Samuel Benoit

*Note the above post title only lists our destinations, one must pass through innumerable places on the way. Overnight buses and trains are a great way to both save money on hotels and to develop funky personal odours while travelling in India.  For me, the single thing that I had been anticipating the most about Anis’s visit was being able to take him to my favorite restaurant, Hotel Hoysala.  As the Baha’i blogger ‘King of Vegetables’  put it “Hotels in India are often not hotels at all, rather they just feed you food; incredibly amazing, awesomely good food.”  With the change in plans taking away Dharwad time I was worried that this wouldn’t end up happening and the whole excursion would be a waste.  But lo, it was the first place we went, and it was good. 

I took him to my hostel and mess and finally to my Professor’s house for Christmas dinner.  Rather than to take any pictures of my Prof and I  and our amazing chemistry, Anis took a picture of this building.  Don’t ask me why. From there we took a bus to Belguam to check in on some friends and deliver the books from Bangalore. We watched I Am Legend  the very cool new movie where the world has been taken over by computer generated folks and their pets and the Fresh Prince  has to fight them off with science.  Belguam has its very own totally unique New Years tradition where different neighbourhoods agree on a reviled figure of the past year ranging from terrorist masterminds to cricket players to construct a number of giant effigies of to alight at midnight.  Below is one ‘old man’ under construction that we saw as we headed out in the wee hours the next morning.   The next destination was Panchgani, an obscure one – so getting there would be incremental up the National Highway, the first stop being Kolhapur on the state line.  Once we reached there we were surprised to find a sunglasses-wearing man from a private bus company offering a direct bus to Panchgani for “200 rupess only… um no actually 220 rupees only.”  I reminded my self of my mother as I kept telling Anis how lucky we were to make sure his spirits were up.  It was during this ride that we remembered that only recently our main man Nuri had been travelling through India himself.  We speculated about how great it would be to have seen his no doubt hilarious reactions to the chaos of travelling here.  What advantages must he have as a travel buddy? As we wondered this, the bus stopped in some town along the highway and the bus-people told us this was our stop.  “No see, we are going to Panchgani, and this is not Panchgani.”  Without even informing us of where we are they said that from here we can take a bus to Panchgani.  Yes, Anis and I had been conned by a man in sunglasses.  I cursed my way off the bus but then actually recognized the town as one passed through my last time heading in that direction.  We imagined someday having the opportunity to build an effigy of the man in sunglasses and burning it down in front of his shop in revenge.  “You, know I bet somehow Nuri would not have been fooled.”  I said.   And this is where the Nuri Legends began.

Next installment in our series of ever shortening installments, Panchgani and Mahableshwar and more Nuri Legends.