Volcanoes, Cats and Candy

I just received a new batch of questions from the sixth grade, so here goes:


Have any of your friends experienced an earthquake? We are also studying volcanoes. We have sort of determined that your longitude might be 75 degrees East and latitude 30 degrees North. Are we close? We have been using longitude and latitude to find volcanoes throughout the world, so are there any close to where you are?

Earthquakes are a real danger here, and the conditions that made the earthquake in Pakistan so devastating exist in Dharamsala. The hillsides are unstable, especially in deforestd areas where erosion is a problem, most buildings are not built to withstand an earthquake because it is too expensive to do so, and since we are quite high up in the mountains and only accessible by a couple mountain roads, a sizeable eathquake would cause a lot of suffering. In fact, in 1905, an earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale hit here in Dharamsala (Latitude 32.10N, Longitude 76.40E). Around 19,800 people were killed here and in the valley below (with thousands more injured), making it the most deadly earthquake in modern Indian history. There is an effort to establish an earthquake prediction center here in Dharamsala. When the recent Pakistani earthquake occured, I emailed Rinchen Tsomo and she said that even though they felt it, it was not very strong here. I am unaware of any volcanoes in the area...

Sophie wants to know if dogs and cats just roam freely and if there are a lot of them.

My experience has been that wherever there are people, there are dogs hanging around nearby. I have seen very few dogs that are pets. Most roam freely and fend for themselves, and they can look really raggedy and sad. Some people do keep dogs as pets, though, and the other day I saw a nice old Tibetan woman feeding a bunch of local dogs from her doorstep. I have seen no cats anywhere, probably on account of all the hungry dogs!

Chris (who has lived in Singapore) wants to know if you have eaten any food with curry in it.

Well, Chris, that's kind of a trick question. "Curry" is a term that the British gave to Indian dishes, but it is not a term that means very much to Indian cooks, as near as I can tell. Intead, they describe dishes in terms of what is in them, and if they use a particular blend of spices, they name it after a region or just call it "masala" which I think literally just means "a mix". Different cooks use different blends, sometimes with as many as forty spices in one dish! I have eaten plenty of Indian food, including baingan bartha, daal makhani, aloo chaat, saag paneer and chaana daal. I challenge you to look those up on the Internet, or to go to a local Indian restaurant and order them. They are delicious!

Aron wants to know if done any activities other than visiting friends and learning the Tibetan alphabet?

Yes, Aron. Yesterday for example I took a morning walk on a forest path around the perimeter of the Dalai Lama's temple. I was not alone. It is an ancient custom in Buddhism, Hinduism and other very old religions to pay respect to a place by circumambulating it, or walking around it, usually in a clockwise fashion, and usually in a very reverent, meditative way. I was accompanied by many Tibetans who walked with their malas and prayer wheels (like the ones I showed you in class), reciting Tibet's national prayer, om mani peme hum, which translates loosely as "what a precious gift", referring to the gift of Buddhism. The path wound through tall pine trees and offered fantastic views of the surrounding mountains and many interesting birds. Just walking around here is an adventure, since the plants and animals are so different. Yesterday I met some very interesting people, whom I will talk about in my next post.


Jake wants to know if there is any candy there.

Sure, Jake, there is plenty of candy here. In fact, even though I am far from a big city, I can get a Twix, a Hershey bar, a bag of Lay's potato chips (masala flavor or "American style" which is sour cream and onion) a Diet Coke, or more exotic snacks like Kerala peanuts, fried chickpeas, mint soda, or, if I am hanging out with Tibetans, dried yak cheese on a string or some black sugar-cured dried turnip chunks.

Johnny wants to know if you have had any tea yet that has yak milk in it?

I have had tea made with yak butter, black tea leaves and salt, which is a typical offering to show hospitality in a Tibetan household. It is an acquired taste...that I have not full acquired yet, but I am polite so I drink it down and lick my lips and say "Tu je che!" which means thank you.

Thanks for the questions, everybody. Good luck finding my latitude and longitude on a map, and good luck with your volcano studies! If you see any near me, please warn me.

Hello Sixth Grade!

Hello Mrs. Tempelmeier, Ms. Linihan, and all of my good friends in the sixth grade! I received your email, and I would like to respond to your questions. I will answer them in order.

Since there has been so much rain, is there any flooding?

Great question. India has slightly different seasons from what I am used to. In most of the country the year is generally divided into wet (monsoon) and dry seasons. The rain that is occuring almost every afternoon here has less to do with the monsoon, which is in a different part of the year, and more to do with the changing temperatutres as the air from the plains below hits the mountains. So far it has rained three days in a row at the same time of day, for onyl about an hour each time. This is not enough to cause serious flooding, but water runoff is a big issue here. When it rains a lot there are rock and mud slides, which can destroy homes and roads. When I arrived here I could see that they are still repairing some mountain roads from the last monsoons.

Another big water issue here is water scarcity. Since winter was on the warm side and there was less snow this year, there will be less water running down from the melting snow higher up in the mountains, so there will be less water for the people to drink. I do not know if global warming has caused there to be less snow in recent years. I will let smarter people debate that one...

Also, do you see signs of flowers or other greenery?

Another good one. Yes, the terraces that people have carved into the hilllsides are turning bright green with barley, wheat and rice stalks. Wild mountain rhododendrons are coming into bloom, with bright red flowers.

Johnny Acker wants to know if the taxi drivers drive wildly.

Well...yes, but not on purpose. While a ride in a taxi seems like a wild adventure to me, it is actually a display of skill and concentration on the part of the driver. I cannot believe how hard the man who drove me here from Delhi had to work. He had to watch out for camels, donkeys, dogs, cows, pedestrians, other taxis, buses, trucks, motorcycles, goats and sheep, all of them moving at differnet speeds and in different directions. So I think taxi drivers deserve a lot of credit, even if the way they drive may appear a little wild by our standards.

Sophie wants to know if the roads are like the ones in Greece—narrow with people walking in front of cars.

Yes, Sophie, they are. There are not any sidewalks, shoulders or crosswalks where I am right now, so the street is a place to be cautious. I would love to compare stories with you about Greece and India when I get back. Sounds like you have had some adventures, too!

What has been your most favorite thing to eat?

That's a tough one. I have eaten many interesting dishes so far. One of my favorites, though, is tenthuk, which is Tibetan soup with noodles and vegetables with some Chinese chilis thrown in to give it a little fire. My freinds Rinchen Tsomo and Tashi Dolma made me some homemade tenthuk the other day that was very tasty. Yesterday they taught me to make

momos, and today they are going to teach me to make Tibetan bread.

Will you get to meet with the Dalai Lama?

No, I am afraid not. Even though I am staying right across from the Tsulag Khang, his home gompa (monastery), he is not in Dharamsala right now. He travels all over the world trying to spread the word about the plight of the Tibetan People. He will return soon, however, for Losar. Two years ago I was here for Losar, and I got to meet the Dalai Lama then. He shook my hand and gave me a little golden Buddha as a gift. I will show you the picture when I get home if you remind me. I am very lucky, Many Tibetans have risked there lives traveling over the mountains from Tibet to get here just to meet the Dalai Lama. When he returns here to give new year's teachings, thousands of people will come here to hear him teach.

Thanks for the questions, sixth grade! You ask good ones, and I hope my answers are helpful. See you soon.

Momos and black tea

I am having to send this post via email instead of
entering the weblog site itself. Another afternoon
storm has trapped me in an Internet shop running Red
Hat Linux (big western howdy to Mr.Inman!), and I do
not seem to be able to run the Blogger.com java from
here, so the formatting of this post will be a shot in
the dark.

I just spent the afternoon learning from Rinchen Tsomo
and her friends how to make momos, a Tibetan
traditional steamed dumpling. I was lousy at making
them, which led to some good laughs. Then I had a
Tibetan alphabet and language lesson. The hospitality
I have been shown has been remarkable. I am offered
tea the moment I arrive at Rinchen's and my cup never
even drops to half full. I am going to float away on
all the black tea I have consumed, and then today they
tried to stuff me with more momos than a man can
possibly eat in three sittings, let alone one. In
return I have become a bit of an English tutor to
whomever I meet at Rinchen's. We are having fun.

I took the opportunity to ask one of Rinchen Tsomo's
friends about why he came to India. Tsewang is a
twenty-something student who wants to be a history
teacher so that he can "teach others about the true
history of Tibet because the Chinese tell lies." He is
the only member of his family here in Dharamsala, and
he said he came here "because of freedom of ideas, and
to meet the Dalai Lama." He also wants to learn
English so that he can teach history to a broader
audience. Tsewang's English is a little rough around
the edges...okay, it's no great shakes, and it took us
a while to understand each other, but he insisted that
he would like to answer questions that our seniors
might have about conditions in Tibet, and the history
of the Tibetan people. I will send Mrs. Hays his email
address and she can share it with you. Tomorrow
morning I hope to visit some agencies that might have
some more good info for your current studies,
seniors...

Are there any eighth graders reading this? I would
love to hear from you at larryhays2@yahoo.com, and
that goes for sixth graders, too. I will do my best to
respond in a timely fashion.

The rain is subsiding, so I am going to go find a
quiet spot where I can study my Tibetan alphabet...

Mindfulness

Thank you to all who have emailed. Reading notes from home helps me keep some perspective. I got a great email from my dad today reminding me to be vigilant, even if I begin to feel comfortable walking these steep, dirty streets. What a great topic, and an excuse to write a top ten list, which I have not done in a while:

Top 10 Mindful Practices for the Road

10. Mind the water. If you are in a place with plentiful, clean water, be grateful. If you are not, exercise caution. This means brushing teeth with bottled water, avoiding nicks while shaving (or just not shaving), keeping your mouth closed during a shower, not eating fresh fruits or veggies under any circumstances unless you peeled them yourself, not eating any food with fruits or veggies unless it has been cooked at a high temperature (e.g. soup) to kill parasites and bacteria, never drinking anything with ice in it, and never swimming in, washing in or drinking from even the safest looking local water source, including "clean" mountain streams. I once camped in Montana with some friends, and one of them drank from a mountain stream against our advice since she thought such fresh runoff from snowmelt just had to be pure. She was doubled up in her tent with cryptosyridium for several days after that.

9. Mind the food. Same rules apply, and in a place like this, eating any kind of meat is asking for it. Most shops that sell meat to restaurants display their wares by hanging the carcasses in the shop window (if they have a window, and most are street stalls that do not) where the meat is visited all day by flies. Refrigeration is an expensive luxury.

8. Mind the monkeys, cows, and dogs. Monkeys are fun to watch, but they can be dangerous. I spotted some langurs in the forest below Temple Road this morning. They'd robbed a vegetable stand and were eating the spoils. There are also big troops of macacques that sneak into town and cause all kinds of trouble. Even big cities have trouble, as you can see in this article about monkeys in Delhi. Cows and bulls are not a big deal unless they step on your foot or get ticked off and gore you. They seem to be very laid back if you don't harass them. Dogs in undeveloped countries are most often not pets the way we think of them, with collars and tags and shots. Instead they live in packs in the streets and can carry rabies and lots of other diseases. T

7. Mind the traffic. The biggest street menace is traffic. I've spent so much time walking around and almost getting run over (no sidewalks, streetlights, lane markers or stop signs here) that by now I can tell whether the vehicle behind me is a Bajaj motorscooter, an Enfield motorcycle, a Tata Sumo mini-SUV or a goverment jeep. The good thing is, drivers warn everybody they are coming by honking their horns-- a lot! I have learned to take honking very seriously. At night, I mind a driffferent kind of traffic--robbers. I stay in at night unless I am in a group. I have seen people being robbed in my travels to Spain, France, India and other places . Better safe than sorry.

6. Mind your manners. I find that a smile and a please or thank you makes every transaction more pleasant and makes people more willing to help out when they can. I am surprised at how many Western travelers are curt, impatient or rude. Maybe they are not feeling well because they had some tap water and tandoori chicken and then got stepped on by a cow after the monkeys robbed them, but an important concept to know about is "face". It is important to phrase things in a way that shows you recognize another person's dignity. If you seem to assume they are not smart, honest, well-intentioned or kind, or you make it impossible for them to show these attributes, you are insulting them. This is a tricky one, very subtle.

5. Mind your body language. Learn what offends. I have to know when to take off my shoes, when it is not okay for me to have bare arms, when I should not wear certain colors (e.g. black in a Jain temple), when I should not sit so my feet are pointing at someone, what to do if I step on someone's foot (appaently a big deal in India). I also have to be careful of the most simple gestures, e.g. giving a double thumbs up in Tibetan culture means "I apologize." Pointing at someone instead of gesturing with your chin is very rude in Indian culture.

4. Mind your physical health. This morning I had tea with fresh ginger root to calm my stomach. Today I will lay off the chili paste a little. I drink even when I am not thirsty in order to avoid dehydration since this is a relatively dry, high altitude environment. I wash my hands with Purell hand sanitizer a lot, especially after typing on keyboards like this one. I get 8 hours of sleep as often as I can. It is easier to interact with people when I am not preoccupied with my own discomfort, so maintenance is a must.

3. Mind you mental health. I try to keep track of when I have taken in a lot of new, shocking, or important information, and I give myself a mental rest afterwards. Since so much of travel is new, it can wear out your mind, and then your emotions get all goofy. I try to pace myself.

2. Mind you mission. Remember that your top job is just to learn, to smile, to endure, to adapt. It is important to remember that you can do all of these things without sticking to an exact timetable, routine or set of assumptions.

1. That being said, LET GO. Travel only changes you if you are open to change. I have come to believe that a place like India can be a heaven or a hell, depending on one's own perception of it, and indeed it is both, sometimes from moment to moment. Thinking that the world will adapt to you leads you to hell, while letting go of how you think it should be opens the door to heaven.

This turned out way more serious than I intended. Here's a little more lighthearted top ten:

Top Ten Fun Things About India

10. Riding in a cab is a way bigger adrenaline rush than any video game.
9. Dropped a banana peel? No worries, the next cow will eat it.
8. Monkey show! Every hour of the day!
7. Walking across a street in Delhi is a great free test of cardiac health.
6. Several hundred gods, no waiting.
5. Bollywood ringtones provide carnival atmoshpere.
4. Dinner for four? Five bucks.
3. Betting on how high the thermometer will go in Delhi (114 by the month of May).
2. No need to explain where you are from. Almost every person you meet has a cousin who lives there.
1. Maybe it's important, maybe it's not. The universe will be here an awful long time, and we'll all be reincarnated anyway, so relax!

Oh hail...

Just as I finished my last post, the power went out in the Internet shop. I paid my 35 rupees (75 cents) for an hour's Internet time and stepped out onto Bhagsu Road to notice two things: the power was out everywhere, and the air temperature had dropped from 65 degrees to about 35 degrees. The sky was dark, and it was only about 1:30pm. There was a sudden sense of urgency in this otherwise slow paced town. Everyone was in a hurry. Motorcycles and scooters raced by, threading through the hasty foot traffic. It seemed everyone was in a hurry to do something. Then I heard a woman shout "Bring in the clothes before it rains!" and I remembered I was in the mountains.

I flashed on camping trips in the Sangre de Christo mountains in New Mexico and the daily afternoon showers there. Once my dad and I were stuck in a tent in the Latir wilderness playing gin rummy for about six hours. I quickened my pace down Buddha Temple Road as thunder rippled across the sky over the Kangra Valley below, seemingly at eye level. A couple cracks of lightning made me glad I had only about a hundred yards to go when the sky opened up. The hard rain did not hit until I stepped into my hotel lobby, just in the nick of time.

By the time I was in my room and settled in to study Tibetan consonants it began to hail, in small pellets at first, then in big marble sized stones that cracked agaisnt my third floor window. I looked down onto the street and it was empty, and the vendors had covered their cauliflowers, daikon, oranges, apples and kale with tarps. They were prepared.

I am typing this from another "cybercafe" closer to my hotel. The rain is over, the sun is shining, and this shop is operating on noisy gasoline-generator power. Generators can be heard from about every fifth building or so (in front of businesses that can afford them), and so I guess power outages are a way of life here.

The Tibetans I have spoken to so far do not say they love it here in Dharamsala. For some it is certainly better than what they faced at home in terms of freedom of expression, but this hilltop town is an odd kind of limbo for them. Some get so homesick that they go back to Tibet even with the risk of imprisonment and certainty of poverty.

I spoke to a man yesterday who was standing on an outcropping on the back side of town, looking at the 17,000 foot mountains that dominate the northern and eastern skylines. He was holding his 18 month old son. He said he was from Chamdo, where the Mekong River begins as ice-melt, and he told me his name is Nyimon, which means "sun", joking that he has his very own day, Sunday. I asked him his son's name and he said "Tenzin, after the Dalai Lama." I asked him why. He told me he escaped from Tibet in 1991 and came to Dharamsala where, like most escapees, he was greeted by the Dalai Lama. For a couple years Nyimon took a four hour bus ride every day to a free English class provided by the Tibetan goverment-in-exile. He hoped learning English would give him a chance at prosperity. He said it has not so far. He is stuck in Dharamsala without a passport, without official status, without job prospects (since most Indians do not want foreigners taking theirs), and without his extended family. "But I named my son after Tenzin Gyatso, the Dalai Lama, because at least he gives us a chance."

I asked Rinchen whether she is happy here, and she said that yes, sometimes she is, but on some days she is terribly homesick for Dege. She talks about Dege as if it were the most beautiful place on earth. The Yangtze River starts there, the mountains are beautiful and the valleys are green with farms and pastureland, she says. Her cousin Tashi Dolma told me I must come see it and stay with her after she returns there in a few months.

Rinchen divides her time between cooking in a restaurant and studying English, which she does fanatically, carrying a notebook with her everywhere.
In it are lists of words she has written down to increase her vocabulary, words like alert, loyal, association, requirement....and homesick.

ca kha ka nga...

Those are the first sounds of the Tibetan alphabet, and they are part of my homework. I'll explain in a moment.

First, I want to answer Candy Kroupa's question about Valentine's Day, which she posted to the comments section of this blog. I don't know what the coverage has been like in the rest of the world, but BBC South Asia reported last night on troop callups and police barricades in cities across India to safeguard the public from occasional Valentine's Day violence....yes, violence. To many Hindus (80% of India) and Muslims (12%), the commerical aspects of Valentine's Day represent the worst in Western culture. They seem to see it as silly at best, and at worst an affront to modesty, traditional values (which include arranged marriages) and religious attitudes. On one hand, love is celebrated in India, but not the way it is in the US. Sexuality is different here too. While Bollywood films feature sexy stars who sometimes dance in provocative ways, only recently were they allowed to kiss on screen. Publc displays of affection are almost non-existent here, and on some bus and train lines there are "ladies only" cars. Sexuality and romantic love are intensely private, and it seems that to show them publicly is viewed as a way of cheapening them. Like all things in India, however, there is an interesting duality to this. The hip middle class, especially the young, seem ready to embrace the fun aspects of Valentine's Day, and so there is a lot of talk about it and some exchanging of flowers and candy, etc. This has caused a backlash among more conservative elements, which has erupted into street violence at times. Shops selling Valentine's cards can be burned, people holding hands or giving flowers can be chased down and flogged with bamboo canes.

These incidents do not seem to be the norm, but they do occur. Not here on the side of the mountain, though. Last night was pretty quiet except for the power outage, which inexplicably darkened Upper Dharamsala for about a half hour. Lucky for me I was "home" and eady to sleep anyway.

This morning I went next door for a boiled egg, toast and tea at the Tenyang coffee house, where I met the owner, Chompel, a Tibetan man who rides a very cool looking Royal Enfield 535 motorcycle with handmade leather split saddle seats and lots of chrome. We talked cycles for a little while, and then I delivered Rinchen's big bag of fruit to the family of beggars up the road. The little girl said "Please, sir!" and I just handed her the huge bag of food, said "Namaste" and walked on. Behind me I could hear the fruit being divided up among the hungry kids and adults.

It is 1:11pm and I just came from Rinchen Tsomo's apartment, which is a room a little smaller than my office at school. That's it. It is her kitchen, bedroom and living room. Two small beds are the only furniture, and they are separated by a coffee table. All food is cooked on two bottled-gas burners. Most of the time, Ngawang is at boarding school further up the mountain at the Tibetan Children's Village, but as I mentioned before she is on holiday.

When I arived there were two Tibetan monks there, along with Rinchen's cousin Tashi Dolma, a forty year-old woman. Little Ngawang was watching music videos on a tiny TV. I was offered black tea and khapse (a long pastry like a homemade donut rope), and we chatted for a while until the monks had to go. Then I gave Ngawang a "Dora the Explorer" coloring book, some crayons, a little purse and a bracelet that Mrs. Hays wanted her to have. I gave Rinchen an REI fleece jacket. Ngawang as especially excited and she set about coloring like mad. Rinchen and Tashi and I chatted for quite a while, and I was impressed with their English, which is pretty broken but understandable nonetheless. They work very hard at learning new vocabulary.

Before I knew it, they had decided I must learn Tibetan, and so Tashi Dolma pulled out the kind of lined paper one uses to write the alphabet in first grade. She wrote the Tibetan alphabet on it and made me start reciting: ca kha ka nga nka cha jya nyah, and so on. Suddenly I was in school, and Tashi made me recite over and over for a half hour, but then she let me return the favor by quizzing her in English conversation. It was pretty fun and we shared a lot of laughs. Rinchen wants me to learn the alphabet by tomorow so she can start teaching me words and how to write the letters.

As lunch time rolled around, Tashi Dolma offered to cook. She made us a homemade tenthuk (Tibetan veg-noodle soup) from absolute scratch, and it was delicious, especially with the big globs of Chinese chili paste she dropped into mine. We sipped more black tea and Ngawang read to me from her English primer. She reads like an eight or nine year-old. I was really impressed. I was sent away with homework, but I was also told I would be learning how to make several Tibetan dishes in the next few days, so I hope Mrs. Hays is ready for momos, tenthuk, Tibetan bread and Tibetan chowmein when I get home. I promised to take everyone out to dinner tonight for one last good meal before I start cooking. What a geat day this has been.

My next job today is to call the YMCA in Delhi to try to get a room for my return there before I fly home. Delhi will be in the upper 80's by then, and in a few more weeks temps will approach 100 degrees. I am not looking forward to the hot dirty air of Delhi next week, so I am savoring every cool mountain day here in Dharamsala. If I have time this afternoon, I will also visit the Environmental Education Centre to gather info for all you Green Seniors. Rinchen has also promised to let me interview her about her direct experience with the Tibetan ethnic stuggle against Chinese policies. Tashi Dolma is just visiting from Dege Tibet and in a couple months she will sneak back across the border to return home after visiting Rinchen. Her son is a monk in a gompa (monastery) in Tibet, so I hope to ask her more about his experience with the Chinese goverment's controls on religious expression.

Yesterday there was a local demonstration against Google for its agreement to work with the Chinese government to censor Internet content in China. Their signs read "Google=gulag" and "Google rejects truth". I am using the Firefox web browser at this moment for simlar reasons. Tibetans feel that Microsoft has been too cooperative with the Chinese government as well.

I look forward to my cooking lessons tomorrow, but I dread my Tibetan language quiz. Some of the sounds I have to pronounce are new to my mouth, and they take great concentation to remember and reproduce. I'd better go study...

mushy keyboard

I am two flights up a rickety staircase in a concrete buildng across the street from the Dalai Lama's residence at 7pm in the evening. It is 7:30am and you are just beginning the day that I am finishing. If this email is filled with even more typos than my previous ones it's becaue the keyboard I am using should have been retired a long time ago. the keys are vey mushy, barely regstering unless I hammer them. One flouresctent bulb buzzes overhead and a small rado is playing Bollywood showtunes. Four tibetan mnks are workng at their own computers beside me, each one using Yahoo mail or IM-ng. Dogs bark at the waning traffic, the last few motorcycles roarng up over the crest of the hill beofre the town goes all dark. A large family of beggars is camped out up the street, cookgn chapatis on an open fire at the edge of the road. Each time I walk past them, a lttle girl about four eyars old, her hair matted, feet black and clothing worn through, shouts to me "Hello sir! Rupees? Eat?" There are also about a half dozen lepers who curl up under their blankets and sleep at the edge of the street each night. A large black cow and i crossed paths several times tday, especally near the veg market. The local dogs almost killed one of their own in a dramatic street brawl that was broken up by a lttle old Tibetan woman...

Lunch was steamed momos and tenthuk, which is Tibetan dumplngs and veg noodle soup, best eaten with chili paste. also had an apple lassi, a yogurt drnk to help cool the effects of the chili paste. caught up with Rinchen Tsomo and her daughter at the veg market jsut before sundown, adn they seem happy and healthy. Little Ngawang, five years old, was eating a slice of watermelon and spttng the seeds everywhere, including on me and RInchen, in between attempts to show off her English. She is on holiday for several weeks for Losar, Tbetan New Year.

I walked with them a little while and then we agreed to meet in the morning. Rcnchen was at the market to buy me fruit as a welcomng gesture. I do not know what I wll do with a huge bag of pomegranates, oranges, bananas, a mango and a pneapple, but if you were thking about that family of beggars, I am way ahead of you...

This keybard s driving me crazy, so will go find some supper adn turn in.

8000 feet up

Hello all.

Sorry about the typos in the last post. I was in a big hurry to get out of Delhi and get on the road to Dharamsala.

Yesterday was a pretty crazy day. After six hours of sleep, I packed back up and caught a taxi to the domestic airport to see if there was any chance I could fly to Himachal Padesh. I figured it was worth a chance, since overland travel of any kind is so uncomfortable. No dice. A competing small airline was on strike and so the little private air carrier Jagson Airlines, the only one that flies to Kangra Airport in Himachal Pradesh, was booked solid with a waiting list of people trying to get north.

After waiting a almost an hour for a taxi, I finally landed one and sat through an hour of Delhi trafic to get to New Delhi train station, where I hoped to get a train to Pathonkot. The station was nuts, and a really nice guy directed me to a travel office in Connaught Place, the center of Delhi, where I could get a train ticket. A quick fifty cent ride in a 3-wheel autorickshaw brought me to the office, where a kind and well informed government agent explained to me why it was impossible to get a train ticket due to troop movements and religious pilgrims clogging up the Jammu mail express for the next week solid. At that point I was feeling like I'd made some big mistakes in my planning and maybe I had come all this way only to get stuck in Delhi without ever seeing Rinchen Tsomo and Dharamala again.

The agent informed me that it was possible to hire a taxi all the way to Dharamsala, and that he could have me there that evening. Well, that sounded pretty good. Just after I finished my last post, I was introduced to Ravikumar. We climbed into his little Maruti sedan and filled up at the gas station for the long ride ahead. We departed at 11am.

Ravikumar negotiated the clogged, debris-strewn streets of Delhi (a city area of 12 million inhabitants, all of whom are crossing the street in the middle of traffic every few minutes) like a pro. Just as we reached the outskirts of Delhi, we blew a tire, so we spent a half hour at a dhaba/service station, which gave me a chance to buy us a couple of cold Limcas and a cream-cheese tomato sandwich (it is so easy to be a vegetarian in India), my first food of the day.


Back on the road, we weaved north through traffic that was a mix of army tucks, oxcarts, three-wheelers, donkey carts, diesel heavy trucks, herds of cows and sheep, bicyclists, camel carts, wild dogs, goats and even one cart pulled by an elephant...all of this on the main highway! We spent a third of the time playing chicken with oncoming traffic in the other lane, and another third of the time on road surfaces so rough that at one point the radio fell out of the dashboard. All along the road in Haryana were farms and brick kilns belching black smoke into the already very hazy air.

As we crossed into Punjab the air cooled a little from the mid-eightees of Delhi and Haryana, and the road side was often lined with groves of what looked like sycamores, beehives, honey stands, and great stacks of brilliantly colored oranges. We stopped for a lunch break at around 3pm in a dhaba (open-air roadside restaurant, kind of like a Mexican palapa) for daal makhani and roti bread right out of the tandoor, brushed with ghee. We ate with our hands, pinching little slices of fresh sliced onion with our roti before using it to scoop up the spicy daal. We drank bottled water with our meal, and we felt a lot better after having eaten something. The water helped dilute the thick layer of road dust and exhaust fumes in my throat.

At five-thirty in the afternoon we saw out first hill in an otherwise flat trajectory so far. I was so glad to see hills, but before long the novelty would wear off in a big way. As it got dark, we climbed through the little villages of Himachal Pradesh, where the rivers run colder and bluer than the still, green water of the plains. Driving in the dark made things even more exciting (euphemism) since now we had to miss pedestrians, animals, and vehicles that for whatever reason had no lights whatsoever. The deeper we got into Himachal, the more winding the road was, climbing constantly toward the Himalayas.

We stopped for chai in another dhaba around 8:30pm, both of us getting road-weary. We finally threaded our way up a one-lane road whose edges dropped into black nothingness until we reached McLeodganj, Upper Dharamsala at just before 11pm. We checked in, I tipped Ravikumar and thanked him for all of his hard work driving all day, something I could not have done to the end, even though I love long car trips, then I rolled out my sleepsack, put in my earplugs to block the barking of the wild dogs, and drifted off...

I write this to you from a small Internet shop in Upper Dharamsala. I awoke at 6:30 am but let myself lie around reading and looking out the widow at the Kangra valley adn the Tsulag Khang, the Dalai Lama's residence and temple, until 8am, when I got dressed and walked up the road a way to the Tenyang coffee house. I ate a boiled egg, two slices of brown bread and chai for a dollar. Some Tibetan monks and nuns ate at the tables around me, along with a couple of French women who were debating the pan-Arab movement. It was odd to use my French in such a remote corner of India, but I guess Dharamsala attracts a rather eclectic bunch of tourists...

After breakfast I watched some monkeys try to steal fruit from a stand along the road, then I went to a Tibetan travel agent to hire a ride back to Delhi which, as I expected, will cost half as much as the ride here. Since I will be hauling an extra bag filled with thangkas and prayer wheels and things to raise money for Inside Dharma back home, I do not want to mess with a bus, train, or tiny airplane, even if I could get a ticket for any of them...

I changed some dollars for rupees at the bank this morning, re-learning a cultural lesson that was hard to get used to at first when I came to Inda in 2004. The idea of lining up and taking turns is not a universal practice, and so I participated in a minor mob scene at the teller's window for about a half hour just to change my money. No violence, no hard feelings, just no discernable order to things...

And so here I am at the Internet shop, a tiny storefront with about a dozen outdated computers hooked up by modem. I have been here an hour, so I will pay my Rps 60 now and give up my spot to go fnd some thugkpa and veg momos for lunch.

I am looking forward to meeting up with Rinchen and her daughter this evening.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Arrival

Fourteen hours in an airplane is a little longer than anyone should ever spend confined in a small space, but it was not as awful as I feared. I must type quickly because my ride will leave soon.

I stayed last night in a small hotel by the airport, and then this morning I have been all over Delhi trying to get a ride to Dharamsala. The airline schedule was wrong on the Internet, and it's booked all week anyway. The train to Pathankot is full, book solid with soldiers moving back and forth to and from Kashmir, and with religious pilgrims visiting Vishnu Devi. So I am in the gov't. tourist office hiring a driver to take me to Dharamsala, which, though more expensive than the train, will get me there tonight and probably with less hassle.

I am waiting for my driver. I've been chatting with Shabir, whose uncle lives in Eureka, California. Shabir wanted to ask me about Area 51 and UFO's, and we got to talking about e-mail, spam, California, music, Kashmir, and lots of other things over a cup of masala chai. While Delhi has been confusing, crowded, noisy, and crazy, I have already encountered several very kind people who have helped me in important ways.


Sixth graders: I have already seen three cows, lots of feral dogs, parakeets and peacocks.

Eighth graders: I have been asked by every taxi driver so far whether I am married and whether I have children. Family is a huge topic of conversation here.

Seniors: My pal Shabir knows about skype.com and lots of other tech stuff that seems to contrast with the less developed conditions on the street here...



My driver is here...I have to go. More later...

Departure

Fenruary 11, 2006

First of all, thank you to the good friends who met me and Mrs. Hays for a little birthday/goodbye yesterday evening. You guys are great.

I am about to head to Lambert Airport to catch the flight to Chicago that forms the first leg of my journey. At 7:30pm this evening I will board a very large plane for a very long flight from Chicago to Delhi, India. I will arrive at 9:35pm Sunday evening, India time. After one night in Delhi, I plan to take an overnight train Monday night to Pathankot, arriving there at 7:30am on Valentine's Day. Once there, I will track down a ride up to Dharmasala, which will take about 4 hours by jeep, a little over 5 hours if I take a local bus.

Yesterday I read about two separate bus incidents in Jammu and Uttar Pradesh. In each case, buses plunged off mountain roads into river gorges, killing many occupants, not an uncommon occurence in India. India has the third largest road system in the world, but just under half of it is paved, and less than 10% of it meets international road construction standards. I am going to try hard to find a jeep and driver to take me from Pathankot to Dharamsala.

Today Mrs. Hays and I bought a maroon fleece jacket for Rinchen Tsomo, and yesterday we bought a big coloring book and some fancy crayons for Ngawang. Mrs. Hays also gave me a bracelet she wants Ngawang to have. I cannot wait to see our friends again. It has been two years since I first met them, and I look forward to seeing how they are doing and whether we can do anything more to help out. For those of you who have been discussing Tibet in class, another good resource in the U.S. is Tibet House. If you are interested in knowing why my friend Rinchen Tsomo took so many risks to leave Tibet, check out the film Cry of the Snow Lion

My next post should come to you from India. Bye for now, and thank you for all the wishes of good luck and a safe journey from everyone on Friday at school. I really appreciate your kind words.