Delhi and Dharamsala

No pictures from Delhi or Shimla . . .
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Hello again!

I left off last time at my afternoon in Jaipur. As I mentioned, late that night I caught a sleeper train to Delhi to meet several folks with whom I've worked with as a rafting guide in the past who were also in India for various reasons. The train was late to arrive in Delhi, but no one told my alarm, so I was awake for the last hour or so of the ride, which quite mirrored my arrival in Mumbai; that is, it was something of a tour of the local slums. The area surrounding the train tracks, to the extent that it isn't covered with shacks of all different sorts, also acts as something of the morning latrine for the slum inhabitants, which made passing through a particularly strange experience. The sun was just rising, and I found myself thinking, "Another day in these people's desperate lives . . ." Their seemed especially grim this morning, as Delhi was experiencing a record low cold spell-- only days before there had been the lowest recorded temperature in seventy years. At just above freezing, I had sort of laughed carelessly to myself when I had read in one of the papers that they had closed the schools down for this. As I sat shivering from inside the train, looking out on cardboard patchwork huts (among other types), I recalled my laughter shamefully. Of course they closed the schools! So much of the population has essentially no means to stay warm.

When we finally arrived in Delhi, I collected my things and made my way out the train and down the platform to try to find my friends, as several were on the same train, but had started at an earlier point and were traveling in the posh (relatively) and expensive (even more relatively) A/C cars. I did, and the four of us caught a pair of autorickshaws (a cross between a taxi and a motorbike, and cheaper and more commonly used than taxis) to the section of town home to budget hotels and other tourist facilities. So far it was Jamie and Helen--a married couple, both Scots-- and Jasmine, who grew up near to the American River where I worked for several years. Later that day we were joined by Roland. Having grown up as the child of diplomats in Delhi and Islamabad, he really knew how to handle himself in India. As a non-Indian, he got harassed like everyone else by people selling stuff and begging, etc (in Delhi they're particularly relentless), but he was able to move through somehow above it all. Pretty much every Western tourist I've seen seems like a weak sucker or is excessively mean when dealing with so-called "touts"-- I think I've been both at times-- but Roland seemed to float above it all. To be sure his knowledge of Hindi and his familiarity with the city helped, but regardless his manner dealing with people and situations as we moved about the city impressed me quite a bit.

We were in Delhi a little less than 48 hours, which was more than enough. The first day I spent adventuring in Indian bureaucracy, trying to get a two-week visa extension. The office was on the other side of Delhi, which is a huge place, but fortunately Roland was on his way to the nearby Pakistani embassy to try to get a visa so he introduced me to the Delhi local-bus system, saving me quite a few rupees and the trouble of haggling with rickshaw drivers. In the end my visa extension request was soundly rejected, for several reasons. That night we went out for a night on the town, touring the bars in an upscale, Westernized area. There were several amusing parts to this, including a bar/restaurant with a live keyboardist who performed only Mark Knopfler covers (except for playing Piano Man once), a visit to an Indian Pizza Hut (as expensive as quite fancy Indian restaurants), and a stop at a Western-themed bar with actual saddles as the seats on the bar stools. The second day I spent with a really nice English couple who I originally met on the Bollywood set, and had run into on the street in Goa as well. As I fetched my key from the counter upon returning from my visa-extension attempt, I had a moment of great surprise as I realized that the couple standing next to me checking in was that same couple; after a few moments of "whoa, what are the chances?" we agreed to meet up the next morning. After an extended breakfast catching up and swapping stories, we toured a few of the sights of Delhi. None were stunning except for Delhi's main mosque-- India's largest-- which besides some excellent domes included a set of towering minarets, one of which was possible to climb to the top. The views over Delhi really drove home the city's size-- and pollution. That evening the couple caught a taxi to the airport and flew to Hong Kong to spend the next six months or so in China.

Early the next morning (as in early) we caught a train to a location several hours north of Delhi, where we switched lines to the so-called "toy train" (basically just much smaller than normal) that ran up into the Himalayan foothills further north still. We were headed up to Shimla, a hillstation that was once the summer capital of the Raj (British govt. in India). Originally we were all planning to visit the remote Arunachal Pradesh in the northeastern states (east of Bangladesh). Roland had managed to acquire hard to come by permits for the state because he is hoping to start a rafting company there and the state authorities are quite excited at the prospect but in the end we were unable to secure train reservations for all of us hoping to make the journey over there (quite a long ways). My attempts at convincing the others to travel in general compartment unsuccessful, the plan was abandoned and it was decided to check out the hills north of Delhi instead. Roland bailed out on the trip entirely, traveling to Pakistan (thus the visa) instead, among other things to visit some people in Islamabad he hadn't seen since his high school days there. At the place where we switched trains another rafting guide friend named Aisling, who had been in Nepal for a number of weeks, met up with us. So in the end it was five of us traveling into the hills.

Shimla was mostly a bust. Though we arrived just after sunset in perfect weather, we woke the next morning to rain and cold. Perhaps the weather influenced my perception, but I didn't much care for Shimla-- I found it to feel quite a lot like a charmless ski resort (do doubt in part due to its British past), minus the skiing. What they did have, however, was the most aggressive monkeys I have encountered in India. That first morning I was listening to music (I brought an ipod, though I mostly use it for picture storage purposes . . .) in my room (since there were five of us I ended up in a single) when I heard what I thought was one of the others knocking. I opened the door without much thought to find not a familiar face but a pack wild monkeys! I think what I had heard hadn't so much been a knock as the result of a pair of the monkeys wrestling each other into the door. Needless to say I shut the door . . .

Anyhow, the bad weather kept up into the night so the decision was made to move on to Dharamsala, our next intended destination, the next morning. This we did, arriving just after dark after an all day bus ride. We stayed in the neighboring town of McLeod Ganj, home to the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan government-in-exile, and a whole bunch of Tibetan refugees. For this reason, it is also a popular tourist destination. And yet it was still quite a charming place. I think this was partly due to the fact that, as it's winter in the mountains, it's the off season, so there weren't excesses of Westerners. I don't know exactly why I prefer this, but definitely I do (as I've made clear). Probably just my vanity, liking to feel like some kind of wild adventurer-- an illusion that is hard to maintain when I'm surrounded by hundreds of other tourists. Second, due to the great number of Tibetans in the town, it felt like something of a break from India. It was such a pleasure to be able to walk down the street past shops without the owners standing in the doorways trying to coax every passing white person inside, and to be able to go into shops without someone breathing down your (or rather-- my) neck trying to make a sale. Not all Indian shopkeepers do this sort of thing, but those who don't are quite a scant minority. And just the layout and feel of the town itself was pleasant.

We ended up staying several days, and each day we saw improved weather-- starting with rain, ending with sunny, bright blue skies. Correspondingly, each day we saw more and more of the giant mountains that surround the region. BIG mountains-- if still only foothills of sorts. We got into a pleasant, relaxed routine of sleeping in a bit, going for a walk on local roads to nearby villages through the midday, passing the afternoon seeing the local sights (mostly pertaining to Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism), and at night playing cards and chatting in a local bar. One afternoon we went to a Tibetan cooking class-- something I never would have considered doing on my own but ended up enjoying. The item of the day was the momo, a Tibetan food much like the Chinese potsticker. Mostly we watched our teacher do the difficult bits-- preparing the dough and other ingredients. As a result I wouldn't say that I'm now especially capable of making momos, but we did actually get to practice folding the dough into the three distinct momo shapes. I probably wouldn't have written about this except for my mentioning it in the title . . . The best part in my opinion was the chance we had to talk to our teacher while the momos were steaming-- like most of the refugees, he got to India from Tibet via a grueling three-week trek over Himalayan passes. It's incredible, what so many these people have been through, and absolutely, miserably sad.

The picture at left is from one of our morning hikes, on the third day. As this was our first day with some breaks in the clouds, it was the first day that we were able to see the above-mentioned mountains-- though at first we mistook these too for clouds! Though you can get a sense for this in the picture, for some reason it doesn't do justice to just how huge they were. When I first said, "that's not a cloud, that's a mountain!" I ended up feeling pretty foolish about it, as it seemed pretty much impossible since the hills we could see were pretty huge themselves-- until we realized a bit later that I had been right! The path were on was full of these women carrying these massive bundles of plants on their backs. From the back they looked like (rather large) walking bushes . . .

Anyhow, besides the short hikes, seeing the main temple and the nearby Gompas was a great part about the place. Though not architecturally impressive as their counterparts in Lhasa are said to be, they are still culturally very interesting. We also had the good luck to see the Dalai Lama drive past in a procession on his way home from a tour to some of the Tibetan settlements of south India. He's quite the celebrity . . . . Being around Tibetans-- who seemed just lovely-- learning about their brutal treatment at the hands of the Chinese the past half-century, and hearing further reports that the Tibet itself is changing fast has fueled my desire to try to get there before I this trip is through. Whether this happens, of course, remains to be seen-- apparently it's quite logistically difficult and expensive to get there, thanks largely to Chinese policy.

Overall this week with rafting people was quite different than the others in that I was with people that I know from home (in the broader sense) and will with some at least almost certainly see again in the not too distant future. I also spent more money this week than any other, in part because these people were traveling with a somewhat higher standard than my own, but also largely due to the presence of the Scottish couple, who steered us in the direction of the bar each night. I never had more than one beer, but this was enough to set me back almost double the cost of my room each night!

On the afternoon of that last day with the perfect weather my companions caught an overnight bus to Rishikesh, a town a little ways to the southeast famous for its many yoga ashrams (in fact I plan on being there tomorrow, but more on this later). I wasn't leaving until the next morning, so I had the afternoon to hike some more. I was informed of a hike up to the snow-line in the mountains towering over the town, and so I had a pleasant walk up there with better and better views down over the valley, McLeod Ganj, and various small villages as I continued. It was a trip to be stomping through snow, having been sweating like mad at the New Years just a few weeks before.

I had originally been planning to begin heading back south from McLeod Ganj, but as I remained in the mountains I found myself not wanting to leave. So I changed my plans, as is so wonderfully possible when traveling like this, and decided to head further into the mountains rather than out of them. I stopped for a night in Dalhousie, another former British hillstation-- which again I found sort of interesting but not especially appealing. The next morning I headed to Chamba, which you may recall if you read my last entry is likely to be my point furthest north in India (it was also the place from which I wrote the last entry). Chamba was a lovely place-- an ancient town, once the ruling city of the surrounding region, with great old slate roofed homes with lots of character, and fabulous temples over a thousand years old spread all over, and very much integrated into, the town. The setting too was fantastic-- a beautiful, steep sided valley with a granite-boulder strewn river at the bottom and quite impressive snow capped peaks at either of the two ends of the valley. As the valley was the lowest point I had been to since Delhi, it was also pleasantly warm-- I could go out during the day without a jacket! But the most interesting thing was that I began to realize after a day or so there and talking to several locals, I was the only non-Indian in the town. I spent two nights and the better part of two pleasant days. On the first night I got to observe an hour so of a wedding which was mostly pretty boring, actually, except for the moment the bride and groom saw each other for the first time (that's what I was told when I asked, anyhow . . . ). Otherwise they were mostly just sitting there akwardly. The morning after the second night I woke early and caught a bus further up the valley to a town called Bharmour.

My visit to Bharmour was without a doubt one of the highlights of my trip to India. But I'm almost out of time and feeling that this entry is quite long enough as is (if again dreadfully long winded . . . my apologies!). So I'll leave you with the above teaser, in the hopes that I can write with a little more inspiration next time. More pictures next time around as well-- I've already uploaded them and everything!

Before I go I'll take the chance now to let you now that I'm planning on suspending the blog for a month and a half or so starting probably after my next update. It's finally been worked out and confirmed, etc., that in about two weeks (Feb. 15) Ashley will be joining me in India for a little over a month. We are going to travel to a village in the vicinity of Calcutta (now called Kolkata officially) to spend the bulk of our time together there, sort of volunteering. The organization is called Dakshinayan (www.dakshinayan.org), and we decided to participate in this program largely because it sounds refreshingly un-patronizing with regards to those we will be working with as compared to most volunteer organizations. Anyhow, I won't have internet access during that time. As for my intention not to update the blog in the time between my next entry and my arrival at Dakshinayan, well, I'll explain that bit next time.

--Josh