Familiar Faces in Delhi, India

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JANUARY 21, 2013

There’s nothing like a run in with a familiar face when you’re traveling.  Sometime I go days without having a conversation with another American, let alone one I know.  Some of my run ins with people I know have been so random its impossible to explain.  I’ve been hanging out in some nook and cranny of a country I didn’t know existed a few years prior and ran into someone I met a couple weeks and a couple countries ago.  Its always a great feeling to see that familiar face.

Yesterday, as I sat in the hotel lobby in Dehli waiting to meet the group I would travel with to the Kumbh Mela, I looked up and saw a familiar face.  Though I didn’t recall her name, I knew she was from Minneapolis.  Alyssa and I eventually put it together, that we had met at a Para Yoga workshop last year and had some mutual friends.  She is the kind of warm and welcoming person that you talk to for fifteen minutes and feel like you’ve known for fifteen years.  Two days and about twenty hours of bus travel later, I felt really blessed to have a wonderful new travel buddy.

My second trip to the Taj Mahal lacked character.  I felt sorry for the group to have to arrive in the afternoon and leave before sunset.  Their experience was nothing like mine earlier in the week.  The lighting was weird and the place was packed.  I couldn’t get out of there quick enough.

As I exited the Taj Mahal I had another one of those random run ins.  This time with Ben and Angela Vincent, two of my favorite yoga teaches in the world.  We would be traveling to the Kumbh Mela together with The Himalayan Institute.  What a gift.

Alyssa and nearly 13 feet of VincentYoga.com

The following day I would by chance have Alyssa, Angela and Ben on the epic thirteen-hour bus ride from Delhi to the retreat site in Allahabad.  During this time I spent several hours talking Yoga with Ben and Alyssa.  Though I’ve had literally hundreds of noteworthy travel experiences, my conversations with those two will certainly go down as an inspiring highlight.

We arrive at the retreat site late today.  Its dark and everyone is exhausted.  I see the spiritual head of The Himalayan Institute, Pandit Rajmani Tigunait, in person for the first time.  He is standing around as we form lines for check in.  Less than a dozen of the approximately 150 of us even recognize him in the dark and go over to say hello.  He’s wearing khakis, a generic down coat and a ratty black wool hat.  There is no ceremony for his entrance.  He could have been one of the porters for all I knew.  Humble.  I like that.

After a quick meal, everyone unpacks and falls into bed.  I sneak away for a short walk around the grounds.  The noise of humanity a few kilometers away is indescribable. It is a steady hum of various spiritual groups – singing, chanting, drumming, shouting, being.  I cannot wrap my brain around what lies ahead.

Street Food in Delhi, India

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JANUARY 19, 2013

Big day.  I get to meet the group that will be traveling to the Maha Kumba Mela. 

I grabbed a quick bit to eat at the same street food stoop I ate dinner at late last night.  Two of the workers recognized me and pointed me to a seat, which was wonderful since I never really understand the proper protocol for ordering food.  My seat was on the corner of a really low bench seat.  Keep in mind I’m on the side of the road.  Underfoot is dirt.  Overhead is a tarp.  Four meters to my right are two guys stirring god-knows-what in several three gallon caldrons.  Beyond them at another station another guy is cooking bread in pans and over an open flame.  Across the table from me are three guys who clearly know each other, along with a fourth sitting next to me. 

My order is taken by the kid who seated me.  I point to bread and a red bean in orange sauce dish the guys near me are eating.  “Dal! Dal!” they shout.  Okay, dal it is.  I thought dal was a title reserved for the yellow lentil in yellow sauce, but I’ll take it whatever it is.  The guys are also feverishly trying to order more rotti (the flat bread that is like naan but without oil). 

The dishes are brought out almost immediately and set in front of me – bowl of dal, bowl of jicama in mint sauce, and a small stack of rotti.  Instantly the guys sitting around me break into a frenzy, alternately pointing to me and my rotti while screaming at the kid.  Great, I’m getting the preferential white guy treatment and the locals want to kill the poor waiter.  I start sweating, not daring to touch the rotti.

After a minute, I start in on the rotti.  Now the locals are yelling at me not to eat the rotti yet.  Great, now the locals want to kill me. 

The poor kid comes back, shammed, with a cube of butter.  The locals switch to English and the situation becomes immediately clear.  They don’t want me to eat the rotti without butter.  I’m a vegan in the U.S. but will consume whatever is in front of me when travelling abroad so as not to offend the locals.  All the same, I really don’t want that crap in my body so I start to go through the motions dabbing half a millimeter of butter on the bread.  The guys start screaming at the kid again.  He reaches over my should, takes the butter out of my hand with his bare hands and smears it on for me like my mother used to do thirty years ago, though my mother likely would have used a knife.  With my bread soaked and shining with butter, he drops the other half of the butter cube in my dal bowl and stirs.  Okay …looks like I’m eating some butter today.

Next they grab my overturned cup and waive it in the air while yelling at the kid again, “Lassi! Lassi!”  I tried to stop them before more dairy found its way to my table.  They wouldn’t have it, pouring me some lassi from their own stash telling me, “Just a little ….you have to try …its like milk’s cousin.” 

With rotti buttered and lassi in my cup, the local guys are beaming from ear to ear and starting to make small talk.  They didn’t want to kill me.  They wanted me to special order the meal exactly the way they do to get the full experience.  I love this country.    

Local Culture on the Road to Jaipur, India

JANUARY 18, 2013

Jaipur was another stop that I would not have seen were it not for Aliz, my traveling companion.  The Taj Mahal may be one of the Seven Wonders of the World, but the Monkey Palace was the highlight of the region for me.  It was a little less glamorous, a little more run down, and most definitely more real.  

Here are some pics from the drive out there ...and one pic from the actual palace .   

 

Tiger Sighting in Ranthambore Park, India

JANUARY 17, 2013

One single banyan tree

"Running down the muddy road
A hundred miles from hope
Dangling from a banyan tree
I see a length of rope
Behind me is a tiger
And a killer with a knife
One wants me for supper
And the other wants my life"

- Bayan Tree, by Robert Hunter

Sometimes traveling on someone else’s agenda has its benefits.  For one, I didn’t plan a damn thing.  I hit town with a credit card and an open calendar.  And, there are some things that I would have never sought out on my own that my travel buddy scheduled, like today’s trip to Ranthambor nature preserve to see a tiger in the wild.

The trip started exactly like you would think an Indian faux safari would – with me waiting in line at 5:15 in the morning pushing, shoving and shouting for tickets with two dozen other tourists, guides, and hotel operators trying to lock down spots for their clients.  I felt like a floor trader at the Chicago Board of Trade, just with more chai and b.o. in the air.

 In the park our guide almost immediately heard a noise and stopped the Gypsy (basically an extra long Jeep with two elevated bench seats in the back) to climb up on the roll cage to look into the jungle.  He perched there looking into the wild with an expression on his face with the perfect mix of excitement and stoicism.  A couple kilometers later the guide stopped again to point out some downed brush and ruts in the sand he claimed were drag marks from a “big kill.”  The whole while I was sitting there thinking the look on his face and the drag story were well-rehearsed skits used week after week, much in the same way my parents used to show me Rudolf’s tracks in the snow on Christmas morning after letting the family dog out to leave prints in the snow next to bits of carrot they threw on the back deck. 

There's one in every crowd.

We wandered further on trail, paying little attention to the flora and fauna.  We were looking for a tiger.  Period. 

Despite the focus on getting our cat, we still saw some amazing things like monkeys and peacocks. 

There was an absolutely amazing banyan tree.  Each tree throws out its branches horizontally, then drops limbs vertically.  For trees as old as the one pictured below the vertical branches get big enough to look like whole new trees.  You really have to step back to realize the whole cluster is really one continuous organism. 

At once, our driver heard the call from another up the road and our guide shouted instructions to the buses and gypsies further down trail behind us.   Tiger sighting. 

We whipped down the two-track trail and settled into our spot.  Then she appeared.  Tiger T16.  The subject of more than one documentary.  At only fifty meters away, you need not be a biologist to realize that it was a tiger.  It was really bizarre feeling to see a live version of a creature I had only known in cartoon form.

She remained visible for about a full minute before wandering out of sight.  It was amazing.  

 Note:  All pics from this post were taken by Aliz.  She borrowed my SD memory card, so I wasn't totally useless in the process.

Acting Like a Tourist at The Taj Mahal, Agra, India

JANUARY 16, 2013

Jamal: [seeing the Taj Mahal] Is this heaven?  

Salim: You're not dead Jamal. 

Jamal:  What is it? Some hotel? 

- from the movie Slumdog Millionaire

Taj Mahal today.  I think the pictures tell the story better than I can, so here ya go.

Some hotel, eh?

Part of the crazy dive out of Agra.  Dude going down the highway standing on the bumper of the truck.

Laundry day in a big way.

Lies in Delhi, India

JANUARY 16, 2013

"It wasn't lies.  It was just ...bullshit."

My Hungarian friend, Aliz, using her native bird herding skills.

 - Jake Blues, from the movie Blues Brothers 

Back in the hostel in Sri Lanka I had met Aliz, a fellow traveller headed to India.  She was a little leery of traveling India alone as a woman and we agreed to spend the first three days traveling together.  The original plan for me was to lock down in Delhi for four days so that I could get ahead on my work prior to heading into retreat.  Thanks to a full week of illness and another week of rain that kept me indoors, I was way ahead of the game as far as my work goes.  This came in handy as we were sold a whirlwind 3 day tour of the Cultural Triangle.  First stop, Taj Mahal.

My Mongolian cousin, Bolorma, taking pics.

My Russian mail order bride, Malchenka, and I at the Taj Mahal

My Canadian step-sister, Steph, warming up with a chai.

So there’s something you need to know about Indian culture.  It is not acceptable for a man and woman to be together unless they are married.  Thus began a wonderful chain of lies from Aliz and I.  Sometimes we were married.  Occasionally, we were actually on our honeymoon.  Sometimes, we travelled as brother and sister.  Our country of origin usually varied.  It almost became a contest of who could be put on the spot by the other and pull off a good story with confidence.  Never did anyone question that I was a yankee through and through and she had a relatively think Hungarian accent.

Sweet Conclusion in Negombo, Sri Lanka

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JANUARY 13, 2013

With the botched logistic of the trip that stranded me in Jordan combined with my illness two weeks ago and the driving rain throughout the last 10 days, my itinerary pretty much got shot.  I ended up on the wrong side of the island with 4 days to spend.  I went back to Negombo, the city by the airport, to get ahead on my work and chill out. 

 

The weather finally cleared and I got to spend a couple lazy days on the beach.  The city of Negombo itself is pretty lame.  Given its proximity to the airport it is basically a place for Europeans to spend a couple days to rid their jetlag and pretend they are actually in Asia.  The food is European and the shops are tourist traps.  Its like going to the Myrtle Beach boardwalk and saying you’ve experienced America. 

 

On the bright side, I did get to do a bit of yoga on the beach and run north out of town through the fishing village that borders Negombo. 

The Hindu New Year went down with a huge beach ceremony (read: party) while I was there.

I saw cricket being played on the beach.

And being there for four days I actually got to know some of the locals at the juice shop I frequented.  I drank juices made from passion fruit, custard apple, wood apple, nelli and belli.  If I lived in the tropics I think I would subsist on weird fruit alone. 

Now its time to pack it up and head to India. 

Mmmm, salad texture.

 But first, for your entertainment, I give you the menu from the restaurant by my hostel.

Better than wussy vegetarian food I suppose.

Kinky.

Seriously!?  They have to know this reads like soft porn.

Yes! Yes! Yes!  ....now someone get me a cigarette.

Rain and Temples in Anadurapura, Sri Lanka

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JANUARY 9, 2013

The city of Anadurapura is home to a slew of temples and Buddhist relics.  If only the rain would stop.  I rented a bike earlier today and road around in the hard rain I’ve experienced since moving from Florida.  

 Even the locals were huddled under cover as I trolled town on two wheels, soaked to the bone.

Ultimately, I went back to the guest house to dry off.  With only a couple hours of daylight left the clouds broke.  I hired a tuk tuk and ventured own to the Sacred City.