Mussoorie to Jaipur

Having completed the book-learning portion of my time here in India, I headed back to Delhi to begin the equally edifying travelling. Mussoorie was tranquil, a great place to study and focus in on my own writing. While I was there, I got to visit a Tibetan Refugee Community, apparently many of them have sprung up in the last 20 years in the hill stations of Northern India. It was an eye opening experience (an understatement considering all of India is an eye opening experience), but shocking nonetheless. Our tour guide was telling me that, in the past three years, China has fully tried to shut down the borders between Tibet and India, forcing the refugees to cross discreetly. One young girl, age 12 when she trekked down out of the mountains, arrived in Mussoorie to find that her fingers had become so frostbitten under her gloves that they disintegrated as she removed the thin wool.

Also during my stay, I went on a 14 mile trek up to about 9000 feet, to a peak named Top Tibba. The hike itself was painful enough, not to mention that we did it alongside a few of the Woodstock teachers, one of whom is an avid marathon runner and has done the path that we walked at a clip, finishing the entire route in half of the 5 hours that it took us. Regardless of relative athleticism, the views were beautiful.

Anyhow, I left Mussoorie on the 16th, travelling by train to Delhi, where I spent one final night before catching a bus to Jaipur. The bus ride was another 5 hour journey, but well worth the time spent. I was sitting in the window seat, with a 250 pound muslim man between me and the aisle. We started with the formalities, his english was quite good. What my name was, where I was from, whether or not I was married. The usual questions. He was a massive man, with skin as dark as the night, and a huge beard that sharpened to a point below his chin. I leaned back, asked him if he enjoyed futbol. He did, I let him know that Argentina had just blown out South Korea, Iguain had a hat trick. I opened up Midnight's Children, by Salomon Rushdie, and he proved as sharp a reader as he was a talker, and immediately reminded me that Rushdie was living in the USA now, because the Ayatollah recommended that he be hung for another of his novels, The Satanic Verses. I feigned ignorance, and the subject quickly changed, but not before he offered some alternative literature, namely Harry Potter. He then brought up the topic of marriage, saying that my life was not complete until I had a wife and kids. I asked him about his, he is married, with a boy and girl. He confessed that he thinks Shakira is "mighty fine", he kept saying "waka waka".

My two days here in Jaipur have been spent mainly staying out of the heat. It is regularly about 100 degrees here, and doesn't help that the water tank, which is on the roof, heats the shower water to a boil which makes bathing impossible during the daylight hours. My hosts are extremely gracious, however, and brought me to the wedding of one of their friends the other night. I tried to be as inconspicuous as possible at the reception, but still managed to be the only white person there, thus I was never without the awkward hello of some curious English practitioner. The most memorable guest (that I met) was the former minister of State, who is a very well educated (albeit tiny) man, who was very outspoken about the potential of India's growing middle class. The average age of an Indian, he kept saying, is 24! In Japan, it is 41. Think about it. Proper education, and we'll be ahead in no time.

Thats all for now, the power has just gone out as it apparently does every day for a half an hour, from 545 to 615. I hope all is well in the states, and I'll be writing again soon, hopefully sooner than I managed with this entry.