Gods! Mountains!

A narrow meandering road disappearing around a curve somewhere at the foot of a mountain woollen with trees and shrouded in the orange glow of a fiery evening sun hanging three feet from the mountain, coming level with its summit but losing altitude fast.

A late evening last bus, that jars your teeth loose at  idle, wherein you are surprised with the sounds of birds chriping with early morning vigour emanating suspiciously from a woman’s heaving bosom, a denoument that reveals that it was just a mobile phone ululating from the bosomy recesses in response to what could one only hope to be the lover’s call.

A wizened old man in a small but powerful car scything along the narrow, crowded roads like the pedal was applied to the floor not by a foot but by a nail gun, with a gleefully maniacal smile plastered on his face much to the insane frustration of the younger, slower drivers burdened by their pansier vehicles and their less skilled driving technique.

A sleepy ticket conductor roused by some mysterious purpose walking through the length of the bus asking if anyone needs to buy tickets, knowing fully well that the bus hasnt stopped anytime since he last checked for new passengers. If this bus regularly expects passengers to apparate into it, remains a mystery. Considering the bus ferries passangers to the worlds richest and the most famous temple town, the conductor perhaps was just doing his job.

An airport that is so much off the radar that one would need not just detailed directions but a human guide who has had the experience of hacking away forests in a previous successful attempt to get to the mysteriously unconnected road that leads to the airport entrance from nowhere. An another guide to reassure you that the disintegrating gate that you see once you reach the end of the unconnected road is indeed an entrance to the airport and what is inside is not the outhouse but actually the entire physical representation of the airport. An airport with a total real estate footprint of a garage housing two and a half minis.

Brilliant roads that one wishes never entered the urban realms. Roads that would make one want to be a part of something akin to The Truman Show if only to inspire jealousy of the world watching you. Roads that are appointed on the sides with rolling green fields improving into unkempt forests and small, sporadic lakes and misty mountains disappearing and reappearing making you pray the horizon you are riding into was an event horizon in a space warp.

Shops, with sign boards in 4 languages of which two are neither spoken or understood by anyone within a two hundred mile radius and the other two which arent by anyone outside of it, selling wares that have disappeared from where you live two decades ago, bringing back memories riding a wave of nostalgia so strong you forget you are standing in the middle of a road generously sprinkled with at aleast three different species of mammals in diverse states of abandon driving varyingly large vehicles on roads that were never meant for them.

Queues of people that stretch 8hrs and a few kilometers long just to get a glimpse of of a bigamist god currently running the world richest temple with assets that include gold, vechicles, forests, man-eating cats, man-kissing deer and mountain vistas with roads that are perfect for all round the clock rides if only for the all round the year cool winds that caress your hair (if you have any) and the sight of the brilliantly lit city that lies sleeping and tossing at the foot of the God Mountains.

Places visited: Tirupati, Tirumala and the areas around.