Greetings from Mysore, India, where I am on the National Geographic Society’s 2011 Field Inspection for the Committee on Research and Exploration. It is 6:30am here, 5:00pm yesterday in Santa Barbara, and, from my hotel room, I can look across the hazy dawn landscape as the light filters back into the lush gardens of the former British Raj mansions, filled with coconut palms, surrounding the city train station now just coming to life in the middle distance.
I left Santa Barbara on New Years day, overnighted in New York, and then flew directly to Mumbai, where we stayed in the Trident Oberoi, one of the two hotels attacked by terrorists in 2008. Early the next morning, departing from the Gateway to India in front of the Taj Mahal Hotel (center of the attacks), we took a boat ride out to see the 7th century carved basalt caves on Elephanta Island, where the mountain has been carved into a temple to Shiva.
In the afternoon, with guides from the local community, I toured Mumbai’s most persistent “informal settlement” or slum called Dharavi. Here, the inhabitants take waste materials and recast, shred, and grind them down for recycling, living, and eating where they work under dire conditions. The tour was quite extraordinary and was led by Jan Nijman, a Geographer at the University of Florida. Most distinctive memory was a small blast furnace, fed by hand, that melted down aluminum waste, primarily automobile distributor caps. Rows of gleaming 6kg ingots were spread out along the wall, and the smoke and heat inside the tiny slum room evoked Dante’s inferno.
Yesterday, we flew to Bangalore, where we were greeted on the highway by a massive Yahoo! sign, truly showing the new India. A four hour drive brought us to Mysore, where today we visit Bandipur National Park. Interwoven among our meals and visits have been extraordinary lectures by the people funded by the CRE, on primates, elephant behavior, Indian geology, and the caste system. Last night, we were entertained by tribal dancers from a Western Ghat tribe with only 100,000 people left. I’m learning much.
India is hot, dirty, busy, overcrowded, and unpredictable. On the other hand, it is a unique and wonderful place I would not have missed for the world.
More to follow.
Keith Clarke
