mfmaster

2007-06-05T04:49:00.001-06:00

Glasgow, what to say. They also have a funny name for themselves. Its a nice Victorian industrial town (if those words can be used together). Classic Victorian architecture everywhere, squares and exchange buildings, houses and houses and houses, double decker buses, guys in kilts (rare) pubs everywhere. Gregg´s, the Tim Horton´s of Glasgow, basically a take away sandwich shop but much cheaper than sitting down for a pint and a meal that could buy a small apartment in downtown Vancouver, and still tasty and its rather nice sitting in a
victorian square having a cheap sandwich. That is while the weather is good. We lucked out and had plenty of good weather for wandering the city.

So cool things being cool, the church in Glasgow is cool. Giant, gothic, with gargoyles and everything. The basement church is just freaky cool with the gothic arches stretching along creating amazing $shadow and light, and just a freaky and awesome gothic look. I can't really do it justice with the gothic arches seen at wierd angles running off into the distance. It was just coolio.

The oldest house in Scotland was cool but not the coolest. The museums were neat, but not overly bloggable. Random collections but worth the admission, most of them were free, and intended more for the locals than to gouge tourists. One notable collection was the Burrell collection, which some random rich trading magnate collected, renovated a castle to house and then donated everything to the city, which built a special museum to house and showcase it. A rather eclectic collection of all ages, greek, renaissance, oreintal etc, including a tapestry which had first been commisioned by Cardinal Wolsey for Hampton Court (a living piece of Henry the VIII reaching out to grab you in Scotland).

We had a guide too, Rebecca's former colleague Gordon, a native and now professor at U Glasgow. Nice guy, gave us a place to stay in his rather nice flat, and a kitchen (so important!) He did his best to convince us that everything every good to come from anywhere was scottish. Turns out that´s easy when anyone who was ever in scottland or has scottish ancecstry is claimed by the nation.

Also a few arguments as to whether or not they are a country. If Scotland is a country, then by similar arguments each province of Canada is a country as we live under a devolved federalist model similar to their own. At the very least Quebec and Newfoundland would have to be considered as countries, as well as every indpendant native nation. Although I suppose in the end its just a definition game, but it does make one wonder in the end.

And then we grabbed a car and off to the highlands.

2007-05-30T03:19:00.001-06:00

Again its been a while, now I shall attempt from distant recollection to recount our journeys through Scotland and Barcelona... we´re in Sevilla now.

Edinburgh picked up after that last post. We had done a ghost tour when I posted and both Rebecca and I felt rather ripped off. It wasn´t the most pleasant of ghost tours. The guide made lots of anti-american comments (asking if there were any americans in the group after the first one) which isn´t so bad, but then she let out a stream of anti-tourist comments which made us a little uncomfortable. They didn´t really seem to want to be there, were glad that the later group was cancelled and did their best to shuttle us out of the drink at the end.

The next day we went on a tour of Mary King´s Close which solidified our feelings of having been ripped off. The closes are random narrow streets and passageways. Basically off the royal mile there were a series of perpendicular streets with high tenement buildings on either side, very narrow streets, only a couple metres wide at the biggest. Back in the day, i.e. medieval times, people lived their whole lives in these tenements often not venturing out very far, they had cattle in the lower rooms, and workshops and their homes. The poor lived at the bottom, the stench of the uncleaned roads with the detritus of human existence slowly being washed down the streets in front of them by the rains and the sun almost completely blotted out by the high
buildings. The rich lived up top, sunny and with "fresh" air.

So what happened was the town counsel decided to build a new counsel building and rather than flattening things and starting anew, they just skimmed off the top floors of a couple of the closes and left the bottom intact and built on them. I should mention, the counsel buildings are off the royal mile which is a road leading along the ridge of "mountain" leading up to Edinburgh castle and dropping away steeply on either side, so these closes were streets leading down at a rather sharp angle, not ideal for building large monuments on, so the foundation structure of these tenements was somewhat of a godsend I guess. Anywyas, over the years the closes under the counsel buildings were largely forgotten and the"rediscovered" of late, and touristised in part (yes I am verbing the noun tourist). So its been cleaned up, made mostly safe (although still narrow and dark, with random ledges an steps and unfinished bits) and they run guided tours through it complete with sound and light shows. Its actually set up really well and pretty tastefully to wander through a bit of the life in medieval times of Edinburgh.

So we saw the flats they lived in, including some which still had wall decorations on (one you couldn´t go into as someone decided it would be a good idea to use arsenic to put up the wallpaper and now the health-types in the UK don´t want us eating the arsenic wallpaper
chips). And they did one room up as if it were a sick room in the plague, complete with a Dr. in wax coated jacket with funky bird beaked mask to keep the evil fumes of plague away! And of course the light show and ghost story, same story as the night before but well done.

We wandered to Hollyrood Castle, which is where there are the ruins of the abbey and the current scottish palace of the royal family, of course it was closed as the "Lord High Commisioner" was coming for his annual visit. What, Rebecca and I wondered, makes him better than us? Why couldn´t we get in? So we missed that, had tea and smuggled outside sandwiches on a patio on the royal mile, watching tourists.

We went up to the university, saw some neat pubs in the area, a few old buildings, and plaque commemorating where Darwin had lived when he studied, the face of Darwin in bronze staring down at us. On the facing wall someone had graffitied "Darwin is watching", which have Rebecca and I both a good chuckle.

We wandered up Arthur´s seat the next morning before heading off to Glasgow. Its a bit of a large hill in Edinburgh, on the edge of town, from which you get a good view down to the castle and the old sections of town. On the way there we wandered up the back road of Hollyrood and got a good view (albeit perspective a bit cut off by the big security wall) of the ruins of the abbey which are rather cool and impressive. Big hulking walls with no ceiling, random empty windows,
walls with holes etc. Then up the slog of a hill, past whatever the beautiful yellow flower they have ubiquitously growing on the mountain is.

Leaving was a bit of a gong show. Stores have just different enough hours to drive one crazy, if one is in a rush and wants to do something. Notably restaurants behave just wierdly. So in Ethiopia I had met Andrew, a scot and a correspondant living in Addis, and he had told me that in Edinburgh I had to have a pint of 80/- and fish and chips a l'Alba d'Oro. Him being a nice guy I decided to honour that request. At the time, I had no idea what l'Alba d'Oro was or how to
spell it, he was sure any local would know what and where it was. But we even asked the night we arrived and the receptionist had no idea what or where it was. Finally after an exhaustive search (asking the receptionist and an abortive attempt in the phone book looking under "a") we gave up. So two blocks out from the apartment we were staying in, on a random walk looking for a pub for dinner (which is suprisingly hard to find, most of them... no food) we ran into l'Alba
d'Oro and filed the info away for later, the girl at the hotel was just ignorant. So the day we were leaving was last chance to fulfill my mission, which I had chosen to accept. But l'Alba d'Oro doesn´t open until 5, and we were supposed to be in Glasgow at 7, a 45min train ride, which worked out perfectely but we weren-t sure it would at the time. Our plan, after a long day of wandering had been to go at 4, get food and then go to the train station, plenty of time, but
with them opening at 5, and the train every 30min, on the hour and 30min mark we were a bit pressed, so tired from a days exertions and hungry, planning to eat at 4 and pushing it off and off, we wandered about town, got the train schedule and tickets, just to be sure, and headed back, grabbed packs and ate in the chippy some pretty gosh darned good fish 'n chips with its special home grown brown sauce.... mmmmmmm.

Then we hopped on the train after this one last adventure to hit Glasgow and find that pint of 80.

2007-05-16T06:06:00.001-06:00

What an odd name, Edinburgers?

Short of it is, we're here. Our place is great with a nice little kitchen, and oddly enough the tesco only serves fresh and smoked lunch meats, they don't drip with preservatives. So ham sandwiches and lots of walking have been the order of the day, really only a day as after
the rush to pack and get everything in the house ready, the flight (on which neither Rebecca nor I really slept in spite of being exhausted and the sound being broken in both our seats and the movies being Eragon and Bridget Jones, all good reasons to sleep). Anyways, we slept after arrival and didn't wake until noon, which is a shame as it was the one sunny day they were expecting sin Scotland this year.

But then we were off on our run around the city, the royal mile, up to the castle. Its a great city. I really don't know what to say about it except that there is a large old town, stretching the length of the royal mile and several blocks wide which still retains that medieval feel, in spite of the cars running around, double decker buses, and police in bright yellow vests. One end of this is Edinburgh castle, the big bad on the rock. We got there too close to closing so I think we missed out on a bit(although as we were being ushered out, the last to leave, there was still a steady stream of people wandering in trying to get in, in spite of the ticket booth being closed etc.).

Dinner in a pub. Hughie, I think the fish and chips are better in Edinburgh than anything I've had on the Canadian Atlantic coast... discuss. Beers good, although I'm intimidated by the variety of scotches, and the exchange rate, so I am waiting for Rebecca's friend, and our Glascow host before I go down that road.

Finally last night was a ghost tour. Wandering the town hearing about old torture and murder plots in renaisance and baroque Edinburgh (they say medieval, but its far too late for that in my humble opinion, hard to call the 1700s medieval in my mind).

Today wandering, what to say, that's the trip, wandering past the varied architecture of an ancient city spared the ravages of WWIIs carpet bombing.

2007-05-08T10:02:00.000-06:00

So I got caught on the edge of a riot yesterday.

I geuss its been a week since I updated things, so hold on, it should be rambly.

I left off out of Harrar, I then had a night in Addis. I ended up meeting a journalist from Scotland on the plane and having lunch with him and his wife who has been the Addis BBC correspondent for the last 3 years. Turns out it was rather wise not to come during the troubles two years ago when Henry and I were thinking of coming. Twas a bit tense, and Jordan worked out anyways.

So a night in Addis, the neatest thing. Meskal Square is a giant… square, more of a giant paved area where cars run around, but on the side is an equally wide area (about 10 lanes) where there are no cars. Its usually pretty empty, or might have some people playing soccer. This night there was a Man U game on and they had it on the big jumbotron type screen. There was a great crowd around it treating it as though it were a drive in, taxis and private cars had pulled up at the rear of a large crowd, most of which had obviously walked, gathered around intent on the game, most people were, with the obvious exception of the necessary salesmen!

Flew to Lalibela, and headed up to a sweet little hotel, hot showers, clean and had an amazing terrace with a ridiculous number of birds. More importantly a chef who prided himself on his good pasta (it wasn't bad at all) and a nice view of the sunset. The morning we hiked to a monestary near the top of a mountain, and then saw the rock hewn churches. I think I'm getting a bit blasé about the whole thing, another church just doesn't do it for me, but there's something great about what they've done in Lalibela. The king (Lalibela) had wanted to create a holy land outside the holy land, if only symbolically, so there is, wrapped up in this tiny corner of Ethiopia, symbolic representations of most of the holy land for pilgrims who were barred from the then muslim lands.

So there's Golgatha and Calvary, each represented by a wing of a church, there's windows on the back of a church devoted to Jesus' life which was just full of the symbolism of the crucifiction. There were three windows side by side, the one in the middle Jesus and the ones on the sides representing the two criminals crucified with jesus. Jesus and the man on his left both had crowns, symbolizing the last minute repentance of the one criminal (sorry about the z in symbolizing, auto correct is doing its English (US) thing to me). The most famous church, Biet Giorgis, the church of St George, symbolizes the arc of Noah, three storied, with the bottom windows covered to prevent the water getting in, and to the side of it (not that it was hewn from the solid rock around it, down three stories into the earth with about 10m of air on either side) the rock was carved into a mound to represent the land they found at the end.

They also had a fertility pool outside one of the churches, actually several, stagnant water with muck and various floating plants that women lower themselves into to cure infertility. I'd rather the infertility to that water!

So that's the short of Lalibela, but of course the touts, and the beggars and they are in full force there. I went to Torpedo, the local Tej Beat (Tej is the local honey wine which is a popular drink around and apparently Lalibela has the best in Ethiopia so I had to go) I was followed in by a kid, who just wanted to talk, then he wanted me to sponsor him for school, then his teacher just happened to come in and sit beside us and start explaining the situation. Kinda sours the evening.

There's a book at the airport for suggestions, of course some are ridiculous and show that people didn't want to travel in Ethiopia but would have been well served by a movie of the churches, one suggested they should turn down the volume of the call to prayers at the churches and mosques, others of well meaning fooled people. The kids run around with a piece of paper from their "soccer association", where they are trying to raise money for a soccer ball, it's a scam, and my guide would shout at and shoo away kids doing it (the best reason to have a guide in Lalibela, and the locals are aware of the problems, the tourist commission has signs in the hotels asking people not to donate to the kids and donation boxes, they know it encourages truancy and begging if we donate that way). One of the comments in this book was that they appreciated the organization of the kids to get the soccer ball, it was something they, as Americans, could understand and were happy to help out with! Another guy was warning people not to just buy them the soccer ball as they will go back to the store and return it. And that's another one they tried on me, talked to me for an hour, trying to be friendly, then wanted me to buy them the Merritt Ahmaric English Dictionary because they found it very interesting. No one finds the dictionary interesting, necessary evil yes, but interesting, and I could see it would be just returned.

So I left, went to Bahar Dar, saw some monestaries, amazing similarity to many hindu temples I had seen, even the budhist paintings in Tibet were, stylistically, very similar. But it was more churches, neat. Nice paintings, but not too exciting.

I fell ill in Bahar Dar, so spent the time mostly eating Faranji food and watching the lake from the garden in my hotel. Reading and chillin, and after Harrar, and Lalibela I was rather tired of the touts.

So then back to Addis, recovery, and the ethnographic museum, which is, oddly enough where the riot comes in. Lately there have been some demonstrations at the University. Students will be students, although here for, what seems to me, no good reason, they get violent with every demonstration. On Fri there had been demonstrations and Andrew (the Scottish journalist) had warned me to be careful. On my way to the uni I saw nothing, just lots of patios with students drinking coffee and coke, the only difference from Canada that they were outside! I even met two nice students who seems to just want to have a friendly chat, asked lots of questions (although they seemed very knowledgeable) and showed me the way to the museum.

I wandered the museum (interesting) and had just got to the art gallery when I heard a bell and an employee came up and said, "Could you please get out" and then when I asked if they were closing he muttered something I later made out to be "student trouble". The gathered us in the giftshop then took us round the back halls, past the presidents office (he shares the building with the museum) and out a side door. We waited a bit there, watching scores of students running with a mixture of empty hands, some with sticks and some with rocks, behind them came some khaki uniformed security officers with lathis, or the local equivalent, and one or two with rifles (still on their backs). We poked our head around the corner and a few rocks rolled by, the security the target.

So one of the employees went and got his truck, piled us in and started tearing off across campus (in the direction from which the security forces had come) before we were turned into a side alley to wait for a gait to open, streams of people evacuating the campus quickly, most of the students it seems didn't want to be part of the trouble. Finally the opened the gate and with about 50 blue camo uniformed solidiers streaming through the gate we drove out and away from the problems of campus life! So that was my excitement in Addis, the edge of a student protest turned violent, with the locals getting us away as best they could. But really, I doubt I was every in too much danger.

So now I kill time and come home in a few hours. Cheerio!

2007-04-19T09:04:00.000-06:00

I'm High... after the most painful bus ride ever.

I made it to Ethiopia, wandered Addis Ababa for two days. There's a distinct difference between here and Uganda. The city was nothing more than a ring of huts on top of a hill a century ago (at least according to Wilfred Thessiger) and now its a 6million person city, the population of Uganda. The difference is palpable, although I think culture p[lays a huge part, but then have we ever known me to philosophise and judge on my blog?

Anyways, there's everything in Addis, good food, good drink, and cheap. I don't feel prices are hugely overinflated for me just because I am Faranji (the new word for Muzungu). I can still get good foreign style food (i.e. Arabic, oh hell there's even Spaghetti on the menu and Cappuchino is everywhere, a hold over from being occupado by the Italianos (they hate Italians here in Harrar, although they tell me it is because they beet the French in the finals of the last world cup).

So Addis good food, some shopping, some wandering, the Merkato, the largest market in E Africa, lacks the charm of Islamic Cairo, just a shanty town with mud and ashphalt roads meandering through everywhere. My view may be coloured in that I had to fend off a pickpocket. I was wandering and they tried twice. The first time I thought was just an accident, too close and trip over the guys leg as he was walking in front of me. I shuffled, caught myself and went on. The second time, same guy, bumped my shoulder hard, and then grabbed my arm saying sorry. His grip was like a vice and at the same time his partner had his hand on my ipsilateral pocket. I twisted and pushed forcefully away from the bumper into his partner pushing him hard with both hands. I could see his empty hands, a hat in one ready to hide the spoils. But a quick check of the pockets (a block later) revealed nothing missing. I only had about $5 in that pocket anyways (i.e. 50Birr).

Of course someone else had followed me, comiserated and tried to be my guide. Needless to say I wasn't interested and was on edge the rest of the day!

So I headed off by bus to Harrar the next morning. Ethiopian bus networks are... original. The way it works is that at 0500 the gates to the bus park open and a stream of people rush in. People everywhere are shouting, rapidly calling off lists and lists of names. Outside are touts selling more expensive, unofficial transport. Inside I geuss the people are legit but I don't know how to tell the difference. I wandered, quickly separated from my friend who found his bus to Moyale just inside the gate, and just said Harrar? to anyone who would listen. I got on one bus that I was told was for Harrar and was quickly taken off it by three nice people who admitted it wasn't the right bus. Then a guy, who had been walking beside us on the way to the station, dirty, grubby, dressed in a worn jean jacket, face worn by the sun, looking much like the guy who had tried to pick my pocket, started speaking to me in english and took the lead, taking me to the bus for Harrar. I stepped on and the conductor confirmed Harrar.

Now this is the reason for the 5am rush, and not sauntering in at the last minute... the buses. To say they are yellow school buses would be to be very generous. They are old, have no shocks, and have two bench seats, the L is just a touch bigger than a yellow school bus and seats three, the row on the right seats two and is much smaller than what I had to two people as a youngster.

The trick is to figure out what makes you comfortable. On many roads the locals hate opening the windows for the dust, so the bus is essentially hermetically sealed for the ride, and crammed, hot, stuffy. So some people take the tack that a window seat by a working window is best so you can crack it just a bit, and get that small breath of godly fresh air. Others like the leg room of an aisle, but all agree, on no account sit in the three seater.
So I got what seemed a good seat, a two seater, the window broken, but stuck open just a hare, enough that no one would fight that much to close it, but enough to let a steady stream of oxygen in!!!

And then she sat next to me. An old lady, her son at the front, she put a big bag at our feet so that I had enough room for my feet to sit on the floor, with just two birkenstock widths space allowed. No space between the feet, and she insisted as well on her half of the seat. Now let me remind you that these are buses made not for large, northern stock faranji, but for much smaller people (Kindergaten to 5 I think would be appropriate). I had been warned that in the aisle one would be lucky to have a whole but cheak on the seat. So she pushed my shoulders aside till I was corkscrewed in the seat, shoulder at a 45degree angle, sitting on one but cheek with my face pressed against the window to get that tiny breath of air... for the 10h ride. The only respite, two brief stops for food and piss, and when I stood up while the bus was still moving (a common custom) holding on to the luggage rack for balance and hunched forward as I am a bit too tall to stand comfortably, not most of the locals, just the tall big shouldered faranji.

Around me the smells of your tired, your poor, your huddled masses. A strange mix of sweat, dirt and berber (the local spice used for everything... everything). People chatting, chewing chat (which I declined foolishly until today), the nice guy in front of me making what little conversation he could, we got names, Tedello was his, and us sharing our snacks as the ride progressed.
So I made it alive, and today I wandered Harrar, last night I let me ass heal.
Harrar's a little, old muslim town. Some mosques, some tombs, much of it limited to faranji, fair enough, I've always said I don't mind people protecting their religion. Narrow streets with whitewashed walls. Roads two people wide with the centre turned into a stream by the run off. Markets, a butchers square with eagles (or hawks or whatever some beautiful bird of prey) circling over head picking up the scraps and trying to steal from careless customers. Some old houses, some Adari houses etc etc.

This afternoon I went with my guide to a traditional coffee ceremony at a local woman's house. Turns out she has a husband/boyfriend in France who sired a child and ran off (sounds French doesn't it?) Or that's the story anyways. The ceremony consists of roasting the coffee while you watch, trying a few of the fresh roasted beans before they are ground in a mortar and pestle with some incence and flavour before it is brewed in traditional pot. Three cups of coffee, then they brought out the chat. Thought I should try it once. They're leaves that are chewed ubiquitously in Ethiopia, and apparently in Somalia, parts of Egypt and Kenya as well. You take the most tender leaves off the stock and chew, and then the stimulant hits, now I'm a bit swimmy, not quite drunk, but getting there. Supposedly I have a good night of stimulation and great studying ahead of me (it was prized by scholars for its ability to fend off hunger and sleep, they chewed buckets of the stuff and studied and got smart) and tomorrow... a hangover maybe? Some do, some don't. Anyways, thought I should try it once while I was here. Probably won't try to import it.

Tomorrow wander, then a couple days to get to Lalibela (I'm flying now, no more of that damned bus!)

2007-04-17T06:44:00.000-06:00

Matching... again.

For those of you who don't know after the "match" to find out aboutresidency there is a "mini-match" in Vancouver to decide what site youare at. This is, in theory, the last of the matches. I matched toVictoria, its the same program everywhere, just one in West Van, onein downtown Van and one in Vic.So that's that, I'm going to Victoria next year then Vancouver for 4 years.And I get to fly back and forth between Van and Vic, harbour toharbour, on a float plane once a month for teaching... maybe worth itjust for that?

2007-04-13T06:10:00.000-06:00

Leaving

I'm on my way out. Either I spend a couple nights in Jinga (actually in the suburb Njero for those three who would understand that reference), or I fly tomorrow for Ethiopia, I'll let you know later.

I left the hospital, I was given my mpaco which is the Toro tribe form of a knickname. Mine is Apuuli, which means a young person, young at heart or a puppy, they were a bit confused on the meaning. But that's my mpaco given at a farewell feast for myself and the business students who are a few days ahead of me on the road.

Farewells were wierd. I think myself and the business students are both glad to go and sad. Miss some of the people (most of the people) but there were conflicts, and the food is painful on a day to day basis.

But I find myself only somewhat excited about Ethiopia, I almost think I would more excited to go home. There is too much to do in Ethiopia with too little time/money and interest in 2 day hard seater bus rides. But let's hope I can get an internal flight and get to Aksum, the queen of Sheba's domain (although I haven't booked ahead), maybe to Harrar to see the arab side... We'll see.

So its bitter-sweet I say goodbye to Uganda and prepare to move on. But I found a bookstore, and Ethiopia is renowned for firey food and good coffee and tea so I should be able to keep myself entertained in the country with 13 months of sun.

2007-04-13T06:04:00.000-06:00

Went to Rwanda, Climbed a mountain, Hate the parks

Easter came and went, I was taken away for a weekend to the borderregions, a town called Kisoro within 20k of the Dr. Congo and Rwandanborders (yes I call him Doctor Congo). One of the nuns from herewanted to go and I offered to pay gas if she got a car, and then sheput me up and got me food and drink at her brother's place for theweekend as well.

We left fri, drove down along the edge of the ridge of the Rwenzorimountains (I don't know I'm not impressed, it just looks like a jungleridge to me, but I keep being told there are mountains with glaciersbeyond). We descended into the dry plains area which was rathersavana-esque. Funky umbrella trees and all, water buffalo, gazellesand various birds. Oh and hot and sunny.

From there you climb up a ridge which borders the rift valley anddescend into the vally proper, much greener and lusher than before,drive through constant forests, past a crater lake or two and then,from Kabale on, down a disty dirt track to Kisoro. Turns out weoverloaded the car on the way down, the nuns filled it with food, andso the muffler fell off about 10k from our destination, which meansthat we pulled into town with the muffler nestled comfortably betweenmy legs... They got it fixed the next day though.

The next day, Sat, we feasted and wandered the town shoe shopping (yesnuns, being women, shoe shop) and then eventually went to meet SisterTheresa's brother who lives on the Rwandan border and is abusinessmanof sorts (I didn't ask what sort). He wasn't there so we wanderedacross the border for a peek, went into a restaurant and Sisterordered every beer on the menu so I could try them all... Then herbrother came and ordered spicy chicken wings! So good, roast chickenserved with spicy peppers and fresh lime, you just rub the peppers andlime on to taste and go nuts, first spicey food in ages! So drunk(her brother and I, not the nuns) we wandered back across the borderafter it seemed to be closed, but it was ok, he knew the guards (hencenot asking his business). The stopped us at first but he said hi, andthey recognised him and just wondered if he had anything for them todrink, they were thirsty and wanted some water!

Oh and we did the whole Rwanda thing with no passports for the locals,and Jesse, Theresa's 8 year old nephew in tow and no prarents.... abit different from US border controls.

So yeah, the next day I climbed Sabinyo, an extinct volcanic cone(i.e. mountain) in Magahinga National Park. I was thinking of gorillatracking but, alack, the gorilla's had gone back to Rwanda so I wasSOL. Anyways, climbed the mountain which was cool, not hard, just a1400 vertical metre slog, through new forest, then into virgin bambooforest, into the acacia forest with great gobs of hanging old man'sbeard, then up into the montane (I geuss that's what they call it)with the giant lobelias that are so talked about and yet I'm notentirely sure why.

It was misty on the ridge, a constant stream of misty cloud blowingonto us from the Rwandan side of the mountain. Fitting, you'd feelcheated if you didn't get the mist eh? Then I stood on the summitwhich straddles the Dr. Congo, Rwanda and Uganda, so I've now been toDr. Congo as well, if only about 5 m. into Dr. Congo buit that'sreally not the point is it?

Yeah, but the parks piss me off. I don't know what there point isreally. If its to preserve natural wonders than who for, cause theway it is now I have serious ethical concerns. Ya see, its damnedexpensive, you have to go with a guide and an armed guard (we areassured he is for the animals more than anything). No wandering onyour own. Its USD40 for a day, USD375 for a day of gorilla tracking.The locals have a reduced price, but by reduced price you are stilltalking a huge chunk of someones income, to the point that all thesegreat parks are pretty much exclusively for the use of rick tourists.Which bothers me. We applied pressure through the WWF etc for them todefine these parks, to kick the people who had been living in them outof them (i.e. the pygmies, or even the local Bantu farmers) so thatthey can be turned into ridiculously expensive sanctuaries that caterto hi-end tourism. So is it appropriate that we now have exclusiveaccess to these parks? I'm not convinced. It bothers me. That and Ihate hiking on a straightfoward trail with a guide. Not my style.

So after that we feasted on goat, Joeseph (Theresa's brother inKisoro, not the one on the border) had secured a goat for the Easterfeasting and we ate that goat (who I have pictures of the family with). We feasted and feasted. I ended up in the living room of theirmothers place (they all live in a compound) with Joeseph and Jackson,our driver, having beer and, mostly, just staring at the wall.Relaxing and getting our manly drink on while the women made theirlocal variant of scones (kinda like a bland, baked plain donught wouldbe my best explanation, and not round), and prepared dinner/did dishesetc. Wierd feeling for me to have that going on and I couldn't evenhelp clear the table.

I was exhausted and tried to nap but they came and got me so that wecould watch some traditional dancers they had brought over.Interesting...ish. To me more interesting was the music, just womensinging to a tribal beat on a drum. Kinda cool. Everyone in thehousehold seemed pretty into it too. Then I passed out on the couchwaiting for dinner (supper at 1600) which wasn't until 2300. Afterthat they continued part two of a soap-opera-esque movie series, allfilmed on a camcorder and just a couple light years away from the"style" of our TV. (style in quotes as it doesn't really describe thecomplex of commercialism, subtlety and artistry that we really do takefor granted in our TV).

Then we drove back in the morning, stopping at every different climatezone to buy the local produce, oranges, pineapples, sweet potatoesetc, to restock the convent stores. I watched sunset over the QueenElizabeth Nationap Park, with the Rwenzori in the background, its wasquite stunning, I think I pissed everyone off with my photography, and11h later we made it back, only slightly the worse for wear.

I think I should stop now.

Dirtier

2007-04-05T09:55:00.001-06:00

Now they are doing a survey of the richer people of town, looking at
what services can be provided them. The ends are to generate revenue
to serve the less priviliged, but the means? Offering two tiered
health care? Sound familiar? But here its the difference between
getting service or not at all, not our problem of getting it now or
waiting. Difference in kind or degree though? There's something deep
down in the cockles of my heart (maybe even the sub-cockels) that
makes my skin crawl with this project.

Breasts

2007-04-05T09:18:00.001-06:00

I don't know how to title this. There's a bit of a different
perception of the woman's body here. Breasts aren't something to be
ashamed of. For a pelvic or rectal exam we pull a screen, or offer
some privacy, but for any exam where the breasts are bared we don't.
Dr. Florence complained about this at the start. But its not out of
insensitivity its that the breasts aren't seen that way here. There
is no stigma to a pregnant or just delivered woman lying in bed
uncovered. And there's no stigma to breast feeding. In fact one of
the problems with getting HIV +ve mothers to not breast feed (asie
from the cost) is that she is so expected to breast feed her child
that if she doesn't the community would question if the child is hers,
and rumours abound, so many HIV positive mothers choose to breastfee
in spite of the risks.

I'd think, being somewhat of a crazy feminist, Dr. Florence would be
rather glad at this, the stigma isn't there, its not immodesty just a
bit more liberation. But to our western minds I geuss it can be wrong
because its different?

I guess I mostly found the stigma about not breast feeding
interesting, and it fits in the context of the rest.

Frustration

2007-04-03T08:43:00.001-06:00

Some things can start to be frustrating, I'm not patient enough to
work here a lot of the time.

You see nothing happens fast around here, no one runs, in fact no one
walks quickly, its purely unconcerned sauntering. Often people don't
answer questions, they will respond with a monotonic nnnnnnn. Not a
problem in most settings, but when I am assuming that that means yes
when asking about sympyomology.... I was under the impression that
means yes, Dr. Deo today gave the nurse a hard time for answering that
way as he too needs confirmation of yes or no.

The nurse today wouldn't translate for me on rounds. I would ask how
the patient was, she would say they are changing her dressing. I
would eventually get exasperated and curtly ask, but how is the
patient!, then I might get a vague answer. Forget doing a proper
post-op bleeding, blues, baby, breastfeeding, bowels, bladder, pain
history on every patient. Another frustration is purely mine, I'm not
sure how they go about changing dressings, when sutures come out etc.
We do things rather differently, discharge sooner and have nurses
follow up at home. They don't have home care, and they have a
horribly high incidence of wound dehissence (superficial usually) and
infection. I think I've only seen one infected c-section wound
before, today I saw about 10. So evn though I don't know their
protocols I fear they might not be doing it right at some point, but I
don't know enough of the litterature to really correct them. I don't
even know if its a problem with technique in OR, with the sutures they
use, or with the post-op wound care.

Then nothing is stocked enough. There's always a wait to get a pair
of gloves, or a BP cuff as they search the ward for the one. There's
never enough of the drugs we need on the anaesthetic cart for the day,
sometimes cases are held up because we have to get drugs out of the
storage locker, and they won't just bring 20 and then restock, they
only bring a few. I don't know where things are so I rely on a nurse,
or student, to get things for me, which slows things up even more, and
really cramps my independance on simple things like starting an IV. I
still can't get a swab to clean the area on my own, and its expected
that I don't. That's the nurses job here and the Drs just don't do
it, but I just want to do it to get the bloody job done. Especially
in an urgent situation (there are no emergencies here) I get
frustrated when slowed.

The OR today was a gong show for all that, and my usually ordered,
smooth running anaesthetic routine was constantly interupted by supply
shortages, and we need to start an IV but the nurses are all busy
helping drape the patient etc etc. Frustrating...

Dirty

2007-03-30T06:17:00.001-06:00

I feel dirty every time I chat with the business students about this
stuff. Their focus is so intent on the business of medicine,
obviously, but just the way they look at it, not what services do we
need, but what services could we offer and make some cash off of.
There's something deep down in my canadian socialist self mixed with
the medical ethic that just feels dirty talking about health care
services as a business like that.

But in the system they have here its what they have to do to keep
afloat. Thankfully I can keep arms length and maintain my "moral
superiority" and continue my high calling of seeing patients.

Having said that its really put things in perspective, they ask
intelligent questions about changing the system and how we do things
back home. I really have to think about wether what we do is possible
here, wether we do it that way because our system is so different and
the patients we deal with are so different, or if it is something they
could really benefit from here. It really does get me thinking about
why they do what they do.

One example, they don't have the concept of resucitation here. But
then they don't have an ECG, they don't have an ICU, so if you do
resucitate someone what do you do with them? Not to mention the only
intervention shown to save lives in a resucitation is early
defibrilation, and they don't have a defibrilator, the rest of it
would just be going through the expensive motions. And if they had a
defibrilator? They still don't have an ICU, and ECG, access to the
drugs or pacemakers likely necessary to keep the patient from doing it
again. So maybe its good they don't run around fighting to resucitate
arrests.

Running Joke

2007-03-28T07:46:00.001-06:00

The running joke here is me getting fired. Dr. Deo asked me in
surgery the other day, anything exciting happen? I asked what he
meant as exciting for me is pretty simple, I hadn't seen malaria
before. He said, have you been kicked off any wards today, with a
twinkle in his eye.

Every time Vik and Dave see me they ask me if any more volunteers have
fired me, they like the irony that I was fired by a volunteer.

Questions answered

2007-03-28T07:37:00.001-06:00

A few generic questions I was asked I thought I'd throw out for
everyone, as there's probably some general interest.

Food here is horrible. We all do our best to escape it. Breakfast is
cold, stale bread and an egg or two, fried or boiled. I am now able
to get toast easily where I stay, and peanut butter and tea. They
have tea plantations everywhere but getting a cup of tea is no mean
feat!

Lunch is some combination of matooke or rice with beans or g-nut
sauce. Matooke tastes kinda like potatoes, a bit sour but not too
bad. G-nuts are like peanuts, for the most part, so g-nut sauce is
kinda like a thin peanut sauce, without the varied taste and such. I
described the meals as bland and they just don't stop, which everyone
agreed with, there's just no spice and no variety, which is hard to
understand, I mean its a tropical heaven in many ways, warm, things
must grow like weeds, you could probably plant basil and never run out
here, but they don't. So we go to the muzungu restaurants and get
chips and sandwiches. They do have one redeaming thing, alleymeat,
basically kebabs of chicken or goat (not tender cuts, stringy and
boney) which are quite tasty, and sold with alley deep fried chips.
Not too shabby.

The locals are great here. Most everyone I have met has been very
friendly, people on the road will wave a hello (here its how are you,
which is the translation of their greeting, they don't have a "hello")
kids are always calling out hello. The hospital is a catholic run
hospital and the nuns run around in their full habit, and some are
nurses, some in administration, others floating etc. The docs have
been very friendly to me, and the nurses when they come on the ward
always greet with a smile and "Hello Dr". Of course its pretty laid
back too. No one runs. Ever, which can be frustrating, but its how
they do it. I've really been amazed at how friendly everyone is. I
even got to go over to the convent to watch a movie with the nuns last
week! It was "Our Lady of Fatima" which was followed by "Miss
Congeniality" but I couldn't make it through a poorly copied, black
and white version of a Sandra Bullock movie. But we had juice and tea
and little pastry things (quite tasteless actually) with the movies
and a great time. They had the most hilarious reactions, and would
start cheering when everyone said the Hail Mary together, or hissing
at someone blaspheming etc.

I'm staying in a nice little hostel. Its St Joeseph's Hotel, right
across from the hospital. I have a room with a bed, mosquito netting
and enough room for a tiny desk beside it. But the batthrooms are
clean, I think they clean them 3 times/day, and the people are very
friendly. The Drs all live on the compound of the hospital, pretty
basic accomodations but again, clean and solid. Concrete floors,
simple kitchen, but its kinda the right style for the weather here,
its hot and the houses stay coolish, and they protect from rain, so
what more do you want? The locals live in everything from apartments
to shantys with thatched rooves, or maybe a bit of corrugated iron.
But they live in the tropics and that really does work as housing,
although I think they'd prefer a bit more.

So that's the generic stuff. Cheers.

2007-03-26T10:08:00.001-06:00

So its a bit rough here on the technology side of things. I just did anaesthesia for an urgent c-section, prolonged labour and cephalo-pelvic disproportion. Just as we were about to start the
anaesthestic... rain, and the power goes out. There is no O2 cylinder, just an oxygen concentrator, and there's some hesitation about inhalational anaesthetic in the absence of supplemental oxygen.

Oh and the generator wasn't kicking in, they were trying to fix it.

So by the light filtering through the window we induced and used ketamine for the anaesthetic, supplemented with valium after the baby was out, the surgeon worked with just one high efficiency bulb (i.e not terribly bright) hanging from a wire in the ceiling, and flashlights to check for bleeding before closing. But it all worked out, the baby is well, mother is well.

I also saw a funny bit, the student nurse had taken the baby out for to run to the ward and was changing into his regular uniform from his scrubs before heading off, and he had placed the baby, wrapped in fuzzy blankets and all, in the cubby hole for large scrubs while he changed. I thought that was hilarious. We'd have had a complex and expensive system for bypassing that happening.

It all fit, the OR is kinda like what you'd see in MASH, its a permanent building, but with pretty open circulation, widows for sure, but not air tight. A bare concrete floor in the OR, plain wooden
benches in the change room with the door leading right out side looking over the valley. There's a serious shortage of clutter (which is awesome!) no extra tables for instruments (no extra instruments) and no piles of random machines, just wooden walls, the OR table, the instruments in use, an anaesthetic table and a portable surgery light... and the single high efficiency solar powered bulb hanging by a wire from the ceiling.

Enough babbling already.

Fort Portal... parte the first

2007-03-24T07:57:00.001-06:00

So, I'm getting my hospital on in Fort Portal now. Its an experience,
for sure. I don't know what to say. Many of the details are gross
and I doubt you really care that much, lots of malaria and a new
perspective on HIV.

The hospital. Its a nice place to be honest. Run like... well I'm
stuck for a simile. There are a lot of infuriating things. For one,
lab tests have to be in by noon, and you might get them back in two
days, they definately don't know the meaning of STAT, even for
something like a urine Beta-HCG, or a hemaglobin. But what did I
expect really? They do seem to do a good job, for the most part, with
what they have, and they are asking for help.

The staff are very friendly. They are all happy to have me around and
its impossible to get them to refer to me as anything but Doctor. So
I geuss I'll be used to it by the time I am actually one. I've been
hanging out in the pharmacy doing some research for Dr. Deo, the head
guy here, the last few days (since I got kicked off service) and the
staff there are just fun to hang out with.

I've insinuated myself into the anaesthetic world as well. I have
been doing most of the anaesthesia with Dina, one of the nurse
anaesthetists. Its interesting, they have three nurses who do
anaesthesia, each with different levels of training. Dina did a
1.5year course in Mulago Hospital, the big hospital in the capital,
Gertrude did a few weeks course at the local government hospital and
the other one just picked it up here. It shows quite clearly in their
confidence (and that Dina walks into the OR every day with her Oxford
manual of anaesthesia and is constantly bugging Dr. Deo for a full on
modern anaesthetic machine, one with cardiac monitoring, they don't
have an ECG here BTW).

I was working with Dr. Florence for the last week. She is an american
Dr., undergrad at McGill, medicin and residency in the states. She is
keen to let you know she is doubly board certified in surg and
emergency medicine, and that she was in charge of a level 1 trauma
centre in South Carolina, whatever that means.

It was a hellish week. She complained constantly. At first I thought
it was good to hear, that I could learn about the differences, but she
seems to have expected a bunch of stoic north american patients, who
just happen to be black and infected with tropical diseases, in an
equivalent to a level 1 trauma centre in the US. I kinda realised how
amazingly out of whack her perspective was when she was distraught
that they didn't do laparoscopic surgery here. Considering how she
compains about their open surgery I can't imagine what she was
thinking. The maintenance and service of laparoscopic equipment alone
would kill the hospital (for those poor sots who don't know what
laparscopic is, its when they do the surgery without cutting you wide
open but just make a few small incisions, put in a camera and some
manipulators and work that way, the two stitch surgery concept). I
was just surprised that they actually intubated and didn't do the
surgeries with bag and mask.

There are a few other things too, like she gets mad at them when they
say she, or Jaimie, the nurse volunteering here are fat. I understand
the N American view, but they were very clear that here that means
that you are obviously successful, well fed and happy. Its quite a
compliment, and most of the people at the hospital are fat..ish.

So I worked with Dr. Florence for the week rounding on medicine and
surgery. Turns out she's not the best teacher (I have to be somewhat
careful depending on who ends up reading this). She was very happy
with me when she could send me to pass messages to the nurses, and
send me to get samosas for her when she was stuck infusing a unit of
blood via an art line (they don't have central lines and a pt who was
bleeding profusely needed good access and they couldn't get peripheral
access. BTW Dr. Florence kept talking about how they didn't waste
time with peripheral IVs they went straight to central lines which
seems... bad to me. Anyways, they tried a saphenous vein cut down,
but she hadn't seen one since her internship, I hadn't even read about
them and only heard about them on MASH, and the other surgeon
obviously hadn't done one in a while, they ended up missing the
saphenous vein, but disected down the the posterior tibialis quite
nicely and cannulated it well). When I was called in early one
morning to do some anaesthetics and then rounded on surgery before she
arrived she wasn't happy. I went in at 0700, after a shower and
breakfast, and rather than sit around I thought I would just get
things going. I rounded, wrote my impression and plan and kept
detailed notes to discuss with her when she arrived. We had thrice
discussed my level of responsibility and what was appropriate. So I
did this and she came in as I was finished examining the last patient,
and went off. She said I couldn't do this, that I couldn't write
orders, and I said I was ready, and happy, to review every patient
with her, she just in hmph said review, if you're going to be like
this you are going to have to be on someone elses service. At this
point I was so fed up and she was being so amazingly unprofessional
and inappropriate that all I did was said fine and walked off the
unit. What a saga eh? So I am now banished from medicine, and
surgery until Dr. Grace gets back for doing no more than I would have
done as a canadian medical student. I don't think she was ever
interested in me being anything more than a trained show dog, like she
breeds at home, following, watching, listening to her complaints and
never having my own opinion, never seeing a patient independantly
(except with explicit prior direction from her and as nothing more
than relaying orders) and just running errands and watching. Not for
me.

So I'm killing time now, next week I start on Peds with Dr. Cyprian
and we'll see what happens there.

But the anaesthesia is fun, except Dr. Florence expects to be involved
in all the surg so I'll have to deal with that from now on, anyways,
the surgery is done in old style. Manual BP, of course, but under
Ketamine or Thiopental induction (decision based on BP) with Halothane
or Ether maintenance. There is no oxygen tank but they have a
concentrator, which I had never seen before. Many of the surgeries
are done under local with sedation, to minimise the risk of GA,
something I totally agree with, but Dr. Florence seems un-impressed
with. Without an ICU backing her up Dina didn't want to use a GA on
an 80year old, so she sedated him, Dr. Florence bitched the whole way.
I thought Dina was pretty reasonable about it.

Anyways, what else. I've been hanging out with a guy named Brannon
the last few days. Its a bit scary, he's from Alabama, nice guy but
right wing, the scary thing is how much I agree with him on. I didn't
think I could agree with a southern USer, but we have a lot of common
ground. We just don't agree with the liberal PC dogma without some
basis to it. Its just been fun shooting the shit for the last few
days with him drinking ungodly ammouts of tea. Since Florence kicked
me off her service I haven't had a lot of work to do.

So that's my story these days. More to come I'm sure.

2007-03-18T07:06:00.000-06:00

In case in your timeline I mystically appeared in Fort Portal, there is a brief description of England to Kampala now, its just below, for some reason blogger is being stupid. Enjoy if you're interested.

2007-03-16T10:01:00.000-06:00

I'm in Fort Portal.

Yes, I made it, and found a computer that will actually allow me to post! How exciting. Hopped the bus from Kampala to Fort Portal early in the morning after changing money (i.e. got on the bus at 9:15). I had been told that the buses were scheduled and left every hour on the half hour. Unfortunately they don't they leave when they are full, so I sat on the bus for two hours waiting for them to leave, then we zipped along the road to Fort Portal through sometimes boring and sometimes stunning scenery. As we approached Fort Portal we hit the tea plantations, rolling hills with stubby little tea trees and small armies of workers picking their way across them.

Then Fort Portal and the hospital yesterday, I met Dr. Deo, started work today, mostly introduction now, rounding and getting a feel for the place. There are lots of other Muzungus here (the somewhat loving name given us whites). A group of MBA students from Michigan rebuilding their business model, a Dr. from the US, Dr. Florence, and a nurse, Jaimie, from the states who has been showing me around more than anyone.

We all headed out last night for alley meat at the local pub which has an alley with a grill in it last night, met up with a few other expats, young-uns, including Maggie who is 17 and alone in Uganda volunteering. Bloody hell she isn't even legal to dring in Uganda! We had a time, to bed and the work today.

Tonight the nun who is in charge at the clinic is organising a dinner for us muzungus for which I must soon be off.

Cheerio.

2007-03-14T10:47:00.000-06:00

This is try number 3 to post this bad boy. Makes the apology in the next line all the more important.

Sooo. Its been a while. Sorry to all the anxious types waiting to see if I am alive. I am, just have been travelling.

I'm in Kampala, not Fort Portal as I was supposed to be two days ago, but I'll get there tomorrow... I hope.

After London I caught my nice long flight to Dubai. Not crowded at all, I had a row to myself, until some damned brit came and sat at the other end. The row of 4 seats he was sharing with someone was too close to the pantry, so in stead of spreading out completely to sleep on the plane I dozed uncomfortably with only two seats instead of 4! I know life is rough. But for some reason I can no longer sleep through flights. I am in this wierd jet lagged zone of insomniac uncomfortable bleary eyed dozing with no sleep watching bad movies. We've all been there, I just can't get out of it.

So plane crash in Dubai. Not mine but apparently and air bangaldesh plane skidded to a stop during take off, an hour before I was supposed to land. So they circled us over the gulf for an hour and then diverted us to Abu Dhabi (yes back to Abu Dhabi for Mark). Off the plane into the chaos of an airline basically shut down (shutting down Dubai for Emirates is roughly equivalent to shutting down Heathrow for British Airways. I think they'd just give up and go home). Eventually I was herded through customs, onto a bus to get me over to Dubai by land, only an hour away. Then came the madness of the ticket line, designed as a last-minute businessman changing his ticket line, not a 1000+ tired and confused passengers rescheduling line. Got through that and then had to go through two more lines to get myself into a hotel, there were different people doing the bookings and doing the vouchers. Finally though I got a hotel for two nights and meal vouchers.

So enough of that, I had a day in Dubai as was confirmed on the Wed flight to Entebbe, but me being keen to get to work I went standby at 0530 for the Tues flight to Entebbe. I got the last seat on. Wandered back to my seat (BTW Dubai airport is huge and when you are only given your ticket at the check-in counter 45min before your flight it requires a solid jog to get to your gate before they close the holding lounge 15min before take-off!). So IO wandered back to my seat and lo and behold someone was sitting in it, with a ticket printed with the same seat number. I told the stewardess I would wait in the back while she sorted that and got the other guests settled (I wasn't going to get things done any faster hanging out in the middle of the aisle). She was uber glad for that offer and then it turned out the guys seat had been changed, I was in the right spot but he wasn't. It wasn't just that his seat was changed but they wrote the new seat number on his boarding card, so it is is fault. I volunteered, to expedite things, to take his seat. Seemed like a good idea, he was settled and the huy with his boarding card was two rows behind him so I assumed he was travelling with people. Also he had a B seat and I had an D, B being an aisle and D being in the middle. As I walked towards 10B I reached 15, the last economy row (or the first depending upon your perspective) and was suddenly in the land of champagne before take off, flowers on your dinner tray and a complimentary socks. Yes I had traded for business class. The stewardess came forward and saw me and promised not to say anything. I can just imagine the headache she was looking forward to of getting the guy and moving him, and all his bags, with the plane already late. In the end I stayed in Business Class (yes I am capitalising it, they have seats that actually recline, that deserves caps) for the not uneventful trip to Entebbe.

I arrived Entebbe, a day late, smelling horrible and with that same hazy sleep. Thankfully I had a bed in Dubai, but with jet lag I still woke before teh 0500 wake up call, and couldn't get to sleep (thankfully Hope Floats was on, the only thing on in English, and that helped). I arrived, paid my fees, I mean got a visa, and wandered over to see the beautifully hand written names of the people whose baggage would not be arriving with them, mine included obviously.

The problem with this is that Emirates doesn't deliver in Uganda, and Kampala is a 40 000Shilling trip each way from the airport. So I was stuck in Entebbe for the night, no change of clothes, and I had, foolishly, packed my toothbrush in Dubai. I got a ride with a fellow Canadian who was visiting family in to a hotel to save the stupid cab charges. Made it, slept bad, woke late, called and was told my baggage should arrive, went to the botanical gardens for the afternoon to wait for my bags to get to the airport at 1600.

So the botanical gardens are quite cool. Made by some random brit it is quite stunning and has been re-worked. Medicinal plants from across Africa, and then other important species from as far away as Madagascar (not so far from here, but still a bit isolated). More importantly, to make mother jealous, were the ridiculous numbers of monkeys and birds. There were two species of monkeys (one was, I believe Vervet, black with white tails, the other an uninteresting, to my local guide, brown one running around in troops with babies), then I was watching a plethora of herons, egyptian geese, fish eagles, kingfishers, some yellow bird called sunshine at some point in its name, hornbills, some bird that looks like that crazy dinosaur with the giant horn on its head, some random white birds, something blue and black... and yes at that point that's all I can remember of their names. Yes, they were all running around wild, no cages, just hanging out on the beach with the guys up to their waist in the water fishing with line or nets, the kids swimming and playing, the farmers feeding their goats etc.

My bags arrived today, I got a nice guy to take me on the back of his scooter to the airport (a common form of taxi-like transport). Passed through security three times, once to get a badge to get into the terminal (for which I had to leave my passport) and twice with the perfunctory bag search, yep its a bag, yep, its got a camera in it, and the wand search, which in spite of it beeping they didn't seem to concerned and they only gave me the most cursory of scans, missed the feet etc.

Got the bag, then grabbed a cab and headed up to Kampala, a busy buslting town, reminds me much of Kathmandu, a tropical and busy city. Dirty and cramped shanty atmosphere, but lively. I wandered a bit and saw the mix of guys playing dice, and random meet shops, people just hanging out, the usual big city stuff.

Anyways, I think they are closing here so more later... But I'm matched!

2007-03-14T10:41:00.001-06:00

MATCH

So with the call of the muzzein in the background on the yellowist,stickiest keyboard in a while, I am awaiting the slowest internetconnection to open my match results and tell me:

University of British Columbia / Anesthesia (857513)

Number 3!!

Yay. No unmatch! Yay, top 4! How do I feel. I don't know.So... No anxiety during the wait there!Actually not much stress until the last hour or so, I've been toodistracted until then. More in my next post... momentarily.

2007-03-11T10:44:00.001-06:00

LONDON TOWN

So I arrived in London today, exhausted, but alive. I have a 10h layover so I hopped the train into town and wandered around. Walked from Paddington through Hyde Park, watched some ultimate, people paddling on the serpentine, and generally peasants desecrating Henry VIII's private hunting ground!

Then up Picadilly to the Circus down to Trafalgar Sq ande up Whitehall. Endless imperial british majesty. It was like wandering Budapest, but on a much larger, longer scale. Its just good evidence of the ability of the british to siphon money from every where else.

The monuments alone were neat to me, they were all characters who are so alive to our history, and the buildings bring back so many memories of stories which weave through London at some point.

So it was cool. And Hyde park was cool. First there was a majority whites, but it was a slim majority of whites. Just a huge mix of all races, and it was more common to hear people not speaking english than speaking english (and not just among those with cameras displayed proudly and "tourist" tatooed on their forehead).

And I nipped into a pub for a pint and a sandwich. Wow, did it ever fulfill the stereotype. I wandered a bit off the beaten track and found a pub. A sign outside proudly declares "This is a pub. We do not have 1) a widescreen T.V. 2) music or 3) a fruit machine. What we do have is lots of atmosphere." Of course the regulars were there trading jabs with the bartender, reviewing the latest online reviews of the pub etc. I think there was some sort of occasion that brought them to the pub, but I could only understand abour 1/2 of what they were saying. Silly british people,they need to learn english.

But much of what I saw fulfilled the stereotype. The unending stream of double decker red buses, the pub tucked into some building around every other corner, the telephone boxes, and then the mejestic imperial architecture.

Oh and the bobbies in their cute yellow vests.

Anyways, just some wandering and now some time killing, something to keep me awake so I don't pass out waiting for my train!

Approval

2007-02-28T14:39:00.000-07:00

I have approval, it came through while travelling around the country
on the CaRMS interviews. Quite exciting to know that they can't
prevent my elective now (or at least are less likely to do anything).
So now its packing and then off on Mar 10th.

Approval... the continuing story

2007-01-26T17:47:00.000-07:00

I have faculty approval, and am jumping through the many hoops of the approval for risk management on main campus. How much fun is that. But I have bought my plane ticket inspite of the uncertainty over final approval... we can only hope. So an elective in Fort Portal, Uganda it seems to be, the nicest town in Uganda (according to the Bradt travel guide) and sitting on the edge of the Rwenzori mountains, just in the middle of the rainy season.

But before that my cross country CaRMS tour starts, a three week marathon of intreviews. 15 interviews, 8 provinces, 20 days, middle of winter. Yay! Then three weeks in Pincher Creek for family medicine and off to Uganda!

Uganda?

2006-11-11T15:51:00.000-07:00

So I got an e-mail a couple days ago offering me a spot in Uganda for a one month elective. The day before my other best chance for an african elective was shot down as I heard that the doctor in the town to which I would be going died of tuberculosis as a complication of HIV/AIDS. Quite the e-mail to bring home the day-to-day effects of AIDS on the locals.

So now we see.

I can drink the water

2006-02-06T02:03:00.000-07:00

So its the little things that get you. I can brush my teeth, and drink the water with impunity now. Sure I probably would have been safein the Czech Republic but the ex-pats I asked gave me 50/50 responses on safety, now I'm in Switzerland, the water is safe. How cool is that. I could shower with my mouth open, and not worry! I didn't realise, at first, how tightly I clamp my mouth shut while showering now, out of habit.

I arrived in Swityerland, great connections from the plane to the city, and... well, everything we take fro granted. Clean, efficient, friendly, safe, etc. etc. Not that I've been having much problem with those things in other countries (although Eastern Europe didn't exaclty feel safe all the time) but now that its all back I do notice it, for example, there is always soap and a hand-drying method (usually both towels and air-dryer) beside the toilet.

I was greeted warmly with a good meal, including salad, fresh vegetables for the first time in a few weeks. We headed off in the morning to go to the mountains, after much debate the night before about where to go. Too many ideas, too little time. The decision in the end for time, money, and equipment (I was lacking the last two, the others the first one as they wanted a restfullish day) so we went to the near-by family destination of Rigi. There's a train right to the top, we hiked the last few hundred metres instead of taking the train though. Sorry, not hiking, "nordic-walking", basically walking in the woods, or hiking, but they rent "nordic-walking poles" on the mountain, and there are signs up showing the proper attire and method for this sport, its quite hilarious... to me. At the top we rented sleds and started the grand tradition of train supported sledding. Sled down then catch the train right back up to the summit, lather, rinse, repeat. I was quite surprised though, I'd never seen organised sledding before, I've gone to the hill in Calgary, hiked up, sledded down, hiked up, etc etc, but never seen such organised sledding with rentals and a train with a bin attached to transport my sled.

I may, however, have been enamoured with doing activity where I was just another person, I was not a tourist to be fleeced for money, I wasn't constantly touted, I was just one of a group of three, indistinguishable from the rest of the crowd, going about my Sunday afternoon leisure.

Then raclette for dinner. My first Raclette and I must say between fondue and raclette I think it is just the chef's way of saying, "no, I don't want to do all the work, you guys do it". Not that it wasn't good, it was a grand day.

Ostrava

2006-02-06T01:58:00.000-07:00

What did I do in Ostrava? I wandered the town very little, I saw the coal mine tower, the elevator top to get into the mine, which sits not 200m from the central plaza of town. I saw the outside of some of their churches, I saw the add of two women wearing nothing but painted onto the skin team Canada and Czech Republic jerseys outside of the train station. I saw the bar street, and the bars, every night. I became the worst of university bachelorhood. There's nothing to do here, no where to go, Aushwitz is just 70km away but the best train connections take 2.5h and the tickets cannot be bought in the Cyech Republic, so to got to Poland, buy the tickets and continue on it becomes a 5h, each way, train ride (and not cheap). So I relaxed, I bugged Gregory. I drank Radegast beer because it is cheaper than water (literally). I watched TV, CNN or Czech MTV, everything else was dubbed, or in Polish. Polish TV is cool, for about 5min, they don't properly dub, and they don't subtitle. What they have is a voice layover, the actors voices can still be heard, but an angry polish man reads the translations overtop of their speaking. The same guy reads all the parts, male and female, and just reads them overtop of their audio without inflection. Its disturbing, funny for a few minutes and then frustrating as you can hear the start of the sentences but nothing else.

The Pest, and a little Buda

2006-02-06T01:41:00.000-07:00

Budapest, for a day. A great city, beautiful architecture, modern, cleaan friendly. I just wandered the Pest in the morning and the night, saw the neo-calassical architecture, the great remnants of the Hapsburgs. The whole pest side is one beautiful building after another, collonaded facades with statues and various decorations, not gaudy, well done. The waterfront is a combination of these buildings which have a lasting style, some newer buildings and the obligatory bridges, which of course in their time were "ultra-modern" and have been maintained in that same style ever since. Another benefit of the middle of winter is that half the souvenir shops are closed and the tourist areas have a laid-back feel to them. Even if I did have to wear a down jacket to wander the streets.

Buda has all of the bigger historical monuments, the old vice-regal palace of the Austro-Hungarian empire, a giant building with domed rooves and well, just grand architecture, its really beautiful sitting atop the mountain, surrounded by the old walls of the city and the old city. What's stunning about the museum in this place is that its built upon the remnants of castles going back to the 12th century, bits were walled off during construction, and have since been excavated, so you start at ground level wandering around the 19th century palace halls and as you travel deeper underground you move to the 16th century, arched brick rooms, even further down into the 13th century chapel with its rough-hewn masonry. There are some large halls which have been preserved and are now conferenec rooms.

Back out I wandered to the Fisherman's Bastion which afforded views back across the Danube to Pest, views of the parliament buildings which are a collection of steep red spires jutting up from the waterfront. and views back of the Matthias Church, inside of which is the crown of St Stephen (I believe), the crown of the Hungarian Kings, the crown jewels, as well as an oddly disturbing skull underneath a lace doiley, for some reason. There are still some preserved 14th century frescoes, in spite of the church being converted to a mosque during the ottoman conquests. But its a beautiful church in its own right, probably better from the outside than the inside, dominant sitting atop the hill overlooking the Danube and Pest.

Its a beautiful city, I may have to spend more time (warmer time) there someday, when I can get away from the purely tourist restaurants and parts of town. But lets be far here, the town was real, it was lived in, it was not built up for the sake of tourism, this is the real heart of Hungary with all the people, the offices and the messes that that implies. Kinda nice to be in a real city again, not just eastern-euro-disney.

The end of Romania

2006-01-26T09:20:00.000-07:00

I'm blogging now just to pass the time, with everyone gone there is so much time, and with the short days, long nights, there's so little to do. Long night time hours with no one to annoy, so I pass the annoyance on to you and blog excessively.

Today was Dracula day. I have no idea why Bran Castle would every be associated with Drcaula. Yes it was built in the 15th century, but it has several things which make it un-Dracula, its beautiful, its refined, and its been in constant use, so much so that at the turn of the century it was Queen Anne's pleasure palace, but this doesn't deter the sales people from selling ugly tacky dracula stuff at every shop, its even worse than the crap in Egypt, if onyl because you can go to San Fransisco (the store, not the city) at halloween and pick up at least the same stuff, if not better.

The castle is like something out of a fairy tale, set upon a hill, but it is not the crusaderesquer monstrosity I was expecting, its pretty and small. All the walls are plastered bright white with dark wood finishing, all dark wood furnishings, a beautiful courtyard you can see Disney's cartoon snow white wandering about the well in. Maybe I'm not being fair but it just wasn't real to me, it was Disney's perception of what the reality should have been, and my perception is quit different (epecially as I am frickin freezing and no one in Disney ever seems cold, except when they are about to have an anvil dropped on their head, or is that Warner Bros?)

Around the town is equally... pretty. Perfect houses lined up, dotting the hillside. But that's not, as far as I can now tell, real Romania. Two pieces of evidence indicate this, the strongest was walking from the train station back to the tourist area of Brasov today, through normal looking suburbs, concrete block buildings, and then past older buildings showing the decay of misrepair under the communists and now being too far from the touristic centre to be constantly re-plastered. This seems to me more the real Romania, a country with new and old mixed, not terribly rich, not everything perfect and clean (as the oil money in the UAE pays for) but working, plaster falling off cracks which have formed with age, but not completely decrepid, its kept alive.

I also saw Rasnov, although they say that no trip to Romania is complete without a trip to Bran (which is a bit overdone, there's no cliff's and no dank crypts, there's no creaky doors, and only one, short, secret passage linking two very well done rooms) it was Rasnov that I liked more. Its a real city for starters. There's a factory, a tractor sales shop, and all this on the road where you pick up the bus, which is just one block from the touristy heart of Rasnov, which is centred by a used clothing store. It felt as though people lived there, with all their imperfections, unlike the heart of Brasnov where you feel like you're in a home that is too clean for anyone to live in, you are afraid to touch anything for fear of disturbing its perfection, a far cry from the muddy back-alleys of Cairo.

Beyond this is their Citadel which, for me, was infinitely more interesting than Bran Castle. It starts with a hike up a steep hill, higher above the town than Bran Castle, this Citadel was tested over the years on constantly refortified from its first incarnation in the 14th century. As you get closer what looked like a massive wall on the hill from the town grows until only a small aspect, one tower and a short piece of wall is visibile looming above. Then you just walk in, through one of the side doors and pay (students are here, only students if they are under 18, the ....). Inside is a town, with fortifications around it. This was built to protect the lives and property of the town from Tartars and Turks, and it succeeded. My favorite was a well, 170 some metres deep, built by two turkish prisoners, garaunteed their freedom upon completion, 17 years later it was finished, although the story doesn't tell if they were actually released. The walls have been partly restored, and are partly still crumbling. One of the walls has been restored and has a museum in the hall that would have gone all around the town back in the day, full of "bits and bobs" from the last few centuries.

There's old ruining buildings to poke into (mostly uninteresting and full of restoration construction kit but still, there to be explored). There's a 360 degree view of the surroundings (some squat "mountains" not even above the tree line and a big flat snow covered valley) from which you can see the town, the old core mixed with the new developments, the "factory" etc. It was just an uber-cool truly medieval feeling, not prettified, fortress, high on the hill. Fun to wander a bit.

But then back to Brasov and soon to catch my train to Budapest, on my way to the Czech Republic.

Disney has ruined me

2006-01-25T12:56:00.000-07:00

So while in Egypt there were comments about how people had been too disnified and they stood at the pyramids and couldn't believe that they were really there and not at some disney recreation. I now have that problem, I am walking through Brasov, an old fortified town nestled in the Romanian Alps, and I can't believe in it. It doesn't seem real. Its like walking through Banff, interminable perfect houses, and a huge gothic church stuck sqaure in the middle of all this. How am I supposed to accept this as a real town, as an approximation of real life when it is what has been, all my life, associated with nothing other than tourist development, built up to look like this, but not really like this. So I wander, looking at the houses and buildings that look like something out of a Disney flick, Banff or Canmore, endless Banff Springs Hotels, perfect houses with snow clinging to the steeplchased rooves and I just can't believe it.

The church is beautiful. Stone outside with statues carved into the arch supports, a steep roof with the perfect ammount of snow on it and a perfect gothic bell tower. Inside you can see the medieval world passing through, wooden floors still creaking, aged dark wood pews around the outside, everthing hung with turkish carpets, which is funny as they are actually muslim prayer carpets, draped on the pews in a christian church, but we'll let that slide I geuss. Its a great space, a high archway which leads the eye directly to the alter. But is it real? Its too perfect, its too Saxon.

Am I in Bavaria? The restaurants are all imported, done up in the same way as the restaurant strip in Fernie. Its like the people have taken on that Bavarian lifestyle for the tourists, or is that the real city? There is one bit that seems real, the field in the shadow of the church, packed snow and soccer nets over which kids run playing soccer, a red ball on the white snow. The cold and snow seems to have its advantages though, when the ball goes out of bounds it is quickly stopped in the deep snow.

I also have to give fair voice to the christian devotion here. I otherwise made much of the simple devotions of the hindus in Nepal, the buddhists in Tibet and Japan, and the muslims in the middle east, the way their religion seems to be a part of their everyday life. Here I still see some shadow of this, everytime I see a romanian walking past a church the glove comes off (no small show in -20C weather) and they cross themselves as they walk by, various patterns, large crosses, or small crosses over the mouth and forehead, and differing lengths of crossing, repeatedly the whole block or just one, but it is an ever present action.

So I'm in disney-land--- eastern europe and I just can't believe that its real, the crowds shopping on the narrow pedestrian street, especailly since two blocks away is the 6 lane throughfare, but still the road is lined by these perfect baroque houses. I have to leave, for some reason I can't live in this world alone.

Silly currency

2006-01-24T05:45:00.000-07:00

So, Turkey was a bit wierd with currency, they recently switched to new lira, which was basically just them knocking 6 zeroes off the end of every number. Yes 1 new lira is 1 million old lira. Now this has the effect that people used to the old currency will still give prices in old Lira, so a cup of tea can easily run you 1 million lira. Ok, I can handle that (although Dr. Evil impersonations were abundant), now, however, things have gotten stranger.

Romania has just brought out their new Lei, but instead of something easy for an SI trained mind like getting rid of a multiple of 3 zeroes, they have decided to get rid of 4 zeroes, so 10 000 old lei is 1 new lei. Maybe I could handle this on their own, but they have only just brought in the new currency as of Jan, so now, when I get cash, it is in a mixture of new and old lei notes. I'll get 2 1lei a 10 000 lei note for 3 new lei change. I won't even get started on the coins with which I have no idea what I'm doing, I just let the girl at lunch take what she needed from my hand. Its just odd getting this mixture of huge, valueless bills (10 000 old lei) and small, valuable bills (50 new lei) all in one fistful. Silly romanians. Silly currency.

Bucharest

2006-01-23T08:15:00.000-07:00

I'm here, in communist eastern europe. Is it that bad. Its just like the scene from Eurotrip for those who have seen it. Actually I really do need to grip against communism, not just for the policies, but for the crimes against architecture, art and style which were perpetrated during and perpetuated after communism. Lets be honest, big sterile buildings may impress engineers who know how heavy they are and the technical feats involved, but to everyone else they look like a big looming block of concrete poured on the top of a hill. Yes I am commenting on Romanias grand Palatul Perlamentului, built by Cesesceau in imitation of the Champs Elysee, its lacking something... style.

Now to be fair it could be that its because its frickin freezing out here Mr. Bigglesworth. In general cold. Specifically, -20s. So all the trees on the grand roadway are bare, and bits of ice poke through on the pavement, the many fountains are dry, but in good post-communist style the advertisments are still there, large, colourful and even more than just on the sides of buildings in the middle of the traffic circle, just beside the fountain in line with the palace, a large rotating cube of advertisements slowly rotating about the apex it rests upon. Gotta love the consumerism that post-communism engenders, the old government offices of the central party now have, in a small part of them anyways, a Pizza Hut and a McDonalds.

As for dress, well lets be honest, you can spot an eastern european at 90 paces by their clothing, usually either spot on style, just a knock off that wasn't made quite right, or a throwback to some style which should have gone out with communism. Again I could be biased by the cold as most people are in giant down parkas, but a good chunk of the younger ( i.e. my generation) girls are still running around without hats, good jackets etc in Piata Universitatii.

I went to Piaita Revolutei, saw the building from which Cesesceau was rescued by helicopter, and saw the bullet holes left in the side of that building, the monuments to the revolution, and more stunningly the Ateneul Roman built in the best examples of neo-classisicsm in 1888 its a beautiful building, sandwiched among palaces which, though grand, miss the mark on the inspirational scale of things. And that's been my impression of Bucharest, a very mixed city. Modern buildings, especially the communist concrete block style, randomly interspersed with gothic, baroque and neo-classical facades, the contrast making the nice buildings that much better.

Anyways, back to the hostel for some tea. A hostel run by some friendly Romanians come Canadians come Romanians who, thank god, picked me up at the airport (an interesting parenthetical story, I was meandering the airport, purposefully and lostfully meandering, trying to get the bus downtown, cabs are at least 15euro from the racket at the airport and I didn't want to pay that, especially since, as I was later informed, they tend to raise the price once they get you into town and extort whatever they can from you, and I was approached by someone who asked me if I was looking for Villa 11, which I had no idea what it was, but eventually, he offered to, for a reasonable price, drive me to another hostel, Villa 11 is his hostel and after having a look I had no objections to staying, and still don't, but at the airport it took a while for him to convince me he wasn't just another asshole trying to rip me off as soon as I got into the country. Works out though and he and his family, who all work the hostel, fled Romania in 1979 to Toronto and then got the house as an inheritance in 1999 and have been back running the place since, so the daughter who is about 13, was the one who showed me around the place, and signed me in after negotiating the price. Anyways a nice surprise after the usual getting fiasco every time I land in a new country), and have a nice place (breakfast was huge, bread, cheese, cake, pancakes and jam, coffee, tea, etc. etc.) clean and warm.

I must say that Rebecca and I were... unpleasant, in Istanbul, it was cold some days, but it was nothing compared to here, the difference... because it is cold in Bucharest, not just chilly for two months of the year, they are prepared for it with heating (they sure as hell don't advertise air conditioning here) and hot water, even in the public washrooms the water comes out hot! So its not as bad, once you get out of the bitter wind whipping through the "grand" squares in front of communist buildings.

More Egypt and, Turkey

2006-01-23T07:41:00.000-07:00

So I've been a little remiss in my blogging of late, that is not my fault, I blame things squarely on Rebecca as she was the only constant during my period of non-blogging! Basically I have missed the following, explorations of Cairo (a bit of which may make it into this page later), a tour up the Nile, yes I became one of those, the tour people, a couple days in Alexandria, a flight to Selcuk to visit Ephesus, and then a week in Istanbul, all of which was done in the company of Rebecca, part of which with my family. In light of this I have another blog which will eventually be working and have posts of all of this African, Asian and European madness

A religious experience for only $49.95

2005-12-26T02:06:00.000-07:00

St Katherine's is at the base of Mt. Sinai, the holy mountain where Moses recieved the tena commandments. This was our goal in the sinai, we had to climb it, and as with all holy mountains around the world the best time to climb it is for sunrise. So up at 0300 to hike out to the mountain and get up it. By climb of course I mean walk the pilgrims trail, the donkey trail leading right to the chapel on the summit. And because of this, and accepting what the book said about the time it takes, we managed to get a good hour of huddling in the winter chill on the summit of a mouintain before sunrise. But...

We headed off, and as soon as we reached the usual bus parking spot we were beset by the innumerable touts. Camel rides were offered to us every few hundred metres, one man even went so far as to lie on Mt. Sinai and say we had not time to make it up before sunrise without a camel (we walk faster than camels, at least as fast). Shame on him, bad muslim desecrating the holy site of the prohpet Moses by lying! We passed the first tea shop, the first souvenir stall, all lit by electric lights and something dawned on me.

I had been disgusted by this comercialisation, the exploitation of the "religious experience" of climbing Sinai. This is supposed to be, for the pilgirms anyways, a solemn occasion, coming closer to their religion. It should be treated as such. But wait, this is how pilgrims have been exploited for ages. Maybe not here in the middle of the desert until the advent of jeeps started to bring a steady stream of pilgrims, but surely at other holy sites this is the same as has been happening for millenia. Sales, tea, donkey rides up for the elderly and infirm pilgrims, the difference now must be that the oil lamps are replaced by electric lights and the souvenirs are now scarves with "St. Catherine's" embroidered on them, alabaster eggs, whereas before it was probably pieces of the true cross and saints bones, oil from the Holy Sepulchre. So I was just experiencing the same thing, the procession of huddles freezing masses in inadequate clothes (although now from ignorance rather than poverty) thepeople making a buck. It actually made it a bit fun when I thought of it that way!

Sunrise was nice. THe mountains of the Sinai look beautiful from up on top of Mt. Sinai, at least in the early morning light with low clouds hanging around their summits, but when we got back down they were just as boring. It wasn't any better a sunrise than others I have seen, it wasn't even the highest peak around, that's neighbouring Gebel Katherina, about 300m higher. And huddling in the cold for an hour before the first of dawn hit didn't do much for my disposition. But it was pleasant, and a great way to see the whole pilgrimage/tourist thing. Plus what better way to spend Christmas Eve?

From here we took the bus up to Cairo, along the coast of the gulf of Suez, the odd drilling platform off the coast breaking the monotony of the landscape. Its a sad coast, dotted with half constructed tourist resorts, all within 50m of the highway, but the water is clear and beautiful.

We passed the Suez canal. Basically I looked over to see an endless sea of sand... and a tanker sailing through it. Kinda neat to see a boat sailing through the sand. But we didn't even get to go over the canal, the land route is a tunnel under the canal, but at least I got to travel under one of the worlds most important seaways!

And now in Cairo, christmas in Cairo.

Into Egypt

2005-12-26T01:51:00.000-07:00

Then Aqaba, the red sea port town, the jordanian tourist spot, with ridiculously priced tea on the coast. There's one "public" beach left (the other is now a hotel beach) and the puiblic beach is covered in bedouin tents, side by side, all with plastic lawn furniture in rows from the tide wall down to the waterline and all serving outrageously priced tea (1JD a cup, I couldn't believe it). But, being tourists, we had to sit for at least one tea on the red sea coast. The tents make sense as well, lets be honest in an islamic country you don't need a lot of open beach for sunbathing and swimming, the "upfront hedonism" (as the lonely planet puts it) is saved for Eliat across the bay in Israel. Besides, when its 45C, and sunny, you want nothing more than shade and possibly to dip your ankles in the water to cool them, especially when you have to keep everything covered all the time. This is the local hangout, its not the tourist spot which is taken over by the hotel beaches, but still. 1JD a cup tea seems a bit much.
From here we took a ferry to Nuweiba in Egypt. What an amazing adventure, getting on and off the boat involved more hastle and confusion than I have yet had in my travels. The process of buying a ferry ticket alone required 1) getting lost 2) getting pointed up the stairs to where a bunch of unlabeled booths were more than willing to sell you tickets, 3) get in line 7 at the other row of windows where a guy looks at the ticket intently and finally stamps it without doing anything and gives it back, 4) go out, down and around to pay the departure tax of unkown magnitude, which basically invovles getting intoa press of people and pushing forward to the window until one of the clerks takes pity on the poor, lost tourists. Having mentioned the press, although the Arabs do push forward and push in line it is nothing compared to the Asians, there is no attempt to injure others in the line, there is no violence, just a constant struggle to get up and get it done, its actually a bit civilised, altohugh if I hadn't seen the worst of it in Peking I may be a bit more jaded. 5) from the departure tax got back out, around, and up to customsk, fill out the form and get your exit stamp. 6) get lost, beg the man at the tea stand to tell you where to go, he just sort of directs you out of the building, and this is key, after getting the exit stamp there is no holding area, you just start wandering around the port like anyone else, which just seems odd to us. 7) realise you can wander anywhere even though you are through customs and 8) fight your way onto the bus which takes you the 5min drive to the boat. On the boat, no bags are allowed, no food brought on they are like a bloody cinema and want you to pay their overinflated prices for substandard lunches. I was particularly irked as the ferry was at 1230 and we had brought lunch to eat on the ferry, so I had to go without lunch. But the ferry was smooth and easy once it left, then in Egypt we saw a great arrival procedure. Our passports had been checked on the boat, and a cursory glance given as we left, then customs. Basically we were dropped off in the midst of what looked like a bus terminal with huge lines of people, each with a giant cart laden with good. I mean giant piles of goods for everyone, probably a good 27cubic metres of good each ( i.e. a 3X3X3 metre cube of goods). Where they all, and all their good came from I have no idea. But we just started walking in a direction we thought was out, wandering through aisles, being cut to the front of lines (we had one bag waiting for all these people and we'd still be there) assuming that if we went the wrong way someone with a gun would turn us around, and from time to time we were waved on by men in uniform. By uniform I mean of course in casual street cloths but with a laminated badge.

So we made it out, and fought through the taxi drivers and got a ride to Dahab, the backpackers resort village of the Aqaba gulf coast. It was a place to be stuck for a night, and as we knew we were leaving in less than 26h Henry and I had fun with it. We had our lunch sitting on the coast at our hotels bit of beach (we couldn't have stayed off the beach if we wanted to, every hotel was on the beach, but our hotel was cheap... and clean, although the operator asked us if we wanted cheap or clean, honesty) wrapped in fleeces and hats to keep out the chilly wind coming off the coast. We wandered the corniche, a disgusting, disgusting string of restaurants, hotels and shops. IT could have been Pokhara, or any other tourist town in the world. The differences with Pokhara, the restaurants were on the seacoast, not with mountain view, and instead of Kali-Chakra Mandalas and other buddhist handicrafts for sale it was all pharaonic egyptian stuff, cheap papyrus and the like. But the rest was the same, the touts on the street inviting you in for dinner, good deals of course, the tattoo parlours, the henna shop, the massage parlours, the juice stands, etc. etc. etc. There was nothing egyptian about it. But with only a few hours to wander the corniche and have fun with the touts, haggling a bit then walking away, it was actually a bit of fun.

From here we caught a bus up to St Katherine's we even made it through the age old, taxi driver telling us there's no bus today, maybe you take taxi, but oddly enough the bus arrived and we were off, for a lot less than the cost of the taxi.

We drove through the Sinai, up the coast and then through the central Sinai, a drab, dreary, depressing place. I thought the deserts of Jordan were lifeless, but here was even more lifeless, even the rock had less to it, constantly the same, white, gravel flats a few white cliffs behind, the odd tree to break the monotony (desert, desert, desert, tree, desert, desert, desert... How they live like that is beyond me, but its amazing where life will take hold to be cliche about it). Its like driving through Saskatchewan, really neat for about 30min, then the monotony gets to you, the sheer depressing repetitive boredom of the landscape. We drove into the mountains and even they had the same quality, loose rock, worn by ages, boring slabs, gravel flats between, devoid of life, no trees or scrub on the mountains, no faces, no features, just blank boring rock.

In Katherine, the village we had an epic bread hunt. The shops, (used to the tour buses) were loaded with processed white bread, but we wanted just normal, fresh local bread, available in any town, and we had seen people wandering about with it. After much asking begging, pleading and crying we found the bakery, after trying every restaurant, every shop in town, and we would have walked by, but as we were walking up to it a man walked out with a several foot high stack of bread in his hands. The bakery is in a brick building, non-descript brick building, with no sign. Even the front of the bakery proper is nothing more than a vaulted archway, a man with a ledger sitting on a bench and a metal, flame charred, contraption sitting at the end. As we walked in he said "how much?" to which we replied "how much what?" IT wasn't until we walked in further, and our eyes adjusted to the gloom, that we saw on the floor a pallett laden with fresh bread! Success!

Another great thing came out of this. As soon as we hit Egypt we ran into the tourist crowd. The taxi-drivers, the restaurant touts (at one restaurant "plate of beans with butter" was 5 pounds on the menu, right beside it was written, in Arabic, fuul, which is the same thing and in arabic numbers 4 pounds) calling us in, trying to overcharge us, people lying to us, such as the bus not coming that day. But as we stood in one teashop asking where we could buy bread, pointing at the stack of bread an old man drinking tea and smoking his hookah had in front of him to show what we wanted, working through the translation of a man playing backgammon and getting turned away, just as we walked out off the porch the old man called us over and started offering us his bread, here, have a few pieces, and we protested, no we can't but he insisted (through the same translator playing backgammon) and when we said we wanted lots he just said, how much? We couldn't take his bread, but seeing this side of the egyptians, the side of the bedouin we had seen so much in Jordan did give us hope that the country would be just as good, after you got through the tourist touts.

Wadi Rum... Or the Jebel you know... Or those damned bedouins

2005-12-22T12:08:00.000-07:00

We made our goal, Wadi Rum, a wide wadi (a watercourse, dry or seasonal) wide enough to fit a town in it, flanked by 700m cliffs, the cliffs of Jebel Rum and Jebel Um Ishram. Ahhhh, how optimistic we were.

The powers that be have, over the last few years, started to impose numerous restrictions and protective policies on the region, its had a marvellous effect for our purposes. They have severely limited traffic past a visitors centre, 6km out of town, and this has kept much of the tour bus scene at bay, while still bringing tourism to the area, the town has thus, although developing slowly, not gone through the ridiculous tourist-centric, culture destroying development of so many other places. The tourist centre is, oddly enough, a tourist hell, shops and generic restaurants, jeeps lined up and camels waiting to give you a ride, a tour, but we passed through this into the town, there are no restrictions on going to town, just that there's no benefit if you aren't staying a bit.

With little trouble we made it to the town and set up camp at the rest house. All the guidebooks and websites are a few years out of date, so we didn't know that we could stay at several other places, the only place you could stay in those days was the resthouse. But the other place we found isn't marked, there isn't a gaudy hotel sign out front, and it was several days later, as we had just retreated off a climb we got hopelessly lost on (more on this issue later) that we ran into Mohamed Hussein and he took us to his place, where, instead of a bit of sand for a tent with a toilet that worked sporadically at best (the water was always getting shut off at the rest house) he offered us matresses inside with a reserve water tank in case water did get shut off, and a free kitchen for cooking in (mostly tea, more on this later as well), all for the same price. Mohammed was a nice guy and ended up being our driver for our forrays into the further reaches of the desert.

The town is small, there are a few bedouin shops, and a couple tourist shops, all with the same supply of cooking supplies, fresh breads, cheese, fruit and veg, pasta, canned goods etc, the difference is that the tourist shops have postcards and keffiyahs (the dish towels for wearing on the head) for sale and slightly inflated prices, still reasonable though. There're two restaurants in town, outside the tourist oriented, and thus higher priced, resthouse. Two good restaurants, one a little higher class, more expensive but with more varried food, once you get it, the menu is always "meat, rice, beans, salada" orally delivered by the cook himself, who then dissapears into the back and prepares the food and brings out a great meal, always a little different and definately tasty. The other, the cheaper and the one we frequented, always had falafel, hummous, khubez (arabic pita) and salad, which served us fine, but after climbs, if we were lucky, there was still half a chicken left and some rice that we could share, as well as having the falafel, hummous... The rice here, cooked by Yousef, we were there every night we were in town and got to know the cook well enough that we didn't order by the end, we just sat down and he brought us food, anyways great rice, tasty, with mushrooms, tomatoes and spices, it was enough on its own, let alone with the chicken and the rest.

The rest of the town is houses, surrounded by high plastered and red painted walls, and in the random backyards, camels, and cocks. Damned these are loud. Camels are not quiet animals, constantly grunting, groaning, moaning etc. And these deep throaty sounds echo around the canyons back into the town. Amazing! And no one wakes up to the cock crowing, if you did, you would never be asleep, they basically start crowing around noon and stop around 11am, all of them, in constant competition, on starting and a positive feedback loop as the cry circled around town.

But the mosque here was great. It echoed in the canyon, but there was only one mosque, with a good muzzein, so it was quite pleasant to listen to the Wadi Rum mosque, in other cities there are, wherevere you are three or four mosques whose loudspeakers project to you, and the overlap makes for an unpleasant sound, as they aren't saying the same thing, in the same key, or at the same time. One mosque was quite a treat.

But we weren't here for the village, nice and small and peaceful as it was, we were here for climbing! So soon after arriving we headed off on Hammad's route, a relatively easy route up Jebel Rum, a bedouin route and often done. Most importantly its the standard descent route and if we were to try any other routes on the mountain it would be our way down. As it is convoluted we wanted to make sure we knew it before we got lost in some canyon trying to find our way down. So off we went, but the ridges here blend in with the sandstone faces behind them. Its just like in "The Last Crusade" with the bridge that Indy has to step onto, the leap of faith, and the stone lines up perfect to make it invisible. I thought it was incredible then, but now I can understand, I would look at the mountain, after having climbed the ridge, and I couldn't properly distinguish it from the face behind! Amazing. But we found the ridge, got on it and climbed through the difficulties, into the great siq, this is a feature on the mountain, a wide canyon which runs through the mountain all the way, on the other side it is a massively impressive feature, on this side it is smaller, but a formidable challenge to climb out of, the walls are formed by the water eroding, and thus polishing, the rock, hard to get a hold on. There is a route and after some more faffing about trying to find the appropriate route through, the bedouin have done an amazing job and its hard to follow them, we made it up onto the summit plateau to our first experience of "domes to summit" the ineveitable termination of every climbing route in the area, a simple sounding statement but it involves following sandstone slabs, easy climbing, but lots of it, tiring on the calves, and sustained, and no way to use the ropes so you have to be able to downclimb what you climb up. Furthermore the domes are constantly cut by siqs (siqs are waterworn canyons, narrow and steep walled by the way) making routefinding a nightmare, many of these siqs are too wide to jump across and on the order of 100m deep! Not something to trifle with. As well the sides of the domes are either easy slab, or sheer cliff with no holds, flat, vertical sandstone, so you can easily reach the end of a series of domes with a cliff in front, steep siqs on either side and nothing to do but downclimb a long ways and find another route up. But the mass of domes is so confused that any map would be useless, and impossible to create!

Anyways, the short of this story is that with time running short, and the memories of an unplanned bivy on a mountain in Petra fresh in our minds, we decided with two hours of daylight left to beat a retreat, less than 200m from the summit, but not enough time to make it this time. Besides this was just to find the descent and we had designs on other routes, more interesting routes, to the summit.

So we tried Al Thalamiyah soon after. A three star route well within our grade, but a bedouin route. The bedouin have not only done a good job, but a convoluted job, they have had several hundred years to explore every siq and face on the mountain to find the best ways, often the only ways, up each canyon, however, with that much time it is not a straightforward route. The routes are often impossible to follow without a guide, and we didn't have the funds or inclination to hire a guide for every route we wanted to climb. Besides, confident that Hammad's route had taught us how to read the guidebook and the rock that we could do it no problem. To make a long story short, after grovelling up gullies and cracks with a pack with an overnights supply of water and other bivy kit (6l of water gets really heavy, really quick) as we planned to sleep on or near the summit, we looked across the canyon to realise we had climbed too high too fast and were now on the wrong side of the canyon and far too high to get across reasonably. We thought we were on route, but somewhere we got off and... Well even with a comfortable night possible we weren't sure when we'd make it up, so we gave up and retreated down the mountain to the safety of our tent and tea. Basically we were horribly, horribly lost for a long time.

So now, with two unsuccesful summit bids we had to give it one more shot, but route finding had been hard on Hammad's route and we were completely buggered on Al Thallamiyah, so we were less than optimistic about our bedouin route following skills. We picked the easiest route up the mountain, Thermudic, and promptly got so lost, so high on the wrong side of the canyon, that we were on another route, Sabbah's route, which is another good route at our grade to the summit. So hopelessly unable to find the easy route we commited to the harder more convoluted route and... after taking the hard variations while trying to find the easy variations, we reached the domes, and then.... the summit. We had finished Jebel Rum, climbed the beast! The jebel we didn't know had become the jebel we knew! We brought bivy kit again, planning to sleep on the descent route at our highpoint on Hammad's route so we could easily descend in the morning, and we quickly reached there. Unfortunately some clouds blew in, and we were caught in a short-lived thunderstorm! I have a minimalistic sleeping bag, that is inadequate for bivying in, and Henry has a good solid sleeping bag, so he lent me the gore-tex bivy sack he had brought. I was, if not warm, at least dry and comfortable, partly sheltered from the wind, at the start of the rain Henry pulled out his emergency plastic blanket and tried to wrap himself in it, but his feet still got wet, and he still curses me for having his bivy sack! Its his own damned fault for offering it to me.

The views from Jebel Rum were amazing all night, a moon, full and bright, fading in and out behind broken clouds like you expect to see in a b movie about werewolves. A view out across the red sands and of the cliffs of the jebels rising out of the flat sandy valleys. Bright stars (after the storm passed), and domes, domes, domes.

After Jebel Rum we were keen to get out of there, all that effort and frustration (there was even more than it sounds like) and we just weren't enjoying the climbing, the type of rock was sub-optimal and the routefinding was just frustrating, so we thought, lets head out to the desert, check out Barrah and Burdah then on to Egypt. So two nights at Barrah, one climbing and one lousing about.

The climb, only one great thing, the domes were lower down on this one and the view back from the summit looked like a mass of brains, white sandstone with the deep siqs cut in them, curling around, rounded edges to the sandstone, it was just such a brain. The lousing... Tea

Tea became a focus of our trip, Henry is always up for tea, and from the previous posts you probably noticed that we often sought out the best places for tea in each town. We judge quality based on a scale of price and seediness (lower price and higher seediness better, although truly unique locations, such as the view at Umm Quais looking over the Golan Heights and the sea of Galillee or sitting on the Red Sea with your feet in the water in Aqaba, which happened yesterday, are acceptable alternatives to seediness), it all tastes good. We even got fuel for my stove with the express intention of making tea, cooking while camping was just a side effect later, the first intent was making tea! So on our days lousing about we ate what we could and drank tea, endless tea, read, and basically tried to move as little as possible. It was either that or go for a hike in the soft sand dunes around us, a soul-destroying exercise, its so hard to walk through, so we stayed put and exerted as little energy as possible. As for doing other climbs, there were none others at our difficulty level so we couldn't do that.

Burdah was cool, a great climb, not a bedouin route so we could easily follow it, and then a rock bridge, a metre wide and half as thick, the sandstone all around had eroded into a deep, impassable siq, but for this thin bridge of solid rock which remained, and we had to walk across it! Its quite a neat natural formation. But it was just a day of climbing and then a day of lousing waiting to be picked up and then we scuttled away, tail between our legs, to Aqaba.

"Democracy"

2005-12-21T08:12:00.000-07:00

So after my moaning about politics in China and Nepal, I now have the opportunity to flex my democratic muscle. Now what I heard in Nepal was on the BBC, there is an energy crisis in Britain caused by rising gas prices and the government of Canada was overthrown today in a no
confidence vote. So I read a bit more and surprise surprise everyone gave up on the liberals and wanted another election. So I e-mailed elections Canada, before the candidates were announced, to find out how to vote abroad, all I have to do is send them a fax, and then have my voters package sent to the embassy in Istanbul and vote there. Will I...

My options are:

Rob Anders, I have huge issues with the "conservative" party nowadays, they no longer show the good old fiscal conservatism mixed with social laisez-faire, now they really have nothing to say. Lets be honest, their fiscal policies don't rival the liberals, and their social policies make most people cringe. I can't vote for a party who at their last policy convention were only willing to discuss social issues, and come out with restrictive policies on all issues, not at all progressive anymore. Further their policy of voting themselves home at lunch every day during the last parliamentary session pisses me off and shows a certain lack of respect for democracy. Most likely, in spite of the personal animosity against anders from most of the educated folk in my riding, he will still be elected. So I was thinking protest vote, still show my political might, I can at least tell him that much of his riding does not support him and his party and he needs to put pressure to change. Its a small might but that's what democracy is about (at least that's what the nepali litterature tells me), but....

Jennifer Pollock, the Liberals bill her as a former CBE Chairwomen, they fail to mention that under her leadership the CBE board was suspended by the province and control taken by the minister, and to little public bother, why, because there was another election at the first opportunity and the board was suspended because all the reasonable members of the board had resigned due to the cattyness of the board, and the infighting of the boardmembers. The board was so paralysed they couldn't get a budget together in time, let alone run a board of education. Lets leave aside that in hockey as a kid this was the woman who didn't want discipline on the ice but wanted to give all the kids "warm fuzzies". So I can't vote this way, just on the off chance that she actually gets in, Hitler got in cause no one showed up to vote for the opposition after all. All of this is leaving aside the fact that the Liberal party and its leadership were caught with their hand in the cookie jar, reason enough to vote against the party. Its just not right for a politician to get caught stealing, of course they're doing it, but they shouldn't get caught. So I need to look further afield for a protest Canada.

The other options, the Functionally Innumerate Party of Canada, I'm sorry, the NDP. The party which proposes the most absurd mathematics possible at the worst of times (somehow, during a recession, increasing spending and reducing taxes will decrease the defecit... wait, how does that work, reduce inflow, and increase outflow will promote stability? Something doesn't thermodynamically fit). The last option the marxist-lenninist party of Canada, they don't even
deserve capitals considering what the marxist and lenninists have done in so much else of the world (although Cuba may be the exception).

So I'm stuck with no one who even remotely represents my opinions, even in as much as a reasonable protest, where is the White Rhino Party, or the Totally Absurd Party? so mocked and yet so necessary.

I feel more and more that democracy is truly a farce, at least the russians weren't deluded about their government, the muslim kingdoms and theocracies around here know where they stand. But I have power to control my governance.

Bitterly, and not even bothering to register, from far away.

Mark

Petra, lost in Petra

2005-12-09T09:51:00.000-07:00

So now I have seen numbers 2 through 8 of the top things to see and do in Jordan, Petra being all of them. Its a neat place, the facades are magnificent, 50m high and carved deep into the sandstone, notably they are deep in canyons, and around a vally protected by mountains on all
sides, so as you enter through what was, back in the day, the sacred route, you are struck by the quiet of the canyon (if you beat the hordes of tourists). In fact we stopped at one point, well I did anyways, as the pigeons echoing were so loud! Through the canyon you get a first view of the treasury, yes the front used in Indiana Jones, and off you go to see many more facades carved into the rock face, tombs. This was the thing for me, is that most of Petra is monumental tombs, the insides are plain square rooms, maybe with a niche or two. There is no life, in fact its all death. Its really hard to imagine nabatean life, the interactions as none of these mundane things are around, there is a roman collonaded street, there are a couple temples to gods we don't know or relate to, and monuments to the dead.

Having said that they are spectacular, and there are a few byzantine churches, oddly out of place surrounded by these giant heathen tombs, ruined mostly but with well preserved floor mosaics, and built during the latter period of the decline of the city. Most of the non-tomb
ruins are merely the foundations of an old building. There is one cave which is being used as a museum, with interesting carvings in it from varied ages.

Yesterday and today Henry and I got lost in the desert around Petra, we wanted to hike from one of the outlying region, Little Petra, to the main city, following two canyons, but we had no good map and ended up climbing two mountains trying to find a route over and into the right valley, then got so lost as night fell that we ended up bivying about 50m from the summit of one of the peaks, lighting a fire to keep warm (not that we were in danger of freezing in the temperate climate) and rationing the last of our water. As we climbed down in the morning, after another hour of trying to find our ascent route, we were scouting out new terrain whenI heard a flute, Henry thought it was sounds wafting around from the tourist site, but no, it was a
Bediouin girl playing her flute and singing to her goats as she herded them, she gave us directions, and we ran into another girl who in much better english, also gave us directions, both very friendly, starting the conversation with a curious, where you come from? I don't think
there used to toursists taking our route. Then we got a bit further down, to a house, rather one of the tombs, in which lives a bedouin family, and the father invited us for tea, Gaseem was friendly and as we sipped on three sweet, sweet cups of tea in the shade of the snake monument he serenaded us on the local version of a guitar. Just amazing hospitality, inviting in two wayward, idiots, for a cup of tea, him also shocked that we were coming via that route.

So then to Wadi Musa, the town near Petra for a feast to make up for our lack of a breakfast or dinner, and a pile of tea to rehydrate. We're one day late now on our way to Wadi Rum, but in the morning we're off to live in tents and climb!

Castles and Columns

2005-12-06T09:57:00.000-07:00

So since the last post, in two days, we have run through ridiculous numbers of roman columns and several castles, of the giant fortified crusader kind. For my lowly castle-ignorant self they have been amazing, and most importantly you can poke around anywhere, getting yourself into all the trouble you want down the crypts and passageways, at least what has been excavated after several hundred years of dusting.

Anyways, we started at Jerash which is supposed to be one of the best kept pieces of roman architecture kicking around. There were some great highlights, the oval plaza, a giant roman paved centre of the town where the highway came in and was merged with the main street, a
podium in the middle, now with a random column, but originally with a statue they think, and the outer ring a series of corinthian collonades with the top pieces, some re-erected, but many still standing after 2000 years, there are pictures from 1922 when the site was "discovered" by western archaeologists and they show remarkable preservation of the buildings. Anyways, the two half ovals make a giant plaza, and you can just imagine the business of a roman city, the old men in togas arguing over the christian problem, the vendors of various things, children playing, random people crossing the square to get from a to b, a couple of legionaires patrolling, and chariots clattering across the rough paving in and out of the city.

The main street of th town continues like this, with collonades on both sides and in places, especially at the foot of the great complex of the temple of Artemis, there are still the remains of the shops, giant, vaulted arches for ceilings and and a short room for the wares. On either side of the road is a pave sidewalk, there are two main intersections, with the north and south crossroads which come off with their own collonades, although near the north crossroads we get to see the ionic style of capitals. We wandered the length of these roads, quite enamoured with wandering the old imperial roman street. There were ruins of temples of Zeus, and Dyonysis as well as Artemis, interesting, there were two theatres both excavated from about 3m of dirt, which makes me think dusting may not be all bad, its an average of about 1.5mm accumulation a year, which is probably less than accumulates in my place between dustings. As blase as it may sound, theatres are all starting to look like one another, although the south theatre here did have a view, behind the stage complex, of the collonaded road stretching off in the distance, and the temple of Artemis on the hill beyond.

We also got to see more byzantine church ruins, although little remains but the foundations and the odd columns, in two of them the ornate mosaics on the floor remained, rather time consuming to produce considering the tiny tiles wich needed to be coloured and ordered. Interesting to see, with designs ranging from similar to celtic knots, to animals, humans and even inscriptions, easy to see, hard to describe with justice.

From here we headed off to the dead sea, with first a stop in As Salt, an old ottoman town which has been rather well preserved. Not entirely rich, but constantly inhabited, the city has not been completely modernised, so many of the old ottoman buildings remain. This is a more interesting bit of living ottoman history than Umm Quais, where they were crumbling shacks. Here as we stepped out of the car, off to one side was a narrow, twisting alleyway with houses lining it, and as we wandered through these alleys we could catch glimpses of courtyards down some of the entryways. The alleys are calm and quiet, never empty with locals lounging on their steps, or
someone trundling from A to B. And these little bites, and houses here and there are interspersed among the new, standard jordanian buildings, giving a mix of new and old city.

Then we struck gold, a narrow street of entirely ottoman buildings, with nothing but shops lining it, the market street, shoes everywhere, and everything else available, a quiet, busy street, we were never harrassed, but often invited into shops, alas though we started to be followed by a gaggle of kids, neither Henry nor I have high kid tolerances and got a bit annoyed when they started to grab us, but soon we left their territory and they left us alone. Loved this street, the architecture and the peaceful business of the market, the smells of spices, coffee and perfumes, and infinite rug shops, who buys all these rugs and shoes?

In Salt we found another tea shop, the hole in the wall with old and young playing cards or staring into space, constantly sucking on their hookah's, tea in hand, arguments over the cards, friends wandering in to say hi, for a brief chat then wandering out, the waiter slowly refilling tea and bringing more coals for the hookah's. With the standard decore of olive painted concrete walls adorned, only in the back, with piles and piles of hookah's. We had the choice of a second
cup of tea or trying to get to the baptism site of Jesus (maybe it was here, they don't know, but a few years ago someone rich built a church and it has become a pilgrim site), and oddly enough the consensus came to stay and have at least one more cup of tea to wash down the Shwarma.

From here we headed to the Dead Sea, the border with Israel, and a barren desolate land, as soon as the Jordan River drains into the Dead Sea all life stops for the 40km length of the river, except in the few deep wadis still with a trickle of water. We had an adventure trying to find a place we firmly believe doesn't exist anymore, and late at night, not wanting to stay in a 5 star or above hotel (or rather any hotel rich enough to deserve stars) we headed along the coast until we lucked out and find a pullout, beside a flowing wadi, which was down the slope just far enough to shield us from the lights and noise of the road above. So here we supped on cheese, bread, tomatoes and oranges on the shores of the Dead Sea, brewing tea and watching the
lights of the israeli settlements on the other bank.

As light came we realised sunset would be underwhelming on the dead sea due to a persistent haze which has settled here at the lowest point on earth (408m below sea level according to our map). But we had a beach to ourselves and went for a dip in the dead sea, little dipping, in the 35%(ish) salt you float rather high and you can stand/float upright without treading water, and your head, shoulders and most of your chest will be out of the water. This doesn't last long as your body tries to throw you face first in the salty water. Most of the time we floated along with our feet, arms and heads sticking up out of the water. But after a few minutes floating around
like that it became a bit monotonous and we had put the tick on our list next to "float in Dead Sea". So off we trundled up the wadi to rinse off in the tepid waters of the stream, perfectly comfortable tepid and we found a nice mini, waist height waterfall which was perfect for showering. Now here's the deal, a shower is essential, hence stopping next to the wadi, the salt is amazingly thick on the skin almost immediately. You can feel, while in the water, a slime
building up, rocks on the side of the sea, where waves splash, are encrusted with salt, and without other knowledge you would think they were encrusted with ice, but that just doesn't happen when its at coldest 15C at night. The salt crusted rocks were uber cool though, not the ones you had to walk across at the edge of the sea which cut the feet, but those where there was a cliff into the sea, just an amazing effect.

Anyways, quickly we were off to Karak, an old crusader castle from the 12th century, then taken over by the arabs for centuries. The entire existing town (less 3 buildings) still lies within the walls of the castle/town of olden times which is quite neat, and new houses sit right beside the old battlements, the rounded towers of the crusader walls. Again we were allowed to roam freely, taking hours to explore all the nooks, crannies and vaulted chambers which had been excavated. Just a stunning structure, with the whole, I'm walking through a well preserved crusader castle (actually a lot restored and rebuilit) giddiness about it. I have now, innumerable pictures of the narrow arrow slits from the inside, looking out on the glacis below, or of chambers, dimly lit from holes in the ceiling. Crumbling arches etc. etc. It was a lot of fun to run around.

From here, through a lazy town of Tafila where we stopped for more tea and lunch and off to Shobak castle, the highlight of the castles, mostly ruined, hardly restored, with narrow passageways, a commanding view of the valley below, a stunning view of it sitting upon a
plateau, dominating the entire summit of the plateau as you approach, and, most importantly, deep dank tunnels. After walking around the ruined battlements a little ways we entered the church, under which a tunnel leads down into the heart of the mountain, where you may ask?
Down a ways into a pocket of earth, it seems they just stopped digging. The other? Down, deep down, twisting and turning right and left, hairpin turns, ever steeper on stairs covered with centuries of dust, looking less like stairs and more like the cartilage rings of a throat, down in the pitch black (luckily we had our head torches, although a flaming torch would have made the Indiana Jones-esque exploratory feeling stronger) and down until finally we saw daylight,
just past two empty chambers, and across a stream, there was a tunnel leading from this staircase up into the sunlight, into the valley below the castle. There was a stream running below the entrance, and this was diverted, partly, into the tunnel we had come down, the
source of that water, and the main supply of the water to the castle.

Aside from this there were rooms, and tunnels to explore, Ummayyid carvings, one room was just full of the non building material stones they had found, carved stones, artillary stones, rough rounded balls for the catapults, and millstones mostly.

So this has been great, Indiana Jones style poking around un-impeded exploring the ancient ruins of the crusaders, of the islamic warriors, the romans, the ottomans, and tomorrow, the Nabateans as we head into Petra to explore (these are the ruins seen in Indiana Jones and the
Last Crusade as the entry to the place where the grail is stored). Supposedly great... but too hyped now?

Jordan, and Philladephia

2005-12-04T09:47:00.000-07:00

So after the flight from Abu Dhabi I found myself in Philidelphia, the city of brotherly love, which is the name of Amman under the romans. After a rather interesting cab-ride involving everything the lonely planet warns about in Dehli, but definately not Jordon I made it to the hotel to find Henry waiting for me, napping away the entire day with jetlag.

So luckily I didn't miss a day of sightseeing and after a meal of what you see is what you get, from which the "meat" being random bones in a very, very thin broth did not appeal, but a great meal in the end of veggie stew and rice at a hole in the wall we spent the following day searching first for food on a friday when everyone was either at mosque, or just not making it easy for two dazed white people to get food, that and we got ourselves lost in some of Amman's less upscale
markets, shoes everywhere breeding the theory that the number of shoe stores in a country is actually inversely proportional to its GDP. That day we explored Amman, my first roman ruins, a grand colliseum and the remaining, re-erected pillars of the temple of hercules as well as the, even to a ruin virgin, underwhelming nymphaeum. The ampitheatre is quite impressive, in spite of the two interior rooms being taken over by museums with stuffed dolls showing off garments
from various periods with little explanation, but it is fronted by a garden and a remaining corrinthian collonade which is inspiring, and then the giant, still usable and used bowl of a 6000 seat theatre. From here there is a spectacular view across the valley to the sillhouettes of the pillars of the temple of hercules, as impressive up close as far away.Up the hill we trudged from the theatre, through the backalleys of Amman to see the Ummayid palace, ruined but one building remains and many of the carved stones litter the site, as well as the foundations and a few walls which you can explore like a maze. The museum up there is a bit underwhelming as well, a bit dry, and drab, but that fits with the city. From here there is what would be a spectacular view of Amman, but rather than inspiring us it was a depressing monotonomous city, identical concrete buildings rising out of the desert not breaking the desert but creating a new desert of style and beauty. The colours range from "beige to drab" as Henry put it, and
the only decoration is the minimum 7 sattelite dishes per building.

So that's Amman, a collection of 50s and 60s buildings constructed after the influx of immigrants following the creation of israel, and a few roman and Ummayid ruins. So we resolved to escape the city rather than explore its every identical suburb and rented a car to get us into the desert. First the airport through its checkpoints manned by friendly but well armed and stern guards to Qasr Mushatta, an old and uncompleted pleasure palace, giant arches with the backdrop of radar towers and landing airplanes. Then a quick hop to Qasr Hraneh, a square building, hidden from afar but striking up close, blank walls broken only by what appear to be muderholes, alone in the desert, in its day it must have been quite isolated, but now it is barricaded on one side by a highway, on another by an electrical substation and on another by a massive radio complex. But one can imagine, and a bedouin waits outside with his camel to add to the feel. Inside the
massive chambers are oddly cool and damp in spite of the midday sun and there is enough exploration to keep me happy a while, and even the veteteran Henry seemed whelmed, at least no longer were we underwhelmed.

Off then to Qasr Amra, an old bath built in a wadi, sort of, really more a depression in the great basalt plains. The structure looks like Luke's house on Tatooine in Star Wars and the desert around matches. Inside are a bunch of frescoes, well preserved and rather interesting, the mixture of the arab, christian and helenistic styles. Then off to Qasr Azraq which was the highlight of the day, a roman castle built entirely out of black basalt near a once oasis, now dried
up. The castle was used by the romans, by the byzantines, the ummayids, who built a mosque, and then finally by Lawrence of Arabia. We were shown the Lawrance room and the custodian made a flippant offer to let us stay, we tried to take him up on the offer but I think it was more a language barrier and we didn't get to stay, so off into the night. Up until this point we had been following signs in the desert, through endless inhospitable plains, pointing us first on the highway to the Saudi and Iraqi border, then when we had a choice we headed straight for the Iraqi border. Imagine driving along a road, navigating as your driver asks, "towards Saudi or Iraqi border?". Then as we headed back for the first few hours we headed towards the Syrian border, I'm not sure that choice ends up being any wiser.

So back the north of Jordan, to Irbid where we ate our half rotisseried chickens, very healthy as they had been rottiseried so long there was no fat left on them. This morning we headed out to
Ablis, or Iblis, or any other variant of the pronunciation, in arabic it seems the consonants are the important ones and the vowels are oftern interchangeable with place names, especially considering the difficulties in transliterating the different vowel sounds. Anyways, we went to Ablis an old roman ruin quite off the beaten track, the only others there a family picknicking in the olive groves below the church. We saw here the ruins of a few byzantine chrches and a slope
which was a necropolis, including one tomb which had full on sarcophagi and frescoes spectacular condition around the individual crypts. From here we headed to Umm Quais, another set of roman ruins, an ampitheatre, a 1.5km collonaded, basalt paved street, and now an ottoman town, built out of the ruined blocks of the old roman buildings. Our histories a little confused in its order it seems, but then middle eastern history is just confused anyways.

After this we went to a castle, Aljoun Castle, a muslim castle from the time of the first crusade, not entirely a ruin, and we were able to wander exploring the nooks and crannies until 1600 on the dot when a somewhat ornery caretaker came around and started shouting at everyone in Arabic, the only way we knew to leave was that another tourist happened to be wandering by who seemed to be able to figure out what he was saying and translate for us. But we had a good look around, and a mosey along the ruined battlements etc.

Now we are in Jerash awaiting the morning to see ruins that are supposed to rival the best in Italy.

A word on tourism here. Its great, although the people are poor the abject poverty seems to be absent, and more importantly, everyone is friendly, and for the most part honestly friendly, just happy to chat, find out where we're from (but no I'm not german in spite of what they all think). We've had many pleasant conversations with people who don't end them with trying to sell us stuff. Others do go that way, but its rare.

On top of this, as a tourist, we have been for the most part alone the entire time. Aljoun today had a few people, and there was one other group of people at the sites in Amman, but otherwise we have essentially had the sites to ourselves, which is just great after the bustle of the asian world, the lined up tourism and noisey tour groups. But as Henry says, you wait till Petra. I'm still hopefully optimistic that it won't be too bad though. We are in the off season, the cold season, i.e. its only about 18 degrees in the shade ritght now so as far as I can tell its the ideal time for weather to be here.

And I failed to mention one other thing, in Umm Quais we got the wonderful view of what most of the fighting has been over, the Golan Heights, the Sea of Gallillee, the fertile areas of Jordan, and border bits of Syria, and Israel, they're fools. There's little there, only olives, the most stubborn plants around that will only grow if there are rocks in the soil seem to be grown outside the Jordan valley, the Golan heights themselves are mostly sandy slopes, leading to plateaus
which require hard work to farm. It hardly seems worth a (n) thousand year history of hatred, recrimination and bloodshed. Henry and I have been joking that when Moses was lead up mt. Nebor and shown the land of milk and honey he must have died of depression, this is what we
wandered 40 years for? You gotta be kidding?

But in spite of that it is an n thousand year of mixed up history and its great for me to get around and see it, although in a few days I am pretty sure I will be more than ready for the camp life, and my three favorite things, eating, sleeping and climbing.

Abu Dhabi!

2005-12-01T02:37:00.000-07:00

Who knew? Who knew?

So my travel to Amman didn't work out, temporarily and it turned into a classic travel story. My flight was to leave at 0930, they wanted me there at 0630 but there was no way in hell so at 0730 I hopped a cab for a (probably) overbooked flight, through the light morning traffic wondering if I would make it through the customs procedures in time (I had read horror stories of baggage searches for religious artifacts, scrupulous inspection of all souvenirs etc. etc. and I had wanted to be there at 0730, 2h early, just 3h seemed a bit excessive). So I arrived and my driver took me to the domestic terminal, I didn't know there were two terminals and I had seen the sign for international and shouted at him "international, international" and he had said "yes yes" and waved in the direction he was going anyways. So I wandered through the lines of barbed wire with bleary eyed military lounging about, their machine guns/antiquated rifles (almost muzzle loaders) on the ground or slung uselessly around their shoulders. At the door they told me to go to the next building, which is actually another 5min cab ride. Luckily my driver saw me and after I yelled a bit "I said INTERNATIONAL" which elicited some snickers and imitations from his fellow cabies, he gave me a ride to the proper terminal. Through everything and pay the 1695 rupee departure tax, and I convert the rest of my money to USD, a fun task as he takes your cash and immediately throws it on a counter, not a neat counter or
near sorted piles of money, but a counter of piles of random bills heaped upon each other, a scene like fall leaves piled, but with a Scrooge McDuck twist. I got my USD$23 and went to check in, and after being shuttled through two lines (apparently you can't just go to the
gulf air desk labelled with your flight number) got my boarding card and headed to immigration. No instructions, no forms, so grab a random walkie-talkied guy to find out what the hell to do and where to go, this form? right line? yes sir, yes sir.

Wait for customs until about 5min before boarding time, but the fog outside was thick enough to turn a Nova Scotian's head, and the flight was listed as "delayed" on the board with no new time put up, and instructions to proceed through security immediately. Through security. A joke, a bloody joke. A metal detector which goes off for everyone, absolutely everyone, and then no hand wands but a pat down which covers only the most essential areas, i.e. if I wanted to I
could have gotten anything on I wanted by doing nothing more than strapping it to my inner leg. Baggage check was equally foolish, after scanning every bag is hand searched, sort of. They pat it a bit, and often don't even ask people to open it. A useless search. Through that and to the gate in time to catch last boarding call, if the flight was leaving. But there was no one in line, and no boarding announcement so I grabbed a seat. 4h later our plane landed. The fog had cuased it to be diverted to Dehli, fair enough, it was here now, there were a few announcements, enough to keep us satisfied for the most part. Because it was so late they fed us as we waited, well they
fed us on Gulf Air, but not the locals on Nepal International. No food for the Nepalis on Nepal International, and only one water bottle for two of them. They started to have some fun with it, commandeering the speaker system to ask no one to every fly Nepal International in the future because of this affront, and doing it in Nepali, Hindi, and broken English. Then they started to have a rally, everyone gathered around, chanting slogans, arguing. It was kinda fun (to watch from a safe distance) and rather good natured. But there was nothing to do but wait and see.

So we left late enough that I missed my connection from Abu Dhabi to Amman, which was just hilarious. I felt like Nermal from Garfield, in a brown box with nothing on it but "to Abu Dhabi" and a few airholes poked in the side. I've been chuckling to myself since I got the bloody ticket! So we spent two hours doing the push to the counter and try to get a new ticket sorted, try to get on another flight, what to do. Getting shuttled from person who couldn't really help to
person who couldn't really help through the press of impatient, tired, bored fellow travellers. It worked out in the end though, there was no flight for myself, or an american I met in the press, out that day, but today, in about an hour, I am off on the next flight. So here I am in Abu Dhabi, and Gulf Air has been much, much, much (insert many muches) better than Air Canada ever would have been. Because of the delay I get three free meals in the hotel restaurant (dinner last night, breakfast and lunch today), a free hotel room with cable TV and hot, hot, high flow hower, my first fulfilling both conditions in so long it was about a 45min event! and hotel tranfers to and from the hotel which is a 15min walk from the waterfront.

So last night, tired, we had our indian/iranian food dinners and crashed, exhausted from... sitting around waiting and sitting on a plane? Did two hours of re-arranging my ticket tire me out that much? Anyways, "Lord of the Rings: the Two Towers" was on and after watching Gandalf falling with the Balroc I fell asleep before Sam and Frodo even realised they were going in circles, and woke to a commercial advertising the virtues of a vacation in Jordan at 0400 (which was soon shut off and me back fast asleep).I lingered in bed and after breakfast asked what there was to see, to do in Abu Dhabi. The answer? There's a boardwalk on the waterfront and big malls, otherwise nothing, very boring. There is non nature, and no heritage to see, I think you find it very boring. This was the hotel guys statement, obviously edited for clarity, but at least bloody honest! So we got all excited about the 15min walk to the waterfront and were off, Lora, this american stranded, had run into me at breakfast and we both had time so off we went.

Abu Dhabi is like Tokyo without the press of population, and wide streets. So it has the building but not the character, not the feel of life. Its quiet, and even in the "touristy" bits, there are no
touts. Its a rich, bloody rich, city and the buildings look uniformly like they were built within the last 10 years. Having said that the architecture is far from boring, they have beautiful architecture, but it is all neat skyscrapers of similar dimensions in neat rows alongside the roads.

And the roads, better than anything in North America, wide, and all newly paved, smooth with no potholes whatsoever, police actually enforcing traffic laws, my cab had a warning everytime he got to 120kph that he was going to far, an annoying beep which he quickly slowed down to shut off, and no honking. They change lanes, by signalling and moving over, they don't honk, they don't run pedestrians off the road by honking, no honking, peace, quiet.

So through this we walked to the waterfront, a channel was all we walked along, on one side the boardwalk with neat rows of skyscrapers behind us, across the water bright red sand dunes. The boardwalk was neatly developed, a bit boring, a bit sterile like the rest of the city we saw, but still, a nice place for a walk. Along the channel some rowers went by, a man in his long white flowing robes, the white headress with black band around his forehead, holding the megaphone
calling out, coaching them.

So we wandered back, me wondering if I could find a postcard with a picture of Nermal on it, and past the Starbucks where my companion grew quite excited, and unstoppable, in her need for an "unmasculine european coffee (to quote Hudson Hawk)", once I walked in I couldn't resist. She was in a rush so she headed back to the hotel, her coffee to go and we parted ways, but I remained for a while to take in the atmosphere of a Starbucks in Arabia. I feel sorry for Melanie right now as the music they had on, remixes of some great old songs, was a pure fecal matter, I can't imagine that for more than the 15min I spent there. I have a picture which I hope turns out, in my head I have titled it "The Arab Enemy", its a picture from the elevated seating area in starbucks, looking back at the counter, of a typical, generic, starbucks counter in arabic and english, but with all the same design, coloration and general americanness of Starbucks, and at
the till a black woman serving a man dressed all in the long white clothes typical of here. They are pretty dangerous people around here.

So in general I would say that the UAE, Abu Dhabi at least, is like North America if we could afford to make it the way we want to. They are bloody rich, things are cheaper here and their GDP is on par with most of the West. Everything is clean and new, the malls are north american style with obviously middle eastern influence in the decoration, marble columns, and arabic style bordering, but otherwise... Domed rooves and mosques sure, but they just replace churches and rounded arches. I feel a lot like I'm back in the West, ok, ok, so people dress a bit funny here, but the woman dress in everything from burkas to standard western clothes, and the stored are
a bit different, we have no where near as many perfume, textile and random electronic stores, but it still has that feel.

Anyways, off to Amman, nothing else to do here so I thought I'd get this down, what with Vipassana I feel I have been neglecting my audience with the ammount produced, and for that I am sorry.

One of the poorest countries in the world to one of the richest in a day, that's culture shock.

Vipassana, no not more Vipassana!

2005-11-29T00:40:00.000-07:00

So there's a few things I thought of, should be short. The first was chatting with Daphne on the morning before the course, she was worried that Rebecca would dump me if I became even more quiet and introspective. Imagine that there is someone out there who thinks I talk too little already and me being quieter would be a problem! But I think there is no worry of that whole mess happening.

Another was an element of shock coming out of the absolute serenity of the vipassana centre, I was exstatic to be in the real world, but as I got off the bus and walked away, I was assailed by images and smells which had been absent for so long in every way. It was a dog walking towards me that got me, an old beaten dog, who had obviously been scrapping with others, and he hadn't come out unschathed. His ear hung in tatters, clumps of hair ripped out, sinew dangling bare down his face, bloody edges exposed. An old wound, a festering wound, the old tissue rotting away, and as the dog came nearer, and I walked further up the street the mix of the usual Kathmandu rotting stench from food and human waste in the gutters, mixed with this image and the stench of foul decay coming off the dog was enough to make me naseous.

Beyond this, there is one other thing, the catharsis of my previous post, I felt much better after writing it all out, I think in part I had all these doubts and problems building for at least 5 days in the centre, with no way to get them out, not being forced to really organise them (although mentally they were organised), and just letting it out, unfortunately all onto your sad eyes, seems to have been part of the catharsis of vipassana.

So now I run errands in Thamel, and tomorrow early in the morning I take off for Jordan and climbing and exploring!

Vipassana

2005-11-28T02:06:00.000-07:00

THE HOTEL SERVICE

Complimentary wake up calls (0400), free room and board (donation basis only), two solidm eals a day (more than you can eat, heaps and heaps of rice, and seconds available upon request. ctually quite a vast, varied compilation of totally vegetarian food.) and an evening snack with all you can drink Chai twice a day, the accomadations are simple, shared rooms, comfortable but plain. Daily activities are planned to keep on occupied (or more accurately unoccupied) and there are peaceful courtyards to wander in the other times. Showers are hot, or warm at least, most of the day and there is complimentary purified water available throughout the hotel and gardens.

The evenings in the hotel are quite pleasant, a light dinner of fruit, sweet fresh apples and bananas, some cereal and several cups of chai, a relaxation period before a movie, different every night, then another relaxation perdiod to reflect on the movie before heading to bed. My favorite part of the day, quite pleasant after the trials of a long day doing...

To put this in context, its a meditiation course, 10 days, a typical day is:
0400 wake up call
0420 second bell to call for:
0430-0630 meditation
0630-0800 breakfast (following which my roommate and I would nap, 0425 is far too early to wake up)
0800-0900 group meditation
0900-1100 meditation
1100-1300 lunch and "rest" although why we need more rest is beyond me
1300-1430 meditation
1430-1530 group meditation
1530-1700 meditation
1700-1800 light snack and tea and rest
1800-1900 group meditation
1900-2030(ish) dhamma discourse
2030-2100 meditation/instruction for the following day
2100- bed

What is the difference between group meditation and meditation? I still don't know, although I was grateful as it broke up the sessions and gave us nice little 10 min breaks in between the sessions to wander, get a drink of water, urinate (which at times it seemed like you were doing more just to have something to do than out of any real urge) and generally see some light.

Meditation takes place, with few exceptions, in the Dhamma Hall. This is a simple hall, chairs at the front for the assisstant teachers, and then mats on the floor for each of the meditators to sit on, in neat rows, flat, compressed ancient mats which are more of a demarcation of area than offering any real cushioning, but our little area. The room is quiet, although sounds drift in from outside and there is the constant sound of burping (Nepali eat lots, fast. In the shovelling large quantities of air must be ingested and this manifests as continual burping), coughing and the rustling of pained meditators shifting positions. The room is dark, not pitch black, but dark enough that after coming first thing in the morning the light doesn't bother the eyes, and after an hour meditating with the eyes closed, opening the eyes doesn't bother you, but the sun will bother you when you step outside.

The dhamma discourses are the time when, in theory, the theory of the technique we are practicing is given, in the end it is explanation of the doctrine of the religion/philosophy association, than just of the technique. The are taped lectures by the "great" teacher SN Goenka.

DAY TO DAY
Arrival, show up at 1200 and wait, wait in four lines to check in then wait for a bus you don't know when it is coming. Arrive and hand over your passport, for what reason I don't know, but it must be handed over. Valuables can be locked in a safe if desired and then wait, from about 1330 to 1700 wait, wait for you don't know what. Then a light dinner, some porridge and fruit, and then the opening ceremonies, the rules, the vow of noble silence, and the start of meditaion, anapana meditation, observation of the respiration.

Day 1: Pain, Pain of sitting on the floor for hours on end, from never sitting on the floor and walking all day, to now sitting still, cross legged on the floor, pain. Observe the respiration, maintain awareness of the natural flow of respiration (ever tried to do that, just watch breath without any concious control taking over for the autonomics, interesting and of questionable possibleness. Its like asking someone which leg the step with first, and then them standing up and being unable to walk because once there is conciousness of the action the unconcious normality can't really assert itself).

Day 2: Frustration, my mind wanders, lets be honest, observing the breathing isn't a topic of extreme interest so I wander and can't focus. I tried to ask the teacher a question, but he focussed on the word visualisation and went nuts, which had only a small part to do with my question and so I was left still with no understanding of where I should be. Finally after dinner I just get uber frustrated and... ah, there it is! Concentration, somewhat.

Day 3: Anticipation, the next day is vipassana day, only one more day of observing the breath, feeling the sensation of the natural breath on the lip now. What's vipassana though? Anapana is only to get us to vipassana after all, to build our samadhi (mental mastery) to allow us to us the vipassana technique to explore panna (true wisdom).

Day 4: Fear/anticipation. Vipassana is supposed to be hard, supposed to be very difficult as one faces oneself, ones past, ones complexes, the deeprooted complexes come to the surface and we must face them. What do I have to face? Then we learn the technique and it turns to incredulity. Is that it? Observe the sensation on the skin on every part of the body? When do I explore my mind truly?

Day 5: Boredom. Quickly the technique becomes boring, although strange sensations, and patterns emerge. We are to focus on one patch of the body at a time but I get sensation over face hands and legs simultaneously and persistently, I can focus, but is this right? Should I change? My mind is still there, always chattering, singing Barrett's Privateers over and over again, or other sea chanties and songs from my singing days, Caro Mio Ben. It passes the time, but am I doing it right? The dhamma talk is crazy.
Day 6: Try to leave. I had 4 problems. I didn't buy the basis of the doctrine, and there was no way to discuss the doctrine, debate, or get clarification. I didn't know if my technique was right, if I was practicing properly or just wasting time, 6 days of sitting on the ground was killing my back, it even hurt to stand and lay down, I had to lay down with my feet in the air in order to alleviate the pain and I was bored. The first two are good reasons, the last two of so-so quality. The question is, was I bailing cause it was too hard? Not really. I figured that if I could learn the technique I could focus on that, forget the doctrine, just learn the technique well.

I went to talk to the "teacher". I asked about the sensation over larger parts of my body than we were supposed to be practicing and he gave me a discourse on equanimity at death. Riiiiigggghhhht. He was no help so I tried to leave. A very friendly volunteer talked to me, friendly like, though. Why did I want to leave? The reasons above. Had I talked to the teacher? Yes but he's part of the problem. OK there's another teacher who speaks better english I'll see if he'll talk to you.

He comes back and sends me to talk to the same teacher (I geuss the other one wouldn't talk to me). To him I say that I want to leave and he replies only that I can't, I signed up for 10 days, we have an agreement and I can't leave. Bullshit say I and I try to debate with him. I bring up an analogy the videotaped head teacher made, of consenting to surgery, you can't say, after the surgeon has cut, that you want him to stop. Well that's wrong for two reasons, the first is that I didn't know what I was getting into, there was no information available, the information didn't reflect the reality of what was happening, so how could I consent, it wasn't informed consent. The second is that a patient can withdraw consent at any time as long as they are of sound mind, it just so happens a patient in surgery is under anaesthetic and isn't of sound mind. He didn't care, we have a gentleman's ageement. I argued that the teacher, Goenka, says that we should always practice with understanding of the technique, not just acceptance, but I didn't undertstand the technique, nor did I accept and understand the underlying doctrine. He didn't care, we're here for 10 days to understand the technique, but if I don't understand it then I'm sitting practicing against the instructors wishes, but we have an agreement. Finally I say so I gave up my freedom for 10 days to which he says yes. So our contract, under canadian law anyways, is no contract as it is a contract under which I have consented to abuse and consented to give up my freedom, both are consents to break the law, and are therefore not binding, at least by my understanding. So I walk out in a huff, ready to leave. They weren't really going to stop me, I had a couple hundred rupees in my bag and could make it to Kathmandu, if they wouldn't give me my passport back I'm sure that between the Nepali, and the Canadian government no one would be impressed with this organisation refusing to return my passport to me! But that damned friendly canadian volunteer talked to me again, and convinced me to give it one more day. One more dhamma discourse at least, one more day of meditation. I was so angry I didn't even think that none of my problems had actually been solved and I was back in the room for four hours, "meditating". Once in a while doing my thing and mostly singing to myself, and watching the time go by. The discourse that night was "madness, madness" a discussion of the senses arriving from kaloppas. Madness. But that afternoon I had started to feel horrible. Myalgias and a chill, like I was getting the flu so I figured either a) this was the meditation kicking in and my old sankaras were surfacing and my misery being made manifest, in and out of meditation, b) I was getting the flu and would be lying in bed in Thamel not doing anything so I may as well sit here and not do anything or c) I was getting sick and I would be violently ill and be able to leave for that anyways.

Day 7: Soul destroying. Feeling ill while meditating, unsure about the sensations, unsure where to go. I had had horrible nightmares the previous few nights, I had awoken with a feeling of pure anger and fear in my chest, overpowering and sustained, it didn't just pass with conciousness I stayed in it for a while. I would periodically have strange moments of meditation, I would be percieving sensation on my body and I would have a dual body phenomena where my mind would feel as though it was rotating about an axis at my spine, but I could feel my body staying still. Once I was so naseous after coming out of this that I wanted to run out and vomit, but couldn't get up. I started to have visual and taste sensation, I want to say hallucination but I knew they were not real, so it was sensation, everything from the sensual to the macabre, a pile of skulls with my face sensation merging with the visualisation, feeling like it was melting into the pile of skulls. Or the taste of a spectacular Malbec sitting on my toungue. At other times my mind would feel as though it was being wrapped in a wet blanket, and then another, and another, very heavy, it was a physical sensation though, the mind could still work, still analyse, but was somewhat distant. Distant from what though? Itself, what was I observing it with? Was this normal, should my sensations continue outside of the meditation, should the naseau occur, should the feeling of mental changes come, should my mind be constantly chattering or quiet, how can I change all this? Oh and I don't believe your philosophy.

The teacher asked a question today, and I responded, he went off on some tangent and I cut him off. I had said that my sensations were different today from yesterday, he started talking about not comparing, using the same words the taped teacher had used, and so I cut him off, I never said it was better or worse, only different, today I observe differently, no judgement.

Day 8: By now my roommate and I, had broken noble silence a bit, the odd phrase passed between us, and knowing he was having problems too made the time easier to bear somehow. Two more days. Oh and now they tell me the sensation I was having on day 6 was the "right" one. The direction the meditation should be moving in.

Day 9: One more day. Day ten is different, very different. Just get through this day. Just get through the afternoon, the evening is pleasant after all, in the morning, we can all talk. Ok sing Barrett's Privateer's again, no not that shit again! No please anything else. But I can't remember other songs, only fragments and the last thing I want is Boney M stuck in my head as I drift through the morraines of my mind.

Day 10: Just 3 hours meditation in the morning then Metta Bhavana, a new technique its soemthing to do, and then noble silence is broken. Just three hours. Ok, that's done, now metta bhavana, what the @#$% is this? Be peaceful, be happy, may all beings be happy and share in my joy? Infuse my sensations with a feeling of goodwill and love towards all. What the hell is this. Should I get up and dance to Krishna now? My god a day of this I'm going to go crazy. No, no, the days different, some time to chat, lunch, then the discourse on volunteering, then a short meditation session, then a book fair (I made a firm commitment to not donate and not buy anything... yet. Maybe later but I don't want to yet, this commitment was made early on, I had brought nothing to really shop with anyways), dinner, more meditation and some discourse, a summary of the course, and then done. No wait there's more in the morning by the way.
Day 11 (of the 10 day course): No sleep in, meditate at 0430, then another discourse, then metta bhavana (i.e. wishy washy vibration crap), then.. breakfast, then the buses and now, freedom. A chocolate bar, my e-mail, a letter, or 6 from Rebecca, and soon butter chicken and Naan. Then beer. Obviously I have had a lot of time to think about how I wanted to say some of this stuff.

THE PHILOSOPHY

The basic philosophy is one of "anicha" of the impernanance of all things. This needs to be deveoloped a bit though so bare with me.

First there are three teachings, these are the unobjectionable teachings of Guatama, the buddha. Sila, or morality, samadhi, or mental mastery, and panna, or wisdom.

We take five precepts, do not kill, steal, lie, take intoxicants or engage in sexual misconduct. I intend to break two of those tonight. You pick which. Sila is based on compassion for all living being and actions in accord with sila are those which do not harm, or benefit others, and those opposed to sila are those which do cause harm to other beings. To kill harms another, I take issue with this however as the line is arbitrarily drawn at killing animals. Why is a sea cucumber so different from a sea sponge? How do you draw that line. One argument was sentience but I have trouble seeing a sea cucumber, or a fly or even some mamals (even some humans) as being sentient. Yes they react to external stimuli, but so do plants. Where is the sentience? Especially in lower invertebrates which may have the most rudimentary of sense perceptions only slightly different from those of advanced plants. Or say we just go by the oil production destroying the habitat of animals, are they really willing to do completely without oil, their consumption continues to drive the killing process. And Goenka was very specific, eating meat, ordering it, killing, raising animals to be killed, or producing the implements are all equally in violation of the sila of not killing. Ok, ok, so it helps the meditation. How about lying? What if lying to someone will save them pain? Is this right or wrong in the end?

Also the compassion ethic doesn't extend into some realms, difficult decisions, the ones the ethics struggles to grasp with. If I have two sick patients who both need the same drug, I only have enough for one, who do I give it to? I have compassion for both, and any action I take causes harm, so how do I choose my action?

The only argument I heard which came close to resolving this in light of the philosophy presented, was that an enlightened person would know. A godhead, that their understanding is beyond the grasp of mere mortals and that until we reach that state we can't grasp the truth of morality. We might as well just put our faith in god and his rightness then and give up as far as I'm concerned. But as we are human and we "seek to strive and to never yield" we can't wait for a society made entirely of buddhas so we need to discover real workable ethics now.

Ok, ok ok, this is the philosophy. I don't need to accept it, just practice the technique but....

The technique is founded on the philosophy, so really you do need to accept it to have the motivation and understanding necessary to undertake the technique and further, Goenka says that the pactice of sila is the foundation sama samadhi, the proper type of smadhi which is necessary for panna, so in the absence of proper sila, with understanding and practice, one cannot practice the technique.

Ok, samadhi, focus on the breathing, anapana meditation. Turns out meditation is something I have been doing all my life and part of my epiphany was realising this. Its just focusing the mind, pano, singing, fencing, climbing, studying and training the mind for all of these, all meditation, all samadhi, not sama samadhi as they are not built on the foundation of good sila but samadhi nonetheless. Once I realised this samadhi was almost no problem. I had no teacher so I didn't know if I was doing it right, but hey, I did something.

Panna, wisdom, learning the truth within oneself, the truth of ones own reality, the absolute universal law of nature. I don't know which on it is, the truth within oneself or the absolute truth. The truth within oneself is relative truth, it cannot be brought out and shared with others, except by them experiencing it themselves, in their own way, and there is no way to objectively compare them.... hmmmmm. So we are being offered the truth, the absolute truth at a subjective level. Seems sketchy to me. But he, like all religious figures, has such faith in this truth that it is absolute and beyond question to him, it is absolute and I don't think he sees the conflict between his absolutism and the reletavism.

But what is the wisdom, the truth within oneself, and here the philosophy becomes more complicated, or something anyways. The truth is that we are a ball of sensory mind matter interactions. Fair enough. These interactions constantly produce sensation, pleasant or unpleasant, and we react to these pleasant or unpleasant sensations with craving or aversion. Ok, we like good things, don't like bad things, sounds reasonable. The basis of all misery is craving and aversion. Craving creates a pleasant sensation on the body, and we crave that sensation, in the absence of that sensation we have an unpleasant sensation so we develop an aversion to absence of the sensation which causes misery. With aversion I think it is apparent what happens.

All these sensations are impemanent, all the sensations, painful or pleasurable arise and pass away and are temporary, therefore it is not worth developing craving or aversion to a temporary phenomena. This is the core of the philosophy. Sila, Samadi, and Panna are all tools to develop the metal capacity to not understand but experience the truth of this anicha, impermanence.

Impermanence. This is where the elsewhere mentioned kaloppas come into play. The universe is made of tiny subatomic particles. Ok. Buddha could observe them. Riiiiiiiiiigggggghhhhhhht. With human senses he's able to percieve, directly, subatomic particles. These particles are called kaloppas and constantly come into existance and then pass out of existance, arise and pass away. Query: law of conservation of mass/energy? His justification is that a scientist in the US (unnamed but he got a nobel prize so he must be good) built a bubble chamber and found that these molecules arise and pass away 10^-22 times a second, the buddha said that in the time it takes to snap his fingers they would arise and pass away trillions of times. Since the buddha and this guy said the same thing then it must be true. Did they say the same thing? Is the period of vibration the same as coming into existance and dissapearing? Did the buddha misinterpret, and truly it is just their changing? All immaterial as the buddha's is based upon a theoretical, purely intellectual construction of the universe with noe direct observation. Goenka picked one observation which fit with his world view, ignored all the rest of the theory and experimentation, and expounded the truth. What a load of bollocks. Further, he goes on to describe the kalopas as earth, air, wind, water and fire elements interacting with mind elements and it is the concentration of these elements which causes sensation, spicey indian food has lots of fire kalopas, hence the hot feeling.

Two problems, the first is that this no longer fits with science, so trying to mesh the two seems a foolish proposition. The second is that no longer is his ethic internally consistent. Anicha, impermanence, no longer is true for everything as the quality of fire, earth, air or water in kalopas is permanent, although the molecule itself isn't the quality remains, so there is a level of permanence, a quality of permanence. If there is a quality of permanence in the physical world there is no reason to exclude permanence in the mental world, is there a quality, beyond my immediate sense perceptions and memory, that is me? Is this the foundation of ego and a validation of ego?

And this goes to the next part is that realising impermanence of all things physical and mental, the ego, the "I" to which I am attached is constantly changing, so what point is there having attachement to this "I", to the "me", why worry when something happens to a constantly changing identity:

a) Where does control of ones life come into this ethic. There is discussion about reacting equanimously, without generation of aversion or craving. This means that we take our emotion out of the question and we react with simple rationality. A loss of humanism in many ways, a loss of passion is explicitely stated. Perhaps a boring existence. But we are free from craving, and thus misery, and feel an eternal peace, calm and compassion towards all others, simply by calming ourselves.
b) Is there an eternal "I" quality which needs to be protected, as indicated there are flaws in his metaphysic.
c) What is the mind in the end? My experience is that we now have two parts of the mind, the sensations, the constantly arising a passing away mind matter interaction of the subconcious (to use Goenka's terminology) and a separate conciousness. We train the conciousness to observe the subconcious, to overcome the irrational craving and aversion generation and react equanimously. So this concious rational part is able to train the other part. But so far we have proof only that the subconcious is anicha, the concious follows rational laws, if these are impermanent, then the control and mastery and therefore the universal truth expounded is also impermanent, and its not really universal then.
d) Even if we grant that the phenomena is impermanent, impermanent on what scale, if we take a geological scale that is very significant for a human, and all his incarnations (lets leave that concept aside). If we deny the importance of any phenomena as they are impermanent, well that's just sad, humanity is impermanent so in spite of there being a path to freedom from suffering then we might as well just give up as even freedom from suffering is impermanent. If we accept that impermanent phenomena can be important then the ego, though impermanent, is still important. So many problems, so little time.

Freedom from misery, to expand a bit, stems from a certain theory of the mind, that the mind is the collection of our sense perceptions, and our conditioned responses and that as these are constantly changing, the mass that is ourself changes, arises, and passes away, there is no real "self" that one can identify with, there is no need for ego, no need for attachment to sense peceptions which arise and pass away. Anicha. Why worry about a pain if it is only going to dissaear in a few moments? The flip side is the necessity of awareness of this anicha, awareness of ones sensations to experience the truth of this statement, it cannot be intelectually accepted, only be experiencing the reality within, the reality of changing sense perceptions and their arising and passing away can one understand anicha.

I suppose that toall of this Goenka would merely reply that it comes from experience and I haven't the appropriate experience.

THE PRACTICE

Lets start by getting two niggling details out of the way. First the dogma that the technique cannot be wrong as it has worked for many people, thousands of people, therefore it must be the practice that is wrong, this was brought up time and time again, and is just a questionable statement. Millions voted for Bush so they can't be wrong? Or could this be another indication of the non-universiality of the technique and the truth that it shows, that in reality it is a subjective limited truth, hence it does not work for all?

Practice what you preach. Goenka claims that we should work with understanding, not blind devotion, but he disallows communication and discussion in anyway of philosophy and the basis for the technique. Totally a receptive one way street. Questionable at best, as well Goenka takls about how the knowledge must come from direct experience, when asked if he has reached the "goal" of enlightement he says that he is at the final stages and that he is confident that this is the right technique, the right path. But if he has not experience the final goal, if he does not have the experiential truth how can he be certain without blind devotion that he is on the right path and that this truth is truly universal?

Further on the practive what you preach, this pissed me off, he constantly knocks other sects for their symbolism, their imagery etc. Fair enough we all have problems, but the video about his "Dhamma Hill" outside Bombay looks like a video for a posh hotel the way it is shot, and the imagery, of sculptures in bronze, in stone, the gardens, it smacks of all the religious symbology he insults. Now he wants to build a golden rooved Dhamma Pagoda to allow thousands to meditate together and reach the heights and create a lasting monument to vipassana. By his own preaching vipassana is the monument to vipassana, it need no other monument than the happiness and enlightenment of humans. Questionable at best.

So how does one, knowing the philosophical basis, practice vipassana, what is it at its base level. Again sila and samadhi as described above, but further there is panna, the all important experiental wisdom which is what vipassana is, the technique for experiencing it. It consists simply of observation, constant observation of the mind-matter interaction at a subtle levelthroughout the body. What this ammounts to is awareness of small pains, the touch of your clothes, and subtle tingling sensations. But where do these come from? Are we actually sensing the nerves interacting with the outside world? Do we lower our threshold for concious recognition of senses such that random nerve depolarisations are no longer filtered out? Are we now at a level where we are seeing the background noise in the sensory cortex? Or is there an imaginary aspect, is this a subconscious imagination of the three dimensional spatial structure of the body that we have superimposed sensation upon, can we not understand the concept of no sensation and this is the bodies way of interpreting absence of sensation, much as when in a silent room you can "hear" silence? These are questions I have. The answer could be important to the next stage.

As you develop this sensation the next step is to develop "equanimity", observation and reaction to sensation with equanimity. In his language this means to observe and react entirely through the rational mind. What happens is as we become equanimous to sensation we stop creating new aversions and cravings and our old stock of craving and aversion comes to the surface, these are felt as painful sensations which, if we react equanimously, slowly arise and pass away and are burned away leaving us without craving and aversion and thus free from the source of all our misery.

I have a fundamental problem with this, what it ammonuts to is purification by pain. Pain from these past craving and aversions which we must, not ignore, recognise and not respond to, in order to cleanse ourselves of past aversion/cravings. We have taking all of our mental complexes, all our emotional problems and dumbed them down to sensation such that we can overcome them and let them melt away. I just don't accept that deep emotional and intellectual problems can be ignored as nothing more than a pain in the hip, that this will cleanse us of, oh to pick a random example, grad school. Surely, if it is the rational mind which controls, there has to be something more to understanding facing and overcoming our past than just, in essence, ignoring it. It seems an irrational way, for the rational overmind to respond, at least to me.

Just to re-iterate, the basis, the two wings of the bird as he puts it, are awareness, of the sensations which represent our cravings and aversions we want to train ourselves not to respond to and thus not create more, via equanimity. Awareness and equanimity to overcome all the past.

THE CULT OF VIPASSANA

If I ever form a cult I will model it on the Vipassana technique of indoctrination. Its amazing what they do, and they can justify it all in the sense that it aids our meditation.

Start off by taking a group of people already inclined to believe parts of what you say, people who have buddhist leanings or interests and are willing to listen to what you have to say.

Soften them up by a) isolating them from the external world, this includes isolating them from others in the meditation. There is no contact whatsoever outside the compound, no phone, no e-mail, no newspapers, etc. Moreover there is no reading material allowed, no books, nothing, and no journals no writing. Isolate them from the world of the camp, maintain strict "noble silence". No speaking, no communication by gesture, nothing, just pure silence. Even eye contact is considered verboten. This is ostensibly to give you a space in which to meditate and think, a space to clear the mind free from the distractions. It has the further effect of killing joy and mirth, for some reason people feel they must walk around with dour expressions on their face and their eyes downcast. There is even isolation from nature, although there are beautiful gardens to wander they are a small area and can only sustain interest for a limited time. Most of the day is spent indoors, in the dark and quiet of the Dhamma Hall anyways.

Note that this takes away all intellectual stimulation, except yours. There is no ability to discuss the philosophy or practice of what you are doing, there is no ability to refute or question the philosophy and religion, there is the ability to question the teacher on matters of technique, which in our case was a moot point as the teacher spoke only enough english to entirely misunderstand us and answer with either a) a repetition of exaclty what had been said in a lecture we had already seen ( i.e. we already knew and did not answer the question) or b) a pre-prepared speech on a completely different topic.

b) change their life patterns entirely wake them before sunrise, at earlier times than any will be used to. Disturb there eating patterns, change the times of the meals so that you don't eat significfantly after noon, breakfast at 0630 and lunch at 1100. Also snap people out of their vices, no sweets, no snacks, no smoking or other intoxicants. Further the diet changes with no meat, not as huge an issue but additive. No excercise is permitted whatsoever, weaken the body to weaken the mind. As days progress make slight modifications to the schedule, but don't tell people what is really going on until the last moment so there is no preparation, only obedience.
c) Give discourses every night when they are tired and beaten by a days meditation, they will be receptive, and will forget much by morning when they have the time and energy to think on the topics raised. Further carefully craft your discourses. Start off the first few days, before the conditioning sets in, with a healthy dose of common sense, things no one can object to. Good morals, not killing, not stealing, not lying, the importance of understanding ones mind and controlling it etc. Slowly progress and start to make outrageous claims, the mind observing the period of sub-aromic particles, the nature of earth, air, water and fire particles as the basis for all matter but throw in comments that although not entirely logical, and not entirely right on their own, are understandable and make a whole heck of a lot more sense than the other crap. Continue these discourses daily, and for the last three days talk about the importance of donation of time and money to further the work of the centre (although not the entire three days, definately large parts of three days worth of lectures), throw in extra lectures on the benefits of service.
d) Give a demanding schedule of idleness, idleness in one place followed by idleness in another, followed by idleness in a place of your choosing, all with nothing to do, all under strict supervision of students who have previously taken the course.
e) Give a feeling of lost freedom, through the schedule, through the loss of all usual activities, but more from reminding them that they have agreed to 10 days and they cannot leave. No they aren't prisoners, but you agreed to 10 days, you can't leave early.

And that, to me, sounds like a pretty well thought out and established way way to set up a cult.

THE END... just about

I think that's about it for my epistle on vipassana. I went in with certain ideas I must admit and that likely had detrimental effects on my experience. I didn't accept letting physical pain manifest all our emotional pain, I expected to be intelectually and emotionally facing my past in order to overcome it, not bypassing it. But then how was I to know that exploring my mind was only in as much as it interacts with matter?

Did I get something from it. Maybe. I wish I had left on the 6th day and headed to the Terai, but such is life, no point crying over spilt milk. I tried to get more out of the last few days, but really it wasn't happening terribly much.

I think that a combination of questions about the technique which could not be answered, and questions about the philosophy was too much. Its impossible to motivate oneself to practice diligintly and patiently when you keep thinking about what a heap of fecal matter it is.

Oh and if it seems I had a lot of time to think aobut stuff, I did. I wrote most if this in my head between the 6th and 8th day, the 9th was mostly counting down the time, and just one more hour, just one more hour...

I'm not sure about this hotel?

2005-11-16T03:48:00.000-07:00

So I switched hotels and now I'm just not sure about this hotel. The staff keeps bugging me, bed is maybe too wide, I'm constantly eating on their schedule, what they decide to serve me, being forced food and drink, the driver dropped me off yesterday a block away from my store, they turn down the bed but don't make the sheets and don't remove the hard reading pillows to make room for the sleeping pillows, the monkeys and pigeons are loud in the morning, and there's construction right next door, loud every morning and evening.

I've checked into the Indian Embassy, where Carol's Aunt and Uncle are, and were kind enough to invite me to stay. They have since been extra-ordinarily kind to me, have force-fed me more food than is reasonable for any human to ingest, ensured my laundry has all been done, given me free access to internet, local phone and just in general been more accomodating and friendly than you could imagine.

They were worried about the bed, that it would be too short, or uncomfortable, and offered me either of the other beds in the adjoining room, but lets be honest, the bed only looks short because it is a king bed and is wider than long, its just the right length for me, and ridiculously comfortable. They just fold the sheets at the bottom of the bed each night so I have to unfold them and curl under them, really no hardship.

Its been quite the time, tea on the verandah in the early morning, Colonel Chauhan's special Elam Darjeeling tea by the way, served to me on a tray as I read overlooking the pool that is frequented by monkeys and hawks, in the garden with the jungle behind. Spectacular food prepared by Daphne and the cook, and just generally relaxing. Unfortunately, the day doesn't start around here until about 10, lunch is around 2 and dinner late, late. So I am constantly in a rush for time to get those errands done. In this case the errands are re-organising my trip. There have been a few issues.

Ethiopia's out, too much civil unrest and I'm just not totally confident the society won't collapse in the next few weeks, the BBC has carried some stories on it, but it seems there have been protests about the election, and the government has responded by just shooting people in the streets. About 60 dead in the capital this last round. So I'm a bit hesitant to go. What's happening now? I'm going to dissapear for the next few days to do a course in meditation, then I will be off to meet Henry in Amman on the 30th (ish) of Nov, from whence we will run off to Wadi Rum to do some climbing and generally explore that area of the middle east, mostly climbing. Then the trip will resume as previously scheduled with meeting Rebecca, et al, in
Cairo for the Egypt to Zurich leg of the trip.

Now I'm trying to book myself into flights, there all booked, but it seems the name Colonel Chauhan, especially after he has introduced me to them, carries a lot of weight, they don't want to piss of the Indian Military and Embassy around here it seems, too much business at stake. Its fascinating to see this side of things, after being the penniless traveller on the run down busses, and especially from North America, it just doesn't seem that contacts will be able or willing to
do nearly as much for you back home.

As for another indian issue which Carol had warned me about, food. They are always worried it will be too spicey, but it never is, more importantly, they are worried that it will be not enough, so they keep stuffing it down your throat. I have eaten so much since arriving, appetisers, snacks, biscuits, and meals, I couldn't skip a meal if I tried, or even have a light meal, its impossible. I ate so much my first lunch, admittedly after trekking, and what not, that I was stuffed for 24 hours and still felt ill in the morning. All day, after the lunch, I was sleepy from too much, very good, food! And then at dinner they wanted me to have biscuits with tea before leaving, and appetisers before a "light" dinner. Oh, my aching stomach! But its been great, just its hard to say no more times than they give you dirty looks and encourage you to eat.

So back to my new hotel. The other side of things have been meeting the embassy-kept company. I have been able to meet a few interesting characters, and tonight I am off for dinner with one of them, a consultant, who studies mathematics at harvard and is a... interesting chap. Quite the perspective, and quite the ammount of information to share. He meditates daily, no point in calling him from 1400-1530 he says as he will be meditating, and he's keen to chat, so dinner tonight.

That seems to be my story, a new hotel with spectacular accomodation, I pray I haven't worn out my welcome, but they have been very helpful and welcoming, and great conversation, from the elite, the informed, those in the thick of the problems around here, quite refreshing after what had seemed to be quite a while of tourist chat, no information cause few actually go out of their way to educate themselves on the issues, beyond, do I have to pay the Maoists? So yes, this perspective has been quite engaging and refreshing.

Anyways, enough gushing about the my life in high society, tomorrow the austerities of a meditation retreat after all.

Bhaktapur

2005-11-16T02:31:00.000-07:00

Pokhara was lazy. Very lazy, trying to figure out what to do with the rest of the trip. Wandering, waiting for e-mails, and eventually just running away. The 8h bus ride to Kathmandu (about 200k on sealed roads is somehow a cause for an 8h bus ride) with my feet on the wheel well the whole way, now I'm not asking for too special of treatment, but the only tall white guy on the bus, you'd think they could get him the non-wheel well seat, with a little more leg room? No, assigned seating so there I was for the whole time. Oh well.

Then a cab straight to Bhaktapur, I had been told how great it was. Its another Durbar square, similar in architecture and feel, but I stayed a night so I got to see it after most of the tourists had gone home to Thamel for the night, and the vendors had closed up and things had generally quieted down, which was quite nice.

Its harvest so every surface is covered in grain, with old men and women stirring it with shovels and hoes. Through the squares you have to carefully pick your way down the narrow laneways in between the giant patches of grain left out to dry. Even potter square is now half potter/half grains.

And Bhaktapur is a bit bigger, the medieval architecture extends further, and there are about 4 major squares with temples on them, all in the pagoda style, all with intricate detailed woodwork. I had met another Canadian heading from Pokhara to Kathmandu in my hotel in Pokhara, he flew the lucky bastard, and so I took his reccomendation on hotels, his friend that he was travelling with is a native of Bhaktapur and he agreed to take me around and give me a bit more insight into the place. But other than details of centuries of construction, and some of the festivals, I got very little information from him that wasn't in the leaflet.

On the morning before I headed into the hurley burly of Kathmandu I was wandering and saw the aftermath of a sacrifice, at first all I saw was a headless goat, some kids pulling on a rope tied around its leg, I thought it was being slaughtered for food. Then I saw the alter, with smears, pools and rivulets of blood, and dead center, surrounded by bright flower garlands and marigolds on their own, was the goats head, staring blindly out into the street. Nor sure I'm terribly down with the animal sacrifice thing to be honest. So then to Kathmandu, Thamel, where I have changed residences. My first place was rather... spartan, it would have been fine but that it was dark and the cielings were only 6ft. cielings, which means that every doorway, and under every stairwell I had to hold a hand to my forehead to prevent from injuring myself. Nepali are definately shorter than me.

Annapurna... the wrong way

2005-11-11T01:29:00.000-07:00

I'm back, 17 days in the woods, trekking to the Annapurna Sanctuary/Base Camp, then around the circuit. For those in the know, my evenings were spent at Ghandruk, Chomrong, Dovan, Annapurna Base Camp, Bamboo, Chomrong (and Laundry), Deurali (in lieu of Ghorepani), Tatopani, Larjung, Muktinath, Muktinath, Braga, Braga (Millarepa's cave on my "rest day"), Chame, Dharapani, Bahundanda, back to Pokhara. For the rest of you... I hiked to base camp and then around the circuit. Over Thorung-La which is my new high point, 5413m above sea level, not that its much of an achievement with the old ladies whowere crossing it.

Now I have a feeling no one wants a blow by blow, 24h a day description of my 17 days of trekking, although this has kind of turned into that, so maybe a bit more detail on my favorite day, (in another post) and some generalities would be the ideal model? If you want the blow by blow I kept a detailed journal, you can read it, ifyou can get past the handwriting.

So two things need to be commented on, the first is Dal Baat. I had read with interest Henry's advice t some others of to the Himalaya, there is only one food in Nepal, Dal Baat, if they offer you anything else and say its nepali they are lying. I had horribly nightmares of eating, for weeks on end, nothing but watery Dal spread over rice, a monotonous diet of lentils and rice. Nothing could be more misleading. So yes, there were lots of lentils, and lots of rice, and dal and rice are the staples, but Dal Baat is a set with those two, plus pickles, potatoe curry and often fried vegetables. The key is that no two people can make it the same, and not like we all make
spagetti sauce a little different, but substantive differenecs in taste, and composition, the spice of the potatoes curry, wether it has cabbage or not, carrots or not, etc etc. The pickles are always
different and surprisingly even Dal can take on a plethora of incarnations given the chance! Who knew? Who knew? I had Dal Baat for 15 dinners and never had the same dinner twice, except when I had it in the same hotel twice.

Also spindrift is great stuff, when you are in the valley looking up at it on the mountain top. I doubt I would have wanted to be in the winds that were causing the spindrift off those high peaks but it is the most amazing stuff to watch I tell you. Its great in the sunrise especially, you see a puff of white as the snow blows off the ridge and it quickly catches the sinlight, reflecting it at you, so that the dark ridge, barely lit in the dawn, has suddenly a star gleaming from it. Or you can just watch as the puff of well lit snow, red in the alpenglow this time, blows out, forming, and reforming like a cloud, streaming out from the ridge. Love to watch the stuff; glad I wasn't
stuck in it!

So I did the trip up to basecamp, it startes in the jungle, climbs up into bamboo forests, through decidious forests and into the scrub. Then we hit the snow. Our departure was delayed two days as there was a nasty 3 day snow/rainstorm across all Nepal, I really had no interest in trekking in the rain, so we waited two days to head out, much to the Chagrin of the brits I headed off with as they were on a tight timeline. so we hit the snow of the sanctuary and I found the base camp, and sanctuary to be somewhat of a letdown. Too alpine, and as I mentioned earlier, big enough that perspective is lost and really it seems to be just big faces of snow and rock. The south face is impressive, and sunrise was nice, but its a static, white environment
under the snow, and they masses of toursists, who wouldn't shut up for a minute, were quite annoying, and kind of detracted from the "feel" of the moment. Then down, back through the forests with an awe inspiring view of the Modi Khola valley as it snaked away below us, through the canyon. Waterfalls everywhere, tiny, tricklng through the moss and leaves, and huge, falling thousands of feet of free fall below a snowcapped peak into the jungle.

Then hiking around across the front of the range through the jungles, until you reach Chitre and for an entire day hiking down 2000m through endless villages on a stone paved road, down steps which are not helpful, but wreak havoc on the tired knees, past kids who are so accustomed to tourists that they know immediately what to do "Namaste, scholpin", or "Namaste, sweet" or if they are in their teens "Namaste, hashish" (at least in this case they are offering for sale to make some money, not just begging). And the towns aren't towns, there are
the farmers but they seem to be unable to build on the trail by public ordinance, so the trail is lined by teahouses, lodges, restaurants, and other shops of interest to tourists, and they all want to be friendly, "Namaste, Tea sir?". What a tiring day, in the hot sun with all of that.

Now there are lots of places that you can see stuff, the locals, the real locals, not just the tourist industry, and especially at this time of year as the harvest comes in and they are threshing, or
cutting with their sicles, or sorting the grain from the chaffe. On the houses, corn hangs in the sun, hanging from the windows to dry, the rice is lying in the fields, either where it was cut, or in
curious hut shaped piles to shed the rain water and dew, the millet is spread out on the rooves to dry, some of the barley is in bottels, hanging from the windows in the sun to ferment to chang. Porters carry goods for the locals, and carry massive loads, as large or larger than them, of rice, straight from the fields, the yellow stalks poking out in all directions from the bundle slung around their forehead and on their backs. As you get lower families are crawling through the banana trees and orange trees picking the ripest fruits, which they promptly run over to sell to you. And the construction changes as you decend, from sturdy brick buildings, to keep out the
wind and cold to thatched rooves, and wicker walls, obviously in the warmed clims, to keep out the rain and keep cool in the day.

So then I stayed in a hotel with a palm tree in front of my room and hiked up the next day into less and less hindu country, through the jungle into what can only be described as a desert canyon until I found myself walking in the shade, pine needles underfoot and I looked around and thought... this is just like at home. Rocky, limestone peaks all around, lots of slab, with snow on the rock and the treeline extending pretty much right to the rock, below a coniferous forest in
a deep river valley. The differences were tangible, the size of the mountains, prayer flags on every roof, flat roofed, mud brick construction, and more importantly, people living in the mountains living on agriculture, growing corn, and millet in the mountains, but the feel, the smells and the sights were so similar, it looked like the hike up Burstall Pass.

This continue for some time, to the desert anyways, past Tukuche the trerrain changes from the coniferous forest with the odd apple orchard thrown in, to full blow, himalayan rainshadow, dust and dirt everywhere desert. And the comunities change too, from mostly hindu, to mostly buddhist. So now I was back in Tibet, Tibet the way I envisioned it and thought the Tibetans would develop, slowly, carfeully with a regard for themselves, and their way of life. There were small hydroelectic projects, and electricity runs right up to Muktinath, phone and internet have come, a road is being built, but there are still prayer flags and prayer poles on every house, the bridges are strewn with prayer flags and scarves, flapping in the wind, but unlike the tibetan side the wind is lacklustre here, inconstant, so the flags spend much time drooping sadly and
desolately.

So from Tukuche I hiked up to Muktinath, through the "Apple Capital of Nepal" Marpha, also known as Tibet R Us judging from the "Tibetan" hotels, souvenir shops, restaurants and bookstores. I think it was even tibetan internet and photocopying. Through this into Jomsom, which is a dusty town with a couple hotels spread about the airstrip, and some nice smaller "suburbs" to wander through on the way into town, and off to the side of the trail, and then hike up the wide river valley with sandstone cliffs on either side to Eklabatti, from here you get enticing views of the upper Mustang valley, for all intents and purposes off limits as it is a minimum USD700 entry fee for 10 days, a bit steep. Here there is an old Kingdom, invaded by
tibetan geurillas in the 50s I believe, it is one of the few mysterious spots left in Nepal. To me it just looked like a desert canyon, a small river, no good land for agriculture, with steep sandstone cliffs protecting either side of the canyon. I didn't see the appeal, cooking during the morning, choking on dust in the afternoon wind and freezing at night in a barren landscape? So up to Muktinath which is a community with a distinctly tibetan feel. On the last bit of trail the fact that it is a sacred valley becomes evident as Hindu pilgrims pass you by with marks on their forehead, having recieved their blessings. The buddhist pilgrims were either absent, or less conspicious on the trail.

So Muktinath, with Thorung-La in front of me, and a whole stream of people telling me how hard it was going to be. One man when I talked to him told me not to do it, as it is too difficult and not worth the hastle. Others, mostly Nepali, thought I was crazy as it was the opposite to what everyone else does. One guide recited the way to do it the otherway, including a rest day in Manang for acclimatisation, very important to rest in Manang, as though reading from a book with no understanding of acclimatisation whatsoever (I had just gone to basecamp at 4200m, and come from Tibet, I didn't need to spend time acclimatising at 3000m). Its too hard, its too dangerous, veryslippery.

Needless to say with all this buildup, although I found it cold, 7 in the morning, no sun with a strong cold wind blowing across the hard packed snow of the pass was not pleasant, I had to wrap a scarf around my face to keep off the frost bite, and it was steep, 1600m of ascent, it took me only 5 hours up the pass, no problem, and although I was doing the high altitude hike, 20 steps, then 20 steps of breathing, actually it wasn't that bad but I was going pretty slow for the last 200-300m of vertical ascent, considering that the slope lessened quite a bit at that point, it took me a long time to go the last bit, so in spite of these hardships, I continued on! It wasn't bad at all and Ihave to say for several reasons its probably the better way to go.

1) It is the appropriate direction for a Kora. Buddhists and Hindus do their Koras in a counter-clockwise direction, so unless you are aBonpo, going the way I did made sense and did not offend the gods.

2) The wind is better this way, although over thorung la I had a head wind which was sub-optimal, coming up the valley to Muktinath it was a tail-wind, this is where I had been warned about how bad the wind was and how most people stopped hiking at noon to avoid it, but this wayit was a tail wind, kept me cool and was not at all unpleasant.

3) The views. I spent my last day before Thorung-La looking up the Upper Mustang valley, glimpsing into the mysterious closed of kingdom. On the way down I spent my time staring at panoramic views of Annapurna's II-IV, Gangapurna, and various other mountains, the people
coming the other way had no view of the Upper Mustang, except over their shoulder, and would have been hiking into the most desolate, boring canyon in the world the whole way up to Thorung-La, just not right.

I ran into a dutch traveller, his 5th time on the circuit, and he agreed that, if you were in shape for it, the way I did it was better, the only reason he was doing it the normal way is that he was taking two weeks to explore the villages around Manang. So since one guy agreed, and the rest were either out of shape or ignorant, I claim victory. I climbed the right way!

So over Thorung-La, to Braga that night, a long day, I arrived as the last of the sun was fading, a great place to stay though, recommended to me by a Russian, now living in New York, who had stayed there and thought it was great. I went to Millarepa's cave, through a pile of soft powder and had stupendous views of the face of Annapurna III. The next few days were spent walking out, my feet had gotten some bad blisters from all the downhill, my boots are great for the approach and the ascent, but on descent they can get a bit uncomfortable. Unfortunately in the Himalaya, the descent can be 4 days or more. Also my climbing mentality seems to have shut my brain off after Thorung-La, for me, at that point, the climbing was over, the trip was done, so I was on auto-pilot heading down the hill. Besides it was the least awe-inspiring part of the trip, after the views from Kalopani, from Deurali, from Annapurna Base Camp, and even Muktinath,
the views here were substandard by comparison, small, non-dramatic, and a road being built through the nicest remotest parts stole from the mood.

So base camp and around Annapurna backwards. Some Nepali influence, a few Russians, one American, just one, lots of French, and Dutch (theyare everywhere with their snootiness and windmills respectively), and some big, big mountains.

Bestest Day

2005-11-11T01:27:00.000-07:00

The best day I had was day 7 I believe. The night before I checked into the International Geust House in Chomrong, I was fast so I checked in around 1100, planning to go no further, to do my laundry etc etc. A relaxing afternoon, some reading, and to bed. Chomrong was one of my favorite places on my trip, I stayed two nights and immensly enjoyed the view both times. What I love about the Himalaya views is that it is not a mountain on its own, it is a giant pillar of rock and snow which grows straight out of dense jungle, on the ridges in front of these mountains are infinite terraces with a varieaty of crops growing, and ripening, and that to me, is the magic of the Himalaya, its not the mountains, or the size, they look like the rockies in a lot of respects, only bigger, and even the size is of such a scale that as you get closer the mind cannot truly comprehend how big it is. 2km of rock looks a lot like 4km of rock when you are standing below it. Its really this living mixture of jungle, agriculture, and holy moutains that make the Himalaya so spectacular.

Now I had gotten the sweetest room in the place. The lodge is built on the top of a ridge facing the Annapurna Range, and my room was one of two built above the dining room, which was built on stilts out from the ridge. As there were the two rooms side by side, and the climate is warm, and they were jutting out, I had two walls of nothing but windows, a 180 degree view, from Macchupuchhre (fish-tail mountain) over to Annapurna S, and the night before I had taken down the curtains. So as the first rays of sun woke me I just lay in bed, without moving, and watched the sunrise over the Annapurna range. From the dusky colours of dim light through to the bright oranges and reds of the alpenglow and then the shadows and light as the low lying sun falls on the flutings and ridges, but is too low to cover thewhole face.

Breakfast, some farewells and a book trade (very important to find people to trade books with as often as possible, in this case good book, Dalrymple's From the Holy Mount, for Herrer's Seven Years in Tibet) and I was off. The hiking of this day was glorious in its variety and beauty. I started off by a stiff hike around Chomrong's ridge, through the fields of rice, the lower ones yellowing with ripeness, the grains falling heavily, the stocks drooping, but higher up the hill the rice was still growing, bright green, straining upwards, through millet and a large ammount of animal pastures, buffalo everywhere, no cows, but buffalo. I hiked through this and then down, into steep canyons where there is no point in agriculture, and here it turned to the thick Nepli jungle, green, and thick. Through a variety of this Jungle, into some flatter areas where small
towns cling to tiny plots of arable land, and the every present tourist lodges, friendly towns, where you walk through peoples front years, just because they have built their houses right on the trail, and the gate around their property encompasses the trail so there is no option. Friendly "Namaste"s all around, a few brief conversations with people who were friendly, curious and probably just wanted to practice their English. And then, just before Tadapani, as I hiked up to the top of the ridge, panting and sweating in the heat of the jungle, I came across a troop of monkeys.

A group of monkeys just sitting back, chillin in the woods having lunch. I scared a few away, as in they were using the trail and as I continued along the trail they ran off to one side, but mostly I
stopped, watched and photographed. They sat, watched, ate and jumped. It must be said that at first I didn't see the monkeys, I heard them, more accurately I heard the trees as they jumped from branch to branch. They can move, but mostly its surprising that they never end up on a branch that is too thin and go flying to the ground, I geuss years of practice will prevent that. They were spectacular to watch, but when I arrived at Tadapani, all excited to have seen these monkeys (and have just finished off my memorycard photgraphing them) the lodge owner was less than impressed, they have a tendancy to eat her vegetables it seems so they are less the cute lovable, if tick infested, animals I had just watched eating, running and listened to as they grunted and burped, they were a nuisance and nothing else. Damned tourists like them but I'd kill em all if I could was the subtext.

So brief stop in Tadapani which also has lovely views of the Himalaya, lovely but I was on a mission, to Deurali, so I continued on, down, steeply down into a valley whose characteristics were completely different from the forests and jungle of the morning. No agriculture here, none whatsoever, as I descended through decidious forest with steep cliffs making up the canyon walls, no room for agriculture and so I was in tourist land again, the only people living here are the ones crazy enough to want to cater to tourists all the time. Down into this which was just spectacular, its autumn in the himalaya and this whole canyon was in full autumn mode (I have to say Autumn as no one here had a clue what I meant when I called it fall). And because of the 500m of elevation I was constantly going up and down through I was constantly through various levels of autumnal change, in the lowlands it was but a couple of trees, bright greens all around with just a few trees who had changed to bright red, stark contrast. Or trees that were still green, but whose vines had turned to read giving the tree a look as though it was on fire and the flames had yet to reach the foliage at the top. Higher up, everything was yellow, and read, I walked on a trail coated with a bed of fallen leaves and all around me was a canyon in the last stages of autumn, a creek flowing through the bottom of the canyon, and steep walls, and rockfaces toeither side.

Finally I topped out at Deurali, I wasn't terribly impressed. Its a small place, poorly developed, nestled in the trees with no real view. Ok, Tika (the guide with whom I had gone to the Basecamp) had said to stay here as nearby was a tower with good sunrises. Sure sure, so I stayed, and sat for the afternoon sunbathing, and then in the evening I huddled around the fire for a bit of warmth. I had the lodge to myself and asked them not to start a fire but they had already, so what was I to do. The couple who ran the lodge were very friendly, the husband sat and chatted with me for a while, and the wife took an almost maternal worry for me, offering food as soon as I arrived, and always on the look out to see if I needed anything (I'm sure in no
small part motivated by the thought of another sale, but still very friendly). Then after stuffing myself on Dal Baat to bed, a nice warm bed with full length covers, most covers are nepali length which leave either my shoulders or my feet uncovered, but here, they were Mark length, no cowering in the fetal position to get coverage, this way I could stretch out and enjoy the sleep.

About a half an hour before dawn I was woken by a friendly knock on the door and a "Namaste". I was already awake and knew what it was for. I pulled on some clothes, loosely tied my boots, threw on my down jacket and headed out of the room, the husband was waiting and although he didn't come with me he guided me to the right path, its not well marked and splits off among the few terraces and pastures the hotel families run, so he gave me some guidance and up I went, a good 15min winding before breakfast straight up hill hoping to catch the first light from the tower. And soon I made it to the top of Deurali Hill, and up the tower. Its not Poon Hill, lets start with that, I think its lower, but the locals claim that it has better views than Poon Hill at sunrise (sunset is better at Poon Hill) and I was gloriously alone, except for a man who came for about 5min, snapped two photos and ran, I had an hour to revel in the sunrise, alone, andwhat a vista.

From where I stood on the tower I had a spectacular idea of the Nepal, not just the moutnains, or the hills. To the East I could see down to the Terai, the plains that make up the border with india. Low, flat and slowly growing into some small undulating hills, its all dark, the sun hasn't reached this low yet, further North you see the hills grow, almost imperceptably, from nothing more than a ripple to nothing more than a slightly bigger ripple. Then come the foothills, not much, and not a subtle change, nothing in the Himalaya is terribly subtle. From these ripples grow ridges, only one or two running along the himalaya tall and green, covered entirely with vegetation and then immediately behind them the mountains, 4 or 5km of rock and snow higher than these ridges, sudden, abrupt, massive. And the first moutnain you see on this chain is Macchupuchhre, no slouch of a mountain, short but a peak of unusual type for the himalaya, steep on all sides, not a lump, but 4 faces to a steep summit. As you pan around then you get a view of the whole of the Annapurna, a glimpse of Gangapurna, the top of Annapurna 1 poking out, Hiun Chuli and Annapurna S, then a canyon,wide, and deep, a put of nothing, and the steep face of Dhaulagiri.

Dhaulagiri was the most impressive Himal I saw, it's part of a range, but not. It is one of the few I saw that was not a ridge with many peaks, one of which just happens to be 200m higher and thus the main summit, an entire ridge of "Same same". Daulahiri stood on its own, a face rising up from the 1000m above sea level canyon to the height of the mountain at 8167m. An icefall which must have been over 1000m, crumbling glacier falling down the ravine. Sure there are other peaks associated with Dhaulagiri, Tuckiche, but the pass it looks like a part of the N ridge of Dhaulagiri more than a separate mountain, or Manapath, which I only really now notice on the map. In short, quitethe peak to catch a first glimpse of.

So that's how I passed the hour, watching the sunrise over the Terai, sillhoueting the tiniest of variations in landscape, the alepnglow onthe mountains, and just admiring Dhaulagiri for the first time.

Lunch with the sub-continent

2005-10-21T08:49:00.000-06:00

So Carol was kind enough to set me up with a local, her aunt and uncle, he just happens to be living in Kathmandu as the military attache to the indian embassy. So I was picked up at my hotel by their car to be driven up to the embassy, through heavily fortified gate and through the manicured grounds to the turn off for "Colonel Chauhan" as it was boldly labeled on the gate to his driveway. Then you drive around small driveway circle to the front of a stately colonial house, built in the 1800s, and slated for demolition and rebuilding. Inside you wouldn't know, as, in defiance of a lack of money for the upkeep of the house the Chauhan's have taken care to restore the place to what probably resembles its old magnificance. Whitewashed walls, with lush furniture and intricate throw carpets. Yet still they have maintained some modernity in the style of furniture, and the decor in general. Quite a lovely place.

But I am ahead of myself. I finally met Daphne, Carol's Aunt, and was welcomed warmly into the sitting room where I met Colonel Chauhan, and a gentleman whose name was lost on me two seconds after it was told to me, a human rights inspector from the UN, who it turns out is a pakistani expat. We sat and opened the chatting, small talk and big talk. Everyone in Nepal, local and expat, is excited to hear about Tibet, my impressions and my experiences. Also its hard to get in from Nepal so they were curious as to how I did it.

As the afternoon progressed Cabbie and his wife and son came, he runs a bar in Kathmandu, in Thamel, and she cooks when everyone goes home for Dasain. She hates it and made sure, lightheartedly, we all knew about her hardship the previous weeks. As well we were joined by an advisor and editor, I believe, for the Himalayan times, a local newspaper.

So there we were, India, Pakistan, Nepal, and the poor whiteboy sitting aroud chatting, eating the endless hors d'oeuvres as we awaited our lunch. We moved into the dining room and the timbre of the conversation shifted to a more serious discussion, and here I got to learn about the current politicians in India, the interactions between India and Pakistan, the Maoists, the role of military service in a young man's life, and the role of national military. All from the most fascinating of perspectives.

Needless to say I could not sit silent and just listen so I had to prod. I am ignorant about the subcontinent in reality, so I cannot comment too much, but... the north american issue I have watched somewhat and can comment. There is one of two things happening, either a) I am overly cynical, or b) they over-idealise. The discussion came down to the american system of democracy, and the benefits of it. I was arguing that the liberty which exists, and the control of government, are carefully crafted illusions. They argued that at least there was the chance to change things. I'm not sure, I'd like to think it is true and definately the rhetoric is that it is
possible, but I just don't see it in practice, outside the rhetoric, that the US, and Canada, is anything more than modern feudalism, where the aristocracy are the corporations and the king is replaced by a government, hereditary with approval of the corporation. I just don't think that the ideal that was spoken of is there, and I applaud the american government for its ability to fabricate, disseminate and enforce this illusion internationally.

Anyways, it was a fascinating discussion of the sub-continent, details, I don't know. The indian president is from a poor family, so there is optimism that his skill is what got him there, and this is what he will be able to use to improve the country. The military is necessary as they are the only ones who could do anything during the recent natural disasters, which argues for the maintenance of a disciplined body of young labourers, but not for the maintenance of a fighting force. Various things like this.

And the food was spectacular. What? Well the world famous Chauhan Chicken Biryani was reat, the rest is lost on me. But there was an excess of everything, and an excess of great dessert. Just spectacular!

Durbars and Magic

2005-10-21T08:26:00.000-06:00

So every town in the Kathmandu Valley has a Durbar Square, at least the three big ones which were the palaces of the Malla kings do anyways, Kathmandu, Patan (which is really just a suburb of Kathmandu these days) and Bahktapur. I made it to two of these, Kathandu and Patan.

They are remarkably similar. At both, as soon as you enter, you are harrassed by gentlement with guns desirous of your money. Then you walk in and are harrassed by people who want to be your tou guide, and usually persistent enough that they aren't interested in hearing that you don't want them to be your guide, and definately more persistant than a friendly "No Thank You" will cover. And then as you walk about you are constantly harassed by more tour guide types. Its great fun! All the nearby shops are now tourist shops selling Thankas and various "tibetan" arts and crafts, as well as all the usual Nepali stuff. Then there are the endless tables of cheap gifts which spring up like eternal wells, from any holy site, or site of touristic importance.

So because of all this the historic and religious significance is somewhat lost. Partly through ignorance on the tourists part, the lonely planet has some info, and the tour guide touts spew out useless information which doesn't help. Then much of the interesting stuff is closed to tourists, the hindu temples and the palaces are museums which require paying more to get into.

Now that's not to say there aren't interesting elements, but I am at a point where one more temple is just getting to be that, one more temple, with hordes of tourists passing by.

The most striking thing to me was the woodwork detail which is present on these temples, ancient woodwork, much of it is simply ornamental, similar to the celtic knots, sometimes with the inclusion of plants in the structure. Other is more striking, images of gods, images of warriors. Everywhere there are four multi-armed statues attached to the columns, swords in each hand, most broken off with time, and probably some element of vandalism. The woodwork is really spectacular, both in its intricacy and the ammount of this work which has been amassed in the durbar squares.

The temples themselves are interesting, mostly in a pagoda-esque style, but really not that stunning to be honest. They are not huge, nor are they truly unique, although they each have elements, this is the oldest 5 story pagoda in the valley, at what point are we just splitting hairs to find some way in which it is the most important. They are old, the squares date from the 15th and 16th centuries in large part, and the stupas surrounding the Patan square were supposedly founded in the 5th century, if I remember rightly. I did as the lonely planet said, and I rose up on one of the temples to just let the day pass me by. It is Dasain, one of th emajor
festivals, so the square was busy with locals, but more so it was busy with tourists buzing about, however, there were two notable things. The first is that in spite of the age of this place, and the religious significance of the shrines, this is a market, a living centre for a community, much as the temples of the middle east must have been before Jesus cast out all the evil people who admitted religion into their everyday lives (yeah, I said it). Sitting on the temples are men and women who just came and want to rest. Lying down and napping are any people who just want to have a quick nap. Its not a problem, its just a part of the life of the community. In front of ancient statues, in the middle of the square, old ladies have spread blankets and upon them are neat piles of vegetables, green leafies, peppers, cucumbers, tomotoes and others are all neatly placed in small piles awaiting sales. Families, with baskets of flowers sit together stringing them into necklaces. Beside them sit the piles of garlands awaiting sale that day, bright red and oranges mixed together on the blossoms. Across the street, are men lined up with ducks and roosters for sale, wicker baskets and wire cages stuffed with poultry await, or upturned cases with the ducks proudly walking on top of them display the wares. Some of the people with less to sell carry the roosters by the feet, one or two in each hand, holding them up for prospective
shoppers to inspect.

The second is a part of the first, its still that this religion is just a part of the life of the people. ALthough I am sure it was busier for Dasain, it did not require arriving promply at 0900 for
someone else to lead you in devotion and for hours people streamed by on their own, or with their family to pay respects to one or another image, to put red dye on them, to say a prayer or light a candle. The bells are run constantly, there is a dysrithmic ringing throughout the square from people paying their respects.

But there are the ubiquitous tourists, blatant, rude, obtrusive. As the lonely planet says to sit and take in the life of the Durbar, everyone does, but just two blocks away, right around the corner, are the Nepali's living life out of the shadow of the tourist industry, and the whites don't venture there, the lonely planet doesn't seem to think it is worthy. But here you can sit and truly watch the market, curious kids may approach and sit next to you, but if you are just sitting and relaxing on the steps, no one will both you, and you are, I suspect, not bothering anyone. Here you can watch the locals huddled around a chalk board on the ground playing games, and you can see the bustle of a roundabout cum market, or the people wandering quietly by the other shiva shrine, all without being harassed and without harassing.

And perhaps this was the best part of the days, wandering away from the tourists in the areas beyond the Durbar square, they are neat, but they just do not have the commanding presence, the majesty, or the serenity that characterises other sights. They are not there to command the imagination of the people, so much as to be a part of the life of the people, a life which is disrupted constantly by the click click of shutters, a life which seems to have been moved two blocks away to more peaceful environs. So no there is not the same intricate woodwork around, but there are people. No there isn't the same giant shrine, or endless rows of pagodad roofes, but there is an old building lining the other side, and a narrow lane of shops extending away perpendicular.

From Durbar to Durbar, and Thamel to Durbar, and from Durbar to Thamel, the foot can show you an infinite number of treasures. Notably you get to wander through the tortuous alleys that are Kathmandu, and get lost in the dead end of a giant courtyard to an apartment block that looks like a through lane from afar. You get to see the shops of Kathmandu, where not everyone sees you as a bag of money, but as soon as you stop there is someone willing to help you. And then at some point you stumble across a great white spire, which looks oddly like it should be on a rocky promentory on the coast, in the middle of a grassy field. There is the river, muddy, grey and dirty, slowly trickling through the trash of the city, but on either side is lush vegetation, fed by the river and the rains. This dirty river leads to the oddest phenomena, the rich houses are not waterfront, riverfront properties, but rather it is the slums which are on the waterfront. Then for a while there are no houses on one side, just fields, in the middle of the city, or rather towards the edge there are the fields of grain being harvested, the workers bent over, sickle in hand, to gather the stalks, others carrying, the community working to harvest the fields together.

Night comes as the walk continues and a whole new city pops up around you. Hot food vendors pop out of the woodwork everywhere, and the shops look so different by lamplight. Even the roundabout/grocery stores have a different feel in the dark, there is nothing sinister about it, just a warm glow. The old woman is now selling her vegetables, not by the light of the sun, but by the light of a bare bulb, the bare bulb lighting the store across two lanes of traffic from her. Now the roosters and ducks are placated and calm, not running around. But the people are more alive, it seems an urgency has entered their steps, rather than the relaxed business pace, they
now have a rather excited step. Like they are excited to pick up something for dinner that night, that they look forward to getting home and relaxing, or that they are just happy to be out wandering.

Then there is the magical moment, comes when you turn a corner and are in the right position, and its not cloudy and all of a sudden as you wander around some stupa, you see in the distance the Himalaya. The Stupa is beautiful, but its beauty is accentuated from curiousity to commanding by a backdrop of giant mountains. But they are not peaks and valleys, they are enormous ridges of rock and snow extending across the horizon. It is also not the rounded snow we are used to, it is a jagged, fluted snow, hanging off the faces and glaciers in what, from this distance, looks to be an impossible position. I read in Annapurna, by Herzog, that he had asked a question before leaving of some of the previous expeditions, he said that the Himalaya had been so built up, and he was worried that he would be dissapointed; that they could not live up to the expectation. Was it possible that he would be dissapointed? I can now imagine the look on the face of the respondent. He would pass through numerous emotions, a blank expression as his mind returns to that first magical moment, laughter as he considers the absurdity, pity... and a simple word would be all the necessary answer, "no". I think you would have to be truly dead
in some way to not see the greatness of these mountains, rising so imposingly out of a lush green valley, a hint of red upon them as the sun begins to set. Yes you will be impressed, and yes that french expedition was.

So that was the moment. After time wasted, wandering through Thamel being harassed, not wanting to get on a crappy bus, I had to go, and it did not matter the bus, or the difficulties, I had to go. So now, after wasting far too much time reading, and being whigny and just wasting time in Kathmandu I am no in Pokhara, off to the mighty Himalaya, as soon as the rain clears up. (21...ish days if I can hack it, 8 or 10 if I am a wimp. To the Sanctuary then up to Jomsom and back if you must know).

Kathmandu

2005-10-17T01:28:00.000-06:00

The big K,

Its quite a shock after Tibet... There's trees, and humidity. Quite shocking and its the first thing that hits you when you step off the plane, all of a sudden, as the door opens a wave of warm, humid tropicalesque air hits you. A brief kafuffle at immigration gets you a visa, and by kafuufle I just mean that no one knows what they are doing or where they are going, so you get in line, then go back to get the other form, get your money changed into american (cause they just
don't take their own currency for anything substantial around here) wait in line, and then you are through. Just the usual really. Then out and a cab, lots of promises but nothing comes through in the end unless you fight, like a 100 rupees refund because I shared my cab to a hotel and the cab should have been free anyways for those people, but they forgot and the guy who was with us managed to quickly disapear. Then of course the price of the room is always open for
discussion and debate, but hard debate. Somehow being a student doesn't get you any slack. But I settled into a room that not only has a bed, but has a hot shower, on couple of occasions I have even had to turn on the cold water to balance it out!

After China and Tibet its a noticeably Hindu kingdom. Women in Saris are the overt fashion statement but the festival of Dasain was in full swing so many walked around with Tikka on their foreheads, the paint which signifies a blessing from an elder I am told. Mostly it has a mix of the tropial and the dirty. Trees and beautiful gardens are mixed with the refuse of a crowded city. People abound and it looks in large part like the images from india, of poor cities with dirt roads, people everywhere, carrying chickens to market in baskets. Street corners are the markets where women will lay out their goods, vegetables of numerous sorts, men with roosters and ducks for sale and some of the streets have butchers selling from no more than a table in the street, a whole pigs head waiting for someone to stew it. There are faces everywhere, peering out from the doors of stores, from the upstairs windows, and everywhere on the crowded streets, each brought out by the bright colours of the clothes and hats of the person whoseface you are seeing.

So from the hotel I went for a walk and in my first day I managed to meet: three friendly kids from 6-14, and a guy at the end of high school. They have all just started the holidays. I wandered south in Thamel and came across the Stupa just south of Thahity Thole (for those in the know) and wandered into the courtyard where I was accosted by these three kids wanting to know where I was from, my name, and guess what, Canada was their best country, as everyone knows someone in Canada, somewhere. So they started to show me around, to introduce to to the monestary beside the Stupa and then to wander, aimlessly, through Thamel with me as I tried to get the lay of theland.

Lets start with that, the place is somewhat crazy, a maze of streets built around courtyards, ending and weaving around random buildings, all with no street names and all a bit intimidating to the poor white boy who grew up with a grid layout to his city! But its small enough and you soon get your bearings and it all fits in in a certain way. In short you quickly find it possible, if not necessarily easy, to find your way around. But what happens is constant harrasment. Thamel is, too put it bluntly, the tourist hole, of Kathmandu. Most of the hotels, most of the restaurants (western style anyways) and a fecal matter load of trekking agencies. So who comes to Thamel
besides tourists? Those wanting the money of the tourists, the flutesalesmen, the snake charmers and the jewellery salesman, but what's worse, those who try to conceal their intentions by being friendly. Now the formerly described can for the most part be brushed aside with a polite "No, Thank You" and they will just wander on to the next person, but there are two violators of this code of conduct. The first will ignore your "No, Thank You" and persist, pushing themselves on you, or becoming beligerant. These make it hard to be nice to the next guy who politely tries to get your attention. Then others will disguise their intentions behind false politentess, they try to engage you in conversation, where are youfrom, how long are you here for etc, or even better I know many capitals, ask me any country I'll tell you the capital. Then it comes to the truth and they want you to buy them milk, or food, or just want money, or what is most galling of all, they want to sell you a trek. I wanted to take a day and see in one day just hw many trekking agent cards I could collect, but then I realised that was just a horrible waste of time so instead I did... nothing.

So why is this so galling to me, at first it was just an anoyance to be ignored but then I met this high school student, and the reason I stopped was that his starter was different. "Excuse me can I ask you a question?". Ostensibly he wanted to know why none of the white people would talk to him, so I explained how any people there were just trying to get something from you so you put up blinders and ignore them, a no thanks and keep walking. He was friendly though so I sat down to chat, and his cousins came by (he was waiting at their jewellery shop) and eventually I was invited to their place for dinner, which sounded a great idea for the following night. I accepted and came bck, we went for a quick drink, and then to their house, and this was actually fascinating for the "poor white boy" (yes Carol) who had never seen this type of hierarchical family in action. The youngest did the work while the oldest sat and rested, as a geust I got to rest the entire time. It seemed that the oldests job was just to hand out money. And it did not matter if he was the absolute patriarch (it was a bachelor pad after all, just a bunch of guys living in the big city), it was just who was the oldest in the house at the time, as when the older cousin, "the boss" came home everything changed, seats were moved and all of a sudden it was him handing out the money and I can only assum, the orders as to what to buy. And the food was great, curried potatoes, daal and chapathis, simple but tasty. Now the problem is as the evening progressed and the rum (I had brought a bottle of rum as it was thanksgiving night in Canada and you can't stay completely sober at a thanksgiving dinner can you?) was consumed the issue of business came up. They tempted me with offers of several tens of thousands of dollars, all I had to do was take Jewellery back to Canada. Oh and its totally legal don't you know? Knowing there was something excedingly fishy, but drunk enough to entertain the thought I brushed them off, and I was invited to their store for tea the next afternoon. Needless to say when I arrived discussion quickly turned to business and they wouldn't accept no for an answer, as its
totally legal. Now either a) they think I am stupid or b) they are honestly misinformed as to the legality. Now if b) they are bad businessmen as there is no need to pay me as much as they were going to pay me, to do something totally legal (I was garaunteed $10 000 US for doing nothing more than, when I return to canada, picking up a package they would ship to me (or rather I wouldship to myself but they would pay the costs) and giving it to them during their next visit, and I would have to invest nothing.) So I fall on a). They need someone stupid though to smuggle their jewellery, or more likely drugs, for them. Needless to say I have bee avoiding that street, and especially that store, since then. So this is what makes it so galling, that hours down the road it turns out that they are not friendly at all, but that they want you as a coke-mule. It makes it
very hard to trust any Nepali who opens a conversation with you after that, and you can see it in the wariness of short-term travellers in their interactions with any local.

But back to the kids, they followed me around, and I had to stop them at one point and make sure that they knew, absolutely knew, that I was not going to pay them for showing me around, or pay for anything for them. I felt bad saying it but you have to eh? But they had no problem with that and insisted on meeting in the morning and going to the local temples, so in a busy busy day they rushed me to the Swayambhunath, aka the Monkey Temple, Bodnath Stupa and the
Pashupatinath temple. But even more while wandering the previous day I ran into my first holy man, who offered me Tikka and a flower on my head, I said no, he came closer, said no, he suddenly brought up his hand and deftly rushed a flower and painted my forehead. I had just
gotten off the plane and I had no small bills, but what's more, I told him no, so I had to explain that I had no money, and there was no way in hell I would pay him. As we walked away my little guides called him a bad man, asking for money after that is just not kosher with the locals. The next "holy man" I ran tried the same, but I grabbed his arm and pushed him away as he went for my forehead. I thus escaped unschather.

But the nex morning, after a steak dinner with yet another dutch couple, I met my young guides and we chatted a bit. We went over my travels on the map, and over where in Canada Calgary is. Then Soroj, Bikash and Bishal and I headed off for the day. We started with the walk to the monkey temple, from Thamel its a short walk through some more interetsing parts of the town, to the base of the 365 stair staircase which leads to the Stupa sitting atop. The place is knicknamed the Monkey Temple though for the innumerble monkeys which inhabit the grounds, neat for me as the only monkey I have seen were few and in a zoo, these monkeys were everywhere and quite noticeably not behind glass. But the order of the day is to keep a sharp eye out to keep them out of your pack. Its not the locals, but the monkeys that are the pickpockets here. So you walk up the stairs, past statues, through the lush forest until finally you reach the top and are astounded by the giant gold stupa sitting in front of you, with so many shrines to everyone around it its hard to keep track, and of course the inevitable souvenir sales tables. Then you turn around andwhat greets is a view back across the Kathmandu valley.

Of course I walked around, past the lamps, past the statues that in the end have no meaning to me except a certain aesthetic pleasure, dividing my time between an extesnive view out the valley of the poorly built houses sticking out of the greenery and the gold and buddhas of the temple. We descended the back way, past prayer flags and the monkey pool, unfortunately they were not playing that day, down around several more temples and monuments, to a lookout populated by monkeys and little else where we were able to see more of the valley and then down and out, to another Stupa, a gian buddha and akora with a pile of prayer wheels to be spun for world peace.

We wandered a while, past a public water fountain where a family was washing up, and on through to finally catcha cab to Pashupatinath. As you may be able to trell its all becoing a blur of one temple after another, but Pashupatinath has a few things which make it different from the other temples, notably it is the place where the hindus come to cremate their deceased relatives. The smell of the smoke, a little off from the smell you would expect, greets you long before you get to the site itself. Then of course the necessary "guides" greet you at the door, they harassed me as I was with these kids and didn't need there services. But they wanted to walk me into the cremation area, akin to tourists buzzing around the open casket, so I'm not sure how much I respect the "guides" around here. Tourists of course also did their usual thing. There is a resting spot, up on a hill across the river, and tourists sit and wait, telescopic lenses in hand, trying to
get the perfect shot of someone being cremated, or of their ashes being pushed into the holy river. I just hope that a poor hindu shows up at their family funerals with camera in hand and starts snapping away, just to have something for the photo albumn.

The temples themselves are closed to tourists, hindus only, but we could walk around the outer area, past the many, pretty much innumerable, shrines to Shiva, past another Shiva temple, and then out to the river on the road to the Bodhi stupa. The contrast palpable as we walked past a wedding, here at the other end of the crematorium/shrine. So through the poor streets of Kathmandu, past villagers living in shanties on the edge of cultivated fields we wandered up to the largest Stupa in Nepal, a giant mass of white with its eyes gleaming down upon you, its funny crooked nose, in the shape of the Nepali one, and attention always drawn to the neatly strung prayer flags. But the stupa, in spite of the entrance fee, is just a centrepiece to a square which has been turned into a market for tourists, Tbetan artisans shops line the outer edge of the Stupa, the odd small buddhist templeseems to lose its significance amongst all of this.

From here we were caught in an afternoon rainstorm and caught a cab to take us back to Thamel, I got soaked in the walk to my hotel as I thought the rain was letting up so I started walking but it was just a bluff, and after 15min waiting under a canopy for it to let up I gaveup and ran for the hotel through the rain. Silly tourists.

Genocide

2005-10-14T05:46:00.000-06:00

What follows is more of my rantings, some stuff that needs to be gotten out after being in China, see the disclaimer about the previous post.

The word has been thrown out there, Genocide. Do I need to define it? I don't really think so we all have a gut feeling for the connotations and denotation of that word. Why do I throw it out there? Because like everyone who has been to Tibet its what I saw, at least everyone who went further afield than the three day tour, or the jeep ride to the base camp. It doesn't take much to see it, as the chinese are very proud of the areas they have wrapped their iron grip around.

So the people, culture and religion of Tibet are being slowly wiped off the face of the earth. The cultural revolution gave a good headstart. Destroy temples, monestaries etc. Just take it down, and make it obviously part of a decrepid past.

Education is another. Education in so many forms. Tibetans only recently were allowed to learn to speak their own language in school, that is the Tibetans who can afford to go to school. But the rest of the litterature on history is approved by the central government, the history in the museums paints the chinese version of history. All history is skewed but usually we at least have access to several different interpretations.

Religion is being torn down. Its hard to badmouth the living incarnation of compassion, and the 14th Dalai Llama has been a spectacular incarnation, hard to argue with. But the Panchen Llama, the 10th helped out at the beginning, and the 11th, depending on if you accept the chinese recognised one, is being groomed to be the perfect little chinese puppet. So what happens when the Dalai Llama dies? I have a feeling we can all geuss where the chinese will run with that one. Many temples have been destroyed, as indicated above, and the others are slowly desecrated by tourists, see my post on the Jokhang for examples.

Then there's the Han migration into Tibet, a forced migration of one people into another area with an nitent which appears sinister. There is no accounting for religious sites, in a series of mountains which are full of religous history, and the chinese will actually mine mountains which are sacred. I have a theory that the only reason that the holy Mt. Kailash was never climbed by a chinese team bent on proving their supremacy is that the Indian government threatened war if they tried. Look at Lhasa now, yes the chinese have brought improvements in agriculture and apparently sanitation (although i find that hard to believe), but the city has been torn down in many parts and in many ways. Take the Potala, pictures from the black and white era, no dates are provided, show a small huddle of tibetan style houses at the bottom of the hill clustered around the Potala, these are gone, not replaced by new houses, but replaced by the most vile of creations, a giant concrete people's square, which is currently celebrating 40 years of the Tibet Autonomous Region (ha). The sad truth is that there is a symetry with the Gate of Heavenly Peace and Tiananamen Square in Bijing and the chinese are obviously playing it up.

Beyond that the small remaining tibetan quarter is surrounded by stock chinese houses, the standard square concrete building which characterise the height of their architectural creativity (their interesting buildings in Beijing, Shanghia, etc are designed by Westerners) are built up surrounding the poor tibetans and muslims. It almost looks like a fist, squeezing them, when viewed from above. I doubt this is how the Tibetans would have built their cities. Just a hunch, but I'm going to run with it.

So no its not a bloody massacre, anymore, to capture the minds of the world with the mass graves and sheer enormity of the sudden destruction, its slow, suppressive and stifling genocide that will slowly eliminate the tibetans from Tibet and leave its natural ressources free for the chinese to rape at will. And as much as a train to Lhasa and a civilain airport in Ali will improve travel in Tibet, it will be used by the chinese for more opression and ethnic cleansing. But the tourists will have easier access so don't worry we won't complain.

Anyways, very bitter, but at least the tibetan community is strong around the world. Here in Nepal there is more litterature and crafts from Tibet than Nepal, at least in Kathmandu. There is eternal talk about Dharamshala, and even in Cape Breton their is a tibetan buddhist monestary. Perhaps the tibetan way of life can live on as a modern export, absolution and re-incarnation in a better form if you will just support one or two of our monks. Buy tibetan carpets and earn good karma.

Cheers.

"Communism" or... Chinesey

2005-10-14T05:21:00.000-06:00

What follows is a somewhat disjointed, wholly unsolicited, rant about the chinese. Read at your own peril (peril of boredom and naseau mostly), and please feel free to call me crazy, stupid or wrong.

Let us first dispel a nasty rumour that has been circulating in the international community for some time. China is in no way communist. I know this is a shocker for everyone who has been told by the US that for so long we have been fighting the communist evil, but lets just make it obvious, China is not communist.

So what is china then? Well it could be termed a tyrrany, or a dictatorship, although that brings to mind ideas of military government, or it could be, I'm gonna throw it out there, fascist. All right there that is.

Now lets give Mao some credit, when he started his crusade I am sure he was intent on a communist state, be it true communism or a central government communism that is what he had in mind, most of the Chinese propaganda seems to indicate that anyways, and even some of the more moderate western documentaries have painted much of what Mao did has being very communist, but what happens now is definately not communist.

So what do I mean by communist? Well this is half the problem of any politcal discussion now isn't it? The definitions of political systems change as fast as the media changes from reporting one natural disaster to another (speaking of which is it the same video reel that they are showing in the Pakistan earthquake as they showed in Louisiana and the Tsunami? Same reporters, same words, just different bluescreened background? but that's another story). In any event its difficult to come to a reasonable statement as to what communism really entails but lets take a somewhat marxist view, that communism is the development of a governmental system of some sort that seeks to ensure supremacy of the proletariat, or the lower classes, and maximising their well being. Well now that I have defined my terms I dare you to challenge me! I can now reign supreme in my arguments because I have defined my terms in such a way that in no way can you compare that communism to anything going on in China.

First off I need to agree with Ralston-Saul, and Russel, I would say Chomsky but he was just repeating american history to justify what the others had said. Notably they dissociate the idea that democracy is the only way to have a flourishing free market economy. They point out several interesting things, including the ideological/historical argument in which there is a parralel but in no way dependant evolution of the two, the second is the political/historical argument in which in Germany under Hitler, and according to Chomsky the US under the aristocracy that currently exists, have been the most healthy free market economies, and that free markets tend to flounder under complete freedom. It seems the theory of a free market doesn't factor in the horrible extent of human avarice. In any event I think we can argue that Free Market does not necessitate Democracy, and vice versa. Forgive me if your already there but it took me a while to realise just how tangled in up in my psyche the two ideas were.

So what do we have in China? Well communism would involve redistribution of the wealth in order to ensure benefits are given to as many as possible. Well lets see, most chinese are farmers, yes there is a large urban population, but still the proletariat is dominated by the farmer classes, by chinese statistics only 36% of the population is urban. A major coup recently came for these farmers in that they don't have to pay tax to the central government! hooray for them right? Absolutely not, although taxes were crushing to them, they must have been negligable in comparison to the industry taxes in order for the central government to have "liberated" them from taxation. Also less reported is the cost of liberation from taxation,of which the intelligentsia seem to be aware but unconcerned. Notably no taxation means no access to the benefits of taxation, i.e. pensions and healthcare. This flies in the face of redistributing the wealth to the poorest, what is really happening is a pittance is being given in exchange for the benefits that can only come from a system of central taxation and organsiation. i know this might seem contentious but i think we can agree that the poor benefit more from a public health care system than a private one? That a government pension scheme is more stable, and reliable, than private savings?

What else, well education is 100% to grade 11, by chinese statistics and i call bullshit. Children are required to enrol, but are only allowed to go if they pay their monthly fees, so maybe enrollment is high but attendance is not so ideal and those fees are just high enough to keep the lower classes from attaining education (in Tibet that means oppression of the ethinc minority).

There's another element to the education problems, and I now laugh when I think of China critisizing Japan for using textbooks which were not horrific enough in detail about the Japanese attrocities of WWII. I laugh because chinese education is so lacking in substance, so full of crap that its spectacular it gets anywhere. It reminds me of reading through Russel's interpretation of Plato's Republic, that children should not read Homer as it does not enoble the mind, it displays gods and leaders behaving badly and should therefore be banned. For this reason much litterature, film, television, radio and internet is banned in fullfillment of Orwell's vision of 1984, down to the point that there is state litterature which is constantly revised, especially as concerns modern history, central television and news which is only allowed to point out how great the chinese are today.

And this is key as the chinese are great today. All of the history I was exposed to was intended to show how evil China was. Empress Cixi is the prime example of the forbidden city, yes interesting but hardly the past we should revel in, an evil dowager empress who imprisoned rightful emperors, lost an opium war, misappropriated funds and prevented social evolution. This is the only history presented to us, but what of the great poets fo the Tang dynasty, whose praises are often sung in the west even though few have read them, or the great minds such as Lao Tsu, Confuscius and Bodhidarhma? These are not the figures that figure in the chinese mindset as the past must, being not the current government, be evil.

Contrast this with the japanese. There are elements of their past which they are in no way proud. I do not think the japanese necessarily believe that the Tokugawa Shogunate was necessarily the best way to govern, but in the end they glorify the greatness of that. A powerful Shogun who brought peace and stability. An almost mythic figure, who is a great part of the history... but maybe just a little wrong. Beyond this there are numerous examples of the japanese extolling the virtues of their past, the great learning, and philosophers all part of the past and the present make up of society, even if it did culminate in an unfortunate imperial expansion and a war with the allies, ending in defeat.

Lets keep in mind ourselves. We have done a spectacular job of re-writing history, from a few rebels who bucked the colonial government forcibly, to a war of succession, to the opium wars, to what Robert Mcnmarra admits were war crimes in WWII, opression of the irish, slaughters in India. I mix british and american history together as we have all done the same, just brushing aside the bad parts to glory in the good, fighting for freedom from tyrrany, freeing the slaves, the glory of the empire, they started it (actually I don't believe that the Japanese ever really attacked american civilian targets, lack of opportunity or more idealistic motives?), oh hell the rest is just glory of the empire.

So we are just as ignorant as the chinsese after their education? No. i think i can say this for one great reason. We have access, free and easy access to the unfettered truth about all the past, well at least free and unfettered analysis of whatever subset of the facts is presented to us. We also have free ability to criticise... at least in theory. Ok there have been bad incidents, Kent State University comes to mind, but a) I know about it and have heard much criticism of it and b) there just aren't the political prisoner's and re-education systems in the west.

So what am I trying to say? Well another point i am round about coming to is the "rising tiger" of China, the new power in the world market. Why are all eyes focused on China, not India, comparable populations. India's a democracy, a free market and relatively well educated, so why not India. Well let's enumerate India's export industries, one major example leaps to mind, they are the largest exporter of software in the world, and more close to home, HMOs in the states are constantly outsourcing their x-ray reading to India. Two examples, but examples of India entering educated markets. What does China tend to export? Cheap labour in the manufacturing sector. Why can they do this? Becuase they effectively supress development of a rich middle class is my supposition. India does not seem to supress development of this middle class, in spite of Hindu hierarchies which would make it easier, and so the labour market is unstable. China on the other hand, is willing to use its cheap labour and abuse it, to maintain an opressed proletariat under the guise of communism which is now going to give a prosperous country by 2020. The people are fooled because of the realisation of the Orwellian nightmare, a poorly educated population terrified of the governement and being re-educated, exposed only to the correct news. They can't criticise and improve their lot as they don't know how, nor have the information to criticise with. Tiananmen square was not a massacre, not a single person was killed in the square... the streets outside are another story. Oops the cultural revolution may have been a mistake, but the damage is done and we're not going to repair it, because it led to a population terrified of us and willing to doublethink our new policies. The past became dissociated and in spite of living through terror and hardships it was all for the better?

So if China does become the rising tiger and the new economic power it will not prove that we are helping them to improve, it will not show that they are becoming a freeer better society, in fact it will reflect nothing but poorly on the entire world moral fibre. All we will have proven is that the almighty buck leads on, and that any country willing to sacrifice its citizenry to the cause of bettering our living room is ok with us. It will prove that we do not build strong societies on free thought and innovation, and in fact that these are entirely unnecessary concepts in the long run, when you have people to exploit and money to be made.

Admittedly there's other issues, an ability and willingness to destory the environment is one, but I think the above may have something to do with it.

Bryan

2005-10-14T04:16:00.000-06:00

Bryan, Bryan, Bryan... Which Bryan are you, so many nerdy Bryans, and all with the same "y", not "i". What to do, i can't reply to the wrong one.

So first though sorry for nothing earlier, the chinese blocked my access to my own blog, that will be part of my ranting in my next post, and so I couldn't see the comments until now. But which Bryan are you.

No Rebecca is not travelling with me, she is back in Canada dutifully working on the PhD, unfortunately she couldn't join me for the whole trip, although I don't think she was terribly excited about the prospect of the Himalaya, after vomiting in her hat in the Andes (the low Andes too). But she is coming to Cairo, and then Istanbul in the New Year which should prove to be interesting, and reminds me of a certain new Nickelback song.

Anyawys, which Bryan? Let me know and i will drop you a line!

For the rest of you thanks for the comments, now that I can read them I appreciate them, especially the links to the dating services. Are any of those services active in Nepal? =;-)

End of Tibet

2005-10-10T22:11:00.000-06:00

So a few days relaxation and convalescence in Lhasa seemed warrented at this point and I firmly resolved to take it easy, but to arrange my way to Nepal. A visa at the nepali consulate turned out to be more hassle than it was worth (long lines and I forgot to bring my passport photos), and flight hunting turned into quite the adventure. I went to the Air China office and was told one story, I talked to the travel agent in my hotel and was told at least 4 stories (by the same guy, I was willing to give them money if they got me a plane ticket, but they didn't seem to understand so I ended up just leaving and ignoring them, that and they were open from 0900-2100, but there was rarely anyone in the office, it was just generally a gong show in there and at a certain level of inefficiency you wonder where your money is going to dissapear to). Anyways, a long walk to and from the nepali consulate almost did me in, it was just more effort than my still sick and malnourished body could handle without a nap mixed in. My appetite improved to ravenous as I tried, and am still trying, to make up for a week of non-eating, and eventually I got the last seat on a plane that had been sold out the day before. My plan was rapidly changed from thinking I would be stuck a week in Lhasa, to leaving the day after next.

Ken was off on a trek in the morning so we arranged the food (basically I gave most of it to him as there was no way I was lugging it all the way to Nepal) and said our farewells after dinner. One last night at the folk bar and in the morning I experienced the full force of China post. There packers have amazing skills and although everything had to go through customs before it could be shipped customs was rather a joke, just a quick look to ensure there were no large explosives, but otherwise pretty much anything went through no problem it seems. Then my last chance to see what was supposed to be the best monestary in the Lhasa region, Drepung monestary, so a short cab, with an asshole who wouldn't negotiate until I walked away, and I was there standing below the monestary named "hill of rice" as it is a village in its own right in a drainage on a mountain 8km up the road from the Potala. In general the monestary was friendlier than any of the others I had been to, numerous monks greeting me with smiles and "tashi dele", more chapels and a main assembly hall that I finally dropped the money on to photograph, 20Yuan, for a place that help many of the elements of the temples I had visited all along, I just couldn't leave with absolutely no pictures of the insides, in spite of my urge to not pay to take the photos. But it held the two things which had impressed me as items in their own right.

The furst are the butter lamps. Silver pots set on pedestals are scattered about all the holy sites, usually in front of altars, or statues, and in these pots is a sea of yak butter and ghee, fuel for the fire. Wicks are placed in the butter and lit, many tiny lights floating in devotion to the holy place they are in front of. These do not sit alone, independant of the humans, they are a centre for activity, either the pilgrims who are constantly dropping hot oil from their thermoses, or ghee from plastic bags to refuel and maintain the eternal fire, or the monks who reposition the wicks, and generally maintain the fires, where there is an oil lamp there is inevitably nearby a monk.

Then there are the books. Translations of various texts; commentaries and sutras. They are mostly on crumbly moldy paper, as they have been stored for centuries, but this is only what can be seen from the glimpses that are rarely afforded, for the paper is wrapped, a wooden block on top and bottem and yellow or red silk around. These are then placed in pigeonholes which can number in the hundreds for entire sets of particular commentaries, they are quite the stunning sight, an entire wall of these wooden and silk books.

But in the end it was another tibetan monestary buildings built haphazard as lodgings for the monks with narrow tortuous streets in between. Steep and tortuous as, lets be honest, there is only one way to attain enlightment and it involves being on the side of a hill, preferably a steep hill.

I found the debating courtyard and wandered in, a sign inviting me to take photos for 15Yuan. It was a peaceful spot with trees and pebbled ground, but I was soon kicked out as the monks filed in, it seems that tourists were not welcome that day and I just continued wandering my way out and down the hill. I resolved to walk back which was a horrible mistake. The walk back was 8km, but 8km of walking through soulless streets of chinese shops, car shops, noodle shops. Dirt and disuse, not from poverty but from ignorance and uncaring. It was just 8km of china's modern materialistic conformism spread out a reminder of what is encircling the tibetan people here.

But the day before I had managed to remind myself why I wanted to come to Tibet, and what I had enjoyed when I first landed. I did my shopping, prayer flags, and prayer scarves and went to a UNESCO sponsored store named Dropenling to see if they had anything reasonable for me to get. In order to do this I had to set out from my hotel into the heart of the tibetan and muslim quarter of the city, surrounded by the chinese and to one side of the tourist mayhem that has become the Barkhor there is still a heart to the city where the people are friendly, and there is just a general feeling of a soul. Its a small part of town, but it is real and its uplifting to walk through, in spite of the smell of yak cheese wafting around the place.

One last dinner, good company, and then the trip off to the airport in the morning. An argument with cabbies, we negotiated a price, then got in the cab, and then the cabbie decided to tripple the price. We tried to convince him of our original agreed price but he wouldn't so we grabbed our bags and went away, grabbed the bus and made it to the airport, probably in as good of time and as much comfort as the cab would have offered. An added perk, the TV was on the whole time showing a mixture of chinese music videos and sitcoms in what looked like a hybrid between a TV holiday celelbration and a telethon. Oddly enough I got little out of it not speaking chinese.

Then came the great fun of flying again and the chinese decided to send me off in good style. A 2 or more hour delay (I stopped paying attention) due to computer error and then somehow the runway was congested. Their were no more than 3 planes at the bloody airport so how the runway was congested I don't know. But I met a very nice lawyer from Beijing, and chatted with him, he helped me get my luggage on without extra charge (all of a sudden it became too heavy... who knew?) and would explain to me what the people were saying in chinese without informing the english passengers of the reason for the delay. It was comforting to at least have the info. Then the flight and I am now in Kathmandu.

A Central Image

2005-10-08T21:30:00.000-06:00

There is a central image of Tibet which no camera can capture, and that words will be wholly inadequate to describe, but which must be mentioned. I don't even really know how to start.

Waving, and fluttering. Tibet is windy, at the very least there is a ubiquitous breeze above the buildings and this leads to everything fluttering, which the Tibetans have taken advantage of. I first noticed the scope of this phenomenan when hiking from Tingri to Rongphu, Ken and I were waiting for Tendan to arrive with the yaks, and I noticed as he came around the corner the way the wind caught on the nexks of the yaks caused the hair to wave, carrying the skin with it somewhat to create waves of motion moving across their necks.

I had first noticed this at the Potala, every window is dressed, on the outside, with cloth hangings, simple, usually just black and white, or with some blue stripe. In pictures they appear to hang there, but with few exceptions they are really always moving, again the wind captures them but they do not get blown about, they flutter, they wave, they take the aspect of gentle swells on the ocean moving across the tops of the windows, swell after swell after endless swell moving continuously across the window. In large part it is this continous motion which gives the Potala its beauty and causes it to stand out in the mind.

But this motion in the wind is taken even further and the prayer flags and prayer scarves left at the numerous devotional sites around are testament to it. The flags, as they flutter in the wind, are supposed to spread their good karma to the wind, I believe, at least something like that, but the effect can be intoxicating. We noticed it most on Bump-o-ri, the only Tibetan mountain I climbed is called bump, but in any event it is between the two peaks of this mountain that pilgrims have strung long lines of prayer flags, the high wind constantly blowing them to the wind, the strings flying higher and lower as the wind comes and goes, but gently floating up, and floating down, not being pushed about rudely by the wind.

Just thought that this deserved special mention, a key part of the beauty of tibetan construction, and part of Tibet invisible in the camera. Even film I have seen does not do it justice, the lense is unforgiving, and does not allow the contrast of these tiny motions with the enormity of the landscape and the structures on which they occur. The eye can focus in without losing the perspective, the camera cannot (which irks me to no end as I do enjoy photography, as Rebecca can irritatedly attest to).

Dirt, Dust and Dysentary

2005-10-07T05:54:00.000-06:00

So in the morning we were up at 0730, but the place was locked up, we couldn't get anywhere, no way to get breakfast. At 0800 things started to open in our hotel so we could get out of the courtyard and into the restaurant to order. Where were the yaks? No sign, no one knew. We ordered, they called and the yakman was on his way we were assured. Fine but when? No one knows.

We ate breakfast, no yaks. A Japanese guy, who had arrived with a full jeep was willing to give us a ride to basecamp as most of his group had already been and weren't interested in paying to go again. We agreed to go with him if they hadn't arrived by the time he was finished his breakfast. They ate, no yaks. So, after much humming and hawing, we were off, well not really. The driver wouldn't take us as he was Tibetan and didn't like the idea of us calling for the yaks and not going with them, fair enough, but where were our Yaks?

Finally a horse cart arrived, this was our ride... to get to the yaks. So now we were off, bags in the cart, and us on the bags, holding on as we first rode through Tingri, then onto the marshy plains just outside of town on our way to Ra Chu and hour away. This is where we were to meet our yakman and yaks... eventually.

We pulled into Ra Chu and our driver jumped out to go get two yaks, leaving us with another driver who took us to the main square (not really big, but at least the largest clearing, on the main (only) road and right beside their little chapel. So we were dropped, bags in a heap at the middle of the square, and all the townskids came up. "Hello, Money, Pen". Kids in Tibet now, thanks to tourists, know how to articulate these three words, however, we severely doubt that the majority of them understand the meaning. Usually with "Pen" they are willing to grab your hand and mime writing on your hand, but for Hello and Money it becomes obvious that they have no concept. This is especially irksome with Hello as they now associate saying hello with getting a present, a sweet, a small bill, a pen etc. from the rich whites pulling through town. This happens everywhere and is getting to be quite the problem, even here in Tibet where, we are informed by good authority, that this was not a problem even two years ago. I was walking through Gyantse in the evening and I actually saw a kids mother push the kid towards me, and he began begging, "hello, money" over and over. He grabbed my book and would not let go, when finally I got him to let go he grabbed my camera straps and would not go away, I tried to peel his fingers off but its that fine balance between hurting him and pushing him away. I kept walking and ignored him all to no avail. Finally Ken and the others caught up and were able to distract him and I made good my escape. Even in Lhasa, amongst the better off kids, this happens. I was walking around the muslim quarter with Matijs one afternoon as school got out and we were assailed by children "hello, money" as they then proceeded to walk into the convenience store and purchase sweets with the money they already had. This is a ubiquitous problem in Tibet now, and from what I understand pretty much everywhere and it is caused by the combination of poverty, human greed, and stupid tourists. I actually watched a woman, a gaggle of kids in front of her hand out three candies to select children, and then she sat perplexed when others started harassing her more and the younger ones, who had recieved nothing, began to cry. For the love of god everyone, don't give money, pens, sweets, cars, houses, etc. to kids. If you want to do good it seems the way is to contact a school directly, or an NGO and have the money filtered to useful programs. If you just want to feel good about yourself consider something longer-term than your instant gratification of seeing the kid happy for 30s, consider the development and encouragement of a culture of begging at the expense of real sustainable development.

So to step off my high horse, not that all interactions with kids are like this. The vast majority are just curious and want to say "hi", and that's uber fine with me. A smiling friendly, inquisitive face is always welcome and I am more than happy to respond, usually they skitter away at that point. So luckily at Ra Chu Ken had more patience than I as he began to play with the kids. Mostly it consisted of him, after the boundaries of no money, no sweets, no food, no pens were established, taking pictures of them individually or in various groups and showing it to them. They got quite the kick our of seeing their photo on the camera screen. Ken must have spent a good hour playing this game then teaching them english, "Hat, Jacket, Pants, Shoes" became the refrain chanted over and over as he pointed to each in turn. Unfortunately when he mixed them up they batted somewhat less than 1000, but what can you do, it was a valiant effort.

After a while, kids everywhere renewing their demands for food and pens, and no yaks or yakmen in sight, our patience was wearing thin. We went through the formalities of park entry, handing over tickets etc, in the absence of defninitive knowledge that we would actually be leaving. Finally after noon our guide decided to grace us with his presence, and some yaks. YAY! Within 15min they had them saddled, the loads placed and we were ready to start, ever so cumbersomely, herd two yaks across Dingri plains towards Cho Oyu. We were off.

The the trek starts with a day of hiking along Dingri plains, these are the northern basin of Cho Oyu so you spend the entire day hiking almost directly to Cho Oyu. The landscape, however, in the rain shadow of Chomolangma and Cho Oyu is barren, it is a desert, a scrub desert. Dirt, dust, sand and a scattering of rock. A river does run along the plain, fed by high glaciers. So we spent the day hiking up this plain and into what can only be described as the Tingri Wind Tunnel, strong winds blowing through a gap in the himalaya which whip up the plains forced into a straight path between the mountains on either side of the plains. As we got further up the plains narrowed and following Bernouli, the wind velocity increases to the point at which it became really rather annoying for hours. Ken and I would hike on in front of our guide until we found a spot, shaded from the wind by a hill where we could wait. Our guide trundeled along behind us. He was having trouble with the Yaks as our packs were not evenly weighted so the yaks were being pulled constantly to one side. Further he had no nose rings in the yaks, so he was actually herding them across the plains, not the most efficient proposition, but he made it work. Kind of.

So we trekked on through the day, miming out brief interactions, the most we could get was putting hands in miming of sleep and saying sleeping and dishing food into the mouth for eating. He understood "sleeping" though and used the word often, at leats with this we could define our stages, although that, in the end, had no bearing on where we went really. So our plan was, Lungjang, eating (we assumed him not us, he assumed all of us we think, in the end we just kept walking) hiking to 7 (he had a watch so we could figure things out) and sleeping, up an trekking to Zomphu, sleeping and then trekking to Rongphu and sleeping. Well he stopped in Lungjang for a snack, which comprised of pulling out a raw leg of meat and hacking off a slice with his knife. He kindly offered to each of us some, but we declined out of abject fear. He had stopped a few other times as well, and we got to try a sip of Chang, which he drank a litre and a half of a day (this is the local barley beer). It was't great, not that bad but very frothy and a bit sour. I have no idea how he does it all day, with nothing to drink but a litre and a half of that stuff, no water, but I geuss, as described below, he makes up for it with yak butter tea.

So we trekked on and found a spot in our guidebook which was a "drokpa" or nomad camp and had corrals for animals, and some shade from the wind, mostly afforded by the corrals. We agreed on sleeping here and we finally saw that our guide, Tendan is his name by the way, had brought a massive tent with him. He wanted us to join him in his tent for cooking and dinner, but he immediately proceeded to start a yak dung fire, in the tent, and the smoke that was billowing from both the doorway and the roof dissuaded us from entry. But his tent ended up becoming quite the nightclub! The drokpa dropped by for the warmth and they were up late chatting. When Ken went in in the morning to get our food bag out there were at least 4 other people in there. It turns out a group of Tibetans were off to Cho Oyu and Tendan had put them up for the night, as well as at least one shelterless dropka. Quite the party there.

We breakfasted and were soon off, well we woke at 8 and were hiking by 10 as is the norm for slow people like us. The trek followed the valley along which soon veered to the east (we had been heading south) and began to have a bit stiffer a gradient, not enough that you noticed it at any time but enough that you could look back and understand why you were getting tired and out of breath. As we headed up the valley two things happened. The first was that it got drier, amazingly so, the already parched terrain looked absolutely barren and devoid of anything. The odd small spring would be surround by tiny hummocks but otherwhise there was nothing, no life whatsoever in this valley. The second was that Tendan was at least keeping pace and started to even get into the lead from time to time.

We followed the road to what we thought was the summit of the pass we were to cross until we reached it and realised that it was just one valley two close. We had to drop down into the next drainage and head up to the next pass... Bugger. At this point we stopped, fatigued, for a lunch break and Tendan informed us, the "cheekey", as Ken put it, guy that he was, that we would not be crossing the lower Lamna-La and head to Zomphu for the night, but instead we would take the direct route to Rongphu, via the higher, more remote and more rugged Pang-La, which our guidebook actually said was too hard for pack animals. But Tendan was set, and as it was the shorter route we acquiesed (after we had assured ourself it was only nominally higher, and not, as we had for some reason gotten into our heads, massively higher).

So off we were down, into the valley and back up, directly to the summit of Pang-La, well after the three false summits. And I just can't stress this enough, the whole lot of nothing, no water, no vegetation, no life, just barren desert. Ken and I commented and he said he expected barren, but as in remote not as in lacking absolutely anything. I think I was expecting similar as this kind of took me back. So tired, we made it over the pass and dropped down into another dry desert valley, we saw some of the Tibetan Wild Ass in the distance, no not human ass, but small deer-like animals running around high on the rocks on the cliffs beside us. As we descended though, there started to be some vegetation and finally, down by the river, we came to our campsite, which was actually quite spectacular. Nuptse was poking its head up from the valley which we would be hiking in the morning, an old corral to one side and a beautiful green meadow around us, with a stream that reflected the fading sun like I rarely get the opportunity to see. So with camp set, and dinner eaten we settled in for a night. This time we joined Tendan for some hospitality in his tent. He understood my "duwa" (which is tibetan for smoke) and then fake coughing, so he made an exceptionally small fire and invited us in. We joined him and his tent was surprisingly warm, we expected warm but this was warmer than we expected. He offered us a cup of tea, an offer which we accepted, with some regrets later. It was the infamous yak butter tea and we finally understood why it tastes the way it does when he went through how to make it with us. Take a fistful of black tea, preferabally tibetan, a pile of salt and some water, boil to taste. Hmmmm, I wonder why it tastes salty? Pour out glasses and take a liberal spoonhandlesworth of yak butter and drop it in, when melted drink. Continue to refill the glass, or at least offer to, in spite of the adament objections of your geusts. Lets just say yak butter tea is not my... yes I have to say it, cup of tea. But with evening drawing on Ken and I retired to our tent for some reading and sleep.

This is where the trouble began. The previous night had been cold, there was some wind shade but not that much. This night was hell. Ken was comfortable in his sleeping bag with just his base layer on. I, on the other hand, woke in the middle of the night, naseous, and shivering. I had on already extra layers, but I crawled out of the tent and crawled to the side of the corral for a good session of vomiting and dry heaving. I got up and did some running on the spot and jumping jacks to warm up to little avail and I crawled back into the tent when things had settled down. I spent the rest of the night as one of my most miserable ever, wearing two paris of socks, my trekking pants and my gore-tex pants, a long-sleeve shirt, fleece, rain jacket and down jacket with both a toque and the hood pulled up I crawled into my sleeping bag and caught only fleeting sleep as I shivered through the night. Finally morning came, and with it the touch of warmth that the sun brings, but it came too slowly. Damned did I fell like ass. I kept down half of my ration of breakfast and got some water in, but I was still shivering, freezing, and my muscles felt all like lead. At go time we basically had two choices, stay put, or hike on, and I opted for hike on, I wanted to get to Rongphu from whence I knew we could evacuate me, where we were the options were somewhat more limited. So we were off, hiking the road to Everest base camp.

I could hardly eat, I drank as much as I could down, and we hiked. I couldn't regulate my temperature, in the sun I was cooking and in the shade freezing. But we trekked on for the 6 hours. I vomited my way through a short portion of it and kept on. Just focussing on reasonable goals, and a steady, continual pace. More than once I wanted to just pack it in and try to hitch a ride up the road, but lets be honest it wasn't going to happen.

We stopped for a rest, well Tendan stopped and waved me over to him and I obediently came, it was about 100m beyond where I was planning on crashing for a while anyways. As I came up beside him we had our usual pantomime conversations, and he showed the genuine concern of a father it seemed. He had throughout been very kind to us as far as we could tell, even pantomiming forgetting something at a rest stop because he didn't look around when he got up, he actually did it about three times, once for me and then for Ken and I and then to make sure that we got the point. That morning he had put my coat back on me to keep me warm just as the sun was coming up. But here as I lay beside him he gave me a stomach massage, and did what seemed to be traditional medicine type thing. He rubbed the stomach and then swept it all down towards my legs and out. It was quite interesting. I also took a few photos of him with Chomolangma (now very visible) in the background and he played with my camera as we waited for Ken to catch up.

Luckily this stop was not far from our destination as all I could think about at this time was how hard it was to hold my trekking pole, my forearms being almost useless, and how great curling up in a soft bed with two giant comforters for warmth would be! But we dropped down and were soon crossing the river where the old, destroyed in the cultural revolution, nunnery Ani-Gompa lies, from which our guidebook also assured us it was only 30min to the monestary where we were staying. And so I trundled on, regaining the altitude I lost dropping into the stream bed, let me tell you that was fun, and then finally I caught one of the most lovely sights of all time, two strings of prayer flags across the road in the distance. No buildings but surely these must be at Rongphu monestary! As I drew closer they were and I could see the geusthouse, we got into the tiny dusty monestary town, I checked us into a room, and we lugged our bags in, payed off Tendan, got the last shot (I remember all this but all I wanted to do was crash) and I quickly crawled into bed, under the massive comforter (maybe not massive but it was very comforting) and sat dozing for the rest of the afternoon. And this is where the dysentery comes in. I will spare you the details, but lets just say that in spite of my aching and my coldness, it was every hour, on the half hour, that I was up and running to the toilet. Unfortunately the toilet gave me flashbacks to Trainspotting and "The Worst Toilet in Scotland" cause this was horrendous. It was a squate toilet, the usualy two parralel holes cut in the concrete floor, a mop in the corner for cleaning. The mop was either brand new or had been cleaned very well after its last use as it was pristine. That was the only pristine part of the washroom. Lets just say people had given up getting to the hole in large part. This was to become my other friend during my time here and I have no doubt that it contributed in no small part to my ongoing nasea.

So anyways, finally around 8 or 9 my chills dissapeared and I was able to sleep the sleep of the damned, or the just, whatever. I slept heavily, and aside from my bathroom breaks (much less frequent through the night so I got periods of un-interrupted sleep) I slept really well. I woke, not quite refreshed, but much better. I was able to keep down a snickers, with a little effort, and walked to the monestary to catch a few shots of the alpenglow on Mt Everest. But with sickness still foremost on the mind I wanted to get out, either it was altitude, in which case I wanted to get to Lhasa to lose some altitude, or it was more sinister, which considering the way it was going I wanted to get somewhere with at least basic medical services.

Ken, by the way was a god. The night before he got me tea, he kept forcing water down my throat, or at least reminding me to drink, he urged me to eat what I could. Further, in the evening he had found me a ride from Pasum (which is where the bus to and from base camp originates from) back to Shigatse (a 4h drive from Lhasa) that same day. There was a group who had an extra spot and were willing to take me so Ken was going to ship me off to get me as close to Lhasa and as low as possible as fast as possible. He had also secured himself a ride to Tingri, which is further and higher than Lhasa. All this and he put up with me being a grumpy bugger.

So we started trying to get on the bus leading from base camp to Pasum, but they only send buses up, when they are full in Pasum, so finally, after 3 hours of waiting, and losing out to the chinese who are good at the game of rushing overcrowded conveyances and fighting for space, we all got on. Now waiting three hours wouldn't be so much of a problem, except that in an obvious cash grab the chinsese have decided that you can no longer drive to Rhonpgu monestary yourself (which is only 8km shy of base camp), but that you must stop one hour short and pay 80Yuan round trip for a bus to take you up the road. There are no options, just this one bus service that you have to wait for. Needless to say, they have no pressure to be efficient or usefull so you end up, again, spending large ammounts of time waiting, which is more irksome for people on tours who have a distance to drive, than for layabouts like myself. My problem was that I needed to get up periodically and leave the queue to evacuate myself in the trainspotting throwback toilet (actually I was dreaming of the worst toilet in Scotland at this point).

Finally we got on a truck, and we got to Pasum. And then the *expletive deleted by authorities* driver of these guys wouldn't take me for some obscure reasons none could understand. These guys were indignant that they were paying him, that it was their choice and they even tried to just open the trunk and throw my bags in and have me jump in, but he had locked up the doors. In the end it was a lost cause, for whatever obscure and mistyfying reason they would not take us, which left us stuck in Pasum (which only really exists to give tourists a place to change from land cruiser to bus, making it sub-optimal for arranging rides). There were two others in the same boat, they ended up getting motorbike rides cheap, which was not an option for us with our rather large packs (we still had all of our kit and about 17 days worth of food). A tractor was willing to take us as far as the highway. The distance seemed fine, the cost a bit much to be reasonable, but the time required for a tractor to make the journey seemed somewhat prohibitive to even warrent discussion. There was a landcruiser that would take us in the morning for 500Yuan, but we managed to get into a truck for 400Yuan, that night to Old Tingri, high and far from Lhasa, but it was on the highway, so we jumped on it, not quite like a fat kid on a smarty, more like a women on a diet on a smarty. It seemed expensive and not our ideal destination, but he had us over the barrel so we had to accept his offer in the end. It was 2 and he was leaving at 5 so I managed a half a plate of fried rice, we played some cards and read. Just at 5 we were off in a flurry, into a minivan to take us to the truck, which had gone from empty to probably triple its original volume.

So after driving by it then backtracking for lord knows what reason we were off. 15min later we were stopped. The truck had been overloaded on the right, as evidenced by all the struts being loaded on both sides, but the right tire looking flat, but it wasn't the tire, it was the load that made it look flat. That and the truck almost tipping over as we went up a hill. So we stopped for a solid hour while the riders, Ken and I excluded, unloaded and reloaded the truck. As for the riders, there were 7 of us in the cab and innumerable more riding on top of the baggage, at best a precarious positioning. Ken in the meantime played with the kids, the usual picture show but also he learned how to use a sling. We helped a little, but we were more of a hindrance than anything and I was still very ill, so it was less help than us making ourselves feel better about not standing around watching, which was what we ended up doing in the end. I did get an offer to purchase my boots, but they weren't for sale (at least not at a reasonable price they could afford) while we were waiting. More of the "Hello, money" and "hello pen" from the kids that passed by.

Finally reloaded we were off, a breif stop in Tashi Dzom, where the kids had a different tack. THey would come up to me with money or pen in hand and say "hello, money, hello pen" and thrust the bill or pen at me. I gratefully accepted one of the pens, at which point oddly enough he expecpected me to give it back with another pen. Anyways, we were off, at least until sundown and the road got rough. You see the truck wasn't loaded wrong at the start. It was just overloaded. So here, in the middle of nowhere, the wind blowing through the cab, we hunkered down to wait for the calvary, in this case another truck had been called in to pick up the load and drive it the rest of the way. Finally it came, and they borrowed my headlamp so we could get things shifted and get off (by we I mean they). In the meantime though Ken and I had noticed the ubiquity of labels, Nike, FILA, North Face is on everyone, but also sports teams. Lots of Manchester United, and we spent some time educating our cab-mates about the symbology of their clothing, including a New York Yankees baseball cap, "are they good?" and a Chicago Bulls toque. It was good fun trying to explain basketball with no tibetan!

But off we were again and finally rolled into Tingri at 0130. They hooked us up with a room, and we crashed almost immediately (in case you are wondering it must have been the 24h dysentary as things were, although not good in the hood, bearable for the ride at this point). Breakfast was two eggs and as I slowly choked down half a banana pancake (surprisingly they have taken to pancakes in Tibet and make rather good banana and apple pancakes) Ken managed to hitch us a lift to Shigatse in a landcruiser! Hooray for Ken! So we were off again, this time with a driver who believed that putting the air on recirculate with the fan on low was the ideal way to keep the cab aerated, so I spent the majority of the trip in the back trying not to be sick, I still don't do well without a window open, give me an open window and I'm fine, but close the windows and its just hell, the car was hot and stuffy.

Lhatse for dinner, a dent in a plate of noodles, then we picked up two more hitches for the final leg to Shigatse, which was much better road at least, and I finally won the argument on the open window by pretending to vomit all over his car. I kept the window open a life-giving crack the whole way.

Shigatse - the hotel from god. They had one room left, a double with a bathroom. It was clean, with warm shower, and had two double beds. Just amazing, after a shower I felt much better, in the morning I felt a lot better. Lets just say that that place was great, the Tenzin hotel if anyone is looking. I was ravenous for breakfast, but it was my first real meal in a while so I could only get so much in, and then we went out to arrange a cab/minibus/bus to Lhasa. We finally ended up on the public bus between Lhasa and Shigatse, which turned the 4h drive into about 6h and there was no leg room whatsoever (I spent the entire time turned sideways with my legs in the aisle, my left ass cheek screaming in pain, I don't know how Ken did it on the window). But the ride was reasonable. Although here's the experience, the best dressed guy on the bus, the rich chinese guy, with his two perfectly put together bags, nice suite and wire rimmed glasses, was the one who turned around and horked a loogy and spat, right in the middle of the bus. Sorry father, not a department store, but a bus.

We picked up people on the way and one guy brought two propane canisters on which were put in the aisle, over which people still smoked which surprised me, but luckily I was right beside them so if they did blow I was likely to die quickly rather than suffer maiming. Back to Lhasa, and into that Tashi. Recovery has gone well, I fell fine now, although I have a persistent cough that I don't know if its residual from altitude or allergies or infectious. Today was Drepung (next post, this one is likely already too long) and off to Kathmandu in the morning, for various reasons (also to be detailed later).

Getting there.

2005-10-05T02:53:00.000-06:00

So off we went on our wild voyage which from the last posts extatic visions, and this posts time stamp, I think you can see plans changed.

We had done a massive shopping trip to get food for our trip, about 800Yuan of food which mostly Ken and in small part I carried back to the room, just a load of instant noodles, rice, biscuits, yak jerkey, peanuts, snickers, tinned sardines etc. etc. etc. 21days worth of meals. There was much commotion at the grocery store as 4 checkout girls had to put their heads together to figure out how to box everything up so that we could carry it away with us. I also think they were just in awe at these two white guys buying a mountain load of random foods. But it was all packed and our ride to the start arranged with Brian, Nicola and Peter, a group who were heading to Nepal and were willing to drop us at our starting point on the way.

The Way Out

From Lhasa we had joined their trip via the normal tourist route to Dingri. We therefore headed off on the south friendship highway passed Yamdrok-Tso, a ginormous morainal lake just outside of Lhasa where we were constantly harrassed by the locals to take pictures of them, of their dressed up mini-goats, or of their yaks, for a price of course. The mini-goats, if I may have a word, are just the oddest coolest things. I am in awe every time I see them. No larger than a sheep, in fact significantly smaller, herds of these tiny goats are grazed all over the place by the tibetans. They are everything you expect from a goat, scruffy, big horned, dull-eyed, but tiny. They're just spectacular. Anyways from Yamdrok-Tso, at the pass, we dropped down and followed the road along the lake for quite a while, its quite the expansive lake, with herds of mini-goats across the hills making some of the hills look as though they were moving. The ground changed from rocky to marshy and we headed then into canyon country, eventually catching brief glimpses of glaciated peaks in the distance. At one point a plea to our driver, Tenzing, a good man, to stop brought him waving us off, later, and he was right, as we came across the pass and dropped down just below a glacier the full face of the mountain came into view with a chorten by the glacier, prayer flags streaming out in all directions. Of course, the locals new this was a viewpoint for the toursists so we were offered great deals on peices of quartz, obsidian and various other stones, as well as the odd fossil. Others were just there to have their picture taken.

We continued on from here to Gyantse. The town is built around an old Dzong, which is the local way of saying a fortress on a hill, and a monestary, Palchor Monestary whose claim to fame is the Kumbhum Stupha. Its also a great way for the monks to make a wack-load of cash. As you enter and through every side door and in every chapel are monks with their items for sale, not the items for the pilgrims, but the rich westerners who will buy the prayer beads, and the various other indulgences for sale. Yes I make the direct comparison as this entire process of dropping money left and right by pilgrims, especially, in return for prayers, or just good karma, strikes me as a slightly less overt form of the catholic sale of indulgences. No you won't go to hell if you don't throw a couple of jiao at every shrine you pass, but you won't reach enlightenment either! Anyways, from here we headed over to the Stupha, 5 stories of chapels devoted to Buddhas who, after seeing so many Buddhas over the last weeks, looked like so many of the other Buddhas. Their affects are usually flat, they are lifeless and painted gold. There are the odd statues to the evil protector demons which are quite intriguing, multi-headed demons, angry faces, carrying swords and various other weapons, whose job it is to scare away the evil spirits and protect us from them. We finally, after numerous chapels, at which point we were just starting to get silly. I commented that one of the Buddhas looked as though it was fingering us, as all you could see was one finger sticking up through the prayer flags hanging off the hand. Nicola proceeded to return the favour, which is when I made it more explicit that it looked like it was fingering us, but in fact it was only the fourth finger. So here we were, halfway up a stupa fingering the Buddhas.

We finally made the roof which is supposed to have spectacular views of the monestary and the surrounding town and plains, which it did. Unfortunately I couldn't photograph it as photography from the roof of the Stupa cost some silly fee, or you had to check your camera. I'm sick of being nickled and dimed to death so I will pay to get in but the extras are just too much for me. I'm not sure what the religious argument against taking photos is, but that giving 20yuan makes that argument go away. I prefer the japanese method, this is a cultural relic, to preserve it there is no photography allowed. But we did get an idea of the extent of a monestary that once house 4 different orders of monks peacably (can you imagine catholic monks living peacably?) and a view to the windy, dusty plain surrounding with the rocky ridges surrounding it. We stayed the night in a funny little hotel. By funny I mean great. The beds were clean and comfortable and we ended up staying in the common rooms, which did not have hot water, but had hot water, as usual in China what we were told and reality were two different things. So some had relaxing baths, I cleaned the goop off my shirt. Goop on my shirt, earlier in the day our driver had shared some of the local pastries with us, they are ubiquitous and good, flat breads with some sort of filling. When asked what type of filling we could only retort "brown". Its not sweet, but not bland, its just "brown". In any event as I ate one, a bunch of the filling ended up dripping down onto my shirt, so for the rest of the day I was sitting with "brown" dring on my shirt. It was great to be able to get to a sink and wash it out.

So we slept the sleep of the damned, and inspite of an alarm at 7:45 Peter came roaring out of the back room ready to leave and Ken and I were startled into action. We slowly got going, breakfasted, one last pit stop then off to Shigatse. From here on in the road was somewhat less than friendly. Up to Gyantse, if I remember rightly, the road was paved and very manageable. From Gyantse on we were travelling over rough dirt road, not terribly well kept, but still in this section not to bad, its all relative after all. We travelled through interminable Canyons, its all a blur of dust, and desert for the next 8 days, and eventually arrived in Shigatse for a view of Shigatse Dzong (note that these interesting Dzongs were mostly destroyed in the cultural revolution). In any event Shigatse is the second largest city in Tibet, and is the seat of the Panchen Llamas, hence a major monestary, Tashilunpo. So off to the monestary while our driver arranged our Alien Travel Permits (I feel like something out of "The Outer Limits"). Anways, to the monestary which has a spectacular Kora around it, high on the ridge which connects the monestary to the Dzong.

The monestary was more of a walled city than a monestary in this case. You walk through narrow alleyways of three storied houses which are the monks quarters, towards the back where you finally get to the temples, the attractions. Here you find the monuments that the 10th Panchen Llama rebuilt after the "redecorations" of the cultural revolution. A ginormous Buddha, purporting to be the largest sitting Buddha statue, seems to be the biggest attraction, and it is quite awe-inspiring, if only to consider how they built it, did they build the Buddha in the building, or build the Buddha, then build the building around it? Its huge and gold, and you can circle around and admire the Buddha from all angles. It was built recently, in the life of the 10th Panchen Llama (who only died in 1989) but is still quite interesting. From here we ran into Chris and Geirhart, our American and Austrian compatriots from Lhasa who had left only a few days before us. They had made it as far as Lhatse, but at that point transport ran out and they couldn't get to Base Camp, or indeed any further at all. But they had been exploring the area and wandered the rest of the monestary together which consisted of tombs to the 4th-9th Panchen Llamas (one big tomb, rebuilt by the 10th Panchen Llama again). There was also a rather large central temple with a statue off to the side which is the oldest and holiest relic in the monestary, according to the guide of the group I followed for a bit, and a courtyard with a group of people waiting for the prayers of the monks at 1300 as the lonely planet said they would, yet again the lonely planet was wrong, not today, no prayers till the evening so off we decided to go. Ken and I were off to do the Kora of the monestary, all the way around the outer wall, a solid 45min walk lined most of the way with the giant gold prayer drums. From the top of the ridge was a great view showing the demaracation of the Chinese and the Tibetan sections, the old town being somewhat of a dump, the new being a dump in an entirely different way.

We ran down from the Kora, and came upon Chris and Geirhart, just as they were a few doors from their hotel buying drinks. Ken was in the process of taking photos of the local market, here its a street lined with entire animal carcasses, hanging from wooden structures, just waiting for a buyer in the sun. I suspect it was mostly mini-goat or sheep meat for sale here, definately too small to be yak and I don't think they get much fish up here. But off for a brief lunch then back in the car for some fun driving to the tiny, hole of Lhatse.

The Frienship Highway is under construction. China and Nepal signed a treaty gaurunteeing the resumption of a bus from Lhasa to Kathmandu direct,and China has responsed with a massive roadworks project on the friendhsip highway. What they have done is to rip up the entire road from Shigatse to the border (although I can only vouch for the segment to Dingri personally, I am assuming they didn't stop there). No they haven't taken one part, and started work on it, they have ripped up the entire bloody road, leaving only rough tracks around the construction, and by rough tracks, I mean worse than the last stretch of road to the Bugaboos, or a very rough, non-maintained logging road. Somehow the bus manages to make it over this. In any event its the craziest public works project I have seen in ages, requiring massive increases in driving times and in general making things hell on the ass. What's most galling is that there are numerous work camps, but as you drive by in the day you get to see many spots where they have left one tibetan with his hand cement mixer to work, solo, on putting together the drainage that the road has been ripped up for. The best estimate I heard for the completion date was "mnyugh". So this was the trip to Lhatse.

When we arrived we arrived in a one horse, one road, dusty town. Yes there's that word again, dusty. We stayed in a reasonable geusthouse, the Tibetan Farmers Hostel, and we had a good dinner at the local chinese restaurant as suggested by Chris. Now interestingly, here we are and Peter is looking for a memory card for his camera, while he is haggling over the price, I walk to check out the location of the restaurant and am stopped by a friendly Tibetan with a friendly "Hello". Now this is in no way unusual, many people are just happy to see you and will greet you, others only know hello as an adjunct to begging, but in this case it was just a friendly hello, at which point he starts speaking to me in excellent english. It turns out he had been to Ottawa a few years back and studied english for a while and he was very excited to see a Canadian. But diner was on, so in spite of his question of whether I was "single" or not I had to bid him farewell.

The morning was a quick up, no breakfast, snacks in the car, and a drive to Shigatse. The drive starts off down a steep narrow canyon, again the road ripped up so its rather rough, then up to a pass where you catch your first glimpse of Chomolangma. Down again from the pass into Shigaste for a breakfast and then another two hours to Dingri. Dingri for the afternoon, dropped off at a hostel where they can arrange yaks and our group was off, Ken, myself and a pile of kit at the start of our marathon 20day trek!

The hostel was able to help us arrange our guide and yaks, but here's the catch. Any trip to Rongphu requires payment for 7 days, even though it is at most a three day trek there. hmmmmm. We tried to bargain but it turns out that its the Dingri government that has set the rules. We were somewhat irked by this, but it was either pay or no yaks, no discussion, no bargaining, they kinda had us over a barrel. But we arranged the Yaks for 0800 and went off to get our permits to enter the park (another 65Yuan each) and a hat for me, I had lost mine somewhere around Lhatse. I found a crappy hat, we got the permits and then went to the Everest or Kuya restaurant, I'm not sure about the name, but the place is in the Everest Guesthouse. Anyways, it was a great little restaurant, and when we entered Tibetans got up and scurried to give us a couch and a table that we could sit at, as they scootched over at their table making room. We had a great meal and watched the interactions of the three groups (tibetans, chinese and westerners). So the chinese guards sat in their corner and everyone sort of started at them, eventually they left. The ignore factor between them and the tibetans was very high. The westerners reclined in the couch and had some trouble interacting, but the odd smile and laugh was passed and shared with the locals.

As the night dragged on Ken and I were the only ones in the place, waiting for our Momos to arrive, the family's youngest boy was a little devil running over and turning up the music continuously and then running back to his seat hoping no one would notice. The daughter came in and told us a bit of her story, how she had been in Dharamshala studying for 15 years of her life when she had recieved a call from her mother and had come back home to help out. She had no passport so she was smuggled into the country. Now this complicates things, she is reporting to the local authorities trying to get a passport, but she can't travel, even within Tibet bcause of this, and she now has assigned work so there is no hope of her studying any further. We closed the place down, paying an extremely grateful aunt, and headed off to bed, the great adventure awaiting.

I'm off

2005-09-25T02:08:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow I'm off. Ken, my roommate in the dorm, and I have arranged a trip into the everest region. We are joining an existing land cruiser tour to everest base camp but we are jumping out early. We will go to Tingri, stopping at a few places along the way, Gyantse monestary for a night, and Shigatse and Lhatse for another night, and from there we will set off trekking, 4 days to north Everest base camp, 5 days from there to Kharta and from there a 10 day trek up to the Kangshung Face base camp. We figure 22 days in total on the trek, with rest days, and in total 28ish days, including getting there and back. We are quite excited. Oh and no we're not carrying everything, we're hiring a Yak or two.

I'll have to update when I'm back.

Lhasa II

2005-09-25T02:03:00.000-06:00

So I've been very lazy in Lhasa now for quite a while. I'm up to a whole week in the same city and, in all honesty, I have done very little. Most people seem to spend three days and see more than I have seen, but then they just rush from big temple to big temple. I've taken to spending a couple hours a day in a tibetan tea house just up the road from my hotel. I first spotted the place my first day in Lhasa. I noticed a dark room taking up the entire ground of one building on the street. The room is decked out in worn wooden benches and tea soaked woodent tables, all very simple, and inside a plethora of tibetans, huddled together chatting, laughing, generally carrying on. I didn't have the cajones to walk in right then, but soon I was off with Chris from Miami, Gerhardt from Austria and Ken from Ireland to go for a cup of tea, them having already explored the place. They serve a sweet milk tea in this house, which is very similar to the indian chai we have all grown to know and love and what's more is that myself and my group are the only non-tibetans in the place every time I have been there. Its fun, we become the centre of attention for a while. They are often a bit shy, staring at us as we sit, but a brief "Tashi Dele" is all that is needed to break the ice, unfortunately that's about all we can say to communicate. Bookjacking occurs as they get to look at pictures of Kailash, and Chomolangma (Everest) in my books, or they can see the pictures we have taken around Lhasa on our cameras (there are more and more ways that digital camera's are great). Mostly we just sit and down cup after cup of this tea generally shooting the proverbial shit and wasting time.

I've seen a bit of the required tourist sites. Notably the Potala and the Jhokang. The Jhokang is the holiest temple in Tibet as I understand it, and pilgrims from far and wide will come on journeys to see the temple, to pray in its various chapels and to walk the Kora around it, circling while praying. Some will circambulate the temple by protrating themselves the entire way, advancing only the length of their body with each prostration, the more devout will face towards the temple with each prostration advancing no more than their bodies width. There were two of these who stood out in my mind. The first was a middle aged man, not dressed as a monk, he wore a long leather apron and had two blocks of wood tied to his hands, which is common to reduce the injury to the hands when rubbing them on the ground in prostrations. He was actually on the Potala Kora the frist time I saw him and he advanced very slowly, as the alleyway along which he was moving was only as wide as he was tall, so every time he stood up, he would wait with a smile on his face as people passed by and he waited for a hole in the throng of pilgrims walking around the Kora, before he would protrate himself. The second was a young monk, about 12 years old, whom I have seen at both the Jhokang and the Potala, so young, and he has, on his forehead a grey circle, from the dirt and dust he has come into contact with during his hours of prostration and prayer.

The Jhokang bothered me deeply inside. I entered with the rest of the pilgrims and payed my 70Yuan to enter, but my timing seems to have been off as I came at the busiest time for pilgrims. The Kora of the inner chapel was a throng of pilgrims, bustling about, humming with energy and the sound of their prayers. It was almost impossible to net get caught up in the flow of bodies, pushing you along. Unfortunately a few tourists with their Telephoto lenses had stopped, forcing pilgrims to redirect, so they could take pictures as they walked by. After a Kora I went to enter the inner chapel. Most people have just walked in and joined the line of pilgrims moving about, and I was to do the same, except that today, I had to wait in line for an hour, sandwiched between a man who did not stop praying the entire time, and a woman and her son. Its not the hour I had a problem with as I will shortly describe. As we passed the entranceway the pilgrims stopped to touch their head to the wooden railing in front of the statues in hallway and finally we made it to the inner chapel, around which a line of pilgrims snakes in and out of various side chapels, completing an inner Kora of some of the holiest statues in Tibet. Most tourist join this line and follow around, but people were sitting, waiting patiently, for the line to start moving again, and there was in general little movement. Not having the patience, both to wait that long and the patience with myself for interfering with these pilgrims journey, I left the line and walked around the inner chapel, seeing the giant buddha's and the place where the monks sit and pray. A bit of geography, there is a dark tunnel leading into a cavernous chapel, the centre of which is cordoned off and contains ornate figures and the seats for the monks. Around this is an open area, and lining the wall around this are the entryways to chapels housing various holy figures, Buddha's and gods. As I left the line and wandered around this inner chapel, eschewing the line for the outer chapels was when I started to feel horrible. Already I ha felt uncomfortable, there was an energy in the building, coming from the pilgrims, for whom this is obviously a deeply personal and religious experience, and here I was the international voyeur, wandering in their midst, barging in on their journey. I tried to be unobtrusive, but I was stuck in the press of bodies, obvious to the ones around that I was not there for the same reason. As I started to wander around the inner chapel I ran into several chinese tour groups. They wandered in masses, and their guide would stand in the entryway to the side chapels, in between the lines of entering and exiting pilgrims as they shuffled through, shouting to the group. The group would form a tight knot extending from the pilgrims shuffling along the wall to the various outer chapels, right up to the railing around the inner chapel, blocking everyone else from getting through. As the group would break up you could sneak through, until I got to the temple of Jowo, perhaps the centrepiece of the Jhokang and the destination for many of the pilgrims to here. I watched as the tour leader shouted out from the steps up into the temple, a monk behind him calmly tending the butter lamps and pilgrims moving through slowly, praying as they went through. As the tour guide finished, the group immediately started to push their way up the stairs, pushing through the pilgrims and forcing their way into the chapel without waiting in line.

I continued on and saw some of the smaller chapels for which there was no line, and then headed upstairs. To the second floor, much less populated, I was able to wander freely, and without interfering through the temples, but to me, they all started to look the same. A small vaulted rock walled room with a statues lining the walls and butter lamps in the middle. Pilgrams bustled about in an amazing diversity of attitudes. Some were on a mission, pushing through anyone moving to slow, quickly scooping an offering of a spoonful of oil into the lamp, and moving on, constantly muttering. Others seemed to wander through, heads constantly bowed, in a moment of deep religious experience, praying constantly, and others seemed to be wandering like me, a tourist, but them making small devotions in some of the chapels.

From here I made it to the roof which has a teashop and a gift shop, of course, and views down of the pilgrims prostrating themselves at the entrance to the temple, or doing the Kora on the outside of the inner temple, or of the golden rooves of the temple itself with frightening carved figures keeping watch. What struck me here was the conversation I overheard, an english speaking tourist and his friends, he stood bragging about how he had worn shorts and a t-shirt from the morning, and he was comfortable and all of the others, who had worn pants and shirts, were hot now that the midday sun was up. Obviously he was just patently ignorant, showing the legs is disrespectful in the temples, but he was so proud of his ignorance. I felt like part of a problem, a tourist problem which was destroying a holy site, rather than the solution we tell ourselves we are, those seeing tibet to bring the what's happening, and the culture to the rest of the world. What bollox, we are part of the reason this holy place is being slowly desecrated, because we will not repsect their customs, and show proper deference to the pilgrims. I would not have a problem at all with the monks closing the Jhokang to all but pilgrims, or at least putting up signage telling tourists that they will not be admitted if they are not approprately dressed, and that tourists can only visit during a limited few hours. The experience was horrible for me, I would love to talk to the monks, or the pilgrims and know how they feel about these tourists trampling through their temple.

The second place of note is obviously the Potala, set on the top of a hill in the centre of Lhasa it is a commanding and magical sight. Once the seat of the goverments power and the winter palace of the Dalai Llama it contains the remains and shrines to several of the Dalai Llamas as well as numerous artifacts, many copies of translations of old texts, and obviously the living quarters and throne room of the Dalai Llama. What's most interesting at the Potala is the combination of the monks, guarding each room, tending the lamps and collecting the offerings, and the army guards, who seem paired almost one to one with the monks. There's not much to say, the shrines containing the past Dalai Llama's are massive, made of 1000s of kg of gold, one of them is over 16m tall. They are impressive structures. The thrones of the Dalai Llama's were interesting, there did not seem to be the same pomp associated. Their recieving rooms were small, and although they sat on high, they were still close, within reach, human. Also notable was the workers on the roof, singing and marching to chinese songs, as they prepared to repair this holy sight of tibetan buddhism.

The rest of Lhasa has been my meanderings through the town. The tibetan quarter is great, friendly and alive, energetic. Beside it is a muslim qaurter, almost the same but sith men with round white hats and women with their head covered; the signs are also in Tibetan, Chinese, Arabic and English here. There are markets and pool tables. We played a game with a cue ball that resembled a pockmarked, erratic comet more than the smooth rolling ball we desired. We were horrible, but it was fun. There's also a massive market, rows and rows of stalls of random everything for sale. A large area of the obligatory yak meat, another of yak butter, sweets, packaged food, and upstairs hardware, pots and pans, clothes, notebooks. Nothing is easy to find, its just small stores all side by side with random things, today we bought the last of our supplies there. As Matias, a dutchmen, and I wandered we came across a small peaceful nunnery, of which we could only enter the courtyard, but which was emminently peacefuly. Beside this was a tiny temple one of the secondary temples of the Jhokang with inviting signs to tourists to come upstairs and look around, into the chapel, downstairs, around another chapel I heard what I thought was the praying of monks, but it seems to have just been the buzzing of the pilgrims praying as the circambulated this chappel. We joined them and as we left the circle a friendly man stopped us, making sure we had done three circles, the bare minimum, which we had, before he continued on his circambulations and we headed out of the temple.

The last few nights we have headed to a local folk bar, the main act owns it and has played both nights. Last night we closed down the bar and another dutchman we met up with, as the night wore on, convinced the owner that if he played one more song he would buy the CD. The CD purchased, the singer/guitarist pulled out his two string guitar and, accompanied by his friend on the drums, set about playing a couple songs, a private concert for us. A few beer later, and a couple more CD purchases (without further songs, we weren't cruel) later we headed out.

Outside of the tibetan and muslim quarters however, is the soulless chinese district. New and sterile, it doesn't have life, any life, not the hum of Japan, the modern vibrancy co-existing with their living history, but a complete detached and lifeless world, just outside the warmth of the tibetan, muslim quarter. I am looking forward to getting out of Lhasa and into Tibet, the Chinese influence is starting to grate on me.

Lhasa 1

2005-09-19T04:02:00.000-06:00

I love Lhasa, laid back mountain community, colourfull and friendly. Happy tibetan's smiling and always curious. The chinese district is somewhat soulless but what can you do?

THe flight was not what I expected, and Airbus A340 400 series, you know the big ones with 8 across in every row, and it was almost full. I was kind of expecting a small plane, but no there was a mass of people. Getting off others were met by their tour group, I not so much. My tour is more of a formality to get me into the region. The tunnel is done so my first impression of Tibet included a drive through a 2.5km long tunnel on the way to Lhasa. Old tibetan houses lined the side o the road, most with chinese flags pasted on the roofs. The doorways are colourful, a base of red, but with more colour, more depth and variety than I had seen till now in China. I checked in to my dorm, three beds in a room, and was off to wander the Barkhor Square, one of the many local markets. Chinese army was conspicuous, as were the government cameras, but the pilgims continued on oblivious, the merchants as well. The people will try to get your attention but after the rude behaviour of Beijing they are very mild, "look, just look" is the catch phrase, or beggars saying "guchi guchi" but they are polite about it all. A giant urn sits in the centre of the square where pilgrims burn bunches of fragrant leaves, the smoke billowing out, then to a cheap dinner and an early bed, after some e-mail of course.

I briefly met my room-mates as they arrived later on in the evening, I half asleep, but we had breakfast in the morning, a Canadian, an Irishman, an Austrian and an American were in a restaurant in Tibet, stop me if you've heard this one. Pleasant and it sounds as though we may try to work out a trek at some point, something around the Everest region maybe? We'll see, right now I want to relax a bit in Lhasa and the day consisted of wandering the streets, around the outer Kora of the Potala. First the Kora, this is a pilgrim circuit of a building, in this case on one side (the right) is a row of golden barrels, similar to the prayer wheels that the pilgrims turn as they walk by, they line the route. On the left a market selling everything from meat, just piles of Yak siting out, Yak butter, to toothpaste and clothes. Everything a devout pilgrim could want. The Potala is the Dalai Lama's seat of power and is a giant, magnificent castle sitting atop a hill in the middle of the city. Look for a picture, it is quite a striking sight, very impressive, and dominant in the landscape. The views from each of the sides equally interesting, especially with the pilgrims wandering about, prayer wheels constantly spinning. While my walking companion was using the loo I was accosted by a guy who knew little english. He's from Sischuan and we pulled out my map to show him where Canada is. Just a brief friendly chat with little we could really say to each other.

We also sat in the courtyard of the Potala, the main square out front I should say, and two tibetan teens came up and just sat beside us. A few brief smiles, the one started playing with the waist strap on my pack, intrigued by the clasp. The tibetans have been eminently friendly, always smiling, the waitress last night singing as she cleaned, the cook down below belting out a tune which could be heard up the stairs.

Anyways, relaxing, but I shall head off for a brief nap before dinner, where we will attempt to plan some attack on the base camps of mighty everest.

Lhasa 1

2005-09-19T03:59:00.000-06:00

I love Lhasa, laid back mountain community, colourfull and friendly. Happy tibetan's smiling and always curious. The chinese district is somewhat soulless but what can you do?

Anyways, relaxing, but I shall head off for a brief nap before dinner, where we will attempt to plan some attack on the base camps of mighty everest.

Beijing

2005-09-19T03:42:00.000-06:00

A breakfast of the usual odd chinese fare then off to spend far too much time changing my plane ticket and arranging permits for Tibet, yes it can be done in Beijing now. Then the walk to Tiananamen Square. So the square a big pile of concrete surrounded by western buildings, in styles reminiscent of colonial british construction, large pillars supporting giant facades, and surrounding domes reminiscent of european architechture. So much for rejecting the capitalist imperial western traditions, here they have been embraced, right down to the architecture. The best sight is across the square, a large flag waving in the wind, two soldiers stand guard underneath with 4 police guarding the honor gaurd, beyond this, the face of Mao, staring down from the gate of heavenly peace, across Tiananamen square. All seem to be symbols of ages gone by, the old empire, and the old powerful communist regime, now just memories of the past. Free trade abounds in the square, all sorts of food, drink, and trinkets for sale.

From this I hiked into the Forbidden City, under Mao, and past the plethora of guards through several gates, then paying far too much to look at buildings in the process of being restored, and into the forbidden city itself. The scale of the forbidden city is in a class of its own. Giant courtyards, giant gates. Stairways with etching, and symbols placed carefully to remind the visitor of the emperor's power. The various halls are eqully enormous, the emperor enthroned on a dias, dragons gaurding him from the roof. But much is reconstruction, and its hard to tell too terribly much. Plus the throng of locals pushing, every pushing, jostling and fighting for position, makes it difficult to appreciate and absorb the sights. I meandered through, admiring the architecture, the detailing on the roofs, and the brief historical exhibit on the Empress Dowager Cixi, the last person to truly wield imperial power in China. Yes the glass was beautiful, but one snuff box looks like another. Many of the rooms have old articles lining the walls, but they are poorly kept, non-illuminated and extremely hard to see. Even the restored rooms are kept dark, behind glass such that the only way to view a slice is to use both hands to shield the glass from reflections and light and peer through the grimy, oily glass. Half the city had been restored, and the other half was closed as it was under restoration. The emperor's garden was beautiful, but packed and not nearly as exciting as the summer palace.

I made my way out a few hours later and wandered around, at every corner being offered an umbrella, do they think that if I turned down the last person (standing 5m away) that I will all of a sudden buy theirs? I had little time so I wandered and finally found a few Huoton to wander through. It was the end of the day and people were returning from work, playing games in the alleys, talking. I could only glimpse in the gateways to the courtyards, mostly filled with excess wood and bricks. I headed off to meet Gon Jun for dinner, hiking over an hour in a rainstorm before I finally found a cab who knew where the hell my hotel was (this was a problem. I was put in this hotel in the Health Sciences Centre, and no one knew where it was, the bathroom stank, just wreaked of I don't know what, an maid service was erratic at best, they tried to kick me out of my room at 0730 to clean the room, and other days didn't come at all. This and it was extremely non-central). But finally I got back and we went for a dinner at the canteen on campus, then to bed with my plan to pick up my Lhasa permit and orgnsie flights in the morning, then to the great wall in the afternoon. I got my Lhasa permit no problem and tried to change flights again but couldn't (A blessing in disguise) and spent the rest of the day not having a bloody clue what was going on. We went to the silk market for about 10min, not the cool one, but the grocery store up the road. Apparently anywhere you buy things is silk market. Aside from that I sat in front of the internet until Gong's friends arrived to go to the great wall. We took the train, this was an interesting experience.

THe train to the great wall is a hard seater only. Wooden seats with leather covering, the backs at 90 degrees to the seat. And they just sell tickets. We pushed in beside two obviously un-impressed travellers who thought we were too many for the seat, there were 6 of us in pace taken by 4 in all the other seats. A friendly old man in the next seat, excited by the foreigner, turned around and chatted with me for a bit. Apparently we are now friends. The train car looked like somethin out of the 50s, and felt that way. Tired dirty workers returning home for the weekend, 50s style music piped through the speaker, burlap sacks tied up and stored on the roof racks, and the car itself looked like something out of the 50s, high celiengs as aerodynamics are not a concern, it had the feel that it should be tied up in a museum, and in Canada it would be. I just can't think of how to describe it. 4h later we arrived at our destination and hopped off in the dark, greeted by a farmer and his flashlight we wandered through the scrub down a hill to his house where we were to be put up for the night. The courtyard had a small garden, giant red flowers growing, and one wall entirely blocked off by corn. A feast awaited us (vegetables or the first time in a while) and then we watched some TV (not exactly roughing it) and headed to bed. It was a single big bed for all of us, just a 6ft wide, by the length of the room, bed with pillows and individual blankets, it actually was very spacious, we probably each had four feet widthwise. The pillow was, I swear, loaded with corn, and the pillow case was a tea towel with the character for fortune on it twice.

We awoke and a short van ride led us to Jinshanling, suppoedly the most beautiful part of the wall. In the predawn we could see the watchtowers shillouetted along the top of the ridge. I started hiking the route to Simitai, but Gong and the others went the other way, shouting at me to turn around and waking up a party of 50 or so who had camped out on the great wall. At least they all knew my name after that. I ran back to tell him to shut up and we headed off. From a watchtower I was able to watch sunrise over the great wall, quite spectacular actually, and then we began hiking the other way. Gong stopped us soon as we wouldn't have time to see Simitai if we kept going on, an argument ensued as to whether we could walk the wall to Simitai (which I said we could, having read the lonely planet and the map at the entry, but Gong didn't believe me. First rule, Mark is always right, well except today, I thought we were going East, but we were actually going West, don't laugh Tim, I had a landmark wrong). Anyways, we headed off hiking along the wall.

Its an enourmous structure, and we only hiked a short 10k secton, but we could see it snaking off in the distance for quite a distance beyond until it was lost in some sharp ridges. To the other side the wall rose up and sank with the ridge, at times it must have been about 45 degrees, watchtowers every 100m I would geuss, but everywhere, Janshanling has been well preserved and restored, but as we reached Simitai we entered some of the ruins of the wall, great watch towers collapsing, and in parts the wall no more than a metre off the ground. We continued on and hiked down through a narrow gorge, across a river and back up to the famous Simitai portion of the wall which climbs up a steep ridge, 12 towers are now open along the way. We debated whether to go, I was getting tired and my knee was hurting, but the others wanted to go. I acquiesced gracefully and still they argued (about what I don't know it was all in mandarin) so in order to solve the argument I started running up the bloody hill. Needless to say I was ahead of Gong and stopped for them to catch up. After a while they did, and Gong had a huge smile on his face. "Are you hungry?", "Yeah, I could go for something to eat","Do you want to know why I am smiling", not really, I was sick of him laughing at me for everything from carrying a backpack to uing chopsticks differently from him, but to be polite "why?" "because we stopped for lunch, and ate all the food!" HOW IS THAT FUNNY! So for the 10h we were hiking, sore throat and all, I had nothing to eat because they had been so inconsiderate as to eat everything. Not impressed. But we got down and I bought myself some reasonable but not cheap, lunch at the hostel while waiting for Gong's friends to arrive. I was to travel back to Beijing with them as a) Gong et al were staying to camp, b) the bus was faster than the train, even though they still don't beieve me, and c) they were going to the same place as I. They arrived and they spent a good 20min talking before Gong introduced me and we could leave. Anyways, cab to the bus, bus to Beijing, check into the hotel, which is apparently only for those affiliated with the university, although why you would charge people that much for that service and associate it with the university I don't know. Checking in was interesting as they didn't remember me and they didn't speak a lick of english. Oddly enough I don't understand anything but the most basic of mandarin, but we eventually got things sorted and I got my overpriced room, a sleep then flew early to Chengdu, by now my sore throat a full fledged cold. I was supposed to overnight in Chengdu but was able to get on the 1330 plane to Lhasa so off I went. Check in, the didn't like my Lhasa permit as it was only a photocopy, but eventually checked me in when I told them it was what Air China in Beijing gave me, and at security they didn't like it either, but they argued a bit and eventually accepted it (all the head guy wanted was a piece of paper that had a name on it the same as the passport) and off I went.

Ancient Japan to Ancient China

2005-09-16T02:02:00.000-06:00

Japan finished simply, a dinner of Unagi (Barbequed Eel, Yousuke and I enjoy it but most don't) an early night and then a sleep in. Yousuke was exhausted so it seemed only fair. We headed off late and were even able to find a locker large enough for my bag, its huge so it was quite a feat. There we were in Ueno where we stopped for a final sushi meal, along the lines of the sushi boat restaurants but cheaper and better, and then off to explore some famous temples in Tokyo, a buddhist temple and a Shinto shrine side by side, the Shinto shrine calm, the temple famous and busy. We meandered through some streets one the tourist trap from hell, the other a busy outdoor market. Yousuke introduced me to a few more chinese treats, Matcha, which is usually a very bitter, cold tea but which had been sweetened for the tourists, and a few sweets along the way. We topped it all off with a walk through a quiet park in downtown Tokyo, a shrine surrounded by a lake which was over run with lotus plants, then off to catch the train to the airport to get my plane to Beijing. This time I flew terminal 2 of Narita, which is rather large, shopping everywhere, absoultely everywhere. The upstairs is one large mall complex. What got me was the currency exchange. As soon as you check in there is a counter to change money at, as you go through security there is another counter, after you take the tram to the other concourse there is another, each a windowed facade behind which sit men in white and black, surrounded by piles of boxes and books. It was like a scene from Ikuru.

The plan was only slightly late leaving, but we were given constant updates on our departure time, in true Japanese precision fashion. The flight over was uneventful, except that Japanese food from the airline is as disgusting as anywhere else. Considering their fetish for fresh food, preserved reheated anything japanese is just not right.

I arrived in Beijing and sauntered through health inspection, passport control and customs no problem. The airport is an enourmous, cavernous complex which is an obvious testament to the might of the People's Republic, it appears brand new from every angle, but as soon as you walk out of the secure area it turns into the usual, cabbies harrasing you for a ride, and the throng of people pressed against the railing waiting for their loved ones to come. Lukily I didn't have to find my way around alone though, as Xiaoxia and Gong Jun met me right outside the departures gate. from there off to my simple hotel and a quick dinner at Aaron's supposed favorite restaurant.

The next morning Xiaoxia met me early and we were off to breakfast, dumplings, some sort of sweet bread and rice porridge and then to Peking University to meet He Gang. We were greeted at the gates and got the super quick tour of the beautiful campus of "China's Harvard". All built in traditional chinese style, yet designed by an american, the campus is stunning. In the middle is a pagoda-like tower which stands beside a lake, symbolising knowledge, wisdom and a whole bunch more that I can't really remember. The park in the middle of campus was just amazing, and quickly made me jealous of their campus. On the way out we passed through the gate and a pair of pillars, of which there are only three in china, one in a museum, one in the imperial palace, and one in the university. They are highly symbolic of success in war, at the top two beasts keep watch over armies away and watching for their return.

From there we went off to the Summer Palace, by bus, and when the lonely planet calls the buses crowded they mean it. I have learned just how strong old chinese women can be, they are able to violate laws of physics, compressing two other people until they occupy the same space so that they can get on the bus. Its disturbing. These buses are packed to the gills,and lumber ever so slowly through the Beijing traffic. That is another note, driving in Beijing, lets just say I'm glad I don't. The drivers are insane, a four lane road easily sports 6 lanes of traffic with most cabbies driving with the white line somewhere between the driver and the passenger, do they think it offers added protection? Traffic lights are optional, and the rule is to just make your way, its an interminable game of chicken with a never ending supply of oppponents. I now know why traffic is the leading cause of fatalities in the world, there are 15million people here on the verge of death any day. At least crossing the street is better than montreal. Although they won't make much effort to not hit you, cars here will make no extra effort to hit you. So you just look for a hole, cross until the middle of the road, wait as cars go by on both sides, then finish when there is space. Just like Montreal.

So the Summer Palace, get tickets, tourist map and go, join the throngs of people who are touring around. Its beautiful, but crowded. Amazingly crowded. Ridiculously crowded. Its like a touristic Shinjuku in a lot of ways, except without the purpose of people shopping/working etc.

But the palace itself is quite the sight. The juxtaposition with the recent japanese architecture I had seen was very interesting, as you know Japan was heavily influenced by China. The attention to detail and diversity in the artwork is also quite amazing to see. Every beam, and every rafter is painted, designs in bright colours. The middle of every beam, on the three visible sides, will be painted each with different scenes depicting poetry, stories, scenery and the flora and fauna of China. The entire summer palace lies alongside an enourmous man made lake. The north bank is the palace, heading south east from there is the Western Causeway (which actually divides the lake into three) which is spanned by 6 bridges, each of differing design, each with names from various poems. The Jade Belt Bridge is among the more famous and is so called because in the sunset it looks like a belt of jade, oddly enough. Then entire walk down the Western Causeway is lined with trees, peach and pear if I remember correctly, which must be an awesome sight when in the spring they are in full bloom.

We meandered along the long hallway, which covers the entire north bank, and then around the lake, a hefty walk but with beautiful scenery the whole way, a different view around every corner. From the starte you could look south and see downtown Beijing rising behind the far wall, the gardens and above the lake. as we walked down the causeway we could see the palace behind, perched on a hill and the Jade Stream Tower, which gaurded the once source of the waters that fed the lake, perched in the foothills, the mountains rising behind it, and close a lake, filled with lotus plants, little room for a boat. From the south you could see the seventeen arch bridge with the palace rising behind it.

I was struck by the differences in gardens between china and Japan. Japanese gardens embody a condtradiction in their appearance, they appear to planned spontenaity. Its the bestI can do to describe it. Although spontaneous and naturally place, it is still obviously placed and maintained. Chinese gardens just look spontaneous, trees allowed to grow more freeley, grass instead of moss, hanging blowing trees and plants in the water instead of carefully groomed evergreens and streams, or clear water.

Back at the palace we were walked up towards the gardens and had a brief lunch. Sitting at the edge of the pond, surronded by bright red pavilions and courtyards, He Gang translated some of the signs for me, they are quotes from litterature, and use imagery of contradictory senses. The one that stuck, and made the most sense, was "Drink Green", sitting with a pond of green lotus leaves, and hanging trees all around, green everywhere you could drink in the green.

On the opposite side of the lake there were groups playing traditional chinese music, just out for a relaxing day, enjoying the elder life as He Gang put it. A couple, the husband playing a traditional violin and her singing. Just up in the next pavilion an enthusiastic old man sang and swayed to the song he was belting out, accompanied by an equally enegeretic flutist. The old man was a sight, punctuating every note with his hands, smiling and then laughing with his friends as the gathered crowd applauded them.

We continued on wandering through more gardens, until we reached the budhist temple and the Sizhou street. We hiked first up the hill that the palace is centred on to the temple. Three large buddha's keep watch while 18 monks sit on the sides, their faces very lifelike, each with different dress and expression, some serene, others hysterical, angry... Then up through the broken rock to the top to the temple of 1'000 Budhas, there so named for the 1'000 Budhas carved into the outer walls. Most of their faces had been destroyd, by people I assume as it was only the lower ones, but the upper ones remained intact.

AS we came down I actually paid to gointo Sizhou street, which is supposed to be a recreation of the chinese Venice. A floating city with the waterway as the cheif mode of transport, now a tourist hell, with a traditional chinese Dr (who looked 16 but was at least decked out in the traditional clothes) an thin, venerable old man doing caligraphy, a younger fatter, joyful man also doing caligraphy, and shops harrassing you to sell water, or tea or cheap ugly trinckets, or, and this is my favorite, disneyland style charicatures. "My son went to china and all I got was this charicature I could have gotten anywhere else". He Gang and Xiaoxia had a good laugh when I got out as I basically just wandered around, pretty much without stopping until I escaped.

From here we went to Yuanmingyuan park. This is the old summer palace, destroyedin 1860 during the second opium war. The land has mostly been returned to parks, very european in style, very different from the other parks I had seen, but at the back are the ruins of the old summer palace. As you walk up you get a glimpse of but one of the buildings, and as you walk in there is a half kilometre walk with the ruins of mansions on either side and in the middle, massive structures in the european style which served as the emperors summer residence and largely a pleasure centre, but they were utterly destroyed, and although the palace all told was once 5 times vatican city, this one block of ruined stones is all that remains. There are copper plates made just before the destruction which have been reproduced to show what once was, models of the buildings are also presented, the air holes have been stuffed with one and five yuan notes by visitors, and a labyrinth with a gazebo in the middle has been reconstructed. Xiaoxia eagerly ran off to find her way through the labyrinth, He Gang and I, afraid of getting lost, and already tired, decided to wait on the outside for her.

Most striking is at the end of the block of houses, you can sit in the pavilion that once held the imperial thrown and look across at the ruins of a giant european style water park. Two towers on the side and a colonnade in the middle, the ruins of the pumping building behind. It is a famous sight in Chinese history books, and a shocking one. It conjures memories of Nuclear destruction, of firebombing Tokyo and Berlin, of massacre's in Ireland, India, Africa, but here there is a memorial to it. Not ruins from disuse as in greece, but ruins from our violence. And to simplify it, all because of a large trade deficit and an insistence on the legalisation of opium. Vietnam in all its incarnations, Nicaragua, Iraq, Aghanistan...

So enough pontificating, we headed from there to dinner. A quick cab to Peking university then up a side road where He Gang an Xiaoxia left me alone for a 15min while they went off to get some meat on a stick for me, from the western provinces. I sat and waited for the dishes we had orderd, all in hunan style. Cooked tomatoes with egg (which I thought I wouldn't like but was somehow really good), smoked and dried pork, boiled green vegetable (lets be honest, I only really recognise Bok Choi here) and yet another dish, I believe beef, but I just can't remember, so much and so good. We stuffed ourselves and I was exposed to the custom of raising the beer glass in toast every time we wanted a drink.

After this He Gang had arranged tickets to see the University of Dusseldorf Symphony performing at Shanghai University, so I finished off a day in the old east with a night in the old west, listetening to Shumann, Wagner, and Bheethoven in the opposite order. I met another student who is studying film and is president of, if I remeber rightly, their film students association. It is always difficult though describing to them the differences between the Canadian and (insert country here) education system, but we muddled through.

And that was the first of Bejing.

Fuji and fish

2005-09-12T03:57:00.000-06:00

Now first off, what was I expecting of Fuji. An easy, if long, trip to the top of what I believed to be a spiritual mountain. A few huts spaced along the way with floors for would be summiters to crash on and something serene on the summit. The mountain is quite different.

We started late and headed off, but by 0945 we had started climbing, well left the car anyways. The start of the hike is a traverse at 2305 m to the base of the route, which heads on a straight line up the mountain. There were several large gift stands at the bottom, it seemed like Banff. But we headed along and through what was a beautiful, if wide, trail through the trees until we reached the base of the climbing, at the 6th station. OF course when I say climbing I really mean easy scrambling, but that is what I expected, a well trodden path to the top. But what ends up being there is a reinforced, 8ft wide path, reinforced by steel embankements to protect it from snow and rockfall reshaping it and all the way to the top, not just a few here and there, but a constant line of huts of one sort or another, and lots of construction. I had read in the lonely planet and elswhere that people had gotten off route, nothing serious, but I have no idea how as the entire way up is not only signed, but cordoned off to prevent climbing straight up. Oh my god the switchbacks!! So many switchbacks!

But we summited and at the odd point there were gateways with coins stuck in the cracks in the wood and at the summit, well where you exit the crater rim a hut and supposedly a post office, but it was closed when we arrived, and further along a small shrine like thing was present where people had tied bells and put coins in the wood, I assume for luck. At the summit, however, was weather station, and on the route to the summit around the crater, a backhoe. The weather station is not just a small windmill and rain catch it is a giant monstrosity of a rusting steel structure which blocked the entire view of the summit to the valley below, such that we could only really look at the crater rim. But we had summited the highest mountain in Japan (3776m), about 100m higher than the highest I had climbed in the rockies (North Twin). The descent was made easy by the subaru line which, unfortunately, did not include, a subaru to drive me back, but was a more than one lane road, perfectly graded the whole way down, with a soft layer of dirt underfoot. Still it was 1500m of descent.

Now I may have sounded whingy above, but that is just too much climbing with Henry. There were numerous perfect moments to the day. Notably the weather. We had constant fog, but with only sprinkles of rain during the descent. What this set up was a perfect day climbing. In the sun we would have been cooking the whole way up and likely would have been buying water at every hut we passed, but the temperature was perfect for climbing, and the scenery was made all the more fantastic by the surreal effects of the cloud banks blowing in and out, the vistas through holes in the clouds, and the nearby ranges as the clouds played about the summits, or just hung, far above those summits, but still far below us.

As well the torii, a shito gateway, just below the crater rim, was hiding in the mist as I approached, only to have a window open behind me which offered an amazing view. Through the torii one could see down into the valley, the next range over just behind a lake, and framing the view on one side the black sloping cone of Fuji-san, on the other a bank of cloud.

So down we came and unfortunately missed out on the promised onsen (japanese hot springs) as the traffic on the highway delayed us over two hours. But late as we were, and cranky as Mark was becoming, we went out and Yousuke, Hiroshi, Masake and I had Okinawa food, an entirely different taste of Japan. Now Yousuke had me eating boiled pigs ear, i.e the cartilage, but various other pork dishes, including what appeared to be the cut used for bacon, but which had been boiled for a whole day to make it very, very soft. We had sea grapes, and various vegetables indiginous to the region for which I am unsure there is any real english name. Then came the doughnuts, Okinawa style. Big balls of fried dough, heavy and dry but with an amazing after taste caused by the seed used in cooking them, whose name I had forgotten. Honestly Okinawa food is not my favorite, their Shochu is great though, but still lots of fun to try.

So after the later return, and dinner starting at about 2130-2200, we decided to get a few hours sleep before Tsukiji, the fish market. We arrived as early as possible, the only way to have been earlier would have been to have gone to the fish market on the last train in as we took the first one in the morning. We then caught the second subway of the day, and in a city renowned for its hard working attitude and long hours, I was shocked that I was up early enough to be catching only the very start of that!

We arrived at the market at about 630 and Masake, who had met us en route, ushered us into a small sushi restaurant, actually pictured in the lonely planet. In here they make fror you one piece at a time of a variety of extremely fresh sushi (let`s be honest, the source is a 2min walk away) so that you get a sample of many types of the best of the day. Tea flows and fish soup is provided. There are no plates, just a bar which is constantly wiped clean for the next piece to be placed upon. For your final piece you can choose from any of the fish they have that they haven`t served you yet, I had no idea and getting few suggestions was led down the road to the little bin of spaghetti thin, 1inch long see through fish, I have no idea what they were but I was able to try them, bitter but good, and they made for a good picture as their tiny heads were still on and you could see their eyes and gills. After this feast we ran off to the market itself, to wander around. The outer market is everything, a store which sells only scales, for weighing, not of the fish, and stores selling various hooks, knives and then any vegetable or mushroom you could desire to server your sushi with! But inside the market...

Row upon endless row of fish shops, each wtih different stock, each busy, each with more fish than Calgary sees in a week. Whole tuna are brought in and cut up for the customer on the spot. Bins of octopi are put side by side, mollusks of all sorts are displayed and squid. Oh and there`s some other fish too. Its chaos, and likely not very organised. People running around pulling carts by hand, motorised conveyances of various sorts, bicycles and masses of people haggling, sorting, cutting, buying, and me trying not to get run over. Yousuke and I were, I think, the only two there who were wearing sandals, a poor idea, as as buckets would empty the water would be dumped to wash the pavement. Due to all of this, and what I failed to mention, was that as soon as you step of the metro, you can smell the fish, the station reaks of it. I had a hell of a time with pictures here, the action is so fast, and every photo I have taken in the past I can sit, and wait and set it up, but by the time the camera turns on, or I zoom, the fish is cut, or the runner has gone by... Then we got past the markets into the shipping where wearhouses full of fish are packed in styrofoam and a large army of trucks carries ot off. But there is no military precision, its every truck, and every tourist for himself.

Being only 0800 we were all tired and so found a coffee shop, a quiet little oasis in Ginza, businessmen coming in for a relaxing cup before heading off to work, reading the paper or their favorite Anime book and then to Kabuki. Yes I saw the infamous kabuki theatre, for Hughie and Rebecca, just like the scrubs resident telling the bad news Kabuki sketch. The whole show runs 4h, but for a reduced price you can sit in the balcony and see only a couple hours, in our case from 1100-1300. Two act, one a dance, not so much a dance but as collection of dramatic poses as the woman tries to stop her man from heading off to battle, a chorus of singers, drummers and biwas (a sort of guitar). Quite the production, with every movement of the band and the every slight nod of the actors carefully choreographed. Luckily they have an english translation device which not only comments on the plot and translates the text, but also comments on the style and the significance of various poses, otherwise I, like Yousuke and Masake were, would be completely lost! They even got the Japanese equivalent for the second act. The second act was one act from a 5 act play, but the act was a complete play by our standards, perhaps a few minutes short, but with all the elements of a good Shakespearean tragedy, except that the death was not by misunderstanding, but by mislaid loyalty of one brother and a perfect undertstanding of the duties of the other brothers. It ends in the youngest son commiting Harakiri to atone for his failures and to commit his final duty.

So by the end of this we were asleep, my coke was done, and we were hungry, so yes sleeping is acceptable and half the audience caught a nap for at least part of it, and yes eating and drinking is perfectlty acceptable in the theatre so it was off for Tonkatsu for lunch, basically deep fried pork, and then to Shinjuku to camera shop. My camera died so I need to replace it and where better than Tokyo? The largest camera store in the world, after checking out the two runners up on the same block, I got the S2IS to replace my S1IS and it costs about $200 less than in canada, still pretty steep, but what can you do, I need a camera and I don`t think they honour warrenties on cameras that have been dropped from mountains.

Tonight I have my last dinner and in the evening I fly to Beijing where Aaron`s friends have kindly agreed to meet me and hook me up a little bit.

Shinjuku, Marianouche, Ginza, Shibuya, Harajuku

2005-09-12T03:08:00.000-06:00

So two days is far to little for all of that, but I saw a bit, and got a feel.

After the sleepy Kyoto, which has a law against building tall buildings to preserve the feel of the town I am now told, I caught the Shinkansen and headed to Tokyo. I got off in Tokyo station and headed to Shinjuku, the bright ligths and big builing capital of Tokyo, the night time party area, the centre of insanity. I stepped off the train into what can only be described as a faceless mass. I didn`t realise it untill later, but the entirety of these stations causes people to lose their identity. Its no longer a man walking towards you, its part of a stream of bodies, everyone`s head up looking for their platform and to avoid crossing streams. The best you can do is dodge in between to get from flow to flow to take you in the right direction. I didn`t realise how faceless it was until I finally did see a face, a striking style in the crowd and realised that for at least 5min of meandering I had seen no one, just the press. It was all in stunning contrast to Kyoto.

Yousuke`s friend met me and I was quickly ushered through the Chaos of a Shinjuku station exit (N.B. this required navigation, without aid, to find a phone to call them and tell them where I was to come get me). From there we walked through the towering billboards to a quiet restaurant. Another feast of food and drink later and the four of us headed off to walk the streets of Shinjuku, and to find Ramen. I was continually singled out by black men, all of them from Chicago, who were desparate to usher me into their club, which just happens to be the best in Tokyo. Its nice to be that popular, and it wasn`t untill too late that I realised that rather than brushing them off in english or walking by I should have just switched to french. The area was crazy, and around a corner we found a Ramen shop, just finished dinner, what else do you do but go for noodles. I would never have figured out what it was if not for my guides. And the choices in noodles were astounding, I was given a sheet more complicated than most customs forms, but I just filled exactly what the others had filled in, peeking over their shoulders and copying as they handed it in, and we were taken into a bar, with individual fountains for water and 5min later, a bowl of piping hot Ramen, made just the way you like it, if you know how you like it.

The night in Shinjuku done, we headed back to Yousuke`s with plans to climb Fuji-san in the morning, but the others overslept (Yousuke had been on call the night before and was exhausted) so at 10am we sat down to discuss what to do for the day. Suggestions of visiting Kamakura were eventually dismissed as it is a long train ride and lets be honest, I was templed out. I was keen on seeing Tokyo, Yousuke had not had much chance to explore so we headed to Tokyo station got an airbus tour and planned to let the day guide us after that. Hiroshi, Yousuke, and I had a juice at an open air bar in Marianouche which, being Saturday in a business area, was extremely quiet and peaceful. We discussed the fair trade policy Japan had adopted with south east asia, an amazing opposition to our free trade policy making us look like savage rapists of our less developed trading partners and then said fairwell to Hiroshi, until tomorrow`s attempt on Fujisan.

The bus tour was fun, with a "precision instrument" tour translation (i.e. a palmpilot and numbers at the front of the bus telling me which track to listen to, effective but not as precision an instrument as the rental policy warned me of. It was a drive around the government area, the Diet (the national legislature, a bit of Ginza and the the outside and perimter gardens of the new imperial palace.

Our wandering then took us to Ginza, the ritzy shopping area in Tokyo and likely one of the most expensive areas to shop in the world. Tiffany`s Louis Vuitton and a ginormous Yamaha store were some of the shops as well as, in the midst of all the glamorous world renowned shops, what looked like the equivalent of a "Bob`s suitcase emporium" with Bob himself standing out front offering discounts and trying to call in customers. Yousuke and I, in spite of this, felt very much like on Stephen Avenue back in Calgary. People were wandering freely in the road, but in this case chairs and tables had been set up at which people chatted, relaxed with a drink, or amazingly enough, slept. It was also a mixture of the highest new fashions and the most traditional of garments as a group walked down the streets in traditional Japanese garb. What struck me the most is where this shopping area was bisected by a major road, the only road not shut down in the ~1km stretch of shopping, and as people got to the no walking zone they compressed into a mass which, as the light changed, were unleashed like a slow, powerful spring.

From here we took the train over to Shibuya, the other crazy shopping district, next to Shinjuku. People everywhere. Masses and masses for block after block. Traffic was a mess, but nothing compared to the pedestrian jams, caused by school girls in uniform stopping to chat, or the stylish couple who just wanted to strike a dramatic pose. The tourists seemed scared to stop moving in this mass and would run quickly to the side to avoid being run over. The whole thing was reminscent of the red mile at the height of the flames success, the difference is that this is everyday, all day, the best we could must was a couple hours after a good game.

As we headed north from Shibuya, we had decided to walk to Shinjuku to catch the train back to Tachikawa, which is where Yousuke lives, we ended up in Harajuku. I didn`t realise this was on the way, but what a great surprise. From the glam?of the glam in Ginza, to the teens running through the crowded alleys looking for nwe trends to start or join in on. Stlyes of the oddest sort were mixed with people like Yousuke and myself. There were the stylish people, clean cut, fitted clothes, perfectly messed hair, and then the goths, few and far between but apparently coming into style, a punk-grunge fusion look seemed to be very popular with high boots with socks just slightly longer than the boots seeming to be on the cutting edge. Even the odd girl in pink frilly dress, with matching lace umbrella and bonnet (not stylish, rather scuzzy). And then the masses of totally normal people out for the day, or the people like Yousuke and I voyeurs looking on. Gotta love approved voyeurism.

The madness continued several blocks up narrow alleys, and eventually we headed off north towards Shinjuku, up quiet side streets and alleyways. Yousuke was shocked that such places existed in the heart of Tokyo, short buildings and quiet laneways, the father pulling a suitcase up the hill, following his wife and child with that universal look of "Just let me get home to a beer and a couch".

We hit Shinjuku and hopped a train, not to Tachikawa but to meet Yousuke`s other friend, Masake, for a night of yakitori and the odd beer in Kichioji, another area of Tokyo. This was obviously a less affluent area, the salaryman`s home (this was an interesting thing, I had read about the "salaryman", white collar workers with their jobs, but thought it was a chatch all. It turns out its hiow Tokyoites refer to themselves, it took some effort to get Hiroshi to tell me that he sold PET scanners, I still don`t know what Masake does). Anyways, we headed down narrow streets, restaurants all along them, people pushing around each other, not nearly the insanity of Shinjuku, Shibuya, Harajuku, but enough to show that Tokyo is alive and busy for miles from the centre. We found a Yakitori restaurant, and Masake secured us a table, upstairs we went to sit on the floor with a table that was oddly reminscent of a short version of the coffe table I had had during first year. Beer came quickly and then a variety of Yakitori, basically, meat on a stick, was brought up. Chicken, chicken skin, liver, heart and tongue were the order of the day, followed by a small sashimi, and a pot of sukyaki. Never having had sukyaki before I didn`t really know what to expect, and so I was surprised when I was served a small bowl of raw egg and a single burner propane stove was put in between us. But then came the sukyaki, a hot pot of boiling broth with mushrooms, beef and various vegetables. All in all a great meal, although I could have done without the liver. As we walked out we could see the kitchen, people cramped in the heat bearing down on their plates, and behind a long grill with stick after stick of meat lined up roasting. This is the favorite of the Salaryman, and any worries I had about not enough food in Japan were again allayed by the volume of food thrown at me. Mostly, as Masake pointed out because Yakitori is cheap, but sushi is really really good. Quantity or quality and I agree that for the most part, quantity is the goal.

We retired early with plans again to climb Fuji-san. We met Hiroshi at Tachikawa so he could stay with us and we picked up a car for the trip. Early to bed.

Kyoto

2005-09-11T18:21:00.000-06:00

So I have explored the imperial city of Japan somewhat. Lots of temples, around every corner is another temple, each with their own charm. Its just ancient buildings eerywhere. Somewhat ancient anyways, they keep getting burned down and rebuilt, but in the old style. I saw some of the famous ones, Ginkakuju, Kinkakuju, the Castle Noji, the Imperial palace but it was in the small ones that I really saw the intersting bits.

You see the thing is that when you have a country as populated as this, with so many tourists, you can`t just leave everyone to run around willy-nilly, so the popular attractions are set up to herd you through a specific path, whether with a tour group or not. Kinkakuju, the gold temple, was beautiful. A three story Pagoda the top two stories wrapped in gold foil. It　makes a striking sight as you come around a corner and find, there in front of you a beautiful lily pond, islands covered in moss with ancient trees and across this pond, a bright gold temple, and oddly enough it doesn`t look chinzy. But you are constantly in the swell of people pushing through taking pictures. If you aren`t careful you will miss what I found to be the most beautiful side of the temple, from around back, as you get square on the temple, there is a perfect view, I just wish my camera hadn`t broken. From the back side of the temple a small wooden dock juts out a metre above the water. An old boat, hollowed out from a tree is tied underneath the dock, and less than the boat length away an island, the mossy with a single tree growing out of it and leaning towards the temple.

But in spite of this my favorite temple turned out to be rather off the beaten path. Many people go but here, at Nanzenji, I was alone, walking through a living monestary. There is a path but it loops around on itself and mostly you are free to go where you please, to wander at will. I was alone, with the exception of one family who meandered silently by. The monestary itself is simple, there is no furniture, just bare rooms with tatami mat floors and sliding walls painted throughout the last 400 years. Simple design, minamalistic and yet captivating. Outside you could spend hours wandering through the gardens, a mixture of rock gardens and collection of trees and moss. The interaction between the spontaneous living gardens and the carefully spontaneous rock gardens is ... well I don`t know the adjective to use, What I especially liked was the interplay of shadow and light, the monestary and the gardens seemed to be designed to show differebt faces as the day progressed.

Outside of Nanzenji, in seeing the gardens and temples there was only one other moment more stunning. I was on a tour of the imperial palace, the only way in is by tour and hey, its free, and in the emperor`s tea garden, off to one side there is a pile of rocks. It was obvious that they had been placed there, but the arrangement, the growth of the moss on them, and the arrangement of trees had that distinctly Zen flavour of planned spontaneity.

But Kyoto is much more than two days of running around temples paying 500 Yuan for an hour of following the herd like a well tamed cow, there is an amazing, and very real city built in this ancient capital. I walked a lot through the city, cheaper and easier than the bus and found that the Japanese have an amazing ability to create quite streets in the centre of Chaos. Adjacent ｔo an intersction of two major roads you can walk down a tiny one lane (if there`s no one parked, otherwise no lane) street. These are quiet laneways, the noise of the city completely blocked out and only the odd car, some bicycles and local foot traffic. A few odd looks at the Gaijin wandering around the back street, but very friendly and peaceful.

Yousuke, my friend here in Tokyo, has been amazing to me, and called a friend of his studying in Kyoto. After a bit of a mix-up, involving a fatigued mark passing out on the futon in his Ryokan, we met up and we headed off for dinner. And this is where I have been extremely fortunate, eating with Yousuke and his friends I have been in restaurants that are marked only in Kanji, in buildings marked only in Kanji, for meals where no one spoke english eating foods not even close to those mentioned in the lonely planet. We had a great dinner, including some Kyoto tradtional dishes, such as a block of soft tofu with salt as the only garnish, and something green, that I can`t remember the Japanese name for and Toyonari did not know how to describe it in english. After our feast, yes a feast, this expensive Japan thing is a joke, for $30 we had a feast with soup salad, sashimi, green things and other dishes, as well as Beer, Shochu and Ni-Honshu (two Japanese Liquors) in an exceedingly nice restaurant. So if you cut out the booze it was $15 for a great meal, and lets be honest it was a lot better than what I`d get for $15 in Canada. Anyways, after dinner we headed off for "pricub", which is all Toyonari could tell me. I had no idea whatthat meant, and only later was I informed its the Japanese way of saying, quickly and in an abbreviated manner, "Print Club". Its a very souped up photomat, blue screen, wind effects, post production editing and all. Unfortunately Toyonari was in the middle of exams, he is also studying to be a Dr., and had to get home to learn endocrinology for the next morning and neurology for the night after.

The following night I was left to my own vices, but on tour of the imperial palace I met up with a Spaniard who had just come from China. We agreed to meet up for dinner, went to a sub-par Korean grill, but afterwards met up with a hostel-mate of his who was travelling Japan during his summer vacation. We got some beer a beer at the local convenience store and headed to the banks of the river to sit back and have a drink. Toyonari had pointed this spot out as a very famous spot in Kyoto pointing it out with "see boy-gtirl, boy-girl...". So we sat back at the local make out point and chatted.

The next day I templed myself out and off to Tokyo.

Japanese keyboards

2005-09-06T22:12:00.000-06:00

Right now, in spite of all their great technology, I hate Japanese technology. The damned keyboards are completely different. Oh sure they are QWERTY but the shift is tiny, the ` is above the @ which is where the [ should be. Mostly I am annoyed as I have 4min left and I am spending more time with the backspace than typing!

So I arrived, connected fine at LAX, made it onto my flight and got out here. Of the whole 16 of flying I was awake for about 4. mmmmmm sleep. Then I arrived and Yosuke met me at the airport, the saint that he is, and we hopped a bus to his place. A three hour bus to his place! And that`s still within Tokyo, although on the other side of the city. I was torn between sleeping to avoid the hunger and bus-sickness and staying awake to so I`d sleep that night. Sleep won out and I still slept the night away.

I have booked it on to Kyoto already, which meant another 4h by train and am quite travelled out for a while. I`ll fill in the details later as I`m starving, nothing but a bagel all day and my time just ran out.

Later.

Itinerary

2005-09-04T15:40:00.000-06:00

So the broad strokes.

Tomorrow, the 5th of Sept, I fly to Japan and arrive on the 6th in the afternoon. I have some time there before I take of and fly, via Beijing with the briefest of stopovers, to Chengdu, on the border of Tibet. From there I have about two months to reach Bombay. Then sometime at the end of Nov I am off to Ethiopia. I have a month to 6 weeks there and then to Cairo around the 28th of Dec. From there I have 5 weeks to get to Zurich for my flight back. I get back into Canada on the 10th of February and I am starting my electives full time on the 13th in Taber.

I look forward to it all!

Tickets

2005-08-25T09:27:00.000-06:00

The plane tickets are in. Tee hee hee.

More Guidebooks

2005-08-23T23:02:00.000-06:00

I mostly am just writing to get into the habit, but also 'cause I am quite excited. I now have all my guidebooks; lots of them. Basicallyall that remains is for my tickets to arrive and for me to pack! Oh and something about a thesis...

Pre-depart: India and Japan

2005-08-12T11:43:00.000-06:00

So the ticket is reserved, the Indian visa arrived (in just a couple
of days, I expected them to be less efficient), Yousuke is taking time
off with me when I get to Japan. Things are shaping up. Now I just
want to go. But I must finish my course, which means I must first
figure out who to write code in MATLAB again!

Soon I'll be packing.