Travel Part I, the first half of this year.

Today my task was to work out the ASHtrip - We're doing North India this time. Also have been chartering my Post-Ash trip trip:


Part A : The trip with the Ashes & My Video Camera


Delhi (look around for a day)
Amritsar (look around a day and a half)
Jodhpur (a day)
Jaipur (a day)
Delhi (pass through) - Roorkee - twds Musoorrie
Last stop Musoorrie and the ASHs head back to Delhi and to Atlanta

NEED TO LOOK AT TRANSPORT & HOTELING



My trip:

Musoorrie
Delhi _ Mani\Beulah's place

Nepal_Dad's friends
Moradabad_Mom's family and friends
Lucknow
Saharanpur
Ayodhya_Babri Masjid Site
Madhubani ? Is this Bihar?
Jharkhand to meet with Danny
Orissa (Khandhamal)
Hyderabad

and so on and so forth.

Monsoon trip also coming, for more details, Alexander Frater: Chasing the Monsoon. I'm planning to follow the monsoon this year: Its the Travel Part II for this year

[There is also a childhood dream to go to a particular place - that I'm thinking and praying I'll be able to do if all works out.]

It'll be pretty cool if I could get even half of all this done!

I watched the sunrise today. I ate Cereal at 2:30Am and watched a riveting "True Romance", a script Quentin Tarantino wrote to be able to make "Reservoir Dogs". I smoked half a left over cigarette and then with a Wired magazine and a piece of A3 sized paper, I climbed up a faulty ladder and started writing in the darkness as the night ran for cover and the stars dimmed and the sun displayed it brightness and slowly shone.

The mornings are fascinating, 3\4th of everything wakes up, and the night goes to sleep. The air is nicer, it feels better to be alive in the mornings. In the day its just like normal and the nights are prone to work, smoking, baseless conversation and a display of craziness.

I love trees. They shimmer with life. If you look closely, its more apparent in trees where the leaves are tinier, trees move, they move, they're more than alive, they are life. They're listening. One must really travel to see. To really see.

Traveling to Mussoorie, the do's and dont's

The train to Doon, is a train from Hyderabad to Delhi and then a rackety taxi ride to Nizamuddin stations, another part of Delhi. The alternative to the death proof but heart attack guaranteed taxi ride is the new, hot, sexy Delhi Metro, the train is a marvel and a glimpse into the developed world. From Nizamuddin, an over night ride or a seated day journey to Doon only 200km away, take the night train, sleep the journey. It makes a difference.

Early morning, awake, watch the plains of the Indian Heartlands flyby, they’re spectacular, breath taking, everything that would want to make you haul your luggage out the door, and jump into the Golden sunrays falling across fields and brick kilns, tiny villages, haystacks and refineries. You pass through several lovely little temple towns, all significantly mentioned of in the Mahabaratha, famed for landmark temples and their intrinsic culture.

Walking onto Doon station is an experience pretty much identical to walking onto stations of smaller towns anywhere else in India, only as it from state to state, the dialect and the little details of how people live life is different in the slightest but most intricate of ways. As you walk out the station, on the left is a small taxi stand where you could pick up a share taxi to Mussoorie. My Father had been here a week earlier and had watched Pranoy Roy hitch a ride in one of those, in a place like Musoorie, there’s no knowing who you’d meet.

The climb up by Taxi is a winding climb but the lower Himalayas are lovely, as lovely as Ooty and Kodaikanal are, but I swear, the skies are bluer, much bluer, as if someone had been colour correcting them. It was the bluest sky I’d ever seen, a brilliant sky. Free of the crap that fills our choked cities. Of course the only paradoxical nature of romantic hills on a seemingly seamless journey is your fellow passengers throw up breakfast or the nothing they had for breakfast. Never travel empty stomach, even if it means tea and biscuits. And always sit in the front seat if you’re on your own. Otherwise you could always ask the Taxi man and drive the car yourself, he won’t mind, they do that on the road from Doon to Mussoorie.

A large Sardar community lives up in Musoorie, several of them displaced after the horrors of partition, so almost all the taxi drivers are a Mr. Singh. This particular Mr. Singh chatted me up, and as the rest of the taxi got sicker and later quieter, I had a fine conversation. When you’re traveling always talk to people, strangers, its fun, you can be totally honest about the little things in life, little embarrassments on the journey, all sorts of stuff, they’re strangers, chances of ever meeting them again are minimal, they won’t tell anyone you know, it’s a finer aspect of traveling. Of course for me Mr. Singh suddenly begins to tell me his escapades as a young man smuggling goods across the border and the IPS officer that he had killed and rolled down the mountain side. When you’re traveling watch out for killers and sociopaths, you never know the truth about anybody.

Mussoorie’s weather is across the year in extremities, severely cold and snowing, hot in summer, rainy and different points in the year. Two kinds of people are predominantly always seen in Musoorie. The Coolies, you can’t miss them, they carry anything from babies to a fridge or a whole new washing machine up and down the hill sides. And they do it on their backs. It’s a tricky business and a very pathetic one, but it is their livelihood, they never fail to smile at you. A friend of mine had recently made a documentary on their short span of life from the hard labors that their destiny cements.

The other type of people are the Delhi wallahs, guys in cars, real jerks with the booming stereos trying to look cool, talking foul Hindi. They make a lot of noise, grope at girls… avoid them like the plague, if you’re a girl traveling alone, remember kick a man in between and he’ll go down like a tree.

The locals are very friendly, very helpful, getting around Mussoorie is as easy as pie. Tourist attractions are all around, almost everything is walk-able. Staying is as you like it, based on your budget. If you are on a low budget there’s a youth hostel at the foothills which makes it quite a walk into town, but apart from that cheap rooms are all over the internet if you search right.

The chai is brilliant, the samosas are amazing, the garam garam Jelabees are not to be missed, chai shops are all over Musoorrie. They are nice, warm and comfy to have conversations in or simply read, journal or write. They’re filled with snacky food but the walking walks it all down. In Musoorrie the water is a bit of a tricky business, so best buy the bottled mineral water and stay safe.

There is an entire Tibetian community that came into Mussoorie as refugees when Tibet was occupied by China. They eventually set up their colony and now live as members of our society. It’s a very interesting cross cultural situation, walking from one part of Mussoorie walks you right into a little bit of Tibet. The Tibetian food is not to be missed. It’s a bit porky and beefy, if that’s not your thing there’s loads of other very interesting food that the Tibetians serve. If you’re a spicy person you’ll want to ask them what is spicy and what is bland.

A taxi ride or a slightly longer walk up to Sister’s Bazaar is interesting because it is one of the places where you pull out your camera for a breath taking view of the Himalayas. The mountains are snowy and icy peaks in a distance, the whitest mountains you’d see. If you haven’t seen the Magnanimous strength that the great hills have and the feeling that rouses up inside you when you marvel at the largeness of the earth, you must experience it on your own terms, the sight of the temple hills, I say temple because the mountains are something that are close to timelessness, they seem distant and eternal, a force to be reckoned with.

Walking back down sisters bazaar and into Char Dukan (you won’t miss it cause its four shops). At the café at char dukan, order Aloo Ka Partha and chai, followed by Banana Pancakes, for that food you’d come back to Mussoorie a second time. If the mountains are magnanimous then the food is out of the world.

Finally, if you’re in Mussoorie, take the time on Sunday to meet Ruskin Bond. If you don’t know who Ruskin Bond is, he’s a writer, a man who has lived in Mussoorie for years writing over seventy books, his latest being an interesting volume of poetry. This time around I missed meeting him. But the last time in Mussoorie I did, he politely advised me on writing and reading, politics and economics. It’s very interesting holding a conversation with him. He has an authority over Mussoorie and the valley, he would tell you the most marvelous stories of love and loss, adventure and tranquility. He’d also give you a specific idea of what to do in Mussoorie, what not to miss. He’s at the bookstore on Sundays, usually till about 6pm or so.

It’s a little town Mussoorie. People who visit either stay back with their lives and their secrets. The calmness of the hills has a sense of peace and healing within them. Otherwise tourists like me tonker around, try to write, meet people, ride a horse, step in dung and the get the heck back out of into the real world of degrading poisonous air, cable TV, work and worship. The hills are alive, with the sounds of all the little things in life, everything that gives life solemnity and meaning. If you walk the hills and think hard enough, you’ll hear your life, and you’ll definitely see one of the thousands of places in the earth that everyone must see.

There are a lot of people in India who work labor and are stuck with difficult and physically exhausting jobs. Their reponsibilities to the people in their families is immense, the ability to innovate and change jobs for a better standard of living is difficult to even hope for because they don't have much scope for change. So even if a rickshaw guy wanted to change his profession he couldn't because he has to support his family. This is probably one of the smaller issues of our emergent economy and stunted growth.A friend of mine describes his own plight as a predestined move, one that is dictated by time and need. He sometimes says if perhaps the days were 30 hours longer....

The white peaked Mountains

We walked up today to Char Dukan and bumped into Stefan Eicher, he and Preeti grew up together and he may be American but he looks and sounds like anyone of us Indians its very warm. We talked for a while, it was great to connect. Had Chai and me and Preeti spoke at length about the activist cafe.

Met the girls and walked up to sister's Bazaar which is quite empty, a beautiful street with the tallest trees and the bluest skies (I'm convinced that the skies in the hills are clearer and brighter and have more colour). Although Sister's bazaar may be called so but in all actuality there is no bazaar, one of the girls pointed out that just because it has a name that says "bazaar" doesn't mean it has a bazaar...... interesting.

and then I saw them, or we all a group of us saw them at the same time... the white peaked Himalayas, like snow cones, sturdy, distant, a vision of ice and frozen mountain, beautiful tall and cold. History and vivid television shots of the mountains rang in my head, every book about the people of the mountains, the Tibetians, the soft and insightful prose of Heirich Harrer all echoed in my mind's Halls. But I'd seen them before, as that child in an infants baby blue bodysuit socks, pants and top all connected as one clothe. These eyes had seen them before but perhaps in an incomprehendible context, in a vision that failed to recognize the magnitude of what was seen.

22odd years later. In a whole new context, a different person, older and perhaps a bit too comprehensive, i see the himalayas for real. they enrapture me. I beheld them. or perhaps the power of the hills held me. the geographic splendor. the splendor.

the train to Doon

Describe is to derive meaning from worded thoughts and Navigate is to find one's way and travel. I equally love\loathe travel. Love because of the sense of adventure and the unknown. Loathe because of instability and the unbelonging of places that I must soon leave.

I'm right now in Mussoorie, was here as a baby in years that are now once upon a time, I was wearing that full body jumpsuit that babies wear. Last time here was in Summer I think, this year. And now here, September end. I had an interesting journey apart from frequent headaches. Transition from point to point, from a plane to a taxi to a train to a share taxi and another taxi and throughout a lot of walking.

I was on the train from Delhi to Dehradoon, my travel mates were a bunch of young people, my age, all working, going for a trip to Haridwar - sounded familiar, I realized how inept I've been traveling north India, it's the south that I am familier with. I must say that the North is a lot more contemporary in terms of what people wear or how they behave, very open statement I know, but I can't quite explain it, its something to do with the conservativeness of South India and the superficial liberty that the North seems to have, on a large general scale of fashionable demeanour.

Girls and guys, traveling on my train making a racket. they spoke very nicely to me (surprised me because of my perception of Delhiwallahs, which is probably a baseless perception, but my previous experiences with Delhiwallahs have been quite rough and uncanny. They were very suave these kids, very self assured, very smart in getting what they want.

I later struck a conversation with a middle-aged couple, the man farted really loudly, said oops and then apologized to the window. The lady ignoring her husbands oprahtics asked me where I was from and I said, Hyderabad, although strictly speaking I'm not from Hyderabad although I live there. They told me that they once owned a place in Sainikpuri, which surprised me as they'd already told me (when I'd asked them) that they lived in Noida. They spoke about Hyderabad with a sense of nostalgia, like a long lost home. I told them how frequently I dated in that area (sainikpuri), they described the place where they hung out together as a couple. They described a beautiful temple surrounded by forests and further a colony\neighborhood and built into a rocky ground with a stagnant but calm, cool pond at the temple's shores - a place where me and aadishpa sit around sometimes. I found this connection interesting, being on a particular train sitting next to nice people at random and sharing pictures in our minds, experiences of a particular place at different times, but the same sights and the same smells, the trees, the rocky stone, the grass, cows, birds on the pond's edge, colours, paths the different descriptions that fit the same place of a same name of a different time and a similar experience, the journey was short to Dehradoon and by the end of it I didn't even learn their names, simply said our goodbyes and made our ways apart after such a personal conversation of the beauty of the pool, the temple, the trees, the place we'd shared, in a different time in the same place.

This is the end

Describe and Navigate is the beginning of my traveloguing and writing for this blog. its almost non-sensical to keep scribbling into books as there's very little feedback at least in the sense of something "out there" rather than something interesting scribbled "in there" - as would be with a diary. I'm still keeping diaries. But Journaling into a Blog for some reason seems to make some macabre sense, it freezes our short time on the planet, out here in the perimeters of the internet i can jarr people with my ideas, and I remain written in a state of randomness.

I love the transitional state. Life exists in the experience between the points of home and destination or place and place. Everything within the connections is connected and you find yourself in a perpetual state of motion. and in that time you think and think and think forever and unashamedly of being so non-linear..