India Part 2

let’s resume the narrative from McCleod Gange. Mike and I spent two more days in peaceful Little Tibet, hiking amongst red robbed monks, dinning at roof-top cafes, and watching heart warming pseudo-propaganda Tibetan films with our new Tibetan and American friends. There were no rickshaw drivers yelling at us, no haggling in shops and abundant personal space. it was as if we had wandered into some hasslefree alternate universe.; 4 days of travelers bliss- that is until the last night.

Tibetan Monks eating lunch under sun umbrellas

A hike to the the waterfall

Chess at the roof top cafe

Our McCleod Gange zen was disturbed the by a 59 year-old parkinsens afflicted American named Amram (wait to judge). Around 6 pm Amram shakily walked into the restaurant we were eating dinner at and, after I locked eyes with him, he asked Mike and I for assistance. We gladly obliged, spending 1 and a half hours helping him through dinner, Mike feeding him and I pulling his shoulders back so that he could breath. We were pepered with condescending remarks and a few insults but we continued because we didn’t have the heart to leave a 59 year old Parkinsons man alone to drown in his own soup. Eventually he was joined by 2 mormons who led him in prayer as we, thinking we had done a couple weeks worth of good deeds, made sure everything was ok and, or so we thought, said our goodbyes.

Mike trying to be more Ferrel than our k9 companion

I then went to watch a movie with our two American friends, Jenny and Carly, and a Tibetan friend whose name unfortunately I can’t remember, however, when I was heading home, I ran into Mike helping Amram zip up his pants in the middle of the street. Evidently Mike had been skyping his mom when Amram, using his unwieldy umbrella as his cane, hobbled his way over to Mike to ask for further assistance. Being the good Samaritan that Mike is, he dropped an important conversation with his mom to help out. Over the course of the next hour Mike helped Amram cross the street and unzip his pants so that he could pee in the ditch.  Despite the fact that Mike had had to endure seeing “old man bush” and had taken time out of his life make sure that Old Man Rivers didn’t kill himself while trembling down the stairs, Amram had the guile to berate Mike with insults and attack his character.

Either because we are suckers or because we are nice people, we spent the next 4 hours until 1am helping the old man. Because no one else would, we fed him his desert, making sure to hold his shoulders back so he could breath, and then hopped in a taxi (which we paid for) and walked him down a dark, poorly paved, obstacle strewn alleyway. The later part took well over an hour because Amram, for some reason unbeknownst to Mike or I, would only allow me to help him. Around 1:30 we got him to his house and had an intervention of sorts, telling him that it was unsafe for him to be in that situation and unfair for him to put others in our situation. He looked shocked but seemed to dismiss our suggestions and we eventually gave up and went home to catch a couple hours of restless sleep before our 5:45am bus.

The one good thing to come out of the Amram incident was that, while Mike was finishing his conversation with his mom, I got to meet a very nice American girl who was smitten with our kindness. We tried not to take too much credit, but it was damn hard to express our resentment in front of Amram and in front of a cute girl. Funny how things work out. 

Luckily Manali was fun enough that we quickly forgot all about Amram. The town was India’s response to Aspen; a clean(er), posh(er), and more comfortable environment than the big cities. We ate well, we slept really well, and we went paragliding. There was basically no snow, so in keeping with our Indian modus operandum, we adapted our plans and booked a paragliding session at the local ski resort. Like the town itself, the resort was an Indian version of Western resorts: It was named the Ropeway Cum Ski Center (we never did figure out what the word “Cum” means in India), and the sings warned against paragliding while “wearing bulky cloths, turbans, saris, neck ties, three piece suits, and long skirts.” The signs also said that all paragliders must have helmets, but obviously these were just for show because when I asked my instructor why my paper thing, non-padded, plastic helmet didn’t have a buckle he simply gave an Indian head bobble that implied I shouldn’t worry about it.

The Janky Helmet

The paragliding itself was exhilarating. Mom you may want to skip two paragraphs down. After a 6-7 meter sprint, Mike and his pilot made a textbook take off, the parachute inflating and sweeping the two of them effortlessly into the air. My takeoff was, shall we say, a bit more… exciting? We started roughly ten feet from a cliff and all that my instructors English could allow him to communicate was “run”. Before our take off I repeatedly asked him, “so what exactly do I do”, and his response was always “run” plus a head bobble. So, when we were strapped in and he gave the word, I started running as fast as I could, however, that evidently wasn’t fast enough and the pitch and frequency of his “run” increased rapidly as we got closer to the cliff. The  sail wasn’t inflating as quickly as it was supposed to, and his urgency/slight panic was palpable. As I began to seriously worry the shoot caught and, a step or two before the cliff, we took off. I personally blame the fact that we only had about 10 feet to get up to speed, but I will definitely hit the track before I go paragliding in India again. 

After we took off we had a 5-10 minute flight, depending on if you ask us or the pilots. A minute or two into the flight my instructor, in a sudden burst of English efficacy asked me if I, “want to do acrobatics.” Of course I said yes and we started rapidly spiraling down, and then spinning upward, the centrifugal force thrusting our bodies in the opposite direction of the parachute. It was fun. A couple minutes later we landed in the middle of a cricket field and, shortly after our parachutes were taken care of, the came recommenced.

We left Manali that night and arrived in Delhi the next morning. Randomly, I ran into a kid from my Berkeley Thesis class, but the highlight of our few hours in Delhi was us almost missing our train. Mike, after rereading the ticket at least 5 times to check the station, took us to the wrong station. After we realized our train wasn’t at Delhi Central, we went as fast as we could (the rickshaw driver didn’t understand that “fast” doesn’t mean “pull over and talk to every rickshaw driver you meet”) to the correct train station, but we arrived 3 minutes after our train was supposed to have left. Ignoring  the fact that the train was no longer listed on the board, I asked the security guard where our train was and he looked at us like we were idiots and pointed to the end of the station. After running around we found our train, located our compartment and hopped on no more than 15 seconds before the train started moving.

Mike getting into his Hindu side

We arrived in the holy city of Varanasi the morning of the 27^th where wee spent the day walking around the ghats, miles of steps leading into the sacred river Ganges, and taking care of our 3 travel necessities (food, sleep, and toilets).  The next morning we hired a 14 year old for a pre-dawn rowboat ride along the ghats to watch people perform Hindu rituals and put candles on lily leafs and float them down the river. 

After that we took a nice long nap before going to the Burning Ghats where Hindus preformed the sacred act of cremating their relatives on funeral pyres. With Varanasi city folk, we watched from a terrace above as families solemnly gathered around to send their loved ones off the next life. Before arriving neither nor Mike nor I were sure what to expect, or even if we should go, but visiting the Burning Ghats ended up being one of the more important and contemplative events of India. Of course as we were leaving the Ghats to catch our next train we were asked if we wanted a pony ride or hash.

SEX

Both of us with our new Indian hair-does

Our train ride from Varanasi to Hyderabad, a 28 hour journey that was necessary to get Mike to his flight home on Dec. 1st, involved almost as much luck as the Delhi-Varanasi near fiasco. Unfortunately, due to rules that we will never understand, being first on the waitlist for a train meant that a dozen or so people got their seats and we didn’t. Fortunately, we befriended a very, very nice–it is hard to understate how incredibly nice- guy named Pradeep. Pradeep and his buddies gave us food, one of their bunks and helped teach us how to bribe Indian rail officials (evidently a prerequisite for getting a waitlist seat). In typical India fashion, the trip turned from near debacle to a memory neither of us would forget.

We spent the ensuing day making friends and eating Indian munchies that our new friends wouldn’t let us decline. Pradeep and his buddies were super nice, but my favorite new friend had to be the overly excited 10 year old boy genius. We showed him ski movies (cultivating the youth), taught him the various forms of “pound its”, took apple photobooth pictures and taught him how to count to ten in German, Spanish, Norwegian and Canadian. (In case your confused, Candian goes “one ehh, two ehh, three ohh you betcha, four ehh, five keen, six ehh, etc.)

Once in Hyderabad, we spent the day getting  Mike an old fashioned shave -just for you Leslie- and eating really, really good Briyani. Mike went in just wanting a mustache, but the barber convinced him to go for the handlebar/flavor savor combo because a famous Thaliwood star rocks one and their evidently coming into style. I, meanwhile, enjoyed an orgasmic head massage for a mere 40 rupees while laughing at Mike. After eating Biryani (a type of saffron, cumin, chicken rice dish) at the city’s most famous restaurant, we went out to the Airport to say our heartfelt goodbyes before I caught a train to Hampi and left Mike to spend a McDonalds filled night at the airport before his flight home the next day.

I'll talk about this in more detail in the next post (hopefully coming sometime this week), but since splitting ways with Mike I went south to Hampi, a backpackers paradise in the midst surreal boulder landscape studded with massive 2,000 year old temples and palaces, and then went to Varkala, a laid back beach town, before going up to the pristine beaches and hippie paradise that is Gokarna. Those two weeks of traveling weren't quite the same as the previous month had been with Mike, but they were definitely fun. I'm now in the Kashmir, splitting time between the ski town of Gulmarg and canal city of Srinagar. I'm helping 3 Aussie girls set up a bar and I've been assigned the task of "mak(ing) contact with some of the village elders and rustl(ing) up a group of kids that you can give lessons to."I'm not sure how this will work out since there is no snow and none of the instructors have arrived, but it should be interesting.

It’s a month and a half into my India travels and I feel like I can finally start wrap my head around what I’ve seen. Despite the fact that these posts consist of a series of individual stories, India can best be comprehended as a flavor rather than a set of individual ingredients. Like a good paneer butter masala, neither the zesty sauce, lightly seared and perfectly seasoned paneer, nor the butter garlic naan can be considered representative of the whole; rather, the essence of the dish is found in a single, mouthwatering bite in which the dinnee combines all of the contents into one, all encompassing flavor. For the sake of brevity I’ve tried to paraphrase key experiences in the blog, such as the Amram incident, but unfortunately the shock factor of certain highlights can distract the reader from the experience as a hole. So far, each frustrating situation is undoubtedly overshadowed by half a dozen amazing experiences, ranging from teaching a 10 year old the newest High Five/ Pound It techniques being to invited to an Indian wedding (it happened shortly after Mike went home). Yes, India is a dish in here are undeniable hints of frustration and confoundment, but it is also decidedly delicious- easily one of the best experiences I’ve had and, for that, I’m quite fortunate.

I don’t know if I’m going to get another post within the next week, so I just wanted to say I miss all of you -I’m assuming you’re only reading this if you’re a close friend or family member, and I hope you all have a great holidays. I also have reliable wireless internet for the first time in India, so if any of you want to skype during the next month and a half, just contact me with a time and date and let’s see what we can do.