It has been a long few days since I last wrote here.

Excuse the long post, but here’s my epic in three parts.

Part I: Against my instincts

The first day we entered Bhagsu, Tristan Adam and I were handed a flyer by a local man advertising a three-day “Trance Party in the Jungle.” Scoffing, we joked about going. Not being a fan of techno, contact dance or glowsticks, the event seemed to me like a loud open-air prison.

So, after a few day we had all but forgotten about the rave..

Thursday, about an hour after Tristan and I had returned from breakfast, Adam burst into the room. He was excited.
He said quite a few people were going to this party and going would advance our story. So, Tristan and I reluctantly, but hurriedly head out with little more than a a camera and a flashlight to find out more.

We have two hours to prepare for the event which promises tents and sleeping arrangements, music and a daily buffet.

Looking around to see how many people are going we fight our first instinct, which is “stay the hell home, this is clearly a scam.”

Waffling, the whole time, it takes us up until the last taxi is loaded to decide to go. After running all over town we literally jump on the last vehicle as its preparing to leave.

We have with us a sleeping bag and one liner, stupid looking stocking caps and dumb medieval-looking linen shirts, two bottles of whisky, a flashlight, a camera and some toilet paper.

Stomachs churning our SUV-style chariot embarks.

Part II: The path to hell…

Despite being packed into a car like sardines, the ride to the “party” is delightful, I’m crammed into the car next to two Israelis and another American journalist. We have polite conversation for the three-hour ride up the mountains.
Along the way, I see some of the most beautiful mountain terrain I’ve ever had the pleasure of viewing, nothing short of spectacular.

Along the way locals wave, along rural mountain roads.

As evening falls we arrive in a small town situated on a Himalayan stream.

We leave the town on a small path formed by years of donkey and goat travel up steep grades and over rocks. After about an hour, we walk through a genuinely rural Indian hamlet, no roads and very little electricity just brick and slate homes surrounded by farms and hills.

The townspeople line the path waving and greeting us with “namaste” and hallo.
In short, I was left amazed at how they managed to be so happy with so little.

Really excited for the first time, we trek onwards for another hour, as night falls completely.

Part III: One hell of a party…

We finally arrive in pitch-black night.

In front of us there’s a pile of dirty mattresses in a cow patty-covered field buttressed by thorny brambles. There are no tents, no lights and certainly no dj.

There is a dj booth and a couple of speakers, but here we find ourselves surrounded by about 100 people speaking languages we don’t understand, tearing down everything they can find to start a fire.

The promised buffet on arrival? This  consists of a group of shepards crouched in a corner cutting onions and ttomatoes and throwing them into a pot on top of a pit fire.

After building a small fire of our own, which attracts a decent crowd, we eat shepard stew. It for some reason tastes of wasabi.

For some ongodly reason, however, our fire is the one which attracts all the Indian men. This group includes a number of rumored undercover police officers.

Smoke and laughter drift from all the fires around us.

We, however are surrounded by people speaking heated Hindi while we sip our whiskey.

By now its midnight, we’re trying to falll asleep. We just want to make it to morning and leave this place.
The Indian men keep sitting on my feet, flashing lights in our faces and yelling at each other feet away from us.

Eventually our fire starts to die and we give up. We move our mattresses to the front of the valley, away from most other people, which proves to be the best decision we’ve made all night.

Here we don our stupid hats, genie shirts a scarf and wrap ourselves in pieces of fabric we bought along the way. To keep warm Tristan and I are forced to sleep back-to-back under the one sleeping bag we have in the middle of a shit-strewn field somewhere in the middle of the Himilayan mountains.

Here, you’d think things couldn’t get much worse, right?

Well, around 2 or 3 maybe 4 after finally falling into a shivering sleep we are awoken by about 30 Indian police officers bearing sticks, flashlights and  guns streaming past us into the cow patty and bramble meadow. Tristan and I just kind of stay still and they roll past us.

Tristan is facing the rest of the camp and can see them rousting and searching everyones bag.

So, we’re laying there ass-to-ass in a field, in the mountains, in northern india, dressed like assholes with a cadre of Indian police officers feet from us. But, for reasons which will forever remain a mystery we are not bothered by the police other than the occasional flashlight glare.

We wake up at 6 a.m. to see that the police have not only taken the dj equipment, but as if to add insult to injury, have flipped the table over.

One giant scam.

We make back to the larger town after a starved buhtan-style march through the mountains and a crowded taxi ride back we’re back.

Here’s a picture Tristan took along the way, check out his blog for more.

Worried and dressed like an idiot on the road to hell

After climbing countless stairs and taking a few death-defying rickshaw rides, we have found a place to lay our heads.

We are staying at Paul’s Guest House in Dharamkot a town perched on the side of a Himalayan foot hill. From afar it resembles a small Swiss hamlet. Closer it becomes an obviously Indian town.

Misspelled signs dominate the open markets and dusty roads. There exhists a major difference here, however.

For every sign in English or Hindi there is one in Hebrew. As a direct result of the influx of Israeli travelers here many of the locals speak all three languages.

It serves as an interesting backdrop for the new-age mentality that seems to dominate the place.

Just last night, after dining in neighboring Bhagsu — also an Israeli dominated berg — I sat on the steps of our guest house awaiting a glass of freshly squeezed mango juice. The sounds of a flute and tabla music cascaded off the hills to compliment the slightly smoke flavored mountain air to create an almost mystic feeling.

Contrast this with the large barking, ostensibly feral, dog that continues to enter the Internet Cafe from which I currently write. Now, add hundreds of spirituality-seeking tourists talking about energy and then, perhaps, you’ll get a feel for the place.

For pretty photos of the past few days, check out Tristan’s blog.

After a fourteen hour, arctic air-conditioned bus ride through crowded Indian streets and precarious Himalayan mountains, Adam Tristan and I have arrived in McLeod Ganj.

Since Sunday our days have been filled with banana pancakes, apartment hunting, billions of stairs and squat toilets.
McLeod is different from Delhi in just about every possible way.

There still remains a subdued aura of dusty Indian filth, and the few vehicles honks incessantly. Otherwise the place is serene, peaceful and in some places quiet, even by western standards.

The city surrounds the Dalai Lama’s temple. It attracts travelers from around the world. This adds an interesting dynamic to the city, in which Indians seem to be a minority.

Western tourists in flowing pants and Ohm bearing t-shirts roam the streets among monks in exile wearing bright robes and brand named shoes.

Further up the hill the bohemians live. In Bhagsu they stay, making handicrafts and — rumor has it — smoking hash.
Our story is up the hill, and we’ve spent days trekking up uneven stairs and steep hills to try to find an apartment.

Here we hope to fashion a war room with a kitchen, beds, desks and even a western-style toilet.

In the meantime, we’re climbing hiking and searching for a place that suits us.

Tristan, Adam and I planned on leaving Delhi today for Dharamshala in a deluxe Volvo bus. But, we have to settle for leaving tomorrow in a Tata “air conditioned” bus.

The bus station is hard to describe.

It’s a large, dim cavernous building with tall ceilings and skylights. Though the architecture suggests it was was erected in the early 70′s, its walls are a crumbling, lead paint-covered relic of some bygone era. They are caked in every sort of detritus Delhi has to offer, which I’m learning, seems to be limitless. The station has an open design with three floors. The main floor is dominated by an atrium which reaches the roof.

To call it an atrium or open is generous, as the building resembles a catacomb more than a work of modern architecture.

The whole thing is beautifully lit by skylights, through which large sheaths of light catch the dust to become crooked columns. These supply the only brightness for a market area in the center of the place. Here you can buy anything from shoes to street food.

It rained earlier in the day and to get to the ticket counter, which is on the second floor we had to navigate a series of swamps rivers and ponds. This is made more complicated by little squeegee totting cave dwellers which appear to be hell-bent on spreading the trash strewn water targeting already dampened shoes.

After securing tickets, Tristan and I took a gastronomic gamble on some samosas which were spicy, crusty and delicious.

My bag went in red and emerged the color of the Delhi’s burnt clay streets.

In short I feel a bit like I did some urban spelunking.

Check out pictures at Tristan’s blog.

We’re official! Well, that is according to our swanky new business cards.

Yesterday, Tristan, Adam and I braved the 115 degree heat — hot even by Indian standards — to wrap up a couple of errands.

We went to the computer market in Nehru Place, near Adam’s house. Here are some photos:

As the sweltering evening wore into sultry night we visited the South Asia Foreign Correspondents Club.

It was an interesting mix of professional journalists and photographers, thrown together by their common experience. It was encouraging to see so many successful journalists working in Delhi. It helped underscore that it is certainly possible to support one’s self in India as a freelancer.

It’s definitely going to take a lot of work. I’m looking forward to getting started in earnest.

Last night Tristan, Nalis, Adam and I struck out for a night on the town. We were on the list for F Bar, owned by FashionTV here in Delhi.

The bar is located in the base of a 5-star hotel and was playing host to a French cover band. The dirt-rockers played a mix of English and  French Rock and Roll to the most culturally diverse crowd I’ve ever seen.

Sikhs with gray beards and colorful turbans mixed with hopping Europeans and young Indians in shiny clothing. The bar was a long flat florescent light and LED’s sparkled on the walls. The sweaty band hammered out tributes to the Rolling Stones and Buddy Holly.

After days of walking the dusty street markets and mingling with the country’s lower casts it was interesting to see how India’s elite partied. It seemed a parody of everything sheik in the west.I imagine the bars at Euro Disney are much the same. We weren’t sure we wanted to stay.

After some deliberation we decided to let the drink prices decide our fate. In a country where a night in a decent guest house costs Rp150 ($3 US), a Heineken with glycerin at F Bar costs Rp450 ($9 US).

We decided to leave.

On our way out of the hotel we passed a traditional Indian wedding. I’m fairly certain it was in the reception phase at this point, but we were invited in. A kind gentleman explained he was a colleague of the bride’s father grabbed us and encouraged us to have a bite to eat. He handed us fruit drinks, telling Adam and Tristan to snap as many photos as they pleased.

Apparently it’s common for people to crash weddings in India. Here another guest is considered a blessing not a burden.

Today, was a different story.

The local expats have a name for this story, Delhi belly.

I won’t go into detail, but i took a picture to summarize my day:

At 110 dusty degrees Delhi is a cacophony of smells.

Leaving Adam’s place, there’s the sweet dusty scent of the neighborhood streets, then the stale hint of urine near the corner men have arbitrarily chosen to evacuate their bladders.

Onwards, the unique aroma of a spice market mixes with the already hot musk of an Indian afternoon.

There’s the diesel fumes of gas-powered electric generators in the nicer markets, and the cilantro flavored scent of street vendors carts.

The camera market’s air is flavored slightly by musty mud, while the tailors’ market smells of moth eaten fabrics and antiques.

Then, standing above and beyond the rest, the meat market looms like a reeking, rotten sheep’s head. The combination of fish, tripe and fetid pools of stagnant blood combine with dried chicken carcasses and that of larger, more pungent animals to send the stomach throatward. The already thick Delhi air, is turned abjectly foul and escape is found only in the clothes vendor’s Nag Champa.

Never have I been so happy to smell the dorm-room sweetness of cheap incense.

Now, my first slideshow for your pleasure:

Tristan and I, with the help of Adam, went on a mission to set up our phones yesterday. I’m proud to report, we were successful.

Prepaid cellphone service in India costs about 1 rupee per minute. That’s 2 American cents. So, with the cost of activating a sim card good through 2012 (the purported end of the world) with 599 minutes of talk time, including free Airtel to Airtel calls was Rp600.

That’s around $12 American for those keeping score.

To get cell phone service in India as a foreigner feels a little bit like applying for a visa to Iran. You’re required to present a passport sized photo and your passport with a photocopy of your visa and picture pages.

You present these to the semi-confused cell phone store employees. They work as a team to activate the SIM card. You sign your name a million times and voila, a phone that works in India!

My first full day in Delhi was a study in contrasts.

Striking out with Tristan and my new friends, Adam and Nalis, I experienced my first taste of “real India.”

To get around we rode the city’s shiny new metro, which easily rivals any other notable subway. It’s cleaner than New York, quieter than Munich and more high-tech than D.C..

Exiting at Chawri Bazaar, a large teeming series of markets on dusty streets around Jama Masjid, India’s largest Mosque. There, the streets were crowded with bicycle powered rickshaws, mud caked motorcycles and Indians out for an errand. Goats, cows and dogs ate scraps out of trash piles while monkeys climbed the incomprehensible tangle of power lines. It’s easy to see why power outages are such a large problem here.

We were the only visibly identifiable Westerners in the area. Every block scores of people would shout “Hallo” to try to grab our attention. Children in tattered clothes grabbed our arms asking for food money.

Back to the glimmering subway. We rode to the end of the line for a glimpse of real irony. First came the slum, a clutter of makeshift houses topped with tarps, bags and blocks. Poor people stacked on top of each other, sometimes literally in ramshackle two story construction of other people’s trash. Then a large stream of open sewage. Lastly, butting against the river of excrement, is the U.N. World Health Organisation’s building.

Shortly thereafter, our airconditioned metro slid quietly back underground.

After tickets, shots, flights, beer and countless hours of work, colleague and friend, Tristan and I made it into New Delhi.

A little too sick to elaborate much, but a collaborative slide show is in the works.

I’m looking forward to exploring a city I plan to call home.