ABC

I don’t have much time to write. Travel plans are getting crazy. Tomorrow I fly to Lukla to trek to Gokyo, over the Cho La Pass and up to Everest Base Camp. I return to Kathmandu and fly to Bangkok on the 24^th for a week, then back to Kathmandu for two days, followed shortly by HOME.

Tracy and I trekked to Annapurna Base Camp (ABC) with two porters and our guide Milan. (See Mountain pictures below.) It took 7 days to get to base camp, walking about 4 hours per day. The sky was usually clear in the mornings until it warmed up and the clouds rolled in, revealing the mountains from time to time. The trekking itself was beautiful and hilly, but generally not too exciting. I like the routine of getting up every morning, moving my body, thinking, and watching as the scenery changes around me. We got to our guesthouse early most days and I read through three books. (For the Everest trek I bought World Without End, 1200 pages, so hopefully I won’t finish it too fast.) It was great to spend so much time with Tracy. We ate biscuits together in the afternoon and talked about baseball and travel. I got to know Tracy a lot better and our conversations improved with the trip.

Machhapuchhre Base Camp (MBC) was the stop before ABC. The canyon up to camp was only as wide as the river at the bottom and the views downstream were the best non-mountain views of the trip. Views from base camp were spectacular. Machhapuchhre (Fishtail) has never been summited and its triangular face rises more than 3 kilometers above the base camp to a double peak that resembles a fish’s tail from Pokhara. The other side looks a little different, as most mountains do. Milan asked us if the mountain still looked like Fishtail, to which we would say yep. But he would say Noooo…it looks like blahblah mountain in the Everest region (a mountain Tracy knew but I did not). He thought it was sooo funny. So it because a running joke between Tracy and me: Does it look like Fishtail today?

Annapurna Base Camp at 4100 meters was outrageous. The guesthouses are perched on a big moraine made by an old glacier much larger than the current one. Walk 50 meters and you’re looking over a crumbly cliff down to the current glacier. Every few minutes we heard rocks falling down the moraine and sometimes a big boom meant the glacier was shifting, but the amphitheatre reverberates sounds well so we rarely saw something move. It was exciting though!

Hium Chuli rises directly above the camp to 6441 meters. Annapurna South is nearby at 7219 meters. Annapurna 1, the tenth highest mountain in the world at 8091 meters rises almost 4 kilometers above the glacier below like a 13,000 foot cliff. And Fishtail is directly opposite Annapurna South. The scale doesn’t compute with what I know about mountains.

We stayed two nights at ABC. The first day we explored along the edge of the moraine and looked at the names of dozens of people who have died on the mountains. The second day we scrambled part way up Hium Chuli to get a better look at the mountains and the piles of rock on the glacier below. I could have stayed up there all day basking on a rock if the clouds hadn’t rolled in. It would have been nice to take a helicopter back when we had accomplished our mission, but, unfortunately, we didn’t. Took us 3 days to get back to Pokhara where we had our final meal. Tracy and I parted ways the next morning and I caught a bus back to Kathmandu.

Last night I met up with Blaze, the New Yorker that I will be trekking with for the next two weeks. We drank local liquor and ate at least 20 momos with his friends…a good first night excellent night. Today I ate donuts and drank espresso with a dreaded German guy. I bought tickets to Bangkok and got my trekking permits, generally wading through the masses to run errands. I met up with my cousin Nick for the first time I can remember away from Uncle Jim and Aunt Wendy’s house and finally met his girlfriend Olivia. I ate 20 more buff momos. I cannot think of a better way to spend $1.25.

Well, all is set for tomorrow. I’ll be back in a few weeks. Wish me luck!

First day

First amazing views. Annapurna on the left, Fishtail on the right

Third guesthouse. Proof that we REALLY went trekking

Tracy's typical afternoon look

The canyon leading up to MBC. Layers of the sea floor
tilted on their side...reminded me of the Lord of the Rings
for some reason.

View from MBC facing east towards Fishtail

Aaand facing west towards Annapurna South

Big 'ol rock perched on the moraine

Pretending to fall to my death

We made it!

Annapurna South

Fishtail in the clouds. It was gone when I got done peeing...

Tracy doing his business 

Moonset over Hium Chuli

Halfway up the hill on our second day at ABC

 

The Beast, Annapurna 1

And again 

South again

Left to right, our two porters, Tracy, me, Milan

Incredible expanding clouds on our last night, though
they don't make much of a picture 

Five Days in Dimik

Peace Corps volunteers Nick, Chad and Tia

I’m writing from Pokhara, back for the third time. Each stay gets shorter – this one is only 2 nights until Uncle Tracy gets here and we start trekking. The town has lost its novelty but the coffee is still good. The last five days I spent in Alex’s village, Dimik, four hours by bus southwest of Pokhara and the days melted away as fast as the days in Darjeeling and Delhi.

Briefly, Alex and I met this summer in Winthrop when I made her iced lattes at the bakery but didn’t talk until her sister told me she had left for the Peace Corps in Nepal. I found her on Facebook and we’ve kept each other company since, both being volunteers alone on the Indian subcontinent. The day before I was meant to go to her village, her Nepali sister said the house was too crowded and I couldn’t come for a few days. I could not mask the terror I felt at having to wait another WEEK in Pokhara so thankfully Alex convinced her sister to let me come.

Feeding time!

We had a relatively comfy bus ride to the nearest town, Galyang, ate some chow mien and walked with her sister back to their village. Most of the men work in the Middle East as drivers or in hotels on two year shifts with two month breaks so the village of Dimik is mostly women, children and toothless men. It’s interesting to me because nobody in Pamohi left the country to work and almost every student had a mother and father at home. Alex guessed that her family’s income was $6,000 per year, 2-5 times more than families in Pamohi made, but of course the children grow up without fathers…just an interesting contrast that gave Alex and me something else to talk about.

Baby Bisey

Another topic was the institution of marriage. In Dimik, all marriages are arranged. Alex’s sister’s husband saw her on the street in Galyang and “liked what he saw...” and that’s how it works. The married women move into their husbands’ houses but the husbands are gone for years at a time so often several wives live together with their children and mother-in-law. It’s difficult for me to wrap my head around, just as the mythical love-marriage is for Nepalis. I’m always surprised at how similar people in India and Nepal are to people at home – friendships between men and between women are essentially the same but marriage is simply a fundamentally different concept.

My second and fourth nights there we had massive thunder storms that lasted for hours, poured rain and hail the size of marbles and cracked lightening like flashbulbs in a stadium. It was an impressive show and a preview of what monsoon season is like. Luckily I was inside watching movies. It did, however, send all the silver dollar-sized jungle spiders scurrying inside. The outhouse had a resident makura that we named Richard “Ricardo” Nixon. I needed to know where he was every time I used the toilet so when nature called Alex and I would say we were checking on Ricardo. Ricardo was fine – he stayed on the wall – but his friends and kin made life exciting when they appeared unexpectedly. When one crawled next to me while we were eating, Alex thought my quick reaction and the aaahhhhHHHHHH noise I made meant I had either shit my pants or was about to vomit. I smacked the spider mostly dead and Alex’s sister’s husband scooped up the still wriggling body in his hand and threw it into the storm.

Kin of Richard Nixon, aka Ricardo

Every morning we got up at 7 for tea, then spent a relaxing few hours talking and waiting for breakfast. No one really spoke English so I was totally reliant on Alex to translate for me. People knew she spoke Nepali and thus assumed I did as well so many times I looked over helplessly at Alex and said “They’re talking to me!” The day began after breakfast. One day we went to a training for new mothers at the health center. The next day Alex and I hiked up to a peaceful hilltop mandir and she explained the boundaries of her district and where she went for meetings. The next day we walked to another village with Alex’s sister. A few hours later while we were waiting for her, I entertained the village kids with Inception noises. That night Alex’s sister’s husband came home for the first time in two years though you wouldn’t know it from the subdued reception he got. The day after that we spent building castles in the river sand. We didn’t do a ton because everything is spread out up or down a hill but the days always felt productive.

I learned about the Peace Corps experience in Nepal. I got some perspective on my experience with village life and made friends with a wonderful family, and I got a friendly face to talk with hours a day.

The beautiful home where I lived for 5 days

 p.s. For those concerned about the health and whereabouts of Dave, he Skyped me from work in London. He's fine. We must have just missed each other walking about town. We're DEFINITELY coming back here.

Part II

 Dave and Laura are gone, maybe the best week-long friends I’ve ever had. Laura headed off to do the Annapurna Circuit and I frankly don’t know what happened to Dave, but I’ll get to that in a sec. In the meantime, Peace Corps Nepal and my friend Alex rolled into town and I now have 18 Americans my age to party and hang out with. Seeing Alex was great because even though we’ve never really met, we’ve looked after each other over the past 6 months. Not only was she the first familiar face I’ve seen in five months, but we can just sit around and talk about Winthrop and college and crazy shit that people do in this part of the world, and generally things I haven’t talked about since I left home. So these are my new night-time friends (they have PC training for 10-12 hours each day) and I have to entertain myself sunnyside. So that’s how I came to publish two blogs in a day.

Little boy and his pink sheep

So like I said, Dave and I shortened our trek and were supposed to start two days later. For every occasion we meet outside the Once Upon a Time restaurant in the middle of town and Dave was uncharacteristically late…he was sick again, but he wanted going to power through it. We had paid $45 each for these trekking permits and he wanted to get out of town so we hired a taxi that dropped us off at the trailhead for the trek to Poon Hill. Almost as soon as we started though Dave was clearly in pain and we only walk about twenty minutes before he decided he couldn’t do it. We drank a cup of tea and Dave felt like shit on the whole. He gave me some meds and I started up the trail by myself. It’s funny how this Pokhara cocoon of friendly people to be with all day has softened me a little to being on my own. It went away quickly but I had this specific lonely feeling that I haven’t felt since I read The Road in my first few weeks in Pamohi.

Waterfall pool that I put in the sketchbook. 

As trekking often goes, the walking part was not that interesting. I gained 1080 meters between Naya Pul and Ulleri. It was hard, but not as bad as I imagined. The guesthouses didn’t have any singles and the guy who ran the place I stayed simply told this Japanese guy that I would be sleeping with him. He understandably wasn’t so keen on his lack of options but he turned out to be a nice guy who had been traveling the world for 2 years. That night I didn’t have much to do so I went to bed at 6:30 and had a glorious 11-hour sleep. The next day I went up another 800 meters to Upper Gorepani but I got to the guesthouse at 11:30 even with a break to sketch a beautiful little waterfall. I was only at 2800 meters, not where I would expect to get altitude sickness but my lungs weren’t feeling quite right when I dropped my stuff in the room so I just took a nap in all my sweaty clothes! Unfortunately I didn’t bring a book so I wrote everything I could think of in my journal, wandered around a little, meditated, ate dinner and chit chatted with some nice Australian people who were finishing a 16 day trek around the Annapurna Circuit. Then I slept.

That's me!

The climb to Poon Hill started 5 and I saw the bottoms of two 8000 meter peaks. I took the requisite picture in front of the sign, and actually some other nice pictures too. I ate my breakfast with the Aussies and as soon as I was finished their guide told me I needed to leave my chair, so I took that as my cue to leave. I chugged down the mountain and finished a total decent of 2200 meters in about five hours. I forgot to cut my famously long toenails so they were a little sore but even with my new Nepali hiking boots I got no blisters. The roof of the local return bus to Pokhara seemed to shift back and forth independently of the frame, like the screws were loose and the whole thing might collapse, but it was fine and I warmly re-embraced the giant iced-lemonade and free internet that makes Pokhara great. It is the best feeling to come back to a happy, safe place with friendly people after doing something emotionally or physically draining. That was probably the hardest part of traveling in India - I might get off a sleepless night bus at 6 AM to find that my only comforts were a railway station bench and a pay-for-use toilet. Needless to say, it makes me appreciate HOME, wherever it may be. I think Dave and I decided that we could just live here…he’d rent his house and do some advertizing work on the side to live like a King on $20 a day. He didn’t know if his super-FINE girlfriend would go for that though.

Fishtail

Speaking of Dave, I was supposed to call him up when I got back but his phone was off. I knew he moved from his first guesthouse so I asked where to and his next guesthouse said he had gone to a doctor and moved out the night before to stay with a friend. The office where he bought his plane ticket back to Kathmandu said he’s never been there so I couldn’t meet him at the airport and he wasn’t at any of the usual spots. My detective work failed and I have no idea what happened to him. If you read this Dave, I’ll meet you back here in a year. 

Easy days in Pokhara

 I’ve been in Pokhara now for 10 days. I’ve been having enough fun that I’ve put this off for almost two weeks. Sorry.

Most people who come to Nepal funnel through Pokhara because it’s beautiful - on a lake in the shadow of 7000 meter mountains - and because it is one of only a few places from which to start a trek in Nepal. As a result Lakeside Pokhara is like the Disneyland of the Indian subcontinent…I would guess that nowhere in India approaches this concentration of tourists. There are dozens of restaurants, cafés with real coffee, outdoor shops, bars and gift shops. Everyone in this part of town speaks English but the salesmen are not rabid like they were in the parts of India where I was, so one can actually enjoy a walk down the street. It’s outrageously expensive, relatively, but still cheap compared to any such western resort town. On the whole it is glorious and the days just melt away.

My first day I though, Jeez, how do people make friends here? It seemed like everybody coupled up and kept to themselves. But my second day on the way back from my adventure to find the camera repair shop in the city, some other tourists joined me as I was eating momos by myself and I haven’t looked back since. Sometimes people who are overeager to make friends with me sketch me out, not the type of people I want to spend my time with, but these guys were great. They were all single travelers and they just rolled around collecting other single travelers like a human snowball. We congregated at the Busy Bee Café every night to drink two-for-one happy hour cocktails and listen to the cover band. There was an Australian woman and a Pilipino man who were sorta Mom and Dad of the group, plus a Dutch girl, an Austrian dude, a couple of British guys…I’m blown away by how friendly everyone is here. Travelers can get quite competitive especially when it comes to which routes you have trekked but I have encountered none of this.

Irish Laura and Scottish Dave. Best people to pass a day with.

 These guys have all gone their separate ways but through them I met Laura and Dave, my new best friends. Laura is Irish but lives in London and Dave is Scottish but also lives in London and I’ve done most everything with them the last 5 days...we more or less eat breakfast, lunch and dinner together. They are 30 and 32 so I’m the baby of the group but they treat me as a peer and I like them all the more for it. I don’t speak with a British accent yet but I’ve adopted all other British manner of speech, something I hated when my sister came home from England. Laura and I spent a morning watching the sunrise over the huge Fish Tail mountain, then climbed up to the World Peace Pagoda overlooking the lake in the afternoon. Dave and I rented a boat and paddled around the lake for two hours and had a great time talking about all kinds of stuff. Dave said at least 10 times that he was Definitely coming back here. This place is so comfortably and cheap that I may join him. The three of us also went paragliding a few days ago...running off a cliff until the wind lifts your feet off the ground is just about the coolest thing I’ve ever done, probably the closest thing you get to being a bird.

That's what my face looked like for 30 minutes.

 Dave and I were meant to go for a four-day trek two days ago but he got a stomach bug and today is a national transportation Bundt so no busses or taxis are running. We decided to shorten the trek by a day to see the famous sunrise from Poon Hill so Dave can get back and catch his flight to Kathmandu. Laura’s trying to get in gear to trek the Annapurna Circuit so we’re all sorta sitting around tapping our toes. 

On the road

My previous plan had been to travel from Agra to Jaipur, then Pushkar, Udaipur, Jodhpur, and Jaisalmer, hitting all the tourist destinations in Rajasthan. But I wasn’t too thrilled about just seeing all this beautiful stuff. I saw Varanasi, I saw forts and monuments in Delhi. I saw the Taj Mahal and the Agra fort, respectively perhaps the most beautiful building in the world and the former capital of the Mughal Empire. This is some of the best that India has to offer but I have no context for it’s significance and most of it doesn’t interest me.

So when I met Viktor from Sweden, about my age, at my guesthouse in Agra, I was very interested to hear what he had to say about the 10 day vipassana meditation course he did. I got a little interested in this type of Buddhist meditation when I was living in Salem, though I never got around to actually sitting down to meditate for more than a few times. Viktor seemed down to earth, I trusted his recommendation I didn’t just want to keep seeing stuff, so I signed up for a course in Jodhpur starting on March 14. He was pleased that he convinced me and he gave me his email address so I could tell him about my experience.

I had two days to get my ass to Jodhpur so I spent a night at a couchsurfer’s bachelor pad with five Polish kids and a German woman outside of Jaipur. The guys who owned the house cooked really good food and arranged a bus ticket to Jodhpur for me. The bus left at 11:30 pm so I met one of the guys from the house, put my stuff on the bus, and gave him 600 rupees to buy me the ticket. I waited and waited and finally the bus engine started but I didn’t have a ticket. I pleaded with the bus driver to wait two minutes and ran around aimlessly looking for this guy. All of my stuff was still on the bus though so I was pretty nervous that the bus would leave with all of my possessions. Two guys were trying to help me and though I trusted this guy not to run off with my money, I had to tell them that I didn’t have his phone number and I didn’t know where he was buying the tickets. FINALLY a different guy showed up with a tiny receipt sized piece of paper that was my ticket. Sleeping on a bus is not much fun but I got to Jodhpur so I was happy.

After seeing the fort in Jodhpur (my favorite so far) I hired an auto rickshaw to take me to this meditation center. The driver looked like he was 16. The place was quite a ways out of town and I think this kid though I was taking him out to the desert to kill him. After asking directions several times we finally found the center but all the signs were in Hindi and no one there spoke English so I had to rely on my driver to translate. I knew he wanted to get rid of me so I just had to pray that it was right place. They did give me a room with a bathroom no questions asked but it wasn’t until I saw white people speaking English that I could breathe a little easier knowing that the course wouldn’t all be in Hindi.

It was a ten day meditation course. There were 11 of us. The rules were no talking for nine days, no killing, no lying, no stealing, no sexual activity and no intoxicants. We meditated from 4:30 am until 6:30, ate breakfast, rested, meditated from 8 until 11, ate, rested, meditated from 1 until 5, ate, rested, meditated from 6 until 7, then attended discourse where we watched recordings of the man who started this organization talk about meditation and the Buddha (this was my favorite part of the day), after which we meditated from 8:30 to 9 and went to bed. It came out to about 10 hours of meditation per day.

This course fulfilled three important purposes for me. First, I got a chance to stop traveling. No one wanted anything from me and the people around me were self-selected so I trusted them. I was doing something that I actually wanted to be doing. Second, I learned how to meditate and I got some outside motivation to do it. It was intense but it was a really interesting experience. Also, when my mind wandered I thought about all sorts of useful and totally irrelevant things. I had nothing but my own mind to entertain myself (no reading or writing materials allowed) and I kind of got to see the inner workings of my brain. Third, I got to learn about the Buddha (not Buddhism), something I’m been interested in for a little while. The man on the discourse recordings was highly intelligent and well-spoken and told stories and gave simple metaphors to help us better understand him , though after 9 days of hearing his voice 99% of the time, he got a little tiring. I could say a lot more, but I’ll keep it to this.

I would recommend anyone who has 10 days free (say, after school or between jobs) consider doing this. It’s donation based so you can give as much or as little as you want. There’s a center in Onalaska halfway between Seattle and Portland. The website is called dhamma.org.

On the last day a Norwegian and an English woman and I got a ride to the city from a nice man who sat next to me during meditation. I got pretty close with these two women (the only other foreigners) for only talking with them about 12 hours and we all gave hugs when we parted ways. I caught a bus to Jaisalmer and am currently staying at a really nice hotel inside the Jaisalmer fort for less than $4 per night. I went on an overnight camel safari and found out that riding camels is a cool thing to do but in practice it’s pretty uncomfortable. I went with four nice Korean people. It was a lazy day.

We rode for about an hour and a half, then hung out for 4 or 5 hours under a tree, eating lunch and relaxing. We got back on the camels and rode a little further to our campsite. We ate dinner and slept under the stars on simple mattresses, but at that point I started getting sick and it continued unrelenting through the night. The one night I didn’t have a toilet I had to get up perhaps 6 times to dig a whole in the sand and squat down. I had a fever, I was dizzy, dehydrated and I ran out of toilet paper, so it was a long night. I spent all yesterday recovering in my room, drinking water and watching Ken Burns’ Baseball. The people at the hotel are really nice to me and keep checking in on me. I feel much better this morning.

Tonight I catch an overnight bus to Japiur, then a flight to Nepal. I stay in Kathmandu for 2 nights, then head to Pokhara. I’ll write more then. 

Tomorrow I leave for Agra to see the Taj Mahal. I will be there two nights, then on to Jaipur. My friend Bhaswati was a great host, making me food, introducing me to her really smart friends (they're all doing their masters of Indian economic development), tour guiding, etc. It's been four great days and I could stay longer. I've only met her now three times but we click very well, like old friends. The worst part of traveling alone is not having anyone to trust but I trust her implicitly so I can relax a little. I'm not so sure I like traveling alone. Maybe I'll like it more next week. 

Jump from the nest

Well, I’m writing from the train heading to Delhi. I spent one Long Day in Varanasi and saw much of what it has to offer. First let me back up though.

The last two days at Parijat were magical. On Saturday, the last day of school, classes 6, 8, 9, and 10 each gave me gamusas and gifts (class 7 gave me theirs a few days earlier). I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. My favorite gift came, as I was hoping, from my favorite class 9. It was a small, simple, solid brass goblet. Each class had collected money amongst themselves to buy these and Aimoni told me it was the first time they had ever done this for a volunteer. I didn’t know what to say. Some of the gifts I wanted to keep but could not take with me, so I shipped a package home. The ones I didn’t want, though given no less sincerely, I took with me and gave to the nice family that ran the guesthouse where I stayed in Varanasi.

When the final afternoon prayers had finished, I gave final hi-fives to all the kids as they left school and distributed the last of the pictures. Hard to believe that even if I come back, I will never see most of those kids again. That evening Sankar organized a ceremony with the hostel students. Sankar said good things about me, Swarnamika and Bijyunti read Assamese poems and several other students sang songs. Rasan spent most of his time disrupting the event. The hostel students presented me with a big beautiful journal, a pen, and a shoulder bag like everyone wears. Aimoni gave me a Parijat-made Karbi gamusa, bright orange with green embroidery. Then we cranked up the stereo and danced to Assamese music and Gangnam Style. I was the chosen partner of Bibha and she wouldn’t let me take her off my shoulders, which was fine with me. When dancing was done Paul and the hostel students served us chicken and I went to be happy though uncomfortably full.

The next day I ate my final breakfast and drank my last cup of coffee at Parijat. I chatted with the new volunteers from Germany – they seem like great people and I would have liked to work with them. They will take over teaching computers. When it was time to go, I gave everybody a hug. Reboti, the weaver who hardly looked at me for the first 6 weeks but with whom I had gotten very close without a common language. Dulumoni and Bibha, mother and daughter, crying together. Despite being two years younger than I, Dulumoni is the older sister I’m always searching for and her daughter is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. Sankar, my roommate and best friend at Parijat. Aimoni, the best thing that ever happened to Uttam. And all the wonderful girls and boys in the hostel. I miss you guys. You’re making traveling hard because now I have two families to miss. Uttam and his brother Prasanta put me on the train, said their goodbyes and I pulled away.

The train ride to Varanasi was 28 hours. I spent most of my time watching movies or sleeping. I met some nice people who helped me arrange an affordable taxi, which (unsurprisingly) took me to the wrong end of town where I met a man names Lakshmi who got me an affordable room and showed me where to eat and get good lassi. He offered to show me around the next day and since I didn’t know much about Varanasi and I only had one day to explore, I agreed. I understood it was a business arrangement – he made commission off getting me a room and he expected payment for showing me good stuff. But the room was fine and I wanted to see Varanasi.

Next morning I woke up at 5:30 and he arranged a boat to show us the ghats along the Ganges. It was beautiful to see these giant colorful buildings towering over the stone steps in golden sunlight. It is THE thing to do in Varanasi but of course people do it for a reason. We ate breakfast and agreed to meet back around 10 to see some of the city. At that point he asked for 200 rupees so he could recharge his phone. I balked but didn’t want to argue and I figured it would come out of the tip at the end. I rested. At ten we walked to the University which was clear and cool and not too crowded. We went to the museum and walked around a big temple. We went to a silk shop where he was irritated that I didn’t want to buy anything (thus no commission) although I told him before I went that I already had too much stuff. We agreed to meet back in a few hours so I went and wrote in my journal, read my book and people watched at Assi ghat. In my whole time in Guwahati I only saw one foreigner walking the streets, so the foreigners were fascinating to me. At this point I didn’t want to spend much more time with Lakshmi but he was taking me to see a show on the ghats which I wanted to see, so I met him at 6 and walked through the ghats full of naked babas and smoke of every flavor. The show had lots of fire and Hinduism that I could not relate to but it was a spectacle and I’m glad I went. On the way back we walked through the tiny alleyways of Varanasi that I never would have seen without someone to show me.

When we got back it was time to leave. Lakshmi wanted 500 rupees (in addition to the 200 earlier). I was going to give him 200-300, so 400 seemed like a compromise. This is where being a Westerner in India gets tricky. I fully understand the value of dollar but the rupee I am only just learning. Would I have paid more than $14 (700 rupees) for such a tour at home? Of course. Is $2 (the difference between 600 and 700 rupees) enough to worry about? No. Does it make me a true American if I can afford it but don’t want to pay? I don’t know. But I wouldn’t pay him what I would at home, maybe $50, almost four times more than he asked. That leads to other problems.

I had this conversation with Tets, our Japanese friend that came to visit a few weeks ago. He has traveled the world for several years now and he seemed wise to me. His advice was to just be fair and don’t be arrogant. Of course everything in India is negotiable, we didn’t agree on a price beforehand, 600 seemed fair to me given what I do know about the value of the rupee, and I didn’t want to be the American who pays whatever is asked because I feel guilty and I don’t want an argument. So when we were in the taxi going to the train station I gave him 400.

WOOOF he was pissed. Once he figured that I wouldn’t give him what he wanted, he told me that he would f--- other people because of me, he would f--- somebody’s mother because of me, to f--- off myself. He didn’t have much leverage – how couldn’t refuse me services – so he told the driver in Hindi to charge me double. I paid 150 instead of the 200 he wanted and walked into the train station. It’s tough to know what to do. It’s pretty unlikely that I ripped off someone who does this for a living. I just wonder why he was SO angry…I think either he’s just crazy or he desperately needed the money for ganja. Will I worry about the 100 rupees next time? Maybe not. I dunno. I DID learn that I don’t want to pay another guide in India. Needless to say it was a good day and I’m glad to be out of Varanasi.  

One day later, I’m now relaxing in Bhaswati’s fourth story studio apartment in Delhi having enjoyed morning chai and breakfast. It’s good to see a friendly face.