Good Style Unleashed

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Good Style Unleashed

Middle February

116 k day into this jungle city paradise. Forts and palaces to explore, and a river for daily swim.

Shivaratri commence. In lue of “shubaratri” (good night),  Orchha comes alive past 9 to make merry like “there’s no other time”.  No bhang lassi reverie with  my lost travelers in Varanasi- a rained out cycle day spent playing chess. Yesterday we wandered into the square outside of the only religiously relevant building in this city of ruins, which is not an architectural gem. Wedding music blares, Bangara drummers funnel blast beats of energy. I take out my guitar and start to play along, drawing a crowd and locking eyes. Oh, the Saddhu we helped into the nature sanctuary the day before wants us to follow him. He leads us into a circle playing baijan on Sarangis and tiny cymbals. Our guy plays a little hand drum-I take out my guitar and look at him through his thick glasses.  My guitar is magically and randomly open tuned to the same chord of the Sarangis.

Call and response “Sita-Ram”, “Hare Krishna”. I chordify baijan classics, sharing in the exact romaticized way we’ve put our search for on the backburner in exchange for hot showers and lemon tart. My plan to unload my wallet on these holy beggars is foiled only by their incessant asking for money.  Interrupting the music- “Money”-I ignore. “Rupees, Rupees!”. Of course we give. But the harsh reality reigns another day-money is the basis of every friendly exchange here.  India will never give us what we hope for, and tends not to give us what we expect. But as soon as we give in, agree to love or hate it, it smacks us in the face with a stomach flu or sunset river dip.

“ride awaaay”

GWALIOR

End February

Too much “real India”. The city is off the tourist loop, and left us fending for ourselves from the bottom of the food chain in a “law of the jungle” economy with fewer western comforts. Being bullied by greater vehicles amidst insane traffic, being ripped off more, and general heckling left us indulging more intensely in soda, ice cream, and television. We upgraded rooms to view “Street Fighter” in Hindi on our big rest/recovery day.

More of the same, if you can call experiencing extremes “sameness” (Which one can more easily here). Exploring the fort that sits atop the city (turns out architecture is the best thing about India) we were pleased to meet a good hearted, wispy bearded man at the Sikh temple. He gave us food and chai in an enormous dining hall where everyone sits on the ground in lines and cleans their plate. He treated us as pilgrims in the classical sense. He offered us a place to stay around the temple for free. A place where a traveler in a strange land may have some peace and dignity. We left the temple evolved from a cocoon(a) of judgments (unevolved Beedrills) about the nature of the Indian, open hearted and greeting strangers with “Namaskars” to show respect. We smoked a bidi on the fort wall, overlooking the city in smog. We heard yells from above in Indian half-englishy, threats and curses. A group of teenagers were throwing rocks at us from hundreds of feet up. Multiple encounters on the ride home left us cursing the idiocy and ignorance of India’s layfolk.

I am learning the value of “callous” here. Whatever’s I do do is what I do, and there’s some rightness in it. There’s wayyy better places to work on opening the heart than India. Expand in the comforts, attack and defend when in its almost a matter of survival, lest we finally push our luck and in our ultimate plunge into the unknown suffer death, which we can’t better ourselves with.

SHIVPURI

ender February

Such grace led us to the holy mandir (temple), where we deed as Baba’s do for 3 days. It started with a young 17 year old’s prayer to Hanuman that his dream of meeting a westerner may finally be granted, after 2 years of studying English from the songs of Akon.  After an hours conversation, mostly translations of American slang and uncomfortable descriptions of sexual acts, we asked to stay in his home. Too embarrassed to show us wher he lives, he took us to a temple which sat under a spring, and the keeper of this holy place agreed to let us stay.

The babas, whether out of ignorance  or disinterest in value judgments of “good” and “bad” possessed as little ecological consciousness as the rest of India, littering plastic chai cups and washing oily dishes in the source of fresh water for the wildlife of Madhav national park. Sharing their lifestyle for a few days was a gift and required little renunciation, save the headmaster Baba insisting that I use his blanket instead of my sleeping bag, which everyone was equally astonished and disgusted by.  These people know how to live: wake early, bath, meditate, eat delicious, simple food, do Assana, formal prayer and Baijan singing, hitting the chillum violently and drinking chai throughout the day. And all in the name of god.

JAIPUR

Beginning March

” Bundar manu, Holi hai!” That’s what we say to victims of our bicycle, water balloon drivebys on this holiday-Holi. Day…of water and color bombs, dished backhanded to approved victims based on their response to a “Happy Holi” as we approached. If there was no risk of cold blooded, cruel natured revenge, I flung one and rode away with a “scram!”. “Do’t mind, it’s Holi!”, and most didn’t. The foul looks and nastiness that we often receive at the whims of overproudy teenagers and young men as we ride by have, for the time being, transformed to smiles, hugs, and a generous smearing of purple powder dye on our cheeks.

We stayed in a guest house occupied by a cross section of a family with a long lineage of musical mastery.  The current bearer of the flame, 17 year old named Zuber,  is presently a finalist on Indian Idol. His crystal voice could easily come to be recognized through overdriven speakers on street corners across India. Each morning we  practice Qawwli singing. The home cooking is Rajasthan flavored and delicious. Our room has lot of windows and smells like old books. During the day, pigeons fly in and out of the open windows as I play guitar and write poems.

Hardcore roadside calorie clincher

Sikh wedding. Guess I was doin’ “the zombie”

We biked many sun baking, wind whipping, lip parching days through the desert of Rajasthan to get to  Udaipur  , oasis city where the “bicycle adventure” portion of the trip ends and the “traveling with parents” section commences. We meet my dad and grandparents here tomorrow, and do aspire to sneak our filthy selves into the Lake Palace hotel to stay with them, most romantic and luxurious hotel in all of India. I always thought of this section as the icing on the cherry of the cake of this trip, very end, lap of luxury. Weird! Home on April 7th. Thanks for reading my blodglings’zes!

We started our bicycle adventure through the countryside of India in the traffic of Varanasi. Bicycles shiny looking and fully loaded for the first time- One speed, heavy but tough, the most common mode of transportation in India. Our packs strapped to a back rack with bungee cords and twine. We head to the train station in some of the most insane traffic I’ve ever seen, and presumably the worst we’ll experience on this trip. We intended to take a train past an area in Madhya Pradesh of which we were warned of violent Naxalite activity, a military Maoist group.  However, we fail to successfully navigate the bureaucracy of the train station, specifically in regard to registering our bikes. We end up taking a bus, loading our bikes on the roof, which suffer minor damage from the bumpy ride (broken spoke, broken seat, broken lock).

We arrive in the industrial, bus station dump of Rewa at 11 pm. On the bus ride in we pass two road side mobs, screaming and banging on the side of the bus. We find ourselves cycling around, looking for a guest house, in the heart of “bandit country”. A tout with a big posse wants us to pay his rickshaw to lead us through the mobs to a hotel on the other side of town, and we have a hard time shaking him. His drunk sidekick grabs my wrist, insisting and scolding me “No Problem” in the way that most Indians like to tell us we worry too much. The first two places are full, and hard enough to find. At 11:30 we finally find a room-but in our obvious desperation, we are dished a price hike. We try to bargain down in vain, accusing him of highway robbery, looking him in the eyes, begging “sukriya”. At last we concede, tired and frazzled. Throughout the day, we reminded ourselves conditions will never be this bad again on our trip, but regretfully sense a calloused “future me” laughing at the naiveté.

REWA-SATNA-PANNA-

KHAJURAHO-165 KM

Our first day was a 50 km ride from Rewa to Satna, along highway 7, a single lane each way road through mustard farms, lined with beautiful old trees. We got to Satna mid-afternoon, opting for a slightly posh sleeping arrangement-a double room with TV. We smoked a joint in celebration of catching “Almost Heroes” from the very beginning, in celebration of the road being beautiful, in celebration of “Anything Malega” (possible).

The next day was 70 km to Panna Tiger Reserve. The first 50km or so took us through blooming yellow mustard, but there was an intense elevation gain entering the desert foothills of the Bundelkhand mountain range. I had a stint of extreme doubt, trying to muster strength to pass through this modern Mordor in my exhaustion, 4 o’clock sun setting fast. How the land got to be so lifeless it is hard to tell-whether the over tilling of land or its elevation out of the floodplain of the Ganges. This landscape did queer things to my mind-an army tank being towed behind a truck, the dominions of darkness hauling coal to keep the fire of industry and greed ever burning. We are frequently run off the road by the convergence of oncoming trucks and buses, contemplating having to spend the night in the brushes, notorious for its bandits, without dinner or water, feast to the mosquitoes under the full moon.

Finally a fair omen- a bush with bright flowers, neon birds hopping about. Suddenly, the climb is over flying down hills surrounded by forest. Vital energy of the trees restores our failing limbs and hearts, working our legs merrily all the while, singing praise and thanking god. 13km, 9km, 5km-I can run that in 17:30, so I can bike it in less than 10!

We woke at 5:45 to explore the park by Jeep. Panna, like most wildlife reserves and National Parks in India, has a money sucking trap that is totally unavoidable. Armed guards kept us from going in by bicycle, and we were slapped with fees for taxi, jeep driver, and a massive entrance fee. Our guide kindly explained that this job paid him very little, that only tips from foriegners fed his family. It ended up costing about 30 bucks each for a morning jeep ride- not THAT much for American prices, but worth almost a week of living in Varanasi.  Still able to enjoy the park though. We saw no tigers, but many antelopes, different types of deer, Langur monkeys with big black faces and feet who hissed at us, a “hawk-eagle”(?), and a Kingfisher bird, appearently very rare. 

Our tour ended pretty early so we decided to start biking the 45 km to Khajuraho at 2 PM, cutting it a little close. It ended up being almost totally downhill and flat though, and we made it to watch ther sunset over the lake here, surrounded by little tout children bothering us with places to sleep, things to buy, how much the bike costs, can I have a cookie, can I have another?

Khajuraho is famous for temples adorned with erotic carvings. Everything has been so pristinely restored that the place feels totally sterile. The jungles that the temples were “rediscovered” in have been replaced with gardens, hedges trimmed too short, and no walking on the grass. Little  spiritual significance remains in these hollow shells-in fact, the forces of capitalism and tourism have left the entire area generally distasteful to our adventurous sensibility, and seemed to turn the beautiful countryfolk we met on the roads into english speaking, pathetic, begging, tricksy, money grubbers. Looking at the temples makes me tired like standing too long at the art museum, and we retreat to a sanity nap in the shade.

Collecting the spoils of my bhang lassi bet, days later, to experience the true insanity of this city. A playdoh-y, fruity beverage, ultimately untasty, cement colored, grey green, and chunky. Took a boat across the river to a country of sand and caked mud bricks. During the monsoon’s, this is the floor of the Ganga, but during the rest of the year, and arid wasteland. Full winter garb and not enough fluid to combat dry mouth that convinced me I was tongue-less. We are approached by 4 riders who offer to take us across this desert on their beasts. We fearfully accept their off. My horse disliked me, trying to buck me off after I ineptly scrambled up to ride him bare back. The horse despite his situation was proud, and it seemed to me a miracle that this strange, cow-ish, machine consciousness was willing to bear such a bumbling moron. I got off and asked the man if he loved this horse. “Yes, my horse”. Is it your friend? “Yes, friend.”

Jonah has left for Bodh Gaya to hear the Dalai Lama speak, and I am left “alone” amongst the masses and friends I’ve made here. An unprecendented cold spell plagues this city, according to the front page headlines of unreadable newspapers for their lack of American news and focus on professional cricket. I remain, despite the cold, in unwavering devotion to Guru-Ji. By day I explore the streets and sands, the corpses and cow pies. By night I spend 2-3 hours studying at the Mishra’s house, where I am flattered by my “Indian Momma”, who gifted me a grey paisley shaul. Brother there is the greatest Tabla player I’ve ever seen, 17 years, his practice session first introduced me to the Mishra lineage.  One hour of perfectly syncopated and synchronized practice with his two younger brothers, an epic of applied Indian mind, heart, and discipline.

Guru-Ji and Deobrat Mishra

One day spent wandering with Walen friend, who I happily room with, discuss god and conception, discuss discussion and its merits-I defend the ancient past time of “the dialogue” over passages from “Yoga Vashista”. We woke to an early, South Indian style breakfast of Idly-puffy lentil and rice cakes with curry, and Paratha, a kind of vegetable pancake. We catch a boatman back to the other side of the river, this time to the tranquility rather than insanity of caked mud and sand, thicket and thorn, and wild mustard. We crossed the desert, entered the brush in hopes of finding woods, and at last settled for some farmland where we climbed a tree that bore strange, green, fuzzy, acorn sized fruit.  The ripple of wind in the trees brought my mind to home, already feeling the moment as if a distant memory from my backyard dwelling. Then my mind slowed and I was present,  conversing with the giant whose crevice of branches I was nestled in.

We ventured back into the sand where I busted out my brand new kite, 60 rs, rainbow stripes and flies like a hawk.  Having a kite draws much interest from filthy stranger boys with basic English. Grotesque imagery is commonplace in Varanasi, but the grossest thing I’ve seen of yet was a human corpse we came across, stuck in the mud and reeds of the Ganga, chunks of flesh being ripped off and gnawed by a starved, mangey dog. I stopped to look for a few moments and actually experienced a feeling that everything is the same, without putting words to that feeling, without any kind of reminder from Yoga or Buddhism on high that this is what I ought to be feeling if I’m on the right track. It didn’t need to make a good story, and I did nothing to make it a certain way, to feel it more intensely. The only thing that compares in overall definitive disgusting-ness  was the dead rat lying in that pile of shit I saw earlier in the morning. Maybe the dead puppy in the gutter of trash and shit water. Ever access to that feeling, reminder of fleet, by a simple visit to the burning ghats here, where you can watch bodies burn to your hearts content, if that’s what you’re into. A favorite hangout, watching the flames consume shape, listening the the crack of pressure when the human skull pops.

Boudha, a Tibetan Buddhist neighborhood of Kathmandu of which I feel a local, confidently navigating the curved, dirt alleyways that circumambulate the largest stupa in Nepal. I even judge the day tripping tourists who flash the monks’ routine with cameras. Attend Choki Nyima Rinpoche’s teachings, daily, for a week, 4-6 hours every morning, a flash flood transmission of the dharma.

Working inside one spiritual tradition, for once. Never mind this anarcho hodge-podgery free jazz McNature music yoga art jewish and most undefinable god endeavor that I’ve set out to discover the ways of the world by. They have answers, even a dictionary of language to precisely contextualize concepts that I struggle to find new words for. So Rinpoche brought us up to speed, explained that the “everything is nothing” moment that I grasped for, that I’ve defined as the highest, is but a part of godly experience, and the feeling of my most naturalest me. The phantasmagoria fleets until I learn to detach from it. Full realization comes with objectivity, and what I do with it. I could go on forever in this excitement, but Buddhist language, useful as it may be, quickly falls into the realm of cliche in writing, and this isn’t a log of “stuff I now know”-that would be so tedious. So I’ll stick to finding new ways to describe “it”, “all of it”. Apologies to a fascinated future me.

Studying Buddhism with Jonah has already volcanicly reconfigured our dynamic. It’s almost impossible to hurt eachothers feelings. if there’s a thought I want to convey that runs a risk of being taken the wrong way, he can check that flash of anger. Any jealousy, miscommunication, or careless action, I can nip in the bud, too! Ask myself why it bothered me, trace it so deeply, and its always something so stupid and selfish that I don’t relate to it in all when put into language in my thoughts. In conjuncture with “everything is nothing” mentality, I can genuinely remain unaffected, not forced to suppress it, or go through the electrifying, time and energy consuming, entertaining ordeal of settling it.

Growing a bit tired and frusterated with an aspect of Nepali culture that we identitfy specifically with males. So many of the teachers here have at some point or another taken me aside, grabbed me by an arm, and demanded me to confirm a conception of America in which the streets are lined with “too much money”. They want to know how much Sandeep, a Nepali friend from Philadelphia, makes every year. Most share a vague ambition to get to America to become rich. I occasionally challenge people on it, with phrases that are cliche in English, and yet are so foreign to a Nepali that they can’t be understood. “Money doesn’t neccesarily make people happier”, and the like. Nothing gets through, and its not the language barrier. The entire worldview is about getting rich enough to leave, to get richer-and this process effectively eliminates all talent and money from Nepal.

I spoke to a most respected and estimable teacher-friend Kailash about it.  I asked if he wanted to leave Nepal. “Yes, why not?” he said. He wants to go to America to become “the richest person in the world”. I asked him if he was happy here, and if he loved Nepal, and he said “of course”.  Where does the desire to leave the country enter this culture? TV? India Forbes magazine?

It’s difficult to assess from my privalege of being an American. If I were not, I wouldn’t have this freedom, to work one summer and travel on the money I made for 6 months. How can I blame Nepali’s for wanting that kind of freedom for thier kids? My enlightenment, to come from a place of such privalege that I can look at this objectively, outside of the cultural stories and circumstance that inform our goals and dreams. Am I above thier trap of thinking they need to leave their home to be happy, I wonder, from the side of the world to which I do not belong? Or do they look at my behaviors and ambitions and see through them, thinking I’m trapped in my analytic mind? Well my friends, that’s just a trick of the mind.

HILARIOUS ZONEEEEEEE

Chalk wunderer I drew on the wall outside of our room.

EPISODIC NATURE

Our last day at the school was magical, one of those “best days” that are increasing at an exponential rate per capita per citizen of this freedom/imagination realm we’ve manifested through the art of traveling.  We had a plan to present a program of film and music, with a basketball competition to tip the potter in the piano, for the whole school to watch. Our time frame didn’t include the surprise ceremony that Kailash planned for us, in true Nepali fashion of maintaining the element of surprise over all else, even though it caused us stress and confusion. But we could learn a lot from the level of patience and trust that Nepali’s tend to demand from us. So the ceremony commenced after school hours.

There was a series of speeches that were so formal that they borderline didn’t mean anything, about how “with great joy comes great sorrow” and including multiple “furthermore’s” and “Henceforth’s” per speech per capita per student to teacher ratio. Then, 1X1, every student in the school bestowed upon us a fatty garland of flowers, or a wrapped gift, or bot, or and best of all, drawings! the genius of which could only come as a result of mistranslated conceptions of Sana Claus and bizarre cartoon ecstacy rituals. It was better than birthday! Garlands stacked, immobilizing our necks, piling to the forehead so that we couldn’t see or breath, outstrectched arms clutching paper and presents. I was worked up to an ecstatic speech in which I jumped up on a chair and professed my love for Nepal and everyone at the school.

Last night, some kind of incredible feat of brotherhood. After all day tension with Jonah, the worst of which a run we took together, but separated by long stretch of dusty trail before the swimming hole, it came time to read Lord of the Rings, and he wanted to sleep. I took some leap of faith to tell Jonah my tidy inner workings, so sick of waiting for him all the time, and he never makes concessions to me, taking himself out of our shared situation with his constant projects. He’s mad at me for my poking at his insecurities, which he said I “delight in”; I’m mad at him again over basic exclusion and abandonment when all we have is each other. Suddenly the truth is emerging, that we’re not mad at each other at all, we love each other, and our conversation that started as our most heated confrontation all trip was brought outside, morphed under the stars into our most open and searching to date.

Universe, personal gods, capitalism as anarchy, imagination as religion, Kabbalah, Ramayana, loving America for its foundations in enlightenment and liberal arts, and loving Nepal for all the obvious reasons. We spoke of personal god-our relationship with a force higher than us but based on our own ability to make it up, so of course we envision god as man. Or that history is pulling evolution/humanity towards a more realized future form that represents our present God, creation, as we grow into more and more conscious forms that understand the ability to create, and that’s why God is experienced in that place of art and imagination where you are suddenly out of the realm of the regular world, or even the archetypal world, and there is infinite freedom in all directions in your choice of which shapes and elements to move around.

And the funny thing is, to imagine your own personal God, to invent that myth of someone who knows you better than you know yourself, to imagine, you must do the act of imagining. The act of art is what opens us up to our greatest art- a godly experience, where we don’t have it all figured out, but our creation does, and we can come to know both sides if “it”, the humility of being nothing in the face of God, without the arrogance of feeling that you yourself know enough about yourself and the world to the point where you shut down and no longer let real wisdom reach you in the ways that it does: without specifically searching for it, but interacting with your worldly loves until it either trickles down into your open and sensitive conglomerations of nerves from above, or hatches inside of you, and that’s why you feel in a certain way like you’ve known it all along.

But is it just me that doesn’t have to search for it? Have I been blessed with the enlightenment of our founding fathers, who kept slaves because their position to be able to contribute to the overmind inherently excluded manual labor? I have been given education, taught how to write, given teachers like Jonah who teach me to teach myself, but Jonah never had that.  And he suggests, “Maybe that’s why you are Gabriel the Angel, and I am Jonah, always searching and second guessing myself.” And it’s beautiful to think of life this way, in terms of a story that history has proven to interact with certain archetypal layers of our psyche. But the Bible is just a story, a collection of stories from a collection of cultures, thousands of years old, and to believe in the power of the names to that extent is superstition. It’s easier to say “Well that’s just who I am” and stop growing right there, and it would seem like freedom to really know something until I’m old and watching tennis in my recliner and my grandchildren are debating whether grandpa is free or enslaved. I’d rather leave having it all figured out to my personal God. We are new Gabriels and Jonahs of the 21^st century, infinitely free in our love for each other, creative expression, American privilege, and belief in God.

Sunrise from our rooftop abode over the basketball court.

HILARIOUS ZONE

Jonah is deep in slumber again after a generous lunch of daalbhaat. It’s very hard to stay awake after a second plate, no matter how much sugar is mixed into post-everything chia, black masala tea with no milk. Jonah falls asleep after nearly every meal, unable to both remain conscious and digest food in the heat of the Terai summer, a fact which led to our first rule: no listening to Lord of the Rings after dinner. But now, the season has quickly changed, and we only get so many hours of daylight to adventure in the jungle sun on this rare day off. What’s the best way to wake up a presumably irritable Jonah from a presumably wonderful dream? Flipping the pages of a book, louder and louder, until he concedes to the waking world. We roll sumpin up, pack a bag full of necessities: cookies, water for drink, other cookies, apple, and peanuts.

No bikes today, so we’ll take the long walk to the short bridge, at which point we’ll have reached the swimmin’ hole, of questionable existence locality. The perimeter is littered with dung and candy wrappers, and now peanut shells, and there is a kind of circusy smell. Noid. The water is cool and it feels great! I think sentences like that can be cut from writing usually, he said. We swim up to the aforementioned bridge, locking eyes with a youth harrowing sugarcane peel into the water from above. Well we know at least one person is littering here. Jonah pitches advertisement for aforementioned treat au natural: “3/4 Dentists agree: Sugarcane is Candy!” which seems incredibly clever. “Our jokes are getting a lot better,” he self-congratulated. Gabe almost drowns getting to the shallow bank where he can stand and catch his breath. There he declares a second rule: “No slogans while we swim.”

Lakeside in Pokhara, truly some kind of vortex of cheap pizzas, wool ponchos, and semi-tactical gear. There is nowhere left to walk to, and the air is thick and humid, leading to a kind of pleasing drunken lethargy of café crawls. Growing weary of the pervasive stench of commerce, we muster some forethought and get the bright idea to roll sumpin up and rent a rowboat to take out on Phewa Tal, a pristine questionably safe lake with a sweet island temple and bomb views of Machapuchre. Testing out various coves for their swimmability, and rowing more or less in large circles, we are stalked along the shore forests by small voices, and we are eventually ambushed by 3 small naked boys who with questionable intentions attempt to board our vessel. Gabe is ‘noid. Well, not this cove. We spot a giant swing on another nearby shore. A popular recreational device across the world, a swing is useful for going both back and forth and up and down. In Nepal there exists a form of indigenous giant swing, for both kids and adults, made of 3 enormous stalks of bamboo.

We find a place to sit on the shore and triumphantly eat apples, bananas, and juice, of questionable drinkablility, in our underwear. Some middle school age kids are sitting nearby pointing. Jonah is ‘noid. He swims it off. Brothers join. The water is cool and swimming makes us laugh. Laughing makes swimming difficult. Hash + water = difficulty breathing. While drying off, our noia coalesces into physical manifestation: a slow but very social hornet, of questionable intentions, who wants to chill, first with Sam, who tries to walk away, but is eventually pursued right back into the water, the only hornet free zone in the world. With it’s new friend all washed up, the hornet begins to slowly fly toward gabe, who eventually resorts to the same evasive action runs into the water screaming. We dry off quickly. Not this cove.

Rowing back, a boat is calling to us. It’s the newlywed Israeli couple that taught us the amazing card game Wiste back on our first night of the trek! “You owe me a snickers!” he jokes. We keep rowing. Give them some privacy. It’s their honeymoon.

Friendly master of Nag

Where to begin after so many long, trying days? How about the blizzard. Well, Jonah and I decided we felt well enough not to turn back on account of altitude sickness, so we looked forward to “complete” our trek after a long day over the Thorung La pass, a jeep from Muktinath to Jomsom, and a flight the next day to the tropical jungle city of Pokhara. Pokhara, as it turns out days later, is not so much a literal city as some kind of unattainable symbol of better fortune, when our troubles will truly be gone, it will be warm, it will be no ones turn to endure the sleepless night of vomiting, and our calfs and thighs won’t tenderly bubble with each step.

We started our day over Thorung La at 3:30 AM, in order to make it over the pass in time for the sunrise. My night was full of nervous anticipation, tossing and turning throughout a musical, victorian era dream. We threw together our packs and went to the lodge in Thorung Pedi for breakfast-no one was hungry. “Cool Guy” asked me to teach him a walking bass line, a promise I had failed to keep the night before when the lodge was stormed by Spaniards and we quietly retired to an early bed. Wemet “Cool Guy” the day before-he DJ’d our lunch with Rufus Wainwright and Sigur Ros. We started to talk about music, swapped our ipods a bit, previously used exclusively for Lord of the Rings on tape, played his old busted high action guitar with a metal slide, and then really started to get down. He was an amazing jazz guitarist, and with two guitars, a jaw harp, and a recorder, we were able to play through a surprising amount of jazz standards like “Blue Monk”, “Giant Steps”, and “Autumn Leaves”. We soon moved onto Bob Marley, Nirvana, untill we were stright up putting on a concert for the packed lodge of 50 Israeli’s, Kiwis,Spaniards, Germans, Swedans. Occasionally the crowd would go completely silent, as in our most tenderest 3 part harmony during “King of Carrot Flowers”.
After teaching “Cool Dude” a walking B flat bassline, we were off, but the rain of the night before had turned to sleet which saturated our bags and gloves. After an hour of steep, uphill,freezing, stomach achey climb, we turned off our headlamps in favor of the illuminated dark blue of the snowy mountain. Beyond hope, we’d see a Snow Leopard stalking from the rocks above. I myself walked in the back, my nervous stomach ache producing abominable gas. Suddenly, emergency struck-I saw a tea house in the clouds upwards, rushed to it, waited for an attractive British woman to finish a rambunxious diarreah, and walked into the ugliest bathroom that has ever existed on this earth. This one lacked even a hole in the ground- it was a walk in closet, with a cracked corrugated tin door that didn’t close, with shit everywhere, in all corners, mostly liquidy, and a few with blood in them. Looks like most tourists are fighting the same demons we are.

I walked on greatly relieved, and the sleet had turned to a gentle flurry, much easier to keep warm in, as the snow could be brushed off the packs and clothing. As we ventured further, the flurries changed to considerable snowfall. Sam started to complain of windedness and stomach pain, the same first symptoms of what Jonah and I had just gotten over, truly an ugliest of bugs. By the time we reached the pass, at 5416 meters, we couldn’t keep our eyes open with the wind and snow whipping our faces, and we were pretty freezing in our raincoats and fleece pants. We had a highest,most expensive cup of tea, and started our descent through 4 biomes, muddy and steep downhill.

First out of the snowy, arctic chill, was the barren rocky slopes that the demon in Kourosawa’s “Dreams” inhabits. Then colorful algae and moss started to appear on the rocks. This transition gave us a gateway to what life on mars must surely look like. Orange and red, spikey, video feedback patterns contained therein. It started to rain again when grassy patches started to appear. Soon we were sloshing through mud among rice paddies again. After lunch, 9 hours from days beginnig, we hustled through heavier rains into the twon of Muktinath. Now entering the region of Mustang, famous for its wild horses, and we see some grazing on the way into town.

In Muktinath, a famous pilgramage site for Hindu’s and Buddhists alike, we visited the temples before second lunch. The Buddhist temple boasted a spout of natural gas that someone lit on fire 150 years ago, and it has never gone out. At the lodge where we took our lunch’s sequal-”Return of the Lunch 2-Back to Lunch”, we met a group of college exchange students visiting from Kathmandu, toasting to the concept of “No more jeeps!!!”. Psssshh… They treated us to tea, spiked or not spiked, and we got a girl’s email to meet up with in Kathmandu, if we ever do return. After lunch we quickly find a jeep to Jomsom, where our 7 AM flight departs from the next morning, to Pokhara. Which will only be possible if the rain ever stops, as they are quick to cancel flights on account of rain…

We get to Jomsom at 6 AM on the first of many consecutive longest days ever, all our belonings drenched, needing a good meal, a hot shower, and a bed to pass out in. The restaurant in the lodge we stayed in smelled like fish puke, Sam used all the hot water in his call for “first shower” and there were only two beds in the room, so Jonah gracefully took to the floor, as we both passed out at 8. Sam’s demon had other plans for him though. He was up all night, shitting and puking even more than we had.

The next morning we were awoken with the news that our flight to Pokhara was indeed cancelled. We’re told that if we hurry throgh the unrelenting rain, we can take a series of Jeeps and get to Pokhara by the next night. We catch some kind of offroad bus, to point A on our list of vehicle transfers. Our road takes us through the river bed, flooded by the recent, unseasonal rains, and 10’s of buses and cars are stuck in the mud and rushing water. Half of our bus gets out, and crosses the series of streams by foot, to reduce the weight of the bus. Somehow, our bus is the first across the stream, and we press on in our humanity-less bus ride, where the culture of South Asian commute is very dog eat dog, which resulted in even the westerners unplugging their manners for the sake of best possible seat finding. Soon the road is blocked again-This time, a Jeep is stuck where it tried to cross a landslide, with a line of 5 buses and more cars behind, stopped, people wandering outside in the rain and communally trying to dig out the jeep and fix the road so we can all get through. Jonah helped dig, but Sam and I watched from a nearby cave with binoculars.After hours, it was our buses turn to crawl over the hump. Our bus went on, hours delayed, and eventually, we faced a landslide uncrossable, and short of our destination, an hours walk from the nearest town, we were instructed to get out of the bus with our luggage and walk. I would not have been keen on the idea had I not been trekking for the last few weeks, used to it.

We reached a town in some clouds called Ghasa. That night we smoked the marijuana that we had picked from the trail a few days before, in the environment that it originally comes from, and still today grows in tall trees as a weed. It was weak in potency, as we were told it would be, but gave us a feeling of clearheaded relaxed-ness. Jonah’s yoga session turned into an elf dancing celebration. It was still raining hard, but this was a moment of relaxed clarity, looking out at the hills from the balcony of our hotel from within a raincloud that had been soaking us for days now. The next day we had a 9 hour day of commute to look forward too. All the roads and highways in the Himalayas were closed due to flooding and landslides, but we had a deadline to make in Pokhara. We would have to continue on foot, and complete the entire Annapurna circuit.

To our surprise, the rain stopped the next day. Sam and I were awoken by an exhuberant, yoga happy Jonah exclaiming “Brothers! The sky is as blue as Vishnu’s skin! The rain has passed! Hooray!!” A stroke of luck, but Sam was as sick as ever, having suffered another gross, sleepless night. Our bodies were starting to really catch up with our bold new itinerary. Before setting out on yet another truly longest day ever, Sam started to cry out of nervous tension, having to do it all again, again. We had a brothers hug and were off on a long, downhill day, by far the most milage I’ve ever covered in a single day, and booking it through the whole day at a heroic pace, dictated by Tenzing, who kept under exaggerating distances to make us seem stronger and in a better boat than we were in. When we took a break, we could see that even he was feeling it, limping from the counter to our table to bring us our sodas. Sam fell going up the stairs at the end of our day. We were 11 hours exhausted, and so rested 11 hours of sleep to do it up again.

October the 13th, or present moment time
I have now spent two days in the village school where I will be teaching, outside of the city of Butwal. We arrived at night, during a power outage, to be led around the school by flashlight, giving the enourmous brick building a good “haunted” feeling. Jonah and I share a room built onto the roof of the school, where we can see miles and miles over the flat lowland at bold orangey sunsets and rises. The climate of the area is extremely interesting, already affecting the way our minds work (slowly) and our bodies function (tiredly). But everything is slow here. Life is very relaxed here, and no one seems to be in much of a rush to do anything at all. We are in the Terai, the hottest and rainiest of the 3 climate zones in Nepal. It is also the region in which the most people come down with malaria , and we ae without medication,which is at Tulsi’s house in Kathmandhu. The bugs flock to our room at night, the only lit place for mil;es across the flat hot expanse. Millions-beetles, roaches, dragon flies,aphids, crawl and fly into our room through the unfinished windows and door frame. We crawl into our sleeping bags at night to escape, with their 20 degree F rating, making us sweaty dehydrated messes come morningtime.
I was surprised to find myself giving basketball instruction to 50 Nepali children my first day here. The kids our cooperative and without the ‘tude, thank god, cause I could get eaten alive doing this for Americans. They are all eager to be told what to do, as they have a basketball court, but no one knows how to play. I led them through all the gym class dribbling, passing, and shotting drills. The most successful activity was steal the bacon style, two people, who can score first. It’s hard to explain stuff, cuase no one understand’s my language very well. But Jonah and I exaggerate our demonstrations and make fools of ourselves, and it all works out.
I love this place, and feel challenged by and appreciative of my situation here. The library is full of awesome books supplement my experience of Middle Earth on tape via landscape Nepal. Children are patient and nice and interested here, and they are making me feel the same way.