Last Daze in India!

Hey friends and family,

We left beautiful but increasingly rainy Dharamsala and headed for the flatlands, first spending two days at beautiful Rewalser Lake, another Buddhist site in a Himalayan setting where the sage Padmansbava stayed before he brought the teachings of Buddhism to Tibet. It's near a bustling important city full of Hindu temples, Mandi, and the small town of Rewalser itself is impressively diverse with small Hindu temples, a Sikh temple, several beautifully painted Buddhist monasteries. Everyone walks around the lake, many with prayer wheels, clockwise. At dawn one could hear if awakened, many different faiths very early morning hymns over their loudspeakers. One facet of India that can both charm and annoy depending on how sleep deprived one is, is the fact that there seems to be music in the air all the time. On top of it all was a brand new massive monument to Padmansbava seen in our photos, we did not get up to the unfinished site to see it, but it looks to rival the size of the Statue of Liberty. It was not there the last time I passed through this place in 2006.

On the way to Rewalser, we passed through the town of Kangra, which at one time was famous for its miniature painting school. We visited an important Devi goddess temple, bustling with intense activity, chants, incense and the ringing of bells,all of which I love and makes me feel the presence of the temple as a living entity more than looking at the beautiful carvings alone. After that visit we stopped at the beautiful Kangra fort itself. It was a very soggy visit with heavy and light rain intermittent as Kangra was not far enough from Dharamsala to be out of the cover of clouds. However, after many past trips of day after day of cloudless blue skys, the diversity of weather was refreshing, the drama of the clouds, and fog rolling in and out, and then sudden bursts of sun and lush lush fields, reminded us at times more of Ireland than India. In the town of Kangra our driver left us in the crowded bazaar area to find the temple, then told us where to find him. It was totally disorienting and we thought we might have been lost forever and were very very happy to see him. He had the best car we had driven in, a new car with great suspension for the rough roads, with a cd sound system and a 4 hour cd of old Bollywood hits he had downloaded and made into a cd which I ended up buying from him. John continued his collection of purchasing "photoshopped" mementos of the temples overlaid with miraculous images of deities and impossibly beautiful landscapes. Lucky you (and not me) who will get to live with this increasing collection he started years ago when we visited southern temples, but if nothing else, they are wonderfully if kitschy reminders of the trip.

The Kangra fort was atmospheric, with ruins of an old Hindu temple inside of it still being actively used, and plenty of monkeys to keep John amused and snapping his camera, he is talking about getting a pet monkey or two or three when he returns to California as companions for his dog Onyx. The monkeys and their antics can certainly keep one distracted for vast amounts of time!

We finally settled in Rewlasar which was the best region from which to find the last of the wooden temples on my list although we took two off the list as they were over 100 klm away, and we had had more than enough driving. The one we could see was in a village that like the rest, was not on my map but the travel agent knew where it was and gave our driver directions how to get to a small village up and up and up on a typically frightening road, one that our drivers car was clearly not up to the job, it was a logging road, narrow, rutted and finally impassible. Our driver seemed frightened also, which made me even more nervous. I tried to keep my "scholars resolution" and kept going, though secretly I was not sure if I could admit that maybe just maybe I did not really need to see this one last temple. However if not for these temple searches we would not have seem so much the "off the beaten track" parts of HP. We finally left the car behind and walked the rest of the way. The terraced rice fields in the sun (the rain stopped once we were further south,) were spectacular. We never found the temple, but as in most cases, the journey was more important than the destination.

Once we arrived in the tiny village where we were told the temple was, we encountered people living there who were strangely unfriendly, very much unlike our visits to other small towns where people were extremely friendly and curious. John's theory was that perhaps people were wary of visitors (foreign in particular) because of the ample fields of cannabis planted there for a fall harvest. We innocently were taking photos of the beautiful landscape and then became nervous once we sensed that we were really not welcome there, though nobody said a thing, it was just very stony, reports in the lonely planet speak of foreigners disappearing from HP, most likely related to the flourishing if illegal drug trade, and decided that we would quickly depart, they may have thought we were documenting the fields or maybe they enjoyed their privacy and did not appreciate strangers stomping in. If our driver had been able to make it all the way up he no doubt would have been helpful in explaining either what we were looking for or what we were doing there.

On the return journey however, we stumbled on two more temples we did not expect to see, one a small very much "folk art" temple adorned with wooden snakes, and another in a more major town, a beautiful elaborately carved and painted temple that I remembered seeing on my 2006 trip. This one fortunately had not been uniformly painted in a light brown as distressed me with so many other temples on this trip, but had been nicely repainted in bright primary colors however a new marble structure had been erected front of it that partially obstructs a full view until you are inside of it.

Next we headed down out of the mountains to the hot plains of the Punjab where we spent one night in Chandigarh, the capital city of the Punjab designed by
Le Corbousier. It is very different from any other Indian city in that it is laid out in a grid structure with various "sectors" for the government, dining, living, entertainment etc. Although tree lined, we found it strangely overly organized and almost foreboding, reminding us with all of its dreary worn concrete of a communist block city, minus guard towers, it did not have spirited colorful texture of the typical crazy chaotic Indian city that I so much enjoy and identify with India. The museum however was quite impressive as the fanciful Nek Chand "rock garden" a four acre site that in the US would be termed "outsider art" of mosaic and stone figures and forms, waterfalls, labyrinths paths all designed by a former government worker on the sly. When the Indian government found what he was doing (upon wanting to expand the city) they actually "hired" him to expand and continue the project, like an Indian "Watts towers" it is in such delightful contrast to the severe order of the rest of the city and a major tourist attraction in India, as evident from the crowds there on a Sunday even between very heavy bouts of rain.

The drive from Rewalsar to Chandigarh was very tough, luckily done on a Sunday as we passed a major city with a cement factory and overloaded trucks full of cement bags dominated the two lane highway which had to be continuously passed on narrow mountain roads and as we descended it became hotter and hotter. Indian trucks belch out exhaust from pipes on the side of the truck so each time we passed one we got covered with grime and the equivalent of smoking a few packs of cigarettes probably. We smartly opted for an AC car to Delhi.

The drive to Delhi was great, they are working on a new highway that in most parts of complete so our driver could really cruise, we arrived in about 4 hours, (it used to be over 6) though it took a bit of additional time once in Delhi as we had to stop and pick up my stored suitcase at the Fulbright house in downtown Delhi and then get to our hotel in another area. The driver had been told for some reason that we were going to the airport and the poor young guy seemed terrified, it seemed he had never been into central Delhi. It was a real test of my knowledge of the city as I had to direct him to both places and he spoke very very little English. He seemed challenged but cheerful and again entertained us with a very wonderful cd of Hindu pop, we certainly had wonderful drivers on this trip overall. We offered him additional money for the trip which he would not accept.

Driving in India is truly amazing and confounding. At one point a truck had just stopped in the middle of the two lane highway to go into a food joint to get something to eat, causing a terrible traffic jam, there was room to pull over but he didn't and was clearly in no hurry to get back into his car and unjam the traffic. On the opposite side, as if to take good advantage of the crunch, the same restaurant was out on the road serving drinks to anyone on our side of the road who also wished to stop, completely stopping traffic on both sides. This is the National highway between Chandigarh and Delhi! (in many places the new highway is 4 or more lanes fortunately) When they came to us, we were very firm in wanting not to stop for drinks and "encouraged" the people in front of us to pull over so we could pass. In another incident a truck had stopped, again in the middle of the road, and the driver was sleeping under it, at about 10 am. I'm fully supportive of truck drivers getting sleep as so many bad accidents are caused by drivers lacking sleep, but, hey, maybe a rest stop is in order?! Cows still occasionally wander on the road, which is much more dangerous when you are going 90 klm. The new highway however is wonderful, divided with a strip of landscaped trees, but very few places for anyone to pull over, no shoulder in most places, so when there are stopped vehicles it gets messy quickly.

Driving into Delhi is interesting, so many huge new glitsy malls and apartment complexes, John said it looks like Miami, most of wonderful design, and with the attempts at controlling auto emissions in Delhi, hopefully they will retain their glitz and not like so many newer building in Indian cities, look worn out in a few years. So here we are back in Hot Hot Hot Delhi on our last few days enjoying our last moments of shopping. Delhi is an expensive city so we could only afford a hotel in the grungy backpacker bazaar area which makes the heat seem even more intense. John has a interesting photo of some electricity outside of our hotel. We enjoyed a dinner last night in a "live" bar where a mixed Nepalese band played "hits" on John's request such as "Michelle", (particularly for his wonderful daughter) "Hotel California" "Proud Mary" and "Hey Jude" among others. India is indeed an often surreal crossroads which we have been so fortunate to experience on this wonderful trip. Thanks for being "computer" travelers with us, see you back at home!

One thing we have always always been strict about on this trip is attending to our cocktail hour and its about that time now!

So long friends and family, we are both looking forward to being back in the good old USA!

Kathryn and John