September 30, 2006 Rural Village Again, Little Rann of Kutch Sanctuary, Wild Ass

I woke up early and Vijay gave me another tour of the village. He explained that this village is 100% Hindu, and when we saw a Muslim outsider, he joked it was a terrorist. He’s a kshatriya (warrior), but since he’s non-veg, the Brahmins in the town consider him a Dalit. He asked my favorite caste, and only since my family was of samurai class in Japan, I told him “Kshatriya”, but also “Dalit” because I eat meat. Just like him. I saw lots of cows, mostly females because the male steers are for working and only one bull is kept locked up for reproduction. We rode by bike to some fields to see someone plowing. The farmer had two oxen connected to a plow that had a metal point to stir the soil. He also let me walk behind the plow in the cotton field, also. I got to ride a camel, with a funny prankster guy who kept popping up and giggled when I tried to speak Hindi. I had to leave to catch my bus, and fifty people saw me off. I was son in Zainabad, a small rural town, and was picked up at the PCO booth in a Jeep and taken to Desert Coursers Resort at the edge of the Little Rann of Kutch Sanctuary. It was really upscale by my standards. It had huts with tables and couches, and little cabana-type bungalows with little swings, nice beds, clean room, towels, soap, and....toilet paper. I was given a discount because the season hasn’t started yet, so I paid 1900 Rs for room and board with safari. I had fresh fruit, omelette, and bottled water for breakfast, with the owner, a Nawab (Muslim version of Maharaja) woman who ruled over seven neighboring villages. She spoke perfect English and was rich. The experience was like a luxury safari in Africa, with good food, lodge-style accomodation, and safaris at night and dawn. I took a walk around the neighboring villages, and saw cowherds, women washing clothing, and I had to leave because they started stripping and bathing. Kids followed me, shouting “Bye-bye”, and people had expressions on their faces as if to say, “What the hell are you doing wandering around my neighborhood?” I took pictures of some women tilling a field, and they wanted my water bottle. It seemed like it was the 1600s, except the shiny clear Aquafina bottle. It reminded me of the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy. What was funny about the situation was that they tasted the water and spit it out because it was hot. They poured out the rest and continued to drink their dirty tap water from a gasoline jug. The cowherds all wore white loose lungi with white turbans and huge gold earrings. I came back to have lunch (I was the only guest besides a seminar going on in the reception hall) and then I took a nap. The guide took me-and only me-in the Jeep to the Little Rann of Kutch Sanctuary, which is a barren plain of muddy and crackly scrubland. We rolled past the small town, a flat plain home to migratory birds like flamingo and egrets, and the last refuge of the 2,8000 Asiatic wild ass (called the khur), which can run up to speeds of 35 miles per hour for long distances. In winter, people cultivate salt in huge fields, and the ground is completely enveloped with glinting salt crystals. Now it’s just a bunch of thorny trees, brown streams, and cracking dry mud with whtie salt crystals covering large swaths of open plains. It looked like snow, but it was 90 degrees. It was pretty interesting, definitely different from anything else I’ve seen anywhere else. We saw some wild asses from behind a huge thorny shrub, so you could say I was only getting a piece of ass. I wanted to get some ass, so we had to hack at the thorns to walk out onto the fields near the herd of about 50 female asses, which were ass-white and cream-colored with long ears. They all looked when we approached on foot (because the road was too flooded to try and drive). They scattered, running really fast. I had to walk and chase ass because I wanted to see and photograph some asses, and I wanted to get some ass, so I walked faster. But the herd was really fast, so they made me work to get ass. I was doing ass from behind, so I was literally seeing ass the entire time. There was one solitary male to fifty females. The male ass is dark and hairy, compared to the beauty and perfection that is the female ass. I walked back to the car. I have seen so much ass; sweet ass, stupid ass, luscious ass, dumb ass, crazy ass, nice ass, perfect ass, huge ass, fat ass, and tight ass. That safari was the closest I’ve come to getting ass all trip. I had way too much fun writing this. Then I watched the colorful sunset over the fields, which took ten minutes because we’re so close to the equator. You could almost see the sun moving. I had dinner with the owner of the resort, and it was good besides insects falling into the food from the grass ceiling.