Plein le cul-ry!

Rien ne sert de demander ce que nous allons manger pour souper. La reponse est toujours la meme: du riz et des lentilles. Je dois dire que meme si la bouffe indienne est delicieuse, j'en ai plutot marre. Manger la meme chose matin, midi et soir, durant 9 semaines est assez ennuyeux. C'est comme ca qu'on apprecie la grande variete que nous avons. Il nous est arrive quelques fois de discuter des repas que nous aimerions manger. Et a chaque fois c'etait: un bon steak frite ou des vols au vent et pour dessert un bon gateau au chocolat avec de la creme glacee, ce qui n'est pas un point fort de l'Inde. La nourriture "Continentale", comme ils appellent, n'est pas tres bonne non plus. Alors profitez du temps qu'il vous reste, car a notre retour on vous met a la diete indienne!

Indian Menu (by Evelyne)

If you ever go to India, you are bound to come across a German bakery, where you can eat Indian, Italian, Chinese, and even Maxican food. But don't look for Germans or German pastries, they are nowhere to be seen. If you're not very hungry, you can order a girlled cheese or a sandwicth. Also available are a plate of mashroom or mess potato. For bigger appetites, there are pizzas with green paper or macroni's with a silce of bread. To drink, why not try a fresh frut juse or a child beer? If you would like some desert, there are always pan cack on the menu. And if you liked it, you may come back for breakfast and have a big bowl of cornflex!

Seriously, we read all of these words and many more in menus all around India, which always give us a good laugh. We've also seen signs for a Panting School and a place where you can rant a motorbike... In India, everything is possible!!

Dingue Inde

L'Inde, c'est vraiment dingue! Le 28 octobre, c'était "diwali", un genre de Noël Indien, une fête joyeuse très importante à l'occasion de laquelle les gens illuminent leurs maisons et leurs commerces de lampions et de bougies, à l'intérieur comme à l'extérieur. Sauf qu'au lieu de s'échanger des cadeaux, tout le monde fait exploser des pétards et lance des feux d'artifice. Les détonations résonnent sur les murs plongeant la ville dans une atmosphère que nous trouvons terrifiante mais que les Indiens trouvent rigolote. En rentrant à l'hôtel, on a même été "pris entre deux feux" de jeunes qui se tiraient littéralement dessus avec des feux d'artifice pour donner encore plus de piquant à leur fête.
Le lendemain, à la clarté du jour, nous nous sommes aperçus que bien des gens sculptent des bouses de vache en forme de bonshommes de pains d'épices qu'ils décorent de fleurs et qu'ils placent devant l'entrée de leur maison avec un lampion! J'avoue que j'ai parfois de la difficulté a comprendre la spiritualité hindoue...

Des nouvelles de l'Inde

Le Times of India n'avait absolument rien sur les élections générales tenues au Canada le 14 octobre. Il n'y a pas eu d'annonce la veille ou le jour même, pas même le résultat le lendemain. Même pas un entrefilet. C'est dire comme le "plus meilleur" pays du monde compte aux yeux de la plus grande démocratie du monde...
Que rapportent donc les médias indiens? Les cinq ou six chaînes de télévision d'information continue ont toutes un bandeau permanent au bas de l'image qui annonce en gros caractères "BREAKING NEWS" et l'image au dessus est invariablement un feu de poubelle, des pneus qui brûlent, un incendie, des gens qui brûlent un drapeau... Il faut croire que la psyché indienne réagit fortement aux images de flammes... Sans blague, que ce soit à la télévision ou dans les journaux, on parle surtout de crimes et de corruption. Mais ce qui fait la une le plus souvent est sans conteste le criquet, des ligues locales aux tournois internationaux.
Pour en remettre sur la conduite en Inde, un éditorial du Times of India du 24 octobre enjoignait le gouvernement d'agir au plus vite pour réduire le nombre d'accidents fatals sur les routes. Que se soit en nombre absolu de décès ou le nombre de décès en pourcentage de la population ou encore le nombre de décès pour 10 000 voitures, l'Inde offre les pires statistiques. Comme le faisait remarquer Noemi : "Quand on monde a 14 dans une auto, ça prend moins d'accidents pour faire beaucoup de victimes!"

Living on the Edge

After the houseboat stay, we took a jeep over the mountains to Dharamsala (McLeod Ganj). O.K. I know I've already ranted about driving, but let me just tell you that getting sick in Inda is the least of your worries. Getting into a car is far more dangerous!! The first two hundred kilometers were over a windy mountain road with no gardrails, which is scary enough, but then everybody tries to pass each other! At first I thought being on the inside (hugging the mountain) was better, but since they speed up to pass on the outside, just inches from the hundred meter drop, in fact, driving on the outside turned out to be slightly less frazzling. Luckily, by nightfall we had reached the relatively flat portion of the journey. The entire trip was about 400 km, scheduled to take about twelve hours (of course we scoffed and figured they completely overestimated) and in fact, it took almost eighteen. Yes, way up on this narrow, windy road, trucks break down, get flat tires, have accidents, which reduces the whole road to one functional lane and then everyone tries to scrape past each other. In several spots we came to a complete halt, in the scorching heat. The drivers took the opportunity for a smoke (all drivers smoke, now I think I know why), and meanwhile, I developed my newfound fascination for TRUCKS! If you check our India photos, you will notice a picture of a highly decorated and colorful truck. Well, they're all like this, only different colors and different motifs, but all beautiful. And all made by a company called Tata. (Our family joke after this trip was that we all thought we should do as the locals do and start believing in reincarnation, seeing as how our life expectancy seemed to be diminishing...)
So, we made it alive to Dharamsala, home of the Dalai Lama and the bouddhist community of Tibetans in exile. And since we always seem to be in the right place at the right time, we just happened to be in town when the Dalai Lama was giving a series of public teachings (which he does very rarely). We attended one of his teachings, and actually got to see him as he entered the temple (where you needed a pass). We sat in the courtyard where his talk was simultaneously broadcast on t.v. and translated into English over the radio. It was especially moving to see how the Tibetans reacted when he arrived, such joy and respect on their faces, a moment I will always remember.
So, McLeod Ganj is a curious mix of Tibetain monks, lots and lots of tourists (Europeans and many Israelis), studying bouddhism or yoga or meditation or cooking or just hanging out, and a few Indians. Honestly, it didn't feel like we were in India (just to give you an idea, you can actually get a good expresso, and Indians don't drink coffee) but we greatly enjoyed our week long stay. It's super easy to hike, the village is on the edge of the mountain so you just step outside and head off in any direction, so we did several hikes, on of which took us to the Tibetan Children's Village, a school for Tibetan refugee children. Some are orphans, many have been sent by their parents who still live in Tibet, and who want them to get an education that incorporates the Tibetan culture and language. A lovely woman showed us all around the school, the library, the classrooms and the dormitories where most of the children sleep two to a bed, up to 38 in one house with a "house mother and father". And since we arrived at lunch time, Julien played with some of the boys in the playground. As our guide told us, these kids have nothing, some have endured extreme hardship just to make it to the school, and yet they are happy, hardworking and appreciative. It's unbelievable.
We also met two guys (renting the room next to ours, long term rental) who teach Thai massage: Sean from England, and Ram, from India. Well after chatting for a few days, I mentioned I wanted to take a cooking class, and Sean said, don't take a class, just ask Ram to show you. So I did, and we spent an evening cooking together(lemon rice with nuts and fruit, dal, and aloo gobi) . And then, we all sat down on the floor in a big circle, and, as is the custom, ate with our hands. Needless to say, Julien loved this part, actually being told to eat with his hands!

P.S. If any of you are reading this and would like a postcard at some point during our trip, please send me your mailing address.

Namaste India!!

Hello India! Yes, we made it to Delhi in the middle of the night and woke up to the sights and sounds of this exciting and absolutely crazy city: cars, rickshaws, bicycles all fly past pedestrians, tooting horns and bells non-stop (so you'll jump out of their way), cows wander through all this commotion and leave traces of their passage as they go, all this mixed with the smell of deep-fried snacks, curry and incense, with an occasional whiff of public urinal. Namaste India!!
Shortly after, we headed up to the mountains, to a small town called Srinagar. We took a one hour flight which afforded us an absolutely spectacular view onto the Himalayas and the terrassed fields surrounding the foothills. It made me think of those pictures by Yann Arthus Bertrand, the guy who takes those amazing arial photographs. The colours and textures were breathtaking: white mountain tops, gray-brown crinkly mountain ranges, and beautiful semi-circular fields in various shades of green and yellow. I discovered a few days later that these fields are in fact rice fields: I had no idea rice grew in northern India, I thought it got way too darn cold there in the winter. Well, apparently there is sufficient water after the monsoon (rainy season), and the summer is hot enough to grow rice. I'm learning... We were there just as they were harvesting, which involves cutting the stalks (which kind of look like wheat from far away), then beating them to extract the grains which they collect on large pieces of cloth, pouring the grains into sacks, and tying the stalks into little bundles which they dry and then feed to animals. All of this work is done by hand, of course, and after you see people doing all of this back-breaking work in the scorching heat, you sure appreciate that bowl of basmati rice!
Here we stayed on a houseboat and got paddled around the lake on a "shikara" by an eighty year old man. Sure made us feel like a bunch of lazy tourists, we should have been paddling him around! One day we went for a hike up to a glacier but didn't get to touch the ice: it always looks much closer than it is. We did however have some tea with goat's milk made for us by a gypsy woman, which we sipped while enjoying the incredible view onto the glacier. We also visited some beautiful Mughal gardens, built in the 16th century (sort of like French gardens, everything very symmetrical, no square shrubs though) and the old town with its many mosques. This town is predominantly muslim, and we just happened to arrive towards the end of Ramadan. So we got to hear the prayers, broadcast over loudspeakers ,which seemed to resonate across the lake right into our houseboat, all through the day, and all night!! Quite an ear-opener, you might say.
(As you may have noticed, I am attempting to keep my entries in chronological order, and fill you in on our itinerary. Jean-Francois and I are not in sync, but I'm sure you'll figure it all out!!)

Rafting sur le Gange

Par une magnifique journée, nous avons fait une sortie de rafting sur le Gange, à la hauteur de Rishikesh. Bien que nous soyons partis une heure plus tard que prévu - ce qui est normal en Inde - la compagnie était "sérieuse" et la descente sécuritaire (gilets de sauvetage, casques, bateaux en bon état et personnel expérimenté). Très étrangement, l'excitation causée par les remous, la vitesse, les vagues et les douches d'eau froide successives m'a semblée un répit des routes indiennes et de ses klaxons, virages brusques, arrêts subits, nids de poule, précipices...

Visa pour l'Inde

Notre voyage en Inde a commencé à Nairobi, où il a fallu obtenir nos visas. Prévoyant, je consulte le site Internet du haut-commissariat de l'Inde à Nairobi pour connaître les heures d'affaires pour les visas. Lorsque je m'y rends le lendemain, ce n'est pas la bonne heure! Soucieux de savoir si les visas seront prêts en 24 h, tel qu'il est écrit sur le site Internet (j'avais des raisons de douter), le type me répond avec une face de vache sacrée qui n'a pas l'habitude de se faire déranger : "Come tomorrow, I tell you tomorrow!" Bien.

Je reviens le lendemain, armé de Patricia qui est meilleure que moi pour faire du charme. Nous avons cinq formulaires, remplis et signés, des photos, de l'argent. Après avoir attendu une heure trente, le type - le même que la veille - nous demande si c'est bien nous sur les photos! Après, il nous fait remplir un nouveau formulaire avec les mêmes questions que le premier (nom, adresse, lieu de naissance, date de naissance, etc.) et nous facture 200 shillings (3.35$, mais quand même, pour avoir les mêmes réponses que sur le premier formulaire qui était gratuit...). Ensuite, il nous dit de revenir dans une semaine. Et le visa, on l'aura? "Come next week, I tell you." Heureusement que le site Internet dit 24 heures! Heureusement, surtout, que nous n'avons pas laissé cette corvée à la dernière minute.

Nous sommes donc retournés une semaine plus tard pour nous faire dire qu'on pouvait payer et que, s'il n'y avait pas de problème (le type ne pouvait rien promettre), on aurait nos visas. Pour payer, c'était à la Bank of India, quatre rues plus loin, et en argent comptant seulement. Nous nous y sommes précipités, ne sachant pas si elle fermait à midi et il était moins cinq. Cette charmante banque, à qui nous versions la somme de 16 500 shillings, nous a facturé 100 shillings pour le service!

Je résume, car l'aventure serait trop longue à raconter ici. Mais vous comprenez que nos trois premières visites n'ont pas été des plus agréables. Quand nous sommes entrés pour la quatrième fois au quatrième étage du haut-commissariat de l'Inde à Nairobi, le type nous a tout de suite repérés de derrière son comptoir vitré et nous a fait signe de nous approcher, comme à de vieux copains. Nous faisant passer devant tout le monde, il nous a remis nos passeports avec les visas et est aller jusqu'à amorcer un sourire lorsqu'il a dit : "Have a nice trip to India."

Photos de l'Inde

Voici un nouvel album avec quelques photos de l'Inde.

Le marketing, vous connaissez?

Au Kenya, le slogan d'une importante compagnie de transport par autobus, Tawakal, est : "Others run, we fly!". Vu l'état des routes, ce n'est pas rassurant!

Autre objet d'inquiétude. Nous avons vu souvent au Kenya des "cases" (comme disent les Français) qui annonçaient "Hotel and butchery". Curieux mélange de commerces. Nous ne trouvions pas l'annonce très invitante. Comme a dit Evelyne, "ça soulève quelques questions lorsqu'on voit saucisse italienne au menu!" Nous avons fini par comprendre que ces hôtels très locaux (même les routards les plus aguerris ne les fréquentent pas) n'ont pas d'électricité et donc pas de réfrigération. Ils égorgent donc les chèvres sur place pour servir les ragoûts les plus frais!

Et l'Inde? Ça fait dix jours que nous y sommes et nous ne savons pas encore par quel bout la prendre! Ce ne sera pas long, on finira bien par vous en parler.

Kwaheri (Good-bye) Kenya

After three visits to the High Commission of India, we finally managed to get our visas. Apparently this is just a taste of things come... We were starting to get a bit worried, since we heard they might not let us on the plane without them!
During our last couple of days in Nairobi, I managed to visit an all-girls highschool just around the corner from where we staying. In my usual fashion, I didn't organize anything in advance, I just waltzed up to the gate, introduced myself, managed to meet the vice-principal, and then a lovely teacher who spent a hour and a half explaining the entire Kenyan school system and showing me around the premises. Surprisingly enough, it is quite similar to Villa Maria, where I work in Montreal, (the curriculum, the students, the schedule, the uniforms) except that it is a boarding school and on the school grounds they have cows, hens, and pigs!! I also got to speak to a few of the teachers who complained about being ... overworked and underpaid!! I guess some things are universal.
A note for my African Dance buddies: one day we got to see an entire show of dances from about fifteen different tribes. Of course, Julien wasn't so thrilled (all the dances looked the same to him) but I thought it was great (who could complain with all those beautiful muscular bodies?) All accompanied by live musicians and occasional singing.
Although five weeks certainly isn't sufficient see everything, I feel we did get a taste of Kenya, especially the people and the way they live.I would certainly look forward to going back some day. (I know I will be saying the same thing about every place we visit) It is a land of extremes: geographically, economically and culturally. Which is indeed what makes it so fascinating.
Next stop...Delhi