It’s 11pm and India has just won the ICC Cricket World Cup, it’s been 28 years since the last time they have done this.  The whole town is in the main street of Hampi going crazy, screaming and setting off fireworks.  Xavier, a French traveler I met the day before, and I are running up and down the street with the locals yelling “F*ck Pakistan, India #1!” over and over, getting hi-fives from the people.  Never mind that India wasn’t playing Pakistan in the championship game, as the only game of the year that matters to Indians is Pakistan.  If you want to impress an Indian during a cricket match, just tell them that and you will get a laugh 99% of the time, promise!

I’m snapping photos away with the camera, trying to make sense of it all, when I feel a hand rubbing on my stomach.  “Ohh, wow” I think to myself, as I hope it’s a beautiful Bollywood girl doing this to me.  I turn around and see Big Boss with a huge smile from ear to ear and his head bobbling back and forth.

Big Boss I had met the night before at the only drinking bar around near Hampi, just 2k outside of the town.  Xavier and I had randomly went there that night and when we walked in most of the tables were full.  Big Boss pulled out a chair for us both and said we could sit at his table, so we did and Instantly struck up a conversation with the group.  We dubbed him “Big Boss” because honestly we couldn’t pronounce his name and because he was the biggest guy at the table, so we just said that instead of his good name.  He seemed to like it, so we just went with it.  We had a great night with him and a few others; they even gave us rides back to Hampi on their motorbikes that night for free.

“Hey Big Boss, F*ck Pakistan” as I shake his hand, “India #1! You guys did it tonight!”  He laughs and asks me what Xavier and I are going to do later to celebrate this joyous occasion.  I said I didn’t know but when my team wins back home we get drunk.  Big Boss put on a smile and said “Good sir, you will go with us tonight to the bar and be our guests to help us celebrate.  We have started already my friend, you know!” as his head bobbles back and forth to suggest that this is the only way to celebrate in India too.

I quickly said yes but that we didn’t have a ride to get to the bar and finding a rickshaw now might be hard.  Big Boss laughed and let us know that he will take care of that and not to worry.  To his word, 30 minutes later, Xavier, an Indian guy and me are on one motorbike that is about the size of a kid’s bicycle and put put put were off.

We’re laughing the whole way to the bar about the celebration in the streets but Xavier and I both notice this guy is driving all over the road.  This might be normal in India except the road is empty that night and there wasn’t any need to fully use two lanes and one ditch of the road.  We both almost simultaneously ask the guy driving if he has been drinking at all?  “Yes but only one drink sirs…” which was a relief until he finished his sentence with “…just one bottle of whiskey so far my friend.”  Oh, well just one bottle of whisky and to think I was worried for a second.

We make it to the bar and it was the most fun/fearful 2k I have ever had in my life, I’m ready for sure now to get my drunk on and rest my nerves from the ride.  We walk into the gate for the bar and all the lights are off.  I ask why it’s so dark and Big Boss says “It’s now not 10:30pm my friend.  Police will cause problem if lights are on.  Bar no legal after 10:30, so we celebrate inside.  Is ok no problem my friend, come come!”  God I love India for it’s bending the law when it involves cricket celebrations!

We walk into the building and it’s so full we can’t even get inside.  The bar is packed with nothing but men, mostly workers from the fields in their dirty labor clothes and smelling fresh of booze.  Xavier and I lost Big Boss for a minute then finally seen him waving at us to follow him into a room.  We make it there and it’s a 12×12 garage room with nothing but chairs in it, formed in a circle.  I think we just made the VIP room, score!  Beers start coming out, snacks are brought and passed around, whisky is being mixed and everyone is yelling at a 10 level about something.

This is where it really starts to get confusing for Xavier and I.  Our small group of six guys turns into 14 drunks within minutes.  I guess everyone wanted to drink in the VIP section and with the only Westerners at the bar.  Everyone is asking us where were from, what are good names are and how long we’ve been in Hampi.  Everyone has some kind of advice as well about India, something to see or something to watch out for.  It’s starting to turn into a rapid history lesson and I can’t keep up.

I finally turn the tables on these guys and start asking questions back.  One guy I asked his name and he said, “My good name is Cesar Baba my friend!”  Then everyone laughed and someone said he was the oldest archeologist in Hampi and that he lived in a cave.  Wow, I want to do a Faces Interview of this guy, as who wouldn’t want to read about such a man?  Everyone was laughing and joking and Xavier and I made a slight note of it but didn’t bother to ask why.

Someone said something about music, so I pulled out my iPod4 and threw on a tune.  I went with a safe selection and played some Bob Marley, as I didn’t have much music to choose from.  Cesar Baba yells across the room and gives me a thumbs-up and says “Paka”.  No clue what that means but he seemed to really like Bob Marley, so I handed him my iPod and let him listen to it better (see top photo) and gave him a big thumbs-up and yelled “Paka” back at him.   I guess it doesn’t mean your mother is a hooker because he smiled big at nodded back.

After a few hours there we finally shut the bar down and had to leave.  I wanted to know more about this Cesar Baba guy so I asked if it would be ok if we visited his home tomorrow, because come-on he lives in a cave… how cool is that!  His reply was a firm “Yesssss!” with a nod.  Someone laughed and said we should go and that he would be there all day at his home.  We asked where it was and everyone said it was easy to find, as it was right on the main street of Hampi and just ask around because everyone knows him.  I’m bad with directions but thought “Ok, we can handle that!” how hard can it be to find a man’s house on a street that is only 300m long.We left the bar on the same motorbike we arrived on, with the same driver who drove us there, except now he had only three drinks in him (ie; 3 bottles of whisky).  The ride home this time was nothing but fun and he drove so well we didn’t notice his constant swerving the whole time, as Xavier and I yelled “F*ck Pakistan, India #1!” at anyone and everyone we seen along the road back to Hampi.

The next day I met up with Xavier and we had a late lunch.  We laughed about last night and how so far we always find the strangest places since meeting one another.  We both agreed Cesar Baba was the most interesting guy we met that night and decided we should go visit his place.  Now this should have been our first clue, that a man living in a cave on the main street of Hampi didn’t add up but then again this is India and not much makes sense half the time anyways.  Everyday I’m India I see something or find something that leaves me scratching my head, so we didn’t think it was out of the norm.

I really couldn’t remember his name and only thing I remembered was they called him “something Baba”, that he was an archeologist and lived in a cave.  Xavier said he thought he knew his first name, so we went to the street and started asking locals where this guy lived.  One guy told us he lived in a shack across the street from where we were standing, which didn’t sound right but we walked over there and asked the guy.  The guy there wasn’t the man we drank with the night before.  He didn’t speak much English and all we could say was “Famous archeologist of Hampi, Baba, lives in a cave.  You know him yes?”  After about two minutes of the most confused conversation with this guy he finally lit up and said “Cesar Baba!”  YES we both shouted in excitement, as we couldn’t remember that part!  In broken English he said he lived across the river in a cave.  Man we were both confused but the man assured us that was where Cesar Baba lived.

So off we went to catch the ferry across the river, now that we knew his name for sure we felt confident we’d find this guy.  We get to the other side and ended up meeting four other travelers who just arrived to Hampi that day.  They looked a little lost, so Xavier and I told them what there was to see and do on this side of town.  We told them we were going to go visit a man who lived in a cave, was a famous archeologist in Hampi, real cool guy and he loved Bob Marley.  They thought it was interesting and asked if they could join us. The more the merrier we said!

We asked some locals where his cave home was and they explained it was at least 5-6k away, so we decided to rent some motorbikes and drive it.  Three of us rented the bikes and we all shared the costs.  We took off and stopped every 10min to ask people if they knew where Cesar Baba lived.  Everyone kept pointing down the road to keep going.

We finally come to the end of a road to which a river with no bridge was.  We didn’t know where to go but seen a boy near the river playing.  We asked him and he said he knew where his cave was and he’d take us there.  Score we found it!  FINALLY!

We cross a small stream made by a log for a footbridge and the boy leads us up a trail.  We finally come to a little building built into the rocks that looks like a small Hindu temple.  I look at Xavier and say “You sure about this man?  Think this kid is jerking us around?”  Xavier said the kid seemed happy to show us the place and didn’t have a reason to, so why would he.

So here we are, two Americans, two French guys, one girl from Portugal and one girl from Ireland, who just met 40 minutes earlier and are about to go inside some place that we’re not sure about.  God I Love Traveling!

We walk up the 40 steps and remove our shoes when we enter.  We find three men sitting around a small fire on a concrete floor.  This doesn’t look like a cave and these guys don’t look like archeologist but we were told this is the place.  I tell one guy, who looks like he’s in charge that we’re looking for a man named Cesar Baba and if this is where he lives.  He smiles and nods, not saying a word, and waves his hand low to signal for us to sit down and make ourselves at home.

We all sit down Indian style and for about a minute none of us say anything and everyone just looks at each other.  Damn, how did I get us in this weird situation?  All I wanted was a photo of this guy and to interview him, how hard is that?  The man who I thought was in charge, dressed in an orange robe, said something in Hindi to us.  We didn’t know what he said and everyone was looking at me to say something, as I was sitting closest to him.  So I went into my speech about how last night we had been drinking with Cesar Baba at a bar.  That he invited us to his cave home and that now we are here.  Could we see him please?

The man didn’t understand anything I said except for Cesar Baba but motioned us to wait and yelled out to someone.  A minute later a man appears and he’s not Indian, nor Cesar Baba.  He says his name is Joseph, that he was from Spain and spoke some English.  I repeated what I said to the guy in the orange robe and Joseph laughs and says, “This is not possible, Cesar Baba is in Italy.  He has been there for two months now”

“WHAT?  In Italy?  This can’t be, we were drinking beer with him last night!  He invited us to this place.  This is how we found it!” I said with the dumbest look ever.  The guy laughed again and said “Cesar Baba doesn’t drink, he forbids it.”  What the hell does that mean, I thought.  This went on for about 10 minutes, as Xavier was just as confused as I was and everyone else in the group must have thought we were morons.  We kept trying to tell the guy we weren’t crazy, that we had drank beer with him last night and that he couldn’t be in Italy because so.

The four men all just stared at us with a blank looks, confirming that we must be crazy.  I asked Xavier, what the hell we drank last night because I don’t remember taking any hallucinogenic drugs.  We were stumped and worse of all we had an audience to see it.  Finally the man in the orange robe offered us chi to drink and some small snacks to eat.  At least they were understanding and didn’t seem to mind us for being loco.

While Joseph went to prepare the chi, I asked the man in the orange robe if he had a photo of Cesar Baba.  He pointed up at a big picture that was hanging on the wall and said “Cesar Baba” with a nod.  What he pointed at was a picture of some guru looking Rastafari.  Now I was really confused, so I pulled out my camera and started digging through the photos on it from the night before.  I quickly find the photo of what we thought was Cesar Baba and showed the holy man.  He shook his head and said no, then pointed back up at the picture on the wall.

It was then, and only then, that it all made sense to Xavier and I.  We had been played a joke that seriously went way beyond what Big Boss and his friends had imagined.  The guy at the bar wasn’t Cesar Baba at all.  He wasn’t an archeologist and he sure as hell didn’t live in a cave.  Yeah they called him Baba but that can mean a lot of things in India.

Ba·ba (noun)

1. Father (often as a proper name or as a familiar form of address).
2. A respectful form of address for an older man

Once we knew we were at the real Cesar Baba’s home and that we had a bone to pick with the other guy later, we asked to know more about him.  Joseph finally came back with the chi to drink and he explained whom Cesra Baba was.   He was an Italian man, who had been living the last 25+ years in Hampi at this cave/ashram.  He had a few followers and lived a simple life with his teachings.  The man in the orange robe was there only to fill in for Cesar Baba until he returned from Italy.  Think of him as a substitute teacher.

This might have been the most random, strangest thing I have ever done in all my travels but it seemed so tranquil that I stopped noticing it and just enjoyed.  The Holy man started asking us all questions.  Where we were from exc.  While he was doing this, he pulled out a pipe and a bag of what I thought was tobacco until I noticed how green it was.  He packed the pipe while we told him each our stories, as Joseph translated for us.  Finally when he had it full, he struck a match and lit it, creating a huge smoke cloud as he exhaled.  He passed it to Joseph after one puff and Joseph did the same.  He then passed it to me, as I was sitting next to Joseph.  “When In Rome” I say, and went to take my first puff of grass with a Hindi holy man.  We passed that pipe around until it was done, then the holy man packed it again and we repeated.  If we did stuff likes this back at church I know for sure I would go more often.  These Hindu guys ROCK!

After about 20 minutes it hit us all and we found the whole group of us just laying back and staring at nothing.  Man this was some mean grass these holy guys smoke!  Joseph would every once-in-a-while say something about the ashram, about people seeking Cesar Baba and just wanting to sit in his presence because his power and energy was so strong.  I could see why if he had this quality of weed because the more stoned I got the more I wanted to meet the real Cesar Baba.

We stayed at the ashram for another hour or so and finally said we had to go.  We all thanked the Holy Man and Joseph for being so kind to us and letting us visit.  I know they must have busted out laughing at us when we exited because I know we did!

Later on that evening Xavier and I found Baba from the bar on the main street.  He smiled big at us but we quickly yelled Cesar Baba in a mocking way, as in we got the joke.  We told him our lost adventure from the day and how we knew he had pulled a fast one on us.  He just laughed, probably thinking we’d never have actually gone looking for his cave or the real Cesar baba, and held out a big thumbs-up and said “Pakaaaaaaaaa!”  What the hell does paka mean anyways?  We couldn’t be mad at him and we all just busted out laughing together.

How did I go from meeting a random guy at a bar, meeting four new travelers, to smoking weed with a holy man the next day is beyond me but I can safely say it’s reason #34 Why I Travel!

The real Cesar Baba! Photo Credit: Joseph Cains

Posted on April 26th, 2011 Archived in Asia, India, Why I Travel

Asia, Hampi, Hindu, India, People

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