Man and Meat Eater

Just one more day before we leave Bylakuppe and Mysore for this time. The weather has been good the last few days. It's been hard sometimes but today I felt that I'm comfortable here. We are looking forward to spend some time on the beach but it will be hard to leave Tenzin. A few days ago the children were intrigued by the ghost story. yesterday the same paper carried an article about a man eater, a tiger that is, who has been eating villagers in Nagarhole, a large jungle area on the other side of the fields. The Tibetan settlement more or less on the edge of one of the largest national parks in the world. The best place to see wild animals is Kabini river just south of here, but not during the monsoon. The work I p;lanned to do is almost done. Thinley is still running around Camp 1, trying to link children born before 1974 with their mothers. I just hope I can get a preliminary report together before the Tibetan studies conference starting on 29 August. The last couple of days we have been eating spinach that Tenzin bought fresh out of the field. First as a wrecked pasta sauce and then as a modified Indian Palak Paneer. The kids stuck to their usual diet of plain pasta/rice with ketchup, cucumber and nuts. They speak about meat everyday and Alice has given up her vegetarian ambitions. The big yellow M casts its spell...

The Air is Humming With Voices

Living with 3 000 monks has its sides. For instance, the air is always humming with voices repeating the texts in order to memorize them. This goes on virtually around the clock. At given hours hords of maroon dressed monks suddenly emerge from the buildings and flow through the lanes on their way to or from their Khangtsens. Sera monastery is divided in two parts: Sera Je and Sera Me. Each of them consists of a number of Khangtsen which are, more or less, monk households. They have their separate living quarters and assembly halls. Each part has a big main assembly hall of which Sera Me's new hall is the grandest. Most tourists only stop at the Nyingmapa school's trap , the Golden Temple, across the fields from here. But Sera Me's Taiwanese funded hall is more interesting and has better artwork. The Golden Temple wins the garden contset though. Above Sera Je lies the monastery's own Beverly Hills with lavish bungalows built by celebrity teachers sponsored by foreign students.

Maybe Not So Idyllic

Today I took a trimmer, cut my hair and shaved off the beard. Looking more like lama than a professor now. The kids were amazed to see my face after four years and so was I. Yesterday I went out to a Tibetan village called Porong. They call it Mini-Swiss because of its beautiful location by a dam. But the idyllic peacefulness of the place is deceptive as the inhabitants have to fight off their Indian neighbors. At night the Indians come across the filed to steal whatever they can find on the Tibetan fields. They also let their cattle graze there. Some Tibetans even sleep in huts on the fields to secure their property. The local police is passive. Now the Tibetans have erected barbed wire fences that will at leastkeep the cattle and pigs out. This animosity is a long story that has been going on since the early 60's when the Tibetans first came here. Thinley, whose family has land in this area, told me that they eventually had to give up, demolish their farm house and move back to the camp. As soon as they left nearby villagers moved in and cut hundreds of fruit trees and sandalwood trees.

Animals & Secret Policemen

Back from Bandipur. It was good and my trust in Jungle Lodges & Resorts quality is still intact. The drive was quick with a "pucca" road most of the way. The accomodation was outside the park with cottages set in a hilly area, each one with an inviting hammock outside. Food was good too. In the late afternoon we went for a 2 hrs drive in the park. There were plenty of animals although not so exciting except for the wild jungle dogs. Spotted deer was abundant as usual. We also saw bisons, some elephants and a bunch of moongoose. In the evening there was a campfire and Esbjorn fell asleep before dinner. The next morning we went for another long drive but didn't see many animals. The scenery was good though with lakes and deep gorges, and with the Nilgiri mountains as a backdrop. Before we went home there was a short elephant ride. The kids enjoyed it but I don't like the way these poor old tuskers are treated. The mahout more or less pedalled the elephant's ears with his feet around the track.

There was a story about a haunting ghost in the local newspaper which triggered the kids' fantasy. Some estate supervisor whose ghost was captured in a bottle by an excorcist, and put in a grave sealed by a big chain. If the chain was broken the ghost would be free again. During the rains this year a tree had fallen on the grave causing the chain to break. Now the ghost, whose name is Robert, is on the loose again! Esbjorn constantly talks about ghosts, especially zombies for which he has developed a special fascination.

Today I was caught by the Indian secret police, IB. They too demanded to see my permit as well as xerox copies. Even so they seem to be pretty incompetent as they didn't even ask what I was doing with my computer and other gear in the Representative's office.

Mysore Again

Here we are back in the nice climate of Mysore again, staying at Metropole. The kids watch TV and swim in the pool. Esbjorn has discovered Power Rangers and has fallen completly for the merchandise. Tsering went back to Chennai on the night train last night but we are meeting her again when we go there in the beginning of August. Tenzin is probably enjoying the peace in his house (and fixing the leaks in the roof, I hope). They made fried Momos for us the other day. Tomorrow we are going to Bandipur, a wildlife park on the Mysore-Ooty road about 80 km from here (http://www.jungleresorts.com). Our new found Tibetan driver Nyima Tsering will drive us in his new Tata Sumo (http://uv.tatamotors.com/newuv/sumo/victa.asp). He is a careful and dependable driver, and is not overcharging us.

Police Raid

Yesterday we visitited TCV, a large Tibetan school here. They have every level from a creche up to high school. In pre-school they are using Montessori methods. The Director received us and delivered the same speach he did when I was there 2 years ago. No harm done, though. Mrs Dolma, whom I know from before, showed us around. She is a sponsorship secretary and all the funds for the school comes from sponsors. Tsering arrived from Chennai and I picked her up on the main road on Thinley's motorbike. Back at the Tibetan Representative's office I was caught in a police raid: "Who are you? What are you doing here? Let me see your permit!" Luckily we do have permits and have been duly registered by the local superintendent of the police. So I could go. Didn't even have to pay any up front "fees". There's a story circulating here about a foreigner who had to cough uo Rs 10 000 to get off the hook last year. It's Tsering's first time in Bylakuppe so we have to show her the local sites. Today we took her to see Namdroling- the Golden Temple. And that's it, I'm afraid.

Clean Elephants

At last, a day with decent weather.

Yesterday we took a chance with the weather and set off to Dubare forest and the elephant camp. It was drizzling when we got there and the Cauvery river was fast flowing. Nevertheless we shuttled across in right in time to see the big animals have their breakfast. Then the mahouts took them down to the river for a bath. They asked if the kids wanted to join them scrubbing, and Esbjorn was ready to go. If we had known we would have brought some swimming trunks and towels. The whole place was pretty muddy but the weather cleared for a while, and Anna and the kids went for a ride around the compound. It was OK but the mahouts were asking for tips all the time. The fact that the old tuskers had take another bath when a new group came across made the place a tourist trap more than a genuine elephant camp with the purpose of preserving the traditional craft. But they were some clean elephants!

The power situation has improved a lot since the electrician fastened the cables in the pole. Got some ant powder finally. The Indians call it DDT-powder. I thought it was illegal but, hey, this is India. Laws are made to bend. Tsering is visiting from Chennai tomorrow. It will be the first time she meets the kids and they are looking forward to it. I have met her regularily through the years but I think the last time she met Anna was in 1994.

We have confirmed bookings in Tamil Nadu now so we will leave Bylakuppe for good on 3 August. Tenzin has become part of the family so it will be tough, I'm sure.

Poke A Stick At It

The power cut turned out to be a very local problem. Yesterday evening Tenzin poked a bamboo stick on the wires in the pole outside our house, causing the lights to flicker. This morning we got a Rs 40 Indian electrician to fasten the cables and "let there be light"! Not only that but a big improvement in effect as well. We can have everything plugged in at the same time now. After lunch the ants from the palm trees behind the house intensified their attack. I have tried to hold them at bay by strategic application of poisonous spray but they come by the millions. Tenzin wants to hit them at the source by spreading some kind of powder around the trees. That would perhaps keep the rat out too since it uses a palm tree to get up on our roof. Tenzin has promised to make cheese momos for dinner.

Power coming?

Not much to report except an extended power cut. No power since yesterday afternoon except for 10 minutes around 4.30 pm today. The back up battery is dead and the fridge is smelling bad. But it seems like everyone except the patch where we live behind Sera Je has power???? Must be bad karma. The emergency light proved to be a good investment! Got it recharged at work today.

Load of Concrete

Finally some authentic drama and action! I was working in the settlement office when I receiveda phobe call from Subramanya in Mysore. I had forgotten my mobile at home and Anna had called him to say that I urgently needed to come back to the house. I borrowed Thinleys Yamaha bike and speeded across the settlement thinking soemthing had happened to the kids. I and found them playing and safe but the house had a big hole in the roof. The Kangtsen (monk fraternity) next door is building a 4 floor builing 50 cm from our house and the Indian workers had managed to drop a load of concrete blocs off the 4th floor. They went through the roof and smashed Tenzin's bed in pieces. Luckily these house are simple constructions and the roof was fixed in a couple of hours. Tenzin got a new bed as well and it was an opportunity to clean his room thoroughly. Still, it could have been much more serious if the concrete had hit the next room where the kids often sit with the computer. Got to stay away from that side of the house during daytime. Tenzin, who was out at the time of impact, was pretty stressed out by the incident but settled down after dinner.

Boring for children

Every morning at 7.30 I have to rush up to the road with the garbage as the garbage tractor rolls by. Then to the milk let-out where they sell pasteurized milk in half litre plastic bags. Got the keys to the settlement office's old file cabinet today so I could get started with the scanning work. The household interviews are working well. Yesterday was another Tibetan holiday. We didn't do much except for a shopping round in Kushalnagar. Bought an emergency light since the afternoon power cut now extends well into the evenings. The weather has been rainy again and the children are bored. What can you expect when we are staying in a place with 3 000 monks? Their food is pretty boring too- noodles, potatoes and rice with nuts, cucumber and carrots. Esbjorn survives on semolina porridge. I'm not sure what we can do about it. At least Tenzin gets along well with them. He's a great guy. Yesterday he bought them some toys that they immediately started to fight about. I went to the Tibetan school today and we can make a visit there after July 17. We are thinking about a vacation on the opposite side of India, Tamil Nadu south of Chennai. There is much less rain there this time of year. It feels more like Sri Lanka than India.

Sad to see it go

Only a few hours sleep last night after the WC final. We stayed in room with satellite television, AC and hot water. A change from Sera, to be sure, although things are much better when it's sunny. Italy is not worthy of the vicory, and I got the feeling that the Italian players were verbally abusing the French players with racist comments to get them off balance. So no more football. It feels sad since it has given our stay here some kind of continuity and structure to follow the games. But no looking back. I gave my Swedish team shirt (the blue verson) to Tenzin. Don't know when he can wear it though since monks dress in red and yellow only. I rushed back to Bylakuppe to get to work this morning while Anna and the kids went by themselves to Kushalnagar to do some shopping (measly vegetables and worthless toys). It was their first time out without me. It seems to have gone well. I'm not sure what will happen with our plan to have Anna and the kids stay in Mysore by themselves next week. Our favourite affordable hotel is fully booked until mid-August. We're looking for an alternative right now. We also want to visit Bandipur or Nagahole which are part of a very large national park within the next couple of weeks.

Power Cuts All the Fun

Not much happened yesterday except for a prolonged power cut and worries over the food in the fridge. When the power finally came back the voltage was too low to start the fridge. No, that's not all. The power supply to Anna's laptop short circuited. A blow to DVD watching and gaming. The voltage here fluctuates a lot. If you try and toast a piece of bread it's not enough power to make the coils glow and it stays white. In the house we have a voltage stabilizer and a battery to compensate for it but there seems to be a problem with something called "crawl current" (krypstrom)in Swedish. Anyway, it seemed like the power supply unit was blown out. The nearest Apple store is in Bangalore which is 4-5 hrs from here so we despaired. But it seems there was some kind of automatic fuse, and magically it started to work again in the afternoon. Aside from an ant extermination crusade this is pretty much all the excitement we get here right now. We got some take-out vegetable momos (a kind of dumpling) from a Tibetan restaurant in Camp 3 and the supply lasted for two days. None of the children wanted to try it, though. They sit next to me now and play games on www.hamsterpaj.net while Anna is readin about citizenship. Our Tibetan sponsor girl Tsering, nowadays a woman, is coming to visit us next weekend. She studies economics at a college in Chennai now. Tonight we have booked a room at a hotel in the nearest town, Kushalnagar, so that we can watch the WC final without any unwanted power cuts. They serve beer too. Alice has made an Italian flag but I hope France wins.

Lost Film Crew

It's typical that the day I finally got a chance to start working seriously was a public holiday- the Dalai Lama's birthday. Everything was closed yesterday. Well, I cleaned the kitchen instead.

This morning when Tenzin and I was buying milk Subramanya turned up with the film crew. They are making a documentary about Tibetan Buddhism in a single day (!). A couple of hours later they showed up at our doorstep demanding to see "the Lama". Well, Tenzin was at work so they used Thinley as a stand in, filming the neglected house altar and the exterior (after they had removed all un-authentic plastic items from the porch). But the house just a normal Indian slab of concrete and bricks, nothing particularily Tibetan about it. Seems to me they are making a film about their own prejudices about Tibetans rather than a documentary. Sometimes I wonder how much S really knows about Tibetan (refugee) culture and society. They did not seem interested in what is going on with Tibetan Buddhsim and in the monasteries today.

This afternoon it was sunny and the kids played outside. Later we went to the internet place and they played some online games on Hamsterpaj.se. They are still pretty much living on staple food, chips & nuts, and Pepsi. I hope they will come around. Tonight we will offer them to try Tibetan momos.

Pirate DVDs

Found Mysore's only modern food store yesterday: Food World on Devaraja urs Rd. They did have a version of pesto with coriander but manufactured 2 years ago. They did have fresh parsley too but what good does it do for us here? We should try and find some seeds and grow it in Bylakuppe. We bought a small piece of cheddar cheese. The kids are swimming and watching television- two amusements that do not exist in Sera. The southwestern monsoon is worse than ever along the coast. Bombay is under water. We were lucky to get out of Kerala in time. Believe it or not, but the weather became a lot worse a few days later. I thought that was impossible. In Mysore it's like a bad Swedish summer although warmer. Bought some pirated kids' movies on DVD today. They’re the kind that have been secretly filmed by someone in the movie theatre’s audience with a smuggled in video camera. Sometimes you see the heads of the audience or the cameraman’s fingers. They never seem to be able to get the whole screen in the picture and the sound (dts surround!!!) echoes out of comprehension. Watching them is constant agony over computer health as the screen freezes or the disc refuses to load. In the afternoon I discovered that I had made a mistake on dates because of the time difference and tonight I get to see Germany play Italy on big screen. Great! I thought I’d miss it. I called Tenzin this afternoon and he told me it has been raining for two days solid in Bylakuppe. It’s not exactly a magnet right now. Subramanya is coming with us out there. He is part of a team making a documentary about Tibetan Buddhism for Indian Institute of Languages (or something similar), and they are shooting this week. I hope I can get the three of us (Thinley, Subramanya and myself) together for a research meeting.

So Germany lost, but what suberb goals by Italy in the last minutes!!!

Anna's phone number

Anna's Indian phone number is +91 (for India) 9449272448.

Phone number

Our Indian phone number is +91 (for India) 9980000948.

Mysore vacation

Back in Mysore again. The car was an hour late to pick us up. Thubten, who was riding with us, missed his train to Bangalore and had to get in another taxi for two hours more of bumby roads. Construction work is going on almost everywhere on the highway but eventually it will be finished and smooth? We’re staying at Hotel Metropole. It has television, WiFi and a swimming pool (www.baljeehotels.com). The kids jumped right in. Indians think we’re crazy to go in the water in this season. Some of them are even wearing woolen hats. But it’s just like a Swedish summer. We brought a big bag of dirty clothes for the hotel laundry service to wash. In the humidity of Bylakuppe the clothes never seem to dry. The climate is a lot better here in Mysore although we’re only two hours away. The luxury is quite a change from the leaking roof and frequent power cuts. On the other hand it has been a great way to pass time to try and figure out the pattern and logic behind these events. Everyone has a theory but none of them seem to be right. Before we moved in Tenzin rarely used the kitchen except for making tea. It’s rebirth has started to attract unwanted guests. Saturday night a rat ran around the beams under the roof. He climbed a palm tree outside and squeezed under the roof sheets. The kids were alseep but Anna could lay in beds and follow it’s acrobatic movements. A spray raid flushed out a couple of big, fat cockroaches that turned belly up. It’s poison but it works (one hit can kill an entire ant colony) Got to clean out the kitchen and scrub it when we get back.

France & Beef

I'm wearing the French team's shirt today. Perhaps another loser? I don't think Zidane can save them. The weather was actually pretty good until the mid afternoon when the rain started again. Tenzin's room mate and my old friend Thubten came home from Delhi/Bombay. But he's taking off to Germany in a few days. Tomorrow we are going to Mysore to stay for a couple of days at Hotel Metropole. They have a swimmingpool that the kids can use. I made spaghetti with tomato sauce for lunch. Thubten brought 2 kilos of beef from Mysore (!). I'm not sure how these Buddhist lamas figure out their meat eating. I mean, the cow could have been their mother in a previous life. Tenzin went over to the neighbor's kitchen to cook it ((-: