don't freak out

hiatus

2008-04-27T18:08:00.000-07:00

there's a break in the weather, and the wanderings. stay tuned for more, when there is more. until then, thanks for reading.

tim

the playa

2007-09-15T12:52:00.000-07:00

i saw the pictures, i heard the stories and i had even had people try and discribe the experience of burning man to me in great detail, but i still wasn't prepared for what i found way out in the nevada desert, hundreds of miles from anywhere on a dry lake bed the size of lake george, called the playa.

when i told friends and family that i was going to attend burning man, people were either unaware of the festival at all, sceptical of it, writing it off as some dirty hippy drugfest that was past its prime anyway, usually without actually having attended to make the judgment, or lastly, they took on a warm glow and just softly smiled at me, giving me the impression they knew something magical about my future that i didn't.

briefly, bm started around 20 years ago when, after a particularly trying year, a san franciscan guy and some friends burnt a small wicker effigy of a man on a beach in california as a celebration and farewell to aspects of themselves that were no longer relevant to now and onward. since then it has grown, and subsequently moved to the nevada desert and attracts around 40,000 people. the basic idea is that the camp and festival sets up on a dry lake bed and after a week of celebration, ceremony and much more, the man is burned and everyone vanishes, leaving no trace behind. part music festival, part art installation and part experiment in temporary, low impact habitation, bm has become about much more than, but culminating in, the burning man.

i secured a ride in SF and after many hours on the road through california and the desert, we found ourselves in the long line of cars, 4WDs, caravans and RVs driving out on the huge flat expanse of the playa, heading for the gates. the theme for this year's burn was "the green man", basically sustainability. the irony of which can be amusing as you follow the long line of huge SUVs, hummers and house-truck RVs toward the front door, and pass the landing strip set up on one side of the playa complete with parked private planes.

just as i was about to get sceptial, however i passed the first of many signs on the long winding road between the gates and the festival proper, that said "its not as good as it used to be." huh? the next one said "last year was much better" and then "its just a bunch of tired hippys in the desert." , and even "how can all those SUVs and trucks be green?". and so went on a long line of signs that basically fed every pre-conception or cynical attitude i'd heard, and many more, right back at you. while weird at first, it did somehow allow me to suspend any opinions or scepticisms and just open myself up to the experience. as we drove in the gates, a large african-american guy dressed as a dove leaned in the car and asked "are there any burn virgins in the car?" i nodded and was told to get out of the car. he and three others then gave me a big hug.

"welcome home" he said.

it was pretty incredible. i didn't know anyone when i went in, but i met a whole bunch of weird and wonderful people and the sheer scale of the event is mind boggling. there were temples and statues and sculptures upwards of 90 ft high, and 3 story mobile birthday cakes with a dancefloor on the top. there was a full scale replica of the thunderdome, complete with crowd hanging off the walls, weapons and elastic harnesses, where you could choose to fight with foam toys, or iron bars, whatever your particular fetish dictated. the best way i could describe it is like the bizarre love child of woodstock and mad max, held somewhere on tatoine (complete with armys of jedi and speeders). unreal. there was even a bar called "cameltoepia - the pink pussycat lounge". i'll refrain from too much detail here, though.

the festival was a feast for the eyes, ears, feet and loins, whatever your particular desires required. a night of wandering the playa partying with a PR guy from Apple who was dressed in a big chicken suit and a guy called "the chadillac" will go down as one of my life's more memorable experiences. just when i though it couldn't get any better, some guy next to us said "hey, there's some cool dj playing over the other side of the playa"

"what's his name?"

"ummm....oakenfold, i think..."

and the rest of the night was history. on the last night they burnt the man (again - some pillock tried to burn him prematurely the previous week), and the place grew to a creciendo. after things died down and we arrived at the the last morning, the sunrise was beautiful over the nevada desert, but i was faced with a small problem. i was booked on a flight out of san francisco 24 hours later, and had no ride out of there, for the 10 hour trip from nevada. a lovely lass called stacy, who was part of the same camp i joined, wanted to get back as well, so we decided to just wander out to the exit road and hitch a ride back to SF. i was confident in our manifestation capability, and felt sure a safe, reliable and expedient ride would present itself.

as we got to the exit gates, we realised that we didn't have a sign to our destination, so i said, "you keep an eye out, while I write one". i hadn't even retrieved my pen, before i heard her yelling at me from the middle of the road. i turned around and there she was standing next to the biggest RV i've ever seen, with the door open, as a hydraulic staircase was descending to the ground. bingo, we had a ride in 23.7 seconds.

the driver was a guy called dave from san jose and he seemed like a cool guy. the surprise was, he was the only one in this monstrosity, that was roughly the size of your average interstate coach. anyone who's seen "meet the fockers" will know what i'm talking about. it was a beast.

we were set. a ride across nevada and california in a condo on wheels. would we prefer to travel in the front, the lounge room or the master bed room? we couldn't have manifested any better...

things started to go awry about 30 minutes into the ride. the beast started wandering in the lane and dave started to look like he was flaking. in hindsight, i should have seen it coming when he asked if we'd had any sleep the night before. "are you okay man?" i asked...

"yeah, we took some crazy acid last night and its knocked me round a bit."

pause.

"have you ever driven anything this big before?"

now, lets just get this straight. i've never been to the US, never driven on the right hand side of the road and never driven anything bigger than a ford transit van. but for some reason i wasn't in control of my mouth.

"yeah sure man, heaps of times."

stacy just looked at me. i couldn't bare looking back, otherwise i was going to crack, but i just knew we had to get dave out from behind the wheel and into bed, otherwise we were likely...well...lets not go there. put it this way, the last thing we needed was the nevada highway patrol getting interested. dave looked like a health and safety commercial when he took his sunglasses off, and i didn't want to know what they might find in a thorough search of the RV. we pulled over and i got in the drivers seat.

at first i was terrified, then once i got a feel for the humungus proportions of the RV, things went pretty smoothly. in fact, a few miles down the road i realised that i had discovered something. something i never thought i would after only 2 weeks in the country. i realised that i had landed smack bang in the middle of the american dream.

admittedly, it was a bizarre hybrid of grizwald lampoonism and thompsonesque fear and loathing, but i had found it. plowing through the nevada desert in a rolling condominium with a girl called stacy and dave the acid freak. things went smoothly from then on in, and i even started to enjoy myself. just when i thought the experience couldn't get any richer, somewhere outside of reno as we pulled out of a gas station stacy reached over from the passenger seat...

"here, i got you some beef jerky."

callin' out

2007-08-27T23:52:00.000-07:00

phase 2 has begun.

a marathon session of m.o.d. at 30,000 saw in the new day across the dateline and arrival in the land of the freeway and home of the bay area - the USA and touchdown in san francisco.

a beautiful place, really, with hummers and homies, mustangs and modern art, bowling, budwieser and the best damn burritos i ever ate. i really need to take a moment to announce my first ever attempt at 10 pin yielded a spare on my first throw, and 5 strikes in the ensuing game. what can i say? whether it was the buds or the bowling shirt with "Bob" on it, i was a natural.

the music started almost immediately too, with a supreme manifestation of a ticket to the very sold out beastie boys concert on saturday at UC Berkley. i need not explain, as those of you who know, know.

now begins the journey across the bay bridge and california to the charged deserts of nevada for the next step in phase two - the madness, chaos and wonder of burning man.

stay tuned.

in order of appearance...

2007-08-07T18:47:00.000-07:00

series one is now complete in physical form. a return to oz has involved a bumpy re-entry but a safe landing nonetheless. i would like to send my thanks and hellos to all the cast and crew of the adventure thus far. you are, roughly in order of appearance:

chris (pablos), pip, hughey, chris, neal, loz, kiyomi, haatchi, nishio-san, kris, deb, carolyn, corinne, marcello, chloe, mattieu, jason, dave, marinne, tenzin, dawa, thupten lama, martin, james, alon, laya, wang chu, mahesh, omraj, osaris, ohad, lilach, yuri, stephanie, tom, will, adam, ryan, claire, kane, erin, bidur, shom, rajendra, chandro, hira, ajay, hh, jimmy james, lihi, kfir, sam, estelle, ashish, bhollu & family, sarah, pawan, praveen, stephan, prem, james' sweedish wives, hila, akasha, pepe, diyar, ivan, tarah, ludo (mr. bonjour), martin, the grumpy french girls, babloo the snake, tariq, ali, aslan, collin, ajaz, wonderful jax, gemma, iftach, ombaba, vjas, ahendra, billy, jovan, sheera, jenifer, and a bunch of people i cant remember right now, who may find you names here later.

the saga continues. stay tuned for more adventures in series two, this time in the exciting locales of north america.

coming soon.

jewels

2007-07-07T08:29:00.000-07:00

the backpacker is like an individual subspecies. we congregate in small parts of big places, starting and ending freindships in an exhalation, getting to know, for however brief a time, the beauty and foibles of many people, and the richness of many cultures. people from all over the globe come together to surf the cultural wave of india, or wherever they may be, manifesting a galaxy of joyous and challenging experiences. the learning is matrix-like in its download speeds, and the imprints are jewels of enrichment in the crown of my india, my planet.

that being said, i still completely fail to understand how the indians manage to take hindi musicals so seriously.

soon, monsoon...2

2007-07-01T22:42:00.000-07:00

each year between may and august, india enters a kind of altered state that starts in the south and moves north with the rising temperatures. the monsoon.

the monsoon arrives like a balm on the scorched flesh of india, as the tail end of summer leaves the lowlands of the southern 90% of the country sweltering. last week delhi hit 50 degrees, and the death toll from heat related issues stands at just under 40. varanassi is experiencing the same and some places in rajasthan are touching 55 deg.

i was in delhi almost 2 months ago when it was a balmy 44, and the place was already on edge. the heat induced tension and lack of tourists meant the place was a bit of an energetic hothouse. three "cold" showers a day would barely suffice, and generally you were sweating before you dried you self off anyway, and thus were back where you started.

dealing with taxi or rickshaw drivers was an extreme sport, or at least required the guile and tenacity to meet the sharks face to face. getting a taxi? no problem. communicating your destination? piece of cake. actually getting to your destination? thats a whole different story. i've discovered that something like "HEY! STOP. THE. FUCKING. CAR!" can be reasonably effective at making yourself understood, as is opening the door in the middle of 7 lanes of traffic.

the scam can go something like this - if you're freshly arrived into delhi, the drivers will pretend not to know how to get to your hotel which is right in the middle of the most popular tourist area of town. then they will tell you your map is wrong, the roads have changed. then they will take you to a tourist information office where some guy will pretend to ring your hotel, and the guy on the other end of the phone, most likely in the room out the back, will tell you we've lost you booking and we're full, or your room has been double booked. then you are very politely encouraged towards another more expensive hotel, where everybody involved takes out your wallet and carves up the spoils. i wish i'd read the lonely planet section on this prior to arriving. half way through my rather trying experience i realised what was going on and resorted to my previously mentioned methods of making myself understood, and i assure you they work. but if all else fails, resort to violence, or a serious attempt at convincing the indian man who is trying to drive you to the badlands that you are mentally unstable and he is putting himself at great risk by having you in his cab. techniques for this method include random unprovoked screaming, quickly reciting lines from your favourite episodes of seinfeld or lyrics from cold chisel songs or anything else that may sound like complete gibberish to an indian, as long as its said at high volume and within a 2 inch radius of his eardrum.

note: be careful when finalising your victory. if your screaming and threats of violence eventually get you to where you want to go, your driver may ask you for a tip, the sheer audacity of which can kick start a whole new round of screaming and violence can kick off, putting at risk you bags which are still in the boot. make sure you are where you want to be, with all your stuff before telling buggerlugs to go sit on a flagpole while you hoist his tip up to him.

but i digress.

the wave of heat starts in the south as summer kicks off, and then follows half of Israel, as they make their way up through gokarna, goa, hampi, mumbai, rajastan and rishikesh until everybody arrives in the mountains in the north, where they wait out the heat.

it seems that just as everything is about to cook beyond repair and all life is about to collapse under the weight of the heat - Ssssssssssss, the rains come and cool everything down, and then the death toll changes from heat exhaustion to drowning as the whole country goes into flood control.

i've just returned to dharamsala from srinigar in kashmir, trekking up near the border with POK (pakistan occupied kashmir), which despite the unbelievable military population is remarkably serene. dharamsala has been raining solidly for a week, and the heat has definitely subsided, but everything is wet inside and out.

as things heat up, the energy of the place seems to come to a head, where you can imagine the place exploding if the rains don't come, in fact in the past it has. in 1947 when india and pakistan attained independence from britain, the massacres and bloodshed that gripped the country in the aftermath (including the assassination of Gandhi) occurred against the backdrop of a monsoon that was 2 or 3 months late - india was in the grip of a heat wave for almost 15 weeks, instead of the usual 5 and the place boiled over.

the rains are here now, though, and i sense that an exodus from this remarkable country is close at hand for most. for others its the phenomenally epic journey from the north to the south, where the rains are beginning to subside. although, to get there, you've got to go right through the middle of it...

kipling moments

2007-05-19T08:41:00.000-07:00

where oh where has tims blog gotten to? is he still alive? does he still care about us? is he a maoist?

here! yes! yes! and not yet! are the answers your looking for. just enjoying avoiding technology occasionally. don't lose faith, and don't freak out. the world in the asiatics is treating me with many treats, and engrossing me in the engrossing. like last week for example...

i floated down a river for 8 days, sleeping under the stars on the sandy banks and found myself almost in darjeeling, in the south-eastern end of nepal. a wonderous place, its quite incredible how the himalayas just stop. like...just...well, stop. big open flat land over there, that turns into india and eventually bangladesh, and.....mountains over here, that don't stop untill pakistan.

i got on a bus way to late, but moving quickly. it was the intention to head around 10 hours northeast, to sauraha and royal chitwan national park, on the border of nepal and india. about half way we stopped at a traffic jam in a tiny village, there were buses and cars and motorbikes extending as far as the eye could see with no one moving anywhere. apparently someone had been hit by a bus, and the family had blocked the road, demanding compensation. compensation is an imediate transaction in traffic negligence cases in rural nepal.

after a couple of hours, we were on our way again, but the late departure and the delay caused by the nepalese legal system meant we arrived in sauraha at 3 am, a little behind schedule. but in a great moment of preparedness, an open topped safari jeep was waiting for our arrival. he'd been waiting since 9pm.

we drove for about an hour through small villages and farmland until we got to our humble hotel, spread out on the edge of the jungle. we were led around and shown our respective rooms, and when i was the last one left, the guy said "this way", and walked down a side path. i dreamily followed, as i was basically in sleep limbo. the dream took a turn when, in the darkness of the back alleys heading out to my bungalow behind the garages, i walked straight into a huge elephant.

after my, now much more awake, eyes adjusted to the darkness, there were three huge elephants standing around munching on a midnight snack, while the mahouts slept soundlessly in little cots beside them. it was realy quite sweet. you just wouldn't want one of the elephants to roll over in the middle of the night.

the next day it was into the jungle, and the start of my patience wearing very thin with a couple of groups of tourists that insisted on talking so loudly they scared away the wildlife, and then complained that they didn't see any, and threw endless cigarette butts into the river.

it was clear management was have an equally frustrating time, but sadly they appeared used to it. i decided it was time for action, i dutifully offended the smokers with my waving ashtrays around in front of them (they still threw them in the river by the way), and then boycotted the communal events and elephant rides through the jungle. hey, from what deb and kris have told me, the saddles on the elephants weren't up to scratch anyway. i had befriended one of the guides, ajay, and asked if there was any chance of completely abandoning the scheduled events they had in stall for me, and just wandering off into the jungle and creating our own experience? he smiled "of course, i'll take you".

and then his smile became just a tad more wicked. excellent. then began two days of walking the jungle with ajay, tracking rhino and sloth bears, and then hiding from rhino and sloth bears. it was quite amazing, but the end of the second day stood out somewhat.

ajay, decided to take me on a fairly extended walk, "maybe we will reach the other side of the island" he said. chitwan is a big national park that also contains a complex river system. the island we were on was around 50 square kms. we had been walking for a few hours at least, and had found a few humungus black one horned rhino, some barking deer, and a few hoards of monkeys. most of the island is covered in dense jungle and some clearings of 7ft high grass and reeds. by around 6 in the evening, about an hour before sundown, and we were indeed on the opposite side of the island. we walked on a narrow path, through some quite dense scrub when ajay stopped and put his hand in the air. i was about to ask something, but then i heard it. it was getting louder. there is no real way i can describe it, but it did things to my skin and my hair that nothing else had ever done in my life. the best i can come up with was it sounded like satan gargling. about 10 metres ahead of us, behind a bush, was a bengal tiger.

we waited a few seconds until it went quiet, and then ajay motioned for us to move forward, and move quickly. for some reason i didn't immediately think about the fact that we were running towards the bengal tiger, but we were. unfortunately we were not quick enough, and it was gone. we never even saw it.

the jungle was very dense and our path was barely there and it was too good and too quick for us. while we walked back to the bungalows occasionally ajay would stop and listen, and then move on. i enquired what he was doing, and he said the tiger was most likely following us. "they do that sometimes" he said, "sometimes they circle us for a while, maybe an hour or so, just out of view. they're pretty wiley." wow man, its a trip tracking tigers on foot through the jungle, i must say. i was also very pleased we were so well armed.

me, ajay and the mahout who came with us, were carrying sticks.

the alpinist

2007-04-24T22:08:00.000-07:00

the annapurna sanctuary is a mountaineering base camp located around 5 days walk into the glacier covered peaks of the nepal himalaya. the 8000m annapurna I is surrounded by 7 other soaring rock gods, creating a glacial basin in the middle, from where attempts at the numerous peaks can be made, in and around the avalanche zones, which are many. annapurna base camp was the destination of the 10 day annapurna sanctuary trek i just finished, and its amazing. little wonder it is so popular.

it is the start of spring and base camp, at a little over 4300m, was freezing. covered in snow and glaciers, it made quite a change from the tropical forrests i walked through, and up, for 5 days to get there. its pretty seriously up and up, the nepalese love their stairs and suspension bridges. given the conditions and scenery it attracts a lot of trekkers and climbers from all over the world, with serious gear to tackle the conditions. you must be a walking harmony of equipment, preparedness and light weight.

tim: "What's that"

french climber: "you mean this?"

tim: "yes"

french climber: "its our GPS. global positioning system."

tim: "uh huh. and those?"

french climber: "these are carbon fibre, telescopic trekking stocks."

tim: "and what about those?"

french climber: "blizzard goggles."

tim: "i see. and those?"

french climber: "cramp-ons. ice climbing spikes."

tim: "hmmm."

french climber: "what's that?"

tim: "you mean this?"

french climber: "yes"

tim: "a didjeridoo."

reconnections

2007-04-09T22:23:00.000-07:00

almost 3 weeks in kathmandu can start to wear the travel urges down a little, particularly in thamel, where the food and hotels are so good and cheap, with live music every night - i even found some reasonably good jazz. just when you think "right. time to move on...ummm...perhaps after just one more day of tea and dal in the sunshine." and before you know it, its day after day of tea and dal and sunshine. the "traveling" seems to have stopped.

but do not loose faith! after a great few weeks of reconnecting with people i have met on my travels, a large number of whom have ended up in kathmandu at the same time, it's off to the mountains again (what am i supposed to do? its the himalayas for pete's sake!). i will miss falling asleep to the sound of the nepalese rock band across the road, and their particularly idiosyncratic version of i shot the sheriff, wondering if they might be rare urban maoists.

somehow i don't think i will escape the relentless "my friend, my friend! smoke? hashish?" i think its part of the nepalese/india deal. oh to be a teenager again.

too wang chu

2007-03-27T23:32:00.000-07:00

as part of my preparations and research for embarking on this trip, i read a number of books, as well as watching a number of films and tv shows. one such book was "himalaya" by michael palin, and the accompanying tv series. in it he traverses the himalaya from pakistan, through india, nepal, tibet, china and down to bangladesh. as i had never been to any of these countries, it seemed a good resource.

in his travels through nepal, along the annapurna trail and to langtang, michael was accompanied by a sherpa called wang chu, a caring man of incredible talent and what you might call "extremely" fit. he has summited everest twice, and on the second trip, arrived a little earlier than everyone else, and so promptly lay down and had a nap. at the top of everest. for a while. during the course of the nepal adventures, wang chu was michael palin's shadow, helping, carrying bags and giving advice on the landscape and assisting in dealing with altitude. great! i thought, now all i need when i head to nepal and tibet is a "wang chu" of my own and making my way through these foreign and unfamiliar places will be a breeze.

and so it was that my journey commenced from the tibetan plateau to nepal along what would turn out to be the craziest road in the world.

i had made my way from gyantse to shigatse by bus after parting ways with my fellow landcruiser buddies kris and deb, who were to make their way back to lhasa and shanghai. i managed to secure a lift in a 9 seater minivan with 14 people, 2 babies and 4 bags of animal feed bound for shigatse, where i was to try and find a lift for the 8 -10 hour journey to the border.

i checked back in to the tenzin hotel and ran into martin, a german guy who i had run into about 4 times in various different places around tibet, and hung out in shigatse for a few days biding my time to see what turned up. then i heard a rumour of a group of land cruisers departing first thing the next morning to pick up a tour group at the border. bingo. time to leave.

the journey to the border was pleasant and uneventful, if you can call driving through the most amazing lunar landscape, through lovely dusty tibetan villages and through sweeping plains with glaciers and views of mt everest uneventful, but there you go. it was compared to the final stages from nyalam down to the border at dram. and i had a lovely nepalese businessman to share the journey with. he spoke good english, and was on his way home from doing some work in tibet, which he does quite regularly. he shared his food and beer and told me many a tale of life in nepal.

approaching the border from tibet, we crested a 5000m pass and then promptly dropped 3000m in around 60km. the crazy highway, as it has become known to me, was cut from the hills and sheer rock faces, rarely with any guardrails and covered in snow and ice. i stopped looking down after one to many glances out the window revealed no road between the edge of the tires and the 300m drop to the valley floor. the nepalese man could obviously see that tensions were high, as he kept offering me more beer. i finally accepted one, when we drove into a waterfall and stopped. "will clean car" our chinese driver said. yeah, either that or the force of the water dropping from 400ft up will peel the roof off like a can opener. i kept this option to myself. no major incident occurred, and we drove off in a clean car with the thunderous roar still in our ears.

once we got the bottom and i got shakily out of the car and considered asking someone for a cigarette, it dawned on me how unprepared i was. no hotel, no currency for a nepali visa, no transport accross the border for the following morning and no transport to kathmandu. then the lovely nepalese businessman appeared next to me and said "we're here". and then informed me that the hotel we were standing in front of was run by his friend.

"you stay here, have dinner with me, and then we go to the border together in the morning." he said.

"but i haven't changed any money yet, and the banks are closed"

so this man gets his mobile phone out, makes a quick call in nepalese, hangs up and says "okay, lets go." we go into the hotel and just as we sit down to dinner, a woman comes over to the table, greets the lovely nepalese man warmly, opens up a bag of different currencies and asks how much did we want to change?

i knew how much the visa was, but wasn't sure how much i needed for a ride to kathmandu. "it's okay" says the nepalese man "my driver pick me up tomorrow at the border, you can get a lift to kathmandu with me." the next day, surely enough there was a driver in a big black 4WD waitng at the border and drove us the 6 hours into kathmandu.

"thank you very much for your kindness." i said "but i'm afraid i don't even know your name."

"wang chu." he replied.

"no kidding."

the anti-plateau

2007-03-25T00:41:00.000-07:00

after an extended hiatus in the blog, thanks to mao's finest and their slightly capable but unsurprisingly huge surveillance division, i'm back online. whoa, so much to catch up on.

tibet

the climb up emei shan was great for all the reasons i had hoped, and one important extra. as the sun rose over the sea of clouds surrounding the jutting peak of of the mountain, i turned around and low and behold, a rare sight apparently - tibet.

it rose up out of the clouds in the distance, pretty much higher than anything else. not surprising given that i was on the (i thought) rather high emei shan at 3100m, and there's tibet, with it's 8000m peaks and it's valley floors 500m higher than my precipice.

3 days later i flew in to lhasa and marched with the pilgrims around the barkhor, ate yak and drank butter tea, which incidentally i never really developed a taste for. i think someone got it right when they hypothesised that if they called it soup, it wouldn't taste quite so bad. hmm... butter soup. sounds quite nice actually.

as emails in the absence of blogging have told, the journey then turned to the plateau proper. we hired a land cruiser, which is a little more efficient than i would have liked, but given the areas and distances involved and the limited time frames of chinese visas and tibetan travel permits, it was clear tibetan public transport would be too slow. if there is an overall lesson that tibet instills in all it's travelers, from which they can take what they chose into life itself, is that things happen at their own speed, and when they are meant to happen. heinrich harrer tells of a nomad who gave him some of his most valuable advice: the haste of europeans has no place in tibet. i suspect the tibetan universe is not a middle man, you deal direct with the factory.

there is much to be absorbed over many recollections to give a fully coherent description of the tibetan experience, but let me say that as a country it is very real, with real people and real challenges, quite grounded in ways the myth of shangri-la, the kingdom in the clouds, brushes over.

on the whole, the tibetans are very poor, and the chinese are reasonably wealthy, creating more of a divide than a tension. they seem to spend most of their time ignoring each other, the tibetans going about the task of being buddhists, farmers and families while the chinese go about being keen entrepreneurs or government types. i think next time i visit i will learn the mandarin for "don't yell at me, i'm not going to buy anything". i might also learn "excuse me, i couldn't help but notice you just spat on the floor of the restaurant. would you like me to get you a cloth to wipe it up?"

anyway, the plateau, like a huge mountainous desert covered in prayer flags and dung smoke and beautiful stones, was a wonderful experience, and the tibetans were a joy to be around. the monasteries we visited were an emotional mixed bag. they can be truely charged and lovely places, but it is a little sadly that i report the extortionate entry fees they charge are certainly not going to the maintenance of the monastery, not even the Potala. the monks do a great job, but obviously on a shoestring. i guess the money goes to beijing, who probably use it to fund the police stations and PSB and SSB agents that are located at each monastery. at the Potala, there are 300 staff - 80 monks who clean, cook, carry out maintenance and serve as guides, and 220 security staff, who....er....secure the huge crowds of less than 200 people who go through there every day. every time anyone asks a monk a question, a mysterious chinese man appears at their shoulder, also interested in the response.

a plateau it is, but only in part. the soaring physical and emotional peaks the landscape gives birth to are profound. and yes, when you crest the pass outside shegar and before you lies chomolungma, known to the west as everest, you think to yourself "by gum, that actually looks like the highest mountain in the world".

it's absolutely huge.

i need a hat

2007-02-26T04:09:00.000-08:00

beijing continued for a week, and got a little madder every day. i said farewell to pablo the wild card, my travelling companion through valleys of japanese powder, eye of the tiger and the great wall of salesmanship, and set off on my own. by the end of the week, i had meet some lovely french girls, a wonderful brazillian dude, and a pom into urine therapy. i had avoided eating the large dog paws grilling on the coals outside my hotel, and found satifying and satisfyingly cheap scrambled eggs just down the road. just as the polution effect reached a creciendo, and life was starting to feel like a dream, i left beijing behind for the small town charm of chengdu.

dragon town youth hostel. how could i resist? there was really no other place i was willing to stay, so i rocked up and sure enough, a room was just for me. unfortunately my sinus's had bared most of the full on assult in beijing and i found myself with the flu, so down time it was. chilling in dragon town, a gorgeous 4 story qing dynasty building with courtyard, beautiful sichuan street food in a bustling alley out the front and a charming frenchman to play guitar with. we table hopped most of the night, entertaining goups of chinese people with our repetoire, and they bought us beer and spat on the floor in approval while we played.

i woke the next morning with but one thought to dominate my mind. i need a hat. its hard to describe the feeling, as it was unusually strong for a urge to buy a hat. but again, how could i resist, there is afterall, always method to my madness, especially when it comes to hats.

not only did i need a hat - today. but a grey, feintly chequered blues brothers hat. so hat i found, in a crazy alley of markets and once i had it on, it made sense. i was ready for the next phase. mountains.

i jumped a bus to emei shan, a 3100m peak covered in buddhist temples around 120km south of chengdu. apparently the whole mountain is basically a steep staircase, so its quite a challenging hike. the steps are also slate, so in the winter, like now...ish, it can get very slippery. a good idea is to buy a walking stick, they say, from one of the many walking stick vendors in town or, indeed, up the mountain.

so, now i find myself about to hike up a sacred buddhist mountain in a bowler hat with a walking stick. perfect.

big cities in little china - pt 2

2007-02-24T02:50:00.000-08:00

beijing

now, i'm sure chinese new year is probably not the best time to use as an example of "typical" beijing, unless of course, that beijing is usually covered in thick gun powder smoke, and sounds like beirut in 1986. i have never seen or heard so many fireworks.

there was no official sydney harbour bridge style fireworks display, rather everyone just hosting there own on every street corner. and every street. and every alley. basically everywhere. it got to the point, that in an hour of walking, i didn't put my foot down and not step on spent fireworks.

around 8pm we headed out for a drink and to see what was on, and were confronted with a fairly sleepy town, aside from the occasional explosion. but come 11pm, the whole city just spilled out of their houses and started blowing shit up. the quiet family celebrations were over. at one stage we saw guys walking along with boxes of fireworks the size of washing machines...no wait.... that's one firework, and they're just lighting it up in the middle of the street. 4 lanes of traffic just stops for a while as it goes off, and then just drives around the spent carcass.

at the end of the night, as we snuck around the darkened stairwells and plant rooms of the upper, and dare i say it, thoroughly out of bounds floors of our highrise hotel looking for the roof, we were wondering how far we could push this experience. we were finally confronted with a door, that looked decidedly alarmed, but none the less was as far up as we could go. we showed our age and chose to break in to the revolving restaurant above the roof instead. there were cleaners in there, who looked very uncomfortable at our presence, but i just don't think they knew how to say, i'm sorry, we're closed. damn it was a good view though.

the fireworks continued for 5 days. very few that went fizz, whoop or ssshshshshshshshshpop, but a lot that went bang.

big cities in little china - pt 1

2007-02-22T03:50:00.000-08:00

i've been a little unsure of what to say about china. when i formulate one view from a series of experiences, it isn't too long before something else happens to contradict that view. perhaps a country of contrasts is the best way to put, based on the events up until this point, at least.

shanghai

all advice prior to arrival was tales of a city in the throngs of a crescendo. a social and cultural boom was going on, and you're a damn fool if you don't get in there and see what it's all about. business is booming, the entertainment industry is booming, and the nightlife is going off. so, obviously i arrived with fairly modest expectations...

well, all of the above might well be true in one form or another, but it doesn't seem to mean that life is any better for most of the people who live in shanghai. it may be that most of the "boom" is coming from the arrival of the new elite, a microscopic byproduct of the market economy, with gigantic amounts of money. but thats more of an impression, than anything i'd like to cast in stone.

on an experiential level, the french concession has a flavour of old shanghai, that is immediately contrasted by the huge modern office towers and hotels that are springing up as quickly as the land can be bought. someone told me that 20 years ago, the tallest building in shanghai was 8 stories, and it was really old, in fact i think it was a bell tower. then in 20 years literally thousands of high rise buildings have gone up. its like they didn't have time for the 1920s-1950s mid rise phase that most other cities went though, they just went straight for the money shot. the result is basically dilapidated old single story near-slumlike building next to monolithic glass bank headquarters and back again next door.

the nightlife lived up to expectation, however, as a couple of bars and restaurants we frequented were absolutely stunning. it turned out that the highlight of shanghai, was indeed the social boom, but had it not been for my lovely friends and hosts, i may not have experienced it at all. its not a big "come one and come all, and shanghai will show you a good time" kind of vibe. its great places to hang out with great people in the midst of a pulsating, overwhelming chaotic and mildly depressing metropolis.

trust is a key

2007-02-11T17:27:00.000-08:00

i'm not usually one for broad sweeping statements about a country or place. from most of my experiences i've found that contrast can be found anywhere. the diamond in the rough, or the turd in the golden flames. however, i have found the japanese among the most trusting and trustworthy people i've ever met. they are very beautiful people, in a very beautiful country.

the public face i saw wandering the streets, or serving me in restaurants can be seen as slightly expressionless, or distant, perhaps even un-engaged. i never saw anyone yelling, getting mad, crying, being obnoxious or getting upset. but instead of feeling like a pressure cooker of repressed emotions, there is a calmness and stillness to it, even right in the middle of tokyo. furthermore, once you scratch the surface, there is generosity, joy and openness like i never imagined.

the amount of pride and care that is taken to look after themselves, and others is wonderful. in the throngs of tokyo, it wasn't quite so obvious, but in hindsight it was still there. once i made it to hokkaido, it was very present. our hosts in the various guest houses and hotels treated us like family, preparing the most incredible food for hours, and then sitting and sharing a drink with us after, and at one point even sharing their birthday celebrations with us. i never really even got lost, as the moment i looked mildly confused about where i was going, someone who spoke english would cross the street and ask if i needed any help.

and so my last night in japan was spent in the most traditional and appropriate way possible - getting drunk in a karaoke bar with a bunch of japanese people we didn't know. they sang songs in japanese that we didn't know, and couldn't sing so we just clapped along. then we got up and sang anything from frank sinatra to madonna and even eye of the tiger.

of course, they all got up on stage with us and joined in.

hokkaido vortex

2007-02-06T22:41:00.000-08:00

tokyo ended up as a lovely new friend, and i will surely see her again. a big city in all ways that i can think of, and standing in the new york bar on the 54th floor of a hotel in shinjuku, looking at the most spectacular cosmipolitan view i`ve ever seen, was an almost spiritual way to spend my last night in town. who would have thought.

a hideously early flight out and an hour or so later i was in a dreamland. hokkaido.

being in a 747 landing on snow was certainly a new experience, and it didn`t stop there. there is so much snow its not funny. everyone has been telling me how much there is ad nausiem, and eventually i stopped listening but it still doesn`t prepare you for the reality. "come and ski the best snow in the world" says a flyer in the info office. they`re not kidding. i`ve seen it on tv, i`ve seen it in snowboarding videos, but hot damn, it is almost surreal to be doing it. waist deep in the dryest, softest lightest snow. orgasmic.

nishio san and his lovely people at the guest house have been keeping us like family, and niseko annipuri is a truly beautiful place. quiet and loaded to the attic with a foot of new snow every night.

the other night, as i sat in a hot spring with snow falling on my head, i realised i was smack bang in the middle of a perfect moment, with no sense of past or future. i know exactly how that monkey in baraka feels.

dancing about architecture

2007-01-31T04:03:00.000-08:00

one of the main things that interested me about japan was the architecture. i`ve long been facinated by traditional japanese architecture and houses in particular. i think my virgo nature is attracted to the clean, minimalist spaces, the tatami mats and un-interupted vertical space of any room, no matter how little vertical space there is. the warmth that seems to be created in the courtyards of rectangular japanese villas, when the blank rooms surrounding them seem almost cold.

not that i expected any of this in tokyo, mind. but surely, i thought, the attitude to living space must still survive, even in the urban flying circus of tokyo, and i think i was right. the abitlity the japanese have to take some small, and i mean small, block of urban, no make that metropolitan space into a haven of cutting edge domestic design is world leading. the small back streets of harajuku, are perhaps the best example i`ve seen, but it even continues out to the burbs, away from the central mod real estate scene.

off form concrete is the order of the day. entire 2 and 3 story houses look like they were formed up in one go and poured in one session. then comes the wood and stainless trim, the glass and bingo. welcome home. i`ve got to say i love it. only because they maintain a certain japanese homely design, mind you. it would be easy to go a miss if you didn`t think things through.

the iconic public architecture can be a different story. there are wonderous achievements, don`t get me wrong - the hermes building, the spiral building, and the tokyo international forum is a dynamite achievement in monolithic metropolitan design. 10 years old this year and would be cutting edge if it was finished yesterday. hot damn, tommy would have ball cleaning the inside of that thing. i was jazzed after seeing it, and so ventured forth to see phillip starck`s asahi building with great anticipation. it`s the quitessential tokyo architectual icon - modern, cutting edge, bold, big name architect, the works. "the golden flame", as its known, due to the big golden flame on the roof. how disapointing.

it cowers off to the side of the city in asakusa, hiding behind an elevated feeway, trying so hard to be an architectural landmark, but only really succeeding in being rather uninspiring. as my family will attest, i`m quite partial to the monolithic, minimalistic black granite box as a design aesthetic, but the asahi building really don`t cut the mustard in this lounge chair architect`s opinion. it looks like an outsiders bold attempt to create something culturally relevant and loud, that ends up a bit of an architectural train wreck, the result of a cultural hijacking. the shape pays homage to a box of noodles, and the "golden flame", well perhaps the locals call it "the golden turd" for good reason.

the japanese architecture that i have come to love is alive and well, and wonderful, and probably done by japanese people no-one i know has ever heard of, and thankfully it doesn`t look like its going to disappear anytime soon. fantastic.

death in the evening

2007-01-30T04:04:00.000-08:00

there is a friction that exists between different interpretations of the value of life in my experience of japan so far, if one is to look solely at food.

i went to a tempura restaurant the other night, which provided me with an insightful experience of "real" cuisine. its a restaurant called tsunahachi, and its in shinjuku. i seem to be spending a lot of time in shinjuku at night. the throngs are somehow comforting. the restaurant is one of those more traditional types, with low lighting as opposed to a neon flouro nightmare, and nice wooded surroundings and rice paper doors. you sit around one of about 7 different bars, all with their own chef who cooks your food in front of you.

i ordered a tempura banquet from the menu and sat back to enjoy the show. the "show" included the chef introducinhg me personally to my dinner alive and flipping and flopping about, before it was ceremoniously killed and prepared in front of me. something i would rather have been prepared for. the prawns were easy enough to deal with - here they are, then rip their heads of and shell them. the freshest seafood money can buy. the slithering eel was a little more challenging. here you go timbo, meet mr eel, mr eel - timbo. mr eel`s head was then nailed to the chopping board, he was cleaned, skinned and de-spined and then doused in tempura batter and fried. the spine was tied in a knot and fried crisp, as a nice crunchy garnish.

now once the initial confrontation is overcome, and the reality of what has just occured arrives on your plate - fried and delicious, its actually a blessing. it is a significantly more satisfying experience being forced to witness the processes and the sacrifices that have been made to nourish you, than to mindlessly accept the inanimate slab of meat without so much as a glance or second thought for the events that have brought it to you. yes, it was a living creature, and now it is dead, disembowled and cooked, and it`s my responsibility. acknowledging that, it was one of the best meals i`ve ever had, and i`d like to take my mother there. the killing and cleaning was humane, the seafood delicious, the tempura batter was light and not at all greasy, and the miso soup was to die for. mum - you`d love it.

the friction

i went to the tokyo fish markets (tsukiji) the next day. the lonely planet guide said - be sure to get there early and catch all the action of the biggest fish market in the world, wander the rows and rows, then dine on sushi and asahi beer for breakfast. it`s one of tokyo`s highlights.

let me quote some of the stats - 2500 tonnes of seafood, valued at $US23million is sold there every day. i saw severed heads of tuna bigger than basketballs, piled 30 high, and i lost count of the piles. i saw tuna the size of my father, and octopus the size of my mother. mud crabs that were 80cm accross weighing 10 kg. there was every form of sea life i could think of. i`ve been racking my brain all day, and the only thing i can think of that wasn`t there was coral, and you can`t eat that. if there was 50 market stalls, there was 5,000. it took 40 minutes to walk around it once, and i didn`t stop, or go down all the aisles.

and i was there late morning when the market was half empty and winding down.

and so we come full circle. from taking some responsibility for our consumption, to taking none. i no longer believe it is a matter of if the sea stops feeding us, but when. and the "when" just got a whole lot sooner.

then i wandered up the street and had a coffee and a bagel for breakfast.

small victories

2007-01-28T15:21:00.000-08:00

i`ve decided i love tokyo. especially at meal time. it`s almost like half the city exists to feed people, which i suppose isn`t so far from the truth.

i headed into shinjuku for the proverbial mind blowing experience that everyone had forseen and it pretty much lived up to expectation. the sheer volume of people, neon signage and activity is beyond most westerners imaginations. i find myself thinking ghost in the shell is making more sense, it doesn`t feel so much of a science fiction fantasy as a premonition of what might happen next week.

i headed to shomben kokocho, which roughly means "piss alley" and the lonely planet assured me it wasn`t nearly as daunting as it sounds. its basically a couple of small alleys filled to the rafters with yakitori (stuff on skewers) vendors. and no pictures. damn, there goes my wildcard. i had been counting on the fact most asian restaurants i`d ever been to had pictures of whatever you were ordering.

after a few laps of the block flirting with each unknown entity and thinking "maybe i should just ease myself into this and start off and mcdonalds", i was blessed with a brief moment of overconfidence and just sat down at a cupboard/restaurant and looked hungry. the lady said something to me that i obviously couldn`t understand, and i of course acted like i understood perfectly. "yes, yes", surely she just asked me if i would care for a longneck of beer. bingo. a large bottle of sapporo beer lands right in front of me 2.4 seconds later. this is a piece of cake. "yakitori mixu?" she asks. "yes yes", no stopping me now, i`m on a roll.

i watch my assortment of things on skewers cook, feeling a combination of pride at my cultural surfing, and uneasiness at the apperance of one item in particular that resembles a rodent on a minture wooden spit. don`t ask, you`ll blow your cover. fortunately it turned out to be a couple of unfortunately shaped bits of chicken.

i negotiate the subways and head back to the hotel with a belly of meat and a beer buzz, with a whole 20 mins to spare before lock down. sometimes it`s the small victories that feel important.

welcome to tokyo

2007-01-27T15:40:00.000-08:00

it`s so peaceful at 40000 feet in a way. the sky is dark blue and you can see the moon in the middle of the day, and the huge wings and engines out my window just appear to be hanging in space, with some cloudscape gnely rolling by underneath. oh there`s papua new guinea. and more ocean...

a song by blackalicious comes into my mind for some reason　"i`m surrounded, I am open...I can think of nothing heavier than an aeroplane/ i can think of nothing less likely to fly..." scrap that one. anyone got any buddy holly?

japanese tv shows, japanese flight attendents, japanese announcements. holy shit i am actually going. can i do this? can i just shamelessly wander around by myself in other countries where i can`t even read the signs on the toilet door or order any food? hmm...food. i`d been dreaming of good airline food on my JAL flight - sushi, noodles, asahi. dreaming in vain. i`m afraid the chicken penne and the roast beef roll just didn`t cut it. ahh the nerves are back. where descending into to tokyo and i get a mild case of the fear which doesn`t really subside when the plane lands. we taxi around the place for an eternity and just when i think the pilot might be doing us a huge favour and driving us into town. clunk. time to get off. i check to see if the little knot is still in my belly and i`m a little dissapointed to see that it is. as we disembark the little knot keeps holding on for love or money and in to the terminal we go, a little shakey as i always am when i get off those big metal tubes not really meant to fly. i start to feel the knot taking hold when i see a big sign just down the hall.

"welcome to japan"

hey... the knot`s gone. so i walk under the sign and up the hall, grinning like an idiot.

nothing to report

2007-01-20T21:30:00.000-08:00

hello. thanks for coming. nothing particularly interesting to report as yet, other than hardy's bay is quite nice this time of year. preparations are in place for departure, so all is well. please take the time to bookmark my blog if you would like.
tim.