JUN-B-20
THE PENULTIMATE
DESTINATION BEFORE THE GLOBE-GIRDLING RETTURN FROM CHANDIGARH THROUGH DELHI
HOMEWARD:
AN EARLY BOULEVARD
RUN AND A ROCK GARDEN TOUR
BEFORE THE A/C BUS
TO INDIRA GHANDI INTERNATIONAL
June 28, 2002
It is hot. How hot? About 42* C. If this were a patient\’s temperature, you would say he or she has a very bad fever---about 104* from the normal 36*. And the humidity in this monsoon season beginning is close to a 100% reading as well, so the morning run, in which I was joined by both Jim Blitz and Austin for the second time since yesterday’s magnificent run at the 1817 meter elevation of Dharamsala was through thick air and heavier temperature. It was a good thing we began at the 6:30 AM time, since there would be no running now. IN fact, since the run and in walking out in the sun, and getting up abruptly as I just did twice in alighting from a rickshaw, I am quite orthostatic, and have to stand for a bit while the graying out of everything around me comes back Into focus with the blood pressure rising to about 80 torr.
It is easy to see why the British Raj used the summer as a time to retreat to their “summer palaces” in the “Hill Stations” such as Shimla—the altitude cuts of the top twenty plus degrees F and makes it almost tolerable—or at least, as I have been enjoying it in McLeod Ganj, runnable. This may also mark the first week of daily completed runs, despite the unusual circumstances of the moving from one point to another, and I have provided inspiration to Jim Blitz and Austin to get restarted in this very easy habit to get out of. But, here in Chandigarh, if we had not done our run early, we would not even b e able to walk briskly in the later day.
We have proven this by our excursion to the Nek Chand Rock Garden, a unique feature of the Chandrigarh landscape. I had been here two years ago when we were departing from the Ladakh-01 trip, and Paul Gibbs and I went over to the Rock Gardens to visit it since it was not the season for roses, the other attraction is the Rose Garden in this former colonial capital of all of the Punjab. We had taken off in a taxi as a few large drops spattered down. When we were there we had to run for it, since the monsoon deluge hit so hard that there was water over our ankles in minutes and the two cameras I was carrying never functioned again until after their complete overhauls at Mora Camera. Today, I came back just as wet, but it is not raining.
I had told our group to enjoy the hot shower here at the Himachal Hotel (one of the few services these Himachal Pradesh state employees in a sinecure for them outside their own state since Chandigarh is in Haryana State) provide since they are mostly hiding and biding their official clock time in the cavernous halls of this Russian classic style architectural behemoth, avoiding providing service that might otherwise disturb their leisure. They epitomize government service lifers, as we realized on once again entering the huge cavernous an unwelcoming lobby last night and being told to call room service if we wanted to insist on eating It is not that they are too hard worked, but there are a lot of vast empty spaces in which they can hide until quitting time, or whenever the next special event comes along, like the big splashy celebrations of the “Monsoon Weddings” of the wealthy elite, in which the parents must impress their business clientele and public of their well fixed status at which they throw a very big, flower-filled and ostentatious wedding reception, one of which tripped us out of the restaurant last night in which I am typically the only customer, and very slowly served by the redundant wait staff.
But, the shower, alas, was not a hot one. It did not matter after my coming back from the run and before breakfast since I was already overheated and stood in the cold water to get rid of heat. But, I have now returned from the Rock Garden and the Lake Sarvana by rickshaw early, since no one of us was prepared to wander about in such heat, and I have now had my last shower before departure –another cold-water cascade, and probably needed more than the first!
INDIRA GHANDI
INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
We had a good lunch and a final pack up (rather easy, in my case!) and awaited the pick up by Jeep for the ride to the A/C bus that had been advertised as our luxury ride direct to the Airport in Delhi. Our 1:00 PM pick up did not arrive on time, and I posted the last of the serial letters, E-6, concluding in the posted report of this trip “Spiti-02.” At 1:30 PM, Hem was still saying “Do not worry; the same company that runs the bus is the one scheduled to pick you up by the Jeeps.” At, 2:00 PM he was no longer so sure we should not worry, and called repeatedly by cell phone. They arrived over an hour late—and, if this is not reminiscent of the Super Shuttle fiasco at Derwood to Dulles that began my last months’ trip to Dharamsala and Nepal, it then got too eerily familiar, since the driver went off in search of another customer to pick up asking directions repeatedly as he wandered back and forth very lost in the suburbs of Chandigarh. Whatever the time of the bus departure, there would be no way we could make it now. The fat fellow who was to join us was picked up and hauled all his overstuffed luggage into the small jeep, which meant that all of ours had to be put up on the roof, untied or covered. He then squeezed into the front seat next to and partly on top of me, as I was pushed over the shift knob which had to be manipulated between my legs as we took off at high speed to take the back roads among rice paddies toward some rendezvous point where we could catch the bus that would be impatient with our late arrival. Even worse, the driver and this fellow got into a very loud and simultaneous high-pitched rapid Hindi political corruption invective, right through me. I wanted to call a time out on the basis of rudeness if not excess decibels, but they continued as the high speed car chase dodged sacred cows and pedestrians as we careened down the roads, with the belts and cinches of the backpack straps on top of the Jeep beating a tattoo on the roof top, with the buckles cracking in the vibration.
It turned out that the fellow who joined is a typical Indian of the upward mobility type, who had a wife, mother and multiple children all in tearful and repeated farewells at his sendoff who were quickly forgotten as we got into the vehicle and the political discussion heated up. At one point I heard him ask if the other ciphers in the Jeep were going to the USA, and then he asked in ‘English. I responded yes, and he then asked “California?” “Yes, one of us will be---“ since Jim Blixen is headed to Los Angeles. He was quick to point out “Yes, I go every year for six weeks since my brother is a Doctor in Sacramento.” Somehow, we managed not to add that we knew something about the doctoring business, and we allowed him to add that he could go each year and live off his brother who had made good in the land of milk and honey, whereas his wife and children could never get a visa to visit. I asked how he was going, and he would b e taking Cathay Pacific through Hong Kong to California, arriving by going east at the same time as Jim would be arriving going west—each of us converging on the far side of the world after starting from the same point on the opposite global margin.
We arrived at the big A/C Canadian bus, which was field with Sikhs nervously awaiting our late arrival. We got our stuff on board and took off toward the “G. T. Road”---the Grand Trunk Road I have traveled in Pakistan and the western parts of India. It was the legendary road of the silk trade and the colonial Raj in the days written about by Rudyard Kipling.
This is a divided “Motorway” as it would be called in UK, with a wide boulevard median, and all of it paved with limited access. This would mean it is a high-speed highway, and that would be true if this were not India. We still had to doge sacred cattle and water buffalo, and there were not only small cars, but also the tricycle vehicles, rickshaws, bicycles, horse drawn trailers, the ox-carts and even pedestrians on this limited access motorway. I saw a colorful procession of Rajasthani women in their colorful clothes each with a bundle on there head, and passing a rice paddy with a pool in which water buffalo were submerge d to escape the heat. If this constituted a good photo op it was not to be taken by me, out of film and cameras by now. The bus ride took six hours, so we arrived after dark in the Delhi suburbs approach, which meant crowded with people and cluttered with trash. They are building a new Metro to the airport, and that construction filled some of the streets as well. But at each stop I would hear a banging on the bus, which should not have surprised me, since we had missed most of our smaller vehicles on collision course by centimeters at most. But when I looked down, these bangings on the side of the bus were often beggars, young women with beseeching up stretched arms to the hermetically closed windows and carrying either one or two babies---and odd combination for infants near the same age, unless they were “rent-a-babies” to enhance their chances. At least I looked out at them. The well-heeled elite Sikhs on the bus ignored the pleas, since this is an A/C package of the first world in transit through the real India as in a space capsule to avoid any contamination from the sights and smells and unsavory taint which might soil those of us who have pulled ourselves out of this morass. This is a space capsule like the one that carried Superman as a boy off from planet Krypton, leaving behind all the dashed hopes of third world status—perhaps I, too, some day, can go to the lala land of California, squeeze grapes on my head, and get fat from living off my more successful brother who seems to have escaped through the magic carpet of medicine to the land of milk and honey which will allow me to escape for at least six weeks a year to the kind of life to which I should be entitled. And, here, it seems, I am flowing in the wrong direction!