homeness

I'm home! After 2 days traveling, I arrived in Boston today, conveniently unburdened by my luggage by the airline. Look for pictures on my website in the nearish future - I'll add them as I get them together.

Kerala for Christmas

Kerala is in the far south-west of India. Resource-rich and more socially-minded, it is a more wealthy place - and tourist-friendly, mainly because it has better roads - by Indian standards. One of the highlights of Kerala are the backwaters, quiet canals that serpentine from the ocean inland. After a quiet night in Alleppy, we hopped aboard a house boat on Christmas Eve day to explore the backwaters in style. We spent the day and night lounging, reading, chatting, and eating, served by our staff of 3 including a wonderful and very sweet cook who made enough food for 10. Since Kerala has a good-sized Christian population, there was music all night, and Sarah and I slept under the stars. In the morning, we were graced by a lovely sunrise.

Men wear dhotis here, which are pretty much a bedsheet wrapped around the waist. It appears to be appropriate attire for just about anybody - laborer, businessman, hotel manager, though I have yet to see anybody riding a motorcycle in one. They are ankle-length, but are often folded up to the knees, and so look quite like wrap-around skirts. I have yet to be able to take anybody in one very seriously. Which seems ok around here because people are pretty happy and friendly, laughing and smiling a lot.

We are now in the mountains in eastern Kerala, where the vast majority of the country's spices are grown. The whole town smells like a mixture of cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger. The mountains are small but beautiful - they're all pressed together with deep folds in between, and mist gathers in the valleys. We're hoping to explore some if we can figure out how.

In a whirl

Early this week, my frenetic days in Delhi gave way to more time to see the country. I flew to Pune and met back up with Sarah, who had gone ahead to greet her brother and his fiance at the airport - they're here for two weeks and are now traveling with us.

In a whirlwind day-and-a-half, we bussed out to central Maharashtra to Ajanta and Ellora, two sites where Hindu, Jain and Buddhist monks carved temples and monasteries out of mountains. They are truly stunning, beautiful, stark and eerie places - it is easy to imagine being there 1000 years ago. They were built between 200 BC and 800 AD, with chisels and hammers.

We are now in Kerala, in the south of India, where there are Christmas lights and palm trees and good roads. Our flights here were delayed by 4 or 5 hours yesterday in true Indian fashion - thick morning fog in Delhi tied up flights all over the country. I've decided that it's my new favorite excuse to use when anything goes wrong: just exclaim, 'well, there's fog in Delhi!' It's sure to work. Also in true Indian fashion, I received phone calls notifying me of the delays all throughout the day - which was great in the early morning, but was of very limited use once I arrived at the airport.

a few photos

The Internet gods only want me to upload these two photos for the moment, though I have hundreds more I'd love to put up. The first is the Taj Mahal at sunrise, the second is the western temple complex at Khajuraho at sunset. Lovely.

power of people and place

Five days in Dharamsala was a bit like stepping into a parallel universe. Like India, but not, in so many ways. And I felt the difference palpably. It was cold, which made me breathe more deeply. It was mountainous, which made me stretch my legs further. And its spirit made me open my heart.

Tibetan refugees arrive here by bus, after harrowing, often violent, always terrifying journeys over the mountains from their homeland. They must take high passes to avoid Chinese forces, who shoot freely at Tibetans trying to escape (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nangpa_La_killings for a recent example). The community takes them in - feeds, houses, nurses their frostbite, and tries to help them settle in. Each refugee, when ready, receives a personal audience with the His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The government and the community have tried to create a home here, and a center for the preservation of the traditional culture - the arts: music, painting, sculpture, metalwork, dance; the language; the religion.

Dharamsala is thus a place of sadness, and of hope. It is like a history lesson walking down the main roads or strolling through paths between temples. Wise eyes on wrinkled, shining faces turn prayer wheels for good blessings and sell hand-knit socks and scarves. I wonder at their stories - what they have seen with those eyes.

Now and again, especially when traveling, I meet someone who really challenges me to think and feel, who encourages me to follow my dreams without fear. In Dharamsala, I met three. On our second night, Sarah and I went to a cafe to drink tea and watch an open mike night, but found that just a few musicians had shown up, and we were the only customers. One of them invited a small gang of us to his apartment to have tea and play music there, and so we went - it was bliss to sit with warm tea, listen to guitars, and sing badly without remorse - so there were the first two people. A day or so later we wanted to hike up from town into the mountains and after a few false starts, we all ventured out for what ended up being a very fun, very special hike to the middle of nowhere. The trail was recommended to us by the third wonderful person, who has been living in Dharamsala and studying Tibetan history for over 20 years - he has been to Tibet countless times, cataloging ancient sites and studying ancient writings. He says that you cannot describe the landscape of Tibet without being a poet, the light is so brilliant and the place so starkly tactile. The sun was setting as we reached the main road from our hike, and as it cast continually changing light on the snow fields above town, I think I caught a glimpse of what he meant.

something in the air

Though it looks like a remote mountain village on the map, Dharamsala and its surrounding communities are teeming with life. The population is predominantly Tibetan, though there are a number of Indians living here, many from Kashmir. It's a place that's good for the soul, I've decided. From almost anywhere in town, you can glimpse high peaks, and gaze down into the valley. Mist comes and goes, and the views change with the light of day. In the afternoons, the weather has turned stormy, bringing downpours, wind, fog, those snappy mountain thunderstorms, and hail. We were sitting in a cafe having lunch yesterday when the power went out, the wind picked up, and the hail began. It didn't actually look that bad - really small hail and it wasn't too cold - so we decided to venture out and run a few errands before going back to the hotel. Outside, we heard some excited yelling and looked up to see a man up a telephone pole monkeying around with the cables. Three men on the ground were trying to unroll a giant spool of electrical wiring to get the power back on, dragging it across other lines in the process. They had a small audience, everybody laughing and shouting suggestions and warnings to the men.

The people here are wonderful. We noticed it the first day, and it hasn't changed or dampened. This morning, I simply ordered tea and cereal for breakfast, and when the food came, the waiter served it with such joy - there is a real sense of true joy, and honest giving to those around you. It's a part of Tibetan culture that I had known about but never experienced, and something I hope to carry into my own life.

I have also learned some about Tibetan Buddhism, as some young men befriended us yesterday and took us through the main temple here. There were several parts to the temple, dedicated to different gods, and as we went through they explained the gods - it's a much more colorful religion than the Buddhist philosophy I've studied at home. We're learning how to make Tibetan bread later today, and possibly taking a yoga class. Tomorrow we'll try to pack a lunch and head for a hike - there are some amazing places to walk to around here. The air has been cold, and clean, and good for my lungs - though hiking these steep streets certainly reminds me that we're at 6- or 7000 feet.

mountain country

Continuing our mostly unintentional tour of religions in India, we made a brief stop in Amritsar, home of the Sikh Golden Temple. It is said to hold 750kg of gold, and is built in the middle of a large pool, accessible by a narrow causeway. We went at dawn, which was an interesting time to be there - beautiful light and a lot of people doing their morning prayers.

We also made a trip to the border between India and Pakistan, which is about an hour by car from Amritsar. At sunset, there is a big flag ceremony that draws spectators on both sides and involves a lot of patriotic chants, songs, and guards marching around high-stepping and saluting, each side trying to outdo the other. It was actually quite disturbing to see, especially when it was all over and a bus traveling from Delhi to Lahore passed through the crowd, reminding me that these people all used to live in the same country - not without conflict, but still the same country.

After a six- turned seven hour bus ride into the mountains, we are now happily in Dharamsala, home of the Tibetan govt in exile, stunning mountains and cleaner air. It rained and thundered yesterday and spit a bit of snow last night, but today we have deep blue skies and lots of things to explore. It's cold here - people don't really heat things - so even though it's in the 30s outside, everybody just layers up. Sarah and I have been wearing roughly the same max-layered look for awhile now.