indian finale

it is delhi, 5 hours before the taxi is picking me up to the airport. been here two days, tried to recover from the 13 hours night-bus from parvati valley, and gain some strength for the 2.5 days delhi-amman-tel-aviv-athens tour. chilling out in a 35 degrees and 15 million people city is not a simple thing - some locals do it by taking beds out to the packed and smokey streets and lying down for a siesta - but somehow my time here has passed quiet pleasently, at the cost of a few extra dollars above the planned budget. yesterday was spent lazily and dizzily, mostly moving between resturants and internet places (after a week and a half of being disconnected), and reading "the curious inceident of the dog in the night time", the only novel on this trip so far. today was also relaxed, although i hanged around old delhi and took care of some last arrangements.

after completing my last post from dharamsala, i had a second nice, yet more modest goodbye dinner with sara (who is healthy again and having a wild journey in rajastan as these lines are being written) and carine - sara's brazillian neighbour from the guest house who shared the responsibility of taking care of her. carine (pronounced carini) has a shop for indian clothes on the beach in bahia. in the brazilian winter (which is now) she comes to india for a few months to buy some fresh merchandice and travel, and in summer you can find her spending the days on the beach and opening her prosperous shop at 18:00 o'clock. however, this adorable lifestyle is threatened by a new calling that seems to have come upon her - bringing yoga to brazil. after years of practicing capoeira, she discovered yoga two years ago, and that was love from the first site (having practiced with her i can definitely confirm it). the brazilians, as she says, are all about the heart, though with very little conciousness; yoga seems to be a great contribution to this culture, and somehow without any effort from her side she is already known as the authority in her area for indian wisdom and alternative lifestyle.

so after dinner i took the night-bus from dharamsala to parvati (i am lucky to be able to sleep in these quaking things), tried to avoid the israeli settlements in the area (manali, kasol), and managed to make it to pulga before next noon. pulga is a beatiful (see picture for an areal view) and relatively quiet place (the reports i got was that it is the most quiet village around - however, travelers' reports turn up to be a tricky thing, since once a place gains the reputation of a being peaceful it begins to attract more travellers), but though scenery was realy magnificant, the overpacked israeli scene was less appealing. 90% of the travellers are israelis (the second large group, the italians, will arrive in two weeks when the new harvest of charas - the highest quality marijuana product - will be released), most of them are in their early twenties, and they are usually gathered in large groups, do a lot of drugs and listen to loud music. after the quiet atmosphere and the lovely and like-minded friends i had around me in dharamsala, it was really annoying to hear from the beautiful sunflowers and marijuana plants garden outside my guest house high-volume shlomo artzi, and conversations about drugs and selling fake pictures around the world. of course it wasn't always that bad, and as we know there are also nice israelis, but more often then not during those 8 days in parvati, i was struggling to find my quiet corners apart from the scene. and in very small places it can be hard sometimes. there is always the option of walking 50 meters and being alone in nature, which is great sometimes, but when you feel like having civilization around you, it would rather be a nice one.

after one night in pulga i took the 5 hours track to khirganga, the legendary hot springs up in the mountains, which is the main destination for some visitors in india. i got there in the late afternoon, tired, breathless and completely wet from sweat and the rain that fell down in the last hour of my climbing (have you ever tried to trek with a backpack, guitar and umbrella?) i got myself a room in the ashram near the waterfalls (the place is holy for shiva, and sadhus - indian holy men - come there as pilgrims and get a place to stay and free meals, probably funded by the income from foreign tourists), which is the most quiet among the 4 places you can stay, and looked eagerly for the bath. but there were no baths, there was the hot springs - a steamy pool on the top of a green fieldy slope between forested mountains and a huge cliff (i couldn't find a decent photo in the net, but wait till i develop my own...) the (verrrry) hot, slightly sulfur odored water melted my aching mussles, the rain went down, the view was stunning, and then the setting sun came out from the clouds, masking the valley and the far-away snowy peaks with yellow, and creating two large rainbows.

that was enough for me to decide to stay there for 4 day, and give up trying to do the spiti valley really quickly. i had good time generally, though again with some hardships with the local israeli scene. but there were many beautiful moments, like the nights playing music and singing with my two neighbours, or chanting praises to shiva with the indians around the ashram fire at night.

by a way, khir = rice pudding (with milk), and ganga = river, or water. one legend says that the place called khirganga because you can cook rice in the water. another one tells that shiva used to meditate in the place, and then the spring produced khir. but when he left it people started fighting on ruling the place, so he turned it into a hot water spring.

in the last day i joined a group and had a track up to bunbuni before going down to sleep in kalga village. that was one of the best trekking days i have ever had, very reach in views and with the attraction of a frozen river on the way. again, one of the israeli guys carried an i-pod (a new generation tiny music player) and speakers and filled the air with testostron soaked music. the two nights in kalga were generally nice, and i found a quiet and relatively isolated guest house, with a very nice israeli couple on their honey-moon (they were met in goa 3.5 years ago).

that's it. it is always less then i want to tell, but you know dead lines, they have their own agendas. and this is also the dead line for this visit in the east. i still don't realise that everything that is now so obvious will soon be but an exotic memory. but i am happy to come home and say hello (there were some days that i phantazised on getting home just for a shower and a sleep in my bed, and returning here next morning). and of course - there's the reunion in greece on its way. never a dull moment...