Keylong

Now I'm resting in Keylong before moving on to Spiti. I enjoyed my short stay here on the way to Leh, and I'm enjoying it again now.
Today I heard the sound of a beating drum and followed it until I found a secondary school. As a few students played music, two regiments of students - one boys and one girls - marched around the schoolyard. I was quite horrified by what looked like a very militaristic way of schooling children. I later was invited into the school by some teachers, and they explained that the students are training for the district-wide tournaments held next week where all the schools of Lahaul compete. The marching is merely for the opening ceremony.
They also compete in sports (I watched some excellent Lauhauli girls practice volleyball), declarations (speeches), and cultural shows. I also got to watch students practice one of these performances - singing, dancing, and music. I was surprised that they actually had boys and girls dancing together. Actually, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. This is Himachal Pradesh, after all, a state known for being exceedingly more liberal and progressive, especially on issues of social and gender equality - than most of India.
That said, the teachers, though very friendly towards me, still acted somewhat obnoxiously patriarchal. They sent a schoolgirl to go get me tea, and then they smoked cigarettes in the schoolyard in front of students.
But I spent a pleasant 2 hours at the school, talked to several teachers, and students, and am glad that I went.

When people ask where I'm from, I never know exactly what to say. Do I say "America", "The US", "The USA", "The United States", or "The United States of America"? My country has such a stupid, long name. How bout something nice and succinct like "India" or "France"?
I usually say "America" since it's short and easy. But today I got an interesting response:
"Oh I see. North America or South America?"

Manali to Leh Road, and Leh, Ladakh

I'm pretty behind on this blog and have a lot of catching up to do.

Since I last wrote, I've been to Ladakh and back.

The Manali-Leh road greatly varies in quality. In some places it is newly paved and makes for excellent driving. In other places, it is dirt, or rock, or sand, and makes for a very bumpy ride. In several places, the road has been washed out by streams, which must be forded by vehicles. Being in a jeep made that easier, but even our jeep got stuck in a river crossing, and we had to get out and push it across!
I wasn't originally planning to take a jeep, but some others had organized a trip and offered me a seat, and I figured it would be worth it to see what all the fuss was about.
It was pretty expensive because they arranged to have the trip take 3 days instead of the usual 2 (or even 1!). As a result, we had a very relaxed journey, with no more than 6-7 hours of driving a day. We were able to stop frequently for breaks and photos. I rode with Ania, from Poland, and Nico, from France, who together help run the Learning from Ladakh NGO. James, a geography teacher from England, was also along for the ride.
The road crosses 4 big mountain passes in its 475 km from Manali to Leh.
First we rise out of the green Manali valley, shrouded in mist, up from 2000 meters to the 3800 m (13,048 ft) Rohtang Pass. It is a zoo! Thousands upon thousands of Indian tourists come here to experience their first snow. The whole pass area is a giant disneyland of winter activities - skiing, sledding, dog sledding, snowmobiling, horseback riding, yaks, etc.
It's a giant tourist trap and hectic as hell, but interesting nonetheless for the cultural phenomenon that it is.
As can be expected, the route up to Rohtang from Manali is crowded with tourist vehicles. It's one traffic jam after another as cars zoom up the mountainside and negotiate the hairpin curves with wild abandon, despite all the warning signs spouting hokey safety slogans.
Some choice examples:

"Be Mr. Late, Not Late Mr."
"Drive Like Hell, You Will Be There."
"After Whisky, Driving Risky."
"Safety On Road Means Safe Tea At Home."
"This Is Highway, Not Runway."
"No Hurry, No Worry"

After Rohtang, the traffic suddenly disappears, and we descend into Lahaul Valley. We spend the first night in Keylong, the largest city and administrative hq of Lahaul district. Next day it's a long climb up to 16,016 ft Baralacha La ("La" means pass), a rocky expanse and a double pass where four valleys actually meet. 20,000 ft peaks rise all around and snowfields and glaciers extend as far as the eye can see. From here on there are no permanently inhabited villages until Ladakh.
There are, however, seasonal tent camps where travelers can get food, spend the night, and show their passports to the military checkpoints. There are also numerous military bases up in these mountains, as we are getting close to sensitive borders with Pakistan and China.

The valley opens up into a green plateau with a turquoise river carving out a valley that looks like something out of Montana or Nebraska. Then we climb 22 hair-raising hairpin curves to the 16,597 ft Lachlang La. From here it's a rocky wasteland. No signs of vegetation or life. Just barren high desert. Rock and ice.
Then we descend through a gorge that looks like something out of Arizona and reach the tent camp of Pang where we spend the second night. We all sleep together, along with the Ladakhi family who runs the tent, in a big tent with lots of blankets. At 15,000 feet, it's the highest place I've ever slept.

Next day we rise up on top of a great expanse of plains. There are some seasonal nomads here. Finally we ascend the fourth and tallest of the passes - the second highest motorable pass in the world - Taglang La, at 17,476 feet.
Then we descend into a charming river valley with Ladakhi villages. The road improves, and soon we're zooming along a modern paved highway to Leh.

Leh is the capital of Ladakh, which is part of the troubled and wartorn Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Ladakh, however, is not a site of violence. It is far enough away from the Pakistan border for that. In fact, it is far away from everything. It is sealed off from the world for 8 months of the year by the two highest passes in the world (although there is an airport connecting it to the outside world in winter).
It is culturally and geographically part of Tibet, and is, indeed, known as "Little Tibet". Maybe more Tibetan the real Tibet, since the Chinese never got here (though they would probably like to...they already seized the nearby Aksai Chin from India in the 1962 Sino-Indian War)
There are lots of Tibetan influences here, lots of gompas (monasteries), chortens (stupas, or giant whitewashed family gravestones), and prayer flags. Older folk where traditional clothes, but younger folk dress thoroughly modernly, just like Tibetans in Dharamsala.
Leh itself is a bustling city, and the level of development and commercialization here is of grave concern to many. It is the subject of the documentary film Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh, which I saw before I came here (it is shown to undergraduates in the geography department) and is shown daily by the NGO that Ania and Nico run, followed by a discussion.

I suffered some serious side effects of AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) for three days after arrival in Leh - headaches, nausea, and intense fatigue. I barely exerted myself but felt exhausted and slept (or tried to sleep) much of the day
Little appetite. Couldn't really enjoy my surroundings, though they were spectacular.
Leh is at 11,500 feet and along the Indus River Valley. It is an oasis of green in a desert of brown. Although there is very little rain (it falls in the rainshadow behind the Himalaya, protected from the monsoon rains), glacial melt feeds streams and irrigation channels watering small family farms.
Leh is a big tourist destination, and there are hundreds of guesthouses. Some of them practice sound environmental practices (which the Ladakhis have used for years) such as composting toilets, solar showers, and serve organic homegrown food.
Apples, apricots are big here.

Ladakh is a big center for trekking but Leh is far away from Himachal Pradesh, where I am focusing my research, and after about a week I felt I should move on. This time, I took the public bus instead of a jeep. It cost $11 as opposed to $88.

THere had been a great amount of snowfall on both sides of Taglang La.
The slopes all around us were all blanketed in a fresh layer of
powdery snow, but fortunately the road remained open.

I got a seat in the front, and it was surprisingly comfortable. Not as much leg room or room to stretch out as the jeep, of course, but the ride itself was not nearly as bumpy as I had been lead to believe. I don't know about the people in the back of the bus, but up in the front it was more or less smooth sailing. The bus is a pretty powerful vehicle, too, able to climb those steep slopes and rocky stretches without difficulty. Where our jeep had trouble crossing that rocky stream, the bus just drove right across without a problem. We left Leh at 5am and drove all day to reach Keylong by 9pm. We had a slight delay getting out of Leh. 20 minutes out we stopped at a service station to fix a flat tire, and it took over an hour just to pressurize the tire because the station had such low pressure in the hose.
There was an old Ladakhi lady on the bus. She must have been 100 years old. I don't know what she was doing traveling, and she seemed to be all alone. She got sick and started throwing up, and the English and Italian folks on the bus took care of her and made the bus driver stop so she could recover. The Englishman got into something of an altercation with the bus driver because he did not want to stop. He yelled at the driver "Be a good Muslim. One day you too will be old and sick."

McLeod Ganj (Dharamsala)

To get here, 10.5 hours spent on 4 different buses and with 2 flat tires. Saw the Dalai Lama my first morning in town.

An old hill station, McLeod Ganj is now home to the Tibetan government in exile, as well as thousands of Tibetan refugees who trekked across the Himalaya on foot to escape from China's brutal occupation.

They don't necessarily look like "refugees" though. The community here, for the most part, is extremely modern. Young Tibetan women stroll down the streets in tank tops and miniskirts and high heels, or jeans and abercrombie and fitch and hollister tshirts. It's not like anything else in India. Tibetans are the clear majority here (I did a pedestrian traffic count to ascertain this). There are some Indians but they are all either tourists or in the tourism service sector. There are also large numbers of foreign tourists, from all over the world. Many more Americans here than anywhere else in India. Many of them stay here a long time, and engage in any of the many courses offered. You can study the sitar or tablas, or yoga, or meditation, or Tibetan cooking, or volunteer. There are lots of monks too, but they are thoroughly modern as well, toting cell phones, sporty sunglasses, and hanging out in the cafes and internet cafes. The food here is excellent. There is Mexican, Italian, Japanese, lots of organic, vegetarian.

Even though we're up in the mountains, it has gotten quite hot here, with highs in the 90s expected in the next couple days. India is under a heat wave right now, and it's 118 degrees down in Delhi. Dozens of people have already died from the heat and dozens (or hundreds) more in the violence and rioting that's been spreading across North India. One of the ethnic groups is demanding that they be added to the backward classes designation, because then they would be eligible for affirmative action programs like the other lower castes are. They have forced the closure of major roads, railways across Rajasthan with the violence spilling into Delhi in the last couple days. Tourism in Rajasthan has come to a standstill, and an article I saw today blames the violence for the noticeable decline in tourism across India and in Himachal Pradesh this summer.

If this heat wave persists, then I shouldn't have to worry about the mountain passes opening up in time.
If all goes well, I'll be able to cross over into the rain shadow deserts of the trans-Himalayan plateau just as the monsoon rolls up here.

As I said before, the mix of people here makes for fascinating people watching. The place is on Free-Tibet overload. Everywhere you go is information about Tibet and the human rights catastrophe there. I am as sympathetic to the Free Tibet cause as anybody, but I've found the attitudes of some of the foreigners here a bit close minded. Many of them refuse to even travel to China and sound surprised when I tell them I was there. I suppose that's there right. But I try to explain that while the Chinese government may be evil, that doesn't mean the Chinese people are. But in short, China is not high on most peoples' list of favorite countries here.

My laptop had an accident and now it won't start up, so I'm without laptop for the rest of my trip. As a result, I probably won't be uploading any more photos until I get home. And I probably won't update this blog as frequently, either.

Jari and the Parvati Valley

I had to get out of Manali. I was starting to feel stifled. Even if it was probably the best place to conduct my research (being as there are probably more foreign tourists there than anywhere else concentrated in one place), I had to get out. I’ll be back later, as it’s on the way to other places I want to go. But for now I had to get out. Manali is a “scene” and although I thought it might be a scene that appealed to me, it doesn’t. Every business fits into neat categories:

a) Hippie clothes and hippie paraphernalia b) Guesthouse and/or café c) Travel agent and/or internet cafe d) Convenience store e) “German” bakery f) Laundromat But that’s not what didn’t appeal to me. I’m fine with all that, although it does strike me as a bit amusing that the hippie shops look exactly the same and sell exactly the same stuff as the hippie shops you find on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, or Haight Street in San Francisco, or Venice Beach, or wherever else hippie culture presides in the US of A. It kind of makes me wonder: which came first? In both places, the shops are obviously selling an version of “Indianness” designed specially for Western tastes. But did it begin.

So now I’m in Jari, a little village perched high up the side of the Parbati Valley, about four hours and two bus rides southeast of Manali. It’s nice and quiet here. That’s at least what the book said, and it is more or less true. This is a real working village, can’t be more than a few hundred residents. Women work in the fields and tend livestock. Men work in construction, of which there is a lot. It’s all by relatively traditional means, though: cutting stone and slate tablets by hand, and cutting wood by a simple saw blade. Those are still the building materials here—stone and wood—and I think it’s better for it. Even though it’s a small village it has a school, and during my morning stroll I see all the schoolchildren preparing for school – the girls brushing their long hair, or tying each other’s hair in pigtails. Wheat fields and apple orchards surround the village. There is a hydroelectric plant a couple km up the river. You can often hear the buzz of the generators from a distance. This is supposedly a reason why tourism here is not bigger than it is. I don’t see the villagers complaining, though. You can bet they appreciate the reliable source of electricity.

On my first day in the village I thought I was the only tourist here. My guesthouse was very quiet and I was the only person out and about. There are two other guesthouses in the village and they seemed quiet too. As nice as it was, then, I realized I’d have to move on soon because I wouldn’t get any interviews here. The next morning, however, I met an Australian in my guesthouse, and an Israeli girl in one of the others. She was traveling alone, which is unusual for Israelis, but I’m glad for it because it proves that not all stereotypes are true, so I decided to stay because I thought I’d be able to get two interviews out of it. Two interviews in a day is really a good rate, because there will be many days in which I don’t get any interviews. This whole interview business is much more difficult than I had anticipated. For instance, chatting casually with the Australian was easy, but when I asked him if I could interview him, he declined. I tried to assure him that it would be informal and not at all intimidating or invasive, but he still said he’d rather not. I hadn’t really counted on that. But it’s certainly his right to decline. The onus is on me to find people and convince them that they should spend an hour of their life helping me with my thesis.

The challenge in finding interview subjects is that, although in places like Manali there are lots of foreign tourists, I can’t just approach people out of the blue and ask to interview them. I first have to get to know them, chat on a casual basis. Only then can I take the next step and ask to interview them. It takes time to reach that level, and given the time of day or the setting, it’s often not possible to conduct the interview right then and there, so I have to set up an “appointment” to do it later. And goodness knows, these travelers are not exactly the type to be keeping appointments while they’re on their vacation. So it often boils down to me trying to stake them out at their guesthouse, looking for an opportunity to conduct an interview, usually without success. I know that I’m here on a working vacation, and that my goal is to obtain interviews, but being here, I also want to be partaking in what there is to do…go hiking, etc. But it’s difficult to get interviews when you’re off hiking. Then again, if everyone else is off hiking, it’s difficult to get interviews by staying around the village. Oh, the woes of field research! ☺

At least I have my laptop, though, so I can theoretically be productive, reading and writing while I sit around all day. I brought several PDFs of journal articles I’d been meaning to read but hadn’t gotten around to. Other than that, though, a laptop is definitely not as fun when you can’t go online. I realize how many hours I spend online when I do have a connection.

I’ve been in Jari three days now. It is beautiful and peaceful up here. And I’ve managed to get my first interview with a girl, and with an Israeli. I’ve also met several long term travelers/hippies/freaks who live in India most of the year for many years. One was a British woman, 36, who has been coming here every year since she was 18. One is a German man who first came here 25 years ago, married an Indian woman 20 years ago, and has lived here ever since. And one is a German-French-Spanish man who was in prison for three years in Spain and now lives alternatively in the mountains and in Goa and had some very interesting conspiracy stories about how the US forced India to shut down the rave parties in Goa because, according to him, the US thought it had killed the hippie movement already, and when it saw that the hippies were carrying on in India, the US got mad and made sure the Indians stopped the hippies from having any more fun. Apparently, according to him, every Indian policeman who arrests a foreigner for drug possession gets $200 straight from the US government.

Everywhere I go people are surprised that I, being an American, am here in India. It seems to be a very uncommon thing. (I encountered far more Americans in China than I have in India).

I made daytrips to two towns further up the Parvati Valley, but I liked neither one as much as Jari. Kasol is a crowded, dirty travelers town full of hippies. Manikaran has some nice hot springs, in which I bathed. But they are too hot! I could only stay in the water for a few seconds. I don't know how the locals do it! It's way hotter than the hottest hot tub I've ever been in.