India from the back seat

A bit of a traffic jam on the mountain road.....

India from the back seat because for the last 20 days we have been travelling with Raj, in a little white tourist car, and I have been watching the world go by from the back seat. It is more isolated than using public transit, but a lot more practical and more comfortable too. Most of our hotels have been places favoured by middle class Indian tourists, which means we are usually the only westerners, the "European" breakfast is, well, interesting (I eat Indian now) and there is no internet access. I will try to catch up:

I am sitting in the restaurant of the CJ International Hotel in Amritsar, Punjab, India. Raj went back to Delhi last night after taking us to see the ceremony of the daily sunset border closing between India and Packistan. It is advertised as the closest hotel to the Golden Temple, and maybe it is. Most of the view out the window is taken up by white tourist cars dropping of and picking up passengers because if it's not the closest hotel to the Temple, it is certainly the closest point that vehicles can access. The dome of the Temple and the entrance are just out of sight to the right.

So...where have we been?

Chandrigar, the capital of Punjab. It's a big, formal city full of wide streets and round-abouts. Not "India" as we experience it in other cities. The highlight is the Nek Chand fantasy garden. He's a road's inspector who, for his own amusement, started makinng sculptures and rock gardens out of waste material. It has grown into a acres of pathways and sculptures made of everything from left over rusty barrels to broken bracelets. Broken ceramics (toilets, plates, floor tiles and electrical fuses) predominate. It's said to be the next-most-visited site in India after the Taj Mahal. It's inspiring, Nelson and I took about 100 pictures thinking.....we could try that on the patio wall at home!

Haridwar, sacred site on the Ganges river. We joined the hundreds of pilgrims climbing to the temple. Small children followed us down the streets with their hands out, saying "hello money" and crippled beggers called out from the ground. Interested Indians asked us where we are from. We saw naked saddus and saddus painted orange or blue to look like Gods. It was chaos and it was fascinating.

Rishikesh, the Yoga Capital of the World. A small city on the banks of the Ganges river, waaayy up in the mountains. A fair number of westerners there to take yoga lessons or sample the charras (following in the footsteps of John, Paul, George and Ringo back in the '60s) but still vastly outnumbered by the Indian tourists there to bath in the Ganges and visit the temples. We spent three nights at a hotel with a pool (John loved it!), went rafting on the Ganges with a group of Indian teen-agers and generally enjoyed the people watching, the food and the chaos.

Shimla, the English Raj era government outpost. This was the highest in the mountains we went, and could have been a highlight of the trip but....I spent three nights in our gubby hotel being violently sick while Nelson explored the town. There are some very run down English buildings, an English church, and not much else. Even our driver, Raj, said he's not sure why people go there.

Manali, the "adventure capital" of India. Our hotel room had a view of the mountains and a balcony over the creek. We began to see many people who looked like they could be from Tibet or other mountain countries. We went up the mountain and played in the snow with hundreds of Indian tourists who were seeing the white stuff for the first time. We visited the Parvati Valley temples where the hot springs are so hot the water is boiling when it comes to the surface and people cook bags of rice and potatoes in the outflow. Fields and farms are cultivated as far up the mountain sides as possible (in fact it looks impossible to me) and access is by rickety old cable cars across the river. Roads do not follow the valley floors (it's too narrow) so the vehicles cling to one lane routes the hang off the sides of the hills. We went rafting again, this time in the Beas river. More rapids than the Ganges, but we were still the only westerners on the boat!

McLeod Ganj, where the Dali Lama has established the Tibetan Government in exile. We saw more westerners here than we have seen in all of India. They fall into three groups. 1: People who have come to volunteer to help Tibetan Refuges. Raj told us that there is some resentment among Indian people about the refuges. The Indian Gov't gives them aid, and helps to resettle them in India. Forgien governments and individuals give them aid, and then, according to Raj, they don't work or try to integrate into Indian society. We never had the chance to talk to anyone from Tibet to hear their side of the story. 2: People who are trecking into the Himalayan Mountains. This is the smallest group, identifiable by their MEC equipment and sensible footwear. 3: People who are there for the charras (marajana ...I can't spell it) and the left-over-hippie life style. These are the most visible. Everyone shows up in the many internet shops. We had some good fun people watching and visited the Buddist temples.

The diet caught up with Nelson and John in McLeod Ganj, so we purchased more medicine and spent a fair bit of time in our hotel watching the international movie channel and encouraging them to rest. My food theory now is "eat local and eat hot", that is hot as in fully cooked most likely deep fried. It tastes better than what's on offer under the "European" list on the menu, and if I get something unexpected it's an adventure, rather than a disapointment. (Ask Nelson about the "Greek" salad he got in Ulanbaator!)

I am going to post this and then try to add pictures. It's a slow internet connection.