Happy New Year! No I haven't gone mad, well not completely anyway. Wednesday 17th Feb was Tibetan New Year (Losar), so welcome to the year of the Earth Rabbit, 2126! I was in McLeod Ganj (Upper Dharamsala), home of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government in Exile for this - it was very peaceful and relaxing there after Delhi. The scenery was absolutely fantastic, and the Tibetan people are very friendly. The food is great as well, especially the Momos (dumplings), and they serve pretty good cakes also! I got to see the Dalai Lama when he gave his New Year speech at the temple on Wednesday morning, the only problem is it was all in Tibetan so we only got snippets of translation from the locals. I'm back in Delhi now having been to Amritsar on the way back. We visited the Golden Temple - it is absolutely stunning, especially when lit up at night, and the people there (Punjabis, mostly Sikhs) are extremely friendly. Lots of kids would come up to shake hands and practice the only bits of English they knew, which was usually to say hello and ask you your name. Some of the younger ones got a bit confused if you asked them their name back! A few people wanted photos with westerners as well - makes you feel a bit like a movie star - they'll be asking for my autograph next! I take back everything I said about Egyptian drivers (well, maybe not everything). Indian driving has to be experienced to be believed. Some of the bus journeys I've had recently have to be the most scary experiences of my life. The journey to Agra last week involved travelling on a 'dual-carriageway', two lanes in each direction, alledgedly. Trouble is, often one side of the road is closed for road works or due to an accident (I saw the remains of three recent serious crashes just on that 200km drive). When the traffic is diverted onto the other carriageway, there are no cones to separate the traffic, and a lot of the time some of the vehicles don't realise they are supposed to go back to their own side at the end of the diversion (sometimes there's a sign, sometimes not...). Upshot of all this is that it is quite common to suddenly find a car or large truck heading directly for you on your side of the dual-carriageway. If you're lucky, you don't actually see it until its gone past - its less scary that way! The real suicidal maniacs are the people riding bicycles and motor scooters in the inside of the wrong side of the road - sheer madness. Its no wonder the side of the road is littered with wrecks. The really comical thing about all this is that most of the trucks, lorrys, rickshaws and some private cars (as well as almost every hotel room, office, restaurant etc) have little Hindu shrines on the dashboard. Whether this means that the drivers then think that the protection of the gods means they don't need to worry about their driving, or they could be close to death so want to make sure they are at peace with their gods, or whether they believe in re-incarnation so don't care anyway, I'm not quite sure.... I head for Calcutta in the next few days, possibly via Varanasi, the Hindu holy city on the Ganges. Nigel
Happy New Year! No I haven't gone mad, well not completely anyway. Wednesday 17th Feb was Tibetan New Year (Losar), so welcome to the year of the Earth Rabbit, 2126! I was in McLeod Ganj (Upper Dharamsala), home of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government in Exile for this - it was very peaceful and relaxing there after Delhi. The scenery was absolutely fantastic, and the Tibetan people are very friendly. The food is great as well, especially the Momos (dumplings), and they serve pretty good cakes also! I got to see the Dalai Lama when he gave his New Year speech at the temple on Wednesday morning, the only problem is it was all in Tibetan so we only got snippets of translation from the locals. I'm back in Delhi now having been to Amritsar on the way back. We visited the Golden Temple - it is absolutely stunning, especially when lit up at night, and the people there (Punjabis, mostly Sikhs) are extremely friendly. Lots of kids would come up to shake hands and practice the only bits of English they knew, which was usually to say hello and ask you your name. Some of the younger ones got a bit confused if you asked them their name back! A few people wanted photos with westerners as well - makes you feel a bit like a movie star - they'll be asking for my autograph next! I take back everything I said about Egyptian drivers (well, maybe not everything). Indian driving has to be experienced to be believed. Some of the bus journeys I've had recently have to be the most scary experiences of my life. The journey to Agra last week involved travelling on a 'dual-carriageway', two lanes in each direction, alledgedly. Trouble is, often one side of the road is closed for road works or due to an accident (I saw the remains of three recent serious crashes just on that 200km drive). When the traffic is diverted onto the other carriageway, there are no cones to separate the traffic, and a lot of the time some of the vehicles don't realise they are supposed to go back to their own side at the end of the diversion (sometimes there's a sign, sometimes not...). Upshot of all this is that it is quite common to suddenly find a car or large truck heading directly for you on your side of the dual-carriageway. If you're lucky, you don't actually see it until its gone past - its less scary that way! The real suicidal maniacs are the people riding bicycles and motor scooters in the inside of the wrong side of the road - sheer madness. Its no wonder the side of the road is littered with wrecks. The really comical thing about all this is that most of the trucks, lorrys, rickshaws and some private cars (as well as almost every hotel room, office, restaurant etc) have little Hindu shrines on the dashboard. Whether this means that the drivers then think that the protection of the gods means they don't need to worry about their driving, or they could be close to death so want to make sure they are at peace with their gods, or whether they believe in re-incarnation so don't care anyway, I'm not quite sure.... I head for Calcutta in the next few days, possibly via Varanasi, the Hindu holy city on the Ganges. Nigel