(Written December 21st)

Link to current photos

Today marks a year since we pulled out of the driveway back in San Francisco. If you can remember that feeling you used to have when you were a child on the first day of summer vacation - you had all the time in the world ahead of you and you were free to do whatever you wanted - that was how I felt last December 21st. The following 365 days have not disappointed in the least way. I suppose some people roll their eyes at my or Tami's repetitive expressions of how grateful we are. Call me naive but I still feel it strongly.

After a full year of literally wandering the planet, we finally landed on a beach. We're on an island in the Gulf of Thailand called Koh Mak. In my mind, when you strap a backpack to your body and board an international flight, a tropical beach hovers confindently somewhere in the wings as the inevitable default destination. If you're lucky, you can find a beach with the right balance of calm serenity and comforts. Palm trees, sand and clear, warm water might be the comfort food of backpacking travel - perhaps of all travel.

Beach life is one of those parts of a big trip that you know is going to give you some low-impact, intimate interaction with nature. It's going to give you a sure chance to slow down. (And no jokes about what the heck do we need to slow down from...everyone needs a little beach chill in their lives from time to time.)
Koh Mak delivers. Actually, if Koh Mak were any more relaxing, I'd think it was fiction. Apart from a thatched hut on stilts, we virtually live outside. We can walk through huge groves of coconut palms swaying in the breeze. We get to submerse our bodies into the limpid ocean all day. Beers are cheap and very cold.

We may be in and out of touch for awhile. Tomorrow we take a boat for Cambodia. If the next year turns out to be anything like the last, we're in for lots of fun. May yours be that, as well.

Happy holidays and all the best!

'Bye-bye to the Sub-Continent

A lion stands guard as a boy and a dog share a rest.

Today is our last day in Nepal and the last, after nearly two hundred, in the area geographers refer to as the Indian subcontinent - the expanse bounded by the Himalayas to the north, the Bay of Bengal to the east and the Indian Ocean to the West. I rose early today for walk around Kathmandu's old central square trying to absorb every trademark impression; commit to memory in some tangible way all the sights, sounds, smells and any sensations that make the Hindu heartland special. When I force myself to acknowledge that these last hours are all that's left, my heart shivers at leaving behind this taxing but familial chaos.


Puja (prayer) offerings for sale

At one of the many temples just after dawn the smell of the burning butter lamps and incense wafted all around. The devout stood in line to ring bells and hang chrysanthemums and daub colored tikka powder on the antiquated stone idols.

After the sun came up, I bantered one final and, as always, unpredictable time with the man - the clearly over-educated man - who, from before dawn to well after dark, squats on a very low wicker stool in front of a grimy kerosene burner making and selling tea to the students and merchants in the square in front of our hotel.


The best tea shop in Kathmandu

He combines his preparations with solicitations to all the passers-by with the frenetic energy of a trader on the floor of a stock exchange. Every day he finds time to intersperse our morning cups with pearls of humorous wisdom culled, if he's to be believed, from a life path more circuitous and full of surprises than I can guess at. I will miss his smile, his barking exhortations at potential customers and even the confusion I feel at not knowing which of his eyes to respond to as one wanders randomly in its socket the other bounding back and forth or up and down in rhythm with his animated head. I will certainly, certainly miss his tea.

I'm plotting how I might fit in one last taste of naan; chewy flat bread hot out of the tandoori oven. Before I leave I want to eat one last bag of Kurkure, the Frito Lay snack seen only in these parts because it's too spicy for anywhere else.

This has been a good time to be in Nepal. The government, such as it is after years of turmoil and fragmentation, has signed a peace agreement with an insurgent opposition group. The revolutionaries (that's really the only fair term for them) fought an eleven-year battle to dislodge the world's last Hindu monarchy who've ruled the country as a fiefdom for almost two and a half centuries. The good political news for Nepal started in April with a cease fire agreement and culminated last week with the signing of the peace agreement. Since then, the streets of Kathmandu have been filled with celebratory Nepalis buoyed with optimism that peace and more equitable opportunities might become the norm in their lives.

So, five countries in ten or so months. Tomorrow we move on to a new region. As when we pulled out of our driveway, before we left New York for Barcelona, departing Europe for New Delhi and, now, flying to Bangkok, southeast Asia projects the gravity of another major chapter. The warm weather, warm Thai people, fantastic Thai food and the beaches should, with luck, help make the transition tolerable.

'Bye-bye.

360 Degree Wow (Pt. 3)

Khangsar from Old Khangsar

Link to current photos

Trekking evokes hiking in mountains through nice terrain and, with luck, interesting cultures. What we found out around Annapurna was an experience so dense with variation, so large in scale and still so fundamentally and sincerely different than our normal lives back home that Walt Disney or a Vegas impresario would be lost at how to wake people from their somnolent lives so effectively. Who're the lucky duo yet again? By the grace of the good heavens above, Tami and I.

We were lucky that, for the length of our trek, the work of fall harvest filled the valleys. Every day below treeline people swarmed over the terraced fields cutting, threshing, winnowing, drying and storing their provender for winter. By the latter stages, villages were starting to celebrate the succesful harvest with ritual festivals. In Marfa, the local monastery held a traditional dance. For a few days, buddhist monks wearing elaborate masks and costumes acted out scenes from ancient stories as villagers from up and down the valley came to watch. The excitement was like a local rock concert. The monasteries themselves could fill a traveller's description of the trek.

Buddhist iconography littered the valleys for most of our way. Long walls piled with carved 'mane' (mah-nay) stones, chortens, gates, prayer wheels, prayer flags and more added a reverant salute in celebration of the awesome beauty of these peoples' abode.

One morning, in Marpha, we awoke well before dawn to the sound of horns then drums coming from the monastery up the hill. The commotion continued until we were fully awake so we decided to roll with it and go see what was happening. We put on almost every piece of clothing and trundled out into the dark chill. Up at the gompa, three local lay women were performing what looked like the morning puja or ceremony. They walked around the perimeter of the building spinning prayer wheels, muttering "om mane padme hum" (hail to the jewel of the lotus within), and lighting the juniper smudge pot in the center of the courtyard. Three stories above, the tops of the four walls and, to the west, the mountains behind, framed the dawn stars. A huge spar rose up forty or so feet from the smudge and streamers of prayer flags stretched from its top to the surrounding walls. A monk in his red robes arrived to towel the wooden floor inside. None of them took even passing notice of two westerners standing quietly. The setting of this place of worship, similar to so many others we've seen in these mountains, makes me wonder if a spiritual practice or cosmology is possible without a tangible connection if not outright integration with nature.

I could go on but who has time to read so much? If you're curious, talk with us when we meet. Our excitement will be easy to tap. Those friends who do love to spend time in the mountains, put Annapurna, or at least Nepal, on your list. Sure, it's not like it "used to be" and I wouldn't say it's without faults. If done right, it sure as hell can be wonderful. Moreover, with 'development' working its own dark magic, it's not likely to get any better over time.

I'd kind of thought that I was starting to get saturated with travel experiences. This trek erased any ennui. Time seems to have slowed on this part of our trip. The month on the trail felt like a month. It didn't rush by in a flurry of discordant activities and logistical encumbrances. Many people we met on the trail, as I might have expected from outdoor enthusiasts, were people who'd I'd likely befriend at home. As time passed out there, I, for the first time in a while, worried less about politics, money and problems outside my control. For better or worse, the trip obliged me to live in the Present. At the very least, it's probably not unrealistic to guess that I may never be in this good of shape again.



Or have this much facial fuzz.

No, I did not drink all that beer.

360 Degree Wow (Pt. 2)

Some numbers:

• 31 - Number of days on the Circuit
• 175 - Approximate number of miles walked as we did the Circuit (including side and day trips)
• 19 - Number of villages or encampments in which we overnighted
• 2 - Number of nights we slept at a higher elevation than any peak in the US outside Alaska (14,600' and 15,840 respectively)
• 3 - Approximate number of miles in elevation gained from the beginning of the trek to the highest point (2,592' to 17,769')
• .97 - Approximate number of miles climbed during biggest single day of ascent (5,100' from Tatopani to Ghorepani) Ouch...
• 10 - Approximate number of US dollars spent per person/per day on the trail

Link to current photos

The first three days we walked through tropical green hills and deep river valleys layered with rice terraces and surrounded by forest. Despite our daily yoga practice in Varanasi, our legs and lungs were pitiful matches for the foothills of the Himalayas. After ending each day more exhausted, we capitulated in the village of Jagat on our second night and contracted a porter to carry some of our things. Porters are an integral part of trekking and of living in these mountains. They comprise a class of laborer similar to trucker in the West. Well before recreational backpackers ever existed, let alone heard of Nepal, porters carried much of the trade goods that moved through this entire region. Due to the challenging nature of the topography here and what that means for 'development', they still do.

We'd been hiking from the start with two very bright and very nice Australian guys just out of college, Peter and Jonnosch.* Peter had a bad knee so he, Tami and I decided to offload some of our heavier things onto our new porter, Arundha. Thank heavens for that man. The next two days were tough uphill and, if it weren't for him, they would have been miserable. His fee when we parted ways was just over fourteen US dollars. That was good for him, actually, as we only loaded him maybe forty pounds of gear. Most porters contracted by tour groups make about $3.50 a day and carry twice that weight or more. I tried hefting some of the larger porter loads I saw and, no exaggeration, could barely get them off the ground. They told me they weighed around sixty kilograms (130 lbs.)!

On the fourth day we started to get closer glimpses of snowy ridges and peaks. The temperatures were lowering and the air thinning. It started to feel like the mountains. We pushed on for a long time as it was our final day with Arundha and we wanted to cover as much ground with his aid as possible. We also wanted to avoid Chame, the marquis tour group village that marked this stretch. Organized groups of 12 to 20 people - mostly from Germany, France and Spain in our encounters - platoon around Annapurna with their retinue of porters and guides in tow. When they descend on a lodge or guesthouse, their sheer numbers impart a kind of hegemony that is tough to escape. They take over a dining room so thoroughly that, if you weren't paying attention, you might think you were in the Pyrenees or the Alps rather than Asia.

An hour and a half past Chame was the tiny village of Bhratang. We made for it but our energy and the valley light were failing badly by the time we reached it late in the afternoon. We'd only eaten a mid-sized breakfast and skipped lunch to make time. After about nine hours of climbing, we were famished. The trail approaching Bhratang was lined on one side by a long stone wall that shielded an apple orchard containing hundreds of trees. We'd seen almost no fresh fruit since we started the trail so I was surprised the trees still held most of their apples. From where we walked, I could see what looked like dozens of sizes and colors. My stomach lurched in a much different way than it had after the buffalo gore.

Our small lodge actually fronted the orchard and an old man squatted on the deck slicing a huge basket of apples for drying. As soon as I dropped my bag, I went back down to the manager and asked him, if we paid him, we could go into the orchard and taste from the different trees. Without hesitating he walked me back down along the wall, showed me the place to climb over and pointed out where his half of the orchard began. With the very whettest of appetites and an equally sharp knife, Tami, the two Aussies and I trundled down to the trees and commenced a feast. (Though it would be difficult to quantify, there is no doubt we burned more calories every day than we consumed. The net result is evident in our current emaciated appearance.)

We picked an exemplary specimen from each tree, quartered it, tasted with slow relish then moved on until we spotted apples that looked different and repeated the ritual. Each tree had unique fruit and virtually every one was better than any apple I buy at home. All were organic. Most all were too small or misshapen to make it into a supermarket bin. The flesh was often as hard and crisp as a potato but super juicy and bursting with flavor. The fourth or fifth tree we sampled stopped me cold. If I were stranded on a desert island and forced to pick just one apple , this was it; a thin skin that popped as you bit through, flesh that split under your teeth like crystals and a balance of sweet and tart that made me forget all other apples...forever. For a guy that is an avowed slave to his palate and stomach, I was in heaven.




(As a sidenote: Early on in our travels, Tami and I both read an excellent book called "The Botany of Desire". The author explores the history of Man's relationship with apples - and three other plants - in very interesting detail. I learned that all apples originated as knobby wild fruit not so far from Nepal in central Asia. The fruit we buy and eat today is much different and has changed drastically from its forebears. These apples of Bhratang were heirloom apples, closer in quality and character to their ancient relatives than anything I'd probably ever eaten.)

The sensory transition that began with the change of topography and climate and climaxed in the orchard, presaged satisfaction and joy that most 'practical' adults won't allow themselves to hope for out of fear of assured disappointment. On our hike the next day, the valley opened up to reveal Annapurna II, a glaciated peak three miles above us yet so close we could trace every foot of the incline directly from the ground we walked. That night we stayed in the village of Upper Pisang, the first of ten consecutive nights at which we slept at 11,000 ft. or higher. Apart from some modern consumer goods, intermittent electricity and plate glass, the villages we visited had not changed in hundreds of years.

Trekking evokes hiking in mountains through nice terrain and, with luck, interesting cultures. What we found out around Annapurna was an experience so dense with variation, so large in scale and still so fundamentally and sincerely different than our normal lives back home that Walt Disney or a Vegas impresario would be lost at how to wake people from their somnolent lives so effectively. Who're the lucky duo yet again? By the grace of the good heavens above, Tami and I.

* (I found out later that Peter, also unawares, walked up to the Buffalo killing just as the celebrants delivered the final hack. His description of what he saw was quite a bit more ghastly than my own.)

360 Degree Wow

Well..that took a little longer than we thought. Not to worry, though. We're both safe and sound in magical Kathmandu trying to put a few pounds back on our scrawny bodies. What we thought was going to be a nice two or three week hike turned into a month + a day of hard work and rarely interrupted bliss. Where to begin....

Morning Departure for the Trailhead

Link to current photos

I'm afraid some description will be lost on those who don't like to spend time in the mountains so first, a little context. Before we even made it into Nepal, we knew we would do at least one trek. The Annapurna Circuit was one among several possibilities but we'd heard grim stories of it suffering the ruin of its own popularity. Images of backpack and Gore-tex-clad Westerners lined up at narrow passes or cable bridges kept our thoughts tentative for this route. I'd heard about Annapurna before I got my first passport over twenty years ago and, even then, the area was already a well known destination for trekkers the world over.

The word 'trek' itself is an unfamiliar word to most Americans. We typically describe the activity as 'backpacking' which is partially correct. Within the setting of North America, mountain backpacking is pretty much limited to putting everything you need to survive into a backpack and heading out into the wilderness. In mountainous places that have been inhabited for far longer, mature settlements and even societies existed long before there were roads or cars. Populations are more dense and humans live, as they have for a long time, with an intimate relationship with the mountains. Much of the Nepal is populated like this and trekking through it yields a much different kind of experience. You still get the nature but you also get a cultural component that can be just as rewarding.

Barring Tibet, Nepal has the highest average elevation of any country on earth. The majority of its land slants either up or down some part of the Himalayas and travel, even now in more places than not, has been limited to those willing to do it on foot. Necessity gave birth to a well developed network of "roads" (trails, actually) used for trade. People either carried their goods themselves or loaded them on horses, donkeys or yaks. As trips can take days or weeks, every village had at least one inn or teahouse for travelers to eat and bed down for the night.

Nepal remained closed to the rest of the world until 1950 when its king, optimistic about the prospect of earnings from foreign exchange, agreed to let in tourists. In the late 1960's, budget travelers looking for unspoiled, off-the-beaten-track destinations stumbled upon the mountain trade routes and their teahouses and inns. Word spread slowly that you could walk among the most amazing mountains on earth with the added bonus of spending time in a culture minimally affected by Western development. By the time Tami and I arrived in Nepal the reputation had had the better part of four decades to spread far and wide. As I said, we were tentative if not outright skeptical.

We started our Nepalese visit in Pokhara, the traditional jumping off point for Annapurna. Arriving directly after five months in India and, more importantly, after three weeks in Varanasi -- pressure-cooker India distilled into one, very dense and intense city -- the refined calm and cleanliness of Pokhara's tourist area only increased our suspicion about overexploitation of the area.

On our first full day we decided to get some exercise by hiking up one of the lakeside hills to a huge stupa. It was hot and we couldn't believe how much we sweat but the views were nice. We knew the high peaks were to the north but, being the end of monsoon season, clouds shrouded that horizon all day. Then, as we started to go down, Tami stopped with an oath that most Christians would think mildly inappropriate. Above Phewa lake in front of us, above Sarangkot ridge a few miles beyond and above and much higher off the horizon than you'd think to look for land - or, as Peter Mathiessen says in the Snow Leopard, "...so high as to seem overhead"- a break in the clouds revealed a glimpse of the snow and rock pinnacle of Machhapuchhre. From the maps I'd seen, the Annapurna summits were twenty and thirty miles to the north. Macchapucchre loomed so big and clear, it looked no more than an afternoon's walk around the nearest hills. Then and there we both reconsidered our 'ban' on Annapurna. We were still at the very beginning of trekking season and since Pokhara had almost no other tourists yet, we reasoned the Circuit might not either. Two days later we were on a bus to the trailhead at Besisahar.

Events and observations can take on unintended portent prior to challenging and unfamiliar endeavors. Our bus ride coincided with one of the final days of the Nepali festival of Dasai. On this particular day, the faithful attempt to appease the goddess Durga with a ritual slaughter of some livestock, usually goat or buffalo. All along the five hour ride we saw fleeting and distant evidence of rural carnage. As I stepped off the bus and adjusted my backpack, I walked over to a group of twenty of so locals gathered in a circle at the side of the street. Over their shoulders I could see a young buffalo stretched between a few men pulling ropes from his back legs. His front legs and head were tied to some protruding re-bar stretching him prone to the pavement. In the next few seconds, a man standing beside the animal raised a large but very inadequately sized khukri knife mounted on what looked like a broom stick and drove it down on the buffalo's spine at the neck. I was in no way prepared for this. I heard a loud crack, saw some red where the blade struck and the men heaved against the beast's frantic struggling. Horror of horrors, the little blade did little more than bounce off the bone and tear the skin. I saw instantly this would be a prolonged, gory affair. I was five paces down the street before I heard the next chop.

My vegetarian stomach was still reeling five minutes later when, down a side alley, I saw two legless, headless and bloated buffalo corpses wafting smoke to the heavens. To remove the animal's hair, a man with a rag-bound torch on a stick was smearing kerosene over the hides. It's been over twenty years since I stopped eating meat and the smell of barbecues holds no nostalgia for me. I hurried faster toward the trailhead.

Did I think we were marching off to our own slaughter? Not at all. After India and Varanasi, the sacrifices of Dasai were really not so shocking. If anything, they helped to make me acutely aware of my present existence; more overwhelming than coffee and certainly more bracing than anything I'd imbibed over an adult lifetime, I was embarking on a long awaited trek, alert and appreciative of all that lay ahead.

Line of Demarcation

Pokhara, Nepal

Tami observed that tomorrow will mark the first anniversary since we left our jobs. It seems especially auspicious (her observation, as well) that we depart on one of the epic hiking routes, the Annapurna Ciruit. (Note, I did say 'hike', not 'climb'.

What a year it's been. At the end of it I can only bow my head in thanks.

So, we'll be out of touch for anywhere between two to three weeks. Don't fret if we don't get back to you right away. We'll certainly be thinking about you.




Meanwhile, in the 'what will our legacy be?' department, this from yesterday's Washington Post...

Dan Froomkin - Bush Rules - washingtonpost.com:

Washington Post Link

"Today's Senate vote on President Bush's detainee legislation, after House approval yesterday, marks a defining moment for this nation. How far from our historic and Constitutional values are we willing to stray? How mercilessly are we willing to treat those we suspect to be our enemies? How much raw, unchecked power are we willing to hand over to the executive?

The legislation before the Senate today would ban torture, but let Bush define it; would allow the president to imprison indefinitely anyone he decides falls under a wide-ranging new definition of unlawful combatant; would suspend the Great Writ of habeas corpus; would immunize retroactively those who may have engaged in torture. And that's just for starters.... The people have lost confidence in their president.... Bush remains deeply unpopular... mistrusted... out of touch....

But he's still got Congress wrapped around his little finger. Today's vote will show more clearly than ever before that... the Republicans who control Congress are in lock step behind the president, and the Democrats -- who could block him, if they chose to do so -- are too afraid to put up a real fight. The kind of emotionless, he-said-she-said news coverage, lacking analysis and obsessed with incremental developments and political posturing -- in short, much of modern political journalism -- just doesn't do this story justice...."

One of their readers observed:

"This is bad. Very bad. I can't underscore how bad this is. This is our Fugitive Slave Act, our Sedition Act, our Korematsu. This is a danger to our domestic liberties and a terrifying threat to our national security--for its impact on our international standing and on our alliances may be terrible indeed."

Brother From Another Planet

Most rececent PHOTOS HERE.

Well, well, well...

Flirt with the gravity of Planet Burning Man and who knows what might come shooting out of the cosmos? Just after the festivities finished back in Nevada, I got an e-mail from Mark, a person who joined our camp, Garage Mahal, for the first time this year. He was on his way to India to meet a friend and wanted to see if we could cross paths. This isn't so easy, as India is just over a third the size of the US. Comparitively, he could have been flying into Missoula, Montana and we could have been in San Diego. Lucky for us, we were still camped in Varanasi which gave us a fighting chance because he and his friend both wanted to visit this city anyway.

After several e-mails trying to nail down meeting places and times, we finally hooked up. They checked into the same guest house as us....but, OOOPS, what's this? Their rickshaw (motorcycle-taxi) driver took them to a different Vishnu Rest House. (Funny side note: In India, to try to cash in on an existing business's success, competitors have NO reservations about naming a business after an established, successful hotel or restaurant. Upstart business make it known to all rickshaw drivers that the 'imposter' hotel will pay a 'finders fee' to any driver who delivers customers to their door. We have subsequently heard that there are as many as seven guesthouses in Varanasi with some variation of Vishnu in their names i.e. "New Vishnu", "The Real Vishnu", "The Original Vishnu", "Ganga Vishnu", etc.) Once we figured out that we were at different "Vishnus", Mark and Alexandra moved to ours. We had an excellent 30 or so hours hanging out until they hopped a train to Agra.

What a quick and surprising dose of "home"! Major kudos to Mark for such a well-timed and appreciated precision strike.

Wayyyy Over the Line

Some of you know that I spent several years working in the beer business. One of my roles at the company where I worked had to do with regulatory conformity. Perhaps the single most important part of this concerned what is commonly termed "label approval". The governmental body that has primary and almost sole responsibility for this is the Alcohol Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) in Washington, D.C.

I'm not sure anyone would debate that alcohol's role in human history has been and continues to be turbulent....the swizzle that stirs the drink in certain circumstances, so to speak. Ever since prohibition in the 1920's and early 30's, the TTB has had an explicit restriction against making any "therapeutic claims" for alcoholic beverages. Basically, this means that a beer or wine company cannot claim, even implicitly, that their product can make you feel or perform (in any way) better after consuming it. I saw some ingenious attempts at circumventing or navigating, rather, the spirit of this regulation....the best of these, for better or worse, originating from my own company.

The most obvious (and terrifically worn out) tactic is to throw a few pretty and scantily clad women into your ads to make a man (men drink the vast majority of beer after all) think he might meet similar women if he drinks "X" beer. All the big brewers do this and it's long accepted that the consumer can draw his own conclusions regarding his own probability of meeting similar women.

When a brewer wants to communicate something that promises more 'efficacy', they have to take a more subtle approach. A typical ploy could involve sending a message to potential consumers that your product might enhance the male sex drive or make a drinker feel more masculine. Designers (not the company I worked for) might try to communicate this (and did, however ineffectively) by including the image of a Rottweiler dog on their beer can. In their print advertising they (again, not my company) might claim that their product could make you 'last till the dawn'. Most all efforts treading into this 'claim' territory are caught by the specialists at the TTB leaving a legacy of fairly straightforward communication based on brand and quality. Until relatively recently, even claims of alcohol strength were discouraged by the TTB.

Nonetheless, beverage marketers continually try to step just a little further over the line with the designs they submit in an attempt to get the upper hand on the competition thereby putting out a product about which they can build 'myth'. See, if you have 'myth', you can play on that to differentiate your product from all the others. But myth is a subtle thing and the dance the TTB does with it's constituent manufactures actually helps enforce a subtlety that, ironically, lends any embryonic myth credibility. In other words, because of the TTB's long record of managing therapeutic "claims", if a marketer went too far over the line in its claim, no consumer would believe the hype. Conversely, if a marketer got something through TTB...perhaps the 'word on the street' is true.

I have recently discovered, in India, they apparently regulate alcohol marketing by using somewhat different guidelines. The US beer market is relatively conservative. My experience allowed me to see plenty of interesting ads and labels that all pushed the envelope but all that was within an admittedly prudish marketing environment. My horizons have now been broadened and I have now, offically, seen EVERY LAST THING...






And if you had any doubt at all...

















I'm not even sure what this communicates. I am, however, absolutely certain that I will avoid drinking "Fire" at all costs.

Exile on the Ganges

Burn Night Foursome (Tami Quest, The Man, Holiday and Claudia)

Planet Burning Man swung into Indian orbit and we were able to catch a ride, even if only briefly. Perhaps it was a case of being in the right place at the right time or maybe (if you're a believer like me) the spirit of the Playa can be tapped anywhere as long as the good citizens of Black Rock City have come together in fun-loving convocation. If it's the former, Tami and I sure are lucky. Varanasi is one fortuitous waypoint for a co-celebration. There is much about this ancient city on the Ganges that complements the ethos of "letting go" found in late August on the Black Rock Desert. Western preconceptions about personal space, cleanliness, decorum and sometimes, sanity get called into question continually.

The main reason Indians come to Varanasi, though, is to be released from mortal life. I can think of few endeavors of comparable sacredness. As a non-Hindu, non-Indian, I feel privileged to spend time here to watch and learn about the ephemerality of human existence. When you sit above one of the cremation platforms, the continual flow of bodies borne by family and friends to a final passage leaves little room for illusions of clinging self-importance. Some lessons transcend borders and culture, though, and my time with my fellow Burners has bequeathed me a few insights about graceful liberation of my own. Armed with that wisdom, Tami and I plunged into some of the ritual celebration that makes Varanasi special and gave it our Black Rock best.

We came up with the idea to co-celebrate about a month ago. (See this post.) Our invitations to other exiled Burners posted on Lonely Planet's chat site and Burning Man E-Playa yielded a nice handful of encouraging messages from around the globe but no respondents were in the vicinity of Varanasi during the actual event. That didn't slow us down a bit. Each day as you were on the Playa, we talked about you and whatever you might be doing. From 12,000(+) miles we were able to get right into the rhythm of things.

When we arrived in Varanasi, we set to work building our own "Man" and craft to float him down the sacred river. Actually, I had visions of sketching out a man and giving to plan to a local carpenter but after one surprisingly frustrating, three-way (interpreter included) exchange at a building supply store, I could see the chance of getting what we wanted was slim. That evening, I walked all over the old city of Varanasi scouting materials to build him ourselves. The first breakthrough came in the form of a large woven basket. I thought I could use that as a boat. After that, the other pieces fell into place. Our work area was the terrace of our guest house immediately overlooking the Ganges. Very, very nice.

I won't go into too many of the details here. Our Burn photos tell some of the story and Tami covered the unfolding events wonderfully on her blog. We burned our man a few days after the main event back home. That worked out perfectly as our burn night had a full moon, a partial lunar eclipse and a cast of supporters both in our boat and on the shore. After a few hitches, the Man burned better than we'd hoped. As you can see, it was a rousing success. :)


Link to our Burn Photos

The important thing I want to communicate is this: At the appointed time (Burn night for you, the next morning for us), each and every one of you, our Burning Man friends, whether you were on the Playa this year or not, had your name spoken aloud on the banks above the Ganges. Call it a prayer, if you will. For a short while this past weekend, you were with us in a special place.

A year from now, chances are slim we'll be either in Varanasi or in Black Rock City. Perhaps the question at the beginning of this post is correct also with the second answer. With luck, we shall find out.

Thanks for another great Burning Man.












Now......bring on the photos so we can see what kind of trouble you got into!

Random Notes From the Gangetic Plain

• Yesterday I watched a man chase a cow down an alley. The man was cruising (and cursing) at top speed. The cow held a sturdy box the size of a large microwave high in his mouth and trotted faster than I assumed possible for such a big beast. The cow had apparently absconded with the box which belonged to the man and, as I've seen on many occasions here, was trying to eat it.
• Last night I stood on the roof of our hotel and watched flock after flock of green parrots fly into the grove of large trees in the center of Khajuraho, the town we've been visiting. The 'migration' starts about the time the evening sun hits the horizon and continues unabated for a good 30-40 minutes. The parrots, emerald green with the long tail feathers you might know from your pet store, flew in groups of twenty-five to well over a hundred. I'd never seen anything like it before. The flocks came in from the countryside and they just didn't stop. Parrots are loud birds and as the main roosting flock grew, all of Khajuraho was immersed in a cacaphony of squawking. There were easily over a hundred thousand birds. You can see the evidence on the walks beneath the trees today. Eww...
• In a couple hours we get on a bus to Varanasi, holiest of Hindu cities. It'll be at least fifteen hours across the Gangetic Plain of north central India. Ouch. The last time I was in India, I was so fascinated by that city I made the effort to go a second time at the end of my trip. Probably no single place has made a stronger impression on me. I'm eager (and a bit apprehensive) to return.

Size Matters

Link to newer photos. New ones start on page two of this album.

So we went down to Agra last week to see the sites. I did the same thing twelve years ago and suffered no diminished excitement at a second visit. Tami and I have seen a lot of amazing things on this trip but I knew the Taj Mahal was superlative and was as excited to see her response as I was to see the monuments. In fact, as we sat on the roof of our guest house watching the sun set on the Taj's wasp-waisted white dome and minarets, I realized there was maybe only one human-made structure on the face of the planet that resonates as deeply as the Taj...and we saw that one back in April in Paris. Now were going to see the other.

You can take all the Empire State buildings, Macchu Picchus, Acropoli, St. Peter's Basilici and Big Ben's and even pyramids of Giza you want. I think I even mentioned in an earler post that Barcelona was building another Taj Mahal. Antoni Gaudi and Barcelona are good...but they aren't quite that good. Seeing the Taj Mahal is one of those rare experiences that lives up to all (and I mean all) the hype you may have ever heard. That says a lot because no building in world has been surrounded by more myth and hype than the one in the above photo.

In fact, the Taj evokes such powerful emotional responses that I'd be hard pressed to think of any single work, building or otherwise, that surpasses it in its ability to inspire. The dome and the minarets dominate Taj Ganj, the village that surrounds it. Many of the guest houses and restaurants have rooftop seating taking advantage of their unique treasure.















Most people who have not visited the Taj don't realize that it's the centerpiece of a large, extremely complementarily beautiful complex. I remember stopping in wonder at the main entry gate my first visit. I had no idea I would get to see other structures of such awe inspiring size and graceful beauty. As you move toward and look through the opening in that gate, your sight toward the Taj itself is compressed down to a pin hole scope where you see, a few hundred yards distant, the Taj itself. The thing that struck me first was the people walking on its surrounding terrace. Those people were small...which made me realize that the Taj was big....really big.

And you know what...in art, you get extra points for size. The best art, in my mind, inspires you to want to be a better person. Whether or not you agree with the style or intent, if it's done superlatively, you have to give that to the creator(s). You can walk into the Louvre and see the Mona Lisa and it can inspire. But you check out Mona Lisa for fifteen minutes or a half hour and you move on. You walk into the Taj complex and (first, you cry...) you can spend days. From a distance the symetry, proportion, color and repetition of forms entrances you. Up close, you can see the flawless stone work, specifically carving and inlay, that covers the entire exteri (Incidentally, there is a fairly popular but...barely drinkable beer here called "Taj Mahal". I remember thinking that anything taking the "Taj" name should hold itself to the same, unsurpassed standards of quality. Everyone in India would be an alcoholic, though, so I'll have to let "Taj" beer slide on this one.)

The Taj Mahal is 351 years old as of last week. In 1655, the Pilgrims were still trying to get a foothold on the eastern seabord of the US. The Taj, built solely of stone, still looks as fresh and incomparable as ever. The Mughals and their craftspeople built a lot of nice things in India but they never got it so "right" as they did with the Taj. Apart from some fun loving Parisian riding the cresting wave of industrial modernization, I don't think anyone else has either.

The Big Miss

Homesickness....

Up until the past week or so, missing home has manifest itself as the occasional pang of longing. In a reflective moment I'll remember how nice it was to enjoy a proper beer or a passable wine, the fun surprise of standing at a party and have PleasureSean walk in and hand you a CD of new music or the liberating feeling of having your own kitchen where you can make whatever food that happens to sound good rather than take yet another gamble on the skills of a local cook. Things like those do make me miss home but you can take the longing in stride. Something comes up at this time of year, though, that for me...at least for the prior decade...has defined late summer: the final run-up to Burning Man.

Just like any major, annual happening, you always know it's out there in orbit. About two weeks ago, though, I could feel it in my bones. From ~12,000 miles away, it pulls like a migratory call. I could smell the Playa dust as my friends pulled their gear out of storage. I remember the added stress (and satisfaction) at work as you try to get everything organized for the time away. We see the e-mails flying around for everyone who's going and, for the first time, I'm really sad to not be in (at least one part of) my old life. Those who've had the very lucky fortune to partake of the giving and sharing that takes place at Burning Man have tapped into and helped to grow something that is valuable beyond quantification. The community that we share in Black Rock City doesn't come often in life. If you're lucky, you might find a similar depth of connection in your family or close group of friends. The openness and acceptance you find at Burning Man, though, have a different quality because people make a choice to make the long trek out there and endure the same potentially harsh conditions that you do.....because they know the effort is all worth it.

From a great distance, I'm happy to say, Burning Man looks even better. For the most part, Tami and I have been an isolated, little two-person caravan. We meet other travelers but they come from many different places and all walks of life. That's good for variety but you can meet a ton of them before coming across someone you think could make a deeper connection with. Out here, making those connections is even more difficult because everyone is on the move. Most meetings are brief and the potential of any friendship left speculative.

If you've been to Burning Man, you know that something happens in the weeding-out process where the liklihood of meeting a person of complementary mind and soul is much higher than your normal, day-to-day life. So what does that tell you????? If you don't make those kinds of connections or get to be a part of that kind of community most of the year at home.........and, from our perspective out here in backpacker land, community is even harder to cultivate.......you sure as heck should cherish the opportunity to partake of it when you can.

I've always said I didn't think I'd be able to be anywhere within striking distance of Burning Man and not attend. Now, from such a long way away, I miss it more than I might have guessed. The good news is, Tami and I aren't conceding anything. We decided to celebrate concurrently with our own "burn" in Varanasi. If you know anything about Varanasi (it's all about fire, spirituality and letting go), you'll understand what a perfect place it is to be if we can't be at Black Rock City. We posted an invitation on the Lonely Planet and Burning Man discussion sites. Whether we have anyone join us or not, know that we'll be right there with any of you on the Playa in real time sharing our all.

Random Notes on Cross-Pollinization

• We're in Dharamsala/McLeod Ganj right now. The area defined by these two towns is renowned as the home of the Tibetan govt. in exile. Back in 1959, after years of increasing repression of Tibetans and pressure on their leaders, the Dalai Lama had to flee for his life. The government of India offered Dharamsala as a place of asylum. (Tibet History) It's refreshing to stay among the less hectic Tibetans. They've created a small, mountain oasis of Buddhist restraint amid Indian boisterousness. One shortcoming about the setting, though: Dharamsala sits at about 6000 ft. on a ridge at the southern edge of the Himalayas. During July and August, the Indian monsoon bumps up against the mountains and the clouds pour rain down incessantly. I read in the paper that this area received 1450mm (~58 inches) in July alone. That's almost double San Francisco's annual rainfall. Very damp....and I have the nasty cold to prove it. I noticed today that much of our gear is starting to mold. It's time to move on....
• Both the native and traveler populations have adapted well to the inclement weather here in Dharamsala. There are lots of activities to do indoors out of the rain. They have meditation and yoga classes, lots of restaurants, internet cafes and movie houses, among others. For the first time since we left San Francisco, we've jumped into movie watching since it's A) cheap [about $.70 a movie] and B) dry inside the theaters. By theater, I mean a small, ramshackle room that will seat about 20 or 30 people with the movie shown on a wide screen TV. We've focused more on Tibetan documentaries since we're going there in a few months and these films are a good source of information. However, since the subject matter of these films, reflecting actual Tibetan events, is unfailingly sad, we see the odd Hollywood flick, as well. The moguls in Los Angeles would be disappointed to know that we can watch the same films you do within days of their US release. I'd heard about the practice for some time, but Dharamsala is the first place I've seen the end result. Someone out there in "first-release land" (the US) uses a video camera inside a theater to illicitly record the movie as it's shown. They then load the pirated film onto a computer and put it on the Internet for other people to download and burn into a DVD. Somehow it feels appropriate that the first film we saw that was an obvious copy was the new"Pirates of the Caribbean". We could tell it was pirated because the dialogue was out of synch and the sound and image quality, generally, were terrible. The clear give away were the sub-titles (English, in this case, for those in the audience who didn't understand 'pirate talk'). A non-English speaker sitting at a PC must have quickly slapped up whatever dialogue seemed to "sound right" as a "translation" and the results were often funnier than the film. Example: Something like, "I don't know where he is." became the sub-title, "It's wireless." Silly.
• Sometimes the quality of the copy is fine...but that doesn't make comprehending the film any easier. Last night we watched the new film with Ed Norton, "Down in the Valley". If any of you out there have seen it, can you please explain it to me? Specifically, the ending......? TIA.
• In the realm of entertainment, one more note: The former WWF, now "World Wrestling Entertainment", it H-U-G-E here in India. I've seen guys all over the country wearing 'Stone Cold Steve Austin', 'The Rock' or even outdated 'Hulk Hogan' t-shirts. You wouldn't believe how many boys and young men have asked me who my favorite wrestler is. TV's, even in remote villages, show "Smack-Down's" or "Summer Slams" every other night. How many programs does this WWE organization crank out? Ouch...
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Also, on the subject of American exports, consumer snack foods and soft drinks have become dominated by the big-two from the US: Pepsi-Co. and Coke. This is a marked change since I was here twelve years ago. There used to be a bewildering variety of Indian products in every little store. Some are still there but they share much of their former shelf space with the above two plus Wrigleys (gums), Cadbury and M&M Mars (candy bars) and others. Coke had actually abandoned the Indian soft drink market back in the 1970's (they refused to comply with an Indian requirement to "Indianize" their shareholdings to at least 40% Indian). They came back in the late 1990's to a more liberalized India where Pepsi already had a fairly dominant presence against domestic brands such as "Thumb's Up" and "Mirinda". Well, Coke's 100% US owned subsidiary bought all of Pepsi's competition and, now, it's just the two globals fighting it out with their respective portfolios. I have to say it's weird to see Indians drinking "Mountain Dew", a product named after a barely remembered euphemism for the do-it-yourself efforts of Appalachian bootleggers. The snack shelf is where Pepsi-Co. (their subsidiary, Frito Lay, actually) shine. As in the US, they don't just dominate the shelves, they went out and bought new ones to ensure proper display of their wares. Even in India, a small shop owner can find a place for a wire shelf display dedicated to one brand. It'll be interesting to see what, if any, Indian brands survive the onslaught.

See For Yourself

(Written about a week and half ago.)


Alchi, Ladakh














Link to current photos.

Tomorrow we leave for Kashmir. As of today, we've spent three weeks in Ladakh, longer than any single place since we pulled out of our driveway back in December. In the time we've been here , the potato fields that were green when we arrived, have started to flower en masse. This seasonal tick of nature's second hand was the kind of chronology I sought as I sat at my desk at work. In San Francisco, seasons are so subtle that, if you spend most of your time indoors as I did, you can look out a window and guess blindly where you're at on the calendar. This can be shockingly disorienting for anyone with a sense of his mortality. I play a game now where I try to think back over the preceding months and remember where we were on the nights of the full moon. Good memories are made like this.

Ladakh, sitting on the militarily sensitive border with Pakistan, has been closed to all but Ladakhis and the Indian army prior to 1974, the year it was opened to tourism. Politics played as big a part as economics in the change of policy change. Some observers speculate that Ladakh was opened to tourists primarily as a measure to cement the validity of India's claim on a land that, culturally, is very different from the nation that exists in the huge land south of the Himalayas. Ladakh is one of those red-headed stepchildren in the hastily cobbled geography left by the retreating colonialists. For this reason and its mountainous isolation, Ladakh was unique in that it remained relatively untouched by Western industrialization or materialism.

This uniqueness raised some questions which fed into a continuation of a discussion with Shawn from the prior post. He asked if it is ethical to "travel in an area known to be teetering on the edge of famine?" I don't think his description was meant to apply to Ladakh (which currently suffers no shortage of food) but to other places he referred to in the developing world. It's of no matter, though. After I reflected on his question it became clear to me that a person of the US, if he or she is able, has an obligation to travel to countries in the developing world. I think each and every person should get the hell out and see what life is like in places where people live with their hands never far from their proverbial mouths. A person can learn some things about compassion, humility and gratitude that can't help but make them better.

The example of Ladakh is useful because here, you can still see something that is simply too complex to grasp in the Western world: a complete model of the natural resource systems that are needed for humans to live. I say still because even Ladakh is changing quickly and this insight will get more difficult to appreciate if development continues as it currently is.

Before 1974 and for centuries prior, Ladakh was a fully self-sufficient area. People sent trading caravans over the high mountain passes to other areas for a few things like salt but, for the large extent of what they needed to live, Ladakhis produced it themselves. They made their own clothes with wool from their sheep and natural dyes from plants and minerals. They saved some seeds from each year's harvest for future planting. They made houses out of poplar logs, adobe bricks and mud stucco. They cooked over dung fires. They fertilized their fields with human feces collected in composting toilets that was mixed with ash and wood shavings. It was a society with, literally, no waste.

With the introduction of the military and later, tourists; packaged goods, electricity, diesel jeeps and trucks, manufactured clothes, commercially grown food and other products from an industrializing India; the closed-loop system that sustained the Ladakhis throughout their history started to unravel. The results range from the obvious to those that are indiscernible to outsiders but all, to some degree, are destructive. If you walk anywhere in Ladakh, you will see the discarded plastic packaging of snack foods candy, laundry soap and on, and on. The Ladakhis never had a need for sanitation trucks and landfills and the introduction of these goods comes with no direction as to the proper disposal of their wrappings after the consumption of the contents. Ladakh, a network of fragile, high-mountain, desert ecosystems nutured with centuries of irrigation, terracing and careful planting, is becoming a plastic-filled mess.





Roadside Waste Disposal












My point is not to blame the Ladakhis for being litterbugs. I could also talk about the use of pesticides that are banned in the Western world or genetically engineered seeds (those are here as well). I could talk about how large trucks carry subsidized (and non-native) food into Ladakh from the southern plains rendering local agriculture economically unsustainable and the valley air smoggy. The point is, that for most of their history, Ladakhis could see the end result of virtually all of their decisions and actions. They knew exactly where their food came from. They knew if they needed to build another house where all of the materials could be obtained and who would help them build it. For over a thousand years they lived in a large collection of green, reasonably prosperous valleys. Now, after a few decades that is rapidly changing.

The young people have little interest in working the farmlands. They are drawn to the 'glamour' and wages of the tourist trade. From what I could see, a good portion of that precious and very limited farmland is being given over to the building of an astonishing number of new guesthouses for tourists. I wonder, if the need should ever arise, they'll pull down the houses to grow food. I've seen the same changes around any number of cities in the Midwest or the central valley of California. Useful farmland, for all practical purposes, permanently entombed under huge subdivisions courtesy of shortsighted planning commissions and Pulte or KB Homes.

A place like Ladakh is a microcosm of our natural world and what makes it a destination worth visiting is that, here, you can see the results of what happens when a person makes a decision about consuming something. If you use certain things, there will be costs and waste. If you want to eat, you wait for the seasons to work their magic on the fields and, if you're lucky, you grow what you need. Most importantly, you can see and have an innate understanding that those resources that sustain life are not infinite.

At home, in the States, you don't see the costs. The plastic we use goes into a landfill but it doesn't go away. You use that same plastic or pump some gas into your car but, unless you're getting uncensored news from inside Iraq, you don't see the human suffering caused by securing the petroleum needed to make the plastic or gas. While that nice farmland outside Ann Arbor is being paved for another subdivision of McMansions, in places like Nevada or Idaho, you have massive industrial farms that exist because land there is cheap and agribusiness uses subsidized water to farm in earth that is nothing more than a sponge for natural gas derived fertilizers and oil derived pesticides.

But we've always been able to look away from those "costs" is we dont' like what we see. The garbage goes into the ground. If you don't like living in Saginaw or Stockton, you move. Costco and Sam's Club don't run out of lettuce or Tide or strawberries so why worry about how they get to the store. Detroit keeps making huge gas hogs so they must know something about the oil supplies, right? Politicians, news commentators and even some 'scientists' tell us we have nothing to worry about with respect to the environment or oil supplies. What to believe....?

I keep hearing that technology will keep coming up with solutions to resource issues. Well, here I am in Ladakh, an area in the nascent stage of being "developed" in the Western style and the resultant problems of material consumption look just as bad if not worse than every other place that had to go through "development". It's two thousand and freaking six and we still can't even deal with potato chip bags and clean water! If ever there were a time to bring some of that technology to bear, it is now and here. Yet, apart from a few, small, underfunded, non-governmental organizations working to stem the tide of consumption and waste, it's business as usual in Ladakh...which, I can assure you, will lose what makes it unique if this continues. And, if a small place like Ladakh with a long history of sustainable self-management can't continue to live within its resources, how in the hell will the rest of the world?

Helena Norberg-Hodge, a linguist who has lived and studied among the Ladakhis since the area opened, says that "In the West, our arms have grown so long that we don't know what our hands are doing." Visiting a place like Ladakh or Sudan or Guatemala or most any other "undeveloped" country helps to remind and illustrate for us that, for every comfort, there are costs. The question is, how long can those costs be sustained? "...it has been calculated that if all the worldÂ’s people had an American standard of living, two more planets the size of Earth would be needed to support them." That's tough to get your head around but, if you spend some time in a place like Ladakh, you can extend the logic out from what you see....and maybe it makes sense.

None of the above is new info to a lot of people. I am one more person sounding the "sky is falling" alarm. I would love to go to my grave a "Chicken Little". I will not bet that direction, though. Perhaps one more voice bouncing around the echo chamber of human consciousness will help more people to see, despite what Dick Cheney or Bill O'Reilly say, we are headed for trouble and we'd better look for ways to change. Places like Ladakh have shown us some of those ways and if you have any interest, you can come see for yourself.

Is This Kind of Travel Worth It?

Leh, Ladakh

Current Photos of North India

The previous post begs a question. If it's so 'grueling' out here in India (or anywhere in the developing world) is the adventure worth the discomfort? Are the deprivations you might suffer here, but can say goodbye to when you return home, akin to going on a fast from eating just so you enjoy food that much more because you're starving? Not at all. Oddly enough, pain is supposed to be one of the most difficult memories to conjure in our heads. Even a few days after a bus ride like the one I mention below you can laugh easily at the distress.

No, being out here you have a good chance of living a day worth telling a story about. At home, while working (unless you're in an exceptional situation), one day, week or month can bleed into another with no more to talk about than having seen an good movie or the final, climactic episode of American Idol. (No disrepect, those kinds of things are only so inspiring to me.) Since we've been on the road, at least once a week or so we have some kind of epic day. We see or experience something I never would have expected to see.

In Shimla, a city I mentioned in an earlier post, we were sitting under a little gazebo overlooking the main part of town. A cloudburst turned into a hailstorm. This grew into the most serious hailstorm I'd ever seen. What made it extra special was the fact that all the roofs in Shimla are made of corrugated metal and the buildings are very tightly packed. The sound of that hail grew to such a crescendo that I could not hear myself yell at the top of my lungs. It actually scared the heck out of me but, as soon as it stopped, everyone under the gazebo laughed and cheered and high-fived because they knew they just saw and heard something rare and powerful.

In Rishikesh we had to trek across a bridge four times a day going to and from yoga. Every time we crossed, we had to contend with religious pilgrims, holy men, scooters, cows and aggressive monkeys who'd try to steal any bag that looked like it might have food in it. This, while traversing an eighty-year old cable suspension "foot bridge" a hundred feet above the River Ganges. That commute bore little resemblance to my daily walk from the parking garage to my office in SF.

Wallace Stegner, a writer who emigrated from the pastoral East of the US to the wide-open and vast West, said that a key difference between the two regions was the scale. A person raised in the East had no vocabulary or relative comparisons for the spaces and mountains, colors and textures of the West. To understand its majesty he once said, "You have to get over the color green. You have to quit associating beauty with gardens or lawns; you have to get used to an inhuman scale; you have to understand geological time."

In many ways, for a person raised in a small Mid-western farm town then anchored in the beautiful but admittedly provincial boutique city that is San Francisco, inching my way through the Hindu heartlands or the Buddhist valleys of the Himalayas presents a similar disjunction in my ability to frame my experiences.

When you walk a longer distance, as Tami and I did a few days ago between the small villages of Hunder and Disket in the Nubra Valley, you know how miles feel. You can walk for hours and you don't pass a mountain by, you just change your perspective on it. We did the outbound trip in a bus, but only when we walked did I realize that you could actually see each town's monastery from the other's. On the bus, things happen and scenery passes too quickly to make such connections. This is part of what I think Stegner meant by scale differences. My experience has little to compare to the vast silence of a huge, still Himalayan valley. A thousand years ago and more, kingdoms , with their own complete histories, rooted themselves in these valleys. The remains and people are still here for anyone curious enough to see.


Disket Monastery From a Distance




Part of Disket Monastery and the Nubra Valley









My words, at best, communicate a few, token details about what it's like to travel in the developing world. All five senses are assaulted or triggered in new ways in a place like India. At the time I wrote this, we were resting in late afternoon heat on sand dunes surrounded by mountains whose peaks have held snow for all human memory. Until I traveled there, I may never have known that a place of that particular beauty and majesty existed.

A friend in San Francisco, Shawn, sent a note that got me thinking about the worth of this kind of travel. Shawn is one of the sharpest people I know and lives a very full life back home so, when he poses a question, I take it to heart. In a recent e-mail he wondered to us and to himself:

"Yes, I really do think about you every day...about what you’re doing, what it means to you, to the people you meet, to us spectators. I imagine it’s something how Burn Night [edit. at BurningMan] used to be, with everybody wondering What Does It All Mean (if anything). What I do know is this: I can’t end my life NOT having had an adventure like that. This damn western cocoon is a little too comfortable."

In many ways, his words summarize the main part of my motivation for taking this journey. There are plenty of people in the Western world working their careers, having families and following the path of life that's been laid out for a long, long time. Again, I mean no disrespect to those on that path. I wouldn't be here is someone didn't choose to have me as part of their family. (Thanks, mom!) But, because I've been lucky enough to travel before, I am acutely aware that this is a vast and hugely varied planet. To not explore some of it and try to connect with those who live differently than I seems like a crippling limitation of what it means to live.

We are incredibly lucky to have been born in the US. The opportunities we can pursue might as well be magic to a majority of people in this world. By coming to a place like this and keeping an open heart, that magic becomes palpable to me in a way that simply is not possible at home.

No question, being out here is worth it.

Less Angst, More Work....and Adventure

Leh, Ladakh

So, a friend sent a note saying he noticed less angst in my posts from India than those from Europe and the States. Well, that comes down to a couple simple things: 1) Cost and 2) Difficulty of Travel. As for the cost issue, Tami and I were spending somewhere around $110-$120 a day or so in Europe. You might think that's cheap, and, it is. You'd have a hard time getting by for less money for two people. You could, but you'd see no sights, drink no Rioja and self-cater every meal in your room. We actually did plenty of self-catering but that was more out of choice than necessity. As vegitarians, we are better able to make food we like than most restaurants.

No matter how cheaply we were getting by in Euroland, our savings still dropped precipitously. That's not the case here in India. Costs for the two of us per day are somewhere just under $25. We could easily scrimp down further but....that's not why we came. Too much scrimping = angst. Bad.

Difference #2 comes from the quality of the days you spend; not the overall quality but certain components. As we walked the streets of Madrid, Granada, Barcelona or Paris; the the other tourists out seeing the sights were almost exclusivly either retirees or student-aged. For all the fun we had there, touring Europe felt a little too safe and easy. It's never far from my thoughts that Tami and I are in our prime earning years. Being on the road for an extended period as we are comes with a steep opportunity cost. If we're going to forego gainful employment (and being with friends and family) we want some serious memories out of the deal.

Unless you have a host to show you life beneath the typical tourist existence, Europe can feel pre-packaged and infused with a sense of denouement. Everyone knows what you're supposed to see when you go to a European city. You visit the museums and cathedrals. You stroll the famous parks. You search out the best, fresh almond croissants or sample the tapas and wine. All that said, as excellent as the Euro-nooks and crannies we found were, we sought something more intense.

To get to where we are now, a person needs to be willing to sacrafice a fair amount of comfort. From San Francisco, to get to the Nubra Valley where we were a couple days ago, would take at least four days, and that's assuming no problems with connecting flights, jeep rides, etc. It wouldn't matter how much money you could throw at the problem. It would take that long.

If you came overland, as we did, it would take you over a week, best-case, easily two. Anyone willing to come this far must have a pretty compelling interest in the area and probably plans to stay for a while. It doesn't cost only time either. The final three full days through the mountains in a rickety bus take you over the three highest motorable passes in the world (and several lower ones). The highest, is over 18,000 feet. Altitude sickness is almost impossible for a human to avoid unless you live in mountains like this. The outsides of the buses under the windows all carry the scythe-shape splatters of peoples' nausea. It might not be a necessity but it helps a hell of a lot if you're fit. Everyone is sore and exhausted at the end of a trip like that. The payoff comes in the form of some superlative scenery. I've spent a lot of time in mountains and still rode in awe for hours as the peaks and glaciers moved past. (One caveat to the above: Leh has an airport with direct flights from New Delhi. In the past week the package tour people have arrived en masse. Leh and its immediate environs have been overrun.)

Another advantage of traveling here vs. the West is that you're not marketed to nearly as much. A great deal of what you see here comes as a surprise. You can see mountains or waterfalls or monasteries that are breathtaking but, because they are so far off the beaten track and so plentiful, they don't get much or any hype. You have a feeling of discovery and the farther you get off the main routes, the greater and more inspiring that sense.

All this is to say that, once you're in a place like this, you know you're nowhere near Kansas anymore.

Time Travel For Dummies

So....some of what you get from traveling comes as a surprise. Actually, most of our best experiences come unlooked-for. During our time in the American Southwest, we visited and explored several native American ruins. I was impressed by how extensive and developed they were. A lot of people lived out there before Europeans came to North America and the remains of their architecture are so extensive and intact that I couldn't help but imagine what it was like to live as they did. In some ways, I didn't have to be too creative as we were camping in the dead of winter ourselves.

As I mentioned below, we have been in a pretty remote and arid part of the Himalayas. For much of the past three weeks we've been staying in and visiting buildings that have been built in the same tradition for at least a millenium, probably much longer. As I've looked at these buildings, the memories of those of the Southwest gave me the ole sense of deja vu. I went back and looked at our photos from that time (see links below) and was surprised to see how similar those buildings are to those they still build here.

Chaco Structure Photo Link 1

Mesa Verde Photo Link 2

Navajo National Monument Photo Link 3

Chaco Structure Photo Link 4

Chaco Structure Photo Link 5


New monastery being built in Nako, Himachal Pradesh.



















































Old Monastery in Tabo, H.P.
















Without looking for any connections, I was suddenly surrounded by them. The buildings are very much the same. The people themselves look like American Indians. These people have been living in much the same way they have for, again, centuries. Just by coming here, I can very effectively travel back and have some of my questions answered including some that I never asked. For example, the buildings have stone and/or adobe walls and timber rooves and supports. Well, those big timbers give off a cedar-y/piney incense aroma for generations. It's one of the most homey smells I've ever enjoyed. And you know what? These people seem to do pretty well in stone buildings. Modern conveniences like electricity (which is sporadic) or running water are easily used without being viewed as absolute necessities. When you don't rely on electric lights, the movement of the sun becomes a day-long pleasure.

I think about how someone might travel to Disneyland or Vegas for some kind of pre-fabricated versions of culture. Here, we are, quite tangibly, traveling in time on no more than the periodic bus and our legs. How lucky is that?

Life on the Edge

For the past few weeks, we've been traveling in an area of the Indian Himalaya just west of the Chinese (occupied Tibet, actually) border. The area bears little resemblance to the India of the plains to the south. The population, except for the few intra-border 'colonialist' (i.e. Hindu flatlander) business owners encamping to make money, is mostly Buddhist. In places closer to the Hindu areas, the temples' decorations have adopted a hybrid of the two religions. To my eyes, it doesn't seem to matter so much what religion one practices in mountains like this. The monumental and austere beauty draw out your humility and reverence.

Water is a valuable and scarce resource. Until the past decade or so, when the area was opened up to travelers, farming has been the only way of life in these parts for all of its history. We aren't talking the kind of farming you might be familiar with in the States. This is subsistence level farming on limited, mountainside terraces, irrigated by small streams, growing only the few crops that will survive at this altitude (peas, barley, potatoes, lentils and a few other beans). Life on such a precarious edge leaves scant room for climatetological variation. If the snows don't fall in sufficient amount to provide water, these people are, in the fullest sense of the phrase, high and dry.



In many villages, they have water shortages and ration to certain times of day. To the humble and reverent, you can add that these mountains definitly make you feel vulnerable.

Access of Evil

If you question the damaging effects of media consolidation and and unquestioning press, see the below article in the current, on-line issue of the Nation magazine.

Link

Access of Evil
by AMY GOODMAN

[from the July 3, 2006 issue]

If President Bush had stood on the steps of the White House with a megaphone when he set out to sell the Iraq War, he might have convinced a few people about the imminent threat posed by Saddam Hussein. But he had something far more powerful that convinced far more people: He had a compliant press corps ready to amplify his lies. This was the same press corps that investigated and reported for years on President Clinton's lying about an extramarital affair. The difference here was that President Bush's lies take lives.

In order to be able to get that all-important leak from a named or, better yet, unnamed "senior official," reporters trade truth for access. This is the "access of evil," when reporters forgo the tough questions out of fear of being passed over.

And then there is the embedding process. Journalists embedded with US troops in Iraq bring us only one perspective. How about balancing the troops' perspective with reporters embedded in Iraqi hospitals, or in the peace movement around the world? Former Pentagon spokesperson Victoria Clarke proclaimed the embedding process a spectacular success. For the Pentagon, it was. More powerful than any bomb or missile, the Pentagon deployed the media.

During the Persian Gulf War, General Electric owned NBC (it still does). A major nuclear weapons manufacturer--which made parts for many of the weapons in the Gulf War--owned a major television network. Is it any surprise that what we saw on television looked like a military hardware show? According to the New York Times, CBS executives "offered advertisers assurances that the war specials could be tailored to provide better lead-ins to commercials. One way would be to insert the commercials after segments that were specially produced with upbeat images or messages about the war."

After the Gulf War, Pentagon spokesperson Pete Williams jumped ship, but he was hardly crossing enemy lines. He became a correspondent for NBC. Just over a decade later, another Pentagon spokesperson, Victoria Clarke, gave up her position to work as a CNN commentator.

During the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, MSNBC, NBC and CNN--not only Fox--called their coverage Operation Iraqi Freedom. We expect the Pentagon to research the most effective propagandistic name to call its operation. But the media's adoption of Pentagon nomenclature raises the question: If this were state media, how would it be any different?

While the big players in the National Entertainment State deserve much of the blame, other major news outlets have truly outdone themselves in their total affront to the role that an independent media should play in a democracy. The New York Times and its former national security reporter Judith Miller were critical to the successful promulgation of the WMD lie, with repeated front-page, above-the-fold articles pumping the false stories about aluminum tubes and buried weapons caches, to name a few, all reliant on unnamed sources.

Sinclair Broadcast Group, which controls close to sixty TV stations, acts like a junior version of Fox News, with right-wing biases in its lackluster coverage. Sinclair refused to broadcast an ABC Nightline segment on which the names of killed US servicemen and -women were read, continuing the Bush Administration campaign to deny to the American public bad news about the War on Terror. Sinclair also broadcast with much fanfare a Swift Boat Veterans-inspired smear piece against John Kerry at a critical moment in the 2004 presidential race.

And then there's the Clear Channeling of America. Enabled by the Clinton/Gore-backed 1996 Telecommunications Act, the Bush-connected Clear Channel Communications, which began with a dozen radio stations, ballooned into a 1,200-plus-station radio network. According to South Carolina's 2002 Radio Personality of the Year, who believes she was fired for her antiwar beliefs, Clear Channel led prowar rallies, forbade certain songs from being played and silenced critics.

In 1997 the late George Gerbner, former dean of the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School of Communication, described the media as being "driven not by the creative people who have something to tell, but by global conglomerates that have something to sell." And almost ten years later, it still rings true. We need an independent media. Democracy Now!

For Sale: One, not very recently used First Amendment

We have come down from the higher parts of the Himalayas to re-group. We're in a touristy town called Manali to get some supplies, eat some more varied food than noodle soup and Tibetan bread (like pita bread) and to catch up on communications via the Internet. That last task has become something of an indespensible activity since we've been on the road. It used to be that a backpacker's only access to news about the world came in the form of a few abbreviated, international publications such as the International Herald Tribune (published by the New York Times), Time magazine or its British equivalent, The Economist. These were expensive, limited in scope and tough to find.

Now, via the World Wide Web, I can and do get all same the news I read when I was in the U.S. I can't tell you how much more connected I feel out here because I can track news and issues I care about. Even when I was at home, most of the news I read came from the Internet. In the last ten years, I have grown so suspect of the agenda of "corporate owned" media that I sought out more balanced coverage from other sources. The web-link to one of those sources, Democracy Now!, is to the right of this text. I get a daily news summary from them every weekday.

In two recent articles, I was sickened to read about the introduction of a bill (the COPE - Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act) into the US Congress aimed at controlling content on the Internet. The bill has already passed the House of Representatives. They debated and passed it late at night to minimize media exposure. You can read the full articles here: (first article, second article). In a nutshell, the major telecommunications companies, those who supply all of us with Internet access, have lobbied Congress to allow them to have more control over the quality and cost of access. If their effort at re-writing the regulations succeeds, these companies will have the ability to limit the expression of anyone who wants to read, write, advertise, sell or otherwise communicate without censorship to anyone else via the Web.

The Internet was originally set up to be "neutral". In other words, anyone who set up a web site would be allowed the same speed and accessibility as any other web site at the same cost. Your corner video shop could offer access to their web site as easily and quickly as Microsoft could offer you access to theirs. Under the proposed bill, AT&T or Comcast or Cox cable companies or any Internet "provider" would be able to go to a company with a "rate card" offering differing levels of service at different costs. This is the same setup as those currently employed by television and radio stations (you pay more for prime time, less for middle of the night) or newspapers (you pay more for more space and better page placement, less if your ad is tiny or buried.) If you can't afford what a big company can, the "provider" could relegate you to a super-slow connection rendering your site too frustrating for people to use.

What's worse, if you have a message that the "provider" disagrees with, they can block your site or slow it down. Heaven help the Democrats or any other political party who wants to raise money or disseminate information for elections. If the company doesn't agree with your point of view, they will have authority to block your site or slow down access. This is not far-fetched. Companies have already limited access in such underhanded ways as (see link):

- In 2004, North Carolina ISP Madison River blocked their DSL customers from using any rival Web-based phone service.

- In 2005, Canada's telephone giant Telus blocked customers from visiting a Web site sympathetic to the Telecommunications Workers Union during a contentious labor dispute.

- Shaw, a major Canadian cable, internet, and telephone service company, intentionally downgrades the "quality and reliability" of competing Internet-phone services that their customers might choose -- driving customers to their own phone services not through better services, but by rigging the marketplace.

- In April, Time Warner's AOL blocked all emails that mentioned www.dearaol.com -- an advocacy campaign opposing the company's pay-to-send e-mail scheme.

The telecom companies are trying to plunder something they had no hand or interest in creating. Here is a quote from one Congressmember (Ed Markeky - Democrat of MA - speaking on the House floor, June 8th, 2006.):

CONGRESSMAN MARKEY: Let me just make this point once again. The Bell companies had nothing to do with the creation of the Internet. The Bell companies had nothing to do with the development of the World Wide Web. The Bell companies had nothing to do with the browser and its development. In fact, AT&T was asked if they wanted to build the Internet, the packet-switched network in 1966. They turned the contract down when the government went to them. And so a company named BB&N, Bolt, Beranek, & Newman got the contract, a very small company -- not AT&T. They had nothing to do with the development of the Internet, but now, at this late date, they want to come in and to create these bottleneck control points that allow them to extract Internet taxes, Internet fees from companies and individuals who have been using the Internet for a generation. It is this absence of non-discriminatory language in the Manager’s Amendment and in the bill to which I object.



In the US we have four major TV networks all owned and controlled by very large, multinational corporations. Radio and newspaper ownership is similarly consolidated. You can go to this site to see who owns what: link. In my lifetime I have seen the corporate media become a unquestioning lap dog for the Government and big business. The Internet finally allowed some diversity. It will be a huge step backword if this bill is allowed to pass as-is. See this website: http://www.savetheinternet.com. Contact your Congressperson and Senators and tell them to keep the telecom companies' hands off the Internet.

e-mail: For Senators go to www.senate.gov/contacting/index_by_state_cfm.cfm for Representatives, go to www.house.gov/writerep/

Here is a link with other steps you can take:

http://www.savetheinternet.com/=act