Unconventional Tours, Too Many Rotis and Water Water Water!

We were in a beautiful city and I felt like I’d swallowed bubble bath liquid again. Not that I’ve ever swallowed bubble bath liquid before, but I’ve felt like I’ve swallowed it a lot during this trip. It’s a sensation of bubbles multiplying and crowding in the intestinal highway, trying to push past each other just as Indian drivers do. Nausea was also sneaking insidiously upwards from my stomach towards my throat. I decided I should go to the doctor the next morning. This time I would act fast.

But I didn’t need to act fast. Other people acted even faster for me.

We were ready to turn in for the evening. There were several Indian men chatting outside the hotel. I can’t even remember how it happened now, but one minute they were complete strangers and the next minute Moonho and I were piled into a car with all three of them and off to find a hospital.

I’m not sure exactly why three fully grown men, four including Moonho, were required to get me to a doctor. But if I’ve learnt one thing in India it is that questioning a genie on his motivations rarely results in clarification.

So we just went with the flow, and the flow took us on a grand tour of every single hospital in Shimla. I kid you not.

“Thank you so much, really, but I think I’ll survive until morning,” I said after it became obvious the doctors were all at home doing Sunday night things. My voice was immediately drowned out by a chorus of Indian accents insisting “But you might get worse at night! You seem sick! You need medicine quickly! We will take you, no problem…”

My mind flashed back to how the Tibetans insisted on helping when I got sick, then further back to the many times Koreans carted me off to the doctor for ailments that would have buggered off of their own accord. On that night, however, the Indians hit a new record in sheer determination to be helpful. Resistance was simply not worth the effort.

As our search exceeded one hour Moonho and I startled to giggle. We couldn’t help it. It just seemed so absurd to be touring hospitals on a Sunday night with a random bunch of Indians, well-wishing as they were. This is how things tend to happen in India. Everything is so sudden. You are about to go to bed and then boom! You are caught in a current of Indian enthusiasm; a current even stronger than that of the Ganga River.

Unable to find a regular doctor, they took me to the labour ward of a woman’s hospital, which was open because newborns don’t care whether or not it is Sunday. I tried to explain that having a parasite is quite different to having a baby, but they were determined to explore every avenue. I entered a labour ward full of Indian women whose eyes immediately went to my belly (which I’d been rubbing due to the pain.) Unable to speak Hindi, I let them think what they would.

One of the genies, called Sushil, ushered me towards the doctor’s room, and I sat down awkwardly. “Eh-hem… hello… I’m not actually pregnant,” I said. “I just have a bad tummy.”
She looked at me for a moment and asked if it was related to periods.
“Eh, no… only, these men very kindly wanted to help me and… well, they insisted on bringing me here… I know you only deal with pregnant women though…”

The doctor turned to our new friend and explained patiently that we’d have to find a regular doctor. Then, zoooom! Off I was zipped once more! I’m sure we must have left a puff of genie smoke behind us in the doctor’s office.

After what must have been at least two hours of valiant doggedness, the genies did manage to find me a doctor who kindly saw me despite the late hour. He gave me medicine, I took it gratefully and only then would the genies allow me to go back to the hotel. Thus ended our Tour De Hospital, and so begun our friendship with Sushil.


Sushil and Sulochana

Sushil is mildly obsessed with rotis (one of the many types of round Indian flatbreads.) He started by insisting that I should eat five or six with every meal, a habit which would absolutely cure all my ailments and prevent any other from occurring..

“Are you sure?” I asked.
“No doubt!” he replied. This is his pet phrase.
I tried to explain that women don’t usually eat as much as men. That was a mistake.
“Nooo, women need to be strong. Women must eat more! They must eat seven or eight rotis at every meal!”

Not only would a daily overdose of rotis cure me of all ills, he said, but it would also ensure lots of healthy babies. That is where things started getting really silly. “One roti for each baby!” he insisted, his ever-present grin expanding even further. “But I don’t want eight babies!” I said, laughing. I could feel Moonho silently but vehemently agreeing by my side.

Moonho and Sushil

Sushil teaches maths and science at a little ‘after-school school’ below our hotel. We ended up chatting with him often, during which rotis only filled the conversation about fifty percent of the time. It wasn’t long before we were invited to his house for dinner. We accepted with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation. Exactly how many rotis would I be expected to eat?

“My wife is very lovely and sweet,” he informed us, utterly sincere. “And you can try her cooking. It is great!”

I looked at his eyes, bright against his dark skin, and thought that perhaps his was not an arranged marriage. I asked whether it was (this is not a rude question in India) and his face lit up. “We have a love marriage!” he announced.

And indeed, the two together were a pleasure to behold. Their smiles were as fixed as the shape of a boomerang. They obviously took great pleasure in each other’s company. Sushil even wants to create a position at his school for her so that they can be together during the day as well.

I asked about their castes, which apparently is also an acceptable question. It turned out that he is Brahman while she is a supposed lower caste in comparison. “But these days those things don’t matter,” Sushil said with a dismissive flick of the hand.

Sulochana laughed frequently and as his equal. In fact, hers is one of the best laughs I’ve ever heard; the sort that takes you along for the ride even if you are not in on the joke. She is a content product of the new generation. And Sushil’s words were not biased – she is also a bloody fantastic cook!

But here is the problem: some people participate in extreme sports. Sushil participates in extreme hospitality.

On his insistence, the amount we ate that night could have fed a whole African village for a week. Dal, curry, rice, curd, pickles, rice pudding and of course rotis piled up before us like the formation of mountains seen in fast forward. The quality of the food was fit for royalty, but afterwards the mountains of food on our plates had become mountains of food in our bellies. Even Moonho, who is a big eater, was struggling. If I’d gone to the labour ward that night instead of the night before, they would have believed me pregnant.

After dinner they refused to let us walk home, insisting that we take their double bed while they slept on a single one. Despite (or possibly because of) a belly pregnant with dal and roti, I slept like a baby and woke up to another meal of herculean proportions.

Although I couldn’t eat like that daily without my digestive tract exploding, Sushil was right about one thing. That food really did give me some much needed energy.

Naughty monkeys

Shimla monkeys are particularly naughty. It is a big city by Himachal standards, which means lots of food scraps to steal. Better yet, lots of meals-in-progress to steal.

I had a bag of peanuts, and noticed a one-eyed he-monkey strutting his furry stuff around our hotel. Aww. A strutting monkey with only one eye.

So of course, I gave him some of the peanuts from my bag. And of course, this was not enough for him. Before I knew it he was soaring through the air towards me like a sugar glider.  It was instantaneous as everything is in India: Now you’re here, now you’re there! Now you see it, now you don’t!

I wasn’t upset over the loss of my peanuts to Monkey One Eye. I thought he could have been more graceful about our wanting to take a photo though. Moonho moved forward a little with his camera, but Monkey One Eye was having none of this touristy bollocks. Fangs clearly exposed, he puffed his body so that there would be no mistaking his supreme manliness. He moved towards Moonho like a footballer looking to vent his testosterone.

The camera clicked, but it didn’t catch the monkey. It caught naught but the blurred motion of escape (Moonho’s escape – not the monkey’s.)

But Moonho wasn’t going to leave without a photo any more than the monkey wasn’t going to leave without all of my peanuts. My husband seems on a mission to take a photo of every mangy dog, every vaguely stationary bird, every scraggly-eared donkey, every watery-eyed cow and every naughty monkey in India.

So he waited until the monkey was busy with his goodies and started snapping. When Monkey One Eye’s appetite was sated, he disappeared over a wall and into the thicket and Moonho put his camera away, believing we’d seen the last of him.

We were eating lunch outside later on when he reappeared. Monkeys can fly – I swear. One minute he is over there; the next he is on our table. There was a brief manly standoff between Moonho and the monkey during which teeth were exposed, muscles were puffed up, red bottoms were flashed and a chair was used as a shield/potential weapon. I’ll let you guess who did what.

I would have helped but a laughing fit had rendered me temporarily disabled. The monkey scampered away in the end, discouraged by Moonho’s elaborate chair act (which had also drawn a few curious Indian eyes.) Yay for my husband, Defeater of Monkeys!

Despite an ego akin to that of a footballer, Monkey One Eye still managed to be adorable and cute. Theatrics over, he flopped over a branch of a nearby tree and started working on all his itchy bits, innocuous as a newborn puppy.

It’s a pity footballers can’t get over their brawls quite so easily.


To Tattapani's hot spring

As soon as I heard this place called Tattapani has a hot spring, I knew I was destined to soak in its warm waters. Stuff registration! I could hear the spring calling my name. Its single greatest desire was to soak all the aches and pains from my tired body. Well, I couldn’t deny a little spring its one pleasure in life, could I?!

So into Damsel we climbed and onto the road we trundled again. I didn’t think the roadside scenery could possibly be improved on what we’d already seen. I was wrong. To get to Tattapani one is transported for a time to the sheer fertile slopes that is Scottish landscape - only this Scottish landscape is dotted with cacti and what appears to be aloe vera plants monstrous enough to attack Indiana Jones.

I’m talking about gobsmackingly beautiful stuff here. While Indiana Jones is tackling giant aloe vera plants in the hills, I wouldn’t be surprised to see James Bond on the road engaging in an exciting car race with a wild, long-haired beauty, halting only just in time for James to win and avoid plunging down into the valley below.

Like James… James Bond, we also avoided toppling over the precipitous hills. Down, down, down Damsel drove, out of the nippy air, out of Scotland, and into dense humidity that sits upon one’s shoulders like a baboon. In one of the deep wrinkles of the valley and by the river sat Tattapani: a tiny town whose life seems to revolve around the hot sulphur water oozing upwards from the earth.

We chose to stay at Old Spring View Hotel because it cost a pittance and, more importantly, it had two big hot spring baths. The closer I got, the louder their calls became: Leah, let me wash you clean! Let me soak you until you are naught but wrinkles! Let me make your muscles malleable again!

Despite the insistence of the hot spring, I made it wait until night before I graced its waters with my tired post-sickness body. Greedy me wanted the bath all to Moonho and myself, and oh was it worth the wait. Water lazily slapping a dark river shore, the voices of a few crickets and some soft Indian music somewhere in the distance were our only audial accompaniments, and even they melted away as warm water wriggled its way into our pores. We gave each other a massages then simply laid back it splayed postures, allowing ourselves to become limp pieces of meat.

Afterwards we took our new supple, floppy bodies to bed where we both sunk into a deep, still sleep.

Other good things about Tattapani…

Fireflies or faeries?

Tattapani is either teeming with fireflies or faeries. At night the little lights shine everywhere and shine bright, moving gently here and there upon invisible meandering paths. We went up the road to a bushy area and turned off our lamp. It was as if the stars of the sky had descended and landed among the grass blades and bushes. I just stood still and stared, spellbound by the many cousins of Tinkerbell. Moonho tried to capture them on camera but they were not to be caught. Magic things, after all, should be difficult to catch.

Shiva Cave

The walk to get there is small enough that it isn’t particularly tiring and long enough that it isn’t overcrowded. Shive cave, as you have probably gathered, is a cave dedicated to the worship of Shiva. In the wall of a river that becomes fat and turbulent during monsoon, I suspect the cliffs on either side contain many such furrows and caves. This one, however, was a sacred one, and after ringing the bell I entered it reverently with my head bent.

The holy man sitting inside gestured towards my feet. Oops. I’d forgotten to take my shoes off. I scurried back out, took them off, rang the bell and entered it reverently with my head bent… again.

Despite my fear of small spaces, I braved the inside of the small cave, feeling the fresh dampness inside my nostrils and slimy dampness under my bare feet. I was awarded with a tikka on my forehead and some white sweets that look like tiny solidified cotton balls.

Below the cave is a low point of the path that touches the river. The river was clear, flowing rapidly, and was deep enough for swimming. Woohooooo! For the first time in a long time I immersed myself in a large body of water and swam. My love for feeling my body free in water is as intense as my dislike of feeling my body entrapped within a small space. Robbing gravity of its power, the water made me feel light once again. I hadn’t felt that light since before I’d gotten sick in Dharamsala.

Bliss I tell you, bliss!

The Germans

I mention the Germans because they were great. Both in their forties or thereabouts, they had the life-force of twenty-year-olds. Thea had this special laugh that, upon reflection, could only possibly be matched by Sulochana (roti-obsessed Sushil’s wife.). When it started it surprised you, and by the time it ended you’d realise you were laughing too. Michael, the other German, had a kind face that would suddenly crack into these goggle-eyed expressions that shouted out loud and clear “Yes, I’m eccentric, and I’m proud of it!”

We fell in love with them immediately. Thank you, funny and lovely people! The laughter you caused shall make us live longer!

Rafting

July is not rafting season in Tattapani. The river moves too fast and its volume covers the rocks that would otherwise create a break in the flow and white rapids.

But I really wanted to go rafting. I really wanted to.

The first day they said maybe we could go the next day. It rained that night and the next day they said the water was too high. I pleadingly asked again the day after. No go. The day after that I asked one of the guys working at Old Spring View Hotel. He said no. I asked another, just in case he felt differently. He didn’t.

Third time lucky. I asked the main guide and owner of the Old Spring (and two other hotels in town.) He ummed. I pointed out that it was our last day. He aaahed. I made big eyes and smiled. He looked towards the river. I smiled wider and brought my hands together in a pleading fashion.

“Well, it isn’t going to be very exciting without the rapids,” he said.
“I don’t mind, I just want to see the scenery!”
“Well… I guess…”

I know I’m a stubborn poo head. I guess this is the similar to tantrums I used to throw as a four year old, only without the kicking and screaming and with considerably more begging.

Moonho shook his head when I got my way, but hey! We got to go rafting, German friends and all! It was a 6km stint, and I admit there were few rapids. But it was a taste of Indian rafting, and I want more! In fact, I am inspired to take more in-depth lessons if I ever get the chance. There is something appealing about having nothing between you and a live, writhing body of water but a mere layer of rubber and air.

As I watched bulbous green hills drift swiftly backwards, I swore that if I ever make it back to Tattapani at peak season I would hire our friendly guide and do the 45km stint.

But unfortunately it was time to turn our minds towards more practical matters (sigh.) I’d spoken to a guy at the Ministry of Transport, who said that Damsel's registration could be done in Shimla despite what the Shimla lads had told us. Try again, he said. So try again we would.

Phew. All for you, Damsel, all for you…

Registration and Marriage

Damsel and my paintbrush long to be united, but the dastardly men are keeping them apart. They say that registration must come first. This is almost like no sex before marriage!

I never thought it would be so difficult to make my girl legal. Foreigners can register their vehicle in India as long as they have a permanent address, but because they are foreigners they don’t have permanent addresses. Our Indian genies in Mandi did everything they could to help but finally concluded that we had to go to Shimla. Some newfound genies in Shimla did everything they could to help but finally concluded that we have to go back to Mandi. We went to Transport in Shimla and they said we have to go to Delhi. We rang Delhi and they said it is possible to get it done in Shimla.

The only thing they all agree on is that Damsel’s virgin blue cannot yet be marred by my paintbrush. The registration guys might not like it… whoever they might be. That is what I have to figure out, isn’t it? Who are these mysterious people with the mighty power to stamp a form? And where are they hiding? Must I search all the offices in the land? Must I bribe someone to find them? Must I BEG?!

That rant felt good.

Now, let me go back a few steps in our rickshaw story.

In India there is a cool and easy attitude among infants that seems ubiquitous. The children are obviously loved and cared for, but they are not mollycoddled. Us in the West tend to tip-toe around babies, shielding them from the world in wheeled cubicles and silent bedrooms. But Indian parents know that babies are not made of explodable eardrums and glass-blown limbs. Surrounded always by the sounds, smells and sights of a colossal population and its multifarious activities, Indian bubs just don’t give a gurgle. They don’t give a hoot about the hooting horns, prodding fingers or searing sun. They simply do the ‘rag doll’ pose, quite content to lie back in the hammock-like arms of their parents. The ones old enough to have figured out how gravity and legs work together trot around like benevolent little princes and princesses, unaffected by the multitude of wheels and tree-trunk legs bulldozing past.

Manoj’s little girl was no exception. We were invited to our insurance genie’s family home, and she did cute faces all evening, running from person to person in that contented fumbling little person sort of way. This particular little person popped into the world two months prematurely, so she is even littler than the average little person, but her busy legs belie the fact. Sometimes the tiny people of this world are the strongest.

Manoj’s wife, by contrast, was quiet and reserved, but she certainly didn’t hold back on the hospitality front. Cauliflower rice curry, pickled mangoes (oh so good!) and curd from their own cow. The curd tasted so fresh I suspect their cow produces curd rather than milk straight from the teat!

A wedding album Manoj showed me portrayed the joining of some sort of Demigod and Goddess. It was later revealed, however, that these brightly-clad, bejewelled figures were in fact Manoj and his wife. The Indian wedding outfit makes our traditional white dress look positively drab.

A traditional Indian wedding spans over three action-packed days, during which time a series of highly specific rituals I will not pretend to understand take place. At the beginning the bride and groom each have to wear over their faces what appears to be a beaded curtain – the sort that keeps flies out of summer holiday huts and goes ‘clink clink’ when you walk through it. This is important because in arranged marriages sometimes the bride and groom have not yet met each other. I surmised out loud that perhaps the curtains were to prevent the bride or groom running away if the other is hideously ugly, which sent Manoj into a fit of laughter. I apologised for my hopeless sense of humour and Manoj responded by saying, “No, no, this is a good joke!” Perhaps it holds some truth.

Manoj is Brahman, which is the highest caste and traditionally in charge of esoteric religious activities (although these days they can obviously also go into insurance as well.) Being of such a distinguished caste, his marriage to a Brahman woman was arranged by his parents, and he fully accepted this. They met a month before the wedding.

It is impossible for me to envision happiness under such circumstances, but nor can I judge. Perhaps they feel a sense of happiness and security following the steadfast road of tradition. Perhaps their parents’ footsteps are as colourful as everything else in India, making them irresistible to follow. Who knows?

After thanking all our genies one last time it was finally time to leave Mandi in search of this elusive crew of form-stampers and signers. With more frequent bouts of roof-battering rain, the hot breath of the north-bound monsoon could almost be felt. Even as I write, Mistress Monsoon is salivating with anticipation at the idea of drowning North India. The papers say that, tragically, already some people have been electrocuted during floods in Himachal Pradesh. Yet I am told this is only the precursor.

But we were heading out and up to a city that begins at a height of 1950m and ends at a height of 2300m, where Mistress Monsoon’s breath is not quite so hot. The road to Shimla wove through lush valleys and hills like a pattern crawling up a green sari on a curvaceous body. We drove over great hips and down magnificent thighs. Such formations, I’m sure, is why so many cultures call this lump of land we live on ‘Mother’ Earth.

The closer we got to civilisation the worst the roads became. I thought it was supposed to be the farther away you get from civilisation the worse the roads become, but one must expect the unexpected in India. Moonho was heroic in his attempts to avoid sharp declines and potholes lined with teeth, Damsel the Speed Demon was slow and well-behaved and the policemen were hilarious.

Road police don’t seem to know how to react to a couple of foreigners in a three-wheeler. As we approach they half raise an arm, see that we are foreigners, lower the arm, wobble their jaw, take a step forward, a step back… and by the time all that is done Damsel has already warbled past… warbling in a Speed-Demonish manner, of course. Usually an expression of bemusement finally settles on their faces, seen by us in the side mirrors on Damsel. Foreigners in a rickshaw? That is way too complicated to deal with.

For some of that seven-hour trip I sat in Damsel’s open rear end.

That sounds wrong, doesn’t it?

From there I could see what we left in our wake, and I’m not talking about what rear-ends usually leave in their wake. Behind us was a line of people giggling, pointing and waving at us. Truck drivers honked and grinned, ladies toiling in fields called out greetings, lads in cars took photos… at one point two young men on a motorbike kept yelling out something over and over again, waving urgently. They were so insistent that I thought for a moment something might be wrong with Damsel. Then I realised they were crying out “Snap! Snaaaap!”

Nothing, of course, was about to snap. This is an Indian’s way of saying they want a photo with you. I just sort of smiled and shrugged apologetically. If we had a snap with everyone that requested it our progress would become even slower than it already is.

We were greeted by a splendiferous Shimla who had donned its evening hue. Dubbed the ‘Summer Capital’ by the British in 1864, Shimla is an extremely attractive city. Thousands of ramshackles and houses spill down the sides of steep valleys and the many trees reaching for the sky vary in type depending on what altitude their roots fancy. The mall is wide, car-less and lined with yummy little coffee shops, restaurants, knick-knack stalls and ice cream parlours. Here the British left their unmistakable footprints in the form of cottage-like stone buildings and a church. There is even a quaint little theatre called the ‘Gaiety Theatre,’ created for Englishmen to quench their longing for home-like entertainment. Of course, that was back in the England Wants to Own Everywhere days. Since their independence India has claimed what was built on their land and it still runs shows today.

So, we’d found a nice city. A gorgeous city, in fact. But the question remained: would we be able to make Damsel legal?

Gaeity Theatre

Downtown Shimla

Damsel's new jacket, amusing animals and more genies

I tell you, these magical Indian genies are more numerous than first imagined. They always seem to be in the right place at the right time, popping up in a puff of smoke (or fumes) to help us.

We’d decided to have a waterproof canvas tailored to go over Damsel’s tray. This will act as a jacket allowing her some measure of dignity – you know, to hide her pointy bits – and a shell to protect us less water-resistant types. To do this we were told we had to go to a body building place.

Damsel was to be worked on by gym junkies?!

As it turned out the men were not so much body builders as builders of bodies; jolly chai-drinking chaps completely devoid of gym grease but amply covered in car grease. We pretty much performed a complete pantomime in order to communicate to them what we wanted done to the rickshaw. The pantomime provided some level of amusement, as pantomimes should, but at the end of it I didn’t understand them, they didn’t understand Moonho, Moonho didn’t understand me, and there were several other variations of misunderstanding as well.

To get no one knew what done to Damsel it would apparently cost 12000 rupees.

So we rang Rahul, our rickshaw dealer, to ask for his assistance. And of course, being firmly in the magical Indian genie category, he appeared with supernatural alacrity. He understood us, he understood them, we understood him… therefore eventually we understood them and they understood us. This was altogether a lot more understanding than we had hoped for!

Rahul had one of those apparent auctions (see second post) with the body builders and by the time he’d finished with them they were ready to dress up Damsel and willing to do it for 8000 rupees.

Since we’ve been in Mandi, Rahul has chauffeured us around, helped us get the rickshaw insured, shared chai with us, taken us to a famous Ayurvedic clinic for medicine to help my tummy (which was still dealing with some errant bacteria and pollution left behind by the amoeba family) and introduced us to his charming wife and little boy.

So, if any of you out there ever want to buy a three-wheeler (I can hear hundreds upon thousands of feet shuffling as you line up) I have one piece of advice: Rahul Solanki, Global Motors, Bajaj Auto Limited www.bajajauto.com. I wouldn’t normally advertise so blatantly in a post, but I rather think I owe it to this man. Bajaj exports to anywhere in the world and, I can assure you, parking will be a lot simpler. It is easier to fit a rickshaw into a small space than gum into a crack in the wall – and it is more environmentally friendly too.

Incidentally, I have just been sitting here watching James Bond on TV sailing upon blue oceans with his bonny lass. No class, I say, no class! Real romance is bumping around India in a blue rickshaw! Perhaps by the next Bond film it will have caught on and they too will follow our example.


They are chunky, they rule the road, and they moo…

It is quite natural to shift the subject from vehicles to cows, because in India they are much the same. They both go anywhere on the road, they both ignore everyone else on the road, and they both honk very loudly. Cows are cars with legs. They park their leather bottoms alongside motorbikes and indeed in the middle of the road if they so desire.

They are, however, much more chilled out than the cars. And much more holy. Maybe it is because of their sacred status or maybe there is something special in Indian grass (and, Shiva knows, there are all sorts of grass in India), but I get the feeling that these cows see the world differently to us. They kick back on frenetic fumy streets like you or I might kick back on an exotic island beach. Their main pastime is to eat green goodies and other gravel-coated morsels at the breakneck rate of one chew a minute. Occasionally they grace the wheels of monster trucks a brief glance, decide the flies are much more of a nuisance, then go back to their cud. This is all done with the supreme confidence of one who knows it will never be reduced to mushed steak on the pavement or carved steak on a plate.

You have to admire them. I’m considering chewing what they chew; maybe then Indian roads might become a relaxing place for me too.


Rewalsar and its fishy inhabitants

Tibetan prayer flags at Rewalsar

A gorgeous one hour bus ride from Mandi, Rewalsar Lake is special for three reasons: it is sacred to Hindus, it is sacred to Buddhists and it is sacred to Sikhs. Each religion has its own version of why it is sacred, but they all agree on the fact that it is indeed a holy lake. Various temples and monasteries cluster together in circular formation around the lake like so many cushy suburban houses. Red-robed Tibetan monks spin prayer wheels, Hindus gather around temples of kid-book colours and turbaned Sikhs ascend stairs to reach their place of prayer. You’d expect some name-calling or at least a naughty gesture or two, but there is nothing of the sort. It is amazing how in some places in the world a simple thing like a border will cause religious hostility while in other places in the world a simple thing like a lake will cause religious harmony.

The most arresting figure overwatching Rewalsar Lake (and there are a few) is a gargantuan 37m tall statue of Guru Padmasambhava. He sits cross-legged and golden upon a hill with a smile more serene than that of the road cow. This dude is supposed to have spread Buddhism to Tibet after flying there on a tiger, as one does. Gazing upon his image is almost enough to turn one Buddhist – at least for the duration of the stay at Rewalsar.

But for me the most entertaining feature of the lake is the fish. Suffused with holy water all day every day, these fish are also holy. Like the cows, they get around with the supreme confidence of one who knows it isn’t going to end up prone on a water-deficient surface with a knife on one side and fork on the other. Unlike the cows, they are not chilled out and they don’t chew; they guzzle. Food purchased at the side of the lake causes delirium the likes of which I’ve never seen (except perhaps on TV when WWF wrestlers reach their climax.) Throw tidbits into the water and it instantly becomes a silvery slimy orgy punctuated here and there by vast gaping mouths.

Can you oblige me for a minute and imagine a basketball hoop steadily increasing in size for fear of missing the ball? Well, that’s pretty much what a Rewalsar fish’s mouth does.

And, just to increase the comic qualities of these permanently alarmed creatures, they have grandpa whiskers! Guzzling, whiskered, holy basketball hoops is what they are! I could have watched them for hours.

Getting Damsel back

It’s another day, and we have now discovered that even our insurance man is of the magical Indian genie category! He is friends with Rahul, after all. Perhaps they met at some magical Indian genie convention.

I think we may be genie magnets. I’ll tell you what, though – we need as many genies as we can get because in India anything may be possible but everything is difficult.

Manoj, who works for ICICI Motor Insurance, spent many hours attempting to organise Damsel’s registration. I’m certain that helping clueless foreigners with registration is not in his job description, but he tried his best nonetheless. At the end of one particularly frustrating phone call he even said some naughty words to the bureaucratic poo head on the other end, and all on our behalf! I was quite impressed.

He also gave us a tour of the valley surrounding Mandi in his car. And invited us to his papa’s retirement party. And, after I’d expressed my admiration for the pretty Hindu knickknack hanging over the dashboard of his car, he insisted on giving it to me. Damsel was most excited to receive her first piece of jewellery!

A colourful farmer's house (taken on Manoj's grand tour)

As if we hadn’t already received our quota of kindness for the day, the ‘body builders’ and their families became our bests mates over the course of several hours. In their house above the bodyworks shop the two owners (who are brothers), their mother, both their wives, all their children, a few extra children from I don’t know where and several sisters entertained us with smiles, giggles, chai, photo albums and family stories we couldn’t understand but somehow still seemed amusing.

And when our Damsel was finished – oh, a more adorable sight there never was!

Well, there probably was a more adorable sight, but not for me in that moment. Damsel the Speed Demon has now become a caravan for dwarves! Several people have pointed out that, considering neither I nor my husband is a dwarf, it might prove to be overly squishy. But I shall soldier on in the face of such pessimism!

Parking Damsel outside a resort/restaurant, we finished the day with the best restaurant meal I’ve had in India so far. The dal I ordered was so good I almost melted and became a part of it; the garlic naan so good that I went limp and nearly dropped it in my epicurean ecstasy. You see, now that my gut is amoeba and bacteria-free, the experience of eating good food and feeling it go in the right direction has reached new heights. I can feel my blood stream greedily sucking up those nutrients and sending them to the parts of me that had until recently gone on strike for lack of proper payment in sustenance.

To prevent vital parts of me going on strike again, concern over the cleanliness factor has also reached new heights. I can hear my organs snarling when anything even vaguely suspicious comes my way. My habits have always been clean enough, but I’ve never been one to obsess over cleanliness. I grew up as a country girl – mud is my friend and great fun to role in!

But for now at least, I use anti-bacterial hand wash before every meal and I’ve taken to drooling when I shower. This is because I figure that if something is on the way out of my mouth something else is less likely to go in. I’ve had a cold recently, and I can tell you now – it is not easy having a shower with a blocked nose and only effluence allowed to pass through your lips. One tends to go red in the face and make some rather odd noises.

Oh dear – but I have gone off on a tangent again. I really mustn’t let Damsel read this blog. She’ll be offended at how often I deviate from her - the rightful star of the show.

But right now she sleeps, and so must I, for who knows what tomorrow might cough up?