Sunday, December 19, 2010
Use your Imagination
So the computer that I brought along with me has decided to crap out on the photo front, it simply can't read photos off of the SD card anymore and it looks like the problem has also corrupted my USB sticks. Fortunately it doesn't look like I've lost any of the pictures... yet. I hope you enjoy. I'll do my best to keep writing and posting so you all have something to chew on.
Oh Goa
Most people reading this are in New England. Its December 18th, and aside from a three day jaunt to Hampi (an umpteen hour bus ride in from the coast) I have spent about two weeks on the coast. I read that a snow storm threatened and grazed some parts of New England and my Floridian grown body surely has a piercing memory of the kind of cold that is descending upon what I call ‘home’ with a grudging love. For all my loved ones reading this, I’m so sorry, but right now I’m outside. I’m sitting in shorts and a tee-shirt, the sun set long ago and before me is a fine white sand extending off into the dark where a beautifully rhythmic surge of tumbling water sounds and rolls towards me.
This morning I was up early, before the girls and I was on the beach for a morning walk before the sun had risen high enough over the land to hit the water.
Please remember that I love all of you, and don’t hate me… too much.
The food is spectacular here on the coast. My favorite being a locally caught kingfish that I picked from an array brought before our table. Consistency is fairly absent when it comes to anything on the menu that is not strictly Indian, but this has led to some tasty and pleasantly surprising discoveries. Though, if anything food related is to be said about India, surely anyone in my position would say it must be the juice.
No one does juice like the Indians do. When the three of us had found Goa’s northern most beach and ordered some pineapple juice, we watched as the man who took our order walked back towards the kitchen and grabbed a couple of pineapples on his way. All juice is juiced fresh, on the spot and orange juice is made from mandarin oranges, nothing like home, but perhaps far better.
We decided to hunt down the quieter, more out of the way beaches of Goa as opposed to the drunken party beaches that are more characteristic of its core. The time has been spent well, if simply, and everything that I dreamed of while starving, sick, exhausted and cold in the Himalaya has come true. The heat of the sun and the roll and sway of the ocean is a comfort that is only paralleled by the comforts of home after having been long deprived. My sense of reality has done a gleeful 180. In the Himalaya, I was so thankful to go to sleep, not just from exhaustion but because of what I knew I would dream. Here, I awake from dreams to find that actually, I’m somewhere better.
From the Rajasthan desert through the smog, slum, and glitz of Mumbai to the powdered sand of Goa’s palmed coast, India is quickly living up to its reputation of truly having everything.
This morning I was up early, before the girls and I was on the beach for a morning walk before the sun had risen high enough over the land to hit the water.
Please remember that I love all of you, and don’t hate me… too much.
The food is spectacular here on the coast. My favorite being a locally caught kingfish that I picked from an array brought before our table. Consistency is fairly absent when it comes to anything on the menu that is not strictly Indian, but this has led to some tasty and pleasantly surprising discoveries. Though, if anything food related is to be said about India, surely anyone in my position would say it must be the juice.
No one does juice like the Indians do. When the three of us had found Goa’s northern most beach and ordered some pineapple juice, we watched as the man who took our order walked back towards the kitchen and grabbed a couple of pineapples on his way. All juice is juiced fresh, on the spot and orange juice is made from mandarin oranges, nothing like home, but perhaps far better.
We decided to hunt down the quieter, more out of the way beaches of Goa as opposed to the drunken party beaches that are more characteristic of its core. The time has been spent well, if simply, and everything that I dreamed of while starving, sick, exhausted and cold in the Himalaya has come true. The heat of the sun and the roll and sway of the ocean is a comfort that is only paralleled by the comforts of home after having been long deprived. My sense of reality has done a gleeful 180. In the Himalaya, I was so thankful to go to sleep, not just from exhaustion but because of what I knew I would dream. Here, I awake from dreams to find that actually, I’m somewhere better.
From the Rajasthan desert through the smog, slum, and glitz of Mumbai to the powdered sand of Goa’s palmed coast, India is quickly living up to its reputation of truly having everything.
Curry, Children and the Slums
Sophie and I quickly made our way to Jaipur in the northern region of India called Rajasthan. This was after going to three different train stations in Delhi, looking for our train.
A kid named Isral picked us up from the train station to take us to our hotel. He made us laugh even though we were exhausted and we agreed to meet him the next morning so that he could take us on a tour of Jaipur.
I was still repudiating from being sick in Lukla, but unfortunately this would not last for long. A few days later when Sophie and I were in Udaipur, she got food poisoning and I definitely felt a bit of the same bug, though my body seemed far more experienced to meet the challenge. All I’ll say of this is that traveling to foreign countries where the likelihood of getting sick is high is bound to make friends get to know each other very well - in perhaps… unexpected ways.
Food became increasingly difficult after Udaipur, though when we tracked down a hotel that had a free showing of Octopussy (James Bond movie that was filmed in Udaipur - remember the floating palaces?) we were far from disappointed from the chocolate milkshakes and the ‘Hello to the Queen’. Sophie and I had, also, never heard of this desert. Picture quartered banana with crushed graham cracker, a few scoops of vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce everywhere.
The German bakery we found also suffered from our onslaught when we stumbled across it. (Side note: When I was way up in Dingboche, Nepal, a few days before my epic babysitting climb with ‘N’ and essentially the starting point to go to that pass, I came across a French bakery that boasted a ‘Snickers Danish’ -- Yes. That’s right, its exactly what you think it is: a Snickers bar baked into a Danish. I’m sure this is the result of an unknown genius somewhere in Nepal who ran out of regular chocolate and noticed they still had a few Snickers bars left for sale. Yes, I got one, its slightly better than you’d think it would be, but only if you have high expectations, in another word, spectacular)
I was a little disappointed that the only way to actually gain admission to the floating palaces of Udaipur is if you plan to spend an exorbitant amount of money on a drink (something I thought was pretty strange since alcohol is a bit taboo in this part of India).
By the time we got on our umpteen hour bus ride to Mumbai, I believe I’d consumed about 30 or 40 pounds of Imodium. Well, perhaps not… but I’ve certainly taken enough for it to be ineffective now.
A rickshaw took us from the hole-in-the-wall ‘bus station’ to the actual bus which was around the block and down the street pulled over on the side of the road across the street from some of the Udaipur slums. As I took off my shoes and got comfortable in the plush sleeper cabin, arranging luggage in the most advantageous conglomeration for comfort, I took out my book to read and stopped to look out the window. The slums seems to be constructed of dark colors rather than actual substance. Rotting food and garbage is strewn about - its end marking the beginning of the road, and everything is slathered in the color of the filth. Corrugated tin roofs are held down by rocks and boulders, doorways are black holes, perhaps with a tiny steady flame suffocating in a corner, but always in the darkness of those dwellings - the wandering glint of eyes. The children, always the most telling examples of a place, are walking histories of their slums. Clothed like their houses, with dirt, garbage, shit and rags, they wander and beg, all with the universal gesture of an outstretched hand moving to the mouth for a moment to indicate food before returning before you for anything you might proffer. I have gone back and forth, unsure as how to regard them. Most westerners, I have noticed simply ignore them. I can’t help but look at them, head to toe, and try to guess what is going through their head. I’ve noticed that there is a substantial complacency that lurks behind a practiced pity look. These children are starving and poor beyond an empty pocket, but there appears to be a boredom in them, and their hunger craves not just in the literal sense, but also for something more, some path to follow, some game to learn, some example to follow. In the month since I have arrived in India, I have paled in these moments, not for the sole reason of their abject poverty but because of this already ingrained habit of the begging ritual. Each and every time I have hoped for some reason to give money. Of course its impractical and unwise to give to children who beg, for it further ingrains that this kind of behavior will reward, as numerous signs in India have warned. What I have hoped for is some kind of ingenuity, some neat trick, a song, a dance, something to respect. I would not be rewarded in my search until I was sitting on Palelom beach in southern Goa. I watched as a mother and her two children sit up two tripods made from long bamboo. Between these tripods extended a rope which was pulled tight between the stands approximately eight or nine feet above the ground. Puzzled I watched while sipping my Danish beer. Of the two children, the younger little girl proceeded to climb up one of the stands and sit perched down on her haunches as her mother handed her another long bamboo pole. She took it, balanced it and then stood up on the rope and proceeded to walk the tight rope. I was delighted to see a break in the pattern as it was still obvious that this trio was in a very low bracket of society. When she successfully got to the other side, her bother gave her a stack of bowls which the little girl took, balanced on her head and then started out again across the rope. On the next run, her mother handed her the inside rim of a bicycle wheel (sans spokes, of course, and tire and tube). The little girl walked the rope with her feet inside the wheel rim, each foot climbing the curve and pushing it down into the rope and of course, the pottery was still balanced on her head. On the next round the wheel rim was replaced by a tin plate which the girl placed under one of her feet and once again she walked across the rope, sliding the plate against her other foot and then stepping on it… on the rope. It was a circus act, but nonetheless, I was enthralled. When the little girl clamored down the bamboo pole, I had already walked up to the trio and was waiting to meet the star. She met me with a gorgeous smile and big bright eyes. Her skin was slick with sweat from the heat and the effort but it was obvious that she was happy, proud and exhilarated. She told me her name was ‘Muscan’. I told her that she was absolutely fantastic and handed her some money. It may not be the most innovative thing imaginable, but I couldn’t help my happiness with the mother’s ingenuity. Surely she had coerced her kids into performing the spectacle, but she was also showing them that begging isn’t they way to go about it, and that if you learn something, work hard at it, and practice, it can reap benefits. What better lesson for someone who is starting off with nothing? The other, countless children, who have come up to me begging for money have the counter-intuitive idea that things will be given to them - an absurd idea that is (ironically) usually a characteristic of someone born into exorbitant wealth.
Upon reviewing this last length of words, Sophie makes an interesting point regarding the boredom and complacency I have mentioned. Begging is a behavior that is taught, primarily, we assume, by parents who tell their children that foreigners have lots of money (which is proportionally too true). Children in turn go about it like they would anything else, like a game. Westerners are just a matter of time. It is in the moments when the game grows boring, and the reality is that a child is just standing in front of someone who is pretending to ignore them, that their utter complacency is revealed. Their practiced look of pity fades and they look off hungry for some kind of stimulation. Sophie went on to say that while I slept on the train out of Delhi she watched the slums roll slowly by, seeing the children play, the men sitting with one another talking and the women smiling, bouncing children on their knees. Sophie’s reassuring observation about people is true: we have each other and joy creeps into our lives through the smiles of those we love, and the joy of family can sprout, even in the worst of places.
I can’t help but think that this reassuring observation is also double edged. Is it a pitfall of joy and love to be… ok with one’s situation? As terrible as it sounds, do the trappings of love, the positive and the negatives, to some extent perpetuate bad situations? Surely its fair to say that no one likes life in a slum but its also likely to say that they DO like and love their family. How much more probable would it be for someone to better their situation if they could sever ties to family and friends who are all woven so intricately into the situation of a slum? And does the observation of happiness in such an awful place in anyway placate an ‘other’s’ sense of generosity and responsibility?
This sign of joy also reminds me that these people have the same capacity for feeling, and that they are not some other kind of creature, or some other kind of ‘safe’ categorization that the mind takes emotional relief in… whether we are aware of it or not. I can’t help but think this is the kind of mechanism at work when I see westerners ignoring children who are standing right in front of them. How can we conceptualize of something we don’t want to recognize? Doesn’t this make a child into something less than a ghost? And isn’t this act of non-recognition the greatest expression of the disparity between my observed westerner and the child before them? I have, of course, ignored some of these children, but all I can think about is the child. I have tried to interact with them, feeling desperate for some brilliant game to introduce, but I have ended up usually embarrassing myself and feeling not a little ashamed.
Infrastructure, I truly think, is the biggest culprit of people’s situations. Having lived in Denmark, (a country where the social services are so good and pervasive it seems that being homeless borders on being a choice) and comparing its infrastructure with the less taut U.S. and Canada, a country’s infrastructure, both political and economic determine how well the poorest will live.
India’s infrastructure isn’t just written on its people but is evident on a constant basis. The entire country, it seems is either in an accelerated rate of decay or growth. Abandoned concrete buildings can be found next to modern structures still incubating in the stages of construction. Dirt roads slam into beautiful highways, and elsewhere the potholes would wake up a comatose patient had they the pleasure to be in the busses we’ve had the pleasure of riding. I could feel that infrastructure, as I sat comfortably in the decked out Volvo sleeper bus. Across the street I watched a child and came to another conclusion. The children, like dogs, find every and anywhere a good place, not just to play but also to defecate. A little boy squatted at random and as he gave something back to the world, he smiled at me.
My aim in this entry is to be thought provoking more than anything else. I’m not sure where I stand on any of this, but the sights I have seen have certainly come with more than just their shapes and colors.
A kid named Isral picked us up from the train station to take us to our hotel. He made us laugh even though we were exhausted and we agreed to meet him the next morning so that he could take us on a tour of Jaipur.
I was still repudiating from being sick in Lukla, but unfortunately this would not last for long. A few days later when Sophie and I were in Udaipur, she got food poisoning and I definitely felt a bit of the same bug, though my body seemed far more experienced to meet the challenge. All I’ll say of this is that traveling to foreign countries where the likelihood of getting sick is high is bound to make friends get to know each other very well - in perhaps… unexpected ways.
Food became increasingly difficult after Udaipur, though when we tracked down a hotel that had a free showing of Octopussy (James Bond movie that was filmed in Udaipur - remember the floating palaces?) we were far from disappointed from the chocolate milkshakes and the ‘Hello to the Queen’. Sophie and I had, also, never heard of this desert. Picture quartered banana with crushed graham cracker, a few scoops of vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce everywhere.
The German bakery we found also suffered from our onslaught when we stumbled across it. (Side note: When I was way up in Dingboche, Nepal, a few days before my epic babysitting climb with ‘N’ and essentially the starting point to go to that pass, I came across a French bakery that boasted a ‘Snickers Danish’ -- Yes. That’s right, its exactly what you think it is: a Snickers bar baked into a Danish. I’m sure this is the result of an unknown genius somewhere in Nepal who ran out of regular chocolate and noticed they still had a few Snickers bars left for sale. Yes, I got one, its slightly better than you’d think it would be, but only if you have high expectations, in another word, spectacular)
I was a little disappointed that the only way to actually gain admission to the floating palaces of Udaipur is if you plan to spend an exorbitant amount of money on a drink (something I thought was pretty strange since alcohol is a bit taboo in this part of India).
By the time we got on our umpteen hour bus ride to Mumbai, I believe I’d consumed about 30 or 40 pounds of Imodium. Well, perhaps not… but I’ve certainly taken enough for it to be ineffective now.
A rickshaw took us from the hole-in-the-wall ‘bus station’ to the actual bus which was around the block and down the street pulled over on the side of the road across the street from some of the Udaipur slums. As I took off my shoes and got comfortable in the plush sleeper cabin, arranging luggage in the most advantageous conglomeration for comfort, I took out my book to read and stopped to look out the window. The slums seems to be constructed of dark colors rather than actual substance. Rotting food and garbage is strewn about - its end marking the beginning of the road, and everything is slathered in the color of the filth. Corrugated tin roofs are held down by rocks and boulders, doorways are black holes, perhaps with a tiny steady flame suffocating in a corner, but always in the darkness of those dwellings - the wandering glint of eyes. The children, always the most telling examples of a place, are walking histories of their slums. Clothed like their houses, with dirt, garbage, shit and rags, they wander and beg, all with the universal gesture of an outstretched hand moving to the mouth for a moment to indicate food before returning before you for anything you might proffer. I have gone back and forth, unsure as how to regard them. Most westerners, I have noticed simply ignore them. I can’t help but look at them, head to toe, and try to guess what is going through their head. I’ve noticed that there is a substantial complacency that lurks behind a practiced pity look. These children are starving and poor beyond an empty pocket, but there appears to be a boredom in them, and their hunger craves not just in the literal sense, but also for something more, some path to follow, some game to learn, some example to follow. In the month since I have arrived in India, I have paled in these moments, not for the sole reason of their abject poverty but because of this already ingrained habit of the begging ritual. Each and every time I have hoped for some reason to give money. Of course its impractical and unwise to give to children who beg, for it further ingrains that this kind of behavior will reward, as numerous signs in India have warned. What I have hoped for is some kind of ingenuity, some neat trick, a song, a dance, something to respect. I would not be rewarded in my search until I was sitting on Palelom beach in southern Goa. I watched as a mother and her two children sit up two tripods made from long bamboo. Between these tripods extended a rope which was pulled tight between the stands approximately eight or nine feet above the ground. Puzzled I watched while sipping my Danish beer. Of the two children, the younger little girl proceeded to climb up one of the stands and sit perched down on her haunches as her mother handed her another long bamboo pole. She took it, balanced it and then stood up on the rope and proceeded to walk the tight rope. I was delighted to see a break in the pattern as it was still obvious that this trio was in a very low bracket of society. When she successfully got to the other side, her bother gave her a stack of bowls which the little girl took, balanced on her head and then started out again across the rope. On the next run, her mother handed her the inside rim of a bicycle wheel (sans spokes, of course, and tire and tube). The little girl walked the rope with her feet inside the wheel rim, each foot climbing the curve and pushing it down into the rope and of course, the pottery was still balanced on her head. On the next round the wheel rim was replaced by a tin plate which the girl placed under one of her feet and once again she walked across the rope, sliding the plate against her other foot and then stepping on it… on the rope. It was a circus act, but nonetheless, I was enthralled. When the little girl clamored down the bamboo pole, I had already walked up to the trio and was waiting to meet the star. She met me with a gorgeous smile and big bright eyes. Her skin was slick with sweat from the heat and the effort but it was obvious that she was happy, proud and exhilarated. She told me her name was ‘Muscan’. I told her that she was absolutely fantastic and handed her some money. It may not be the most innovative thing imaginable, but I couldn’t help my happiness with the mother’s ingenuity. Surely she had coerced her kids into performing the spectacle, but she was also showing them that begging isn’t they way to go about it, and that if you learn something, work hard at it, and practice, it can reap benefits. What better lesson for someone who is starting off with nothing? The other, countless children, who have come up to me begging for money have the counter-intuitive idea that things will be given to them - an absurd idea that is (ironically) usually a characteristic of someone born into exorbitant wealth.
Upon reviewing this last length of words, Sophie makes an interesting point regarding the boredom and complacency I have mentioned. Begging is a behavior that is taught, primarily, we assume, by parents who tell their children that foreigners have lots of money (which is proportionally too true). Children in turn go about it like they would anything else, like a game. Westerners are just a matter of time. It is in the moments when the game grows boring, and the reality is that a child is just standing in front of someone who is pretending to ignore them, that their utter complacency is revealed. Their practiced look of pity fades and they look off hungry for some kind of stimulation. Sophie went on to say that while I slept on the train out of Delhi she watched the slums roll slowly by, seeing the children play, the men sitting with one another talking and the women smiling, bouncing children on their knees. Sophie’s reassuring observation about people is true: we have each other and joy creeps into our lives through the smiles of those we love, and the joy of family can sprout, even in the worst of places.
I can’t help but think that this reassuring observation is also double edged. Is it a pitfall of joy and love to be… ok with one’s situation? As terrible as it sounds, do the trappings of love, the positive and the negatives, to some extent perpetuate bad situations? Surely its fair to say that no one likes life in a slum but its also likely to say that they DO like and love their family. How much more probable would it be for someone to better their situation if they could sever ties to family and friends who are all woven so intricately into the situation of a slum? And does the observation of happiness in such an awful place in anyway placate an ‘other’s’ sense of generosity and responsibility?
This sign of joy also reminds me that these people have the same capacity for feeling, and that they are not some other kind of creature, or some other kind of ‘safe’ categorization that the mind takes emotional relief in… whether we are aware of it or not. I can’t help but think this is the kind of mechanism at work when I see westerners ignoring children who are standing right in front of them. How can we conceptualize of something we don’t want to recognize? Doesn’t this make a child into something less than a ghost? And isn’t this act of non-recognition the greatest expression of the disparity between my observed westerner and the child before them? I have, of course, ignored some of these children, but all I can think about is the child. I have tried to interact with them, feeling desperate for some brilliant game to introduce, but I have ended up usually embarrassing myself and feeling not a little ashamed.
Infrastructure, I truly think, is the biggest culprit of people’s situations. Having lived in Denmark, (a country where the social services are so good and pervasive it seems that being homeless borders on being a choice) and comparing its infrastructure with the less taut U.S. and Canada, a country’s infrastructure, both political and economic determine how well the poorest will live.
India’s infrastructure isn’t just written on its people but is evident on a constant basis. The entire country, it seems is either in an accelerated rate of decay or growth. Abandoned concrete buildings can be found next to modern structures still incubating in the stages of construction. Dirt roads slam into beautiful highways, and elsewhere the potholes would wake up a comatose patient had they the pleasure to be in the busses we’ve had the pleasure of riding. I could feel that infrastructure, as I sat comfortably in the decked out Volvo sleeper bus. Across the street I watched a child and came to another conclusion. The children, like dogs, find every and anywhere a good place, not just to play but also to defecate. A little boy squatted at random and as he gave something back to the world, he smiled at me.
My aim in this entry is to be thought provoking more than anything else. I’m not sure where I stand on any of this, but the sights I have seen have certainly come with more than just their shapes and colors.
Hello India
Don’t believe what they say. Well, maybe a little bit. The description I had heard over and over of what it is like to get into Delhi couldn’t have been further from my experience. Walking out of the airport and getting to one’s hotel is supposed to be a nightmare of loud, fast paced, mind fumbling disorientation.
Compared to the tiny half-abandoned orange brick building that comprised of Kathmandu’s International Airport, the Airport in Delhi was like disembarking for Heaven. Reminding me very much of Vancouver International airport, I was pleasantly overjoyed to find air conditioning, clean tile floors, huge glass windows of crystal cleanliness, baggage carousels, and not only that, but screens to match flight numbers to carousels! Customs couldn’t have been more customary and when the electronic doors parted and I walked out into the hot Indian air, I dare say it was dead quiet. A hundred taxis were lined up, all silent with only a few drivers lounging around.
I hung my head out the window as the taxi sped towards the city and rejoicing in the heat and the after-glow of business class cocktails. ( because I’d been stuck in Lukla, I’d pushed back my flight to Delhi. The travel agency I had done this through neglected to tell me that this required a change of class also, and when I arrived at the airport, I found out that the only way I could make it to India was to cough up another couple hundred bucks. Sitting in business class with the collision of continents below me, I endeavored to drink back the extra cost of my seat. I lost count, but I’m confident that I succeeded.)
I perked up when I saw a traffic light. I hadn’t seen one since I left the states. (Katmandu uses officers stationed on permanent posts in the middle of intersections as opposed to lights to direct traffic. And they are only present when traffic is the busiest… though every moment after the first morning honk of a car horn feels like rush hour.)
The stereotypical description of Delhi started to emerge, but after the joyously schizophrenic pinball machine that Kathmandu streets had proved itself to be, Delhi was a little tame.
One thing I have noticed about driving in this part of the world is the difference in the use of the horn. In the states, the horn is only really used in two cases: when an accident is about to occur and when someone is just pissed off. The people of these countries have found far more diverse and better uses for the voices of automobiles. Driving, of course, is a visual task, but here in India and also Nepal, people drive using sonar. The horn is in constant use, not because people are agitated or deaf, but really just to say ‘hey, I’m just letting everyone know where I am.’ With every car in your immediate vicinity giving a little honk, you have the invaluable benefit of getting an instantaneous picture of where everyone is without actually looking. Though of course drivers are constantly looking around, the need is not overwhelming to try and compensate for the added chaos that driving in these countries comes with. Sonar seems the best way to describe it.
My god, what a relief it was to sit back with a good friend and a beer and recount the trials of my weeks in the mountains.
Compared to the tiny half-abandoned orange brick building that comprised of Kathmandu’s International Airport, the Airport in Delhi was like disembarking for Heaven. Reminding me very much of Vancouver International airport, I was pleasantly overjoyed to find air conditioning, clean tile floors, huge glass windows of crystal cleanliness, baggage carousels, and not only that, but screens to match flight numbers to carousels! Customs couldn’t have been more customary and when the electronic doors parted and I walked out into the hot Indian air, I dare say it was dead quiet. A hundred taxis were lined up, all silent with only a few drivers lounging around.
I hung my head out the window as the taxi sped towards the city and rejoicing in the heat and the after-glow of business class cocktails. ( because I’d been stuck in Lukla, I’d pushed back my flight to Delhi. The travel agency I had done this through neglected to tell me that this required a change of class also, and when I arrived at the airport, I found out that the only way I could make it to India was to cough up another couple hundred bucks. Sitting in business class with the collision of continents below me, I endeavored to drink back the extra cost of my seat. I lost count, but I’m confident that I succeeded.)
I perked up when I saw a traffic light. I hadn’t seen one since I left the states. (Katmandu uses officers stationed on permanent posts in the middle of intersections as opposed to lights to direct traffic. And they are only present when traffic is the busiest… though every moment after the first morning honk of a car horn feels like rush hour.)
The stereotypical description of Delhi started to emerge, but after the joyously schizophrenic pinball machine that Kathmandu streets had proved itself to be, Delhi was a little tame.
One thing I have noticed about driving in this part of the world is the difference in the use of the horn. In the states, the horn is only really used in two cases: when an accident is about to occur and when someone is just pissed off. The people of these countries have found far more diverse and better uses for the voices of automobiles. Driving, of course, is a visual task, but here in India and also Nepal, people drive using sonar. The horn is in constant use, not because people are agitated or deaf, but really just to say ‘hey, I’m just letting everyone know where I am.’ With every car in your immediate vicinity giving a little honk, you have the invaluable benefit of getting an instantaneous picture of where everyone is without actually looking. Though of course drivers are constantly looking around, the need is not overwhelming to try and compensate for the added chaos that driving in these countries comes with. Sonar seems the best way to describe it.
My god, what a relief it was to sit back with a good friend and a beer and recount the trials of my weeks in the mountains.
Getting Out of Lukla
After three days of trekking down from Gokyo Ri, which had been the last high destination of my trek, I finally crawled back into Lukla having had little food over the last week, spraining an ankle and being generally exhausted and run down. Trudging up the last long misty flight of roughly hewn stone steps to the archway that signaled the threshold to Lukla, I felt as though I was entering a long awaited home away from home. As rewarding and spectacular as my time in the high regions of the Himalaya had been, it had by far taken its toll and I was ready to recuperate. The prospect of making my way down the western coast of India, with Sophie, to the much talked about Goa - a tropical paradise from the sounds of it- was a dream I was holding on to. My tired eyes looked at the cold wet archway of Lukla as if it were signaling some magnificent accomplishment, holding beyond its threshold days of relief.
The weather was very poor that day and the deep green valley that I remembered seeing during my first week in Nepal, almost a month ago, was laid blind by the thick grey and ubiquitous cloud that draped the lower Himalaya. I thought nothing of it and breathlessly made my way to the lodge I had stayed in before. Dropping my bags and sleeping and eating. For the third time in two weeks I got sick, and two days later when my flight out of Lukla was supposed to take off, I stood in the airport all day with the constipated backload of grumbling passengers from previous days’ cancelled flights. Since my flight did not go that day, it meant that I was placed at the end of the back log, therefore, the next time the gods granted Lukla good weather, the people scheduled for that day would fly out and only after that days’ schedule was complete, would they start flying out the backlog of people, beginning with the first people who had missed their flight a couple of days before myself.
For the first two days the western mass was polite and complacent. By the third day, I had figured out the entire hierarchy of the Tara Airlines operation. The boss of the Lukla branch of Tara airlines was a short corpulent man, a strange sight among the characteristically thin Nepali population. Below him in rank were two ‘supervisors’ and below them a series of versatile ponds who filled in where needed. By the fourth day I was debating whether bribing the boss would actually do anything, when a couple of friends I had made shared with me a recent discovery.
Lukla airport comprised of three main rooms and one hallway lined with offices. The fist large room I walked into was a general area with bathrooms and a corner devoted to the sale of snacks and tea. Down a shallow flight of stairs led to the check-in counters and baggage check. This is where the most hopeful people would wait to get boarding passes and descend down the last flight of stairs to the ‘gate area’. a closed off area behind security that was starting to feel like some kind of promised land - promised by a false corpulent god. What my friends had discovered was that for the very few planes that did land each day the ‘Tea’ Lady who manned the snack stand in the first room was running out every time and renegotiating new manifests. We discovered that if one was so inclined, and had the right connections, AND THE MONEY, one could purchase a sold seat for three times the original price. Suddenly it made sense why she seemed so friendly with all of the Tara Airlines’ employees. I witnessed as an Australian couple watched their flight take off - FULL - while they were still waiting to check - in with ‘confirmed‘ seats. They were first in line the entire time and yet somehow the flight had ‘filled up’. By the fifth day two guys from Poland were so upset with the people at Tara Airlines that they threw one of Tara Airlines’ desk chairs through a window. In a reflecting rain of shattered glass the chair smashed into the tarmac below and stayed there for an hour before someone removed it.
For a people who believe in Karma, it wasn’t hard to spot the blasphemers.
On the seventh day I didn’t even go to the airport. I stayed in my lodge and chatted with a wonderful Australian couple the entire day. The weather was shit - I figured there was no reason to match my mood by sitting in the airport. In the evening, on a whim I went to the Tara Airlines’ office (something we were instructed to do every time we asked for help. This had led to nothing and seemed to be implemented only to placate the grumbling customers. On showing my tattered ticket, however, I was asked if I wanted to be on the first flight out, the next morning, to Rameschap.
“Is there a bus to Kathmandu from there?”
“Yes”
“How long is the ride?”
“12 hours”
“Yea, I’ll go to Raaameemsshappp --- wherever you said.”
“Check in, 7:15 am, second flight.”
At 7:00 am I watched the first flight take off into clear skies. The second one rolled in and I was first in line at the check-in counter. Hopeful and painfully anxious, I handed one of the supervisors my ticket, certain that this flight had to be the one I was getting on. He looked at it, and without looking at me, he said
“Not yet, next flight.”
I had heard this before. I had heard this many MANY times before. After being stuck in the tiny little town 3,000 meters up in the Himalaya for eight days, watching nothing but the uninterrupted triumph of greed and corruption, being unable to eat, and spending each night hoping that I’d be able to sleep the whole night without getting sick, I had felt as though I’d reached a bit of an impass with how much I was willing to put up with. I said it to myself, but loud enough so that everyone in the near and crowded vicinity could hear what it was. Anyone reading this right now certainly would have thought it, and most of you would have joined me in saying it, because, when you’re faced with a situation as paralyzing as mine - feeling like a fish in a bucket and all you want is the sea, only one thing comes to mind, and at that moment it came to my lips.
“What the FUCK!”
The Nepali man who had told me ‘next flight’ looked up from the ticket he was looking at and anger brimmed over the lens of his glasses.
“DON YOU SAY THAT WORD!”
He paused, paralyzed with anger. I was taken aback, feeling simultaneously embarrassed but also restraining the enormous impulse to laugh. The only thing that went through my head was Hey, look at that! I got a reaction!
“ALWAYS THIS WORD! FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK! ALWAYS, YOU PEOPLE FEEL YOU NEED TO SAY THIS WORD! DON SAY THIS WORD, EVER! YOU PEOPLE, YOU BRING THIS WORD FROM YOUR COUNTRY, BUT YOU ARE IN NEPAL! KEEP THAT WORD IN YOUR OWN COUNTRY!”
I bit my lip, I bit my lip hard and swallowed the convulsion to laugh. Here this man was, an integral part of the most corrupt organization I’ve had the opportunity to witness on such a detailed level, making thousands of dollars a day off of the desperation of trekkers who for fear of missing international connections were succumbing to the opulent, corrupt costs, and he was giving me a morality lecture on the use of profanity? Oh, this is good, I thought. I held his gaze for a moment and then responded.
“Well, airplanes also came from my country, and if it weren’t for that, you wouldn’t have a job.”
He looked back down at the ticket he’d been looking at, and when, a moment later, the Tara Airlines’ employee at the next kiosk called my ticket number (unbeknownst to me), the man in front of me instantly recognized it and ferried me over to get immediately checked in.
Profanity exists for a good reasons.
That low grade piece of shit card paper that my boarding pass was printed on felt like a sheet of gold in my hands. I hurried through security after throwing my bag in the right pile and entered the forbidden holding room. How pathetic, I thought, I’m actually ENTHRALLED with what this room looks like…I’ve been in Lukla way too long.
When, ten minutes later, my flight was called and I found myself running across the open tarmac towards a small one engine prop plane, painted green and white and tipped with the floppy Tara Airlines’ ‘star’ logo, I felt as I imagine a prisoner does upon waking and finding all the guards handcuffed in a vindictive pile. I scanned the people lining the fence to see if the Australian couple I had become friends with were watching. Hyperventilating, I crawled up into the plane with my pack, squeezing myself in so that just barely, they could slide the door shut. Ten people in all, including the pilot fit into the plane and I thought to myself that Sardine Can had never been more appropriate. The single engine buzzed and then buzzed louder - this engine simply wasn’t going to roar, no matter how much fire it was fed. Nonetheless it perked up the plane and pulled it out onto the runway. The pilot pressed the breaks and made the engine buzz just a little bit louder before letting its long smooth winged teeth have at the mountain air. The tilt of the little plane was so high and the runway was sloped so far down that all I could see through the cockpit window in front of me was clear bright morning sky.
Lukla airport is said to be the world’s most dangerous airport, averaging one crash a year. (In 64 years of operation there have been 63 crashes) A fact that I did not learn until after I had flown into the airport a month earlier. When, on approach, a month earlier, I had looked over the pilot’s shoulder to get a peek at the runway, I’d said “You’ve got to be joking” and thought Holy Shit and Hell Yea!, all simultaneously. Staring up at the sky through that cockpit as the little plane put putted down the runway, I knew that we were headed for a cliff edge. I looked at the wing just outside my window. The sheet metal riveted to the frame rattled and shuddered and I said a prayer to the god of aerodynamics. Luckily, all of the risk for crashing is with landing at Lukla and almost none of the crashes had been on take-off.
I always feel a rush when a plane veers up and lifts up on to invisible tracks of air. I remember clearly when I took off from Boston, and everything - the hope for adventure, fear of the future, and the memory of everyone I’m leaving pulling at me - condensed into one moment. That similar electricity of emotion was with me but this time it was something more as Lukla shrank in isolation behind me.
The Nepali people as a whole impressed upon me a wonderful picture. Their kindness and harmony with their lives seems to give them an almost meditative quality. The steadfast porters, carrying unfathomable conglomerations of weight exemplified this immensely and it was as if the culture is without complaint. This compassion is, of course best exemplified for me by my experience with Sanjay Kulung.
But, as with every country and every place, there are the kind and then there are also the crass. I couldn’t have been happier for my time in Lukla to be over.
Once in Rameschap, I took off my coat and bore my face upwards to feel the heat of the sun, the air hot for the first time in weeks. How my childhood days in Florida have branded me to be at odds with the cold forever. I quickly found the bus and asked the bus driver if I could sit on top of the bus with all the luggage. He waved his hands upwards and I clamored up the ladder on the back of the bus and finagled myself between a guy from Spain and the inside edge of the luggage rack. I found myself sitting on steel bars that were unfortunately spaced. I knew it was going to hurt, but I knew it would be better than being on the inside after the horrors I’d heard of with regards to Nepali bus travel.
The ride was everything one could wish for in a scenic mountain drive. How did I phrase it in my journal? It was like watching the more scenic parts of an Indiana Jones movie while continuously achieving the sorest ass that memory or imagination could recall. I didn’t care terribly. I was happy to be out of Lukla and on my way. I knew that soon I would be in Kathmandu, with a good room, shower, food, and soon after that India with a good friend already waiting.
One of the friends I had made in Lukla was in the bus behind mine and when at the end of the night we sat in an Irish pub in Kathmandu recounting the journey, he said I’d looked like a scene from ‘Into The Wild’
“the one where he’s just left, and he just looks free. You looked so free up there on that bus.”
The weather was very poor that day and the deep green valley that I remembered seeing during my first week in Nepal, almost a month ago, was laid blind by the thick grey and ubiquitous cloud that draped the lower Himalaya. I thought nothing of it and breathlessly made my way to the lodge I had stayed in before. Dropping my bags and sleeping and eating. For the third time in two weeks I got sick, and two days later when my flight out of Lukla was supposed to take off, I stood in the airport all day with the constipated backload of grumbling passengers from previous days’ cancelled flights. Since my flight did not go that day, it meant that I was placed at the end of the back log, therefore, the next time the gods granted Lukla good weather, the people scheduled for that day would fly out and only after that days’ schedule was complete, would they start flying out the backlog of people, beginning with the first people who had missed their flight a couple of days before myself.
For the first two days the western mass was polite and complacent. By the third day, I had figured out the entire hierarchy of the Tara Airlines operation. The boss of the Lukla branch of Tara airlines was a short corpulent man, a strange sight among the characteristically thin Nepali population. Below him in rank were two ‘supervisors’ and below them a series of versatile ponds who filled in where needed. By the fourth day I was debating whether bribing the boss would actually do anything, when a couple of friends I had made shared with me a recent discovery.
Lukla airport comprised of three main rooms and one hallway lined with offices. The fist large room I walked into was a general area with bathrooms and a corner devoted to the sale of snacks and tea. Down a shallow flight of stairs led to the check-in counters and baggage check. This is where the most hopeful people would wait to get boarding passes and descend down the last flight of stairs to the ‘gate area’. a closed off area behind security that was starting to feel like some kind of promised land - promised by a false corpulent god. What my friends had discovered was that for the very few planes that did land each day the ‘Tea’ Lady who manned the snack stand in the first room was running out every time and renegotiating new manifests. We discovered that if one was so inclined, and had the right connections, AND THE MONEY, one could purchase a sold seat for three times the original price. Suddenly it made sense why she seemed so friendly with all of the Tara Airlines’ employees. I witnessed as an Australian couple watched their flight take off - FULL - while they were still waiting to check - in with ‘confirmed‘ seats. They were first in line the entire time and yet somehow the flight had ‘filled up’. By the fifth day two guys from Poland were so upset with the people at Tara Airlines that they threw one of Tara Airlines’ desk chairs through a window. In a reflecting rain of shattered glass the chair smashed into the tarmac below and stayed there for an hour before someone removed it.
For a people who believe in Karma, it wasn’t hard to spot the blasphemers.
On the seventh day I didn’t even go to the airport. I stayed in my lodge and chatted with a wonderful Australian couple the entire day. The weather was shit - I figured there was no reason to match my mood by sitting in the airport. In the evening, on a whim I went to the Tara Airlines’ office (something we were instructed to do every time we asked for help. This had led to nothing and seemed to be implemented only to placate the grumbling customers. On showing my tattered ticket, however, I was asked if I wanted to be on the first flight out, the next morning, to Rameschap.
“Is there a bus to Kathmandu from there?”
“Yes”
“How long is the ride?”
“12 hours”
“Yea, I’ll go to Raaameemsshappp --- wherever you said.”
“Check in, 7:15 am, second flight.”
At 7:00 am I watched the first flight take off into clear skies. The second one rolled in and I was first in line at the check-in counter. Hopeful and painfully anxious, I handed one of the supervisors my ticket, certain that this flight had to be the one I was getting on. He looked at it, and without looking at me, he said
“Not yet, next flight.”
I had heard this before. I had heard this many MANY times before. After being stuck in the tiny little town 3,000 meters up in the Himalaya for eight days, watching nothing but the uninterrupted triumph of greed and corruption, being unable to eat, and spending each night hoping that I’d be able to sleep the whole night without getting sick, I had felt as though I’d reached a bit of an impass with how much I was willing to put up with. I said it to myself, but loud enough so that everyone in the near and crowded vicinity could hear what it was. Anyone reading this right now certainly would have thought it, and most of you would have joined me in saying it, because, when you’re faced with a situation as paralyzing as mine - feeling like a fish in a bucket and all you want is the sea, only one thing comes to mind, and at that moment it came to my lips.
“What the FUCK!”
The Nepali man who had told me ‘next flight’ looked up from the ticket he was looking at and anger brimmed over the lens of his glasses.
“DON YOU SAY THAT WORD!”
He paused, paralyzed with anger. I was taken aback, feeling simultaneously embarrassed but also restraining the enormous impulse to laugh. The only thing that went through my head was Hey, look at that! I got a reaction!
“ALWAYS THIS WORD! FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK! ALWAYS, YOU PEOPLE FEEL YOU NEED TO SAY THIS WORD! DON SAY THIS WORD, EVER! YOU PEOPLE, YOU BRING THIS WORD FROM YOUR COUNTRY, BUT YOU ARE IN NEPAL! KEEP THAT WORD IN YOUR OWN COUNTRY!”
I bit my lip, I bit my lip hard and swallowed the convulsion to laugh. Here this man was, an integral part of the most corrupt organization I’ve had the opportunity to witness on such a detailed level, making thousands of dollars a day off of the desperation of trekkers who for fear of missing international connections were succumbing to the opulent, corrupt costs, and he was giving me a morality lecture on the use of profanity? Oh, this is good, I thought. I held his gaze for a moment and then responded.
“Well, airplanes also came from my country, and if it weren’t for that, you wouldn’t have a job.”
He looked back down at the ticket he’d been looking at, and when, a moment later, the Tara Airlines’ employee at the next kiosk called my ticket number (unbeknownst to me), the man in front of me instantly recognized it and ferried me over to get immediately checked in.
Profanity exists for a good reasons.
That low grade piece of shit card paper that my boarding pass was printed on felt like a sheet of gold in my hands. I hurried through security after throwing my bag in the right pile and entered the forbidden holding room. How pathetic, I thought, I’m actually ENTHRALLED with what this room looks like…I’ve been in Lukla way too long.
When, ten minutes later, my flight was called and I found myself running across the open tarmac towards a small one engine prop plane, painted green and white and tipped with the floppy Tara Airlines’ ‘star’ logo, I felt as I imagine a prisoner does upon waking and finding all the guards handcuffed in a vindictive pile. I scanned the people lining the fence to see if the Australian couple I had become friends with were watching. Hyperventilating, I crawled up into the plane with my pack, squeezing myself in so that just barely, they could slide the door shut. Ten people in all, including the pilot fit into the plane and I thought to myself that Sardine Can had never been more appropriate. The single engine buzzed and then buzzed louder - this engine simply wasn’t going to roar, no matter how much fire it was fed. Nonetheless it perked up the plane and pulled it out onto the runway. The pilot pressed the breaks and made the engine buzz just a little bit louder before letting its long smooth winged teeth have at the mountain air. The tilt of the little plane was so high and the runway was sloped so far down that all I could see through the cockpit window in front of me was clear bright morning sky.
Lukla airport is said to be the world’s most dangerous airport, averaging one crash a year. (In 64 years of operation there have been 63 crashes) A fact that I did not learn until after I had flown into the airport a month earlier. When, on approach, a month earlier, I had looked over the pilot’s shoulder to get a peek at the runway, I’d said “You’ve got to be joking” and thought Holy Shit and Hell Yea!, all simultaneously. Staring up at the sky through that cockpit as the little plane put putted down the runway, I knew that we were headed for a cliff edge. I looked at the wing just outside my window. The sheet metal riveted to the frame rattled and shuddered and I said a prayer to the god of aerodynamics. Luckily, all of the risk for crashing is with landing at Lukla and almost none of the crashes had been on take-off.
I always feel a rush when a plane veers up and lifts up on to invisible tracks of air. I remember clearly when I took off from Boston, and everything - the hope for adventure, fear of the future, and the memory of everyone I’m leaving pulling at me - condensed into one moment. That similar electricity of emotion was with me but this time it was something more as Lukla shrank in isolation behind me.
The Nepali people as a whole impressed upon me a wonderful picture. Their kindness and harmony with their lives seems to give them an almost meditative quality. The steadfast porters, carrying unfathomable conglomerations of weight exemplified this immensely and it was as if the culture is without complaint. This compassion is, of course best exemplified for me by my experience with Sanjay Kulung.
But, as with every country and every place, there are the kind and then there are also the crass. I couldn’t have been happier for my time in Lukla to be over.
Once in Rameschap, I took off my coat and bore my face upwards to feel the heat of the sun, the air hot for the first time in weeks. How my childhood days in Florida have branded me to be at odds with the cold forever. I quickly found the bus and asked the bus driver if I could sit on top of the bus with all the luggage. He waved his hands upwards and I clamored up the ladder on the back of the bus and finagled myself between a guy from Spain and the inside edge of the luggage rack. I found myself sitting on steel bars that were unfortunately spaced. I knew it was going to hurt, but I knew it would be better than being on the inside after the horrors I’d heard of with regards to Nepali bus travel.
The ride was everything one could wish for in a scenic mountain drive. How did I phrase it in my journal? It was like watching the more scenic parts of an Indiana Jones movie while continuously achieving the sorest ass that memory or imagination could recall. I didn’t care terribly. I was happy to be out of Lukla and on my way. I knew that soon I would be in Kathmandu, with a good room, shower, food, and soon after that India with a good friend already waiting.
One of the friends I had made in Lukla was in the bus behind mine and when at the end of the night we sat in an Irish pub in Kathmandu recounting the journey, he said I’d looked like a scene from ‘Into The Wild’
“the one where he’s just left, and he just looks free. You looked so free up there on that bus.”
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