This Blog is Over

Home for a few months now. Today seems like a good day to reflect.

First off, congratulations to Barack Obama and to the US. No matter your feelings about Democratic vs. Republican politics (or lack of difference therein), this country took quite a step forward in putting a man of color into the White House. I wish him, and us, the best of luck.

Somewhere earlier in this blog, I mentioned that Tami and I occasionally play a game: "Where were we a year (or two...or, now, three) ago?"

On this day in 2006, we were hunkered down, enjoying the warm mineral baths of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. We made a destination of "T or C" (as called by the locals) because we'd been camping in exceedingly cold temps for the preceding three weeks. We soaked in the heat and the hippie funk for three days before continuing further south.

(Early morning soak looking out on the Rio Grande - Truth or Consequences, NM)

On January 20, 2007, we prepared to leave Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The next day we were taking a boat down the Mekong to cross over Chao Doc, Vietnam. I may have had no point during our trip where I felt a greater sense of adventure...but also of apprehension. Vietnam shares a more complex history with the US than any country on our itinerary. I had no palpable idea of how we'd be received. Luckily it turned out very well. The people treated us warmly and the country, as a whole, stands as a highlight of our entire trip.

(Heavily laden rice boat making its way along a canal of the Mekong to the mill - Vietnam)

On the 20th of January 2008, we were in the former French colony of Pondicherry on the Bay of Bengal in southern India. Fresh from 13 months is Southeast Asia, we'd been back in India for just over a week. I wrote in my journal that morning of my surprise at how difficult it was, "yet again", to adjust to the chaos of the Sub-continent. As challenging at it was, Tami and I often find ourselves now, looking back on our adventures in India with sighs of longing. Over the course of two visits we spent almost a year there. Given the chance, we'd go back in a heartbeat.

(Chai vendor working his craft at a street stall - Pondicherry, India)

See what staying put at home will do? We're travel-ready ... even for India ... again! Unfortunately, that's just part of our DNA and a chronic condition. We're happy to be back and San Francisco looks better than ever. What a crazy time to re-integrate, too! The election and the economy have kept the news interesting if not slightly unsettling. I'm frankly amazed how thoroughly the latter pushed environmental concerns almost completely off the media agenda. Those issues are only getting more acute and $30/barrel oil...well, it doesn't help.

I could reflect nostalgically about this trip for hours. Most folks don't have that kind of time, though. In the spirit of brevity, I'll sum things up with a few numbers.

• 1,055 - Total number of days on the road.
• 11 - Total number of countries visited. (Doesn't include transit countries. Must have a visa stamp and/or must have walked the streets for a few hours minimum.)
• 240 - Number of unique places we slept. (Doesn't include repeat visits to places e.g. multiple visits to transit hubs like Bangkok, Delhi, etc.)
• $19.25 - Per-person cost per day - all costs included from departure to return
  
• $15.91 - Per-person cost per day - minus health insurance and plane fare
• 7 - Number of flights - destination to destination (not including connectors)
  
• 9 - Number of friends who visited us while we were outside the US. (Ken, Rich, Johan, Tish, Eric, Maggie, Mark, Sherry)
  
• 20 - Number of fiction books read.* (See below)
  
• 42 - Number of non-fiction books read.** (See below)
  
• Favorite Feedback - From my uncle Gordon: "I don't just look at your pictures. I study 'em. I look at the background and try to see everything that was going on when you were there. I try to put myself in your place and see how it felt."
• Tie for Favorite - Friends following in some portion of our footsteps e.g. Scott and Tami going to Koh Mak in Thailand, Eric and Maggie doing their own groovy trip.
  
• Things I miss most from being on the road: Frequent, random smiles and hellos from strangers. Fantastic tropical fruit. Cheap, public transportation that goes virtually anywhere. Warm weather. A tangible sense of history in the surroundings.
  
• Unsettling lesson: Where there's water, there's life. And ... the corollary: Where it's dry, there's little or none.
  

(Top of an irrigation dike near Hampi, India)

(The minimally-irrigated village of Nako, Himachal Pradesh, India)

• Biggest surprise of being on the road - How bad the food choices were.
• Runner-up surprise - How hard most of the people of this world work for their food.

(Farmer in the village of Langde, Guizhou, China plows a rice paddy the same way his people have for centuries)

(Buckwheat threshing - Kali Gandaki Valley, Nepal)

• Biggest surprise of being home - How limited peoples' questions were about the trip. Most questions were limited to: "Did you have a great time?" ... "Did you get sick?" ... "What was your favorite place?" and "When are you going to write a book?"
• Tie for biggest home surprise - How quickly time passes in the US. On the road we often remarked on how much we'd done since breakfast or how, on Thursday, something we talked about had happened only two days ago on Tuesday, seemed like ages prior. Now that we're home, we're experiencing that same old feeling of, "It's Friday already?!" Time really does fly here.
  

So that's it. Home. Healthy. Still adjusting. Eminently grateful.

'Bye bye...

It's all ahead now...


Books:

* Fiction - Oryx and Crake (Margaret Atwood), The Great Indian Novel (?), Delhi (Kushwant Singh), For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemmingway), The God of Small Things (Arundahti Roy), All Families Are Psychotic (Douglas Coupland), The Life of Pi (Yann Martel), Perfume (Patrick Suskind), Sweet Thursday (John Steinbeck), Karma Cola (Gita Mehta), The Elephanta Suite (Paul Theroux), The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini), The Road (Cormac McCarthy), A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry), Shantaram - (Gregory David Roberts), 1984 (George Orwell), Foucault's Pendulum (Umberto Eco), Main Street (Sinclair Lewis), Hamlet, Richard II, Richard III, Much Ado About Nothing (William Shakespeare)

** Non fiction - In Ruins, Botany of Desire (Michael Pollan), A Tale of Two Valleys, Stupid White Men, Dude - Where's My Country (Michael Moore) , Ancient Futures - Learning from Ladakh (Helena Norberg Hodge), Highness - The Maharajas of India, The Gods Drink Whiskey (Stephen Asma), Seven Years In Tibet (Heinrich Herrar) , India in Slow Motion (Mark Tully), Small is Beautiful (E. F. Schumacher), The Snow Leopard (Peter Matthiessen), It Must Have Been Something I Ate (Jeffrey Steingarten), Return To Tibet (Heinrich Harrar), A Time of Gifts (Patrick Leigh Fermor), First They Killed My Father, Dispatches (Michael Herr), A River's Tale - A Year on the Mekong (Edward Gargan), The Girl in the Picture (Denise Chong), The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (Anne Fadiman), The River at the Center of the World (Simon Winchester), Earth Odyssey (Mark Hertsgaard), Lost In Mongolia (Angus ?), Kitchen Confidential + A Cook's Tour (Anthony Bourdain), Riding the Iron Rooster (Paul Theroux), Himalaya (Michael Palin), Cambodia Now (Karen Coates), Slow Reckoning (Tom Athanasiou), Emergency Sex (?), Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (John Perkins), The Prince of the Marshes (Rory Stewart), The Spice Route - A History (John Keay), The World is Flat (Thomas Friedman), The Power of Now (Eckhart Tolle), King (?), Sorrows of Empire (Chalmers Johnson), Rogue States (Noam Chomsky), The Tree Where Man Was Born (Peter Matthiessen), Hell's Angel (Sonny Barger), Globalization and It's Distontents (Joseph Stiglitz), Soul of a New Machine (Tracy Kidder)

Last Long Haul

June 16 - The Satyagrah Express train from Gorakpur to Delhi


* Note to self : Be sceptical of Indian trains named for swiftness. This is no 'express'.
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How fitting that I'm finishing my foreign sojourn with a marathon bus and train run. I've been traveling since I left the hotel in Kathmandu just over forty-seven hours ago. It'll take me at least another hour or two to get to my next, and final, one. The Monsoon has hit. I left in the rain and it's been gray or coming down most of the past two days. The various surges of aroma that typically shock your senses now hang in thick and constant in the humid air.

Any long piece of travel in the Developing World can humble you, but overnight rides weaken you in a way reminiscent of heartbreak. You rush to make connections or get through border crossings - in my case walking, taking a taxi, two buses and a bicycle rickshaw to get to and over the Nepal/India boder. You end up eating crappy food which invariably means carbs and fat. You're already tired physically and overwrought emotionally. Then, you battle through the darkness (or lack thereof, because no one will turn off the lights) and sounds and constant bumping and jostling of the moving vehicle. All night you fall, literally, chin-on-chest to sleep for just a few minutes only to wake up because of the pain in your neck. In and out. In and out. In and out...in and out of sleep for hours. You feel a surge of raw excitement at dawn both because you finally have something to look at out the window and the akward publicness of sleeping together is over. People know how to act in crowds during the day. Big public slumber parties are not so common. At dawn, your travel compatriots seem much more human for having gone through the same equalizing breakdown. You know, perhaps for the first time, a little bit about what they feel inside and you like them for it.

This particular trip started with a rainy taxi from Durbar Square in the center of Kathmandu. We rambled through the medieval lanes without a hitch finishing at the New Bus Park a couple kilometers north. Touts approached me immediately asking where I was going and to take their particular bus. I looked over the craft that were going to the border and settled on the one that looked the least uncomfortable. There was still an hour before the bus was supposed to leave but it was pouring so I sat in my seat and made a gloomy dinner of the sandwiches I'd brought. Apart from one English woman, I was the only onther non-Nepali/Indian. It took us an hour to wind through the traffic up and out of the Kathmandu Valley.

The winding continued for the next ten or so hours. As usual on buses here, the crew played an uninterrupted stream of Bollywood movie music. The good news is that this bus had a CD player - one of the first I've ever seen to discard the outdated, warbling cassette players. At least the music was clear! At our first stop, at around 11:30 p.m. I stayed onboard and tried to sleep. The crew left the bus door open, though, and the monsoon mosquitoes descended on me. I fought them for half an hour until the driver and crew came back from eating. We stopped for two more such breaks in the night and both times I had to get up and walk around to fend off the bugs.

Around dawn, we pulled into a larger town about an hour north of the Indian border. Our crew unceremoniously ordered us off the bus onto a smaller and supremely crowded local bus. I hesitated but none of the other passengers complained so I grabbed my bags and went along. I ended up sitting on a bag of rice in the aisle for an hour but it was fine. Everyone, locals and long distance travelers alike seemed genial - until we got to Bhairawa, still four kilometers from the border. That was the end of the line for that bus and we're directed to pile into an even more cramped 4x4 with no protection for our bags from the rain. The other option was to take a covered bicycle rickshaw. I had time to kill so I opted for the rickshaw.

It took probably five times longer and cost two or three times as much as the jeep but the silent ride along the rice paddies so early in the day was perhaps the best part of the entire trip. When you know you're seeing something for what might be the last time, you stare and listen and smell and absorb as much as you possibly can so it sticks deep in your tangible memory. You make a prayer of the luminescent green rice shoots and the quizzical buffalo stares and the smoke from the dung fires and the dripping of the rain and you listen to its rhythm and you repeat it back to yourself until you can do it all with closed eyes. Then you whisper thanks that you had a chance to see it and pray that others will have a chance to take a ride just like it.

We eased into a the small but very bustling border town where I changed the last of my Nepali rupees for Indian, filled out the exit papers and walked into India. At the immigration post there, I listened as one of the officials suggested to a young woman backpacker that she change her money with him. She asked what the rate was and he quietly mumbled one very much in his favor. I looked up as she was getting out money and mentioned that there were other places where she might want to see if she could do better. He immediately stammered, "Yes, there are official money changers, as well." She looked at me, looked at him and put her money back in her bag.

Sunauli, like border towns everywhere, is grubby. There is one long street lined with shops with housing bleeding out behind on either side. One half of the street is perpetually filled with huge, tandem-axle freight trucks waiting to cross into Nepal. Every time I've been through, the line is well over a kilometer long. The other half of the street is filled with a constant stream of pedestrians, bicycle rickshaws, cars, motorcycles and ox and horse carts among other manners of locomotion. It's never a pleasant stroll but the bus station is at the south end and you have to walk or take a rickshaw to get there. I was happy walking as it was early and relatively quiet but I needed chai first. I stopped at a stall and drank two. While I was there, a man came in and asked me, "Gorakpur?", the city where I was going. I said yes and he pointed out to his 4x4 parked across the street. There were already a couple men inside (this is important since they won't go until they get a full load of passengers) and his price was the usual 100 rupees so I grabbed my bag and got on board.

He and his two touts worked the stream of walkers coming from the border ruthlessly trying to get more passengers. Two other jeeps were parked there and the competion for riders was stiff. At one point, we had two more riders but there was an argument with the crew from the jeep in front of us about who approached them first. They ended up getting back out of our vehicle and hustled into the one in front. Rancor all around.

After about twenty minutes, our touts sprinted up from behind yelling and slamming closed all the doors. The driver started off before they even finished. We accelerated for about fifty meters and took a hard left down a narrow alley. We went another seventy or so meters and came out in a vacant lot. The driver wheeled the truck around and turned it off. After maybe forty-five seconds, two Indian police rode up on a motorcycle. One had a lathi (long bamboo stick used as a club) and one had a very old rifle. The cop with the lathi came over to the driver and started barking at him in Hindi. I've seen variations of this quite a few times now and I hoped that a foreigner there might temper his brutality a little. A couple times he shifted his glare from the placating driver to me assessing, I assume, if I could understand what was going on.

One assumption you can safely make about Indian cops is that they are guaranteed to be corrupt. They see many if not most law breaking as a way for them to extract bribes. A second assumption is that they are almost as certain to be violent. Indians may be used to this but it still shocks the hell out of me. This inquisition progressed as I've seen most do. The cop seems to bark, "What the hell do you think you were doing?" The offender says something trying to minimize or deny what was going on. The cop goes on, getting enraged that the accused would question what the HE saw. In this instance, the cop wanted the keys to the vehicle and the man to come with him. The driver pleaded but the officer just got more and more angry. As usual, a good sized crowd had gathered to watch. Eventually, he reached in the open door, grabbed the driver by the collar of his shirt and yanked him outside. Of course, that's never enough. He went on shaking him banging his head into the truck then almost throwning him into the mud. The cops took the keys, got back on their cycle and told him, I assume, to follow them back to their post. As soon as they were gone, the two other 4x4 crew guys frantically got us passengers and our bags out and told us to "GO!"

They might not look dangerous...

I was now happy to walk down to the bus park as originally planned. I knew some exercise would help shake off the grim adrenaline. At the bus park, I hopped on a half full small one and waited for it to fill up. Too much competition made that task take over an hour - not a big deal, my train wasn't until 3:25 p.m. and it was only 9: 00 a.m. but forward progress is usually preferable to stasis.

The rail junction of Gorakpur in India is a fabled nowheres-ville in the annals of South Asian travels. It sits at the junction of major rail lines and, if you want to get in and out of Nepal, you are most likely to pass through here. Lonely Planet says of it, "There is nothing to see in Gorakpur." After four visits, I have to agree. The Monsoon only made it worse. The normally dusty streets oozed with mud. I still had over four hours to kill so I made myself familiar with the rambling train station.

My ticket was only "wait-listed", a fact unknown to me until after I'd paid for it, but the travel agent in Kathmandu assured me I'd move up to a "confirmed" birth by the time of departure. Not true. I had, in fact, moved up, but only from 49 to 26. (*Second note to self: Don't trust Nepali travel agents.) Not only that but the wait list still had over 200 people on it. Great. I bought that ticket over two weeks prior and the best I could do with lead time was waitlisting. There were a few other trains coming through but I had no chance at an impromptu ticket on any of them. I had to get to Delhi to catch a plane, though. I asked three different counter agents and two other passengers who spoke English what I might be able to do. They all said to just get on the train and talk to the conductor. I resolved that I'd be on the train one way or another and deal with whatever happened once I was rolling. To be in Delhi in two days was non-negotiable.

The hours went by and 3:25 came...but the train did not. I found out it was a hour and a-half late. I won't relive the agony of the successive delays but each hour I returned to the platform, saw no train and went to the Enquiry desk to get the latest. I did this five times. We finally left at around 10:00 p.m. - six and a half hours late. I tracked down a conductor who immediately barked that the train was full. I pleaded with him about my flight and need to get to Delhi on time and that I'd take anything. I didn't even have to have a seat. I'd stand. He hesitated then said, "Go to Sleeper." I've seen plenty of people standing at the ends of the cars in Sleeper before. Now, I was going to count myself among them.

The car I chose was only about 2/3rd's full. I couldn't believe my luck when the train started rolling and several berths remained empty. I hoisted my backpack and bag into one, crawled up and was alseep before the last car was out of the station. I was exhausted. My next memory came when a man was slapping his hand on my bunk. He was asking me something in Hindi and, although I absolutely didn't want to hear it, knew exactly what it was. He was ensconsing his family into this compartment and they had the ticket for my berth. I looked down and around the car and my heart flooded with dread. There were people lying on every square foot of horizontal space. Not only was I tired, but I had my huge backpack to find a home for. I sighed, fell back, and told him, "OK, one minute."

By pure luck, there was a storage alcove at the end of the car just big enough for my pack. I stuffed it in and stepped out onto the platform. Hundreds of people slept everywhere on the cement. (See below video)

I was happy to discover that I'd slept about four and a half hours - better than nothing. I got back on and took a place next to the door. A family had taken the floor behind me (see below) and four of five scruffy men joined me standing. Everyone looked tired and no one spoke but in all the jostling, I never heard one raised voice. Indians have been through all this and more.

The train rolled on. Everything was quiet - a rare thing in India. Apart from thebuzz of the overhead fans and the clatter of the tracks, I heard nothing. Successive station platforms punctuated the darkness. At some stops, the lone light at either end of each car attracted clouds of bugs. They engulfed everything around, including those of us standing. Some of the men hopped off the car into the dim light of the station until the train moved again. I was reading and the white pages of my book looked like and entomology experiment. That happened only once. Afterward, I did the platform hustle, too.


(Sleepers awake in the a.m.)

Finally, the sky started to lighten. Passengers made their ways to the bathrooms at each car's end. I don't think I've ever turned and made room for people so many times in one stretch. It went on for maybe two hours - men, women, teens, women coming back for a second round with kids, old people (apparently incontinent based on how many trips they made). It was as if the whole train car refused to stay in their seats. Somehow, though, daybreak seemed to put everyone in a tolerant mood, me included. I'd be later than I planned but I was reasonably certain I'd make it to Delhi now. I just had to ride it out.

Rolling through that early morning countryside, I also felt nostalgia flooding back into me. Who knows when I'll see tropical fields and villages like this again? Hell, who knows when I'll ride a train again? The dim light and fatigue, one point, made me question what I saw. Out in a field about a hundred meters from the train were what looked like two birds. They were so tall, though, that I literally doubted my sight. Less than hour later I saw another pair, this time much closer to the train. An Internet search showed me I'd had the very good fortune to see these:

http://www.savingcranes.org/species/sarus.cfm

The train rolled on. Station after station. Even on a long ride, trains in India are rarely without interesting things to see. You get the impression that half of India's billion-plus people are on the move at any given time.

We eventually crossed the Ganges and down on the banks below the bridge, a group of people were having a funeral. The flames of the funeral pyre had just started to burn when we rolled over. The men stood around the pyre and the women, as is tradition, squatted in their own group a few meters away. The Ganges.....freaky.




On board, you never know who or what you're going to see. In India, there is a group of people called hirja's You might call them transsexuals or, in some cases, eunuchs. They like to refer to themselves as a 3rd gender. As you might imagine, they are quite marginalized. One way they support themselves is to beg on trains. I've seen quite a few and they always like to push for money from foreigners. I was happy to fork over a few rupees.



The last hour of the ride the air got grayer and grayer. The smog told me we were finally penetrating the 10 million(+) person mega-city of New Delhi. I was so tired I was numb. Finally, out the left window I saw a wall of the Red Fort. Relief.




Shortly, I was out on the street in front of the Old Delhi Railway Station in my rickshaw. The ride to the guest house in Pahar Ganj neighborhood took another half hour.



I think it was almost 50 hours from door to door. I gave myself a good, long scrub, at a tasty south Indian style meal....an slept. Fun stuff...but I think I'll wait awhile before I do another trip like that.

Vipassana post-script

Lumbini, Nepal


Some folks have said I may have painted an overly bleak picture of my experience with the Vipassana meditation course. Perhaps a long-honed propensity to sandbag swayed me toward under-selling what I came away with. I most certainly didn't want to appear like some of the few starry-eyed alumni I've met who can't seem to find anything but unqualified, raving praise for their own experiences. That kind of summary always smells of "promotion" to me, or of someone clinging to a life preserver of dogma. I prefer the dynamic of "attraction". Check things out for yourself. If you find something or things you like, excellent. If not, perhaps the practice or philosophy is not for you.



There is no doubt that the Vipassana course put me through ten honest days of gloves-off grappling with my brain and body. But when do you ever grow without some fear or pain? I don't want to discourage anyone. This course taught me a LOT. I will continue with this practice and, if I'm lucky, very likely do another course or more at the Vipassana center in California. Without exception everything we were exposed to was practical and self-assessable. In other words, I was able to judge for myself to see what I found. For the record, I was - and I very much like what I felt.



It's not a small coincidence that I'm writing this post from Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha. Tami and I made a last-minute change of plans for trekking and came north into Nepal. The road goes near Lumbini where we've heard that a handful of Buddhist monestaries is growing in a large campus of sorts. Each monestary is built in the style of the representative country where Buddhism is practiced. We had a very good two-hour meditation at the Korean complex.



For me, life in this modern world is confusing and not easy to navigate with happiness and tranquility. Vipassana seems to be a useful tool to help me do that better. That's enough for me to keep on trying.

Travel back to the age of chivalry

Following on the subject below of things swinging, we just finished traveling in the state of Rajasthan where you can't swing a cat without hitting some medieval fort or palace. Most of them are perched dizzily on intimidating bluffs or escarpments. Nearly everyone who comes to India makes a trip out to Rajasthan to take in the romantic settings and desert landscape. I think we spent almost a month.
Us with Jaisalmer Fort behind

Rajasthan has a history that seeps from the ruins of its past. About a thousand or more years ago, different "clans" moved into the area and building fortifications. I can only imagine water was more plentiful then because the region prospered judging by the architecture and infrastructure left behind. Cities grew and some of the people obviously made a great deal of wealth. From everything we read, the "Rajputs", as they were known, also fought a LOT.
A havelli "house" in Jaisalmer - they'd be palaces anywhere else

Actually, in the those days and before, city states seemed to always be fighting. From my read of the history of Rajasthan, it didn't take a lot to start a conflict. In one case, the prince of Jodhpur was promised the hand of the princess of Udaipur. He died unexpectedly so the second eldest son was elevated to crown prince. Tradition had it that the marriage would proceed as planned but with the second son. The Maharaja of Udaipur, however, didn't like the second son as a choice and instead promised his daughter to the prince of Jaipur. This was enough of a breach of protocol that the Maharaja of Jodhpur and his army intercepted the wedding procession with ALL THE DOWRY GIFTS (worth a very great deal) on its way from Udaipur to Jaipur. The armies of the two offended city states pursued the Jodhpur transgressors back to the fort you see below and gave siege for NINE MONTHS. These were serious folks when it came to honor, fighting and money.

Jodhpur Fort and part of the old city


Sometimes, the forts were not enough to hold off defeat. In rare circumstances, a siege was insurmountable. Some lasted for years and the occupants of the forts would eventually run out of food and water. When everything was viewed as hopeless, the defenders embarked on a final path that epitomized their idea of chivalry and honor - jauhar. Much religious ceremony preceded jauhar but the final steps included the self immolation of all the women and children in the fort. This often numbered in the thousands. They built large funeral pyres of wood, covered them in oil and burned themselves to death. When this was completed, the men would ride or run out through the gates to fight until death. In one case in Jodhpur, the fort was almost taken in a surprise attack. There was not time to conduct the rituals and burning. Rather than have their women and children treated with dishonor, the men had to cut their throats. Imagine the fury of their fighting on riding out against their foes after leaving behind their families, dead by their own hands.

The "Victory Tower" in Chittor Fort

Part of the wall at Chittor Fort

Fighting between city states or principalities was not uncommon. Everywhere, Europe included, went through those long, brutal centuries where fighting touched everyone at some point or another. They built huge walls and lived inside them for a reason. Violence came up close and, if the need called, everyone who could joined in the battle. Whichever city was stronger, prevailed getting the economic spoils. It occurred to me that the US never went through this brutality. Apart from one paroxysm of nastiness - the Civil War - our history has no scar tissue from American on American violence. We have the wars to eradicate the Native Americans but those, for a long time were portrayed as a noble cause - and there are few or no monuments of those conflicts left behind to remind anyone. Makes me wonder if this contributes to our willingness to use violence to get what we want in current times.

Another part of Chittor's wall

Anyway, you can almost throw a dart at the map of Rajasthan, get on a bus or train, go to the city and see some freakish fort or battlements or palaces. At one point, Tami and I badly misjudged the map in our book. We took a six-hour bus ride to get to a certain old fort to find out no roads penetrated the hills between us an said fort. We deliberated and headed instead the opposite direction to Chittor. It was supposed to be good, as well. Well.....good it was. This was just one more of those scenes where we wandered around ruins Disney would covet (but never approach in quality or scale) and mumble the litmus test phrase of travelers' fulfillment, "You've got to be kidding me."

Old alcove paintings at Bundi Fort

Being the early part of the hottest season, we were blessed to have most of these ruins totally to ourselves. We could wander for hours and only see a few other people. We could find supremely meditative and beautiful places and sit for long periods imagining what the royal high-life might have been like. Very nice stuff.

Interior at Naggaur Fort

Another interior at Naggaur Fort

I have to admit, I'm tired of seeing stuff, tired of buses and new guest houses, tired of the grime and Indian guys who cannot behave like adults. I'm tired of Indian food. Be that as it may, India just keeps coming on. There is so much to see here I am at a loss to contextualize it. If you get a chance, you'd be missing out on so much if you didn't come here.

Like a wild monkey...

Jaipur, Rajasthan

At 7:00 this morning we bid a poignant goodbye to the place where we'd just spent ten challenging days. After a very great deal of consideration, Tami and I joined a meditation course taught in what is, reputedly, the technique most true to that taught by Sidhartha Gautama Buddha 2,500 years ago. The technique is called Vipassana, which means "to see things as they really are". The course was held at a beautiful little campus just outside of the city of Jaipur in a desert arroyo that could be in the hills behind San Diego. The place was overrun with peacocks, parrots, a handful of other colorful birds and the occasional mongoose - stark yet peaceful contrast to most of the locales we've visited in India.


I first heard about Vipassana during my first trip here in 1994. I met a young Canadian couple that had recently finished a course and they could not enthuse about it enough. Their description and the descriptions of many other people over the intervening years have invariably acknowledged the difficulty of the course but praised the peace of mind that comes from working through it. The challenge comes in the form of 10 days of silent, mostly sedentary contemplation. You enter the course and say nothing for the duration - even to yourself. You're not supposed to make eye contact with other "meditators". Separation of men and women. You rise at 4:00 a.m. and work until 9:00 p.m. with a few rest periods. Your two meals and one snack are served in a dining hall. The idea is to focus on your inner self.

I have to admit, I was intimidated at the prospect of enrolling. In the past couple years we met many alumni who told us they were emotionally and physically overwhelmed during the experience. Most people have no experience trying to hold a sitting position for more than a few minutes, let alone holding a position on the floor with nothing more than a thin pillow or two to support you. After even just an hour, pressure points, joints and muscles ache. After a few days, the pain is supposed to be inescapable. The psychological pain, a result of the introspection and intense focus, was also described as agony. Again, the vast majority of people never slow down to try to take an objective look at what's going on inside themselves. Most people go from cradle to grave without attempting to take such a look. When those that do try take the step, they often don't like what they see.

So why enter the course? I felt I had no major crises in my life. Nonetheless, at any given time there always seems to be a flow of distress that ebbs and flows beneath the functional surface of living. Whether I'm concerned about relationships or work or financial security or the inescapable reality that my life is coming inexorably closer to its end; periods of unmitigated peace are fleeting and rare. Some menace often seems to be lurking around the corner.

I've done enough rooting around with my anxieties to know that a) I'm not unique in this worrying (almost everyone does the same) and b) most worrying is pointless (everything will pass as it's going to whether I stress about it or not) . All I can do is try to do the right thing in the present. That said, I also know that taking a focused look at my fears and hopes would require a lot of work and letting go of many patterns of "distraction". Since I'm about to transition back home, into one of the vortices of artificial, superficial torment that is the materialistic Western Word, now seemed like a good time to see what fears I could clear out of the mouldier recesses of my psyche.

My room

Even though participants are discouraged from writing, I could not help making some notes every day. This is an honest ten-day session, not eight days in the middle bookended with half days of in- and out-processing. We got started on the eve of the course with some meditating in the Dhamma hall. The teacher and assistants also explained how the next 10(+) days would proceed. There were 33 men (me as the sole non-Indian) and 17 women (four non-Indians). We sat on the floor on 30" square pillows with a smaller rectangular pillow under the butt. Already, in the first couple hours, I shifted repeatedly because of the pain.

Our schedule

Day 1) They wake us by ringing a gong in the center of the campus. Much more peaceful than an alarm clock. Mid-way through today I envision myself dejectedly scrawling the first of ten hash marks on my cell wall. The life of a monk or the that of an exiled prisoner? The idea is not to react to any sensation - pain, itching, twitching, etc. Watch them with the knowledge that the truth of the universe is that all things arise and pass and so will your sensations. In the instructor's words, "No itch is eternal."

I tried sitting "Indian" style like most of the other meditators but within an hour or so had to unfold my legs because of the pain. As the day wore on, my changes became more and more frequent. Of the other men, only one - a 60(+) year-old Sikh man, 70 or so pounds overweight fidgeted more than me. Temps are in excess of 100 degrees. With nothing to divert my attention, I cannot believe the monstrous and slowly unfolding length of the day.


One of the meditation halls

Day 2) I'm glad I can't speak with anyone. This is hellish and I want to see how I deal with and interpret it. This a.m.'s first session was the worst so far. The pain was excruciating but fighting it while falling in and out of sleep infused the entire two hours with a nightmarish quality. The Sikh man (and two others) now sit on chairs in back.

Day 3) I realized that I forgot to take my Doxycycline (for malaria) for the past two days. Otherwise preoccupied. The silence and isolation help instill the sense of individuality and earnest importance of this whole endeavor. We've been give plenty of instruction but as the teacher quoted Buddha last night, "I can show you the path but you must walk it yourself."

This a.m. I finally got a glimpse of non-thought. My mind focused and slowed. It was brief, just a few short interrupted silences, but shortly after came a wash of insights and a feeling of clarity. Shutting out the background noise works like a long-overdue laxative. Unfruitful thoughts like status or money concerns or guilt about people I've wronged or indictments against those who've 'wronged' me or hedonous revelry melt away. Goenka (the founder of the Vipassana organization) in last night's discourse, laughed that the mind "is like a wild monkey swinging from branch to branch." How apt. Until I got a glimpse of my mind's mania, I'm not sure I would have understood his analogy. My thoughts seem to run as fast as possible from one to the next. There is a dissonant narrative loop playing in my head constantly. It's very likely you wouldn't even see unless you were patient and wanted very much to see it. The brain is tricky and seems supremely eager to not let you get a look at it.


The scene tonight outside the Dhamma Hall was like an infirmary. Men tottering to and fro their hands pushing where their hips meet their spines. Groaning and sighing. Some lie flat on the low cement berm to rest their backs. Five now sit on chairs to the real of the meditation hall. Temps were in the neighborhood of 110 degrees today. Everyone seems exhausted.

Day 4) Our method of meditation changed today. I don't want to give away any surprises but, as the days progress, the course challenges you more and more with increased complexity.
More pain. Many feelings of anger and resentment - all flailing in different directions. Surely this process is dredging up many things. The paramount goal here is to remain equanimous and not judge, just observe what's going on inside.

Day 5) Questions of morality being discussed in the discourse. The ultimate goal here is enlightenment or liberation of the soul. This meditation and self-assessment is the first of many, many long steps. Seven men now sit on chairs or against the back wall.

Day 6) The non-communication ultimately does take a toll. I find myself curious about my compatriots. That's saying quite a bit since I was thoroughly tired of dealing with Indian men before coming in. In many ways, India is a country filled with men who remind me of how I was when I was about 19. That kind of adolescent, know-it-all, loudmouthed, silliness is not at all pretty. Out on the street, they're always smarting off about something. It must be killing them to have to keep their mouths shut. Some already have not been able to resist.

The pagoda

Day 7) Today we were each assigned meditation cells in the above pagoda. Fascinating. The cells are small and dark. Inside you are hyper-aware of even small sensations compared to in the meditation hall under the fans. I was much better able to concentrate. By the end of the day, I was drained. I have not focused so hard for such a protracted period on anything like this in years. I finally accomplished a half lotus position for one of our group sittings today. It was hard but it allowed me to sit nearly perfectly straight up making for much better concentration. My knees now feel like someone's been hammering on them, though.

Day8) Everything has been wratcheted up for the home stretch. Again, I don't want to give away any surprises but the program for the week is progressive in what is demanded. The message driven home repeatedly is simple - 1) be aware and 2) be equanimous. "See" the world for what it is and don't hold attachments or aversions to what you see. This all begins with looking at yourself.

Day 9) Victories in this process come unexpectedly. Today I sat in a half lotus. After about 45 or 50 minutes I had a wide-open opportunity to look into the heart of pain. The pain in my right knee throbbed with a glowing heat but, with the faith that I wasn't doing any damage and with the further advice of the Dhamma that I should just be an observer, I sat. Instead of focusing on other thoughts I zeroed in on the pain. It seemed like it actually had something to tell me and part of that message was that running away wasn't necessary.

Following on the heals of this, I was able to let go of my anger at the other meditators who, by now, had been flagrantly disobeying the precepts of the course. As expected, the Indian guys caved on the non-talking agreement. By day 6 a small group of them casually conversed whenever the teacher wasn't around. At their worst, they joked and seemed to mock the whole process. I kept wondering why they were there. It was huge relief not to care any more. I was moving forward.

Day 10) This is a big summary day. After the morning's group sitting, we are finally able to talk. I seek out Tami and we meet in front of the office - the only place men and women can talk (but not touch). I feel clean, grounded, tired but exhilarated. At first words don't come easily. What can I say about something that feels profound. On my way, one Indian man who seemed to work the course seriously asked how I felt. I replied, "good". I asked him and he smiled and said, "I got something new." No small praise in a cynical, message saturated world.

May 13. Back to the top of this entry. Yesterday was our first full day out of the Vipassana center. Things move a LOT faster out here. I was a little disappointed (attachment!) to find I had to let go of some of my hard-earned tranquility. Just crossing a busy street here is at odds with thorough reflection. That's how it is, though. Tami and I also both noticed that our sense of smell was back to normal. The smells on the street were overwhelming just like when we arrived in India. Pee-yewww. (aversion!) Another funny thing was that I kept forgetting to pay for purchases. I guess being on the all-inclusive honor plan for 10(+) days somehow took me out of the loop of commerce.

Random Notes from the Great Thar Desert

Currently writing from Jaisalmer, a city in western Rajasthan. This is a desert state and Jaisalmer, founded in the late 12th century prospered on the trade of gold, silver, sandalwood and opium. These days, it sustains itself on tourist and military spending. This is about as far west as most travelers make it in India. The Pakistan border is only a 100 km away - hence the massive military presence.

The main attraction for tourists like us is the massive old fortified city. It cuts quite a profile against the bleak Great Thar Desert. The fort and all the buildings in town are made of the same golden local sandstone much of it carved with fanciful natural and geometric detail. The oldest lanes of the city have the feel of something I'd expect out of caravan times.


If you look on a map, you can see it's isolated out here. At night the stars shine bright and luminous. There is a restaurant that serves passable Italian food - something we haven't had in quite a while. Their location is romance par excellence with seating along the top of one of the ancient walls next to the city gate. Last night, Tami pointed out a satellite cruising overhead as we ate.

People have been living here for a long time - not as many people as live here now, though. Their lifestyles have changed dramatically, too. Until fairly modern times (less than the last 100 years) people who lived in the desert made do with very little water. They cooked their vegetables in the same water in which they washed them. Any water that was left went to the livestock. Rajasthan is in a state of perpetual drought (the definition of a desert, of course). Nonetheless, the population is quite a bit bigger than California and it gets even less rainfall. Currently, Rajasthan has more than 50 million people and is expected to have 80 million by 2016.

Depending on the severity of the 'drought', on any given year over 1000 villages and more than 300 towns receive all their water via truck or train tankers. We saw this camel tanker yesterday. There was a little depot on the edge of town and four of them waited to fill up.

Camels aren't the only big animals out here. This being India, there are plenty of cows - sacred to Hindus. It's not unusual to see big ones like this girl below waiting at the door of a house waiting for any leftover "chapatis" - rounds of flat bread. They'll climb right up the stairs and wait for someone to feed them...and inevitably, someone does.

Beach Cow

Fourteen years ago I stumbled into Goa after two months of racing around big tracts of north India with my friend Sherry. She returned to the US to go to school and I headed south to a place where I'd heard that a traveler might be able to decompress from the craziness of the Subcontinent. I figured I'd stay for a few days or a week then head back into the fray. I stayed for a month....and still had to reluctantly drag myself away.

Me on Asvem Beach - Goa

This time around, Tami and I almost didn't bother stopping in Goa. The sad reality of the evolution of almost all travel destinations is that they almost never get better over time (see the country of Thailand or the city of Kathmandu as exhibits "a" & "b").

Tami with Vagator Beach behind - Goa

A good beach is just as much of a lifesaver as ever here, so we followed the advice we'd gotten from a handful of seasoned travelers and headed to a town called Gokarna on the coast of Karnataka State. The beaches were nothing short of epic and supremely relaxing. Almost all the development was low-impact bamboo and thatch but you could always get a cold beer or some decent dal and rice or a fruit salad.

Morjim Beach from Vagator Fort - Goa

We ended up staying for about ten days - a few days of which we spent checking out big festival in honor of the God Shiva. I was ready to head to Mumbai but Tami had heard me talk so glowingly of Goa over the years that she had to at least see it. We agreed to visit Chapora, the small village I'd stayed in in 1994.

Holiday makers on Asvem Beach - Goa

We ended up staying more than two full weeks and...."still had to reluctantly drag ourselves away." :)

Putting in on Kudle Beach - Gokarna

Goans and travelers have had a decade and a half of development to ruin things and, admittedly, some things are not perfect. On the whole, though, Goa is still one of the best beach scenes I've ever spent time in. Development has been kept low impact i.e. no high rises. The coast is breathtaking. The dance scene has plenty of energy. The people, especially Goans and the long-time visitors are laid-back and seem to be open to all kinds of lifestyles yet tourist culture hasn't overwhelmed the flavor of the place. The live-and-let-live attitude that Goa became famous for still flourishes.

Dog days on Kudle Beach - Gokarna

For the first time in more than two years we were able to dance - I mean boogie down for hours at a time. The vibe on the dance floor reminded us of the best scenes at home - everyone friendly and connecting.

Low impact development on Paradise Beach - Gokarna

Goa is one of the Grande Dames of budget travel. Backpackers have been coming here for more than forty years. The package tourists are here, too, but they stay to their own areas in central and south Goa. Backpackers still have some places (the best ones really) all to themselves. If you're willing to stay in a hut, get around on a little scooter or hump your pack down a ravine to the beach, you can get some quality solitude.

Backpackers trundle off Kudle beach to the road - Gokarna

And....one interesting thing about Indian beaches is that it's still India. You can never be sure what you're going to see.
Beach cow with a growth - Gokarna

Those Eyes....

A few days ago Tami and I bused it for ten hours from Patan in Gujarat to Jodhpur in Rajasthan. Sometimes, especially when you venture off routes not frequented by western travelers, you become a spectacle. You see it most at extremes. In Mumbai, we hardly drew a second glance. Mumbaikers (as the city's denizens are called) have seen it all, like people in any other world capital. It didn't take long after we left to feel the change, though. It's a safe equation that you can ratchet up your chance of drawing attention with every few kilometers you go into the folksy hinterland.

I think I've mentioned before that privacy is tough to find in India. Now, after three trips and more than a cumulative year in the country I see one of the things about traveling here that is most exhausting. If you've never been subjected to it for a prolonged period of time (and prior to traveling here, I hadn't), you don't understand that constantly being stared at is a form of psychological torture. It can make you CRAZY.

There's no doubt I'm more aware of it more because I'm traveling with Tami. She, draws far more stares than I do...but I see most of those and try to run interference when I can. Even on my own, though, I guess I look different enough to be the news of the day when nothing else is doing.

The guy at the photo above sat across the aisle from us on the bus ride I spoke of. He got on in some small town and COULD NOT STOP LOOKING. He gazed with such an absence of reserve that I am convinced he did not believe I was another human. For a long time I hid behind my sunglasses and tried to ignore him. I have no idea what he found so interesting but he sat with his head craned around for a solid two hours. Once in a while I'd look directly back at him and he would not flinch - not a thing in his expression changed. It was unnerving.

If I made a note in my journal, his eyes followed my hands like they were going to burst into a shower of gold flakes. If I reached into my bag for gum, he watched every move - from pack to mouth. I took the photo above by taking my camera out of my bag while it was down between my legs. I never looked at him - just pointed the camera at him because I knew he was staring and fired.

Finally, I started writing about it in my journal. This....I can only guess...what too much for him. He actually offered his seat to a man standing next to me and stood in his place looking directly down on what I was doing. I lasted about two sentences and folded up shop. No one else on the bus (except Tami, who'd gone completely incommunicado behind her shades and I-Pod) showed any sign that they thought it was weird. And why should they, many folks here stare. They don't care that some stranger stares at a foreigner.

Thank heavens he got off at some other small town. He left without a word but kept glancing back right until he stepped off the bus.

Bye, bye...

Hooray for Bollywood

Been off-line for awhile. This being our home stretch (in a quite literal sense) we've been moving and seeing things at a brisk pace. We were in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) recently. Mumbai is the main home of the Indian movie industry usually refered to as "Bollywood". They make a lot of films in Bollywood - upwards of 800 a year, I believe. For reasons I don't fully understand, the makers of films in India like to have non-Indians appear as extras. This is so common that the Lonely Planet guidebook even has some pointers on places you might get "discovered".

One recent day, Tami and I were walking into our guesthouse and a man asked us if we wanted to be extras. Tami hesitated b/c she had to replace her camera that had just died. I thought, "Why not?" and arranged to be picked up the next morning at 6:00 a.m. From the very first, it was clear that this was not going to be a...glamorous endeavor. You see, three or four blocks up the street is the Taj Palace, the nicest hotel in Mumbai. We saw Westerners of all stripes coming and going through the Taj's noble portal every time we passed. No, to find his Euro/North American faces, the casting agent came instead to the small cluster of guesthouses (some might call it a ghetto) frequented by backpackers. I guess when you're in the background it's not so important that you have long straggly hair or haven't shaved in weeks (as did the Argentine who was with us). They just want folks with round eyes and light skin.....that, and they only want to pay 500 Rupees a day (about $15). Whatever, it wasn’t about cash. The 500 roops didn’t even cover our room. I figured it might be worth some laughs…and it was….for about two or maybe three of the nineteen hours.

I and a couple other sleepy looking scruffs piled into a small bus with about a dozen people of various national origins but all uniformly European. No one talked except for one, probably over caffeinated young woman from Buffalo, NY who announced to her friends that it was “croissant time”. Where she got one in Mumbai I do not know. Our shuttle driver sped off through pre-rush hour Mumbai with speed being the operative word. We bumped and turned and jostled on roads I’d have driven at half the speed and that in a sports car. He clearly had a deadline and in this case the operative word, I hoped, wasn’t going to be dead. We only got stopped by one cop. I watched the driver not so slyly slip him a handful of bills and we were rolling again in less than two minutes. It took us a full hour to cross Mumbai, 100% of the way by surface streets. It’s a BIG city. At last we wound our way through a very stinky little slum then a line of trees and finally out to the edge of a broad beach.

All the accoutrements I would have expected were there – generator truck, props, cameras, lighting equipment, tents, etc. It was a real production. The “white folks” first stop was at our canteen setup. Breakfast on the beach was a decent way to decompress from the terror of the breakneck Rally of Mumbai.

Most of the people just nibbled but I dug right in and piled my plate high. Something instinctive told me that there were no guarantees when I’d get a chance to eat again and thank heavens I did. With about 150 people trying to coordinate shooting on a beach, take after take pushed lunch from noon to one to two and so on. Almost all the extras were moaning with hunger (and boredom) by mid-day. The “stars” had their own little table with snacks and tea and coffee but it was made clear to a couple of the riff-raff that we weren’t supposed to touch it.

They hustled us through breakfast to "wardrobe" where we were fitted in whatever passed for the Indian idea of beachwear for westerners. The girls got a lot of floral print things that hid skin and the guys got shorts and singlets that made us look like strongmen from the early 1900's.

Work commenced. It turned out we were shooting a "two-fer" that day: one commercial for Sony Handycams and one for an Indian bank - both themed with families at the beach.

It was also fun to see the production assistants run and jump...and splash...to get the shots. I'm glad I don't do this for a living.

The best part was undoubtedly hearing the director shriek at his assistants on the loudspeakers in his mix of Hindi and English. As the tide receded from the prepared set, "WE'RE LOSING THE F*CKING PANNI (water) MAHESH! IF WE DON'T GET IT THIS TAKE YOU CAN KISS YOUR OPENING SHOT F*CKING GOODBYE! CELLO!! CELLO!! (go!, go!)"

My role was supremely easy. I got placed next to the lovely Genvieve from Montreal. Our background roll was to make conversation and look like we were having fun at the beach. Not the easiest fifteen bucks I've ever made but certainly not the hardest.