Hitching a Ride to the Monsoon Palace on a Stranger’s Motorcycle — Udaipur, India

It’s February and I’m alone, navigating a street in west Udaipur.

I cross a small plaza. The crowd is thick, shoulder-to-shoulder, the smells, speech, and skin assailing my senses. I push, prod, and pummel through. Vendors cry out, “Miss, miss!”  For an inexplicable reason, one voice stops me. I turn and see a man weaving through the crowd. Out-of-breath, he reaches me and presents his calloused hand, “Hello. I’m Savir. May I buy you Chai?”

I eye Savir suspiciously. He’s three inches taller than me, and more compact than most Indians.  I don’t find him attractive or ugly. His face is mediocre, a face I could alternately forget or love. I contemplate walking away, but something in his manner is so patient, so genuinely interested, that I agree to tea.

A willowy man in a torn Beatles T-shirt hands us small, ceramic cups. We stand to the side of traffic, against a gray wall, sipping.

“Where are you from?” Savir asks. And, “Why are you alone?” These are two questions people will ask me every day for the next nineteen weeks as I traverse three continents, nineteen countries, and forty-eight cities. I explain to Savir that I’m American and that I’m not alone, at least not now. I’m traveling with a guide and ten people from Australia, Canada, Switzerland, and Germany.

“How long will you be in Udaipur?” he asks, and when I tell him that I leave tomorrow, his face crinkles with disappointment. “A day in Udaipur,” he says, “is barely enough time to see a thing.  You must watch the sunset at the Monsoon Palace. It’s phenomenal. I have a motorcycle.  Would you like me to take you there?”

“Oh,” I say. “Really, I’d love to, but…” I trail off, searching for an excuse. Savir seems like a good person, but really, I shouldn’t trust a man I’ve just met.

“I’m actually with a group,” I muster. “My guide, Javed, is from Udaipur. And, well, I should go back to the hotel and meet them.”

Savir’s eyes brighten at the mention of Javed. “Javed,” he exclaims. “I know this man! We grew up together. I used to play football with Javed and his brothers.”

“Oh really?” I say. I can’t help but wonder if Savir is trying to concoct a fake connection with my tour guide. Still, Javed told us that he has several brothers that live in Udaipur. “Have you kept in touch?”

“Well,” says Savir, “No. Actually, I haven’t seen Javed recently. About ten years ago, I moved to Switzerland. I only come back here on vacation, to visit my family and to help with the export business.”

“The export business?” I say. The fact that Savir lives in Switzerland makes him seem trustworthy, somehow. The word “export,” however, smacks of something criminal.

“Well, you see,” says Savir, “the store in Udaipur was started by my father. We sell artwork, saris, jewelry, rugs—authentic, Indian things. In 2001, my uncle opened a second store in Switzerland and I moved there to help.” Savir pauses. “If you don’t want to go to the Monsoon Palace, it’s fine. But really, it’s a must-see. I’ll have you back by dinner.”

Businessman, Switzerland, Javed, English. I consider the reasons I have for trusting this man.

“Well, OK,” I oblige. “Let’s go.”

I follow Savir down a road that parallels the water. Two boys play football in the gutter, navigating their ball around a wrinkled man who lies beneath rags in the fetal position. A vendor calls, “Miss, miss” and gestures to vegetable pakoras—brown, green, yellow, fried. I shake my head, and continue downhill behind Savir, past a beggar with two stumps for legs, his back contorted with scoliosis. He’s seated on a wood crate with four wheels, and he scoots himself along the incline with bare hands.

A freeway’s worth of traffic swerves down the street. The door handle of a taxi brushes my elbow and I cringe, edging closer to the gutter. India is devoid of streetlights, stop signs, and traffic lanes, but I haven’t observed an accident in eight days, something I attribute to the howl of horns and an unspoken rule: pedestrians yield to bicycles yield to rickshaws yield to taxis yield to buses yield to cows. I watch a renegade heifer sidle straight into traffic, unharmed.

Close to the water again, I hear the low murmur of feminine voices. Savir motions me to follow, and we detour around a gray wall. There’s a small inlet here, and a gaggle of women in pink, red, and orange saris kneel on stone steps, their hair fashioned into braids or obscured beneath scarves. They dip clothing into Lake Pichola, then submerge them in soapy buckets, twisting, torquing, like a meditation.

I assume that if Savir wanted to kill me, he wouldn’t waste his time showing me this. Still, my friend Caitlyn comes to mind. “I was mugged in an alleyway in Valencia,” she once told me. “I pushed the guy away and ran into the crowd.” Caitlyn is four inches taller than me. I’m not sure I could push a guy away, especially a guy as compact as Savir. I’m not certain what, if anything, I’ve retained from the self-defense courses I took in my early twenties.

Leaving the women, we reach a gravel lot. Savir mounts a Honda Beat and sticks out his arm.  It’s game time. Images Caitlyn flash through my head. As if in response, an inner voice retorts: You’ll be fine! Go for it. Adventures like this don’t come around every day! It’s the free-spirited side of my psyche, the side that insisted I embark on this round-the-world adventure in the first place. In listening to this voice, I’ve expended a significant amount of my life savings on airline tickets, backpacks, and visas. The voice reassured me whenever people brought up terrorists, travel advisories, and malaria.

I take Savir’s calloused hand and climb aboard.

He revs the engine.

We drive.

First there is Lake Pichola on the left, silver, regal. Sun filters through tree canopies and imparts gold glints to the surface. A bird bobs in the misty center then takes flight, cawing as it rises from the water, unbridled, free. On the right side of the road, wizened trees stretch skywards and tropical vines with red and purple flowers creep and curl around their trunks and branches.

I wonder if the Monsoon Palace is an alibi. I wonder what will happen if we get hurt; the road is full of hairpin turns.Once again, my inner voice commands me to let go, live.

We round the edge of Lake Pichola, then wind through a village, flashes of water visible through trees. It’s poverty, the kind you never forget. The houses are small and squat, the size of a dining room—concrete, clapboard, broken windows. A red and brown hen teeters across the street. A goat chained to a pole bleats plaintively. A woman in a loose sari with a crying child on her back extracts water from a well. Metal squeals as she pumps the handle.  Backyards burst with rusty bicycles, decrepit trucks, and scrap metal. Two children in nothing but underwear dart into view, then disappear behind a tool shed.

The road turns again, and we rise into the Aravalli hills, a mountain range that extends eight hundred kilometers from western India to eastern Pakistan. The sun is now low on the horizon, an orange haze. The higher we ride, the chiller the air becomes. Goosebumps prickle my arms. There’s nothing in my ears but the wind, deafening. Near the edge of the road a monkey swings from foliage.

The lushness bowls me over—green ferns titillating in air, thick vines in roped coils dangling from tree limbs, flowers so bright they’re indecent.

Water sloshes down a rocky embankment. A magnificent blue-green bird, a species I’ve never seen in America, alights on a branch. We ride faster, higher.

The sky is tinged cranberry, lemon, and orange. Clouds drift aimlessly, hiding the sun, exposing the sun. The world is spiked with newness and I feel a giddy intoxication, like I’m five years old again.

I think about the four months leading up to this trip. I’d just gotten out of the Army, and I’d slept excessively, lying in bed in my parents’ basement because the world didn’t hold an allure anymore. At twenty-eight, I’d felt like I’d accomplished everything I was going to accomplish and now I had nothing to do but will the years to pass. Looking around, from the back of Savir’s motorcycle, I wonder how I could have been so wrong, and I feel the edges of my post-Army depression coalesce. I’m overcome with an emotion I’ve rarely felt before, and for a few minutes I struggle to name it.

Then it hits me. I feel completely present, and I realize that I can only remember feeling this way a handful of times. Instead, I’ve spent an inordinate amount of my life eulogizing the past or idolizing the future.

The road to the Monsoon Palace continues to curve, sometimes in gentle undulations and other times in violent turns that force Savir to slow the motorcycle to a crawl. And then we’re out of the woods and riding along a stretch of highway that hugs a cliff. There’s a guardrail along parts; other places are bare. Without warning, Savir stops his motorcycle on the shoulder and gets off, beckoning me to follow.

“Sometimes you can see tigers and panthers from this overlook,” he explains. “The animals like to roam over by that lake, at your three o’clock.” He gestures and I follow his hand, peering over the precipice at miles of forest, the Saijangargh Wildlife Sanctuary. I pinpoint the lake Savir is referring to, a lake so diminutive from the ledge that it appears no larger than a doormat. It sparkles like a cache of diamonds and we stare, strain. I’m disappointed not to spot wildlife.

“Don’t want to miss the sunset,” Savir says at last, and we get back on the motorcycle and keep climbing. We make another turn and I finally see the Monsoon Palace. At once, that distant hilltop and cut of white marble are familiar and I don’t understand why.

“How do I know this place?” I shout into Savir’s back. He’s trying to tell me the answer, but I can’t hear him through the wind.

I edge closer, and my cheek brushes his T-shirt.

“James.  James Bond.”

In that second, recognition floods through me. The Monsoon Palace is from Octopussey and I recognize it as the home of the film’s villain, exiled Afghan prince Kamal Khan.

Now we’re directly below the Monsoon Palace, at a wooden guard shack, and Savir idles the motorcycle and hands the attendant several hundred rupee, the equivalent of a few US dollars. The guard allows us to pass through a wire fence and into the compound, telling us to make this quick.  The Monsoon Palace closes after sunset.

Sliding off Savir’s motorcycle we’re in a courtyard with a gurgling fountain and the palace towers overhead. It’s at once formidable and fantastical—nine stories of masonry and marble on a hilltop 1,100 feet above Lake Pichola. Constructed in 1884, the palace served as a hunting lodge and a place where the royal family went to avoid summer heat. I gaze into latticed windows and imagine how pleasurable it would be to watch dark monsoon clouds roll in over the lake.

Turrets flank the main building, which has domed roofs and white pillars etched with leaf and flower motifs. I want to explore, to rage through corridors and chambers and courtyards, but the guard has told us to be quick. Savir pulls at my arm, corralling me to the edge of the cliff. “The sunset,” he’s saying. “The sunset. Look at the sunset.”

The timing could not have been more impeccable. The sun quivers on the edge of the planet like an overripe fruit. It’s streaks of cloud, light, and shadow. It’s the most immaculate sunset I’ve seen. It wavers there—wrestling with Earth—then slips beneath the horizon in one fluid motion.

I turn toward Savir, rendered speechless; he asks to take my picture. He immortalizes the expanse of sky behind the Monsoon Palace—pulsating with color, beyond beautiful. He captures my hair floating on a breeze around my face, my lips curved in a slight smile.

“You’re gorgeous,” he says reverently, and hands me back the camera.

The sky is turning shades of blue and violet and a small, exquisite moon appears. It’s a delicate circle, silver, rutted with craters. We crunch back over gravel toward the Honda Beat.

“I know I said I’d have you back before dinner,” Savir begins, “but would you like to go to a wedding reception? My friend Raja is getting married tonight.”

“Yes,” I say, without hesitation this time, and we get back on the motorcycle and ride slowly through miles of shadowed rainforest, past the darkened village on the shores of Lake Pichola, into town.