Cliffhanger in Chandigarh

Post-draft edit: HA! SO you'll hear about us meeting Punjabis, but you'll have to wait to hear what happened!

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Now that I've writen those haikus, I'm going to try to touch on some of the important things thus far in the trip.

Shimla is GORGEOUS, but I'm not sure if it's worth NINE HOURS on the train to get there. Our hotel was beautiful (did I say this already?), The Commbermere, and Shimla was odd in the sense that it's essentially a vacation town, but at the same time it's not "touristy" in the same way that Connaught Place in Delhi, or Agra and Fatehpour Sikri are.

We really didn't see a ton in Shimla, mostly because we were taking our relaxation stop seriously, and also because we are both scared of rabid monkeys, which, since one of the major tourist attractions in Shimla is a monkey temple, meant that certain key attractions were off limits. We have fun playing amateur photographers in the Christ Church, and it's interesting to see some of the bereavement plaques in these places -- "In honorable memory of Gen. Thomas Hood, b. London and served in Rajasthan, the Punjab, d. in United Provinces; he worshiped with his wife humbly and regularly in this spot." Ok that's a bad example, but stuff like that...in some ways I feel like India has so much overpowerd whatever colonial infrastructure was left (ENGLISH is not a colonial language, but an Indian language, and colonial properties, rails, etc. are all essentially Indian in their feel, to me at least, and go beyond feeling organically-incorporated -- they feel totally recoded by the post-colonial Indian state), but in some ways, like those plaques, you can really see the colonial focus.

I should say, to be fair, that Desi whooped me in three straight rounds of ping-pong, our last night, there, but to my credit (and to the amazement of those who know me well), I didn't even have the URGE to cry!

When you go from Delhi to Shimla, you take a train to Kolka and then transfer to a single gauge "toy train" that SHOULD NOT have the naive tourist thinking "shiny painted steam engine with whistle." Think instead: really small, bad, slow train. We were both disappointed by the fact that it was so NOT a toy train (I should note that when you visit the Grotto north of Beirut, you take a REAL toy train, although only for a few hundred meters...but that's what I was picturing!), and when we had to take the super-express an {OH MY GOD! SOME HUGE GRASSHOPER DEADLY MOTH MUTATION JUST LANDED ON MY THIGH...AND THERE WAS A DEAD ONE LYING ON IT'S BACK IN MY HOTEL ROOM, TOO -- I HATE AGRA!} d super-luxurious "Volvo bus" (cf: Hunday bus in Pakistan) we weren't TOO heartbroken (it was only 5 hours and would get us all the way to Chandigarh, which is well into the Punjab and way past Kolka).

Ok, well, I don't know if Desi would agree with me if I were to rank the awfulness of the buses we took together, but this was awful because the BLARING Bollywood film that we watched (plot line: Boy loves girl visiting from states but everyone things she's just in his imagination until they meet WHILE DRIVING FROM DELHI TO SHIMLA (!), he saves her life, they fall in love, never declare it, she gets accepted to do post-grad work at Harvard (of course), and finally at the airport he tells her (after they are both zombies at his sisters wedding) that he loves her) was supplemented by the PROJECTILE VOMITING of the people around us. I didn't believe Desi, at first, when he told me that they were handing out barf bags (I thought they MUST be used for something else!) but let me tell you -- the weak Indian stomach combined with the swerving descent from the mountains made for MASS vomiting. The seats were also oddly reclined (like force-reclined) and I kept feeling like I was in the stirrups at a gyno's office, even though I've onviously never been in that position. Bad movie, projectile vomiting (note their eagerness to SCARF down the cheesy snacks we wer handed out MINUTES before the descent began!), stirrups. That sums it up.

We arrived in Chandigarh -- "India's only planned city" (planned by Le Corbusier!) on THE hottest day, thus far (it was published in the newspaper the next day, and Chandigarh was listed as the hottest city in the Punjab that day, topping 42 C (so around 108 F), and we spent a fair part of it either pounding the pavement with NO shield from the sun (yes I even wore a HAT it was so extreme!) or in a cycle rickshaw peddled by an 80yo man for about 5 kilometers (I paid him 90 rupees which then ride would have been about 25, basically because I was convinced that we almost killed him) [I will spare you my feelings of both obesity and exploitation of slave-labour when in a cycle rickshaw, coupled with Desi's insistence that we take them so I'll get over it, and my recognition that they DO have their imporant niche amongst consumers].

I should say that I really like Chandigarh. It's not really beautiful, although the lake really hit a soft spot with me, I loved the restaurant that we went to, and the people wer VERY warm (and Punjabis have such a bad rep!), but overally I liked it (I think it shows on the relaxation and warmth of the people that it's the richest city within an already relatively rich state). We went from our underwhelming hotel (Desi was using a lonely planet that had not been updated since pre-partition, so, despite his best efforts, hotels were hit and miss) to the High Court, where {AH! THEW GRASSHOPPER JUST TRIED TO GO UP MY PANTLEG...I HATE IT HERE!} we got an interesting glimpse of INdian bureaucracy. We wanted passes to enter the building, so we were sent by security to some kind of regulatory office, who sent us to a registrar's office, who sent us back...eventually they had to use a form to type ridulcous and useless facts about us that was made in triplicate and faxed and signed by us, which we then showed to security (I tried to get it back, at the end, and was molested by the Sikh guard in the process, but ended up with no paper! [and by molested I just mean that he toom my hand at his desk and was sort of peting it lovingly with this knowing look...]. When you sit in these over-crowded offices amongst shelves upon shelves of MILLIONS of pages of yellowed paper, and you see the CONTINUED insistence on this machine, you wonder where India can go with this whole South Asian tiger/emergent world power THING.

I am AGAIN compelled to rush, because the guy in this AWFUL grasshopped-filled excuse for a hotel in Agra who I asked SEVERAL times what time they were closing (and he even said 11, 12, whatever you want) has now told me I need to leave in 15 minutes at 10:45, so I'll finish up Chandigarh and {THE ELECTRICITY JUST WENT OUT!} you will get Amritsar and Fatehpour-Skiri and Amritsar tomorrow after I see the Taj.

We visited a "fantasy" rock garden and a lake and met Punjabis and went to a great restaurant and I have to cut this short because this place is GROSS and is creeping me out!

On the run in Agra,

VC