25 November - Rishi& the Beatles

covered lots of ground in Manali, then dharamshala/dalai lama 'house' and now in rishikesh . have spent afternoon at the old and massive ashram where the beatles came in the sixties to study with the Maharishi, remember all those photos of them garlanded up?

well the maharishi didn't pay his taxes so in 97 (but seems longer ago) the Indian government reclaimed his territory and gave it over to forestry, it's like going to angkor wat in Cambodia, what was once a thriving huge compound full of houses and halls and roads and huts and blah blah is now overgrown with trees and vegetation , a bit eerie in fact. The gate is locked but you call out and a lock keeper appears and lets you in for a fee. On the way over, the banks of the Ganges where chocka with cross legged gurus and their pupils. A blonde woman gave us a filthy look for presumably taking up her field of vision. Sorry asshole, she should have learnt by now to meditate despite distractions. Ganges very clean here, my only other comparison being seeing it down river at Varanasi. My companion who was here ten years ago claims to have found rooms that were stillf full of documents scattered about. Alas he took none and no pictures and nothing tangible remains now apart from the structures.

Rishikesh is still hippie central. very nice /chilled out place but every time i see some westerner in dreadlocks, i want to cross the road, cannot bear them. Then I remember to practice tolerance and you know, live and let live. Anyway.... great yoga classes here, ie the guruji bothers to explain poses and corrections , my experience in London is not so hands on. No sign of celebrities visiting these parts now, was expecting at least a photo of Sting embracing some tantra master who had taught him all he knows. And my hindi is coming along, by which I mean i cannot understand the locals walking around with their mobiles attached to their ear but i can amuse them with silly sentences i learn like 'i will fire bullets' . er. yes, those sentences stick in the mind, the more useful ones do not. The Beatles and the rest would have crossed the ganges by boat and arrived in what must have been paradise then, ie before ... now, when there are too many jeeps on the road and they make a racket. no stray dogs here howling in the night but been here two nights and one wedding marquee 50 ft from hotel last night and another nearby .. sigh... wouldn't mind so much if was indian music but it's the worst kind of disco music ever. but it's ok, they're not hassly here so you can wander around w/o being sold stuff .

22 november - iranians & Japanese

tbc when i find a keyboard that doesn't stick or a connection that doesn't boot you out.

20 November - Rita & Dill

Just a short story to illustrate how generous people are here (they are generous in lots of places elsewhere too, but never ceases to surprise me in people who have so much less than you).
so am in Mcleod ganji where the dalai lama in exile lives , ten km from Dharamshala and decided to take some Hindi lessons and do some yoga so i can approximate Toph level when he turns up.

Rita is 29 and has a toddler boy and a 3.5 year old girl and she teaches Hindi, she's good.
her husband, not sure how old he is but similar and he teaches yoga or rather at the moment he teaches people who want to achieve teacher level themselves, and one of his former students a swede called Erik teaches the classes. He's good but can't do handstand!

Rita told me she was going to Dharamshala to the market and did i want to go with as she had misunderstood that i wanted to buy a mobile phone but i didn't. . I said yes, off we went in a taxi for which she said we could share the cost, fine by me.

she was happy as finally husband had agreed she could buy a sawing machine, the machine , indian made, cost just short of 40 quid, and to put it into context the rent they pay for 1 month for the yoga studio which is nice and full of windows and the ONE room in which they live is 26 pounds. then we went to buy some fabric for a pound, for her to make pajamas for the kids or 'night suits' as she called them, she wants to practice on kids clothes before she tries on good fabric for herself. A neighbour will teach her. husband then went to buy vegetables . i said to Rita on way back that i wanted to buy something for the daughter, some trinkets as she'd been looking at my shiny watch. so we stop in a toy cum make up shop. Shagun , the daughter chooses some bracelets, and i was looking at a toy truck for Bittu, but Rita said it was too expensive, (2.50) and no, i should get him something cheaper so we settled on a plastic water bottle 'that he can use later when he will go to school' , that cost 1. and i got another wind up cheap toy and some hair bands.

As I was paying , on the counter were some displays of earrings i was picking up and looking at and Rita asked me if i liked 'these' i said yes, but they were 'expensive ' at 2.pounds (sorry no pound sign on this keyboard). they were childish shapes and colours anyway, and i was just looking because i look.....
i go sit in the car with kids and husband and she's taking her time to come out of the shop. when she does, she hands me the earrings i was looking at and said they're a gift from her.

I remonstrated and said you can't give me a gift because i got you one! but she wouldn't hear it.
I just think things like these make my day.

18 November - Movies & George

have no time to edit this so from an email sent to mates.

so have not seen the dalai lama yet and doubt i will since i move on tomorrow, you have to do a certain amount of admin to go to a talk of his as some are for tibetans only and the other ones you have to sign up for it 3 days before, bringing passport etc, and then you have to bring an FM radio to tune into the translation and you know, i went to the tibetan meditation centre and library and fingered about 50 of his books with discourses and thought 'nah, me no need right now for all of this' and strangely enough there were so many youth around and in the photos of people attending meditations there etc and i thought, maybe when you 're younger you search more, right now i have no questions to ask and need no answers, it's sort of perfectly clear to me and if the meaning of life is to prepare for a good death, well, am ok there , won't mind, if far ahead in the future blah blah.

they also had a breakdown by nations and gender and ages of the participants over past few years and overwhelming majority is USA, UK and.... israel - that's a surprise since much smaller number of people there and by % all israelis have done buddhism courses so why they still want to kill the palestinians me don't know. And more women than men seeking enlightenment and so on. er, women usually more keen to find mediating solutions to anything so it figures. Practically no muslim nation seeking it. oh dear...

Was fun to see pictures of richard gere there, bless, they love him for bringing the cause to attention in the west and he's here, well not here but in bodhgaya near Varanasi in 2 weeks to celebrate the 2600th anniversary of the buddha finding eligthenment under the bodhi tree at er.. bodhgaya. of course last week posh beck, aguilera, bono , ricky martin where in udaipur to help celebrate the 80'th b'day of some millionaire indian. so sooner or later i will no doubt run into some celeb instead of strange ozzies who talk about science all the time or a lovely iranian woman who has been studying law in india for 5 years. i like that you find out lots of stuff from different people. of course could sit in a cafe' in piccadilly and button hole strangers from many countries but in london we'd both think the other super weird for that , whereas travelling you don't mind.

but enough about that. the town is awash with gap year peeps here to do some voluntary work with kids, english or clearing up rubbish, which the indians have always had a different view of. it all goes into the street to be eaten as much as possible by dogs and stray dogs, and the rest swept up at night . of course it means that in the hours it doesn't get swept up,it flies everywhere into the woods, streams etc so the gap yearers are walking around collecting tons . bless, a very worthwhile pursuit i think, whilst i just sit and read.

last night after a day that included a long chat with a delightful tibetan girl at the internet cafe' who was completing a USA visa application to go join her tibetan boyf who already lives there , and during which she told me that it took 24 days of walking to get from tibet to india and most of the tibet/nepal side of it included mountains of course (the girl is half my size) ... anyway, today she came to find me in the shop and wants to cook some vegetables for me to thank me for the visa stuff/form. so sweet. she was born in '88, sigh.

so, last night, since i found the cinema and it was showing' Drive 'i thought, must go at 8.30. The cinema is a room with a screen a decent size, 30 odd chairs and dvds of course. I was the only person there and chatted to the owner who told me he likes monsoon weather (here from mid june to september ) because his cinema is full but now obviously is not. eventually a large american bloke with a beard and indian garb turns up and we chat about the film , i said i saw ryan gosling in the Ides of March with George Clooney and he was super good. bloke says he was once an actor in LA and was in a forgotten dvd movie called Combat Academy with a young george pre-ER. must check this out. He now teaches yoga in hollywood of course - golden bridge? so i said 'i did yoga in larchmont last year ' which established i am 'cool' (he knew the place) and is about to go to italy to spend time in Assisi learning meditation with a mexican called guru dave who well, teaches in italy. go figure. bloke told me his name, but was naturally an indian name so forgot it promptly. i told him to dress warmly as it's freezing in assisi in winter. Ah he also said he had been an architect and gone to Milan for trade fairs. (have actually checked imdb now and yes, he must be the actor called Kevin who is no longer an actor). story tallies!

so it was like we had a private screening room situation and felt it was ok to talk through some of the movie, mainly to call out reference points (the debt to david lynch, the one to michael mann the one to scorsese and so on) . He was also scared of violence so had to ask me what happened after any violent scene (and there are a few). and i'm squeamish too. and i made the mistake of telling him a few seconds before ryan on screen realises he's been played by the baddies that he had. he didn't like that.... He had been eating popcorn whilst sat behind me. towards the end of the movie i heard a rustling to my right and thought 'uhm, does he still have popcorn', then i heard it again and thought no, he's behind me, and rustling to the right , must be a .... RAT?
almost at same time i hear bloke say 'did you hear that rustling? I answered yes, must be a rat or a monkey, the words were not out of my mouth that he had catervaulted (new word?) to the front chairs saying i'm scared of rats!. i said am not, and to just lift your feet to another chair. i guess all those years ago occasionally seeing rats the size of cats near my grandma's house have come to some sort of fruition. The rat is not remotely interested in you, as he goes off scavenging as he does.

movie ended and we voted EXCELLENT, so if anyone hasn't seen yet.. go see. unfortunately dvd copy had no end credits so need to check who sang the 80's inspired songs which am betting are all new songs and not of the period. thank god was not a horror movie or would have spooked myself plenty in a room with a stranger, never mind he'd met george. darn, forgot to ask about the gay/straight opinion of george.

ok this story is not so great, i guess you had to be here/there as if felt surreal to watch LA night landscape in an underground room near where the dalai lama sleeps.

apologies for typos but it's always the damned sticky keyboards, not me! honest!

8 November - Apples & Potatoes

I could say I miss the office gym but …. the Himalayas kick butt more. But thank god at some point in my life I did enough lunges and squats because yesterday I walked (with a guide and another tourist) a round 22km , some of it uphill or downhill on dry riverbeds and mountain paths. I’d say the first two hours were easy-ish, through time forgotten villages, but when you get to the third and fourth hour and you have not had lunch yet, you do wish you could just go ‘Taxi!’, but then you have a second wind and you do another three and voila’ seven hours trek done. That’s on top of all the other walking , easily 6 or 8 km a day up and down to villages here and there. The other tourist, a dutch girl, has been in India for two weeks and she showed me her trousers are falling off her, and we were both marveling at the fact that we’re putting sugar in tea and coffee (never at home) and eat cakes and lots of starch and drink sprite. That’s sort of proof if we needed any that exercise burns more fat than sticking to diets. Actually the other western thing that’s missing is any alcohol. Nobody seems to drink, so the idea of a beer or a glass of wine doesn’t enter your head. Plus you don’ t snack. why go to a Spa when you can go to the himalayas heh?

Am glad boyf. is not with me initially as he would have objected to 10 hours on bumpy local buses on scary roads in the night (but that’s better than a week on the jubilee line as far as am concerned) and also to my sleeping habits, ie 12 hours a night. I could never achieve this degree of rest in London as would always have something to do and would feel guilty wasting time but since I have no master here, 12 hours it is. My next job would be one that starts at 11am I think since my ‘without alarm clock’ waking up time seems to be around 9am. er...that will never happen.

So in a day or two I will have enough energy to face another 10 or 12 hours on a scary bus on a bumpy road to go say hi to the Dalai Lama, he’s not there but his house is, in Dharamshala. then i'll do the same to go to Rishikesh and beyond . There are so called luxury Volvo coaches which are more comfortable especially if travelling at night but am here in low season so they don’t run them. Drat! Local bus it is, which resemble something you see on those documentaries about kids going to some village school in Africa, they were built the year I was born and the suspension pads never existed. And the roads get routinely washed away or the tarmac does and you're left with a muddy track. Sigh…. But a bit of yoga on arrival will sort out the achey spine.

So things you learn no. #55. The other day I stopped to buy a banana and 2 apples. The banana I know is 5 rupies, so when he asked for 30 for the apples I thought no way, this is where you GET apples, the whole region is apple orchards galore and 30 rupies is 50p which is massive for 2 apples in the apple region of india. So I left them, was in no mood to barter. Yesterday on the a 22km round trek with the guide, he was telling me that this year the crop of apples has been dismal. His father has an orchard and year before he produced 800 boxes of 20kg of apples and this year he got……………23 boxes of 20kg. so his father didn’t have apples to spare to give to him (bear in mind that they make cider from those and some other local potent brew). So me buying apples at 50p was no more than a tokyo dweller buying an orange back in the 80’s , astronomical. Guide also told me that prices are going up for Indians too. When a couple of years ago a kg of veg was 20p , now it’s edging towards a pound. I like finding out about economy. funny though as every single one has a mobile phone. and not just the cheapest nokia to talk only, approx 12 quid, but more advanced models. Which reminds me I spent a day and 8 quid to have one of my spare london handsets unlocked, doh. Except that this way I don't contribute to any child labour in a Congo mine to extract the minerals needed for mobile phone function. So there, smug or what, and i contributed to the local economy and skills practice since the guy doesn't get asked often to unlock a london phone and was chuffed he managed it.

Then we saw some massive quarry and asked ‘why/what’ . he said they’re starting construction of a 9km tunnel under massive mountains (currently it takes hours to go from 2,000m to double that where the pass is to continue on the other side and the road /pass is closed to traffic as of now because of snow/weather. ), the tunnel will take over 10 years to build. I said ‘exuse me but what do they produce in Ladak (the other side, 2 road days away). Do they have minerals? He said no, do they have oil?, he said no, gas? , he said no. So I asked what do you care then if they’re cut off for six months of the year, that was always so ….. it was kinda nice no? (all western townies long for some forgotten way of life but could only stand it themselves for a week max of course)

And the said in Ladak they produce practically all the potatoes that you eat in india!!!! But potatoes are cheap I argued, why spend zillions to make them available, when you can , I don’t know, ship them in from… Ireland? But he had no answer and thinking about it I don’t think the production of potatoes in Ireland or Italy or Poland or Germany could ever be enough to feed billions of Indians.

So now we know about apples and potatoes.

now for climate change. last year they had no snow here. No snow. that's like... scary! and the guide (born in 1980) says he has picture of the glacier when he was a teen and now and the glacier is well, considerably smaller . if you think about the fact that i rushed here from delhi because in early november they get tons of snow and therefore i would not have been able to get to the pass and instead not only is it not snowing, it's 28C during the day, you get an idea of weather patterns screwed up. However, i think Italy will destroy the world economy before we have to worry about disappearing snow. The last time the river here overflew and took out the entire road down to the valley was in 2004. now of course it's dry season still and there's a trickle of water but if no snow = no river = no er...lots of things, and no rubbish carried down to the sea also.

now for nationalities. the guide says the dutch always ask lots of questions about birds species and and nature and they love mountains presumably because their country is so flat. he didn't offer anything about other nations. he said the Israelis come here and don't want to trek. why we don't know, since er. you come here to trek or smoke. i offered that perhaps since they are obliged to do military service for 2 and a half years, when they are here they don't want to exercise but smoke and rave? he agreed. that was the end of nationalities/cliches. Apart from a story about some woman who suffered vertigo even walking on a path that was not overlooking a cliff or anything and kept crying but kept wanting to go on treks. He had to hold her hand all the time. Uhmmm...

oh , i had to laugh. we met the guy who accompanied the Himalaya/indian skiing team to the winter olympics in Turin a mere 6 years ago i think. bless. i saw the slopes here. they are er.. 1 slope in place called Solang Nallah. One slope, think a Red. ok so higher up there are others, and you can heli ski so if you're good you can be parachuted down to some glacier but no way is there the network of slopes we have in europe or america. not quite jamaican bob sleigh team but....

My guesthouse is nice but more than that seems to have the best food around. The food costs as much as the room but is worth it, and in light of the above economics of vegetables and fruit, the fact that my muesli with yogurt and fruit had the following on top is extraordinary: apples and bananas , standard, plus melon and pomegranate, exceptional. The chef makes a mean pasta arrabbiata sauce and a good pizza.

The essential thing though is that total quiet never exists anywhere. The place is full of stray dogs , all of india is since they don’t put down any creature. During the day the dogs are perfectly peaceful if manky and seeing 7 puppie at your feet when you drink tea is kind of cute, especially when a yak goes past, yes, one of those giant furry mountain bulls and the 7 puppies decide to bark at him and chase him. As if! Very funny. Then you go to bed at 9pm and w/o fail at 10 or 11 or 12, the dogs start some elaborate drama , dozens of them barking at each other or fighting since there is no human on the streets at that time. What the f? I wish I knew what sets them off. But at least am not under a canopy of trees inhabited by zillions of crow (that’s kerala and goa for you) or surrounded by hens and cockerels that cookadooodledoo at 3am (that was laos). The trusted earplugs that kept me sane from listening to ex colleague’s hour long phone conversations with her mother/sister/friends daily at work well here too. Never travel without plugs!

I have a lot more in common with the middle classes than I have with the poor despite some of my family thinking am here to seek some mother Theresa style mission. The guesthouse has a large collection of the india version of conde nast Traveller magazine which is highlighting tons of places India that are up and coming as opposed to the over-visited Rajasthans etc. plus reviews of chic hotels and restaurants up and down the country. I like, and it makes me laugh when I see a tourist board page ad for visiting…. Manchester. Check it out, it tells you could see lakes nearby, or go on a steam train or drink in fashionable bars, must be interesting if you’re a middle class Indian from Delhi looking to escape the heat there in summer.

The guest house library is also full of FHM magazines with great looking Indian guys and their six packs on the cover. The ads are super daring for these parts, ads for condoms, ads for nutritional supplements, (can’t get the six packs just with exercise don't ya know) and ads for fashion and grooming products, all correlated with half naked gorgeous Indian lady models . none of these people are to be seen on the streets, much as London is not full of Helena Christensens on the tube to work but still, how does the life of the magazine co-exist with the local women here who wear a blanket held together by broaches at the top , belted in the middle and plastic/rubber flat shoes and cardies ? necessary attire for spending hours in the woods collecting branches and grass to fill huge wicker baskets which to then carry home to store for fire or feeding cows in winter. then again some housing estate dweller in Glasgow has no thread in common with an ad in Glamour magazine so have given myself the answer already. Ain’t I clever?

But the quiet life here in the mountains is attractive up to a point. I will soon long for Mumbai and the scene. Am busy learning the names and faces of bollywood stars in case I come across them in real life. Half of them share the surname Khan, the other half are Kapoors and there are a few Chopras and one other surname i can't remember.

The gossip mags are full of them and they are more candid than our stars , they all comment negatively on the others, (example 'Goa is full of girls who look like Freida Pinto (she of Slumdog millionaire) says a MALE actor! how ungracious) but maybe that’s a bit like having Jordan calling Posh a moody cow or something so again, maybe the west is the same, long time since I read the National Enquirer.

November is the season of weddings, 20 in the past two weeks alone am told in old manali village which holds 2 or 3000 people. That’s a lot. Have seen various processions but think they were the ones to bless houses rather than seeing any brides or grooms. Thank god here they don't subscribe to the notion of dowry which is widespread in the rest of india and is themost appalling thing. Should be outlawed as far as am concerned, much as throwing yourself on the funeral pyre of your husband is outlawed since the sixties or seventies thanks to Indira Ghandi (I think)

I’ve seen various old mills to grind flour using the power of rushing mountain streams in action. I have seen similar in Italy but I guess if you were 20 years younger than me you wouldn’t have. It’s no longer done. Same for seeing various old ladies spinning wool on those spools or using machines to make carpets, I remember my gran spooling sheep's wool under her portico but don’t think any of my ‘nieces’ would have seen similar as their mothers are my friends and or mothers never did, it was already a lost skill. Same as killing and plucking a chicken. Yewwwwww. One of my grans did as lived in small town so rural habits still persisted in the sixties, and I was obliged occasionally to assist in the plucking. Double yewwwww.

anyway, back to reading a novel or two.

4 November - Travel & Mishaps

Arriving in delhi at 2am and staying awake long enough to go check in for flight to Kullu (for Manali in Uttar Pradesh) and you get to the front of the messy queue only to be told all air india flights to Kullu cancelled today and so all other airlines to same place, please to go to desk over there.

Then choosing on spur of moment Chandigarh as don't fancy arriving in Jammu/Kashmir, bit risky that area on first day out of Europe. The ticket desk lady said Chandigarh near Manali, you can drive there. I said 'Umh, I don't think it's that near' but what choice did i have, had no desire to leave relative sanity of airport to go into Delhi to find a bus. So Chandigarh it is. In the meantime the first few cups of chai bring just happiness. Only here can I drink stuff full of sugar and love it. There is no internet terminals for public use so first a nice indian guy with a laptop allows me to check an email or two and later, after I make it past security and there's no internet either, 3 employees of the local Dixons go to lengths to allow me to log on to a display laptop and send the guesthouse in manali the 'hey , won't be arriving this morning after all' since I very stupidly forgot to write on paper their phone number and simply assumed no hitch would take place. Doh! Good old pen and paper, should remember that.

You land one hour later to discover that the way to Manali will take a further 10 hour on a government bus! but that's preferable to staying in Chandigarh which looks like the pits despite having been built on a le Courbuoisier type grid. the bus goes at midday, you'll be lucky to be in bed at midnight. Only good thought you can have at this point is 'thank god the boyf is not with, he'd have hated this, hated it, proof that india doesn't work. As it happens I came prepared with the trusty earplugs to block out some of the screeching engine noises and with the super versatile foamy pillow that allows you to nod off against a rattling window. At least it's cold on the night portion of the journey and am wearing all my winter clothes instead of carrying them. Fun to watch the poor local indian men sat next to me for stretches of the hours, trying not to knock their legs or other anatomy against my body. So much for the boyf thinking they all want to prey on western women. I keep telling him that apart from a small percentage who for sure thinks western women are whores or some such as they travel on their own, the vast majority has no intention of being disrespectful and since none of these men gets on board drunk ie abusive, after they register a lady, they go on to chat on their phones, eat peanuts, talk to their mate etc. I wish had not taken both a rucksack and a small wheelie as you really can't keep track of both. Wheelie btw is only full of books I intend to read and discard, the guide and a few hindi notebooks. Once i get to the heat of the south, i'll be able to discard all woollens, and the persistently unread novels, like A.'s grandad's of which am reading the last 3 books in the series and am disconcerted by the amount of characters he's following. Should have written for Eastenders or something. I also have a remaining Bolano to get through and a few more. The Kindle has to wait for next long trip.

all the way up there the batteries on the mobile are slowly dying but managed to arrange a driver pick up at a surely deserted bus station at 11pm in Manali. Vinod was there, to take me to tired but patient guest house staff (thank you Drifter's) who lugged my bags up along the impassable (to anything but a donkey ) road which was being re-built in time for the next tons of snow to dislodge it down the hill again.

All is forgotten upon waking to brilliant sunshine next morning at 10am and stepping out to march type strong sun on the slopes in france or italy. Pure joy. A good choice was made without resorting to any omens, just 'has to be done'.