Last night’s bus ride confirmed that buses are clearly not the way to travel in India. So with that in mind, tomorrow morning we set off into the desert on camels to spend a night sleeping on the dunes under the stars. I don’t want to get my hopes up as Jaisalmer is one of the seediest tourist traps I’ve ever seen, but even if it’s a disaster, it’ll be a disaster that involves camels which will make for some serious comedy.
No news is good news on the knee. Haven’t bothered to mention it lately because it’s doing really well. It’s bending again and hasn’t hurt in days which makes me think it’s going to be just fine.
By the way, I saw the above portrait hanging in a photo stand and thought it was brilliant. Check out the expression on the guy sitting rear upon the best. It’s the kind of gravitas that can only come from experience leading men at war, ruling a nation, or a severe case of the shits.
In the above clip, Bruce Lee plays Cipro whoopin’ the bad guys in my belly. Note the sheer number and ferocity of the bad guys. But most importantly, note that Cipro wins just in time for my bathroomless bus ride to Jaisalmer for the camel trip over the dunes we’ve been looking forward to. Justice at last.
“Too many bags”, said the indian father with furry ears as I tried to gracefully hobble my way off the train in Jaipur. We had five bags to be exact. And a pair of crutches. How did this happen? We actually have six bags in total if you include the day pack that fits neatly as part of C’s monster backpack. And my crutches. Which were clearly made in India as they’re too small for me anyway and are killing my back. Today is the day to purge. The goal is two huge back packs with a daypack that neatly fits inside each by the time we board our bus to Jaiselmer tonight. Wish me the kind of ruthless detachment that drives parents to sell their children into slavery in order to lessen their domestic burden.
In other news, our day in Jaipur almost ended with the murder of our autorickshaw driver (dunce) who after an afternoon filled with every text book attempt to scam us out of cash between tourist sites crossed the line by trying to convince us to smuggle jewels into Thailand for his friends. Sadly, this scam is so old that it’s actually in Lonely Planet. Bless him. His excuse: “This wasn’t my fault.”
Spent yesterday zipping around Udaipur looking at palaces and temples with a chilled out rickshaw driver named Bunty. He’s apparnetly a bit of a local mogul, owning two autorickshaws of his own by the age of 34. Well done Bunty. The lake palace here is where the Octopussy bond film was filmed and every restaurant shows Octopussy at dinner time. It’s hard to watch Bond with a straight face since Austin Powers, or is it me?
Off to Jaiselmer tonight to ride camels through endless sand dunes. After that, I think I’ll be ready to sit on a Thai beach eating mangos for an indefinite amount of time.
So there I was, covered in crickets, overlooking train tracks caked in human excrement, awaiting a train that was bound to be later than the station had announced, starving for food after a 24 hour fast in the hopes of kicking a stomach bug and thinking “India sucks”. In fact, I believe the words “i hate this place” may have escaped both of our mouths more than a few times in the past few days. But for some reason, that chapter felt finished the second we got off the train in Agra. The air is drier, the city feels cleaner, the people have been friendlier, and we’re being reminded of the side of India that isn’t out to screw, gawk or carelessly poison your food, but the India that infects you with the most powerful optimism in the world after approaching you to just practice its brilliant English.
While packing my crutches and leg into a autorickshaw outside the train station, a number cab drivers came to inspect my situation. As the rickshaw engine started up, one of them told me “Just remember, even if bad time, still best of time. Okay?” He’s right. I’m currently sweating my ass off, my shoes are still caked in varanasi’s holy cow pooh, but I’m staring at the Taj Mahal as I write this and thinking that even at its worst, this is a damn fine adventure and I haven’t been this happy in ages. The best part of all is that we still have two months left, most of which will be spent on gorgeous beaches. I can’t wait.
Off to the Taj Mahal in a few hours to catch the sunset and catching a train to Jaipur tomorrow to explore desert palaces in Rajasthan.
Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, I managed to get food poisoning last night. Combine that with a knee that won’t bend and you have the kind of physical comedy that’s going to crack me up endlessly once this is all over. It turns out, most of the toilet activities inherent in a bout of food poisoning involve bending at least your knees. The good news is that my stomach is better today and I’m all kitted out with crutches and a heavy duty knee brace to make the rest of the trip possible. If I’m still in bad shape come July 9th, I’ll go to a hospital in Bangkok.
We’re leaving Varanasi tonight on a train to Agra to see the Taj Mahal and I really don’t think I’m going to miss it here. It’s impossible to walk through the narrow lanes without stepping in cow diarrhea, the holy river is saturated with fecal matter, most of the people in our hotel have one form of food poisoning or another, and you get the feeling you’re risking a serious case of dysentery with each breath. On the other hand, this place has blown my mind more than anywhere else in India and is more visually stimulating than anything I’ve seen. From the burning ghats where people go to cremate their relatives, ensuring their place in heaven to holy pilgrims, narrow lanes full of surprises and a dodgy element that gives the place a fascinating edge.
Anyway, we have an auto rickshaw coming to take us to the train station in an hour and I have some last minute stuff to do which means I’ll end this here.
No idea what’s wrong with my knee at the moment. Yesterday, it felt so healthy that I was running all over Varanasi without my brace like a cheetah. I felt invincible. Then, on my way back from the burning ghat, something dislocated and ashooting pain that can only be translated into English as “What are you thinking?” took me down just in time for me to block a procession carrying a dead body to be cremated at the ghats. I managed to hobble over to a nearby bench, the corpse made its way to the fire, whatever was out of place went back into place and I was back to my normal self. I figured everything was alright until the same thing happened last night when I was sitting on the roof of our hotel. I bent my knee just a tad and it locked up. I couldn’t bend it until this morning and now everything’s back to normal. Thinking I’m going to hold off until Bangkok to see a doctor as we’re going to be in random towns between now and then. Grrr…
Watching the daily shenanigans surrounding the election, I can’t help but wonder if there’s anything really democratic about any of this. I know. We get to choose in the end and it’s our duty as citizens of a democracy. But I’m not so sure there’s much democracy left in a system that’s fueled by spin, political strategists, and persona management. No matter how much you read, it’s really difficult to know exactly who you’re voting for. And then what’s the point of voting when you’re vote isn’t really informed in the first place.
Most people haven’t heard of Richard Saul Wurman, but he has an interesting philosophy that goes something to the effect of “We can only live in a democracy when information is democratized.” And with that, he’s spent his life creating visual books that make public information accessible to the masses.
If only Richard could paint a clear picture of the candidates we’re currently looking at. Because right now, very little of what I’m hearing sounds realistic or sincere. And without an informed point of view, I may as well decide based on whose wife offers up the best cookierecipe.
There are two ways of describing the past two weeks of trekking in the Himalayas:
The first is a self-congratulatory tall tale about how I dragged an injured knee 70 miles to the base camp of Everest and back with only a bamboo cane, a ratty ace bandage, a loyal porter and a bottle of anti-inflammatories to help me along. How we burned Yak shit for warmth and persevered even as avalanches collapsed all around us. This story will be told to each and every one of you whenever I’ve had too much to drink or I’ve deemed a complaint of yours to be trivial.
The other version of the story hinges on my failure to read an obvious warning in our Lonely Planet Nepal that goes something like “Make sure you are the kind of person who actually enjoys trekking before signing up for a 15 day trek to Everest.” It turns out I don’t really like trekking and 15 days is a long time to spend doing it. I can’t imagine how people manage to do this in the winter when it’s 100 times as cold. And my hat certainly goes off to anyone who attempts the remaining 3500 meters to the summit of Everest (8850 meters above sea level).
We just got back yesterday morning after a ten hour trek through the rain the day before. I’m wearing my last set of clean clothes and have given my shoes away. Once I’ve thawed, there will be pictures to share and stories to tell. But for now, I’m looking forward to spending a few days finishing an amazing book and rewarding my knee for not completely giving up on me before heading to Varanasi.
See here for more photos like the one above or see the sidebar. C also has some great pics on her flickr page worth seeing.
We’re off on a 15 day trek to the base camp of Mount Everest tomorrow morning which means two things:
1. We’re getting the hell out of Kathmandu, away from the pollution, the touts and not a second too soon.
2. The likelihood finding anything new on this blog between now and the 21st is pretty slim. That said, I promise tales of frost bite, avalanches and tea houses once I’m back.
In the meantime, check out this guy’s story.
Made another visit to the Indian Airlines regime today which I imagine is much like visiting an Eastern Block bureaucracy in the early 80s. To my surprise, they greeted my American passport with excitement. Apparently they were dying to chat about the “big positive change in America… like big positive change in Nepal.” They too had apparently heard about the primary, and the prospect of Obama made these guys very excited.
In fact, most of the people I’ve spoken to around the world over the past year have the same view: Bush has made a mess of the world in America’s name and therefore the rest of the world has closed up towards Americans. America needs a huge change in order to open their minds again. My guys at Indian Air felt the same way. And while they have a point about the Bush years that you may or may not agree with, ignore that for just a moment and listen to the way they talk about Obama. “Big positive change for America.” It makes you wonder if the value of Obama is as a symbol of change that gets the rest of the world to reconsider its views of America. Whether or not that’s worth a vote is another story altogether, but in my head we could use a slightly more open world right about now.
By the way, the picture was drawn by a 6th grader in the US: “The split red and blue on the flag shows how America is split by the current government. The faces represent other nations and the headphones represent America’s closed mindedness to other nations.”
–Student artist’s own words.
