In Kathmandu with Extreme Style

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“I think I’m going to Kathmandu.
That’s really, really where I’m going to.
If I ever get out of here,
That’s what I’m gonna do.
K-k-k-k-k-k Kathmandu.
I think that’s really where I’m going to.
If I ever get out of here,
I’m going to Kathmandu.”

Triumphant Return to the Cyber World

Well, it’s been a while, but with a little encouragement from the parents, I finally got around to posting another entry. You may want to hunker down with a cup of tea or something though, because I have a feeling it’s going to be a long one. Right now I’m sitting in a Cyber Café in an unbelievably crowded part of Kathmandu. But a lot has happened since Manali:

I traveled from South India by plane to Amritsar via Delhi, where I took care of a rather sticky passport situation and spent a freezing cold night on the cold, hard floor in the domestic terminal. The flight was actually a lot of fun (it was actually three flights: Thiruvananthapuram-Chennai-Delhi-Amritsar) with the views I got from above. Flying into Delhi was especially exciting. I got to see the Qutb Minar complex as we were descending, which was good because I never made it back there…

Anyway, when I got to Amritsar I met up with Connor, Michael and Jeff, the three guys from Washington state that I had had dinner with in Bombay several weeks before. We didn’t spend a ton of time there, but we did end up going to the nearby village of Attari, right on the border between India and Pakistan, to see the fantastic border closing ceremony. It’s basically just a “go India” festival, with quite theatric shows of machismo on both sides of the fence, but only a real audience on India’s part (the stands on Pakistan’s side, and yes, there were stands, had only a few dozen people, compared to the thousands that showed up to cheer for India).

Before the ceremony started, volunteers went down to the road and ran a couple of Indian flags up to the Pakistan border and then back to the crowd. Connor and Jeff went down to see if they could take part, but they didn’t make it in time, leaving them stranded down on the street. Michael and I watched them get whisked away somewhere, and after a couple of concerned looks at each other, decided to head down to see if we could find them.

It turns out they got sent to a special “V.I.P.” section of the stands with a great view of the whole spectacle. Once down on the street, Michael and I were sent there as well. We wondered why for a moment, and then looked around. Every single person sitting in the V.I.P. section was white. I guess the mentality is basically “Oh, you’re westerners? Well, come on over here, friends! You don’t want to sit with the hoi polloi, do you?” We felt bad for a moment, getting preferential treatment based on our race, but then it passed.

The ceremony itself was basically just hilarious. Indian soldiers would do these unnecessarily dramatic stomps and kicks in the air, and then march to the border fence to have a kind of scowl-off with the Pakistani soldiers. At the end, the fence is thrown open and the Indian soldiers scurry back and forth across the border, seemingly taunting the Pakistanis. Then the flags are lowered in perfect synchronicity, so as to not imply superiority on the part of either nation.

After Amritsar, we made our way by bus to Manali, a tourist town at the north end of the Kullu Valley. The bus ride was awful, but what else is new? After 14 hours of hairpin turns taken at the absolute maximum speed, heads smacking on the metal frame of the bus, and uncomfortably infrequent bathroom stops, we arrived more or less unscathed. The first thing we noticed was how incredibly cold it felt. It was about five in the morning, and all of a sudden our sandals and shorts didn’t seem too appropriate. Luckily there was an enormous tire fire to keep us warm while we decided on a place to stay.

The guidebook we were using mentioned the village of Vashisht, about 3 km away. We decided that was where we were going when we read that it’s filled with hot springs and hippies. And was it! There were as many westerners in Vashisht as locals, if not more. But it was actually a nice change from what we had been getting a lot of, which was none at all. We ended up staying at the Dharma Lodge, which I guess is kind of an institution for backpackers. There’s pretty much every conceivable luxury you could want as a budget traveler, including a large sit-on-the-floor restaurant/lounge with a collection of pirated movies to choose from (something we found, after a day or two, was very common in the area).

On one of the more relaxed nights, if any were more relaxed than others, the four of us along with a few other travelers we met went to this place in town called the “World Peace Café,” where we hung out and enjoyed the live music (and got to play some as well) at the Friday night jam session. I was also able to order a burrito, or some approximation of it.

Getting to know the folks we met was a lot of fun. They’re all actually working in the city of Jaipur at different types of NGOs and charity organizations, but had a couple of weeks off to do some traveling around India. What was really interesting was that they were basically all from different countries, aside from the two of them who were both Dutch. The others were from Japan, Serbia and Turkey.

After we had gotten enough good vibes out of Vashisht, all eight of us (Michael headed north to Leh) caught a bus to Rishikesh. If the name of that city sounds at all familiar, you probably know it as the place The Beatles went to chill with the Maharishi and write most of the white album. A friend told me once that the song “Sexy Sadie” (What have you done, you made a fool of everyone) is actually about the Maharishi himself, and how disappointed John Lennon was with his so called “spirituality.”

Rishikesh is definitely another town on the hippie circuit, but it was definitely not as riddled with them as Vashisht or Manali. It kind of sprawls outward from both sides of the Ganges, but with nothing but two pedestrian-only bridges to connect the two sides, they remain pretty independent. On one side are the bus station and the tourist enclave of High Bank, and on the other are the yoga classes, temples and ghats. We stayed with the rest of the tourists for sleeping purposes, but for our swim in the Ganges and self-guided tour of the temple, we headed to the less developed side.

One incredible experience I had in Rishikesh was our post-midnight walk to a ghat on the other side of the river. We had an early morning train leaving for Delhi, and we didn’t want to sleep, so we figured we’d spend our time feeling spiritual. I played a little guitar, we had a little chat, and we got sandblasted in the face with all of the wind that was blowing that late at night. All in all, it was a really fantastic few hours. Being completely isolated from the rest of the world like that with a few good people is great, but doing it on the banks of the Ganges is just amazing.

After Rishikesh, our posse parted ways in Delhi, leaving me all by my lonesome once again. I did a bit of exploring for a few days, and found myself staying in a district called Majnu Ka-tilla, a small Tibetan refugee community that is a world away from Paharganj, the tourist center of Delhi. One thing worth mentioning, although I didn’t do a whole lot while I was there, is the Jama Masjid, or Red Mosque, which is India’s largest and really striking up close. Tourists are allowed to climb to the top of one of the minarets (121 terrifying spiral stone steps in complete darkness) for a great view of Old Delhi, a labyrinth of cramped alleyways filled to the brim with bustling bazaars; really quite fun to explore.

One part of my trip I will loathe the memory of is the night I spent in the Old Delhi train station after having missed my train out to Jaisalmer somehow. I slept on this bed, which was very much like a coffee table, sans blanket or pillow, using my messenger bag to prop my head up and putting my arms inside my shirt to stay warm. Luckily, I caught the train the next day.

Jaisalmer is a beautiful city, but I only spent a couple of days there because of the combination of heat and fever that I was contending with at the time (it was pretty consistently over 100 degrees). I did spend a couple of hours exploring the fort perched atop the old city, which is pretty much straight out of Aladdin. A lot of people actually still live within the confines of the fort, making the only one in India that’s still alive with activity apart from tourism.

After my brief stint in Rajasthan, which really doesn’t warrant too much more explanation, considering I was lying in bed clutching my stomach the whole time, I headed to the holy city of Varanasi, a place I was really looking forward to, and with good reason, it turns out. The city stretches down the Ganges in a series of dozens of beautiful ghats, each with its own story and purpose, but even without them is a mezmerizing mélange of alleyways snaking around each other for miles and miles, making it amazingly easy to get lost. There’s not a whole lot to mention though; I just spent a few hours in a music store trying to learn how to play the tabla, and the rest of my time exploring the old city and the library of Benares Hindu University, the “Harvard of India.”

My bus ride to Pokhara, Nepal, was arguably the most arduous journey of my trip thus far. It’s a two-day ride with an overnight stop in the border town of Sunauli, where I was ripped off $10 by the border patrol guys and didn’t even notice it. But it gets even worse than that: the first 14 hours of the trip are okay, but with only two or three stops the whole way, really tough of the posterior. It’s really the final leg to Pokhara that almost killed me, though. There are so many bumps in the road… I can’t even describe it… wait: THERE ARE SOOO MANY BUMPS IN THE ROAD that’s it’s impossible to keep yourself in the chair, let alone attempt to read or write. It’s also a little frustrating that the bus tends to go about walking speed uphill but then totally freewheel it downhill, basically banking on the hope that there will not be a bus coming in the opposite direction from around a sharp curve.

Anyway, Pokhara is lovely. It’s pretty much just a small town swimming with tourists. I met a British guy there who compared it to the Scooby-Doo cartoons where even though they’re running straight for quite a distance, they continue to pass the same three buildings. All up and down the strip of the tourist district is basically trekking shop, travel agent, restaurant, guesthouse, money changer, etc. And on the other side it’s simply: lake, lake, lake, lake, etc.

I did enjoy my time there, though. I met a couple, Michael and Sarah, who I had dinner with a couple of times and I really was grateful for the company. They’re actually planning a route similar to the one I’m taking from here on out (which I’ll get to in a minute), so I’m pretty sure I’ll see them again. I also made a hike up to the World Peace Pagoda. On the maps, it said 400m up, and I thought “psh. I can make that no problem, right?” WRONG. It was 2 hours of extremely steep grade throughout which there’s not one place to get a bottle of water or a cloth to wipe off the copious amounts of sweat I was producing. The top is nicely climactic though, with spectacular views of the Annapurna peaks and, of course, the pagoda. What was really nice was that there was absolutely no one else around, so I napped on a bench for a while and soaked up the ambience.

Phew. Sorry about how long it’s been and how long that was. Fortunately, I’m planning on spending at least a couple of weeks here in Kathmandu, and I should be able to limit the next entry exclusively to this wonderful city. There are a lot of volunteer organizations here, and although I’ve had bad luck today, I hope to get in touch with one of them soon.

As for future plans, I have a flight from Kolkata to Bangkok that leaves on the 6th of January, and I’m going to try to stick to that date. Since I only have a 60 day visa for Nepal, I’ll have to be out of here by the beginning of December, and that means a month in Kolkata, where I’m hoping to be able to stay with a local family and work at one of Mother Teresa’s joints or something of the like. I’d like to be able to say I had purely philanthropic concerns, but to be honest, it’ll be nice to have something worthwile with which to occupy my time, not to mention the prospect of meeting some other people with similar ethos. From Bangkok, I’ll have to eventually get to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia where my flight back to the states leaves on the 1st of March and flies (oh God) to Singapore, Tokyo, Washington, D.C., and finally Syracuse. It’s nice to have that all in order. It adds a sense of eventual completion and accomplishment to my trip. Six months isn’t exactly what I was aiming for, but it’ll definitely have gotten the travel bug out of my system, at least for a while. =D

Peace,
Anthony

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