Wednesday, June 30, 2010

day 31





















On the road from Chandigarh to Shimla there is one stretch, about 5 km long, where the traffic simply doesn’t move. In situations like these it’s great to be on a motorbike because you can weave in between the cars, trucks and busses and be on your way. In Delhi I learnt how to weave like a pro but I realized that I might have become a little ambitious in my weaving when, on this particular stretch of road, I lightly bumped into the backside of a bus. This bus was standing still and I was hardly moving but the bike fell over, with me on top of it. I managed to get up with my dignity/ego not too damaged and in the process stepping in some holy cow dung (the smell accompanied me all the way to Shimla). The fall also claimed my clutch handle. It just snapped off. Luckily, in India you can’t swing a cat without hitting a bike wallah and I was soon on my way with a new handle.

The road to Shimla, especially on a bike makes it feel like you are ascending into Heaven. The further North I get the cooler the air and forests, meadows and mountain ranges complete the divine-ness. After the heat in Delhi it was pure bliss to feel the ice-infused wind on my face. Soon I’ll be seeing the Himalayas covered in snow.

By late afternoon I made it to Shimla but getting booked into my hostel was a mission of another kind. No vehicles are allowed in the city itself and you need to park right at the bottom and walk up to where you want to be. Most hotels and restaurants are right at the top (as was mine) and I soon understood why I had so many porters offer their service to me when I first arrived. I’d declined all the porter-offers and was now carrying my back-pack up a steep winding hill 3km long. Suddenly there were no porters in sight. The walk up to my hostel was the most exhausting thing I had ever done and I nearly collapsed when I finally made it to the steps of the YMCA.

The next morning I woke up sore and filled with great respect for these porters, who carry extreme loads up and down, all day long, for only a few rupees.

Like I said, Shimla was Shangrila and I decided to spend a long as I wanted and everyone knows; it’s fun to stay at the YMCA.

Monday, June 28, 2010

the open hand diary

lost and found

Today I woke up in Chandigarh and had a list of things to get done before I could set off for Shimla. I had to pack up, check out of the hotel, find the right road to take and replace a spark plug. The bike had been acting weird and kept stalling whenever I stopped at a robot and I was convinced it was the spark plug that needed replacement. So I replaced it. Yes, I, replaced it. And then the bike wouldn’t start.

Turns out, there was dirt in my carburator (?) and that was making the bike act up. I mentioned about the spark plug but the mechanic said the plug was fine. The old plug was also fine. The process of cleaning out my carburator set me back an hour but I had a bigger problem, my diary was gone. There are a lot of things that I could do without on this trip but my diary was not one of them. In it was every contact I’ve made on this trip. Important phone numbers, e-mail addresses and almost every person I’ve met have written in it. It was precious to me and it was missing. Then I remembered where I saw it last, by the open hand monument. My heart sank. I left it on the lawn underneath the monument and it was probably gone by now. What were the chances that it was still there? I’d already lost a few hours of precious early morning riding time but I had to try. I raced to the monument and spent 30 minutes explaining to the guard what had happened and asked if anybody had picked up a book. He didn’t speak English and thought, when I made the sign for book (2 open hands next to each other) that I wanted written permission to see the open hand monument. Eventually I think he got the point but said that there was no book. Feeling very raw about the loss of my diary I decided to walk over to the monument, just in case. It wasn’t there but I saw something in the grass that I recognized. It was a business card from Tritalia in Cape Town and it had been in my diary. Frantically I looked around and found another piece of paper, a contact for someone I could stay with in Nepal. But where was my diary? And then, about 100 meters from where I’d left it, on the grass, was my diary. It was not in the condition I left it but it was there.

My diary had spent the night underneath the open hand of Chandigarh getting some character chewed into it by a stray dog. It was badly bruised but still in-tact and I floated back to my bike clutching my diary tight to my chest.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

read my mind

This morning, before setting off for Shimla, I had breakfast at a Dahba just a short walk away from my hotel. I was still a little sleepy and didn’t notice, immediately, that I was sitting in the middle of the restaurant, with about 40 Indians, also having their breakfasts. There’s nothing strange about that, only, every single person in the restaurant was staring at me. I smiled, acknowledging the room and turned my eyes down to stare at my plate. Whenever I looked up, I looked straight into someone gaping at me, seeming to be trying to read me or figure me out and after a while I felt brave enough to attempt a joke.

Sipping my chai, I made eye contact with a young Indian guy sitting to my right. Holding his gaze, I narrowed my eyes, touched my forehead lightly with my fingertips and pretended that I could read his mind. He reacted almost violently and I didn’t have any trouble reading his thoughts, anyone could see, he was terrified and suddenly the whole restaurant wanted to know what happened. This sparked more staring and some pointing and I promptly paid my bill, saluted to the room and left.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

The open road.











Ok look, I’m not a biker but ever since I was a little girl I dreamt about having a Vespa. Then I grew up and got a Vespa and I loved it but after two weeks on a BIKE-bike I’m thinking that if Vespa was my first love, then this must be my true love. I love I love I love riding this bike and today I had another 7 hours with just the open road and my thoughts. The road snakes through this beautiful country and I went up passes, through forests, past lakes, plantations and little villages where people stared at me with their mouths open. And all the time, I’m dreaming of what Chandigarh is going to be like. This was one of my top locations that I wanted to see and my next stop.

The city is famous for being designed (the layout and most important buildings) by Swiss-French architect, Le Corbusier. The city is very un-Indian (more like a cosmopolitan city) and I spent two days in architecture heaven.

The open hand is Chandigarh’s outlook on everything: an open hand to give and an open hand to receive and I took everything Chandigarh had to offer with my hands, arms and heart wide open.

I could not, however, for the life of me, find an affordable hotel but after another hard day on the road I was dead tired, in no condition to bargain, and wanted a bed badly. The good news is that my room, apart from having the most comfortable bed on the planet, also has a TV and I quickly turned to the football.

Before I left my country men were still undecided whether to be excited about the coming FIFA World Cup or annoyed by the endless frustrations caused by road works and a done-to-death ad campaign. Somewhere, as I was flying over the Indian Ocean their attitude changed and by the time I got to India my fellow South African had gone football bezerk. I sank into a deep FOMO (fear of missing out) and knew I was missing out on something extraordinary. The World Cup had never been hosted by an African Country before. India doesn’t much care for football.

I decided to make the world cup part of my schedule. While I had a TV I would watch Uruguay vs South Korea and then gun it to Shimla the next day to catch the England vs Germany game. I assumed that our own team, Bafana, didn’t make the cut, haibo.

Day 27

Yesterday I left Mussoorie and set off to Chandigarh. I left just as the sun was rising and I remembered a promise I made to myself back in SA: that I would see as many sunrises as I could. Actually it was more of a new year’s resolution. If you think about how often you are awake to see the sun rise it’s really quite sad. And they are spectacular. During our stay here I met wonderful and sincere people but my wanting to stay was outweighed by my desire to move on. The day before I left, each one of them, in turn, stopped by to say farewell and that they would miss me. I believed them, I would miss them too.

So, I made a new rule, I would not stay in one place for more than 4 days. It’s too hard to leave but I also made a new promise: Mussoorie will see me again.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Things that get lost in translation.

Today Shallu and I were having chai at our favorite spot when I saw three Korean kids eating waffles at the table next to us. ‘Oh look, waffles!’ I said. She looked over and said ‘no, they are Koreans’.

97% of India still doesn’t know or trust the Apple Mac and it took me four days to find someone who was willing to ‘try’ to connect Internet to my Mac Book. It’s so foreign to them and I actually heard a story of an Indian guy who stole a Mac Book from a store and sold it for Rs200 (R35) because he thought it was a big calculator.

But, by far, the most bizarre communication blunder has been with my cell phone Network, Aircel. I bought a phone and sim card in Delhi and realized, only after I got to Mussoorie (a two day journey from Delhi) that I could only top up on airtime in Delhi, because, get this, it was a ‘Delhi phone’. And then, to top it all, I started getting messages from Aircel but sent from my own number. At the end of the message they even tell me how much it cost me to receive it. Now, you try explaining, to Aircel, in Hindi, why this is unacceptable.

My Mussoorie



Early this morning, Shallu and I left for Mussoorie where we would be staying for a few days before Shallu returns to Delhi and I continue further up North. This time of the year, everyone in Delhi flees up into the mountains to escape the heat of the city and Mussoorie is the most popular spot. To get there you drive about 300km North of Delhi and then up, up, up 6000ft along a narrow, winding road until you are above the clouds and the air is cool and fresh. It’s a place that you simply have to see with your own eyes as no photograph will ever do justice, though I keep trying.

Shallu and I are staying in a little apartment with a breathtaking view of the whole town. It was a hard day of riding and I had energy only for soaking up the coolness and sipping a cup of cardamom chai.

Up North we go forth
















Now that I had a bike and conquered my fear of the traffic I could finally start planning my trip. After speaking to some of the locals I decided to make my way up North, up into the Himalayas for the first leg of my journey. I ended up staying 2 weeks in Delhi and was very ready to trade the crazy hotness for the open road.

Though I was ready to clock some kilometers I was still waiting for a few final details to come together. My insurance for the bike hadn’t been issued yet and I soon discovered that everything in India takes “just a little more time, Madam” and I reset my bio-clock to India time.

I also picked up a passenger for the first few days of my journey. Shallu, a tiny, shy Indian girl, who works at the learning centre, asked if she could join me for the first few days. She was the only one that was authentically excited about my plans and somehow worked up the nerve to ask this pale stranger if she could go with. Shallu only wanted to as far as Mussoorie (a hill station just North of Delhi and a two day journey by bike). I loved that she was excited, spontaneous and, most importantly, weighed almost nothing. But, though I was willing to risk my own life for the sake of adventurous exploration, I was not comfortable with risking hers.

In the end I yielded and told her to get a helmet for the trip (non negotiable) and started packing. I suddenly had something I didn’t expect, a witness to the madness.

In Delhi the days are short but the nights are endless. Like everything else, the heat is to blame for this. It’s too hot to sleep at night so most people stay awake until the early morning. This means that the city only wakes up at around 11h00. I discovered this when I rocked up at Delhi’s famous Sora Jinni market at 9h00 but only after 2 hours did I see any sign of life. Like the rest of Delhi I didn’t sleep well the night before and had a cat-nap under one of the trees outside the market (somebody’s husband perhaps).

When the market finally did open I was treated to a chaotic, beautiful.. Everything is so much cheaper and I had to resist buying everything I laid my eyes on reminding myself that I had to travel light. Of course, I’m only human and didn’t make it out without buying anything and trying my hand at bargaining. All in all I did fairly well despite still being charged my usual skin-tax.

As much as I love the city, I also love leaving the city. I’m referring of course to my city, Cape Town. Whenever I drive out of the city I feel like I’m taking the first deep breath in a long time but, without fail, whenever I drive back into the city again I feel like I’ve come home. I have never, though, wanted to leave a city as badly before as I want to leave Delhi. Not that I don’t like this crazy city, I do, I do, I do, but the cool crisp mountain air and the open road is beckoning.

Despite the insurance delay it seemed that Murphy and his law was determined to make everything go wrong. Just as I was having an intense, internal moment of doubt and was about to call the whole trip off, my clutch cable snapped. It should have been the camel’s back snapping but it put things into perspective for me. Surely I didn’t expect things to be easy. After that I relaxed into my, albeit much delayed, adventure knowing that it only really starts when something has gone wrong.

I need a drink

A few weeks before leaving for India I asked my friends Sven and Elke for a verse to take with me, a piece of scripture that would be on my mind, so to speak, while I was away. Sven responded a few days later with John 7:37. I read it and, arrogantly, replied by saying ‘nope, that’s not it, keep looking’.

After a week in India my monster thirst had only grown in stature and determination. You know when you’re so thirsty it feels like you’ve eaten sand and you’re so dehydrated you start seeing black spots? I felt like that all the time. At first I thought I was just getting used to the hot climate and needed to up my water intake but later I started thinking there was something supernatural about my thirst. I drank close to 6 liters of water a day (not counting all the nimbu pani and chai I was drinking) but I was still thirsty. Of course it doesn’t help waking up in the morning feeling like you’ve slept in a sauna but this morning, despite being hot and thirsty, I woke up and flipped my Bible open, I had been reading the gospels and I opened to where I stopped reading back in SA. My eye caught a word that had a completely new meaning for me these days.

“Thirsty”.

“If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me as it is said in the scriptures, streams of living water will flow from within him”.

Never has any piece of scripture (or literature) been so literally relevant to me personally. It was John 7:37.

Amen, brother Sven.

Delhi traffic and a series of very-near-death-experiences

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Joshua John, easily the coolest Indian guy I’ve ever met and pastor of Capital City Church, was the right person to speak to about riding a bike in India. He rode a Bullet from Delhi right down to the very south of India (about 7000km) with 2 of his friends once and made a documentary about it called ‘Highway Head Rush’. The first time I spoke to him about riding a bike but being terrified of Delhi traffic he told me that most foreigners he knew took a long time before they worked up the nerve to drive, sometimes, he added, only after a few years! I didn’t have a few years, I had a few days. In my mind I gave up on the idea and started researching train schedules and ticket prices. Then I met Jafar (photo) and his son Joseph.

Jafar and his beautiful Iranian family became my bike-and–everything-related godsends and helped me on my bike sourcing expedition. Within 2 days I found and fell in love with a beautiful Yamaha RX 135 and bought it (after Jafar bargained the price down a little).

Purchasing a motorbike was the easy part, I still needed to learn how to ride it and from the mad traffic I’d seen in Delhi, the idea made me go uncomfortably numb.

Jafar had a gentle nature but was merciless as he instructed me, later that day, on how to ride it. It wasn’t how to ride the bike that made me sweat (I’m not a biker but it can’t be that hard) it was the crazy sea of traffic that I would have to maneuver through that had me panicking. It was just after 17h00 (peak hour traffic) when Jafar told me to follow him through the traffic for a test drive and then promptly told his son Joseph and his daughter Mary * to get on the back with me. Panic turned into fear as I tried to kick start, balance the bike and my 2 passengers while trying not to lose sight of Jafar as he raced off on their family scooter. I had no helmet. In the delirium of becoming the owner of a motorcycle I had neglected to buy one. Helmets are compulsory only for men though but even then, most locals ride like rabied bats out of Hell without one.

So there I was, in the middle of the busiest intersection I’d ever seen, on a bike with two Iranian teenagers on the back trying to keep my mind and my hands steady. After 20 minutes of uneasy riding and the occasional stalling I managed to catch up with Jafar and asked if perhaps it would be better if I attempted this madness on my own first. He disagreed.

‘You need to learn control, sister’ he said. ‘If you got control, you take 4 people, 5 people, no problem!’

In that moment I cursed myself for choosing this madman to show me the ropes and as if on cue my heart started beating from a wild and unfamiliar place. Somehow, lost in the madness of a thousand hooting rickshaws, bikes and cars something took over and I steadied myself (albeit out of sheer terror). I saw an order slowly forming in the madness and I learnt an important traffic lesson, don’t be afraid to use your hooter. In South Africa, hooting at someone is an expression of severe disapproval at someone’s driving; here it is simply saying ‘I’m here’. ‘In India’ I would later here a local say ‘you have to make a lot of noise so people know you’re coming’

Jafar’s merciless method turned out to be the best baptism into India that I could have hoped for and I continued onward, a little less terrified, steady and with a helmet, of course.

Travelling by bike, I soon discovered, was not as easy as one-two-three-go and every day my list of things to organize became longer and more complicated. I had to travel light and in my backpack I had one pair of jeans, a few t-shirts, clean underwear, a travel towel, toothbrush, a sweater, riding jacket, a pair of sneakers and my Havaianas. In a smaller bag that I carried with me at all times I had my passport, money, camera, MP3 player and a pair of nylon riding gloves.

In an empty 10kg basmati rice-bag I had the following:

A few extra tubes, spark plugs, clutch and brake cables, spanners, screwdrivers and a bag of candles. The tool bag added another 7kg to my luggage and I soon discovered that I would rarely find the opportunity to use any of it (except for unnecessarily changing the occasional spark plug). India is far more bike-aware than South Africa and I could always find a bike mechanic without too much trouble.

Namaste, hey.









To my disappointment, the first thing I did in India was vomit. Well no, that’s entirely accurate; I was still on the airplane when I threw up but it was, as they say, an ominous start. Nobody welcomed me at the airport because I was spending the next 6 months in India, on my own. Something was waiting for me beyond the doors of the plane though; Noise, heat and a good dose of disillusionment.

The first thing I wanted to do was get myself into a hotel room as soon as possible so that I could freak out without anyone seeing. En route to the hotel I realized two things; my very romantic idea of riding a motorcycle through India was probably an insane idea as was visiting this country during summer (June-Sept). Alas, today is the first of June and here I am, freaking out and frying.

I spent my first night in the Pahar Gang. Looking back now, the India of my nightmares. Within minutes of booking into my hotel I had what you might call a panic attack. Those voices, of my family and friends, asking me why on Earth I wanted to travel alone in India for 6 months, became louder and louder and for the first time I didn’t know what to say. What on Earth am I doing here? Calm down, dammit. I very nearly slapped myself across the face but managed to get a hold.

Looking back now, it seems silly that I felt so overwhelmed but back then I felt like Alice being asked how far down the rabbit hole I wanted to go. That first night in Pahar Gang was a rite of passage of sorts. Before you could become a traveler you had to be a tourist first. A scared, overwhelmed little tourist.

I had no contacts in India but knew that there were several churches that I wanted to visit and the first was right here in. Delhi. That was the day I met Shallu.

‘So what’s your plan?’ one of the girls in church asked.

‘To survive the next 181 days and make it home alive’ I thought but managed to say ‘travel’ instead.

‘Oh’, she replied and then asked the question I was already sick of; ‘On your own?’

In India women rarely, if ever, travel without the company of a man, usually a husband or father but after 3 days in Delhi I decided that I would be buying a motorcycle and would be riding it, on my own, though India. This announcement was met by blank stares and a few distorted facial expressions and I realized that my solo mission was a foreign concept to them and that I might as well have announced that I will be flying to the moon on a magic carpet.

Their disbelief, I realized was soaked in concern for me and when one of the ladies asked me, aside, what my mother thought of my plan to do this I couldn’t make light of it. I remember seeing my parents, heads drooping and heartbroken, when we said goodbye at the airport and I knew what this lady was saying spoke true and I suddenly felt very lonely, selfish and irresponsible.

The church in Delhi turned out to be just what I needed and I was immediately invited to spend a day at the church’s learning centre. Every day, Monday to Friday, these street children (sometimes as many as 60, from babies to teenagers) come to the centre and basically get fed and taught by a few volunteers. These kids live in extreme poverty, mostly on constructions sites in and around the city and look like they are always covered in dust.

I got my first opportunity to use my badly broken Hindi with the Super Seeds (as they are called) but soon reverted to miming and hugging to communicate and basically fell in love with them. I suddenly understood why Madonna and Angelina Jolie keep adopting children. These kids get to you.

I decided to stay for at least a week in Delhi before adventuring onward and so got a chance to attend a Sunday service at CCC (Capital City Church). They have a wonderful ritual on Sundays. After the service, everyone stays behind to have coffee and chat but then, lunch is served and everyone eats together, in the church. On my first visit I had lunch and ended up staying until 16h00. Some even stay there, talking, sleeping, singing and drinking chai until the evening service starts at 18h30. This was community on another level.