Ok so yet again I neglected my blog and haven't really done any writing in it. However that is going to change right now as I am sitting in an internet cafe on my last day in Varanasi. Its about 1:30 in the afternoon and it is really too damn hot to do much of anything, so I figure I will burn out the time until my 7:30 pm train typing. I do believe I haven't really even talked about most of my adventures in Mcleod Ganj so I guess that will be where I start for today. I'm going to try and make it all the way through Varanassi, but I might get bored and wait to finish it when I arrive back in Delhi tomorrow. Ok so here it goes...
So our last couple of days in Mcleod Ganj were really a good time, even though it did rain just about every day that we were there. One day, the weather was pretty nice, so we walked down to the big Dalhi Lama temple where most of the monks that live in the town reside. This complex is just huge and very beautiful, there is a path that circumnavigates the perimeter of the temple and its grounds. Along the path there all of the boulders have been painted white and many of them have budhist prayers engraved into them, also all of the trees along the path and a ways off of the path have hundreds and hundreds of prayer flags strung between them. Along the path there are several Stoopa's (smaller budhist temples) that you can stop and take a look at, and they are all very intricately designed as well. Near the end of the path before you make it back into the city you get to walk around and take a look at the outside of the Dalhi Lama's home and it is a very emaculate building. He was actually in town while we were there but unfortunately we did not have the luck to catch a sighting of him.
We also went inside the big main temple that sits at the beginnning of the path, and that is a really grandoise temple as well. When you go into some of the rooms with all of the monks praying and chanting it is a very cool sight to see, and the paintings of all of the different deities painted on the wall are really fantastic. The paintings are hundreds of small paintings and the detail on each one is really intense and perfect, that was probably the part of the temple that I liked the most. Of course after we are done looking around the temple and its grounds, it begins to downpour and hail just like it does every day in Mcleod Ganj. We found out that it is one of the two most rainy cities India, so we ran back to our gues house as fast as we could to wait out the rain before going out for dinner.
The day before we left Mcleod we finally went and did a trek up the nearest mountain to a small hikers camp called triund, and its where a lot of people start their treks that last a week or longer. Saul and I really wanted to do a several day trek but with only having a month in India the time just wasn't right for us to do it, plus its kind of expensive and would have blown our budget way out of whack. So instead we opted for the one day trek with no guide to be our last excursion in Mcleod Ganj, we booked a bus ticket for the next morning at 8 am and prepared for our day in the Himalaya's.
We started up the mountain at about 8 in the morning when Ruby came to meet us at our guesthouse because she hadn't had an opportunity to hike the mountain yet, so the three of us headed up the path that led to the last village, Dharamk0t I think ints called. We pushed on through that village pretty quickly and began the ascent on a rocky path through a bunch of evergreens. After about fourty-five minutes of walking we came to a small guest house and restaurant that people go to do extended meditations, we thought this would be the perfect spot to grab breakfast before proceeding. The food was fine, and it filled us all up so with our energy restored we grabbed our bags and kept on walking. The climb up the mountain really wasn't that bad, it was a nice gentle slope that wound around the outside of several mountains eventually leading to the camp called triund. Along the way there are a couple rest stops that you can grab a bottle of water or a small snack, a couple of the stops had me wondering how in the world they got some of the gear up there and if these people hiked up every day or if they brough a bunch of supplies and just stayed in the mountains for a while. I am thinking that most of them go up with the intention to stay for a while, and I'm kind of kicking myself for not asking one of the shop owners while I was there, hahaha.
About half way up the mountain and maybe an hour and a half into the hike we ran into about five other backpackers that were doing to hike as well. A couple from France that lived in London, a Dutch girl, and two other Brits. They were all really nice and funny, and some of the more normal people that I ended up meeting in that town. While we were sitting there talking to them all of the sudden I hear this rumbling like something large is falling down this mountain side, my first instinct was that there was some sort of landslide but I was oh so wrong. We turn around just in time to see a pack of mountain goats comming barrling at us, and the French guy says "Oh shit, those damn dogs." Im really confused at what the hell he is trying to tell us, cuz I didn't see any dogs, just mountain goats. It turns out that while they were walking through one of the towns on the way to the path they had slowly picked up more and more dogs that just begin to follow them up the path. The dogs were very friendly and seemed to think they were part of the pack, this pack of mountain dogs had spotted this herd of goats and deceided that it would be fun to chase them down or something, but they almost ran us over in all of their fun and enjoyment. Either way after that somewhat freightening incident we had to continue our trek up the mountain, the French couple was waiting for some slower friends behind them so we continued on up on our own. The rest of the trek up was all just great views and spiraling pathways, and it took a total of probably 3 hours to make it to the first camp.
Breaking over the last hill to see all of the tents that were lining a ridge that looked out on maybe five or six gigantic mountains was a very satisfying sight, even more so after the long and pretty tiring climb. They had a nice little cafe in a shack right when you got to the top so you could sit down around a fire and drink a nice cup of chai, so thats exactly what we did. As we all sat there we began to talk to some of the other trekkers, most of who were either going on or just getting back from a pretty long trek through the mountains. They all told us that if we wanted to continue further up the mountain we could easily reach the snow line in maybe an hour and a half. The day was starting to get a little late, but I could see the snow capped mountains on the other side of the valley and they were calling to me, I needed to reach the snow line at the very least. Ruby was to tuckered out from the hike up to the base camp, so she opted not to continue on with Saul and I and to head back down the mountain. I felt a little bad for ditching out on her, but I needed to go further, since I had already come so far to begin with.
We trekked on up the path that was somewhat marked with blue arrows on some of the rocks, so we could easily find our way and hopefully not get lost. However we were on the side of the mountain so it would be pretty hard to get lost, if we didn't where we were we could just head back down the side of the mountain and find the camp again. That was my assumption anyway. The hike up the mountain was really foggy and wet because it seemed to be that there was a rain storm moving into town, so most of the last leg of our trek was through thick clouds minimizing our visibility to a couple of meters. All of that really helped keep things interesting, always hunting for the small blue arrows that pointed the way. After about and hour of walking we reached what was called the "Snow Line Cafe" this was the last cafe that existed before you entered the real mountains. Apparently this is where the blue arrows were leading us, so we asked the cafe attendant which way to see snow and he pointed us off in a direction, through the mist. So we decided that we should just take a guess and keep heading up the mountain.
After about another hour of hiking up the mountain there was still no snow, so we chose to walk just a little further and see if maybe it was just out of sight. As we began our last climb before turning back, the rain started to come. We thought whatever, its just a little rain, and we continued on. As we kept walking the rain picked up and turned to hail, this was when we thought it was maybe best to turn around and seek refuge in the cafe about an hour behind us. We turned around in defeat and began to trudge back to the snow line cafe, and you know what my whole theory of being able to just walk back down the mountain was probably not the most sound theory. After a while we really weren't sure if we had past the landscape before or if we were even going on the right path. The compass that I had said that we were going the right way, but you can never be sure when the landscape that you can see around you is just giant freaking boulders. So it was at this point we decided that we should sit down and maybe take a break for a minute and collect our thoughts. As we sat there thinking, and drinking our water we hear something coming up behind us, a little freaked out we turned around and there is a huge dog trotting up to us from out of the mist. This was a little bit weird since we were probably at almost 4000 meters elevation and there were no people or villages in sight. Either way the dog was very friendly and gave us a little bit of an energy boost. We named the dog Bruno and kept on walking back to the cafe.
Fortunately Bruno the big mountain dog seemed to know exactly where he was going and where we wanted to be. He was walking maybe five paces in front of us the whole way, and all of the sudden out of the fog and clouds we see the snow line cafe. How nice it was to see that small little rock hut that was called a cafe. We stopped there to wait out the rain, grab some tea and a bite to eat. As we sat in the cafe we ended up seeing the French couple and the Dutch girl come out of the rain to seek cover as well, and it turns out that all of the dogs that had been with them still were, plus they had picked up several more along the way now they had a pack of 9 dogs following them up the mountain. They stopped to chat for a little bit at the cafe and they were going to keep going until they found the snow, but for Saul and I the trek was over. We were extremely tired and we had a long trip ahead of us, so we said our goodbyes and headed back down the mountain. It was funny as soon as we started walking down the hill the big pack of dogs ended up ditching the other humans to follow us back down to the camp, it was really a hilarious sight to see this pack of now ten mountain dogs, Bruno joined the clan, following and leading us down the mountain. I have a couple of really good pictures of these silly dogs but I'm going to wait till I get home to upload most of them. The dogs followed us all the way back to the main town, which was probably a good two hours hike down, and then they all dispersed and went their own ways. It really was a pretty peculiar thing, but they were pretty good company for the walk back down. So now that we are just dead beat tired from what turned into an eleven hour trek we both packed our bags up in preparation to leave the next morning and begin our string of bad transportation.
We got up to grab our bus at 9 am that would take us from the twin towns of Mcleod Ganj and Dharamsala and bring us to a transport hub of a city called Pathankot. Of course since this is India and hardly anything ever makes complete sense our bus was not on time and didn't even leave Dharamsala untill about 11:00 am. This was not a good thing for us since we really needed to be in Pathankot by 3 p.m. so that we could catch a train to Amritsar, home of the golden temple. Yet again we took a government run bus, so it was dirt cheap to make the 3 hour journey out of the mountains, but the bus seemed as though it could have fallen apart at any moment. We did not make it in time to catch the train we wanted, so we were stuck in Pathankot.
This town was just a complete garbage town, the people were the rudest that we had met anywhere in India which is odd because Indians are usually very kind and accomadating unless it is involving money. We couldn't find a single person that could point us in the direction to tourist agency that was supposed to be 2 km from the train station. We got a variety of different answers to that question, for example, no, no, no you can't go there. It burned down last year. What the hell, I honestly doubt that it had burnt down mainly because after this gentleman is done telling me that the agency has burnt down he wants to arrange a taxi for us from Pathankot to Amritsar for the small price of 1700 rupees a person. That is just a ridiculous price for a private taxi in the first place, and secondly we didn't want a damn taxi, we just wanted to know train times however he persisted to offer us a taxi for about five minutes untill we lost our patience and yelled at him, "I don't need a damn Taxi!!" Then he gets all offended that we had to yell at him. It was quite rediculous.
So back to the train station in attempt to score some sort of answers even though there wasn't a single railway employee that spoke more than a few words of English. Saul is running back and forth from one terminal to the next trying to figure out where the hell the next train is, because it said on the board that it was supposed to be coming any minute. I sat watching our luggage trying to deal with a bunch of very very very persistant beggar children that would help to continue our awful time in the shit-hole called pathankot. Eventually after plenty of grief and confusion we found out that the train that we needed to Amritsar was delayed several hours but they didn't know how long it would be. Great. So we tried to buy our tickets for the train, alas they are sold out of sleeper class and if we want to get on the train that evening we had to ride general class the whole 5 hours. At this point we are so ready to just grab anytrain and get the hell out of Pathankot that we thought, why not? How bad could it possibly be.
So we sat there in the trainstation reading and waiting and waiting and waiting. The whole time that were sitting there, there are about five beggar children that have been sent over by their mother to try and get money out of us. We did as you are told and ignored them for as long as we could, they kept trying to reach into our pockets and grab things out, as well as grabbing at our chips or sodas. I felt really bad for them because I obviously had much more than they did, but at the same time if I were to give one of those children a rupee or two all of the others would have needed some, and then who knows maybe the rest of the pour beggars in the station would be hassling me. So we obstained from giving any hand outs. The thing that reallyblew our mind was that not a single bystander would say anything to these children, they all just sat in their chairs and gawked and the frustrated white kids. It was really quite irritating that this was happening, and you could see their mother sitting and watching it all happen as well, we tried to move down the platform. That didn't work. We left the station, that didn't work. Eventually as we stood there ignoring their attempts to steal our stuff out of our hands and crippled man came up and slapped one of the kids in the face. The all scattered away that time, but every Indian in the whole damn station gawked at Saul as though he were the one who had hit the kids. It was really hard to take everything in, but soon after that incident we heard the announcment for our train. As I mentioned earlier we had grabbed General Class tickets, so we had to hog pile into the train with hundreds of other Indians. This normally wouldn't have been such an ordeal if I didn't have my giant ass backpack on, plus my day pack. Eventually we found spots near the door to stand, and set down our bags, and then we began our long trip standing on a train talking to a bunch of sekh teenagers about their "100 girlfriends" and how one of their cousins was Michal Jordan. Normally I would have found the humor in it, but I was really stressed out and didn't want to deal with it, so I eventually just tuned it out and gave them routine answers while they had their fun talking to the Westerner.
Im gonna end this post here because my hands are tired from typing and I'm getting a bit hungry. Ill try to finish this post all the way through to Varanasi when I reach Delhi, or maybe even later on this evening. However I hope all is well in the States and I will be back very shortly.
Peace,
J a k e
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
I am a little short on time at the moment...
Ok so if my memory is serving me correctly it has been a couple days since I was last on the internet or even had a moment to write anything down. This has been an awfully hectic past couple of days, but it has been a pretty amazing couple of days at the same time. I think I understand why so many other travelers say that they have a love/hate relationship with this country. I only have a couple of minutes to write before I need to go and start doing some last minute shopping before I go for another extremely long train ride to the holy city of Varanasi which sits on the banks of the ganges river. So for now I will just give a short list of things that have occured in the past couple of days and I will try to write about most of them once I get checked into a room in Varanasi. I think last time I left off I was complaining about all of the hippies in Mcleod Ganj, but a lot has happened since then.
- Dali Lama Temple
-Hiked up a Himalyan mountain all the way to the snow line
-Hellish bus ride out of Mcleod Ganj
-Stuck in a town called Pathankot (Worst City Experience Yet)
-Crap train ride to Amritsar
-Stuck In Amritsar
-Delayed Trains
-Broken down trains
Probably some other things that will crop up in my head as I write them, but make sure to check back in a couple of days, while I'm in Varanasi I'm gonna take some time to write during the day when it is way too hot. I've heard that the average temp right now in Varanasi is somewhere around 120-125 fareinheit and really humid! AWESOME!
Peace,
J a k e
- Dali Lama Temple
-Hiked up a Himalyan mountain all the way to the snow line
-Hellish bus ride out of Mcleod Ganj
-Stuck in a town called Pathankot (Worst City Experience Yet)
-Crap train ride to Amritsar
-Stuck In Amritsar
-Delayed Trains
-Broken down trains
Probably some other things that will crop up in my head as I write them, but make sure to check back in a couple of days, while I'm in Varanasi I'm gonna take some time to write during the day when it is way too hot. I've heard that the average temp right now in Varanasi is somewhere around 120-125 fareinheit and really humid! AWESOME!
Peace,
J a k e
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Have you ever heard yourself!?
Ok, so I will probably keep this post shorter as well since I'm getting pretty hungry after all the hiking we did today. It was a pretty good hike all in all, we got to see another waterfall and then we kept going up this mountain and found the Shiva Cafe about fifteen minutes from the waterfall. The cafe was really nice, it oddly enough had a small pool outside for swimming and a whole bunch of seating in a garden. Unfortunately however as soon as we got up to this cafe, the rain started to come in a pretty nice downpour. So Saul and I were forced to wait out the rain inside the cafe drinking Chai and playing some card games. The cafe itself was really old and made out of stones that they find all around the hillside there, we ended up waiting about two hours or so playing cards untill the rain slowed to a stop so we could walk back to the town.
Well back to when we first arrived in Mcleod Ganj, we got off the bus at about 430 in the morning, as were sitting in the street exhausted and hungry we see Ruby come down the hill to collect us and bring us back to where she stays. I was so thankful that she came down to meet us so early in the morning and let us hang around here guest house untill we finally could go and eat and then check into a guest house of our own. We at on the roof of this really nice bakery and then grabbed a guest house just up the hill from her, a double room with bathroom, shower, and hot water is only 200 rupees a night for the both of us. Plus its probably the best room that we have had so far on this trip, clean and huge!
The first night that I was there we went out to eat and met up with some of the people Ruby knew, I can hardly remember it though because I was so exhausted, I almost feel asleep during dinner. After we ate that night I went to bed and slept for almost 12 hours, and I needed that sleep so badly and I felt so much better the next day. The second day wasn't too eventful either, we mainly wandered around the main town of Mcleod and did a little shopping, we then trekked it up to the neighboring village called Bhagsu where all of the "travellers" stay and we ate a really nice cafe there. After that we pretty much just hung out on our balcony the rest of the evening and then met up with Ruby to cook some dinner and hang out. That night Sam, whom we met through Ruby, didn't feel very well after dinner so he went and laid down and we didn't really think much of it and just left him to sleep it off. Saul and I went back to our guest house and sat with our neighbor Flavio from France. We sat there drinking beers and talking till pretty late, and he had some very good stories and was pretty entertaining, even more so since he has been traveling for around 12 years or something like that but he wasn't super fake and stuck up like some other people that you meet that have been traveling for a really long time. Well we go to bed and wake up the next morn to hear Ruby knocking at our door, Saul went to let her in and it turns out that Sam is not doing so well at all, he ended up going to the bathroom around thirty times the night before he had a fever and pretty bad pains in his stomach. We got him some hydration tablets hoping he could keep those down and maybe fight through it but things got worse in the next three hours. He ended up going to the hospital with ruby at around 1 pm and he is actually still there right now. They think its just a bacterial thing and it should go away fairly soon, we went to visit him yesterday and he wasn't looking awesome, so tonight Saul and I will drink a beer for his health while we watch the soccer Finals.
Well maybe a slight change of tone in this scatterbrained post, the night that before Sam got sick we all went down into town to a cafe kind of restaurant to see an open mic. This was one of the most sickening things that I have ever seen, I'm very glad I went and saw what some of these people are like but it would take a whole lot of money to get me to go back there and live through the torture again. Saul, Ruby, a couple other randoms and I walked in about 15 minutes after it started and the place was just packed to the brim with a bunch of overly stoned hippies, I'll call them hippies but I'm not exactly sure if that is the correct term. Saul and I just refer to them as the Individuals but I'd rather not type that out a whole bunch of times. So packed to the brim with hippies and it took us a very awkward 10 minutes of climbing around very lazy people to find a spot to sit/stand. We settled in for the entertainment really not knowing what to expect, I mean we knew it would be bad but we did not think that it would be unbearable.
I may sound hypercritcal in this post but the atmosphere of this place is very hard to discribe, low lights, everyone is silent looking up at a random traveler that has decided the song that he or she wrote when it was raining yesterday is ready to be shared with the world. At the end of any performance, or at the hint of a joke, or even just the emcee cuing up the next act brought ridiculous amounts of applause or laughter from the crowd. I really do understand the notion of being supportive and what not to these people that are bearing their souls, but I mean there has to be a line that is drawn in my opinion. If these people never are ever criticized will they ever get better or work hard to become better at what they apparently love to do? Maybe they would all just prefer to go on being clueless.
The best, well I guess I mean the one that was the most mind wrenching was a freaking clown/mime. The guy is announced and he walks up through the back of the crowd making sure to stop and put his arm around my shoulder. I didn't see him comming up behind me so I'm looking next to me and I see this clown staring at me, I didn't crack a smile or laugh or anything I was far too uncomfortable with this extremely creepy clown staring back at me. He pretended to be startled and continued on to the center of the room to start his act. The whole time he was attempting to magic tricks and other gags but every single one that he did was poorly performed and not very entertaining. I think what made this act really unbearable was the fact that the crowd that really loves anything that moves or is moderately sparkly couldn't even muster the energy to fake laugh at this joker. Thankfully he stopped his act after 20 minutes of torture and the emcee came up to announce the next performers, two hippies from Canada who were going to sing and play the guitar. This was another awful act with two very annoying people taking center stage and sharing things with these people that should probably stay in one's own mind. This woman rambled on for nearly five minutes about the lovely rainbow vibes in the room, and how everyones aura was making the evening especially pleasant, I nearly yakked. Then she tells us she is going to perform her new song she wrote during the thunderstorm the day before, surprise the song is called thunderstorm. Her boyfriend I'm assuming was awful at the guitar and couldn't keep a rythem to save his life, I'm assuming he just bought the guitar when he got to Mcleod Ganj and thought that he could play because he took those five lessons ten years ago. Guitarist asside the woman really killed me, not only did her song lyrics make no sense at all, but she thought she had the voice of an angel. She would belt out every word as loud as she could without yelling, and then she would warble her voice up and down in some sort of weak attempt at a vabrado I'm thinking. They sang four songs and were planning on doing three more before the emcee thankfully jumped up and told them they were out of time.
There were several other terrible acts at that open mic night, more guitarists, a flamboyantly gay tibetan booty dancer that sexually harrased the men in the front by the stage, and then a spaniard I believe that wrote a three act opera about a celestial yak that turned his penis into a rope to ensnare his true love. However the Yak opera was pretty funny but we were laughing at the fellow instead of with him. Oh yeah and the thing that really topped the cake about the Canadian Thunder Singer was when I was kind of eavesdropping on her conversation. She was talking about her what she does at home when she isn't travelling India and finding herself, drum roll please......................
At home in Toronto I think, she is a vocal therapist. She has patients that come to have her sing to them to heal their ailments! I couldn't believe it, her voice made my head feel like it was going to impload and she is claiming to heal people with it. Ahh what it is to truely find yourself in India.
Well I do apologise for this post, thinking back to writing it I feel like I jumped around a bunch and didn't even get down all of the things that I wanted to. Only if I had more than an hour and a half to post I would write down some of the other adventures we have gone on as well. Alas I will save them for when I see you all in person, or maybe if I have time tomorrow Ill write down one more. I promise one of these posts will be grammatically correct and not be completely mental. Look forward to a composite list at the end of my trip, Top 100 ways to find your inner-self in India.
Peace,
J a k e
Well back to when we first arrived in Mcleod Ganj, we got off the bus at about 430 in the morning, as were sitting in the street exhausted and hungry we see Ruby come down the hill to collect us and bring us back to where she stays. I was so thankful that she came down to meet us so early in the morning and let us hang around here guest house untill we finally could go and eat and then check into a guest house of our own. We at on the roof of this really nice bakery and then grabbed a guest house just up the hill from her, a double room with bathroom, shower, and hot water is only 200 rupees a night for the both of us. Plus its probably the best room that we have had so far on this trip, clean and huge!
The first night that I was there we went out to eat and met up with some of the people Ruby knew, I can hardly remember it though because I was so exhausted, I almost feel asleep during dinner. After we ate that night I went to bed and slept for almost 12 hours, and I needed that sleep so badly and I felt so much better the next day. The second day wasn't too eventful either, we mainly wandered around the main town of Mcleod and did a little shopping, we then trekked it up to the neighboring village called Bhagsu where all of the "travellers" stay and we ate a really nice cafe there. After that we pretty much just hung out on our balcony the rest of the evening and then met up with Ruby to cook some dinner and hang out. That night Sam, whom we met through Ruby, didn't feel very well after dinner so he went and laid down and we didn't really think much of it and just left him to sleep it off. Saul and I went back to our guest house and sat with our neighbor Flavio from France. We sat there drinking beers and talking till pretty late, and he had some very good stories and was pretty entertaining, even more so since he has been traveling for around 12 years or something like that but he wasn't super fake and stuck up like some other people that you meet that have been traveling for a really long time. Well we go to bed and wake up the next morn to hear Ruby knocking at our door, Saul went to let her in and it turns out that Sam is not doing so well at all, he ended up going to the bathroom around thirty times the night before he had a fever and pretty bad pains in his stomach. We got him some hydration tablets hoping he could keep those down and maybe fight through it but things got worse in the next three hours. He ended up going to the hospital with ruby at around 1 pm and he is actually still there right now. They think its just a bacterial thing and it should go away fairly soon, we went to visit him yesterday and he wasn't looking awesome, so tonight Saul and I will drink a beer for his health while we watch the soccer Finals.
Well maybe a slight change of tone in this scatterbrained post, the night that before Sam got sick we all went down into town to a cafe kind of restaurant to see an open mic. This was one of the most sickening things that I have ever seen, I'm very glad I went and saw what some of these people are like but it would take a whole lot of money to get me to go back there and live through the torture again. Saul, Ruby, a couple other randoms and I walked in about 15 minutes after it started and the place was just packed to the brim with a bunch of overly stoned hippies, I'll call them hippies but I'm not exactly sure if that is the correct term. Saul and I just refer to them as the Individuals but I'd rather not type that out a whole bunch of times. So packed to the brim with hippies and it took us a very awkward 10 minutes of climbing around very lazy people to find a spot to sit/stand. We settled in for the entertainment really not knowing what to expect, I mean we knew it would be bad but we did not think that it would be unbearable.
I may sound hypercritcal in this post but the atmosphere of this place is very hard to discribe, low lights, everyone is silent looking up at a random traveler that has decided the song that he or she wrote when it was raining yesterday is ready to be shared with the world. At the end of any performance, or at the hint of a joke, or even just the emcee cuing up the next act brought ridiculous amounts of applause or laughter from the crowd. I really do understand the notion of being supportive and what not to these people that are bearing their souls, but I mean there has to be a line that is drawn in my opinion. If these people never are ever criticized will they ever get better or work hard to become better at what they apparently love to do? Maybe they would all just prefer to go on being clueless.
The best, well I guess I mean the one that was the most mind wrenching was a freaking clown/mime. The guy is announced and he walks up through the back of the crowd making sure to stop and put his arm around my shoulder. I didn't see him comming up behind me so I'm looking next to me and I see this clown staring at me, I didn't crack a smile or laugh or anything I was far too uncomfortable with this extremely creepy clown staring back at me. He pretended to be startled and continued on to the center of the room to start his act. The whole time he was attempting to magic tricks and other gags but every single one that he did was poorly performed and not very entertaining. I think what made this act really unbearable was the fact that the crowd that really loves anything that moves or is moderately sparkly couldn't even muster the energy to fake laugh at this joker. Thankfully he stopped his act after 20 minutes of torture and the emcee came up to announce the next performers, two hippies from Canada who were going to sing and play the guitar. This was another awful act with two very annoying people taking center stage and sharing things with these people that should probably stay in one's own mind. This woman rambled on for nearly five minutes about the lovely rainbow vibes in the room, and how everyones aura was making the evening especially pleasant, I nearly yakked. Then she tells us she is going to perform her new song she wrote during the thunderstorm the day before, surprise the song is called thunderstorm. Her boyfriend I'm assuming was awful at the guitar and couldn't keep a rythem to save his life, I'm assuming he just bought the guitar when he got to Mcleod Ganj and thought that he could play because he took those five lessons ten years ago. Guitarist asside the woman really killed me, not only did her song lyrics make no sense at all, but she thought she had the voice of an angel. She would belt out every word as loud as she could without yelling, and then she would warble her voice up and down in some sort of weak attempt at a vabrado I'm thinking. They sang four songs and were planning on doing three more before the emcee thankfully jumped up and told them they were out of time.
There were several other terrible acts at that open mic night, more guitarists, a flamboyantly gay tibetan booty dancer that sexually harrased the men in the front by the stage, and then a spaniard I believe that wrote a three act opera about a celestial yak that turned his penis into a rope to ensnare his true love. However the Yak opera was pretty funny but we were laughing at the fellow instead of with him. Oh yeah and the thing that really topped the cake about the Canadian Thunder Singer was when I was kind of eavesdropping on her conversation. She was talking about her what she does at home when she isn't travelling India and finding herself, drum roll please......................
At home in Toronto I think, she is a vocal therapist. She has patients that come to have her sing to them to heal their ailments! I couldn't believe it, her voice made my head feel like it was going to impload and she is claiming to heal people with it. Ahh what it is to truely find yourself in India.
Well I do apologise for this post, thinking back to writing it I feel like I jumped around a bunch and didn't even get down all of the things that I wanted to. Only if I had more than an hour and a half to post I would write down some of the other adventures we have gone on as well. Alas I will save them for when I see you all in person, or maybe if I have time tomorrow Ill write down one more. I promise one of these posts will be grammatically correct and not be completely mental. Look forward to a composite list at the end of my trip, Top 100 ways to find your inner-self in India.
Peace,
J a k e
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
I think I found inner self...In India...Sitting on the toilet
Ah well another ten hours on steep mountain passes, another shitty bus and a sleepless night. However all terribly uncomfortable things aside, all of the torturous waiting aside was this bus ride ever worth it. I do suppose that this is one of the spectacular parts about my trip so far, how I repeatedly put myself through these mind-bending journeys on less than comfortable means of transportation, and as soon as I step off that bus and see what surrounds me my breath is taken again. This time we went from Minali to the town of Mcleod Ganj, which is just about a much larger city called Dharmsala. The distance we traveled could have been greatly reduced if it weren't for the giant mountain that stood between the two small hill stations, so instead of a direct line our bus goes back and forth around a mountain! However Mcleod Ganj is a much more interesting town than Minali, and I do believe that all of the trees and greenery everywhere greatly help the aesthetic appeal.
A little history that I have gathered before I came here, I do apologise if there are some great inconsistancies as I am still trying to gather more information about it. This town of Mcleod Ganj is a village that is dominated by the tibetan refugees from China, this is also where the Dalai Lama resides. Its a really beautiful city, the landscape and the buildings are in the best conditions that Ive seen so far in India and the people here have the best disposition on life considering the conditions that have been dealing with. Everyone here is extremely friendly and ready to talk to ya, and the beggars and scammers are pretty few and far between here which is very nice as well. However I am speaking of the locals here, some of the "travelers" are driving me fucking crazy with their completely distorted view on life, at least it gives Saul and I some very easy material for making fun of them! Hahaha.
So we have been hanging out with Ruby for the past couple of days and that is a real refresher. Having someone that knows the town and all of the different things to do is really going to save us some time wandering around aimlessly trying to find the different things that we want to see. Plus its just really great to see Ruby after having it been so long not seeing her! Ok well Saul and I are going to try and make it down to see the Dalai Lama's residency before we are due to meet up with his sister, I hear that his grounds are supposed to be just gorgeous so I'm pretty excited.
Ill prolly finish this post later tonight, I have a couple good stories about these so called "individuals," and an open mic night that we should have stayed clear from. I leave this internet cafe with Lady Gaga blaring in my face.....How freaking odd...
Peace,
J a k e
A little history that I have gathered before I came here, I do apologise if there are some great inconsistancies as I am still trying to gather more information about it. This town of Mcleod Ganj is a village that is dominated by the tibetan refugees from China, this is also where the Dalai Lama resides. Its a really beautiful city, the landscape and the buildings are in the best conditions that Ive seen so far in India and the people here have the best disposition on life considering the conditions that have been dealing with. Everyone here is extremely friendly and ready to talk to ya, and the beggars and scammers are pretty few and far between here which is very nice as well. However I am speaking of the locals here, some of the "travelers" are driving me fucking crazy with their completely distorted view on life, at least it gives Saul and I some very easy material for making fun of them! Hahaha.
So we have been hanging out with Ruby for the past couple of days and that is a real refresher. Having someone that knows the town and all of the different things to do is really going to save us some time wandering around aimlessly trying to find the different things that we want to see. Plus its just really great to see Ruby after having it been so long not seeing her! Ok well Saul and I are going to try and make it down to see the Dalai Lama's residency before we are due to meet up with his sister, I hear that his grounds are supposed to be just gorgeous so I'm pretty excited.
Ill prolly finish this post later tonight, I have a couple good stories about these so called "individuals," and an open mic night that we should have stayed clear from. I leave this internet cafe with Lady Gaga blaring in my face.....How freaking odd...
Peace,
J a k e
Friday, May 22, 2009
Minali, You were really great....But its time for me to take my leave
Well I am sitting in the internet cafe for probably the last time while still in Manali. I have to say, I didn't have nearly as much fun anywhere else in India as I have had here. The weather is beautiful every day, gorgeous landscapes and very scrumptious food. However it has been nearly a week in this small town, and we don't have all that much longer to find the rest of India. So tomorrow evening we will be taking another horrendously bumpy bus ride out of this hill station and into another, we are headed to Mcleod Gange and Dharamsala, which are right next to eachother. The Dali Lama's residence is in Dharamsala, and it is about 3 kilometers away from Mcleod Gange I believe. It is unfortunate that he is not currently at home because I have heard that he gives many lectures and speeches when he is, but of course he is out speaking to the rest of the world just like he should be.
So, I realize now looking back at Saul and I's last week here that our plans to fit in all of these crazy extreme sports while were in this city, was perhaps a little ambitious. We did manage to fit in a couple of really fun events, as well as meeting some other cool travelers and we also did a fair amount of shopping. So about two days ago we went white water rafting on the Beas River, which runs right through Central Manali, and that was honestly so much fun, we thought about going again today. We got down to the river early in the morning had to wait around a bunch untill there were enough people to fit into the raft, and then we departed. At first I was a little skeptical about what the rapids were actually going to be like, mainly because the raft that went before us had a whole bunch of small children on it with a couple of adults. I was quite wrong though, it wasn't exactly what I had pictured when I think about the white water rafting you may see in a movie or on tv, but it sure as hell was a bunch of fun. The rapids got to about 5 feet tall at some points of the river, and I almost fell off a couple times, however I was being dumb and not really holding on, there was also a part in the river that we got to jump of the raft and into the river, but damn was that shit really really cold. Either way the whole river rafting trip was about 15 km which took close to two hours and it was well worth the 10 bucks I paid for it.
Yesterday we had some ambitious plans to wake up early, get to the ski hill around 8 or 9 and go zorbing. Then we were planning to come back to town, see a friend off on the bus at 2, and then we were going to try and do some mountain biking in the evening. Too bad that I felt like absolute shit when I woke up yesterday. I tried to eat my egg sandwhich and my bannana lassi, but I just couldn't stomach it, so I forced Saul to skip zorbing that morning hoping I could take a nap and come out of that shit mindset. I woke up again at about 1230, we went into town to meet our friend at a restaurant to eat, and I was still feeling really sick, I could only eat about half of the chicken spring rolls that I ordered, so mountain biking ended up not happening either. So instead yesterday was spent trying to hash out our plans of what to do next and what bus to take, and also what to do with the time that we are most likely going to have left over after we are finished seeing Mcleod Gange. Oh well, today made up for any shittyness that happened yesterday.
We started today off really big indeed, we woke up real early today with plans and the determination to make it to the ski hill to go zorbing. We walked down to the motorcycle rental before we got breakfast, reserved two bikes then went to eat a delicious breakfast at the Freedom Hall Cafe where they blare reggae music all morning then switch to some hard hitting house after about 1 pm. The music choices here are so weird, lots of american music, and mostly really bad. After we ate we went and picked up our motor bikes, I was riding a yellow Hero Honda, and Saul was on a Baja Pulsar. We took off, and sadly we learned to ride as we went down the hill which was probably not the safest thing, either way we figured it out pretty quick and then stopped for gas. The shitty place that we had rented the bikes from didn't provide any gasoline in the tanks of the bikes we just rented. This was just the first of signs that showed we should not have gone where we did to get these bikes. Either way we took off after grabbing some gas, and headed north towards Solang ski resort. The entire way there it is just a bunch of switchbacks up the mountain side, along with a couple off road gravel detours, the roads are shit everywhere in India I swear. We made it to the ski resort without to many problems however it did seem that Saul's bike wasn't operating exactly how it was supposed to. We did the zorbing thing, it was a little pricey at about 6 bucks a person but after we paid the fee and did the damn thing it was definitely worth it, soooooo much fun. I have a video that I'll post to facebook or something when I get the chance to use a computer that can take my camera memory card. After that we hiked around the hill a little and chatted it up with some friendly local juice salesman, than we hit the dusty trail back to manali. This is where even more signs of our shotty bike rental became apparent. On the way back I had to stop several times for saul to catch up, his bike kept stalling out and the gears were sticking. He said that a couple times there were patches on the road that caused his tire to slip and him almost to take a spill on the rented bike. We finally reached Manali, well I did anyway, I looked down the hill and I didn't see Saul anywhere. I went back down the hill two times looking for him, but didn't catch him anywhere. I eventually sat and waited, and then about 10 minutes later I see him walking up the hill. Im thinking oh shit, the bike is down a valley or something. Turns out he was just frustrated with the gears and clutch and left it at the bottom of the street. I deceided I would go down to the bike and check it out and see if I could figure out what was going on, even though I don't know dirt about motorcycles, but at the very least I figured I could drive it up to the guest house.
I got down to the bike, started it no problem and took off, I figured I would take it for a little spin and see how the bike ran. About 15 seconds into the ride, I am going down the hill and start to break for a car that is comming towards me, and then all of the suddent the front tire locks up and I go down with the bike in hand. I slid a little ways, in front of about 6 or 7 cabbies all the while screamming "What The Fuck Was That?" I come to a halt and stand up, I'm cursing up a storm at this point because there was no reason for that to have happened at all, I was going really slow and I barely touched the hand break. All the cabbies come over and begin to calm me down, telling me everything is fine, and making sure that I am all right, i have a small bit of road rash on my arm but ive had worse from my bicycle. After everything checks out on my person, we begin to look at the bike, and it is prettymessed up. I started freaking out again, because I didn't want to pay the exhorbent prices that I knew that this rental shop would charge me. Thank god for the Indian Cabbies, they were so great and offered me great advice and even told me where to go to get it fixed before I brought it back to the shop. Honestly if there isn't any money involved, Indians are the most caring people ever, extremely accomidating and genuinely interested in you and your well being. This is something that has been shown again and again whenever I meet locals that aren't trying to make a buck off of my tourist self.
So back to the motor bike, all of the cabbies were telling me it wasn't going to cost much at all to fix the broken clutch lever and busted light, they told me to roll my bike down the hill to this mechanic that specializes in Royal Enfields and that he may be able to help me out. I found the place no problem, it was about five minutes away from where I tipped and it was a very nice looking shop. I stood in the waiting area for about five minutes, no one showed up, so I started walking around and calling out for someone to help. Pretty much instantly the owner showed up, he was in the back watching some weird ass bollywood movie. I told him what had happened and asked if he could help me fix it, at first he told me that he wouldn't work on it because it wasn't a Royal Enfield (Which are the sweet bikes that all the Kool Kats ride around India, Google it!) I told him then that all that really needed to be fixed was the clutch lever and he said he would take a look at it. He came out and took a look at the bike, and realized that the damage was minimal, he said he would fix it~ Next thing I know, his brother and son are out taking apart the clutch lever and started working on the light too! I sat there for maybe fifteen to twenty minutes and chated it up with the owner, he was a really cool guy and told me I should never have rented bikes from those jokers up the hill because they trap tourists and then send them out on the road on very unsafe crumby bikes. After everything was fixed and I had paid up, (it only cost 150 rupees,) he then pointed out all of the stuff that was terribly wrong with the particular bike that Saul was riding all day. First off he showed me the front tire, it was almost completely bald and it was also next to half flat, no wonder the bike kept slipping while it was being ridding. After that the throttle was in terrible shape and would stick when it was revved too high. On top of that, the gears were sticky and would only shift about 75% of the time! So it all makes sense now why the bike would randomly stall out when ridin' half the time when the gear was supposedly changed it was still in the same gear. We ended up taking the bike back, pointing out what was wrong with it and got most of our money back....well actually we only got 200 back out of the five hundred, but either way we got some back. So it was almost a good thing that I had tipped the bike and had to take it to a mechanic so that we didn't end up going out riding in the mountains again with a terribly shot tire, and then saul would have slipped off a cliff. Horrible though, I know. Well thats basically India for ya.
Well I shall update again once I reach Mcleod Gange!!
Peace,
J a k e
So, I realize now looking back at Saul and I's last week here that our plans to fit in all of these crazy extreme sports while were in this city, was perhaps a little ambitious. We did manage to fit in a couple of really fun events, as well as meeting some other cool travelers and we also did a fair amount of shopping. So about two days ago we went white water rafting on the Beas River, which runs right through Central Manali, and that was honestly so much fun, we thought about going again today. We got down to the river early in the morning had to wait around a bunch untill there were enough people to fit into the raft, and then we departed. At first I was a little skeptical about what the rapids were actually going to be like, mainly because the raft that went before us had a whole bunch of small children on it with a couple of adults. I was quite wrong though, it wasn't exactly what I had pictured when I think about the white water rafting you may see in a movie or on tv, but it sure as hell was a bunch of fun. The rapids got to about 5 feet tall at some points of the river, and I almost fell off a couple times, however I was being dumb and not really holding on, there was also a part in the river that we got to jump of the raft and into the river, but damn was that shit really really cold. Either way the whole river rafting trip was about 15 km which took close to two hours and it was well worth the 10 bucks I paid for it.
Yesterday we had some ambitious plans to wake up early, get to the ski hill around 8 or 9 and go zorbing. Then we were planning to come back to town, see a friend off on the bus at 2, and then we were going to try and do some mountain biking in the evening. Too bad that I felt like absolute shit when I woke up yesterday. I tried to eat my egg sandwhich and my bannana lassi, but I just couldn't stomach it, so I forced Saul to skip zorbing that morning hoping I could take a nap and come out of that shit mindset. I woke up again at about 1230, we went into town to meet our friend at a restaurant to eat, and I was still feeling really sick, I could only eat about half of the chicken spring rolls that I ordered, so mountain biking ended up not happening either. So instead yesterday was spent trying to hash out our plans of what to do next and what bus to take, and also what to do with the time that we are most likely going to have left over after we are finished seeing Mcleod Gange. Oh well, today made up for any shittyness that happened yesterday.
We started today off really big indeed, we woke up real early today with plans and the determination to make it to the ski hill to go zorbing. We walked down to the motorcycle rental before we got breakfast, reserved two bikes then went to eat a delicious breakfast at the Freedom Hall Cafe where they blare reggae music all morning then switch to some hard hitting house after about 1 pm. The music choices here are so weird, lots of american music, and mostly really bad. After we ate we went and picked up our motor bikes, I was riding a yellow Hero Honda, and Saul was on a Baja Pulsar. We took off, and sadly we learned to ride as we went down the hill which was probably not the safest thing, either way we figured it out pretty quick and then stopped for gas. The shitty place that we had rented the bikes from didn't provide any gasoline in the tanks of the bikes we just rented. This was just the first of signs that showed we should not have gone where we did to get these bikes. Either way we took off after grabbing some gas, and headed north towards Solang ski resort. The entire way there it is just a bunch of switchbacks up the mountain side, along with a couple off road gravel detours, the roads are shit everywhere in India I swear. We made it to the ski resort without to many problems however it did seem that Saul's bike wasn't operating exactly how it was supposed to. We did the zorbing thing, it was a little pricey at about 6 bucks a person but after we paid the fee and did the damn thing it was definitely worth it, soooooo much fun. I have a video that I'll post to facebook or something when I get the chance to use a computer that can take my camera memory card. After that we hiked around the hill a little and chatted it up with some friendly local juice salesman, than we hit the dusty trail back to manali. This is where even more signs of our shotty bike rental became apparent. On the way back I had to stop several times for saul to catch up, his bike kept stalling out and the gears were sticking. He said that a couple times there were patches on the road that caused his tire to slip and him almost to take a spill on the rented bike. We finally reached Manali, well I did anyway, I looked down the hill and I didn't see Saul anywhere. I went back down the hill two times looking for him, but didn't catch him anywhere. I eventually sat and waited, and then about 10 minutes later I see him walking up the hill. Im thinking oh shit, the bike is down a valley or something. Turns out he was just frustrated with the gears and clutch and left it at the bottom of the street. I deceided I would go down to the bike and check it out and see if I could figure out what was going on, even though I don't know dirt about motorcycles, but at the very least I figured I could drive it up to the guest house.
I got down to the bike, started it no problem and took off, I figured I would take it for a little spin and see how the bike ran. About 15 seconds into the ride, I am going down the hill and start to break for a car that is comming towards me, and then all of the suddent the front tire locks up and I go down with the bike in hand. I slid a little ways, in front of about 6 or 7 cabbies all the while screamming "What The Fuck Was That?" I come to a halt and stand up, I'm cursing up a storm at this point because there was no reason for that to have happened at all, I was going really slow and I barely touched the hand break. All the cabbies come over and begin to calm me down, telling me everything is fine, and making sure that I am all right, i have a small bit of road rash on my arm but ive had worse from my bicycle. After everything checks out on my person, we begin to look at the bike, and it is prettymessed up. I started freaking out again, because I didn't want to pay the exhorbent prices that I knew that this rental shop would charge me. Thank god for the Indian Cabbies, they were so great and offered me great advice and even told me where to go to get it fixed before I brought it back to the shop. Honestly if there isn't any money involved, Indians are the most caring people ever, extremely accomidating and genuinely interested in you and your well being. This is something that has been shown again and again whenever I meet locals that aren't trying to make a buck off of my tourist self.
So back to the motor bike, all of the cabbies were telling me it wasn't going to cost much at all to fix the broken clutch lever and busted light, they told me to roll my bike down the hill to this mechanic that specializes in Royal Enfields and that he may be able to help me out. I found the place no problem, it was about five minutes away from where I tipped and it was a very nice looking shop. I stood in the waiting area for about five minutes, no one showed up, so I started walking around and calling out for someone to help. Pretty much instantly the owner showed up, he was in the back watching some weird ass bollywood movie. I told him what had happened and asked if he could help me fix it, at first he told me that he wouldn't work on it because it wasn't a Royal Enfield (Which are the sweet bikes that all the Kool Kats ride around India, Google it!) I told him then that all that really needed to be fixed was the clutch lever and he said he would take a look at it. He came out and took a look at the bike, and realized that the damage was minimal, he said he would fix it~ Next thing I know, his brother and son are out taking apart the clutch lever and started working on the light too! I sat there for maybe fifteen to twenty minutes and chated it up with the owner, he was a really cool guy and told me I should never have rented bikes from those jokers up the hill because they trap tourists and then send them out on the road on very unsafe crumby bikes. After everything was fixed and I had paid up, (it only cost 150 rupees,) he then pointed out all of the stuff that was terribly wrong with the particular bike that Saul was riding all day. First off he showed me the front tire, it was almost completely bald and it was also next to half flat, no wonder the bike kept slipping while it was being ridding. After that the throttle was in terrible shape and would stick when it was revved too high. On top of that, the gears were sticky and would only shift about 75% of the time! So it all makes sense now why the bike would randomly stall out when ridin' half the time when the gear was supposedly changed it was still in the same gear. We ended up taking the bike back, pointing out what was wrong with it and got most of our money back....well actually we only got 200 back out of the five hundred, but either way we got some back. So it was almost a good thing that I had tipped the bike and had to take it to a mechanic so that we didn't end up going out riding in the mountains again with a terribly shot tire, and then saul would have slipped off a cliff. Horrible though, I know. Well thats basically India for ya.
Well I shall update again once I reach Mcleod Gange!!
Peace,
J a k e
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
I love the Himalyas
Well I have been here in Minali for a couple of days now and I can definitely understand why so many damn hippies flock to this town to stay for extended periods of time. Everywhere you go there is a breathtaking view of the snow-capped mountains, all it takes is one second to look up and see the postcard panorama. Saul and I have not yet begun to do all of the crazy extreme sports that they offer here, we have been just bull shitting around and checking out the different areas of the town. Tomorrow however we begin doing all of the different activities there are to offer, for example we go white water rafting at 10 in the morning and that should be pretty rad. After that we are gonna hike to the top of this mountain, where there is a giant waterfall, you can go behind the waterfall and if it is a sunny day you can see rainbows everywhere. Thats what we have been told anyway. Day after that its mountain biking and zorbing, (rolling down a hill in a big giant clear ball!) Then I think we are going to finish the week off by going up in a hot air balloon!
Yesterday I also took part in my first session of Yoga, they have a beginners class just down the road from our guest house. The session runs for an hour from 10-11, and it costs 100 rupees which translates to about two bucks. I really had no idea what to expect with this beginners class of yoga, and I really didn't think that it would be all that hard, as it turns out I was so very wrong. The class was so much more intense than I had expected, I sweated my balls off doing all the different streaches and whatnot, but I did feel really good after that. However today I woke up with aching muscles all over my body, I never realized how great of a workout yoga can be. The best part of the whole class was this older woman that was right next to me. The entire class she was moaning and groaning everytime we would begin the streatch, and the way that she was moaning was very explicit. I had such a hard time keeping my composure and not busting out laughing. Even the yogi thought the noises this woman was making were a bit ridiculous and over the top, he kept walking over to her, correcting her posture and she would let out this guttural cries that began to make me very uncomfortable. He kept asking this woman, "you cannot streatch without making the classical music?" This was such a trip, Saul and I joke about it for the rest of the days and we had to tell the tale to every other traveller that we met up with.
After Yoga yesterday we went and took a short little rest and then started talking to the cool dude that runs our guest house. We asked him about short treks near the town we were staying in, and he told us of this waterfall that we should go check out, "The Rainbow Waterfall." He gave us some very vague directions about a pine forest, traveling 30 degrees away from the marked trail, and then something or other about a big U-turn when you come to a cliff. We set out with the intentions of finding the top of this waterfall, but as we were traveling "30 degrees" away from the path, we ended up just at the bottom of the water fall we were aiming for. At the bottom though there were about three or four big rocks that created a nice little pool of water, and the roaring waterfall was the background music to this certain site. We chose to just hang around there for an hour, where we met some crazy tibetan kids that were vacationing here too. These kids have such skewed ideas of what the United States is its really funny when they ask you about all of the women that we supposedly get, they asked us "just like James Bond? Right? Right?" We ended up just joking around with them for a while, and they were making some really raunchy jokes, it was a pretty good time all in all. We got to jump into the cold river and swim around a little bit as well which was very nice to do indeed. After we set back out, we asked a couple of the other people around about getting to the top of the waterfall, and they showed us where we strayed. Apparently the 30 degree angle that we thought we were taking was not quite enough because you need to get all the way up this foothill/mountain to reach the trail that winds around these big rock faces. With not very much daylight left we headed back to town, but now we are very determined to make it to the top, so we will head out tomorrow after we get back from rafting.
Well untill later, everyone have a nice week? I forget what day it is....
Peace,
J a k e
Yesterday I also took part in my first session of Yoga, they have a beginners class just down the road from our guest house. The session runs for an hour from 10-11, and it costs 100 rupees which translates to about two bucks. I really had no idea what to expect with this beginners class of yoga, and I really didn't think that it would be all that hard, as it turns out I was so very wrong. The class was so much more intense than I had expected, I sweated my balls off doing all the different streaches and whatnot, but I did feel really good after that. However today I woke up with aching muscles all over my body, I never realized how great of a workout yoga can be. The best part of the whole class was this older woman that was right next to me. The entire class she was moaning and groaning everytime we would begin the streatch, and the way that she was moaning was very explicit. I had such a hard time keeping my composure and not busting out laughing. Even the yogi thought the noises this woman was making were a bit ridiculous and over the top, he kept walking over to her, correcting her posture and she would let out this guttural cries that began to make me very uncomfortable. He kept asking this woman, "you cannot streatch without making the classical music?" This was such a trip, Saul and I joke about it for the rest of the days and we had to tell the tale to every other traveller that we met up with.
After Yoga yesterday we went and took a short little rest and then started talking to the cool dude that runs our guest house. We asked him about short treks near the town we were staying in, and he told us of this waterfall that we should go check out, "The Rainbow Waterfall." He gave us some very vague directions about a pine forest, traveling 30 degrees away from the marked trail, and then something or other about a big U-turn when you come to a cliff. We set out with the intentions of finding the top of this waterfall, but as we were traveling "30 degrees" away from the path, we ended up just at the bottom of the water fall we were aiming for. At the bottom though there were about three or four big rocks that created a nice little pool of water, and the roaring waterfall was the background music to this certain site. We chose to just hang around there for an hour, where we met some crazy tibetan kids that were vacationing here too. These kids have such skewed ideas of what the United States is its really funny when they ask you about all of the women that we supposedly get, they asked us "just like James Bond? Right? Right?" We ended up just joking around with them for a while, and they were making some really raunchy jokes, it was a pretty good time all in all. We got to jump into the cold river and swim around a little bit as well which was very nice to do indeed. After we set back out, we asked a couple of the other people around about getting to the top of the waterfall, and they showed us where we strayed. Apparently the 30 degree angle that we thought we were taking was not quite enough because you need to get all the way up this foothill/mountain to reach the trail that winds around these big rock faces. With not very much daylight left we headed back to town, but now we are very determined to make it to the top, so we will head out tomorrow after we get back from rafting.
Well untill later, everyone have a nice week? I forget what day it is....
Peace,
J a k e
Sunday, May 17, 2009
The Last Hippie Standing
Well shit, it has hardly been a day since I last wrote in the blog but I felt that the last 24 hours were very deserving of a new post! Its about 815 in the evening here, and I just finished eating some very delicious dinner at the roof-top restaurant across from my guest house. I had me some grand ol' vegetable biryani (sp?) Some rice, sauce and veggies I think, whatever it is it was amazing. Anyway I just arrived in Minali this morning at about 630 am and it was one very shitty, but very interesting bus ride.
We departed from Chandigahr last night at about 8 pm because our 7 o'clock bus was running late of course. The bus we were told would be Deluxe with Air conditioning was neither of the two, the seats reclined a little and there were fans on the ceiling however I think that the fans were honestly for decoration purposes only because not a single one worked. We got stuck in the very front seats behind the driver cab and being in those seats means that my knees are constantly hitting against the hard metal of the cab, for ten hours. It was pretty much hell on wheels, I didn't think that a bus ride could be worse than the last one, but this one was far worse.
The way that these drivers operate their machines is one of the most freightening things that I have ever seen. Since we were headed to Minali the entire trip was switchbacks up and down mountains. A normal person would obey these speed limits and probably not pass many cars, complete opposite in India, just like everything else! Our driver was barrling as fast as he could around these hairpin turns, on bumpy unkempt roads, and if there was another bus, truck, car or motorcycle in front of us he would turn on the brights and hold the horn while passing the poor person in front. Regardless if there were cars comming at us or not the driver would swerve to the other lane and continue his attempts to pass these cars. This was basically a ten hour roller coaster with no lapbelts, and I hope I never have to do that again. Even though I will have to when I return to Delhi to fly out, dammit.
Sadly, the way that this drive drove his car was not the most interesting part of the journey at all. Other than meeting a bunch of crazy Indian kids our age who were stoned out of their minds, other than the extreme lack of sleep and food, but our driver was slowly getting trash-hammered wasted while he took us up and down these mountains. Saul was the first to spot it, but behind his seat in a nifty little pouch were two good sized bottles of "bagpipe whisky." Yet again, this also isn't the most ridiculous part, as everyone else is dozing off after about 5-6 hours of the drive, my insomnia kept me up of course. I sat there listening to my ipod and watched the traffic as he swerved effortlessly through it without a second thought, never breaking a sweat or his temper. Than another bus is barrling towards us, and they have their high beams on for several moments, apparently this was the breaking point for our driver. He starts freaking out and flailing his arms, as the bus approaches I see him grab for what I thought was a bottle of water, and he chucks it at the window of the other bus as it passes. I start freaking out, laughing and wondering what the hell just happened.
We continue to drive along for about 30 minutes, and then all of the sudden there is a road block in front of our bus of about four big ass trucks. We try to move around it and all of the trucks move closer and begin to blare their horns at us. I thought we had just hit one but that was not the case at all. The bus pulls over and all of the sudden there are about four angry Indian truckers yelling at our driver. After this there is about a fourty minute arguement in hindi that neither I nor Saul can understand, we are just waiting for this to escalate to blows. After the fourty minutes passes, our driver hands one of the truckers a big wad of rupees, and we continue on. So apparently when the bus driver threw what turned out to be his whisky bottle at the bus, one of the windows shattered and the arguement was over the two thousand rupees that the bus driver owed for the broken window. So I guess after the incident the other bus driver radioed in the name of our bus and they created a road block so we could go no further. These crafty ass Indians.
Anyway, we made it to Minali in one piece, and I watched the sunrise over the himalayn mountains. It was quite the beautiful site. We checked into a guest house called the sonam gues house in vashist which is a couple kilometers away from minali. The owner is this burnt out indian guy that keeps talking to us about all these wacked out documentaries. I think we are going to go to the "theatre" and watch one of them a little later. The room feels like its a damn tree house, the ceilings are super low, everything is hardwood and the bed isn't that comfortable. I really like it though, it has such character and the people that are staying in it are pretty rad, especially the owner. Plus I'm only paying about 2 bucks a night to stay here, and we have a Bakery next door and a really good restuarant across the street that has some spectacular views of the mountains. I can't wait to show these pictures off! Tomorrow we are going to go hiking and then we are going white water rafting the next day, and maybe mountain biking. I will keep you all informed!
Peace,
J a k e
We departed from Chandigahr last night at about 8 pm because our 7 o'clock bus was running late of course. The bus we were told would be Deluxe with Air conditioning was neither of the two, the seats reclined a little and there were fans on the ceiling however I think that the fans were honestly for decoration purposes only because not a single one worked. We got stuck in the very front seats behind the driver cab and being in those seats means that my knees are constantly hitting against the hard metal of the cab, for ten hours. It was pretty much hell on wheels, I didn't think that a bus ride could be worse than the last one, but this one was far worse.
The way that these drivers operate their machines is one of the most freightening things that I have ever seen. Since we were headed to Minali the entire trip was switchbacks up and down mountains. A normal person would obey these speed limits and probably not pass many cars, complete opposite in India, just like everything else! Our driver was barrling as fast as he could around these hairpin turns, on bumpy unkempt roads, and if there was another bus, truck, car or motorcycle in front of us he would turn on the brights and hold the horn while passing the poor person in front. Regardless if there were cars comming at us or not the driver would swerve to the other lane and continue his attempts to pass these cars. This was basically a ten hour roller coaster with no lapbelts, and I hope I never have to do that again. Even though I will have to when I return to Delhi to fly out, dammit.
Sadly, the way that this drive drove his car was not the most interesting part of the journey at all. Other than meeting a bunch of crazy Indian kids our age who were stoned out of their minds, other than the extreme lack of sleep and food, but our driver was slowly getting trash-hammered wasted while he took us up and down these mountains. Saul was the first to spot it, but behind his seat in a nifty little pouch were two good sized bottles of "bagpipe whisky." Yet again, this also isn't the most ridiculous part, as everyone else is dozing off after about 5-6 hours of the drive, my insomnia kept me up of course. I sat there listening to my ipod and watched the traffic as he swerved effortlessly through it without a second thought, never breaking a sweat or his temper. Than another bus is barrling towards us, and they have their high beams on for several moments, apparently this was the breaking point for our driver. He starts freaking out and flailing his arms, as the bus approaches I see him grab for what I thought was a bottle of water, and he chucks it at the window of the other bus as it passes. I start freaking out, laughing and wondering what the hell just happened.
We continue to drive along for about 30 minutes, and then all of the sudden there is a road block in front of our bus of about four big ass trucks. We try to move around it and all of the trucks move closer and begin to blare their horns at us. I thought we had just hit one but that was not the case at all. The bus pulls over and all of the sudden there are about four angry Indian truckers yelling at our driver. After this there is about a fourty minute arguement in hindi that neither I nor Saul can understand, we are just waiting for this to escalate to blows. After the fourty minutes passes, our driver hands one of the truckers a big wad of rupees, and we continue on. So apparently when the bus driver threw what turned out to be his whisky bottle at the bus, one of the windows shattered and the arguement was over the two thousand rupees that the bus driver owed for the broken window. So I guess after the incident the other bus driver radioed in the name of our bus and they created a road block so we could go no further. These crafty ass Indians.
Anyway, we made it to Minali in one piece, and I watched the sunrise over the himalayn mountains. It was quite the beautiful site. We checked into a guest house called the sonam gues house in vashist which is a couple kilometers away from minali. The owner is this burnt out indian guy that keeps talking to us about all these wacked out documentaries. I think we are going to go to the "theatre" and watch one of them a little later. The room feels like its a damn tree house, the ceilings are super low, everything is hardwood and the bed isn't that comfortable. I really like it though, it has such character and the people that are staying in it are pretty rad, especially the owner. Plus I'm only paying about 2 bucks a night to stay here, and we have a Bakery next door and a really good restuarant across the street that has some spectacular views of the mountains. I can't wait to show these pictures off! Tomorrow we are going to go hiking and then we are going white water rafting the next day, and maybe mountain biking. I will keep you all informed!
Peace,
J a k e
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