A Continuing and Retrospective Journey

Laos, Part 2: A Long Sunset on the Mekong

2011-09-17T16:04:00.000-07:00

From where I sit now at the Grass Valley, CA Public Library, Laos feels like a world away. It IS a world away. Thinking back to the last two weeks there, exploring Luang Prabang, being awed by the great valley to Vang Vieng, and lackadaisically hammocking along the banks of the mighty Mekong at Dondet, 4,000 Islands, I am amazed again. My pictures remind me of the moments my breath was taken away, and humble me to the beauty of that land and its people. So far, it has never been easy to select which photos to show, and choosing 60 best pictures from this portion of the trip was harder than any other... decisions decisions! It was difficult to take a bad picture with scenery this amazing; I hope you enjoy my final selections!

We embarked from our river boat into the old city of Luang Prabang, which, historic as the former French provincial capital, is laid with distinctive architecture. It is also blessedly tranquil, seeming to sleep on the banks of the Mekong. There is a nightly market where you can score excellent Laos made textiles and silver, beautiful temples and many strolling monks, and astounding waterfalls in close proximity.

Our river boat was like the small one in this picture.

A look around town shows...

White stucco colonial era buildings...

Slope-roofed temples...

Saffron robed monks...

We motorcycled out to our first waterfall, Kuang Si.

Here is an Asian Sloth Bear, at the reserve set up by the waterfall. It was an unexpected surprise to meet this guy here!

Rushing with water, Kuang Si waterfall overwhelms its viewing area well past flood stage levels.

The roar was incredible!

A rare picture of the two of us, wet with mist.

Before shopping at Luang Prabang's night market, I suggest filling up with an all-you-can-put-on-your-plate meal, less than a dollar to fill up!

After dark is when the night market starts to get busy.

Aiyanna eyes silver bangles and silk scarfs...

Fun oddities everywhere, so many fun things for sale I just wished I could buy it all!

Another day another waterfall outside Luang Prabang: Tad Sae.

Jungle and waterfall collide, forest merging with rapid.

Swimming and rope swinging here is quite refreshing also.

At the food market... moth chrysalises. The green ones were too young, still caterpillars.

This rainbow reflected in the Nam Khan besides stretching the whole sky.

I specifically asked the travel agent who booked our bus ticket, "How are the roads?" "Good," he said, "The landslide is clear now."

He lied. We hiked where the road had been washed away weeks before, and that probably won't be fixed until the monsoon rains clear.

We had originally intended to take our bus straight from Luang Prabang to Vientiane, the capital, but as we desended into the valley approaching Vang Vieng, we changed our minds.

We got to our hotel room just in time for this sunset off the balcony. See why we stayed?

This was the reason we almost didn't stay: we'd heard about the bad scene happening here between locals and party seeking tourists. They come to get drunk and tube the river, they don't care about modest local customs, and they seem happy watching episode after episode of Friends and Family Guy at the "TV Bars" lining once quiet streets. There were probably 20 different TV Bars, in one section there were 4 bars in a row, all with Friends on. PUKE!! This was NOT what we came to Laos for, and we were sad to find this ongoing "worst-of" culture wreck.

Luckily, scooter journeying outside of the town itself brought us to the beauty we were looking for.


Rice fields run into cliffs, caves abound!


One such cave above one such rice field...


Cool formations inside!

The hike down we met many little local friends, like this downclimbing millipede.

Ant battle!! The mega-ants were getting wrecked by the micro-nasties.

Buzz, land, buzz, dash: a dragonflies life for me!

Water scorpion? Don't know what to call him.

A real local, she stopped us to touch Aiyanna's hair.

Another scene from the hotel balcony... morning.

A drive back up the valley, revisiting our bus route in the open air of a rented scooter made for the most beautiful drive of the trip. Epic scenery!!

Returning to the hotel after our long drive, butts soar and getting rained on was nothing as we chased this rainbow down the valley.

We cruised through Vientiane, Laos's unremarkable capital, and overnighted in Pakse after an overnight bus trip south.

Men playing the local sport in Vientiane.

A boy bicycling in Pakse.

Next stop: Si Phan Don! 4,000 Islands, as it is also called, is laid back place alive with local culture while simultaneously sleepy with hammocks.

Fresh fish!

We took a boat to our island, Don Det, where we would spend about six days relaxing and soaking in the views.

Boats are the primary transport around here.

Storms are made better when viewed from your small hut!

Bungalows line the river for tranquility seeking tourists like us, but luckily in low season they are almost all empty!

Not just a pretty flower here...

"Mumbua", or lotus seeds, make a snack... raw, tastes like a big fresh pea.

Locals.

Bringing water into the school house from the river.

Crossing between Don Det and Dong Kong, this bridge is left over from a French railroad that once connected the islands.

From anywhere on Don Det you can hear the roar of this waterfall, only a fraction of which is pictured here. The waterfall stretches accross the entire Mekong where one plate is sucked below another. It's not a high waterfall, but in terms of volume, it's the biggest in SE Asia.

A kitten hisses at my camera.

Water buffalo looking... water buffalow-ish


Kids on the island.

More kids. We watched some other children, younger than this, making a fishing pole with a meat cleaver. No parental supervision seemed to be necessary.

I was invited to this business opening banquet. Laos people really like to celebrate, as you can see from the feast spread before us! It was really fun to party with the locals and experience some authentic local culture.

Watching storms come in from our bungalow was a favorite past time of mine.

Our bungalow for four nights was made of bamboo and grass. The roof, though I could see sky through it in the day, somehow did not leak.

A swarm of insects around the light at night, an incomprehensible number.

One of my favorite scenes from the island rice fields.

Your truly.

Farewell...

to the beautiful Mekong...

And farewell to Laos.

The next day we crossed into Cambodia, where we spent six days at Siem Reap and around the temples of Angkor Wat... another chapter of the voyage that, from America and Grass Valley, seems so distant.

Well here I am! Writing about the past in my own present, I leave this blogging world to go back and live. My phone is back on, and I have wheels and some time to travel. Talk to you soon?

Thanks for reading everyone, love to all.

Chapter 3, Part 1: Introduction to Laos Mountains

2011-09-09T07:23:00.000-07:00

Laos... Have you been here? One of the poorest countries in the world, and also one of the most beautiful.

Thank you for reading my friends! I am excited to recount more of Aiyanna and I's stupendous journey. This post will take you into the splendid mountains of Northern Laos-- the beauty, peace, and tranquility of life here, and also examine some of the many conundrums ongoing in this country. Read on, and look at the commonplace life of the small town street, observe the many moods of a rice field, trek with us through the jungle to a remote village, brave awful roads in frightening buses, and have a well earned rest along the Nam Ou river before finishing on the banks of Mekong at Luang Prabang, where you will have to wait for the next installment... Sorry, our excursion in Laos was just too much for one post.

Our trip in Laos started when we crossed the Mekong from Thailand, and our first stop after visas and passport stamps was Luang Namtha.

We were greeted in the market by tribal Akah women: relentless bracelet pushers, but full of personality with their traditional head dresses and near toothless grins.

Laos is a very rural country, and agriculture is the primary occupation of its citizens. Here are some street scenes from Luang Namtha and Muang Sing, farther north, to give you an idea of what daily life is like.

Geese, as well as ducks and chickens, as well as every other farm animal, make their presence known.

Textiles are made locally, and sold aggressively. Here Aiyanna contends with local children selling scarves... In the end she couldn't say no.

These funny vehicles, a sort of tractor, carried everything from rocks, mud, logs, and most often, crowds of people riding to and from town.

The morning market in Muang Sing was a bustling affair in the early hours of the day. Here a man leaves loaded with goods for the day.

Laos is also a Buddhist nation, so monks young and old are a common sight.

We spent several very restful days in Muang Sing (where and when I began recounting our adventures in this blog) as I convalesced from the antibiotics I was taking. These rest days were a great opportunity to soak in the beauty of Northern Laos and observe the shifting moods of the rice fields beyond our guesthouse balcony.

Early morning mists...

Daily labors...

Rifts of monsoon clouds in the afternoons...

And evening illumination on dragon skies.

Northern Laos is an ethnically diverse area with tribal groups making up a more than significant portion of the population here. The Akah, Hmong, Khmu, and Lahu, among others, live in mostly homogenous villages all over the region. In order to see the life of the Akah as they have lived for many generations, we embarked on a trek to one of their many remote villages. We weren't really sure what we were signing up for in this trek... we knew there would be jungle walking (through the Nam Ha National Protected Area) and an overnight homestay experience, but not much more. It turned out to be quite an adventure, a good challenge for both of us.

Our trip started with a hike through this families farm, about an hour drive further into the remoteness from the already far removed Muang Sing. This family is growing rubber trees on their hillside since clearing it of trees; below are their rice fields.

Laos jungle is dense, dark greens. The trail was generally bad or worse, though occasionally it opened for some nice walking.

Luckily our guides knew the way, and this man, though he spoke no English, carried a bush knife he deftly wielded to cut the brush before us.

Lunch spread before us on a blanket of banana leaves. Yum!

One of the "bad"sections... you can imagine worse!

We explored this cave-- it was small, but rather exciting in an Indiana Jones sort of way.

The hiking provided a great opportunity to check out the jungle life. Please endure my following attempts at nature photography:

Ferns dotted with eggs at the edges.

This looked like strawberry and tasted like sour incarnate.

A bird, a bee eater? Beautiful.

Eight inches of millipede.

Most bizarre fungus award goes to... this weird looking guy.

Needless to say, the jungle is a great environment for mushroom mayhem.

What is that all over that tree? Let's take a closer look shall we...

Caterpillars! "No touch," our guide says. Ferocious friends!

Mating rhinoceros beetles.

After about 10 hours of hiking-- a mostly uphill fight through slippery deep mud, through waste high rivers, fighting angry briars, sweating in thick humidity before finally getting drenched by rain-- we arrived at the Akah village where we would spend the night. The high remote setting made for a beautiful location, but any romantic fantasies of village life quickly dissipated as we were confronted with scenes of a very hard life-- bad for the people, bad for the planet.

No plumbing in any of these houses, livestock going where they please: poop is a problem, especially when most of the children are barefoot.

Food is cooked over a fire, and the fire is indoors. The house where we stayed was constantly filled with smoke, not to mention that bamboo walls and grass roofs are not exactly flame retardant.

Here a woman goes to one of several springs for water. This is also where people bathe, do laundry, wash vegetables, etc. While this woman is old enough, we also saw very young children, like 5 and 6 years old, making water runs, carrying two full buckets over their shoulders. Hard as I tried not to judge a way of life and a culture situated to a time and place unfathomable to me, I couldn't escape my conclusion that this is no way to live. Change should come-- for the good of many.

Here are the high rice feilds of the Akah village we observed; a beautiful scene until you observe the following:

This photo shows the charred stumps of a once-forest. The Akah practice slash and burn agriculture: they clear a section of mountain, burn, and then plant rice for one season before abandoning the clearing to be overtaken with rough brambles. They slash and burn again and again, year after year, deforesting at a completely unsustainable rate.

The next day, many more hours of walking. It was really exhausting, but very good to be out in nature in totally unfamiliar territory.

And of course, hiking has its rewards, such as this beautiful waterfall...

And this beautiful view. Trek finished, we had a lot of new information to process. On the one hand, we had encountered up close the beautiful landscapes and incredible diversity in nature on tap all over Northern Laos. We had gained an appreciation for the ruggedness of this land, and witnessed the seemingly unstoppable forces of the jungle. On the other, we were beginning to understand the struggle of poverty facing the majority of people here. Our guide talked to us in his broken English about the corruption of the government, about the selling out of Laos land to the Chinese, and about his own rubber tree farm on his own bit of clear-cut mountainside. These same perplexing mixes of an awesome natural beauty aside a despairing social poverty would follow us all over the country.

We left Muang Sing and began our gradual southward journey through Laos. Bus rides were almost always arduous affairs here: the roads in the north are terrible, especially during monsoon season as there are frequent landslides that cover the roads, deep breaks in the road, and soft mud that seems as if it should just give way to our overloaded and top heavy bus. This picture shows the narrowness of the roads, and the size of the vehicles passing. Of all those dangers, the speed of the buses is certainly not one: they travel very, very slowly. To go 100 kilometers could take as long as 6 hours.

I rarely take pictures from the bus, but sometimes it's worth trying. Bus rides often took us through some of the most beautiful scenery as we made mountain passes and traversed our way up and down past villages and vistas.

A German fellow who goes to the jungle to collect moths for museums wanted to show us this unusual cricket, and I wanted to show you!

Those jarring bus rides got us to this beautiful riverside bungalow in Nong Kiaw.

The Nam Ou River splashes by he karste cliffs that surround the town.

Ah the river... The people here washes themselves, their clothes, and their food in these waters. Simultaneously, the same people throw in their trash, and wash away their personal waste, in the same water. Yuck.

A loom in one of the village houses. Laos weaving would be something I'd want to take home with me.

Scenes from the village.

The river at night.

A man standing among the holes of recently removed land mines. Laos still has a lot of unexploded ordinance and land mines to clear, part of the sad history from this region.

We explored this cave that local people used as a refuge during American bombing raids during the Vietnam War.

Looking out the cave.

Looking in the cave, a message for everyone.

When it was time to leave Nong Kiaw, we boarded one of these "slow boats" down the Nam Ou. It was a 5 hour journey through some very beautiful country.

Karste mountains in mist as seen from the river.

The "Buddha Cave" along the Mekong River; getting close to our destination Luang Prabang!

Here I am on the boat. Hi everyone!

OK-- you've reached the end of this post. Thank you for reading! Stay tuned, as there is still more to come. Next time I will show you the magnificent city of Luang Prabang and the powerful waterfalls around there; I'll tell you about what crazy business is happening in Vang Vieng and show you the most beautiful scenery from the whole trip; and then finish Laos with some seriously earned R&R in the far South on Si Phan Don-- 4,000 Islands. Of course, this is all past tense... In the present moment, I am writing these final lines from Siem Reap, Cambodia, on our last night here before we buzz back to Bangkok. Three more days before we officially enter the time frame reserved for Chapter 4 on the West Coast. California: see you soon! South East Asia, I'm gonna miss you...

Thanks everyone! Much love, best wishes to all; see you when you see me.

Chapter 2 Part 2: The Road North, Chiang Mai & Pai

2011-08-28T00:24:00.000-07:00

Hello Intrepid Blog Readers!

Greatings from Pakse, Southern Laos. Aiyanna and I arrived early this Sunday morning via an overnight sleeping bus-- quite a novelty-- and after a lot of go go go-ing, I am grateful for a restful day to allow me an opportunity to continue this story, in 4 chapters, about Aiyanna and I's rambunctious voyage. So while resting in Laos, let me continue where I left off from the last post, traveling from Krabi Province into Northern Thailand. We landed in Chiang Mai, peaceful city of temples...

We stayed in a very comfortable guest house (with the best breakfast to date) that was very near this "wat", or temple. However, almost any guest house in Old Chiang Mai a person stays in will probably be within a stone's throw of a wat.

Old Chiang Mai, where we stayed, is delineated by the ancient square moat that surrounds it, and on Saturday night down the main street that cuts Old Chiang Mai through the middle is the Saturday Night Market. It's a busy affair, with hundreds of vendors coming from around and outside the city, with a lot of stuff for all of us tourists to buy. As the picture shows, the Market happens with or without the torrents of monsoon.

Vendors are not caught off guard by the weather, even if some tourists are ("Where's the umbrella kiosk, Aiyanna?"). Rivers formed through the thoroughfare.

One night in Chiang Mai, Aiyanna and I took a traditional Thai cooking class.
Aiyanna is learning it's hard work to make green curry paste the classic way.

My spring rolls came out great!

All in all, it was a delicious, satisfying, so much fun experience for both of us. We learned a lot, and have a little recipe book we're bringing home, so watch out! We're cooking you the real deal Thai food tonight!

We drove out of the city on a motor-bike (sorry Mom!) to do some site seeing around Chiang Mai.
Here the glittering gold of Wat Doi Suthep, high on a mountain overlooking Chiang Mai.

Lotus offerings.

Funny temple monster #1.

And funny temple monster #2, "Mom"??

Farther up the mountain we arrived at a seldom visited coffee plantation and Hmong village.

It rained at the Hmong village while we were there, but the children didn't seem to mind. They were laughing, playing, splashing in the puddles. I had to think of E.E. Cummings, "when the world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful."

We encountered a field of these really beautiful lotus flowers on another drive out of the city. Our curious admiring of their cultivation brought peels of laughter from the school children across the road.

Later that day we found an awesome local market-- no "ferang" (foreigner) but us in sight. There were some usually unusual things to see there...
Crispy barbequed frogs!

Tadpoles!

Meat, with all the latest in freshness apparatus (the plastic bags whirl overhead to keep the flies off). Refrigeration is just a Western fad.

And these guys really ARE fresh.

We went to a couple waterfalls on our next day with the motorbike.
Seeing waterfalls is also one of my favorite times to see plants and animals, my wild friends. This flower is one of the strangest plants I've ever seen.

Delicate and velvety in texture, green-purple hued, and extra-terrestrial in appearance, a most unusual friend indeed!

Fungi are my friends!

Aiyanna's shoe-moth.

Can you find me? I am a secret, hiding, nearly invisible friend, but if you could hear how LOUD I sing! Cicada friend.

Waterfall #1, very quiet because of a very high entrance fee. We lucked out and didn't have to pay-- the guards couldn't break our 500!

Aiyanna at waterfall #2, also very beautiful but less peaceful.

Back to the city we go...

Next day was a big day. Get ready for lots of elephant pictures!
Welcome to Elephant Nature Park!

We spent a very special day at the Elephant Nature Park, a home for unwanted, abused, and injured elephants in Thailand. The Asian elephant is an endangered species, and Thailand is home more Asian elephants than anywhere else in the world, but the elephants' story in Thailand (as anywhere there are elephants) is very sad. Domestic elephants, though exactly the same species as the endangered wild elephants, are given no protection under Thai law, and after Thailand outlawed logging (no doubt a good step for Thai forests!), the thousands of domestic elephants were basically out of work. Too expensive to keep as pets, elephant keepers were forced to find new uses for their elephants-- mostly tourism.

Elephant Nature Park is simply a home for elephants, "where they can be elephants." They are not forced to give tourists rides, to paint pictures, play soccer, or stand on hind legs; they are not being used to beg in the streets of Bangkok or Chiang Mai; and they are certainly not used to destroy the forests they might otherwise be home in.

Here, tourists just feed, wash, and admire the elephants. These elephants, after all, have had hard lives and deserve pampering. Several were blinded by their owners sling-shotting and stabbing their eyes to force more work from them, often they were drugged with methamphetamine to coax more work out of them, and the elephants suffered withdrawal, many had poorly healed broken legs and hips from being overburdened, and there is even one who stepped on a land mine: here they are safe to relax, and you can see the ease on their faces!

Elephants eat TONS.

So useful... I could go for a trunk of my own some day.

It was really fun getting in the river and washing the elephants. We just splashed them and threw water all over.

And then we just watched them play. Elephants love water...

Water and snacks =)

Aiyanna and I both got wet elephant kisses. It felt really weird. I washed my face later.

My sense after spending the day here was that elephants are very wise creatures. Domestic or wild, they do not deserve to be mistreated and abused for work or pleasure.

I wish Lek, the native Thai woman who founded E.N.P., much luck in her project to improve the lives of many Thai elephants. Thank you for an amazing day!

We left Chiang Mai early the next morning to go farther north, to Pai.
There was a really cool bug on the way there, worth stopping to look at! Stopping for lunch was a good idea also.

You can see why we (and so many others) wanted to come to Pai. This once sleepy village is now a very popular place.

We drove around checking out the views...

sliding into waterfalls...

making friends...

and chasing rainbows.

One of my favorite pictures of the trip so far, this was one bright rainbow!

We reunited with a couple of friends from Tonsai in Pai, an Israeli couple named Guy and Chaquette, and together we teamed up for an awesome hike to a remote waterfall.

It was a good hike on a long trail that followed and criss-crossed a stream for 5 kilometers or so. It was vibrant jungle, full of wonderous roots and vines.

Guy and I enjoy the coolness after the long hike.

Aiyanna snacks on our new favorite tropical delight: dragon fruit!

A fun team for a good adventure.

Hiking back through bamboo and jungle.

Beatle.

Tiny fungus on a log.

Rockstar grasshopper.

More scenery from Pai by day...

And by night.

Street vendors are picturesque everywhere... especially whey they set up in front of temples with a dark sky, etc etc.

That's it from Thailand! I leave you with this tease...
Crossing the Mekong.

Chapter 3 and Laos is yet to come! I have to apologize that it is taking some time to get this blog up-to-date. I am now in the midst of living Chapter 3, which has been so chopped full of adventures and beautiful places that I am more than a little overwhelmed. Also, our days are generally so full of seeing and doing that I am left very little time to prepare these posts, which demand quite a lot of work to prepare for your blog-reading pleasure. But it is crazy to complain about the richness of experience, or the fullness of days; I did not transport around the world to blog of adventures, but to live them! In the mean time, let me just say this about Laos: wow. Wow! WOW!!! You are not going to believe your eyes!!

Thanks for reading everyone, and I hope it wasn't too long (again!)! Peace, love, enjoy~

Chapter 2, Pt. 1: Bangkok and Southern Thailand

2011-08-21T02:50:00.000-07:00

Hello again friendly readers!

Thank you for returning for the second installment of this travel saga in four chapters. If you are tuning in to this blog for the first time, scroll down to the earlier post, "Introduction and Chapter 1", for some orientation. For your reading and viewing pleasure, I have decided to deliver Chapter 2 in two parts. The story commences where we left off: Aiyanna and I, after our cross country drive, flying with Moshe around the globe...

We land in Bangkok to the hustle and bustle of one of the world's biggest and busiest cities. Last time I was in Bangkok, I arrived from India to a city that seemed to sparkle in comparison to the dirt of Delhi; this time, traveling from America, Bangkok's heat and city smog overwhelm me, but Aiyanna and I are excited to be here. Jet lagged, on the other side of the planet, we take to the streets.

Aiyanna's father leads us from our dingy room on Khao San Rd to his favorite part of Bangkok-- China Town. Here he shows us where he gets tingling electro-accupuncture by Chinese doctors while pushing us into his favorite Thai massage parlor: rejuvenating after our long flight.

The markets of Bangkok are full of exotic fruits; everything is in season. Mangosteins sell for 20 baht, or about 80 cents, a kilo. We eat our fill.

Thailand is predominantly, though not exclusively, Buddhist, and the many temples in Bangkok and accross the country host many striking images: shimmering Buddhas, saffron robed monks, and enormous candles burning with blessings.

We are not long in Bangkok. The city is a difficult place to relax, and Aiyanna and Moshe have work to do: a book to read. We head out of Bangkok first class on an overnight sleeper train South to Krabi and the Andaman Coast. None of us being accustomed to first class travel, we felt pampered on the sleeper train as we rolled out of Bangkok, and, as I looked at the people staying along the tracks, observed the poverty outside the window.

Boats remain a crucial mode of transportation in Bangkok and all over Thailand...

...After arriving in Krabi Town we chartered a boat to Railay Beach, which is not accessible by road. The seas were rough as rain poured down on our long-tail driver.

Aiyanna and Moshe grin at the adventure; I trust in the longtail driver while hoping a rogue wave doesn't overturn our small vessel and ruin my camera gear.

Twenty minutes later we land at Railay East, the cliffs looming and beckoning. We hike across the isthmus to Railay West, and then around the cliffs at low tide to Tonsai Bay, our home for the next two weeks.

Mountain View Resort: our bungalow and home sweet mildewing home for the next two weeks. Hot shower? No way. Mosquitoes? Ravenous. 5 dollars a night? We'll take it!

Let me introduce a few of my friends for the next two weeks:
Frogs found by flashlight during the monsoon rains...

Sea slugs in the tidepools...

Giant orb spiders over our heads...

Cats doing battle with enormous stick bugs... and more you will see as you read on!

If you read my blog over my last adventures, you might remember I was in Thailand and Tonsai three years ago. Last time I was at Tonsai I had a birthday and turned 26; this time at Tonsai I turned 29. If it seemed unlikely to me to find myself here for a second birthday, the experience I had at dinner that night was far more serendipitous. Aiyanna and I, while eating a big fish dinner to celebrate, were joined by two other travelers. These two travelers, as it turned out, were also BOTH celebrating their birthdays, and to push the unlikelihood of this 3-way-birthday meeting to even greater levels of incomprehensibility, turns out they were turning 23 and 31, which alongside my 29, made 3 prime numbers!! I was so utterly flabbergasted... a small world scenario to the highest degree.

I furthermore thanked my lucky stars for a full moon and relatively clear skies the night of my birthday; I am indeed a very lucky person, so grateful for everything...

Working on the project that brought us all to Thailand together, here are Aiyanna and Moshe reading and editing the book sunset-beachside...

As a glorious sunset washes the ocean in pinks and purples, a conflict is brewing. In a way, this sunset is symbolic in the story of Aiyanna and Moshe's work. Up to this point, everything was rosy: Moshe was exuberant to be at Tonsai, and he marveled at Aiyanna's writing and enjoyed a book largely about himself. But as the sun set over the bay, so did his good humor, and he became angry with the words he read. He and Aiyanna began to fight over whose stories, whose voices, whose perspectives were allowed within the pages of the book. I looked on with empathy for each, simultaneously immersed and separate from their story.

While they worked and struggled, I used the time to improve my slackline skills...

And tried to get some of my climbing strength back. Here I am fighting my project "Lion King", 6C+ (11d), which was my nemesis through the 2 weeks at Tonsai. It's basically a tall boulder problem with huge jugs, but it's steep, polished, and baking in the sun almost all day long... but still, it's a beauty of a beast, and someday I'll send it without falling.

And here I am flailing through a 7b (12bish) on the Tonsai Wall. After making it through the crux, I was too pumped to finish; alas 7b is a little too hard for me these days.

Aiyanna also had time to learn to climb...

And climb she did! Here she is on a 6a (10a) at the beach, and not pictured is her at the top, grinning.

Hard work, hard play, and lots of time to relax at the beach side bars-- I tell you, life was rough!

Night or day, the karst cliffs plunging into the ocean make for inspiring scenery.

July through September is monsoon season in S.E. Asia.

Watching a monsoon rush in over the ocean, and then observing its ripping power blowing a driving rain sideways, was a pretty awesome thing (when it doesn't catch you off guard at a crag!).

And then, because you can't climb when it's raining sideways, you hide under Chicken Momma's shack and eat a delectable barbeque chicken leg.

Let me introduce you to some more of my friends:
Snail under banana leaf...

Shiny beetle...

Cliff-side monkey...

And snacking tree monkey.

There are some strong climbers congregating in Tonsai. Here Kay, from Sweeden, sends an 8b+ (14b) project.

Opting out of climbing the 8b's, I stuck to 6c's like this bouldery fellow. A nice climb! We did this 6c and then another one that was even better...

The climb went up and around the arrette here. Lucky me I climbed it first, because as Simon tried to go up after me, a huge monsoon came in and nearly blew him off. It was another beautiful storm...

Moshe went back (angrily) to Bangkok, and without the book project to work on during the day, Aiyanna and I took some time to leave Tonsai and wander around Railay. Here is "Happy Island" off of Au Nang beach. Yes, there are climbing routes on Happy Island-- when the tide is out.

She walks in beauty and thoughtfulness...

I boulder in Chacos...

And we make a treacherous mud climb to a lagoon...

It was a vertical drop by a mud-slick rope to the lagoon. Aiyanna opted out, I tried my luck...

I am a muddy animal.

The lagoon was la-great, though I didn't stay too long what with the bird sized mosquitoes and Aiyanna waiting beachside. Some friends of ours had been mud wrestling here the day earlier, although they complained the water made them itch! I thought better to just look.

Here's a good view of the whole area: Railay East on the right, Railay West left, and Tonsai in the distance below the far cliffs... no roads, just water!

Our time at Tonsai running out, we spent our last evening bouldering at the beach. We both felt stronger than when we arrived, and Aiyanna seemed much more confident on the rock. She look quite strong here making a traverse over the sand!

Tonsai is a great place. Sitting back and watching a climber silhouetted by sunset hues, it's no wonder why climbers flock to these cliffs. But the climbing scene has changed Tonsai. What once upon a time 15 years ago was a quiet fishing village is turning into a resort town that attracts far more people each year than its infrastructure (or rather total lack of infrastructure) can handle. Trash-- paper, plastic, and styrofoam, is burned, and the sewage of so many visiting butts creates far more waste than any of the septic systems can handle: a smell is evident from time to time, from place to place. All these issues left me wondering about myself as a traveler and a tourist in Thailand. These questions would follow me as we left Tonsai, returned to Krabi, and eventually headed north. But more of that later...

Krabi Town proved an interesting place to spend a day:

Fresh treats from the market in Krabi town. A handful of hot chili's anyone? No? Maybe some snails then? Still no takers? We also opted out, just looking and not buying these delicacies.

One-thousand two-hundred and thirty-seven stairs to the top of the Tiger Cave Temple. Turns out this stairway is not for the faint of heart! Aiyanna looks at the top, "Seriously? 1,237? OK..."

Too busy gripping the railing and pulling ourselves up the often nearly vertical stairway to count, we just had to take the signs word for it. It felt much longer than I anticipated...

Looking up, we couldn't see the top, but from the top, it was very impressive to see the bottom!

Of course the views of the surrounding karsts of Krabi Province were quite breathtaking-- even more breathtaking than the stairway! Definitely worth the climb. These were our last views of Krabi Province, and the next morning we boarded a bus to Phuket Airport, and then a plane to Chiang Mai in the North of Thailand, where Chapter 2 will resume when I find time again to write.

Thank you for reading everyone! I know this post has been long; there were just a lot of pictures I wanted to show you. There is still a lot more to come from Thailand, and perhaps the best is yet to come in Laos; indeed a wise person once told me that the best is ALWAYS yet to come! May that be true for us all. Love and peace to all.

PS: For more stories of our travels, please read Aiyanna's great blog @ www.birdbeartracks.blogspot.com. She's such a talented writer, I'm sure you will enjoy it also!

Introduction and Chapter 1

2011-08-13T02:46:00.001-07:00

Dear Family, Friends, Fellow Travelers, and Assorted Blog Perusers,

I write to you from Muang Sing, small Laos town a single bow shot from the border of China, to tell the story, in 4 Chapters, of some adventures I'm in the midst of. I will apologize now for the mix of present, past, and even future tenses necessary in this writing: the first two chapters have passed and shall appear as quickly as I can produce them, the third chapter I am in the midst of living, and the forth and final chapter, lying a month ahead, I can but now only foreshadow.

I would also like to insert here in my introduction an apology for not commencing these blog posts sooner. I haven't been as enthusiastic in sharing this my second far East adventure as I was my last, and have perhaps thus disappointed those people who so encouraged me to share my photography and thoughts during my first such expedition. The thing is, I felt so fortunate to have had my first trip, that in providing a sequel I cannot help but feel exceedingly guilty for my good luck. Now I realize it is a greater crime to withhold sharing this magnificent experience.

Here's how it happened: my girlfriend, my love, the beautiful Aiyanna and I were gifted two airline tickets to Bangkok, Thailand, from San Fransisco, California, by her eccentric father, Moshe. The reason behind this generous allotment was so he, traveling with us, could have time with Aiyanna to read the book she is writing about him. There in the paradise of a Thailand beach could he see the product of her 8 months labors in a climate comfortable to him; and there in an Eastern setting where her father spent much of his late life could she find a suitable ending for the book of their stories. I got to come out of Aiyanna's gracious asking, and her father's most generous granting, of her request for my presence. Intrepid traveler I am said to be, I was to play the guide of our party.

Careful readers notice: our departure was from California, but Aiyanna and I make our abode at my house in Asheville, North Carolina, so here is the gist of Chapter 1: Aiyanna and I decided to make our way across country by the highway. In short, we took ten days in Aiyanna's green Honda Civic hatchback through Nashville, TN, Boulder, CO, Moab, UT, and Grass Valley, CA, before meeting our flight in San Fran. That, in a longer sense, I will present to you after this introduction.

Chapter 2 commences when the three of us land in Bangkok, Thailand. In the course of this month in Thailand, we survived the air and noise of Kha San Rd, assailed the cliffs of Tonsai (where we parted ways with our disgruntled benefactor Moshe), flew north to Chiang Mai, scooted our way around the lush Pai countryside, and then, with our Thai visas expiring, crossed the Mekong River into Northern Laos.

Thus begins Chapter 3, which while now summarizing, I am yet at the onset of living. In this chapter I will make note of the circumstances of my convalescence from antibiotics necessary for a minor infection which gave rise to the opportunity for relating this posting. Yet to come: treks, river boats, and more of the beautiful easy life provided by this magnificent country. This chapter will likely conclude from Bangkok, where Aiyanna and I will part ways and fly to our respective destinations, journeys to be recounted in the far off Chapter 4.

Chapter 4 will be... something as yet quite unknown, and therefore complete with uncountable possibilities. I know that it will take place for some time on the West Coast, but that it must conclude, with these great adventures, back home in beloved Asheville. I set it down now, dear American family and friends, that should you wish to be involved with the excitement of this final chapter, please do get in touch with me: the fun begins when I touch down September 13th.

Enough of this most verbose introduction! I will from here commence with Chapter 1, which, since it has been outlined above, needs no more prequel. I will tell this story just in pictures, leaving any more necessary explanations to the captions below.

Thanks everyone for your forbearance of my previous silence, and subsequent loquacity. I hope not to disappoint. Love and blessings to each and all; as a wise man once told me, "enjoy, enjoy, enjoy!"

Chapter 1

First stop: Aiyanna's good friend Emma's house in Nashville, TN, with a backyard of home grown garlic drying, and Aiyanna dancing under the porch light, happy to start our good journey.

We approach a storm in Kansas: the thundercloud laid down a wrath of hailstones on poor Toby, Aiyanna's small but trustworthy steed of a Honda Civic.

The Flat Irons: a most welcome sight after the 20 hour drive to Boulder, CO.

Virdin, most sarcastic philosopher of the Furman alma mater, surveys his township below.

Behold the Rockies!

Katie Finn, her precious and precocious pugs Lucius and Igor, Aiyanna's friend Also Katie, at our fantastic 4th of July micro party. I now have a soft spot for pugs, thank you Katie! Not to mention the very comfortable abode: graciously sacrificing your room for Aiyanna and I, I venture yours was the best bed of the whole trip.

Yours truly slip and slides for Forth of July festivities!

At our first free camp outside of Moab: and me without my trad rack!! This was my first time in Moab, and I was a goggle with visions of cracks to be climbed, not to mention slick rock to be mountain biked. Moab, I venture I will return someday better prepared and with longer to stay.

Without said implements of adventure, we "settled" for hiking around Arches National Park, jaws dropping every step of the way. Here is Aiyanna at the Delicate Arch.

And the stupefying Landscape Arch.

As ever on my quest to document all wildlife, as shall be shown in this and subsequent chapters, here is a wee desert Monitor, digging a hole.

Yee with eyes should determine that these are all pictures of arches from Arches. I loved every one!

Hello Canyonlands National Park! (Gosh that's a pretty lady waiving.)

I found these stones here, and heartily agreed with the clicking of my camera.

Sandstone: amazing.

Judge for yourself the resplendent beauty of Canyonlands.

These two are from Dead Horse Point State Park. I can't say much for the name, but the view is great!

Aiyanna flies gracefully across the Bonneville Salt Flats: we're almost to California!

Aiyanna's generous, long-lived, interesting, complex, humorous, outrageous, sagacious, vain, nearly toothless, and many other adjectives I must forgo here, father Moshe, here in Shabbas dress (for he is an ordained rabbi, among so many other things). We stayed as guests at his farm in Grass Valley, CA.

Aiyanna, Moshe, and sister Abra at a lake outside of Grass Valley.

Aiyanna, Moshe, and brother Eli at his house above Berkley looking out over San Francisco. This is the end of one journey, for we flew from San Fran this night, but it's just the beginning, for we landed in Bangkok the next morning.

And here I leave you till the next chapter, which, fear not, I will not outline a second time. Thanks for reading my friends, and I will be grateful for any comments you might have! Much love, and adieu.

Sweet Breakdancing Photos

2010-11-08T07:34:00.000-08:00

Good B-Boy break dancers will make your jaw drop.

Before last Saturday night, I'd only ever seen breakdancing briefly in movie clips or on YouTube, but after seeing a live competition and observing the B-Boy culture in person, I feel inspired. The way these dancers move to hip-hop rhythms and simultaneously explode with gymnastic, yogic, strong-man feats of athleticism commands respect and awe. What's more, the breakdance scene is infused with B-Boy culture, a stylistic front that translates to poise and presence in the face of competition— heavy attitude on and off the floor. While the attitude isn't something I'd like to infuse with my life, the B-Boys' ability to match music and movement, their meld of strength and toughness with dance, became that night something I wanted more of in my life.

I guessed with my yoga training that some of the moves would be easy; wrong! While I could find my way into many of the "freezes", moving between them with a rhythm was way hard. Like a fool, I fell all over my living room floor with Girl Talk playing loudly as I tried spinning and jumping like the badass B-Boys I'd just seen. I'm going to keep trying breakdance movement, but in the meantime, I'll maintain a massive respect for the few strong that inspired me.

Props to all the dancers at Saturday night's South East B-Boy Championship who inspired and others, and to the organizers for their work in realizing a vision to promote breakdancing and the hip-hop life. For more info read this informative Mountain Express article by Aiyanna Sezak-Blat. See also this follow-up story with video, here

Any B-Boys who find their picture here please holler at me to get your name under the shot and copies of your image.

2010-06-20T18:21:00.000-07:00

just one raspberry
both hollow and not hollow
becomes delicious

Laurel Knob and NC Climbing

2010-05-10T07:36:00.000-07:00

The day starts at 5:30 with Jeff’s alarm— too early, too ambitious. He resets it to 6:00, and we go back to sleep.

The day starts again at 6:00. While water boils for coffee, we sort climbing gear: various carabineers, camming devices, nylon runners— all making clinks and jangles as it’s chosen and set in the pile. I get two sixty meter ropes in my pack; Jeff takes the weighty rack. Along with the usual for a day of climbing, I’ve got my camera with its heavy 24-70mm lens and polarizer. With our packs filled, our breakfasts ingested, and coffee savored, we start the long hike in. This glorious, long day is just beginning.

Laurel Knob is a little known destination in Western North Carolina. Its cousin, White Sides Mountain, gets more recognition and traffic with its easier access and choice of hiking trails. Laurel Knob, on the other hand, hides from visitors on private property owned by the Carolina Climbers Coalition (CCC), and requires a solid hour and a half hike in to reach the cliff bottom. And if you want to see the view from Laurel Knob, there’s no hike to the top; it takes traditional, multi-pitch climbing experience and a little thirst for adventure.

Jeff and I make a two man climbing team, and to ascend the enormous slab of granite that’s Laurel Knob, we follow a climbing route called Groover— first climbed by Jeep Gaskin his wife Julia on their honeymoon in 1980. With about 800 feet of climbing, this is one of the South East’s longest routes on the tallest cliff east of the Mississippi. As we trade pitches— alternating lead climbing and belaying— we are alone on the rock. Because of its difficult access, few climbers come here. The climbing is not difficult, but very enjoyable on wonderfully aesthetic rock. Our route follows a crack up and right, and eventually takes us through some interesting water groove formations, the route’s namesakes, further and further from the ground. Somehow amidst hauling up rope and keeping a safe belay, I manage to take some pictures that I hope will tell the story of a beautiful day out.

There’s another story at Laurel Knob though, besides our own individual ascent, and that’s the story you start to see looking out beyond the cliff. Laurel Knob is surrounded by Cashier’s numerous, private, gated developments, and large, opulent houses pock what might otherwise be a rugged wilderness. The long hike in to Laurel Knob— from the Panthertown Valley trail system onto an easy-to-miss, unmarked climber’s trail— is necessary to avoid trespassing on the private land that surrounds it. Laurel Knob would itself be off limits to everyone if not for the hard work of John Myers to secure a deal for the CCC to purchase the 50 acres of land comprising the cliff. The access granted by this epic purchase— $250,000 that was just recently paid off— is the antecedent of about thirty years of secretive, clandestine climbing while the cliff was still off limits.

Our climb was stellar. When we reached the top of our last pitch, looking out and down from high on the cliff, we showed our appreciation and respect for the beauty of this rock with some awe and silence— as well as high fives and smiles. The challenge provided by Laurel Knob was an exceptionally rewarding experience.

For me, climbing is a fantastic way to enter nature. It’s an activity that requires close attention to the moment and provides direct experience with the world around. Personally, I feel fortunate to live in North Carolina, a state where there is an abundance of high quality rock in breathtaking wilderness settings. I am grateful for the likes of the CCC for preserving this particular, unique area for rock climbers to explore, and owe my respect to the climbers who were establishing routes here before I was even born.

It’s my hope that climbing in North Carolina continues to thrive. For this to happen, our growing climbing community must take care of the land we do have access to— minimizing our impact in use areas as if we were still climbing in secret. Sometimes it takes sweat and cooperation, such as the large trail cleanup at Rumbling Bald last fall. And of course, the CCC appreciates financial support via donations and membership dues to help pay off the acquisition of climb sites it protects for local climbers, such as the very popular West Side Boulders of the Rumbling Bald, and to support its cooperative efforts with the Access Fund and government agencies like the Park Service. Go to www.carolinaclimbers.org for more information about this beneficial organization.

To all you non-climber readers who want to test your meddle on North Carolina’s many challenging rock faces, there are a lot of ways to learn. Try your hand at Asheville’s rock gym, Climbmax, with a supportive staff to teach you some skills. Western NC offers some fine guiding services, such as the Appalachian Mountain Institute, that offer a safe, fun, and qualified introduction to the world of outdoor climbing. Selected Climbs in North Carolina, by Yon Lambert and Harrison Shull, is a comprehensive guidebook to most of North Carolina’s best climbing areas, and essential reading for all Carolina climbers.

Jeff and I had a long hike out after our climb, reflectively trudging our three miles back to the car. But pink lady slippers and beautiful trilliums lined the trail, and a memory card full of color photographs waited development— these good things are best appreciated with hard work. At the end of a long day, how fantastic to be completely satisfied.

Jeff hits a steep section following the fifth pitch and trusts his shoes sticky rubber to make the move.

Far bigger than it looks in pictures, Laurel Knob is the tallest cliff east of the Mississippi.

Jeff checks a photocopied route description before embarking on the next pitch.

Blue skies brighten the view as Jeff makes his way with little protection and terrific exposure.

Double rope rappels down Laurel Knob's distinctive water grooves take us back to the ground and finish the climb. Fantastic!

The Cultural Reflection in a Local Toy Store

2010-03-09T18:21:00.000-08:00

SPED 620, a class called Education in a Diverse Society, asks teachers to consider the impact of cultural biases in our classrooms. As a part of this discussion, we’re asked to look at possible sources of and reasons for racial and gender inequality. How, in spite of our nation’s growing diversity, do white middle class values achieve dominance in our society? One assignment, which I’ve chosen to present online via my personal blog, asked me to go to a toy store and consider what cultural perspective is dominant.

Toy Box is located on Merrimon Avenue, prime business real estate for North Asheville’s community. The high price of real estate and the overflowing parking lot of the organic Greenlife grocery store both point to a simultaneously wealthy and eco-conscious community. Social conscientiousness is a kind of currency in this neighborhood, and the streets are getting crowded with Toyota Priuses with reusable grocery bags in the passenger seat. I was interested in finding out what the neighborhood toy store could say about this progressive and affluent crowd.

In a toy store, certain cultural values seem to stand out more than others, and most notably we see how the toys reflect gender roles and represent racial diversity. I also wondered if socioeconomic status might be discernable, and I predicted at Toy Box I would see a selection of toys catered towards Asheville’s upper class. All these things became pretty obvious the moment I walked in the door.

Gendered pink and blue sections are obvious when you walk in the door.

First, gender issues: two colors stood out distinctly directly upon entering. Blue and pink; pink and then blue— these colors are still obviously associated with their respective genders and demarcate girls’ and boys’ toys. In the pink sections there were dolls, and in the blue sections action figures and models. This general perspective shows that there are still different kinds of toys for boys and girls, but it doesn’t show that this toy store is reinforcing negative gender roles like Barbie or G.I. Joe. Toy Box is doing much better; there are no Barbies or Bratz Dolls that make women into sex objects, and there aren’t any war toys in the entire store. The dolls, packaged in pink, were Go Go Girls— “healthy lifestyle dolls” dressed in athletic wear— an example of dolls attempting to break down old gender stereotypes. Also in the pink section were dress up outfits: fairy wings, wands, and tutus. Boys, it seems, don’t do dress up.

Taking education classes, one of the more harmful gender stereotypes we’re made aware of is the notion that boys are better at math and science, and girls are more gifted in arts and English. Toy Box had a good supply of educational toys— a commendable effort— but unfortunately the gender roles were represented, and thus reinforced, by many of these educational products. Most notably “The Dangerous Book for Boys” chemistry set, as well as the other science kits, were pretty clearly directed at boys, but the doll making kit, weaving starter set, and coloring books were all clearly directed at girls. It seems rather unfair to fault the toy store for reinforcing this stereotype, but its presence at even a progressive toy store is troubling.

Once again, I wouldn’t like to fault a small local business making efforts to be socially conscious, but, if product packaging is to suggest anything, toys at this store were all for white kids. A significant portion of wall space was devoted to Playmobil toys, and according to the store’s owner this is because Playmobil toys are consistently best sellers. It is certainly noteworthy, therefore, that not a single black or Asian child is on any Playmobil box, and perhaps less than 5% of the figurines available from Playmobil are something other than white. Playmobil sets, if you’re unfamiliar with them, are little models of society— hospitals, fire stations, houses— as well as imaginative fantasy worlds of pirates and pyramids. It seems the real and fantasy worlds of Playmobil, a German company, are not racially diverse, even if the real world is.

A hundred figurines and all the same color: Playmobil fails to represent diversity.

I predicted based on the location of Toy Box that its toys would reflect certain features of the North Asheville demography. Indeed, I found a good bit in the store that affirmed my predictions. Cool toys in the Toy Box weren’t cheap. “Inexpensive” items hovered around ten dollars each, and on the other end of the spectrum were dozens of Playmobil sets from eighty to two-hundred dollars. There was a significant collection of “green” toys also, like “Eco Kids” stainless steal water bottles, “Hand Made and Fair Trade” knitted flying discs, and tea and dinner play sets made from “100% Recycled Plastic.” The store had a wide selection of Plan Toys, a company that promotes itself for its sustainable practices. Wooden parts of their toys come from recycled rubber trees, they use special eco-friendly glue, water soluble dyes, and even have special recycled packaging printed with a soy based dye: all of which, the owner says, allows customers, “to feel better about buying a doll house.” Feeling better about buying a doll house will, however, cost a bit more; unfortunately, like organic groceries, sustainable products are still the privilege of those that can afford it.

I talked to the owner of Toy Box for a bit for a little more information. They have been in business along Merrimon for 22 years. I asked about their efforts to be a socially responsible toy store, and he explained to me in honesty that it was just a better business decision. Toy Box can’t go up against the likes of a Wal-Mart, so they don’t offer the same products: “We give people a choice of what to buy rather than where to buy, and consciously give them a better product.” Indeed, the toy choices Toy Box offers reflect its customers and their values.

To be the reflection
of an image
or
consumer demand
is also to be
its re-creation.

A young man looks
into his mirror
and allows what peers back
to change him—
he grooms,
or despises,
himself by what he sees.

The toy shop
sells
what sells;
what's manufactured by companies
with more research than development who
analyze markets to market—
the toy shop is its market's mirror,
not as it reflects each buyer
but as it reflects to each buyer—
each subtle re-creation
unnoticed.

Observe
the danger
of ignorant manipulation
within the system
of mirror and mirrored.
Watch
the cycle of a reflection
to change one,
many—
be aware
for good
in you.

—EB, 3/9/10

"The Spiti Situation"

2009-12-10T06:44:00.000-08:00

What follows is a project done for my ENG 617 "Postcolonial Lit" Class for my MAT at Western. This idea had been percolating the whole course, and while it wasn't exactly "the assignment" as written, I give a lot of thanks to my prof Dr. Laura Wright for giving me the green light. Please enjoy and give me your feedback! I want criticism!!
A note on format: italics denote a picture caption, and "-------------" implies separation between vignettes.

Adventures in Postcolonial Photojournalism: The Spiti Situation

A group of villagers eats lunch together outside of Demul, Spiti Valley, 2008.

Postcolonialism was introduced to me as a literary genre. Certain books, I learned, could qualify for this specialization if they were written from a country that had been formerly colonized. Laura Moss’s outlining of postcolonial issues is suitably broad for a somewhat amorphous subject like this: “cultural imperialism; emergent nationalisms within a nation and between nations; negotiating history and the process of decolonization; hierarchies of power, violence, and oppression; censorship; race and ethnicity; multiculturalism; appropriation of voice; revising the canon and ‘writing back’ to colonial education; and Indigenous languages and ‘englishes’ versus Standard English” (4). Moss uses her definition to qualify Canadian literature as, at times, postcolonial, and now I would like to use her definition to once more stretch the limits of the postcolonial genre to include some of my own writing and photography about something I call “The Spiti Situation”.

This is a complicated, layered project. At the heart, though, is beautiful Spiti Valley, my home of five weeks in the spring and summer of 2008. I believe Spiti is a site of ongoing postcolonial negotiation, not for India’s grappling with British Imperialism, but for Spiti’s destructive encounter with Modernity. Second is consideration of my own role as a traveler and photographer in Spiti— is it possible for someone like me to do good for an indigenous population? Also I try to probe the thorny issues surrounding representation, issues inherent to photography, photographs, and photographers. Unfortunately, I will not be able to deal with each layer as neatly as I’ve laid them here; I’m afraid they mix and mingle and occasionally talk out of turn. What’s worse, instead of resolving my queries into these issues, often the questions are ultimately left unanswered: you will have to draw your own conclusions. And remember, this text is only an introduction; the true exploration of these matters lies in interpretation of the images and prose after it.

A professional Indian photographer snaps photos of Lama’s at Thikse Monastery, Ladakh, 2008. The high Tibetan Plateau and its unique Buddhist culture are exotic to the Indian mainland and international travelers alike.

The changes in Spiti closely parallel the recent history of its cultural and regional neighbor, Ladakh. Ladakh has been open to tourism for almost 40 years, about 25 years longer than Spiti. Leh, the capital, with its airport and many comfortable hotels, remains the more popular destination to Spiti. Helena Norburg-Hodge traveled to Ladakh before the area was opened to tourism as a linguist, learned the local dialect fluently, and lived closely with local people for several years (91-92). Later, when the area opened to tourism, she noted many changes and wrote the book, Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh, as a collection of observations about the sustainable way of life she witnessed in Ladakh, as an indictment of Western culture, and as lamentation over the destructive changes that happened there with the arrival of modernity. She writes about modernization as a colonizing force, saying, “Today’s conquistadors are ‘development,’ advertising, the media, and tourism” (3). While her summary of the Ladakh situation, which is almost completely analogous to the Spiti situation I’m writing about, is largely one-sided and oversimplified, her observations remain critical to understanding what’s happening all over the Tibetan Plateau beyond the Rhotang Pass.

A great many pages of her book deal with the regional ecological destruction that is readily apparent at any glance, a devastation that is not to be minimized in the least; however she astutely identifies a parallel cultural loss that is not so apparent. She explains, “the psychological impact of modernization has been felt throughout the entire region… In one day a tourist would spend the same amount that a Ladakhi family might in a year… Compared to these strangers, they suddenly felt poor” (95), and “The sudden influx of Western influence has caused some Ladakhis— the young men in particular— to develop feelings of inferiority. They reject their own culture wholesale, and at the same time eagerly embrace the new one. They rush after the symbols of modernity…”(98). To write such a process off as “natural” or “inevitable” would demand the incorrect assumption of cultural superiority, a mindset that is inherent to the spread of Modernity and other forces of colonization. Ladakh, and Spiti, while not quite the mostly utopian society described in Ancient Futures, had and still has much to offer to the future “progress” of the world.

In a seminal tract of postcolonial theory, Edward Said argues that the Occident’s relationship with the Orient was (and still often is) a “systematic discipline by which European culture was able to manage— and even produce— the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively…” (3), and, in short, describes “Orientalism” as “a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (3). The implication for such an argument if accepted, as we should, as sound, is that we shouldn’t do that any more. Said, by spelling out what was going on within the discourse of information about Eastern places, hoped to open the terrain of knowledge to new ways thinking about Eastern topics.

The notion of Orientalism applies directly to this project in a couple ways. First and foremost, it demands the reader be critical of my role as a Western traveler in the East. Being a Westerner, and especially today as an American, carries, whether we accept them or not, definite bearing upon the relationships I had with the local people. Sadly and discouragingly, I am drawn to the conclusion that by mere virtue of being there, and in spite of all my good efforts and best intentions, I acted as an agent perpetuating the Oriental discourse. The tourist, and even the most unassuming traveler, goes to India because he can, “which puts the Westerner in a whole series of possible relationships with the Orient without ever losing him the relative upper hand... The scientist, the scholar, the missionary, the trader, or the soldier was in, or thought about, the Orient because he could be there…” (Said, 7). I saw this relationship play out time and time again while I was in India, and specifically while I was in Spiti, and it deeply troubled me. Even engagement in philanthropic work with the Spiti EcoSphere NGO, where I worked partially in an attempt to offset my “traveler’s guilt”, seemed to perpetuate the dominance of my own nationality and its Modernity. For my part, I was a persistently respectful traveler; I worked for locals, and I learned from locals— I met many who were not respectful— and yet because I paid to come there, because I looked through a camera lens, there was nothing I could do to escape my, as Said called it, “positional superiority” (7).

On the other hand, how Orientalism applies to photography is not nearly so clearly damning; it may, in fact, provide sound reasoning in favor of it. But first, the obvious fact is that before photography ever did anything against Orientalism, it was most certainly its purveyor. Said asks, “What other sorts of intellectual, aesthetic, scholarly, and cultural energies went into the making of an imperialist tradition like the Orientalist one?” (15). All over the globe, early colonist photography has a general theme to it: native men and women are presented in a way to appear both exotic and inferior to the West and for the West (Hight & Sampson, 1). There is a fundamental difference between photographic and textual representations of a culture, however, that allows even the colonists’ photographs to convey more—a substantial truth— than the falsity of the Orientalist stereotypes. Texts, Said argues specifically, cannot convey anything of substance.

Said describes the representational problem of any Oriental text: “In any instance of at least written language, there is no such thing as a delivered presence, but a re-presence, or a representation… the written statement is a presence to the reader by virtue of its having excluded, displaced, made supererogatory any such real thing as “the Orient” (Said, 21). Photography, I argue, lacks this problem by its substantial delivery of reality. Barring exceptions of digital manipulation and “trick” photography, what is presented by the camera is fundamentally actual. In a text, as Said points out, reality is removed, but reality cannot be removed from a photograph. This is not to say a photograph, like that bulk of that early colonist photography, is not subject to the biases of its photographer, but it does mean that by reinterpreting a photograph we can get to reality in a way that reinterpreting a text denies. In other words, no interpretation of Heart of Darkness will allow the reader to know anything real about Africa, but looking at an eroticized image of a native woman shows both the Orientalist thought that created it as well as a substantial reality about the woman.

By that loophole, I can feel secure that, in spite of my own inescapable “positional superiority”, the photography I produced during those travels is safe from any necessarily Orientalist disposition. Furthermore, in defense of my photographic style, I worked hard to shoot in a way that there would be a high correspondence between the intrinsic representation of reality in the picture and my own subjective presentation of that reality. Hopefully, the truth and the expressed truth are very close to the same. In any case, the subject of these photographs, namely the current postcolonial conflict in Spiti, should be far more important (and interesting) than the subject of photography itself. Photography has long before proved its usefulness as a highly potent and illustrative medium, and it’s my sincere hope that this project once again proves that usefulness by demonstrating certain problems with the “modernization” of “primitive” cultures.

Recording and exhibiting the colonization of Spiti by Modernity is a task well suited to the photographer. During colonization, one culture’s national identity is transformed by the domination of another culture. Homi Bhabha, another prolific postcolonial theorist largely concerned with issues of nationality, asks the question “How does one write the nation’s modernity as the event of the everyday and the advent of the epochal?” (293). In Spiti, juxtapositions like what Bhabha alludes to are commonplace, and thus the changing national character can be photographed. Bhabha is concerned with getting to the bottom of what a nation is, and, as he explains it, the concept of nationness is rather abstract. He does yet identify some tangible, observable qualities, though, saying, “The recurrent metaphor of landscape as the inscape of national identity emphasizes the quality of light, the question of social visibility, the power of the eye to naturalize the rhetoric of national affiliation and its forms of collective expression” (295). He has thus outlined the task of the photographer: to record “the quality of light” in a place, to catalogue its artifacts of “social visibility”, and to document cultures “national affiliation and its forms of collective expression.” Look at the pictures that follow and you will observe a landscape of national identity.

I think at this point some biography about myself, the photographer, is useful. Before I went to India, Spiti Valley was unknown to me. I went to India to study yoga with an Indian teacher, and then stuck around to travel— about nine months all together. Adventurous and idealistic, I began looking into volunteer work in the Himalaya, and came into contact with Spiti EcoSphere, an NGO who describes themselves as a “collaborative effort of the local community of Spiti and professionals from diverse backgrounds… We aim to create sustainable livelihoods that are linked to conservation” (spitiecosphere.com). So, with a very vague notion of where I was going and what I would be doing, I motorcycled my way north over the Rhotang Pass from Manali, and then east into Spiti Valley along India’s northeastern border with China. I spent the next month (and later another week) living with a local family, driving EcoSphere representatives to villages, organizing a first aide training for local guides, doing some English teaching, documenting wildflowers, and immersing myself in the local culture. Through the local connections I gained working at EcoSphere, I was offered numerous experiences I wouldn’t have been able to have as a tourist, and my work as a photographer benefited from these experiences enormously. Also, the extended length of time I remained in the area, as well as having my own motorcycle, afforded me the leisure and means to thoroughly explore the valley. Yet for all the richness of this experience, I know that I only scratched the surface in understanding what I think of as “the Spiti Situation”.

What follows is a series of photographs and writings that I am calling postcolonial photojournalism. I describe it as “postcolonial” because the issues in Spiti I hope to focus the reader’s attention on are well within the bounds of Moss’s definition of the term. Perhaps calling it photojournalism is a creative stretch, considering the liberal use of artistic license in the prose, yet I still feel the term is accurate in so much as this work intends to expose a current issue in the world today. I do not have high hopes for this project to change the world. In fact, I hope it keeps you out of Spiti Valley and inspires you to do absolutely nothing about the situation there, because probably the best thing any of us could do for Spiti is just that: nothing. It’s beautiful, take it from me; now don’t go there. Just look closely at each photograph, and be satisfied there is an essential truth in each one.
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Kaza.
A dry stream divides it, Old Kaza and New Kaza.
Sometimes water flows in this creek, down the canyon, into the Spiti River, early in spring, when there is the most snow melt. It is dry more lately, there is less snow; the locals say.
See Old Kaza? On the left side of the stream. Brown roof tops, made from earth, cascade into a pattern of fields all the way to the steep bank and braided channels of the Spiti. Old Kaza.
To the right it’s New Kaza. Green metal roofs of government buildings; the hospital; an unused tennis court with no net because just who the hell plays tennis here anyway?; government school and private school; the military outpost; the police station; many concrete hotels: none of this was here before. Before… what? Do the local people call it progress?
That is not the word they use.
––––––––––––––––

Drinking “arak” in Anjan’s house, and observing the observer.

It was my first trip to one of the small villages to stay with locals. I stayed with my coworker Anjan’s family at his small mud house. Anjan works with Ecosphere as a guide for tourists, and as such his English is OK. Like many, he understands better than he speaks. I felt very lucky to be welcomed into his family’s house, served food, tea, and a small glass of “arak” which is local alcohol distilled from rice. I knew, even as I sat in the room, bleary from altitude sickness (the village is at 4200 meters), that this would be a precious experience. I felt privileged to do participate in a night that was so normal for them and extraordinary for me. The dinner was not specially prepared, it was simple rice and dhal (not traditionally Spitian food, but now a common meal); nor were any great lengths to accommodate me made and I saw to it that none would be— otherwise Spitians are the most generous people and would have gone to nearly any length to see me comfortable. The conversation around me happened largely in the Spiti dialect but also in Hindi because there were two men from another region also staying with the family. They were two very young men who were helping Anjan with the labor to build his new house; they had the same appearance as the many road building laborers, and I knew Anjan couldn’t afford to pay them much besides food and shelter. The whole time I sat and listened, not understanding, to the quiet talking, laughter, socializing. Occasionally someone would direct a question to me through Anjan, and I would try to answer, but mostly I was just an observer in the room.

The TV volume was loud, and Bollywood music videos featuring tall buxom immodestly (by Indian standards) dressed women dancing with shirtless men reminded me of what I’d just read in Ancient Futures, “In films, the rich, the beautiful, and the brave lead lives filled with excitement and glamour. For the young Ladakhis, the picture they present is irresistible. By contrast, their own lives seem primitive, silly, and inefficient. The one dimensional view of modern life becomes a slap in the face” (Norbuerg Hodge, 97). Still, the TV is always on, playing loudly in the background; they would not think of turning it off. I stay one more night, and return with Anjan to Kaza.

This is a picture the modern Spiti house, and the changes its whitewashed mud walls are beginning to accommodate. For better or worse is not up for me to decide; time will tell for the local households like Anjan’s.
–––––––––––––––––

Traditional Spiti Socks: 200rs

I remember when Spiti Ama laughed
At the socks that I bought.
She would never pay good rupees
For socks like these—
She has made them for years,
So they must be worthless.

Always she wanted to know the cost.
How much this camera?
How much you pay to come here?
How much their thukpa?
I know this woman knows more about cost than it seems—
I do not think she is naïve—
She is at the change
When money is more valuable than value

I think she sees the loss
When a woman will sell her own socks
But no longer wear them.

––––––––––––––––––

She looked like an interesting subject— so tradtional. I wanted to show my Grandma a Spitian woman wearing a yak’s wool Kulu blanket like the one I bought her for Christmas. This woman was suitably old for my Grandma to relate to. So I turned my camera toward her, zoomed the lens to 400mm, and focused on her. I made the aperture as wide as possible to blur the background and establish the viewer’s focal point. I set an appropriate shutter speed to correctly expose the frame, and then I took several pictures so I could make sure I liked the expression she had on her face. I have saved this picture in several places: back up DVD’s, external hard drives, and here on my computer where I corrected the color so it would be like I remember it; where I subtly cropped an unwanted edge from the right; where I can publish this image to my website or print enlargements to frame and display in a gallery.

My artist’s statement is this: I hope to show my audiences something beautiful and real. This picture is a success to me. The detail of it satisfies me. It is crisp and clear, and the woman is alive, vivid. And this photo says more about a woman in Spiti than I alone could be capable. I wrote out everything above to say what I put into this image, to indict myself as a journalist of Orientalism, or worse, a tourist. But please, pull the photograph from my hands, and it is a truthful thing. It is a document of light and color, not of empty words; the words come after, light and color are first.
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Road to Kaza from Key, 2008

The smell of burning tar reached the village miles away and a thousand feet above. It is dirty work building a road, and the crews rarely clean up what’s wasted. I see that the people working on building the roads are not from Spiti; locals tell me they are from Bihar, south of the Himalaya. They live in encampments near the road sites, crowded hovels littered with plastic trash. What does the government pay them? Less than the locals will accept for work like this.
The roads are helpful to the people here. They are able to get around better, to visit, to get supplies and health care in Kaza. Taxis shuttle folks about once or twice a day, filled beyond capacity with people and supplies. Many people, though, still use the footpaths that run more direct routes, but there is no debate that the people appreciate the roads.
Even so, sometimes roads around here just seem like a bad idea. These mountains do not take kindly to grading and paving, and they constantly bury the roads with rubble or give way beneath them. In the winter the roads are unusable, and then, as the snow melts, the thaw destroys much of the previous summer’s “improvements”. It seems like such arrogance to try to build roads in this terrain, a Sisyphean task that quite possibly invites more problems faster than solving old ones.
The roads bring the tourists to see everything they came to Spiti Valley to see. But the roads also bring in everything that the tourists don’t want to see. They drink bottled water and act disgusted when all the trash is burned on the side of the road. They demand flush toilets and wads of toilet paper where the water is scarce and sewage is overflowing. Roads are a contradiction here that bring more contradictions here.

A man clears the road outside of Nako, 2008. The Valley is frequently cut off when roads become impassable from rockslides.
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At the entrance to villages there are always collections, usually hundreds, of these hand carved “mani stones”. Sometimes these cairns are more than a hundred feet long and about four feet high.

The subaltern do speak
And they write it on stone—
“Om mani padme hum.”
–––––––––––––––––

Demul, June 2008.

This is a picture of a government school in Demul, a village of 55 houses. A sign at the base of the village (like many Spiti villages, Demul is situated on a steep hill) proclaims local sustainable tourist initiatives, like homestays, for “conservation of the natural and cultural heritage of the ecologically fragile Spiti Valley” and to make a little additional money to supplement the subsistence farming they do. Currency helps the people buy what, in their not too distant past, they would have had to trade for, and the people here are no doubt grateful for the convenience the diverse wares in Kaza’s bazaar now offer them. But did they bargain for the curse of poverty declared on their school building? Spiti, before, was mostly a closed system; there were only a few goods, salt, for instance, that they imported from outside their region, and while it was not a Communist society— some families did indeed have more than others— it was communistic in that the villages provided for itself the means needed to live. When the Spiti system became opened to new markets by roads, there was suddenly a whole range of outside cultures to compare themselves to; they could see Bollywood fiction on TV and seemingly rich foreign tourists.

The sign in Demul also declares the homogeneity of the village’s religious beliefs as the Sakyapa sect of Buddhisim, a religion that mostly renounces the accumulation of wealth. Reminded of this fact, the ideology printed on the government school seems more out of place, oppositional, or even insidious to the local culture. I see the school as a place of the ideological colonization fundamental societal beliefs. As the community’s children learn for the purpose of making money, why would they farm barley and peas? When their ambitions are to be doctors and engineers so they can buy motorcycles and diamonds, why should they look after a yak? And yet, if these children, and their parents too, want these opportunities, of course they should be available. Shaming one’s origins, however, seems imprudent and destructive, especially when these origins have so much to teach the world about sustainability and immateriality. It is not to preserve a culture for my own romantic notions of simplicity that I would erase those words from Demul’s school, but to stop the psychological feeling of inferiority they want to instigate.
–––––––––––––––––––

Stuffed snow leopard hanging in the entrence to Sangla Monestery

Really?
This is what I want to preserve?
This is a culture of patriarchy that kills endangered snow leopards. The second born sons are sent packing to be celibate monks, no say for them; it’s tradition.
OK, because they build houses of mud and have a peaceful religion, because their villages are so picturesque and the little monks so adorable, because the people smile in their ignorance and are quaint in their rituals, I want to preserve this place so I can come to look, point and shoot, ooh and awe.
But really.
Some things around here could do with a little change.

Now, carefully, how will the Spitians change? A new world and new ways have shown up in their valley. I hope they can pick and chose, with awareness of the consequences, the changes they will make from within. But what I see happening is the domination of their small fragile culture by a large powerful assimilating one.
It’s not that this is a place that shouldn’t change. It’s not even that this is a place that’s incapable of changing itself. It’s just not right for that change to come from outside.
–––––––––––––––––

Locals outside of Demul, 2008

They are excited for me to take their picture. As soon as I make several “clicks” they are reaching for my camera, laughing at their images, saying what— I don’t know— about themselves.

They leave their knitting
to ride my motorcycle
I am so ashamed.
––––––––––––––––––

I wondered what Mr. Bhabha would make of this sign. It stands outside the medium sized village Chicham. It seems this is one of “the complex strategies of cultural identification and discursive address that function in the name of ‘the people’ or ‘the nation’ and make that the immanent subjects and objects of a range of social and literary narratives” (Bhabha, 292). These people are making a very real attempt by declaring the protection of special plants to locate, in the present, what Bhabha would term a metaphor of community. But then these people have never heard of postcolonialism or deconstruction.
What else does this sign say? It begs the question, who must these plants protected from? The repetition of the word “local” on the sign implies the plants are protected from non-locals, probably mostly tourists. Chicham, as a village, seemed to me the most— dare I even say— hostile of communities to outsiders. It is, for one, one of the hardest to get to: either by way of a very long drive or a difficult hike through a deep canyon, and therefore it sees relatively few tourists compared to its neighbors. The feeling as I walked through its streets and pathways, alone, was of skepticism, even avoidance, of me. No one talked to me or invited me in for tea, and that was unusual. The feeling in this village, on this sign, is indicative of the presence of an invader, a colonizer, and what’s more is that I, in feeling that Otherness (to think of Said), was indicted as the colonizer. I had wonderful intentions there, photographing and cataloguing the rare medicinal plants in the area, but this sign confronted me as an agent of modernity. Who was I photographing these plants for?
Whether or not the conflict of the “virtuous colonizer” has a satisfactory resolution depends on who you talk to. The people I worked with at Spiti Ecosphere surely felt that yes, we could be of help alongside the locals. However, I talked to a few locals who did not feel that way.
–––––––––––––––––––––––

The rugged Himalaya cut Spiti Valley off from the rest of India, 2008.

Let the land speak
About a liminal space
With a saw tooth edge.

Look how the layers talk about process
By folding before you
What geologists call a “fault”.

An idea is thrust
This barrier between
Flesh—

That’s the Himalaya;
Living mountains
Upon the between.

I talk to you Mr. Bhabha
For spelling out
What the mountains already said.
–––––––––––––––––––

Old and New monasteries side by side in Sangla, 2008.

I guess a thousand year old temple can’t stand forever. I guess they will have to replace it, eventually. But the one at right was built from the land and has accumulated the sacredness of generations. How can it be replaced by one built of concrete and money? It seems truly a sad irony that the rupees coming in from tourism, a tourism based on seeing thousand year old monasteries, are being used to construct concrete replacements of their ancient counterparts. But maybe, when the old ones crumble and the concrete ones are finished, tourists won’t come to gawk any more, and life will get back to normal around here.
I, the photographer, do not know what this picture says. Perhaps it says to me, it is too late for Spiti; they have abandoned their essential traditions. The temple was an icon of something essential to their culture, and seeing the soulless modern version shows the irrevocable loss. Or perhaps it says to me, I don’t know what is essential to Spiti, and there is really nothing incongruous about these two temples; quite possibly, to a Spitian, these temples are fundamentally the same, not fundamentally different. It seems the meaning of this photo depends on who you ask.
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A small fossil I found outside Langza and a local man with the biggest “chadua” he’s found, 2008.

The ammonites
Here
Are part of
The landscape
These fossils are
Historical
My uncle is a geologist—
I think about
Paleontology—
I have the spiral stone in my
Pocket
I think it will make a great
Paperweight—
It seems like there are plenty
And the travelers who come here
Hiking to the creek bed
Are few
So
I take.
But the ammonites
Are not paleontology
The fossils
Were not fossils
Before—.
Before they were “chadua”
Which means “bird stone”
Which makes me think
It is not my history
To take home
With a different name.
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The classic Spiti dry toilet is the top picture. Below is the modern flush version, the typical Indian squat toilet. Neither of these toilets is sustainable with the population growing at its current rate.

––––––––––––––––––––

Self portrait at Chandra Tal, 2008

This is how I would like to finish, to “conclude”, my exploration of the “Spiti Situation”. Forget the theories. Forget the discourse. And please forget my vain self-indulgent writing— it’s all empty, a shadow, and we each create our own. But please please please remember the photographs; remember what you’ve seen, because that part is real. Tread lightly.
–––––END–––––

Works Cited

Bhabha, Homi K. “DissemiNation: time, narrative, and the margins of the modern nation.” Ed. Bhabha, Homi K. Nation and Narration. London & New York: Routledge, 1990. Print.

“Ecosphere Spiti Eco-Livelihoods.” www.spitiecosphere.com/about_us.htm. n.p., n.d. Web.

Hight, Eleanor M and Sampson, Gary D. “Introduction: Photography, ‘Race’, and Post-colonial Theory.” Colonialsit Photography: Imag(in)ing race and place. Eds. Hight, Eleanor M. and Sampson, Gary D. New York, NY: Routledge, 2002. Print.

Moss, Laura. “Is Canada Postcolonial? Introducing the Question.” Is Canada Postcolonial: Unsettling Canadian Literature. Ed. Moss, Laura. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier, 2003. Print.

Norburg-Hodge, Helena. Ancient Futures: Learning From Ladakh. Berkely: Sierra Club Books, 1991. Print.

Yoga Cowboy Photography

2009-07-28T11:39:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to provide a link from my blog to my official photography website. Please have a look and tell me what you think! www.yogacowboyphotography.com

I don't really think anyone reads this blog any more, but I have not forgotten it, and someday will revive my blogging. Love, Ethan

Play Ultimate

2009-04-19T18:44:00.000-07:00

I began playing Ultimate in high school. We preferred to play when it was raining and Sertoma field was flooded. We didn't have many rules; we weren't even all that good at throwing. But we played because it was fun; we played because there is excitement with a frisbee aloft and just, just enough time to run it down.
Ultimate is an exciting game, and I believe it's that excitement that keeps someone like me playing for 10 years. There's a lot of ways to play Ultimate. Most common of all is the ubiquitous "pick up" game that happens, often spontaneously, when some people have a frisbee and a field. Pick up is also frequently organized in a city at a loosely set time in a set place. As long as I've lived in Asheville there has been pick up Ultimate every Sunday; it's casual, people are friendly, and a game. It's not necessarily competitive, but it's FUN.
On the other end of the spectrum is tournament play. Ultimate Tournaments range from the most serious of sporting events (National Championships) to an excuse for a giant party (Fools Fest) with Ultimate as a bonus. It's all Ultimate, but the difference at tournaments is a noticeably more committed player who has learned to play the game at a higher level. Games are more competitive, and the excitement of each moment is brought up to match the level of play. Once you've played ultimate at the tournament level, if you are like me you will crave that excitement again and again.
This collection of photos is an attempt to express the excitement offered by the game of Ultimate. They were all taken at a one day "Hat Tournament" where teams are chosen randomly-- the idea is a combination of casual pick up ultimate with tournament level play. Despite the serious expressions that come out in action shots, these are people enjoying themselves.

I love this game.

Street Night Light

2009-04-02T13:04:00.000-07:00

walking the
boulevard
by the blocks
verticle line
by line by line
Ethan Burns
absorbing
street night light
through an alley
with a beat
moving moving feet
city folk
I'm wide eyed it's bright
street night light
that is luminescent
warm air
bringing them out
Ethan Burns
new shoes
it's those jazz and blues
play it on the
street night light

this guy
pulled out a calendar
a menu
of venue
for coin
my shot for him
no front teeth
going big

I am tilted
not just one side
street side
the camera is tilted
it's a box
and a frame
and I didn't look
when I took aim

what he want to see
the little guy with dirty laundry
him with the
light
sometime ain't
right
the feeling i get
the power we let
we need that man
in that car
but damn if it ain't
gone too far

don't stop
for this light
just use
eyesight

Blog sounds like a cuddly monster.

2009-03-24T14:39:00.000-07:00

I have ignored my blog lately. There was enough to deal with coming home after so long away. But I'd like to think I'm sorted out for now and I can get back to putting up some pictures and thoughts from my life. I hope the blog will take a new direction from the India travelogue it was into a more creative direction, kind of like my life has. Thoughts and encouragement are always appreciated.

Spending some time at Hampi

2008-10-03T10:29:00.000-07:00

Hi Folks,
Hampi in late September is a quiet place. The monsoon isn't "officially" (according to Lonely Planet) over there until mid October, so the droves of tourists haven't invaded yet. The rice paddies are exploding green, and the morning air is cool fresh breezes, clean to smell. Hampi is the ruins of an old (I hesitate use "ancient"; it's only 600 years old) Hindu holy city in South India, so the ruins of stone buildings still stand everywhere. While the city is primarily known for it's ruins amongst tourists, there is another group who considers Hampi sacred for another reason: rock climbers come for the boulders. Ever since climbing legend Chris Sharma filmed the movie Pilgrimage and named a number of routes, boulderers from across the globe have followed.
I was brought to Hampi by the triple-force pull of climbing, ruins, and country-relaxation. I found a cheep bungalow with a shared bathroom, climbed in the mornings and the evenings, and read Midnight's Children and played chess through the day. I taught a few yoga classes to friends and fellow climbers. I take it this life sounds pretty good, and I admit that it was.
While I was in Hampi, there was only one day of bad weather, one dark day with only rain all day. It was the day after my Grandfather died. He had suffered from Parkinson's and died under the vigil of his wife of over 50 years and his three children. My grandfather was a good man, had a good life and a family that loved him. He was good with his hands, a wiz at crosswords, a bit of a grinch about Christmas, scientifically curious throughout his life, with a good memory from his youth. He will last in my fond memories of him telling stories at the table during holidays, and after watching football, and often asleep, in peaceful snoring sleep, my Grandpa. There is no doubt that he will be missed by my entire family, but he was also released from a terrible disease. So I am sad of for the loss, and glad that it's over. I took a rainy day of depression, but when better weather came around the next day, I went out climbing.
So here are pictures from about ten days in Hampi. I hope, as usual, that the photographs I show you will take into the experience I had. Please enjoy.

Welcome to Hampi... rice feilds: check, massive boulders: check, temples and ruins: check.

Looking good so far?

Mornings and evenings the rice fields absolutely GLOWED their green color. You could almost dive right in... sure, one time, I did.

This is Steffi going for a long reach to a finger crack...

And here is Owen facing off with "The Arrete."

Climbing and local culture mingle at Hampi where boulders are sometimes near local footpaths.

See all the dragonflies like gold in the air? See the crane perched high on the boulder stack? This is a place of imagination.

Rice kernels up close in the morning light.

Classic India: men holding hands. It's not unusual, it's not homosexual, it's just culture.

Another photo from my study of the rice paddies. I like the simple pattern here.

Here Owen looks at the top hold of a high, hard problem. He stares at the feature, not sure if he can move his hand from his current position, keep his balance, and grab the top-out without a long fall. Does he? Yes!
I was lucky to have Owen and Steffi to boulder with as they were both really good climbers. They showed me around the rocks, and when they got on the really exciting problems that got too hard for me to even lift off, I found the angles to be photographer. To get this perspective I balanced a bit precariously at the top and held the camera out at arms length over the edge to shoot down and into the overhang.

Owen had a good reeeeaaaaach.

This was about as hard a problem as I got on, and while I could put a few of the moves together I never made it to the top. There were lots of good climbs for me, too, just none as photogenic as ones Steffi and Owen could do.

Morning gossip on an incomplete bridge.

Washing at the river.

Their poster declares "WORLD TOURISM DAY: RESPONDING TO THE CHALLENGES OF CLIMATE CHANGE"... who knew?

People rocks ruins...

No, I don't know these people, but you can imagine they're anybody.

Legend is that the Hindu monkey god Hanuman threw all these boulders down in a show of force to his enemy Ravana. So here's my homage to Hanuman in the form of a Langoor Monkey silhouetted by the setting sun. Beautiful right?

Also beautiful.

More "WORLD TOURISM DAY" (whatever that is!) festivities.

What if it was your job to wash an elephant every morning? This is a big job...

Splash splash wash wash

Scrub scrub scrub

I think the elephant, who spends the rest of his days at the nearby temple, eating bananas accepting rupees and giving blessings, mostly enjoys his morning bath. But the mahout gave a nasty beating to the elephant when he rolled over too slowly, and I thought that wasn't very nice to do to a holy elephant.

Your guess is as good as mine.

India's children are still so beautiful.

But what are you doing in the road all alone?

Street scene walking towards the temple and bazaar.

The main temple of Hampi at sunset.

Well that's it folks. I'm back in Mysore now, back to where I started the trip, for one last month in India. I'm living here with my old friend Andrew from my years at Furman and who's as unlikely a yoga accomplice as you could expect to find from my past. It's cool though; we have a nice apartment with two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a nice living space including internet and HBO, but most fantastic is a blender to make never ending smoothies from all the fresh fruit at the markets. I've got a motorcycle again, and have started class with my old teacher Bharath. By living like this I'm working on a partial reintegration to American culture before I get home. We'll see how well that works in November when I fly home on election day...
Love you all,
Ethan

All That It Was and Could Be

2008-09-18T04:30:00.000-07:00

I have said farewell to the Himalaya. Here's the view from the plane.

But there were three weeks before I left, three weeks in which I moved by motorcycle, bicycle, jeep, bus, and again happily and humbly as a pedestrian. I hit 6 high mountain passes, awed at three high altitude lakes, and clicked over a 1000 pictures. There were endangered species sighted, extraordinary people met, and somewhere along the way all that this Himalayan adventure was and could be was realized. I hope this selection of pictures and whatever aphorism I can offer helps communicate the experiences these mystic mountains gave me.

Spiti had one last surprise for me before I could start my motorcycle ride to Leh. The visit of the Rinpoche Lama to Kaza brought people in from the outside villages to line the streets and wait for him.

This woman waits with a "kahtee" cloth, an offering to the coming high lama.

And this was the scene for a few hundred yards up and down the road from Kaza's temple until the Rinpoche arrived: dressed in their best, offerings in hand, and waiting patiently they'd recieve their honored guest.

My landlord Nataji would play an important role for the day. He went out early in the morning to meet the Rinpoche at the Kunjum La, the pass and official entrance to Spiti Valley, to have the red cloth in his hand blessed by the lama. This special cloth will be kept in the Kaza's new monestary.

The Rinpoche passes through the fog of incense smoke on his entrance to the temple.

It was the first time I'd seen hats like these.

The guest of honor. That such venerated Lamas can be so young will always be something that puzzles many of us about Buddhism.

My host's wife, my Spiti Amma, also played an important role in the welcoming by dawning traditional clothes and performing a traditional dance. After seeing some traditional dances performed for non-traditional reasons, I felt really lucky to see dance on an authentic occasion.

The next day the drive to Leh, in the Kashmir region of India, commenced; although I reached Leh only four days later, it was my longest and most epic motorcycle ride through the Himalaya. There are five high passes between Kaza and Leh, some good sections of road but mostly very bad, and non-stop gorgeous scenery.

A local bus reaches the pass at Kunjum La on its way to Spiti Valley as I leave. To the left many prayer flags flutter in the constant wind, and the bus kicks up dust to a background of glacier; the bus stops for a moment here for local people to pay respect, and for foreigners to collect their rattled bones.

I spent my first night of the ride camped at Chandra Tal, or "Moon Lake", a small but high (4,300 meters) puddle of serenity. Taking a rare moment to look away from the Lake's waters I took this picture of grazing horses.

Early morning stillness.

And late morning colors: earth water and sky at Chandra Tal.

Back on the road for the roughest section: between Losar and Keylong the road goes over large, loose rocks, rough gravel, mud, through knee deep water, along cliffs, via active landslides, and is, in a general way, ominous and uncomfortable.

Self portrait from the road.

This picture symbolizes the end of The Day of Four Passes, as I refer to it in my journal. Having ridden all day I reached this pass, the Taglang La (5,300 meters) at about 6:00PM, cold and tired, but it was beautiful to be up here in evening, and satisfying to have packed so much into one full, bursting, epic day. I arrived in Leh the next day dusty and tired; happy.

Leh was a very welcoming place with an easy balance of culture and comfort that make it easy to see why it's become such a popular tourist destination. Endlessly picturesque pathways along trickling channeled water, the imposing palace looming above, and shops full of beautiful, handmade carpets, jewelery, wool and silk... surrounded by the Himalayas it's many peoples notion of paradise.

I have seen many Himalayan gompas before, but none so large and impressive as Tikse. Situated about 30 minutes outside of Leh, it's Ladakh's most famous monestary.

Another look at Tikse.

Blowing a brass horn 10 feet long takes a lot of wind, and this monk puffs to muster it, but the sound, such deep and lasting vibrations, will stay with me forever.

Young monks are not forced into endlessly serious existence; I see them having lots of fun.

The impressive palace that overlooks all of Leh.

What's this picture of my Mom's garden doing here? Actually, these zinnias are part of the amazing garden at Oriental Guest House, my home away from home.

While Leh seems to be doing great now, clean, prosperous, but still unique, the pathway to a sustainable future for this unique culture was not always bright. With the original influx of military to secure the border with Pakistan and China, the improvement of the roads, and the opening to tourists 30 years ago, the Ladakhi way of life was greatly threatened by pollution and whole-sale selling out to Westernized culture-- the conflict outlined by Helena Norburg's book Ancient Futures. This picture points to one of the tools bringing Leh onto a brighter future. It's a solar cooker, reflecting the sun to one hot point at which heats a kettle of water. It's not as fast as a stove, but a lot cleaner than burning dung.

I was in Leh for the Ladakh festival, a cultural event put on by the tourism bureau. So while it's a bit of a circus for tourists and photographers alike, it definitely created a number of exciting events I was happy to witness.

Welcome to the Ladakh festival: the opening procession on September 1st.

Wild costumes on display.

Shy smiles.

A spectacle of spectators.

Another common sight in Leh, the fort on high.

Local monks also come to watch the festivities.

Costumes and dancing from dusk to dark.

This is the magic seabuckthorn berry. To learn about the wonders of this plant go check out http://www.spitiecosphere.com/health_seabuckthorn.htm

Since I was planning to do some high altitude climbing, I thought it would be a good idea to do some good cardiovascular training. Also, since I sold my motorcycle on arrival in Leh and Kardhung La, "The Highest Motorable Pass in the World" seemed like a necessary place for me to go, riding a rented bicycle to the top seemed like the best way to go.

Here's the home stretch-- although you can see the actual pass in this photo (just to the right of the second bump from the left), it's still seven kilometers away. Not normally so far, you have to remember these kilometers at an elevation over 16,00 feet.

Riding a rented bike in boots and rolled up jeans and peddling the granny gear, I reached the top in snow. I hadn't been on a bicycle since I came to India, and I think driving a motorcycle had made me lazy. It took me about 6 hours to get to the top, and when I got there my ass was so sore!

High altitude training finished, I was ready for my high altitude climbing. I had just read Jon Krakauer's book Into Thin Air, and was fascinated with the idea of climbing a big mountain. (I think the book for many has the opposite effect). I found out what was the biggest, summitable peek in the area and went out after it: Chammser. Chammser, on the east side of lake Tso Moriri, reaches an altitude of 6,600 meters, or 21,600 feet, and can (according to the locals I talked to) be climbed without ropes or crampons-- just a really big hill to walk up I thought. I got gear together, bought food and rented a stove, and hitched a ride to Tso Moriri hoping for a view from the top. That was not to be.

Laying pavement on a road in the Himalaya: not on my list of dream jobs.

Tso Moriri is a very remote area of the Himalaya, neer enough to the border of Tibet to require a permit. On the edge of the lake at an elevation of 4,500 meters is Karzok, the only village in many kilometers. The night I arrived here the weather quickly turned bad and brought high, cold wind and snow, but I absolutely love this picture: a woman hurries back to her village as the storm begins to fall.

Morning was much nicer as I settled in to Tso Moriri and readied to start walking North, clockwise, around the shore.

Barley. The local people call say "Strong food."

A portrait from Karzok

On my first day of walking I teamed up with a Frenchman, Cedric, because he seemed like an interesting fellow and we were going the same way. To my luck, Cedric turned out to be a proper naturalist, a man who spends months and months every year in the wild identifying birds and mammals-- just my sort. So we watched birds, talked about women, and had ideas about climbing the Mountain.

Along with Cedric came Gismet, his local ponyman.

Gismet was joined by Tashi, and thus you see the trio pictured here on the third day. Also note the weather. Every day there had been storms with snow coming down and wind blowing hard; it didn't look good for a climb.

The lake, on the other hand, was offering all kinds of treats to the tune of rare wildlife and nice wildflowers.

On the fourth morning, there were clear lake views and, very very good luck, a Tibetan Wolf, "Shanku". With weather as it had been, and hiking around the lake all that it was, it was the morning I chose keeping to the Lake over climbing the Mountain: All That It Was or What Could Be.

Home sweet home. My tent in the corner can convey some notion of the scale of this place, but the only way to understand the size of these mountains and this place is to walk around, from here to there, and feel the unquantifiable space. These are the Himalaya, and they are another size from all other mountains.

These beautiful little horsies are Tibetan Wild Ass, or "Chang". Not many people get so close to such a large group of these.

On the sixth day it was time to finish my circuit of the Lake and for Cedric with his ponymen to go on to Kibber, treking to the Spiti valley. The four of us spent some quality time together: preparing dinner, drinking tea, hiding from the wind under a parachute tent. Meeting and learning from these three people was a unique opportunity, a conspiring of circumstance only possible here and now, in India in this moment.

A portrait of Chammser as I walked away. Chang in the foreground, and all 7,000 feet from lake to summit in between, it still looks climbable. Incredibly formidable yes, but climbable... for next time, I decided.

Beautiful Bar Headed Geese in flight

The trip to Tso Moriri was very special for me. Before I left for India, the wilderness was my home over half the year, so going back to the wilderness, even if it was Himalayan wilderness, was like going home, back to something familiar, that I love. My passion for camping and photography flared as I remembered what's possible. I began dreaming about winter camping in Yellowstone and sea kayaking in Alaska. By the end of the trip I felt my appetite for life renewed.

A mane wall of carved stones and stupas in Karzok the morning of my departure from Tso Moriri.

Yaks on the banks of Tazang Tso, just north of Tso Moriri, with Mentok reflected in the water.

No one in India knows what a "GAMA" is either, but these poetic roadsigns of warning are everywhere. "After whiskey, driving risky" "If you're married divorce speed" "Speed is the knife that cute [sic] a life" etc etc.

Having grown used to the liberties of photographers over the many years of tourism, Leh was OK with people taking pictures inside gompas and stupas. I was happy to get to take a picture of this Avolokeshvara, of which the Dalai Lama is said to be an incarnation of. Avolokeshvara has 1000 hands with 1000 eyes for which to see all the suffering of the world and help all beings on The Way.

The last day of the Ladakh Festival, of which I made sure to get back from treking in time for, was the Polo Match. This was a really exciting thing to see, and so much fun to photograph. It's a bloody rough game; the horses are ridden to full tilt, riders acrobaticly lean to reach the ball, players jostle shoulder to shoulder at full gallop, sometimes scattering the crowd should the ball stray into their midst.

Good Old Red White and Blue

Himalaya by Moonlight

A fisheye look from my room on full moon night.

I hope I've shown everyone a little bit here of what makes the Himalaya so special, but truly it's a place that must be experienced viscerally to understand. These mountains spellbind; they will captivate me for life.
I'm back in South India now to bring this trip to India full circle. Tomorrow I'm on my way to Hampi for a week of rock climbing, and then I'm on my way back to my teacher Bharath in Mysore for another month of yoga study. I want to end my trip this way, back where I started yet in a brand new place. I appreciate symmetry.
America, the election is coming. Scary isn't it? Please don't let another Republican in... I'll be back Nov. 4th.
Love you all,
Ethan

Farewell to Spiti

2008-08-23T06:18:00.000-07:00

Spiti is behind me now, but that's just geography. About a week ago I drove out over the Kunjum Pass and left Spiti via the same route by which I first entered it last May. I invested a lot of time in Spiti, all told about 6 weeks there, and it was not wasted. The experiences of my last week in Kaza and around helped me remember why I spent so long here.

I drove up to Langza, one of the high villages, to see how my friend Anjan's house had turned out (I posted pictures of the construction back in early June). I stopped in at Nawong's house to see how this young guide-to-be that I'd spent some time with was fairing, and learned that he had fallen off his mount in a horse race at a local festival a few days ago. He was not seriously hurt. On the way in I took pictures of his grandfather brewing Chang (barely beer) just outside the kitchen-- more daily life in Spiti.

Traders and villagers came to Kaza from all over for a local festival. While centered around commerce and not really so much a "cultural" festival, the event also featured different kinds of dancing, as well as a very exciting horserace.

In Kaza I always stayed at the same place, the Phun-tsok Palbar Guesthouse. The couple that owned it were two of my favorite, two of the sweetest, people in Spiti. Pictured here is the Mother (Amma)who, as well as appearing in several local, traditional dances, also made me tea almost every morning, smiled really big when she laughed, often, and in general made me feel so welcome in her home-- more like a guest or a family member than a paying tenant.

My three of my guest house family's children were home, two from school in Shimla, during the festival. Here brother (Chan-chuk) and sister took me to the festival's horse race. As we sat around waiting for the race to start, plenty of time as things don't happen punctually in Spiti, Chan-chuk made bets on which horse would win, what village people were from, and which yak was the strongest.

Many people came to the horse race, and before it started we had plenty of time to admire the horses. They were all very small horses, and, since horses are ridden very little in Spiti and mostly just at festivals, they are mostly untamed. Regardless, the riders saddle the horses only with a blanket and some light reigns.

Here's a little pre-race excitement, and a taste of the untamed nature of the horses and the recklessness of the riders.

The race, though it was only two laps and lasted only about two minutes, was really quite exciting. The riders rode very fast, at their limit, around flags set up in a large dirt feild/arena. Riders and horses mixed closely, collided, fell and fought around the track-- never a dull moment.

Here's the finish: neck and neck two riders shoulder to shoulder, horses nose to nose, dash for the final flag. The rider in the foreground, white T-shirt, would be declared the winner.

At sunset the texture of the houses stands out. I will always sentimentalize the mud houses of Spiti.

This is Khan Mo, or Black Mountain, the day before I would leave to climb it. Those blue skies would not last. Note there are two summits, one to the right and one to the left; I would only make it to the first summit (at left) at about 5,980 meters (the right is 5,995meters) due to a big old snow storm.

Mani Mountain at 6,300 meters, here painted by sunset, dominates the views looking south-east down Spiti Valley. Mani, part of the sacred six syllable mantra Oh Mani Padme Hum, translates to Jewel, which I aggree is a very good name for the peak.

How many mornings and evenings did I sit and eat in this kitchen? Every time a special moment immersed in another culture. Here the my family eats dinner.

A close up of the Kee Monestary from below taken on my way to climb Khan Mo.

As I hiked up to about 5000 meters to establish a base camp for my summit bid the next morning, I watched nervously as clouds rolled in and some light rain fell in the evening. I would hear intermittant rain during the night; at that altitude I slept very lightly.

Breathless and having new respect for high altitude climbers, I arrived at the summit in visibility slashing snow fluries. The mountain was mocking my futile toting of 20 pounds of camera gear up its steep skree flanks. I almost forgot to take any pictures at all, but here I am: cold and grinning. From here the proper summit is probably a 1 kilometer ridgewalk away, but because of the prospect of some technical steps and the massive impairment to visibility from cloud and snow, I opted to go down. I spent the whole next day with a pounding AMS headache. While 19,600 feet is pretty damn high, Everest, by comparison, is 9,400 feet higher; I can't imagine what it's like trying to breathe up there.

I am always impressed by the flowers that grow at high altitude. Both of these, and a few other varieties, were blooming in August at about 5000 meters, or over 16,000 feet. And beautiful!

Hiking through the high hills on the way to and from Khan Mo I twice encountered a herd of about 150 Yaks. Something like a cow, something like a bison, these wooly beasts and their pointy horns thrive in the highlands. Known for their strength and calm temperment, I was no less intimidated by their size (and horns) as I walked through their midst on the way down.

Now I am in Leh, Ladakh, in the Kashmir region of Northern India. Over 500 kilometers from Srinigar, where most of the political unrest is seated, I am not in unusual danger of terrorist attrocities. It's beautiful up here, and sight more comfortable than life in Spiti, but also more crowded tourists. After a most epic drive up here from Spiti driving at times over 5000 meters, I have sold my motorcycle and am once again a humble pedestrian. I'll try to post again before I leave Leh on the 17th of September-- I think the two weeks between now and then will prove interesting.
Two months from coming home, I think about leaving India a lot. I'm having some initial butterflies about what readjusting to America, not to mention to working, will be like. I'm wondering where I'll live and what I'll do. Confident that I'll be able to answer these questions when I need to, I continue to try to live in each moment here and realize how one of a kind and important each second of this trip is. I am scared that when I get home I won't be able to make sense of it all, and will have wasted 9 months of my life. I continue to write this blog in hopes that sharing this experience has meaning for more than just myself, that, in reality, packing up and leaving home for so long was not a wholely selfish act. If you're reading, thank you; you give me needed strength. I hope that each of you will also share thoughts with me. I really love getting emails and comments.
Much love to everyone,
Ethan

Over the Hills and Far Away...

2008-08-17T01:42:00.000-07:00

Hello People,
I don't have time at the moment to write under all of these (60, count them) pictures, so I will just summarise here my journey from Delhi back to Kaza. My first day in India began with misadventure. Here I am on minute, ready to feel like a veteran India traveler feerlessly navigating the Delhi railway station, and here I am the next, theatrically running next to a moving train and jumping on board at the last minute without a ticket. Then I learn I've floundered on board the wrong train-- I do not feel so veteran after all; India has duely humbled me once again. However, in India when in doubt, go with the flow. So I got on the wrong train... this one not taking me north but actually south-- just happening to make a stop in Agra, home of the Taj Mahal. So it is that I visited the Taj Mahal by mistake.
The Taj Mahal, dear friends, did not disappoint me. I expected hoards of tourists and there were hoards of tourists. I expected Agra to be a shit-hole and it was a shit-hole. I guessed it would be hot there and it was hotter than hot. Oh, and I expected the Taj Mahal to be a grand, beautiful building, and it was beyond that; let me be clear: the Taj Mahal is the most beautiful building I have ever seen. Further adding to my unlikely fortune of finding myself at the Taj by mistake, I also happened to arrive there the day of a partial solar eclipse, and an Indian news crew interviewed me and a couple other American girls I happened to get along with. It's only the second solar eclipse I've ever seen, and at the Taj Mahal no less. Only in India.
After the Taj I got back on the train to Delhi, then in Delhi got on the RIGHT train (with a ticket, no less) north to Shimla. In shimla my motorcycle was waiting for me, covered in weeds, wet and a bit rusted from over a month in heavy monsoon. I dropped about 2000 rupees at the mechanic tuning it up, replacing parts, getting a new front tire, spare tubes, etc., getting it ready for the Big Mountains again. There aren't spare parts on the far side of the Himalayas. Shimla is a beautiful and atmospheric city. Built by the Brittish as summer turf, in its hay day it was a bit of England landed in India. Now it's been totally reclaimed by India and turned into a curious metaphore for post-colonialism.
I got on the road as quickly as I could; I wanted to get out of the monsoon rains and back to the big blue skies of Spiti. My route was the remote way: up through the only recently opened Kinnaur Valley along the Satluj River. Half massive hydro-electric projects, half quiet Hindu/Buddhist wood and slate villages, it's a diverse and beautiful drive. I made a detour up into the Baspa Valley, up through fields of pink flowers going up towards Tibet, and stayed in some very quiet villages, Chitkul and Rakcham. Then back out to Kalpa, high above the Satluj, gazing accross to some 6000 meter peeks seperating India and Tibet. Next to Nako, first village in the Spiti valley and boasting a very picturesqe lake-- waylaid here for two nights feeling very fine. Then to Tabo. Ah, Tabo.
Tabo is home to some of the oldest and finest Tibetan temples in the Spiti valley. Inside these temples one is gazed upon by hundreds of finely painted and preserved Buddhas, and it's hard not to feel some kind of Divine. I sat and meditated in peace there, allowing the moment to overwhelm me. But I only stayed a night, and, seeing Dankhar Monestary on the way, next day I drove back to Kaza. Oddly, I had feeligns of coming home when I got here. People happy to see me, me happy to see friends. I'm just another week here, then up up and away, Going to Kashmir with a Bron-y-aur Stomp, I will wander further...

On to Shimla...

Driving along the Satluj up Kinnaur Valley

And into the Baspa Valley to Sangla, Chitkul, and Rakcham.

Over to Kalpa...

And back into Spiti-- Nako, Tabo, and Dankhar.

Angkor What??

2008-07-30T07:32:00.000-07:00

Hello again folks,
Well I took a little side trip out of Thailand to visit neighboring Cambodia and see a little old temple known as Angkor Wat. Angkor What?? Yeah, it's one of the Seven Wonders of the World and the largest religious structure on the planet... who knew? I didn't know anything about Angkor Wat until I went-- thanks for the suggestion Mom!
Of course, to me a trip into another country should include more than just seeing its number one tourist attraction; I generally want to get involved in the culture somehow. However, with two full days of traveling, one coming and one going, I only had three full days in Cambodia-- barely enough time to explore the Angkor temples. Lucky for me I wouldn't have to go looking for cultural events; it just so happened there was an election on.

This is how I found out about the election. When I crossed over the border one of the first things I saw was a long parade of political supporters driving down the road. And it wasn't just campaining I'd be witnessing, the election was going to happen on my last day! I was happy for the timing, but also a bit nervous. Cambodia has only very recently achieved relative political stability, and past elections have been marred by violence. This time around, the current leader (formerly of the dreaded Khmer Rouge regime) was facing strong support from his opposition. And with a border dispute with Thailand flaming nationalistic furvor, there was a possibility for a bit more excitement than I really wanted to get into. So more about that little election later.

So while we take this tuk tuk ride to the temples, let me give you some quick history of Angkor. While Angkor Wat is the largest temple in the area (and in the world) there are many other very significant temples here, notably Bayon and Banteay Srei. Built by the Khmer civilization between the 9th and 13th centuries and still largely intact due to their stone construction, there are over fifty temples in this relatively small area surrounding the city Siem Reap. Since the Khmer rulers changed from Hindu to Buddhist, Buddhist to Hindu several times, these temples sometimes underwent multiple dedications. While today Cambodia is a Buddhist country, most of the bas relief carvings depict Hindu iconography.

During the Kmer Rouge's Communist "experiment" the temples of Angkor were significantly defaced, hence a lot of scaffolding and restoration work.

The temple of Ta Phrom, on the other hand, is intentionally left in its delapidated state. Huge roots grow out of and around walls and moss encroaches on the carvings as nature slowly reclaims the sandstone.

The temple of Pre Rup is a nice place to watch the sunset. I like to watch people watch the sunset.

Course I take pictures too.

This spider is ready to drop on your head! Trust me he was MASSIVE. I would not tangle with this guy.

Lotus and Dragonfly, in Color.

The temples could be quiet places, unless of course a busload of Japenese or Korean tourists showed up. Nothing against either nation, they're very just gregarious tourists.

This is Bantea Srei, probably the best preserved temple in the area. The bas reliefs here were carved deeper and out of a harder sandstone than others, hence their remarkable condition. Behold Indra riding his three headed elephant Airavata! After seeing hundreds of bas reliefs, these were by far the most detailed I came accross.

Maybe instead of carrying around ten kilos of camera gear I should just use a camera-phone. Hmmm. Maybe not.

OK, let's step out of Temple Land and have another brief history lesson. Cambodia was colonized by the French until the 1950's when, due to WWII, the French pulled out and Prince Sihanouk began ruling. Sihanouk was diposed by a coup the US military supported in order to gain military access to Cambodia. With the new government in place the US then dropped hundreds of thousands of bombs inside the Cambodian border to flush out the Vietnamese who were hiding there and also killed thousands of innocent Cambodians. It was in this period that the Khmer Rouge gathered considerable political support, and in 1975 the marched into the Cambodian capital of Phrom Phen and under the leadership of the despot Pol Pot. Over the next three years over TWO MILLION Cambodians would be either starved or murdered in what is recognized as one of the largest efforts of ethnic cleansing to occur ever. The Khmer Rouge, during their insurrection and subsequent rule, placed thousands of landmines all over Cambodia and made no record of where. Numerous unexploded bombs and rockets litter the war-wracked countryside. Thirty years later people are still killed and maimed from these devices.
Here at the Cambodian Land Mine Museum and Relief Fund, unexploded ordinance is on display with information about where it came from. Intrestingly enough, this little gem is from the USA, and it's manufacturer, surprise surprise, is outsourced. The museum has information on the landmine-banning Ottowa Treaty that has been signed by over 150 countries, but (surprise surprise) NOT the USA (or Russia, China, and India).
Sorry for the downer ya'll, but we can't ignore this stuff.

OK here it is, the Big One, Angkor Wat.

And it's busy busy busy!

Here's the main causeway leading over the moat into the temple complex. Once over the moat you walk through the gate of the first tower into temple grounds. Beyond the outter gate it's still about 200 yards to the central temple. Unlike much famous archetecture, Angkor Wat is bigger than you imagine.

A bas relief on the outter wall, a teaser to the famous "galleries" of the inner temple.

Sunset at Angkor Wat. Unfortunately, me and a handful of other rather serious looking photographers were getting chased out by the staff. The temple was closing and everyone else had left, but it was just as the colors began to get really good in the sky. I tried to bribe them to let me back inside but it didn't work, oh well.

One visit to Angkor Wat is not enough, so I went back the next morning for sunrise. Actually, I was up at 4:30 every day at Angkor to catch the morning light and avoid the heat. Two out of three days the sky was just grey, but this morning I got a little color.

The eight "galleries" of the main temple, each one approximately 100 meters long. When you look at repetitive scenes like this one they appear endless. This relief depicts a battle scene from the Mahabarata, one of the core Hindu texts.

Hi everybody!

This is an illustration of the 32 different sin-specific Hindu Hells. In this case, the emaciated sinners are being devoured by Yama's, or hell-hounds. Above, and not in the picture, are scenes from the 37 different Heavens. These depictions of the Heavens, however, are all sort of boring.

This relief shows the primary Hindu creation myth, The Churning of the Sea of Milk, where Vishnu, standing on Kurma (a giant turtle) pulls the naga (serpent) Vasuki thus turning the cosmic milk.

Steep stairs lead up to the top of the most center temple, but no climbing! Oh well, I can imagine if everyone that visited Angkor Wat could climb those stairs how quickly the sandstone would be worn to nothing. This is really just one little corner of the temple.

An elephant provides scale for the gateway to Angkor Thom, another really fascinating temple complex very close to Angkor Wat. Let's go!

These are the many faces of the Bayon, a very mysterious temple inside Angkor Thom. Scholars are still not sure if these heads are show the face of the Buddha, or of Shiva. The temple itself changed religions many times, but the faces, there throughout, have remained completely astounding. Massive, put together like jigsaw puzzled, and looking completely serene, these faces mesmarize. There are 37 still standing towers, each having one to four faces, that makes... a whole lot of big faces! It's really amazing, trust me. Just check them out:

So which is your favorite??

Oh yeah, and about that election. There was really never much doubt about who would win. The CPP, the party of the current prime minister, controls the media and voter registration process. Read for yourself at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7531184.stm. In spite of this, being in the country for the election was interesting and I talked to many people about it. Although I couldn't photograph the polls or the tallying process (and you wouldn't be able to see anything overtly corrupt happining even if I could have), finding voters to talk to was easy. All you had to do was look at their index finger-- if it was covered with ink then you knew they'd been to the polls. By the end of the day, it was definately a majority of people with inky fingers. There is a lot of national pride in this country, and even though our country has a less than sparkling record here I always introduced myself as American and was recieved with friendliness and smiles.

Well, my month vacation from India is up. I fly into Delhi tomorrow, and head for the hills ASAP. Thailand was really good to me, and some day I would like to come for longer; I left so much unexplored.
Once again a big thanks to everyone reading and for all the supportive comments you give. It means a lot to me. Until next time, much love to all and all the best.
Ethan

Diving Down, Climbing Up, and What's In Between

2008-07-23T07:47:00.000-07:00

Sawat de krahp everyone!
The last twelve days or so since my last post have been really great, so let me tell you about them.

I caught a bus from Bangkok to Krabi Province, described by Lonely Planet as "Thailand's most beautiful province", with the intention of doing some scuba diving and rock climbing. My first destination in Krabi was Ko Phi Phi Island. I didn't know what sort of scene Phi Phi would be, but the ferry ride out there prepared me: packed with tourists. Also note the looming monsoon clouds gathering strength overhead.

I landed on Ko Phi Phi and headed straight for a quiet end of the island with the cheapest bungalos. I was having mixed feelings about being around so many uniform tourists, but the blue green waters and high limestone cliffs were reassuring of my intentions for being here.

Ko Phi Phi is a beautiful island, and the sun sets right off the west beach leading to post card perfect pictures. It's not surprising this is a popular place.

Silhouettes of carste topography give the area considerable drama... especially if you're a climber.

Not feeling eager to take part in Phi Phi's alcoholic social scene, I signed up for a Master dive course the day I arrived. So, the very next day, I was out in the warm Andaman Sea checking out sharks, sea snakes, eels, and irredescent coral through the crystal clear water.

Already a busy place, it's hard to imagine the marine park just off Phi Phi in high season. But all those long tails sure are photogenic...

Taking a rest for lunch in between dives (and to let the nitrogen out of our systems) we have some fun on the boat. Serial divers are notoriously goofy. Everyone had plenty of time to practice backflipping off the boat's upper deck (that's me), an activity surely more dangerous than diving to 30 meters.

On day two of the course I did my first wreck dive. Diving a wreck is a pretty surreal experience, but similar to how you'd imagine it. Barnacles everywhere, ghostly light, and so many fish. Down here we saw many lion fish and a massive bat fish.

If you haven't done scuba diving, it's hard to describe the feeling you get surfacing after an incredible, mind blowing dive. You've just been underwater for almost an hour, looking at freek-show marine life-- sea cucumbers, anenomes, stone fish, sea horses, eels, a cuttle fish-- and everything has been so quiet. Underwater all you hear is breathing and bubbles with the snap crackle pop of coral munching fish, and you surface to a gentle lap-lapping of waves. The first moment of surfacing then is a moment of clarity when sound and vision return to normal; what everyone says is "Wow."

I'll be glib: there's more than one fish in the sea...

The last time I rented an underwater camera it was a bit of a disappointment, but this time, perhaps due to clearer water or better light, perhaps due to improved technique, I took some good clear shots like this moray eel.

Just hum to yourself Camille Saint Sains' "The Aquarium".

The iconic long tail boats make cliche but beautiful pictures.

I hiked up to the islands main view point (and tsunami evacuation route) to check out another beautiful sunset. I wasn't alone here, but it's a really nice vantage point of the island.

When the sun goes down and its beating heat dissapates into a somewhat cooler but still drenching humidity, a multitude of parties hosted by the numerous bars are fired up. On one night I went to one with a friend to observe the debauchery, and was at first reminded of college frat parties. They put on this drinking contest encouraging young women to drink buckets and shots of hard liquor; it's no surprise that right after finishing her turn in the contest this budding sorority sister ran over and yacked into the ocean. Observing people reveling in gross intoxication I remembered my past but felt only sadness for these people; I cannot celebrate that lifestyle any more.

Next came the fire show with professional fire dancers, and I had so much fun taking pictures. Letting the poi and firestaff be paintbrushes of light, I experimented with exposers and aperatures, panning and pulling the zoom, and really getting milage out of my image stabalized telephoto. Don't mind me while I dork out a bit =)

Going back to my cabana my last bit of Phi Phi night culture was a trio of painters up late creating paintings of pop culture. Scenes from Tarintino movies, portraits of Che Guerva, and other Western iconography hang all over the walls as they silently paint and humor my clicking camera.

After my dives were finished and I'd spent a day climbing Phi Phi's singular "Tonsai Tower", there was no reason for me to hang around the over priced and over run resort island. Since the water is too shallow to land a long tail on the beach, we had to hop out and walk to shore. Easy for me with my backpack, but not so much for prissy tourists with their rolling luggage. In this way the tourists are seperated from the travelers; here, at Railay, the tourists fill up the expensive resorts of Railay West, and the dirtbagging climbers (that's me folks!) hike on over to secluded Tonsai Beach and it's hundreds of bolted sport routes.

Being shown to my bungalow at Tonsai, I found this foot long centipede. It moved like a snake, really quickly. And the local man showing me to my room didn't want me to go anywhere near it or, as I am want to do, to poke it with a stick. While I wasn't about to pick it up, this "ferang" (Thai for "foreigner") has been closer to more dangerous bugs and wanted a good shot!

My first night on Tonsai beach is really beautiful. It's the night before my birthday and the moon is really bright, and it seems I've found my place in a warm community of rock climbers.

I got really excited when I spotlighted this silly frog. He's like a balloon. He fills himself up from the back, then thrusts it all forward into his throat to make his loud bullfrog croak. I was able to set my headlamp down right in front of the bugger, and remembered catching frogs in Michigan as a boy while I took pictures. I've always had a soft spot for amphibians.

The setup on Tonsai is pretty ideal for a relaxed climbing lifestyle. The limestone cliffs come right to the beach here, with unique stalagtite formations, big hand holds and steep overhangs, it makes for some really fun climbing. Not to mention the cave, with its insane ceiling routes, is next door to ever popular Freedom Bar.

Thailand jungle foliage.

See the water spider? After climbing hard for 4 days in a row I took a rest day. The timing was perfect because it rained more this day than any other day I was on Tonsai. I had lots of time for wandering around and seeing little things, like a spider on lilly pads.

And each night you could count on a pretty chill scene at the Casbah Bar, punctuated by a slacklining, fire twirling bartender.

Yes, it's more firedancing pictures. But this time the dancer isn't a profession (though she does harder tricks with better coordination), she's just another traveler who, for the time being, is part of the Tonsai climber community.

That's me stemming my way up a 6b (French for 10.b) climb. This was probably my favorite climb because of all the stalagtites.

And here's a friend of mine doing the same climb. I borrowed a trick lense from a fellow camera dork for this picture, so that's why everything but Chris, the climber, is blurred. This is jungle climbing!

This is my friend Georg (German for George). He and I climbed together at Ko Phi Phi, and met up again on Tonsai. He was my main climbing partner, and we had a lot of fun route after route.

Another friend from Tonsai, Juul from Holland, here takign on the 6c+ "Lion King". You can tell by the exhausted expression on her face that this is a tough climb-- really pumpy.

And here I am on the same climb, Lion King. Earlier in the day I tried to lead it, falling several times at the third bolt, so here I am again going at it on top rope. Even on top rope I couldn't make it farther than I did trying to lead it; I think my earlier attempts had left me too weak. But even though I never made it to the chains I felt great about going for it.

Carlos bouldering on the beach. Since it's monsoon, and most mornings it was raining, the limestone was dripping wet in many places. Even so, most of the best routes were still climbable.

Check out my buddy Borg throwing a strong heal hook on this 7b. He made this climb look easy; the dude's a real bad ass.

Another day in paradise...

I hope you agree that this is a really cool spider. As big as my hand.

After diving, climbing, and all that was in between in Krabi, I took an overnight bus back to Bangkok. Besides sky train, the chanels are my favorite way to get around in Bangkok. Sure, they are extremely polluted and smell awful, but you can ride all the way accross town, with no traffic, for 18 baht.

That was this morning, getting back to Bangkok. Laundry finished, emails sent, and blog updated, I'm heading out again early tomorrow morning for the final installment of my Thailand adventure. In a move reminiscant of my jaunt from Belize to the Mayan temple complex Tikal in Guatamala, I'm jumping accross the Thailand border into Cambodia to visit the ruins of Angkor Wat for a few days. It's a bit of a dangerous journey, what with the tension between Thailand and Cambodia, but I hear it's worth the trip. I actually don't know anything about it at the moment, but I'm about to look it up in Wikipedia.
I really appreciate anyone still reading. These days I'm really enjoying myself and I hope sharing these experiences is giving others some joy too. I'd love to hear your comments; leave them here, send me an email, or find me on FaceBook. Oh and thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday-- the wishing must have worked cause I had a great 26th.
Much love to everyone.

I'm smiling =)

2008-07-08T07:33:00.000-07:00

So, having the feeling that my luck in India was running thin, I've taken a little trip to Thailand. I only planned to stay here a little more than a week, but I'm so taken with the country that I've pushed my return ticket back till July 31st-- the farthest date possible with my ticket.
I'm going to skip the harrowing story about getting out of India -- ask me sometime -- and just keep this blog to Thailand. Needless to say, India had one more stretch of madness for me before I could leave (road crews, dynamite, landslides OH MY!). Let's keep to the present; we're in Thailand now.
Part of why I decided to come to Thailand was because my friend Elle, from the yoga teacher training in Mysore, lives in Bangkok. She volunteered to be my tour guide, so for the last week I've had her and her Japanese boyfriend Kei to take me all over Bangkok. They've been exceptional hosts; I have to fight to pay for anything, they gave me my own room, have high speed internet, and are good company wherever we go.
Let me assure you I knew nothing about Thailand before coming here. I bought a Lonely Planet the day before my flight, and, like I said, only planned on staying about a week. I just wanted to get out of India, relax, and renew my tourist visa. Niavity!! This is a wonderful country, and Bangkok is a wonderful city. It's clean, cars drive in lanes, people put litter in waste baskets, unobnoxious beggars, shorts, air conditioning, and amazing food. I had grown so used to the chaos of India and didn't expect to find anything different here, but Thailand is different.
I have adopted a relaxed pace around here and don't do too much site-seeing each day. There are more interesting things to do than go to the tourist spots, like just hanging out with Elle's friends. I have done a few tourist activities too though, like visiting Jim Thompson's house, The Tiger Temple, Khao San Road, Chatuchak Market, and Lumphini Park. Otherwise I've spent my time going to yoga class in the mornings and then taking the sky train here or there, to that mall or this mall. I'll let the photos below tell the story. So far, no, I haven't done what Bangkok is known for, and if you don't know what "that" is, then I won't mention it.
Soon I will head out to Krabi Province south of here to try to do some rock climbing on the famously juggalicious coastal limestone formations, or do some scuba diving at the world famous reefs, or just hang out in a room reading when it's monsooning too much to play outside.
Life is good, perhaps too good, because I feel a little guilty having it so nice. Do I deserve this? Really, it's probably better for me not to ask that question (or to consider my credit card tab). Better just to acknowledge my good fortune and be grateful, which I certainly am.
Oh yeah, and with reluctance I put myself on FaceBook. Actually, it wasn't a bad move. If you're on it, look for me there. And while FaceBook is certainly more user friendly, and more addictive, I am going to try to keep this blog the priority because it's less kitsch more informative. And on that note, on to the pictures:

My hosts Elle and Kei outside one of the many malls in Bangkok. We were checking out a free photography exibit called Earth from Above. They were some breathtaking images from around the globe, all arial shots. Unfortunately I don't have a hot air balloon in my back pocket.
Those of you that know her might notice that Elle is pregnant, but you'll have to get the story from her.

To confuse matters, this is Little Elle, Elle's best friend Elle... yup. Anyways, one night we all went to Khao San Road for dinner. There are many cool T-shirts (and plenty else) for sale at bargain prices, so I snagged a couple I liked. Elle here is buying some sliced fruit with the famous backpacker street's bright lights glowing behind her.

This may not look like much to you, just an average city scene, but to me it's glorious. Clean and orderly, this city is NOTHING like India's debacles. Also to note is the Sky Train gliding through on its way from some of the many massive malls. Maybe you know I am a huge fan of city mass transit systems-- the New York Subway, San Fran's BART, Portland's MAX-- and the Sky Train ranks up there for ease and convinience.

Meet Kai Chiow (translation: "Omelet"), Elle and Kei's young Shar-Pei mix. He is not friendly with me, but I'm making progress: he hasn't tried to bite me in four days. And that's Elle's boyfriend Kei ("Kay") holding him.

Orchids are the national flower of Thailand, and they're growing everywhere around Bangkok, but I still can't get used to seeing them. To me there still rare, exotic, expensive flowers and there's nothing common place about them, so again and again Elle smiles patiently while I say "Wow! Orchids!" Here's masses of them bundled up and for sale for 20 baht, or about 75 cents, in all their orchidly glory.

And lotus blossoms are for sale at a similar price; these are traditional gifts for Thailand's many buddhist monks.

You can buy almost anything at the Chatuchak market; it's huge! There's a huge art section with amazing paintings for sale-- cheap. The pictures of the previous flowers were taken here also, and there were many more, rarer, varieties of orchids on sale. Elle had been telling me about the pet section, so we went to have a look at some puppies.

Maybe soon Kai Chiow will have a friend...

I shaved my beard. It was time-- new country, new look.

Another stop on the tourist circuit is Jim Thompson's House. Jim Thompson is the original ex-patriot American in Thailand who set up a major silk trading house and revived the silk industry here. He brought together six traditional Thai houses and filled it with ancient art-- he was partial to Buddha statues and there's one here from the 7th century. The gardens are nice too, and that's all I could shoot because photos were not allowed inside. Bummer.

The three of us made a day trip out to Kanchanaburi on the way to the Tiger Temple. Hanging out by the somewhat famous, heavily touristed, and dramatically named Death Railway Bridge I was struck by how big the motors in these boats are. With a big block V-8 in a canoe, they're ready to zip tourists off to... some other tourist place I don't know where.

The elephant's trunk is an unpredictable thing.

So here's the deal with the Death Railway: the train comes roaring so fast over this bridge and tourists are so awe struck, trying to take pictures, that they are squashed by the speeding locomotive. No, just kidding. The train actually moves very slow over the bridge so the woman here is in no danger. The railway gets it's name because in WWII the Japanese occupied Thailand and used forced labor to make the Thai people construct it. Many died.

I'm like a little kid around trains, so the camera went click click click.

Now that I have your attention, welcome to the Tiger Temple. Lonely Planet calls it "a petting zoo for big boys", well, that doesn't quite sum it up.

Elle and Kei posing with an adolescent tiger. Yes they're quite safe, these tigers were raised by monks and are haven't eaten manflesh yet.

Check out this kitten, the size of the biggest full grown house cat. The tigers at the Tiger Temple are orphaned, their parents poached, or bred in captivity. So this little guy will be raised by the monks and other volunteers and temple staff to be docile, socialized creatures... with razor sharp claws and fangs.

But alongside the altruistic intentions of the Tiger Temple, it seems like someone got greedy. Currently the sizable amount of tourist money isn't going into wildlife funds, habitat preservation, education initiatives, or anti-poaching legislation; instead the thousands of baht are being used to build elaborate false waterfalls, performance arenas, and other highly artificial, spectator friendly enclosures to ensure the Tiger Temple continues to climb higher on Thailand's "must see" list.

Despite my mixed feelings, I was really happy to get so personal with tigers. Although you could get really close to the tigers, these shots were made with my sweet new 400mm telephoto (available on the cheep in Bangkok).

Tickling a tiger.

Maybe the biggest tiger, the purple on his back leg is antibiotic. If he looks drugged to you, remember that tigers are nocturnal prefer to sleep all day. That helps to explain their calm, not to mention growing up with Buddhist monks-- some of the calmest people on earth.

And here I am hugging a tiger. Good kitty, I wuv you. Despite being tame, the tigers still have quite a presence. Touching them you can feel the tigers' power, their amazing strength, their feline prowess. This is an endangered species folks; their habitat is quickly deminishing; and people, us, are responsible. But let me end with optimism: our actions in this life are not ineffectual. Little steps do make a difference. Positive change, no matter how small, is positive change.
And if you don't try, I'm going to sick this tiger on you.

Much love everybody. Till next time,
Ethan

Hiatus

2008-06-24T05:59:00.000-07:00

Julley Everyone
I say "julley" because that is the local greeting here (say "joo lay"), and I have grown rather fond of using it. Responses are almost always friendly- a reflection on the local culture.
But no one has told me the Spitian word for goodbye, and I'm not actually sure there is a concise way to say it, but goodbye is what I will be saying to Spiti for the next few weeks. Yep, I'm on my way out of the valley, heading south down to Shimla where I'll ride the Indian rails to Delhi to hop a plain to Bangkok, Thailand. What? Bangkok? Yes, I have to take a break from India-- two reasons. One, if I don't leave the country in July to renew my tourist visa, I will be deported. And two, I think I need a short break from India. I've had a few illnesses here in Kaza (it's a daily germ bombardment) that have left me tired, and as well I think some space from India will give me some renewed perspective I can use creatively. So Thailand it is! I have a friend from my Yoga TTC from Bangkok, and she has volonteered to be my Thai ambassador and tour guide. Should be sweet-- a small trip inside a big trip, like Shakespeare's play within the play.
Anyways, last couple weeks in Spiti have been fantastic. I've spent a good portion of time with a couple Spiti teenagers who, after several years working with our American teenagers, are a real pleasure. While they go to the private school in Kaza, I've gone to their homes in the villages and they are serving me chai and showing me their fields and telling me about their yak. They don't do anything deviant as far as I can tell. They are very shy around girls-- when I was at one's house and about six young women came in, he hid in another room -- "I am very shy" he said.
Anyways, I will let the pictures speak and tell their story. Sorry the resolution of these pictures and the last batch is lower than the quality was before, but as I've said internet here is unreliable and slow, so it's the best I can do.
Hope everyone's stepping into a nice summer; I've heard from many of you about your summer plans and I think we can all be mutually envious.
All the best and much love,
Ethan

Road building presents the Spiti quandry succinctly: what cost for modernization? While roads offer an undeniable improvement to the quality of life here, the cost is pollution (pictured) and a massive influx of cheap laborers- tripling the area's population-- and leading to a host of new problems.

Part of the work I'm doing with ecosphere is cataloguing wildflowers and writing a document on what's growing where, local names, and local uses. This is one of my favorite wildflowers blooming now at the higher elevations, above 13,000 feet. It's called Arnebia euchoroma, and I love how it blooms black flowers, pink flowers, and white flowers all in a cluster. Local use this plant medicinally as well as for making hair oil and red dye. Really cool.

Just as I was getting bored of wildflowers, thinking I'd seen all that the season had to offer, I stumbled upon a wet environment in the untouched village of Dumle and a field of, I couldn't believe it, orchids. Dactylorhiza hatagirea, or "aung po lackpa" in Spitian, is another important plant to Spiti and the root is used medicinally by the "amchi", or local doctor. Not to mention it's BEAUTIFUL.

A scene from the streets of Kaza, a young boy in orange mightily pumping water.

In the house of Kunga, one of my teenage friends, I had a lot of fun with the women preparing "timoh", a local steamed bread. Here the little doughballs sit on the woodstove steaming their way to gooey yumminess.

This beautiful Spiti woman is Kunga's sister. Sometimes the young Spiti women are very shy, but always from that shyness the most beautiful smiles come. And sometimes they are not so shy: once, around a large group of locals, one young woman asked for a short ride on my motorcycle. Never one to turn down a chance to have a pretty woman along for a ride, I agreed, and next thing I know not one but THREE women are getting on the back of my motorcycle... so off the four of us go, the three of them laughing and talking excitedly, and me just hoping I can manage my bike with four people on bored. This story repeated itself ten minutes later... Long story short, I find these women some of the most beautiful on the planet.

Women aren't the only ones in India carrying things on their heads. Also to notice in this picture is the ditch of flowing water the man's walking alongside. It's an irrigation channel running through Kaza down to the fields below, and also serves as a place laundry's done.

The village of Kibber on a sunny day.

Hiking through a canyon from Kibber to Chichim, I came accross some curious stone and mud buildings with these queer contraptions inside. Upon inquiry I found these are mills used for grinding barley. Barley goes in the big funnel and is slowly let through, and water comes through to turn the big stone.

A local shaggy haired donkey guarding the door in Chichim village. Have I arlready posted a donkey picture? These are damn fine donkeys!

My 17 year old friend Kunga showing me the local rhubarb, "litchu", that grows at high altitude (over 14000 feet).

Next he went about showing me how to prepare to eat it by peeling the outside off to get to the tender inside.

It's sour, sweet, and crunchy. Yum!

An amazing sunset as seen from the village of Komik, my friends home village. Komik is the highest village at 4,500 meters with great views all around.

This is your classic Spitian dry toilet. Aim carefully please.

This is from the ridgeline above Komik. I don't know the altitude, but I can tell you after a night of sleeping well higher than my level of acclimitazation, hiking up here neerly finished me. If I want to hike Khan Mo, an approachable, non-technical 5,950 meter peak (you need a permit to climb a peak higher than 6000), I will really need to condition. Altitude, as it turns out, is no joke.

I admit this post has been a bit rushed and may be slightly substandard. Please forgive me! Next post: Thailand!

Another day at the office...

2008-06-12T05:39:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,
This is Kaza, my home, from a road high above.

On the left side of the dry creek is Old Kaza, and flowing out like branches from the city are green fields-- the traditional setup of a Spitian village. To the right is New Kaza, where you will see no fields flowing from below but perhaps you will notice a new sort of field-- feilds of concrete. New Kaza is home to the many government buildings installed here, government schools, government hospitals, government administation offices... on New Kaza side you will even find, un-netted and unused, the concrete rectangle of tennis courts. And at the top of the picture witness the drama of the Spiti river and the Himalaya Mountains. This, friends, is the beautiful and complicated scene of my life.
Perhaps you'll remember I'm working at an NGO here named Spiti Ecosphere, and my job brings me to the fringes of the Spiti Valley and into close contact with the regional culture. Most recently I taught a first aide class to about 20 villagers, and despite the language barrier (everything I said in English had to be translated into Hindi, which, taught in the government schools, is not the primary language of the locals) was, I think, rather successful. Other projects have been to fix up the bikes we let, help teach some English classes, and write up some reports, but my must usual and relished job is the documentation of nature and culture in the area, or, in another word, photography.
So here are some snapshots derived from this great Spiti project for your enjoyment and education.

The Pin Valley is an offshoot of the Spiti Valley, and up this beautiful gorge lie several villages connected by a single road. Pictured here is the Kurgi Monestary which has with three temples: one 800 years old, one 400 years old, and the third completed several years ago.

Everyone loves a good rainbow picture: a lucky day in the Pin Valley.

Many wildfowers are beginning to bloom, especially at the lower elevations.

A small building signaling the proximity of Damul, and the ubiquitous prayer flags of Tibetan Buddhism. A note on prayer flags: once put up they are never taken down, and are allowed to disentegrate over time, so you see them in various states of their existance: from bright and colorful to pale and threadbare.

Young girls outside the government school at Damul. You'll have mixed feelings about the coming of government schools to the Spiti. While there can be little doubt of the importance of education anywhere, especially of literacy, government schools here do not teach in the local language or in ways particularly relevant to the area, so the local culture is gradually phased out. Imagine your conflict if in gradeschool you were taught in Chinese, and all the examples came from a Chinese context; would you feel unsure of your identity?

Despite its remoteness (the road to Damul was only built 3 years ago, and is still quite rough), Damul is a one of the largest villages I've been to. I came to Damul with Sonam to find out how the women here have been doing producing local knit-wear. The sale of local handicrafts is an initiative designed by Ecosphere to empower the women of the area giving them a way to bring in Rupees while simultaneously preserving part of their culture.

This is a basket of dung. In the traditional Spiti culture, nothing is wasted, not even manure. It is collected and used for feul. Also, I am falling in love with these baskets, the Spitian version of a backpack. Hardly looks comfortable, but the simple utilitarianness of it appeals to me.

Looking South East down the Spiti valley from a little old 15,000 ft peek where you are supposed to be able to see 14 villages. I counted 12, but I doubt my eyes are as sharp as the locals'.

The braided channels of the Spiti River in the glare of sunset.

Wildflowers aren't just blooming at the lower elevations; this little yellow flower in the pea family is blooming now at over 5000 meters.

I've decided part of my Ecosphere work should involve peak bagging, so I tagged this unnamed mountain right above Rangrik (just outside of Kaza). A lesson in hiking Himalayan mountains: they are always, ALWAYS, much bigger in reality than they appear, and despite this mountains unassuming appearance from the ground, it was a beast. The air is just a lot thinner at 16,000 feet.

It should go without saying that the view from the top was outstanding. "Outstanding" is such a banal way to describe looking accross the Himalayas, but I'm trying not to use obscenities here. Just look at those f*ing things! (sorry!)

Looking down from the top of my Unnamed Mountain, the Key Monestary looks very small. You can still see the way monestary is stuck right on steep hillside high above the village of the same name. This is a splendid place.

Thanks to everybody who has written to let me know how they are doing. As some of you know, I've decided to stay in India until November. While this decision brings me a lot of joy because now I will have time to chase down a few more Indian dreams, there is also the heavy weight of time and homesickness. I miss home! But hearing from my friends and family gives me a lot of joy and helps me stay focused here.
I wish everyone the best, and send much love.
Ethan