I’ve been feeling the itch to write lately and capture what the experience of coming home for a visit, post my India experiences, has been like. Btw, I came home. After Vipassana all I wanted to do was see my best friends and my family so days after I exited that hellacious piece of heaven/hell on earth in my enlightened state, I booked a visit home, this time the ticket was round trip. I realized I had a part 2 of what was supposed to a many part series about my incredible daily life in McLeod but well, it ended with part two, which I have yet to post, until now. Instead of completing this series, which the concept will be resurrected upon my return to SE Asia, I will just capture the things I’ve missed terribly since I’ve left.
I miss all the amazing people I met, whom I know many of us will reconnect in the future, I miss listening to screaming eagles while hovering in Chatturanga, the sun penetrating the wall of windows in Yogi Shivadas’ studio or the torrential rains pounding on the ceiling. I miss Shivadas calling me out on things and pegging my issues to a tee, I miss the random and sketchy looking routes to get to ANY yoga studio in McLeod or Dharamkot, which means I kind of even miss Jonathan the crazy Israeli tantric yoga teacher who told me to drink my own menstrual blood and that of my now no longer lady friends. I miss my post yoga dates with Brittney and sitting on an open area, usually tarp covered roof watching the screaming eagles and eating our eggs and Tibetan brown bread or our fruit, muslei and curd. Sometimes I miss Marina and her pounding on my door moments after I set foot in my room after a long day out. I miss Mohan screaming, “MAAADAAAAAMMM“ and finally in the last few weeks I was there “JEEESSSSIIIIIIII” whenever he needed to talk to me and I miss the giggle and shy smile of his wife Beetu and her lil round preggers belly. I miss the boys at Sanji’s always flipping me shit, the brothers Raan, Sanjay and their friends Ravi and Dinesh. I miss my talks with Mohan’s brother Rinku and their helper during the busy season, Lama, about life in India. I miss random adventures with Brittney and anyone else we met along the way, lounging days away “reading” in any one of our favorite cafes. I miss my solo days where I’d park my ass on my balcony and stare out at the hillside while eating, reading, writing or doing yoga. I miss my daily yoga lessons with DK from Lhamo’s and hearing about his stories of the life of Tibetans or the movie night they had EVERY night at 7pm in their café. I miss the random guest house owner, Vikram, who would greet me each morning on my way down the hill to my yoga class as he’d tell me if I was early or late that given morning. I miss passing the man and woman right by the steps playing Marabaraba (no idea what they call it in India) for hours on end. I miss dodging cows, motor rickshaws and weaving in and out of the traffic mayhem that is India. I miss living in the storms! Oh MY GOD do I miss the storms! I miss watching them roll in, roll through, the pounding on the roof, dodging the puddles of ick they created on the streets, the thunder that would shake my entire guest house ALL night, the lightening that would wake me in the middle of the night by igniting my room in incessant flashes. I miss going to Tushita for Buddhist movie days, chai, chatting w/ Renchin the monk from Hawaii, morning meditations and workshops. I miss going to Vipassana and then planning out a day w/ Marina afterwards. I MISS THE FOOD! I miss the “shanti shanti” life style and attitude, which also means, India Time. I miss the real true street food. I miss hearing any one of the dozens of Shiva temple bells getting rung at any time of the day or waking to the sound of Buddhist chanting echoing across the hills. I miss the sights, sounds (even the fucking ridiculous horn honking), smells and energy of the entire place. I miss looking at the swirly trees that were sporadically located between all the gigantic evergreen trees. I miss my Big Gay Umbrella and actually getting to use it without getting glared at because of its size. I miss the Dalai Lama and you know what else I miss… the fucking MONKEYS! (FORESHADOWING)
Anyway, without any further ado, here is part 2 of what ended up only being 2 parts of Day in the Himalayan Life.
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Taking in one last breath of sun I bounce out of my balcony chair, throw on some yoga clothes, toss my mat into my backpack, make sure I have my antibacterial soap and cream for my fully exposed, fresh ¼ sleeve tattoo, slip into my flip flops, grab my 3rd arm, which I have lovingly named “My Big Gay Umbrella,” which doubles as a walking stick during the non-torrential parts of the day, and head out for my walk/hike down to McLeod Ganj. The path from my guesthouse to the main corner that houses the Himalayan Tea Shop, Tushita and Vipassana is relatively flat and mixed with paved parts, small pebbles and sand and big rock chunks, not unlike most other streets in the area. Two routes will take you to McLeod Ganj, one driven by taxis, motorbikes and rickshaws; although, not at this early hour of 7:30am and the other path is known as the “shortcut” that passes along the backside of Tushita and is more of a hike than a walk. Its descent is quick, steep and predominately nothing but rock. A majority of the path looks like someone spent a month going up and down the mountain with a jackhammer, destroying the shit out of the road, and left all the remnants as a perpetual obstacle for the journey between McLeod and Dharamkot. This is when I learned I’m amazing in a pair of flip flops and decided my Reefs are going everywhere in the world with me. They handle this crazy bit of terrain like the champs they were born to be. They’ve taken me through 4 continents, endured showers with leeches, vineyard strolls, mountain hikes, spa days, yoga outings and trudged through flooded roads of cow shit and sludge. I feel like I should write a song about them but that would just be silly. Understandably, this road is not taken by anything motorized, or anything not on foot, to be more specific. It’s a beautiful path, lined with massive evergreen trees on both sides, it smells fresh, until you get closer to McLeod or pass a freshly dumped cow pie, and due to the surroundings, the incline and the condition of the path, I’d classify this more in the category of “hike” versus a “walk.”
McLeod Ganj is like Seattle on a sunny day, especially after months of absolutely ridiculous torrential downpour from the skies. The rain here is like nothing I’ve ever seen, in quantity, ferociousness and frequency. It’s no wonder the poorly engineered roads look like they are going to slip out from under you with just the weight of your foot step, or a massive rock will dislodge from above and tumble your direction as you cross its path. When the skies part and the sun shines, people are all smiles and friendly. I have taken to hauling ass down the mountain in the mornings, since I’ve already spent considerable time strolling, gazing at my surroundings and absorbing everything around me. Now, haul balls is the name of the game, unless I have a chance encounter with a lovely stranger, which, because I apparently can’t stop socializing, is often. One morning a wonderful Tibetan man, whose name I still don’t know, who works at a guest house at the bottom of the hill, was on his way back from his early morning walk with his dog up to the top of the hill, showed me a marvelous short cut that allowed me to bypass the massive garbage can around the bend and down the hill. You know who likes garbage cans? MONKEYS! You know who doesn’t like me? MONKEYS! I will say, since my encounter with that beast in Rishikesh (see Mission, Monkeys and Motorbikes – OH MY!), and after a few weeks of automatically chanting the Saturn mantra Sanjay’s guru gave me as I approached a pack, I’ve eased a bit in their presence and I don’t think I’m giving off the stench of utter terror and fear. I think it also helped that during Vipassana, I would take it upon myself to lead all the women to either the Dhamma Hall or cafeteria, because those are the only places we went, putting myself in harm’s way first of any monkey shenanigans, because I am up to date on my shots, thanks to Rishikesh. The Vipassana retreat center in Dharamsala is like a playground for those things and one day a girl from San Francisco and I were essentially locked into the outdoor bathroom area because an entire family, or more of monkeys, were surrounding us. As they came closer, we’d both run into whatever was nearest that had a door we could slam and lock. I chose the bathroom, with the toilet EVERYONE tinkled on (so annoying!) and she, one of the showers, which probably had a disgusting leech on the darkened concrete, lifting its grotesque head sniffing for flesh to suckle. Fifteen minutes we stood there, waiting for our chance to escape and keep in mind, we can’t talk and technically we’re supposed to have “Noble Silence,” which means also no gestures or eye contact but this was a different kind of situation and silent communication was a must for our survival. I may be exaggerating, slightly. Finally, Dimple, a woman from Bangalore, frantically waved her umbrella in the air as a signal we were in the clear and we managed to scurry off to our rooms, unscathed. I feel like I could write a book about my monkey experiences in India.
Back to my lovely jaunt down the hill. I round the bend that passes the lower entrance to Tushita, by one of the Buddhist temples they walk circles around chanting mantras and playing with their prayer beads, and I hear a noise from the trees, I think. I’m alone, which is not uncommon, and there is always some weird noise in this area that I haven’t been able to identify so I just keep walking, with heightened alertness and a firmer grip around my Big Gay Umbrella that has a metal point. I’ve determined that in time of need the Big Gay will be my life saver and allow me to stab a bitch in the gut through the heart or in the eye. I told this plan to my mom on the phone once after she told me, “be safe girl,” and she suggested, “I think you should go for the eye. Then you don’t have to contend with a rib cage.” Thank you mom for the wonderful advice. With a firm grip I look ahead and down to see if there are any newer obstacles in my path this day. This is the point where the road is somewhat paved but the retaining wall of filled old metal containers is ahead and effective they are not, so the road is crumbling to bits around that piece of engineering genius. As I peer up I catch the glimpse of an adolescent monkey running and jumping through the brush, swinging from a low hanging branch, landing on the ground and all of a sudden, I see a few more join it on the right side of the path. I’m calm, cool, collected, not even chanting my mantra at this point and I’m feeling pretty a-okay. All of a sudden, from the left, I hear similar noises and while looking down but carefully lifting my gaze I spot about 15-20 more monkeys of all ages. At this point, the lil guy on the left, who I thought was alone, had crossed the path but left behind him another 20 monkeys. I’m fucking SURROUNDED!
Usually when I come to a group of monkeys they are all chilling by the garbage can, noshing on only god knows what and pay no mind to me, as long as I’m not oozing nervousness and anxiety. I thought maybe they’d stop as I was walking, listening to Ratatat from my phone that’s shoved into the water bottle compartment of my backpack, but no, they are going the same direction as I. I have baby monkeys walking within a foot of me on either side, almost in an accompanying fashion, older monkeys are frolicking (do monkeys frolic?) in and out of the trees to my right and on the left they are just running along the side of the cliff, some are crossing right in my path, making me weave a little from side to side like a hopeless drunk at this early hour. I keep my pace even, as to not disturb the flow we’ve all created because I honestly don’t think I’d survive a monkey attack of 50+ strong, and there is not a person in sight. The brief detachment from civilization in the woods is coming to an end and I see the patch of homes and guest houses on the left. Water spews from some of the exposed piping that’s stacked in mass, soaking the left side of the road and this is India, you have NO idea where this stuff comes from or more importantly, what’s in it. I try as I may to avoid getting “India” on me because who knows what will grow from the tainted spot once “India” has touched my skin, or what will fall off my body due to infection. On the right the road becomes unmanageable in flip flops, or at least very difficult but there is a nice clear, yet small patch of pavement running down the middle of the path. Even with the spots I like to avoid, there is maybe only 2-3 feet of each unpleasant situation on either side of the nice patch of pavement. Under normal circumstances, this is not problem but today it’s proving not only difficult, but impossible as I carefully keep my head down but gaze up and see the patch of hairy chest on a really big fucking beastly monkey plopped right in the middle of the road, parked on my landing strip of pavement. “Fuck fuck fuck!” I silently utter to myself. So that lack of fear I felt on this rather surreal trip down the mountain came to a jilted halt. I’m all of a sudden, very cognizant of my breath and more importantly, controlling it. Breathing slowly to regulate my heart beat I, even more, carefully look at the monkey’s face, making sure to not make eye contact, to size up the situation I’ve encountered. He’s just staring at me, not moving, I’m not moving, none of the monkeys around us are moving anymore, and life freezes, for how long, I have no idea. Five feet from what seems to be the leader of this pack I stand as nonchalantly as possible, even go so far to place a hand on my hip, look up at the sky and pretend I don’t see this creature and that I’m totally unmoved by his power play, because, that’s what he’s doing that monster bastard of a mammal! I fight the urge to whistle a little tune of nothingness, which I’m sure would send all 82,384,732 monkeys in my direction, teeth bared, arms flailing and screeches capable of draining my ear drums of blood. I carefully, and briefly, look at his face again and he’s still just staring at me, not showing teeth or hissing like the one who attacked me in Rishikesh, but instead, smiles mockingly at me. Maybe I dreamt it, or maybe I’m just being a dramatic Leo, but I swear he was flipping me shit with his eyes and a smirk. I wait, patiently, maybe for 30 seconds, maybe for a few minutes and all of a sudden I hear small movements in surround. A few of the little monkeys latch onto their moms and as I’ve been deemed nonthreatening, the big bastard saunters into the brush on the right side, allowing me to pass. At this juncture, the monkeys stay put and carry on about whatever business it is monkeys carry on with? I’d say they are on a mission to terrorize humans but that would be inaccurate in McLeod, thank god. The red monkeys here are actually a bit more docile and just want to eat the remnants of food off the ground, rather than steal bags of whatever goodness you may have in your hands. If I was still in Rishikesh though, terror, trouble and shenanigans are all those damn red assed monkeys are about and I have the faint scars of wisdom to prove it.
Until the adventures continue and I need to decompress from my visit home,
xxxo
DIRTY!
