dellhi

I awoke very early indeed and checked out of the International Center. I was off to spend three days in Mussorie, an old English hill station in the Himalayan foothills, near the town of Dehradun. This is about a five hour train ride from Delhi, so I needed to embark early. The bleary-eyed driver picked me up, along with Sheila's friendly young cook, and the cook helped me find my train car (this was harder then it seemed, and we spent a few early-morning minutes desperately trying to find my name on the little papers pasted on the train car walls.) I finally found my spot and immediately made my usual travelers nest - pashmina around the shoulders, laptop plugged into the handy outlet, backpack placed to create a strategic privacy-buffer zone - and I dropped off to sleep contendedly as the train chugged into action. I sleep very well on transportation.

I woke up slowly about an hour and a half into the ride - as usual I missed the drinks cart - and looked out the window. The scenery was rice paddies and yellow, waving fields, water buffalo shining with slick perspiration walking among the rushes. People in dodhis hunched over threshing grass, pausing to watch the train go by. I saw a woman in a brilliant red sari walking down a country trail as a storm rolled in, big grey clouds coming up from behind and billowing the cloth of her dress - and with that beautiful image in mind I dropped off again.

I woke up for the last time and we were almost there, the country growing more wild and rocky in my absence. Little shanties and vaguely Tibetan-looking houses lurked on top of rocky knolls, and the train rolled through thick rhodendran jungles (I even saw a couple of wild gaur or Indian cattle grazing in the clearings.) The day was a bit overcast and it lent a nice moody feel to the air outside - I could see the big dark outlines of the Himalayas off in the hazy distance, over the tops of the jungle vegetation. In one particularly dense looking bit of forest, I saw a lone, solitary rickshaw putting around a country road - they cannot be escaped.

(I have this running nightmare that there is a taxi or rickshaw parked in an alley somewhere in India, waiting for me, lurking in the shadows. It has my name written on it - I don't seem to see any driver - and it desires to crush me into nothingness, to turn me into yet another Indian traffic fatality. I have awoken in terror from such dreams on a few occasions and can only conclude that my destiny is written on the rusty bumper of an auto-rickshaw, my death dealt out by a slightly lit driver in a khaki suit toting a couple of plump and surprised aunties on a shopping tour. )

We finally arrived in Dehradun, and I disembarked from the train to find my taxi. (i find getting off trains so jarring - you have spent the past few hours in comfortable air conditioned doziness and suddenly you're up on your feet and elbowing touts and snarling at beggers and what the hell just happened.) I found him and hopped in the car, and we began winding our way through the traffic of Dehradun - a misty town totally unlike anything else I'd seen in India, full of wooden and mossy looking structures and hill people lugging huge loads on their backs. This was punctuated by expensive designer clothing emporiums and advertisements for air hostess training school.

It was election day and to the driver's consternation, we found ourselves behind a rowdy victory celebration, hordes of young men and women on motorbikes waving yellow flags and shouting and firing blanks into the air, gleefully shutting down traffic. The lady herself - the winner of the election - sped by in her yellow bedecked car, waving beatificially to her hordes of admirers. The driver muttered Hindi curses under his breath and attempted to navigate around them to make his way up the hill to Mussorie, but I rather enjoyed watching the whole thing go on.

The driver finally escaped the victory parade and we began winding our way up the most tortorous switchbacks I've ever seen in my life - after all, this is the Himalayas. We passed by rocky outcroppings and a colorful, gorgeous Buddhist school, making our way into the pine forest that Mussorie lies in- the car driving up ever more dizzying heights in a light and slightly disarming rain.

We finally reached Mussorie proper, a pleasant and slightly leaning old town perched on the very top of an incredibly steep hill. It's composed primarily of wood and is a curious combination of Himalayan hill archeitecutre and British design, a big old clock tower presiding over an antiquated bazaar full of smiling, healthy looking people shilling potato chips and used books to all comers. We weaved through the cobble-stoned street, dodging wizened looking porters and uniformed school children, to make our way to Landour - the little group of houses right up above Mussorie where Sheila and Baldev's place is located.

The car stopped and I noticed the house was actually situated down below the road, on a lovely ridge with a full view of the wild Himalayan peaks. You can't see Mussorie town from this side, just a bunch of tiny, tiny little white villages and the curiously graduated outlines of farming terraces.

I disembarked and went down to meet Baldev, Sheila's very sweet husband, who prefers to spend his time up here instead of in the boiling misery of Delhi's summers. We talked about my family and his with a bit of delving into Indian political affairs, and I was introduced to their house staff - Goody and I believe Manesh, though I am probably getting his name wrong - who were preparing lunch. We then sat down for a lovely lunch - bhindi masala (yum), curried lotus root, lamb curry, and some daal, along with those nice little wheat chapatis that puff out hot air when you pop them with a fork. This was served with home-made mint chutney - refreshing as a breath mint - and some tangy and rich curd, which is used as a condiment with pretty much anything. We finished with some fruit and a biscuit or two. India is turning me into a serious digestive biscuit aficionado. I imagine a visit to England itself would ruin me. (I would subsist primarily on McVitie's Chocolate Digestives and then turn into Jabba the Hutt.)

Anyway.

Goody's friendly 13 year old son, Vikram, was consigned to take me on a little tour of the hillside, and we set off despite a gentle (and in my opinion, most welcome) drizzle that set the rhodendron leaves quivering and settled a gentle, refreshing mist over the hillside. Himalayan rhodendrons bloom lovely red flowers that appear most suprisingly in the blanket of green that surrounds the rocky crags - singular and interesting. (I also enjoyed the tenacious little stands of yellow daisies that erupt in the spring time.) I half-heartedly chased a few little bronze skinks, the sort that always travel in pairs - but skinks are hard to catch and they probably form profound interpersonal bonds that I should not lay asunder.

Vikram and I tromped up to Prakash's tiny little curio shop and rummaged around a bit, looking at carefully preserved and oh so English pressed flower greeting cards and bronze statues of Buddhist icons intermingled with the omnipresent packs of biscuits. Adam had mentioned offside the day before that he had not actually bothered to acquire a towel for his service apartment and was using a sheet instead, and I decided as a sort of joke to buy him one from 7000 feet in a little Himalayan village. (I figure this would be a high altitude sort of towel.) I found a nice blue one and went up to pay, inadvertently offending the hell out of some high class type English people there as well, by asking if they were American. I am beginning to confuse the accents. (Nothing seems to piss off an English person more then being mistaken for an American, even if the mistake is entirely innocent.)

We set off down the mountain again, passing by the Kellog Language School (contained in a nice old granite church), coming to a wonderful viewpoint of Mussorie town proper and the Woodstock School below. I was alerted to the presence of the Woodstock school by the decidely unexpected sound of a highschool band playing American football fight songs and "Eye of the Tiger" below me - Woodstock is an American boarding school in a very, very strange location. It's got an incredibly good reputation and the location certainly can't be beat - Sheila went there himself - and I found myself wishing quietly that I'd just gone there instead of having to deal with the general misery of American high school. (But that's all water under the bridge!)

We finally found ourselves at Four Shops, a little clearing that is exactly what it sounds like: four little tea shops perched on the side of a cliff, where hillsmen and tourists park their mules and luxury jeeps side-by-side to drink chai and gossip about everyone else. We ran into Baldev and went to the Tip Top Tea Shop to order tea and read the newspaper. While there, Baldev hailed his friend Ganesh, who is apparently a photographer and writer of some note in the area, along with his charming wife and daughter. He was great fun to listen to, and I quietly attempted to figure out something, anything about Indian politics as they talked shop - the daughter is a news announcer with one of the major Indian networks, in the area to cover the elections. Victor Banarjee, one of India's more renowned actors, also blew through with his wife, although I didn't get to actually meet him: he was yelling at someone on the phone. (I understand. I often find myself needing to yell at people on the phone.)

The clouds began looking ominous again, so we walked back to the house, and I had a lovely nap in the ridiculously huge bed I'd been appointed in the outside cottage. I awoke just in time for dinner: tasty garlic spinach soup, chapati, cucumber and tomato salad with garlic, and some curried cabbage and peas. After supper, Baldev and I sipped whiskey meditatively and watched the BBC - the story of the Texas polygamy case had just broke. I found myself having to explain that this sort of polygamy business is not uncommon in the United States (with extreme embarrassment.)

I was tired and decided to retire early to my warm room - Goodie had lit the big wood burning stove in the corner. Still, coming up from the heat of Bangalore and Delhi, a little evening chill in the air and the refreshing, smoky snap of burning wood was pure luxury. I slept very well.