Monday, September 27, 2010

Only 2 weeks left!!!

The past couple of weeks have been great.

After recovering from my little mudslide ordeal, I went to Naggar, a small town about an hour-long bus ride from Manali. Weird place. It's famous because some Russian painter that I don't think anyone has ever heard of lived there and painted the surrounding mountains. It's also the place that the most offbeat old Europeans you will ever meet go to smoke and die. I originally went there because it's the start of a supposedly wonderful trek to Parvati Valley. I couldn't find anyone to go with, and to go alone would have been a) lame and b) really expensive, so I just decided to take a bus to Parvati Valley. The evening before I was going to leave, I met an older German couple in a bakery who were planning on starting that very trek the next day, so I joined them.

The trek, hereby referred to as “ScheisseTrek,” was pretty much as the name indicates – crap. The first day was nice, about 7 hours of steep uphill, but enjoyable. We got to 3400m, to a little room made of mud where we were to spend the night. It was freezing and pretty gross, and the next morning the guy tried to charge us $70 for it! We fought him for a couple of hours and eventually got it down to $40, which was still absurd, but at least we could leave. Oh and the guy working in the hut stole my hiking sticks in the night! Luckily, I found them hidden in some bushes a few minutes walk away the next morning.
As we were about to leave, one of the porters decided he would go no further, so the German lady ended up carrying her big backpack for the rest of the trek. The porter knew what we didn't – snow was coming. By the time we got to the top of Chandrakani Pass – 3600m – it was snowing and freezing, but at least it was beautiful – Kullu Valley on one side, Parvati Valley on the other. We then had to go down an incredible steep “path” for 4 or 5 hours, on which I fell multiple times, courtesy of rain and crappy Indian hiking boots with no grip. We finally got to Malana, the most unpleasant village in India, and could relax. The residents of Malana claim to be descendants of the soldiers of Alexander the Great, and have a special caste system that forbids them from touching or being touched by foreigners. The result is that any visitor will be find 1000 Rs if you touch a person or a building. This makes for a very awkward and unpleasant experience while walking through the village. We wanted to buy a bottle of water, and got shooed away from the first store. When we finally found a store that would sell to us, we had to throw the money on the floor and they in turn placed the bottles of water on the ground. Weird.
The last day of the trek was about an hour's walk to the road to Jari, and then potentially 17km of walking on the road, which would have been pretty crap so we decided to take a taxi instead. And so ScheisseTrek finished in wonderful Jari.

I spent pretty much all of last week in Jari, a small village at the beginning of Parvati Valley. It's wonderful, with very few tourists and incredible scenery. Parvati Valley itself is incredible – it's really narrow, and the jagged mountains shoot up right from the banks of the river. From Jari I was able to go on a couple of day trips to Manikaran, which is beautiful and spiritual, and Kasol, which is actually Israel - everything was written in Hebrew.

Once the rain stopped (the monsoon is finally over, yay!) I dared take a bus to Shimla, about 8 hours away by bus, which is where I am now. It's a very strange place. At this time of the year it's almost exclusively frequented by Indian tourists and honeymooners, and has kept a very British/colonial identity. The town, which is massive, is dominated by Christ Church, and all around is British architecture and old British-looking cars. The place makes me a little uncomfortable, because I feel like this is exactly what it must have looked like under colonialism, but with a few more brown faces in the mix. It was fun meeting up with a some girls from the internship who came up for the weekend, but now that they've gone back to Punjab, I'm eager to leave and go to Rajasthan. I decided to forgo on Rishikesh and the rest of Uttarakhand, because it's essentially underwater due to heavy rains.

Tonight I'm taking an overnight bus to Delhi, from where I will directly take a bus to Jaipur. I only have 2 weeks left in India (!!!), so I won't be able to discover Rajasthan the proper way, really taking my time, but I'm really excited to end my time here with a taste of “real” India.

I would also like to briefly describe my attempt to get the debit card that was sent to me via Poste Restante to the poste office:
- Hello, someone sent me a letter, could I check if it's arrived?
- No check. No cash.
- No. Do you have a box where I could look to see if my letter has arrived?
- Letter box is outside.
- No. A letter was sent to me 'Poste Restante', could I see if it's here?
- You want stamps?

Today, when i finally got the letter and sent off a parcel, which took all of about 3 hours, I gave my passport to the lady, and when she saw my birth year, she started cracking up and calling me baby. She then walked off and I heard her speaking hinidi, pointing at me, and saying "baby" to all the other employees. Oh India, I will miss you.

Also, I am currently eating dried dates that are so dry they actually taste like wood. Delish.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

I'm still alive... Take 3

Yesterday was the most terrifying day of my life. Scarier than a possible LRA intrusion into Uganda. Scarier than the Kampala bombings. Scarier than the Leh mudslide. I actually think I had a pretty good chance of not making it to 22.

I thought the bus ride from Manali to Kaza was scary. But boy, was I in for a shock.

I got on the 4:30am bus to Manali and off we went. When we stopped for breakfast a few hours in, the driver informed us that they were expecting snow. As we resumed our journey, it started to rain a little bit. Rain turned into snow. Snow turned into a snowstorm. As our elevation lowered, snow turned to slush, and we all know that slush is heavy, and these mountains are not very stable. The drive is already scary in itself, with hairpin turns and drops down to the valley floor right next to the road, but when you know that the stones that compose the road on which you're driving, as well as the mountain above, could give way at any moment, it adds a whole new dimension to the drive. Especially when you hear thunder and you're not entirely sure if it's just thunder or if it's a mountain coming down somewhere.
The really scary part started around noon, when we had to periodically stop to move rocks and boulders that had fallen onto the road, and the bus had to carefully maneuver around them if they were too big to be moved. I had a window seat on the side of the bus that was most crowded, meaning the side on which the bus tilted more into the abyss on the unstable road. I pretty much stuck to the man sitting beside me so that I wouldn't have to look out the window. As we bounced about hoping a boulder wouldn't crush the bus or that a wheel wouldn't slip off the road, I turned my phone on – I thought that in case I died, at least my body would have a chance of being traced by the radio waves. It may seem silly now, but that's honestly how scared I was. Maybe I was so scared simply because my nerves are shot from several terrifying experiences in the past 4 months, or maybe because my life was literally in the hands of the bus driver and the whims of over-saturated soil.

At about 3pm, we arrived at Rohtang Pass (which literally means 'pile of corpses' in Tibetan). There we found out that the road to Manali was blocked by a mudslide, and it could take hours or days to clear it up. We all got off the bus and started walking down the mountain, heavy backpacks in tow. I'm so glad there were other tourists on the bus – a Polish guy and his dad, a Spanish girl and an English girl – it was nice to have some mental support :). We walked for a few kilometers down the mountain, which at least was absolutely beautiful so we could take our minds off the actual reason why we had to walk down the mountain, until we found some taxis. Unfortunately, most of them were full of Indian tourists in hideous but hysterical rented fur coats who wanted to go up to the Pass to see snow. We left them in their fake-fur glory and continued on our way. Suddenly, the Polish guy yelled that rocks were falling. I looked up and indeed, boulders were falling down the mountain, straight for us. We ran for cover behind a parked truck, which is not so easy with 15 kg of luggage on your back, and hoped the boulders wouldn't obliterate us. Luckily, they stopped on the road above, about half way between us and the place from where they had started falling. About 45 minutes later, we got to a rest stop, where we could have some tea and food, and waited for a taxi. Two hours later the taxi arrived, informing us that we would have to pay 2000 rupees for the one and a half hour ride down, which is almost as much it costs to go to Spiti Valley itself by taxi! At that point we had no choice, we couldn't walk down the 36km to Manali, and the two girls had to get back to Delhi to catch flights, so off we went. I think we all expected a nice drive down in a warm taxi, bringing us to definite safety after our long day, but the taxi driver was insane and drove like a maniac, sometimes with one hand holding a phone and the other on the gear shift, never mind about the steering wheel! We made it to Manali safely, and I think I will wait around here for a few days for the storm to clear before I go trekking in Parvati Valley.

Ironically, the reason I decided to take the bus back from Kaza to Manali, rather than the other way through the Kinnaur Valley and onto Shimla, was because the latter road is supposedly one of the most dangerous in the country, and I was trying to play it safe. Failure.

Anyway, the trend of this trip is sort of starting to scare me a little bit – 4 months of traveling, 4 scariest moments of my life:
11 June: Rumor on the radio that the LRA has returned to Uganda
11 July: Kampala bombings
6 August: Leh mudslide
13 September: Snowstorm and mudslide at Rohtang Pass

Anyway, if this trip kills me know that I die happy because I'm traveling, discovering the world, and living the dream :)

Sunday, September 12, 2010

"Write your sad times in sand, write your good times in stone"

Greetings from Spiti Valley, one of the most remote places on Earth!

I've been in Spiti for the past week or so. On Tuesday, I took a bus to Kaza, the biggest town in the valley, from Manali, on a road that can only be described as insane – hairpin turns all over these Himalayas! Not to mention the road is usually no wider than the bus itself, which makes looking out of the window on the side of the drop quite terrifying. But I made it in the end, safe and sound, and it was worth it. Spiti Valley is beautiful. It looks a little like Ladakh – barren and sparsely populated – but it's even more spectacular because the mountains and cliffs are literally ripped apart (“d馗hiquet” was the word used by my guide book, which I find quite appropriate). It looks a little bit like the Grand Canyon or Monument Valley at times, and the villages are like oases on small patches of fertile land. From Kaza, I shared a taxi with a few older German guys to some of the sites in the surrounding areas. First stop was Kibber, a small Tibetan village that is one of the highest in India, and claims to be the highest in the world with a road and electricity. It was a beautiful place – greenery among the surrounding barren mountains. We walked into the village accompanied by a little girl who could not have been more than 4 years old, struggling to carry a rice cooker in one hand and the peas she had just collected in the other. She gave us some peas to munch on during our journey. Why is it that in the West we always say, 'kids are cruel'? But in places like Ladakh, Spiti, or even Gulu, kids are the kindest, gentlest, most caring of them all. It's like the West forces this idea of competition into our young brains, and forces us to put others down in order to get ahead. By turning everything into a commodity, something to be fought over, capitalism (or Westernization? Or modernization? Or “development”?) makes kids into monsters. Luckily there are still parts of the world where kids can still be generous without it being unusual, be caring without it being embarrassing, and be kind without it somehow being detrimental to themselves.

Next stop was Tabo, the only other town in Spiti Valley, which is really more of a village – a dozen or so houses surrounding the main attraction, the 1014-year-old monastery. Perched on the surrounding hills are caves carved into the mountain and surrounded by prayer flags, where the monks go to meditate. I can't imagine a more peaceful place to go and contemplate life or try to reach Nirvana. The monastery was incredible. I don't know much about Buddhism or gompas or art, but even to my untrained eye this one was special. It is made of clay and wood and almost looks like an adobe structure that could easily be found in the American Southwest. Inside are several rooms, all covered in centuries old paintings and sculptures of different divinities and Buddhas. It is completely dark inside, so the only way to see anything is with a flashlight, which makes the whole experience even more intimate.

This morning I took a bus back to Kaza, and tomorrow morning will be heading back to Manali, before going to Parvati Valley for a trek. I will most likely spend my birthday in whatever village I find around there. Maybe I'll get myself a jar of Nutella as a substitute for cake.

I also quickly wanted to describe my paragliding experience from last weekend. Yes, paragliding. No, I will not do it again.
After a 45 minute walk up a 45 degree “trail” that was not a trail, we got to the patch of mud from which we were to take off. I was the last one to go, and had to wait a while until the winds picked up again. After a few minutes of flying and me wanting to die because all that was suspending me in the air and keeping me alive was wind, which I could neither see nor control, we tried to land. Fail. Updraft. So we keep flying and tried again. Partial fail. Because of another updraft/downdraft/whatever-you-call-it we landed too quickly and skidded/crash-landed-gracefully into cow poop, almost hitting a group of Indian tourists who ran for their lives. Anyway it's all on video for to admire when I next see you. All that really matters is that I'm alive, have all my limbs, am $30 poorer, realized I am a little afraid of heights, and got it out of my system so will never do it again. :)

To end, here is a quote that was scribbled on the bathroom wall of the monastery where I stayed in Tabo:
"Write your sad times in sand, write your good times in stone."