And on the Sixth Day... (pt. 2)

Well Didsbury Mosque has been in the news this week. Did I tell you I used to live opposite Didsbury Mosque? Guess I wouldn't have mentioned it, no real reason to. It was before they had open days, so I never visited. Barely noticed it was there, apart from Fridays when the street was full of cars. The mosque was doing its Burton Road thing and I was doing mine.

Manchester is ace. I wasn't going to write anything for fear of seeming a grief jumper but I sort of couldn't not.

Once upon a time, I was travelling down the Oxford Road when the whole bus - both decks - spontaneously broke into Maggie May. That's the Manchester I remember, so seeing St Anne's Square spontaneously Oasisise, that made me feel warm and fuzzy. You can add to that the homeless heroes, the Sun boycott, Dan Hett's joke and the general cross-community pulling together that's being reported. It makes this grumpy, old cynic remember the wide-eyed twenty something that desperately wanted to be a part of that city.

Anyway...

Since I've been in Delhi, the Number 1 sight to see (according to Trip Advisor) has been Gurudwara Bangla Sahib. I found this odd as I hadn't heard of it - it doesn't have the international cache of a Red Fort or an India Gate. But then neither does Akshardham and Akshardham is brilliant with its garish, OTT, Disney vibe. Maybe noone has heard of it because the name is too long and my simple English speaking ears just can't comprehend all those syllables.

It was alright. If you stumbled across it you'd think it was ace with its golden ceiling and its domes and its cormorant doing its business in the holy water that people were drinking (some religious idiosyncrasies are weird, aren't they?). It would probably make my Delhi Top 20 but Number 1 is a whole heap more hype than it should have.

Whilst we're talking about religious places with overlong names, I also visited Hazrat Nizam-ud-din Dargah. That would probably feature higher up my recommendation list, although admittedly more for the uncomfortable, juxtaposed weird than the end spectacle. You go into a really local market, then walk barefoot through an intimidating, winding tunnel of beggars before it opens out into the flower-scented religious complex.

I Can't Believe It's Not Butlin's

So I went to Dharamshala. That's a bit of an overstatement. My exposure to Dharamshala was limited to ten minutes of traffic jam caused by someone being selfish / ignorant (standard Indian traffic jam). I actually went to McLeod-Ganj which is where people go when they say they're going to Dharamshala.

Even that's a bit of an overstatement. My McLeod-Ganj was limited to getting my Buddhist on. I went to the Dalai Lama's temple. I can't help but feel a bit let down, I was kinda expecting one of the most important buildings in Tibetan Buddhism to seem more spiritual and less like a cheap, sixties holiday camp (to be fair, most of McLeod-Ganj had a similar vibe. The only building which didn't scream sixties holiday camp was Chorten, a pretty Buddhist temple, outside which they were selling scream masks). Still, I got my pilgrim on, walked the Kora circuit, span a few prayer wheels, smiled at some monks and then headed higher up into the hills.

Where I actually ended up was Upper Bhagsu. A backpacker village creeping between the pine trees and into the mountains. It was so backpacker, with its Reiki healing and its tabla lessons and its stinky-dreadlocked-acousticguitars. Off the top of my head I can't think of anywhere more backpacker. It made San Pedro look like Copiapo (that's the second callback of the post; that's selfindulgent even by my standards).

But don't get confused and go to Bhagsu and expect the backpacker treatment. Hell no. It's like Puri, another one of those places where different tourists colonise different bits. One hundred metres downhill and Bhagsu is entirely for Indian tourists. By which I mean eighteen-thirties men who are away from home for the first time so have drunk a little bit too much Old Monk.

Upper Bhagsu; falafels and homeopathy. Lower Bhagsu; Szechuan noodles that have been toned down so they're not too spicy. Both are smelly in their own way, I recommend not leaving the Vashnu Mata Temple between the two. You get to walk up a lion mouth staircase - who doesn't love that?

Oh and here's a bonafide travel tip. If you are in Bhagsu, don't eat in Nex Cafe. Worst food I've had in India. And that's coming from a man who once ate a Domino's.

Go Cricket!

I did the crickets. I thought I should see what all the fuss is about. It was one of those fancy IPL ones where all the teams have very silly names.

Turns out the crickets is mainly about sweating. It's definitely sweatier watching the crickets than it is playing.  Admittedly I have never played the crickets in 40+ heat, so I don't really have an appropriate control sample for my experiment.

Apparently some of the crickets that I saw were famous. Which is nice. I saw a Chrisgayle, which seems to be like a normal cricket but much bigger. A colossus amongst sparrows. And there was no doubting that the crowd love the Viratkohlis even more than they enjoy holding cardboard in the air and cheering at fanfares.

The whole experience was kinda experiencey. We were in the cheap seats which mainly means that: a. You spend the whole time sweating, and b. If you stand up, someone is standing on your seat next time you want to it down.

Judging by the crowd the Viratkohlis definitely won. The Crickets came second. Not sure who came third.

Centurian?

So with last weekend's trip I can claim membership to the Traveler's (sic) Century Club. For those of you that don't know this is a "club" for those people that have "been" to a hundred "countries". I don't know much more about it than that.

What I do know is that they have a broad definition of what going somewhere means - they accept changing planes - and an even broader definition of what constitutes a country - Balaerics anyone? From that and the way they spell "traveller" I'm prejudging that it's a club I don't want to be a member of.  

I've not been to a hundred countries. By my definition (it was a distinct visit to see something; the country is in Sporcle's "Countries of the World" quiz) I'm in the mid-eighties, which I don't think is too shabby. By the far more stringent Eldad rules (two full weeks, including two days in the capital city; the country is universally recognised as a country by all UN member states) I'm on the somewhat shabbier sixteen.

Leh Lady Leh

So Ladakh left me breathless. Not so much the scenery (although them there Himalayas are pretty spectacular), more the altitude. Every other time I've been somewhere so high I've travelled by road so had some time to acclimatise, flying into high places makes the altitude thing a bit more pronounced. Climbing a flight of stairs leaves you puffed. With this in mind you're supposed to spend your first Leh day resting; I waited a full two hours before climbing the biggest hill in town.

Leh is kinda weird. It's real touristy, but not that in-your-face about it. And once you're off the main drag there are winding lanes full of local people doing local things: baking shirmal in underground ovens, or - in the case of the cynical sheep - being a cynical sheep.

I timed my visit wrong. I was a couple of months early. The passes connecting Leh to the rest of the world had only just opened (as I was leaving they were celebrating the arrival of the first onions of the season, fresh off the Srinigar lorry) so the tourist industry hadn't really kicked off - maybe that's why it wasn't so in-your-face.

On the second day I got out of town and had a bit of an explore of the Indus Valley. They love a monastery here. I went to monasteries at Hemis, tucked away in the mountains at the top of a ridiculously picturesque road, and Thiksey, a maze of Tibetan buildings sprawling across a big, old rock. Well prayerflag.

As an aside, what is it with German bakeries? There were at least three in Leh and I've seen one in most towns across India. I've no problem with them, I just didn't really appreciate that German bakeries were a thing. Maybe it's just that any time I've been to Germany I've only eaten pork and had no real need for pastry products.