Sangat Project 2007

back in the US

2008-01-10T15:44:00.000-08:00

Hi all,

I'm back from India. I'm currently in Sacramento, so I still have some travelling to do before I'm totally ensconced and hooked up to the internet on a full-time basis.

I will be catching everything up, don't worry. The worst case scenario is that it will have to wait until I'm in Tucson, in which case it'll be next week.

Paonta Sahib photos

2007-12-26T05:02:00.000-08:00

Paonta Sahib is located near where the Yamuna River comes out of the Himalayas and onto the plains. It's a pilgrimage site, and the Gurdwara there is well-known and well-visited. Here are some photos:

India Xmas

2007-12-25T05:44:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas!

There are signs of the holiday here, but they are nothing compared to the big buildup in the US. Which makes it a lot nicer, actually. I am more inclined to feel Christmas-y without it being shoved down my throat everywhere I turn.

Christmas Eve update

2007-12-23T21:08:00.000-08:00

Hi all and happy holidays. I am back from Rishikesh and in Chandigarh once again. I had plans to go to Delhi, but once again I experience the futility of planning things here, as Jessie wants to go to Dharamsala and I will probably follow him there.

Dharamsala is the site of the Tibetan government in exile. It's more or less where the Dalai Lama is these days, and it's THE place in India to find out about all things Tibetan. I won't be working on river stuff there, but I would have the opportunity to find out about Tibetan art and environmental attitudes, so it could definitely be worthwhile.

I really should go to Kolkata (Calcutta) both for the Ganga river and the contemporary art scene, but that may be for another time.

I realize that I haven't talked much about my actual project -- this blog has kind of turned into a catchall fro my travel notes and photos, so I'll try to remedy that. I have some posts to make about le Corbusier, the rock garden, river mythos in India, and several other things, and I've been procrastinating. So I promise to address thoe things after the holiday. Also, I have many pictures I need to post, and that will be happening in a few days as well.

Rishikesh

2007-12-04T20:52:00.000-08:00

I'm in Rishikesh now, a bit by accident. I've been trying to get to Yamnotri, the source of the Yamuna River, with no luck. Normally, in summer, there are tone of busses there, on account of it being part of the Char Dam and a holy pilgrimage site. But it's the off season.

Rishikesh is on the baks of the Ganges, and is the purported Yoga capital of the world. There are more westerners (and east Asian) tourists than I've seen anywhere else, but there are a lot of Indian tourists as well. It's a religious town, full of pilgrims, temples, and ashrams. I may stay here for a while and try to learn about people's relationship with the Ganga. I'm staying in an ashram. It's something else, I tell you.

at the Satyadeep Hotel

2007-11-30T01:12:00.000-08:00

I'm staying in Chandigarh for the next few days so I can finish up some class projects and stuff. The house got way too crowded for me to do any work, so I had to move into a hotel. This is an eye-opener for me because it lets me see an entirely new Chandigarh. The hotel is pretty nice; a bit more expensive than I'd like, but it has all the amenities and is clean. And I'm in a different part of town; it's more upscale here. I found a pub down the street that offers free wifi, so I'm going to try that out tomorrow.

2007-11-27T21:31:00.000-08:00

Sorry about the poor quality of the drawing photos. I've been having a hard time setting up for taking pictures. I'll try to replace them with better photos when I get a chance.

This is just to say
that I'll be around Chandigarh for
a few days,
and then I'll travel
up the Yamuna River to Yamnotri,
so cold and delicious.

So I will be out of contact for a while when I leave.

Creation Story

2007-11-26T22:30:00.000-08:00

This is from a drawing assignment before I left -- I just got around to finishing it.

Hamraj's friend in Sangla

2007-11-26T22:24:00.000-08:00

The Drawing Teacher at Rampur, waiting for the bus

2007-11-26T22:21:00.000-08:00

Sutlej River Blues

2007-11-26T22:17:00.000-08:00

Portrait of Ambika

2007-11-26T22:15:00.001-08:00

Chhitkul

2007-11-26T22:11:00.000-08:00

Today is the 24th, and I'm farther up the Baspa River at Chhitkul, a small village. The natural setting is incredibly beautiful -- I'm at somewhat higher elevation here than Sangla, and it is noticeably colder, so there are little pockets of ice and snow by the river.

Chhitkul has some tourist accomodation, but less so than Sangla, especially now during the off season. I'm debating whether to spend tomorrow here and hike around, or to catch that super-early bus back to Sangla so I can continue on with the trip.

I mentioned in my last post that I wanted to say more about Ram's family. The time I have stayed in Chandigarh, his 5 year old son Shibu and 11 year old daughter Ambika have been good friends to me. Shibu doesn't speak much English, but he is friendly and willing to try to communicate with me in order to get me to play, and Ambika speaks English well, and has taken it upon herself to teach me Hindi. She has taught me a bit, and it helps. We also play chess together, but I think she may not want to anymore, because I keep beating her more quickly each time (which is a shame, because the last time I meant to let her win, and checkmated by accident!). She made Jessie and me a card for Diwali. Ram's wife does not speak much English but she is nice, if shy.

Sangla photos 2

2007-11-26T22:05:00.001-08:00

Ashok is the fellow on the left.

Sangla photos 1

2007-11-26T21:59:00.000-08:00

Sangla 4

2007-11-26T21:58:00.000-08:00

Anyway, to make a long story short, I decided to go back up the Sutlej River and to Sangla by myself this time, so I could get my water samples. I didn't want to go somewhere I hadn't been yet all by myself, because the first round of bus trips were very confusing to me. I was very afraid to do this, but it has turned out fine. The only hitch I had was getting to Karcham too late to catch the last bus or to take a taxi to Sangla, so the bus driver told me to go on to Rekong Peo and spend the night there, and come to Sangla in the morning. He didn't even charge me the extra fare for Rekong Peo. I did that, and it was fine. Rekong Peo was decent, I found a hotel there without trouble, and I was able to catch the direct bus to Sangla with no trouble in the morning.

A few highlights of my solo trip: I stayed the night in Shimla, and in the morning I discovered the Indian Co-operative Coffee House, which was great. The coffee is not as fancy as the other place in town, but it's fair trade, the menu is good, and it's got a lot more style -- waiters in cummerbunds, for example. And the coffee was extremely good for the price.

Between Shimla and Rampur I made a friend on the bus. She was a nurse/beautician going back home to Rampur, and she spoke some English and was very nice to me. She gave me apples, showed me the best lunch spot when we stopped for it, and so on. She tried to get me to stay at her house with her family in Rampur that night; in fact she asked me several times. I declined politely because I wasn't sure how I felt about it. It was a nice offer, but I've heard so much about how Indian people will try to scam me that I felt uncomfortable about it. I still don't know -- I'd like to think it was a friendly offer, and leave it at that.

I have had an easier time on my own making friends with people. I've been cautious because I've heard, as I said, that friendly people will try to scam me, and I've also heard that as a woman traveling alone I might be subject to harassment, but so far my experiences haven't played out that way. I do get some male attention, but it has been unfailingly polite, and I have been able to deflect it. Otherwise, especially here in Sangla, people are friendly and patient, and I have been made to feel at ease wherever I've gone. I went hiking today up to a mountain pass that was nearly at 12,000 feet, and on the way up I met a young man who wanted me to take his picture. I took some photos of him, and then offered to send them to him when I get them developed. He was very eager to have them and anxious for me to send them as soon as possible, and then he invited me to his (nearby) house. This time I agreed to go, and I met his family, who gave me chai and insisted that I eat lunch. I used my paltry Hindi as best as possible and they were happy about it (the fellow I met, Kali Chang, was the only one in his family who spoke much English). They kept sheep in the highlands and were building the house. Kali Chang and his father both do carpentry, and his brother keeps a shop in Sangla.

Anyway, now I'm pretty much caught up, except for everything I left out. I promise more about Chandigarh and Ram's family next.

Sangla 3

2007-11-26T21:57:00.000-08:00

I keep making these posts short because I don't have a long attention span. So here it is, after I've had my big dinner, and I'm posting again. I must have confused 2 different restaurants in my head, because the place I went to didn't have Israeli food or anything like that. The menu was typical of this region -- Chinese and Indian -- but it did have drinks, so I decided to stick around and have something a little nicer than normal plus a drink. I had an incredibly good vegetarian spring roll, chicken curry, and I ordered rum but it was some sort of whiskey. All in all it was pretty good. I had another rum (whiskey) after the meal, with some instant coffee.

This is the first time since I've left Tucson that I had an alcoholic drink, because generally they aren't too inspiring with the drinking here. There are a few Indian beers which I have already tried in the US, plus this weird confusion of hard liquors. I was assuming that they might have a rice wine or something, but the drink menu was strictly Indian. They did have a choice of 'beer' or 'strong beer', and I might have tried one of those, I guess. I hear that there is a local brew, very low in alcohol, called 'chang' that might be fun to try, but I just haven't had a good opportunity. Jessie doesn't drink alcohol, so when we were traveling together everywhere I had no real motivation to try beers or other drinks, and now that I'm traveling alone, I still don't really feel it's a good idea. Today was an exception because of the holiday, and it was quite nice.

I should explain how Jessie and I have parted ways for now. We talked about it the first time we were here in Sangla, because I felt like there was a lot for me to see and learn here, and his project angle turned out to be a disappointment. He wanted to come here in order to photograph some leftover Tibetan Buddhist artifacts, such as stupas, but he found that all of the ones he had seen previously (and had not had the chance to photograph) were gone by now. So he was pretty much in the mood to leave. We stayed for 3 days all together, and then went back to Chandigarh. I would have stayed then, but I wanted to find something I could use to take water samples, and there was nothing to be gotten here.

When we got back to Chandigarh, things changed quite a lot, because Jessie's aunt from the US and his mother showed up. They were trying to get things ready for the wedding. I think I may not have mentioned this yet -- Jessie's sister decided to get married in India, right before the time when we were ready to leave. Therefore a bunch of extended family were coming to stay at the house where Jessie and I had been planning to make our headquarters. He assured me that there would still be room for us there, but it was obvious once the vanguard arrived that I was resented. I spent a rather uncomfortable 4-5 days there, doing research, looking for my water bottles, and trying to help out a little bit around the house, and then Jessie told me that he wanted to go back to the village (that would be the village where he grew up, near but outside Chandigarh) with his mother and do some stuff there.

Sangla 2

2007-11-26T21:56:00.000-08:00

So, I was talking before about Ashok and the Sangla Valley Sustainable Development Society. This is an NGO in partnership with some Swiss Organic Agriculture Institute, and they are big on plans, but they don't have too much accomplished yet. Ashok is a busy bee, though -- he invited me to go with him up to some farm houses high in the valley while he talked to the people living there about what they want to see happen in the valley and how they think they can make it work. They were all speaking Hindi, so I didn't understand much of the conversation, but I did get to look around some households and I enjoyed the experience. A lot of people around here live in very large, multi-storied houses, with the ground level usually housing livestock and the upper ones for living in. The traditional style of architecture is stone and wood in alternating layers, with a high peaked slate roof. Sometimes there are ornately carved wooden beams. It has become the trend rather recently, though, for houses to be built out of concrete with a tin roof. Most of the land is steep, and so is leveled into terraced fields and orchards. People grow apples, barley, walnuts, apricots, and some other stuff that I can't identify. There are footpaths winding up and down the valley.

There is also a lot of trash, in the form of little bits of plastic packaging. This is one of the problems that Sangla grapples with as it grows as a tourist attraction. The state of Himachal Pradesh has banned the use of plastic grocery bags, but there are still plenty of things that the dhabas sell with packaging. Traditionally, people would just throw their garbage into a ditch -- since most of the things they disposed of were organic, this worked fine. But now there is nonbiodegradable plastic waste, and absolutely no infrastructure for collecting and disposing of it. Many people burn trash in order to keep things tidy, but the toxicity of plastic means that's a terrible idea. A large part of the waste is water bottles, so there is some thought to providing filtered water throughout the city so as to cut down on this. It's a nice idea, but I don't know how they will implement it successfully, although I hope they do.

Sangla 1

2007-11-26T21:55:00.000-08:00

Well, I let my regular writing slip for a while because of things I'll explain later, so now I'll try to catch everything up to the present. It is currently the day before Thanksgiving, and I am sitting in a charming, inexpensive hotel room in Sangla, and since the last time I wrote an entry I stopped just before I got to Sangla for the first time, this seems like a good opportunity to write about that.

My whole India attitude before I got to Sangla was best described as 'game'. In other words, I was in very unfamiliar territory, being exposed to things that were mostly a combination of interesting and uncomfortable, and just trying to do the best I could to play my role and to enjoy myself. I had to file most of my experiences under 'to be processed later' since I just didn't have the right kind of perspective to even see if they were good, bad, or OK. But the minute I got off the bus at Sangla, I started genuinely enjoying myself. It was the first place in India that seemed just like a place, not an 'experience'. Part of it was that there are incredible mountains and forests, and evidence of truly rural life here, so I began to feel like there was some breathing room for me, if that makes any sense. There were people on the streets, but there wasn't the kind of hectic crowding that I had been dealing with elsewhere, and the pace of everything seemed much more relaxed. It was also obvious that trekking and nature tourism is a big attraction here, and since those are things that interest me I felt like I fit right in as the kind of tourist they expect around here.

Jessie had wanted to spend 2 nights in Sangla, and one day heading further up the Baspa to Chitkul, but within the first couple of hours I was here, I felt like I wanted to stay longer. I thought about trying to arrange some sort of short, easy trek. When Jessie and I were looking for a lunch spot, I saw a trekking and tours office, so I decided to come back in the afternoon to find it, and I saw that it also said 'Sangla Valley Sustainable Development Society'. I went inside, and that's when I met Ashok. He was minding the store, and his face lit up when I asked him about environmental concerns in Sangla Valley. He offered me tea and handed me a sheet of information about their organization.

I should describe the office, first, I think. It was perched on the second tier of shops in the main bazaar, and I had to climb a rickety, steep metal frame staircase to get there. Inside were several mountaneering trophied, trekking photos, bits of climbing gear, and a relatively new computer. It was easily one of the most appealing offices I've seen so far in India. When I fist showed up, it looked like no one was inside, so I knocked on the door, and Ashok came up from one of the lower shops to let me in. He sat himself behind the desk, short and enthusiastically intense, and sent a teenage boy to get us tea while we talked. I had to corral Jessie and bring him up from below, since it looked like we were going to chat for a bit and Jessie was waiting there.

Rampur Photos

2007-11-26T21:51:00.001-08:00

Rampur 11/16/07

2007-11-26T21:46:00.000-08:00

The experience of taking the bus to Shimla, then Rampur, and up the road was pretty rough. Every bus was crowded and it was hard to figure out which bus went where. I got my first view of the Sutlej River at Rampur, where we stayed one night, and it seemed cold and foreboding. Rampur was extremely crowded due to Diwali, and we had some trouble finding a hotel room. There was dirt and rubbish everywhere and above all a throng of people in the narrow streets. Everybody was buying or selling, and the main road was crammed with vehicles and reeking of exhaust fumes. At night people were setting off Diwali explosions, and it sounded like a war zone.

The Sutlej River runs through town, but there isn't much access to it since the valley is so steep. There's a bridge connecting one side of town to the other, and a path that parallels but is quite far above the river. I could stand on the bridge, or sit on a bench near the Buddhist Temple, and look down on it, but I couldn't get to the water itself. Taking a water sample would have been out of the question even if I had the right equipment. Instead I spent time watching the water, trying to get a feel for this river, and assessing the plant and animal life. Since I don't know much about flora and fauna of India, this mostly involved photographing different plants and counting bird species. The only immediate thing I can say about that is Rampur has a strange flora -- there are a lot of Eucalyptus trees, which are definitely not native, but seem to be well established.

Shimla Pictures

2007-11-14T20:58:00.001-08:00

Shimla

2007-11-14T20:45:00.000-08:00

I just got back from Himachal Pradesh, investigating water issues in the Himalayas, and it was a mixed bag. We only spent a week total, instead of the 2 weeks that we had tentatively planned, but I am thinking of going back to get some water samples, if I can find bottles for that. Anyway, here's a recap (in parts):

Shimla

We left on the day after I last posted and got on a bus for Shimla. Jessie took motion sickness pills (which put him to sleep), because the road is quite twisty and rough, and we were packed in the bus like sardines, so I didn't get to see much or talk to anyone while on the bus. We went from the plains into the foothills of the Himalayas. The most obvious differences were that we were now in a pine forest, and the weather was cooler. The air was only a bit cleaner, which was disappointing.

I suppose Shimla would be just another little valley hovel if not for the British, who built it up considerably. It is currently a tourist town, and the tourism is mostly domestic. When we were were there, it was during Diwali, so the town was packed. (Diwali is a big Hindu holiday. People are supposed to put lights in the windows, and they set off fireworks, which would be nice but they mostly do the loud explosion kind rather than the pretty lights kind. Anyway, it's a VERY big holiday, and lasts for three days.) The main street is called the mall, and it has a lot of fancy shops (including an excellent coffee shop).

The only other thing I have to say about Shimla is that there were a lot of monkeys there. They have signs that say something like "Help combat the monkey menace -- do not feed monkeys".

Chandigarh 11/07

2007-11-14T07:02:00.000-08:00

We'll be leaving (finally) for Shimla later today, and I won't have a guaranteed opportunity for internet access until we get back.

Yesterday I went to the Rock Garden. The Rock Garden is a feature that was not planned – a man named Nek Chand (?) started building it in the forest on the outskirts of town. He lived in a little hut out there, and collected bits of broken ceramics, wires, bottle caps, and other odds, which he used to assemble in the most fantastic shapes and landscapes. The walls and banks are adorned with strange figurative creatures, and also with abstract forms of volcanic rock. It's an absolutely incredible example of what I guess they call outsider art. It's rather like the yin to the city's yang of modernity and organization.

I met a man in the British Library yesterday who was quite old. He sat beside me and asked if I was British. When I told him I was an American, he started telling me about his wife who was also American, and from there he told me many interesting stories. He said that he has traveled extensively in America and Europe, and met many famous people while doing so. He told me a story about meeting Albert Einstein, and also Pearl S. Buck. I have no idea whether his stories were true, but they were well told, and he was certainly old enough to have met Einstein before his death (1955). I enjoyed listening to him. I drew a picture of him.

Chandigarh 1 (Nov 4)

2007-11-14T06:55:00.000-08:00

I've been here a couple of days now and am getting a little more used to things. We are staying in a 3-bedroom house that belongs to Jessie's family on his father's side. It is part of a larger building that has 2 or 3 residencies with separate entrances. There is a back yard that we share with various others, particularly Rom's family.

Rom (I'm not sure how to spell his name) takes care of this house when it is empty. He sees to the yard and the main rooms. The bedrooms were locked off separately when we first arrived, so they were pretty dusty, but when we got here he brought us tea and cookies and swept out the rooms. His wife has been cooking some of our meals. He has 2 children, a son and daughter, and his father lives with them as well. His father used to be a tailor, but I think he is essentially retired. Rom works as a technical consultant for the government, I think.

I went out yesterday to do some looking around, and I have to say that I am quite impressed with Chandigarh, especially the residential areas. There is much harmony between the open spaces and the buildings. The streets are laid out in a very easy to navigate grid. I took some pictures of the residential area in my sector, and I'll try to post those soon.

The traffic is a bit alarming. There are many cars, and also a lot of these motor driven rickshaw things, and on top of that there are plenty of bicycles and bicycle rickshaws. People drive without much regard to things like signs or road markings.

Kaliyah drawing

2007-11-06T21:45:00.000-08:00

Kaliyah is tha name of the 5-headed serpent demon that Krishna found polluting the Yamuna River in the Bhagavata-purana.

Rock Garden, part 2

2007-11-06T21:39:00.001-08:00

Nek Chand Rock Garden

2007-11-06T21:30:00.000-08:00

2007-11-06T21:26:00.000-08:00

I've been writing posts on my computer, and then transferring the files at cyber cafes, but sometimes they don't have what I need exactly. To make a long story short, I have a couple of posts that I may not be able to put up right now, but I can and will do pictures, including a drawing.

Hong Kong Photos

2007-11-04T05:55:00.000-08:00

2007-11-04T05:49:00.000-08:00

Date: Thursday, November 1, 2007 10:50:51 PM
Topic: As of 11/03, Friday

We're here, after 5 days of travel. A lot of the travel was actually in the US. Our plane left out of San Francisco on Wednesday night, and we decided to drive from Tucson. I have never been to San Francisco before, so I got to be a tourist in 3 countries in 2 days, since we had a layover in Hong Kong and decided to check it out a bit.

I haven't been here long enough to make any intelligent observations about India. I know that Chandigarh was designed after independence, and was intended to be India's most modern city. Le Courbusier, famous modernist architect, designed it in a top-down sort of way. It's gotten shabby in 50 years, but it is advertised as 'The City Beautiful' on its sign, and I have to agree that it is a rather nice looking city under the surface neglect.

We got to Delhi in the middle of the night and I didn't see much of it. I don't think I'm ready to see it, to be honest -- what little I saw was daunting. Everything was filthy, including the air. There is still a smell of burning here in Chandigarh, but in Delhi it was like I was in the middle of a fire. It was pretty strange to think that the last city I had been in outside of the airport before that was Hong Kong -- they were worlds apart.

We spent about 4 hours in Hong Kong. We took the bus to the city center and wandered, checking out the sheer swanky commercialism of it all. We also visited the park in the city center, and that was pretty nice.

That's it for now -- I have to sleep of some of this jet lag. We'll be here in Chandigarh for the next few days while we plan our Himalaya trip.

Itenerary for part 1 of the trip:

2007-10-30T15:38:00.001-07:00

We leave Nov 1, and then it's:

Chandigarh, ~ 4 days

Himachal Pradesh, Sangla, Chitkul, etc ~ 2 weeks

Introduction

2007-08-24T15:33:00.000-07:00

Hello and welcome to my Sangat Project blog. I will be using this space to post research about Indian art, culture and history, project updates, travelogue entries, and coursework related posts.