Just Back From ...

Nothern India

Just back from Northern India.

Delhi – Agra, Amritsar, McLeod Ganj, Manali, Leh – Delhi

By Amy Rudder

In the foothills of the Himalaya... I take a wrong turn. A friendly Tibetan monk guides me through the Cypress, clouds and born-again backpackers in silent meditation until I find the right path. He unsurprisingly says very little along the way, but makes many hand gestures. His whole body convulses as he suppresses a giggle and feigns horror when I perform karmic suicide, stepping on a slug. I don't know how I missed it. The slugs are about 15cm long and 3cm in diameter. They are bright orange and have black sluggy antler/eye things.

So I out-run my destiny, escaping the small hillside town of McLeod Ganj (home to the Dalai Lama) in the North of India, for Manali, another 300m higher up the mountains.

It's far less chaotic (and cooler) than in Delhi and Amritsar. Those places were complete with all the noises, colours and interesting smells that you might associate with India. The Taj Mahal in Agra was surreal, and the Golden Temple in Amritsar, striking. In what was a prelude to the slug incident, I swallowed a fly there (let me assure you it was unpleasant for both parties). I joined the Sikhs in the kitchen rolling Chapati for the masses that are fed there each day and worked extra fast to ensure no other flies would be lost - a hard task given they were insistent on sucking on the balls of dough right up until the moment that the rolling pin would be brought down to do the flattening.

Indians love Australians on account of their genuine respect for our cricket team (and our common past-time of bagging the poms.) Life is good, until I hear we aren’t faring so well in the second test.

On the road North through the Himalaya I reached, at the highest point, 5326m. Outside the jeep it was extremely cold and to move around was a strange outer-space-like sensation (it felt like you were on some serious drugs). It also felt like someone had a firm grip of my heart as it had to work a whole heap harder to keep pumping up there.

To travel 400kms through the Himalaya took two full days. The road was testing on the behind and the stomach. The bends were frequent and hairpin. I saw the barely discernible remains of a tanker in a riverbed and an army truck in a valley – worryingly easy to understand how they had come unstuck on the road above.

The Border Roads Organisation, responsible for the building and maintenance of the road, dot the route with some comical signs designed to prevent such accidents from occurring. To follow is a selection (no word of a lie) of those signs:
Better being Mr. Late than Late Mr.
Be gentle on my curves
It is not a rally, enjoy the valley
Go slow on the bend my friend
Safety on the road is “safe tea” at home
If you love her, divorce speed
Drive on horse power, not rum power
Darling, I like you, but not so fast

And my personal favourite:
Don’t gossip, let him drive

A much more pressing education campaign is needed though – the prevention of male, public urination. Certainly, the first step would be the infrastructure to decrease its necessity – public bathrooms (in fairness they were few and far between) - but in Leh, where I first saw a public toilet ‘block’ I also saw a couple of men relieving themselves up against its outside wall. Clearly there is a long way to go.

From Leh I commenced a four-day trek in the Himalaya. Day 3 presented the task of climbing to an elevation of 4900m. Stok-La Pass lay 800m above the base camp of the previous night. My guide, Tenzin told me that it could take anywhere between 2.5 to 3.5 hours, but he predicted 2.5 hours as he had made note so far that I was indeed a ‘good walker’. The official time-card reads: 1hr 19mins – Me 1hr 34mins – Tenzin 1hr 47mins – Pony-man Not that I am gloating or anything.

The mountains in the Himalaya at the height of summer had turned into a veritable desert and although it was cool at night, the midday sun scalded your skin with great ferocity. Although a discomfort at the time, and no doubt damaging in the long term, it is nice to return with a hint of a suntan.