Saturday, October 23, 2010

What a long, strange trek it's been.

A little friend at the thousand year-old Thare Gompa in Khangsar, Manang Distrtict. I received a blessing from the Tibetan lama here for a safe passage over the mighty Thorung La Pass.



(please click the audio file above to listen whilst you enjoy this blog, o reader)

Tibetan refugee Tenzin Sangpo struck the last chord on his homemade tanyin, a six-stringed guitar-like instrument and it slowly faded into the thick fog settling around us.  I pressed "stop" on my tape recorder, thanked him for sharing his music, and quickly gathered up my things. I slung my pack onto my back for the last time and strode into the dense fog. My friends and trekking partners of the last three weeks had been walking ahead of me when I heard the faint strains of music leaking onto the road from an unseen courtyard. Knowing full well they would ditch me, I stopped anyhow. Thirty minutes later, I was far behind the group. We had been making our final descent through scattered villages and massive, terraced rice paddies. The goal, a rural taxi stand at the Phedi trailhead, lay hundreds of meters below by line of sight. But a cloudbank now blocked my view, and dusk was dropping quickly. 

Rice terraces.
A wide fork in the road appeared in the fog. It began to rain lightly at first as I made a quick decision and jogged down the right fork, my pack bouncing. An old man pointed me down the muddy, rutted road towards Phedi. It began to pour. Jeeps heading up the mountain for the night, loaded with families returning from the Dasain holiday, coughed past me and splashed mud belligerently in my general direction. After ten minutes running the margins of the road, I saw a wide, flagstone steps leading down into the rice fields. At first glance it appeared be one of the beautiful staircases maintained by the Annapurna Conservation Area Project that criss-cross the mountains and hills in this region. I didn’t think twice as I turned into them. I knew I had to go down; the steps looked like a reasonable way to achieve this. Running down the slick steps, I soon passed from neon green rice paddies into dark, lush forest. 5 minutes passed; the steps got a bit mossy and meandering, then narrower and narrower. 10 minutes passed; the trail became a cow track with vegetation, heavy with rain, leaning into my path. They soaked me as I stormed through, heedless of my mistake. After 15 minutes, I realized I was hopelessly lost and skidded to a halt. There was not a soul around. Just rice and barley and croaking crows to witness my bewilderment.

My friends were gone, I was lost, it was getting darker and a bit chill. I started to laugh. We had been so close to finishing the trek without any incidents whatsoever. (Unless heartburn from deep-fried Snickers banana pie counts as an incident.) Then it all fell apart at the very end in just a matter of minutes. So I laughed. 

My laughter initially frightened the young Nepalese women who emerged from the mist and dripping foliage. She was downslope from where I stood giggling in the light rain. My savior was dressed in a mist-dispelling electric pink sari. Strips of green bamboo and flowers were woven into her dark hair and a tikka of rice grains and scarlet sandalwood paste covered a circle on her forehead the size of a tea cup’s saucer. She was returning from her grandparents’ village. She had gone there for the last day of the Dasain festival to receive the tikka blessing from the eldest members of her extended family. I found this out later. 

“Where are you going, sir?”
“Phedi?” I uttered without much hope. “And not sir, Michael, thanks.”
“Oh my goodness!” She laughed, the fear slipping from her face. “You are so very much lost!”
“I know.” We both laughed.
“Follow me, Michael Jackson!” If I had a rupee for every time I was mistaken for the late King of Pop by Nepalis, I could afford to buy the Elephant Man’s skeleton back from MJ’s estate.
“Back up the hill? No way to keep going down?”
“No, mati, UP! Very much up, all the way back to road.” She tittered as I sighed and turned around.
As we walked back up a series of twisty side trails, she told me about her family and the Dasain festival. She asked about me and my family and America and my age.
“Almost 30.”
“Oh my goodness!” Covering her mouth to smother a shocked laugh.
“Thanks. You’ll be 30 someday too, you know.”
Out of the crops and back in the land of mud homes and buffalos being milked, she said goodbye to me and pointed me mati to the road.
Dhan ya baad. Thank you… but what is your name?”
“Rosina.”
“Oh, ramro Rosina. And your full name?”
“Rosina, just Rosina.” Her eyes flickering nervously past me to the glowering man who walked towards us.
Namaste, Rosina.”
Namaste, Michael." She hesitated."I’ll never forget you...” She blurted out, then ran into the house.

I fell a little bit in love right then. I didn’t think pretty young women actually said things like that; at least not to me. I brushed past her father presumably with a curt namaste exchanged. I wouldn’t forget her either. 

Back on the road, a groups of teen boys played on a huge bamboo swing erected especially for the end of Dasain. They wanted to walk with me in the right direction, but I was running again and soon left them behind. Their fire crackers split the quiet, woolen air at my heels. At the next fork in the road (damn these choices!), I shook a man awake who had passed out on the damp hillside. Barely able to lift his head and none too pleased to be roused from his stupor, he drunkenly waved me on towards Phedi. He was asleep again before my footsteps faded away. One more fork. One more affirmation of my path, this time by a pair of young lovers leaning dangerously close to each on the side of a pond.

But still darkness and rain were falling together. Although I was on the right path, I had a long way to go. A mild edginess, younger brother of panic, was coiling around heart. Surely my friends had gone to Pokhara already, leaving me to take a costly taxi ride alone. Plus, I was dead tired. Since leaving the of Jhinu hot springs, this morning, my friends and I had hiked up and down for more than nine hours, going up 1000 feet then down 3000. My feet were not particularly happy with me. 

As I set one mud-caked boot onto the main road, a motorcycle engine revved in the mist. Instinctively, my arm thumb shot up, led by a hitchhiker’s thumb. The driver fishtailed to a stop in the mud next to me. The proverbial cavalry had arrived. Fumes of rakshi, a home-distilled rice whiskey, rolled over me as he said, “It’s too muddy…for me to take a rider. And I’ve been drinking…just a little bit…with my brothers. Ok, get on.” So, on I got with my big backpack and hiking stick and dignity. We fishtailed at low speed down the road dodging jeeps and animals, forging murky puddles, and singing. Raj taught me Nepal’s unofficial national anthem, Reshan Firiri, which as far as I can tell is about a flying insect. And I, feeling quite happy to be off my feet yet still moving forward for the first time in almost three weeks, really belted out the old tune.
(click below to listen to this classic tune with some modified lyrics especially for tourists.)


Trad. bamboo swing constructed for Dasain.
The road down to Phedi was much longer than even I expected. I clung to the back of the motorcycle as we bounced down through rice terraces and little towns for over half an hour. I realized I never would have made it down before dark on my own. More of the towering bamboo swings rose out of the fields around us, swarming with people at play. One old lady motioned for me to join the fun as we rolled past. A little boy made faces out me from a window. Raj and I talked about his difficulties finding work and his hope to join his father in New York City someday. Finally we dropped below the clouds and into the valley bottom. The last bit of sun for the day slanted beneath the fog bank before it was extinguished by the mountaintops, a premature sunset.
Our familiar mud track emptied us onto the paved highway leading back to Pokhara and hot showers and warm beds and food other than the ubiquitous national dish of rice and lentil soup called dahl bhat. Pavement, what a strange thing. Too move along at such speeds without feeling the texture and flavor of the ground beneath your feet. Wondrous strange after so many days getting to know every rock and step of the Annapurna Circuit so intimately. Anyhow, on to Phedi. 

Without any real hope of seeing my buddies there, we pulled into the roadside trailhead. Dave and Brandon saluted me with the celebratory Everest beer they were sharing as the other David loaded a taxi with reeking, sodden gear. No one seemed surprised at my sudden reappearance on the back of a motorcycle, just as they had not been surprised by my disappearance up on the mountain earlier. Turned out that everyone had gotten separated in the fog and taken whatever way seemed best. Dave and Brandon found each other, the most direct path, and the proffered bamboo swing ride. David followed conflicting sets of directions down an alternate, but ultimately sound, trail arriving just minutes ahead of me by foot. And I… well, I took the road less traveled, and that has made all the difference.

Epilogue
A big steak dinner in Pokhara later that night became fertile ground for my little tale to assume the epic proportions it now boasts. Even though there is a little creative license here and there, this I tell you is true: somebody actually said “I will never forget you” to me. I can die happy now, knowing that I won’t be forgotten.

If you are interested in learning more about the people and landscape of the Annapurna Himal region or my trek, check out my annotated photo album on Facebook (click here) or stay tuned to this blog for a compilation of the sound and music recordings I made on the trail. They should be up soon.

Above Milarepa's Cave and below the glacier/ice fall at the base of Annapurna III. I was happy evidently.

















P.S. Can someone teach me how to resize my embedded audio players? Pretty please?

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

My debut podcast! "The Babas of Pashupati"

Two young boys on the street stroll arm-in-arm on a sunny Sunday morning.  They could be boys anywhere.  But they’re not.  They casually inhale glue fumes from a plastic bag that they pass back and forth as if they were sharing a Coke. A policeman on motorbike drives past. Three Germans in expensive trekking gear quietly windowshop.  No one gives them a second glace. This is Kathmandu, Nepal.

I stay with a Nepali family, just outside the main tourist ghetto, Thamel.  But it feels a world away. The streets are deep mud as this is monsoon season. Piles of rubbish, open sewers, and homicidal taxi drivers make navigation…fun. Once a stranger gave me a ride home on his motorcycle.  Turns out he lives below me. As the only foreigner in the neighborhood, most people in the area recognize me after just 3 weeks.  But as I walked home late last night, a man chatting on a corner with his friends called “Hello, Hello, wrong way, sir” as I turned into my dead-end courtyard.  “No, it’s okay. I stay here, but thanks.” Well, at least the dogs in dark alcoves don’t bark at me anymore. They recognize me.

 That’s a good thing because everything that happens here or in any of the flats on my courtyard is amplified and broadcast to all of the flats.  This means that at any time of day or night, you can hear people talking, laughing, cooking, cleaning, washing.  Bollywood music bounces around, flutes intertwining with the cries of a boy that walks the street each morning advertising his skills as a porter to anyone that can hear.  At 7:15 promptly each day a woman begins pounding spices with mortar and pestle in the flat adjoining my own.  I always wake with a start, thinking that the rhythm must be Rajesh, my friend and owner of this whole building, knocking on my door.  I add my own sounds to the courtyard racket:  American indie rock, NPR podcasts, downloaded movies.

I just finished a short course in audio storytelling taught by independent radio producer, Jack Chance from Bozeman, MT.  For my first assignment, I went to Pashupati, the holiest temple in Nepal.  Anya Vaverko, the woman that organized the workshop, and I spent the day with the homeless, dreadlocked holy men, or saddhu babas, that live there. Learning the scripting and editing process at the moment and should have that audio story posted up here in a day or two. 





So here at last is my first audio story, "The Babas of Pashupati." Enjoy and please give me feedback! I know there are some audio quality issues to work out as I get better at editing. Let me know what you think of the content, my voice-over style, the length and pacing, anything. I really want to get better at this, so I need objective opinions. Don't worry about my feelings! Lay on the criticism, as long as it's constructive.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Back on the blog.

wow, so hard to get back into this after such a long break. I think after all the positive responses to my Bhutan blogpost, I got some kind of performance anxiety. I have actually been nervous to write about my time and travels in Borneo feeling like I couldn't live up to people's expectations for my writing. THEN I remembered this is just a blog, and I am not a paid writer, and not many people really read this thing after all, and I was just getting a big head. Sooooooooo, I am back at the keyboard.

I will eventually get some more substantive posts up here about the work I have been doing with Noah Jackson and his NGO Forest Voices here in Malaysia this summer. But in the mean time, I have decided to try a new format. This one will be shirt little quips about the randomness of my life and travels in Asia this year. No big thoughts. No big ambitions. Just my disassociated ramblings. Here goes:

Today, I went running for only the second time since I have began traveling in January.  It is ususally too hot here, but rainy season has arrived early which cools things down considerably and blocks out the brutal equatorial sun. I run in this massive, hilly Chinese cemetary surrounding the apartment complex where I stay in Kuala Lumpur with my friend Mohala. The cemetary must be at least 4 or 5 square miles with a big network of access roads running through it. The Chinese build these huge elaborate enclosed graves of molded concrete and tile.  Their families come and leave offerings of water, incense, flowers. You know, the stuff you need in the afterlife.  On most of the older graves there are also black and white pictures of the inhabitant of the grave. Thes pictures are somehow made of tile and very durable, so the pictures are in quite good shape. Chinese men and women stare out at me as I run past. Some smile, some just appear sullen, others distracted. I pretend that I am running a marathon and that they are cheering me on to the finish (ok, let's be honest, it's only a half-marathon, even in my fantasies.) There are children in the pictures too. I wonder if they died as children or if their family members chose the pictures of them as children to put on the grave. If they never had a better picture than their 1st grade school photo with slicked down hair and tight collar. Twice, older people visiting graves have yelled at me. I assume that they are telling me to leave, that I am being disrespectful. But I like to think that the dead enjoy me jogging past. That it adds a little excitement to their eternity.

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Travel is the act of leaving familiarity behind. Destination is merely a byproduct of the journey. - Eric Hansen

So I just haven't been feeling super inspired to write anything since Bhutan, kind of a travel hangover or something. Or maybe the tropical heat and humidity of the rainy season in SE Asia  have made me lazier than I already am as a blogger. So this will just be a shorty, mainly sharing some interesting ideas I have gleaned from reading I am doing in preparation for my summer volunteer position in Malaysia.


I am in Kuala Lumpur, Malayasia now, as you can see from the pic featuring me looking heroic beneath the famous Petronas Towers. I'm  preparing to do some work in the forests of Malaysian Borneo for the next month or so. I will be working with a fellow U of Montana grad, Noah Jackson, and his NGO, Forest Voices, to document local ecological knowledge of the Penan tribe. Please check out Noah's website to get an idea of the great stuff he is working on, plus there are a ton of gorgeous photos from the area I will be working in.   http://hopeinlight.com/    The Penan are formerly nomadic hunter-gatherers that live deep in the rain forest. In prior times they were infamous as head-hunters and deadly accurate blowpipe marksmen. Now, they are just another group of indigenous people getting a raw deal from their national government that values logging and oil palm plantations over their traditional rights to forest lands. An all-too-common tale across the developing world. Noah and I will be using mixed methods of interviews, short video clips, audio files, still photographs and more to allow them to tell their personal stories about life in the forest in their own words. So in a month's time I should have much fodder for the blog.

Until then here are some passages I wanted to share from Eric Hansen's wonderful1983 travelogue, Stranger in the Forest, chronicling his epic 9 month trek on foot through the forests of Borneo and the time he spent with the indigenous forest communities there.

After months of continuous jungle trekking, ridden with leeches and  injuries and mishaps, Hansen starts to lose focus on why he is doing this to himself and begins to wish he was elsewhere. A feeling familiar to most long-term travelers. I think they also call it "homesickness." The antidote usually involves a hot shower, some Western food, and a good night's sleep.
"My anxiety about wanting to get "somewhere else" was partially due to the fact that I knew too many "other places" in the world. Fo Bo 'Hok and Weng (the author's Penan forest guides) there was no "other place"  apart from the jungle, and I grew to envy their sense of place, their contentment with where they were. When I became anxious , I would embark upon extraordinary journeys in my mind. When, for example, a steep, muddy trail became impossible because of the leeches, I might imagine myself on a pair of cross-country skis, gliding across expanses of unmarked snow, a picnic lunch and a bottle of wine in my pack. This sight of bee-larvae soup could send me around the world to the Empress Hotel in Victoria, British Columbia, for afternoon tea and scones with freshly whipped cream and thick strawberry jam. Outside, a light snow would be falling on the passing traffic."  
  
This passage really resonated with me as I have often caught myself completely absent from the present moment at times during my travels. In my head, I am back in Montana, floating the Blackfoot River with a cold can of Kettlehouse beer in my hand as rainbow trout break the surface all around me slurping hatching insects of the glassy surface of the water. And then I realize the little Thai lady that is serving me pad thai, sigh, again, (never dreamed I would or could get sick of the stuff!) has been trying to hand me the plate for a minute or more. The other effect is that everywhere I go is constantly being sized up, compared to, and judged against other places that have formed and informed me throughout my short but rarely sedentary life. To my chagrin I have frequently found myself making snap judgments about a new place. A gorgeous beach in Cambodia in its own right gets reduced by my overactive mind to merely "not as pretty as Hawaii." Unfair, I know, but sometimes my brain is just too quick for me!

 "Travel is the act of leaving familiarity behind. Destination is merely a byproduct of the journey."
- For someone who intentionally arrived in Asia with no plan or budget or timeline or return ticket, I can say, definitely, yes, destination is nothing but a byproduct!

Hansen goes on to quote a Victorian-era, British traveler,  Isabelle Eberhardt, from her book The Oblivion Seekers. This is a long passage but worth reading all the way through. I don't necessarily agree with all of her sentiments, but it is good food for thought.

"To have a home, a family, a property or a public function, to have a definite means of livelihood and to be a useful cog in the social machine, all these things seem necessary, even indispensable, to the vast majority of men, even intellectuals, and including even those who consider themselves as wholly liberated. And yet such things are only a different form of slavery that comes of contact with others, especially regulated and continued contact.
I have always listened with admiration, if not envy, to the declarations of citizens who tell me how they have lived for twenty or thirty years in the same section of town, or even the same house, and who have never been out of their native city.
Not to feel the torturing need to know and see for oneself what is there, beyond the mysterious blue wall of the horizon, not to find the the arrangements of life monotonous and depressing, to look at the white road leading off into the unknown distance without feeling the imperious necessity of giving in to it and following it obediently across mountains and valleys! The cowardly belief that a man must stay in one place is too reminiscent of the unquestioning resignation of animals, beasts of burden stupefied by servitude yet always willing to accept the slipping on of the harness.
There are limits to every domain, and laws to govern every organized power. But the vagrant owns the whole vast earth that ends only at the nonexistent horizon, and his empire is an intangible one, for his domination and enjoyment of it are things of the spirit."    hmmmm....

Until next time, 
Michael

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Bhutan: The Land of the Thunder Dragon

My excitement soars along with the plane as we ascend from Dhaka, Bangladesh on the final leg of my trip from Bangkok to Bhutan. After an in-flight meal of pad thai and tropical fruits, the pilot comes over the intercom and directs our attention to a pure white pyramid breaking through the cloud layer to the left of the plane. My wide eyes have already been glued to it for several minutes. I feel strange, excited yes, but also calm and quiet seeing this peak for the first time in my life. Japanese tourists crawl over one another to to get a glimpse of Qomolangma (Tibetan), the highest and most sacred mountain on earth. For once I'm not the obnoxious tourist. Soon, Sagarmatha (Nepali) is obscured by a sea of clouds as we begin our descent into Paro, the only airport in the whole country. (Bhutan, btw, is 1/8 the size of the state of Montana and has a popn. of only 700,000 people compared to Montana's 900,000 souls.) Suddenly, the plane breaks through the floor of the clouds, and we are deep in the belly of a massive canyon. Our wings practically brush the blue pines clinging to the steep mountain slopes within a few hundred feet of my seat. As the jet swings left, right, and precipitously down to follow kinks in the canyon, I laugh out loud with childish delight. The women next to me, clinging with white knuckles to the armrest, gives me a dirty look. Terraced fields of rice and chilies clustered around boxy, white farmhouses slip quickly beneath us before giving way to the tightly packed stores and homes of Paro. Then suddenly we are on the ground without a jounce in one of the smoothest landings I have ever (not) felt. I have arrived in Bhutan.[ P.S. I am later told that the take-off and landing in Paro are considered among the most technical and dangerous for a commercial jetliner on earth. Check that off my bucket list.]

I am in here the tiny Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan to attend a wildlife biology conference and hands-on workshop in the holy town of Bumthang, home to the most temples per square kilometer in Bhutan, as well as the Ugyen Wangchuck Institute of Conservation and Environment. I have been invited as a guest of the government by a classmate of mine from grad school at U Montana, Tschering Tempa, who has organized the conference. Although the plane ticket is outrageously expensive for an intra-Asia flight Bangkok, once I am in country all expenses are covered by the conference. There is no other way I could afford to come otherwise because Bhutan is a semi-closed country. Tourists must arrange visas through travel agencies and pay at least $250 per day for the privilege of traveling here. This policy was set in place by the last king, a beloved father figure named Sigme Jigme Wangchuck, to promote low-density tourism that would not overtly impact the deep Buddhist culture. Thanks to this and other policies, such as measuring the country's progress through Gross National Happiness rather than GN Product, Bhutan is a place relatively untouched by western influences. 80% of the people are still rural subsistence farmers, and the country is 72% forested. These numbers didn't really become real to me until our 12 hours bus ride from the capital Thimphu out to Bumthang over some of the curviest roads I've ever seen. We would go for long stretches between tiny villages and hamlets , and the dense blue pine forests just seemed to roll on forever.

Goodness, how do I describe this place? Well, for starters it looks a lot like the northern Rockies or the central Alps (think Switzerland with yaks and Buddha statues everywhere) with steep mountains hemming fertile valleys that grow potatoes, rice, buckwheat and all manner of veggies. Crystalline streams, blue and milky green from glacier dust, tumble over huge granite boulders through slot canyons. Not surprisingly, Bhutan's economy rests on tourism and hydropower-generated electricity exported to India.

What else? Everything, everywhere from cargo trucks to temples to bank is hand painted with intricate Buddhist motifs of animals and symbols and frequently, huge, graphic phalluses (aka penises) that are meant to ward away evil spirits. Despite being devoutly Tibetan Buddhist, Bhutan is a very sexually open place, with both men and women being allowed to take multiple sexual partners in a discreet process known as "night-hunting." Sex ed is taught in schools and condoms are distributed freely and widely. Perhaps that's why everyone is so happy here. Oh yeah, and marijuana grows wild here all over the place, my first sighting being right outside the airport. That might help too.

Archery is the national sport, with men competing every weekend or any free moment, it seems. It involves more singing and dancing to psych out your opponent and celebrate good shots than actual firing of arrows. Extremely fun to watch with all participants wearing traditional clothes and really whooping it up. Um, what else? The whole country is supposed to be vegetarian, but like every other Buddhist country I have visited, they are emphatically not. The one twist here is that Bhutanese abhor killing…so they get Indian immigrants to slaughter the pigs, chickens, and cows for them. Ah, spirit of the law, that's my kind of religion!

The people of Bhutan, despite being generally calm and tranquil at nearly all times, often burst out into song and dance at the drop if a hat. They love to dance in big Greek-wedding style circles, especially around fires. The Institute had a great farewell bonfire for us, and I picked up a few steps. The majority of the singing I experienced came from Tempa and the drivers of the buses and trucks that carried us everywhere in Bhutan. Sonam and Tempa would serenade us with both traditional and original songs they composed, most having to do with lengthy but eloquent metaphors about love and sex. One day, on a hike to a tiny hilltop village in the remote Tang Valley, we came upon a group of women using huge wooden posts to pack clay into the rammed earth walls of a traditional Bhutanese farm house they were constructing. As the women did this back-breaking work all day without a man in sight, they sang a song punctuated by the deep bass thuds of their vigorous dirt-packing. The song explained that although men might seem to be in the ones in control in Bhutan, it's really the women that get it all done and make the real decisions. Based on the sinewy biceps these ladies were sporting, I was prone to agree with them.

Temples, monasteries, and chortens (memorial monuments, some simple, some grand) thickly dot the landscape. You are never far from the sounds of chanting, prayer flags flapping, bells ringing, and prayer wheels spinning. The Bhutanese are so keen on getting their prayers heard that they have built water-driven prayer wheels that sit in little huts over streams that keep the wheels spinning out prayers all day and night. And of course, each flap of a prayer flag in the breeze is another prayer or wish shot out into the cosmos. Local deities inhabit every nook and cranny in Bhutan, from homes to trees. They must be appeased with gifts or special chants from paid monk squads or scared away by giant phalluses. The fusion of religion and politics, church and state, is so complete that from regional administrators all the way up to the Parliament and the King, government officers share space with to monks and lamas in huge , fortress-like "dzongs" that house them both. Dzongs are often perched in strategic spots on cliffs and riversides because they originally served as forts against the invading Tibetans, and later British. Due to their impressive design and features such as internal water tanks, Bhutan is one of only a few Asian countries to never succumb to invasion or colonization. Because of this Bhutanese are very nationalistic and proud of their unique place in the world. But at the same time, kids are taught impeccable English in school starting at a young age, and many are given the chance to study at foreign universities the world over. However, unlike international scholars of other nationalities, the Bhutanese abroad nearly always return home to Bhutan to contribute the development of their land. The Bhutanese are keen on developing their homeland and raising the standard of living, but not at the cost of tradition and family. Doesn't sound like a terrible place, huh?

Perhaps one of my favorite days in Bhutan was my last there. Those few of us left after the conference went on a trip to one of Bhutan's most famous landmarks, the Tiger's Nest, a very sacred monastery perched precariously halfway up a massive cliff. Next to the monastery is a huge ravine with a waterfall tumbling down its face. Prayer flags are strung across the entire gorge and up and down the cliffs above and below the temple. The temple was supposedly created in the exact location where Guru Rinpoche, the lama that brought Buddhism over the mountains from Tibet, landed after flying across the Himalayan Mountains on his magic tiger steed. The temple is so delicately perched on the cliff that some Bhutanese believe that it is held in place by the hair of angels. The hike up to the Tiger's Nest started hot and dry at the bottom as we passed through cow pastures. Soon we entered a forest glen where three huge prayer wheels turn together over the tumbling stream. Women call plaintively to you, "Shopping…?" as they try to interest you in fake turquoise trinkets. We hike up and up through pine trees into dry oak forest festooned with Spanish moss. Several horses that ferry supplies up the mountain everyday come trotting down the trail unattended, seemingly happy to have their burdens lightened; we give them the right of way. The trail is so old that in some places it has become worn 6 feet deep into the earth by thousands of pilgrims making this trek over the years. Piles of rocks, prayer flags, and prayer wheels make frequent appearances along the trail. We stop at one spot where one is meant to see a handprint in solid rock left by Guru Rinpoche; however, the sacred relic doesn't reveal itself to our foreign eyes. We finally make it to the overlook, "the postcard spot," our first closeup look at the Tiger's Nest. It is magnificent. Nearby I light a yak butter lamp for 5 rupees and say a prayer for my grandmother back in Delaware. We then climb all the way down to the base of the waterfall on a series of vertigo-inducing rock steps carved into the Cliffside before climbing back up the other side to the gates of the monastery. One of our drivers Sonam tells us in his broken English that the sheer drops were making his heart feel "itchy." We all knew what he meant! (Sonam also describes the crazy, hairpin roads of Bhutan as "curly" and himself as the "undrinkable driver" for his refusal of all alcohol.)

Inside the monastery, I see that one temple is actually six temples stacked on top of one another and carved into the rock. In the first one, I get a lama to bless some prayer flags with holy water from one of the many sacred springs trickling from the rocks beneath the Tiger's Nest. On my way out I hang them along with thousands of other flag strands to spin prayers off into the canyon breeze until winter storms wear the cotton threads down and ultimately pull it out into the void. In other temples, monks play huge bronze horns, bang drums, and chant atonal mantras. One temple houses giant, intricately painted and gilded statues depicting the many incarnations of Guru Rinpoche, both benevolent and wrathful, as well as Buddhas of past, present, and future. In the final temple we enter, pushed back into a cave within the cliff, I leave an offering along with hundreds of others on the tiers of a crumbling chorten, and make a wish. I almost went the most obvious route and wished to return to Bhutan someday, but I stopped myself and offered a different prayer. I wished to have no more wishes.

I could go on and on, but perhaps the best things I can do is tell you to check out my pictures of the place that I will post on Facebook soon hopefully, fast internet connection willing.


 

Culinary Delights

Doma – A special combination of betel leaves betel nut and limestone powder. An addictive stimulant chewed all day long by most men and many old women. According to traditional belief, the leaf represents human skin, the nut a shrunken skull, and the lime the gray matter of the brain. When chewed together, a chemical reaction turns one's saliva bright red, representing blood.

Chongmo –rock-hard pieces of dried yak cheese sold on a string; off-white, mild taste, and smelling of smoke; it took me an hour to chew through my first piece; aka Bhutanese bubblegum;

Ema-datsi – a spicy staple present at every meal, and the national dish. Basically whole chili peppers cooked in yak cheese. Unlike most culinary traditions that use chilies as a spice or condiment, Bhutanese cooking treats the chili as a vegetable to be consumed in heaping piles. My capsaicin-addicted tastebuds and I are pleased; my digestive tract is not.

Buckwheat noodles and pancakes – common wheat is also grown here but native buckwheat is prized for its taste and high nutritional content

Red rice – another staple of the Bhutan diet, tastes like white rice, but looks much more awesome on your plate.

Favored veggies - often served in yak cheese like ema datsi – carrots, green beans, asparagus, fiddleheads (young fern buds)

Pork Bacon – thick strips of gelatinous fat, not fried crispy as we do it, but left practically raw

Dahl – a thick Indian-style lentil soup with mild curry spice, served with nearly every meal

Excellent raw honey and wild strawberry jam available from local producers all over Bumthang province.

Cow's milk yoghurt from local dairies; tangy and sour and full of probiotic goodness.

Oh wait, almost forgot the delicacy served to us at a special dinner given by the provincial governor: Pickled cow hide aka leather! Chewy and spicy, not as bad I had imagined it would. Unfortunately, when I ate this I was already coming down with a stomach virus. Apparently, pickled leather was the straw that broke the camel's stomach, and it was soon deposited in the bushes outside the dining room at the beginning of a 12-hour stint of food poisoning-esque sickness. Yum.

Monday, April 19, 2010

The Motorbike Chronicles ( I couldn't help myself...)

Wow, I can't believe that I have let a month go by without blogging.  No excuses, but I did get pretty far off the beaten path since then. I even vetnured into lands entirely devoid of internet, perish the thought. Additionally, I find that the longer I travel the less time I want to spend in internet cafes. That maybe because here in Vietnam the cafes are packed full of screaming boys playing online videogames and cranking bad Asian pop music at high volumes. Or it just may be that I have gotten more comfortable as a solo traveler and don't feel the need to seek solace in my community of electronic friends. Oh yeah, I also found out that more people read this thing than I realized, and it freaked me out a little. Any or all of the above will suffice for a decent excuse, I hope.

So on to the meat of this blog, concerning the title.  After leaving the Imperial City Hue, I traveled down to China Beach with some friends (location of the infamous surfing scene in Apocalypse Now), then on to Hoi An, a beautiful ancient city in a river delta by the South China Sea with a mixture of old Japanese wooden buildings and newer French colonial architecture. There I linked up with my friend Amy Morison, an Aussie expat. I stayed with Amy for 2 weeks, a much needed break from constant packing and unpacking of bags.  While in Hoi An, enjoying the nearby beach and best food in Vietnam, I decided that I really wanted to get off the well-trod backpacker path and see something different. Soooooooo, I bought a beat-up old Honda motorbike for less than 300 bucks, got used to driving it around town (mostly to the beach and back every day), then hit the road.  Or the trail.  To be exact, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which was the route used by the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong to smuggle supples to the South.  The trail runs through the mountains and highlands along the border with Laos, and it was under constant bombardment by the US during the war, although it was never shut down in that time. Today, it is a reasonably well-paved, 2-lane highway that passes through hilltribe villages, mountain passes. primary rainforest, coffee abd tea plantations, rice paddies, big cities, national parks, past waterfalls and bamboo long house on stilts, and much more. I passed elephants and oxcarts, funerals and weddings, saw one deadly accident and many many minor ones, all all on my own, just me and the motorbike named Speed.

For my first long distance 2-wheeled excursion, I have to say that it was amazing. In the first 5 days, I traveled about 1000 kilmeters (~600 miles) stopping in the towns of Dok Glei, Pleiku, Ban Ma Thuot, and the tiny M'nong village of Ban Don on the Laos border.  My only problems came when I had a breakdown during a torrential downpour on my first day out ( I was able to limp into town and get the chainguard fixed for roughly 25 cents) and a flat tire on the second day, which went flat just as I got to a major town. So for an older, high mileage motorbike, I feel very lucky.  After 5 days on the road, I made it to Dalat, capital of the Central Highlands region. It is a gorgeous small city nestled in pine trees (the smell of which made me homesick for Montana) with a big lake in the middle of town and the best, eternally spring-like weather in all of Vietnam.  From Dalat I made excursions into the surrounding countyside discovering tiny villages where people just about popped the eyes out of their heads from staring at me, Cao Dai temples, and even took my bike (nicknamed Speed) offroad on some really fun singletrack adventures going where I thought no scooter could go. One day I met some American girls in town and led them on a trip to a high pass from which you could see 50 miles to the sea. It was great to do some riding without all my heavy gear bungees to the back seat.

Finally leaving Dalat just 4 days ago, I rode down from the Highlands to the coastal plain. My last big mountain day on the bike started with a thunderstorm as I left Dalat. Luckily, there are cafes everywhere along the roads here and I just popped in for a cup of java to wait it out. And when there aren't cafes there are little rest stops that serve coconuts, sugarcane juice, and cold drinks and provide hammocks for lounging under shade tarps.  This ride down to the coast on Route 28 was one of the best I had in the 'Nam, with a rolllercoast-like series of hairpins down into jungle valleys. I was sad to say goodbye to the mountains and pine trees, but the beach was calling.  I rode into Mui Ne, a coastal town known for windsurfing, sand dunes,  and brewing fish sauce. The whole town reeks of the sauce which is made by layering sardines with brine in big clay pots and letting it ferment in the sun for up to a year. The Viet use it in place of soy sauce or salt. Yum. The beach was really nice though, and I rode with some Canadian girls and a Brit out to the huge  pure white sand dunes next to a lake filled with pink lotus blossoms (at some point I am going to figure out how to upload pictures to this blog and save myself a lot of typing.). At the dunes you could rent plastic sleds from kids for 50 cents and going sledding down the dunes. Good fun, but ridiculously sandy and hot!

Yesterday, I did my last big ride on Speed most likely. I left Mui Ne and rode along the coast with great views of the ocean almost the whole way. I stopped at the amazing Kage lighthouse surrounding by twisted red and yellow sandstone formations and passed salt fields, mud springs, and dragonfruit orchards.  Last night I finally stopped in Long Hai, a beach town frequented by Saigon weekend warriors. I hit the beach for a hour before sunset and what a scene it was! Huge families having picnic dinners, teens racing tricked-out motorbikes on the sand, kids playing soccer, women bathing fully clothed (they hate the sun here, or at least getting tan), ice cream vendors cranking dance music from their carts, and local ladies selling bbq-ed octopus.  A relaxing last night before the big hot crazy city.

So today I make a short ride into Saigon where I will sell Speed in the next few days and become another backpacker on the bus, just like everyone else. Sigh. But it was an amazing journey over the last few weeks, and I am certain it is not my last big motorcycle trek, but just the first. All in all, not a bad inititation to the two-wheeled brotherhood. All told, I will have done about 900 miles on a bike that is only 110 cc and tops out at 50 miles per hour.  I have been run off the rode by trucks and buses and braved the ridiculous no-hold-barred traffic of Vietnam and navigated in a country with little to few road signs without getting lost once.  I got so far off the beaten track I didn't speak English for days ( a rarity in Asia nowadays) and got a workout from performing charades so much in order to communicate. I have walked into places where everyone stopped eating at the sight of me and women felt compelled to show me how to use chopsticks and roll springrolls I appeared so helpless.  Not bad for a kid from Delaware, I think.

Coming soon: Reflections on a year of traveling. Yesterday marked my 1-year anniversary of leaving Montana and beginning my travels around the US and Asia.

Addendum to the last blog about wierd food:

Cat - a corner beer joint, Hoi An. Minced meat formed into little squares with rice flour. Grilled in banana leaves. Gross.
Frog- Better than chicken. Delicious in fact!
Fish pate sandwich - I got this from a little old lady at the night market in Dalat. I triewd everything she had to offer from night to night. It was all amazing, but she spoke no English, and I very little Vietnamese. So besides this one, I had no idea what I tried.
BBQ-ed octopus head - Long Hai beach.  Marinated, stuffed with cilantro, line, and scallions. Grilled. The best seafood I have had in a long time.

Monday, March 22, 2010

Strange foods that I have eaten.

 

Well,  my ambitions to keep a true log of all the delicious and amazing foods that I have sampled in SE Asia have come to naught. So, to at least throw all you interested foodies out there the proverbial bone, I will now share, not all the great food, but instead the much shorter list of really strange foods I have tried in my travels thus far.  Try not to judge me too harshly...

Thailand
Deep-fried Giant Water Bugs with chili sauce - the Chiang Mai night market. Crunchy and delicious! Each one was about 4 inches long by 2 inches wide.

Laos
Grilled river weed - Nam Tha National Park, from the Nam Ha River.  Basically green algae but smoky, chewy and quite tasty.
Chicken feet grilled on a skewer. Local festival in Huay Xai.  Chewy, tough, and nasty. Full of bones and cartilage. Never again.

Vietnam 

BBQ water buffalo balls on a skewer with mint. Excellent!
Pig intestine soup. Actually sweet and soft, despite intestine usually being really tough other times I've had it.
Chicken liver soup. Meh.
Green unripe mango with spicy salt and pepper. Sour and hot and sweet. Yum.
Fetal duck egg. A truly beloved culinary treat here in VN and China. Basically a duck egg that is ideally about 5 days away from hatching. Served boiled in the egg (you crack it out like a hard-boiled egg) with pickled ginger and coarse salt and pepper. Mine was actually not so bad as long as I didn't look at it. However, my friend loves these things, eating about 2 per day, and got 1 that  was a little too  "ripe" and he had to spit out a tiny beak and feathers. Ugh. Won't be taking any more chances on these little guys.

And.....drum roll please...the moment that you have all been dreading....
DOG. Yes, I went for it here in the city of Hue one night while I was couchsurfing with two Vietnamese university students. Cooked in and eaten in a greasy spicy sauce over a charcoal brazier that is set directly on the table. In big unidentifiable chunks with baguette to dip in the sauce, rice noodles on side, plus basil, mint and other greens to chew along with it.  Really greasy, tough and full of gristle. Pretty disgusting but a worthwhile experience I suppose. This dish is eaten mainly by drunk men late at night, kinda the equivalent of post-drinking Pita Pit or pizza in the U.S. I was complimented by my Viet friends for being the only westerner they met that was willing to try it.  I was doing okay until I got to the ribs, the tiny little ribs. A single tear rolled down my cheek as I thought of my first dog. (Not really...?) I was also offered "little tiger" (aka house cat) which I politely declined. Gotta save something for Cambodia!

So for some quick redemption of Vietnam in order to leave you with a pleasant taste in your mouth, here are the good things about the food here (mostly relics of French colonialism). The following are almost entirely absent from Thailand, if not prohibitively expensive.
Ca Phe Sura Nong - Dark,  strong coffee made by a single-cup slow-drip method referred to as "lazy coffee" b/c it takes so long to drip. Served with a layer of sweetened, condensed milk on the bottom. Often iced.
Baguettes!
Cheese! - extremely rare in Asia.
Wine!
Chocolate!
 
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