Extremely Hectic Last Week

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