YESSSSSS

Hopefully you will all pardon the dust I am kicking up as I storm out of Delhi, facilitated by the shiny permit stamped in my passport ;)

What Waiting Around Sounds Like

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Originally I scribbled that to get my font straight, but since it's a fair assessment of my mood it stands undeleted. As Josh blogs in his own exile, "the clickity clack therapy of a blog."

I've had a pretty decent week, including an eventful weekend trip to Pushkar in Rajasthan, but My God am I ever seized by wanderlust and dreams of mountains. Delhi, in the stiffling heat and the ubiquitous McDonalds and Pizza Huts, comes into a backpacker's heart with a "BEST BEFORE" date, and is good for a few days - a week tops.

So I need a plan to not go stir-crazy, and I think I have one. I've finally figured out what they're stalling on - they're confirming my date of arrival in India from the airline - which the Canadian Embassy was able to do in twenty minutes when it needed the information. So if the Indians can't get that information and resolve my visa issues today, I'm going to get an exit permit and fly to Kathmandu. I was talking with this poor guy from Ghana whose mother had passed away and he was trapped in India with a similar problem. He thinks they're waiting for a bribe in his case, and although I'm skeptical (we're not exactly in a tinpot banana republic, after all,) it's starting to seem conceivable.

But 'tis best to focus on the fun things. At least I've been meeting all sorts of interesting people, and just as important, people who will play chess with me. I wandered around Connaught Place all morning yesterday with an English/Irish pair arguing about the nature of luck and intuition. For the weekend I visited an English friend of mine, Jesse, in Pushkar. The train ride was a little expensive, (well, if $15 is expensive by any standard..) but it was my first experience of Indian first-class - waited on with tea, breakfast, tea, lunch, tea in air-conditioned infinite-leg-stretch comfort. The nightlife there was fun in its own right, filled with hippies and eccentrics of Indian and foreign variety, but it also doubles as a holy city with the only temple to Brahma in all of India. I took a puja or holy ceremony from a brahmin priest (whose authenticity may be questionable, but still...) which really did arouse feelings of devotion and piety in me for a few brief minutes. I also had a refreshing avocado milkshake there, something I had never seen before, which is something that Peters should really try to emulate in Calgary.

And second-lastly, a quote from biscuit packaging that could surely only be found in India: "89.9% fat-free"

Actually, lastly, since I just got the decision of the Vancouver-Dallas game: my congratulations to those Vancouver readers of this blog! But someday soon you will have to face Detroit in Detroit, who are ferocious and bloodlusted in ways you cannot even contemplate. :)

Ulysses - 1 ; Steven - 0

Lesson learned. Don't read James Joyce without a dictionary, caffeine and a good table/chair setup. I'm going to write a letter to the publisher insisting on graphic warning labels for the next edition. It's nice to send it home, and nice to have an excuse to buy another book.

My visa got delayed mysteriously again, and since it's going to be held up over the weekend, I'm zipping to Pushkar in Rajasthan for the weekend to have one last adventure in the desert.

My New Mailing Address in Delhi

It's nice to have pieces of Canadiana in my vacation from my vacation. The Quebecer fellow staying in my guesthouse popped over to me in the TV lounge with the greeting of, "so how about those flames yesterday, eh?". I'm not sure how he knew about the slaughter before I did, but for those of you who aren't following the playoffs, we lost 3-1. That would be understandable as a random act of hockey, were it not that we were outshot 51-15. Sometimes shots go in, sometimes they don't - but if you're outshot nearly 4 to 1, then you're simply not playing hard enough, you're playing little league hockey. I mean we took three goals against detroit's one and still had the better goaltender, save-percentage-wise. I

I'm trapped in Delhi still, for an unknown amount of time ("come back Thursday and 99% I can help you then"). My guesthouse has a good atmosphere - there's usually someone interesting enough to chat with in the lounge - but it's hard to be upbeat when my heart is climbing up and down mountains in Nepal as the ideal season slips further and further away. And I'm getting a paunch sitting around in Delhi all day! That's probably the most depressing bit, as shallow as it is. Indian men all have paunches from withering away in the heat, it's almost a sign of status among the middle-aged.

One thing I've had time to think about is the question of India's poverty - I've fielded a few questions from people about how it is to travel in a third world country, how the images of poverty affect me. First, let me be rational. If you take the total amount of food India produces, divide it by the number of people - there's more than enough to go around for every person. It's not like Darfur or other parts of Africa where the lack of total food periodically causes devastating epidemics and famines. In an Indian town - even an Indian village, there are TVs everywhere, a very large number of people have motorcycles for transport. I would say there are more people in the TV and motorcycle bracket than the worried-about-next-meal bracket. With that said, in a society still as poor as India's, the people at the fringes are in serious danger of malnutrition and disease, and there are alot of gainfully employed people (like cycle rickshaw drivers) who barely make enough to cover food expenses for their family. It's absolutely heartbreaking to see the beggars in the street.. I have become too familar, too jaded to the tugging at the pantleg or hand by little children who say "food.. chapati... rupee". And you know that sometimes the beggars, particularly the women with children, have perfectly legitimate reasons for being beggars - in a poor community (unlike increasingly well-protected educated, middle-class women,) poor women have little recourse in the case of being abused or thrown out by their husbands. On the other hand, there are beggars who have learned the begging trade from their parents, who have learned from their parents in turn. There are even parents who mutilate their children in the hopes of providing them with a means to earn more money begging, whether for selfish reasons or not. So I truly am torn in whether or not to give to beggars. But one thing is for sure - when I return home I feel compelled to make a big, juicy donation to an NGO like Oxfam or the Red Cross.

It's funny, there was a big scandal in the news (on all the TV channels, actually) about Richard Gere holding this Indian actress at an AIDS fundraiser and kissing her in some display of elation or joy. She didn't mind, either, but the conservative media in India grilled both of them and there were letters supporting opening a criminal investigation into the "loosening of her morals" or something like that. Now, I don't mind conservativism. Even if I don't subscribe to it, it's still still a valid viewpoint on alot of issues on how to run a country - and I believe that brief turns to conservatism can provide government with much needed discipline. (Hopefully our's will be over soon, still!)

I find, however, that conservatives are more prone to sensationalism than their centrist or liberal counterparts. They make mountains out of anthills - like how the Lewinsky scandal in the US eclipsed any of George Bush's menacing assaults against the constitutional rights of Americans. Even if their positions are sometimes quite reasonable, they often appeal to the baser qualities in voters - like nationalism, or religious moralism. For example, it's a very common criticism by Republicans towards Democrats that they aren't being patriotic if they don't support the war of the present moment. It's a real shame, and something that's been more true in the past fifty years, because there truly have been golden eras in world politics. Indian politics shortly prior and shortly after Independence were filled with astonishingly intelligent, nuianced positions about issues - and eloquent personalities, like Nehru, that could rightfully be called visionaries.

I can think of a couple readers that that last comment will rile, so I wait eagerly for examples of liberal sensationalism to appear on my comment board ;)

Drawing Circles in the Sand

Huge thanks to Josh to finding the best comic series in the history of comic series. (xkcd.com) Backpacker or not, I'm still wired, and those archives took up three hours of my afternoon.

I'm back in Delhi, but this question of an Indian visa is up in the air. I had to go to this obscure Ministry of Home Affairs to get permission for a new visa.

Official: "So.... what do you want?"


Steve: "I'd like something like my old visa, you know, something equivalent."

Official: *laughter* .... [Blogger's note: I'm not joking...]

Steve: "Not possible?"

I wound up with a recommendation that gave me permission to stay in India until June, but the caveat is that I might not get re-entry permission, which would be necessary to cross from Nepal back into India. If they're trying to make me choose between India and Nepal, (if it makes sense to anthromorphize the bureaucratic machine,) then obviously I'm going to choose Nepal. I was pretty tempted to ask them where exactly I could get a Pakistani tourist visa while they were dragging their feet.

Prior to this, I more or less succeeded at adventuring out the path I drew a few blogs ago. From Ahmedabad I travelled onto Bhuj, which was at the epicenter of a massive earthquake five years ago. Bhuj was the closest I got to to true desert on this trip, and accordingly it was irrationally hot. Office hours were from 8-12 and 4-7 to avoid the worst of the midday sun. But I made my pilgrimage to the Arabian sea, through a series of local buses and crammed taxis. It was glorious - if those beaches had been anywhere else in the world, they would have been jammed with revelers. I've decided that the Indians are the only people in the world who are allowed SUVs, because somehow we fit 14 people into our's.

From there I moved onto Jodiphur, in Rajasthan, but at this point my money had run out and I was sort of stuck inside writing and reading newspapers / watching TV due to the heat. I think I felt an earthquake while I was there, a miniature little one. Living off of oranges and bananas feels surprisingly good - thoughts furthered by my learning that Gandhi was a fruitarian for a long part of his life for hygenic and moral reasons.

Now I'm back in Delhi, and armed with a passport I was able to get more money and I'm really pampering myself and buying luxury items. Delhi's been a good time, I'm staying in Connaught Place this time and it seems easier to meet people as a solo traveller (and there's alot more to do after 8 at night). Connaught Place is the essence of Imperial India, this long circular district with big marble facades and all the expensive brand-name stores in Delhi. It's a superb place to wind down and central to everywhere.

Steven's a Canadian Again

... and armed with a passport to prove it.

... and a shiny new money belt to protect that passport from the evils of the world.

Before Moving On

So, I went to the Gandhi Ashram today - which was a quiet and fairly well-done combination of the places he lived and a museum explaining his ideas about ahimsa and abolition of untouchability. I trembled a little bit as I meditated beside Gandhi's personal room at the ashram. More fun to note, though, I had the unique experience of being mobbed by an army of teenagers on a class trip to the Ashram (their young woman teacher shot me death glares every so often...) One started talking to me and.. next thing I know.. I'm surrounded on all sides by 20 teenagers. The 17-18 year old alpha-male of the group took me aside and explained how hot his [married] teacher was, and asked for my advice on good scotches - which was a puzzle for me because Gujarat is a dry state.

I've stolen and edited a map of India so you can get a rough idea of where I've been (red light) and where I'm going (green light), but I don't think it'll be practical to label it clearly with place names. The green loops where Nepal ought to be signify that I'm planning on doing some trekking in the Annapurna and Everest regions.

Too Hot to Blog / Off the Beaten Track

"So, let me get this straight - in your country [Canada], it is OK for a woman to have partners before she gets married?"
"Yes, yes, that's it. But it's not like Baywatch........."

Every bus ride, every train ride, brings an interrogation into Western values. Which is alright by me - I learn (without feeling nosy) alot through comparison about Indian values. And what a gulf of difference there is!

Ahmedabad is the most prosperous city in the most prosperous state in India - so there are certain indicators of progress here, like pedestrian lights. It's wonderful to cross a street and feel that I'm only in slight danger. But it's not a tourist destination at all - and I'm soundly off the beaten track now. How can I tell? I can tell because people stop as I walk by and stare at me. Kids tug at my hand and try to practice their English on me. And in 30 hours in this city I've seen six other non-Indians, four of them in the air-conditioned internet cafe I retreat to when it gets too hot. To think I was worried India had gotten too exposed to the West.

In some ways, it's nice - I don't feel treated like a commercial object at all, people aren't trying to hustle me into their shops, and I don't suffer so much from inflated prices. I had a big glass of freshly squeezed orange juice (and if you know me you know I love my juices,) from a roadside wallah for 25 cents! Someone entirely random bought me a saffron lassi today while I was sitting down at a cold drinks shop. The fellow was a lawyer, and he was with a policeman. I asked him if he was a defence lawyer or prosecutor - he said he was a defense lawyer, and that was why he kept the police officer on good terms... that may or may not have been a joke. It's also nice to introduce myself as a mathematics student, here. India has enormous respect for the Engineering/Hard Science academic complex, and I field alot of questions comparing Indian with Canadian schools.

The flip side is that Ahmedabad is prosperous mostly as an industrial centre, and the pollution and heat are really hard to tolerate. I had my first sleep disrupted by the night's heat - needless to say, I'll never complain about 30C at home again. I just looked on the BBC and it was 42C today here. The mind harbours too many delusions lying awake from the heat, and to be perfectly honest I only get enough willpower to venture out for an hour or two in the daytime. My body longs for the cool of the mountains of Nepal, but my passport is still 1000 kilometers and 7 days away, so I'm making an even sillier move and leaving for the real desert, in the west of India called Kutch. Then to Pushkar, and then back onto Delhi.

"Why would you want to go to Ahmedabad? There's nothing there for tourists." - Bus Booking Agent
"I want to see Gandhi's old ashram."
"Oh, you're one of those."

Further Photos

Udaipur Lake

Camels resting in the street

View from Triund, over Dharamsala and Mcleod ganj

Meditation Cones at the Beatles Ashram in Riskikesh

River valley on the way to a National Park near Rishikesh

Didn't I tell you? Monkeys are everywhere.