Monk Mystique

LUANG PRABANG, Laos – Despite the tell-tale dress, those orange or red robes draped ever so perfectly, Buddhist monks stop catching your eye the more time you spend in Southeast Asia.

You grow accustom to them on the streets. You see them hailing a cab at a busy Bangkok intersection, checking their e-mail at an Internet cafe or chatting on their cell phones waiting for the bus.

But here in Luang Prabang their presence once again captivates. There’s mystique in this grand old village of a city that feels stopped in time. Gleaming gold-roofed wats pop up behind white walls on every street, and the light here bounces delicately without anytime of day lending harshness or glare.

Early each morning, just before the sun wakes up and as the city is basked in a silver glow, processions of monks leave their wats and walk the streets. They're greeted by locals sitting on blankets, waiting for them with rice and other goodies. It’s the collection of alms.

Seemingly endless orange robes slowly swish by and gold buckets clink with each offering. The smell of baking baguettes warms the air as they walk down main street. The monks appear to be lined up from tallest to shortest or oldest to youngest, but it’s the amount of time spent in monkhood that determines the order. The young novices at the back seem a little shy about the reverence offered along with the rice.

One morning I followed one procession from the main drag to the smaller streets on their route. I was silent save for the distinctive click of my Nikon. So I was startled when I heard “Good morning, Megan.” I had meet one of the monks the other afternoon. The 20-year-old had entreated me to come into his wat as he saw me walk by, and we spent the afternoon chatting. He and others like to practice their English with a native speaker, and I imagine, break up the typical afternoon with new entertainment. He peppered me with questions and told me about his life. The monks are up at 4 a.m. Many of them are from over the border in China and only go home once a year or so. Some chose this life and some were instructed by their family.

That morning as I followed along and watched the alms offering, he asked me asked me how much longer I was going to be in Luang Prabang. Sadly only another day or two, I replied. He said that I should stay and be their English teacher. I wish I had.

Tigers!

KANCHANABURI, Thailand - What a rush.

What an incredible rush, sitting with a tiger's head in my lap and then playing with a four-month-old cub. And I mean really playing with him. No bars, no restrictions. Just running around with this tiger like he was a labrador retriever.

These tigers are raised tame by monks at a large temple compound about two hours outside Bangkok (near the Bridge over River Kwai). For a reasonable donation, you can spend the afternoon with the majestic cats.

First you visit a canyon where the tigers, after a morning of play and a very large lunch, go to laze and snooze in the afternoon sun. Handlers lead you around to each cat and take photos of you petting them. It's very controlled and a bit touristy. But it's tigers! Huge, 440-lb. tigers!


Their fur is stiffer than a housecat's, but they're still soft and like to be nuzzled in the same places. For an extra donation, which I happily paid, you can sit with a tiger snuggled with his gigantic, heavy head in your lap. I stroked his chin and traced his stripes down his long body. The tigers are pretty sound sleepers. Had he not opened one eye and peered up at me, I would have sworn he was drugged. But he was just a fat, happy cat enjoying his siesta. Another cat slept not too far away with her four huge paws in the air.
Sitting on the cool canyon floor with the tigers is amazing but a little stilted as the handlers are pretty hands on. The real fun came with the cubs. Basically, the young ones were allowed to just run around as they pleased - as long as they left the compound's roaming boars and peacocks alone.

I was free to interact with the cubs however and how much as I liked. They have this low, purr-like growl and their powerful paws can easily knock you over if you're sitting a little off balance. The feel of a tiger's muzzle in your hand is amazing. I fed the cubs milk tablets, which they happily lapped up from my palm.

My favorite cub had the naughty sensibilities of Curious George. The colorful colors of the peacocks and roosters arrogantly stalking around were too much for this tiger to bear. It was facinating to watch him sneak away from his babysitter monk and steathily stalk the birds. When the monk would notice what the cub was up to, he'd run over and grab him by the tail. Then the monk would jokingly jump around the tiger, teasing him in the lovable way one does a toddler. At one point, the monk picked up the cub and threatened to toss him over a wall into the enclosure with the big cats. The cub scrambled up the monk's torso, over his head and down the other side, leaving the monk with a pretty good scratch.

The tigers seem so domestic, but instincts don't disappear just because some peaceful, saffron-robed men raised them. As the tigers were being led back to their enclosures after the afternoon tourist visits were over, one male decided to do a little grocery shopping on his way home. He took after a boar. About four handlers had to scramble to hold him back. The tiger relented, but he paused for a good while and looked hard at that boar, as if to say, "you would be dinner if I really wanted."

Tastes Like Chicken

DA LAT, Vietnam - The famous food writer James Beard said "Food is our common ground, a universal experience."
Well, maybe. But I never before considered silk worms a part of a balanced diet. It never crossed my mind to roast a few and pop them like peanuts. That's what a roasted silk worm tastes like, a peanut.

There's all manner of weird food out here in Asia, and I've sampled quite a bit of it - including some unidentifiable meat that makes me shudder to contemplate. Though I do admit in Cambodia I declined to taste barbecued chicken feet. I did sit there and watch them - and smell them - cook for a few minutes, and trust me, that's close enough.



I felt a little braver in the hills of southern Vietnam when an eager ambassador of all things Vietnamese shoved a roasted silk worm in my face, imploring me not to miss out. The little critters are a common afternoon snack for the female workers at a silk factory I was visiting. In the morning, they put some of the worms on one of the factory's hot pipes and let them roast. Then they pull the yellow, centipede-like bodies out of their cocoons and munch away.

Mmmmm. Like a handful of warm peanuts.

Hey McCain, you've got a friend

MY THO, Vietnam – In a farming village off the Mekong Delta – a 20-minute motorcycle drive away from the Internet – there’s an informal fan club of one for Sen. John McCain.

Kan** is a groupie, really.

The 30-year-old math teacher, who just broke into the tour guide biz, has quite a political crush on the Republican presidential hopeful. He proudly displays photos of the senator on his wall that he downloaded off the Internet. Given a willing ear, he will rattle off McCain’s life milestones like a fantasy baseball junkie spouting stats on the latest prospect.

And he’s following the build up to the United States’ 2008 election closely, rooting for his boy to take the White House.

“Every Vietnamese hope he will be next American president,” he says earnestly and a little brashly after quickly steering the conversation with his American guests to politics.

From the nearest city, Kan’s village is a series of right turns onto increasingly narrow roads, the last of which isn’t paved and can best be described as a path. The grass gets taller and the buildings squatter as motos speed along playing chicken with those trying to go the other direction. Then the path ends and the rest of the way must be traversed by foot over a series of rickety log footbridges.

Despite the apparent isolation, Kan is a news buff. Once a week he heads for the nearest Internet café to read about the latest world happenings. He says Voice of America is his first choice because he can read the news in his own language, but he also does his best to digest English news sources like the BBC.

“I read all the Websites my government would like to block,” he says.

Kan is a dedicated student of English. He obsessively writes down all the words he learns in a little white notebook, halting conversations to ask for the spelling and look it up in his English-to-Vietnamese dictionary and then his Vietnamese-to-English one.

As if to perform as well as practice with native speakers, he’ll pronounce a recently acquired word and then use it in a sentence.

“Dem-on-strate,” he enunciates. “In Vietnam we cannot demonstrate because the police will come and get you.”

Since achieving his goal of becoming a tour guide this summer he gets to interact with more Westerners. He leads tourists around the Cu Chi tunnels, the Mekong Delta and a city that for him, like many other Southern Vietnamese, has two names. Only when working does he refer to it as Ho Chi Minh City. In his personal life it’s Saigon.

Kan’s father fought for the Republic of Vietnam and was re-educated for nine months when the South surrendered in April 1975. In the same fashion Saigon was renamed, he went from a telephone technician to a farmer.

“After reeducation he was unhappy with this life,” Kan says, gesturing at the rice paddies and banana trees of his family’s farm.

His father slowly became an alcoholic.

“He was always drinking rice wine,” Kan says with some judgment but not scorn. “So now I don’t drink.”

But the bottle didn’t diminish his staunch anti-communist attitudes that he was vocal about until he died.

“I always follow my father’s political opinion,” Kan says.

He attributes that to why he and his three brothers didn’t have to fulfill the normally obligatory military service.

“My family background is not good for them. They’re afraid we’re CIA,” he says laughing.

His father, Kan says, hoped that by the time his children were grown “America would come back.”

Kan seems to have transferred that hope to McCain.

He talks with reverence about how even though McCain “suffered in the prison, after the war (he) came back to our country many times and shook hands with the communists who were the enemies in the war.”

McCain in the White House could only be good for Vietnam, Kan reasons. His country would have a better shot bolstering its economy and status in the world, as he envisions McCain as an ally, an American president who would pay attention to Vietnam and improve relations between the two nations.

As if to prove his theory, Kan lists all the times McCain has met with Vietnamese leaders and said the war should be in the past. His shining example of McCain’s commitment to the Vietnamese people is how McCain worked to get them special refugee status in the United States.

Kan insists he isn't alone in his adoration of McCain. It's fair to say that the Republican is one of the most well known US politicians in Vietnam. He's oft quoted in news stories as the rational voice of America. Not to say that he's universally liked, but ever since Vietnam broke away from its isolationist policies in the 1990s, McCain has earned wide respect and generous press for his advocacy on the country's behalf. He's often represented as an important architect of change in U.S. policy towards Vietnam.

Like in 1995 when President Bill Clinton normalized diplomatic relations and McCain defended the move to the largely outraged Republican Congress. And more recently, McCain was lauded for getting permanent normal trade relations established in 2006, a vital part of Vietnam's long yearned for accession into the World Trade Organization this year.

“In Vietnam, everybody like Mr. John McCain,” Kan says. “As for me, I hope Mr. McCain will be the next American president and the vice president will be a woman.”


** This story was written for an official news agency, but during the editing process we decided the Vietnamese man's candor and pro-West sentiment could get his name on a list somewhere and cause him trouble. So the story wasn't published. Since this blog has no anonymous source policy, I'm posting the story using an alias for my friend to protect him from commie harrasment.

Cambodian Heartache

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - Cambodia rips your heart out. And just when it's laying there quivering on the pavement thinking nothing more could more happen some corrupt official runs it over with a brand new Caddy.

It's been almost 30 years, but the Khmers haven't been able to escape their past. The effects of the Khmer Rouge's 1.7-million-person genocide are felt in the struggling economy and the blast of a land mine. The Khmer Rouge wiped out all the people who were able to make a contribution. Even anyone who had glasses was considered a threat to Pol Pot's whacked idea of a perfect society. Cambodia is left with a poor, uneducated population and a government interested only in lining it's own pockets.

In the country's capital, the S-21 prison still looks like the school it originally was before it became the infamous headquarters of the Khmer Rouge torture operation. With the yellow and white checkered floors of the classrooms it's easy to imagine little chairs and desks and eager students running along the outside corridor, giggling in their crisp white shirts. But instead, a solitary metal bed stands in for the desks and the shouts of joy are replaced with echoes of screams. Lashings with electrical wire was a favorite of Pol Pot's men.

As I stood in one of the "interrogation" rooms, I suddenly realized the dark spot on the tile under foot is from blood. This place is literally stained with horror. (After WWII we swore - the world swore - never again. And yet we let it happen many times again. We're letting it happen right now. Somehow genocide isn't enough to propel those who can to act. Identifying it, wagging a finger and saying it's wrong seems to be enough to placate the world's outrage. Too bad Darfur lacks resources other than humanity).

The mug shots of the dead - only a dozen of the 14,000 prisoners survived S-21 - and the one-legged men pedaling down country roads and the countless kids living on the streets is hard to take. In Kampot, this little provincial town near the coast, a little street girl timidly approached me. She was hungry. I took her across the street to a fruit stand a bought her a sliced mango. Every time I saw her thereafter she would skip over to me, smiling and chanting "Thank you! Thank you!" I was crushed.

Despite having one of the largest concentrations of NGOs and significant contributions of international aid, no progress is being made in Cambodia. None of the money coming into the country gets past the officials. I sat and watched a government building the other day. Three officials came out. Two got into Lexuses. The other a bright red Cadillac.

*****
Three of the masterminds of the Khmer Rouge brutality will be tried soon for their crimes against humanity. The NY Times ran an interesting article a few days ago about the man who took the mug shots of those to be killed: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/world/asia/27cambo.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Say Cheese!

SIEM REAP, Cambodia - What is it with all the tourists who want their photo taken in front of everything?

Everywhere I go it seems I have to politely hang back while some idiot tries to look cool posing for the camera. And oh man, if you get caught behind a Japanese tour group - you wait hours while everyone takes their turn playing model.

What do people do with these photos?

I pity the poor folks back home who are subjected to the boring slideshow. Here's me giving the peace sign in front the Emerald Buddha. Here's me raising my glass of beer outside the Heart of Darkness bar. Here's me pointing at the big carving in the Anchor Wat temple. Look how big it is compared to me! He he.

OK, some I get. Like sitting on the toe of the largest Buddha in Thailand or petting a monk's pet tiger. Even the repetitive photos of arms around the tuk-tuk driver or guest house owner. Those I understand.

But I just don't get the motivation behind the others. So many times they pose in front of something stationary and inanimate. It's never an interaction with the place (same way as they travel, I suppose, but that's a whole other rant). Do tourists feel a need to prove they were some place? How does it capture what they saw and felt and experienced while traveling? And do they put those photos in frames around their house? No, probably just on Facebook or MySpace.

I simply don't feel the need for any of that. At the Taj Mahal one of the greeters followed me for five minutes trying to get me to stand in front of the magnificent building while he took a photo of me with my camera. Everyone else obliged happily, clearly oblivious to the fact that they would be tiny little dots in the massive landscape.

I take photos of the people around me. I try to find the moments that say something about the culture. My smiling face is mostly irrelevant. Maybe I'm just a photography snob. Maybe when I get home and show my family and friends the photos I took, they'll nod politely but wonder why there aren't any of me pretending to hold up a falling temple.

Final Thoughts on India

BANGKOK, Thailand - Ah, India. What a crazy experience. I have never before felt such a wide range of emotions crammed into such a short time period.

There is so much to love in India. So much to be entranced by and enthralled with. The Taj Mahal, the Rajasthani women standing in popping contrast to the desert sand, the vast array of religion, the chaotic yet langourous street life...

The challenge is you have to claw, grapple and push your way through so much shit, sometimes literally, to get to it. It's exhausting. I vascillated between completely loving it and completely hating it. India is just intense.


Traveling for five weeks in just two areas of the large country, I lost myself in India. But not in that I'm-a-new-person, enlightened kind of way. India seemed to bring out the worst in me.

Take my last bus ride early one morning from Jaipur to Agra, my last stop in the country. As the bus driver extorted 2 rupees from me for a "bag charge", I found myself hot with anger. Chest tight and jaw clenched, I jeered "this is bullshit." Sitting in my seat waiting to leave, I realized I had just cussed at an elderly driver over a whopping 6 cents.

It's not the money. It's the frustration of being constantly hasseled and hussled. So, instead of engaging, I just closed myself off, rudely dismissing eager shopkeepers, shooing child beggars and practically telling anyone who came near to shove it. Basically being a complete dickhead.

Then, I'd have a pleasant interaction with an Indian and feel bewildered and ashamed at my behavior, for acting like such a right shit. I would resolve to reclaim my usually approachable attitude, to smile and make eye contact and to start to let the world in again. After all, it's only as scary and nasty as I allow it to be.

I wouldn't take long, though, for someone to sniff the vulnerability of friendliness and swoop in to take advantage. And I'd be right back to marching through India with my try-me-I-dare-you stare, pursed face and generally pissed off attitude.

I hate acting that way. I don't like being dismissive. I don't like ignoring people. I'm a journalist for Christ's sake! That, I think, was the source of my displeasure in India. I couldn't be the best version of myself.

The trip also revealed an unpleasant truth about myself - and one I'm afraid others who know me have always readily seen. It's no secret that I'm spoiled. My wonderful and generous father never let his kids want for anything (except a horse and trampoline). And in the corporate excess of the 1980s I aquired sun burns at resorts all over the country - Tuscon, Orlando, Palm Springs - as we often accompained my father on lavish business trips. I learned the joy of charging it to the room and non-alcoholic pina colodas with those little umbrellas.

So spoiled, yes. Accostomed to the priveleged life, yes. But I didn't realize until my experience in India just how much I would cling to those luxuries when I was stressed out. About three weeks into the trip, my second round in Delhi again hit me like a sledgehammer, knocking my legs out from under me just when I was getting comfortable.

A friend, bless his soul, came to the rescue with an offer to stay with him at a 5-star hotel on the government's dime. I retreated to the calm serenity to lick my wounds...at the pool with a fluffy white robe. (In my defense, I was going on day 8 of pink eye and was having a nasty allergic reaction to the meds I got in Dharamsala. I needed that on-call hotel doc).

I've reported from Iraq, gone on house raids with the US Army in Ramadi. And I was fine. Kicked butt and took names, actually (well, at least in the I-wrote-everything-down and reported-it sort of way that we journalists do). So I was surprised I could be overwhelmed.

I don't know if it was the squalour, the lack of personal space, the aggression of the Indian people or just the feeling of being such a fish out of water. But something got to me.

I found it incredibly difficult to connect with the people in any meaningful way. Indians always want something from you. Rare is the conversation that doesn't have an end game. Enevitably the sales pitch always comes.

In Udaipur I hung out with an Isreali women named Tal. She and I have similar feelings about India - at its worst it's in-your-face, overbearing and often disrespectful. We had an interesting conversation about trying to understand the culture rather than retreating in our first impressions and isolating ourselves.

Tal told me a story about living in the States and being constantly annoyed at how people, such as a salesperson at a store, would ask how she was after saying hello and then fail to listen to her earnest answer.

I had to laugh. In that kind of situation Americans don't ask the question to ascertain an answer; it's simply an extension of the greeting, an acknowledgement of the person's presence and a welcome. When Tal would answer beyond the usual "good" or "fine" expected, she was off script.

I started to wonder how I was off script in India. Surely there was some logic in what I perceived as utter chaos. When I felt invaded and violated by the constant intrusion into my personal space, the Indians must be operating within their acceptable boundaries and perceptions.

Like when I would be pestered to death at a coffee shop just trying to read the paper in the mornings. In Indian culture, if you are sitting by yourself than you must be in want of company. No one wants to be alone! So they would join me and want to chat endlessly (it was the one time they didn't want to sell me something, as I was already in their establishment).

I never found the answers. I'm far from having figured out the puzzle of Indian culture. Still, as I look back I realize I had some great encounters. Like in Kashmir when I spent a delightful hour sitting on the floor eating cake and drinking tea with a local family who had been kind enough to invite me into their home.

My last afternoon in India, I couldn't help being anything but engaged by the life around me. On a dusty street, teenaged boys were playing a rowdy pickup game of cricket, watched by a couple of bored-looking donkeys. They were interupted by the occassional speeding motorcycle and once by a herd of cows with bells around their necks. To the left a monkey, who had been scampering along the store signs, wickedly jumped onto a tin awning, bounced up and down and delighted in the racket he made.

This country is never dull, I'll give it that. The senses are always atwitter here. Although I find the country intrusive and confrontational, I do get a kick out of the street life - at least when I'm not cursing it.

In the hours before my flight to Bangkok part of me was blissful at the thought of leaving India behind and moving onto the laid back friendliness of the Thais. But the dogmatic, determined, competitive side wasn't ready to go, not in defeat. India is a challenge and I wanted to tackle it, wrestle it to the ground and conquer it. Alas, I didn't have the time or the energy. That will have to wait until my next trip to the bewildering Asian subcontinent (and, yes, there will be one).


I leave the topic of India behind, dear readers, with my Top 10 LOVE/HATE list of India. For those who have been, feel free to add your own to the comments

LOVE

1. Strangers inviting you into their home

2. Chicken tikka, banana lassi and nan

3. The bright, colorful dress of the women

4. When shopkeepers, upon seeing you with your backpack, step out of their store to wish you a good journey - even those to whom in maddening frustration you were positively rude

5. The formal Queen's English, like when they address you as "madam" and ask you about your "motherland"

6. The shopkeepers insisting their customers sit, chat and drink chai with them

7. India's acceptance of outsiders into their country for refuge

8. The Tibetan prayer flags at McGleod Ganj

9. Fervent political debates on late-night trains

10. Never knowing what's going to happen next

HATE

1. Needing exact change for everything

2. The scarcity and high cost of Diet Coke

3. The subjugation of women

4. Rickshaw drivers who try to misguide you, ignore your requested destination and take you to a place where they get a commission

5. Aggressive salespeople who don't take no for an answer and follow you for blocks

6. The shopkeepers insisting their customers sit, chat and drink chai with them

7. Indian men who sleazily leer, "accidentally" bump into you or blatantly cop a feel

8. The cow shit

9. The loud, disgusting phlem hawking, and the very public penis holding and ass scratching

10. The obnoxious price inflation for foreigners

The Monument to Love

AGRA, India - The Taj Mahal doesn't look real. Not from the couple hundred yards away where you walk through an archway and first glimpse the monument.

The Taj is dreamlike and seems to quiver in the early morning mist as if it's a sophisticated hologram or a mirage. I felt like I could reach out and swipe my hand right through it, positive my mind had created the incredible building in front of me.

It's that ethereal. I didn't believe the image was solid until I laid my hand on the cool marble.

This is quite possibly the one time in my life thus far that something has truly lived up to it's awesome expectations. I can't seem to find the words to describe it without gushing, and I get stuck on cliches, like breathtaking and awestruck. Each time I looked up at the Taj I was impressed all over again.



I had big plans for the Taj Mahal. I timed my entire visit in India around the full moon so I could view the monument at night. However, the Taj wasn't open for the full moon as usual because it was Ramadan - a little fact my guide book failed to mention. I was also going to spend the entire day at the Taj, watching how the changing light of day changed the color of the monument. But it was overcast and raining and the light stayed the same the entire day.

Still, my feet were slow in leaving. I kept stopping to look over my shoulder for one last gaze. I was enchanted.


(My photos don't do it justice. Please use google images and see some proper photos of the place)

No bags, no parcels

JAIPUR, India - I didn't think it was possible.
But the aggressive, in-your-face, pushy, conniving sales people of India have knocked the shopaholic gene right out of me.
I have zero desire to buy anything. The experience of shopping in India is just so exhausting and infuriating I can't be bothered.
Here's what usually happens: A shop owner lurches from his store, blocks your path and pretends to care what country you're from.
"Madam! Excuse me, madam, which is your country?"
Once he has successfully stopped your movement, he launches into a sales pitch and pulls you, quite literally, into his shop. Then he proceeds to take down everything from the shelf, shove each item in your face and lie his head off about how it's handmade and quite unique. Then he quotes you an outrageous price about 10 times what it's actually worth.
If you escape, you'll only get about three feet before the next shop owner jumps in front of you and tries to start the whole thing over again only in his shop where he sells the exact "unique" item the other guy wanted you to buy.
I wonder why the entrepreneurs haven't figured out that their tactics just send Westerners running. I'd happily pay extra rupees for a shopping experience where I was left alone.
Every where you go in India, each step you take, you're harassed. You cannot walk in peace. Sometimes they follow you for blocks touting their service, products or hotel.
I feel like a walking dollar. Every one wants a piece of me.

The Venice of India - almost

UDAIPUR, India - From the rooftops this laid back city on a lake looks Mediterranean. On the streets, with the dirt, the cows and the crazy sales people, it's distinctly Indian.
But, ah, looking down at the city one can see how Indians claim it's the country's own Venice. I've spent most of my time here chilling on terrace restaurants enjoying the view.
Here's a peek at what I see from my guest house:


And from the foot bridge I walk across each day to get to the old city:

Camel Safari

JAISALMER, India - Camels are awkward creatures. Their gait is wobbly and unsure and they often trip on their own feet. They also reek and produce the most putrid farts. The smell is powerful enough to practically knock you backwards off its hump and send you tumbling onto the hot Thar Desert sand.

If it weren't for that whole can-go-for-days-and-days-without-water attribute, I can't see how they would possibly still have employment.

But all over this Rajasthan desert the stinky creatures are used in daily life. And the entrepreneurial spirit has found them an additional job: taking tourists on a camel safari into the desert. Yes, I actually paid money to spend a couple of hot, sweaty hours on the back of a camel named Calou.

The Thar Desert is amazingly - and disappointingly - green. I scowled at the surroundings - there was enough greenery for sheep and goats to graze. If I was going to get bounced uncomfortably on the back of a camel then I wanted to see some Lawrence of Arabia sand dunes.

Thankfully my camel "driver", who really just walked along in front of the camel, was amusing. He had dark, weathered skin and wore a bright orange turban on his head. Every few minutes he'd turn over his shoulder and call out: "You okay, Meg?"
"Yes, I'm good," I would reply.
"Good. You're good, then I'm good," he would say each time before breaking into a "happy" song featuring my name.

His family had lived in his tiny village - about 50 houses - for centuries. Marriages were arranged with nearby villages. Despite this isolated life - save for the tourists - he spoke pretty decent English. He had one adorable quirk that made me smile each time he said it. When I said "thanks", he would reply "welcome". But when I said "thank you", he would respond with "welcome you."

We left on the camel trek in the late afternoon and started climbing a little hill just as the sun was setting. As we reached the top beautiful, rolling sand dunes emerged - not a twig of green in sight. My six English companions and I watched the sun drop fast beyond the dunes. We ate dinner made by our drivers and drank rum.

That night I slept under the most beautiful sky I'd ever seen. It was so dense with stars it reminded me off that jello little old ladies make with the mandarin oranges suspended in it. Like you could reach up and scoop a handful. I fell asleep wishing on all the shooting stars.

Holy Cow

JAISALMER, India - Cows, cows everywhere and not a slice of beef.

The menus at most restaurants have a section titled "Burgers". It's a cruel, cruel trick and I fall for it every time. My stomach leaps with hope and my mouth salivates. Beef! At last!

Each time I am left with a deeper pit for it's only a worthless imitation - that granola favorite, the veggie "burger".

Not that the mostly emaciated cows eating trash off the street look all that delectable - certainly no filet mignon. But surely there's some decent ground chuck to be had.

I am craving a big, fat juicy steak. I'd settle for a nice hamburger. I will get neither.

But being a holy animal in India is not all it's cracked up to be. The Indians won't slaughter cows, but they don't do much to ensure their survival or happiness either.

The cows wander where they please with complete disregard for the commotion around them. They also stop wandering wherever suits them, sometimes lying down smack in the middle of the street and forcing cars, auto-rickshaws and motorcycles to find a way around them on the narrow roads. Pedestrians do best to just jump as far out of the way as possible for the cows don't alter their path to accommodate anything. Cows are the langourous kings of the road.

But that's about the extent of their privilege.

I just don't think cows were ever intended to be city folk. Urban living isn't exactly conducive to grazing. The animals end up foraging for food among the sickly sweet smelling trash that piles up along the sides of every road in India. Their ribs threaten to poke right out of their skin.

It inspires some unusual cow behaviour.

The other night around dinnertime I saw a white cow walk up a set of steps leading to a house. It was begging for scraps. The bold cow stood there peering into the open door. A few minutes later it took another step up and rested its head on the doorway.

The cow's style reminded me of the way my well-fed yellow lab would rest his head on your knee, looking up at you with sad eyes as if to say: "one cashew, just one little cashew from that nut bowl would be the difference between life and death for me. Come on, have a heart. Share the bounty."

The beggar cow looked much better than many of others that I'd seen, so I assume his efforts pay off. The neighbors said he comes 'round every night. Cows are holy animals, they said, it's good karma to take care of them.

I wonder what they'd think about me picturing that very cow on a dinner plate. I'll probably come back in my next life as a beetle.


An unrelated but funny menu note: Here in Rajasthan alcohol isn't illegal but is it's rather taboo and not widely available. Restaurants have to pay insane fees for a liquor license. To get around that and please the Western tourists who want a cold beer at the end of a day in the desert, there's an item on nearly every menu in town for a "special cold coffee".

The Pool of Nectar

Amritsar, India - Amid the squalor of this city it's hard to imagine anything serene awaits. But once you cross the threshold into the Golden Temple, the chaos of India fades so far away remembering where you are is difficult.

This Sikh holy site is truly a sanctuary.

The gilded temple, called Harmandir, is resplendent in the middle of a rectangular lake and surrounded by the white, polished marble complex of the Parikrama. At sunrise the reflection in the water is so shimmery it looks as if there are two temples.

Sikhs make at least one pilgrimage in their life time to worship at the temple and bathe in the waters of the Amrit Sarovar. The "Pool of Nectar," is believed to have purifying and healing powers.

You have to take off your shoes and clean your feet before going into the temple compound. The noise fades and the atmosphere completely changes as you walk down the marble steps and see your first glimpse of the Harmandir. For the first time since arriving in India I'm not aware of my outsider status. One of the central tenants of the Sikh faith is the principal of equality. The Shikhs accept all, regardless of religion, caste, creed, race, gender or nationality, and as a result the environment is incredibly friendly and welcoming. No one seems to wonder what a blond American is doing here.

I spent hours wandering around. They perform beautiful music that is played throughout the temple by Bose speakers.
The people at the sight range from jeans-wearing British Shiks to the ultra-orthodox nihangs, who wear blue robes and carry lances, sabres and curved daggers (they follow one of the more militaristic gurus of the faith).

One of the cooler things about the temple is the Guru-ka-Langar, which is basically a communal canteen. People gather with strangers on mats on the floor for the free meal served 24 hours a day. The practice is done to break down caste barriers.
Despite some worry about eating lentils cooked in such mass quantities with Indian standards, I quite enjoyed this experience of breaking bread with the Sikhs.

A Sikh bathing in the Pool of Nectar

The roof of the Harmindir

A group women who wanted me to take their photo. They would smile and laugh when the camera was away, but they adopted this serious face whenever I snapped a picture

Seeing Pink

Dharamsala, India - In elementary school classrooms sicknesses tend to spread to everyone and fast.

My sister-in-law, a former teacher, used to hilariously call her students "little carrier monkeys."

Well, apparently the backpacking community is nothing more than a traveling troop of carrier monkeys.

Apparently that fun childhood infection, conjunctivitis, better known as pink eye, is "going around."

Apparently some dude brought the delightful gunk up with him from Delhi, as the Tibetan nurse told me today at the clinic. When I walked in she took one brief look at my eyes, slightly shook her head as if to say "tourists" and then actually said, "okay, I'll give you medicine."

Small bottles of eye drops were already out on her table for easy dispensing. It cost 16 rupees. That's about 44 cents (and I was all prepared to collect lots of paperwork to file a claim with my travel insurance).

So I'm taking Advil for the pain, allergy medicine for the histamine, antibiotic eye drops for the bacterial infection and ointment for the goop.

Lovely.

Last week I had the infamous Delhi Belly (though I was in Srinagar). And now I look like my currently digustingly bloodshot eyes might just swell up forever and disappear behind impenetrable layers of gunk. Like it would take archaeologists a serious dig to locate them again.

Ah, India.

The Dalai Lama

Dharamsala, India - The Dalai Lama has the greatest laugh.
If one of those jolly, fat Buddha statues had a white string on the back that you could pull, the sound would be his laugh.

You cannot help but join him when he chuckles, even if with language barriers you don't know what joke he made.

The rock star lama is often traveling and normally isn't in residence here this time of year, but I lucked out. I've spent the last two mornings listening to him teach at the big temple near his home.

I'm not a religious person, but I'm drawn to the philosophy and spirituality of Buddhism. I like it's dismissal of the absolute, rejection of the material, focus on the individual and tolerance for fellow man. And there isn't much dogma in Buddhism.

His holiness, as he's called around here, speaks often about infinite compassion and altruism. Yesterday, he talked about how to be compassionate to even your enemy.
One can change his enemy's "wrong dream" without losing compassion, he said. "If we use our intellect properly, it is possible."
Such faith in man.

I studied Buddhism in college as part of my religion course, but I couldn't follow all he lectured about. Still, it was fascinating to watch his loyal followers. The temple was packed with people sitting on little pillows on the concrete. Monks came round with Tibetan tea and bread. There were a bunch of Western wanna-be's in the audience - dreadlocks, grubby clothes, I-know attitudes.

The Dalai Lama spoke in English at first, then switched to Tibetan. There were translations available over FM radio in a bunch of different languages.
Today, his last day of teaching, he thanked his followers from traditional Buddhist countries. Then he welcomed the Westerners.
"But they are so serious," he said with a grin in his voice.
And the crowd laughed.

Billy Goats and Monkeys

Dharamsala, India - A flight from Srinagar to Jammu. A bus from Jammu to Pathankot. And yet another bus from Pathankot to Dharamsala, home of the exiled Dalai Lama. The day started at 8:30 and ended 12 hours later - all to go 400 kilometers.

The road up the mountain to the hill station of Dharamsala, or more specifically, its upper section McLeod Ganj, is precarious with steep drop offs. Along the way I spotted the oddest combination: billy goats chilling alongside monkeys. I think I'm going to like it here.

(Blog note: I didn't have much access to Internet while I was in Kashmir, so I've posted the story of how I ended up there and what I saw, dated for when it actually happened. It's posts "A Movie without a Ticket" on Aug. 27 through "Sringar Streets: Have it. Have it". I've also added photos to the Kyoto post: "The Art of the Geisha").

Srinagar Streets: "Have it. Have it"

Srinagar, Kashmir - Narrow alleys that twist and turn make the city of Srinagar. It seems to have it's own smell. And apparently, though just a 100 or so meters from Dal Lake, a population distinct from the "boat people."
Shops are low, cramped structures with most of the business happening outside on the streets. You have to duck under whole pigs hanging from hooks outside the meat shop to make your purchase.

Crates of vegetables and fruit protrude onto the street. About every three or four stores, there's a stand selling soda and candy and potato chips and other Western junk food. Look up and there's laundry strung along most of the windows.
Strolling along, snapping away, window shutters bursted open above my head. A young, very regal looking women in a peach sari called down to me.
"Where are you from?" she asked. "Come up. Have something."
She, her sisters and her parents welcomed me into their humble living room and served me tea and cake, which they insisted I eat every bite of.
"Have it. Have it," they would implore when my fork stopped moving for longer they would have liked.
The sisters were sweet and well educated - at an Irish Catholic school of all places. The youngest, Fazaleet, wants to be an aeronautical engineer. She said she was 18, but then added that she would be 18 in November. My friend, Gustav, said tell us your birthday and we'll send you something.
"Oh, I love presents!" she said.

The sister wearing the peach sari, Hinna, has been married a year and teaches English and science. Her older sister, Sabia, is engaged to a diamond trader from Goa and will be married next May.
"You should come to the wedding," Fazaleet said.
The others nodded in agreement. Really, they said, I must come back to Kashmir and stay with them. For a month next time, not just a few days.
When I returned to the Snow Goose, I told the youngest Shalla son, 23, that I had meet two eligible women. I could arrange a marriage, I joked. The Shalla women in the room perked up at the mention of marriage and demanded to know the names.
No, no. These names were no good. They were city girls.


(Bathing in Dal Lake, in which I spotted a dead cow)

Now that's a wedding!

Srinagar, Kashmir - Wow, are American weddings boring.
I've just realized this after watching the crazy, elaborate and tradition-filled, 3-day festivities of a Kashmir wedding. These people do it right (except, maybe the whole women must have a dowry thing).
At least 400 people normally attend, and both the bride and the groom's family throw lavish parties to celebrate (It takes a full 24 hours of nonstop cooking in giant barrels to make enough food).
On the third night the groom, wearing a fancy turbon of sorts, is lead slowly from the house by a procession of singing and swaying women and proud looking men. He boards a boat decorated with Christmas lights (not, of course, actually called Christmas lights, here, in Muslim Kashmir). He's on his way to retrieve his bride. A band plays on the boat and there's wild dancing (but not, sadly, for the groom. He's made to sit very proper in a special chair and just watch the fun).
The family lights fireworks to signal to the bride's family that he is on his way - and sometimes, if the bride's family is a little bit competitive, they also launch fireworks, which sets off a series of one-up-manship.
I was able to watch two weddings on the third night. Once from the groom's side and then from the bride's.


(The groom being led to the boat. When they saw me with my camera, I was instantly popular. The guy on the left called me over and asked me to take a "proper" photo. The procession stopped for maybe a second to accommodate me and the men stood very still and straight. Not a great photo at all, but this way you can see the getup the groom wears)



(The groom's female guests singing a traditional wedding song and swaying arm in arm)



(The swaying women as fireworks go off and the groom boards the boat)

The Shalla Women

Srinagar, Kashmir - I find myself having a hard time with the role of the women in the Shalla Family - and presumably every other Muslim family in Kashmir.
They wait on the men like slaves. The men don't even acknowledge the women when they serve them. It's quite revolting.
The other day Monzoor told me that many Western women fall in love in Kashmir and never leave. Whenever I head out to town, he says: "Don't come back married!"
That, I guarantee, is not a worry.

The daughter-in-law: I never saw her out of the kitchen except do laundry. She doesn't speak but a few words of English, but she is incredibly friendly. She's always motioning me to come join her in the kitchen. It must be a lonely life, the one she leads.


The matriarch: A hobbled 65, who is none the less subservient to all the males in the house, including the defiant 9-year-old grandson. She can't speak English either, but she has warm, earnest eyes. She often sits real close to me just studying my face and smiling when I make eye contact. She always wants me to have tea.



The sister: She was on holiday and therefore had a break from the daily chores of the home of her husband's family. Normally she would be the kitchen slave like her sister-in-law. Still, she spent a good portion of her "holiday" waiting on the men. She's taken a few days to warm up to me. I wasn't sure at first how much English she understands, but I now I realize she has a good grasp of the language. She was married at 30 and had the baby a year later. We chat while I play with her 16-month-old daughter, who clearly thinks I'm some weird alien creature from another planet.

Ignoring the State Department

Srinagar, Kashmir (India) - What a shame that war and political turmoil has plagued this beautiful place. Tucked into the Himalayas and centered on a great lake, Srinagar is lovely.
I'm staying with Monzoor's family on their houseboat, the Snow Goose. You enter from a dirt road through a metal door and walk across rickety wood planks fashioned into a narrow bridge. On the left there is a room and a tiny kitchen. On the right, a small bedroom and a large sitting room. Not much furniture, just carpet and pillows on the floor.
Walk a little further down the wooden bridge and you'll get to the houseboat. Rows of houseboats are parked along the lake, dividing the water into avenues. The boats have English names, such as Happy England, Star Ruby and Denver.

(The view from the House Boat Snow Goose, where I'm staying)


(The full moon rising over the Himalayas, as seen from the Snow Goose)

Three generations of the Shalla family live in this humble complex. The parents, two of their five sons, a daughter-in-law, and two grandsons. One of their two daughters is visiting for a while with her husband and 16-month-old daughter. The other daughter, her husband and two kids come by often. (In Muslim families, the sons stay with their family while the daughters leave and join their husband's). The other three sons live abroad.
I often daydream about my whole family being in one place, but I picture Sunday dinners together not every meal together. I couldn't imagine being on top of one another like that.
The Shalla Family is immediately endearing. They offer me a place on the floor of the kitchen and the mother puts a pillow behind my back. The walls are painted green and the cooking area is tiled floor to ceiling with little shelves of pots and cups and tins of flour. I'm fed an egg with tomato and an endless cup of Kasmiri tea.
The women don't talk much; they don't know much English. The men are fairly fluent.
They laughed at my hesitancy to come to Kashmir. I told them that the US State Department warns that it is too dangerous for travel. That my insurance doesn't cover me while I'm here.
They nodded, knowingly.
Like so many others living with political conflict, their sentences often begin with 'before'.
Before the problem, there were many tourists in Kashmir.
Before the problem, there was a bridge here, but it was destroyed by the Army.
Before the problem...
Monzoor didn't intend on staying in Australia for more than the three months on his tourist visa in the late 1980s. But "the problem" began while he was there. His family said they would send word when it was safe for him to return. Years passed and now he is settled Down Under.
Soldiers on the streets of Srinagar stand as guards and symbols of the precarious peace. This beautiful place has more than once nearly brought Pakistan and India to war, and though it's been quiet for a few years, nothing is settled.
Nothing, except that life goes on.

From 5-star to 5 dollars

My lovely room at The Imperial...

...and the Ringo Guest House

A Movie without a Ticket

New Delhi, India - Sitting in the atrium of The Imperial, enjoying high tea, I look up from my novel and catch the eye of a Westerner.
He and his friend start a conversation and soon join me at my table (though they drain a beer while I sip tea). Almost immediately they invite me to Kashmir with them. I smile and shake my head 'no'. I won't be joining the two strangers who just sat at my table and asked me to go with them to an area of India that has been plagued by terrorist activity for nearly two decades.
We continue chatting and they push Kashmir. I demure. But then one says, come with us to my cousin's shop in the bazaar (One of the men, Monzoor, is Kashmiri, though he has been living in Australia for almost 20 years). He'll drive you back to the hotel and we'll catch our train, they say.
I can't resist. Here's my chance to go somewhere in Delhi with a guide of sorts. Maybe this will shake me loose of culture shock's hold.
We head out. First an auto rickshaw ride to the metro (Delhi has a brand new subway system with one track. There's a metal detector and quite a groping by security as you enter).
As we exit the metro after one stop, I realize the craziness outside The Imperial is nothing. My senses are assaulted, leaving me without really taking anything in. I'm just jumping hurriedly from one sight to one sound to one smell...
The bazaar is narrow and crowded. There are cows chilling, eating trash, motorbikes whizzing by and people everywhere, selling, hawking, trading, buying, mingling and loitering. It smells.
We arrive after a short walk at Monzoor's cousin's shop, which is located, quite hidden, down a side alley.
Raqif has an easy smile and a welcoming demeanor. A French woman dressed in a bright pink sari with tattoos on her feet, is perched on a low stool. There are piles of shawls along the walls and a shelf with the ubiquitous but appealing Indian paper mache.

(Rafiq)
Rafiq dashes off to inquire about a plane ticket for me to Kashmir. I hesitate. I look at the shawls instead. No, I decide. I can't just fly off to Kashmir to meet up with two strangers.
But...why not? Spontaneous trips and adventures is what this journey is supposed to be all about. Staying with a family, eating home-cooked food and talking politics into the early morning - isn't that what I pictured in my head before I left?
Look around, Rafiq says, India is like a movie without a ticket. Enjoy it.


(impromptu dancing near Rafiq's shop to celebrate a new baby)

Going with the flow, letting your heart lead, that is what India is all about, the French woman says. Here, you aren't the driver, so relax and let yourself be taken, she says. Her love of India - she has been living in a small village four hours from Delhi, her husband and four kids in France - is calming.


(women watching the dancing)

I'm convinced. I buy the ticket.
Monzoor and his Hungarian friend, Gustav (also living in Australia), take off for their overnight train journey and then Jeep ride to Kashmir. And I sit on one of the low stools, drinking chai and talking politics with Rafiq.
Later, back at The Imperial, as I sit in a restaurant sipping Perrier and watching the musicians playing traditional Indian music, I realize I smell faintly of the bazaar and sweat - that sweet aroma of adventure.
And I feel like I am getting away with something, sitting in this impeccably decorated restaurant with its smartly uniformed staff and air of the British Raj.
I smile. Tomorrow I will leave the Imperial.