Faith in Greek Tourism Restored

Is there really a difference between travellers and tourists? Yes, of course! Right now I’m touristing Greece along with a very special person and I’m savouring every moment of it. And even if you think 'touristing' is not a word, I'm still going to use it. Yes, it’s definitely touristing; with hotel rooms where you can sleep in with no fear of the ceiling falling apart or the rats falling upon you at any minute. You can really fall back on hot showers and travel-sized soap and shampoo bottles. The only anxiety is for some major Ancient Greek monument to fall through the cracks.

Everything falls into touristy place: internet hotel reservations, good meals, nice rental car (with effective braking system no less), GPS and proper maps. No more ‘hellowhereyoufroms’ smiles or potent haggling abilities needed. It’s touristing! It’s easy.

Even when I tried to do it the hard way, getting to a remote little touristy town in the South-eastern part of the Peloponnesian peninsula without a hotel reservation and trying to find some cheap accommodation on the spot, things turned out differently than I expected.

This is Tourist Country and, against all my expectation, everything seemed booked out. So, when we asked at a small guest house whether they had a room available, the lady there with her minute English knowledge told us – with the help of some particularly effective aerobics moves – that her place was full, but she somehow explained that she would check other places on the internet. Not only did she come up with some alternatives (booking.com really comes in handy at times like these), but she gave us a map and encircled the affordable places on it, and gave us her blessing to go look for the best deal. Which we eventually found.

Dear kind, friendly and helpful guest house owner/manager from the guest house in Nafplio which I don’t remember the name of: this is me thanking you in the name of all travellers (and some of the tourists) for your wonderful and astounding gesture (and I don’t mean your funky calisthenics)! Flowers and/or candy coming soon… Touristing is easy!

Rip-Off Sri Lanka

Meditation can wait. Frustration cannot.

Even though I’m supposed to be calm and shanti after the meditation retreat, I decided that this is the place where I can enumerate my frustrations like on an extensive grocery list (better yet, a discarding list). Sri Lanka is the land that can fill up a whole tome of grocery lists of frustrations, frustrations that surface mostly when you’re spotted as being a foreigner, and trust me when I say that being anywhere over 1m50, with a non-dusky skin complexion, and with dreadlocks blending in might be considered somewhat extreme. And they’ll spot you faster than you can blink. When I say ‘they’ I mean everybody. You see, they’re not stupid, I’ll grant them that; they’re actually pretty smart and cunning and have been able to turn any remotely interesting thing on their island into a business opportunity (just like the Lonely Planet, but that will be the subject of a future post), attracting gullible tourists like a light bulb attracts moths. I’m not even going to enter the ‘hellotaximadam?’ on the list, even if it tends to get on my nerves when 10m away from my guesthouse not one, but all the taxi drivers on the road ask me if I want a ride; or that when I’m patiently waiting for the bus at the bus stand, two separate tuk tuk drivers offer their services or just simply say ‘come, I’ll take you’ (and they don’t even know where I want to be taken and probably don’t care)… I hold that it’s good to try your luck and, of course, business is business and there may well be credulous tourists around, so the better your people skills are, the greater the chances to get some work. I can deal with that and usually try the polite approach, amicably refusing their magnanimous offer (at some point I found out that sarcasm or derision have proven to go sky-high above their heads). No, these widespread Asian techniques cut no ice.

The seed of my revolt lies a lot deeper, implanted with the precision of a sharp dart in the bull’s-eye of the shattered tourist paradise that is Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka is a beautiful country. Trust me! And it’s a country where tourism is in bloom but not so much for backpackers and ramblers as for the classic tourists; people who leave their daily jobs and lives for 2 or 3 weeks and look forward to a nice relaxing time either visiting historical sites and experiencing cultural aspects, or chilling back on beaches and hilly tea plantations, or both. They’re looking for Services, Wi-Fi and swimming pools and they’re prepared to pay the price; the tourist price; the price that is being asked. The overpriced price. Which means that the rest of us have to struggle to find the backpacking scene, the underground scene, the authentic scene.

Cheap accommodation? It’s either $15 per person in a not really run down place (but usually painted in a baby-pink or Paris green shade), or the shabby, shady dorm room or YMCA, which is hard to find and can use a good sweeping (or, in some cases, a big barrel of petrol and a match). Cheap food is easier but as soon as a place makes it in the Lonely Planet or on TripAdvisor, the prices shoot up like fireworks in a Maltese factory. And that’s only the least bothersome of issues.

The bulk of the problem lies with the attractions and, as luck would have it, everything is considered an attraction. Also, every attraction has a price. An overpriced price.

Anuradhapura is one of three very old, very important historical cities in the cultural triangle of Sri Lanka. And it wasn’t really surprising that the entrance ticket to the ruins and temples of the old city had a price on its head that locals would surely never afford (they don’t have to, as they have their own ‘local’ prices, but still): $25. The other attractions in the triangle range from a measly $10 for a temple in Kandy to an obscene $30 for the Rock Fortress at Sigiriya. And even where there’s no entrance ticket, you’ll have to pay the friendly-looking elderly Sri Lankan who accompanied you for a while to make sure you don’t get lost when trying to get to Ella Rock (as business is better not to maintain a proper pathway and thus let the poor, ignorant Westerners lose their way and squeak for some assistance in mid-trek).

And then there’s the Dowa Temple, a low-key, highly religious site, the actual reason why I started this vicious rant.

Yesterday was marked in the Sri Lankan calendar as Binara Full Moon Puya Day, an official Buddhist holiday, when people go to temples to pray and give offerings to Buddha. The monks chant (through speakers, no less) and pray and there’s a festive atmosphere all around, with parents guiding their barefooted toddlers to and fro the temple grounds, offering flowers, lighting oil candles and sitting in prayer all over the place. I walked through the temple grounds feeling quite peaceful, smiling to amused Sri Lankans and taking photos of the 4m high unfinished Buddha statue carved into the rock face. And as soon as I entered the temple, an elderly caretaker surrounded by pre-teen monks greeted me with ‘’Scuse me, madam, ticket here.’ I was more than willing to offer a small donation for the conservation of the temple and I even had my 20 rupees handy (it’s the usual amount I’ve seen locals donate), but the guy beckoned me to his desk and extracted a bunch of colourful tickets to hand one over to me. His mistake: after saying ‘ticket’ he also said ‘h’ndrd rupees’ so I took a closer look at the alleged ticket and even upside down I managed to read the bold black letters on the paper: DONATION. My 20 rupee’d hand stopped in mid-air and the guy and I locked stares and for a second there didn’t move, like two tomcats preparing to jump at each other’s jugular.

‘What?’ I asked. ‘Donation, no?’

‘H’ndrd rupees…’

But he probably realised his tiny tactical error and stared intently at the ticket stubs lying flawlessly in his hands. He then ignored my 20 rupees and waved me inside so I went in and looked around. Five minutes later when I emerged he suddenly found something else to do and hurriedly left his station, leaving the kid monks to negotiate a donation, which didn’t miraculously increase because of any sudden enlightenment on my part.

Does It Pay to Be German?

Since it’s a lot harder to come face to face with the puzzled confusion of local people when I answer the ‘what country?’ question, I adopted Germany as my native country: Nepali know Budesliga, Indians know ‘wie geht’s?’ and Sri Lankan know Volkswagen, which makes everybody happy, as opposed to the worried countenances people get when faced with the real answer. I think it’s always easier (for me and for my conversational partner) to choose this win-win situation because they beam with the pleasure of knowing something about my Heimat, and I can smoothly avoid the ‘which country is near? Hmm? Ukraine? Ahh, Russia! You speak Russian? No? [disappointed face]’ line of questioning.

But on the other hand, my being German converts people’s faces from happy-to-meet-you to borderline exuberant, as, in their eyes, I suddenly turn from smiling foreign tourist to a walking dollar sign (better yet, euro sign), ensuring my interlocutor good impending fortune somewhere down the line.

It’s never entirely clear when this strategy is best employed. But in Jaffna this answer ensured several conversations with German-speaking Sri Lankans, conversations that left me flabbergasted no matter the language. Who would expect such German fluency from the inhabitants of a small island in the Indian Ocean? So, on more than one occasion my white lie almost came back to bite me in the arse, only I was faster: if they have worked in Hamburg, I came from the Austrian border; if they moved to Switzerland, I came from Berlin and so on, so that my somewhat shady German accent would not give away my true secret identity.

But on one occasion, the Bundesrepublik Deutschland came to my aid in the least expected way: I set out to buy a men’s sarong for my imaginary brother because of the pretty batik patterns I had seen on some of these male skirts flapping around the Sri Lankan male shins, and because it’s always nicer to buy stuff for other people than for yourself (or at least that’s what you are supposed to say to the sellers in order to impress them). All around the Jaffna bazaar the prices ranged from exorbitant to outrageous (that is, if you consider $5 a bit costly for a 2m long piece of fabric turned into a comfy cylinder) and the traders didn’t even think about budging or haggling. They even seemed on the verge of bursting out in a fit of an infectious laughter at the mere thought of settling for a lower price and I got sniggered at from shop doors in front of which I passed twice. Feeling like not getting the great deal I was hoping for, I just walked around aimlessly, letting the alluring invitations to buy saris and skirts with flower patterns bigger than my head pour over me like a jar of spilled honey, contemplating my ever diminishing chances. And, as I responded to another ‘hellowhereyoufrom’ with my mechanical ‘helloGermany’ answer, again I got spoken to in German.

A middle-aged fellow with a sad receding hairline but grinning like there’s no tomorrow fancied a good German speaking practice session and tackled the situation not with the usual ‘aaa, Volkswagen’ but with an effortless conversation about the German football team and the FIFA World Cup and lured me into the normal conversation that comes after the first introductory lines: you came alone? are you married? what is your work? I like your hairstyle…

‘You know, I live in Switzerland' he said. 'My family is still there but I’m on holiday and help my brother with the shop… Come in, look around. Want to buy a sari?’

‘Well, actually I’m looking for a sarong for my brother…’

With a palpable feeling of pride and self-importance, he felt that it was his duty to translate all my German words to his brother and their helper and all the other curious spectators, who by this time started their own parallel conversations with me along the exact same lines, only this time the dialog was in English. I felt like being transposed in a second superimposed universe, the latter being the English dubbed version of the first German one, both having a strange storyteller laid over. And the only main difference between the two was the price of the sarong: the English universe offered me the sarong for 450 rupees, while the first one clearly stated (as I repeatedly checked) that the sarong was dreihundertfünfzig, 350. By this time I was already so confused as to which conversation to square up to in which language that I decided I would entirely ignore the English one and concentrate on the one that promised the better deal. And by this time, the Swiss Sri Lankan and his brother also figured out that they were rear-ending each other and decided to reunite their universes. To make up for the bad business decision of his Swiss brother, the shopkeeper ceremoniously presented his best merchandise: a lovely pair of plastic training trousers, in case the sarong proved too airy and the wearer would prefer a better shielded option. I dismissed the trousers, reverently accepted the sarong and the receipt nicely wrapped in a FIFA World Cup plastic bag, and victoriously, Germanly exited with a ‘Tschüss papa!’

So, does it pay to be German? Sometimes, it pays less.

Meditation or Medication?

Today is a very special day, which I'm sure I will remember a long time, as it's the day I'm checking myself into a Vipassana Meditation Centre so that I can whine about it later. There will be 10 days of waking up at 4 AM, sitting down until the back muscles give out and start complaining (that usually happens by the third day), no communication whatsoever with the people inside or the outside world, no technology, no books, no writing, and above all no smoking or using any type of intoxicants. Again! And, surprisingly, it's all done out of my own free will, this being the reason why I think I'd rather need some medication for having made this wonderful choice. So, I'll be sure to check in here after I escape from the centre. 

It's A Jungle Out There

There’s only one word you can hold high in a cartoon-like bubble above your head, just like you’d hold a big flaming torch in the darkest cave: awesome! This place is awesome! This should be used for the times you return from the speechless bewilderment when confronted with the scenery of Cherrapunjee. No wonder you stumble on every little pebble in your path: this isn’t a time to be looking at your feet; time well spent here is having your eyes wide open, looking over the plateau stretching all around, speckled with valleys so deep that the foaming rivers seem mere brush strokes somewhere far below. You can argue that the place is even more awe-inspiring when the rainy season strikes head-on and the plains turn to a surreal green full of the strangest creatures that walked the earth: butterflies the size of a large cabbage leaf, centipedes with Mohawks, and slugs that cause all your hairs to stand to attention. Anywhere you turn you can see waterfalls, big or small, but each as impressive as the next one. And you’d think that such a rainy place would have you clattering your teeth because of the cold but you’d be wrong. Well, mostly.

There’s the nasty little feeling when, waking up in the morning, after a good night’s sleep thanks to the humdrum sound of raindrops falling on the roof, and to the makeshift wind chime clatter coming from the television tower across the road… that’s when you get that unmistakable feeling that, in spite of all of Mother Nature's beauty, which you can observe all day long, you still need to use the toilet. Right this minute. And, as there’s only an outhouse 30m away, you sigh, give up the warm embrace of your bed, step outside and start running. And then you stop, return, hastily grab the umbrella and make a run for it again.

When you feel you have admired and awsome’d enough (which will probably never happen), you can tackle the 3500 steps down to the jungle strategically hidden in one of the valleys. The 1000m elevation difference allows for a new type of scenery to unfold magnificently, so that you don’t need to discard your bubble of awesomeness just yet: it’s a real jungle out there, where climbers and creepers rule even over the people, who seem to have vines instead of veins blending perfectly into the background. You’ll soon feel like a modern age Alice who has stepped into never-never land and will have the urge to have a pleasant conversation with everything surrounding you, flowers and insects alike. There’s no end to the hours you can spend watching the spiders spin their cobwebs and there’s no explanation as to why these creatures deliberately place their traps at a human head level, so that wherever you walk, adopting the same looking-everywhere-around-you-except-where-you-step pace, you’ll inevitably end up with strands of webs across your face.

And once you reach the root bridges, you’ll never want to see concrete again!

Awesome!

Shillong

You’d think you’d get used to it. Or at least bear it head held high. If not, at least you’d be able to endure it with not more than a surrendering shrug, just like you’d accept a daily, painful shot that you know would make you feel better. But the Asian heat is still a treacherous, ruthless enemy that will make your skin prickle and your eyelids grow heavier. Your body takes twice the amount of time to get from point A to point B, and requires more rest than usual, so your energy level goes down quicker than a stone in a pond. And there’s no need to go to a remote desert in order to experience this; it’s enough to be somewhere in India. Almost anywhere…

Well, this time the heat attacked while we were in Guwahati, the biggest city in the North-Eastern states of India, a less visited area, but with a great many natural attractions, one of them possibly being this unreasonable weather. Talk about monsoon… hmm, must be wreaking havoc... somewhere else because it obviously never heard of this place.

One look at the map showed that the heat would at least interrupt its violent spasms in the North-Eastern state of Meghalaya, just a few hours away but – hopefully – at a higher altitude and, therefore, closer to some colder weather (if this logical statement seems flawed and doesn’t make any sense, it’s because it is and it doesn’t; but there’s more than one way to reassure myself of something and this one was the handiest one available for my overloaded brain).

And that’s how this new overcrowded jeep took us to Shillong. And the sunny weather suddenly changed, becoming a massive vertical sea, so much so that even when we stopped for lunch, no one wanted to get out in the heaving rain. That made it difficult to get out, as we were surrounded by reluctant Indians who didn’t want to get wet and who certainly didn’t even consider getting out, even just for a moment, so that we could sprint towards the sheltering roof of the restaurant.

Onwards then, with damp clothes and armpits raised, so that the jeep soon became too small a place to inhabit along 10 other people (11, if you count the kid stretched on his mother’s and my lap). When confronted with heavy rain, all the windows are closed shut and the air inside the vehicle becomes sparser, thinner, and with a slight tinge to it that can make the weaker ones wish they better had walked barefoot all the way to their destination. On burning coals.

Pretty, posh Shillong had a great vibe to it and we were quite excited to find a nice place to stay and explore the busy streets filled with tourists, underpants sellers and balloon inflators – yes, a nice variety of goods are sold on the streets of Shillong, the items listed above being the most common I’ve seen. Alas, Shillong cannot pride itself with a wide choice of affordable guest houses and, asking around, we were pointed towards another area of the city, on another hill, not really within walking distance, especially when burdened by an assortment of backpacks and bags (between the two of us, we were carrying 4 backpacks and a handbag; also, some bags with fruit and a bottle of water). We took the local bus to this new, unpronounceable area only to discover that we were pointed towards the top end of available accommodations, so we ended up going back to where we started some 3 hours earlier.

By night-time we settled for a lovely cockroach-infested matchbox-sized room somewhere in an underground crypt and we decided we’d better go for a nice, really long stroll, so that the time spend in the cellar would be as short as possible.

The main thing about irony is that it always strikes when you least expect it and in this case, it struck about 10 minutes after we filled in all the check-in papers: a mere 15m further down the street another subsurface hotel would have offered us a room with a smaller number of permanent inhabitants of the cockroach persuasion, a bigger surface (to accommodate the guests alongside the bugs), and at a better price. We ended up finding the local bar…

Sidekick Survival

As you can probably guess, my sidekick got sidetracked for a moment there and lost sight of its purpose in life. To be honest, it should take some time off and stay on the sideline for a while, but for the moment the Sri Lankan sun is shining brightly on its sides. More coming, just as soon as India is out of the way...

Drama At The NMCH

I was roving on the monastery tourist route in Sikkim state and felt happy to return to Gangtok for the evening, where I was looking forward to a nice chat with the wonderful staff at the New Modern Central Hotel, the last place on Earth where I thought I would meet the spawns of an ex-kingdom small as a tiny splinter in India’s finger, and of the promoters of equal rights between sexes. By 5PM I was back on Tibet Road where Sang – the lady owner of the hotel, some tourists and some cops were having a pretty intense conversation just outside the hotel doors. I decided to wait until all the commotion was over and hid in a conveniently placed store from where I could scrutinize the whole scene. But, as I tried hard to refine my hearing and my intuitive senses, they all disappeared together down Tibet Road, so all my attempts at private detectiving were abruptly terminated. So i waited at reception until Sang came back literally purple in the cheeks, panting and huffing. She sat down and proceeded to tell me what had happened (try to imagine this entire dialog taking place in an all but level tone of voice):

'So these 3 backpackers come, like, they ask for a room and I show them one and they, like, say they think about it and come back down and, like, they’re not really happy, so I send the boy upstairs to clean the room, right? And the boy comes back and takes them to see the room again, right? And they, like, ask for some clean sheets, you know? And I haven’t checked the rooms, ‘cause I don’t check them every day, you know? This is why I have a manager, like, you know? And I tell them I will personally change the sheets if they are not clean enough, right? So they go up the third time, right? And the boy walks up 4 flights of stairs and cleans the room and shows them everything, you know? And then come back and they say okay, they'll take the room. And, like, they sit here, smoking and filling in the forms and I tell them, you know, they need to get copy of the passport, the visa, the permit, you know? For one hour they sit here, right? And then they fill in everything and go upstairs, you know? And an hour later they come down and drop the key in front of me and they say they don't want to say. And I'm shocked, you know? Because I didn't know what happened, but okay, if they want to check out, fine. But I tell them that because they checked in already, they have to pay a little cancellation fee, you know, like 50-50-50 each. And even the room I gave them was really cheap, you know, like 500 a night. And the boy has to go up three times and clean the room and everything so that they are happy, right? So this fucking German – just one of them, right; the girl seemed already like she wanted to deal with everything nicely, right? This guy throws 20 rupees in my face, you know? So that's when I exploded, right? And, like, I started shouting, well not really shouting but I got very, very mad, and I told him to take his fucking 20 rupees and don't throw them like that. What, does he think we're animals or what? I also travelled, I've been to Bruxelles for 6 months and where does he think he is? In Europe hotels would charge all the money for something like that, you know? And this German guy tells me to show him on the internet the law that says they have to pay. But what does he think? I don't have internet on my phone and c'mon, 50 rupees each is not that much... So they want to go away so I tell them to wait and I'll call the pulice, like. And the pulicemen come and I explain everything and they think I'm crazy, right? You know, everybody in the city knows who I am. You know, this hotel was a wedding present from my parents, you know? And my husband is very well known in the city… You walked around MG Marg, right?’

…

‘Did you see that gate with the dragons? Well, like, that was made by my father-in-law, right? He’s an artist, you know? Like my husband. And he did all the sculptures of dragons; anywhere you look for dragons in Gangtok, like, all were done by my father-in-law, you know? They call him Dragon Baba, you know? So these-these-these stupid tourists, you know? For 50 rupees I get this much trouble?! But it's not for the money, it's for the ethics, you know? What do they think? That because I live in India I'm stupid? But the pulice, you know? They're always on the side of the tourists so that we here in Sikkim state will make a good impression on the travellers, right? And they think I’m crazy, right? This crazy lady makes so much fuss for nothing… You know? But the old puliceman, you know, he understood what I said and told these travellers that they should pay something and just leave it like this, you know? At least for the boy’s effort for going up and down so many times and cleaning the room, right? But he left and the other one was on the backpackers’ side, like, he thinks I shouldn’t make, you know, so much blah-blah out of this, you know? And he told us to go to the pulice station but that German idiot, you know? He didn’t want to go… and he tells me to show him on my phone on the internet where the law says. I mean, you know, it’s common sense, right?'

...

‘Sometimes I think I should sell this place. You know, this is the last place in Tibet Road where backpackers can come. It’s the only cheap place left in the middle of the city. All the other hotels renovated and now they have TVs in every room, right? And their prices start at 2000 rupees, you know? Well, I really want to see those guys find something as cheap as this and believe me that I hope they have a terrible night tonight! Because they shouldn’t treat us like this. What do they think that we’re like cattle or something? But then we got to the pulice station and the German guy lied, you understand? He lied to the pulice, telling them that they didn’t check in, right? What does he think all those forms are for? I don’t do them to keep them, you know? I have to send them to the Tourism Office because we also have to pay taxes, right? Fucking tourists!’

And on she went. All my signs of alliance and coalition were acknowledged but could not calm her down. I offered a cigarette. She sent for some coffee. She talked some more and then retold the story on the phone… about 3 times. And only after a long unwinding time, thanks to some coffee, some beer, a joint and a couple of cigarettes did I have the courage to approach her again:

‘So, now that you feel better, what do you say, can I check in again?’

‘Hah, you know what? I’m in a good mood now so I’ll give you a better room…’

She called ‘the boy’ – a very sweet lad, who could win any contest involving dancing and/or re-inhaling the smoke rings he just blew out – and briefly instructed him to take me upstairs. My previous room had been 302 but now I went higher up in the hotel room hierarchy (and the hotel’s floors) and got to 505, a large room with a nice view towards the main road and some unique paintings:

 

Incidentally, this was also the room zee Germans had checked in and subsequently rejected.

Alexander

An unfulfilled request dangled over my head like a hatchet about to drop: when in Darjeeling, visit the monument of the great Körösi Csoma Sandor, a Transylvanian scholar, one of the first to ever research the vast domain of Tibetology and to bring to light Tibetan teachings of immense import, mainly by authoring the first Tibetan-English dictionary and grammar book. He died in Darjeeling following – what else? – fever from the Malaria he contracted during his travels in the Terai.

My pledge of sending photos from places my friends found particularly interesting sent me on a wild goose chase around this city perched high upon numerous hills, making any such endeavour a sort of heaving treasure hunt trek up and down the steep hills of Darjeeling.

In all honesty, Körösi Csoma Sandor was not much more than the tongue-twisting name of the street where my uncle resides and his fame was as familiar to me as the spatial positioning of quarks in mesons and baryons. But I had to do it, not only as a fulfilled wish to my friend, but also for the benefit of my own intellectual (and physical) development. This is what brought me in front of the tourist officer whom I casually asked about the Christian cemetery in town:         

‘Why you want to go there?’

‘Well, you see there’s this Romanian scholar who expired in Darjeeling and I want to visit his grave…’

‘What his name? He is famous?’

‘Well, his name is a tad complicated, Körösi Csoma Sandor. And yes, for my country he was quite famous. I don’t know if he was famous here as well…’

‘When he died?’

‘’Bout a hundred fifty years ago.’

‘I don’t know this name. Can you write it down?’

…

‘Hmm, no, so sorry. I don’t know. There’s a cemetery here [points to a place on the badly photocopied map] but the only famous person there is Alexander…’

‘Okay, I’ll check it out anyway. Thanks for the help.’

After this deep heart-to-heart I started walking downhill looking around for some nice gravestones where I imagined myself an astute archaeologist in search for some long-lost treasure. I mostly found tea plantations stretching as far as the eye can see, especially since the eye has some difficulty seeing past a thick blanket of low clouds in a city propped on the highest, steepest hills around, where for some reason the British decided that they should inspire the locals and force them to grow tea plants so that they – the British – would feel more at home. 2400m is Darjeeling’s mean altitude (pun intended), give or take 100m here and there, where nature was stubborn enough to erect yet another mound with a 70 degrees slope.

This being said, I walked on, dreading the way back as the city rose menacingly over my head. And that’s when I saw it: I stopped in the middle of the road, oblivious to the persistent stream of honking pouring from every jeep that passed me by; I stared, transfixed by the shiny 50cm letters that composed the message on the opposite wall; and I started laughing again. So hard in fact that my face turned redder than an overripe tomato and my cheeks started hurting:

As soon as he saw me (and probably a little confused by my overly joyful appearance), the caretaker of the cemetery shuffled closer and introduced me to the tomes of greetings and notes that had been left by faithful admirers of Alexander. He approached the matter by asking me if I was from Hungary and I was hurt by this blunt lack of knowledge of obscure east-European history. I remarked that Alex, as well as myself, came from Transylvania and withstood the urge of explaining the whole political and historical situation, which I myself am not entirely clear with. He said he knew all about it but still insisted on showing me all the Hungarian memos safely stored inside his notebooks and encouraged me to leave a meaningful, deep commendation about the great man, of course not failing to remind me that he was the one who took such good care of the monument and any financial acknowledgement of his efforts would be welcomed.     

That’s how Alexander turned out not to be the Great (although he will always be great in my heart – a 50cm high great etching, that is) as much as he turned out to be good old Sandor, the one I looked for and thus excavated, and, if still on that subject, the only famous person Darjeeling prides itself with.      

Let Go

And this isn’t just a metaphor.

An imaginary seam across the rich Asian landscape, a bridge and some signposts informed me that I had crossed the border to India. The hot plains didn’t feel any different: the Indian heat gave me the same queasy feeling as the one I had felt for so long in the Nepali Terrai; the people, sharing countenances and features that I love and admire reveal the same pearly-white toothy grin I’ve been welcomed with all over Nepal. And the sing-song Nepali and Newari languages have been replaced with the chirpy Hindi and other thousands of dialects between which I can’t tell any difference. After all, just like someone once told me, the common denominator of all the languages Nepal and India share is ‘ek’ – one; and it’s as good a start as any.

But the scorching plains revealed the dwellers’ character, that cunning sense of trying to pinch a little extra off the ignorant westerners, a skill employed discreetly at any purchase, regardless how small: the water bottle with its official price stamped on is sold to a westerner with at least a 50% service charge, the seller adopting a charming innocent smile that would reassure the customer.

I couldn’t handle it straight away so, after a first hot hour in India I hopped on a jeep to the hills. Darjeeling, I thought would be a good start for this new Indian odyssey: hills, clouds and tea would surely make me forget about that strange feeling I had, which could only be described as having a sense of loss leaving Nepal, feeling sad, missing it.

And that’s when I had to let go. Let go of old customs and the Nepali ways I had come to know, let go of those strange feelings of attachment to a place I only knew for a couple of months, let go of firm convictions. I would soon discover I could even let go of any handhold in the jeep and embrace the way of the mountains, swaying gently along my fellow passengers on this new jeep ride.

The mountain way is simple: get as many people inside a jeep as humanely possible and start negotiating the steep, narrow hairpin bends up the road, disregarding the fog and rain that is emblematic for this area and this season. A tiny thought crossed my mind once we started and I noticed that all the people inside the jeep were chanting little prayers to their respective gods and only later, once we hit the real mountain roads that would be better tackled on a cross bike, I realised that the prayers might have been welcomed by the gods. The steep road uphill got every heart pumping faster each time another car passed us and the driver slowed, viciously pressing the break and getting us to an abrupt stop, so that the other jeeps would have enough space to pass. But the main feeling I had while sitting in between a portly businessman who had a lot in common with a slightly deflated balloon, a small man with a big packet in his lap, and a quiet fellow plastered onto the window – the main feeling was that of being in the mosh pit at a rock concert, only without the tossing and turning: I tried really hard to take up as little space as possible, so I experimented with trying to make my shoulders touch each other while crossing my arms, so that I’d be somewhat closer to giving myself a nice, warm hug. And all the while I was hoping that someone would get off so we’d have a little bit more space or something that might be considered normal, man-sized space.

And finally, someone did get off… only to be replaced seconds later by someone else. But I did manage to get a better seat, mainly a nice place close to the window; a nice place where I would be pressed only from one side towards the dripping wet window, my body taking the shape of the door panel on one side, and the shape of a monk’s shoulder, elbow and shinbone on the other. 

Upon reaching Darjeeling, I soon discovered that I didn’t have all that much to let go of, seeing that the language spoken in this area locally known as Gorkhaland is Nepali and the people’s character is still the one I got used to in Nepal. Yeah, letting go is not that hard.

Front seat of a jeep, built for two, let's say two and a child in the middle...

Rainy Days

Well, it appears I've been lying low for the last couple of weeks, which is not even remotely true. And it appears that I've been stranded between countries for a long time, which can also prove to be completely wrong.

What happened in fact is that I've been internet-less for a long time and, even if there are millions of things to recount, blogging tends to be borderline impossible when there's no internet connection available and your personal computer decided to take an extended break just to spite you. Yup, that's right! My trusty sidekick (i.e. netbook) refuses to cooperate and is now blinking a sad little blue LED at me, all the while not doing anything else. 

The upside: the ex-wettest place on Earth - while being probably the wettest place on Earth right now - is indeed a lovely (rainy!) place.

No Man's Land

I got to Kakarbitta, which would surely be my last stop in the kingdom of Nepal, as it’s a border city, enabling travellers to get to the north-eastern part of India. I thought that Ilam would be my last Nepalese stop right about the time I thought I would catch a direct bus from one tea country to the other, from Ilam to Darjeeling respectively. But, as always, plans are usually changed faster than socks and I ended up in Kakarbitta.

The buzz and heat only reminded me that the border is just a virtual one, that the first person I’d meet would not be that strikingly different from the ones on the other side of the border. And, sure enough, I still couldn’t tell the difference between Indians and Nepali even at gunpoint.

The Indian-looking Nepali at the hotel was very kind to explain that the cheapest way to get across was to walk (preferably with eyes and ears closed so as not to get distracted by the myriad of offers of rides to the other side of the border, to Siliguri or Darjeeling, or to any other happy place, made happy by my own existence and the existence of the person offering). So, within 10 minutes after walking up that morning, I started walking to India.

The border trend seems to be bridges; and, of course, there’s a bridge crossing to get to the Indian border: a bridge long enough to make the crossing irritatingly hot and sweaty even in the trickling rain, so that people would be either really exhilarated or immensely exasperated by the time they reach India. I was definitely on the reasonably irritated side of things by the time they pointed me to the Indian Immigration Office, welcoming me with shouts and preposterous offers for the most uninspired transportation means to major Indian cities, an eye-watering deal that could well mean the most memorable welcoming present to India for any credulous traveller (it would also mean that a considerable amount of one’s budget would go towards the maintenance of the shabby jeeps which would provide the transport to any Indian city).

So, after having some really friendly Indian policemen welcoming me on the other side of the bridge, I hopped around the alley leading to the Immigration Office because it was under construction and, eventually, got face to face with a nice officer who shoved some forms under my nose and proceeded to ask me about my favourite football team. After filling out the immigration forms, the officer turned to his job and started analysing my handwriting and checking the highly important information. And just when I thought I’d get the stamp of approval to go crazy anywhere in India, the officer asked if I had ‘checked out’ of Nepal. I was flabbergasted; there hadn’t been an Immigration Office on the Nepali side of the bridge and I didn’t know you had to officially say that you were leaving Nepal.

‘You need to go back, ma’am, and get the stamp from Nepal Immigration Office in your passport. I would take you myself but I have to stay here… so maybe if you wait for half an hour, I can take you.’

Lovely offer, really, but I chose to do it myself and left my backpack in India, leisurely walking back to Nepal. I’ll tell you this: the bridge didn’t get any shorter in the meantime and the stroll was not all that much fun, as the motorised traffic between the countries with its unceasing honking – a sure sign of joy or sorrow for leaving or coming into a country – was as pleasant as having a tooth extraction. At the Nepali Immigration Office nobody was at work, which meant that I had to spend more time in Nepal waiting for someone to put a goodbye stamp in my passport. They eventually did that and soon enough I was back on the bridge reminding myself that the careless Nepali ways have just been replaced by the complicated Indian methods of doing things. And I knew I was back!

On the upside, I did get a neatly written name and phone number (‘If you need any help…’) from the Indian immigration officer and made my first true, honest friend in India.

What Happened Afterwards

As the bike was handed back to its rightful owner – in perfect condition, mind you (although there has been a short pit stop along one hilly road, where the bike underwent a small session of acquiring a footrest that had miraculously gone missing) – I had to resort to old ways of travelling: by bus. And it would be the first night bus I’d be riding in. I had reasoned that a night bus would offer the fuggy comfort of a bed in which you can snuggle boundlessly because Nepalese sleeping hours stretch from somewhere around 9PM to almost 7AM.

But, as is often the case these days, I was wrong. The endless hours waiting for the night bus to come culminated in a rainy instant when my luggage was mercilessly shoved in a trunk that was already too full and wouldn’t possibly contain it, and me being gently jostled into a grubby compact seat where my knees and the seat in front instantly merged into one bruise-inflicting body. At least I had the presence of mind to coax the ticket seller into giving me a window seat for the times when my head would fall off the back rest and wobble softly onto the cold, hard metal frame of the window (as opposed to nestling lightly on the shoulders of the person next to me – like I’ve seen it done so many times. And the good-natured Nepali would never dream of pushing away a total stranger who’s serenely snoring like an enraged bumblebee on their shoulder).

And off we went into the night. I could tell this was a deluxe bus by the fact that we were offered water bottles (I lost mine somewhere under the seats) and, after a short musical intro, they turned the TV on and we were treated to the finest Nepali (or Hindi) action movie. The rocking and swaying was soothing at first but it promptly stopped as the bus also came to a deathly halt. Because the movie captured the attention of most passengers, people didn’t seem to mind much but as the hours dripped by, this protracted pee-break turned into a nerve-breaking over-nighter. But after only two hours, the bus started slowly ambling away and its continuous humdrum soon put me to sleep.

I awoke right before the dinner break, sometime around 2AM and, dreamily following the bevy, I started munching at the dal bhat placed in front of my face.

Dal bhat is an all-in-one all-you-can-eat traditional meal that usually consists of a small mountain of rice, dal (lentil) soup, vegetable curry, tomato chutney or some pickled vegetables, some unidentified boiled greens, one papad (a thin crisp lentil-flour pancake), a slice of cucumber and a slice of radish. And whenever any of the items listed above disappears from the plate, there will be someone replacing the missing item until you are either full or literally on the verge of bursting. I’ve only ever asked for seconds and even that with some reluctance, but there’s no saying as to how many servings there can be. The sure thing is that even a physically well-developed grown man can’t possibly have more than two servings of the thing.

After nibbling at it for a while (and not even thinking about seconds), I asked for the bill and was thankful that I was still sitting down when they told me the price: the equivalent of two and a half dollars was joyfully asked of me, which is what I call highway robbery (and, in fact, we were on a highway)! Even with this hearty amount of food, it would still be almost as much as I would pay for a room at night, but nevertheless, I handed the money in the hope that I was still dreaming and this never actually happened. I intended to have a nice smoke after this potentially ruinous meal but the staff didn’t have change and I had to wait around, my dream of a rewarding cigarette destroyed and my bus on its way onward without me. It took some time for the restaurant staff to:

• stop the bus and get it turned around
• find my change in the recesses of some dingy waistcloth
• reverently escort me to the bus and, thus, away.

All in all, it only took 15 hours to get to Janakpur, where at 10 in the morning, fully bridled and equipped with a backpack that inexplicably becomes heavier and grittier I was sweating my way to town.

I’ll spare you the details of how it is indeed possible to sweat as much as a fountain without moving a single muscle; how it is possible to not be able to tell which drops covering your body are water from the refreshing shower you’ve just had seconds ago, and which are the treacherous drops of sweat already turning into a flowing torrent; how it’s possible to instantly have sticky, wet clothes that have been clean and dry moments before; how it’s possible that even the air you breathe has the consistency of boiled butter… I’ll spare you all that.

And just tell you about the latest biblical flood that erupted in Janakpur late in the afternoon. I had been walking through steady light rain for a while and stopped for a nice beer refill when the rain doubled its forces and turned into the wrath of gods, pouring water like there would be no tomorrow. And people felt that tomorrow would be out of the questions for them, as most Nepali can’t swim and the weather conditions implied that swimming would be required even for a short hop to the toilet. I watched as the whole restaurant filled with water and people started stacking important-looking boxes to the walls. A stray dog wandered in seeking refuge somewhere where it thought it would find a dry spot to quietly curl up. But the water had already claimed the entire floor so the only logical thing for a dog to do was to try and shake the water off its fur, thus splattering all the customers.

Owner and staff started putting the fridge on top of a table and handed out bricks for the customers to put their feet on. A small boy started shovelling water out of the bar with his flip-flop; bottles were minding their own business, floating peacefully among the tables, slaloming around a forgotten bike helmet; my new-found friend, a Nepali with whom I was sharing my beers (there were more than one now, as there was nowhere to go and nothing better to do) asked for a plastic bag and ceremoniously took off his posh leather boots and socks, stored them safely inside the plastic bag – which was thoroughly checked for any holes – rolled up his pants and proceeded to explain how, if the rain doesn’t subside, he will surely perish, either from his inability to swim or from the snakes that would surely welcome this forlorn weather and prepare for the hunt…

As we watched the apocalyptic deluge, the kids outside abandoned all worries and started dancing and squealing in the waist-high waters while the motorcycle drivers morosely pushed their water-filled engines around. Night was falling and the rainfall was not subsiding. Eventually, my Nepali friend and I decided to face death and defy the mighty forces. It was easy for me, as the hotel I was staying at was but a few dozen metres away. But my friend had to face a lots perils on his way home, clutching protectively at his boots in the plastic bag. I still don’t know if he made it home…

Bonus: really low-quality phone photos

If you look closely, you can see that
the owner's feet are under water

This is just the beginning...

If you squint really hard, you can see a motorcycle floating somewhere in there

Is the World Ending?

Much to my surprise, the world is not really ending. It’s just changing, morphing into something that I’d never have imagined possible some years before. No, I’ve checked: most of the stars are still up there in the sky, although it’s hard to see them with this thick blanket of clouds that is not only above my head, but it’s occasionally surrounding my feet as well; it’s either that I’m really high up in the tea-producing hills of Ilam, where life goes on unabridged by weather phenomena such as, oh let’s say rainy season; or these clouds really ignore common gravitational theories and submerge everything in a milky soup that makes everything look as though nobody sounded the fire department alarm in time and now the odourless smoke from an invisible fire gnaws at the human senses.

No, the world is not really ending. Understandably, you’d think it’s ending when all around you seems to disappear in the misty unknown and strange, singular occurrences may get you seriously considering the fate of the world.

Especially if you’d know that I tend to choose my lodgings according to the availability of a television set that will broadcast the FIFA World Cup (this fact sometimes trumping over the ease of use of a wireless internet connection!). Or that I rigorously wake up at 1.30AM to watch the football games live, and surprise even myself with getting emotionally involved and cheering for a particular team. And that I am inclined to make football the gravitational centre of all my conversations with Nepali people, who are as captivated by the subject as a cat is by a fluffy, tinkling ball.

No, the world is not really ending; but my sane, football-free mind is on holiday, hopefully returning right after the final game.

How the Other Half Lives

Because yes, it lives. And it lives well. Nepal’s rich and not famous (unknown, really) have quite the comfy life in the Kathmandu Valley, where their problems range from what social meetings to attend to choosing the most suitable restaurant for the evening’s culinary desires.

Kathmandu Valley boasts a wide variety of business people from all branches of economic activity, who mostly have international professional affairs, ensuring the well-being of a class that has yet to find all schemes – shady or rainbow-tinted – to churn the last drops of national money and shove it deep inside the safety of their pockets.

Politics happens mostly in restaurants and bars, more often than not over a bottle of the finest import whiskey or other ardent spirit that will seal the deal much better than your average glue. And anyone in need of convincing will be handsomely rewarded with a thick stack of greys: although Nepali banknotes are joyfully coloured, they pass through countless of sticky hands until they reach their destination, and so their overall colour often turns to a muddy brownish grey usually having the consistency of cleaning rags found in restaurants all over the world. And after the local authorities – minor annoyances in the way of prosperity – have been financially oiled and dutifully greased and thus, convinced  the wealthy Nepalis will proceed to deal with a number of equally rich Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, and in times of hardship, even with Europeans.

You may ask: what is it that they in fact do? And the simplest, most illuminating answer is business. That’s the most satisfactory answer I got and it should be sufficient to extinguish any other bothersome questions.

The Nepali rich have a definite idea of having a good night out and that is having an expensive dinner and some expensive drinks in a posh, expensive establishment. The operating word here is, as you might have guessed, expensive. And if you can add some World Cup football on top of that, then it’ll be a really good time. Naturally, if you can bet ridiculous amounts of money on one team or the other and lose more than a whole Nepali family makes in a week, you've just painted the picture of a perfect time.

Another great activity for the Nepali rich is bragging: what about is not usually a concern, but if there is a chance of arrogant gasconading, it will be fully exploited. The best line-shooting I’ve heard was swimming like a dolphin across the World Cup ocean and it consisted of enumerating the ownership of various gold and platinum hotel member cards, and holding that any of the aforementioned prized cards would supposedly get the owner a room (a royal suite no less) at practically any hotel in Brazil, oblivious to the fact that piranhas worldwide have surfaced only to snatch any type of available lodgings – be it royal suite or camping lawn – months ago. The bragging does not, in fact, stop here, as there is an endless supply of noteworthy self-praise. What should be engraved on the marble mausoleums of expired rich Nepalese: the sheer number of bankrupt businesses one can have and talk about with the pride of a toddler who escaped its mother’s protective embrace and is now productively sitting in a puddle of mud having lunch with the frogs. It is simply astounding. But at least you can admire the positivity of the Nepalese rich, who don’t consider bankruptcy a failure on the slope towards impoverishment, but only a slightly annoying setback in the game they never imagine they could possibly lose.

And while seeking to extend their fortunes and absorb material wealth like a dog absorbs water in a tempest; while having the latest smartphones, tablets and computers, and the flashiest gold rings, bracelets and anchor-chain-sized necklaces; while ‘retiring’ before the age of 50; while doing all that these prosperous Nepalese hold themselves the saviours of the poor, the ones who donate and organize charities and other noble causes, concurrently doing what people of their stature and position do best, considering their education and manners: barking orders at low-class waiters, shouting for a napkin when the table’s full of them, or simply disregarding anyone who’s not as well-kempt and affluent to be worthy of their precious consideration.

But do you know who else lives well? Mosquitoes. And do you know what the rich Nepalese people’s biggest living irony is? It’s that mosquitoes viciously attack everyone and only stop to ask about economic prowess when they are full (and they never are).

Post written with wrath and fury (and artistic licence, of course) because the rich Nepalese asked me to go to Brazil with them.