Linda: Delectable Excitement April 16

Delectable Excitement
It was an easy journey by Indian standards, but it is also the first time I traveled alone in India. This made for a minor set of difficulties, mostly revolving around luggage. For example, what do you do when you cannot find the car on the train to which you are assigned? With Eleanor, one of us would wait with the luggage while the other one ran up and down the platform figuring out what happened. It is not easy running up and down the platform with a large (I think the suitcase gets bigger with every leg of this journey - not heavier, bigger) bag, apologizing to the people you run over on your way. And using the ladies’ facilities has another set of luggage issues. Though it is much more convenient to travel in tandem, it has also been nice to travel on my own for awhile, too. Especially here, and especially now that I’ve adjusted to India - more or less. (Travelers tip: Take a backpack and not a suitcase!! Other essentials: a thin towel if your hotel didn’t give you one and for putting down on seats and beds in trains/busses, a blow up neck pillow, something to cover your eyes so you can sleep when the lights are on, little cloth slippers, a shawl which can also double as a blanket, a good alarm clock, a lighter.)
After an overnight train ride followed by a 5 hour wait in a bus station, I was on the bus, not quite sure what to expect. The first three hours went past the lush wheat fields and gardens that I had been seeing since we left the desert. The crops here are amazing. They already have enormous cauliflower and beautiful beans. How can they do that this far north?? There is much to learn here! As the last three hours began to tick away (no food, very little water for the past 20 hours), I saw a distant rise in the horizon. How high up is Dharamsala? Is it really mountainous, or just beginning to be mountainous? And … it’s still hot! Typically, heat does not bother me very much. Even though there was a coolish breeze coming through the bus window, I was hot, through and through. Will it be cooler? How will the hotel be? Will it be peaceful and contemplative or will we feel like we need to move on? The answer, as always: What will be, will be. (Thanks, Mom,) There is no use wishing, hoping, wanting, fearing. Be here. Be now. And do what needs to be done when it needs to be done. Right now, I’m on a bus. Nothing to do. Pure being. Simple. Nice. (Why did that man leave his bag in the middle of the aisle where everyone had to climb over it?)
I watch out the window as the scenery starts to unfold. Thank goodness, the bus starts to make an ascent up a small mountain. Up and around, and, bit by bit, the world changes. The first thing I noticed were the gardens. As we started climbing more into the mountains, the gardens are, of course, smaller. Many are terraced, though there is still ample low land areas. But the gardens and fields are not big areas planted with only one crop. They are an artful mixture of plants. An area which, a few kilometers down the mountain would have been all wheat or something else, is groupings of several kinds of plants. And they are not planted in squares, but in meandering swathes of plants. And, even more beautifully, there are little wandering rows of lovely purple flowers planted between the types of plants and even within a group of similar plants. It was organic and natural looking , round instead of sharp and square; varied in color and texture instead of uniform. Why? Is it companion planting or do people here still do strip planting within communal plots, like in medieval times? Or, is their asthetic sense so developed that they keep beauty of form even in the planting of their crops?
My focus is on these little fields, wondering, admiring, thinking how I might change my little garden which needs some reviving this year. Pine trees begin to appear, and other kinds of conifers. We’re getting higher. The air is cooler, refreshing, uplifting. A boulder filled stream appears. Our bus follows along its side and I watch water cascading over the boulders. Finally, I see a person amongst the boulders. It was a glimmer of the scale of the stream and of the boulders to see that little person amongst those big rocks.
My eyes had been down, following the valley, the gardens, the stream. What is that? A cable? Why there? It is then that I realize it is a bridge! One cable for your feet, another rope above it for your hand. That’s it. A thrill starts to climb up my spine. Yes, I really DO what to cross a bridge like that. My mind says, "No", my body says, "Yes."
And then, I look up. As they say frequently here, "Oh my God!" Truly, that is what came to mind, and I kept saying it, over and over and over. For up ahead, rising above the twisting, turning, climbing road was peak after peak after glorious peak of snow covered mountains. "Oh my God! I’m actually in the Himalayas!" It is real. It is now. It is here. And I am here! How did that happen? How is it that someone like me can be in a place like this? This magical, mystical land. The Home of the Gods. The Roof of the World. Shangri La. I pinch myself. I still am. The vision stays. It really is real.