Lonesome Day Blues

Ahm peacing out of Manali.

Overall a great experience. I feel as if I am finally at peace spending time with myself. At first, traveling was difficult; my mind racing against unwinnable thoughts. What am I doing? Where do I want do go? All this kind of bullshit thats not really bullshit if you are twenty, alone, and have enough time to slow down and think. All of this, I owe in part to Evan.

My second night in Manali (of three total), I walked into a rooftop cafe and joined a dreadlocked dude who didn't have any company. We start talking, and to be honest it was clear that Evan was a smart and satisfied guy. Being 39, and a cab driver from australia, I wondered. But he said he spent all day shuttling around well-off people who thought their lives were shit, and who had everything. The anynomity of the cab gives people 15 to 20 minutes to unburden all their problems on a sociable and empathetic cab driver, and Evan helped me alot. Maybe only because I wanted to hear him more than talk my self. When talking about worldviews, visions of self and community, acheivement, girls, and happiness, he had many insights, and said he had seen along many of the same lines at one point or another. He said that like himself, he was enlightened (or as I think of it, burdened) as being a thinker (I hope this doesn't sound pompous) to be a thinker, and that the best medicine was reflection. Forget TV or drugs. Those are just instant changes of perspective, whereas real changes of perspective (what we all desire) are much slower.

Normally I wake up groggily and feeling like going back to sleep; I think this is an effect of a seemingly mundane existence which we can get caught up in. Its like when we do something repetitive, we get sleepy, and even the mention of going out or doing something more preferable wakes us right up. Anyway, the following morning I woke up, and was awake immediately. Honestly one of the first times this has happened in a long time, and I hope to remember this perspective on tiredness.

So what have I been doing? Well, I saw two 500 year old temples, one on top of a treacherous hill. The other was swarming with tourist touts selling junk and old women clutching very furry rabbits, which are subsequently shoved in your arms in demand for rupees. I guess holding a really fuzzy moving white ball is worth paying for. I also checked out an amazing Tibetan gompa with a 25 foot high bronze statue of buddha inside. The building itself was being meticulously hand repainted, and it is incredible to think that this seemingly impossible task must be undergone a couple times a decade, for the last 300 years, due to the damp and varying climate here. I also found the natural hot springs, funneled into pools for each sex in a temple. Excruciatingly hot, the sulfurous water was bearable only after a half hour of wading and receding. Being a mix of Western and Israeli tourists, screaming local children, and derobed tibetan monks, it was a great place to take a soak, with an open roof looking onto the beautiful sky.

So I've met some cool people, locals and Israelis (which are everywhere, half the guest house signs are in hebrew), and read and am learning how to enjoy not doing everything. For those of you who don't know me, I am a perfectionist and an overacheiver, and have been fighting the impulses these traits bring for the past year or so, and Manali is certainly helping. However, I don't think I'm going to spend a month sitting in one of the cafe's smoking a chillum like some people do; vacations here start brief and turn to an elongated, hazy stay (at least for the Israelis). I had a jacket made here; with tailoring and how I wanted it, it cost only about 12 dollars (which is still kindof a ripoff in India, but this town is 100% tourist economy).

The outlying areas are very tibetan, and they rely off of hash production or apricot and apple harvesting. An amazingly meager lifestyle, especially in direct comparison to the tourists. And many of the shop owners here are from Rajastan or Kashmere, who come from May to October, leaving their families behind in order to make some money here. One kid had high hopes to study abroad, but being the oldest in his family and working in Manali at the age of 16 to help bring stability to life in Kashmere, it was hard to take chai with him and stay optimistic, and then turn to more jovial topics.

Blah, my ipod's almost dead. And I am at least a week from being able to chare it.