Close connections

Wear the yellow hard hat. Buckle the orange vest. Be careful of droplets of water. And, more importantly, keep your mouth shut. Silence is important in the dark cave. Think before you open your mouth. The bats might just poop in.

In Puerto Princesa city of the Philippines, I had put my first foot forward in the paddle boat, when the audio started spewing instructions - strict dos and don'ts piping in my right ear. The don'ts were mandatory because I was entering an underground river in the Puerto Princesa Underground River. A river tearing through an older-than-time cave chest. Quiet, yet magnificent.

As the boat glided on the emerald waters, I saw a monitor lizard darting by. A gigantic lizard leaping through the dense forest. And a macaque shrieking.
The Filipinos dice the lizard for a lavish meal. I was not hungry. Not hungry enough to fork a lizard for lunch.

In one of the '7 New Wonders of Nature and a UNESCO World Heritage Site', Nature has worked sedulously. The cave opening is jagged and low, the ceiling high, and the bats hanging upside-down from the rock outcrops.

The audio snaked around my neck turned into a storyteller. Of the stalactites and stalagmites that grow less than a millimetre in one year; of guano, the bat/bird poop that is the world's most expensive fertiliser.

Of the drops of water that fussed over the rocks to create a colossal candle, a mushroom, carrots. Even the semblance of Virgin Mary. All carved
millions of years ago. In the dark cave illuminated solely by the headlamp of the boatman, what could have been a dreary story of geology turned into a spiritual tale of Christ the Redeemer and Virgin Mary.

Soothe the sinner
For 45 minutes inside the cave, I sat silently. Afraid that even a racing heartbeat would disturb the habitat of the bats and the swallows. The underground river runs navigable for 8.2 km, but tourists are not allowed beyond 1.5 km. I crossed the river's The Cathedral mark but could not reach God's Highway that sits at the 2-km mark.

Going that far and not going on God's Highway was perhaps a misdemeanour. And I, the sinner, got buried in the sand. Warm sand. In Puring, a swim in the volcanic hot springs did not wash away my irreverence. A man in white outfit dug my grave and prompted me to lay on my back. Before I could beseech the Lord for forgiveness, he picked up a shovel and kept throwing sand on me until I was buried neck-deep. To ensure that I was buried well, he started walking on me. I have heard of dead men walking. Here, the 'dead' was being walked on!

"It is a massage," he smiled as he tiptoed on my limbs like quicksilver. Buried a few feet under, I was on cloud nine. There'll never be a soul so gleeful in a grave. The warm sand was therapeutic, and the massage walk-over relaxing. There sure was no epitaph, no headstone, but it felt supreme blissful to be dead. Or, pretend to be dead. After nearly 15 minutes, I was exhumed. The man who had walked over me, lent a hand to pull me out of my grave. A lady promptly brushed the sand off my skin and hurriedly slathered volcanic ash on my skin. Ash that Mount Pinatubo bellowed during its 1991 eruption, the
second-largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century. In Puring, my sand-grave experience ended not with hosannas but with a sugary drink called Mogu-Mogu.

From six feet under, I had to race back to life. In the Philippines, there is the jeepney, the fastest, quickest, cheapest mode of transport. So packed are these jeepneys that if you get an inch inside, consider it a feat. No one confirms, but gossip is that the name 'jeepney' is a portmanteau of jeep+knee. The passengers sit so close to each other that they knock knees. Hence, the name. The more etymologically conscious owe the name to jeep+jitney.

Mechanical makeover
At the end of World War II, when the American troops were leaving the Philippines, hundreds of surplus jeeps used in the war were sold or given away to the Filipinos. Then, Harry Stonehill, an American soldier, gave the Willys a makeover - metal roofs were added to the open jeeps, the bodies painted in flaming red, canary yellows, blast pinks, chrome-plated ornaments were welded for the bling, and two long parallel benches were squeezed into the Willys' back. And lo! the old war horses were metamorphosed into public carriers. Soon, the jeepneys gained immense popularity and became everyone's favourite mode of transport.

I was not ready to knock knees in a nation that is made of more than 7,000 islands. In Palawan, I chose the tricycle, a sidecar attached to the everyday motorcycle. The driver in a  white tee and a pair of black sunnies stopped for a brief moment. I bent to sit in the sidecar.

Even the petite me had to lower the head, hunch enough to get a foothold into the tiny tin bench. One more minute. Two more guests were sitting across my bench. Our knees knocked. In the Philippines, that did not hurt. No bruise. No pain. Perhaps it says a lot about the Philippines where one can be happy in the grave, and smile at knocking knees.