Faces of Rajastan

Saddle-sore into the Sunset

India’s Thar Desert: hundreds of square miles of blistering wasteland. Two newlywed American tourists with milky complexions. Two fleet but feeble-minded camels afflicted with dystentery. The stage was set for an epic battle of man vs. beast.

Our trek on camelback through the Thar began in the ancient fortress city of Jaislmer. Over the next three days, we rode our smelly steeds over towering dunes, through thickets of six-foot cactus, and into isolated desert villages of straw and adobe. Along the way, we saw antelope, eagles, a plethora of superbly ambitious dung beatles, and a three foot monitor lizard, lurking in a village well.

The journey took to within a stone’s throw of the Pakistan border, and to the outer limits of the human groin’s endurance.

Sand-swept but triumphant, we returned to Jaisalmer, southbound to Gujerat.

Bright Lights, Pink City

The ancient Pink City of Jaipur is a desert metropolis, gateway to the vibrant state of Rajastan. By sheer luck we got a bicycle rickshaw-wallah at the Jaipur train station who was a real gem. Krishna was enthusiastic, tireless, and utterly guileless. His broken English was punctuated amusingly as we navigated the crazy city by random comments of “another, another [cow, camel, tourist, elephant, temple…].” He took us home to meet his baby girl Payal along with his wife and sister.

Then we all squeezed into a tuk-tuk (motor-rickshaw) and went to the Monkey Temple. The highlight for us was not the monkeys but the sacred bathing-ghat.

In another stroke of luck, we wandered that evening right into a parade for a Hindu guru. We were welcomed with open arms, and immediately swept up in the festivities. At one point, Michael found himself riding on the lead cart, seated next to a pair of sadhus.

We spent a pleasant few days wandering the streets and alleys of the Pink City, exploring vibrant bazaars, discovering neighborhood temples, and visiting the city’s impressive collection of Mughal palaces and forts.

A Diamond ln the Rubbish

Despite Agra’s deservedly awful reputation for scams, rip-offs and thieves, we couldn’t miss an opportunity to see the Taj Mahal. It lives up to its billing and then some, just as lovely in its tiniest details as in its majestic symmetry. (Susannah isn’t bad looking, either!)

As for the rest of Agra – well, it’s a little less grand…

The Holy City of Happiness

(photo credit to the inimitable Todd Moore)

Susannah: The first impression we got of Amritsar, sacred city of the Sikhs, was from a plump, jolly man in a turban who we met on the train coming into town. To celebrate our new friendship, he called a cousin in an upcoming town on his cellphone. When we hit the next station, the guy handed us a bottle of whisky as the train rumbled through.

A little disoriented (needless to say), we arrived in Amritsar after dark and hopped a bicycle rickshaw to the famed Golden Temple. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of people sleeping on the floors in the lobbies of the temple’s dormitories, where we intended to stay. We had come to town, it turns out, on the eve of the religion’s most important festival, celebrating the birthday of their last guru.

Miraculously, we got a room. The next day we stepped out the door right into an amazing parade featuring thousands of men and children in the full ceremonial dress of their sects.




At every turn we were greeted with broad smiles and outstretched hands. The Sikhs truly are some of the friendliest people in the world. After the parade, one of our new friends showed us around the temple complex. Every single day the temple feeds tens of thousands of people a simple but delicious free meal, which we thoroughly enjoyed.

All the food is made and served entirely by volunteers, such as this proud man who demanded I take his portrait as he distributed plates:

As you can imagine, food for that many people is made in enormous vats. The temple also owns the world’s largest chapatti machine!


With our spirits warmed and our bellies full, we reluctantly left the hospitality of the temple, on our way to another of India’s most magnificent religious monuments, the Taj Mahal.

You've Got a Friend in Buddha

Mike: We planned to visit McCleodganj, the home of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government in Exile, for a few days or a week at most. But as many travelers before us have found, it’s a hard place to leave. The setting is idyllic, the small community perched high on a wooded ridgeline above deep river valleys, with birds of prey soaring by and towering monsoon weather systems filling the panoramic horizon. But the real draw is the Tibetans themselves, and the rare chance to interact face to face with one of the world’s great cultural and religious traditions. As things turned out, we spent over a month in McCleod, teaching English to Tibetan refugees who had recently fled Chinese persecution in their homeland and studying Buddhist philosophy under some of the greatest teachers in the world today, including the Dalai Lama himself.

I should state, for the record and those who don’t know me, that I am not a new-age, spiritual pilgrim kind of dude. If the Age of Aquarius ever dawns, I won’t be at the party – I’ll be down the street, eating a steak and drinking Jack Daniels. But although full-moon festivals, séances and astrology aren’t my scene, I am fascinated by religious philosophy, and the 2,500 year old Buddhist tradition in particular. So my first morning in McCleod, I set off down the hill to the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives to attend their daily Tibetan Buddhist Philosophy class.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but I got more than I bargained for. The instructor at the library is Geshe Sonam Rinchen, a highly respected Tibetan scholar-monk with over a dozen books and decades of teaching behind him. Ruth Sonam, a highly accomplished scholar in her own right, translates his lectures into English. The lectures themselves were stunningly erudite, as philosophically complex and cogently presented as any academic talk I’ve heard in the West. Geshe’s presence, though, was what made the experience remarkable. Despite his advanced age, his warmth and energy easily fills the room. The next morning, Susannah joined me. We kept going back.

After our morning classes at the library, we spent the days getting to know the community. We befriended a Tibetan family running a hole-in-the-wall café, refugee monks, a lively group of long-term resident expats, and the members of a local band called The Exile Brothers (Himalayan folk and rock fusion, with Rage Against the Machine-inspired lyrics).

In the evenings, we volunteered as English tutors at a school for young refugees. Time and again, we found ourselves amazed at the warmth and good humor of people who have endured imprisonment, torture, and the loss of friends, family and homeland.

At the suggestion of a few friends, we decided to enroll in a ten-day introductory Buddhist meditation course at the nearby Tushita Meditation Center, a place I now affectionately call Buddha Camp. It was, without a doubt, an interesting experience. We spent the ten days in silence, attending a mixture of classes on Buddhist theology and meditation sessions. Not talking for ten days is, in and of itself, an educational experience. It’s amazing how much mental energy and time one wastes blabbing about nothing all day, and you don’t realize it until you shut your yap for a while, as my mother would say. Susannah and I both found the meditation helpful as well.

As I talked with more and more exiled Tibetans, I began to get a feel for the challenges and uncertainties faced by the refugee community. With the Chinese firmly in control and continuing to eradicate Tibetan culture in their homeland, and their leader the Dalai Lama ageing, there is an increasing sense that the movement for a free Tibet is running out of time. After His Holiness leaves the scene, Tibetans will be without a clear leader, and it will be years before the 15th Dalai Lama is old enough to assume the role. Meanwhile, Beijing will be free to increase Chinese settlement in Tibet via the new railroad to Lhasa, and continue its campaign to subsume the Tibetan identity through repression and state-run education. While this seems like a victory for the Chinese, it may lead to disaster for Chinese and Tibetans alike. Younger Tibetans inside the country and in exile are growing increasingly impatient with the Dalai Lama’s commitment to non-violence, and there is fear that once he has passed, there will no longer be anyone in the Tibetan community with enough moral authority to ensure continued restraint. If China doesn’t reach an acceptable agreement with the Dalai Lama in his lifetime, it looks from here as though the result may well be a guerilla war on the roof of the world.