Excerpt from the latest travels around the world… Spring 2006 (circa May 17)

Hello

I guess I finished my last rushed message in a dramatic way with ‘another story’, but it is funny. I was in the Leh airport at 5 AM and struck up conversation with a couple next to me. The woman Deborah from Australia and Naz, an Indian man, who I thought, from his accent was from the UK. I proceeded to give them advice on survival skills in crazy Delhi… how to deal with the lame ass taxi drivers, the touts, the travel agents and other things. Naz listened attentively, and then introduced himself as a travel agent in Delhi. We had a good laugh and he agreed with my advice. Naz was intent on changing my opinion of smelly Delhi. They coincidentally sat in the same row as me on the plane. Naz took me into Delhi from the airport in his private car. Booked me in a reasonably priced room that is far nicer than any I have stayed in Delhi, for three nights, at a third of the cost of the last room at the Connaught, had his driver give Deborah and I a free tour of the sights in Delhi and arranged a reasonably priced ride with his driver the following day to the Taj Mahal and Fahtepur Sikri in Agra… plus a free ride back to the airport. I guess I amused him. My stay here has been pampered and relatively luxurious, a giant contrast to my prior experiences here. A Kashmiri, he made me promise that I would visit Srinagar on my next visit, with his travel agency… and I will. He took such a liking to Deborah that he went to Leh with her… no strings attached… a great guy.

The tour around Delhi took us to many sights, some of which I have been to before. The Red Fort was closed for Monday but still impressive from the outside. We visited Jama Masjid, the largest mosque in all of India. It was 43 degress celsius and oppressively hot, especially to be in Old Delhi. It is so chaotic and filthy dirty there… overwhelming poverty and misery everywhere. Crossing the street you dodge a strange array of vehicles and farm equipment, donkeys, and cows. We walked down the main drag leading to the mosque passing what seemed like dozens of staring faces at any given time. A flea market of garish children’s clothes, shoes, small kiddie pools filled with watches, mystery foods and plastic crap. Deborah tried to keep her face and hair covered but still we were stared at every step of the way. Deformed people, lepers reaching out. Upon reaching the stairs of the giant mosque you pass through a metal detector and police look through your bag as there has recently been terrorist attacks there by Hindu extremists… going up the stairs we soon had about twenty men gathered around just staring at us from about two feet away. A small mentally retarded man stood inches away from me staring vacantly. It was as if a spaceship had landed and aliens had gotten out in front of the mosque…we hung around for a while until it just got too intense with the heat and all

The following day, the driver picked me up early for the ride to Agra and the Taj Mahal…Delhi is relatively cool and pleasant in the early morning and we got out of the city limits before the morning traffic got too intense…the road to Agra is chaotic by Western standards with cars and trucks sharing the road with camels, cattle, herds of sheep, people pushing huge loads of god knows what..rickshaws packed with a dozen people….motorcycles and scooters, sometimes with whole families on board….we weaved through the mess as Sonil said, ‘driving in India is sooo silly’ it is indeed silly…we reached Agra after a few hours and picked up the guide Naz set up for me for the Taj Mahal….my guide seemed to be thoroughly sick of the Taj as he droned on about the place…king this, queen that…I almost laughed as he totally unenthusiastically proclaimed ‘yes, welcome to the 7th wonder of the world’. Most people rave about the Taj, much as they do about the Grand Canyon and other wonders…they say as you pass the main gate to view it, that it is supposed to appear two dimensional with nothing behind to obstruct or take away from the view…like a photo…and that is just how it appears…I have to say that the Taj didn’t blow me away…it was just like seeing a photo and I was over it in a matter of minutes….I was more interested in the plants and birds there…checking out some beautiful birds as my guide droned on…they said in Agra that it was 47 degrees celsius that day and it was so hot that it was unbelievable…one of two occasions I can think of when I have experienced this kind of heat…it was killing me…then we went inside to see the tombs of the king and queen and someone lifted my camera out of my bag…the camera had served me well over the past few years but it was no loss…the Taj Mahal also appeared a lot smaller than I was expecting…maybe I’m lame…

We then drove through the chaos that is Agra towards Fahtepur Sikri….I had the option to stay in Agra but declined as it is infamous for a scam where they poison you in a restaurant or hotel and then send you to a fake hospital where they keep you ill while charging your insurance company thousands of dollars…a couple of Irish kids died a few years ago in Varanasi due to a similar scheme….Uttar Pradesh is a bit dangerous…people can be seen carrying firearms and apparently they use them against one another from time to time….Fahtepur Sikri is an amazing complex of red sandstone Islamic architecture and I thought that it was more impressive than the Taj in some ways…unfortunately, I was one of the only tourists there, due to the heat I imagine, and the fake guides never left me alone…they hide in the dark corridors of the place and just pop out at you…it is more than a little creepy and I felt slightly unsafe wandering around some parts of the place…touts try to wave your car down as you drive up to the place as if they were policemen…Sonil said..’Fahtepur Sikri is such a silly place…sooo silly’ and he is right…we left and drove through some unbelievably poor villages to take a short cut to the main highway…mud huts, straw huts and tents made out of scraps of plastic…we were listening to the Carpenters in the air conditioning as we passed through…the thought of us getting a flat tire passing through these places as we dipped into huge potholes scared me…I would die, I thought, without the airconditioning in the time it would take to replace the tire…and what if he didn’t have one? The people stared into the car at me and most of them didn’t smile…just stared..while the soothing sounds of the Carpenters played on….we stopped at a filthy town off of the highway on the way to Delhi for a cup of tea and a man came up with a small bear…he said ‘tourist bear..for picture’ drooling with all of its teeth removed it was a sad sight…it made me mad…boys came up with similarly abused macaques and the monkeys absurdly jumped up and down on the defeated bear as we sat there covered in flies in the dilapidated cafe….a monsoon wind blew in out of nowhere and the torrential rain drove away the sad circus…it had been 12 hours of mostly driving as we reached Delhi and its rush hour traffic…the smells of sewage filled the car as we passed encampments of people living next to the cess pool with hogs wallowing in it…I can’t imagine how these people can deal with this…I guess you can get used to anything…my driver busted out the first Red Hot Chilli Peppers album…I hadn’t heard it in 15 years or so…and we rocked to it passing through the mayhem…when I reached my hotel, I was a shell of a human being and laid there watching the French Open on tv…my last day is today and the only one where I am unhealthy…just in time for the epic plane ride home….I think that the intense heat just upset my system…I hope…I leave tomorrow…thanks to everyone who sent me an e-mail as it gets lonely out here sometimes

Thanks,

Brian

Excerpt from the latest travels around the world… Spring 2006 (circa May 29)

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Hello

My next trip into the back country of Ladakh was amazing. We set off into another area near the Pakistani border and apparently the Pakistanis recently invaded the area of Kargil not too long ago and we were very close to there at one point of the journey. India and Pakistan are currently arguing over this recent breach in their current peace process and it is all over the news here, now that I am in Delhi..outside of Leh.

We passed the confluence of the Zanskar and Indus rivers creating sometimes fierce grey colored rapids, then a magnetic mountain that caused problems in the car’s electrical system. Planes cannot fly over it…strange. We first visited Likir monastery that was perhaps the most beautiful I have seen in Ladakh… a giant gilded Buudha statue is perched on the side of the complex with massive snow capped peaks in the background…just amazing. Then on to Alchi…a 10th century monastery constructed in the shape of a mandala and the only gonpa in Ladakh that is not perched on some high cliffside. The Buddhist paintings and sculpture in this place are the oldest and most stunning I have ever seen. It is set in a fertile valley filled with apricot trees and fields of yellow mustard greens. The green blazes in contrast to the desert mountain surroundings.

We then drove through Bagso, the former capital of Ladakh and its crumbling gonpa. Alongside was the raging Indus river, finally reaching the Lamayuru area, winding up some more dangerous and windy roads. The scenery became intense. I would compare it to the Grand Canyon if you were to drive along the Colorado River at its base… strange rock formations and green, yellow, red, purple crumbling scree. As we approached this ancient monastery the mountains turn a sulphuric yellow set against the high peaks… a very dramatic setting for this 10th century monastery.

There were no other visitors this day and I was allowed to stay in a guest house next to the monastery. The only guest, I hung out with the monks and watched them practice mask dancing in their courtyard. They let me witness a couple of their rituals and the morning puja. I drank butter tea with them dumping spoon fulls of barley flour in for a porridge breakfast My room was literally next to the monastery and the view from up there at 12,000 feet or so, was unbelievable… so quiet and peaceful at night. It was almost a little creepy. It was just so silent with occasional howling winds. The next morning we drove for hours off the tourist map to the Aryan valley to visit the Caucasians that moved to this region hundreds of years ago. Hitler sought these people out as the pure Aryans, looking for them in Tibet. Sending Heinrich Herrer to explore the region which the film ‘Seven Years In Tibet’ is based on. Hitler’s fascination with the occult made him believe that there were secret chiefs in the Tibetan plateau as believed by H.P. Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society… and perhaps these were the Aryans, in his mind… a convoluted and strange set of beliefs Hitler had.

The Aryans live in warm valley made humid by the surrounding peaks and they indeed look caucasian but darkened by the Ladakhi sunshine. The women still wear the flowering hats with old coins and beads attached but the men and children are embarassed by their heritage and wear Western clothes. A family invited us in to their stone and earthen home… a pig carcass stuffed with curd hung from the ceiling… no tv… no radio… and really no knowledge of the outside world. I told them I was from the USA and they seemed to have no idea about what that was. My guide said they didn’t. Apparently, some Germans still seek the Aryans out occasionally to attempt to take home the seed of the pure race. There are many stories… we hung around for a while and the family just stared at me strangely and spoke in their unique dialect amongst themselves as I ate the almonds and tea they offered me. The kids stared and nervously laughed at me and had me try the flowery hats on. The ride home was very long… 7 hours or so back to Leh for some evening visits to the Leh gonpa and other local sights. I can’t type anymore as this keyboard it is in a pull out drawer and is killing me… only two days left here in Delhi. Tomorrow I finally see the Taj Mahal…another story

Brian

Excerpt from the latest travels around the world… Spring 2006 (circa May 26)

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Hello

Ladakh has been great and despite being a part of India it really is as though modernity as barely touched this place…unlike Bhutan, nobody knows who Eminem is…my guide had never heard of Las Vegas and he is a hotel owner…things have been getting worse over in Srinigar and it is strange to be so close to a place where buses are being blown up and Hindus killed on the streets…in Leh, where it is 80% Buddhist and the Muslims are friendly, it seems far away…I visited a few gonpas (monasteries) around the Leh area and the most impressive was Thiksey gonpa…a grand complex of the Tibetan/Ladakhi structures that if you have never seen this form of architecture, somewhat resembles adobe but white washed and often with Buddhist symbols painted on….the landscape is a moonscape, not unlike that of Nevada with the exception of the Indus Valley, a powerful green contrast of marshlands, willow and poplar trees…the monasteries in Ladakh are all ancient and most have the same artwork painted inside the temples that existed in the 16th century…

I spent two days in the remote Nubra Valley…you have to receive special permission from the Indian government to enter as you are very close to the Pakistani border and there are checkpoints and army barracks here and there…to get there you have to take an incredibly windy road with sheer drops of hundreds of feet…the twisted wreckage of trucks and cars could be seen at the bottom of some of these valleys, one sun bleached chunk of metal that used to be a van, carried a group of American doctors and fell over the side about ten years ago and nobody survived…this is the highest motorable road in the world and at the top of Khardung la pass the elevation is 18,350 feet…even coming from Breckenridge, walking around up there was a challenge…I walked up the snow for about 150 feet or so and visited the highest Buddhist temple….I imagine…in the world…a tiny little room with tattered prayer flags flying all around, a single monk sat chanting and playing a ceremonial drum….the views from up there were spectacular….then a ride down, down, down…into the Nubra Valley where the scenery changes to more of a Mars-scape…I guess, with garnet colored peaks and yellow colored streams disappearing into green patches of seabuckthorn and willows with yaks grazing…we (my guide, driver and I) drove for hours in this beautiful terrain before reaching the small town of Diskit…I was hanging on to my seat at points along the way…the road is essentially a car width and a half and the cars and trucks just beep the horn constantly as they go around each blind curve…in Bhutan it was like this, but the people drive mellow…this is India and the people are insane!…a couple of times we came less than a couple of inches from slamming some oncoming truck…psychedelically painted with Hindu symbols…signs on the road every now and then say things like ‘Without geography we would be nowhere’–Jimmy Buffett ( who, by the way, I hate )…or ‘Love Thy Neighbor—But Not While Driving’..’Stop gossiping and let the man drive’…funny things like that and there was a quote by Eric Hoffer which I thought was a strange coincidence as I have one of his books in my bag….Diskit was pleasant but there was not much going on to say the least…I guess, I was what was happening in the town that day….people really stared at me.. the lone tourist….but in a nice way…we visited the Diskit gonpa and it was another unbelievably impressive structure built right into the side of a cliff…there was a statue in one of the temples of the White Makhala, a protector deity that is rather fierce looking and it had a mummified human hand and skull displayed in its hands that date back to the days of the Mongol invasion of the area….the following day we visited Hunder, which is the end of the line for visitors…this is where the Karakoram and the Himalayan ranges meet and it is quite amazing there…the head lama of the monastery was not there but we walked around the grounds of the structure…expanding out into the Nubra Valley from Hunder are white sand dunes where Bactrian camels (the two humped ones) can be seen, they were once used for the spice trade with nearby Turkmenistan….now tourists can ride the hairy beasts around…so I did…this is perhaps the only truly touristy thing I have done on this trip, but I had to get on one of the beasts, and it was nice to get out into the dunes and it was just me..the Bactrian don’t hurt the groin area quite as much as the Dromedary, I was pleased to find out…watching sand storms blow beneath massive snow covered peaks was an amazing experience…really my experience there for two nights and three days is too much to tell in an e-mail…I am sorry if I sound rushed but the power goes off here in Leh all of the time and pretty much is done with by around dinner time each day for some reason….it is an exciting walk home from the town center to my hotel….you wonder, is that black thing a person or a small cow walking up the street?….maybe a donkey…tomorrow I head out into the hinterlands again but in another direction..towards the Zanskar range and the place where the people with the flowery hats live…it turns out they are the Aryans….yes, the ones Hitler was looking for when he sent the Nazis to Tibet to find the pure white race…they live here in Ladakh and came here centuries ago from Europe and ironically they look a bit like Jews…we will be going to visit their village and hopefully I will be able to get one of those funky hats….more on the Aryans later

Brian