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October 31, 2003
You'd never have guessed"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" - Sigmund Freud
So he did have a sense of humour after all.
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October 30, 2003
Too bleedin coldOne of the main reasons this blog has been neglected of late is the onset of winter. Every day seems to get half a degree or so colder, and about a minute after sunset you have to reach for the woolies. Somehow, as we found out last winter, the cold has a negative effect on creativity too. Its hard to find the enthusiasm for long blog entries or emails when your fingers feel like they are about to drop off, and anyway the cold seems to seep into the brain and perform a minor lobotomy. In short, I dont feel like writing much, and accounts of Dussehra and Diwali are still half finished. I begin to understand why some animals hibernate.
I got an email today from a friend who runs a small trekking agency in Manali, but is spending the winter for the first time in Goa. In the email he was complaining about the humidity and heat, leaving me to think "what the hell are we doing here, freezing the proverbials off". The last 2 guests at our place decided today that enough cold was enough and headed to Rajastan
And then after a walk through the orchards and the relative of the village I realised why its nice to stay here and freeze. Old Manali in winter is really a pleasant place once the mayhem of the season is over devoid of the racket of Enfield Bullets, the omnipresent background buzz of techno and the loud shout of "Bom Bolaye" as yet another Traveller Stereotype sparks up a giant chillum safe in the knowledge that "its part of the local culture". But now all is peace and quiet in the village. If you see more than one or two travellers outside Manali Town, its a busy day. Post Diwali even the last of the Indian tourists have gone back to Gujarat and Bengal, although there will be plenty for the secular version of New Year.
Every day both the village and the main town get a little more empty, and every day you think it cant get any quieter, but somehow it does; another shop or another restaurant closes for the season, finding a rickshaw in town is impossible after 9pm. Old Manali now has only one open cafe at Dragon Guest house, and they are closing in a few days. Overall the effect is great, with the place feeling more like it must have done twenty years ago (over developed buildings excepted) before the promise of 3 day parties and en suite chicken schnitzel drew half of Israels youth to the Valley to let off steam and invent their own subculture.
Everything in India, and the Kulu Valley especially, seems to have a season, and this is 'chillout season' for the local people of Manali and the surrounding villages. Almost all the crops and winter grass are finished, and with Diwali and Dussehra over the whole atmosphere relaxes with more people taking time to talk, drink chai and play cards. The pace of life seems to visibly slow, although there is still work to do collecting firewood - and post Diwali there are plenty of three day weddings to attend.
The village is home to only 2 or 3 thousand people, yet the sheer number of weddings each year seems out of proportion to those numbers, with an apparently back to back stream of weddings continuing for more than a month. In our relatively small circle of friends we already know of 3 imminent marriages, and a couple more "maybe this year, maybe next"s. To survive wedding season requires a stout liver, a good diary and a fairly deep pocket. Kulu Valley weddings (as with most Indian weddings) are extemely colourful and immensely enjoyable. As much as a celebration of marriage, they are an opportunity for old friends and distant family from other villages to meet up.
But even after the weddings are over theres plenty for the villagers to look forward to. New year is closely followed by the Winter Carnival, Faghari (spelling extremely uncertain!!) and a localised version of Diwali to fill in the time before Holi.
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Rooms with an unusual viewwe spent the latter part of this evening poring over plans for a "second roof" on a friends guest house, the second roof being the local description of putting another floor of rooms on the guest house. Anybody who has visited enough Indian hotels will well remember some of the wacky layouts that they can contain, with rooms sometimes only accessible through another room, "attached bathrooms" that serve 2 or more rooms and require an intricate routine of locking and unlocking doors to have a comfortably private dump.
So we talked over his plans, hastily drawn on a piece of photocopy paper, for about three hours attempting in our tedious European way to introduce concepts such as load bearing walls (to hold the 10 ton concrete roof) to the discussion only to be informed that that wasn't a problem as "none of the builders previous efforts have collapsed", and that running a sewage pipe 7 metres with only 50 cm of downslope would merely mean he would have to clean the pipe occasionally. The notion of "user centric design" as opposed to builder centric (well it works OK in Bihar) didn't even get a nod. We did succeed in deleting a ludicously small bedroom that would have had a delightful view onto the sceptic tank breather pipe.
A happy compromise was reached on all counts, and now awaits only the skills of the Bihari builders to take physical form. Apart from 2 years of Tech Drawing classes in school, I have bugger all idea about laying out buildings, and I shudder to think what future travellers will say when they discover the door opens exactly the wrong way, the windows are impossible to close and the stairway is exactly the wrong height for anyone over 5.5ft tall.
The other, and perhaps more practical concern to be resolved is how to fill the additonal four rooms, considering that Western Tourism in Manali has gone into a decline the last couple of years, with the big himalayan party having made Kasol in the Parvati Valley the summer retreat for the Chillum Tribe. This year there were only two or three occasions when potential guests had to be turned away, and I reckon its a bit optimistic to splash out 5 lakh rupees and hope tourist numbers are set to double. Which would require at least that a) India and Pakistan have no plans to rattle Nuclear sabres next year b) nobody incites a massive outbreak of communal violence in India c) SARS doesn't make a comeback, and d) the local Cops chill out a bit with hassling tourists over parties and charas.
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October 21, 2003
God is on the side of dope smokersIn a story to cheer the hearts of dope smokers, one of the tales currently on the Kulu valley grapevine concerns the police destruction of the dope harvest in Melana in September, as mentioned in this blog entry. According to the story doing the rounds, police team of around 100 suffered repeated problems with ill health, to the point that many had to come back to Kullu, or stayed with the mission to destroy the famed Melana dope crop, but were plagued with stomach problems in spite of bringing their own cooks and food. This was all apparently due to divine intervention in the form of the powerful village deity of Melana, Jamloo, who caused the illnesses as a warning to the police and to protect the villagers livelihood, worth many crores of Rupees.
The Gods also apparently intervened in early September in Manali. The Manali villagers had started to collect winter grass for cows in advance of the start date (usually announced by the Panchayat, or village council), and this displeased the local Deities, Hadimba Devi and Manu Rishi who reponded by continuing the rains for days after Monsoon should have ended, making collection and drying of grass (and apples) difficult.
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Cops get an early result in Manali Backpacker deathManali's finest appear to have solved the riddle of the death of Anna Hamilton, who was found washed up in the Beas River at the beginning of October. Early on they arrested a local Manali man, Lot Ram, also known as Latoo, and after questioning him issued warrants for 2 Irish tourists and a Nepali. The two Irishmen, Adrian Breathnach and Frank James, have since handed themselves in to Kullu Police after first travelling to Delhi and contacting the Irish Embassy, and have now been charged - apparently and are being held in Judicial remand in Kullu pending a further hearing and trial. A Nepali sought by police, Santosh, has so far evaded arrest.
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October 3, 2003
Arrest made in backpacker murder Another story on the Annaova service confirms that a local Manali man has been arrested in connection with Anna Hamilton's death, and that police are looking for two Irish backpackers and a Nepali youth who may also have been involved.
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Malana Cream shortageThe coffee shops of Amsterdam may suffer a shortage of a favourite product this year. A team of local Kullu police in conjunction with the NCB (Chandigarh) returned last week from Malana where they had been implementing the imaginatively named Operation Destroy Cannabis, aimed at cutting production of the areas famous Charas. Police involved in the operation destroyed fields of dope plants around the village, some apparently as high as 15 feet, in and around the village on the way prosecuting 8 people for cultivating the plant on private or forestry dept land. The story in the Hindustan Times suggests that in addition to crop cutting, the Police took time out to educate the local people as to why growing the stuff was a Bad Idea, and reputedly won some converts to the cause - surprising as it makes many of them extremely well off.
A total of 1,100 Bighas was destroyed, which had it been harvested would have produced 3,000 kg of the world famous Malana Cream worth 82.5 crore (around 11 million GBP) on the international market. Tokers of Europe will be crying into their coffee.
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More on the Manali backpacker death This link to a Daily Mirror story carries more typically sensationalised tabloid information on the death of Anna Hamilton, the traveller whose body was found by the banks of the Beas River in Manali yesterday. According to the Mirror, Anna, from Southend, Essex, had been released in June from jail in Dubai, where she was serving a 25 year sentence for smuggling cocaine and ecstasy, facts that will no doubt lead the local Rumour Mill to the usual comfortable conclusions. There is more of the same here. The Manali grapevine also reports that a local man, said to be of "bad character", has been pulled in for questioning, and further suggests that a number of people may have been involved in the murder.
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October 2, 2003
Dussehra weekFor anyone confused by the dates for Kullu's Dussehra festival 2003, the starting day and opening event with the pulling of the Rath is on the 5th of October with the arrival of Hadimba Devi from Manali, and the closing day is on the full moon day on 10th October.
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Another tourist death in the Kullu Valley The Kullu valley continues its grisly reputation for the deaths and disappearances of backpackers today with the news that a female body was washed up in the Beas river in Manali town this morning. A brief report is given in this article in todays Hindu newspaper.
The article names the woman as Anna Hamilton, a British national who had been missing from her guest house. She was found by a local man taking an early morning dump by the river. The body has now been taken for Post Mortem by local police who have informed the British Embassy.
The local rumour mill reports that the body was wearing trousers, but no clothes on the upper body, and that when found a wound on her head was still issuing blood. The river is currently low, suggesting the body would not have washed down very far.
Many people reading this will know something of the valleys rather dodgy reputation for the murder and disappearance of backpackers. Some reports suggest that between 25 and 30 people have been killed or disappeared in the valey since 1996, although that is only the "reported" figures; the real number may well be higher. A couple of years ago a British man was badly injured and his girlfriend and her son were murdered when they were attacked and beaten and then their bodies thrown into the river Beas. That case attracted a lot of publicity, and the Police made arrests. the culprits were then blamed (rightly or wrongly) for many of the other incidents.
A friend I had met in Manali in 1996, Jason Bellman from Manchester, UK, disappeared in August that same year in Rishikesh, while on his way to Nepal to meet up with me. He had been noticed as missing by his guest house owner. His body was (to my knowledge) never found, but his money belt, with travellers cheques and passport apparently intact were found on the beach by the river. When he didn't turn up in Nepal I thought nothing of it; plans change, and I only found all this out later when I saw a "missing person" poster in Manali later in the year. A Swedish doctor who had been in Rishikesh at the time told me the story - or as much of it as there was. The local theory in that particular case was that he had committed suicide. I knew Jason only briefly, but found that an absolutely ridiculous proposition. He was a lively sorted sort of guy with a one year Indian visa and plenty of money; why on earth would he fling himself into the river? If anyone knows the story of what actually happened to Jason, I would be grateful if you would drop me a line.
This year in May, an Israeli, Gil Duady, disappeared while lost on the hillside above Dhungri (as reported on this blog) after suffering a bad fall and injuring his leg while walking with his Turkish girlfriend. After spending the night on the hillside, the girl went for help but couldn't find the exact spot on returing with her guest house owner and his staff. The local police response was lacklustre and it was only a few days later that any sort of reasonable number of people participated in the search. A search and rescue team from Israel eventually arrived, but like the others found no trace of his body. To date, there is no trace of him.
The popular local theory, as with most of these incidents, worked aroud the "blame anyone but never suggest a local involvement" mentality, with many local people suggesting that the Turkish girlfriend had robbed and murdered the Israeli, then gone to report him as missing and assisted the search "team" for another 2 weeks or so. She was not reputed to be the brightest person on earth, and this explanation seemed designed more to soothe the local psyche and not buck the tourist industry than it was a serious effort at solving the crime.
And that is a common theme with such incidents; the locals are famed for being notoriously uncooperative with such investigations, and for many (but by no means all) their first reaction is to worry about their precious tourist industry before the loss (or disappearance) of a human being. Often they put it down to the individual themselves, blaming drugs, recklessness, insanity (!!) or even suicide rather than look for more obvious reasons. Other favourites include the Israeli or Italian drug mafia.
While some of the incidents are almost certainly unfortunate accidents that may happen to trekkers unwisely walking alone in remote areas where they are unlikely to be found by chance, others clearly involve malice, rape or robbery, and it is these - and the response of the authorities and local people to them - that are the most disturbing. The attitude seems to be "if no one knows, the tourists will keep coming", except that many of the incidents are well reported and must put off a large number of people - even Lonely Planet gives it a mention. I have tried to point out many times, with little (success) that some serious effort to solve the crimes, catch the perpetrators and prevent a repeat would go a lot further in mitigating damage to tourism income than clamming up and hoping the problem will go away. The government authorities including the Dept of Tourism and the Police do little better.
The prosperity of the Kullu valley area and its people depends heavily for its income on the influx of foreign tourists, whether from trekking, restaurants, guesthouses and even the notorious Charas business. They morally owe something to those who come to their land and make many of them really rather rich. However, many are very shortsighted in their outlook. If they refuse to take that responsibility seriously they may well find that before too long the Goose That Layed the Golden Eggs is also found washed up in the Beas river.
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October 1, 2003
BSNL overcharging - or the Ancient Art of Indian Civil Service Politics We returned from our Spiti trip to at least one piece of good news - the Forces Of Darkness and Inanity at the Manali office of BSNL (the Indian national telecoms provider) seem finally to have implemented the new charging rates for Internet calls, and as a result out phone bill was about a quarter of what it would have been.
Last November, BSNL head office issued notice No 3-47/2002-R&C cutting rates for Internet calls after 10.30pm drastically. The old rate was 180 seconds "per pulse" - meaning a charge of 1.2 Rs for every 180 seconds used (about 25 Rs per hour phone charges) - and the new was 360 second pulse (about 12 Rs per hour). News however travels slowly in the Indian Beaucracy, and our phone bills rolled in as high as ever. Especially odd as 99% of all of our phone usage is to the net after 10.30pm. This continued until May when BSNL Head office at Statesman House in Delhi slashed the rate further to an amazing 600 second pulse (about 8Rs per hour), and our phone bills continued to look like bills for 5 star hotels.
So then we decided to play a few rounds of the ancient game of Indian Civil Service Politics (respect to Douglas Adams) with the boys at Manali BSNL HQ, and tried actually enquiring why the charges were not correct. As any Indian will tell you, Indian Civil Service Politics is the hardest game on earth, making the Tour De France on a Hero Bicycle look easy and fun. As we dont have any relatives or friends at BSNL (or even knowledge of the full rules of Indian Civil Service Politics) making enquiries was a bit like trying to eat soup with a knife.
At the office the dance began with the traditional offering of Helplessness by the Clerk, and incomprehension of the problem, and after being shuffled past a few Meaningless Flunkies, we were invited to fill out a "complaint form" - basically a blank piece of paper - which would be passed (allegedly) to someone with Power - currently "out". This would in theory give us an itemised bill for the next bill so we could pinpoint any discrepancies. Ha. Or more likely "filed" in the Round File (read dustbin).
Now I am no expert on the function of Telecoms equipment, but I imagine the deal goes something like; 1) Memo arrives from Delhi. 2) Post Room Flunky passes this to Manager (possibly via a flotilla of Under Managers, Junior Engineers etc. 3) Manager passes it on to Appropriate Technicial Staff. 4) Appropriate Technicial Staff read it and tap in appropriate numbers as per Head Office instructions to change the pulse rates. 5) BSNLs Happy Customers (read Victims) enjoy the largesse of New Charging Regime with lower bills, Manalis Internet users go totally nocturnal resulting in widespread famine as no work is done during the day.
This is undoubtedly a far foreshortened version of the actual sequence required under the Rules.
Simple, of course, is not how it goes. At this point I began to have more than a passing suspicion that some fiddle was going on. I thought it unlikely that anyone was pocketing money, but in absence of a better explanation, that the continuing overcharging was the local BSNL trying to keep to a quota of how much money they made. Or something. I am far, far from a fan of Privatisation of public utilities (it stinks), but I began to think that if I couldn't derive any satisfaction from a lower bill (as per the Rules), I could at least be happy in the knowledge that, come the Glorious Revolution most of these people would either have to sharpen up their attitude about 9 billion percent or join the ranks of Civil Servants Privatised Out of a Job. The last bitter laugh would at least be mine.
A few more visits got us little further, except varied and conflicting promises on Itemised Bills, continued (apparent) misunderstanding on what the nature of the overcharging was, offers of tea from The Boss, plus a few excuses about the difference between STD (call office) phones and domestic lines.
After returning from Germany, another bill resembling that for a Rock Star Party at the Oberoi arrived - minus itemised component. Another visit to the HQ gave us similar vague promises of itemised bills etc with the next bill from a variety of Important But Powerless Officials, and we waited with minimal anticipation.
So the bill that was here on our return from Spiti was a huge surprise, by the look of it without checking it against the modem log file it is exactly what it should be - a quarter of the previous bills. Almost worthy of a party - although we both have a vague suspicion that they might discover their mistake and the next bill will be enough to pay for a minor satellite launch. We cant be the only ones cheering; during the season, many of Manali's Internet cafes do a good deal of business after 10.30, and have bills far higher than ours.
So now, 9 months after the issue of notice No 3-47/2002-R&C amending Para D3 of Circular No 3-5/99-R&C peace and prosperity reign throughout the land and we are all happy and contented. Now theres only the matter of getting the several thousand Rs already scammed from us on the 4 previous bills. As much chance as a Kashmiri carpet salesman undercharging on a Shiraz.
*BSNLs current phone tarriff for Internet connections can currently be found here.
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