The Longest Flight

Judy and I arrived in Chicago at 5 a.m. CDT, a full half hour early. New Delhi to Chicago is, apparently, the longest flight American Airlines operates. It is a long one at 15 1/2 hours.

My advice to you if you head for India is to book roundtrip from Chicago to Delhi. If you are flying on a Boeing 777, select seats A, B, H or J in row 40. You get extra leg room.

We'll be home this afternoon, but I have so much more to say and show about this trip, that I can't imagine ever running out of stories to tell. Photos will be coming. Keep reading.

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FabIndia

In Delhi we met a force of consumerism that we could not resist: FabIndia. We went to three different FabIndia locations and bought things in each. Even Carol shopped. Judy and I have done our “school shopping” for fall, but we probably won’t be able to wait to wear our new outfits.

Pristine white shelves line the walls of the clothing section; some shops have free-standing shelving cubbies as well. Every cubbie is overflowing with colorful cotton and silk fabric in more colors than you can imagine. I found the place completely overwhelming at first. Carol told me to “just pick out one thing” and that would get me started. It did.

Shoppers decide whether they want long sleeves, short or sleeveless. They choose long, short or mini kurtas. Patterns, solids, square necks, v-necks, embroidery, silk, cotton…. For women, pants, salwar, churidar are all arranged by size (small, medium, large, extra-large) and fabric.

I had been wondering how Indian women manage to get their feet through the narrow lower part of the churidar pantleg, so I tried on a pair. No dice. Churidars are not for wide, Northern European feet. Judy, however, said that putting the pants on was easy if she treated them like socks. She looks just as sexy as the Indian women with the ankly-hugging churidar on.

I stuck to the looser fitting salwar. I’m going to try making churidar from a stretchy fabric when I get home.

After choosing the top and pants, the female shopper moves on to select the dupatta, a filmy length of cotton or silk. Some salwar kameez come with a matching dupatta, and matching is possible at FabIndia, but we had a lot of fun mixing textures and patterns to complement our outfits.

During our first visit to FabIndia the power went out four or five times and a generator kicked in. Apparently, all major businesses in Delhi have backup generators, If they didn’t, it would get really hot in the second-floor shops and so dark that no one would be able to shop. Paying by credit card would be a problem, too. India business people know what they have to do to provide great service.

Although I was a bit overwhelmed at first, I managed to find my bearings in the store and buy about 10 kurtas, a few pairs of pants, a length of saree silk and some ayurvedic supplements during four separate visits to FabIndia shops. Judy didn’t warm up as fast as I did,. She pulled together one outfit on the first visit but really kicked into gear at the Khan Market store where Carol and I helped her mix and match quite a few outfits.

FabIndia has more going for it that colorful, high-quality goods. The company buys all of its good from rural craftspeople. This trade provides jobs for rural people and supports the continuation of traditional crafts.

Even better, you can buy from FabIndia online.

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Return to Leh

Summer has come to Ladakh and we are back in Leh. We sat outside at the Hotel Olmasila at tea time after a hot shower to wash off the dust of the road (and the soot of the 500-year-old Ladakhi house we climbed around in) and ate more mangos than I care to count.

Today we are going shopping.

Of course, the best laid consumerist plans have already been interrupted by the sound of live chanting. We were drawn to the temple where the majority of the lamas in Ladakh have gathered to celebrate the spring puja. Inside the prayer hall, lamas are chanting. Young monks are crowded in under the portico outside the temple building. People of the community, and more lamas, have gathered on the steps outside the temple. Loudspeakers amplify the chanting for the growing crowd of people outside. We listened and observed the crowd.

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The Indus River

We traveled along the Indus River from Leh to the turn off onto the Alchi road and again, Monday, from the Alchi road to the fork in the highway that took us to Lamayuru. We had seen the river in the distance from Leh, but we picked up its route near one of the multitude of military bases that we passed on our journey on the Leh – Srinagar highway, and followed high above the water on the well developed roadway.

We stopped to look at the confluence of the Indus and the Zanskar Rivers not far outside of Leh. We also saw a heard of cattle, including an enormous yak, in the distance on the opposite side of the river. At this point, the banks of the river are wide and fertile, but it passes through narrow gorges, flowing within massive cliffs as well.

Judy wanted to put her hand in the water of the Indus, but near Leh the river is fenced, and the approach is a wetland, as well, making touching the water practically impossible. Travelers on the Leh – Srinagar road are well above the surface of the water, with no realistic way to descend.

Carol and Martin, however, are geniuses in figuring out how to get to seemingly inaccessible places.

After our first visit to the Alchi monastery, we set about circumambulating the complex. Circumambulation of sacred places is an important part of Buddhist practice. We set out in a clockwise direction on the well developed path around the monastery, which follows the bank of the Indus for a stretch. Here, we could see snow-capped mountains and the river (and the power plant construction site), so we decided to shoot the video clips that the person heading up the social media project at TLU had requested. What could be better than both mountains and the river that fed some of the first human civilizations? While Martin, Judy and I worked on the video clips, Carol was looking around and found a trail that led down toward the river bank.

After we took photos with a Ladakhi lady in traditional dress who asked to be photographed (and gave her 20 rupees for her work), we followed Carol down the slope. We ended up in a field of rocks just above the shore. With Martin’s help we found a congenial place to clamber down to the water. We have now both touched the Indus and have in at least a small way become part of one of the world’s greatest rivers. (We have photos of this, but as I may have mentioned in an earlier post, I have insurmountable obstacles to uploading photos until I get home.)

I’m not much of a rock climber, so this jaunt was a challenge for me, but it wasn’t too hard and was definitely worth it.

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Power in Alchi

Electricity comes to Alchi (10,340 feet) from 8 – 11 p.m. from the generator in the neighboring village of Saspol, which is about a mile away. Supper is served at the Alchi Resort when the power comes on. The supply of electricity can be uneven, with periods of low power when the lights stay on but dim. The power went off completely for what seemed like several minutes while we were drinking tea after the first of the amazing meals prepared especially for us by the warm and friendly owners and staff of the hotel.

We sat in darkness so deep that I could see nothing at all. I haven’t experienced cocooning darkness in years and was kind of disappointed when Carol and Martin flipped on their LED flashlights. I would not have wanted to attempt walking back to our cottage without the light, but I enjoyed it for the few seconds it lasted.

The relative lack of electricity in Alchi doesn’t diminish the experience of this magical place for the traveler in any way. I don’t know much about what the local people think about it, but some of them do have generators. The proprietor of the Alchi Resort also spoke expectantly about the electricity that will be coming from a hydropower plant that is visible from Alchi.

This plant will use the water of the Indus River to generate electricity. I don’t know when it is scheduled to come online, but work was steady on it while we were in Alchi. Generation of electric power raises some of the starkest questions about the effect of development on the natural world, and this project is no exception.

A little bit more inconvenient for travelers is the lack of phone service from the village. Clearly, the phone generally works because the gift shop has signs proclaiming that shoppers can pay with any credit or debit card. Judy asked if she could use her card, but she could not because the phone service was out. This was not a big deal because we used an ATM in Delhi before we left for Ladakh, and we have plenty of cash. The phone problem affected reconfirmation of our ride back to Leh, however. On Sunday Martin found someone with a cell phone that was working to call the hotel in Leh to touch base that the driver would be coming Monday morning. (He was, and he did arrive before 7 a.m.)

All this about Alchi’s connection to the conveniences of contemporary life really misses the point of the visit to the village, however, which is the monastery and the other temples and chortens around the area. We started both of our full days in Alchi with early visits to the monastery to beat the tourists coming from Leh (about a three-hour drive).

The first day we stayed in the temples until lunchtime (with a brief interruption from one other Western tourist who wanted to zip through). The second day, the lama who is in charge of dealing with the keys to the temples (and the tourists) was just coming out of the first temple with a group of Indian tourists. When he saw us, he panicked a bit because he had not yet had breakfast, or even tea. He looked desperate, and we agreed to come back in about half an hour. (In the meantime, we got started on a wonderful walk around Alchi and ended up coming back to the monastery well after lunch. The lama was in a better mood then and even asked what had become of us in the morning.)

The monastery was founded and built in the 12th century. The painting in the temples and prayer rooms is in the Kashmiri style and is so amazing that it is difficult to find words to describe the experience of being in these sacred spaces. The walls are like carpets with thousands of repeated images of buddhas and boddhisatvas along with some portraits of historical figures, including secular figures making pilgrimage to worship the Buddha.

By design, the only light source in the temples is a skylight. The lamas have brought a little bit of artificial light to the rooms, but they are quite dark and to look closely at the paintings, one needs a flashlight. This increases the feeling of focus on particular images, which adds a meditative feel to our visits. Although the paintings, statues and other objects in the sacred rooms are beautiful, their value is in their role in sacred practice. Aesthetic considerations are secondary, and photography is not allowed.

The statues of buddhas and boddhisatvas burst out of the buildings that attempt to contain them to remind us that they cannot be contained. The paintings are both overwhelming in size and detail so they simultaneously create the desire to step away in awe and the urge to move toward the paintings to become immersed in the details.

This is the true power of Alchi.

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Internet in Ladakh

I am writing in an Internet cafe on one of the main streets in Leh (after an incredible Tibetan vegetarian lunch of feast proportion). Leh is a big city and one can find Internet cafes on many streets. Tomorrow we are leaving for Alchi, which is not so big and, I'm told, has no Internet access at all. If you are checking the blog and find no updates for the next three or four days, don't be alarmed. We are just out of the Web.

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The Heater

Ladakh is a cold region. Seven months of the year the area is unreachable by ground and iffy by air. May is just the beginning of spring. Apricot and apple trees are blooming, irises are flowering along some of the fields. Grain seeds are sprouting in some of the fields but most haven’t yet been planted, it seems. The poplars and willows, the only trees that grow here, are the lovely yellowy green of new leaves. Most of the older willow trunks are standing naked of branches with tiny green shoots popping out.

The willow is a generous tree. Every year the people cut it back dramatically for firewood. Wood and dung are primary sources of fuel around here, and we see pats of dung drying on the sides of hills as we walk or ride along the roads.

Now, back to the shower and more importantly the heater (monasteries will wait; they have been here for hundreds of years); you will see the connection. With wood as a primary source of energy, heating all the homes and businesses would lead to deforestation. And then, where would people get energy if they had cut down all the trees?

Heat is not standard in the rooms of our hotel, and I would guess in others in the city as well. This was not a problem when the city was completely inaccessible in the winter, but with air access, tourists have started to come here in the winter months. The proprietor of Hotel Omasila bought some gas heaters and offered them to guests for the first time this winter.

On out first night, before we got the heater, we slept in long underwear under pajamas, and our knitted hats. The twin beds are pushed together (I can see why) and we had two really incredible blankets to share. Judy got so warm that she threw off her hat and part of her blankets (not me). Neither of us wanted to get out of the bed to open the windows that let the warming sun in, but finally we did.

Our room is wonderfully warm and beautiful in the daytime. The propane heater has made it possible to sit without a coat on and be comfortable at any time of day although we had a moment of uncertainty when we couldn’t figure out how to turn the heater back on at 6 a.m. I went down to the desk to ask for help (and to find about a dozen people up and engaged in their daily activities). I caused a little stir by slipping, but not falling, on the steep staircase in front of all the extremely kind Ladakhis, and then they sent a young man to our room to light the heater. He showed us how to turn it on and reiterated how to turn it off, which seems to be far more important no matter one’s perspective.

Thank you Carol for suggesting the heater. Thank you Hotel Omasila for having it.

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Election Day in Ladakh

Light returns to Ladakh by about 4:30 in the morning. The moon hung over the mountains in the distance, and I could see every detail of the terrace outside our room in Hotel Omasila as well. It would have been a great time to shoot a dramatic nighttime landscape photographs, but I decided to hold the image in my memory instead.

By about 5 o’clock the hotel was alive with the sounds of people chanting according to a variety of traditions. I could particularly make out a male voice chanting deep, earthy oms and a female voice chanting in a tradition that requires more words. I joined in with my own silent meditation. Who knows how many others in the hotel and the city of Leh were also engaging in meditation in their separate rooms but all together, nevertheless.

Judy woke up naturally, too, and asked me if my clock was right that it wasn’t even 6 o’clock yet.

Yesterday was Ladakh’s day to vote in India’s parliamentary election. The election has been in progress for a month, and now voting is complete. All businesses and schools were closed, and someone told us that no one was permitted to drive until afternoon, “if it was peaceful.”

We walked to a polling place in Leh, a small primary school, to see how things were going in local voting. Small groups of women (mostly) were also heading in that direction on foot. The only vehicles we saw at that time were military, not unusual for two reasons: first, a big army base is up the street from the school (home of the Fire and Fury Officers’ Mess, according to a sign with an arrow pointing onto the base), and second, this area is sandwiched between Pakistan and China and the borders have not always been quiet here.

Polling station no. 063 Changspa expected 571 voters, 275 +2 males and 296 females, according to a handwritten, official notice (feel free to check the adding). Voters take their laminated voter cards – a friendly Ladakhi woman showed us hers – to a table in a field across the lane from the school where the election agent checks the voter list and gives voters a small piece of paper to take into the school where they will cast their ballots.

Five candidates were running for the seat for this area, two from major parties and three independents. The ballot presents the name of the candidate and a symbol for each one because literacy in this region, and India in general, is not universal.

We asked a young woman to explain what was going on and about how people feel about participating in the election. She said that most people will come to vote. Judging from the mood of the crowd, people were happy to participate, or happy that they had a holiday? In any case, people in Ladakh voted peacefully and cars began to appear on the streets again as the afternoon progressed. After about 5 or 6 p.m. some businesses reopened, too.

In the afternoon we hired a car and drove to two of the many monasteries, or gompas in Tibetan, Shay and Thiksay, both built in the 16th century.

More on the monasteries later because Judy has just come out of the shower, and we have hot water only in the morning. If I hop into the bathroom quickly, it will still be warm (not an opportunist, am I?). We got a gas heater last night and are impressed with its power, but it doesn’t reach to the bathroom.

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Early morning at the airport

It’s 6 a.m. at the Indira Gandhi Airport in New Delhi. We are drinking coffee from Costa Coffee after going through security for our flight to Leh on Kingfisher airlines (owned by the same guy who owns Kingfisher beer). At security women are checked by a female officer in a curtained booth. Men are checked in front of everyone, just like at home. (Indian women must be very surprised at how they are treated in the United States.)

Judy says she would comment, but it is too early to think.

We spent the evening at Hindu temples yesterday. One temple is devoted Hanuman (the monkey god who is associated with courage) and Shiva (the god of creation and destruction), the other to Shiva alone. We received a blessing from the priest devoted to Hanuman that included sacred oil on the forhead, a flower and a sweet. Several children received blessings ahead of us. The priest placed a necklace of marigolds around the neck of one little girl. Men played music in the section of the building devoted to Shiva. (And other things were going on that I will go into later because I have only a few minutes left before our flight boards).

The second Shiva temple was built by South Indians. There, we saw the evening puja.

On the way to Leh, we are going to be sitting in window seats on the left side of the plane in hopes of catching a glimpse of K2.

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Our First Day and the First Mosque in India

We are in our room at the Hotel Palace Heights to escape the midday heat after a morning spent touring the Qutb Minar and the area around the Parliament and President’s residence. We will go back out at 6 p.m. for a visit to Hindu temples, dinner and the ATM.

Qutb Minar is a World Heritage site, the first mosque built in India. It’s also one of few mosques that combine India and Islamic styles of ornamentation. The Muslims were, basically, a conquering army and came without a staff of craftsmen. They hired local craftsmen who were Hindus and used to ornamenting everything with living signs of life. Thus, the phrases from the Koran are entwined with vines and punctuated with flowers. (I have a lovely photo of Cheshire Kitten’s book perched on a column in the courtyard. I couldn’t resist.)

The minaret itself was never used to call anyone to prayer. It is too tall to make climbing up and down five times a day practical. Instead, the tower stands as a symbol of the power of the conqueror. The British played around a little with it in their day, in particular, they constructed gardens around the buildings. Everything is in flower here at the moment, so we saw orange and yellow flowering trees. Above us flew one of India’s most common hawks, enormous, green parakeets and common mynahs. The mynahs sound just like Texas’s grackles.)

Tourists from all over India were looking at Qutb’s Minar along with us. May is the time of school holidays because it is the hottest time of year here. A man from Gujurat posed us along with his family for photos. His little girl was wearing the brightest orange flouncy skirt. The man said he works for an American company, which I suppose made us particularly interesting to him. We were also the object of many long looks from a group of tourists from the Western coastal state where the main industry is ship demolition and resale of parts. It seems fitting that we become part of the spectacle as objects of interest.

Judy and I are both consumed by sari envy. The women’s clothes are bright and beautiful, whether saris or kameezes with a variety of pants styles. My favorites are orange and gold and the red one with blue six-pointed stars.

I would post pictures, but the wireless network is weak and barely able to carry data long enough to upload a text post, so the images will have to wait until later. I’m hoping for Internet access in Leh too, but I’m not sure of it.

Judy just saw a fist fight out our hotel window. We think it was a group of taxi drivers, definitely the combatants were both white-haired men. The man who was trying to make peace was considerably younger.

The taxis are little green and yellow vehicles powered by compressed natural gas. Buses use the same fuel. We are wondering how much more haze Delhi would have if it didn’t use this cleaner-burning fuel.

India is in the midst of an election. Voting takes place in different areas on different days and the results will come in while we are in Ladakh. Our guide Martin is happy that we will be in a remote area when people in Delhi find out about the results. He expects that we still won’t know what the government will look like because more than a handful of parties are running candidates and it’s likely that some of the victorious parties will have to form a coalition. We are watching “Election Alerts” on CNN-IBN as voting comes to a close in Bihar (I think). The election coverage is headlined “A Billion Votes,” but it seems to me that some of the billion Indians are children. The politicians all have harsh words for each other, or CNN-IBN is just picking the harsh parts. After they have all slammed each other it must be hard to come together in coalition.

Tomorrow we have to leave at 3:45 to get to the airport for our flight to Leh. It’s pretty early, but when one isn’t used to one’s current time zone, how much does that matter?

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Arrival in India

I had harder time getting to Champaign, Ill., three years ago than I had getting to New Delhi. After an easy drive to the airport in San Antonio (thank you, Tobin!) we had an easy flight to Chicago, a snack in O’Hare and the easiest 14-hour air trip I can imagine from Chicago to Delhi. No one questioned Judy about the extra box she took on board and even the babies sitting near us were quiet. I noted especially that unlike flights between Russia and the United States, no one got drunk. Not one person.

And the flight arrived early.

The first people we saw were a unit of Indian soldiers who sent us in the right direction toward baggage claim. We had to fill out a health form attesting that we were not feeling symptoms of the flu, and the rest of the passport and customs check was easy, too. In the passport line, a blond woman dressed in black turned to us and said, “I recognize the smell of India. I love it.” (I think it smells like burning trash. In any case, the smell doesn’t seem unique to India.)

Our pre-arranged taxi met us at the airport. We had a smooth ride through the crowded evening highways of New Delhi to Connaught Place. We say a young woman in a golden sari riding behind her boyfriend (I suppose he could have been her husband or brother) on a motorcycle and a caravan of bicycles carrying several wooden chairs each. With this much traffic at 9 p.m., I can imagine how many cars we’ll see tomorrow.

We saw a lot of places with guardhouses and razor wire. The U.S. embassy is among that crowd.

Our hotel is on a pretty quiet street with a lot of restaurants and shops. This area has quite a few Western chain food places. We passed Wimpy not long before arriving. The reception man took us to our room and in explaining the amenities, he pointed out that we have a view. Of Papa John’s across the street.

We’ve had a call from our guide already. We’ll be meeting at 8 a.m. to get started early before the heat gets too thick.

Judy and I both are still not really believing we are here in India and that it was so easy, so far. The hotel sent us a glass of apple juice on the house as a welcome. We are settling in.

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Not Forgetting Amadou Diallo

I am listening to Bruce Springsteen, The Essential Springsteen, "American Skin (41 Shots)," to be exact. Reminded by the song of Amadou Diallo, I looked on the Web for articles about this case in which police in New York shot an African immigrant 41 times in 1999. 

They fired on him, apparently, because he was walking in New York and carrying his wallet and a pager.

The case was highly publicized, and people were outraged. Yet, in 2000 the patrol officers, who acknowledged taking each of the 41 shots, were acquitted by a jury in Albany, N.Y., where the trial had been moved to protect the officers constitutional right to a fair trial.

The acquittal raised another round of outrage, including Springsteen's elegaic "41 Shots."

The Boss's musical commentary on the killing of Diallo provoked the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association of New York City to boycott a Springsteen concert in the City in 2000. Kenneth A. Paulson of the Freedom Forum linked the song and the boycott to another constitutional right, that of free speech, in an article published shortly after the concert.  The police boycott -- meaning they refused to work security at the concert while they were off duty -- constituted punishment of the speech the officers found offensive, according to Paulson. 

Ultimately, the police chief at the time stood up for free speech and urged the officers to provide their expertise in crowd control at Springsteen's concert and those of others who held positions the PBA did not share. If the officers had refused to work the concert while on duty, the boycotters would have been taking an action on behalf of the government, thus actually violating the constitution.

"Everyone's best interests are served when police officers find a way to protest unpalatable speech without punishing it," Paulson wrote.

Ironically, in this first Black History Month in the era of Barack Obama, most of us seem to have forgotten about the 10th anniversary of the needless death of Amadou Diallo. Diallo died Feb. 5, 1999, when four police officers shot him 41 times. No matter how hopeful or preoccupied we are feeling today, or this month, we should remember him and mourn.

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Cambodian Painting

In contrast to the amazing sculptures in the Siem Reap airport, the reliefs of the Angkor temples, the wood carving, and other arts and crafts we saw in Siem Reap, Ellie and I were not impressed with the paintings we saw in Cambodia.

I'd have to say most of the paintings I saw looked a bit like the velvet Elvis paintings one sees at street corners in U.S. cities.

Admittedly, I didn't go in any galleries and most of these paintings were for sale at stalls outside the temples and along the highways... But, they were hanging alongside batik, weaving, wood carvings, ceramics, rubbings of the temple reliefs and other folk art that made me wish I had a container to ship things home in rather than my medium-sized suitcase that had to weigh in under 50 pounds.

We wondered if the Cambodian painters had been misled by tourists who lacked taste. But then I thought about the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot and his colleagues did their best to rid Cambodia of fine artists during the genocide in the 1970s. It stands to reason that skill in painting would have been lost to at least a generation because of the death of those who would have been teachers.

Nevertheless, one painting stood out.

I saw it in a floating market on Lake Tonle Sap next to the charts showing the array of fish and bird species that inhabit the lake, not far from the fish farm and the tables where tourists drink fresh coconut milk before they get back on the boats that will take them back to shore. There hangs a painting in which a B-52 (I checked the silhouette against photos of U.S. war planes) flies over the lake while people go about their daily activities.

I knew the United States dropped bombs on Cambodia when it wasn't supposed to, but I didn't know why. I am reading Kenton Clymer's Troubled Relations: The United States and Cambodia since 1870 to try to understand why the United States bombed Cambodia during the Vietnam war, or the American War as it is called in Vietnam and Cambodia.

I will let you know if I understand any better after reading an expert.

Cambodia has had a few years of peace, now. I hope that the peace continues without any foreign bombers or home-grown horror. I hope this man, and other artists like him, will have the luxury of painting in oils.

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