India at altitude

Once again I've been very tardy about posting following a jaunt out of Delhi, for which apologies. Anyway, about a month back I hopped on a flight up to Leh, in Ladakh up in the high Himalaya. This is a corner of India quite unlike any other - it really does feel like you've stepped into another country. The culture, the scenery, the people are all decidedly closer to Tibet (which I was lucky enough to visit a decade or so ago) than they are to the Ganges plains. Leh itself doesn't really feel like an Indian town (apart from the incessantly honking horns - I'm not sure there's anywhere in India, apart from maybe the smaller islands in Lakshadweep or the Nicobars, that doesn't feature that). The usual hustle and bustle, the overwhelming activity that you seem to find pretty much everywhere else, is absent. In its place is a laid-back, relaxed atmosphere quite at odds with the fact that the place is in Jammu and Kashmir state - one of the most unstable trouble spots in the world - and hosts a huge military presence.

My time in Ladakh was all too brief - just four days, which was just enough time to adjust to the altitude, do a little bit of trekking, see some fascinating monasteries and buy a rather nifty rug. My friends Nick and Alex, who are travelling round India for a few months, had rather more time to appreciate it. But it was a wonderful place to escape the heat and the crowds of Delhi for a little bit, and kicking back with a cup of chai and watching the sun set over the mountains from a cafe seemingly squeezed into someone's attic was heavenly. Less heavenly was our trip back to Leh after the trek, which involved an ill-advised attempt by our guide to ford a stream in our little minivan. It took a couple of hours to rescue the minivan, and we had to get the army involved. Fun!

So here are some photos from the trip. I hope you enjoy them.

Minaret in Leh. The dominant culture may be Buddhist but the city has seen significant immigration, and now hosts quiet a diverse population including a significant number of Muslims. I did think this was a particularly graceful piece of architecture.

Looking up from Leh's old town towards the palace, perched on a ridge above the city.

Typical view in Leh

The marketplace at Leh. This is pretty much about as busy as it got while I was there - this would be the slowest of slow days in Delhi.

New hat. Ahem.

The Red Temple, high above Leh. Getting there was a struggle but worth it.

View between the prayer flags from outside the entrance to the Red Temple. I was really quite pleased with this photo!

Nick And Alex outside the red temple

And Alex and me! As you can see my legs have entirely failed to notice that they are exposed to the sun.

Nick and Alex horsing around. Leh in the background.

Typical view of the valleys in Ladakh. It's amazing how the barren mountains give way to the lush green valley floor, which looks like a carpet or even the surface of a lake. The Ladakh irrigation systems must be superb - literally nothing grows beyond the confines of the valley.

Prayer flags tethered to an outcrop, Red Temple, Leh

This is the confluence of the Indus and Zanskar rivers. The scenery in Ladakh is majestic: all sweeping panoramas of mountains in various shades of brown and grey, punctuated by pockets of green, and sitting underneath skies that seem almost unnaturally blue. I have to admit though that after a while in the mountains I did start to miss the greener environs of lower altitudes!

One of the few photos I took inside one of the monasteries we visited. We were told that photos were fine, but I still felt very uncomfortable taking them. Just to my right there were about 100 monks chanting in prayer, and I felt like a coarse and vulgar intruder. I took this one shot and then stopped. 

I love that the temples and towns of Ladakh make up for the lack of colour in the environment by making everything they can colourful.

Monks at Lamayuru monastery. 

Yup, it's a seriously big Buddha.

I'm not sure what the significance of the headgear or the percussion is (if anyone can enlighten me I'd love to know). But taken together they certainly create an impression.

There was a large pile of firewood stacked up outside the monastery - I guess they get supplies in during the summer for the long and hard winter.

This was possibly the highlight of the trip - at Lamayuru monastery we came across a group of monks creating a mandala out of coloured sand. It's a painstaking process but they had achieved this in less than 24 hours. Temple was filled with the sound of them scraping their metal tools together to deposit tiny amounts of sand in the exact right position to create the intricate and beautiful pattern, chatting quietly as they did so. Outside the mountains were bathed in bright sunshine and birds flitted around the windows. It was a world quite apart from anything I've ever experienced, and it was breathtaking.

Close up of the tools used to create the mandala.

I like this picture because it tricks the eye. He is actually standing on a broad, flat roof (the white part) but it looks like he's perched on a narrow ledge. 

Young monk taking a rest from work

I like the combination of banality and grandeur in this photo.

Life is hard in Leh. I spotted this lady coming with her heavy burden as I was gazing out from the monastery wall. It's sometimes easy to focus on the picturesque monasteries, monks and prayer flags and forget that people have to earn a living up here in the barren mountains.

Wood stacked up in Lamayuru village. I liked that it was so neatly arranged by type of wood - I presume each has different properties, so they need to be kept separate. But it also created a textural contrast that I thought was really beautiful.

The village at Lamayuru.

Looking back towards Lamayuru after setting out on our short trek.

Three sweaty people.

Early attempts to rescue the minivan after the afore-mentioned incident in the stream. Needless to say pushing the thing was never going to work. Ultimately we had to flag down an army truck, then find a length of chain, and then have about eight people pushing before we could get the thing out of the water. I got to push, and felt all butch. For a second.

All this is just a couple of hours' flight from Delhi, and it feels like another world. It's a cliche to say India is astonishingly diverse, but - well - it is. 

Shopping and segregation

I'm not usually a mall kind of person. This is maybe because instead of growing up in, say, Houston, Texas (where the malls are sparkly, the clothes are cheap and they sell interesting things like Dead Sea salt rubs which then leak all over your suitcase), I grew up in suburban Manchester in the 1980s. In Stretford, we didn't use the word "mall" to describe our local shopping centre; we called it "the precinct", or - more often - "the preccy". It was built of yellow public-toilet bricks and concrete, and had an increasingly pound shop-occupied interior that was scarcely less depressing. After I left Manchester, the place was indeed rebranded as "the Stretford Mall", but they weren't fooling anyone.

This wasn't a great introduction to the mall experience, though I've undoubtedly had a somewhat better experience since then. I retain, though, a healthy dislike for these places and their soulless capitalism, divorced from the civic and artistic life of the city centre. So I've pretty much avoided the various huge establishments that have sprung up in south Delhi in recent years, and done my shopping in the various family-run, stick-out-your-elbow-and-knock-over-an-entire-exhibit little stores in the various local markets.

Every now and again, though, needs must. This last weekend I needed to go shopping to buy a new outfit for the concerts my choir is giving this week. Last time the dress code was black; this time it is off-white, so I had to buy another kurta (yes, I now have two garments that I'm going to wear maybe four times in my life). I decided this time I'd go the whole hog and get the matching pyjama and juttis too (that's a whole other post) so I met up with a couple of friends at the Vasant Kunj mall to do the needful, as they say here.

Vasant Kunj mall is actually a set of three interconnected malls, that sit by the site of an enormous dusty highway somewhere amid the south Delhi sprawl. The location seems bizarre to me. As a non-driver I find the idea of putting commercial outlets miles from anywhere where people would naturally walk to be inherently weird; for those used to getting everywhere by car, I guess the perspective is different. But anyway, the view from the malls is of said dusty highway, a few sad patches of grass, and a lot of Indian style pavements (cracked stones, random gaps, even more random lumps of concrete stuck in the middle of the path). And that's it. You can't see any human habitation or other commercial activity, even though logically they can't be that far away. It's just the malls and the wasteland. It's very post-apocalyptic.

(I feel I must add at this point that I didn't take my camera with me, so the above photo is not my work. I hope I would have managed to get a reasonably horizontal shot...)

Talking of the apocalypse, like any self-respecting horror film fan (and I am one, though that seems to surprise people quite often) I can't go to a mall without my thoughts turning to zombies. And Vasant Kunj could indeed be modelled on the Dawn of the Dead mall. Once you've left behind the broken concrete, cooking under the 42 degree sun, it's definitely more Houston than Stretford: sparkling clean, completely sanitised, and shamelessly dedicated to shallow consumerism (in which, of course, I would NEVER indulge. Oh no). And like such places everywhere, it's populated by people who, in the main, are mindlessly in pursuit of exactly that.

We want Gucci saris, new iPhones, and fresh masala brains please.

Actually, though, I was more reminded me of a more recent Romero outing, Land of the Dead. You know, the one where the survivors of Z-Day are walled up in an idyllic prison while outside chaos rules? Vasant Kunj mall feels a bit like that - a slightly surreal, too-perfect world that bears no resemblance at all to the noisy, hot, churning city outside. And while this may sound like I am drawing a comparison in the mall's favour, I'm not. For a couple of hours it was nice to escape the dirt and the heat, breathe in the air-conditioned goodness, and eat caprese salad in a sports bar complete with pool tables. But it gets old pretty quickly, and anyway, it feels as phoney as those impossibly handsome shop mannequins you see these days.

I'm not sniping at India for having malls, or romanticising the "real India" as something under threat from these developments. As I said, I don't much like any malls, and I think they do have a destructive effect on the vitality of the cities where they spring up. But I understand their attraction, particularly for Delhiites between May and September, when the weather is at its most intolerable. I can't blame people for wanting some cool air, some space, and some respite from the traffic cacophony.

If, of course, you have the money to afford it. Indian malls have tight security, and routinely turn people away if they look like they can't afford to shop there (which, of course, the vast majority of Indians can't). At least in UK shopping centres anyone can come and window shop; in India, part of the appeal of these places is that they are exclusive to a small number of well-off people who are desperate to escape the seething masses for a while.

And this is what I find a bit unnerving about them. Generally, markets in Delhi are quite equalising places. Yes, you have more exclusive ones where stores cater to people with large budgets, but to get to them you can't avoid rubbing shoulders with shoe shine boys, cycle rickshaw wallas, and all the others, hustling for a few rupees. The streets of Delhi simply don't allow for much segregation between different kinds of people.

So the mall seems symptomatic of a wider change in India, seen also in the proliferation of gated communities in cities like Delhi and Bangalore. A degree of exclusivity - in leisure activities or education, for instance - has always been a feature of being rich; but India's increasing wealth (and its concentration in the hands of a few) seems to be leading to a place where rich people's entire lives are becoming removed from those of their poorer countrymen.

Maybe I'm exaggerating. The markets at Lajpat Nagar or Sarojini Nagar remain, after all, melting pots of Delhi society (and despite the lack of air conditioning or piped music, a more rewarding experience for the visitor). But I think the trend is there - the same trend that, for instance, South Africa has seen (though for different reasons, I think). Is the future of urban India one of stark polarisation? Will tomorrow's rich Indian kids have any idea at all of the poverty existing on their doorstep?

More to the point, is the only option for an increasingly rich India a future of increasingly bland consumer environments and the decline of the vitality of the street? And is that just a patronising Western perspective on the inevitable changes taking place in a country that rightly wants a chance to experience the kind of living standards I've been able to take for granted?

Entertaining Madam President

Last night I participated in one of the most unusual carol concerts I've ever attended - certainly one of the most memorable. It took place in the ballroom of the Rashrapati Bhawan - the Presidential Palace - with the President of India, Pratibha Patil, in attendance. The carol concert takes place every year with several choirs from across the country invited to take part, and this year (for the second time) the choir I have recently joined, Capital City Minstrels, was included in the programme. Needless to say, I was quite excited at the opportunity to sing for a Head of State!

The palace itself was built towards the tail end of the British colonial period as the residence for the Viceroy of India, and became the President's residence on India's independence. I'm not particularly inspired by the exterior - or indeed by the rest of Lutyens' Delhi, as I've blogged before - which manages to combine squatness and pomposity (though, as a fellow chorister pointed out, it's still better than Buckingham Palace):

Sadly we weren't allowed to take cameras inside, so you'll just have to take my word for it when I say that the interior is much more pleasing. Of course it's all terribly grand, but somehow the proportions seem to work far better once you're inside, and the marriage of classical architecture with strong Indian influences is really stunning. The effect is only slightly marred by the red masking tape marking the edge of all the stairs (the original designers apparently having failed to realise that two white marble steps in the middle of a long white marble corridor is a recipe for unfortunate mishaps).

The ballroom itself, though, is quite simply one of the most gorgeous rooms I've ever been in. Mostly this is due to the paintings that cover the walls and ceiling, featuring scenes reminiscent of the best Mughal miniatures (though magnified rather a lot, obviously) surrounded by lovely arabesque floral designs. I spent quite a lot of the concert (when not singing) with my head back feasting on the beauty of it all. I felt enormously privileged to be able to do so.

Preparations for the concert were extensive - we arrived at 3 and didn't start singing until half past five - and organised by the Indian military (I presume the Presidential guard) with a technique that showed a great deal of respect for tight timing and absolutely no recognition of the practical matters of getting entire choirs on and off a stage. As a result we over-ran by nearly an hour, but good humour seemed to prevail.

Apart from our three numbers we had a mixed programme, including a couple of children's choirs (actually not bad) and a really amazing performance by a group called Voices of Hope, from Nagaland on the border with Myanmar, whose conductor Nise also plays piano for our choir and who has a heartbreakingly beautiful singing voice. There was also a group called the Delhi Syro-Malabar Mission, who sang a number in the Malayalam language from Kerala which, upbeat and highly enjoyable though it was, is, I fear, unlikely to be joining Silent Night and Jingle Bells on the list of Christmas classics any time soon:

Apparently, that little mouthful translates roughly as "Do re mi fa so la ti do...the holy light over the stable". Doesn't really trip off the tongue in either language.

Once the choirs were finished we had a Christmas message from the Cardinal of Ranchi, who rejoices in the superb name of Telesphore P Toppo. No, really. It's an even better name than Cardinal Sin. The evening was then slightly marred by the appearance of two very skinny santas wearing frankly terrifying masks, which of course put me immediately in mind of a certain episode of Dr Who and made me fear for the safety of everyone present:

Baffling, this. As a fellow singer pointed out, India hardly has a shortage of rotund gentlemen with white beards. The preference for skinny guys in hideous masks is something I can't really fathom.

To round off the evening we had a good old singalong, including the following verse of Jingle Bells. I can honestly say I have never heard this verse before, so I'm wondering if any of you have ever come across it. And what is the meaning of the word "upsot"? Answers on a postcard...

And the President? Well, she sat dutifully through it all, perched in splendid isolation immediately in front of the stage in a white armchair that seemed far too large (she is a tiny but dignified elderly lady). At the end she congratulated all the conductors and then posed for photos with all the choirs (I will post ours on here as and when it's sent). At one point one of the choirs sent up two of their members for a photo dressed as Mary and Joseph, at which point the President grabbed the Baby Jesus out of Mary's arms for an impromptu shot, which I thought was a nice touch. But it's rather hard to say how much she enjoyed it all. The presidential role here is largely ceremonial so I imagine she has to go to a lot of this kind of thing, and she maintained a fairly inscrutable expression. But it was an honour to perform for her, whatever her thoughts on the matter!

Altogether a truly memorable evening and one that reflects India's embracing of its many different cultures and creeds as well as its love of festival. Despite the rigid security, the inevitable formality of the event, and the fact that a majority of the people present were not Christian either by background or by belief, it was one of the most enjoyable Christmas events I've been to. And just the fact that it happens at all - hosted by the President of a country that is only about 2% Christian - is really quite beautiful. I feel lucky to have been there.

Some soggy photos

Mumbai offered precious few photographic opportunities thanks to the monsoon, but I thought I might as well share a few anyway...

The Gateway of India, built on Mumbai's sea front to commemorate the visit of King George V to India in 1911. It was completed in 1924, and less than a quarter of a century later it was the scene of the final departure of British troops. It's quite an impressive monument even in the rain, and although it doesn't sit on a grand boulevard like India Gate, I think it makes more of a visual impression. It's also home to the most persistent touts I've come across yet in India, all of whom desperately trying to take me on a sightseeing tour. None succeeded.

One of the many beautiful Gothic buildings in the Colaba / Fort areas. I'm none too fond of the British architectural legacy in Delhi, but Mumbai really has some stunners. This is the David Sassoon Library and Reading Room. Even among the clamour of Mumbai, buildings like this, the University buildings and the High Court retain a feeling of poise and calm that I far prefer to the bombastic showiness of Delhi's colonial era architecture (though the railway terminus has bombast aplenty and I have to say it's pretty damn awesome). 

Apparently, it was a law during the British period that all buildings on the main streets had to have a covered arcade outside. What a good idea. The shade provided from the sun on hot days must be just as welcome as the respite provided from the downpours during my visit.

Nothing really to say about this one - I just liked the name of the store and the posters in the windows.

Mumbai has beautiful old buildings (this one the University tower) and some glittering modern constructions, but the bits in between tend to look a bit tired.

An itinerant flute-seller. I'm not sure how he keeps all the flutes attached.

The Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya. Or if that's a bit too much for you, do what the locals do and call it the Prince of Wales museum (it's not my place to say, but if you want a new name to catch on making it short and snappy might be a good idea). Reminded me of nothing so much as Miss Havisham's house, if Miss Havisham's house had a big dome stuck on top.

And that's pretty much it! Hopefully my next visit will be more camera-friendly - the opportunities for snapping Mumbai life are endless.

Old walls and old wells

I still

cannot get over the sheer number of ancient sites and monuments in Delhi. We Europeans tend to think of Asian cities as modern affairs - either squat concrete or shimmering steel-and-glass - and that Europe is where you go for truly old urban architecture. But there are few places in Europe that come close to rivaling Delhi's wealth of heritage buildings - as a few posts on this blog have attested.

My latest bit of exploration into Delhi's history is probably the most dramatic - the Purana Qila or Old Fort, which lies north of Humayun's tomb and south-east of India Gate and the Rajpath. As with Old Delhi, the "Old" bit of the name is not really accurate: this is the site of the sixth of the cities that have stood here, and was Humayun's (he of the beautiful tomb) centre of power in the sixteenth century (though it is reputedly also where the first city, Indraprastha, stood). It's also where Humayun met his end - after falling down a flight of steps, which seems a cruelly undignified way for a man of his standing to go. Its massive walls tower dramatically over this part of Delhi, and the main gate was clearly designed to impress:

There's not much that survives inside the walls though, other than Humayun's graceful little observatory and a mosque, dramatically positioned overlooking the valley of the Yamuna river and featuring some wonderful mosaic work on its facade.

From its defensive position, the Purana Qila looks down on the whole valley - although the river itself has shifted course away from its walls these days. Of course, nowadays the valley features some rather less beautiful architecture, which provides some interesting contrasts:

The once-impregnable fortress is now a favourite spot for an evening stroll for the citizens of Delhi, who come and have their photos taken outside the ancient buildings. As you can see, the occasion gives rise to unmitigated joy and gay abandon on the parts of the participants:

But if you don't fancy a walk and would rather a sit-down activity, you can always opt instead to take a boat around the slightly swampy-looking boating lake that sits at the north-west foot of the walls. It looks like a pleasant excursion, but I can't help thinking that the sight of these garishly coloured pleasure boats and giant ducks pottering about beneath the towering, defensive ramparts looks a bit incongruous. I wonder what Humayun would have thought of this particular usage of his citdael.

Finally, just outside the main gate to the Purana Qila is the Khair-ul-Manazil, or "best of houses", a now rather dilapidated mosque and madrassa, which apparently was commissioned by the wet nurse of one of the Mughal emperors (I never knew wet nurses could be so powerful outside of Blackadder). The building itself doesn't stand out greatly against Delhi's other monuments, but it does feature a working hand-drawn well, which was being put into use when I popped in for a visit:

This is one of the things I find so fascinating about Delhi - in a rapidly modernising city, older ways of life still flourish. There is always something happening, wherever you are, and few things are allowed to go to waste. In the middle of a semi-derelict historic site, a working well that produces clean water (well, it looked clean anyway) and a family making use of it. The guard came in just after I took this photo and was given some of the water to wash his hands and mop his forehead. What they used the rest of the water collected in the urns for I have no idea - but I was happy for the photo op.