2015 October - Through the Kangra Valley

We went down into the Kangra Valley which runs below Dharamsala to stay on the Darang Tea Estate.  This turned out to be a real 'homestay' - living in a room in the bungalow, eating with the family (lots of their fruit and veg), and shouting at rather deaf but still very bright 93-year-old granny.  Even a chota peg before dinner. 





Here we are with Naveen and Neera, with the tea plantation behind.  This is using my selfie stick, which is taking all my concentration.

We went off to the Sherabling Tibetan monastery which was very fancy - in fact 'bling' is the right term.  The Dalai Lama's temple in Macleod Ganj is very modest indeed, but this was the full business - big campus in a forest, huge buildings, and the main temple and courtyard that had all been roofed in.   Got to see some great practice - huge drums, trumpets, and a massive gong to get the monks back from their break.

                      Then, rather bizarrely, we headed off the the landing site of the World Para-gliding championships which were due to start the next day at Bir, just down the road.  All very beautiful and Himalayan, with a sky full of practicing paragliders, although the landing site was rather Indian, with stray dogs, chai stalls etc. And, in spite of its name, Bir was a dry town and so I am not sure how all those para-gliders felt about not getting a drink at the end of the day.

      

  

The next day came the major treat - a ride on the Kangra Valley Railway, a 100-mile narrow gauge built by the British in 1929, and still going strong.  Worked out the time-table and fares, which was 10 rupees each (10p).  

     

   

 

The average speed of the train was less than 20 mph, and it was clean and cool inside.  But clearly the thing to do was to sit on the step as we trundled along. Which I did.  Some of the landscape was spectacular - rattling along looking down gorges in the sunshine.

Finally, if the video works, it shows us going over the curved viaduct just before Jwalamukhi Road - such excitement!

2015 October - Up the local mountain from Macleod Ganj

This is the view looking up from Triund, which at 3000m is 1000m above Macleod Ganj - that 1000m is a few-hours slog up a good path.  Triund is a 'base-camp' for further exploration, with tents and rooms to rent, and inevitable chai-tents. We had booked a guide to take us up towards the Andrahar Pass at 4300m - but we were not going to attempt that.

Here is the memsahib in the morning at the lodge we had booked through Summit Adventures - fairly rudimentary  but a bed and a warm sleeping bag, which was needed.  Had a snooze in the afternoon and woke to have pakora and chai in bed, which was a bit of a treat.  

The earth toilet in a small tent reminded us of trekking, similarly the joy of 'tent-tea' in the morning.  But happy not to be sleeping in a tent.                                     

The path leads steeply up from Triund along a steep cliff through fine forest which eventually peter out into a slightly desolate landscape of large granite rocks interspersed with grass, rather like the Dolomites. 

The mist started thickening, but then down towards us came a huge herd of goats which had been led over the pass that morning. They were, not surprisingly, exhausted as they had been on the move since 5am in incredibly inhospitable terrain.  The shepherd was carrying the youngest goat, and we both had a cuddle.  Then it just sat looking a bit pathetic with a 'carry-me' expression, until it got picked up again.

 

We got to the glacier, which was  grubby and slippery.  Then on up an almost vertical path to the Lahesh cave at 3500m, and that was quite far enough.  Very happy to turn back - the weather was grim and I did not envy the people we saw carrying on.













Met the goats again on the way down, who had collapsed in heaps where the grass started, and were due to stay there and recover.  We just stepped through them, like that scene at the end of The Birds.

 The next day we started down happily the path from Triund, when there was the most dramatic storm  - huge lightning flashes, deafening thunder and hailstones like large ballbearings.  Almost frightening. We plodded on, Kate helpfully pointing out that it all was transient, but we got very wet and cold, not being properly eqipped for storm and tempest. Briefly stopped at a chai-stall only to find a group sheltering who were on a charity trek for Alder Hey hospital.

We were very relieved to be greeted by a blast of hot air as we walked down to Dharamkot, and looked forward to a latte and pancake, just like Ice Cold in Alex.  But the first cafes we came to had no power, so no latte  - this never happened to John Mills and his Carlsberg. But eventually found someone who could provide the goodies.

2015 - September - raining in Amritsar

 September 2015 Amritsar

My selfie-stick had come apart, and so we got directed to a warren of little shops that did everything electronic. They managed to re-solder it, and then mend my Mac charger, and sell us a 4-pin plug converter, all for 170 Rupees (£1.70), and refused to take more.  The picture is an unposed test of the stick.

But then the rain came down - real monsoon style, and the streets filled up.  

Traffic was a shambles, and in the end our auto-rickshaw driver just gave up, and passed us over to a cycle-rickshaw. 

 

We had been reluctant to take the cycle-rickshaws as they seemed to much like something out of the Raj, but they were the only practical way to get through the streets.   

 

We were fine, but people were stuck pushing their conked-out motorbikes through a foot of water.  The streets were full of potholes which became invisible, and even open drains - locals put little red flags up as warnings.  I thought immediately of classic Laurel and Hardy scenes of walking through a puddle and disappearing, but it isn't so funny in real life - apparently people regularly just drop into the sewers as they are walking along.

In the evening we set out to eat at the 'Brothers Dhaba' - an Amritsar institution (a dhaba is midway between a cafe and restaurant, like a snack-bar, and Punjabi dhabas are famous - we saw them all over Kashmir and Dharamsala).  We had to take a cycle-rickshaw through the pitch-black flooded streets, it would have been lethal to try and walk.  And outside the Brothers Dhaba they even had a makeshift jetty so that customers could get in without wading.  We sat inside by the window, watching people struggle to get home.  Apparently these floods are a regular occurrence, the drains having been blocked by shabby road mending.

We were quite generous to the rickshaw-wallah, and after a good dinner we came out to find that he had waited the whole time to take us back to the hotel.  So we stepped daintily along the jetty and got home quite dry, feeling like the Sahib and Memsahib.

2015 - September - at the Golden Temple

September 2015

The Golden Temple at Amritsar is an iconic structure, both as the centre of the Sikh faith and through watching Michael Palin's Himalaya.  It was just round the corner from our hotel and so we kept going back at different times of day - taking our shoes off and leaving them with efficient volunteers, taking a head cover from a basket outside, then into the main area with the central Harmandir Sahib sitting at the end of a covered causeway in the middle of the artificial lake.  

Wonderful, calm, but also full of families enjoying themselves, talking, taking pictures,  praying and bathing.  Stayed while the sun went down, just sitting and taking it in.  Difficult to imagine the surrounding buildings were all restored after the Indian army stormed the complex with tanks when it was held by Sikh separatists in 1984, with huge casualties on both sides, although the Indian army were under strict instructions not to hit the actual golden temple in the middle.

 

Meals are free, and so one morning we turned up for breakfast at the Temple.  Just followed the crowd, picking up a steel plate, bowl and utensils, and lined up on the floor in rows.  

 

Along come the buckets of dal, rice, and chapatis, and the food is slopped out.  Then this extraordinary machine is wheeled along by a finely-bearded man, dispensing water into bowls from a control like a bicycle brake.

We finished quickly as we did not want to be the only ones left after everyone had got up, and then thought we would help with the washing up.  We lined up at the 'first rinse' section, ladies one side (Kate is just visible in the picture above), gents the other, sloshing the plates and passing them rapidly to 'second rinse'.  Wonderful noisy efficient chaos, ending with thousands of clean plates lined up. Apparently they serve 30,000 meals a day, all free.

Just to end, I can't resist putting in some pictures of the fine tiling after a downpour of warm rain in the evening. Like optical illusions.

 

The Temple is intended to be open to people of all religions, and non-Sikhs were treated with great respect. When the sacred text was carried to its resting place at night, the heavy 'throne' is supported by mobs of volunteers who all want to help carry it -  we met a friendly Sikh from Burton who was almost overwhelmed with the joy of getting to help, and enthusiastically explained everything to us.  It felt a real privilege to be there.