Penelope Hits the Road

Besides Lake Dal, a major attraction in Srinagar are the Mughal Gardens. These are beautiful gardens that were mostly built in the 17^th century by the Mughal Emperors. I hired an auto-rickshaw to bring me on a little tour of three of them – and it was definitely worth it. Picture grand sweeping old trees, symmetrical pathways and flowerbeds, and long stretches of flowing water interspersed with gently spraying fountains. I didn’t get the best pictures because there was a slight drizzle most of the time, but these were truly lovely spaces to just wander around.

At the first garden stop, a smaller one which was definitely a warm-up for the next two, the focal point of the pathways was a gushing stream of water from a stone fountain. People were lined up to get close to it, and soon I noticed that they were all scooping up the water with their hands and drinking it. As I watched a teenage Indian girl in tight jeans and a black pleather jacket nudged and me and said, “You should go drink it! It’s supposed to be sacred.”

“Really?” I wasn’t sure if this was a good idea or not – isn’t one of the iconic experiences of India, right up there with visiting the Taj Mahal, NOT drinking the water? But I watched as she helped an elderly woman in a sari, possibly her grandmother, find a place in the line, and they both dipped their hands into the fountain. The older woman splashed the water around her face and neck, then drank several handfuls.

So, if all these people are drinking it – it can’t be bad for you, right? And it’s coming out of the mountains anyway, down from the Himalayas….

And with that conclusion I got in line, made it up to the fountain, and drank the sacred water.

I wish I could say that I subsequently had a very sacred experience, although I guess I should just be grateful that I didn’t have a very grounded and physically uncomfortable experience. In actuality nothing really happened – the water was cool and refreshing, and nobody seemed to think anything of the foreigner joining the crowd. The teenager smiled at me as she helped her grandmother down the steps back toward the parking lot, black jacket and red sari soon blending into the crush of people, all here to get their own brief taste of the sacred.

I’m in New York City now, finally recovered from the delirium of jetlag, and ready to start posting again.  So this is back to Srinagar, in Kashmir.

*****

On the main day of striking in Srinagar, I decided to avoid the basically closed up city and instead explore Lake Dal by boat.

The view from my shikara

This is the main attraction of Srinagar, along with the beautiful gardens, and the full experience is supposed to be staying in a houseboat. I considered doing that for my last night here, but the houseboat owner’s association was also closed, and dealing with all the touts was just not appealing. So I decided to stay at my hotel one more night and take a shikara boat ride around the lake instead, which was lovely.

Some shikaras and a mosque - 95% of Srinigar is Muslim

My shikara guy, by the way, satisfied my ongoing hobby of finding celebrity lookalikes in different ethnic incarnations – I swear he was the Indian Dustin Hoffman.

Dustin Hoffman - who has apparently been on Lake Dal since 1982

A floating garden

You can get anything on a boat these days - soft serve?

The air was cool, enough to put a sweatshirt on, and I just laid back “like a begum” and relaxed for two hours, gazing at the mountains, the other boats, and the water lilies.

At one point we were facing the snow-covered peaks of the Himalayas off in the distance, and the call to prayer came floating out over the water. I felt this incredible thrill of not only being right in that moment, but in anticipation of soon riding up into those mountains, ones that I’ve read so much about but never actually seen before in person.

My time in McLeod Ganj (Upper Dharamsala, home of the Dalai Lama in exile) has been greatly enhanced by meeting Lorena, a woman from Chile who quit her job and is following the travel bug to India. We met on the night bus from Manali, and have been exploring the town these last several days. Today was a mixed bag – complete with physical climbs up and down the roads and steps of McLeod Ganj, and similar exertions in terms of meeting people along the way.

We started off with plans to enjoy what the Lonely Planet described as a “pleasant walk” from McLeod Ganj to the village of Bhagsu, making a loop through the village of Dharamkot, then back to the main town. Bhagsu had been hyped up to us by some Chilenos we met on the bus as a great place to stay and similar to Old Manali in its hippie-town vibe. However, if there was such a vibe in Bhagsu, we definitely did not find it: all we saw was a uninspiring little town filled with the same types of souvenir shops and traveler restaurants claiming to do it all (Indian, Tibetan, Chinese, Italian, and Israeli) on one menu.

The two major attractions of the town were a Hindu temple and a waterfall. We agreed to skirt the temple as it didn’t look too appealing, and made our way towards the waterfall. It was quickly turning into a journey of “we’re doing this because this is the attraction and that’s what you’re supposed to see,” not because it was a really awe-inspiring site, although there were some funny goats along the way.

Things were starting to have the feel of a bad sitcom – you know, when you laugh because you’re desperate for something to be funny at that point, rather than actually encountering a moment of true humor – and we were contemplating how traveling can sometimes be just not that exciting. Often these are the days and attractions that you don’t really mention to anyone else – the uninspiring bus journey, the temple that was a repeat of so many you’ve seen before, the museum full of dusty exhibits of farming implements and endless clay pottery shards.

After determining that the closest we could get to the waterfall involved a tricky climb and a whole lot of junk food for sale, we decided to return to the main road and complete our loop.

Back in town, we stopped at a cafe to catch up on the internet. Here was the start of the most bizarre encounter with a human being I’ve had in awhile – our interactions with the old man. He tottered up to the couches where we were sitting, and asked for help getting seated in a chair at the edge of a table. Lorena, being a naturally nicer person than me, started to help him right away. I was busy eyeing his long white beard, and the even longer ribbon of drool that was descending from his mouth onto the floor. He was mumbling and difficult to understand, but we finally managed to get him seated, after which he let me know that he was originally from New York (Astoria!), asked me several times how much money I made in Taiwan, and told me that he wanted to go teach English and how should he go about doing that.

At this point I really had no idea what to say to him, so I hedged and said something about “you should look online,” then turned back to my computer.

Later on, he asked for help again, to get up. Lorena was trying to help him, and a young Israeli guy ended up getting involved, and he and the old man started speaking Hebrew. I was shocked to see how, once this gentleman was upright and leaning on his umbrella, he managed to skip off to the back of the restaurant. The Israeli guy sat back down next to us and explained how this guy apparently had been traveling for the last 40 years, and how he always seemed to be trying to get people to help him in a very physical manner. My distrust light was fully lit up now, and I kept an eye on where he was, much as he had ordered us to keep an eye on his glass of water: “Make sure they don’t take it away.”

He returned a while later, and ended up getting a Bulgarian woman to help him and walk with him all around – shuffling slowly and leaning greatly on her, although I mentioned to her that he had been skipping around perfectly fine not so long ago. Everytime he tried to talk to the people who were trying to help him, he would mumble, contradict himself, and just be generally unclear – this was accompanied by rudeness to the non-native English speakers who were trying to figure out what he wanted, and appeals to me as “someone who speaks English” to help him out. Then he got angry with me because he accused me of being “non-responsive” and “staring at him,” and proceeded to ignore me from then on.

It was basically an awful and uncomfortable situation. I was disgusted with this man who was clearly taking advantage of people, and uncomfortable with not knowing how much help he actually needed, and troubled by the idea of someone this elderly being so obviously lost in the world.

So, we left the cafe, and made our second attempt to see something of the day, an auto-rickshaw ride to the Tibetan Children’s Village, a school and home for orphaned and destitute Tibetan refugee children some 4K away from McLeod Ganj by Lake Dal.

"Lake" Dal

“Lake” Dal turned out to be a big mud patch – it was out of water. Then we found ourselves standing in the middle of an empty lot, surrounded by some buildings and kids walking around, but without any obvious signs of where we should go. That moment was “la ginda de la torta,” or the cherry on the top of the cake. After a day of not-so-great moments, here we were at the peak of them. But then, we were saved.

A man noticed us standing there in a helpless traveler stupor, and asked us if we’d like to see the place.

“Yes!”

He led us up to an office, and a woman soon came to give us a tour. The Tibetan Children’s Village is one of a number of facilities around India, serving around 17,000 children. At this center there are about 2,000 children, from babies to 17 and 18-year olds. We saw the nursery with two rows of cribs, a playroom where young children were busily engaged in figuring out some type of clothing, and two cranky toddlers who were not happy about sitting on plastic “potties” outside.

The children live in group homes with foster parents, and all of them have various chores and work together to take care of the cooking, cleaning, etc. Some of the children are orphans, some of them have parents that are unable to take care of them, perhaps because they are back in Tibet, and only smuggled their children out over the mountain passes into India so that they could have a better life. A child might not speak to or see his or her parents for 17, 18 years. Any communication, letters or phone calls, must be handled very carefully because it will be censored by the Chinese government.

The Dalai Lama is of course connected to the Children’s Village, and many students were busy practicing cultural performances in anticipation of his birthday celebration on July 6^th. Until the age of six, students learn in Tibetan; after that classes are in English, and they also learn Hindi as a third language. One of the goals of the Tibetan Children’s Village is the preservation and fostering of Tibetan culture, so that these children value their identity as Tibetans, and hold on to the dream for the future of someday returning to their homeland.

Pema, the woman who showed us around, had also attended school here; she was born in India but her parents came over from Tibet. She has now worked at the school for 17 years, and she told us that about 70% of the staff were former students.

Both Lorena and I were so grateful for this experience, and for getting a brief glimpse into the life of this school and home for so many children who, as Pema told us, support each other among all different age groups, away from parents, but still around caring adults in their very changed lives. So at the end of the day, this truly was the “cherry on top of the cake” – one that made this up-and-down travel day much sweeter.

Math teachers take note!

This is a little out of order because of the lack of wireless, but I decided to include it anyway. Unfortunately there are no pictures though – or maybe fortunately? In retospect, this ride was nothing compared to the Leh to Manali drive – and I was too busy on that drive contemplating my imminent death to actually take any pictures. But more to come in the future!

***

I have officially entered “territory you’re not really supposed to go to” – Kashmir. So far, so good, although there’s rumors of a strike tomorrow, and I think my stomach has finally decided to assert itself – I don’t think it’s had such a good time since Bali.

It started with a 4-hour bus ride from Amritsar to Jammu. As soon as I got off the bus I knew I was in trouble – it was HOT, dusty, dirty, and crowded with auto-rickshaws, four-wheel-drive jeeps, and many men trying to get me into one of these vehicles. I tried my usual “I know where I’m going so please leave me alone” escape walk, but quickly found that the auto-rickshaws were packed so tightly I could barely get through them, and there was a substantial divider between where I was and the side of the road I wanted to be on. Okay, fine…take me to the hotel.

Quickly deciding that one night in Jammu was more than enough, I made arrangements with the travel agency near my hotel to share a jeep to Srinagar.

So, 6 am, jeep is full with seven people plus me plus the driver. In the front with the driver was a couple with a little girl of about 5 or 6, in the middle seat were three women and a little boy of about 3 or 4, and in the back seats that face each other were me, another guy, and a teenage boy. We started off, and pretty soon we started to climb this beautiful twisty mountain road – and pretty soon the girl in front of me started to get sick.

Yes, that’s right, she totally started puking out the window. The road was really curvy, and we were going fast and swooping (quite skillfully, I have to say) around endless Tata trucks, and she was off. Then, you guessed it, the little girl in front starts puking. Then – of course – the little boy starts making some noise – and being younger, perhaps, doesn’t quite make it out the window…and his mother quickly (but more accurately) follows suit.

So there we were, one big happy puking party. It was bad. I tried to distract myself with what I could see of outside, which consisted of:

• Monkeys
• Cows
• Goats
• Sheep
• Horses
• Chickens (both “in the wild” and crammed in a truck, vegetarian-inspiration style)
• People trying to hitch rides, one of whom joined our backseat crew
• Tata trucks colorfully decorated, some with creative slogans on their bumpers such as “The Gambler” - which seemed like a reasonable attitude to take in the blind curve melee we were constantly negotiating
• Soldiers. Lots and lots of soldiers. Perhaps indicative of this being a somewhat “troubled area.” Many bases lined the road, and we passed one tank on a flatbed. The best part was when I thought “what’s that guy doing with a metal detector?” and then I realized, “oooohhh, that’s probably a minesweeper…doh”

But eventually the road smoothed out, the horrible road sickness eased off, and nine hours later I made it to Srinagar. Srinagar is lovely and cool, surrounded by pine-covered mountains. However, there was a protest problem which stirred things up a bit…

Yay, I finally have wireless!  Here’s a post I wrote about visiting Amritsar, my second destination after Delhi.

Late afternoon on my second day in Amritsar, dodging persistant postcard-sellers and taxi drivers trying to take me to the Border Closing Ceremony, I made my way to the entrance of the Golden Temple Complex. Once inside the gate, I found everything a little confusing – there were shops, an ATM, people walking around with shoes, people walking around without shoes, a small bag check area, and a big shoe check area. I decided to head immediately left and get rid of my shoes, since I knew for sure I couldn’t enter the temple area with them on. This involved walking downstairs to a below-ground section where I handed my sandals off to a cheery woman who whisked them away and gave me a silver disk with indecipherable lettering (numbering?) in return.

Once I got out of the shoe basement, I could see what looked like another entrance off to the right. Now here was my other dilemma: when to cover my head.

I had brought a scarf because the handy LP says everyone has to cover their head. But I was having self-conscious anxiety about putting on my scarf too soon – I didn’t want to look like a Westerner who was trying overly hard to fit in. Now I realize this is absolutely ridiculous, but that’s part of the ongoing struggle that I have sometimes when traveling, over just plunging in versus doing the wrong thing (read: looking like an idiot). The great flipside about traveling is that it also allows me to face this silly self-judgmentalism and challenge it.

So nearing the entrance, I noticed that there were several shallow pools that people were walking through, and I vaguely remembered reading something about having to wash your feet. As I prepared to walk through, scarf still self-consciously in hand, a little girl tugged at my arm and said to me, “Excuse me madame, you need to cover your head.” I looked up to see her mother standing a little ways away, smiling kindly at me, and I finally relaxed. Time to put on the scarf, walk through the water, and not obsess over not knowing what I was doing – the Sikhs could handle it.

A quick bag check, and I was in. The thing that hit me first was the chanting. Musical, rhythmic, continual chanting in men’s voices, broadcast over the water and contained by the walls of the temple complex. It was the perfect Indian soundtrack, and I felt like the only thing to do was start walking slowly around the marble edge of the pool.

I had also read about the free communal dining hall – according to LP, 60,000 to 80,000 pilgrims are served a free vegetarian meal here every day. As I rounded the first corner of the pool, an older gentleman in a vibrant blue turban gestured up towards what must have been the dining hall, and said, “Come, come, you should eat.” Now here is where I should say that I followed him and had a dining experience like none other in my life, but I have to admit that I only smiled and called out “Thank you” to him as he charged ahead towards the dining room. Honestly, I knew I wasn’t hungry, and I was too entranced by my walk around the pool to want to change the tempo. All the more reason to come back to Amritsar in the future.

After I had made almost a complete circle, I came to the bridge that leads to the Hari Mandir Sahib, the actual Golden Temple that stands in the middle of the pool. People were lining up to cross the bridge, and I joined the queue. Still had no idea what I was doing or what was over there, but I was feeling emboldened by my successful scarf venture.

Women to the left, men to the right, we shuffled down the bridge until we reached the temple. People were clutching banana leaf bowls, which turned out to be for some kind of brown paste-like food that several people were dishing out right at the entrance. As I stepped over the threshold of the temple, I discovered the source of the soundtrack: a small group of men were sitting in the center, playing tablas and chanting while surrounded by people sitting on the floor. I felt like I had just come up to the edge of everything that was drawing all these people into this sacred space.

Moving with the flow around the men in the center to the back of the temple, I found myself in a line to drink the water from the pool. Quickly sidestepping this ritual, I headed back to continue my circumnavigation of the marble walkway. After making several circuits, I retrieved my shoes, uncovered my head, and rejoined the heat, dust, and busy commerce of Amritsar. Only now I had a little less fear about wearing my scarf if needed or even if I just felt like it, and a soundtrack that persisted even through the endless honking and shouting that quickly filled the streets.

Quick update – Saturday afternoon I finished my trek.  Woo hoo!  After climbing to a height of almost 17,000 feet, I came back to Leh, took one of the best (and most needed) hot showers of my life, relaxed for a little bit, then at midnight headed out for Manali in a shared 4-w drive jeep.  Eighteen hours later, we arrived.

Manali is a true hippie-traveler town, and I have two days here before leaving on a night bus for Dharamsala (McLeod Ganj) on Tuesday.  I have seen some wifi signs already, so it looks like I’ll be able to put some pictures up soon.  Right now, I’m still a little exhausted from both my hiking and driving treks, so I’m going to find more coffee and then explore the town.  I think there are as many Israelis here as Indians – I’ve already been spoken to in Hebrew and told that I look Jewish!  Now if I only had dreadlocks, tattoos, and a few more piercings, I could really fit in…

So I’m in Leh, and internet access here is unpredictable.  Last two days the whole town was down, but luckily it’s back up today.  I have found one place that has wireless, but unfortunately it’s not working, so no pictures yet!  Also, I am about to go trekking – 6 days, 5 nights – so I definitely won’t be online for that time.  When I get back to Leh I hope the internet will be working so I can post a quick update before I head to more technologically hooked up areas.

If I were personally more technologically hooked up, I could probably figure out how to time release new posts – but I feel like I’m barely capable of just putting up new posts with pictures in them.  I’m like a technological toddler – if it were possible I would be putting html in my mouth like any good two-year-old trying to figure out her new world.  I do realize that there’s a lot of resources online about how to do this though, so I plan on availing myself of those sometime soon.

I’m quite excited about this trek – I arranged it with the Ladakhi Women’s Travel Company,  the first female travel company in Ladakh.  They only have women guides, although both men and women are free to take treks.  I’ll be staying at homestays in villages for four of the nights, and in a tent for one night.

I’m sure I’ll have some fun stories and pictures for when I get back – I’m looking forward to sharing them with you all!

Thanks as always for reading.  And Dad, Happy Father’s Day!!  Love you and miss you.  I sent you a card from Srinagar – hopefully it will make it through the Indian postal bureaucracy sometime this year.

I just wanted to say a huge thank you to Sarah and Heather and Matador Travel Magazine for publishing my article on the international teaching job fair experience:

http://matadorabroad.com/three-job-fairs-three-jobs-an-international-teacher-hiring-saga/

This was my first published article ever!  Thanks also to Pete and Dawn, who fielded my emails and quick office and classroom pop-ins as the process unfolded.

The India journey continues, as I managed to reach Leh, in the Himalayas, at 1 AM after a jarring 17-hour jeep ride.  There are rumors of wireless availability, so I hope to post some pictures soon.  Thanks for reading!

Well, I’ve been a little out of commission for awhile, but stores seem to be open again, and I’m hunkering down in an internet cafe.  Yes, that’s right, I’m in Srinagar, Kashmir:

http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/2010/Jun/14/srinagar-on-boil-61.asp

Quick summary – several days ago people were protesting.  The papers say it was about “freedom,” presumably Kashmiri independence.  My hotel manager, who has been very helpful, talked to me for awhile about it and got me a copy of the Greater Kashmir paper to read.  He said it was about some electricity problems; people were unhappy about the state of electricity wires in Srinagar, so they were protesting to get the government to do something about it.

During the protest, some police threw tear gas, and a seventeen-year-old boy who was walking to school was hit in the head and killed.  So people have been striking, and today was the funeral, so that’s why things were still bad today.

I’m writing posts on my netbook, but I don’t have any access to wireless; it may be a little while till I can really use my own computer again.  The day after tomorrow I’m heading over to Leh.

Hey, a soldier just walked in – but it looked like he was just trying to get change.  Other than seeing lots and lots of soldiers with big guns on the street, and some armed battle cars, I haven’t seen much of anything out of the ordinary.  I’ve gotten many warnings today not to head into the Old City, and to stay close to home (hotel), and to make sure I get back early, all of which I heeded.  I made one (slightly foolhardy) attempt this morning to go to a cafe that is reputed to have wireless, but since everything was closed it ended up being  just a cruise around in an auto-rickshaw.  Things also seemed a lot more tense this morning – don’t know how much of that was my own perception, but there were several groups of young men milling about among the soldiers and the closed shops, and I decided it would be wiser to give up on finding anything open and just walk around Lake Dal.

I just finished reading On the Grand Trunk Road: A Journey Into South Asia by Steve Coll, so I’m all about vicariously experiencing the foreign correspondent in the danger zone life.  But don’t worry, Mom, I’m not doing anything that foolish, and really unless I got right up in the middle of the stone-throwing (which Steve Coll basically did!) there’s not a whole lot to see.

Another couple of soldiers have come in since I’ve been writing this, but they just seem to be trying to make phone calls.  I guess it’s just another day in Kashmir…