Catching up..

We are actually in Thailand right now but I figured I'd catch the blog up and finish off our travels in India..

Jai Guru Deva
After spending an enjoyable week in McCleod we moved east to the hippy town of Rishikesh, where the venerable Ganges gathers itself out of the Himalayas and where the Beatles spent several months finding themselves and also apparently the inspiration for their subsequent 'White Album'.

Ashrams on the Ganga in Rishikesh

Unfortunately, Rishikesh was a bit of a bust..overpriced and overcrowded with the baggy pants brigade in full force so we decided to spend just one day walking around the myriad of ashrams and visiting the now abandoned Beatles ashram before heading out. (for more on the shams and ashrams read the Beatles own account of perverted Maharishis and sneaking chicken to vegetarians here)

Downstream from Rishikesh we stumbled upon the much cooler town of Haridwar where we watched the evening Ganga (i.e. Ganges) celebration. Pilgrims from across the country were visiting the Ganga to float candle-topped lotus leaves down the current as an offering to the Pantheon of Hindu gods. If you're not familiar with Hinduism it's worth reading up a bit as it is actually quite colorful and interesting. There are thousands of gods and other incarnations available for petition on everything from financial success to marital happiness although the main gods, Brahma, Shiva, Vishnu dominate most of mythology. Haridwar as it turns out is one of the holiest places to Hindus.

Ganga offerings

Hindu Pantheon

Haridwar was interesting for the couple of hours we spent there whilst waiting for our connecting train to Varanasi further downstream.

Anyway we boarded our train later that night and began our 26 hour train ride to Varanasi..that's right 26 hours. When you consider that the distance between Haridwar and Varanasi is less than 1000km, this makes the average speed about 38km per hour or about 23 miles and hour..pretty damn slow..this has been one of our greatest challenges in India..getting from A to B just takes so dang long..even short distances of 100km or so seem to chew up entire days or two..

Varanasi
Anyway, so we get to Varanasi, which is The City to go to in India..especially if you are dying and want to be released from the cruel wheel of karma. Varanasi is quite a spectacle. Day 1 we did the tourist thing and toured the silk factories. It was interesting to see hand looms in action..especially when we learned how the fabric pattern is translated to a punch card that is then used to drive the weave mechanism of the loom (you can see the 3x5 punch cards hanging in front of the loom)..it was very similar to the old school type of computing..the factory owner even calls this his 'source code'. We saw the dye factories and watched as these guys toted bundles of material from one shop to the next, hammered out punch card patterns or relentlessly threaded the shuttle back and forth through the weave... I think the daily wage for these workers must be something like 100 rupees a day..or about 2.50usd..maybe less.

The next day we took an early morning boat tour of the Ganga. This is what Varanasi is about..well, half about at least. Every morning the Ganga comes alive with flocks of pilgrims streaming down the many ghats to bathe in the holy waters. These pilgrims are met by hundreds of boats full of tourists floating silently past like crocodiles on the prowl.

Ganga Sunrise	Main Ghat
Ganga Bathers	Ganga Scene

In addition to the bathing pilgrims, mystics, and other holy revelers lining the shores..it is quite a scene. I would say it was a bit of a carnival but it really is a holy affair for the pilgrims so I won't. Here is a brief list of the things we saw: An old man, whom we initially thought was dead, lying on the steps of a ghat with his robe hiked up around his waist, hanging out like a Scotsman and covered in buzzing flies. A candy box assortment of mystics lounging under umbrellas offering worldly and spiritual advice to passers by..for a fee. A 10 year old preacher who had an entire ghat captivated by his life lesson. Intoxicated men in complete body paint and costume offering photo ops for 5 rupees. Indian police men stroking their quaffs in front of a riverside barber. Children playing cricket. Shore side massage parlors. Various cafes and eateries. And cows...always cows.

Ganga Mystic	More Mystics
Rupee Photo Op	Ganga Police and riverside barbershop

As I mentioned earlier the Ganga is the place to die if you want to escape the endless cycle of karmic rebirth. Apparently if you die in Varanasi you are granted a 'get out of karmic rebirth free' card and so many come here specifically to die and to be cremated. There is even a cremation ghat that performs several hundred cremations a day. Actually, they do about 200 bodies a day..and not all of the bodies are burned completely before being dumped into the Ganga-kids for example are not cremated since they are deemed to be pure and thus don't require the cleansing fire of cremation. This creates substantial pollution for everyone downstream as there is something like 350 tons of ash dumped into the river every year..and an additional 250 tons of unburnt flesh that is also dumped. When combined with the open sewers and other run off that all flows into the Ganga you can imagine how filthy it must be. Yet surprisingly people still bath here and still use the river to do laundry. Strangely there's even a species of fresh water dolphin that lives in the Ganga..weird.

Crematory Ghat -note the smoke

Varanasi Laundry

As with every morning, every night the banks of the Ganga come alive with crowds to watch the Ganga celebration show, this is the other half of what Varanasi is about. Throngs of men dressed in white tunics and women dressed in their finest silk saris sit in groups to watch the 7 or so young performers offer incense and fire to the Ganga.

Varanasi crowd	Varanasi Celebration
Karma sparks

Darjeeling

After Varanasi we headed north again into foothills of the Himalaya to the hill station Darjeeling. Darjeeling is famous for its tea and for being the launching off point of some of the earliest Everest expeditions. The world's 3rd tallest mountain rises magnificently behind Darjeeling and Everest is a mere 100km or so away..easily viewable from Tiger hill on a clear day.

Population wise Darjeeling was an interesting place. Squeezed between Eastern Nepal and Western Bhutan it is populated mostly by Gurkha, and was much more Asian influenced than we expected. So much so that it hardly seems that it should belong to India. History informs us how it and neighboring Sikkim came to be part of India (read: British Raj era meddling) and also explains the "Free Gurkhaland" rallies we kept seeing around town.

Flower and Vegetable vendor

School kids

Due to this cultural difference, Darjeeling has been granted certain autonomy from India at large. The biggest difference we noticed was the beef butcher shops around town..something that is strictly forbidden in the rest of India. Darjeeling was also cold and rainy, but what else do you expect from the Himalaya in late October.

We spent a couple of days in Darjeeling exploring the town.

We visited the Happy Valley Tea Plantation to watch how tea is made.

Tea Plantation

Tea Sorters

We rode the famous Darjeeling Toy Train

Toy Train

Train hand

And we visited the famous Buddhist stuppa upon Observatory hill where the monkeys run wild.

Helen at Observatory Hill	More Monkey Menace
Monkey Love?

All in all we ad a good time in India. It is an amazing place but after 6 weeks we were ready to leave. And so after Darjeeling we bused it back south to Kolkuta airport and flew to Thailand.

Smokin'

Dalailamaland

After Amritsar we took a 12 hour bus north again up into the McCleodganj hill station which sits in the foothills of the Himalayas at about 6000ft. The ride up was windy, dusty and bumpy. Our driver was driving this public bus up the windy mountain rode like it was a Porsche..several times I really thought we were going to tip over and tumble down the side of the gorge.

McCleod hill station

Having arrived safely we found the cooler, cleaner mountain air to be a welcome relief from the hot and polluted air of the plains below and well worth the white-knuckled drive up.

Himalaya foothills

We spent a couple of days hiking around the hills and visiting the local lakes and waterfalls.

In addition to the climate change the Tibetan-Buddhist-influenced culture of the area was a welcome change as well.

McCleod it turns out, or more specifically, Dharamsala, about 4km south, is the home of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan government, and about 400,000 other Tibetans in exile.

Buddhist monks in front of Dalai Lama residence

It was neat to see a new culture. There was a large Buddhist temple in town where many young and old monks and other Buddhist pilgrims would circle and spin the mani prayer wheels (Om Mani Padme Hum) elevating their karma.

Buddhist stuppa

young and old monks

One night a crowd gathered in the streets with candles and flags for a a Free Tibet rally.

Helen and I had seen 'Free Tibet' stickers before..usually stuck to the bumpers of dilapidated old VW's. We had a vague knowledge of the Chinese occupation of Tibet and that the Dalai Lama was living in exile. The day after the rally we read a bit about the history of Tibet and attended a showing of a documentary film about the crisis in Tibet and the plight of the refugees. Until arriving in McCleod though I don't think we had a real sense of magnitude of the situation. Without getting too deep it seems that in 1950 the Chinese Maoist decided to invade and 'liberate' Tibet and have since then engaged in a systematic destruction of the Tibetan culture, a sort of culture-icide if you will, forcing Tibetans to adopt Chinese language and customs and cannibalizing all Tibetan cultural and historical relics. In an attempt to preserve their cultural heritage and historical identity many Tibetan, led by the Dalai Lama, have fled Tibet into India and Nepal to established refugee communities where children can grow up and live free as Tibetans.

This need to preserve a free Tibetan way of life is so strong that many parents send their children over the hill (i.e. the Himalaya's) knowing that they may never see them again. And this is what the documentary film was about. The film followed several young Tibetan children sent away from their homes in Tibet and their perilous journey over the Himalaya's into India. What was particularly moving about the film is that it featured many of the locals from the area, several of whom were sitting in the audience. So when you watch the guide taking these 8 year old kids through shoulder high snow drifts, fighting off frostbite and snow blindness, and running and hiding from the Chinese authorities at the Nepalese border and then you look over and sitting there is the guide with one of the kids (now 15) you couldn't help but feel moved by the reality of the situation. Especially when you learn that not all of the kids make it..some are lost to the elements..others are captured and imprisoned for years (the guide in the movie/audience was only recently released from spending 2 yrs in a Chinese prison)..still others are shot and killed by Chinese authorities, the most recent case of this was a shooting that occurred last month, claiming 9 people. To complicate matters more, Nepal has apparently recently changed its stance on Tibet and is now cooperating with China to capture and return refugees. The future looks bleak for Tibet it seems...

Anyway...

While shopping we came across a necklace for our friend Pierre.. (you know you love it P)

Some other monk pics..

Only in India

It's been a while since our last blog and we've been to many many places in India so apologies for the long blog and butt load of fotos..

After Jaipur and Pushkar we moved south to the Lake town of Udaipur where they filmed James Bond's Octopusy..I've included a couple pics below but if you really want to get a sense of what Udaipur is like rent and watch Octopusy..the town looks exactly the same!

Udaipur at sunset (City Palace on top of hill)

One night in Udaipur we were trying to sleep and kept hearing this "Beeeoorrraaahh" sound. It was loud and sounded like it was coming from right out front. We weren't terribly concerned as we were on the third floor but we kept trying to figure out what animal it was..was it a donkey? was it a monkey? a camel? an elephant? Who knows..but what is truly great about India is that it could very well have been any of these things.

Elephant ride vendor in Udaipur

After Udaipur we moved east again to a town called Bundi..a small village in the hills that despite being in the Book (i.e. Lonely Planet) is still relatively off the tourist radar. We had a great time in Bundi actually. Rudyard Kipling apparently lived here for several years while writing and it was also where we met our first Indian woman..actually we met two. It sounds funny but as of this point in India we had only interacted with men. Women were always around but were never part of the commercial or social fabric that we interacted with. So this lady that we stayed with, let's call her 'Mama' since that what she called herself, was a Brahman widow who apparently caused some waves in the conservative town of Bundi by opening up her haveli (house) as a guest house with her two daughters. It turns out the women from the Brahman class are not allowed to remarry if their husbands die. Facing a life of destitution (keep in mind that women in India aren't really allowed to work either) Mama decided to break with tradition and open her house to tourists. Her main selling point? Her food. Her food was by far the best food we have had in India. In fact she showed us some articles from the London and LA Times that featured her and her home cooking favorites. Props to her. Later we met another lady who also ran a Haveli with her brother..she was younger and less traditional. She told us that the newer generation is moving away from the restrictive traditions of their parents. She also informed us that we were among 10 tourists in town at that point...apparently all the Haveli owners talk..we became known as the American couple who wanted TV in their room..an apparently absurd request.

Lake house in Bundi (Rudyard Kipling lived here for a short time while writing)

We were rudely awaken one morning at Mama's to the sounds of crashing and banging on the roof above us. Having heard stories of the Monkey menace that plagues the town I grabbed my camera and ran up stairs to the rooftop to try to catch them. On my way up I was joined by another Indian who was staying at the Haveli..he brought a long stick. When we gt to the rf I was surprised to see about 30 monkeys on our rooftop alone..old, young, families. Mothers were hugging their young and the 'teenage' males were banging the chairs and tables around (which was the cause of all the racket). The guy who joined me started swinging the stick at the monkeys to shoo them..which I was grateful for since they didn't seem alarmed by my presence and in fact the older males seemed somewhat confrontational..while the rest of the monkeys fled across the rooftops one of the adult males actually circled behind us in an attempt to flank us or something..we spied him and shoo'd him too. Later the guy told me stories about how the monkeys will steal things from around the house and then hold them for ransom..only returning them if bribed with food. I'm a big fan of evolution and all but these monkeys it seems are getting a bit too smart.

All in all Bundi was a great town with colorful temples and streets.

We spent almost a week here exploring the Palace ruins that loomed over the town like Pankot Palace from Temple of Doom ...and with the swarms of bats that come out at night this place really was from Indiana Jones.

What is fascinating about a lot of Rajastan is that these towns still seem sort of medieval in a way. Swap out the accouterments of modern life (i.e. rickshaws, and tangles of telephone wires stretching across the street) and the scene is probably fairly close to what is was hundred of years ago with the massive city gates and street bazaars.

Bundi vegetable market

Bundi city gate

After Bundi we continued east to Ranthambore National Park to go tiger spotting. Ranthambore was tres cool..real Jungle Book type of stuff..ancient monkey infested temples, crocodiles basking on old Raj hunting bungalows. Lots of wildlife too, mostly monkeys, birds, and deer though. We toured around in an open top van for about 3 hours looking for tigers and just as the tour was ending our luck came around and spotted a mother tiger and her two cubs. They were a bit far away and it was getting dark so I couldn't get a decent picture..but still it was great to see these cats in the wild. Even from a distance you could tell how massive these things are.

Wild deer in Ranthambore National Park

After Ranthambore we said goodbye to magical Rajastan and continued on to Agra, site of the Taj Mahal. The Taj Majal is magnificent, mainly from the outside, but the 20usd ticket price to get in is a bit steep even by western standards. And apart from the Agra Fort and the Taj, Agra is a crappy town so we only stayed a couple of days..long enough for us both to catch colds.

Crossing the Yamuna River behind the Taj

Agra train station crowd

From Agra we took a train north to Delhi. Delhi is a city of about 25 million..almost the population of California. New Delhi is more modern than what we had been used to so far with wider streets and covered sewers. Having fallen ill in Agra we spent almost 4 days in Delhi doing nothing but watching TV and blowing our noses. Feeling slightly better we managed a couple of short ventures out to the bazaars and the Red Fort and even a night out for one of the Hindu holiday festivals.

Festival car..these things were loaded with a 4 man brass band and would cruise the streets blaring music collecting throngs dancing celebrators.

Street crowd dancing in street festival

From Delhi we took an overnight train to Amritsar in Punjab, home of the Sikhs and the holiest of Sikh sites, the Golden Temple.

Crowds of pilgrims stream into this place 24x7 it seems singing songs and reading passages from the Sikh holy book in an effort to pay respect to the religion and gain blessings from the Sikh priests that inhabit the temple. The Golden Temple was great and we came here several times through out the day just to crowd watch and take photos in the different light.

Sikh Guard in front of Golden Temple

The next day we took a day trip to the town of Attari/Wagah on the India-Pakistan border to watch the border closing ceremony. This is a truly bizarre affair. A massive crowd gathers on both sides. Music blares and the crowds dance in the street...

and then as the ceremony gets started.. the soldiers line up and shout some calls in Hindi which translate to something like "Hindustan is great, Hindustan is the best" and take turns marching quickly towards the border swinging their legs in these ridiculously high kicks...

then when they get to the border they face each other in groups and continue to kick the air and stomp the ground while snarling at the other side..all of this happens several times, for about 20 minutes, while the India and Pakistan flags are lowered from the poles. Then they shake hands and the border gates are closed and that's it..everyone goes home.

They'll repeat this to a similarly large crowd the next day..and the next..and the next! Only in India..