Permanently Impermanent

Dharmkhot tea house. Egg parantha, curd, chutney, and a hot lemon ginger honey. Just what the doctor ordered.

I’m hungry.

I haven’t eaten for hours. Since brekky. And that was only a bread omelette and a chai, from my fave little stall near the taxi stand down the hill.

Since then I’ve been shopping for a few supplies, I’ve done a load of laundry, chatted to a few people, and been climbing around exploring the hills around here.

It’s pretty quiet. There’s a bunch of monks at the table next to me, chatting in super-fast Tibetan. I love listening to the sounds of the language. Tibetan sounds to me like a cross between a soft Mandarin, Sanskrit and some sort of Slavic - I say Slavic because there’s loads of ‘z’s, ‘ż’s and ‘ź’s floating around. I know about such things because I’m a Pole, and Polish has more zeds in it than a lecture theatre full of Statistics students.

As I pass Tibetans on the mountain paths or in the streets, we call out a greeting to each other, “tashi delek,” which basically means good luck and good wishes. The monks often raise one hand in front of them, in like a half prayer-position, and I’ll reply with two hands in prayer position. You know, being polite.

It’s so great to watch the world go by from here. It’s a little chilly, I've got my puffer on, I guess it's about 12 deg Celsius - which of course is not that chilly, but it’s all relative. I’ve just spent 10 months in SEA remember.

Great old school bus

Some of the places we used to hang out up here are no longer being used, and have been left to nature. Others have become little settlements for Tibetan monks. Others have been razed completely, replaced by two or three storey hotels. But that’s only really on the Bhagsu Nag side of the hill.

I’ve been exploring the whole area the past few days, walking around, hanging out in places, walking some more. I always emerge back in McLeod Ganj not too long after dark.

Better than nothing

Naddi

One day I strolled across to Naddi, a small town a couple of kilometres around the hill from Dharmkhot.

From the chai shop it’s another beautiful walk in the forest to get there, with stunning views on the way.

I only saw two people the whole way, both monks.

There’s sacred Tibetan places on the way, adorned with prayer flags and painted stones, as is the Tibetan way. The different coloured flags represent different elements - sky, air, water, fire and earth - and together they symbolise compassion and goodwill for the universe, spread everywhere by the wind.

Eventually I made it down to the Tibetan Children’s Village (TCV), which was set up by the Dalai Lama to care for and educate Tibetan kids who were forced to flee from Tibet, due to the Chinese occupation. Many of these kids are orphans, or have been separated from their parents for various reasons.

Over the decades the TCV has expanded greatly, due to the huge influx of refugee kids, and they’ve set up a number of similar villages in other parts of northern India, such as in Ladakh and Dehra Dun.

Dal Lake, on the outskirts of Naddi

Sometimes there’s huge explosions up here in the hills, compliments of Indian army training exercises. I tell you, when you’re sitting deep in meditation for days on end, as we did on many retreats here, sudden loud explosions can scare the living shit out of you.

Lately, the setting off of fireworks by young locals is common, you hear it a lot every day, as everyone is preparing for the huge Diwali celebrations coming up in a couple of weeks. And we all know how fun fireworks are.

See anything? The call of this bird is really distinctive, and it didn’t take long to find her, she’s beautiful.

There she is, a yellow billed long tailed magpie.

Yeah, of course I didn’t know what she was, I looked it up.

Bhagsu

Bhagsu Nag is the place that’s really changed around here. From McLeod Ganj the road heads straight into the forest for awhile, there’s no development, but as soon as you hit the town itself it’s suddenly all built up. These days there’s loads of high-rise hotels there, all set up for Indian tourists. There’s street stalls, restaurants and shops, but it’s still India-style - a bit ramshackle, and still interesting. And there’s not so many tourists here now, it’s getting too cold.

Heading out of McLeod Ganj

Great to see some public education about littering and recycling around the place.

Fairy floss still lives!

The main drag in town

Heading to the temple entrance

Bathing pool

Once you head out of the temple, there’s a track along the hill, that climbs all the way to a waterfall.

There were loads of young Indian tourists about. They’re always so amazingly friendly, and love to practice their English and take selfies with foreigners like me.

Once they hear I’m an Aussie, well well well, I’m suddenly bombarded with all sorts of questions about Steve Smith, Glen Maxwell, Pat Cummings and all these other famous Australians I don’t know anything about.

It’s just not cricket.

Oh ... actually, yes it is.

Behind this bag of I-don’t-know-what, is a person, carrying it. It looked really really hard. The bag was attached to him via a rope that went right across his forehead, with a small cloth underneath it.

It feels confronting and sad to walk past people who are struggling so much just to make a few rupees. It’s hard to watch, and I constantly feel how lucky I am not to be in that position.

It also makes me wanna change this excessively unequal world, whose historically-based current structure no longer serves the vast majority of people on the planet.

Eventually I climbed right to the top of the waterfall. Hardly anyone else did. And I went to the Shiva Café, a beautiful place we used to visit back in the day. It’s more built up these days, but it’s still all by itself up there, with a really great view, and the same seriously chilled vibe.

This’d be pretty cool in summer

A king cobra practising his diving

Back in Bhagsu Nag eventually, I went up to a Punjabi dhaba for a thali.

Thali means plate in Hindi, and is basically an all-you-can-eat rice-dhal-vegies dish, with curd, and sometimes with some sort of sweets, like gulab jamun thrown in at the end. A thali costs about 130-150 Rupees here, less than $3.

Loads of stalls in the centre of Bhagsu

Henna stamps

Taxi driver posse. All watching the cricket on their phones.

Mind Your Language

The unlikely name for the little town of McLeod Ganj is obviously a colonial relic. It was named after Donald McLeod, the British governor of the state of Punjab, and somehow the name is still used.

Maybe one day the town will revert back to its original name, as has happened in many places in India, such as Mumbai (Bombay), Kolkata (Calcutta), Chennai (Madras), Bengaluru (Bangalore) and Mysuru (Mysore). And the hundreds of others.

Even the name India is possibly on its last legs, with the original Hindi name, Bharat, starting to be used exclusively by some government departments and media these days. Bharat is actually the Hindi word for India anyway, and it literally means “those who are striving for illumination,” which is not a bad meaning for a modern country of people.

India’s government departments previously used 3 names for the country interchangeably - Bharat, India and Hindustan.

But using the name Bharat exclusively also has political connotations within the country, related to the use of the Hindi language.

India is a cultural and linguistic melting pot. There are nearly 800 languages spoken here, with the most common being Hindi.

But as a first language, Hindi is only spoken by 44% of the population. At least a quarter of the country’s population speak southern Dravidian-based languages as a first language, such as Telugu (Andhra Pradesh and Telangana), Tamil (Tamil Nadu) and Malayalam (Kerala).

And, importantly, many Muslims speak Urdu as a first language, which, although it is quite similar to Hindi, having the same Sanskrit roots, has many words that actually derive from Persian or Arabic.

So the fact that the word Bharat is being pushed by the Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi is causing political friction, as it’s seen as another power play by his mainly northern-based government to further dominate the southern states. Conservative Hindus in the south reject the idea of an official name change.

Modi’s BJP party won support from 49% of all Hindu voters in the last election, but there were huge regional differences in the level of support. Among northern and central states, the BJP won about 65% of the Hindu vote, but in the east it was only 46%, and in the south a measly 18%.

Furthermore, Modi’s many anti-Muslim laws and policies, his policies in Kashmir, and the restrictions that his BJP Party have already imposed on the use of the Urdu language demonstrate pretty clearly where he’s at in terms of his political strategy.

He’s been very successful at using the politics of divide-and-rule for decades now.

With a general election in India coming up next year, there’s a good chance Modi will dish out more big serves of the same divisive policies.

Fear, of course, is always a good vote winner.

Around Town

I love the town of McLeod Ganj itself.

It’s so cruisey. Friendly. Interesting. Beautiful. Full of warm fascinating people.

My cute first hotel

From a distance you can see the mountains in the background

The rickety view from my room balcony.

Looking to the hills from the café out the back of the hotel

The streets are so interesting. Like any Indian town, there’s loads of stuff going on all over the place.

Bringing makeshift to a new level

Morning strolling

The place is a paradise if you’re into shopping for exquisitely beautiful things

Herb for burning as incense

Water plants

Of course, in a place like this, there’s an incredible array of food on offer.

Foremost on the menu is Tibetan fare, with dishes such as momos (sorta like Japanese gyoza - steamed or fried little riceflour pastries stuffed with assorted vegies, sometimes meat, tofu etc). There’s also various noodle soups such as thukpa, mokthuk or thanthuk, stuffed with amazing vegies and other goodies, and tsampa, which is a barley porridge common in Tibet.

Due to the comparative lack of vegies in Tibet itself, the diet there is supplemented with yak meat and yak butter (including yak butter “tea”), but that’s not so common here. Most of the restaurants and cafés here are vegetarian.

Of course, besides Tibetan food, there’s the usual delicious Indian tucker, which, given the size of the country, is massively diverse in itself.

Thanthuk. That’s egg on top, and the soup is also full of small flat sheets of rice pasta, and delicious vegies and tofu. Goes down so well in this clime. Btw the chilli in the little tub is so bloody spicy! Tibetans love chilli.

This ole fave goes down pretty well too. Hot lemon ginger honey.

Rasgulla, a delicious Bengali sweet, made by cooking paneer (cottage cheese) in sugar syrup until it goes light and spongy. They add rose water too, it’s to-die-for.

Of course, given the weather, I’ve had no choice but to hang out in cafés, and have really stimulating conversations with interesting people from all over the place.

One of these riffraffians, Victor, a guy from Maryland, has an incredibly huge litany of travel stories that he’s quite happy to share at the drop of a hat.

In fact, he doesn’t need a hat to drop to tell them.

And actually, if I’m really honest, if you’re with him and you’re already clutching tightly onto your hat, with no chance in hell of dropping it, you'll still get stories.

But at least they’re interesting, I gotta admit. Victor’s been everywhere, and has been travelling from way back in the early 70s, when men were men, and women were glad. He's also spent most of his working life as a case worker in a huge prison in Maryland, so you can imagine the stories from there as well.

He’s a lovely guy, who, he finally confided, has been grieving since he’s been here, as his Cambodian wife died here four years ago, and memories of that tragedy have been coming up for him. Poor guy. He lived around these parts for many years, and knows the area well.

Luckily he’s got friends around, but he told me he’s been feeling a little lost coming back to visit. He’s ready to go home soon, he says.

If only it were that easy.

Inside the Snow Lion

And another café

Cakes galore. And cheap. They look better than they are though. You know, it’s India.

My new little guest house.

And the view across the road. My guest house is up the hill towards Dharmkhot, a little out of town.

Electrical wires holding up a large tree

Every morn I’ve been coming down to this little spot where the locals sit around and drink chai and chat. I have a chai and a bread omelette. All for Rs 60, about $1.20. Or maybe some puri, or a parantha and some chana masala or chole, basically some type of bread with chickpea curry or dahl.

There’s a stone bench seat, and everyone sits on little sheets of cardboard ripped from boxes, so our butts don’t freeze. It’s mainly monks and Tibetans, but some Indians hang there too. Most of the chai wallahs are Indian.

Inside the chai shop. That’s actually part of a living tree.

A Tibetan man walking past with a prayer wheel. Prayer wheels are spun by devout Tibetans to purify themselves, and to pray for happiness for all beings. They often chant as they walk past spinning the wheels, or whilst clutching necklaces called malas, made of beads, seeds or gems. When they end each chant they move on to the next bead, and start again.

Think rosary beads.

More prayer wheels

I got one of these old five rupee notes the other day. Don’t see them around much these days.

To The Hot Plains

And so, despite the fact that my chesty phlegmy thing was still stubbornly hanging around, I decided to leave Dharmkhot, and head to the hot dusty plains below the great Himalaya. I realise that although I’ll be in India for awhile, there’s a lot I wanna see, if I can, before I meet my friends down south.

So I said goodbye to Victor, whom I’d been hanging out with off and on, strapped on my pack, and headed off on foot down the hill.

I accidentally but happily got lost on a Tibetan prayer route, a long circumambulation around the Dalai Lama’s temple and residence. A circumambulation is a ritual involving walking around a sacred temple, special place, or even a shrine or statue, as a sign of respect, and as a way of putting you in a different frame of mind, to remind you of the deeper purpose of your own life and the universe, and other such important cosmic things.

Monkey business

Painting prayer stones

There were hundreds of prayer wheels along the way, of all shapes and sizes.

I spun them all.

May all beings be happy.

The Woodville Hotel’s changed since I knew it back in Adelaide

Cheeky monkeys. Langurs in fact.

The larger town of Dharamsala, down below, through the haze

It turns out Masala Munch snacks are just like spicy Twisties

Waitin’ at the bus stand again. You never have to do this when you’re cycling.

Nighttime snack stop. 80c for 2 samosas and a chai.

I Need Air

I actually slept quite a few hours on the bus. Luckily, I’m one of those people who seem to be able to sleep anywhere, night or day.

Around 6am, as it became light, we reached the outskirts of Delhi.

And as soon as we hit the plains during the early hours of the morning, it was like driving into thick fog. But it wasn’t fog.

The air pollution index in Delhi is outrageously high at the moment. In fact, it’s 89 times what the World Health Organisation deems as safe.

Yay.

The smog from industry and cars is only part of it. Major seasonal burning in farms all around Haryana and Punjab is significantly adding to the catastrophically unhealthy pollution levels. Burning of refuse and wood/biomass burning for cooking or heating is another major contributor, especially in surrounding rural areas.

Luckily, I wasn’t staying too long in Delhi. I jumped off my bus, found the interstate bus station, and jumped on another, to the Rajasthani capital of Jaipur.

The air pollution there is way better, only 18 times the WHO safe levels.

Gasp!

Shiva Buddha and Allah! Air pollution is one problem India has to sort out. It’s having massive negative health and economic impacts on the whole country at these sorts of levels.

Air pollution currently contributes to the premature deaths of 2 million Indians every year, and on its own is the fifth-largest killer in the country. It causes heart disease, lung cancer, respiratory diseases, as well as long-term damage to nerves, the brain, liver, and other organs. It even causes birth defects.

A 2013 study on non-smokers found that Indians have 30% weaker lung function than Europeans. Over half the kids in Delhi have abnormalities in their lung function. That’s over 3 million kids!

While steps are being taken within the country to address the problem, and strict emissions standards have been introduced in many areas, the main problem is enforcement. It’s fine to have legal standards, but insufficient policing, and bribery, corruption and a general lack of political will has resulted in the problem getting worse, rather than better, as the years go on.

There’s been some small improvements in some areas, particularly in cities or states where local governments have introduced and strongly enforced new laws. But the overall trend is not good.

Of course, the rapid population growth of the country doesn’t help. It’s currently growing at 0.8% a year, which means that every single year there’s another 12 million Indians to be squeezed in to an already crowded country. So basically, every 2 years, another group of people almost the size of the whole population of Australia have to be supported here, in a land area that’s less than half the size of Oz.

And we think we’ve got problems.

Sad sunrise

The dusty plains between Delhi and Jaipur

The Pink-ish City

Jaipur, the capital of the state of Rajasthan, is named after the great warrior and astronomer, Jai Singh II, who founded and ruled his Rajput kingdom from here in the 1700s.

In 1876 Maharaja Ram Singh had the entire Old City painted pink, to welcome the Prince of Wales. Pink is traditionally the Rajput colour for hospitality. These days all residents of the Old City are still required to make sure all the building facades remain pink. Maybe it’s a tourist thing, I don’t know.

But the thing is, it’s not really pink. It’s more like an ochre colour.

The original city and palace was at Amber, up in the hills a few clicks up the road,  but a new capital was built on the plains below, due to the demands of the fast growing population.

The Old City is amazing. Pink bits everywhere.

Well, orangey-amberish bits.

Walking around looking for a guest house

Really hard to see this. I think this person only has one complete leg - well, that’s what it looks like to me.

I eventually found a dorm, and then headed towards the old town in a rickshaw. I may as well have walked. The traffic was seriously bad. But the streets are so crazily lively and interesting that I didn’t really care. Complete traffic gridlock just gave me more time to really look around.

My guest house laneway

Rajasthani dolls on my dorm door

15 rupees for a puri snack and a bit of dahl (30c)

Firewood wallah

Jaipur’s a big city these days, with a population of over 4 million. It’s way busier than how I remember it.

Rickshaw action

In the Old City

Hawa Mahal

Eventually I got to Hawa Mahal, Jaipur’s most distinctive landmark, which was built by the Maharaja’s vassals in 1799 to allow the ladies of the royal court to sit around and watch the city below, without having to mingle and be hassled by all the riffraff.

It’s an incredible architectural wonder, and a very famous symbol of Rajasthan.

Back entrance

One of many inner courtyards. The local tourists were having a wow of a time.

The whole complex was built without stairs, only ramps. That was so they could carry the palanquins with the Rajput royal ladies on them more smoothly. Wouldn’t want the delicate creatures to be bumped around as their slaves carrief them up the steps now would we.

Great views of the previous capital, Amber (pronounced ‘Ammer’), way up on the hill.

There’s so much to explore in the Old City. I headed off to the grounds of the City Palace next, but didn’t go inside the building as it was closing.

Fresh pineapple juice

All kinds of snacks, including dried ones, are popular here. Well, all over India.

The imposing archways of the City Palace

These are actually melodic drums, you play them with rubber tipped sticks, like a xylophone. Each of them has a different tuning.

Outer gate

Then I went off to Jantar Mantar, an astronomical observatory built in 1724 by Jai Sigh II, after consulting astronomers from all over the world.

Jai Singh II was crazy about astronomy, and this park was one of the most advanced astronomical measuring observatories in the world at the time. He also built 4 others around his kingdom, including one in Delhi.

All of the devices here were actually invented and designed by him, except one. Smart cookie.

Jantar Mantar is basically an open area full of architectural astronomical instruments, to study and track the movements of the planets and stars, and be able to make astronomical predictions. In 2010 the observatory was added to India’s list of World Heritage sites.

This huge device is actually an incredibly accurate sundial, which also happens to be the world’s largest. With it you can tell the time to an accuracy of 2 seconds. Not bad huh. If the sun’s out, that is. The hypotenuse is parallel with the earth’s axis, and it faces the North Pole, so it was also used to plot planet and star positions.

Another device for measuring celestial positions and coordinates.

These objects were used to measure the latitude and longitude of various celestial objects when they crossed certain meridians.

Another extremely accurate sundial

There was even a fun puppet show in the evening.

After the enlightening science class, I decided to wander the streets of the old city.

Rooftop dinner spot

Deep frying samosas

Orange juice time

There were crowds everywhere, all shopping, chatting, and eating snacks on the street. The street food, of course, is amazing. There’s everything you can imagine, from things like samosas, puri, paratha, chapatis etc, to all sorts of fruit juices and sugar cane juice, there’s chai and curd stalls everywhere, and then there’s the sweets shops.

Of course I sat in one of the latter when I finally got close to my guesthouse (which was a long walk away), and had the softest, spongiest, tastiest rasgullah on the planet - like a big fat rose-flavoured marshmallow. And a chai of course.

Later, Evie and Kevin came in, and we chatted. They’re really cool people - Evie a nurse from Northcote in Melbourne, and Kevin an accountant from Dublin. They recently met in Sri Lanka.

It turns out we’re sleeping in the same dorm, and ended up hanging out for the night up on the rooftop of our guesthouse, and all the next day and night. It was fun. Paiton, from Washington State, joined us a little later. She’s been teaching English in Thailand all this year, and is now preparing to go back home, albeit a little reluctantly.

We talked about lots of things - travel, families, having kids, sexism, misogyny, wealth and materialism, spirituality, the planet. The usual fare.

Don’t blame me, I had nothing to do with it.

I’m still really struggling to kick off this throat infection/cold thingy. It’s been with me for a week and a half now, and, while it hasn’t really been stopping me from doing too much lately, I’m still producing so much phlegm, and can’t speak for too long without coughing profusely. It’s annoying.

I’ll get out of the city soon, and hopefully get into some fresher air.

More Raj-ing Around

There’s so much to see in Rajasthan, and now is a relatively good time to do it, while the temperature’s a little more bearable. In summer only the super-hardy blistering-heat-immune souls amongst us would wanna be here.

But the locals, of course, have no choice but to put up with the extreme temperatures, which are rising as we speak.

I plan to visit Bundi next, a small town a few hours from here.

It’s nearly time to get out of the big smog, to the quiet, to mingle with the monkeys, the birds and the squirrels again❤️

http://buymeacoffee.com/krolesh9