Yesterday we went to Borobudur, Indonesia’s largest Buddhist temple. Impressive, huge and detailed as it was, something was missing.
Our trip was as members of a herd of tourists – not our usual way of experiencing a temple. The ship docked in Semerang and Borobudur is a significant drive away so we thought that if we went on our own that it was entirely possible that we’d get back late and would miss the ship so we took a Holland American excursion. If anyone travels in an excursion, they are guaranteed that the ship will not leave without them so it wasn’t the excursion we took as much as the sense of guaranteed return.
Along the way we passed some million dollar photos, photos kept out of our camera by speed and a bus window. The horse drawn carts were super. Some horses advertised their presence in silver and leather finery while others had brightly colored carts and others were work-a-day plain.
There were people slaving away under conical straw hats in the mercilessly large, hot rice paddies. Women planted seedlings or pulled weeds and men pushed what might be called hand tractors but looked like long, homemade roto-tillers. The rice fields themselves were patchworks of glistening, brown water or fields of green or brown rectangles whose lines were drawn by grassy burms where barefoot farmers lugged hoes or bundles of leaves. Bamboo sticks along the sides of plots supported long beans and occasional trees added their own brand of green.
Rice, by the way, is about 50 cents per kilo for the good stuff and it is eaten 3 times a day by everyone. The rice farmers grow white and red rice as well as white or black sticky rice. Some own the land and some share crop. There are also people who share bulls and other animals. One person buys the animal and the other cares for it until it is mature. They share the sale price of the animal or the sale price of what it may create such as milk.
In cities groups of children waited for transportation or walked together in animated groups. The younger children wore red shorts or skirts and white shirts. Middle school children were defined by dark blue and white and high school students by gray and white. Unlike Australia’s these uniforms did not include hats though the sun and heat here accost the body with even less mercy.
There were motorcycles with families of 4 or rolled carpets or huge bales or boxes that dwarfed their drivers. Trucks full of water buffalo and bicycle powered carts all begged to be captured in pixels but the camera couldn’t work fast enough or focus through the dirty window.
Another missed photo that I so wish I had is one of the police dolls. I don’t know what they are called but at some rotaries, or traffic circles or roundabouts, there were concrete, life-sized traffic officers painted in appropriate colors and tirelessly at attention.
Speaking of police, we had a police escort for the whole trip. There were 5 buses in our convoy and a police cruiser with blaring siren led the way. At all major intersections, police stoped traffic so our convoy could travel uninhibited. If the right lane was more open than the left, the convoy just went in that lane. The rest of the cars, trucks and motorcycles were at our mercy. How the people in the car or in the first bus tolerated the hours of siren, I cannot imagine.
Onboard the bus our guide talked endlessly about life in Samerang. He is Catholic and is married to a Catholic woman. His wife was Moslem but her parents sent her to a Catholic school and she converted. He said that the government insists that people not marry outside their religion and said that women must be at least 20 and men at least 24 in order to marry.
Churches can approve of a marriage of younger people who can have a religious marriage until they are old enough for a civil wedding. It is not allowed to live together without being married by one institution or the other and if a woman gets pregnant then she gets married.
The man pays the woman’s family a dowry and it seemed that a middle class dowry was about 500,000 to 1,000,000 Rupiah ($50-$100 US). The bride’s family could use part or all of that money for the wedding celebration which might include having people witness the wedding ceremony and then having a meal or might just be a party after the ceremony. There might be bands or singers at the cerebration or the guests might come to the bride’s home in small, staggered groups for an hour or two.
The guide said that every Indonesian must have a religion. It is not allowed to say that they have no religion because that might mean that they are communists and that’s not allowed.
The temple at Borbudur rises as a huge mound in a field with nicely kept gardens but it’s just there by itself. There are no long walkways with guardians on either side that allow the sense of grandeur to grow as one marches toward the temple. There are no auxiliary temples or mahouts with elephants. Rather than quiet conversation in small groups there are loud speakers and harsh city sounds that convey more of a sense of Disneyland than of worship.
That may be the real difference. Nobody seemed to be there in order to pray. There were no prayer cloths tied around trees and it didn’t feel that candles or incense had ever burned there. The literature compared the t
Showing posts with label Asia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Asia. Show all posts
Saturday, April 4, 2009
BALI INDONESIA
Pandang Bai, Bali, Indonesia offers things to do for anyone who can make it past the hagglers on the beach. It’s hard to resist them. They want very little money for what they offer but knowing that I would never use the things and that they don’t appeal to me aesthetically made it possible to say no.
We did agree to go in a taxi to outer towns to look around. The driver stopped when we asked him to and he took us to a wood carving place as well as a batik place though the prices at both were out of this world – so high they had to price in US dollars because they’d have run out of zeros using Indonesian Rupiah.
We stopped to take photos of the bridge protector. Since all bad things come from water, the bridges need special creatures to protect them from the water. Some of these are quite elaborate.
At another area we stopped to take photos of rice fields but it was hard to capture the small terraces on the photo so I took a little step onto a rice paddy wall. Apparently I weigh more than a rice farmer because the wall under one foot gave out and I ended up with a mud-coated shoe. Later, in the toilet at a wood carving studio, I held my foot over top of the toilet and poured a bucket of water over it to flush off some of the mud. (It was one of those bucket-flush toilets and this may have been the first time I was happy not to have a flush toilet.)
While the rinse removed some mud it also resulted in a distinct squish while walking out. As the shoe dried the mud became more apparent so I tried to clean it back at the ship where I learned that wet wipes and Q-tips are not the best tools for cleaning mud from a shoe.
Another stop was the Bat Temple. Built into the side of a hill, it has sheltered thousands of bats since the 11th century. Our guide told us that there are a million bats in the cave along with snakes. The snakes never come out but eat the dead or dying bats.
The bats have to feed so they come out at night looking for insects. I said it would be exciting to see them fly off but he disagreed. “The bat shit rains all over the temple, Madam.” he said.
He said it as easily as if he had asked it I would like tea.
His name was Wayun or something akin. It means first. He is the first born son and has 4 brothers so they are named First, Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth. He and his brothers went to elementary school and then had to drop out. While elementary school is free the students and families must buy uniforms and all their books and materials. This was enough for his family to manage. They couldn’t afford high school so he works at the temple.
In the past, before the bombing , 500 people would come to the temple every day but now there are 30 ore 40 a day and nobody at the temple has money.
An old man trailed Rick to sell him a coin for $4 so I eventually bought the coin. Our guide told us that the man’s grandfather found the coin in a sunken ship off the coast. Who knows?
After I bought that coin another man appeared with another coin and I bought that too for $3 with no story of grandfathers or sunken ships but in a flash he whipped out another coin so Rick and I skedaddled before we became the owners of dozens of coins.
We talked with a port officer, a gentleman dressed in a red shirt, red plaid sarong and with a kris in his belt loop. There were many such officers who seemed to take turns directing traffic, sitting and watching traffic and smoking cigarettes in nearby cafes. This particular officer allowed me to take his photo and then asked for my Holland America 25 day cruise button. He collects them. It didn’t mean much to me so I gave it him and he said it would be the 209th in his collection.
He talked about his kris saying it was his grandfathers and that the kris has magic in it and power in it so it’s best to keep it in a family. He seemed surprised that Rick had actually been able to buy a kris so maybe they are not sold in Indonesia as they were in Malaysia.
Back on the ship with a bit of lunch in us at 6 p.m. Rick stretched out on the bed and I went to walk the deck one time. One of the maintenance men was fighting with a tender propeller. It had about a kilometer of rope of various sizes wrapped around it and he was trying to get it off.
The anti-pirate acoustic weapons are still on deck and the security officers continue to prowl but there’s been no official alert of any kind. Only rumor.
We did agree to go in a taxi to outer towns to look around. The driver stopped when we asked him to and he took us to a wood carving place as well as a batik place though the prices at both were out of this world – so high they had to price in US dollars because they’d have run out of zeros using Indonesian Rupiah.
We stopped to take photos of the bridge protector. Since all bad things come from water, the bridges need special creatures to protect them from the water. Some of these are quite elaborate.
At another area we stopped to take photos of rice fields but it was hard to capture the small terraces on the photo so I took a little step onto a rice paddy wall. Apparently I weigh more than a rice farmer because the wall under one foot gave out and I ended up with a mud-coated shoe. Later, in the toilet at a wood carving studio, I held my foot over top of the toilet and poured a bucket of water over it to flush off some of the mud. (It was one of those bucket-flush toilets and this may have been the first time I was happy not to have a flush toilet.)
While the rinse removed some mud it also resulted in a distinct squish while walking out. As the shoe dried the mud became more apparent so I tried to clean it back at the ship where I learned that wet wipes and Q-tips are not the best tools for cleaning mud from a shoe.
Another stop was the Bat Temple. Built into the side of a hill, it has sheltered thousands of bats since the 11th century. Our guide told us that there are a million bats in the cave along with snakes. The snakes never come out but eat the dead or dying bats.
The bats have to feed so they come out at night looking for insects. I said it would be exciting to see them fly off but he disagreed. “The bat shit rains all over the temple, Madam.” he said.
He said it as easily as if he had asked it I would like tea.
His name was Wayun or something akin. It means first. He is the first born son and has 4 brothers so they are named First, Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth. He and his brothers went to elementary school and then had to drop out. While elementary school is free the students and families must buy uniforms and all their books and materials. This was enough for his family to manage. They couldn’t afford high school so he works at the temple.
In the past, before the bombing , 500 people would come to the temple every day but now there are 30 ore 40 a day and nobody at the temple has money.
An old man trailed Rick to sell him a coin for $4 so I eventually bought the coin. Our guide told us that the man’s grandfather found the coin in a sunken ship off the coast. Who knows?
After I bought that coin another man appeared with another coin and I bought that too for $3 with no story of grandfathers or sunken ships but in a flash he whipped out another coin so Rick and I skedaddled before we became the owners of dozens of coins.
We talked with a port officer, a gentleman dressed in a red shirt, red plaid sarong and with a kris in his belt loop. There were many such officers who seemed to take turns directing traffic, sitting and watching traffic and smoking cigarettes in nearby cafes. This particular officer allowed me to take his photo and then asked for my Holland America 25 day cruise button. He collects them. It didn’t mean much to me so I gave it him and he said it would be the 209th in his collection.
He talked about his kris saying it was his grandfathers and that the kris has magic in it and power in it so it’s best to keep it in a family. He seemed surprised that Rick had actually been able to buy a kris so maybe they are not sold in Indonesia as they were in Malaysia.
Back on the ship with a bit of lunch in us at 6 p.m. Rick stretched out on the bed and I went to walk the deck one time. One of the maintenance men was fighting with a tender propeller. It had about a kilometer of rope of various sizes wrapped around it and he was trying to get it off.
The anti-pirate acoustic weapons are still on deck and the security officers continue to prowl but there’s been no official alert of any kind. Only rumor.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Singapore
Singapore
Our first notable encounter on this trip to Singapore occurred in the Rochester Airport. We learned that our checked bag weighed 55 pounds and that the excess 5 pounds would carry a $150 surcharge. Holy cow. We moved things around and made our carry-on heavier and bulkier but saved the $150. Looming in the near future is the notion that we have neither space nor weight for any treasures we might find on the trip.
Having dealt with the suitcase we concentrated on the serious task of getting to Singapore. We didn’t wait long in Rochester before we flew to Chicago where we waited and flew to Los Angeles where we waited and flew to Hong Kong where we waited and flew to Singapore. More expensive tickets might whisk a person along in fewer steps but no matter the route Singapore is on the other side of a large world.
It was interesting to look at airports along the way. If ranked only by the style, cleanliness and art in airports, Singapore and Hong Kong would leave the US bleakly behind. Both those airports are new and elegant as is the subway system in Singapore. Full of mosaics and large spaces, it’s like traveling though an art museum. The tracks are hidden behind glass walls whose doors only open when the trains are there. The safety and cleanliness of such a system are without question.
Singapore is a new, tiny country. They say they have no water supply on the island but I’m guessing that means in quantity for the population because people have lived here for a long time.
Again, in the modern context, there are no natural resources yet the country seem to provide for the people. It was a Sultanate and then the British claimed it. Japan took it in the Second World War and it spent a bit of time as part of the Malay Federation but racial tensions and the political pressure of Indonesia forced Singapore into independence and they’ve done well.
With pockets of Chinese, Indian and European as well as other ethnic groups and huge areas of poverty Singapore took an interesting approach to racism decades ago. They built low income housing and required that every floor have families of different ethnicity. Over time people have come to see each other as neighbors and not as ethnic groups and this has helped bring the country together. Perfect? Not likely but real progress is made all the time.
It seems that the country’s pride has also helped. Singapore doesn’t talk about military wealth or power. How could they? It’s tiny with a small population. What they talk about is being educated. What they show is cleanliness and landscaping. There is public art everywhere. The economy seems strong and the country seems “together” at least to visitors. That’s not the impression one gets from LXA.
While in Singapore I am oversized and under bling-ed. There are sparkling Indian saris and rhinestone embedded T-shirts. Shoes and boots are jeweled and the sun dances over handbags and jewelry. The size-zero women become inches taller on heels which seem no impediment to traveling stride after stride over the streets and into shops. Even if a few sparkles were added to my backpack and perhaps my sneaker laces, I would still be a few sizes out of the ordinary.
Singapore is changing. Though the flowers blossom on every elevated walkway and the parks are amazing pockets of jungle one can find the occasional bit of litter and the stainless steel panels in the mass transit areas show fingerprints. Taxi drivers say that they wait 30 minute for a new fare and some shops are permanently shuttered. Hotel occupancy is down and we heard only the occasional German or French conversation.
Western food has pushed into Singapore where Kentucky Fried Chicken is presented as an American Classic and people choose Subway sandwiches over won ton mee or masla dosi. As a result some people have attained a Western girth and, according to the papers, related Western diseases. Since everyone is covered by the same health plan, it is in everyone’s interest to be healthy so warnings are posted on snack foods to eat in moderation. Commentators in videos at the Museum urge Asian food and rejection of Starbucks. Change is tough.
Rick and I discovered, on our last day, the best masala dosai in the world. I say this with great conviction. The best spring rolls in the world can be found at the Chang Dao Nest in Thailand. We’ve eaten spring rolls everywhere and those are the best.
We’ve eaten masala dosai in a lot of places too including our month long trek through India and this was the best. Called Sree Sagar Pte Ltd, Pure Veg Restaurant, it is the establishment owned by Mr. Ananda Rao K.
The dosai was perfect. The masala had a wonderful flavor that made me just keep chewing it to make it last. The onion was mild and the other spices were able to blend and carry through. I don’t know the name for the coconut dipping sauce or the red sauce but I ate every drop of both. The sambal was, again, perfectly spiced. I also had a samosa. I could have eaten those samosas every day for years. If I could write about food the way Emilie does, you’d understand how good this stuff was. I had eaten some masala dosai the day before elsewhere and it was okay but when I tasted Mr. Rao’s food there was no comparison.
I have a photo of Mr. Rao and his cook and will post it when possible but if anyone out there is going to Singapore, stop by the Lau Pa Sat Festival Market and find him at the end of the row on Street 1 or go to his restaurant at 212 Serangoon Road. He has a website - www.sreesagar.com but what he really has is the best masala dosai in the world.
Rain interfered with our walking in the evening so we went inside a mall and were amazed by the number of people walking around a mall on a Sunday evening. Slightly over half the stores were open and hundreds of people gathered in groups in chairs or on the floor or leaning over the railing talking in that mix of Asian languages that just sounds like Singapore.
Our first notable encounter on this trip to Singapore occurred in the Rochester Airport. We learned that our checked bag weighed 55 pounds and that the excess 5 pounds would carry a $150 surcharge. Holy cow. We moved things around and made our carry-on heavier and bulkier but saved the $150. Looming in the near future is the notion that we have neither space nor weight for any treasures we might find on the trip.
Having dealt with the suitcase we concentrated on the serious task of getting to Singapore. We didn’t wait long in Rochester before we flew to Chicago where we waited and flew to Los Angeles where we waited and flew to Hong Kong where we waited and flew to Singapore. More expensive tickets might whisk a person along in fewer steps but no matter the route Singapore is on the other side of a large world.
It was interesting to look at airports along the way. If ranked only by the style, cleanliness and art in airports, Singapore and Hong Kong would leave the US bleakly behind. Both those airports are new and elegant as is the subway system in Singapore. Full of mosaics and large spaces, it’s like traveling though an art museum. The tracks are hidden behind glass walls whose doors only open when the trains are there. The safety and cleanliness of such a system are without question.
Singapore is a new, tiny country. They say they have no water supply on the island but I’m guessing that means in quantity for the population because people have lived here for a long time.
Again, in the modern context, there are no natural resources yet the country seem to provide for the people. It was a Sultanate and then the British claimed it. Japan took it in the Second World War and it spent a bit of time as part of the Malay Federation but racial tensions and the political pressure of Indonesia forced Singapore into independence and they’ve done well.
With pockets of Chinese, Indian and European as well as other ethnic groups and huge areas of poverty Singapore took an interesting approach to racism decades ago. They built low income housing and required that every floor have families of different ethnicity. Over time people have come to see each other as neighbors and not as ethnic groups and this has helped bring the country together. Perfect? Not likely but real progress is made all the time.
It seems that the country’s pride has also helped. Singapore doesn’t talk about military wealth or power. How could they? It’s tiny with a small population. What they talk about is being educated. What they show is cleanliness and landscaping. There is public art everywhere. The economy seems strong and the country seems “together” at least to visitors. That’s not the impression one gets from LXA.
While in Singapore I am oversized and under bling-ed. There are sparkling Indian saris and rhinestone embedded T-shirts. Shoes and boots are jeweled and the sun dances over handbags and jewelry. The size-zero women become inches taller on heels which seem no impediment to traveling stride after stride over the streets and into shops. Even if a few sparkles were added to my backpack and perhaps my sneaker laces, I would still be a few sizes out of the ordinary.
Singapore is changing. Though the flowers blossom on every elevated walkway and the parks are amazing pockets of jungle one can find the occasional bit of litter and the stainless steel panels in the mass transit areas show fingerprints. Taxi drivers say that they wait 30 minute for a new fare and some shops are permanently shuttered. Hotel occupancy is down and we heard only the occasional German or French conversation.
Western food has pushed into Singapore where Kentucky Fried Chicken is presented as an American Classic and people choose Subway sandwiches over won ton mee or masla dosi. As a result some people have attained a Western girth and, according to the papers, related Western diseases. Since everyone is covered by the same health plan, it is in everyone’s interest to be healthy so warnings are posted on snack foods to eat in moderation. Commentators in videos at the Museum urge Asian food and rejection of Starbucks. Change is tough.
Rick and I discovered, on our last day, the best masala dosai in the world. I say this with great conviction. The best spring rolls in the world can be found at the Chang Dao Nest in Thailand. We’ve eaten spring rolls everywhere and those are the best.
We’ve eaten masala dosai in a lot of places too including our month long trek through India and this was the best. Called Sree Sagar Pte Ltd, Pure Veg Restaurant, it is the establishment owned by Mr. Ananda Rao K.
The dosai was perfect. The masala had a wonderful flavor that made me just keep chewing it to make it last. The onion was mild and the other spices were able to blend and carry through. I don’t know the name for the coconut dipping sauce or the red sauce but I ate every drop of both. The sambal was, again, perfectly spiced. I also had a samosa. I could have eaten those samosas every day for years. If I could write about food the way Emilie does, you’d understand how good this stuff was. I had eaten some masala dosai the day before elsewhere and it was okay but when I tasted Mr. Rao’s food there was no comparison.
I have a photo of Mr. Rao and his cook and will post it when possible but if anyone out there is going to Singapore, stop by the Lau Pa Sat Festival Market and find him at the end of the row on Street 1 or go to his restaurant at 212 Serangoon Road. He has a website - www.sreesagar.com but what he really has is the best masala dosai in the world.
Rain interfered with our walking in the evening so we went inside a mall and were amazed by the number of people walking around a mall on a Sunday evening. Slightly over half the stores were open and hundreds of people gathered in groups in chairs or on the floor or leaning over the railing talking in that mix of Asian languages that just sounds like Singapore.
Friday, May 2, 2008
India, second class
Dinner and a Train Ride
Rick and I always travel on our own. He finds guest houses and interesting restaurants and we walk mile after mile taking photos. But his research hinted that India was visited with a guide so we booked a tour.
Our trip was difficult, interesting, unforgettable, exhausting, amazing and sometimes wonderful. The problems were often due to our terrible guide and his terrible company (GAP tours) but sometimes they were due to poverty and intense numbers of people.
One night we left our hotel, piled into taxis for the train station stopping for dinner along the way. For safety, we took the luggage off the roof and stuffed it into the taxis while we ate at Treat Restaurant.
The restaurant occupied one side of a large building while the other side had some kind of children’s restaurant/play area where the music was loud enough to cause brain damage. Through the wall the music rattled the tables. Shortly after we ordered dinner the music stopped and the play area closed.
As my nerves began to settle with the quiet, I glanced to my left, toward the kitchen and a rat scamper across the floor to scoot under a cabinet.
I was sitting across from a pale, sad Jen, green shawl pulled tight around her shoulders and head down in the fatigue of constant stress. Earlier that day, while recharging her Blackberry, and she told me she thought herself adventurous before this trip but had reassessed. All future travel would be first class.
Had she seen the rat? Her eyes were closed so probably not. The rat might have sent her into a comatose state or perhaps it would have propelled her, screaming, onto the table. My relief turned to moral dilemma. Should I tell her or be silent? I chose silence because as I thought about it I began to realize that I too was in this restaurant with a rat. Should I eat this food, my last meal before a long train ride? If not, what reason will I tell everyone for my sudden change of heart? Maybe I should jump on the table and scream.
Certainly we had seen rats in Asia. In some Hindu temples people share food with rats – a form of prayer, a source of blessing. I do not wish to be so blessed.
If this had happened on my first night in India, I’d have probably starved but it was the middle of our trip and I smiled wanly at Jen and ate.
After dinner we continued to the train station. There’s an advantage to being in a train station at night. With the heat of the day gone, the smell subsides. With the darkness, one can’t see the, well… the rats.
We waited a long while for our late train but finally boarded a second class sleeper car. It would be home base for 12 hours, clanking from Orchha to Varanasi. The night on the sleeper train was a much-dreaded component of this tour. While I would not rush to board that train again, it wasn’t as bad as it might have been. It was November, winter, so instead of reaching 48 degrees Celsius in the afternoon the temperature merely ambled toward 30 (about 90 F) and that passes for “cold” in India. So, since it was winter, the fans were off. From my slot on a top bunk, I looked longingly at the shiny aluminum blades wishing they would move the hot air surrounding me but seeing the Indians mummy-like in woolen blankets, heads buried to conserve heat, it was senseless to ask.
Let me describe the train. The cars were in sections and each section accommodated 8 people. There were 2 sets of 3 bunks and one set of 2. The bunks, or berths, were green shelves cushioned with a bit of padding. Each person was given 2 sheets, a blanket and a pillow for personal nest building for the night. I started by cleaning my berth with several sani-wipes.
During the night, the train chugged for about 10 minutes, then stopped for 5. While it moved the snoring was masked by the many train noises and the sound of one’s brain sloshing in one’s head from the jarring movement. (How can train tracks be so bumpy?) When the train stopped the snoring seemed to pass through a clarifying filter sharpening the edge of each sound to increase the fingernails-on-chalkboard sensation.
This was my train song - to the tune of “My Favorite Things” – sort of
Clanking of train wheels and blaring of loud horns
Sellers of chai tea and people of loud snore
Bare toes that wiggle ‘neath white crispy sheets
These are a few of the things on my train.
When the flies bite
When the sanitizer stings
When I’m feeling bad
I simply ignore all these things on the train
And make sure my Rick is near
During our afternoon in Varanasi, we were warned not to walk on our own but that’s just what we did. We were approached by 50 drivers by the time we turned a corner. Once out of sight of the hotel, people ignored us.
Imagine this. We found a Hindi wedding march. It was Sergeant Pepper’s Band meets Bollywood - very cool. The bride was a lovely young girl who walked barefoot on the street surrounded by family and led by a marching band in full uniform.
We found spice alley with huge baskets of every spice we know and more and metal work factories where people rebuilt tuktuks. In the streets of Varanasi we crowded with humanity talking, beeping, driving, walking and riding bikes on every street while flies filled the spaces between people and sound. (I exaggerate only marginally.) Streets held cows, trash, goo, spit and urine. In every sheltered corner, we saw men peeing. Where there was no sheltered corner, we saw men peeing. Constantly, men pee. Of course, if one has no toilet what is to be done?
I’m sure parts of India are quiet, calm, aromatic and elegant. Perhaps even parts of Varanasi are serene but everything we saw was intense with color, noise, odor and clutter.
Rick and I always travel on our own. He finds guest houses and interesting restaurants and we walk mile after mile taking photos. But his research hinted that India was visited with a guide so we booked a tour.
Our trip was difficult, interesting, unforgettable, exhausting, amazing and sometimes wonderful. The problems were often due to our terrible guide and his terrible company (GAP tours) but sometimes they were due to poverty and intense numbers of people.
One night we left our hotel, piled into taxis for the train station stopping for dinner along the way. For safety, we took the luggage off the roof and stuffed it into the taxis while we ate at Treat Restaurant.
The restaurant occupied one side of a large building while the other side had some kind of children’s restaurant/play area where the music was loud enough to cause brain damage. Through the wall the music rattled the tables. Shortly after we ordered dinner the music stopped and the play area closed.
As my nerves began to settle with the quiet, I glanced to my left, toward the kitchen and a rat scamper across the floor to scoot under a cabinet.
I was sitting across from a pale, sad Jen, green shawl pulled tight around her shoulders and head down in the fatigue of constant stress. Earlier that day, while recharging her Blackberry, and she told me she thought herself adventurous before this trip but had reassessed. All future travel would be first class.
Had she seen the rat? Her eyes were closed so probably not. The rat might have sent her into a comatose state or perhaps it would have propelled her, screaming, onto the table. My relief turned to moral dilemma. Should I tell her or be silent? I chose silence because as I thought about it I began to realize that I too was in this restaurant with a rat. Should I eat this food, my last meal before a long train ride? If not, what reason will I tell everyone for my sudden change of heart? Maybe I should jump on the table and scream.
Certainly we had seen rats in Asia. In some Hindu temples people share food with rats – a form of prayer, a source of blessing. I do not wish to be so blessed.
If this had happened on my first night in India, I’d have probably starved but it was the middle of our trip and I smiled wanly at Jen and ate.
After dinner we continued to the train station. There’s an advantage to being in a train station at night. With the heat of the day gone, the smell subsides. With the darkness, one can’t see the, well… the rats.
We waited a long while for our late train but finally boarded a second class sleeper car. It would be home base for 12 hours, clanking from Orchha to Varanasi. The night on the sleeper train was a much-dreaded component of this tour. While I would not rush to board that train again, it wasn’t as bad as it might have been. It was November, winter, so instead of reaching 48 degrees Celsius in the afternoon the temperature merely ambled toward 30 (about 90 F) and that passes for “cold” in India. So, since it was winter, the fans were off. From my slot on a top bunk, I looked longingly at the shiny aluminum blades wishing they would move the hot air surrounding me but seeing the Indians mummy-like in woolen blankets, heads buried to conserve heat, it was senseless to ask.
Let me describe the train. The cars were in sections and each section accommodated 8 people. There were 2 sets of 3 bunks and one set of 2. The bunks, or berths, were green shelves cushioned with a bit of padding. Each person was given 2 sheets, a blanket and a pillow for personal nest building for the night. I started by cleaning my berth with several sani-wipes.
During the night, the train chugged for about 10 minutes, then stopped for 5. While it moved the snoring was masked by the many train noises and the sound of one’s brain sloshing in one’s head from the jarring movement. (How can train tracks be so bumpy?) When the train stopped the snoring seemed to pass through a clarifying filter sharpening the edge of each sound to increase the fingernails-on-chalkboard sensation.
This was my train song - to the tune of “My Favorite Things” – sort of
Clanking of train wheels and blaring of loud horns
Sellers of chai tea and people of loud snore
Bare toes that wiggle ‘neath white crispy sheets
These are a few of the things on my train.
When the flies bite
When the sanitizer stings
When I’m feeling bad
I simply ignore all these things on the train
And make sure my Rick is near
During our afternoon in Varanasi, we were warned not to walk on our own but that’s just what we did. We were approached by 50 drivers by the time we turned a corner. Once out of sight of the hotel, people ignored us.
Imagine this. We found a Hindi wedding march. It was Sergeant Pepper’s Band meets Bollywood - very cool. The bride was a lovely young girl who walked barefoot on the street surrounded by family and led by a marching band in full uniform.
We found spice alley with huge baskets of every spice we know and more and metal work factories where people rebuilt tuktuks. In the streets of Varanasi we crowded with humanity talking, beeping, driving, walking and riding bikes on every street while flies filled the spaces between people and sound. (I exaggerate only marginally.) Streets held cows, trash, goo, spit and urine. In every sheltered corner, we saw men peeing. Where there was no sheltered corner, we saw men peeing. Constantly, men pee. Of course, if one has no toilet what is to be done?
I’m sure parts of India are quiet, calm, aromatic and elegant. Perhaps even parts of Varanasi are serene but everything we saw was intense with color, noise, odor and clutter.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Story Jar: Baktapura
A bell clangs, a hundred bells clang and the sound bounces over and around the chugging engines, beeping horns, chanting monks, bargaining shoppers and endless drums and flutes. In the far distance the dying day glows pink on mountain snow and over the valley a huge flock of white birds settles then explodes again into the air looking for a night roost.
Red and pink shawls warm shoulders of women buying, women selling, women walking with children tied to their backs, women filling water jugs and everywhere there is another sound, another movement and another temple toward which sounds are offered. This is Bhaktapur, Nepal, the city that holds its heritage.
We came here with Jeff, the last member of our India tour we hugged good-by. Rick and I had a room for our last night in Nepal but Jeff came only to walk about and have lunch before returning to Katmandu. Shortly he’ll leave for Tibet and we will head for home.
Inside the taxi was one century but outside time was braided: ancient history, middle ages and modern times. We found internet cafes and pottery smoldering in straw fired pits. Tarps on streets or temple steps were covered with rice drying in the sun while people talked on cell phones.
At noon a live goat led a parade to the main temple where it was sacrificed leaving a large puddle of blood on cobblestones – all of it captured on digital movie cameras. It is completely not Kansas.
Bhacktapur is the most impressive of the World Heritage sites we have seen during this trip. A large, complex entity, the city is a living museum with hundreds of temples and wells (there is little indoor water service) and more carvings than a person could count. The wooden doorways, windows, balconies and roof tops are carved with Ganish (the elephant god), elephants, goddesses unknown, Garuda (a mythical bird), feathers, fruits, diamonds and flowers.
The main square is carved and polished but Rick and I walked the back alleys peeking in a doorway where a woman cooked over an open fire while surrounded by as many people as the small floor would hold. Hens pecked at stray grains of rice between their fluttering chicks. A young girl jumped rope in a courtyard and an old man slept on a bit of burlap next to knitting women and sleeping babies.
Everywhere there is one more structure worthy of a photograph.
Once just a bit of a trading road to Tibet what is now Bhaktapur became a town under the efforts of King Ananda Malla 1080, more or less. For 200 years, from 1400 onward it was the most powerful city in the area. Most of the knock-your-yak-wool-socks-off architecture is from that period or from the 17th century. Apparently it would be even more dramatic but an earthquake in 1934 destroyed several temples. It’s hard to believe that any were lost since they are everywhere but at the peak there were 172 temples and monasteries here as well as 172 pilgrim shelters, now used as shaded meeting areas for old men during the day.
It seems as if there must be 172 stores selling CDs of monks chanting or of Nepali music because one hears this everywhere. Our guidebook says that this city, the architecture and pace, is what Katmandu was 30 years ago. As I write we are sitting on the roof of our hotel sipping tea, listening to all that is Bhaktapur while I type on the laptop by the light of a candle sheltered from the wind by a plastic water bottle. Gotta love recycling.
In the 1970s a German consortium decided to support Baktapur by building a sewage system and repaving the streets with cobblestone and brick and also began a continuing restoration of buildings and temples. Now one pays $10 to enter and the money is used to restore old buildings brick by brick and clay tile by clay tile. Only photos will do to explain this town wide party with momo steamers on every block.
Part 2
One never knows what one will find on any street but when on a street in a foreign city he chances of seeing something outlandishly different increases. Baktapura’s streets are as foreign as they come and they have provided us with shock, amusement and fascination.
A three-year old girl’s toy was the creepiest thing though I can only say that because we missed the goat sacrifice in the afternoon. She was running and laughing while waving about a hypodermic needle. (Let’s reassess the danger level of “runs with scissors”.) The needle was huge, the holding several ml of what looked like very dirty water (sewage??) and brandishing a 2 inch long needle. Rick and I cleared out of her way. Can you imagine being stabbed with an old hypodermic needle with unknown fluid inside?
Later another tiny girl ran between us with a burning stick. She was among a group of 3-10 year olds who were burning bits of trash in the corner of a temple.
In a safer part of our evening walk we went to Potter’s Square. We had been there in the afternoon when we saw pots being stacked on a straw bed, packed with more straw and layered with more pots and more straw. By evening the pots were covered in straw and buried in ash in preparation for a 3-day firing.
Another load of pots had been fired and another was in the process of firing with smoke leaking out all around it. This pit firing was being tended by a man who fed scraps of wood into each of the ports at the bottom. He would continue to do this all night.
We went to our hotel room for the night when I heard cymbals and drums and looked out the window. There was a dancing parade of the nine manifestations of Durga, living gods that are particularly revered and feared in Baktapura. During certain few occasions and particularly during the festival of Dasain (now), members of the cast of flower sellers are chosen to don the masks and parade through the street.
The masks are specially made and used for only one year. When on, the masks empower the wearer with the embodiment of the deity and so they are living gods. They dance throughout the city to of the major temples and then they disappear into the monastery where only they and initiates can go. I snapped one photo but then learned that someone might have taken my camera and smashed and then beaten me for the audacity of photographing a living god. Religious ideas are amazingly creative and varied.
Part 3
Through the COLD night there were periodic bells clanging but the bells began in earnest at 4:30 and were ferocious for a while being joined by blaring horns and the occasional fire cracker. Dressed in every layer we had we ventured out, creeping down the stairs intending to go to the square for a closer look but the night clerk slept under a thick blanket in the lobby and the doors were closed and bared. We were locked in but in isn’t really the right word.
The hotel rooms are closed but the restaurant is in the open courtyard and the stairs lead to the roof-top café so the building is more open (cold) air than enclosed but without leaping over the outer walls or waking the guy on the sofa we were locked in.
Jen Brown, a new friend from the India tour, leaves today for base camp at Everest. We’re chilled to the bone here and can’t imagine what she will face.
Red and pink shawls warm shoulders of women buying, women selling, women walking with children tied to their backs, women filling water jugs and everywhere there is another sound, another movement and another temple toward which sounds are offered. This is Bhaktapur, Nepal, the city that holds its heritage.
We came here with Jeff, the last member of our India tour we hugged good-by. Rick and I had a room for our last night in Nepal but Jeff came only to walk about and have lunch before returning to Katmandu. Shortly he’ll leave for Tibet and we will head for home.
Inside the taxi was one century but outside time was braided: ancient history, middle ages and modern times. We found internet cafes and pottery smoldering in straw fired pits. Tarps on streets or temple steps were covered with rice drying in the sun while people talked on cell phones.
At noon a live goat led a parade to the main temple where it was sacrificed leaving a large puddle of blood on cobblestones – all of it captured on digital movie cameras. It is completely not Kansas.
Bhacktapur is the most impressive of the World Heritage sites we have seen during this trip. A large, complex entity, the city is a living museum with hundreds of temples and wells (there is little indoor water service) and more carvings than a person could count. The wooden doorways, windows, balconies and roof tops are carved with Ganish (the elephant god), elephants, goddesses unknown, Garuda (a mythical bird), feathers, fruits, diamonds and flowers.
The main square is carved and polished but Rick and I walked the back alleys peeking in a doorway where a woman cooked over an open fire while surrounded by as many people as the small floor would hold. Hens pecked at stray grains of rice between their fluttering chicks. A young girl jumped rope in a courtyard and an old man slept on a bit of burlap next to knitting women and sleeping babies.
Everywhere there is one more structure worthy of a photograph.
Once just a bit of a trading road to Tibet what is now Bhaktapur became a town under the efforts of King Ananda Malla 1080, more or less. For 200 years, from 1400 onward it was the most powerful city in the area. Most of the knock-your-yak-wool-socks-off architecture is from that period or from the 17th century. Apparently it would be even more dramatic but an earthquake in 1934 destroyed several temples. It’s hard to believe that any were lost since they are everywhere but at the peak there were 172 temples and monasteries here as well as 172 pilgrim shelters, now used as shaded meeting areas for old men during the day.
It seems as if there must be 172 stores selling CDs of monks chanting or of Nepali music because one hears this everywhere. Our guidebook says that this city, the architecture and pace, is what Katmandu was 30 years ago. As I write we are sitting on the roof of our hotel sipping tea, listening to all that is Bhaktapur while I type on the laptop by the light of a candle sheltered from the wind by a plastic water bottle. Gotta love recycling.
In the 1970s a German consortium decided to support Baktapur by building a sewage system and repaving the streets with cobblestone and brick and also began a continuing restoration of buildings and temples. Now one pays $10 to enter and the money is used to restore old buildings brick by brick and clay tile by clay tile. Only photos will do to explain this town wide party with momo steamers on every block.
Part 2
One never knows what one will find on any street but when on a street in a foreign city he chances of seeing something outlandishly different increases. Baktapura’s streets are as foreign as they come and they have provided us with shock, amusement and fascination.
A three-year old girl’s toy was the creepiest thing though I can only say that because we missed the goat sacrifice in the afternoon. She was running and laughing while waving about a hypodermic needle. (Let’s reassess the danger level of “runs with scissors”.) The needle was huge, the holding several ml of what looked like very dirty water (sewage??) and brandishing a 2 inch long needle. Rick and I cleared out of her way. Can you imagine being stabbed with an old hypodermic needle with unknown fluid inside?
Later another tiny girl ran between us with a burning stick. She was among a group of 3-10 year olds who were burning bits of trash in the corner of a temple.
In a safer part of our evening walk we went to Potter’s Square. We had been there in the afternoon when we saw pots being stacked on a straw bed, packed with more straw and layered with more pots and more straw. By evening the pots were covered in straw and buried in ash in preparation for a 3-day firing.
Another load of pots had been fired and another was in the process of firing with smoke leaking out all around it. This pit firing was being tended by a man who fed scraps of wood into each of the ports at the bottom. He would continue to do this all night.
We went to our hotel room for the night when I heard cymbals and drums and looked out the window. There was a dancing parade of the nine manifestations of Durga, living gods that are particularly revered and feared in Baktapura. During certain few occasions and particularly during the festival of Dasain (now), members of the cast of flower sellers are chosen to don the masks and parade through the street.
The masks are specially made and used for only one year. When on, the masks empower the wearer with the embodiment of the deity and so they are living gods. They dance throughout the city to of the major temples and then they disappear into the monastery where only they and initiates can go. I snapped one photo but then learned that someone might have taken my camera and smashed and then beaten me for the audacity of photographing a living god. Religious ideas are amazingly creative and varied.
Part 3
Through the COLD night there were periodic bells clanging but the bells began in earnest at 4:30 and were ferocious for a while being joined by blaring horns and the occasional fire cracker. Dressed in every layer we had we ventured out, creeping down the stairs intending to go to the square for a closer look but the night clerk slept under a thick blanket in the lobby and the doors were closed and bared. We were locked in but in isn’t really the right word.
The hotel rooms are closed but the restaurant is in the open courtyard and the stairs lead to the roof-top café so the building is more open (cold) air than enclosed but without leaping over the outer walls or waking the guy on the sofa we were locked in.
Jen Brown, a new friend from the India tour, leaves today for base camp at Everest. We’re chilled to the bone here and can’t imagine what she will face.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Thaipusam, Batu Caves, Malyasia
Thaipusam, 1986
It is hard to explain the sights, sounds and smells of a Hindu festival. There aren’t events in this country, especially in Wellsville, to compare them with. One particularly unusual festival is Thaipusm. Hindus practice the world’s oldest religion and share a body of cultural practices and beliefs with about a billion people. A million or so of them participate in Thaipusam Malaysia at the Batu Caves near Kuala Lumpur.
The basic idea is that petitioners who feel that the gods have granted their wishes climb the steps of the Batu Caves temple as an expression of thanks. Many climb up with a kavadi (a sort of small shrine), chariots and/or pails of milk, some of which are connected to the body of the devotee with wire hooks or spears.
Others pierce their tongues or cheeks with metal shafts of various sizes from small and delicate to large and imposing. I’ve a photo of a man walking along the path to the caves while Jay and I were standing on the sides watching. We didn’t actually notice him at first. Some other, more dramatic scene distracted us, and Jay waved his arms as this man bent forward to receive the blessing of the person next to us. That was when Jay hit his skewer.
I started to stammer an apology, pulling little Jay close to me, hoping that Jay hadn’t injured the man. After all, this rod, the diameter of a pencil and about 2 feet long, pierced through one cheek and out the other and Jay had smacked it. The man smiled at Jay. People often smiled at Jay in Malaysia. His little pink cheeks, blue eyes and blonde hair, all unusual among these dark toned people, fascinated them.
The man patted Jay on the head and smiled. He held out his alms jar and we put money in it. I held my camera and he nodded permission for a photo after which he bowed to us and walked onward.
While he was near, we could see that the skewer truly went through his skin. When he spoke we could see it in his mouth, disrupting the movement of his tongue. There was no pain, no blood, no stress. This was a man who was proud of what he was doing, who viewed his religion as a part of his life, a part of his body.
We found the man again as he left the temple. He had no marks on his face, just a bit of the sacred ash that the priest applied when he removed the skewer at the altar. The smell of camphor was all around him and he seemed at peace.
Nobody bled, not where fish hooks stretched their skin as they pulled against heavy chains, not where skewers pierced their mouths. There was no swelling, no redness, no pain, not even a dent in the skin when these devices were removed.
I worried about how Jay saw things. He was just six and this was a pretty intense experience so I scrunched down and asked him what he thought of the whole scene. He looked around thinking and watching for just a bit and spoke with wisdom.
“I think these people love their god so much that they are willing to do anything but he loves them so much that he won’t let it hurt.”
That’s how I’ve seen Thaipusam ever since.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Navigating the Kathmandu Airport or The Saga of Much Security and Many Stamps
An open letter to Jeff and Jen
Leave early for the airport. Bring aspirin. Breathe deep.
First, stand in line to get into the airport building. It’s slow progress because
1. There’s a crush of people.
2. Suitcases go through an x-ray machine with a warning sign: Caution – put no body parts inside this machine.
3. The suitcases are wrapped with a yellow security band before they are released.
4. Men are searched in the line and women are searched inside of a small curtained area. I’m not sure what I was searched for but I rarely put things in the places that were checked.
5. Everyone pushes.
So, you get inside and purchase a departure coupon at the bank. There are two lines – for nationals and foreigners. For us, the foreigners line was on the left and was much shorter but progress was slow. The charge to go to Delhi was 1365 and we didn’t have enough Rupees so had to combine payment in US dollars at an unfavorable exchange rate.
The coupon is actually a set of 4 coupons, perforated on one sheet. Periodically these will be stamped and torn and collected.
The next step is to go to the check-in line. Jet Air was on the far left of the terminal near where we jostled to enter the building. We stood in a line that we evaluated as moving at a snail’s pace. Little did we know.
The sign said that there could be only one carry on but when we were on the plane we saw people with up to four carry on cases so it’s an expansive “one”.
Finally we went upstairs where we stood for an hour without moving. None of the lines seemed to move. We stopped to fill in our embarkation forms and moved to the line but I recommend that you take a form to the line and work on it in line. It’ll give you something to do.
We stood and stood and talked and talked – with an American couple who had spent a lovely time in Nepal and looked forward to three weeks in India. I didn’t envy them the next three weeks.
We were standing behind 20 people at our boarding time so we jumped over to the diplomat line and begged. They sent us back. Other people jumped and went through so we returned to the diplomat line and with the help of another agent we were allowed to stay. Stickers were affixed to our passports and the boarding pass was stamped and I think the last bits of our departure tickets were collected so we were on our way. Except we weren’t.
There was another security check. The bags went through on the far left and people were checked on the right – separate areas for men and women again. We walked right down the center of the room to leave but were sent back to a row of tables for a visual check of our bags and stamps on both sides of our boarding passes.
We were not certain what people were looking at or for. We didn’t take our liquids out of our bags and nobody looked at my computer. Rick even came through with a bottle of water.
So, we went to the boarding area and we were on our way except that we weren’t.
Jet Air uses the second waiting room and the woman at the door said that it would be at least 30 minutes before boarding so I went into the restroom and came out to find all hell had broken loose. They announced boarding for flight 9w262. We were on flight 9w261.
Did Jet Air have two flights to Delhi at the same time? It didn’t seem right so I gently shoved forward (learned this in recent line experience) to ask and was told that the two numbers were the same flight. We went to the boarding bus.
Finally, we were going to be on the plane and out of lines – or not. At the bottom of the stairs was a little tent with one more security check of our bags and one more physical search of the men on the steps and of the women inside a curtained area.
The whole thing took 3 hours from the time we left our hotel for the 30 minute taxi ride until we sat on the plane. We were in a queue all of that time, never sat down and only made it to our plane because it was 15 minutes late and that’s with jumping into the diplomat’s line. When I filled out the evaluation for Jet Air I mentioned some of this though fatigue kept the comments short.
When you leave Kathmandu, you should consider giving yourself lots of time. May the 36 million gods of the Hindus smile on you and your luggage.
Namaste,
Elaine
PS: The Delhi airport isn’t much easier to deal with. They say that you can’t go in more than three hours before your flight and so offer space in a lounge for 30 Rupees for 3 hours, The lounge has a blaring TV set, a monitor for flight information, a couple of souvenir shops and some nasty chairs.
We sat chairs that were chained together in front of the chained emergency exit on a long glass wall. On the other side of the glass were dozens of people stretched out under or on blankets on the ground sleeping. Our entire 6 hour stay was punctuated with beeping horns. I honestly and without exaggeration don’t think that there were more than a few two-second pauses in the beeping the whole time.
There is a toilet downstairs that offers free urinals, 1 Rupee flush toilets and 2 Rupee baths. Rick offered me 3 Rupees if I would take a bath there and while I needed one I declined.
On the level with the lounge are other toilets. In the lady’s the attendant slept fitfully on a sheet of cardboard. She must have been exhausted and I wondered if she worked 2 or more jobs. As a bonus to travelers the toilets are free and have the comforts of home.
Two hours before our flight we dutifully began seeking our boarding area. Rick chased down a man in a Finn Air sweater when he came out of the men’s room and this man directed us to gate 3 but there were hundreds of people crowding the area so it was difficult to find where progress toward entry could be made.
Getting in took time and as with the Kathmandu airport we went through security and had our bags banded but didn’t thankfully need a departure coupon. If everyone in that airport had to stand in line for a departure ticket, planes would never take off.
Clutching boarding passes we went through customs and then through another security check where I was shunted off to a curtained area for my body search. If Rick hadn’t been there to pick up my computer and bag I don’t know what would have happened.
It took 2 hours to get inside, get the passes, go through customs and security and our flight was called to board while I was still in line to be searched.
All of which is to say, don’t expect an easy time in the Delhi airport and allow yourself 3 (miserable) hours.
Post PS
We made it to Helsinki, sat for hours and hours and boarded the plane but someone had a medical emergency and the plane took her to Iceland. The stop wasn't quick because of course they had to remove her luggage also.
The extra trip meant an extra 4 hours and we missed our connection to Rochester. Since Finn Air didn't have to take us further they didn't owe us anything and we have to sit around here for 12 hours to go home. As a bonus, our car parking will expire before we get to it so there is some chance it will be towed. Can you hear me scream?
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Baktapur, Nepal
The city gate:
A bell clangs, a hundred bells clang and the sound bounces over and around the chugging engines, beeping horns, chanting monks, bargaining shoppers and endless drums and flutes. In the far distance the dying day glows pink on mountain snow and over the valley a huge flock of white birds settles then explodes again into the air looking for a night roost.
Red and pink shawls warm shoulders of women buying, women selling, women walking with children tied to their backs and everywhere there is another sound, another movement and another temple toward which the sounds are offered. This is Bhaktapur, Nepal, the city that holds its heritage.
We came here with Jeff, the last member of our India tour we hugged good-by. Rick and I had a room for our last night in Nepal but Jeff came only to walk about and have lunch before returning to Kathmandu. Shortly he’ll leave for Tibet and we will head for home.
Inside the taxi was one century but outside time was braided: ancient history, middle ages and modern times. We found internet cafes and pottery smoldering in straw fired pits. Tarps on streets or temple steps were covered with rice drying in the sun while people talked on cell phones. At noon a live goat led a parade to the main temple where it was sacrificed leaving a large puddle of blood on cobblestones – all of it captured on digital movie cameras. It’s, as I sometimes say, not Kansas.
Baktapur is the most impressive of the World Heritage sites we have seen during this trip. A large, complex entity, the city is a living museum with hundreds of temples and wells (there is little indoor water service) and more carvings than a person could count in a decade. The wooden doorways, windows, balconies and roof tops are carved with Ganish, elephants, goddesses unknown, Garuda, birds, feathers, fruits, diamonds and flowers.
The main square has all of this but Rick and I also walked the back alleys peeking in a doorway where a woman cooked over an open fire while surrounded by as many people as the small floor would hold. Hens pecked at stray grains of rice between their fluttering chicks. A young girl jumped rope in a courtyard and an old man slept on a bit of burlap next to knitting women and sleeping babies.
Everywhere there is one more structure worthy of a photograph.
Once just a bit of a trading road to Tibet what is now Bhaktapur became a town under the efforts of King Ananda Malla 1080, more or less. For 200 years, from 1400 onward it was the most powerful city in the area. Most of the knock-your-yak-wool-socks-off architecture is from that period or from the 17th century. Apparently it would be even more dramatic but an earthquake in 1934 destroyed many ornate temples. It’s hard to believe that any were lost since they are everywhere but at the peak there were 172 temples and monasteries here as well as 172 pilgrim shelters, now used as shaded meeting areas for old men during the day. (Though this one is stacked with pots not people.)
It seems as if there must be 172 stores selling CDs of monks chanting or of Nepali music because one hears this everywhere. Our guidebook says that this city, the architecture and pace, is what Kathmandu was 30 years ago. As I write we are sitting on the roof of our hotel sipping tea, listening to all that is Baktapur while I type on the laptop by the light of a candle sheltered from the wind by the middle part of a plastic one liter water bottle. Gotta love recycling.
In the 1970s a German consortium decided to support Baktapur by building a sewage system and repaving the streets with cobblestone and brick and also began a continuing restoration of buildings and temples. Now one pays $10 to enter and the money is used to restore old buildings brick by brick and clay tile by clay tile. Only photos will do to explain this town wide party with momo steamers (a sort of dumpling stuffed with veggies or chicken or buffalo) on every block.
Part 2
One never knows what one will find on any street but when on a street in a foreign city he chances of seeing something outlandishly different increases. Baktapura’s streets are as foreign as they come and they have provided us with shock, amusement and fascination.
A three-year old girl’s toy was the creepiest thing though I can only say that because we missed the goat sacrifice in the afternoon. She was running and laughing while waving about a hypodermic needle. (Let’s reassess the danger level of “runs with scissors”.)The needle was huge, the holding several ml of what looked like very dirty water (sewage??) and brandishing a 2 inch long needle. Rick and I cleared out of her way. Can you imagine being stabbed with an old hypodermic needle with unknown fluid inside?
Later another tiny girl ran between us with a burning stick. She was among a group of 3-10 year olds who were burning bits of trash in the corner of a temple.
Their "clay store" was a series of large mounds under tarps and lean-tos left in such a condition that intense wedging was required and so they were intensely wedging the black clay.
The pots dry in sunny potter's square and is pit fired to a red and is finished with paints or some kind of clear coating and is sold directly to tourists (ie the elephant vases)
but most of their work is of functional vessels traded for rice.
In a safer part of our evening walk we went to Potter’s Square. We had been there in the afternoon when we saw pots being stacked on a straw bed, packed with more straw and layered with more pots and more straw. By evening the pots were covered in straw and buried in ash in preparation for a 3-day firing.
Another load of pots had been fired and another was in the process of firing with smoke leaking out all around it. This pit firing was being tended by a man who fed scraps of wood into each of the ports at the bottom. He would continue to do this all night.
We went to our hotel room for the night when I heard cymbals and drums and looked out the window. There was a dancing parade of the nine manifestations of Durga, living gods that are particularly revered and feared in Baktapura. During certain few occasions and particularly during the festival of Dasain (now), members of the cast of flower sellers are chosen to don the masks and parade through the street.
The masks are specially made and used for only one year. When on, the masks empower the wearer with the embodiment of the deity and so they are living gods. They dance throughout the city to of the major temples and then they disappear into the monastery where only they and initiates can go. I wanted a photo but was told that someone might smash my camera and beat me for photographing a living god so it's good that they ran inside a gate and that I didn't follow trying for a good shot but, again I ask, where do these ideas come from?
Part 3
Through the COLD night there were periodic bells clanging but the bells began in earnest at 4:30 and were ferocious for a while being joined by blaring horns and the occasional fire cracker. Dressed in every layer we had we ventured out, creeping down the stairs intending to go to the square for a closer look but the night clerk slept under a thick blanket in the lobby and the doors were closed and bared. We were locked in but in isn’t really the right word.
The hotel rooms are closed but the restaurant is in the open courtyard and the stairs lead to the roof-top café so the building is more open (cold) air than enclosed but without leaping over the outer walls or waking the guy on the sofa we were locked in.
Jen Brown, a new friend from the India tour, leaves today for base camp at Everest. We’re chilled to the bone here and can’t imagine what she will face. Rick particularly is feeling awful today, so awful he finds nothing of interest in the streets.
A bell clangs, a hundred bells clang and the sound bounces over and around the chugging engines, beeping horns, chanting monks, bargaining shoppers and endless drums and flutes. In the far distance the dying day glows pink on mountain snow and over the valley a huge flock of white birds settles then explodes again into the air looking for a night roost.
Red and pink shawls warm shoulders of women buying, women selling, women walking with children tied to their backs and everywhere there is another sound, another movement and another temple toward which the sounds are offered. This is Bhaktapur, Nepal, the city that holds its heritage.
We came here with Jeff, the last member of our India tour we hugged good-by. Rick and I had a room for our last night in Nepal but Jeff came only to walk about and have lunch before returning to Kathmandu. Shortly he’ll leave for Tibet and we will head for home.
Inside the taxi was one century but outside time was braided: ancient history, middle ages and modern times. We found internet cafes and pottery smoldering in straw fired pits. Tarps on streets or temple steps were covered with rice drying in the sun while people talked on cell phones. At noon a live goat led a parade to the main temple where it was sacrificed leaving a large puddle of blood on cobblestones – all of it captured on digital movie cameras. It’s, as I sometimes say, not Kansas.
Baktapur is the most impressive of the World Heritage sites we have seen during this trip. A large, complex entity, the city is a living museum with hundreds of temples and wells (there is little indoor water service) and more carvings than a person could count in a decade. The wooden doorways, windows, balconies and roof tops are carved with Ganish, elephants, goddesses unknown, Garuda, birds, feathers, fruits, diamonds and flowers.
The main square has all of this but Rick and I also walked the back alleys peeking in a doorway where a woman cooked over an open fire while surrounded by as many people as the small floor would hold. Hens pecked at stray grains of rice between their fluttering chicks. A young girl jumped rope in a courtyard and an old man slept on a bit of burlap next to knitting women and sleeping babies.
Everywhere there is one more structure worthy of a photograph.
Once just a bit of a trading road to Tibet what is now Bhaktapur became a town under the efforts of King Ananda Malla 1080, more or less. For 200 years, from 1400 onward it was the most powerful city in the area. Most of the knock-your-yak-wool-socks-off architecture is from that period or from the 17th century. Apparently it would be even more dramatic but an earthquake in 1934 destroyed many ornate temples. It’s hard to believe that any were lost since they are everywhere but at the peak there were 172 temples and monasteries here as well as 172 pilgrim shelters, now used as shaded meeting areas for old men during the day. (Though this one is stacked with pots not people.)
It seems as if there must be 172 stores selling CDs of monks chanting or of Nepali music because one hears this everywhere. Our guidebook says that this city, the architecture and pace, is what Kathmandu was 30 years ago. As I write we are sitting on the roof of our hotel sipping tea, listening to all that is Baktapur while I type on the laptop by the light of a candle sheltered from the wind by the middle part of a plastic one liter water bottle. Gotta love recycling.
In the 1970s a German consortium decided to support Baktapur by building a sewage system and repaving the streets with cobblestone and brick and also began a continuing restoration of buildings and temples. Now one pays $10 to enter and the money is used to restore old buildings brick by brick and clay tile by clay tile. Only photos will do to explain this town wide party with momo steamers (a sort of dumpling stuffed with veggies or chicken or buffalo) on every block.
Part 2
One never knows what one will find on any street but when on a street in a foreign city he chances of seeing something outlandishly different increases. Baktapura’s streets are as foreign as they come and they have provided us with shock, amusement and fascination.
A three-year old girl’s toy was the creepiest thing though I can only say that because we missed the goat sacrifice in the afternoon. She was running and laughing while waving about a hypodermic needle. (Let’s reassess the danger level of “runs with scissors”.)The needle was huge, the holding several ml of what looked like very dirty water (sewage??) and brandishing a 2 inch long needle. Rick and I cleared out of her way. Can you imagine being stabbed with an old hypodermic needle with unknown fluid inside?
Later another tiny girl ran between us with a burning stick. She was among a group of 3-10 year olds who were burning bits of trash in the corner of a temple.
Their "clay store" was a series of large mounds under tarps and lean-tos left in such a condition that intense wedging was required and so they were intensely wedging the black clay. 
The pots dry in sunny potter's square and is pit fired to a red and is finished with paints or some kind of clear coating and is sold directly to tourists (ie the elephant vases)
but most of their work is of functional vessels traded for rice.
In a safer part of our evening walk we went to Potter’s Square. We had been there in the afternoon when we saw pots being stacked on a straw bed, packed with more straw and layered with more pots and more straw. By evening the pots were covered in straw and buried in ash in preparation for a 3-day firing.
Another load of pots had been fired and another was in the process of firing with smoke leaking out all around it. This pit firing was being tended by a man who fed scraps of wood into each of the ports at the bottom. He would continue to do this all night.
We went to our hotel room for the night when I heard cymbals and drums and looked out the window. There was a dancing parade of the nine manifestations of Durga, living gods that are particularly revered and feared in Baktapura. During certain few occasions and particularly during the festival of Dasain (now), members of the cast of flower sellers are chosen to don the masks and parade through the street.
The masks are specially made and used for only one year. When on, the masks empower the wearer with the embodiment of the deity and so they are living gods. They dance throughout the city to of the major temples and then they disappear into the monastery where only they and initiates can go. I wanted a photo but was told that someone might smash my camera and beat me for photographing a living god so it's good that they ran inside a gate and that I didn't follow trying for a good shot but, again I ask, where do these ideas come from?
Part 3
Through the COLD night there were periodic bells clanging but the bells began in earnest at 4:30 and were ferocious for a while being joined by blaring horns and the occasional fire cracker. Dressed in every layer we had we ventured out, creeping down the stairs intending to go to the square for a closer look but the night clerk slept under a thick blanket in the lobby and the doors were closed and bared. We were locked in but in isn’t really the right word.
The hotel rooms are closed but the restaurant is in the open courtyard and the stairs lead to the roof-top café so the building is more open (cold) air than enclosed but without leaping over the outer walls or waking the guy on the sofa we were locked in.
Jen Brown, a new friend from the India tour, leaves today for base camp at Everest. We’re chilled to the bone here and can’t imagine what she will face. Rick particularly is feeling awful today, so awful he finds nothing of interest in the streets.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
getting to Kathmandu
Kathmandu
We had a decent bus for the trip from Pokhara though we started by backtracking over the rutted road that rattled our brains two days earlier. We passed the land slide with chunks of mud like small huts and over the same shaky single-lane bridge. There is only this one road to Pokhara. Monika began to get nauseous so when we stopped for tea she went to the front seat. Why not? There was room for three people and one was empty and it would be easier on her if she sat up front.
She called to me to look out the window because a man was riding a motorcycle with chickens tied to it. The guy had 30 very unhappy chickens hanging by their feet from the luggage rack and handlebars. And we thought our transportation was lacking.
We drove for a few hours eventually reaching a better road so Monika asked if we could stop for a potty break. We did but I want to say that I used the world’s highest toilet in Peru and now possibly the world’s dirtiest toilet here in Nepal. Happily we stayed at the stop to stretch our legs a bit and so photographed some of those great Nepali trucks as they drove by. The backs of the trucks have messages such as: push horn, horn please, honk please, please honk, see you and on the rare occasion one is decorated with heart love. The fronts are all flowers and vines and tinsel garlands. Very cool.
I just couldn't stop taking photos of these trucks
so I continued to snap through that break.
Monika wanted to get back in the front seat but Brahm told her that he had to do some work and needed space and she should sit in the back seat. She didn’t want to make a fuss so she went in the bumpy back.
We passed an industrial area with brick making and with large scale poultry barns and then the air became dust mixed with diesel fumes and I knew we were getting near Kathmandu.
Work was being done to construct a wider road but for now, loads of stone and sand restrict passage so that our movement was measured in dusty feet per minute.
Kathmandu
Words escape me still but I’ll work on describing it. Perhaps I could just say it’s busy and crowded and as old as Buddha. We’ve traded cows and goats for monkeys. It’s more like Delhi than any where else except that people smile and remove trash here.
Our arrival was on Friday and while Friday is Pie Day in Alfred it is Party Hearty in Kathmandu. Near our hotel live bands played with ear-splitting exuberance from 2 am till after the roosters began to crow. It was louder in our room than we could bear and the band wasn’t anywhere near us so I there might not have been a way to measure the decibel level at ground zero. It was a miserable night.
Looking back
We like Kathmandu more than India. When we walked to a restaurant Sunday morning people swept the street and when we passed by later the trash was gone. It was, we later learned, spread out on a larger street for recycling, of sorts. People picked through it to find cardboard and useful things. Maybe it will be taken away later. There were no piles when we arrived so there must be some kind of system.
There are traffic lights and cross walks. There are sidewalks and few places that smell of urine.
In the old city, there is mass traffic and massive confusion but in the new part of the city there is order. We walked past the king’s palace and saw the royal carriage pulled by huge horses and guarded by soldiers. Our only major adventure was the monkey temple.
The monkey temple isn’t about monkeys but somehow they live there. Hundreds of aggressive furry families that mill about stealing food from people’s hands and messing with the offerings.
This man sat outside of the temple and patiently used his hands and feet to unweave this plastic sack and then wove the bits of plastic thread into rope.
There is a huge tree near the top and it wears more prayer flags than we have previously seen in one place.
There are people praying and spinning prayer wheels, lighting candles and selling flowers, making offerings and asking visitors to buy their carvings. We didn’t stay very long.Later we visited the Yak and Yeti, a famous old hotel built in part using an old palace. The room rate online is $86 per night including breakfast so we thought we could afford a pleasant dinner there. Dinner was closer to $86 per person so quite out of our budge but we did walk through the upscale shops and accepted the salute of the doorman.
In general, we may have had enough chaos, confusion, clutter and noise and might be ready for home.
Kathmandu post script
Our few days in Kathmandu left us impressed with the cleanliness of the city when compared with Delhi or Varanasi. We noticed a couple of large piles of trash around dumpsters but people were picking through it and we thought that it was some kind of recycling effort. While visiting with people in a non-moving custom’s line at the airport we learned that Kathmandu’s garbage collectors have been on strike for a week. Color us surprised.
Departmental Obsersvations
Departmental Observations
On the main tourist road in Pokhara, Nepal, there are 2 departmental stores. We went inside one looking for snacks.
The doorway is lined with bottles of water and stacks of big, soft rolls of toilet paper. After our time in India, such a display is as appealing as the Hope Diamond would be in a jewelry store.
The second aisle offered snacks: a hundred brands and flavors of chocolate including M&Ms and Cadbury lots of European dark chocolates but also prepackaged bags of nuts and trail mix.
Nuts sounded good so I picked up a couple of packs of almonds and cashews. Hey, they were packaged in nice, sanitary, plastic bags. Wasn’t that great? I carried them around the store and looked at a huge display of scissors, soaps, teas, socks, paper and more cookies than a town full of trekkers could dunk in morning tea.
Then I found two men sitting on the floor in the back. One reached into a large sack of cashews and measured the nuts on a scale. When he had the right amount, he picked up a bag and poured them in. He handed the bag to the other man who held the edges of the bag in a candle flame to seal it thereby creating the sanitary packages of nuts stacked so nicely by the chocolate bars.
I returned nuts to the nice sanitary display.
On the main tourist road in Pokhara, Nepal, there are 2 departmental stores. We went inside one looking for snacks.
The doorway is lined with bottles of water and stacks of big, soft rolls of toilet paper. After our time in India, such a display is as appealing as the Hope Diamond would be in a jewelry store.
The second aisle offered snacks: a hundred brands and flavors of chocolate including M&Ms and Cadbury lots of European dark chocolates but also prepackaged bags of nuts and trail mix.
Nuts sounded good so I picked up a couple of packs of almonds and cashews. Hey, they were packaged in nice, sanitary, plastic bags. Wasn’t that great? I carried them around the store and looked at a huge display of scissors, soaps, teas, socks, paper and more cookies than a town full of trekkers could dunk in morning tea.
Then I found two men sitting on the floor in the back. One reached into a large sack of cashews and measured the nuts on a scale. When he had the right amount, he picked up a bag and poured them in. He handed the bag to the other man who held the edges of the bag in a candle flame to seal it thereby creating the sanitary packages of nuts stacked so nicely by the chocolate bars.
I returned nuts to the nice sanitary display.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Annapurna Mountains
In the Annapurna Mountains
It seems days ago now but at 4 this morning a knock at the door set us in motion to view the sunrise on the top of a hill overlooking the valley town of Pokhara. We almost didn’t make it up because the car in front of our van had a problem. People gathered around it and pushed it up the hill until the engine caught but it went only a few feet and stalled again. Another group gathered around and pushed and again it faltered so they pushed it to the side of the road so our van and others could labor to the top.
We found coffee shops and souvenir stands and a flood of pink sunlight crawling up from the other side of the distant hills. There were many tourists there taking photos of the sunrise, the mountain tops and themselves. When the red ball broke over the hill there was a combination of frenzied shutter action, applause and prayer to the sun god – a mini festival.
We returned to the hotel to regroup for breakfast and then to hire taxis to the dam where we crossed a swaying wooden foot bridge and began what Amanda timed as a one hour hike but I’m sure her watch stopped for at least 50 minutes because I did 2 hours worth of puffing and sweating.
The taxi driver actually insisted that we not take this walk. It was a long walk and “not good.” He couldn’t define “not good” so we went. It wasn’t good in that it was mostly in the woods and so the view was limited but we did peek through the trees at the lake and the mountains and we passed a couple of snack stands and found an observation point fairly covered with prayer flags. It was wild, crazy prayer flaggage. The workout was good for us after so many long hours of bus bouncing.
We found our way with the help of a young man who came along on the trail because at first we weren’t sure about how to go but there were actually signs (Who could expect such a thing?) and we would have been fine but it was all good, share the wealth and all. We walked a long time without being able to see the stupa so his presence was good security.
Early in the walk we passed people working in the rice fields. Water buffalo tramped in a circle over rice to loosen the grains and then men beat the rice on the ground to remove the grain. Nearby a group of women cooked what was most likely a hard earned meal and together they painted a lovely scene under the huge blue sky.
Not far from the rice fields, Amy decided she was too ill for a hike so she and Gordon walked back. They got a closer look at the rice work in the field and decided to take a walk in the river where women were washing clothes. This ended with their paying the women for foot massages and then taking a taxi back to the hotel
The point of the hike was the World Peace Pagoda created by a Japanese group some time ago. The Pagoda was closed for renovation. No problem. It was a nice walk through the woods followed by a direct walk down steps to the lake where we hired two boats to take us back to the hotel.
One boat came with a boatman but Rob was handed a paddle and pronounced driver of the other so he and Jeff had to pay for a boat ride and then do the work themselves (and us). It’s like that sometimes and it’s all okay in Nepal.
It seems days ago now but at 4 this morning a knock at the door set us in motion to view the sunrise on the top of a hill overlooking the valley town of Pokhara. We almost didn’t make it up because the car in front of our van had a problem. People gathered around it and pushed it up the hill until the engine caught but it went only a few feet and stalled again. Another group gathered around and pushed and again it faltered so they pushed it to the side of the road so our van and others could labor to the top.
We found coffee shops and souvenir stands and a flood of pink sunlight crawling up from the other side of the distant hills. There were many tourists there taking photos of the sunrise, the mountain tops and themselves. When the red ball broke over the hill there was a combination of frenzied shutter action, applause and prayer to the sun god – a mini festival.
We returned to the hotel to regroup for breakfast and then to hire taxis to the dam where we crossed a swaying wooden foot bridge and began what Amanda timed as a one hour hike but I’m sure her watch stopped for at least 50 minutes because I did 2 hours worth of puffing and sweating.
The taxi driver actually insisted that we not take this walk. It was a long walk and “not good.” He couldn’t define “not good” so we went. It wasn’t good in that it was mostly in the woods and so the view was limited but we did peek through the trees at the lake and the mountains and we passed a couple of snack stands and found an observation point fairly covered with prayer flags. It was wild, crazy prayer flaggage. The workout was good for us after so many long hours of bus bouncing.
We found our way with the help of a young man who came along on the trail because at first we weren’t sure about how to go but there were actually signs (Who could expect such a thing?) and we would have been fine but it was all good, share the wealth and all. We walked a long time without being able to see the stupa so his presence was good security.
Early in the walk we passed people working in the rice fields. Water buffalo tramped in a circle over rice to loosen the grains and then men beat the rice on the ground to remove the grain. Nearby a group of women cooked what was most likely a hard earned meal and together they painted a lovely scene under the huge blue sky.
Not far from the rice fields, Amy decided she was too ill for a hike so she and Gordon walked back. They got a closer look at the rice work in the field and decided to take a walk in the river where women were washing clothes. This ended with their paying the women for foot massages and then taking a taxi back to the hotel
The point of the hike was the World Peace Pagoda created by a Japanese group some time ago. The Pagoda was closed for renovation. No problem. It was a nice walk through the woods followed by a direct walk down steps to the lake where we hired two boats to take us back to the hotel.
One boat came with a boatman but Rob was handed a paddle and pronounced driver of the other so he and Jeff had to pay for a boat ride and then do the work themselves (and us). It’s like that sometimes and it’s all okay in Nepal.
Pokhara, Nepal
Pokhara
Sorry, the internet is so slow I still can't post photos but I have about 500 of them.
Our group’s numerous demands and not inconsiderable whining brought us a larger, newer, cleaner bus which made both a potty stop and a food stop (at a restaurant with many toilets – one of them western style).
We traveled from Chitwan to Pukhara on a road built in 1973. Before the road this particular trip was a ten-day mule train trek. For us it was a 5 hour drive that involved as much bouncing as a ten-day mule train trek.
I’m pleased that the road is there – all 220 km of it – but the sad little road suffers from pot holes like craters and the occasional rock or mud slide damage that creates a great deal of unevenness so that travel is slow, halting, and amazingly bouncy. We spent the whole trip listening to Nepalese or Indian rock music which was okay at first but seemed to grow in volume toward the last hour until our heads were raw from the piercing sounds of thin, high pitched women’s voices.
This bus ride started with a bit of excitement – we chased a run-away horse. We were leaving the village and had just crossed the bridge when Rick pointed out a little horse cart with a cute cover. He called it the “surrey with the fringe on top” but suddenly said surrey took off without a driver.
Amy saw the driver panic and run and Amanda watched the cart speed away. The man smacked on the side of the van and though not a word was spoken the driver realized that he was being commandeered as a rescue vehicle so he slowed the van, the man jumped onto the ladder at the rear and we were in pursuit.
We drove for quite a while and I thought that the pony must have turned somewhere. I watched the man through the back window as he glanced up side roads and driveways but always returned to the forward view with extreme concern and distress.
We must have gone the better part of a mile when we saw the pony stopped on the road. A crowd gathered much like one did when our bus locked together with a pink car in some other town on a previous endless bus ride.
That accident was on a busy street full of cars, bikes, motorcycles, people and all kinds of animals so it was no surprise that there were suddenly enough people to lift the car and pull the vehicles apart but this was a relatively quiet street suddenly full of people ready to help. Where did they come from?
The horse stood in that particular place not because he had been caught and not because he was satisfied with that much freedom but because he ran over top of a westerner’s motorcycle which was then lodged between horse and cart. (It is unknown if the motorcycle was moving or not at the time of impact. The westerner was wearing gloves and helmet so it seems likely that he was riding but we missed the moment of impact.)
The crowd assessed the situation and the motorcyclist held the horse with a “what-the-hell-happened?” look on his face. Thankfully he seemed unharmed.
The horse’s owner jumped from the still moving bus and ran to the fray but it seemed the crowd was in process of detaching the cart so he held the horse as they lifted it from the motorcycle.
A bicyclist went down the street to tell everyone what the problem was. When he came to our bus driver there was a short conversation which must have included the driver reporting his part in the rescue. Smiles were exchanged and the bike rider went on. Everyone was quite patient.
The motorcyclist seemed okay as did the horse. The horse owner kept a tight hold on his animal. People moved the cart to the other side of the street out of the way so that the horse could be hitched to his cart again. The crowd picked up the motorcycle for the smiling rider who, when last I saw him through the back window, was putting his gloves back on and shaking his head.
The rest of our trip was relatively free of drama though the road seemed hardly wide enough for two buses to pass unscathed and it was occasionally nerve wracking. We drove past fields patch-worked in rice harvested and rice cut and drying. We crossed the river a few times once on a one lane bridge so creaky and rattlely that it seemed ready to collapse.
Right along side of the creaky bridge was another bridge under construction so maybe the old bridge will shortly be removed. On this day, only one vehicle crossed that bridge at a time which I thought was perfectly dandy but there didn’t seem to be any signs telling people to do that. How does everyone figure this stuff out?
We often had views of snow-capped mountains, lovely green valleys and winding rivers all watched by people with room to wiggle.
In Pokhara Rick and I walked the town and found an observation platform on the lake where we watched a pink sunset. Rick keeps thinking he is in Peru with pizza restaurants, cold air at night, fires burning in the restaurants and colorful knitted socks, mittens and hats for sale but we are certainly in Nepal where the eye of Buddha is on shirts, buildings, trucks and signs.
Again, the people seem friendly and happy. They interact with their children and greet without pushing one to buy, buy, buy. Also, we are all finding great joy not only in walking on sidewalks but in walking where there are no cow droppings to navigate.
Sorry, the internet is so slow I still can't post photos but I have about 500 of them.
Our group’s numerous demands and not inconsiderable whining brought us a larger, newer, cleaner bus which made both a potty stop and a food stop (at a restaurant with many toilets – one of them western style).
We traveled from Chitwan to Pukhara on a road built in 1973. Before the road this particular trip was a ten-day mule train trek. For us it was a 5 hour drive that involved as much bouncing as a ten-day mule train trek.
I’m pleased that the road is there – all 220 km of it – but the sad little road suffers from pot holes like craters and the occasional rock or mud slide damage that creates a great deal of unevenness so that travel is slow, halting, and amazingly bouncy. We spent the whole trip listening to Nepalese or Indian rock music which was okay at first but seemed to grow in volume toward the last hour until our heads were raw from the piercing sounds of thin, high pitched women’s voices.
This bus ride started with a bit of excitement – we chased a run-away horse. We were leaving the village and had just crossed the bridge when Rick pointed out a little horse cart with a cute cover. He called it the “surrey with the fringe on top” but suddenly said surrey took off without a driver.
Amy saw the driver panic and run and Amanda watched the cart speed away. The man smacked on the side of the van and though not a word was spoken the driver realized that he was being commandeered as a rescue vehicle so he slowed the van, the man jumped onto the ladder at the rear and we were in pursuit.
We drove for quite a while and I thought that the pony must have turned somewhere. I watched the man through the back window as he glanced up side roads and driveways but always returned to the forward view with extreme concern and distress.
We must have gone the better part of a mile when we saw the pony stopped on the road. A crowd gathered much like one did when our bus locked together with a pink car in some other town on a previous endless bus ride.
That accident was on a busy street full of cars, bikes, motorcycles, people and all kinds of animals so it was no surprise that there were suddenly enough people to lift the car and pull the vehicles apart but this was a relatively quiet street suddenly full of people ready to help. Where did they come from?
The horse stood in that particular place not because he had been caught and not because he was satisfied with that much freedom but because he ran over top of a westerner’s motorcycle which was then lodged between horse and cart. (It is unknown if the motorcycle was moving or not at the time of impact. The westerner was wearing gloves and helmet so it seems likely that he was riding but we missed the moment of impact.)
The crowd assessed the situation and the motorcyclist held the horse with a “what-the-hell-happened?” look on his face. Thankfully he seemed unharmed.
The horse’s owner jumped from the still moving bus and ran to the fray but it seemed the crowd was in process of detaching the cart so he held the horse as they lifted it from the motorcycle.
A bicyclist went down the street to tell everyone what the problem was. When he came to our bus driver there was a short conversation which must have included the driver reporting his part in the rescue. Smiles were exchanged and the bike rider went on. Everyone was quite patient.
The motorcyclist seemed okay as did the horse. The horse owner kept a tight hold on his animal. People moved the cart to the other side of the street out of the way so that the horse could be hitched to his cart again. The crowd picked up the motorcycle for the smiling rider who, when last I saw him through the back window, was putting his gloves back on and shaking his head.
The rest of our trip was relatively free of drama though the road seemed hardly wide enough for two buses to pass unscathed and it was occasionally nerve wracking. We drove past fields patch-worked in rice harvested and rice cut and drying. We crossed the river a few times once on a one lane bridge so creaky and rattlely that it seemed ready to collapse.
Right along side of the creaky bridge was another bridge under construction so maybe the old bridge will shortly be removed. On this day, only one vehicle crossed that bridge at a time which I thought was perfectly dandy but there didn’t seem to be any signs telling people to do that. How does everyone figure this stuff out?
We often had views of snow-capped mountains, lovely green valleys and winding rivers all watched by people with room to wiggle.
In Pokhara Rick and I walked the town and found an observation platform on the lake where we watched a pink sunset. Rick keeps thinking he is in Peru with pizza restaurants, cold air at night, fires burning in the restaurants and colorful knitted socks, mittens and hats for sale but we are certainly in Nepal where the eye of Buddha is on shirts, buildings, trucks and signs.
Again, the people seem friendly and happy. They interact with their children and greet without pushing one to buy, buy, buy. Also, we are all finding great joy not only in walking on sidewalks but in walking where there are no cow droppings to navigate.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Nepal, the antidote to India
I moved a comforter on a shelf and a lizard hopped off slithering under the cupboard. Welcome to Nepal where lizards patrol the ceiling, monkeys scramble in trees and elephants stop by the restaurant for potatoes.
Rick and I enjoy geckos and look forward to finding them on our walls but when one jumps out from a blanket that’s a different thing. Even so this is by far the nicest place we have stayed.
Called the Sapana Lodge, it is operated by Dhura Giri, the general manager, the person who has calmed our life, fed us well, given us a comfortable room and arranged for us to visit a local village, the source of our eggs, bread and vegetables and the place where Sapana Lodge will establish a medical clinic and school.
It’s been a wonderful day in Nepal, a country I can heartily recommend as a marvelous destination. This morning we rode a jeep to the Rapti River and boarded dugout canoes for a trip down the river looking for crocodiles, birds and rhinos and then hiked back. We saw 2 crocs sunning on a bank, birds everywhere, a monkey in a tree and the very coolest of red bugs, a cotton bug. Wonderful.
The river was dressed in mist so it seemed we must fall off the end of the earth. The water constantly gurgled over in swirling eddies while bird calls filled the air.
It was so tranquil and quiet that the stress of India fell into the water melting away.
After almost an hour we reached an area where our heavy western butts pushed the canoe into the stone river bottom so the boatman brought the boat to the bank to let us out. The bank was velvet soft sand undercut by the current in this area so before everyone was out of the canoe a huge chunk of land broke loose and smashed into the water and canoe sending one chair tumbling, nearly rocking Gordon overboard and splashing me with mud. Could have been worse.
The return trip was a jungle walk and those start with safety lessons. If a bear finds us come together in a group and make noise. For a tiger, make eye contact and walk backwards. If it’s a rhino climb a tree or hide behind a tree or run in a zigzag pattern while tossing a piece of clothing to distract it.
Coming down our narrow path was a mahout on his elephant. We all pushed into the plants along the path to make way and suddenly realized that her baby walked behind. They were out looking for elephant grass, a disappearing plant.
It seems that 9 years ago someone brought a vine from Africa and it is now going wild here. A true invasive plant, it grows over the elephant grass, the shrubs, the trees and everything else killing the native plants and removing habitat and food as it grows. Nothing eats it; nothing kills it. The people call it minute mile – because of its rapid growth.
After lunch most of the group went off for an elephant ride but Rick and I walked to town where we found everyone was incredibly pleasant. Children visited with us and this crazy guy asked us to take his photo. Shop keepers didn’t beg us to buy and carried on long conversations with us about where we live and what grows in our home.
The street had no roaming cows, no beeping horns, no tuktuks, no begging rickshaw drivers – only two bull carts, a collection of bike riders and many pedestrians most of whom smiled to say Nameste. By the time we were half way to the river we were waving and saying Nameste to everyone. Very cool.
We went to a store with fair trade items made by women’s collectives and a leprosy camp. The owner was very pleasant and proud of what he had to offer and how the art work was original and how fair prices went to his clients. Nepal is not India.
Our third big event was a visit to the Tharu village nearby. It was a bit of a mess because today is a festival in honor of Shiva. People come from about a 15 km radius to pray at Shiva’s temple and then gamble, eat, shop and visit. It’s a special day for the young girls to dress in their best clothes and meet young men from neighboring areas. The girls were gorgeous but the traffic was worse than in Delhi.
We had to cross a narrow bridge, a narrow bridge completely filled with people and bikes. The jeep drove slowly through the crowd that flowed around it almost like the river moved around our canoe. At one point a car came from the other direction but we made it then another jeep came. There wasn’t more than an inch clearance between the two. Wow.
We visited a house with a bio gas system. The put water buffalo dung into a vat and mix it with water. This goes into an underground storage tank and gives off methane. The methane is captured and piped into the house where plastic tubes take it to burners for cooking. It must seem like heaven to the woman there because she no longer has to search for fire wood. It also means less smoke in the house. Slick.
The houses by the way are mainly built of elephant grass covered on both sides with a mixture of buffalo dung and mud which dries into a hard coating. The floor is made of grass mats covered in buffalo dung and mud and it is hard enough to walk on and smooth enough to sweep. Just now homes have gotten a fresh coating of dung and mud to make them clean and they have been painted with handprints, prints of the foot of god and flowers. The paintings are there to invite the god of wealth to enter and bless the family.
The paintings are particularly concentrated around the doors to make certain the gods know where to enter. It’s a type of competition because the gods only go into the most inviting homes.
We went into a small house with only two rooms with most of the space filled with sacks and baskets of rice. The harvest we have seen across India is the same as in Nepal. It’s the rice for the family for the next year.
If they don’t thresh all the rice now they pack it into cylindrical stacks outside their doors and collect the rest of the rice later. The rice straw is animal food and is also used to make a sort of beer.
Near the homes are gardens for vegetables, darting chickens, goats, cows and bulls. Cows for milk and work and bulls for work.
One man was ripening bananas. He buried bananas under some loose dirt and then had on one side of the dirt pile an opening where he placed some rice straw. When we were there he lit the rice straw to get a smoldering fire and then covered the fire with more dirt. The smoke would surround the bananas and make them ripe in two days.
A woman held a curved knife with her foot while she sliced julienne potatoes as quick and even as any chef on Food TV and another woman showed us her tattoos. Women must have tattooed right arms before they are allowed to cook and serve food. Their arms must be beautiful when they had food to guests. Where do traditions originate?
Everywhere children played and people talked and laughed. Nepal is so not India.
Some of the houses were brick and some, mud or brick, had electricity. Many had water pumps but NONE had toilets. Washing is done in the river and squatting is done in the field between the village and the river. The central government provides nothing here. Even the roads and bridges are locally built.
This hotel was financed by a Dutch NGO in an effort to change things. They hired Dhurba Giri because he was born here and knows all the people but has business knowledge and is dedicated to using hotel resources to help the village.
Hotel furniture was made locally and the hotel buys food from villagers. There are nine workers living here and every one of them speaks English well and is skilled and organized. (I so missed organization in India.) The hotel opened only 2 months ago so this is the start but when it becomes profitable the money will be used for the local people.
As the perfect ending, two little lizards are now scuttling up the yellow wall with little, round, sticky feet so I will choose to believe one is the creature who startled me this morning and survived his fall and will eat mosquitoes all night.
Rick and I enjoy geckos and look forward to finding them on our walls but when one jumps out from a blanket that’s a different thing. Even so this is by far the nicest place we have stayed.
Called the Sapana Lodge, it is operated by Dhura Giri, the general manager, the person who has calmed our life, fed us well, given us a comfortable room and arranged for us to visit a local village, the source of our eggs, bread and vegetables and the place where Sapana Lodge will establish a medical clinic and school.
It’s been a wonderful day in Nepal, a country I can heartily recommend as a marvelous destination. This morning we rode a jeep to the Rapti River and boarded dugout canoes for a trip down the river looking for crocodiles, birds and rhinos and then hiked back. We saw 2 crocs sunning on a bank, birds everywhere, a monkey in a tree and the very coolest of red bugs, a cotton bug. Wonderful.
The river was dressed in mist so it seemed we must fall off the end of the earth. The water constantly gurgled over in swirling eddies while bird calls filled the air.
It was so tranquil and quiet that the stress of India fell into the water melting away.
After almost an hour we reached an area where our heavy western butts pushed the canoe into the stone river bottom so the boatman brought the boat to the bank to let us out. The bank was velvet soft sand undercut by the current in this area so before everyone was out of the canoe a huge chunk of land broke loose and smashed into the water and canoe sending one chair tumbling, nearly rocking Gordon overboard and splashing me with mud. Could have been worse.
The return trip was a jungle walk and those start with safety lessons. If a bear finds us come together in a group and make noise. For a tiger, make eye contact and walk backwards. If it’s a rhino climb a tree or hide behind a tree or run in a zigzag pattern while tossing a piece of clothing to distract it.
Coming down our narrow path was a mahout on his elephant. We all pushed into the plants along the path to make way and suddenly realized that her baby walked behind. They were out looking for elephant grass, a disappearing plant.
It seems that 9 years ago someone brought a vine from Africa and it is now going wild here. A true invasive plant, it grows over the elephant grass, the shrubs, the trees and everything else killing the native plants and removing habitat and food as it grows. Nothing eats it; nothing kills it. The people call it minute mile – because of its rapid growth.
After lunch most of the group went off for an elephant ride but Rick and I walked to town where we found everyone was incredibly pleasant. Children visited with us and this crazy guy asked us to take his photo. Shop keepers didn’t beg us to buy and carried on long conversations with us about where we live and what grows in our home.
The street had no roaming cows, no beeping horns, no tuktuks, no begging rickshaw drivers – only two bull carts, a collection of bike riders and many pedestrians most of whom smiled to say Nameste. By the time we were half way to the river we were waving and saying Nameste to everyone. Very cool.
We went to a store with fair trade items made by women’s collectives and a leprosy camp. The owner was very pleasant and proud of what he had to offer and how the art work was original and how fair prices went to his clients. Nepal is not India.
Our third big event was a visit to the Tharu village nearby. It was a bit of a mess because today is a festival in honor of Shiva. People come from about a 15 km radius to pray at Shiva’s temple and then gamble, eat, shop and visit. It’s a special day for the young girls to dress in their best clothes and meet young men from neighboring areas. The girls were gorgeous but the traffic was worse than in Delhi.
We had to cross a narrow bridge, a narrow bridge completely filled with people and bikes. The jeep drove slowly through the crowd that flowed around it almost like the river moved around our canoe. At one point a car came from the other direction but we made it then another jeep came. There wasn’t more than an inch clearance between the two. Wow.
We visited a house with a bio gas system. The put water buffalo dung into a vat and mix it with water. This goes into an underground storage tank and gives off methane. The methane is captured and piped into the house where plastic tubes take it to burners for cooking. It must seem like heaven to the woman there because she no longer has to search for fire wood. It also means less smoke in the house. Slick.
The houses by the way are mainly built of elephant grass covered on both sides with a mixture of buffalo dung and mud which dries into a hard coating. The floor is made of grass mats covered in buffalo dung and mud and it is hard enough to walk on and smooth enough to sweep. Just now homes have gotten a fresh coating of dung and mud to make them clean and they have been painted with handprints, prints of the foot of god and flowers. The paintings are there to invite the god of wealth to enter and bless the family.
The paintings are particularly concentrated around the doors to make certain the gods know where to enter. It’s a type of competition because the gods only go into the most inviting homes.
We went into a small house with only two rooms with most of the space filled with sacks and baskets of rice. The harvest we have seen across India is the same as in Nepal. It’s the rice for the family for the next year.
If they don’t thresh all the rice now they pack it into cylindrical stacks outside their doors and collect the rest of the rice later. The rice straw is animal food and is also used to make a sort of beer.
Near the homes are gardens for vegetables, darting chickens, goats, cows and bulls. Cows for milk and work and bulls for work.
One man was ripening bananas. He buried bananas under some loose dirt and then had on one side of the dirt pile an opening where he placed some rice straw. When we were there he lit the rice straw to get a smoldering fire and then covered the fire with more dirt. The smoke would surround the bananas and make them ripe in two days.
A woman held a curved knife with her foot while she sliced julienne potatoes as quick and even as any chef on Food TV and another woman showed us her tattoos. Women must have tattooed right arms before they are allowed to cook and serve food. Their arms must be beautiful when they had food to guests. Where do traditions originate?
Everywhere children played and people talked and laughed. Nepal is so not India.
Some of the houses were brick and some, mud or brick, had electricity. Many had water pumps but NONE had toilets. Washing is done in the river and squatting is done in the field between the village and the river. The central government provides nothing here. Even the roads and bridges are locally built.
This hotel was financed by a Dutch NGO in an effort to change things. They hired Dhurba Giri because he was born here and knows all the people but has business knowledge and is dedicated to using hotel resources to help the village.
Hotel furniture was made locally and the hotel buys food from villagers. There are nine workers living here and every one of them speaks English well and is skilled and organized. (I so missed organization in India.) The hotel opened only 2 months ago so this is the start but when it becomes profitable the money will be used for the local people.
As the perfect ending, two little lizards are now scuttling up the yellow wall with little, round, sticky feet so I will choose to believe one is the creature who startled me this morning and survived his fall and will eat mosquitoes all night.
Leaving India, the hard way
Sunday and the end of India for us
It’s amazing how loud an Asian phone can be at 4 in the morning. Eyelids snap open so harshly that eyeballs pop out as if on springs. Awake we were and as stunned as if whacked upside the head with a cricket bat. So began our last day in India.
The bus arrived at 3 am though we were scheduled to depart at 5. Something upset the driver so he took off in a huff and we sat on the bus for almost an hour waiting for him to come back. Brahm made several phone calls during the time but when we asked him what was happening he only said, “No problem.”
That’s the universal answer around here, “No problem.”
Obviously there was a problem but while we waited we discovered that the bus is home to a mouse. I say a mouse because we saw one at a time but a lone mouse seems unlikely. Some drumming and clanging distracted us from the mouse. People were chanting and marching to the river for sunrise. We rode to the river for the festival night and it took 30 minutes to drive so those people would be lucky to get there for Monday’s sunrise.
Varanasi is on the Ganges River (Ganga). Every Hindu is supposed to bathe in the river but if they can’t actually go to the river, they can go to some temples with specially shaped arches which represent the river. Passing under the arches substitutes for the trip itself. When they die though their ashes must go into the river, a body of water seen as holy to drink and bathe in though swirling though the water are grandpa’s remains.
Hindus believe that they make no choices. Hindu gods (all 326 million of them) decide all matters so that people only endure. That’s the perfect attitude to teach people if you want to control them and use them and that’s the religious/superstitious/cultural package in this part of the world. As always, geography determines one’s take on god.
Two of the 326 million gods are the river and the sun or they live in the river and the sun. I’m not sure. The holiday honoring both of them is Chhath and we were there in time to see it celebrated.
The Hindus of Vananasi go to the river to celebrate sunrise every morning but on Chhath tens of thousands go and tens of thousands more go to other rivers. They bathe there and brush their teeth. They dip or splash their sons to give them long lives (daughters are on their own) and they put candles in little dishes with flowers in them and add to the pollution of the river.
At any rate, the bus did get underway in the morning but only went about 10 minutes with 75 horn beeps when we stopped for gas.
Have you ever been on a bus and stopped to buy gas? Apparently it’s not odd here because another bus was at the pumps too. We hoped the mouse would hop off while we were there.
Rick kept saying he was one with the…
One with the bus
One with the mouse
One with the horn
One with the music
One with the sauntering cows
Ohmmmmmm
In a way the bus was good because we each had two seats and could stretch out but in a way the bus was bad because there was no air conditioning and some windows wouldn’t open. The bus had no toilet but it was clean, ignoring the mouse.
I planned to work on my photos during the ride but it was so bumpy and jittery that it would have destroyed the hard drive to ask it to work under those conditions. Likewise I couldn’t read or write or even work on Suduko. It wasn’t possible to write legible numerals in the boxes. One spot on the road was so lumpy that if it was a river it would be white water or if it was a ski slope it would be serious washboard.
We often rolled along at a good rate but sometimes were slow enough that children could run along side and beg for food and pens. The 8 hour drive took 12 hours and it wasn’t a lot of fun though most of the people we passed probably thought we were living the good life.
The bus hit a small purple car and the two vehicles locked together. There was a lot of loud conversation and then a bunch of men picked up the car and jiggled it free of the bus and the bus moved down the road. While some people thought we had gotten away easily I reserved judgment and sure enough we stopped at the next wide area in the road. The car’s driver stormed over and all kinds of people were yelling and stomping and pointing and then they all left and we drove onward.
We stopped once tea and toilet though Rick and I declined the tea which had milk. The next toilet stop was at a brick wall. The gentlemen calmly waited while the ladies squatted in the grass providing entertainment to the Indian women walking across the fields with bundles of straw on their heads. Criminey.
When the men took their turn to pee, the women were uninterested. Indeed, I am surprised when a man with his back to the road is not peeing and I assume every puddle is urine.
Dinner was of slight servings but tasty and Rick took his drippy noise to bed. Up at 5:30 tomorrow but I’m ready for that phone.
It’s amazing how loud an Asian phone can be at 4 in the morning. Eyelids snap open so harshly that eyeballs pop out as if on springs. Awake we were and as stunned as if whacked upside the head with a cricket bat. So began our last day in India.
The bus arrived at 3 am though we were scheduled to depart at 5. Something upset the driver so he took off in a huff and we sat on the bus for almost an hour waiting for him to come back. Brahm made several phone calls during the time but when we asked him what was happening he only said, “No problem.”
That’s the universal answer around here, “No problem.”
Obviously there was a problem but while we waited we discovered that the bus is home to a mouse. I say a mouse because we saw one at a time but a lone mouse seems unlikely. Some drumming and clanging distracted us from the mouse. People were chanting and marching to the river for sunrise. We rode to the river for the festival night and it took 30 minutes to drive so those people would be lucky to get there for Monday’s sunrise.
Varanasi is on the Ganges River (Ganga). Every Hindu is supposed to bathe in the river but if they can’t actually go to the river, they can go to some temples with specially shaped arches which represent the river. Passing under the arches substitutes for the trip itself. When they die though their ashes must go into the river, a body of water seen as holy to drink and bathe in though swirling though the water are grandpa’s remains.
Hindus believe that they make no choices. Hindu gods (all 326 million of them) decide all matters so that people only endure. That’s the perfect attitude to teach people if you want to control them and use them and that’s the religious/superstitious/cultural package in this part of the world. As always, geography determines one’s take on god.
Two of the 326 million gods are the river and the sun or they live in the river and the sun. I’m not sure. The holiday honoring both of them is Chhath and we were there in time to see it celebrated.
The Hindus of Vananasi go to the river to celebrate sunrise every morning but on Chhath tens of thousands go and tens of thousands more go to other rivers. They bathe there and brush their teeth. They dip or splash their sons to give them long lives (daughters are on their own) and they put candles in little dishes with flowers in them and add to the pollution of the river.
At any rate, the bus did get underway in the morning but only went about 10 minutes with 75 horn beeps when we stopped for gas.
Have you ever been on a bus and stopped to buy gas? Apparently it’s not odd here because another bus was at the pumps too. We hoped the mouse would hop off while we were there.
Rick kept saying he was one with the…
One with the bus
One with the mouse
One with the horn
One with the music
One with the sauntering cows
Ohmmmmmm
In a way the bus was good because we each had two seats and could stretch out but in a way the bus was bad because there was no air conditioning and some windows wouldn’t open. The bus had no toilet but it was clean, ignoring the mouse.
I planned to work on my photos during the ride but it was so bumpy and jittery that it would have destroyed the hard drive to ask it to work under those conditions. Likewise I couldn’t read or write or even work on Suduko. It wasn’t possible to write legible numerals in the boxes. One spot on the road was so lumpy that if it was a river it would be white water or if it was a ski slope it would be serious washboard.
We often rolled along at a good rate but sometimes were slow enough that children could run along side and beg for food and pens. The 8 hour drive took 12 hours and it wasn’t a lot of fun though most of the people we passed probably thought we were living the good life.
The bus hit a small purple car and the two vehicles locked together. There was a lot of loud conversation and then a bunch of men picked up the car and jiggled it free of the bus and the bus moved down the road. While some people thought we had gotten away easily I reserved judgment and sure enough we stopped at the next wide area in the road. The car’s driver stormed over and all kinds of people were yelling and stomping and pointing and then they all left and we drove onward.
We stopped once tea and toilet though Rick and I declined the tea which had milk. The next toilet stop was at a brick wall. The gentlemen calmly waited while the ladies squatted in the grass providing entertainment to the Indian women walking across the fields with bundles of straw on their heads. Criminey.
When the men took their turn to pee, the women were uninterested. Indeed, I am surprised when a man with his back to the road is not peeing and I assume every puddle is urine.
Dinner was of slight servings but tasty and Rick took his drippy noise to bed. Up at 5:30 tomorrow but I’m ready for that phone.
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