Three days of drizzle and incessant overeating - apparently this is normal for Vancouver at this time of year.
Six more posts up today, so now's not the time to let your guard down and revert to unthinking witlessness.
If you don't understand what's being said, it may be because you've missed one or more previous posts, rather than because you're limited - scroll down until you see a post you've read, work your way up from there
x
Monday, December 26, 2011
The Place of Yaks
Short Version:
More Israeli asshattery, more walking. A purple velour birthday. A yak at Yak Kharka
Stats:
Total Walk Time Day 11 = 3:30
Cumulative Total Walk Time = 51:30
Beer Time = 35:30
Long Version:
Sheree Kharka Morning:
Israeli noise wakes us up.
Israeli girl jumps the queue for the toilet.
Amerikan guy jumps the queue for the toilet. Israeli girl is still in there. Israeli girl had not latched the door. Amerikan guy gets yelled at. Israeli girl storms off. Puppet amusement.
Asshat Israelis keep leaving the dining room door open. Cold air enters. Other groups take turns shutting the door and making rude comments. Each comment louder than the last. Eventually one Israeli guy clicks that everyone hates them and that they should not leave the door open. Round of applause.
Mountains spectacular in pre-dawn light. Sun touches high places first, then steadily encroaches into lower regions.
********
Somehow, we're walking uphill again. Buddhist holy places are abundant; seems like there's one on every high rock outcrop. We find a seasonal yakherd village. It's currently empty, and surprisingly large, sprawling out across a small plateau. We follow a wall up and then across the face of the hill. In winter, the villagers herd their animals into the field enclosed by this wall, where the long grass and their hay stores provide food for the beasts when there's not much else about. For now, the animals are outside the wall, roaming free-ish. We see a large flock of naur, or blue sheep. They look - and act - a lot like the mountain goats we saw in the Rockies a year ago, only with more fighting.
Over the northern ridge, we descend quickly into the next valley. There is snow, so we throw it at each other. The game of "sneak rocks into the Puppet backpack when he's not watching" continues.
At the bottom of the valley, we cross a bridge and start up the other side. The "No Complaining" agreement is stretched. We see more naur, and then rejoin the main Annapurna Circuit trail for the final few hundred yards past the small hydro power station and into Yak Kharka*, where we acquire a small free-standing chalet that is much like the one in Turangi in which we stayed while assaulting Mt Ruapehu in January, except this one is pink, inside and out.
The views from the dining room are stupendous. The wind is whipping loose snow off the mountain tops; it looks like it's cold up there! It's warm here, lower down, in the sun, inside, near the fire. An English man does magic tricks for a little old lady, people sing "Happy Birthday to You" to a Polish woman in a purple velour tracksuit (top and bottom). They are terrible singers**. The apple pie looks delicious. The apple pie IS delicious. There is a yak outside. It is large. We are excited.
* = The Place of Yaks, apparently. Which probably means that Sheree Kharka, where we stayed last night, is The Place of Sherees
** = To be fair, it's apparently a really difficult song to sing well. Which explains why we've never heard it sound anything other than horrendous
More Israeli asshattery, more walking. A purple velour birthday. A yak at Yak Kharka
Stats:
Total Walk Time Day 11 = 3:30
Cumulative Total Walk Time = 51:30
Beer Time = 35:30
Long Version:
Sheree Kharka Morning:
Israeli noise wakes us up.
Israeli girl jumps the queue for the toilet.
Amerikan guy jumps the queue for the toilet. Israeli girl is still in there. Israeli girl had not latched the door. Amerikan guy gets yelled at. Israeli girl storms off. Puppet amusement.
Asshat Israelis keep leaving the dining room door open. Cold air enters. Other groups take turns shutting the door and making rude comments. Each comment louder than the last. Eventually one Israeli guy clicks that everyone hates them and that they should not leave the door open. Round of applause.
Mountains spectacular in pre-dawn light. Sun touches high places first, then steadily encroaches into lower regions.
********
Somehow, we're walking uphill again. Buddhist holy places are abundant; seems like there's one on every high rock outcrop. We find a seasonal yakherd village. It's currently empty, and surprisingly large, sprawling out across a small plateau. We follow a wall up and then across the face of the hill. In winter, the villagers herd their animals into the field enclosed by this wall, where the long grass and their hay stores provide food for the beasts when there's not much else about. For now, the animals are outside the wall, roaming free-ish. We see a large flock of naur, or blue sheep. They look - and act - a lot like the mountain goats we saw in the Rockies a year ago, only with more fighting.
Over the northern ridge, we descend quickly into the next valley. There is snow, so we throw it at each other. The game of "sneak rocks into the Puppet backpack when he's not watching" continues.
At the bottom of the valley, we cross a bridge and start up the other side. The "No Complaining" agreement is stretched. We see more naur, and then rejoin the main Annapurna Circuit trail for the final few hundred yards past the small hydro power station and into Yak Kharka*, where we acquire a small free-standing chalet that is much like the one in Turangi in which we stayed while assaulting Mt Ruapehu in January, except this one is pink, inside and out.
The views from the dining room are stupendous. The wind is whipping loose snow off the mountain tops; it looks like it's cold up there! It's warm here, lower down, in the sun, inside, near the fire. An English man does magic tricks for a little old lady, people sing "Happy Birthday to You" to a Polish woman in a purple velour tracksuit (top and bottom). They are terrible singers**. The apple pie looks delicious. The apple pie IS delicious. There is a yak outside. It is large. We are excited.
* = The Place of Yaks, apparently. Which probably means that Sheree Kharka, where we stayed last night, is The Place of Sherees
** = To be fair, it's apparently a really difficult song to sing well. Which explains why we've never heard it sound anything other than horrendous
Holy Frozen Shit Fight, Batman!
Short Version:
Cold. We walk up a hill to a lake, then hike back down to find ourselves shafted. We meet our first Israelites, and are unimpressed.
Stats:
Total Walk Time Day 10 = 7:00
Cumulative Total Walk Time = 48:00
Beer Time = 32:00
Long Version:
Tilicho Base Camp Morning:
Where are we? What is this grim place? Are those tents? Are people sleeping in those tents? Are they mad?
Both lodges had been full of trekkers, and the fields around the lodges were festooned with colorful, frozen tents, where younger,hardier,more frugal, and/or stupider trekkers had spent the bloody cold night. Icicles were everywhere. Every puddle was frozen solid. Even the several fast-flowing streams in the vicinity were ice-choked. The dining room was warm by comparison; the dung fire had a knot of shivering people huddled around it as it worked to warm the fairly cavernous - albeit low-ceilinged - sparsely-decorated space. If it weren't for the dive fin nailed to the wall the place would have been essentially unadorned; as it was we found ourselves reading and re-reading the words on the fin, placed there to commemorate the Polish deep dive at altitude team who'd submerged themselves in Tilicho Lake back in 2007.
We set off early for the hike up to Tilicho Lake, leaving the bulk of our gear at Base Camp. Three hours later, we arrived at the lake. That's three hours of uphill; hauling ourselves up a series of steep switchbacks, back and forth across a steep, unstable scree slope.
The bright sunshine at lakeside was glorious, though, and we sat for a while, cups of hot lemon+honey drink in hand, before the rise of the chilly, biting wind drove us back down the hill. Snow-covered mountains loomed on all sides, with Tilicho Peak particularly imposing at the western, upper end of the valley. Glacier-carved ridges split the valley and its streams; these met at the bend where the valley turned southeast, beside the flat spot where the Base Camp lodges had been built.
Depending on which source one consults, and what one accepts as the definition of or criteria for calling a body of water a lake, Tilicho is either the world's highest lake, or something like the 20th-highest. There were a number of signs referring to it as the highest. No signs said "cold," but there were icebergs floating around, and snow to the shoreline on all sides, so that's a fair bet. Other signs espoused the holiness and sacredness of the lake and surrounding area. We threw frozen yak shit at each other.
Back at Base Camp, we gathered our gear together, ate the worst meal of the entire trek (also one of the priciest), and hid Lovely Wife away in a dark room. An hour later, sun-induced headache a thing of the past, we set off back down the trail we'd come up the previous afternoon. Turns out that there really were apparently-levitating standing stones all over the place, and that the stairways really were treacherous and surrounded by gaping pits. Also, there were spectacular frozen waterfalls. Oh, and an avalanche.
A few hours later, we beat dusk to the lodge at Sheree Kharka, where we'd lunched (and napped!) the previous day, and where we'd booked a room for tonight. "Sorry," they said. "A big group arrived, so we gave your room away." ... "But we booked!" ... "Yeah, sorry about that."
Luckily, there's a half-built new lodge two minutes downtrail.
Unluckily, that lodge is also full.
Luckily, there's a half-finished, not-yet-furnished room that we can have, with temporarily-emplaced foam mattresses on the floor. This is quite a relief.
In the dining room that evening an old man wandered around with plastic bags on his feet, an Amerikan got told off by a porter for insulting the gods by putting his feet too far into the flaming brazier, and some Israelis were rude to the lodge staff and kept leaving the door to the frigid outside world open.
Cold. We walk up a hill to a lake, then hike back down to find ourselves shafted. We meet our first Israelites, and are unimpressed.
Stats:
Total Walk Time Day 10 = 7:00
Cumulative Total Walk Time = 48:00
Beer Time = 32:00
Long Version:
Tilicho Base Camp Morning:
Where are we? What is this grim place? Are those tents? Are people sleeping in those tents? Are they mad?
Both lodges had been full of trekkers, and the fields around the lodges were festooned with colorful, frozen tents, where younger,hardier,more frugal, and/or stupider trekkers had spent the bloody cold night. Icicles were everywhere. Every puddle was frozen solid. Even the several fast-flowing streams in the vicinity were ice-choked. The dining room was warm by comparison; the dung fire had a knot of shivering people huddled around it as it worked to warm the fairly cavernous - albeit low-ceilinged - sparsely-decorated space. If it weren't for the dive fin nailed to the wall the place would have been essentially unadorned; as it was we found ourselves reading and re-reading the words on the fin, placed there to commemorate the Polish deep dive at altitude team who'd submerged themselves in Tilicho Lake back in 2007.
We set off early for the hike up to Tilicho Lake, leaving the bulk of our gear at Base Camp. Three hours later, we arrived at the lake. That's three hours of uphill; hauling ourselves up a series of steep switchbacks, back and forth across a steep, unstable scree slope.
The bright sunshine at lakeside was glorious, though, and we sat for a while, cups of hot lemon+honey drink in hand, before the rise of the chilly, biting wind drove us back down the hill. Snow-covered mountains loomed on all sides, with Tilicho Peak particularly imposing at the western, upper end of the valley. Glacier-carved ridges split the valley and its streams; these met at the bend where the valley turned southeast, beside the flat spot where the Base Camp lodges had been built.
Depending on which source one consults, and what one accepts as the definition of or criteria for calling a body of water a lake, Tilicho is either the world's highest lake, or something like the 20th-highest. There were a number of signs referring to it as the highest. No signs said "cold," but there were icebergs floating around, and snow to the shoreline on all sides, so that's a fair bet. Other signs espoused the holiness and sacredness of the lake and surrounding area. We threw frozen yak shit at each other.
Back at Base Camp, we gathered our gear together, ate the worst meal of the entire trek (also one of the priciest), and hid Lovely Wife away in a dark room. An hour later, sun-induced headache a thing of the past, we set off back down the trail we'd come up the previous afternoon. Turns out that there really were apparently-levitating standing stones all over the place, and that the stairways really were treacherous and surrounded by gaping pits. Also, there were spectacular frozen waterfalls. Oh, and an avalanche.
A few hours later, we beat dusk to the lodge at Sheree Kharka, where we'd lunched (and napped!) the previous day, and where we'd booked a room for tonight. "Sorry," they said. "A big group arrived, so we gave your room away." ... "But we booked!" ... "Yeah, sorry about that."
Luckily, there's a half-built new lodge two minutes downtrail.
Unluckily, that lodge is also full.
Luckily, there's a half-finished, not-yet-furnished room that we can have, with temporarily-emplaced foam mattresses on the floor. This is quite a relief.
In the dining room that evening an old man wandered around with plastic bags on his feet, an Amerikan got told off by a porter for insulting the gods by putting his feet too far into the flaming brazier, and some Israelis were rude to the lodge staff and kept leaving the door to the frigid outside world open.
Sick!
Short Version:
Sick! We walk somewhere, apparently.
Stats:
Total Walk Time Day 9 = 6:30
Cumulative Total Walk Time = 41:00
Beer Time = 25:00
Long Version:
Manang Morning:
That heavily-garlicked fried rice tasted delicious at dinner-time. Not so lovely coming back up at 1am. And 3am. And 5am. I'm not sure how Lovely Wife managed to sleep through the racket, to be honest. And we're out of toilet paper. Yes, we bought a new roll yesterday. It's been a busy night.
No breakfast. In fact, please don't mention food. Too late. Please excuse me, I have something that I need to attend to with some urgency.
They made me walk up hills. I've had more fun.
The last time I was this sick, Lovely Wife had poisoned me, in the forest in Oregon. I spent a day at death's door, writhing around in our tent, superheated/freezing/superheated/repeat. Then we went mountain-biking, and she pushed me up all the hills.
This time around, I didn't have the luxury of spending a day in bed. I still had Lovely Wife pushing me up hills though. Unfortunately for both of us, the entire day basically involved us walking up hills. Apart from the bit where we had some steep, tricky descents to manage; in those bits, Nene and Ganga watched nervously as unsteady Puppet-tottering threatened the cliff edge.
We made it in the end, though, to Tilicho Base Camp. I'm told that on the way, some of the following happened:
- We walked uphill for a couple of hours, then stopped for a cup of tea at Khangsar, which is on the lower slopes across the valley from the mountain of the same name. Hot water and small pieces of Mars bar were fed into the Puppetmaw, along with some drugs
- We walked uphill for another couple of hours, then stopped for lunch at Sheree Kharka. Puppetnap in an empty sunroom. Puppetawakening in a room totally full of evil Czechs. Disorienting. More hot water and Mars bar. Left a big sweaty patch on the sleepsurface. More drugs.
- We walked through a bizarre landscape: steep scree slopes with pernicious rock and dust avalanches; huge standing stones appeared to levitate off the ground up- and downslope from the trail. Maybe too many drugs?
- We climbed a tortuous set of uneven, narrow, and, in some places gone, set of stairs. Then we descended three or four more. Occasional oubliettes gaped hungrily.
Tilicho Base Camp was a bit grim. Our room was like a prison cell, with thick dank stone walls and a tiny, barred window. And it was cold. We huddled around the firestove in the dining room. The mildly retarded lodge guy fed yak dung into it at regular intervals. A puppy provided entertainment. The food was awful. Early to bed.
Sick! We walk somewhere, apparently.
Stats:
Total Walk Time Day 9 = 6:30
Cumulative Total Walk Time = 41:00
Beer Time = 25:00
Long Version:
Manang Morning:
That heavily-garlicked fried rice tasted delicious at dinner-time. Not so lovely coming back up at 1am. And 3am. And 5am. I'm not sure how Lovely Wife managed to sleep through the racket, to be honest. And we're out of toilet paper. Yes, we bought a new roll yesterday. It's been a busy night.
No breakfast. In fact, please don't mention food. Too late. Please excuse me, I have something that I need to attend to with some urgency.
They made me walk up hills. I've had more fun.
The last time I was this sick, Lovely Wife had poisoned me, in the forest in Oregon. I spent a day at death's door, writhing around in our tent, superheated/freezing/superheated/repeat. Then we went mountain-biking, and she pushed me up all the hills.
This time around, I didn't have the luxury of spending a day in bed. I still had Lovely Wife pushing me up hills though. Unfortunately for both of us, the entire day basically involved us walking up hills. Apart from the bit where we had some steep, tricky descents to manage; in those bits, Nene and Ganga watched nervously as unsteady Puppet-tottering threatened the cliff edge.
We made it in the end, though, to Tilicho Base Camp. I'm told that on the way, some of the following happened:
- We walked uphill for a couple of hours, then stopped for a cup of tea at Khangsar, which is on the lower slopes across the valley from the mountain of the same name. Hot water and small pieces of Mars bar were fed into the Puppetmaw, along with some drugs
- We walked uphill for another couple of hours, then stopped for lunch at Sheree Kharka. Puppetnap in an empty sunroom. Puppetawakening in a room totally full of evil Czechs. Disorienting. More hot water and Mars bar. Left a big sweaty patch on the sleepsurface. More drugs.
- We walked through a bizarre landscape: steep scree slopes with pernicious rock and dust avalanches; huge standing stones appeared to levitate off the ground up- and downslope from the trail. Maybe too many drugs?
- We climbed a tortuous set of uneven, narrow, and, in some places gone, set of stairs. Then we descended three or four more. Occasional oubliettes gaped hungrily.
Tilicho Base Camp was a bit grim. Our room was like a prison cell, with thick dank stone walls and a tiny, barred window. And it was cold. We huddled around the firestove in the dining room. The mildly retarded lodge guy fed yak dung into it at regular intervals. A puppy provided entertainment. The food was awful. Early to bed.
Death Biscuits
Short Version:
A day-trip, up a hill. Another special dance, another funeral.
Stats:
Total Walk Time Day 8 = 2:30
Cumulative Total Walk Time = 34:30
Beer Time = 18:30
Long Version:
Altitude sickness is not fun, apparently. Headaches, blurry vision, nausea, other unpleasantnesses. Kind of like a hangover, only not curable with a steak, cheese and japaleno (sic) pie and a litre of chocolate milk - the cure for altitude sickness is descent. Sounds easy? So long as it's not night-time, and your onwards route isn't forward and up, maybe. At any rate, we didn't want it, ergo precautions:
- walk slowly
- spread significant climbs across several days
- climb and descend to help acclimatisation
Climb and descend we had covered, having taken the high road from Pisang to Manang. Walking slowy we'd been doing since the start of the trek. And now we stay an extra day in Manang, to help our bodies adjust to how high above sea level we've come: Manang is at 3,519m
So, a good night's sleep, then a restful day, another good night's sleep, and we'll be ready to roll!
Or, of course, we could have a shitty night's sleep, courtesy of homeward-bound local yakherders partying it up and having massive-volume cellphone conversations. Outside our room. All blimmin night.
Then, instead of rest, we could go for a walk. Up a hill. A big hill. And for anyone reading this who's not been to altitude, even when you're not sick, doing anything is significantly more difficult than it is in the lowlands; strolling along the flat is enough to get one's lungs burning and heart pumping, let alone walking up steep hills. Or having snow fights. Or doing a special dance* to celebrate being higher than the highest point in New Zealand, which is Aoraki/Mt Cook at 3,754m.
The site of the dance was another Buddhist holy spot - they like high places - with a seasonal yakherd village nestled in at the base. Patches of snow lay all around, prayer flags fluttered in the fresh breeze, an enormous glacier hung high in the valley between Annapurna II and Gangapurna... and down below, the Buddhists prepared a fiery farewell for one of their departed.
We were too far away (up, mainly) to see much detail of the funerary proceedings, but it was still interesting. And, when we eventually made it back to Manang after a couple of goat-heavy detours and found our way (somehow!) to the Buddhist temple, we found an extra-special ceremony in progress, to honour the deceased. They invited us in, gave us popcorn and packets of biscuits**, and bade us watch, and listen. Which we did, rapt. Drums, with curved beating sticks! Gongs! Cymbals! Clarinetty oboeish trumpetlike horn things! Lot of chanting!
When we leave, we get blasted with holy smoke(!), then make our way past projector houses (mountain-oriented movies for trekkers on their extra-day layover) and some fairly distinctive architecture: houses are 2-storey beasts, with an enclosed courtyard extending the lower floor area outside, providing the household animals wonderful indoor/outdoor flow. The people live in the upper storey of the house, and extend their living area up onto the flat roof, generally using ladders made from tree trunks (they look like prtially-completed dugout canoes stood on end). Often, the divide between storeys is obvious from the outside, as the stone wall is broken by a piece of timber, oftentimes resting upon goat horns that protrude from between the stones. Occasionally dangerously.
Back at the lodge, we stare fixedly at the mountains that surround us on all sides. They're enormous, and marvellous. Then we eat food and go to bed happy. But not for long...
* = Not dissimilar to the dance from 11:11:11 on 11/11/11. Maybe more pointing and other arm gesticulating, less energetic jumping.
** = Plain crackers for the Puppet, Chocolate creams for everyone else. Cue much complaining.
A day-trip, up a hill. Another special dance, another funeral.
Stats:
Total Walk Time Day 8 = 2:30
Cumulative Total Walk Time = 34:30
Beer Time = 18:30
Long Version:
Altitude sickness is not fun, apparently. Headaches, blurry vision, nausea, other unpleasantnesses. Kind of like a hangover, only not curable with a steak, cheese and japaleno (sic) pie and a litre of chocolate milk - the cure for altitude sickness is descent. Sounds easy? So long as it's not night-time, and your onwards route isn't forward and up, maybe. At any rate, we didn't want it, ergo precautions:
- walk slowly
- spread significant climbs across several days
- climb and descend to help acclimatisation
Climb and descend we had covered, having taken the high road from Pisang to Manang. Walking slowy we'd been doing since the start of the trek. And now we stay an extra day in Manang, to help our bodies adjust to how high above sea level we've come: Manang is at 3,519m
So, a good night's sleep, then a restful day, another good night's sleep, and we'll be ready to roll!
Or, of course, we could have a shitty night's sleep, courtesy of homeward-bound local yakherders partying it up and having massive-volume cellphone conversations. Outside our room. All blimmin night.
Then, instead of rest, we could go for a walk. Up a hill. A big hill. And for anyone reading this who's not been to altitude, even when you're not sick, doing anything is significantly more difficult than it is in the lowlands; strolling along the flat is enough to get one's lungs burning and heart pumping, let alone walking up steep hills. Or having snow fights. Or doing a special dance* to celebrate being higher than the highest point in New Zealand, which is Aoraki/Mt Cook at 3,754m.
The site of the dance was another Buddhist holy spot - they like high places - with a seasonal yakherd village nestled in at the base. Patches of snow lay all around, prayer flags fluttered in the fresh breeze, an enormous glacier hung high in the valley between Annapurna II and Gangapurna... and down below, the Buddhists prepared a fiery farewell for one of their departed.
We were too far away (up, mainly) to see much detail of the funerary proceedings, but it was still interesting. And, when we eventually made it back to Manang after a couple of goat-heavy detours and found our way (somehow!) to the Buddhist temple, we found an extra-special ceremony in progress, to honour the deceased. They invited us in, gave us popcorn and packets of biscuits**, and bade us watch, and listen. Which we did, rapt. Drums, with curved beating sticks! Gongs! Cymbals! Clarinetty oboeish trumpetlike horn things! Lot of chanting!
When we leave, we get blasted with holy smoke(!), then make our way past projector houses (mountain-oriented movies for trekkers on their extra-day layover) and some fairly distinctive architecture: houses are 2-storey beasts, with an enclosed courtyard extending the lower floor area outside, providing the household animals wonderful indoor/outdoor flow. The people live in the upper storey of the house, and extend their living area up onto the flat roof, generally using ladders made from tree trunks (they look like prtially-completed dugout canoes stood on end). Often, the divide between storeys is obvious from the outside, as the stone wall is broken by a piece of timber, oftentimes resting upon goat horns that protrude from between the stones. Occasionally dangerously.
Back at the lodge, we stare fixedly at the mountains that surround us on all sides. They're enormous, and marvellous. Then we eat food and go to bed happy. But not for long...
* = Not dissimilar to the dance from 11:11:11 on 11/11/11. Maybe more pointing and other arm gesticulating, less energetic jumping.
** = Plain crackers for the Puppet, Chocolate creams for everyone else. Cue much complaining.
A Fat Cow and a Happy Yak
Short Version:
We walk from Pisang to Manang, via the High Road.
Stats:
Total Walk Time Day 7 = 6:30
Cumulative Total Walk Time = 32:00
Beer Time = 16:00
Long Version:
Pisang Morning:
Up early.
Everyone else we speak to is taking the low road to Manang. We, of course, are taking the high road. And to make it even worse, I've promised not to complain.
The vultures were circling by the time we reached halfway up the hill, which was nowhere near as scary and grim and depressing as it sounds; it was actually rather spectacular, with a bunch of the big carrion birds punctuating their effortless thermal drift with occasional sweeping dives towards some tiny critter on the hillside below us. From the Buddhist stoupa at the top of the hill we could still see the birds, and had yet another panoramic mountain view; Khangsar, Tilicho, Chulu East, Pisang, and Annapurna II and III were all basking in the brilliant sunshine.
We rested for a shorter time than most - mainly cos we'd walked slower up the hill than most - and then set off across the face of the hill towards a cluster of holy buildings full of demons and spinning tops. Then lunch with Swedes at Ngawal, although not before we'd fought our way past a recalcitrant path-blocking fat cow*.
And then oralo! Downhill and downhill and downhill! Sun is shining, nice breeze is blowing, we're walking downhill! Hoorah! Now if only these arsehole Czechs would stop powering past us at inappropriate passing spots and then stopping for a rest before setting off to pass us again...
Still, we saw an eagle, we saw our first yaks, WE SAW THE HAPPY YAK BAKERY!!!
And then we reached Manang, although not before some kids tried to rob Nene of all her sweets while she was photographing baby cows at Braka.
* An actual bovine, not an obese lady
We walk from Pisang to Manang, via the High Road.
Stats:
Total Walk Time Day 7 = 6:30
Cumulative Total Walk Time = 32:00
Beer Time = 16:00
Long Version:
Pisang Morning:
Up early.
Everyone else we speak to is taking the low road to Manang. We, of course, are taking the high road. And to make it even worse, I've promised not to complain.
The vultures were circling by the time we reached halfway up the hill, which was nowhere near as scary and grim and depressing as it sounds; it was actually rather spectacular, with a bunch of the big carrion birds punctuating their effortless thermal drift with occasional sweeping dives towards some tiny critter on the hillside below us. From the Buddhist stoupa at the top of the hill we could still see the birds, and had yet another panoramic mountain view; Khangsar, Tilicho, Chulu East, Pisang, and Annapurna II and III were all basking in the brilliant sunshine.
We rested for a shorter time than most - mainly cos we'd walked slower up the hill than most - and then set off across the face of the hill towards a cluster of holy buildings full of demons and spinning tops. Then lunch with Swedes at Ngawal, although not before we'd fought our way past a recalcitrant path-blocking fat cow*.
And then oralo! Downhill and downhill and downhill! Sun is shining, nice breeze is blowing, we're walking downhill! Hoorah! Now if only these arsehole Czechs would stop powering past us at inappropriate passing spots and then stopping for a rest before setting off to pass us again...
Still, we saw an eagle, we saw our first yaks, WE SAW THE HAPPY YAK BAKERY!!!
And then we reached Manang, although not before some kids tried to rob Nene of all her sweets while she was photographing baby cows at Braka.
* An actual bovine, not an obese lady
Superheated Metal Cups
Short Version:
Clean! Monks (not monkeys). Moon.
Long Version:
First into the Hotel Hill Top - despite Lovely Wife stopping to play with baby animals of the goaty and doggish varieties - meant that we got the best of the hot water in the showers. Outside the main towns and cities, access to volume hot water is very much hit and miss; usually solar powered, and usually limited to a handful of showers. Stinky and late is a bad combo.
Post-shower, clean and with fluffy hair, we ate delicious foods and learned a new card game: Shitet*, which we played incessantly from here on in the trek, interspersed with the other game Uzir and Ganga taught us: Dumbal**
And then we walked down the 62 steps from our lodge to the main trail through Lower Pisang, up through narrow passageways between buildings, across rickety bridges, up more stairs, past incomrehensibly-mumbling old people, past cows and buffalo, and eventually into the major monastery complex at Upper Pisang, where a monk greeted us with superheated metal cups of hot lemon+honey drink, and where the views were truly spectacular; the Pisang valley stretched away on both sides, Manasalu Himal lurking beyond the curved stone wall at the leftmost, downvalley end. Behind us, Pisang Peak loomed massively. Straight ahead, on the lower slopes of the far side of the valley, we could see people moving, antlike and tiny, at our hotel. Looming above that, though, and dominating the view, Annapurna III. Massive. Glorious.
Closer to us, construction galore, in both Upper and Lower Pisang. Buildings mainly stone in Upper Pisang, with wooden window frames. Lower Pisang had a number of all-wooden buildings going up. Apparently the monastery is very good for business.
Later that night, one of the Quebecois operated on his crushed toenail with his penknife, and the vast snowy slopes all around conspired with the full moon to keep the light bright all night.
* = Someone from Belgium later pointed out that not only were the rules almost identical, but that the name of the game was almost certainly a corruption of "Shithead"
** = We kept score on games won/lost on both games, with beer-buying penalties after the high pass for the most losingest loser
Clean! Monks (not monkeys). Moon.
Long Version:
First into the Hotel Hill Top - despite Lovely Wife stopping to play with baby animals of the goaty and doggish varieties - meant that we got the best of the hot water in the showers. Outside the main towns and cities, access to volume hot water is very much hit and miss; usually solar powered, and usually limited to a handful of showers. Stinky and late is a bad combo.
Post-shower, clean and with fluffy hair, we ate delicious foods and learned a new card game: Shitet*, which we played incessantly from here on in the trek, interspersed with the other game Uzir and Ganga taught us: Dumbal**
And then we walked down the 62 steps from our lodge to the main trail through Lower Pisang, up through narrow passageways between buildings, across rickety bridges, up more stairs, past incomrehensibly-mumbling old people, past cows and buffalo, and eventually into the major monastery complex at Upper Pisang, where a monk greeted us with superheated metal cups of hot lemon+honey drink, and where the views were truly spectacular; the Pisang valley stretched away on both sides, Manasalu Himal lurking beyond the curved stone wall at the leftmost, downvalley end. Behind us, Pisang Peak loomed massively. Straight ahead, on the lower slopes of the far side of the valley, we could see people moving, antlike and tiny, at our hotel. Looming above that, though, and dominating the view, Annapurna III. Massive. Glorious.
Closer to us, construction galore, in both Upper and Lower Pisang. Buildings mainly stone in Upper Pisang, with wooden window frames. Lower Pisang had a number of all-wooden buildings going up. Apparently the monastery is very good for business.
Later that night, one of the Quebecois operated on his crushed toenail with his penknife, and the vast snowy slopes all around conspired with the full moon to keep the light bright all night.
* = Someone from Belgium later pointed out that not only were the rules almost identical, but that the name of the game was almost certainly a corruption of "Shithead"
** = We kept score on games won/lost on both games, with beer-buying penalties after the high pass for the most losingest loser
Friday, December 23, 2011
Another Tardy Note
I'm still in catch-up mode. Not so sunny today, and rain overnight means less frost in the shadows.
I'm still writing about trekking in Nepal, and will be for a whie yet
There are still multiple posts are going up each day; six today.
So, keep your wits about you. If you don't understand what's being said, it may be because you've missed one or more previous posts, rather than because you're limited - scroll down until you see a post you've read, work your way up from there
x
I'm still writing about trekking in Nepal, and will be for a whie yet
There are still multiple posts are going up each day; six today.
So, keep your wits about you. If you don't understand what's being said, it may be because you've missed one or more previous posts, rather than because you're limited - scroll down until you see a post you've read, work your way up from there
x
Special Dance
Short Version:
We walk from Chame to Pisang. Cow fight.
Stats:
Total Walk time Day 6 = 4:30
Cumulative Total Walk Time = 25:30
Beer Time = 9:30
Long Version:
Chame Morning:
Up off and on all night. Curse you, pot of tea!
The mountain peaks are glowing bright in the pre-dawn light, then light up when touched by the first sunlight.
Early morning villagers walk up and down around the prayer-wheel row but don't spin the wheels - suspect they're considerately noise-averse
Bought playing cards: "Bee" brand, with a picture of a wasp on them. Inside the pack was a calendar card, from 2008.
Didn't buy jacket with cartoon monkey on it. Too small.
Another steep uphill walking day, with musha.
Musha! The Nepali version of the NAmerikan pika!
Kind of like a hamster/gerbil/guinea pig only with bigger ears.
Yesterday we saw one sitting at trailside, calmly watching and waiting for us to depart. When we didn't, and pulled out a camera instead, it left, quickly.
Today's musha didn't stop at all; it raced across the trail midway between Puppet and Nene/Ganga, disappearing into the trailside rockpile without a backwards glance.
There were rockpiles galore today, especially in the vicinity of the roadwork crew. Unlike roadworking crews in the Western world, where you generally see one person driving a machine up and down while several others lean on shovels watching, road crews in Nepal seem to comprise shitloads of people, all of whom are hard at work; hitting rocks with hammers, prying split rocks apart with sections of rebar, or, very occasionally, being rattled about by a pneumatic drill. We found their tent town shortly after - three long tents made of tarpaulins pegged and tied over bent tree frames. Bear in mind that we were up pretty high by now, and it wasn't hugely warm during the day... and was decidedly chilly at night. Looking for a life of luxury? Nepali road construction may not be the right option for you.
Special day today: 11/11/11. That meant that, at 11:11:11am, it was time for a special dance. Kind of like star-jumps mixed with the running man, only with more pointing and less suaveness.
We didn't stay to watch the end of the cow fight. Apparently the little one won.
We walk from Chame to Pisang. Cow fight.
Stats:
Total Walk time Day 6 = 4:30
Cumulative Total Walk Time = 25:30
Beer Time = 9:30
Long Version:
Chame Morning:
Up off and on all night. Curse you, pot of tea!
The mountain peaks are glowing bright in the pre-dawn light, then light up when touched by the first sunlight.
Early morning villagers walk up and down around the prayer-wheel row but don't spin the wheels - suspect they're considerately noise-averse
Bought playing cards: "Bee" brand, with a picture of a wasp on them. Inside the pack was a calendar card, from 2008.
Didn't buy jacket with cartoon monkey on it. Too small.
Another steep uphill walking day, with musha.
Musha! The Nepali version of the NAmerikan pika!
Kind of like a hamster/gerbil/guinea pig only with bigger ears.
Yesterday we saw one sitting at trailside, calmly watching and waiting for us to depart. When we didn't, and pulled out a camera instead, it left, quickly.
Today's musha didn't stop at all; it raced across the trail midway between Puppet and Nene/Ganga, disappearing into the trailside rockpile without a backwards glance.
There were rockpiles galore today, especially in the vicinity of the roadwork crew. Unlike roadworking crews in the Western world, where you generally see one person driving a machine up and down while several others lean on shovels watching, road crews in Nepal seem to comprise shitloads of people, all of whom are hard at work; hitting rocks with hammers, prying split rocks apart with sections of rebar, or, very occasionally, being rattled about by a pneumatic drill. We found their tent town shortly after - three long tents made of tarpaulins pegged and tied over bent tree frames. Bear in mind that we were up pretty high by now, and it wasn't hugely warm during the day... and was decidedly chilly at night. Looking for a life of luxury? Nepali road construction may not be the right option for you.
Special day today: 11/11/11. That meant that, at 11:11:11am, it was time for a special dance. Kind of like star-jumps mixed with the running man, only with more pointing and less suaveness.
We didn't stay to watch the end of the cow fight. Apparently the little one won.
Learning to Talk, Learning to Count
Short Version:
We walk from Bhagarchap to Chame, and explore Chame
Stats:
Total Walk time Day 5 = 4:15
Cumulative Total Walk Time = 21:00
Beer Time = 13:00
Long Version:
Bhagarchhap morning:
Nene eats all the honey at breakfast. Nasty Wife!
Today we walk uphill. We have plenty of time to learn how to say uphill in Nepali (okalo). Ganga tries to teach us to say downhill as well, but it's going to be a couple of weeks before we need to know how to say that, so it doesn't stick (it's oralo, for the record). The uphill here is steep switchbacks, mainly, with some steep not-switchbacks thrown in for variation.
We have awesome mountain views for much of the day: Manasalu, Annapurna II, Lamjung... very cool. Proper mountains, these, snow-capped and massive. The Nepali word for mountain is himal.
We've learned a bunch of Nepali already. Favorites are bhoklagyu (hungry), chhai nah (no/not), and bandar (monkey). Learning budha (husband) and budhi (wife) means we're on the way to being able to insult each other. Even doing it wrong is amusing, as an attempt at "My nasty wife has a monkey head*" is mispronounced and becomes "My nasty wife has a cabbage for a head**."
Puppet v donkey: Round 2! Donkey wins!
There are marijuana plants galore alongside the trail. Ganga refers to them as bhang plants. We also see tamarillo and apple trees, and crops of rice, buckwheat and millet. Prayer flags abound, especially on the bridges. We see a small boy pooping at the side of the road, and realise that we haven't actually seen anyone else doing anything of the sort. There are posters on walls in many of the villages that depict with language-agnostic imagery what not to do (ie poop near your water supply) and why (you'll get sick), and apparently there has been a significant health education initiative in recent years. We, of course, are doing our business in semi-plumbed toilets, mainly of the squatting kind***. These are, essentially, a hole in the ground, albeit porcelain-lined and with an area on either side with ridges, to help with foot grip and/or spillage drainage. In most places, there is a tap near the toilet, and a jug which one fills from the tap, pouring the contents down the hole after one's waste products. Where everything goes, we know not.
We arrive in Chame in the middle of the day, and spend half the afternoon sitting in the sun in the courtyard, chatting to some Quebecois, who are surprisingly nice. One, Stephen, helps the lodgeladies chop up some cucumberish things. They're knobbly, and the ripe ones are red inside. We also meet an Austrian woman, who we assume is a doctor because when we first see her she is helping to treat a wound on the foot of a small child. We later find out she's not medically-inclined at all, but that the wound was plainly infected, and she had some antiseptic stuff, which is a luxury item not possessed by most villagefolk.
Late afternoon we explore the village. There are a number of large prayer-wheels, as there have been throughout the day. Here they have hooked some up to the river, so they spin all the time, thereby sending a perpetual message to the divine. We don't say anything, but privately wonder if having that kind of incessant bombardment might be just a wee bit irritating for your average supernatural entity.
In the evening we have an Everest lager. And we learn to count to ten. Then we go to bed, in our double bed, and have a really crap sleep.
Beer Stats:
Beer Drunk = 2
Beer Time = 5:00
Time to Next Beer = 3:00****
* = Mi nahramro budhi bandar touko
** = Mi nahramro budhi bondar touko
*** = The few situpons we find - including at our first lodge, at Bhulbhule - are rendered squatters by virtue of dubious cleanliness and/or soaking-wetness
**** = No more beer until Muktinath, which is after we cross the high pass, by order of Ganga.
We walk from Bhagarchap to Chame, and explore Chame
Stats:
Total Walk time Day 5 = 4:15
Cumulative Total Walk Time = 21:00
Beer Time = 13:00
Long Version:
Bhagarchhap morning:
Nene eats all the honey at breakfast. Nasty Wife!
Today we walk uphill. We have plenty of time to learn how to say uphill in Nepali (okalo). Ganga tries to teach us to say downhill as well, but it's going to be a couple of weeks before we need to know how to say that, so it doesn't stick (it's oralo, for the record). The uphill here is steep switchbacks, mainly, with some steep not-switchbacks thrown in for variation.
We have awesome mountain views for much of the day: Manasalu, Annapurna II, Lamjung... very cool. Proper mountains, these, snow-capped and massive. The Nepali word for mountain is himal.
We've learned a bunch of Nepali already. Favorites are bhoklagyu (hungry), chhai nah (no/not), and bandar (monkey). Learning budha (husband) and budhi (wife) means we're on the way to being able to insult each other. Even doing it wrong is amusing, as an attempt at "My nasty wife has a monkey head*" is mispronounced and becomes "My nasty wife has a cabbage for a head**."
Puppet v donkey: Round 2! Donkey wins!
There are marijuana plants galore alongside the trail. Ganga refers to them as bhang plants. We also see tamarillo and apple trees, and crops of rice, buckwheat and millet. Prayer flags abound, especially on the bridges. We see a small boy pooping at the side of the road, and realise that we haven't actually seen anyone else doing anything of the sort. There are posters on walls in many of the villages that depict with language-agnostic imagery what not to do (ie poop near your water supply) and why (you'll get sick), and apparently there has been a significant health education initiative in recent years. We, of course, are doing our business in semi-plumbed toilets, mainly of the squatting kind***. These are, essentially, a hole in the ground, albeit porcelain-lined and with an area on either side with ridges, to help with foot grip and/or spillage drainage. In most places, there is a tap near the toilet, and a jug which one fills from the tap, pouring the contents down the hole after one's waste products. Where everything goes, we know not.
We arrive in Chame in the middle of the day, and spend half the afternoon sitting in the sun in the courtyard, chatting to some Quebecois, who are surprisingly nice. One, Stephen, helps the lodgeladies chop up some cucumberish things. They're knobbly, and the ripe ones are red inside. We also meet an Austrian woman, who we assume is a doctor because when we first see her she is helping to treat a wound on the foot of a small child. We later find out she's not medically-inclined at all, but that the wound was plainly infected, and she had some antiseptic stuff, which is a luxury item not possessed by most villagefolk.
Late afternoon we explore the village. There are a number of large prayer-wheels, as there have been throughout the day. Here they have hooked some up to the river, so they spin all the time, thereby sending a perpetual message to the divine. We don't say anything, but privately wonder if having that kind of incessant bombardment might be just a wee bit irritating for your average supernatural entity.
In the evening we have an Everest lager. And we learn to count to ten. Then we go to bed, in our double bed, and have a really crap sleep.
Beer Stats:
Beer Drunk = 2
Beer Time = 5:00
Time to Next Beer = 3:00****
* = Mi nahramro budhi bandar touko
** = Mi nahramro budhi bondar touko
*** = The few situpons we find - including at our first lodge, at Bhulbhule - are rendered squatters by virtue of dubious cleanliness and/or soaking-wetness
**** = No more beer until Muktinath, which is after we cross the high pass, by order of Ganga.
Tigers and Sheep and Bears and Exploding
Short Version:
We walk from Chyamche to Bhagarchap, and play games
Stats:
Total Walk time Day 4 = 6:00
Cumulative Total Walk Time = 16:45
Beer Time = 8:45
Long Version:
Chyamche morning:
Streetsweeper is out and sweeping; his short-handled straw brush and shovel increased the time it took to get the job done, but also meant that when there was a chunk to pick up, he was already in position to do so.
Englishman in hotel opposite ours attacks his wife with his Hello Kitty hat's ears. She's not impressed.
Stray dog hangs around for scraps. Nene obliges it. We're saved from acquiring the beast longer-term by the hotel proprietor lady, who scares it away with yelling and suspected deliberate-no-contact kick action.
Tea/coffee mugs: Could you bear a hug? [picture of cute teddy bear]
Speaking of bears, the entire time we were in Nepal, we were plagued by Winnie the Pooh carry-bags. They were everywhere! Assumption is that some minion added a zero to the number required on the manufacturing order sheet, and the extras were dumped on the South Asian market for disposal so as not to impact the asking price on developed markets.
Today saw the first physical action in the Puppet v donkey conflict: on a (relatively) wide section of path, we'd moved well out of the way of the approaching mule train. For some reason, though, one of the beasts in mid-pack lined us up from distance, and came straight for us. No worries, it'll go around us. Or not. Bastard thing.
Also today, an explosion! An actual, exploding explosion, with noise, and smoke, and debris, and crowd management by uniformed men with guns! No moustaches though.
We'd been walking for an hour or so when we saw the first soldier, just after we saw the medevac in progress. The unconscious patient was in a basket, strapped to the back of a grimly-determined-looking middle-aged man. An assortment of people fluttered about the pair, mopping brows and generally not being much use. One of the reasons the locals are keen on the road, presumably.
The soldier was running downtrail, gun banging against his hip with each step. He didn't stop to chat, but the pair that followed did, telling Ganga that there was road construction ahead, and that they were closing the trail behind us to ensure no injuries from the blasting action. We hustled onwards, seeking a good viewing spot for the action, which we found, atop a hill, across the valley from the blast site. We had a prime view, comfy rocks to perch on, sunshine to bask in. Perfect! Then the army guys told us to move. Bastards. We joined the crowd by the symbolic "You're now entering Manang District" archway, next to the razorwire-topped army compound wall, and stared fixedly at the cliff on the far side of the valley. It exploded. Noise. Smoke. Dust. Rockfall.
A little later, eating lunch while watching a pig consuming the wall and roof of its house, we realised that we could tell which sections of road had been blasted through obstructive rock, and which had been carved into a less-steep hillside; the rocks lining the riverbanks were of uniform size where blasting had taken place, ranging from fist- to head-sized. The natural rockpile banks had far greater variety, with rocks ranging from tiny to the size of a house.
It was late afternoon by the time we stopped, at Chame, at the pasang Guesthouse. We sat outside in the sun until the sun went away, at which point the temperature dropped noticeably, and everyone with an ounce of sense went inside. Being nonsensical paid off, though, as the Puppet was the only one to see the middle-aged lady slip and fall on her backside. This, with the backdrop of high, snowy peaks stil bathed in sunshine, was pretty special viewing.
Indoors, we created a paper-and-beans version of the wood-and-steel game we'd seen in overpriced Thamel trinket stores. Unfortunately, we knew nothing whatsoever about how to play; all we knew was that one person had 4 tigers (the white beans) and the other had 20 sheep (the dark red beans). Lucky for us, Uzir figured out a) what we were trying to play and b) that we had no idea how to play it, and he fixed the board and taught us the rules by beating Nene. Twice. Then a Random Old Man stepped forward, and handed Uzir a defeat, then handed over to Nene to indulge in standard boardgame practse... ie thrashing the Puppet. Pretty much everyone in the place was involved by now, either offering advice, moving their chosen supported-player's pieces for them, or just standing behind one of the players and making disapproving noises whenever someone did something stupid (the Random Old Man was particularly good at this).
Pretty soon we were warm and fed and sleepy, and it was off to bed in our wood-walled room, to sleep beneath the watchful gaze of the Chinese baby, lying on its stomach, with the caption "Give me health and a day I will make the Pomp of emperors ridiculous."
We walk from Chyamche to Bhagarchap, and play games
Stats:
Total Walk time Day 4 = 6:00
Cumulative Total Walk Time = 16:45
Beer Time = 8:45
Long Version:
Chyamche morning:
Streetsweeper is out and sweeping; his short-handled straw brush and shovel increased the time it took to get the job done, but also meant that when there was a chunk to pick up, he was already in position to do so.
Englishman in hotel opposite ours attacks his wife with his Hello Kitty hat's ears. She's not impressed.
Stray dog hangs around for scraps. Nene obliges it. We're saved from acquiring the beast longer-term by the hotel proprietor lady, who scares it away with yelling and suspected deliberate-no-contact kick action.
Tea/coffee mugs: Could you bear a hug? [picture of cute teddy bear]
Speaking of bears, the entire time we were in Nepal, we were plagued by Winnie the Pooh carry-bags. They were everywhere! Assumption is that some minion added a zero to the number required on the manufacturing order sheet, and the extras were dumped on the South Asian market for disposal so as not to impact the asking price on developed markets.
Today saw the first physical action in the Puppet v donkey conflict: on a (relatively) wide section of path, we'd moved well out of the way of the approaching mule train. For some reason, though, one of the beasts in mid-pack lined us up from distance, and came straight for us. No worries, it'll go around us. Or not. Bastard thing.
Also today, an explosion! An actual, exploding explosion, with noise, and smoke, and debris, and crowd management by uniformed men with guns! No moustaches though.
We'd been walking for an hour or so when we saw the first soldier, just after we saw the medevac in progress. The unconscious patient was in a basket, strapped to the back of a grimly-determined-looking middle-aged man. An assortment of people fluttered about the pair, mopping brows and generally not being much use. One of the reasons the locals are keen on the road, presumably.
The soldier was running downtrail, gun banging against his hip with each step. He didn't stop to chat, but the pair that followed did, telling Ganga that there was road construction ahead, and that they were closing the trail behind us to ensure no injuries from the blasting action. We hustled onwards, seeking a good viewing spot for the action, which we found, atop a hill, across the valley from the blast site. We had a prime view, comfy rocks to perch on, sunshine to bask in. Perfect! Then the army guys told us to move. Bastards. We joined the crowd by the symbolic "You're now entering Manang District" archway, next to the razorwire-topped army compound wall, and stared fixedly at the cliff on the far side of the valley. It exploded. Noise. Smoke. Dust. Rockfall.
A little later, eating lunch while watching a pig consuming the wall and roof of its house, we realised that we could tell which sections of road had been blasted through obstructive rock, and which had been carved into a less-steep hillside; the rocks lining the riverbanks were of uniform size where blasting had taken place, ranging from fist- to head-sized. The natural rockpile banks had far greater variety, with rocks ranging from tiny to the size of a house.
It was late afternoon by the time we stopped, at Chame, at the pasang Guesthouse. We sat outside in the sun until the sun went away, at which point the temperature dropped noticeably, and everyone with an ounce of sense went inside. Being nonsensical paid off, though, as the Puppet was the only one to see the middle-aged lady slip and fall on her backside. This, with the backdrop of high, snowy peaks stil bathed in sunshine, was pretty special viewing.
Indoors, we created a paper-and-beans version of the wood-and-steel game we'd seen in overpriced Thamel trinket stores. Unfortunately, we knew nothing whatsoever about how to play; all we knew was that one person had 4 tigers (the white beans) and the other had 20 sheep (the dark red beans). Lucky for us, Uzir figured out a) what we were trying to play and b) that we had no idea how to play it, and he fixed the board and taught us the rules by beating Nene. Twice. Then a Random Old Man stepped forward, and handed Uzir a defeat, then handed over to Nene to indulge in standard boardgame practse... ie thrashing the Puppet. Pretty much everyone in the place was involved by now, either offering advice, moving their chosen supported-player's pieces for them, or just standing behind one of the players and making disapproving noises whenever someone did something stupid (the Random Old Man was particularly good at this).
Pretty soon we were warm and fed and sleepy, and it was off to bed in our wood-walled room, to sleep beneath the watchful gaze of the Chinese baby, lying on its stomach, with the caption "Give me health and a day I will make the Pomp of emperors ridiculous."
Not Necessarily in That Order
Short Version:
We walk from Bahundallah to Chyamche. Chillies, buffalo, waterfall, bees!
Stats:
Total Walk time Day 3 = 4:30
Cumulative Total Walk Time = 10:45
Beer Time = 10:45
Long Version:
Morning in Bahundallah:
We'd both slept well in our bags on our single beds, although there were some crazy dreams* close to morning.
Clouds that had threatened rain - and occasionally delivered, in small doses - had dissipated overnight, and we could see... mountains! Two of them, big buggers, looming at the head of the valley, capped with snow. Exciting!
Lodgekids were doing the washing of the clothes and other cloth things at the outdoor tap. We knew from noseyparker experience that that water was bloody cold even at the hottest part of the afternoon, so we were goosebumpy just watching those kids get stuck into the soaping and scrubbing and - especially - the rinsing. They seemed to be having fun though. The small boy, in particular, kept stopping work to sing little songs and dance little dances. He was, at various times, told off by various elders, and at one point was threatened with a hose-drenching by his older sister.
And then we were off, uptrail, downhill, upriver! The fat cow we saw turned out to be a small buffalo, and then the little old lady we saw walking with the aid of a stick used the stick to beat some full-sized buffalo, and then we hauled ourselves up a hill to Jagat, where we ate delicious foods with extra chillies (koshani!) and didn't visit the cybercafe.
Progress is afoot in this part of Nepal. The dirt road we were walking on on day one rejoined, left, and rejoined the trail repeatedly throughout the morning, and there was steady, if occasional, motorised traffic heading in both directions. Mule trains still outnumber the stinkboxes, but motorvehicles can do multiple journeys in the time it takes a mule train to do one, and can carry more stuff with less complaining. So the road exists, and is being extended. Much of the walking on the lower sections of the main Annapurna Circuit is on the road, which is a bit of a pain in the arse, to be honest. Still, side-trails exist in places, and will, we suspect, come to exist as alternatives to the road on more and more sections of the circuit as time goes by. We walked the road through to Chyamche from Jagat, which meant we got some great views of the large waterfall on the far side of the valley, and of some large black shapes hanging from a massive stone overhang that turned out to be wild beehives.
Chyamche was nice. We took a room with a balcony overlooking the main road, then switched to one at the rear of the building, with no balcony but with views out over a woodworker's yard and across to the waterfall. From this angle, the force of the falling water was very apparent; after its initial 50m drop inside a self-carved stone chute, the water struck a ledge and was propelled several metres horizontally out into thin air before resuming its fall to the river, another 40m below. We got a different view of the fall later in the afternoon, when we hiked back towards Jagat on the old foot trail. It was steep, and narrow, and hard work to walk on the uneven surface. We loved it. Once again, our wandering attracted local kids - this time a pair of rapscallion young boys, who ran up and down the trail with their stick-propelled hoop incessantly. The hoop looked like the most inappropriate toy possible for the environment - basically a skinny, rocky path across the face of a stupidly steep hillside - but on closer inspection the propulsion stick turned out to be attached to the hoop with a loop of wire. Not so stupid after all! Even so, one of the boys took a decent fall when he tripped on a rock, plunging face-first down a short flight of stone steps. Picked himself up, dusted himself off, turned his frown upside-down, and took off again.
Currently the end of the driveable road - there are more sections of road further up, but they're yet to be connected through to the outside world - Chyamche has become a commercial hub of sorts, and a waystation for travellers and traders alike. It's unlikely to last, though - as soon as the next section of road is linked, that role will shift uphill. We saw some sign of what happens when the road comes to town on our exploration walk; there were a number of abandoned lodges back along the foot trail while those at the roadhead were thriving.
We also encountered vast numbers of butterflies, a lot of marijuana, hydro power in miniature, and a madwoman. Not necessarily in that order.
The mad lady was stalking purposefully up and down a section of path, yelling what sounded like they were probably obscenities - notably bhakra, which means goat - and throwing stones at trees. We gave her a wide berth. Later, when we asked what the standard treatment for the mad was here in Nepal, we were informed that she wasn't especially nuts - she was moving her goats, whch were grazing in the trees downslope.
The pot plants were, essentially, weeds. There are some areas where vast quantities of the stuff grow - these are marked on maps as "Fields of marijuana" - but what we were seeing were the scruffiest, most bedraggled-looking plants imaginable. Not sure if that's due to random leaf-harvest at the hands of passersby or animals, or whether that's just what marijuana plants look like when they're not being tended by profit-minded gardeners.
The town, too, had sights to behold; most notably the stocky woman, wide as she was tall, who bestrode the street, censer in hand, chanting, as we were enjoying our first hard-earned trek beer**. She was clad in full traditional Tibetan garb, with a North Face down jacket as top layer. She was, apparently, driving out evil spirits, and blessing the town. Our group get some blessings, too, as Ganga stood in a fresh pile of dung. Apparently that's good luck.
Beer Stats:
Beer Drunk = 1
Cumulative Total Beer Time = 2:45
Time to Next Beer = 5:15
* = Asterix, Natalie Portman, busy drinking fountain, NZ's Next Top Model, pooping. Not necessarily in that order.
** = A Tuborg, which was the only beer they actually had. Most places had an assortment drawn from Tuborg, San Miguel, Everest and Gorkha. All lagers, more's the pity. Refreshing though, after a long walk. All locally-brewed, too; the Tuborg (Danish) and San Miguel (Spanish) are brewed in Kathmandu under licence.
We walk from Bahundallah to Chyamche. Chillies, buffalo, waterfall, bees!
Stats:
Total Walk time Day 3 = 4:30
Cumulative Total Walk Time = 10:45
Beer Time = 10:45
Long Version:
Morning in Bahundallah:
We'd both slept well in our bags on our single beds, although there were some crazy dreams* close to morning.
Clouds that had threatened rain - and occasionally delivered, in small doses - had dissipated overnight, and we could see... mountains! Two of them, big buggers, looming at the head of the valley, capped with snow. Exciting!
Lodgekids were doing the washing of the clothes and other cloth things at the outdoor tap. We knew from noseyparker experience that that water was bloody cold even at the hottest part of the afternoon, so we were goosebumpy just watching those kids get stuck into the soaping and scrubbing and - especially - the rinsing. They seemed to be having fun though. The small boy, in particular, kept stopping work to sing little songs and dance little dances. He was, at various times, told off by various elders, and at one point was threatened with a hose-drenching by his older sister.
And then we were off, uptrail, downhill, upriver! The fat cow we saw turned out to be a small buffalo, and then the little old lady we saw walking with the aid of a stick used the stick to beat some full-sized buffalo, and then we hauled ourselves up a hill to Jagat, where we ate delicious foods with extra chillies (koshani!) and didn't visit the cybercafe.
Progress is afoot in this part of Nepal. The dirt road we were walking on on day one rejoined, left, and rejoined the trail repeatedly throughout the morning, and there was steady, if occasional, motorised traffic heading in both directions. Mule trains still outnumber the stinkboxes, but motorvehicles can do multiple journeys in the time it takes a mule train to do one, and can carry more stuff with less complaining. So the road exists, and is being extended. Much of the walking on the lower sections of the main Annapurna Circuit is on the road, which is a bit of a pain in the arse, to be honest. Still, side-trails exist in places, and will, we suspect, come to exist as alternatives to the road on more and more sections of the circuit as time goes by. We walked the road through to Chyamche from Jagat, which meant we got some great views of the large waterfall on the far side of the valley, and of some large black shapes hanging from a massive stone overhang that turned out to be wild beehives.
Chyamche was nice. We took a room with a balcony overlooking the main road, then switched to one at the rear of the building, with no balcony but with views out over a woodworker's yard and across to the waterfall. From this angle, the force of the falling water was very apparent; after its initial 50m drop inside a self-carved stone chute, the water struck a ledge and was propelled several metres horizontally out into thin air before resuming its fall to the river, another 40m below. We got a different view of the fall later in the afternoon, when we hiked back towards Jagat on the old foot trail. It was steep, and narrow, and hard work to walk on the uneven surface. We loved it. Once again, our wandering attracted local kids - this time a pair of rapscallion young boys, who ran up and down the trail with their stick-propelled hoop incessantly. The hoop looked like the most inappropriate toy possible for the environment - basically a skinny, rocky path across the face of a stupidly steep hillside - but on closer inspection the propulsion stick turned out to be attached to the hoop with a loop of wire. Not so stupid after all! Even so, one of the boys took a decent fall when he tripped on a rock, plunging face-first down a short flight of stone steps. Picked himself up, dusted himself off, turned his frown upside-down, and took off again.
Currently the end of the driveable road - there are more sections of road further up, but they're yet to be connected through to the outside world - Chyamche has become a commercial hub of sorts, and a waystation for travellers and traders alike. It's unlikely to last, though - as soon as the next section of road is linked, that role will shift uphill. We saw some sign of what happens when the road comes to town on our exploration walk; there were a number of abandoned lodges back along the foot trail while those at the roadhead were thriving.
We also encountered vast numbers of butterflies, a lot of marijuana, hydro power in miniature, and a madwoman. Not necessarily in that order.
The mad lady was stalking purposefully up and down a section of path, yelling what sounded like they were probably obscenities - notably bhakra, which means goat - and throwing stones at trees. We gave her a wide berth. Later, when we asked what the standard treatment for the mad was here in Nepal, we were informed that she wasn't especially nuts - she was moving her goats, whch were grazing in the trees downslope.
The pot plants were, essentially, weeds. There are some areas where vast quantities of the stuff grow - these are marked on maps as "Fields of marijuana" - but what we were seeing were the scruffiest, most bedraggled-looking plants imaginable. Not sure if that's due to random leaf-harvest at the hands of passersby or animals, or whether that's just what marijuana plants look like when they're not being tended by profit-minded gardeners.
The town, too, had sights to behold; most notably the stocky woman, wide as she was tall, who bestrode the street, censer in hand, chanting, as we were enjoying our first hard-earned trek beer**. She was clad in full traditional Tibetan garb, with a North Face down jacket as top layer. She was, apparently, driving out evil spirits, and blessing the town. Our group get some blessings, too, as Ganga stood in a fresh pile of dung. Apparently that's good luck.
Beer Stats:
Beer Drunk = 1
Cumulative Total Beer Time = 2:45
Time to Next Beer = 5:15
* = Asterix, Natalie Portman, busy drinking fountain, NZ's Next Top Model, pooping. Not necessarily in that order.
** = A Tuborg, which was the only beer they actually had. Most places had an assortment drawn from Tuborg, San Miguel, Everest and Gorkha. All lagers, more's the pity. Refreshing though, after a long walk. All locally-brewed, too; the Tuborg (Danish) and San Miguel (Spanish) are brewed in Kathmandu under licence.
A Too-Small Singlet and Lycra Shorts
Short Version:
We walk from Bhulbhule to Bahundallah, and spend an afternoon in the village
Stats:
Total Walk time Day 2 = 3:30
Cumulative Total Walk Time = 6:15
Beer Time = 6:15
Long Version:
Morning in Bhulbule:
Cups of hot lemon+honey drink
Chapati (flatbread) with omelet
Cloud-shrouded ridgelines disappear into rainmist up- and downvalley.
But! At the head of the valley we can see the lower portion of a snow-bearing and truly enormous mountain.
Excellent.
We had an early start, courtesy of the alarm on the Puppetwatch. As usual, the Nenewatch alarm failed to sound. Luckily, we had German lodge-neighbours as a wakeup backup. No fluffing around, either - we were dressed and packed before we hit the dining room, and we bailed pretty soon after eating. Even so, we were among the last to leave, and trekkers who had overnighted in the part of the village on the other bank of the river had been streaming across the suspension bridge for quite a while before we actually got underway.
We'd spent some time talking to Ganga and other Nepali about appropriate clothing before we set out. Guidebooks had been universal in their advice to wear clothes that wouldn't offend our hosts, but a little vague and/or contradictory on exactly how that translated to the real world. Turns out it wasn't too strict; shoulders covered and no short shorts or skirts.
Not everyone had read the same books, obviously; one of the trekkers we saw on day 2 was wearing a too-small singlet and lycra shorts. German, we assumed. Offensive, certainly.
Didn't stop the group of young girls at one of the villages along the way stopping him with a makeshift barricade made of scarves and demanding a toll of pens, paper, or sweets to allow him to pass. We snuck through while they were gloating over their newly-acquired goodies, and carried on up the trail; past a chicken that caught and ate a butterfly as we watched; past many uniformed children on their way to school, many of whom wanted their photo taken either solo or with the inky Puppet; past sleeping cows; past waterfalls and baby goats; past lizards that didn't run even when touched; past cicadas which employed a violent abdominal contraction to generate their vast noise output. We saw a pair of heavily-decorated holy trees, we saw a grumpy old man tell a girl off for asking Nene to photograph her. We saw the path ahead go up a steep hill. Rats.
At the top of the hill we found the village of Bahundallah, just in time for lunch. Hoorah! We sat and looked out across the orange groves (oranges here don't actually get to turn orange, but they're picked and eaten anyway, and they're bloody nice) to the valley that stretched away to the northeast from where we sat atop the ridgeline spur. Good food, full bellies, comfy chairs... nap time! Wait, what? No napping? Asshats.
Out to explore the village, then!
Kids galore, scampering hither and yon, often looking very much like a fall from a precipitous precipice is imminent but somehow managing to stay on their little feets.
Kids and adults alike in various mixes of traditional garb and modern Western clothing; often North Face and other outdoorsy stuff (especially down jackets, worn over any number of styles of undergarment), but just as often slightly weird urbanwear, from tight jeans and street sneakers and shiny thin jackets through to cocktail dresses and heels. In a village with rice straw scattered over the worst of the muddy parts of the dirt trails that serve as footpaths.
A walled school complex, from which uniformed kids and young adults streamed at the close of their school day. Not all kids go to school, but some of those that do travel a LONG way on foot to get there and back.
We'd been hearing a rhythmic thumping for a while, and asked Ganga what its origin might be. He led us into a gated farmyard, calling out to the inhabitants as he drew near the low-roofed building from which the noise was emanating. He explained to the woman and 8ish-year-old girl inside that he had some nosey foreigners who wanted to see them in action, and, with much giggling and shyness on the part of the girl, they started up again.
The woman crouched on the ground just inside the open end of the building, next to a foot-high calf-thick chunk of wood that had been lashed to a long piece of timber that passed over a sawhorse-style brace mid-length before ending at the inner end of the room near where the girl stood, ten feet or so from the woman. As we watched, the girl stood on her end of the piece of wood, pressing it to the floor, then leaped away, causing the chunk attached to the far end, raised two or three feet into the air by her standing on the end of the timber, to come down onto the rice piled on the floor. THUMP! Before her outstretched foot reached the timber for a repeat, the woman was in action; brushing bits of rice that had been ejected from the pile by the force of the blow back into place. THUMP! When the crushing end rose again, the woman had not only hands in motion, brushing errant grains back to the pile, but also her breath, blasting across the pile, scattering split husk segments away from the heavier pieces. THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! MOO!* THUMP!
After a prolonged period of thumping, the woman spoke to the girl, who stood on the lever and stayed there. The woman then gathered the rice into a basket and shook it, on an angle that varied from 30 to -30 degrees. Dusty debris streamed away from the basket, leaving husked rice grains, ready for cooking. Not many, though - they were back in action as we left, the renewed thumping following us as we set off.
We meandered back to the lodge, and ate delicious foods (fried rice, and vege spring rolls) while sneakily watching the other trekkers. Some ordered WAY to much food, one took a shower with hearing aids in and killed them irrevocably dead, others played games with local kids until bedtime.
Room very similar to the previous place: Beds are wooden platforms topped with a 3-inch foam mattress; Sheets and pillowcases are white, not new but clean; Incongrous wall decorations - this time a poster for a (very cool-looking!) VW concept car from some years-past auto show; Wide shelf-like windowsills.
Differences from previous place: All walls wood, where Bhulbhule had concrete exterior walls; Floor covered by matting, not linoleum; Exterior blue, not yellow.
Early to bed, again. All this fresh air and walking and eating delicious foods is tiring!
* = The cow in the other part of the room was occasionally quite vocal
We walk from Bhulbhule to Bahundallah, and spend an afternoon in the village
Stats:
Total Walk time Day 2 = 3:30
Cumulative Total Walk Time = 6:15
Beer Time = 6:15
Long Version:
Morning in Bhulbule:
Cups of hot lemon+honey drink
Chapati (flatbread) with omelet
Cloud-shrouded ridgelines disappear into rainmist up- and downvalley.
But! At the head of the valley we can see the lower portion of a snow-bearing and truly enormous mountain.
Excellent.
We had an early start, courtesy of the alarm on the Puppetwatch. As usual, the Nenewatch alarm failed to sound. Luckily, we had German lodge-neighbours as a wakeup backup. No fluffing around, either - we were dressed and packed before we hit the dining room, and we bailed pretty soon after eating. Even so, we were among the last to leave, and trekkers who had overnighted in the part of the village on the other bank of the river had been streaming across the suspension bridge for quite a while before we actually got underway.
We'd spent some time talking to Ganga and other Nepali about appropriate clothing before we set out. Guidebooks had been universal in their advice to wear clothes that wouldn't offend our hosts, but a little vague and/or contradictory on exactly how that translated to the real world. Turns out it wasn't too strict; shoulders covered and no short shorts or skirts.
Not everyone had read the same books, obviously; one of the trekkers we saw on day 2 was wearing a too-small singlet and lycra shorts. German, we assumed. Offensive, certainly.
Didn't stop the group of young girls at one of the villages along the way stopping him with a makeshift barricade made of scarves and demanding a toll of pens, paper, or sweets to allow him to pass. We snuck through while they were gloating over their newly-acquired goodies, and carried on up the trail; past a chicken that caught and ate a butterfly as we watched; past many uniformed children on their way to school, many of whom wanted their photo taken either solo or with the inky Puppet; past sleeping cows; past waterfalls and baby goats; past lizards that didn't run even when touched; past cicadas which employed a violent abdominal contraction to generate their vast noise output. We saw a pair of heavily-decorated holy trees, we saw a grumpy old man tell a girl off for asking Nene to photograph her. We saw the path ahead go up a steep hill. Rats.
At the top of the hill we found the village of Bahundallah, just in time for lunch. Hoorah! We sat and looked out across the orange groves (oranges here don't actually get to turn orange, but they're picked and eaten anyway, and they're bloody nice) to the valley that stretched away to the northeast from where we sat atop the ridgeline spur. Good food, full bellies, comfy chairs... nap time! Wait, what? No napping? Asshats.
Out to explore the village, then!
Kids galore, scampering hither and yon, often looking very much like a fall from a precipitous precipice is imminent but somehow managing to stay on their little feets.
Kids and adults alike in various mixes of traditional garb and modern Western clothing; often North Face and other outdoorsy stuff (especially down jackets, worn over any number of styles of undergarment), but just as often slightly weird urbanwear, from tight jeans and street sneakers and shiny thin jackets through to cocktail dresses and heels. In a village with rice straw scattered over the worst of the muddy parts of the dirt trails that serve as footpaths.
A walled school complex, from which uniformed kids and young adults streamed at the close of their school day. Not all kids go to school, but some of those that do travel a LONG way on foot to get there and back.
We'd been hearing a rhythmic thumping for a while, and asked Ganga what its origin might be. He led us into a gated farmyard, calling out to the inhabitants as he drew near the low-roofed building from which the noise was emanating. He explained to the woman and 8ish-year-old girl inside that he had some nosey foreigners who wanted to see them in action, and, with much giggling and shyness on the part of the girl, they started up again.
The woman crouched on the ground just inside the open end of the building, next to a foot-high calf-thick chunk of wood that had been lashed to a long piece of timber that passed over a sawhorse-style brace mid-length before ending at the inner end of the room near where the girl stood, ten feet or so from the woman. As we watched, the girl stood on her end of the piece of wood, pressing it to the floor, then leaped away, causing the chunk attached to the far end, raised two or three feet into the air by her standing on the end of the timber, to come down onto the rice piled on the floor. THUMP! Before her outstretched foot reached the timber for a repeat, the woman was in action; brushing bits of rice that had been ejected from the pile by the force of the blow back into place. THUMP! When the crushing end rose again, the woman had not only hands in motion, brushing errant grains back to the pile, but also her breath, blasting across the pile, scattering split husk segments away from the heavier pieces. THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! MOO!* THUMP!
After a prolonged period of thumping, the woman spoke to the girl, who stood on the lever and stayed there. The woman then gathered the rice into a basket and shook it, on an angle that varied from 30 to -30 degrees. Dusty debris streamed away from the basket, leaving husked rice grains, ready for cooking. Not many, though - they were back in action as we left, the renewed thumping following us as we set off.
We meandered back to the lodge, and ate delicious foods (fried rice, and vege spring rolls) while sneakily watching the other trekkers. Some ordered WAY to much food, one took a shower with hearing aids in and killed them irrevocably dead, others played games with local kids until bedtime.
Room very similar to the previous place: Beds are wooden platforms topped with a 3-inch foam mattress; Sheets and pillowcases are white, not new but clean; Incongrous wall decorations - this time a poster for a (very cool-looking!) VW concept car from some years-past auto show; Wide shelf-like windowsills.
Differences from previous place: All walls wood, where Bhulbhule had concrete exterior walls; Floor covered by matting, not linoleum; Exterior blue, not yellow.
Early to bed, again. All this fresh air and walking and eating delicious foods is tiring!
* = The cow in the other part of the room was occasionally quite vocal
Rice Cycle
Rice likes to have wet feet.
It grows to around a metre high.
The grains we know as rice are in the seedhead - it's a lot like seeded grass.
People cut the stalks at the base and leave them lying.
When dry they are gathered up and bundled together.
Bundles are held at the base and the heads are slapped onto a tarpaulin or canvas lying on the ground.
The rice grains fall from the heads, and are collected in the cloth.
The stalks are piled onto haystacks and left to dry.
The grains are milled, cooked, and eaten.
The hay is fed to animals in winter.
The animals' poop is used to fertilise the next crop.
Two or three crops are sown and harvested in each of the two viable growing seasons (March-May and September-December)
It grows to around a metre high.
The grains we know as rice are in the seedhead - it's a lot like seeded grass.
People cut the stalks at the base and leave them lying.
When dry they are gathered up and bundled together.
Bundles are held at the base and the heads are slapped onto a tarpaulin or canvas lying on the ground.
The rice grains fall from the heads, and are collected in the cloth.
The stalks are piled onto haystacks and left to dry.
The grains are milled, cooked, and eaten.
The hay is fed to animals in winter.
The animals' poop is used to fertilise the next crop.
Two or three crops are sown and harvested in each of the two viable growing seasons (March-May and September-December)
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Tardiness Note
I'm in catch-up mode. That means that, despite being holed up in North Vancouver, recovering from pneumonia and watching a series of beautiful, sunny, perfect skiing days march past outside the window, I'm writing about trekking in Nepal. From a month+ ago.
That, in turn, means multiple posts are going up; five have been uploaded since last night.
So, keep your wits about you. If you don't understand what's being said, it may be because you've missed one or more previous posts, rather than because you're limited - scroll down until you see a post you've read, work your way up from there
x
That, in turn, means multiple posts are going up; five have been uploaded since last night.
So, keep your wits about you. If you don't understand what's being said, it may be because you've missed one or more previous posts, rather than because you're limited - scroll down until you see a post you've read, work your way up from there
x
Five Moneys
Short Version:
We're off!
Stats:
Total Walk Time = 2:45
Beer Time = 2:45
Long Version:
We walked a dirt road for a few hours that first afternoon.
Met some Nepali children. Refused to give them "five moneys." Or sweets. Or pens.
Learned our first Nepali words, for "Let's go" and "Slower!"
The first hour or so must have been a nightmare for Ganga, who got to watch the two of us scurry about the place, burning valuable energy unnecessarily, like excited puppies, only with less weeing on the carpet. At least we didn't fall into any of the rivers we crossed.
Uzir had tied our bags together and to his bag, and attached a webbing strap which he then hung off his forehead. We were wincing at the thought of using your head and neck to carry 30-odd kg, up until we heard about Uzir's record carrying effort: 105kg, for several days. Lovely Wife and I were carrying a daypack each, containing warm stuff and wet-weather stuff, camera and breakables, and water. Maybe 5kg each. Tops. Uzir and Ganga each had about that much stuff as well, although, to be fair, they didn't have to carry sleeping bags or water with them. And they were more hardcore than us.
As non-Catholics, we don't have to do guilt, so we didn't. Instead, we enjoyed being not in a van, not in a city, and not around thousands of people. Having said that, there WERE a LOT of people about; village folk going about their business, kids playing cricket and football and volleyball and other less-identifiable games, and trekkers. Many, many trekkers. A lot of them were in or on buses and jeeps, all of which were highly ornamented, and all of which were laden well beyond NZ standards of feasability, let alone sensibleness.
We were walking alongside a mid-sized river. The torrent of milky, limestone-sediment-laden water flew past at a good clip, and appeared to be moving even faster when viewed through the gaps in the decking of the well-deteriorated suspension bridge. The rain we'd encountered earlier in the day had left puddles on the ground, and was hanging around the ridges and mountain flanks that surrounded us on every side, and for as far as the eye could see in every direction, leaving everything looking slightly spooky and mysterious.
Dusk was starting to draw in as we made our way up a set of stone stairs and through Bhulbhule village to another suspension bridge - this time decked with metal gridwork - which we crossed to our first night's accommodation: the Arjun Hotel and Restaurant.
The Arjun was, we assumed, named after Arjuna, the hero of the Hindu epic tale "The Mahabharata." We never confirmed this, though, as we were too busy learning how the Nepali Himalayan lodge environment works, from how to get cups of tea or plates of delicious foods through to what gear do we need for evening, overnight, and morning. Oh, and there was some German management to do.
It would be unfair on everybody to refer to Germans as the Amerikans of the Himalayas. Yes, they're a bit louder than absolutely necessary, and they definitely exude an air of arrogant entitlement... but then so does pretty much every German out and about in the world*. And, to be fair to the Germans, we later met groups of French, Czech, and Israeli trekkers who were more irritating. Interestingly, the majority of the trekkers we encountered were from Europe, but pretty much everyone we spoke to for longer than the bare minimum required for politeness was from either Nepal or Canada. The Germans at the Arjun were big, ruddy-cheeked men who stood talking loudly in the middle of doorways and passages and didn't deign to notice the other people who were trying to get past them.
They were but a minor irritant, though, on a night full of newness and excitement. First time ordering food by writing one's order in the order book, first time eating dhal bhat (standard Nepali trekking fare: rice + lentils + potato curry + pickle + a papadam) on wobbly mismatched chairs at a communal table by candlelight during regular/irregular power outages, first night on hard single beds in a low-ceilinged room, first farts in the new sleeping bags...
* = Certainly the couple we met on the tiny island off the coast of the small island off the coast of the still-not-very-big island in Samoa were just as bad as, if not worse than, any of the Germans we met in Nepal
We're off!
Stats:
Total Walk Time = 2:45
Beer Time = 2:45
Long Version:
We walked a dirt road for a few hours that first afternoon.
Met some Nepali children. Refused to give them "five moneys." Or sweets. Or pens.
Learned our first Nepali words, for "Let's go" and "Slower!"
The first hour or so must have been a nightmare for Ganga, who got to watch the two of us scurry about the place, burning valuable energy unnecessarily, like excited puppies, only with less weeing on the carpet. At least we didn't fall into any of the rivers we crossed.
Uzir had tied our bags together and to his bag, and attached a webbing strap which he then hung off his forehead. We were wincing at the thought of using your head and neck to carry 30-odd kg, up until we heard about Uzir's record carrying effort: 105kg, for several days. Lovely Wife and I were carrying a daypack each, containing warm stuff and wet-weather stuff, camera and breakables, and water. Maybe 5kg each. Tops. Uzir and Ganga each had about that much stuff as well, although, to be fair, they didn't have to carry sleeping bags or water with them. And they were more hardcore than us.
As non-Catholics, we don't have to do guilt, so we didn't. Instead, we enjoyed being not in a van, not in a city, and not around thousands of people. Having said that, there WERE a LOT of people about; village folk going about their business, kids playing cricket and football and volleyball and other less-identifiable games, and trekkers. Many, many trekkers. A lot of them were in or on buses and jeeps, all of which were highly ornamented, and all of which were laden well beyond NZ standards of feasability, let alone sensibleness.
We were walking alongside a mid-sized river. The torrent of milky, limestone-sediment-laden water flew past at a good clip, and appeared to be moving even faster when viewed through the gaps in the decking of the well-deteriorated suspension bridge. The rain we'd encountered earlier in the day had left puddles on the ground, and was hanging around the ridges and mountain flanks that surrounded us on every side, and for as far as the eye could see in every direction, leaving everything looking slightly spooky and mysterious.
Dusk was starting to draw in as we made our way up a set of stone stairs and through Bhulbhule village to another suspension bridge - this time decked with metal gridwork - which we crossed to our first night's accommodation: the Arjun Hotel and Restaurant.
The Arjun was, we assumed, named after Arjuna, the hero of the Hindu epic tale "The Mahabharata." We never confirmed this, though, as we were too busy learning how the Nepali Himalayan lodge environment works, from how to get cups of tea or plates of delicious foods through to what gear do we need for evening, overnight, and morning. Oh, and there was some German management to do.
It would be unfair on everybody to refer to Germans as the Amerikans of the Himalayas. Yes, they're a bit louder than absolutely necessary, and they definitely exude an air of arrogant entitlement... but then so does pretty much every German out and about in the world*. And, to be fair to the Germans, we later met groups of French, Czech, and Israeli trekkers who were more irritating. Interestingly, the majority of the trekkers we encountered were from Europe, but pretty much everyone we spoke to for longer than the bare minimum required for politeness was from either Nepal or Canada. The Germans at the Arjun were big, ruddy-cheeked men who stood talking loudly in the middle of doorways and passages and didn't deign to notice the other people who were trying to get past them.
They were but a minor irritant, though, on a night full of newness and excitement. First time ordering food by writing one's order in the order book, first time eating dhal bhat (standard Nepali trekking fare: rice + lentils + potato curry + pickle + a papadam) on wobbly mismatched chairs at a communal table by candlelight during regular/irregular power outages, first night on hard single beds in a low-ceilinged room, first farts in the new sleeping bags...
* = Certainly the couple we met on the tiny island off the coast of the small island off the coast of the still-not-very-big island in Samoa were just as bad as, if not worse than, any of the Germans we met in Nepal
To the Mountains!
Short Version:
We meet Ganga and Uzir, and leave Kathmandu in a van full of people and stuff.
Long Version:
We were in more than two minds when it came to deciding how we should manage our trekking; every source we consulted had their own opinion, from "go by yourselves, you'll be fine" to "go in an organised group, they know best" and all points between. In the end, we opted for somewhere in the middle, borrowing a Kathmandu-based friend-of-a-friend senior guide's knowledge and contacts to arrange a guide, insurances, permits, transport, and pretty much everything else that needed arranging. Including, in the end, a porter. We'd been reluctant to succumb to the luxury of having our gear carried; self-sufficiency is something we feel like we're supposed to uphold as a NZ cultural standard, as well as a personal fundamental. However, between the expert advice and anecdotal evidence about altitude impact, the ongoing effects of Delhi Belly, and the comparative low cost of porter hire, we decided that we might as well. And, as it turned out, we were we glad we did.
We'd spent a couple of days exploring Kathmandu with our trekking guide, Ganga, who arrived at our hotel on trek day 1, bright and early, in a tiny van. We somehow managed to fit the three of us and all our gear (plus driver) into the tiny van, and set off into the madness. Not very far though - pretty soon we halted at a fairly scruffy open area the size of half a football field, chock-full of people and normal-sized vans. Ganga did some people-wrangling, we loaded our gear onto the roof of our chosen/allocated van, and... we waited. And waited. And waited. People burned tyres. Others played badminton. We met Uzir, our porter. Someone sold us flowers for our hair. And then, finally, the dodgy-looking van guy herded his passengers into their seats, and we were off! Not very far though - before we knew it we were stopped again, cramming in more passengers. Not sure where they were being put, as all seats looked already full, but they got in. Apart from the ones who climbed on the roof, who got on. And then the driver handed the wheel (and, more importantly, the horn button) to a younger and less-dodgy-looking guy, and we were off! And this time, we went very far.
We started by driving up. And then up some more. Still, it was somewhat surprising when we rounded a bend and found ourselves peering over the edge of a bloody great big cliff that dropped away into a steep-sided narrow valley that stretched away into the distance. Terraces covered the hills on both sides, with crops of some kind growing under the bright sun. A steady stream of more-or-less crazy-looking vehicles powered up the hill towards us, throwing up rooster-tails of dust in places where road (re)construction was in progress. We wound our way down the hill for what felt like hours, and might have been. And then we stopped. For a wee. At a rickety cliffside stall selling potato chips and cans of fizzy sugar liquid. With black polythene stretched vertically along a wooden frame, for weeing on. For the so-called ladies, the polythene urine wall was a ceilingless polythene room, with an area of more-or-less flat ground in the middle, for weeing on.
And then we were back in the van, back on the road, heading downhill. The hours trickled by. We stopped for lunch. The toilet was awesome. The trashfall on the other side of the road - down the bank and into the river - even more so. We passed a cable car that takes worshippers to a hilltop Hindu temple, we read a sign that said "Hearty Welcome to Open Defecation Free Zone," we saw a tractor perched on a rock in the middle of a river, and a truck being hauled by hand back up the cliff it had been driven over. We got sore legs from being squished into a van seat for too long. Then it rained, and the bags were removed from the roof and piled into the van, which meant a reshuffle that led to four in the front, but then we started to offload passengers at various waystops, and then we reached Besisahar, and the van vanished, and it was time to start walking.
We meet Ganga and Uzir, and leave Kathmandu in a van full of people and stuff.
Long Version:
We were in more than two minds when it came to deciding how we should manage our trekking; every source we consulted had their own opinion, from "go by yourselves, you'll be fine" to "go in an organised group, they know best" and all points between. In the end, we opted for somewhere in the middle, borrowing a Kathmandu-based friend-of-a-friend senior guide's knowledge and contacts to arrange a guide, insurances, permits, transport, and pretty much everything else that needed arranging. Including, in the end, a porter. We'd been reluctant to succumb to the luxury of having our gear carried; self-sufficiency is something we feel like we're supposed to uphold as a NZ cultural standard, as well as a personal fundamental. However, between the expert advice and anecdotal evidence about altitude impact, the ongoing effects of Delhi Belly, and the comparative low cost of porter hire, we decided that we might as well. And, as it turned out, we were we glad we did.
We'd spent a couple of days exploring Kathmandu with our trekking guide, Ganga, who arrived at our hotel on trek day 1, bright and early, in a tiny van. We somehow managed to fit the three of us and all our gear (plus driver) into the tiny van, and set off into the madness. Not very far though - pretty soon we halted at a fairly scruffy open area the size of half a football field, chock-full of people and normal-sized vans. Ganga did some people-wrangling, we loaded our gear onto the roof of our chosen/allocated van, and... we waited. And waited. And waited. People burned tyres. Others played badminton. We met Uzir, our porter. Someone sold us flowers for our hair. And then, finally, the dodgy-looking van guy herded his passengers into their seats, and we were off! Not very far though - before we knew it we were stopped again, cramming in more passengers. Not sure where they were being put, as all seats looked already full, but they got in. Apart from the ones who climbed on the roof, who got on. And then the driver handed the wheel (and, more importantly, the horn button) to a younger and less-dodgy-looking guy, and we were off! And this time, we went very far.
We started by driving up. And then up some more. Still, it was somewhat surprising when we rounded a bend and found ourselves peering over the edge of a bloody great big cliff that dropped away into a steep-sided narrow valley that stretched away into the distance. Terraces covered the hills on both sides, with crops of some kind growing under the bright sun. A steady stream of more-or-less crazy-looking vehicles powered up the hill towards us, throwing up rooster-tails of dust in places where road (re)construction was in progress. We wound our way down the hill for what felt like hours, and might have been. And then we stopped. For a wee. At a rickety cliffside stall selling potato chips and cans of fizzy sugar liquid. With black polythene stretched vertically along a wooden frame, for weeing on. For the so-called ladies, the polythene urine wall was a ceilingless polythene room, with an area of more-or-less flat ground in the middle, for weeing on.
And then we were back in the van, back on the road, heading downhill. The hours trickled by. We stopped for lunch. The toilet was awesome. The trashfall on the other side of the road - down the bank and into the river - even more so. We passed a cable car that takes worshippers to a hilltop Hindu temple, we read a sign that said "Hearty Welcome to Open Defecation Free Zone," we saw a tractor perched on a rock in the middle of a river, and a truck being hauled by hand back up the cliff it had been driven over. We got sore legs from being squished into a van seat for too long. Then it rained, and the bags were removed from the roof and piled into the van, which meant a reshuffle that led to four in the front, but then we started to offload passengers at various waystops, and then we reached Besisahar, and the van vanished, and it was time to start walking.
Probable Non-Human DNA
Short Version:
We get all Zen on things, and pay for cuddles
Long Version:
Our first Buddhist stupa was, as it turned out, one of the biggest in the world: Boudhanath. As a spiritual nonentity and void, my favorite bit was when the small, heavily-wrapped child waddled as fast as its stumpy little legs would carry it through the midst of a large herd of pigeons. The room-sized prayer wheel was pretty cool too, especially when it was being cleaned by the dwarf.
It's kind of surprising that the Buddhist practice of automating prayer, through prayer flags (prayer written on cloth, hung from wire, blown by wind = prayer done) and prayer wheels (prayer written, carved, or stamped in metal on a cylinder, mounted vertically and spun on an axis by passing hands = prayer done) has not been adopted by god-botherers in Western nations - you'd think that lazy people who limit their religiosity to lip-service and proselytising would be prime candidates for a system that allows one to build one's prayer stats without ever taking one's eyes from one's 80-inch television.
The taxi journeys around Kathmandu took us down a number of brick-paved streets. These look quite cool, but don't provide the most even surface for your suspensionless bicycles, or your tiny Suzuki hatchback taxis. We also saw a mangy cat chewing some carpet.
Back in Thamel, we found a bakery. Hooray! And not only did it have delicious baked goods, it also had a crazy little old lady, with some probable non-human DNA, wrinkled face plastered against the window from the outside. She managed to convey to us her preferred nommage - a chocolate donut - and her prune-like face split into a HUGE toothless grin as she saw us preparing to buy it for her. Lovely Wife then had the presence of mind to haggle with her, and both parties seemed pretty darned happy with the eventual donut-for-cuddlephoto bargain.
We get all Zen on things, and pay for cuddles
Long Version:
Our first Buddhist stupa was, as it turned out, one of the biggest in the world: Boudhanath. As a spiritual nonentity and void, my favorite bit was when the small, heavily-wrapped child waddled as fast as its stumpy little legs would carry it through the midst of a large herd of pigeons. The room-sized prayer wheel was pretty cool too, especially when it was being cleaned by the dwarf.
It's kind of surprising that the Buddhist practice of automating prayer, through prayer flags (prayer written on cloth, hung from wire, blown by wind = prayer done) and prayer wheels (prayer written, carved, or stamped in metal on a cylinder, mounted vertically and spun on an axis by passing hands = prayer done) has not been adopted by god-botherers in Western nations - you'd think that lazy people who limit their religiosity to lip-service and proselytising would be prime candidates for a system that allows one to build one's prayer stats without ever taking one's eyes from one's 80-inch television.
The taxi journeys around Kathmandu took us down a number of brick-paved streets. These look quite cool, but don't provide the most even surface for your suspensionless bicycles, or your tiny Suzuki hatchback taxis. We also saw a mangy cat chewing some carpet.
Back in Thamel, we found a bakery. Hooray! And not only did it have delicious baked goods, it also had a crazy little old lady, with some probable non-human DNA, wrinkled face plastered against the window from the outside. She managed to convey to us her preferred nommage - a chocolate donut - and her prune-like face split into a HUGE toothless grin as she saw us preparing to buy it for her. Lovely Wife then had the presence of mind to haggle with her, and both parties seemed pretty darned happy with the eventual donut-for-cuddlephoto bargain.
Delicious Discarded Items
Short Version:
Monkeys! Naughty monkeys!
Long Version:
From the Pashupatinath Temple, we sidled around the bottom edge of the Deer Park and into a cluster of small temples.
Linga abounded.
And there were monkeys.
The first one we saw was stealing and eating the orange and yellow flowers that devotees had left as offerings. Naughty monkey!
The second and third appeared together; a baby clinging to its mother. They too were snacking on religious offerings. More naughty monkeys!
And then they were everywhere; in the trees, not in the trees... everywhere! Big ones, little ones, raw-bottomed ones. Squabbling, grooming each other, staring into space, eating. Lots of eating. Flowers, bits of tree, dirt, unidentifiable objects, shoes. Nom nom nom nom nom. Delicious shoes.
We descended a series of switchback corners and were spat out onto a broad, tree-lined avenue. With more monkeys. One tried to steal an old man's flower necklace. Failed. Lucky not to be hit with a stick.
A bridge took us back across the river towards a bright orange monkey-god statue, at and near which groups of women were worshipping and bathing. Monkeys, too, were frolicking in the waters, and operating in competition with the human trash scavengers for prime - and especially edible - discarded items. Nom nom nom nom nom.
Monkeys! Naughty monkeys!
Long Version:
From the Pashupatinath Temple, we sidled around the bottom edge of the Deer Park and into a cluster of small temples.
Linga abounded.
And there were monkeys.
The first one we saw was stealing and eating the orange and yellow flowers that devotees had left as offerings. Naughty monkey!
The second and third appeared together; a baby clinging to its mother. They too were snacking on religious offerings. More naughty monkeys!
And then they were everywhere; in the trees, not in the trees... everywhere! Big ones, little ones, raw-bottomed ones. Squabbling, grooming each other, staring into space, eating. Lots of eating. Flowers, bits of tree, dirt, unidentifiable objects, shoes. Nom nom nom nom nom. Delicious shoes.
We descended a series of switchback corners and were spat out onto a broad, tree-lined avenue. With more monkeys. One tried to steal an old man's flower necklace. Failed. Lucky not to be hit with a stick.
A bridge took us back across the river towards a bright orange monkey-god statue, at and near which groups of women were worshipping and bathing. Monkeys, too, were frolicking in the waters, and operating in competition with the human trash scavengers for prime - and especially edible - discarded items. Nom nom nom nom nom.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
God's What?
Short Version:
We explore Kathmandu, and check out the Pashupatinath Temple
Long Version:
Our first night in Kathmandu was a noisy night in hard single beds, with a no-hot-water bathroom attached. This was followed by a room-change negotiation with hotel management, which in turn led to a sunny rooftop penthouse room. With hot water. And views. And, as Lovely Wife put it, if you have to be sick*, better to be sick in a nice place than in a grim, unpleasant, noisy one.
From our rooftop perch, we** did some eyeballing of people going about their daily business. Said business bore both similarities and differences to life as lived in other places; brothers scrapped energetically across multiple rooms until halted by their spoon-wielding, baby-carrying, sari-clad mother; a small child watched Kung Fu Panda on a small TV in a dimly-lit furnitureless room above a combination restaurant/grocery store where chain-smoking men sat talking deep into the evening. No nudies spotted, unfortunately.
The tourist bit of Kathmandu is called Thamel, and it's quite nice. Especially compared to other bits of Kathmandu. We spent a few days in Thamel, getting gear sorted for the trek, wandering from overpriced trinket store to overpriced trinket store, familiarising ourselves with the location and operating principles of the Indian embassy (more on that later), and getting to know our guide-to-be while seeing the sights of Kathmandu, starting with the Pashupatinath Temple. As non-Hindus, we weren't allowed inside the temple proper, but the gatekeepers were more than happy to take our money (again, significantly more for tourists than for locals) and the parts of the sprawling complex on the far side of the Bagmati River were open for us to wander at will. The complex climbs uphill*** from the river in a series of ramps and steps, from terrace to terrace, and eventually to the lower edge of the Deer Park, where various deer spend their days stuffing their cute little faces with bits of greenery handed through the fences by tourists.
The hillside terraces housed various temples, smaller and less holy than the main attraction. Many of the smaller temples had one or more of the following:
- bells, for ringing or taking photos of, depending on your ethno-religious background
- statues of cows, weatherworn and often kind of cute
- statues of the Shiva Lingam, for worshipping or tittering at****
- holy men (sadhus), for sneakily not paying to take photos of
- beggars, for not giving moneys to
We managed some sneaky unpaid photos of sadhus. And some sneaky unpaid photos of crippled, arthritic, leprous beggars. But none of the funerals, despite the fact that there were a lot of them happening, and that they were quite far away from where we were, meaning the chances of being caught snapping something we oughtn't were pretty low - unlike the beggars and sadhus, who yellingly waved mutant club fists and gestured benevolently, respectively.
We saw funerals at many stages from our perch on the far side of the river, from the decoration of the platform and the preparation of the body, through the participatory, wailing and gnashing of teeth stages, to the dissipation of the last wisps of smoke rising from the expired pyre. People were bathing, clothed, in the waters of the Bagmati. Most of them seemed to be men - the women, as it turned out, were upstream, near the monkeys.
* = Delhi Belly is real, and unfun. It's not dissimilar to the Montezuma's Revenge we encountered in Mexico
** = May have just been me
*** = At the time, we thought it was quite steep. It's likely that our guide was more than just a little horrified by our reaction
**** = Shiva Lingam is one of the most commonly found worship symbols throughout the Hindu world. Literally translated, it essentially means "God's Cock." Someone in rural southeast Auckland, NZ, decided it would be a good name for their cattery (Shiva Lingam, that is, not God's Cock. I'm not entirely certain that the NZ Companies Office would allow the registration of "God's Cock Cattery," or, indeed, "God's Cock [any type of business]." Can someone please try, and let me know how you get on? Thanks), which has always been a great source of amusement on Hunua bike adventures.
We explore Kathmandu, and check out the Pashupatinath Temple
Long Version:
Our first night in Kathmandu was a noisy night in hard single beds, with a no-hot-water bathroom attached. This was followed by a room-change negotiation with hotel management, which in turn led to a sunny rooftop penthouse room. With hot water. And views. And, as Lovely Wife put it, if you have to be sick*, better to be sick in a nice place than in a grim, unpleasant, noisy one.
From our rooftop perch, we** did some eyeballing of people going about their daily business. Said business bore both similarities and differences to life as lived in other places; brothers scrapped energetically across multiple rooms until halted by their spoon-wielding, baby-carrying, sari-clad mother; a small child watched Kung Fu Panda on a small TV in a dimly-lit furnitureless room above a combination restaurant/grocery store where chain-smoking men sat talking deep into the evening. No nudies spotted, unfortunately.
The tourist bit of Kathmandu is called Thamel, and it's quite nice. Especially compared to other bits of Kathmandu. We spent a few days in Thamel, getting gear sorted for the trek, wandering from overpriced trinket store to overpriced trinket store, familiarising ourselves with the location and operating principles of the Indian embassy (more on that later), and getting to know our guide-to-be while seeing the sights of Kathmandu, starting with the Pashupatinath Temple. As non-Hindus, we weren't allowed inside the temple proper, but the gatekeepers were more than happy to take our money (again, significantly more for tourists than for locals) and the parts of the sprawling complex on the far side of the Bagmati River were open for us to wander at will. The complex climbs uphill*** from the river in a series of ramps and steps, from terrace to terrace, and eventually to the lower edge of the Deer Park, where various deer spend their days stuffing their cute little faces with bits of greenery handed through the fences by tourists.
The hillside terraces housed various temples, smaller and less holy than the main attraction. Many of the smaller temples had one or more of the following:
- bells, for ringing or taking photos of, depending on your ethno-religious background
- statues of cows, weatherworn and often kind of cute
- statues of the Shiva Lingam, for worshipping or tittering at****
- holy men (sadhus), for sneakily not paying to take photos of
- beggars, for not giving moneys to
We managed some sneaky unpaid photos of sadhus. And some sneaky unpaid photos of crippled, arthritic, leprous beggars. But none of the funerals, despite the fact that there were a lot of them happening, and that they were quite far away from where we were, meaning the chances of being caught snapping something we oughtn't were pretty low - unlike the beggars and sadhus, who yellingly waved mutant club fists and gestured benevolently, respectively.
We saw funerals at many stages from our perch on the far side of the river, from the decoration of the platform and the preparation of the body, through the participatory, wailing and gnashing of teeth stages, to the dissipation of the last wisps of smoke rising from the expired pyre. People were bathing, clothed, in the waters of the Bagmati. Most of them seemed to be men - the women, as it turned out, were upstream, near the monkeys.
* = Delhi Belly is real, and unfun. It's not dissimilar to the Montezuma's Revenge we encountered in Mexico
** = May have just been me
*** = At the time, we thought it was quite steep. It's likely that our guide was more than just a little horrified by our reaction
**** = Shiva Lingam is one of the most commonly found worship symbols throughout the Hindu world. Literally translated, it essentially means "God's Cock." Someone in rural southeast Auckland, NZ, decided it would be a good name for their cattery (Shiva Lingam, that is, not God's Cock. I'm not entirely certain that the NZ Companies Office would allow the registration of "God's Cock Cattery," or, indeed, "God's Cock [any type of business]." Can someone please try, and let me know how you get on? Thanks), which has always been a great source of amusement on Hunua bike adventures.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Kathmandu! (Is Not a Shop)
Short Version:
Kathmandu has its own filth
Long Version:
Tribhuvan International Airport is made of red bricks. That was unexpected.
The queue for visas was long. Two women appeared at intervals and walked up and down the line, stapling photos to application forms for people. One was lovely, the other scary. Pretty sure the scary one deliberately put the staple in the middle of the Puppet forehead.
Visas acquired, it was outside, where a man holding a PHARO sign bundled us into a van and drove us through various bits of Kathmandu to our hotel. There was a lot to take in - we'd been warned that we were going to be hard-pressed to determine whether buildings were in process of being built or knocked down, and that was not only true but applied to almost every building we saw, although not the Royal Palace, where in 2001 Crown Prince Dipendra massacred nine of his family before putting an end to himself as well (his uncle, Gyanendra, succeeded the throne, and remained in power through to the end of the monarchy - replaced by a form of democracy - in 2006). The palace is now a museum.
We also passed the most polluted river we've ever seen. Holy heck, the water was FILTHY! Dark grey and semi-solid, with chunks. Ewwwwww!
And then the streets got cleaner, the number of pale faces in the hordes of people we were passing increased, and then we arrived at the International Guesthouse, where we were staying for a couple of nights before setting off to walk around/up/down some hills...
Kathmandu has its own filth
Long Version:
Tribhuvan International Airport is made of red bricks. That was unexpected.
The queue for visas was long. Two women appeared at intervals and walked up and down the line, stapling photos to application forms for people. One was lovely, the other scary. Pretty sure the scary one deliberately put the staple in the middle of the Puppet forehead.
Visas acquired, it was outside, where a man holding a PHARO sign bundled us into a van and drove us through various bits of Kathmandu to our hotel. There was a lot to take in - we'd been warned that we were going to be hard-pressed to determine whether buildings were in process of being built or knocked down, and that was not only true but applied to almost every building we saw, although not the Royal Palace, where in 2001 Crown Prince Dipendra massacred nine of his family before putting an end to himself as well (his uncle, Gyanendra, succeeded the throne, and remained in power through to the end of the monarchy - replaced by a form of democracy - in 2006). The palace is now a museum.
We also passed the most polluted river we've ever seen. Holy heck, the water was FILTHY! Dark grey and semi-solid, with chunks. Ewwwwww!
And then the streets got cleaner, the number of pale faces in the hordes of people we were passing increased, and then we arrived at the International Guesthouse, where we were staying for a couple of nights before setting off to walk around/up/down some hills...
Really, I'm a Lady!
Short Version:
Onwards and upwards, eventually.
Long Version: Delhi was fun, but we were ready to leave by the time it was time to leave. Old hands at Delhi after four days, we watched with interest as an increasingly excited mob formed around a newly-arrived and rather bemused-looking Westerner seeking transport, and then we were retracing our steps over the railway tracks and down to the Metro station for the journey to Indira Gandhi International airport.
We travelled by Metro a lot while in Delhi. It's easy, convenient, and cheap. They even have one car per train reserved for ladies only! It is possible, we discovered, for men to travel in this car. However, one becomes the target of many, many staring eyes. It's a bit uncomfortable, even when one's been spending most of one's time with many staring eyes following one's movements because one is a) not Indian AND b) have tattoos OR c) are attractive. In the ladycar, some of the stares were glares, others seemed amused at the not-very-brightness of the foreigner.
Delhi is a hazy-aired city, and the Airport Metro Express affords some grand views of various towers marching into fog/smog/other-shrouded distance beneath a big orange sun. Birds of prey wheel overhead in many places, engendering wonderment about just what - or who - they might be eyeballing from above and preparing to rend and devour.
And then we reached the airport, and made it as far as the doors, where we queued before a gun-toting, moustachioed soldier who wanted to see passports and tickets before we were allowed in. Once we produced the documents, he told us we had to go to the next door along, because the check-in desks for our airline were in that direction. Given that a) there was a queue at the other door and b) once inside the door we could have walked across to our check-in counter in well under a minute, we contemplated an objection. Briefly. Then we queued at the other door. The gun-toting, moustachioed soldier at the head of that queue looked good and hard at both of us before allowing us through, probably on one hand trying to reconcile the clean-shaven, short-haired passport Puppet with the hairy version in front of him. Suspect that on the other hand he was just checking Nene out.
Check-in itself was comparatively painless, especially compared with the multituinous security checks and red-tape we then had to endure. One of the security goons decided he did NOT like the cut of the Puppet jib, and it took three walks through the sensor gate, one extra-throrough pat-down, and various clothing-removals before we were through to the departing passenger area, where we found... MORE SECURITY CHECKS!
Finally, they let us onto the plane, and into the sky, and back to earth at Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, Nepal
Onwards and upwards, eventually.
Long Version: Delhi was fun, but we were ready to leave by the time it was time to leave. Old hands at Delhi after four days, we watched with interest as an increasingly excited mob formed around a newly-arrived and rather bemused-looking Westerner seeking transport, and then we were retracing our steps over the railway tracks and down to the Metro station for the journey to Indira Gandhi International airport.
We travelled by Metro a lot while in Delhi. It's easy, convenient, and cheap. They even have one car per train reserved for ladies only! It is possible, we discovered, for men to travel in this car. However, one becomes the target of many, many staring eyes. It's a bit uncomfortable, even when one's been spending most of one's time with many staring eyes following one's movements because one is a) not Indian AND b) have tattoos OR c) are attractive. In the ladycar, some of the stares were glares, others seemed amused at the not-very-brightness of the foreigner.
Delhi is a hazy-aired city, and the Airport Metro Express affords some grand views of various towers marching into fog/smog/other-shrouded distance beneath a big orange sun. Birds of prey wheel overhead in many places, engendering wonderment about just what - or who - they might be eyeballing from above and preparing to rend and devour.
And then we reached the airport, and made it as far as the doors, where we queued before a gun-toting, moustachioed soldier who wanted to see passports and tickets before we were allowed in. Once we produced the documents, he told us we had to go to the next door along, because the check-in desks for our airline were in that direction. Given that a) there was a queue at the other door and b) once inside the door we could have walked across to our check-in counter in well under a minute, we contemplated an objection. Briefly. Then we queued at the other door. The gun-toting, moustachioed soldier at the head of that queue looked good and hard at both of us before allowing us through, probably on one hand trying to reconcile the clean-shaven, short-haired passport Puppet with the hairy version in front of him. Suspect that on the other hand he was just checking Nene out.
Check-in itself was comparatively painless, especially compared with the multituinous security checks and red-tape we then had to endure. One of the security goons decided he did NOT like the cut of the Puppet jib, and it took three walks through the sensor gate, one extra-throrough pat-down, and various clothing-removals before we were through to the departing passenger area, where we found... MORE SECURITY CHECKS!
Finally, they let us onto the plane, and into the sky, and back to earth at Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, Nepal
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Sights, Sounds, and Smells
Short Version:
Stuff we did/saw/heard/smelled in Delhi
Long Version:
Raju had a moustache, and pants that he kept pulled up high. He drove us around Delhi in his little silver hatchback, which backfired and stalled at irregular intervals, severally in the middle of major intersections*. The radio turned itself on and off at random intervals. When on, it played a fairly random assortment of more or less musical music. With and without him, we did/saw/heard/smelled some Delhi stuff, including...
...a motorbike v car crash. The car driver took the motorbike keys so the bloke couldn't disappear. The motorcyclist seemed unsurprised and remarkably relaxed about that.
...a snake charmer became less-than-charming when the fat middle-aged Australian woman refused to pay him for the photograph she'd just taken of him and his charming charmed snake. We were hoping he'd encourage the snake to attack her, but he didn't. Boo, hiss!
...many, many schoolchildren, many of whom wanted their photos taken with us. Nene was especially popular with teenage boys, possibly because the top button of her shirt kept falling open.
...kids weeing in gutters
...men weeing in gutters and against walls
...swastika symbols galore
...people throwing orange and yellow flowers at statues of gods and goddesses
...the Continental Surgical Emporium
...many monumental edifices, historical buildings and complexes, some of which were actually quite cool. Statesman House was rather excellent, as were India Gate, the sprawling Humayun's Tomb complex, the tranquil Lodi Gardens, the Qutab Minar complex,and the memorials to the variously assassinated Gandhi statesmen and women
...special queue systems for non-Indians. We joined the lengthy queue for the shoe storage counter at the Laxmi Narayan Temple, for example, but were spotted as the infiltrators we were and redirected to a separate Westerner-shoe-storage environment, with padded seats upon which to sit while removing one's Westerner shoes, lockable lockers for storing one's Westerner non-shoe valuables, and direct access to the gift shop, where one could spend ones Westerner moneys.
...many governmental buildings, all of which are huge (suspect grandiosity = prestige in some inter-departmental importance war). The Engineer Corps building was next door to the Tuberculosis Hospital
...our second huge, striking, beautiful, nonagonal Ba'ahai House of Worship in as many months, after the one in Samoa. The Delhi House looked like a symmetrically improved Sydney Opera House, and is beautiful
...statues of mutant animals
...special entry fees for non-Indians. Many places that were charging for entry did so on a multi-tier cost basis. Usually this meant 10 rupees for Indians, 250 rupees for others
...flower sellers thronging the streets early in the mornings
...the sun rose and set hugely and redly in a murky sky
Also in Delhi, we:
...took a free and exciting high-speed pillion ride on a scooter through the Main Bazaar at Pandar Garj (Lovely Wife didn't attend this event, despite the South Asian penchant for multiple passengers on mopeds)
...met some Canadians, an Australian, and a Persian. The Persian was one of the most unique-looking people either of us had seen for a long time
...had to get our shower drain unblocked by a minion on a daily basis.
...drank coffee that was "enriched by the goodness of mushroom extract"
...paid to wee in a nice, clean toilet with relaxing music
...took tuk-tuks, but not as often as we should. The walk from the Metro to Qutab Minar was shit, although the mad guy was entertaining. The tuk-tuk ride back was quick, fun, and cheap. And the driver had a good beard
* = NZ has no major intersections. Delhi has major intersections!
Stuff we did/saw/heard/smelled in Delhi
Long Version:
Raju had a moustache, and pants that he kept pulled up high. He drove us around Delhi in his little silver hatchback, which backfired and stalled at irregular intervals, severally in the middle of major intersections*. The radio turned itself on and off at random intervals. When on, it played a fairly random assortment of more or less musical music. With and without him, we did/saw/heard/smelled some Delhi stuff, including...
...a motorbike v car crash. The car driver took the motorbike keys so the bloke couldn't disappear. The motorcyclist seemed unsurprised and remarkably relaxed about that.
...a snake charmer became less-than-charming when the fat middle-aged Australian woman refused to pay him for the photograph she'd just taken of him and his charming charmed snake. We were hoping he'd encourage the snake to attack her, but he didn't. Boo, hiss!
...many, many schoolchildren, many of whom wanted their photos taken with us. Nene was especially popular with teenage boys, possibly because the top button of her shirt kept falling open.
...kids weeing in gutters
...men weeing in gutters and against walls
...swastika symbols galore
...people throwing orange and yellow flowers at statues of gods and goddesses
...the Continental Surgical Emporium
...many monumental edifices, historical buildings and complexes, some of which were actually quite cool. Statesman House was rather excellent, as were India Gate, the sprawling Humayun's Tomb complex, the tranquil Lodi Gardens, the Qutab Minar complex,and the memorials to the variously assassinated Gandhi statesmen and women
...special queue systems for non-Indians. We joined the lengthy queue for the shoe storage counter at the Laxmi Narayan Temple, for example, but were spotted as the infiltrators we were and redirected to a separate Westerner-shoe-storage environment, with padded seats upon which to sit while removing one's Westerner shoes, lockable lockers for storing one's Westerner non-shoe valuables, and direct access to the gift shop, where one could spend ones Westerner moneys.
...many governmental buildings, all of which are huge (suspect grandiosity = prestige in some inter-departmental importance war). The Engineer Corps building was next door to the Tuberculosis Hospital
...our second huge, striking, beautiful, nonagonal Ba'ahai House of Worship in as many months, after the one in Samoa. The Delhi House looked like a symmetrically improved Sydney Opera House, and is beautiful
...statues of mutant animals
...special entry fees for non-Indians. Many places that were charging for entry did so on a multi-tier cost basis. Usually this meant 10 rupees for Indians, 250 rupees for others
...flower sellers thronging the streets early in the mornings
...the sun rose and set hugely and redly in a murky sky
Also in Delhi, we:
...took a free and exciting high-speed pillion ride on a scooter through the Main Bazaar at Pandar Garj (Lovely Wife didn't attend this event, despite the South Asian penchant for multiple passengers on mopeds)
...met some Canadians, an Australian, and a Persian. The Persian was one of the most unique-looking people either of us had seen for a long time
...had to get our shower drain unblocked by a minion on a daily basis.
...drank coffee that was "enriched by the goodness of mushroom extract"
...paid to wee in a nice, clean toilet with relaxing music
...took tuk-tuks, but not as often as we should. The walk from the Metro to Qutab Minar was shit, although the mad guy was entertaining. The tuk-tuk ride back was quick, fun, and cheap. And the driver had a good beard
* = NZ has no major intersections. Delhi has major intersections!
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
City of Things
Short Version:
Chaos. Carnage. Things.
Long Version:
Our hotel room had no windows. It did have a fishtank though. Probably better than a window, to be honest, given the chaos taking place outside at all hours of day and night.
Even the animals were pulling loopy moves; from the hotel's rooftop restaurant, beneath a sky chock-full of wheeling, diving black kites*, we watched a slender cat attack a long-tailed chipmunk. It missed, nearly falling off the roof. Then a dog tried to eat the cat, but was chased by another dog. Bemused, we ate curry.
Eventually, we braced ourselves for the chaos and the carnage and set off out into the madness again.
There were a lot of people with things to sell. To us, preferably. Some of them were quite vehement about it, despite repeated avowals of extreme disinterest. And as soon as one extricated oneself from the clutches of one thing-seller, there was invariably another right there, ready to sell you THEIR things. And another. And then three more. Not waiting politely for their turn, either, because the only people who wait politely for their turn for anything in Delhi are newly-arrived NZers.
So, things. For you, the things. Cheap cheap. In fact, special price for you, my friend, because you are my friend, because you are from New Zealand, special price New Zealand, very nice country, Black Caps, rugby. You have very nice tattoos, my friend. Come look my things, best things, cheap cheap for you.
No. Fuck off. Don't touch me. Go away. Don't want your things. No. No. No. No.
Luckily, there was not-dying-from-traffic to concentrate on, to take minds off thing-selling people. Anyone who thinks the driving in Tauranga, or Auckland is bad, you're... well, actually you're absolutely correct. NZ drivers are appalling. Delhi traffic is different; it's bigger and scarier, and stinkier and generally mayhemic, but once past the initial pants-shitting stage, it starts to make sense, and then it starts to seem like an almost rational system. It'd never work in NZ, though - NZ drivers, cyclists and peds are all too selfish and too arrogant.
And all through the madness, cows wandered serenely, stopping at intervals to eat... well, things. Not grass, for grass there was none. Things. Some identifiable, others... not so much so. Some raw, some... you get the picture.
Delhi - City of Things
* = Birds, not string-controlled human-constructed flying items
Chaos. Carnage. Things.
Long Version:
Our hotel room had no windows. It did have a fishtank though. Probably better than a window, to be honest, given the chaos taking place outside at all hours of day and night.
Even the animals were pulling loopy moves; from the hotel's rooftop restaurant, beneath a sky chock-full of wheeling, diving black kites*, we watched a slender cat attack a long-tailed chipmunk. It missed, nearly falling off the roof. Then a dog tried to eat the cat, but was chased by another dog. Bemused, we ate curry.
Eventually, we braced ourselves for the chaos and the carnage and set off out into the madness again.
There were a lot of people with things to sell. To us, preferably. Some of them were quite vehement about it, despite repeated avowals of extreme disinterest. And as soon as one extricated oneself from the clutches of one thing-seller, there was invariably another right there, ready to sell you THEIR things. And another. And then three more. Not waiting politely for their turn, either, because the only people who wait politely for their turn for anything in Delhi are newly-arrived NZers.
So, things. For you, the things. Cheap cheap. In fact, special price for you, my friend, because you are my friend, because you are from New Zealand, special price New Zealand, very nice country, Black Caps, rugby. You have very nice tattoos, my friend. Come look my things, best things, cheap cheap for you.
No. Fuck off. Don't touch me. Go away. Don't want your things. No. No. No. No.
Luckily, there was not-dying-from-traffic to concentrate on, to take minds off thing-selling people. Anyone who thinks the driving in Tauranga, or Auckland is bad, you're... well, actually you're absolutely correct. NZ drivers are appalling. Delhi traffic is different; it's bigger and scarier, and stinkier and generally mayhemic, but once past the initial pants-shitting stage, it starts to make sense, and then it starts to seem like an almost rational system. It'd never work in NZ, though - NZ drivers, cyclists and peds are all too selfish and too arrogant.
And all through the madness, cows wandered serenely, stopping at intervals to eat... well, things. Not grass, for grass there was none. Things. Some identifiable, others... not so much so. Some raw, some... you get the picture.
Delhi - City of Things
* = Birds, not string-controlled human-constructed flying items
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Delhi? Of Course We Can!
Short Version:
We make it to the hotel, which is quite an achievement
Long Version:
Off the plane and on to a terminal bus, along with the rest of our fellow passengers. Full bus. Slight delay in actually setting off for terminal as official chap stands in doorway shouting about a black mobile phone which has been found on the plane. For quite a while. Woman sitting near our standing place pipes up, volunteering the information that the phone was found at seat 24. Wait a minute... That'd be ours then... Thank you, nice shouty official man! Thank you, nice phone-finding woman, who is from Nepal, is en route home from a migration conference in the Phillippines, and with whom we chat as the bus navigates the tractors and other vehicles swarming according to some master plan indecipherable from our perspective.
Into the terminal and up to the Visa-on-Arrival counter. Interesting assortment of countries listed as eligible, including New Zealand, Vietnam, and Finland. No Orstralia, no Canadia. It took a while to get our stamps, partly because the two men manning the counter had to handwrite our details in umptiplicate into many ledgers, but mainly because the one who spoke discerned that our travel plans involved a return to Delhi post-Nepal. This, it transpires, is not a viable course of action, as on-arrival visas are one-time entry only. Rats. Suggestion is that we apply to the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu for a transit visa, which we promise to do, several times.
We are then whisked through Immigration, bypassing queues galore, escorted by a young official chap who rebuffed all challengers to our whisking, to find our bags waiting, already loaded on a trolley. Nice!
Next stop: the Delhi Airport Metro Express, a new metro* link from the airport to the heart of New Delhi. Signage directs us part of the way, and then vanishes. We ask a venerable army gentleman, and he directs us with his cane towards a descending ramp, which we follow to the ticket booth, and then past the multiply-manned machine-gun emplacement and down to the platform. Train arrives within minutes and we embark, onto a clean, predominantly empty carriage for the 20-minute journey into the heart of Delhi.
So far so easy.
I continue feeling rather pleased with myself right up to the point where we exit the metro station, and enter three or four of the circles of hell, which have been munged together to produce a cacophonous, seething, megahell, reeking of piss and shit and filth, and thronging with people, who are completely indifferent to our existence, or are determined to accost us for random, ill-communicated and doubtless nefarious - or at least avaricious - purposes. We have no idea where the fuck we're supposed to go, so we go left. The smell of rubbish decreases, or is overwhelmed by the odours of piss and shit, which are becoming more intense. Crippled, broken people lie on the ground in the filth. Their feet are quite dirty. Massive puddles - which in NZ would be a) fixed pretty quickly, and b) made of water - turn out on closer inspection to be of piss. There is reason to suspect that the liquid lies atop a layer of shit. The smell is incredible. Rubbish is everywhere. People are everywhere.
It feels like hours but is probably only minutes since we reached the outside world. We see a clustering of taxis and tuk-tuks and feel relief, which is dispelled by the fact that the operators refuse to take us to our hotel. Someone tells us we need to walk up and over the pedestrian bridges to the far side of the railway complex. Hooray! A destination! An achievable goal!
We walk to the stairs, are greeted by frenzied blasts on a whistle by a khaki-clad stick-brandishing policeman, who bars our way onto the descent-only staircase and directs us elsewhere. As far as I can tell he's just stopped us using the only stairs there are, and there's nothing in the direction he's sending us except thousands and thousands of people.
Bags are heavy. At least mine is an actual pack. Nene is carrying a duffel so heavy the straps pull free of the clasps unless reef-knotted in place. Even so, she's handling this better than I am. We walk past a queue, of several hundred people, who are clamouring for entrance to a large old building. By NZ crowd definitions this queue is a young and enthusiastic riot. A helpful chap - who I greet with extreme suspicion - tells us that there's nothing in the direction we're heading except car-parking. He says we need to go inside the building to get to the stairs. Hearts sink as the concept of joining and navigating that queue is contemplated. We ask one of the many army guy queue-wranglers if this is how we get in to go across to the other side. He is distracted enough for long enough that queue-jumping opportunism becomes rife, and somewhere between twenty and fifty people are past him and in through the doors before he clicks. When he does, he begins lashing out indiscriminately with his beating stick, cracking people across waists and shoulders and upraised shielding forearms. The scurrying past becomes scurrying into line, and the persondamburst is quelled. He turns back to us, ushers us in through the gap between people and doorframe. He's learned his lesson, though, and spends more time eyeballing the crowd than he does looking at us. We flee inside.
We are in the New Delhi Railway Station. So are thousands of other people. The smell inside the building is different from that outside, but no less potent; here it is the people themselves giving rise to the reek, except for occasional patches of overwhelming urine stench where clouds of fetid mist billow out from pissoirs formal and not.
Beggars lie on the floor. So do entire extended families; babies and children are watched over by the elderly while the middle generations keep close eye on towering piles of luggage. No-one is trying to speak to us here inside the station, which is a nice change, but our shoulders are starting to hurt rather a lot. Either that or being free from external harrassment is leaving us more capacity to notice the pain.
Pretty soon we're heading downstairs. It's hard to see where feet are landing with a backpack on the front. I'm lucky to avoid standing on the trailing edge of an old woman's sari. I do some imagineering, and figure that if I DO stand on it she'll end up naked at the bottom of the stairs, and I'll be running from an angry mob.
The decision not to stand on the old lady or her clothes proves to have been a wise one, as we make it to the bottom unmolested. Then we're well and truly molested, by a swarm of people who enjoy shouting. Nene and I employ different strategies at this point; she engages with a sub-horde, enlisting them in her quest for transport to our hotel; I say "No!" and stride away purposefully. This confuses everybody, including me, and eventually we find ourselves in a clear(ish), quiet(ish) space, which would be glorious except that we still have no idea where the hotel is or how to get there.
Nene espies what appears to be a fifty-plus car pile-up comprised solely of taxis. On closer inspection, this turns out to be a taxi rank, and we head for it. We're intercepted by a gaggle of men exhibiting various levels of clean but a near-universal level of yell. One knows where our hotel is. We are pleased. He leaves. We are sad. Heated discussion continues all around, as more and more taxi- and tuk-tuk drivers, nosey-parkers, and other hangers-on join the group. We sneak off. A small, grim man nods at us and we follow him to his tuk-tuk. He manages to cram us and all our luggage in, and takes off into traffic the likes of which I have never seen before in my life. I am agog at the madness unfolding on all sides, although I am especially taken with that on the side I am on, because it is so close to me. So very, very close. It's exhilarating, and completely insane.
There are so very many vehicles crammed into every available inch of space. Every one that has a horn is sounding it, and at first I think it's because we've just cut all of them off at once by driving straight out and onto a main road in front of a free-flowing stream of traffic. I am convinced that if we don't die in an accident, we'll be ripped limb from limb by a mob of angry motorists, enraged at the effrontery our driver has displayed. But wait! Everyone else is pulling rancid maneuvres also! And we are doing some tooting of our own! I'm starting to think this may just be the way it's done here, and then we hang a sharp right across an onrushing wall of cars, buses, tuk-tuks**, rickshaws***, and pedestrians, and begin driving up the middle of a street market, fast, tooting at pedestrians to get out of our way. This is like a scene from a film, except we're not being chased by gun-toting evildoers intent on laying hands on our drugs/diamonds/stolen moneys. And we're not actually knocking over fruit stalls in spectacular cascades of colour. And then we're swerving to avoid a rickshaw coming the other way, and then another one, and a car, and we realise that this, too, is just the way things are, and then we're outside the hotel and paying the still-silent little chap about five times as many rupees as we should have and we don't care because we've made it to the hotel and it really probably is time for a nice cup of tea and a lie-down.
* = That's light rail, partly underground, for all those who live in places bereft of this basic metropolitan necessity.
** = Auto-rickshaws. Three-wheeled vehicles that look like the back half of an old green Mini with a yellow canvas roof bolted to the front part of a Vespa. Run on CNG. Wonderful.
*** = Previous century's version of tuk-tuk. Massively steel single-speed tricycles. Wonderful from the outside, bumpy from in.
We make it to the hotel, which is quite an achievement
Long Version:
Off the plane and on to a terminal bus, along with the rest of our fellow passengers. Full bus. Slight delay in actually setting off for terminal as official chap stands in doorway shouting about a black mobile phone which has been found on the plane. For quite a while. Woman sitting near our standing place pipes up, volunteering the information that the phone was found at seat 24. Wait a minute... That'd be ours then... Thank you, nice shouty official man! Thank you, nice phone-finding woman, who is from Nepal, is en route home from a migration conference in the Phillippines, and with whom we chat as the bus navigates the tractors and other vehicles swarming according to some master plan indecipherable from our perspective.
Into the terminal and up to the Visa-on-Arrival counter. Interesting assortment of countries listed as eligible, including New Zealand, Vietnam, and Finland. No Orstralia, no Canadia. It took a while to get our stamps, partly because the two men manning the counter had to handwrite our details in umptiplicate into many ledgers, but mainly because the one who spoke discerned that our travel plans involved a return to Delhi post-Nepal. This, it transpires, is not a viable course of action, as on-arrival visas are one-time entry only. Rats. Suggestion is that we apply to the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu for a transit visa, which we promise to do, several times.
We are then whisked through Immigration, bypassing queues galore, escorted by a young official chap who rebuffed all challengers to our whisking, to find our bags waiting, already loaded on a trolley. Nice!
Next stop: the Delhi Airport Metro Express, a new metro* link from the airport to the heart of New Delhi. Signage directs us part of the way, and then vanishes. We ask a venerable army gentleman, and he directs us with his cane towards a descending ramp, which we follow to the ticket booth, and then past the multiply-manned machine-gun emplacement and down to the platform. Train arrives within minutes and we embark, onto a clean, predominantly empty carriage for the 20-minute journey into the heart of Delhi.
So far so easy.
I continue feeling rather pleased with myself right up to the point where we exit the metro station, and enter three or four of the circles of hell, which have been munged together to produce a cacophonous, seething, megahell, reeking of piss and shit and filth, and thronging with people, who are completely indifferent to our existence, or are determined to accost us for random, ill-communicated and doubtless nefarious - or at least avaricious - purposes. We have no idea where the fuck we're supposed to go, so we go left. The smell of rubbish decreases, or is overwhelmed by the odours of piss and shit, which are becoming more intense. Crippled, broken people lie on the ground in the filth. Their feet are quite dirty. Massive puddles - which in NZ would be a) fixed pretty quickly, and b) made of water - turn out on closer inspection to be of piss. There is reason to suspect that the liquid lies atop a layer of shit. The smell is incredible. Rubbish is everywhere. People are everywhere.
It feels like hours but is probably only minutes since we reached the outside world. We see a clustering of taxis and tuk-tuks and feel relief, which is dispelled by the fact that the operators refuse to take us to our hotel. Someone tells us we need to walk up and over the pedestrian bridges to the far side of the railway complex. Hooray! A destination! An achievable goal!
We walk to the stairs, are greeted by frenzied blasts on a whistle by a khaki-clad stick-brandishing policeman, who bars our way onto the descent-only staircase and directs us elsewhere. As far as I can tell he's just stopped us using the only stairs there are, and there's nothing in the direction he's sending us except thousands and thousands of people.
Bags are heavy. At least mine is an actual pack. Nene is carrying a duffel so heavy the straps pull free of the clasps unless reef-knotted in place. Even so, she's handling this better than I am. We walk past a queue, of several hundred people, who are clamouring for entrance to a large old building. By NZ crowd definitions this queue is a young and enthusiastic riot. A helpful chap - who I greet with extreme suspicion - tells us that there's nothing in the direction we're heading except car-parking. He says we need to go inside the building to get to the stairs. Hearts sink as the concept of joining and navigating that queue is contemplated. We ask one of the many army guy queue-wranglers if this is how we get in to go across to the other side. He is distracted enough for long enough that queue-jumping opportunism becomes rife, and somewhere between twenty and fifty people are past him and in through the doors before he clicks. When he does, he begins lashing out indiscriminately with his beating stick, cracking people across waists and shoulders and upraised shielding forearms. The scurrying past becomes scurrying into line, and the persondamburst is quelled. He turns back to us, ushers us in through the gap between people and doorframe. He's learned his lesson, though, and spends more time eyeballing the crowd than he does looking at us. We flee inside.
We are in the New Delhi Railway Station. So are thousands of other people. The smell inside the building is different from that outside, but no less potent; here it is the people themselves giving rise to the reek, except for occasional patches of overwhelming urine stench where clouds of fetid mist billow out from pissoirs formal and not.
Beggars lie on the floor. So do entire extended families; babies and children are watched over by the elderly while the middle generations keep close eye on towering piles of luggage. No-one is trying to speak to us here inside the station, which is a nice change, but our shoulders are starting to hurt rather a lot. Either that or being free from external harrassment is leaving us more capacity to notice the pain.
Pretty soon we're heading downstairs. It's hard to see where feet are landing with a backpack on the front. I'm lucky to avoid standing on the trailing edge of an old woman's sari. I do some imagineering, and figure that if I DO stand on it she'll end up naked at the bottom of the stairs, and I'll be running from an angry mob.
The decision not to stand on the old lady or her clothes proves to have been a wise one, as we make it to the bottom unmolested. Then we're well and truly molested, by a swarm of people who enjoy shouting. Nene and I employ different strategies at this point; she engages with a sub-horde, enlisting them in her quest for transport to our hotel; I say "No!" and stride away purposefully. This confuses everybody, including me, and eventually we find ourselves in a clear(ish), quiet(ish) space, which would be glorious except that we still have no idea where the hotel is or how to get there.
Nene espies what appears to be a fifty-plus car pile-up comprised solely of taxis. On closer inspection, this turns out to be a taxi rank, and we head for it. We're intercepted by a gaggle of men exhibiting various levels of clean but a near-universal level of yell. One knows where our hotel is. We are pleased. He leaves. We are sad. Heated discussion continues all around, as more and more taxi- and tuk-tuk drivers, nosey-parkers, and other hangers-on join the group. We sneak off. A small, grim man nods at us and we follow him to his tuk-tuk. He manages to cram us and all our luggage in, and takes off into traffic the likes of which I have never seen before in my life. I am agog at the madness unfolding on all sides, although I am especially taken with that on the side I am on, because it is so close to me. So very, very close. It's exhilarating, and completely insane.
There are so very many vehicles crammed into every available inch of space. Every one that has a horn is sounding it, and at first I think it's because we've just cut all of them off at once by driving straight out and onto a main road in front of a free-flowing stream of traffic. I am convinced that if we don't die in an accident, we'll be ripped limb from limb by a mob of angry motorists, enraged at the effrontery our driver has displayed. But wait! Everyone else is pulling rancid maneuvres also! And we are doing some tooting of our own! I'm starting to think this may just be the way it's done here, and then we hang a sharp right across an onrushing wall of cars, buses, tuk-tuks**, rickshaws***, and pedestrians, and begin driving up the middle of a street market, fast, tooting at pedestrians to get out of our way. This is like a scene from a film, except we're not being chased by gun-toting evildoers intent on laying hands on our drugs/diamonds/stolen moneys. And we're not actually knocking over fruit stalls in spectacular cascades of colour. And then we're swerving to avoid a rickshaw coming the other way, and then another one, and a car, and we realise that this, too, is just the way things are, and then we're outside the hotel and paying the still-silent little chap about five times as many rupees as we should have and we don't care because we've made it to the hotel and it really probably is time for a nice cup of tea and a lie-down.
* = That's light rail, partly underground, for all those who live in places bereft of this basic metropolitan necessity.
** = Auto-rickshaws. Three-wheeled vehicles that look like the back half of an old green Mini with a yellow canvas roof bolted to the front part of a Vespa. Run on CNG. Wonderful.
*** = Previous century's version of tuk-tuk. Massively steel single-speed tricycles. Wonderful from the outside, bumpy from in.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
The Drowned City
Short Version:
Bangkok, even when flooded, partially evacuated, and judged solely by a manky airport suburb, is awesome.
Long Version:
Original Plan:
4 nights in Bangkok, 3 in a cool riverside downtownish hotel, 1 in an airporty transity one. Various excellent, exciting adventures, including riverboating, eating delicious foods, and table tennis action*.
Spanner/Fly for your Ointmenty Works:
Flooding. Visit timed to perfection to match the arrival of peak floodwaters. Bangkok partially evacuated, commercial activities suspended, mild panic ensues. Riverside downtownish hotel underwater and closed.
Revised Plan:
Leave Bangkok for Delhi earlier than planned, stay in Bangkok airport.
Actuality:
Leave Bangkok airport, eventually. En route to leaving airport, acquire the following:
- 6 passport photos each, to supplement existing collections, for Thai and Indian visas. Puppet looks like a jihadist. Nene looks like she's been photographed on the mortician's slab, or in the cells after a lengthy, enthusiastic, and eventful meth binge
- 1 mild heart palpitation when Visa-on-Arrival booth guy says "Where from? New Zealand? New Zealand no eligible Visa-on-Arrival. Go Immigration, get Visa." Fucksocks.
- 2 improved understandings of the difficulties involved in attempting to explain what a Samoa is to a Thai Immigration official who speaks little English, and who has interestedly thumbed through the Puppetpassport peering at the stampage.
- 0 visas.
We ended up in a riverside airporty hotel. Sandbags and pumps and other temporary flood barriers were abundant. So were fish. In the water, out of the water, climbing all over each other in pursuit of the bread being tossed their way by a variety of people**. Similar size to the salmon we saw in Canada last year***, but with catfish-style barbels sprouting from their mouthparts. Suspect they taste like mud, but a bunch of people were fishing for them, so I guess either I'm wrong about their flavour or mud's better than the alternative. Which is possibly nothing.
We, on the other hand, had plenty of food options at the cafe we found: duck with noodles, or duck with rice... One of each, please!
We napped, promenaded along the riverbank, were barked at by a grumpy dog, and eventually settled in to a riverside table to eat and drink well into the evening. Well, into the evening at any rate; 730pm saw us tired and drunk and ready to start the sleep that would take us through to 230am and airport o'clock.
We made a friend at the airport. He was sleeping on a bench, up to the point when a trolley loaded with puppetbags was driven into his legs with some force. Sorry! Maybe it's time we left...
Wait, not so fast, tourist scum!
First we had to experience some Bangkok airportness:
- A massive orchid display
- 50% of passengers on our flight were checking boxed flatscreen TVs in as luggage
- An angry passport control woman. She yelled at Nene. I'd be angry too, if I were that ugly, and that old, and had a zit that MASSIVE in the middle of my forehead.
- The space on the far side of passport control at Bangkok airport is HUGE. We wandered for ages, watching the high-end fashion stores coming to life for the day.
- Fresh-baked big soft pretzels. Why are all the pretzels in NZ the small, crisp ones? These ones are way better. So much so that we had two.
- Every security, passport, and airline staff member we spoke to asked us if we smoked
- Cheesy Thai pop music from every store, sometimes competing cacophonically with them next door
- Additional security check at departure gate. The woman with the wand**** became angered by the seemingly mild-mannered but ineffectual old man in front of us, who failed to understand that she was finished with him. We were pleased that we'd had the opportunity to observe, as we'd most likely have roused exactly the same ire if not forewarned.
- A middle-aged Indian woman made it as far as boarding the plane with all her luggage, which included a full-sized suitcase. When - finally! - challenged, she removed a large doll (a European-looking baby about 2ft long) from the suitcase, handed it to the airline staff, and tried to set off again into the plane. Eventually they repacked the doll and removed the suitcase from her possession for - I assume - transfer to the checked-in luggage compartment
...and then we were aboard, and the pianomuzak versions of "Love Lifts Us Up Where we Belong" and "Didn't We Almost Have it All?" were playing, and then we were airborne, and [CENSORED - see note ***** at own risk], and then the stewardess was walking up and down the aisle, spraying disinfectant from a pair of cans, and it was like we were arriving in NZ in the 80s! But we weren't, we were arriving in Delhi, and the madness was about to begin.
* = Use your imagination. Or google "Bangkok + ping-pong balls" with SafeSearch off
** = Our favourite was the older gent with the up-high slacks beltline, who was very seriously ripping hunks of stale bread and throwing them to the fish then gesturing as though conducting their movements
*** = The fish, not the people
**** = Not a fairy. Maybe a witch.
***** = One of the expectations of our Bangkok sojourn was that we'd see some nudity, and some unusual nude activities (see note *). The floods put paid to our visit to the centre of the perviverse, and by the time we were airborne en route to Delhi these things were far from our minds. It was with some surprise, then, that upon opening an unlocked, "Unoccupied" toilet, Puppetvision captured a Thai woman, urinating frenziedly. Who was more surprised? Possibly a tie. Puppet almost certainly more amused, although the steward who had watched the whole thing abruptly closed the curtain to seal off the kitchen area, and one suspects he may have been privately chortling, heartily.
Bangkok, even when flooded, partially evacuated, and judged solely by a manky airport suburb, is awesome.
Long Version:
Original Plan:
4 nights in Bangkok, 3 in a cool riverside downtownish hotel, 1 in an airporty transity one. Various excellent, exciting adventures, including riverboating, eating delicious foods, and table tennis action*.
Spanner/Fly for your Ointmenty Works:
Flooding. Visit timed to perfection to match the arrival of peak floodwaters. Bangkok partially evacuated, commercial activities suspended, mild panic ensues. Riverside downtownish hotel underwater and closed.
Revised Plan:
Leave Bangkok for Delhi earlier than planned, stay in Bangkok airport.
Actuality:
Leave Bangkok airport, eventually. En route to leaving airport, acquire the following:
- 6 passport photos each, to supplement existing collections, for Thai and Indian visas. Puppet looks like a jihadist. Nene looks like she's been photographed on the mortician's slab, or in the cells after a lengthy, enthusiastic, and eventful meth binge
- 1 mild heart palpitation when Visa-on-Arrival booth guy says "Where from? New Zealand? New Zealand no eligible Visa-on-Arrival. Go Immigration, get Visa." Fucksocks.
- 2 improved understandings of the difficulties involved in attempting to explain what a Samoa is to a Thai Immigration official who speaks little English, and who has interestedly thumbed through the Puppetpassport peering at the stampage.
- 0 visas.
We ended up in a riverside airporty hotel. Sandbags and pumps and other temporary flood barriers were abundant. So were fish. In the water, out of the water, climbing all over each other in pursuit of the bread being tossed their way by a variety of people**. Similar size to the salmon we saw in Canada last year***, but with catfish-style barbels sprouting from their mouthparts. Suspect they taste like mud, but a bunch of people were fishing for them, so I guess either I'm wrong about their flavour or mud's better than the alternative. Which is possibly nothing.
We, on the other hand, had plenty of food options at the cafe we found: duck with noodles, or duck with rice... One of each, please!
We napped, promenaded along the riverbank, were barked at by a grumpy dog, and eventually settled in to a riverside table to eat and drink well into the evening. Well, into the evening at any rate; 730pm saw us tired and drunk and ready to start the sleep that would take us through to 230am and airport o'clock.
We made a friend at the airport. He was sleeping on a bench, up to the point when a trolley loaded with puppetbags was driven into his legs with some force. Sorry! Maybe it's time we left...
Wait, not so fast, tourist scum!
First we had to experience some Bangkok airportness:
- A massive orchid display
- 50% of passengers on our flight were checking boxed flatscreen TVs in as luggage
- An angry passport control woman. She yelled at Nene. I'd be angry too, if I were that ugly, and that old, and had a zit that MASSIVE in the middle of my forehead.
- The space on the far side of passport control at Bangkok airport is HUGE. We wandered for ages, watching the high-end fashion stores coming to life for the day.
- Fresh-baked big soft pretzels. Why are all the pretzels in NZ the small, crisp ones? These ones are way better. So much so that we had two.
- Every security, passport, and airline staff member we spoke to asked us if we smoked
- Cheesy Thai pop music from every store, sometimes competing cacophonically with them next door
- Additional security check at departure gate. The woman with the wand**** became angered by the seemingly mild-mannered but ineffectual old man in front of us, who failed to understand that she was finished with him. We were pleased that we'd had the opportunity to observe, as we'd most likely have roused exactly the same ire if not forewarned.
- A middle-aged Indian woman made it as far as boarding the plane with all her luggage, which included a full-sized suitcase. When - finally! - challenged, she removed a large doll (a European-looking baby about 2ft long) from the suitcase, handed it to the airline staff, and tried to set off again into the plane. Eventually they repacked the doll and removed the suitcase from her possession for - I assume - transfer to the checked-in luggage compartment
...and then we were aboard, and the pianomuzak versions of "Love Lifts Us Up Where we Belong" and "Didn't We Almost Have it All?" were playing, and then we were airborne, and [CENSORED - see note ***** at own risk], and then the stewardess was walking up and down the aisle, spraying disinfectant from a pair of cans, and it was like we were arriving in NZ in the 80s! But we weren't, we were arriving in Delhi, and the madness was about to begin.
* = Use your imagination. Or google "Bangkok + ping-pong balls" with SafeSearch off
** = Our favourite was the older gent with the up-high slacks beltline, who was very seriously ripping hunks of stale bread and throwing them to the fish then gesturing as though conducting their movements
*** = The fish, not the people
**** = Not a fairy. Maybe a witch.
***** = One of the expectations of our Bangkok sojourn was that we'd see some nudity, and some unusual nude activities (see note *). The floods put paid to our visit to the centre of the perviverse, and by the time we were airborne en route to Delhi these things were far from our minds. It was with some surprise, then, that upon opening an unlocked, "Unoccupied" toilet, Puppetvision captured a Thai woman, urinating frenziedly. Who was more surprised? Possibly a tie. Puppet almost certainly more amused, although the steward who had watched the whole thing abruptly closed the curtain to seal off the kitchen area, and one suspects he may have been privately chortling, heartily.
In Brunei, You're Too Fat To Use The Intertubes
Short Version:
Brunei is probably more exciting outside the International Transit Lounge.
Long Version:
We had, essentially, no idea what happens in the Kingdom of Brunei before we got there. The view from the porthole as we flew in gave us some clues; they spend their time puttng gold domes/roofs/canopies on buildings. Having subsequently spent several hours in the International Transit Lounge at Bandar Seri Begwan Airport, I can now report that other things that happen in the Kingdom of Brunei include:
- people arrive on aeroplanes
- people leave on aeroplanes
- people wait for a aeroplanes to arrive so they can leave on them
- white birds of the heron/crane variety browse the grassy verges of the runways when aeroplanes are not howling hither and yon upon them
- people attempt to get the internet to work on the "Free Internet! (Brought to you by [sponsor's name removed]!)" terminals... The very short man in the red shirt succeeded. The bald guy with the neck-beard failed. The advance contingent of the Thai student horde succeeded. The really ugly woman who queue-jumped me* failed. I failed. The many-chinned British-looking man failed. The irritating Australian boy** failed. The very short man in the blue shirt failed. The rearguard of the Thai student horde succeeded. I thought for a time that perhaps it was a site-related success criteria at work, but I had a crack at the facebook page of one of the previous users and had no joy. Possibly a weight sensor in the stool that blocked anyone over 50kg.
The fish in the fountain pool were pretty cool, the aircon was cranked to the point that the window glass was covered in condensation, and the intercom announcements were so quiet as to be borderline inaudible. Certainly not loud enough to be heard over the nincompoopery of the Thai student horde. Luckily, we had a Thai student horde to follow to our Bangkok-bound aircraft, where we found ourselves crammed into the kind of seat-space you'd expect on a sub-hour domestic flight in NZ. That kind of sucked, but more so for Janine's neighbour, who was so fat that he had difficulty lowering his tray-table, which pretty much bisected him once it was wedged in place. He also didn't read, watch visual programming, or otherwise indulge in any form of extraneous entertainment throughout the 4-hour flight. Either a great imagination at work, or... not.
* = She felt the hate, I assure you
** = Seriously, just fuck off, you little twerp
Brunei is probably more exciting outside the International Transit Lounge.
Long Version:
We had, essentially, no idea what happens in the Kingdom of Brunei before we got there. The view from the porthole as we flew in gave us some clues; they spend their time puttng gold domes/roofs/canopies on buildings. Having subsequently spent several hours in the International Transit Lounge at Bandar Seri Begwan Airport, I can now report that other things that happen in the Kingdom of Brunei include:
- people arrive on aeroplanes
- people leave on aeroplanes
- people wait for a aeroplanes to arrive so they can leave on them
- white birds of the heron/crane variety browse the grassy verges of the runways when aeroplanes are not howling hither and yon upon them
- people attempt to get the internet to work on the "Free Internet! (Brought to you by [sponsor's name removed]!)" terminals... The very short man in the red shirt succeeded. The bald guy with the neck-beard failed. The advance contingent of the Thai student horde succeeded. The really ugly woman who queue-jumped me* failed. I failed. The many-chinned British-looking man failed. The irritating Australian boy** failed. The very short man in the blue shirt failed. The rearguard of the Thai student horde succeeded. I thought for a time that perhaps it was a site-related success criteria at work, but I had a crack at the facebook page of one of the previous users and had no joy. Possibly a weight sensor in the stool that blocked anyone over 50kg.
The fish in the fountain pool were pretty cool, the aircon was cranked to the point that the window glass was covered in condensation, and the intercom announcements were so quiet as to be borderline inaudible. Certainly not loud enough to be heard over the nincompoopery of the Thai student horde. Luckily, we had a Thai student horde to follow to our Bangkok-bound aircraft, where we found ourselves crammed into the kind of seat-space you'd expect on a sub-hour domestic flight in NZ. That kind of sucked, but more so for Janine's neighbour, who was so fat that he had difficulty lowering his tray-table, which pretty much bisected him once it was wedged in place. He also didn't read, watch visual programming, or otherwise indulge in any form of extraneous entertainment throughout the 4-hour flight. Either a great imagination at work, or... not.
* = She felt the hate, I assure you
** = Seriously, just fuck off, you little twerp
Monday, October 31, 2011
Gone, Again
Short Version:
We leave.
Long Version:
Despite having had months to prepare for departure, we were - inevitably - scrambling to get ourselves ready to go when it came to the final few days. The time spent rejigging Bangkok travel arrangements in light of the flooding could have been used otherwise, and a whole bunch of hitherto-undisclosed* tasks requiring completion pre-departure manifested themselves. These included, but were not limited to:
- a late-night beer delivery to an unsuspecting octogenarian
- a likewise late-night and unheralded skateboard delivery to a 5-year-old girl
- posting various odds and ends to various peoples across NZ
- painting a house
- eating food, with people
Eventually, though, we found ourselves at Auckland International Airport, being told by the check-in lady that, contrary to all information the all-knowing interwebs provided, we needed visas galore, and that we needed umpteen passport photos for each of them. After some initial, not-allowed-on-plane noises, she relented and we were away, through passport control and into the clutches of the security guy, who went so far as to tell me "You know I'm going to stop you and search you - you're a suspicious-looking bearded guy."
He found nothing of interest.
Neither did we, once through security, with all shops closed bar the duty-free places, and not much exciting exploring on offer. A wee nap in the ovoid chairs instead saw us, if not bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, then at least slightly less scratchy by the time we made our way to the departure gate lounge, where we waited, in the company of a noisy horde of Thai students on the cusp of adolescence, for our plane to board. Which it did, an hour or so after our scheduled departure time. Adding insult to non-injury was the fact that, as borderline unaccompanied minors, the horde were invited to board first, along with the very elderly and the moneyed.
Once aboard this last-ever Royal Brunei Airlines flight ex-Auckland, we were treated to an Islamic blessing upon the plane and passengers, which reinforced the suggestion that an Islamic airline might be a good choice for explosion-free travel. Later, the alcohol-free drinks trolley reinforced the flipside of that benefit.
And then sleep occurred, at 38,000ft. Apparently I slept through a meal, which is unheard of. I was awake in time to watch the sun finally catch us, somewhere over Indonesian islands, and in time to take possession of a delicious airline breakfast, much of which I ended up wearing. Not through catastrophic events mind you, but by a slow, clumsy accretionist process; here a little bit of scrambled egg (huevos revueltos!), there the juicy, pulpy detritus of the fruit bowl. Added to the mandarin, black-pepper sauce, and korma acquired over the course of the previous evening's activities, and it was a classy classy beardy tattooed man who hit tarmac in the Kingdom of Brunei, ready for some... wait, what happens in Brunei?
* = May actually have been disclosed and well-explained to unlistening ears
We leave.
Long Version:
Despite having had months to prepare for departure, we were - inevitably - scrambling to get ourselves ready to go when it came to the final few days. The time spent rejigging Bangkok travel arrangements in light of the flooding could have been used otherwise, and a whole bunch of hitherto-undisclosed* tasks requiring completion pre-departure manifested themselves. These included, but were not limited to:
- a late-night beer delivery to an unsuspecting octogenarian
- a likewise late-night and unheralded skateboard delivery to a 5-year-old girl
- posting various odds and ends to various peoples across NZ
- painting a house
- eating food, with people
Eventually, though, we found ourselves at Auckland International Airport, being told by the check-in lady that, contrary to all information the all-knowing interwebs provided, we needed visas galore, and that we needed umpteen passport photos for each of them. After some initial, not-allowed-on-plane noises, she relented and we were away, through passport control and into the clutches of the security guy, who went so far as to tell me "You know I'm going to stop you and search you - you're a suspicious-looking bearded guy."
He found nothing of interest.
Neither did we, once through security, with all shops closed bar the duty-free places, and not much exciting exploring on offer. A wee nap in the ovoid chairs instead saw us, if not bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, then at least slightly less scratchy by the time we made our way to the departure gate lounge, where we waited, in the company of a noisy horde of Thai students on the cusp of adolescence, for our plane to board. Which it did, an hour or so after our scheduled departure time. Adding insult to non-injury was the fact that, as borderline unaccompanied minors, the horde were invited to board first, along with the very elderly and the moneyed.
Once aboard this last-ever Royal Brunei Airlines flight ex-Auckland, we were treated to an Islamic blessing upon the plane and passengers, which reinforced the suggestion that an Islamic airline might be a good choice for explosion-free travel. Later, the alcohol-free drinks trolley reinforced the flipside of that benefit.
And then sleep occurred, at 38,000ft. Apparently I slept through a meal, which is unheard of. I was awake in time to watch the sun finally catch us, somewhere over Indonesian islands, and in time to take possession of a delicious airline breakfast, much of which I ended up wearing. Not through catastrophic events mind you, but by a slow, clumsy accretionist process; here a little bit of scrambled egg (huevos revueltos!), there the juicy, pulpy detritus of the fruit bowl. Added to the mandarin, black-pepper sauce, and korma acquired over the course of the previous evening's activities, and it was a classy classy beardy tattooed man who hit tarmac in the Kingdom of Brunei, ready for some... wait, what happens in Brunei?
* = May actually have been disclosed and well-explained to unlistening ears
Saturday, February 26, 2011
The Thundering Paws of the Poodlepocalypse
Short Version:
Birds, beaches, baches. Running, not riding. Work in the north. Carnage in the south.
Long Version:
Tonight I watched a gull preparing its dinner. It flew from the sand to the sky, released its shellfishy beakload, and followed it sandward to inspect the outcome. Repeat until broken. Eventually, the bivalve gave up its fleshy self to the gull’s gullet, and the full-bellied bird was on the wing, just in time to avoid the thundering paws of the impending poodlepocalypse.
Onetangi beach is in a strange state; serious weather across consecutive weekends first deposited an estimated 2 million horse mussel shells on the mile-long stretch of golden sand; then an unprecedented deluge sent to splintered oblivion the iconic red-roofed bach* that had graced the cliff-face at the east end of the beach for longer than most people can remember. Turns out it had long been a haven for women in need of a haven, which puts its destruction – which is pretty entirely comprehensive - another notch higher on the regrettableness scale. Much debate about the culpability of the people who stripped bare the hillside above the bach in order to build themselves a rather unattractive modern behemoth. Not sure where current public sentiment sits – I’m retrofitting this piece quite some time after the fact, and quite some time after last visit to Waiheke, even though it feels like no more than a week or so since we first laid eyes on it upon our return to NZ, on a rainy, humid Tuesday morning in mid-December. We were mildly hungover; the AirNZ cabin crew response to our wedding anniversary disclosure was to ply us with Business Class wines throughout the sixteen-hour flight. We’d had a hard time saying goodbye to Canada, but the moose- and raccoon-head hats helped, and we’ve now been back in Auckland for a couple of months. Ironic, given we were fairly certain we’d farewelled the city pretty well permanently; the plan was Canada indefinitely, with any eventual return to NZ leading us to places other than the big city in the north.
Topping that list was Otautahi, which many people know as Christchurch.
I say “was” because the big city of the south was well and truly flattened this week by a near-surface magnitude 6.3 earthquake. Death toll sits at 146 as I write, with another 200+ missing, presumed dead. It’s been touted by the not-smiling-now Prime Minister as “NZ’s darkest day,” and has serious implications for the city, the region, and the country, although it’s hard to concentrate on the medium- and long-term ramifications when there are still people – or, as now seems near-certain, their remains - trapped under tons of crumbled masonry and steel.
Makes tales of our activities - basically we’ve been running coastal/bush/volcanic wasteland trails and working – seem ever-so-slightly frivolous, and best left for another day.
* = Bach: noun; Pronounced “Batch.”
The name given in New Zealand to small, often very modest holiday homes or beach houses. An iconic part of New Zealand history and culture. Sometimes defined as: "something you built yourself, on land you don't own, out of materials you borrowed or stole." Ma’s house on Waiheke started life as a bach.
Birds, beaches, baches. Running, not riding. Work in the north. Carnage in the south.
Long Version:
Tonight I watched a gull preparing its dinner. It flew from the sand to the sky, released its shellfishy beakload, and followed it sandward to inspect the outcome. Repeat until broken. Eventually, the bivalve gave up its fleshy self to the gull’s gullet, and the full-bellied bird was on the wing, just in time to avoid the thundering paws of the impending poodlepocalypse.
Onetangi beach is in a strange state; serious weather across consecutive weekends first deposited an estimated 2 million horse mussel shells on the mile-long stretch of golden sand; then an unprecedented deluge sent to splintered oblivion the iconic red-roofed bach* that had graced the cliff-face at the east end of the beach for longer than most people can remember. Turns out it had long been a haven for women in need of a haven, which puts its destruction – which is pretty entirely comprehensive - another notch higher on the regrettableness scale. Much debate about the culpability of the people who stripped bare the hillside above the bach in order to build themselves a rather unattractive modern behemoth. Not sure where current public sentiment sits – I’m retrofitting this piece quite some time after the fact, and quite some time after last visit to Waiheke, even though it feels like no more than a week or so since we first laid eyes on it upon our return to NZ, on a rainy, humid Tuesday morning in mid-December. We were mildly hungover; the AirNZ cabin crew response to our wedding anniversary disclosure was to ply us with Business Class wines throughout the sixteen-hour flight. We’d had a hard time saying goodbye to Canada, but the moose- and raccoon-head hats helped, and we’ve now been back in Auckland for a couple of months. Ironic, given we were fairly certain we’d farewelled the city pretty well permanently; the plan was Canada indefinitely, with any eventual return to NZ leading us to places other than the big city in the north.
Topping that list was Otautahi, which many people know as Christchurch.
I say “was” because the big city of the south was well and truly flattened this week by a near-surface magnitude 6.3 earthquake. Death toll sits at 146 as I write, with another 200+ missing, presumed dead. It’s been touted by the not-smiling-now Prime Minister as “NZ’s darkest day,” and has serious implications for the city, the region, and the country, although it’s hard to concentrate on the medium- and long-term ramifications when there are still people – or, as now seems near-certain, their remains - trapped under tons of crumbled masonry and steel.
Makes tales of our activities - basically we’ve been running coastal/bush/volcanic wasteland trails and working – seem ever-so-slightly frivolous, and best left for another day.
* = Bach: noun; Pronounced “Batch.”
The name given in New Zealand to small, often very modest holiday homes or beach houses. An iconic part of New Zealand history and culture. Sometimes defined as: "something you built yourself, on land you don't own, out of materials you borrowed or stole." Ma’s house on Waiheke started life as a bach.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)