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“The Dharma Bums?/STRONG> Back in 40-degree heat and high humidity again...the fourth extreme climatic change in four months. There are air-raid sirens sounding off in my core-body-temperature engine room. Have spent the last three weeks turning into more and more of an ascetic. Disappeared into the Himalayas, walking up to 30kms a day. The soutpiel who went up a mountain and came down a...bergie. Forgone such luxury items as soap, toilet paper, razor, deodorant, and underwear. Slept wherever we were when the sunset, putting up tents, or when we were lucky enough to come across some mudhuts, we\'d pay a few rupees to crash on the roof. |
The monks were great people, though, touchingly hospitable, letting us stay right in the temples and insisting that we join them for every meal. Morning "puja" was announced when the abbot blew a conch shell from the top of the cliff. We\'d all assemble in the prayer hall, facing each other in long lines on the floor. The Lotus position is for, well, lotuses...not westerners. Novice monks keep ladling you huge bowls of the innocuous enough sounding "butter tea". Essentially it\'s yak\'s milk, salt, rancid butter and broth all cooked on a dung fire. Don\'t try it at home. It tastes remarkably similar to how you would imagine the inside of a yak to taste. Physically dwarfing any of the monks (people all over India look up at us and grunt "stwong, healty, beeg musssells"), they all forced us to eat four times the R.D.A in one sitting. Which is ok with thukpa, or momos, but butter tea has you thinking of "wafer thin mints". Puja is a religious breaking of the fast, repetitive chanting intermingled with sporadic and quite aggressive tea sipping. And the acoustics in those halls are incredible. What is the sound of 30 monks slurping? Kinda like the sound of 30 airplane toilets flushing. The mantra chanting can be quite fun...after not having eaten meat for two months, I found
Spent a few nights in Kibber, reputably the highest village in the world. It certainly had the shortest long-drop. An ear, nose and throat specialist would do a roaring trade in these parts. People would try to casually converse with you with twin, vampire-esque trails of mucus running down their faces. Stumbled across a really primitive settlement in the side of a cliff and after being plied (more like beaten into submission) with litres of butter-tea, arranged to sleep on a villagers roof for the night. She invited us for some dinner round the yak hearth, and proudly wired up her ancient T.V to a power source when our grunting dialogue had dried up. As fate would have it, it was my first exposure to Indian TV, and I was amazed by the lifelike, documentary style special effects of Bollywood. Turned out it was breaking news from New York. So the world\'s bin laden with crises? "Hey Mister Taliban, Taliban\'s gone bananas, daylight come and I wanna go home." Bizarre. Wouldn\'t have believed it if I hadn\'t seen it on TV.
“Into thin-ish air?/STRONG>
So, I\'ve come back down to earth again. And as part of my ongoing therapy-via-correspondence, I suspect that this e-mail will end up almost as long (and tedious) as the walk itself. 300kms of leech bites, calf-sprains, sub-zero temperatures, Maoist guerillas, crevasses, glaciers, altitude, yaks trying to gore you off the path (Pamplona is for pussies), and most brutal of all: 21 days of unwashed, unpeeled boiled potatoes. I\'d like to thank, but in the same breath put a jihad on the westerner who introduced the hardy, high-altitude potato to Nepal. Potatoes were all we could afford up there. The path to Everest has evolved from the old trading route between Nepal and Tibet. The path is unforgiving...no gentle contour paths here, it\'s as the crow flies. Or, rather, as the distempered yak plods. Most moneyed folk shave off the most difficult 8-day stretch from Jiri to Lukla by flying direct to Lukla. Not us. Jiri to Lukla crosses valley after valley at a relentless right angle, so in one day, one can walk 20km, ascend 1500m and promptly descend 2000. Soul destroying stuff. Our altitude after four days of vertiginous up and down was lower than when we stepped off the bus on Day 1.
It\'s a prolific distribution route, the only way to get anything up there is to pay a sherpa to physically carry it up there. And carry the poor bastards do. Straining under refrigerator-sized loads of up to 80kgs, which they balance precariously in low-tech wicker baskets that are supported solely by a rope headband strapped around their foreheads, they grunt up and down treacherous paths in a pair of shorts and slip slops. Realised on day one, if we were to make it up, our best bet was to shadow their every move, from their dietary habits to their sleeping and walking patterns. Thankfully, I never picked up their permanent posture of neck-strained-forward constipation that results from carrying heavy objects on your forehead. As much as possible, we tried to eat what they ate, stay where they stayed, and generally avoid the tourist trappings. Since we were generally keeping pace with them, carrying our own packs and food and cooking along the trail with our stove...a degree of bemused respect developed.
It was difficult to keep costs down up there, but we got pretty ruthless, loitering around lodges, scavenging other foreigners?ample leftovers. Was somewhat consoled by the shoestringer Spaniard we met (who had cycled from Spain on a meagre budget) who demanded the brothy water that his potatoes had been boiled in! You would pay more than a meal for a hot shower up there, and some chancers started charging for a cold one too. So we resorted to scaring the locals by bathing in icy Himalayan streams (Matthew dived into an iced-over lake at 5200m) until frostbite became a reality. Yup, you get nothing for free up there but the shits. Lodge owners threatened to charge you 100 times the agreed accommodation rate if you didn\'t take your meals at the lodge. Cooking our own food became a covert operation akin to skiving off behind the shed for a smoke. Aside from the obvious physical pain and suffering, it became an incredible mental journey. Waking at 5am every day, walking 10-12 hours a day, crash for 6hours, slap on boots do the same again. We were expecting the hike to take us 30 days, so on day 15, you\'re not sure whether to celebrate 15 days of toil, or shoot yourself in anticipation of the next 15. The daily tedium of one foot in front of the other is hardly alleviated by the prospect of that famous comfort food...boiled potatoes.
We made excellent time, covering the first 9 days in 5. Arrived in Lukla to be confronted with the theme-park spectacle of dollared tourists fresh off the plane. What a farce. Yanks puffing along with nothing burdening them other than 1000\'s of $\'s of ridiculously high-tech clothing, caravans of personal porters, cooks and guides in tow. One couple had an entourage of ten servants walking them up the mountain, carrying their Samsonite cases. Yup, it seems enough dollars can buy you a "house-boy" on any continent. Too much money merely creates a buffer zone between you and the local culture. Their servants would sprint ahead at dawn every day, reserve accommodation, pitch camp, setup folding chairs and tables, prepare meals, wake them up with breakfast in bed every morning, probably even wipe their butts for them. In fact, several times I witnessed guides, both hands on client\'s prosperous posteriors...literally pushing them up the mountain. Their decadence was disgusting. At the end of each day, they would descend on the lodges and wolf down Cokes, Beers, Mars Bars, Pringles and Pizzas...leaving us to glumly confront our penance of potatoes.
We went up the Gokyo side first, climbing Gokyo Ri peak (5350m) at 4:30am in -15 degrees with headtorches. It was pretty insane. Your fingers get so painfully numb that you can\'t depress the shutter on your camera, your water bottle freezes solid, people\'s camera batteries stopped working, your urine freezes, and snot pours out off your nose in two dignified stalactites. The most hardcore (but also the highlight) section was when we climbed the Cho La pass (5420m)...which we later found out should only be crossed by experienced mountaineers with ice axes, crampons and rope. We also found out retrospectively that 6 people died on the pass a few weeks ago. Ignorance is bliss. Pretty nervy stuff, climbing snow and ice, crossing the pass in snow. On the way down we made the mistake (without a guide to...well, guide us) of descending right down the head of a 400m glacier. It was a living, breathing, moving, creaking entity, like walking on a huge defrosting ice-cube, you could hear and see the water roaring under the thin sheet of ice under your boots. A group of 5 of us got stuck on there for 2 hours. Looking for a way off, I fell into a crevasse, but managed to avoid death with my ski pole and my right leg, which was twisted at an impossible angle in the region of my ears. There\'s only one thing worse than dropping into a crevasse, and that\'s persuading the shocked onlookers to risk venturing near enough to haul you out. After that little sphincter-tightener, every step I took was mental russian roulette. Suffice to say we got down eventually, wet, shaken, cut and exhausted. Resorted to throwing our packs down and off the glacier, and carved out a route of steps with a knife, our ski poles, and boot heels, collectively lowering ourselves, and sliding and jumping down to the moraine.
A few days later, we reached Gorak Shep (at 5200m the highest settlement before base camp) and spent 3 nights there, climbing Kala Pattar (5545m) and going up to Base Camp and walking a little way up the Khumbu Icefall. Kala Pattar was a zoo, putzes being pushed up the hill by their porters, people clammering for the "summit shot". One wanker had even got his porter to lug a satellite phone up there, and proceeded to phone his mates (at $20/minute) and drawl obnoxiously how "honey, I can touch Everest from here...". Base Camp was deserted (no expeditions) but amazing. A bit macabre looking at Pumori from there, as we\'d just heard that 5 Spaniards had died on it, and we could see the Iranian Team summitting. You\'ve got to be a real gambler climbing those mountains...sitting there for one hour we must have seen and heard 8 avalanches. After that, we got the hell off that mountain, doing the 5-day descent to Lukla in 2 days, and bribing our way into the cargo hold of a dodgy (but cheap) Russian freight helicopter.
“Never Ending Peace And Love.?/STRONG>
The five rand a night room finally started to take its toll. Over the festival, the family outside our window had acquired a shrill Casio keyboard, a jetlagged cockerel and a pining puppy. By the frenetic rate that we could hear the TV changing, they\'d jumped a LSM to remote control TV too. Their proximity did have its advantages. Needing some sharp scissors, we simply forced our window open 15cm, until it banged into their windowsill (over which the dry huge, hanging clumps of garlic) and stuck our hand into their lounge and made the universal sign for scissors. (I don\'t think "ching, chong, cha" is played in these parts.). Moments later an Asian hand poked into our side with a pair of scissors.
In Kathmandu, the innate western capitalist in me finally relented, and in a few short days I consumed enough chocolate cake to give a bull elephant an insulin imbalance, buying some extraneous, but dirt-cheap trekking equipment too. A polartec fleece sleeping bag inner didn\'t seem like such good value anymore, when climbing into bed that night, (still gloating over the ridiculously low price I had beaten the vendor down to) I found that no matter how hard I tugged, it ended in the region of my solar plexus.
In true Nepali fashion, its custom-made for, well, Nepalis. As is everything else. Bus seats would be passable if I amputated my legs above the knee, and beds, bearable if I had no shins. On my first Nepali bus ride from the Indian border I learnt 3 inevitabilities:
1. If I sit inside, I will hear the one, the only, the quintessential Nepali song that every single radio blares 24 hours a day, on continuous loop for the entire bus trip. Much of my time on the roads of Nepal is spent mentally unscrewing every bolt of the speaker above me, and hacking the red-wire with my leatherman.
2. My kneecaps will travel up my thighs and press against my testicles
3. The bus will break down.
I now insist on riding "upside" or "upper-class" with my luggage. Skin cancer and/or decapitation by low-slung power lines are preferable to the psychological torment of "downside". Every single bus I\'ve taken has had some form of mechanical failure. Most have been clutch problems (it\'s the most mountainous country in the world, what do the drivers anticipate, blowing an indicator bulb?). And the clutch is usually repaired in makeshift fashion with a brick (seriously), some debris on the verge of the road, or a shoe. Had 3 blowouts, one tyre literally exploded while we were getting off the bus. If much of my time inside is spent counting to ten, upside I while away time working out a practical three-step plan for self-preservation when the bus rolls. On one 6-hour ride, we counted 1 freshly-rolled bus (with what I hope were tomatoes littering the tar) and 5 trucks. One trip turned ugly when I was downside and staring out the window to see a human being drop past my window at 50km/h. When the roof is packed, that\'s a 7m-drop. Once the mob had cleared, we had to scrape the poor fella off the road and dump him at the nearest hospital (the conductor was leaning out the door making siren noises). Constant sandbagged police and military checkpoints also slow progress. Here, everyone on the roof (up to 50 people) climbs downside and crams into the already bursting bus, drives for 100m out of sight around the first corner and then clambers upside again. This invariably happens four or five times per trip. If that\'s not halting enough progress, sporadic, informal roadblocks of village children heckle and bribe the buses for "donation".
Finally got out of Kathmandu with a heavy 150 litre duffel-bag and a correspondingly light wallet. Spent 2 days on the Annapurna trek, but high-altitude prices forced me down (that and a virulent stomach bug, which three weeks later still has me exercising the sphincter control of a Jedi knight). Rested up and then tried the "royal Trek?instead. Prince Charles and an entourage of 90 servants christened this trek, and by the incessant shorts-tugging and mobbing by hordes of young villagers yelling "Hello, Bye-Bye, give me pen" and demanding balloons and chocolates, I can only surmise that 30 of Charlies entourage were carrying bags of the above items. I don’t know what these kids are thinking. I always find a gross of balloons and pens indispensable while trekking. They\'ll try and sell you anything...one man was grunting past under a 10m long bamboo telephone pole, and approached us and asked whether we wanted to buy the pole!
Spent a few days by the lake in Pokhara before going white-water rafting down the Kali-Gandaki (the deepest gorge in the world). Some companies were demanding up to 180US, but we eventually got it for 65. And judging from the rest of the clientele on the trip, Israel, Croatia and South Africa...all share similar exchange rates (and adrenalin cravings that they\'re accustomed to back home). It was pretty wild, grade 3 to 4- rapids, was thrown clear 6 times. Put a lot of faith in our water filter on this, a holy river...the banks are littered with burial mounds and ashen-banked cremation sites.
Have been suffering from the Bin-laden of stomach bugs. He has dug in deep in some subterranean bunker and won’t be flushed out. A multi-pronged attack of: smart bombs (a course of antibiotics), cluster bombs (2 other courses), food aid (packets of dry biscuits, and then, in desperation a huge bowl of muesli), friendly fire (bucketfuls of local curd, brimming with "good" bacteria) and even napalm (a bottle of local rum, I vaguely remember a label with XXX on it.) 25 days later, it seems its going to be a long, hard campaign against a dogged and elusive enemy. Finally resorted to surgical strikes (a local hospital, although hospital\'s a strong word). The medical fraternity are hysterical. The pharmacy at Pokhara Hospital is manned by a pubescent boy handing out schedule 5 drugs like smarties. Questioning his qualifications (I assumed him to be some kind of child prodigy) he proudly told me of 5 years "hands-on" experience, but admitted he\'d like to go to school too. You can amble into any pharmacy, sans prescription in the land of generic medicine and walk out with bagfuls of speed, Valium, ephedrine and ketamine, no questions asked. The hospital tried to charge me US 10 just to speak to a doctor, as opposed to 0.80 US for Nepalese. So I sat down in the ward and refused to budge until they gave me good treatment at Nepalese price.
Lavatorial talk continues to take me aback. I still can’t get used to speaking to pretty european girls and have them enthusiastically outline their bowel movements and stool status in graphic detail. Toilet paper is the cell phone of the foreigner here, with people walking the streets with a roll permanently fixed in one hand, as if they\'re expecting an important call.
Spent Diwali (the festival of lights) in Pokhara. Bizarre 5-day festival honouring certain animals on successive days. Day 1: The offering of rice to crows (the messengers of death). Day2: People corner stray (and often rabid) dogs and put flower garlands round their necks and tikka between their eyes, lavishing them with attention and platefuls of food. It must seriously fuck with the dog\'s psyches. For 364 days of the year they\'re neglected or beaten, and for one day they\'re worshipped and pampered. The streets were littered with garishly decorated dogs lying satiated in comas-like states with bellies swollen from food. The following day, still basking in the afterglow, they were a bit bewildered by the fickle nature of people beating them again. The third day is the cow\'s turn...but they\'re sitting pretty 365 days and 24-7. Day 4 Bullocks. Day 3 falls when there is no moon, and Lakshmi (the goddess of wealth) promises to visit every home that invites here with candles, the whole town comes alive with butter lamps and candles. Day 5 has sisters cooking lavish meals for their brothers who reciprocate with hard cash.
Everything has religious significance in these parts. In Kathmandu there is a living goddess ensconced in a temple in Durbari square. When she hits puberty she is offed and replaced (re-incarnated). The most famous Indian actor is still alive (and endorsing every product from pens to pepsi) and is worshipped as a living god at a temple in Calcutta. On one alley in Kathmandu is a dental shrine. People with toothache take a coin and come and nail it to the statue, so it\'s evolved into a large sequinned scaly blob.
Interestingly every single shop for two hundred metres in that vicinity is leased by "dental clinics.
I\'m beginning to feel like a travelling shit-magnet. When Afghanistan flared up I was near Pakistan, and headed to Nepal. This weekend the Maoist guerrillas broke their ceasefire in Nepal, civil war has broken out and a state of emergency has been declared. So I head back to India once more (with some trepidation). The junkies in Kathmandu are obsessive spouters of acronyms. Nepal stands for Never Ending Peace And Love, India- I\'ll Never Do It Again. As another tout described India : "full power, 24 hour, no toilet, no shower".
“Bring out your dead...?/STRONG>
Stepping over the invisible border from Nepal into India\'s cowshit, dirt and bombardment of the senses was hardly welcome after 14 hours on a bus. Killing 5 hours until our 12am train in a typical Indian train station just added insult to injury. If you kept your feet still enough, brazen rats would scamper over your boots. An enthusiastic disciplinarian on the bench opposite me regularly beat his half-naked autistic son with his fists. So I was forced to pace. But then a deranged drunk would follow 15 cm behind me, mimicking every move. Shouting, "hum marega tumku" (I will kick the crap out of you...rough translation) eventually got rid of him, but the commotion attracted the attentions of a poisonous little dwarf. He was the most sinister, intimidating, 4-foot embodiment of evil I\'ve ever met. Straight out of Tolkein. Hideously deformed, long white robes, beard and hair complimenting his albinism, he would move athletically, in forward roll after forward roll and pop up and thrust his face into mine. A nice little finale to his evil ensemble was that his blue eyes were infected to the extent that blood was leaking out of his tearducts and down his cheeks. One either finds untapped depth of character in such situations, or like me, dives straight into a pharmacy and buys enough valium to sedate me for the next 18 hours on the train. Only woke up twice, once when the the 80 year old woman opposite me started shrieking and gasping her last, and later when her husband\'s catheter fell out of his bottle and started leaking under my seat. I\'m convinced that the brains behind the Jim Rose Circus pulled through India in a truck, throwing freaks in the back.
Shaved my hair as soon as I arrived in Delhi, some form of subliminal cathartic cleansing. Spent the next few days whoring around Delhi, being driven wherever we wanted by a taxi driver. It was all free, but at a cost. For every 2 temples/monuments we visited, we had to go to 1 emporium. Our driver earned baksheesh or commission for every tourist he snagged and dropped at emporiums. We must have visited 10 in one day, sadistically teasing each salesman (who would ply us with tea, biscuits and incredibly seductive sales talk). Very surreal position to be in. Our budget didn\'t allow for taxis, yet our penance was to sit in opulent, air-conditioned emporiums faking genuine interest in U$2000 Persian carpets and diamond necklaces. South Africa\'s plummeting exchange rate is even infamous here, it seems. We were under strict instructions from our driver to renounce South Africa, so instead we spoke Afrikaans and were Hans and Andreis from Munich for one bizarre day. Poked my head (and snuck my camera) into the Jama Masjid, the mammoth mosque that is the seat of Islam in India. Not many white folk around. 30 000 people waving posters of Bin Laden at Friday prayers will do that.
The Indian penchant for extracting money in any situation continues to astound me. You can have your ears cleaned by roaming "ear cleaners" on the streets, who dig out the wax with dangerous looking steel needles swathed in cotton. Nothing is sacred, extortion doesn\'t stop even with dying...tourists are ushered by touts onto the overlooking balcony of a decrepit "hospice", where they are forced to "donate" to the sick and dying (who are propped there by the touts during peak hours only). A bit of an ethical problem develops when people who are clearly on death\'s door beg for money. If you choose to give, are you not helping them stave off the inevitable (and therefore the state of nirvana guaranteed by dying here?). One traveller\'s twisted logic suggests that maybe the expedient thing would be to kick the old and infirm to death instead of donating? Although, if they have no family, and need 100kg of sacred wood (which is meticulously weighed and sold by the kilo) to be correctly cremated...they seem to be in the bizarre situation of pre-emptive begging to pay off their inevitable funeral. The burns are quite stoic, sombre, almost businesslike affairs, and grieving is low-key by western standards. One reason could be that you\'ve really hit the Karmic jackpot if you bite it here. The Christian equivalent would be suffering a coronary on the steps of St.Peter\'s and being buried in the Vatican.
Another 24hr Valium blur (well more of a slow motion action replay) on a train to Calcutta.
“From the South?/STRONG>
Leaving Calcutta for Bangkok was an amusing cultural shock. Walked over blanketed homeless lumps in the dark, rode on a crowded wooden seated bus and did the last 2km to Calcutta International on an antiquated bicycle rickshaw. And before we knew it, a whole load of shell-shocked budget travellers were contemplating the relative luxury of a Boeing’s interior. Spent the 3 hour flight switching the airconditioner and overhead light on and off and flushing the toilet repeatedly with nostalgic glee. All around us backpackers were filching the miniatures, jams and sugars, some were surreptitiously spreading peanut butter and jam from their own stashes within their daypacks to bulk up the meal. You can take the traveler out of India, but you can’t take India out of the traveler. I half expected the stewardesses to metamorphosis into the persistent chai-wallahs and beggars that prowl the train aisles at 4am, screaming at the top of their voices. Before we could figure out quite what to do with those dainty warm refresher towels, we were in Bangkok. The first thing that struck me was the heat. Then the women. Then the cleanliness. Then the hot, clean women. You get fined 1000baht for even dropping a cigarette butt. Cleaner, more efficient and first world than JHB.
Decided to wallow in all the evils the west could offer. The slumbering beast in me awoke after 5 months and that night we celebrated my birthday with maturity befitting my years. Receiving complimentary handjobs in a drunken, amphetamine fuelled blur of strip clubs and go-go bars. A quality establishment called “Superpussy?stands out from the murk somehow. While, on stage, jaded women do impossible things with their genitalia, 3 or 4 gorgeous, semi-naked Asian women (touchwood) work your lap like skilled sexual pickpockets. Before you can say, “me love you longtime?your privates are now decidedly public and your hoping that your passport hasn’t been as skillfully extracted. The sight of women opening beer bottles, blowing out candles, shooting balloons out of your one free hand (with blow-darts), and extracting razorblades from where razorblades should not be extracted, tends to distract one a tad. Woke up the next day (alone, phew) with a huge hangover, small wallet and some vivid flashbacks. I found myself sporadically breaking out into “One night in Bangkok and the tough guys tumble, can’t be too careful with your company, I can feel the devil walking next to me??Was staying in a quaint family run guesthouse owned by a prim 60-year disciplinarian. Felt a bit humiliated when I stumbled to the bathroom mid-way through breakfast, to figure out why folk were staring, splash water on my face and get the dry retching under control, only to be faced by bloodshot eyes and a neck riddled with hickeys and lipstick. Ouch. The hangover melancholy, which is on the scale of an e-comedown, has only recently been explained to me: 1. All the alcohol here is loaded with amphetamines. 2. The redbull here comes in tiny medicine bottles and is almost pure speed. So, invariably the mourning after is spent torn between feeling like you’ve been bludgeoned over the back of the head, and hoping that someone would bludgeon you over the back of the head, so you can get some damn sleep already.
Set about scoring some drugs for the notorious Full Moon Party on Ko Pangan. Which is a nerve-wrecking enough process (in my paranoid little world) in the west. Another ballgame here, could end up in Bangkok prison for life. (Quite a popular pastime amongst altruistic/morbidly curious travellers in BKK is to visit the foreign life-sentence inmates, taking them food books and company for a day.) Through a combination of chivalry/naivete on my part, I ended up in a Thai hooker/drug addict’s apartment at 1am one night. Talk turned to drugs…as it does, and I was suddenly handing over three weeks budget, arranging to collect in 20 mins. 1800 long, angst-filled mins (36hrs) later, she still hadn’t returned. Thinking she’d try and do a runner (or already had) we staked out her room from the bushes, and finally surprised her at 7am and got our merchandise. Which we smuggled there on the ferry. And then took. And then took again. And then realised we’d been took. Duds. So the outcome of those 2 days of sordidness had me very publicly peeling 1000B in small notes over a packed bar counter for a 40B beer, to a dodgy barwoman/dealer…in full view of the police! I don’t know what the pharmacology of the evening was really (does one ever?) but 40mins later everything was more than all right with the world and remained so for a good 12 hours. 50 000 rave pilgrims dancing knee deep in the surf still at 11am the next day. Freaks abounded. Michael Jackson was reportedly there (in disguise…as if he needs it) and in retrospect I swore I could have seen him, but dismissed him as a hallucinated boy/girl. The next day, I quickly discovered that 2 hours on a ferry, then hitching a ride with an off-duty cop and trying to sleep it off in a 40 degree bungalow…lets just say it’s not videos in bed in JHB. Terrible Tuesday never came, cause every day is Sunday here.
Fled to Krabi, a world famous rock-climbing spot. Spent 2 and a half weeks in some great bungalows in D-block. "Discount block" as we began to call it. All the long-term prisoners hang out there. All climbers…some have been there for 4 months already. Became part of the community, cooking together, drinking together and basically just hanging out. Matthew would do occasional supply runs to the mainland, swimming 3kms there, and returning by boat with a case of Big Changs (beer) and groceries for a week. They shot some Bond films there…very picturesque, limestone cliff, caves and small islands jutting out of the sea. Spent a week watching the climbers walking around, necks craned up at the cliffs, making ferret-like gestures with their hands and mumbling as they planned their handholds and route. Decided to give it a bash. Awesome, if not a little terrifying. After a day of climbing and 2 sunset yoga classes on the beach, there was even lactic acid buildup in my eyelids. Spent 2 weeks trying to master the art of slacklining (walking a tightrope between two palm trees). My faith in my travel insurance declining fall by bad fall, decided to slack off instead. Started to feel sexually invisible on that beach, what with climbers having perfect physiques, as opposed to well…my physique. Our neighbour in D-Block was a world famous soloist. Which means he enjoys climbing up 500m overhanging cliff faces with no ropes. Almost as much as his marijuana. Which is a dodgy combination. I give him 2 years at best.
There was quite a rat problem, so we hung 3 weeks of carrots, spring onions etc from our ceiling with string. Neighbours thought us a little eccentric. Then just downright weird (we’d catch a rat a night on average and photograph ourselves every morning with our trophies). Pang of guilt, though. In India and Nepal they have karma-friendly catch-and-release mousetraps, here only the western style jaws of death. So every night you’d be woken by a loud clang and the heart-rending sound of the “death-throe scamper? as we began to call it. Fled to Phi-Phi. The island where they shot “The Beach? Stayed on a picture-postcard beach inhabited by only 10 people (it’s a one and a half-hour trek through the jungle to get there, no FDT’s). Brilliant snorkeling. You can take an expensive dive tour to a place called “Shark Point?(as opposed to “Human Point?. Or you can walk there for two hours in true budget fashion, swim the channel and hang on a buoy for three hours blowing your bloodnose in the water to attract the sharks. Worked like a charm, swam with two sharks and saw some moray eels. Seeing a shark is a double-edged sword (especially as a snorkeller, not a diver). Part of you is terrified, part excited. It\'s the whole half-empty, half-full conundrum. I like to hope that the shark is half-full. Off to The Bridge over the River Kwai, then BKK, then Laos, Vietnam Cambodia. Try and pickup some more "mercenary" extra work. Yup. Asian Flu has bitten, let\'s hope the Asian economic crises doesn\'t hit me before I make it "home" to India. Adios Jake
“Ramble on?/STRONG>
So...where to start then? Aah yes, the boat ride to Burma. Had just got off a 20 hour bus trip, hadn\'t slept, but it was a rather special sunset. Strolled past a floating barge disco on the River Kwai. Ordered a beer and was confused when they refused to let us pay, and then they invited us to join them for a cruise. Smelled a rat, until we found out we were now official guests of Canon Bangkok\'s annual office party. The head honcho introduced himself with Japanese-style hospitality and humility. As a backpacker this was pretty much nirvana, free food and drink and partying along with 150 gorgeous Thai women who couldn\'t speak a word of English, but insisted that we dance and pose for photos with them. Thought I\'d have to pinch myself, but they were pretty adept at that too, women kept darting up and curiously pinching the blonde hair on our arms (a novelty in Africa too). The boss insisted that we match him scotch for scotch, but I assume were the first South Africans he\'s met...pretty soon we broke him, leaving him passed out on the floor with 2 secretaries trying to revive him with tiger balm. Wasn\'t really paying too much attention to the scenery and the next morning discovered we were pretty much in Burma. After 16 hours, and no sleep the previous day it’s hard to keep flashing that smile and keep dancing. Testament to Thai amphetamines is that the locals didn\'t sit down once. It was great to finally interact with local people. The South caters purely for foreigners, evidenced in the islands clinics which loudly advertise 1: Pregnancy Testing 2: HIV testing 3: Suturing and abrasions (foreigners drop off motorbikes like flies) 4: Visa extensions.
My English has deteriorated to staccato, telegraphic dumbspeak...e.g. "OK, very good mistah, I go take food now and then I take shower and afterward see you later". Speaking to locals in English, you even start mimicking the tonal range fluctuation that they use here, different tones of the same word have different meanings. Your voice goes all pre-pubescent again. For example in Thai: "griep, griep, griep, griep, griep" said like doh-ray-me will mean "the old woman sells chicken eggs". Only problem is I don’t realise I\'m doing it with foreigners too, until they look at me like I\'m simple or something. Spent some time on the mighty Mekong that flows down from Tibet. There are some X-file type creatures in there, 300kg 3m long catfish and an 8m long dragon-like sea snake. Took a short but memorable ride on a "speedboat". A 4m canoe with a 2litre 16V Toyota car engine mounted on the back with a 5 metre long propshaft. Alarm bells should have been ringing when a local parked his bike on the bank and got in the boat without removing his helmet. I no longer thought he was just eccentric when we hit 80km/h up a rapid. The roads are worse. On one trip we literally had a team of dynamite blasters and 2 earthmoving machines carving a road out of the cliff for us. Up on the border of China, they\'re spectacularly bad; a 50km trip on the back of a truck can take 4 hours. Real jungle here, the villagers are primitive, spirit and ancestor worshipping animists, they cringe when the bus comes past and flee, terrified, when it hoots. Padkos here is jungle food. Monkeys, civets, huge gopher-like rats...they all get bought alive and leashed so they\'re fresh for dinner. Quite high maintenance food on the seat next to you, though. The Lonely planet usually recommends some sedate topical movies for every country, giving you some cultural background. Here, they recommend Rambo, Platoon, The Deerhunter and Apocalypse Now. Spent some time near the Ho Chi Minh trail near Vietnam in a vast bomb-scarred plateau. The Plain Of Jars is a pockmarked landscape of hundreds of mysterious ancient stone amphorae (up to 4m large) that stick out of the earth. Stonehenge-like atmosphere, archaeologists are still unsure. Here the only real westernisation is in the form of unexploded American bombs littering the area. People are constantly blowing themselves up. Villages are built around craters and are constructed from old bombs and bomb casings. The houses, furniture, pig troughs, farming implements, everything is scrap bomb. Spent a few days in beautiful limestone Karst cliff area, floating down a river in an innertube. After an hour in an innertube, you develop the locomotive abilities and posture of Stephen Hawkings. When I wasn\'t innertubing or watching the sunset, I was playing Jake Goodall to a 10 day old orphaned monkey. Really got my biological clock ticking, after three days, I had bald patches of chest hair and chafed nipples from its confused and rather perverse suckling instinct.
“Breaking the silence?
The South of Laos was truly amazing, a country with no "buts". I.e. India is great, but.
Spent 2 weeks on small islands on the Mekong on the border of Cambodia (incidentally the stretch of river where they found Marlon Brando living with the river tribes in "Apocalypse Now".) Stayed with small simple fishing communities and some real travelling stoners and freaks. My neighbour seemed to be following in Marlon Brando\'s footsteps. A half-naked Australian woman, she\'d been hitting the LaoLao and Marijuana hard since being married into the village by the village headman 10 months ago. She chose my stay there to completely flip out, and eventually we managed to get to a telephone, rifled through her possessions and tracked down her parents and embassy to come and whisk her away in a straitjacket. Scary stuff. Days were spent in a stupor developing a strong right arm rocking myself in a hammock. Also went to see the remaining rare Irrawady freshwater dolphins (those that hadn\'t been killed by the Cambodian grenade fishermen). Nights were spent drinking laolao, mouth clamped shut in fear of choking to death on the rampant insect life. Switch on a light and within seconds a cloud of insects would congregate and cluster so densely as to actually block out the light. Bathing was au naturelle in the Mekong, quite an interesting mental process. It\'s not very comforting taking your boudoir in bathwater that originated in a Tibetan glacier, wound it\'s way through the many soapy groins and armpits of China, Burma, Thailand and Laos. Will have to get a comprehensive blood test done one of these days.
Bribed the immigration and customs officials on both sides of the Lao/Cambodia border to let me cross the unofficial border. Then made my way through the badlands and roads of the desolate Khmer Rouge northern region of Cambodia. Pretty hardcore roads, rivaling the worst I saw in Africa. Travelled down the Mekong for two days to the capital Phenom Phen. If Thailand’s south is about sex tourism, and the north about drug tourism, then Cambodia is about death tourism. Pretty depressing sightseeing. In one day I visited the S21 prison/extermination centre from Pol Pot\'s and the Khmer Rouge\'s heyday. Make\'s Auschwitz look like a holiday resort. Then ploughed through "The killing fields". Mass graves and a 2 storey high pile of skulls and bones. You can still inspect the bloodied scars on the trees where women and children were bludgeoned to death to save bullets. Over 3 million people died. Getting there is half the fun. The only mode of transport is on the back of a "moto". A 100cc scooter with no suspension. Your "moto driver" zooms you around Phenom Phen with scant regard for road rules, other road users (who have even less regard), you fear for your life. Complete automotive anarchy. People zooming in a hundred different directions at once, on road, pavement, potholes, puddles, it\'s an off road experience like none other. To take the edge off, I ended up firing off a short but expensive burst with an AK47. Seeing the emotional distress on my face as I arrived, they very kindly offered to let me blow up a cow with a rocket launcher, but the latent vegetarian in me declined.
Then undertook a 35 hour blur of a bus ride back into Thailand for the 8th wonder, the Full Moon Party on Ko Pangnang. Again. Spent 6 nights before the party partaking of the infamous "bucket". Amazing packaging, a small plastic bucket filled with ice, a bottle of whisky, a bottle of redbull, a can of coke. When you\'ve finished, simply vomit back into the bucket. Genius. Days were spent pretending I hadn\'t drunk three buckets the previous night, and pretending that 20-something Swedish girls could possibly find me attractive. Does the transition from dashing young man to dirty old man happen overnight? Sure feels like it. Young whippersnappers, I ought to put them over my knee and.... Stop that! Full Moon Party...same same, but different, too many expectations, too many buckets.
03h55 Wake
04h30 Daily Reading
04h45 Sitting Meditation
05h15 Yoga
07h00 Sitting Meditation
08h00 Breakfast and Chores (managed to dodge toilet cleaning)
10h00 Dhamma Talk
11h00 Walking or Standing Meditation
11h30 Sitting Meditation
12h00 Walking or Standing Meditation
12h30 Lunch and Chores
14h30 Sitting Meditation (Instruction and posture)
15h30 Walking or Standing Meditation
16h15 Sitting Meditation
17h00 Chanting
17h45 Loving Kindness Meditation
18h00 Tea and Hot springs
19h30 Dhamma Talk
20h00 Group walking/standing/sitting
21h00 Goodnight
22h00 Lights out
You\'ll notice that\'s only 6 hours sleep on a plank and 2 meals a day. No reading, no writing, passports at the door please. Days were spent responding like Pavlov\'s dog to the monastery bell, and trying to figure out the country of origin, personal history and favourite fetish of every stranger in the hall. The principle behind meditation soon became very clear to me.
It was pretty taxing trying to meditate at 4h30 with a blood donor drive being conducted on your person by the rampant insect life. One of the Buddhist precepts is to not harm a single living creature. The abbot once mopped his brow and realized he\'d inadvertently killed an innocent mosquito. He immediately retreated into the forest to return the following day with more than 300 mosquito bites as retribution. So I learnt to camouflage any murderous slaps with a covert cough. I intellectually understand the concept of not harming any living creature, but I meditated horizontally for 8 days last time I caught malaria. It became like "Survivor". Every morning they would open with "Congratulations on making it to Day Eight..." It was very, very taxing. I think part of the dissonance within was related to having to go to mass every day at school, and flashbacks to the militaristic institutionalization and religious indoctrination of veldschool.
Walking Meditation was like exercise hour at the asylum. 120 foreigners sleepwalking painfully slowly through the forest like heavily sedated zombies. The initial atmosphere was that of the 9 am aftermath at a rave. Serious emotional fallout. People\'s faces were ashen, haunted, expressionless, slack. And suddenly around day 7, a warm, serene complexion glowed on people\'s faces. Calm, peaceful, radiant, blissful. Picture a lobotomised 5 year-old and you\'ll get the picture. As if under the influence of psychedelics, people regressed/progressed into a state of childlike, wide-eyed naivete and enthusiasm. People hugging trees, stopping and bending to inspect some curious natural phenomenon. Like psychedelics, too, all colours became curiously vivid; it felt like sunset/sunrise the whole day. The whole rose-tinted spectacle scenario. I\'ve always avoided acid fearing the 12-hour ride. Try 11 days. It would be a doddle. Some pretty bizarre behaviour all round. I\'d develop sudden, overpowering compulsions. Certain times of the day would find me almost sprinting a few circuits of the 3km perimeter fence (Run Forrest, run!) and doing uncharacteristic things like scampering up coconut trees like a monkey.
Spend 11 days in a silent forest, and you\'ll understand where the Afrikaans expression going "bos" comes from. Over the period of 11 days, the lecturers held up, analysed and then tore apart every western perception I\'ve ever believed in. Challenged everything. Some eloquent professional would probably call it a complete "mindfuck". It was more "mindsodomy", a "mindgangbang", "Debbie Does Da Cerebral Cortex" I\'d cry foul and label it "mindrape", but I\'d paid good money, so technically I was consenting.
One day they decided to up the ante and give us only one meal. These monks are incredible ascetics. They eat only one small midday meal, most are pushing 80 and living on 4 hours sleep a night. They would constantly refer to "Those 4 years I spent meditating alone in the forest" or that "15 day period where I survived on water alone". The ancient Spartans were living the high life in comparison. Which is the crux of the matter. Buddhism is suffering. They basically aim to remove any human emotion/experience from life and simply let all attachments to anything go. That way one cannot be hurt or defiled. They have issues with any comfort. No cushioned chairs or comfortable beds. They have serious issues with food, the process of chewing, and craving that goes along with hunger. They\'re one huge eating disorder. Although they are steadfast vegans, they still have issues with plants, which are living beings too. Before any plants are ingested the following food reflection had to be recited:
"With wise reflection I eat this food. Not for play, not for intoxication. Not for fattening, not for beautification. Only to maintain this body to stay alive and healthy, to support the spiritual way of life. Thus I let go of unpleasant feelings and do not stir up new ones. Thereby the process of life goes on, blameless, at ease and in peace."
No wonder snacking is not big, imagine having to say that every time you popped a Pringle in your mouth. Man, they even have defilement issues with going to the toilet, they say eating and defecating breaks your consciousness. Not exactly the life and soul of the little party we like to call life.
Simply put, by not getting involved in life, life can\'t hurt you, so you feel nothing, mental static...bliss.... nirvana. I think religion is just clever marketing. All human beings have an inna