Daily Archives: July 2, 2014

Dolomites to Delhi

I don’t want anyone to have too great a shock when my next dispatch arrives from the far kingdom of Ladakh. Because if I’m having a bit of a time getting used to the change I can only imagine what it’s like simply to read about it. One moment I’m faced with this:

And the next, this:

I had a little reverie about the vast differences in view above. There are two sacred cows lounging on a sunny Delhi garbage heap, one munching a plastic sack, the other fondly licking a yellow and silver foil bag of chips. One says, “Do you ever think about the after life?”

“Sure, every day. You?” says the second one.

“Yeah, me, too. In my next life, I hope I come back as a pariah dog,” sighs the first one, pointing his shiny nose enviously toward a dog lounging in a damp gutter shaded by a stout banyan tree covered in twisted vines.

The other one looks around and said, “Not me. When I come back, I want to be Italian.”

So, here we are in Delhi, about as far away from the Dolomites in look, feel, taste, sound and smell as one can possibly get.

It is great to be back in India, despite that the 106F temperature left me feeling like I was walking around in my own personal hot tub. I still find a dinner of richly spiced dal and basmati rice enticing. A breakfast started with watermelon juice quenches my morning thirst immediately and the rich magenta of the juice seems a statement of the world of color that awaits.

Despite the heat we’ve been walking around, mainly in old Delhi, where streets narrow to lanes, then alleys, then cobbled paths where the buildings shadow the ground and wires and cables seem to seethe overhead.

Is it my imagination or are the streets more packed than last time? Some say everyone’s out more because Ramadan started on June 29. Perhaps it’s because it’s summertime.

Or maybe it’s just that I feel the heat of the crowds more since I’m so darn hot myself. In a manner of speaking….

Today we begin our drive north. We held a short puja for us, our cars and the route ahead. As in 2009, limes and a coconut were put under our car tires, we each were ringed in marigold necklaces and an important symbol of safety was smeared on the trunk.

Sweet smoke from incense wafted about in the still humid morning air. The red tilak placed between my eyebrows by a damp finger covered the seat of memory and thinking. A few uncooked grains of rice were flung at me, to make a point. All this was meant to protect my energy and, being red, to channel my warrior instincts, As it dried, it itched. Mindlessly I kept rubbing at it with my hand as we navigated up the packed roads toward the Delhi outskirts. By the time I looked in the visor mirror, it was smeared all over my forehead. Energy dispersed. I took a wet wipe to the red swath above my eyes as we headed north on the Grand Trunk Road.

Unlike previous trips I haven’t present a completed map yet, thinking you might like to piece together our route yourself, using Google Earth so you can see how high we’re going to be. Our stopping points:
Delhi
Chandigarh
Shimla
Manali
Sarchu Pass
Leh
Uleytokpo (~50km west of Leh)
Kargil
Srinagar

We’ll be traversing 4 of India’s 29 states: Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Jammu-Kashmir. Each state used to have its own ruler of course, before all were combined into one India. And there were varying ethnicities, too. All of which is to say that India is not one homogenous country, but a country that has been melded starting in 1947 and continuing for decades thereafter. Take a look

Happy researching and keep your fingers crossed that we drive safely.