Monkey Business

yesterday, while reading, a monkey manage to sneak into my room. i caught him as he made his escape with my box of mixed fruit juice.

i was excited about that juice. but the monkey seemed to like it.

mornings

chai. himalayas. puppies. muesli with curd and honey and fruit. a book. sunrise.

doesn't suck here. thats for damn sure.

Workout of the Day

3x
Crutch down 500 yards
Crutch up 500 yards
Crutch shuffle past the ditch

Post time to comments.

The upside of being a hopper in the himalayas

I'm on crutches. In a mountain town. In the himalayas. While this sounds bleak, it affords me a huge opportunity to sit and watch. and breathe in good old clean himalayan air. and the work I am doing...still going on. they ladies just come to visit me at home. (its very sweet of them). And tibetan classes...also done in my home. SO except for the fact that I get bored sometimes because its a ton of alone time but it gives me lots to think about. lots to ponder.

although, I am pretty stoked to get home. and have a fiberglass cast and be able to clomp around on somewhat level ground.

deep breaths. everything will work out. in the meantime...i've got mountains to keep me company.

foot.

is broken. yup.

Fact

You can't say no to a Tibetan Grandmother.

Evidence: 2 100 ruppee shawls, 1 pair of 150 ruppee slippers, 4 20 ruppee bracelets.

Mcleod Ganj.

After the wedding it was honestly a relief to be alone and on a train headed for the Indian Himalayas. Although that relief was short-lived as it turns out 36 hours on a train is a very very long time in a side berth when you are traveling alone and have to sleep with your baggage. A side berth, especially an upper side berth is a very very tight squeeze at my gargantuan height. Add luggage (a large backpack) it’s more than super cozy…

Anyhow I managed the 36 hours just fine and even made some friends on the train. Two married Indian classical musicians who go by Ravi and Huni adopted me around hour 30 and played cards with me. They were very proud of what they did and the fact that their marriage was a “love marriage” and that she was 29 when they got married, and that Huni had for all intents and purposes shoved off her arranged husband to be. Ravi proceeded to tell me she wanted to give me a present but needed nice paper. So I gave her my journal and then she disappeared into an empty berth. Huni and I spent the next 20 minutes or so playing go fish, which he had never played before and loved more than life itself immediately. (I think it helped he kept winning). After the 20 minutes Ravi returned with my journal and pen and handed to me…In it she had drawn an elaborate henna like drawing in it with a time and a date and inscribed it saying “to our American friend”. It was very sweet.

They left me about two hours (and 20 rounds of go fish later) all alone again on the train. Until lo and behold I found another backpacker (success) who managed to keep me entertained for the rest of the ride and the 2.5 hour car ride (we skipped the bus…good choice I would say we saw three of them in ditches due to the thick fog on our way up). I arrived in Dharamsala with a flourish and found a guesthouse after walking around for 20 minutes. Now this is strange for a few reasons: A) it was freezing cold. B) Not one person harassed me, unlike the typical town and C) The dogs here look like normal animals…Not mange ridden beasts. After we checked into the Om hotel which supposedly had SUPREME VALLEY VIEWS (it was pitch black, we took their word for it), we made our way to McLo’s…

Mclo’s is a very typical backpacker joint. Overpriced and mediocre food and beer. A regrettably disappointing order of Momo’s and a Kingfisher beer later my short term travel compatriot made his way home…I stayed alone in the gauntlet. Within five minutes I met a Tibetan named Pema (who obviously was trying to get my attention for less than favorable reasons) but after 10 minutes of talking…Clearing up that I was unavailable for dating, he turned out to be a very great coversationalist. He was a political prisoner for 1.5 years in solitary confinement and when he was released his father sent him from Lhasa to Dharamsala to learn Tibetan Buddhism and find some sort of peace. (His stories about his time in the prison are heart-breaking...)

While we were talking a nice American girl interjected as she had heard me talking about Colorado. Christine (see blog below) her named was and she and her friend Logan had lived here for three months after a failed backpacking attempt in "real India" (everything outside of the Tibetan safe-haven of Dharamsala). They invited me to their pizza party the next night and bid me farewell. Another beer or two later (which Pema REFUSED to let me pay for…”Dad is fancy businessman in Lhasa he pays for everything”) and I was off to my guesthouse. Welcome to “Not Real India”


Also, you should check out my friends’ blog about here. Its far more entertaining than my own.

Mcleod Ganj...A place to hang my hat

So my blog is about to get pretty boring. I arrived in Mcleod Ganj and two days later decided to stay. So I switched to a long term guesthouse with a killer view of the Indian Himalayas and hung up my thangka and decided I'm just not leaving.

Take that south india.

On Indian Weddings: Part 2

So the wedding was Saturday. And what a day it was.

Before the wedding I was brought to a women to put on my sari/saree whatever you want to call the huge piece of cloth that I wore. After five different ladies fussed and stressed about how to dress such a tall drink of water, I was clothed (sort of, hello midriff) and brought to the wedding site.

Now there is this tradition in Indian weddings where the brides side is obligated to steal the grooms shoes. The purpose of this ritual being that if the groom does not have his shoes at the completion of the ceremony then he will be unable to take his bride away from her "sisters" (sisters encompassing actual sisters, friends, aunties and mother etc). Now traditionally this isn't that difficult to accomplish as the brides side is well-organized to achieve this goal. Alas, we were not and the grooms side is exceedingly nutso about this tradition. They succeeded in having the shoes initially and hid them while the brides side scrambled to find the shoes. Somewhere near the end the boys decided to be ballsy. Shika (Alma's friend who I got along with FAMOUSLY and is from Mumbai) and I were ready. The boys held a singular shoe in the air from across the way. Shika and I (Sari and all) took off in a full sprint towards them. After sprinting around like a raving lunatic in a saree for 2 minutes I managed to intercept the shoe. But was promptly tackled to the ground. As I wrestled with five Indian men my sari was coming undone (luckily you wear them with petticoats). After a five minute scrum we were victorious. Quickly, me dragging some three yards of fabric behind me, Shika and I went to fix me up and replace the pleats.

Now...in any other situation my behavior would have been ridiculed and viewed as inappropriate. But for some reason this shoe fiasco is considered a part of the deal. As I returned to the wedding (which was still in session...yes this whole event occurred while the wedding was going on...strange but normal so they say) all the Aunties (women aged 60-80) crowded around me and began lauding me for my efforts and saying in their best English "we can't even walk in a sari and there you are, american girl, sprinting as fast as you can in one". Was truly an experience I can't forget.

After the wedding everyone was put onto buses and sent the 1.5 hour drive back to Ahemdabad where the reception would take place.

Oi. Another long post on a cold day. Maybe I will actually manage to write something about where I am now one of these days....Indian Himalayas are gorgeous and I am in love with Mcleod Ganj. There. I wrote something. :)

On Indian Weddings: Part 1

So some of this is a bit of a repeat but that just has to be ok.

The main purpose of my trip to India was to go to my friend from graduate school's wedding. I had been warned that Indian weddings were crazy...but I had no idea what I was getting into.

I arrived in Vadadora, Gujrat, India on Wednesday in the evening. I had a fine train journey from Bombay to Gujrat albeit a bizarre one including screaming children and a few stares. Ok fine...Not that strange but I had forgotten. I was met by my friend's aunt and driven to the hotel we were staying in. And upon arrival was shuttled to this janky little store next to the hotel. Now Gujrat is a dry state, so this janky little place was none other than the liquor license purveyor. Ten signatures and a stamp in my passport later (yes a liquor license in my passport...charming) I was a certified beverage consumer in the State of Gujrat. Next we went to a family house where we were fed and watched Alma get her hands covered from tip to elbow in Mehendi. It was beautiful work. The next day the big fun started.

At 5pm we hopped in a coach in our best party dresses and made tracks to Ahemdabad to the future Husband's family house. To say the least ringing in the new year in India in a pseudo-legal party with a not at all legal bar was truly a treat. The DJ was killer as was the company. Now Ahemdabad is a 1.5 hour journey to Vadadora, so we had to hit the road again. On the way there we took the "super-slab" (if you can call an Indian expressway a super-slab) but on the way back...our driver forgot and the driver got lost in the middle of nowhere. 3.5 hours later we were back in Vadadora.

Next day was Friday, and it was a full day of prayers and a very fun Mehendi night with dancing and singing abound. All of the ladies sat around smoking hooka getting our hands painted. My friend Alma sat for a couple hours to get her feet done and the family women sat with her playing Hindi singing games, which were of course no use to me but it was still more than pleasant. It was the best and most personal of the evenings as only 200 people were there (compared to 600 at the wedding and 700 at the reception).

Ok. Enough for now. Its cold and the internet cafe is not heated.