REWIND: India-- Weddings and Rivers

Another installment of my whirlwind rewind summaries. I spent 3 weeks in India, and the experience was intense, wonderful, exhausting, colorful, overwhelming, and a host of other motley adjectives. This one looks to be a doozy. Such a doozy, in fact, that I´m splitting it in two.

Delhi:
*I stayed for my first few days in India with an old friend from primary school, Faith, who moved to Delhi permanently after falling in love with both the country and a co-worker in the course of an NGO service placement program. We spent these days getting a feel for the city, from Old Delhi, where the city's old Muslim still shows through, to the magnificent tomb complex of emperor Hanuman.

Looking out at Delhi from the main mosque

Scenes from Old Delhi



Humayun's tomb

Dehra Dun and the wedding

*Through the miracle of couchsurfing, I was invited to a traditional North Indian wedding in Dehra Dun, a small city northeast of Delhi. The bus ride there was an adventure in itself (more on Indian busses in a moment), but the wedding itself was, of course, the highlight. It is one of my great regrets that I was not able to participate in the first day of the wedding, which included henna painting ceremonies, song, and dance. But I was still able to complete my role as part of the groom´s party. At about 8 PM we gathered at a set point and our 50+ party snaked our way through the evening Dehra Dun streets. The whole party danced boisterously to the music of a hired brass band, illuminated by slanting light from 20 electric lamps whose trailing cords were plugged into batteries carried by yet others in the retinue.

The groom's procession-- going to get the bride

When we finally reached the bride´s house, we found a feast set up, with tables scattered about the lawn. The guests ate, while the bride and groom took interminable photos with seemingly every possible combination of relatives and friends. The rest of the night was a string of rituals-- the exchanging of the dowry; the signing of the marriage contract; and, at 4 am, after many cups of chai and super-sweet coffee, the actual marriage ceremony, which involved a Hindu priest and the ritual of tying the couple together (lightly, no S & M here) and having them walk around a sacred fire.

The happy couple

Circling the fire 7 times (circa 4 AM)

Haridwar and Rishikesh

*Dehra Dun is a veritable hop (well, on Indian terms) from the twin sacred towns of Haridwar and Rishikesh, pilgramage sites along the Ganges River, so with some difficulty I boarded a bus to Haridwar. I wanted to see the Ganga Aarti ceremony, a nightly ritual where thousands gather on the banks of the river to chant together and bathe in the river. Haridwar was everything I expected a sacred town to be-- a riot of color, cows wandering the roads, orange-robed holy men camped on the sidewalks, bindied children selling flowers to float down the river.

I took a chairlift to a mountaintop shrine outside of town, but it was so mobbed that I only had time to admire the smoggy view of the river winding into the distance before I had to go back down to find a spot at the Aarti. In the press of people along the riverbank I was sure I would be pickpocketed, or at least lose my shoes (which were left in mountains outside in a designated area), but I was lucky. In fact, even when I was pulled forward by a scam artist looking to make me pay for a fake ritual I was able to use that opportunity to find a much better position from which to view the ritual, which was haunting and beautiful.

A temple in Haridwar

Washing in the Ganges

The Ganga Aarti

*My experience in Rishikesh was similar, although the few days I spent there turned out to be very frustrating and overwhelming in some ways. It was my goal to cross into Himachal Pradesh province to Manali. I had been told in Dehra Dun that I had to go to Haridwar to do this. In Haridwar I was told I had to go to Rishikesh. And then when I got there I was told I had to go back to Haridwar. Nevertheless, I was able to explore the enchanting streets and even to celebrate the river goddess Ganga´s birthday with an impromptu dip in the river, clothes and all. Hindu bathers around me nudged each other, cheering, and laughing good-naturedly. Sure, I had to wait a week to wash those clothes and wear them again, but the memory is priceless.

The streets of Rishikesh

Rishikesh-Haridwar-Shimla-Manali

*What followed was one of the worst three day stretches of my entire trip. I was trying to get to Himachal Pradesh, and I had very little success. My nerves were already stretched thin from the exhausting ordeal that is traveling in India. India is (quite literally, I think) where the busses from the rest of the world come to die, and there is nary a shock absorber, functioning vent, or unbroken window among them. I spent 3 almost uninterrupted days on these overfilled busses, gritting my teeth over the bumps, elbow to elbow with 8 other people in a seat made for 4, with the dusty 100 degree wind dehydrating me. Ten hours later, exhausted and near tears, I would get to my next destination and be told that I could not get from there to Manali, despite the information I had been given at the chaotic, overwhelming bus stand that morning. I would try desperately to find a place to stay for the night and try again the next day, when I would again be given misinformation but the single English speaker at the bus stand, only to end up in another Wrong Place that night.

By the time I ended up in Shimla, a place I had never intended to go to, I was desperate-- and then the bus was late and the hotel owner chastised me for my tardiness and told me he had given away my room. I was lucky enough to meet Bala, an Indian-born Canadian, at this point. He shared his hotel room and his dinner with me and helped me to find a bus (semi-deluxe, even) to Manali the next night. Sure, the so-called semi deluxe bus had broken windows and lacked shock absorbers just like its brethren, but I had my own seat in which to drowse, and when I arrived in Manali I was finished with long, hot, torturous bus rides in India. Train rides, well, that was another story.

Really the only good part of Shimla-- sunset over the mountains

Ich bin ein Berliner

After a false start this morning (leaving my host's apartment a bit late + awful luck with tram and metro timing = missing my train to Hamburg) I am en route to Copenhagen. To celebrate my fairly cruddy day, I invested in some super-shiny on-train wireless internet.

Yes, I left Berlin today, albeit with a heavy heart. The city is truly vibrant, with a very different feel than the other Germany cities (or other central European cities, for that matter) that I visited. The look is different, of course, since so much of the city had to be rebuilt after the various wars/conflicts that it has hosted in the past century or so. But what really attracted me was the creativity that permeated so much of what I did. Some highlights:

*Art museum hopping-- from a great little place full to the brim with Picasso and Matisse to the Hamburger Hof (a redone train station), which features amazing modern art from Warhol to Nauman and also currently boasts a very interesting exhibition from three new artists who are competing for an annual prize

* Spending Wednesday night at the Wienerei, a cozy/funky cafe which hosts a weekly "wine night." You pay 1 euro entrance and a 1 euro deposit for your glass, then feel free to drink as much wine, champagne, juice, or whatnot as you like all night. There are lots of interesting people about (if you're lucky, lots of couchsurfers, too), a tasty buffet, and at the end you pay whatever you think is a fair amount

*Exploring the Turkish quarter, Kreuzberg, sometimes known as the third Turkish city outside Istanbul and Ankara. Went with my host to the Thursday market there, and the hawkers selling produce, material, gozleme, and doner made me nostalgic for July. Then met an interesting couchsurfer (writing her thesis on crime fiction in South Africa) for some amazing and quite-close-to-authentic tasting chai at a great cafe nearby-- which made me nostalgic for June

*Visiting the Memorial to Murdered Jews of Europe, an abstract sculpture made of hundreds of rock pillars that appear to be the same height but actually descend into a disorienting, sickening, sobering forest in the middle, was very affecting. The museum underneath it, detailing real people and real families obliterated in the genocide, made me both almost cry and almost vomit, neither of which I am moved to do easily. More about this in a later entry

*Celebrating! I didn't know this beforehand, but October 3 is Reunification Day, commemorating the reunification of East and West Germany. I was around for the festivities and managed to weasel my into a festival of food, drink, and great German bands. I did miss an art installation in which a troupe of puppeteers staged a reenactment of the fall of the Berlin wall using 10-meter high puppets, unfortunately.

*Exploring the remnants of East German culture, specifically the beautifully preserved murals on what's left of the wall and a fascinating sculpture gallery/studio complex/cafe cluster made from a building that had been left to urban blight during the 90s. What was once a filthy, graffiti-riddled hulk has become a beautiful, vibrant, graffiti-rich place for alternative artists to work and show the results. I wandered the warren of small home-made galleries constructed from pieces of scrap metal, storage containers, and old fences, and felt in awe of the art that can come from chaos.

*Visiting the weekly flea market in Mauer park, which was equally uplifting. It was a great flea market, in general, with lots of interesting crafts and intriguing junk, but what really caught my breath and my eye was the grassroots karaoke session which happens there every week in a small run-down ampitheater at one side of the park. At least 200 people gathered to drink beer and watch the proceedings. There was an ad hoc soundsystem wired through a couple of bicycles and a Mac laptop, and an Irish guy was MCing as a succession of Germans, Danes, and Norwegians worked their way through the likes of Elvis' "A Little Less Conversation," Janis Joplin's "Another Little Piece of My Heart," and the one and only "Sweet Transvestite." It was entirely unironic, despite the hipster clothing in evidence, just a lot of people with a cold, windy Sunday on their hands who weren't afraid to look silly and let loose.

Art, cafes, culture, markets, karaoke. And I'm told the rent is cheap and English teaching jobs are plentiful, if competitive. Just a few reasons I'll have to come back some day.

REWIND: Taiwan

In keeping with my new blogging feature, here is a quickie-rewind version of my adventures in Taiwan, a whirlwind recounting that will hopefully whet your appetite for more detailed posts in the future.

Taipei, part 1
*Joined by my university friend, Mel, I spent a few days exploring Taipei's old neighborhoods, many temples, and hotsprings. We spent a lovely evening in Danshui in the northern part of the city, a community resting on a riverbank where fishing boats ply the waters and a carnival-like atmosphere rules the open-air shops that line the shore.

*No trip to Taipei would be complete without a visit to the t night market, where a multitude of delicious food and cheap fashions await your discovery. My favorite part of the night market: very real looking rolls (the bread kind) made out of foam rubber, sold at virtually every stand. Neither Mel nor I could divine their purpose-- they all had silly faces piped onto them with brown ink, so they couldn't be for tricking your friends. Maybe, we thought, they're like pet rocks?

Worshipping at a temple in Taipei

A man fishing at Danshui
Some of the wonders at the night market
Sun Moon Lake
*Coincidentally, I have several friends who ended up in Taiwan this year, either teaching English or returning to their families to plot their next post-university move. So my next step moving south from Taipei was to meet up with Sam, a very old friend from middle school. He showed me around his neighborhood, Jhubei, and then we took a brief weekend trip to SunMoon Lake, one of the foremost tourist attractions in Taiwan. The lake featured an interesting aboriginal population, several beautiful lakeside temples, and a good deal of the misty-mountain scenery that one associates with Taiwan. On Sunday before parting ways we took a boatride along the lake. Very pleasant, indeed.

Beautiful masks hanging in one of the aboriginal villages lining the lake
A ferocious lion guards a temple

Lake scenery
Kaohsiung
*From Sun Moon lake I took the train south to visit another university friend, Maya, where she was teaching in Kaohsiung, an industrial city in the southwest. I got to go to school with her for a day to see her teach, and I also spent a lovely day roaming the city with a couchsurfer who took me to the top of the highest hill in the area for a beautiful view of the city and also introduced me to PigDog Cafe, a haven for the city's independent thinkers, half art-gallery half cafe. It was a day of great conversation and scenery. On the last day before I left Kaohsiung, Maya and I went to Lotus Lake, which is famous for its temple- and shrine-lined shores. There we stumbled on the birthday of a local god, and were treated to a live orchestral performance, after which we were made to eat many delicious bean-paste sweets and other goodies.

My new Kaohsiung-native friend, Jolie

Along the shores of Lotus Lake

Tainan
*While in Kaohsiung, I took a day trip to Tainan, a city filled with temples. I spent the day wandering among a variety of fascinating, beautiful temples, a day tempered only by the fact that my cell phone was stolen in the afternoon as I was preparing to return to Kaohsiung.



Taitung
*The highlight of my time in Taitung was the opportunity to attend an Aboriginal Taiwanese wedding. Through a series of convoluted connections originating with people I met on couch surfing, I was invited into the hills to a wedding celebrating of the Bunun people. A German couchsurfer picked me up on an old-fashioned Kawasaki motorbike (the first motorcycle I'd ever ridden) and sped me into the hills, where we feasted with a cast of hundreds, eventually retiring to the bride's family's house and then to an unlikely karaoke location. It was in this way that I found myself huddled, freezing in the chill of a Taiwanese spring night in a tiny house/shack that passed for a karaoke club, perched on the edge of a deep gorge that divides southern Taiwan in half

Wedding festivities

The East Coast-- Hualien and Taroko
*On the recommendation of friends, fellow travelers, and guidebooks I took an extremely scenic bus trip up the eastern coast of Taiwan, where I couchsurfed with a very friendly Taiwanese med student who came out to me, locked her keys in her sixth-floor apartment, and engaged in an extremely daring/foolhardy caper to get back in (which included swinging briefly off the roof of her building, much to my terror)-- all in one night. Then I taught her the word "badass" and we went to another of Taiwan's fabulous night markets.

*Taroko Gorge has got to be one of the most impressive and stunning places I've been. Short on time and independent transport, I joined a small tour for a day and soaked in the remarkable scenery, which I utterly failed to capture with my little point-and-shoot camera.

From the Hualien night market
Not doing Taroko Gorge any justice

Nan'ao
*Given my interest in aboriginal culture, Maya agreed to help me get in touch with one of her fellow Fulbrighters who was working in an aboriginal school in Nan'ao, a little southeast of Taipei. I stayed with Julia for a few days, and she was an amazing host. On the first night we took her scooter out to the beach and made a fire, eating dumplings and roasting tiny, sugary marshmallows among the dunes. The second day I wandered the town and visited the school where Julia taught. And on the last day we took her scooter into the countryside, where we climbed up a river valley to a beautiful waterfall and then road to a hotspring.

Language learning at the Nan'ao school

If you look really closely you can see Julia on top of the waterfall, on the left side
Taipei, again
*I returned to Taipei, and to Mel, for another few days at the end of my Taiwan sojourn. This time we visited several museums and went to the top of Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world. Nothing quite like that feeling, being higher than pretty much everybody. That soaring feeling gave me a good push, energy that would last me until I had landed in my next destination-- Osaka, Japan.

The tallest building in the world, modeled after a bamboo shoot

View from the top

Taking a Breather in Nelson

When you're a long-distance marathon traveler putting weekly/monthly notches on your belt and watching a succession of stranger's bedrooms slip by, any modicum of familiarity is welcome. Especially welcome are the comforts of family friends, an almost-home away from home.

Nearly 2 months after I'd left the US, I arrived in Nelson and heaved a sigh of relief. I'd been there once before with my family to see the G's, long-time friends. We'd done lots of sightseeing and marveled over the town's laid back nature. And now that I was back, the pressure was off. I didn't have any plans or feel I had to see anything and everything. I could borrow a bike to tool around town and peek into bookstores and bakeries, sleep late, read on the shady back deck facing the Mai Tai river, and plan my text move.

And so, for the next week, that's exactly what I did. I visited with the various members of the G family, in town from the US and other parts of New Zealand; went to the remnants of the Busker's Festival (which I'd first seen in Christchurch) when they came through one evening; explored the city. One day I walked down the river to swim at the swimming hole with 15 adolescent boys who dared each other to jump off higher and higher trees into the cool water. Another day I biked all over the flower-lined town, to art galleries, a little museum, and a highly recommended coffee shop painted bright colors. I discovered a calligraphy school run by a British man and his Japanese wife, who was from the same town in Japan that I would later visit with JJ. I marveled at the WOW fashion/classic car museum, which featured fantastical outfits and gorgeous cars. And, as a special treat to myself, I splurged on a day trip to Abel Tasman park, where I tried sea kayaking for the first time and loved it.

Nelson, lined with flowers


The Mai Tai swimming hole


The Nelson Japanese calligraphy school

From the WOW Classic Car and Wearable Fashion Museum-- some of my favorites:

I want this car one day


Did somebody say "Bingo"?

This is a flapper dress made entirely of cotton swabs! (Look closely!)
Abel Tasman

The morning rain made it seem like it would be a disappointing day, but in the end the weather cleared.

And we saw seals...

Peeked into hidden, eroded coves in the coast...



And kayak sailed back into port.



On the day before my departure I got up early and visited the Nelson Sunday market, a fantastic specimin featuring everything from homespun wool sweaters to artisan cheese to woven baskets to pet rocks. An hour browsing the merchandise, chatting with the salespeople, and having fresh coffee and crepes for breakfast, got me prepared to leave the comfortably relaxing weigh station that Nelson had been for me and ready to make the leap to the next stop-- all the way to the north island and my last weeks in New Zealand.

Snorkeling, soldier crabs, and soda

I rode into Airlie Beach, gateway to the Whitsunday Islands, in the pouring rain. This wasn't particularly a surprise, as it was the rainy season in Queensland, but I was feeling gloomy nonetheless: I was hoping to take a sailing trip around the Whitsundays that day, but that wouldn't be much fun in the rain.

I had arranged to be dropped off at a backpacker's: my couch surfing host, Bill, was working all day, but I could store my stuff at the backpacker's for the day if I paid a small fee. The owner also agreed to book me on the aforementioned sailing trip, as many of the tourist day trips picked up from his place. Unfortunately, my train was late because of the rain, and that gave me literally 10 minutes to drag my things down the long driveway, change, and pack a day bag before turning around and heading out into the downpour.

We left port on a repurposed military raft, and the first hour or so miserable. The surf was choppy because of the rain, I felt a bit nauseous, and I couldn't see anything through the deluge. At length things started to look up, just in time for us to land at Whitehaven beach, one of the most photographed beaches in the world. We took a bush walk (Australian for "hike") through dense rain forest to a beautiful look out, then walked across a long, ankle deep inlet back to the boat, shuffling our feet to avoid rousing stingrays.

Whitehaven Beach, still cloudy


We lunched on a beach near Whitehaven, with the whitest sand I've ever seen. According to our guides, the sand is 100% silica, which gives it its white color and also makes it great for polishing jewelery. I considered trying to get the scratches out of my glasses but thought better of it. By the end of lunch the sky was clearing a bit, which cheered us up, although by then we had begun a day-long battle with marsh flies, which are some kind of devil's spawn of a mosquito and horse fly.

Leaving my mark (temporarily) in 100% silica


We spent the afternoon snorkeling at Border Island. The Whitsundays are at the very southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef, and this was my first taste of the wonders of the reef. The fish were gorgeous, and the coral remarkable. It was larger and more diverse than anything I'd seen in previous snorkeling in Bermuda and Virgin Gorda. And it carpeted the entire bay, as far as the eye could see, in knobs and swirls, branches and intricate patterns front light green to dull red to purple.

The rafting company dropped me back at the backpacker's, where I met my couch surfing host, Bill. Bill was a bit of a nomad: he worked out on one of the resort islands five days a week, then came into Airlie Beach each weekend to do overnight security work, sleeping in a motel. He had generously offered to let me stay in his room, which was a lot less suspect than it sounds, given that he was gone most of the time.

Airlie Beach is basically a big backpacker party all the time. The town is essentially pure tourist creation, and there are an endless supply of travelers, mostly foreign and ages 18-28, coming throughat all times. This meant that most of Airlie's main drag consisted of huge, rather expensive backpacker bars filled with glitzy people drinking copiously. I walked down the street looking at bar after bar filled with drunk co-eds but enjoying the warm night air. At length I chanced upon a little restaurant at the end of the road with a cheap soup of the day and a man playing an acoustic guitar at the bar. So I had my dinner, drank a cider, and felt good about finding a spot that fit me in the midst of so much else.

In the morning, Bill and I went sightseeing. We stopped first at the weekly Airlie Beach market to browse the crafts and produce stalls. This is one of the best market locations anywhere, I think, abutting a sparkling blue sea lapping under coconut palms. I tried to have coconut milk for breakfast but it was sour in a way I wasn't used to, so I ate dim sum pork buns instead.

Best market location ever


The wonderful thing about couch surfing (well, one of the wonderful things) in a place like Airlie Beach is that your host can take your off the beaten track and away from the plastic key chains and $10 Coronas. Bill was kind enough to spend the afternoon with me, driving me to a beautiful lookout over Shute Harbor (where the boats from the Whitsundays dock) and a gorgeous, deserted beach, and taking me to see a huge, old tree and a woodland waterfall.

Shute Harbor


Maybe the oldest tree in Queensland. To give you an idea of scale, you can just see Bill leaning against the the bottom of the trunk


Along the way, he told me a little about his experience growing up as an Aborigine. He was raised by his grandparents (although he didn't mention it, I inferred that his parents were among the Stolen Generation, an entire generation of Aborigines who were taken away from their parents and made to assimilate to white Australian culture at boarding schools, often never seeing their families again.) His grandfather was left to tell him about his family's people, who lived originally inthe Blue Mountains area outside of Sydney. Bill had had some success getting his people, who had scattered through New South Wales, to come back together and apply to be recognized by Government and reclaim some of their land, although much of that effort had come to nothing due to infighting.

As we walked through dappled sunlight out to a swimming hole/waterfall in the woods, Bill told me the story of the "Dreaming of" an area near the place he grew up. In Aborigine parlance, during the Dreamtime (a sort of prehistory) the ancestors sang or dreamed various places into being, so all creation stories involve the dreaming of a place, tradition, or landmark. This one involved a wise eagle fighting against dark spirits.

Waterfall

Our last stop was the beach. The tide was out and the sand extended about a quarter mile to the water, which blended seamlessly with the cloudy sky. It was dotted with seaweed and mineature armies of soldier crabs, tiny blue marbles with legs that travel in masses of hundreds or thousands and whose simultaneous scurrying sounds exactly like soda when you've just opened it. The tide had carved curving lines into the shore, and I wandered for a time hunting soldier crabs and relishing the solitude of an empty beach.

Soldier crabs


I spent that night at a little Thai restaurant, then back at the same bar with a different acoustic guitarist, this one accompanied by a drummer with an electric drum set. Between songs they were heckled by couple of very drunk, enthusiastic Kiwis, who would whoop, shriek, and yell at the performers to "get out the little brown cigar, broo!" ("broo" is what very Kiwi Kiwis call one another.) It took me several songs worth of heckling to realize that the "little brown cigar" they were referring to was a didjeridoo, and when the duo finally heeded their demands and played an acoustic version of "I Come From the Land Down Under" with didjeridoo accompaniment I experienced a moment of elated, hilarious harmony. I told you Aussies love that song.

The beach