mountains to desert (and Sikhs in between)

So in the last.. 4 or 5 days (time passes so strangely when traveling) we've gone from the mountains of Himachal Pradesh to the plains of Punjab to the desert of Rajasthan, and I'm definitely experiencing one of the main things that made me want to come to India: the myriad of landscapes, peope, and cultures all contained in one country (and that you can go from one to another so easily on train!).

From Shimla we took a lovely 10-hour bus ride complete with all the cliches: winding roads, careening around corners, and constant honking (even some puking, but I'm not going to name names) and by the end of the day we were gasping over the Himalayas being RIGHT THERE and settling down in McLeod Ganj. Like Shimla, it felt pretty similar to the mountains at home (but with more monkeys) although the mountains were much more amazing then then the Cascades and closer than in Shimla.. but the people were really different. McLeod Ganj is uphill from the seat of the Tibetan government in exile, and the area around there has a huge Tibetan refugee population, so we saw lots of different faces and could even tell the difference in clothes (the Tibetan women wore long wrap-around skirts and striped apron things). And then there were all the Tibetan Buddhist monks, wearing red robes (and red socks!), some of them chatting on cell phones and some fingering prayer beads. Oh and the sizeable expat/backpacker population, who seem to land in McLeod Ganj to study Buddhism and learn to play the tabla and dreadlock each others' hair or something. Anyway we had a great day there, hiking up for awesome views, checking out the main Buddhist temple (w/lots of fiercely debating monks!), the Dalai Lama's residence (well the outside of it) and the government complex. Oh and shopping, of course.

Then we had to get the 5 AM (only) bus to Amritsar, down out of the hills and into fertile plains.. the Punjab countryside seems to be lots and lots of wheat fields. By late morning we were in Amritsar, where we went straight to the Golden Temple, were led to the foreigners' dorm in the Sri Guru Ram Devi Niwas guesthouse by a nice old Sikh man, and adjusted ourselves to not having any privacy for 2 days. There's more to Amritsar than the Golden Temple--we also went to a Hindu cave temple which was sort of like a amusement park funshouse complete with mirrored walls and tunnels to crawl through, a nice park, the memorial for the British massacre in 19something, and a fancy restaurant in the posh "new city"--but we spent most of our time there just chillin at the Temple, people watching, etc. First of all it's pretty amazing the sheer number of people that stay for free at the guesthouses and eat for free in the massive 24 hr community kitchen (which make reallllly good food, surprisingly); then there's the diversity of pilgrims, from the old guys in sarongs and loose shirts with blue trubans, long beards, ceremonial daggers and spears to the adorable little boys with their topknots and gorgeous long eyelashes; then there's the afct that you can see all these people doing everything from bathing in the holy pool to drying their laundry to helping prepare food in the kitchen to drinking chai in long rows.. and all the time! I actually got up at 2 AM the second night to see what was going on, and it was liek the middle of the day.. people were ven still lined up to get into the temple itself. Which of course was gorgeous; it was really cool seeing it at different times of day, sparkling in the bright sunlight or illuminated at night by flashes of lightning. It was a pretty amazing couple days, but what with the not showering and the hardly sleeping real noisy) we were okay with leaving yesterday.

Everyone kept saying we had to go back to Delhi to get to Jaisalmer but that made no sense so instead we went through Jandalhar (just southeast of Amritsar) which was notable only for the plastic roses in the train station refreshment room and Bikaner, where we ended up spending a night and a day. We actually ended up at a really nice hotel, a gorgeous haveli w/ a hot shower! And nice restaurant. Went to the Karni Mata RAT TEMPLE outside of town which was crazy, everyone was bringing food to give to the rats and the had all these big bowls of milk and like branches to play on and things.. bizarre. Also saw the current maharaja's palace/hotel and the fort, which has amazing palaces and furnishings from when the maharajas lived there. It really feels like the desert, with the sand everywhere and camels pulling carts down the street And the people are different again, the men wrap their turbans differently and lots of them have pierced ears, and a lot of the women wear really colorful bouse/skirt/shawl combinations instead of saris or salwar.

Tonight it's sleeper to Jaisalmer, where we hope to find a camel safari into the desert dunes, a Shiva/Parvati festival, etc etc. More soon!