Lattes & Singing Bowls

A week or so ago, Heather and I took a quick trip to Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh.  Dharamsala is the seat of the Tibetan government in exile, as well as being a hill station perched in the Himalayan foothills.  We flew up mid-afternoon on Friday and landed at Kangra airport, which is in the valley below Dharamsala.  Kangra was in the midst of a lazy summer afternoon, but as we wended our way up the mountain to Dharamsala, the fog laced cool fingers through the trees and coaxed the temperature down a bit.  Himachal Pradesh has made me feel right at home each time I've visited.  It's the home of morning fog, cool evenings, crisp apples and woodsmoke, which are all the more disconcerting for being found just beyond the sweltering plains around Delhi.

The Tibetan government resides in McLeod Ganj, which is aerie to Dharamsala's peak, and high enough to have it's own micro-climate.  We stayed at Chonor House, which overlooks the Dalai Lama's temple and residence. Chonor House is the top of the line in Dharamsala - it is very nice, but that fact argues for the whole scale having shifted a bit.  The hotel is run by the Norbulinka Institute, which is chartered with safeguarding and sustaining Tibetan culture.  There are beautiful Tibetan woodwork, applique, and paintings scattered throughout the hotel and each room has a particular theme.  The hotel shop and a store in town sell the beautiful clothes and handicrafts produced at the Institute; Heather got some lovely things and I was sorely tempted, but stuck to a silver ring and a book about Norbulinka.

Once we stowed our gear at Chonor House, we wandered into town to grab an early dinner and see what McLeod Ganj was all about.  The town itself is quite small, just 2-3 km of road wrapped around the hillside.  We walked to what appeared to be the end of the line, and then turned back to have dinner at J.J.I. Restaurant.  Apparently, it was one of the proprietors' birthdays and the staff, consisting of 4-5 members of a Tibetan boy-band, had been drinking all afternoon.  Needless to say, I don't really want to know what went into our food before we got it and things were a little shaky on the way to the table.  Probably the best response is to just say that the thentuk (Tibetan noodles) and hot honey ginger lemon tea tasted great and didn't make us sick - though we were on the lookout for trouble.  

On our second day in Dharamsala, we met up with the brother of a Tibetan doctor that Heather's aunt works with.  He was supposed to be a great English-speaker, married with kids, and very handsome...I think we hit 1 for three - not married, English a leetle bit shaky.  Kaldup met us midday at our hotel and treated us to a cup of tea at his apartment.  While we were chatting, it started to rain cats and dogs outside.  We hung out for a while waiting for it to pass before deciding to go boldly forth and strike out for the Dalai Lama's temple.  Kaldup took us on a path through the back alleys of his neighborhood that landed us smartly at the temple gates.  Along the way, the deluge continued until I had water running over the tops of my feet - no, Mom, no leptospirosis so far.

The Dalai Lama's temple complex has a small but evocative museum covering the Tibetan exodus and all that the Chinese have done to eradicate Tibetan culture.  You begin to understand Richard Gere's passion for the subject, however incredible the vessel.  I kept thinking, "someone needs to stand up for these people...why hasn't someone done something."  As a country that prides ourselves on resistance of the oppressor and fervently carries the standard of democracy, I think we may be missing a golden opportunity.  The temple itself is very simple, and very well attended.  Most of the community seems to come here for morning prayers, which made the people watching along Temple Road pretty spectacular over our lovely lattes.  I have to pause here and give a huge shout-out to Coffee Talk on Temple Road - best latte in India, hands down.  Heather and I were in heaven.  And the breakfast of omelettes and Tibetan toast was amazing too.  We liked it so much we ate there twice... yum, yum, yum.  After we finished touring the temple complex, the rain had slackened off a bit, allowing us to make it back to Chonor House and part ways with Kaldup without getting inundated.  After a cup of tea, a snack and an afternoon nap, we headed into town to do some serious singing-bowl shopping...whooo-aahhh.  We also ducked in to Jimmy's Italian Restaurant for a good dinner and a local jam session, which was a fantastic way to end the day.  I highly recommend it.  The only regrettable part of the day was hearing about the Delhi bomb blasts over dinner, and the mad scramble of text messaging and calls to make sure that everyone on our teams was ok.  We fell asleep to Blackberry vibrations as people checked in on one another - all present and accounted for, thank God.

On Sunday, our last day in Dharamsala, we headed down to the Norbulinka Institute itself with Kaldup, our local volunteer tour guide.  The Institute was beautiful; the temple there has some of the nicest paintings I've seen, and it was nice to be able to see the work the organization is doing to preserve Tibetan culture.  After the Institute, we visited a modern Tibetan temple down the road, complete with monk dormitories and light-up lotus lamps.  Back up the mountain to McLeod Ganj, another latte and some cake, and we were on the road again.  Wings up over Dharamsala and the Kangra valley....

Safe and Sound

This evening five bomb blasts went off in Delhi killing at least 10 people. They were placed in crowded public places with the clear intent to harm as many people as possible. They were placed in locations that I regularly go. If there ever was an illusion of safety here, it's pretty thin today.

Heather and I are safe and sound in Dharamsala, or MacLeod Ganj specifically, just down the street from the Dalai Llama's house. We've been madly text messaging people at home in Delhi and have managed to confirm that our roommates, drivers and most of our teams are safe as well. Please keep your fingers crossed that this remains the case.

'Nothing But Blue Skies...'

For Labor Day weekend, six of us headed out to lovely Leh, Ladakh for a restful vacation in the Himalayas.  Mollie and David flew up from Hyderabad; Heather, Austin and I represented the Gurgaon crew, and Austin's friend Jenni joined us from the States.  

When you fly into Leh, you arrive at an air force base.  There are two flights every morning between Delhi and Leh, and that's about it in terms of ingress and egress.  Leh is in a high valley which is bordered on all sides by steep mountain ranges.  As you come in, the plane banks sharply into the scoop of the valley, tracing a wingtip toward the sweep of the Indus river.  Our first day in Leh, we mainly stayed in town and visited sites nearby: Leh Palace, Stok Palace, Shanti Stupa, a temple and the main bazar.  Because the elevation is so high, it's not considered wise to do much on your first day, and we definitely were huffing and puffing a bit climbing steps.  

Leh has a distinctly different feel from the rest of India that I've seen.  It is very arid with huge snow-capped mountains surrounding small villages, monasteries and towns.  The aesthetic is much more East Asian in terms of style and color pallette, and the people have features more similar to Tibetan or Chinese people.  Weather-wise, Leh is considerably cooler than what we're used to in Delhi.  Even in early September, we were somewhat bundled up in the evenings and early mornings.  For me, it felt more like home.  Even the flowers in the gardens are the same ones we would grow at home - bright, bolting, zinnias, dahlias, cosmos, and marigolds peeked out of yards everywhere we went.  I had the sense the crisp Fall frost would soon put an end to the abounding color, but it was lovely to behold while we were there.

On our second day, we got up at the crack of dawn to drive out to the Nubra Valley.  About four hours by car from Leh, Nubra is a hub for trekking, camel safaris, and generally communing with nature.  We decided to just do a day trip, but another group from our office went and stayed in the valley itself for a day or two.  It's hard to imagine what that might be like to do that - Nubra seems really remote after the hustle and bustle of Delhi.  The drive itself is beautiful, crossing the 'world's highest motorable pass,' and wending its way down into the valley.  It was so bizarre, after months of warmth, to find ourselves in a snow storm.  The high, puffy white clouds, set in azure blue skies over dun-colored peaks scattered with snow, created a vista unlike any I've seen - truly amazing.  The drive was also punctuated by a bit of humor, from my traveling companions of course, but also from the signs placed by the local road authority - some excerpts for your reading pleasure:

• Don't gossip, let him drive
• Be gentle on my curve
• I'm curvaceous, go slow
• After whisky, driving risky
• Better Mr. Late, than late Mr.

In Nubra, we took a brief (45 minute) camel safari that was supposed to drop us off at Deskit monastery and instead left us in sand dunes about 2 km away.  The camels were bactrian or two-humped camels and very furry.  My camel did NOT like his hump touched, and since they were all tied together on short leads, there were a lot of near misses as one camel would tend to tinkle on the foot of the trailing camel's passenger.  It may not sound like much fun, but it was.  After the safari, we grumpily hoofing it through the dunes to our car and continued on to the the monastery at Diskit.  The monks here were friendly and let us come in and observe their midday meal, which smelled great.  I can hardly imagine such a solitary life, but the beauty of the surroundings and the solitude do tend to put one in a contemplative mood.  We lunched on thukpa and momos in Diskit town and were back on the road back to Leh by mid-afternoon.  When we got back to Hotel Lasermo, we were pretty pooped and late-afternoon naps were in order.  I hunkered down with my book and a pot of chai until the posse was ready for dinner.  Thanks to the Canadian contingent (David), our choice of dinner establishment was made via Canadian rochambeau - instead of rock/paper/scissors, it's cowboy/bear/damsel.  We had a good dinner at Summer Harvest and then went early to bed to prepare for another early morning the following day.

On day 3, we set out for Pangong lake around 7am, again with our trusty driver Sonam and the hotel's Scorpio.  We drove into the mountains for an hour or so, but near the main pass to cross out of the valley in which Leh sits, we were stymied by snow.  Now me, I was ready to skip the lake when the road turned white and we were able to make snowballs at a roadside pit stop.  Everyone else, however, was ready to go on, but that didn't last long.  Near the top of the pass, the paved road ended and the snow was slick enough that the car was fishtailing a bit - not an amusing experience with no guardrails and hundred-foot drops to one side.  We actually left the driver to turn the car around and walked back down to the paved road - "the better part of valour is discretion."  In the end, I think the re-route made us better off.  Rather than another 4+ hours driving in either direction to see the lake, we stopped at two of the major monasteries, Chemde and Thiksey, on the Leh-Manali road, and had lunch at the Chambra Hotel, which had a lovely garden with picnic tables for us to eat at.  The monasteries were beautiful - with very elaborate Buddist paintings and statuary.  I wouldn't have wanted to miss that.

All too quickly, our Leh adventure was coming to an end.  We ran our last few errands - Ladakhi hats and Kashmiri honey for me - and headed to Dreamland Restaurant for dinner.  We were joking that our restaurant choices got incrementally better with each meal, with Summer Harvest, Chambra Hotel, and Dreamland being the three best.  After a game of gin over ginger honey lemon tea, we were early to bed so that we could get up bright and early for our 6:50am flight back to Delhi.  All in all, I loved Leh.  It was really different, and consequently a good break from the rest of India.  Since it's snowbound for most of the year, I was glad that we were able to squeeze in this trip before winter sets in for good.  I also have to give a shout-out to my traveling companions - Mollie, Heather, Austin, David, and Jenni might be one of the best road-trip posses ever - good humor, jumping and 'Evita' photos, bush-peeing expertise, rocking out to ipod speakers in the car - what more can you ask for?

The Nehas Do Pondicherry

A few weeks ago, my team hosted a conference in Hyderabad, and most of the folks flew down from Gurgaon to attend.  Austin and I had been talking about going to Pondicherry, since it's a farily short hop to the south and east.  Before we knew it, we had 10 traveling companions signed on for a road trip, including all three Nehas from my team - Neha A, Neha S, and Neha T.  

From Hyderabad, you have to travel to Chennai (Madras) and then continue on to Pondicherry via bus or car down the East Coast Road.  Our orignal plan was to take an overnight bus to Chennai, and 9 of the folks did that; from Chennai to Pondy, we planned to rent cars and drive.  However, we weren't able to get enough bus tickets for the whole team (darn it), so Austin and me, and the two drivers, Taru and Divya, flew at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning to Chennai to pick up the cars and meet the bus.  We went through some shenanigans to find the rental car company, get gas, and find the bus station, only to find out that 'The Nehas' and their traveling companions were somewhere in downtown Chennai.  I need to stop here and pay homage to Google Maps and my Indian Blackberry.  The cell-tower triangulation on Google Maps was good enough (pinpointing our location within 3 meters for most of the trip) that I was able to navigate us through Chennai and on to Pondicherry, just by using Google Maps on my Blackberry.

Once we had the whole crew assembled and brunched, we were on the road again, headed for Pondicherry.  The East Coast Road is phenomenally good, by Indian standards, so the trip went fairly smoothly. We rolled into Pondy in the late afternoon, and after checking into our hotel, headed for the promenade along the beach.  Pondicherry is famous for two things - being the last French colony in India, and being home to the Utopian community of Auroville.  It also happens to be right on the coast of the Bay of Bengal, with beaches nearby.  In Pondy itself, the beach is rocky, so it's more for taking in the view than soaking up the sun.  After shopping around town and getting blessed by Lakshmi, the temple elephant, we headed to Rendezvous for some of the French cuisine that Pondy is famous for.  In the end, my traveling companions stuck with the Indian food, but I had a lovely Chicken Cordon Bleu and was pretty happy with life in general.

Our trip was short and sweet, so on Sunday at midday, we had to head back for Chennai.  After cafe au lait and croissants for breakfast at Le Cafe on the beach, we packed up our things and headed for Mahabalipurum, which is a beach town about 1 hour south of Chennai.  Mahabs, as it's known, has actual sand beaches and the most lookey-lous I have seen anywhere in India.  We went to the public beach to spend an hour or so enjoying the surf and sand.  The lighter skin of my traveling companions apparently was tremendously exotic to the Tamil locals, and it didn't help that all of the girls were frolicking in the waves.  I learned this trip that people on the beach in India swim in their clothes, not in swimsuits.  The only time that I'd been to the beach here, prior to Mahabs was in Goa where, apparently, the strong expat influence has changed the beach culture to be more Western in style.  

After everyone on the team went swimming in their clothes, we found a resort where folks could clean up and headed for a late lunch.  Unfortunately, we miscalculated time a bit and ended up having to take the food to go and leadfoot it out of town to get everyone back to Chennai in time for their flights.  We screeched to a halt in front of the Chennai airport and 10 girls and 2 guys poured out of the car, racing for check-in.  We were just in the nick of time.  The Nehas and posse made their flight by minutes, and Austin and I cruised into our flight just 30 minutes later.  Whew!  I would like to go back to Pondicherry sometime and do less of a speed round, but I'm really glad that I got to go, and it was fun to see the town with my team.  Vive la France!