Srinagar, the capital and purportedly most beautiful city of Paradise, reminds me of an old self-deprecating Brazilian joke. Like the Kashmiris, many Brazilians refer to their homeland as Paradise On Earth. It's said that, on the portion of South America known as Brazil, God placed a paradise on this earth. In order to balance the scales with the rest of the world, He populated it with Brazilians.
It's a pretty place. And every face tells the story of twenty years of war, twenty years of paranoia. It was hard for me to ever feel at ease. And it didn't hurt that the guy whose houseboat I was staying on oozed nothing but paranoia, borderline-creepy kindness ("You will love me like a father"), and stories of how anyone I met was going to attack, rob or rape me. On my last night there I couldn't take the dinner conversation (see previous sentence) so I took the family rowboat and paddled around the black waters of Dal Lake, losing myself in mazes of houseboats and plots were the coming spring would see floating gardens. I didn't stay long.
Two weeks to go.
The undisputed highlight of my rambling down the Pakistani border back toward Delhi was my stay in Amritsar in the pilgrim's quarters at the Sikh's holiest site, the Golden Temple. Arriving well after dark, my first view of this magnificent temple complex was just before the holy Guru Granth Sahib (the Sikhs' holy book/"living" god and guru) was carried by a chanting and singing crowd of sacred servants to its nightly resting place. Four spotlights from the four directions gaze across the Amrit Sarovar, or "pool of nectar," -- the enormous tank of water the Temple sits in the center of -- at the gold, gold, marble and Golden Temple.
A description of the marvelous Golden Temple could never fit in the few paragraphs I have to dedicate to it. Sitting, stunned, somebody asked me what I thought. Even in its presence, even with the thing I was trying to verbally paint sitting immediately before me, I had no words. All I knew was that as I pulled at the far, tattered edges of my memory I couldn't think of any other building or complex that I had seen in the world that could measure against this; the Golden Temple under the light of the full moon. For me, it was everything the Taj Mahal should have been. Except without the outrageous admission charge -- without any admission charge, at that -- and with free food, free lodging and a free museum to illustrate it. Merriam-Webster's dictionary has its picture sketched as a visual description of the word "wow."
Minor mentions to McCleod Ganj, home of the Tibetan Government in Exile, and to Rishikesh, self-proclaimed global capital of Yoga (in tight contention with Berkeley, CA). I had a lovely time in both places but what can you say after oozing over Amritsar?
Two boats passing on a watery alleyway of Dal Lake, Srinigar, Kashmir, Paradise, India/Pakistan (depends on who you ask)
Stilted Kashmiri house. Smells like Kashmiri tea -- the only thing India invented sweeter than the average cup of chai. It's like the sugariest cinnamon/apple crepe you've ever had, only in liquid form. Beyond delicious. Paradise for the tongue.
Forty square acres of trash sculpture? Of course, I made a pilgrimage to Nek Chand's Fantasy Rock Garden in Chandigarh. It wasn't what I had hoped, but still a very cool place. Like a dumpster-diver's Disney Land! Fantasy land for the raccoon-spirited.
A rainbow (of paint) on every face. Holi -- an annual festival where it's suddenly appropriate to dump loads and loads of paint and paint powder on complete strangers. Two weeks and multiple showers and scrubbings later, I'm still partly dyed pink. Easily qualifies as the most fun I had while in India. Road blocks by very aggressive painters. Woa to anybody silly enough to ride a motorbike to work.
Three-page, centerfold closeup of the Golden Temple at dawn.
Hold me down.
And this, in hot competition with a New Zealand "Lord of the Rings Tour" for being the most touristy thing I've ever done, is from my visit to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's ashram in Rishikesh. It's best known as "the place the Beatles went" when they went to India. Abandoned around 13 years ago, it already looks like a relic from centuries past. Complete with dozens of little stone domes that give your "OM" that perfect transcendental echo and reverb. Ravi Shankar, eat your heart out. Ringo Starr, eat your heart out.
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