Memory III: Nainital returns

If you are planning a visit to naini and are not the kind to be happy just walkng back and forth on the mall, here are some guidelines to enjoy it at its best.
1. One of my personal favorites is the hanging rock that you get to on taking the little mud road behind Aurobindo Ashram. About a 5 minute walk from the usually noisy Ashram hostel is the most serene place to sit and read a book. I don't know why that road is there at all - I refuse to accept that it has been built solely for the "No Trespassers, private Property" gate that you find once you walk till the end. It seems so unfair that such a pretty road has been built for such a selfish giant who doesn't even let you sit on his hill!

So this rock hangs (literally) on the cliff and on a clear day (which are plenty in the month of August and October) you can see the entire valley till Khurpatal - the old old graveyard with its tiny white grey graves, the winding road that goes on forever, the little patches of green and ofcourse the big green mountains on your left. If you look high enough you can often see the hanging rock on tiffin top far far away and I swear you can even see people standing there, looking like tiny stick figures. Right below you is the horse stand, a steep fall & you can sometiems catch snatches of conversations honeymoooners have while sitting on their horsies! Try it, it's fun. I have spent a whole morning and afternoon just sititng there, soaking up the sun, the ambience and flipping through my Amitav ghosh!

2. Hanging rock II: I guess I am fascinated by the whole concept of hanging your feet over a cliff and looking down at the valley and beyond. My second spot is on the narrow road that runs from Naini Retreat to the Mall. The hanging rock is more man made than the first one near teh Ashram but from this one you get a great view of the lake and the mall. On a bright sunny day I can just sit here for hours with my Ipod, singing to myself and counting the boats on the lake. One thing I 've wanted to try out but never did was to sit here on Diwali night when people set afloat their dias on the lake - I am sure it must make a really pretty site - the flickering lights in the hills and the lake. If you get a chance - do write to me!

3. This is hard to describe but definitely one of my top spots - the first bend that takes you into the pine forests near Cheena peak. If you start hiking up from behind Polytechnic School, after about half an hour steep climb up is where the real woody woods start - right after the two huts with a hand pump and a dog! The bend is just like any other bend just that it gives a great view of the lake, the hills and my house! If you look hard enough you can even see the Ashram and the little road that takes you to my spot no. 1. I always run out of breath by the time I reach this spot and sit here to celebrate my "semi- top-of- the-world" feeling! A little ahead of this place is where we (P&I) encountered the wild beast!

About 10 years back, on our first hike to Cheena peak, P & I heard this roar - I ofcourse assumed its a panther but it turned out to be as bad! It was a mad bull which came charging at us right when we taking that trun and the only options were to either fall of the cliff, climb up a tree or get gored to death! Although neither of us knew how to climb, P did a remarkably good imitation - she clung on to a tree trunk and whimpered "help help"! I would have NEVER imagined someone would actually say "help help" when facing death - a scream or pissing in pants seemed more realistic(BTW I was not much better and bleating brave "shoo shoos" at it )! Thankfully a "local" boy turned up and saved the day by hitting the "mad" bull's behind with his stick.

Memory III: 27 years of Nainital!

One of my earliest memories of Naini is of a horse that I was riding - and the reason why I remember it still is cos I wasn't enjoying myslef at all. Somehow trusting horses to carry 4 years old safely on a narrow hilly path doesn't seem like the smartest decision to me!

Maybe it was that trip or a few years later (to be fair to myself I have been to Naini at least 3 times every year for the past 27 years i.e. 27x3 = 81 times atleast - so my memories might over lap a few times!), some scarwny horse man was telling us some gruesome story about a British women named Emily who killed herself for her lover(?) by jumping off the cliff and since then that cliff has been named Emily Top! Ya Ya whatver - you have those stories of mystical white mems in every British colony!

The first 10 years of my Naini visit memories revolve around Elphinstone Hotel - the first hotel you encounter on the hotel- filled mall, with its bizarre sense of color coordination, long damp dining hall, a damper table tennis room but a lovely sunny balcony facing the blue green lake and green side of the mountatins. I loved it there esp since all the managers, chefs and even the waiters had become uncles and bhaiyas with the frequency of our visit. P & I would take our walk (1.7 miles- we learnt that by heart!) up and down the mall, checking the same old shops, hotels and restaurants every single day.

Naini is a strange place - for tourists who come for just a few days and stay in one of the hundred hotels lined adjacent to each other on the mall - it has very little to offer. The lake and Tiffin top and for the real adventurous ones a horse ride to Cheena peak. Summers look like teh whole sweaty karol Bagh has been picked up and planted in the mall road. These misplaced Karol Baghians shop in the Tibetan market, complain that Sarojini is cheaper, eat their aam papars, candyfloss, bhutta and Butter chicken at Sher-e-Punjab and go back home and say "Naini was great, we didnt even need to turn on our car AC!"....

Thankfully there is much more to see than the Mall.

Meadows, Ibex and Coke!

Our next stop was the highest motorable village in the world - Kibbar - snuggled high up at 3800 mts. Kibbar turned out to be an oasis in the rocky barren Spiti desert with its green pea meadows and totally "made-for-rolling-down" hills (ofcourse once u really start rolling down you are covered with sheep poop!). It's a strange place - isolated from the rest of the country for 8 months a year when snowfall cuts off all supplies. The people here seem to be doing quite well though- maybe from the pea farming or maybe they are just happy living in such a beautiful place. Or maybe I am being the typical tourist and exoticizing their misery - I am sure they wd trade places with me any day...

PS: I am cheating on the pic - it's actually of this place near Alchi (near Leh) but it reminded me of Kibbar & yes these are pea farms! What can I do, I didnt have a digital in 2001!

All the wime oops iwne oops wine I had with Anne is making me woozt woosy woozy! So I will do some unacademic stuff like blogingg..

In Kibbar we were staying in the first floor of a Kibbarian's house - most amazing place with roots coming out of his roof to keep the place warm and a hole in the ground as a loo! One morning A & I decided to venture out to the highest village the world - after a lot of trekking thru nowhere land reached this patch of land with 5 huts - which was apparently our destination. We lay down next to sheep poop and rested for a while only to head back on nowhere road - it was actually a river bed which was slippery and nasty and steep as hell. But being a pseudo feminist (!) I had to pretend to be all brave & competent! After this gruelling walk we turned up without any fanfare at the only restuarant in Kibbar to find our fellow travellers looking nice and rested over a bottle of coke. I was livid and demanded one for myself only to be told that the coke supply for the month had been exhausted and the next case would be arriving next year! So all i could do to keep my brave front was to burst into tears! HEHEHEHHEH

And since we had actually achived nothing except a rest next to poop we told them tall tales of ibex and rare species that we saw in our imaginary sanctuary. I was somehow sure ibex was a pretty deer - ofcourse they turned out to be these ugly bulls with horns that we encountered for real in Leh 4 years later!

Few memories of Kibbar - aprt from these real memorable ones..

The first one is of this woman yelling out about some "women's meeting" and her voice echoing thru the entire valley " something something saari mahilae ... varna zurmaana 100 rupayya". I was impressed not just by this brilliant way of getting the msg across to the entire town without a phone, but also the messenger's volume - Wooppeee for Spitian feminists!

Memory II: Monks and more

The morning after our long drive into Manali we were informed by our mad friends that they had booked bus tickets to Spiti - which was another 14 hour drive through river beds and missing roads on a tattered HP tourism bus! The ride itself was quite something, there were times when the bus bumped around so much that we (who were too urban to fight for our seats and thus got the last one) had our head literally hitting the roof of the bus. Then ofcourse, A had the brilliant idea of sitting on top of the bus with all the sleeping bags and luggage of the passengers to enjoy the winding roads to the fullest. Ya, it was dangerous but totally worth it. Our noses were red in the sub zero temp, hands were frozen but just looking down at the roads, the rocky mountains and the river flashing (or bump) by - ummmmmmmmm nothing in the world can be prettier.

First stop - Tabo. Tabo dates back to 996 A.D. and stands at a dizzying height of 3050 m.



Though I've taken 3 trips to Spiti already, the terrain of that place never ceases to leave me breathless. I've always assumed that green mountain = beautiful mountains till I stepped into the cold and rocky Spiti dessert. The rocky mountains take on such bizarre shapes that sometiems it's difficult to accept that they are natural - some of them really look like forts built by some snow queen long long time ago with their imposing structures and amazing architecture!


Our first stop - Tabo - was a quiet little place in the middle of nowhere and our guest house (the NEW Monastery Guest House) was the best place we could have chosen - right adjacent to the 950AD monastery. All I remeber of the place was the cold mud floor at night with the moon shining down on the gompa and 3 of us lying down counting the zillion stars. For its height Tabo is surprisingly warm and for its back of nowhere-ness it has a very contemporary population! take our "Yo MANN" man at Angel's Italian Cafe, for instance. I mean would you really expect a small place tucked away in teh himalayas to be playing "Buffalo Soldier" and the Keralite waiter-cum-manager to be a Bob Marley look alike slurring yankee "Yo"s at you! And would you expect the peace loving monks to start haggling with you for a couple of Rupees especially since payment is voluntary!

Memory II: Tales of a 100th Grade Nothing

I know I am being bad but I just can't make myself work on the paper anymore. So will continue with the memory series - of which I managed to write just one till now.
So here goes...

Memory II: Spiti Valley, July 2001











Places to be remembered (in order of their appearance in my itinerary 5 years ago)
Manali
Tabo
Kibbar
Kaza


PS: For the first time I take no credit for the phototgraphs: The first one is of the monastery and the next two of Thanka painting in the gompa itself.

Let me play a memory game






Reached the bus station, tired and dirty. As could be expected from two alcoholic dope head friends, neither was there to pick us up from the station. That would have been fine just that didn't know the name of the hotel we were staying in. All we knew was that it was across the
bridge" - whatever that was. That ofcourse did not hinder our baragining with the auto driver "30 nahi hum to 20 denge (for where who knows that!)". Midway saw Ad rolling down the hill with blood shot eyes and vodka breath so decided to save the screaming for later.

The "hotel" turned out to be a half finished little house with no facilities - even the bathroom was not usable in the room Pi and I were sharing. But then that wasn't enuff to dampen our enthu - the sneak peak of the diary entry helped!

Manali is great off season and in the month of July only the real dedicated dopeheads or the adventurous trekkers to Spiti and beyond can be seen stocking up on their supply of hash or trek mix respectively! Our hotel owner (manager cum receptionist cum cleaner cum dope supplier) was a prepetually stoned guy who charged guests random amounts for the room and the tea. He made most of teh money from the Israelis who stayed there and relied on him for the dope supply!My fav was this young Israeli girl who wd have a new guy over every night and wouldn't let us sleep. But she would gurgling "namaste namaste " to us early morning and shoving "stuff" into our mouths in the name of "shivaji ka prasad"!

Night was fun - resturant hopping - the Tracy Chapman store, the one with hanging lamps and low tables. Ofocurse we never reached the "promises you all the vices" Raasta CAfe.

(The pics are of Old Manali, babaji and some tourists strangely trying to horde some 'stuff' from all the freely growing marijuana bushes!)

I'm a boy I'm a boy but my mom won't accept it

I burnt my tongue on the coffee in the grad lounge and also got terribly sick of editing the zillionth draft of my paper so now will take a creative break and do some random blogging!

So this conference I was attending comprised of a cackle of feminists from sociology. This group of smart oldies have realised that the only way to get new members to attend their conference is to have it in exotic good weathered places. The last winter meeting was in Miami & who will want to miss Miami in the middle of January? It's wierd cos mostly all they do is stroke themselves for all their good work ("oh did u read my last book , it's REALLY good" - yup no modesty in anyone here!) and pretend to really care for us mere grad students. Maybe I am being too harsh but it pissed me off that it claims to be the a place where faculty intercat with juniors and tra la la and almost everywhere we were completely ignored. Well, I do confess I was not bothered since I really was more intersted in taking a dip in the sea than hearing them be so "liberal" and revolutionary as to assign "different color ribbons for colored faculty" (?? who does that???)

well, who cares. I got my sun, sand and mofongo!

The beach benind our hotel was supposed to be our "private" beach - it was not too bad just paled in comparison to the private beach that next door neighbor Hilton owned! But what the heck, blue water is blue water and blue sky cannot be bluer above Hilton so we were happy!

ok tongue healed so back to work for a bit...

Another coffee break. it's 3 pm and disgustingly cold out. Missing my lil beach outside hotel Normandie. The good part about SJ was that even tho the beaches were no great shakes (no, they were great but not as great as u expect the "Carribeans" to be - I mean they were worse than Goa in soemways cos of the buildings around - here I go singing Jana Gana Mana again) the old city made up for it. I never thought I would enjoy a city so much - cobbled streets, fancy restaurants, colorful shops, view of the sea from street ends, palm trees on every sqaure in the middle of the city, houses of bizarre colors lined one after the other, old style lamp posts, plants sand creepers hanging from peopl's balcony.. I was so enamored that even the police man in blue uniform seemed quaint and exotic!

Mofongo Baby!

I've always wanted to try the "national" dish of the place I visit - couldn't make myself do it in Edindurgh where that involves eating somthing called HAGGIS (really hagish bong style!). If you think I am just being cute then read on ...

Simple Recipe for Haggis
1 sheep's lung (illegal in the U.S.; may be omitted if not available)
1 sheep's stomach
1 sheep heart
1 sheep liver
1/2 lb fresh suet (kidney leaf fat is preferred)
3/4 cup oatmeal (the ground type, NOT the Quaker Oats type!)
3 onions, finely chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
3/4 cup stock
Wash lungs and stomach well, rub with salt and rinse. Remove membranes and excess fat. Soak in cold salted water for several hours. Turn stomach inside out for stuffin..... WANT MORE??!!

anycase, the reason why I started talking about national dishes in the first place was cos I managed to try one - the Puerto rican "Mofongo" yesterday! Much less dangerous than the haggis it is a simple sweet plantain pie with a spicy beef filling. Oh well, you know I am just showing off, yaha I did take another trip, this time to San Juan, Puertu Rico. And no, you can't say I am neglecting my PhD cos it was (at least ostensibly) for a conference!

To get it going let me start with some pics of the island, sun and beaches.

More wine

I am feeling all bluh duh after the long flight back home. The weather, I have to accept, is terrific, all snowy and white but beautifully sunny. Almost felt like joining Wanda in her search for frozen poo in the snowy back garden - crunching thru the knee high snow and chasing birds around the bird feeder. What a fun life she has...

Well my life is not too bad either - leaving for Puerto Rico tomorrow - supposedly for a conference but you know how much we will stay in conference rooms when our hotel is bang on the beach. But that's for later, I was supposed to complete the wine story...

So, after slushing thru a rainy redwood we stopped over at Viks' in Berkeley. Tons of Desis - very Nirulas or actually very Saagar style place where the man behind the food counter kept calling for Mohit, Dinesh and Kalpanas of the world - it was quite surreal! We ordered everything we could stuff our faces with- keema paratha (I was the only carnivore so I got to eat all of it!), Chhola Bathura (yah ma, I ate it as well, all naikamis about too much oil forgotten!), pao bhaji, sweet milky chai and gobi parathas! Ok, I can totally picture Ma baba's face at that list - all things I would cringe at back home . All it needed was a poori aloo and a deep fried bread pakora to make it the deadliest meal possible!

Rest of the day just drove around SF trying to find the twin peaks but somehow never got to it, drove on Lombard Street (the most winding street in the world or some such crazy claim to fame) and then got ready to hit the clubs HAHAHHAH! I never thought I would do that but I did.

And it was almost fun. Went to this place called Bubble Lounge - which app'ly is a desi hangout but surprisingly does not play any desi music. We figured that was a deliberate move to establish their undesi-ness- we don't like Bollywood bhangra and yah, we also have white friends (every group there had atleast a symbolic white member). It was very interesting to just watch these people in action - throwing their money around, dressed in almost nothing or in very expensive something, sipping champaign and giving those fake kisses in the air to everyone they met midway to the bar.

The other highlight of the night was the oscar deserving movie called Lajja that we happened to watch. Oh man, whoever this Rajkumar Santoshi is, someone give him a kiss from my side for making the most accidently hilarious movie possible. Poor chap tried very hard to be a "feminist" with his protagonists screaming "Jai Mata devi ki" or something to that effect everytime they did something "revolutionary". Like when Mahima screams out to her to be inlaws (who ofcourse were very evil and were demanding dowry from her hapless parents) "Tu rabies ka kitaroo, yaha se bhaag ja. nahi to tuney jo saare mere baap ke die kaprhe pehne hain, underwear se shirt tak, sab utarwa ke nanga bhaga doongi" ( You rabies germ, get lost otherwise I'll strip you off all the clothes that you are wearing - all of which are given by my dad- and make you run naked.) WOW WHAT A WOMAN :0 and who thought of the brilliant dialogues!



To get back to the travel story, left for the wine county - this place called Healdsberg on Sunday (near the Russian River). I was a bit apprehensive about the place msotly cos wines give me a headache. The place we stayed in did nothing to alleviate my apprehension - it was some Best Western "inn" right next to a gas station. I was expecting "right in the middle of vinyards" from their website, so I was a bit pissed off but my motto to "never regret" kept me going!


Well, how do I describe the place to you. Hmm, so I think vineyards are prettier in some season than others - so don't expect to see all purple grape-y vines looking all pretty(I did), the vinyards actually look more like cemetaries (No I am not trying to be funny - they REALLY do) with the gnarled shrubs lined neatly one after the other. SOme of the wineries were very nicely done up - with gardens and fountains and picnic benches and ofcourse the wines were great. But the place got a bit dull at night once the wineries shut especially since we were the only non white couple under the age of 100 there. All the restuarants were too la-di-da (expensive) so we ended up going to a sketchy Mexican place. So I would recommend the place only if you really love wines or if you want to relax, bike around and generally enjoy being at a quiet low key place.

Wine and winding roads Part I

Anyone not planning a PhD should get inspired to do do once I finish writing my travelogue - yah ha I did travel some more last weekeend. Ille ille to you all who work on your computers all day, we poor PhD types are compensated for our poverty with an overabundance of vela time to do as we wish!

So thursday night (12 am) we set off on our much planned "road trip" to San Fran and the wine county (this place called Healdsburg, 60 miles north of SF). After a looong foggy drive reached Sf. The highlights of that day were lunch at Chaat Cafe (3rd and Folsom for anyone who gets to visit SF someday when u retire from your busy jobs :P). I was drooling all over the seekh kabab roll - I swear it beats Kareems. The crowd was enjoyably eclectic there - not just different shades of desi-ness (unlike at Viks' another Indi dhaba in Berkeley), mostly office goers in fancy -ass suits and some touristy types.

The weather was fantastic - perfect temp and a really bright sun so we spent the rest of the afternoon at Union square engaging in our favorite hobby - people watching! Union Sq has the perfect ambience for doing that without feeling stupid (never do that in the Simla Mall - you are bound to get classified as the pitiable Himachal university vela variety). The art exhibitions, pigeons and cafe music actually manage to make you feel very aantel (arty farty intellectual for you non Bongs) even if u know nothing about the art and all you care to check out is how many desis are around and who's wearing what..


That night was spent in hysterical conversation over Tamarind Margaritas (!) and an exotic Senagalese platter - I unashamedly accept that my life's happiness revolves around different cuisines. The place was young, fun and not too expensive. Definitely worth a second visit. This is beginning to sound like those restaurant rating websites so I'll change track.






Next stop was the much talked about "Redwoods" which obviosuly struck my Enid Blyton fancy - what's the point of having tall trees unless the tree tops hit a cloud and the Land of "Do as you want"! The woods were enchanting no doubt but the obsessive precautionary attitude of this country was a killjoy. Yah, it makes sense to preserve nature for the next generation and all that jazz but it does seem a bit excessive to treat tree trunks like dinosaur skulls in a museum with elaborate "Don't touch this and that" signs. Woods for me are meant to get lost in and not be spoon fed .. well, I guess I'd just have to get that kind of thrill from my mad-bull-infested pine forest trek in nainital!

Memory no.1: 1983?

Since the travel bug is in me now I might as well make most of it - and spew some wasted thoughts on cyber space!

If I think really hard, long long back in time, maybe I was 4, in a pink dress (why are memories always so gender conforming!), by the pavement in a little town in Kerala. I won't claim that I remember the face of the artist, but I swear I can still see snapshots of the charcoal portrait he drew of me (on the pavement?)... The same trip, some aunty's roof. Pia and I were throwing bricks down a chimney (I don't know why we were being so Calvin-ish). I am not sure we got yelled at but there was some kind of moral lecturing involved.

Mmmmmm and wasn't it the same place where we were in this fancy hotel with uniformed waiters who only knew how to speak in English? Pia the smarter one (I was at that stage when I pretended to know no language except when I wanted to sing songs to random foreigners) was rehearsing lines in english before calling Room service! Why had Ma baba abandoned a 4 and a 6 year old in the middle of Kerala and a balcony full of monkeys I have no clue....?