Octopussy

Greetings everyone!

If you're interested in seeing what life is like in Udaipur, and being entertained at the same time, go rent the James Bond movie Octopussy (Roger Moore). A few of the magnificent palaces around here are shown and the city life is pretty accurate, except there is more dirt, garbage, and traffic.

The Taj Mahal

The Sleeper Train and the Case of the Lost Wallet

Hello everyone! We have successfully survived an overnight sleeper train from Jaipur to beautiful Udaipur and are staying in the lovely Hotel Hanuman Ghat. We're planning on relaxing here for several days before hitting the road again.

The Case of the Lost Wallet
Being the wise man that I am, I neglected to remove my wallet from my pants pocket before going to sleep on the train. I was on the upper of three two-foot wide berths, and Stephanie was on the middle one. I rolled around quite a bit during the night, trying to maximize my comfort the best that I could (no matter how futile it seemed to be).

On the fifth time that I woke up, I had the realization that my wallet may have fallen out of my pocket, so I searched my pants, but it was not there. I searched my kurta, but it was not there either. Ohhhhh boy. I looked around and noticed that the man that was sleeping on one of the lower berths on the other side of the cart was no longer there. Did he take my wallet and book it? Ohhhh boy.

I searched my pockets again. I searched my kurta again. No wallet. It's okay I thought, just relax, perhaps I put it in my bag, but I really not no hope that it was there. And it wasn't. Ohhhh boy. So, I checked my pockets again. I scoured my kurta again. No wallet.

I grabbed my flashlight, hopped down to the floor and looked around, and luckily enough, there it was. EUREKA! I grabbed my now dusty beast and stuffed it carefully in my bag, zipped it up and climbed back to my bed where I thought about how lucky I was before falling back asleep.


Anyway, today is the big day for Diwali, so make sure you celebrate with plenty of lights and maybe some fireworks.

Happy Diwali

Today is the first day of the 5 day Diwali festival. We are in Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan, it is night time and the city is glowing brightly with tiny butter lanterns, firecrackers and gaudy, blinking light displays. We enjoyed the view very much from the 14th floor of the Om Hotel, in the revolving restaurant!

We've been traveling quite intensely the last few days, have covered a lot of distance. It hasn't always been pleasant. After spending 2 nights at the Golden Temple in Amritsar (which is an amazing place that swept me off my feet that I'd like to talk about for a minute just here inside these brackets ... All are welcome; it is a sanctuary! Waves of people sit in lines on the floor, their plates filled with dahl, rice, vegetables and chapati bread [which is made by machine apparently, and is actually not very good but it doesn't matter much because it is a gift]. That's right, free food - and accomodation. They feed ~40,000 people a day. It doesn't matter who you are; if you are hungry, you are fed. The temple itself is lovely, and we waited in a long, sweaty line the first day to see inside, but enjoyed much more walking around barefoot [before entering one must remove ones shoes, wash ones feet and cover ones head] on the white marble around the temple at night. I felt so peaceful during those walks.) Where was I? Yes, after spening 2 nights at the Golden Temple, we got on a sweet 5am luxury train to Delhi, had lunch and then took a bicycle rickshaw to the bustand where we learned no bus from there went to Agra, so we got on one of those crazy Indian city buses you read about for a half hour ride to another bus stand where we hopped on another one of those buses you read about for a 6 hour ride to Agra. After crashing, we woke early EARLY to go to the Taj Mahal for sunrise. It was spectacular, and we joined in with everyone else in photo fever. (We were more goofy than the rest though.) After breakfast we got a supposedly delux bus for a ride to our current location, Jaipur, which took way too long because of all the stops made to pick up and drop off bags of some sticky sugar liquid that dripped on us and our stuff.

Tomorrow night we plan to head to Udaipur on a sleeper train. We've heard it's very nice there and I'm hoping it's somewhere we'll want to spend some more time. The worst thing about many of the places we've passed through lately has been the air quality. I feel like in the last week I've shaved some chunk of time off my life just from inhaling so much air thick with exhaust and garbage burning. The garbage burns are brutal - on every corner around here. Gahyuck! Please take a deep breath in and, if you're lucky enough, enjoy your relatively pure dose of oxygen.

P.S. There are lots of camels in this province!

Fifty Percent!!

Believe it or not, we've made it 50% through our trip! Day 57. It feels good.

We left Dharamsala for Amritsar yesterday afternoon. The start of the ride was incredibly beautiful. Driving through Kangra we got to see the Himalayas in all their glory. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get any photos, so you'll just have to trust us that it was amazing.

The bus took us to Pathankot where we decided we'd get a train to Amritsar for.... EIGHTEEN RUPEES!!! We couldn't even believe the cost for this supposed 3 hour train ride over 107km, but when we finally got on it ended up being fairly comfortable. Perhaps our definition of comfort has decreased since arriving in India. The train wobbled when it finally got going, but spent half the trip sitting around waiting for other trains to pass the single track that was available to us.

So we're here now. Amritsar, home of Golden Temple. This place is equivalent to the Vatican for Sikhs. It's a wondrous site. We're staying overnight for a crazy slumber party with the Indians in one of the many dormitories they have available for free (by donation).

Wig hats!

on our way to enlightenment

Meditating with Monkeys

We're out! We're out! Yes, the rumours are true. We have made it through our 10-day retreat in silence, learning about Tibetan Buddhism. Now, the time has come for me to share nothing other than our encounters with the lovely monkeys of Dharamsala.

The monkeys around Tushita are very clever and rather sneaky little guys. We were warned that if we were eating any of our meals away from the dining hall and some monkeys approached, it was best to just hand your food over to them, since they would take it anyway. Since we had heard similar warnings in the past, I wasn't too concerned about it. I mean... they're just a few monkeys, right?

Well, it turns out we lived very intimately with these creatures and I will share three encounters with you.

The Cookie Thief
From 2-3pm everyday we were allowed to speak in small groups of six to ten people. These were our assigned discussion groups. After a few days, one of the members of my group thought it would be nice to bring a package of cookies for us to enjoy while we discussed different points of Tibetan Buddhism. What a lovely gesture, I thought, and apparently so did the rest of my group, as the next day three people brought packages of cookies!

Three packages!!! A FEAST! Oh boy oh boy, so we quickly devoured the first package and opened the second. Discussions took our attention away from the cookies and towards each others' hearts. It was really the most lovely part of the day.

Anyway, back to the monkeys. So, as were were listening to one of our group members speak, a monkey slowly crept up and crawled silently between two of us. Before we had time to even acknowledge that a monkey was sitting in the middle of our circle, it snatched the package of cookies at incredible speed and ran away to consume them in a nearby tree.

We laughed heartily as did all the neighbouring groups. Oh, you little monkeys.

The Apple Snatch
Often we had the opportunity to eat apples as part of our lunch. We grabbed as many as we liked from a bucket where they had been sliced in half. Being an apple lover, I grabbed a half, put it in my salad bowl, and head outside to eat on the porch of the dining hall.

Practicing mindful eating meditation, I sat very quietly and observed every bite I took, taking special care to put down my fork between bites. While I sat there, surely as serene as Shakyamuni Buddha himself, a monkey saw the perfect opportunity for his lunch. He jumped down from a tree ran across a nearby roof, fell to the railing, scurried across the table, and SNATCH! He reached into my salad bowl and looted my apple!

Everyone laughed and the monkey returned to a tree just above where I was sitting and sat there eating the apple right in front of me. Oh, you sneaky little bugger.

The Revolution
One evening while we all sat in the gompa, we heard incessant monkey cries from outside. This was not altogether unusual, but this time there was quite a bit more than what we typically heard. So, Stephanie and I took a peek out one of the windows where we saw around ten monkeys just hanging around out front of the gompa. They just sat around in what Stephanie saw as a planning moment of the revolution when monkeys will take over. It lasted for 20 minutes and was really quite interesting to watch.

Around fifteen of us were just standing watching the monkeys in confused amazement. Oh, you crafty little buggers.


Anyway, hope you enjoyed this post. I've been at this computer for far too long now, so I'll see you later :-)