The Story So Far...

Considering we don’t have a rickshaw as yet, the title of this blog is perhaps a tad premature. But there will soon be a rickshaw. Yes, there will! I have fallen head over heels in love with the little three-wheeled buggies, and love knows no bounds.


While I am waiting to get my baby I’ll give you some background information. The following blog entry is what you have missed from the previous episodes of rickshaw travels (minus the rickshaw.)

As many do, my husband and I started in Delhi. As many do, we buggered off from Delhi pretty quickly. Although I could immediately recognise the positive changes that have been made in the city since my last visit (fewer beggars, slightly less ferocity required when bargaining), all the construction work made it impossible to be in. Drills grumbled interminably, gaping holes yawned in the roads, concrete cracked and crumbled, dust was omnipresent… I guess if you want to clean up a place it is bound to get messier first, after all.

That has been the standard excuse for the state of my bedroom for some time. I hope Delhi manages to get cleaned up quicker than that.

So, still picking concrete dust out of our orifices, we trundled onto a third class train. That bit was easy enough. It was perfectly comfortable. Getting off was the problem.

You see, we’d expected some sort of announcement at our stop. You know - that disembodied voice that follows you around in stations, trains and buses telling you what you should do? The nice lady with a soporifically smooth voice that we all depend upon so very much…? Well, that voice, it seemed, had forgotten to get on with the rest of us.

Our ticket told us we should disembark at 4am. It was an hour strange seen from this new angle of post-sleep. Usually if I see 4am at all I only ever see it from the other direction. But I slept, 4am came, and all was silent. The all-knowing voice didn’t tell us to get off, so we didn’t. Indian transport is known to be late often anyway, right? But we realised after a few stops, as the hour matured, that people were doing the unthinkable. They were getting off without the aid of the disembodied voice!

Acting like the daft tourists we are, we dragged our bags towards the door and asked a man “Have we gone past Chakibank?” He wobbled his head for awhile and then indicated that it was yet to come. In unison we heaved a sigh of relief and at the next stop asked another man “Is this Chakibank?” He said no.

Nor were the next few stops. We started to worry that we had indeed gone past Chakibank, so we changed the question. “Which way to Chakibank?” Moonho asked. This man responded with a series of hand movements that, had we taken literally, seemed to indicate Chakibank as being skyward. Seriously doubting the inclusion of any Willy Wonker-type technology that would allow us passage skyward on this train (we hadn’t paid for first class, after all), we tried our luck with the next person. And the next.

Finally we found a friendly chap who was obviously a part of the ‘in-group’ with the disembodied voice, for he seemed to know what he was talking about. He explained in concise detail what we should have done. What we should have done is gotten off at the 4am Chakibank stop.

Ah, well. We got off at the next stop and, skipping over several train tracks and piles of turd steaming in the morning sun, we climbed up onto the platform of… where? Ah, well (I said again.) It hardly mattered.

It was the scenic route. There was a lot of scenery in it. Lovely scenery, I have to say. One rickshaw, several buses and uncountable convoluted roads later we were in Mcleod Ganj, where we wanted to be. Wherever there is a will there is a way and wherever there is a way there is a bus. Eventually.

Tibetans in Mcleod Ganj

Mcleod Ganj is the place of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan refugees. During my time there I discovered the Tibetan culture to be among the most charming cultures I have ever come across. In fact, with a large group of Tibetans I found myself in strangely familiar territory. These people are much like Koreans. They even look alike. Take a Korean woman, convince her to use less than a litre of whitening cream daily, get her to build up some thigh muscles and change her name from ‘Min-jong’ to ‘Dolma,’ and there you have your Tibetan woman!

Okay, that may be an exaggeration, but even Moonho agreed that the two cultures are similar. For example, we became friendly with a bunch of Tibetans who run a little place called ‘Peace Café.’ I was unwell, and once they discovered this – well! You’d have thought Death had already come to claim his latest recruit! Crowding around me, they immediately commenced a feisty discussion about what course of action should be taken. At some point the Mum appeared (I’m not in fact sure that she is anyone’s mum, but she seems an all-round motherly type) and joined in on the debate. Occasionally they would pause and look at me as if trying to gauge just how sick I was. Gladly, they stopped short of fashioning a stretcher out of odd bits and pieces from the kitchen.

I wanted to tell them they needn’t fret on my behalf, but I’ve already learnt from living in Korea that such a thing is futile. Finally there was a general conclusive sort of mumbling, and they turned to me as one.

“You come here at seven in the morning and I drive you to hospital on my motorbike, okay?” said the boss of the café.

I got the feeling the question was rhetorical. I tried to disengage myself from the promise, not wanting to cause them to spend valuable work time carting around a sick foreigner. But they wanted to help. In some cultures kindness is so extreme as to be philanthropic.

Similarly, I’ve had more than one Korean drag me off to the doctor, usually reiterating things like “Oh dear you must miss your mother!” and me replying with something like “But I’ve only got a runny nose! We don’t necessarily have medicine every time we’re sick in Australia, you know, but… oh, we’re here are we?... Well, I’m okay but… Yes… Oh, alright, let’s see the doctor.”

But there is a difference. In Korea I might get a runny nose, while in India I get something else altogether.

As it turned out, I didn’t burden the Tibetans with the responsibility of my wellbeing. The next morning, thinking I was getting better, I decided that getting up at 6:30am was too heavy a price to pay for medicine I didn’t need.

Good Lord Buddha, I was as wrong as wrong can be!

The Joys of Amoebae

For me, the stay in Mcleod Ganj was pretty much one big tour of the town’s toilets. I know the condition and regularity of dysfunction of all the public toilets in town. I know exactly which cubicles don’t have locks, necessitating a balancing act to avoid anyone having to witness you mid... well, you get the picture. I even know the distance between certain points in town and the toilets, enabling me to estimate with uncanny accuracy the agony levels upon arrival.

Yep, I know the toilets of Mcleod Ganj.

Moonho and I went to the same restaurants together, ate similar foods and we both drank filtered water. Either his gut is lined with steel or my gut is like an amusement park for microscopic nasties. It was during my stay in Mcleod Ganj about seven years ago that a parasite called giardia decided to move to the highly coveted location of my intestines. The relationship was rather one-sided. I think this giardia bloke enjoyed me more than I enjoyed him.

Well, my reputation evidently precedes me. During my absence the word had spread to the amoeba family that my gut was the choice place to be, and they spent no time dilly dallying. I was so sick that even water came straight back up. My own stomach bile didn’t even want to hang around in there with the new inhabitants. My bottom became a water dispenser, despite my inability to ingest any. I almost started to wish that Death did come and claim is latest recruit.

If it wasn’t for my darling husband I’d probably still be in a miserable heap on a bathroom floor somewhere. Despite almost blacking out every time I stood, he eventually managed to get me to the hospital. The woeful wretch I was, when I saw the number of people waiting I burst into tears.

I nearly burst into tears anew when I heard the doctor would see us. And that she was Korean. A practitioner in New Zealand, she was over for a month of doctoring experience in India. She took special care of us. She put me on a drip, allowing a pulse rate of 136 to dive back down to normal. She spoke to me in soothing words I understood. She gave me pills that would kill all the new residents of my gut. Ah, lovely, glorious, wonderful pills! Never before have I been so happy to take antibiotics.

I could almost hear the amoebae screaming their objections, but I didn’t listen. I feel guilty if I accidentally kill a fly, but I can tell you this: I was out to annihilate these amoebae and I couldn’t wait to do it.

The little bastards put up a fight, but finally they started to push the daisies and I slowly – painfully slowly – got better. As soon as I was able to get around again we left Mcleod Ganj. Of course, it isn’t Mcleod Ganj’s fault, but the place no longer holds the same charm for me. I can’t help but associate it with toilets. Toilets surrounded by stunning hills and snow-capped peaks, but toilets nonetheless. Perhaps I can rectify this at a later date, but for now I’m quite happy to be out and seeing a new India.

Mani, Dolma and Passang

These people are the reason my memories of Mcleod Ganj have not all been flushed down the toilet. Mani is a Nepali with coal-coloured curly locks and a wide grin. He and his pretty Tibetan wife, Dolma, got married despite the taboos surrounding cross-cultural marriage. They work with Passang, a Tibetan man with tragic eyes that transform when his infectious laugh fills the air.

One night Passang, Moonho and I were invited to Mani and Dolma’s house for a Nepali dinner. The house was a humble little structure made from mud and straw. Outside chickens tottered around drunk on fat wriggly treats. Also tottering around was Araman, 16 months worth of little boy. A happier child I have rarely seen. With all the dirt, chickens and puppies a child of boundless energy could desire, he spends hours occupied with the aforementioned items, occasionally stopping to allow one of the adults to dote on him. He wears a cool little pair of sunnies and kicks back with the air of someone who knows they are adorable and is perfectly comfortable with the fact.

We settled down on the ground outside and Mani’s mother prepared us a traditional Nepali meal. This is when the near overwhelming Nepali/Tibetan hospitality kicked in. Mani’s mother became almost apoplectic if I tried to help with anything. We were guests and as such were to be waited upon. She served up an entrée, Nepali/Tibetan fermented rice wine (which, incidentally, is almost identical to Korean rice wine), a main course so huge as to be intimidating (complete with a separate vegetarian course just for me) and she refused to eat anything herself until we had swallowed our final mouthfuls.

Full to bursting point of lentil and spinach goodness, we retired to the one double bed in the only private room there was. Everyone else (Mani, Dolma, their son, Mani’s parents and Passang) crammed themselves anywhere they could fit on the two narrow beds or floor in the other room. Again, any attempts to give up the master bedroom were met with load and adamant protests.

That night thunder and lightning ripped across the sky. Bullets of rain pelted towards the earth with vengeance. It was all very atmospheric seen safely from the inside of the mud hut, which stood firmly through it all like the unyielding piece of earth that it is.

In the morning Mani’s mother greeted us with a beaming smile and more rice wine. We were assured that in their culture it is perfectly acceptable to start the day with a rice wine buzz. We politely sipped a little, but left it at that. A rice wine buzz in the morning may be all very good, but a rice wine belly in the afternoon we wanted to avoid.

When we left with Mani and Dolma on their way to work, Araman cried for the very first time that I’d heard. Further up the path I could hear that he’d settled down again pretty quickly though. He’d probably been distracted by a passing chicken.

Life must be good when all you need is a chicken to stop the tears. Thank you Dolma, Mani and the family for treating us like a King and Queen. Thank you Passang for making us laugh and always giving us good advice.

Because of you amoebae memories do not reign supreme!

Mani and Dolma tucking into Korean food at a restaurant

Passang amused over Buddha knows what this time