The Mibby Post

Date: March 24th 2005

Here is a link to Archives of "The Mibby Post":
http://www.songseek.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi?f=list&l=mibby
it also includes a subscription link, if you are getting this as a forward from someone and want to get it directly.

Recent photos sent here by Matt are now online here:
http://songseek.com/picturenet/photos/Ladakh/index.htm
or find a link to them at www.picture.net




Hey everyone,
We are really excited that J.C. And Jamie showed up this week after a three
day weather delay in Delhi. He has such a good story, though, I asked him
to share about his time in Delhi. More later...

>From JC...


So after a flight from Burlington to JFK, a seven hour hold over there, a
six hour transatlantic flight, a nine hour flight on to Delhi, Jamie and I
collected our voluminous luggage (which included a hockey bag, and an extra
carry-on full of presents for the students and the Matt Family, as well as
Jamie's and my backpacks and daypacks), and caught a cab from the Delhi
International airport to the domestic airport, arriving there around
midnight. We spent the night on the benches, hugging our luggage. At
around 5:30 am, we checked our luggage through three (3) security areas, one
of which was actually out on the tarmac, where you are required to identify
the luggage you just checked through the first two screenings
as Indian army personnel with automatic weapons looked on.

But there was a weather delay that kept us waiting on the benches for a
further three hours before they decided to cancel the flight altogether. So
we gathered our luggage, loaded onto a bus with Hindi pop music blaring, and
they drove us to the posh (though slightly thread-bare) Ashok hotel in Delhi
(about a half hour away). They treated us well at the Ashok, with buffets
in the various restaurants - chinese-a-la Indian for lunch, the Funbar
restaurant for diner (with a tabla player, and waiters who pulled out the
seat for you as you sat down). Later we met up with a Ladakhi guy and a
Swiss fellow named Domonique Rolle (we nick-named him "Swiss Rolle"). We
saw cows in the streets, desperately poor families, markets where small
children accosted you for money, stall keepers telling you there goods are
the finest quality, open avenues, and crowded back alleyways, beautiful
women in colorful saris. We rode through unbelievable traffic in motor
rickshaws, weaving in and out around trucks and busses; it was as thrilling
as any carnival ride.

The next morning they got us up a three (3) am and loaded us onto another
Indian, crowded, colorful bus to catch the 6:30 flight to Leh. We waited
around another three hours, they cancelled the flight, and they bussed us
back to the Ashok.

It was like "Ground Hog Day". The rides around Delhi, the buffet with the
tabla player, the three (3) am wake up call, and back to the airport we went
to find another weather cancellation. But this time they had sold more
tickets, and the bus was getting more crowded. By now we had made several
more friends: mostly Ladakhis and a few westerners. We were getting to know
each other, feeling a sense of solidarity and a growing sense of resentment
of Jet Air, and their ticket selling policies. Even the Ashok was loosing
its shine.

So the wakeup call came again a three (3) am, and we loaded onto an
unbelievably crowded bus, isles stuffed with luggage, baggage hold
overflowing. Jamie and I, packs on our backs, were dragging the huge hockey
bag full of goodies down the isle, stepping over luggage with our feet on
the seat arm rests, and Jamie's pack snagged and he completely dislocated
his shoulder just as the bus pulled out of the Ashok. I eased off his pack,
trying to stabilize his arm, and he began to pass out. I finally got him
into a seat, calling to see if there is a doctor on the bus. I tried to put
his arm back into its socket as we are roaring through the streets of Delhi.
I realized at a certain point that I was not going to be able to do it, so I
just held his arm out, and fed him Ibuprofin from my pack.

When we got to the airport, our Swiss friend helped us unload our luggage
and guarded it while I took Jamie to find a doctor. A Jet Air official led
us to a little room, where a sleepy little man, who claimed to be a doctor,
but showed no signs of competence, told us that Jamie was hurt. The Jet Air
official said "I go get a taxi, yes? It will be pre-payed." And he
disappeared, never to return. Jamie was in great pain, so I finally went out
side and stamped my feet, retrieved our luggage, and got a taxi (how hard
should it be to get a taxi at an airport?). We loaded our luggage on top of
the taxi (no straps or anything), and sped off to the big government
hospital in Delhi.

The hospital was a Dante's Inferno sort of place with piles of bloody sheets
in the corner, mutilated victims laying in halls, moaning on stretchers,
people staggering around. A nurse approaches Jamie with a big hypodermic
needle and says "this goes in the hip." "What is it?" we reply. "Pain
Killer." We made her show us the sterile package it came out of. To give
proper credit, the doctor was brusque, overworked and competent. They took
an x-ray (people walking in and out of the room with no protection, the door
to the x-ray room open to the hallway) the doctor relocated his shoulder
while I ran outside to guard our luggage at the entrance to hospital where
the military guard with the automatic weapon told me we could not bring the
gurney full of luggage inside, but that he would watch it. He was gone, but
by some trick of fate the luggage was still there. I kept running into the
hospital to make sure Jamie was okay, and back out again to see if we still
had luggage. At one point I saw monkeys climbing up the façade of the
outside of the hospital, in and out of windows, throwing down bits of paper
on the crowd below. At another point, two women came up to me and started
speaking rapid Hindi, very close to me, while some person stole our water
filtering bottle, and some batteries from the side pocket of my pack.

The doctor gave me a sheet of scrap paper on which he had written "shoulder
immobilization." and directed me to go across the street (at the peril of
my life), and into the "subway" (an underground passage below another
street). There were whole families of homeless people, and among other
shops there was the Pharmacy, or "chemist." I elbowed my way to the
counter, among rapidly speaking Indians, and for around four dollars, bought
a sling contraption and made my way back to the hospital. So in about two
hours, for four dollars, we got Jamie's shoulder put back in its socket, two
sets of x-rays, and we were back in a cab with our five hundred pounds of
luggage, minus a water bottle and a pack of batteries, headed back to the
airport. We passed a dead cow in the highway on the way there, and decided
that by comparison we were not so unlucky after all.

So by 9:30 am we learned that the flight was cancelled again. The doctor
had told us to wait around for an hour so he could talk to Jamie about how
to deal with his recovery, but luckily we decided to flee Dante's Inferno,
and return to the airport to learn that Jet Air had cancelled our flight
again! A buddhist monk and a group of our Ladakhi friends were staging a
small sit-in, which thrilled Jamie. The monk was very calm and firm, and
demanded that our entire group receive boarding passes for the next
morning's flight. They conceded and we were bussed back to the Ashok.

So the next day we finally got out, after a scene of airport chaos like I
have never seen. People desperate to get on the plane, pushing and shoving,
even when we had checked our luggage, and were filing out onto the runway in
the fog to board the plane, they were still crushing in and shoving. It was
surreal. We broke into spontaneous applause when the plane took off. We
were just not real anxious to go back to the Ashok. We already had the menu
memorized. We did get one last souveneer from the Ashok though. I thought
that two rolls of toilet paper would be enough for one guy for a month, but
I've already gone though a whole roll in less than a week. I remember they
assured us that the water we had with the buffet was purified. So much for
promises.

Greetings to all from Ladakh.

J.C.


--
Warning, clicking on the link below, at the bottom of
the page, will instantly unsubscibe you from this mailing list:

To unsubscribe from: The Mibby Post, just follow this link:

http://www.songseek.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi?f=u&l=mibby&e=example@example.com&p=[pin]

Click this link, or copy and paste the address into your browser.