Wrapping it up...

IMG_1807, originally uploaded by Augustus Finbar.

Are you familiar with Murphy's Law? I used it several times in my Watson interview to illustrate how I understand things can go wrong under the worst circumstances. I thought I understood such a scenario having had some hard times before. That was until June 26, 2008 and the following six days in India. Let's see, in that week my bike has broken badly three times forcing me to hitchhike though rioting Kashmir, rode in the back of rickshaws with my bike and a small army of Kashmiri, Pakistanis and Afghani staring at me for a combined total of 100km, riots in Srinigar and Kashmir making me a hostage in the city while awaiting my bike repair, found myself between the rioting mob and police barricade just like out of a climatic movie scene, my travel agency mysteriously closed with flights in a mess, favorite sunglasses finally broke after 11 months of travel, and had to sell my beloved bike, Chibuku, for spare parts to a mechanic in order to make my flight from Delhi to Hong Kong. I like to call this a Beautiful Nightmare orchestrated to perfection turning my last week in India into a comedy rather than a tragedy. R.I.P. ChibukuI then headed to China for a brief tour with my brother before coming home. I was curious to visit my first "communist" country of the trip, but my fears soon disappeared once I arrived to find a KFC on every corner with McDonalds, Pizza Hut and Subway on the adjacent corner. And if that wasn't enough, I somehow found myself in a lesbian bar in the middle of Chengdu, a city you have probably never heard of that has 13 million people and a solid blanket of smog covering it. The hot pink walls with yellow and tin foiled honeycomb design should have given me a hint that it was a gay bar but I kept telling myself. "This is China not San Fran...There are no gay bars in Communist China." I sat down at a table, ordered a beer, and started to notice my fellow short haired customers had unusually large chests...no..ok..they are girls. But these girls were very touchy-feely with their longhaired female companions. What's the deal? Finally, a short haired Tom Boy comes over with a dolled up long haired feline in tow to talk with me in broken English."What you doing here" she asks"Traveling""No, no, what you doing here" pointing around the bar, "You not lesbian...this lesbian bar!""Yes it is..and...well...I don't know what I am doing here?"I decided to stay for a couple beers to check things out. The girls that called me out for not being a lesbian soon became my friends. They tried to answer several of my questions about the bar: "How long has this bar been open?" "Is there a big gay scene in China?" etc. The conversation didn't get very far due to the language barrier and my curiosity was not satisfied. I decided to leave once my newfound friend got up and declared, "I love Hitler!" I spit out my beer yelling, "What!” She yelled again," I love Hitler for his passion!" I tried to tell her that Hitler's passion was directed directly against her, but she didn't understand. I decided to leave. It was getting weird. The first person I met at the next bar was from West Virginia. Needless to say, it was yet another bizarre night.I left from NYC July 21, 2007 making it an even year on the road living out of a backpack. The clothes that have made the entire journey with me don't really fit anymore: falling straight of me without a belt. It is not like I really want to wear them anyway because they smell like they have been in a backpack for a year! I have one week left before I return to the States: broke, tired and in desperate need of some home cooking. It is strange what you miss when you are on the road. I have thought about it a lot, and I miss biscuits the most. Biscuits, as we know them in America, don't really exist anywhere else.

More Himalayan Adventures: Sights and Sounds of Nako

My shortcuts never turn out to be shortcuts. Instead, they turn in long lost wanderings through the middle of nowhere trying to find my way with head wobble directions from locals which are impossible to judge correctly when the roads disappear under glacial run-off from the glacial peaks towering above or massive boulders slide into the muddy roads blocking my way. One recent mislead shortcut wasn't my fault though; well none of them are really my fault when I tell the story, but I blame this one on the map. Our great Indian Road Atlas showed a road connecting the village of Kibber to the 700 year-old Komik Monastery...key word "showed." We set off from Kibber wearing shorts, t-shirts and were worried more about sunburn than anything else. After a thirty-minute climb up a ridge where we ran into a herd of wild blue mountain sheep, the skies darkened, the wind silenced and with it the fear of sunburn vanished. With one silenced fear came a much bigger one: an unexpected nasty hailstorm. In the matter of minutes we were being pelted with Skittle-sized pieces of ice blowing sideways from the storm's powerful winds. After two wrecks, a broken side toolbox, broken foot stand, torn pants, and a damaged ego, the hail stopped but we were lost as night was quickly approaching on the high barren slopes of the Spiti valley, 18km from the Tibetan border. Not a good situation to be in!Suddenly, from out of nowhere, a yak herder tending to about a dozen yaks and dzos (a mix between a yak and a cow) appears on the ridge above us. I think he was just as shocked to see us, as we were to see him when we rushed to him for directions. With a gentle smile and a half-head wobble, he led us down a dirt path to a village named Tashigang, Tibetan for a high beautiful place. That was the start of an eventful week that grew more bizarre and exiting with each passing day; a week filled with breathtaking views; goats and their shepherds; yaks and their herders; glaciers and their ice-cold runoff forming waterfalls that captivate the imagination with their size and frequency but causing havoc on the roads; triumphant sporting moments beating local yak herders in a friendly game of cricket only to be humbled the next day in a intense volleyball game with Buddhist monks half my size in what I would call my most embarrassing sporting event ever!The events from the previous week have all taken place in the Spiti valley. The Spiti valley is a desert mountain valley located high in the Himalayan mountains, which is periodically cut off totally during winter by horrendous snowfalls and thick icing conditions. It possesses a distinctive Buddhist culture similar to that found in nearby Tibet. The valley and surrounding region is one of the least populated regions in India and is the gateway to the northernmost reaches of the country, Ladakh. Many times we came within twenty kilometers of the Tibetan border until my Israeli friend, Hagai, and I finally mustered up the courage to venture eastward to the border.We spent over an hour and liters of precious petrol climbing the border mountain between India and China with no idea of what waited for us ahead. Our only plan was to act lost if we were forced to stop. About one kilometer from the peak and subsequent border, the army guards jumped in front of our bikes stopping us in our tracks. They proceeded to wave their batons in the air while angrily shouting Hindi insults our way. They weren't happy! I was a little worried at first but there is one thing I learned about Indian government officials in Dharamsala long ago: humor them!The Dharamsala police rolled my bike away from a perfectly legal parking place knowing it had to be a foreign tourist's bike because no self-respecting Indian would be caught dead riding a pink Enfield. They wanted tourist bikes to get back shish (a bride) from them nervous tourists that don't have a driver's license or insurance such as myself. I retrieved my bike title from my room, printed off a fake insurance form from the Internet, and reported to the police stand to find all of the policemen staring at my pink bike. The police chief was demanding 1,000Rs ($25) for improper parking, fake insurance and for just being a foreigner. I thought he had me but then I pulled out my West Virginia driver's license and my family photos popped out. He was intrigued. I told him a brief family history of how my family are cattle keepers just like a good Hindu. I omitted the small fact that we were beef farmers raising cattle to be hamburgers but he never asked. After a chai (milk tea) and more tale tales about my family history omitting other possibly offending facts, the chief wished me a happy journey before handing over my keys with zero rupees paid. I was so shocking that it was comical.Back at the Indo-Chinese with the angry batons whirling sergeants, Hagai and I tried the same approach, humor. I don't know what finally broke the ice but I think it was when Hagai told the guards American women loved Indian men. Knowing I was from the States, they looked at me with astonishment. Holding back a sly grin, I agreed continued the story in detail. The enchanted guards needed details. Ten minutes later we found ourselves in a bunker drinking chai and homemade rice wine with the broad generalization that all American women loved all Indian men being our ticket. The conversation was surreal. I think part of it went like this, Curious Guard: "Are all women like Monica Lewisky "Me: "Of course, all like that" Excited Guard: "If I come to America, can I get girl like Monica Lewisky?" Me: "I know one just for you" Rounds of joyous laughter, high-fives, hugs, and bottles of rice wine ensued. Keep in mind, this was all taking place in an army bunker one kilometer from the disputed Indo-Chinese (Tibetan) border where no foreigners are allowed to visit. That's kind of funny!When the embarrassing volleyball games thankfully ended, the cricket balls were lost, the bike was fixed, the drunken border guards passed out, and no hail storms in sight, I found myself sitting in a small village, Nako. Nako is a village just small enough not to get lost in but big enough to provide a new route through the maze of narrow earthen streets each time I wandered through. In my wanderings through the alleys, I found a rock to call home for an hour to record the sights and sounds of the Himalayan village:












Sitting on a lonely rock in a forgotten street Nako comes to life; toddlers barely old enough to walk roam the street's unafraid and unharmed; ladies are frying seeds into tiny kernels for sale in the local market in animal kraals; the steady "Ping, Ding, Ping, Ding, Ping" of hammers chiseling away at rocks shaping them into desired shaped for new houses or animal kraals; old women that can barely stand upright slowly carrying thatched baskets full of green fodder for the animals; a donkey nays the sounds of a frustrated lover as he frantically searches for a mate; Tibetan prayer flags flapping in the gusty mountain winds (red, green, blue, white, and yellow representing sun, grass, sky, clouds and earth respectively), men walking briskly in and out of the alleys as they are loaded down with two, three or four lumber beams for the constant maintenance and construction of the traditional Tibetan styled homes made mostly from rocks, mud, manure and sticks from the surrounding area; a Bollywood tune plays in the distance, probably from a TV, for no matter how far into the Indian countryside you venture, every village has electricity and several satellite dishes perched atop their houses made of cow dung and rocks. The ears being tickled by the Bollywood tune most likely belongs to a man since most of the women are hard at work with numerous chores like most third world or traditional settings. I think...oh no..it is Om Shanti Om, the most popular Hindi movie and subsequent song in Bollywood history that is overplayed to the hilt. A woman just passed with freshly processed flour and cooking oil in one hand and a clump of cow dung in the other to fuel the fire that will cook the flour with the cooking oil.One major difference in the mountainous village vs. the low-laying Indian villages to the south is the smell. In the mountains, ammonia fumes from yak, dzo, cow, donkey, sheep and goat manure are overwhelming; so strong that a headache instantly ensues the initial whiff. The same smell exists in the south but is drowned out by the smell of burning trash suffocating the nostrils and stinging the taste buds; the smell of poverty. In Spiti, there small black smoke plums from burning trash piles are non-existent. The streets are somewhat clear of various forms of litter. How refreshing!My fairytale is not complete, however. Amid the most simplistic agrarian lifestyle operated through a maze of stone huts and earthen alleyways, sits state of the art solar panels atop a twenty-foot stainless steel pole peaking it panels just above the Tibetan thatched rooftops. The solar panels charge all day to serve as night-lights in their strategically placed positions in the village. As I said before each village has power bringing with it the eyesore of power-lines strewn across the alleys just high enough to escape a nomadic toddlers curious grasp. The power lines are out of place and scar on the otherwise fairytale Himalayan village, but who am I to say they can't enjoy the pleasures of modern technology, even if that means listening to Om Shanti Om on repeat.A small calf wanders past; the horny donkey still nays in the distance as he continues his search for a mate; an old lady passes to collect to the fresh dropping from the calf to patch her house or to mold into disks for fuel; the prayer flags are still flapping in the wind as they start to tether at the fringes; a drunken elderly man carrying a half-empty bottle of rice wine stops to talk with the calf for at least a minute before he realizes he is talking with a calf, my company less is far less interesting as the stumbling elder only stops to chat with me for a brief moment, local birds still singing the sweet Himalayan songs, and now I am surrounded by four nomadic toddlers watching my every move with awe and wonder hoping for a sweet. Ok..I give in! I pass out chocolate cookies and watch as they scurry off with excitement and giggles.

An hour is up and time to return home where I find a Buddist nun and her thirty year old brother eagerly awaiting to see who is America's favorite dancer in the hit reality TV show finale, "So You Think You Can Dance."
Where am I again?

Shortcuts Gone Wonderfully Wrong

Setting

• Bikes in the shop...again
• My friend Anton and I take a local bus to the mountains
• Fatal car crash blocks main road...maybe for days?
• Bus driver takes a shortcut through numerous small villages
• The dead man was from one of the villages on the detour. The angry villagers cut down a tree to block the road demanding money from the government to allow traffic through the government road through their village.
• After hours of argueing the passengers finally unite, overpowering the villagers, and removing the road block.
• I jumped in! and Anton caught it on film

Rest of the story coming soon...

Delhi Bullet Wallas

Bike Trip 1 009, originally uploaded by Augustus Finbar.

There is a sucker born everyday goes the saying. I will be the first to admit I have been a sucker many times during the year. In many places, life becomes a negation due to the skin tax imposed on all foreigners. It can be endlessly frustrating being forced to haggle a pair of shorts from 40,000 Tanzanian shillings to a measly 2,500 shillings. I am not nearly that good of a negotiator especially when the negotiating is in Swahili. The small shop owners simply see an opportunity to hit it big with the “rich” tourists and try to capitalize. It can get frustrating to say the least.You would think I would have learned my lesson by now but that wasn’t the case when I bought my Royal Enfield in Delhi. The swallowed the dream the owner, Balu, sold me hook line and sinker. The dream was to join a newly formed multi-national biker gang, Bullet Wallas. He even promised to make me custom stickers for my bike with “West Virginia Bullet Walla” on it (I can't lie. I really liked them, especially with the orange dueling banjos in the middle). I lived above the bike shop with my four newfound friends who also believed the dream as they too bought bikes from him. We were eager to hit the roads on bikes freeing ourselves of the painful bus journeys and overcrowded trains that plague Indian backpackers. The idea of joining any semblance of a biker gang in India made the decision to buy even easier.We paid a premium (40,000Rps=$1,000US) for the bikes that were totally reassembled with a new engine, tires, custom paint job, and even West Virginia Bullet Walla stickers. We were living the dream...at least for a while. Boy, were we had! It took us about a day to figure out the bikes may not be all we had hoped. Don’t get me wrong, Enfields break, that is what happens when 1950s motorcycle technology is driven over rough Indian roads. But after only 600KM drive from Delhi to Manali, two of the four bikes bought from Bullet Wallas needed new pistons (2000Rps), new starter, two new batteries, dozens of over tightened bolts letting oil ooze out, and other loose ends. Enfields break but every single time a mechanic takes out the broken part from my bike he laughs because it always the cheapest knock-off part to be found in India. Some mechanics have laughed at me in my face upon seeing the Bullet Walla stickers knowing there will probably lots of problems with the bike that I paid too much for. Some have also said they would not purchase a Bullet Walla bike because it wouldn’t be a good bike. So basically, I paid 25% more than I should have for a bike that kids assembled with the cheapest parts available by an American guy selling me the dream of entering into a world of an elusive traveling biker gang in India. Can’t say that everyday!Note: Any weary traveler in India thinking about buying an Enfield, definitely do it. After two months and all of my cheap imitation parts have been replaced, my bike finally running like it should and it is amazing. It will definitely get you off the Humus Trail and into some remote areas to see more Indian culture. I couldn’t imagine traveling around India any other way. Just don’t buy a bike from Bullet Wallas in Delhi. You can buy a good bike for 30,000 Rps ($750 US) from other travelers and then sell it after a couple months for the same price. Several travelers sell their bikes on the road (a lot in Goa, Dharamsala, Pushkar or Manali) and most mechanics sell good bikes. Always ask for a test drive to a different mechanic to get a second opinion. The best mechanics I have found are Anu Auto Works in Manali (Vishisht) and Rai Auto Works in Gaggle (right beside the Dharamsala airport...a 30 minute drive from McLeod Ganj).I will admit. I was a sucker. Don’t make the same mistake I did, but do buy a bike!Message from an angry "ex-Bullet Walla"

Land of Color

There is a famous section of Buenos Aires named Boca where the colorful houses and tango music filling the air with tango dancers lining the streets has turned into quite the tourist destination. Boca is probably most famous for its football (soccer) team, the Boca Jrs. The Boca Jrs. have of the most illustrious histories of any football team in South America but they are best known for two things: Maradona and the most devout musically gifted fanatical fans on Earth. Maradona lead the Argentina national team to its victory over West Germany in 1986 World Cup, in which he collected the Golden Ball award as the tournament's best player. He scored both goals in the 2-1 victory over England in the quarter-final of the '86 tournament. The first goal was an unpenalized handball known as the "Hand of God", while the second goal was a spectacular 60-metre weave through six England players, commonly referred to as "The Goal of the Century" or, in Argentina, "The Cosmic Kite." He is legend around the globe but the fans of the Boca Jrs. take a back seat to no one. Fans from around the world come to Buenos Aires to learn from the musical geniuses in the stands as the have a song for each player and many more tunes to passionately sing out depending on the situation. Witnessing a Boca Jrs. game is the pinnacle for any sporting enthusiast around the globe.

I found the Boca fanatics and Maradona nostalgia to be the most interesting while in Argentina, but since in India, I often think of the other main attraction to Boca: the mixed and matched colors on each house. The reason for the lime green doors, yellows window frames, red, orange or yellow siding, and many other combinations all adorned on one house, was the scarcity of paint when the area was established. Boca has always been and still is the blue collar section of Buenos Aires always pinched for every nickel or in this case, every drop of paint. It became Boca's trademark: crazy colored houses lining the river port. If Boca couldn't paint their houses one solid color due to paint shortages, applying the same logic to India would mean paint should be the rarest product in the country, surpassing gas that is now over $5 a gallon at the pump. Buenes Aires had one section of the city with wacky colored houses making it famous but wild and wacky colored houses are the norm in India. What happened to all of the paint?

Pink door, blue windows, red siding and a multi colored Shiva shrine adorned with an array of flower necklaces draped on the colorful figure; a typical scene driving around the Indian countryside. The colors do not end with the houses though. The women love bright colored clothes in many various combinations; pink saris, baby blue pajama pants, and orange sarongs wrapped around their necks. There are golden fields of wheat which have quickly been replaced with rice paddies looking like dozens of miniature green-tinted reflection pools as the rice sprouts emerge from the shallow water, blossoming apple and cherry orchards, produce stands on every street corner selling exotic fresh fruits, bright orange turbans from the Sikh Punjabi tourists, and much more. The truck drivers, a profession that doesn't usually attract the artistic spirits, paint the most intricate flowery and religious symbols on their trucks. Some even take the time to crawl beneath their trucks to paint their favorite Hindu God on the rear wheel axle. With so many colors in the oddest places, I have labelled India the "Land of Color."

Not all of the colors are good though. TRASH! It is everywhere, even the most remote beautiful places are scared with plastic wrappers of every make and model. Most city streets lining with trash a foot high in the gutters being picked through by kids, cows and dogs for any forgotten bits of nourishment. It is heartbreaking that such a beautiful country is being destroyed by trash. When a driver finishes a water bottle, he will simply throw it out the window. The same goes for the passengers with any and all trash. The blue trash plastic bags, the red spicy masala potato chips bags, and much more are clogging the rivers and streams. I actually saw a dump truck go from Manali town with a full load of trash properly put in the trash bin, drive five kilometers to the dried out river bed, and dump the load knowing the flood waters will wash it away as the glaciers melt. Does he ever think of where that trash might go? I doubt that he considers the river water from the Himalayas brings life to roughly a billion Indians on the sub-continent. But why should he care? Right!

This is not just a problem in India. It has been a constant theme throughout my trip. Many small villages around the world have started to outlaw plastic bags because of this. This didn't bode well or my friend Jane in Tanzania when she came to Longido village to teach the women how to crochet plastic bags into hand bags for tourists. We did find some plastic bags…from the store! Not her fulfilling her original objective of cleaning up trash but it worked out well. One person tried to tell me that most developing countries' citizens have traditionally discarded any extra wrappers or bags back when such things were made naturally and were bio-degradable. Then came the modern plastic wrappings that never disappear and someone forgot to tell the average Jo this important piece of information. I don't fully believe this theory because plastic has been around for a long time and people are still littering.

A major reason the trash disposal is lacking in most countries is the lack of infrastructure to properly dispose of all the trash. Infrastructure costs money and these countries think they have bigger problems than being environmentally conscience. India has the money now becoming an economic powerhouse that some predict will one day have an economy just as big if not bigger than the US. Lets just hope they clean up their country because it is an amazing place.

Even though it's trash, it is still colorful. Yet again, earning India a fitting title in my book as the "Land of Color."