but they sure do in nepal. i just finished a 4 day “trek” around the himalayan foothills. it definitely wasn’t camping since every night and every meal was in a tea house. however. it was exactly how nepalis have been getting around nepal for centuries and, given how many i encountered, how most of them still get around, walking for days carrying oranges, chickens and even refridgerators. my guide for the trek hadn’t even seen a car until he was 16. walking is definitely an integral part of nepali culture. the newspapers in kathmandu, which like any city has plenty of cars and roads, still talks of distances in terms of how many days of walking time it is. each morning i’d get to a village a walk for sometimes 2 hours with groups of children on their way to school carrying their books in the typical nepali backpack which hangs from their forehead instead of their shoulders. that’s just how they do shit every day in nepal. and it’s what i did for four, ate dal bhaat, walked, slept in a tea house, woke up and started it over again until i got where i was going.

apart from boiled eggs and oranges (which are all over the valleys of the foothills) dal bhaat seems like all nepalis eat. it’s a massive pile of white rice, some curry, a bowl of lentil soup, and “pickle”. there’s quite a bit of variation possible though. the entire time the only thing that was the same was the rice. i had fish head curry and spinach curry. once me and my guide, kaji, had dried beef curry.

“this is dried beef, very fresh.”
“wait, aren’t you hindu kaji?”
“i just pray beforehand. it’s okay.”

this pickle is also pretty variable. i’m not too good at figuring out what something is based on taste, but one time the taste of the pickle was really distinctive so i asked what was in it. “marijuana seeds.” an interesting not about prices in rural nepal. they are obviously directly proportional to how far some one had to carry it.

like i said there are no roads connection the villages and i don’t know how there could be. they’re called hills in nepal but anywhere else they’d be mountains. and they’re all incredibly steep. my trek was to visit the summit of poon hill in order to get a nice view of the annapurna range of the himalayas. this “hill” is over 3000 m high and the second day we hiked up 1500 of them. now, like i said this wasn’t at all like camping as nearly the entire route was paved with stone which was crucial as the majority of that second day was up inclines steeper than 45°. my calves are still somewhat sore.

but i made it. the view for the top of poon hill was as promised, spectacular. i’ve seen the rockies, the andes and the alps, but the himalayas are something else altogether. it reminded me of the first time i’d gotten flattened by a wave in the ocean.

the trek was based from pokhara which is 200 km west of kathmandu. about how i got there …

between kathmandu and pokhara is a town called gorkha. above gorkha is a preserved medieval palace with some interesting views of the countryside and the himalayas. it seemed like a good place to check out on the way to pokhara. i got to gorkha about noon and started the walk up to the palace as soon as i arrived. the palace was neat and the view was cool, but i decided to keep going up the ridge to try for an even better one. at the top of the ridge is a telecommunications tower which is guarded by not a small number of military personnel who decided that i was not going to be allowed through. so i hiked back down a bit and found a path the curved to the back side of the ridge facing the himalayas.

this is where i met tej. he approached me and we started talking. the view of the himalayas was obscured by clouds and he invited me to his house 50 ft away to wait an hour for it to clear. sounds good. i had some cookies with me and he made us some tea. i spent the entire afternoon with him. we talked a lot about rural life in nepal. he had a garden and a small millet field where he grew food for his family (a wife and 4 children). he earned money as a porter for treks and building houses like the one we were sitting in. it was a single 10×10x6 room which had one bed, shelves, a fire pit, 3 stools, mud walls and floor, with a thatched roof. he described how they, like “every rural person” in nepal, are eking out a living. we talked about his family. he was particularly proud of how far each of his children had gotten in school. he also bragged about having a intercaste love marriage to a buddhist. and he groaned about his teenage daughter’s insistence that he build them an outhouse.

we also talked about life between the maoists and the soldiers. he pointed across the valley and said that the “mao party people” occupied much of that area occasionally forcing villagers to give them money or food. right behind him was the telecommunications tower with all the soldiers. 3 of which, i believe, he quarters. he at least feeds them. while we were talking they walked right into his house and his wife prepared food for them. i asked if they paid for the food but he didn’t answer. he was reluctant to say much of anything about the soldiers in the area, but did tell me about the 8pm curfew.

kaji and i also talked about many of the same things. he also grew up in a rural village in the gorkha district. he was a bit more willing to talk about politics however. when i asked him about the government and the maoists he said that as long as the was no peach he won’t support the prime minister and about the maoists he said, “i don’t really know what they want.” then he added, “everywhere in the world it is poor people who fight and the rich people that tell them to.”

my conversations with kaji those four days and tej that afternoon have got to be the best conversations i’ve ever had while travelling. incidentally, i was the first american that tej, who is 40 years old, had ever met. neat!

the next morning i decided to head to pokhara. the guest house manager told me that there would be a bus for pokhara at 6am. i woke up early and headed to the bus station where i found out that there would be no 6am bus and that i needed to wait for the 9:30 one. so i did and then found out that there would also be no 9:30 bus and that i could wait until the next day. ugh. i was offered a bus to the main road from where i could catch a bus the rest of the way. fine by me.

on the way though, almost immediately in fact, the bus broke down. an hour later another bus came and we all had to pack into that one. now it was a beautiful morning, the valley around us was filled with a dense fog such that it looked as though it was a lake of cloud. this plus my reluctance to sit sardine style for 2 hours is how i ended up riding on the top of a bus in nepal with a goat! one the great travelling stereotypes is travelling with livestock. check! by the way, as romantic as a ride with livestock is, it should be pointed out that goats least feel no compulsion to “hold it” until the next stop. i realized this when brown hail started bouncing off my bag. i quickly shoved the goat’s ass away from my bag before it got christened.

it was a killer journey to say the least and i even made it to pokhara in the end.

i just got the shit kicked out of me. as an adult male is wont i had to get a shave. after discovering that new razors for my first-time-is-free gillette mach3 razor (i got sent a sample razor in the mail) cost Rs 565 (the same price as 4 nights accomodation) i opted for a traditional barber shop shave for only Rs 50. the shave included a massage. the “massage” included getting noogies and conked on the head, slapped basically everywhere above the waist, my neck cracked twice and my arms twisted. had we been boxing i would’ve won by flagrant disqualification. don’t get me wrong it was actually refreshing although in the “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” sort of way.

this was the first thing i did once i got here to kathmandu and i think i deserve a little pampering after the ordeal of getting here.

so.

after spending a couple days in varanasi i decided it was time to head to nepal. now to get to where i wanted to go in nepal involves a 10 hour bus ride to the border from varanasi and another 8 hour ride to pokhara. i hoped to be able to get an overnight bus for the first leg and catch a day bus for the second. i was going to start out on sunday but found out that the night buses weren’t running that day. however. the last travel agent i talked to said that i could still take a train to a town near the border and catch a bus from there in time to make the connection to pokhara. now i had tried to book a train ticket through an agent once before and was given a ridiculously frustrating run around. but i decided to give it another try as the worst that could happen was catching a day bus and spending the night at the border. after waiting a day for the agent to do the leg work i was quite pleasantly surprised to get an actual ticket in my hand. feeling relieved i spent the rest of the day relaxing as my train wasn’t until 11pm.

in varanasi i had been hanging out with a brit named luke that i had travelled with through delhi and an frenchie named antoine who was taking a break from his bike trip through central asia and had flown to india from tehran. we had one last dinner together which involved sitting in the living room of the owner of the restaurant since all the tables were full. nice. as such we got to watch some tv while we ate, even better we got to watch indiana jones and the last crusade. this 14 year old (clearly) indian kid joined us for a bit. he claimed he was from barcelona and was quite good at spanish and i think even knew some catalan. no lie! anyways. after dinner it was time for me to head to the train station. getting there was pretty interesting as that night happened to be a very auspicious night to get married (the same reason there were no buses). as such, i got to see a number of wedding parades. these parades all included four things, as far as i could tell, the groom on a white horse, a marching band, men dancing like they would if they were a bit tipsy at a club and kids carrying flourescent lights in a V-shape with rickshaw mounted generators to power them. with all these parades my rickshaw had to take quite the circuitous route. but i made it there in time.

the train arrived to the platform, stopped for about 1 minute and started going again. i panicked and started booking for the sleeper car since you can’t really board anywhere you like on an indian train (the overcrowding makes it basically impossible to move through the cars). however, it stopped again, i guess it wasn’t far enough forward the first time. out of breath i climbed in.

now. in india you can board a train without a ticket and pay once you’re aboard, this even applies to the reserved cars where it requires just a little “baksheesh” (bribe) to get a seat. sure enough when i got to my sear someone was there. i showed him my ticket and started psyching myself up for the “get out of my seat” conversation. but instead i hear, “december.” i look at my ticket and yep, the fucker who claimed that the greater than 100% commission he charged for my ticket was because it was so hard to book a ticket with such short notice had given me a ticket for a month later.

i was livid.

nevertheless, all i could do was go back to the city and try for a bus in the morning. and in fact, if i wanted to catch that bus i wouldn’t be able to confront the either inept or dishonest travel agent since his shop wouldn’t open until after the bus would leave. i figured that was purposeful and thought i would wait yet another day just so i could lay into the guy on principle. but principles and Rs 35 will get you a curry and $5 was not worth it since as much as i loved it it was definitely time to leave india. so i got on the bus, got over it and decided from then on i have to check the entire date on my tickets.

the bus was quite a nice experience anyway. it was to be 10 hours with pretty basic benches, though padded at least. in typical indian fashion it was very overcrowded but i got there early enough to grab a seat by the luggage so i could stretch my legs (and keep an eye on my backpack). the seat happened to be behind the driver which is how i noticed that while it had a key the bus was started by the driver pinching together two exposed wires. the horn worked (for a while until it shorted out) the same way with the driver touching a wire to the chassis. india is the only place that i’ve seen billboards advertising light switches and i guess now i know why.

on the bus i met a guy named hasan. he had just finished school and was getting ready for university. he wanted to know what he needed to do to get into an american college. all i really knew to tell him was to take the TOEFL. he also wanted me to quiz him on math so i showed him l’hôpital’s rule. he taught me how to count to 100 in hindi and i taught him the same in spanish. we also talked about islam which led to a discussion (that he broached) about osama bin laden. he seemed somewhat guarded about his opinion but said that he felt that bin laden was only an enemy for george bush and not the people of the united states. he also lamented the oppression that muslims experience throughout the world, although he said it is quite easy to be a muslim in india. all in all i really enjoyed talking to him.

eventually i made it to the border starving and with a sore ass. i booked a room in a cheap guesthouse and asked the manager about morning buses to pokhara. he replied, “no buses. two day maoist strike.”

whoops.

the next morning i woke up and walked across the border to the nepal side of sunauli (the border town) which has quite a bit more to it than the indian side. i tried to check my email. “no internet. two day maoist strike.” the area was quite beautiful and while crossing the border i thought it wouldn’t be so bad to spend a couple nights there. however, my total distrust of border towns and the fact that everything looked shut down made me feel less enchanted. when combined with the fact that maoist basically only attack police and military and since everywhere i looked there was another group of soldiers (some behind stacks of sandbags even) i began to feel uneasy. there was an airport 1km outside of town that had flights to kathmandu. so $80 and one hour later i arrived here.

the flight was pretty rad actually. i was worried that i would get a window seat until i found out that they were all window seats. the stewardess even passed out cotton ball ear plugs. and mountain dew which seems to be more popular in southasia than it was in middle school. but, oh my, the view! my first glimpse of the himalayas made me realize that they’re worth all the hoopla. even though the foothills are quite steep they are still farmed. they have dozens of levels of terracing making them look like models of mountains made by layering boards cut along contour lines. and very lush. wow.

but yeah. i’ve left india.

my last few days in varanasi were very nice. mark twain said of varanasi that it is “older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together.. it’s true too. the streets of the old city are impossibly narrow, at times too narrow even for a motorbike. the buildings are not that old but have just been built on top of, around, and through older structures. with the layout of the city and the stopgap, poorly maintained buildings varanasi is a really cool mix of ancient and decrepit.

i also watched a few more cremations. my instinct was to feel like i was intruding but the entire deal was so very unceremonious. the bodies are wrapped in thin fabric and draped with a shiny gold sheet, but all that quickly burns away and the person becomes quite visible. once when i had caught a strong whiff of the fires my stomach turned, but otherwise it was all that impressive.

i also met a niguri a type of ascetic who wears all black instead of the traditional orange. he had with him a human skull and a necklace of small animal vertebrae. niguri coat their bodies with the cremation ashes (mostly just the ashes from the wood) and some even allegedly eat human flesh. his name was baba big black and showed us a photo of him with his head burried in the sand and his body held straight up in some sort of yoga position. he claimed to have been in that position for 48 hours. i was impressed that he could do it at all.

over all india reminded me a lot of manhattan. both places prolly have too many people for such a small place — it never failed to amaze me just how crowded everywhere in india was. and like manhattan the people in india can be unconscionably rude and inconsiderate when they have somewhere to go, something to do, but just as open and friendly when they finally have a chance to relax. however. cows are not free to roam anywhere they please in manhattan. but cows are not a problem in india. they’re slow, extremely mellow, and only annoying if you’re driving and one decides to walk in the middle of the road. yeah, cows aren’t the problem. cow shit is the problem. if you come to india you will at some point, guaranteed, step in some.

varanasi is one of the holiest cities in hinduism, and where i am right now. to die in varanasi means that you are automatically released from the cycle of life and death. in fact, on my way to my guesthouse i walked by someone being cremated over an open fire on a ghat. death and cremation is an everyday kinda thing in varanasi and despite the taboo of photography the event appears to have little more significance than shopkeepers sweeping off their front steps.

i wonder if all life that dies in varanasi gets released from the cycle of reincarnation. if that’s the case then i’m fairly certain they’ll be some mosquitos which are never coming back tonight.

i’ve only been here an hour so far but i’ve had quite a chuckle when i was sitting on my dorm bed looking out the window directly onto the ganges thinking about the cremation i had just seen when suddenly a dance version of the theme from brazil came roaring from the building next door.

ps. so, it turns out that the music was in preparation for varanasi’s biggest festival of the year. the ghats are filled with people dancing. there are candles everywhere and of course … fireworks. little kids are seeing how long they can hold them in their hands before they throw them in the air. hrm. dozens of boats are floating up and down the ganges the moon is full and the smoke from the fireworks is giving this play a very surreal feel. i have the feeling of disorientation without actually being disoriented. it’s a bit like the scene in apocalypse now when they’re blowing up the bridge. goofy.

rishikesh has to be one of my favorite places in india. the blue grey color of the ganges is rad. it flows west carving a valley into the foothills of the himalayas making for sunsets which are about as good as sunsets get. and what’s more there are numerous small (to tiny) white sand beaches along its banks. the city itself is quite small and uncrowded which is a nice break from the other indian cities i’ve been to. it’s just as hilly and vista-y as san francisco as well. i say all that to say that rishikesh is idyllic.

anna and i spent most of our time walking along the river or hiking into the foohills. we made it to the now abandoned ashram where the beatles stayed. it’s only sort of abandoned though. some people appear to be living there and the rest of it is occupied by the largest spiders i have ever seen. these spiders are quite prevalent around rishikesh actually, unfortunate for this swedish girl at our guest house who greeted us outside her room asking, “are you afraid of spiders?” and then asked for our help getting rid of a tiny spider that had crawled onto her bag.

after rishikesh we headed down to delhi. anna had to catch her flight to australia and i had to arrange my visa for nepal. delhi seems pretty standard as asian cities go and admittedly i’m not a fan. delhi reminds me quite a bit of bangkok. both are large, crowded, loud, smoggy, hot, and i only seem to go there while i’m trying to get someplace else. that said i found all the government buildings to be very interesting. they are all quite various shades of the same earthy red with nifty domes and cornices. and. i would definitely recommend a look at the national gallery of modern art. almost entirely indian artists, the collection is an interesting look at european modernism springing from hindu culture instead of christian. much of the artwork there is a result of the british introducing realism and later styles during its occupation of india. not to mention that a trip to a museum ensures a couple hours of quiet and air conditioning.

in order to get my nepal visa i first had to get extra pages for my passport. i’ve never been to a us embassy before and it did not disappoint. nearly all the embassies in delhi are located in the same area. the us one, however, was the only one with a huge line of indians waiting (inside and out) to get visas. when i arrived at the embassy i was ushered past the visa line to the services for american citizens area. the difference between the american and visa applicant areas is like the difference between first class and economy on an airplane. the visa area also got to watch propaganda videos with colin powell describing how much the us has done for india. say what you will about that matter, but personally i’m always annoyed when i’m being advertized to after i’ve already clearly decided to buy the product.

the most notable thing to me however was that the bathroom in the us embassy is the only bathroom i’ve used in india in which i was able to dry my hands afterwards. from sea to shining sea!

once my passport was sorted out i took a train down to agra. the train was to depart from the new delhi railway station. now, also like bangkok, most backpackers stay in the seeming buttcrack of the city. in delhi this area is called paharganj. my theory is that these cities do this to keep the rowdy backpackers out of the face of the people who live and work in the city. however, in delhi’s case paharganj is filled with just as many indians as any other part of delhi. including one day a huge parade of grade schools through the main bazaar of paharganj. it seemed to be mainly a sikh affair which included young male sikh sword dancers and younger female bagpipers … seriously. however. this is not my point. i had to get from paharganj to the train station. naturally, i walked until i found a rickshaw driver. i asked him to take me to the station and then we haggled over the price. he wouldn’t go low enough so i decided to try another. he said something about walking to the end of the bazaar, but i couldn’t really understand him. the bazaar is crazy so i decided that walking the two blocks to get to the end of it was a good idea in any case. once i got to the end i found another rickshaw driver to take me to new delhi railway station. he looked at me and then point across the street to the building with big letters saying, “new delhi railway station.” ah … tourists.

agra is where people go to see the taj mahal. where i am right now. like poutine and canada the taj mahal is the premier tourist attraction in india. and there’s reason. i will join the billion people before me and say that this place is “breathe-taking”. i was somewhat ready for the “grandeur” of the outside, but wasn’t quite ready for how intensely ornate (and entirely marble) the inside is where photography is prohibited.

the taj mahal has quite a history though. most people know the general story. the emperor shah jahan commissioned it for his second wife, mumtaz mahal, after she died in childbirth as a monument to his love for her. things i didn’t know, however, include that shah jahan paid for the construction by levying an oppressive pilgrimage tax on hindus (the majority of india was governed by muslims at this point) and that he amputated the hands and thumbs of many of the laborers so that they couldn’t replicate it. what goes around comes around though. his son, aurangzeb, facilitated by the instability caused by the hindu pilgrimage tax, imprisoned shah jahan and killed all of his brothers in order to take power.

but that was like 400 years ago. now the place is full of tourists and, at least this morning, fog. the fog is nearly as impressive as the taj mahal. pouring off the yamuna river behind the monument it became so thick at times that i couldn’t see the three story tall minarets which were only 50 yards from me. coo-ool.

i’ve now flown on my first passenger prop plane. desperate to get out of bangalore and maximize the two weeks anna has off before she gose back to work we opted for a flight to jodphur, rajasthan. travelling around india is as cheap as you’d like, unless you’re flying in which case it’s every bit as expensive as domestic flights in the us.

but. we got there.

jodhpur was founded in 1459 and is centered around an old rajput castle. the old city of jophpur lies between the castle walls and the original outer city walls. it’s known as the blue city as most of the buildings here are painted sky blue. the city itself reminded me a lot of genoa with cramped, ancient and chaotic streets and the castle imposes itself on the city much like the castle in edinburgh. set in the middle of the desert with actual camels roaming the streets the city felt very foreign.

according to most guidebooks the thing to do in jodphur is to visit this castle. but if you ask me the thing to do is walk past the castle and visit the mausoleum of all the old rajas of jodhpur. it’s cheaper and prettier. then. if you ask yogi, the manager of the guest house we stayed at, the thing to do was try to catch a glimpse of the various famous western actors who (according to yogi) regularly come to jodhpur for filming. it seems that we just missed richard gere and omar shariff.

anna and i spent a few days in jodhpur before going farther west to jaisalmer. jaisalmer it turns out is also centered around a medieval castle which looms over the city the same way. as it appears to be the case for many cities in rajasthan. but the reason we came to jaisalmer was camel trekking. for three days we rode camels through the thar desert near the border with pakistan.

now. i’ve only ever seen camels in zoos. as such i missed a couple important things about camels. first, they are incredibly tall. i could quite easily walk underneath a camel, that is of course if the city boy in me weren’t so scared of getting kicked. and. if i wasn’t so put off by the second important thing. the smell. sweet baby jesus on a hangglider camels stuh-ink. if they’re not pooping, they’re practicing (farting). all the only thing worse than the smell coming out their ass is the smell coming out their mouth. nevertheless i sure felt regal way up high riding them sitting half indian style like in lawrence of arabia.

since i was going to be in the desert i needed some sort of protection from the sun. naturally i opted for a turban. despite being a 7 sq. meter rectangle of cloth they are quite easy to put on. in addition to the turban i had thes wicked rad mirrored sunglasses about half the size of my face. if they hadda been scouting for bad guy extras for jewel of the nile ii i would landed a part easily.

apart from camels there was plenty of other goofy life in the thar desert. i was really into these large black (and quite friendly) beetles which seemed to be everywhere on the dunes. occasionally i would see some sort of half rabbit half deer type thing (yes … a jackalope perhaps). and on the last day we rode through patches of wild, small and round watermelon looking fruits^*. these watermelon seemed to be a favorite of the goats that wandered around the outskirts of the villages in the desert. which brings me to the final night’s meal.

while chatting with our camel drivers the idea of having some desert barbequed goat came up. the drivers told us a goat would cost about 900 rupees, divided by eight. all i could think of was 3 dollars for a traditional desert feast.

it wasn’t until i saw nura, one of the drivers, walking over a dune leading a goat that i fully realized exactly how traditional this feast was going to be. put simply, i’ve now witnessed what some people say all meat-eaters should.

after the camel trip we returned to jaisalmer just in time for the biggest night of the biggest hindu festival, diwali. diwali is often compared to the christmas, presumably because both create the same amount of cultural hype, and commercial hype as well — i am fully stocked with suggestions for what kind of mobile phones are in fashion for this diwali. but it’s prolly closer to hannukah since both are multi day affairs referred to as “the festival of lights”. i don’t know why hannukah is called that because adam sandler’s song wasn’t descriptive enough. but. i did find out why diwali has that name and i think it’s cool.

so. apparently, back in the day it was foretold that some prince was going to be killed by a snake on the fourth night of his wedding. despite this he was married anyway, to quite a thoughtful wife. on the predicted night she placed lanterns all around him as he slept so that the brightness would scare away the snake. well it worked and now we have diwali (well, part of it. diwali actually encompasses lots of other myths as well.) to celebrate this evening hindus place lanterns and “christmas” lights on everything. what’s more they light firecrackers off. everywhere. it seems that little kids are especially happy if they can sneak up behind whitey and set off a really loud one.

after the celebration and a bit of post camel relaxation anna and i headed up to uttaranchal to a city called rishikesh, the yoga capital of the world (the same city that the beatles came to to meet their guru). it’s on the bank of the ganges close enough to the source that you can see that it’s a glacial river. beautiful. we got here yesterday and have been maxing and relaxing since.

*note: under no circumstances should you attempt to even taste the tiniest bit of these “watermelons”. it is the foulest taste on this mighty planet. i don’t care what the goats say.