Sally's blog

People always say that when it comes to India, you either love it or hate it. Considering that I decided to come and spend almost 3 months travelling around ‘incredible india’ without trialling the above theory, it is very lucky that I love it. Here are just some of the things I love about India.

As a necessity of life, food is very important. As a person who thoroughly enjoys eating out, food is very important. I have been able to indulge on things like masalas, chais, dosas, iddlys, sambal, lassis, pakoras, vindaloos, thukpas, momos, biryani, ice creams, coconut curries, achaars and pickles, local fish, aloo, paratha, curd, rotis, kebabs, tandoor, thalis, pulao, naans, jalfrizis, daal, koftas, paneer channa, fruit and lots and lots of rice. And doesn’t my waistline know it.

banana leaf dinners

I say this about every country I go to, but I do love the people here. The kids are curious, the women are shy and kind and the men are so eager to help. I especially love being able to capture a smile on camera, which is very rare as majority of Indians seem to put on a very serious look when posing for a photo, like the time when a group of young pilgrims ran up with extreme excitement begging that I take a photo of them, once the camera was held up each one of them looked as though he was having a mugshot taken. The people here make me smile all the time.

a rare smile

the pilgrim mugshot

India does colour well. On the streets you get to see things like groups of women in their various saris looking like a giant fruit bowl, temples and their idols painted in colours from a children’s book, houses in vibrant pinks or lime green, market sellers with trays of spices or tika powders, hawkers trying to sell you carpets and bed sheets in ‘many colours madame’, and they are right, you can buy a bed sheet in any colour of the rainbow or in all the colours of the rainbow at once if you want.

colours of the markets

There is barely a street that you walk down in India that doesn’t have a temple or statue of an idol to worship, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Buddhist. But there are two that I have come across in my travels that have really amazed me with their beauty. The Golden Temple in Amritsar is a Sikh temple that attracts thousands of pilgrims every month. In the middle of an ordinary, dirty looking Indian city are the marble walls that hide a man made lake which surrounds and reflects the gold plated temple and the hundreds of barefooted people in their saris and turbans who go there to worship. The second temple is in another dirt and ordinary city down in the south, Sri Meenakshi Temple in Madurai. A Hindu temple built to worship the goddess Meenakshi, built with 12 towers of colourful and intricate carvings of all the Hindu gods and idols, like Ganesh riding his rat, the Gatekeepers, and a scene showing the entire wedding party of Shiva and Meenakshi. I could have spent hours looking at this temple.

a shimmering golden temple

rainbows of meenakshi

There is a god that is an elephant, who is only an elephant because his mother cut of his head as a child and felt so guilty that she replaced it with the head of the first creature she saw, there is a monkey man god who fights battles and a blue baby who is worshiped. This is Hinduism. Well, that’s not all that Hinduism is but these are some of the 330 million Hindu deities that are worshiped throughout the country. You can find carvings, pictures and statues in bright colours with the cartoon looking faces of Krishna, Vishnu, Ganesh, Parvartti, Shiva, Hanuman, Devi, Lakshmi and of the other 329million or so, all covering temples, home shrines, car windows and even jewellery. I’ll miss the vibrancy of Hinduism when I leave India.

gods on parade

Chaos. With the second largest population in the world you get lots and lots of chaos. There is always activity, always people, always traffic, and it makes the country feel alive. With this amount of chaos there are constantly delays and jams and I understand that as a expat living with it each day this would not be so amazing, but as a backpacker it gives me the opportunity to slow down and watch people, to smile at the kids and to have conversations with the locals.

That’s what I like about India.

I have a confession; I am not the same backpacker I was in my younger years.

THEN: I would stay in dodgy little hostels in the backstreets of hell and stay in a dorm with a bed next to a Scotsman fresh out of prison (true story) if it meant it would save me a few extra pennies. It never bothered me to get woken up at 3am or to hear the drunk couple fooling around in the bed in the corner because I could survive on 3 hours sleep a night and the extra cash would let me have a few extra drinks at the pub.

NOW:I no longer have the ability to share a dorm with 12 other backpackers, I can’t think of anything worse than being woken up by people coming back drunk or hearing them get up and pack to get that 5am train. Don’t wake me up, I really need my beauty sleep nowadays and I don’t have the ability to share a bathroom with other residents so I find myself very happy to pay the extra 100rupees for the private room with a private bathroom.

THEN: I was happy to eat cheap and nasty food, never mind the calorie content or even the taste, all in the same of budgeting to allow an extra vodka that night.

NOW: I don’t want to survive on deep fried street foods like samosas and pakoras for each and every meal. I prefer to eat something that can be classified as food, something a little healthy and finding a decent, healthy meal here in India is tricky enough without restricting the cost. And besides, there aren’t that many bars to be spending my money at.

THEN: 15hour bus rides with the locals, sure. 27hours in cattle class on a train, why not? Reach my train station at 3am and sleep on the street til the hotel opens it’s doors, that’ll be a fun adventure….

NOW: No, no, no. If there is no second class sleeper train tickets then I will get the deluxe-luxury bus please, and if there is no bus then I will fly. I don’t care if its only 60km away. But seriously, I will only get a 2^nd class train ticket as I like having that little bit of privacy, I like not having the locals sit and watch me like I’m the in-flight movie or waking up to 5 men pointing their camera phones at me. As for the buses, it’s deluxe all the way, I don’t want to share any more trips with a herd of goats.

THEN: The hotel is 3km away from the train station but a cab will cost 5pounds. The obvious answer used to be ‘walk it’. I was young and fit and healthy and didn’t have a bad back and was on a tight budget, I could deal with walking with my 18kg worth of possessions on my back.

NOW: Oh, the hotel is 500m down that way? Let’s get a rickshaw. I am older now and my back is sore and my knees hurt and my 16kg worth of luggage is feeling really heavy. Let’s pay to have someone else carry us and our luggage directly to the door of our accommodation.

I am certainly not the young backpacker I was. I am lucky that I have chosen to travel through such an affordable country that allows me these extra little luxuries in my old age.

Off to Mcleod ganj, the home-in-exile of the Tibetan Government and of the Dalai Lama. Wouldn’t it be awesome to meet the Dalia Lama in his home town! But everything we had read about trying to meet him said that he was never in Mcleod Ganj at this time of year, it’s winter and he usually heads off to do good deeds in warmer climates, so we were resigned to the fact that we were there at the wrong time. Defeat. Oh well, still plenty of interesting things to do here.

Walking around town, Lyrian points out that there are all these posters written in Russian. Using the language skills she acquired whilst living in Russia she worked out that for the first time ever, the Dalai Lama was giving 3 days of teachings to Russian Buddhists, beginning the next day.
Our roller coaster of emotion that began at defeat slowly starts to rise to surprise and excitement as we realise that he is here, against the odds he is actually here in town, but plummets to frustration because we aren’t Russian and can’t register to attend any of the teachings. This turns to optimism as we think about the fact that, surely, the Dalai Lama wouldn’t exclude anyone from his talks, it’s not his style, maybe there is a way for us to sneak in.
Elation next as Lyrian practices her Russian to ask where other foreigners register. We have to walk back up the hill with 2 passport photos, passports and a completed form and simply be handed a pass to get us into any or all of the teachings over the next 3 days. Disbelief, excitement, anticipation. We are actually going to be able to sit and listen to the Dalai Lama give teachings on Buddhism! This is so cool.

The next morning we got up early and had breakfast and walked to the monastery to take up our positions. We managed to find a spot on the ground amongst a few hundred Tibetan Monks. In all directions, all you could see was red robes and shaved heads with a few scatterings of foreigners. It was quite a scene, very humbling.
And then there was a hush, the 14th Dalai Lama walked past, shaking hands, saying hellos, the usual red carpet scene. Oh my god, I just saw the Dalai Lama in the flesh, wow he looks exactly like his photos.
He takes up his place in the front of the temple, unfortunately we can’t see him from our spot on the concrete, but that doesn’t matter. He starts the first teaching, based on his thoughts of human nature, compassion, inner happiness. All the basics of Buddhist philosophy, material things will not bring you true happiness, consciously increasing positive emotions and consciously decreasing your negative emotion, the need for more compassion throughout the human race, serving others will lead you to happiness. His closing was ‘serve others, and if you can’t serve others then do no harm to others’. Very simple. There wasn’t much I hadn’t heard or read before, but to hear it all from the man himself was such a treat. Something I’ll never forget.

Due to our tight schedule (so much to see, so little time) we didn’t go to any of the other teachings, but I’m ok with that because I got to hear the Dalai Lama speak about compassion!