colva beach, south goa - december 31, 2006

perhaps because it felt like my "new year" began when i left canada on july 31, exactly 5 months ago, i arrived in the beach party capital of india this afternoon with little more than a slight gust of exhaustion.

i overcame my instinct to hide in my room and walked down the beach while the sun was setting. the beach was packed where i entered it, mostly with indians. i was beset by young indian men wanting me to rent bikes, jet skis and a para-sailing experience. i walked as far down the beach as possible and smiled alot at the unfamiliar way in which indian families enjoy a day at the beach. on the way back, i spotted a clump of human feces in the sand.

but the sun setting beyond the arabian sea and the few fishing boats floating just offshore was spectacular.

colva beach is in south goa, close to margao, from where i hope to catch a train to hampi on wednesday (jan 3). yes, i already can't wait to get out of here. way too many people on the weirdest night of the year. as part of the package i purchased through the travel agent in delhi, i was compelled to pay 2000 rupees (about $50) for a NYE bash at the Hotel Silver Sands Beach Resort.

i want to hide in my room. instead, i'm hiding in an internet cafe. it's now 6:45pm. the festivities start anywhere between 8 and 9pm. really. what was i thinking? if i knew (and trusted) anyone here, i'd be seeking out a psy-trance beach party, but i think they tend to occur in north goa. just as well.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE!

pushkar, rajasthan - december 26, 2006

weird things happen in india.

truly.

like oddly grand hotels on the edge of Pushkar, where i arrived about 2 hours ago from Jaipur. i did not expect the luxury of the Hotel Master Paradise given the relative shabbiness of the Hotel Residency Inn that i found myself holed up in in Jaipur last night (that would be christmas night, btw).

Pushkar is the site of a lake created by Brahma and literally means "flower hand", meaning that it was created when Brahma dropped from his hand a lotus (one of of three) on the desert floor and up sprang (sprung?) a lake. Pushkar is home to the only temple to Brahma in the world. within the holarchy of the non-dual, transcendent, immanent, transpersonal, universal infinity of Brahman, the Hindu trinity, or Trimurti, of Brahma (creative force), Vishnu (preserving force) and Shiva (destructive force) has captured my attention and a good deal of my spiritual interest in the last two years. i really had no intention of coming to Pushkar. it just kind of happened. and tomorrow morning, a brahmin priest (pandit) will perform a puja for my dead parents. somehow when the subject came up yesterday while driving between Agra and Jaipur, i experienced only a moment's hesitation before saying "yes, i'd like a puja performed for my parents". of course, there will be a cost. it costs a Hindu family to have a pandit perform the puja. and if there's something in it for my driver, Ashok Kr. Gautam (!), who's been wonderful, so be it. he has 3 daughters to marry off. very expensive in this culture.

anyway. here i am in this gorgeous Hindu pilgrimage site, on the eve of a puja for my parents with a brahmin priest, after which, i will enjoy a 2-hour camel ride in this afghanistan-meets-okanagan environment.

stupefying.

and despite the hordes of (mostly indian) tourists and the hour-long queue on christmas eve day, the Taj Mahal is truly breathtaking. it was unfortunate that time prevented us from visiting Agra Fort, but we were able to be at the Taj while the sun set.

magnificent.

(by "we" i mean me and The World's Cutest Guide Ever, Pawan Singh--aka Nick--a 22-year-old dynamo studying spanish at delhi university in order to find a niche acting a s a guide for the spanish and south american market. i learned a great deal about the importance of succeeding at what you want to do. ahem. and, yes. yet another crush.)

with the help of the owner of the Hotel Residency Inn last night when i called home to convey my holiday greetings and then tried to make a hotel booking for december 28-31, i now have a reservation at the Hotel Classic in Aurangabad. this task required two calls to Aurangabad, which prompted the owner to ask why i was going there since not many tourists do. in turn, the older gentleman who had checked me in asked if i was a writer, and smiled, and when i waffled, he said "you're lucky", by which i understood him to mean that i am lucky to be a writer. this is the second time in india (the first being in a shop in Chennai) when i have been identified as a writer by an indian who seems to know something i don't.

i wasn't going to tell this story or mention Chennai, but after arriving in Pushkar, etc.--see above re the puja for the parents--i'm beginning to have a different experience of....something. i'm not sure what that is.

back to our main story.....

when i had to call the Hotel Classic back because (a) the connection was crackling and (b) i had trouble deciphering the accent of the clerk underneath the crackling, the owner came to my rescue, communicated my needs, obtained the tariff information for me and the hotel's bank account information, into which i was to desposit 1000 rupees. the owner even filled out the deposit slip for me, which he oddly had on hand. "the bank will open tomorrow morning at 9am," he told me. although i pondered the possibility that this was some scam to bilk me out of 1000 rupees, it occurred to me that the reputation of the hotel would be worth more than that, especially when in return for the favour, the owner asked for a favourable recommendation to Lonely Planet. once again, i trusted that i wasn't being led astray.

when Ashok arrived at 8am to pick me up for the day's sightseeing in Jaipur (Hawa Mahal or "Palace of Winds", Amber Fort and Jantar Mantar), he nervously asked if it was ok to take care of some business: he needed to deposit some money into his account in order for his wife to pay his cell phone bill or his service would end today. guess where he needed to make the deposit? yep. at the very same bank (ICICI) where i needed to make my deposit for the Hotel Classic, so no special trip was needed for me AND the bank was already open at 8am. in fact, Ashok took care of both pieces of banking business and provided me with the receipt i need once i get to Aurangabad and check into the hotel. he also allowed me to call the hotel on his cell to confirm the details of my arrival and the deposit of the money.

brilliant.

almost at Pushkar, Ashok (whose father is buddhist and mother is hindu), remarked on one of his favourite songs, which he began to talk about by explaining the three words of the title, Satyam Sivam Sundaram. when i remarked that one of my favourite songs at home (in fact, it's on my iPod) bears the same title, he played it for me.

same song. different singer. same song.

i feel right.

but weird things happen in india.

itinerancy - december 23, 2006

two posts in two days. my relationship with this blog is becoming orgiastic.

however, it's been a very action-packed day, filled with preferences, planning and patience.

with the extraordinary effort and cleverness of Guman Singh, of Capital City Travels & Tours at the Hotel Ajanta, i've organized my itinerary for the next couple of weeks and it goes something like this:


The Golden Triangle(+) Road Trip:

December 24: Delhi to Agra, Uttar Pradesh (yes, i will spend christmas eve at the Taj Mahal, a muslim monument to lost love)

December 25: Agra to Jaipur, Rajasthan (so my dream of spending christmas in Rajasthan is realized, not just anywhere, but in the capital, the so-called Pink City *giggle*)

December 26: Jaipur to Pushkar, Rajasthan (Pushkar would be the "+")

December 27: Pushkar to Jaipur (morning camel ride, narrowly missing both christmas and boxing days. oh well, my aim was a little shakey)


Spellunking in Maharashtra:

December 28: Jaipur to Aurangabad, Maharashtra (via Mumbai)

December 29-30: Ellora and/or Ajanta Caves


Goa-ing, Goa-ing, Gone:

December 31: Aurangabad to Goa via Mumbai (ahem, yes, well, after all of my more or less internal "i have no intention of visiting Goa," not only am i going to Goa, i will be celebrating NYE there. how this happened has more to do with the logistics of the next two pieces than anything else, but i admire the forces that have pulled this wriggling rabbit out of the parapatetic hat,)

January 1-2: recovering (hehe) on the beach in Goa

January 3-5: Hampi (my first train trip...from Goa...and back...yikes. but at least i can amuse myself with the pronunciation of the destination, which is close to "humpy")

January 6: Goa to Thiruvananthapuram aka Trivandrum, Kerala

here the details become fuzzy, as well they should. i hope to meet two of the women i was travelling with through india on the child haven caravan, since they will be at the ashram of "the hugging saint", Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, otherwise know simply as Amma. i don't know whether i will join them in the ashram or not, but i've been looking forward just to being in south india for quite awhile. by the time i arrive, i'll have only just over one month left on my india visa and i think i'll be ready to plant myself in Kerala for a week or so.

i'm off.

but then, all of you knew that.

thank you for playing.

namaskahr

(btw, rod is about 3 days ahead of me, assuming he got out of kathmandu on the day of the bandh [general strike] on december 19)

on my own (again for the first time): paharganj, delhi - december 22, 2006

i've been in delhi for 3 days. about 2 hours ago, i sent bonniema off the to airport to fly back to canada. i can't believe she does this four times a year. she's unstoppable and apparently inexhaustible.

unlike me.

i stop. i exhaust. rinse. repeat.

it's late (for me: see stop, exhaust, etc.): 10:23pm Dec 22. i was staying at the YMCA with bonnie for the last 2 nights. the irregular lumps of fluffy cotton batting-like material in the front gardens nicely set off the cardboard santas, jesus, mary and joseph, but i found the xmas lights a little too baroque. but then, this is india.

now i'm at the Hotel Ajanta in the chaotic district of Paharganj (thank you grant robinson, whoever you are), which in some ways resembles Thamel in Kathmandu. but it's india. (see also this take on the chaos. oh and this one, too.)

i'm going to speak to the hotel's inhouse travel agency tomorrow morning about getting to the Taj Mahal in Agra and to Jaipur. i'll think about whether i want to go further into Rajasthan, or save some time for Hampi in Maharashtra before heading much further south to Kerala. i have to remind myself not to rush the evolution of preference. it unfolds in extra dimensions outside of the usual spacetime continuum.

sidenote oddity: i said au revoir to my Danish friend, Mie, in Boudha on December 19 (remember her? we met at Kopan. she of the once-beautiful, full head of long, blonde dreds, now-beautiful with one dred and a shaved head). she was leaving for Denmark and the next segment of her journey--a 6-month course to qualify for a 6-year art program at the most prestigious art academy in Denmark. i suggested NASCAD as an alternative. :o) anyway....apart from sharing a tendency toward compulsive thinking (who me? what?), we've also both experienced flashes of homelessness, what Mie characterized in her lovely Danglish as "sort of a picture, with a feeling". yes. perfect. neither of us can explain our individual experiences of this peculiar phenomenon, nor the fact that we've both had it.

ok, actually, that's not just a sidenote, but i'm rinsing and repeating, so that means i should go to bed. now. full stop.

in the event, or the meantime, whichever comes first: may all of your holidays be filled with clown noses, polka dot fritters and the occasional gulab jamun.

ps: why do people--including me--lapse into patent falsehood as rhetorical flourish, e.g "i can't wait to [whatever]"? because, like, clearly i can. clearly i will.

clearly i must.

"when you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music....work is love made visible"

-- The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran

last days - december 19, 2006

it would have been my mother's 74th birthday on december 17 and my parents' 48th wedding anniversay on december 18. on december 30, my father would turn 75. in the middle of that is the so-called holiday. i called home yesterday, where my family is. mike was characteristically off his nut; jesse was characteristically cooking 5 dishes for 12 people (it being sunday in calgary); mom was sick and could barely speak, but characteristically gushed about her 3-second "spot" on some kind of "connection line" (i think) for adam & eve's exotic boutique; gaelyn told me that she had bought me a christmas gift, characteristically, but that mom had told her she'd have to give it to me in march when i come home. i hate crying in public telephone establishments.

it's sometimes comforting, being in character.

so i'm back to being scared out of my gourd by the idea of being alone in india, which mostly manifests in relation to anticipated train/bus journeys if i want to get to some interesting out of the way places. securing my belongings is a puzzle that leaves me gasping for air and longing for home. travelling with someone would be much more comfortable. however, since this is an experiential learning environment, in which the goal is to develop a facility for joyful discomfort, a companion would, i suppose, result only in a waste of the tuition fees.

i'm riding out my last day nepal as best i can.

i left Boudha at 10am to go to Thamel (the tourist district of Kathmandu). i left with Bahadur, my trekking guide. there was some mention of a strike, which usually has meant a short slowdown in the availability of transportation. the "from 10am until 4pm" didn't register as potentially problematic. we got to Thamel. there were burning tires and most of the stores were closed. within 1/2 hour just about all of them were closed. Bahadur said i was stuck there until 4pm when the strike is over. i contemplated 6 hours in Thamel with nothing to do but wander the weirdly empty laneways. nope. not today. so we found a bicycle rickshaw-wallah who was willing to pull me all the way back to Boudha (about 1/2 hour ride). some of it was so steep that i got out and helped him push-pull the device up the hills. eventually, we were stopped by the maoists, well short of my destination. he'd offerred to take me all the way for 200 rupees. i gave him 500 (about $8). his name is Kaji.

there will be demontstrations and strikes over the next several months as nepal adjusts to a new, and new form, of government.

i walked the rest of the way to Boudha along the wide, empty road lined with closed metal roll-shuttered shops. in the absence of carnival-like traffic, i consumed the billboards, e.g. "success is demanding. success is good fun"--this copy for sandpiper [whiskey? rum? something alcoholic] overtop a greenish-blue photograph of a nepali man on the front of a speedboat [nepal being one of the poorest countries on the planet], his arms being separately tugged by two nepali women, a third snapping a photograph.

success is, indeed, very demanding.

lhasa apso facto - december 15, 2006

i finally got out for some real experience of this strange and beautiful city today, accompanied by my latest mate, Prakisha, a young Nepali woman who has lived in Scarborough since she was 10. she joined up with the Child Haven Travelling Caravan in Bangladesh, where she had been volunteering in the home there since october 18.

our day started with a visit into the true heart of old Lhasa, into the Jokhang, surrounded--sometimes overwhelmed--by pilgrims bearing lamps and urns of butter to keep the many chapels lit and filled with yak butter soot, breathing ancient faith. i somehow found the courage to offer three from-standing-to-hands-and-knees prostrations before entering the temple. surrounded and stared at by people of such deep and almost impenetrable faith was a moment of true wonder for me, but it was really for Lungre and Sonam. i have felt their presence constantly here.

we tried to visit the Dropenling Handicraft Development Center, part of the Tibet Artisan Initiative, deep in the maze of streets and lanes of old Lhasa, but arrived to find a notice on the door advising us that it is closed for the "winter" season. i had hoped to support the initiative, but will settle for encouraging anyone reading this to check it out if you're ever in Lhasa. (i consoled myself by finding a gift...for someone...made by the Tibet Association for the Deaf.)

in the afternoon, for more comprehensive exterior photo-ops, we revisited The Potala, which ranks as the most photogenic architectural monument i've yet encountered. there may be others lurking in other, non-euclidian corners of the globe. i don't know if i could cope with the wonder.

Prakisha was craving french fries, so we ducked into a Dicos, sort of a Chinese amalgam of KFC and Macdonald's. i saved my container. you'll all understand why when you see it. (i couldn't find a link to their webpage, but i've got a photo....and a fry container.)

i'm a bit anxious about returning to kathmandu tomorrow. it still crackles with the scent of failure and it also means i have only a few days to make some more concrete plans for india. as The Reluctant Planner, i feel queasy. in any event, if we can change our tickets, Bonnie has asked me to fly to delhi with her on december 20 rather than december 21 since she has more work to do there. so my solo journey will truly begin on december 22. i'm still hoping to be in Rajasthan for christmas, though i may not get as far as Jaisalmer and a camel trek.

it's my last day in lhasa. the contrast between the old, convoluted, true city and the crisp, almost harsh, linear metropolis surrounding the heart is bewildering. this visit has been essential.

tashi deleg

Lhasa - december 9, 2006

on the one hour flight from kathmandu to lhasa this morning, i was blessed by incredible views of everest, from just about all angles (hi rod!!). that was an unexpected treat.

i'm adjusting to the altitude (approximately 3600m). we ascend to 5000m to visit the village of the child haven home. i'm not sure when that's happening, but i've given up trying to understand why, when and how things happen. they just do. somehow.

we're staying at the Snowland Hotel near the heart of old lhasa, though the influence of the chinese presence is everywhere, with new buildings and roads. the profusion of shops and hawkers is incomprehensible, but there's a different feel to this city, with it's wide, clean streets, than there is to kathmandu. it's much more at ease. we're very close to the Jokhang Temple, sometimes called the "spiritual centre of Tibet". (if i could get wikipedia to work, i'd link that, but this connection is very dodgy.)

i'm off to rest. just a quick note to say hello from Tibet.

chittagong (or birthdays in bangladesh) - december 1, 2006

THANK YOU THANK YOU to EVERYONE who sent birthday greetings!!

this is my first access to the 'net since my last post from the mumbai airport. since then, i've been to Hyderabad in Andra Pradesh, Chennai and Kaliyampoondi in Tamil Nadu, back to Mumbai, Pen and Savarsai in Maharashtra, have flown threw Kolkata en route to Dhaka, Bangladesh on my birthday and am now in a really cool cafe in Chittagong. i'm wearing a lungi, the most popular, lower body attire for men in this country.

yes. i'm wearing a skirt in public. i plan to continue the practice at home in the summer months. these puppies are WAY to comfortable and WAY to sexy, especially on the regally thin, dark men who sail like parades of living flags up and down the streetsides of this weirdly vibrant city. the traffic is even more insane than Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai or Kathmandu. it is, however, less polluted than Mumbai, whose brown sky stretches for miles upwards and outwards well into the countryside. imagine children growing up never knowing what a blue sky is.

anyway, the colours of Bangladesh have captivated me, from the brilliant variety of saris and salwar kameez of the women to the lungis and punjabi suits of the men and to the buses (pink, green, blue). the word "igloo" is used alot here. the Gelateria Igloo is just up the street from this cafe.

because of one of the frequent planned strikes that occur here, similar to those in Kathmandu, we have to carefully schedule our exit (by air) from Chittagong back to Dhaka on the morning of December 4 to be able to return to Kathmandu on December 5. it adds another level of brilliant uncertainty to this incredibly insane journey. i'm learning to accept things as they come in a way that i never dreamed possible at home. and everything seems to work out. especially once i figured out how to tie the lungi properly. :o)

and don't get me started on all of my little crushes. this trip has completely exploded my previous aesthetic.

now it's off for ice cream and a little shopping.

(there were links to all kinds of things in this post that got lost in one of the saves. i encourage you to wikipedia "lungi")