the shiva puja

rita, zoë's hindi teacher, invited all her students to a shiva puja. because only zoë and mel committed to going, there was a spare seat in the car for me. now this sounded good, for it was a opportunity for a bit more adventure in our lives! however, i was not without caution, and was on the alert for any human sacrificing, since this was a shiva kind of thing. it's good to have zoë -- i can outrun her.

we woke at 5 in the morning and wandered through the dark with a pack of dogs to the yoga center. rita's husband om, who was nicknamed the sound of the universe, teaches yoga. when we strolled in, both rita and om were hastily getting their children ready; a two year old daughter and a three month old baby boy.

mel sat in the corner munching on two bananas, om set out two folding chairs and we sat down with mel. the two year old daughter was giving mel a 2 minute death stair non-stop, which she did many times that day, and the baby was sprawled on the bed beginning to cry a little. rita explained she had been up since 3 washing her kids, herself, and getting ready.

they began to finish and we both offered to help to speed up our departure but there was not much we could do. when om left the room to go put some bags in the car the daughter burst into tears having severe attachment to om, so she went with him. a few minutes later we joined them, mel carrying the baby and the rest of us with bags or flashlights.

the vehicle was a tiny, beat-up suzuki that rode about 4 inches off the ground. it had 5 seats and there were 7 of us, so it was tight to say the least. om struggled with the vehicle -- it took 4 tries to back out of the steep driveway, each time scraping the bottom of the car. the engine was loud but that was probably because the exhaust system had been ground off the bottom of the car from backing out each time.

finally everyone in the back seat got out and the car made it up the driveway. then we got back in but the car could not start going up the mountain side, om seemed to be really struggling to get it into first gear. we all got out again, om put a rock under the back tire and then managed to get the car rolling up the hill to a more level area. we all got in again and this time the car did not struggle to start rolling, though the engine roared to get started.

we went up and then all the way down the mountain into the valley. rita explained that om had not driven in a year and had forgotten a little. om, in the little english he had, said: "i am yoga teacher, not driver!" then he proceeded to laugh hysterically as the car flew around each corner a bit too fast.

we stopped at a gas station and om passed a 2 liter coca-cola bottle to the guy working the pump. he filled the bottle with bright orange gasoline, screwed the lid back on, and passed it back to om. the tank in the car was then filled half way. i asked what the coca-cola bottle was for, and rita explained that there were no gas stations out where we were going, it was just in case. this is yet another characteristic of india!

om passed the bottle of gas to me and told me to place it behind my seat in the sun, great. i vaguely remember being told in boyscouts that gasoline can easily eat through a plastic bottle. maybe that was true, maybe it was not. ironically om said at that moment: "today you experience real india and real indian food," then laughed hysterically again, a discomforting characteristic he has. he was right though.

we drove for 2 hours, slowly getting into more and more remote areas. at one point there was a bridge out. we drove across a 100 foot wide dry river bed, the car scraping along every inch of it. finally we got to a foot path on the side of the road, where we were dropped off and om parked the car.

there was no road to the village, we trekked about 1.5 kilometers across another dry riverbed and then straight up a big hill. we began to enter a village and i am sure we were being laughed at for our "out of place-ness."

finally we got to the om's parents house, where the puja was being held, and there were about 30 people. mel, zoë, and i found some plastic chairs and sat together chatting since no one else spoke english. mel and zoë attempted to communicate with the others in hindi with varying levels of success. chanting began in the house and tons of smoke began to come out the windows and roof. a small bonfire was lit in the living room where everybody was crowded (especially the men,) chanting and throwing things into the fire.

we stayed outside -- the smoke was unbearable -- and we occasionally poked our heads in. the 2 year old girl was throwing fits and crying off and on during the whole time we were there. i know you cannot expect much of a 2 year old but she was being ridiculous, crying and screaming purely for attention. she continued to throw fits non-stop, pouting, and rejecting any sort of comfort besides attention. finally rita took her to the side and slapped the child in the face several times. i'm sure this reinforced how much she likes her dad. i am not judging the parenting at all -- this is extremely common way of punishing children in india and i have seen it many times before.

i cannot deny that part of me felt like the child deserved it; she knew she was being bad and we put up with hours of it. however, most of me was shocked and appalled. in the end though, it worked, it stopped her poor behavior for the rest of the stay, though it did pick up again later. i will never, ever, strike my child no matter how bad they act.

the puja continued for about 2 hours and moved outside to in front of the shrine. several songs took place and more people appeared. by now we were probably up to 40 or 50. during the second and third song three people became possessed and began to twitch and thrash, wildly out of control, yelling. the point of the songs was to remove the evil from inside, an annual exorcism. i did not take video of it out of respect for the people. they thrashed for about a half hour as the priest tried to hold them and tell them to be at peace. the evil seemed to completely leave them once the songs ended.

after that, we had a gigantic lunch. we ate on the floor off of leaves. this is the first time status became clear. all the very rich men sat on one side, then us, then the very rich women, and then whoever came after that. a total of three lunches was served to about 70 people. i am not sure where they all came from. the food was excellent. i peaked into the kitchen and saw a giant 10 foot trench dug into the earth floor. it was like a bean suppah! a fire filled the entire trench and large pots lined the top of it.

after lunch we sat around stuffed and sleepy. we stayed for about another hour, then left around 2 after some chai. we had to walk about 3k to the car and the road was just as sketchy on the way back. the car seemed to struggle, but i was comfortable.

we stopped at a beautiful hindi temple. inside we went up to the shrine where a man painted a dot in the middle of our forehead and gave us water. i think you're suppose to drink the water, but zoë and i put it on our heads, not knowing what to do. we were then given puffed rice and sugar to eat. then we went to the next shrine upstairs and repeated the process.

after we did a photo-shoot outside the temple.

we drove another hour and stopped at om's aunt and uncle's. we had another chai and left after only twenty minutes or so.

the car began to really struggle as we went back up the mountain. by now it was dark and om seemed to be unable to shift the gears properly. i know very little about manual transmission, but i figured that om was having a hard time to get the clutch to work. after we got about halfway up the first pass, the clutch would grab no more. we stopped in the middle of a highway on the edge of mountain side figuring out what to do as massive busses blew past us. we had stopped in a blind corner and it was definitely not safe. we all flipped out when om turned off the lights, not sure why he did that, but then it was impossible to avoid a vehicle hitting us. om looked at me and asked if i had experience driving. i said no, but i do know when a car is not working, and it was not working at all.

finally we rolled back down the mountain, we made it back to the aunt and uncle's house (about 90% of the way) until we ran out of momentum. zoë, mel, and i got out and began to push the car the last quarter mile. at 9 in the evening we showed back up at the house of the now confused aunt and uncle.

the uncle's brother showed up and said something about being part of the police, never believe this when you hear it in india unless the man is in uniform. anyways, he began to ask us question after question as we tried to watch the australia vs. india cricket game and debated between getting a cab back or waiting for a mechanic. at one point he pulled out some hash from his pocket and pressed it in our face asking us over and over again to take it. i began to get pissed off and each "no" became harsher than the last until he started apologizing, thinking he had offended us, which he had. definitely not a policeman, or not a good one at least.

later, we got another room to sleep in away from this annoying man, while we waited 4 hours for the car to get fixed. we asked who he was, and got several answers including that he is a "taper" for the police, whatever that means, a rickshaw driver, and fucking mechanic who was sitting on his ass watching the cricket game. however, he did get us 3 mechanics at an ungodly hour.

at around 11 i went out to the car. the three mechanics were pulling it apart like mad, no wheels, hood open, yanking out hoses, tubes, and bits of metal left and right. scrap yards don't look this violent. i began to think we were going to get home in a day or two. i went back to bed and fell asleep.

at 1 in the morning i was woken up and told the car was fixed, and it was! a true testament to indian mechanics! we also found out that the car is lent to everyone who needs it, including as rita said: "a bhang man who takes drugs and then drives." all i know is that the clutch plates were replaced, though probably among other things.

om drove incredibly fast, shooting straight back and reaching home at 2 in the morning. the tires had no tred and i was afraid we were going to slide or roll off the mountain. it seemed like a sports car. we drove 70 kilometers an hour through a small town, which was kind of scary.

zoë and i beelined home ushered by a back of dogs happy to see us. i fell asleep with in 5 minutes of lying down.

shoot, a book, really?

i got enough to scrap together for a book soon. by soon it may be a few months, but maybe i will start the first part. i plan to use this blog as a skeleton for this book. i only put about 50% of what i write on this blog plus i also need to write quite a bit to put these entries and post into context.

so yeah, maybe a book. for christmas i received some money to get a book made, i should have spent it on coffee, because now i really feel obligated to make something. i have no idea what form it will take or how much i will take from the blog.

our friend mel made a joke about americans recently. she said, not seriously at all, that the americans she met have been really into documenting. well, i am not an exception to this generalization, but i do not appreciate the documentation as much as practicing writing and doing something creative. also writing gives me a method of digesting what is happening all around and inside me.

so there is a book on the way, i will probably publish or get a copy printed sometime when i am 20, hopefully this summer! sounds like a lot of work, bummer.

language, language, language....

i have students now. is that scary? i definitely have one and soon i will have two. my current student is Dorjee (sounds kind of like do-jee), who's a tibetan that we're guessing is in his mid-forties. he braved walking through the himalayas with two of his children. he had two more once he got into india in 2006 -- his children range in age from 2 to 13.

Dorjee has 6 sisters and 2 brothers. 5 of his sisters are still in tibet, 1 is in india. one of his brothers is in tibet while the other is severing a 6 year sentence in a chinese prison for protesting in lhasa in 2008. that is a really covered-up piece of history due to the olympics happening at the same time.

i feel the more tibetans that learn english then the greater they can explain their issues to the west as china moves their culture from present to tourist attraction. i fear this culture will be almost completely gone within my lifetime. also since so many indians speak english (1 in 6 i believe, so it gives the tibetans a fair competition for work etc.)

this morning we went out to a book store and made an investment of a simple tibetan/english dictionary, a nice thick grammer practice book, and a basic english tibetan book, all for about 350 rupees or $7. dorjee happened to be in the book store at the same time so we handed the books to him, he was definitely shocked, but now has some homework for his 3 day trip to new delhi. i have no idea what his financial situation is, but 4 kids can't be cheap. also the majority of tibetans that have escaped to india have come with nothing but frostbite. stories like dorjee's is not uncommon here in mcleod.

last night i ran into my other future student who lives about a 30 second walk from where zoë and i are staying. we will begin when his current teacher leaves tomorrow. he can only have clases in the evening because, supposedly, he needs the day light to paint. either way he seemed like a really interesting guy and his english is at a good beginner level.

we have begun to piece together bits of our china plan. originally we wanted to go to beijing but now we've changed to hong kong to visit our friend vic and for ease of the visa process. we plan to eventually end up in tibet after a somewhat winding path, visa permitting.

on an unrelated note, something you must do with zoë is watch planet earth. she has the best commentary, being an animal enthusiast herself. "lemur… lemur… i want to see a lemur… i like lemurs." that was in all seriousness. it is a nice escape to watch animals somewhere far away.

also zoë and i are starting basic chinese to get by while we are in china. although much of hong kong has english the majority of the country side, where we will be, has none. we have been drinking a lot of coffee while researching china in cafes like this:

that's not real ketchup mark! :(

what's that smell? why am i so happy?

for a good two weeks we have been trying to eliminate a pretty bad smell from our kitchen. however, no matter how well we cleaned or removed possible sources of the aroma we could not figure out what we were smelling. it was a sort of rotting food smell, and if we removed the food it was still present, and it was not coming from the drains.

then one night while making mark high potatoes the top of the can and the control nob caught fire. luckily the potatoes were done, so i quickly turned off the gas and blew out the fire. the stove has had a very slow leak -- around the wielding of the valve, i think. it is hard to tell since so much catches fire. so what smells like rotting food, that would be rotting food, and, oh yeah, propane.

so we put the stove outside our landlord's door and bugged them for a pot of hot water for tea, which they were more than willing to give. we had hot ginger lemon honey tea and watched "the king's speech," which is one of the best movies i have seen in a long, long time.

also, for 3 hours last night we had a lightning storm, rain, hail, and thunder. it was strange -- because of the altitude the lightning strikes below, above, and right outside our window! the whole sky would light up purple every 5 to 10 seconds for the entire 3 hours. then after it calmed down we could watch the storm drift away in the distance.

i made a movie, it's called lightening is all around us, directed, shot, and edited by max holden. it is the first in a trilogy, the sequel is ironic and the final film is epic. you can watch the other two in my photos and videos.

also in the last few days we have been researching WWOOF china a lot and already had some success. we hope to also visit mr. serio, a cascobay teacher i have only met once but zoë had for biology.

i have also begun to developed a taste for yak butter tea, which is a traditional tibetan tea. it is basically melted buter (see the oil on top?) but it's really amazing -after a few of them that is, it is like moxie! it is best when pretty salty and served wicked hot. i can skip 2 meals with a tea like this.

also we have been drinking honey ginger lemon tea like there is no tomorrow. it is really good and so easy to make. i am comfortable to say that one of the reasons why our health has been so good is due to this tea (not the yak butter though!) it seems to help with our respiratory problems as well, but that might be the placebo effect or because the air is so much more clean here.

the leper

warning: like anything you read you can stop when it gets too disturbing. this entry includes some of the most intense suffering i have come across so far. i am not being mellow dramatic, i am telling it how it is.

i remember the first day i saw the leper. he was kneed over rocking back and forth talking to himself. he wore his pants around his knees and covered himself with a stretched out sweater, he probably could not control his bowels. he lives is a box with the rough dimensions of 3x3x5 feet. the front is covered with a tarp, which he covers himself with as well.

he is always either sitting in his box, or laying down inside it, never leaving it. he seems to survive on food scraps people leave outside his box. he is there all the time, even in the freezing cold, which is how it was when we got here. I did not notice him for two weeks and i passed him at least twice a day.

and then i saw him, sitting on the edge of his box mostly covered by a blue tarp. i saw his feet first, the front half of each was missing, they were bloody stumps. for about a week i thought a car crushed them until someone told me he suffered from leprosy. some purple fluid was on the ground around his feet, i think it might have been treatment but i am no expert. he rest his feet on sponges too absorb what ever comes off them.

with the awareness of his presence i pass him everyday and look for him. i have only known he has been there for 5 days now, and in those 5 days his bloody stumps have been covered in white mold. i notice the smell of him now, strong, pungent, and unforgettable. day and night he is there, always.

he is located on the busiest street across from a clinic that i have yet to see open. sometimes i see the other street vendors telling him to go away. very few tourist notice him, and even fewer know what is going on.

this is the most intense suffering i have seen in india and it took me about a week to learn how to cope with it. there is no way you could dull the pain of an insane person who is helpless and suffering from one of the worst disease known to man. this is the second marker of my journey into compassion.

if you ask me if i have compassion for all strangers i would still say no, but i am beginning to understand what it means to truly have this for everyone i do not know. i have been reading the dalai lama's spiritual biography which is so inspiring. i think that i really get what it means to greet every stranger like an old friend and realize, in a non-hippie way i swear, that we are all  brothers and sisters. it is really grasping what it means to be human, and to treat others as human which is what they are.

as humans we automatically separate everyone in our mind into one of three categories which is friend or enemy, and for the vast majority strangers or nobodies. we must learn to develop equal compassion for everyone and break out of this ridiculous categorization habit.

the first was time i felt compassion all the way to the bone on this trip was staring at zoë on a stretcher, my closest friend suffering from food poisoning. i knew she would be okay but i wished that for her suffering to be relieved with all my being. the second is this leper, a stranger, and with all my being i wish him to be free of his pain. the final installment of this chapter in compassion is to develop a sense of compassion for my enemy.

the final segment, developing compassion for my enemies has two parts. first, the majority of this segment is myself, my greatest enemy. if the root of all evil is ignorance, fear, and grasping, i certainly have a journey ahead of me. second is external sources which is every little problem all the way to coping peacefully with the unjust of the world. this could be china beating tibet to a pulp, the US presence in the middle east, or the corrupt indian government, the list is endless. i must non-violently, non-destructively, mindfully protest all these in my own way. this final segment will certainly be my greatest.

(this post will probably go under further editing in the next few days)

about a week later....

the man is gone now, he has become very ill. this morning i asked a vendor that sells next to him where he went. the vendor replied that he has been hospitalized, that he had become sick and continually got worse everyday until he needed to be hospitalized.

i also found out that due to his mental illness he rejects any treatment offered to him. he must have been so sick that he had not been able to refuse. he has been gone about 4 days now. i also managed to get a blurred picture of where he lives. on the ground there is a rock with sponges tied to it, that is what he normally rest his feet on.

tibet and other places

i bought these traditional tibetan bone beads. yes they are made of bone and i hope the animal did not suffer too much. what a great reminder of impermanence.

zoë and i are developing plans to see one or two more places in india and then go up to nepal for two weeks while we wait on chinese visas. a chinese visa should take 3 days, and a tibet visa should take no longer than 10 days. then we will go into the T.A.R. zone (tibet autonomous region) which is roughly half of tibet. the remaining land has been absorbed into each of china's neighboring states.

currently the border into tibet is closed to all tourists for the month of march due to the violent protest three years earlier. the borders should open again in april. tibet has been terribly destroyed by china: 6,000 monasteries have been leveled and 1.2 million tibetans killed since the 50s, not to mention their spiritual/political leader has been kicked out. on march 10th of this year his holiness the dalai lama handed over his political status to the tibetan government to become simply a spiritual guide for tibet and the world.

zoë and i went to the tibet museum in the dalai lama's current (temporary) residence. right before we went to the museum we both agreed that we had a strong desire to see tibet. after seeing the museum it only grew, though we both got a pretty good idea what we are in for. tibet is in absolute ruins, and then the chinese build modern buildings on top them. 


my stomach was doing flips as we went into the section on torture, the stains on this shirt are blood. It is pretty unbelievable, it is almost a hidden history, china has been so much more brutal then I though they were. there are posters all over dharamsala showing the most mutilated bodies after the chinese tortured them in 2008, all of them dead. it is common practice for china to release their torcher victims on the brink of death so they do not die in their hands.

on the way out we picked up a free travel advisory book for tibet. it explained several of the monasteries are intact only due to the tourism they pull, and the donation box goes straight to the chinese government. they said hand your money straight to the monks, and be discrete. any family you stay with is likely to be immediately put under surveillance. all phone calls and emails are monitored -- it really is big brother to the maximum. i took this video on the way out of the museum, you can here the monks chanting, an incredible experience, you can feel them shake the earth.

so why go to tibet? the dalai lama actually encourages it for whoever can possibly go. if one goes to tibet it's encouragement for the suppressed citizens that the world is taking interest in their land. if you can make sure the majority of your money go to the locals, it really can be a help. it is also important to see what is going on in this country and to tell others when you get back. very little information leaves tibet. lonely planet recommends to cover the book; otherwise you will lose it at the boarder because it mentions some pro-dalai lama things.

it is also pretty safe, except in march, to go to tibet. really the worst that could happen is they kick you out of the T.A.R. zone back into nepal or more likely to some other chinese state to spend more money there. i really doubt the chinese government is keen on imprisoning americans. further more i do not plan on breaking any of the laws, at least not publicly, of course i support the dalai lama!

several books have mentioned that it is possible to get out of the chinese developments and see some parts of tibet that are still tibet. this is what we will try to do. i will be researching the best thing to do with my time to benefit the locals. i hope to learn as much as possible from the people. we will probably end up trekking to the more remote locations, a common practice among visitors. 

my goal is to find these answers to these questions:

-what has fueled the tibetans for 52 years? 

-what aspects of buddhism support the effort to survive?

-how can the world best support tibet?

-will tibet ever achieve it's independence with in this generation? if not when?

-how can we support the effort for independence, in and out of tibet?

-and how can we do it peacefully without trouble from china?

-what changes have the tibetans seen throughout their lifetime?

-how have their homes changed? -has things become more restricted? 
                 -how have things changed since 2008?

-what do the tibetans think about the dalai lama handing over his political status to the tibetan government in exile?

-how do the tibetans develop the heart to deal with such tragedies?

-how do you develop compassion for people attempting to get rid of your culture?


i have to be really careful to ask these questions beyond the ears of the chinese, i could really endager a tibetan. i am partially on a spiritual quest to find motivation for my own life and to reach my full potential, whatever that might be. it is likely i may leave my computer behind if i go into the T.A.R. zone, there may be a gap of communication. I have too much buddhism and pro-dalai lama things and pictures to get it through the border.


i plan on being completely open to whatever comes to me in tibet, spiritual enlightenment or not, i am bound to learn something.


there are more questions, that is what we came up during breakfast, this is what we were looking at this morning:

that's enough for now!

the himalayas

100_1484, originally uploaded by Maxwell Holden.

a retreat, a chocolate log, and big big mountains

today i did my most mindful act yet: deleted all my photos in my camera. luckily all the new ones were only from today and zoë took similar ones, so i'm going to steal a few! i did get a few nice shots this evening though, including one of the bathroom at the restaurant. it was epic in a way, so incredibly india. when you flushed the toilet water would run out on the floor from the pipe that fed the bowl water. next to the toilet was an open fan and under it if you look closely is written: "danger! danger! do not touch!" what really made it tasteful was the sink did not run though the faucets on the wall did and there was a massive pile of wet laundry in the sink. zoë dashed out of the restaurant while we waited for our food and got some hand sanitizer.

on the way home from dinner we bought some milk which came in a plastic bag. every time i see these bags of milk i have a flashback to first and second grade when oakhurst dairy temporarily packed their milk in bags like this.

earlier today zoë had a hindi class which was great. the teacher whose name is rita is very impressed with zoë and told her she knows too much and needs to forget. We met three other students who will take the class for only 15 days all of whom seem quite nice, especially our new australian friend mel. we continually run into her especially in the main square where there are coconut cookies more addictive than most hard drugs.

today we finally went to where the dali lama lives. it is a big temple built fairly recently. it is really nice because it is built around the trees or there are holes for the trees to grow through. the top floor is the temple area while the rest of the building is meeting rooms, housing for the monks, kitchens, etc. it also has a fantastic 360 view. we did not see the dali lama this time but there were plenty of monks.

we did a lot of walking around town today and we've covered all the main roads. i would say about 80% of the roads, if not more, are foot paths here in mcleod. we have definitely seen most of the stuff here, but done very little of it since none of it has been open. when we walk to our house, (we joke and call it the palace since it is the nicest place we have stayed at yet,) we pass cows as we walk along high ledges,  then walk in between donkeys, pass a spring where everyone is washing their clothes, and go over 3 bridges.

we were excited to go to the chocolate log, mostly for it's name. we were a bit disappointed. they had a great quiche and their baked goods looked pretty great. their coffee however was not that great, it was pretty acidic. also despite having the name the chocolate log they did not seem to have a bathroom which was slightly annoying considering how much (bad) coffee makes zoë and me pee.

so then we went on retreat at tushita. it was great, the teacher had a crazy amount of enthusiasm for tibetan buddhism. her name is robina courtin. check out her teaching in the video bellow. 5 days of her yelling at us, it was so great. snow monkeys came halfway through the course to eat the young leaves off the trees. snow monkeys are awesome and have a totally different manner. some were as big as zoë.

after we got out of the course we got our papers sorted out to see the dali lama speak tomorrow and the day after. check out our new id's. i remember when we got these photos taken we duct out of the blazing hot weather of kochi into a photography studio to get passport pictures. you go in and say 5 minute photo and you get 5 passport pictures for something like 400 rupees. it's so funny, you need passport pictures for everything, including getting a cellphone.

this is where we live! if you can see the building with the green roof, we are renting a flat in the building behind that one, you can see the roof, it has solar panels on top.

here is a wider picture of the valley. it's so bright, if you squint you can see all 3 peaks that tower over us. maybe i will go hiking soon. it is tough though, lonely planet warns hikers about getting mugged in this area.... luckily the walk back to our "palace" is very safe.

nearing a daily routine

this morning we woke up and i ran out and bought 2 cups of yogurt and 10 bananas for $1.32. we mixed together yogurt, bananas, and muesli bought the day before; zoë threw in some oranges as well. we sat out on the front porch overlooking the valley.

from this height we can see several spins of mountains strung together. if you looked at it from a greater distance it would appear the earth had wrinkles. clouds gently rest in between the mountains; only their thin line of peaks is visible. these ranges are a build-up to the massive peaks that hang over mcleod and i am sure they just keep getting higher.

the altitude has not made us sick, but the air does seem a tad thinner and the sun has burned my face. also, the air is very dry considering how much it rains. at night the true reward comes: the stars are so bright even though there is so much light pollution. down in the valley below the lights of towns twinkle but it looks like the same perspective as from an airplane.

the air here is significantly cleaner than where we have been, it even smells like pine sometimes. zoë has had a cough for a while now and it worries me a little. 1 in 4 travelers who come to india get a lung infection because the pollution is so bad. i remember in bangalore a fog that rolled by us of car exhaust and industrial smog -- it is no wonder she has a cough. if you spend enough time in a place with really bad air your snot turns black. what gets me is the raw sewage and smell of death we occasionally pass.

as we sat eating our breakfast zoë noticed a child with a stick chasing something we could not see. behind him, a faithful dog followed, and behind the dog a cow, and behind the cow a crowd of children. we certainly missed out on some sort of exciting event. 

the tibetan new year has proven to be a little scary. the children are armed to the teeth with firecrackers and all sorts of other explosive fun. they chase and throw the firecrackers at each other in their chaotic celebration, and i cower trying not to get in their crossfire or lose my hearing. when the firecrackers go off its a very sharp, short sound, but there are also these massive firecrackers that shake windows and echo through the valley. i always laugh when these go off because they are so ridiculous -- we feel like we are in a war zone!

the monkeys continue to be a great source of free entertainment. it amazes me how well they climb and leap from building to building. even the small ones seem to latch onto smooth concrete walls with little effort. when we eat in a restaurant on the second floor of any building they often run by our window.

there are also tons and tons of mongooses. they are just like squirrels without the bush tail. instead they have a thick rat like tail that is definitely used for balance. they are grey, slightly bigger than squirrels, and much faster on the ground. there are tons of them in the grassy terraces right before our hotel.

after a while we head to a cafe to get caffeinated right before zoë's hindi class (she seems to be really enjoying them!) i dropped her off and now i'm at an internet cafe typing this up. writing is proving to be useful for both memory and understanding india. 

tibetan new years resolution

write better. i must write better. last night was the tibetan new years. my resolution is to write better. well, new years resolutions are actually one of the worst ways to initiate growth. to change one's life it must be a slow and steady process if it is to be effective. i must stop using commas or semi-colons to join two sentences together to begin with.

today we climbed (further) up a mountain to a buddhist retreat center where we listened to a talk by the main teacher on the basics of buddhism. she is australian and has taught at the center for about a year, but will leave in april.

she told us that arguably in the west the greatest scientific discovery of the 21st century is brain plasticity. once it was thought that by the age of 7 most of the "self" is formed and unchangeable, this i believe until about a year ago. brain plasticity can be observed all through life even at an elderly age. however, about 25 hundred years ago this was discovered in the east with far less technology (as a philosophical idea rather than a scientific one.) habits can change, skill can grow, we all can improve. 

the main emphasis of the talk was on impermanence. it was fun to think about how we so easily intellectually accept impermanence and that we would even be embarrassed to say we were immortal. the really hard part is to accept it emotionally.

i nicknamed her "the knife." she is so good at not wasting any time or dragging on for too long. there was a short q&a after and as soon as the question being asked became clear she would respectfully cut them off. she was extremely assertive but not from an aggressive or ego source. her dialogue was simple and somehow very organizing of the many aspects of buddhism. i think she is a great (enthusiastic) teacher.

well, i could go on and on about the talk, but i won't. we have invested in a 5-day course starting on the 8th that's taught by this woman. when it ends we will go to a two day course by the dali lama. it seems like a pretty good start on buddhism in india.


it is also a good use of our time since most of the volunteering organizations seem to operate through this centralized office that is closed until the 15th we are pretty much out of luck until then. i am very keen on teaching english to monks or editing the local magazine (i don't know how good at either i will be!)

electricity, stoners, fireworks, and a new place to stay.

electricity is a mysterious modern convenience here in india, but especially mcleod. once or twice a day, during strong downpours, the power goes out, usually for an hour, but sometimes more. the wires are exposed everywhere in a giant tangled mess draped from one building to the next or even hanging in the trees.

today, in the street, i saw a man reach into a box full of wires hanging off a telephone poll. he pulled two wires from the tangled bunch and wrapped the wires with the wires of a telephone receiver, then immediately started talking into it. i was shocked he was not electrocuted, then was lost in the great mystery of if there was someone he was really talking to. we will never know.

we switched hotels to a room almost half the price. our new room has everything our old room did, minus a television (who cares about that anyways?) the only difference really is that it is smaller. gas must be expensive -- so far every appliance has been electric, including our antique-looking water heater. 

at our old hotel we had a similar hot water heater that could give you a 2-3 minute shower. the current heater does not seem to work at all. i tried a combination of the switches in the room, which has worked in the past, but the power light refuses to illuminate. taking a shower is a pain anyways, it's 45 degrees outside and the room is not heated. it's amazing how fast you're dressed when your shower ends.


this was literally across the street from our old hotel:

stoners. there are lots of stoners here. don't worry, there are lots of other kinds of people here. i can broadly classify the four groups of tourists i have seen so far, but it is a very loose system. first there are people who are here just for the day or two, and seem to come here because it's close by. then there are backpackers who look a bit mountain worn, vaguely hippy-like, seem somewhat spiritual. there is a good number of late-middle aged people here who vary a lot in how "into" india they really are. and then there are stoners.

i am slightly entertained by them, i don't really want to poke fun at them, but they are so classic. i so far can put them into two sub-groups. the first type is like 1960s u.s. military's depiction of hippies, with a bit of shaggy from the television show scooby-doo mixed in. the second is your dreaded grubby backpacking friend.

i don't mean to make fun of people and this is not seriously classifying people, it's just we have had such a continual run in with this crowd and it is obvious mcleod is designed to receive this type of tourist. the the majority of shops look like mexicali blues. there are only a few true tibetan shops that break this pattern. mcleod has so much to offer, it seems most people do not take true advantage of this place. the vibes below this subculture are of much greater depth, you can find it in the land, the locals, and the schools/temples.  

fireworks go off at random times. it's not like your pretty forth of july fireworks, the ones here just make a ton of noise. zoë and i actually laugh when they go off because they are so ridiculously loud. the windows panes shake and i usually jump when they go off. it's 10:30 p.m. right now and some of the loudest ones yet have gone off. 

what will the tibetan new year be like?

we have a new place to stay. for the same price as our cramped hotel we now have a room with a bathroom and kitchen attached. earlier we were torn between another place that was a 20-25 minute walk out of town but this one is only about 5 minute walk from the heart of town. it will be about $5 per day.

it's funny, the place we saw on our morning walk yesterday with the green green grass and the dog i nick named zipper is actually exactly where we now live. i suppose things really do work out. we are on the second floor of the building behind zoë.

we miss zipper but today i saw a pug! we also set up hindi classes for zoë.

i think zoë is going to post pictures of the inside of our new place! I am still sorting out buddhist philosophy classes, and we seem to have it pretty much sorted out of what we need to do to see the dali lama speak on the 14th/15th, which is registering 2 days in advance. I am really looking forward to the tibetan new year, the town is really beginning to shut down, it must be huge! I hope we can still find cappuccinos....

dharamsala fun

dharamsala is a big mexicali blues. it's fun though, and the local life has a different beat. we start out our mornings with cappacinos now!

here is almost all of mcleod, the dali lamas house is on the other side of that shoulder.

we went for a walk and made a friend, we had two dogs walk with us for a half hour. i named this one zipper, then realized i wanted to name my future pug yeti.

the camera did not capture how green that grass was, we had an absolutely gorgeous walk this morning.

later when it was raining pretty good we ventured up the mountain and passed a bunch of monkeys, maybe 30 or 40.

we saw this on the way back down.

mcleod is still plagued by trash, unfortunately i believe the locals produce most of the littering.

the pointy mountain is hiding behind these two.

delhi to dharamsala

the train ride turned out to be 35 hours with some minor delays. it was not as long as we feared. we ate lots of food, read, and slept a ton. i got sick towards the end of the ride with stomach pain, a low fever, and lots of burping. flashbacks of being sick thailand hit me, and i tried not to panic. i patiently waited for it to get worse -- getting sick in thailand started out the same way. luckily it did not get worse, and i'm better now, but my energy is still lacking.

delhi was an amazing city. i believe it has at least the same population as nyc (a little over 12 million?) we bought an all-day pass to the spanking clean new metro that buzzes all over the city. it's funny, even though it is quite large it is still groaning under the demand of the people.

we went to a massive shopping area; to our disappointment the only thing that was open was cafe coffee day, our favorite overpriced chain coffee store with so-so drinks. since going back on the metro did not seem like much fun, we went in. during our cappuccinos we were informed by a man of the corruption of the dali lama once he heard our next destination. wonderful, i hope this is not what the typical indian believes. he also said it was too early for KFC, so that was why he was at this coffee shop.

we went to a planetarium show, bizarre as usual but scored a bit low in the ironic section. i liked it a lot though, especially that ewan macgregor narrated a really low-budget, really strange cartoon on what it takes to be an astronaut. it included a mad scientist torturing his clones to show you all the horrible things that space does to a being unprotected.

i was still feeling quite ill and was craving to just take a rest. zoë was exceptionally understanding and agreed to take me too a hotel to sleep and take a hot shower. we decided to go to a tibetan area of town that consisted of a mere 3 or 4 blocks in the sprawling city.

i immediately felt better once entering the neighborhood. slightly inconvenient in location to the bus station it proved its worth with its in your face but polite culture. men sat out front the gate playing cards while children ran up and down the narrow alleys, mostly playing and asking for money. this area was significantly poorer than the surrounding areas and it was obvious from a distance.

i had a hard time with the kids. two girls hung off my pinky and thumb for a good block testing whether they could lift themselves off the ground. they kept asking me for money, which i had none, and only when some adults yelled at them did they leave me alone. i believe it is because i have a hard time giving a convincing face with a firm no -- i cannot hide how feel about kids in such obviously terrible situations. it was tough seeing a 10 year old smoking a cigarette who then passed it down to his younger brother who could not have been more than 7. he was very aggressive when he asked for money, but there was no way i could fund his smoking habit.

we crashed in peace house, which was a perfect place for that purpose. well-rested and cleaned, we went to the bus station. the station is unbelievable. it is tucked under a massive 5 or 6 story unfinished concrete structure with only half the first floor in place. the station occupies the ground (literally dirt) level where the buses squeeze in and crowds of people churn like the sea. i cannot even describe all the smells. there is a new one every 10 feet. I am not sure any westerner would be truly convinced that this was a bus station and that it was as efficient as it was.

as for the bus ride itself, it was a moderately uneventful 10-hour ride, quite short once again. it was an overnighter, which i woke up about every hour on, but still managed to feel somewhat rested. at one point in the night we were on a dirt road for several miles. it was difficult to discern the side of the road; it was all smooth dirt with the occasional marker of a good size rock or a tree.

then the bus went up, and up, until at last we reached our destination just after dawn. we met a spaniard on the bus and spilt a taxi to go from dharamsala to mcleod ganja. when we got into town it was about 7 in the morning and nothing was open. i saw a woman in the street who seemed to be a fellow tourist, and more importantly, well-settled in this mountainside town.

she was actually a resident, she is belgian, and extremely kind. she brought us to a cafe where she explained to the waiter our situation and to please admit us even though it was 45 minutes until they opened. the waiter was completely fine with it, zoë and i enjoyed some real cappuccinos, and hot porridge.

now let me give you a picture of dharamsala, it has been constantly raining or drizzling all day and its about 45 degrees. both zoë and i love the change in weather and we really enjoyed the cold even though we had nothing to cope with it. halfway through breakfast we heard an explosion and the power went out. the waiter explained that it was due to the rain and that it usually came on with in an hour.

when we left we noticed that our irish friend had a shop on the ground floor of the cafe. we chatted with her a bit more and we introduced ourselves. her name is marleen. i had put on most of what i owned and was warm, but zoë had very little, so marleen kindly lent her umbrella and a thick jacket to zoë until she got some more clothes.

i bought an ugly sweatshirt that now doesn't seem so bad, and zoë got a nice wool sweater for a bit less! we are both warm now. by now the power turned back on but went out only a few hours later for some time. since the water heater is electric zoë and i are both waiting for it to get hot. our hotel room is unheated, but even the locals don't heat their homes.

we ventured to another part of town for some more coffee (we are overjoyed by how great it is,) and did a little bit of internet stuff. on our walk we ran into a group of 5 or 6 women, one with a baby who begged me for food. it caught me completely off-guard -- it was the first time someone begged me for something other than money. there are certainly new experiences and new things that tug on your heart every day in india. i am forced to learn quickly how to deal with these situations, both in the moment of choosing whether it would be good to find a store and buy these women some food, or realizing that receive a lot of support from the local community, especially the one with a child. also, i have to learn how to let these experiences pass. they can build up quickly and get me in a really depressed state.

animal treatment seems so much better here as well. the dogs seem healthy despite the harsh weather conditions and they do not cower when you get with in 5 feet or so. the old dogs even have thick fur coats and none of them are starving. there are monkeys too, with big white manes like lions, and tons of baby monkeys, which indicates it is good environment here for them. 

overall, the start to dharamsala has been a great one. we have made a few friends already, the cost of living is low, and we are already  investigating classes. i just hope we stay warm!

later on zoë and i had tea and talked with marline in her shop. what an amazing woman! the hoops she has had to jump through in order to be here are incredible. we chatted with her for about an hour over some chai. she was drawn to india for the buddhism and now resides here. she told us so many great stories about her first experience in india and then later on getting her family to come out and vista her.

marline also had some extremely good advise. she recommended specific classes and told us the best thing to do this time of year. she also warned us of some of the problems here in dharamsala, mostly theft. it turns out the women who were begging me for food are not locals and come here to scam visitors into buying them food then selling it back to the shop at a much higher rate. she told me what to say in hindi (because i didn't know, zoë did) to the women to make them leave me alone quickly. i am so glad i did not fall for that scam. it really is great to have a really good friend here!