Oh my India

My bull elephant was lumbering through the brush, pausing to uproot small trees or rip branches from larger trees for a snack, causing birds to scatter overhead. Suddenly we glimpsed the unmistakable orange, black and white design of a tiger, lying in a thicket beside a large sambar it had killed and partly consumed.

India Passport: must be valid for six months past end of trip. Immunizations: None currently required, but tetanus, Hepatitis A and flu shots are recommended. Contact a travel doctor or the Centers for Disease Control at (404) 332-4555 for the latest information. VISA: Hawaii residents can obtain a visa by mail from the Consulate General of India, 540 Arguello Blvd., San Francisco, CA 94118. Call (415) 668-0662 for an application and updated requirements, which currently are that you send the application with your passport, two passport-size photos, $60 and a stamped, self-addressed, priority-mail envelope no later than a month before you depart. Medications: To avoid malaria, especially in wilderness areas, medicines such as Larium or Malarone may be prescribed, plus you should spray your clothing with peremethrin and use insect repellent on exposed skin. Where to stay: » Kabini River Lodge, Mysore Dist., Karnataka, India. Kabini is a division of Jungle Lodges & Resorts Ltd.; e-mail: junglelodges@vsnl.com or info@junglelodges.com; junglelodges.com » Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary (also called Periyar Tiger Reserve); Thekkady, Kerala, India; e-mail: aranyanivas@sancharnet.in » Kanha National Park. Several lodges are on site. I stayed at Royal Tiger Resort; e-mail: royaltigerresort@yahoo.com; royaltiger.com Current: You will need a voltage converter and a two-prong adapter; current varies from 200V-240V. More information: » The Web site incredibleindia.org contains a plethora of information about every aspect of travel to, from and within India, including weather, currency, culture, cuisine and even a trip planner. » Check sierraclub.org for information on Sierra Club travel. My trip had a good variety of interesting destinations, while focusing on wildlife. However, the planners used distance, not travel conditions in calculating time, causing "overnight" train rides to take 18 hours, and some bus rides to last all day, leading to late arrivals, early departures and scant time to explore in some towns.

The tiger lay quietly until it sensed we had seen it, at which time it rose, glanced about warily, then sauntered in a nonchalant but determined manner directly into our path and stopped in front of us. It glared at us, opened its mouth widely to show us its teeth, and backed up that display with a long, low-pitched snarl.

My heart skipped a beat, but I had confidence in age-old elephant wisdom. After a moment's hesitation, the elephant slammed his trunk down three times, calling attention to his size and strength. That motion of the magnificent pachyderm slung me about in the howdah atop his back, while the mahout (elephant keeper) wrapped his legs more tightly around the elephant's neck.

The tiger didn't flinch. It stared at us and then, ever so gracefully, walked on across our path and disappeared into the undergrowth. Whew! I gave the elephant a kiss and the mahout an extra 50 rupees.

I was in Kanha National Park in the state of Madhya Pradesh in central India, the setting that inspired Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book," and prompted him to describe the land as "infested with tigers." Sadly, with human overpopulation decreasing the tiger's habitat and poachers decreasing its numbers, the 40,000 Bengal tigers in India a century ago are down to about 2,500.

Kanha was the last wildlife preserve I would visit. I would miss those long dawn and dusk rides in open bush vehicles, looking for animals and birds, and even the billowing, thick dust that clung to bodies and clothing.

I dreaded the 18-hour train ride to Mumbai (formerly Bombay) on the Arabian Sea, more so because I would soon head home from there. I had started my sojourn three weeks earlier in Chennai (formerly Madras), on the other side of India.

Chennai, renamed in 1997, is a bustling city of 6.4 million on the Bay of Bengal. Upon my arrival, I was assailed by a burst of smothering humidity, and despite the late hour, throngs of people and wild traffic. But I was also welcomed with the traditional greeting of "namaste," said with hands pressed together and head slightly bowed.

Two days later, I met up with nine Sierra Club members, and at 3 the next morning, we got a bus to the train station for an all-day trip to Mysore, a town famous for its sandalwood, incense and silk.

The packed train was fairly comfortable, although the toilets (Indian style had a hole in the floor and Western style had a commode) lacked soap, towels and toilet paper, but we had our own. Bottled water was available, but we also had water-purification tablets.

The porter brought us idlis (rice pancakes) and sambar. The name is the same but this is not the Indian deer favored by tigers for its ample meat; it's a dish made of dhal (lentils), vegetables and spices. We also had sour yogurt and vadai, a fried, spicy doughnut.

"AMPLIFIED" IS THE word that best describes India, a country of more than a billion people. Colors are bolder. Fruits are larger and sweeter. Sounds are louder, aromas more pungent, flavors more potent and spices more powerful. The sun is redder, the sky bluer, and life is more intense.

It is a land of contrasts, a mixture of serenity and hysteria. Illiterate people alongside Internet technology geniuses. Pristine waterfalls and polluted rivers. Eco-lodges and lavish hotels. Extreme poverty and garish wealth.

India is a kaleidoscope of color. Women wear dazzling saris, the graceful wrapped garments, worn over a choli, a short blouse. Or they wear the salwar kameez, an outfit of loose pants that gather around the ankles, and a long top, worn with a rectangular scarf draped around the front of the neck, with both ends flowing down the back. Whether planting crops or washing clothes in the river, they wear these delicate garments. They also wear a lot of jewelry: necklaces, bracelets, rings, earrings, anklets, toe rings, hair ornaments and sometimes a jewel in a pierced nostril. Many wear the bindi, the dot in the middle of the forehead that has broadened its spectrum to colors matching clothing or jewels.

Men wear a lungi, which is like a sarong, or a dhoti, a cloth tied around the waist, with an end brought up like a diaper and tucked into the waist, with which they don Western-style shirts. Businessmen wear Western dress.

Southern India has many similarities to Hawaii, in its flowers: plumeria, bougainvillea, hibiscus, orchids, heliconia and bromeliads; its fruits: papaya, mango, pineapple, bananas and watermelon; its vegetation: coconut palms, banyan trees, bamboo groves, breadfruit trees, coffee trees and sugar cane; and its aloha spirit: Indian people are warm and gracious.

Fruit and vegetable carts line the roads and train tracks, along with stands selling cane juice, squeezed on the spot in a manual press. At tiny shops jammed together, resembling a giant caterpillar, vendors sell an array of goods, from food to trinkets, toiletries, baskets and pans.

Sheep, goats and cows roam the towns and roads, but it's the revered cows that stand out. They are decorated for various festivals, but some wear their decor year-round. Many have painted horns, often in contrasting colors. They're milked, bred, allowed to roam or tied to trees, and bathed in rivers, unaware of how lucky they are to live in a Hindu country.

Mud-brick homes with thatched or tile roofs often had gaudy billboards painted on all sides.

At our hotel in Mysore, we were greeted with thick, fragrant leis of jasmine and marigolds. The sliding door of my room had a sign, "Keep door closed to keep monkeys out."

We visited the Mysore Palace. Inside, we got a taste of the extravagance of the bygone era of the maharajas, and outside, we were beset by hordes of beggars and hawkers.

Dinner, customarily served at 8, or later, consists of marvelous vegetarian dishes. Always lentils, rice and chilies, but also spicy concoctions of ordinary vegetables, such as cauliflower, cabbage, green beans, peas, eggplant and okra. Vegetables are cooked whole, mashed, sliced, shredded or cubed; they may be fried, sauteed or baked, alone or in combinations in dishes such as curry. Crispy lentil cakes and bean sprout fritters were among my favorites. Paneer, cubes of cottage cheese in a tomato and onion sauce, was surprisingly tasty, as was masala dosa, a crepe of rice and lentils, stuffed with potatoes and spices. The bread was outstanding. Not just the famous naan bread, but many varieties and in many textures: crisp, chewy, soft or fried into hot, doughy, buttery cakes.

HUNDREDS OF languages are spoken in India, but independence from Great Britain just came in 1947, after a peaceful campaign led by Mahatma Gandhi, so English is still widely used. Traces of the British influence also linger in the spelling of certain words, such as favour, programme, and scrutinise; the affinity for afternoon tea; driving on the left ; and a passion for cricket, which resembles baseball on espresso.

Mysore was just a break before a long bus ride to Kabini River Lodge in Nagarahole, also called Rajiv Gandhi National Park, located on the edge of the Western Ghats.

Traffic was unruly. The bus driver had an assistant whose job was to decide whether the bus had room to squeeze through tight spots. En route, I saw an elephant running around in a yard, like an oversized dog, and monkeys playing along the road, especially near bridges.

The lodge was charming, although the beds were hard, and to get hot water for showers, we had to turn a switch and wait. The night sky was starry, but at ground level, all was black so I used a flashlight to get to the dining room, an open thatched hut by the river. The food was fresh, healthy and exquisite in its simplicity. A huge stalk of bananas hung in the area, alongside a platter of sweet tangerines, both of which seemed to magically replenish themselves.

Kabini had a lot of magic. I saw a tree full of huge pods, and while trying to figure out what they were, one "pod" flew away. They were bats. In other trees, monkeys swung, climbed and played, with mothers carefully cradling babies.

Villagers made mud bricks by the river in wooden forms and left them to dry. Unique birds flew about, delighting us all. Some 3-foot structures that resembled clay castles turned out to be termite mounds, on which hundreds of hairy spiders crawled.

We made many trips into the forest in open-air vehicles, first stopping to pick up a game spotter. Pachyderm person that I am, I squealed in delight when I saw the first elephants: a mother and baby, eating bushes, and a big bull strolling along the other side of the river, easy to identify because only the male Indian elephants have tusks.

On our treks, we also spotted one leopard, slinking along, with a herd of peafowl parading behind. We saw a lone dhole (wild dog) and wondered where the rest of the pack was. We saw sambar, chital (spotted deer), barking deer and gaur, the Indian bison, which weigh up to 2,600 pounds each. Also wild boars, several varieties of monkeys, squirrels with fluffy orange tails, and a mongoose about four times the size of the little fellows in Hawaii, plus it had an upturned tail.

The peafowl is the national bird, and we saw many peacocks prancing about in mating dances. We saw the same animals that we would later see at Kanha, but no tiger until the last day, when only those with powerful binoculars could make it out, nearly invisible in the brush.

We stopped at an elephant camp to ride elephants. My elephant had a baby, which went with us and kept trying to nurse. The mahout said the elephant was 60 and that baby would be her last. Her skin was deeply creased with age, but she was regal and I was proud to be in the company of this treasure of nature. Asian elephants are smaller than their big-eared African relatives, but they still reach about 6,000 pounds.

We also took nature walks, and once, four of us walked three miles to a village and visited with the residents, who were delighted to see their images on a digital camera. One dragged me to a neighbor's simple hut to take a photo of the old woman who was all decked out in her jewelry and stunning sari. We walked past rustic temples, a lot of cows and women pumping water from a community pump and lugging it home. Amid one group of mud huts loomed a huge satellite dish, alien in its incongruity.

DURING BOAT RIDES on the peaceful river, time seemed to stand still. We would see elephant families bathing, otters playing, crocodiles sunning and boars, deer and gaur grazing along the banks.

We also cruised the river in coracles, small, woven bamboo boats with a tarp-like waterproof covering. The steerer sat on a stool in the middle and paddled first this way, then that, so that we were gently spinning along the river.

I loved everything about Kabini, but too soon we were off on a long bus ride to the town of Ooty. As we climbed the Nilgiri Hills, the dry, brown grass turned to lush green as we wound through acres of tea plantations.

In Ooty, an environmentalist told us sad tales of trying to halt the poaching of tigers and other endangered animals, and the poisoning and electrocution of elephants and others deemed nuisances by some farmers.

After a night's stopover, we took a nine-hour bus trip to Madurai, the site of the famed Sri Meenakshi Temple. An Indian guide told us that the caste system and dowries are illegal but still widespread, and that group weddings at the temple were for lower castes who could not afford private ceremonies.

Twelve Dravidian towers with intricate carvings on every inch surround the temple.

The stars and moon were perfectly aligned so many couples were getting married, most of whom were meeting for the first time in arranged marriages. Flowers were everywhere and the heady scent of jasmine and incense filled the air. Couples, many looking apprehensive, sat on the floor, surrounded by relatives in brilliant attire, each wedding party having claimed a few feet of space.

The cave-like temple is the center of life and the atmosphere was boisterous, as people crowded in to worship, socialize, sight see, beg, peddle wares or bathe in the lotus pond. I gave a temple elephant 20 rupees, which it handed to its mahout, and then it wrapped its trunk around my neck, which was such fun that I gave it 20 more, and it draped its trunk over the top of my head.

Enormous stone carvings of animals and the multitude of Hindu deities -- especially Ganesh, a favorite god with the head of an elephant, said to remove obstacles -- filled the main hall and side rooms.

Outside, persistent hucksters made the street market hard to navigate. Filling both sides of numerous streets and alleys were spices, fruits and vegetables, some arranged in artistic displays, others piled on the ground or filling burlap sacks. The riotous atmosphere was punctuated by the luscious colors of saris and the aromas of spicy food cooking.

After that walk on the wild side, we were off to Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary, noted for its tigers. En route, we saw all the now familiar sights, and a few new ones: a wind farm; women planting rice or washing clothes, while their children played in the water; cane being harvested and newly made mud bricks being fired in sooty stone ovens. One woman was weaving thick rope from mounds of fluffy hemp on a rustic loom. We saw a sign with elephants on it that said, "Share with us; save us," and signs saying, "Say no to plastic," because plastic routinely clogs waterways and kills animals that eat it when foraging for food. But plastic is still pervasive.

After nine hours, we reached the lodge at Periyar, only to be told there was a tiger census going on and we could not go on tiger safaris. We could still go on nature walks and jungle boats, from which we saw groups of elephants bathing, while forming protective circles around the young. We also saw boars, monkeys and many types of deer, including sambar.

Walking near the lodge later, I heard a commotion in two large trees: Dozens of macaques and langurs were cavorting and soaring from limb to limb.

Some people with rooms on the other side of the lodge had heard elephants trumpeting and thrashing about in the woods the previous night. I asked them to call me if they heard them again. I lay awake, waiting, and at about 2 a.m., a knock on the door signaled that the elephants were carrying on, so I went to listen for the lovely sound of trumpeting elephants.

Too soon we had to leave Periyar and drive several hours to Kottayam, where we would board houseboats to ply the inland lakes and canals of the backwaters.

On the road, new sights included rubber plantations, where trees had gashes in the trunks for the sap to fall into little receptacles; a pond so thick with hundreds of ducks that we could barely see the water; and fields of hardwood trees and shops selling hardwood furniture.

Three of us boarded each houseboat; each had a three-man crew. We glided along the water, and observed life in the backwaters, where people who live on a narrow swath of land jutting between two bodies of water, bathed or washed pots and clothes. It was as if we were looking into their backyards.

The people came and went in canoes, some carrying wares, such as pottery, to market. Fishermen threw out their nets. As the orange sun set, the crew brought out lanterns and mosquito gunk and we tied the boat for the night in an isolated area, and were serenaded by insects as we dined on food the crew had prepared. We spent the night in spacious cabins, and the next morning, we had crepes filled with shredded coconut and fruit, plus toast, pineapple spears and coffee. No one wanted to leave our watery oasis, but we boarded a bus for the fishing village of old Cochin on the Arabian Sea, and then the "new" city of about 1.6 million.

In a street bazaar, we saw pashmina shawls; silk clothing; animals, especially elephants, carved of everything from sandalwood to marble; carpets, and all types of home furnishings. I wanted a salwar kameez but the shopkeeper had none, however, he told me to choose the fabrics and he would measure me and in two hours he would deliver the finished garment to my hotel. I had to decline because we were on our way to a tiny theater to see kathakali, the ancient dance-drama of Kerala.

After the actors spent an hour putting on thick makeup, they demonstrated how they mimic animals and use exaggerated eye movements to tell their story without words, and then they dressed in elaborate costumes and danced the story, amid much stomping and frantic arm movements.

The next day we caught a plane from Cochin to Mumbai, the home of "Bollywood," which was a frenzy of activity, with trucks, cars, buses, tuk-tuks (three-wheeled bike/auto combinations), auto rickshaws, motorcycles and bicycles going every direction. We saw a lot of hovels and homeless amid the sea of people. We ate at a restaurant, where they put a platter full of aluminum cups in front of each of us, then put vegetables, rice and spices in the cups and piled several types of bread in the middle. In a traditional celebration, this feast would be placed on a large banana leaf.

Then to the train station, where we stepped over people sleeping and dodged beggars and vendors to get our overnight express to Jabalpur. It was packed. Some of our group ended up in berths in corridors. I was in a two-berth nook with a young Indian man, with a curtain separating us from the hallway, but no individual curtains. I was assigned the top bunk, but he gave me his lower bunk. I gave him a can of macadamia nuts.

"Express" was a joke; we stopped at every one of dozens of stations. Amshu, a scientist, was charming, and we discussed politics, religion, culture, travel, education and food. Still, it was stressful to spend 18 hours, socializing with a stranger, and trying to sleep in my clothes on a hard bunk.

Once off the train, we got a bus to Kanha, stopping at a village along the way. Residents invited us into their mud huts where they were pounding and grinding wheat. We dragged off the bus at our lodge in Kanha after several hours on rocky, unpaved roads, 34 hours after we had checked out of our hotel in Mumbai.

I wiped the thick dust off my suitcase and backpack and sprayed my clothes with peremethrin because we would be heading out on a wilderness drive at 5:30 a.m. Mosquitos swarmed but I saw some huge geckos ready to zap them, plus I was taking my Larium malaria preventive medication.

We set out at dawn, and after several hours of wildlife viewing, we had a breakfast picnic of cheese sandwiches, egg sandwiches, chapati (bread with potato filling) coffee and papaya. Our wildlife guide took us to the "toilets," which were leaves on the ground, behind a straw blind.

Then we went on elephants to look for two tigers a tracker had spotted. My first wild tigers! They were resting in the brush and ignored us.

Everyone gives a different estimate of the number of tigers in India and in each preserve, but I fear the numbers are much lower than statistics show. The Indian army is involved in halting poaching and illegal trade in endangered animals, but the number of wild tigers in India could be down to 2,000 or less. There were no wild elephants at Kanha, only 25 trained ones.

We saw a lot of animals on our morning and afternoon drives, along with lovely sunrises and sunsets. In the evenings, we sat under the stars and had local Kingfisher beer. On our last evening, we watched tribal dancing, singing and drumming around the bonfire.

We rode the bus back to the train station in silence as we pondered the beauty and cruelty of nature and the hard life of the wild animals, divided into hunters and prey, or peaceful animals like the elephants, just trying to find enough food and water to survive. Even the hunters among the animals are also prey because they are hunted by humans.

We saw the Indian people along the road, also trying to find a way to survive. One was polishing shoes, one was cutting hair, another was selling fans of peacock feathers. Each had devised some small way to earn a living. They waved and smiled at us. We hadn't yet left India but we were already nostalgic.

---