The Riddle of the Yak Butter Tea

We're 40% of the way towards our fundraising budget at Kickstarter, which is pretty awesome. Please think about helping us be more awesome by being closer to said budget.

In other awesome news, I solved a riddle.

Two years ago, I was in Dharamsala taking a tour of a monastery that's part of the TNP system, and talking about how yak was kosher and therefore I could drink yak butter tea. To which my guide said, "There is no such thing as yak butter tea. Yaks don't produce milk that butters."

And I thought, "Well, this has to be true; she's an abbess, she must know what she's talking about," and I took it on faith. But when I repeated this story to just about anyone, they said, "No, that is real yak butter in the tea. What else do you think it is?" (Unless you order in in America, in which case it is just butter from the grocery store)

This frustrated me for a long time, until I happened to be reading a Tibetan photography book with an introduction by a monk, who went into a side note about yaks. It seems that the word "yak" actually means "male yak" while the word "dri" means "female yak." There's a gender signifier that hasn't made it into English. Since the stuff that comes out of yaks, which are all male, doesn't butter, there is no such thing as "yak butter tea." It's "dri butter tea," though you will look weird if you order that in English. But apparently Tibetans find Western people making this mistake and consistently referring to it as yak butter tea hilarious but for the most part are uninterested in letting us in on the joke.

And I can't blame them, because as far as jokes on stupid white tourists go, it's a pretty good one.

Kickstarter Project

For those unfamiliar with the site, Kickstarter is a program where people can donate money to creative projects and receive prizes. Their donation is only collected if the project meets its initial goal and can be completed, so you're not throwing money at people who are not going to produce anything.

My program is called The World That Was: A Living History Project, and is my attempt to record the oral histories of people who lived in independent, pre-1950 Tibet. I've wanted to do something meaningful for the Tibetan refugee community in Dharamsala for a few years, and this was inspired by Jewish organizations like the Shoah Institute and the research projects at Yad Vashem. Anyway, I explain that all in the video. The program asks for regular updates during my stay in India, and those will be posted here, along with pictures and video as I'm bringing a camera and a computer this time.

Also, if you're interested in purchasing a fairly high-quality Tibetan thangka, $300 is probably what you'd spend in America doing it (maybe a bit less with considerations for size and quality), whereas if you donate to the program you'll get one AND help out what I hope is a good cause, since thangkas are cheaper over there and I happen to know a bunch of artists and where to buy them.

Update for 2011

G-d Willing I will be in India working with the Tibetan refugee community in February 2012. Stay tuned for more information.

This is the final blog post

Mom requested I put up this photo again, so people don't have to scroll down to prior entries to see it.

(May 15th, 2009)

Well, we've come to the end. All the pictures are posted, all the events summarized, and tomorrow morning is my last anti-malarial pill. I want to remember every minute of India, though of course that's not going to happen because my memory can be terrible and awfully selective. I guess at some point I'll just have to go back; there certainly is a lot more to see. I wasn't even finished with the top 3rd of the country.

When I was growing up, my life goal was to get published. Then I got published. So I said, "I'm going to go meet the Dalai Lama." And I went and met the Dalai Lama. Now people are asking me, "What's next?" I'd like to be a rabbi; it's a suitably crazy and far-fetched idea that doesn't seem like it suits my lifestyle, but I don't think putting my budding writing career on hold for six years of rabbinical school is really the best thing to do right now. On the other hand, for this goal, I don't feel a need to rush. "I'd like, possibly, to have rabbinic ordination before I die. Maybe. If I get around to it. Not for any particular reason; it's just something I want to do." Check back on that in 20 years.

Back to the present: India has opened up a world of travel for me. Before India I was reluctant to travel, having been burned multiple times by getting sick while abroad, and I was positively terrified of going to India when the moment came to leave the apartment. In the end, my stomach was fine on my own food, and good enough on Indian food, and my health didn't hold me back from anything I wanted to do while I was there. I definitely want to travel more, and the more exotic the better.

Where to next? I've wanted to go to Tibet for awhile, which is partially why I went to India (to meet the Tibetan exile community), but China keeps closing the country to foreigners, or at least saying it's open and then denying most foreigners visas to travel to Tibet. Plus you actually have to go all the way to Beijing to apply for the visa, and wait for it to be approved. But hey, I got published and I met the Dalai Lama. Nothing's impossible. Just at the moment, not probable. There are plenty of other places to go that are similarly insane but involve less Chinese bureaucracy. Oh, and I have to make some money to pay for the trip. Did I leave that out? That sounds crucial.

My answer is that I have no idea where I want to go next, but the question isn't pressing. For the moment, I just have India, and that's enough.

Photos from Delhi

I met with my editor for the Darcys and the Bingleys series yesterday and she feels I can write off my India trip as "research." I think it's worth trying, at least the plane ticket and the cost of the tour. It was actually a research trip, in that I visited particular sites because of scenes I had written or intend to write. Whether I can pull it off remains to be seen.

At the end of my trip I returned to Delhi, and saw the Red Fort (another Mughal Red Fort built around the same time as the others), Gandhi's cremation site (he has no grave), India Gate, and some government buildings like Parliament and the President's house that I couldn't go in because they were active. That was the end of my tour, though I could have tacked things on, but I was running low on cash and it was 113 degrees or so by noon, so next time I'm in Delhi, I'll have more to see.

Up next: Conclusion of my India blog.

Red Fort at Delhi

New Delhi

General Photography from the Road

Photos from Dharamsala

I spent the middle of the trip in the cooler Dharamsala, a small mountain town in the state of Himachal Pradesh. The state borders Tibet, with the Himalayas acting as a natural border. Most refugees who came straight to India did so through a treacherous passage through the Himalayas that takes up to two weeks, including the Dalai Lama himself, who fled Tibet in 1959. From Dharamsala, you can see the Himalayas in the distance. Planes land in the Dharamsala airport in the Kangra Valley, then it's an hour ride up treachorous dirt roads that are very, very steep and often one lane even though traffic goes in two lanes. Dharamsala contains the largest gathering of Tibetan refugees in the world and is the seat of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile.

Most of "downtown" Dharamsala is actually McLeod Ganj, named after a British Governer of Punjab. It's not any flatter than any part of the mountain, but it's based around the Tsuglagkhang Complex, which contains a monastery and most importantly the private residence of the Dalai Lama, which was gifted to him by Prime Minister Nehru upon his arrival to India. The Dalai Lama does all of his public teachings and most of his press conferences in the main temple complex, either on his throne or sitting in front of it. Pictures of thrones that contain a picture of the Dalai Lama mean that only he can sit there, even if other people are meeting without him. They leave the throne empty.

Dharamsala is cooler than most of India because of the elevation, which meant it was hot but not unbearably, and in the winter it snows. None of the hotels have air conditioning, and the majority of them are, by normal standards, not very good. On the other hand, they are all very cheap. I was staying at one of the most expensive hotels, and I think I was paying about $42 a night, which was worth every penny. Dharamsala is safer than most Indian areas for tourists, with lots of women seen walking alone, and there's all kinds of cuisines, from Tibetan to Israeli to Italian. The town is particularly popular for Israelis, and many of the signs are in Hebrew. Despite the presence of so many Tibetans, Indians own all of the land because the Tibetans are refugees and are not allowed to own land, even if they were born here as a child of refugees. So many of the shop owners, hotel owners, staff, and especially construction workers are Indian.

A very interesting place. If you're not tremendously fascinated by Tibetan culture, you can do the town in a day, maybe two. I was there for four, not counting Shabbos, and saw pretty much everything. Also I used the time to rest from the pace of the trip, as I get sick when I get overtired, so it was good for me.

Also there were a lot of monkeys.

Dharamsala

Photos from Amritsar

Going out of order here, these are my photos of Amritsar, which I spent a day in between Dharamsala and Delhi. Amritsar is in the Indian state of Punjab, about forty minutes from the border with Pakistan. The last ground war with Pakistan in 1971 was fought along the Punjab border. Today the border is stable and somewhat peaceful, with trade of textiles and food crossing the border both ways and a colorful ceremony on the Wagah Border each night as both countries lower their flags at the same time. The ceremony was a surprise, as I didn't notice "going to Pakistan" was really on my itinerary until we were on the road to it. I asked if they would let me put my foot in, like the time that my parents took me to Colorado and we stopped at the state border and I put my feet into Utah or something, so I could put a foot in and say, "Hey, I was in Pakistan." Actually Wagah is a no-man's land anyway, and even so they wouldn't let us get within 20 feet of the opposite gate. The ceremony was fascinating not really for its pageantry of the soldiers walking back and forth to salute each other, but for the crowds on both sides. On the idea side, there was color and and crowds dancing and the place was packed. On the Pakistan side, the amphitheater was about 2/3rds empty, men and women were seperated, and the men were wearing mostly white and the women mostly black. Both countries had sort of an MC, who would signal the crowd to cheer for their country (which in India's case was "Hindustan!") and then the other MC would do the same to compete on the other side ("Jia Jia! Pakistan!"). The Pakistani side did a good effort of keeping up the noise for how few they were in numbers, but perhaps the most poignant moment was after the actual ceremony, when the crowds were allowed to come to the bars of the two gates, 20 feet apart, and both sides waved to each other and took pictures with their cameras. People forget that before the Partition, Pakistan was part of India, and millions of people were displaced when the Hindus went one way and the Muslims went another. The Sikhs dominate the Punjab state, and the ones on the Pakistani side have had to endure a heavy non-Muslim tax, which angers India.

The Wagah Border Ceremony

Primarily, Amristar is the holy city of the Sikhs, a religion whose members wear turbans and are often mistaken for Arabs in this country. Sikhism was founded by Guru Nanak, a 15th-century sage from Lahore (now in Pakistan), who came west to discover a caste system he didn't care for, so he was inspired to create a religion anyone could join and that did not have a caste system. Sikh men and women cover their hair, men grow beards, and they are supposed to always have on them five things: uncut hair, underwear, a silver bracelet, a comb, and a ritual dagger. The last thing created a mess in the Amtrak station in Providence either on 9/11 or the day after (I forget), when a Sikh man had his bags searched by some racist security guards who assumed he was Arab and found his ritual dagger, which created quite a stir in Providence before things were sorted out.

The holiest site is the Golden Temple, built in 1577 and really one of the most incredible buildings in the world. It is plated with gold, and though it is forbidden to take photographs inside, I managed to snap a few, but they are sideways. The pool surrounding it is the Pool of Nectar, which comes from a fresh spring of water and people bathe in it for health and penance. The Golden Temple is open about 20 hours a day, and closed around midnight for cleaning, but the complex is open 24 hours a day and 24 hours a day they have someone reading the sacred book of the Sikhs over the loadspeaker. Food is free for all pilgrims, as is guest housing, though I would recommend a hotel. It was very hot there when I was there, probably 100 or 105 degrees, but it wasn't unbearable. They were very serious about guests removing their shoes and covering their hair. I also visited it briefly the night before the official visit to get some pictures. Unlike other sites in India, admission is free for all at all times. I was really happy for the chance to go. Amristar is fairly far north of Delhi, so originally I scratched it off my list even though I mentioned it in book 10 of my series, but then I discovered it was only a few hours from Dharamsala, so not terribly out-of-the-way. The return to Delhi was a 6-hour train ride.

The Golden Temple

My final stop in Amritsar was Jallianwala Bagh, a park which was the site of a British massacre of civilians in 1919. The episode spurred on the Indian Independence movement and is a major event in the movie Gandhi. One of the most notable monuments is the well of matyrs, where people fell to their death to escape the hail of bullets.

Jallianwala BaghThe next few days are Shavuos, but after the holiday I will get up my pictures from Delhi, from traveling, and of course, Dharamsala.