Trip down memory lane.

Let’s break the routine for today, since I am bushed again anyway and today was pretty much like any other day spent, waking up, have breakfast, edit for hours, worked on the wall…though we also did some serious digging into the rock wall today…basically winding down from that and of course picking ticks of the dogs at every possible turn.
I know, boring, so we’ll do a trip down memory lane.

As I considered last night, I figure I might as well write about traveling through India. Admittedly, it was twenty years ago, but still, it was a fun trip, worth talking about.

Of all the places I’ve been during my youth, I would have to say that the most adventurous place I visited was definitely India.
Okay, I positively hated the many hours on the plane that got us there, especially since we left for the airport by night and all of us had managed to catch maybe four hours of sleep, tops.
Follow that up with an endless amount of time in a plane and you've got disaster in the making for five kids traveling by airplane for the first time in their lives.

Our very first day in India was spent passing out at a friend's place and not knowing what to do with ourselves simply because our brains no longer functioned. I remember that I felt pretty darn awful, since it was hotter than I could ever have imagined.

So there we were, New Delhi in autumn. Smoky, hot, foreign and so full of people that I admit feeling somewhat daunted by the crowds going every which way as we were transported by several taxies to the outskirts of town.
Beggars everywhere, cute young families, old people, uniformed school kids and also children mutilated by their parents in order to get more money, and just the dirty little criminals wandering the streets in hopes of stumbling on rich foreigners.

We stayed in Delhi only for a day or two, since it was the country that pulled us, rather than the big cities, but still it made an impression.
We traveled around with four taxis, and public transportation...whew, that was a smelly and crowded business...at first and basically just wandered from one town to the next, meeting wonderful, and scary, people alike.

Oh, and for those who wonder; yes, the stories are true. If a cow is resting in the middle of the road, traffic will be stuck there until the cow deigns it time to move on. Hah.

I remember a particularly small village in which we (a group of sixteen, All family, relatives and close friends) got stranded one evening when the bus didn’t arrive due to some sort of accident…or so we later heard.
The town was so small that there weren't any hostels, hotels or even a bed and breakfast, so we were pretty much stuffed.

We sat there, with our backpacks by the side of the bumpy dirt road for hours on end, when suddenly out of nowhere the villagers came milling around us, offering the most wonderful tea I'd ever tasted. It was a mix of milk and herbs, a foreign taste that I haven’t managed to duplicate since.
They were so kind, including the mayor who showed up at the roadside himself to offer us his former home for the night, so that we at least would have a roof over our heads that night while we waited for the seven o'clock public bus to arrive.

The house–it had actual brick walls rather than clay blocks the others had–had been used as storage mostly. No windows, but a door that closed, many, many rolls of barbed wire, and broken furniture piled together everywhere.
It was fun, not to mention excitingly new…especially the next morning when we had to run to catch the bus that was already packed with the locals and at the verge of leaving without us.

It was tricky traveling through the country back then. Foreigners were a much desired prey so that meant guard duty whenever the bus stopped for a much desired break after narrow winding roads through the mountains that offered magnificent views…even through the floors, riddled with holes. Hah.
There was one particular time when oncoming traffic forced the bus to back up, sticking its butt out over a MAJOR drop beside the road, giving an excellent vantage point STRAIGHT DOWN!

After that particular disaster of public transportation, we decided to rent a private bus instead.
We had a wonderful chauffeur, a guide who was absolutely adored by my little brother (three years of age back then) for some reason, and the feeling was entirely mutual and a young man who was there for the sole purpose of keeping the bus clean. Apparently that was a standard deal for the bus, and I have to admit that he made traveling rather comfortable.

We went from the North, saw all the sights, Calcutta, Bombay (in passing) etc, to South-East…saw the ocean there, walked into it as a matter of fact, with a beach and surf that went on for miles. An extraordinary experience that. The land just never seemed to drop away, and at our feet with the water coming up only as far as our shins a small stingray swam.

There at the Sea, we stayed at a rather decrepit hotel…hotels were rather difficult to choose, since standards of what's fancy and CLEAN was really relative back then.
It smelled like fish everywhere, what with it being a fishermen's town and all, and most of us were nauseous for the duration of our stay there. We were all vegetarians, so fish was really not something we enjoyed.

Which reminds me of another hotel in another city (near Calcutta, I believe) where we'd ordered pakora (coated vegetables) and fries…or chips as they called them. It took the hotel more than four hours to bring us our meal, since for some reason they'd figured we wanted FISH and chips…and yes, they actually had to catch the fish, gut it and prepare it before they were able to serve it. Talk about fresh! It was a nice thought.

We took a different, more scenic route back north; following the eastern costal areas and headed straight for the Himalayas.
We considered visiting Tibet for a while, but decided against it due to the political climate there and the hassle it would be to cross the border. Getting a visa would have been disastrous.

On the way, we met with a particularly nasty group of armed forces that boarded our bus armed to the teeth and demanding cigarettes–which we didn't have.
Thank God for our guide Fino, who talked us out of what could have turned out to be a really nasty situation. It was rather scary, I’ll admit.

A small chartered flight brought us to "the top of the world"…or at least the lower parts of it, hah…and its ancient town Shimlah.
There we stayed there in a beautiful British Colonial Hotel (The Marina hotel) that was more than a hundred years old and showed it. I could just imagine the Brits staying there many years ago when it was still a British colony.

It was huge, dark, it creaked everywhere and balanced rather precariously on the mountaintop, looming over an abyss that was so deep that it made me dizzy looking down over the banisters of the wrap-around veranda.
I even slept in a room, right beside one that was closed because it had suffered fire damage at some time in the past. It was creepy dark. If any place was more likely to be haunted, that was it! Very cool.

Another part of our travels in India sticks in my mind. This was higher up in the Himalayas, and after staying at a hostel for trekkers…a marvelous experience, even though it was rather crowded sharing dormitories with pros and sleeping in bunk beds without any privacy whatsoever. It was a gorgeous night, and we spent most of it outside, overlooking the amazing vistas of snow-topped mountains stretching on forever as the stars slowly appeared.

After hearing some marvelous stories of the surrounding area, we decided we wanted to hike a bit. Just us, no guides, enjoying the peace and quiet without any interference. So, soon thereafter, we chucked into our backpacks and started on our way in rented cars that drove us higher up.

It took us all day to reach the top of the relatively low mountain we had picked. (One that wasn't covered in snow on a rather wondrously sunny day.)
The way up was steep, but beautiful, absolutely gorgeous! Everything was untouched, it seemed, and we were thrilled by the time we reached the top where a small cow shed had been built years before, right beside a clear black pond.

Seeing as the day was rapidly waning, we decided to spend the night there, seeking shelter inside the shed, lest we were forced to sleep in the open with the wild animals that actually roamed the area.
It was a tight fit, I'll admit. Sixteen people squeezed into this tiny space like sardines in a can, with the unfortunate ones at the walls, squashed up against dried cow dung and other organic matter that I don't even want to contemplate now.

It was great! We all had uncontrollable giggles that night, (especially us kids) simply because it was so very uncomfortable and exciting at the same time.
The sunny morning was met with smiles and a quick dip into the clear mountain water, before we started back on our way down, where, two thirds of the way, we were met by our frantic guide who had been worried sick because there had been warnings of dangerous wildlife (a mountain lion, I believe) and a dramatic storm coming from the east to boot.
He'd actually contemplated taking some of the villagers up the mountain with tents for us in the dead of night. A darling man.

After that rather adventurous trip, we stayed at a former palace turned into a hotel for a couple of weeks, recovering from the many miles we had traveled, and just relaxing. It was one of the fanciest hotels we ever stayed at, built back in the day when the English still ruled there and the maharajah wanted to be fancy…but only for a night because a couple cottages on the estate suited our needs more.

It was great staying there. Monkeys…Baboons I think…all over the place and trying to steel our food whenever they could, hah. They were a bit scary. Very forward creatures, and they could be quite aggressive.

We got our own foodstuff from the local village, for which we had to travel up and down narrow trails every other day or so, getting fresh peas (they were delicious, especially while you're spending hours just peeling them in the warm sun) potatoes and everything else we needed, to lug it back up the mountain.

We also got our hands on a small oven there. You know one of those pan-shaped things you can hook up to the electric.
Soggy white English bread was our greatest difficulty food-wise over there, and we all were ready for some decent bread that didn't actually taste like watery cake. That bread made me nauseous, actually.

You can imagine our chagrin when we put the freshly baked bread in the windowsill to chill, only to have one particularly cheeky baboon steel it and take off screeching like a loon. Us kids hunted that beast for at least an hour before we finally had to admit defeat and gave up.

But anyway, after those few weeks in the cottages we decided that it was time to head back toward Delhi: A long, LONG journey westward. Of which two days were spent in a single traffic jam. There had been some horrible accident, and I regret to say that I actually saw a corpse with its head squashed like a melon on the street. Not a pleasant sight at all.

Once we arrived in Delhi, we did some souvenir shopping in the many colorful bazaars, and we visited a Wendy (sort of like McDonalds) which was an absolute delight after eating Indian food that literally scorched the tongue for months.

By then, we were faced with the rather disastrous news that our tickets had been resold by our sneaky traveling agent. It was quite a concern, seeing as our Visas were about to expire, so our guide stepped up to the plate and traveled all the way back to the Himalayas where he faced off with the nefarious travel agent that had booked our tickets, and made it back in time to see us off to our plane in the middle of the night.

I assure you that the dear man was left with a more than generous tip, our contact information, the small oven and several items of our high tech camping gear (which he'd been admiring for weeks). I don't know what we would have done without the guy.

Which concludes today’s Blog, and announces that it is time for me to make ready for bed. I might have to think of more memories for this daily posting thing, because just repeating daily events is starting to get a bit of a bore.