So where've you been? 32 Maharashtra, India: fifty thousand years old and from another planet ... anyone could get distracted, right? right?
So-o-o, I was flying over Maharashtra, see, and the pilot pointed out the window, and showed us Lonar Meteorite Crater.
I paid through the nose for the 7 hour drive there and back. Turned out being a tour guide wasn't included in the 1,700 rupee itinerary. Sitting with a cold drink by the car saying 'there it is' was about the extent of it.
'Path's on the right.'
Right of what? Staring down into a partially filled crater pool, fourteen tiny deserted temple structures scattered the sides. 2 kilometres diameter. 170 metre deep salt pool. The largest meteor crater in the world.
A perfect greeny blue hole punched into the earth, before the dawn of (our) time. Noted in the oldest sanskrit documents. Fifty thousand years old.
It made yesterday's second century cathedrals carved top-down into a rockface at Ajanta seem nouveau.
I estimated thirty, maybe forty minutes to get to the bottom (noon. clothed in black. 42 degrees.). Ten minutes to eat salt based stuff and rehydrate, then thirty minutes back.
Started on the right of a crevasse. No path. Spotted a goat track on the left hand side, so retraced myself and alternately clambered / walked / skittered in an ungainly fashion down the road not taken instead.
After about ten minutes of photographing weirdy opals set in black basalt rock (from another planet!), and sliding warily down scree, I noticed the big set of giant's causeway type stairs on the right. Beyond the bloody big crevasse.
Ah well. Didn't fancy being stuck with Suresh, my driver, after dark, much, so there was a time limit. I was a third of the way down by then. What's the diff?
I ran into a herd of goats, thorny silver brambles that looked uncannily metallic, like the truly otherworldly silverswords that only grow above 2000m inside volcanoes. I nearly stepped in a massive honeycomb fallen from somewhere (the moon ...?), and made good use of my camera to photograph dead trees in order to remember the way back up out of there.
Forty minutes of clumping clumsily, trying to remember how trekking in the Annapurna I'd learnt to zigzag downhill, save your knees and ankles from repetitive and unaccustomed shock.
I made it. Emerald green kingfishers diving, cranes rustling in thick bracken clumps on the water. Peacock calls. In the far distance, buffalo bathed in the salt lake. The area surrounding the base of the crater was craggy, parched dry, magnificent. Like a riverbed in a David Attenborough 'Drought Special'.
It almost looked like there could be lava down there, where sun-leeched dust crust slowly morphed into black, into red, into algaed green, and then into thick salt water.
Sweaty hands clutching a faded dying camera. I wanted closeups.
I started noseying around the crusty bits.
I fell into the meteorite crater. The ground just Gave a little, and boom. Encased in thick black sludge halfway up the calves of my jeans.
With a forty minute hike back up the crater walls to go. Great. There's no such thing as quickmud, right? I remember thinking. I mean, there's quicksand, but there's no way there's quickmud.
I needed a photo of this. No one can be this clumsy. No one.
You know, I haven't even the energy to tell you about getting stuck in the crevasse on the way out (in four inch thick black mud-yeti boots), and having to remember my rock climbing instructor's words from back in 1983 to get up the basalt rockface to the top of the crater.
Or the three maggots I found living between my toes when I finally made it to a standpipe.
Fifty thousand years old. Give or take six thousand yearsAnd so-o-o, of course I had to go there. Hang the cost. I could pick up a rock! From another planet!
I paid through the nose for the 7 hour drive there and back. Turned out being a tour guide wasn't included in the 1,700 rupee itinerary. Sitting with a cold drink by the car saying 'there it is' was about the extent of it.
'Path's on the right.'
Right of what? Staring down into a partially filled crater pool, fourteen tiny deserted temple structures scattered the sides. 2 kilometres diameter. 170 metre deep salt pool. The largest meteor crater in the world.
A perfect greeny blue hole punched into the earth, before the dawn of (our) time. Noted in the oldest sanskrit documents. Fifty thousand years old.
It made yesterday's second century cathedrals carved top-down into a rockface at Ajanta seem nouveau.
I estimated thirty, maybe forty minutes to get to the bottom (noon. clothed in black. 42 degrees.). Ten minutes to eat salt based stuff and rehydrate, then thirty minutes back.
Started on the right of a crevasse. No path. Spotted a goat track on the left hand side, so retraced myself and alternately clambered / walked / skittered in an ungainly fashion down the road not taken instead.
After about ten minutes of photographing weirdy opals set in black basalt rock (from another planet!), and sliding warily down scree, I noticed the big set of giant's causeway type stairs on the right. Beyond the bloody big crevasse.
Ah well. Didn't fancy being stuck with Suresh, my driver, after dark, much, so there was a time limit. I was a third of the way down by then. What's the diff?
I ran into a herd of goats, thorny silver brambles that looked uncannily metallic, like the truly otherworldly silverswords that only grow above 2000m inside volcanoes. I nearly stepped in a massive honeycomb fallen from somewhere (the moon ...?), and made good use of my camera to photograph dead trees in order to remember the way back up out of there.
Forty minutes of clumping clumsily, trying to remember how trekking in the Annapurna I'd learnt to zigzag downhill, save your knees and ankles from repetitive and unaccustomed shock.
I made it. Emerald green kingfishers diving, cranes rustling in thick bracken clumps on the water. Peacock calls. In the far distance, buffalo bathed in the salt lake. The area surrounding the base of the crater was craggy, parched dry, magnificent. Like a riverbed in a David Attenborough 'Drought Special'.
It almost looked like there could be lava down there, where sun-leeched dust crust slowly morphed into black, into red, into algaed green, and then into thick salt water.
Sweaty hands clutching a faded dying camera. I wanted closeups.
I started noseying around the crusty bits.
African drought ridden riverbeds what you see on telly don't suck you in.Yep. Unh-hunh. The curse continues.
David Attenborough never looks down to find he's sinking.
How was I supposed to know this molten rock like stuff was liquid?
I fell into the meteorite crater. The ground just Gave a little, and boom. Encased in thick black sludge halfway up the calves of my jeans.
With a forty minute hike back up the crater walls to go. Great. There's no such thing as quickmud, right? I remember thinking. I mean, there's quicksand, but there's no way there's quickmud.
I needed a photo of this. No one can be this clumsy. No one.
Long fumble in pack. Change batteries. Fidget. Find memory card full. It's too bright in the noon burn-beat-heat to seee the miniscule screen, let alone delete anything, and I thanked my foresight in buying a replacement card. Switch card. Fiddle. Fiddle. Fiddle with the stupid things. All this standing ankle-deep in ....***
oh.
Knee deep.
There is such a thing as quickmud after all.
You know, I haven't even the energy to tell you about getting stuck in the crevasse on the way out (in four inch thick black mud-yeti boots), and having to remember my rock climbing instructor's words from back in 1983 to get up the basalt rockface to the top of the crater.
Or the three maggots I found living between my toes when I finally made it to a standpipe.
posted by Lectrice at jueves, mayo 25, 2006
1 Advice:
*snort*
It's good to be all caught up. Although, I'm still torn as to whether it's good to be 'home'.
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