Mountain Festival Friday

Friday dawned clear and bright; it appears that the constant mist we've had has finally left. This is the best kind of October weather here -- warm in the sun, cool in the shade.

When I was here for previous Writers Festivals, I attended every session. It was wonderful, but also very intense. This year I volunteered to help out as needed, so I couldn't go to as many sessions. Maybe I am even enjoying them more this way! There were 11 different presentations yesterday, plus three book releases and two Q&A sessions with artists/photographers. I spent two hours at the front gate registration table and one hour in the booth selling T-shirts, hats, etc., with the festival logo.

The morning began in Parker Hall with the usual welcome and introductions. The Upper Years students are required to attend a certain number of sessions (classes were cancelled for the day). The Lower Years through Grade 5 had their own special events, but they started out all sitting on the stage. After the introductions, Paro Anand, a children's author and storyteller, told part of a story about an angel born without wings. She was wonderful, very engaging, and the kids (and the adult audience) enjoyed it.

Here's a photo of Steve Alter, alumnus, author, friend, and founder/director of the festival.

The first presenter was Manjari Mehta, a classmate of Steve's and an anthropologist. She talked about the village near Kedarnath where she did her research 30 years ago. She had photos from then as well as some now. The lives of the village women have changed drastically; the young ones are being more educated and many improvements have been made.

Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner grew up in a small village in Austria, where the priest loved the outdoors. She and others would go to church on Sunday morning in their hiking boots and gear, and the priest took them up into the mountains for the rest of the day. She became one of the world's great woman climbers -- she has scaled all the world's 8000-meter-plus peaks without supplemental oxygen. Her talk focused on her successful attempt to climb K2 after several failures.

My two hours at the front gate were quite enjoyable; people kept arriving. It was quite cool in the shade, but too hot in the sun. Dan brought my jacket and friend Eric stopped by with a cup of tea. The usual traffic on the road was disturbed by all the extra vehicles parked around!

From 11:00 to 2:00 there was a Mela (generic word for festival) in the Quad. There were booths selling a variety of food, handicrafts and other local items. Cambridge Book Depot had a very large booth. I said NO MORE BOOKS and ended up with only four!! [Paro Anand's adult comic novel Pure Sequence, about four Indian women in a retirement community; Steve Alter's latest, The Secret Sanctuary, for young readers, set in the new Jabarkhet Nature Sanctuary, formerly Flag Hill; The Himalaya Club by John Lang, Australia's first author, who is buried in the Camel's Back Cemetery; and A Children's History of India by Subhadra Sen Gupta, quite fat but an easy read]

Here is the booth with jam, hats, T-shirts and fleece. Two students did most of the work and I made sure the money was correct.

This cleverly decorated balloon was in the Quad as decoration.

After lunch I went up to hear Bernadette McDonald, the curator of the Banff Mountain Film Festival. She is a writer of books about mountain climbers. I've heard her before and own her book about a woman in Kathmandu who was involved in most of the Everest expeditions for nearly 50 years. Her book this year focuses on climbers from Slovenia. She was followed by one of them, Silvo Karo. The picture below shows a peak in Patagonia.

The final session I went to was by Sandesh Kadur and Kamal Bawa, who have done several books together. Their focus is on climate change in the Himalaya. They work with an NGO that has been developing ways to help the mountain dwellers to cope with the rapid changes; one thing they've done is create a cooking stove that is more efficient and has much less smoke emission. The photo below from his presentation shows the Darjeeling train in a snowy landscape. [This one's for you, Laverne!]

In the evening we walked up to the top of the hill to Sanjay Narang's new house for a dinner with festival participants and guests. It was wonderful and I'll post more about that tomorrow.

Festival Begins

Thursday afternoon was the first session of the Mussoorie Writers Mountain Festival. We were treated to the Banff Film Festival World Tour, a selection of short films on extreme sports, from mountain biking the ridge on the Isle of Skye to the first scaling of Half Dome and El Capital in Yosemite. Absolutely fascinating, and Parker Hall was crowded. There will be events all day on Friday and Saturday. I'll be attending as many as I can, plus working the registration desk and sales booth and proofreading student blog posts about it.

Dan returned about 2:00 Thursday afternoon after a wonderful week motorcycling in the Uttarakhand mountains. His bazaar-made boots worked well, and Tashi helped outfit some of the pieces he was missing.

Wednesday evening Cate, Margo and I were included in a dinner invitation to the Principal's house. The classes of 1995 and 2005 were having milestone reunions and it has become tradition for these groups to be entertained there. I got to visit with a number of people and met an alumnus of 2005 with whom I have had quite a bit of email back and forth. He and his brother are from Nepal, and since the terrible earthquake there last year, they have been working in the relief efforts.

The weather has turned much nicer -- it is 67-68° in our apartment instead of 63-64° as it was much of last week. That is a big difference! The mists have gone and it is clear and sunny.

Wednesday morning I was up early, as usual. I heard the monkeys clattering on the roof, as they do nearly every day. Then I looked down into the playground and watched a young monkey playing on the swing. He swung in the normal way, climbed the chain on one side, leaped on and off and through. He was obviously having a great time.

Art

For the past several months, an alumnus, Antonio Puri, has been an artist in residence at Woodstock. His art represents the many colors of people here and that we are all of one humanity. Today was the final day, the opening of the two artworks he has created while here. You can read more about it here.

We had a special tea and then the ceremony.

Gathering in the Quad

Dr. Long introducing Antonio and talking about his art

Alok Maiti, Indian music teacher, performed a short raga

Antonio thanked so many who helped

Ribbon cutting at Business Office lobby

Wall paintings in lobby (yes, this is where Diana Biswas sat for many years)

Ribbon cutting of the outside sculpture

DNA of many skin colors

And great news -- Antonio has gotten engaged to one of our Hindi teachers!

Thursday afternoon starts the beginning of the Mussoorie Writers Mountain Festival, which will go all day Friday and Saturday. I'll be working registration some of the time, attending as many sessions as possible, blogging here and proofreading/editing blog posts from students.

FYI, Dan is having a wonderful trip with his motorcycle buddy, Tashi. They will return late on Thursday.

Weekend

Well, I had a wonderful weekend, with the staff outing and WWD. Sunday afternoon I headed up the hill to Wolfsburn, home of my friend Immu. It was about a 40-minute walk up to Char Dukan, where I stopped to have a cup of tea. Cate and Margo, alumni volunteers working in the same office with me, came before I quite finished my tea. We went together to Wolfsburn, where Immu was fixing an Ethiopian meal for us. Immu grew up in Ethiopia, met an Indian teacher, married him, had two daughters, and eventually he retired to Mussoorie. Her daughters attended Woodstock and she has been working in the alumni office for quite a few years now.

We were pleased to have Dr. Cyril Dutt join us for dinner. He was the head of the Landour Community Hospital in the late 1960s/early 1970s when we were living here. He is currently renting an apartment in Immu's complex (she has about 5 units, I think). He is from the town where Cate's parents worked, so she's known him most of her life and they were happy to catch up.

The first picture is standing in front of one of the rental units looking back at the building Immu lives in (on the right). She has a very cozy place on the upper level. The terraced hillside is covered with marigolds.

We had a proper Ethiopian meal, injera, door wat chicken curry, dal, and vegetables. It was delicious.

Monday evening just before dinner I looked out and saw a gorgeous sunset. The limbs are from the Lyre Tree, which has been mostly dismantled. The wood has been saved and something will be done with it. I think for now they are leaving the trunk and main branches standing, even though they are chopped off.

World Wide Woodstock Day

Yesterday (the 17th) was World Wide Woodstock Day, an annual celebration that began in 2009. Woodstock people gather together all over the world. We have frequently been here for it; last year we had a lunch in Dehra Dun. This year we went to the Tavern Cafe, a new place below the older Tavern Restaurant in Kulri. The owner is an alumnus. Quite a few people who might have attended were still away on Activity Week, but we had a fun gathering anyway.

We all ordered whatever we wanted from the menu. The names of all the dishes are based on Mussoorie names, and include Ruskin Bond Fish & Chips. I had the Company Garden Pesto Paneer Burger. That looks like a maraschino cherry on top, but it is actually a tiny tomato. It was delicious and the fries were good, too.

I wanted to show you the inside with large chunks of paneer covered with pesto.

Here is the full group after we ate. Thanks to Cate Whitcomb who posted this on Facebook.

And, to close, here is a picture that Karen Tamminen took of our group in the boat. I am in the back.

Staff Outing

As I mentioned before, this past week has been Activity Week, with students and staff chaperones scattering for hiking and other activities. For some years, on Friday of Activity Week the administrative staff, most of whom have been working in their office, are treated to an outing of some kind. A few years ago I wrote about a day at Brentwood Sanctuary, a resort area to the west of Mussoorie. This year the group headed east to Chamba and Tehri, and I was fortunate to go along.

About 18 of us traveled in four taxis and one private car. Before we left, Eric handed each of us a bag for the trip with a bottle of water, bag of chips, packets of peanuts and cashews, and boxed pineapple juice. Very nice! We left the school gate at 7:00, just an hour earlier than Dan's small group motorcycle trip was to leave. The drive was spectacular; all but about ten kilometers was on the front side of the slope. The views would have been better if there hadn't been so much mist and haze. At the tea stop we could just make out the snow-capped peaks poking out of the clouds, but not enough to have a picture.

Our first stop was at a village tea shop, a little less than two hours away.

Village house with traditional slate roof

Enjoying tea in the sunshine

After another hour we arrived at a resort in the hills above Chamba. Chamba is now a big town, where the Tehri-Mussoorie Road forks to Rishikesh. The resort was an organic farm with a restaurant. Material from the Purana Darbar palace in Old Tehri has been used in the construction. The palace had been built by Maharaja Sudarshan Shah in 1815. When the Tehri Dam was built, a new Tehri was built some kilometers away and the residents were moved. The town is now submerged in the lake. It was a nice place with gorgeous views. There were six rooms opening onto a veranda. Behind the building and up a hill were a couple of tents nicely outfitted. In the dining room, there were many artifacts taken from the old palace.

Lodge veranda

Section of painted ceiling

Antique rocking horse

View of Chamba from farm

We looked around, enjoying the view and the sunshine. Around 10:00 tea was served, with many delicious pakoras -- onion, potato, capsicum (green pepper), paneer (cheese) and brinjal (eggplant). The sauces were fresh mint chutney (spicy!) and catsup.

Pakoras!

After tea we headed toward the Tehri Lake. We drove through the center of New Tehri and I grabbed a shot of this temple from the car. It is a large bustling town now.

Tehri street with palace hotel above

The picture below was taken in 2002 when the dam was still being built. It is the tallest dam in India and one of the tallest in the world. It is rock- and earth-filled.

And here it is today -- you can see where the terracing just above the water level was during construction.

We drove down a long way to the level of the lake, where we had boat rides. They had two boats that each held six passengers. I was in one of the first boats. We were taken across the lake to the opposite shore for a half-hour ride. A videographer was taping us for a promotional video.

On the far side of the lake, these workers were standing on the shore watching a small fire that appeared to be coming out of a depression. We couldn't tell what they were burning.

After our ride, another group was taken out. Most people stood around the dock watching, but the sun was hot and I went up. This man had a small tea and snack shop with a large canopy. Esther and I sat in the shade and had a cup of tea.

Once everyone was finished with the boat ride, we drove back up to the resort for lunch. It was delicious -- panneer curry, spinach, mixed vegetables, rice, dal, chapatis, and mutton.

By this time it was about 2:30 and we had one more sight to visit -- an angora rabbit farm. We drove just a few kilometers and walked up a long narrow path. I got as far as the shop where they sold the sweaters and shawls, but didn't go on to se the rabbits. It is a government scheme that provides farm wives with their own income. Several people bought shawls and sweaters; they were beautiful. The pure angora ones were very expensive, but they also had blends that were very reasonable. The photo below shows a flat part of the path alongside a marigold garden.

When we got back to the resort, many people were ready to leave, but the manager said that our afternoon tea was ready. So we trooped back upstairs. They had made tandoori paneer and chicken. Someone had aluminum foil and packed up the chicken and paneer for people to take home. We had tea and biscuits and finally headed back. Just as we were leaving, the sun went behind a cloud.

It was a wonderful day and I'm glad I went. We got back to the school gate at 6:45, just under 12 hours after we had left. I was completely exhausted and slept for nearly 10 hours!

Wednesday Storm

The past couple of days it has turned colder and threatened rain. Finally today about 3:00 it let loose. It got very dark, the rain was heavy and interspersed with hail, and it was very windy. When I got back to our apartment (I am happy that it is under cover between the office and home!) there was a leak in our kitchen window. I think it was because the wind happened to be blowing in that direction. By about 6:00 it had cleared up and I got this shot toward the west from our balcony.

Last evening we walked to the top of the hill to have dinner with friends. This gorgeous lampshade is made from camel skin, painted and with many tiny holes punched in it.

Visit to Dehra Dun

On Sunday we took a taxi down to Dehra Dun to see our friend Ajit and his sister. We had a lovely visit over lunch at the President Hotel restaurant. The trip down was interesting. Our driver took the road through Barlowganj, which avoids all the bazaar. It is narrow and steep, with many switchbacks, several of which require three-point turns. It is a little harrowing, but I try to stay mellow and just enjoy the scenery. I did take quite a few shots out of the window and, as expected, they didn't all turn out. But here are a few of the best.

Once we got to the main road, there was a lot of traffic. Fall weekends are a popular time to visit Mussoorie, and this is not unusual.

Near the bottom of the hill, there is a huge Shiva temple, a popular stop for travelers. There are food shops on the street level.

This is where the road ahead goes to Rajpur and the turn to the right is the Diversion Road into Dehra Dun. For many years travelers to Mussoorie had to go through Rajpur. In fact, before the road was built, they had to walk or be carried by dandy or palanquin up the mountain.

This shot shows one of the many, many luxury apartment blocks being built along the Diversion Road. It is getting completely built up, with many schools and colleges as well as flats.

Here we are in the restaurant. Ajit has been ill and lost a lot more weight, but is doing well now. His sister teaches Indian dance at Woodstock one day a week.

This week is Activity Week at Woodstock. Students are heading out in all directions. This page shows  the destinations.

Saturday

Hello out there! Not very much new to report. But we are going to Dehra Dun on Sunday to visit our old friend Ajit Singh and I promise to have lots of pictures to share tomorrow. Here are a couple of miscellaneous shots.

On Friday there was a delivery of new chairs for the dining room in the Quad. After the boxes were emptied and school was out for the day, a number of children were enjoying climbing into the boxes and playing around.

On the pushta beside the main school gate, there is a new planter. It is large plastic piping hung on ropes with plants inside. Attractive and ingenious! At first I thought it was a small ladder.