ou sont les super nechands?
i arrived back in delhi at 6.30am after a particularly bumpy night's sleep, or lack thereof, on the bus. i checked in and crashed out, with my only plan to doze in bed all day and generally do very little. unfortunately, the compressed nature of the last fortnight means that i constantly feel that i have to be doing stuff, so by 11am i was out on the roads of new delhi.
new delhi is the administrative capital of india, yet it is uncomfortably distant from the nation that it is supposed to signify. designed by an european, lutyens, the rajpath commences at the president's house, goes past parliament, and culminates at india gate. what is immediately noticeable is the lack of cars on this road, which then serves to highlight how broad and spacious the thoroughfare is, with parks and fountains flanking it all the way. solitude and space, totally anomalous with modern india: it makes you wonder how effectively the individuals working within this bubble can represent the inhabitants of the desi landscapes that voted them in. as i started heading down rajpath, the sound of a
muezzin's call arose: again, the sound of one religion so suddenly dominating the air around the heartbeat of this secular nation was unsettlingly discordant.
anyway, as it was just after noon the sun was at its most intense, and i was a bit tired from all my mincey thoughts, so i ducked into the national museum. what should have been a 30 minute rest stop turned into a two hour exploration, with plenty of open mouthed moments en route. the quality of some of the ancient sculpture and carvings on display, lifted from various temple sites, was breathtaking. how a country founded on various civilizations that all uniformly sought to valorise the sexual beauty of the female form, and female sexuality within, can now be so subsumed within an ideology of repression is shameful. more to the point, all the statues of
apsaras had cracking norks: i did a bit of research during the afternoon and these appear to have disappeared. is there some kind of secret brown girl boob reduction program to prevent moustachioed side parted youths getting overexcited? i think we should be told.
from the museum i walked down to humayun's tomb, an early example of the mughal architecture that peaked with the taj mahal, and a world heritage sight in its own right. the monument itself was very impressive, but my travails at getting in left a bit of a sour taste. i had to argue long and hard to convince the pen pusher selling tickets that i was indian and not foreign. the reason i was so eager to make this (admittedly untrue) distinction was the difference in price: 10r for indian, 250r for tourists! it had been the same in the museum, entry/ camera was 10r/20r or 150r/330r, but art staff are much too lazy to worry about stuff like money so asked no questions.i don't mind paying a bit more, but the sheer magnitude of the mark up made me seeth. i blagged it ok, but i really felt for the other, white, young travellers, who were probably just as skint as me, that were being extorted. the indian tourist board seems intent on alienating as many visitors as possible: cretins.
either way, all the walking had knackered me out, and i was getting funny looks from lots of the brown girls i was conducting my research on. so, stopping only for a cheeky chicken roll, i headed back. i'm now off to watch the football (liverpool v sunderland) and rugby (aus v sa) with ryan, who's just putting rachel on the train. happy days.
r & r
i can see why so many people spend so long bumming around in mcleod ganj, it's actually a genuinely relaxed place. even the street dogs, who are already onto a winner as far as i'm concerned by being both big and stupid, have a peculiarly soporific air (in that they're almost always asleep), as if they don't have to contend with the worries that strays across the rest of the subontinent have to deal with.
i have had a nice relaxing day, sleeping in till ten (although i did get woken by monks chanting at 6am. surprisingly, it actually helped me sleep: less surprisingly, they're still going now. crazy monks). went for an amble up to bhagsu, a dozy little village with a small shiv mandir and quite a nice waterfall, before strolling down to st johns in the wilderness, a remarkably gothic church that seems to loom out of the foliage on the road down to dharamsala. i also met a truly amazing italian girl (ciao valeria!) over lunch, who's doing a phd in tibetan buddhism and has just spent the last ten months living in lhasa. after meeting scores of deluded tourists who think they've somehow become truly indian just by virtue of having stayed in the same place doing nothing for a month (i think i actually dislike this breed of traveller even more than the bangkok boozers: they have this infuriating moral high ground that makes you want to punch them), to meet someone who actually speaks fluent tibetan is a refreshing change.
just killing a bit of time now and staying out of the rain which has just appeared. off to delhi for the weekend so more from there tomorrow.
dharamgaza
their troops might only have just started shifting them a few days ago, but it seems that half of israel decided to take preemptive action and escape to north india a few weeks early. this concentration of yids on tour has been noticeable wherever i've been so far, but surely must have reached its nadir here in mcleod ganj (just above dharamsala) where skullcaps are closely contesting orange monk's robes as the clothing de rigeur. surprisingly (perhaps in the absence of yanks) they are deeply and universally unpopular amongst all the shopkeepers/ hotel staff i've talked too, and indeed the rare israelis who speak to people out of their groups. it seems that three years of enforced military service has created a generation of squaddies, all loud voices and a rudeness that startles even indians. national stereotypes abound all round here however and the brits aren't doing too great either: i was just having dinner when a group of five posh british lads strolled in and one of them tried to order a chicken jalfrezi. scenes of confusion all round, particularly from our brit on tour who , sounding genuinely confused, said 'but we're in india'. priceless.
either way mcleod ganj is pretty enough, but the views are completely obscured by thick fog. this is the dalai lama's official place of residence but he's away at the moment (probably catching the end of the ibiza season.... apparently he finds hard house monktastic) so we couldn't go for that beer i'd been planning. i checked out his gompa complex though, and another little gompa (down an unneccessarily steep hill... crazy buddhists), so i am officially gompaed out. going to take it easy tomorrow, then catch the overnight bus for a weekend in delhi.
there and back again
it’s been a busy, and fairly incredible, few days. i left shimla early on friday morning to head to manali. The journey was relatively scenic, winding around green hills besides the beas river, but uneventful as far as indian road journeys go. I did meet a very safe (northern!) irish couple though, ryan and rachel, who were to keep me company over the next few days. we arrived in manali at around 7 pm and i took a fairly instant dislike to the place… not as relaxed as shimla, with far more aggressive touts, nor particularly attractive due to the choking traffic. As such, we booked a share taxi to go to kaza the next morning at 6 am.
i’m nowhere near as bad in the mornings as some people, but following a tiring all day bus journey the day before i was hardly bright eyed and bushy tailed come saturday morning. we had a bit of luck as there were only three of us in the jeep so it was fairly spacious in the middle seats. still, the road snaking up the mountain away from manali was suitably bumpy to prevent too much comfort (after all, that would have been un-Indian).we wound all the way up to the rotang la pass, at just under 4,000m above sea level. i enjoyed the green hills of shimla, but i had come to himachal pradesh to see the huge snow capped peaks that i associated with the himalaya. as the jeep trundled over the ridge of the pass i witnessed an image that will stay with me forever… a line of imposing, dark mountains, sheer white glaciers at the top with waterfalls tumbling all the way down the sides. it was one of those (few) moments that made even me shut the fuck up for a second, as i gaped slack jawed in wonder. fortunately, the sight of these himalayan peaks was something i was to get relatively accustomed to in the following days.
the journey continued down a dirt track which forced it's way through the valley in the shadow of the mountains. the amazing views that surrounded the jeep were however tempered by the hilariously bumpy ride within. we discovered that the back of the jeep, where four cramped seats had been jammed in, was the place to sit if you really wanted to emphasise the bumps and continually slam your head into the roof (anyone who’s witnessed me insisting on drinking until i’m sick will know how much i enjoy these kinds of masochistic japes). this dirt track continued for about three hours, concluding in a crawl up to nungri la. at 4,500m some buddhist madman had made a gompa offering both breathtaking views, and an insight into the mind of these crazy buddhist types: the more inhospitable or inaccesible the terrain, the more eager they are to put a gompa up. i saw them up mountains, down sheer scree drops perched perilously above swirling rivers, pretty much anywhere where going for a quick pray carried with it a solid chance of death.
nungri la also saw the birth of a new extreme sport: al fresco peeing, which involved whipping the old man out and micturating to the most spectacular views possible. al fresco pooing is still in development, but i have to say that even i’m not that keen.
from nungri la the scenery changed, as the mountains which had been green towards their bases, feeding into a lush valley, changed to dramatic red rock. we entered spiti valley in a cloud of dust and headed towards kaza. the air was noticeably thinner as we finally arrived at a still relatively ramshackle town, based at 3,600m.
kaza is a strange place: very dusty and hot, and totally surrounded by imposing red rock mountains. it is located at the start of the tibetan plateau, about 100km west of tibet itself, and both ethnically and culturally is almost entirely tibetan: monday may have been indian independence day but in kaza noone had a clue. the most noticeable thing was the complete lack of people hassling you. there are travellers heading out there, but still no touts or beggars. everyone just leaves you alone to get on with it, a total rarity in india. Furthemore there are no mobiles and no internet connection (the claims of some places to be cyber cafes were basically a lie).
spitian languages vary, and are nothing like hindi or bengali. there is however one truly indispensable word:
jule means hello, goodbye, please, thank you, sausage egg and chips, and pretty much anything else inbetween. it just makes learing a new language so much easier when there’s only one word in it.
the next day we headed up to ki gompa. as further proof of insane gompa building, this is perched on a rocky outcrop at about 4,200m… crazy monks. The place itself is absolutely incredible: serene, with stunning views in whichever direction you look. we managed to ingratiate ourselves to a monk, who showed us around and made us tibetan black tea. a thoroughly nice chap, although a quick glance at his forearms (like anvils) sugested he was not one to be trifled with. the entire place was noteworthy in that it even made me, not the most peaceful of souls, calm down and keep quiet too. oh, and there was also a particularly friendly cow in residence, although i’m thinking it was probably a hindu cow providing a professional service rather than a buddhist one hoping that a life providing monks with dung would lead to rebirth as a badger.
from ki we headed up to kibber, which claims to be the highest village in the world. At over 4,300m it’s a pretty good shout. we were just going to stop for a cup of chai, but having espied a gompa at the top of the village we decided to scramble up there. at that kind of height any kind of exertion is tiring so having reached the gompa i stopped for a while to check out the view. kibber is set on a green mountain: looking up the slope from the gompa you could just make out a jagged white peak behind it. my curiousity piqued, I began to wonder what the view would be from up the top. i started meandering up with ryan and after a few minutes we decided it would be a nice half hour stroll.
an hour later we were both out of breath and baked in the midday sun: we also had however one of the most spectacular views I have ever experienced, a panoramic snapshot of the entire valley with awesome peaks in every direction. stunning. our sense of achievement was slightly dimmed when an old spitian woman ambled up and past us, but anyone born around here must have lungs like an elephant so we threw out a quick
jule and tried not to think about it.
the rest of the day was spent recuperating. at night we crashed a tibetan wedding: some head honcho was marrying off his daughter and it was pretty much an open inivite. good craic, though not as good as bengali ones (although they did provide a beverage which, while smelling like an unhappy mix of ethanol and despair, was actually quite quaffable).
the following day we went to tabo gompa, where the dalai lama plans to retire. although containing some stunning frescoes, my gompa standards were artificially high after ki, so it was a bit of an anticlimax. in the distance however you could see a peak that was clearly higher than the others. this was kinnaur kailash on the tibetan border, winter home of shiva and one of the most aggressive, and beautiful, mounds of rock i will ever see.
The time had come to leave kaza, as i wanted to get to dharamsala for a few days. so, the next day we bundled into another taxi jeep: unfortunately it had been overbooked so there were three people in the front, four in the middle seat (a tight squeeze), and four in the back (a tighter squeeze with added bumps). the atmosphere in the cab was therefore distinctly frosty, a situation not helped by the driver trundling along slowly on the last smoothish roads for a few hours, contentedly singing along to the hindu devotional music blaring out of his stereo.
i started off in the middle seat, but at the spiti checkpoint ryan and I took one for the team and went to the back seat to allow a french girl suffering from bad stomach (silly white people!) to have a comfier window seat. for some reason this rearrangement totally alleviated the tension in the jeep. our driver turned out to be a lot quicker on a dirt track, and another new extreme sport of chicken was invented which involved not holding onto anything so you flew about in the air: a great game that had to be stopped when I almost jammed my neck through my spine and into my coccyx. again, hilarious (though i can’t really move my toes anymore).
we were making good time and spirits were high: it looked like we would be in manali for about 6. all of a sudden we came to a queue of jeeps and buses… we got out for a reccy to find a landslide had taken out a small portion of the road. The drivers were trying to refashion a track but ryan and i thought more hands light work and all that and got involved lugging rocks into the newly formed crevice. soon a bunch of tourists were getting stuck in and we were making good, if muddy, progress. finally, after an hour, we sent a jeep over and there was much jubilation.
short lived i’m afraid. there were a few army vans in the queue: although the soliders had impressive tasches, as required, they had done fuck all to help the rescue effort. now the track was up however they barged to the front with one of their two wheel drive vans and promptly got stuck. cue the waste of another half hour until the truck was able to reverse out. rather than moving to the side and letting the passenger jeeps go, the army decided to try again. another stuck wheel, another wasted half hour. by this point all of the tourists that had helped make the new track were getting increasingly irate. i spotted a chap in camoflauge combats and some rather sharp aviators so i went over to harangue him. it turned out that he was the officer for these parts: this meant that he was in charge of the whole affair. after politely asking him where he’d been for the last two hours (and calling him a congenital retard and a moron in my most incomprhensible sarf london accent) i suggested that he tell the army to let our jeeps go, then work on strenghthening the road, thus preventing an unnecessary backlog. the cretin however was having none of it, so we all had to watch our hard work get dismantled as we got wetter and more dismayed in the drizzle.
it seemed that the master plan was to dynamite one of the big rocks out of the way. the chap holding the dynamite was a bit of a legend: constantly leaving it lying around and always with a fag in his mouth (which at one point he dropped next to the bag: white faces and people running away all around). finally, after an hour of making a hole in the rock, they embedded the explosives. an exciting bang, but absolutely zero effect. so, a gang of about twenty spivvys just rolled the rock out of the way instead! why not just do that in the first place! eejits.
anyway, at 7pm we finally got rolling again, having a final glimpse at the mountains that manage to simultaneously be both supremely beautiful and unreasonably intimidating, and started up to rotang la. the name means the pass of dead bodies because the rapidly changing weather conditions have taken so many lives: as the bright moon suddenly disappeared behind fog so dense visibility was under ten metres, we began to fear we may be about to join the corpses. our driver had just received a call, no doubt from his missus asking him why he was three hours late already, so he decided that now was the most appropriate time to put his foot down.
the thing about the road is that it clings to the outside of the mountain, which means that on this one track road you are never more than a few feet from a pretty tasty plunge. the situation’s worse at corners: any brake failure or understeer and your jeep becomes a fairly ineffective plane. it was hair raising in the birght sunshine: in the dark and fog it was absolutely petrifying.
during rides like this in planes or english roads the stats are with you: planes rarely crash, english cabbies never fly off mountains. unfortunately in india all such bets are off: although i’m aware how melodramatic this sounds, i was genuinely scared for my life, and I know all the other denizens of the jeep (in itself no range rover) felt the same. ugly, white knuckle scenes all round, and more than a few muttered prayers to a variety of gods.
still fair play to the driver, because we made it, bruised, battered, but alive. after a great night’s sleep I’m preparing to leave manali again to go up to dharamsala, although as it’s just started pouring with rain i may stay an extra night. i’m back in the hills, and while the mountains gave me some of the most frightening moments of my life, they undoubtedly also provided some of the most awe inspiring. I haven’t bothered shaving for a week so I’m going for a cut throat shave and a head massage, as the closer you get to kashmir (dharamsala’s just below the state border) the less wise the beardie look is...
