The Green Hills of Manipur

smw, slt is proud to present your first views of where we're now based. Just about all of the photos above and below were taken on the several long Sunday rambles I and my colleagues here at MSF-Manipur have taken in recent weeks. You'll notice that we've once or twice experienced the monsoons first-hand; you'll also notice that we've been befriended by some local youth at a waterfall and even a shepherd in the hills. Well...the shepherd tolerated it when my colleague Fiona asked if he'd pose for a photo, then had to scramble after his sheep to get them back in line. Fiona and I felt pretty guilty about that little bit of touristic enthusiasm. I'll throw in the occasional caption, but mostly I'm gonna let the photos speak for themselves. Above, what you see is Lamka Town, aka Churachandpur Town, sitting in its little bowl of a valley as seen from the hills that we've been hiking most Sundays, and doing brief runs through on many a morning. It's truly a lovely place, and so far so good with the work: keep those fingers crossed that all continues well, please. Thanks.

...that's me in the ball cap, on the right. They all wanted the pic - it wasn't my idea, honest! And oh by the way, immeiately behind us is about a 15-meter waterfall.

Everywhere you walk in these hills, you chance across these little villages -- this one was at the back side of the ridge we climbed in taking many of the views of Lamka that you've been seeing above. When Fiona, Phil and I reached the ridge and looked down, she said 'How do the kids get to school?' Good question.

That's Phil and Fiona making art: in honor of Phil's and my great fondness for environmental art (he's a longtime fan of Richard Long, I of Andy Goldsworthy), we turned one hike into an ongoing art experiment: see walking banana peels below, and flower art, further down...

...that's Michelle. It was raining pretty darn hard but for some crazy reason we were all having a ton of fun.

...Phil & Paul take a load off en route to our usual post-hike restaurant outing.

...what there is to do on a day off in CCpur.

This is a little village on the outskirts of town that's both on one of our favorite morning run routes, and figures in the early km's of several of our favorite walking routes. Sorry I don't have much more to show you yet: I've been working long days, but as you see, at least I get out every now and then. Cheers.

Aging Gracefully (One Hopes) in Mussoorie

OK, peeps, it's been a month or so since last I put up a bit of what I've seen or done since arriving in India five weeks ago. As some of you may know or recall, I had about a ten-day wait in Delhi while the paperwork was finalized to allow me to come over and work here in truly lovely (but really not yet tourist-ready, trust me) Manipur. The second weekend of my Delhi sojourn was ... well ... the weekend on which this boy from Ohio finished his 47th complete cycle around the sun, to borrow a concept from my friend Gary. Unable to tolerate the idea of smoggy, hot and loud Delhi that weekend, I and two colleagues who were also waiting for the green light to head east all decided to hire a car and drive the six or so hours up to the foothills of the Himalayas to Mussoorie: described by at least one gentlemen as THE hill station to see and be seen in during the British Raj. It's certainly lovely. We were there during the rainy season, not the high (and dry) season, so sadly you won't see images of the snow-capped Himalayas, but perhaps you can imagine them and still get a sense of the grandeur of this truly lovely and remarkable town.

smw, slt is not able to publish with regularity these days -- I'm experiencing a lot, and working hard, but have limited internet access and even more limited free time and energy. Bear with me; it'll unfold over time. Enjoy these images in the meantime.

...ummm....that's our hotel. We kinda broke the bank and splurged in honor of my bday on a gorgeous legacy hotel. It was worth it. A tad musty, a tad shabby perhaps in that elegant old-school way but the food at the restaurant was excellent and the people working there were delightful.

The griffins and large stone house are NOT Hazelmere Cottage (sign below); that one is closer to the Kasmanda Palace Hotel, we treated ourselves and stayed. But this is also a grand summer home built by a ruler from one of the princely states under the British Raj. I was so captivated by the look of the building and how it fit into its hillside, taking the photos above the griffin shots, that I was noticed and Fiona and I were invited in to have tea and snacks on the back porch, with the griffins, and delightful chat with the grandson of the house's original builder and resident (himself a delightful conversation partner and retired brigadier, if I understood correctly); he and a young lady whom Fiona and I took to be an American based (possibly American-born) relative of some sort shared some really enjoyable conversation over tea with views of the misty hills. It was quite an experience!

Another thing that captured my imagination was the idea of all the young English-type lads from the far-flung corners of Britain's empire, whose final resting place was here when they died of malaria or TB; or who were raised here by colonial-bureaucrat parents and went off to fight Britain's colonial wars and never made it back, to leave behind a memorial stone in the Anglican church on the hillside. Then there's the sheer chutzpah of the British, in the first place, to march into an India that had been doing high culture since before Europe's dark age, and declare that they were the bosses now, thank you very much, and oh while we're at it we'll just put in some churches and stained glass and act as though all those venerable and great religious and philosophical traditions that originated in this subcontinent aren't worthy of our honor or respect ... well, a hundred and more years later we see the mixed legacy of the British Raj. (But you gotta admit the stianed glass is nice, huh? The brigadier told us not to miss it.) The colonial mentality fascinates me, especially when you consider that solid arguments are made that we INGO folks are the new colonialists. I like to hope we approach it with a different ethos and that our results are more uniformly positive, but honesty requires one to admit the argument has been and will be made, with some reason.

...I believe that's a scene from the Ramayana, but I'm often wrong when it comes the density and complexity of Hindu iconography etc. Still, pretty cool statue at the temple entrance, no?