Agra, India
Today I saw the Taj Mahal. It was very cool.
Sorry I have not been able to update more frequently the last couple of days, but our schedule has been crazy. Getting into Agra this morning proved to be quite the adventure. Google news stories with “Jaipur” and “road blocks” and you might come up with what was going on.
Don’t have enough time to write much, but enough to say things are going well, and we’re all still having fun. I’m glad the trip is winding down though, as there’s no place like home.
About to board an overnight train to Varanasi, India – the oldest continually lived in city in the world… if that makes sense?
Begging
I did some calculations the other day. Since it’s obvious I’m not a native around here, I am constantly being asked for money. It usually comes in four forms – be it by beggars, people selling an assortment of who knows what, people wanting to give me a ride somewhere, or people who want to be my “tour guide”. The “tour guides” are the worst – they just won’t go away.
About two days ago I kept count of the number of times I was asked for money in the three hour window we walked around Kathmandu after lunch. Grand total? 60. Or, once every three minutes. They aren’t bad people… they’re just annoying. and persistant. really, really persistant.
Some of these beggars really do appear to have legitimate needs. My heart does go out to them, but if I start giving money to everyone who asks, I’ll be as broke as they are.
Tonight after dinner in New Delhi two seperate people came up to me from behind and touched my arm to get my attention… to ask for money. Both times it really freaked me out. There’s not a lot of personal space over here.
The best way to handle these people is to somehow acknoweldge their presence, and then just flat out ignore them. It feels really dehumanizing though. I don’t want to feel like a cold heartless bastard… but otherwise they just won’t leave you alone. One guy followed my father for three blocks!
People will come up, say hello, ask ‘how are you’ and ‘where are you from’? If you answer those two questions with any hesitation while breaking your stride, you’ll spend the next 5 minutes trying to get rid of them.
Did you ever hear that AOL customer service phone call where the AOL rep just wouldn’t let the guy cancel his service no matter how ridiculous he acted? There’s a striking similarity here.
Demonstrations in Kathmandu
We had an unscheduled day off today in Kathmandu after learning that the people were demonstrating against teacher’s wages and had shut the city down with road blocks consisting of burning tires across the road or just a bunch of people blocking things.
We had our Mt. Everest flight this morning (which was amazing, but I’ve talked about Everest too much as it is..) and did not come across the demonstrations until after we tried to get back to the hotel from the airport around 8am.
At every road block, our driver would shout something out of the window, and the crowds would see he was carrying tourists, and they would let us go through. We have nothing to do with the teachers in Nepal, and spend a lot of money (relatively speaking) so the crowds know not to mess with the tourists. Which once again proves why Americans can do whatever they want here (see a previous post).
Some cars had signs in them reading “Foriegn Visitors Ony”. We passed maybe three cars between the airport and the hotel where it is normally a traffic packed 20 minute ride. One of the cars was a United Nations peace keeping SUV… probably from our hotel.
We were able to walk around a little today with our guide, but after getting back to the hotel from the mountain flight, there were definitely no cars available today.
Final Chinese Impressions
After two trips to China, I think I can safely form an accurate opinion of the Chinese, and their position on the world’s stage.
The Chinese are the new Beverly Hillbillies. And here’s why -
They both just fell into a crap ton of money, and have no idea how to spend it. So they both buy ridiculous things. They think that just because they have money, it means they are now sophisticated. Unfortunately both lack the brain power and class to pull it off.
Eventually they’ll figure it out, but it will take a lot more time and education to get there. The rest of the world will just have to hold their breath until they do.
Last day in Lhasa
It’s always nice to try and learn a little of the language in a foreign country. Hello and Thank You are the two big ones. In Lhasa, technically there are two languages here: Tibetan, and Mandrian Chinese. The interesting thing is that I always get a better response from the people when I say “thank you” in English, over Shea Shea (phonetically spelled Mandrian Chinese). Little children will go out of their way to say “hello” to us in hopes that we’ll say it back.
Today I climbed to the top of the Potala. It’s the historical (and technically still) the seat of the dalilamma. They give you an hour to go through the place, but the catch is you have to climb up thirteen (13) stories to get there. Took me half an hour just to make it to the top of the hill and into building!
Besides major theological differences, the biggest reason I could never be buddist is the constant burning of incense. It’s all over all the temples and it drives me crazy…
Tomorrow we fly back down to a reasonable altitude in Kathmandu. There are tradeoffs here… altitude sickness, but gorgeous weather in Lhasa… or air pollution all over the streets, but at least you don’t need to lay down after climbing a set of stairs in Kathmandu. At this point, I’m ready for the latter.
Dailup in Nepal, and small cities in India makes internet predictions shaky from here on out. I’ll do the best I can!
More from Tibet
I am well aware at how lucky I am to travel as much as I do. I am even luckier to never have gotten sick overseas… until yesterday. I guess it was something I ate, but man did yesterday suck. Luckily it was a 24 hour thing… I took some meds, and it’s all good now.
Even by staying in all day yesterday I didn’t really miss much – just two Buddist Monasteries. I saw two today …and they all look the same on the inside. The one fascinating thing about these monasteries is that people place cash *all over the place* inside these things. You would think it takes the monks hours to a) find it all, and b) pick it up. I see some bills and wonder how anyone was even able put it there in the first place.
I’d say about a quarter of the population here in Lhasa walks around with portable prayer wheels. (See picture). The object of these things is to place some buddist scripture inside, and then constantly swing it in circles. I’m not convinced they are not midevil tourture devices personally… Some people carry around large ones stapped into the kinds of belts you use for deep sea fishing. I guess the purpose of these things is the ritual, but I guess I don’t see it.
I have been streched a bit here in Tibet with so much exposure to Buddism. I respect the history and the culture, but when it comes to the religion, I just don’t believe any of it. The temples feel empty… Part of me wonders if that’s just a cultural thing.. Like if the Tibetans came to the US and saw the churchs if they would have the same reaction. I will say the devotion to Buddism here far exceedes the kind of devotion to Christianity I see in the US.
We watched the English language channel of the China state run television networks last night. They had a documentry on (parapharased) “Victory in the Chinese resistance to the War of Japanese aggression”. Or what the rest of the world calls “World War II”. It went on to show how the Chinese defeated the Japanese and more or less kept their “chinese honor”. My history is a little shaky, but I’m pretty sure the Japanese surrendered to end WWII because the United States bombed Japan back to the stone age – not because some small towns in China built tunnels between each other.
The internet cafe is closing, so I will have to also!
Lhasa, Tibet
On the way into Lhasa today we flew past Mt. Everest. Very cool. I’ve never seen so many people crowding over to one side of the plane before. I swear we were flying lopsided.
It is very obvious that China has pumped in extreme amounts of money into Lhasa. They built a 70-something million dollar tunnel through a mountain to save an hour’s worth of driving between the airport and the city – which 200,000 people inhabit. Even with that, the airport is still an hour away from the city.
Lhasa is also situated around 10,000 feet above sea level. At that kind of height, the oxygen is scarce enough to cause health problems. Not serious ones – if you’re careful… but I’ve definitely felt it today. The sensation is not unlike going numb, all over your body. It also feels like your entire body is vibrating. It’s the kind of thing that after you climb a flight of stairs, you need to sit down. The upside is that it hasn’t been as bad as when I was in Cusco, Peru a couple years ago.
Coming to Tibet after visiting Beijing, and Shanghai gives me a much different perspective than my father and brother, who have never been to China before. They look around and all they see is China imposing their culture on the Tibetans, and how horrible that is. On the other hand, I really enjoyed being in Beijing and Shanghai and I loved the Chinese culture. While I’m well aware that everything isn’t peachy here, I’m enjoying both cultures much more than they are.
After leaving the hotel this afternoon with my father and brother to do some wandering around, I came up to where the cycle rickshaws waited. One of the drivers grabbed my arm and started physically moving me towards his rickshaw. I was not prepared for that. I about hit the guy. He should be in the hall of fame in violated personal space.
Speaking of personal space, I’m reminded that lines in this part of the world for locals have no sense of personal space at all. Everyone is lined up back to back as close as they possibly can without physically touching each other. It’s like that camp game where people stand like that in a circle and then sit on each other’s laps?
I saw this much more in Kathmandu, than Lhasa but it’ll be easier to add it here than the previous entry… I’ve constantly seen guys hold hands while walking down the street. At first I was a little confused about the sexuality of the majority of the male Kathmandu population… until someone told me that it was actually a cultural thing.. and didn’t have any meanings other than they were just good friends. Whatever floats your boat.
Fianally, like in most countries, traffic laws do not exist. But the one thing that different here (India/Nepal/Tibet) over other places is that there usually isn’t a double yellow line down the middle of the street. So, the placement of and the distance between on-comming traffic is quite negotiable – and quite scary!
More Kathmandu
Spending time with the people from John’s mountaineering expedition was such a breath of fresh air. After spending over a week with my father, it’s just nice to have other people to talk to also…
I don’t know what it is about traveling, but when you’re with a group of diverse people be it from all over the US, or from all over the world – politics are always heavily discussed. My favorite (paraphrased) quote was from Ted, originally from Boulder, CO on US imigration: “English is the international language. Yesterday I saw a German guy talking to a Nepalese guy in English, and then a Chinese guy walked up and started talking to them in English too. So, what the hell’s the problem with the mexicans in my backyard?” Not politically correct, but I was amused.
I had the chance to listen to one of the Everest sumiteer’s stories about his experience at the top of Mt. Everest about ten years ago that was fascinating. The summit is aparently large enough for about ten people to stand on. When this gentleman was a couple feet away for it, he discovered that there were already people up there – celebrating. They pulled him up the last two feet and he started celebrating with them too. It’s quite the accomplishment. The twist he found out later was that the other guys at the top celebrating were from Iran, and they were the first Iranians in history to summit Everest.
Last night I spent some time on a hotel roof top. The view was fantastic. I can’t help but wonder that since Kathmandu is near the largest fault line on the planet, how long it will be until an earthquake totally levels the place.
Various members from the UN (human rights etc…) were staying at our hotel and drove those large white suv’s with the black UN letters on them that you usually only see in parts of the world that could explode at any minute (Africa). That was kinda scary.
There were definitely tourists in Nepal, but not many. One thing we noticed was that because we were american, we could do basically anything we wanted. No one stopped us at hotel entrances, airport entrances, anywhere. All of these access points had Nepalese security that hounded the other Nepalese, but we were always waved right through.
Kathmandu, Nepal
Kathmandu sits at roughly 5,000 feet above sea level. On the way in today the pilot radio’d to prepare for landng, but we were probably still 15K feet in the air. I was a little confused until we barely clipped the top of a mountain, and then landed after only after a short decent. Aparently all 5K feet comes at the end of the flight.
Kathmandu is way cooler than Delhi – on multiple levels. Obviously there is the temperature thing, but also as a city there are cool things to buy and people don’t hassle you just for walking by. There is nothing interesting to by in Delhi unless you want eastern religious paraphanalia… which I don’t.
Dealing with the different religions in the region, it’s interesting to see how people really view it. The lotus flower temple in Delhi is for a religion that does not believe in anything. A little contradictory if you ask me. Everyone believes in something – even nothing is a belief. But even stranger than that was how many places require everyone to remove their shoes before entering, yet the place is really littered. There was a pool at the Lotus Flower temple that had all kinds of trash in it. Odd.
Anyways.. high speed internet has yet to make it to Kathmandu. Not so fun, but it works. The shops here are wonderful.
We met up with my brother and ate dinner at the “Rum Doodle” with his climbing team. Three of the people had sumitted Everest. It was a very interestng meal. Aparently if you summit Everest you get to eat for free, for life at the Rum Doodle.
Need to run. Will post more later. Headed to Tibet on Tuesday!
Last day in New Delhi
Not a whole lot to report today… Just more sight seeing, and the fact that it’s so hot I want to die.
Interesting comparisons to China for those who have been…
Delhi has much less traffic…
China has much more smog… (I’m betting the two are correlated) 
The Beijing Silk Market was a worse shopping experience than Delhi, but not by much…
Beijing is much more developed than Delhi… especially in the worse parts of the city. There is still a lot of Delhi that looks like a third world country. There’s a good reason both are labeled as “emerging” markets… Though China has already emerged a lot more than India…
Flying to Kathmandu tomorrow, and I don’t know my internet availability.. I’ll post when I get the chance. Be well.
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