So I wrote this a few days ago and I don't feel like changing the tense. As I wrote it the woman next to me was staring over my shoulder trying to look at what I was writing, as if she had any means by which to understand it. Maybe no one writes in China, maybe it's the act she found so mesmerizing.
So I'm on the train from Hangzhou to Guangzhou for the next 20 hours and when I first boarded there were more people on the train than I can recall ever seeing on any train, anywhere, and that's saying a lot because I went to India once. There were people all through the aisles, in the bathroom, in the little cranny next to the bathroom, in every seat, some even sitting on laps of others, very possibly strangers. And there was luggage everywhere, in places you would never even think to put luggage, and no clear space for my hulking bag.
So I located my seat slowly and, unsurprisingly, found it occupied, but, somewhat surprisingly, by a baby. I had a quick discussion with him about how he was in my seat and surely he had simply made a mistake, but only after I showed his mother and every other person around me my ticket, emphasizing the seat number with my finger, did anyone move at all, and even then, very casual and begrudgingly. But happy day I got the window seat by some stroke of luck and there was no way some fucking baby was going to deprive me of that sweet, sweet joy. It truly is the difference between a night of a little sleep and a night of no sleep whatsoever.
Even after getting the baby out of the way, no one was moving to actually allow me access to it, so I threw my man purse over several people (they are rather small, it was easy) and landed it perfectly in my berth.
Next up, my backpack, which was going to be more difficult as I couldn't even move enough to get it off my back. I tried making gestures to my back and then up to the luggage racks and then moving from side to side a bit as if to say "could you please get right up out my way", and soon the man next to me sprung into action, parting the crowd toward the only space I could see in the entire car big enough for my bag, and when we got there he bent down for a moment and materialized some magic purple duffle bag from out of the ether and lifted it up to place into my bag hole. Dick. Even when you think you've found a good one, you haven't.
I realized that my usual approach of polite, soft-voiced tones and incoherent hand gestures wasn't going to work this time; I was gonna have to go Chinese style. I forcefully pushed my way past two people, nearly lifting one of them off the ground, then gently urged a man out of his seat so I could stand on it to begin rearranging the luggage rack to make room for my own. After 5 minutes and with shockingly little regard for any luggage that wasn't my own, I had managed to a small space to fit it, sideways and hanging precariously over the edge, but rammed so tightly between two others as to provide me assurance enough against it's dropping in the night onto some poor Chinese head.
There is a dude whose job it is to walk the entirety of the train making sure all the luggage is safely stowed, moving it around when it isn't, and when he made it my bag he said something rapidly which I took to mean "who in Mao's name does this one belong to?", because directly afterward everyone around pointed and looked straight at me. Then he muttered something like "why did I even ask" or "fuckin' white people" and moved on without doing a thing.
Luggage stowed, I climbed down from the seat and let the rightful owner re-occupy his place and in his movement to my right side used him as a buffer to move past him and, with that new momentum, past the family who hated me with their eyes and their immovable bodies and landed safely into my beautiful window seat.
I've yet to get out of it in six hours because I worry if I do I'll never get back into it. And I worry that if this little kid decided to bounce off me the entire night I might have to club him like a seal. Just kidding, but seriously, just kidding. I saw this kids mom get so pissed at him earlier that when he turned his head away she pushed it right into the table and tried to make it look like it was his fault. He wailed and wailed and at the time I felt quite bad for him, but now I no longer do.
It remained pretty much like this for 21 hours. It was great.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
China
Despite the people, China is a lovely place, naturally one of the most stunning places I've been. The China you've seen in pictures, huge mountains, lush greens, big water, really is the China that you find there. Some of the mountains have such odd formations you wonder how they don`t fall into the sea. And the smog, as well, is quite like you've heard or seen. Except it's worse. In Beijing you literally couldn't see the other end of Tiananmen Square from one end. Even the ever imposing painting of Mao hanging above the Forbidden City gets a little blurry. It was crazy, and quite bothersome as you had to wait until morning to judge how smoggy it was going to be before planning on what to do. Super smoggy, go visit the preserved corpse of Mao Zedong housed indoors, not as smoggy, temples and gardens outside.
And not only the big cities, all cities. Cities I had truly never heard of that house millions of people that you couldn't`t see from across the street.
Chinese people have this great habit of spitting, reaching deep within their guts first to summon every last glorious drop, then letting it fly in the loudest possible manner towards the nearest possible section of ground, be it inside or outside. This might sound awful but I came down with a cold a few days into China that stayed with me the entire time I was there, so the ability to cough up some seriously nasty shit that really wanted out of my body in public was actually a strange comfort. Urte did not see it that way.
In Xi`an we took the bus an hour out of town to see the famous Terra Cotta Warriors, a massive underground tomb filled with over 7,000 life-size terra cotta figures in full battle armor, each with distinctive faces built hundreds of years ago during the Qin dynasty and then buried with terra cotta horses, birds, weapons and the unlucky few real humans who set the final figures in place before the entrance was sealed behind them, burying them alive. I had seen pictures of the figures for years and thought that I would be a bit unimpressed, but once you get out there and see the magnitude of the undertaking and realize the balls of emperor Qin Shi Huang in hoping he could carry all this might into the afterlife, it is quite stunning. There are three different buildings in which the warriors are housed, and the largest of them is as big as two aircraft hangars. And after seeing all the excavated warriors you find out that the excavation is still ongoing, and that they expect to find many more, and also that 2 km away lies Qin's own tomb, a massive underground pyramid that is the biggest known tomb in the world. Mad, mad people have existed before us.
In Luoyang we walked two sides of a river where hundreds of years ago a hundred different people spent years carving likenesses into the rock face.
In Tai`an we walked up and down over 20,000 steps to reach and descend Mt. Tai`shan with thousands of other people.
In Shanghai we walked into the future, or the past, depending on your architectural affinities, and saw one of the world`s greatest skylines.
I spent my entire allowed stay of 30 days in China (for which I paid $198 for my visa in Nepal), breaking off with Josh and Urte a few weeks ago in Shanghai as they flew off to Japan and I traveled further south to Hong Kong. On the way down I stopped in Suzhou, a slightly quiet city referred to (at least by some Chinese people) as the Venice of China due to the canals streaming throughout, then Hongzhou with it`s massive lake Xi Hu, to which every single person in the in Zhejiang province had decided to come the weekend I arrived (apparently the second biggest holiday in China) and then to Guangzhou (ugly, hot) for a couple hours before catching the train to Shenzen (clean, hot) and walking myself across the border to Hong Kong, mere hours before my visa expired. There, I spent a few days walking the streets I walked almost exactly a year prior, watching A Symphony Of Lights at Victoria Harbour every night at 8pm, haggling for a room at the Chung King Mansions, eating red bean curd peanuts (the absolute best peanut in the world), even going back to Hotel New China to ask if they ever found the journal I left hiding under my mattress when I stayed there a year ago. They thought I was trying to use this story to haggle for a better room price. This is why I love Hong Kong. For someone who rarely returns it was nice returning.
And not only the big cities, all cities. Cities I had truly never heard of that house millions of people that you couldn't`t see from across the street.
Chinese people have this great habit of spitting, reaching deep within their guts first to summon every last glorious drop, then letting it fly in the loudest possible manner towards the nearest possible section of ground, be it inside or outside. This might sound awful but I came down with a cold a few days into China that stayed with me the entire time I was there, so the ability to cough up some seriously nasty shit that really wanted out of my body in public was actually a strange comfort. Urte did not see it that way.
In Xi`an we took the bus an hour out of town to see the famous Terra Cotta Warriors, a massive underground tomb filled with over 7,000 life-size terra cotta figures in full battle armor, each with distinctive faces built hundreds of years ago during the Qin dynasty and then buried with terra cotta horses, birds, weapons and the unlucky few real humans who set the final figures in place before the entrance was sealed behind them, burying them alive. I had seen pictures of the figures for years and thought that I would be a bit unimpressed, but once you get out there and see the magnitude of the undertaking and realize the balls of emperor Qin Shi Huang in hoping he could carry all this might into the afterlife, it is quite stunning. There are three different buildings in which the warriors are housed, and the largest of them is as big as two aircraft hangars. And after seeing all the excavated warriors you find out that the excavation is still ongoing, and that they expect to find many more, and also that 2 km away lies Qin's own tomb, a massive underground pyramid that is the biggest known tomb in the world. Mad, mad people have existed before us.
In Luoyang we walked two sides of a river where hundreds of years ago a hundred different people spent years carving likenesses into the rock face.
In Tai`an we walked up and down over 20,000 steps to reach and descend Mt. Tai`shan with thousands of other people.
In Shanghai we walked into the future, or the past, depending on your architectural affinities, and saw one of the world`s greatest skylines.
I spent my entire allowed stay of 30 days in China (for which I paid $198 for my visa in Nepal), breaking off with Josh and Urte a few weeks ago in Shanghai as they flew off to Japan and I traveled further south to Hong Kong. On the way down I stopped in Suzhou, a slightly quiet city referred to (at least by some Chinese people) as the Venice of China due to the canals streaming throughout, then Hongzhou with it`s massive lake Xi Hu, to which every single person in the in Zhejiang province had decided to come the weekend I arrived (apparently the second biggest holiday in China) and then to Guangzhou (ugly, hot) for a couple hours before catching the train to Shenzen (clean, hot) and walking myself across the border to Hong Kong, mere hours before my visa expired. There, I spent a few days walking the streets I walked almost exactly a year prior, watching A Symphony Of Lights at Victoria Harbour every night at 8pm, haggling for a room at the Chung King Mansions, eating red bean curd peanuts (the absolute best peanut in the world), even going back to Hotel New China to ask if they ever found the journal I left hiding under my mattress when I stayed there a year ago. They thought I was trying to use this story to haggle for a better room price. This is why I love Hong Kong. For someone who rarely returns it was nice returning.
Tibet
The Chinese government blocks many websites, including Blogger, Facebook and Wikipedia. They seem rather determined to write their own history, and it may be working: I spoke with many people who thought that when you would type in Facebook.com and arrive at the "web page not loading properly" page that it was because of some fault in the website, not a direct block by the biggest of big brothers. Very strange. Now on to better things.
Tibet was unreal, unlike any landscape I've ever seen. In certain passes you would see these huge 6-7,000 meter mountains one right after the other. You'd see Everest, then turn a corner and see an equally stunning peak you've never heard of. Literally mountains everywhere in every direction all the time. And the elevation of the entire country is always above 3,000 meters (close to 10,000 feet) and at our highest pass we hit 5200, which is 17,000 feet, over three times as high as Denver. The capital Lhasa sits at around 13-14,000 feet. I have never been anywhere near that height and was completely unaware of exactly what it can do to a body. On our very first day as we climbed our first pass I began noticing that it was slightly difficult to breath, and ahead of me in the front seat Josh began to lay his head back against the headrest often and seemed strangely tired. We stopped for lunch and things seemed fine, but an hour after getting back on the road we climbed to the 5200 meter pass and by the time we got there I could tell that my body did not work as it used to. We stopped the jeeps so everyone could get out to take some photos and have a look around at the scenery. I had to pee so I walked maybe 50 yards off the road to a bathroom which had a staircase of maybe ten stairs leading up to it. By the time I got to the top I felt like I had just run a mile. On my way back down I was breathing deeply and feeling totally loopy. I snapped a picture or two because I had to and then got back in the jeep and tried to figure out exactly what was happening. I tried to eat some peanuts and drink water because I figured it would help, but I was having a hard time getting my mouth to do what I wanted of it. For the next hour I barely said a word because I was incredibly tired and somewhat apathetic, zombie-like, and also because I wasn't sure I still knew how to communicate. Finally we came back down to around 4,000 meters and things slowly began returning to me. I realized that none of us had been speaking and that we had all been dealing with the beginnings of altitude sickness. Urte actually seemed slightly drunk for the next hour, which I heard later is common for someone coming out of the heights.
Over the days my body got used to the altitude, but the entire 8 days I was in Tibet it was noticeably harder to breathe. This is made more evident when climbing the innumerable staircases toward monasteries and temples that the Tibetans love to build as high up as possible. All the white kids on the tour were often made to look like old, old men while simply trying to climb up to the second floor to their hotel room.
The next week was quite beautiful, driving the country and stopping in the towns of Nyalam, Shigatse and Gyantse to explore ancient places of worship. I've never met a group of people like the Tibetans, always smiling and loving even when they have no idea who or what you are. I didn't meet one who even looked at me with a frown. One day at the monastery in Shigatse I had walked off on my own to explore quietly when I turned a corner and found a group of 10-15 teenage monks. They invited me to sit with them, as sit was one of the only English words they knew, so of course I did and they instantly began feeling my ears and playing with my earrings. They loved it and couldn't quite grasp it but laughed and smiled. Eventually one of them lifted my jacket sleeve and saw my arms and so I was made to take off the jacket as ten monks rubbed my arms at the same time. Soon word spread to all parts of the monastery and slowly more and more monks arrived to touch me, and soon after a good portion of the tour group arrived to stare with equal amazement at the throng of monks gathered around me. This same story would play out a few more times in the next week, with children or old women in place of monks. Truly unusual people in the most glorious sense of the word.
Arriving in Lhasa I assume everyone has nearly the same reaction, which is something like disbelief mixed with wonder coupled with a frown every time you pass a military base, which we counted 14 of before we made it to our hotel. It really is China there, surprisingly, with military and Chinese flags everywhere in case you haven't quite grasped the concept yet. You have one of the most monolithic buildings in the world in the Potala Palace, somewhat sullied by the new urban mass that has been built up around it. There is a Playboy store not two minutes away. You could be inside a Louis Vuitton and look out the window and see the Potala. I did not expect that. Josh didn't either. We were allowed our one hour inside, basically rushing through the few rooms they allow you to see inside, but the building is truly massive so you know they've got some secret shit hidden in there somewhere.
After the week was spent we said goodbye to our new friends (there were 42 people on the tour) and boarded the Tibet railway for a 36 hour ride towards Xi'an, China. It was crazy packed and the hard seat ticket we bought was truly a hard seat, so much so that Josh and Urte upgraded on the train to a sleeper. I, as I'm sure you would guess, stuck it out in the seat and spent a lovely evening with a complete stranger's head in my lap. No joke, the second Josh and Urte left for their sleeper this guy jumped over to my side and occupied the two vacant seats with his whole outstretched body, and at some point in his slumber he mistook my left leg for a pillow and snoozed away. I, on the other hand, got maybe two hours at most as my pillow was the window or the small table in front of me. I even took a tylenol pm and drank a little strange Chinese booze and none of it helped at all.
You don't really know exactly when you leave Tibet and enter mainland China, because Tibet is, after all, part of China (please sense the sarcasm here), but you definitely feel it in the crazy bustle that moves through every single Chinese city, even the smaller ones, which are still gigantic. And you feel it in the people, who I found for the most part to be rather foul, often looking at you with displeasure and completely unremarkable in any way. There were very few I met who redeemed them, as apparently all the kind ones live in Tibet.
Tibet was unreal, unlike any landscape I've ever seen. In certain passes you would see these huge 6-7,000 meter mountains one right after the other. You'd see Everest, then turn a corner and see an equally stunning peak you've never heard of. Literally mountains everywhere in every direction all the time. And the elevation of the entire country is always above 3,000 meters (close to 10,000 feet) and at our highest pass we hit 5200, which is 17,000 feet, over three times as high as Denver. The capital Lhasa sits at around 13-14,000 feet. I have never been anywhere near that height and was completely unaware of exactly what it can do to a body. On our very first day as we climbed our first pass I began noticing that it was slightly difficult to breath, and ahead of me in the front seat Josh began to lay his head back against the headrest often and seemed strangely tired. We stopped for lunch and things seemed fine, but an hour after getting back on the road we climbed to the 5200 meter pass and by the time we got there I could tell that my body did not work as it used to. We stopped the jeeps so everyone could get out to take some photos and have a look around at the scenery. I had to pee so I walked maybe 50 yards off the road to a bathroom which had a staircase of maybe ten stairs leading up to it. By the time I got to the top I felt like I had just run a mile. On my way back down I was breathing deeply and feeling totally loopy. I snapped a picture or two because I had to and then got back in the jeep and tried to figure out exactly what was happening. I tried to eat some peanuts and drink water because I figured it would help, but I was having a hard time getting my mouth to do what I wanted of it. For the next hour I barely said a word because I was incredibly tired and somewhat apathetic, zombie-like, and also because I wasn't sure I still knew how to communicate. Finally we came back down to around 4,000 meters and things slowly began returning to me. I realized that none of us had been speaking and that we had all been dealing with the beginnings of altitude sickness. Urte actually seemed slightly drunk for the next hour, which I heard later is common for someone coming out of the heights.
Over the days my body got used to the altitude, but the entire 8 days I was in Tibet it was noticeably harder to breathe. This is made more evident when climbing the innumerable staircases toward monasteries and temples that the Tibetans love to build as high up as possible. All the white kids on the tour were often made to look like old, old men while simply trying to climb up to the second floor to their hotel room.
The next week was quite beautiful, driving the country and stopping in the towns of Nyalam, Shigatse and Gyantse to explore ancient places of worship. I've never met a group of people like the Tibetans, always smiling and loving even when they have no idea who or what you are. I didn't meet one who even looked at me with a frown. One day at the monastery in Shigatse I had walked off on my own to explore quietly when I turned a corner and found a group of 10-15 teenage monks. They invited me to sit with them, as sit was one of the only English words they knew, so of course I did and they instantly began feeling my ears and playing with my earrings. They loved it and couldn't quite grasp it but laughed and smiled. Eventually one of them lifted my jacket sleeve and saw my arms and so I was made to take off the jacket as ten monks rubbed my arms at the same time. Soon word spread to all parts of the monastery and slowly more and more monks arrived to touch me, and soon after a good portion of the tour group arrived to stare with equal amazement at the throng of monks gathered around me. This same story would play out a few more times in the next week, with children or old women in place of monks. Truly unusual people in the most glorious sense of the word.
Arriving in Lhasa I assume everyone has nearly the same reaction, which is something like disbelief mixed with wonder coupled with a frown every time you pass a military base, which we counted 14 of before we made it to our hotel. It really is China there, surprisingly, with military and Chinese flags everywhere in case you haven't quite grasped the concept yet. You have one of the most monolithic buildings in the world in the Potala Palace, somewhat sullied by the new urban mass that has been built up around it. There is a Playboy store not two minutes away. You could be inside a Louis Vuitton and look out the window and see the Potala. I did not expect that. Josh didn't either. We were allowed our one hour inside, basically rushing through the few rooms they allow you to see inside, but the building is truly massive so you know they've got some secret shit hidden in there somewhere.
After the week was spent we said goodbye to our new friends (there were 42 people on the tour) and boarded the Tibet railway for a 36 hour ride towards Xi'an, China. It was crazy packed and the hard seat ticket we bought was truly a hard seat, so much so that Josh and Urte upgraded on the train to a sleeper. I, as I'm sure you would guess, stuck it out in the seat and spent a lovely evening with a complete stranger's head in my lap. No joke, the second Josh and Urte left for their sleeper this guy jumped over to my side and occupied the two vacant seats with his whole outstretched body, and at some point in his slumber he mistook my left leg for a pillow and snoozed away. I, on the other hand, got maybe two hours at most as my pillow was the window or the small table in front of me. I even took a tylenol pm and drank a little strange Chinese booze and none of it helped at all.
You don't really know exactly when you leave Tibet and enter mainland China, because Tibet is, after all, part of China (please sense the sarcasm here), but you definitely feel it in the crazy bustle that moves through every single Chinese city, even the smaller ones, which are still gigantic. And you feel it in the people, who I found for the most part to be rather foul, often looking at you with displeasure and completely unremarkable in any way. There were very few I met who redeemed them, as apparently all the kind ones live in Tibet.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Nepal
Hello all,
A week ago right now I was dropping down over the mountains and into the Kathmandu valley in an airplane that was very literally falling apart on the inside, with windows so burdened by the collected dust of fifty desert years that you could barely see past them, shaking violently as the wind pitched us in all the directions you don't want to be moving in the air. About thirty feet from the ground I still could make out no sign of the runway or any piece of land I could convince my mind would be suitable to build an airport upon, so when the engine suddenly kicked in the afterburners like "oh shit we're going to land on earth not runway" it made perfect sense, and when we did finally land on the farthest southern edge of the blacktop I imagined all of us on that airplane communally let our muscles and minds relax and return to the dim and comfortable pulse of the still living world.
All of this after 40 hours from Lincoln to Omaha to Chicago to Frankfurt to Delhi to here. I was very glad to have arrived.
Since my flight from Delhi was rescheduled, then rescheduled again, and then finally delayed another hour I arrived like five hours later than I had told Josh and Urte to be waiting at the Kathmandu Peace Guesthouse, but shortly after I arrived they came walking down the hill yelling my name and we all hugged and got down to the very serious business of bullshitting and making very big decisions like how to get to Tibet and what part of all the many beautiful parts of Nepal we should spend our time in.
So we ate some Momo's, these little balls that look like dumplings filled with vegetables then wrapped and either steamed or fried, and then set about the task of going to different travel companies to find the best prices. As of right now the Chinese government doesn't allow any foreigner into the Tibet region without being part of an organized tour approved by the Chinese. So, I couldn't just take a jeep to the border of Nepal and Tibet and cross by foot as can be done at so many borders across the world. This is a bit annoying but also financially taxing, as tour companies can charge pretty much whatever they please, knowing travelers have no other recourse if they want in to Tibet, which many travelers, Josh and I in the utmost, do. We were lucky enough to find a man named Suman whose tour was hundreds of dollars cheaper than anywhere else in town and also a very nice man to have a conversation about Nepalese politics with, headhunters, matricide and all. So we basically give him a stack of cash and he goes about dealing with all the Chinese bureaucracy for us, the visas, the Tibetan permit, the tour while in Tibet and the train ticket from Lhasa out of Tibet into China, a ticket which we have to prove we have before entering the country and which has to be for a train leaving right after our scheduled tour is over. The Chinese really don't want you in Tibet unsupervised, like a big overprotective father, but more Asian and militaristic.
So we booked with Suman and set about finding a trekking company to take us into the mountains. After quotes from multiple companies hawking all-inclusive three day tours we found Tiger Travel who would rent us a guide for $20 bucks a day, and we could be left alone to fend for ourselves where food and accommodation are concerned, which we'd rather do anyway as these things are very cheap here. So they rented us Lama, a very kind 28 year old of small stature from the Tamang ethnicity with a big smile and a wife named Maya and a young boy named Adus. He spoke passable English and taught me wonderful Nepalese that sounded so good coming out of his mouth but was wholly ruined when I would speak what, to me, sounded exactly the same as what he had just said. So for the next three days we walked deep into the Shivapuri National Park up some very steep terrain to Chisapani and then on to Nagarkot while I shouted Timonie Costishow (how are you, surely not spelled this way but it's how it sounded) and Chutow Hai (goodbye) at some very confused villagers. I received a reply only one time.
After three days of quite intense hiking and drinking coffee on the rooftops of hotels we returned to Kathmandu to spend a couple more days before leaving tomorrow morning for Tibet for our 8 day trek. After that we'll take the Tibetan railway across the frozen tundra of the Tibetan plateau for 36 hours towards Xi'an. If you haven't heard of this railway, go google it now. It's only like five years old and is one of the most striking examples of modern engineering (as well as colonialism and human rights abuses, but that's not for right now); the train travels across frozen earth on a rail suspended above the ground. The cabins have to be pressurized and extra oxygen in available upon request, and we, as white lowlanders, will probably need it. In some strange proof of genetic connectivity, Josh and I have both had a severe fetish to ride this train since we heard about it independently years ago.
Tonight we go to say goodbye to our good friend Qayoom, the rug purveyor and owner of Rug Up Originals. We met him our first night here and have been visiting him since. He makes us tea and tells us stories of all the people he knows. Last night we gave him a framed picture of us and then took him out for pizza. He gave us these beautiful prints of Everest taken by his friend Jeff Bodz. He is seriously in love with Urte. He would trade his rug shop for her. He will be missed by all of us.
Tibet tomorrow. Josh and I are giddy like children.
Love,
B
A week ago right now I was dropping down over the mountains and into the Kathmandu valley in an airplane that was very literally falling apart on the inside, with windows so burdened by the collected dust of fifty desert years that you could barely see past them, shaking violently as the wind pitched us in all the directions you don't want to be moving in the air. About thirty feet from the ground I still could make out no sign of the runway or any piece of land I could convince my mind would be suitable to build an airport upon, so when the engine suddenly kicked in the afterburners like "oh shit we're going to land on earth not runway" it made perfect sense, and when we did finally land on the farthest southern edge of the blacktop I imagined all of us on that airplane communally let our muscles and minds relax and return to the dim and comfortable pulse of the still living world.
All of this after 40 hours from Lincoln to Omaha to Chicago to Frankfurt to Delhi to here. I was very glad to have arrived.
Since my flight from Delhi was rescheduled, then rescheduled again, and then finally delayed another hour I arrived like five hours later than I had told Josh and Urte to be waiting at the Kathmandu Peace Guesthouse, but shortly after I arrived they came walking down the hill yelling my name and we all hugged and got down to the very serious business of bullshitting and making very big decisions like how to get to Tibet and what part of all the many beautiful parts of Nepal we should spend our time in.
So we ate some Momo's, these little balls that look like dumplings filled with vegetables then wrapped and either steamed or fried, and then set about the task of going to different travel companies to find the best prices. As of right now the Chinese government doesn't allow any foreigner into the Tibet region without being part of an organized tour approved by the Chinese. So, I couldn't just take a jeep to the border of Nepal and Tibet and cross by foot as can be done at so many borders across the world. This is a bit annoying but also financially taxing, as tour companies can charge pretty much whatever they please, knowing travelers have no other recourse if they want in to Tibet, which many travelers, Josh and I in the utmost, do. We were lucky enough to find a man named Suman whose tour was hundreds of dollars cheaper than anywhere else in town and also a very nice man to have a conversation about Nepalese politics with, headhunters, matricide and all. So we basically give him a stack of cash and he goes about dealing with all the Chinese bureaucracy for us, the visas, the Tibetan permit, the tour while in Tibet and the train ticket from Lhasa out of Tibet into China, a ticket which we have to prove we have before entering the country and which has to be for a train leaving right after our scheduled tour is over. The Chinese really don't want you in Tibet unsupervised, like a big overprotective father, but more Asian and militaristic.
So we booked with Suman and set about finding a trekking company to take us into the mountains. After quotes from multiple companies hawking all-inclusive three day tours we found Tiger Travel who would rent us a guide for $20 bucks a day, and we could be left alone to fend for ourselves where food and accommodation are concerned, which we'd rather do anyway as these things are very cheap here. So they rented us Lama, a very kind 28 year old of small stature from the Tamang ethnicity with a big smile and a wife named Maya and a young boy named Adus. He spoke passable English and taught me wonderful Nepalese that sounded so good coming out of his mouth but was wholly ruined when I would speak what, to me, sounded exactly the same as what he had just said. So for the next three days we walked deep into the Shivapuri National Park up some very steep terrain to Chisapani and then on to Nagarkot while I shouted Timonie Costishow (how are you, surely not spelled this way but it's how it sounded) and Chutow Hai (goodbye) at some very confused villagers. I received a reply only one time.
After three days of quite intense hiking and drinking coffee on the rooftops of hotels we returned to Kathmandu to spend a couple more days before leaving tomorrow morning for Tibet for our 8 day trek. After that we'll take the Tibetan railway across the frozen tundra of the Tibetan plateau for 36 hours towards Xi'an. If you haven't heard of this railway, go google it now. It's only like five years old and is one of the most striking examples of modern engineering (as well as colonialism and human rights abuses, but that's not for right now); the train travels across frozen earth on a rail suspended above the ground. The cabins have to be pressurized and extra oxygen in available upon request, and we, as white lowlanders, will probably need it. In some strange proof of genetic connectivity, Josh and I have both had a severe fetish to ride this train since we heard about it independently years ago.
Tonight we go to say goodbye to our good friend Qayoom, the rug purveyor and owner of Rug Up Originals. We met him our first night here and have been visiting him since. He makes us tea and tells us stories of all the people he knows. Last night we gave him a framed picture of us and then took him out for pizza. He gave us these beautiful prints of Everest taken by his friend Jeff Bodz. He is seriously in love with Urte. He would trade his rug shop for her. He will be missed by all of us.
Tibet tomorrow. Josh and I are giddy like children.
Love,
B
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
The last month
I've done an awful job of keeping up with this blog and now that I've been sucked into the whole Facebook thing it's doesn't look to be getting better anytime soon. That being said I'll try to give a brief overview of our time since leaving Indonesia.
First we flew out of Denpasar on Bali to Kuala Lumpur to walk three hundred steps up into the Batu Caves with over a million Indians in Arizona-style heat and the next day we caught a train to Taman Negara the biggest national park in Malaysia and the oldest rain forest in Asia to hike and pick leaches off our feet and eat meals on large platforms floating in the river for a few days before taking the Jungle Railway north to Kota Bharu where we got stuck in a great guesthouse that had a television and a box of hundreds and hundreds of dvd's so I stayed up every night until seven in the morning then slept until after noon and did the same thing for five days until we had finally had our fill of movies and decided to cross over into Thailand for the second time and we spent the next two days on the train traveling from the very southeastern corner to nearly the northern border to Chiang Mai where we did a lot of walking and eating and music playing with some new friends and after a certain time every night we did a lot of saying no to the prostitutes which gets old really fast and after a few days of really enjoying ourselves in one of our favorite new cities we took a very small very cramped bus five hours north to Pai where we relaxed in the mountains and enjoyed the cold weather for the first time in quite some time and met back up with our two new favorite people Faye and Luke from England and the four of us went on the most epic motorbike journey 200 KM into the mountain range and back and near the very end Nate crashed coming around a very sketchy hairpin turn but other than some cuts and bruises he is just fine and since Thailand only gives out 15 day visa stamp for anyone entering the country on foot we were forced to leave earlier than we would have as Northern Thailand is one of the nicest places we've yet been so the four of us caught a bus to Chiang Rai to spend one last night in Thailand that wasn't all too exciting as I had spent the night before in the throws of a horrible fever and somehow passed it on to Nate for the day but luckily the next day we woke up and felt much better and were of to Chiang Khong on the Laos border and after crossing the Mekong on a small boat and then paying our $36 visa fee we were in Houay Xai to spend one night before taking the 2 day slow boat to Luang Prabang which was truly slow but such a great time as we met three more people to add to our growing posse, Lisa from Holland and Alex and Will from England, and a river cutting it's way through enormous mountain passes with Laos on your left and Thailand on your right is not a bad backdrop to spend a couple days viewing and after the first days trip we stopped in small Pak Beng for the night where we found out about a local celebration that we were invited to attend and when we got there it was about five hundred locals drinking Beer Lao and dancing quite badly to live music so naturally I fit right in so we all drank and danced for a while before retiring to our guesthouse where they shut of all the water and electric at a certain hour and the next morning we had to get up far too early for our second day on the boat which was much different than the first as my seat was directly next to the engine and it was so deafening that I couldn't hear anything or carry any type of conversation and it took a good day for my hearing to fully come back after arriving in Luang Prabang but it eventually did and now I have a great story of my nine hour boat journey with what sounded like a helicopter directly beside me and either way it was worth it because Luang Prabang is so lovely and slow nestled between rivers and there are three vegetarian buffets that all cost 5000 Kip (about 60 cents) and everyone sells fruit smoothies and there's even a bowling alley where I proved my incredible bowling skills by bowling a 96 two nights ago on Nate's 28th birthday and right now there are seven of us traveling together and somehow we all really enjoy each other's company and have plans to stay together for the near future and Will has even changed his plane ticket to Australia to stay and travel through Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam with us until Nate and I fly to Hong Kong on the 27th of April so it will be a nice change and a different mode of travel for us for the next seven weeks and we're both really looking forward to all of it but before any of that today we rent bicycles to cycle around the city for a few hours before wondering the night market, eating some cheap vegetarian food and settling down on the roof of our guesthouse with a great view of the city for some beer Lao, cards and conversation until the early morning as we've done every day since we've been here and will probably continue to do until we find some reason to leave the incredible peace covering the city.
Love to all,
B
First we flew out of Denpasar on Bali to Kuala Lumpur to walk three hundred steps up into the Batu Caves with over a million Indians in Arizona-style heat and the next day we caught a train to Taman Negara the biggest national park in Malaysia and the oldest rain forest in Asia to hike and pick leaches off our feet and eat meals on large platforms floating in the river for a few days before taking the Jungle Railway north to Kota Bharu where we got stuck in a great guesthouse that had a television and a box of hundreds and hundreds of dvd's so I stayed up every night until seven in the morning then slept until after noon and did the same thing for five days until we had finally had our fill of movies and decided to cross over into Thailand for the second time and we spent the next two days on the train traveling from the very southeastern corner to nearly the northern border to Chiang Mai where we did a lot of walking and eating and music playing with some new friends and after a certain time every night we did a lot of saying no to the prostitutes which gets old really fast and after a few days of really enjoying ourselves in one of our favorite new cities we took a very small very cramped bus five hours north to Pai where we relaxed in the mountains and enjoyed the cold weather for the first time in quite some time and met back up with our two new favorite people Faye and Luke from England and the four of us went on the most epic motorbike journey 200 KM into the mountain range and back and near the very end Nate crashed coming around a very sketchy hairpin turn but other than some cuts and bruises he is just fine and since Thailand only gives out 15 day visa stamp for anyone entering the country on foot we were forced to leave earlier than we would have as Northern Thailand is one of the nicest places we've yet been so the four of us caught a bus to Chiang Rai to spend one last night in Thailand that wasn't all too exciting as I had spent the night before in the throws of a horrible fever and somehow passed it on to Nate for the day but luckily the next day we woke up and felt much better and were of to Chiang Khong on the Laos border and after crossing the Mekong on a small boat and then paying our $36 visa fee we were in Houay Xai to spend one night before taking the 2 day slow boat to Luang Prabang which was truly slow but such a great time as we met three more people to add to our growing posse, Lisa from Holland and Alex and Will from England, and a river cutting it's way through enormous mountain passes with Laos on your left and Thailand on your right is not a bad backdrop to spend a couple days viewing and after the first days trip we stopped in small Pak Beng for the night where we found out about a local celebration that we were invited to attend and when we got there it was about five hundred locals drinking Beer Lao and dancing quite badly to live music so naturally I fit right in so we all drank and danced for a while before retiring to our guesthouse where they shut of all the water and electric at a certain hour and the next morning we had to get up far too early for our second day on the boat which was much different than the first as my seat was directly next to the engine and it was so deafening that I couldn't hear anything or carry any type of conversation and it took a good day for my hearing to fully come back after arriving in Luang Prabang but it eventually did and now I have a great story of my nine hour boat journey with what sounded like a helicopter directly beside me and either way it was worth it because Luang Prabang is so lovely and slow nestled between rivers and there are three vegetarian buffets that all cost 5000 Kip (about 60 cents) and everyone sells fruit smoothies and there's even a bowling alley where I proved my incredible bowling skills by bowling a 96 two nights ago on Nate's 28th birthday and right now there are seven of us traveling together and somehow we all really enjoy each other's company and have plans to stay together for the near future and Will has even changed his plane ticket to Australia to stay and travel through Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam with us until Nate and I fly to Hong Kong on the 27th of April so it will be a nice change and a different mode of travel for us for the next seven weeks and we're both really looking forward to all of it but before any of that today we rent bicycles to cycle around the city for a few hours before wondering the night market, eating some cheap vegetarian food and settling down on the roof of our guesthouse with a great view of the city for some beer Lao, cards and conversation until the early morning as we've done every day since we've been here and will probably continue to do until we find some reason to leave the incredible peace covering the city.
Love to all,
B
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Good things
Twice in the last two weeks I have found myself in truly alien landscapes, looking around only vaguely understanding where I am, putting it all together very slowly, allowing myself to be taken by it and relegating the understanding to a later day.
The first was at Gunung Bromo, an active volcano in Eastern Java, which constantly spews a steady stream of sulphur and rests in the shadow of another much bigger volcano that shoots ash into the sky every ten minutes. The very lazy take a far too small horse from the base of Bromo to the foot of a staircase that carries you the rest of the way to the summit, but I, along with Anna and Joanne my two new Dutch travel partners, decided to hoof it for the twenty minutes it takes, half amused and half horrified by the fat tourists weighing down their horses. At the summit you stare into the heart of it, a very unusual chalky color flecked with deep maroons in places, then turn to view the surrounding hills and flat lowlands, giants buried in the earth with their spines exposed, colors as rich as you think possible.
The second was the very next day a few hundred kilometers further into East Java at the Ijen Plateau, a place I new almost nothing about before I came other than that it was to be something beautiful, and to some, quite amazing. What I was never told before is that you are going there to witness humanity in a form completely incomprehensible to most, to see a mountain and it's crater merely as a backdrop . As you walk the hour hike to the top of the mountain you begin to see many workers coming up the hill behind you carrying two baskets suspended between a plank of bamboo. At the moment you have no idea what it's used for. The farther you go up, the more workers you see, and eventually you notice that some of them have incredibly large pieces of sulphur rock filling both baskets. When you finally reach the summit you look down into the crater and see the small sources of sulphur leaking out, the brightest blue lake, the fluorescent yellow and dark red walls, the sand trails snaking through the water; then you see to the very bottom, a very, very long and steep way down and you finally realize what these men are doing, where the rocks are coming from, and how completely impossible it seems that men as old as 60 are carrying out loads of sulphur weighing upwards of 150 lbs from the bottom of a volcano up a steep and extremely perilous path only ever wide enough to barely squeeze two people by at the same time, then all the way down the mountain to unload, a journey they can complete twice a day working ten hours each day, being paid the equivalent of US$6 a day. Every one of these men works for 20 years or until they die, which many do from falling, exhaustion and heart and lung problems due to the fact that they are constantly covered and breathing in sulphur, sometimes so thick that you can't see a few inches in front of you, dependent upon the wind to shift to clear the path again. I walked all the way down the path to the source of the sulphur, talked to many of the workers, saw exactly how they were working, got horribly in the way, surely made their jobs more difficult by my presence but not one of them didn't smile and say hello, offer to give me a sulphur rock or ask me for a cigarette that I wished I would have bought a pack of just to give away. None of us, myself, Joanne, Anna, or Kendra and Irene my new American travel partners could make any good sense of it at the time, and even days later we are still enjoying being completely baffled by it.
I decided to follow Kendra and Irene into Bali, and they invited me to come to Pemuteran with them, a small beach village with few tourists, kind locals and good food. Nate eventually met up with us there, and we all snorkeled every day and spent a lot of time relaxing. After four days we had made many new friends and I had traded my t-shirt with Bang Bang, the cook at our favorite road side food stall.
Nate and I are now in Ubud, after a disastrous trip to Kuta to try and find a bar that played the Super Bowl but failing. It's perfect here, everyone loves art and music and the Balinese culture is evident in most everything you see. Today we played with monkeys and Nate almost got his face eaten off, tonight we'll see a gamelan and dance performance, tomorrow maybe some white water rafting then meeting back up with the girls, the next day touring the countryside, Friday to Denpasar to catch a flight to Kuala Lumpur, Sunday the Indian festival of Thaipusam, after that we have no idea.
For those of you worried, last night Nate and I finally found a bar to watch a replay of the Super Bowl, and it was only fitting that the two Arizona boys were joined by another traveler living in Seattle who was from Pittsburgh. The locals working the bar had no idea what we were watching or why it made us so happy.
Love to all,
B
The first was at Gunung Bromo, an active volcano in Eastern Java, which constantly spews a steady stream of sulphur and rests in the shadow of another much bigger volcano that shoots ash into the sky every ten minutes. The very lazy take a far too small horse from the base of Bromo to the foot of a staircase that carries you the rest of the way to the summit, but I, along with Anna and Joanne my two new Dutch travel partners, decided to hoof it for the twenty minutes it takes, half amused and half horrified by the fat tourists weighing down their horses. At the summit you stare into the heart of it, a very unusual chalky color flecked with deep maroons in places, then turn to view the surrounding hills and flat lowlands, giants buried in the earth with their spines exposed, colors as rich as you think possible.
The second was the very next day a few hundred kilometers further into East Java at the Ijen Plateau, a place I new almost nothing about before I came other than that it was to be something beautiful, and to some, quite amazing. What I was never told before is that you are going there to witness humanity in a form completely incomprehensible to most, to see a mountain and it's crater merely as a backdrop . As you walk the hour hike to the top of the mountain you begin to see many workers coming up the hill behind you carrying two baskets suspended between a plank of bamboo. At the moment you have no idea what it's used for. The farther you go up, the more workers you see, and eventually you notice that some of them have incredibly large pieces of sulphur rock filling both baskets. When you finally reach the summit you look down into the crater and see the small sources of sulphur leaking out, the brightest blue lake, the fluorescent yellow and dark red walls, the sand trails snaking through the water; then you see to the very bottom, a very, very long and steep way down and you finally realize what these men are doing, where the rocks are coming from, and how completely impossible it seems that men as old as 60 are carrying out loads of sulphur weighing upwards of 150 lbs from the bottom of a volcano up a steep and extremely perilous path only ever wide enough to barely squeeze two people by at the same time, then all the way down the mountain to unload, a journey they can complete twice a day working ten hours each day, being paid the equivalent of US$6 a day. Every one of these men works for 20 years or until they die, which many do from falling, exhaustion and heart and lung problems due to the fact that they are constantly covered and breathing in sulphur, sometimes so thick that you can't see a few inches in front of you, dependent upon the wind to shift to clear the path again. I walked all the way down the path to the source of the sulphur, talked to many of the workers, saw exactly how they were working, got horribly in the way, surely made their jobs more difficult by my presence but not one of them didn't smile and say hello, offer to give me a sulphur rock or ask me for a cigarette that I wished I would have bought a pack of just to give away. None of us, myself, Joanne, Anna, or Kendra and Irene my new American travel partners could make any good sense of it at the time, and even days later we are still enjoying being completely baffled by it.
I decided to follow Kendra and Irene into Bali, and they invited me to come to Pemuteran with them, a small beach village with few tourists, kind locals and good food. Nate eventually met up with us there, and we all snorkeled every day and spent a lot of time relaxing. After four days we had made many new friends and I had traded my t-shirt with Bang Bang, the cook at our favorite road side food stall.
Nate and I are now in Ubud, after a disastrous trip to Kuta to try and find a bar that played the Super Bowl but failing. It's perfect here, everyone loves art and music and the Balinese culture is evident in most everything you see. Today we played with monkeys and Nate almost got his face eaten off, tonight we'll see a gamelan and dance performance, tomorrow maybe some white water rafting then meeting back up with the girls, the next day touring the countryside, Friday to Denpasar to catch a flight to Kuala Lumpur, Sunday the Indian festival of Thaipusam, after that we have no idea.
For those of you worried, last night Nate and I finally found a bar to watch a replay of the Super Bowl, and it was only fitting that the two Arizona boys were joined by another traveler living in Seattle who was from Pittsburgh. The locals working the bar had no idea what we were watching or why it made us so happy.
Love to all,
B
Monday, January 19, 2009
Indonesia
Nate and I have been in Indonesia for about ten days now, starting in Jakarta for two days and then on to Bandung for one night. We quickly grew tired of the traffic and the noise and the general rush of both cities, so we moved on as fast as we could, as Indonesia only gives us 30 days on our visa.
Most of our time has been spent here, in Pangandaran, a sleepy beach city (at least outside of tourist season) with good waves for surfing, at least one large rainstorm a day, and food for 80 cents. I've have done almost nothing outside of read, swim, run, eat, walk, sleep.
Nate has taken up surfing, and since it's cheap to learn and to rent a board here, he has decided to stay for a while. So, tomorrow I will be taking off alone for Yogyakarta, where I'll spent a few days traveling around the area to see Borobodur, the Prambanan temples, the Dieng plateau and Gunung Merapi. Then I'll head East to Solo, then off to Gunung Bromo before reaching the Easternmost tip of Java to catch a ferry to Bali, where, at some point and some location, Nate and I will meet up again to fly back to Kuala Lumpur by the 6th, our last legal day in the country.
(About a minute ago there was a massive motorbike accident outside the internet cafe that wiped out about ten motorbikes. Everyone seems alright though.)
But, on the 1st of February I will be desperately seeking out a bar or restaurant or any place that has a television and is broadcasting the Super Bowl so I can watch the Cardinals win their first championship.
Love to all,
B
Most of our time has been spent here, in Pangandaran, a sleepy beach city (at least outside of tourist season) with good waves for surfing, at least one large rainstorm a day, and food for 80 cents. I've have done almost nothing outside of read, swim, run, eat, walk, sleep.
Nate has taken up surfing, and since it's cheap to learn and to rent a board here, he has decided to stay for a while. So, tomorrow I will be taking off alone for Yogyakarta, where I'll spent a few days traveling around the area to see Borobodur, the Prambanan temples, the Dieng plateau and Gunung Merapi. Then I'll head East to Solo, then off to Gunung Bromo before reaching the Easternmost tip of Java to catch a ferry to Bali, where, at some point and some location, Nate and I will meet up again to fly back to Kuala Lumpur by the 6th, our last legal day in the country.
(About a minute ago there was a massive motorbike accident outside the internet cafe that wiped out about ten motorbikes. Everyone seems alright though.)
But, on the 1st of February I will be desperately seeking out a bar or restaurant or any place that has a television and is broadcasting the Super Bowl so I can watch the Cardinals win their first championship.
Love to all,
B
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