FALLS

From the British graveyard we went to the home of some Americans who have been living in India for several years. They are friends of our host which is why we visited.

A picture of our gracious hosts on July 2nd.

The husband of this couple is a linguist currently learning his sixth Indian language so that he can translate official documents and other materials into that language. This language is spoken by about 50,000 people in a tribe in southern India.

A view looking south and down in the direction of where we came. From their balcony you can kind of get a feel of the steepness of the slope that this house and pretty much all the houses here seem to precariously sit.

The apartment house, sits on the edge of a steep drop off and was build in the late 1800’s for a British officer. It is a large building that is now a four level apartment with an orphanage on the top level. I guess the British officers lived pretty well. Their balcony has quite the view.

Up the road a little bit from their home was another impressive vista. In the post "Graveyard" I mentioned that the cows are everywhere, the even walk the streets like pedestrians. In the photo to the right, you not looking at mountain goats... those are cows.

After our visit and our lunch we went to a popular tourist area (though we were the only white people there) to see a huge waterfall tucked away in a ravine between mountain slopes… It is not a tourist trap in the sense that mostly westerners are there. It is a beautiful waterfall close to 100 feet high though main cascade is about 40 feet high. Kempty Falls, as it is called, is a place for people to find some fun and relaxation. Think of some of the naturally formed sites in New Hampshire or elsewhere. At some point someone saw this spectacular waterfall and then saw an opportunity to make some money.

The traffic was so bad and the roads are so narrow, that we were stopped about a mile from the falls to wait for the traffic to get going again, and even then it moved really slow. We took the opportunity to get in a few pics.

That being said, the people enjoying the water did not seem to mind at all. What we all observed was that the men when into the water in basically their underwear. The women however, wore their full traditional Salwar suit. There were a couple women who were progressive enough to wear shorts and a T-shirt, but nothing like the guys.

You can barely see that the bottom of this picture but there are people swimming and splashing in a small pool that has been built up at the base of the falls. This picture was taken on a bridge which crosses over the water as it flows into other pools further down the mountain side. This, as you can see, was a pretty popular spot.

The falls have been an attraction for people for more than 150 years dating back to the time when the British controlled the area. In fact even the name "Kempty Falls" comes from the British name for the place, "Camp tea." There is one road that goes through as you can see from the wide shot above. So traffic moves very slowly. Most people simply park by the side of the road and walk, which is what we ended up doing.

Here is part of the small market area that you have to walk through to get to the base of the falls. It's a good spot to do some shopping if you want to purchase some over priced souvenirs.

The long windy drive back down the steep mountain roads was quieter. The monkeys and cows and random pedestrians were things we had all seen before, so there were much few pictures being taken. We had a good dinner and slept very well that night...

GRAVEYARD

On Saturday we drove up and down… but mostly up these very windy roads through very steep mountains, which are actually the foothills of the Himalayas going as high as 10,000 feet here.

One of the many twisty and windy roads on our way into the mountains... ahem... foothills.

In some places the drop offs down the side of the road were at least 1,000 feet… and there are NO guardrails.

As I mentioned in my previous post “OFF” cows and monkeys were common sights, and in the little villages we would pass through men carrying heavy loads was also a common sight. The first place we stopped on our Saturday outing was a British graveyard.

This is a portion of the road we walked to get to the graveyard. They built spaces in the retaining wall for trees to continue to grow rather than cut them down. The root systems gives stability to the soil during the rainy season.

Land is precious in India. Hindu’s do not bury their dead because they believe it defiles the land. Instead they burn dead bodies or simply send them down the holy rivers. In order for the British to get a plot of land where it was okay for them to bury their dead it had to be land no one else wanted or land that was useful for little else. Hence this British Cemetery, which is actually in Landour (part of Musoorie) is on the side of a very steep mountain slope. Most of the soldiers who were buried here died of Malaria around the time of WWI; some, however, were from well before that time.

The picture to the right may give you a small idea as to the slope that we were on. The grave on he left is a more prominent one that was close to the wall and a little easier to get a picture of.

The gate was locked (see pics below) and apparently we were not supposed to be inside but the wall broken down around the side which gave us the opportunity to get a closer look. Dehra dun was a British hill station for many years until the independence in 1947. This brought a strong British cultural influence to the region; it is why we have tea time here at the college.

The stones that you see in these pictures were only about three feet long. Maybe the Brits were a lot shorter in those days, but I think that because of the degree of the slope they simply could not make full length coffins.

British soldiers and officers were stationed in Dehra dun and many officers had homes in the foothills towns like Musoorie where we went for our Saturday excursion. Musoorie started as a place where British soldiers would recover from war wounds and sicknesses but eventually it grew into a community and a popular vacation place for officers. There is also a military school here somewhere though we did not see it. That being said, when British soldiers died, the closest place where they could be buried was here.

A slightly different angle. It is eery to think that the person who was buried here was laid to rest so far from his homeland. He may have living relatives who have never visited his grave or even know that he is here. It was a quiet, beautiful, and lonely place.

This photo to me is a depiction of the Indian culture and the Cross. The culture is closed and and locked to anything outside of Indian culture...

...but the Cross is at work in ways that none of us can really understand. Jesus is already inside the gates. The gates of Hell can not prevail, nor can the gates of culture or politics.

These two pictures give a good illustration of the attitude towards Christianity here. Some are closed to the idea, others think anything is possible. What you focus on will determine what you see.

Just a Meandering Thought...


After the Graveyard we had lunch and then went to the FALLS (the last portion of our day off) which will be in the next post.

OFF

On Saturday I visited a town (if you can call it that) called Mussoorie. (Think Missouri with a Hindi accent). It is tucked away in the hills (foothills… of the Himalaya’s). I went with my co-traveler Matt, and two college students from Indiana who are also staying here. At our highest point of elevation we were about 7,500 to 8,000 feet in elevation. This “town” is really a series of hamlets, or villages build into the side of really steep mountain slopes. The roads that connect these villages are a little wider than one lane back in the states and somehow they are two land roads here.

The first picture on the left is of a small slum along a river not too far from the college. There are slums here in the North but they are not like what you find farther south.

Some of the unique things that we saw on the roads from Darhedun and these mountain hamlets were cows, monkeys and guys carrying massively heavy loads on their backs and shoulders using a kind of sling that is tied to their heads.

The Most common Monkeys in this part of India is called the Rhesus monkey in English. In Hindi they are called Baghndar, there is no generic word for Monkey.

Monkeys are as common on these streets as squirrels. I made the observation that there was hardly any road kill on the streets - in fact there was none. I figured it had to be because monkeys are much quicker than squirrels and maybe a little smarter too.

The guy in the picture to the left is carrying a comparatively light load. I saw one guy who had just lifted what looked like a dresser onto his back / head.

Cows make their way up and down the streets like pedestrians. Cars will wait for oncoming traffic to ease before trying to pass a cow in the street, or a driver will honk his horn to let the cow know that he is trying to get by. Mexico has street dogs, but India has street cows. You will occasionally see one simply lying on the side of the road; even way up on these narrow windy mountain roads.

This statue of Shiva stood about thirty feet tall.

Another unique sight while we were on our way was a large statue of Shiva, the primary god of this region. Shiva is always holding a trident and always has a snake on him in some form or fashion. There is a massive Temple complex to Shiva, the largest in North India here. There are many other smaller ones around as well. I was told that as big as this one is, it is expanding. This region has been hit by Muslim extremists over the last ten years (the kind of stuff that does not get reported in western media) and as a result there has been a nationalistic movement towards Hinduism.

You are just barely able to see part of the complex in the picture on the left. It was take from a road as we passed by it. If you look closely you will see tridents throughout the architecture.

There is no official national religion in India; on the books India is a secular nation. But if you ask anyone, they will tell you that to be Indian is to be Hindu. Terrorism has created a resurgence in the popularity and practice of Hinduism here.

The windy narrow roads were at times breathtaking and a testament to Indian engineering was how they were able to get buildings to stand on these steep slopes.

These windy roads led us to our first stop; a British graveyard on the side of steep mountain slope...

GARDENING??

Well that is what they call it here when you take the entire campus and divide them up by classes, and go to separate sections of the campus to pull weeds... Gardening. So this is what we did on Saturday morning after breakfast. I went with a group of guys that I have started to get to know and pulled weeds.

It was 8:00 in the morning and about 90 degrees outside, at about 90% humidity. Yeah, I nearly dripped out of my shirt and jeans, that’s right… JEANS… The Indian culture is still pretty modest so not only to men sit on one side of a classroom and women the other, but they all wear long pants when they do outdoor work. Me being the culturally sensitive guy that I am wore a pair of jeans.

So they also mow the lawn with a long metal blade, that looks like a putter… but it’s not. Because if it hits you in the shin it hurts… I don’t know this from personal experience but I have seen it in action.

As the piles of cut grass and pulled weeds began to pile up we would take the piles and dump them over the retaining wall near where we were doing the yard work... ahem... gardening... and there was a totally random cow munching on some of the weeds that were being thrown over the side and probably whatever else it could find. Cows are everywhere but I did not expect one to be here. I would find out later in the day that they really are everywhere.

I helped for an hour then promptly changed out of my jeans, which felt like they were a pound heavier. Then we went for a little drive further up into the hills (foothills that is). More on that in the next post...

CLASS

On Friday, at 10:30am, after morning tea (a leftover tradition from the when the British ruled) one of the professors asked me if I would be willing to take his class which meets at 11:40am. and two classes next week. I thought about it for like a second and said sure. Needless to say there was little time to spare. But for those of you reading this who have ever been in a class that I have taught you know that sometimes I do pretty well when I wing it. The class is called “Basic Christian Spirituality”. Knowing that people in India have a very different view of spirituality than Americans do, to assume they are thinking the same thing I am when talking about spirituality could make for a very confusing class.

I began by asking them about their religious background. Many had come from other religious backgrounds and I asked them to share with me and the class some aspects of spirituality from their own background. I had a Buddhist, a few Sikhs, and many Hindus share. About a third had a Christian background. I made a list of some of the “spiritual” aspects of each of these religions and then demonstrated how Christianity has many things in common. Things like:

• There is a Holy Book or holy Scriptures.
• There is an ultimate reality
• There is some form of divine figure or figures (though for Sikhs they are gurus who are treated like gods)
• There are good works you are supposed to do

What we discovered as a class however, was there is one big difference between Christianity and these other religions. That one difference (there are many things but one big one) is the person of Jesus.

• There are no gods in the other religions who claim to love their people to the point of dying for them.
• There are no gods who became human so that they could die for their people.
• There are no gods who died and rose from the dead to forgive sins.
• Sins are not forgiven by gods in these religions instead they are worked off by suffering or through good works.

The other religions represented by those in the class state that the way to experience ultimate reality in their expressed form is through human effort; by outweighing you bad deeds with your good deeds. But according to Christianity, human effort is not enough. The only way to get to God is through God, not through our own work. Ephesians 2:8-9 tells us that we are saved by grace, and not by works, otherwise people would boast about how much they had done in comparison to others. I told the class, now that we understand the similarities between these religions we can begin to look at what makes Christianity different. And really the person of Jesus is the big difference.

One thing you may notice from the pictures is that it is all guys in one and mostly girls in another. Indian society is still very gender conscious. So most women have the same access to education but they separate men and women in their classes. Men sit on one side women on the other. This is the case in most places in India. They guy to the extreme right of the first photo is the professor of the class. He graduated from GCTS (where I am now) four years ago.

CAMPUS

I took a walk around the campus here today (Friday) and took some pictures. The first half of the day was sunny for the most part so I took the opportunity to walk around the campus before the rains came. I took some pictures of the campus here so you can have an idea of where I am living.

This is the guest house where I am living for the next five and a half weeks. My room is on the upper right hand side. The school has many supporters in the states so it was built so people from the U.S. could come and not feel too far out of their comfort zone. It is home base for me. I will be going to more rural locations for a few days at a time from here.

This building is called Magdala. It is almost directly across the roadway from where the guest house is. It is the women's dorm.

This building is the academic building. There are maybe twelve or fifteen classrooms in this building. Students stay in their classrooms for five classes (there is a break for tea time) and the professors move from class to class.

This building is the chapel and mess hall. The chapel is on the upper level and is glass all the way around. The Mess, as they call it, (many words are carry-overs from the British days) is on the lower level. It is pretty big. Roughly 250 students are present for chapel services and they take up about a third of the floor space.

This building will house the new linguistics center that is being developed. The official language of India is English, in fact India is the largest English speaking nation in the world. Aside from that there are 4 major families of languages; within these four families there are just over distinct languages, from there there are over 4,000 dialects.

The mountains to the north east are often cloud covered which gives the place a bit of a mystical feel. It is easy to see why this region surrounding us was given the nickname “land of the gods”.

More campus vistas to come in a later post...

MONSOON

I found out just before leaving for Derhadun that in Northern India, this time of year is the beginning of their monsoon season. Yeah, I guess when I think of the Himalayas I don’t think of Monsoons, but here I am and it rains for at least half of the day, and is cloudy for most of the rest of the day. The sun has come out for an hour or so since I arrived.


I should say though that I love seeing the clouds pour over the mountains behind the school.