Monday, March 28, 2011
Mencken said, "to lack a remedy is to lack the very license to discuss the disease".
As he also said, " it is one of the peculiar intellectual accompaniments of democracy that the concept of the insoluble becomes unfashionable....".
It doesn't require much imagination to see that Christianity and Islam derive much of their vigor from having an answer to the question "what happens when we die?", while Judaism, Buddhism, Confucianism, more circumspect, leaves the questioner dangling.
America loves a prescriptive philosophy.
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Sunday, March 27, 2011
Begging is one thing that is different in India than it is in America.
Very few people out and out ask you for anything in India, expecting that you might give it to them out of the goodness in your heart. Rather, they are constantly asking you for work, or simply picking up your suitcase and starting towards your hotel, or stopping their rickshaw directly in your path and making it very difficult not to go with them. Their attitude seems to be that they cannot count on your kindness, but they might be able to make themselves temporarily useful.
In America, people simply importune you for money, and only money, with nothing offered in return.
There's no entrepreneurial incentive for the giver to respond to.
It's not all that difficult to see these characteristics as not simply individual, but national.
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Very few people out and out ask you for anything in India, expecting that you might give it to them out of the goodness in your heart. Rather, they are constantly asking you for work, or simply picking up your suitcase and starting towards your hotel, or stopping their rickshaw directly in your path and making it very difficult not to go with them. Their attitude seems to be that they cannot count on your kindness, but they might be able to make themselves temporarily useful.
In America, people simply importune you for money, and only money, with nothing offered in return.
There's no entrepreneurial incentive for the giver to respond to.
It's not all that difficult to see these characteristics as not simply individual, but national.
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Wednesday, March 23, 2011
India is a photograph in a raw format
A RAW photographic image is a format that leaves all the pixels of an image available for manipulation and interpretation, without any compressing of the image, as in a JPEG format.
A RAW image is just that, raw and unadulterated.
Everything is there; nothing is left out.
RAW files are huge.
They are nearly impossible to transmit, especially from hand-held devices, today's instruments of choice for communication.
Without some degree of compression, as in JPEG, a RAW image is almost not communicable and, therefore, not capable of being comprehended.
JPEG, by compressing the gigantic amount of data into a workable quantity, allows the data (ideas) to be transmitted and received, and, therefore, to be viewed (assimilated) and comprehended.
RAW data is like the blinding light of cosmic revelation; and JPEG is like a religion, a format that tames and interprets the insight, before which we must otherwise remain mute.
For me, India represents, at this point, TMI, too much information.
Difficult to talk about without some serious personal debriefing (compression of data).
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Saturday, March 19, 2011
Joseph Campbell makes the point that religious expression manifests itself in one of two ways: wonder, and self-salvation.
Wonder- seeing the world with eyes brightly-wide.
Self-salvation- a sense of having done something wrong and feeling a need to atone.
In Varanasi, I'm reading "The Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist" that my friend Bloch gave to me before I left. I can understand his hunger for figuring "it" out, but I really, really can't say, as he does, that I have never experienced contentment.
I can say, without reservation, that I have never been down for long.
Am I wrong in assuming that most people feel the same way?
Though being happy, or not, doesn't seem to relieve the itch to think about what we exist for.
To scratch or not to scratch, that's the question, isn't it?
I suppose that one can just wait life out.
It will end, after all.
But what's the fun of that?
I happen to be sitting poolside at the Taj Hotel in Varanasi, munching on a veggie burger and buddha's dictum that "all life is suffering".
I don't know if, as Batchelor says, "by removing death's finality, you deprive it of its greatest power" but it bears thinking about.
The blind cow,
With the man's hand on its hump
Moves through the blaring horns
Campbell spells out the extraordinarily complex cosmology of the early Hindus and Jains, and calls it evidently mythological and not realistic. And, of course, that seems reasonable, but it doesn't explain why ancient India felt the need to have such a theology of such stupendous proportions, needing billions of lifetimes and countless billions more of universes, to satisfy a need that the Greeks managed so much more simply.
Is all just rigamarole?
Or is Hinduism so old and complex because the world really is that old, and that complex, and so conceiving of all creation must needs be equally ambitious?
When I ask Hindus as to why the complexity, they all say that if they hadn't been born a Hindu, they wouldn't understand it either.
It is what it is.
The more, the better.
Almost as if Hinduism were the grandest of mazes. And being lost within it induces religious awakening.
A blowing of the mind.
There is no A to B to C and etc., but rather a million As to a million Bs from every A, then a million Cs from every previous B, and so on and so on.
As if the point is, that there is no one point possible. And just try to find one!
Imagine a corn field maze the size of the universe.
Rather than make sense, inspire non-sense?
The Greeks got it all done from Mt. Olympus.
I know that I'm not the first to notice this: that
-Mahavira. The Jain saint,
-Buddha,
-Aeschylus, the Greek tragedian,
- Confucius,
- And finally, Zoroaster, according to Joseph Campbell, the link between East and West,
all lived within a few years of 500 B. C.
Something in the water?
Campbell, in "Creative Mythology" proposes that we humans now bring about our own personal myths, as if this were different from any other time. Maybe we have always done this and some myths simply were adopted by the masses, who found it too much trouble to invent their own.
Possibly we are in a time of upheaval and new myth- making, as we were in 500 B.C.
Seen on a temple wall in Delhi:
Attharva Veda
God is One.
He (sic.) is Omnipresent
Omnipotent
Omniscient
and the Creator of the Whole Universe.
I suppose it's possible.
Air
Thick with dust
Of Buddha.
Joseph Campbell makes the point that religious expression manifests itself in one of two ways: wonder, and self-salvation.
Wonder- seeing the world with eyes brightly-wide.
Self-salvation- a sense of having done something wrong and feeling a need to atone.
In Varanasi, I'm reading "The Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist" that my friend Bloch gave to me before I left. I can understand his hunger for figuring "it" out, but I really, really can't say, as he does, that I have never experienced contentment.
I can say, without reservation, that I have never been down for long.
Am I wrong in assuming that most people feel the same way?
Though being happy, or not, doesn't seem to relieve the itch to think about what we exist for.
To scratch or not to scratch, that's the question, isn't it?
I suppose that one can just wait life out.
It will end, after all.
But what's the fun of that?
I happen to be sitting poolside at the Taj Hotel in Varanasi, munching on a veggie burger and buddha's dictum that "all life is suffering".
I don't know if, as Batchelor says, "by removing death's finality, you deprive it of its greatest power" but it bears thinking about.
The blind cow,
With the man's hand on its hump
Moves through the blaring horns
Campbell spells out the extraordinarily complex cosmology of the early Hindus and Jains, and calls it evidently mythological and not realistic. And, of course, that seems reasonable, but it doesn't explain why ancient India felt the need to have such a theology of such stupendous proportions, needing billions of lifetimes and countless billions more of universes, to satisfy a need that the Greeks managed so much more simply.
Is all just rigamarole?
Or is Hinduism so old and complex because the world really is that old, and that complex, and so conceiving of all creation must needs be equally ambitious?
When I ask Hindus as to why the complexity, they all say that if they hadn't been born a Hindu, they wouldn't understand it either.
It is what it is.
The more, the better.
Almost as if Hinduism were the grandest of mazes. And being lost within it induces religious awakening.
A blowing of the mind.
There is no A to B to C and etc., but rather a million As to a million Bs from every A, then a million Cs from every previous B, and so on and so on.
As if the point is, that there is no one point possible. And just try to find one!
Imagine a corn field maze the size of the universe.
Rather than make sense, inspire non-sense?
The Greeks got it all done from Mt. Olympus.
I know that I'm not the first to notice this: that
-Mahavira. The Jain saint,
-Buddha,
-Aeschylus, the Greek tragedian,
- Confucius,
- And finally, Zoroaster, according to Joseph Campbell, the link between East and West,
all lived within a few years of 500 B. C.
Something in the water?
Campbell, in "Creative Mythology" proposes that we humans now bring about our own personal myths, as if this were different from any other time. Maybe we have always done this and some myths simply were adopted by the masses, who found it too much trouble to invent their own.
Possibly we are in a time of upheaval and new myth- making, as we were in 500 B.C.
Seen on a temple wall in Delhi:
Attharva Veda
God is One.
He (sic.) is Omnipresent
Omnipotent
Omniscient
and the Creator of the Whole Universe.
I suppose it's possible.
Air
Thick with dust
Of Buddha.
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15. My English speaking guide, for the trip to Agra, fails to live up to expectations.
I want to talk to him about Hinduism, but even if his English were better, I don't think he would be interested. To him, and other Hindus I've tried to talk to, religion is like air, whether it's good or bad, you still have to breathe it.
What's the point in questioning it, just be grateful that it exists.
In a way, Hinduism resembles Judaism, in that it is as much a cultural life as well as a religious life. A person might adopt Hinduism, but to BE Hindu, one must be born Hindu. And so, India has the same place in the lives of Hindus as Israel has for Jews, being both a religious homeland and a cultural homeland.
I turn to discussion towards cricket, but even this topic confounds our mutual efforts. Neither he, nor anyone else, has been able to explain "overs" to me.
Lan, my driver, admitsu that he doesn't speak "very good English" and it's difficult to disagree with him. Or agree, for that matter.
Strange to see six-pointed stars and swastika- like images all over India, but they don't mean what they do in the west. The star in the sign for a school, the the swastika-sign is an ancient Hindu symbol found on temple walls.
Go to london, see Big Ben.
Go to Paris, see the Eiffel Tower.
Go to India, see the Taj Mahal. Strange how this last day in India shares so many aspects of my last day in Jordan/Israel.
Driving a long way, to get to a flea-bitten hotel, in order to catch my flight at an impossibly early time in the morning.
The Taj Mahal is spectacular. in a really good way.
One billion people are spectacular in an entirely different way.
It may take me a while to sort the two out.
My camera battery died on the last picture of the Taj Mahal!
It is a mausoleum, after all.
Just like it gave out at Petra.
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Wednesday, March 16, 2011
14-Morning traffic in New Delhi.
Moving to the Metropolitan hotel for a night and then back to Saptagiri for the night before I leave, because it's near the airport.
Wisdom comes from knowing what to overlook.
Deb says not to bring back anything "too weird".
Greater wisdom comes from not ignoring a wife's advice
As I wendy qay around Connaught place, center of Delhi, an ever "helpful" Indian points me off in the wrong direction (I have a map) and suggests it take a rickshaw otherwise, "you end up with dog shit on your shoes, sir".
"Very nice sunglasses, sir. You look like movie star".
All the guide books say, without exception, that the people of Varanasi are the pushiest and most bothersome in India, but I think that Delhi is worse, and, in fact, the people of Varanasi left me, remarkably, alone to wander and marvel.
For that, I am grateful.
One book said that it might be the best or worst part of a trip to India, and I admit that before I left home, I was a little worried that I had chosen to go there. Its reputation put me off.But now, from the perspective of a few days and seeing Delhi again, I'm glad iI stuck the decision out.
Watching clothes being washed in the Ganges, boats being built with a handsaw and a chisel, bodies being burned and the wood for each size body being weighed and assessed a price, Buddha achieving his insights beneath his Bodhi tree, and the celebrating of Holi in a cloud of mosquitos, all this has no place at all in New Delhi.
Deb told me that I would look pretty stupid if I didn't make it to Agra and the Taj Mahal. I said I wanted to go to Haridwar, but it doesn't seem to be possible, and Agra is.
Off to Agra tomorrow.
An undercurrent of anxiety swirls just out of sight here, and that is the crisis in Japan and the threat of a nuclear catastrophe. The newspapers are full of the horrible news, but on TV you would never notice.
Bollywood and Bruce Willis everywhere.
No CNN. No BBC.
Hard to figure
There is a channel, CCTV, which is the chinese CNN, and they do notice what is going on, it being right next door, so to speak. They worry that the wind will shift.
I worry that the wind will continue to blow across the Pacific Ocean. It's a big ocean, I know, but hardly big enough under the circumstances.
I wonder what all the Japanese people here are thinking.
Their english is not so good, and mine seems to be deteriorating.
One reason to go to Agra is to take advantage of an English-speaking guide because I have so many questions.
" Tuk-tuk, sir! Natural air condition'"
I suppose that its not everyone who, denied a trip to Haridwar, has to settle for the Taj Mahal.
First bottle of wine since I left U. S. The nibbles in the bar are salted, dried banana chips.
I asked the waiter to turn on the TV for tonight's cricket match and , unless it involved India, it would not be shown.
"We are a prideful nation," he said.
We laughed.
The music is by Raul Sharma, really lovely, although I think the name of the cd is "lounge music"!
Pineapple upside down cake!
First dessert since Switzerland.
I'm worried about Billy John and Kimiko. This mess in japan will only get worse, I'm afraid.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Moving to the Metropolitan hotel for a night and then back to Saptagiri for the night before I leave, because it's near the airport.
Wisdom comes from knowing what to overlook.
Deb says not to bring back anything "too weird".
Greater wisdom comes from not ignoring a wife's advice
As I wendy qay around Connaught place, center of Delhi, an ever "helpful" Indian points me off in the wrong direction (I have a map) and suggests it take a rickshaw otherwise, "you end up with dog shit on your shoes, sir".
"Very nice sunglasses, sir. You look like movie star".
All the guide books say, without exception, that the people of Varanasi are the pushiest and most bothersome in India, but I think that Delhi is worse, and, in fact, the people of Varanasi left me, remarkably, alone to wander and marvel.
For that, I am grateful.
One book said that it might be the best or worst part of a trip to India, and I admit that before I left home, I was a little worried that I had chosen to go there. Its reputation put me off.But now, from the perspective of a few days and seeing Delhi again, I'm glad iI stuck the decision out.
Watching clothes being washed in the Ganges, boats being built with a handsaw and a chisel, bodies being burned and the wood for each size body being weighed and assessed a price, Buddha achieving his insights beneath his Bodhi tree, and the celebrating of Holi in a cloud of mosquitos, all this has no place at all in New Delhi.
Deb told me that I would look pretty stupid if I didn't make it to Agra and the Taj Mahal. I said I wanted to go to Haridwar, but it doesn't seem to be possible, and Agra is.
Off to Agra tomorrow.
An undercurrent of anxiety swirls just out of sight here, and that is the crisis in Japan and the threat of a nuclear catastrophe. The newspapers are full of the horrible news, but on TV you would never notice.
Bollywood and Bruce Willis everywhere.
No CNN. No BBC.
Hard to figure
There is a channel, CCTV, which is the chinese CNN, and they do notice what is going on, it being right next door, so to speak. They worry that the wind will shift.
I worry that the wind will continue to blow across the Pacific Ocean. It's a big ocean, I know, but hardly big enough under the circumstances.
I wonder what all the Japanese people here are thinking.
Their english is not so good, and mine seems to be deteriorating.
One reason to go to Agra is to take advantage of an English-speaking guide because I have so many questions.
" Tuk-tuk, sir! Natural air condition'"
I suppose that its not everyone who, denied a trip to Haridwar, has to settle for the Taj Mahal.
First bottle of wine since I left U. S. The nibbles in the bar are salted, dried banana chips.
I asked the waiter to turn on the TV for tonight's cricket match and , unless it involved India, it would not be shown.
"We are a prideful nation," he said.
We laughed.
The music is by Raul Sharma, really lovely, although I think the name of the cd is "lounge music"!
Pineapple upside down cake!
First dessert since Switzerland.
I'm worried about Billy John and Kimiko. This mess in japan will only get worse, I'm afraid.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
13-Last day in Varanasi.
Decide to save as much money as I can by going to the rail station and canceling my train tix.
In the foreigner's office, I am sitting next to a Frenchwoman and I could offer to translate for her, but I am having such a difficult time comprehending the indian's English, that it would probably be futile.
And futile, also will be this attempt to get any money back for these tickets.
Let's see.
In actual fact, even this experience shows me a side of India that I would never see otherwise.
Another woman walks in covered in mosquito bites. She must have stayed for the entire holi celebration down by the river.
Salamuddin, the rickshaw driver who takes me to the station, spells out the obvious, that is, that India has many problems. All his parents on both side are dead and heist support 12 people.
Might I help?
I have no real idea whether what he says is true, but I like him and determine to pay him extra. I give him about 20 times what the trip is worth, about $20. That is 1000 rupees, and there are drivers who will offer to take you anywhere for 5 rupees. He thanks me profusely.
It's a lot, and yet, a little,,,,,much like India itself.
Over the top in richness, and desperately poor.
Sitting by the pool, reading and writing prior to heading to the airport, and as I am wondering whether it might be worth a swim, two Brits jump quickly out of the water.
A snake.
That makes my decision easier.
The staff bring a net, the British guy goes into the pool and snags the snake, the pool attendant lifts it up and out and walks about ten feet and dumps the snake, seemingly alive and well, into the bushes.
The pool crowd looks on, rapt
Five minutes later, all is calm.
Before I left home, I tried my best to make travel plans, hotels, trains, etc. but not much worked out. I have had to change at every turn.
Now, the question is, do I arrive in Delhi without a hotel waiting for me?
How bad might it be?
In the cab to the airport, a guy we picked up turns and mentions that driving is difficult in India. I agree with him, with a laugh.
"Because we drive on the left" he says.
I say, rather, "people don't drive on the left here, or on the right either, but all over the road, wherever!"
He laughs and agrees.
Heading for Delhi on Spicejet Airlines.
The big news on TV is is the discovery of pilots of commercial planes cheating on their tests and being arrested.
Not so comforting.
Well, of course I'm sitting here watching a huge crowd board their flight and thinking it wasn't mine, when I heard, somehow, the word, "Spicejet".
Yes, I was the last one on.
That would have been bad.
One cannot survive a trip like this without a guardian angel, though mine is looking a little frayed at the wingtips.
Landed in Delhi.
Checked into hotel saptagiri, near the airport, and I have room 252.
Who'd have thunk?
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Decide to save as much money as I can by going to the rail station and canceling my train tix.
In the foreigner's office, I am sitting next to a Frenchwoman and I could offer to translate for her, but I am having such a difficult time comprehending the indian's English, that it would probably be futile.
And futile, also will be this attempt to get any money back for these tickets.
Let's see.
In actual fact, even this experience shows me a side of India that I would never see otherwise.
Another woman walks in covered in mosquito bites. She must have stayed for the entire holi celebration down by the river.
Salamuddin, the rickshaw driver who takes me to the station, spells out the obvious, that is, that India has many problems. All his parents on both side are dead and heist support 12 people.
Might I help?
I have no real idea whether what he says is true, but I like him and determine to pay him extra. I give him about 20 times what the trip is worth, about $20. That is 1000 rupees, and there are drivers who will offer to take you anywhere for 5 rupees. He thanks me profusely.
It's a lot, and yet, a little,,,,,much like India itself.
Over the top in richness, and desperately poor.
Sitting by the pool, reading and writing prior to heading to the airport, and as I am wondering whether it might be worth a swim, two Brits jump quickly out of the water.
A snake.
That makes my decision easier.
The staff bring a net, the British guy goes into the pool and snags the snake, the pool attendant lifts it up and out and walks about ten feet and dumps the snake, seemingly alive and well, into the bushes.
The pool crowd looks on, rapt
Five minutes later, all is calm.
Before I left home, I tried my best to make travel plans, hotels, trains, etc. but not much worked out. I have had to change at every turn.
Now, the question is, do I arrive in Delhi without a hotel waiting for me?
How bad might it be?
In the cab to the airport, a guy we picked up turns and mentions that driving is difficult in India. I agree with him, with a laugh.
"Because we drive on the left" he says.
I say, rather, "people don't drive on the left here, or on the right either, but all over the road, wherever!"
He laughs and agrees.
Heading for Delhi on Spicejet Airlines.
The big news on TV is is the discovery of pilots of commercial planes cheating on their tests and being arrested.
Not so comforting.
Well, of course I'm sitting here watching a huge crowd board their flight and thinking it wasn't mine, when I heard, somehow, the word, "Spicejet".
Yes, I was the last one on.
That would have been bad.
One cannot survive a trip like this without a guardian angel, though mine is looking a little frayed at the wingtips.
Landed in Delhi.
Checked into hotel saptagiri, near the airport, and I have room 252.
Who'd have thunk?
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12- Talk about going a long way to try to put pieces of a puzzle together : I am sitting on the steps of the temple on the site of the original bodhi tree where Buddha became enlightened, reading "the Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist" on my kindle. Worth a least a chuckle.
Interestingly enough, the author, Stephen Batchelor, starts his quest in India and then goes to Vevey, Switzerland, above lake Geneva, near where I just was.
If, as he says, the point is to "encounter the phenomenal world in all its vitality and immediacy" then this is a phenomenally vital place to visit.
And here I thought I was on a quest like no other persons, reading the same books as Batchelor: Ram Dass, Camus, D. T. Suzuki, and then Jung, and on and on and on.
It certainly seemed authentic at the time.
I stand, staring, at a statue of a meditative Buddha and try to pick out the "exquisitely rendered" folds of cloth draping his arms. Without much success. A guy walks up beside me and comments in American english AA to what a beautiful statue it is and aren't the cloth folds especially nice.
I just have to shake my head.
What a bizarre trip this is.
Without drugs, even.
It's fun to talk to him. He's been in India since November and has just gotten to Varanasi. This is his fourth trip to India and he comes for the meditation.
When I tell him that I have been on the road for two weeks and have already been to Geneva, Delhi, Kathmandu, and now Varanasi, he asks, incredulously, why would I do that?
He considers a month the necessary minimum to be in one place.
Little does he know but that I am running on fumes.
Nice guy. We discuss Buddhism and meditation and the business of pewter- making and how difficult it is to compete with so many desperately poor, yet hard-working, people.
If I try to explain this trip to myself, it's that I love being alive and I want to keep pushing the boundaries so that I don't get complacent.
With ever so much computer power, I managed to change my reservations and am now heading generally in the direction of home.
I took a rickshaw to the travel agent and the driver introduced himself as Sillamuddin, a Muslim. You know, he said, like Ladin.
I countered with "you mean bin Ladin, al Quaeda?"
He said, "yes".
I said that that's an iffy way to start a conversation with an American.
We did both agree the Obama is the best.
Everywhere I turn, in every guide book, the is a reference to Mark Twain being here. I simply cannot imagine what this city must have looked like to him, and how he manages it. The man has my utmost admiration.
I hate to say it, but this hotel has terrible food, but the bar is a lot of fun, full of English, French, Indians, Spanish, Russians, Swiss, though no other Americans.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Interestingly enough, the author, Stephen Batchelor, starts his quest in India and then goes to Vevey, Switzerland, above lake Geneva, near where I just was.
If, as he says, the point is to "encounter the phenomenal world in all its vitality and immediacy" then this is a phenomenally vital place to visit.
And here I thought I was on a quest like no other persons, reading the same books as Batchelor: Ram Dass, Camus, D. T. Suzuki, and then Jung, and on and on and on.
It certainly seemed authentic at the time.
I stand, staring, at a statue of a meditative Buddha and try to pick out the "exquisitely rendered" folds of cloth draping his arms. Without much success. A guy walks up beside me and comments in American english AA to what a beautiful statue it is and aren't the cloth folds especially nice.
I just have to shake my head.
What a bizarre trip this is.
Without drugs, even.
It's fun to talk to him. He's been in India since November and has just gotten to Varanasi. This is his fourth trip to India and he comes for the meditation.
When I tell him that I have been on the road for two weeks and have already been to Geneva, Delhi, Kathmandu, and now Varanasi, he asks, incredulously, why would I do that?
He considers a month the necessary minimum to be in one place.
Little does he know but that I am running on fumes.
Nice guy. We discuss Buddhism and meditation and the business of pewter- making and how difficult it is to compete with so many desperately poor, yet hard-working, people.
If I try to explain this trip to myself, it's that I love being alive and I want to keep pushing the boundaries so that I don't get complacent.
With ever so much computer power, I managed to change my reservations and am now heading generally in the direction of home.
I took a rickshaw to the travel agent and the driver introduced himself as Sillamuddin, a Muslim. You know, he said, like Ladin.
I countered with "you mean bin Ladin, al Quaeda?"
He said, "yes".
I said that that's an iffy way to start a conversation with an American.
We did both agree the Obama is the best.
Everywhere I turn, in every guide book, the is a reference to Mark Twain being here. I simply cannot imagine what this city must have looked like to him, and how he manages it. The man has my utmost admiration.
I hate to say it, but this hotel has terrible food, but the bar is a lot of fun, full of English, French, Indians, Spanish, Russians, Swiss, though no other Americans.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Sunday, March 13, 2011
11 cont.- As difficult as it is to believe, it's still Sunday.
Panday comes for me at 4:00 and we go back to the Ganges because today is a big holy day to Hindus and he wants me to see the celebration.
Before anything else, let me say that it feels really crippling not to be able to eat any of the street food. It's not so much that it looks good, but that it is so much a part of the life of the country. Everybody eats in the kiosks along the side of the road, and socializes. More than most any other country I've been in, I wish I spoke the language. I would love to be able to hang out and chat under a propane lamp, popping pappadoms.
At the moment, to leap ahead, I am stashed in the hotel bar with a gin and tonic, watching Australia play Kenya in cricket, with not a mosquito in sight, no chance of dying miserably beneath the wheels of a massive dump truck, and feeling rather proud of myself that I am here at all. But more of that later.
It takes some while to get to the river this time, and it's difficult to find out why.
What exhausts me about India is that I am trying to pay attention to everything, for example, in the restaurant two musicians, a drummer and flautist, have me enthralled and no one else in the restaurant seems to know that they exist.
Maybe it's because I'm traveling alone, but that's a good reason to travel alone.
In a manner more episodic than chronological, I see so many Japanese people and wonder what they are feeling so far from their home, with all that has happened. They look kind of uncomfortable eating rice with a fork.
I kill a bug in the restaurant. Jains don't like that.
Panday and I walk through the
"old city", though as Mark Twain said, this city is "twice as old as time", and after mNy turns and even more temples, we emerge above the river Ganges, in a soft March evening light.
It really is beautiful, and peaceful.
We are at the top of the stairs of the ghat, and we descend to a beach with piles of flaming branches, the crematorium. He bids me take a seat, on the seats provided.
I watch people being burned up and it's not as weird and existential as I thought it might be. As I consider what's on front if me, I realize that both my parents were cremated, only just not so unabashedly out in the open.
Life goes on, and so does death. I actually feel that i'm not so overwhelmed by something so out of the Oregon ordinary.
A man, from Calcutta, sits down next to me, and takes it upon himself to explain the entire cremation process, who does it (low caste), how much it costs (2000 rupees), and who doesn't get cremated (pregnant women, children under 10, wise men, lepers, and those with chicken pox).
It would be macabre if it weren't riveting.
We decide to continue along the riverfront.
Kids play cricket in the unlikeliest places, somehow hitting balls in spaces the size of basketball courts for a sport ordinarily played on a soccer-sized pitch.
We come on four guys building a boat. I mean, building a boat from scratch: cutting the boards, hand planing the edges, chiseling the lap joints, caulking the seams, hammering it all together with homemade nails. It actually made me sorry that I had sold all my tools.
We ate still walking along the ghats and come to a series of stages/altars decked put in flowers and so, so many colored lights.
Everybody is getting ready for something big.
Panday and I take a seat next to what looks like the main act. Unfortunately, I have to sit in something that makes me cringe.
Deep breath.
Dusk is coming on and people arrive in droves. I tell Panday that I am not as comfortable with all the crowds of people that he is. I hope it didn't sound insulting.
We sat there for a few moments and he said that he had to go to the toilette.
He didn't return for a long time and the mosquitos became vicious. I has not expected to be out after dark so I had not applied any insect repellent, and, as the woman behind me sprayed herself vigorously, I thought, "this is crazy". O saw everyone of the millions mosquitos as huge and laden with malarial death.
Okay, yes an overreaction, but I had warned Panday that the crowds might be too much for me.
He indicated that that would not be a problem, and then promptly said that he needed to find a toilette.
I sat there
and sat there
and sat there,
watching the gathering clouds of mosquitos.
I decided that I can't do this.
I knew that Panday would wonder what the hell had happened to me, but he lived here, after all, he could take care of himself.
I started back to the hotel, not having the slightest which way to go, except against the river of pilgrims.
It was another one of those moments, like I had had in Fez, Morocco so many years, when to be lost in your own city is to be close to God.
I just kept walking.
The lights of the oncoming cars and motorcycles, the cacophony of horns, whistles, singing voices only contributed to the oceanic feeling of being swept along on a tide.
I couldn't stop shaking my head and smiling at the incongruity of it all.
Seriously, I had no idea where I was going and I couldn't take it at all seriously.
Except that i really didn't want to contract malaria.
But it did feel really liberating to be away from Panday and on my own again. I do like him, but there is something to wandering freely that is inexplicable.
A rickshaw driver came up beside me and I decided to get in, telling him to take me to the hotel clark. He jumped at the chance and off we went.
He said that he knew where he was going, but they always say that in Varanasi.
Trucks, horns, and lights to the left of us, trucks, horns, and lights to the right of us, sallying forth into the night rode the two of us.
All this, he said, for 70 rupees
($1.75)! well, let me tell you, after an hour of pedaling, I emptied my pockets to him.
Panday showed up later and we agrees to meet tomorrow.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Panday comes for me at 4:00 and we go back to the Ganges because today is a big holy day to Hindus and he wants me to see the celebration.
Before anything else, let me say that it feels really crippling not to be able to eat any of the street food. It's not so much that it looks good, but that it is so much a part of the life of the country. Everybody eats in the kiosks along the side of the road, and socializes. More than most any other country I've been in, I wish I spoke the language. I would love to be able to hang out and chat under a propane lamp, popping pappadoms.
At the moment, to leap ahead, I am stashed in the hotel bar with a gin and tonic, watching Australia play Kenya in cricket, with not a mosquito in sight, no chance of dying miserably beneath the wheels of a massive dump truck, and feeling rather proud of myself that I am here at all. But more of that later.
It takes some while to get to the river this time, and it's difficult to find out why.
What exhausts me about India is that I am trying to pay attention to everything, for example, in the restaurant two musicians, a drummer and flautist, have me enthralled and no one else in the restaurant seems to know that they exist.
Maybe it's because I'm traveling alone, but that's a good reason to travel alone.
In a manner more episodic than chronological, I see so many Japanese people and wonder what they are feeling so far from their home, with all that has happened. They look kind of uncomfortable eating rice with a fork.
I kill a bug in the restaurant. Jains don't like that.
Panday and I walk through the
"old city", though as Mark Twain said, this city is "twice as old as time", and after mNy turns and even more temples, we emerge above the river Ganges, in a soft March evening light.
It really is beautiful, and peaceful.
We are at the top of the stairs of the ghat, and we descend to a beach with piles of flaming branches, the crematorium. He bids me take a seat, on the seats provided.
I watch people being burned up and it's not as weird and existential as I thought it might be. As I consider what's on front if me, I realize that both my parents were cremated, only just not so unabashedly out in the open.
Life goes on, and so does death. I actually feel that i'm not so overwhelmed by something so out of the Oregon ordinary.
A man, from Calcutta, sits down next to me, and takes it upon himself to explain the entire cremation process, who does it (low caste), how much it costs (2000 rupees), and who doesn't get cremated (pregnant women, children under 10, wise men, lepers, and those with chicken pox).
It would be macabre if it weren't riveting.
We decide to continue along the riverfront.
Kids play cricket in the unlikeliest places, somehow hitting balls in spaces the size of basketball courts for a sport ordinarily played on a soccer-sized pitch.
We come on four guys building a boat. I mean, building a boat from scratch: cutting the boards, hand planing the edges, chiseling the lap joints, caulking the seams, hammering it all together with homemade nails. It actually made me sorry that I had sold all my tools.
We ate still walking along the ghats and come to a series of stages/altars decked put in flowers and so, so many colored lights.
Everybody is getting ready for something big.
Panday and I take a seat next to what looks like the main act. Unfortunately, I have to sit in something that makes me cringe.
Deep breath.
Dusk is coming on and people arrive in droves. I tell Panday that I am not as comfortable with all the crowds of people that he is. I hope it didn't sound insulting.
We sat there for a few moments and he said that he had to go to the toilette.
He didn't return for a long time and the mosquitos became vicious. I has not expected to be out after dark so I had not applied any insect repellent, and, as the woman behind me sprayed herself vigorously, I thought, "this is crazy". O saw everyone of the millions mosquitos as huge and laden with malarial death.
Okay, yes an overreaction, but I had warned Panday that the crowds might be too much for me.
He indicated that that would not be a problem, and then promptly said that he needed to find a toilette.
I sat there
and sat there
and sat there,
watching the gathering clouds of mosquitos.
I decided that I can't do this.
I knew that Panday would wonder what the hell had happened to me, but he lived here, after all, he could take care of himself.
I started back to the hotel, not having the slightest which way to go, except against the river of pilgrims.
It was another one of those moments, like I had had in Fez, Morocco so many years, when to be lost in your own city is to be close to God.
I just kept walking.
The lights of the oncoming cars and motorcycles, the cacophony of horns, whistles, singing voices only contributed to the oceanic feeling of being swept along on a tide.
I couldn't stop shaking my head and smiling at the incongruity of it all.
Seriously, I had no idea where I was going and I couldn't take it at all seriously.
Except that i really didn't want to contract malaria.
But it did feel really liberating to be away from Panday and on my own again. I do like him, but there is something to wandering freely that is inexplicable.
A rickshaw driver came up beside me and I decided to get in, telling him to take me to the hotel clark. He jumped at the chance and off we went.
He said that he knew where he was going, but they always say that in Varanasi.
Trucks, horns, and lights to the left of us, trucks, horns, and lights to the right of us, sallying forth into the night rode the two of us.
All this, he said, for 70 rupees
($1.75)! well, let me tell you, after an hour of pedaling, I emptied my pockets to him.
Panday showed up later and we agrees to meet tomorrow.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Saturday, March 12, 2011
11
Arose early this morning so as to meet Panday in the lobby for a ride to the Ganges and there take a boat out onto the water to see the ghats (steps) at dawn.
I
We agreed to meet at 5:30 and while I was there, he wasn't. When he arrived 15 minutes later (by my watch 5:45), he laughed and said that I was still on Nepal time- 15 minutes difference. Who knew?
We drove in his little white cab to the river, in the darkness. When we parked and walked through the empty food stalls with sleeping bodies scattered here and there, and huddled groups of pilgrims waiting to enter the hindu temples, I could only be thankful that I had contracted with Panday to show me the way. We turned a corner and there was the Ganges River, hazy and already covered with boats, a trip on the river at dawn being required .
Panday told me not to pay 500 rupees; 200 was enough, no matter what he says.
"I tell him that you are not tourist, but important government official".
He was a young kid and actually spoke english better than Panday.
I bought two little flower boats with candles in them ( "for you, sir, and your wife, for long life and much happiness"). A really good deal, I thought, for 20 rupees.
He rowed upriver and pointed out all the temples and houses that had been built by the maharajahs of the past. They all wanted to come here to die because if you die and are cremated with the wood of the banyan tree and your ashes are thrown into Mother Ganga, well, I'm not sure exactly what happens then, but it's a GOOD thing.
He told me, as hard as it is to believe, that , in 1978, the river flooded over all the steps and almost up to street level, maybe 30 feet higher. During an especially heavy monsoon.
We rowed back downriver, as far as the major place of cremation.
Piles a stacked logs (200 kilos of wood required to completely burn up an adult, at 150 rupees a kilo for the wood of the banyan tree-expensive, he says), are prepared for the nearly 400 cremations that occur every day, though not in the morning-unnerves the tourists.
I am going down to the river this afternoon with Panday, to witness the festivals and cremations-no pictures, though. In a way, it's a good thing that I have committed to meet Panday, otherwise it might be tempting to just hang out at the hotel and enjoy the silence. But hey, I've come this far...
All along the road, as I walked to the Ganges, people lay on pieces of cloth with very few belongings, staring. Not necessarily at me, in fact, hardly anyone, except for one tenacious woman with a limp baby to whom I gave some money, asked for anything.
They just stared.
And thought.
But of what, I can't even imagine.
In America, a person begging doesn't seem like from a different millennium, but here, these people's thoughts might be 5000 years away.
When a water buffalo standing ten feet away, the timeless Mother Ganga, a dirty morsel of cauliflower, a scrap of cloth comprise the whole of the Universe, I can only wonder.
Look, here I am wondering why data roaming isn't working on my IPhone, like it did in Kathmandu, while some half-naked Indian saddhu trys to sort out the beginning of Time.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
11
11
11
Arose early this morning so as to meet Panday in the lobby for a ride to the Ganges and there take a boat out onto the water to see the ghats (steps) at dawn.
I
We agreed to meet at 5:30 and while I was there, he wasn't. When he arrived 15 minutes later (by my watch 5:45), he laughed and said that I was still on Nepal time- 15 minutes difference. Who knew?
We drove in his little white cab to the river, in the darkness. When we parked and walked through the empty food stalls with sleeping bodies scattered here and there, and huddled groups of pilgrims waiting to enter the hindu temples, I could only be thankful that I had contracted with Panday to show me the way. We turned a corner and there was the Ganges River, hazy and already covered with boats, a trip on the river at dawn being required .
Panday told me not to pay 500 rupees; 200 was enough, no matter what he says.
"I tell him that you are not tourist, but important government official".
He was a young kid and actually spoke english better than Panday.
I bought two little flower boats with candles in them ( "for you, sir, and your wife, for long life and much happiness"). A really good deal, I thought, for 20 rupees.
He rowed upriver and pointed out all the temples and houses that had been built by the maharajahs of the past. They all wanted to come here to die because if you die and are cremated with the wood of the banyan tree and your ashes are thrown into Mother Ganga, well, I'm not sure exactly what happens then, but it's a GOOD thing.
He told me, as hard as it is to believe, that , in 1978, the river flooded over all the steps and almost up to street level, maybe 30 feet higher. During an especially heavy monsoon.
We rowed back downriver, as far as the major place of cremation.
Piles a stacked logs (200 kilos of wood required to completely burn up an adult, at 150 rupees a kilo for the wood of the banyan tree-expensive, he says), are prepared for the nearly 400 cremations that occur every day, though not in the morning-unnerves the tourists.
I am going down to the river this afternoon with Panday, to witness the festivals and cremations-no pictures, though. In a way, it's a good thing that I have committed to meet Panday, otherwise it might be tempting to just hang out at the hotel and enjoy the silence. But hey, I've come this far...
All along the road, as I walked to the Ganges, people lay on pieces of cloth with very few belongings, staring. Not necessarily at me, in fact, hardly anyone, except for one tenacious woman with a limp baby to whom I gave some money, asked for anything.
They just stared.
And thought.
But of what, I can't even imagine.
In America, a person begging doesn't seem like from a different millennium, but here, these people's thoughts might be 5000 years away.
When a water buffalo standing ten feet away, the timeless Mother Ganga, a dirty morsel of cauliflower, a scrap of cloth comprise the whole of the Universe, I can only wonder.
Look, here I am wondering why data roaming isn't working on my IPhone, like it did in Kathmandu, while some half-naked Indian saddhu trys to sort out the beginning of Time.
Morning in Kathmandu, at the airport, boarding Buddha Air for the flight up into the Himalayans. It is already cold but I am grateful to have a window seat. Luckily, the plane's wings are on top of the fuselage so it will be easier to to see. There is an entire fleet of aircraft taking off simultaneously. Might be quite a crowd up there.
We are scheduled to cruise at 21000 feet, which is 7000 feet below the top of Mt Everest. The pilot invites me to come into the cockpit, just at the moment we turn towards Everest. I take forward to see better and stumble and fall forward onto the controls! I grab for something, anything that hasn't a handle. And the pilot, in turn, grabs me. I have visions of sending the entire plane into the side of Mr. Everest.
He kind of laughs. I can't imagine what the TSA would say about passengers in the cockpit, but, wow, the view is terrific. At the moment, the plane is headed directly at Mt Everest. It's so rare to see anything head-on from an airplane anyway, let alone this!
A woman, who mentions that she is from the Philippines, sits down to look out the window (I have a window seat) at the mountains. we both remark at how little snow there is, except for the highest peaks.
She says that the climate, the world is changinhg. Look at what happened in Japan.
I tell her how glad I am that the Tsunami missed her homeland, though mentioning it only brings the nearness that I was feeling about yesterday's disaster, closer.
Air India to Varanasi.
It takes five separate security screenings, with pat-downs, to finally get on the plane, the final one on the very steps upon entering the plane's cabin.
Hope that it's just security people with too much time on their hands.
After reading my guidebooks, I may have scheduled overly ambitiously my stay in Varanasi.
Every chapter begins, "you will either hate this city or consider it the highlight ....." I'm trying not to dwell on the references to hyper-aggressive touts and smoldering corpses being tossed into the Ganges River.
Up here at 30,000 feet, all that still seems pretty far away, but we are getting ready to land.
After all these days in Asia, India seems more enigmatic than before I arrived. After all that I've read, after all that people have said, the haze over everything only gets thicker.
I have a hard time reconciling human sacrifice which ended only in 1835, all these love-preaching yogis on television.
I leave the airport in a pre-paid taxi and we drive no more than 1/2 k. and we stop on the sun and wait.
And wait.
I wish I had booked an air conditioned cab, but I thought it would be a quick trip.
On the other hand, I couldn't have known that the President I visiting Varanasi and is trying to get to the airport as we are trying to leave.
On the way into town, I would like to hold my camera out the car window and snap the onrushing torrent of traffic but I'm afraid I might not only lose my camera, but also my arm!
Oh thank you! The driver refuses to answer his mobile!
I decide that I need an all in Varanasi, so I hire Panday, the cabdriver, to pick me up tomorrow morning at 5:30 a.m., in order to get a boat ride on the Ganges at dawn.
I have no idea how I am managing this much initiative, after not sleeping at all last night so I wouldn't miss the flight to Everest.
Deborah, you are right, this is NOT you.
Az I wore this, I am recording a man playing on a flute off toy left, while I am surrounded by table after table of acolytes all dressed in white except for one table of monks in orange. People who walk in kiss the hand of one of the monks.
I'm in over my head.
But it's really cool, somehow.
the only part of this that centers me is the maitre'd who keeps stopping by asking me if all is good and do I want another glass of wine, my glass being the only glass of wine, I might add, in the restaurant.
Big monk came over near my table and I smiled at him and he smiled at me and I wondered if I ( being the only westerner in the room) looked as strange to him as he looked to me.
Went next door and bought myself a new shirt. I told the guy at the front desk that it was a chancey thing to do without my wife here but I had to do it, being down to a single shirt.
Across the street, there's a big festival but, you know what, Varanasi is a big enough festival for me right now.
India's beating South Africa in cricket.
I bought a second shirt.
The bartender wants me to open a bar in the States and hire him.
I'm reading "Confessions of a Buddhist atheist".
And I have to get up to see Hindus on the Ganges tomorrow.
I almost called it quits today, but Deb helped me over the hump.
Love. Love.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
11
Arose early this morning so as to meet Panday in the lobby for a ride to the Ganges and there take a boat out onto the water to see the ghats (steps) at dawn.
I
We agreed to meet at 5:30 and while I was there, he wasn't. When he arrived 15 minutes later (by my watch 5:45), he laughed and said that I was still on Nepal time- 15 minutes difference. Who knew?
We drove in his little white cab to the river, in the darkness. When we parked and walked through the empty food stalls with sleeping bodies scattered here and there, and huddled groups of pilgrims waiting to enter the hindu temples, I could only be thankful that I had contracted with Panday to show me the way. We turned a corner and there was the Ganges River, hazy and already covered with boats, a trip on the river at dawn being required .
Panday told me not to pay 500 rupees; 200 was enough, no matter what he says.
"I tell him that you are not tourist, but important government official".
He was a young kid and actually spoke english better than Panday.
I bought two little flower boats with candles in them ( "for you, sir, and your wife, for long life and much happiness"). A really good deal, I thought, for 20 rupees.
He rowed upriver and pointed out all the temples and houses that had been built by the maharajahs of the past. They all wanted to come here to die because if you die and are cremated with the wood of the banyan tree and your ashes are thrown into Mother Ganga, well, I'm not sure exactly what happens then, but it's a GOOD thing.
He told me, as hard as it is to believe, that , in 1978, the river flooded over all the steps and almost up to street level, maybe 30 feet higher. During an especially heavy monsoon.
We rowed back downriver, as far as the major place of cremation.
Piles a stacked logs (200 kilos of wood required to completely burn up an adult, at 150 rupees a kilo for the wood of the banyan tree-expensive, he says), are prepared for the nearly 400 cremations that occur every day, though not in the morning-unnerves the tourists.
I am going down to the river this afternoon with Panday, to witness the festivals and cremations-no pictures, though. In a way, it's a good thing that I have committed to meet Panday, otherwise it might be tempting to just hang out at the hotel and enjoy the silence. But hey, I've come this far...
All along the road, as I walked to the Ganges, people lay on pieces of cloth with very few belongings, staring. Not necessarily at me, in fact, hardly anyone, except for one tenacious woman with a limp baby to whom I gave some money, asked for anything.
They just stared.
And thought.
But of what, I can't even imagine.
In America, a person begging doesn't seem like from a different millennium, but here, these people's thoughts might be 5000 years away.
When a water buffalo standing ten feet away, the timeless Mother Ganga, a dirty morsel of cauliflower, a scrap of cloth comprise the whole of the Universe, I can only wonder.
Look, here I am wondering why data roaming isn't working on my IPhone, like it did in Kathmandu, while some half-naked Indian saddhu trys to sort out the beginning of Time.
Morning in Kathmandu, at the airport, boarding Buddha Air for the flight up into the Himalayans. It is already cold but I am grateful to have a window seat. Luckily, the plane's wings are on top of the fuselage so it will be easier to to see. There is an entire fleet of aircraft taking off simultaneously. Might be quite a crowd up there.
We are scheduled to cruise at 21000 feet, which is 7000 feet below the top of Mt Everest. The pilot invites me to come into the cockpit, just at the moment we turn towards Everest. I take forward to see better and stumble and fall forward onto the controls! I grab for something, anything that hasn't a handle. And the pilot, in turn, grabs me. I have visions of sending the entire plane into the side of Mr. Everest.
He kind of laughs. I can't imagine what the TSA would say about passengers in the cockpit, but, wow, the view is terrific. At the moment, the plane is headed directly at Mt Everest. It's so rare to see anything head-on from an airplane anyway, let alone this!
A woman, who mentions that she is from the Philippines, sits down to look out the window (I have a window seat) at the mountains. we both remark at how little snow there is, except for the highest peaks.
She says that the climate, the world is changinhg. Look at what happened in Japan.
I tell her how glad I am that the Tsunami missed her homeland, though mentioning it only brings the nearness that I was feeling about yesterday's disaster, closer.
Air India to Varanasi.
It takes five separate security screenings, with pat-downs, to finally get on the plane, the final one on the very steps upon entering the plane's cabin.
Hope that it's just security people with too much time on their hands.
After reading my guidebooks, I may have scheduled overly ambitiously my stay in Varanasi.
Every chapter begins, "you will either hate this city or consider it the highlight ....." I'm trying not to dwell on the references to hyper-aggressive touts and smoldering corpses being tossed into the Ganges River.
Up here at 30,000 feet, all that still seems pretty far away, but we are getting ready to land.
After all these days in Asia, India seems more enigmatic than before I arrived. After all that I've read, after all that people have said, the haze over everything only gets thicker.
I have a hard time reconciling human sacrifice which ended only in 1835, all these love-preaching yogis on television.
I leave the airport in a pre-paid taxi and we drive no more than 1/2 k. and we stop on the sun and wait.
And wait.
I wish I had booked an air conditioned cab, but I thought it would be a quick trip.
On the other hand, I couldn't have known that the President I visiting Varanasi and is trying to get to the airport as we are trying to leave.
On the way into town, I would like to hold my camera out the car window and snap the onrushing torrent of traffic but I'm afraid I might not only lose my camera, but also my arm!
Oh thank you! The driver refuses to answer his mobile!
I decide that I need an all in Varanasi, so I hire Panday, the cabdriver, to pick me up tomorrow morning at 5:30 a.m., in order to get a boat ride on the Ganges at dawn.
I have no idea how I am managing this much initiative, after not sleeping at all last night so I wouldn't miss the flight to Everest.
Deborah, you are right, this is NOT you.
Az I wore this, I am recording a man playing on a flute off toy left, while I am surrounded by table after table of acolytes all dressed in white except for one table of monks in orange. People who walk in kiss the hand of one of the monks.
I'm in over my head.
But it's really cool, somehow.
the only part of this that centers me is the maitre'd who keeps stopping by asking me if all is good and do I want another glass of wine, my glass being the only glass of wine, I might add, in the restaurant.
Big monk came over near my table and I smiled at him and he smiled at me and I wondered if I ( being the only westerner in the room) looked as strange to him as he looked to me.
Went next door and bought myself a new shirt. I told the guy at the front desk that it was a chancey thing to do without my wife here but I had to do it, being down to a single shirt.
Across the street, there's a big festival but, you know what, Varanasi is a big enough festival for me right now.
India's beating South Africa in cricket.
I bought a second shirt.
The bartender wants me to open a bar in the States and hire him.
I'm reading "Confessions of a Buddhist atheist".
And I have to get up to see Hindus on the Ganges tomorrow.
I almost called it quits today, but Deb helped me over the hump.
Love. Love.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
10- Morning in Kathmandu, at the airport, boarding Buddha Air for the flight up into the Himalayans. It is already cold but I am grateful to have a window seat. Luckily, the plane's wings are on top of the fuselage so it will be easier to to see. There is an entire fleet of aircraft taking off simultaneously. Might be quite a crowd up there.
We are scheduled to cruise at 21000 feet, which is 7000 feet below the top of Mt Everest. The pilot invites me to come into the cockpit, just at the moment we turn towards Everest. I take forward to see better and stumble and fall forward onto the controls! I grab for something, anything that hasn't a handle. And the pilot, in turn, grabs me. I have visions of sending the entire plane into the side of Mr. Everest.
He kind of laughs. I can't imagine what the TSA would say about passengers in the cockpit, but, wow, the view is terrific. At the moment, the plane is headed directly at Mt Everest. It's so rare to see anything head-on from an airplane anyway, let alone this!
A woman, who mentions that she is from the Philippines, sits down to look out the window (I have a window seat) at the mountains. we both remark at how little snow there is, except for the highest peaks.
She says that the climate, the world is changinhg. Look at what happened in Japan.
I tell her how glad I am that the Tsunami missed her homeland, though mentioning it only brings the nearness that I was feeling about yesterday's disaster, closer.
Air India to Varanasi.
It takes five separate security screenings, with pat-downs, to finally get on the plane, the final one on the very steps upon entering the plane's cabin.
Hope that it's just security people with too much time on their hands.
After reading my guidebooks, I may have scheduled overly ambitiously my stay in Varanasi.
Every chapter begins, "you will either hate this city or consider it the highlight ....." I'm trying not to dwell on the references to hyper-aggressive touts and smoldering corpses being tossed into the Ganges River.
Up here at 30,000 feet, all that still seems pretty far away, but we are getting ready to land.
After all these days in Asia, India seems more enigmatic than before I arrived. After all that I've read, after all that people have said, the haze over everything only gets thicker.
I have a hard time reconciling human sacrifice which ended only in 1835, all these love-preaching yogis on television.
I leave the airport in a pre-paid taxi and we drive no more than 1/2 k. and we stop on the sun and wait.
And wait.
I wish I had booked an air conditioned cab, but I thought it would be a quick trip.
On the other hand, I couldn't have known that the President I visiting Varanasi and is trying to get to the airport as we are trying to leave.
On the way into town, I would like to hold my camera out the car window and snap the onrushing torrent of traffic but I'm afraid I might not only lose my camera, but also my arm!
Oh thank you! The driver refuses to answer his mobile!
I decide that I need an ally in Varanasi, so I hire Panday, the cabdriver, to pick me up tomorrow morning at 5:30 a.m., in order to get a boat ride on the Ganges at dawn.
I have no idea how I am managing this much initiative, after not sleeping at all last night so I wouldn't miss the flight to Everest.
Deborah, you are right, this is NOT you.
As I write this, I am recording a man playing on a flute off to my left, while I am surrounded by table after table of acolytes all dressed in white except for one table of monks in orange. People who walk in kiss the hand of one of the monks.
I'm in over my head.
But it's really cool, somehow.
the only part of this that centers me is the maitre'd who keeps stopping by asking me if all is good and do I want another glass of wine, my glass being the only glass of wine, I might add, in the restaurant.
Big monk came over near my table and I smiled at him and he smiled at me and I wondered if I ( being the only westerner in the room) looked as strange to him as he looked to me.
Went next door and bought myself a new shirt. I told the guy at the front desk that it was a chancey thing to do without my wife here but I had to do it, being down to a single shirt.
Across the street, there's a big festival but, you know what, Varanasi is a big enough festival for me right now.
India's beating South Africa in cricket.
I bought a second shirt.
The bartender wants me to open a bar in the States and hire him.
I'm reading "Confessions of a Buddhist atheist".
And I have to get up to see Hindus on the Ganges tomorrow.
I almost called it quits today, but Deb helped me over the hump.
Love. Love.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
We are scheduled to cruise at 21000 feet, which is 7000 feet below the top of Mt Everest. The pilot invites me to come into the cockpit, just at the moment we turn towards Everest. I take forward to see better and stumble and fall forward onto the controls! I grab for something, anything that hasn't a handle. And the pilot, in turn, grabs me. I have visions of sending the entire plane into the side of Mr. Everest.
He kind of laughs. I can't imagine what the TSA would say about passengers in the cockpit, but, wow, the view is terrific. At the moment, the plane is headed directly at Mt Everest. It's so rare to see anything head-on from an airplane anyway, let alone this!
A woman, who mentions that she is from the Philippines, sits down to look out the window (I have a window seat) at the mountains. we both remark at how little snow there is, except for the highest peaks.
She says that the climate, the world is changinhg. Look at what happened in Japan.
I tell her how glad I am that the Tsunami missed her homeland, though mentioning it only brings the nearness that I was feeling about yesterday's disaster, closer.
Air India to Varanasi.
It takes five separate security screenings, with pat-downs, to finally get on the plane, the final one on the very steps upon entering the plane's cabin.
Hope that it's just security people with too much time on their hands.
After reading my guidebooks, I may have scheduled overly ambitiously my stay in Varanasi.
Every chapter begins, "you will either hate this city or consider it the highlight ....." I'm trying not to dwell on the references to hyper-aggressive touts and smoldering corpses being tossed into the Ganges River.
Up here at 30,000 feet, all that still seems pretty far away, but we are getting ready to land.
After all these days in Asia, India seems more enigmatic than before I arrived. After all that I've read, after all that people have said, the haze over everything only gets thicker.
I have a hard time reconciling human sacrifice which ended only in 1835, all these love-preaching yogis on television.
I leave the airport in a pre-paid taxi and we drive no more than 1/2 k. and we stop on the sun and wait.
And wait.
I wish I had booked an air conditioned cab, but I thought it would be a quick trip.
On the other hand, I couldn't have known that the President I visiting Varanasi and is trying to get to the airport as we are trying to leave.
On the way into town, I would like to hold my camera out the car window and snap the onrushing torrent of traffic but I'm afraid I might not only lose my camera, but also my arm!
Oh thank you! The driver refuses to answer his mobile!
I decide that I need an ally in Varanasi, so I hire Panday, the cabdriver, to pick me up tomorrow morning at 5:30 a.m., in order to get a boat ride on the Ganges at dawn.
I have no idea how I am managing this much initiative, after not sleeping at all last night so I wouldn't miss the flight to Everest.
Deborah, you are right, this is NOT you.
As I write this, I am recording a man playing on a flute off to my left, while I am surrounded by table after table of acolytes all dressed in white except for one table of monks in orange. People who walk in kiss the hand of one of the monks.
I'm in over my head.
But it's really cool, somehow.
the only part of this that centers me is the maitre'd who keeps stopping by asking me if all is good and do I want another glass of wine, my glass being the only glass of wine, I might add, in the restaurant.
Big monk came over near my table and I smiled at him and he smiled at me and I wondered if I ( being the only westerner in the room) looked as strange to him as he looked to me.
Went next door and bought myself a new shirt. I told the guy at the front desk that it was a chancey thing to do without my wife here but I had to do it, being down to a single shirt.
Across the street, there's a big festival but, you know what, Varanasi is a big enough festival for me right now.
India's beating South Africa in cricket.
I bought a second shirt.
The bartender wants me to open a bar in the States and hire him.
I'm reading "Confessions of a Buddhist atheist".
And I have to get up to see Hindus on the Ganges tomorrow.
I almost called it quits today, but Deb helped me over the hump.
Love. Love.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Friday, March 11, 2011
9
9
Spent all morning scrounging around Kathmandu looking for a charging cable for my I-phone, which I left in Delhi. Well, I didn't so much leave it in Delhi bit it was taken out by security as they ransacked my bags and tosses everything all over the place and then, when they stuck it all back in my bag, they neglected to put the bag with my shirts and pants and charger back. So, no charger or shirts and minus my other pair of pants! Making do.
Apple has an untapped market in Nepal, though I finally found one. Trying to find an strange item in a strange land never fails to uncover parts of a country the tourist rarely encounters.
What surprises most is Not how few people speak English, but rather how many know at least a smattering. I can just imagine, wandering around in America, how likely it would be to encounter even one person speaking Nepalese!
Similar to Hong Kong, businesses are organized by streets and all the mobile phone people are beside each other. Makes competing both simple and cut- throat. Just the sort of business plan that would be anathema to Americans.
I'm hiring a driver to take me to the temples of bhaktipor and nagrapor (sp.?) world heritage sites, they say, but then the concept of a 5* hotel wouldn't stand scrutiny at home. But hey, it's got an acceptable bed and the Gorkha beer (authentic Himalayan brew) is cold.
One adjusts.
In Bhaktapur, so many gods, maybe someone invented the unitary God because he/she couldn't keep them all straight.
On the way to Nargikot, guard rails not so many.
It's hard to know where to begin. Nargikot is really just a lookout from the top of a small mountain from where you can catch a glimpse of the really bog ones. To get to the small mountain, however, involves a harrowing drive on a road fit only for motorcycles, of which there are hundreds, but also cans like this one I'm in, and also enormous tourist buses.
Like I said, no guard rails.
The driver wanted me to snap some photos on the ascent because he said it might be dark on the way down. I'm thinking,
"no way". As soon as we get to the top I tell him to start back, which seems to disappoint him. I think he feels that I am missing out on the sunset over the Himalayas.
I'll buy the postcard.
At the moment, I am sitting in the cab outside a police station because, on the descent, a motorcycle passed us and yelled something rude to the cab driver, but since it was in Nepalese, it went right by me. But not by the driver. In the next little village, he saw the moto driver and pulled over and started yelling at him. Of course, here come the cops with their machine guns, and then all the rest of the village because what else is there to do in the middle of Nepalese nowhere?
The cabby points out the cyclist and the cops start yelling at him and pushing him around the crowd closes in on the cab and I hear someone yelling "Americani".
I was wishing that the cab driver had just let those few rough words pass. You know, be a big guy about it, and all.
But no, a major federal case seems to be in the making. I asked the driver what was going on and he said that we can't have people treating foreigners this way.
Twenty minutes ago, he said this would take two minutes.
Frankly, from a tired foreigner's point of view, I'm willing to let bygones be bygones and let's get back on the road.
Finally, back in the hotel and I turn on the T. V. Hoping to see how the cricket tournament is going and I find that there has been a terrible earthquake in Japan and there is a tsunami headed a Ross the Pacific Ocean, towards Oregon.
Suddenly, I feel so far away.
I know the wave will never reach Eugene, but what a strange feeling to k ow that I'm half a world away and a monster wall of water threatens them, and they're asleep.
I feel so bad for the people of Japan.
The pictures on BBC are difficult to believe.
I start to cry.
Somehow, being on this side of the world makes me feel so much more a part of the tragedy than I might otherwise, if I were home.
And then the lights in the hotel go out!
What the hell?
The TV goes off and I fumble through my stuff for my little flashlight.
Wow. Hotels are really dark. Not only will I always remember the light, but extra batteries, too.
I now understand that traveling off the beaten path requires a few added accessories.
The lights go back on.
TV on.
TV and lights off.
Lights and TV on.
Love my flashlight.
I take the stairs down to the front desk (no elevator!) and make sure that there has been no earthquake. They reassure me that those things only happen in Japan. And in incidentally, the hotel has been constructed to withstand a 15 earthquake.
While I don't believe them, I'm at least glad that they are considering these possibilities.
Namaste.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Spent all morning scrounging around Kathmandu looking for a charging cable for my I-phone, which I left in Delhi. Well, I didn't so much leave it in Delhi bit it was taken out by security as they ransacked my bags and tosses everything all over the place and then, when they stuck it all back in my bag, they neglected to put the bag with my shirts and pants and charger back. So, no charger or shirts and minus my other pair of pants! Making do.
Apple has an untapped market in Nepal, though I finally found one. Trying to find an strange item in a strange land never fails to uncover parts of a country the tourist rarely encounters.
What surprises most is Not how few people speak English, but rather how many know at least a smattering. I can just imagine, wandering around in America, how likely it would be to encounter even one person speaking Nepalese!
Similar to Hong Kong, businesses are organized by streets and all the mobile phone people are beside each other. Makes competing both simple and cut- throat. Just the sort of business plan that would be anathema to Americans.
I'm hiring a driver to take me to the temples of bhaktipor and nagrapor (sp.?) world heritage sites, they say, but then the concept of a 5* hotel wouldn't stand scrutiny at home. But hey, it's got an acceptable bed and the Gorkha beer (authentic Himalayan brew) is cold.
One adjusts.
In Bhaktapur, so many gods, maybe someone invented the unitary God because he/she couldn't keep them all straight.
On the way to Nargikot, guard rails not so many.
It's hard to know where to begin. Nargikot is really just a lookout from the top of a small mountain from where you can catch a glimpse of the really bog ones. To get to the small mountain, however, involves a harrowing drive on a road fit only for motorcycles, of which there are hundreds, but also cans like this one I'm in, and also enormous tourist buses.
Like I said, no guard rails.
The driver wanted me to snap some photos on the ascent because he said it might be dark on the way down. I'm thinking,
"no way". As soon as we get to the top I tell him to start back, which seems to disappoint him. I think he feels that I am missing out on the sunset over the Himalayas.
I'll buy the postcard.
At the moment, I am sitting in the cab outside a police station because, on the descent, a motorcycle passed us and yelled something rude to the cab driver, but since it was in Nepalese, it went right by me. But not by the driver. In the next little village, he saw the moto driver and pulled over and started yelling at him. Of course, here come the cops with their machine guns, and then all the rest of the village because what else is there to do in the middle of Nepalese nowhere?
The cabby points out the cyclist and the cops start yelling at him and pushing him around the crowd closes in on the cab and I hear someone yelling "Americani".
I was wishing that the cab driver had just let those few rough words pass. You know, be a big guy about it, and all.
But no, a major federal case seems to be in the making. I asked the driver what was going on and he said that we can't have people treating foreigners this way.
Twenty minutes ago, he said this would take two minutes.
Frankly, from a tired foreigner's point of view, I'm willing to let bygones be bygones and let's get back on the road.
Finally, back in the hotel and I turn on the T. V. Hoping to see how the cricket tournament is going and I find that there has been a terrible earthquake in Japan and there is a tsunami headed a Ross the Pacific Ocean, towards Oregon.
Suddenly, I feel so far away.
I know the wave will never reach Eugene, but what a strange feeling to k ow that I'm half a world away and a monster wall of water threatens them, and they're asleep.
I feel so bad for the people of Japan.
The pictures on BBC are difficult to believe.
I start to cry.
Somehow, being on this side of the world makes me feel so much more a part of the tragedy than I might otherwise, if I were home.
And then the lights in the hotel go out!
What the hell?
The TV goes off and I fumble through my stuff for my little flashlight.
Wow. Hotels are really dark. Not only will I always remember the light, but extra batteries, too.
I now understand that traveling off the beaten path requires a few added accessories.
The lights go back on.
TV on.
TV and lights off.
Lights and TV on.
Love my flashlight.
I take the stairs down to the front desk (no elevator!) and make sure that there has been no earthquake. They reassure me that those things only happen in Japan. And in incidentally, the hotel has been constructed to withstand a 15 earthquake.
While I don't believe them, I'm at least glad that they are considering these possibilities.
Namaste.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Thursday, March 10, 2011
8 cont.
8 cont.
A woman leans over, looking out the window and asks, "ces sont les Himalayans?". the plane is jam-packed with Francais. And everyone has a backpack.
Amazing. I am walking down the street in K behind an old Nepalese version of Barry Lopez.
Kathmandu, with all the colors, confusion. dust, cooking fires everywhere, and the evening coming on resembles nothing so much as an urbanized version of the Oregon Country Fair.
A problem averted, sitting in the hotel bar and waiting for dinner, these two young girls sit down and introduce themselves, and ask if I am alone.
Well, yes, but no.
I ask where they come from and the they say that they are froM the Philippines. When I ask how old they are (because they look to be about 16) they say that they are 21 and 28, respectively. When I try to insist that that seems impossible, they say that maybe it's the other way around.
Getting too complicated!
I tell them I'm leaving, but I hope that their time on Nepal is a good one. I encouraged them to climb a real mountain.
Ever the dad.
Just like in Paris, so many years ago, even though it's going on 8:00 p.m, I'm the only one in the restaurant.
It never fails.
I signaled to the band that I wanted to take a video of them (after giving them a nice tip) and they responded with smiles and namastes.
The lamb rogan josh and afghani naan leave absolutely nothing more to be desired!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
8
8
Time has come to leave Delhi until I return at the end of the trip to head home, In a word, pollution, which makes it so difficult to even be outside for any length of time. In fact, from my hotel window, the buildings barely a mile off are all but invisible.
Rather than stay in Delhi for another two days, as I had planned, I'm taking advantage of cheap air fares and debarking for Kathmandu. Maybe, up in the mountains, the air may be clearer. Of course, if Kathmandu is in a valley....
On the front page of the sports section of the IndiaTimes, is a photo of a golfer at a tournament not far from where I was yesterday. As I sit here, hacking and sneezing, even inside the hotel, II have no idea how anyone could have spent, and probably will spend today, playing while holding one's breath for four hours.
Like Jerusalem, Delhi has it's own smells. Even the taxi to the airport has the odor of curry.
I don't know exactly what you think when someone pops the word " Kathmandu" up in front of you , but over here, people think "Las Vegas". How about that? Casinos and everything!
Maybe Circque du Soleil has a branch over here.
Good guy at the check-in counter, a Sikh, who, when I asked if I might have window seat, said, "oh, you want to see some mountains!" I laughed and said I had come a long way to see "some mountains".
The next counter over is a flight to Kabul, Afghanistan. Yikes. Although no one looks any different than the passengers in my line.
1 hour and 10 mins. to Kathmandu, but over the Himalayan mountains!
Impetuosity spices up the curry of travel.
Some part of me thinks that if I'm not exhausted, in a good, over-stimulated , way, then I might as well have stayed home.
I'm not a blasé traveller, I don't always get it right the first time, but even after more than 50 countries, crossing a new border gives me goosebumps.
Standing in a bookstore, I notice a woman looking for a novel and I see "Shantaram", a book I tell everyone about, and so I recommend it to her, especially because it takes place in India. It turns out that she has been living here for a while and has heard of it.... Sounds like that what she has heard probably is not her cup of lapsang suchong.
But anyway, we start chatting.
She has two children who go to school up in the mountains where she also lives, but she (her name is Kai) is having visa problems and must needs go out of the country and apply to re-enter from Nepal, having to leave her children temporarily. Crazy. But she seems to be quite the experienced ex-pat and is only mildly exasperated.
She wants to know if the social and political climate back in the U.S. if as nutty as it appears in the press in India. I have to admit that it probably is, malheureusment.
She's originally from the San Juan islands north of Seattle and is a Democrat!
One thing that seems obvious to me, having seen The U.S., Switzerland, and now, India is that no country is trying to solve the myriad problems in the modern world the way America is. Switzerland and India have much more in common: public transport, universal healthcare, international outlook, many people living together in a small place, apartments. America continues to believe that It doesn't have to live by the same rules as everyone else.
There just is so little concept that we all share a common fate.
For how much longer?
Out the plane window, peeping up through the clouds, are mountaintops! It's not out of the realm of possibility that one of the peaks might be Mt. Everest. In fact, Everest is the name of my hotel in Kathmandu.
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Wednesday, March 9, 2011
7
7
I just got off the metro in Old Delhi, walked outside the station and immediately felt like Dennis Quaid in the movie in which he is traveling in a tiny submarine in Martin Short's bloodstream, being buffeted right and left by billions of corpuscles.
Old Delhi is definitely not for the faint of heart.
I finally found the Red Fort, mostly by deciding that I got off the metro south of it and simply kept walking north, with the sun behind me. No one inthis part of town speaks much English. Everyone says that Varanasi is very dirty. It will be amazing if it's dirtier than Old Delhi. Yesterday, I new Delhi, I entertained the now-quaint notion that India resembled a warm NYC. Well, no.
I have no idea, not yet anyway, how so many people can live so close together, with so many big smiles.
One of the small benefits of an admission charge is that the sheer quantity of humanity drops by about 95%. Inside the Rad Fort couldn't feel like more of an oasis if I were in the middle of the garden of Eden, what with trees, shade, breezes. It's not that all the people are a trial, it just takes some getting used to.
A woman in a full chador passes me, not necessarily something I would have even noticed last year in Jerusalem, but here, in a country with such a large population of Muslims, this woman is the first one dressed like that that I have seen. Saris don't seem as restrictive somehow. One thing sure, no one wears shorts. It mist be close to 80 degrees and yet many people, men and women, wear sweaters.
In trying to relate Old Delhi to some other place that I've been, I might compare it to the souk in Cairo, but no one, or very few, is trying to sell you anything. I keep waiting to say "no" , but nobody asks!
True, thee are a lot of people, especially close, but most everyone smells nice. Part of living together, I suppose. I've been paying particular attention to loading on the deodorant. Being a responsible tourist.
Time to dive back into Chandri Chowk.
I prefer not to think of myself as overly fastidious, but after going into the gents toilet and, yes, it's about what you would imagine, and then being asked for 1 rupee as a cleaning fee and, of course, who has 1 rupee, I had to give h a 50 rupee (1 dollar) bill and have hake change. As I thought about his hands being the same ones that "cleaned" out the toilet, I looked slightly askance at the 10 rupee bills he handed back.
Glad I brought the hand wipes.
Can see that it's only a matter of time, though.
I guards things have impeoved somewhat sine Raven last visited India, I haven't seen any dead people in the streets, yet.
But there sure is a lot of life!
Chaos is in the eye of the bewildered!
I finished off my bottle of water, I don't know what to do with the empty. If I toss it, it would certainly feel at home with all the other bottles in the street.
Thinking I might try to find an hotel closer into the center of the city, I try the Taj Hotel and I inquire about availability and the woman behind the desk, in her blue sari and red mark on her forehead, in the king's English, replies. "I'm sorry, sir, but we're jam-packed."
I decide to go to Nepal.
I just got off the metro in Old Delhi, walked outside the station and immediately felt like Dennis Quaid in the movie in which he is traveling in a tiny submarine in Martin Short's bloodstream, being buffeted right and left by billions of corpuscles.
Old Delhi is definitely not for the faint of heart.
I finally found the Red Fort, mostly by deciding that I got off the metro south of it and simply kept walking north, with the sun behind me. No one inthis part of town speaks much English. Everyone says that Varanasi is very dirty. It will be amazing if it's dirtier than Old Delhi. Yesterday, I new Delhi, I entertained the now-quaint notion that India resembled a warm NYC. Well, no.
I have no idea, not yet anyway, how so many people can live so close together, with so many big smiles.
One of the small benefits of an admission charge is that the sheer quantity of humanity drops by about 95%. Inside the Rad Fort couldn't feel like more of an oasis if I were in the middle of the garden of Eden, what with trees, shade, breezes. It's not that all the people are a trial, it just takes some getting used to.
A woman in a full chador passes me, not necessarily something I would have even noticed last year in Jerusalem, but here, in a country with such a large population of Muslims, this woman is the first one dressed like that that I have seen. Saris don't seem as restrictive somehow. One thing sure, no one wears shorts. It mist be close to 80 degrees and yet many people, men and women, wear sweaters.
In trying to relate Old Delhi to some other place that I've been, I might compare it to the souk in Cairo, but no one, or very few, is trying to sell you anything. I keep waiting to say "no" , but nobody asks!
True, thee are a lot of people, especially close, but most everyone smells nice. Part of living together, I suppose. I've been paying particular attention to loading on the deodorant. Being a responsible tourist.
Time to dive back into Chandri Chowk.
I prefer not to think of myself as overly fastidious, but after going into the gents toilet and, yes, it's about what you would imagine, and then being asked for 1 rupee as a cleaning fee and, of course, who has 1 rupee, I had to give h a 50 rupee (1 dollar) bill and have hake change. As I thought about his hands being the same ones that "cleaned" out the toilet, I looked slightly askance at the 10 rupee bills he handed back.
Glad I brought the hand wipes.
Can see that it's only a matter of time, though.
I guards things have impeoved somewhat sine Raven last visited India, I haven't seen any dead people in the streets, yet.
But there sure is a lot of life!
Chaos is in the eye of the bewildered!
I finished off my bottle of water, I don't know what to do with the empty. If I toss it, it would certainly feel at home with all the other bottles in the street.
Thinking I might try to find an hotel closer into the center of the city, I try the Taj Hotel and I inquire about availability and the woman behind the desk, in her blue sari and red mark on her forehead, in the king's English, replies. "I'm sorry, sir, but we're jam-packed."
I decide to go to Nepal.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
6
6
Everything about this day has begun in fine Indian fashion except. Dawn is itching to break in spite of my ambien at 3:30 in am.
On the metro into New Delhi, the announcements sound vaguely British, "mind the gap" until I hear, "passengers are advised Not to sit on the floor of the train".
Two older women sit across from me as we head into New Delhi, dressed in colorful saris, one red and gold, the other light yellow and green, laughing and chatting animatedly, while texting.
No other white persons on this train.
How did all this vast invention of peoples and religions and architecture arise here, in the Indus valley, so much before even Egypt or Mesopotamia?
With so little undiscovered, if the collection in the Indian national museum is any indication, so much is left to the imagination and oral history. The uncountable number of god, goddesses, universes, possibilities now extant must only have been passes on through tales and rituals, unlike in Egypt, where we have so much archeological evidence. I don't know if it's a little to say but there is a feeling of continuity between harappan civilization and the present the was missing in Luxor.
So much more could be here but the climate doesn't encourage the preservation of antiquities as the dessert climate in Egypt does.
How did this happen?
How did this come about
Shiva? Vishnu? Parvati?
Or Gautama Buddha for that matter?
Outside again, I'm impressed at how beautiful even Delhi is.
As we drive through the streets in the evening, narrowly avoiding disaster in the velocicycle, I ask the driver, ranjit Singh, if we are still in New Delhi because life seems to have deteriorated markedly, and he says " no, this is not Old Delhi, the traffic in Old Delhi is much worse!"
Once a person has been to NYC and ridden the subway there, this is certainly no worse and it smells much better. People seem to get a lot accomplished while riding cheek by jowl, going through their camera pictures, working on their computers....
I know deb recommended to maintain my "crap detector" on level red, but that's just not me, I guess. A Sikh cab driver convinced me to go with him and we rode all over Delhi for "only 50 rupees!"
Well, we did end up at a store that sells "Indian art", of course, but it was pretty good
quality. I hope you like it! I'm just kidding, but I realize if you don't say yes sometimes, and take the risk, new things might not happen.
Once I admit that that it may be part of my nature to be gullible, maybe I will just relax when life takes an unexpected left turn.
As I write this, swaying on the train back to Huda City Centre, I glance up and meet the eyes of a wizened, sari-clad old woman with the largest red dot in the center of her forehead a the deepest black eyes imaginable. I smile. She doesn't. But it doesn't seem rude.
I am doing my best to understand this cricket match on TV. The bartender is trying to tell me, after I ask him whether he has little book of rules, that it's "pretty simple". I laugh. And then he laughs, too.
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Monday, March 7, 2011
1
1
Leaving for India on a propeller plane, in the dark and wind and rain, bouncing around, seems more Indiana Jim than I like. I can picture a 1940's map with a little plane crawling across it, with a large, ornate compass in the lower lefthand corner.
The noise reverberates throughout the cabin, defeating any attempt at conversation, making it easy to spend time with my thoughts.
A small plane has a more intimate connection with the sky.
A transcontinental trip, at this lower altitude and with this noise, as used to be the case, would have been exhausting.
-1
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2
2
On the plane, one equipped with satellite television, I look down the aisle and see Barack Obama delivering a speech and I ask myself "why are things in our world the way they are, and why can they not be different?".
Have we stopped thinking?
Can we stop listening to the opinions of people who want to do our thinking for us and, instead, wake up.
"Who are you?"
"Why are you?"
Obama is our Socrates.
He wants citizens to think, and they want to kill him, for undermining the gods of their convenience and attracting their children.
Wisdom accrues to intelligent people who want to learn more.
Obama, considered an outsider by those who feel they know more than enough, thank you, responds with patience.
How much patience might it require?
How much new do we really want to know?
Maybe somewhere in India .....
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
On the plane, one equipped with satellite television, I look down the aisle and see Barack Obama delivering a speech and I ask myself "why are things in our world the way they are, and why can they not be different?".
Have we stopped thinking?
Can we stop listening to the opinions of people who want to do our thinking for us and, instead, wake up.
"Who are you?"
"Why are you?"
Obama is our Socrates.
He wants citizens to think, and they want to kill him, for undermining the gods of their convenience and attracting their children.
Wisdom accrues to intelligent people who want to learn more.
Obama, considered an outsider by those who feel they know more than enough, thank you, responds with patience.
How much patience might it require?
How much new do we really want to know?
Maybe somewhere in India .....
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4
4
Going to to the rear of the plane in search of a glass of vino, I notice that the steward is studying "Latin for dummies ".
Some hope for the old world , after all.
Waking later to the smell of coffee and croissants, and noticing on the map that we are 35000 feet above Paris, I pop open the window shade to the rosy dawn and the resounding final choral movement of Beethoven 's ninth symphony.
Great way to break open a day.
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5
5
Monday.
Setting out from the rarified heights of Switzerland's comprehensibility
for the humid chaos of India's Gangetic Plain.
Arriving in Frankfort, and as I walk through the airport looking for my departure gate, I pass those for Rome and Boston, and other western cities, seeing people who decidedly resemble me.
Heading further into the airport, towards the gates labeled Teheran, Djakarta, and Delhi people no longer look quite so much like me. The occasional foreigner I see on flights to Chicago is now me.
Another thing you won't find in many airports in the U.S.; a woman mopping the floor behind me while I stand at the urinal. America could stand some loosening up.
The woman in the seat in front of me just got up to put her spongey, rubbery mat away.
The world's longest commute to yoga class.
I am reading my newspaper when an offensive odor permeates the cabin. I look around to see what it might be. Uh oh, I realize it's the smell of the Indian spices in the soon-to-arrive lunch.
So very amazing to watch the map and the plane and the names of places below me I never imagined getting even this close to: Rawalpindi, Lahore, Qandahar, Almaty, Karachi.....
I feel a long way from home.
From Frankfort I sit next to An Indian-American woman who, as she says, loves to talk.
So I talk too.
She went to America with her husband by way of an arranged marriage and he promptly has an affair after she has a son. She left him and became a schoolteacher in Houston.
Her son is grown and has married a 100% redneck, as she describes her, married without her input, no less.
That her son's wife was divorced and came with a daughter did nothing to endear her to his new wife, then the wife asked for the mother to move out. Ouch!
I know that Deb is very proud of me, that I am able to discover all this.
In fact, I am Mr. Chatty and when we part at passport control, she says that it feels like we have known each other forever.
We talked long enough for her to start out sweet and then, with a little prodding, I found Mama India.
She raised her son by herself, now she is thinking of returning to India to be with her nine brothers and sisters, saying that she doesn't want to die alone. She has made the trip back to India for a wedding, a wedding for eight hundred people!
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Thursday, March 3, 2011
India 3
3
Sitting across the aisle from me, an older man ( says me!) in a suit spills his cup of water onto his tray and, shocked, watches the water run down towards his lap. I can see that he is fully expecting to be drenched and I quickly reach over and, with my hand, sweep the water off his tray and into the aisle.
He looks at me as if what I did was only short of crazy by a very small margin.
It didn't seem crazy to me.
But we all operate a little differently at the margins.
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Sitting across the aisle from me, an older man ( says me!) in a suit spills his cup of water onto his tray and, shocked, watches the water run down towards his lap. I can see that he is fully expecting to be drenched and I quickly reach over and, with my hand, sweep the water off his tray and into the aisle.
He looks at me as if what I did was only short of crazy by a very small margin.
It didn't seem crazy to me.
But we all operate a little differently at the margins.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
India 2
2
On the plane, one equipped with satellite television, I look down the aisle and see Barack Obama delivering a speech and I ask myself "why are things in our world the way they are, and why can they not be different?".
Have we stopped thinking?
Can we stop listening to the opinions of people who want to do our thinking for us and, instead, wake up.
"Who are you?"
"Why are you?"
Obama is our Socrates.
He wants citizens to think, and they want to kill him, for undermining the gods of their convenience and attracting their children.
Wisdom accrues to intelligent people who want to learn more.
Obama, considered an outsider by those who feel they know more than enough, thank you, responds with patience.
How much patience might it require?
How much new do we really want to know?
Maybe somewhere in India .....
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Up and away
Leaving for India on a propeller plane, in the dark and wind and rain, bouncing around, seems more Indiana Jim than I like. I can picture a 1940's map with a little plane crawling across it, with a large, ornate compass in the lower lefthand corner.
The noise reverberates throughout the cabin, defeating any attempt at conversation, making it easy to spend time with my thoughts.
A small plane has a more intimate connection with the sky.
A transcontinental trip, at this lower altitude and with this noise, as used to be the case, would have been exhausting.
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Tuesday, March 1, 2011
What words?
My wife keeps saying,
"I have no words!
I have no words!"
As if that's a bad thing.
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"I have no words!
I have no words!"
As if that's a bad thing.
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Indiana Jim
I tell Larry that I am leaving for India on the day after tomorrow.
"Why?"
I tell Larry that I'm going to track down the dirty, rotten varmints who have stolen our designs and are having them made in India.
"Like Indiana Jones!"
And I realize that it's true, Indy did go to India, and, like me, he did go to Egypt, as I did when I turned 60. And in another episode which took place, first in Venice, the then in Petra, I see that, Indy, c'est moi!
There you have it, Indiana Jim.
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"Why?"
I tell Larry that I'm going to track down the dirty, rotten varmints who have stolen our designs and are having them made in India.
"Like Indiana Jones!"
And I realize that it's true, Indy did go to India, and, like me, he did go to Egypt, as I did when I turned 60. And in another episode which took place, first in Venice, the then in Petra, I see that, Indy, c'est moi!
There you have it, Indiana Jim.
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Getting ready to leave
Day after tomorrow I leave for Switzerland and then on to India.
Hadn't sunk in until now.
My 65th birthday today.
Last year, as I left for the middle east, I phoned mom.
She died since that trip.
Tempus fugit.
With both my parents gone and me being the eldest sibling, goodbyes no longer flow up and down the pyramid, but only down now.
It does make me feel lighter, as if there were nothing between me and the great Upthere.
The Empyrean.
I love the sense of solidity beneath me, family and friends of 65 years.
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Hadn't sunk in until now.
My 65th birthday today.
Last year, as I left for the middle east, I phoned mom.
She died since that trip.
Tempus fugit.
With both my parents gone and me being the eldest sibling, goodbyes no longer flow up and down the pyramid, but only down now.
It does make me feel lighter, as if there were nothing between me and the great Upthere.
The Empyrean.
I love the sense of solidity beneath me, family and friends of 65 years.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
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