May-July, 2012
After a long train ride to Delhi, I once again had
to spend one night waiting for a bus the following day to the mountains. I headed directly to the Swisston Hotel in
Pahar Ganj where I had stayed the previous year, hoping that again they would
be sympathetic to me not having a passport and visa. The man at the front desk stated that there
was a new, stricter cop and I would have to go to the police station to talk
with him to get approval. I left my
paraglider and the rest of my gear at the hotel and walked about a kilometre to
the station. I spent the next hour and a
half waiting, talking with one guy, then to someone else, waiting some
more. Eventually they told me I had to
go to the other police station, across Pahar Ganj a couple of kilometres
away. Dejected I trudged along the
dusty, dirty and busy streets as dusk set in.
At the other station the same procedure occurred but eventually a
sub-inspector (the same rank as Sachin, the main cop in my case) gave me his
phone number for the hotel to call.
Returning to the Swisston Hotel over 3½ hours later I was gutted when
they told me that they had no rooms available anymore. Whether they really were full or just didn’t
want to deal with me, I’ll never know.
So I picked up my gear and allowed touts to try
their luck at finding a room for me. We
asked at six to eight hotels and I was denied, denied, denied. It started to look like I was going to be
sleeping on the streets, huddling in a corner with my paraglider. Finally we entered one hotel lobby with a big
fat man who resembled Jabba the Hut sitting on a chair watching cricket on
TV. “Yeah, you can stay here. I don’t talk to the police,” he grunted “but
2000 rupees.” I figured I didn’t have a
choice. It was by far the most I had spent
on a room in India and it was the worst room too. In the dirty dingy bathroom there was no
showerhead causing the water to run down the wall so I couldn’t have a
desperately needed shower and the toilet didn’t flush. The bedside table was smashed in and there
was dirt everywhere. To top it off, I
woke up in the night itching all over, probably from bed bugs. Needless to say, I was glad to get out of
Delhi and head up to Dharamsala and the home of the Dalai Lama.
For this travel application I had been required to
state the specific guesthouse in each place I was staying along with the dates
in each spot. Any backpacker knows that
this is not easy to do. Not many
guesthouses can be found online, nor will you know if they’ll have availability
and most importantly, whether you’ll like it or not. It’s usually best to just show up, look
around and then decide. But I had
researched for McLeod Ganj situated up the mountain from Dharamsala and had
picked the “Pink Guesthouse”. Arriving
there at 8am after an overnight bus I was pleased when the manager, after a
quick perusal of my court documents, seemed to have no problem with my lack of
passport and visa. Ah, what a nice
change from Delhi.
Well that was short lived. Two days after my arrival the manager told me
I had to go to the Foreigner Registration Office (FRO) down in Dharamsala. It was a small dingy office with stacks of
dusty papers piled up everywhere behind the half dozen desks behind the serving
counter. I spoke with two different guys
there, showing them my court papers and explaining to them that the police had
confiscated my passport and I was awaiting trial. This did not suffice for them and I was told
that I had to leave the region. I left
dejected and tried to think of my options.
I had my laptop with a 3G modem so by the side of the road I Skyped the
British High Commission in Delhi to see if they might be able to help me. A guy named JD told me he’d talk to them and
call me back on my cell so I climbed into a jeep taxi to head back up the
mountain. JD rang while we were making
our way up the windy road but my phone battery died part way through our
conversation. Once I got out of the jeep
I tried to Skype him again but was told that he had left for the day. I don’t seem to have good luck in this
country.
The next morning I spoke to JD and he simply stated
that I would be safest in Goa and that I should have obtained some kind of
letter from the FRO in Goa before I left on the trip. That doesn’t do me much good now. Great, nothing like getting exiled from the
place that is home to Tibetan exiles!
So I decided to head to my next destination that I
had planned for my trip in Himachal Pradesh, a small town called Bir located 42
kilometres east of Dharamsala and a world renowned paragliding spot. Thankfully there I was welcomed by the staff
of Hotel Surya. Brothers Naresh and
Suresh run the place and have many paraglider pilots stay there so it didn’t take
long to establish that they knew some of the same pilots that I did which gave
me a bit of credibility. In fact I ended
up liking the place so much that I decided to try and extend the return date on
my travel permission. Caroline said it
would cost another 5000 rupees for the change and I needed to have a reason why
I was staying longer. I guess “I don’t
want to sit in the monsoon in Goa when I can have epic paragliding flights in
the mountains” wasn’t good enough.
Knowing that I had back issues from the previous year’s paragliding
crash in Panchgani she suggested I say that I was taking some special yoga
course for my injury. So over the next
couple of days and with the help of an American paraglider pilot I befriended,
we concocted a phony receipt from “Yoga One on One” for a special “Medical
Yoga” course and it worked. How silly is
this? My lawyers telling me to commit
forgery!
While staying in Bir I had the longest cross
country paragliding flight of my life. I
flew from Bir all the way to Dharamsala, gave it the finger (for kicking me
out) while a few hundred meters above it and then flew all the way back again
without landing, a distance of 84 kilometres which took me a total of five
hours. It was a thrilling flight and a
little terrifying at times since I was on my own and had I had a collapse with
my wing that caused me to land near the back spine of the snow capped
mountains. I would have had at least a
day’s hike to get back to civilization and that was provided I didn’t sustain
any injuries. A flight like this is
similar to a chess game in the sky. You
have to determine how high to get above a mountain ridge before crossing a
valley where there will likely be no lift and hopefully arriving at the next
ridge high enough up that it is easy to find lift. So you have to factor in the direction and
strength of the wind, look for where the sun might be heating rocks on the
mountainside that might kick off a thermal, watching which clouds are forming
and which are dying off, keep an eye open for any birds circling to locate
nearby thermals while always keeping a possible landing zone in mind. Add in some turbulence and you have a recipe
for some good mental gymnastics. The
takeoff in Bir is at 2300 metres above sea level and on the way I reached as
high as 4500 metres but when I made it to Dharamsala I was only at 2100 metres,
two hundred below where I launched from but 42 kilometres away but thankfully I
made it back.
Next I headed off to Manali to finish my trip where
I once again stayed at the Purnima Guesthouse and this time Manu simply didn’t
register me with the police. It seems
that I can travel around India, but only if I can stay in places where I know
the people. I guess I need to make more
Indian friends!
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