Richard's Travel Blog

Diwali is the biggest holiday festival in India. Though it has Hindu origins everybody celebrates it. I’ve been asked a lot what Diwali is. There are short, medium, long and very long explanations. In short, it celebrates the triumph of good over evil. It takes place over five days. Day one, yesterday, celebrates Rama’s return to Ayudya from exile and fighting the demon, Ravenna. Search “Ramayana” for the complete story in Hindu mythology. Lamps are lit to show him the way home, presents are given and gifts are given. Day two celebrates Krishna’s victory over the tyrant Narakasura, another demon. Asura at the end of any name means demon, as in a-sura.  Day three is devoted to Lakshmi, Vishnu’s consort and the goddess of prosperity. Day four is devoted to the friendly demon, Bala. Day five is good luck day.

There are many stories to go along with all this.  Diwali is the “Festival of Lights”. It’s a long story, but basically in Hindu tradition, it was prophecized that a king’s son would die four days after his marriage at 16 from a snakebite. The bite happened on schedule. So the new wife piled up silver and jewels and lit candles to make it all sparkle. She then kept her husband up all night singing to him. the goddess of death came but was so taken with the sparkling jewels and lovely singing, she wiled away the night sitting on the pile, then left without taking the man. So, it’s now the biggest holiday, full of gift giving, lights (especially floating candles in little boats where there is water) and fireworks, sparklers and firecrackers or small bombs. Everybody’s family gets together. It’s like Christmas.

  Another reason for the symbolism of lights is celebrating Laksmi’s emergence into the world. One version of her coming into being is she emerged from a lotus floating on the primordial sea of chaos, bringing the world into existed, bringing light into the world, so to speak. For Hindu’s this story is equivalent to the biblical “Let there be light”. hindy stories are myriad, often contradictory, which is not a problem for them. The other way she came into the world is from a lotus growing from the navel of Vishnu.

  So, the way I spent last night was sitting on the roof of my hotel, where there is a 270 degree panorama of the city, drinking whiskey with a bunch of the guests and the hotel staff. We listened to thousands of firecrackers and bombs, like the old M-80’s, go off, and watched the most fantastic night of fireworks, by far, I’ve seen in my life. It started at 7 PM and was still going on at 1 AM when I put in my earplugs and went to bed. There were thousands of skyrockets and flares all around, near and far. It was incessant. The hotel guys and a couple of guests set some off from the roof. It was something else.

These look like Hubbel telescope pictures, don’t they? I love my camera.

Greetings. I’ve been in the capital of Rajastan, Jaipur, for three days now. The first day, my travelling companion until tomorrow, Beatrix, and I went to a bazaar in the old city. This area is called the Pink City because originally the walls and many of the buildings were of pink sandstone. What’s left of those buildings from the 16th-18th century are crumbling and pretty dingy. But that pink/rose color is definitely the paint of choice all over town, when it isn’t a kind of purple. India is too poor to keep things up as would be nice, but they try. One can understand why, with people literally starving all over the place.

Anyway, back to what I’m doing… Yesterday we hired a taxi to drive us around all day, mostly looking at the forts from the height of Mughal power, the early 18th century.

There are three major forts near Jaipur. This one is Jaighar. Normally I have little interest in too many forts, but these are pretty nice. We managed to spend about 3 hours walking around them.

Below is a typical old Hindu temple. This one in Amber town is from the 16th century.

After looking at the forts we walked around in the nearby town. there wee several of these temples, and one Jain temple. Jains have a good heart. Look them up on the net. The taxi driver was a nuisance. He kept following us around, wanting us to go to shops and restaurants where he gets something for bringing people in. Both of us have been around way too long to have any of that, but he still tried. They are especially persistent in this country with pitching whatever they want. Between them and the beggars, I can see why people often go away mad. I look at it as a practice opportunity. How you feel about stuff is a window into what really makes you tick. Controlling yourself when you can’t control what you experience can be an effort.

This is not an uncommon site here. Camels are used for many things, including plawing and hauling. there will be many more camel pictures as i’m going to the anual camel fair in Pushkar early next month. There will be trading of course, but also races, beauty pagents with the camels all trussed up and dressed in their finest, and other stuff I’ll tell you about when I see them. I hear they don’t eat them here. I wonder if that applies to this place during this time. Pushkar is the beginning of the wilder western part of Rajastan.

This is a temple complex just east of Jaipur. There are areas for worship of several different deities, though Rama and Sita are the most popular, as far as I can see. This complex was built at the site of a hot spring. You can see in one of the pictures people ritually bathing at the temple ghat. The other pictue is staken from the second floor of the building you can see beyond the ghat picture. This was an unexpectedly nice place. I was surprised. Beatrix knew of it as the “monkey temple” because of the thousands of monkeys around. Little did either of us knbow it would be so nice. The monkeys are around and even fed in respect for Rama’s monkey god comrade, Hanuman. the original temple was a small cane. In there is the original rock painting of Hanuman from the 15th century.

As Tennessee Earie ford used to say, “Bless their little pea pickin’ hearts”. A nit doesn’t stand a chance around these fellows.

Like, I’m really not that busy.

This isn’t such a good picture. It’s hard to take a picture inside without using the flash, but I wanted to publish this anyway. It’s a lovely, 10 ft statue of the Bodhisattva of compassion, here and elsewhere named Avalokateshvara. In China she’s known as Quan Yin. A Bodhisattva is a being who have attained enlightenment but declines Buddhahood to remain in the world to benefit it.

It’s time to move on. I’ve relaxed, seen what there is to see, and made a friend. If I stayed on, it would be to learn something, take a class, sit, work in a clinic, something. But I think it’s time to go. Rajastan is calling. Getting from here to Jaipur directly is a little hard to do, but i’m trying. It’s hard to do anything around here over the weekend. My German friend, Beatrix, decided to stay on for a while, and we’ve decided to go to Jaipur together. We’ll know tomorrow the best way. Jeez, she wants to take a government bus for 10 hours to Delhi. that’s one step up from a chicken bus. I-I-I dunno. There may be seats on the direct train, but we won’t know till the morning. Anyway, we’re out of here no later than Tuesday.

This is Beatrix. No, we’re not doing anything.

Like I said, I’m not that busy around here anymore. Mostly I’m just walking around, looking at views from here and there, and reading. I’ve got a book on Hindu mythology. The stories from the Hindu classics are quite entertaining. What vivid imaginations people have. The ways they describe expanse, time and grandeur paint quite a picture of their image of the universe.

I may write again tomorrow. if not, I’ll write from Jaipur.

Monastery in McLeod Ganj.

   The weather is really bleak around here. If it isn’t storming, it’s windy, cold and dark. It looks like it’s almost nighttime out there, It’s a good day to blog.

   Despite the weather, I’ve been able to do something every day. Like, yesterday my German friend and I went to Dal Lake. It’s a holy lake for the Hindus, though for the life of me I can’t figure out why they would then throw garbage in it. It was nice enough. Basically, we had a nice walk in the woods. We also walked by and around a mid-nineteenth century Christian Church, grounds and cemetery from when the Brits had hill stations around northern India. That was about a 4 km walk. Then we went down to Dharamsala, where she wanted to shop for some silk material. We didn’t do that because it started pouring rain. So we had lunch and took the bus back to Mcleod Ganj.

As you can see, it’s really dreary, even when it’s not raining.

   Anyway, the day before, we went to the Norbulinka Institute, not to be confused with the monastery where the Lama Karmapa was. There are lovely gardens there, a very nicely maintained Buddhist temple, and fine art workshops. You can buy this artwork, furniture and crafts at the store there. Some of the things take months to make.

This is what’s called a thangka. It’s an elaborate painting of Tibetan deities. You’ve seen them, I’m sure. I wish this was a better picture so you can see the detail and effort involved. This man has been working on it for four months. It’s almost done.

This man is applying thick lines with a kind of syringe on a drawer which will go in a chest, which is in parts nearby. Here’s a close-up of the side.

And here are some people making a carpet at a “factory” on town.

   So, as you can see, I’m not just sitting around pondering my navel. In fact, after dealing with about five power outages and one place’s buggy computer, I’m going outside. It’s stopped raining for now. I haven’t even seen the main temple yet. Maybe I’ll make a run for that.

   Later….

 

 

It’s been over a month now, and finally I’m getting it about not having to be busy all the time. I left with something of an agenda to see as much of India as I could in my six months here. After covering great distances, looking at things then moving on, I’ve come to a place where I’m happy not being so busy and learning a little more about this one area. This is reflected in it having been a while since I last wrote. I was filling up my day and night with things to do. It was almost like home, where there is such a tendency to peddle faster just to keep up with everything we think we want. In the long term, my well-being depends on being out of the rat race and simplifying my needs and desires.

I really love being in a place where even the most casual tourist is trying to touch the sacred, to learn something new about the world and themselves. Despite the number of tourists, there is an atmosphere here conducive to improving oneself. I have doubts about what improving might even be, when I think about it, but if things seem better, I’m going to continue day by day to go with the flow.

That said, here is some travelogue stuff. I loaned my camera out, so I can’t add pictures this time, but I will later. HA!, depending on how compulsive I feel.

My days are sometimes a little busy, though I’m hardly getting an early jump on the day’s actvities. I still have a tendency to wake up early, but there’s nothing realy to do till 10. I read and have some chai, maybe a bite to eat. I’m kind of in the backpacker social circle again, so often I’m doing something the group has talked about. Many have been here for awhile, so they have good suggestions. More importantly, they have good ideas how to get it done. Sometimes it’s just a walk through the surrounding forest. Sometimes it’s something right out of Lonely Planet. Let’s see what I can remember…

Yesterday was actually busy. In the morning I went with a German woman I’ve been hanging out with to the Tibetan government complex. Funny, I haven’t even gone in the temple yet. I’m finding I’m not needing to see or sit in temples much. We went to the national library, or at least what they were able to get out of China. She was intersted in health care for the refugees, especially the torture victims. I was more into trying to figure out political realities. That of course is a big subjuct here. Ah, they have such hopes. Maybe in a future lifetime their wishes might happen to some extent. For now, we live in a world where commerce and power render a spiritually guided existence as little more than a quaint idea. Time marches on and modernization will be defined as material development and the pursuit of things which ultimately disappoint. Oh well. All we can do is be responsible, if we choose, that is.

It’s very casual at the governmet center. There’s no security to speak of, some Indian army at the open front gate looking bored. Inside, personnel are easily approached and very friendly. We walked into the office of the minister for refugee’s affairs. The young woman we first talked to said she was new there and she would find someone to answer our questions. The minister who was sitting at a computer in the back, not in a walled offece space, came out and spent about 20 minutes with us, answering questions it would have taken forever to research.

By the way, I don’t think I’m going to get to see the Dalai Lama. Unbeknownst to me, he was here the next morning after I arrived, but the public appearance was at 7 and I didn’t hear about it in time. Now he’s off to somewhere.

I did get a blessing from Lama Karmapa, the head of one of the four sects of Tibetan buddhism. That was special, to me. I went down to his monastery about 30 km from here for that a couple of days ago. You should have been there. There were maybe three hundred people sitting and waiting for him and his entourage of monks to come out. You could here a pin drop. No coughs, no voices, vitually no perceptible movement. There were maybe 20-30 babes in arms there. Not a peep. Even when people went up to him in line, it was so quiet.

Anyway, back to yesterday, after the library my friend and I went to the Norbulinka Institute. It’s a lovely place where there is an exceptionally nicely maintaned temple, beautiful gardens, and displays of the finest Tibetan, furniture, thankas, clothes, jewelry, etc.. The detail is amazing. Of course, it reminded me of Thai art. Some of these things take months, even years, to make. It is allowed to watch the work in progress. The beauty of the place was remarkable in a country with so little man-made beauty.

Ths is getting awfully long. Too much is too much. I thank those of you who have hanged in there this long. I’ll write again soon, and put in some pictures, though the pace of my picture taking has slowed too

Well, somehow I managed to delete my pictures of the Golden Temple of Amristar. I know I was deleting ones I didn’t want, but I’m sure I looked at them before doing it. Hmph. All I can say is that if you’ve never seen pictures of it, you might want to search Golden Temple Amristar. It is really beautiful. The central temple in the “pond of nectar” is entirely covered with almost a ton of gold gilding on copper plates. It’s especially dazzling at night when spotlights are turned on it.

I was only in Amristar fo a day, so I don’t have much to say. My impression was that it’s a bit cleaner than most of India I’ve seen so far. That may be because it’s a bit more prosperous. The Punjab is India’s breadbasket, and the wealth is apparent. I lso think it’s in the Sikh culture to keep things up a bit. My other impression was that the people are really nice.

The other thing I did was go to the Pakistan border village of Wagah. There they have a flag lowering ceremony that draws thousands a day, at least on the Indian side. To sum it up, the Indian and Pakistani border guards put on a competitive show of bravado. These border guards must have been chosen because of their height, which averaged about 6’5″. They have competitive goosestepping and jolly old stampng with their boots with taps. They are in the finest turn of the centurn uniforms with plumes that make them look even taller. they open the gate, and it’s like watching the show and seeing it in a mirror as the Pakistani guards do almost the same moves. After the flags are lowered, there is a crisp handshake between the two guard leaders, and they shut the gates for the night. It’s quite a sight with the people in the grandstands cheering and jeering, and singing patriotic songs to the music of the military bands. It’s like a pep rally. As this is done at sunset, I don’t have pictures of that either.

This morning Rakesh and I came to Dharamsala/McLeod Ganj. It is home to the Dalai Lama and his government in exile. Normally people say he lives in Dharamsala, but he really lives about 8 km up the road, here in McCloud Ganj. Despite the toursit scene, this feels like a special place. Beneath the superficial, this is the center of Tibetan Buddhism. The feeling of spirituality pervades the place. when I digst it a little more, I’ll wite about it.

Be well, all of you.

This is the view from the balcony of my room. It’s relly thinking about precipitating. If it gets much colder, it’ll be snow.

   Though techically Ladakh is in Kashmir, they are so different they might as well be different states, if not different countries. Ah, and therein lie all the troubles. A few years ago, the people of Jammu and Kashmir voted to divide into three regions, two of which Moslem Kashmir and Buddhist Ladakh, would become semi-autonomous. Hindu Jammu would probably retain close ties to Delhi. Ladakh was given a lot of autonomy, but the rest of the plan was nixed by the central government. So here they are here in Kashmir, feeling independent, and India maintianing an impressive military presence just in case Pakistan gets any ideas. Once ina while they exchange artillary fire, but the last time was seven years ago. And there are sporadic bombings, but that’s been over a year. Fortunately, the party that wants to join Pakistan gets almost no votes.

   Because of all this, the US, UK and Australia recommend it’s citizens don’t vist Kashmir. Lonely Planet suggests you don’t go west of Srinigar. I think it’s not that bad. As always it’s wise to ask around and get “protection” in the company of locals. This is what I did.

   Sringar itself is the principle city of Jammu and Kashmir. It is decidedly Moslem, especially now during Ramadan, or Ramzen as they call it here. It’s quiet during the day because of the holy month. Tourism is at a trickle now. The main season is over. Tourism is only just coming back anyway after the political troubles of a few years ago and animosity toward the West over Iraq, Lebanon, etc., basically the same old stuff just more acute these days. The main attactions are it’s marvelous gardens and the lakes that dominate the city. That can all be enjoyed in about a day.

    For the last three days I’ve been on a shikara trek, that is, I was taken through the marshes and coursing waterways west of Srinigar in a small covered boat. My hotel guy araanged it with a shikara owner and a worker. They did the work. I just drifted along. For safety, I pretended to be English. It was a great three days. Sometimes I luck out and do something even better than I had hoped for. It is so lovely out there. The lakes of Srinigar are separated from the marshland by a lock. Getting through there was a project, as they are rarely opened. Farooq, my hotel guy/guide/protector/babysitter, had to give a lot of backsheesh to get through there, including hiring about 15 guys each time to manually open the doors. Anyway, once past there, it was like another world of village life on the water. There, the communities travel about on flat bottomed shikaras of various sizes, though there are roads as well. There is electricity in places and people with generators, but it doesn’t look like life has changed in quite a while. There’s am amazing array of waterfowl and other birds. There are small eagles, like golden eagles, by the HUNDREDS, and countless hawks, owls, egrets, herons, and everything else. I’ve never seen so many kingfishers either, not even in Borneo. It’s all very bucolic. NEar to Srinigar is farming, mostly rice and lotus. Then it becomes wilder, with agriculture mostly of the mom and pop variety. The rivers and ponds are the centers of life.

   I know it sounds like a cliche, but the people here are really nice. If they ever were jaded, I think the dearth tourists has made them gracious again. Too many tourists creates hard-cases. There’s just not much of that here. I hope it stays that way in the rest o India, though I think when the cool tourist months of December to March come, I’ll be in the rat race again.

   I rested up today. Three days in a little boat gave me a stiff back. Tomorrow we are going to Amristar. Here are some pictures. I hope it doesn’t make the previous pictures turn to x’s.

This is the view from Main Street in Srinigar of the first, biggest group of boathouses, where most tourists stay.

View from the deck of the two room boathouse I stayed in in Srinigar.

The houseboat man’s daughter paddling herself to school. Check out the uniform.

The western suburbs of Srinigar.

The four of us lived on this shikara for three days. They did all the work. The only hard part was sleeping with Farooq’s feet in my face.

Along the way. I’m telling you, this is a nice ride.

I guess I had the camera set wrong, so this is a little out of focus, but these kids were really cute, as were all the others who would come sit on the bank and look at us whenever we stopped..

Thank you’s to all of you who gave me feedback about the pictures that had turned to “x’s”. My friend, Renato, who helped set this page up for me noticed it too and is helping me fix the problem. Hopefully, if pictures get “x’d” again, I/we can replace them. Hopefully, it won’t happen again. I’m crossing my fingers. It’s about all I’m competent to do.

I notice when I bring up my site, some of my pictures from back in Himachal Pradesh are just “x”‘s in the upper left corner. Are all my pictures showing up? They used to be there.