Part 1: July, 2000. where do i start? india is truly an exercise in chaos...nothing,absolutely nothing can prepare you for the intensity of the population, the pollution, the traffic, the poverty...you can read all you like, but being here in the thick of it is another story.

so, i'll start with the first 24 hours...actually, it's not even that yet...i landed at 9 last night, it's 6pm now.

new delhi international airport built decades ago, falling apart and full of officious little shits. the smells start before you even get into customs...burning rubber? outside, the throng starts...we were greeted by a tibetan friend who wrapped white tibetan blessing scarfs around our necks...very sweet and touching, made me feel very special. i get my first taste of the stares. crowds gather around me and bronny as we wait for tenzin to sort out the taxi...i begin to think delhi has a ratio of 10:1 men to women...so many men, so few women...a dozen cows laze comfortably in the loading dock,while i notice 1...2...3..4,5 dogs just lying in little balls in the thick of the crowd, sound asleep....then i notice people spread out on little shawls...or nothing at all...also sleeping...

the cab ride to majnu-ka-tilla (new tibetan camp) in north delhi at 9.30 pm on a sunday night omigod omigod omigod we're going to die and i haven't had a chance to see anything yet! the cab is a vintage old white classic morris shaped thing...we are loaded up with luggage, and yes, it's about 28 degrees and humid. as we take off, (with a cheer from the team..we're here at last!) the cabbie (who speaks no englisi or ossie, no sir) introduces us to the delights of indian road rules: the horn. who needs to indicate when you have a loud horn and you're not afraid to use it!

the tibetan camp is at least a 30 minute drive from the airport, and is located pretty much in the poorest parts of delhi - the northern suburbs, just near ghandi's grave. ok, think of every cliche you may have of indian slums, and i saw it on that 1 single cab ride at 10pm on a sunday night. people everywhere! sleeping on every available surface, markets, loud blaring loudspeakers blasting hindi pop to the entire district, crap roads, the SMELLLLLLLL eughhhhh, rubbish everywhere, buildings with fallen walls but with families still living in them, makeshift camps with plastic and tarps by the side of the road, cows and dogs just walking across the roads while the traffic zoomed around them (did i mention that traffic and that that main route only opens to trucks at night...and that the horn is the only road rule and that trucks, motorbikes, scooters, bicycles, rickshaws and autorickshaws just zoom in out out of each others ways, trying to outmanouvre and overtake at any insane moment), fires, bicycle carts loaded up metres high with sacks of who knows what, and people sitting on top! entire families buzzing in and out on their 1 motorbike...(one i saw had dad in front, 2 kids aged 5 and 2, then mum then a kid of about 8...oh, and the women ride sidesaddle...sari's are very hard to ride with)...beggars..one woman was crouching in a black shawl by the side of the road with her baby sleeping sprawled on the bitumen at her feet, wearing just shorts. and that was just one...they were everywhere.

as we drove with the windows wide open (too hot, no aircon), we had to use our greeting scarves as face masks, the pollution at times was so shocking, i just could not breathe. but you should have seen the grin on my face! and my eyes as big as plates (when they weren't scrunched tight against the grit) he dropped us off on one edge of a busy highway which we had to cross with our packs, then wander up a little muddy alleyway to enter the tibetan camp, a true oasis.

monks greeted us with big smiles, got us ice cold pepsi's (the drink of choice around here) and cups of tea as we found our room. we stayed in the top room in a little 4 storey guesthouse - they only had 1 room booked for us, so tenzin had to sleep on the floor ( on a blowup matress). bizarre to turn on the telly and watch farscape then great expectations with gwyneth...especially when to get to that room, we had to wander down a little maze of muddy, smelly alleyways and find this obscure little door... showered and watered ...oops, i forgot the cardinal rule for new travellers...don't let the tap water go near your mouth - i brushed my teeth with it! still no sign of delhi belly so the water can't be too bad... at midnight, we turn off the tv and sleep, with the ceiling fan belting away and sweat trickling down my back.

5.30 am, we are all wide awake and excited...the nearby mosque is blaring out it's calls and it's drizzling. bronny and i sit on the window sill and gaze out the window at the yamuna river and the tibetan prayer flags everywhere. tenzins young brother dawa has arrived from dharamsala to hang out, he's a sweet shy young artist and tenzin is very embarrased he has no presents for his family. he gives him $200 AUD instead. (about 3 months avaerage wage) tibetans are so beautiful and affectionate, and after a day out in the big city, i can say that it is a true paradise to be staying in a tibetan community. prayer flags everywhere, monks, kids, smiles. lovely.

so, brekky...my first real indian meal - at a fancy tibetan restaurant. it costs $3 aud to feed all 4 of us breads, teas and lemon soda. the boys eat eggs but me and bronny are too scared of delhi belly so we are eating sparingly...we run around arranging new, more spacious accom for tonight and the train trip to varanasi (1.30 pm tomorrow), and buying rupees on the blackmarket with our australian dollars.

then, into an autorickshaw and off into the outside world. connaught place : delhi centre and shopping mecca omigos omigod omigod...we're going to die and i've only had one night here...the traffic is truly amazing, but i am getting used to it...i have not yet, for all the chaos seen one single crash or brush...we truly travel cm's away from big trucks and buses and you have to keep your limbs firmly inside the rickshaw compartment. on the way in i see even more...i'm glad we're staying in the poor half of town, it is just so mindblowing and otherworldly. people sleeping on every available surface - road dividers even. and once again, the ratio of men to women is staggering.

we arrive in CP in a blaze of horns and heat and humidity, and set off to buy me a camera. after much haggling in this wierd little underground shopping centre that just spirals around itself, i found one - reduced from 360 aud to 270 aud after some serious bargaining. tenzin is champ! we find the markets - they are so amazing, and it is here we see out first real representation of women - selling magnificent rajhastani cloth. the camera was put to the test as i cranked through a whole roll of 36! we were hassled by touts and begging kids, and i was such a softtouch i gave 2 kids coins, and a young mum with a malnourished looking baby. also bought a hand made snake charmer pipe from a tiny little man, and a lovely shawl and a nice cotton hippy shirt for tomorrow...

off to the red fort on an autorickshaw after a dhal and naan and the obligatory pepsi (which tastes really good with dhal), but alas , it is closed on mondays (by order of the government), so after a few pics and more crowd gathering around us (wehere the wealthier locals took pictures of us, or of us with them), we jump on a bike rickshaw - well, 2 actually, they can only take 2 at a time, and peddle offthru the insane traffic to the nearby famous mosque...another world again. markets lead up to the mosque, and surround it - it is an ancient mosque, built at the same time as the red fort, around 16th century.

here the poverty and beggers and truly staggering. as is the smell. as we dismount and are instantly surrounded by snotty nosed,smiling beggar kids, i feel like i'm in some movie set some hundred years ago...we are the only foreigners in a crowd of thousands, and it is as if we are royalty...the crowds part and stare. i need more film so we wander up one of the many side alley markets, much to the locals astonishment. we find the film, reload and make our way to the mosque. the great stairway is packed with people...truly poor for the most part, limbs missing,deformed, goats sit in amongst them.

we hit the top at the same time as a bunch of europeans arrive, and the throng gets quite frenzied...we must all take off our shoes before entering, so they all stand around watching us. so weird. inside, it's quite peaceful - a huge open courtyard, with towers and a bathing pond in the centre. we climb to the top of one tower (about 200 ft)- in a stairwell about 1.5 feet wide in absolute darkness except for the occasional hole in the wall. i realise in horror that there are indian men descending...in the tiny cramped space and darkness, you can imagine the ...ah...intimacy that indian men seem to presume all women desire. disconcerting, to say the least, especially as me being the excited one barrelled up the stairs way ahead of tenzin, dawa or bronny...(foolish) i screamed after one particularly intimate encounter, and i could hear the others scambling to catch up. when we finally get to the top with quivering thighs and cramping calves, the small enclosed area is full of men (surprise surprise) - tenzin takes charge and clears a path for me and i realise bronny sensibly decided against the climb and returned to the bottom...ughh..she has watched i guy calling to his friends that there are western women in the tower, come quick...

been typing for an hour, very tired, but my head is spinning (wow wow wow)and i need to tell you all about it!!! so after the mosque, we catch an autorickshaw home to the tibetan camp..the oasis of peace and quiet. we play with the kids and play the flutes tenzin bought today. the others are sleeping but i can't sleep yet, so here i am... i promise from now on, i'll keep these a little shorter! it's just so nice to sit in a safe little cafe with the dalai lama looking down at me and fans belting away...

tomorrow we go to varanasi, and i think from now on it will be much harder to find internet cafes, as we are heading away from the tourist circuit. but you never know... looking forward to finding a new restaurant to have some dinner and maybe even a beer in...somewhere down one of these little alley ways there's bound to be a few to choose from.

Part 2 August, 2000

HELLO HELLO HELLO ai ai ai...so sorry I have not written for a loooong time.....computers in India are indeed a joke! servers are crappy, there are constant power cuts. I have tried to send e-mails 3 times before now (over the past few weeks..) and had no luck, so today, I am sitting here in this little cyber cafe in lovely manali, typing this letter in word pad in the hope that sometime this morning there will be enough time on the server to allow a cut and paste jobby. (LATER: it's about 8.45pm and at last the server is working, so i have read all my e-mails at last, so lovely to hear from you all!)

anyway, well well well...so much to say! can't believe it's been 3 weeks...feels like 3 months...3 years...i'm mostly loving it and occasionally freaking out, but i think that's quite normal for this country. I'll start from the beginning i guess it's a very good place to start (there's a song in that..)..ha ha ha.

delhi, we stayed there for a day and a half before setting off via train to varanasi..it ended up taking about 18 hours, winding through every single little village between delhi and varanasi. every time we stopped the train would get mobbed by food and drink sellers, selling their wares...anything from "chai chai chai" (sweet milk tea) to fruit to samosas and all sorts of indian delicasies. of course, we being scaredy cat inji's (foreigners), declined all the street prepared food (all cooked in the open with filthy utensils and hands...) and ate the train food which was probably just as bad! you are supposed to bring your own food but in all the excitement of delhi, we forgot to organise anything beyond a few banana's. being female inji's, we are of particular interest, and anytime we catch public transport...or do anything, really, we ineveitably have a crowd of onlookers, staring dumbstruck and unflinchingly. there's no point getting mad or staring back because they just don't stop. the trains are particularly bad for that, as you are stuck in the one seat with 2 guys from the next compartment just gazing for hours, which gets pretty weird when you're trying to sleep. often, they'll race off to the other carraiges and bring a crowd back to stare. amusing for a while, but mostly incredibly annoying. you're lucky if you can find one who speaks a bit of english cause if you can communicate with 1 of them, the fascination dissipates and they realise we're quite ordinary.

anyway, that's the train to varanasi. exciting, chaotic, typically indian. varanasi: enchanting, magical, bizarre, i loved it and will return there again. this is the holiest of indian cities, the ganga flows beside it and many many people come here to die (or relatives bring their dead here) so thir bodies will be burned at one of the 2 burning ghats, and their ashes scattered in the mighty (monsoon swollen) river.

only 5 days before we arrived, the monsoon had swept through north india, causing the ganga to swell by about 10 metres. that's a lot. the ghats were mostly covered by water, except for a few stairs on the tallest ones. which was a little disappointing, as one of the features of life in varanasi is the walk along the river that joins all the ghats. lots of stalls and street life. it had all been pushed into the tiny alleyways in the old city that back onto the river. ah....these alley ways. they are ageless, timeless. we could have been in the 16th century..silk traders or explorers. mark twain came here and wrote that it was ancient..older than time itself..and that is still the case. cows and goats and dogs live in the alleys alongside the sellers and the familes whose little shops front their homes. heaps of street kids peddling post cards and powdered bindi stamps. such characters! sassy as hell.

we arrived at varanasi junction train station in the drizzle and hoped that our friend shen had got the messages that we were arriving, and would pick us up and take us top a nice hotel.... he didn't. (ah, another of the mysteries of india: wayward communications) so there we were, in this other world of smells and massive crowds, surrounded by our usual large circle on fascinated on-lookers, totally exhausted. the tension mounted as tenzin haggled for the cheapest lift into the old city and we ended up an a 2 seater auto-rickshaw with our 3 bodies and packs (?!). fortunately in varanasi the policing of the autorickshaws (or anything else for that matter) is nonexistant, so we were able to throw tenzin into the front with the driver, and carry the packs on our laps, peering out around them through the drizzle, into the mud and traffic.

oh mi god, i'm going to die....it seems like a constant refrain when ever we embark onto the roads here. through the vegetable market, through the mud, we could see it was different place to delhi. slighty more relaxed, more rural, but still intensely chaotic. indians love to yell, i'm sure they are all quite deaf. they play their music and their tv's at ridiculous volumes. actually, the tv is a problem because the broadcast levels are all over the place..ad's are like 3 times the volume of the program.

anyway, we had told the driver the name of the first highly ranked hotel in the bible (lonely planet guide - which had warned us they will try to take you to all sorts of places to get their own commission) and he took us to at least 3 places which were most definately NOT the place we wanted - all dingy, grotty little places. so we ended up getting out and just walking into the nearest decent looking place (we were just exhausted by this time, and it was very hot and steamy).

Iit ended up being placed right on the secondary burning ghat (Harishchandra), and absolutely wonderful! hotel sonmony. right on the river, a little cafe, rooftop views of the city..the river..and the burnings. just fascinating. life just danced around us, funerals paraded past us constantly, street kids, pilgrims, sadu's, music and dancing at all hours, devotee's chanting...so much, so vivid, so wonderful. the river was so swollen that they had had to move the fires up to the alley way just behind the hotel.

i took about 4 x 36 rolls of film. just got some developed yesterday, actually - scratched to hell, but great nevertheless. we found shen and his girlfriend, and did lots of sightseeing, boat rides, eating out (yum)...and, ah, at the amazing buddhist archeological dig at sarneth - 15 kn's north of varanasi, i made a fatal mistake. i ate a soup that i did not trust. i showed it to tenzin, he ate some, said it's fine, so i kept right on suspiciosly eating. really must trust my intuition more. that night, halfway through a classical indian music concert, i started shivering violently. by the time we got back to the hotel, i knew i was very sick. 2 and a half days in bed with fever and violent diarrhea. tenzin got a bit too, but not as bad as me. i still have a touch of diarrhea even now, 2 weeks later. had antibiotics which worked wonders for about 3 days, but it came right back. anyway....that's india for ya. i'm getting very hungry now, so sorry folks, will have to do the condensed version from now on.

we stayed in varanasi for about a week, then caught the train back to delhi (where we were entertained by some street kid circus performers and muso's who were 50 year olds trapped in 8 year old bodies) where we caught a same day overnight bus to manali (all this with bad stomach - i started gobbling immodium [gut paralyser] and hallucinating - tenzin and bronny have been great, looking after me very carefully.).

tenzin's sister lives in a little village just south of manali, called patlikul. we stayed there for 2 nights in a guest house, eating at yuodon's little one room house which she lives in with her hubby and 2 teenage kids. she was very worried about me and kept feeding me this vile tasting tibetan magic medicine. she also got the family monk to come in and pray for our safe journey up into the mountains. very sweet and caring and giving...considering they had so little.

5 minutes after we got off the bus at patlikul, the dalai lama's entourage drove through enroute to the kalachakra teaching in the mountains...the people were all lined up with flowers and offerings and were so excited! bands were playing, they love their dalai lama so much. this area is very tibetan, and even some of the indians are buddhist.

anyway, we arranged for a 4 wheel drive to take us - me, bronny, tenzin, shen, his girlfriend and tenzins younger brother dawa up into the mountains, to ki monastery, where the dalai lama's teaching was taking place. this was not in ladakh as i had thought - and just as well, as the road to leh and ladakh was closed due to landslides. we went to a place called spiti valley - just near the tibetan border, north west of nepal. oh mi god oh mi god oh mi god.

the himilaya. the home of the gods. we camped at about 4000 metres on the 1st day, and of course, got altitude sickness and ended up virtually bedridden for 3 days. none of the boys got sick (but 2 of them were tibetan), but we chicks got the most intense headaches ever. but it didn't matter because we were just awestruck...every couple of km's we drove, it seemed like a different landscape. rugged and barren to lush and soft green rolling hills. we passed through the rotang pass (4270 metres), and the ka zun pass (4470 metres) - both marked with buddhist stupa's and hundreds of prayer flags. do i need to tell you how bitterly cold it was? or how penetrating and fierce the winds were? it took 12 hours to drive 180 km's. oh mi god, oh mi god, it was just unbelievable.

the people who live here are very traditional mountain folk. all the villages are pretty much tibetan in architecture, culture and peoples. we made a couple of expeditions to neighbouring villages - they are officially the highest inhabited villages in the world. we were invited into a couple of homes for chai, so we got a pretty good taste of traditional tibetan life. these people live tough lives. they work the fields, and maintain the roads...and that is a huge job. the more remote you get, the rougher the roads. they are pretty much maintained by hand - small family groups (women and kids as well) camp out by the road for weeks at a time, working with bare hands or shovels or picks to break up the big rocks. some parts are bitumen - they cook up the mix in big 40 gallon drums and shovel it onto the road...and that's that. the fumes are intense and they all wear heavy scarves over their faces. wait till you see the photo's of both the roads (oh mi god, we're going to die) and the road gangs..often just a man, his wife and kids.

anyway, we arrived at the monastery, and made our camp with the 10 000 others in the dust bowl plain below the monastery. the indian army was providing the infrastructure, hiring tents, cot beds, electricity. we hired a big mash tent and pretended we were hawkeye and bj, and tried to set up an illegal gin stil. the dalai lama, it turned out, was totally in tune with me and compassionately suffered bad stomach and mountain sickness for about 3 days, so the teachings were put back about a week...which is why i have put back my return flight out of delhi on the 27th August. it was all just as well, gave me a bit of a chance to regain my strength. saw a doctor, got antibiotics to bomb my belly.

we camped there for 7 days, and caught 2 days of teachings...so amazing to see the dalai lama with his own people....many of them had walked enormous distances to get there. some of them very old, coming to see him for the last time. some had even escaped from tibet...walked from tibet to nepal to spiti valley. i cried a few times at their hardship and devotion. talking to 2 women who had made the journey from tibet, having to leave their kids behind because they were in so much personal danger from the chinese for their treasonary behaviour (calling for freedom, etc) - had to leave in the night, in secret. they were so sad. this situation is so sad.

anyway, the big DL was very cool...talked alot about the chinese and peace and hope and stuff. after 7 days, bronny and i had pretty much had enough, the altitude sickness was getting us down, the dust was unbelievable, the toilets were appaling and about a km's walk from the main camp (which is great fun with a bad belly), so we left the others up there and caught a 4 wheel drive back down here to manali.

we are staying in a nice hotel with a western toilet and hot water (a rarity in India), and we're eating out at funky little restaurants with all the other tourists (lots of hippy ravers and wealthy middle agers) and going shopping and relaxing and recovering and watching lots of wierd indian tv. tomorrow we leave for mandhi and rewalsar lake, then on to dharamsala, where we'll be for a week. after that, i'll head off alone to delhi and agra (taj mahal) and the return trip home. (boo hoo hoo)

postcards haven't happened very much...just 1 to the zoo, so sorry...there just doesn't seem to be time to write stuff...there's always so much to do. i'm loving it, and taking heaps of great photo's, so you can all have a good look when i get back. hopefully i'll have better internet access in dharamsala, the servers and electricty are quite a good standard apparantly. so please e-mail me everyone, tell me all the goss...

love you all, martine. xoxoxoxoxoxo back in bris early on the 29th. maybe. ;)

LATER: had a great day today - having had some rest time for the first time in quite a while, we've been feeling quite energised. caught the gov't bus to patlikul to visit tenzin's family - they made a big fuss about us, of course, cooked up a big meal and were very distressed that they had no gifts for us. then rang my brother david on his mobile for his 30th birthday and got to have a quick chat with my family which was lovely, then just hung out on the street with all the street sellers, chatting and haggling (bought a gram of saffron and a present for my nephew) and getting out shoes polished by street urchins. did a little sightseeing tour on an autorickshaw around old manali (tekno tekno tekno - lots of long term isreali travellers who like tekno and flouro) and a couple of other small villages and temples in the area. this area is lovely, and i feel just so happy and relaxed here - it'll be sad to leave.

Posted by frangipani at January 20, 2000 2:24 AM