Today we had an extremely enjoyable river cruise along the Li river in the first half of the day. This river course is between mountains, has clear water and is deep enough for passenger boats to cruise along. At the starting point, we saw a number of flat bottomed boats similar to ours ready to take off. The boat could carry about 100 passengers. It had besides the engine room with a steering wheel, a belly room in which there were tables and chairs for the tourists to sit. On top of the boat was the deck where one could stand and enjoy the scenery while the boat was cruising along. The Li river is a river in the valley between two mountain ranges. It has a rocky bed and clear water. One could clearly see the shingles and rocks along with large and small fish of different colour in the bed. Apparently fishing is not permitted here otherwise there couldn’t have been fish in such quantity. Different shapes and sizes of the mountains on both sides with their greenery enthralled our eyes. Hawkers, paddling along on their sampans ( rafts ) peddled their ware. The same bargaining as in India went on. When I was on the deck, I managed to get a hawker down to 50 Yuans from the 200 Yuans before I bought a laughing Buddha made of beautiful jade stone. I felt a sense of victory. A little later, when I was sitting in the belly portion of the boat below, near my window, appeared another hawker selling the same Buddha figurine. He too quoted 200 Yuans. As I had already bought one, I was in no mood to oblige him. For the sake of politeness, I quoted 20 yuans in the hope that he would slink away. Surprise of surprises ! The man held out the figurine to me and asked for 20 yuans as he was in a hurry to go home. I could not resist the bargain and the share market operator in me wanted to bring down the average price of these figurines taking advantage of a falling market. I bought it. Those who had bought similar figurines @ 50 Yuans doubted whether the second one was of the same size and quality. I too had doubts initially but on checking up, I found them to be identical. Now, I did not know whether to be happy at getting a piece at a cheaper price or to be unhappy at having paid a higher price earlier. I reasoned with myself that the deals had averaged themselves out and I should neither be too elated nor too sad at the happenings. When you take life as a whole, that is what you find ! Things average themselves out. This second bargain helped me to make a new friend. An Englishman sitting near me marveled at my non-challant bid of 20 Yuans in the face of a quoted price of 10 times that amount. I had heard that the English do not speak to people unless spoken to or only after introduction. May be, because he was my age and age had mellowed the proverbial stiff upper lip. Or as it later turned out that as he had settled in Netherlands and the nether part of his adopted land had affected him. Most probably he was like me, a fan of P.G. Wodehouse and you know we Bertie Woosters tend to bond with each other ! He wanted to know if I was a jew, probably meaning it as a compliment. ( In any case, that is what I like to believe ). I said that while I wasn’t one myself, I did have a jewish connection. A niece of mine ( Dipti ) had a jew for a son-in-law and like all my younger relatives, I am proud of him, even if I haven’t set my eyes on him so far. May be that explained my skill, he said and we both laughed. He introduced himself as Bill Nicholson and we got to talking. I told him that the greatest gift of the British to India was bringing back a scientific outlook on life. ( During Vedic times, the spirit of enquiry was there and only on furnishing a proof, were hypotheses accepted, but medieval times had brought in fossilization of concepts ) He gave me his email address and wrote alongside, “ Let’s hold contact “ By sending a copy of this tour diary, I am making my first contact with him. Future will tell its own story. The river mildly meandered its way through the mountains and we were served our lunch. Ours was the vegetarian table and courses after courses of dishes came. One good thing was that the dishes were left on the table and if we thought that the previous dish was better than the succeeding one, we could simply reach out to it and partake of it, unlike western style where unless you specifically asked for a second helping, it is not served. This suited people like us who were unfamiliar with the items served. The quantity served was rather more for us, but than that is their style. I wonder what they do with the leftovers. The meal was quite a satisfying one. While the meal was on, a waitress brought in a fried scorpion as a delicacy. Even non-vegetarians who did not belong to the Mongolian races, did not take the offering despite a pretty good sales effort on the part of the waitress. Thus far, I had only heard about the unusual gastronomic preferences of the Chinese but today I actually saw an example. We disembarked at a different location but our bus was there to take us. Next, we visited the Reed Flute Cave. It is so named as it was discovered by a young boy playing on his hand made flute. The wind took away his flute and in chasing it he went into this unusual place. The rest is history. The cave has fantastic stalactites and stalagmites, of different shapes and colours. Stalactites are formed on the floor of the cave whereas stalagmites are formed on the roof of the cave. They are formed by water percolating, bringing with it some mineral particles and depositing it. Gradually and over a long period of time, these are formed. I had seen some stalactites and stalagmite formations during our geological tour but nothing on this scale and so beautiful. Simply amazing ! For more information on them you could go to google search. We then went on a city tour. The first site was the Elephant Trunk hill, so named because the shape of this largish outcrop is that of an Elephant’s trunk. We drove past the Sha lake and the Banyan lake to go to a pearl factory. We were first taken to a briefing room where a Professor ( no less ! ) explained to us that there are three main areas where pearls are found in the world. While the other two are formed in ocean water, the Guilin one was where pearls were formed in fresh water. He showed us an oyster and said that he was going to open it and if we were lucky, it may contain a pearl. We were indeed lucky and on his cracking open the oyster, a pearl was seen. We were then taken to the exhibition hall where a variety of ornaments and other articles made of pearls were lying. I made some purchases using the visa card. I have purchased a trinket for each of the girls and each of the boys ( both big and small ) in my family. It was a rather long and eventful day and I simply crashed for the day in the bed.
Pappa
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