Hemingway & Herriot

Hemingway & Herriot
Lily Greener

India is defined by motion –

     Buildings are crumbling
     Skyscrapers are being built
     Roads are being torn up
     Rickshaws and trucks are whizzing past
     Dust is flying
     Fences are leaning
     People are jostling

Everything is constantly moving.

And in that spirit, so have we.

After one last day of clinics almost two weeks ago (are these not the cutest patients EVER?), we hopped on a 5am flight up north to Ahmedabad to begin our first tour of India. As in the US, India is broken up into states and we flew from the one where we’ve been working, Tamil Nadu, up to Gujarat. It was so nice to move from the city out to a more rural area and on that first day we went right to Gandhi’s ashram and then to a horse farm to practice aging horses and reviewing anatomy (and by that I mean playing with the farm dogs…)

We drove back to our hostel there only to get up bright and early for a 4am bus ride out to the desert to stay in a lodge by the lion sanctuary we were visiting. After a quick (delicious) lunch, we grabbed our binoculars and drove over the sanctuary for a safari. We bumped and bounced around in open air jeeps past water buffalo, monkeys and lions!! OH MY.

Our next move was an 8am drive over to Dasada to visit a fancy-schmancy resort called the Rann Riders. Once again welcomed by a pack of dogs (heaven for a group of vet students), we stuffed our faces with amazing Northern Indian food and drove out around 10pm to look at some wild ass (amirite?) in the Gujarati desert. We drove about 567 miles an hour then stepped out into the inky blackness and gusting desert wind. It took us a while to find any, but we happily occupied ourselves doing cartwheels in the dark, spinning in circles, cackling at the atrociously blurry photos we were taking in the darkness and generally just doing very mature adult things like that. We finally did spot this one little guy running rather quickly away from the jeep. Can you blame him? I probably would, too, if people yelled “wild ass!” every time they saw me…

Early the next morning we loaded up the bus once more and drove for about 8 hours to get to the Dolavira ruins, remnants of one of the oldest Harappan civilizations located about 40km from the Pakistani border. It was around 120 degrees in the shade so after running around the old stone stairs and gates for a while I was all too happy to collapse back on the bus.

After opting out of the next morning’s 6am safari – sorry, folks – I woke up at the leisurely hour of 7am and spent the first part of the day buying jewelry from some local families and talking through some equine cases with a friend of our professor, Dr. Ramanathan. Check out this 9-day-old foal that melted our hearts (or was it just the heat?)

After about 4 bottles of water and another great lunch, a few of us squealed with delight to see a camel roll up with a cart to take us into town. I mean come on, look at him SMILING. We hopped on the cart and were magic-carpeted into the old streets of Dasada. There was no A/C on this ride, but we didn’t care – children from the neighborhood ran from their games to wave and chase our cart and one sweet boy even ran up with a baby goat for us to pet. We disembarked at one house to look at some of the family’s handicrafts, but I got distracted playing with their perfect little baby, Gupi – we had the same attention span, so we got along.

 

We finally (sadly) prepared to leave the resort and once again climbed onto the bus for our next adventure. We returned to Ahmedabad and the next morning revisited the farm to see a few more equine procedures. We took a short break during lunch to run out to the Step Wells in town – a historical site where the city used to draw up water – how gorgeous is this architecture? Then well into the evening we sat around a little oven and watched Dr. Ramanathan make and attach horseshoes to fix a mare’s foot condition.

 

Early the next morning (sensing a pattern here?) we once again stuffed our things into bags and headed to the airport, this time to fly to our next state, Uttar Praddesh. A jolting drive into Agra, a quick change into the outfit I had carefully been keeping clean in my book bag and we were off to the TAJ MAHAL, Y’ALL. I had been waiting for this stop the entire trip, partly because it would be my first visit to one of the Seven Wonders of the World and partly because the Duke and the Duchess had recently re-enacted the iconic photo of Princess Diana on the bench outside the palace and obviously I would need to do the same…

The following morning we drove from Agra back to New Delhi, but first we stopped at Fatehpur Sikri, an ancient palace and World Heritage site built by the Taj Mahal builder’s grandfather. The architecture was stunning, but after being hounded by the hordes of children selling souvenirs outside the gates, I was more than ready to move on.

And now finally after about ten days of vagabond-ing, I am happily back in Chennai – thrilled to be sitting still, quite frankly – writing, recuperating and getting ready for the next few weeks back working in the veterinary hospital. So if you need to find me, I’ll be in Large Animal Surgery again tomorrow morning, keeping my fingers crossed that we get a camel…

“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.”
~ Jack Kerouac