What just happened?

Learned Truth: Time flies.

Its over. I’m in Taiwan waiting for my final flight back to San Francisco. This has been a REALLY long day for me. I woke at 2:30 Saturday morning for a drive to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. I went with two girls who were also ending their program. They were in Palumpur so I didn’t know them before. So we drove four hours to Agra and arrived at the Taj Mahal quite early which was good, there were few people and the heat wasn’t too overbearing. We drove back to Dehli arriving at a little past noon and then just waited around until 7:30 at night when we would be taken to the airport.

Let me back up a bit. My last full day in Dharamsala was Wednesday. It was a hard day for me. I remembered being there in my third week with someone who had been there for eight weeks and it was her last day. I now know what she was going through. Walking around the place, realizing that it was your last time for a least a while is hard. I grew quite attached. I realized how peaceful the place really was and then realized that I would not experience that kind of feeling anywhere else.

The last day with the Tibetans at the Hope Center was hard. There were so many people I wanted to talk to that I never got to and so many questions for the people I did talk to. I got email addresses for most of them. Yes, monks have email.

I met some friends at Carpe Diem for one final night there and thankfully more local friends just happened to pop in so I got to say my good bye’s to them. Again, there is no place like Carpe Diem. It really can’t exist outside of Dharamsala. Yet another place I will never forget.

At the end of the night while walking to the taxi stand I got really depressed. Blah... Later that night, back at the flat I hung out with a bunch of people I call my friends. Most of these people I’ve known only two weeks and three I’ve known for five. I knew I would miss them and miss the times we sat on the balcony overlooking the valley while talking about various random stuff and listening to music. Sitting in a moment and realizing its the last time you’ll experience it makes it hard to enjoy it.

I’ve made lots of new friends and I’ll keep in touch with them and they all have a place to hang out when they come to San Francisco. I’m sure I’ll see most if not all of them again at some point but probably never again in the same groups. Being there for so long I had a lot of friend groupings with some members overlapping. Of course the dynamics of each group were different and that made it awesome. I think that experience kinda helped me come out of my shell a bit.

On Thursday morning I went to my daycare for the last time. I got to see all the kids for one last time except for Sajaya. She’s been gone for the past two weeks somewhere else for a wedding. I wish I knew when her last day was. Anyway, it was a tough day. The teacher explained to the children that I was leaving for good and told me something to say to each one of them in Hindi. I have no idea what it was but it got the point across. The kids made a extra effort to say goodbye and do whatever it was with me that they enjoyed most.

After returning from the daycare I ate lunch then headed to the airport. I took some final pictures, some of one of the dogs. This is a puppy that we adopted named Biscuit. Care for Biscuit will be passed down to other volunteers and a staff member will probably take him on full time. This has happened in the past with our other dog, Jackie. I think I have pictures of Jackie somewhere.

I’m leaving on an off week so there aren’t many other volunteers phasing out and no new ones phasing in. I left with only one other volunteer, Renu. We went back to Delhi to wait around for our return flights. Renu has family in Delhi so we went to their house for dinner and went out with her cousin and his friends. The two volunteers from Palampur, joined us.

Being back in a city was a jarring experience for me and the other volunteers. We were all wearing relatively dirty clothes and still in the small mountain town mindset. I felt like a farmer in the big bad city. It was an odd feeling. It was a good shock buffer in between Dharamsala and San Francisco. I think, had I gone directly back to San Francisco, the shock would have been much greater.

So anyway, back to the present. Yeah its been a long day. I woke at 2:30 AM yesterday and had only a few short naps on the planes and in the VIP lounge. Luckily I was bumped to First Class on my last flight. It had a lay flat bed which was awsome. Too bad it was only a three hour flight. I doubt my seat to San Francisco is a First Class seat so Business class will have to do. Yeah woe is me. So right now its 9:48 PM in Taiwan making it 7:18 PM in India so that makes it thirty some hours since I’ve really slept and I have another thirteen to go. I need to try to stay awake so I can sleep on local time at home.

I’m going to wrap this up later with final impressions of India once I get home and experience the culture shock and hopefully by then my many thoughts about the place will coalesce into something I can get across in words. I know I’m definitely going back as soon as I can.

Click here for this week’s pictures

I'm on my way-ay. Home Sweet Home.

I'm coming home on time. There's mixed results with the child abuse case.

The doctor examined Nishan and said that the burn pattern is consistent with someone grabbing a pot of hot liquid from over their head and having it spill on them. The center of the burn is a deep second degree burn and that's where most of the liquid hit. The burns surrounding the center are from splashing. The reason it looks so bad, and the center looks fresh is because the parents aren't caring for it properly. They didn't take Nishan to a doctor and when the doctor came to the daycare no one said anything about it.

Now, the doctor did confirm what those who have witnessed Nishan have suspected and that is that there is some level of abuse in the house based on his aggression and general behavior patterns. Its possible that the parents are rubbing the burn as a way to punish him. But there's a bright side to this...

So my poking around did raise some people's interest. There were a few more calls made from the Children's Welfare Office and a police investigation was started. Also within Nishan's village there have been rumblings about it probably started by the taxi driver who took me to the Children's Welfare Office. So there is help for Nishan now. Its become a high profile deal. The DC is overseeing it. Hopefully Nishan will be OK...

So I'm in Delhi right now which is basically the way station before I come home. My flight is on Saturday night and after a 36 hour journey with an eight hour layover in Bangkok and a seven hour layover in Taipei I will be in San Francisco Sunday night. The first thing I will do when I get home is take a shower. I'll swing by the office on Monday bringing stuff for everyone. I will see everyone else some time soon I hope.

I'm half sad I'm leaving and half excited to come home and restart my life. This trip has been successful. I'm recharged and ready to rock and roll. I kind of feel the way I did when Brian and I started Rockstar Studios in 1995.

See everyone soon.

Oh I'll probably do a post with final pictures and thoughts from one of my layovers so this isn't the last entry.

I might have to stay.

I may extend my stay a week. I'm pursuing a child abuse case here and so far those involved have hit a brick wall. I've made some good progress and I may have to stick around to see things to the next step. I managed to get an agreement with the woman responsible for the health and well being of the children in this region. She cannot believe that parents could purposely burn their child. Even after I've given her all the evidence she still refuses to accept that a parent can hurt their child. (This kind of bullshit it common here). The burns on this kid are horrible and many. His mother says its one burn that happened by accident. So the blind woman agreed that if I could get a doctor to examine the child and tell her that there are multiple burns inflicted over time she will file a case with the authorities. She's the only person who can do this. So there's a doctor here volunteering and he's going to look at the child on Monday. If he tells me that he's sure he's been burned multiple times I will need to find a local pediatrician who will talk to the doctor here and examine the child himself and talk to the blind woman. Then I will extend for one week to do that. Otherwise I'll come home.


Here's the boy for whom I'm playing guardian angel. His name is Nishan

I forgot something

Someone from here read my blog and asked why there was a huge glaring omission in it. I said that event occurred during the post where I was complaining about the infrastructure and lack of coffee. So... just to make her happy I will let everyone know the big news.


I joined the monastery.



No, just kidding. I saw the Dali Lama two weeks ago. He was giving a teaching. He talked about causality then took questions from those in attendance. So there. The glaring omission is no longer omitted and it cost me forty rupees at this internet cafe to to rectify that.

Snakebite!

I was bitten by a snake on Saturday and lived to tell about it. I actually had no idea I was even bitten. It happened early during a hike in the woods. I remember feeling something in my leg but nothing intense. I shook it off thinking I stepped on a stick or something and kept on. I went about my way though the day hiking though the woods up to a waterfall. Much later in the evening as I was eating Tikka Masala at Carpe Diem I noticed my sock was caked with blood I looked and saw the bite. I had no idea what it was. It didn’t hurt even when I poked it. I thought I must have been bitten by a spider or something (which wouldn’t have been out of the question). I sat around joking about it a bit with some travelers who were with me.

I realized that I probably should get it checked out, paid my bill and called the “the guy” I’m supposed to call in an emergency. He sent a taxi that took a half hour to get there and about a half hour more to get me to the hospital. The monsoon has started and the infrastructure has gone to shit. The roads are falling apart. The first hospital I was taken to had no doctors. The nurse looked at my bite with a dire expression then gave me the Indian head wobble which means like three hundred things that only another Indian can truly understand. I understood it to be “Sorry buddy, you’re fucked.”

Panic was slowly creeping up on me, mostly due to the road conditions adding so much time to the journey then it was exacerbated by the nurse at the first hospital. Next I was taken to the government hospital. I was still calm and feeling no pain though I was thinking that it must be some slow acting poison that would kick in any moment. The government hospital was something out of a horror movie. It was dark and wet and smelled nothing like a hospital should. I was taken to a room with a doctor, an assistant and some other random people who’s function was unclear. The doctor shined a flashlight on my leg, and everyone came to look. Ahhs and Oohs and Hindi were exchanged by the people in the room. “Snakebite” the doctor tells me. Then he said “if you’re walking and talking you’re OK. If not then it wouldn’t matter”. He didn’t even bother to clean it or anything. His assistant gave me two shots of something and sent me home with some pills.

I guess the snake either gave me a dry bite or didn’t have time to inject the venom. Everyone who’s seen it tells me I’m very lucky. I think I’m Deathproof :) The fang marks are intense. It looks like it should hurt a whole lot but it doesn’t. There’s a very slight itch right now but that’s it. I hope it leaves a wicked scar!

Actually it did keep me up all night thinking about my mortality. Had the snake injected its venom I’d not be here to write this. It happened deep in the woods in the middle of nowhere during a rainstorm. The doctor told me I would have had fifteen minutes to get help at the most. The various motorcycle incidents I’ve been in haven’t come close to this. I still think “holy shit!” when I think about it. Wow...





The next entry was supposed to have been posted Saturday before I left on the hike but as I said the infrastructure is shit now that we’re in monsoon. Right now dry doesn’t exist. There are varying states of wet. I’m going to stop using my MacBook because I’m afraid the air might be too wet for it so, most likely from now until I return, my blog posting and email reading will be erratic.

I’m back on June 29th late. See you guys soon...

There was one?

There’s a line in “Darjeeling Limited” spoken by one of the main characters that I have realized is meant as an inside joke for people who have been to India. “I love the smell of this place!” I’ve heard that India has a particular smell before so when I heard that line it didn’t mean much to me. Now that I’ve been here its a different story.

There are actually four distinct smells of India. Usually they’re mixed in various ratios. The base note is the smell of smoke and its common to most of the mixed aromas here. It smells mostly like a campfire but not exactly. Actually sometimes the fires are from burning garbage and those smell toxic, like burning plastic mixed with rotting meat. Oh also there are no catalytic converters here. Most trucks and busses spew thick black exhaust and the cars aren’t much better.

The next smell is curry. There are of course variations in the curry but by and large all curries have commonality in their smell. Most of Delhi was about 75% smoke and 25% curry. It was quite an interesting smell. Here in Dharamsala the smell is usually much subdued because of the winds coming off the Himalayas but there is a hint of fire mixed with the next ingredient in the Indian aroma, flowers. The flowers change depending on when each variety blooms. When there’s a new bloom the smell in the air is amazing.

The final smell is sewage. Rotten stinking sewage from animals and people. Its all over the place here. There is no source of water in India that is not contaminated by sewage. Even the Indians cant drink the water unless its been filtered. Many do but they also do get sick. There’s a river that runs nearby that is filled with garbage. Mostly everyone in the village dumps their garbage in it. The lower caste locals who can’t afford a bathroom use the river for an outhouse. Needless to say, it smells. This is very common all over India. Every smell has at least of hint of sewage in it. There are intense pockets of sewage smell in many places and they come upon you really quick. For the first week or so I would walk along and begin to smell flowers or curry and take a deep breath only to stumble upon a pocket of sewage. I’ve learned to stop walking when I want to smell the flowers and to take shallow breaths when I am walking. There are places where a constant smell of sewage lingers, some actually are very near food stands. I really don’t know how the people can buy food with that smell.


Anyway...

I’m alone. Jodi, Pam and Chelsea left. They were the last people from my original group. Pam left early mostly because she had some problems with the director and didn’t want to be around any more. Most of this is related to an abused child who was in a daycare where one of the volunteers from our group, Deb worked. The boy, who’s around three, has bad burns all over his arms. To punish him his father pours scalding water on his arms. He wears long sleeve shirts to cover it up. Deb tried to do something about it but ran into brick walls and wasn’t here long enough. She talked to the director about it and he said he would do something. She then asked Pam to follow up. When Pam did she found that nothing had been done. The director told her to forget it, its not her place to intervene and its a different culture here and she needs to accept that. Well she didn’t, had it out with the director then went ahead and pursued it. She went to the police station where no one wanted to talk to her except for a civilian who happened to overhear. He suggested the Red Cross. A doctor at the Red Cross said he would help if Pam brought the family to him. Yeah, like that’s going to happen. So yeah, more brick walls. So afterwards the relationship between Pam and the director became untenable and she left. I’m now taking up the cause. There’s a children’s welfare center nearby that we learned about and I’m going there early next week.

Pam was supposed to stay with me throughout the entire time. She’s going to be replaced by a new volunteer coming in on Monday. He is a fifty eight year old retired police officer. That’s going to be interesting. My wisdom to him will be “Maintain control while letting chaos flourish” We’ll see if he understands...

So yeah, I’m alone. There are other volunteers here, two of which I hung around with a lot over the last three weeks, Renu and Alexandria and one who I’m now starting to get to know, Rachel. I think I’m going to spend more time in introversion over my last two weeks here. The past six have been mostly hanging around with people or teaching. There was only one day when I was by myself. There’s only two weeks left and a lot of stuff to sort out in my head. So right after I post this I’m going to a place called Forsythe Ganj and then to Bhagsu. They’re both good places to sit and think while being in the woods with other peaceful people also looking for something in themselves.


I posted some pictures from last week. The first three are of a cluster fuck that came about because the driver of the white bus was older than the driver of the public bus and so the white bus didn’t wait for the public bus to get though a narrow passage making it go around. It ended up almost tipping over into the other bus. This is a common thing they tell me. I think its bullshit. Whatever. Then there’s some cows hanging out outside the Hope Center (where I teach English to Tibetans). Then there’s pictures of my last trip. We went to Manali. Its basically a resort town like Aspen. They have skiing into July because its high up in the mountains a few hundred feet from the permanent snow line. There’s also white water rafting. We did that. There’s one picture of a poker hand that pissed me off. Guess which one was mine... Finally there’s pictures of a service at the Buddhist temple.

Click here for this week’s pictures

What Week is This?

Learned Truth: Beef is tasty. Coffee is good. Showers are awesome. Clean clothes rock. Highways are wonderful. My bed is on the other side of the world. My friends and family are too...


So far this blog has been about experiences and not feelings. That can be explained.

The first three weeks were loaded with experiences as I got my footing here in India and started to get comfortable and functional in my host country. There was little time for introspection and I pushed aside most of the feelings that did come up so they wouldn’t interfere with the experience.

The second three weeks were/are routine with only a few new experiences. There were a bunch of new people that helped continue with a sense of newness but routine was mostly the order of the day. Not much new is happening right now.

I have been exploring more of the spiritual side of India, mostly in the Buddhist temple and in my talks with the monks. In my talks with the monks and Tibetan laymen I am also educated about the situation in Tibet. I haven’t written about that here and I probably won’t. That’s not what this is about. I will however talk about it when I get home. I made a promise that I would tell people the real story.

So anyway, besides good coffee etc. (See learned truth) this past week I’ve begun to miss odd things from home. For example one day I was sitting in the daycare and had a massive urge for Taco Bell. It stuck with me though they day. The next day I had a craving for Dunkin Doughnuts iced coffee. For those of you who are born and raised in California, its a chain of doughnut shops in the East coast, kinda like Krispy Kream. (“Time to make the doughnuts”). Just today on my way home I really wanted to watch a US Football game. So yeah I’m homesick.
I don’t dislike India at all but some of it is wearing on me. There is no word in the Hindi language for “Privacy”. Seriously. It can’t be directly translated and when its indirectly translated most Indians would wonder why someone would want such a thing. Its completely foreign to them. There could be a wide open space with plenty of room and if a person sits down among all this wide open space its a given that the next person to come upon this space will choose to sit right next to the first person and immediately ask questions like, “What’s your name?” “What do you do for a living?” “How much money do you make?” “Are you married?” “Why not?”. Actually that’s not so bad. When I want to be alone my psycho stare works here just as well as it does elsewhere but just the general lack of privacy does wear on me.

I think the infrastructure or lack there of is what gets to me the most. Not so much because it inconveniences me because it doesn’t. If I were here on business I’d go mad but I’m not so the lack of good phones, internet, transportation etc. isn’t really affecting my daily life though at a few isolated times it has. The real reason why is gets to me is the reason for the shitty infrastructure. The people who build it.

I’m not sure but I don’t think there’s a word in Hindi for “Quality” either. Just barely good enough for now is the best one can hope for in quality here. Built to last is as foreign as toilet paper to Indians. Oh yeah, toilet paper is a commodity here but only among Western tourists. Westerners learn soon to carry their own and every one here past their second day does. But that’s a tangent so back to the infrastructure...

The people who do the building in India are mostly from the Dalit or Shudra castes. There’s a blurry line between Shudra and Dalit but the Shudras are the laborers and the Dalits are the untouchables (they do the labor even the Dalits wont do. Together they comprise most of India’s poor which is about fifty percent of the country. They are uneducated, illiterate, unskilled and they build the roads and the houses and what comes out of the factories. Yes they are unskilled and build stuff.

On my way to the daycare and to the Hope Center (where I teach English to the monks) I pass road construction sites. One is on the side of a steep hill and right now the retaining walls are being built. The other is on the edge of what can loosely be called a road and its an open-air aqueduct (basically a sewer, more on that later) I’ve been paying close attention to the progress of both. The rebar is sloppily tied off and not welded. The concrete is mixed onsite in small mixers by, you guess it, an unskilled laborer. One can plainly see the quality of the concrete differs from batch to batch in the color and density of the dried concrete. Parts of the retaining wall that were poured a week ago are already crumbling. Same thing for the aqueduct. There’s a few places in the aqueduct where they encountered an obstacle and just stopped there and continued past the obstacle. And no, they probably aren’t going back to deal with it later. There’s plenty of examples of work done years ago where one can see the builders just stopped when it got hard and started again where they could making the whole project pointless. I could go on but I’d rather not. Its depressing.

These people don’t wear any sort of safety gear. Most are in bare feet or sandals. They wear the same thing everyone in India wears. A thin cotton or wool collared shirt and pants. The woman wear their saris (Indian dress). The woman bring their children to the job site. Babies are carried in cloth cradles in front of their mothers who carry large stones or bricks on their heads or load stones into the concrete mixer. One day I saw a baby’s head no less than six inches from the moving cement mixer as rocks were being thrown in over its head. The older kids play right at the job site. Not off to the side, they are playing a few feet from where their parents are breaking rocks, pouring concrete, mixing concrete or whatever. Oh and they don’t close or cordon off roads where there is construction going on so cars and other vehicles are whizzing on by. This leads me to the next thing about India that is wearing on me.

The strongly held belief in karma in reincarnation leads to a lower valuation of human life than in the West. If something bad happens to someone its always their fault because their karma dictated it. Everyone is responsible for their own karma and good deeds build good karma and bad deeds build bad karma. If a bus went over the edge of a road and killed twenty people those people had bad karma and deserved it. Yes, there’s grieving etc. but that’s just superficial. This is why there are kids playing at the job sites. They were born into the low castes because they led a bad life the last time around. They don’t need to go to school or even be in a safe environment. Their karma dictated their fate and no one is going to change it.

I’m going to post this now and continue in a day or two. Much more to come...

Week 4

Learned Truth: Om Ma Ni Peme Hum


Last weekend there were only four volunteers here. On Saturday Jodi, Pam and Chelsea went on a picnic with the students from Jodi’s English class. They invited me but I wanted an introspective day at the Buddhist temple. I spent most of Saturday there just mulling about and doing various things. Later on I ate at a backpacker restaurant that had a killer view of the setting sun. I sat there and watched much of the sunset while I ate and drank tea. As I was heading back I ran into a friend, Claire, who’s here from Ireland for a few weeks. She told me about a DJ party in town and invited me and the girls. (yes it was a rave or as ravey as you can get in a mountain town).

I went back to the house to see if Jodi, Pam and Chelsea had returned but they weren’t there. I chilled at the flat for a bit seeing if they would return then figured they must be at Carpe Diem (a chill hang-out in the Tibetan area). I went back up there but didn’t see them at Carpe Diem. I did see some other friends, some who were volunteers from two groups ago that were here in their last week or two of volunteering. I sat down and hung with them for a bit the bit turned into a while then the while turned into the night. Carpe Diem has a way of keeping you there. Its a really cool place that could only exist here. So I missed the party but I had a great time anyway.


This week a bunch of new volunteers came in. We were a little apprehensive about them but did all we could to welcome them. Everyone in the previous group got along really well instantly and according to the staff that’s really rare. It turned out that everyone in the new group is really nice. Its a different dynamic than our group and I don’t think they are as tight as we were. There seem to be three cliques but everyone gets along. Three of the new group, Joe, Taylor and Renu have meshed with me, Jodi, Pam and Chelsea.

Things in my daycare are getting a little interesting. Pam is about to have it out with the teacher though an interpreter. The teacher is mostly disinterested but when she gets interested she gets in the way. One day this week Pam and I were in the middle of an alphabet lesson. We had just gotten the kids settled and paying attention which is not at all easy. The teacher walked over, sat down and asked us where we are living. Of course her English isn’t very good so it took a while for us to understand that. Then she wanted us to do nursery rhymes which is something we do much later when the kids are wound up and jumping around, not sitting quietly. Well that broke things up the kids lost focus and we had to end the lesson before really even starting it. Other times she’ll sit right behind us while we’re giving a lesson and just talk with the helper or any neighbor who drops by. She’s so loud we can’t hear the kids and they get distracted making lessons pointless. Other times she’ll yell at the kids from across the room while they’re playing with us. We never understand why she yells at them. Doesn’t she understand we’re playing? We have this new girl who constantly sneaks away and goes outside. We wanted to close the door so this wouldn’t happen any more but the teacher would not let us close the door. She also doesn’t do anything when this new girl walks outside. She’s too wrapped up in conversations with a neighbor or doing some sort of paperwork. Anyway, yeah we’ll see what comes out of Pam’s talk with her. From what I understand of Indian culture probably nothing will. Pam is too young to be having that discussion with the teacher no matter how right she is.

This past Saturday, Pam Chelsea and I hiked up to Triund and camped overnight. I went up there before with Deb but that was a day hike. Triund is a base camp for long term trekking though the Himalayas. From there we could see the second range of the Himalayas which are all above the snow line. We were a few feet from the snow line. The tree line also isn’t that far. There was mostly rock and grass and only few trees by the time we reached the top. After setting up our tent we went to one of the shacks set up there that serve food. We found the one that also had beer and spent the evening there. We were joined by a group of Swiss backpackers, a couple from Calcutta and a French woman. The owners of the shack sat with us and we drank and sang all night. Pam plays guitar and sings fairly well so she did so a few times. One of the Swiss guys plays guitar so the two of them switched off. I played a bongo drum until my hands hurt. People say the night sky is amazing up there. It was very cool but I’ve seen better from Death Valley.

The return trek took everything out of me. When I got back I collapsed. I barely made it to dinner and hour later. After dinner I passed out. I don’t know why I was so exhausted. I’ve been a little sick the past few days and maybe that’s contributed to it.

Right now, Monday morning I have the day off because its raining. The roof at the daycare barely keeps out sunlight so it does nothing for rain. Its raining now off and on. I have nothing to do until 3:30 when I have an appointment to teach some Tibetians computer skills before I continue practicing conversational English with monks at 4:30.

Click here for this week’s pictures

Since I have some time I’ll explain a little about the pictures this week.

The first three are from Carpe Diem where we took Angela and Deb for their last night.

The next fourteen are the goodbyes when everyone left.

The next six are taken from the patio of our house the day after a big rainstorm that cleared the air of smoke. Indians light a lot of fires for anything from cooking to burning trash so the air is often filled with smoke.

The next few are from the day care. In order the pictures are of.


Kajul (the new girl who likes to run out)

Akosh

Sajaya

Two of Ayush

Sajin

The helper (I don’t know her name, everyone calls her Didi but that means Aunt in Hindi)

The kids lined up for lunch. The woman at the end is Akosh’s mother.

Sajaya and her mom.


After that are seven pictures of Hope Center where we go to teach conversational English. The westerners in the pictures are volunteers from our group. The girl with Jodi is Lynn from Vietnam. She went to dinner with us after the lesson that day.
After there are eighteen pictures of bubbles day. The kids LOVE bubbles.

The next thirteen were taken outside of Jodi’s school while we were waiting for her class to end. The trucks are examples of the kinds of trucks driven all though India. Notice the coloring and decoration. There’s no such thing as a plain truck here.

The last group of pictures are from Triund.



That’s it. See ya next Sunday. Maybe earlier or later if I go on a weekend trip to Manali which is something we’re talking about.

Week 3

Learned Truth: There is no good or evil, only self-interest and circumstance.



Last weekend’s trip to Amritsar was weird. I would call it an experience more so than I would call it a trip. Angela, the girl who’s father is from Amritsar and the reason we were going on the trip got very sick a few days before and ended up in the hospital. She didn’t make the trip. This was the beginning of the experience.

The ride was mostly at night though various Indian towns and villages. There really aren’t any highways here, or at least highways as we would think of them. The highways here are simply wider roads that are mostly straight. They are not necessarily paved and are rarely lit. Generally traffic is supposed to stay to the left side but that’s just a guideline. Drivers take up whatever space is free and its not uncommon to see a row of cars from one side of the road to the other heading straight into oncoming traffic. It eventually works out and there’s no head on collisions but its scary as hell at times. We often gasped and braced ourselves as we came within a few feet of what was moments earlier an oncoming truck or bus. This is driving in India. The drive took six hours and after it we all needed a drink

Our hotel was a rock bottom budget hotel. It makes Hotel 6 look like the Ritz Carlton during a presidential visit. Seriously. The rooms came with a mattress, a dirty sheet to cover the mattress and a pillow. Nothing else. Our rooms were the deluxe rooms meaning they had a bathroom. We had to buy toilet paper. The walls probably hadn’t been painted in decades. All this decadence costs $2 (US) per night. College girls are on a budget after all.

Nicole and Jodi got sick the first night and were mostly confined to the hotel for the first day. The rest of us ventured out for breakfast and site seeing. Amritsar is an extremely dirty place its very hot. This makes for walking around a generally unpleasant experience.

In the afternoon, a few hours before sunset, we all drove to the India-Pakistan border to see the border closing ceremony. Nicole and Jodi were feeling better and joined us. This thing is like a football game.There’s stands on both sides of the border though the Indian side is much larger. Military on both sides wear full military dress including some kind of fan on their head. When they walk out the crowd cheers as though a sports team just hit the field. There’s people waving flags on both sides and each side is chanting either “Industan (India) is great” or “Pakistan is great”. The Pakistan side is much more subdued than the Indian side though. The men and woman sit in different sides and the women remain quiet. Only the men are allowed to cheer. On the Indian side everyone is dancing and cheering and its basically a wild party.

Eventually the actual ceremony began where both sides march around in an extremely exaggerated fashion mostly in circles. Eventually the guards make it to the border line and then each side stares at each other with their hardest stares sometimes circling each other. The flags are lowered together with one side not wanting to have their flag lower than the other’s which makes this tedious with lots of false starts and inching down of the flags. Once the flags were gone it was all over and everyone wanted to run to the border line for some reason. It was getting really crazy and us Westerners wanted out so we got out. I don’t really know what happens after that, probably more taunting from both sides.

Our next stop was The Golden Temple. This is a Sikh temple but its open to everyone. The city of Amritsar was built around the temple. The temple is protected by a castle that surrounds a lake of holy water and in the middle sits the temple on an island. The temple is covered both inside and out in gold. Thousands of people go there every day on a pilgrimage to enter the temple for a brief moment and the bathe in the holy water. Andrea, Deb and I went into the temple to leave some money one of the Sikh staff members asked us to take for him. We were the only Westerners in line to enter the temple. Everyone was staring at us. Not in a bad way, all are welcome, but its not very common for Westerners to do that. Actually we get stares everywhere we go but to be surrounded by people looking at us was odd. We skipped the holy water bath...

That night Andrea got sick, she was the last one of us to get sick. It really wasn’t a good time or place to be sick. She was taken to a “hospital” which is really just a doctor in a storefront with a bed and some medical equipment. He didn’t do much and at first refused to give her anything including water. She was told to walk to the store down the street if she wanted water. He had to be practically begged to give her antibiotics. Many Indian doctors believe in karma and feel that if someone gets sick its because they did something wrong and deserve to suffer. I don’t get the point of being a doctor if one feels that way but there’s a lot I don’t get about this place.

The next day we were leaving. Andrea wasn’t ready to travel yet so we waited around for a while. Our driver got pissy because he wanted to leave much earlier. He got even more pissy when we wanted to go to lunch. He was going to drop us off and expected us to walk back to the hotel. Eventually we worked things out where he would return to pick us up. Eventually we got on the road to return to Dharmsala. The driver really wanted to get back and drove like a maniac. Andrea was in the front seat throwing up into a bag but that didn’t concern the driver at all. I guess he’s a believer in karma as well. What took six hours of normal driving (for India) too four and a half (of suicidal driving) to return. Multiple times we actually went off the road to avoid getting hit by an oncoming vehicle or to pass a slower one. There was also lots of slamming on the breaks. None of this helped Andrea.


Tuesday I hiked up a mountain with Deb to a placed called Triund. The clouds were low that day and we made the cloud line very early. Most of the hike was though thick mist. When we reached the top there was a short break in the low clouds and the view looked like that from an airplane window. We were about fifty feet from the snow line and it was quite cold. On the hike down we ended up caught in a herd of mountain goats coming down the mountain. The fog was so think they didn’t see us until they were right on top of us and which point they would freeze and eventually walk around us. It was pretty amazing.

Thursday most of the volunteers were phased out leaving me, Jodi, Chelsea and Pam. There will be a bunch more phasing in on Monday.

There’s more pictures of the kids in my daycare this week. I couldn’t resist. The rest are from Amritsar and my hike.

Click here for this week’s pictures. See ya next Sunday.

Week Two (A little early)

Learned Truth: Before any act of creation there must be an act of destruction.


I’m posting early because I’m going with Jodi, Andrea, Pam, Chelsea, Nicole, Debbie and Angela to Amritsar for a three day weekend. Monday is a holiday here. Amritsar is where half of Angela’s family is from and she wanted to go see it. The Golden Temple, India’s second most important monument is also there and its close to the Pakistan border where they hold a border closing ceremony every night that’s supposed to be awesome. We’re leaving Friday afternoon and returning Monday night.


...anyway, on to the past few days

The major Buddhist Temple was actually a major Hindu temple. The trip to the Buddhist temple is in a few days. All the Hindu temples are starting to look alike to me. There’s two reasons this temple was special. First, there’s a story about a prince who ran to the site after his kingdom was conquered. He meditated there under a rock and after a few years was given the sword of Shiva (the destroyer god) and with that sword took back the kingdom. The second story is a bit more historical. A few hundred years ago a baba went to the site and mediated under the same rock. He reached enlightenment. In his enlightenment he built a tomb for himself and when it was almost finished had local villagers complete the tomb with him inside. The tomb still exists and is the basis for the temple.

After the temple we had a picnic in the forest. We played various games in a clearing near a stream. I was still a little sick so I sat out most of the activities and just took pictures. At the end we took a group picture.



From Left to right are: Debbie, Elizabeth, Anna, Reese, Chelsea, Angela, Eric, Pam, Andrea, me, Laura, Jodi and Nicole.


Most of us went into the Tibetan area, McLeod Ganj, after the picnic. After about an two hours of shopping and tea we went down to the monastery. This is where the Dali Lama lives. We split up there. Most of the group did a bit more shopping and then quickly toured the temple. Me, Jodi and Pam went into the monastery compound looking the catch a glimpse of the Dali Lama. We just kept walking deeper and deeper in until someone would tell us to stop or a fence would stop us. No one ever said anything to us and we found an open gate in every fence we encountered. We ended up very deep in the compound.

We came upon a grove filled with Tibetan prayer flags, thousands of them. I was soon surrounded in flags not able to see anything but more flags. The cacophony of them flapping in the wind was all encompassing. I lost Jodi and Pam but kept pushing on. I eventually came across a temple and was out the the grove. I looked back and still couldn’t see anyone. I assumed we’d find each other at some point so I kept going. The temple was surrounded by prayer wheels. I dropped down to the base and walked around the perimeter spinning the wheels with the monks in front and behind me. It was kind of hypnotizing, especially hearing the monks chanting.

Just as I finished I saw Jodi and Pam walking down a different path. We reunited and pushed further into the compound. There was just us and lots of monks, none of which had any concern that we were there. Feeling welcomed or at least ignored we were at ease as we walked among them. Soon we came upon the edge of a cliff. We had gone as far as we could.

We stood at precipice of the top of one of the highest mountains in this particular range of the Himalayas. We could see forever and hear everything. We all felt like we were in a movie. Behind us was a home for Elder monks. A few were puttering around a garden. We said hello and they all smiled at us. Two old dogs slept at the edge of the precipice as Eagles flew overhead. The sky was cloudy and growing more so and the wind was gusting in from the valley. The three of us stood silent for a long moment just taking it all in. We looked straight down and found our house. It was cool to realize the we live at the foot of the Dali Lama’s temple.

From the prayer flags to the precipice I had little real world thoughts including taking pictures so as of now there are none. I am going back and then I will take lots of pictures.


We slowly walked back to the more populated areas of the temple and walked into the temple complex. The walls to the complex are filled will political posters either about the Panchen Lama who was abducted by China when he was six years old, or graphic pictures of dead Tibetan protesters. Across from the entrance is a cage filled with hunger protesters. Its a very real place. We went inside the Lama Temple and looked around. I was to awestruck to take pictures, but I’m going back a few times so there will be some later.

I started my second gig, talking to monks helping them with conversational English. I went on Tuesday and I’m going again on Thursday. I found a coffee shop near the place I go to pick up my monk for conversation. Hallelujah! Its not Starbucks or Peet’s but its decent coffee. The caffeine headaches have been huge.

The rest of the week was same old same old. We’re getting a few more kids, there’s a few pictures in this week’s set. You should be able to tell who’s my favorite. Click here for this week’s pictures. See ya next Sunday.

I'm OK

I guess there's news of some explosions in India and terrorist gun battles in Kashmir. Both are far away from me and there's no concern about such things here. For all intents and purposes this is a podunk town way up in the mountains with a population of less than 20,000. There's no alerts here.

Week One

Learned Truth: Order arising naturally from chaos brings balance. Order unnaturally imposed on chaos brings conflict.


Day 4


There was some issue with flying directly into Dharmsala so we flew into Jammu Kashmir. Yes THE Kashmir. The airport was like a military bunker. There’s a picture of the entrance in this week’s photos. Can you tell which one? We walked past a guy in his car with an AK47 in between his legs. This wasn’t a military person or police or at least they weren’t wearing any uniform. It was pretty intense. The border out of Kashmir was something out of a movie. Tanks, lots of soldiers with machine guns and rows and rows of trucks waiting to be inspected lined the road to the border. The truck drivers wait there for up to four days. Our driver had to park and walk up to some soldiers. I’m not entirely sure but I think he had to bribe the soldiers to let us though. Our guides were definitely keeping us in the dark about what was going on. I wasn’t able to take pictures at the border. Sorry.

Well, after we got out of Jammu Kashmir we were in a much more peaceful state, Punjab and then soon we got into Himachal Pradesh and finally arrived in Dharmsala. Its high up in the mountains and when we weren’t in populated areas it reminded me of the Santa Cruz mountains. Every so often we would pass though a town. They were all basically the same. There would be what amounts to an Indian strip mall with a fruit stand, hardware store, clothing store a cafe and a liquor store all in that order. It was too dark for pictures by this point unfortunately. There were also lots of cows.

There are cows all over the place. I asked the driver if the cows had owners and he said that some may but most are stray cows. I’ve never heard those two words put together. Go ahead say it, stray cows. Doesn’t it sound ridiculous? On the roads cows have the right of way in all situations. A cow can stop an entire highway and all people can do is gently try to convince the cow to move. Yes there are cows on the highway. I took a video of us driving down a stretch of highway and you’ll notice us weaving around a pair of cows. I’ll try to upload it to You Tube if I have the time and bandwidth.

So anyway, we made it to the house in Dharmsala just as a storm was coming though. We’re located on the side of a mountain overlooking Kangra Valley. I stood on the patio of the house with an unhindered view of the valley with the Himalayas rising up behind me. I watched the lightning and waited for the thunder to eventually catch up while scattered warm raindrops fell on me. Yes, it was an awesome welcome.

The next morning we went to orientation and then to our placements. I’m working with Pam at a preschool. Chelsea and Andrea are working in a different preschool. The four of us rode together. We went to their placement first and got an introduction to an Indian preschool. There were eleven kids ranging in age from two to four. We stayed as Chelsea and Andrea were introduced to the teacher and students. Before we left the teacher asked one of the students to count the people in the room. The little girl got up and walked around the room touching everyone’s head as she counted. Another student stood up to do the same. The preschool was mostly what I had expected. Its in a brick building with electricity and running water. There were pictures on the wall of the alphabet, numbers, body parts and animals; all the things we are supposed to be teaching. The teacher maintained discipline and the kids were well behaved. Then Pam and I went to our preschool.

Our preschool is in a shed with a roof that can only barely keep light out. There’s no electricity and no running water. Its not so much a preschool as it is a daycare. It’s run by an older lady, Indu. She’s more of a grandmother than a teacher. The kids mostly run around doing what they want with what little they have. There’s actually little expectation of teaching anything. Oh all the kids are Indian, not Tibetan. I ended up in a placement in a totally different part of Dharmsala. There were three kids. Two girls, Sneha and Sajaya, and a boy Ayush. Sneha was terrified of us. Sajaya and Ayush slowly warmed up to us and began to play. Sometimes the teacher would point out a student and say each letter of the alphabet with the child repeating each in tandem. They can repeat just fine but they can’t recite the alphabet on their own. Its an exercise in futility. There’s really also very little discipline. The kids go off and do their own thing and that’s OK. I was a little worried.




Days 5 to 8


On the second day there were only two kids at the daycare, Ayush and Sajaya. Sajaya was sick. She had a fever and was listless. Pam held her the entire day. When we were leaving she tried to wake Sajaya up but she would not wake. Her eyes were rolled back in her head and she wouldn’t respond to stimuli. That scared the hell out of us but the teacher thought nothing of it. She grabbed Sajaya from Pam’s arms and put her on the floor. Sajaya definitely had a fever and her pulse was racing. When her mom came we tried to bring that to her attention but she gave us a nasty look and stormed out with Sajaya over her shoulder. Pam and I had no idea what to do. No one seemed to care.

I woke at 5:00 the next morning for a hike up to a Hindu temple on a mountain near our flat. There were six of us on the hike. We made it to the temple just as the Baba (priest) was opening. He lives there. He actually cannot leave. He was talking with us about the British, an Indian Nobel Prize winner and about the holiday that was on that day commemorating the third day past the new moon. He also told us about Heaven’s Temple that was at the peak of the mountain. We tried to get to that temple but ran out of time.

Pam and I were still worried about Sajaya. We went to our daycare thinking the worst. We arrived to see her up and about playing and there were two new students, Sanjin and Akosh. We were relieved to see that Sajaya was OK and that there were more students. We brought iPod speakers with us and played Grateful Dead’s Touch of Gray on a loop. It seems to have somewhat of a calming effect on the kids and every so often we would get them to dance. We also started teaching the alphabet for real by just focusing on one letter, A. The teacher wasn’t happy with that and went right back to repeating the alphabet letter by letter with each student. Once that farce was complete Pam and I pushed on with our focus on just A. We tried to get them to write the letter but none of the kids can do anything with a crayon besides scribble broad strokes. Sajaya can at least make lines and circles.

Chelsea, Nicole, Anna and Angela ended up with traveler’s diarrhea. Chelsea had to stay in the hospital overnight. Angela also had a cold making her experience more of a hell. Everyone beside Angela got over it after a day. Angela took two days. Everyone is destined to get it. Its kind of a rite of passage here for Westerners.

I went into the Tibetan area for the first time on Thursday with Nicole and Debbie. We first had tea on a mountain top terrace with an amazing view. After tea we went to the Temple. As we were walking down we heard the monks chanting. It was quite amazing. We arrived at the temple just as services ended and watched the monks stream out of the temple. There were also laymen walking with the monks. Debbie stopped one of the Western layman and asked if they attended the service. They did attend and told us what we needed to do if we wanted to attend. That was pretty exciting. When we got back to the flat we told everyone about that and most of us are going to sign up to attend a service next week. Unfortunately there are no pictures of this. My camera batteries died just as we were getting to the temple.

Two mornings later we tried the hike again up to Heaven’s Temple. This time we made it. Its one of the important temples of the Hindu faith. It is quite nice. The only way to get there is to hike up the mountain. There’s no roads. We got there early as the caretakers were cleaning up so we didn’t really get to see much but the views from that high up were amazing. We’re going back during the a weekend day to take in the whole thing.

On Saturday I got sick. It wasn’t so bad because I learned what to do to make it go by as painlessly as possible. As soon as I felt rumbling in my stomach I took an antibiotic and Imodium. Still I was on the toilet at least twenty times over the day. When I wasn’t on the toilet I stayed in bed and slept. By Sunday morning I was fine and back to normal.

This leads me to right now. Today we’re all going to a major Buddhist temple. There’s no work today. Life is good. I’m putting the pictures on a different page so that the blog loads better. Click here for this week’s pictures. Sorry the images aren’t labeled. I don’t really have the time to be that cool. When I get back I can tell you what is what and who is who. Next blog update in a week...

I'm In-Country

Day One

The airport was under "upgradation" which means its being renovated. I was made to walk though the construction as it was happening. That was my welcome to India and it was actually fitting. India is definitely a place where the individual is expected to take on much more responsibility for themselves. My years of walking though San Francisco paying little attention to traffic lights or cars for that matter has served me well. There are no traffic lights here. There's no crosswalks, no right of way, no rules. Everyone in a car, on a motorcycle, on a bike or on foot compete for space on the road and they all go by the one rule that does exist; Who dares wins. It seems that kind of thing applies to many other aspects of life here. It seems to be at least one gestalt of Indian culture.

I was picked up at the airport by two guys. I have a hard enough time with Western names so don’t ask me to remember their names. They do rhyme though I remember that. We drove a bit though Delhi giving me my introduction to India. For someone who hasn’t been here, the best frame of reference is Mexico. Actually Mexico is Eden in comparison but it still sort of maybe gives a frame of reference. We drove though many shanty towns which seem to pop up on any open space. I witnessed multiple instances of mothers bathing their children on the sidewalk. There were also a few adults doing the same thing. Unfortunately my camera was still packed so I didn’t get any pictures of the drive in.

We arrived at home base and I ate my first authentic Indian meal. I thought it was awesome but from their standards it was just a simple lunch. It seems that food plays a huge part in this culture probably even more so than with the French. I’m staying in what is considered a middle class flat. Its quite nice actually. This is where my group is supposed to congregate before we take the trip up to Dharamsala. After lunch I took my first bucket shower. It wasn’t so bad. I guess the fact that the air temperature is over a hundred degrees makes it bearable.


Soon after I settled in I took my first excursion out into the city by myself. I walked around the marketplace and a middle class communities. Click here for pictures


Day 2

I was alone for day one. I woke on day two to the sound of someone else taking a bucket shower and realized I was no longer alone. A bit later I walked into the living room and scared the hell out of Angela. She’s from Calgary and here for three weeks.. Her father is from India, Ameritza, Punjab to be exact. She’s going there on the second weekend. It sounds like a great place and I may join her along with a few others. We ended up spending the day together first walking around the local market then we took a tour of Delhi by taxi. I took about three hundred pictures that day. Here’s the best ones.

Click here for pictures


Day 3

Everyone else except for one is now here. I went to sleep with only Angela in the flat and woke to an additional three girls. Pam and Jodi are also from Calgary. None of the Calgary girls knew each other before coming here. Nicole is from Scott’s Valley. Today was the orientation. There’s another flat containing a family from Utah that’s traveling the world together for seven months. Eric and Elizabeth are mom and dad and the three kids ranging in age from six to twelve are Reece, Laura and Ann. Also in that flat are Andrea from Michigan and Chelsea from Calgary. The last person has yet to arrive so I don’t know about them.

So now this leads me up to now. Tomorrow I fly to Dharmsala. My next post will be next Sunday. See ya...

Taiwan layover

I'm hanging in the VIP lounge in Tapei airport waiting for the flight to Delhi. I have 1.5 hours to kill. I just got hit with some great engrish. I'm not enitrely sure what its attempting to tell me. I'd take a picture but its on a monitor and the quality isn't that great. It says

"Its prohibited to breed pigeons or flying objects on the plane."

Damn and I already bought the pigeon sperm.


I grabbed a beverage in an orange can that looked like orange juice. Not so much. I don't know what it is but it isn't bad, except for the first hit when I was expecting orange juice.

I should be in Delhi in less than ten hours. I'll have the rest of today and all of tomorrow to myself. I'm the first one to arrive. Everyone else is arriving tomorrow. The orientation starts on Sunday. I'm assuming I'll get to an internet cafe in Delhi tomorrow and upload a few pictures.

Rock on.

Where in the world is Rikki Masala?

Here's some stuff about where I will be.

Two Wiki articles

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharmsala

http://www.dharamsalanet.com/index.htm

A Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rcgjNeGEkU

Daily weather

http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/INXX0056.html

First Post!

I haven't left yet. That's going to be May 1st. So next post will come from Delhi on May 3rd where I will begin the journey. Subsequent posts will probably happen every Sunday morning in India which is late Saturday in the US and early morning Sunday in Europe.


Rick...