January 2023

Maharashtra: The Wala Flower Coast

I’m crouched beside a rented motorcycle on the shoulder of an Indian highway. I knew there would be kinks when I left my hotel, but I didn’t expect them to come so fast. Moments before, the rear tire of the Royal Enfield had unexpectedly locked up and sent me into a terrifying skid at highway speed. Investigating, I find a loose luggage strap that’s wrapped itself around the bike’s rear axle. Mercifully, the strap snapped before I lost control. But I don’t have a spare. The torn stub is all I have to secure my duffle for the next 1500 kilometers of this solo trip through rural India.

I’m riding south to Goa through Maharashtra on India’s western coast. I’ve given myself seven days to reach the small state’s golden beaches and make the return journey. My offline map shows me four hours southwest of Mumbai on the Arabian Sea. I look down the highway and see road crews stoking a wood-fire beneath an open barrel of tar. It’s a slow going section of coastline where road construction is haphazard and monsoons regularly wash away bridges. I’ve stopped dozens of times to check my map where the pavement periodically disappears. There’s a section of dirt and crude stone cobbles just up ahead. I set out again and try to make up for the time I’ve lost with the strap fiasco. It’s faster up on the plateaus where the roads are straight and hedged by cactus. In the guava scented valleys between, the land rises and falls in hairpin turns. This pattern of desiccated fields, stone fences, and hillside orchards will repeat itself for the next 700 kilometers to Patnem, Goa, a little beach town south of Vasco Da Gama.

Maharashtra

In the next village, I bring my bike to an idle beside a flower stand. Strings of saffron colored carnations hang from the eves. The dusty village square is filled with residents buying vegetables before the afternoon heat arrives. One woman stands out in a group of women wearing full length black burkas. Hers is embroidered in gold. Ostentatious for a Muslim but very Indian. The square is bursting with bright color. Stacks of pomegranates, tangerines, and guava make pyramids around the perimeter. The miniature, tree ripened bananas taste like candy even when squished by a bungee cord.

I buy a red-white-and-saffron garland for 30 rupees. For luck, I hang it around the bike’s windscreen. The long string of carnation flowers is called a wala and wards off mishaps like stray cows, water buffaloes, and broken straps. Cows lumber down the centerline of every Indian highway and have zero fear of cars or humans. Traffic parts around them. Indians love cows so deeply, but a poor country can’t afford to feed 300 million livestock. Destitute families turn aging milk cows loose to chew plastic bags beside the highway. A deathly skinny one is nosing through the doorway of a nearby restaurant. In America, the only way for a cow to see the inside a restaurant is on a plate. The sympathetic Indian restauranteur feeds it a string of walas. I’m not sure which system is more humane.

The Indian trucks are another adorable and deadly road hazard. Their braided ox-hair talismans flap in the wind and strings of bells jingle as they bounce down the road. I glimpse a hand-painted tiger on one of their axles. I’m grateful not to get a closer look. It’s not melodramatic to say that Indian drivers live nearer to death than American drivers. I looked up the statistic and found traffic fatalities in India are 9x higher than America. There are 130 deaths per 100,000 vehicles in India compared to 14 deaths in the US. Even as their constant attempts to pass each other threaten to run me off the road, the hand-painted lettering on the back wins me over: “Honk please ok”. Every lorry has small variation on its tailgate: “No honk please ok” or just “OK please.” It’s like a matching service for frustrated drivers.

In a perverse sort of mindfulness, I’ve never been more present than I am now. Attentive driving here substitutes for lane discipline. My friend Praveen explained that predictability is the key. “Watch the person in front of you and they watch the person in front of them.” I’m completely tuned into my surroundings. A patch of gravel on a hairpin turn, a swerve around an auto-rickshaw trying to avoid a pothole. I see every inexplicable speed bump placed at random on the highway.

I memorize my next few turns. Left at the T,  stay right at the Y, then right again after the river. I know I’ll forget and check my map again later, but I don’t mind. The valleys are lush with coconut trees and the shade is welcome in the January dry season. The smell of dry grass and hot rock reminds me of sun baked riverbeds in Bend, Oregon. But there are no sunburned rednecks shepherding coolers of beer here. The volcanic crème brûlée of these riverbanks are for washing laundry. Shanties and barking dogs remind me how deeply rural I am on this part of the coast.

The next shortcut on my map turns out to be a canoe shuttling villagers. The dotted line connecting two sections of highway is a pedestrian-only ferry. It’s late afternoon and I’m tempted to gamble by trying another ferry route. But missing a ferry will leave me too far from the hotel I’ve booked up ahead. Rather than risk getting stranded after dark, I bail on this section of coastline and make my way inland to the main interstate.

Trash Fire and Brimstone 

National Highway 66 is the industrial artery between Maharashtra and Goa. It gets a constant beating from overloaded lorries. I’ve been hoping to avoid it but have no choice if I want to sleep that night. Despite trash fires that burn in melting pools of plastic on the road surface, its one redeeming quality is speed relative to the meandering local highways.

Within an hour, I pass through a town with a chemical plant. The factory extends the length of the town on both sides of the interstate. It has pagoda-like towers with roofs in tiers that are venting some kind of industrial fume. Within moments, my lungs burn and my eyes water. The air has become poisonous. I can see apartment blocks blackened beside large chemical storage tanks. I ask myself what poor, abused people can live next to this? Then another detergent smell hits me. It’s an overpowering, synthetic mountain fresh odor. It makes me sick to know these residents suffer at the hands of a fragrance industry so I can feel clean. I’m leaving to enjoy travel-sized soaps in my paid time off. Their permanently soiled laundry hangs out to dry behind me.

Sindhudurg Fort

On the deserted backroads of the coastal range north of the Western Ghats, the star filled skies are the biggest distraction. Back on schedule the next morning, I have more time to explore. Sign posts begin to tempt me. I recognize the name of Sindhudurg Fort. Long ago, French and Portuguese traders built forts up and down the coast like castles, but Sindhudurg is connected to a local hero, the Maharaja Shivaji. Shivaji constructed the fortress on an island in the mid-1600s to protect his monopoly on trade. For 200 years, Sindhudurg kept out foreigners like the British East India Company and the Mughal rulers from Persia who dominated the rest of India. Today Shivaji is a hero to Hindu nationalists. I’ve been riding past statues of him for the past 100 miles.

I reach the wharf at Sindhudurg just as the heat of the day relents in the late afternoon. A seat on the ferry to the island is 100 rupees ($1.30). Indian tourists pack like refugees in a small wooden boat. Life vests are piled in the stern. The outboard motor sputters to life as the overladen boat moves into the shallows.

The fort has been abandoned for 200 years. Between its 30-foot walls a 48-acre forest has grown up. The trees are penned in by high stone walls that feel like King Kong’s zoo exhibit. An Indian businessman on vacation points out how the stonework blends with the natural rock. It reminds me of the Croatian sets from Game of Thrones. Circumnavigating the 2-mile rampart takes the better part of the evening. Diving companies give sunken tours of derelict cannon barrels below. The sun sets behind us as we head back to the mainland.

Goa

I reach Goa after three days on the road. Goa is a former Portuguese colony with a western cultural heritage, similar to the influence of the French on Pondicherry. The influence of the Portuguese on Goa is most visible in the architecture. Hindu temples give way to Catholic churches as soon as I cross the border. The Catholic hymns are piped through loudspeakers. They’re exuberantly Indian and played at the same volume as Hare Krishna devotees. I’m making my way to Patnem, a small community beside the better known Paloem Beach. My goal is to find low key spot to recover from the ride before the return trip to Mumbai. Patnem is famous for yoga studios and Ayurvedic treatment centers.

When I finally show up to the beach cottage I’ve rented, the staff don’t know what to do with my dirty face and filthy road clothes. Who is this grubby Englishman who can’t afford a car? The bigger, nicer hotels are even more baffled by it. Tourists don’t usually travel by bike.

I settle into a pair of white linen pajamas. It’s the first clean thing I’ve worn in 3 consecutive, 8 hour days on the road. For being the birthplace of the Buddha, India isn’t a place that lends itself to relaxation. A person needs to push hard in a country with 1.3 billion people. After a steady stream of Kingfishers and two Goa sunsets, I’ve sat still long enough. I decide make my way back up the coast and spend an extra day on the road. It’s hard to hide my smile when the ticket seller at the ferry tells me I look like an Indian guy. It might not even be the dirt.