Non-Essential Travel

I want to start off this piece with a thank you. I really appreciate you reading what I post up here, especially considering it is happening with less and less frequency. I am privileged to know you. Unless, of course, this is the first time you’ve ever visited the site and the timing is just a coincidence. In that case… welcome!

Since my lazy lack of adventures over Christmas and New Years on Om Beach, I’ve covered a lot of ground on Tara. I’ve been to some undeniably authentic Indian cities, such as the one-time royal capital Mysore and Calicut. I’ve seen thousand year old temples built during the Cholan empire, which spread Hinduism far beyond India. It is to these kings we, as global backpackers, owe a massive debt, as without them the wonders of Angkor Wat and the idiosyncratic culture of Bali wouldn’t exist. I’ve been to a zoo where I watched a Bengal tiger and two lions try to out roar each other. I watched ten men haul a huge, levered fishing net out of the sea for a piddling handful of tiny fish.

While the bounty of the deep is in question, it did serve up an obvious highlight. I visited the very south tip of the subcontinent, Kanyakumari (Cape Comorin). There I watched the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean meet and mingle, getting to know each other (a little too) well. I wasn’t alone, either. I just happened to find myself there during a state-wide winter festival of Hindu pilgrimages. And the Tamil new year. Oh, and there was an eclipse. On the morning of January 15^th, I joined some many thousands of Indian tourists, pilgrims, and families, as well as a handful of overwhelmed foreigners, to watch the sunrise. That afternoon the sun was reduced to a shimmering ring around the dark silhouette of the moon. At this very auspicious (love that word) moment, I plunged into three seas at the same time, and floated in the eery half-light of a solar eclipse.

Otherwise, the South has been a disappointment. Making comparisons is often difficult when traveling, as places are good for different reasons. But there is little doubt in my mind, now, when I consider the great dichotomy in traveling India: North or South​​? For me, North India represents the heart of the country in all its stimulation and frustration. South India, alas, is too touristy, too easy, and too expensive.

I should, out of fairness, give the South its due. I have come through it during the peak tourist season, when prices inflate dramatically and short term tourists abound. This has limited the sense of adventure. As well, I’ve stuck to a fairly tried and true tourist regiment, stopping in the major centres and seeing the major sights. Distances are shorter down here, compacted by the geographical slimming of the continent, and so I spend less time driving on Tara through village and field, and more time in cities.

There are some interesting draws, without a doubt. A Keralan local claimed that his state is a third Hindu, a third Muslim, and a third Christian. I saw far more mosques and churches than temples in Kerala, so I haven’t felt to need to verify this independently. Most of the churches are either Portuguese or, interestingly, Syrian. A throwback to the good old days of Christian Syrian merchants, sailing the seas and, obviously, pounding the Bible around. I tried to withdraw some rupees from the Catholic Syrian Bank, but the ATM was out of order. Damn.

I went out for dinner with a local man and a group of his friends in Trivandrum, Kerala’s state capital. The man, who I’d met on the beach over New Year, was Hindu, but his friends were a mix of Muslim and Christian. I described how Canada is big enough to fit three Indias within it, yet has a population approximately equivalent to Bombay. We discussed a little of my latent Christianity as we ate fish, beef, and chicken while drinking several beers. I think all of our Gods disapproved. The beef was delicious, if holy. Tandoori seafood, not to rub it in, is divine.

Yes the food down here is an obvious one, but warrants a mention. In Mangalore (not to be confused with Bangalore), I had chicken roasted in ghee, a clarified butter. It was incredibly rich and tender, melting in my mouth and exploding with fatty flavour. Southern thalis (set meals) come on a slab of banana leaf, with a pile of rice and several small dollops of various veg curries and soupy dhals. You basically mix it all around with your hands like a chunky finger painting, then scoop up misshapen orbs of rice and curry and stuff them into your mouth. The flavours blend beautifully, and the tactile sensation of the hot rice and mushy curry adds to the enjoyment. I’ve been eating with my hands for the last few months, and am starting to worry about how you’ll treat me when I return home and start packing my mashed potatoes and gravy into little balls with my fingers. Don’t judge.

Despite the culinary treats, my tour through the South is about to end. I’m currently in Pondicherry, the erstwhile French colony that still maintains just enough of a whiff of its Gallic roots to deserve a few days – despite the extraordinarily overpriced food. From here I’ll head to the pentasyllabic Mamallapuram, and then to Chennai to catch the boat out to the Andaman Islands. I’ll live on a beach, dive, snorkel, hammock, read, etc for a few weeks before heading up to Delhi to meet my parents, who arrive at the end of February. Until next time…

Just added a gallery of photos from my first five months. They’re portraits from India and Nepal. Click on the Photos tab up top.

Enjoy!

In the lull between Christmas and the New Year most travelers seem to be moving. One spot for the holiday, one for the party. Lots of people are heading north to Goa, where the beaches are busier and pricier yet maintain more nightlife. Here in Gokarna, the only parties are groups of revelers around beach fires sipping on rum and pulling on hash joints.

It’s a good time, to say the least, but for many it’s simply too relaxed. They want throbbing bass lines and laser light shows and world class DJ’s. Not I.

I’ll stay here, sleeping in the same bamboo and palm leaf beach hut, enjoying tandoori calamari at the same couple of restaurants, reading on the same patch of sand, floating in the same bit of Arabian Sea. It’s repetitive, sure. But stressful it is not.

I’ll take this opportunity (I hope) to impart on this site some observations and musings I’ve been developing during my time on the road. You may have noticed that the vast majority of my blog posts are focused on where I am and things I’m seeing. On mishaps with Tara or adventures with locals. What  I haven’t done is sum up India in and of itself, regardless of my interactions with it. A brief introduction follows, but I hope you’ll see a few more posts up here before the end of the decade.

It isn’t immediately obvious when you first arrive, but India is a startlingly multicultural country. For many of us it’s difficult to distinguish even between people of different South Asian nationalities, let alone within the countries themselves. Yet only half of the population of Nepal is actually Nepali by ethnicity, even if they’re all (mostly) citizens. In India, with the population exceeding a billion and a civilization as old as civilization itself, the differences can be startling.

In the mountainous north, every valley has its own traditional clothing, festivals and delicacies. Even many of the facial features and body types differ between the various regions. Many Himalaya residents resemble Tibetans more than Indians, with Buddhism dominating. Just to the west is Islamic Kashmir, where locals have sharper features and are just as likely to have red hair as black, and green eyes as brown. I’ve been asked several times if I was Kashmiri.

In the south of the country skin tones are darker and facial features more rounded than in the north. There is considerable overlap, obviously, as millennia of migration and regional warfare mix bloodlines. But I’ve learned to recognize a South Indian from a North Indian. Noting differences in regional languages helps make the distinction, but it isn’t an easy process.

In India, there are 18 official languages and over 250 recognized dialects. Despite being the official language of the federal government and of most entertainment (Bollywood included), Hindi is only spoken as a first language by 20 percent of the population. As a result many locals are multilingual, speaking passable Hindi and English in addition to their mother tongues.

The other major regional wild card is the food. Ah, the food. In all its glory, Indian food must rank amongst the great cuisines of the world. It is most easily split along geographical lines, with the Northern styles most common back home. Punjabi dishes such as malai kofta, chicken tikka masala and palak (saag) paneer dominate restaurants all across the north and central regions of the country. In the South, one finds spicier dishes such as vindaloos and also crepe-like dosas, stuffed with potato curry and served with a coconut chutney.

But the real key to local Indian food are the smaller distinctions – the local delicacies. Unlike the vegetarian dominated Indian food, Kashmiri food involves lots of meat – especially goat and chicken. Lamb rogan josh is a personal favourite. In Calcutta, street stalls sell egg rolls – the closest thing to a breakfast burrito you’ll find. Even smaller towns and cities will boast a particular sweet or dish as locally famous. Samosas are ubiquitous yet in certain places they come with chick pea curry and curd (yogurt) and in others potato curry and green chilli sauce.

Even something as simple as a cup of chai carries with it different flavours and serving styles. In the northeast cities, such as Varanasi, the tea comes in a small clay cup which is amusingly smashed on the ground when emptied. Apparently this used to be more common, as the idea of reusing a glass touched by a member of a lower caste was unimaginable. I can’t help but wonder if economics, rather than a relaxing of caste-based discrimination, had an effect on this policy changing over much of the country. At three rupees (seven cents) a cup, it must be hard to justify giving a wholly new vessel to each customer. Far in the north of India, at an altitude of 4000m, I had the best cup of chai yet. Up there, with access difficult to important spices, the locals grow their own on the mountainsides, often using wild ingredients. It was a spicy tea, almost too much so. Amazing.

I’ve only been here for five months, but already I feel better equipped to recognize the profound diversity that exists in the subcontinent. I try to stop at sweet shops in every town I’m in and ask for whatever they make locally. I walk into local restaurants and suss out what most of the people are eating, then order ‘one plate,’ pointing at someone’s meal. Sometimes, depending on the English abilities of the staff and clientele, I have absolutely no idea what I’m eating.

When I come home (eventually), I’ll spend some time searching out regional Indian restaurants. I’m just a little worried the chai will be a let down.

It’s Christmas Eve and I’m on a beach in India. I sort of expect a little homesickness or loneliness to sneak through this time of year.

But I sit here, eating a breakfast of fruit and yogurt muesli and listening to the surf crash into the golden sand, and I feel fine. I miss you, no doubt, and wish you could be here with me, but other than that I don’t really feel the need to come home. I have to give a good chunk of credit to the weather, which is so perfect here it’s embarrassing. I’m fully aware of the atmospheric happenings back home in Toronto and I have absolutely no desire to switch this for that.

Here my most stressful moments involve dodging cow shit on the beach. Yes, even on the beach there are cows everywhere. They plod slowly through the sand browsing for carelessly unguarded morsels. I watched one devour the thorny leaves lopped from the top of a pineapple. A grumpy bull with imposing horns ate a plastic juggling ball that some hippies had left lying about. He chewed on it for about five minutes but eventually got it down. Much consternation amongst the hippies.

Other than cow watching, there isn’t much for us to do here. Maybe I’ll play cricket with some domestic tourists and English backpackers (I’m a terrible bowler, but am making improvements in my batting). Perhaps lie on my back in the Arabian Sea and watch the sea eagles wheel above the palm fringed jungle that lines the beach. Their wings are two shades of chocolate, their heads and chests the colour of fresh cream. They soar effortlessly in the coastal breezes and thermal updrafts, making a mockery of even our best attempts to be free.

‘Us’ is a motley crew of internationals, ever evolving as some split off and others are assimilated. The family, as we call it, has its roots in Varanasi, where 11 people from 10 countries played soccer in the sand on the banks of the holy Ganges. Across the river from us smoke rose from a dozen funeral pyres, the families watching quietly as their loved ones returned to the goddess of the river. Since then the core of the group moved to Arambol beach in Goa, where more members were initiated with a game of soccer near the waves. This ended in disaster, naturally, as Andy from London broke his toe trying to separate a Russian tourist from the ball. Indeed Russian and European holidaymakers (two-weekers, or T-dubs, as we call them) have taken over Goa, it seems, so we’ve moved south to quieter beaches in the next state Karnataka.

Which is where I currently find myself. On the only-in-India named Om Beach, near the holy town of Gokarna, where beards and dreadlocks are ubiquitous. The family now consists of Andy, Andrew from Melbourne, Grace from Wellington (NZ), and the upcoming arrivals of Nils from Sweden and his Israeli friend Martin. We’ve also met a pair of Argentinians and a trio from South England (the cricketers) who were interested in our plans for Christmas Dinner and Secret Santa. This last idea should be especially hilarious, as there is no shopping on this beach (a world away from Goa) other than the occasional jewelry or fresh fruit vendor who stalks the sand harassing sunbathers. I get the impression everyone is going to be getting a bracelet and a half dozen bananas this year. Maybe a papaya.

I’m considering bottling some sea water. Swimming at night here is a trip in and of itself, regardless of what you’ve been rolling in your cigarettes. It’s hard to describe phosphorescence to someone who’s never seen it, but imagine millions of neon green fireflies in the water who only light up when you agitate them. The white foam that trails behind your hands and feet as you swim turns to bright green, and the ocean lights up around you in a thousand tiny flashes. It’s a scene, man.

So Merry Christmas. Don’t let the weather (or the man) get you down.

I had crashed. A village man and his wife were lying on the road next to me, their bike as smashed up as mine. I lay there for a second breathing heavily, my heart pounding. I pulled myself to my feet. The adrenaline dulled the pain, so I had to visually analyze myself for injury.

About two months ago I named my bike. It’s actually quite a good story. Sorry for waiting this long to tell it.

Ever since I saw the Indian army guys riding their Enfields, I’ve wanted to paint my bike green. I loved the look of the dark, army green on the old-school, WWII style bikes. It’s remarkably cheap to have it painted, and it personalizes the bike. But, first, I needed a name.

In Dharamsala, the home of the Dalai Lama, I took a ten day Buddhist philosophy and meditation course. We learned all about different Buddhist deities and some mantras (repetitive prayers) you could do to them. Some of the more religious aspects of the course were difficult to swallow, but many lessons were more practical and applicable to everyday life.

After the ten days had finished, I returned to town and found a hotel. Trying to have a shower, I realized I didn’t have my towel. I had left it back up at the monastery where we’d taken the course. No problem, I thought, this is why we travel by bike. So I rode up the hill out of town.

Arriving at the monastery, I said hello to the monks and volunteers and grabbed my towel. I hopped back on the bike and headed out. As I rolled through the little village nearby, I saw the nun who had been our main teacher at a chai shop. I pulled over to thank her again for all the lectures. She gave me a hug and wished me well. Noticing the idling bike outside, she asked if it was mine. Yes, I said, it was.

“This is very dangerous, you realize?”

“Yes, it is, but so far so good,” I said happily. Knock wood.

“You know what you must do? You must do your mantras to Tara. Especially Green Tara, she is the protector. Ask her for protection on your bike.”

Tara, eh? Green, you say? Well, my Buddhist nun teacher, you’ve just named my bike.

So, now on Tara, I began the customization process. I bought a two piece brown leather seat. I rode to Rishikesh and, through my Scottish friend Ross, was introduced to a trustworthy mechanic. I left my bike with him when I went trekking to a glacier, with instructions to paint it. Now she’s a matte green, with black trim and chrome piping. I also had a sticker guy outfit the front license plate with her name in an appropriately esoteric font: TARA.

She’s a beaut, an absolute stunner. Her vintage styling, as the pre-1990s (she’s from 1980) bikes were still built to WWII design, along with the new colour scheme… I get lots of compliments. She probably gets more attention than I do (deservedly).

So Tara and I were south of Patna, the state capital of Bihar, on the road the Bodhgaya, where the Buddha achieved enlightenment 2600 years ago. The afternoon was getting on so I was in a hurry. Driving at night is never fun, as it’s hard to see potholes or people (both are everywhere) and the bugs are out in force. I was going about as fast as the bike comfortably goes, around 65km/h, when rounding a bend I saw a motorbike parked on my side (the left) of the road. It was beneath a tunnel of tree tops, which shaded the road attractively. Without thinking, I moved out into the center of the road to pass by.

I saw the second bike come out from behind the parked one at the last second. A villager and his wife were on their little 100cc bike, and clearly didn’t see me coming as they pulled out. I slammed on my brakes, locking my rear wheel into a skid as I tried to steer to the right, the far side of the road, to avoid him. But, instead of stopping, he accelerated in an attempt to cross the road in front of me. This moved him, of course, to the same side I was now leaning toward.

I was probably doing at least forty five or fifty when I smashed, head on, into him. They say it all moves in slow motion when things like this happen and such was the case for me. I remember twice yelling paisahb, which means ’sir’, as I saw him pulling out. At first it was a short, desperate, (hilariously) shrill, PAISAHB!! I remember a sinking feeling in my chest as I realized that we were going to crash, that there was nothing I could do to avoid it. Oh shit, I thought, here it is. I remember bracing myself, flexing my muscles and clenching my jaw. This, along with the fact that I was on the heavier and faster vehicle, is probably what led to me escaping relatively unscathed.

My second paisahb was through gritted teeth and only halfway through when we hit (as in paisah-BAM). I was thrown to the right, Tara’s rear wheel lifting off the tarmac and twisting in midair. I rolled and lay there on my back, breathing and staring at the sky in shock. I pulled myself to my feet almost immediately. Checking myself over, I had another shock when I realized I was fine. I felt a little pain in my knees, elbows and wrists. A trickle of blood from a few tiny spots of road rash on my hands and joints. Otherwise nothing.

I looked over to where the man lay on the asphalt. He was woozy and bleeding from his nose. Locals (who, I gathered, he had been talking with on the side of the road before pulling out) ran over and carried him and his wife to the side of the road. She was wailing and clutching him, but physically unharmed as far as I could see. The man lay there, bleeding, with a faraway look in his eyes. I crumpled at his feet. Unable to communicate my sorrow verbally, I touched my forehead to his toes and said paisahb over and over again.

The other villagers, now growing in number, pulled me to my feet shaking their heads. They clearly thought that I was not in the wrong and so shouldn’t be showing such strong deference. Issues of blame hadn’t quite crossed my mind at this point. I automatically assumed responsibility mostly due to the fact that this was his country and I was the foreigner. I was, therefore, in the wrong. If I wasn’t joy riding around his country this never would have happened.

I have heard from other biking foreigners that the best thing to do when you get in an accident is flee the scene immediately. They told me horror stories about mobs of angry villagers beating foreigners and having them arrested. That no matter whose fault it was they’ll always blame you and hold you financially or criminally responsible. God forbid you ever hit a cow.

I had no such experience. The locals were very supportive and making sure I was okay. I said tikka, tikka, saab tikka (good, good, all good). I helped them pull the two crumpled bikes off the road. We put the man, who was now fully conscious and doing fine, in an ambulance and his wife followed on the back on another bike. I sat on the side of the road breathing, fighting back tears of shock and fear. I was physically fine but shaken badly. The locals, in standard form, simply stood in a circle around me and stared. A few who spoke some English showed up and were quite helpful. I asked them about getting a truck and whether I should go back to Patna or toward Bodhgaya. They told me to wait for the police.

We waited for the police for over an hour. I crossed the road away from the gathered villagers and sat alone on the dirt shoulder, staring into the rice fields. Children played with old bike tires and sticks, running down a dirt path keeping the tire rolling. Water buffalo rolled in a little pond. Some villagers squatted in rice fields, cutting the stalks at the root and flattening them down to dry in the sun. I cried quietly. I called my friend Steve from Montreal and discussed what I should do with the bike. He told me to get to the biggest city nearby, as it would have the best mechanics. He asked if I was all right. Yeah, I’m fine, I lied. For the first time in the past four months, I really, truly missed you all.

The police arrived in the form of five men in camouflage with automatic rifles and thick moustaches. The villagers told them what had happened. The story was obviously sympathetic to my cause, because their first questions for me were about how I was doing and whether I wanted to make any case against the man I had hit. I asked them if the man and his wife were okay. They assured me everyone was fine. I told them, using my best Hinglish and gesturing to myself and the people gathered around me: this is important, yes? People are important, not bike. Bike is only money. Money not important. They all nodded sagely. I wrote down my passport, visa and bike information, as well as my address in Canada and my father’s name (?). The police seemed satisfied.

Attention turned, however, to Tara. A local man with decent English had set off on his bike to find a truck because, otherwise, she was not going anywhere. The front wheel and fender were smashed and twisted. Both front forks and shock absorbers were cracked in several places, contorted wildly and oozing shocker oil all over the road. The headset, the heavy piece above the handlebars that houses the headlight as well as the speedometer, had a huge crack down the side. Both the brake and clutch levers were broken. The only things on the entire front part of the bike that survived were the handlebars themselves, the headlight (miraculously) and the small number plate with the gold and black lettering: TARA.

A small, pickup sized flatbed truck arrived. We spent some time loading Tara into the back and tying her down. It was now dark. We tried to drive back to Patna to a mechanic, but the headlights didn’t work on the truck. Much arguing between the truck driver and some locals. We drove, with the hazard lights flashing in the darkness, back over potholes to the nearest village. I sat in the cab and watched about twenty different locals take a shot at flicking the headlight knob off and on, wondering why their magic touch didn’t get it working. I even had a go.

Another hour sitting in a chai shop on the side of the road with the police. A second truck finally arrived, again with the same enterprising local man leading it in. It was actually more of a auto rickshaw, a three-wheeled vehicle like a motorcycle crossed with a pickup truck. But it did have a decent flatbed in the back, just big enough to shift Tara out of first truck and tie her down, again. I thanked the man who had found both trucks profusely, but he refused my offer of money. A saint, he was.

We rattled back up the highway and into the teeming city. Patna was still busy in the darkness. We checked hotel after hotel but all of them were full. Just outside of town a massive livestock fair was underway. It took another hour to find a hotel with any vacancy, and it was the worst place I’ve stayed in the country. For a ridiculous 600 rupees, about 14 dollars, I had a grubby room with a leaky bathroom. The windows were busted – one of them was lazily covered by a piece of styrofoam – so mosquitos flooded into the room all night. I slept terribly there.

The next day I took a bicycle rickshaw to a street lined with auto mechanics. I found one guy who said he knew Enfields, but I doubted the sincerity of this. The damage was extensive enough that I wanted a serious mechanic with lots of experience on Bullets, rather than just some 100cc scooter guy who would fiddle around. We found a bicycle-flatbed guy to bring the bike from the hotel, and during this process I noticed an official Royal Enfield showroom and shop.

It was probably a little more expensive, but the uniformed mechanics were so confident and smooth during the day that I felt great watching her get stripped down and rebuilt. Tara was whole again, to the tune of about $300.

I’m also doing much better. I’ve spent some time chilling out under the Bodhi tree in Bodhgaya. I’ve since made it to Varanasi, the holiest city in Hinduism, where I’ve met a great international crew of travelers. I’ve spent evenings watching football (soccer) and playing poker. We even played some football on the bank of the Ganges here. It’s been a nice recovery.

It’s difficult to know where to begin. I wrote a piece about my drive into Nepal, I thought it appropriate to pen something on my drive out. As you may or may not be aware, the model of motorcycle I’m driving is a Royal Enfield Bullet. And one thing about bullets, for all you CSI fans out there: the exit is always messier than the entrance.

After my trek and some time living it up in the supremely touristy Pokhara, I slipped off to the small hilltop village of Bandipur. I’d had it recommended to me by a few locals along the way (as well as a few tourists, and the Lonely Planet) so I checked it out. It was nice, a quiet place with nothing to do but walk in the fields and hills around town or sit at a table on the flagstones and drink tea. A little too popular with the domestic tourists, however, who fill the village square and play ringtones on their mobiles well after the power is shut off and everyone is sitting around by candlelight. Such is travel in Asia.

From there I zoomed south and east, making for the border. A few hours out from Birganj, the border town, I heard a noise. Ignoring it (optimistically), I continued until I was sputtering to a stop on the side of the road with nothing in sight but rice fields and water buffalo and a single lonely farmhouse. Standing in front of this farmhouse was a young man, in his late teens perhaps, staring at me. I began checking the few things I know to check when the engine stops – spark plug, petrol line, air filter, carburator. Everything seemed in order. The young man sauntered over and asked if there was a problem. Assuming the worst (correctly), I asked after a mechanic. A few kilometers further down the road, he said, in the next little town.

Walking down the road slowly while trying to stay upbeat, I realized a few km is quite a ways in the midday heat. A farmer on a tractor came up behind me with another villager perched on the back. I flagged him down hopefully and, without much hesitation, he pulled over so I could hop on. I smiled and mimed motorcycle mechanic to them (to do this, stick out your hands like you are holding handle bars, then twist your right hand as if revving a throttle, then mime a wrenching motion). They nodded and on we went.

There was no mechanic in the next town. I asked two different men who both spoke some English and they were both quite confident I was out of luck. Both said the same thing: only in Parsa, 7 km back the other way. Sighing, I flagged down a local bus and hopped aboard. We puttered down the highway, passing the farmhouse with my bike sitting lonely out front. Seven klicks and five rupees (about seven cents) later, I was in Parsa at a mechanic.

The mechanics there were busy, and none of them seemed too excited about having to go four or so kilometers to look at some stupid tourist’s Bullet. They rarely, if ever, get Bullets driving through this part of Nepal (though they’re not unheard of in richer Kathmandu) so these guys probably weren’t too comfortable working on them. I sat there watching them poke around a little scooter for twenty minutes and started getting impatient. I asked about going and checking it out and was told to ‘just wait’ a few times. Two of the mechanics were just sort of watching the main wrench doing all the work, so again I asked if we could get moving. ‘Just wait.’

Eventually I got fed up and walked off looking for another mechanic. I found one, but he wouldn’t go take a look down the road either. ‘Bring you bike here,’ he said. Yeah. I stood on the side of the road for a minute. I’m not sure why I didn’t go back to the original shop and simply wait patiently for them to come with me to take a look. I had already walked off, so returning would have been admitting defeat, or something. Immature, I realize. Seeing another local bus heading back up the road, I impulsively flagged it and took it back to where my bike was waiting. Trying again to fix it myself I began getting frustrated and hot.

This is when that same young man, clearly trying to help, turned on a Nepal-Pop ringtone on his phone and held it out, about six inches from my ear, for me to listen. I asked him, with as much polite patience as I could muster, to please turn it off. He did. I struggled with various parts of the bike. I think at one point I threw my screwdriver into the dirt in disgust. He then suggested I go see the mechanics who have a shop only a few hundred meters back up the road. I suppressed the urge to ask the obvious question: WHY THE FUCK DIDN’T YOU MENTION THEM BEFORE??. I just borrowed his bicycle and went to find them. We ended up towing my bike into their shop.

It took me a few hours, but I finally realized that these guys had never seen the inside of a Bullet before. The sun was setting, the sky darkening, and they were trying many of the same common issues I had been looking at. After ruling out electrical or petrol flow problems, it had to be something inside the engine. So they opened her up.It was at this moment, when they were pulling out pieces and looking at them like some previously undiscovered dinosaur bones, that I asked them to please stop working. I was putting the bike on a truck for India, where Enfields are common enough that mechanics don’t have to assume the role of amateur archaeologist.

That night, thanks to a helpful local man, I slept in a guest room at the local agricultural development bank. It was a training base for more than just farmers, I quickly found out, as it had walls and barbed wire and a big gate and 24 hour security. Yet I spent the evening there with the cook, her husband and their two daughters. I sat quietly at a table, watching her prepare dhal baat for me and her family. The administrator, who spoke passable English, came in with his son and we chatted briefly about my plans and Nepal in general. His son was studying at an English boarding school so he pressured the shy kid into practicing English with me. I drank tea and watched all of them pour over a local newspaper so they could order new ringtones on their phones. They were all very impressed with my terrible Nepali and the fact that I ate the rice and soupy dhal with my fingers, as they do.

The next morning I was standing on the side of the road with a half dozen local men flagging down trucks. It was tough to find a driver willing to load my bike in the back who was also heading to Birganj. Eventually the locals started trying to flag buses. I questioned the logic of loading my bike onto the roof of a bus, rather than the back of a truck. There is the obvious difficulty of loading (bus roofs are higher than truck beds) and the fact that the bike would have to lie on her side, rather than stand up straight. Oil leakage would be inevitable. Eventually they got a bus to stop and the driver seemed eager to get me on board, but luckily another local had flagged a big Tata and for 700 rupees (ten dollars) they would drive me and the bike three hours to the border town (but not the border).

There I was, for the second time, riding up in the cab of a truck with my bike riding in the back. The wingman, Raz, was twenty-one and spoke a little English so we hit it off. They had picked up a few other locals who use trucks like buses, and I bought forty rupees worth of peanuts and bananas and shared them with everyone. The driver, a gruff older guy with a terrible sounding cough, wasn’t too excited to have me around and didn’t partake in the mini picnic.

We stopped every so often for no obvious reason. To a puncture wallah to top up the tire pressure. At the side of the road to talk to a few other truck drivers for a few minutes. Less than 10km from our destination we stopped for lunch. I remained patient and paid for all three dhal baats. On we went. We stopped for diesel and something I didn’t catch happened, but it ended with Raz grabbing a hose from under the seat and leaping out the door. We sat on the side of the road waiting. I got out to look for him, but the driver honked and waved me back in and we drove off without him. I never got to say goodbye to ol’ Razzy.

In Birganj, finally, the driver was eager to be rid of me. He tried several times to boot me out on the outskirts of town, but I knew the words for ‘let’s go!’ (jam jam!) and kept waving toward the center of town. He would grunt and grumble something and drive on. One time he tried flagging down a bicycle rickshaw, as if we were going to balance my 200kg bike on his little cushioned rickshaw seat. Eventually, as the traffic got thicker and we were clearly close to the core of the city, I allowed myself to be hustled out. We got a couple passersby to help unload my bike and there I was, back on the side of the road in the afternoon heat. I stood there helplessly for a few minutes, trying to figure out how I was going to get this bike the final 5km to the border.

A teenager on a bicycle saw me standing there and came over to speak with me. He was studying engineering and so spoke good English. He went off to see if there were any small trucks or auto-rickshaws to take me to border. I noticed a mechanic working on a couple of 100cc bikes so went to inquire. No, he didn’t know anything about Bullets, but there was another mechanic just down the road…

And so this, miracle of miracles, was how I ended up being unceremoniously dumped out of a truck on the side of the road in a Nepali border town within 100 meters of an amazing Bullet mechanic who, thanks to three years of working in a Malaysian factory, spoke decent English. I would spend about seven hours sitting in the dirt in front of his shop as we took my bike apart, replacing rocker pins and both valves. The mechanic and his father were both jovial bike lovers and I had a great time joking and wrenching with them.

The next morning I roared out of Nepal and, some unplanned days and rupees later, into India.

Ahh, India. It was good to be back. I won’t go into detail just yet but there is something intangible about India and her people. I flew south, along a bumpy, potholed highway past more rice fields and water buffalo and smoky bamboo hut villages. I wandered through one of these villages in search of bananas, getting some pretty surprised stares from everyone. I eventually found the market and got a dozen little bananas for 10 roops (about 22 cents). I triumphantly showed them off to all the perplexed villagers as I strolled back to my bike.

I was now in Bihar, India’s poorest state. It is beset not only by poverty but also a Maoist political rebellion and a corresponding campaign of violence. Indian newspapers contain stories of bombed schools or government buildings almost daily. I wasn’t too worried. Cruising through the wonderfully named Muzaffarpur, choking on dust and truck exhaust in the intense traffic, I asked directions. More than a few locals told me I was on the right road. I wasn’t. I wanted to get to Patna, the state capital, but they had sent me down the indirect road that would take me to Patna eventually, rather than the direct but smaller highway. I managed, thanks to my road map and my willingness to ask everyone for directions, to find a little back country road that connected my wrong way highway with the right way highway. The road was, for the most part, smoothly paved and weaved it’s way pleasantly through fields and villages. I got plenty of stares and smiles as I went. Mostly stares. I’m not claiming that these locals have never seen foreigners before, but I guarantee it’s been a while since one went chugging past on an Enfield.

Patna is a small Indian city of to million people, bustling with the urgency and endless horn honks that are ubiquitous in any settlement of decent size. Struggling in the traffic, I wove through town asking endless directions from police and older gentlemen who looked likely to speak English. My system is simple: I roll alongside a man on a bike or bicycle or perhaps standing roadside, and offer a polite paisahb, which means ’sir.’ I then name the town I’m looking for with a questioning tone. They usually indicate a direction with hand motions and some broken English. Eventually finding the road south, I ripped toward Bodhgaya.

I was about 35 kilometers out of Patna when I crashed. More on this soon.

(Photos are up for this post now, click on the photos tab at the top)

It was late for us, closing in on 8pm. We’d just agreed on a time to meet for breakfast the next morning. Four. The snow had been falling all day, and would probably keep on into the night. The guides and porters had us convinced: The snow, maybe getting worse, yes? The wind strong later in morning, we get over pass by nine. Leaving four, four thirty is best. If the snow and cold were bad here, how much worse would it be a thousand meters up, at 18,000 ft? People looked worried, scared even. Many of them had next to no experience in snow or real cold. I was woefully unprepared, with my warmest layer a hoodie and no waterproof gear at all. But it wasn’t until right as we were all saying our goodnights, with final words of encouragement for each other, that someone let it slip. Tomorrow is Friday the Thirteenth.

The Annapurna Circuit is one of the most popular treks in Nepal. (No, it has nothing to do with Spock or Picard, a ‘trek’ is the word the Lonely Planet (and therefore everyone else) uses for multi-day hikes in the mountains). The route loops around the Annapurna Massif; an enormous cluster of mountains vaguely in the center of the country. With a peak of 8091m, about 750m shorter than Everest, Annapurna is the eighth tallest mountain in the world. Needless to say, the views are a big reason the path proves to be so well trodden.

Yes, there is no shortage of gore-tex on The Circuit. Tourists from all over the world flock here for some strenuous walking mixed liberally with relatively luxurious living conditions. Instead of camping in flapping tents and huddling around fires, the entire trail is lined by lodges with walls, toilets, beds, blankets, wood stoves and solar-heated water (hot showers!). I had a (half-decent) pizza at 4400m. The tour groups can be a little much, sure, but I enjoyed the comforts as much as anyone.

We began in a steep sided valley at around 1000m. At first I was with three Americans, but the young couple from Washington State were keeping a very slow pace so a Chicagoan and I pressed on alone. Through forest and village we walked uphill and along the east side of the massif for several days. The further we got from the road, the more expensive food and drinks became, as everything is carried in by porter or pony train. The people were of Tibetan heritage so Hindu temples gave way to Buddhist gompas (monasteries) and bamboo pole mounted prayer flags sprouted from every rooftop.

There were also many signs of Nepal’s ongoing political struggle. Maoist flags – red with the hammer and sickle – flew prominently in a few villages. Spray paint scarred cliff walls, demanding an independent Himali state or trumpeting support for the Maoists. Two years ago the rebellion ended (for the most part) when the Maoists were granted amnesty and allowed to form a democratic party. They shocked everyone by winning the election last year.

And yet the mood of the people was refreshingly light. Locals were either outgoingly friendly or pleasantly indifferent to our presence. Even up here, isolated from so much of the world by the difficult terrain, interest in our culture dominates. I think I saw two men in Avril Lavigne t-shirts on the mountain (bringing my total in Nepal to five). Two youngsters approached me in one village and began showing me stickers of wrestlers from the WWE. They loved that I knew the names of some of them (Yes! John Cena, yes! Yes! Shawn Michaels!) and rewarded me by finding me a bamboo walking stick that some foolish soul had cast off. This stick would later prove very useful.

The further we climbed, the more impressive the scenery became. The forest turned from broad-leaved to needled, the mountains grew taller and more wonderfully snow-capped. Rounding a bend on day four we were confronted by an epic curving slab of rock, arcing 1500m (about three CN Towers) above the riverbank. It looked like one side of the halfpipe in a skatepark for the gods. Owing to the pre-Buddhist animist traditions of the area, locals refer to it as the Swarga Dwar – the Gateway to Heaven – based on the belief that the postmortem soul must ascend it after leaving the body.

That night we slept in yet another little family run lodge. We were in the upper part of Pisang, perched above the main part of the riverside village. Directly above us was Pisang’s gompa, gleaming thanks to a recent restoration and home to a handful of monks. We sat down for a quiet dinner of dhal baat (Nepal’s national dish and some damn fine hiking food: lentil soup, vegetable curry, rice, papadum, and spicy chutney are all brought until you can eat no more). Right as we were mopping up the last drops of dhal with our third helping of rice, the horns began to blow. It was the evening puja, an offering of sound and light made by the monks.

They blew eight foot long Himalayan horns, as well as smaller horns, and banged on gongs, cymbals and drums. I sat on the flagstones in the cold wind, watching them play the ancient music out over the village and the river valley below. The awesome Himalaya, drenched in snow, lined up on the other side of the valley to listen. Prayer flags whipped in the wind. The next morning the puja was repeated, and so I scaled the few steps behind my lodge to watch and soak up the atmosphere. That morning I struggled with the idea of leaving.

But leave we did. We arrived in Manang, a veritable hub town with an airport and cinemas and internet access. There we spent an extra day to acclimatize to the altitude (we were a little over 3500m) before climbing toward the pass. Dinners of spaghetti and enchiladas, games of yaniv (an Israeli card game) and chess all ensued. We climbed 400m up the valley wall to a small cave cum gompa, where a 93 year old monk blessed our impending attempt at crossing the pass. We left rested and ready to head uphill.

Two shorter days followed, allowing our systems to adjust to rapidly thinning air. Yaks grazed lazily above the path. On day eight we were in Thorung Pedi, which means The Foot of Thorung. A thousand meters above us was the Thorung La, the 5416m pass we were to cross the next day. We had woken to snow that morning, and it had gotten progressively heavier as the day wore on. People were suffering early signs of altitude sickness – headaches, nausea, fatigue. Hikers from warmer climes were frightened of the very idea of walking in snow, and my assurances that it wasn’t a big deal didn’t seem to have much effect. I guess the fact that I hadn’t brought anything waterproof or windproof didn’t lend to my credibility. Two Californians decided to head back. When this news came out I saw several others waver. The whole Friday the Thirteenth thing didn’t help.

But the next morning we set out. The snow was still falling, though lightly now, and the low clouds added an imposing closeness to the darkness. Lines of bobbing headlamps zig-zagged their way up the steep mountainside ahead of us. Apparently 4:15am was too late for some people. We had amalgamated our smaller groups of young backpackers into an international conglomerate of four Aussies, two Kiwis, three Americans, two Germans, and singles from Northern Ireland, Holland and Canada (me). Between us we had three guides and two porters. Almost immediately we were separated.

The Chicagoan I had been with since day one was sick. An Aussie couple, a girl from South Cali (who had originally been walking with the two who turned around) and I stayed with her as the rest of our fellowship pressed on. We arrived at a base camp of sorts, four hundred vertical meters above our starting point, and she told us to go on without her. I objected, but she insisted, so only ninety minutes in we were already one down. The other four of us climbed slowly through the snow, the only sound the crunching of snow beneath our feet.

Ascending further and further, I found it increasingly difficult to breathe. This manifest itself in two ways, neither of which was particular pleasant. The first was an inability to order my body parts around with the reckless impunity I usually enjoy. Unzipping my camera case for photos of huddled hikers or entirely white landscapes became a battle. Even convincing one foot to fall in front of the other was difficult. The other was a lightheaded dizziness that was, eventually, frightening. Closer to the top I would have to stop every five or ten steps and lean on my bamboo stick to catch my breath. More than a few times I thought I was going to pass out.

Yet on we went. A false top presented itself with a few lonely prayer flags and I cursed my gullibility when I saw a line of people climbing even higher beyond it. Some people were doing terribly at this point. A few ponies went by with breathless or puking foreigners bouncing in the saddle. I don’t want to know how much they paid for the ride. One of the Aussies was suffering immensely from nausea and headaches. There was a moment of inspiration, however, when the sun came out.

It was difficult to call anything ‘perfect’ at this point, but the clouds parting to reveal two immense peaks separated by the prayer flag clad pass was as beautiful a sight as I have ever seen. One peak was brown and rocky and rugged, while the other domed in ice and snow. The sun warmed my back and encouraged me on (but only five steps at a time) toward the windy pass with it’s celebratory sign (CONGRATULATION FOR THE SUCCESS!!!). A few foreigners were doing handstands and posing for endless team photos, but we snapped a few shots with each other or with the sign then quickly began the descent.

The way down was much, much more dangerous than the ascent. With the fresh snow the path was slippery and, lower down, muddy. It was steep and often traipsed precariously along sharp drop-offs. At one point it was a tight-rope walk along the edge of a cliff, with the snow packed down into ice by previous boots. My Aussie friend, still feeling like he’d drank ten times too much Nepal Ice beer the night before, gladly accepted my bamboo stick for the rest of the day. Now without my prop, I just let gravity take over and basically ran down the side of the mountain.

That night we were all gathered around a fireplace eating pizzas and drinking beers. It had seemed out of place at first, but now the Bob Marley Hotel and Rasta Restaurant was home. Around nightfall, our Chicago amigo, lost to us so early in the day, strolled in. She had crossed the pass three hours after us, after a drastic improvement in her condition. Celebrations were now even more called for. The next day we simply hung out in the town for a rest day, exploring some nearby Hindu and Buddhist holy sites.

From there, our walk was over. Many people chose to spend another week walking back down the other side of the massif, but there are roads on the west side and so we chose the four wheel option. We spent a night in Tatopani, which translates directly to ‘hot water’. There we sat in the natural hot springs drinking locally made apple brandy and beer (and listening to some sweet Nepali pop).

It was, all told, a wonderful experience. The fact that it was far more difficult than I had anticipated just added to the sense of accomplishment. It also renewed my patriotism somewhat, as even though I had far less gear than pretty much everyone else up there, I handled the temperature better than most. There are some moments, I guess, where it pays to be Canadian.

Stay tuned for some upcoming posts, where I’ll discuss sleeping in a bank and crashing my beautiful motorbike into a man and his wife on their bike. At over 50km/h. Wheee.

Well, sorry for the vanishing act again. I’d like to blame Nepal’s IT infrastructure issues, but really it’s my fault. I’ve been enjoying myself here and can’t be bothered to sit and write for hours. I understand that you’ve probably lost interest in my site as a result. This is especially unfortunate because of how much fun I’ve had over the past few weeks. I wish you were here.

From Rishikesh, the site of my last post oh so long ago, I drove for three and a half days to the Nepal border. I spent some time in smaller places generally void of tourists. The road was in the mountains so wonderfully curvy. It was fun but slow driving, especially considering how often I stopped to admire the views. Highlights included the always entertaining conversations with local men about my bike, my trip, and my opinion of India. One evening was spent drinking vodka-Fantas and watching an Australia/India cricket match with the hotel owner, his son and brother on the reception desk TV. Their English was good enough for us to discuss cricket (which I now appreciate as a decent, if slow-paced, sport), motorcycling, and the sporting culture in Canada (i.e. “No, in Canada we play ice hockey, you know? Yes, very cold. No, no cricket.”)

And on into Nepal. Crossing the border was fairly painless. The Banbassa-Mahendrager gate is so little used it’s almost comical in its laid back-ness. Indian immigration was just a couple of old desks under a concrete awning. The desks were lazily draped in purple felt to lend an air of officialdom, but it seemed more like signing up for the three legged race at the company picnic than checking out of the world’s largest democracy. After crossing the purgatory that dwells between nations, I drove right past Nepali immigration because it was, again, a little concrete shack down off the road with very little indicating I was supposed to stop there. The police had to stop me at the gate and point me back to the “office,” otherwise I would have driven right into the country with no visa. The bike had to get a visa as well, at a cost of 113 Nepali rupees (75 Indian rupes, or about $1.65) per day. The customs guys who looked over my paperwork were very interested in the bike, but more out of personal rather than professional motivation.

Yes, she is pretty. I finally had her painted and put on a new seat. She also has a name, now. More on that in another post.

Stamps and handshakes and forms in triplicate later, I roared into the country. The main highway burned east dead straight and flat. Southern Nepal is mostly level, hot plains much like central India. I immediately noticed a few differences, however. The people are much more Mongolian in their facial features – resembling Tibetans or Bhutanese rather than Indians. On the plains, however, they maintain the dark, rich skin tones of their southern neighbours. The people are, in a word, beautiful. Cruising on a motorbike on a busy roadway (buses and tractors and goats, oh my) is dangerous enough without gaping at a group of young women double-riding rickety bicycles. They giggled to each other when I smiled at them and I swerved around a cow I saw at the last second.

Nepal is also much, much poorer than India. Simple shacks dot the rice fields, water buffalo roll in muddy pools, and little half-naked kids run out onto the roadside to wave to me as I pour past. Enfields are rare in Nepal, especially in the poorer south of the country. When the kids hear one coming, and there is no mistaking that sound, they know it must be a foreigner and so come running out of their shacks and up onto the raised roadway. My wrist was tired from waving.

I spent my first night in a small safari style bungalow operation on the edge of Bardia National Park. There I met an American guy who was doing NGO work in the isolated mountains in the north. The next day we went tiger/rhino/elephant spotting in the park and, except for a semi-domesticated rhino that hangs around the park entrance, saw none of the above. We stumbled into plenty of rhino and elephant tracks and took photos of the tiger claw marks and prints we saw all around us, but no actual sightings of the animals. Still, a great day walking in the jungle.

The next day I flew east toward Lumbini, the birthplace of the Buddha. It was another long, hot day counting kilometers and hoping I’d get there before dark. I didn’t. The last hour was spent anxiously watching the sun dip behind the rice paddies. As the sky darkened, it filled with bugs. It was like driving through the rain only, you know, with bugs. Above me flew fruit bats bigger than crows, silhouetted against the pastel purple of the late evening sky. It was a frustrating, beautiful, hilarious scene. I couldn’t wear my sunglasses because of the darkness, so bugs were flying into my eyes and mouth and, when I’d look up in awe at the massive bats, nose. Every so often a big one would bounce off my forehead or cheekbone like a bullet. I’d swear loudly and scare some villager carrying a load of straw down the road.

But I got to Lumbini. The next morning outside the temple built directly on the auspicious spot, I sat down under a tree to meditate. Soak up the energy of the place, etc. Ten minutes later a tour group of a hundred Indian Hindus showed up and ended my meditation session. As with the Buddha, who is revered in Hinduism as an incarnation of Vishnu, the Buddha’s mother, Maya Devi, is worshipped as a goddess in her own right.

I spent the day riding my bike around the site, which is dotted with Buddhist monuments built by the governments of Buddhist countries. The whole place had this unfinished feeling, as if the Nepali government had only just last week realized the potential tourist gold mine it was sitting on. Buddhist and Hindu pilgrims aside, there really wasn’t much in terms of visitation to the area. It made my time at some of the temples quite special, as here were these massive monuments and temples lying empty in the hot sun. A few times I was the only one strolling the grounds or examining the murals. I met a young Thai family in the Royal Thai Wat and luckily remembered my sawadee kraaps and sabai dee mais.

From there, I sped back along a busy, intense highway toward the hills that make Nepal famous. Eight of the ten highest mountains in the world are at least partially in Nepal (Everest, the world’s tallest at 8848m, is on the border with Tibet and Kanchenjunga, the third tallest at 8598m, is on the border with Sikkim in northeast India), making it easily the most ridiculously mountainous country in the world.

In these hills I would join the reams of travelers who trek for weeks beyond road and rail (though, as I would find out, not beyond WWE wrestling) and into the snowy peaks. Where multicoloured prayer flags flutter above French tour groups clad in gore-tex. Where bearded hippies dodge herds of yaks. Where the temperature drops, the air thins, and people who have never seen more than inch of snow cross an 18,000 foot pass in a blizzard on Friday the Thirteenth.

More soon. I promise.

Sorry about disappearing there. Had a good time in Rishikesh and have spent the last week making my way into Nepal. Some pretty rural places along the way, so no real internet. But I went tiger spotting (without actually seeing one) in the Nepali jungle and am now in Lumbini, the birthplace off the Buddha. More on this soon. Here’s a post on a religious festival in India).

It would be a played out travel-writing cliché to call India an exciting melange of the ancient and modern. Every stupid culture is a blend of old and new (except, perhaps, for those isolated indigenous tribes that have yet to discover the world of fridge magnets and R. Kelly). Even relatively infantile countries such as Canada and Australia combine old European perspectives with fresher (mostly American) influences.

In India, however, the word ancient actually applies. This is one of the oldest civilizations on the planet, centered around its longest running major religion. Hinduism developed over 1500 years before Christianity, and the famously Buddhist concepts of karma, reincarnation and liberation from the cycles of rebirth are actually appropriated directly from it. Hindus consider Siddhartha, the Buddha who began teaching the Path to Enlightenment 2500 years ago, to be one of the ten major incarnations of Vishnu. Buddhists disagree, of course, but seemingly without anger. Big surprise, there.

You’d be hard pressed to find a river more revered than Holy Ganga, known abroad as The Ganges. While not as long as the Nile or as mighty as the Amazon, Ganga possesses a spirituality and character unmatched by the other great rivers of the world. Honestly. Name another river that is actually a goddess descended to earth to cleanse humanity of its sins and illnesses. See?

River worship is quite a practical phenomenon. Rivers are life givers, supporting permanent communities through droughts and dry seasons. A standard monsoon in northeast India lasts only four months, so the river is the sole source of drinking water and irrigation for eight months a year. In such a climate, it’s only natural that the biggest river around would develop into something worthy of  religious devotion (there are many holy rivers in Hinduism, Ganga being the most important).

It begins on the roof of the world, under a glacier high on the India-Tibet border. Sapphire blue and ice cold at first, it mixes with white foam as it crashes over rocks and boulders. Picking up green as it descends, it becomes a brilliant turquoise, slowing as the valleys widen and the altitude softens (hydro dams do their part, as well). Soon it finds the frying pan mud of the Indian plains, turning a warm soupy brown and, having lost its urgency, slowly wanders its way east. Eventually it forms the massive delta in Bangladesh – where it floods often as it meets the rising sea.

Ganga is central to the life of Hindus. Bathing in the river cleanses sins, and many families return home from pilgrimages to her banks with vials and bottles of the holy water. Perhaps more famously, however, Ganga is central to Hindus at the time of death. The greatest pilgrimage in the life of a devout Hindu is to make it to the shores of the holy river in time to die and be cremated on the banks. The body, once burned to cinders, is dumped into the river to be carried away. This is extremely beneficial for future lives, helping to cleanse the soul of sins and aid in its quest for reincarnation on a higher level. Varanasi is perhaps the holiest city in Hinduism, and has developed into the premiere death tourism centre. I’ll be there in a few weeks.

But for now, I’m still in the mountains. The holy city of Rishikesh, where the Beatles lived and got high and wrote the White Album, is low in the foothills. Here the river is quick and cold and wonderful. It probably isn’t as clean as we’d like to think, but compared to its condition down on the plains it is positively pure. So we swim in it. The locals bathe in the holy waters to receive the blessings of the goddess, but we swim to cool off from the heat. I’m not Hindu, but there is a sense of renewal from these waters. The undeniable spirituality of India rears its head again.

But it isn’t enough for us. With Naomi from Sydney and Alon from the Tel Aviv suburbs, I spend twelve hours on buses and jeep taxis and make my way back into the Himalaya. At over 3000m and in freezing temperatures, we spend the night in the small town of Gangotri, which owes almost all of its economic success to religious tourism. Nearly as important as the death pilgrimage to Varanasi is the personal mission to the glacier from which Ganga springs forth.

Called Gamukh, or the Head of the Cow, the mass of ice is known to Hindus as the place where Ganga first descended to earth. The blessings bestowed upon a Hindu for bathing in the river are multiplied greatly if done at the river’s birthplace. I still haven’t quite figured out what draws so many foreign, non-Hindus to the spot, but we nevertheless felt the need to go.

After a night in Gangotri, we walk fourteen slightly inclined kilometers to Bhojbasa, a mountain camp of low stone buildings with corrugated tin roofs. We spend the cold, dark night in an ashram, a combination Hindu temple/guesthouse, eating simple dhal and rice on the floor with the pilgrims. Our room, shared between the three of us, is a stone box with blankets on the floor and a single naked (energy saving) light bulb dangling on a wire. All around us are jagged snowy peaks towering over barren, rocky scrub. The chai is excellent. So are the stars.

At seven the next morning we clamber over boulders and rocky streams toward the glacier. Four kilometers later, a 15m tall jagged wall of dripping ice looms over us. From a dark cave rushes forth the holy water. I had expected, thanks in part to the Lonely Planet’s use of the word embryonic, for it to be an icy creek or brook. Not a trickle, surely, but at most a fast stream. Wrong. A full fledged river courses out of the ice with a flow of surprising intensity. It is at least five or six meters wide, not deep but moving quickly. And it is icy, icy cold.

But we wash in it. Alon strips down to his skivvies and goes in fully, while Naomi and I just wash our face, neck and hair. Some of the pilgrims go in all the way as well, though not all of them. The sun is bright and strong but the air is cold at almost 4000m in mid October. We drink our fill, as well. I’ve never tasted such clean, cold, delicious water. Bottle that stuff and you’d make a fortune. But the negative karma would be astronomical, I’m sure. Still, we fill a plastic water bottle so we can ship home a little glacial Ganga water. I hear drinking it can cure serious diseases. Get your own.

We watch a BBC documentary team film some footage of the glacier. They interview a local glaciologist who explains how much the wall of ice has receded even in the last six months. A very up close look at climate change. During the filming, a local guide arrives and grows angry with all the tourists standing too close. Apparently two foreigners died last year when a chunk of the wall broke free and crushed them. The BBC crew calms him enough to get their footage, but he manages to get everyone else to move a safe distance away.

We sit and enjoy the energy of the place. Alon and Naomi write in their journals. I join a few pilgrims and meditate next to the river for a few minutes. The sun is getting hotter as it climbs, the thin atmosphere doing little to calm its blaze. We walk the four kilometers back to the ashram for more dhal and rice before packing up and walking the rest of the way back to Gangotri. Early the next morning, we’re in a jeep taxi for the nine hour ride back to Rishikesh with two ladies from Pune (near Bombay) who now live in San Francisco.

Now it’s Diwali, the biggest festival in the Hindu calendar. I’m still in Rishikesh for it. Will post on it soon, in all it’s fire and noise and madness.