A Monsoon Adventure

Ok, it's been a couple of days, I apologize. So there is much to catch up on! I am currently in the mountains in Dharamsala, in the state of Himachal Pradesh, having arrived this morning after a long long journey from Amritsar in the Punjab.

The night before I left Rishikesh, 3 (one suave, two hippie-dippie) Italians showed up at our guesthouse. They were obviously old friends of the owner and had been there many times as they were growing basil in the garden. One of the men had a storage room to himself filled with his things. Within an hour of their much ballihooed arrival, several young and nicely dressed Indian guys on motorbikes or mopeds showed up to greet them and "make things happen." I don't know all the details but for each enquiry they had, about overstayed visas, private drivers, and other things I'd rather not know about (but am still curious) they were told, "It's India, anything's possible." They were all living in India for several years in that region. The day I left, a white man wearing swami like clothing arrived and several of the tenants quickly and excitedly went into the prayer room with him. He told them, "I am only staying one night," I suppose so they wouldn't get too excited. What a motley crowd.

I now need to apologize to Amy Jo, as I promised her no mopeds. I'm afraid I did take a moped while in Rishikesh but it was SO worth it....up a mountain to see water falls and caves and beautiful forests. The spring and glacier water (tributaries to the Ganga) was clearer than any I have ever seen. I also saw a random sadhu sitting in a cave on the footpath up the mountain.

But despite all this fun, I knew it was time to leave Rishikesh. So the day before my departure I went to the train station to buy a ticket. Through a garbled mixture of Hindi and English I was unable to buy a ticket to Varanasi and instead got an overnight train from Hardiwar (30 kms away on a ridiculously bad road) to Amritsar. The next day when I was preparing to leave realized, OH SHIT! I have lost my ticket. (I have no idea how this happened and spent at least an hour pondering whether some force larger than me --or a thief--was trying to get me to stay in Rishikesh.) I was told by the locals, "You should still be able to go on your journey." Hmmm. So I decided to leave early for the trip...giving myself about 5 hours to make it 30km on the bus to Hardiwar and recover my seat on a train for which I had no ticket. I know, it sounds overly cautious (turns out it was not). As I was preparing to depart...MONSOON. I'm not talking rain, but MONSOON. The thought of taking a bus that would likely get stuck on a broken-up asphalt (and sometimes mud) road jammed with cars very nearly convinced me to forget about leaving and just stay afterall. But a flash of inspiration took me. I said goodbye, opened my umbrella, rolled up my pants, put on my flip flops and waded through a foot of water just to get to the guest house exit. I felt insane. I was soaked in a minute. I caught a rickshaw instead of a bus a few blocks away (for a good price as no one in their right mind was going anywhere in that rain) and it took us 2 bumpy hours to go 30 kms. It was...wet.

[Just to insert here a note about a few blisters on my right foot that in the cow-shit infested monsoon mud puddles had become....a little um, disgusting. After a dry 2 days in Amritsar and here, I'm already better though.]

When I arrived at the train station, no one appeared to be working there, and in true Indian fashion, no one (except me) felt any urgency about anything. Hundreds of people were sleeping and sitting around, all of them of course staring at me, the soaking wet white girl. In the end, to successfully recover my ticket, I had to go to 3 railway police stations--all of them several blocks away in the rain and separated by large ocean-esque puddles, threaten the police with making a report of a stolen ticket (but nicely, with a head-bobble), and stand in a very long line in which all the men tried to cut in front of me (without success). I did this all without giving over a single extra ruppee for a bribe (a major accomplishment!) I also had to write the following statement that was stamped and initialed and scrutinized by many men:


To the Sogrp Hardiwar:
Subject: Loss of Journey Ticket
Sir, kindly inform to you my journey ticket train number 4631 Hardiwar to Amritsar date 26.08.08. Please do the necessary action.

Hilarious. After this absurd rigmarole, I had just enough time to eat some dhal, chapati, and some spicy thing and hop on the right train. I met a nice couple from Poland on the train, Gregory and Agnes. As we had the same plan, going to Amritsar and then Dharamsala, we decided to travel together.

Tomorrow I'll give more info on Amritsar and the Himalayas. For now I am off to eat Tibetan noodles.