Expat Life in the South of France

She was 25. I was 58.  She was lithe, fit and an experienced back-packer in India. I was none of these. Yet, in a moment of adventurous abandon, I agreed to backpack with her through the Himalayas.  I let myself be seduced by her enthusiasm.  “You can speak the language.  Imagine how wonderful it would be if we really had an insight into the lives, thoughts, beliefs of the people.”  I ignored the little voice in my head that said “Remember, the closest you’ve ever come to roughing it is travelling economy class on an aircraft.”

As the doors of the aircraft opened  to a just breaking dawn at Delhi airport, the smell of wood smoke tickled my nostrils, unleashing a flood of childhood memories; of long train journeys through villages; of early morning walks in the hill-stations around Bombay; of being invited into a farmer’s mud-brick home for  milky tea and chapattis at breakfast. Nostalgia mingled with guilt for memories unwittingly shrouded. I was home.

We had agreed that for me to really be a “traveller” and not a tourist, we would live and travel accordingly during our three week trip. Leyla met me at a hotel in Paharganj in old Delhi.  I had been to Delhi several times and never heard of this area.  I was in for a surprise.  To break me in gently into the travellers’ world, we stayed at a reasonable hotel, which meant a clean bed and a private bathroom; it did not mean perfumed bath oils and fluffy white robes.   The next morning Leyla,  a long-term habitué, was my guide around Paharganj, the backpackers’ mecca,. Paharganj means mountain district. Nothing could be further from the truth.  We stepped out into a heaving, seething, dusty mass of men and machines.  Narrow streets swarming with handcarts, motor rickshaws, taxis, all driving in a frenzy of horns, weaving zanily through unconcernedly strolling pedestrians, led into narrower streets teeming with wandering cows, more rickshaws, and beggars on wheeled boards holding out amputated limbs, which led into still narrower streets.   We were on our way to see a typical backpackers’ hotel, as part of my education. We fought our way through the vendors of vegetables, street hawkers, touts promising “best rate for dollars”, hashish, hotel rooms, and leather jackets. Adding to the cacophony on the street, music stores blared hits from the latest Bollywood movies, a muezzin wailed his call to prayer from a mosque and an urchin played the tabla …Sight- and sound-bytes assaulted the senses from every direction. Leyla protectively hung on to me. “Don’t worry mum, it’s quite safe.”

How odd, I thought, that I, an Indian, had to be shepherded through this most Indian of  scenes by my half-English daughter, who by dint of having spent the last year in India studying yoga and meditation, felt herself to be more Indian than I did.

We arrived at our destination, an extremely unprepossessing construction of about 4 storeys.  Young westerners in sandals and loose flowing Indian clothing wandered in and out.  The Reception was an unmanned school desk.  We walked up. There were three to four rooms to a floor. The “expensive” ones had a low wooden bed with suspect looking linen, the cheaper ones were charpoys , plain rope beds where you slept in sleeping bags.  There was one bathroom and one toilet per floor with the most basic facilities, toilet paper not being one of them. 

“It smells of incense here” I remarked. 

“Not incense mum, hashish!”

The biggest surprise was the rooftop café. Tables and chairs shaded with large umbrellas, laid out under a brilliant sky .  We were brought a menu. Apart from “potato chips” I didn’t understand anything.  Leyla explained they were all Israeli dishes.  Having backpacked through Israel as well, she ordered for us. 

That was another surprise.  We met young Israelis all over India. On trains, buses, in the mountains, in the villages, in the ashrams and meditation centres.   It seems that after the rigours of army service most young Israelis, after their discharge from the military take off to travel the world, their favourite destinations being South America and India.   Later, out on the streets I noticed that the signs outside most of the cyber cafes, money changers, small hotels and leather wear shops were in Hebrew as well as English.  We entered one shop to look around. Ali the owner was polite and welcoming.  I asked him about his business. He said that if it wasn’t for the Israeli travellers, all the shopkeepers would be worse off.  Curious, I asked him, if being Muslim didn’t bother him doing business with the Jews.  He said to me “Business is business.  We may be Muslims but we are not Arabs, we are Indian.  They are great people.  I have even visited some of my clients in Israel!”  I was delighted and hopeful that this microcosm of inter-religious harmony would one day spread further beyond Paharganj.

We left Delhi by train from Paharganj station for Rishikesh in the foothills of the Himalayas not too far from the source of the Ganges in the Gangotri glacier.  Leyla had booked us into the Shivananda ashram.  I was now really getting into the swing of being a traveller and not a tourist, and was pleasantly surprised when we were shown our room at the ashram. Large, clean beds, light and airy, with the bathroom down the corridor, again clean and well maintained.   We wandered the streets, shouldered our way through the crowded  bazaars, talked to other travellers and wandered down to the ghats on the river.   The Ganges here is a swift flowing, cold and crystal clear river on its way to the great Indian plain.  We saw several saffron-robed saddhus sitting on the steps, some filling their brass bowls with the water which they considered holy, others praying and others just talking.  A young saddhu smiled at us. We too sat on the steps and watched the setting sunlight playing on the ripples of the water, and wondered what the saddhus were doing here.  Leyla prodded me to ask, which I did in Hindi, only to receive a reply, to my surprise, in English.  They were just on their way back from a pilgrimage to the source of the river because it was now September and very cold in the mountains.  The young saddhu then proceeded to tell us about his life in Rishikesh and to our great astonishment, went into some detail about his amorous conquests among the young Western female travellers passing through Rishikesh.  We didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.  All our illusions about the holy men and their life of abstinence suddenly exploded when faced with this casual reality. To our rather indiscreet enquiry about this aspect , he just enigmatically shrugged his shoulders and smiled.  We were confused to say the least. 

Our departure from Rishikesh was somewhat unconventional.  We booked an overnight berth on a train to Pathankot, further north which was the nearest railhead to Dharamsala in the Himalayas, the capital of the Tibetan government in exile and the Dalai Lama, which was our next port of call.   The train was not at the platform, and we had to cross several sets of train tracks to get to it, which had it not been for the porter we would never have known how to find it.  We found our berths which were full of passengers.  Leyla assured me that by night fall, they would all have disembarked.  It was stifling, and we were travelling second class, unairconditioned.  Leyla decided to buy a bottle of water and leaped off the train.  A few minutes later, the train started moving, and I was panic stricken because she had not yet returned and wondered if I could jump off a moving train. However to my relief, it finally pulled into the station at the platform. Daughter retrieved. 

As the train made it’s way north through the plains, the searing afternoon heat gave way to the cool air of the foothills.  We were provided blankets but Leyla had warned me to carry a woollen shawl with me, which at the time I thought was absurd, but was very glad of as night fell. 

We arrived in Pathankot early the next morning and on our way to the exit we started speaking to two young Israeli men who had boarded the train at Rishikesh.  As  they were also taking the bus to Dharamsala , we decided to travel together. We asked at the station how far the bus station was, and were assured  it was “only five minutes” away.  I suspected it was considerably more and wasn’t prepared to walk with my backpack.  So we decided I would take a horse drawn rickshaw with all the luggage and they would follow on foot.  We had a long wait before our bus was ready to depart, so after feeding and watering ourselves we sat down to wait, when suddenly, one of the young Israelis decided to uncover his contraption and started to play - the didgeridoo! He soon attracted an audience, none of whom could understand the purpose of this tuneless instrument.

The bus arrived. Luggage had to be placed on the roof – by the passengers themselves.  Not being as nimble as I once was, I gazed in trepidation as the lads shimmied up with their backpacks.  They then stayed there while we threw our packs up to them and they stashed them.  Leyla then said to me “The last time I did this trip I rode on the roof, would you like to do that? The views are fantastic.”  I was appalled.  The thought of riding on the roof of a rickety bus as it snaked its way up a narrow unmade road up the highest mountain range in the world, didn’t fill me with delight. We travelled inside, the boys travelled on top. Four hours of bone shaking travel in the company of various animals, birds and their owners, brought us to Dharamsala

The Hotel Tibet in Dharamsala was a find. We had a huge room with a private bathroom, and a terrace opening to the most magnificent view of the mountains . The cost?  £4!

Dharamsala was unlike any place I had been to. Called Little Lhasa, it is home to 5,000 of the 80,000 Tibetan exiles who followed the Dalai Lama from Tibet. Spaced out hippies trudge shoulder to shoulder down the muddy roads with burgundy robed, shaven headed Buddhist monks.

I had never seen so many young westerners concentrated in such a small area.  Unlike them I hadn’t come seeking nirvana, Richard Gere, hashish or the Dalai Lama (though I did, quite unintentionally, come across the last two).  I had come out of curiosity because Leyla loved it and had done her first of several Vipassana Meditation courses here, which had so changed her outlook.  Looking back on it, there was something indefinable about the place which really seeped into my psyche.  I absorbed the peace and energy almost by osmosis. I had an overwhelming desire to prolong my stay. This little Himalayan town of chanting monks, wandering cows, seekers and searchers captivated me.  It most certainly pandered to tourists. The streets were lined with internet cafes, second hand bookshops, pizza parlours, and travel agents offering treks in the surrounding mountains.  Leyla guided me to her favourite snack-bar. I was bemused – here was a Tibetan selling the most mouth watering cheesecake, carrot cake, jam tarts and all other manner of very unIndian delicacies.  Passing grocery stores displaying Houmous and Tahini in their windows and the Hasuka Israel Restaurant, it was obvious that the Israeli contingent were important contributors to Dharamsala’s economy.

Leyla’s Anglo-Egyptian friend, Joseph, who had spent several months in India, invited us to lunch. 

“This restaurant serves the best dal in India.”  A formidable commendation.

We found our way to his village house in the village of  Bhagsu, a few kilometres further uphill from Dharamsala, and together with some of his companions, we started up a steep, narrow, winding track up the side of a mountain. 15 minutes into the uphill climb we wondered where the restaurant was. Leyla had worn a long blue dress and as the path continued to snake upwards, Leyla and I looked at each other.  This is when I began to suspect that this was probably not the ideal situation for a middle aged woman to find herself in.. I was soon proved right. The track disappeared and continued after a gap of about a meter, with a smooth granite rock face plunging into a ravine through the clouds below. Joseph and Leyla leapt across. When it was my turn, no sooner did I leap then I found myself spread eagled on the rock face, Joseph hanging on to my right arm, and his girlfriend to my left. As I scrambled to get a foothold, I could hear Leyla wailing “Oh my God, my dad’s going to kill me!”  My legs shaking and stomach churning we made it to the “restaurant” which turned out to be a cave in the mountain with an open air kitchen consisting of an open stove with two large aluminium pots containing dal and rice. “ This dal better be good,” Leyla muttered.

The walls of the cave were covered with paintings by various travellers passing through, some quite beautiful. It all seemed surreal to me, eating dal and rice, 2500 metres up in the Himalayas in a painted cave, with a group of spaced out travellers in varying states of cleanliness, on the ledge facing ours, because that was the only seating; two narrow ledges on opposite sides of the cave, running the length of the caves along the walls.  Our co-patrons of this restaurant were either sleeping, lounging, staring into space or smoking joints – no one was eating or drinking.   One of the young men suddenly lurched across the cave towards me and offered me his joint. “Who, me?” I thought incredulously as he wordlessly held out his joint to me.

“No, thank you” I managed to croak.  Our crowd had big grins on their faces, watching to see how I would react.

“Why did he choose you?” Leyla asked. Beats me.

We ordered our dal and rice and the cook and Joseph discussed the previous night’s full moon party, which was held in a large open area further along the same suicidal track we had just negotiated.

“The stuff last night was shit” said Joseph.

“God knows where they got it, but look, I’ve got hold of some great stuff. Guaranteed.” The cook  showed Joseph a few white tablets in a newspaper. I looked questioningly at Leyla.

 “Ecstasy.”

I tried to keep a grip on myself. I came on this trip wanting to see a side of travelling that was alien to me. I saw it in spades.  Leyla proceeded to fill me in on the full moon parties, which were usually held in places from where the moon could be clearly sighted. It was a music, drugs and alcohol fuelled scene.  I thought with horror of the track which we had just walked up in broad daylight, which the party goers would negotiate late at night. I remembered Leyla’s encounter in a bank with the mother of a missing Canadian boy, who had disappeared in Dharamsala during his gap year travels.  He was never found.  How many youngsters, I wondered, had plunged to their deaths in the dark down these mountains, high on drugs and alcohol?

We reluctantly left Dharamsala to continue our journey further into the Himalayas, to Manali.  We had enrolled in a one-week Buddhist meditation course at the Nembutsu Centre.  Manali at 1900 meters lies in the Kulu valley.  The surroundings are breathtakingly awe inspiring. It is impossible to describe the grandeur and majesty of the surrounding pine-forested snow-capped mountains, the rushing streams dropping into the orchards in the valley, magnificent landscapes around every corner. The Nembutsu Center was our home for the next week. With unrestricted views across the valley to the mountains, the situation was unparalleled.  The accommodation was spartan but comfortable, except when the thermometer plunged every night.  Our night wear was longjohns, leggings, jeans, thermal underwear,  sweaters and several blankets! The facilities were basic but spotless.  Luxuries like heating, washing machines, dishwashers, water filters, vacuum cleaners and ovens were not available.  Clothes had to be hand washed outdoors with bucketfuls of water, drinking water had to be boiled in huge pots and rooms had to be swept with brooms.  The strange thing was, we didn’t miss any of the mod cons.  It was wonderful living simply.

I was amazed to see how many young people had enrolled for this course. There was Geoff from Australia, Kristina from Sweden, Dani from Israel, Rudy from Switzerland, Jyoti from New Zealand, about 16 altogether. There were obviously, a lot of spiritual seekers out there.

 The day started at 6 a.m. with early morning meditation, followed by Yoga and breakfast.  After breakfast it was time for Karma Yoga, all the participants were given chores, ranging from cleaning to kitchen duties.  The afternoons and early evenings were given to discourses on Buddhist philosophy and inspiring “how to live” type talks.  Behram, the facilitator and  teacher, was supportive and committed.  He was obviously fulfilling a need. Travellers had come from all over only to attend his courses.

A highlight of our Manali stay was a trip to the Rohtang pass, at 3,978 meters, the jumping off point to Leh. Luckily, I came prepared with altitude sickness tablets. As the public bus snaked up the winding mountain road, miles from civilisation, it was amazing to pass an outdoor stall with a large banner flapping in the wind, advertising “Chinese Fast Food Vegchowmein Maggi Masala, Hot & Cold Drinks.”  When we finally reached the pass, it started to snow. In September.  It was an eerie feeling, being on top of the world, of which we were only allowed glimpses as the clouds formed and reformed.  The plateau was covered in Tibetan prayer flags, flapping in the wind.  It was also a truckers stop, before they started their descent into the valley of Leh.  Food stalls dotted around the plateau served all types of cuisine, including of course the ubiquitous “Chinese Fast Food.”  Being on that plateau, surrounded by the Himalayas, really brought home the wonder and majesty of this “abode of the gods” to us.  They chose well, the gods. And so did I, thanks to Leyla. 

Word of these places and courses gets around on the travellers’ grape vine. There is no advertising, no guide books tell you about them, and yet they are always full to capacity.  An experience I will always remember and that I would never otherwise have had.

All too soon, it was time for me to head home.  Leyla was going back  to Dharamsala on the back of a friend, John’s scooter.  She had met him on her earlier travels.  I was a bit concerned.  A scooter competing for the narrow mountain tracks with buses and trucks was not my idea of a safe trip.  I met John. He was bald, his face looked like a pincushion, it was pierced in so many places, and he was charming and caring.

“What does he do in his other life in Australia?”  I asked Leyla.

“He grows and sells marijuana.”

I was past being incredulous.  This trip had taught me to stop judging continually by my standards. I embraced everything that was offered to me and came back certainly a better human being than I went in.  The young people I met were honest, confused, funny, seeking, accepting, loving and helpful.  They would one day run the world I thought, and thank God for that.

My overnight bus-ride to Delhi was uneventful. Leyla did allow me to book an airconditioned coach!