Into the Great, White Himalaya

After a bit of back + forth - Should we do this trek, or that, once we're in Nepal? - We've physically arrived in Pokhara at the base of the wide, magnificent Annapurna range. We came with no guide book for Nepal, so were TOTALLY unprepared to see this massive range rising WAY above town in all it's majesty and looking close enough to touch! The second surprise is that after hearing of it's popularity and overcrowding, the peak trekking season is just beginning and there's hardly anyone here! It only took us a day of fleeting glimpses of Machhapuchhre's fishtail profile soaring to 6,977M, than we decided to go for it! A quick visit to the government office for our permit, changing our Nepali money in for small bills, rental of sleeping bags + purchase of maps and a few other supplies and we're off!

We just realized that it's also our one year anniversary from the day we both quit work (Can I hear a Hell Yeah!)... Seems pretty auspicious to be beginning the longest trek either of us have ever attempted on this date :) This IS one of the most famous treks in the world and only partly because you have the luxury at spending every night in a "teahouse" as opposed to camping + cooking for yourself. It's not going to be EASY by any means, but it's CERTAINLY going to be 2-3 weeks of FANTASTIC vistas without ALL the work. We'll give you the low-down once we return...

India in Slow Motion

LOL! I just found myself tapping my foot along to the evening Puja song! Well, at least ONE of them... They still play for 3 FREAKING hours every evening! It just shows how much this, and this place, has really grown on me. The filthy, yet magical Ganga; The scores of colorful pilgrims + sadhus; Freaky sights; The dozen or more shopowners on busy Bengali Tola alley that greet us with a big smile every day; Our evening beers on the roof terrace; Learning how to make fresh cheese from a guy whose family has been doing it for generations and whose family name, Yadav, actually MEANS cheesemaker; Our homemade picnic dinners; Boat rides on the Ganga and appreciating how hard those guys work for a few rupee; Finally finding a cook that makes REALLY GOOD Indian Food; Mornings in the Temple with our new friend Claudia, doing yoga while gazing out at the river... And these are just the things I'm going to miss about VARANASI!

By going in slow motion, you're able to get past the initial overwhelming assault on the senses and see more deeply. You begin to understand the people and how they interact. You observe the details of the rituals and begin to wonder at their meaning. You stop taking your camera out and snapping away, but instead sit and be more present. You do yoga, meditate, gaze at rivers, learn a classical instrument, some hindi, how to make Malai Kofta... You invest yourself. And these people, the Indians, make it easy. They encourage you. They're happy that you care!

And then it happens, the things that you once despised, that made it so hard, become a game or an intrigue. The touts that never leave you alone are silenced by laughter, or confusion at your silly or absurd responses. You notice that THIS pile of garbage contained a bag of the red powder-dye pilgrims dot their foreheads with, and that a cow has tried to eat it and COMPLETELY covered it's face and neck in the stuff. You begin to wonder if the reason Indians smile + laugh so much is because they're aware enough to see the comedy amidst the tedium in everyday life. Maybe they're just trying to maintain their sanity amidst the chaos. Maybe that's why they've cultivated a carnival-like atmosphere with colors, deities, freaks + music everywhere! If I asked someone the secret, could they tell me?

Maybe WE need to take a big lesson from them and smile more during the course of our days. To seek out the oddities + pleasures around us for our amusement + sanity. To not be in such a hurry. Take a different route to work. Walk and ride a bike more often. The U.S. REALLY went wrong when we began city planning around the automobile. With wide avenues and everything spread out it became impracticle to use your body to get around. Here, and in many European cities, you still find lots of winding alleys that are actually FUN to walk or cycle through. A city plan like this creates intimacy, forces you to communicate with people and helps to build strong, local communities. I know we'll have more opportunity to experience much of the above as we now continue on our way into Nepal, then Tibet through the end of the year. It's with a fond farewell + longing to return though that I depart now from India.

Also, we finally finished posting picks from our big Architectural Appreciation Spree. You can check the "link" for photos.

Assault on the Senses - Revisit

Well, after 4-1/2 months here I still find myself unable to distill down what India IS better than I did my first week! What have I given? A list of nouns and adjectives that don't really say alot on their own. But these same few words speak VOLUMES to me now. Let me revisit just a few...

SIGHT -
Brightly colored saris in every shade + design imaginable - Words just can't describe the endless variety. You see them all around, out of the corners of your eyes, like beautiful butterflies. They make even the simple woman cleaning the filthy street appear elegant. It certainly makes a place feel much more exotic than somewhere where everyone's in simple, western attire.
Sacred cows, moving with the cars down busy city streets - How can this be? It just seems CRAZY! A herd of cattle may decide to park it in the middle of a busy intersection and people elect just to steer around them. They rule the roads.
Naked holymen painted white, their fierce eyes gleaming - These sadhus come in all types, but are usually recognizable by their orange sarong/longhi. From the little, white-bearded man plucking his one-stringed instrument and singing with a radiant smile to the frightening, warrior-like one with the human skull on the end of his staff. My advice - Give a friendly "Namaste!", but keep your distance.
Sunset fire ceremonies on the Ganges - Big, small or do-it-yourself, it's always beautiful + powerful, and Indians love it.

SOUND -
The chai sellers' call - An endless variety + regularity of which I never seem to tire.
Horns blaring ceaselessly - From scooters, to cars to buses. They're ear-piercingly loud and tirelessly used. We try and anticipate them and accordingly plug our ears, much to the amusement of Indians who get a good laugh at us and I presume are all DEAF!
Adults interrupting whatever you're doing to tirelessly ask the same string of questions - I've come to learn that Indians are CURIOUS. They stop and stare at anybody selling weird stuff on the street or anything out of the norm as a source of entertainment. This includes you, and as long as you're in their country you just have to resign yourself as fair game for their attention. This is REAL reality TV.
Laughter - Indians LOVE a good laugh and they laugh + smile more than any people I've ever encountered. What a refreshing break from our western sobriety! Darin's silliness has been proven to work exceedingly well :)

SMELL -
Freshly baked chapatti - It still makes my mouth water, even if I'm full.
Garbage everywhere - I've now experienced what I consider BEYOND the limits of acceptable human existence amidst filth, and I KNOW it gets alot worse. What do you do? Hold your breath and try not to think about it. The government here is so corrupt that there seems little hope of intervention. We have noticed a simple do-it-yourself approach where both home + storeowner's sweep it into a pile on the street and then later burn what the cows, dogs + goats don't eat. Sound bad? Trust me, it's something.
Flower offerings to the Gods - Indians are FANATICAL about their Gods, and have daily rituals for waking them up, bathing + feeding them, putting them on the altar, then retiring them to a separate bed at the end of the day. It's alot of work. Sometimes more than they appear to spend on their own homes. I'm not sure if even the most devout little, old Catholic grandmother spends that much time daily on religion. Very peculiar.

TASTE -
Perfectly ripened Alfonso mangoes - Mango season has come and gone, much to my chagrin. I truly got to appreciate them for the first time as I never thought I would. How types varied every few weeks based on what was ripening + by geography. At home we're lucky to get 2-3 varieties. Here, I've had the luxury to taste maybe 1-2 dozen and there are 200 in all. Seems like I've got lots of future taste-testing cut out for me!
Chai with the PERFECT amount of sugar + cardamom - STILL stops me in my tracks and elicits MUCH Mmmm-ing.
Chai with WAY to much sugar + cardamom - Just when I think I've got it down I'll forget to ask for it without. God, it's awful! I try to take it as a lesson for further appreciation of the really good ones.
Western Food (for a change) - We've basically given up expecting anything really good on this front. Pizza + Pasta that tastes like nothing close, veg burgers with pasty cream sauce atop instead of a bun... Forget it! We're just gonna have to wait until we can do it ourselves. Just more resolve, if we needed it, for pushing us onward towards our goal.

TOUCH -
Cool water on hot skin - Still find myself taking at least 3 cold showers a day. Also elicits lots of Mmmm-ing.
Cows hair - After you've seen so many of these beasts they kind of grow on you. I actually will pat the less scruffy-looking ones on the head now.
Stepping in soft cow dung - It comes in all consistencies from a liquid disaster of great diameter to an impressive mountain of dung and it's Flat, Out, Unavoidable.
Smooth, white marble - What a treat to hot, tired feet! And have I mentioned the Taj?! :)

Check the "link" for current photos from our past 3 weeks in Varanasi

The Zoo

Never in a million years did I think such a number + variety of animals would become a part of my daily life as they have here in Varanasi. Every day for the past 3 weeks we've observed + lived amongst Monkeys + Mongoose, Sacred Cows + Brahma Bulls, Fresh-Water Dolphins, Goats + Geckos, Huge + Hippy Water Buffalos, Dogs + Swallows. To just use monkeys as an example - It's possible to watch them by the scores, just outside our room - Scaling walls; mothers carrying babies against their breasts; Using any sort of power or telephone cable as a zip-line; Stealing food + laundry; Adolescents playing games trying to knock or bounce each other out of trees... Wild!

Delhi Belly, Monsoon Fever + Other Maladies

Getting sick, mildly or severely, is just one of the things you have to accept when traveling in the developing world. Not that you don't get sick at home, but it's only once in a great while that you get food poisoning and it's IMPOSSIBLE to get malaria. Usually, it's a small price to pay for the experience of modern day time travel. For those that don't understand what I mean by that - Being in the third world, especially in rural areas, you're often able to witness a way of life you may not realize still exists - People carrying goods on ox-drawn carts; Cooking over dung fires; Living under the same rood as their livestock; Bathing + washing clothes in rivers... But back to my point. Unfortunately for me, I have a delicate constitution and on this + past trips I've contracted numerous G.I. problems and as a result have lost alot of weight. Something of which I can't afford to do on an ongoing basis.

My last case, of what they call Delhi Belly here in India, persisted for over a week until I was so weakened + irritable that I finally broke down and got antibiotics (always a last resort because it also kills the GOOD bugs and temporarily weakens your immunity). Not a week later and now I've come down with what the Doctor presumes is Monsoon Fever, common here in Varanasi post-monsoon, but of which I can find nothing about. Symptoms last for three days and include SEVERE, incapacitating headache, high fever + body aches. Sounds like what I've got, but is it? Conducting my own search online, the symptoms all sound alarmingly similar to Typhoid, Dengue Fever and Japanese Encephalitis. Yikes! I'm lacking the abnormal rash + neck immobility, for now, so I rule these out. Then I read about Brucellosis, contracted from eating unpasturized milk + cheese products. For the past few days we've been taking cooking lessons from a guy that makes some of THE best fresh cheeses we've ever tasted, and we've been doing ALOT of tasting... In my weakened immune state, could this be it?! I'll give it the three days and if symptoms persist I'll get a blood test to find out.

Darin + I were talking about this, in one of my moments of clarity, and he reminded me that just because you're in the U.S. doesn't mean you shouldn't do your own research. His Mom was a Med Tech for 30ish years and was witness to numerous diagnosis' made by doctors that, with her specialized knowledge in reviewing test data, did not agree with. Not to say that the doctors didn't have many more years of school training, or even experience, but not all are created equal, and they CAN make mistakes, overlook things or err towards the more common of two possibilities. Another example is of some friends of ours that are very heads-up. They had a child - NOT their area of expertise. As their pediatrician began prescribing numerous standard inoculations they started to do their homework. What they found was disturbing - Several of these so-called preventatives were completely illogical... For things a child shouldn't even contract... from drug use or sex... like Hepatitis! What?! It's true. Further investigation unveiled that the DRUG COMPANIES were pushing this one. Must be a tidy sum for them with every newborn in the U.S. being required to get this!

Anyway, I said all this not to get your sympathy for me (after 3 days I AM about 80% back to normal), but just to caution you to be your own doctor. Look up the medicines you're prescribed before taking them. Sometimes there is more information about how they should be taken than you're given - Like being ineffective when taken with another or allergic reactions. I ALWAYS list my allergy to Tylenol/Paracetamol on the informational questionaires and you wouldn't BELIEVE the number of times doctor's give it to me anyway! So question, then question some more. Make those doctors WORK!

BurningMan, India Style - Part 4

http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLandingSignin.jsp?Uc=usubtxr.a111vikv&Uy=arkqbf&Upost_signin=Slideshow.jsp%3Fmode%3Dfromshare&Ux=1Varanasi (Thursday, Sept. 7)

Temple Burn Day has passed, AND the BurningMan Exodus, AND the First Day Back to Work... Here in India, the Ganga still rises and the winds whip through Varanasi. Each day we keep our fingers crossed that we can put our plan into action, and each day we wait. One of our new friends, Alex, built a Mini-Man out of Nag Champa Incense sticks, but had to burn it ahead of us as he was heading back home. Two others of our group have also departed. Today we awoke... still air. We had some finishing touches to take care of - Buying flowers + offerings to fill the basket with and basting the Man with another coat of oil to ensure he burns well. We also learned that not only is tonight a full moon, but there'll also be a partial lunar eclipse! Seems pretty auspicious that the timing has worked out like this...

Burn Night -
We started final preparations around 5:30PM and 45 min. later we're stepping aboard a boat with one of our new friends, Claudia, that had been around for the construction of "The Man" + build-up to the burn. Our boatmen, Jaganath + Pakaloo rowed us up-river, past several ghats where Indians asked what we were doing - Puja? This one for the Ganga? What God is this? All the while, The Man stood upright between us, face to face, arms raised. We'd adorned his neck with a garland of marigolds as is typical here for offering to the Gods and on bodies before they're burned.

We reached a spot where the current was calm and we could assemble it all in the river - One woven basket wrapped in heavily waxed cloth for waterproofing; One "Man" constructed of pine + heavily basted in mustard oil for flammable; One bag of sand to stabilize the base + act as a ballast; Four guy wires to ceate a tripod for added support; One bag of wood shavings sprinkled with extra oil for fuel; One bag mixed flowers; One bag puffed rice prasad (Indian offering); Five sticks incense; One golden Ganesh emblem (A logo we've come to use for our Garage Mahal camp). Man stable. Craft not sinking. YES! Having not been able to test any of this before we were hugely excited at this first success. NOW to get the torch lit... Not so easy with the breeze, but we did.

We took a quiet moment for reflection. Even our boatmen were into it. It was BEAUTIFUL, the full moon reflecting magnificently on the Ganga as we attempted to set him alight. Operative word, attempted. We tried, and we tried. This we HAD tried beforehand, but now the breeze was working against us. We were faced with a "Man" who wouldn't light and no fuel available to us. After several minutes our torch was beginning to burn out and Jaganath had the excellent suggestion of throwing on an old shirt, that we'd only JUST brought to carry our sand because it's bag was ripping. Thank God, Shiva, Krishna + Lord's Hanuman + Ganesh - It WORKED! Soon "The Man" was flaming mightily as we floated alongside. An arm fell first and the head shortly after. We gathered the pieces from the Ganga and added them back to the basket. Other bits were falling down sparking the wood shavings below. We were ecstatic - He BURNED! And what a backdrop with the full moon!

A crew of people were waiting + watching back at the guest house for us to float by. Our flame was MUCH larger than all the typical evening banana-leaf candles that are cast out so we figured they'd HAVE to be able to see us and possibly from aways off. Now, the whole basket was aflame and we guessed that'd be the last of it. Instead, the sand dropped out and it just kept burning. We realized later that the heavily wax-soaked fabric had acted as a kind of candle with wick, so it burned, and burned, and burned... well beyond the point that seemed possible. We watched as it drifted farther + farther away, a flaming red glow on the Ganga waters, until finally, the sacred river took our offering.

The boat was in front of the guest house and everyone was clapping and cheering. We were incredulous... Could it really have worked out so well?! Claudia was joyous and thanked us profusely for sharing this special moment with her. She GOT it. Another converted burner :) We were able to share the message with many quality people, most of who've never heard of BurningMan. I feel very blessed that we've been given this opportunity to expand the experience and we're excited about future burn possibilities as we're abroad. Nothing can compare to the week in Black Rock City, but until we can return, we see possibilities for a bigger + better (if that's possible) regional burn next year. Do I hear Burningman... Laos?

Here's a "link" to more photos from our Burn

BurningMan, India Style - Part 3

Varanasi (Sunday, Sept. 3)

We awoke at sunrise for a Ganga cruise with two of our new friends, Richard + John. The sun was a red orb rising across the swollen river as we headed upstream towards one of the burning ghats. We passed people bathing and one CRAZY looking sadhu sitting up high on the banks meditating and holding a staff with a skull atop! Fa-re-kee! Later, another was covered in mud doing a headstand on a platform in the river! More bodies bathing + burning, side by side, as we gazed on. We returned and had a tasty breakfast, complete with REAL coffee, before Darin and I parted ways with our friends to head to the main burn ghat (pictured) and get in a proper headspace for our 'round-the-globe mental commune with our friends AT the burn. Knowing and trusting these people as some of our very best friends there was NO doubt in our minds that we WERE making a connection. We felt it so strongly as images of someone's face would come to mind and we'd say their name aloud. Then another, and another. Soon we were crying from the bittersweetness of missing them and wishing we could be sharing the burn together, but knowing that they are as happy for us being HERE as we are for them being THERE. A Brahmin (priest) approached us and began saying "No crying. God gives life and he takes it. It is the way of things..." That misguided condolence brought us around, and despite the 1000's of miles that still separated us from our friends and the yearly ritual that has come to mean SO much on so many different levels, we were able to smile. We continued saying names, but this time with renewed cheer. All the while, bodies were carried to the river, dipped in the holy Ganges, then burned on the platform beneath us. Talk about a moment for thoughtful reflection!

Eventually we made our way away from the ghats and the crowds and spent a memorable afternoon by ourselves, feeling very connected and reminiscing about past burns. As the afternoon wore on we emerged to see how our Man was enjoying his Ganga view and chat with our new friends. We'd decided to postpone our burn a day to allow us more time to savor what we were feeling and the spirit of it all.

That evening we enjoyed a great stroll through a quieter neighborhood, watching locals going about their evening rituals and feeling very at peace with the day.

BurningMan, India Style - Part 2

Varanasi (Saturday, Sept. 2)

We've ended up with only 2 days pre-burn prep time in Varanasi. For the first I was confined to bed getting over a few-day, feverish case of food poisoning and Darin was left to scout for supplies. The second I was well enough to work and we spent the entire day on the terrace of our Ganga (holy Ganges river) view guest house, constructing our Man and waterproofing a basket in which to launch him onto the river. This last is our Indian improvisation as it's typical to float candle offerings on the Ganga at sunset. We attracted alot of interest and provided several explanations over the course of the day about what BurningMan IS and why it's so important to us to make such effort to celebrate from afar. The creative process felt great as did the actual building of it all ourselves, since this is also such a big part of our process back home in the months leading up to the main event.

All day we played the "What are our friends doing on the Playa NOW?" game and got endless smiles and laughs as we remembered special moments including each and every member of our camp. In the process, we made four NEW friends here in Varanasi who want to share the Burn with us.