crying and resting. They were having a ball, and it was most definitely going to be a long hike. The rest of the students had found a tea-stall and were enjoying a hot cup while they caught up.

We had hiked for about 45 minutes. The descent to the tea-stall should have taken 20 minutes. A fair number of students were out of breath and unable to stand on their rubbery legs. It was a typical first hike.

"Are we at the end of the hike yet?" Shenika asked me, breathing heavily.

In fact, we hadn't begun the Ghat Road Hike. We were still in the process of getting there. The real hike began about a kilometer through another village and was about three kilometers long, six there-and-back. Then we had to hike back up to school. I stared at her wondering what to say. Humor? Truth? A soft lie? Maybe I should break down in tears and point back up the hill towards school, our obvious final destination.

"We haven't started the hike, Shenika." I heard myself saying. "It begins over there. Then we hike all the way back up to school." Shenika's hopeful smile froze, then melted into a blank expression of "you're no help." She walked off and sat down with a huff to compose her breathing. What doesn't kill you, I suppose.

In Shembaganur, the small village at the head of the old Coolie Ghat road, more families greeted us Alien Passerbys. The road was pretty much flat here, which greatly helped the mood.

Then we were there: the top of the remaining Coolie Ghat. I stopped the hike and gave them the two-minute sermon on the history of the path.

"Original way up...only walking... Look for a big stone mile markers...the British put them in on roads to tell travelers how far it was to their destination...." I received lots of bored looks in response.

Almost immediately, the path became overgrown and difficult to pass. The lanthanum and other bushes had grown so thick there was barely a foot-wide path left along the retaining wall. It looked as if the original road was about ten feet wide. We struggled along in good cheer since the path descended gently.

A huge, three-foot tall tombstone like marker loomed up out of the shrubs below. It was a mile marker with '1' on the downhill side and '15' on the uphill. So it was 1 mile back to Kodai proper? That seemed about right. And some of our kids nearly died doing it downhill.

We squeezed around it and kept going.

"Mr. Purdy, how could they get mules around that marker? I mean, we could barely get around it" asked a boy named Sameer in all earnest. I didn't know him well enough to call him a blinking idiot aloud.

"Well, Sameer. You see, a long time ago these lanthanum bushes weren't here. If you look through them you'll see the original hillside. The ghat road was that wide."

"Oh wow" He seemed to have learned something. I forgave him his idiocy in the name of universal progress. A city boy, probably--never seen an overgrown path. Curse my curmudgeonly nature. But he's still an idiot.

Not long past the marker, the bushes got so thick we were forced to walk on top of the retaining wall. This had the added thrill of being highly dangerous. The British put the retaining wall there to keep people from falling over the edge. I looked down. Hmmm. It wasn't too bad. Perhaps a fall of thirty feet before rocks would arrest the descent.

The path switched back twice, then leveled out again. Girls behind shrieked on occasion. It seemed the bushes were tangling their hair or scratching their legs. But those screams also reminded me of.... Must check legs.

I sighed in relief to find no evidence of leeches. But I was the lead hiker. The first person to pass through leech territory rarely got one. The leeches slept (or something) until disturbed. The hikers that came afterwards tended to pick up lots of alert leeches, primed for assault.

We continued a bit then found a rocky, dry outcrop to pause. I let everyone catch up. They arrived a few at a time over the next few minutes. None were out of breath, though bits of leaves and twigs were caught in hair and backpacks.

"Why are we stopping here, Mr, Purdy?"

"OK, everyone, it's time to check for leeches."

The looks of surprise were almost audible.

But then they looked down and began to scream and would not stop. Indeed, they were covered in leeches. Shenika was standing right next to me. She pulled up her pants leg and found three big, fat leeches sucking away just below her knee. She jumped and let out such a holler as to knock leaves from trees. The leech dance had begun.

"OH MY GOOOOD! GET IT OFF ME!" Hop hop hop.

"DISGUSTING!" Hop hop.

"HELP!" Hop hop hop hop hop..

I looked on in horror. While I hadn't picked a single one up on the trail, the hikers behind each seemed to have several on their shoes, in their socks, up their pant legs. The leeches were everywhere. Pandemonium erupted as most did nearly everything except pick the leeches off their clothes and get rid of them sensibly. They danced, screamed, pointed, looked horrified, cried and made excellent barfing imitations.

The more experienced hikers got out the salt and started to smear it on the leeches. They dropped off one by one and disappeared into the forest floor.

"Throw them away! Otherwise it will crawl right back on!"

"Yeah, throw them in the forest, man!"

This advice seemed sound, so the braver boys picked leeches off their clothes with their fingers and tried to throw them. But the leeches stuck to their fingers, sizing them up for a bite. This response produced nervous finger flicking. The leeches indeed flew off, yes, but in every direction in the crowd, left, right, and straight up. Did that one land on someone's head? I backed up and away.

Miraculously, there were only a few bites. Most of the leeches were still making their way across clothing to juicy bits of skin. De-leeched, the hike got back on the trail.

Soon we came out of the forest and onto a (leech-free) grassy slope. The view opened up from trees and bushes to a lovely view of a cliff opposite the valley we were skirting. Then in no time we came across the full view, of the Palni hills rolling both left and right and the distant plains directly below. The sky was clear. Each hiker in turn sucked in breath as they took the view in.

"Amma. What a view!" some incanted, dropping themselves down to sit, eat an orange or a bag of Lay's chips, rest and look.

We had hit the jackpot. Sometimes the view was pure white, a blank of epic proportions. Today it was perfectly clear. You could see the hills a hundred mile away. The size of the view was just huge.

I stood like a drooling fool, scanning every inch of the view for the sheer pleasure of seeing it. That moment lasted an eternity.

Oddly, there was no sign of the Middle School hike. The path had not shown signs of recent trampling. And there was nowhere else for them to be on the Coolie Ghat path. Where had they gone? But it was their problem if they got lost.

Soon enough, though, it was time to make pleasant, easy talk with the new students. Uncertain in their new school, not many good friends, their situation was tough. I sized one up munching on chips and approached.

"So," I started, pointing to the view I would pay real money to see with a broad grin on my face, "Was the hike down here worth it?"

"No." The reply was fast, definitive and with an aggressive tone that suggested I was a complete effing idiot for asking.

"OK, hiking isn't for everyone" I offered and backed away. Perhaps one of the girls would make better conversation.

"Oh my God, Mr. Purdy, are you saying we have to walk back? I can't walk back. I broke my ankle twice. This is supposed to be an easy hike. I'm never hiking again oh my God" said a girl who looked like she was on the verge of heat stroke. It was hard to tell to what extent she was bluffing.

"Drink some more water and you'll feel better. Rest up as much as you can," We had walked a mile and a half, mostly downhill. On the way back, it was all uphill.

"I can't move. I'm dead." More unsolicited opinions filtered into my hearing.

"Fuck this."

"Ahem. Mind your language."

"Yes sir."

I cancelled the easy talk option and found the experienced hikers, happily reclined in the grass, smiling at the view, munching on fruit. My belief in the existence of goodness and beauty in humanity was restored instantly. Then I remembered the cliffs.

"Hey everyone. There's a cliff further down the road. Great for climbing. Anyone interested?" OK, maybe I didn't project my voice beyond the kids eating fruit.

Mabel and a boy I didn't know stood up. We set off down the path.

Not too far along the slope, we found the bare cliffs. They nearly hung over our heads. But beneath them was a just-steep-enough section to make climbing challenging but not impossible or dangerous for someone who knew what they were doing.

Mabel took off up the cliffs with competitive speed. I couldn't climb stairs at the rate she progressed. The boy took off after her, at perhaps 1/5 the rate. I sat back and watched his young machismo at stake.

"Hey" he called. "This is steep." Mabel didn't seem to notice. It certainly didn't slow her down.

In a few minutes, Mabel was at the top of the just-steep-enough section. Right above her, the cliffs turned into a huge overhang.

"Mabel! Climb all the way to the top!" I shouted up at her, to see just how crazy she was.

"Oh, that. No. I can't do that. This is good enough" she called back down. I marveled a bit at her femininity. The tone of her voice. Her climbing seemed unconsciously excellent. Her success was irrelevant. She found a rock and sat on it, taking in the view. No need for a comeback.

Then she lay down on her back and looked out over the valley upside down. I watched her intently, fascinated.

"Hey!" the boy called up to Mabel. "How did you..." His voice trailed off. I looked around and found him about halfway up. He suddenly slid down about fifteen feet, hands and knees grinding on bare rock for, then juddering to a stop on a shrub.

"You OK?" I shouted up at him.

"Yeah," came the unconvincing answer. Mabel stared into the distance upside down.

"Be careful up there." I had a vision of this kid sliding down past me, then falling most of the way into the valley, lost to sight.

"Please come down" I called though he seemed to be following these instructions in any case. He stood up and slipped again.

"OK" came the very convinced reply. The kid made his way down, causing multiple rockslides amid grunts, gasps and the sound of tearing cloth. When he arrived on the path, he looked beaten up. His face and hands were cut. His pants were torn. Every inch of him was smeared with dirt.

"When you get back to school, see the nurses and get those cuts cleaned up." I executed my responsibility.

"Yeah, sure." He looked crushed. I think it was because a gorl had beaten him. It might also have been because he had a crush on Mabel. Hard to tell, and I wasn't going to spend time thinking about it.

Mabel arrived almost instantly after. I hadn't even noticed her descent. Outside of some sweat on her face, she showed no sign of having climbed and unclimbed a pretty steep cliff. A natural.

The rest of the group was very ready to go when we rejoined, packs on their backs looking glum. June sighted me from afar and seemed to wind herself up for some more advice. I avoided her by stepping around a clump of students, then found my pack, put it on and looked about in the opposite direction of June.

The view had begun to cloud over, wisps appearing out of nowhere grew and curled around the trees below us. I gathered them for a pep-talk, June's hectoring already in my ear though she hadn't opened her mouth.

"Listen up everyone. We'll walk back to Moonjikul, where you're free to pick up a taxi or a bus. But not before Moonjikul. Got it?" None of them seemed to be listening, as they were far more interested in their shoelaces and the dirt path. "A good way to avoid leeches is to move quickly. Don't give them a chance to climb aboard. Now please don't run, mind you, or you'll slip and break something. But move along at a good rate and you won't pick up as many leeches. When you get to dry, grassy areas or a rock outcropping, stop and look at your pants and shoes. You can pick any leeches off before they bite. Finally, when you get back to school, please don't forget to sign in at the watchman's bunk. Let's go." And off we went.

"Mr. Purdy, the view was fantastic. Thanks for leading this hike," said Shenika. I felt genuinely thanked, and only after a moment did I suspect she might be buttering me up for some other request.

"Why, you're welcome Shenika. Glad you liked the view. It was good luck to see it at all, the clouds come relatively early."

Shenika then rattled on about living in Bombay and not having any natural spaces, and how awful the air was compared to here, and how out of shape she was, and didn't like being out of shape, but there wasn't any place to exercise where she lived and" I began to wonder if she'd been taking lessons from June. Maybe June had been possessed by a gabbling spirit, which had transferred during the hike.

But no, that was unfair. Shenika was baring her soul to me in all its tortured adolescent glory. I was being an old curmudgeon. I needed to reach out to these kids. They were far from home, lonely, confused, trying to find their place, all that crap. I tried to warm up to her.

"Yes... yes... yes..." I consciously tried to be responsive. I tried to find a way into a conversation, from the monologue I was supporting.

"By the way, Mr. Purdy, you know you look like a geek in that hat. You need a new one. You can get them down in the Budge at Danish Display. They're not too expensive...."

Hat? What? My old hat? It was barely a year old. What the hell was wrong with it? I wanted to say something about her sequined T-shirt, but there was no room into the monologue.

Stepping lightly, we made our way back up the clogged path. Distant screams, shouts and laughter suggested the leeches were still biting at the back parts of the group. I hadn't picked up a single leech. For this I was very grateful, and cast an honest eye heavenward.

At the head of the Coolie Ghat we waited for the stragglers to catch up. Leeches were discovered and picked off, now with less screaming and dancing about and with an almost routine air.

Fifteen minutes passed and still no sign of Mabel, June and two students. It had taken the head of the group twenty minutes to hike the whole Coolie Ghat. The stragglers weren't back yet.

Twenty five minutes passed.

Then forty minutes passed.

Each minute that went by, I considered sending one of the kids back to see what the matter was. Each minute, I decided against it, that they would appear right then. Then they'd appear just right then. Then then.

"Could we go wait by the tea stall?" came a timid voice. Shenika looked at me with pleading eyes. Such a small request. Did she really fear I would say no? We had only stopped here, on a dirty section of road, thinking it would be a minute or two.

"But of course. Go on up ahead. I'll wait here." The majority of hikers got up and made their way back to the tea stall where we had stopped on the way down.

When in fact they did appear, forty-five minutes later, the two students looked fine, placid in fact, but June and Mabel looked red in the face. Had they fallen or something? June was the first to walk up.

"June, what happened?" I asked, expecting to hear some long disaster story involving loose paving stones and a rope rescue.

"One young lady felt faint and needed to rest."

I looked the girl up and down. She was laughing with a friend, and had not bothered to sit down while we talked. She looked fine.

I conjured an image of three too-patient chaperones standing over her as she sat and had the vapours, her concerned friend at her side.

But how could you waste 45 minutes sitting around waiting for "faintness" to pass? It wasn't possible. Was June hiding anything?

"Mabel, what happened?" I asked, with June at a distance.

"Oh, the girls were out of breath."

"For forty-five minutes?" Mabel smiled back and said as much as I thought. And the steep parts were yet to come. This was going to be a very long hike back. We had been walking a very gentle upwards incline so far. Past the tea-stall, the route became sharply steep. How was Miss Vapours going to make it? At least we were now criss-crossing roads. We could always hail a bullock cart. Perhaps an ambulance.

"Strother, be understanding. They're just kids. First hike. way from home. The stress comes out differently in all of us." June spoke.

"Yes, yes, I know It's fine." I shot back at her, more annoyed than I had any right to be.

The first hundred yards up the path took my breath away. It was really a stairs without steps. The kids had slid down it. Now they were slipping back up it. The group paused and panted heavily every five minutes, wiping sweat from foreheads and necks. But the poor, slow girls at the back never got a break--as soon as they caught up, the group would get going again without my prompting. I looked at my watch and saw why--the whole hike was supposed to last three hours--there and back. We were ending our fourth hour on the trail, and much of the steepest part lay ahead of us. The slow speed down and slower back up were adding together to produce a 6 hr. hike.

"Rain!"

I heard the shout and muttered "shit" a little too audibly. A student next to me turned his head and smiled. I had no rain gear. Few of the other kids did either. We would be cold, wet and miserable in a few minutes. There was no shelter on the path. Not even a tree. I looked behind and down the hill. There was a wall of dark clouds billowing up at us.

The first drops were heavy and noisy. I took my hat off and delighted in the cool rain on my sweaty head.

Two minutes later, I regretted taking my hat off. The rain came down in sheets. More screams, as loud as the anti-leech screams. We struggled up the path, wet, unhappy and well, wetter.

As we neared the bus stand the rain tapered and stopped. I expected spirits to rise. They didn�t. Truly we were very wet, cold and tired. I found Miss Vapours sitting on an old tire. She was again, the last to get up and move along.

"Come on, not much more to go. He bus stand is around the corner."

"Um, I broke my ankle. I can't walk at all." She wasn't, however, screaming in pain.

"Oh dear. Let me have a look." I bent down and peered at a normal ankle coming out of a normal sock and normal shoe. "Where does it hurt? Here? I pointed at her shin.

"Yes."

"And how about down here?" I pointed at her ankle. "Does it hurt here too?"

"Yes."

"And is it a dull pain...?"

"Yes."

"Or a sharp pain...?"

"Um. Yes. It's both."

"Both dull and sharp? I see. And can you move your foot at all?"

"No. I can't move it at all."

"OK, well, you have two options. You can slowly walk your way out with my or a friend�s assistance, or I can carry you on my back. It's your choice."

She stood up instantly. "Um, I'll try walking." And she walked up the hill without the slightest limp.

Shenika saw Miss Vapours at the tail end and shouted at her: "Stop holding up the hike! Move it!"

At the bus stop, June looked at me with piercing eyes.

"Yes June? You seem to want to say something?"

"Well yes. The kids should be allowed to take the bus here but they need a chaperone. Were you planning on allowing them to take the bus back alone? I mean you shouldn't do that. Because if you are they need a chaperone on the bus to make sure they get off at the right place, which is the bus stand in town, because if they don't get off there the bus will continue up the road towards Dolphin's Nose and then they'll get lost if they...."

"Would you please chaperone the kids on the bus, June?"

"Uh. Yes. Sure. I'll do that."

"Thank you." I told the kids to follow June if they wanted to catch the bus, or come with me if they wanted to hike the whole way.

Fifty feet from the bus stand, I turned to count the kids following me. Miss Vapours was right there.

"You're walking all the way back?"

"Um, I'm not sure" she said and turned to talk quietly with her friends. "Actually, no, we'll take the bus." And they started to walk back down, very slowly. In spite of the red flags all over her, I turned and headed back to school.

At the gate, almost everyone had signed in. June and I were double checking the list. It read "Coolie Ghat Hike 7:00am to 10:00am. I checked my watch. It was 1:15pm. But at least everyone was back. Except the two missing hikers. Shit again. They hadn't signed in. They'd hidden, now I had to seek. Lunch became mightily distant.

"Hello June. Hello Strother. Did you just get back now?" It was Peter, the chaperone on the Middle School hike that went missing. He looked freshly showered. A smile on his face.

"Yes. But where did you all disappear to? We couldn't find you on the hike." I was curious.

"Oh, at the head of the trail, an old woman warned us that the leeches were bad and we should hike the Upper Path. We got back, oh, about three hours ago. What took you so long?"

Upper path? Leech-free? Nobody had told me such a path existed.

"Yes, we should have hiked the Upper Path. That would have been better. No leeches, too. We should have done that," added June.

On the verge of opening my mouth, I paused, considered it, and refused. "Some had difficulty walking back, Peter. That's all."

More Gaur and the Old Kodai Cemetery

Last evening the gaur returned. On my way to a friend’s house I heard some crunching in the forest leaves and looked up the hill. There stood a group of about ten bison staring down at me, perhaps 50 feet away.

They stared.

I stared back.

They didn’t move.

I didn’t move.

The stare of bison is intense. They don’t move. Not even a tiny fidget. I replied in kind. And the bull’s stare is the most intense. After others move on, he keeps staring.

It’s sort of a gunfight waiting to happen. Who will draw first? Will I yell and charge him or will he snort and charge me? Or will we both start off at the same time? “Yaaaaaah!”

It was a standoff. So I took the initiative and backed up slowly down the hill.

The bull wagged his tail, turned and moved on after his herd.

Armed with camera and some bravado, I returned up the hill. I followed the herd at a distance until they came to a forest clearing. I snapped as many shots of them as I could in the evening light (apologies for the blur and murk: my amateur camera and amateur skills didn’t stand up to the job very well) .

They stared back quite a bit. I didn’t move. Nobody got hurt.

I lay awake most of last night, thinking about the 1-ton beasts hanging around our garden. A man had been recently killed on the Kodaikanal golf course when he saw some gaur, got closer for a photo, and used his flash. The bull didn’t like that at all, and took the matter up with him. I can only imagine the man protested, but the gaur didn’t listen.

I wondered if I went outside and turned on the porch light, what would I see? Would I find a herd of gaur lounging in our deck chairs? I could see their massive heads all turn to me as I switched on the light. And their stares. The frozen moment would last far too long. Would it be best to switch off the light? Hard call.

I began to see versions of my tombstone:

Strother Purdy
Teacher at Kodaikanal International School
Stomped to death by Bison
Dared to Pester Bison Lounging on His Porch
Yelled “Hey Big Nose!” at a Bull
He forgot to turn off the flash

The last was a little too close to home. Sometimes I do forget to turn off my flash.

Later, I felt a guilty pang about the last blog. Well, it was more of a fear-of-discovery kind of thing. I was reminded of wise words once given to me by a Captain of American Industry:

“Son, never lie about anything that can be independently verified. Do this, and you will walk unmolested though life.”

And he had.

So I worried that one of the readers would get on an airplane, fly to India, drive up the Ghat road and head straight for the old cemetery to verify James McDonald’s gravestone.

I hadn’t remembered it exactly, you see, when I wrote the blog. So I made most of it up.

Yes, for shame, Mr. Purdy.

So this morning, first thing, I got on my motorcycle and drove to the cemetery to find the old gravestone, write a new blog, and come clean about the unintentional mistruth, or the inadvertent obfuscation, or all-but technically accurate gravestone inscription.

The cemetery is suitably on a quiet road, behind a big locked fence. There’s no apparent way to get in (except the obvious), so a little fence climbing is necessary. It occurred to me that trespassing is also a crime; but I didn’t let it cloud my conscience. The gravestone fib was already clouding it and that had to be erased. Up over the fence I went .

The last time I visited, fallen tree branches and leaves littered all the gravestones. No one had been there in years. It was sadly moldering away, a bit of forgotten history. The graves were mostly mid-19th century. Soon after that, a new, bigger church was built on the other side of town. Current residents stayed, but nobody else moved in.

On this visit, the place looked positively tidy. The central memorial to the first Kodai church stood proudly in bright sunshine, new flowers planted around it. Other gravestones seemed to have been tidied up. One broken cross-top had been set back up .

I paused at the grave of a D.C.S. There was no complete name on the stone, either side.

The inscription read:
D.C.S.
Missionary of the A.B.C.F.M.
In Southern India.
Born in Boston, U.S.A.
Oct. 27, 1835
Landed at Madras
June 26, 1861
Drowned in the Vaigai River
Nov. 19, 1862

This leaves much to the imagination. Some Hawthornesque tale of betrayal, two husbands, secret love, jealousy, a vision of hair being combed out of a window at night, and a stuttering offer of a boat trip across the Vaigai river, then a struggling missionary pushed from the boat with the tip of an oar.

Many graves had anchors on them. As Kodaikanal is high up in the mountains, and hundreds of kilometers from an ocean, an easy explanation lacked. The names under the anchors were not relocated sailors. A metaphor for feeling “at sea in life?” Perhaps they were Jonahs to the missionaries, people who had to be sacrificed for the common good. Now that’s a mean idea. For shame, Mr. Purdy.

I moved on.

Finally I found the bison gravestone. Someone had recently tried to scratch off the inscription. No, it wasn’t me. Perhaps it was bison, worried about their reputation.

The inscription reads

Sacred
To the Memory of
Dudley Linnel Sedgwick
Third son of the Late William Fellows Sedgwick
Of Cashio Bridge. Watford In the county of Hertford, England.
Who was killed by a bison, whilst shooting in the Pulney Hills
On the 29th of March, 1875 Aged 31.

So I was off a little bit here and there.

The actual means of death is not described. Stomping is too prosaic, too believable. One could imagine the bison, fifteen feet tall standing on his rear legs, challenging Dudley to a duel. One could imagine Dudley sneaking through the forest Elmer-Fudd style (“Ssssh. We’re hunting wabbits”) being tapped on the shoulder from behind by the bison. One could imagine the bull coming home to find his wife and Dudley…. No, on second thought, I don’t want to imagine that.

Poor Dudley. God rest his soul.

The Gaur in the Garden

Yesterday evening, I arrived back home with the kids and was pulled aside by our watchman, Rajan.

“Sir. Bison.” He smiled and pointed up the road past our house.

“Bison?” I replied, wondering if this was a Tamil word for something I didn’t understand, or actually the English word ‘bison,’ which I understood quite well.

“Haaa” he replied, a sound I’ve generally associated with agreement. But I wasn’t sure what he was agreeing with. Perhaps I had simply pronounced the Tamil word he used properly. From the look on his face, his words and gesture could mean anything from ‘dangerous wild animals up ahead’ to ‘someone is selling eggs up ahead.’

“You mean gaur? Buffalo? Big forest cows?”

“Haaa.”

“How many”

“Many.”

“Oh dear. Thank you” and I continued on my way, convinced he used the English word properly. Gaur were in the vicinity. These are wild Indian bison, which are big, really big. We're talking a ton to a ton and a half. They all have wide, curved and sharp horns that have not been dulled by human handlers. (Wikipedia has an acceptable article on the gaur) They shouldn’t be in our domestic faculty compound, but according to Rajan, they were.

In the original Kodai cemetery, just down the road from us, is a tombstone that reads:

Here Lies
James McDonald
1817-1839
Pvt. 1st Class Fusiliers
On hunting trip in Palani Hills, killed by charging bison

The age is what struck me. If he, as a sprightly 22 year old, couldn’t get out of the way of a charging bison, as a sclerotic 40 year old I had no chance. But perhaps the bulls would look at my thin frame and not feel threatened. Then I’d be safe. Maybe they’d see the kids, each holding one of my hands, and take pity.

“Woah! Let’s go see them!” cheered Isaac.

“Yeah, dad, let’s go see them” added Josephine.

“Umm.” I was fascinated and really wanted to go look for them, but I recognized the danger. They were not domesticated cows with dopey faces. They were the real deal, historically able to defend themselves from tigers, and historically liable to charge anything that threatened them. In the Palni Hills, they had always been the biggest bullies on the block. Nothing outclassed them. And “Many” meant families, calves, a bull and over-protective mothers.

“Let’s go hide inside kids, under the beds, while I find out more about the bison.”

“Awww” came the replies, but I was determined to have children through the second decade of the third millennium. We would head straight home and think through a safe approach to get a peek at the bison.

But then, as we got right close to the house, we looked up to our left, and there they were—a whole herd, perhaps fifteen of them walking along the upper road, directly in front of a faculty house, at the top of our stairs. They were about 30 feet away. By chance I had my camera.

Some survival instinct clicked with the kids, for they became utterly silent. I forgot them entirely as I snapped photos.

We could see them moving past the top of the stairs that lead to the Claverack dormitory. The lone bull in charge of the herd was huge, about 6 ½ to 7 ft. tall at the horns. The ladies were not much smaller.

They seemed calm, glancing down at us with a short pause before moving along. I snapped shots through the dark wood—apologies for the blurriness, but I was not about to use a flash (it was too far anyway), and the evening light wasn’t strong.

A brief though crossed my consciousness, to walk slowly up the stairs for a better look. But then some survival instinct clicked with me, and recommended that the mild adrenaline experience we were having was quite enough as it was. I was comforted by the ridiculous image of a bull charging me down a set of stairs. It just wouldn’t happen.

Watching them walk along, there was an immediacy that utterly lacks in a zoo. Yes, you can see fantastic beasts in zoos, but none threatens to stomp you to death. And none act naturally. But none of them even were disturbed by our presence. None threatened a charge. There may have been a few snorts, but no loud bellowing. 

Here the bison were not only acting naturally, but taking over our home for a little while. In a bit, they disappeared into the woods just past the houses.

That evening, kids safe in bed, I felt sorry for the bison. A drought in Kodai had parched their hills. The bison were logically wandering into our compound in search of new grazing lands. They moved into town to eat our lawns for lunch. How long would it be before they could return to their usual forest home? When the rain came. Then they could go home.

Off into the Woods Again

Two weeks ago, the hiking season began at Kodaikanal International School. It will last into November. The “season” has nothing to do with the weather, which is mostly rainy and cold. It has everything to do with the academic year, which begins in July and ends in November.

Every Saturday around 6am, groups of students and chaperones depart from the main campus, and return anywhere from lunchtime to dinnertime. That is, if they don’t get too lost. And sometimes they do.

Hikes are rated ‘A’ through ‘D,’ from most easy to most difficult. ‘A’ hikes should take about 3 hrs. there-and-back and offer no difficult terrain. ‘D’ hikes take all day. The destinations range from infinite views on clear days to 8000 year-old dolmens, from leech-ridden forests to secluded swimming pools with waterfalls.

Leeches again? Yes, one hike is specifically to a patch of forest—a shola—that is riddled with leeches (see previous blogs for more on leeches). Its name is appropriately ‘Leech Shola.’ I’ve not been, but I hear the paths literally wiggle with the movement of thousands of leeches. Why on earth would anyone go? Because no one else does. It’s the best preserved ancient forest in Kodaikanal. Still, very few students sign up for this hike.

With luck, this season, I’ll make a visit to Leech Shola and bring back photos.

The other hikes remain popular. On any given Saturday, eight groups of 20 to 30 students set out on an adventure in the woods. With only 500 some students in the school these are good numbers. Admittedly students are required to hike at least twice a semester. But even after they satisfy their requirements, a few return for more.

Students that hike ten times in a semester earn a ‘Tahr pin.’ The Tahr is a local mountain goat, endangered of course, but nonetheless aesthetically pleasing enough to associate with the hiking program. I’ve suggested the school also offer a ‘Leech pin’ to those students who willingly go on at least five hikes known to harbour leeches. Or perhaps the pin could be based on number of bites suffered. My proposals were met coolly.

To accommodate the uncertain, new students unfamiliar with hiking (indeed, some seem unfamiliar with walking), the first few weekends offer “Exposure Hikes.” You might wonder at the name, but the school is simply “exposing” the students to the hiking program. Shame on you for finding either of the two obvious puns. And no, I had nothing to do with naming these hikes. After my Leech pin proposal, they stopped telling me when they held meetings.

So two weekends ago, I chaperoned an ‘A’ level “Exposure hike” to the Coolie Ghat road. Sadly, I forgot my camera. But with luck, my tale will be vivid enough for you to experience it fully. I’ve rarely heard better complaining in my life (one young hiker ‘broke’ her ankle at least three times on the trip), nor have I walked through a more dense infestation of leeches (our 20 hikers picked up at least 200 leeches). And this ‘A’ hike nearly put half the kids into cardiac arrest, it was so steep and long.

I’ll tell that tale in the next blog (and subsequent hikes over the coming months).

But here’s a thought:

A friend recently asked “where’s the meaning in your blogs?” I offer a lot of “what,” but very little “why.” I rarely spend time assessing, digesting or even framing.

An easy answer is that I don’t quite know what it all means. The experiences are too fresh. Certainly, the greatest porter of meaning is the Slow passage of Time, which can bring a type of profound understanding as we pick through dim memories. Great writers are those who don’t need that much time to do this, which is to say they can find meaning within a lifetime.

But that’s not quite the right answer. I do know what it all means, at least in the way that we all make sense of our world as we go through it. This is a very different type of understanding, a volatile one, which can fundamentally change with the addition or subtraction of experience. Desdemona’s handkerchief is one of the saddest examples of this. Othello knows what it means, but then he does not. Still, I avoid even this type of meaning.

Travel for me, from the little hikes to the long layovers in Kuwait, means a partial reduction in personal density. When my location becomes a little less definite, so does my mass. It is a pleasure in itself to be between; and frankly, it is a pleasure not to have the need to understand, only the need to go from and get to.

We sometimes call vacations “escapes.” We all know and feel this loss of weight when we travel: out of the office, away from families, problems in the rear-view mirror. The avoidance of understanding is one of humanity’s greatest skills and pleasures. It allows us to move beyond errors and sins. It allows us to get on with life, and even enjoy it. For if we did the math and found the answers in every situation, who then shall be saved? Not me.

I have few characters in these blogs for the practical reason that I can’t involve work associates or students without serious job-loss consequences. But I also avoid them because I’d rather enjoy my freedom from meaning for the moment. Heck, it makes for limited reading, but excellent personal therapy.

If you prefer a well-developed persona, characters and plot, let me know. If you prefer the ghostly, disembodied tales (that feel as if you’re looking at unidentified photos of someone else’s family), let me know. I’ve always planned to put flesh-and-blood into these tales, but eventually.