One of my photo showing the full moon illuminating the Himalaya mountains is now published in Worldnomads Book of Travels 2008. I'm now waiting to receive my copy :)
Click the above image will take you to the webpage about the book, the photo I submitted can be seen in my previous post titled "panoramas" .
"No I'm not Japanese."
"No I'm not Korean."
"I'm from New Zealand."
"Yes I look Asian because I was born in Taiwan, but if you go to Auckland, the largest city in New Zealand right now, you'll see people from everywhere around the world."
If I get a dollar every time I have this conversation, let's say the money I got will probably be enough to cover all my meal costs for this whole trip. I was quite patient in the beginning, thinking that it's part of my responsibility to "educate" people, but man~ how many times is too many to have the same conversation? How about 8 times a day? That's my highest daily record so far.
Somehow I find that Indians have more problem accepting my answer when I said I'm from New Zealand, whereas most Europeans are ok with it. I think the reason is simple, many big cities in Europe are quite multi-cultural as I have observed when I was there, and people there are used to the idea of having people from different culture & background living in the same country. Which is not quite the case in most Indian cities. Sure you see lot's of westerners in touristy places, but they're just tourists.
Here's an interesting observation, guess people from which country make up the number 1 tourist population in India? Answer: Israelis.
The second place probably goes to the French.
As for New Zealanders, so far I've met 4.
Taiwaneses: 7.
Australians: 3.
Chinese: 0.
Right now I'm trapped inside the internet cafe, because it's pouring like cats & dogs outside. Dharamsala certainly lives up to its reputation as the second rainiest place in India.
I have a umbrella with me, but judging by how heavy the rain is, I'll still be half soaked if I attempt to walk back from McLeod Ganj to Bhagsu (15 min).
The noise of the rain is so loud, that you'll be forgiven to think that there's a waterfall right outside the front door of the building.
It doesn't rain all day here, but since I arrived on last sunday, there was a heavy rain like this almost everyday for 1~2 hours. Ah well, what can you expect from the second rainiest place in India during monsoon?
Did I just walk 7km uphill in 45 minutes? That can't be right. According to the road sign, that's the distance between Dharamsala & McLeod Ganj. However I'm suspicious about this figure. According to Lonely Planet, the distance by walking is 4km, and that feels more like the correct distanace to me.
Having lived in places with altitude higher than 3000~4000m for about a month, back in places under 2000m, I feel like superman. Ok...not quite, but people who know me well would know that my walking speed uphill had always been dramatically slower than my average walking speed, but now in Dharamsala, I can keep up the same pace all the way uphill, without getting out of breath. I didn't even have to drink any water, even though I sweat a lot during the walk.
It's good to feel fit and well.
I'm now in Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir
this is an interesting place...in a bit of a sad way
you can clearly see that in the past the city must be a pretty upscale resort for tourists, the setting & architecture have strong European influences, the lakes have hundreds of houseboats as relaxing accommodations. The streets are cleaner and greener (in the touristy centers) than other Indian cities.
But since the partition of India, the hostility between India & Pakistan and the political unrest in the decades that followed have pretty much screwed the tourism industry here
Nowadays, while staying on the houseboats remained a tranquil & relaxing experience, in downtown Srinagar, you'll see fully armed Indian soldiers standing guard on every corner of the street. The political situation between India and Pakistan is a lot better these days, but there still aren't that many foreign tourists, and I noticed that there're probably more Indian tourists.
Kashmir used to be dubbed as "paradise on earth" because of it's natural beauty, it's interesting in a sad way to see how human conflicts affect the so-called "paradise".
The Dalai Lama is in Leh now, he arrived at around 10:30am this morning.
This time he's visiting Soma Gompa (monastry), which is just outside the internet place, so I witnessed the event.
As usual the street is fulled of people, about 1/4 to 1/3 are tourists (mind you Leh is fulled of tourists), and there're lots of Indian soldiers & polices on the street, fully armed.
Many Ladakhis are wearing their traditional custumes, holding scarfs, flowers...etc in their hands, and there are banners on the street buildings, saying "welcome".
After waiting for about half an hour, several vehicles passed through the street in front of the gompa, fulled of soldiers/polices, some soldiers jumped out with rifles in their hands, and soon after, the Dalai Lama's vehicle arrived.
He walked out of the car, palms together in front of his chest, making a Buddhist gesture to the crowds, and was quickly lead into the gompa by his entourage.
I took several photos and managed to capture his face in one of them.
But I won't be able to upload any more photos until I left Leh and go back to some place with cheaper internet.
I arrived in Leh on Sunday after a very bumpy 2-day jeep journey through the 2nd highest motorable road in the world (I got photos but won't have time to upload them until a few weeks from now).
Yesterday the Dalai Lama passed through Leh in the morning at around 9am. I was still in my hotel room at that time so I did not witness the procession of his convoy. But people told me that he was on his way to Nubra Valley to give a 3 days teaching to the public, and he'll do the same thing in Leh around the 16th of this month.
In Norther India, where it's more Buddhist than Hindu, Dalai Lama realy is just like the Pope in Italy. Wherever I go, people talked about where he is right now and where he's going to be soon, many shops and restaurants have his photo hanging on the wall, and wherever he goes, people line the streets to welcome him.
I picked up his autobiography "Freedom in exile" in Manali and I it to be a perfect time and place for me to read this book, because I'm so close to where the events happened in the book, and the places around me are fulled of his presence.
I haven't decided whether to attend his teachings in Leh or not, because as usual, "the plan is that there's no plan."
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| Spiti |
Four years ago, I dropped everything in NZ and travelled to Europe for almost 6 months.
After I got back, I thought "ok I've got the biggest adventure in my life over and done with, now it's time to come back to the real life, have a career & create a lifestyle that I want."
Little did I know, the adventure is far from over. Four years on, the current of life take me to places that I would not have imagined before.
All it takes, is for me to let go of my worries, doubts, and dive into the flow. It feels good to be alive, even though it scares me from time to time.
Ever since I came to India, I feel like a handicap because I don't know how to ride a motorbike. Everyone agrees that riding a motorbike is the best way to travel in India, it gives you the freedom to go wherever you want & stop whenever you like. And almost every Indian guys I've met knows how to drive it.
Sure I've been riding bicycles since I was a kid, and I have ridden a scooter in Tuscany (fully automatic), but a motorbike is slightly more complicated than that.
Today I have finally broke my personal record. I rented a motorbike this morning (Yammaha RX100 for Rs. 350), and threw myself into the deep end. Before this, the only times I've driven a motorbike were the four 10-minute tutorial & practices given by Marcus back in Hyderabad, so when I first started, I could not get the bike moving properly and the engine always dies. But after awhile, with some instruction from the guy who rented it to me, I started driving on the main road.
Unfortunately my first experience only lasted for about 15 minutes. I came to a bridge and it was sealed off (looks like it was damaged), so all the vehicles have to drive through a very bumpy & rocky detour. I drove behind a car, and when it suddenly stopped, I hit the breaks and just like that my engine died. I was in the middle of the road and I couldn't start it again! Well...long story short, 2 guys helped me to push the bike back onto the normal road, a local stopped by because his bike had a punctured tyre, he helped me to restart the engine, and he drove my bike with me on the back to a bike repair shop to get help for his bike, and I drove the bike back to the guy who rented it to me, who took the bike & repaired whatever the problem was.
2 hours later, after lunch, I was on the road again, but heading for the opposite direction towards Naggar, a village about 21kms away from Manali. This time everything went smoothly.
Man~ driving in India, it is fun & scary at the same time!
Let's see...how many things have I drove pass (or overtook me)? Trucks, jeeps, buses, cars, other bikes, auto-rickshaws, tractors, people, sheep, dogs, cows, donkeys, horses, an elephant....yes, a real live elephant, with a guy riding on top of course.
My ultimate goal, is to be able to ride to the highest & 2nd highest motorable roads in the world (which happened to be both in this region of the Himalayas), in Nubra valley & from Manali to Leh. But at the moment I really couldn't make the decision, to do that I'll need really solid experiences in handling the bikes, the roads are not easy at all~
Anyway as the saying goes, let's wait and see.
Life is amazing.
It presents you with all kinds of opportunities, if you're open to them, one opportunity will lead to another, and they'll take you through many amazing experiences.
I'm so glad I decided to accept the invitation to come to India. To be honest I had a lot of doubts before. Why would I want to go to an over-populated country, getting paid 1/4 of the standard NZ salary, living with the city traffic, pollution, noise, crowd, and worse living conditions?
The answer, is that these experiences enriched my life. I'm very happy to see the changes in me. I've become more open and more relaxed. I stopped worrying about job, career, and money, and I have a lot more acceptance to everything happening around me.
Best of all, the friendship I have here, and the chance to experience India, is priceless.
I'm now in Vashist, Manali. It's such a nice and comfortable place, and for Rs. 350 (NZD $11.7) per night, I have a million-dollar mountain view (the beginning of the great Himalaya range) in the hotel. Ok it is kind of a high price for my accomodation budget (usually it's around Rs 100~150), but...it's time to give myself a bit of a treat.
Life is good.
So just like that, a week ago I was still working like a slave in Hyderabad, now I'm hundreds of kilometers away in Rishikesh.
I have to say that if I've never done all those solo travels before (in Europe & NZ...etc), I'd be in a huge trouble. Even with those experiences under my belt, I still find travelling alone by public transports in India to be REALLY TOUGH~
I took a plane from Hyderabad to Delhi at 5:40am yesterday (4th July), then from Delhi took an 8 hour bus ride to Haridwar, and a bus ride from Haridwar to Rishikesh.
Without the friendly helps from the locals I would possibly be stucked in Haridwar yesterday. (at almost 8pm) There were no English signs anywhere on the buses or in the bus station. The chaotic station had no counters, no arrival and departure info. When the bus arrived, I had to do what everyone else does, push myself into the crowds to get inside before the bus leaves.
I'm considering to get a motor bike, and when I meet up with Marcus & Kiki next month(maybe), I'll start travelling by bike. But I'll have to wait and see how things happen, because as usual, the plan is that there's no plan.
Boy~ was she right. In the middle of March, I had to choose between staying in Auckland and joining a cafe business with my friend, or to go to India and work on the visual effects for a movie, and I only had 1 week in total before I had to make the decision.
It was a tough one, every mental & emotional muscle of mine were fired up, causing waves and waves of unsettling sensations in my body for over a week. Facing two totally different options with no "right" solution, I swung back and forth between my decisions.
Then something strange happened, on the last day, at around 2am in the morning, I reached a state of clarity, my mind was quiet, my emotions were silenced, I felt calm and peaceful, and I heard my inner voice repeating a message clearly: "Go to India".
It wasn't based on some logical reasoning, like "I should go because of...etc etc", instead it was a clear sense of knowing, that puts all my thoughts to rest.
So that's it, I'm leaving for Hyderabad, India, on Saturday 7th of April, staying for an initial contract period of 2 months, and then decide whether I'll stay longer or not.
It's been 27 years and several months since I came to this world, so that makes me 27 years old in the ordinary sense. However, having to start a new life in a different country/culture at the age of 13, when my family migrated from Taiwan to NZ, meaning that I am only a 14 years old member of this society.
Moreover, at the age of 20, I went through a process of spiritual rebirth, so in that sense I'm only 7 years old as a spiritual being in awakening.
The spiritual rebirth was a confusing process for me, of course being born in the first place could have been an equally if not more confusing experience, but hardly anyone remembered much of it, and we really didn't have much to do back then other than slept & being fed.
Whereas in my case, I had to continue functioning as an adult on the outside, dealing with university studies and social interactions, while inwardly experiencing all kinds of calamity (but dressed with a sprinkle of rare occasional blissful moments of enlightment).
Since then, nothing in the world had been the same for me. Like an infant, I had to pretty much relearn everything about who I am, all of my beliefs were questioned and examined from several different perspectives. And that's not the end of the story, as the whole thing end up becoming a continuing process.
It's because of this process, that in 2003 I took the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain (a.k.a. camino de Santiago, the camino).
One of the optional finishing point of the camino is Finisterre, the westernmost point of Spain, known as the edge of the world during medieval times. Today many modern pilgrims still practice a traditional ritual, they burnt some of their personal belongings (eg. cloth) at Finisterre, symbolizing rebirth, the end of the old and the beginning of a new life.
A rather fitting ending to (approximately) 800km of on-foot pilgrimage I have to say, even though I didn't go through with the burning ritual at Finesterre (because I was unaware of it until my fellow pilgrims told me aabout it after we arrived there), and I finished my pilgrimage at the city of Santiago and took a day trip to Finesterre by bus instead, the visit was still quite an interesting experience.
The spiritual rebirth/awakening had been an interesting ongoing process, even though I intend to write a story based on my experiences someday, at the moment many things are yet to happen, and the ending is all but unknown, so for now all I'll just reflect what comes to mind by writing here.
Photos below:
1)Finisterre, the end of the then known world.
2)Me at Finesterre, it was raining and with the help of my fellow pilgrims I ended up wearing an improvised raincoat made out of a rubbish bag.
3) A fellow German pilgrim burning her cloth at Finesterre.
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