Diwali

Travel Journal Excerpt, November 27, 2006:

Occuring this year on October 21, Diwali is one of the biggest festivals in India. Celebrated by Hindus, Sikhs, and maybe even others, it is a family holiday involving feasts and many firecrackers. "The festival of lights" it is a symbol of good triumphing over evil and houses are dressed in lights and candles until it looks a lot like Christmas. Although Diwali itself is a specific day, it is celebrated over a whole week and is much more complex that I know. For me personally, Diwali meant that I had an entire week off from class and therefore was free to travel.

After weeks of planning, the students in my program had divided themselves into three traveling groups. One group of nine stayed in Uttaranchal, choosing to travel northwest up from Mussorie for a week long trek to Milam Glacier in the high Himalaya.

Another group of eight elected to head out of the mountains and west into Rajastan where they went to Jaipur and the desert city of Jaisalmer from where they took a day trip riding camels into the Thar Desert of western India.

The third group consisted of myself. I had long before come up with three places in northern India wanted to visit during the program, on weekends or during some time off. This list contained the Punjabi city of Amritsar, Dharamsala in Himanchal Pradesh and Rishikesh in my home state of Uttaranchal. During my week off, I avoided other people's attempts to tag along with me and went to the first two places on the list. (If you are worried that I might not get to every city on the list, you should know that I'm writing this during my last night in Rishikesh.)

A friend I met through couchsurfing.com last spring was traveling through Europe, Egypt and as I found out the day before I left, had been in Delhi visiting a friend of hers for the past two weeks. I emailed her that I was coming to Delhi for a day and we decided she should travel with me for the week.

Leaving Friday afternoon, I took a few hour ride in the back of a crowded jeep down to Kathgodam where the nearest train station is. Even though I was a little car sick coming out of the winding mountain roads, I felt liberated to be rid of the pressures of school and intoxicated by the freedom of traveling alone again.

My night train arrived in Delhi very early in the morning and I found myself in a bad part of town outside Old Delhi train statiom before the sun came up. After fighting off a crazed mongrel dog that appeared out of a dark hole under an overpass I found that some people in Delhi begin their day as early as I did this day. I sat down and enjoyed a cup of tea slowly, trying to kill time as I was supposed to meet Hala at noon in the middle of the city.

The new, and incredibly clean, subway system opened at 6 and I took a train south towards a guesthouse in which I had stayed before. After checking in and taking short nap, I got up and headed out to meet Hala where we had agreed, stopping to grab some pastriesfor breakfast. While I waited I paged through my Hindi textbook and a man who came to offer me a taxi sat and talked with me a bid when he saw I was studying Hindi.

After he left to chase down more people to hawk his taxi business, I walked around and around the block on which I was to meet Hala, but she never appeared. Seeing me pass him a couple times, a man began questioning me on what I was doing and took me across the street for a snack. Finally I used a cabby's cell phone to call Hala and found out she was running late but on her way.

When she finally arrived, she, her friend, Ajay, and I walked around a bit until he had to go. I convinced her to come with me the next morning although she wanted one more day in Delhi and after a dinner at Pizza Hut (I know I know... American restaurant????... WTF?) listening to the pop and crack of 10 million people playing with fireworks, she headed back to her friend's place outside of town and I went back to my hostel.

Dodging the explosions the entire way and filling my lungs with the resulting smokethat filled the streets, I arrived at my dorm bed with a headache, and dehydrated from a long day in the sun with little water.

To make matters worse, I had taken a malaria pill after dinner but hadn't had any water to wash it down. When I layed down on my bed in the tent set up on a rooftop in Delhi, I was exhausted, my head pounded and my throat burned mercilessly.

Feeling too sick to actually get up and walk down to the street to find some bottled water, I allowed myself to drift into a light sleep. For hours that night, I lived in a painful and surreal world. Flashes of red and green filled the room as fireworks exploded outside my rooftop windows, while I lay in a stupor of exhaustion adn dehydration, too weak to attempt to remedy my situation. All sleep to be had came in short stints, interrupted by either a banging explosion from outside, or a painful one from inside my head or throat.

Finally and mercifully I found some form of deeper sleep and woke up the next morning more rested after double digit hours of sleep, but still dehydrated. My throat was sore in one distinct spot for days. Getting up and buying some water, I headed to the train station to meet Hala for the second full day of my week off for Diwali.



[Next stop... Amritsar, The Golden Temple, and the Ninja Turtles!]