Why We Travel, part one

Morning Tea
Originally uploaded by Amberly & David.

This is a thread of thought I've been contemplating. It is to be continued.

We travel to meet new people, see new places and experience new things. We travel to share stories the likes of which you don't get in books. Ultimately, we travel to understand our world, and hopefully ourselves, a little better. The story of our Sikkim trek holds a little bit of all of this. This is the vignette of how we ended up on the top of a mountain, next to a small monastery, in a village of sixteen families by dint of a headache, a visiting Lama, and a broken boot.

We wanted to do a modest low-altitude trek to see some historic Buddhist monasteries in Sikkim, formerly part of a Nepali empire and home to a strain of Tibetan Buddhism. All descriptions we could find made the loop sound modestly strenuous, but eminently doable. Scampering down the first long shortcut through beautifully dense semi-tropical vegetation, Amberly got a migraine. Her medication turned out to be less than effective when followed by more blood-pumping hiking instead of a 10 minute lie-down. When we reached the road again, it was hot and completely devoid of shade. We decided to hitch the first ride that came by. How could we know who it would be?

We arrived at Khatchapuri Lake in the entourage of the Lama of Ladakh, and quickly gravitated to the handful of backpacking Westerners watching the festivities. Before we knew it, we were lugging our pared-down gear up a mountain overlooking the lake, sipping tea and waiting for our host’s sister to vacate her room so we might stay in it. Run by the Dalai Lama’s former personal chef, our mountain oasis had 360° views of the Himalaya foothills, prepared meals and a laid-back group of fellow travelers with whom to relax and share stories. Then and there, we decided to forego the rest of our trek and stay a while.

It was a good thing, too, because when I shed my hiking boots in our room, I discovered the sole of the left boot was anxious to separate from its leather upper. I had taken this trusty pair along on its last outing, conscious of the fact that, through age and a bit of neglect on my end, they would not be lasting much longer. Now, they were a heel-seam away from being utterly useless. By the time I went down and back next morning for a meditation at the Lake, the attached part of the seam was down to an inch. So long, boot and so long, trek!

Over a fire that night, built and fed by an eager group of children, we settled into the unending flow of conversation that transpires among travelers. We talked politics, local customs, personal backgrounds and wacky experiences. We even found eerie connections amongst ourselves. Perhaps these are folks we might not have encountered had we stayed home. We likely wouldn’t have spoken if we did. This is why we travel.

For a slightly different and expanded telling of these events, take a look at this post.

Postscript: A few of the folks we met on the mountain shared a jeep back to town with us a couple of days later. We shared a drawn-out meal (if not entirely by design) and a cake for my birthday. Amberly and Jenny found a great exploding and singing candle for me. What a treat!

Finally, a clearing

Our first glimpse of the Mountain
Originally uploaded by Amberly & David.

After five days socked in here in Darjeeling, the sky finally cleared enough to see the mountain we'd been promised! Kanchanjunga is the second tallest mountain in the world and it is barely visible in the photo there (click on it for a bigger view).

Other than today, it's been cloudy and cold - cold enough to inspire me to look in the guidebook for warm and sunny places to take a detour. A few days ago, we made the impulse decision fly to the Andaman Islands for a week, following our trek in Sikkim (which starts tomorrow)! A tropical beach vacation sounds like the write medicine for this cold... I don't know if we'll find time or a connection to blog for some time, so I thought I'd put up a quick entry and some photos to tide you over.

We had a great tour of the Makaibari Tea Estate in Kurseong at the beginning of the last week. It is the first organic and biodynamically grown estate in the region, and they treated us to a great tour and tasting. Hiking back into town, we stopped off at the Tea Research Institute and got a great little (impromptu) tour by one of the researchers there. Only wish we had spent more time in Kurseong exploring the world of fine tea. I did buy a bunch and will be putting together a presentation and tasting when I return... Sign up now! :*)

A quick update

Proof
Originally uploaded by Amberly & David.

Photos are up! I hate to break chronology, but here is the only photographic proof that we did see the Taj Mahal in person. It is every bit as astonishing as you might think... I've put up a semi-representative smattering of our wanderings so far.

We arrived in the sleepy backwater mountain town of Kurseong, near Darjeeling, this afternoon. We hope to visit a couple of tea plantations tomorrow, and take the first of our mountain romps. So exciting to pull on a fleece, after sweating through shirts for a month straight!

Late add-on: Amberly has put up a nice post that neatly encapsulates our stay in Varanasi...

Spiritual India, part two

Bathing in the Ganges
Originally uploaded by Amberly & David.

While in Varanasi, I've asked a few folks - why is India spiritual? The answers sort of fit in with some observations I've made on my own. So here's a crack at it.

Sacred Spaces
Certainly, India is the cradle for several religions, Hinduism and Buddhism the most prominent of them. Hinduism (from which Buddhism spawned) has come to being over thousands of years, amalgamating bits from different ethnic groups along the way. The history I'll once again leave for you to research.

There is something to be said for the religion having grown up next to its cradle. As we've discovered in our travels, there are places (like Varanasi, arguably the oldest living city in the world) that have been holy for longer than most religions have existed! Sacred places everywhere take on more spiritual energy the longer they are so. It's no accident that churches get built on top of Druid sacred ground or that temples are razed in favor of mosques. Places have meaning. It's no small wonder, then, that India has become charged in ways few other places have, after generations and generations of people went to the same places to worship.

Is it the water or is it in the blood?
The reverse angle was posited by a zealous young man yesterday evening: People in India had a religious ancestry that has been passed down. It's genetic! I have noticed (and have been told) that Indians are a very emotional people. To whit, Hindi is a very emotionally expressive language. I don't think it's too big of a leap to say that people who are in touch with their emotions tend to also be more attuned to spirit (saying this without judgment one way or another). It begs the question a bit to say emotionality is the reason rather than place, since the former could easily influence the latter, but it's an interesting observation all the same.

Accident of History
Another evocative theory came from the gentleman I spoke of in the last post. He seemed to be saying (among many other things) that India's (and Hinduism's) continued deep spirituality was quite accidental. Where other major politically dominant world religions (e.g. Christianity, Islam) had their theology corrupted somewhere along the line to serve the ends of the powerful, Hinduism has stayed true (truer?) to some essential spiritual truths, and always kept an eye on individual enlightenment.

This sentiment has no shortage of controversy contained in it, not to mention holes riddling it. Nonetheless, if it accounts for a bit of the explanation, it is worth examining.

The Last Word
As spirituality goes, neither Hinduism or India have the last word, of course. There are many movements within the world's religions (Renewal Judaism among them, in my humblest opinion :) that have it right, as well as sacred places (Jerusalem, anyone?) that yield no ground in the sacred places arena.

Perhaps India's cachet is its foreign-ness. I recently heard of a western woman who married an Indian man and has been living here for the last 20 years. Even though she's fluent enough in Hindi, she purports to understand only 60% of what is happening culturally, even in her day-to-day context. The mythology is so dense and alluring, and the history so long, that is continues to attract western seekers to its shores.

Perhaps the mainstream west has gotten so caught up in a world of secular materialism and turned off by right-wing religious ideology that it would rather bathe in these waters than shower near its own cradle. But that's a topic for another time.

This short essay doesn't do the topic justice. Consider it a thought process, and I'd love to hear your feedback.

Ineffable Varanasi

First off, apologies for the lack of pictures. Uploading them in this town has proven a task requiring more computer patience than I currently have...

Listening to the Universe
Events have conspired to keep us here a bit longer, and a happy conspiracy it's been! Here's how it's gone: we were meant to leave on Friday morning to spend Shabbat and the weekend in Bohdgaya, the place of Buddha's enlightenment. Thursday, I went to a booking agent to get our onward ticket from Patna, a transit point for Bohdgaya, to NJP, the station serving the vicinity of Darjeeling. I returned in the evening to pick up the ticket. As we made small-talk, our time of (Friday) departure came up. When I told the man that we were leaving at 10am, he looked at me and said, "I think your ticket must be for Thursday?" I responded that, no, we had planned a Friday departure. He then showed up the schedule book, and sure enough, the regular 10am train only runs on Thursdays and Saturdays. We went home, a bit apprehensive, but pretty sure we had our ticket right - maybe we had mis-remembered the time? Anyway, our ticket hadn't been ready, so the booking agent promised to bring it by our guest house around 9 o'clock that evening.

At ten minutes past 10pm, Mr. Santosh arrived, all smiles and apologies. We had been waiting anxiously because, indeed, we had flat-out missed our train that morning! Santosh being an experienced train guy, we wanted to ask him about our options, especially since we had just booked our onward trip. He explained what we could do (take the 6 Rp -$.14 - with the other half a million people on the unassigned seat car) and handed over the promised onward tickets. Upon careful scrutiny - not going to make the same mistake so soon - I saw it wasn't for Patna-NJP, but rather Varanasi-NJP! This was too much. When the universe speaks this clearly, you have no choice but to listen.

Shabbat Shalom
The opportunity we had been presented was nothing short of a blessing. We had both been bemoaning the fact that we were going to be leaving so soon. Four nights had seemed like plenty on paper, but we had both been swept up in this city. Everything I've read about Varanasi does it justice and sells it short at the same time. The best word to describe it is 'ineffable'. There are so many facets to the city, from the breath-taking sweep of the river Ganges aside it to the barely-navigable alleys that take you where you want to go, even after you're convinced you're lost. This is also India's spiritual core and cultural cross-section. Life happens, full-on, in the streets and on the holy river's banks. You can eat, sleep, bathe, defecate, dance & die at the river's side, even get a shave (mine took off my sideburns clear up to my ears, but that's another story) without losing sight of the water.

A gentleman I spoke to today said that when the Buddha came through 3500 years ago, he was so intimidated by the spiritual power of this place, that he dared not preach here, instead going down the road to Sarnath for his first teaching. Now that's the kind of place to observe the Sabbath! We spent most of Friday shopping and getting ready for Shabbat - our first such thorough readiness. As we have been observing Shabbat, we realized that an important part of the observance (as it is for any spiritual occasion) lies in the preparation. The tasks put you in the mind of the event. We got some real bread and cheese from the bakery, fruits & vegetables from the market, home-made muesli and jam from a woman's cooperative, and new candles and fruit juice (sadly, no wine to be had) for havdallah. The day was peaceful and truly special.

Yoga on the Ganges
You knew this was coming: the day I finally broke down and took my first yoga class. I have resisted intense peer-pressure in San Francisco, where yoga practitioners must outnumber us heathens by at least 3:1... I couldn't resist the offer though, to do yoga at dawn overlooking the Ganges. We had met a beatific Saddhu a few days before at the Ganga temple, where a nightly riverside ritual is prime-time entertainment for pilgrims and tourists alike. I had gotten to know Saddhu Mishra over the last few days over some chai and afternoon chats. When we went by on Friday afternoon with news of our travels' postponement, he dangled a carrot too juicy to leave on the string. We could pay on Sunday, and take 3 sessions: Saturday and Sunday 6am and Saturday 6pm. We bit. The instructor (a sometime resident of the temple) walked us through in very broken English, but I got a couple of essential nuggets to keep me going. The best yoga ever? Doubtful. An absolutely amazing experience? Check.

Where the dead go

It's been a little bit since the last post. We've been taking it very slow for the last few beats. Amberly has a good post with some highlights. Pictures will go up by the end of the week.

We arrived in Varanasi yesterday, to much bustling and goings on. Since the train station and a temple were bombed here last week, security has been heightened. Compounded with the fact that the raucous Holi festival starts tonight, there has been much activity on the streets! It seems the city has recovered well from the bombings, and the atmosphere is fairly normal, if reportedly subdued for a major holiday.

Nevertheless, our stay in Varanasi has been nothing short of magical. We are staying right on the Ganges, off a quieter ghat that was once so austentatiously built that it sank into the river! It had to be rebuilt... The entire riverside is paved with ghats, each with its own sponsor and special significance. We witnessed a sunset puja last night and people-watched on the steps. This morning, we took a pre-dawn boat-ride. I'm still composing my thoughts about the experience, but...wow.

This afternoon, we found a great little bakery and restaurant that supports a school for poor children in the area, bakes a mean brown bread and sells real cheese!!! Such a treat to have a cheese plate, I can't even tell you.

Spiritual India, part one

This is the first in what I hope will be a series of dispatches from or about spiritual places in India. I don't know where it will lead, but I hope it will be enjoyable!

Brahma Ghat, Pushkar

We arrived in Pushkar in time to prepare for Shabbat, which we've been observing every week during our trip (okay, we missed one - it was an oversight, ok?). This has been a wonderful experience. Obviously, it's hard to cook your own meals, but we've been lighting candles, finding delight in creation, not spending money (arranging payment for food to be made on account), and trying to not make anyone else do any work on our behalf. I will write more about Shabbat in India after a few more weeks of practice to tell you more about our experiences. Suffice it to say, it was a great way to wrap up what had been a hectic week.

The Setting
Pushkar is home to roughly 1000 temples and 51 bathing ghats (steps down to the water), including one of each dedicated to Brahma, the god of creation, and one of the big three in Hinduism. Apparently, these are the only such dedicated to Brahma in all of India, and probably the world. The lake in the middle of town is said to be where Brahma dropped a lotus from heaven and performed a yagna or fire sacrifice. I will leave the details of the story and the research to those interested - you can stick the keywords in google as well as I can! NOTE: Brahma is different from Brahman...

A Quick Prayer
I visited the Brahma sacred sites yesterday, to see what I could see. Worship is a far sight different from what we're used to in western synagogues or churches, at least from my outsider's perspective. A visit to a temple is almost cursory: offer a quick prayer, ring a bell, give your flower/sugarcube offering to the priest, and that's about it. The kids were offered some of the sugar candies, and (holy lake?) water was ladled into the mouths of some of the faithful. Some lingered, contemplating the shrine for a few moments before moving on to the next one. The Brahma temple houses a number of shrines, including a couple of underground "cave" shrines to Shiva (another of the main triumverate), complete with a stone lingum and yoni platform, over which I was instructed to pour water. I wish I could have lingered at these more, but they were cramped caves and a line was forming. The practice, anyway, was to pay your respects and move on along the circuit.

Clarity, It's In The Water
It wasn't until I was directed* to the bathing ghat that the focus of worship became clearer to me. At the ghat, I was led through a puja involving a series of mantras, hand washings and swishings-about of a plate with: vermilion & sandalwood pastes, rice, sugar, flowers, a coconut and some water. After it was all said and done, the pastes and rice were smeared together and dotted on my forehead, and an ochre/saffron-colored string tied around my wrist. The ceremony of the thing did what it was supposed to do, I suppose. It cleared my mind to think about the wonder of creation and take in my surroundings. In sharp contrast to the perfunctory nature of the shrine visit, Indians of all stripes were mindfully performing variants on what I had done, including taking handfuls of what by all accounts was filthy lake water into their mouths, and stripping to their shorts to dip in the lake. Water was a key element in all of this.

A part of my own ceremony that struck me as particularly poignant was the dabbing of water on my eyes, my "third eye", my shoulders and my chest, in turn cleansing my sight, my mind, my body, and my heart. The healing power of water (as I'm sure will be reiterated on the banks of the Ganges) is a strong and powerful theme here. Cleansing of the body transcends metaphor to directly become cleansing of the spirit. This idea, of course, is not unique to Hinduism. You need only look as far as the mikvah or baptismal font to see strong, if not exact parallels in western religion. Water; the ultimate detergent. Water; elixir of life. Water.

*Yes, I did have a student priest attach himself to me, and after his protests of 'no money' nonetheless extracted a small monetary offering. I am of two minds regarding this: on the one hand, I feel its a tad gauche to charge for a sacred site and opportunistic to milk hapless visitors for 'donations', as it's difficult to know whether they are indeed that. On the other hand, I did see his official priest card and I do feel it appropriate to pay a token sum for intruding on a holy place. After all, our places of worship ask for periodic offerings (call them memberships, tithes or what you like) to sustain them - it only makes sense that a place of pilgrimage does this on the spot, as it were. Anyhow, I'm okay with it!

Led by the nose

Camel head
Originally uploaded by Amberly & David.

Not me, the camel! We returned yesterday from a lovely sojourn in the Thar desert on camel-back. After the constant noise and bustle of inhabited India, the desert was blissfully quiet. We trekked around in the morning, then had a nice lunch and "hot-time" break under a surprisingly shady tree. The guides whipped up an absolutely killer curry and chapatti (from scratch, mind you) while the camels, unsaddled, roamed around with a small length of rope around their front legs for impeding their running away.

Another couple of hours led us through a watering-hole village and finally to a lovely set of dunes where we camped. After a sumptuous dinner, the guides sang camel songs around the campfire. The stars were absolutely amazing.

Jaisalmer was a great little place. The fort is absolutely amazing (more photos to come, but quite a few photos uploaded) - all made of sandstone through and through. I spent the first 24 hours laid up in bed with 'Delhi belly', but nothing to be concerned with. We're in Jodhpur today, seeing the last of our Moghul forts here, and then off to Pushkar for some R&R. I hope to write more from there.