Hello Punks!
Hope you’re all well and looking forward to the next exciting installment of The Blog.
Well, I’m still having a nice time here in sunny McLeodganj, and in spite of being India’s second wettest town, it HAS been sunny here for quite sometime, and temperatures have improved dramatically. Over the last couple of weeks we have gone from The Big Freeze to something closer to a warm English spring with colourful Buddhist prayer flags fluttering overhead instead of blossom. The sunshine also emphasises what a truly stunning place this is. McLeodganj, itself over 5000ft above sea level, is surrounded on one side by towering snow covered peaks which I am told reach around 15,000ft! The sunshine turns them a myriad of colours as the day progresses, before the full moon illuminates them from behind. Last weekend, three of us attempted a two day hike to Triund, a small settlement about six miles from and about 4000ft above McLeodganj. Sadly seven feet of snow blocking the footpath eventually forced us to take the walk of shame back to McLeodganj, but it was still a beautiful day which really put into perspective how small McLeodganj, which has been my life for the past six weeks, really is. Stretched along the top of a pine clad mountain, dwarfed by its gigantic brothers and sisters in the background, the town looks really quite vulnerable and insignificant – though very pretty.
This is perhaps for me the best time to be here, with kinder temperatures but before the big spiders come out to play – although I had a terrifying appetiser to the impending situation the night before last. On Monday night I was happily listening to my Ipod at around midnight, contemplating going to bed, when I saw a creature, about two or three inches long, walk across my floor and under my bed. Without my contact lens in I was unable to make out exactly what it was, but knew it could only be something scary, and after making a feeble attempt to whack whatever it was with my boot, resolved to go to bed. The next day I couldn’t really relax in there and, just after I returned from dinner that evening, there it was, on the underside of the shelf about a foot above my bed, its eight legs stretched to full span as if to say ‘come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough.’ I wasn’t hard enough. I ran, whimpering, to fetch my devout Buddhist neighbour who humanely dispatched the horror, before leaving with the comforting words: ‘don’t worry – it wasn’t big for round here.’
As is always the way when traveling there is a constant changing of the guards among fellow travelers and I once again have a nice group of mates – if rather more sedate and abstemious than the last bunch of lunatics who I still really miss. Whilst things are finally beginning to take off on the work front, much time is still spent eating, drinking and putting the world to rights in the town’s many restaurants and cafes, and Carpe Diem’s open mike night is still the stuff of legends.
But what I truly love about this lifestyle is the richness of experience that I have never found in any other sphere of life. From assisting dodgy masseuse ‘Holy Hands’ Manu with ideas to advertise his trade whilst trying not to crack up laughing, to listening to a New York poet recite his raw musings to a musical backdrop of ‘Ruby Tuesday.’ From watching convoys of burgundy clad monks stream up the road leading from the Dalai Lama’s temple at sunset, to wrestling small boys out the way in order to write these words in an incense filled internet café. The sights, smells and sounds of India take some getting used to, as does the unpredictable pace of life, but there is something magical about these mountains and their inhabitants.
Every now and then however comes a stark reminder that this country has more than its share of problems. I have a friend here, from Bristol actually, who is volunteering for a children’s charity and over the past week he has been coordinating a substantial group of Korean volunteers. One girl had her 59-year-old father with her and last week he disappeared without a trace. Last night, after four days of frantic searching and campaigning led by my friend, who posted appeals for information and pictures throughout the area, we learned that he had been found wandering in some nearby woods. It turns out that he had been kidnapped and SOLD by a local beggar for – it is rumoured, the sum of 250 Rupees. Three pounds twenty. Barely enough to buy tea and cake in a café at home, yet here it can be the price of a human life. You only have to look at national papers such as The Times of India (which contains some pretty intriguing journalism) to see how cheap life comes here. People regularly die in stampedes, on railways etc, and the other day a story about a man being sentenced to death for murder made no more than a couple of colomn inches. But then I suppose they only have so much space in which to cover the affairs of over one billion people – a population that grows by 50,000 a day.
We think that in the light of my friend’s campaign, the kidnappers got scared and released their captive close to McLeodganj, but sadly the man is now unconscious in hospital. We’re all hoping for his recovery.
Work is finally taking off which is a huge relief. Wrote my first proper article in two months today, which felt great – now I’m truly a cool international hack. I’m finally adapting to the Indian pace of life ‘slowly slowly.’ There have been some both exasperating and hilarious times though. Two days ago I visited the office of the Tibetan Youth Congress, the president of which I have been attempting to interview for several weeks. Arriving for an interview I had scheduled on the 11th, I found their office padlocked, and so earlier in the week returned for the third time since then to rearrange it. I asked a very pleasant girl on reception if it was possible to interview the president today. ‘Oh yes,’ she replied. ‘Great, can I do it now,’ I asked with relief. ‘Oh no, he is in Delhi.’ ‘Ah, Ok, do you have a deputy that I could speak to instead as it really would be great to get this done?’ ‘A Deputy?’ ‘Yes, second in command?’ pause. ‘Oh a deputy, yes of course.’ ‘Brilliant. Where is he?’ ‘He is in Delhi.’ ‘Bugger. Ok is there ANYONE I can speak to just for 10 minutes about the Beijing Olympic 2008 campaign?’ ‘Oh yes, we have our cultural secretary here.’ ‘Superb! Is he here now?’ ‘Oh no he is in Delhi.’ That’s international volunteering baby. It sucks. I love it.
The next few days are going to be busy as tomorrow morning the Dalai Lama begins his spring teachings, and the town, relatively quiet when I arrived, is now teaming with monks, Dharma heads and devotees from across the globe. Going to interview some of them Saturday for a piece on what it is about his Holy Lamaness that draws travelers from far and wide to hear his stuff. Who knows what dramas that will bring in its wake.
BRING IT ON!!
Take care everyone, and keep in touch. I’m off to dinner,
Love Soph XXX
