Tawang Mar 1 - 3

Sat, Mar 1 - Bomdilla to Tawang

- Bhupen is late again. Claimed that truck would not start, bad filter and had to heat up under car. I used the time to catch a few pics of the gonpa with the warm rays of the rising sun on it.

- A couple of women walk around the main monastery building many, many times. I think it must have some religious significance and indeed, when looking at the building from the side, I see that there are three large prayer wheels at the side of the building. The women spin these on each circuit round the building. With all Buddhist temples, prayer wheels, etc, one walks around them in a clockwise fashion. There are other rules, one is supposed to do an odd number of circuits, or multiples of three. Three is the most common number of times Buddhists will spin the prayer wheels but 108 times is also a very good number.

Tawang

- Switchbacks are amazing as they snake up the mountainside. Sela pass is at 13,700 feet. There is snow on the road for the last 1000 feet. Many military camps on the road.

- I read about the tea house at the top of Sela pass and we stop for tea. It is a real hole in the wall place, with a small oil drum in the center of the room giving off very little heat from a feeble fire. It’s not that cold, perhaps 45 degrees and I’m warm enough with my polypro, shirt, vest and wind shell. A 30ish man is holding a small child on the other side of crude heater. Bhupen and Radju keep trying to get me to sit down. This is a culture clash, where I want to be able to do things for myself, decide myself when to sit and when to stand. For them, it is their duty to carry all my stuff (they keep trying to carry my camera bag, change my camera lenses, open the car door, have me sitting instead of standing). It is slowly driving me nuts. I will talk to Bhupen and try to explain my situation to him. The other thing which I need to explain is that they need to be on time in the morning.

- Squires GOES NATIVE! Before going into the tea house, I walk slightly downslope and pee. I don't think about this, it has become as natural as tossing banana peels out the window or drinking the water which is set in front of me at the local roadstop food joints. I've truly gone native. (Navneet rightly points out after I wrote this that "going native" in this manner is not something of which to be proud. After all, I should be setting a good example for these folks.)

- I learn while driving that Bhupen likes to lead treks and I ask him if he wants to climb to the top of one of the mountains around the Sela Pass. He is agreeable and we set off taking 45 minutes to reach the top. We are able to walk mostly on rock but occasionally we are forced to walk through snow. Bhupen is wearing running shoes and comments after we get down that his shoes are cleaner than they have ever been. They warned me the previous day that there was snow in Tawang so I am wearing my boots and the snow did not bother me. I found myself having to slow near the top (we are, after all, above fourteen thousand feet!) It was great to get a short workout. I was even able to get in my traditional headstand at the top of the mountain, although Bhupen had to be pretty quick with the camera to catch the pose.

- After descending through 10,000 feet, we began to see villages again, along with the terraced slopes and fields that accompany the villages. Bhupen says that most people who live in villages still work in the fields and the entire economy is very agricultural. Millet, maize, barley are grown here and most goes to make wine, which struck me as extremely odd since all the “Wine” shops carry at most 2 or 3 different types of wine. Perhaps Dirang is full of winos? (I later learn the reason. All the wine produced with millet and rice is for local consumption only, meaning the individual famlies brew their own, to be consumed by the families.

- Women form the bulk of the workforce doing maintenance on the roads. We often see a couple women beside a large pile of rocks, patiently hammering large rocks in order to make one inch sized gravel that is used for the road beds. Many of the women are quite beautiful and when I look at them, they start to giggle. They almost all love to have their pictures taken. I take a photo of a group of six women taking a rest, they swarm over the camera when I display the resulting photo and then offer me some of their snack food.

- We stop at Jung village for lunch, and the dried fish is delicious. Saw Ramona and Michline. A jeep of pilgrims arrives. They are very colorful, I take several pictures and before I know it, one of them is thrusting a pimply bead into my hands, saying it has special powers and asking for money. Bhupen comes up and is trying to herd me back into our vehicle.

- Arrived in Tawang about 5PM and check emails. Previously agreed to meet Ramona and Micheline for dinner at 7PM. Streets are dark but find my way to the Tawang Inn where they are staying. They upgraded their room and have a parlour, in which we have our dinner. The hotel staff come by about 7:50 with candles and matches and warn us that the power is scheduled to go out at 8PM. We finish the meal by candlelight, not a bad thing! We chatted till close to 10PM. I had previously checked at my hotel and they lock the gate at 10PM so it is important that I get back on time.

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Mar 2

- Bhupen knows he is in the dog house for being late again and I believe he is chewing out Radju for not being available at the agreed hour. He sets me up in the tea house opposite our hotel. He is trying to be extra helpful, in this instance by carrying my pack from the hotel to the coffee house.

- Go to monastery and get pictures inside gonpa (main monastery building) and along narrow walkways between dwellings. Only males stay here, the youngest is eight. It is customary for the middle son in families with three sons, to become a monk, entering the monastery at age eight. Take a picture of the monastery's secretary (did not realize this at the time, but Lungtan tells us when he sees the picture). The secretary is carrying a pail of wash water, as though he is going to mop the floor. The abbot of the monastery is away in Daram Sala meeting with the Dali Lama. One of monks, Lungtan, invites us into his “house” for tea. He has a stunning view of the Tawang valley from his back porch. When I mention this to him, he smiles, laughs and then says that he has been here for ten years and is bored of the view. He makes tea and gives us some sort of fried dough that is left over from Losar (their new year which finished a few days ago).

- Lungtan offers to take us to see the morning prayers at 5:30 tomorrow. He says he will also cook us breakfast. I try to impress upon Bhupen that he MUST be ready to go at 5AM! I don’t want to miss a chance to get a first hand look behind the scenes at the monastery because someone can’t get up in the morning.

- Power is intermittent throughout the afternoon. During one of the on times, I have a bucket shower. I have a small water heater in my bathroom that makes just enough hot water, except that the air is bloody cold in the afternoon. Ramona, Micheline and I all feel extremely cold, despite the fact that it is above freezing. Perhaps this is due to no heat in our hotel rooms? I suppose “no heat” is a slight exageration, Most rooms do have a single radiant heater than claims to put out 400 watts. However, I find these to put barely a dent in the cold and besides, the power is off half the time.

- I have seen zero begging here. Ramona has lived over 30 years in Delhi and said that begging is syndicated in India. The beggars give their money to the equivalent of the “mob” and in return, the “mob” looks after them. Part of this syndication is each beggar has a specific territory they are to work and you can see this in action when they are hassling you for money and you cross certain streets, they do not follow. Perhaps it is not worthwhile to organize begging outside the large centers and that is why we don't say it?

- Try to look up weather for Tawang at the cyber café but I find only general information, like, “Weather in Tawang is cold in winter and rainy during monsoon“. I think I've stuck gold with a link to, “All India Weather”, but the date of July 2005 is not that useful for me. I guess it will be some time before the major weather websites carry weather for Tawang.

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Mar 3 - Monastery Breakfast

- Bhupen and Radju are ready to go at 5AM! Hurray! Lungtan has his brother, Rinchin, over to help with cooking breakfast. Lungtan ushers us through his kitchen into his bedroom, which is 8 feet square, having a bed on each side. Curtains are used in the doorways to separate between rooms. In addition to two beds, there is a tiny table between the beds, a triangular shelf in one corner, a shelf over the doorway and a shelf against the wall between the two beds. This last shelf contains a cell phone, which Bhupen starts playing with, looking at stored songs, pictures, etc. I am amazed that Bhupen would pick up something so personal and start perusing. I ask him about this and he says people here won’t mind. Bhupen finds a song he likes and transfers it across to his own phone. Bhupen plays the song on Lungtan’s cell phone and to my amazement, a video image accompanies the music. Bhupen tells me the song and video are from Bollywood. The fact that I am seeing, for the first time, video on a cell phone owned by a monk who lives in one of the most inaccessible places on earth, and whose earthly possessions would fit into a box two feet by two feet by two feet, I find absolutely hilarious. I, chief strategist at a fortune 500 company located in Silicon Valley, have never seen video on a cell phone before. (This says as much about my myopic focus at work as it does about the pervasiveness of cell phone technology.)

- There are a couple of small trunks on the shelf above the door. Since this is a double room, I suppose that each monk is allowed to have one trunk’s worth of belongings. Lungtan is always smiling and laughing, perhaps there is something to the simplistic way of life that these monks live.

- Bhupen, Radju and I leave Lungtan and Rinchin to complete making breakfast while we check out morning prayer. I am concerned that we will be disturbing the monk’s prayer but Bhupen confirms with a monk at the entrance to the prayer hall that it is OK for us to take pictures and use flash. After removing our shoes, we spend about 45 minutes moving around the perimeter of the prayer hall in a clockwise direction (always move in a clockwise direction around Buddhist holy places). All the while, the head monk (Lungtan told me the official name, something like oomsee) is chanting and the monks are gently swaying. After some time, young monks, probably ten years of age, walk up and down the aisles of sitting monks and distribute food. The whole thing is a moving experience and I’m glad we were allowed to witness it.

- We return to Lungtan’s spartan dwelling and he soon serves us breakfast on the tiny table in his bedroom. It consists of bali (a round flat bread, similar to chapatti), curried potato slices (their equivalent to French fries), a chickpea dish and of course, chai (milk tea). It was quite spicy, very tasty and left me quite full.

- After breakfast, I sit with Lungtan and Rinchin on their covered balcony and show them pictures that I have taken around the monastery. They laugh and giggle as they see people they know. They really howl when they see a friend asleep during morning prayer. I then show them a few pictures I brought from my travels around the US and the rest of the world. They have not traveled but are relatively knowledgeable about the rest of the world and are eager to see more.

- When Lungtan learned that we will leave tomorrow, he asks if he might catch a ride with us, and says that in return, he could show us some of the traditional dress used in his village. We agree and will see him tomorrow at 8:30AM.

- During this time, it was snowing lightly, and the mountains are white down to within a few hundred feet of where we are. Lungtan tells us that if Sela pass is closed when we try to go through tomorrow, we are welcome to come back to his village, Jung, to stay with his parents.

- I have a parcel and some DVDs containing my photos that I want to post back to the US. We go to the post office, only to find there is a single person authorized to make international shipments and he has not yet shown up at work and no-one knows when or if he will turn up. We go back an hour later and fortunately he is there. He takes one look at the parcel and then jabbers something to Bhupen, telling him that we need to get some wax. Bhupen goes to buy some red sealing wax sticks. When he returns, the three of us go to a back room and “postie” lights an ancient kerosene lamp (It's more like a tin can containing a wick). Postie then holds one of the wax sticks over the open flame and when it is gooey, deposits a blob on some of the tape holding my parcel together. He then presses a special seal into the soft wax, leaving an impression. In this way, he puts 15 wax seals around my parcel. This operation takes about 20 minutes. Then on to the ancient scales to weigh my parcel. It is straight out of a Dickens novel. I am also surprised after buying stamps for post cards, to see postie apply glue to the back of the stamps and stick them to my post cards. I am so used to licking the back of stamps, that this caught me off guard. I can say that our pre-glued stamps are a huge improvement over those that require glue to be applied.