Tso Pema
Sunday, June 25, 2006
I wrote this several days ago thinking to post it immediately. We found that the internet connection here in Tso Pema sucks, to put it directly and succinctly. I haven’t been able to do anything about connecting until today when David B. who lives here let me use his dial up connection to try to play catch up. There’s a lot more commentary to come. We saw Rimpoche in the caves a few days ago. He’s fine and asked me to send his warm regards to all of his friends and students in the west.
Here is the blog:
Tuesday, 20 June, 2006
Tso Pema/Rewalsar, Himachal Pradesh
India
We made it. Despite the usual and unusual mishaps of long distance travel, compounded exponentially by having more people on the journey to complicate things, we arrived in Tso Pema on Sunday morning. I can’t say that we weren’t the worse for wear or that we arrived intact or any of the usual idiomatic niceties, since there was considerable wear and tear and not everything arrived quite intact. However, we do have all our limbs attached and none of our considerable pile of luggage sprouted legs and walked away, something we’d been concerned about, given the quantity of stuff and the number of people handling it and moving it around.
I hardly know where to start. Every time I try to write about the last 72 hours I end up sitting and starting at my screen with my jaw hanging open, boggled at the prospect of describing our journey, our states of mind or the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Maybe I should just try telling about how we got here and what occurred along the way and see what side alleys and rabbit holes that telling takes me down. Nothing is linear.
Yeah, like right now, as I write this, I am seriously distracted by the sound and sight of a pair of bull monkeys having a fairly rowdy fight in the tree outside my window. These are a couple of big guys, obviously dominant males from the size of them. Mostly the little brown monkeys around here are what people think of as monkey-sized, if you know what I mean - the size a cocker spaniel would be if it stood up. The big males are half again as big. So a pair of them duking it out in the trees is quite noisy as well as being not so great for the trees themselves. Think of tree surgeons doing pro wrestling.
Anyway, to reach this out-of-the-way place in the Himalayas, we had to go through Delhi. In the hottest part of the hellish Indian summer. Do the words “never again” ring out clearly? They should. That part of the adventure is one that I do not wish to repeat. Ever. Not this lifetime or the next. The five days we spent in Delhi getting my laptop fixed (yay!) and then procuring bus tickets that would take us to Mandi, the nearest real “town” rank as among the ugliest I can remember. Even with air conditioning in the hotel room, it was miserably hot and the pollution unbelievable. Lena and I met up with Nyondo the second morning (another yay!) and all three of us were sweating, wheezing and our eyes were bright red. Getting those tickets and retrieving the computer from IBM’s Indian service center as quickly as possible became our goal.
Then we got sick. Nyondo first, the whole “Delhi Belly” nasty thing that takes you down and wrings you out and leaves you wishing that humans had never evolved such things as digestive tracts – either the in or the out portions. I won’t go into the gory details, just say that it was ugly, painful, debilitating and many other disgusting adjectives, especially the cramps. Oh the cramps! Makes the idea of being disemboweled on a battlefield sound like a Sunday picnic – at least there you die and it’s over with eventually. I didn’t get anything except the cramps while we were there. That was certainly enough to make me completely dysfunctional, but it wasn’t as bad as what Nyondo was going through. We figured that I’d already been through it in Kathmandu and had some resistance to the bacteria. Lena has been fine – apparently all her old immunities still function fine! Okay, so we ended up being wrong about me. Apparently Delhi summer pretty much guarantee that whatever bacteria is around mutates into some sort of violent and virulent space alien intent on eating your guts. The heat turns plain bread into something lethal to the uninitiated.
Saturday evening we made it to the long distance bus station in Delhi with our friend David whom we met in Majnukatilla (long story – more on that later) and who lives in Tso Pema now. So we decided to all travel up together. Probably good since neither Nyondo nor I was doing so great and having two people who could run around and find things and also effectively watch the luggage was a good thing. Since, between the four of us we had 11 big pieces of luggage plus a hand bag each, the luggage was a major factor. It was like having a herd of small but very heavy children that might tend to wander off and become lost. Remember, if you will, that Lena, Nyondo and I were bringing up stuff to set up to live and work here for awhile. So, in addition to the usual travelers gear and clothes, we have a complete office setup, Nyondo’s computer tech whiz equipment, a minor medical office for Lena complete with basic medicines, equipment and even the stuff necessary to do field surgery if required! Plus at least one suitcase full of gifts intended for people both here and back home in North America when we go back awhile this fall. So lots of luggage, all of it unusually heavy. AND irreplaceable without a great deal of stress and money. This is another NEVER again. I’ll pay the shipping costs, do without, etc. etc., but I am NOT trying to hand carry all my world possessions through India again.
In the US it might have been awkward, but not this chaotic. See, none of the regular Indian taxis were big enough to accommodate that much luggage plus four people. What the service wanted for a minivan that “might” take us all was robbery! So we divided ourselves and our stuff among two taxis. Oh yeah, to get TO the taxis, we had to pile all the stuff into a couple of rickshaws that could transport them out to the gates while we walked. Then bags were piled on top of and into the cabs, we wedged ourselves in and were driven, in 108 degree heat, to the bus depot. Of course, unless you’re on one of the super deluxe, ultimate luxury tourist buses (we couldn’t get tickets, sold out) your taxi can’t actually go INTO the bus depot. You are expected to be deposited about a block away and find a porter to carry it all to the station. Right. 11 bags. At least a quarter ton in weight, probably a good bit more. And we’re in the middle of rush hour traffic in Delhi our bags piled and maniacs driving all around. Our taxi driver is involved in a screaming match with one of the porters which we can’t understand but it escalates to the point where they start pushing each other, not quite hitting, but then Indian guys don’t usually hit, they push and tear each other’s clothing when they fight. This was about as aggressive as I’ve seen.
What it turned out was that the driver was trying to negotiate porter fees and this young guy was asking an outrageous amount for his share. Of course he claimed he could take half the bags himself in one go. Since that seemed clearly impossible, the 100 rupees he was asking (a little over $2 US) seemed totally ridiculous. But he wouldn’t come down lower and neither would the other people. So finally, not wanting to miss the bus, we said, okay, 200 rupees TOTAL and you porters work out who gets what of that, just get it to the bus! Well… I must say that, despite the chaos, the aggravation, the heat, etc., it was worth 200 rupees to me to see this one young man, medium height and build, carry MORE than half our luggage, at least in terms of weight and size. Two enormous duffles went on his head, the other two enormous duffles went over his shoulders and a fifth carried in the hand that wasn’t steadying the burden on his head. Another guy grabbed most of the small bags and a third came along with David’s box and duffle. But that first guy was just amazing! Between the five huge bags it must have weighed well over 150 kilos.
So there’s this procession of three might porters and four Injie travelers all carrying their own personal bags trooping down the road and through the bus depot. The good thing about the size of the burden is that even I, on my cane, could keep up with the primary porter. He couldn’t go fast, but he went steadily and without wavering or dropping anything, up and down stairs and around obstacles while we found the place where we could leave the bags. But now you see why we were worried about the luggage going astray? So many opportunities. And, once he’d deposited those bags in what he said was the appropriate place and stood there, pouring sweat, but might proud that he’d been right about what he could carry, we discovered that the bus wouldn’t come for another hour yet and would load about another quarter block away. So more haggling in which it was agreed that these guys would get their 200 rupees when they came back in an hour and loaded the stuff where it needed to be. They went off to breathe and air out while we took turns guarding the baggage.
The Delhi bus station was about what I had expected: huge, filthy, crowded, noisy, redolent with odours both good and unpleasant. My guess is that it had first been built in the nineteen fifties and there it was. Nobody had done much in the way of any maintenance, cleanup or change since then, not in any official capacity. Various of the stallkeepers selling food, water, magazines in many languages, etc., clearly kept their areas somewhat tidied. Signs for snacks, cell phone packages, movie posters and all that were newish and cleanish, being replaced as needed. But the walls were black with soot and grime, old wanted posters (we think) in Hindi, notices in Hindi, Urdu and probably other languages as well. There were fans mounted on the ceiling but the only ones that still had any blades were pointed towards the ticket sellers’ booths and gave scant relief to the heat that rose like a physical mass from the people and the buses chugging and heaving curbside.
I got misdirected and wandered into the “gents” toilet where the guys were not particularly shocked but politely escorted the befuddled Western lady out and pointed me across the station to the “ladies”. The usual elderly Dravidian woman in a tattered sari taking rupees as the door to the toilet kept looking at me and saying “no English” over and over. I hadn’t really expected her to know English so I smiled and handed her my coin and went in to what was a better-maintained restroom than I’d expected. Not up to normal US standards, but good for India. Clearly what she’d meant by “English” was that the toilets were NOT western style, but the Indian “squatters”. Well, that’s what I’d expected but, with no toilet on the bus, an hour until it departed on its twelve hour journey and a bladder that was making little whimpering noises, I was happy to use whatever facilities were available.
Therein lies the crux of the drama of our cross country bus ride up to Himachal Pradesh.
The bus itself was fairly decent, not the top of the line, but the next down. We had front seats with enough leg room for me, though the structure of the seats didn’t suit anyone’s bodies, neither the short of us nor me, the tall one. As though they’d made an attempt to be generic and succeeded only in giving *everyone* a backache. There was nominally air conditioning on the bus, though it didn’t really kick on until we were on the road and moving so the getting settled in our seats bit was like climbing voluntarily into the sardine can and waiting while they sealed the top.
Did I mention that neither Nyondo nor I was really over our digestive problems yet? I mean, we’d both come to a kind of uneasy truce with our innards that said if neither of us made any sudden moves, nobody would get too badly hurt. The jostle and bump of the bus over the plains of central India hovered on the edge of that truce, leaving us queasy and uncomfortable but not overtly ill for the first part of our journey.
We’d been assured that we wouldn’t have to go a full twelve hours without any bathroom facilities or rest stops. There was a scheduled stop at a “truck stop” about three hours into the journey so that people could get food, use the facilities, etc. We fully expected a typical Punjabi truck stop or dhaba which is a largish shack by the road with a pit toilet, a wok full of samosas, pakora and chana puri, benches, booze and tea and somewhat wired all-night drivers. They are notoriously grimy, dark, dangerous places.
Imagine our surprise when the bus pulled into the parking lot of something that looked, to my eyes, exactly like the Bellingham Fair Mall in upper Washington State. I mean exactly, down to the etched glass windows. We walked through the humid, oppressive night heat and into this sparkling edifice and discovered that it was air conditioned. There was a truly surreal moment when I pointed out that it was labeled “Punjabi Dhaba” in flourishing purple letters and that there was a kind of kiddie jungle gym ball playstructure in one corner, a display of fake giraffes, paper mache people in saris and kurtas and popcorn machines everywhere. It was a food court! Indian food, Punjabi food, but a food court like in a western mall none the less. The bathrooms were western and squeakily clean with about sixteen attendants in evidence. And, of course, the food was ridiculously overpriced and there were tchachkes and souveniers to be bought in the corners. Yes, the mall combined with a distinct influence of Chuck E. Cheese.
I held one end of a table in the central court while Lena and Nyondo went to find us some food that we could potentially eat. After I’d been there a few minutes, I was joined by a middle class Indian family who asked the usual curious questions of where was I from, how long was I in India, where had I been so far, how did I like it? Very pleasant with the young mother and eldest daughter having the best English. Then came the clincher: the mother looked around at the food court with it’s fake giraffes, popcorn, etched glass and fountains and asked me earnestly if I found this place as weird as she did as a place to stop on the road. By the time Lena and Nyondo came back with samosas and curd for me, the mom, daughter and I were laughing hysterically at the “modern” dhaba and the pseudo-western kitch of it out in the middle of the plains where there was absolutely no context. All we could figure is that the bus companies had either built it or were getting a kickback to have the big bus groups stop there and spend their rupees on grossly overpriced snacks and jellybeans. It was pretty hysterical and a really good bonding experience with people chance met on the road.
That was, however, the last time I laughed for a long time. Even the sanitized food of the mall was too much for my poor digestive system. We got back on the bus in a half an hour and I spent the next eight hours hunched in my seat with horrific belly cramps and an urge to just let it all out which, of course, wasn’t remotely possible on a crowded bus with no lavatory. Nyondo was in slightly better condition, but only slightly, mostly having the cramps but not the extreme urges. I consider that I earned my traveller’s stripes this trip, holding it all together through the night. Somewhere around four a.m. we began our ascent into the mountains and the roads became incredibly twisty with switchbacks, sheer precipices, narrow places where two buses could not pass side by side. The veering, the being thrown about, the flinging of people’s possessions, boxes, water bottles the length of the bus taxed my control more than I thought would be possible. The best I can say is that I handled it. I didn’t even freak out when, during all this, my very good eyeglasses, the ultralight, ultraviolet protection, scratch resistant pair that I’d paid such a fortune for as an investment for travel, went out the bus window and probably over a cliff in the Himalayas. I don’t know for sure because, of course, I couldn’t see.
I made it though. Made it to the morning rest stop (which WAS a more typical Indian truck stop of a dhaba beside the road) where I just made it to what passes there for a bathroom. I couldn’t even bear to watch my fellow travelers eat their breakfast puris, but crawled back on the bus with a warm cocacola and hunched blindly in my seat for the remainder of our journey.
Once again, not into the actual bus station since we were getting off in the town of Mandi and the bus was actually going on to the big city of Manali farther along. They dropped us and our luggage off on the road near the station. Fortunately this time our karma was good and our friend and guru, Wangdor Rimpoche, had sent cars for us, captained by one of the most competent monks from the big monastery he built. Lobsang is young and doesn’t drive, but he is a great organizer and extremely practical. He’d commandeered the big jeep AND hired a regular car, having heard what luggage we had. Eventually, with all the energy and confusion of a Mongolian fire drill, the massive luggage array was loaded into the jeep along with David (who was going to his house rather than with us) and we had the pleasant car without being squished by suitcases for a change.
From there, it was a forty-five minute drive up the side of the mountain to the town of Rewalsar where we are going to be staying. That’s it’s Indian name. The Tibetans call it Tso Pema which means Lotus Lake. There’s many stories about this lake and how it came to be and it is a power point and a pilgrimage place for most of the sects in Asia – Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs and Jains all consider this to be an extremely powerful and holy place and come here for it. At some point I’ll tell all the stories and the legends.
I’ve seen pictures, heard stories and Lena’s reminiscences for nearly twenty years now so there was a huge charge, a huge sense of anticipation, as we drove from Mandi up into the high places. The cramps had passed for the moment, it was a glorious, clear skied, blue and green day, cool now that we were out of the plains, mercifully balmy and mild. I wasn’t expecting it to be quite so very beautiful, so unlike anything I’d seen yet in India. As we rose in altitude, the land fell away behind us and we could see across the valleys to the Himalayan range beyond, blue and grey and purple, layered and misty. In the near places it was lush and green, the brilliant, vivid green of an unspoiled, healthy, thriving ecology. Lena’s eyes were as blue as the sky, welling up like some giant hand had reached inside her and was squeezing her heart. This place, this very place, is where she came of age, where she found her place and lived for many years as a young woman. For her this is coming home again. Between the expression on her face and the overwhelming beauty of the mountains and sky, I found myself crying, tears rolling down silently. I can use words to describe it, but there is so much that words alone cannot ever contain. That was one of those indescribable moments. Awe may be an appropriate word. Immanence perhaps? I was too overcome to even think to take pictures.
We were taken to the Lotus Lake Hotel which was built and is owned by Lama Wangdor Rimpoche. If the meeting us with cars and all good ceremony wasn’t enough, our welcome here let us know that we’re getting the VIP treatment. Basically we were shown the place and told we could have any/all of the rooms of our choosing that were not already taken. We chose two on the first floor since with my foot still ailing, the one flight up was about what seemed sensible. We can always move up to the fancier rooms with views of the lake once I’m walking better. But the rooms are spacious if not spotless (Tibetans have no real notion of housekeeping skills in modern buildings) with decent beds and what are, for here, excellent Western style bathrooms with lots of hot water!)
The large, screened back window faces a small open patch of green where cows graze and wild marijuana grows freely and a handful of trees where monkeys spend their days entertaining us. The ceilings are high with a great fan and the place is quite cool and breezy. I say this with absolute delight after Delhi. There’s a decent restaurant run by the Three Stooges, a trio of young Indian boys who can cook quite well, but have absolutely no idea how to organize, time or present anything. There is often much crashing and cursing and banging coming from the kitchen, but the food (the bit I’ve managed to eat anyway) is pretty decent Tibetan and Indian fare. It often takes a few tries to get everything and the toast may come twenty minutes before the coffee which is twenty minutes ahead of the milk for the coffee, but they do try. The regular manager is out of town and the young monk who is fulfilling that role temporarily appears to be on Thorazine or something similar. He makes no trouble and occasionally turns up at the door with something he’s been told to give us. This morning it was a big wooden armchair someone decided we might enjoy. I found a spot for it with a bit of difficulty since our luggage is still all over in the process of unpacking, then got pinned behind it when he simply set it down blankly without waiting for me to get out of the corner. So there are some comedic touches.
The plan is for us to stay here indefinitely since it’s convenient (located on the main drag across from the lake and near the road into town as well) and is costing us nothing for the moment. Eventually we’ll find a place with a kitchen that we can rent and call our “own” while we’re here, but we’d all rather take our time with this and find something we like rather than grab the first thing that comes up. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty good.
I spent that first day being as sick as I hadn’t been able to be on the bus. I suspect it was actually worse for having had to suppress it for so long. I’m actually taking antibiotics to try to kill whatever bacteria are trying to take over my system. Nyondo, having had that stage of the ick a few days prior, is somewhat ahead of me in the recovery process and has gotten about more in the last two days, exploring and researching. Lena is connecting with old friends and making new ones.
I’ve now gotten to the point where I’m giving synopsis instead of telling the story, so I’m going to conclude this particular installation of the blog so I can pick it up with more interesting details about daily life in Tso Pema. A couple of things to know if you’re reading this:
Internet here sucks. No other way to put it. It’s a good 10 years behind the US technologically up here in HP. The BEST we’ll be able to do is a dialup connection at a high price right now. The internet cafes offer a SHARED dialup connection (sort of like tying four people’s legs together and making them crawl in tandem across the floor.) There is hope that Broadband connections might come to the region in the next six months, but so far it is only a hope. There is a possibility of obtaining a satellite internet connection, but, so far, no one in either Mandi or Rewalsar has done so as the cost is prohibitive. We’re looking into what that could mean as both Nyondo and I need a decent internet connection to do our work and, especially, the work I do for Rimpoche which is much of the reason I’m here! The closest good connection is, from what we hear, in Bir, which is about four hours away. We’ll see what can be managed. We are determined to find solutions. We hear rumors that it is possible to get connectivity via cell phones and Nyondo is going to check that out tomorrow. No clue how good it actually is, but likely to be somewhat better than trying to use a landline for the purposes as cell phones are actually easier and cheaper here than landlines.
Since our lives and livelihood depend on connections to the outside world, we did get a cell phone and have it connected. Local calls are really cheap. International calls however are not, are about the equivalent of US 20 cents a minute, which means that we’ll be making necessary calls, but not a lot of social ones. However we can RECEIVE calls from overseas free so, if anyone wants to splurge or has access to a cheap phone card to call India, email or PM me and I’ll send you our phone number. I’d LOVE to talk to people!
