India - Round Three

Just in case you thought this saga was over - no, it's not.

Our story begins with (yet another) strike in the holy land of Israel. After a few weeks of visiting family in Israel, my plane was scheduled to take off for (the holy land of) India on Wednesday, April 30th. Being a Royal Jordanian flight, I was scheduled to make a transit stop at Amman, Jordan. Wouldn't you know it, but on Monday, April 28th, the high holy priest of the Histadrut declared that he was going to call a strike and bring the whole country to a stand-still on - you guessed it - Wednesday. Sparing you the upset stomach and worry and finger-nail-biting - at 12:30 noontime on Wednesday, I got a call from Royal Jordanian, telling me to be at the (totally empty and not-functioning) airport at 2 PM - we were going to take a bus to Amman!

So I ended up with a free tour of eastern Jordan, and I got to see what the Allenby border-crossing point looks like, too. After that, the plane trip to Delhi seemed quite common and mundane. The only diversion was the group of noisy young Israelis sitting close-by (who were evidently on their way to the traditional Israeli-Indian Experience of drugs, dope and dancing - did you know that the Indian inhabitants of Goa hate Israel and Israelis because of this?), passing a huge whiskey bottle between them, laughing and comparing hotel rates with and without TV's. There are very many and different Indias, it seems, and they are worlds apart, even though they are geographically in the same country. The only time I see a TV in India is in Delhi, on my way in or out of the country. Most of the cities I visit have a law prohibiting sale of alcohol, and the really big mind-trip in all of them is meditation, which you do without the benefit of drugs.

We landed in Delhi at 5 AM as scheduled, and my friend, who was supposed to meet me at the airport, wasn't there (reminding me, yet again, that this is India). We had agreed before, by e-mail, that he would meet me at the airport and take me to a hotel to stay one night, and then help me get a train to Rishikesh on my way to the ashram at Uttar Kashi, which was my real destination. (By the way, just to keep the suspense from getting any higher - I am now writing you from the ashram, so now you know I got there and everything is OK.) He had overslept and arrived a little later.

Now for the next part, it would help if you would bear in mind that you are dealing here with a person who never was exceptionally sane to begin with, and it's been downhill for the past few years. We had some tea and we did get as far as the hotel that he booked for me, but at that point I had already decided that I couldn't wait any longer to get where I was going, so I stayed in the car while he went in to cancel the room at the hotel.

And then we drove - all the 400 kilometers and 12 hours to Uttar Kashi.

Most of the time I slept in the back, while he talked in the front with his cousin who came along for the ride. The heat in Delhi was unbearable, but as we progressed farther north, and more importantly, closer to the Himalayas, the weather got cooler, and we could see that it had rained.

The rain also explained the landslides that stopped us. We stopped in Rishikesh for lunch, and then moved on, only to be stopped a few hours farther by a road-block where part of the mountain decided that life would be better further down. The cars stood in a line and waited for the mountain to stop moving. Actually, it was a little land-slide - more rocks and dust than mud. At some point, it more or less calmed down, a few trucks decided that it was time to move, and we moved behind them. The paved(?) road had miraculously turned into a gravel path, and when we finished bumping along it - we hit the cows. No, we didn't literally hit them, but the long, long line of them must have stretched out over several kilometers. Now, you must remember that the roads anywhere in India, but especially in the mountains, are barely wide enough for one car, and in this case, they have slopes on either side, going either up or down, but either way - steep. So we became intimately acquainted with the cattle, their backsides and their keepers. Welcome to India.

After 12 hours, we finally reached Uttar Kashi - almost. There was another landslide just before the town, and this one was big and serious enough that we couldn't pass it. So my friend dropped me off at a hotel that was conveniently located just before the landslide, and set off to drive the whole 400 kilometers back to Delhi. Don't ask me why he considered it unnecessary to rest before he did that, it's beyond me.

The next morning (today), the road into town was still closed. I think I was the only guest at this particular hotel (how many loonies are there, after all...). After hearing where I wanted to go, the guy at the reception offered to take me on his motor-bike. So I mounted my backpack on my back, and we piled up onto his bike. Less than 100 meters out on the road I fell off, when the mud from some road-works made the bike tilt to one side, and the weight of my backpack took me with it. I've been on motorbikes before, as you may know, but it seems that the rules of balance are different when your back weighs more than the rest of you. After that, I got the hang of it, and - excepting a gravelly part where we agreed it would be better for all concerned if I got off and walked a few meters - the rest of the ride was fine.

Now, this is the exceptional thing: when we got there, I asked him what the bill was - for the hotel stay, the room service, and the ride altogether. He said 430 rupees, and I pulled out a 500 bill, fully prepared to give him the lot in return for being so helpful. He said he had no change. Those of you who have been in India know full well that this is the standard line for people who want to get as much as possible, and expect us foreigners to say, as I did, "That's all right, you can keep the change". But not this guy. He wouldn't let it go, and suggested we ask the other people at the ashram if they had change. In the end we did find the change, and he went on his way.

So here I am at the ashram. Rather, right now I am in Uttar Kashi town, which is 8 kilometers from the ashram, because there is no internet at the ashram, and I wanted to let you know that all is well on this never-ending saga. At the moment there are no phones at the ashram either, and it turns out that - even though I did take my cellphone with me this time - there is no reception here either. Probably because we are on the banks of the river Ganges (Mother Ganges to us Hindus), and the great Himalayas go straight up on either side of the river, blocking off any radio-waves. Did you know that Uttar Kashi is home to the Nehru School for Mountain-Climbing? According to the Lonely Planet guide-book, the first woman to climb the Everest studied here.