On my way up to Dharamsala, I was thinking I might have given myself too much time there... 5 days seemed like a long time in my head. What I forgot is that Dharamsala has this way of sucking you in and filling up your time so that you never feel like you've had enough there. It was a crazy 5 days, filled with surprising reunions and good times.
The minute I got into town, I took my stuff to the Om, a family-run guest house where we'd lived as students for 3 months. Hung out with the staff for a bit, got updates on everyone (Deckyi's married and has a baby, Lobsang and Yangzom went back to South India) but they didn't have any rooms, so I left my bag there and set off across town to look for a room.
I got down to Gu Chu Sum, the ex-political prisoners' organization where I lived while I was doing my research both times I'd been in India before. There's an internet cafe and a japanese restaurant operated by GuChuSum, where a lot of my friends there worked. I've literally spent months of my life sitting between the stoop outside the internet cafe and a little shack of a cafe across the street, just hanging out with people, drinking tea, playing guitar, and smoking way too many cigarettes.
As soon as I got there, I saw my friend Tsersang sitting outside the cafe, having an English lesson with an Australian girl and a few others. I sat with them and ended up staying for a couple hours, having tea and getting caught up on the whereabouts of all my old friends.
Tsersang is an ex-political prisoner with a long pony tail and one lazy eye - the result of beatings received in prison. He's always been very sweet, but this time I noticed he seemed a lot more outgoing than before. He told me he'd been working on his dam nyen (Tibetan guitar) and had gotten good, and would now sit outside and sing at the top of his lungs, for which most people in the neighborhood regarded him as crazy. He'd written a song in Tibetan called "There's no True Love in McLeod Ganj" (McLeod Ganj is the name of the Tibetan part of Dharamsala). The words translate to something like:
You can't say there are no beautiful women in Dharamsala,
There are women from all over the world,
White ones, black ones, you can have your pick,
But no one stays in McLeod Ganj.
Last night I dreamed I was sleeping with my love,
But when I woke I found I was only sleeping with my knees.
Maybe you can find love in Ladakh or Shimla [other Tibetan settlements],
But there is no true love in McLeod Ganj.
I learned a bit later from other friends that Tsersang had broken up with his Japanese girlfriend - they'd been together since before the first time I went to India - which prompted both the song and comments from most of his friends that "Tsersang's gone a bit crazy". He was right, though - he's gotten really good at dam nyen. I wish I had brought some recording equipment. I think he was also right about the sentiment. The song was a little strange for me to hear, having been a part of the problem of foreign women who date Tibetans and then leave them after a while. I never think about Tenzin Dawa anymore, but it brought back a lot of memories to be in his world again. I knew he was married to a Spanish woman and living in Barcelona - he'd called me once last summer and told me that. Tsersang told me he'd since gotten divorced, but is still in Barcelona making pizzas for a living.
While sitting outside, someone came up to ask if I could volunteer for an English conversation group (you really can't go anywhere in Dharamsala without being asked to tutor someone in English). I said sure, and the guy said "ok, it meets right now". So still without a place to stay, I went to tutor a woman just arrived from Tibet for a couple hours. The volunteer leader brought me down to a building behind Gu Chu Sum, which happened to be the building where Tenzin Dawa lived - I gasped when I realized we were going in there. Afterwards, I came back to the cafe and met other old friends.
After dark, I finally decided to look for a room in the guest house next to Gu Chu Sum. I went to talk to the owner, who told me "you've been hanging out all day, I had no idea you needed a room!" He's a friend of a lot of my friends and I'd stayed at his place for a few weeks before. When I asked him how much he wanted for a room, he said "how much do you want to pay? be frank." I told him 200 rupees ($5), he said "sure!" and led me to a nice big room with hot water and a private balcony. I love this place.
Across the steps from my room, there's a shack where at all hours of the day, a group of Tibetans is crowded inside playing kiram ball, this game where you flick disks into holes (it's kind of like pool with your fingers). As I was bringing my bag down to my room, one of the guys inside playing yelled "Hello there! Have a good evening!" I turned to see who it was, and I saw it was someone familiar looking (I have to admit that without keeping in touch with a lot of people my memory had gotten a little fuzzy). After a little game of "why do you look familiar?" I realized it was Dawa, who'd completely changed from the last time I saw him.
The last time I came to India, Dawa had just come from Tibet. He was quiet and didn't speak English well. He didn't know many people in town, and Tenzin Dawa had taken him in like a little brother. Dawa was working in the kitchen of a Tibetan restaurant. I'd sometimes help him cook there - which was fun, but I also witnessed some of the most horrific food safety practices imaginable. It was winter then, and the restauarant wasn't making enough money for Dawa to get a salary, so Tenzin Dawa and Migmar (one of my closest friends at Gu Chu Sum) were giving Dawa money out of their very small budgets. They asked me to help him out, since they didn't have much to give, so for about 9 months that year, until I went to Honduras, I would send Dawa some money every month.
Dawa is now incredibly outgoing, his English has gotten really good, and he seems totally in his element. He felt terrible for not recognizing me at first, and made me promise to let him take me out to dinner (for which I felt a little strange, so I treated him to his next couple meals after that). He told me that because of the money I'd sent, he was able to study full-time and that's how his English got so good. He's madly in love with a Korean girl, they're pregnant, and she's moving to Dharmsala next week. They can't get married yet because he doesn't have his papers in order (refugees often don't have the right documents). We hung out a lot for the next few days, and he insisted that we email Tenzin Dawa and tell him I'm in town. We did, and the next day Tenzin Dawa called Dawa's cell phone to talk to me.
It was really strange to talk to Tenzin Dawa afer all this time, but being that I was hanging out with all his friends, it seemed like the right thing to do. Actually, it was a nice reality check that I'd made the right decision by not marrying him. I'd started to feel a little twinge of guilt hearing Tsersang's song, but it's true - there is no true love in mcleod ganj. Too many options there to be happy with one, and everyone there is either a refugee or a traveler.
I spent most of my time in dharamsala hanging out by Gu Chu Sum, just like old times. I felt like I could've stayed for another year easily.
I also managed to meet up with Mara, a friend I've known since we were literally in our cribs together. She's been traveling India with an Israeli friend of hers, and we knew we'd both be in Dharamsala at the same time. Of course when I arrived, the internet had been out in all of Dharamsala for about 5 days, so meeting up was a bit difficult. I spent one morning hiking around the village where she was staying, this little Israeli enclave full of hash and german bakeries, but couldn't find her. We finally managed to meet up when the internet came back and had a great time. I took her to see my philosophy teacher, she hung out with my friends, and we got a good chance to catch up.
Friday night I decided to take 7 of my closest Tibetan friends out for dinner at this "fancy" Korean restaurant behind Gu Chu Sum, to celebrate my last night in town and my birthday the next day. (For some perspective, the total cost of dinner for all 12 of us was under $40). By then Sarah and Adriana had made it to Dharamsala too, so they joined along with Mara and her Israeli friend. Migmar (my first friend from Gu Chu Sum, who'd introduced me to everyone else, including Tenzin Dawa) had come up for the day from the Tibetan arts school where he's now studying to be a traditional Tibetan painter. It was a great time, and afterwards we all went up to the roof of Gu Chu Sum, sat out under the stars with some candles and beer (which one of them had woken up the liquor store owner to buy), playing guitar and singing. They played a lot of Tibetan songs I'd heard before, replacing the words to make them about me - inserting my name in place of Tibetan names, and changing lyrics like "lhasa women are the most beautiful in the world" to "american women are the most beautiful in the world." At midnight they sang me happy birthday and forced some beer on me.
Saturday morning I woke up at 5:30 to go to the temple for the Dalai Lama's teachings. We met our philosophy teacher beforehand (he's also the English translator for the Dalai Lama) to borrow some cushions from him. The teachings were hard to hear, since the English translation by radio has terrible transmission, so I was only picking up every tenth word or so. After a couple hours, I decided to leave and take care of some things in town on my last day. I went to a "review session" later that afternoon that my philosophy teacher was running, so I got the lesson a bit later. But I did get to see the Dalai Lama on my birthday.
When I came back to Gu Chu Sum, I had about an hour before I had to leave to catch my bus - just enough time for one more cup of tea and a couple cigarettes with friends. When I left, Dawa and lobsang walked me to the bus, along with sarah, adriana, adri's boyfriend, and mara. Dawa bought me water and tibetan dumplings on the way, and everyone gave me white scarves (tibetans give them as a sign of respect to mark an occasion) and birthday gifts. It was really sweet.
Once I got on the bus, I found they'd double-booked my seat (in typical India fashion) and they tried to kick me off. I was sharing a sleeper compartment with a nun from Australia and after we both just sat there and refused to move, things settled down eventually and we made it to Delhi after a long night of nauseating driving down mountain roads. I actually threw up out the window - first time I've ever done that in India.
So all in all, it's been a fantastic trip. I was really surprised by how many people I still knew there and how much it still felt like home. Even the new people I met had some context to know who I was (most people are familiar with the Emory program there), we usually had some friends in common, and I still knew enough about Dharamsala to understand who they were. I even got roped into doing a half day of translation work for a Tibetan activist group organizing a protest in Delhi. It was good to know that I could come back to it after so long and still feel really happy there.
So now I'm just waiting out the day in Delhi till my plane leaves at 3 AM tonight... then it's back to NACCHO.
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Life as a high class escort
I arrived back in Delhi from Pushkar on Monday morning. I went straight to the hotel that Dhondup owns, where he lives in the "penthouse suite", which in India means something like a middle-rate studio apartment. It was about 7 AM and I asked the woman at the front desk to call his room, which she did hesitantly, only because she knew I was a friend. Normally the rule is not to wake him, especially after he's been out partying, which he had been the night before. I walk up to his room. He meets me in the hallway outside and says "Don't be surprised, there's a girl in here but she's leaving now." Amused, I go in to find an embarrassed-looking Tibetan woman clammoring for her shoes.
A little background on Dhondup: he's essentially the Tibetan version of Chuck, my landlord in DC. He went to high school and college in the states, comes from family money, and owns a travel agency and hotel. My friend adriana met him a couple years ago, when she was staying at his hotel during her yearly trip to India. He took her out to Delhi's finest places, and since then acts as her general hookup for all things India. He's a good person to know, for access to travel deals and good parties. He's dated a few American women, and some British ones, and currently has a girlfriend from Singapore (who he assured me he didn't cheat on that night, as the Tibetan girl only slept there and he couldn't remember her name when he woke up in the morning). I find all of this pretty hard to believe, as he's a pretty unattractive person. But, stranger things have happened, I guess.
I was meeting up with Dhondup so he could arrange my travel to Dharamsala. When I got there that morning, he told me he was coming up with me, and we would take his car (with a hired driver, of course - only the best.) He said we'd leave around 10 AM, which would get us up to Dharamsala by evening. I showered (in his bathroom with no door and no shower curtain) and then went downstairs to his restaurant for some tea. Around 11:30, i called his room to see what was going on. He was getting ready and just had a couple work things to do before we left. This turned into about 3 hours of me sitting with him at a table in the restaurant, while he yelled at an Indian phone company worker, then he yelled at one of his staff, meanwhile answering the phone every 2 minutes to yell at other people, all flowing between Hindi, Tibetan, and English like it was all the same language.
I learned that one of his errands for the day was to give 2.5 million rupees (that's about 60K dollars) in cash to some man who was bringing it to Nepal for him. The man wouldn't come to the Tibetan settlement because he said "it gets raided all the time", for which Dhondup called him a pussy. So instead we had to go meet him somewhere else, a trip I was nicely dragged along for. We get into one of Dhondup's cars and the driver takes us to a hotel that's only for Indian elected officials. Dhondup's friend, a former state cabinet minister, was staying there and was somehow involved in this brokered deal. Dhondup introduced me as his "Charlie's Angel". I sat there and chatted with them, then these two Indian men come in - dorky looking and really nervous. Dhondup closes the curtains, then opens his laptop bag, which is filled with stacks of bills. he puts them on the table. The men count the bills. He opens another back, takes out another bunch of stacks, and does the same. This goes on two more times, all while we sit there making boring conversation and I'm seriously wondering if I've been dropped into the Indian twilight zone. Finally, they finish and we get on our way back to Dhondup's hotel.
We switch cars and drivers and set off for Dharamsala, stopping first at the gas station across the street. The driver backs the car into an Indian guy's car, for which the Indian man pulls him out of the car by his collar and screams at him. We park the car to wait for another driver, while that one stays behind to wait for his boss to straighten things out. While we're waiting in the backseat, Dhondup asks if he can put his head in my lap, because some staff member of his is across the street and he doesn't want his staff to gossip about him. I'm reluctant, as Dhondup has already proven himself to be exactly like Chuck by hitting on me every 5 minutes and even proposing a marriage of convenience (something Chuck does about once a week). Finally, by about 8 PM, we set off.
Because we left Delhi so late, Dhondup says we'll stop for the night in Chandigarh, a city about halfway to Dharamsala. There's a five-star hotel there where he's arranging to have a tourist group stay soon, and he wants to show his face there and have a look at it. He books one room for both of us. Somehow I didn't get the message that Adriana's "Dhondup will take care of you in Delhi" meant I'd have to share a bed with him in Chandigarh - but I'm a big girl, I can take care of myself, and despite being creepy he's really harmless.
It takes about 5 hours to get to Chandigarh, during which time we smoke a joint in the backseat of the car and I try my best to sleep - mostly just to avoid conversation. We arrive in Chandigarh, where the hotel staff gives me looks like I've been paid to spend the night with this man, and I don't speak to anyone because they're all talking in Hindi and I can't understand. We get to the room, order room service for dinner after not eating all day, and i go straight to bed after giving him a stern warning not to try anything. I actually slept well, despite the fact that i was curled up so close to the edge of the bed that I almost fell off.
The next morning, we set off for Dharamsala. We stopped at a restaurant on the highway where this same tourist group would be eating lunch on their trip - also to show face and take a look around. So again, being the arm candy for the day, I sit there in silence while Dhondup shmoozed the manager (who was drunk by 1 PM) in Hindi. For the most part, the only thing I could understand was the word "madam" which they used to refer to me. In India, it's normal to refer to a woman as "madam", but in this instance it just worsened the situation.
We go outside and get in the car, where a group of young Indian teenage boys is sitting around. They made a comment in Hindi, asking how much I cost. Dhondup made the driver stop in front of them so he could yell at them - not to say "you shouldn't talk about women like that", but to say "Do you know who I am? I'm a friend of the manager's". Thanks Dhondup.
So, thoroughly embarrassed and eager to regain my autonomy, I told Dhondup I just wanted him to drop me off at the bus stand in Dharamsala and I'd take care of finding a room for myself. He said I should stay with him until Sarah and Adriana come up - and without allowing the vomit in my throat to escape my mouth, I politely refused. We got to Dharamsala finally, he dropped me off, and immediately everything changed.
Dharamsala is amazing. I forgot how much I feel at home here. I've had a busy two days, seeing friends everywhere and having a million cups of tea and great conversations. It's amazing how easily i just fell back into being here like no time passed. But I'll write about it all in another post. For now I'll just add "two days as a high-class escort" to the list of really fucking strange things that happened in India.
A little background on Dhondup: he's essentially the Tibetan version of Chuck, my landlord in DC. He went to high school and college in the states, comes from family money, and owns a travel agency and hotel. My friend adriana met him a couple years ago, when she was staying at his hotel during her yearly trip to India. He took her out to Delhi's finest places, and since then acts as her general hookup for all things India. He's a good person to know, for access to travel deals and good parties. He's dated a few American women, and some British ones, and currently has a girlfriend from Singapore (who he assured me he didn't cheat on that night, as the Tibetan girl only slept there and he couldn't remember her name when he woke up in the morning). I find all of this pretty hard to believe, as he's a pretty unattractive person. But, stranger things have happened, I guess.
I was meeting up with Dhondup so he could arrange my travel to Dharamsala. When I got there that morning, he told me he was coming up with me, and we would take his car (with a hired driver, of course - only the best.) He said we'd leave around 10 AM, which would get us up to Dharamsala by evening. I showered (in his bathroom with no door and no shower curtain) and then went downstairs to his restaurant for some tea. Around 11:30, i called his room to see what was going on. He was getting ready and just had a couple work things to do before we left. This turned into about 3 hours of me sitting with him at a table in the restaurant, while he yelled at an Indian phone company worker, then he yelled at one of his staff, meanwhile answering the phone every 2 minutes to yell at other people, all flowing between Hindi, Tibetan, and English like it was all the same language.
I learned that one of his errands for the day was to give 2.5 million rupees (that's about 60K dollars) in cash to some man who was bringing it to Nepal for him. The man wouldn't come to the Tibetan settlement because he said "it gets raided all the time", for which Dhondup called him a pussy. So instead we had to go meet him somewhere else, a trip I was nicely dragged along for. We get into one of Dhondup's cars and the driver takes us to a hotel that's only for Indian elected officials. Dhondup's friend, a former state cabinet minister, was staying there and was somehow involved in this brokered deal. Dhondup introduced me as his "Charlie's Angel". I sat there and chatted with them, then these two Indian men come in - dorky looking and really nervous. Dhondup closes the curtains, then opens his laptop bag, which is filled with stacks of bills. he puts them on the table. The men count the bills. He opens another back, takes out another bunch of stacks, and does the same. This goes on two more times, all while we sit there making boring conversation and I'm seriously wondering if I've been dropped into the Indian twilight zone. Finally, they finish and we get on our way back to Dhondup's hotel.
We switch cars and drivers and set off for Dharamsala, stopping first at the gas station across the street. The driver backs the car into an Indian guy's car, for which the Indian man pulls him out of the car by his collar and screams at him. We park the car to wait for another driver, while that one stays behind to wait for his boss to straighten things out. While we're waiting in the backseat, Dhondup asks if he can put his head in my lap, because some staff member of his is across the street and he doesn't want his staff to gossip about him. I'm reluctant, as Dhondup has already proven himself to be exactly like Chuck by hitting on me every 5 minutes and even proposing a marriage of convenience (something Chuck does about once a week). Finally, by about 8 PM, we set off.
Because we left Delhi so late, Dhondup says we'll stop for the night in Chandigarh, a city about halfway to Dharamsala. There's a five-star hotel there where he's arranging to have a tourist group stay soon, and he wants to show his face there and have a look at it. He books one room for both of us. Somehow I didn't get the message that Adriana's "Dhondup will take care of you in Delhi" meant I'd have to share a bed with him in Chandigarh - but I'm a big girl, I can take care of myself, and despite being creepy he's really harmless.
It takes about 5 hours to get to Chandigarh, during which time we smoke a joint in the backseat of the car and I try my best to sleep - mostly just to avoid conversation. We arrive in Chandigarh, where the hotel staff gives me looks like I've been paid to spend the night with this man, and I don't speak to anyone because they're all talking in Hindi and I can't understand. We get to the room, order room service for dinner after not eating all day, and i go straight to bed after giving him a stern warning not to try anything. I actually slept well, despite the fact that i was curled up so close to the edge of the bed that I almost fell off.
The next morning, we set off for Dharamsala. We stopped at a restaurant on the highway where this same tourist group would be eating lunch on their trip - also to show face and take a look around. So again, being the arm candy for the day, I sit there in silence while Dhondup shmoozed the manager (who was drunk by 1 PM) in Hindi. For the most part, the only thing I could understand was the word "madam" which they used to refer to me. In India, it's normal to refer to a woman as "madam", but in this instance it just worsened the situation.
We go outside and get in the car, where a group of young Indian teenage boys is sitting around. They made a comment in Hindi, asking how much I cost. Dhondup made the driver stop in front of them so he could yell at them - not to say "you shouldn't talk about women like that", but to say "Do you know who I am? I'm a friend of the manager's". Thanks Dhondup.
So, thoroughly embarrassed and eager to regain my autonomy, I told Dhondup I just wanted him to drop me off at the bus stand in Dharamsala and I'd take care of finding a room for myself. He said I should stay with him until Sarah and Adriana come up - and without allowing the vomit in my throat to escape my mouth, I politely refused. We got to Dharamsala finally, he dropped me off, and immediately everything changed.
Dharamsala is amazing. I forgot how much I feel at home here. I've had a busy two days, seeing friends everywhere and having a million cups of tea and great conversations. It's amazing how easily i just fell back into being here like no time passed. But I'll write about it all in another post. For now I'll just add "two days as a high-class escort" to the list of really fucking strange things that happened in India.
Sunday, July 1, 2007
The Pushkar
Had a fabulous weekend in a little desert town in Rajasthan (western india) called Pushkar, which everyone mysteriously refers to as "The Pushkar" - kind of like Ukraine I guess. We got there on an overnight bus from Delhi, after our plans to go to Kathmandu with our friend Dhondup fell through (we couldn't get tickets) and our trip to Jaiselmer also fell through after we bought tickets, went to the train station, trekked about a mile through the crowds to our train, sat down, and then got kicked off by an angry ticket guy who said there were no seats for us. Such is India - nothing happens the way you planned it, but it all manages to work itself out somehow.
We started our morning in Pushkar walking through town in 115 degree weather with our packs, trying to find the guest house my friends stayed in last year. Even though it's crazy hot, the weather's a lot more comfortable than Delhi without the smog and humidity. Pushkar is built around a holy lake (called Pushkar) where it is said that Brahma wanted to do some practice that his wife disapproved of. He took a second wife in protest, and as his punishment, his first wife decreed that this lake would be the only place where people would worship him. It's the only holy place in India dedicated only to him. So common practice in The Pushkar is to do a puja (prayer) to Brahma at the lake. Many people also bathe in the water there. The problem in Pushkar, though, is that there are many Brahmans (priests) who operate as hustlers - this is India, after all. So as we were walking through town, we were approached by men who demanded that before we do anything else (including put our bags down) we do our puja and get a bracelet on our wrists as proof. Arguing proved useless, so we gave in.
Here's how my encounter with the Brahman went:
Brahman: Repeat after me (prayer in sanskrit).. Okay now, take these flowers and this powder in your hands. Tell me the names of your family members. You have boyfriend? Okay, six family plus boyfriend is seven, plus three for Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu... that's thirty dollars. Okay, repeat after me. I offer these prayers to Brahma for my family, for my boyfriend, and I promise to give thirty dollars...
I obviously didn't repeat that last part, and when, after being blessed and offering my flowers to the holy lake, I gave 100 rupees (about $2.50), the priest yelled at me "you promised 30 dollars! you promise, you give!" First time I've ever been hustled by a priest, but I'd heard this about the Pushkar before so I wasn't surprised.
The rest of the Pushkar is lovely, though. People are incredibly nice, and even when they're trying to hustle you they still want to be your friend. We spent two days walking around town at a snail's pace, stopping in every other shop to hang out with shopkeepers (who always offer tea and good conversation if you hang out for a few minutes) and buy shitloads of gifts. There's some good stuff coming from the Pushkar for you all.
We took a camel safari ride for sunrise yesterday morning, which was touristy but fun. Gopal, my camel guide, was silly (Indians tend to be good jokers) and helped me take a picture of us smoking on a camel. We picked up an entourage of young Indian boys walking around town for a few hours, which proved to be entertaining. After they followed us around for hours, they asked us for chapati, then took us to a store and wanted butter. We're familiar with the beggar scams, where they ask you to buy them packaged food then they return it for money... so we brought them to a restaurant and got them hot food instead. The kids were adorable and eventually admitted that they usually convince foreigners to buy them butter, then they use the money to play games.
All in all, pushkar was a great time. I finally feel at home again in India. My India mannerisms have come back in full - the head wobble, the weird accent, the India-english... the more I settle in, the more I remember why I love this place.
I'm back in Delhi now, after an overnight "sleeper" bus, which is sort of like lying in a casket with a window and getting thrown around for 10 hours. I decided to separate from my friends while they're in Jaiselmer, because I don't have that much more time in India and I wanted to make it up to dharamsala. So I'm hanging out in Dhondup's office and he's driving me the 12-hour trip to dharamsala later today. I have to say - it's nice to have friends with money here. That's definitely new for me. I'm used to roughing it and living very cheaply in India, and I prefer it that way - but a hot shower, a hairdryer, and air conditioning in Dhondup's apartment this morning was a nice break.
Even just being in the Tibetan neighborhood in Delhi feels like home. I'm always amazed by how much I enjoy being with Tibetans. I'm really excited to see friends in Dharamsala tonight. More later...
We started our morning in Pushkar walking through town in 115 degree weather with our packs, trying to find the guest house my friends stayed in last year. Even though it's crazy hot, the weather's a lot more comfortable than Delhi without the smog and humidity. Pushkar is built around a holy lake (called Pushkar) where it is said that Brahma wanted to do some practice that his wife disapproved of. He took a second wife in protest, and as his punishment, his first wife decreed that this lake would be the only place where people would worship him. It's the only holy place in India dedicated only to him. So common practice in The Pushkar is to do a puja (prayer) to Brahma at the lake. Many people also bathe in the water there. The problem in Pushkar, though, is that there are many Brahmans (priests) who operate as hustlers - this is India, after all. So as we were walking through town, we were approached by men who demanded that before we do anything else (including put our bags down) we do our puja and get a bracelet on our wrists as proof. Arguing proved useless, so we gave in.
Here's how my encounter with the Brahman went:
Brahman: Repeat after me (prayer in sanskrit).. Okay now, take these flowers and this powder in your hands. Tell me the names of your family members. You have boyfriend? Okay, six family plus boyfriend is seven, plus three for Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu... that's thirty dollars. Okay, repeat after me. I offer these prayers to Brahma for my family, for my boyfriend, and I promise to give thirty dollars...
I obviously didn't repeat that last part, and when, after being blessed and offering my flowers to the holy lake, I gave 100 rupees (about $2.50), the priest yelled at me "you promised 30 dollars! you promise, you give!" First time I've ever been hustled by a priest, but I'd heard this about the Pushkar before so I wasn't surprised.
The rest of the Pushkar is lovely, though. People are incredibly nice, and even when they're trying to hustle you they still want to be your friend. We spent two days walking around town at a snail's pace, stopping in every other shop to hang out with shopkeepers (who always offer tea and good conversation if you hang out for a few minutes) and buy shitloads of gifts. There's some good stuff coming from the Pushkar for you all.
We took a camel safari ride for sunrise yesterday morning, which was touristy but fun. Gopal, my camel guide, was silly (Indians tend to be good jokers) and helped me take a picture of us smoking on a camel. We picked up an entourage of young Indian boys walking around town for a few hours, which proved to be entertaining. After they followed us around for hours, they asked us for chapati, then took us to a store and wanted butter. We're familiar with the beggar scams, where they ask you to buy them packaged food then they return it for money... so we brought them to a restaurant and got them hot food instead. The kids were adorable and eventually admitted that they usually convince foreigners to buy them butter, then they use the money to play games.
All in all, pushkar was a great time. I finally feel at home again in India. My India mannerisms have come back in full - the head wobble, the weird accent, the India-english... the more I settle in, the more I remember why I love this place.
I'm back in Delhi now, after an overnight "sleeper" bus, which is sort of like lying in a casket with a window and getting thrown around for 10 hours. I decided to separate from my friends while they're in Jaiselmer, because I don't have that much more time in India and I wanted to make it up to dharamsala. So I'm hanging out in Dhondup's office and he's driving me the 12-hour trip to dharamsala later today. I have to say - it's nice to have friends with money here. That's definitely new for me. I'm used to roughing it and living very cheaply in India, and I prefer it that way - but a hot shower, a hairdryer, and air conditioning in Dhondup's apartment this morning was a nice break.
Even just being in the Tibetan neighborhood in Delhi feels like home. I'm always amazed by how much I enjoy being with Tibetans. I'm really excited to see friends in Dharamsala tonight. More later...
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