Sunday, March 12, 2006

Tour Guides

They are a bunch of drunks; the whole surly lot of them. We just paid handsomely for some idiot to take us hiking in the biosphere in Ooty, or Uthalimanipaloememnanmenan, as the locals pronounce it. He came highly recommended by notable sources: fellow travelers, The Lonely Planet and ALF. Let me be the first to say that each one of the sources is full of crap, or cats in the sense of the latter. He showed up smelling like whiskey and staggering around worse than new born colt. Then he passed out under a bush during a mandated "acclimatization stop." We stood at about 1500 meters at this point. We played frisbee for a while to let him sleep it off, then Ben poked him with a stick to make sure he wasn’t dead.

For the remainder of the climb our guide hiked about 30 meters in front of us shouting at himself the whole way. From my vantage point he seemed to be giving himself a very animated tour. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, his tour did not include us. After two hours like this we reached the summit, a harrowing 2600 meters. The view was breathtaking but that did not account for the wrenching gasps emanating from our trusty guide. I handed him my water bottle which he drained most of and spilled the rest. He thanked me and then asked if we had any questions. We did not. He kept goading us, assuring us that our questions need not be confined to the biosphere. He boasted that his knowledge of Indian history and culture was as deep as the lakes. Ben caved. He asked when Jainism and Hinduism split and why. Our erudite guide responded that the biosphere was formed some 60 years ago. The droughts must have affected lake depths in this region.

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