Don't Trust Cows

Araceli Munoz

I like travelling very much. Sometimes, in my trips, I enjoy a lot, but sometimes I have had some mishaps. In these circumstances, I have felt uncomfortable, sad, angry, tired, exhausted and even desperate. But when I remember them I think about them only as a part of my travels. It’s very strange but sometimes we forget bad moments and even sometimes we explain them like a fun thing.

Twelve years ago I travelled around North India with my husband. India is a wonderful and amazing country. Their people are very nice and pleasant and you can feel them very close. A particular spice smell covers their places and the colours of their saris cover their towns. Their culture contrasts with European culture, and I saw everything like I had opened my eyes for the first time.

After a month visiting Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh we visited the city of Agra. Then, we decided to go on a trip to a natural reserve that was a few hours from the city. We departed at 9 a.m in a very old car without an air conditioner. The weather was extremely hot, maybe it was to 45 º C, and the humidity stuck to the skin of our bodies like a fine silk. We travelled all the time with the windows opened and I felt in my face the heat and the dust that went through it. Our guide and driver drove the white car while he listened to a cassette of Indian music. He only had two cassettes, so we listened to the same music once and again during the month and a half that our travel lasted.

After three hours in the way, we arrived at the natural reserve. In the entry of the reserve we rented two old and heavy bicycles and we began to pedal. There weren’t signs in the way and we didn’t have a road map of the natural park (or the fantastic GPS that we bought some years later), so we decided to go straight and to remember the forks that we crossed. We only needed one hour to get lost. Along the way, we could only see cows and monkeys. The heat was so stifling and the air was so hot that we found it hard to breathe. The day before it had been raining and the track was full of mud. The mud stuck in the wheels and chains of the bicycles and pedalling was very difficult. I felt that with mud the bicycles were much heavier than when we rented them.

I said to my husband: “We should accept that we are lost”, and he answered me: “Ok. We should follow the cows, because cow never get lost”. We followed the cows about one hour, but at the end we were more lost than before. Sweat covered all my body and I was exhausted and desperate. Then, I threw the bicycle on the ground and I began to swear aloud (only cows and monkeys could hear me anyway). I was annoyed and I said all the swear-words that I knew. My ears were smoking and my eyes were on the verge of tears. I said to my husband: “I am leaving the bicycle and I continue on foot”. He answered me: “Please, hold on a bit longer. You will see how we will soon find the right way. Tomorrow you will remember this and you will laugh when you explain it”.

We continued to walk carrying our bicycles. One hour later, we arrived at a research centre building situated in the middle of the natural reserve. We could drink a cola (I don’t like cola a lot but that day it tasted like heaven) and the people from the centre explained to us how we could go back to the exit of the reserve. Next week, we explained this story to our friends and, as my husband predicted, we laughed a lot.