Pilgrimage '09: India: The First Week in Vashisht

Just a week ago today I flew from Bangkok to New Delhi, a four or five hour flight on Indian Airlines. The plane ride foreshadowed India well. The stewardesses wore long, elegant sari's and I wondered how they kept their footing amidst the turbulence. Towards the end of the flight, I ventured to the onboard restroom and it was a mess of papers and water on the floor, with a sink half full of water and no apparent way to activate the drain. The different hygenic standards of India made their appearance even on the plane. I noted that there was no instructional video like on my Biman Bangladesh flight several years ago which showed how to use a western style toilet and toilet paper... things that are not the norm in India where squat toilets are the norm along with water and the left hand instead of toilet paper.

The pilot said it was 37 deg Celsius in New Delhi as we approached the landing. My reality was about to change drastically from the more tempered heat and mannerisms of Thailand to the blatant heat and chaos of the Indian subcontinent. Just like my last visit to S.E. Asia, I wondered why I was leaving the easy joy of Thailand for India. Yet I remembered how last time, once I landed in Kolkata and roamed the streets, I knew I was in the right place. So this time I trusted I would feel the same when I landed in India.

I breezed through customs and the swine flu questionnaire/interrogation by doctors. I noticed that unlike the Thai's, the Indians weren't buying into the false hope of safety of a paper mask against a virus. I avoided the touts for this and that, looked in vain for a legitimate information booth and ended up following a sign out of the terminal for “buses”, where I found only the airport bus. I asked a couple of official looking people before getting my answer from a policeman about the E.A.T.S. bus to Connaught Place for 50 rs. My strategy was to get to the government bus station and get on a bus to Manali in the mountains and thus sidestep the chaos of Delhi. Thanks to my trusty Lonely Planet, I new that there were many government buses leaving until 10 pm, while I had likely missed the tourist buses that leave between 5 and 7pm. The local bus suited me as I new it would be cheaper, likely have a better driver, and be a more interesting taste of culture.

The bus actually took me all the way to the government bus station beyond Connaught Place, a nice surprise from the Lonely Planet information. A nice young man in his twenties helped me sort that out and did his best to point me to the right counter at the bus station. I was still accosted by several touts for tourist/AC (airconditioned buses) to Manali. I might have followed them if they had quoted me a price. I persevered to counter number seven where I encountered my first Indian queue, or rather lack of one. Proper Indian custom is to just push push push your way to the counter not minding any semblance of a queue. From a country of multitudes where there is not always enough to go around, this makes some sense. I got to the counter to be told to come back in ten minutes at 7pm for the 7:30pm bus to Manali. The bus conductor was already barking out “Kullu Manali” in accent that I could just barely make out. He smiled at me and said “yes, get a ticket at the window first.” I love the Indian bus conductors and often find them great allies in my journeys. I remember one who took me by hand to the ticket window for the next bus in my journey when I traveled to Rajasthan thee years ago.

Soon I was on the bus. It was sweltering hot. My back stuck against the seat; my knees pressed into the seat in front of me. Five seats across in each row of the bus seating in a two /three split. A young woman from Harayana in the seat in front of me spoke a bit of English. She said I would arrive in Manali at 4 am… this was counter to the information of my guidebook which said it would be a 16 hour ride. And I didn’t relish getting into Manali at such an hour before the guesthouse owners were up. I might have known her information was incorrect when she said an AC bus would cost five times as much, when my experience was it would cost maybe one third more. Such is information in India… you will always get an answer, usually several answers to the same question.

As the hours went by I began to regret not getting an AC bus… not for the AC, but for a bigger seat. My seat was firm and the seat back ended at my neck. It was built for a smaller person. Roads in India are rarely smooth and needless to say I got little sleep. When we boarded in Delhi, several men loaded huge burlap bales into the back seats of the bus. About 5 am, this somehow became a problem at a roadside stop. Some sort of official had words to say, and soon the conductor was yelling at the men and their baggage. They were handing over money seemingly demanded of them as an afterthought for excess baggage. Finally the conductor started pushing and trying to get the bales out of their wedged in position between the backseat and the back door handrail. I thought he’d strain his back. Finally the bags and men were off the bus, I assume not where they wanted to be. It might have been helpful if this business had been sorted out earlier for the numerous passengers that had stood in the aisle ways for hours on end between midpoint destinations.

Dawn brought sights of the foothills of the Himalaya in Himachal Pradesch. It soon became clear that we were not arriving in Manali at 4am, nor 6 am, nor 8am, and I realized that none of the people I had asked about our arrival time really knew. Somewhere in their, our conductor and driver stepped off into a village and a new team came on the scene. At 8:30am we arrived in Mandi and I learned we were still 110 km from Manali. Finally we arrived at 10:30 am and I started my 3 km walk up the hill to Vashisht where I ended up in the same guesthouse as 4 years ago.

It felt invigorating to be here. There is something amazing about India… I’m not sure why but it invokes passions and excitement. I felt glad I had come even after my enjoyable time in Thailand, another place I love in a different way. Thailand is a mellow love, sweet and easy. India is a passionate love full of excitement and fire, that will leave you exhilarated one moment and wiped out the next.
If you have an ego, India will dash it to pieces. If you don’t have an ego, India will build one for you, then dash it to pieces.
I’m just wrapping up my first week in India, for the most part, exhilarated, and yet the last 24 hours I’ve been feeling a bit raw. I’ve been relaxing and enjoying the hot springs in this mountain village of Vashist. There are public hot baths from natural sulfur water. The waters feel so good and the scene is something very interesting as the baths are public. Inside the temple there is a women’s and a separate men’s bath. I don’t know what the women’s bath is like, but the men’s is maybe a twelve by twelve foot pool , three feet deep along with another trough where four pipes pour out water. Bathing with soap is done by the pipes and soaking is done in the tub.

The water is nearly scalding. It’s an act of faith to plunge in. But you realize that nearly every man in the village does this daily, and no one has been scalded yet. You scarcely believe that when you put your feet in and they feel like they are burning. It’s a bit of a tourist place for Indians as well as foreigners. The Indian tourist come in droves and families and take pictures galore. It feels a bit rude. The woman’s bath has a sign saying “no photography” outside… the men’s bath I guess has no such sign. Men of all ages partake of the baths wearing their underwear; the youngest boys go nude.

I feel like local as the Indian tourists come and loudly exclaim that the water is too hot and make a big commotion about getting in. It can be amusing. It can be annoying. Yesterday I watched a man change outside the doorway to the men’s bath. Normally, a towel is used to drape yourself so that as you change from wet to dry underwear, you are never nude. The man in the doorway bared all. And the hallway he bared it in went straight to the coed public temple courtyard! Meanwhile a sadhu changed holy chants and did some amazing yoga postures.

A couple of days ago, I was enjoying the baths when a father son motorcycle team walked in, complete in motorcycle garb that made them look straight out of Hell’s Angels. It was early in the morning, yet they’d just completed a long dirty ride by the looks of things. The son was probably 25 and a lean, blue-eyed Adonis, while his father appeared a very weathered 50 yo, scarred and well weathered by the sun. Yet they knew the ropes of bath etiquette and even prayed appropriately at the bath temple diety/shrine.

The past day or so, I’m felling the ebb of excitement. A Kashmiri shopkeeper got on me interested in buying my mp3 player and camera, and I can’t go by his shop without him pestering about it. I nearly sold them to him and his Uncle when they offered me some quite good money. I’d been debating whether I wanted to carry them around anyway, but kind of wanted to at least get some good photos of Ladakh. My social contact has been limited to locals mainly, and communication limited to the basics. I haven’t really connected with any tourists here, and most that I’ve met have been Russian.

It’s one of the thrills and hardships of travel, being left to one’s own thoughts and conversations for long lengths of time… to not have the accessibility of deep, meaningful, understood conversation. It can be hard to find someone to share the adventures with, that will understand them. This is also an excitement, to be in a strange land, and not sure what is going on… and yet at times it can become wearing.
And yesterday it became wearing. On top of that, I cut my foot a few days ago and, though it is healing fine, walking any length doesn’t promote the healing.
A few days ago I was bathing in the evening at the outside men’s bath when it closed at 9pm. I was inside with four others and the attendant locked us in. So I climbed the fence to get out and as I cleared the top, my left foot grazed one of the pointed metal bars. I thought I had just grazed it and with the absence of bright lighting it wasn’t until the next day, I discovered I had gashed it. In spite of my attempts to miraculously heal it with Reiki, it seems to heal very slowly. Actually, I suppose it’s quite a miracle that it is not infected.

India is not my Mother’s house. Hygenic standards are different here. It’s an exc ellent place to build your immune system, if you get my drift. My guest house is along a narrow path up the hillside behind the main street. When it rains, it smells like a cowyard. Cows, dogs, sheep, and people use the path. Assorted types of dung, most often cow, are found along the path. And so walking in sandals, one is lucky to keep one’s feet any manner of appearing clean. Indian toilets are not built to withstand toilet paper. Nor are they scoured with any regularity. The cobwebs lay thick in the corners of my guesthouse toilet. The toilet brushes lay on the floor. There are small rubbish bins for used toilet paper. The bins look like they have been well used. The door way to my room is next to a stairway leading to the roof, and a couple of such rubbish bins sit empty on the steps by my doorway. When it rains, water drips down the stairway and through the rubbish bins and the water soaks into my doormat. Now it doesn’t smell, so it’s “not that bad.” And yet you might understand if my left foot, the cut one doesn’t step on that doormat. And you might just think that the Reiki is working in that my foot is not infected.
Today was one of those quintessential bad days in India. I guess it started yesterday, maybe even the day before with the Kashmiri guy hounding me about my camera. Then the onslaught of feeling emotionally alone. Yesterday afternoon, I thought I’d treat myself to an expensive meal at the Yeti G.H. next to mine, with it’s nice patio. My idea of a quiet time on the patio was dashed by a group of maybe twelve English men and women trying to make some sort of film. I thought I ordered a veg (as opposed to a non-veg) club sandwich, but when I went to pay the waiter said it was non-veg and charged me the extra 20 rs… I didn’t have proper change, so he said I could pay him the balance 10 rs today. Today I stopped by and ordered eggs and a veg sandwich. It was the same waiter and he brought me eggs and toast, which I thought were separate items on the menu. I inquired about it and with his broken English thought he was giving me toast or that it came with the eggs. My veg sandwich tasted very similar to the veg club sandwich that I had yesterday. When I went to settle the bill he said the toast was extra and that it was indeed the veg club sandwich. I asserted that I had ordered eggs and the veg sandwich… why had he brought something else. We had words for a while. He said I should have returned the toast if I didn’t want it. I asserted that I had ordered eggs and a veg sandwich. At one point he said gruffly, “fine, eat for free.” I should have left at this point, but had no problem paying for what I ordered. Then he said I owed him 15 rs from yesterday. I ended up not paying for the mistaken club sandwich, but paying him for the toast and supposed 15 rs from yesterday. Oh I was furious, as I noted that every mistake he made in taking his ordered was a monetary benefit for him. I will not be eating there again, at least not when he is serving.

I was fuming as I went “home” and did some laundry. I ran into the owner of my Guest House, who asked to see my passport so I could properly sign in. I decided to pay up to current, as I’d paid nothing since I’d been here. I checked in last Wednesday and today was Monday, so I figured six days would settle us up, in case I leave tomorrow. When I went to pay, he insisted it was seven days. I couldn’t seem to make him understand that I ought to only pay for the nights stayed. I finally paid for the seven days accepting the loss, then went back to my room. I fumed over the waiter. Then I fumed over the guest house bill and finally decided to go back to the manager and show him that we should only count nights. I went back to the restaurant he runs and appealed to him, and he appealed to some Western customers. It was then I learned that today was Tuesday, not Monday! I felt very sheepish. And we laughed. I noted that I neither have been drinking nor partaking of the hashish growing on the hillsides… and that maybe I ought to start!

It’s hard to believe a week has gone by. I spent 3 days walking to Manali every day waiting for the ATM to work. There are three ATMS in town and by the third day there were a lot of people going through ATM stress. I make a mental note to refresh my cash supply before running out. And I make a mental note that indeed it is good to have a balance of Traveler’s Checks, Cash, and ATM funds.

In the meantime, the mountains are amazing… the green steep hillsides of terraced corn and apples. And the people overall smile and are friendly. A little toddler of a girl plays with empty water bottles using them as bats to bat around a horseapple; another day she plays happily rolling a five gallon bucket.