I was awake by 6:30. I made a pot of tea, collected my art supplies, sat on my balcony and watched the hazy horizon where the sun was still tucked away, readying myself to do some artwork. With each passing moment, a new kite fluttered its way higher into the sky, brought to life with the flapping of insect-like motions, orchestrated by the poised fingers of the early-risers of my neighbourhood. By time the sun rays had cut through the dust, thousands of kites hovered in every remote corner of the skyline and cheers of success were howled from the rooftops. 90’s pop ballads blared from parked cars, and children ran down each twist of the road following the falling kites as their fluttered to the earth. Soon, the power lines were blanketed and the trees peppered with the multicoloured paper and shimmering tinsel of downed kites. This was Uttarayan, the most beloved day of the year in Gujarat. I soon understood why.
Uttarayan is the two-day kite festival held mid-January, celebrating the sun’s northern path on the celestial sphere. The kites are flown during these auspicious days because the wind changes directions, corresponding to the lengthening of the days and the coming spring. Uttarayan is a time to celebrate future prosperity and a chance for new beginnings. Unlike most holidays in India, there is little to no mythology involved. It is simply a time for young and old to gather together, eat special dishes and fly kites. It reminded me of Halloween in the sense that as a holiday, it lacked or had lost any tangible religious beginnings, and instead, revolved around simply having fun and the pursuit of sweets. There seemed to be few rituals or rules, just fly your kite for as long as possible.
At busy intersections make-shift stands sprouted up selling spools of hand-prepared string laced with purple dye and powdered glass, packages of kites, tape to wrap fingers and every other accessory a kite-fighter might so desire. Sameer and I were feeling rather ambitious and we picked up 20 kites, two spools of string, tape and then we took to his rooftop terrace ready to test our luck. As it turns out, kite-fighting is really difficult. I couldn’t even get my kite into the sky by myself, let alone fight it. It was embarrassing, especially when I saw preschoolers far more adept in kite-flying than I. Every Gujarati kid learns how to fly kites when they are old enough to stand. There are tricks of finesse to which I still remain oblivious. From what I could gather, it’s all about trying to outwit the cunning of neighbours, coercing the kites higher and higher, and drawing the line tighter in attack before letting the line loose in defence. Everyone made it all look so simple. But unfortunately, the winds were not cooperating for the festival. By mid-afternoon there was little to no wind and even the seasoned-professionals were struggling to keep the kites airborne. We took the opportunity and retired to his apartment to eat samosas and other specialty foods and nurse our battered egos. My favourite part of the festival was still yet to some.
Once dusk fell, a cacophony of fireworks burst in every direction as if the city were a warzone. Families huddled together against the cool night breeze, telling stories, sharing sweets and watching the slowly ascending sky lanterns rise through the sulphur smoke like glowing apparitions. Even getting the lanterns to rise properly was a skill, but luckily Sameer had had some experience from Uttarayans past and he knew the procedure.
What I’ve come to realize is festivals like Uttarayan would not be possible in Canada. There would be too many rules against it, laws put in place as preventative measures against fire and pollution. There is definitely an argument to be made there because this was both a dangerous and environmentally destructive festival, but at the same time, because strict societal rules and laws in Canada, we often miss some of the magic only found in places like India where rules are often ignored and safety overlooked because having fun with the family is the prerogative.
This took me long enough. My little laptop has real difficulty processing HD. But it’s finished. I’ve got another on the way. It’ll be posted later this week.
I forgot to share the events of my last week in Nepal. After spending a delightful couple of lazy days with Angela, Helen and Sarah in Pokhara, I met up with Jurriaan and we headed westward towards Bardia National Park, one of the last remaining refuges of pristine Nepalese biodiversity.
I started the day before the sun had risen. Over a quick breakfast of tea and toast, my guide explained the dos and don’ts of the jungle; which turned out to be a guide on ways to narrowly avoid a painful death in the event of unexpectedly encountering one of many dangerous animals in the park. Prim, my guide, explained, if you find a rhino, run diagonally as fast as you can, climb up two meters into a tree, and wait. If you find a tiger, back away slowly, look it in the eyes and if it still comes towards you, smash your walking stick into the brush to frighten it. If you stumble upon an elephant, pray. You can’t run faster than a sprinting elephant. You can’t scare it away. You can’t climb a tree large enough which can’t be toppled with ease. These are the big three; the rhinos, elephants and tigers which everyone flocks here in hopes of seeing; the most dangerous of the bunch, excluding the cobras, sloth bears, crocodiles and leopards. With these parting words of council from Prim, I started my walk into the park.
This is about the time when the seriousness of my little jaunt into the jungle began to sink in. This walk in the forest was potentially life-threatening. People do get killed by startled rhinos, raging elephants and territorial tigers. Not regularly, but it does happen. Case and point, it happened the day before I arrived at Bardia National Park. As it turns out, a woman had been cutting elephant grass to repair her thatched roof when she startled a mother rhino with its a baby. With maternal instincts ablaze, the rhino charged the woman and gored her, not with its horn as might be expected, but instead, with its front tusk-like teeth. It was pretty grizzly stuff. Reading about Bardia National Park on the internet made it sound so great. It was a novelty. I smiled while thinking a place where one could go with a guide only equipped with a stick to see wild animals, some of which are ferocious, in some of the last protected pieces of natural habitat left in south Asia. Now that I was here, I felt much more nervous about what I was about to get myself into. This particular morning was misty and cold. Prim wasn’t too happy about it. I figured it was because it was going to make animal-sighting more difficult. This was true, but really, he was more concerned about animals not being able to see us. Rhinos have notoriously bad vision at the best of times, and the worst thing to happen is catching one off guard. After hearing the tales of danger and death I felt rather alert. Every twig that snapped and every bird call in the distance gave me chills of cold fright. We saw ghostly languors perched in the trees, sounding alarms as we neared. We sighted countless spotted deer gliding across the scraggy brush and grass disappearing in the grey veil of mist. I saw whole troupes of macaques making river crossings where the water was the shallowest. Then we visited watering holes well-known to my guide and every animals looking for a quick drink, but there wasn’t a member of big three anywhere to be found. As the hours passed and time after time, the sources of the breaking branches and howls were nothing but harmless herbivores, I found myself becoming desensitized to the pending danger lurking behind each tree. Then turning a bend in the path, Prim would spot a steaming pile of elephant feces and the trail of prints leading away. This was when reality rushed back to me. Oh yeah. This was not a zoo. I was on high alert again.
We followed the well-trodden trails carved out from the undergrowth by the elephants and rhinos. We meandered through the labyrinth of causeways cut into the ten-foot walls of swaying elephant grass. Prim was worried taking us through these paths because if an animal is feeding in the grass neither it nor us will discover each other until it’s too late. We opted for walking the cobble-stoned riverside. After hours of hiking, we came to rest at an elbow in the river. We took our bags off and unwrapped our pack lunches. This place was perfect for seeing animals because it was between two shallow points in the rivers. Prim said our chances were best from here. We ate in near silence and waited for nature to appear. From this vantage point we watched kingfishers dive and dart into the water retrieving minnows in their bills. We watched sambar deer wading waist-deep into the dark pools. And suddenly, Prim perked up and pointed frantically upstream. An Indian rhino stumbled down the river bank, stopped mid-river, took a leisurely drink before continuing across. He then climbed up the opposite bank and disappeared into the bushes. As quickly as it had come it had gone from sight again. Those twenty seconds were what so many people pay to experience. It was such a fleeting glimpse at an animal whose future is full of uncertainty. While people like Prim have grown up with these animals, respect and fear them, choosing to be nature guides, tracking these animals to provide photo-opportunities for tourists such as myself, many people are not like Prim. Many are driven to hunt these prehistoric animals with guns. Their body parts are prized by a thriving black market for oriental medicine or ornament and they offer opportunity for villagers to make income otherwise impossible for simple farmers. Nepal is doing a great job in trying to protect and expand the parks it has, realizing the role these animals have for a bustling tourist industry, but at the end of the day, acts of conservation are often trumped by the desperations of poverty and the temptations of wealthy offered by trafficking exotic animal parts. I feel so fortunate having seen these animals in the wild and I hope they don’t become just curios of zoos, aging relics awaiting the last of their numbers to dwindle and die out. The odds are against the big three, but I have hope that we as a species can leave expanses of habitat free from our influence, where animals can exist how they always have.
I’ve got to admit it; India’s really starting to grow on me. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t too convinced at first. Maybe it was just a rough start in account of my food-poisoning and the forty-plus hours of train travel, but now that I’m settled and working, I’m really starting to fall for India’s charm. I love the range of flavours in the food. I love waking up to pigeon’s cooing outside of my windows and morning Islamic prayers moaning in the distance. I love the way each person wobbles their head as an answer to nearly every question. I love the kids flying kites in the late afternoon and their cheers of joy when they cut the line of an opponent’s kite. I love the dogs who sleep on top of parked cars or perform great feats of acrobatics to climb atop 8-foot walls, like silent ninja assassins. I love the lazy languor basking in the sun, fluttering their eyebrows as they itch their protruding paunches. I love the peeling paint, the crumbling plaster and the coat of black moss which blankets every structure. I love shuttling around town in a rickshaw wondering how there are not more car accidents on roads with no traffic lights, stop signs, speed limits, crosswalks or general rules of road safety. These will be my memories of Ahmedabad; the sensations I’ll try to store away. This is home for the next month.
I’m working as a videographer/animator for a company called Sarvajal. I’ll save details of the company for another time. Instead I’ll mention some people. I work with a big team of dedicated, intelligent and creative people. Prachi has been a godsend. She’s really gone above and beyond to show me the ropes and make me feel welcome. I live with three guys, Ankit, Bala and Vijay. They are all a little crazy in their own idiosyncratic ways. They’ve made me feel right at home; They are really accommodating, especially Vijay, who took me out for New Years and drove me all around town to try new foods, look at sights and shop for some little necessities. Christmas wasn’t very festive, but nonetheless, it was as good as could be expected. At least I didn’t need to hear overplayed Christmas carols. I went to a buffet at the Marriot with Prachi, Sameer, Ankit, and I ate my weight in cheese and olives, watched a bollywood film and then watched some TED talks. It was a little lonely still and I did feel a world away from home. I guess I’m allowed those moments of sombre introspection from time to time. It think it’s healthy.
At work I spend all day on my laptop so my inspiration to write and edit photos after office hours is pretty minimal, but I will take more time to update my people on my whereabouts.
I hope you all had a lovely holiday season and hopefully I’ll be around next year to make up for a few years absence. I still owe some Nepalese stories, but I’ll save those for a better time.
India is an absolute brainfuck. I feel like no place could simply degrade to such a level of social disequilibrium by basis of negligence. It seems more likely that it was a conscious effort of demographers and nation-builders, hell-bent on constructing a place with as many impediments as possible to see how people would come to survive, persevere under such difficult circumstances, like a sociological experiment gone wrong; like a sociopathic teen-aged boy at the helms of a Simcity game. The amazing part about this disorder is that persevere India does, and persevere she shall for years and years to come. India ceases to quit. India is a tenacious beast, and history can’t beat her down.
I can barely wrap my brain around it all, understand how bizarre this place is, but I’ll try to illuminate a few key observations;
According to WHO, Seventy percent of Indian people still defecate outdoors, a statistic which seems shocking considering India has 1.2 billion people. I can believe it having lost count of the numbers of people I witnessed taking open-air shits on the tracks or nearby the railway stations or on the street side during my forty-plus hours of travel from the borderlands of Udder Pradesh to the Western state of Gujarat. Where else on Earth do mangy and flee-bitten cows wander down the main city streets, bringing traffic to a standstill as they lazily munch away at burning piles of multi-coloured plastic and garbage? No one asks the cows to leave. No one shoos them away. They are holy and they own the streets. Where else do obviously rabid dogs attack people in broad daylight, but no one, not even the woman who was attacked, raises an eyebrow or sounds an alarm or call of distress. Where else do trains fill to such a capacity that every square meter of space is colonized by muttering people, and even the bathroom stalls are deemed as appropriate places to enjoy the 10-hour plus journey by six or seven men. But the train-goers look at me as if I am foolish when I ask them to leave so I can take a piss in the only lavatory available? Where else on Earth does an ancient religious hierarchy totally dictate one’s ultimate station in life, totally justifying a life of the lowest sort of servitude or conversely, the highest status of social esteem? Everything is broken or in a perpetual state of disrepair, and no one seems to mind, like a nation of fatalists absolved to the fact their world is beyond repair. Almost everything is rusty or soggy or stained or putrid or peeling or dilapidated or overgrown or overcrowded or overstressed. Everyone seems to bear the burden of a half-century or more of misappropriation of funds from public coffers, and instead of worrying about things they can’t fix, most find a way to carve out an existence for themselves and their families in a world from which they’ve been exempt. I’ve passed through to my fair share of countries, seen my fair share of squalor, but nothing in my twenty-five years has prepared me for that which is India. It is a monstrously filthy and fascinating place, where linear history doesn’t exist, but instead, all of her human triumphs, toils and tears have continuously built on, in or around the crumbling narratives or cultures past, until history neither begins nor ends, but instead shimmers like dusty piles of broken glass shards.
This is where I’ll call home for the next couple months. Then, depending on whether or no India has broken my spirits, I’ll venture elsewhere. Perhaps Sri Lanka. Bangladesh. Myanmar. Or maybe Pakistan and overland to Europe. We’ll see which way the wind blows.
I have some stories left from Nepal, but I’ll save them for another time.
Merry early Christmas, everyone. Have a glass of eggnog on my behalf.
Kathmandu has its bustling back-alleys of dilapidated, ramshackle buildings, with chipped plaster, peeling paint, crooked doorways, crumbling foundations, adorned with once-immaculate wooden lattices tarnished by years of diesel fumes, termites and rain. Hindu shrines, splattered by years of crimson and marigold pigment and blemished by the white wax of countless candles sit at the intersections of most narrow road-sides. Street-vendors selling tangerines and over-ripe bananas declare the prices of their wares to passer-bys. Mustached men on great dented motorbikes weave through crowds of pedestrians blaring their horns to demand passage. Grubby cross-eyed children in greasy jackets and worn-out flip-flops huff glue from plastic bags before staggering about begging for alms with outstretched hands. Trekkers with three-week-old beards, sun-burnt skin and sunken eyes decompress and swap stories of misadventures while devouring warm meals in candle-lit restaurants. Steaming pots of dal and curry billows forth from the front doors of samosa shops, cinder block cubicles owned and operated by a family of six, welcoming you as you enter and ushering you to an empty bench. Men of only skin-and-bones lurk in the shadows, stepping into your ear-shot to ask in hushed tones, “Smoke hash?” This is the dizzying and dusty splendour of Kathmandu, a place of legend and lore; a place with a mysterious and far-reaching reputation; a place where history neither begins nor ends.
Crossing the mountain range separating the Kathmandu valley from the rest of the country, the anxiety and raucousness of Nepalese city life just melts away. The concrete sprawl is replaced by lushly forested hills, aquamarine rivers, golden terraced patties of rice, and best of all, looming above the horizon, the snow-capped peaks of the Annapurna mountain range float like percarious icebergs adrift in the waves of pale blue clouds . In the sleepy villages settled atop the mountain passes people live day by day, waking with the sun and sleeping with the moon, growing and raising all the sustenance they could need. Without falling too deeply into the romance of it all, it’s tough to imagine why anyone would want anything else from life.
We shared a family’s dal bhat (lentil soup, curry potatoes and rice) and drank glass-bottles of Coka-cola, staring slack-jawed and awe-struck at the pastoral beauty of the Nepalese countryside, uninterrupted by the cacophony of horns, engines and banter; instead, serenaded by dogs barking in the distance, chickens clucking and children laughing. Early sunsets paint the skies and darkness falls as fast as a drawn curtain. With a trained and patient eye, while waiting around the giant bodi trees, the fluorescence of fireflies hummed on and off like secret codes. We rode atop a jeep on the roof-racks through the visceral darkness beneath a starlit ceiling, yelling along at every passing vehicle with the jeep totes as they threw their cigarette butts into the black abyss, leaving great trails of sparks in our wake.
We trekked up and down the mountains beyond Besi Sahar, following ancient paths, and ascending winding staircases of rock-slabs shimmering from the talc contained within. We found, as if we were explorers of years long past, timeless Gurung villages only accessible by foot, greeted by wide-eyed and smiling children, snot-nosed but thoroughly polite. We said, “Namaste,” in greeting, pushing our hands together and nodding, to each person we encountered, and stopped to eat at any hut with a table poised outside. We drank tea in villagers’ courtyards as their pigeons cooed above our heads, and helped pick beans from bushels in exchange for their hospitality. For three days we wandered up and down these forested paths, stopping to scare away white-maned monkeys from eating harvested piles of drying rice, or to carry mounds of millet alongside dark and wiry old farmers, or just to stop for the night at an empty guesthouse as the sun slunk behind the hills, buying a room, a warm curry and a cold beer to wash it all down.
We took hours of bumpy local bus rides through sleeping villages and negotiated fares with young guys with slicked hair before finally reaching Pokhara, a city notorious for relaxation and recovery. With no further ado, it’s time to go see what this place has in store.
I was rocked to sleep on a train drifting across the dark deserts of Qinghai province. I awoke with my brain between a tightening vice and on the verge of throwing up. Despite my altitude sickness, I struggled to stand and moved to the window to watch the slow sunrise over the frozen lunar landscape of the Tibetan plateau. I watched the corners of the horizon change from a ghostly grey blue to a pastel orange. Eagles and ravens soared and swooped above the snow-freckled earth and grey foxes ran below, amidst the ashen dust and dun-coloured shrubs split up only by the vibrant azure of meandering rivers of silt. Prayer flags fluttered from every bridge or mountain pass, giving thanks to the forces of nature, the gods of protection or the gods of punishment who have the power to choose whom they give amnesty and those they forsake.
On arriving in Lhasa, my friends and I could barely muster the energy needed to carry our bags from the truck to our hostel and ascend the three flights of stairs to our room. Headaches raged and stomachs churned, but after a few hours and lots of warm water, the signs of altitude sickness eventually passed. Every street corner in Lhasa is occupied by five Chinese soldiers, most of which are fresh-faced, skittish-looking teenagers holding batons or readying rifles on their shoulders. This is the ends of the empire and they are paying their dues as young recruits. Patrols also routinely pass looking for disobedience. No one makes eye-contact. No one wants to make an excuse to be stopped, questioned or carded. Everyone pretends the military isn’t even present. It’s a difficult deception to perform, like a big nation-wide joke in which no one laughs.
Pilgrims of all walks of life, all shapes and sizes, follow a path, a cora, around the holy sites of Lhasa. Some have bulbous diseased noses, burgundy skin of leather, others have mysterious glinting tawny eyes staring out from face masks and head scarves. Some nervous looking farmers wear immaculate head-dresses and intricately designed braids. Some do the entire circuit by lowering themselves to their knees and placing their foreheads on the cold concrete every meter of the way. Some are carried along by loved ones, evidently ill and looking for relief from their suffering in the alms of the Past, Present and Future Buddha or the thousands of other deities and protection gods enshrined within the walls of the holy places. All have prayer beads in their hands and conviction in their eyes. Their faith is total, all-encompassing, effecting each action they make. Buddhism is visceral in Tibet. It has a heart-beat and a pulse. Some are grandparents who’ve witnessed and still remember their nation before it was “liberated” by the People’s Republic of China in 1959. Most are far two young and only know life under occupation. They all walk together in one great pulsating ring around the Potala Palace or Jokhang temple, murmuring their prayers and clicking one bead forward at the end of each prayer’s recital.
Be it within the Jokhang temples, the Sera monasteries or the majesty of the Potala Palace, while walking through the labyrinths of Tibetan buildings, it’s easy to become lost wandering the network of alleys, cul-de-sacs, staircases, courtyards and assembly-halls; these dusty rooms of colour and culture. In these mysterious realms lit by hanging bulbs of fluorescence and the warm glow of yak-butter candles, monks and pilgrims alike ebb and flo before statuettes and inscriptions praying for health and happiness. The air is thick with the sickly sweet smell of hot butter, incense and the sweat and tears of the devout. Light streams in through blown-glass windows, leaving hazy trails where disturbed dust and smoke from incense twirl and twist, illuminating rectangular patches of light on sacred images or statutes of religious icons indistinguishable to my ignorant eye. These are not museums. These are not tourist traps. These are active places of worship and I felt like a grateful intruder on some esoteric ritual.
Leaving Lhasa we headed west, following the valley of the mighty and sacred Bhamputra river, run off from the holy Mount Kailash. Traffic or military checkpoints sit in wait in every village along the Friendship Highway. These are routine annoyances for Tibetan drivers. Their movements monitored and timed.
The Tibetan countryside is covered by rust-red mountains with craggy ridges, jagged like the blades of broken knifes. These great red masses are deeply etched with dried stream beds like scars cut by curved Damascus blades. Upon the seasonally fertile flats between the hills and the rushing water men and boys tend to flocks of speckled sheep, which along with stray dogs and every other form of livestock, bring traffic periodically to a standstill. Yaks graze the autumnal grey grass and ash-coloured ruined walls of ancient homesteads, wind-burnt and weather-beaten, slowly erode, returning to the soil from which they came.
And then there is Mount Everest, Jumulama, its Tibetan name, the giant hunched-back white queen surrounded by an entourage of snow peaked sentinels. My pictures can’t capture the cold of the biting wind and the prominence of this natural wonder. I wanted to stay and bask in its glory, but the health of my freezing appendages was more important to me and I returned to the safety and warmth of the Landcruiser.
Then after one last mountain pass decorated by the flutter of thousands of multi-coloured flags, we started our decent into Nepal. We followed an ancient route called “The way to hell,” name so for all those in history who’ve lost their lives going to or from the roof of the world. The new Chinese-built road was a great improvement over the medieval path, but the evidence of rock-falls, land-slides and earthquake damage were found around every bend in the serpentine road.
My last evening in Tibet found us sitting atop a patio in Khasa, overlooking the Nepalese mountains across the river. We saluted Tibet and the wonderful people who live there and refuse to be beaten. I’ve spent the last eight days thinking and rethinking all I’ve known before, during and after visiting Tibet. It’s no new statement, but it deserves repeating until it comes to fruition. Tibetans deserve to practice their own religion unimpeded. Tibetans deserve to speak their own language firstly and foremost. Tibetans deserve to speak their minds. Tibetans deserve their freedom. I hope to hell I’ll live to see a free Tibet!
I arrived in the early afternoon and eventually found myself in the warm and friendly quarters of Sim’s Cozy Garden Hostel. This is Chengdu’s number one backpacker hostel and also, one of the best hostels I’ve ever seen. I spent the next six days here eating Dutch french fries, drinking Chinese beer, sipping coffees, playing pool, ping pong, lounging around, conversing with travelers and exploring this city which has changed light-years since I was there last. Sim’s was a little bit like a resort for disheveled backpackers. I had such a great time and any one who is in this part of the world shouldn’t hesitate spending a couple days or even a week here.
some highlights from my last week:
I was out-drank by a Dutch girl on several occasions
I visited the Chengdu Panda Research Center and watched the cutest animal alive lazily eat bamboo
I became the focus of a street performance in Chengdu’s People’s Park. I held the attention of an audience of well over a hundred camera-wielding Chinese locals
My leather jacket was stolen when I was being willingly distracted by a pretty lady. Oh drat
I joined a tour group headed through Tibet onward to Nepal with Alister, Merlinde and Andrien
I boarded a 44 hour train from Chengdu to Lhasa and woke up with a mean bout of altitude sickness
That’s been my life thus far. I’ll save Lhasa and the Tibetan Plateau for another time. I’ll be headed towards the Nepalese boarder for the next week. Anticipate a great post in 8 days time. Shout outs to Emma for a hilarious week of lounging and laughter…it was exactly what I needed. Thanks to all the other weird and wonderful people I met in Sim’s!
This is my fourth visit to China. It is still as captivating as my first adventure here with Terry back in 2006. I still find myself dumbfounded by the hive of activity building and breaking around me at every passing moment. It is total sensory overload. The fact that 20% of the world’s people can live and function here day in day out is mezmerizing. The markets are dizzying circuses of barter and banter, the roads are still as loud and chaotic as ever, and the taxi drivers just as pseudo-suicidal. The average people are just as inquisitive, devious, unapologetic, unabashed, but ultimately as friendly as I remember. It seems that for every bit of ugliness that one may encounters in China there are many moments of genuine serendipitous beauty to tip the scales and warm your heart. People appear as if from nowhere to help whenever you need assistance. China provides.
A lot has changed here too in the last five years. First of all, the standard of living has improved greatly. The prices have doubled in the last couple years. This is not to say it’s not still affordable, but gone are the days when ten dollars would suffice for a full day of bizarre and mysterious travel. There is still a lot of inequality, but the new middle class of China is rising and the evidence of a thriving consumer culture is visible everywhere. As Yin, a couch surfer I stayed with in Xi’an explained it, so many Chinese people have fallen quite easily into the swing of consumerism because in a society such as this, every bit of property is technically on loan from the government, and driving a Volkswagen sedan, carrying a Guchi handbag or answering the latest iPhone symbolizes more than it would elsewhere in the world. Ownership is taken for granted in North America, but if one were kept from it for a whole life and then suddenly these restrictions were lifted all at once, one would go crazy for purchasing, spending, consuming. It’s like those kids who parents forbade them from eating candy; as soon as they visited at friends’ houses they gorged themselves until they go into sugar comas and convulse on the carpet.
In the last week I’ve traveled from Incheon, South Korea to Weihai, bussing from Weihai to Qingdao to Shanghai. I explored the financial capital at my leisure, staying with my friend Johnny. As much of a wonder as Shanghai is, it’s not really for me. It lacks the gritty appeal of rural China. I boarded the longest-feeling train ride of my life from Shanghai to Huang Shan, full of ignorant, country-bumpkin Chinese labourers and merchants. I foolishly bought a hard-seat for an overnight train. I was seated beside the toilet/smoking area and I was relentlessly jarred awake by the drunken chatter and chuckles of brown-toothed, glassy-eyed characters of every shape and size, smoking cigarettes and downing half-toxic moonshine mere meters from me and my vain attempts of getting sleep. Needlessly said, sleep was impossible, but things seemed to be cooling down at around 3:30, but alas, a man suffered from a nose-bleed and of course, was nursed for the better part of an hour across the table from me. Torrents of blood spilled from his face. Every train attendant, conductor, food vendor and labourer on the bus had to come and take a look, each with their own folk secret on how to stop a nosebleed. Once he had regained his composure, everyone on the train seemed to be wide awake again. All the men continued chain-smoking and drinking their turpentine while I gritted my teeth. I’ve vowed never to take another hard-seat train again. My sanity is worth the extra money for the sleeper train.
Huang Shan was amazing. I stayed with a fellow couch surfer named Valerie. She was a delight. She showed me around her little town and then accompanied me to Huang Shan (Yellow Mountain). I think the pictures speak for themselves. Beautiful.
From there I went to the village of Hongcun before taking 24 hours of buses and trains to get to Xi’an. I stayed with Yin, a 30-something year old author/hermit. I spent a few hours each day answering his many curious questions about the western world. He was a very philosophical. He helped teach me a different perspective of this country; the darker side of China’s rise.
I tried my best to get a Tibet permit but it proved to be impossible in Xi’an. I met an exotic fruit vendor named Blues who wanted me to witness the real China and while on a bus to the Terracotta warriors I met two wonderful Dutch girls named Daphney and Emma. I explored the city with them for the next day and a half.
Now I’m rattling away on a train to Chengdu, my old Chinese stomping grounds. Hopefully a Tibet permit is awaiting me somewhere in the maze of dusty and chaotic city streets. Wish me luck.
I’m gainfully unemployed, homeless and dead-set on India. My ferry leaves in a few hours. I’m off to Weihai first, before bussing down to Shanghai. I’ll be passing through China for the next couple weeks, so if you don’t hear from me it’s just because facebook and gmail are blocked. Any who, take care everyone and I’ll post some updates soon.
I finally finished this behemoth of a video project just in time. I’m leaving in 3 days to travel from South Korea to India overland. I’ll probably be traveling for 6 months or so. This video is not exactly what I had in mind, but it will have to do. My original idea might have been just a bit too ambitious. I hope you all like it. Please, leave feedback!
Last night was the 2nd Art Beans exhibit. It was a great turnout. I feel so honoured having had the opportunity to participate with such outstanding artists and friends. Everyone produced some excellent work. It was an amazing night.
Sorry I’m not there to spend the holidays with you all. I hope it was great.
Over this holiday season, I have stayed mighty busy. I’ve been painting, drawing and video-editing during most of my free-time. I’m also playing soccer twice a week with a group of Koreans and expats who are in much better shape than I am.
Below are my most recent art projects:
At long last I have managed a work schedule which is conductive to creating art, and also, allows me to make some money so I can travel in the not to distant future, covering both of my passions. I am going to the Philippines in March and back to Japan with my family in early June. Life is great.
I have started hosting couchsurfers in my place in Daegu. It’s about time I repay all of the hospitality which has been afforded to me over my last two yeras on the road.
Also, another important update; I am am working like a dog on my travel videos. I will have something to show for it very soon.
I’ve finally arrived in South Korea, my home away from home. I needed some time to readjust to a life more stationary. It’s really nice to have a constant place to lay my head, kitchen to call my own and a bathroom with hot water at the ready. These are the simple luxuries often taken for granted, which I’ve by no means gone without for the last six months, but certainly had hit or miss and without guarantee. I’m happy to be here.
Upon my arrival in Korea many haved started asking me to recall the most extraordinary experiences I’ve collected on my travels. At first it was difficult to think of any single experience that would trump the others. Then, this one story flashed through my mind. This is my quintessential cultural experience, and it somehow slipped through the gaps of my last post about Mongolia. I call this gem…
“The Death Rattle.”
The members of my excursion had been driving through the Gobi desert all day trying to find the Baga Gazyrn Chuluu rock formations, but the roads were so bumpy and our van was so over-packed that the driving was slow-going to put it lightly. We arrived at this strange alien landscape of granite rock towers late in the evening, after the sun had already slouched behind the red rock hills. We found a group of nomads and Jaaqii, our guide and ambassador, entered the family’s ger to ask them if we could camp near them and possibly sleep in their spare ger. The family agreed. Everyone piled out of the car and entered the spare ger. I was walking around the family’s “backyard” where an old former Russian village sat in ruins. When I returned, Itree, our driver, invited me to drink some milk tea with the family while the others were preparing dinner. I had been teaching Itree various English words and he was teaching me funny sentences in Mongolian. I had bonded with him over the past week and a half, and as if to show his appreciation, he invited only me along to introduce me to the family, something for which I was quite honoured. I sat down and watched the matriarch of the family preparing her hand-made noodles, as the men smoked their traditional pipes, as this little adorable girl played games with an empty Fanta bottle. They were very friendly to me, but they had a lot to do and mostly ignored me, which was totally understandable. For me, it was lovely to watch the family go about their daily activity unimpeded by my presence. They were totally comfortable with me there, but maybe a little too comfortable for my own sake.
At one point the girl started to hit me with the Fanta bottle and I pretended that to be hurt. I obviously wasn’t too convincing because she laughed maniacally during our little game and continued. Everyone else ignored us in the ger. As we played I noticed some activity. The men stood up and left the ger with urgency. I was of course lost in translation during everything that was taking place. No one told me a thing, so I just stayed sitting blissfully on the floor of the warm ger playing with the plastic bottle. I didn’t understand why they had left nor was I told, but, I would soon discover why.
The man of the ger came in and moved a stool that stood beside me as if to make room for something. I noticed this too but didn’t think very much of it. The man immediately exited the ger once more. Moments later the door flung open and through the narrow opening two men returned heaving an enormous sheep by its legs into the clear space the man had just made, setting down the beast less than a foot from me on the floor. I was totally taken aback by this, but out of shock, I didn’t budge. Once the animal was set down it started kicking frantically. It caught the man of the ger directly in the pit of his stomach. He let out a dull moan and then instantly regained his composure, grabbing the sheep’s flailing hoofs. He ordered the other man to do the same. The sheep struggled frantically, but without a sound. Then the other man took his hand and shoved it into a hole that he had cut into the sheep’s belly, above its stomach but below its ribcage. He forced almost his entire arm into the animal’s torso until he reached its heart and pulled in one sharp movement. The animal made a noise that I won’t soon forget. It took one deep breath in and let out a hot, stuttering, bone-chilling exhale that I could feel on my arm because I still sat beside this animal as it let out its death rattle. It had happened so quickly that I didn’t have a chance to react. I sat and stared dumbly at the sheep carcass, which only a mere instant ago was alive and still fighting for its life. The little girl with whom I had been playing was entertained by this animal and showed no signs of fear or remorse at witnessing its death. In fact, she let out a laugh, came to the animals side and started playing with its lips still warm from its last breaths.
I realized in that very moment that this girl was not disgusted because to her this dead animal was not something terrible; its death was not something to reproach. It was something natural, run-of-the-mill. She had not witnessed some savage murder, but instead, a modest sacrifice as common place to you and I as cashing a check at the bank. I decided in that moment to show no signs of surprise or disgust either. These people had just killed an animal that they had raised, fed and protected. They appreciated their livestock more than I could fully understand. This was not just a sheep, it was an investment. Sure, they had taken its life, but they also had given it life. They knew it individually by its appearance, characteristics, they knew what it ate, had protected it from wolfs and other unknown terrors and they kept its safe until its time to die. Who was I to judge them by their actions. They had a far better appreciation for their food, their meat, than I do and what they had just done was not something ugly and vile. It was respectful and clean. I witnessed no blood during this process, not a drop, because the traditional method of slaughtering doesn’t waste anything, including the blood and feces. The blood is a source of iron and protein essential in an environment as rugged as Mongolia, and the feces is just as important, because once dried it becomes fuel which they use to cook their meals. In the Gobi, wood is scarce and feces is abundant and invaluable within a nomadic way of life.
For the next twenty minutes I watched the men and the grandmother skin and disassemble this sheep, step by step, like clockwork. They had done this thousands of times between them, I’m sure, just as their ancestors had before them, and how yours and my ancestors had as well. It’s easy to forget that used to be the only way people kept livestock and what I had just witnessed was as commonplace as going to grab a burger at a fast food joint. This slaughter, though at first glance seemed to me to be a little grizzly due to the intimacy of the slaughter inside the small ger and the lack of concealment from me, the hapless tourist, but upon further thought, it seemed humane and better than the process which I am accustomed (not seeing how my meat is processed at all). To be honest, I think it far worst going to a supermarket and buying a fillet packaged in plastic wrap and Styrofoam not knowing a single detail about the animal’s previous appearance, diet, and living conditions. We in North America are so content picking our meat from the shelves as if it were produce, potatoes, onions or apples, all the while ignorant or possibly even happily apathetic to the process that brought that animal from the womb to the butcher’s blade. We like to pretend that our method is better because most of us don’t have to see it, but I think ours is a byproduct of a sick culture of food. Mongolia helped me realize that I know so little about that which I ingest. I’m so disconnected from my food and I now strive to change this. I want to know what I’m eating even if its a little unsightly.
After my tour, I managed to buy myself a visa to China. I entered on the 22nd of October. I crossed the boarder at Eren Hot, and took a sleeper bus to Beijing. For the next couple days I explored the capitol city of the world’s next superpower, practicing my limited vocabulary in Mandarin, eating traditional Chinese delights, exploring the biggest sights the city had to offer, and finding some hidden treasures while I was at it. I saw the city with Nick, my right-hand-man for my entire trip across Eurasia, and Suzi Lee, a vagabonding humanitarian, and after five days spent in Beijing, I said my farewell to these amazing travelers, wished them good luck on their continued journeys, and I continued east. I took a terrible train to Qingdao with the hopes of boarding a ferry for Incheon, South Korea. However, due to turbulent weather somewhere in the sea of Korea, the after effects of a passing typhoon, the ferry was docked for the day. Instead, I took a local bus to Weihai, bought my passage the next morning to South Korea and parted ways with China for the third time in my life.
China gets a bad wrap in many ways. I for one, adore her dirty and congested streets, her over-populated cities, her strange and exotic foods and most of all, her deviously clever but ultimately friendly people. I’ve been to China three times so far, more than I can say for many places, and I can comfortably predict a return in the near future. But for now, South Korea is my home.
I arrived in South Korea on Thursday, October 29th, at 11:00 am. I traveled south to Daegu to my new apartment where my girlfriend has been living for the past 5 months. I’ve already been working some jobs and I’m still on the search for some more. I am also working on something huge. I have 120 gigabytes of HD video which I plan to put to good use. I am excited to create again, be artistic and have the time to pursue all that interests me. I took for granted my time in Korea my first time round, but I’m promising myself not to make the same mistake now. This country has a lot to offer someone who is determined to learn, grow and experience. I think I’m finally in the right frame of mind now to explore these avenues and see where I end up. Traveling Eurasia has taught me a great deal, and I hope living in Korea will do the same.
And so ends my travels…for now, of course.
Thank you to everyone for following me on my misadventures. Thank you to everyone who helped me along the way. It’s time I repay the cosmic favours which have been so graciously bestowed upon me. I will try to post on here whenever the opportunity arises.
Mongolia surpassed all my expectations. It has everything for which a traveller could ask. I had such a great time on my 14-day excursion, but now that its over, I’m finding it really difficult to put my pen to paper and record my sentiments and experiences. I guess I’m in a state of dumbfoundedness. Mongolia has dumbfounded me.
I guess I’ll start from the beginning. Ulaanbaatar; not your most picturesque city, but an almost mandatory stop on one’s trip to this Central Asian country. Nick and I needed to secure some Chinese visa so we planned to take care of visa before we embarked on our excursion and return to UB to easily pick them up and continue on our way to China. Our best intentions were dashed to pieces. China has a national holiday from October 1st-5th, and after waiting in line for almost two hours on October 6th, the guard slammed the enormous iron door in our faces when we were second from the entrance. Great.
We headed for the wilds of Mongolia anyways, and pushed our uncertainty away. We were getting a late start because of this visa mishap so we drove all day under the varying shades of grey overcast until we arrived in Amarbayasgalant Monastery at nightfall. Nick and I camped while the others slept in a ger, the traditional portable house of Mongolian nomads. We played cards until late night and enjoyed some Mongolian vodka. It hailed and snowed all night, and it’s safe to say it was a cold sleepless night. I was up early and walking around to bring some warm blood back into my toes and I saw the landscape that we had driven through on the previous evening. It was a great location for a temple complex built almost three hundred years ago for the greatness of Chinghis Zanabazar, or so I’ve been told. We were led around the temples by a ten-year-old monk.
The next day we were headed for Lake Ogli. We drove all day down the bumpiest of roads. I use the word road quite loosely. These are dirt tracks snaking up and down valleys and meandering across mountain passes. While in Mongolia one feels like they are seeing how the world used to look. We never found the lake. Once darkness came it was too dark to navigate the roads properly so we camped beside the road and it rained all night. It was another cold and sleepness night.
The next day we awoke to fog. We drove to the lake and we could barely see it because the visibility was so low. It was pretty anticlimactic. We then headed to the former capital of the Mongol’s empire just as a flurry picked up and hurled wet snow down on us. The city had been destroyed by the evil Ming dynasty year upon years ago, and everything has been restored. It has an active monastery inside and we managed to watch some Buddhist ceremonies as we dried ourselves inside a warm temple.
That night we all slept inside gers because we were wet, tired and in need of a decent night’s sleep.
The next day we were up early and headed for hot springs tucked inside the frosty mountains. We drove all morning through pine forests using precarious trails cutting across the mountain passes as wild horses ran among the trees, nervous from our approach. We reached the hot spring camp and unpacked. Nick and I had a snow ball fight with a group of Mongolian highschool students. We were doing great at first, but our numbers went from 2 against 5, to 2 against 20 and they led a charge as just like their ancestors, their horde attacked and defeated their enemies. Damn these Mongol warriors.
The hotsprings were a great change of pace. It seemed fitting with all the snow falling as we lounged in the baths of balmy water.
From here we drove further south among the mountains to reach the Orkhon waterfall. We crossed the same serpentine river more than 17 times to get to the site of the waterfall, which sits in a miraculous place, falling into a canyon made in the depression from a volcanic eruption. We hiked the area at our leisure, returned to camp and then helped the nomadic family that we were staying with assemble their ger. It supposedly takes only an hour to put up a ger, but thats with a skilled team of nomads, not a stumbling pack of travellers. It was a lot of fun and I’m so happy that I was afforded the opportunity to make one. They are of an ingenious design and their simplicity and efficiency make them a vital part of Mongolia’s cultural identity. Gers are pretty swell.
The next day we hopped on some semi-wild horses and went for a cruise in the countryside. Mine was well-behaved at first, but I scared it when I tried to take out my camera and the zipper of my bag jingled behind its line of vision. It reared up, and then took off in full gallop. I stayed as calm as I could and after running for a steady half a kilometer, it finally settled down and relaxed. Jaaqii, our guide, was not too pleased. She reiterated the seriousness of horse riding to me. I explained that it was accidental and she told me how these wild horses can be scared by anything unfamiliar and their flight instinct will lead them to run until they feel the danger is gone. By her accounts, I could have been take away by that horse for several kilometers before it decided to stop.
The next day we were headed for the Gobi. We stopped and camped beside some gers. The nomad family invited us in for boiled sheep entrails and organs. Despite the terrible appearance of these parts, we all tried some of the strange delicacies and they didn’t taste half bad. The next morning villagers from miles around gathered to help slaughter 20 sheep, right outside the gers. We watched the process. It was very humane and clean. Nothing goes to waste in Mongolia, and although they are butchering their animals, they have more respect for their livestock than most people in the western world. They know what they eat, their health, their characteristics, and they protect them until their time to die. It’s not an ugly thing to watch the process. It was truly fascinating.
We drove all day trying to find Mongolia’s largest sand dunes, which might sound like an easy feat, but it proved very difficult in account to the confusing network of paths that zigzag across the horizon. We came to a camp well after dark and we slept as dogs fought amongst themselves in the darkness.
I made it to the land of Genghis Khan. But here his name is Chinggis Khan. His image still rules this “Land of Blue Skies.” He’s on the money, the monuments, endless souvenirs shops and even the Mongolian vodka. Things have changed greatly since his kingdom stretched from the sea of Japan all the way to Bulgaria, south to the islands of Indonesia and across the Himalayas to northern India. Things here are developing, but it’ll be a long time before Mongolia raises itself up from checkered past. There is a lot of potential here and I’m really routing for this beautiful central Asian country. The people are friendly and curious and I can’t wait to get out and explore the countryside and witness the raw beauty.
What happened to Russia? It’s hard to imagine how immense Russia truly is until you are rattling across it in a 3rd-class sleeper train surrounded by an assortment of crazy characters, each playing their own part in the bizarre Russian drama of humanity. Despite the fact that I spent day after day, night after night, on trains to make my way east, I still only managed to cross half of this monstrous country. The third-class “platzkart” was surprisingly comfortable, and as long as I had a good book, some ear plugs, some patience and a smile it was a thoroughly enjoyable way to travel and I highly recommend it to anyone considering a similar trip across Eurasia. Most internet sites and travel publications written about the Trans-Siberian railway claim 3rd-class trains in Russia are dirty, dangerous, and cramped, but I can’t emphasize enough the fallacy in this sentiment. I met some great people who were kind, generous and good-humoured about traveling with some strange and clueless foreigners and they treated Nick and I like gold. We talked shop, bought beers, shared laughs and a bottle of cognac given to us by out friends in Yekateringburg, and as much as I was glad to be done with a two and a half day train ride to Irkutsk, it was a little sad to say goodbye to our funny drunken friends when we finally arrived at our stop. Irkutsk; admittedly, I knew almost nothing about this Siberian city, except for its name and location, care of all night games of Risk where Irkutsk was a place to be conquered in my quest for world domination. When I arrived it was all new and exciting.
We were lucky enough to contact Natalie, a Siberian English teacher, who was very keen to let us crash in her spare room and show us around her city. She took us to Lake Baikal, the largest freshwater lake in the world, but due to some serious time constraints, we could only spend a few hours at the lakeside village, enjoying smoked fish, Russian shish kebabs, tea and a couple rounds of stone-skipping. I put my feet in the water and in moments my toes no longer had feeling. Lake Baikal is cold, as you might imagine.
It was absolutely necessary that I leave Russia on October 1st, so my stay in Irkutsk and greater Siberia was much shorter than I would have wished. It was a beautiful place and I hope to explore it properly someday in the near future. Nick and I chatted up a German couple who have been kayaking and cycling from Europe to Central Asia for close to two years. When we met them they had been cycling the wilderness around Lake Baikal and Siberia for the past two and a half months and they were a wealth of travel information and advice. They are now planning to cycle south for another year and a half, seeing how far they can go down through Southeast Asia. They were very interesting people to meet on our last train ride towards Mongolia.
On the boarder, Veronica, the German adventurer, helped us greatly by asking everyone for details of how to cross the border. It wasn’t a straight forward affair. Most of the people crossing the border do so having booked their tickets well in advance from the internet and they stay on their 2nd or 1st-class carriage as the customs officers check for contraband and let the train advance into Mongolia. We, on the other hand, did the cheaper and crazier route. We paid some kid to take us to the border. He drove us through ominous military checkpoints and down a beat-up country road and then ripped us off for nearly all our money once we got there telling us that they price we arranged before leaving didn’t include the price of our luggage which was in his trunk. We paid him the extra 100 rubles, which wasn’t a lot of money to be fair, but almost all that we had foolishly managed to save for our border crossing. Then we bought our way onto a Mongolian bus, which was necessary because you can only cross the border in a vehicle. Once at the customs office it became apparent to the people organizing the bus that we didn’t have enough money to go to the closest city, or to even buy the most basic of ticket. I had run out of ruble a day before and Nick had been spotting me the small amounts of money until we were to arrive in Mongolia where I planned to withdraw more. They were getting quite frustrated with us, and then I remembered that I had close to ten dollars in Chinese yuan in my backpack for my last trip there in 2008, and I retrieved it and they eagerly accepted it. Everything worked out in the end. We crossed the border and I left at 3:30pm October 1st, two and a half hours before the border closed and my visa expired. I don’t even want to imagine how bad it would have been if I overstayed my visa. All I know is the Russian border officials were none too pleased that I was leaving Russia the day my visa expired, but after everything, they let me leave their country. Also, a word to the wise. If you go across Russia, keep your train tickets. I didn’t want to register my visa and had I not kept my tickets I would have had a difficult time proving that I was only in each city for less than 72 hours. They have strange rules about registration in each city, and I wasn’t too keen to pay 45 euros or whatever it costs to register my visa.
Crossing into Mongolia was like entering the Wild West…or the Wild East. Stray dogs wandered in and out of dusty streets as aimlessly wandering cows stopped the traffic of big Russian lumber trucks headed south to China and roadside mechanics stripped off car tires to place in contraband to sneak across the border. This is frontier Mongolia. It was fun. Had we bought our journey over the internet we would have never seen this strange side of Monglia. It was well worth all the trouble.
I’ve been in Ulaanbaatar for too long. I’m waiting to process my Chinese visa. Tomorrow I’m embarking on a two week excursion into the Mongolian wilderness. We are going off-roading with a rally-sport driver and tour guide, a Belgian husband and wife, Arne and Charlotte, who are on their 7-month-long honeymoon, and the two Kiwis, Nick and Bonita. They are a great group of people with whom to spend the next 14 days jammed in a 4-wheel-drive Mitsubishi van. I’m planning to camp in my tent each night, even though the weather is estimated to drop beneath zero every night. Wish me luck on my adventure. I hope to come back with lots of photographs and hopefully, no frostbitten appendages.
I’m currently situated on the cusp of Asia and Europe, staying in the city of Yekaterinburg on the Trans-Siberian railway. It’s 4 AM and I can’t sleep. I’ve been on the road for 141 days. From hence forth I travel in Asia. I’m excited to be back. Third time’s a charm. Maybe it ‘s the orientalist in me, but I’ve missed her savage beauty and pulsating life, her chaotic streets and enchanting and unknown lands. I’m ready to get lost in translation and tangled in the confusing spaces where cultures collide, merge and mingle. I’m looking forward to what this continent has in store for me, what adventures and mysteries it conceals. In a week’s time I will be in Mongolia, witnessing its majesty, and in just over one month’s time I will be in South Korea. Thus, my trajectory will be complete for a little while at least, and it will be fine time for rest and recovery. Asia, at last.
As for Russia; it has comfortably met my expectations. It’s been an immense and intimidating country. It is not your average tourist destination to say the least. It has not been an easy, translated, pre-packaged kind of travel. It has been difficult, but thereby fulfilling. Each day poses new challenges to overcome. Simple tasks take more time or more careful execution. Russia is work.
Also, the Trans-Siberian is not your average means of travel. Nick and I are going 3rd class the entire way to Mongolia in carriages that sound and smell of strange humanity. We are usually the only English-speakers on these trains and nothing is explained to us, but we just have to learn the system through observation, luck and trial and error. People mutter away to us in their tongue and we nod dumbly in return or smile and laugh. I like it this way. It forces you to be sharp. I’ve had a real crash course in Russian and now I can roughly read the Cyrillic alphabet and pronounce the Slavic sounds. I practice my limited Russian lexicon on anyone which helps to break the ice and bring a smile to the most jaded of faces.
It is worth mentioning that the Russian people cannot be so easily generalized because they all have been uniquely their own. There’s been the brash and brutish and the gentle and sophisticated and the suspicious and assuming and the warm and welcoming and the understanding and the unapologetic. People have offered us help, while others have been totally unwilling to show any semblance of assistance. There’s all kinds here.
I’ve had a lot of time to think on these overnight trains being gently rocked in the cradle of the 3rd class beds. There is a heaviness which hangs in the air here. Like an unspoken and dark truth is on the tip of every tongue. Nick and I are always warned of dangers and deceits by those who call Russia home, but so far so good, and luckily, they have remained whispers and not realities.
Ever-increasingly, I have had the sense that things have not changed very much here since the great fall of communism. Most monuments have their sickles and hammers and sharp and clean-angled stars, while the people of this country still live their lives under relentless observation and scrutiny from police with too much power and not enough pay. Cities are still referred to by their Soviet-era names even though on paper they were changed when Communism dissolved. The streets are still named in honour of former communist heroes, like Lenin Street, which exists in almost every Russian city, big or small. Stately busts and beautiful mosaics of Mr. Vladimir still adorn many public spaces and train stations, and others have immense paintings from floor to ceiling, the most terrifying paintings you’ve ever seen, fiery scenes in red, black and white of labourers toiling while a windswept Mother of the Soviet Union’s beady black eyes stare sternly at those who walk past her, as if to say, “Work faster, work harder, work longer, and don’t you dare complain.” But I suppose this is to be expected. Russia has a long and brutal history, but they don’t ignore these ugly pasts, they remember, and wear their histories like scars of injuries they’ve endured. Maybe things are better now, or maybe they’re not. I can’t say for sure. Maybe all that has changed are the types of cars on the road, the Top 40 pop songs blaring on MTV Russia, or the length of lines at every MacDonald’s and Burger King, now booming businesses, revolving doors for the new and hungry Russian youth, Generation Capitalist, kids dressed in Guess and D&G, talking on their iphones as consuming, ever-consuming, always consuming. There is no questioning who won the latest war. In the short wake of the WW3, America reins supreme and she takes her spoils of war one Big Mac as a time. But of course, this is all just the same sad song sung everywhere to the same sad tune. Let’s all welcome Russia to the long list of American states.
It’s time for acknowledgements and a quick recap. In St. Petersburg I enjoyed the company of two outrageous and rowdy Brazilians. Felipe practised his Drago punch and clipped a wine glass in a swanky resturant disrupting the entire place and embarrassing me while he smiled and pretended like nothing had happened. Eduardo was so transfixed by a passing St.Petersburg beauty that he walked directly face-first into a roadside eavestrough. I met a young guy, a sailor from the Shetlands who almost seemed unfamiliar with the firmness of still land and the societies of man, and as we hiked around the city he talked endlessly about the sea and stopped to explain every detail of every boat that floated by or was tied down in the canals of the city. He was a great character and he’s already lived a long life far exceeding his 23 years. In Moscow, while waiting for my Mongolian visa to come through, I was taken on a tour by a friend of a friend to see a different side of the city. I saw the artistic and young, the fashionistas who make up Moscow’s architecture community. I then met up with Nick, a man on a mission. He’s attempting a journey over land and sea back to New Zealand. He’s been travelling off and on for more than a year and a half and he’s happy to be headed home. He’s a great guy and a smart and capable traveller. I’t's nice to have a person to travel with especially in a country as potentially daunting as Russia. We’ll probably travel to China together before he will head south and I will head to my home away from home in South Korea. My Mongolian visa was approved so all systems are go. Nick and I are couch surfing with a delightful Russian couple called Alexiy and Yulia who have invited us into their quaint but beautiful apartment,toured us around town, fed us delicious fried chicken, sausage and potatoes and shared their bounty of cognac. Life is good. Time to sleep again, if I can.
Finally, my pictures are all caught up. These are pictures from Slovenia to Saint Petersburg with Austria, Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland in between. Enjoy.
I’m in Moscow, awaiting the verdict of my Mongolian visa. The process has been fraught with unforeseen difficulties. I might be stuck in Moscow longer than I anticipated, which cuts into the time I planned for crossing this wacky red giant. Now I will need to cross this behemouth in larger trips, 36 and 48 hours at a time, all in order to get to Irkutsk, and then onward to Mongolia.
Also, according to my hostel staff, I need my visa registered in Moscow as soon as possible to prove compliance with their archaic visa registration policies, even though I think I’m fine. Red Square is infamous for dirty cops in their corrupt police department who help boost their measly paychecks by preying on travelers and demanding to see their passports just to find errors or make them from thin air, and of course, squeeze bribes from whoever they can. Guess where I’m going tonight? That’s right — the one and only RED SQUARE! I hope I don’t end up in a tango with a big KGB type named Boris who wants to inspect the fine print of my Passport.
I’ve met a great assortment of people, Russians and travelers from abroad alike. Many of the Russians I’ve encountered have been very witty, sarcastic, intelligent and otherwise, very friendly, much to do with what I’ve perceived as their avid attempts to disprove a half century or more of North American hysterical terror regarding everything Russian. Most Russians know how they are portrayed in the west and they do not want to be associated with the Big Red Evil Empire of times past. They want to forge new identities and they do so by helping you try to navigate their impossible metro system, or they invite you to their house for homemade food, or offer to translate their language, or just eagerly suggest places worth visiting. There are many who are also very rude and want nothing to do with foreign people, but the good outweigh the bad here. Don’t be so shocked you North American capitalist pigs, Russia has a great side as well.
Yesterday I visited the strange island of Kizhi where old-fashioned Russian buildings from the Northern lands of Russia were collected and shipped here to go alongside a masterpiece of wooden architecture, this enormous cathedral of wooden onion domes. This place was strange and I’m glad I crossed if off my list of things to do, but I wish it hadn’t cost so much money. It used to be very cheap because it was a national treasure, but recently it was sold and now they charge dearly to visit these wooden buildings in the middle of one of the world’s largest freshwater lakes. Oh well, you only live once. Kizhi down, another world of wonders yet to see. Time to go explore Moscow. I hope I don’t meet Boris and the long crooked arm of the law.
I can’t keep up with this site of mine. I feel I’m always behind on it. The pictures especially. I’m still posting pictures from Italy and its too slow to post the others. I will try again soon. Since I wrote on here last I have been to 8 new countries. Yikes. I’ve been busy, beat down and blistered, but I’ve made it to the Motherland. Russia, the country formally known as Prince, I mean the USSR. Exciting, ain’t it?
Here goes nothing. I explored Vienna with a young Mormon man who went by the name of Anthony. He was all the way from Salt Lake City, Utah. We hit all of the main stops in the city by foot and the weather was absolutely perfect for pictures. We explored a museum and mused about many an interesting topic. I felt like we were wandering through the settings of The Third Man. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend this movie. It’s a classic. Check out from 2:22 onward in the video I posted. Obviously Vienna isn’t in a post-war limbo anymore, but it still does have this feeling of being on the cusp of the Eastern Bloc, the line drawn in the sand between the organized and uptight West and the passionate and chaotic East. There is a certain mystique about it still and even though I didn’t see anything out-of-the-ordinary per se, I really do want to believe that dodgy characters undertake dubious business in the shadowy corners and twisting cobble-stoned alleyways scattered throughout the city. Maybe those days are gone, but one can always hope they still continue. My favourite part of the city was watching all the old wino drinking carton after carton of 60 cent white wine and then lounging in the afternoons fading sun. There are characters abound in that city. It’s a great place to waste the time away watching the great human spectacle shuffle past your sights.
The next day, I picked up my Russian visa from the Russian embassy and those working there were as unfriendly as ever. Then I took a train or two to the outskirts of the city where I had read on the internet that there sat a nice little place to hitch my way east towards Hungary. As I walked to the place a 5 euro note was tumbling down the sidewalk like a good omen, serendipitous as it was, I bent over, snatched it up, placed it in my wallet fold and I would have clicked my heels too if I didn’t have 30 kilos of gear weighing me down.
At the hitching spot there was already a couple of fellow vagabonds. I introduced myself and asked where they were headed and the proper etiquette, because they were there first, afterall. They were named Adam and Anna, and they lived a short train or bus ride from Budapest. They had been traveling in Austria for the weekend via hitching and couchsurfing and feeling that they owed me a similar hospitality, they invited me to their family houses west and north of Budapest. Then we started hitching. It took 6 hours, but we managed to get all the way to Anna’s house with 5 lifts, 1 free train ride and 1 free bus ride. We ate bread, cheese and meat and then I slept in Anna’s brother’s former bedroom. In the morning we ate some pastries and Anna bought me little Hungarian chocolates that only grandmas and grandpas eagerly eat for nostalgic purposes. I then hitched to the city, stashed my gear in a locker and wandered in the varying degrees of downpour for the next 7 hours. I went to a bathhouse full of wrinkly oldfolks and Russian and German families.
Budapest is a stunning city. Its architecture is often overlooked. It is a little run-down, but beneath her rough exterior lies a beautiful city of spires, art nouveau masterpieces, old world wonders and eerie holocaust statuettes. The human spectacle was getting stronger the closer I went to the train station. Here every class of Hungarian society congregated simultaneously. There were suit-wearing sophisticates, sharp as tacks, brushing past begging gypsies while little old ladies tried to peddle roses off on strolling Hungarian couples, hand-in-hand, young and in love, while tourists waddled around maps in hand trying to find this or that, and I stood on the periphery observing all of this humanity with wonder and awe.
I then boarded a train to Vis, where Anna, Adam and his family were waiting for me and dinner to be complete. Anna had made some goulash. It was the best goulash I’ve ever had — well, it was the first goulash I’ve ever had, but that point is negligible. It was a great thick stew, very hardy and stick-to-your-ribs good. The next morning we all were awake at a decent hour and headed to the town square where Adam knew a great place to buy langos, another specialty of Hungary. It’s sort of like a funnelcake, only salty, not sweet, and full of cheese, onions or cabbage, depending on your tastes. We shared two which were great. Adam drove me a few villages over to where the road pointed straight north towards Slovakia. I said my goodbyes to that adorable couple and I truly hope our paths cross again someday because they are my kind of people.
My first lift to Slovakia was in a van of three Gypsies carrying a cargo of children’s bed comforters. The driver, named Joseph, was a thick-armed burly man with an enormous grey mustache and wiry black hairs sticking from of his shirt collar and the depths of his big ears. I sat in the backseat of the old Dodge caravan beside a greasy-haired warty woman. Joseph drove that tortured little van as fast as the four wheels would take it. He took bends in the rain at break-neck and no one spoke a single word to anyone else for more than 40 minutes. Upon crossing the border, they let me out. The woman in the back asked for 2 Euros from me, but Joseph wouldn’t have any of it. He shook my hand, yelled at the old wench in the back seat and squealed off into the rainy grey light of morning. The thing about it is, I would have given them 2 Euros for 40 minutes of driving. They were obviously not rich people and I was happy that they showed me such kindness. Joseph was proud, too proud for 2 Euros. I walked to where the autoroute continued north and I found a place to stand beside a field of the most depressing looking sunflowers I have ever seen. All their faces were downcast, black and their petals browning or tawny. They looked like sad, forlorn lions holding their heads low, like in shame. The rain let up but ominous clouds continued to spread across the horizon. It seemed to set the mood of my short trip in Slovakia; it was so strangely fitting for this part of the country, this sad stage of rusting and ruined Soviet infrastructure; these skeletons of concrete and iron; monstrosities abandoned and obsolete.
I wrote PL on a sign and a truck driver bound for Warsaw stopped for me. He knew not a word of English, but for the next 7 hours he took me through 3 countries. He communicated through humerous body language and made very corny jokes and gestures. He dropped me off in Katowice, rumoured to be the most dangerous place in Poland. Luckily for me, I asked some young student for directions, he told me to get in his car and he drove me to the road headed for Oswiecim, better known as Auschwitz in German. A couple picked me up and drove me there and then took me around the city and gave me my first glimpse of the concentration camps for which this little Polish city has forever become infamous. Auschwitz II is enormous and grave. I can’t describe it any better than that. It housed a constant cycle of 90,000 Jews, Gypsies, Poles, homosexuals, and Russian prisoners of war, gassing and cremating 70 percent of those who entered, while keeping the rest for labour and medical experiments. I spent the next day visiting the museum on a tour that was incredibly depressing and informative at the same time. I can’t write anything on this site that hasn’t been explained better by authors or survivors ever since the camp was liberated in 1945. There are many books written on this subject and I can’t do it nearly the justice it deserves.
It isn’t all just depression in Poland. There is also a rich history of empire and esteem. I hit Krakow next. It is a beautiful medieval city ringed by lush green parks and an assortment of characters, young and old. I fell asleep early from a couple long days and short nights’ asleep. I was up early to explore before the droves did. I wandered the misty morning streets and saw the remnants of a vibrant night of debauchery everywhere I looked. Broken bottles were strewn across the cobble stone, a trail of blood was spilt outside a 24 hour perogy joint and vomit congealed on sidewalks as semi-comatose zombie Brits staggered around communicating amongst themselves with grunts and other apelike gestures. You can thank Ryanair. Krakow is on the ever-growing list of cities where trashy Brits can go for a weekend of killing brain cells and other forms of cultural insensitivity for the low fare price of 10 pounds. Thanks Ryanair!
I took pictures of the sights alone, except for glimpses of the elderly people who drifted from trash can to trash can collecting bottles and cans for pocket change. These apparitions of garbage could be in any city around the world. I’ve seen them everytime I’ve woken early to explore. These people move from place to place, half-hidden by early light, gathering like ants the crumbs fallen from the hands of greedy picnic-goers. It was a case study. Maybe I’ve been traveling alone for too long, but I can’t help but notice those who are usually invisible among us. As I said, these people are everywhere, but more visible in the Eastern Bloc, for it is a region of greater disparities of wealth. These are nations of contrasts only heightened by capitalism and further perverted by irresponsible tourism. I love these countries because they transfix me in thought and scrutiny.
From Krakow I visited the salt mines at Wieliczka, but after been led on an uninspired tour and feeling rather claustrophobic in the depths of these mines, I was happy to start my hitching north…but it was too late, so I took a train to Warsaw instead. I arrived near midnight and had nowhere to stay. I took some tips for some kind taxi drivers and they pointed me in the right direction. Eventually I found a great hostel, but it was too late and I was too tired to properly enjoy it. The next morning I was hitching as early as I could, headed for Lithuania. My first lift was from a Polish sailor and “fish-ink mechan-eek” (whatever that means) who had worked in Canada for three years in the early eighties. He knew some English but made up for his lack of proficiency in the English tongue by yelling everything and slamming his fist against the wheel whenever he didn’t know the right word. He hated Poland, but he hated working on boats in various countries around the world even more. We drove past dark and dense forests where little old villagers sold mushrooms picked from the dark underbrush of the forests and Belarusian and Ukrainian prostitutes stood at the mouth of forest paths trying to lure highway-bound drivers to a stop to offer their services. Jesek took me an hour north of Warsaw. Next, I met a great Polish intellectual and gentleman named Patryk. He took me all the way to Biaoystov and a little further, all of which was out of his way. He also bought me Polish pancakes for lunch. He was a very fascinating and wise person and I enjoyed the conversations as we zoomed past the Polish roads.
I then got a lift from a neurosurgeon and lastly a farmer headed home to Lithuania. I made my tent in a forested patch near the highway. I awoke to a spookily misty and still world. A Latvian trucker took me to Kaunas and then I hitched west in the car of a sallow man who looked like he was made of wax. He was missing half of his right thumb and he drove 150kms an hour the whole time as hair metal and strange Russian electronica blared on his stereo. He never really tried to make conversation with me, but I appreciated the ride nonetheless.
I made it to Klaipeda and then started north. After being dropped off in a crossroads village in the pine forests I was approached by a drunk Lithuanian man who tried to give me half of his pack of cigarettes because I opened the package for him. Then I drank some terrible fruit wine with him from a plastic jug as he stood in the middle of the road and impeded cars who swerved to miss him. He wouldn’t leave me alone and I figured I was never going to leave that place because no driver would stop after seeing me standing with this old drunk, so I wished him well and I started hiking north on foot. I was 3 km or so away when it started getting darker and I figured it was going to be a short time before I stopped and set up camp in the misty fields when Willnius, a carrot farmer from southern Latvia stopped and offered me a room in his house and home cooked meal care of his wife. He lived in a beautiful and rustic farmhouse and his family were very friendly and welcoming. They drove me to see their secret beach on the Baltic sea after the sun had gone down and the sky painted the waves in ink of deep indigo.
The next day I hitched to Riga, eventually, and then boarded a bus to Tallin, because I was tired of hitching. I met a Finnish guy on the bus who knew a hostel in the city center. I followed him there and then drank too much Estonian vodka with an assortment of people in the hostel while watching the US open. I went to sleep shortly after having my first vodka and I slept and had the strangest dreams. I woke up to the worst hangover in my recent memory. I tried everything to rid myself of the full-body ache, but it wasn’t until I vomited in a park in front of a parade of kindergartners later in the morning that I felt much much much better…but also, a little trashy. Was I just talking about the likes of irresponsible travelers? Oh my.
I took a ferry to Helsinki, once I had recovered some semblance of normalcy and I explored the cultural epicenter of a quarter of my identity. Finland is amazing. Not only is everyone beautiful, but everything is clean and in proper working order. Unlike most European capitals built on the blood and bones of conquered people in distant colonies, Finland was never a colonizer, it was the colonized. It had been the buffer between the power fleets of Sweden and the hungry ambitions of the Tsars of Russia. Finland grew to prominence because of good old fashioned hard work and ingenuity. I’m proud to be 1/4 Finnish. But talk about a nation of children of the corn. Jesus, I didn’t know hair could be so blond and eyes so blue.
I then took a bus to St. Petersburg, where I am currently staying for two nights. I was very curious about Russia, especially after traveling the countries which were once blanketed by the USSR. So far, it hasn’t disappointed. It just feels like a place where people do, say and wear whatever they want whenever they want to. It is a very complex social setting and their seems to be very little homogeneity. Everyone seems a total individual. Everyone is their own fashion trend or anti-trend. Their are tremendously beautiful young women arm in arm with old grey men, young teenagers dressed in the latest track suit fashions circa 1993, and old women dressed in enormous fur coats with just their little heads sticking out, hair died strange purples or bright shades of orange. Leopard-print and high heels. Multi-coloured denim jeans and pink-tinted sunglasses and some of the worst haircuts that I have ever seen. There are old men who look to be straight off the train from the deepest tundras of Siberia, 1890. Their are middle-aged men wearing white leather (or pleather) suits with scar on their faces and shy Central Asians huddling together talking shop. They are people trying to sell or advertise for businesses on most busy sidewalks. There are strip-clubs beside antique stores and Russian fast-food places offering dumplings and beat soup. And all this in a beautiful Venice of the north, with canals and beautiful bridges offering visas of orthodox cathedrals and Romanesque palaces. It is exactly as odd as I was hoping. I will surely have more to write about soon, especially because I’m going to Moscow in a couple of days and I have a inkling that it will be where the weird and wonderful burn the brightest.
