Bhangra, Bags and Balep Korkun

I am off to a late start today. A very noisy family moved in to the rooms adjoining mine at the hotel and last night I lay awake for a long while listening to a crying baby, bhangra music and loud conversation in Hindi until around midnight, then just as things began to quiet down, the dogs who live in the little square below my window in front of the Dalai Lama's temple heard something in the woods below Temple Road, so they set up a barking delegation to scare away whatever it was. My reading and conversation with locals indicate that they may have had cause for alarm, as there are Himalayan black bears, snow leopards and of course the always mischievous macaques nearby in the forests, but I suspect they were barking at the other dogs that were barking across the valley. While I am grateful for their vigilance, they may have indulged in a little overkill, so I ended up sleeping in. I took a long slow time with my morning routine (heat the water, wash, pick out some dry clothes from the hand-washed collection hanging in my window, drink some water, watch some BBC news).

Once I was up, I headed downstairs to chat with the desk manager, an Indian man who always looks at me like whatever I do is crazy. I confirmed with him that I would be leaving early Wednesday morning, and double checked that it would be okay to pay my 7200 rupee hotel bill with a credit card, which I had OK'd well in advance via email. Oh no, he patiently explained, we take only cash. Ahhh, India. Of course, I said. No problem.

So I ambled up the hill to the Moon Peak coffee house for a bit of comfort, a very expensive 40-rupee cappucino, which tasted great after the river of black tea I have drunk in the past week. I practiced writing the Tibetan alphabet, and now here I am in the Awasthi Cyber Cafe (misnomer-no cafe, just computers).

Yesterday was a good day. I went shopping for items to take back home to sell to benefit Inside Dharma, my prison project. Rinchen Tsomo could not accompany me as she had hoped. She was down the valley signing in with the Indian government to extend her temporary visa another year, which sounded like took hours and hours of frustrating waiting. Since she was not home, Tashi Dolma and little Ngawang accompanied me and helped me bargain. I bought a few beautiful thangkas from a shop where I watched them being made, and some handmade Tibetan handbags and a few prayer flags from a shop whose profits help the Tibetan Children's Village, which is where Ngawang goes to school. Ngawang held my hand the whole way, sucking on a lollipop I'd brought her and playing hide and seek with me from behind store shelves and hanging thangkas. We parted ways mid-afternoon with the agreement that I would return to Tsomo's for supper at 6pm.

On my way down the hill I passed a small shop where workmen were doing some plastering, and the music they were listening to on their cd player was really catchy. I asked a young man nearby if he could tell me the artist, and he invited me into his shop. He offered me chai and introduced himself as Kumar, from Kashmir. He dug out his own collection of tapes and cd's to share titles with me, telling me what I'd heard was Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. I told him I'd heard Ali Khan's music before, but never the kind coming from the shop across the street. We chatted about music for a while, and then he introduced me to a friend who made leather goods in the Kashmiri tradition. I bought two really beautiful hand-stiched leather bags that I hope will bring a good price back home to benefit the prison project.

I went back to my hotel room to chill out, and I could see a troop of langurs in the trees across the road. After watchign them for a while, I watched a little more BBC. It is interesting to me how much of an emphasis the BBC South Asia service places on energy issues. Every time I watch the news there is at least one report about energy issues and what needs to be done in China and India. The report I watched yesterday featured a Western expert and a woman who works for an energy-related NGO in South Asia. The BBC reporter said that by 2020 China will have 140 million automobiles, eclipsing the number in the US, and that by 2020 India's consumption of the world's energy would leap from 3% to 10%. China relies heavily on its cheap coal right now, but they realize that emissions are wrecking their environment. China is now in a partnership with the European Union to implement "clean coal" practices, and China's goal is to have 15% of its energy coming from renewable sources by 2015, and India has a similar goal of 10% by 2012.

This is too little, too slowly, said the woman from the NGO.

The Western expert said that Asian nations should look to dam building for hydroelectric power and nuclear energy as solutions. He bragged that the US is leading the way in the development of renewable energy sources, spending $10 billion in 2001 for research, and that the US is the single biggest donor to UN efforts to push renewable energy.

The woman from the NGO (I wish I could remember which one) said that all that is good and well, but the US is not even cleaning up its own emissions at a viable rate, it has not slowed its climbing energy consumption (the US is the biggest consumer but only comprises a small percentage of the world's population!) and it is not participating in key agreements like the Kyoto Protocols. Besides, she said, nuclear and hydroelectric sources are not without huge costs, including land loss and hazardous waste.

Every day the news carries examples of efforts at innovation, including hydrogen cars in Japan and Brazil's successful transformation of sugar cane into cheap and renewable automobile fuel.

Speaking of energy, the electricity here in Dharamsala goes out sometimes several times a day without warning and for various lengths of time. It sure makes each day an adventure, especially after sundown.

On my way to Tsomo's for dinner last night, I stopped to take a couple pictures and a passing Tibetan nun looked over my shoulder at the image on my digital camera screen. She giggled and giggled, and motioned for me to take her picture, so I did. She looked again at the image I had captured, and giggled some more, then walked on toward her destination.

When I arrived at Tsomo's, Tashi Dolma made me a very interesting Tibetan dish. She baked some balep korkun, or Tibetan bread, from scratch in a pan on the gas burner. When the bread was done (it was in the form of 8" disks), she scooped out the top of mine and dropped a glob of peanut butter in the middle and then scraped some chhurpi, or Tibetan cheese, from a steel cannister from the unrefrigerated cabinet below the burner. The cheese had a pungent, aged flavor, a little like old goat cheese, and it was hard and yellow and crumbly from the granulated sugar mixed into it. She smooshed the cheese and peanut butter and warm bread around with a spoon and then handed me the spoon to eat it. The cheese was hard to take on its own, but mixed with peanut butter and bread it was not bad. Tashi Dolma explained that peanut butter was a recent addition to the dish, but otherwise it was very traditional. Tsomo steamed some broccoli and greens to eat on the side. We had a lot of fun talking, teaching each other words and such until late, and we talked about Tsomo's dream of going to America with her daughter to live. She pleaded with me to help her find a way, and that part of the conversation was hard, but she seemed content when I told her I would see what I could do via my contacts in the Tibetan Buddhist community in the US.

As I walked home I encountered a bunch of young guys playing cricket in the street. I laughed when one of them saw me coming and yelled "game off!" as I walked through. Once I'd passed them, I turned and shouted "game on!" and it was his turn to laugh.

Yesterday was a good day.