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Now don't get me wrong - India was amazing, and I'm very glad we went, but it was work. First there was getting there. Juli and I were not wealthy, but, we had just managed to earn some pretty good money doing a contract job together. We had something like $8,000 Canadian between us, and a whopping $3,200 of that bought us a pair of round trip tickets to Bombay via Bangkok and Hong Kong. It was a lot of money, but it inclued two nights in a fancy hotel in Hong Kong (one each way) waiting for connections, and so we took it. We borrowed a couple of backpacks from her aunt and uncle, got our passports sorted out, and bought a couple of Lonely Planet guidebooks to cling to. I even bought a new camera - actually, that's not quite true - I traded a guy a case of beer for an extra AE-1 body he had lying around, and I picked up a used 70-210mm no-name lens to fit it. It still works ten years later, and it's been dropped off the back of a camel.

I digress - So, we got everything together, not that we were taking much in the small packs, and on September 5th, 1989, we took off from Vancouver International Airport, bound for Hong Kong with Cathay Pacific. It seemed like a dream - it was really - as we flew up the BC coast, past the Alaskan Panhandle, over Japan (it was nightime, and we could see the lights of Tokyo and the fishing fleets like toys below us) and on to the bustling symbol of British Empire known as Hong Kong.

Hong Kong

What a landing! We knew what it would be like from books and movies, but it's still amazing to land in Hong Kong, flying past peoples laundry as you approach. I took a crappy shot out of the window in a vain attempt at capturing the moment. You can probably guess how well it turned out. All our reading did nothing to prepare us for the humidity. I grew up in temperate Vancouver. When it gets humid there it rains. And rains. And rains. It doesn't "rain" in Hong Kong. Either it pours like waterfalls from the sky, or it sits there - heavy in the air - slapping at you with a dull thud. You can hear the humidity in Hong Kong in September. This combined with the imense urbanity that banishes the natural relief of a cool stream creates what must be one of the largest concentrations of air conditioners in the world. They hang out of every conceivable portal lending an appearance of decay to all the buildings with their constant drip drip dripping. After about 7 seconds you forgive them their energy sucking ways as you claw your way into their comfort. I now understand summer blockbusters.

We pushed our way through the atmosphere to our waiting car (courtesy of our $1600 tickets) and were driven across town to our hotel where we crashed for the evening, waking up at 4:30 in the morning. Hungry. The kitchen wasn't open, but hey - this is Hong Kong - of course we'll find some food. The problem was we didn't know where to go. We wandered about looking for a noodle shop, but they'd all closed by 4:00, and we couldn't find anyhting that was open 24 hours except (oh my god) McDonalds and 7-11. We didn't fly across the friggin' Pacific to eat at McDonalds and 7-11. Oh well - give us a few more weeks and we'd be screaming for a Big Mac. I think I had a slurpy for breakfast.

We were in awe of the city. There was just so much life - so much bustle. We watched the drivers (I'd sooner drive in New York) and the pushcarts, the boats and the pedestrians, and we wandered about just looking. We only had the one day in the this direction, and not even a whole day at that, so we didn't get very far, but it set a tone of adventure for the trip that I think really helped. What a place. We came to the conclusion that the best way to explore Hong Kong was to wander around until you were completely lost, and then find your way back on the map.

We enjoyed even better service on our flight from Hong Kong to Bombay than we'd received flying from Vancouver, and this was because we shared a row with Poona, a Cathay Pacific stewardess who was flying home to Bombay to visit her family. She knew all the staff of course, and since we were seated with her, we also received more of everything. She told us that she was really glad not to be working the flight, and that the jaunt from Bangkok to Bombay was considered the worst assignment a Cathay flight attendant could receive. We shortly came to understand. The crowd of Indian buisness men got progressively louder, drunker and ruder as the flight went on. Apparently, the last time she'd worked it (and she often did because she spoke Hindi) they'd had to lock one guy to his seat with handcuffs - not easily done. She declined our request to translate the comments of an irate drunk on our own flight - this was our first introduction to the patriarchal childishness that we would come to know so well. (In fact, as my eyes open further, I see this behaviour more and more all over the world, including in myself sometimes, but that's another whole essay.) Our arrival in Bombay was delayed by one of our drunken cabin-mates who got off the plane prematurely in Bangkok on a stop-over, causing a passenger count, recount, unloading and eventual reboarding. It took 2 hours.

India

The flight survived, we landed in Bombay, and soon found ourselves in the customs line-up. India in 1989 had very few computers. Everything was done on paper, and everyone seemed to have a rubber stamp. We imagined the job adds advertising how many rubber stamps you would be allowed to wield. "...duties include paper shuffling, drinking chai and stamping documents with any of seven different stamps in three colours..." By the time we were free, at least 4 people had stamped and signed various documents, and a list of our valuables had been made, along with a full acounting of all of our travellers cheques and cash. The effect of all of these stamps was somewhat intimidating - one didn't want to throw out a piece of paper that had been stamped, because obviously someone else would need to see the stamp at some point. This led us to amass a large collection of stamped pieces of paper before we realized that no one really cared about most of it - in fact, almost none of our papers were checked on our way out of the country.

From the airport we headed to a hotel that we'd reserved before we left Vancouver. We knew we'd be arriving late at night (about 22h00 I think) so we'd sagely booked ahead. Our travel agents' computer hadn't show many hotels in Bombay - The Intercontinental seemed a reasonable choice on the computer. Clearly we had our sights set on something a little more affordable. Eventually, she tracked down the Avion Hotel, which, when we got there (charged several times over rate by the rickshaw driver for a 500 metre trip) proved to be a lovely hold-over of the Raj, complete with oatmeal and toast for breakfast. All we really cared about though was sleep. We left the next morning on the train into Bombay, through the crowds of Indian commuters. Walking through the streets to the train station we were greeted by a holy man wearing nothing but a giant yellow diaper and some yellow paint blotched onto his face. He's carrying a trident, and hollering "Hallooo, Hallooo!" at us. A mad grin hidden beneath his beard. We smile and wave back and he keeps going - this was no money grubbing ploy - he was actaully greeting us. Years later I'll learn of his sect and the pilgramage he was probably on. He was probably the high point of the day - a day that would bring both of us to dispairing tears as we adjusted to the ways of India, and the vaugeries of budget travel in the developing world. We tried at first to find a reasonable hotel in town, but by mid-afternoon, we'd given up, and headed to Dehli on an overnight train.

Ahh trains! I love trains, and Indian trains are fabulous! They are (or were in 1991) the transportation backbone of the entire country, and many of them still run on coal, dirty romantic coal. I didn't know it at the time, but that meal on the train, a seafood thali, would turn out to have been one of the best Indian meals I would eat on the entire trip. The Lonely Planet directed us to the Ringo Guest house, on Connaught Circle. Ringo's had three levels of service. The extremely cheap roof sleepers, the moderately cheap dorm sleepers, and the simply cheap private room sleepers. We were in the latter group. It had long been a hippy haunt before we arrived. The rooms were gross, the toilets disgusting, but we'd kind of gotten used to it by this point, and the staff were friendly. Stir fried Chinese style food was cheep in the restaurant bhind the guesthouse, and it was pretty central to everything. From here we set out to explore the city, and slowly aclimatise to the travelling lifestyle - you've got to understand that this was the first trip either of us had done without our families, and we'd certainly dove in deeply!

There was so much to see in Delhi that even years later I have dozens of images and memories in my head. Ringo's inspired me and depressed me. When we were there we met a family with a todler of perhaps 2 or 3 years. They were backpacking the world, and this inspired me. On the flip side, there was the 3 inch flying cockroach like creature that was sitting on an unconcious Brits' forehead (drunk and passed out I believe). Screaming insued when the creature was spotted - even more when someone went to shoe it away and it began to fly in huge circles about the room.

Highlights from New Dehli included the discovery of Indian Ice Cream. I don't have any idea how they manage to make their ice cream so fat without having it turn into a gluey mess. It was fabulous! I also have no idea how dangerous or safe it was either, but I loved it. Why dangerous you say? Well, the rumour floating around the travellers at the time was that Limca - a popular fizzie drink that left 7up tasting downright bitter in comparison - anyhow, Limca it was said, contained an allowable portion of asbestos. We were never sure of what was in anything we ate or drank, but it only seemed to bite us each once (more on that later).

Connought Circus and Place form two concentric ring roads (I think there was a thrid as well) and they're a must see for most travellers. First there's the decaying grandeur of the rings of buildings - their curving facades were festooned with garish billboards touting the latest Bollywoods musical extraveganzas. Fabulous Raj period pillars everywhere. Secondly, in the centre of it all there is (or was) a huge underground shopping arcade selling all manner of stuff that you never knew you needed (like music cassettes (I'm sure they're CDs now) from all those Bollywood films).

One of the joys of seeing India is seeing the Hari Krishna's dancing about in their native land - except that they're mostly white - in fact I think the ones we saw were mostly Californians... One fellow looked like a linebacker, and another like Ichabod Crane. They would dance through the streets beeting their drums just like in Vancouver or San Francisco! Ironically, it was like a little piece of home. They weren't the only foreigners who had appeared to move in however. I still remember this desheveled looking white guy, sitting with his rough canvas bag on a steal tube railing, grumbling uninteligably at the world. I think a lot of people have drifted in here, perhaps never to be seen again by the outside world.

One of my best memories of New Dehli was the trip we did to track down a milkshake place on Connaught Place. We eventually found it, and to our great amusement, it was quite litterally shaken milk with some strawberry flavoured powder added in (and no ice cream as we North Americans had expected). They were served in the lovely glass bottles that all the milk came in. Not what we were expecting, but fun just the same. Oh yeah - and there was also the trip to the Red Fort. The fortress itself has mostly melted from my mind, but I still remember the lawn mower - a huge ox pulling an ancient mowing device of some sort. They would mow two rows, and then stop and wait in the shade of a tree while the ox munched on the cuttings. By the time they were done, I'm sure the grass in the first row would have grown long enough to do it all over again.

I think it was in New Dehli that we noticed how all of India seemed to be stained at about the three foot mark off the ground. It didn't take long to figure out that this was from urine. We'd see guys peeing on walls and fences all over the country. Don't blame them though. The state of public bathrooms was such that I remember seeing a river of filth flowing out from under a bathroom door into the road at a bus station north of Dehli. So the guys chose to pee elsewhere...

After a week or so of this, we needed a break, and that came in the form of Sharon, an English traveller we met who was staying at a fancy hotel that sold swimming tickets to guests friends. We spent an idyllic afternoon eating goat burgers by the pool in the shadow of palm trees. It was absolutely devine, and made for a lovely last day in Dehli before we headed north for Manali. Sharon came along too, and we crossed paths many times while we were all in India.

Minali is a mountain town in the lower reaches of the Himalayan Mountains. We got there on a hair raising, gut wrenching 15 hour long bus ride from New Dehli. I have to take a moment here to exalt the virtues of Indian video buses. I'm sure they're better now, but in 1989, these buses were tantamount to torture. Imagine the quality you get when you play a travel worn bootlegged copy of a VHS cassette through an antiquated bus PA system, with the volume cranked up so loud that you cannot hear anything but a grungey beat of the crossover destroying static. Now add squealling nasally lyrics. Now try to sleep. Do this will winding through mountain roads at top speed, only stopping to go into reverse to get around some hairpin corner.

Accidents are a daily event in the India bus transport industry. We saw one horrific scene where the side of a bus was peeled back like a sardine can from a head-on corner to corner collision. And that was on a straight flat road. On more than one occasion, when you could actually see down into the steep and deep canyons below us, I remember seeing whole busses and tracks lying at the bottom. It could be a white knuckle experience if you paid enough attention, but most of the locals seemed to figure that if it was your time to die, then you would, and there was no use worrying about it. Very cavalier. They were never that cavalier when someone actually died however, and you're always hearing stories of lynchings following traffic accidents. Fortunately, Ganesh was watching out for us. Every motor vehicle in India seems to have a little alter to Ganesh in it somewhere, although I have to question the "luck" of someone who was accidently beheaded by his father.

So, 15 hours later, we arrived in Manali ready to explore the countryside, and not really knowing what to expect in rural India. This made left us feeling kind of nervous when the tourist commisioner pulled us aside and invited us into his office for a glass of chai.

Fortunately he just wanted to talk. I still remember how odd it felt - this self assured western seeming India bureaucrat ordering this little old man dressed in a traditional white Ghandi-esque robe to go and get us some tea. We were confused and didn't really enjoy or explore the experience. Another thing I can still remember from that day was that he had a pair of Dynastar downhill skis propped up in a corner of his office. The valley is apparently a bit of a ski resort in the winter, and you can ski year round in the Rohtang Pass as long as your red blood cell count is superhuman.

We didn't go skiing - in fact, we didn't even get up to the pass. Foreigners were not allowed up there in 1989. Ladakh was under a military curfew, and foreign travellers could only go in and out through the Srinigar-Leh route, but with the curfew in place, apparently it wasn't so easy to do that either at the time. We decided to explore Tibetan Culture in and around Manali instead. The Tibetan people stuck out here, and their culture was clearly different. They were quieter, more polite, more peaceful and serene than their Indian neighbours. India, as you probably know, has been home to the Dalai Lama in exile ever since he fled Tibet in 1959. We didn't go to Dharamsala, where exiled Tibetan government and the Dalai Lama live, but we did visit a Tibetan monestary and a couple of shrines in the hills while we were in Manali. Sadly though we also got really sick.

Getting sick in India is what keeps travellers from getting too fat on the rich food. There's a lot of oil in Indian cooking. While we were in Minali, I got hit by traveller's stomach. A series of cheap sulfa drugs from an Indian doctor seemed to do the trick though, and two days later I was feeling better and eating peppery chicken broth at our favourite Manali restaurant. We moved from Manali to Vashist, a small village a short walk away, and that's when Juli got hit by the same bug (which she likely picked up from me sadly). Two more days, and she was finally better too.

The Tibetan Government in Exile

We stayed in a fabulous hotel on the road from Manali to Vashist, and while we were there, we met a woman who has inspired me to this day. She was English if I remember correctly, but lived in Australia, and she was in her eighties. So there we were, as far as we had ever been from the Western world, and we me an octagenerian woman travelling solo with her cameras and binoculars (which I still remember as well for some reason). I have lived my life ever since with the knowledge that it is possible to adventure until the end of my days. She gave me a great gift through her presence there.

The Kulu valley will always stick in my mind for its raw beauty. The mountains are powerful there - you can feel their presence. Your clothes begin to sparkle with the formica flakes that flow through the rivers. The valleys are lush and green with marajuana plants growing at the side of the road. (One guy tried to sell be some pot one day, but I was standing next to a bush of the stuff at the time - you might as well sell me water in a rain storm.) The mountains are silver-grey and fierce. It is a very lovely corner of the world.

After 8 days in the valley, we bought tickets to head back south, but not before loading up on peanut butter and bread - and it was a damn good thing we did, because on the way to Dehli, we came to a sudden halt when we hit an avalance that had blocked the entire highway. It appeared to us to be the middle of nowhere, but to the locals, of course it was home, and they showed up very quickly indeed when word got around about the captive audience.

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