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."

Harvest Season

Usually, the worst part of traveling is traveling itself. Being crammed into buses, braving rusty rickshaws, or herded onto trains, are all nightmares that everyone must endure to reach their destination making the actual travel the worst part of the trip. Instead of dreading my transit experience, I am filled with excitement knowing I get to ride my Enfield once again letting my imagination soar with childhood wonder on the Himalayan roads. Each trip is an adventure within itself with numerous close-calls due to utter stupidity by all parties, but the recent journey from Manali to Dharamsala was my favorite.

As we ventured southbound leaving the high altitude and encompassing snow-capped peaks of Manali, the blossoming apple orchards with their surrounding green terraces of wheat began to transform with every kilometer traveled. The wheat stalks slowly turning lighter hues of green with a growing hint of yellow, ultimately turning dark yellow morphing the terraces into a giant golden staircase meandering up the mountain steppe disappearing into the heavens with the low evening cloud cover. The changing of the color meant harvest season is in full swing. The golden plateaus become littered with colorful sari silhouettes of women hard at work bringing in the harvest. Whether the women are squatting down to cut the wheat stalks, balancing bulging bundles of wheat on their heads, or seeking shelter under a shade tree, the assortment of bright saris (light shawls) scattered throughout the golden fields look like candy sprinkles atop a birthday cake.

It is amazing to witness the whole process of the harvest. From cutting the stalks with a hand sickle, to wrapping wheat bundles with the longer wheat stalks, and balancing a dozen bundles atop each head with grace as they make the journey to the thresher for processing, the village is buzzing with activity throughout the day. With so many people going in so many different directions in the golden fields, each dressed with an array of bright colors with golden stalks under their arm or resting atop their heads, my eyes are pleasantly overwhelmed with color. This amazement soon led to curiosity, and I found myself living in a village helping with the wheat harvest.

I ended up in Chawari by accident with the rest of my biker gang when we met a local an Indian guy in an Internet cafe that promised to take us on a scenic drive surrounding Dharamsala. A flat tire, two broken chains and eight hours after we departed from home, we found ourselves only a two hour drive from home as the sun was setting. Our guide felt bad about the frustrating day after he promised us a utopia, and invited us to stay at his home for the night. Tired and hungry we accepted his invitation.

The family compound was buzzing with excitement as seven foreigners came roaring in colorful Enfields. Some people in this village had probably never seen this many foreigners in their life much less seven at one time on pink, green, and red bikes. Needless to say, they were excited and extremely hospitable. After they softened us up with their homemade wine that tasted like moonshine, they fed us a proper Indian meal of rice, dhal, and roti. We spent the rest of the night in a food coma greeting various villagers whose curiosity led them to come see the foreigners. I sparked up a conversation with our host, Bikee, and promised to help him cut wheat in the morning. I never thought he was going to wake me up at 6AM but he did...with a hand sickle. I was a little startled to wake up to a razor sharp sickle waving in front of my face but Bikee's wide smile put my serial killer fears to ease before we set off up the mountain in the dark.

Squatting down cutting wheat is cool for about fifteen minutes until your knees, back, hands, and neck are ailing from the monotonous process: grab (the wheat)…cut cut…shuffle shuffle (the feet forward)..grab…cut cut…shuffle shuffle. To make me feel even worse, the grandmother that could barely walk to the terrace is cutting circles around me while taking the time to laugh at my clumsiness. It was frustrating but after an hour the pain went away and I improved to cutting mediocrity. After the sun’s heat chased us from the fields, we returned to the village for a special treat, pancakes. The rest of the gang decided to return to Dharamsala while I decided to stay for a couple more days to help with the harvest and see a little more of Indian village life. It was a wise decision.

The cool mornings and evenings were allotted for cutting wheat but the rest of the day was no picnic. The mid-day heat just meant the chores moved inside, under a shade tree, or in the river. There was a large watering hole near the village that served as the local bath tub for the whole community. Soon after it became too hot for cutting wheat, everyone grabbed their soap and towel to head for the mint covered riverbed for a dip. The small mint leaves created a green blanket of sweet aromas covering the whole area. After a quick wash in the river, the village was busy processing their own wheat stores for the year. After separating the wheat kernels from the stalks, they turn them into chalky white flour with their own water powered flour mill in the riverbed. The village was totally self sufficient with the harvest being a busiest and most critical time of year while being the most interesting time for me to visit.

One aspect of village life that shocked me was the amount of weed (marijuana) growing everywhere. In the villages, weed is actually a weed growing in every open space and around each corner, but not every villager is not smoking a peace pipe or in this case a chillum (smoking pipe used by Indian Sadhu holy men). Instead the villagers find a practical purpose for the fields of gange, bed lining for the cows during the wet season. The villagers let the weed grow because they will place the plants in the cow’s bedding during the wet season to rid the animals of leeches and serve as insect repellent. This is very important because the cows can be infected by the huge swarms of insects or drained of their energy by leeches which would mean disaster for the villagers that depend on their by-products: milk, ghee, dung, and urine. Still yet, it is odd to see six foot weed stalks growing beside the kitchen door or outside an elementary school classroom. It's everywhere!

The thought did cross my mind to stay in the village for an extended period of time but I was tired of being used for show and tell after only three days. Bikee would need to run "errands" all day long which required the use of my bike. I was happy to assist because it allowed me to see other surrounding villages but it soon turned into more of a spectacle than anything else. Whenever we would arrive to our destination, Bikee would slip on his fake Ray Ban sunglasses, slick back his hair with whatever liquid was handy (using Coke once), and trying his best John Travolta impersonation from Grease with an added bounce in his step. He was loving the attention I created, throwing out a lot of hand gestures looking like shooting pistols whenever he recognized someone he knew or would like to impress. I felt like his new toy that he was showing off to all of his buddies. It was comical for the first day but then it became very annoying prompting my early exist. Bikee was the center of attention for a short period of time riding around with a mustached foreigner on a pink Enfield. I guess I am quite the sight to villagers!

Everyday is an Adventure

Everyday in India is an adventure. There is always something bizarre around every corner that makes me stop in amazement, wonder, or horror. It is an intriguing place to visit due to its cultural, spiritual and natural diversity. My adventures in India took on a whole new level once I bought the pink stallion, Chibuku Gopa. Every time I kick start the engine on the poorly made machine and the 350cc engine turns over with a roar, I know my day will take on a new dimension; a dimension that I have little control over. As I have repeatedly tried to depict, the traffic in this county is crazy with few laws restricting any form of driving. Putting aside the nomadic cows on the road, the monkeys on the curb darting in and out of traffic whenever they spot a forgotten morsel, and the hot summer heat turning the poorly tarred patchwork holding the roads together into slippery black goo, there is only one rule on the road, Might is Right…as long as you use your horn. Blow Horn! This warning is plastered on the back of every truck and for good reason. The art of using the horn is perfected in India with different chimes or rhythms signifying a passing car, road rage or just hello. It is a form of communication on the roads making your ears just as important as your eyes while driving. Mastering the horn is essential to surviving on the Indian roads.

Another form of communication is the head wobble. Whenever you pass someone on the street or drive past them on the bike, there is no hand gesture such as a wave that is customary in the States. Instead, a little nod of the head to the side with a smile does the trick. The head wobble is even used when asking directions, ordering food, or just saying hello. The wobble can take on many different variations meaning just as many different frustrating possibilities. Whenever I am lost on my bike and ask for directions, the response I usually get is in the form of a head wobble; right, up, down, left with a twist back up. What the hell is that supposed to mean? My first response, but I have learned to take the first direction of the wobble until I find another man to head me in another direction with his initial wobble. Somehow, I find my way through the maze of street vendors, beggars and animals using head wobble directions. Like I said, every ride on the bike is an adventure, even the short ones.

I am still traveling with the same group of travelers I met at the bike shop in Delhi. All four of the original group are English; Anton, Giles, James and Ben #2. It is a great group that has grown since then with the addition of an Israeli and a Canadian, Noam and Ty. It is more fun traveling in larger groups but more importantly it is a lot safer. There have been numerous breakdowns, close-calls and even a two bike wreck along the way but every situation is resolved much easier with a large group.

One day we decided to take a ride to a village near Manali. We set off around mid day with no real idea where we were going. About thirty minutes into the ride down the winding country roads, we came across two Buddist monks. I made eye contact with one when he gave me a kind head wobble. I took it as a sign that he wanted a ride. I stopped, put one monk on my bike and the other with Giles. The monks were filled with giddy excitement as we sped around turns and over humps getting a weightless feeling at times. They loved it until Giles’ monk lost his hat. We all stopped while Giles turned around to retrieve the monk’s fallen hat. Everything would have been fine except for the monk’s excitement to get back on the road turned disastrous. During the retrieval mission, Giles’ bike stalled out. He was in the process of kick starting it when the anxious monk jumped onboard. Giles did not have enough control to support the weight of the bike and the monk so down they went. They were like dominoes falling one after another. The monk fell first, then the bike and finally Giles. Gas was pouring out of the bike so Giles lifted it up halfway until he realized the monk had a wound on his head. Down went the bike again as he rushed to his aid. Then came the sound of a horn from around the corner signaling a speeding bus was on the way. Down went the monk as Giles then saved his bike from being run over. It was give the ordeal. In the end, the monk, the bike and Giles survived the incident and a crowd of Indian onlookers, my monk and even myself got a good laugh out of the show.

The stories are endless once perched on our poorly made machines. From hitting homeless men wandering the dimly lit night streets (on accident), fording rivers when the roads suddenly disappear, stopping at roadside weddings to be invited in as a honorary guest, drawing a crowd of onlookers with each stop, flat tires, new pistons, worn-out brake pads, broken nuts, over tightened bolts, blown seals… the list never ends. I feel like I am in a Seinfeld episode constantly trying to find a trustworthy mechanic that is not going to rip me off. Once finding a ‘Tony’ (Seinfeld’s mechanic), I shower him with Cokes, cookies, and compliments in a shallow attempt to make him take extra special care of my bike at half the price. It is almost as hard as finding a burger in this vegetarian land. It is a labor of love because my bike gives me the freedom to visit small villages well off the tourist radar and see the Indian culture with minimal tourist exposure to the Hummus Trail.

The mainstream traveler’s route from Goa north into the mountains is often referred to as the Hummus Trail due to the large number of Israelis traveling within India. There are so many Israelis traveling in India that Israeli Idol, their version of American Idol, held auditions in Dharamsala just last week. I tried to audition but my Hebrew is a little rusty at the moment. Israeli independence day is nearing which promises to be a good time as well. For me, I like most of the travelers I meet and have re-named the Hummus Trail to the Shak Shuka Trail because I am in love with the Israeli breakfast dish.

So Many Cows...What To Do?

Chopta-Rishikesh 162, originally uploaded by Benjamin Long.

Cows are everywhere; on the street corner, crossing traffic, impeding traffic, in the alley, in the trash heap, getting massages from people passing by, on the steps of 15th century monuments, on foot bridges bringing pedestrians to a halt, and even in homeless cow shelters. Streets are stained with cow manure that fills the air with its distinct aroma bringing with it thousands of flies awaiting yet another feast. Streets are not knee-deep with manure because the dung is constantly being gathered to eventually be forged into dried out disks to be used as fuel. Cows provide many essential elements for everyday life; milk, curds, ghee butter, urine and dung — are all used in puja (worship) as well as in rites of extreme penance. The milk of the family cow nourishes children as they grow up, and cow dung is a major source of energy for households throughout India. Cow dung is sometimes among the materials used for a tilak-a ritual mark on the forehead. Most Indians do not share the western revulsion at cow excrement, but instead consider it an earthy and useful natural product. (If you don't believe me check out this article on the front page of a Delhi newspaper a month ago http://www.indianexpress.com/story/286437.html Cow urine seems to do the trick) So, when I am caught in a traffic jam caused by an emaciated cow wandering through traffic or see people sharing a fresh roti (flatbread that is a staple of an Indian diet) with a playfully aggressive bull on the street corner that feels he is just as entitled to the roti as the purchaser, I get frustrated, amused and bewildered that such a different world exists. This life is not wrong, it is just different.

Why is this world so different you ask? The majority of Indians are Hindus. Hindus have many gods and worship each for a particular reason. Cows are involved with many of these gods- Lord Krishna and Lord Shiva in particular. Lord Krishna was a cowherd, and the bull is depicted as the vehicle of Lord Shiva. Today the cow has almost become a symbol of Hinduism. Holy cows are not always happy cows though. Many of the cows roaming the streets of India are malnourished, surviving on whatever they can find in the trash heaps beside local markets. Many of the cows end up eating plastic bags, cardboard boxes and other manufactured goods that get wrapped around their stomachs often turning fatal. This is disastrous for a country and a people that worship the animal. The solution: government run homeless cow shelters called goshalas. Goshalas were set of for a couple reasons. The religious reason is to treat, protect, nurture, and ultimately save the dying nomads roaming the streets. The more practical reason is the clash between a developing nation and its religious base.

India is growing at an alarming rate. It has the fastest growing middle class in the world and one of the fastest growing economies in the world with construction happening everywhere. It is a fascinating time to be in India at this point in time to witness the changes taking place. Even though I have no prior experience in the country to accurately judge the rate of change, it is not hard to see that basically everything seems to be under construction: new subways, bridges, roads, hydo-electric projects, shopping malls, movie theatres, Mcdonalds, KFC and much more. It is like stepping back in time to when America or Western Europe was developing. The construction is not being done by massive bulldozers, graters, or other advanced machinery as I am accustomed to seeing back home. Most of it is being done by people; dozens of them chiseling away at rocks with hammers to produce gravel, digging roadside ditches with nothing more than a pick axe, patching old roads with scolding hot asphalt by hand and building bridges as fast as the workers can carry the beams to the top. The most shocking aspect about the labor is the majority of it is performed by women, occasionally with a baby wrapped around their backs. If she tires from the additional weight wrapped on her back, the baby will be placed on the curb, dangerously close to the unpredictable traffic. She has no other option. Just today I watched as a group of workers cleared a rock slide from a ditch with the women being the ones actually carrying the rocks to the truck, not the men. They just helped load the buckets as the women carried the loaded buckets on their heads to the dump truck for removal.

With a country that is modernizing rapidly, nomadic cows wandering the streets can hinder development. The goshalas are being set up across the country as a place to put all of the wandering bovine because they can't be eaten. The goshalas I have visited have been financed by various religious organizations, private donors, or local governments. They range between fifty cows to over a thousand depending on the facilities. All people involved seem to be happy with the situation and are looking to expand. The most exciting part of all of this is the actual capture of the homeless cows on the streets that can often turn violent; not for the cows but for the catchers themselves. It turns violent when the unsuspecting cows are being chased through the streets by the urban cowboys with the objective of getting them into a truck door wedged against the side of a building. The cows can become angry of course and cause harm but the average bystander often helps the cows escape by fighting off the John Wayne's of the Indian streets. I have never witnessed such an event but the goshala managers have told me some comical stories of the round-ups. It should be quite a sight.

TJW Report 3

I am so accustomed to bizarre things happening around me that I sometimes forget to appreciate their significance. The first time I visited a goshala was a shock, but at the time it just seemed normal to be abnormal. There I was trudging around a homeless cow shelter in my poorly selected footwear, sandals, in a foot of cow manure when a Jain Guru appears with her sponsor to check on the goshala. The sponsor, a very talkative Indian woman from Delhi, gives me the grand tour of the 'emergency room', 'labor room', "sick bay', 'operating room', and the manager's suite fully equipped with five cows recovering from surgery requiring extra special supervision (I was offered the job but regretfully had to decline). The sponsor would lie in the foot deep manure to hug and kiss the cows saying over and over again, "You see, they are just like us. They just can't talk." I didn't know what to think. I grew up on a commercial cattle farm that was business and here is this woman playing in the cow shit like she has found her long lost friend. This is an extreme case and not all Indians do this but it still makes me think about other beliefs. This woman may sound bizarre and a little off her rocker but she was a successful business woman in Delhi and her son is a manager for a hotel in Singapore. She bragged about this fact for hours just as a mother would in the States. It is easy to think of people worshiping cows and letting them roam the city streets as crazy but is that any crazier than waiting to see if a groundhog sees his shadow which will determine the upcoming weather patterns. Are the average onlookers on Delhi streets that fight government paid cow catchers in an attempt to help the cows escape capture and remain free cows for just one more day crazy or cultural sound? This is all seems like abnormal behavior but then again what is normal. As I tell myself everyday, just because a culture or belief system is different does not make it wrong.

Different cultures also have different expectations that can seem bizarre when put in contrast with your own belief system. The main contrast I have found is the definition of success within each culture. What is success? I was asked this question in my Watson interview over a year ago. I stumbled through the question, soon forgetting about it and its significance. I was a graduating senior from a prestigious liberal arts school; I knew everything and had my life planned out for at least the next decade. At first, the question even sounded silly because success was clearly defined for me at the time; wealthy with a nice big house with a couple little ones running around inside the white picket fence, the American Dream. I never actually sat down and thought about the question because that is what I was supposed to want. That is a great life and I still want some variation of that but there is so much more to dream and think about now. Being successful is so arbitrarily labeled depending what the local culture dictates that I have constantly asked myself which label of success is correct? Are any correct? What is my definition of success?

A successful profession or life varies greatly depending on your geography. With the Masai, the man with the most cows, wives and children is idolized reaching almost god like status in the village. In Texas, a similar man will have his wives and children taken from him by the government with criminal charges being filed. I am not condoning such behavior but it shows how differently similar lifestyles are viewed within different cultures. In India, a man can be fired from every job he has ever held, be a failing father, husband and citizen of the community but still find salvation by simply giving up and becoming a wandering Baba. He can simply start walking, basically becoming a nomad, and living of the generosity and charity of others as a holy man. This is respectable in India. Even though he has left his family to fend for themselves and has failed in every other aspect of his life, he will still be respected. Is the French stock broker that decided after six years on Wall Street to give everything up and start an extreme sports company in the Himalayas successful? He sure seems happy. Is one man's success any less significant depending on his culture or geographic location? Each destination I reach brings with it a new set of rules, expectations and commitments that defines the culture. Every two to three months, I have to redefine so many different aspects of my life to adapt to my new surrounding that is creating one big melting pot of contracting philosophies. Again, what is the right recipe?

Most people simply accept their cultural expectations to be the truth and strive to attain their culture's version of success. The past nine months have opened my eyes to different worlds that I never knew existed, some mesmerizing and others terrifying. With the new exposure comes excitement but also anxiety to see what I will think upon my return home. Will I fall right back into my previous life without missing a beat or will I chose a different path? I don’t know the answer to these questions right now. I keep telling myself that I don't have to worry about it but that does not stop my mind from constantly churning over the possibilities.

Learning about the world is a funny concept coming from the States where traveling abroad usually means going to Europe. It had been an amazing year to be traveling as an American citizen. Obama or Hillary? If I had a nickel for every time I have been asked that question, I could fund a second Watson year for myself. I have also been embarrassed to find that many people know and follow the American political system closer than most Americans. I try to keep up to date with the political news just to be able to answer the inevitable third or fourth question in every introductory meeting with a stranger: Obama or Hillary? The question often comes in the most random and unexpected places.

About seven months ago when the presidential race was just gaining momentum, I was in the meat eating ceremony with the Masai. As we were sitting around the fire watching my prize goat roast over the flames, the Masai elder, Noonjuma, was asking me questions about my life through a translator, his son. Halfway into the conversation he asked me, "Who will win...Obama or Hillary?" I was shocked to hear this coming from a man that could only speak Maa, the Masai language, and not Swahilii, the language of the local newspaper and radio. Noonjuma's next question, "How long will it take me to walk to America?" Noonjuma knew the leading presidential candidates of America but he didn't know there was an ocean impeding him from walking from Africa and America. How can this be? Why should he care about Obama or Hillary? I have thought about that conversation often but as bizarre as it may sound, the election will affect him even if he is tucked away in a cow dung boma in the Rift Valley of Africa.

America’s influence on the world has no bounds: good and bad. It is shocking once you discover the extent. Every newspaper I have read from Zimbabwe to India and everywhere in between has at least one major article on US politics or pop culture. The front page of the Victoria Falls newspaper in Zimbabwe did not talk about the dire humanitarian or economic crisis in the country. Instead, it fully documented Britney Spears’ little sister getting knocked up with the subsequent article about the US election. As I put down the paper in disbelief, I peered across the street at the endless line of people camping on the street corner waiting for the bank to open not knowing if it would be in an hour or a week. Still yet, little Spears was more important that starving Zimbabweans. How can our priorities become so skewed?

Not all of my discussions about my home, America, have been pleasant. In fact, most have been very anti-American. There have been many instances when people automatically dislike me for being an American. It has affected me whether I like it or not. I have learned how to hate America during this trip, even believing it at times. Now that I know how to hate my country, I can appreciate it for what it represents: an improbable experiment in democracy as Obama put it. It wears on me having to constantly defend my country around every corner when it has been instilled in my brain since elementary school that America is the beacon of hope in the world, the leader of the free world. Being raised in such a way often blinds people of the countless possibilities the rest of the world has to offer. This mentality also creates a bizarre contradiction: the country with the most influence and power in the world knows the least about it.

Not all things in life are bad though. Riding through the Himalayas on my pink Enfield lets my imagination run wild. I find myself in a fantasy world of towering snow-capped peaks, numerous waterfalls sending freshly thawed water cascading down the mountainside, tiny villages dotting the lush green landscapes with blossoming apple orchards sprinkled along the terraced mountain slopes, monkeys darting in and out of traffic, cows laying dead or alive on the street, colorful Hindu shrines and temples around every corner and random festivals that fill the air with joyful music, alluring spices, and mesmerizing colors that overwhelm the senses. It is a world that I thought could only exist in my imagination. It feels like a dream but I know it is real; more real than anything I have ever experienced. I tell myself everyday that I am on of the fifty luckiest people alive because I have been given a gift: a chance to experience the world, learn about myself, and open my mind.

Finally...My Bike!

Bike Trip 1 014, originally uploaded by Benjamin Long.

Things have changed greatly since I last posted any news. I am now the proud owner of a reconditioned 1994 model pink Royal Enfield Motorcycle. It took me a month to finally muster up the courage to follow through with my original plan of buying a bike due to the treacherous driving conditions. To the casual onlooker on the street or even the passenger in the back of a bus, driving in India is the most chaotic, dangerous, and frustrating debacle ever witnessed and rightfully so. Might is right on the roads. Buses stop for no one; not even passengers for they must run alongside and somehow manage to climb aboard with their luggage and sometimes children. India has the fastest growing middle class in the world and that means people are starting to buy more cars. Getting a license can’t be that difficult because most people really can’t drive worth a damn. More cars on the mostly the same infrastructure build by the British Raj with lots of bad drivers spells congestion and accidents. Throw into the mix the mopeds carrying three to five people, numerous other motorcycles with delusions of ESPN XGames grandeur, donkeys, camels, cows all pulling carts of some sort, nomadic cows wandering the streets as if it is their right (it is in India), monkeys waiting eagerly on the side of the roads awaiting the right moment to dart across the road, goat herders guiding their flocks on the curb, landslides, more cows and who know what else…maybe an Elephant!

You are probably thinking who in their right mind would even attempt to drive a motorcycle, much a less a pink one under such conditions. I talked myself out of it until I took my first trip to the north with friends I met from Delhi. It was the weekend of Holi, the festival of color that was meant to welcome the spring and win the blessings of Gods for good harvests and fertility of the land but has turned into an excuse to drink Bhang (a drink that has opium in it), cover unsuspecting tourists with colored ink, and dance the night away very intoxicated. During this weekend, I decided to leave Delhi and head north into the mountains. We took two different hikes at the base of the Greater Himalayan range; one to Tungnath Temple ( a holy Hindu temple) and the other to a lake above a small village called Sari. It was a crazy experience to be surrounded with Bhang silly Indians dancing around fires, dogs with steel collars to at least give them a chance if and when they attacked by leopards, six and seven thousand meter peaks dotting the horizon and small villages scattered across the Himalayan foothills with intricate terrace farming networks carved out of the hillsides. After the hike, I stayed behind in Rishikesh (the Yoga capital of the world and also the place where the Beatles visited to study meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi). After a couple days of watching old men take heaps of cow manure and turn them into dried out disks of manure, people sharing the food and bottled water with random cows on the street and people even giving cows massages on the street, I decided it was time to go back to Delhi to get a bike so I can visit more small towns in the mountains. A bike would offer me the freedom to see all of the small towns and not just the tourist hot spots. I did take a swim in the Ganga (Ganges) while I was in Rishikesh. It was cold and refreshing.

Once back in Delhi, I contacted a bike shop called Bullet Wallas (wallas means ‘guy’. So a bricklayer will be a brick walla for instance). After wandering the streets of Pahar Ganj, a very crowded and dirty neighborhood of Delhi, I finally found the bike shop. To my surprise it was run by a American guy from New Mexico named Balu. That isn’t his real name but since he was a big bear of a guy in India and someone made the Kipling connection and called him Balu. This is where the story gets really bizarre. I tell him I am from WV and he is taken aback and says he has been deer hunting in White Sulphur Springs, basically right next to my home in Lewisburg. Who would have thought that in the middle of India I would meet an American biker that has been hunting in my home county in WV. It is a small world!

I tell Balu I want a bike to head to the mountains. He was also shocked by the amazing coincidence and is more than willing to help me out. We go to the shop to find a newly built Enfield bike that just so happened to be Petal Rose Pink with a tan leather seat. “I’ll take it” were the first words to come out of my mouth. I ordered stickers to be put on the bike that say, “Bullet Wallas West Virginia” with two orange dueling banjos in the center (that was Balu’s idea). While my bike was being finished, I met four English guys that had the same idea as me, to buy a bike and head north. We decided it would be safer and more fun if we all hit the road together.

Buying a bike and driving around India sounds like a great idea but here is the catch, I have never actually driven a motorcycle. I left that part of the story out when I was purchasing my bike from Balu. I simply said that I had limited experience on a bike. That was the understatement of the trip! About the third day when I was hanging around the shop waiting for all of the bikes to be ready, Balu threw me the keys to my bike and told me to go fill her up with petrol. It was about 4PM, right in the middle of rush hour in Delhi, and I had never ridden a motorcycle. I figured I had to learn somehow and I took off. I made it about 100 meters before I stalled out and couldn’t get it restarted. A crowd soon gathered to laugh at the foreigner that couldn’t get his pink Enfield to start. One man out of about a hundred finally offered to start the bike for me. I was off again and this time only made it 20 meters. The crowd followed laughing and jeering at my inability to drive. I finally made it out of the alleys and side streets and onto the main street where I again stalled out in the middle of bumper to bumper traffic five rows deep. After another crowd formed to heckle the foreigner, I realized I was out of gas. After pushing the bike for thirty minutes, filling up with petrol, stalling out about nine more times, I finally managed to get it back to the shop in one piece. Luckily!

My second ride wasn’t any better but much more comical. Balu took all five of us to a deserted park to practice before he sent us out on the open rode. I finally got the hang of the gears and was doing quite well. We were all excited, trying tricks, and weaving in and out of trees with ease but then it came, a thunderstorm. Out of nowhere, a torrential rain moved in over us. Balu, the only man that knew the way home, took off and yelled, “every man for himself.’ We ended up stuck hiding underneath an archway for at least an hour with dozens of homeless people staring at us. A hell of a day!

I am now in Manali, a hill station about 500km north of Delhi. (Hill stations are towns in the mountains that offer modern amenities such as internet, restaurants, and better hotels). The ride to Manali was an eventful one with many breakdowns, wrecks, monkeys, cows, goats, snow-capped mountains, and much more. It was a great ride and we all made it here in one piece. It was definitely a group effort. The four English lads I am traveling with are good company and we hit it off immediately. I plan to visit some more goshalas (homeless cow shelters) around Manali. It is more for comic value than anything else. I have been in email contact with one Goshala that signs off every email with ‘yours in service of Lord Krishna and His cows.’ I am not joking. I can talk forever about my visits with the goshalas but that warrants another post.

I have decided to name my pink stallion ‘Chibuku Gopa’ which means ‘Chibuku the Cow herder.’ Chibuku is the name of a local African alcoholic brew that I ran across in Malawi. The drink is kind of like mixing sour milk, bread dough and alcohol together and drinking it. Wretched! But, the Malawians had a very catchy song and dance to go along with the drink that I loved and that is where Chibuku gets her name.

A Rickshaw Ride Through Old Delhi

Jama Masjid, India's largest mosque embedded within the streets of Old Delhi.
india 137, originally uploaded by Benjamin Long.

My grandpa developed a fascination with peacocks and instead of just dreaming about the exotic birds, he decided to populate the farm with blue-shoulder roosters and hens. Nature took its course and soon there were dozens of peacocks roaming and nesting in the barns, sorting pens and even the front porch. For me, the crowing peacocks did not tell of another world or an enchanted forest in the jungles of India as a Rudyard Kipling book may suggest. The often annoying shrills bellowed out by the beautiful birds meant I was home on the farm getting ready to go fishing, hunting or running through the barn from hay bail to hay bail trying not to fall into a crevice. In India, peacocks are anywhere with just enough green space to let the birds spread their wings. Their early morning singing, annoying I might add, wakes me up every morning from the adjacent nursery to my current home. It brings a smile to my face, if only for a brief moment because it is 6AM. I role back over and think of the farm. That is one of the few things that remind me of home in India. To tell you just how different life can be here I will try to recreate a thirty minute auto-rickshaw ride through Old Delhi I took the other day. It was an adventure in itself.

But first, you need a brief history lesson of Delhi to fully appreciate Old Delhi. Delhi has evolved over the ruins of seven cities, built by rulers from the Hindu Rajputs to the Mughals and finally the British. Old Delhi is the city of the Moghuls, created by Shah Jahan and dating back to the seventeenth century. It’s the capitol’s most frenetic quarter, and it’s most Islamic, a reminder that for more than seven hundred years Delhi was a Muslim city. Its greatest monuments are the magnificent remnants of Moghul empires, the Red Fort and the Jama Masjid, India’s largest mosque. Due to the tremendous economic boom of late, modern suburbs and developments encompass the tombs, temples and ruins that date back centuries; in some cases, the remains of whole cities from the distant past sit happily amid homes and highways built in the last decade or two. With its jam-packed streets, bazaars, tower blocks and temples, forts, mosques and colonial mansions there is a surprise around every corner. It is a place where suit and tie businessmen rub shoulders with traditionally dressed orthodox Hindus and Muslims, and the smell of spices, feces, burning trash, and cow dung fills the air with a rather strange aroma. This is Old Delhi.

“Mujhe Red Fort Chahiye” I try tell to the auto-rickshaw driver in my worst Hindi accent. He looks at me and just smiles. I fear I may have botched the only Hindi words I have been able to learn in a week so I ask him again in English; I want Red Fort! “ Oh, yes…100 rupee,” he tells me holding back a sly grin. No, No, I will give you 20 rupee. 90, 30, 70, 30, 50, 30, 40, ok 40 it’s a deal then. Lets go!

And we’re off in the green and yellow auto-rickshaw that smells of exhaust fumes from the harsh life on the Delhi streets. The streets are soon filled with every beast of burden pulling some sort of cargo; donkeys carrying sandbags for construction projects, mules carrying wagons full of cow dung, camels carrying larger trolleys filled with sacks of potatoes, horses pulling carriages, cows pulling or carrying an assortment of goods, and people pushing carts filled with vegetables. The four marked driving lanes don’t really mean anything since the buses, cars, rickshaws, animals, people, trolleys, mopeds and motorcycles are crammed six or seven across.

Ahh, finally a stop light; everyone will stop after the oncoming traffic honk their horns to signal it is their turn. Silence, if only for a moment because there is a beggar between three and five years old holding a naked infant while rubbing her belly signifying she is hungry and needs food. Children beggars are everywhere. I give in and give her a rupee. My driver then yells at me for perpetuating the problem. The next thing I know she has told her friends and I then have six children beggars swarming my rickshaw. The light turns green. Finally, I can get out of here. The children then must dodge the oncoming traffic that doesn’t slow down because pedestrians are on the bottom of the pecking order on the streets.

The streets get narrower and more congested as we near the heart of Old Delhi. My driver directs my attention to the right where a huge baboon is swinging from electrical lines above the street shops. This was not like the baboons I saw in Africa. This was the city kind that was black from sleeping in back alleys and scavenging through trash. Dreadful looking… but normal here. Make sure you close your hotel windows because they can be good thieves!

Damn! We hit a traffic jam. Everyone laid on their horns even more than they usually do which is a lot. I can’t see what the problem is ahead but the traffic begins to slowly creep along. My driver makes a quick maneuver around the bus in front of us blocking our view. Now way! Three mounted elephants are making their way through the middle of the street causing the traffic jam. We speed by the elephants along with a Land Cruiser, Mercedes and multiple other rickshaws. I was stunned and my driver looked at me and laughed.

Watch out! A cow was in the middle of the road and my driver was laughing, looking at me instead of looking at the road. Cows are the king of the road wandering with, against or across traffic as they please where they always have the right-away. My driver swerves out of the way just in time. The cow remains oblivious to the traffic and elephants going past as it continues to chew its curd in the middle of the road.

I can see the Red Fort, almost there. The traffic becomes even more congested; cow, Lexus, horse and buggy, camel pulling a trolley, Land Rover, three bicycle- rickshaws, five auto-rickshaws, Mercedes E-class, more cows, beggars, touts, donkeys loaded down with sacks, two buffalo… “Red Fort!” my driver yells. I give a hundred rupee note. “No change, no change…I wait you here after tour.” I took my tour and my driver was awaiting my return just as he said. Then, I got to take the second strangest ride of my life back home; second due to the fact I was becoming slightly more accustomed to my surroundings.

First Week In India

india 160, originally uploaded by Benjamin Long.

My first week in India had been eventful to say the least. Two days before I arrived in India, a friend from college hooked me up with her friend, Vik, in Delhi. Vik’s family offered to take me for a couple of days until I get oriented in another new country. It couldn’t have been a better situation because Delhi is quite a hectic place where everyone needs a quiet place to catch their breathe. I got lucky yet again. Thanks Mary.

I didn’t really know what direction I wanted to take with my project in India. There are so many different aspects to investigate with cattle. India has thirty per cent of the world's cattle with twenty six different breeds mixed together. Cows are everywhere! Because the cow is respected as a sacred animal, it's allowed to roam unharmed, and they have grown accustomed to the traffic and the rhythm of the city. So, you can see them roaming the streets in towns and cities, grazing unmindfully on the roadside grass verges and munching away vegetables thrown out by street sellers. As opposed to the West, where the cow is widely considered as nothing more than walking hamburgers, in India, the cow is believed to be a symbol of the earth - because it gives so much yet asks nothing in
return.

For animals powerful enough to stop traffic and holy enough that they’ll never become steak, cows are treated dreadfully. Scrawny and sickly, they survive by grazing on garbage on the street. Due to this maltreatment, different religious organizations in cooperation with the government have set up gosadans (homeless cow shelters). No joke! I plan to visit some of these shelters soon to see them for myself. I have also heard that the city of Delhi has cow catchers to round up the homeless cows and take them to the gosadans. I could see myself wrestling down cows in the streets of Delhi. We’ll see?

Another aspect that has fascinated me is an organization called RSS, composed of members from the extreme right of the Hindu faith. I have heard stories of people following around cows awaiting fresh pee to come pouring out so they can fill up their cups. They believe that a cow’s pee replenishes the body. This is similar to the Maasai’s belief of drinking blood. Both are thought to rejuvenate the body and spirit. I am trying to get in touch with the RSS to see if the rumors are true.

In the time it has taken me to figure out which direction to take, I have been the ultimate tourist visiting numerous temples, mosques, shrines and forts that are scattered across Delhi and the surrounding areas. My favorites have been the ghost city of Fatehpur Sikri, Humayun’s Tomb, Taj Mahal, Jama Masjid, and Nizamuddin Sufi Shrine. Fatephur Sikri was built by the Mogul emperor Akbar to be the imperial capital. After building the city from scratch and living in it for over ten years, they finally figured out there wasn’t enough water to survive. So, they abandoned the capital city and it remains a ghost palace even today. The Taj Mahal is simply incredible due to its size and detailed art work in the white marble. Jama Masjid is the largest mosque in India and I think the largest in Asia as well. On Fridays, it is flooded with people trying to pray inside. Nizamuddin Sufi Shrine is one of the seven required shrines that every Sufi has to visit during pilgrimage. It is hidden within a bustling Islamic neighborhood that the average traveler would never stumble across (I was lucky and had a friend to show me around).

It is also wedding season in Delhi. Hindu weddings are quite the affair with it being more of like the coronation of a new king and queen rather than a matrimonial union. Every night since I have been in India, I have fallen asleep to the thunder of fireworks, blaring Bollywood favorites, and a little Justin Timberlake thrown into the mix as well. I asked my hostess, Praveen, how I could attend one. She smiled and showed me an invitation to a wedding the following night. I was excited. I went out the next day to buy a traditional Indian kurta-pajama and was ready an hour before our scheduled departure. We arrived to the wedding that was in a huge tent with wall to wall carpeting, a neon green, pink and orange dance floor, pink fabric forming small huts and an endless buffet serving India’s favorite dishes. It also turned out that I was one of only four or five men wearing the traditional kurta-pajama with the rest of the men wearing a suit or khakis with a button-down shirt. A great lost in translation/culture moment. After Praveen made me sample every type of food on the endless buffet and I could no longer move, the groom arrived on his noble steed preceded by his dancing family members. His family dances up the entrance with the bride’s family standing flat footed ready to receive the dancing mob. It took the family about an hour to dance up the ten meter long entrance. They were in no hurry and were pulling out some impressive dance moves. I was nodding my head with the music when someone spotted me and pulled me into the mix. I cut a rug for a brief moment and then retreated back to the masses. The bride and groom made their way into the tent and took their places on the red velvet covered chairs on center stage. There were about four hundred people there and that is considered very small. A large wedding reaches well over a thousand in attendance. It was still a great time even if it was “small”.

It has been a busy week getting adjusted. I will be the first to admit that India is not for everyone. It is a land of extremes that are endlessly confronting: rich and poor, pristine and dirty, terrible but incredible, material and spiritual. India can’t be generalized or even be put into a few categories because it has everything and its opposite living side by side. In most countries this incites violence stemming from jealousy or resentment but everyone seems to co-exist here in their own way.

Not an Ordinary Week

Not an Ordinary Week, originally uploaded by Benjamin Long.

My journey from Argentina to India wasn't your typical week in transit experience. To start, I arrived in Sydney the day before the 30th Gay Mardi Gras kicked off. I didn't realize this until I tried to check into multiple hostels upon my arrival into Sydney. All of which flat out rejected me and one receptionist even laughed at my ignorance. Not very nice... Anyway, after a 13 hour flight with no TV to pass the time, I was too tired to get freaked out about my situation. I found myself in an Internet cafe in Chinatown searching for a hostel gracious enough to take me in on such a momentous weekend. In the process I struck up a conversation with an Irishman named Dave. It was only ten in the morning but we headed to the local Irish pub to blow off some steam. What can I say, he’s Irish and drinking is national pastime in Ireland. After a couple of beers, he offered me a place to sleep on his hotel room floor. The thought did cross my mind about his intentions seeing how it was the weekend of Gay Mardi Gras but I had never met or even heard of an alcoholic Irishman that was also gay. I decided to go with it, the story of my life right now. It turned out to be a very nice hotel located on George Street, the main street in downtown Sydney.

Sydney was just voted the most desirable city in the world to live in. I can believe it after visiting. The city is immaculately clean with numerous pristine parks scattered around the city, and then there is Sydney harbor. The harbor is a little piece of heaven where the sun always shines, a breeze always blows in from the harbor and with the Sydney Harbor Bridge and Sydney Opera house providing picturesque portraits that even the most amateur photographer can't screw up. It’s close to paradise in my book. It truly is a great city but also very expensive.

I have never been to Mardi Gras back in the States or to Carnival in Brazil, but I can now say I have been to Gay Mardi Gras in Oz (Oz is the shortened hip saying for Australia). With over 10,000 people participating in the parade, I have never seen so many jock straps, speedos, ass-less chaps, the color pink and black leather in a variety of forms in all my life with the constant background music of Kylie Minogue's greatest hits. That being said, it was an amazing sight to see. Many of the floats had political and religious overtones to go along with the liberating outfits. "Gay Is The New Black" and "Would Jesus Discriminate" are the two saying that I remember the most. The streets were jam packed with eager onlookers to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the event. The parade lasted for hours. We decided to leave a little early and as we were making our way through the maze of people, we somehow managed to find ourselves on a side street where the floats were preparing to depart. There is where we got a up close and personal look at all of the floats; very different but clever to say the least. It was a great event all together with a very international crowd of participants enjoying the freedom to express themselves openly. It was a great event.

Over the next three days I was able to catch some sun on famous Bondi beach, explore the Blue Mountains which just make me homesick, and managed to catch a nasty stomach bug, a precursor to Delhi Belly that awaits me in India. I caught a 15 hour flight to Abu Dhabi, the richest city in the world, only to get stuck in the airport for 13 hours awaiting my flight to India. I cleared customs and tried to find a hotel room in the city but after five hotels were booked solid and the cheapest of them was asking $125US a night, I informed my taxi driver to drive 45 minutes back to the airport where we began our fruitless journey. Along the way I was able to gaze out the window at the second largest mosque in the world lit up at night, a magical sight, and the city itself. I now know whose coffers are filled with all of the money I spent filling up my Toyota Tacoma with gas for so long. Abu Dhabi is quite a sight, even at night.

In one week I traveled from the Paris of South America, Buenos Aires, to the most desirable city to call home, Sydney, via the richest city in the world, Abu Dhabi, and have finally made it to one of the most polluted hectic and bizarre places on Earth, Delhi. I think I am going in the wrong direction when I put it like that?

There was a poster in my freshman English classroom in college that depicted the globe turned upside down that said something to the effect, “The New World.” I always loved the poster but I am just now learning to appreciate its meaning. I can now understand what is means after being crammed into a rickety old rickshaw zigzagging through Delhi traffic sweating at the numerous close encounters to my drivers amusement as he looks me through the rear view mirror while still holding his hand firmly on the horn for no apparent reason while dodging weary pedestrians, begging children, nomad cattle and countless motorcycles weaving in out of the madness. It is organized chaos in the truest sense of the word. The world has been turned on its head for me once again. Now it is time to try to make sense of it all.

Recap

Crossing the Tropic of Capricorn

IMG_2105, originally uploaded by Benjamin Long.

The past two months in Argentina have not been as bizarre and foreign as my first months in Africa but they have still been eventful. Let's see, I have crossed the tropic of Capricorn while dodging spitting llamas (felt kind of bad because when I dodged the incoming llama luggie it hit a young boy. Moral hangover), seen a seven coloured mountain (seriously the mountain had seven colours due to different mineral deposits of iron oxide, manganese and other minerals that turned the mountain different shades of red, yellow, orange, white and even green), watched the sunset over the partially restored fortress of Pucará de Tilcara (rebuilt ruins that were once occupied by farmers of the Late Incan Empire over 500 years ago, ruins that may be even 1,000 years old in places), found the hidden city of Iruya tucked away deep in the Andes in the north western province of Jujuy, witnessed the most fanatical sporting event on Earth a BOCA Jrs. home football (soccer) game, traversed through the legendary Rt. 52 through the Andes which was the set for scenes in the movie "Seven Years in Tibet", hiked to the base of the highest mountain in western hemisphere- Mt. Aconcagua, ridden with the gauchos as the sun rose over the pampas, rode in a glider in the Argentine Nat'l glider championships, bought a cheap linen suit, ate my body weight in Argentine beef twice over and washed it down with gallons of steamy mate, had a Argentine girlfriend, lost an Argentine girlfriend, hiked to Garganta del Diablo (waterfall called "the throat of the devil"), hunted for rabbits with a spotlight in the back of a truck going 40mph which is a recipe for disaster, learned to speak Spanish (mas o menos) and well I think that about covers it.

Other stories...

I was in a little town called Tilcara to meet with the local agricultural agent in the area and decided to leave after a week. I went to the bus station booked a 24 hour bus to Buenos Aires for the following day, put the ticket in pocket without looking at it and returned to my hostel. The next day I show up and realize she booked it for the wrong day and I was exactly 24 hours late for my bus, the bus I thought I was to get on was booked solid and so were all of the buses for the next two days. This would not have been a problem unless a friend from back home was coming to visit me the following day and I had to get back to Buenos Aires. I went to argue with them and they let me on a bus to Salta, the largest town in the north of Argentina. The next morning, Valentine's Day, after arguing with the ticketing agent for about 15 min, he put me on an empty bus back to headquarters to discuss it with the boss. I thought that meant that the boss spoke English. No, he didn't! He just smiled and said "no hablo English." Then put a document down in front of me and told me to write down my complaint. I started in writing in English but he then took it from me, ripped it up and said, "En Espanol solamente". It took me about an hour of remembering high school Spanish classes but I finally managed to write out a two paragraph account of how the ticketing agent in Tilcara made a mistake and not me. He looked at it, shook his head in approval, gave a new ticket for free and we proceeded to drink mate until the next bus went back to the terminal. Not all of my lost in translation moments have turned out that well but will not tell you about those.

Argentina: Political Cows

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IMG_2408, originally uploaded by Benjamin Long.

Argentina is a funny place. I often get confused as to where I am in the world because of the French architecture, Italian fashion sense, tourists scattered about but at the same time, speaking Spanish is a must to survive. I didn’t know it before I got here but Argentina is very European: mostly Spanish and Italian with a French influence and other eastern Europeans thrown into the mix as well. The indigenous population constitutes only 3% of the total population. This dynamic is best seen in Buenos Aires, a city that could be a perfect mix of New York City and Washington D.C. with a Latin feel if that is possible. Argentina is famous for beef, the tango, Patagonia, and beautiful women. I will say that the beef is some of the best I have ever eaten, people dancing the Tango fill the streets of some neighborhoods, Patagonia is breathtaking (I haven’t been yet but the pictures are great though) and the women, well they are the most beautiful women I have ever seen.

My plans changed drastically after I hurt my leg and could no longer ride a horse which is a prerequisite for working on any farm in the country. I have been bouncing around since then looking for a purpose with some success with my project. The cattle industry in a perfect microcosm of the problems in the country. Argentina is a country that has everything. Everything that is except good government. The country has been plagued with bad government for years and the corruption has run ramped. Argentina has enormous agricultural potential, wealthy in natural resources, diverse landscapes, thriving tourism industry and a large population to fuel the economy. The population, for the most part, has the same ethnic make up as the States as well. If a country has everything it could possibly need to succeed, then why does the vast majority of the country live in poverty? Like in Africa, the problem lies with bad government. That seems to be a common theme to my trip thus far. Argentina is just better at hiding their problems. The country is by no means poor. The money is just concentrated within a very small percentage of people, which is another reoccurring theme of my trip.

As I said earlier, Argentina is is famous for its beef. I have heard conflicting reports but the average Argentine consumes close to 150lbs. of beef a year. That is a lot of beef! Beef has become as much a part of their culture as the main staple of their diet. The government knows this fact so beef has become a powerful political issue. The government wants every Argentine to be able to afford cheap meat. If they didn’t, there would be riots in the streets. Seriously... Their solution: install export quotas on the beef industry turning it into a heavily regulated business. The domestic beef market has to be filled first before any beef can be exported and that is arbitrarily determined by the government as to when the market is full or not. To add to the confusion of the farmers, the international market likes larger cuts of beef than the domestic market meaning that the farmer has to cater to one market or the other not knowing what the quotas will be at the time of sale. To complicate things even more, the government takes a 15% fee off the selling price, not the profit, of the cattle. So lets say you do find the right market to sell your cattle either on the domestic or international market and make a reasonable deal, before you see any money at all the government takes their cut of 15%. This makes increasingly difficult for local farmers to turn a profit but they don’t complain because it could be much worse. Worse, how? The government takes between 28% and 35% on different crops such as soybean, sunflower, and wheat. The profit margins continue to shrink and the farmer gets even poorer.

The solution to this problem is the same solution that farmers in the US have, get bigger and bigger to survive. Lots are farms are becoming commercially operated or bought up and consolidated by businessmen with too much money from other professions. This is not unique to Argentina at all. It is actually a common trend in the USA and similar to what I witnessed in South Africa as well. Small farmers just can’t compete anymore as a primary source of income or against corporate farming. It is happening everywhere, not just in the States.

Beef's political importance runs much deep than just keeping the peace with cheap over the counter prices which is absurdly low: i.e. 2 pesos for a pound of asado (which is the equivalent of 66 cents US for their favorite cut of meat that is unique to this part of the world. The cut of meat is cut across the ribs. The actual steak with have four or five pieces of rib bone in the actual cut. It is very good.) and 80 centavos for a pound of hamburger meat (roughly 25 cents US). Again, beef is cheap, especially over the counter. If you don’t know your Argentine history, the country had a financial meltdown in 2001. People lost everything, banks ran out of money, land became worthless, the currency was devalued and the country plundered into massive foreign debt. Since then the country has rebounded and managed to pay off most of the debt but the interest rate for the debt is directly tied to their consumer index which beef consumption is a major part of since Argentines eat so much of it. By keeping beef prices low, the consumer index will remain low, thus keeping the interest rate low for their foreign debt. Even though this may sound a little strange, as it should, it is working for now so why should the government change it? For the future, that is a different story.

For the beef, it really is that good. It is not that there are proportionally more cattle in the country but the cattle they do have are all high quality. Driving down the road, you don’t see any bad cattle. They are all high quality black Angus scattered across the landscapes on any land that is unsuitable for soybean, wheat and sunflowers because the crop market is much better than the cattle market these days (even with a higher government tax). The government control of the beef market has had its effect though. Go out to a restaurant and order the best steak they have and you may shell out the equivalent of $10US for a really good cut of beef. A good bottle of wine may run you US $10US also. With that being said, Argentina is a man’s paradise; great beef, great wine, beautiful women, and big mountains to climb. Whats not to love?That being said I am ready to leave. I know I know, I am an idiot. Argentina is just too European for me right now and also very easy to travel within. I would recommend it to anyone to backpack through. I just miss the adventure of Africa, mostly the culture shock. I am off to India. I have one contact in Delhi, no idea what I plan to do or how I am going to do it, but three months in India should provide quite a shock. Adios!