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Published: January 7th 2006
Sorry this blog unedited because of lack of time and freezing fingers in Amritsar. The cold weather is now news even in Amritsar and Delhi!!
When we came to the tourist info office ,which really was not the office of the Delhi Tourist Board, we were snowed into changing the itinerary and ..... well I must say the prospect was more enticing than spending seven days in what we had so far seen in Delhi. And of course there was also the reaction of more than one person to the lenght of time we planned to spend in the place. They could not understand why.
And there we were, after our lovely stay in Dubai, arriving to the shock, surprise, some horror, and loads of denial in Delhi. We found our way nicely to the Tibetan Colony and what a warren of houses it was.The Wongden house where we had booked ourselves for 7 days was a good bargain but as stated before with ancient sheets and bed covers(smelly of cooking fat I know not why). A wide cross section of people stay here. Tibetans in transit, westeners who espouse the Buddist religion, travellers on the way to Dharamsala just to mention a few.
After entering the last blog we slept well had the same breakfast as befor and after packing walked out of the warren to the main road where more than twenty rickshaw drivers waited worse than the tow-truck vultures on the Don Valley Parkway.
We found the driver we were to have for the day. He picked us up, drove us to the office to pick up our plane tickets and drove around Delhi to see such places as the Lotus Temple where no could enter, and a drive past the astronomical place I wanted to see and saw enough of from the car.
We had agreed to fly in and drive the 300Km out three days later.There had been a big snow storm that was headline news on television and newspaper. And we were in the thick of it ...
and here is where the totally new story begins.
We drove to the airport and soon were on our way for the 1.5hr flight to Srinagar far in the north of Jammu & Kashmir. We stopped shortly in Jammu and then in 20 minutes were in Srinagar up to our wazoo in snow... and it was a very damp cold.
We had layers of clothes to put on but nothing prepared us for the onslot(sic) of offers for carpets,scarves,silver,plant seeds,ponchos worn by men and women, and greatest of all a three day tour of the area for $150 US...my wazoo!! Welll what to do on a freezing housebout at the edge of the lake with 1500 other houseboatd?
Apparently when the english first came to the area they were not aoed to buy land so some smarty solved the problem by biuilding a houseboat and the idea truly multiplied. After talking the fast talker down to $75 US the tour began.
On day one we went on a tour of the town to see the Mosque built with 999 wooden pillars made of huge trees. We walked all around this BIG mosque in our stockinged feet. Talk about chill bain! Then we visited a mosque made only of wood where women could not enter. We were allowed to peek into a small window and we could then see the splendour of the inside. There were enough chandeliers to rival Louis the 14th!
As we went through the old town we saw the vendours selling everything from pomegranetes(sic) to synthetic blankets from China to used clothing straight from Value Village leftovers.
And of course the jeep broke down so we sat in the middle of the street and were the centre of curiosity but also able to make some photographsof the milling villagers. We went to one place to buy postcards and were offered a cardboard box with cards from who knows what year. We did recognize some of the sights we had seen.
This night we were treated to a visit to the fast talkers house. We saw all parts of the house... all cold except the bedroom.... and we sat in said bedroom for tea and buisquits(sic) and then were ushered into the sitting room with a propane gas heater, and lovely carpets to sit on. Then appeared a parade of Kashmiri scarves going for $200 US. Not for me thank you and when I heard our guide tell the scarf man to show me black ones, this being the colour I was most interested in, I stopped touching the carpets altogether. Eventually Wendy bought a lovely peacock blue scarf for $20.
We had previously been invited to the house across the street to watch the weaving of cahmere and also the spinning of the wool.
Each time we went anywhere we had to take off our shoes and by the end of the evening I was walking on two ice bricks.
And the best was yet to come!!!!
On the first night we had a reasonably hot shower but
because of the intense cold the water pipes froze .. no flushing ...no running water in the tap... no water in the resevoir to heat for a shower ... and on the second night no *%)#@%^ shower. I WENT TO BED WITHOUT WASHING!!! My handi-wipes disappeared fast. The third night we washed with lots of hot water in a big bucket using a small pitcher while standing in an ice box of a bathroom.
The sleeping room was heated with a propane gas heater but could not stay on all night. There were VERY heavy synthetic blankets on the bed and who knows how many bodies they had covered ...no sheets! and an especially heavy quilt. We did find lovely hot water bottles in the bed and that was a blessing because it became %^$#@*& cold by 07:00 in the morning. I cocooned myself in my SUMMER sleeping bag. I was having nothing to do with oft used blankets. And I survived .... but just.
The houseboat is built all out of lovely wood and a wood stove (a very basic metal cylendar with a straight pipe out the window) heats the main entry room where we ate our breakfast and dinner. Except for the hot water bottle there was no heat in the sleeping room fter Rami, the most helpful all knowing person came in to shut off the space heater. He also came in in the morning to put the heater back on so we could get out of bed without shivering to death. As you can tell by the last two sentences we did not lock the room at night. I only put on the hookowhen I changed clothes, so as not to frighten the help! During the day we were always cold. The vehicle w travelled in had no heater. Wendy and I had a blanket to cover our knees and feet and the driver and guide in the front had their clay heating units. Description in full follows:
People warm themselves while walking in the street or sitting in their tiny open fronted shops by placing under their poncho a double handled clay pot around which is woven willow. Embers from the fire are put into the clay pot and as the pregnant looking people walk about the heat eminates from the coals and they are nice and warm because the hot air is trapped inside their woollen ponchos.
Day two we spent five more freezing hours in the jeep driving 60km up into the mountains which were clear of clouds for two minutes...literally .... just long enought o take a few photos ... and what great photos they are. (Too bad I have yet to figure out how to get them into this blog.)
We drove to an altitude of 3000, 4000, 5000 metres according to our guide; past rice fields, sericulture farms(silk worms), mulberry trees for the silk worms, walnut trees apple, cherries and pear trees. We stopped in one small village and the driver brought us tea and kashmiri cake(pound cake in Canada), we saw children walking home from school and people coming down tracks that stretched five kilometres up the mountain. We saw the flat roofed houses of the 'Gypsies" who were gone for the winter and we saw many small mosques in deep valleys surrounded by glacial morraine and intermittant river beds. The rivers were almost dry for hydro project reasons and because the only time they ran full was during the spring runoff from the mountains.
We saw willow and poplar leaves vedged high into the branches of trees to be used to feed the livestock. Also many trees and the open ended attics of houses are stuffed with rice grass which also feeds the animals. Once we arrived at our destination we gaot out of the vehicle and wakled a good distance UP the mountain road. From Here the view of the mountains and the valley were spectacular and all was clad in beautiful pristine snow.
On the way back I had to stop to pea and did so in a cement cubicle.. i did not remove my gloves and they are now in the wash . We also stopped aty a butchers streetside cubicle for a back quarter of mutton which was hacked into piedes with a very sharp thick bladed knife. The driver was taking this to his home becaus ewe ate fried chees for our dinner (very tasty indeed...the cook had outdone himself on the third night).
There is more to this story... especially an exciting end wich will appear tomorrow.
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Ira-Jane
non-member comment
wow
Hey, what adventures u2 are having; you have enough for at least one book already!!! I thought you were going to a part of the the world with heat!! Thanks for the enjoyable entries so far.