Delhi, McLeod, and Palampur

There is so much to write about from the last months. I have been so many places and so much has happened that just thinking about writing about it is overwhelming. So, instead of trying to recreate the entire west coast of India, Delhi, Manali, and Indonesia in words I am just going to start in the recent past, about 2 weeks ago, when mom got on her flight back to America and I caught the bus from Delhi’s backpacker ghetto (in the true miserable sense of the word) to Dharamsala and the travelers Mecca and the Tibetan refuge of McLeod Ganj.

Delhi and Pahar Ganj: A Miserable Rant
I’ll start at the worst place, so my journey will seem to improve constantly. I’ll start in the miserable cesspit of Pahar Ganj, Delhi. To begin with, Delhi is a miserable place. It is on the outskirts of a desert and at this time in the year regularly tops 100 degrees in the day (and often at night). Not only is it impossible to escape the heat, it is impossible to escape the dirt. The centuries seem to have pilled dirt upon Delhi, to the point where the city itself is held together by dust and dirt, human feces and sweat. It is a city of immense poverty. Coming into the city by railway in the morning, from Rajastan, we passed through a small section of slums. The houses were what you might expect: walls of burlap and cardboard, roofs of used tire rubber. But the slum itself was not what stuck with me. It was the fact that everyone, hundreds and hundreds of people, had walked a few minutes from their homes, to the railway tracks, to any available green space, and were relieving themselves. Hundreds and hundreds of people had no place better to shit than right outside of their homes as the trains rolled past. Welcome to Delhi. I did say I would discuss the most unpleasant place first, remember? It will get better.

But it won’t get better in Pahar Ganj. Pahar Ganj, in what is optimistically called “new” Delhi— but still in a section old in comparison to the expense and relative splendor of the gated and guarded McDonalds and Nike outlets of Connaught Circle. Pahar Ganj is indisputably a backpacker’s kingdom, where the ragged rule. It is a tiny road, pavement destroyed by the motor rickshaws, bicycle rickshaws, ragged backpackers, beggars with stick thin dying babies, cows, money changers, tour agents, angry hotel owners, Israelis, clothes sellers, drug dealers, shocked Indian ladies in rickshaws, food vendors, and anyone with anything that any tourist could possibly want, with the exception of serenity. Almost all backpackers go through Delhi at some point; Delhi and Mumbai are the gateways to the country. Not having been there, I firmly recommend going via Mumbai. If you have been to Khao San Rd in Bangkok, halve the size of the road, destroy the pavement, fill it with cows and cow dung, add immense poverty, and take out a lot of Australians, and you have the beginning of an idea of Pahar Ganj.

The magic of Pahar Ganj appears around 8pm. There is no night time in Pahar Ganj. I mean it; night and day are the same. The road is so small, the lights so bright, and the heat so unendingly intense that going out at night feels like daytime. The same goes for outdoor vs. indoor. The alleys off the main alley are so small that it is not possible to tell the difference between being in a building and being in the alley.

Rereading this, it seems overly bitter. Allow me the following paragraph in praise of Delhi: There are gems in the city: the Jama Masjid, the great mosque of red sand stone and white marble, the Red Fort, where the Moguls ruled, the subway system, which is air conditioned and efficient. There are monkeys in the city, everywhere. There are great tailors in Delhi, who fixed the zipper in my bag instead of replacing it. There is so much humanity in Delhi, and it revels in it. Unlike cities in America, which disconnect themselves from their people, this is not possible, and the city is immensely human. Which, of course, is not always a good thing. In a modern attempt to de-humanize Delhi there is an absolutely wonderful subway system. I thought I was in Singapore. And, finally, importantly: there are multitudes of ways to get out of the city.

Okay, just two more things before I leave Delhi in the dust of my overnight bus: When mom and I got off the plane from Indonesia, the airport did not have electricity. No ATMs, no elevators, no AC. In the international terminal of the airport of the capital city of India. And second, oh God! the dirt. The dirt that you breathe on the streets, the black exhaust of the buses, the cow dung, the dirt in the tap water, so even when you bathe you still are not clean. The gray of the hotel sheets. The thickness of the air. Blarg.

And, so, once mom got on her plane, I bid goodbye to Delhi for the cool of the mountains and the sleep, cafes, and hills of Dharamsala.

Dharamsala and McLeod Ganj: Bemused Sleep Deprivation
McLeod Ganj, at 1700m above sea level, in the hills of the Himalayas, brings together people looking for many different things, most transitory, or at least hoping to be. Dharamsala is the center of the Tibetan government in exile. As such, it is the Dalai Lama’s home in exile, and home to a huge community of Tibetan refugees. New refugees arrive all the time, many of whom have trekked for weeks over the mountains to reach Nepal or India, fleeing religious and cultural persecution.

When they arrive in McLeod Ganj, they join another, very different, transient community. McLeod Ganj is a major stop on the tourist trail in India. Like Manali, Rishikesh, Dehra Dun, and India in general-- in comparison to travel destinations-- people stick around for a while. I only met one person who was there for less than a week—many people for much longer. Although the area is nice-- the mountains are not really visible, but the hills are green and beautiful—it is not a place you stay in for its geographical beauty. I met two distinct types of people who were calling McLeod their temporary home. The first were those who, like me, needed a rest. McLeod has cheap hotels, internet, cappuccino, and really amazing cake. Life is easy there. Tibetans are easier going than most Indians. It’s a place where you can sit with a book in a café for hours and then take a nap.

The other community, one that I have had to give a lot of thought, are the seekers. McLeod Ganj is second only to Rishikesh for western people seeking expand their understandings through mediation, yoga, reiki, ayurveda, or finding a guru. The intermittent presence of the Dalai Lama means that many western Buddhists come to sit in his compound and sing Om Mane Padme Hum. There are courses upon courses for these people, with titles such as “Tell Me How You Breathe, I’ll Tell You Who You Are”, “Re-Birthing: A Week Long Course in Understanding Your Future”, and a lovely hand-drawn sign offering, simply “Spiritual Healing, 5pm”, in addition to the courses in massage and mediation.

The fact is, McLeod is not, not not not, a calm place where people can meditate and relax. The traffic is horrible and there is the constant blowing of horns trying to get people to get traffic to move. The streets are lined with shops, with constant solicitations to come check out the merchandise. There are as more places selling carrot cake than there are mediation or yoga centers. So them what are forty middle aged French people doing singing their Buddhist prayers in harmony outside the Dalai Lama’s gates? The monks, who have devoted their lives to this, are clearly amused. They are watching and talking amongst themselves. And then at least some of them are going to the cafes and having chai and croissants. (Side note: the nearby towns of Dharamkot and Bhagsu are much calmer and more pleasant than McLeod, and many long-term seekers end up finding a place there.)

I had six days in McLeod to ponder these questions. And to sleep. Mostly to sleep, honestly. After all the traveling over the last months, I was so immensely sleepy. It was way beyond sleep derivation; I would wake up early enough, but by ten I would need to go back to bed for a nap. Then up to maybe do something around 1pm, then to read a book or chat in a café until the evening. The evenings in McLeod were, generally, really interesting. Because it is such a center of Tibetan culture there were dances, dinners, movies, all about Tibet. The great part was that there were way more Tibetan people at these events than there were Westerners… they were actually events for the community itself, with foreigners welcome to come along. But then, in those first days, in bed by 10, so I could function the next day.

Gradually I got better and was able to do more things. McLeod Ganj was an amazing place to meet people. I was hardly the only person sitting around in cafes and reading; I think most people spent their time that way. During the first few days there, I roomed with a German girl who was convinced that everyone had the best intensions and that no one would ever see her blond hair, tight clothes, petite frame, and freedom with money and have any intentions other than honorable ones. Not her fault, but she plunged me into a deep cynicism that only came free when I met some lovely extremely well traveled people on their way to Rainbow in Thailand and their poi-twirling friends who told me I was not overly cynical, just travel-rational. I had breakfast every morning with a 60 year old British guy who had moved to McLeod to learn Buddhism and teach English. I had my Ayurveda whichevers calculated by an English lady-yoga-teacher. Turns out I am all fire. I knew that. And with these people, I spent my almost-week.

And what did I do when not hanging out with westerners? I went to the Dalai Lama’s home and temple compound, which is remarkably simple, but has the beautiful touch of having the original pine trees growing up and through the yellow-painted concrete. It does not really feel much like a place of worship, or at least did not when I was there. There are more tourists—mostly Indian—than monks, and the actual areas for mediation and sitting were all roped off. There were, however, people outside the actually temple area who were worshipping: on wooden flats they were lying themselves flat to the ground, pulling themselves up, wai-ing, and then prostrating themselves again. They wore gloves on their hands so that they could slip into the prostrating position in a smooth, continuous motion. The Dalai Lama was in town, but I did not see him. A lovely old English lady who I met did see him, when he came into the temple to greet newly arrived refugees. In a nod to McLeod Ganj, there is a café in the temple complex, where Tibetan refuges learn business skills, and, it seems, how to make amazing cake.

And what else? Walking. Lots of walking. Once you get out of bedlam of McLeod Ganj proper there are some beautiful walks. If you ever end up there, I recommend heading up to Dharamkot, up above McLeod, where the pine forest touches down to the village. From there, just keep heading up. There are prayer flags everywhere—not one or two strings of them, but hundreds of strings, brightly colored, new and faded, between the green pines. And then still up up up. Right in front of you are the mountains, towering and still with white peaks. After the little café, I did not continue up, but turned on a small off path that took me up a smaller foothill. On the top there were no people, but there were a million prayer flags. I could not hear the buzzing and beeping of McLeod and Dharamsala, only the wind and the bells on the necks of the donkey and horse that had wandered up to the grassy top to graze. It was lovely. Unfortunately, I bent my glasses frames by putting by hands on them while doing a front walkover. Nothing’s perfect.

The real dilemma of McLeod Ganj was what to do next. Since being stuck in the unsatisfactory bear center in Indonesia, I had been in correspondence with my to-be graduate advisor, Prof. Arun Agrawal at U-Michigan. I wanted to know if there was anything community-forestry related that I could do in India. He had a research project going on in Palampur, in Himachel Pradesh, at the foot of the foothills of the Himalayas. Speaking no Hindi (I recently counted—I now speak just about 50 words. Yay!), there was not much I could do on the community level, but there were things that I could do in the office, in the small town. So, sitting there in McLeod Ganj, I had to figure out what I wanted to do with myself. Option 1: Bow out the best I could from the research, and continue traveling. Not sure to where at that point, but freedom. Option 2: Go to Palampur, fulfill my sort-off promise to my professor, and live in an Indian town for a while, learn a ton. Lots of positives, lots of negatives, lots of two-sided lists in my notebook. Finally, after going to Palampur, meeting the researchers, seeing how the mountains towered above the little town, seeing how cute the little town was, and seeing that three weeks was a feasible amount of time, I decided to go. Good decision.

Palampur: Ah! So this is India (?)
So, now I am sitting at the computer in my housemate’s flat, which is right below my room. Sandeep, my hardcore Marxist housemate, who works for the same project I am working for, when he is not working as a full time organizer with the Communist Party, is away for the week and has given me full access to his computer, collection of English books (including an incredible collection of the journal of the Indian Communist Party-Marxist), and his kitchen. Of course, the kitchen has been shared since I moved in, but now it is all mine! Muah ha ha.

My room is right above Sandeep’s place. It is perched above the house like a cherry on top of a Sunday. Because there are no other rooms on that level, three of the four walls of my room are all windows, with a porch on both the southern and the northern ends. To the north, my room looks out to a tea plantation. Above the tea plantation are the great foothills of the Himalayas, and above those, the mighty mountains themselves. When I got here they were all white capped, but now the snow is confined to long crevices in the rock, making it look like lines of white going down the mountains. When it rains here, particularly at night, I wake up to see a new layer of white on the mountains. Out my southern windows is a much less dramatic, more comfortable view. The land, all green with trees and parakeets, slowly rolls down towards Delhi and the Great Thar desert. And there are so many birds! The most dramatic flocks of parakeets, bright green with some yellow and pink around the throat, with long tails. They swoop from tree to tree in the evenings, lighting up the sky like bright green glitter.

And my other window? The east-facing window looks towards the village of Ghuggur, and then, 2 kilometers on, to Palampur. To get into the town, I walk along the main road, through Ghuggur, next to dairy shops selling milk, curd, pannir, and ghee; sweet shops with their gulab jambun, rasgulla, and other milk-based sweets; construction shops with their ply wood and wire; fruit and veg stalls with zucchini, eggplant, okra, mangoes, and pomegranates. After about 15 minutes walking along the main road, I can stop dodging the huge, packed, and smelly buses that announce themselves constantly with incredibly loud honks, (except one bus, whose honk noise has been replaces with a happy do-de-do-do do! sound. that’s a great bus.) and dive down a small side road to cross a gully to get into town. Palampur is a market town, supplying the many near-by villages. As such, the town itself is filled with cloth stores, bulk goods stores, construction stores, gold shops, and a surprising number of sweet shops. And at least four internet cafes. Who would have thought? It’s colorful and hectic, except for Mondays, when the market, and all four internet cafes, shut down and Palampur becomes an almost-ghost town.

My office is a run-down green building on a side road off the main market. It’s the official office of the Indo-German Changar Eco-Development Project. The people I am actually working with are the HPEDS: the Himachal Pradesh Eco-Development Society (www.hpdes.org). I think it works like this: the IGCEDP helps fund the HPEDS, which has a memorandum of understanding with the University of Michigan and my to be advisor, Prof. Agrawal. Therefore, my presence. It’s a bit disconcerting to be introduced as a graduate student at the University of Michigan before I have ever been there, but it helps people put me in context. The building is dirty and falling apart, but has huge windows, and good people. There are lights and bells outside of the offices of important people, which are operated by foot pedals beneath the VIP’s desks. When the VIP wants something, they press their pedal and one of the three or four people sitting in the hallway come in and take their order for chai or water.

My god, the quantity of chai I have drunk over the last weeks! It’s even more present than the hot sweet tea of Indonesia. It is an obligatory part of meetings, outings, rest periods, everything. It is served in tiny little glasses, all milky and a bit spicy. Not as spicy, let it be said, as American coffee-shop chai. Then again, it tastes almost nothing like American coffee-shop chai. And supposedly, I recently learned, the office-chai is not actually made with milk! It is made with some sort of fake soymilk, because real milk is too expensive. Who knew?

What have I actually been doing here? Hmmmm. The project that I originally was supposed to be working on focused on environmental attitudes and how engagement in environmental institutions changed people’s beliefs about conservation. I know little more about it than that, ‘cause the project never started. Somehow money that was transferred from the University of Michigan to HPDES disappeared into the ether. Right now there is a flurry of account numbers, bank names, transfer dates, etc, and no one seems to know where the money is. Everyone seems pretty confidant that it will appear, but for now the project is many months behind schedule.

I came to Palampur to meet with Satya Prasanna, who is in charge of the project, he had a list of things I could do in Palampur, even without the environmental attitudes project. They sounded interesting and worthwhile, and still along the lines of my interests. So, I came, and was thrown head first into World Environment Day celebrations. HPEDS had decided to throw a two-day event focusing on water and water management for fifty kids from around the region. My first day in the office was the first Training of Trainers day, which was wonderful, because it meant that I spent my first 2 days in Palampur in the catchment area of the Neugal river, which goes clear up to the snow-capped mountains. Absolutely beautiful, with huge stones and crystal clear water (with the exception of the runoff from the eroded hills near the hydro-electricity plant).

The next days were filled with kids. We took them to the small steams that flow through Palampur to look at trash and water treatment, to the irrigation canals in the lower agricultural hills. We took them to the Neugal river itself and did games and lessons on watershed functions. Of course, there were boring lectures. I was asked to do a presentation on the threats to the river for the kids, and then for decision makers. I also wrote a booklet on the river. The kids did presentations on what they learned in the streams and at the river, both for each other and for the decision makers that were invited to the final concluding discussion. It was hectic, but great fun. Lots of time outside, and a lot of kids.

Since then I have been working on an environmental education manual based off of the event, which can be used by educators and students in the area to do similar events. Computer work, research work, office work, but so it goes.

Without a doubt, the most difficult aspect of my time here has been language. Although almost everyone has a spattering of English, the language of work is definitely Hindi. I knew that I was lucky, in Indonesia, to speak Indonesian, but I now realize how incredibly important it is. Since I only speak English I am confined to theory and policy, and to only talking to people in charge of projects. If I could speak the local language, I could actually interact with people in the field, the ones who are actually doing, not just studying. My work is not impossible without language. Anyone who wants to run an environmental education program will be able to read English. But lordy, it gets frustrating. Interesting sidenote, however, is how wonderful the English spoken by most children is here. Many of the local kids in Palampur, especially the wealthier ones, go to English language school, where their lessons are all taught in English. Seven year olds are almost completely fluent.

What else? Observations: There are more dogs than cows on the street, although the cows are far happier looking than the dogs. The position of military men is extremely high, with bus companies and rickshaws announcing that they are run by ex-military men. Ex-Men. Ex-men are alive and running the state in India. Tee Hee. Communal spaces in Palampur (and other places)— roads, hallways, public squares, etc--- are disgustingly dirty. I would venture to bet that the staircase in my office has never, ever been washed. In contrast, the private, indoor spaces are fastidious. Floors mopped everyday, everything tidy, dusted, perfect personal appearance. I am used to being a little messy indoors and a little messy out—here it is one or the other. And personal appearance is not to be compromised on.

On that note, yesterday saw Bria—or Briya as it is spelled here, to look more like the common Indian name of Priya—wearing ice-blue pants, a white and blue stripped salwar kameez top, which flows almost to the knees, and an ice-blue shall around her shoulders. By the end of the day, I admit, the pants were ripped and dirty (how could they not be in my dirty office?), and the shall is getting a bit ragged, but I still, all I needed was a tiara for the ice princess Halloween costume. And this is very normal.

And that just leaves plans for the future. Considering how long three weeks felt when I got here, it has, of course, flown. Originally I was supposed to leave here on the 17th—two days from now. But, happily, I have been invited to participate in a program evaluation on a community-forestry project in a very rural area in the mountains. The project will take place in a wildlife reserve (which may have bears!), over three days. So, I’m getting back to Palampur around the 23rd. On the 25th the Dalai Lama starts a week-long series of teachings in Dharamsala, so I will go listen to His Holiness until Kirsten is done with her work and evaluation in Palampur, and then head up to Spiti Valley and Ladakh, the real middle of the mountains, for trekking.. And then… home to America!