Do It Again

Today has been incredible. I took a local bus for a few hours from Bhuntar, where I arrived at 3 in the morning and wandered around in the dark (with stray dogs howling and following me), to Manikaran. Buried in the hills of the Parvati valley, the bus drove around steep cliffs where it was a rock face on one side, and a raging brown serpent of a river on the other. Riding atop the bus for the first hour, lurching with the tons of metal going around cliffs, while chatting with locals and feeling the fresh wind in your hair is indescribably awesome. The second hour, when things got steeper, the driver crammed everyone inside. Being packed like sardines is an experience for everyone to have once, and having hindi hip-hop pop blaring as the soundtrack just adds to it.

Upon arrival in Manikaran, I found the a guest house and dropped my stuff and began wandering. Manikaran is famous for its hot springs, and resulting Shiva and Sikh temple. The town is mostly a pilgrimage site, and most of the shops are for devotional objects and food. Sadhus wander the town (religious men who have given up worldly possessions and beg to get by), with a combination of huge wrapped dreadlocks into a cone, or beardlocks, or both.

It is said Parvati and Shiva meditated here for over 11000 years. One day a jewel fell from Parvati's ear into the water of the raging mountain river, and Shiva was furious when his disciples couldn't find it; his third eye opened. At that moment, the king of the serpents appeared, and hissing, brought fourth the jewel, among many others, and the hot water. His anger vanished from this moment. Manikaran is a sanscrit word, deriving from mani - jewel - and karan - ear - , so jewel of the ear - Manikaran. The water is said to have healing powers and ranges in temp from 88 to 94 degrees C. Upon stepping into the temple, one notices people boiling rice and walnuts in the sulfurous hot springs. Upon being blessed and respecting the Shiva statue, you are fed rice cooked in the hot springs. Pilgrims travel all over to collect this water, cook in it, and bathe in it. This is not a western place.
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I wonder if there is an inherent superiority based on being "western," ie european or americans holding mosre wealth than the third world, as defined by the cold war. I realized I just called over my waiter at dinner, and asked him what was being built just outside my mealside window. Once I was told it was to be a new police station, I realized that I 1. expected my waiter to speak english (which he didn't), and 2. expected all my questions to e answered and responded to. Maybe this is not that different from what a waiter does in the states, as wait on the needs of the customer. But somehow to have these miniscule yet spoken demands to my waitstaff was difficult to bear after the fact (currently typing this up, i am laughing at my liberal, overthought, but poignant bullshit).

Who am I to just command around the actions of another? Why are we not in different shoes? why is it I am used to the way the man from atop the bus reacted when he got the answer to his question, How much does it cost to fly from the US to India? I just feel so much guilt about my society. It seems like they invent jobs here for the sole purpose of giving another person employment, not for the work needing to be done. For example, every time a person is shoveling on the side of the road, a rope is attached to the pole, so that another person can tug on it and help with the labor. Is this because work is so strenuous? Or because the men are too weak to do the job, probably from malnutrition? Or is it a way to get someone to participate in society, with little hurt to the investor's pocket?

The US has forgotten about places in the world like this, otherwise it would not let such groveling and brutal poverty continue. Surely in the US, a small fraction of society living in the street the way masses do here would cause a stir. I suppose it is not in our country's responsibility to change such things, but I feel like we have always tried to promote the upward motion of the human standard of living; where is the humanity of being plugged into "24" or "Desparate Housewives" when people struggle to pay 50 cent bus fare to visit their family on holidays?

The power just went out in my resturant, and as I look out, in the entire town as well. Well, a generator just went on, and now the only power and source of light is the Sikh temple.

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Today was beautiful. I woke up late, since I was up in the middle of the night writing and reading the Ramayama. I washed my clothing with a bar of soap in a room with a large in floor tub of hot springs water. It takes over an hour to wash three days' clothes by hand; Im never going to take a washing machine for granted again.

After this I decided to take a hike, and sat set straight up the hillside the town was on after inquiring. There must have been thousands of uneven concrete steps, and the panorama made me feel like I was Frodo climbing to mordor (if I don't get heat for that I'll be disappointed). But really, I felt like a hobbit when I was going up and up hand over hand and foot over foot, trying to keep myself as close to the mountain as possible; my two sides alternated jutting rock face and a precipitous fall, disguised by long green grass and the occasional crop terrace. As I ws passing huge telephone towers and the occasional slate-roofed house, I started to get worried about time. I didn't start my hike until 4 pm, and I had been going uphill for almost two hours. I really wanted to make the top, or at least be able to see into the adjacent ridge.

Well, I got into a flatter area, with alot of little terrace farming patches and eventually stumbled upon three or four slate roof and tin sheeting houses; how the families got the building materials this high, I don't know. I realized this was as far as I was going to make it. There was another summit buried in the clouds which couldn't be seen from ground level; in the next valley was an even higher snow-peaked mountain, its craigy tips only partially visible.

And then a wirey twenty year old popped up next to me holding a tiffin, carrying his dinner. Hotam Ram lived in one of these little houses, and of his two older sisters and two younger brothers, he is the only one in college. Kullu college is 45 km away (not to mention down the hill), and he would go to school for a month and then come home for three or so days. Hotam was really amazing and I respect him emmensley; He said the little village (if you could call it that) I was standing in was named Shushanceri. This translates to cold, cold, long-field agriculture; "Life is hard here" is an understatement. The only income and subsistence is from puny hillside apple trees, wheat terrace farming, and a cow. I gave Hotam my email address, but he hasn't seen a computer since 9th or 10th grade. Hotam wants to be a teacher, "to teach the little ones." His eyes lit up so much when he said this, I pray he achieves this noble but seemingly difficult task, they don't even have internet at his college. Maybe one day I'll hear from him.

The rest of the day wasn't nearly as cool. I hiked down (telling myself, one step at a time, when I could see thousands of meters down a few feet from my footsteps)' and eventually dipped my aching muscles in the hot springs pool of my guest house. Now I'm eating mushroom, olive, and tuna pizza (really good!), and might go shoot some pool.

Back to Ahmedabad in a few days! I think I may stop for a night back in Shimla before going through Delhi to Gujarat. Whooo!!!!!