The Landour Cemetery

I love old cemeteries. And an abandoned cemetery set among pine trees and swirling, ghostly mists? Even better. This is the Landour Cemetery. It's on the road around the hill. You pass by the Four Shops and keep on walking left until you see it below you. Reasonably easy. The gate is locked up with wire, but that's no real impediment.



Walk along the old brick walls on the right, there's a crumbled spot where it's easy to scramble through. I hope I don't have to add that if you choose to do this, you'd best be respectful.



Everyone in Landour knows the cemetery, but there is remarkably little written about it. Well, at least on the Internet. Most of the graves here are of British soldiers. They came up here to take the cure in the cool mountain air, after contracting various tropical diseases in the lowlands. Some of them didn't make it.



Ah, here we go! The Internet Archive contains a very old document, complete with inscriptions from the headstones here. You can barely read them, these days.

1828— BOLTON, G., Captain. Inscription :—Sacred to the
memory of Captain George Bolton, H. C.'s 2nd European Regiment,
who after some months of painful suffering departed this life on the
13th of June in the year of the Lord 1828, aged 40 His virtuous
and amiable disposition rendered him generally beloved in life and
lamented in death This memorial is expected by his afflicted widow
as the last earthly tribute of affection and respect to an indulgent
and affectionate husband. Appointed as a lieutenant in 1804, a captain
in 1818. He was born at Dinapore in 1788 and served in Java.

1830— GRAHAM, J. R., Captain. Lueriptinn. Sacred to the
memory of John Richard Graham, Esq., late a Captain of the 5th
Regiment of Bengal Light Cavalry. This monument is erected by
his brother officers as a mark of their esteem and regard for the
character of one universally beloved for his many good and amiable
qualities. He died on the 30th day of May A. D. 1830, aged 29 years.

He was appointed cadet in 1817, lieutenant in 1819, captain in 1829. He
was the son of J. Graham of Barrock Loige, born 1800, and a relative of Sir J.
Graham. Bart.



Sacred to the memory of Major William Blundell, XI Dragoons, who was killed by falling with his horse on the south side of the Landour Hill, on the 12th November 1834, aged 54 years.

"It is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation that Jesus Christ came into the world to save us. In Him alone is our hope of salvation for this our dear brother, whose kind and affectionate heart endeared him as a son and as a brother, and whose departure hence is severely felt, and deeply mourned by his family and by many friends."



And how did William Blundell die?


"... A house called Newlands, which has been struck and burnt three
times by fire. The hill is said to contain a quantity of iron which attracts the
electric fluid.... A short time ago as Major Blundell was going to that very
house, Newlands, by some accident, his guuth (hill-pony) fell over the precipice,
and they were both dashed to pieces." This tomb is not now traceable and is
reproduced from Fiihrer's List. In the B. 0. it reads " falling with his Gkoont."
The 11th Dragoons are the present 11th (Prince Albert's Own) Hussars, who
were in India from 1819 to 1838.

(Reference: Wanderings of a Pilgrim: In Search of the Picturesque. (?)

Wanderings of a Pilgrim being a fascinating looking book by one Fanny Parkes, who spent twenty four years wandering the far East and writing about it.

However, although the Archive list of inscriptions says this is the reference, I can find nothing of the sort in the text Still worth a read. So, the mystery remains - who first reported on the unfortunate accident of Major Blundell's passing?



1835- RAISES, S. M.. Mrs. Sacred to the memory of Sophia Mary Raikes, the fondly beloved wife of Charles Raikes of the Bengal Civil Service. She departed this life on the 16th of April 1835, in the 19th year of her age.



Sad stuff, for sure. But, as final resting places go - this isn't bad, not at all. It's hard to express how happy I am that I found these inscription and now know who some of these people were. I have a habit at graveyards of looking at headstones and thinking, "I am very sorry, and I am thinking about you, and although you have been dead for a hundred and fifty years, give or take, well, I am sorry still."

They may have been awful people. But I do not know that.

I picked up some biscuit wrappers, found my umbrella, and continued my walk.

Landour, The Four Shops, The Language School

I ate this thali and I went up the hill to Landour again. I wanted to check out the Language School. The Landour Language School is world famous, and is used heavily by the American Fulbright progam. Instruction is conducted in Hindi, Pashto, and Urdu. Classes are either one-on-one or conducted in at most three person groups. I have dreams of coming up here to learn Hindi and finish off a book sometime in the near future. Still - it's intimidating. Talking to people at the Four Shops can fill a fairly average person with profound insecurity. So many young genius-types finishing up dissertations on Pashto poetry, research on the growth of business in Hyderabad, researching ancient Mughal art. Degrees from Harvard and Yale and Oxford. Me? Uh. I write about stuff I ate a lot. I can say "good food!" in Hindi if I'm feeling sharp.

I soon began talking to a small and extremely intense French woman. She was a photojournalist for some of the major news sources and had, of late, covered the Indian tsunami, Pakistani flooding, and a variety of assorted combat zones. For some reason, she took a shine to me. I asked her why she was at the school.

"I need to learn enough Hindi to yell DON'T SHOOT, mostly," she said.

We talked about travel, about my impending journalism career. To my relief, she seemed positive about it, or at leas t my odds of continued survival. As well as my idea of taking classes at the school.

"Your breed....no, you're not the typical American. That's a good thing. Everything about you is quick, fast. It's your physiology. Sim, rapid eye movements. You seem very creative. You'll do well."

"I feel like I'm not smart enough to be with these people," I said, making a vague gesture towards the school.

"No, everyone's smart,in different ways. You know how to survive, and that's most important. Especially for a journalist - the quality of your work, okay, but the ability to survive, that's important. My paper sent us all up for military survival camp, recently. You should try it. You learn good things, useful things - if a gun is loaded, how to deal with political unrest, land mines, stuff like that. I didn't do chemical warfare though. Not this time."

"You seem like you've made it as a journalist. It's really nice to hear all this from someone like you."

"You say, "made it." That depends on how you define made it. I don't have two houses, or a ton of money, so to many people I haven't made it. But I'd rather be out here and seeing this huge world, I'd rather have that then two houses. So it's how you define "made it."

Isn't it always?



She had to go off to class. I followed her and snuck around the school's interior for a bit. Looked lovely. Chatted with a few students who all had glowing things to say. It isn't even that expensive. Maybe I can someday convince a company to pay for it. Yeah, that'll be the day.

I went for a walk since that's what you do in Mussorie. Landour really is a little-known and profoundly interesting UN of sorts. An Indian kid and an American kid from the Woodstock School, wandering up the hill behind me and arguing about video games. Bengali film stars (Hello, Victor Banerjee!).

There were three young guys sitting at the Tip Top Tea Shop, drinking chai and finishing off their lunches. They looked American - something about the plaid shirts - and one way or another, we got to talking.

"We're from Yale, all of us. I'm from Georgia, he's from Vermont, he's from Conneticut."
Turns out one of the guys was the brother of a girl who attended Simon's Rock at the same time I did, the 300 person and very esoteric "early college" in the Berkshires.


The four shops.

There's a tiny fraternity of Americans who travel and go abroad, who are comfortable there. I have stopped being amazed by the network, and by how interconnected we all seem to be. Almost every time I meet an American overseas, they know someone I know or are related to someone I know. In the most far-flung and small places, we share buoyant stories about the personality of So and So, or the time That Girl got wasted at a party and what she did after, or the particular qualities of restaurants and bars we both know and have frequented, and so on and so on. This is comforting, of course, but is also terrifically disconcerting. I think of it in terms of numbers. The USA has over 250 million people. India has over a billion. Why do we find each other? Why are we so interconnected?

The answer, I think, lies in privilege. There are billions of people in the world, but only a vanishingly small number have the means to both receive a fancy education, finish the fancy education, and then find one's self with enough money and free-time to amble off into the wilds for a bona-fide and old school adventure. There are very few of us indeed, and we are the luckiest of the earth. No, I've stopped being shocked by how interconnected we all are. We are part of the same small and terrifically exclusive club, and we only grow aware of this gradually, and with some amount of embarrassment. We cannot pretend we live in a meritocracy. We are beneficiaries of an accident of birth. In the Karmic view, perhaps we were good and just people in our previous lives. But I am no Hindu.


The lovely old church next to the Four Shops.

And what were they doing up here? One of the guys was in fact a relative of Stephen Alter, one of the big-time writers who resides up here, and they were residing at his place. "We're doing fishing outfitting, up here in Uttarkhand. Trout and the local fish. Totally untapped market. Of course, the monsoon isn't helping."

We had a very pleasant chat about nothing in particular. People we mutually knew. Places we'd been. Hipsters. Always, talking about hipsters. There was one brilliant revelation:

"I've always thought...you know, you could really sell these bhidis to hipsters."

"They're cheap, they're foreign, and they taste awful. Hipsters would lap them up."

"Yeah. They cost - what, a penny to make? You could get a shipload to the USA. Sell em' for three bucks a pack."

"You'd be rich."

"Of course, they mostly use child labor to make them. They're really tiny. Need tiny little hands."

"Yeah, I hadn't considered that angle. Well. Kids need jobs too."

"Yeah. You're helping the children!"

They had to shove off down the road, so I sat and got out my sketchbook. Just about lunch time.



I was trying to gain weight for my trek in Sikkim. Something about India seems to make me really skinny. I eat my brains out when I'm here, so not sure that it's *lack* of feeding. Thankfully, the Tip Top Tea Shop offers the perfect remedy in the form of twix bar pancakes. Normally the kind of food stuff this snob with a penchant for healthy eating would turn her nose up. But something about the elevation and the need to pack on a few pounds prior to walking 11 miles a day uphill converted me. I devoured these. This man is a pancake artist. Something about the sweet pancake, the crunchy rims on the side from the frying in butter, the oozing, delectable texture of the Twix bar lurking inside, how the cookie core gets all heated up. (This makes me sound like I am writing a dirty book. As does most food writing.

I ate my pancakes and the proprietors father, who had owned the shop before him (Sheila knows him) came up and politely asked me if I would draw a picture of him. So I did. Drawing is a fabulous icebreaker.

Victor Banerjee, the famous Bengali actor, came down here for his usual cup of tea and looked at me with what appeared to be extreme disapproval. Feel somewhat anointed. (I recall sitting next to him once in the internet cafe here and thinking about what a forceful typist he was. Like me, I admit).

I went up to Landour again the next day.

I walked around the hill again in lieu of anything better to do, and (naturally) I ran into Leon again. He had his video camera and was taping the trails. As always, he was more then happy to chat. I followed him for a while, a bit puppy-like I guess. "Ah, hey! Look over there," he said. He pointed at an old and falling apart house behind a gate, one I'd walked by a few times before and had never taken much notice of.



"Okay, come over here. You can't go inside here, not anymore, but back when I was a boy - this is Peace Cottage. This is where we lived. It was a missionaries retreat for a long time. They'd send the old bird nuns up here to recuperate or go on vacation." The fog was moving in, and we could barely see the white structure beyond. It was diplidated and looked very old. I think the mist and the wet here ages things terribly quickly, and moves quickly when it comes to returning things to the earth, again.

I peered through the gate - which wouldn't open - and thought of the scorpion cup and of the Partition. It was hard to imagine, this little white washed cottage with a mildew problem, living through all of this. But I could try.

"The one thing I want to photograph. Okay. It's a false horizon. It only occurs in two places in the world - here, and somewhere in Switzerland. It's when there's literally a second horizon, and the sun even goes down behind it. I saw it once here, in my junior year. It was like - like God had driven a golden spike into the center of the world. I thought, "Oh my god, someone has to get a photo of this." So that's my mission. Of course, it's nature photography. What do you do? You stake out. And you wait.

"I'll get it someday, I'm certain of it. Because, what does a good nature photographer spend most of his time doing?"

"Waiting," I said.

"That's right. You wait."

We walked for a few minutes more. He pointed out some ferns to me that were going yellow. "That's not good. It means they're going to die soon, and my pictures won't be as good - not like I remembered it. They're dying earlier and earlier these days."


Smoke on th' valley.

We ran into some friends of his - some California boys with Indian family who were studying at the Language School. And so I asked him more about his life. He'd been an accountant before, and then his wife had passed, and then he'd given his house to his son and came here. But, the in-between. He was happy to oblige.

"Well. After I left India, graduated, went to San Jose State for college. I played in a country western band in St. Helena. I taught music for a long time at San Jose state. Then I fell afoul of the administration, so I gave them the one fingered salute, and I went to Montana. I've done a lot of things in my life. I got married. I was a pumpkin, and she was a mouse. I was playing a Halloween party. That's how I met my wife. "

He had mentioned his late wife the first time I had met him. But there hadn't been details.

"We were going to come back here, for a Woodstock School reunion. To see the hills again. Then she got lung cancer, so we put it off for the next year. The year afte that, we wanted to go again, and then she was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. One more year, and she seemed better, and we started planning again. Then, breast cancer. We decided we couldn't plan any trips together, because they caused cancer. She always had a good sense of humor, like that."

"She didn't see the following year."



We turned a corner and there they were, the snows. The sun was just thinking about going down, and the rain had washed away the clouds and the haze. I took as many pictures as I could.

"My parents were missionaries, you know, and so I grew up an atheist in revolt."

(The sun going through the pine-trees. If there be paradise on earth).

I had my epiphany, as I remember. Before then I thought believing in God was a pretty silly thing. Then I'm out here, one night at Woodstock - i'm looking at the mountains, up at the stars, millions upon millions of them. And thinking, "Okay. Someone had to do this."

"Take that as you will."

"I agree," I said. And really meant it. This, the final allure and danger of the Himalaya. That it can turn you from a jaded and constantly irritated skeptic into an agape nature lover. Staring out at the view for days on end and gawping, and making comments about how astounding it all is.

It does make you wonder, why humanity is so specifically programmed. That mountain ranges and marvelous vistas move us on such a primal, elemental state. The mountains, especially. Down in lowland Bengal or in Florida, in the Cambodian river delta or in the Australian desert - wherever there are no mountains, people keep pictures of them on their wall and dream of going someday. Indian Buddhists placed Mt. Meru, the center of the world, in the Himalaya. It is only befitting.

Leon, too. A striking person. Another theme of this trip. Running into people whose spouses have passed, who have encountered an aspect of life I am too young to approach or know. A succession of them, all traveling after the deaths of their spouses, walking with no particular destination and talking to me because I am lucky. The references dropped in conversation are subtle and sad and make one consider the future, far-impending and far off This too myself in forty years or so, maybe, creaking and sleeping on budget-basement beds, thinking always of the person I have left irrevocably and inert behind me. Better then slipping into depression and inertia in a house full of mementos that gradually gather dust and cat piss. Better to go wandering again.

Mussorie: The Tibetan Monastary, the Dalai Lama's Abode, Trepidation!

The valley below the Mussorie Tibetan monastery.

I was discomfited that morning. I guess that's the word for it. The teachers were leaving that day, and I'd like them all very much. Their willingness to let me sneak into their social group for a couple of days was rather touching: that they told me a lot of useful stuff about expat life was even more so. And worrisome, really. Reality, sinking in. On this trip, I wasn't going home, was in fact staying in Asia, making a life for myself, beginning a career. It's something we all go through, us college graduates (yes, from first world privileged backgrounds, here, have a qualifier). You spend your life going up a grad, passing exams, getting your GPA. And then you graduate and there's no paradigm, the system's all changed. You're on your own. At least I had a job to go to. I knew where I was going to be for at least a year -well, when November came. Until then? Drifting.

I remembered a conversation I'd had in the taxi down from Landour yesterday. Linda and I were talking about traveling, traveling alone as women. "Isn't it hard," she asked. Not really a question.
"Yeah, a little. Especially in India. You stand out, you're always on alert."
"I don't know how you do it, you know. I never saw travel as an endurance game. I guess it's an endurance game, going it alone. And especially here in India. I mean - I sound like your mother - I'm old enough to be your mother - but at your age, I mean, it's paramount that you're safe. Make good decisions."
"I try," I said. An attempt at being tongue in cheek. But the truth was - it was a compelling conversation. Was I making a good decision, by going it alone? And was I really having a good time? Was this an endurance test.?


Lovely flowers outside the monastery.

Of course it's an endurance test, this traveling-alone in India. It's a rite of passage, I guess. The sort of thing many of us cosseted rich kids from fancy countries put ourselves through, because we have not found ourselves sufficiently tested. I don't really have fun a lot of the time when I travel alone. It's more depressing then enjoyable. You're often lonely, often eating alone. Looking over your shoulder and giving everyone you meet on the street a wide berth since better safe then sorry. Man, I have to take everything I own to the bathroom with me, since there's no one there to watch it when I get up. It's funny how something little like that really makes you sad after a while. Just someone to watch my stupid laptop for five minutes.

I do it anyway though. "What does not kill you makes you stronger". That's the mantra I was raised under. I don't believe you should do everything you do for pleasure, that some things you do because they're good for you. And I don't know if traveling alone is good for me. I know it isn't good for anyone else. I rationalize it because I do genuinely want to learn about India. I want to get a sense of what it's like to live here, the underpinnings of the culture and history I find so fascinating. I want to go alone because I don't want to get sucked into the backpacker kid vortex. Sitting around all day in a hostel eating Western food and smoking incredible amounts of hash, no learning involved, putting your feet up and bitching about the natives day-in-and-day-out.

It ties into drifting, post college drifting. Going to a job, at least. I like Asia, I find it compelling. I want to put down roots here, integrate myself into it, live here, know it pretty well. Become, in the indulgent phrasing of a latter generation, an "asia hand." Jaded expat, able to handle the situation. If I go it alone, I'm forced to figure this stuff out. Maybe if I know how to survive here easily and well, I can actually produce a valuable work of art. Start a program that actually makes things better for somebody. It's experience gathering.

If I was traveling with my best friend, I'd have a fantastic time. But I wouldn't have India staring me down half as much as it is right now, have to get by within it, meet other people. Learning stuff is sad, and hard sometimes. It fucking sucks in some circumstances. But I'll keep on traveling alone since that's how I do it.

I don't mind linking up with people for brief periods. A couple weeks or so. Someone I've never met before, that's a given. (Example: Kiran in Sikkim. Coming soon to a blog near you).

Anyhow. The Tibetan Monastery, also known as Shedup Choepelling. It's up the steep Happy Valley road (all the roads are steep here). A taxi from the Mussorie Mall will take you here for a handful of rupees. It might make a decent walk if the weather is good. A mutual friend of some of the Teacher Mafia, a freelance journalist named Amy, had come up the hill after researching a story in the lowlands. She was interested in writing about the Dalai Lama's time in Mussorie, and invited us to come with her to check it out. No need to twist my arm. We got in a rather musty taxi and traversed the muddy road up the hill, umbrellas at the ready.



The monastery is a small place. Decked out with the exuberant and delicious colors of Tibetan art. It's astonishing how much color Tibetan artisans can pack into one small space. Maybe it's necessitated by the muted color palette of the dry Tibetan plateau. Something to keep the eye busy. The displaced Tibetan population of Mussorie set the temple up after the mass exodus of the fifties. Many of them still remain in Mussorie, running mo-mo shops and jewelry emporiums. Biding their time until the impasse ends, hoping that at some point they can go home, or at least that something will change. (And as the years go by and the news reports come in - I wonder what the old people think, especially. I really do).

Mussorie was the first place the Dali Lama went after his exile in the 1950's. Mussorie, as it happens, is about 80 miles or so as the crow flies from the Tibetan border - not far.. The Dali Lama based himself at a house close to the monastery.

I'm remembering a story Baldev told me once, when I was staying at the home in Mussorie. They were on some sort of trek up there, him and Sheila.


Buddhist deities of some vintage.

It is around 1959 and Sheila and Baldev in Northern India on vacation. They are, as I imagine them, young and handsome and successful, just embarking on a spectacular career, beginning a singular and fairly remarkable life. She dresses in Lacoste and capris and he in a suit, carrying their camera and a luncheon with them and tea biscuits, in the manner of young professionals on a holiday. The Chinese have just come into Tibet and beaten everybody, they have beaten them and run them out. The Dalai Lama and his saffron disciples are streaming down the passes, and with them residents of Lhasa. And these displaced people are terribly poor, Baldev tells me, looking out the window at the evening coming down, the way the fog rolls in smoky and damp across their little lawn.

The way he describes it: The Tibetans came from their squat homes, and they came from their wood burning ovens. Came with their curious curl-tailed dogs, came down the hills, riding donkeys with braided bridles, jangling jingling all the way, picking through the rocks and dangerous paths. And all the time knowing they could never return, moving somewhat in tandem with their leader who swayed back and forth in his textured palanquin.

"What did they bring with them?", I ask because I know he wants me too, as the house's wood burning oven snaps like a campfire.

The Tibetans rummaged in their mattresses and hats and dug in their gardens before they left. They took out all their beads and amulets and idols and placed them in sacks or wore them around their heads and necks, weighing them down unfortunately, as they streamed downwards through these terrible passes, and down to the Ganges. They brought all their fine things with them, he tells me. They were terribly poor, and they were selling their things to buy food and water, to get them through until they reached India, and reached their ultimate point of exile.


Yama, God of Death, biting the Tibetan Buddhist image of the world. I'll explain it some other time.

And here Sheila and Baldev are on vacation, stopped beside the roadway. They are sitting on their picnic blanket, and they can see the people streaming down the paths in colorful profusion, limping and walking, leading mules and dogs and children. Sheila is unwrapping a sandwich and pauses to watch them pass, and Baldev puts down his thermos of tea.

A woman stops and looks at them, and is offered a sandwich and a biscuit which she takes. Around her leathered neck she wears a silver and turquoise amulet, smoke-roasted and weathered and beautiful. Almost as if it would smell of campfires and pine resin even if it were brought home and worn around one’s neck at a Delhi charity ball.

She of the white capris, the polo shirt, is entranced by it.

The Tibetan woman in her rainbow jacket and her fifteen teeth wants to sell it to Sheila. She takes the necklace and wraps it around the rich woman’s delicate and fervently moisturized hand, chains and filaments resting coolly against her skin. And Sheila wants it desperately, but, you know - well, you know -

“Sheila told me afterwards: that if she bought it, whenever she looked at it, she would see the face of that woman. See all of them streaming down the passes and the gullies wih the snow melting behind them. The fact is, you can’t buy something sold out of sorrow. And you can’t wear it to a charity function.”

The woman went on with her necklace that smelled of campfires and pine resin and kept walking down the hill. God knows where she is and where the necklace went. Where both she and the necklace ended up. And you know, we finished our sandwiches and put on our shoes and sipped our tea and it was like nothing had happened. Nothing in the world."

And those were the Tibetans in their exile, to Sheila and Baldev.



To us, the monastery was a simple enough affair. A small building and some prayer wheels, a bit of nice gardening around the perimeter. A lovely view of the mountains below, better when it isn't foggy. But it has a history behind it. It was the first Tibetan monastery built in India proper, and was consecrated by the Dalai Lama himself. Full of dogs, everywhere dogs. like all Tibetan monasteries. Two monks in evidence in the main prayer room, one dozing off, one nodding sleepily when we walked in the door. "Photos okay?" I asked him, and he shrugged.



That's not actually the Dalai Lama. Just a clever cardboard standee. There are many of those in Tibetan temples in this part of the world. A quiet little room with the scent of incense wafting through, and the sound of rain outside. I don't know how to behave or think in these places. I'm no Buddhist, no spiritualist. Have never been comfortable with the notion of religion or the sacred. I awkwardly took a few photos then went out again, to watch the rain.



Yes, it's a swastika. As you may have guessed, it has nothing to do with Nazis. The swastika is a symbol of vast import and meaning to a variety of Asian cultures, and is often associated with Buddhism - the Buddha is said to have had a swastika inscribed on his chest by his followers after his death. The word "swastika" derives from the Sanskrit "svastika," which is translated into "All is well." To Tibetan Buddhists, the swastika symbolizes (among other things) eternity. In Japan, it's called a manji.



A swastika was even used in a 1925 Coke advertisement. In all cultures, it's a sign denoting immutable good luck. To me, this makes the Nazis perversion of an ancient and venerated symbol all the more repulsive.
,

If you know me, you know those red boots. Faithful friends.


The Dalai Lama and his mother at Birla House in 1959.

We made a brief visit to the Birla House, the Dalai Lama's residence during his time here - and I was too lazy to take photos. There isn't too much to see. The Indian government allowed the Dalai Lama, his mother, and members of his entourage to put up here after his 1959 escape, before they were granted land in Dharamasala. The house where he spent his time here is an extremely attractive one, set in a quiet and beautiful stand of trees with a view down the valley. I can think of worse places to be exiled to. I don't know if you can go in.

We didn't get a chance this go-round. A smaller cottage on the grounds hosted Gandhi in 1946. Quite a history. The first Tibetan School in India, the Central School for Tibetans, was established near here in 1959 as well, and is going strong well into 2010. There's also the Tibetan Homes Foundation, an institution dedicated to supporting Tibetans in exile - especially children - in their lives in India. The entire Happy Valley region functions as a sort of sanctuary for exiled Tibetans, as this article far superior to my own explains.

It was a damp little excursion, but well worth it.

Walking to Landour

We decided to spend the day going up. Upwards to Landour, at least. That's the only real way to get there. Thankfully, Mussorie isn't exactly a big place, and there's just enough sign-posts to keep you on the right track. And what a lovely, atmospheric walk. Sure, it's steep, but there's plenty to see. Small shops selling ornate wooden canes, vegetable sellers, men urging pissed-off donkeys up hills, wave after wave of private school brats in identical uniforms. The mist rolling down the mountain, walking through little pockets of cloud. The wildflowers here look like a kid's drawing: a single hill putting up flowers in red and orange and pink and purple, all the colors you'd want, right below yet another stand of tall and lovely pines. You can stop for chai whenever you get tired. We were talking to each other, too, and things went even faster.



Laura, Eric, and I dawdled for a while at this lovely overlook, down into the valley and Mussorie town proper. Some small girls from the area were hanging out in the shelter with us. Eric's a photographer, and he has an absolutely brilliant method of getting to know people abroad.

He's got a donkey hand puppet. Turns out a donkey hand puppet is a fantastic ice breaker, even with adults. He can even crack a smile from endlessly jaded teenagers, which is no mean feat. And kids, needless to say, find the donkey puppet absolutely hilarious. "I had a white seal puppet for a while, in Africa," Eric told me. "But the African kids were scared of it, they had no idea what a seal was. I figured I'd get a donkey. It's a little more...universal."



A rain storm suddenly burst - not a surprise in the midst of the Weirdest Monsoon Ever - and we dashed to the covered entry-way to one of the hillside homes. A man with an umbrella and head phones took refuge with it. "It's strange weather, isn't it?" he said, and we began conversing. The Eternal Icebreaker, the crappiness of the monsoon.

Leon had moved to Landour with his missionary parents in the 1940's, taking up residence in the Peace Cottage, a gentle stroll from where Sheila and Baldev have their own spread. He attended the Woodstock School in the 40's and 50's, working on a video project. He was trying to map all of Landour's trails, on video, document the area where he spent his childhood and formative years. A video record of his memories. He liked to talk, and if you were williing to let him monologue some, you'd be happy you listened.

"What was life in Landour like, back in the 40s?" I asked. This would have been Sheila's Landour too, after all, her origin point and Leon's alike.

"I spoke Hindustani, for one thing. It's a mix of Hindi and Urdu - this was before partition. I'm having to relearn all my words. But there's one word I still remember. "Scorpion". We had a lot of them in these days, up here. Still do. I found one the other day, and I got my groundskeeper to take care of it. The Hindu word for scorpion - I hadn't said it in years and years - well, it just came out. When you need it. "

"But we had a lot more of them back in the 40's and 50's, a lot more. Less development. Less people. We collected 6 lakh scorpions at our house one year. We'd dump them all in a tin-can. One day, a friend came to see my mother, and she walked into the kitchen. She saw the cup and asked, "What is THAT?"

My mother replied pleasantly, "Oh, that? It's our scorpion cup."

We put the legs of our beds in water, to stop the scorpions from crawling up them at night. It didn't always work. I remember being six years old or so, lying in bed. I wake up and I see a scorpion on the wall, a few feet from my face. I start screaming, "MMOOOOMMMM!"

My father took the scorpion away.


I think they call that right there Ambience.

People who have lived through Partition almost always seem willing to talk about it - the Indian urge to purge, to talk it out, to get it out there. To argue. Living through Partition was terrible but more terrible still would be not-talking about, is what's implied, and By God you're going to listen. And I asked him, "What was the Partition like?"

"Well, we moved here in 1947, when i was six years old. My parents were missionaries. This was back before Landour was a quiet, gentle place - this was during partition. The Muslims and the Hindus were fighting in the streets, and I remember seeing dead bodies on the ground."

It was hard to fathom: this gentle hill station being subject to the same time as savage violence as the rest of India. But history and climate do not produce exceptionalism: people are cruel and easily excitable anywhere.



"You'd hear stories. Conversations overheard. Two Muslims walking down the street somewhere near here. One says to the other, walking by a home: "There's a lot of Hindus hiding in this house. Should we kill them?"

His friend shrugs his shoulders. "Ah, naah. Let's go to the next one." As casual as that.

When we first got here, we didn't leave the house of three months. But I remember - one day, my dad coms to me and he asks, "Well, want to see the fighting?" Of course I did. I came with him to the town. There's nothing more bloodthirsty then an eight year old. Nothing in the world."


This makes it look much more creepy and horrifying-alien-movie like then it actually is up there. I assure you that there are no fog monsters waiting to slurp up your eyeballs out there, or if they are, they are very good at hiding.

The rain was beginning to die down a little, and a couple of locals tentatively restarted their walk up the impossibly steep hill, throwing their backs into it. "I suppose we should be going," Laura said. "We should catch up with our friends for lunch, up at the four shops."

"There's that new restaurant up there. The Roorkee Manor. There's this incredibly wealthy guy, from Woodstock. He made a fortune in iT, and he came back up here. He's a decent guy, but he's kind of misguided. He tried to buy the Four Shops, and he said, "I'll take them off your hands. I'll give you any amount of rupees you want. All but one of the owners refused to sell, of course. He was so pissed off he decided to buy that place up the hill, the Manor, and run them out of business. Everyone says the food is really good, but a lot of us are boycotting. You can't mess with the Four Shop

I made a mental note to avoid the Roorkee. Who doesn't love striking a blow in the face of big-time billionaires with ego problems? And we bid Leon farewell.

We walked up to the Four Shops, or the Char Dukaan. Char Dukaan being, shockingly enough, the Hindi for "four shops." And that's really all it is. All it has been. I've seen photos from the 60's and 70's that show the shops looking approximately the same. They have added an internet cafe with a very wonky internet connection. Other then that? You sit down, order tea and cheese toast or pancakes, and you watch the world go by. I'm a Tip Top Tea Shop partisan myself. One: I like to reward adorable alliterations whenever possible. Two: they have fantastic food and the owner likes to come out and chat with me about minutiae. You can't tell the difference between the tea and the coffee, but that's pretty much the deal in India.

We thought we were going to eat there, but, no. A language school student sitting in the cafe flagged us down. "Hey, you're with that group from Delhi, right?"

Yes, we were. "They're up the hill at the Roorkee," he said. "They told us to wait for you."

"How'd you know it was us?" Laura asked.

"They mentioned boots. Red cowboy boots." What I was wearing, of course. I guess they're a trademark.

Laura, Eric, and I shot each other somewhat embarrassed looks - The Corporate Maw! But we had to meet them anyway.

I was irritated to find that the Roorkee was absolutely lovely. The owner has taken an old Raj-era mansion and transformed it into a smart yet homy little hotel, with lots of wood and exposed stone accents. It wouldn't look entirely out of place in Aspen. The prices, needless to say, aren't in the "budget" range. 100 bucks a night for a hotel room is probably not going to get the Language School crew (except for the professionals) in the door.

The restaurant, as we discovered, was entirely reasonably priced. I was further irritated when the food turned out to be good. Flipping the bird to the specter of capitalism and big-bidnes was proving harder then I'd thought. The menu is a combination of Indian standards and Western food. A good call in this startlingly diverse little hill station. That's thanks to the internationally famous language school, of course.



I had an epiphany in Australia. Not a major one. I just found that I liked mashed potatoes again. Hadn't eaten them in four years, but all of a sudden, manna of the gods. Anyhow, the Roorkee had a pretty good creamy lamb stew with mash. Very mild and very English in execution. Sometimes, what you want on a cold day. The height of Mussorie and the cool temperatures make the human organism interested in eating things like mash and tea and cheese toast, I suppose. Warms the soul. Though nothing warms you up quite like really good chai.




Those are some mighty fine looking lamb chops. Considering the amount of lamb Indians consume, it's surprising how hard it is to find a decent frenched chop in these parts. Not a problem at the Roorkee. I came back to have these chops the next day and was very sad when they were out. They should have gone out and whacked a lamb just for me. Honestly.



They have a bakery on site here. The profusion of breads that comes out when you order soup is truly memorable. And they do western style desserts. A god-send for those with a sweet tooth and an inability to enjoy traditional Indian sweets. Having no interest in most desserts, I didn't partake, but apparently this cheesecake was very serviceable.

Caught in the rain again. And getting darker, too. Four or five of us stood under an awing with some computer delivery boys, who had come all the way from Delhi. Nothing better to do. We talked. And I had a question, since I had everyone cornered and all. "When do you feel you've really lived somewhere? How long does it take?"

"I used to live in Africa," Lauren said, "and I was teaching school there. Every day, these little kids who lived next door would have dinner with me, whether I liked it or not. I just got used to it. And one day, I had dinner, and I'm sitting with my food, and I realize: the kids aren't there. And I kind of miss them! That's when I knew I'd adapted."

Or maybe it's the shipment, she said. Getting that shipment from overseas - your entire life in some boxes - and thinking (as many of the travel inclined do), "How the hell did I get all this stuff? And why do I have it?" And having no answer, but continuing to cart around puffy jackets and take-out menus because they were in the box and you can't bring yourself to throw them away, you might need them sometime. The rain died down some and we walked to the Four Shops to get a taxi - easier then you'd think out here. I sat under the awning and watched the rain go down and the sun go down with it, and wondered how and when I'd define Living There in Phnom Penh. Impossible to say.

Welcome to Mussorie: Hill Stations, Panthers

When you say Mussorie in the USA, people usually assume you're talking about Missouri, and then you begin mentioning himalayan mountains and panther attacks and lots of Nepali people with donkeys, and everyone gets really confused.

But this is Mussorie, the charismatic Himalaya hill station about six hours north of Delhi. That Mussorie.

Mussorie, unlike most places tourists give's a rat's ass about in India, is not very old. None of the hill stations are, really. It was founded by the British in the earlyish 1800's, slated to be the headquarters of the remarkably ambitious (and Great Game spurred) British Survey of Indian. Sir George Everest - sound familiar? - settled and worked here. Mussorie soon became a place where the British went to escape the horrifying heat of the Indian plains. Women and children would often spend most of their time in the cool and less malarial hill-stations, leaving their hardy menfolk behind to do administrative stuff and drink tons of gin and tonic, though they'd come up occasionally to blow away panthers and smoke cigars.

This separation of families led, naturally, to all manner of scandal, Mussorie becoming something of a sin city for Raj-era ladies and gentlemen of loose morals. A good old story relates that, at the iconic (and sadly closed) Savoy Hotel, a bell was rung around 4:00 AM so everyone could scurry to their own beds. Just imagine all these Victorian slut-bags of both genders, gathering up their bloomers and doing the lady-like scurry of shame down the corridors, the Guwhati staff sniggering to themselves somewhere in the shadows. It is delightful.


It's sorta high up.

The Nehru family used to spend a lot of time here - Nehru's father, Motilal, willfully flouting the "No Dogs or Indians" sign that used to stand on the Mall on a daily basis - and the town has attracted an entirely outsized number of well-known Indians, mostly of an intellectual bent. After Independence in 1947, Mussorie shifted slowly but inexorably into the hands of wealthy Indian families, who promptly turned it into their own resort mountain town. The miracle is that it remains an entirely charming and very low-key place despite its popularity and natural beauty. Maybe it's the horrifying and technicolor vomit inducing drive up from Dehradun. Maybe enough people fall off the cliff to keep visitor numbers down, I can't tell you.


Local veg stand. Mmm, I see bitter melon.

Mussorie's another place that's sort of been in the family. Sheila was born in Mussorie and went to the famous Woodstock American school there - she's a child of the hill stations, spent her early years more accustomed to mist and woolen sweaters then the heat and sweat we usually associate with Madre India. They bought a place here from a semi crazy Austrian Jewish lady psychologist back in the 70's , and have been spending most of their free time in Mussorie ever since. Their house has a rose garden - roses go like gangbusters here - and a fantastic view of the Snows when the weather is good. It's hard to ask for more.

Of course, Mussorie proper refers to the main town, the touristy bit, the one with the big main drag and the Swensens and all the convenient ATMS. Where Sheila lives, where Ruskin Bond the famous writer lives, where the English School is - that's all up in Landour. Landour's a little village that was probably at one point separate from Mussorie proper, but is now more of a province. It's not hard to find: you just keep on going up. And up. And up.


Lovely old church on the Camel Back road. The man in the picture is wearing the Old Dude in a Hill Station uniform which may be legally required after the age of 65.

Landour is a vortex. No other word for it. Something attracts some of India's more fascinating specimens up here, up to the Four Shops that form the social nucleus of the area. It's the combination of the Language School, the writerly population, the Woodstock school crowd, the locals who have been here forever - something about the mix generates fantastic conversation. I spent a few days in Mussorie just sitting at the Tip Top Tea Shop, drinking buckets of chai and talking to everyone who would talk to me. Turned out to be pretty much everyone.


The Mussorie Mall: so cosmopolitan that it has an honest-to-god revolving restaurant. It's probably operated by indentured child servants with hand cranks somewhere in the bowels of the establishment. I mean, this is India.

But that's where Sheila has her place, that's where I spent all my time last time I was up here, back in 2008. I only spent two days but I immediately fell in love. The height of the place, the air, the cool and mossy scent to it, the people. Indian hill stations and their particular breed of Indian. A resilient people who like smoking pipes and wearing woolens, leading their donkeys up vertical hills, muttering to themselves about that really bad winter 15 years ago and what's going to be on television tonight if they properly adjust their satellite dish. Everyone's got one stashed away somewhere.

I stayed at the Padmini Nivas hotel for the simple reason that people thought it was pretty swell on TripAdvisor. (TripAdvisor controls and dictates great swaths of my life). Turned out to be a truly lovely hotel right off the Mussorie Mall Road. It's cleverly located directly below the road - you can walk up the stairs and spend five minutes and be at the local Barista outlet, but you can't hear traffic up above. Why people feel the need to constantly honk their goddamn horns every 2.5 seconds in Mussorie, a teeny little hill station with approximately 5 and a half cars, is a total mystery. The place was an old British home wit the trappings you might imagine, and is run by a nice Gujarati family. The view from the front porch, with its twee wicker furniture, is something you will never forget, at least on a clear day when the mist has gone out. The Mall's all right I suppose, if you're into commerce, but Landour, that's usually where I point myself. A good bit of cardiovascular exercise and especially fascinating when it rains. A far lower aggressive beggar to frightened foreigner ratio here then in most regions of India too, which makes pedestrianism that much more rewarding!


India has the absolute best surrealist public art. Always decorated with dogs.

I got into the Padmini at around 3:00 and hadnt had lunch. The kitchen was truncated, and I settled for cheese toast. The cheese toast turned out to be remarkably delicious, featuring what was, a rarity in India, actual cheese and not simulated nightmare dairy product. (When in Mussorie? Order the cheese toast. Everywhere they make it the same and everywhere it is inordinately good. Something in the water, whatever. Don't question it, eat it). I was sitting there eating my cheese toast with a copious amount of ketchup, and fending off a mutant bee as big as a low-level fruit bat, when I noticed a group of foreigners sitting at the table next to me.

So, I started talking to them. It's what I do. I'm a clever and observant journalist, man. Or soul crushingly lonely, somewhere in between. Turned out they were (mostly) a group of teachers from the Delhi International School on a brief weekend jaunt, and they were very friendly, and they were actually willing to talk to me. So I glommed onto them into the amoeba like fashion I have perfected in my time traveling alone. They were fascinating people and I learned a lot from them - they'd all lived in a wide variety of different and strange countries before. Had done what I was doing (so help me God) and had succeeded at it and lived what appeared to be quite happy lives, far away from whatever they grew up doing and knowing. One of their number just so happened to be a foreign journalist - married to one of the teachers - and I very much enjoyed hearing him talk about his life and what he'd done. Somewhat intimidated - oh dear god I picked this, what have I done? - but not really in a bad way.



"Want to go for a walk with us?" one of the teachers, named Peter, asked. Of course I did. Forget my plans of shutting myself up in my little hill-station room and writing such brilliant shit that no one would actually have to read it to deem me Auto-Genius. We ambled up the hill and talked, and I asked them a lot of irritating young whelp type questions about ex-pat life. It was a glorious evening with the clouds coming off the hill, and we ambled up the Camel Back path. There were chocolate stores and places selling hand-crafted woolens (what a souvenir from India). A guy on the corner trying to convince us to take rides on his tiny and weedy looking horses (no thanks, I'll pass on the ringworm, sir). We all paused at a bend in the hill, looking at the endless ridges below us, the terraced fields clinging to the sides of hills. Little villages full of houses, people I'll never meet or know a damn thing about, but can look right into their backyards anyway. "Green stuff," Laura said (I think). "We don't have anything like that in Delhi." Laura from Galicia. Delightful woman. Had taught in Charleston for a while. Viewed from the perspective of a non-Southerner with no understanding of the region's bizarre tribal culture and elaborate social structure, that must have been exotic indeed.



A couple of the Teacher Mafia's friends were staying at a hotel right up the hill, the Kasmanda Palace (which may be owned by the same people as the Nivas, I can't be sure, the website looks the same and confuses me). The hotel was a time capsule, a virtual reality machine. You walk in the door and there's a musty scent, there's a tiger skin with glass eyes and mange up on the wall, there's lots of carpeting in bordello colors and a player piano, and stuff made out of deer antlers and chintzy miniature paintings - welcome to the Raj, chap, we've been a-waiting for you. The place began life as part of a Christ Church complex and then became the summer home of the royal Kasmanda family - Raja included - and man, you can tell. Indians can always, if they so desire, be about fifteen times more English then the actual English, any day, any time, let's rumble on the basis of weak tea, mentally challenged hunting dogs, and a curious inability to frankly discuss sex.

We hung out in their room and drank beer mostly. We got into a discussion regarding weird dreams, sleep walking, and my own affliction, SCREAMING NOCTURNAL NIGHT TERRORS, and that was all good and fun.

Eric told a magnificent story which I will share with the world. Ahem.

"My sister was traveling to a conference somewhere, for work. She had to share a room with a woman she barely knew. Anyhow, that first night, they both shut off the lights and go to bed, early start tomorrow. My sister wakes up in the middle of night to go pee, usual stuff. As she's peeing, she realizes: "Hey, the toilet is kind of jiggly." The toilet is so jiggly that she falls right off it, and the jolt makes her come out of it. She wakes up. She realizes that she has in fact been peeing on the luggage stacked up in the closet.

She walks out of the closet laughing and laughing, and she tells the woman (who has woken up by now, frightened), "Hahah, whaddya know? I accidentally pissed on our luggage." Putting a positive spin on it.

The other woman did not find this even slightly funny and refused to make eye contact with her at the rest of the conference. But it made a good story."

Did it ever.

The skies opened up somewhere in there, and we slid down the concrete road back to the Padmini Nivas in the rain, the lights of Dehradun spread out with incredibly clarity below us. I might slip and fall down the track and break my neck in the most ignominious and stupid of ways, but what a view I would have while doing it. No panthers ate us either. I was happy. Meant more cheese toast in my life, tomorrow morning.

The Red Fort And Other Historical Learnings

The Red Fort is Delhi's most distnctive immensity. In that it is, indeed, goddamn enormous. The gigantic red sandstone strecture completely dominates Old Delhi, set as it is conveniently across the street from the Jama Masjid. The Red Fort and the Jama Masjid were both commisioned and erected by Shah Jahan - the man otherwise known as The Guy Who Built the Taj Mahal - and the face of Northern India today is defined by his remarkable good taste.

I somehow managed not to actually go inside the Red Fort on my last trip. And it looked like the same was going to happen this time, too. It's a classic scenario: a massive, beloved tourist attraction that you never quite find the time to go to. And you use a wide variety of excuses to justify it. It'll take a long time. It's hot in there. The admission is expensive.

Then, I cleverly left my debit card in a restaurant. I'd been meeting with a charming old friend from Bangalore, we'd had a couple of drinks, we'd had a lovely time, I had (characteristically) got distracted by some amusing twist in the conversation when the check came - bam. The night before I left on an early train to Amritsar.

I discovered this at 5:30 in the morning, when I woke up to go to the train station. Whoops. Needless to say, I wasn't getting on that train until I found my damn card. Thankfully, Providence (or something) came through for me. The properitor of Defense Colony's Angels in the Kitchen had, upon finding the card, immediately put it in a lock box and had been waiting for me to call. What a mensch. His restaurant has excellent fusion cuisine, a lovely ambience, and an alluring spread of desserts. You should eat there post-haste when you are in Delhi.

So, I got my card at noon, I missed my train, I was stuck in Delhi for one more day with no idea what to do. I got online post-haste and booked a train ticket up to Dehradun, with the intent of returning to the charming Raj-era hill station of Mussorie as a stop-gap measure. There were actually seats available on the train. So far, so good. My blood pressure had spent the entire evening at a level usually experienced immediately prior to a fatal cardiac event. I had to go do something with my day. So: Time to See the Damn Red Fort.

I hailed a taxi and we dutifully made the rather long drive down to Old Delhi and the Fort Area. Halfway there, the formally blue and reasonably welcoming skies entirely erupted. It was apocalyptic rain, the kind only India can really dish out - it felt like that shit would hammer through the car walls and drown us all. Everyone on the street was running crazily for shelter. "Well, uh, we're here," the driver said. I had, of course, not thought to bring an umbrella. I had a brief internal debate: Do I go back to the hotel and not see the Red Fort once again, rendering myself a member of the Crappiest Tourists in Human History society? Or do I man up, square my shoulders, and completely and utterly soak myself in the interest of culture?

I got out of the taxi. Was soaked to the bone in roughly 2.5 seconds, maybe less. I marched over to the ticket counter anyway, where about 60 tourists were huddled under a leaky awning, standing in ankle-deep water. (Delhi and drainage? Hah, don't make me laugh). I sloshed on through and bought my ticket. I was going to see the damn Red Fort if it killed me. I walked through the gates.


A lovely pavilion in the inner compound.

It's hard to express how shockingly huge the Red Fort is. And this becomes an incredibly good thing. If you pay the price of admission to the Fort, you see, you've got an immense, controlled, and quite clean green space pretty much to yourself (in the off season), a place of remarkable serenity and relaxation in the middle of Delhi, one of the planet's bigger clusterfuck metropolises. The rain finally slackened off, to a refreshing drizzle, and I strolled down the path through the former British army barracks inside, headed to the Indian Independence museum within to wait out the last gasp of the rain. It was really quite lovely.



The Independence Museum does do a reasonably through job of explaining the long march of India's freedom from its colonial captors. Indians are very fond of demonstrative dioramas in their museums, which always amuse the snot out of me. Not that the subject matter is amusing at all. This depicts the brutal Jalianwalla Bagh Massacre in the 1919 Punjab. Punjabis, spurred to protest by Ghandi, began to demonstrate throughout the region - especially active in Amritsar. British official General Brigadier Dyer was put in control of the city, and he quickly began to use harsh methods to bring the demonstrators to heel, including random arrests and a total ban on all gatherings. On that fateful April day, a large number of Punjabis gathered at a protest meeting- unaware of the anti-meeting law - and were suddenly confronted by Dyer and his men. The British troops without warning began to indiscriminately fire into the peaceful - and shocked - crowd. Almost a thousand people died. An excellent article on the massacre is here.

Dyer, for his part, wasn't exactly repentant. In his own words:

"I fired and continued to fire till the crowd dispersed, and I considered that this is the least amount of firing which would produce the necessary moral and widespread effect, it was my duty to produce if I was to justify my action. If more troops had been at hand the casualties would have been greater in proportion. It was no longer a question of merely dispersing the crowd, but one of producing a sufficient moral effect from a military point of view, not only on those who were present, but more specifically throughout the Punjab. There could be no question of undue severity...(report to the General Staff Division on 25 August 1919)"

Interestingly enough, Micheal O Dwyer, the official who approved the action, was assassinated by a Sikh -one Udham Singh - in 1940 (Dyer having already kicked off).

I had not been aware that a significant Indian independence movement existed among Indian Americans (mostly Punjabis) in the early 1900s. Pretty cool story, that. Check out the Ghadar Movement here. The Ghadarites published journals and newsletters extolling Indian independence, but were tragically (and often fatally) repressed by the British.


The Mughals were very keen on water features. You would be too if you lived in the hell that is April in Delhi.

On to the main attraction, the Red For itself. Well, if I could find it. it's really easy to get lost in the countless paths of the Red Fort. There's usually helpful soldiers carrying fearsome looking weaponry to give you directions, but these directions (as it turns out) are usually wrong. I ended up walking over a small green bridge that connected two parts of the fort to one another - now divided by a highway.



A train was going by under me, a coal train. For a moment, I had ab brief and utterly surreal feeling that I was standing on a railway bridge somewhere in North Carolina and that a hobo carrying a ruck-sack and a banjo might manifest magically out of the bushes. Thankfully, the feeling passed.



I turned myself around and finally found myself in the main fort complex - in other words, the old stomping grounds of the Great Mughals themselves. It's an incredibly beautiful place, full of graceful Mughal architecture - and what architecture style really tops it? - and old British buildings, water-features and garden areas. Sadly, the Fort is poorly maintained, and little to no restoration or reconstruction work has been done. This place could be reasonably easily restored to its former majesty...but I suppose the 15 USD or so entry fee isn't going into the upkeep of this superb piece of human history. Can't say I'm shocked. The actual living quarters of the



This is the Moti Masjid or the Pearl Mosque, erected by the hyperactively religious Emperor Aurangzeb. Aurangzeb did not share the rather relaxed and hippie-ish religious notions of his forefathers, and imposed a new era of strict Muslim rule on India. To his detriment: his disinterest in tolerating minor Indian cultural elements like, I don't know, Hinduism, ended up diminishing the influence and popular support that the Mughal Empire had previously enjoyed.



At least the rather dreary and startlingly uncharismatic Aurangzeb could appreciate a decent building, as evidenced by the graceful Masjid. (Aurangzeb is also the guy who deposed and locked up his father - Shah Jahan - in the Agra Red Fort, allowing him the smallish dignity of being able to view his Taj Mahal from across the river. Whatta mensch).



The Hamman, or Royal Baths, are definitely the crown jewel of the Red Fort Complex. This incredibly ornate and lovely white marble structures are where the Mughals abluted, shot the shit, and consorted with their armada of concubines in their off time (and being a Mughal emperor, hey, it was off time whenever the hell they felt like it!). Official business was supposedly conducted here on a regular basis.


Like every tourist attraction in India, the Fort is perennially full of roving packs of bored teenage boys. I find myself wanting to yell GO AWAY AND GET A JOB whenever they hit on me, though doubt this would really achieve much.

This strikes me as a bit awkward - being naked in a royal bath with your boss and a couple of concubines - but I guess cultural norms change. Fast. The complex and highly advanced water system sprayed both hot and cold water, and basins of rose-scented liquid were thoughtfully set out for the sweaty. It is nice to know that the Mughals probably smelled pretty good.



Built in a similar style, the Diwan-i-Khas was the Emperor's personal quarters and also served as an official receiving room (presumably for folks who didn't warrant a full rub-down and a toe tickle by some Kashmiri babe). This is the place where the iconic Peacock Throne of the Mughals sat- and is the place where the great Persian warrior Nadir Shah took it in 1739. There really was an artificial river that ran through the holy baths and this area, nicknamed (somewhat grandly) the Nahar-i-Bihisht or the River of Heavenly Peace.



These rooms were used and abused by the British after the exile of the Last Mughal, Bahadur Shah II after the Delhi Mutiny - soliders were quartered here and doubtless had boozy drinking parties and other carryings-on in what were formerly sacred and incredibly closeted environs. As is the case with all successful invading parties, isn't it?




There's a small museum kept up in the sadly shabbily-maintained Mumtaz Mahal, the old residence of Shah Jahan's beloved wife.



Mughal armor.


The Diwan-I-Am was the spot where the Emperor engaged in public activities of state. Inaugurations and other show piece events happened here - as evidenced by the epic and imposing scale of the building. It's hard to imagine, but the building was originally coated in burnished white plaster, and was trimmed with real gold. If you were inordinately lucky, you might get invited here for a state event, doubtless involving elephants and other awesome things.



I ambled back outside the Fort now. What a pleasant respite from the constant sensory fist-to-your-face assault that is day to day Delhi. A tourist outside the gates was being shaken down for money after foolishly photographing some charming local boys. Rickshaw drivers were calling at me from behind the metal security-gates, as soon as I emerged. The sky was electric blue and the weather almost cool, post-rain, and the Fort was redder then I'd ever seen it before. Such is life, such is life. If there be a paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this....