Please remain dead and keep your limbs inside the bonfire at all times.

“How do I regard you? I regard you as one of those men who would stand and smile at their torturer while he cut their entrails out.”

-Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

 Please remain dead and keep your limbs inside the bonfire at all times. 

“You travel alone?”

Yes.

“Some advice. My country full of thieves. These men you talk to, they thieves. Never travel by self here.”

This isn’t the sort of thing you want to hear at a bus stop in The Middle of Nowhere, India at one in the morning. The previous night the threat was more overt.

“No donation and things get very bad for you here,” I was told over and over again at Varanasi’s Manikarnika Ghat by a druggie turned forced upon me tour guide explaining that if I didn’t donate for ‘wood’, supposedly for cremations for the poor, then maybe I’d end up cremated myself. Grabbing my arm, pulling, becoming increasingly hostile, then outright yelling; call me crazy but I’m not feeling all that charitable.

I was subject to the same scam earlier in the day at a different cremation ghat. Ten rupees--twenty cents—would likely be enough to satisfy these first-I-play-friendly-but-soon-turn-psycho extortionists. Still, I don’t give. Instead I smile, shrug, and slowly walk away. I consume 3,000 calories a day, the people threatening me less than half that. Do your worst. Nothing is more ridiculous, more foolish, than the ego of the big-bodied, but in India when your shrug is followed by a shove it’s often enough to shake the fleas off. It sure beats victimization. Even if it is only twenty cents.

Unless you’re on a packaged tour or holing yourself up in an ashram or yoga retreat India will prove a trying country to exist in. The rickshaw drivers, trinket sellers (barbers, shoe repairers, ad naseam) and beggars supply unceasing harassment. In Agra a rickshaw driver followed me the entire five kilometer walk from a railway station to the Taj Mahal, pestering for a fare right up until I walked into a guesthouse. A near hour of increasingly whiny solicitation. I laughed. It’s all I can do. Let these people get to you and you’d best not visit the country. Many travelers I met in Nepal imported India horror stories, always concluding with, “We didn’t even last a week.” How long were you planning? “Thirty days.” A subconscious self-loathing—yes, Dr. Freud, it likely relates to a repressed Oedipus complex—has swindled me into planning on sixty.

Despite the difficulty India makes for fantastic travel. The religious ceremonies are am-I-still-on-planet-Earth? bizarre, every day I’m eating food I’ve never even heard of, let alone put anywhere near my mouth (my intestines are threatening to strike), and the faces—whether they’re filthy street children or the Varanasi elderly withering away by the cremation ghats to die—are infinitely fascinating. The sights, like Agra Fort, the Taj Mahal and Meherangarh Fort, are even larger and more splendid than the best photographers have been able to depict, in Agra you have the choice of being pulled in a cart by horse or camel, in Allahabad a bull might charge at you as it makes its way down the street (the roads, even in dense urban areas, are filled with cows and cow patties, not to mention plenty of human feces), and have you ever seen a charred human leg roll out of a bonfire as children chant around it?

How about some nonsensical oxymorons? India is richly impoverished, it’s lovingly hated, it’s frustratingly beautiful. Of course, the first few days it only frustrates.

No, I’m not going to give you a donation for opium wood. Yes, I agree, this will subject me to bad karma. Why should I care? I’ve found the Hindu loophole, to bathe in the Ganges is to be absolved of sin, sweep my ashes into the river in Varanasi (also known as Benares, the City of Light founded by none other than Shiva, the world’s holiest Hindu site) and I attain instant moksha or enlightenment. Curse me, grab, pull, yell, please keep your spittle below my neck, violence will only be returned in kind for I’m an American, an imperial power of the Caucasoid variety and I’ve come to civilize you as my British counterparts did until 1947. Guns, grenades, Abrams tanks, I’ll spare no expense, something you have so little of.

That, or I just want to look at a temple, a fort, and I’ll be on my way. Worry and fret over the former as I carry out the latter. One has to talk a big game in the Land of Thieves and no, not a single one goes by the name of Aladdin.

Keep drifting.

[No Taj pics, Indian internet works as well as its social security/welfare systems, a lame joke that's terribly inappropriate and not the least bit funny when you're here.]

The Mowgli population control plan.

"You know, just going to do a bit of the Mowgli thing for a day or two, then head down to India for a month and play in some forts. It'll be brilliant."

-A Londoner explaining her travel plans; after a six hour bus ride and seventy-two more 'brilliants' I couldn't help but become infatuated.

The Mowgli population control plan.

If given the option, consider remaining content observing rather than sitting on top of an elephant as it saunters through the jungle. At a distance you don't realize the animal is being guided by its trainer with metal pole whacks to the skull, you're not close enough to hear and breathe in the beast's flagellations followed by a solid minute of falling feces, and your testicles won't be compressed into the seat's wooden post each time the elephant takes one of its long, awkward steps. It isn't so much an adventure straight out of the Jungle Book as it is a castration.

This blog, it's now being written in a much higher, squeakier pitch. Think Pee-Wee Herman after a date with a helium balloon.

Nepal's Chitwan National Park can only be entered with not one but at least two guides. "In case animal get one other can get tourist back," I'm told. Rhino charges are common, tiger sightings rare, but it's the sloth bear that brings the most fear. Guides are eager to show their scars, some don't need to life a pant leg, they simply point to their faces. Before entering I had to leave a telephone contact number so "we explain to family if bad happen." I've never seen such care taken since I've been in the country.

In the canoe, on the way into the park, a crocodile is spotted. It's also the same time I notice a strong smell of alcohol coming from the English-speaking guide. A half hour into our day long walk he vomits. He doesn't stop until unleashing over a half gallon of liquid in several short bursts spaced a couple minutes apart by gagging bouts. Then it's time for a nap. It's the first of many.

Between naps we walk little and stop a lot. We listen. We bend down, grab dirt, sniff it, sift it through our fingers, then sniff again. His English starts mumbled and ends gargled. I optimistically interpret that we're on the trail of the One-Horned Indian Rhinoceros. More naps, more dirt sniffing, eight hours later we're still on its trail. At least, that's what I'm probably being told.

As we find our way back to the entrance I recount having seen a tiger footprint, lots of large, frightening insects, the ass of a deer in flight, and a couple of monkeys. No rhino. Wait, there's a lot of Nepali gibberish being exchanged between my guides and the soldier with a machine gun guarding the entrance. We run downstream a half kilometer to join a few other Caucasoids with guide entourages. A rhinoceros is bathing in the river, it's blowing bubbles out of both ends. After twenty minutes it clambers out of the water. I'm amazed at my severe underestimation of the animal's size, it's prehistoric, more armor than a Panzer Tank, its ears wiggle stupidly. When you're that powerful there's no need to ever outsmart anything.

Upon returning to the guesthouse the manager inquires about my guide's services. "You see rhino, yeah? My brother good guide, eh?"

"Yes," I agree. "Incredible."

Keep drifting.

My main man Mowgli.

rhino butt

tiger track

It’s not so much altitude sickness as a breathless I-haven’t-been-able-to-feel-my-face-for-so-long-that-I’m-unsure-if-I-still-have-one delirium.

“I said, “Let there be light,” and so there was. And I said, “Let there be earth,” and so it is under your feet. And I said, “Let glorious mountains rise from the Earth’s crust,” and so here they are before you. You’re welcome.”

-My short speech to recent Finnish and Hollander acquaintances upon reaching the day’s destination, we were surrounded by Himalayan peaks. The sarcasm/humor was lost in translation or delivery, silence and askance looks pervaded. They avoided me the rest of the day. Perhaps it was due to my ‘mountain musk’ acquired after a week without bathing. Either way, their loss (I said to myself while crying in the comfort of my sleeping bag).

It’s not so much altitude sickness as a breathless I-haven’t-been-able-to-feel-my-face-for-so-long-that-I’m-unsure-if-I-still-have-one delirium. 

Sorry Mom. You still can’t collect on that travel life insurance policy. Of course, the policy doesn’t cover mountaineering accidents which, undoubtedly, the company would try group Himalaya hiking into and you’d end up settling out of court for a mere $35,000 instead of the $100,000 owed to spare an eighteen month legal battle—an emotional black hole—and such a sum is hardly worth a son. Even the unkempt derelict one of the three who’s current life motto is ‘Why shower, shave, or tweeze my nostril hair when the grime and defiant follicles will be back tomorrow anyway?’

I spent the last 25 days walking. A lot. Up or down, never straight. In tennis shoes that had been super-glued back together twice before beginning and three times during. With a backpack that’s zippers have given way to a tape-and-shoelace system to tighten and close. Filled with second-hand cold weather gear picked up in Nepal using the stratagem: ‘The more filth and tears the better the buyer’s bargaining position.’ About ten days in, at 17,800 feet, my pack was empty. I was wearing its contents. The sleeping bag was used as a scarf.*

I wish I could say the view was amazing, that the mountains mesmerized, that I played witness to angels dancing atop some of the world’s tallest peaks. All I saw was white. Clouds and snow, but for a sign telling me I reached my target I could have been anywhere—a white-walled room of an asylum or in a flurry of copy paper after an accident at Office Depot. Until then the scenery was incredible, afterwards the same. Nepal’s natural diversity is stunning; days were spent in lush valleys, rain forests, cloud forests, pine forests, barren high-altitude terrain, and even (very) high desert.

Ten days later, twenty days in, the clouds parted. I was surrounded by peaks, some elevated above sea-level by over 26,000 feet. A 360 degree panorama of jagged white pinnacles—who knew snow could be so violent? With the sun’s rise the mountains glow, grow gilded. It’s the moment the cacophony of the universe harmonizes in my chest cavity.

I would have kept walking but after 200-plus miles I ran out of trail. If I make it back before Christmas new shoes are first on the wish list.

Keep drifting.

*This is backpacker bragging, the I-roughed-it-more-than-thou boast, something I have no tolerance for receiving but am always eager to dispense. That’s me, always giving, a Saint Nicholas of the modern age.

A few days were spent hiking with other travelers, I prefer the company of the locals--they make me laugh more.

It took 25 days but I finally deduced why my feet were so cold.

My yak stare down; one glance and the 700-pound beasts parted to allow me passage.