Vaishist

A few extra days at the hot springs to recover my health, and leaving tonight on a 2am jeep to Leh, the capital of Ladakh.

I've been asking around about the history of these hot springs in this little village. What I received was a story from the Ramayana, the great Hindu epic which I am studying and translating in my Sanskrit classes. This is one story that I have not yet heard.

Rama, middle in the photo, was the eldest of four sons of noble King Dasharatha of Ayodhya, a divine prince whose destiny brought him on the rather Herculean adventures which comprise the Ramayana. His constant companion, also his brother, called Laksmana is shown on Rama's right side. Sita, Rama's wife

and daughter of King Janaka of Mithila, is on Rama's left.

Rama at one point in his life was looking for a guru to relate with, and with whom to learn and study meditation. Himachal Pradesh has long been a region famous for its mountain retreats, and thus has always attracted spiritual teachers and seekers. Laksmana came to Himachal to help in Rama's quest when he met Guru Vaishist.

During this meeting, Laksmana decided that Vaishist would be a suitable guru - however, as Vaishist had been meditating and living in caves for many years, he was quite dirty and covered in dried mud. Laksmana suggested that before meeting with Rama, Vaishist might fancy a bath. Upon hearing those words, Guru Vaishist touched the ground, and with his divine power opened up the hot springs through a rock in this little village.

This is the origin of the springs, which are the heart centre of this holy village. Apparently, scientists have come to this region and done some tests to determine the source of the springs, to no avail. Yet the question is already answered in the minds of the local people: the source is none other than the guru from whom the village derives its name.

To Ladakh

In the last two weeks or so now of my travels in India. I will be leaving for Ladakh in a few days time, and out of computer contact until I return to Europe - or perhaps Delhi.

Ladakh extends north of India, bordering the Tibetan Himalaya and sharing a similar culture and landscape. Tibetan Buddhism is the religion of the region, and Ladakhi is a Tibetan dialect, similar to the language I speak. Leh, the capital - a small village, really - is two twelve hour bus rides away from Manali, where I am now for a few days, north through Himachal Pradesh and into Jammu-Kashmir. Above the treeline, and sharing a mountainous desert landscape similar only to the Tibetan plateau - or perhaps, the moon.

After five weeks in the Dharamsala region, I came east yesterday to the small town of Vaishist to join a friend. Vaishist is well-known locally for its natural hot springs which run through the center of the village. The springs are harnessed into a small outdoor bath, and the water is drained and refilled each night at midnight, when the foreigners lurk out of the cafes and fill the baths. The water is sulfuric, hot and gorgeous. The Israelis bring cardamom coffee.

In the early afternoon, we follow a small sign to a waterfall. Glacial water pierces the cliffs and rages down into the river valley, forming small pools set amid glacial boulders. When water is involved, regardless of the country I am traveling in, I lose absolutely all sense of cultural modesty and propriety if there is the smallest semblance of privacy. Within a few minutes we were diving off boulders into the waterfall pools of frozen mountain water. And after midnight, into the hot springs.

My health is returning, I am eating properly again, and there are fresh river trout in town. Ah.

Amritsar: the Golden Temple

photo: The border closing ceremony at Wagah, on the Indian-Pakistani border.

photo: within the temple complex in Amritsar

Not sure sometimes how I get myself into these situations. I had to go to Pakistan the other day to have a cigarette. But I get ahead of myself ...

I've been in the Dharamsala area for the last four or five weeks. Himachal Pradesh is far and away my favorite state in India - perhaps in some ways because it is not quite India. A friend and I had been talking for days about making a day trip to the Golden Temple in Amritsar, southwest into the Punjab. We left on Friday at half-three in the morning under the light of the mountain stars, to catch the 5am bus out of Himachal.

Amritsar is a small city, about six hours distance from here, but it is home to more than one million people. It is the capital of the Sikh world, teeming with pilgrims, universities and Punjabi administrative buildings. Amritsar (Amrita Sarovar) means Pool of Ambrosia in the Punjab dialect. The Golden Temple is in the middle of a small manmade, koi-filled lake - the holiest site of the Sikh people. More than 30,000 pilgrims are said to visit the Golden Temple each day, even in the hot season, as it is now.

The heat in the plains is surreal. It was easily between 105 and 115F (40 - 43C) degrees from sunrise to sunset, without shade. I slept for about three hours the night we left, then a six hour busride before arriving in the city in the heat of the day. Never in my life have I felt such incredible heat. I actually changed into a different person in that heat. Movement, any movement at all, becomes extraordinarily slowed. Eating is a challenge. Manuevering between the 30,000 other sweating people is not so simple. The sun glares off of the blue pool of ambrosia, and the Golden Temple is so brilliant in the sunlight that it is difficult to look directly at it. Easier to look at the reflection in the water.

Everyone who enters the gates of the Golden Temple (men, women and foreigners alike) must cover their heads with a headscarf within the gates, and enter barefoot. The inner courtyard which circumambulates the temple is built entirely out of white marble, which simply scorches in the heat. Jute mats are laid out to protect the feet of pilgrims, a small salvation.

A narrow path leads into the Golden Temple itself, which is gilded in more than 750 kg of pure gold. The inside is quite crowded with a constant flow of people, and musicians inside play tabla music which is broadcast through large speakers throughout the temple complex. Always music in India, and always loud.

Food and accomodation at the Golden Temple is free to all, as service to others is a central tenet of Sikh philosophy. There are enormous buildings which house pilgrims and visitors, and within that, a small dormitory for foreigners. The door to the foreigners dorm is guarded by three Sikh with spears. Javelins. I don't imagine that they ever have a good reason for using them, but I suppose it was comforting. I've never been guarded by spear before. Quite an honour, really.

There is a row of about 25 beds in the foreigners dormitory, lined up together and pushed to form one long bed in which to sleep. Outside there are public fountains and loos for the thousands, creating a small community within the city. People from all over Punjab, all over India, and all over the world come together and share the facilities, everyone somehow leveled by the heat, sharing in the same experience.

There is a community dining hall within the temple complex, which feeds the tens of thousands who come through in a bizarre dance. First, one enters through the gates and is handed one of thousands, simply thousands, of stamped aluminium plates, a spoon, and a small bowl for water. Utensils in hand, one follows the crowd into an enormous hall in which hundreds of people sit in endless jute-lined tumeric-stained rows, at all hours of the days. It is an uninterrupted ritual, with food constantly being served: chapati, black daal, something greenish, and some sort of sweet potato with raisins and sugar. Quite good, despite the heat and giardia.

People eat quickly, and once the meal is over, one files out with the others and returns the plates at the huge outdoor dish-washing station. Anyone can join in the dishwashing, and to my great despair, the two Dutch and English women I was with decided to gain some spiritual merit by joining in. I joined in blindly and quite timorously, but we washed dishes with thousands of others for a short while before entering the temple.

In the dormitory, the only respite from the heat with a few ceiling fans, we met several people headed to the Pakistani border in the evening for the daily border closing ceremony. In the early afternoon, the heat still blazing overhead, we took an hourlong taxi ride to Wagah to watch the one of the most outrageous rituals. This is an excerpt that I've read about the ceremony:

"The stage for the performance is the Joint Check-Post at Wagah, 25 kilometers east of Pakistan's most ancient city Lahore and west of the Indian city of Amritsar. A long white line, borne of the 1947 partition of Britain's Indian empire, defines the border between the hostile neighbours and two heavy gates, about two meters (yards) apart, lie across either side.

On the Indian side, some 2,000 spectators take their seats behind the border post after being let in through a path running alongside the border for 50 meters under the curled moustaches of the Pakistani Rangers. Opposite, around 1,000 Pakistanis take their seats on either side of the Baab-e-Azadi (Gate of Freedom).

The gate was built in August 2001 by Pakistani authorities in homage to the thousands of Muslims killed during the mass migration to their new land in 1947. Cries of "Pakistan Zindabad" (Long live Pakistan) alternate with shouts of "Jai Hind" (Long live India). The Indians play war music, the Pakistanis play religious music. The Indians sing and dance. Pakistanis stay in their seats, men on one side and women on the other."

Theoretically, the daily ceremony would seem to be a solemn affair, but is has turned into an absolute spectacle. Indian tourists come by the thousands to the border, which is a no man's land between the two countries. Pakistanis also come in droves to their border to witness the show, and the combined energy creates a havoc and a frenzy of religious and nationalistic fervor. The armies of both countries lead a simultaneous colour guard ceremony on either side of the Baab-e-Azadi.

Before the 6.30pm colour guard, nationalistic Indian music is played at full blast in the fullsun and 110 degree heat, and the Indian men go wild and dance in the road like drunkards at a monsoon wedding. An awful thing to say, but true: the Indian colour guard looks exactly, but exactly, like the Monty Python Ministry of Silly Walks. Its outrageousness is the main draw to the ceremony, as well as the license to go completely insane. Indian flags are waved, and the ceremony begins.

The colour guards of both countries approach the Gate of Freedom: "Pounding the ground with long strides, a Ranger goose-steps hurriedly towards the gate for a brusque exchange of mimicked threats with his Indian colleague. A second joins them, then a third in a bizarre ballet punctuated by glowering glares and warrior moustaches. The gates open. Two officers approach each other and after briefly coming face-to-face shake hands. Both soldiers can then start to lower the Pakistani and Indian flags fixed high on poles planted at the foot of the gates. Silence falls. Both officers return to the white border line. A final handshake. The gates are slammed shut and on both sides, a trumpet announces the end of the spectacle."

Then back to Amritsar. One cannot smoke a cigarette within a 200m radius of the Golden Temple, which covers a tremendous distance when the heat is so intense. Fortunately smoking was permitted on the border of Pakistan, and cigarettes sold freely. But once back within the city of Amritsar, heads covered again and shoes off, one again joins the ranks of the thousands of pilgrims. A strange adventure.

The Dreaded Oonga Boonga

(photo left: giardia intestinalis)

I have giardia. And I am currently sponsoring a genocide within my body. The poor bastards.

There are various stages to being sick in India. First is the physical illness, which manifests slowly and stealthily. Rumblings in the stomach that wake you up nights, a growing inability to keep down what you take in, and then the inability to eat altogether. The process takes a few days usually, from the infant-prophetic stage of realizing that you will soon be ill, to being fully and genuinely ill. Then a mixture of stoicism and lethargy sets in: this will pass in a day or so ... I'll just eat rice and bananas and sleep it off. But I've been sleeping for the better part of three days, and I can't bear the thought of another banana.

In the next stage, one turns to one's fellow travelers for a group diagnosis and general complaint session. Being unwell is so common that all travelers have the experience, the ability and the utter frankness to discuss the most intimate details of one's intestinal happenings. I had such a pow wow this morning, and the diagnosis: get thee to a doctor.

From the village of Bhagsu, it is a ten minute hike downhill, a five minute rikshaw into McLeod Ganj, and another twenty minutes via rikshaw down to the Dharamsala clinic. And the traffic. Not quite traffic in the traditional sense. Traffic here involves roads that were not built wide enough for two large cars to pass each other safely. When an impasse occurs, the beta vehicle is forced to back up (as are all vehicles behind the beta as well) until there is room enough for the alpha vehicle to squeeze by, outer wheels offroad and spraying mud and stones. The situation is compounded by the fact that this town is built on a hill, and the roads by nature snake around the hills curves in hairpin turns.

Sometimes the rikshaw merely idles while two cars decide by horn honking who is the alpha vehicle and who is the beta. Idling in the back of a rikshaw spewing unfiltered diesel smoke usually isn't pleasant under any circumstance, let alone when one's stomach is already turned inside out and spontaneous vomiting is a distinct possibility. It takes a while to make the decision to go the clinic because going to the clinic is a pain in the ass.

Finally, of course, one arrives at the clinic and registers at the desk. About forty other people in various states of physical distress line the benches - sneezing everywhere, looking faint, mothers clutching crying chilldren, monks clutching x-rays, foreigners green and weak as myself with the familiar exhaustion of dystentery and dehydration in their eyes, Indians wrapped in layers of fabric as is their wont, carefully hiding whatever sickness they suffer. And the grim knowledge that I am number 42, and they are still calling the twenties. I hear that if your number is not called before noon and your tests not submitted, you must wait until the following day for your diagnosis and prescription - which involves making the same trip from cozy bed and clean loo to endless rikshaw and clinic once again.

Pharmaceuticals in India are all over the counter, so I seriously consider finding someone with my same symptoms and simply purchasing a matching course of antibiotica on my own. In the end, however, I decide to leave it to the professionals, just in case I have actually managed to catch oonga boonga disease, or Japanese encephylitis, alien invasion, cholera or some other such miserable thing.

After two hours my number is called, and I crawl into the office and deliver my symptoms. I was given the world's tinest vial in which to produce a sample of my wares (with a toothpick as well - what the hell was I supposed to do with that?) and ushered away with a warning that the laboratory (or labratory, as the sign read) would close in five minutes. There were two western interns in the office, and they said to me: try to avoid mangoes, tea and coffees, soups and salads. I could tell they hadn't been in India very long. Their advice is akin to telling someone in Paris to avoid baguettes and brie, espresso, cigarettes and melons and pastries.

Two hours later I return to the clinic for the verdict: giardia. Solution: genocide. Feeling: better, actually.

Constantly Risking Absurdity

The mountaintop plateau of Triund.

The caves are above the small guesthouse and to the right. Half a view through the prayerflags, from a cave at Triund.

Three hours hike uphill from Bhagsu begins the entrance into the Dhauladhar mountain range at Triund (2975m), stretching north through Himachal Pradesh into Jammu-Kashmir, and into the mountain desert of Ladakh. The path is steep and rocky, a goat path really, slowly winding up the hills.

Constantly risking absurdity - the beginning of a poem by Ferlinghetti, and quite an apt beginning to any adventure during the Indian monsoon. Constantly risking absurdity, and landslides, and the possibility of being stranded somewhere - anywhere - for hours as the rains wash away the paths and slippery up the stones. Ran into two friends late the other night, and they were planning to leave for Triund the following morning. Barring wet weather, of course.

Constantly risking absurdity. It could pour at any moment once we begin the ascent, and there are no places to stop along the way save for two chai dhabas. And once we reach Triund? It could rain all day. The mists could hide the Dhauladhar range, the clouds could swallow the eagles, the green parrots, the caves. Very little to do on a clouded mountaintop in monsoon season.

And yet in India, one must constantly risk absurdity, and landslides, and the possibility of being stranded somewhere. Anywhere. Because the possibilities of adventure are much more potent and more vibrant, and always mixed with absurdity nonetheless.

We left later than planned, three hours later than planned. The idea was to get up early and reach Triund before noon, before the rain usually falls. As we hiked, a few drops fell, and disappeared as quickly. We made it to the top in the early afternoon, three hours exactly. A cold breeze blew as we had our mountaintop chai, and slowly, slowly, the sun emerged. During the monsoon. The sun emerged, the clouds dispersed. Blue, blue sky, the mountains coming into view with their glaciers, their waterfalls, their snowtopped peaks, their loose shale, their open-mouthed passes leading into the Tibetan Himalaya.

There are exactly five small buildings on the plateau at Triund: three chai shacks (with three walls apiece, and Hindi music blaring despite the lack of electricity), and two little huts in which to sleep. Above the huts, straight up the mountains, are strewn huge glacial boulders. In between the boulders are a few caves, some quite protected, and others little more than a craggy overhang. From the huts we hired sleeping bags and blankets, and then spent the afternoons checking out the caves and making our nests. We wandered all across Triund, through herds of cows and sheep, and tried to imagine the animals that emerged only under cover of darkness. I had never slept in a cave before.

The sunny, rainless day gave way to a moonless evening. Dharamsala and McLeod Ganj glowed like stars in the distance. Our eyes adjusted easily to the night, and soon we could detect the slightest movements in the trees, along the rocks. Monkeys? Flying squirrels? A long, lean body and a big, bushy tail. Enormous green eyes. And then the most magnificent jump from tree to tree. I wished to myself that I was not sleeping in his cave, whatever it was. The last thing I'd like to wake up next to.

Up at dawn the following morning. The sky stays clear, brilliantly clear, and I sat in the sun for the first time since my arrival in India seven weeks ago. And a Himalayan sunburn is quite something, let me tell you.

McLeod Ganj, HP

Above, a view of McLeod Ganj.
The Tsuglakhang, the main temple of HH the Dalai Lama

It is quiet now in McLeod Ganj, after the celebration of the birthdays of both HH Dalai Lama and HH Karmapa within a week of each other. I have moved out of the main town, and into a small mountain village called Bhagsunag. It is only a short walk into McLeod, but where I stay I

am above the roads, the cars, the people. It is a twenty minute climb with your pack up the

pebble-strewn footpath, north from the small road that runs into Lower Bhagsu. Quiet and rainy.

The monsoon has started in Himachal Pradesh. The rain descends in torrents, and often quite unexpectedly. There is a lull, and a cloud settles in the town. If the windows and doors are open in the cafes, the clouds will pour through them, like smoke, damp and fresh. Sometimes it will clear for an hour, or three, and I try to dash up the mountainside to catch a proper view of the Kangra Valley, of snowy Triund, of the waterfalls and shale cliffs that surround the valley. It is a strange thing, in Dharamsala just as Darjeeling, to be in the midst of such raw natural beauty, and to be unable to access it because of the mist and rain. Such is the nature of traveling in hill stations, I suppose.

It is a wonderful thing, to be back in a Tibetan-speaking area. Here, one needs to go out to the outlying villages to find India once again. I have been invited by an Indian masseuse to visit her home this weekend, about 15km outside of McLeod. Back to India.

HH Karmapa and the Shambhala Delegation

From left: Katrin and Frank Stetzel, Peter Volz, HH Karmapa XVII, Penpa Warren, myself, and Clarke Warren.

Cafe del Mundo

The wild and ridiculous realm of travelers in India is perhaps one of the most wonderful aspects of traveling. With the slightest pluck, one invariably ends up sharing dinners with people from all over the world, in the blink of an eye.

I stayed in Rumtek with an Australian and an Israeli, and on one rainy afternoon I realized that the distance between our three countries could perhaps divide the world evenly into thirds. Yet a shared language, and a shared desire for adventure brought us together like wild dogs. And it is often like that.

Dinner last night in a crowded restaurant, and suddenly an old Englishman, a poet by the look of him, stood up and announced an open music night.

A Quebecois jumped onto a chair and played the spoons brilliantly, and sang a wonderful and raucous song that I could tell was quite dirty despite my poor French. A shy Brazilian woman sang Portuguese bossa nova - or rather whispered it, the way bossa nova is meant to be sung. An Argentine man played the accordian, and made half of us cry. I never knew an accordian could be so beautiful. Several Tibetans sang folk songs in the quiet, high-pitched tradition; a blond man from Manchester played wild rowdy banjo bluegrass; a group of Israelis sang in Hebrew; two Irishmen named Barry (true) sang the blues in harmony; a Persian sang sadly in Arabic. An English girl, a song of Lancelot and Guinevere; a German, the classical guitar; and a Frenchman ended the night with Dylan. Dylan - of course. And there in that room, people from all over the world knew the words, and sang together.

Happy and Healthy