North India 2015

Last Stop Dharamshala

Tue, 10 Feb 2015 16:27:46 +0100

High snow-capped peaks rise above the hills we are driving up to reach McLeod Ganj, the home of the Tibetan Government in Exile in the lower Himalaya mountains in North West India. The three of us managed to sleep once we finally boarded our comfortable sleeping car on the train at 3:30 am, and we now gratefully roll down the windows and breathe in the, finally, fresh air. The road gets rougher as we drive up, often just a single dirt lane, deeply pitted and gouged as we pass through small towns and encounter bad single lane traffic jams. Dharamshala is the original local town, below McLeod Ganj, which was founded before the Indian government allowed the Dalai Lama and his retinue to remain and live in the area when he was forced to flee the invading Chinese in the late 1950’s. Other Tibetan refugees followed over the years, creating a unique community of monasteries for various Tibetan Buddhist sects in the nearby mountains and homes for layfolk seeking religious freedom. The area has also now become a summer vacation spot for Indians seeking respite from the heat and more and more hotels are being built to accommodate them.

I was amazed by the extent of the construction since I was last here. The rows of Tibetan hawkers with stalls under tarps along the road has lengthened, more restaurants now cater to visitors and, finally just a few months ago, the deeply pitted dirt roads are beginning to be surfaced with interlocking brick pavers which creates a whole new feeling to this frontier town. The shells of large hotels under construction face the beautiful valley and are beginning to overwhelm by size the small two-story buildings that form the core of the old town.

In town Center, with our honorific Tibetan scarfs. Note the deep hole in the road behind us. One of many.

It is a world within a world and the mix is changing as it is becoming harder to escape Tibet through Nepal and enter India. Jack, Susan and I visited the Dolma Ling Nunnery, built through the work of the Tibetan Nuns Project and its international friends, an impressive series of buildings created to allow young women dedicated to Buddhist study reach the same level of mastery of Buddhist dialectics as their male counterparts, for the first time in history. But we were told that fewer nuns each year were arriving from Tibet and a greater percentage were applying from within India as transit becomes harder and harder.

Approaching Dolma Ling, a view of the new private long-stay hermitages, preparing vegetables for dinner, and a group of nuns in the courtyard.

We also visited the Gyuto Monastery, renown for its chanting monks and home to the 17th Karmapa, head of the Kagyu lineage. It was a Sunday and day of rest so small boys in their monastic robes were energetically playing hackey-sack in a courtyard while others nearby were busy with a caroom board game. In the main area, in front of the large temple, were a large group of monks surrounding a huge pile of cloth and “worldly goods” that were apparently donated to the monastery, laughing and having a wonderful gleeful time as one of the older monks was describing each item he picked up and trying to find, in a voice like an auctioneer, someone to take it on as their own. These items included thermoses, blankets, shoes, a mattress or two and men’s underwear which the monks were holding up to their bodies with smiles to see if they would fit. It was an utterly charming scene of life on a beautiful day with the snow behind the temple (as shown in the very first photo of this blog).

When I mentioned to an Indian lawyer friend how appallingly poor was the government infrastructure in the area, he said that was most likely because the Tibetan refugees and their families do not have a vote so that the politicians feel no need to woo them with promises of funding for their area. I am hoping that the new road paving and drainage projects that I saw being built belies that scenario but, realistically, the truth is that it is probably the large hotel projects being constructed for Indian tourists and the pressure by the Indian contractors to make the area more hospitable for Indian visitors which is pushing ahead such progress.

The town is only 5 main streets intersecting together in a rocky, deeply pot-holed center area where taxis can be found and restaurants, including a Pizza Hut, abound. But one day I take a walk 5 minutes up one of the roads and find myself in a quiet pine tree lined road, along which walk maroon-draped monks and long-gowned Tibetan women going to or from a local village. On another day, Susan and I take a cab further up the same road to the Tibetan Childrens Village, a project started by the Dalai Lama’s sister many decades ago to care for orphaned and destitute Tibetan children and today it is a large, although very run down, institution with dormitories and schools, playing fields and eating halls for children of all ages. We ran across a small stadium with teenage boys in the stands watching their peers playing soccer on a weekend day. It seems to work although without any of the safety standards we take for granted.

I took a Tibetan cooking class to learn how to make the traditional Tibetan steamed buns, called momos. Four women sat in a very small, rather dirty room, where the young “chef” proceeded to put the flour and ingredients on a reasonably clean table. He did require that we all wash our hands first in his small sink -- but there was no soap or towels -- and he put on a very dirty apron and hat for his demonstration. Probably most disturbing was when he answered his cell phone and then, without washing his hands, proceeded to show us how to knead the dough. The results were delicious and I have remained 100% healthy throughout this journey but it did give me pause to consider the difference in hygiene standards in this part of the world.

I also bought and ate ine day some momos from a local street vender, not as good as the home-cooked ones but considerably less work -- and I suffered no ill effects.

i think the three of us thoroughly enjoyed this concluding part of our journey together, wonderful food, clean air, interesting people and fabulous scenery as the sun shone on the white peaked mountains and the weather was perfect. A short flight back to Delhi (about 10 hours shorter than our train ride), some furious last minute shopping, and a stressful time at the airport as Susan and my plane to the U.S. was cancelled and we had to negotiate a new routing which took us in the other direction around the world through Hong Kong and then back to San Francisco.

How to conclude this 3 week blog? We traveled as a group from one end of the rainbow to another, passing through colors and sensations most of us had never experienced before, seeing the light refract in new ways and taking it inside us, to transform us and, perhaps in some small way, to enlighten us. At the top of the arc were the vivid impressions of lives lived with different values, with the past and present tense closely connected, with existence brilliant in the moment but so very easily extinguished by the abounding dangers of daily life. And at either end of the spectrum, around the fading edges of color, the intersection of the material beauty the flowed around us and the spiritual reverence that grounds the culture of India, rising and ending each day like the aarti fire ceremony over the Ganges, greeting the sun in the morning and announcing its passing at night in an endless cycle of birth and death.

We have all undoubtedly been changed and transformed by this journey.

Train Travail

Sat, 7 Feb 2015 02:53:31 +0100

The Old Delhi Railway Station fits its name --- the first main railroad terminal in Delhi, operating since 1863, with a red and white Victorian/Indian design building from 1903. After saying goodbye to Kathy and Jo, the remaining three of us, Jack, Susan and I, arrive in the dark at the station at 9:30 pm only to find that our 10:00 pm train has been delayed --- really delayed --- until, as the board says, 2:00 am. This is the danger of taking an Indian train that begins some ways away, in this case Jaipur. Now this is a funny coincidence --- as we started out this very morning from Jaipur on a 6 am train that brought us to Delhi.

So now it is 10 pm and the train board now says our train, the Jammu Express, does not leave until 2:55 am. We look in the waiting room, now already filled with people filling all the chairs, find a clear spot in a corner on the floor, and, leaving Jack standing with all the luggage, Susan and I head out for the marketplace, which adjoins the station, still open at this time of night, and purchase 2 blankets to put on the rather dirty floor. It is going to be a long night. As we enter the station, after passting through nominal security, there is a wide open space, now with some portable barriers delineating an area where, it appears, the homeless are allowed to sleep at night. Wrapped in blankets, similar to the ones we just purchased, to protect against the significant chilly night, it is mosly men, strewn across the floor, whom we must pick our way around, to return to Jack.

As far as I can see, we are the only non-Indians in the railroad station and our fellow passengers in the waiting room look curiously at us as we stretch out on our blankets and try to rest. All goes well until Susan and I need to find a toilet. The toilet room attached to this waiting room is definitely for men only -- there are only urinals as far as we can tell. So we expolore, see a sign that says “Deluxe Retiring Rooms Upstairs” and end up in a dark corner with some very broken elevators and an ancient metal circular staircase, encrusted with over a century of soot, which takes us to the second floor verandah overlooking the front of the station.

This is a scene from a sci-fi movie about what our civilization looks like in the future when everything has fallen apart and there are a few remnants of our cultural history. Some closed locked rooms labeled “Dormitories” are in front of us, while to our left is a woman with a fire burning and smoke billowing up in the middle of the floor, undoubtedly for some heat. Yes, an open fire in the middle of the railroad station. Down the hall are signs for “Public Waiting Rooms” and the first is filled with men and the smell is so bad we can not step inside, the room which says “Ladies Waiting Room” is closed andl locked, and the third room also has many men sleeping on seats but in the corner we see a sign that says “Toilet” and, in desperation, find some stalls with reasonably decent (given our adjusted sense of reasonable) Indian squatter toilets which we gratefully use, although these are probably cleaned about once every 5 years.

This upstairs area is a scene so surreal that it is hard to depict in words. In the British heyday, it was a well-used stopping point as the military and civil service changed trains at this major junction for other posting points and needed a place to sleep until their next steam train arrived. It was undoubtedly clean and served its purpose well. But has since been long neglected by the current railway management.

Our train does arrive at 3:25 am and we gratefully find our first class sleeping compartment, 4 berths with one already occupied by a helpful sleeping man whom we wake up fumbling around in the dark and who helps us find our sheets and blankets so we can make our very comfortable beds and sleep for a few hours until we arrive in Pathankot at about 12 noon. The air is already so much cleaner as we descend onto the platform, find our pre-arranged car, and head up the mountains to our final destination, Dharamsala. But that story will wait for another day, after more sleep.

Notice on our train board below that an earlier train to Jammu was simply cancelled. Probably because our train was now leaving about the same time so all those passengers had to scramble to get tickets on our train. Ah, the pleasures of the Indian Railways system!

Our last photo is the street we were on in Old Delhi earlier in the day, where we rested and spent some time. Bustling with activity and filled with color. We leave this world for the higher mountain air and the culture of Tibetan refugees in India in Dharamshala.

Enjoying Jaipur

Thu, 5 Feb 2015 06:23:55 +0100

It is 8 and we have been on a train since 6 am traveling from Delhi to Jaipur. Unlike our earlier train on this trip which was a circus car of chaos, we are in a coach class car which is like traveling on the Long Island Railroad with dirtier windows and the advantage of toilets on board. We were just served breakfast (water, spicy vegetable patties, brown bread and jam, all hygienically wrapped and served) as well as carafes of hot tea or coffee. All this for about $8/seat. Very comfortable, especially for me as two of our group stayed behind and is flying out tonight due to illness so that I have 3 seats to stretch out my painful back.

Here is what I see out the window on my express train (450 kilometers in 4.5 hours and about 6 stops): fields of yellow mustard, occasionally a small village with dirty concrete block sheds and homes, some with fading advertisements painted on the sides, a tractor carrying an overwhelming large bundle of small pieces of wood, probably from the scraggly wind blown trees that dot the landscape, smoke rising from a fire burning in a brick enclosed compound, a man squatting by the side of the train for his morning toilet, several hay ricks and then a larger town, pink and blue and purple 2- and 3-story concrete buildings, with a temple spire sticking up above them. A water pond surrounded by many pounds of plastic trash, over which a family of dark brown pigs is scouring for anything it can eat.

Our hotel, the Jai Vilas, is a magnificent old home turned with loving care into a restored heritage boutique hotel. Hand painted Rajasthani designs on the walls and ceilings, mirror work on the walls - and delicious food. We wait for Kathy and Jo who separately flew from Delhi and meanwhile visit a textile museum outside the city, which showcases the dying art of handmade block printing on cloth, as developed in Rajasthan hundreds of years ago.

Jaipur, the “pink”, actually “terracotta”, city. has a more homogeneous facade inside the old city walls than most still functioning urban centers. The main streets are lined with 2-3 story adjoined terracotta buildings, the bottom level under a shaded portico housing the numerous small shops that supplied this city since its founding, and above most likely storage, housing and the occasional temple. The City Palace is in the center, a large structure rising up above the merchants and nearby is the amazing astronomical garden containing the world’s largest sundial and tools for measuring astrological progress. We explore it together, in glorious weather, sunny and warm with an unusually good guide. The de-throned royalty lives on -- the current maharaja is 17 years old and is going to school in England and his family lives in the massive palace adjoining the historical one open to the public.

An afternoon at the Amber Fort, to which we all walk up rather than burdening the elephants, is glorious. Outside the city, on a hilltop, the fort nd palace contains probably the most strikingly beautiful pleasure pavilion in India -- the Sheesh Mahal Created with inlaid stones, marble and small pieces of mirror covering the ceiling in undulating curves so that the smallest light is refracted and reflected into a thousand points of brilliance. We explore the many courtyards and hallways of this 16th century palace, along with throngs of local tourists.

The next afternoon, Susan, Jo and I wander through the marketplace in the old part of the city. A subway system is being built, due to be completed in 2 years, so that a major thoroughfare is closed and broken up with construction. Like in other parts of India, the traditional market has established itself in sectorw with similar products. First we come to the flower market, red roses and gold marigolds piled up on the ground, a small vegetable market, then a large row of hardware stores, almost all with hanging iron chains as part of their display (I am not sure what they are specifically used for but they seem to be prominantly in every stall), then an area of children’s clothing, followed by shoes, curved colorful sandals that would interest Aladdin and his female friends, a street filled entirely with glass-framed pictures of Hindu gods, for worship in one’s home, then men’s marriage attire, goreous white seqined, beaded jackets and turbans, an area offering women’s wedding saris, sparkling and gold strewn georgette and chiffon, and finally, after walking several kilometers, Rajasthani tie-dyed saris as well as scarfs for tourists. We take it all in, are exhausted, and are glad to get into our car and rest back at the hotel.

For the last 2 days, I have had aryuvedic massages for my back at a Kerala Aryuvedic Clinic near to our hotel -- I undressed in a very plain room, lying on a hard wood table, different oils were rubbed and pressed on my back and legs followed by hot herbal compresses that felt wonderful. I don’t know if this has helped my back condition but it did feel wonderful.

We have relaxed and enjoyed Jaipur tremendously, less traffic, perfect weather, some of the world’s best shopping, and great food. Our host at the hotel arranged for his chef to cook just for our group for breakfast home-made iddlies, South Indian rice pancakes, when he heard Jo was wheat intolerant and that Susan and I did not eat dairy. That is great service. Here is the milkman delivering our hotel’s daily milk and here we are enjoying the front garden. Oh, and the rarely seen Indian snake charmer with a live cobra and some live traffic in the middle of the city.

Delhi Dichotomies

Mon, 2 Feb 2015 07:56:58 +0100

Delhi appears as the adolescent offspring of differing species. The decaying remains of the Mogul empire and resurgent Hinduism forcibly mated with the needful might of British Imperialism. The result today is a world in which raging hormones have built some impressive edifices but mature control has not yet been developed and details have not been worked out. “I can do it”, says the 16 year old without the full comprehension of all the consequences that result from an action. Good architects planning for something to last at least a lifetime have forgotten that pollution and dirt will begin to eat away at their creation as soon as it is completed; the nation’s builders, wanting to bring forth a national vision of cohesion, have failed to recognize that the cheapest construction quickly erodes if not well maintained, young energy wanting to see its city have high rise buildings equal to that of other great countries have failed to recognize that a level of attention and caution is necessary to ensure that the buildings can retain some stature. The British took an old city with the remains of 500 years of well developed stone buildings and created next to it its new anglocentric-driven model, Connaught Circus, rings of ever-larger circular roads with major streets radiating out from its center. On one of those roads a number of very grand structures, India Gate and the main government center, Rashtrapati Bhavan rise at the end of a long straight ceremonial road, made for processions, which Obama stood on just a few weeks ago. The teenage comparison is not quite fair - the New Delhi of the Republic of India is now 67 years old although in a country of such historic depth, this is indeed still an age of early growth

Yesterday, I walked along one of those ring road to a friend’s office. On one side of Tolstoi Marg there are tall offices buildings, built within the last 20 years. The buildings themselves, almost all concrete, once undoubtedly clean and gleaming, are now universally covered with dirt, mold, chipped facades, hand-painted signs, and nothing like what would be considered a first-class facility. On the other side of the road remains the traditional two-story bungalow style government buildings constructed by the British to retain heat in the winter and remain cool in the summer, with verandahs and open space. They have held up in time as well as the skyscrapers across the street. My friend’s beautiful modern office on the 14th floor is in a building in which the elevator does not operate on the weekend without prior arrangement. Last weekend she had to twice walk up 14 floors due to client emergencies.

Our morning in Delhi was spent in the Old City. How can one possibly describe Chandni Chawk, the old marketplace in the old part of town? A blur of sensations. Packed with street cart peddlers, small roadside venders, covered portico walkways with small shops crammed to overflowing onto the sidewalk with displays of their wares, food hawkers and old temples. A magnificent Jain temple, no shoes or socks, wash your feet and walk up cold marble stairs, colorful imported 19th century Belgium tile work, brilliantly painted frescoes, alters with gold and diamond-laden marble gods and goddesses, morning prayers of a group of believers, ringing bells, incense and chants. Truly special to behold.

The Kinnari Market filled with shops selling wedding paraphenalia, colorful turbans, spools of threads and ribbons, souvenir bags and rhinestone jewelry, one after the other, on and on, all in a small narrow lane so as wooden wheeled hand trucks laden with bales of goods go past it is necessary to squeeze to the side of the dirt pathway, and great caution is necessary as bicycles and motorcycles pass through the small lane, almost touching our toes. The smells of frying puri fill the air which is imbued with the frantic energy of commerce. Some of our group loved it and some were overwhelmed by the closeness of it all.

At one of our lunches, I asked our group if they could speak of something that really surprised them on this journey, an aspect of India that they were not expecting. Someone mentioned the extent of the true reverence and piety shown by the people in and out of the temples, someone else mentioned the intense pollution everywhere, and a third member spoke of the realization that the local people were as curious about her as she was about them. The traffic and number of animals on the streets also came up as of greater intensity then expected. In a side discussion, someone spoke to me about the dichotomy between the seeming group consensus about how traffic needs to work to get anywhere, as the kind of top-down rules that govern our ways of urban traveling do not exist here, and, on the other hand, the seeming total disregard about inconveniencing others by parking and stopping anywhere in the streets without regard to the consequences. Because our interpretation of a new experience is based on the accumulation of our past impressions, each traveler into this unknown culture finds their own India.

Our beautiful modern hotel and nearby upscale restaurants and shops in Greater Kailash are an oasis but still --- we know what waits outside. Two of group leave tonight, Angela and Ellen, and we are sad to say goodbye as the rest of us prepare for our journey to Jaipur tomorrow.`

Most of the photos on this Delhi blog were taken by Susan Lourme.

In Buddha’s Footsteps

Sat, 31 Jan 2015 03:16:26 +0100

The pilgrims’ route in the land where Shakyamuni Buddha lived includes a visit to two major historical sites: Rajgir where he spend a good deal of time meditating and teaching after his enlightenment and Nalanda where he also taught and where was founded one of the great seats of learning and libraries in the ancient world.

Nalanda today is a pile of bricks that have been excavated and reassembled into some of the 108 monasteries that once occupied this land in the 5th-12th centuries, until the invading moguls drove off the already declining faithful. Buddha’s great disciple Sariputra lived and died here and his stupa is one of the largest remaining artifacts.

It is a well-maintained and beautifully landscaped site, with more visiting Hindus than Buddhist pilgrims. Most of the structures were once covered with carved granite but little remains but a few niches and pieces of sculpture that have survived marauders over the centuries, like this one with rows of meditating Buddhas.

There is a very small lovely museum across the street with some of the excavated Buddhist art found at the site since 1911 when the British archeologically work began.

Rajgir does not have the sense of history that Nalanda still exudes. There is a bamboo park where Buddha often stayed and to which throngs of Thai Buddhists seem to flock, as the main point of interest is a very Thai statue, covered with gold lead, where many monks were sitting and listening to a teacher speak over a bad microphone.

Some of the most famous talks given by Buddha, recorded as Sutras such as the Heart Sutra and Sutra of the Golden Light were given when he remained at the top of a nearby mountain translated as ‘Vulture’s Peak”. The only way to get up there is by climbing 600+ steps or taking a very rickety “ropeway” with one-person gondola cars hanging from a ratchety cable. So, against my better judgment, I went up with Jack, Angela and Susan, about an 8 minute ride straight up the mountainside where there is a very large white stupa erected by the Japanese and a wide view of the countryside. The most dangerous part of the ride was passing by a group of soldiers coming down as our gondolas were going up --- with their rifles on their laps pointed directly at us. We assume their safety catches were on. That is Jack in the red gondola car ahead of me.

I have not mentioned an interesting side visit we made to the Root Institute, a Gelugpa Tibetan Buddhist center in the heart of Bodh Gaya which conducts retreats for people all over the world and maintains a home for 8 local children whose parents have died of AIDS, some of whom themselves are HIV positive, as well as the Maitreyi School for local children, boys and girls selected from villages all over the area. They also have a community clinic for the local populace and health outreach programs. The school was impressive, grades K-5 and growing upward as it has only been in existence about 3 years.

We returned there at night to participate in a 1.5 hour reading, in English, of the Sutra of the Golden Light. We sat in the main Gompa, or meditation hall, surrounded by the brilliant primary colors of Tibetan imagery, while a nun read at an impossibly fast pace 75 pages, or the first half, of the Sutra. It was not a peaceful experience because of the speed and beat of the reading and the content was not heart-opening but contained dogmatic images from a religion trying to make itself attractive to a local populace by bringing in as much of the local myths and beliefs as possible. So the great Hindu gods swam in and out of the pages and attempts were made to entice great Kings of the area into a new belief system by telling them what material gain they could achieve by converting.

So ends our visit to Bodh Gaya. The sun has finally come out casting a new light on Bodh Gaya and everything around us. It is not exactly hot but the sun’s presence gives us a warm glow.