America

Our greatest cultural ambassador learned to wai when he came to Thailand.

I'm often depressed about how little Americans know about the outside world (my own lack of language skills included). Often other countries know just as little about us. Without exception that I've found, folks know Bush, and they know Iraq, and they know that America is where they'd like to go.

It's not that I'm embarrassed of my country, it's that I'm embarrassed of the face we put forward. Back home we have buckets of beauty, compassion, nobility and justifiable pride that just don't get the press that our tendency to bomb sandy places does. The Vietnamese, as I've mentioned, were excellent hosts, particularly to Americans. Still, I couldn't help walking around there thinking, "so, this would be the place we really messed up." I don't feel any personal guilt for the wrongs of the Vietnam war, but nonetheless it would have been so much easier to distance myself from them if we weren't busily repeating our folly in Iraq with such industry. The Vietnamese almost never mentioned either conflict, even when it would have been natural to do so.

Most folks, I think, are too polite to discuss politics, but sometimes the issue is forced. The other day I passed by one of the many t-shirt shops of Thamel, and realized that all of the custom lettering was being hand-sewn. How much for a handmade t-shirt? Different depend on design, sir. You show me and I give good price. The first thing that came into my head was just four words. Only 300 rupees? Deal.

The next day I picked up the shirt:

I mean, really. They guy who said that he'd fight the Iraq war the same way today, knowing what he knows now? They guy who said if you question the administration you're helping the terrorists, the one who insists that avowed secularist Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with religious fundamentalists of Al Queda? SHOT an old man in the face? You think he'd balk at a six week old tabby with some barbecue sauce? Think about it. Please, think of the kittens.

When I left home I subscribed to what I now realize are some pretty silly superstitions. I had deliberately avoided bringing any t-shirts with English printing on them, just in case I wanted to blend in to the background. This of course only makes one stand out more, as then you are the only person, it seems, not wearing a t shirt with English printing. Everywhere in the world, something is hip just because it has English written on it. Amy's ultimate example was a little girl in China wearing a t-shirt that simply said "Eudora Welty" in a flowery script. I've also seen a large number of Yankees and Red Sox caps in places where I doubt the AL east is followed carefully. And English is not the language invented so that 11th century Norman warriors could make dates with Saxon barmaids, oh no, it's the language of America.

When I come across someone with a ballcap-Bush-Iraq knowledge of America, I have this intense desire to found a university on the spot. I desperately want them to know about something more than our worst leader and the greatest moral lapse of my generation. The injustice of this borders on the absurd- like a Nobel laureate or Macarthur grant recipient being introduced at a dinner party as "the guy with the explosive diarrhea problem."

I feel the urge to educate. I want them to know about Abraham Lincoln, Martin King, George Marshall. I want them to read John Irving, Steinbeck, Emerson. I want to give them headphones and make them listen to Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Jimi Hendrix and even spin my Wilco records for them. They must see Winslow Homer, Cindy Sherman, Thomas Benton, Keith Haring and Andy Warhol. I want to teach them about the bill of rights, and let them listen to a dramatic reading of the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address, Kennedy's Inaugural, Barbara Jordan at the Watergate Judiciary Committee, Brown v. Board.

Instead, the T-shirt shop owner asks me about W.

"Bush good, Bush bad?"

"Bush very bad," I begin with a certain weariness, "Bush worst ever. He starts a war, in Iraq, for no reason."

"Ahhhh. But, sir, how he win? All American I meet say, Bush Bad, no like Bush. But he win, and then win again?"

This is the thing about the red state / blue state divide that you don't realize until you leave home: the passports are blue for a reason. Because the 700 Club viewers will apply for one only if called to do missionary work, the world gets almost as unrepresentative a view of Americans through me and my ilk as they do of America itself through Baywatch and nighttime soaps. I try to explain this, but it's tough to give a satisfactory answer that doesn't include the concepts of the electoral college or Karl Rove (if their English is better, I include these). It's also very tempting at this point to devolve into a caricature of red state America, something I'm usually able to resist.

People's fascination with America is understandable; many want very badly to move there because of the economic opportunity. Although it's interesting to note that according to the Economist, by almost every measurable standard, social mobility is now significantly greater in Europe than in the States, largely because of the tax codes post-Reagan (Clinton also did nothing about this) and the increasingly high barriers to advanced education. America has Hollywood, though, and even if the tax scheme is regressive, people will want to come and live the dream they've seen on DVD.

I know it's unrealistic for someone who's made the decision to emigrate for economic reasons to then hold up her nose at the border because of the foreign policy record of her potential new home. Just the same, any attraction to the United States in light of the war vaguely horrifies me. If I see a supermodel kicking a puppy to death, she's not really beautiful to me at that moment, whatever her other virtues might be. If I had very limited economic opportunities I'm sure I'd move towards the economic superpower too, but my mind conjures the image of poor city kids being drawn to the drug dealer as a role model just because of his potency, or the fact that he might give them a dollar to act as a lookout.

And of course, he needn't be the drug dealer. There's no reason why we need to be the country that bullies the world through the IMF and WTO, no need for us to be one of the only countries in the world that still manufactures and sells landmines, no destiny to be the greatest exporter of small arms, no mandate to boycott the Kyoto accords or block the adoption of a global jurisprudence system, no pressing urgency for us to invade Iraq or topple democratically elected leaders in the developing world. We have Coltrane's A Love Supreme, but what we export is daisy-cutters.

I have become aware of two broad categories lately: things that make America great, and things that make America good. The first category I've already described above and will be the core of the curriculum in my fantasy school. The second is the more mundane but no less significant. In Seim Reap, Amy and I talked to the owner of our hotel, a Philadelphian who had been living in Thailand for more than ten years. His wife, a native Thai, explained why she saw them eventually moving back to the States quite succinctly: "There, everything works."

In many parts of the world, "refund" is a bogeyman word used to frighten children, but most Americans think it's included in the five basic freedoms of the First Ammedment. If you get screwed on the deal, you can ask to speak to the manager, or if that fails, sue. That's not true everywhere. At home the traffic lights work, and if they don't you call the city and they fix it. There's a toilet, yes you can use it, and by god there will be paper. These are banal, and of course they're present in many countries, but such are the markings of a functioning society, and they are conspicuous in their absence.

In the Hitchhiker's Guide the Galaxy, Arthur Dent explodes when he learns that the epithet of the Earth is "Mostly Harmless". I'd want better for my home, but I'd cheerfully take that over "Bush, the conquest of Iraq and Britney Spears." One night in Chiang Mai I was talking to the singer in a Jazz club. She had gone to college in the states, and obviously loved African American Classical Music, as one of the DJs in Boston was fond of calling it. I was trying to express these same frustrations to her, pointing at the stage. "I want that to be what sweeps the world. I want America to be that place Jazz and comic books came from. I want this to be our legacy, not what our military does."

She sympathized- she didn't want Thailand to be sexual tourism, cheap manufactured goods (or coups, I would suspect) and spicy food. Homer-like, this of course made me want to eat some spicy Thai food at that moment, while I listened to the Thai take on the Cole Porter songbook. Jazz is by no means popular in Thailand; Chiang Mai has just the one venue for it compared to three Starbucks and uncounted 7-11's. Yet, there it was. And also, there were my rice noodles with spicy vegetables, served to the tune of "Every Time We Say Goodbye." That was a moment I was proud of my home.

Coup in Thailand

It seems like only a month ago that Amy and I were walking past Government House in Bangkok during our search for the zoo. Maybe because it was just over thirty days ago.

As I write this, the night of the Tuesday the 19th, tanks surround the building , according to the wire services. Thaksin, the prime minister, is in New York attending a UN meeting, and just declared a state of emergency from there. Oh, really? Thank you for that news flash, Shinawarta, the tanks were not an obvious enough clue.

Thaksin is really a crook. He was one of the richest men in Thailand before he took office, and he's making more money than ever now. Oh excuse me, what I meant to say was, he's perfectly innocent, it's just coincidence that all the businesses owned by his family members are doing so well. With all those government contracts. Well, at least we can rest assured that Halliburton, the company that is still paying Dick Cheney every month, isn't posting their best-ever, stockprice-soaring astronomical profits on their Iraq rebuilding contracts. [hesitant pause; sounds of furious last-second fact checking; awkward pause] Whoops. Anyways, back to the Corrupt Developing World:

Thaksin's despised everywhere in the country except the rural north (outside Chiang Mai) and Northwest ( the poorest, most agricultural and conservative part of the country) but even that's because he owns a lot of media access- Berlusconi junior, I guess.

The police foiled a car bomb assassination attempt in Bangkok last month- Thaksin had unwittingly changed some part of his morning routine, and it probably saved his life. Two very funny indicators after the bomb was defused: One, he's so unpopular in the city that a poll taken a few days later showed that something like half the populace thought that he had staged the bomb just to gain sympathy. Two, when the head of the military (who don't forget have ruled the country off and on four or five times in the last thirty years) was asked if he had any knowledge of who was responsible for the attempted blowing up of the prime minister, the general said he was insulted. "If we had had anything to do with it", he scoffed, "[Thaksin] would be dead."

Well, that general is having a busy evening tonight. It's just so frustrating. There was so much good news lately- Thaksin's fake elections (which the opposition justly boycotted) were thrown out of court last month, and the political appointee election commissioners who blessed the travesty were even briefly imprisoned before they agreed to participate in a parliamentary investigation. The new elections were scheduled for November... this has to mean that the military either thought that Thaksin wouldn't step down, or that they were just getting impatient with parliament altogether. Either way, they're going to be in charge, it looks.

In the past the king has given his support to the military when it moved in to replace corrupt regimes, but there was an election on the near horizon... that's the part that doesn't make sense.

Oh, and I'm fine. In Kathmandu for a few days, doing more rafting and also working on another project. I'll know in a couple weeks if it bears fruit, and if so, you'll be hearing a lot more about it.

Rafting in Nepal

When I landed in Nepal, the trip in from Delhi had been obscured by cloud. I was frustrated because I had gone out of my way to get the left window seat so I could see the mountains on my way in.

Two minutes before touchdown, we broke through the clouds and the entire plane gasped appreciatively as one voice. I wish I'd had my camera out for that first image: a fantastically complex terrace of rice paddies descending fifty or sixty levels down to the floor of the Kathmandu valley, beginning just a few hundred feet beneath the plane. This photo is a tenth of the magnificence we experienced live:

Nepal is green like nothing I've seen, save only Ireland.

I've already written about the wonderful creature comforts of Kathmandu (and more specifically Thamel), but I came across this photo I forgot to share with you. On my first morning in the city, I breakfasted at a magnificent bakery, in their lush sixth story garden overlooking much of the Kathmandu valley and its surrounding hills. It was an exceptionally clear and beautiful morning. One of the only bad things about Kathmandu is the smog; it's not LA-magnitude awful but you do notice it, particularly at moments like this. Still, I wasn't complaining.

I spent a good portion of this past week in the water, kayaking on lake Phewal in Pokhara (photos of that coming soon) and rafting down the Tisuli river:

It's been raining hard here this past week; everyone agrees that this monsoon is unusually strong and long-lasting, thus the extremely high Tisuli pictured above. The day of rafting was tremendous fun. The rain ended just as we were getting into the water, affording us magnificent views of the green valley walls rising steeply from the riverbank, occasionally ornamented with little wisps of cloud like you see here. The black and grey rock was so vertical in places that no trees grew there, but even then spidery ferns graced the sheer surface to keep the verdant carpet unbroken.

The Tisuli has a few major bridges, but most of the local folk make their way across by means of these little suspension footbridges visible in the two photos below:















At the end of the rafting, we got out on the opposite side of the river and got to walk across one of these. It was at least eight stories above the rapids, and the metal grating underneath gave an awesome illusion of being suspended in mid air. (Amy, I thought about you as I crossed this, laughing to myself. For the first time and probably only time I was grateful you weren't here). Above right you see Phillip and Felix, a fine pair of German lads I rafted with for the day. I suppose the mirror of this picture is posted on some website ending in .de. Oh, and here's the obligatory tourist photo of me next to the raft right before we get in (and the camera gets secreted away in the "dry barrel". Yes, I'm that excited about rafting.

So despite having been incountry for a week I have a surprising paucity of good pictures to share, mostly due to the lingering monsoon. By the second week of September the weather should by all rights be dry and clear! I'm still waiting. Oh well, I'm not in any hurry as I anticipate staying here through the month. The accommodations are cheap, there's tons to do and I'm having a blast. Due to the rain, most of my activities have been either water-related or indoors.

In particular, I've spent a good deal of time reading, which has been wonderful. In general you read a lot when you travel out here, as you tend to spend a lot of time either on buses or waiting for transport, or otherwise killing time. Since I left the states, I've discovered Agatha Christie. There's a reason why she's the most published author in the world. I read an actual Horatio Alger novel (which wasn't really good, but endlessly fascinating), essays by Arundhuti Roy, a Murakami novel which while not his best work was still awesome, LeGuin, Terry Pratchet for fun, and a fantastic Oliver Sacks book that Monica gave me- very unlike his other works, and highly recommended. I find that I read the Economist more than ever, (having to hold my nose when they proselytize) just because I normally get my news analysis fix from left wing radio, and unlike those programs, the magazine is available everywhere. To give the devil their due, they did turn on Bush (and specifically his Iraq policies, admitting their errors) earlier than any other right wing publication, and it is superbly written.

September the 4th was a big holiday in the Barry family, and alas, I was far from my kin. But I needed to celebrate just the same. So I found the only Irish pub in Kathmandu, Paddy Foley's, ordered a Guinness (the "small" cans... sigh... but what do you want this far from Dublin?) and asked the publican, Krishna, to take a photo of me raising it high. When I told him the reason he insisted I do so from behind the bar, which I found touching.

Happy 50th, Bud. I love you.

Pokhara

The Lonely Planet guidebook warned me it would be tough to tear myself away from the pleasures of Thamel, and it was.

Thamel is the backpacker quarter of Kathmandu, full of lots and lots of CD and DVD shops (pirated of course, selling for a fraction of their cost back home), supercheap restaurants set in beautiful gardens, pubs of every variety, excellent hotels starting at $10 a night (or cheaper if need be, and if one is willing to forego the excellence), good-if-not-great internet connections for pennies an hour, and bookstores that are shockingly, preposterously good. Bookstores that would be superb in BOSTON, only cheaper. Not exaggurating. Plus, everyone burns the most magnificent incense everywhere. The whole city smells intoxicatingly smoky-sweet.

Yet tear away I did this morning to fly to Pokhara. Riding a bus across the domestic flights tarmac at Kathmandu airport, there are a bunch of colorful airline names: Buddha Air, Sita airlines, Gurkha Air. My choice? Yeti Air. Because, I thought to myself: "When, ever, has a Yeti let you down, Peej?" Answer: never.

If there's a country you want to see from the seat of a turboprop at five thousand feet, it's Nepal. There was a lot of cloud today but even then the scenery was incredible- steep, hilly and luciously green, fresh from the monsoon. Forgive the smoky quality of this picture- the glass on the porthole was less than perfect, and the air was hazy. The approach into Pokhara involved dodging some foothills of the Himalayas, which made for some thrilling travel.

Once again, the Yeti came through for me and we landed safely at the cutest little airport ever. If it had been full of kittens, maybe it would have been cuter, but only then.

Now I'm here in Pokhara on the shores of the second largest lake in Nepal. It's raining now, but earlier there were wonderful views of Lake Phewa. My hotel room view is not quite this good, but I may switch hotels.

I'm going to be doing some rafting and hiking for a few days, so if you don't hear from me for a while, don't panic. At least not for that reason. If something unrelated happens that is both unexpected and perilous, sure, go ahead, panic.

Khajuraho

Khajuraho is a small town- less than 20,000 souls, but it is home to some of the most incredible stone temples this side of Angkor Wat. In fact, Khajuraho reminds one of Angkor in several respects. Both were constucted as a series of temples to Hindu gods at about the same time, and are largely made of similar materials, in particular sandstone. Both have magnificent examples of fine carving but were abandoned (in part) by their respective empires as they fell into decline. At Angkor the invading forces were Chams and Siamese invaders who conquered the Khmers, defaced a few temples and then left them to the jungle (which did the real damage). In India, the invaders who found the images graven were the Muslim Mughal kings, who descended on the subcontinent from Mongolia. They were a little more thorough in their destruction of the temples, so that only a little of the Khajuraho architecture survives.

But what does survive looks like this:The Lakshmana

I spent two days here wandering among the various temples, reading and learning about them. Angkor is of course a tough act to follow, and this isn't on the same scale, but comparisons are inevitable. Here there was a lot less variation between the structures. They were each unique, but even temples built many years apart used very similar techniques and ornamentation. I think a better student of architecture would appreciate the subtle differences more, but I found them much alike. Amy and I had both found that to be the case at Angkor, too, but here the effect was much more pronounced.The Visvanatha

Khajuraho itself is just a sleepy tourist town. Indian tourism seems to be taking something of a hit these days, as I was one of only a few people enjoying the temples, was almost always the only patron of the restaurants where I ate, and for two days was the sole guest at a large hotel of at least fifty rooms. That felt really awkward- the place was fully staffed- doorman, bellhops, waiters in the restaurants, and I could see them all snap to attention when I walked by. It's cruel, but I couldn't help but think of it as a scene out of an Inidan remake of Fawlty Towers: "Stand up straight, Vishnay! Here comes The Guest."

The hotel was about five kilometers south of the town and the main temple complex, but it was a straight shot on a good road, and the weather was pleasant if warm, so each day I would walk there in the morning. This shocked my hosts to no end- as if they'd never seen that before. After five days in large cities, it felt good to breathe cleaner air and stretch my legs, since travelling by rickshaw or car seemed the only effective way to get around Delhi and Varanasi. Finally I was out of the cities and into India. There were lovely little mountains in the distance and more greenery than I'd seen since Chiang Mai.

So here's another view of the temple above, Lakshmana, dedicated to Vishnu in his "Vaikuntha" aspect- many Hindu gods have versions in which they appear for different purposes, and temples tend to focus on one.

The carving is amazing, not least because of its diversity. When you stand before one of the stupas (the large conical spires, like the western one depicted above), you're seeing dozens of bands of different types of sculpture. I was trying to capture this idea in this photo- hopefully you can see what I mean. Each of the different styles are right here next to or on top of each other, and they couldn't be more different, but they dovetail perfectly. Some are abstract waveforms protruding from a flat plane, of course the human figurines, then rows of elephants in bas releif (they do support the universe, after all), then an almost filagree-like layer of convex ornamantation, and on and on as far as you can see up the curve of the stucture.

A couple of the most interesting carvings I've decided not to show, as the photographic part of this blog needs to be kept rated PG. There's a theory that the storm god in the Hindu pantheon was a randy fellow, and that placing a few erotic carvings around the base of the temple to appease his appetites was an early form of storm insurance. As such, each of the temples contains a few beautiful and quite graphic depictions of what can happen between man and woman.

Lightning was clearly a problem for these places. They're the highest things for some distance around, and it's a rainy part of the world. At first, I couldn't figure out what these narrow grey bands were running to the top of the temples, as they obviously weren't original. Some sort of toprope for restorers to get to the top of the highest stupa? Then I touched one and saw it was iron, and ran from the highest point down all the way to the ground. As at Angkor, there were teams of renovators working on several of the temples, dilligently removing soil and vegetation from the cracks.

Here's one detail I loved. Amidst a vast row of elephants dressed for war and soldiers beside them (see the photos above for a broader view), this little six-inch high sculpture could easily be overlooked. But when viewed carefully, it's a tiny self-portrait, one of the sculptors' signature. I know that the creation of these builidings was a vast state enterprise, meticulously controlled by the kings and priests, in fact it's believed that the whole time that construction was underway, huge choruses would chant verses from the Upanishads while the laborers worked. But unlikely as it seems, I still like the idea of this being a rogue carving, something that was done on the sly, meant to look like just another war elephant and his handler when seen from a distance, but in fact a half-carved elephant and its sculptor.

One of the highlights of my visit was getting to eat lunch at a restaurant directly across the street from Lakshmana. Here you can see the small temple in the foreground to Shiva's mount, a mighty bull named Nandi. It would have been supremely disrespectful, of course, but I couldn't help thinking as I sat here, I know I could get a frisbee in there. In the fore-foreground, you see my half-finished galub jamon with coconut. Mmmmm, galub jamon.

From Khajuraho I took a bus to Jhansi, and there caught a train bound for Agra. A long but good day of travel.

The bus trip was surprisingly good- it took about five hours all told but the weather cooperated. I felt like I got to see a bit more of real India. On the bus, the driver chewed betel and smoked bidis, which the conductor would light for him every twenty kilometers. Young families bounced the baby on their knees in an effort to keep them entertained.

Once I got on the bus nobody spoke English, and even in Jhansi I only got to the train station by following a large crowd to a taxi stand where one tout was calling out "Train! Train!" The train service was excellent- serving tea and a snack in second class and bringing us into Agra only about an hour late. My hotel had sent someone to meet me, something for which I was very grateful given the crush of touts waiting for less prepared travellers outside the gate.

Home to Inida's iconic tourist attraction, Agra is tourist hell. In fact, my travel agent had sold me on the extra service of a car pick up because the touts were so bad- and he was right- but it was funny how he described Agra as "the worst place in the world". He was referring very specifically to this one phenomenon, but I still kept laughing to myself all day as I went from rickshaw to bus to rickshaw to train to taxi... I'm spending a exhausting day of travel to get to... the worst place in the world. I'm... struggling... to get to The Worst Place in The World.

Next up: The Worst Place in the World (not really).

Varanasi

Varanasi claims to be the world's oldest continuously inhabited city. Called Benares in the nineteenth century, it was visited by Mark Twain, who wrote "Benares is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together." That's no longer strictly true, as there are now too many mobile phones for it to be that old.

This picture at right exemplifies Varanasi to me: garish advertisements everywhere, some of which partially obscure the gorgeous carvings on an ancient stone temple, while a cow eats garbage in a narrow alleyway.

(It's tough to convey the randomness of cows in India. In New Delhi they're absent, but that's about the only place. Goats are everywhere, too. While waiting on the train platform in Jhansi (which is not a small city) a cow passed right in front of me, moving between garbage cans looking for food, while dodging porters, well-dressed business people, and pallets of cargo. By then I had been in India a week and had to remind myself that this is kind of odd. I brushed amongst them in the alleyways many times; they're of course quite tame creatures, but I steered (forgive me... forgive!) clear of the two bulls I saw nonetheless)

Varanasi is important to Hindus because of the Ganges, on whose right bank it sits, and because it is believed that to die there is to get a free pass out of the cycle of death and rebirth. For this reason, many small apartments are rented out to devout elderly from all around India, some of whom spend their remaining fortunes to come here and wait to die. Also many Hindu pilgrims come here just to bathe in the Ganges, or improve their karma by giving to the many beggars, so it's a major tourist destination for Indians as well as foreigners. It's also a city of many temples, such as the splendid Durga temple seen here.

Durga is magnificent in its deep red color, but it's frustrating because like all Hindu temples, non-Hindus aren't allowed inside. I walked around the circumference wishing I could go in. This was made worse when I saw numerous swastikas on the outside of the temple, but of course, they are an ancient Aryan symbol, which is why the Nazis chose it and gave it the connotations that make us quiver. No, this is a benign, holy site for Hindus, indeed one of their most sacred and solemn, which is why this was bound to be the place where I encountered Bollywood.

You can see them in the first photo of Durga, but the second one focuses in on the film crew- the camera is at the center of the tight knot of people on the right, closest to the water. They were filming one of the musical numbers when I walked by. The soundtrack would blare over speakers, complete with the heroine singing in a register just below canine hearing, and the dancers would move in time along the red steps to the left for thirty seconds, then retreat from the blazing sun until the next take. Huge crowds gathered around all sides of the temple's reflective pool to watch the filming, and a dozen security guards were employed keeping gawkers out of the shot.

When its not being used for movie shoots, Varanasi's main claim to fame are the ghats on the bank of the Ganges. Each Hindu king or emperor would want to leave his mark on the holy city by building a ghat, a series of broad steps leading down to the water, to provide a place for the devout to bathe, wash clothes, and eventually be cremated. Only two of the ghats are used for this latter purpose, and one does not photograph them out of respect. In such demand are the services of the "burning ghats" that the fires burn twenty-four/seven. I even saw a body being dressed for cremation in the street while on my way to the river.
Here's a shot of one of the regular ghats at first light, where a group of pilgrims was bathing. It's not my religion, so I shouldn't judge, but setting even a toe in the Ganges seems like a bad idea to me. The water is so polluted that it is now devoid of any dissolved oxygen, and pathogen levels exceed safe numbers by vast factors. Still, it's the holy river.

I was permitted to photograph the staging grounds for Harish- chandra, one of the burning ghats, from atop a neighboring building, which I did just because the woodpile was so impressive. The bodies are ritually bathed in the Ganges before they're burned, so they're wet when committed to the flames (in addition to all the water in the body already). As such, it takes a lot of very expensive firewood to reduce a body to ash. I saw four fires burning there that day, as relatives stood by and watched for the three to four hours it takes. It was fascinating, so I regret not being able to show you (I'm sure I could have snuck at least one shot), but I know I wouldn't have wanted some amateur anthropologist from the other side of the world photographing my father's funeral.

From Varanasi it's a seven hour bus ride to Khajuraho, my next destination, so I opted to fly instead. Jet Airways is India's new low-cost carrier, which felt exactly like flying at home. You still know you're in India (the announcements are in Hindi first, obviously) and the meal choice is "Veg or non-veg?" ("Non-veg" is the subordinate category. God I love this cuisine!). An hour after boarding, I stepped off their brand new 737 in tiny but ancient Khajuraho.

You're Looking Swell, Delhi. We Can Tell, Delhi.

Delhi has over 16 million people in the city proper, and nearly 20 million in the immediate area. And those are figures over a year old. In case you were in doubt, that's a lot of folk. Here's a view of the town taken from one of the spires of Jama Masjid, the oldest and largest mosque in Old Delhi. I'm about ten or fifteen stories up here (quite a climb in a narrow, twisty spiral stair). I love this shot because the haze in the distance captures what is actually the case- the buildings quite literally stretch as far as the eye can see.

The hugeness of the place is tough to exaggerate. There are only a few pockets of skyscrapers (all in New or central Delhi) mostly it's five to six story buildings like you see here. The thing is, they just never end. There's a little greenery tucked into the corners, but on the whole the place is kind of grey and drab. The street level is always lively and colorful, though, given a preference for bright signage and Indian women's love of vibrant traditional clothing. Almost all Indian women wear sarees or similar dress, but ninety percent of the men dress Western. Most of the women who are in Western garb are young girls and women in jeans, or wearing some type of uniform.

There is a lot of activity going on in the street. At times it reminded me of those moments in musicals when the stereotypical busy street scene is rendered with newsboys and fedora'd businessmen walking at rapid pace back and forth across the stage, pumping their arms. Traffic is far more chaotic than elsewhere in Asia, there's none of the lovely zen-like flow to the bodies in motion that I saw in Vietnam. There, you felt confident that accidents were exceedingly rare, here you wonder why you haven't been in a half dozen every minute.

"Old Delhi" refers to the ancient city to the North, while "New Delhi" is the country's current capital, a few kilometers to the south. Central Delhi between the two is dominated by an area called "Connaught Circus" where I stayed. Much like the French architecture in Vietnam and Cambodia, I find the English placenames in India charming. If you think about the centuries of colonialism and oppression, the charm wears off fast, but otherwise it somehow makes the place more exotic.

I started my tour of Delhi at the old Red Fort, built by the same Shah Jehan who erected the Taj Mahal in memory of his wife. Ironically, the fort became the Shah's prison when his son deposed him and kept him there. Every power to rule India since then has made use of the massive fort, including the Mughals, the Hindu kings, and the British. It's over two kilometers in length and the walls are thirty meters tall. Those stats are kind of cold and hard to get a grasp of, but let me just assure you it's huuuge.

The consistency of the red sandstone has an impressive effect; somehow the place seems grander still just because of the color. Here's a picture of the southern gate, again taken from high atop the nearby mosque spire. The towers and walls of the fort are magnificent, and there's great architecture on the inside too:



By far the most beautiful part of Delhi was the Lodi Gardens. In India the larger public parks seem to be often built around ruins or ancient tombs, and Lodi is one of the best examples of this. The gardens were vast and beautiful, full of neatly manicured spaces and also wilder, broad sections of trees and grass. There was a tiny bonsai garden with a hundred little trees in pots, and also a wonderful garden restaurant, where on one hot afternoon I indulged in a fancy western lunch, with the best vichyssoise I'd ever had. Just the thing on a steamy Delhi afternoon, but I still felt guilty- there were only so many days when one can eat Indian food in India.

Next up was the museum and mausoleum of the Mahatma, the highlight of my time in India. The Ben Kingsly film of his life played on television a hundred times when I was ten or eleven, and it had a big impact on me. I think the film had so many ideas and images that had never occurred to me before, and it was also the dawning of my appreciation of acting- Kingsly really convinced me he was this guy. I watched it again a year or two ago for the first time in twenty years and I was amazed at how many moments of the film had stayed etched in my memory.

But this was reality, not cinema. As I stood there, it occurred to me that if anyone could lay claim to the title of the 20th century's greatest man, the diminutive attorney interred under this slab of granite is probably the safest bet. Like many of the other pilgrims, I bought a plate of flower petals and tossed them over the white marble railing. It sounds corny but it felt so good to do that.

I've lately revised my opinions of heroes, and I've decided that they can in fact be good things, for the same reason that a compass point is good when you're navigating. If they have human flaws we should not allow that to degrade the magnitude of their accomplishments. Here, I'm pleased to say, was my hero.

The place and the frame of mind coincide perfectly. When you're standing in the middle of this beautiful sunken courtyard staring at the flickering flame behind the grave, you feel vindicated; it is safe to believe in some things and some people without reservation (perhaps Ghandiji is the great antidote to the postmodern condition). Of course beautiful tombs can be erected for bad men, too, but here it felt so comfortable, so good to slide into a quiet admiration and gratitude for the gift he gave the world: the knowledge that empires with all their injustices can in fact be brought to their knees without firing a shot or raising a fist. It felt so relaxing and wholesome... the moral equivalent of climbing into a warm bath. When Ghandi was assassinated, Einstein said "Generations to come, it may be, will scarce believe that one such as this ever in flesh and blood walked the face of the earth." The Indians are to be commended, for the tomb and accompanying museum are making a strong effort to see that he is remembered as he should.


My last major stop in the city (I'm leaving out some of the other temples and tombs that I saw, though they were all impressive) was Qutb Minar. This magnificent brick minaret on the outskirts of the city cannot, unfortunately, be climbed. It's nonetheless a great example of early Mughal architecture, celebrating their defeat of the Hindu kingdom of Delhi in 1193. Although perhaps climbing a thousand year old tower isn't the swiftest idea after all.

That evening I boarded an overnight train to Varanasi, one of the holiest places for Hindus, seated on the right bank of the Ganges. The train ride was great- I boarded my car around 6:30, found my way to my berth and stowed my luggage on the top bunk. I shared a six-person cabin with three other businessmen in their forties, and I couldn't help thinking the whole time how funny the world is, that something which is so mundane to them could be such an adventure to me. We rolled out of town on time as I sat in a spare window seat to watch the twilight scenery.

As we pulled out of the station, I saw the worst of the city's poverty (near the train tracks is the bad real estate in any country, I think). There were miles of tents and shacks in pretty sorry shape. Kids bathing in dirty water, trash and refuse everywhere. These eventually gave way to blocks of apartments scarce better than the tents. These at least had electricity, though. As the light slowly failed, I saw into row after row of the flats, each illuminated by a single oblong fluorescent bulb, bathing cramped rooms in sallow light, alternating with blank walls at the pace of the train's steady gait. Light, wall, light, wall. I had the strangest feeling- I've driven past rows of cheap apartments more times than I could count, but for some reason this time I desperately wanted to know what was going on inside them- were they happy, did they quarrel, what did they dream of? Light, wall, light, wall. If you could place the whole building on a karmic scale, would the joy outweigh the misery?

I focused on one of the last sights I could make out in the blue of the dying light: a boy atop one of the buildings, struggling to keep his tiny kite aloft. Ever the optimist, I chose to conclude that he was happy at that moment, which as the kite swirled upward from what had appeared a certain doom, seemed a safe assumption.

Cue the Bob Seger Music

Yes, if I ever get out of here (or here). That's what I'm gonna do: Kathmandu. I've arrived safely and I have a lovely hotel room in the center of Thamel, the backpacker quarter of this town. It's at least ten degrees cooler than Delhi, and although it has threatened to rain all day, I've escaped with just a handful of fat raindrops and many cool breezes. I have nothing more to report of the town yet, as I landed in the afternoon and have only achieved mundane tasks like visa, currency, lodging, laundry and food.

Now it's time to knuckle down and catch up on blog entries for a bit (the internet cafes here are tons better than India), and then tomorrow morning start exploring. For those of you keeping score at home, the path was Khajuraho > Jhansi > Agra > Delhi (again) > Kathmandu. Next port of call will probably be Pokhara, but not for a few days. There's a lot to see here in the city and the greater Kathmandu valley, and I have some important Internet work to do on Thursday.

I had another quiet moment of thrill today in the Delhi airport. I had been thinking all morning at my incredible good fortune at being able to travel. I mean, what did I do to deserve this amazing experience? There are people who work harder than me in countries like India (or at home, for that matter) who will never have the opportunity to do these things, because of accidents of birth or obligation. I know I've worked for it, too, but I can't escape the knowledge that I am so, so fortunate.

As I was having this thought, I looked up at a departure board, searching for my flight number, and I saw a flight headed for London at about the same time. I thought: London. I love London. What a great city; I've had a blast every time I've been there. Amazing art, charming British accents, good Indian food, Frenchie. If I willed it, I could walk over there, and change my ticket, and in six hours I'd be eating fish and chips out of a rolled up newspaper and terrifying Bene with a manic phone call from the street. Again this surge of strength ran through me, and I felt as if I wore the legendary seven-league boots, ready to step across the globe on a whim.

But of course, I smiled to myself, shouldered my pack, and walked towards gate 6, and Nepal.

Photos soon, I promise.

India: Chillin with a Billion

India: land of the Mahatma, Mother Theresa, the Upanishads and Galub Jamon. Oh, and the Taj Mahal, the greatest monument to love ever built. So upset was the Shah (one of the Muslim Mughal kings of India) at the death of his wife Mumtaz that he built her the greatest tomb on the continent, resplendent in translucent white marble and semiprecious stones. More pics of the spectacular sights of Delhi and points beyond are coming soon.

There are a billion people here, and no one has ever asked "Wow. Where do they put them all?" Because the answer is (excuse me) they're right (pardon me, if you could move just ... thanks) over here by (excusemecouldIgetthrough.. thankyou. Namaste) you right now. Cheek to jowl. Everything is crowded and people take up every nook and cranny that they can, and then some. I'm told China is more crowded but I'm having a hard time imagining it. I'm glad I was raised a herd animal, or the crowds here would be intimidating.

First, a brief word about the food, and that word is "Awesome". Even better than I could have hoped. The crappy dinner on the train when I rode overnight from Delhi to Varanasi was very, very good, and yet I could tell that the businessmen I was sitting with were holding their noses to get it down. They're spoiled by this country. Last night I had a thali at a restaurant here in Delhi that cost about two dollars and I wanted to compose poetry to it. Not about it, friends, to it. Crisp little samosas with savory potato filling, mulligatawny soup you'd joyfully commit a felony for, suculent small parathas with some unidentified sweet paste, half a dozen different vegetable curries, and at least five dishes that I still don't know what they were, aloo gobi, rotis, papadum, tamarind sauce, and finished with petite galub jamons drowned in saffron syrup. The waiter came over at one point and asked me if I wanted anything else, and I said "an extra stomach". The manager overheard this and, laughing heartily, came over to point out different dishes and suggest condiment combinations.

One of my favorite phenomena of India has to be "Hinglish" or the seamlessness of English in this society. Hindi is just one of the fifteen official languages of India, but it's the dominant one, especially here in the North. The other northern languages (like Rajisthani) are very very similar to Hindi, so Hindi is the "mother tongue" of the country, as the southern languages are diverse and dissimilar. Yet English is the common denominator of business and wealth. Then, to make the linguistic environment more interesting, Hindi and English blend together, sometimes similar to the ways Spanish and English would run together in Texas (and especially San Antonio, whose official language should be Spanglish), but in different ways as well.

TV ads will run in Hindi for twenty nine seconds, but the corporate slogan at the end is English. Interviewers will question cultural figures in English, and nod at answers in Hindi. The aforementioned businessmen with whom I shared a train compartment would drop into English mid sentence for a particular phrase while complaining about the train food "rajiv chowk karol bagh it took forever to get here and anjoo hani paneep". My favorite example of all was a billboard for a morning radio show. Exactly like the boards for morning pop shows at home- handsome young men with manic expressions, wild coloring, "93.7 FM" in big letters, but Hindi printing right up until the slogan at the end: "Wake Up and Smell the Madness!!!!"

Okay, so, this is where I'm severely tempted to stop the entry, but I won't. See, although I might return briefly in a couple weeks, I've actually decided to leave India tomorrow for Nepal. My original plan had me staying here for one to two months, but after a week, I'm pretty much done, and with much sorrow I now depart. I have a ticket for Katmandu, Nepal for tomorrow morning. I thought about it a lot and decided that I had to be frank and tell the bad as well as the good as I see it, and although the food is beyond amazing, and the culture and languages are very cool, and the sights themselves are superlative (photos coming soon), I really have not enjoyed my time here.

Thing is, I can't think of anyone more predisposed to like India than myself. From the youngest of ages until the present, I've had many close friends, teachers, girlfriends either from here or of close Indian ancestry, and I've had a near-lifelong obsession with Indian art, philosophy, cuisine, everything. Maybe this is part of the problem: I had the highest of hopes for the place. Almost every traveler I came across in Asia either loved or despised their time in India without ambiguity, so I automatically assumed I'd be the former. The negatives that I heard cited by the latter group are very much present, but none of them bother me that much. Yes, there's intense poverty, but I saw that in Cambodia and it's no worse here; yes there are unsanitary conditions in the cities, but that doesn't really affect me as long as I watch where I eat; and yes things tend to run late, but if you anticipate that going in, it's not an issue.

The problem with India is money, or more accurately the pursuit of it. In every country I've visited there's enthusiastic folk keen on creating a little distance between you and your dollar. But nowhere has the omnipresence of capitalist yearning crushed the joy out of me as it has here, to the point where I couldn't enjoy the magnificent sights or the society. I'm at a loss to exaggerate this phenomenon. It's as if through the eyes of folk on the street I'm an ATM with legs. You can't take ten steps out the door without being solicited for everything and anything, and it continues nonstop until the next door closes behind you, and sometimes not even then. I have had people sit down next to me at restaurants while I'm eating, wanting to sell me taxi service, sarees, postcards, everything. I've had to bat away arms from rival vendors while trying to cross the street to buy a bottle of water. I've jogged down the street with my 20-kilo luggage on my back to avoid the crush of touts.

When I think about how constant and intense it is, it's comic, like a Bugs Bunny cartoon when Elmer Fudd is walking down the street trying to ignore Bugs, but Bugs pops out from behind every tree, building and rock as Elmer walks by at a steady pace, grimacing. I would not have been at all surprised if a manhole cover jumped out of the street, balanced on the top of a turban whose owner had a lovely selection of Ganesh statues to offer me at a very low price. But when it's happening to you its not funny at all. You want to run.

Every driver wants to take you to his friend's bazaar and refuses to take no for an answer. Every guide has a shop you must go to before the tour begins, every sightseeing expedition has detours to shops, factories, and knicknackeries which you can evade only by emoting sheer fury. All this is while dodging the crowds of children begging for pens, money and sweets (and these are children in private school uniforms, not starving urchins on the street). Every so often, someone would strike up conversation with me in what would seem a neutral setting- the waiter in the hotel restaurant, the high school kid walking alongside the road. I would be cautious and terse for ten, twenty minutes or more, then conclude that this was a real person who just wanted to practice English or get to know the foreigner, open up to them... and then regret it. Every time the sales pitch came at the end. Maybe the problem is me, and I should just enjoy the talk that comes before the sales pitch... but it just feels so... rotten when the advertisement comes at the end, like I've been buying into something false and now I can't get that taste out of my mouth.

(That's an exaggeration- exactly once there was a young man in a train station who just wanted to talk. He was cool, and he actually bought me a cup of chai. His English was spotty but it was the best interaction I had here. His name was Papu, and he was a soldier, having just come back from six months wearing a blue helmet for the UN in the Congo. He said he was very impressed by the American soldiers he met in the Congo, because in particular of one incident: a ditch needed to be dug, and the first of the American detatchment on the scene was a lieutenant, who, after surveying the situation, got out a shovel and actually started digging, and didn't stop when the enlisted men got there. This blew his mind.)

And then, when you actually see the hotel room, its smaller than you were told, or the AC doesn't work, or the power goes out every twenty minutes, or you're miles from the sights instead of the steps you were promised, and then the price is more, the quality is less, the deal has changed, there are hidden fees, taxes are not included despite being promised the contrary... so after a while you can take no one's word on anything, until your very mistrust and vigilance exhausts you. Each night I find myself retreating to my hotel room much earlier than I'd like just so I can close the door, and then I'm angry because I came all this way to see the place, and here I am reduced to shutting it out.

I've been largely to touristy places, and that's a mitigating factor. I know that not all of Indian society is this way. And all of these phenomena appeared in lesser degree in all the other places I've been (the transport touts when we stepped off the bus in Seim Reap were particularly bad). But everywhere else there was relief from the hucksterism, there was a break in the commercial where you got to see a country. And to travel in a country means being in the touristy environment, at least to me. I don't know the language and I want to see the great sights, so that puts me in the maw of the huckster.

When I look into the eyes of each individual, I understand why he's putting on the hard sell. He's poor, and the cash in my pocket is a fortune to him. The individual would be easy to forgive, to sympathize with, if I only had the time, which I don't because of the twenty other dudes right behind him with the same problem and the same sales pitch.

I think I'd come back here for business, or to visit a friend, or to come see a specific event. But for now I'm done. And I may feel better able to handle more India after a week or two off in a different country. I'd still like to see Rajasthan and the Golden Temple of the Sikhs, among other things.

I have many good photos of monuments, temples and rivers, but I will begin uploading those in Nepal. Now it's off to a repeat thali of last night's feast, and then to bed. I'm excited about Nepal- it's supposed to be amazing, right, Ryan?