The First Day in Manali

Finally, the Himalayas!! I'm back in the Himlayas after 3 years, and it seems like a long long time. But the way weather behaved today, it seemed to be a welcome for me :) Reached Manali at 10:30 in the morning from an overnight bus from Chandigarh. The semi-deluxe bus was much more comfortable than I expected, and it took roughly 10 hours from Chandigarh. I had looked up some of the tentative places I wanted to stay at from the Lonely Planet guide, and a place called Vashisht - a village 4km north of Manali - seemed to be perfect. The village was supposed to be in the wilderness, away from the hustle bustle and traffic of the main city. Well, the village does not have the hustle bustle of Manali, but the traffic seems almost that bad. The only saving grace is that if you walk 2 mins you are at some trail that will lead you to the wild.

So the hotel - well it would be an overstatement to call it a hotel, it's more like an old wooden guest house. It's called Sonam Guesthouse, and the rooms are clean but old, and the bathrooms are shared. The major positive is the rent - 120/- per night!! Not to mention the friendly keeper (his name is Joy) who helped me find a cheap internet place, and the friendly Swiss couple who's living in the room next door (and who came on the same bus as me from Chandigarh). The place has a TV room which the keeper insists on calling cinema room, and they have around 35-40 odd movies which you can watch, and write on a board outside as to what time you are going to watch that movie so other people can join you. All in all, a decent place to live - expecially for someone traveling alone and looking for company.

So I tried getting a couple of hours of sleep, and it was lunch time. Had lunch at the roof of World Peace Cafe :) They have wonderful views, and I was surprised at the variety of cuisine they serve! They had Italian, Spanish (YES - Burrito's!), French, Chinese and Indian. I just sampled tofu with rice which was written under the Chinese section, and though it didn't taste quite Chinese, it was pretty decent. Also, the ambience was wonderful - they have seating on the ground with cute bench like tables to have your food on.

After lunch I went for a short hike uphill which was supposed to take me to a waterfall. The hike was very steep, and I was soon regretting all the excercise that I did NOT do the last couple of weeks. But the views made up for all the hard work - it was cloudy and the snowy peaks were covered with a tinge of grey. I walked up as close to the waterfall as the trail allowed me (which was still quite a distance). After a while it started raining, and I had to take shelter under the backyard of a house. The experience was somewhat spiritual - the weather, the mountains, the clouds, the trees, the vegetation - everything played it's part in creating that ambience where all you can do is be thankful for that moment. I tried capturing some of it in pictures, but even pictures don't do justice!

Good night for now - time for dinner, and might go for a party that Joy told me about :)

Traveling solo ...

Just 2 more days to go for the trip I have been looking forward to for so long - Leh!! The biking trip has been converted to a trekking, hiking, and reading/relaxing trip coz of some friends who ditched me at the last moment (Sumeet I'll never forget to remind you this for the rest of your life!!). Neverthless, I'm still excited at the prospect of being in the Himalayas after a long long long time. And I'm excited about traveling alone!

Now my parents, and family, and relatives, and friends etc etc all seem to think that a trip up in the mountains alone is not a good idea, coz it will get boring after a while. But the 2 days I spent in Switzerland exploring the area alone has opened my mind to the idea of traveling without any companions. I actually observed more and took in more of the scenery while traveling alone versus when I was with Ashutosh, where our heated conversations would overpower the scenery!! Not to say that I didn't have fun being with a friend - it is just that probably some conversations are better had when you are in a dimly lit apartment in the middle of the night.

I'm taking 5-7 books with me, and I plan to spend some time relaxing in Manali (2 days), and then in Leh (3 days), apart from the traveling that I'll do around Manali and Leh. I also plan to travel to Pangong Tso lake, and spend another day or two doing small treks in the area. I'm looking forward to meeting other travelers who were ditched by their friend, and are therefore traveling alone :)

And I'm still due with all the pictures and the stories from the Swiss trip - seems like I'll have to wait till I get back to the US to do that - the internet conn in the cyber cafe I use is awefully slow!! I'll try some other place and see if it's fast enough to upload pictures. Till then - bubye!

Violence in Punjab

It's frustrating when you fly halfway across the world to travel, and stupid people fighting over non-issues hold up your plans :( Punjab has been sealed from three sides, and my plans to travel to Himachal have been held up as the situation is too volatile to take a risk. I'm not sure if the ground situation is really that bad - I'm sitting in a cyber cafe in the heart of Ludhiana city right now, and it seems like any normal day. And yet you switch on Star News and they keep repeating some images that would make any normal person believe that Punjab is on fire. I think if the media shuts up for a while, everything will be normal; they're adding fuel to a small fire which is escalating the issue.

Predominantly it is a political issue, because whatever caused the disturbance (the Saccha Sauda Dera chief wearing robes similar to Guru Gobind Singh and administering a ceremony similar to the Amrit ceremony for the Sikhs) has happened a lot of times before. The reason why it didn't have the effect earlier as it had now is probably because no political party could have drawn any political mileage out of it. This time around it was different with different parties at the Centre and the State. It's being potrayed in the media that it's two different parties (the Akali's and the Congress) backing two communities in the dispute (the Sikhs and the Dera followers); whereas it is actually these two parties who are pushing the people to fight (and not just backing them). In fact, the way things stand in Punjab right now, Akali Dal is not even a representative of the Sikhs, but they seem to be giving statements on behalf of the Sikhs enticing people towards violence. And the same's true for the Congress.

I hope the situation does not get worse, because the Congress wants an excuse to dismiss the Akali government, and for that they just have to prove that the conditions are bad enough to put Punjab under President's rule. In fact the Dera followers have been shouting slogans in front of media cameras -"We want President's rule". And most of them aren't even in Punjab - they were standing in the Dera in Haryana!! Makes you wonder whether it's a religious issue or a political one.

Punjab has suffered a lot in the last few decades with violence - the last thing anybody wants here is more bloodshed. Will the political parties realize this and stop instigating violence?

The Swiss Trip - 1

It's been 2 days in India, and the heat has already started to make me forget the 5 days in Switzerland! I guess that's one thing about travel blogging - you have to write when you are in the middle of it, while you are experiencing things, because once you've lost the ambience, it takes very little time for the experiences to be lost from the mind as well. I would love to hear from other bloggers on how they keep up with writing while traveling, as I had problems in finding time (as well as internet access!!) while in Switzerland.

About the trip - amazing! Europe is a totally different experience than the US. The first thing that really hit me was the diversity. Now most people are going to raise eyebrows as you wouldn't expect this comment from someone coming from the US. But the diversity in US is different in a lot of ways. Even though everybody is an immigrant in the US, people tend to leave their culture and language at home, and adopt this culture called "Americanism". So while you would find people from "n" different countries at a given workplace, you wouldn't hear "n" different languages as everybody speaks only English. Also the body language, the topics to talk about, the slangs used etc. all become similar for everybody just because everybody is trying to fit in.

With Europe, well, I'm not sure if this is a European thing or a Swiss thing, you go from one part of the country to the other by a 1 hour train journey, and the official language changes. This is similar to India where we have atleast 50 different languages, but the unique thing about Swiss was that most people could speak all the languages prevalent in the country. That would amount to an average person knowing 3 languages other than English! That's some way towards globalisation!! In fact I met a 15 yr old in the train who actually knew 7 languages, and he hadn't counted English in those 7 as he thought he didn't speak it that well, even though he was almost as good (or bad!) as me.

Apart from the diversity, I found the people to be very friendly. That was surprising, especially because I expected more stares due to my appearance (the beard and the turban which are a part of my religion, Sikhism - people tend to mistake me for an orthodox Muslim in the US, and orthodox Islam is not something you want to be associated with these days!). I guess that's one offshoot of diversity - accepting people for who they are rather than judging them by their appearance. Well all was not goody goody all the way, but it was much much better than the US.

The people's dress sense - I guess that needs another blog entry! In Switzerland, even when someone is going out for a run or a hike, they would dress up extremely appropriately for the occasion. And the number of people in suits that I saw when I went out for dinner at a budget/low-end restaurant made me feel out of place in my faded jeans and t-shirt. While walking in Zurich, I don't remember seeing a single person wearing loose or ill-fitting clothes - someone told me that its a Swiss thing, to wear neatly cut and well tailored clothes! The clothes were expensive though - I saw a handwoven pair of jeans for Sfr 1500 (almost USD 1350)!! Some price to pay for nicely cut clothes :)

My trip itinerary was as follows: Day 1 - land in Zurich, get a room in the youth hostel, and trip to a nearby hill station Oetliberg; Day 2 - trip to Lucerne (called "Luzern" in German), a small city at the foothills of Alps, and a train ride to Lausanne in the evening; Day 3 - travel to the Interlaken area, and trip to the Jungfraujoch (the highest train station in Europe); Day 4 - explore areas around Lausanne and Geneva; Day 5 - train ride back to Zurich to catch the flight to India at 3:30 PM.

I'll write in more detail in the next post, in which I'll have additions from travel within India. There has been some change to my original plans of traveling in Punjab coz of the ongoing voilence between the Dera Sachha Sauda and the Sikhs - mindless political games which are hurting the innocent local people. Hope the situation clears up soon!

And the journey begins ...

Another morning, another move from an apartment, end of another era, and yes, yet another trip! I fly out to Europe at 4:45 PM tomorrow, and will be in Switzerland from 10th to 14th May. Ashutosh (a friend from undergrad who everybody *lovingly* calls guptaji) is waiting with his entourage of desi friends to show me around the place and treat me to the desi dinners that are ubiquitous all over the world and know no national boundaries :)

I'll try to keep the blog updated - depends on where and when I get internet access. It does not seem like the youth hostel that I'm staying at in Zurich (www.youthhostel.ch) will have internet access, but I'm just glad to have found a place that cheap in Zurich. I'm there for only one night, and after that I'm with Gupta the whole while (and hence, not paying for boarding/lodging!).

Now I really should get some sleep - will need that for all the last minute errands that I have to run in the day (it's 4 am in the morning right now!!)

Changes changes ...

Well after what seemed like an eternity, I'm going to be awarded another degree this Saturday. I'm supposed to be elated, on top of the world, happy and all those good things, but somehow all I can think about is finishing up work, and packing for the month of traveling ahead (YES, I'm traveling to India - AGAIN!).

Had been lazy about finishing up things, and now the situation calls for such drastic action that I might have to work/plan/pack while cutting down my sleep to just a couple of hours. I guess subconsciously I wanted this week to be this hectic so that the trip to come feels like a vacation - coz otherwise I was on some sort of a vacation for the last 4 months :)

Anyways, time to hit the sack - but keep checking out my blog during the next 1 month - I'll try to keep things updated here about the trip to Switzerland, Punjab and Leh (looks like a cocktail of places to visit in a month!!). And yeah, about the rest of the posts on the wedding, I'll try to chuck in a an hour or so to clear the writing backlog!