In the Clouds

 

I haven’t had much enthusiasm for the blog this time, it being over a month since my last post. This entry skips a month and comes straight to Sikkim which is a small state in the North East, sandwiched between Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan.

Prayer wheel wall at the Enchey Gompa (Tibetan monastery) in the capital of Sikkim, Gangtok. We went on Holi - a Hindu festival where everyone throws coloured paint powder at everyone. A room of over a hundred young monks found it hard to concentrate on their chanting with us two whities covered in purple paint peering in through the window, so we quickly left them to it.

Changu Lake, the closest part to the Tibetan border that foreigners are allowed (with permits and tour guides) and nearly 4000m in altitude. The ride up was scary as any I’ve ever taken… 2500m in altitude in one and half hour!

Indian bureaucracy at its finest at the Foreigners Registration Office of Gangtok where we had to wait in some Orwellian alternate existence to have our Sikkim permits extended.

The start of the six-day trek to Dzongri (4000m) in one of the most pristine places I’ve yet seen. Those are the two Joe’s (crossbreed between Yak and Oxen) that carried all our food and such. On the last day our yakman let me have a go being in charge of them… grumpy animals at the best of times. I didn’t share his enthusiasm for kicking them full pelt to ensure obedience and quickly passed that job back!

 

The mountains lived up to their comforting reputation for making us humans feel small.

Dawn at the Dzongri viewpoint with blissfully clear weather (most times the weather was cloudy) and stunning views of Mount Khanchendzongra, the third highest peak in the world.

Some amazing snow storms up there (thank God we stayed in trekkers huts) allowed us to experiment with our cameras’ macro functions in each others hair. As you do. 

Another clear dawn looking at a different mountain range.

Happy Joe. Although always up for a fight. We heard that a girl on a trek that started shortly after ours was nearly pushed off a cliff by an angry mob of the creatures.

Rhododendrons just starting to bloom. In April, Sikkim is reputed for being a crazy melange of colour, but unfortunately our schedule isn’t so obedient to the graces of Mother Nature.

A seemingly wild pony taking in the Magnolia.

Our trekking party, left to right: porter, yakman, guide and cook. Damn good cook too. And the most gentle old man for a porter who carried the weight of all the cooking utensils on his neck in the ubiquitous fashion of locals in the Himalaya. I tried it out at one point and gained far greater respect for him. Although our yakman won hands-down for the amount of energy he had. Ex-army where he served in the Tibetan division as a sniper for seven years, and if he is a normal example of the Indian army then just as well India like us.

Tshoka, 3000m in altitude. Another beautiful dawn.

The final walk home. We both miss that trek as much as anything. Although my limbs are happy to return to normal underuse and my belly to meat! And they all eat pork and beef here, being Buddhists rather than Hindus!

 

Tashiding monastery the day after the trek, the most sacred place in Sikkim. And one of the most mystical places I’ve ever seen. It looks like the very beginning of a tourist attraction, although it is as yet off-the-beaten-track. I hope it stays that way. I find it much better to walk round a place where the locals and inhabitants don’t know what to do with you, rather than how to fleece and extort. I really don’t have much time for Hindu temples anymore, for that reason.

An old man famous among Sikkimese (according to our trekking guide) for carving stones at Tashiding monastery with Tibetan calligraphy. This is his workshop and that is his crazy beard. It was great to have to ask him if we could buy some of his work – the concept of offering it for sale seemed blissfully foreign to him.

Bye!

The week that felt like a month

It’s been a week yesterday since we left the wondrous Pushkar. It really is as small as this photo suggests and she will be sorely missed.

Having a parcel made up in Jodhpur was as easy and uncomplicated as anything else in India. In an enchanting throwback to the Raj, our parcel had to be stitched tight in cotton and then have special wax seals placed along the seams! As with everything in India, it took a lot of messing around until we actually discovered this procedure.

There was a not-so-subtle irony to reaching the rooftop restaurant with this view of Jodhpur’s fort shortly after having finished the brilliant book “No Logo”. The cafe was amusing called ‘Fort View’. India seems to lack any kind of legislation to stem the privatisation of public space. When I got to India two years ago, Vodafone had just moved in. Now, every bus station is plastered with its fetid logo as well as half the shops and lampposts. Still, I can’t see India losing her soul.

It seems the dogs are no longer living such terrible, disenfranchised lives since I last visited…

Such vibrant colours…

And now for the real reason I’m writing this new entry. It happened four nights ago when the moon was just shy of full.

It took two days of trains to get from Jodhpur in Rajasthan to Junagadh in Gujarat, the town nearest Shiv’s ashram. Those two trains, punctuated by a brief night in the nightmare of a city that is Ahmedabad (Gujarat’s capital and temple to carbon monoxide), meant that we were thoroughly travel-weary by the time we reached Shiv. But Shiv didn’t plan to let us rest as should have been the order of the day. Instead, we were told of an event that was happening in a nearby village, the details of which were completely unknown, but it was sure to be worth it. Having a decent grasp of the local language and Hindi, Shiv has made some good friends with locals in the past four months he’s been at the ashram and this was how he heard of this event/party. Sounded like a brilliant opportunity to get off the tourist track – that pariah of tourism that must be avoided at all costs. So in spite of our wearied limbs and the oncoming threat of mental collapse, we both agreed to take the “two” hour bus ride to the nearby village.

Of course, being India, that “two” hour bus ride – already more than long enough by our estimates – was not to be so easy or so short. After the third bus ride and fifth hour, it became clear that Shiv’s friends were lost and mine and Jimmy’s patience were quickly following suit. It was dark, getting cold and we were, by all accounts, in the middle of nowhere. Shiv occasionally translated the situation to us as it developed invisibly (thanks to the language barrier) right in front of us. His friends were looking out for a rickshaw to take us the last 10km to the party. For some reason, this took a long, drawn-out hour and the mental strain of the wait was exacerbated by the chai-walla (tea seller) on the street corner making undisguised and unashamed advances towards me. When we finally boarded the local rickshaw, I was contemplating a more-than-unpleasant fate for Shiv.

The 10km ride was freezing. It may be 30 degrees and sunshine in the day, but it gets down to 10 at night. This, coupled with roads that haven’t seen any maintenance in as long as they are old, was the start of the hysteria. My perspective quickly and mysteriously changed from impatient anger to farcical dementia and yet, so far, the night had far from begun.

As we drew close to the party, we could see the lights in the distance – so prominent in a rural area - and just catch the shrill wail of an Indian speaker system. Sound fidelity is as unknown and unimportant to Indians as stilton. As we made our way into the party we were, all of us, completely unaware of what lay in store and fatigue was severely limiting my imagination and mental preparation. We were in an ashram. That much was clear. But there was a stage full of people, far too many to all be musicians, and hundreds of people sat calmly on the ground watching the spectacle. Jimmy and I were ready for sleep, more than ready, but the hundreds of locals who had quite possibly never seen white skin and the numerous babus (holy men) “in charge” of the event, had other plans.

First, we were paraded by the stage and taken to their Shiva shrine to pay our respects, but we were completely unaware of protocol which fortunately posed no problem. The large number of people on the stage weren’t all musicians, as suspected, but were mainly babus from the surrounding area. A few musicians were playing their hearts out while maybe 20 babus smoked chillum after chillum. The sweet smell of ganja was as strong as could be possible. After being fed dinner at “eye-point” – no privacy here – we were invited onto the stage to meet the babus and pay respects to the head honcho. The crowd of hundreds of locals on the floor never took their eyes off us and the horror of celebrity was more than reinforced in my mind.

The head babu seemed completely mad. He pointed his index finger up and twirled it round while resting an incredibly stoned smile on me. Clouds of ganja smoke sailed around constantly. It wasn’t long before the coffee was passed around, and for good reason. Shiv found out that they were planning to keep smoking and listening to music all night, to commemorate a dead friend. It was a stoner party taken fully to the next level. Every now and then, some of the babus would stand up, grinning, and walk over to the musicians to shower them with money. It became very hard to know what to make of anything that was happening and, when the publicity became too much (i.e. when I couldn’t look up without making eye-contact with everyone at the event) it was time for bed.

They’d set up some blankets on the marble floors outside the Shiva shrine, under the stars and almost-full moon. I looked at the total and utter shell-shock on Jimmy’s face and suddenly the same total disorientation smacked me over. I went to sleep with no feet on the ground.

The morning after the night before… still chillum-ing.

We’re now in Diu, a small island off the south coast of Gujarat that was Portuguese until the 60s. Its a peaceful haven for a much needed break and, because its a special Union Territory ruled by Delhi, alcohol is allowed!

Back!

Jimmy and I have fallen in love with Pushkar! It’s sort of like Diet India because rickshaws and cars are banned and so it’s a great place to start afresh. The lake around which the town is centred was made by a lotus flower dropped by the gods and is incredible. Its sort of like a miniature Varanasi without the cremations and the traffic, which works for me! Its considered the King of pilgrimage sites in India and so there are plenty of cows, brahmins and sadhus collecting what they can from pilgrims (with all the shameless pragmatism that is so characteristic of India).

We have the annual Desert Festival in Jaisalmer to look forward to weekend after next, where moustache competitions and camel polo beckon! Tally-ho!

See some recent photos here: Click Me