5/29/2004 10:05:28 PM

It is infinitely dull and colorless. People seem preoccupied, angry and frustrated. This is my perception from London. I assume Paris will be slightly more picturesque(architecturally at least), the people will be even more annoying and the food will be much better. Seeing Debra et famille will more than compensate.

It's not that India is full of happy people in paradise. I wouldn't quite put it like that. It's just way different from here. It's not colorless or dull. Overwhelming, yes. Baffling, yes. I wanted to be seduced and I was (a comment was made to this effect, true methinks). Seduced by lime soda, yoga, clothes, chai, palaak paneer, aacha, basoundi, mountains, car & drivers, rotis, leg waxing, feral dogs, gheckos, heat and dust, squat toilets, the dearth of toilet paper, dhobiwallas, beedis and the friends I made. It has been grand. The best time of my life. Another begining of the best times of my life, I hope.

I have been seduced here in the west with shopping of another kind. Marks & Spencer sexy underwear (yes really). It led me down the lane to Liberty's and Selfridges. Now my feet hurt, I want a chai, I mean a cuppa tay. It's exhausting being in a big city, too many faces too much short fused energy going nowhere. Maybe I can spend more of the summer in Orient, as in Long Island. I'm just flayling about, feeling a bit heartsick and rootless.

Here's the song that I planned to quote at the end. Now's the time....
It called 'The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs' that's the perspective you see, a 'bird's eye view'

Well I feel like an old hobo
I'm sad, lonesome and blue
I was as fair as a summer day
Now the summer days are through
You pass through places
and places pass through you
but you carry them with you
on the soles of your traveling shoes...

Well I love you so dearly
I love you so clearly
I wake you up in the morning so early
just to tell you I got the wandering blues
I got the wandering blues
and I'm going to quit these rambling ways
one of these days soon...
chorus:
the littlest birds sing the prettiest songs
the littlest birds sing the prettiest songs
the littlest birds sing the prettiest songs
the littlest birds sing the prettiest songs

It's times like these I feel so small...
but I'm not too blue to fly
Oh I'm not too blue to fly

chorus




5/27/2004 03:49:13 PM

Not mine. It was an interesting affair. Kind of an arranged marriage via friends. The groom lives in New York and the bride will be moving there. That's where I come in, as a contact when she arrives. I think she will really like being there, I don't know about being married though, that seems slightly secondary to her.

Anyway, the wedding. As is the custom in India, these things start late and go even later. We didn't stay for the whole thing. What I saw though was just amazing. It was the procession part. They have these lamps, one kind is just 4 long fluerscent bulbs (like what they use for offices and hospitals) plugged into a box going straight up and then another lamp an antique 4 tier affair with drippy metal doodads and glass beads hanging down. They are also plugged into a box (slightly bigger than a boot box) and there is a long cord between each lamp box. It's quite a sight! Then there is the brass band all dressed up sweating in this faux military style outfits. Then there are the drummers creating this completely different sound of undulating drumbeats that get you moving in spite of yourself. So everybody is dancing and swaying and clapping and I think at some point coinage is being thrown. THEN there is this GIANT sparkler. A anad or anand, it means pommegranite. It's on a 2 meter high stick and there is this circle the size of a dinner plate with gunpowder or something. It starts spinning and spinning and sparkles start to come out of it and then it gets faster and the radius of the sparks gets bigger and bigger and it is all over everything and rising about 15 feet in the air above. Meanwhile this guy is holding the stick and making sure the circle spins in the middle of all the sparks! It's incredible, I felt like a kid taken to the circus for the first time and it was very exciting. Not to mention the colors, patterns and textures of the saris were beautiful and the lawn was soft and dense. It was the croquet game in Alice in Wonderland in a surreal kind of way. It wasn't though, I'm not Alice, and instead of "off with their heads" it was "namaste, so glad you could come..."

Today is my last day in India. I fly to London tonight with a brief respite in Paris. I am sad to leave. Almost extended my trip to stay and go back up to the mountains again, with V. I loved it there. I'm sorry I didn't think it through more creatively, actually more timely. I guess the trip is over for now. My next adventure is going home.

I'm a bit nervous about returning back to NYC. The concern is that all this will be a dream. Well isn't everything? This is one that I don't want to wake up from. How can I explain what my time has been like? I certainly have tried via blog, etc. But well, for me anyway, this isn't a running commentary for TV or the media or anything. It's been kind of a pilgrimmage with leg waxing and squat toilets and momos and lime soda and cows controlling traffic. Am I enlightened? No. Am I clearer with what I want and what is important, yes. One thing I know for sure is that this isn't just a once in a lifetime experience, it's something I plan to continue doing. Being here in India is a challenge, but that challenge nourishes me on some level.

Will try to write again before returning home. If nothing else, about the french pastry I plan on imbibing in Paris. Can't wait. I could if I was going to the mountains with V though, but that's another story.



5/12/2004 02:56:59 PM

I went up to the guesthouse and I immediately went into what I fondly call 'princess mode'. Not only was it a squat toilet, but it wasn't in my room, but around the corner 30 feet away. OUTSIDE for crying out loud!. There is no sink, you just brush your teeth and spit out on the ground. Bucket hot water means firing up this little heater with branches and leaves and twigs, running cold water through it and then getting steaming hot brown water out of this thing. Uh oh. I am so out of my comfort zone I might as well be on another planet. My mind was racing, gyrating, burning rubber to figure a way out of this one. No wastebasket in the room (why this bothered me I don't know, but I was primed for irritation). And forget phone service (though that I had kind of figured). What was I thinking? This isn't ME!! I'm not simple or natural, I was just low on oxygen when I thought this would be a good idea. I don't want to stretch, at least not this far. OK, okay I'll tough it out for one night and then just look stupid leaving in the morning.

So I sat down, an attempt at calming down. I looked over the hills and watched the sunset. It was beautiful, it was one of the loveliest sunsets I've ever seen. Sitting here watching a sunset on the top of the world, I'm a lucky girl. I think this mind ego thing needs to take a holiday. So I sat there mesmorized by the sun and the shadows and the crickets and it was all a lot better than ok. Then the stars came out, it was better than a movie. I slept better than I had in a while. The bucket bath, despite the color of the water was great, there was plenty of water and it smelled kind of woodsy or pine-y.

While sitting eating breakfast, my friend Megan came by, completely unexpected. We took a little hike together. She didn't move as fast as the guide, and the path was easier. We came back to the chai stand chilled with a chai, then we walked down to McLeod. That's why I'm here sitting writing to you folks. The chain is yet unbroken with the plug-in world. But it's getting better. I think walking back up there will be nice in the late afternoon. I come down (yet again) in the am to meet yet another friend but I think I'll try to stay up there in the afternoon. Give my feet a rest. Maybe even my mind.



5/11/2004 01:39:27 PM

Have buzzed around a bit and got really tired of transport and hairpin turns. Since I wrote I went to Dalhousie, which on a clear day has spectacular views and not a lot of anything else, though walking around the town seeing different panaromas did make me swoon.

Taking a hike up there is a 'trek' a 'gear' experience. My habitat of NYC and hiking around city blocks makes me afraid of paraphenalia. I come from a land of subways and elevators and walk-ups. But 'anything is possible, madam' in India. Yes, even provincial NYer that I am (and I'm out about it!) is making a small attempt to 'be in nature' and hike in the hills, starting yesterday! I think it was the taxi rides and the bus tour to Chamba Valley on the winding narrow roads that drove me to slowing down and walking. Those rides had their own adventure, to me at least, others were barfing out the windows.

I knew having a sense of nature isn't about shooting pictures out of a van. It had always worked before, but now I want something more authentic. Or something like that. So I returned to McLeod Ganj, home turf of HH the Dalai Lama and decent restaurants and great internet connections. None of which Dalhousie could boast. Yes, I am still sucking at the tit of 'modern civilization' particularly of the plugged in kind. Look I know I'm in samsara. I'm feeling a bit weak willed at the moment.

Anyway, I went on a hike, with a guide for a half day yesterday. Sometimes the path was narrow with steep drop offs or very rocky or slippery downhill. It was sweaty (buckets worth), the elevation made me pant, and then we would stop and I would catch my breath, recover my composure, look out and...it was really beautiful. There were no cars, no pavement, only the wind and the sound of goats bleeting in the valley. Soon we heard the rush of water and eventually (it seemed endless at moments) we reached this amazing waterfall, spilling down this huge drop into a pool so clear you could see the bottom,. Real H2O from a glacier! In the Himalyas! Yikes! Here I am, sitting by this waterfall, watching the water fall in the Himalayas! This being India, there was a hut on this big flat rock next to the waterfall that served chai and other beverages. So as we sipped our chais, the guide, Daya Sagar and I talked about our lives what we chose in them, what we wanted. It was great! Walking back was easier, or at least I was more accustomed to watching every step and breathing a bit more deeply. When we arrived at his guest house, I sat and talked with some of the people staying there and thought, I think this is a good place to be. When Daya originally suggested it to me I thought it was more of a sales pitch (a virus for the tourist in India), but sitting there I realized it would be a tonic. A way to ween off the plugged in civilization (I know I can do a few days without too much withdrawal)and see how a part of the world looks like when its left mostly alone. The people staying there seemed friendly (they hoped I would come back and stay) and kind of cool and I actually knew one of them passingly in Mysore. I remember liking her in just casual conversation, confirmed again way up on the other end of the continent at 2100 meters. Yes the world is very small. The mountains are very grand. I think the universe, some intuitive sense (not to mention the long haul of various forms of transportation) put me here to have this experience. Yes, that could be said of being anywhere. But I've never been anyplace like 'here' before. These mountains aren't like Switzerland, folks. They're too big and there are too many of them. It kind of reminds me of 'Lord of the Rings', but rougher, more pine, less lush, more pointy peaks. Anyway, I'm excited, but also am vasicillating to being a bit wary of this new 'adventure' in elevation (without muzak or buttons to push for your floor).

One more thing. HH the Dalai Lama is back from North America and the UK, anotherwords, he's HERE! I am hoping to be here long enough to see him when he gives a public meeting. How cool would that be!



5/05/2004 03:53:54 PM

I have gone from a tropical island where I ruminated about my colon and shit, to the foothills of the Himalayas where I feel a little giddy and have strange dreams. It is cool and clear here. Pines not palm trees. It's lovely.

For this stint of the journey, my friend and traveling companion, Kate, (we went to Hampi together) have been breathing deep and eating momos (Tibetan dumplings). Our ability to travel well, deal with long intense train rides, geysers for showers, communicate with taxi drivers, talk about yoga and how we dream of our comfy beds back home make us very compatible. Well now she just left to go to Panthankot to catch an overnight train (by her lonesome) to Delhi to catch a plane back to Minnesota. :(
O solo mio!!!
Wistful silence.
Tomorrow I leave for Dalhousie, even further north. Originally a hill station full of Raj style colonial hotels and at this time of year many tourists. I'm staying in one of these places, I hope it's full of atmosphere and nice and cushy.

Anyway, my name. My 'good name' is what I am asked. "What is your good name, madame?" Deborah is a mouthful for them. A culture that has names 7 syllables (spelling?) long and they can't figure mine out. So this is what I do:
D as in Delhi
E as in Elephant
B as in Bombay
O as in Orange
R as in Red
A as in April
H as in Hello
Someone then called me Orange.
More soon.