random things i didn’t mention before:

my favorite cars in india – the three wheeled scooter trucks (haha look at cailtin in relation to the size of the car):

traditional kathakali indian dance:

traditional ladakhi kitchen:

helping make dinner at one of our homestays in ladakh(uh we made tibetan noodles what what):

the top of a 3 story buddha statue in a monastery:

resist. rise up. return.

DELHI:

I love seeing monkeys cross the streets – i can’t find my photo of that, but i will eventually!

I went to an art gallery the other day and there was a huge sign that sad:

Indian nationals: 10 rupees

foreign nationals: 150 rupees

haha it’s like that everywhere, such inflated prices for foreigners! ipracticed a line in hindi which means, “i’m punjabi, don’t you know?” in case i ever get questioned. but considering my accents so bad relatives thought i was speaking a different language i don’tk now how well it’s going to go.

driving in delhi is outrageous. no one drives in lanes, it’s kind of like tetris – you fit your car wherever you can. most people tuck in their side view mirrors so they don’t get ripped off in traffic.  no one uses their signal so if you need to get to the right side of the road you stick your hand out of the window and only then will people let you pass. people for real think their james bond, dipping and diving between cars. also, traffic lights don’t mean too much!

McLeod Ganj…i saw the dalai lama!!!

Spent 6 days in McLeod Ganj which is where the Dalai Lama lives and the Tibetan government in exile is set up.  It’s in northern India also, in the himalayas, (but nowhere near as high as ladakh). I have really mixed feelings about this place…at first I really didn’t like it.  While the scenery is beautiful – it’s strange it actually looks a lot like a Canadian forest there are so many fir/pine trees – it’s also insanely touristy. Like crazy touristy, and you feel it a lot because it’s such a small town.  There are only about 5 main roads, and every single one of them are packed with street vendors and hostels, the town has become really dirty because of all the travellers etc. 

At this time of year with the rains the city is really really misty – making it seem really dream like and beautiful. so here’s the view from our hostel when it’s clear:

and this is the view when it’s cloudy!:

But at the same time, by the end of it i ended up loving it and wanted to stay because of all the opportunities to volunteer with Tibetan refugees.  McLeod Ganj has a huge tibetan population, and we volunteered at this place called Tibetan Hope Centre for conversation classes.  So for an hour everyday you go, get a group of individuals and just talk with them for an hour so they can practice their english.  So I had a mix of monks and other Tibetan guys/girls in my group – and for them the most imp[ortant thing is education about what’s happening in their country so they’re eager to tell their stories….which for the most part are heartbreaking.   It’s completely a cultural genocide that’s happening in Tibet – there are only Chinese schools for youth to attend, where they learn chinese more than 7 times a week and Tibetan only about 2 or 3 times a week. And you have to stop studying Tibetan when you’re in grade 6.  Teachers ask you when you get to school what your parents are telling you at home, and if your parents are telling you about Tibetan culture or speaking Tibetan with you the Chinese police raids your house and may/may not imprison you. So alot of kids in the younger generation are growing up not even realizing that they’re Tibetan, just thinking they’re a lower class Chinese citizen (because there’s huge racism in China towards Tibetan, they’re treated as second class citizens…in their own country…).  Anyways, we heard a lot of stories,and got to meet such great Tibetans, it was this kind of stuff that made me feel like I could stay there for a long time.  There’s also this little cafe that holds nights called “Tibetan Talk and Thukpa” (thukpa’s a Tibetan noodle soupe – oh my gooood so goooood) – so you go and eat dinner and get to listen to a Tibetan ex political prisoner talk about their experiences in Tibet and in prison.  Some of the stories are just nauseating though…I think any sort of aggression/violence from the government inflicted on citizens of a country is repulsive but the fact that this aggression is being taken out on monks predominantly whose faith is devoted to peace and compassion is disgusting. We saw clips of monks walking down the street and just being brutally beaten.  Quite overwhelming – yet all the refugees who we met were still so kind loving, generous, open hearted people. Such strong people, to have left their families, everything really behind, fleed over the himalayas for 2 weeks to come to India to follow their spiritual leader the dalai lama and fight for a free country.

This volunteer work really made the trip for me. Too amazing, and I’d like to go back there and stay for an extended period of time to be able to make more of an established relationship with some of them.

Oh I almost forgot!! Okay, at the end of these conversation classes they would have games to lighten the mood, have fun whatever. And even though these people are old, like ranging from 20-60 probably they’re just really simple, easy to explain games you usually play with little kids back home. haha, ahh i’m laughing out loud just thinking about this one game. one person will shout out a ‘rule’ like, form a group of five people or form a group with 2 girls 3 boys and you have to make thes groups and if you don’t you’re kicked out. but it was HILARIOUS because the guy would be shouting out, “alright, two monks, one foreigner and a Tibetan!”  or “one Indian, a monk and a foreigner”. haha it wa sjust too hysterical. and the monks were so into it, people were throwing them around, they were lifting up their robes above their ankles and running – so funny because i find i always think of religious figures to be really reverent and austere, but they were just running about laughing, having such a good time. toooo funny.

We met a woman who lived in McLeod Ganj (for the past year – she’s a political activist and school teacher, so she teaches english to tibetan ex political prisoners) and she was the one who actually told us about the hope center, and was the one who told us the dalai lama was having a teaching. okay, so the dalai lama lives there right, but he’s super busy always traveling and only holds teachings maybe..once every two months or so. but we found out that he was holding an impromptu one – supposedly it was a really high teaching so they asked only very advanced monks and Buddhist practicioners to attend, but everyone else is allowed to wait in the courtyard in the morning to see him cross from his house to the temple. so we go thtere in the morning to see him, and it was awesome because there were only maybe 50-70 people there, most of whom were these little old buddhist ladies and men who have worshipped/devoted themselves to the Dalai Lama all their life.  Then all of a sudden, someone sees him, and everyone becomes totally silent, and kneels on the ground as he walks through the courtyard and blesses everyone in the courtyard…i’m not buddhist, i’m not religious but even i felt something as i saw him so i can’t even imagine what it was like for buddhist practioners. and he just had this huge smile on his face the entire time, so sweet. and for reals, he walked right in front of us, and was maybe 20 feet away from us, tooooo exciting. !!!!!!!!!!

soo yah! the hills themselves were beautiful, the main roads were just a little too touristy – but the volunteering aspect was unbelievable. the smaller side roads are MUCH less touristry – virtually not touristy at all actually and really beautiful and pleasant to be on. the only problem is that it’s really unsafe for women to walk on them. there’s been frequent  assault/rape of women, even when walking in pairs and even during the day. but i don’t wanna talk about that – i’d much rather talk about how i got to see the dalai lama, whoop whoop!!!!!!!

oh yah this is cool – we also went ot visit this place called the Tibetan Children’s Village, which is a school for Tibetan children set up by the Dalai Lama. So the kids can learn Tibetan, English, Hindi and get an education even though they’re refugees (and many of them have crossed over without their parents – actually most I would say). It is so great and also so crazy – we walk up this path and it is literally a little village outside of the city and all you see are kids everywhere. This is going to sound like such a weird comment but i t was like never never land in peter pan! just kids everywhere, running about between classes, from their houses…so great though. we talked to this one girl who’s now 24 and trying to go to nursing college and she hasn’t seen her family since she came to india when she was 9 so this children’s village was her education and her family.  also, it was really misty which made it feel even more like it was out of peter pan! hahaha – check it out:

Oh yah one more hilarious thing. the first night we got there was my birthday – so we had dinner then went to this restaurant/bar. Somehow it resulted in a group of Tibetans singing me happy birthday, who then later kept offering mehand rolled cigarettes as birthday presents and ended in this crazy Hindu man with dreadlocks (who was insanely high)  eating mybirthday cake haha so many different characters all together – it was too perfect.

Ladakh….i frickin love you.

Ladakh hands down is my favorite part of India and very possibly the most beautiful place I’ve visited…ever. It’s a region of the northern most state of India – so the entire region is tucked away into the Himalayas.  The trip was amazing, from beginning to end, starting with the crazy plane ride in.  It’s only an hour away from delhi, and after the first 30 minutes you start crossing the himalayas and all you can see out your window for the rest of the plane ride are the peaks of the mountains above the clouds.  The city we were flying into is called Leh, and to land there the plane first has to lower itself significantly and then fly in between the mountain passes.  But since it’s so mountainous when we were lowering down we couldn’t fly straight and instead had to make these really tight circles in a valley surrounded by mountains, it was crazy I didn’t even know a plane that big could do something like that.  The pressure was so intense though, your body was being slammed against the seats and physically it was so difficult to lift your head/body part away from it.  Then we flew in between the mountains which was unbelievable…I’ve never been so close to other objects (let alone mountains) when in a plane before.

So we were only there for about 8 days but we definitely made the most of it – we were in Leh for the first 4 days and  did day trips to other towns.  Except for the first day – the altitude of Leh is 3500 metres above sea level, so they tell you to only rest for the first 24-36 hours so you don’t suffer from altitude sickness.  Caitlin and I had both never been anywhere that high before and were like oh yah, no worries we’ll be fine…but as soon as you step off the plane you can feel the difference.  For the first day and a half it was difficult to breathe as our bodies got used to less oxygen in the air. We’d be sitting there and all of a sudden become really breathless and feel our heart beat racing – and that was just sitting, imagine how slowly we had to walk the first day haha.  The second day was a lot better, still a lot of of waves of nausea/headaches but after around midday we were fine. 

Ladakh is primarily Buddhist, so all over Leh and the surrounding towns that we went to there were loads of monasteries, monks just meandering down the streets and prayer wheels everywhere.  Prayer wheelsthey can be as big or small as you want, the public ones are usually quite large and they’re filled with the 1,000 Buddhist mantras/prayers within.  So when Buddhists walk by, you walk around the wheel and spin it from left to right reciting prayers. Public prayer wheel:

 

These smaller prayer wheels usually line the walk way up to the monasteries:

 

  Buddhism is such an interesting culture - we went on a 3 day trek and our guide (Angchuk – best guide ever!) was telling us quite a bit about it. I think one ofthe most interesting things about it is that everything about the religion is meant to protect you from yourself.   in all monasteries they have one room called the ‘temple of protection’ which is a lot darker and eerie when you go into it compared to the rest of the monastery.  The room has paintings of different protectors with severed heads around their neck etc. – like, violent depictions, that are meant to protect from evil.  the evil they’re protecting against are your own ego and selfishness – a monk sits in the temple of protection chanting mantras which ask each individual to leave behind their pride, ego, ignorance and selfishness. Too cool.

On our second day we found out it was the Dalai Lama’s birthday, and that celebrations were happening in a town about 10km away called Choglamsar.  So we hopped on a bus  – which was an experience in itself.  The buses are these little vans – actually, they look like the oldschool VW vans, that everyone piles on.  Most people are on the roof or hanging out of the doors/windows.  There are no actual bus stops you just sit on the side of the road and flag one down, then the bus doesn’t stop it just sort of rolls along slowly and you’ve got to jump on and hope you grab a hold of something or someone grabs you.  Best part – they blast Ladakhi music.  Could I be any happier?

When we got off the bus in Choglamsar we saw this long processsion of Ladakhis, Tibetans (there are a lot of Tibetan refugees in Ladakh) and monks walking towards a valley.  So we followed them to this valley, where there was a party for the Dalai Lama’s 74^th birthday – a bunch of tents were set up , there were “head”/important monks, music and games.  

His house there was open also, so we were allowed to walk in it – too bad he wasn’t there!:

: 

Check out this town (Thiskey) – it’s all on one side of the mountain and has a monastery sitting on the very top.  Most of the houses belong to monks:

 

So many of the monasteries we visited were on the peak of some ridge, so we had to climb up to all of them.  Here’s an example:

Tibetan prayer flags are also all over Ladakh – they’re hanging off of everything and they’re so beautiful!  They’re also always strung on the top of a mountain pass, supposedly because once you’ve made it to the top you’re supposed to hang prayer flags and say “kiki so so largalo” which means, “thank God we’ve made it/Oh Joy, we’ve made it!”

We were always pretty jazzed about making it to the top:

Glacier water meets ..um, regular water? The Indus is the blue glacier water on the left and the Zanskar is the muddy one on the right (this was on our way to the beginning of our trek.):

We only had time to do a baby 3 day trek, but it was unreal…pics don’t give it justice.  For 3 days we were climbing down valleys and up passes in the himalayas…unreal.  We also stayed with homestays along the way, and got to meet wonderful people and learn more about Ladakhi way of life.  Most villages only had about 19 houses or so – actually supposedly the number of mentally handicapped children are growing in Ladakh because there are so few people that there is a lot of intermarriage that happens (whether you know it or not).  Also, India has this welfare program where they pay you if you only have one child, so a lot of Ladakhi’s are doing that.  But it makes sense in most of India since it’s so overpopulated, but Ladakh is underpopulated and there’s so much space, that when people start to take advantage of it a lot of schools shut down because there aren’t enough kids…so th few kids who live in that town don’t get an education.  Already schools are so sparse – the kids at one of our homestays had to walk 2 hours to get to school .

Pics from the trek:

the landscape was so drastic.  The himalayas are really dry, and we’d be going through stuff like this:

then you would turn the corner, and see a lush field/valley, all because a glacier stream is flowing htrough that part of the landscape

Oh yah, one last thing about Ladakh…the people are insanely beautiful.  For real, this is probably one of the most stunning ethnicities I’ve ever seen in my life.  People look very Tibetan/Mongolian, so thye have high cheek bones, light eyes and tanned skin or they look Kashmiri, so really really pale skin, green eyes and sharp features.  It’s crazy.  The women are gorgeous and the guys are all so bad ass.  They’re rugged, most ride motorcycles/motorbikes, and for some reason everyone seems to own a pair of aviators…I don’t know what it is, but mountain air is working for them.

Kochi – the last stop in kerala

kochi was the last stop on our trip to the south – we stayed there for 4 nights. really beautiful, the city is neat b/c the main downtown hub is on the mainland of india, but the rest of it is made up ofl ittle islands that are all connected by ferries.  we stayed in the old part of the city called fort kochi which was really beautiful, a lot of portuguese and dutch influence, so the houses looked really european. ALSO there are street signs everywhere which is rare for the south – so for once we actually knew where we were going.

the city also used to have a lot of jewish settlers, but supposedly a lot of them have emigrated elsewhere b/c now there’s only 7 Jewish families who live in the area. but the main part of the town is called “Jew Town” and there’s the oldest synagogue in India there which was beautiful.

the town is known for it’s spice market and essential oils. so on one street it’s pretty much all perfume shops filled with pure oils and spice shops. the pic below is the backside of one spice shop where they’re drying all their ginger:

so the south is socialist, which would usually mean it’s secular but in india it’s also really christian. so there are seriously hammer and sickles, communist flags AND pictures of jesus everywhere. seriously, they have photos in all shops/hostels we went to and posted on pretty much every piece of public property:

hammer and sickle painted on the wall:

not only were houses super colorful, but so were churches! check out this bright purple one:

k, so one of the best days in fort kochi was when we rented bikes and just rode around the city the entire day.  at the very beginning of the day we went by the boardwalk where there are these crazy chinese fishing nets and you need at least 4-5 men to heave them out of the water:

naturally caitlin and i decided we needed to try to pull it out of the water:

on the bike ride we stopped and met/chatted with a bunch of people. so the entire trip people have been really curious about me- but for some reason in fort kochi people’s curiosity was doubled. haha it’s really jokes – people always ask where i’m from. i tell them canada, they tell me i look indian, upon which i tell them my parents are from punjab but i was born/raised in canada. they ask for my name, as soon as i tell them they say ohh very good, very good formal muslim name. you’re muslim yes? then i have to tell them i’m not muslim but Sikh, my parents just liked the name. so basically i’m confusing the shit out of people. they’re like who’s this girl who looks indian, has a north american accent, says her parents are from punjab but doesn’t speak punjabi or hindi, and is travelling with this white chick. it’s actually hilarious. we became quite the talk of the town, to the point where we would walk around and people would just yell out “hey punjabi” to me. and to caitlin “hey punjabi girls friend”. haha – JOKES.

kerala

just got back from 11 days in kerala – which is the southern most state in India (literally is the very tip of India). SO different from north india (delhi /punjab area)  they could be separate countries.  The south reminds me a lot of the Carribbean – super lush and green, palm trees everywhere and it’s a lot more laid back than north/centre India.  The accent is also really different – around Delhi is the typical indian accent that you would imagine, but in the south it’s like nothing i’ve ever heard before…it kind of sounds like a trinidad accent.  it’s a socialist state – so literacy/education rates are 99% which is crazy for any developing country, let alone india considering the rest of the states are nowhere near that high literacy rate. so everyone speaks english – in general, everyone was just super nice, helpful and friendly.

We flew into Trivandrum which is near the tip of India and went straight to the beach city of Kovalam:

This was the beach our hostel looked on to. The town itself is really small – it’s mostly a beach community. It’s off season in the south right now because the monsoon is just getting in – because of this everything is discounted. So we got these baller rooms with ocean front rooms the entire trip. And it didn’t really even rain – it usually rained early morning and at night – some days were cloudy but it was actually nice b/c the temperature was way lower than in delhi. it was probably around 25-30 most days. 

Stayed one night in Kovalam, then went to Varkala which was one of my favorite cities.  On one side of the town are red clay cliffs that drop down to the ocean, and on the other side it feels like you’re in the jungle. Our hostel was along this little 2 foot brick road that faced the cliff/ocean (a little scary at night haha but beautiful):

I took this photo when we were walking along in the town. The “skirt” type bottom this dude is wearing is called a lunghi and it’s what most of the guys wear in the south. It’s a cloth wrapped around at their waist – Hindus and Christians wear the knot on the right and Muslims the knot on the left. When it’s hot/muggy they lift up the bottom and tie it at the front, so it becomes shorter/at the knees like this guy has it:

We met a lot of other travellers in Varkala also – including these two Spaniards who have made me realize again how much I love Spain and need to live there some day. We also met this American guy who is on the same flight back as me and Caitlin – how random, what are the chances? We would all go to this one restaurant/bar at night called the Funky Art Cafe which would constantly play Bob Marley (and unfortunately sometimes Akon/50 Cent which one of the locals really liked to rap/dance to. I wish I had videotaped)…for all the Montrealers, it was like Tam Tams but next to the ocean. Varkala was also called a ‘temple town’ they had a lot of hindu temples tucked away in the ‘jungle’ (i guess it’s not technically jungle but that’s what it looked like and i don’t know what to call it!). unfortunately only hindus were allowed to go in, so we could only see from the outside. the city also had super colorful houses, like all of them are painted turquoise, magenta, fuschia etc.

After Varkala we went to Kollam (pretty much from where we flew into Trivandrum we were working our way up the coast of the state). Didn’t like Kollam, it was busy, hectic, not pretty – everywhere else in Kerala it felt like you were in the jungle, here there were barely any palm trees, no green, just dry and dusty. So we booked it out of there and went to Alleppey next.

They call Alleppey the venice of India and rightly so. Kerala’s famous for it’s backwaters which are kilometers and kilometers of waterways that snake through the state. Alleppey is full of these waterways. We stayed at a hostel in town for one night (the managerof the hostel was our age and threw a party for us when we go thtere. his friend is randomly in a band, and came with a guitar and was jamming on that all night – we met all his friends which live in alleppey so it was cool to not just meet tourists but local people also.

The next day we rented a houseboat and for one day/night floated down the backwaters. K first off, we were in a floating palace – and it was one of the coolest things i’ve done. we went around to a bunch of different villages – most houses within a village are on their own separate island. so you have to canoe to school/to get get groceries/to neighbors houses etc. at the front of your house are the backwaters and at athe back are rice paddy fields. most of the houses are really bright colors,a nd the island your house is on is really really thin. so there’s about a foot between the front and back of your house and water. it was so cool – we saw little kids waiting for their ’school boats’ on these docks, and people getting picked up by ‘boat buses’ to be taken around:

here’s a guy taking his goats across in a canoe. best thing i saw all day:

on the houseboat where wee anchored for the night at one village we got to walk around,meet people who lived there which was awesome.

pics from punjab

street in the village

i’m milking a buffalo…whaaaat!

 men planting rice at our farm:

peacock at the neighbors house:

the golden temple – this is in amritsar, punjab and it’s the most sacred temple for Sikhs.  the outside is totally plated in gold (well at least the top domes are for sure real gold) and the inside is all mosaic tile:

This is a Sikh warrior, they’re called ne hung (i have no idea how to spell it). Sikhs are meant to be warriors, the religion evolved to protect citizens because too many were being killed whenHindus and Muslims were fighting – so these ne hung devote themselves to Sikhism, and still study in separate schools and learn the art of fighting/warcraft – kind of like martial arts. They are pretty much the only people who are allowed to  carry around a massive  spear and sword . They are really, really majestic when you see them, but also so scary – hence me trying to take a photo without them noticing:

first week in the motherland — punjab

I spent my first 10 days in India in the village my dad was born in (Bhinder Khalan in Punjab).  Super neat to hang out there for a bit – I got to live rural Indian life for a while (for real guys- I milked buffalo and rode a buffalo cart full of corn around the farm…word).  The village itself is beautiful, all the houses have flat rooves to sleep on at night, no more than two/three stories high so you can see all around you (although my dad was telling me these houses were only built recently anywhere from the late 60s-70s and before that there was no electricity and people were still living in mud houses), and is surrounded by farmland. it’s really interesting also b/c while it’s modernizing (most kids i’d say go to school, are getting their masters degrees etc) it’s also really old school/traditional – so arranged marriages are stillnormal (including my next door neighbour who just got engaged and met her groom for the first time at her engagement party) and the caste system is still prevalent – everyone knows what caste you’re from by your last name and for the most part phsyical laborers etc are still from a lower caste.  Only brutal thing about staying there for 10 days was how the electricity kept being turned off. it was probably 40-45 degrees every day, but it’s rice harvesting time and the government doesn’t have enough electricity to provide to homes and to the fields to irrigate the land so they cut it off to the village from the hottest hours of the day 11-4. BALLS.