going south

leh -->spangmik -->leh -->rishikesh

i think i spent too long in ladakh. it was beautiful, as i remembered it to be, but unfortunately much more spoiled than last time. it's sad in places like that, where you can actually see them disintegrating in front of you. delhi is crappy, but it's not sad because it's so crappy that it seems right for it to be that way. one plastic coca-cola bottle is much more upsetting in the wild remoteness of ladakh than a pile of garbage is in pahar ganj. i guess it's all relative. o the wonders of development! but enough complaints... it was a peaceful time, as long as i sat in the huge garden of my far-off guesthouse eating homemade apricot jam and forgetting about the bands of trekkers, travellers and local rubbish strewers. garbage really, really sucks.

then, maybe because i'd been lazy in leh for too long and my mind won't allow such relaxation, i started heading south on the same road i came up on. i left my guesthouse at 9 pm, slept in some random woman's livingroom for a few hours and got up at 3 for my bus. the stars were so bright that night i left.

in the 2 weeks it has been since i headed north there was an explosion of plantlife. from the tanglangla pass onwards the former moonscape was literally carpetted in miniature wildflowers. it seemed like a miracle, and it is, and it's also just what happens. there was one meadow that can only be described as "purple and sheepy". i saw 5 himalayan marmots standing on their back feet all in a row. another highlight was the sighting of a prehistoric condor. 16 hours later i was in keylong. dinner, a little sleep, then up again at 3 and on the road.

things became incredibly green and lush as i continued my descent. it was amazing to see the change from brown, barren, buddhist ladakh into the fecund, muddy, crazy, hindoo himachal. ate a lot of crappy roadside food. looked after a little fluffy black puppy who someone was taking on the bus, tied up under one of the seats. watched the apple orchards and fields of ganja blur on past me. arrived in chandigarh at 9:30, an hour break for dinner and off we go.

a strange, hallucinatory night drifting in and out of dreams. lightning. rain so strong we had to stop so i could get my backpack off the roof. a very heated argument between some men who got on... finally we arrived in haridwar at 6 in the morning. i walked with my soggy bag to the ganga.

after an hour of walking in the rain and early morning muck, it became apparent that all of haridwar was full of hindoo tourists. so i went back to the bus stand, a little over an hour ride to rishikesh, and here i lay.

it was one of those stupid things i do sometimes, i real breaking journey for no reason. but in the end it didn't feel so bad. i laughed a lot and i think the bus conductor really thought i was nuts. my body still hasn't recovered but i'm happy somehow. happy to be back in the "real" india with it's horns and squalor and mess. happy to have a view of the ganga from my room. happy and sad because i know i'm leaving it all very very soon.

higher education

amritsar--> katra (vaishno devi and shiv kori yatras)--> sanasar--> kishtwar--> gulabgarh--> kilar--> keylong--> leh

from over here, far and away, i am noticing a general cry amongst my compatriots back home: everyone is going back to school. i understand the urge very greatly, as undergrad was in so many ways unsatisfying. it seemed most of us got thrown into the rigours (or lack thereof) of university life without a moment to really think what we were doing. decisions were forced by beaurocratic deadlines leading many of us strange paths. latin? art history? theatre? hilarious. as for myself, i thank university only for the following three things:

1. the chance to live on the beautiful west coast of canada

2. the people who taught me, and most of them weren't professors

3. samuel beckett

these were things that started picking at the walls around my heart. they made cracks so that i could see that light was on the other side. india then proceeded to take a sledgehammer to those walls.

and what of india? another trip almost under my belt. i'm seeing more and more that actually being in india is not the journey; the journey is internal. i've been hard-travelling through the mountains looking for peace and only rarely finding it. between hyperactive hindoos, physical malfunctions, landslides and (worst of all) my own wretched mind, i have been feeling that pilgrimage must be an action of the soul, not the body. i hope that all of my dears going back into the education system are feeling the same way about their programs. the real lessons we are trying to learn are not contained in countries or classrooms. they are free and available to anyone willing to seek them. these are just the means we go by.

i'm above 3500 masl and for the moment that's the only higher education i can imagine for myself. maybe this is all just the AMS talking. i'm not going to get any letters after my name or a good job for my efforts. i just have to rest on the faith that there's something else for me.

om hari om hari om