Merry Christmas!

Badrinath October 25th, temple bells ring, are ya listening?
     It's snowing heavy flakes coating my black shawl, we're sitting toes chilly in bed, a towel wet on my greasy, sulfur hair. I slipped on the bridge, falling on the other side of my tailbone, which had finally healed from Nagpur, luckily not bad this time. I am the happiest I've been in a while. Billows of steam rising from below the temple at dusk, we made our way through the fog to the Tapkund. The hotsprings here are the opposite of the last, now the water is to hot to dip in. It's empty now, with thick swirls of steam. We got Indian-naked in conservative underclothes and sat splashing scoops from our plastic containers, so scalding and absolutely marvelous, quick splash arm, arm, head, arm, arm, knee, knee, talking and laughing and trying to keep from burning or freezing. Outside the snow is still coming down. Conversation is easy because talking about the future and present doesn't run out.
     We slept in this morning. I had oats which are so much more fun now with our iodine water, which turns from piss-colored to purple in the metal bowl. Almost makes up for eating oats soaked in cold water every morning. Later we had chai and paratha in the purple plastic cups and shiny silver plates. Our new breakfast favorite, the men flailing around like a parody of something, a skit of a married couple, the man with the big mustache and kerchief tied around his head whacks the other with a rolling pin on his behind as he passes, telling him to hurry up to serve their customers, who number fewer than the staff. The thin teenage boy in baggy clothes boiling chai looks like he might start rapping and the entire scene would turn into a music video.
     We walked through rock pasture to Mana village, up to the temple for the mother of the five brothers in the ancient Hindu epic. We watched a movie playing in the chai shop, the kind of really great, old effects religious film with uncomfortable looking fat actors with ill fitting wigs. As they all cross the bridge, the mother falls down, her blurred, photoshop outline slowly sinks into the water, help me, but the men only look slightly more uncomfortable and sad and keep walking with their black dog. We sat for a while up there, I wrote letters I wont send on the stone steps surrounding the red temple. Went down past the people breaking rocks up to the stone village with mustard growing and hats and cozy sweaters. Two temples where the Bhagavad Gita and other parts of the Mahabharata were written thousand of years ago in caves in the rock. We are getting used to being dragged into pujas in the temples and then asked for donations, which usually happens in the tourist-frequented places. the disappointment with our very small contributions is a little off-putting.The very long road home with dark storm clouds pouring in from the south, starting raindrops and then snow.
Before we saw the Himalayas, but now we are unmistakably in them. Surrounded on each side by peaks so massive, you can't quite take it in, even if you schedule 5 days to do just that. Photos do even less justice than usual because each one could be taken from anywhere and be beautiful, there isn't any way to get the scale.
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And up here even higher, we are on a lichen stone table in every fantasy novel, mountains ducking in and out of clouds. My face is so dry, chapped nose and bright sun. . Even less oxygen here, makes you feel even smaller than the scenery make you feel already. We can't see Badrinath at all, only sign of humans is a tarp stretched over a rock, maybe a dwelling or an out of season chai stand. We haven't seen anyone past the shack where we had condensed milk smoky chai, except one man in religious clothes who disappeared far up into the glacier. This place is a different world, the snow is still in patches here, in the town it has all melted. There is a river on the sun side of the valley, which echoes of rocks on the other side. I dreamed I was at a contra dance last night, spun so much I lifted off the ground. There's another sound coming from the mountain above us, irregular, could be air, water, or earth and I wouldn't know. I don't know this land, I love this land in a new way. Where we ended our hike farther up, and the base of a huge peak, I have a page in my journal with lots of scribbles. It was the first time I actually wanted to capture something, usually I am satisfied with a little piece of it, but I'll have to rely on a few blurry pictures.

Married Life

    Jaipur was our second stop after Udaipur. We had many lovely experiences and good meals and saw beautiful old forts and palaces, but what stuck out most was the endless harassment as we explored the city. This isn't unique to Jaipur (or India) as women travelling alone, but the sheer volume of catcalls and less than comfortable situations coupled with hot, dusty weather and lots of walking was overwhelming. In just a few days we (probably more me than Laura with my bright-white skin) had hundreds of men calling out to us, asking to take our picture (or not asking). I had at least three men serenade me, once while I ate lunch someone sat at my booth to try to talk to me, once we were followed for a decent amount of time by two boys on a motorcycle, once someone drove by on a motorcycle, touching Laura's arm. I got much better at sticking up for myself in a very short amount of time. Several of the rare, proper Meleah-yells made their way into the world. None of the situations felt like I was in any serious danger, but it is so frustrating to have the act of going across the street to eat be a big, stressful undertaking.
      I have gender envy like never before. Being a female certainly has it's charms here, access to the community of other women has been a valuable experience, especially when I lived with my Indian family, but for the purposes of travelling, I am finally realizing how short my end of the stick is. In order to stay safe, we have to generally avoid being out after dark, keep our adventures to a minimum, always keep a foot on the beaten path. It is an exacerbated version of the patriarchy in the US, but one that's harder to ignore because it is in an unfamiliar context.
     It's also always hard to get straight information about places to travel. "That place isn't good for you" can either mean "It's closed," "It is actually not a safe place to travel," or "You are probably too weak to go on that awesome hike because you weren't born with a penis."
     Life had gotten a little easier since I got married. It's easier to explain that we aren't two women travelling alone in a foreign land, but that our husbands are eternally waiting dutifully for us in our hotel rooms (or we'll meet them in the next city if we are taking transportation). Being married puts the concerned aunties and uncles we meet at ease and makes us look a little less vulnerable.
     The other day Laura and I sat exhausted waiting for a train, our dusty backpacks seated in the chairs next to us, each with its own character and I realized we haven't been entirely lying. Our backpacks are our husbands, forever kindly waiting for us in the room while we go on adventures during the day. We haven't solemnized the event with rings yet, but we are on the lookout for nice bands. 

Yamunotri Going? Guide Chahiye?

   Bits from my journal Yamunotri (with most of the complaining and repetition and nonsense phrases gone)

In the cold, grimy pool huddled by the stream of hot water, Laura's face lit up, eyes half closed, covered in droplets. A pink room from another dark world. The smell is perhaps the sulfur, but more like a really dirty room. In our kurtas and leggings, splashing warm on our faces, ears, necks, knees, the patch of sun sometimes far off steam rising up and the particles in the water dancing, something long rotten. This is no Golden Temple, but it's divine, the gift of the sun to his daughter, the goddess-river Yamuna, a little dribble of it at least in the neglected women's pool. The temple right above is still freezing, filled with hash and drums, something carried on the shoulders of two men, turned to each direction. Aunties making sure we've had enough prasad, huge balls of warm jaggery, ghee, some flour, and black flecks of the pan. We are so high up, 10,000 feet, lungs straining the 5 kilometers up to the temple, up these uneven steps, metal coverings here and there to stop the glacial drip on out heads. It's like some mythological gorge, shiny rocks shoved up from the earth (why don't I know anything about geology?), the treeline ends where the goddess pours out of the glacier. Dark, gnarled trees, some colors look like fall below, blackberries, ferns, and spiked rose and nettle.
We came out of the water, dripping and freezing, lost Laura's pocket knife somewhere along the way. We stopped in a dubba, sitting on the stone hearth in silence with the men in a comfortable way of humans battling a common element. A huge plate of rajma chawal peas and potatoes, two dollars for two overfull bellies, never too full for tea.
Hiking is strange here, often it feels remote, then a family rides up on ponies. I'm so glad we are not on ponies. Then after the trek you expect some secluded, natural bit and find yourself in a little bustling town, food stalls and souvenirs all carried up the same trail.
Also I don't know if I've mentioned enough how stunning this place is, glaciers lit up by the sun, the valley goes on forever now with rays through the clouds, sunset and sunrise in our ridiculous hotel. The windows are nice, the bed mostly clean, no cockroaches or grime, the bathroom mostly works by pouring buckets to flush it. The very young manager just wants to be friends, but we have to be too cautious for that. This would be so much easier with a man. Yesterday we had a laze and acclimation day, in bed and walking around the village. From our window we see clumps of grass bumbling down the road, closer there are people under the masses, but it's more interesting to see it this way. A dead cow was on the road, there will be a story behind that,