Breaking up the band

We lost a member of our entourage today.  The official diagnosis was ’starting a new job next week in New York’.  I met Eric at the Tushita course and we’ve traveled off and on together since then.  On his last day today we hiked up to a great waterfall here in Rishikesh where you stand under the waterfall and try your best to not get knocked over because the water is rushing down so fast. 

Eric checking out a new place to stay

It is intense and a hell of a lot of fun.  I felt like I was 6.  I arrived in Rishikesh a couple of days ago.  I had planned to stay in Amritsar another day but felt like I had seen all there was to see there.  Outside the Golden Temple, the city of Amritsar is just a convoluted mashup of mules, horses, cows, exhaust fumes and car horns.

There are fireworks going off outside the internet cafe I’m at.  Today is Diwali here in India which is their biggest holiday of the year.  But surprisingly there wasn’t any special thing going on, at least during the day.  All the stores were open and nothing seemed different.  My friend Jeff told me a couple of days ago that everyone goes into the Ganges to bathe and cleanse away their sins.  So we had been planning to wake up super early and get into the freezing Ganges and do the same.  I woke up this morning and there was no one at the river.  So I went back to bed.  No way I’m going in that water if no one else is.  Actually you’ll see a sadhu or a yogi, people that have given up all material aims and possessions to live a very simple life, going into the river to wash and offer food to the fish, usually chunks of bread.   And across the river from my hotel is a public ghat where you’ll see families strolling down each morning to do their daily morning rituals in the river.

I am liking Rishikesh and could see myself coming back and staying here a while longer.  It’s the home of many ashrams, where people come to study yoga and other things like meditation and Reiki and countless other things.  While I’m here I’m trying different yoga teachers and types of yoga and I think I’m finally understanding what all the types are.  There’s basically two: hatha and ashtanga.  Hatha is the kind where you hold the pose for a while, and ashtanga is where you flow from one to the other.  All the other types of yoga are different ways of doing either hatha and ashtanga.  I think.  I’ve tried a couple but haven’t really liked either teacher’s style.  Am I becoming a yoga snob?

One of the few must see tourist attractions here is the Maharishi ashram where the Beatles stayed back in the day. 

Climbing into the eggshells to do some chanting

It was closed in the late 80’s and hasn’t been opened since due to a government dispute on the land.  During that time mother nature has completely taken over.  In some parts you have to push aside huge tree branches to step inside a room.  One of the coolest things they have there are these eggshell meditation rooms.  They are acoustically architected so that when you’re inside chanting your voice echoes over and over and you feel the vibrations all around you. 

I’m planning to leave to Nepal in a couple of days to start hiking before the weather turns too cold.  Then I may potentially return here.  Or not.  It’s a typical dinner conversation.  “So where are you going next?”  “Oh I don’t know.  I’m thinking about heading south or staying around here a bit longer.”  And then someone pulls out their Rough Guide or Lonely Planet and we pore over the options.  There is no alcohol AT ALL over here so we spend our evenings having 3 hour dinners, staying till 10 or 11, whenever the restaurant closes.  I’m used to closing down bars. But this whole closing down restaurants thing is kinda new to me.

Back in India

Sort of. After being in McLeod Ganj for two weeks I kind of forgot that I was in India since it’s pretty much Tibetans everywhere around there. Then today, I along with my Mexican friend Cesar (aka Pablo or Diego or Manuel) and my Israeli friend Itai (aka Pad Thai or Kobe Tai) woke up at 3 a.m. to catch a 4 a.m. bus to Dharamsala from where we were going to take a 5 a.m. bus to Amritsar. It was all really tightly coordinated.

At the India-Pakistan border ceremony

And as is the norm in India, the 4 a.m. bus hadn’t shown up by 4:30 so we cabbed it to Dharamsala instead so we wouldn’t miss our next bus. The highlight of the bus ride was stopping for 15 minutes in Pathankot where I bought some awesome potato samosas for breakfast. I kinda missed having Indian food all around all the time as McLeod Ganj was mostly Tibetan cuisine and the Indian food was okay. And unlike the norm in India, we actually arrived in Amritsar two hours ahead of schedule! I believe this was the first time since 1982 that this has happened here.

The main attraction in Amritsar is the Golden Temple, the Sikh’s holiest temple. Sikhism was founded in the 15th century by Guru Nanak who was protesting the caste system and the oppression of the Muslim rulers. I learned most of this because some guy stopped me in the street and began reading, in English, from this Intro to Sikhism pamphlet. I don’t believe he knew what any of the words meant; he just knew how the letters sounded. His friends gathered around us were cracking up and I found it humorous when he began reading until he tuned the page and just continued. There was at least 50 pages in this thing and I fortunately managed to cut him off after the first page or else I’d probably still be there.

Lunch at the Golden Temple

The whole time we were in Amritsar was like this. People were fascinated by three white tourists and were constantly asking to be in our pictures, and then crowding around to look at the pictures we just took, and then asking ‘Excuse me sir, what is your good name?’ and ‘Where are you from?’ and answering these questions 100’s of times. I kind of felt like the hot chic at a bar getting all the attention. It’s great and flattering at first but it gets kinda old after a while.

The Sikhs are some of the kindest people I’ve ever met. And not just nice-because-they’re-not-rude, but outwardly showing their kindness. While we were in the temple we noticed that some people were getting these orange colored packets, about the size of a phat stack of dollar bills.

We asked this guy what they were all about and he explained that there were sweets inside and that the orange wrapping was a turban. He then offered each of us one of these packets as his family had accumulated several of them. Cesar and I each took one, thanked the man and then left the temple. We decided to rest for a while and bought some ice-cold Cokes in a bottle, just like they had in the U.S. back in the day and they cost just 5 Rupees, which is around 10 cents. As we’re sitting drinking our Cokes a small crowd started gathering around us as they were taking an interest in the orange turbans we had folded in our laps.

Getting my Sikh on

Then this young girl approaches us and tells us she wants to help us put the turbans on. Before you know it she’s tying Cesar’s around his head while two men have come over and are wrapping mine around me. And there was a crowd of at least 20 people standing around watching us, laughing and taking it all in. I never realized how Sikh I could look but it’s a bit scary.

The temple grounds are massive and there were at least a couple of thousand Sikhs there on a weekday. In the temple itself three men were playing music, two on a tabled accordion and one on drums and the music goes on all the time, playing through Bose speakers (nice touch) all over the temple grounds. Around the temple is a big pool of water where you’ll find men stripping down to their underwear to bathe, but never taking their turban off. To enter the temple grounds you have to wear a turban, even the tourists, and they’re very strict about no shoes to the point that you can’t even carry them or have them in your bag. And the place is immaculately clean.

A Sikh guard at the temple

There were people on hands and knees cleaning the whole time we were there. I’ve never seen anything like it before. And a couple of the highlights of the Golden Temple are that they not only have free accomodation (we got a 3 person room to ourselves) but also offer free food 24 hours a day. I’ve heard they feed 30,000 people a day. Of course you can make a donation but in addition to that we pitched in with some kitchen volunteering. After we ate we joined the assembly dish washing line where I put in my dishwashing experience from my 10 days at Tushita. It’s a quiet activity and no one talks as you’re supposed to be serving your fellow man.

Golden Temple

But one young guy across from me couldn’t help himself and started whispering across the sink, asking me where I was from etc. After a couple of minutes he just walked over next to me and we had a full on conversation. He’s 20 and wants to go get his degree in Melbourne, Australia. He was very concerned how people would judge him because of his turban and his broken English, asking if people on the plane would be okay with him flying with them.

I guess that’s where we’ve come to in this world. I did my best to assure him that he would absolutely fine and that his English was more than enough to get by. He also told me that he doesn’t watch American movies because they have crime and sex. He then clarified by saying that he doesn’t watch them when his parents are home, only when he’s home alone. That’s my kind of guy.

I hate to admit this but my preconceived impression of the Sikhs was that they were a very serious lot, as the turban has this way of making the men seem like they’re scowling at you. And their past political stories especially in the 80’s clouded my judgment too and I found myself being apprehensive when telling people I was from the U.S., like I wasn’t sure what there reaction would be. Surprisingly they were really interested and wanted to talk even more.

Bathing in the Golden Temple

And the whole experience with the dishwasher guy and the crowd circling us for the impromptu turban wrapping ceremony got me thinking that maybe I can do my part to change some people’s perception of Americans and help them realize that we’re really not so different from each other. And that underneath all the political, religious and social differences all we really want is to laugh and be happy. And wear orange turbans.

“You can all talk now.”

And after ten days of silence no one really knew what to say.  We just kind of looked at each other and laughed.  Then ten minutes later at breakfast everyone was trading stories of their own experience with the silence, the meditation and the teachings.  I really enjoyed the silence, even if it made for very awkwardly quiet dinners where people sit across from each other but no one says anything.  The only sounds are the clanking of forks and knives on plates.  A few of us did break the silence a bit early as we had an impromptu late night hangout session in the dining room.  It felt like Christmas Eve where you know you’re going to open the gifts in a few hours so why not just start now.  It was especially neat because we hadn’t had power in a couple of days so we were just hanging out by candlelight, and then someone snuck into the kitchen and started bringing out dinner rolls and Tibetan peanut butter (which is soooo good).  I actually hope no one from Tushita reads this or any prospective students.  Don’t get any ideas.  Respect the silence.

Tushita class

Every morning it was one guy’s duty to walk around and bang a gong at 6 a.m. which would be our wake up call.  First meditation would be at 6:45.  My job was washing the breakfast dishes along with three other people and at first I was not psyched at all about this as I hate washing dishes.  Then I heard that some people had toilet duty and I was super psyched about my job.

After breakfast we’d have our first of two classes of the day where Janpa Dekyi, a Buddhist nun, would teach us about simple everyday topics like karma and reincarnation.  We’d break out into discussion groups for an hour each afternoon where we were allowed to talk to each other!!  I can’t tell you how much I looked forward to this hour. I think we all did.

Tushita itself is a cozy place tucked into a mountainside, away from everything except loads of monkeys who spend all their time swinging through the trees and trying to cause as much havoc as possible.

Trying to fit in with some of my finely bearded classmates

I left my window open one day and when I came back they had stolen my toilet paper and rolled it down the hill.  Someone else had their towel stolen and we saw a monkey rolling around in it, covering himself from head to toe.  And one day as I was washing my 1,543rd dish, I turned around and saw a monkey had snuck in the kitchen taking a banana and a roll of bread out of the trash.

We were about 40 of us total with people from everywhere: Israel (half the class), Portugal, Holland, Slovenia, Mexico, USA, Germany, Austria, Belgium among other places. And now everywhere I walk here in McLeod Ganj I run into someone from class.  It’s actually making it kind of hard to leave.  I plan to go to Rishikesh next, I’m just not sure when.  There’s a lot to do here in MacG (as I call it).  I went on a day long hike up to a place called Triund yesterday.  It started with me and a classmate of mine, Ori.

Chilling on Triund with my dawgs

Then along the way a couple of dogs joined us, one in front and one in back, just to stand guard.  And as we kept walking, more dogs joined our troupe till we had 8 dogs!!  It was so cool.  They would walk when we walked and stop and rest when we did.  And when we got to the top 4 hours later they were so completely beat that I had to put the bowl of water I was giving them right up to their mouths since they didn’t want to move an inch.  And then I took a well-deserved one hour nap myself.

I stuck around MacG today and for the first time in my life I fell asleep in a yoga class.  The guy’s voice was so drawn out and deep (“Inhaaaale and relaaaaxxxxxx…”) and one exercise had us lying on our back’s with our eyes closed and that’s when I dozed off.  It felt great.  Oh yeah, and it was $4 for 2 hours.  Stuff is so cheap here.  You can get by on less than $15 a day and sleep and eat really well.

In the afternoon I went to teach English at a Tibetan volunteer center called Lah. 

Hanging with Tashi and Tenzin after English lessons

It’s a big room where you walk in and speak with one of the students, mostly all Tibetans, monks, locals, teenagers who all want to practice their English.  I met this guy Tenzin, 19, who is a football (soccer) fanatic and told me about all the football jerseys he owns of Manchester United and Chelsea.  His dream is to become a professional football player.

I spent most of the time asking him to explain this board game Carrom that is all the craze with the locals.  And I think I finally understand it.  It’s basically like pool except no balls or pool sticks.  Just checkers on a board and you flick them around with your fingers.  Now I really want to get a game in.

Greetings from Tibet…sort of

I’m up in the Indian Himalayas in a village called McLeod Ganj, the northern part of the bigger town Dharmasala.  McLeod Ganj is a pretty sizeable Tibetan settlement.  After China invaded Tibet, the Indian government granted access to this area to all the Tibetan refugees and they’ve been here ever since.  Some say the Indian government did that out of guilt for not stepping in and trying to stop China’s invasion.  McLeod Ganj is also where the Dalai Lama has called home since the early 1960’s.  He was just in town this past week, speaking every night.  I wanted to see him at least once but my schedule wouldn’t allow it, and as it turns out it was probably better.  A local was telling me the town was swarming with people and all the hotels were booked up way in advance.  Interestingly most of the visitors were Taiwanese and from other neighboring countries.

McLeod Ganj

Hardly anyone from Europe of the U.S. as I would have expected.  And definitely not Richard Gere who I recently learned is BANNED from entering India ever again.  This is all because he kissed a woman in public during a speech they were both giving.  And he’s also banned from going to China.  That wipes out quite a bit of landmass that he’ll never get to go to again in this lifetime.  I’m feeling pretty good about myself right about now as should most of you reading this.

I can actually see the Dalai Lama’s home from my hotel.  It’s not more than a ten minute walk.  We’re practically neighbors.  I may go over there and ask to borrow some sugar.  “Lend me some sugar, I am your neighbor.”  I like to quote Outkast whenever possible when speaking to distinguished people.  And his response will probably be something deep like:

“Emile, look within yourself and you’ll find enough sugar to sweeten the whole world.”

And I’ll walk away in a daze, not sure how to do what he just said, but feeling enlightened anyway, and still without any sugar.

And he probably wouldn’t call me Emile either.  He’d probably call me Emily as the hotel clerk in Delhi did when checking me in.  Looking at my passport he says, “Excuse me sir, but Emily is a lady’s name, no?”  Thanks man.

The Vijaya Stupa

The bus ride from Delhi was an adventure in itself, better than anything Six Flags has ever put up.  We waited for an hour in 95 degree, sticky Delhi heat just to board the bus.  And of course there isn’t any A/C on the bus.  Luckily they have little fans mounted next to every other seat.  Unluckily, none of them worked.  I don’t even get surprised by things like that anymore.  I just start to be thankful when something goes as I hoped it would.  Things cooled off once we started moving and we got a breeze playing through the bus.  The ride itself took over 14 hours and it was nearly impossible to sleep as the bus had zero suspension and you could feel every, single pebble we drove over.  And when we drove over one of the big potholes I would be lifted two inches off the seat before I came crashing down again.  I can’t wait for the bus ride back to Delhi.

(a monk just sat down behind me; I’m curious as to what he’s doing online…just looked, it’s a whole bunch of Tibetan text.  I hate to be that tourist but this is all still a novelty to me).

Tomorrow I’m beginning a 10 day meditation course here, which is the whole reason I risked my life on that bus ride last night.  It’s at a place called the Tushita Meditation Center.  The course is an intro to Buddhism and meditation which are two things I’ve been drawn to this year.  And for the entire course, students are required to keep silent.  Not a word.  For 10 days.  I’m pretty excited and a bit nervous because my legs fall asleep within minutes of sitting and here we’re going to be sitting for hours at a time.  Ouch.

I was sitting on a bench near the big temple in town this afternoon, and this local guy Tinzen and his dad sat down next to me.

Prayer wheels...spin them for good fortune!

Tinzen and I chatted for a while and I learned he’s 30 (claims he’s really old) and single (claims it’s because all the tourist women leave after a few days) and really misses homeland Tibet.  He was born there and moved over here in 1999 because it was just getting too tough to live there.  And now he works at a non-profit where he is promoting awareness of the Tibetan cause.  The whole time we were talking, his dad was lost in his own thoughts mumbling some mantras or prayers, all the while running his prayer beads through his hands.  As we got up to leave, Tinzen told me we should meet for tea after my 10 day course is over.  I said great, how can I find you?  He laughed and said “This place is very small.  This is not New York!” Then we went our own ways.

And I ran into him 20 minutes later.

In Delhi

After a couple of days walking around Bangalore I flew up to Delhi yesterday on SpiceJet airlines.  What a great name for an airlines.  Unfortunately there was nothing spicy about the flight, especially not the food or drinks which were not complimentary.  I did want to ask the stewardesses if they were technically known as the Spice Girls, but I got the sense they wouldn’t find the humor in that.

And what is up with Indian children and babies?  They cry and whine louder, longer and harder than any other babies I’ve ever seen.  On the flight to India last week and on this flight there were a couple that just didn’t stop the whole flight.  And the parents are just laughing, almost egging them on.  Come on people, you can do better than that.  Even the locals on the plane were getting irritated so it wasn’t just me.

Sort of coincidentally, I met up with my friend Anton yesterday here in Delhi.  I met Anton on the Camino earlier this year and he’s traveling on his way to Nepal now.  I sent him an email the other day from Bangalore telling him I was going to be in Delhi and not only was he there, but his hotel was next door to mine!  We walked around Delhi for a while and then continued on our mission since my birthday on the Camino: to find a place, any place where we can smoke a hookah.  We’ve had no luck.  But finally last night we found a place: Mocha.  It’s a middle-Eastern restaurant in some way far away neighborhood here called The Defence Colony.  But, as luck would have it, three days ago they passed a no-smoking ban all across India.  And so no more hookah either.  Which now makes it two places that I’ve been in when they passed the no smoking law, the first being back in 1998 in California, the one that started it all.

It was really cool seeing Anton, seeing someone I walked with a lot on the Camino.  He’s also on a one way ticket out here, kind of playing it by ear as he travels.   He left for Varanasi this morning and we plan on meeting up in Nepal in early November and hiking the Annapurna circuit.  This is the same circuit Kevin is going to do next week.  And in attempt to boost his blog’s Google Page Rank I will link you to his blog which is definitely worth a read, especially the list of things he learned on the Camino.  http://kwiggen.wordpress.com/

I’ll try and post pics once I find a computer with a usb connection.  I didn’t know they made computers anymore that didn’t have them.  Actually mine does seem to have it but they’ve covered it with tape which probably means it’s not a good idea to try and use it.  That’s what any good engineer would advise.

Act Now!

I’m not sure I have too much to say about this.  This was from a store in a mall here in Bangalore.