The next day (only up to Wednesday, I'm afraid) I woke at Sanjauli feeling like death – a mixture of my cold, sore throat and a bad neck (I always wake up with one when I'm ill), not to mention a fairly poor night's sleep. But hey ho, after having a go on John's squat toilet (I mean a proper go, good fun by the way) I was right as rain (or something like that). We were invited to watch Mongolian wrestling of all things with the monks – which was surreal, confusing (the wrestlers would periodically start dancing for no apparent reason) and actually fairly dull (with US wrestling, it may be fake, but at least they make it interesting for people dumb enough to believe it (i.e. Americans)). We then headed on down to Sanjauli. I should mention that John has a squat toilet, and intermittent/no running water (hot water is probably totally unheard of there), and thus no shower (bucket showers it is!). In Sanjauli, we stopped off at a coffee house where I had a nice healthy breakfast of chocolate fantasy cake with hot chocolate sauce, with a nice hot chocolate at the side.
Suitably fed, we went all the way back up (I'm not kidding about how tiring a walk it is) to the monastery, where the monks told us they wanted to play football now, not after lunch. And so, we prepared to head back down again to Sanjauli. Luckily enough for us, things at monasteries are chilled and they happen at their own pace, so we didn't actually walk down again for another 15 minutes or so, instead sat around apparently waiting for something, whilst the lamas played with yo-yos. Eventually we walked down to Sanjauli and to a playground just outside an Indian school (stopping first, for no perceivable reason, outside a jeweler's for about ten minutes). It was dusty with quite a few stones, but we could live with that. The playground was on the hillside, so that one and a bit sides lead to a decent enough drop. The fence around the pitch covered one side, so, predictably, the ball was off down the side of the hill within a minute or two. We went down and searched, but to no avail. We suspected that perhaps it had been nicked (the area down the hill was very poor, with shacks and animals inside houses). Monks were dispatched (with money) to get a new one and, eventually, they returned with a ball. The game commenced again – it was a hectic, large game which was fairly confusing and great fun. The monks had boundless reserves of energy, while we were able to astound and amaze with our lack of any skill or motor control. The ball made its way down the hill again a couple of times, though it was recovered these times.
Then the school came out for lunch, and we stepped aside to let a million and one cricket games start. There is no way to understate just how crazy about cricket they are over here – it's mental! With the exception of the girls, and one or two people swotting up for tests, they all played cricket. We (as in us 3 Westerners) received a bit of attention from the girls, who approached us with giggles and fairly good English. We have been told that fair skin is a bit of a turn-on over here, so in addition to our irresistible good-looks, was it any wonder they came over to us? Anyway, we had to disappoint them on that front since they looked decidedly underage.
Lunch soon came to an end, and we began to play a three-way football tournament (each of me, Mike and John being a team captain). The monks pick teams very fairly; instead of the 'fat kid picked last' phenomenon in England, they get together in twos (or this time threes), and choose which is, for example, banana, orange and apple, then come over to us and we choose blindly one of the three fruits. Very fair. They are also very sportsmanlike, so there are none of the normal playground arguments over handballs, posts, professional fouls, etc., and they don't bother to keep score. It's a nice change to play with people not hooked up on winning all the time.
We eventually finished up and the monks took us to a Tibetan/Chinese restaurant where they all had chowmein and we got meat momos (I'll put the record straight now, momos are the dim-sumesque dumplings with a filling, tingmo are the thick bready dumplings that are more like English ones – I may have mixed them up in the past). We questioned the monks on who was paying, and were greeted with a shrug of the shoulders. There's always a catch! Monks have no money (unless they want to play PS2 at the internet café it seems), we were landed with a bill for about 21 monks and ourselves. Ouch you might think, but it only came to Rs350 each (i.e. for each of the three of us) which is less than a fiver (about £4.40). Still, those freeloading monks owe us! Mike made friends with an Indian guy there who had never left Himachal Pradesh (look at a map to see how big it is), whilst the lamas borrowed my phone and slashed my top scores on Street Race.
We went back to the monastery, got our bags, and said our goodbyes to John and his monks. We then got a bus to Shimla, after first stopping at the coffee place for a cold chocolate (very nice) and a sandwich (not bad). We made our way to the ISBT (Inter-State Bus Terminal) in Shimla to buy our tickets home. We were there some time around five, thinking we'd get an early bus back as we'd promised to teach the next day at TJ (the next day being Thursday). The ISBT is crowded and populated by a handful of shady-looking characters. The ticket office had a sign above it saying “please wait in line for your turn”, but that made about as much difference as Mr Rashid to the RGS lunch queue. After much pushing and queue-jumping in front of us, we got out ticket, having to settle in the end for a 9.30pm bus (we decided that the 'normal' quality bus at 8.00pm was not what we really fancied). So, with a long long wait ahead of us, we moved away from the ISBT to a step for a few minutes, to be assaulted (not literally) by the world's most persistent begger. Trying the “wear them down 'til they give you money to go away” technique, this 6 year old girl stood there, hand outstretched, saying “hello, sir” every two seconds for about ten minutes, maybe more (I'm serious). We tried shooing her in Hindi (“nhai” = no, “chalo” = go (away)) and in English (hoping she'd get the gist of what we were saying, if not the words). We also tried ignoring her totally. All to no avail. I got the feeling that she was, in the end, just doing to amuse herself, rather than with any hope of getting any money. We got some sympathetic looks from passers-by but that didn't make her leave. When she finally did, we wanted to leave anyway, so went up to The Mall (first passing her again, though she just shouted and smiled this time).
Up on The Mall, we sat about, and I read while drinking Mountain Dew. At a restaurant I had a good Thai fried noodles (which I alas couldn't finish) and saw a bit of Scotland against Pakistan in the Twenty20 World Cup. In India, even hermits living under rocks in caves without the use of any of their five senses know about the cricket. In shops and restaurants, it's on the TVs. You usually have to wait for the cricket before you are served.
Mike knowingly bought some totally authentic tourist stuff (a Ganesh picture – now on our wall in TJ – and a Ganesh statuette – on our desk) and I met some guys from Punjab who claimed they were in Shimla for a chess tournament (which did exist, we discovered). We then went on down to the ISBT again to get out bus. We were led down by a random (though we could have done it by ourselves) who got us almost there, but then went the wrong way at the last minute. We noticed, told him, and he queried some people in a shop. Three different people all pointed (as is to be expected) in three different directions, before deciding finally that we were right.
At the bus stand, Mike found the bus while I sat and watched the bags. A guy with zero English (almost) talked to me a bit. We then discovered that our semi-deluxe bus (that was why we waited until 9.30, if you remember) had been swapped for a normal bus. So, we'd waited an hour and half too long. We were a little disappointed, considering we wanted to be back at TJ on the Thursday morning to teach again, but on the bright side, we did get some money back for the downgrading of our tickets.
Actually, the normal bus really wasn't that bad. My main complaints were 1) the guy next to me lying on me so that, a) his head resting on my shoulder, and b) my arm was constantly crushed again the window frame (painfully so), 2) my head constantly hitting the window and the window frame whenever I tried to sleep, and 3) the guy behind me getting a bit uppity in Hindi whenever I opened the window and shutting it himself.
Apart from all that, we got into Dharamsala bus station with no problems to speak of, though we didn't stay there long (see earlier posts to refresh your memories on how wonderful a place it is). We got into a taxi there to go to TJ. The driver didn't know where that was, but claimed he knew Paprola. Another driver reassuringly told us that it was our driver's first time to TJ. Needless to say really that whenever I woke up, we seemed to have stopped for directions. That said, we made it safe and sound to Tashi Jong not long after 8am.
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