REWIND: India, 2--Mountains and tombs

A summary of my Indian odyssey, part 2:

Manali
Exhausted from 4 days of Indian Bus Hell, I settled gratefully into Appleview Manali, a Ladakhi guesthouse recommended to me by a friend from university. The hostel was set outside the modern town, in a lovely apple orchard owned by members of outlying villagers. I slept copiously, ate delicious homemade food cooked by the married couple who owned the guesthouse, and admired the view of the Himalayan foothills from all four corners of the guesthouse´s flat-topped roof. Occasionally, I ventured into town to explore a shrine to the goddess Kali, see a street magician perform, and watch the motley throng of soldiers, monks, wandering salesman, dirty-clothed backpackers, sleek-suited businessmen, old Ladakhi women in robes, and old Tibetan women in rainbow pinafores that converges on this town, which feels drawn from some ideal Tibetan Wild West.

The view from Appleview Manali

Some things are universal-- a street magician performs in Manali

After I was suitably recovered, I did something I had thought I might never want to do again: I got back on a bus. This was no ordinary journey, however. Our van convoy left Manali at 3 AM, traveling in a pack of 4 over the second-highest road in the world, traversing the Himalayas, and arriving in Leh, the capital of the semi-autonomous Ladakh province of India 22 hours later. In the course of the trip we waited patiently as we were engulfed by herds of goats on narrow mountain roads, stopped for chai and instant noodles in yurts on windswept plains, held our breaths as blood pounded in our heads in high passes piled with snow, and broke down twice. The landscape outside my window looked more to me like the moon than anything on earth.

A sampling of the most stunning pictures from my 22 hours of my trip


This is where we broke down

Leh
*My Indian visa was set to run out much earlier than I preferred, so I only had a few days in which to pack all the beauty of Ladakh, an ancient civilization on par with Tibet (that has in fact been at war with Tibetans on and off for millenia.) I wandered the winding, beautiful streets of Leh´s old town; explored the ruined castle that lies in the dry mountains above the city; stumbled on a traditional Ladakhi archery festival.

One day I took a car trip over an enormous mountain pass to Pangong Lake, which lies 1/3 in India and 2/3 in Tibet, a stunning drop of blue in thousands of empty miles of forbidding desert and mountains. Another day I went horseback riding through the stony plains outside of town, then hiked my way through the 2 most famous Buddhist monasteries, Thiksey and Shay, which slope up mountains to amazing views at their topmost points.

In the end my time in Ladakh presented only a taste of a world I had also glimpsed in Zhongdian during my travels in China. I found this universe, culturally, geographically and politically different than any I knew, to be fascinating, much like the frustrating, amazing, gorgeous world I had also discovered further south. Some travelers I've met refer to I.N.D.I.A, as in "I'm Never Doing It Again." But I know I have only had a taste and that I want to return for a deeper experience.

The view from my guesthouse

Ladakhi archery

Downtown Leh, with the ancient palace in the background

Yours truly, on the way to Pangong Lake (the sign says "Border Roads Organization Himank Welcomes On World Third Highest Pass, Chang La)
Pangong lake, one the most beautiful places I will ever go

Monks in class at Thiksey monastery
A stunning 3-story Buddha at Thiksey. He's sitting on the floor below.
Thiksey

Agra
*Of course, no trip to India is complete without a visit to the country´s international icon (or at least, so I felt.) So during my few days back in Delhi I boarded an early morning train and visited Agra. The city was dirty, but interesting, with a fascinating market quarter. The Red Fort palace complex was beautiful, even as I melted in heat that reached 48 degrees Celsius (almost 120 F!) My experience at the Taj Mahal was frustrating-- the list of items you cannot bring in include flashlights, iPods, books that are not guidebooks, any kind of food, and I had all of these things in my bag. Once I had resolved the matter of where to keep my bag, the enclosure itself was mobbed with people (I found out later it was the run up to an important festival.) But even debilitating heat, beauracracy, and crowds couldn´t dim the beauty of this building. As I remarked to Faith, and later to other friends around the world, the capacity of the human race to find infinite ways to make architectural beauty continues to stagger me. And stagger I did, back to the train, on to Delhi, and toward the international airport, where a 5 am flight awaited to take me to a cultural universe far, far from the Himalayas. I was bound for a month in the Middle East.

48 degrees!(!!!)

Perspectives from the Eastern Horizon, Column 1

Continuing the run of articles I've written about my experience in China, my first column of a series they're calling "Perspectives from the Eastern Horizon" appeared in The Belmont Citizen-Herald last week.

The inside of this airplane is ordinary—uncomfortable seats that look like they were upholstered by someone locked in a darkened room; flight attendants, starched and smiling; a man in the next row snoring lightly, his chin on his chest. It’s what’s outside that is remarkable. I am flying over Xinjiang, China, an area of savagely serrated mountains and vast deserts with nothing much in between to roll out the welcome mat. I stare out the window at a range of peculiarly ragged sandstone peaks that look like crumpled newspaper ascending from an arid, dusty floor, and think about the places to which this semester of travel and study abroad in China has brought me.

Just last night I was in Beijing, luxuriating in a well-appointed hotel room, an island of quiet comfort in the midst of that smoggy, perpetually hurried city, resting after an afternoon of playing the history student to the city’s many ancient sites. Three days previously I was taking a turn as tourist in smog-choked Xi’an, home of the famous Terracotta Soldiers, an all-clay army one particularly arrogant Chinese emperor had manufactured and buried in his tomb to ensure his continued rule in the afterlife. Two nights before that, I was living the expatriot life in the warm air of Kunming, Yunnan province, in the far southwest of the country, working on a mammoth 36 page term paper while enjoying the triumphant feeling of familiarity with a place that in many ways embodies the opposite characteristics of my homeland. And four weeks before that I was Girl Anthropologist, spending my study abroad program’s independent research period learning about the folkstories of ethnic minorities (similar to our Native American tribes) in the remote Nujiang Valley, an area of towering emerald mountains and ferociously thundering rapids a two-hour drive from the Myanmar border.

Perhaps it is the exaggerated distance from my window seat to the landscape below, the perspective afforded by air travel, that allows me to be struck at this moment by how profoundly disconnected each of those wide-ranging experiences has felt, how independent each one seems from the others--a separate epoch, almost a different lifetime. I feel as if I am a child looking at the different rooms in a dollhouse where the maker has forgot to put in doorways. Each of these experiences is a separate component in one body, a different and discreet view onto the whole vista of my experience. My explorations are united in their role as a part of this whole, but to me they feel as if they have no inherent connections, as if each was completed by a different person. Yesterday night, in that wonderfully cool hotel room in that city many times the size of Los Angeles, I couldn’t sleep. Recalling my adventures in the dark, the thought suddenly came to me: “I’m like a cat, I have so many lives.” Thinking about this admittedly curious gem, I smile a little. There’s nothing so simultaneously silly and profound as 3 AM epiphanies.

Despite the tendency of that hour to produce jewels of absurdity, I do think there’s an important idea to be uncovered here. Growing up, living the way I have, it’s been easy to forget how lucky I am to have enjoyed the opportunities I’ve been offered. The prospect of being to live the lives of so many different people, whether they be expat, researcher, and student or father, lawyer, and golfer, is a luxury that not everyone can afford. The chance to try on so many facets of the world is truly something to stop and contemplate, if not for which to show gratitude.

The plane is now traveling over snowy, craggy peaks that proclaim that they mean business as they cut ragged holes in the cotton wool clouds. I can feel the bracelet I bought while playing explorer on the Laos border resting against my wrist, the grit of sand from a trip to the Gobi Desert wedged in my sandals. And I realize: we are the one piece of evidence that all the lives we live exist in concert, the one place where our pattern of experience converges into something tangible, something concrete.

The mountains look fierce, sharp, and dangerous, and yet from here surmountable, as if I could leap easily, lightly, from one peak to the next. And so it is with my various lives, spread out below me through the miracle of perspective, a distance that will only increase as I grow older. Yet another piece of richness to add to the collection of my experience, then, to have the memories of my many lives to cherish for years to come, to hop from peak to peak in my mind’s eye like so many newspaper mountains.

I'm hoping to write several more columns for appearance in the Citizen Herald once things get in control on campus. Also, for those of you interested in following my writing appearances on other subjects, I will have a piece in The Portland Phoenix coming out in early September-- I'll provide a link here once it appears.

At the Crossroads: Urumqi

Our next stop after Kasghar was Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province. We were technically only in Urumqi 24 hours, or maybe 30, but it was still a really interesting place to explore. Rather than hints of the Middle East, Urumqi was run through with splashes of Russian culture. Which makes sense, as Urumqi is in the far north of Xinjiang, near the Russian and Kazakh borders.

There were a couple of important things to note about the Urumqi airport. Despite being tiny it, A) Featured a ridiculous view of a HUGE mountain not far away

(Said mountain)


and B) It had two way escalators! I know, right? But it's true. At first I thought all the escalators in the place were broken because they weren't moving. But then I noticed that one would go one way (up, for instance) for a few minutes. And then, when I happened to look in that direction again, it would be going down! Turns out they installed motion sensors at the top and bottom of the escalators and when they're triggered they make the escalators go the proper direction! Genius, energy saving, space saving, money saving. I stood in awe. And then got in a cab toward Urumqi.

The one major place we went in Urumqi was Tian Chi lake, about two hours drive outside of town through beautiful mountains. We took a cable car up to the top of the mountain, where the lake (whose name translates as "Heavenly") is nestled between snowy peaks. Really stunning. We took a boat ride around the perimeter, which was beautiful, a really good idea. There was also a very old tree (200 years or so), a fruit tree but I'm forgetting the type, at the lake. It's considered sacred because trees of its kind normally can't live above a certain altitude, but the altitude of the lake far exceeds this limit. There were a lot of prayer flags and strips of red ribbon and string festooning the tree, left there by people making wishes for healing or a good life.

Tian Chi Lake was also a really good place to the lives of Kazakh and other minority nomads in Xinjiang. Their Yurts (round canvas tents) were everywhere, some with goats or other livestock tied up outside. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to go into the Taklamakhan Desert (one of the largest in the world), but if we did we would have seen more of that. The Kazakhs and Kurds have been living in the deserts and high mountains of Xinjiang for thousands of years, and their lifestyle has barely changed. I think that's fascinating.

Tian Chi (Heavenly) Lake




Most of the rest of our time in Urumqi was spent exploring. One night, in search of a rumored Western Restaurant/Bar recommended by our guide, we ended up walking with a Mongolian man and his friend about a mile and a half through the streets, watching the city prepare for nightfall. He led us so far afield that after awhile we started to wonder if maybe he was trying to kidnap or scam us. But just when we were muttering to ourselves (in English, it's like a secret code here) about whether we should jump in a taxi and take off, there was the bar. Disaster averted, and their omelettes were delicious.

We also spent a good amount of time at the Urumqi bazaar. The stuff there wasn't as wonderful as what I found in Kashgar (an embroidered prayer cap, a gourd carved with Uighur language) but it was still cool (a traditional Uighur-patterned head scarf.) And the best part of it was the people watching. More even than in Kashgar, I felt like I was at the crossroads of somewhere-- so many different-looking people together. People in full-out Muslim dress, old Russian babushkas, Han businessmen, Mongolian cowboy types. The faces, too, I loved the faces in Xinjiang. The countless ways that DNA can blend characteristics together is so remarkable, especially at a crossroads like Urumqi. I walked the streets and just looked at faces. Our guide, Jimmy, told us that for a long time Urumqi was very important in Asian and African relations, the crossroads of the Upper and Lower Silk Roads, and I believe it.

Probably the weirdest and best thing we saw at the Urumqi bazaar: two fully barbequed and skinned lambs. Whole.


Images of Urumqi

Kashgar

After bidding smoggy, huge, and oh-so-very-Chinese Beijing adieu, my parents and I boarded a flight for Xinjiang. Xinjiang (which means "New Land" in Mandarin) is an enormous province in the very northwest of China that borders Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and Russia and is inhabited largely by the Uighur minority, a Eurasian Muslim group, as well as minorities of Kazakhs, Kurds, and Mongolians. We connected through Urumqi to Kashgar, about 400 km (200 miles) away from the Pakistani border. Kashgar was completely absent the China I've come to know and love. It was much more Central Asian (for good reason), closer to a Middle Eastern feel than an Asian vibe. Also: the landscape was spectacular. Even flying in I couldn't keep my eyes off the view.

Pictures from the Plane




Silly bureaucratic/stubborn Chinese government decision #902348092348: the whole country, despite being geographically larger than the US, functions as one time zone. This means that Kashgar, something like 2500 miles west of Beijing, is supposed to be on the same time. This also means that in Kashgar the sun comes up around 9:00 and sets around 11:30. Locally, people use an informal "Xinjiang time," which sets everything two hours early. Therefore, when we landed, we were greeted with the following sight (it reminded me a little of Alaska):

Kashgar, 10:30 PM


Our second surprise was our hotel, which was housed in the former Russian Embassy. I guess Russian tastes at the time of building ran along the lines of somebody who ate a bunch of potpourri and Art Deco text books and then threw up all over the place? It was entertaining, to say the least.

Our Kashgar hotel




The next morning we got up bright and early (which in Kashgar is 9:30, the sun hasn't even risen completely yet)and went to a millenia-long tradition in Kashgar: the Sunday animal market. I think that was where we really started to understand how much this Wasn't China Anymore, Toto. The hustle and bustle was that of any Chinese market, but the faces were so very different than the ones we were used to seeing, the smells, the sounds of people talking, bickering, joking. The signs of Islam everywhere (head coverings on the men, various degrees of veil-ing on the women), the Uighur bread (round and pitalike), the Uighur music (sort of a mix of sugary-sweet Chinese pop and the Arabic twang of Middle Eastern music). It was like being transported to a completely different country. This was a China I had never imagined.
My time in Xinjiang in general really made me rethink my definition of "who is Chinese," and my idea of "what a Chinese person looks like." People who looked like me, with brown hair, blue eyes, and hips spouted Mother-Tongue Mandarin. People who appeared 100% Han Chinese looked puzzled when I addressed them in Mandarin and then turned to their friends and continued a conversation in Kazakh. I guess when you get to the border of things this way, the lines blur. And in a world made of so many strong, bold lines, that experience is always the most powerful and moving.
Unfortunately, the pictures I'm posting don't do the experience justice. If you enjoy them, request further viewing when I get back(in 6 days!)

Scenes from the Kashgar Animal Market








Shave and a Haircut (two bits) at the Animal Market


The rest of the day was spent touring around Kashgar seeing the sights, and there were many. The first stop was the largest mosque in Kashgar. When, out of respect, I covered my arms and head with a scarf we'd brought for that purpose, some nearby worshippers asked our guide if I was Uighur (that wouldn't be the last time I'd be mistaken for a Chinese person... but that story comes later, during my Turpan experience.) The mosque was beautiful, really peaceful and spacious. No one was praying there at the moment-- it's only open to visitors when no prayer is happening, and as the holiest place in Kashgar it is only used for that purpose on Fridays.

The largest mosque in Kashgar


Inside the mosque (the first mosque I've ever been inside)


We also visited a tomb nearby the mosque. It's the thickest structure of its type, possibly in the world (or at least in Asia, I know that) and houses something like 9 generations of the same family, whose surname I am unfortunately currently forgetting. While we were walking around with our guide, an American man joined our group, asking if he could tag along. He introduced himself as the former CEO of eLong, which is the Chinese version of Expedia. Very odd to meet a big-wig like that in such an odd situation. He was quite a character, and he gave me his email, in case I ever need help in the .com world.

The tomb


For lunch, we ate at a traditional Uighur restaurant. Among Uighur's preferred foods are pilaf (a creamy mix of rice, egg, spices, and lamb), chuanr (shish kebabs, essentially), and lamian or hand-stretched noodles. They put heavy-duty spices on everything, so we were constantly having to ask for special orders. I found the food delicious, however (there was always fresh fruit juice, pomegranate or peach, to go with it)my mother's stomach didn't agree so much.

That evening, our guide took us exploring Kashgar's Old City, which was essentially like going back 2 or 300 years. The whole structure is that old, and its winding streets and stucco walls reminded me strongly of Jerusalem's Old City. Apparently, the Chinese government has built brand new apartments outside the city and is trying to get the Old City inhabitants to move into them because the old buildings are so vulnerable to earthquakes (which Xinjiang gets fairly often), but no one has moved there yet. Being there, I understood. Just walking through the streets I felt such a palpable connection to the past, to an old way of life almost lost. If my ancestors had lived there, I wouldn't want to leave either.

We walked the winding alleys, followed by adorable Uighur children begging us to take their pictures, peeking into ajar doorways, discovering tiny neighborhood mosques (in one a call to prayer was being chanted. It was incredibly haunting in the fading light). At one point, a Uighur woman approached us and asked us if we would like to see her house. It turns out she was running a homemade crafts business out of her bare, traditional living room, but that's always the kind of endeavor my parents and I like to support. And getting to see the inside of a Uighur house (there was a tree, inside! And so many beautiful carpets!) was incredible. Again, these pictures don't do the place justice. If you'd like to see more, I'll be happy to oblige.

Scenes from Kashgar's Old City








(The writing on the sign is Uighur script, a modified Arabic alphabet)


Said adorable Uighur children




Next time: Time to break out the White Russians-- Urumqi

Up the Valley-- Sidetrips from Liuku

I forgot to post this picture last time, and I like it and the girl is adorable, so apropos of nothing:

Lisu girl in traditional dress, Liuku


As mentioned in my last entry, I went on a few side-trips during my time in Liuku, into the countryside. Both times we went up the Nujiang Valley (there is no where to go but up-- Liuku is located at the bottom, the very mouth of the valley.) The first trip we took was to Luzhang, a small lower-to-middle class village perched way up in the mountains on the side of the river. We visited Xiong Li Mei's relatives (most people here refer to people who are not blood-related as "cousins" or "sisters" so it's hard to tell exactly how people are or aren't related) in their modest home. I got to hear about both Lisu and Pumi culture, as interestingly the husband and wife are a mixed marriage, apparently something that doesn't happen often. But I was told that their daughter was being raised Lisu (in this situation, children are allowed to choose their ethnic identity at a certain age) because Pumi culture was so far away in Lanping (7 hours by bus.)

At the slightest mention of my interest in minority culture, the mother in the family called her older relatives (she called them Auntie and Grandma, but again you never know) and her daughter, they brought over the traditional clothing they save for special occasions, and they gave me an impromptu Lisu song-and-dance performance in their living room. And then, out of the blue, the auntie decided to give me the embroidered and beaded bag she was wearing that she had made herself. Almost all Lisu people carry a bag of this kind or varation, with specific embroidery and colors, as a method of self-identification in a time when most of them don't wear traditional costumes. The old woman just took her cell phone out of the bag, unhooked it from her shoulder, and handed it to me. When I told her I could never take that from her, she just said "I can make another one." It's not the most beautiful thing in the world, because Lisu are so poor-- they can only afford cheap plastic beads. But I don't care. The whole thing was pretty wonderful.

The Lisu family I visited in Luzhang, in full Lisu regalia (of that region. Here in Fugong the headpieces look different) Also note the classic poster in the background.


While we were visiting Luzhang, walking the winding road as it meandered along incredibly verdant cliffs, it started raining. Hard. Very hard. As I wrote before, as we were driving home there were rocks, serious rocks, in the road that had fallen from the mountains above. It was clearly not a safe situation, and so I was kept from going up the valley to Fugong and Gongshan during my ISP. I was furious and frustrated at first, but I just spent longer researching in Liuku, and on the second to last day we took a real trip a full 2 hours up the valley to Chengang. Chengang is a small town in itself, but really it's just a base for a series of small and very poor Lisu villages between 15 minutes and an hour a way by foot. The weather was finally decent that day, and so the ride up the valley was positively gorgeous.

Scenes from the lower valley







(I am especially proud of this photo because it was taken out a minibus window)


When we got to Chengang, it was time for lunch so we found a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant and ate there. Xiong Li Mei did some hardcore social networking for me (I never would have had the guts), and got our server to agree to take us to his home village a 15 minute hike up the mountain. And so we went, past the singularly most disgusting communal bathroom I have ever seen (I won't go into detail, but I've been in China for 5 months now and it still holds that title. And that's saying something, which you'll know if you've ever used a Chinese public toilet.) We passed several small streams and rice paddies before arriving at a very small, very shabby traditional Lisu house.

The Lisu house I visited in Chengang


Traditional Lisu houses are two stories tall, with the bottom story reserved for livestock. They are made out of woven wood and reeds, mostly. The walls are more flimsy and have a criss-cross pattern, while the floor is woven like tiles, warp and woof. Unless the owner is particularly rich, the room inside doesn't have any more furniture than a few simple wooden stools and some blankets to sleep in. A san jiao (literally "three legs" because, well, it has three legs) or traditional stove, sits over a fire, and by that Lisu cook food, boil water, and keep warm.

Inside the house, with the nainai (grandma) who lives there


And her husband, holding their bibles, probably smuggled in from Myanmar


As you might guess from the above picture, the people living in this house are Christians who celebrate both Christmas and the Lisu New Year, Kuoshijie, which fall within a week of each other. They also offered me some alcoholic cornmash, the beginning of traditional Lisu whiskey (which I recently tried at a Lisu wedding I attended, more on that later, but WOW that is strong stuff), but as Christians they don't drink. This kind of fine-line between what's permitted because of culture and what's not permitted because of religion is what my thesis is turning out to be about. I find it fascinating.

After bidding the old couple goodbye, we rode the 2 hours back to Liuku and had a little goodbye gathering for me-- I was going back to Kunming the next night on a sleeper bus. It was lovely, we went out with the same motley combination of office workers, soldiers, and math teachers as before. We had hotpot, which involves an enormous boiling vat of oil/broth and a million different kinds of meats and vegetables, which you put in one at a time and let cook. Kind of like Chinese fondue. I also got to hear several different Lisu and Pumi stories that night-- a good place to leave off. (Well, except for that cell phone pickpocketing which would come the next day.)

My goodbye gathering


And, in case you were wondering:

The inside of a sleeper bus (the nice kind)


Next time: SIT says goodbye-- Adventures in Xi'an and Beijing