- No black people on our flight – to AFRICA!!
- Flying in felt like Australia (dry and mountainous), drive from the airport felt like a European city (modern, groomed gardens, etc.), and then reminiscent of India (townships here look like slums)
- Every store has barred doors and the street we are staying on has surveillance cameras all over and 24 hour security patrolling
- Lots of cafes and trendy food (acai smoothies, organic wraps, fusion, etc.), lots of Caribbean and Indian influence, lots of meat
- Within 24 hours of being in the city, some kids came and hustled us, grabbing at our pockets and asking “you got something in there for me?!”
- Weird to think about 1 in 4 people around us has HIV (never feels that close)
Signs we’re in the developed world again: can drink tap water, prevalence of chain restaurants and big grocery stores, traffic is organized, credit cards accepted, roads are marked, hot water comes out of the tap without a geyser, tourist brochures are everywhere - Kelli absolutely loves how the cover bands here Africanize American pop songs
- They call their traffic signals “robots”!!
- Entertaining to walk by boutique stores here and see them selling stuff we actually bought in Southeast Asia and India for a tenth of the price
- Never seen a big city with such an insane number of things to do
- We’re here in the middle of winter (the end of our eternal traveling summer) and there are so many cool things to do that aren’t open… but in reality this is fortunate because we otherwise might never have made it out of Cape Town. (We have already decided we’re coming back at some point during the summer and with money!)
- It’s a very, very cool city… if only they could get rid of the crime!
Friday, June 5, 2009
First Impressions of Cape Town
Mayhem in Amritsar
While in Bhagsu, we had heard a lot of great things from fellow travelers about Amritsar, a town near the Pakistani border about six hours away that is known for having a very beautiful large Sikh temple made of pure gold and marble. We had a few days before we needed to be back in Bombay for Rutvik’s US visa appointment and decided to make a day trip there on our way back. On the last night in Dharamsala, we were out pretty late and ended up missing the only local bus from Dharamsala to Amritsar at 5 am. Suck. On the upside, this allowed us time to ship a bag full of stuff to Bombay ahead of us. We (read: Kel!) had gone on a massive shopping spree in Dharamsala, buying all sorts of handmade items from Tibet and Nepal (shawls, gloves, jewelry, religious decorations for our new apartment in Berkeley, and even knock-off North Face jackets) and sending it meant that we didn’t have to schlep it with us on the crowded Indian local bus (reference advice for surviving an Indian local bus). It all works out.
We ended up catching a bus later that day to Pathankot, a military outpost halfway to Amritsar. The 5 hour journey sparked the blog entry about advice for surviving an Indian bus, so you can imagine how much we enjoyed it. From Pathankot, we decided to splurge and took a private car the rest of the way. We arrived in Amritsar around 7 pm that night and found that the next day was some sort of holiday (apparently the no moon day each month is symbolic in the Sikh religion), so most of the streets were closed down to traffic. Also, Sundays are always the crazy crowded days in India because that’s the one day off each week and people are out and about. We had to take two cycle rickshaws (since our bags were STILL as big as small people) to a hotel and Kelli realized that she was back to Indian populated India (no foreigners in sight) because the stares began again.
The next morning, we headed to the Golden Temple, a major Sikh pilgrimage site which we had heard rivals the Taj Mahal in beauty. We entered the temple complex through metal detectors along with the usual gazillion people (seriously crazy - check out the pictures). It’s hard for us to get over how the pushing and shoving and chaos of such a big crowd jives with a place of such holiness. We hadn’t eaten yet and it was nearing lunchtime, so, before seeing the temple, we decided to find out where the food was. First things first! We had heard about a free meal (called “langar”) served to all people visiting the temple irrespective of religion, nationality, etc. Over 40,000 people are served on an average day! We asked a passerby where the langar was and someone pointed us toward the alley next to a building. Under Sikh tradition, you are supposed to take off your shoes to walk through the temple grounds but the sun was blazing, making the cement very hot, and, honestly, this alley was dirty and wet with people washing plates, unloading trucks, etc. We really weren’t too keen about walking through all that, but, to be respectful, took off our shoes right before the building entrance. We began to put them in our backpacks when some Sikh woman yelled at us in Hindi and told on us to a guard!! Apparently, it’s not okay to carry them with you. Geez. So we left our shoes elsewhere and walked in to a room of about 500 people sitting on the ground eating.
We ended up catching a bus later that day to Pathankot, a military outpost halfway to Amritsar. The 5 hour journey sparked the blog entry about advice for surviving an Indian bus, so you can imagine how much we enjoyed it. From Pathankot, we decided to splurge and took a private car the rest of the way. We arrived in Amritsar around 7 pm that night and found that the next day was some sort of holiday (apparently the no moon day each month is symbolic in the Sikh religion), so most of the streets were closed down to traffic. Also, Sundays are always the crazy crowded days in India because that’s the one day off each week and people are out and about. We had to take two cycle rickshaws (since our bags were STILL as big as small people) to a hotel and Kelli realized that she was back to Indian populated India (no foreigners in sight) because the stares began again.
The next morning, we headed to the Golden Temple, a major Sikh pilgrimage site which we had heard rivals the Taj Mahal in beauty. We entered the temple complex through metal detectors along with the usual gazillion people (seriously crazy - check out the pictures). It’s hard for us to get over how the pushing and shoving and chaos of such a big crowd jives with a place of such holiness. We hadn’t eaten yet and it was nearing lunchtime, so, before seeing the temple, we decided to find out where the food was. First things first! We had heard about a free meal (called “langar”) served to all people visiting the temple irrespective of religion, nationality, etc. Over 40,000 people are served on an average day! We asked a passerby where the langar was and someone pointed us toward the alley next to a building. Under Sikh tradition, you are supposed to take off your shoes to walk through the temple grounds but the sun was blazing, making the cement very hot, and, honestly, this alley was dirty and wet with people washing plates, unloading trucks, etc. We really weren’t too keen about walking through all that, but, to be respectful, took off our shoes right before the building entrance. We began to put them in our backpacks when some Sikh woman yelled at us in Hindi and told on us to a guard!! Apparently, it’s not okay to carry them with you. Geez. So we left our shoes elsewhere and walked in to a room of about 500 people sitting on the ground eating.
We asked a guard where we should sit and he gave us a weird look but cleared a place for us near the door. We realized only later that we had actually walked in the back entrance and that people on the other side of the building had been standing in line for hours! The guy at the door apparently took pity on the poor foreigner and realized that we would have quite a time fighting through the line to get thali plates and bowls, so he got them for us and let us eat out of turn. Lucky us!! This foreigner thing really works. The food tasted really good (though you have to get over the fact that it’s served out of metal buckets like gruel) - dal (lentil stew), rice, chapatti (Indian bread), and kheer (rice pudding). The whole place is staffed by volunteers and the kitchen is open for visiting. We watched the chapattis being made. The temple also offers a free place to stay for visitors but the foreigners are separated from the Indians and the men are separated from the women, so we opted to pay for an outside hotel. It is a neat, very welcoming atmosphere.
After lunch, we entered the inner part of the complex. The temple is strikingly beautiful, made of gold with the surrounding part of the complex made of marble. It was blazing hot and the temple was swarming with people everywhere. Kelli washed her feet in the water surrounding the temple, and we made one loop around the inside of the complex. The line to actually go inside the Golden Temple was long, unorganized, and claustrophobic-looking, so we skipped out, deciding to come back someday on a non-Sunday and non-holiday. Instead, we walked in a side shrine and stood in a shorter packed line to give a donation. Standing in line, Kelli felt a deliberate pinch and squeeze from behind – in a temple!! Still have to get used to this whole mob mentality religious experience. Funny to contrast that with the other type of very Indian religious experience – the yogis that go meditate completely alone in the Himalayas for months or years!
Later that afternoon, we hopped into the back of a jeep to drive an hour to Attari, where they have a daily India-Pakistan border closing ceremony. The universe works in strange ways sometimes and it just so happened that the couple that jumped in across from us in the jeep lives in Berkeley! We had fun chatting with them on the drive. Being with a group of 3 westerners, Rutvik was admitted to the VIP section as an honorary foreigner. The US passport rocks once again! The ceremony had the atmosphere of a highly charged football game. The Indian and Pakistan sides each had bleachers filled with spectators and vendors selling popcorn, mineral water, and DVDs of past ceremonies. The Pakistan side seemed subdued whereas on the Indian side, a host was riling the crowd to chant patriotic Indian slogans like “Vande Matram”, “Hindustan Zindabad”, etc. Women were encouraged to dance on the border. Kelli joined in the fun and Rutvik laughed at how she stuck out over all the much shorter Indian ladies! (Made it easier to take pictures!!) The soldiers, each of whom was at least 6”6’ tall, then got into the act. They could kick above their heads and strutted about with their chests out proudly. We were encouraged to see that the spirit of the ceremony was good fun and not hostility – they even shook hands across the border and coordinated the timing of lowering the flags. On the way back, the jeep ran out of oil (after we had already paid of course) but we didn’t want to miss our bus to Delhi so we hopped a rickshaw back into the city.
Later that evening, we got on a luxury overnight bus to Delhi and traveled for about 20 minutes before making a stop. We didn’t think anything out of the ordinary (things are always slow in India). However, after about 30 minutes, we started to pick up vibes that things weren’t right. Rutvik got out to find out what the deal was. No one really seemed to know the whole story, but apparently a Sikh leader had been shot to death in Vienna, Austria, sparking unrest in the Sikh dominated state of Punjab, where we happened to be. They had shut down the highway to Delhi a couple hours south of where we were and had started burning buses and cars, though there was no report of human casualties. The bus was waiting for other buses so that we could form a convoy and continue our trip. A few passengers decided not to risk the situation and headed back home. Everyone on the bus was trying to be protective of Kelli, the lone foreigner, but freaked her out by telling her to “Get out of here as soon as you can. It’s not safe for you here anymore” and advising her to cover her face with a scarf. At that point, nobody had a real grasp of what the situation was and people were concerned that the rioters were angry with the Austrians and wouldn’t bother to differentiate between foreigners. That really freaked Kelli out. A young professional on the bus helped us get a reservation at a nice hotel where we would be safe for the night. We were willing to pay anything at this point and ended up paying about 10 times what we were normally paying for a room on this trip. Luckily, the whole bus turned around back to Amritsar and we immediately took a rickshaw to the hotel. The next morning, we bought plane tickets and hot footed it out of Amritsar. The whole city was shut down, ATMs weren’t working since they had been set on fire in other cities the night before, and the cab driver told us that his company was only leaving the parking lot when called. We drove the long way to the airport, on the back roads, and the driver kept in touch with his company throughout to make sure no violence had broken out along our route. We were SO relieved once we entered the airport and were happy to be heading to the relative safety of Bombay. Later, we saw on the news that the violence had indeed spread to Amritsar that day, though fortunately no people were hurt, just lots of buses, cars, and trains burned. What a crazy 24 hours! Trouble continues to follow us.
A Day in Our Life as Yogis
We’ve spent a whole month in Bhagsu, India, just outside of Dharamsala, doing an intensive yoga course and teaching English to a couple of Tibetan girls. It’s been super busy but we loved it! Here’s what an average day was like for us:
7 am: Wake up and do kriya yoga (purification) exercises, which include (1) scraping the gunk off of our tongue with a spoon, (2) rubbing the whole inside of our mouths with rock salt, (3) using a “neti pot” to clear out our sinuses by inhaling water through one nostril and breathing out the mouth (this one really works well if you do it right but we had many not-so-fun experiences learning how to do it!), and (4) rinsing our eyes with cool water. There are several other kriya techniques that we learned in class but we haven’t ventured to try them yet as they are complicated and sound pretty uncomfortable….But we plan to try them at some point (probably when we are comfortably situated back home in the States) as we have learned how important it is to purify the body. After the kriyas, we usually lie around watching our newfound favorite waste of time American TV show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader” (the answer is decided “no”) or rush up the street to get a fresh fruit bowl from Unity Bistro. We’re not supposed to eat anything other than fruit for two hours before our yoga class but if we don’t eat anything, we’re absolutely famished by the time our morning yoga class is over.
9 am: Walk up the mountainside (enjoying the beauty or hating the burning of our thighs, depending on the day) to our yoga class for the morning lecture and morning session of hatha yoga. One of our two instructors, Monika or Manu, teaches us about the new asana for the day, including how to hold the proper position, the benefits to the body and mind of the position, and where to mentally focus while doing the posture. The asanas started from basic postures like a standing forward bend and built up to shoulder stands and headstands. We bend our bodies in various ways we didn’t think possible! Unlike what we were used to in the US, we sometimes hold the poses for up to ten minutes at a time! They didn’t teach us any pranayama (yogic breathing) during the first month because they say it is too powerful energetically for beginners. We did experience many purification reactions (headaches, fevers, chills, soreness in the glands, etc.) during the month, so they are probably right! We have been dragging a lot of the month, but overall the yoga has really made us feel good. It’s going to be a challenge to figure out how to fit it in once we get back to the US… something tells us that we won’t have 6 hours a day to spend practicing!
11:30 am: After the morning yoga, we’re typically starving and head to a local restaurant for lunch. We’ve learned a lot about various yogic diets, including ayurvedic and the yin-yang diet and both visited an ayurvedic doctor to learn about our doshas (body types) and the foods that we should eat to rebalance the energies in our bodies. It’s challenging to figure out what to eat exactly given advice from so many people. If you combine the allowed foods from every different school of thought, you are literally left with nothing to eat except boiled cabbage. The yin-yang diet suggests that most people eat too many acidic foods (which basically includes anything good) and that we can build our inner strength, willpower, and balance by eating more alkaline foods. The most recommended foods on this diet are brown rice, whole grains, apples, walnuts, certain vegetables, and herbs. An extreme version of this diet, called Diet No. 7, developed by George Ohsawa, is said to have cured people from all sorts of long term illnesses. In it, you are supposed to eat only brown rice with sesame seeds for ten days. The idea is that 10% of your blood is replenished per day, so by keeping it up for ten days, you give your body a yang shock that is very purifying. On the other side, the ayurvedic doctor told us to avoid brown rice because we were both strongly of the pitta type (fire) and brown rice is considered heating, meaning it would cause us to be more imbalanced. So we spent many a day staring at the menu trying to figure out what the overlaps were and ended up settling on mainly trying to avoid processed food, white flour, and white sugar. It is so easy to eat locally grown produce (the Indian mangoes are to die for) and Bhagsu and McLeod-Ganj both have a big diversity in the food available (Indian, Chinese, Mexican, Burgers, Israeli, Italian, etc.) We have become big fans of a Korean restaurant (can you believe they have a great Korean restaurant in the middle of the Himalayas with no Koreans in sight?!) and also a good sushi place – both veg!
1 or 1:30 pm: After eating, depending on the day, we either head over to tutor the girls in English at a café in McLeod or Kelli goes to Monika’s belly dancing class…. Or, if we’re especially tired, we chill out in the room. As we talked about a bit in our last blog entry, tutoring the girls has been a challenge but we’ve had a good time and learned a lot ourselves. They threw us a “drink party” the last week we were there, where we went to one of the girls’ flats to chat and drink juice. They had wanted to make lunch but after finding out that we don’t eat meat, didn’t know what to make so it became just drinks. Haha. Probably just as well since we have yet to find Tibetan food that we like! The belly dancing has given us some time apart (pretty rare these days) and Kel has really enjoyed it. Monika mixes it up each time and incorporates all sorts of things from goddess dances, dancing with scarves, Shakira, to Tarot card reading.
4 pm: Afterward, it’s time for our afternoon hatha yoga session. In the beginning of the course, there was an afternoon lecture as well but as we built our strength and learned more asanas, we practice the full two hours (often plus) in the afternoon as well. The only difference with the morning session was that we do a series of twelve Surya Namaskars (Sun Salutations), a common yoga exercise that is more dynamic.
6 pm: Following the afternoon practice, there is another lecture that is usually quite interesting. Topics range from chakras and energy flows in the body, yoga philosophy, spirituality, purification techniques, healing therapy, meditation, to tantric practices. They usually just scratch the surface on a subject but are enough to open doors to things we hadn’t heard of before. Some things are really out there (at least compared to what we’re used to) but it’s been a ton of fun hearing what kinds of healing you can try. It takes the yoga a step deeper than the gym class workout style that we’ve been used to back home.
8:30 pm: Dinner at a local restaurant. We’re again starving by this point. The café behind our yoga school serves dinner, so we sometimes watch a movie related to the lecture topics with other students from the class… anything from The Tibetan Book of the Dead to The Matrix.
10:30 or 11 pm: Pass out from exhaustion. We did dabble with a type of yoga called Yoga Nidra (the Yoga of Dreams) but we have yet to master that one. Maybe that’s how we’ll solve the not having six hours a day to practice yoga when we get back! And NO we have not joined a cult!
7 am: Wake up and do kriya yoga (purification) exercises, which include (1) scraping the gunk off of our tongue with a spoon, (2) rubbing the whole inside of our mouths with rock salt, (3) using a “neti pot” to clear out our sinuses by inhaling water through one nostril and breathing out the mouth (this one really works well if you do it right but we had many not-so-fun experiences learning how to do it!), and (4) rinsing our eyes with cool water. There are several other kriya techniques that we learned in class but we haven’t ventured to try them yet as they are complicated and sound pretty uncomfortable….But we plan to try them at some point (probably when we are comfortably situated back home in the States) as we have learned how important it is to purify the body. After the kriyas, we usually lie around watching our newfound favorite waste of time American TV show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader” (the answer is decided “no”) or rush up the street to get a fresh fruit bowl from Unity Bistro. We’re not supposed to eat anything other than fruit for two hours before our yoga class but if we don’t eat anything, we’re absolutely famished by the time our morning yoga class is over.
9 am: Walk up the mountainside (enjoying the beauty or hating the burning of our thighs, depending on the day) to our yoga class for the morning lecture and morning session of hatha yoga. One of our two instructors, Monika or Manu, teaches us about the new asana for the day, including how to hold the proper position, the benefits to the body and mind of the position, and where to mentally focus while doing the posture. The asanas started from basic postures like a standing forward bend and built up to shoulder stands and headstands. We bend our bodies in various ways we didn’t think possible! Unlike what we were used to in the US, we sometimes hold the poses for up to ten minutes at a time! They didn’t teach us any pranayama (yogic breathing) during the first month because they say it is too powerful energetically for beginners. We did experience many purification reactions (headaches, fevers, chills, soreness in the glands, etc.) during the month, so they are probably right! We have been dragging a lot of the month, but overall the yoga has really made us feel good. It’s going to be a challenge to figure out how to fit it in once we get back to the US… something tells us that we won’t have 6 hours a day to spend practicing!
11:30 am: After the morning yoga, we’re typically starving and head to a local restaurant for lunch. We’ve learned a lot about various yogic diets, including ayurvedic and the yin-yang diet and both visited an ayurvedic doctor to learn about our doshas (body types) and the foods that we should eat to rebalance the energies in our bodies. It’s challenging to figure out what to eat exactly given advice from so many people. If you combine the allowed foods from every different school of thought, you are literally left with nothing to eat except boiled cabbage. The yin-yang diet suggests that most people eat too many acidic foods (which basically includes anything good) and that we can build our inner strength, willpower, and balance by eating more alkaline foods. The most recommended foods on this diet are brown rice, whole grains, apples, walnuts, certain vegetables, and herbs. An extreme version of this diet, called Diet No. 7, developed by George Ohsawa, is said to have cured people from all sorts of long term illnesses. In it, you are supposed to eat only brown rice with sesame seeds for ten days. The idea is that 10% of your blood is replenished per day, so by keeping it up for ten days, you give your body a yang shock that is very purifying. On the other side, the ayurvedic doctor told us to avoid brown rice because we were both strongly of the pitta type (fire) and brown rice is considered heating, meaning it would cause us to be more imbalanced. So we spent many a day staring at the menu trying to figure out what the overlaps were and ended up settling on mainly trying to avoid processed food, white flour, and white sugar. It is so easy to eat locally grown produce (the Indian mangoes are to die for) and Bhagsu and McLeod-Ganj both have a big diversity in the food available (Indian, Chinese, Mexican, Burgers, Israeli, Italian, etc.) We have become big fans of a Korean restaurant (can you believe they have a great Korean restaurant in the middle of the Himalayas with no Koreans in sight?!) and also a good sushi place – both veg!
1 or 1:30 pm: After eating, depending on the day, we either head over to tutor the girls in English at a café in McLeod or Kelli goes to Monika’s belly dancing class…. Or, if we’re especially tired, we chill out in the room. As we talked about a bit in our last blog entry, tutoring the girls has been a challenge but we’ve had a good time and learned a lot ourselves. They threw us a “drink party” the last week we were there, where we went to one of the girls’ flats to chat and drink juice. They had wanted to make lunch but after finding out that we don’t eat meat, didn’t know what to make so it became just drinks. Haha. Probably just as well since we have yet to find Tibetan food that we like! The belly dancing has given us some time apart (pretty rare these days) and Kel has really enjoyed it. Monika mixes it up each time and incorporates all sorts of things from goddess dances, dancing with scarves, Shakira, to Tarot card reading.
4 pm: Afterward, it’s time for our afternoon hatha yoga session. In the beginning of the course, there was an afternoon lecture as well but as we built our strength and learned more asanas, we practice the full two hours (often plus) in the afternoon as well. The only difference with the morning session was that we do a series of twelve Surya Namaskars (Sun Salutations), a common yoga exercise that is more dynamic.
6 pm: Following the afternoon practice, there is another lecture that is usually quite interesting. Topics range from chakras and energy flows in the body, yoga philosophy, spirituality, purification techniques, healing therapy, meditation, to tantric practices. They usually just scratch the surface on a subject but are enough to open doors to things we hadn’t heard of before. Some things are really out there (at least compared to what we’re used to) but it’s been a ton of fun hearing what kinds of healing you can try. It takes the yoga a step deeper than the gym class workout style that we’ve been used to back home.
8:30 pm: Dinner at a local restaurant. We’re again starving by this point. The café behind our yoga school serves dinner, so we sometimes watch a movie related to the lecture topics with other students from the class… anything from The Tibetan Book of the Dead to The Matrix.
10:30 or 11 pm: Pass out from exhaustion. We did dabble with a type of yoga called Yoga Nidra (the Yoga of Dreams) but we have yet to master that one. Maybe that’s how we’ll solve the not having six hours a day to practice yoga when we get back! And NO we have not joined a cult!
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