The pictures wont work, but here are the e-mails I've been writing for my familly.
After fighting and fighting and fighting and fighting with this rediculous computer, I am finally ready to write a bit of an update. (it's still not working properly... I am so frustrated right now)
Tomorrow I'm headed for Sion, Switzerland, where I'll get picked up and brought a little further north to start work up in the mountains. I got a job hearding cows and taking care of all the animals on a farm at about 1800 meters, altitude (they say). The job includes my lodging and eating, and I'll be paid aswell. Also, Switzerland is crazy expensive, so hopefully the wages wont be too bad either. I heard that on this farm, they use horses to get about (to get groceries and all that), so I might get to learn to ride a bit before I leave. Apperantly, we're right next to a big ski resort too, and I might get to hit the hills at some point! I'm pretty excited about my new job!
So the last month has been good. Lots of work, but hardly any stress. We built a terrace wall, using only rocks, to hold up the garden. Since we're in the mountains, they dig out these terraces of level ground. There are walls built to hold the earth in place, but some of them crumble every year and we have to rebuild them. I've been feeding the lambs all by myself, lately (very proud), and they were quite happy..
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(pics of sheep)
... until last week when we took them to the "Abatoir" and had them turned into sausages and other delicious stuff.
Maud is a friend of Denis', who plays the diatonic button accordion, and she came to live on the farm with us for a few weeks. We played music together, and we all whent to see Denis' composer-friend who wrote a bunch of the songs we learned, and we cut a reccord. Only 4 tracks, and not exactly flawless performances, but it was really fun! I'll mail a copy to mom when I get a chance... Maude just came from the same the job I'll be doing in Switzerland. She's the one who hooked me up with it, actually. Here she is, after barfing out a CD (not the one we made).
Images par Ben 006.jpg (pic of Maud)
A few days ago, we hearded the cows from their summer prarie all the way down to their winter prarie (in the gardens where we had been harvesting beans and potatos and corn and everything a couple months ago). It was an hour and a half walk, but the cows were pretty well behaved. Bruno, the bull, is the laziest animal on the farm and he needs to be pushed a lot. Toward the end, I tried to ride him, but that woke him out of his stupor and he threw me off in less than a couple seconds. Pretty fun though! Heres a pic of the cows
Images par Ben 037.jpg (pic of cows)
Directly after finishing with the cows, we whent to the temple to hear Denis sing in a concert with his choir group.
Images par Ben 009.jpg (pic of choir)
it was a good show! It was mostly latin and german (some french) music from various Bach-ish artists. The accoustics were amazing.
So, yesterday we drove to another farm to kill a pig. The pig was already dead when we got there, but the work was far from finished. We ate a little snack with the familly before getting started (chunks of pig fat, complete with hairy pig-skin, and bread). Outside the kitchen smelled terrible (animal poo and old bits of flesh), but inside the kitchen smelled so much worse... I can't describe it. Animal poo + rotting flesh, concentrated in a small, enclosed space, and made hot by the cooking-stove. Nausiating. But, the people were really nice and we drank some wine and tried some home-made cheese (that was also disgusting), and we left to get to work on the pig.
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The old man, who has been doing this sort of thing for probably all his life, cut the arms an legs off with a big knife.
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And then we flipped the pig onto its stomach and slit up its back and cut its head off. To sever the spine, he used a big axe and a mallet.
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Then we removed the spine, and threw all the guts into a big bucket. In order for them to dry properly, the old man blew into the pig's lungs to fill them with air (like a balloon).
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Next it was my job to go back to the kitchen and help clean the intestines.
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We took them all apart and organized them in another bucket. Here are the intestines
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And the stomach and something else... I forget.
Then I whent back up to the hut where all the meat was hanging. (Here's the head)
And we ground all the bits of meat up to turn it all into sausages.
Here's Sophie's portion.
All the pig's blood had been gathered in a bucket and was being used to make another kind of sausage: Boudin. It's simply, some intestines filled with blood and a few spices.
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Then, the old man cooked them for a few minutes.
And then the Boudin was ready to eat! We had some more wine with it.
Some sausages have names. There was one that we made that's called "The end of the World" in certain parts of France, but here it's called "Jesus." Here is a picture of Jesus in the arms of Gédéon.
And Jesus on the table.
It's made with the last bit of large intestines, before they become small intestines. It's the biggest sausage we made.
By the end of the day, we had made all sorts of sausages and stuff.
And they made me a nice necklace with an amulet of pig flesh.
What a day! I ate so much Boudin (which is really FAR too rich to be eaten in large quantities.... even in small quantities, I don't really like it) and we had been drinking wine all day, before finishing up with some home-made brews that they had made on-site. The car ride back to the farm with the stinking load of raw pig in the truck, along the winding mountain roads, was not a pleasant experience. But other than that, the day (through all the bad smells and gross foods) was, in a bizzare kind of way, pretty fun. I learned lots about pigs and meat and stuff that I don't think I'll forget.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
There's no internet access at the house I'll be living for the next month and a half. I'm using a neighbors computer to set up christmas arrangements with my sister, Heather, and I figured I would let everyone know that this will likely be my last e-mail until sometime toward the end of january/start of february. The jobs I'm doing on this farm are less charming than I had been expecting, but I'm working with some really really great people, and it's even more beautiful here than in Ardèche. Most of my job consists of shovelling poo, but I'm thoroughly enjoying myself, and I'll write again when it's all over!
bye!
-Ben
Ben Roscoe
I have forgotten to be posting my updates in my blog...
Wow, it's been a while.
After my work in France, I worked December and January on a cow farm in the Swiss Alps (city of Sion), every day, shovelling poo and helping calves to be born, feeding the goats and the horses, and bagging hay. Lots of work, and sometimes my bosses were pretty retarded, but my co-worker (58 year old Joseph) was the shit, and I had a pretty good time. I whent snowboarding with my boss's daughter and her husband (who work as skiing instructors at the resort) and they took me some of the off-the-beaten-track spots with virgin snow, which is totally different than groomed hills. Pretty fun! I whent out a few times to some bars and jammed with lots of other musicians there, and my boss wound up paying for all my party-expenses. I made 2000 swiss franks in 2 months, but when I tried to send it home from Munich, I lost a bunch and it turned out as only 1800 Canadian dollars (losing about 600$). I was living with Andy in Munich and he was a GREAT host!! Thanks ANDY!!!!!! And the whole Munich crew was really nice and fun to hang out with (except for Daryl............. who never showed...... :p hopefully we'll see eachother again soon, buddy!) and Bea and Andy took me out on my birth-day and we had B52s.
Then I flew to Thailand and I've been here for about 3 weeks. I was in the boring, touristy, honeymooning southern islands for a while, and it sucked; but now I just got back from a little more than a week's stay in Lop Buri, the city of monkey, where I played with all the monkeys at the monkey temple every day and had a great time. I wound up seeing a Thai wedding and partying with them at like 7 o'clock in the morning and it was super fun, and then I was staying in a temple just outside of the city for a few days, sleeping on the floor with the young monks. This was thanks to some contacts I made by playing Tawkraw!! Which led to me playing footbag and showing them how we do in the west! The kids loved it and I want to talk to some people about sending a big shipment of free-be bags to the Tawkraw teacher out there who will be sure to put them in the right place. It was super fun. There's more, but I haven't the time!! I fly to India tomorrow morning, and I'll try to write more regularly, but who knows....
Things are great for me, and I hope they're great for everyone else too!
-Ben
Wow, it's been a while.
After my work in France, I worked December and January on a cow farm in the Swiss Alps (city of Sion), every day, shovelling poo and helping calves to be born, feeding the goats and the horses, and bagging hay. Lots of work, and sometimes my bosses were pretty retarded, but my co-worker (58 year old Joseph) was the shit, and I had a pretty good time. I whent snowboarding with my boss's daughter and her husband (who work as skiing instructors at the resort) and they took me some of the off-the-beaten-track spots with virgin snow, which is totally different than groomed hills. Pretty fun! I whent out a few times to some bars and jammed with lots of other musicians there, and my boss wound up paying for all my party-expenses. I made 2000 swiss franks in 2 months, but when I tried to send it home from Munich, I lost a bunch and it turned out as only 1800 Canadian dollars (losing about 600$). I was living with Andy in Munich and he was a GREAT host!! Thanks ANDY!!!!!! And the whole Munich crew was really nice and fun to hang out with (except for Daryl............. who never showed...... :p hopefully we'll see eachother again soon, buddy!) and Bea and Andy took me out on my birth-day and we had B52s.
Then I flew to Thailand and I've been here for about 3 weeks. I was in the boring, touristy, honeymooning southern islands for a while, and it sucked; but now I just got back from a little more than a week's stay in Lop Buri, the city of monkey, where I played with all the monkeys at the monkey temple every day and had a great time. I wound up seeing a Thai wedding and partying with them at like 7 o'clock in the morning and it was super fun, and then I was staying in a temple just outside of the city for a few days, sleeping on the floor with the young monks. This was thanks to some contacts I made by playing Tawkraw!! Which led to me playing footbag and showing them how we do in the west! The kids loved it and I want to talk to some people about sending a big shipment of free-be bags to the Tawkraw teacher out there who will be sure to put them in the right place. It was super fun. There's more, but I haven't the time!! I fly to India tomorrow morning, and I'll try to write more regularly, but who knows....
Things are great for me, and I hope they're great for everyone else too!
-Ben
Ben Roscoe
-
hacksterbator
- Washed-Up Child Star
- Posts: 4141
- Joined: 12 Jul 2003 18:33
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Yeah ben, sounds like you're experiencing alot of really cool stuff! Keep on trucking bro. Stay safe. We'll see you on the other side!
In this case i beg to differ. While ben is shovelling poo and birthing cows in the swiss alps, I'm living at a surf camp on the beach in australia, Muahaha!!!jay7 wrote:If anyone wants to take a page out of the "I have the coolest lifestyle on the planet" book, I suggest you speak to Mr. Roscoe.
A.G.
Haha, Andrew, I spent the most boring week of my trip, swimming and basking in the sun on the beaches in the south of Thailand. Lame! Hah, but I am kidding. Australlia is another place I look forward to visiting in the future, and I'm sure you've found beaches cooler than the rolex-wridden mess of tourists in the south of Thailand. Look forward to seeing you back at the Peg and swapping travel stories! I haven't forgotten about your shorts, btw...
I left off at kind of a hurried, confused point, and I'm not sure who'se been told what. I'll skim over my trip through Thailand quickly, and bring everyone up to date on my Indian adventures.
In Thailand, I spent a few days in Bangkok before booking about a week of my trip with a travel agency: TAT. BIG MISTAKE!! I paid way more than I should have, and I wound up in the same touristy/vacationning bungallows that rich famillies and honeymooners wind up in. I wound up taking a bus south to Surattani (or something like that). The bus CRANKED the air-co, and gave us blankets to compensate. I was dressed for tropical weather, so I was freezing... what a stupid system. I got a boat to the island of Kopang Nan and checked into my private bungalow on the beach, complete with western-style bathroom, and a T.V.! Normally when you walk into a nice hotel room, you go "wow! Nice" but I walked in and my stomach sank, thinking "how did I get tricked into buying so many frills and luxuries." I think the islands I stayed on in the south of Thailand would have been great for a honeymoon, or for a retired couple to vacation on, but the only backpackers I met were lame kids who's parents had booked their whole trip for them (a whole trip, all th way around the world, all booked in advance with a travell agency!! Every hotel, every bus/train ride... might as well just watch a movie about travelling!) with a travel agency. I whent to the Half-Moon party, which was, admitedly, pretty epic. It was fun, but still very expensive. Next I went to Ko Samui, which was the same, minus the party, and with even richer tourists. The beach was alot nicer, and I got to go exploring, boldering through the rocks for bit (kind of dumb in flip-flops, but I got out of all the sticky-situations I got myself into). I had been planning on heading a little further south to a monastery that I had heard about where I could go on a meditation retreat (a vow of silence, no reading, writing, no prolonged eye-contact with anyone, and sleeping on a concrete floor with a block of wood for a pillow) but I had also heard of even more wonderful stuff in India. So, on the last night of my pre-paid Island-stay, I changed my mind and whent back to Bangkok and applied for my visa for India. The train ride from Suratanni to Bangkok was great. It cost me less than 6-7 dollars, Canadian, and I rode in the car with all the Thai people. I met a very nice couple who didn't speak any english, but we managed to communicate with drawings and hand gestures, and they got me to try lots of Thai foods that I would not have eaten on my own. Some really really wierd stuff... After getting the ball rolling for my Indian visa, there was a 6 day waiting period (not including weekends and hollidays), so I whent a couple hours north to Lop Buri -- the city of monkeys. I spent a couple days in a hotel, and played with the monkeys everday at the monkey temple, then I met a Thai man who's relative was getting married, and he invited me to the wedding. In the eivening, we had big feast, and they had Las-Vegas style show-girls, dancing on the big stage, and a bunch of young Thai girls singing Thai pop-songs. The next morning, we came back for the wiskey drinking, crazy Thai dancing, drum jamming, and 2nd feast at 6:30 am. By noon, I had been drunk, and was newly sober... what a crazy wierd party! The actual binding ceremony happened at about 10-11am of the second day of the wedding. After all that, I went and began my stay at a temple on the outskirt of town, living with the Thai villagers, and sleeping on the floor of the temples, along with the young monks (orphans from Mayanmar who had been addopted into the monestary to be raised as monks -- I think maybe 7 years old). I had a wierd experience with a transvestite I met there. He/she wanted to take me on a tour of the surrounding temples, and I figured "transvestites are people too. there's no reason to be rude" so I got on the back of his/her moped, and we were off. I was asked why I didn't hold on to his/her hips, but I said I was fine. There were a bunch of really awkward and strange comments made, and he/she kept telling me how welcom I was to come and stay at his/her house. I think the wierdest part was when he/she bought some food for us at a market: chicken balls, a bag of coconut milk, and each a weiner on a stick...
Another cool thing in Lop Buri was my trip to the local highschool. I had been offered a day of teaching english in one of the classes, but I mostly just got a tour of the school. It was really cool... I felt just like a rockstar. Apperantly, us westerners are considered to be pretty hot-stuff over there. I was surrounded, for the first time, with giddy, giggling girls, all staring at me, and sighing... it was very funny. What an ego trip! That night, I met a familly who's son was learning english (he spoke very well, actually) and they invited me to stay with them at their house to help the boy practise. His sister had been one of the girls at the highschool, so that was kind of funny and awkward. The boy's name was "One," and he was quite the scholar. He gave me some chinese lessons, and we jammed (harmonica + thai flute) for a bit. THe next day I whent back to bangkok in time to pick up my visa for India.
When I went to leave Thailand, I got a bus from my Guest House to the airport at 10pm, then I slept at the airport (surprisingly soundly) on a bench until 6:30am when I went off to check in for my flight at 9am. Things were bumpy, as usual, with some pretty frustrating encounters, but I had lots of time. The flight was one of the most comfortable I've ever had, with the best airplane food ever and almost whatever music I wanted to listen to. I arrived in Kalkuta and waited WAY longer than usual for my bag to come out, being almost certain that it had been stollen. Apperantly, people always have this problem at this airport, and the baggage handlers are simply very inneficient.
India is trully a whole different world from anything I've ever seen before. Incredible! So much in the way of filth, gritt, thieves, and honking car hornes (this is porbably the worst part... the driving is rediculous, and I've said that about so many places, but here, it defies any explanation. The roads are like the crowded hallways in highschool with people stopped and people shoving and people walking slow and people running, and the lines of the road are totally ignored. The hornes honk so much that it makes little or no difference if your car is honking or not; it can hardly be heard over the din. Some people invested in novelty horns that play crazy tunes and imitation elphant-calls so that their honk would stand out, but then everyone else caught on and now it's ALL novelty hornes. The solution has recreated the problem with 10-fold chaos. Total insanity). I decided to get out of Kalkuta quick, so I whent to the train station. An Indian man helped me get my ticket all sorted out without asking for a tip or anything, and I was bound for Gaya. I had a General-Class ticket, which is the class where they don't cap the number of people allowed in each car, so you wind up sitting half out the window in order to make room for the rest of the throng that's been crammed in. I think it's lucky though, that an Indian guy of about my age told me that his friend who had bought a ticket in the Sleeper-Class would not be showing up, so I could ride with him and the rest of his buddies. He insisted that I stay in Sleeper-Class with them, saying that I would be robbed if I rode in General Class. One of his friends even payed the difference for my upgraded ticket! It was good to be with friends who knew how things worked on the train. They explained to me about the rude transvestites (I've been meeting a lot of them!) that come into the car and clap their hands and rubb up against you until you give them your spare change. Because of their lack of a defined gender, they are unable to find work in India, so they are forced to live in segregate communities, thriving only on people's charity. It has, apperantly, been like this for centuries, and people accept their obligation to give them whatever they can spare. Apperantly their blessings work, and so do their curses... Pretty strange! When the train stopped at Gaya, some of the Indian guys I had been hanging out with escorted me out of the train station and helped me get a hotel for the night (it was almost 2am). Then they all jumped back on the train to continue on their way home to their famillies for the upcoming holliday.
That night I slept in the scariest hotel I've ever been in, in my whole life. They tried to sell me a room that had no way of locking the door from the inside, but I said no. I wound up in a room that I could lock, and I propped the bedside table against the door for a little added security. The matress was so filthy that I covered it with my camping tarp to sleep on. In the morning I saw how filthy the city of Gaya is, and I got a tuk-tuk to my desired destination of Bodhgaya: the city, home of the tree under-which the Buddha achieved enlightenment. There I found a monastery that allowed me to sleep in a room they had, so I napped until about 10am. When I went out to explore, I met another Indian boy of about my age again, who showed me around some temples and brought me to the tree where the buddha had sat, meditating, when he achieved enlightenment. Very cool! Then, he invited me to come and stay with him and his familly, so I got my bag and we headed out of town to his village. There, I met his 2 brothers, 2 sisters, mother, father, and grandfather, and they gave me a room to stay in. I lived with them for a few days, making regular trips back and for the city of Bodhgaya to see the temples and stuff, and I was eating all my meals with the familly, back at the house. This was maybe a mistake, however, because I wound up in the hospital with a bacterial stomach-infection the other night and the doctor gave me a bunch of meds. Now I'm just getting over the bug, with another day worth of meds to take (I checked the stuff the doctor perscribed to me with a Canadian nurse I met, and she said it was good stuff), so I think it was no big deal. When I was sick, the familly brought me to the hospital and Annad and all his brothers, plus one of his neihbors waited with me at the clinic and carried my things for me and everything. Apperantly, the whole familly was up past 1:30am, praying for me and talking about me. Annad said that he hardly slept, he was so worried. I don't really know how to respond to that... what a touching gesture, but it was little more than a bad stomach-ache! Anyway, I'm staying in a guesthouse in the city now for one more night (the familly wanted me closer to the hospital, if anything should go wrong, but Annad has been coming out to get me everyday and bring me around, and take me to his house and back) and tomorrow I will go back with them to cellebrate the festival of "Holli" -- the festival of colours. I'll stil eat in town, but I'll go back to sleeping at their house until the festival is over. I plan on heading out on the 13th for Varanasi.
Although I've had to turn many a blind eye to the cheaters and theives of India, I've met some of the most genuinely generous people of my whole trip. What an amazing place!
One more thing to mention: The Candian nurse I met was with a group of volounteers, coming to drill wells all over India. They said that the Canadian economy didn't only droop a little since I've been away, but that it's really crashed and becoming a crisis comparable to the Great Depression! What's all this nonsense?
Still no way of getting pictures up, sadly.
Hope all is well!
-Ben
I left off at kind of a hurried, confused point, and I'm not sure who'se been told what. I'll skim over my trip through Thailand quickly, and bring everyone up to date on my Indian adventures.
In Thailand, I spent a few days in Bangkok before booking about a week of my trip with a travel agency: TAT. BIG MISTAKE!! I paid way more than I should have, and I wound up in the same touristy/vacationning bungallows that rich famillies and honeymooners wind up in. I wound up taking a bus south to Surattani (or something like that). The bus CRANKED the air-co, and gave us blankets to compensate. I was dressed for tropical weather, so I was freezing... what a stupid system. I got a boat to the island of Kopang Nan and checked into my private bungalow on the beach, complete with western-style bathroom, and a T.V.! Normally when you walk into a nice hotel room, you go "wow! Nice" but I walked in and my stomach sank, thinking "how did I get tricked into buying so many frills and luxuries." I think the islands I stayed on in the south of Thailand would have been great for a honeymoon, or for a retired couple to vacation on, but the only backpackers I met were lame kids who's parents had booked their whole trip for them (a whole trip, all th way around the world, all booked in advance with a travell agency!! Every hotel, every bus/train ride... might as well just watch a movie about travelling!) with a travel agency. I whent to the Half-Moon party, which was, admitedly, pretty epic. It was fun, but still very expensive. Next I went to Ko Samui, which was the same, minus the party, and with even richer tourists. The beach was alot nicer, and I got to go exploring, boldering through the rocks for bit (kind of dumb in flip-flops, but I got out of all the sticky-situations I got myself into). I had been planning on heading a little further south to a monastery that I had heard about where I could go on a meditation retreat (a vow of silence, no reading, writing, no prolonged eye-contact with anyone, and sleeping on a concrete floor with a block of wood for a pillow) but I had also heard of even more wonderful stuff in India. So, on the last night of my pre-paid Island-stay, I changed my mind and whent back to Bangkok and applied for my visa for India. The train ride from Suratanni to Bangkok was great. It cost me less than 6-7 dollars, Canadian, and I rode in the car with all the Thai people. I met a very nice couple who didn't speak any english, but we managed to communicate with drawings and hand gestures, and they got me to try lots of Thai foods that I would not have eaten on my own. Some really really wierd stuff... After getting the ball rolling for my Indian visa, there was a 6 day waiting period (not including weekends and hollidays), so I whent a couple hours north to Lop Buri -- the city of monkeys. I spent a couple days in a hotel, and played with the monkeys everday at the monkey temple, then I met a Thai man who's relative was getting married, and he invited me to the wedding. In the eivening, we had big feast, and they had Las-Vegas style show-girls, dancing on the big stage, and a bunch of young Thai girls singing Thai pop-songs. The next morning, we came back for the wiskey drinking, crazy Thai dancing, drum jamming, and 2nd feast at 6:30 am. By noon, I had been drunk, and was newly sober... what a crazy wierd party! The actual binding ceremony happened at about 10-11am of the second day of the wedding. After all that, I went and began my stay at a temple on the outskirt of town, living with the Thai villagers, and sleeping on the floor of the temples, along with the young monks (orphans from Mayanmar who had been addopted into the monestary to be raised as monks -- I think maybe 7 years old). I had a wierd experience with a transvestite I met there. He/she wanted to take me on a tour of the surrounding temples, and I figured "transvestites are people too. there's no reason to be rude" so I got on the back of his/her moped, and we were off. I was asked why I didn't hold on to his/her hips, but I said I was fine. There were a bunch of really awkward and strange comments made, and he/she kept telling me how welcom I was to come and stay at his/her house. I think the wierdest part was when he/she bought some food for us at a market: chicken balls, a bag of coconut milk, and each a weiner on a stick...
Another cool thing in Lop Buri was my trip to the local highschool. I had been offered a day of teaching english in one of the classes, but I mostly just got a tour of the school. It was really cool... I felt just like a rockstar. Apperantly, us westerners are considered to be pretty hot-stuff over there. I was surrounded, for the first time, with giddy, giggling girls, all staring at me, and sighing... it was very funny. What an ego trip! That night, I met a familly who's son was learning english (he spoke very well, actually) and they invited me to stay with them at their house to help the boy practise. His sister had been one of the girls at the highschool, so that was kind of funny and awkward. The boy's name was "One," and he was quite the scholar. He gave me some chinese lessons, and we jammed (harmonica + thai flute) for a bit. THe next day I whent back to bangkok in time to pick up my visa for India.
When I went to leave Thailand, I got a bus from my Guest House to the airport at 10pm, then I slept at the airport (surprisingly soundly) on a bench until 6:30am when I went off to check in for my flight at 9am. Things were bumpy, as usual, with some pretty frustrating encounters, but I had lots of time. The flight was one of the most comfortable I've ever had, with the best airplane food ever and almost whatever music I wanted to listen to. I arrived in Kalkuta and waited WAY longer than usual for my bag to come out, being almost certain that it had been stollen. Apperantly, people always have this problem at this airport, and the baggage handlers are simply very inneficient.
India is trully a whole different world from anything I've ever seen before. Incredible! So much in the way of filth, gritt, thieves, and honking car hornes (this is porbably the worst part... the driving is rediculous, and I've said that about so many places, but here, it defies any explanation. The roads are like the crowded hallways in highschool with people stopped and people shoving and people walking slow and people running, and the lines of the road are totally ignored. The hornes honk so much that it makes little or no difference if your car is honking or not; it can hardly be heard over the din. Some people invested in novelty horns that play crazy tunes and imitation elphant-calls so that their honk would stand out, but then everyone else caught on and now it's ALL novelty hornes. The solution has recreated the problem with 10-fold chaos. Total insanity). I decided to get out of Kalkuta quick, so I whent to the train station. An Indian man helped me get my ticket all sorted out without asking for a tip or anything, and I was bound for Gaya. I had a General-Class ticket, which is the class where they don't cap the number of people allowed in each car, so you wind up sitting half out the window in order to make room for the rest of the throng that's been crammed in. I think it's lucky though, that an Indian guy of about my age told me that his friend who had bought a ticket in the Sleeper-Class would not be showing up, so I could ride with him and the rest of his buddies. He insisted that I stay in Sleeper-Class with them, saying that I would be robbed if I rode in General Class. One of his friends even payed the difference for my upgraded ticket! It was good to be with friends who knew how things worked on the train. They explained to me about the rude transvestites (I've been meeting a lot of them!) that come into the car and clap their hands and rubb up against you until you give them your spare change. Because of their lack of a defined gender, they are unable to find work in India, so they are forced to live in segregate communities, thriving only on people's charity. It has, apperantly, been like this for centuries, and people accept their obligation to give them whatever they can spare. Apperantly their blessings work, and so do their curses... Pretty strange! When the train stopped at Gaya, some of the Indian guys I had been hanging out with escorted me out of the train station and helped me get a hotel for the night (it was almost 2am). Then they all jumped back on the train to continue on their way home to their famillies for the upcoming holliday.
That night I slept in the scariest hotel I've ever been in, in my whole life. They tried to sell me a room that had no way of locking the door from the inside, but I said no. I wound up in a room that I could lock, and I propped the bedside table against the door for a little added security. The matress was so filthy that I covered it with my camping tarp to sleep on. In the morning I saw how filthy the city of Gaya is, and I got a tuk-tuk to my desired destination of Bodhgaya: the city, home of the tree under-which the Buddha achieved enlightenment. There I found a monastery that allowed me to sleep in a room they had, so I napped until about 10am. When I went out to explore, I met another Indian boy of about my age again, who showed me around some temples and brought me to the tree where the buddha had sat, meditating, when he achieved enlightenment. Very cool! Then, he invited me to come and stay with him and his familly, so I got my bag and we headed out of town to his village. There, I met his 2 brothers, 2 sisters, mother, father, and grandfather, and they gave me a room to stay in. I lived with them for a few days, making regular trips back and for the city of Bodhgaya to see the temples and stuff, and I was eating all my meals with the familly, back at the house. This was maybe a mistake, however, because I wound up in the hospital with a bacterial stomach-infection the other night and the doctor gave me a bunch of meds. Now I'm just getting over the bug, with another day worth of meds to take (I checked the stuff the doctor perscribed to me with a Canadian nurse I met, and she said it was good stuff), so I think it was no big deal. When I was sick, the familly brought me to the hospital and Annad and all his brothers, plus one of his neihbors waited with me at the clinic and carried my things for me and everything. Apperantly, the whole familly was up past 1:30am, praying for me and talking about me. Annad said that he hardly slept, he was so worried. I don't really know how to respond to that... what a touching gesture, but it was little more than a bad stomach-ache! Anyway, I'm staying in a guesthouse in the city now for one more night (the familly wanted me closer to the hospital, if anything should go wrong, but Annad has been coming out to get me everyday and bring me around, and take me to his house and back) and tomorrow I will go back with them to cellebrate the festival of "Holli" -- the festival of colours. I'll stil eat in town, but I'll go back to sleeping at their house until the festival is over. I plan on heading out on the 13th for Varanasi.
Although I've had to turn many a blind eye to the cheaters and theives of India, I've met some of the most genuinely generous people of my whole trip. What an amazing place!
One more thing to mention: The Candian nurse I met was with a group of volounteers, coming to drill wells all over India. They said that the Canadian economy didn't only droop a little since I've been away, but that it's really crashed and becoming a crisis comparable to the Great Depression! What's all this nonsense?
Still no way of getting pictures up, sadly.
Hope all is well!
-Ben
Ben Roscoe
Well, Bodhgaya was cool. Holli (the festival of colours) was SUPER fun! My whole body was died blue for almost a week. I was covered in all sorts of colours, and I scrubbed and scrubbed, but only so much would come off. I think all the lead and chemicals in the paint had something to do with it. It says on all the boxes I bought "For Industrial Use Only," but I drenched lots of the little kids in the village, and they drenched me right back. It was (obviously) everyone against the white guy, so it was pretty brutal. I got a lot in my eyes and my mouth, which some people said is very dangerous, but nothing happened, and I was fine. The family I was with turned out to be kind of frustrating people to live with, and I felt by the time I left that they had been nice to me for their own reasons. They kept talking about how poor they are, and their village, and how they want to be great people, and how lucky I am, and that I would "Be God" if I "send us only 500 dollars a month... only 500... please." They said they wanted to use the money to start a school, but I saw three schools and a university in the vacinity of that village, and I've since heard of several schools in the area that are open to anyone and everyone.... it was a strange feeling to be amoung people that acted so nice, but became so annoying, and who held me in continuous guilt trips to squeeze money out of me. It's undeniable that I have more opportunities than they do, and they could really use a little more money, but it seemed very dishonorable to me for them to tell me I was their best friend and an official brother of the family ... "so, can you support the family?" I was glad to leave.
Varanasi was great! I met lots of great people and had a lot of fun times. On my first morning in the city, I went up to the roof-top restaurant for breakfast and there was a group of tourists who were going to Sarnath that day, and happened to have an extra spot in their van (which they gave me for free). I went to deer park, and a school over there, and we came back. In Varanasi, I had several different jams with various other musiciens (incuding the Sitar, and the Saringhey), and I wound up having a (brief) music lesson on the Saringhey. This insturment is the craziest instrument I've ever seen. It has three main strings that you play with a bow, and a whole array of drone strings (that just vibrate and give an echo-ey sound to the music). You play it, sitting cross legged with the base resting in your lap, and you hold the bow with your pinkie and your ring finger. Rather than putting your fingers down ON the strings (like on any western string instrument, and the Sitar), you put your finger down beside the string (on the finger board) and press your cuticle against the side of the string... it's very very very strange, and incredibly difficult to play. Fun to jam with though! I also spent an evening in Varanasi, sitting down by the Ganges, by the Great Burning Ghat. A guide took me around the fires and pointed out the burning body parts that were visible, and explained the whole process. It's a strange place.
Leaving Varanasi was a truly rediculous experience. There was no train going from Varanasi to Delhi, so I had to go to another city, nearly an hour away. There, the train was delayed 2 hours, and I met up with some westerners and a Japanese girl. The Japanese girl, Yanyan, had been here the night before and had missed her train, gone back to Varanasi, and come back again tonight. She had to catch tonight's train because her flight back to Japan left from Delhi the next day at 6pm. But, sure enough, we missed the train when it finally arived, due to a mistake made by the Indian management. They announced, in Hindi, that the train would be arriving on a different platform than the one that was listed on the sign, but they forgot to mention it in english. THey didn't change the listing on the sign, so we sat and waited while our train came and left. After talking to all sorts of incredibly rude conductors who sent us from one to the other, blatantly trying to avoid the problem, nobody even thinking about trying to resolve it; we finally managed to get a receipt that entitled us to a 50% refund. However, the "last" train for Delhi that night left in 5 minutes, and in our haste to get a new ticket, the ticket seller managed to avoid giving us our refund... he also managed to sell us only a General Class ticket, which means "if you can fit into the train, go ahead!" When that train arrived (late, after our mad rush to get there in time), they announced that it was full, and we'd have to get the next one which would arrive on platform___ in a few minutes. The 100 Ruppee ticket we bought for General Class went in the garbage, and we had to buy a new ticket for the new train. BUT, they only had room in 1st class, so we had to buy the most expensive tickets they had. By the end of the night, the train from Varanasi to Delhi cost more than 1000Rs. ...now, admitedly, that's only 35-40 bucks, but it should have cost about 300rs. Yanyan did manage to catch her flight, with about half an hour to spare, in the end...
I didn't spend the night in Delhi, but I just continued on to Rishikesh. By the time I got there, I was sick again with another stomach infection. I spent 2 days,back and forth between the bed and the toilet, but I was fine after that. When I went to check into a cheaper hotel, once I nolonger needed my own toilet, a girl I had met earlier was checking out at the same time. The paper work was being filled out for me to stay at the hotel, but this girl (Anja -- "Anya", from Norway) invited me to come with her to a meditation retreat. I took my passport back, and told the receptionist "nevermind!" and went off with Anja to meet her friends: Sten and Fleur (a british couple), and some Israle people who said they would meet us at the ashram in a day or two. We went off to the ashram, which was about 20 minutes out of town (by jeep), right on the Ganges, surrounded by forrests and mountains. It was beautiful. The people were VERY nice! Anything we wanted for the duration of our stay was provided. If you were hungry, you could go to the kitchen and let them know, and you'd get either a whole meal, or a large selection of left-overs, fruit, cookies, and tea. The people were VERY nice, but... VERY crazy. When we agreed to stay for the three day meditation camp, we didn't know what we were getting into. It wasn't a Vispasi meditation course, or a Hindu or Buddhist meditation course, but an Osho meditation course. It was a cult. They had their burning candles, and their red robes, and their white robes, and their pictures of The Beloved Master, and they bowed to The Beloved Master, and they shouted The Beloved Master's name... and they were all NUTS!! We had a great time there, but the meditations were rediculous. We did a shaking meditation (you just shake your whole body as violently as possible), dancing meditation (a lot of dancing meditation actually), and silent meditation (maybe the only one that was legit). In the mornings, we would get together and breath as hard and as fast as we could, then we would "let out our emotions": "It can be Laugh... HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH!! ...It can be.. cry... AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH OHHHHHHHHH!!... It can be... Anger... RRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!! GRR!! *punching the ground*" and most of the people were crazy enough that it got pretty intense. We had our eyes closed, and everyone on every side was screaming and bawling and laughing histerically, and jumping around and pounding the walls and floors... my meditation wound up being: "I'm in a safe place. I'm in a safe place. etc" Then we did a meditation where we jumped with our arms in the air and we shouted "HOOO!" as loud as we could. We did a giberish meditation where you just made noises and "let out all your confusions" or something like that... and lots of standing in a circle, holding hands and dancing and Sharing Eachother's Energy. Each night we had the Brotherhood Meditation, where we listened to Osho's discourses and dirty jokes and danced and bowed and shouted the name of The Beloved Master...... so so so so so wierd. We only went to a few of the meditation sessions, because they were just too crazy.
Other than the meditation though, we had a really great time there. We swam every day in the Ganges, and one day we all even swam across it. This was a lot harder than I had expected. The current is amazingly powerful, and I had a moment in the middle where I got scared because I felt like I wasn't moving. And that water is VERY cold, and it's really tiering to swim with a current like that. But, we got there safely, and learned to just ride the current a little more on the way back, so it was much more pleasant. One day we left the ashram to go see a waterfall we had heard about. It was maybe the most beautiful place I've ever seen in my life. I brought my violin out and played at the waterfall, and we climbed up beside the waterfall, and sometimes through it, exploring all the BEAUTIFUL little natural pools, along the way up. We swam there all day. When we eventually got to the top (of the place that had a path), we had to do some rock climbing to get up to a pool above the path where it was deep enough to dive. It was absolutely incredible.
After our days with the cult, we paid (750rs for 3 days, room and board, food, and meditation lessons... everything included), and went back to Laxman Jhula where we had been staying. THERE, we heard about a festival that starts tomorrow. A hippie commune is gathering, further up the Himalayas, and they are having a festival called The Rainbow Gathering, and it will last the whole month of April. It's hard to get there, since it's set out in the mountains, in as secluded a place as they could find, but it'll be an adventure to find the place. I bought a tent yesterday with another guy who I'll be sharing with (he's only staying the first week, and then the tent is all mine), and my sleeping bag and tarp and ground mat and everything will finally come in handy again. I also bought a bowl and a spoon, and a hat (since it'll be colder up there... good thing I kept my long underwear and wool socks!), and now I'm all set to go live in a Hippie commune! Wish me luck!
I don't know how long I'll stay, but at least the first 2 weeks. The wonderful thing is, the money I had earned in Switzerland (2 grand), that had gone missing, turned up!! So now I have enough money to go to Nepal, like had wanted. Now that i have my tent and everything, I want to go do some good trekking in the Nepalisian Himalayas... We'll see how it goes!
Missing Canada! Be home in a couple months!
-Ben
Varanasi was great! I met lots of great people and had a lot of fun times. On my first morning in the city, I went up to the roof-top restaurant for breakfast and there was a group of tourists who were going to Sarnath that day, and happened to have an extra spot in their van (which they gave me for free). I went to deer park, and a school over there, and we came back. In Varanasi, I had several different jams with various other musiciens (incuding the Sitar, and the Saringhey), and I wound up having a (brief) music lesson on the Saringhey. This insturment is the craziest instrument I've ever seen. It has three main strings that you play with a bow, and a whole array of drone strings (that just vibrate and give an echo-ey sound to the music). You play it, sitting cross legged with the base resting in your lap, and you hold the bow with your pinkie and your ring finger. Rather than putting your fingers down ON the strings (like on any western string instrument, and the Sitar), you put your finger down beside the string (on the finger board) and press your cuticle against the side of the string... it's very very very strange, and incredibly difficult to play. Fun to jam with though! I also spent an evening in Varanasi, sitting down by the Ganges, by the Great Burning Ghat. A guide took me around the fires and pointed out the burning body parts that were visible, and explained the whole process. It's a strange place.
Leaving Varanasi was a truly rediculous experience. There was no train going from Varanasi to Delhi, so I had to go to another city, nearly an hour away. There, the train was delayed 2 hours, and I met up with some westerners and a Japanese girl. The Japanese girl, Yanyan, had been here the night before and had missed her train, gone back to Varanasi, and come back again tonight. She had to catch tonight's train because her flight back to Japan left from Delhi the next day at 6pm. But, sure enough, we missed the train when it finally arived, due to a mistake made by the Indian management. They announced, in Hindi, that the train would be arriving on a different platform than the one that was listed on the sign, but they forgot to mention it in english. THey didn't change the listing on the sign, so we sat and waited while our train came and left. After talking to all sorts of incredibly rude conductors who sent us from one to the other, blatantly trying to avoid the problem, nobody even thinking about trying to resolve it; we finally managed to get a receipt that entitled us to a 50% refund. However, the "last" train for Delhi that night left in 5 minutes, and in our haste to get a new ticket, the ticket seller managed to avoid giving us our refund... he also managed to sell us only a General Class ticket, which means "if you can fit into the train, go ahead!" When that train arrived (late, after our mad rush to get there in time), they announced that it was full, and we'd have to get the next one which would arrive on platform___ in a few minutes. The 100 Ruppee ticket we bought for General Class went in the garbage, and we had to buy a new ticket for the new train. BUT, they only had room in 1st class, so we had to buy the most expensive tickets they had. By the end of the night, the train from Varanasi to Delhi cost more than 1000Rs. ...now, admitedly, that's only 35-40 bucks, but it should have cost about 300rs. Yanyan did manage to catch her flight, with about half an hour to spare, in the end...
I didn't spend the night in Delhi, but I just continued on to Rishikesh. By the time I got there, I was sick again with another stomach infection. I spent 2 days,back and forth between the bed and the toilet, but I was fine after that. When I went to check into a cheaper hotel, once I nolonger needed my own toilet, a girl I had met earlier was checking out at the same time. The paper work was being filled out for me to stay at the hotel, but this girl (Anja -- "Anya", from Norway) invited me to come with her to a meditation retreat. I took my passport back, and told the receptionist "nevermind!" and went off with Anja to meet her friends: Sten and Fleur (a british couple), and some Israle people who said they would meet us at the ashram in a day or two. We went off to the ashram, which was about 20 minutes out of town (by jeep), right on the Ganges, surrounded by forrests and mountains. It was beautiful. The people were VERY nice! Anything we wanted for the duration of our stay was provided. If you were hungry, you could go to the kitchen and let them know, and you'd get either a whole meal, or a large selection of left-overs, fruit, cookies, and tea. The people were VERY nice, but... VERY crazy. When we agreed to stay for the three day meditation camp, we didn't know what we were getting into. It wasn't a Vispasi meditation course, or a Hindu or Buddhist meditation course, but an Osho meditation course. It was a cult. They had their burning candles, and their red robes, and their white robes, and their pictures of The Beloved Master, and they bowed to The Beloved Master, and they shouted The Beloved Master's name... and they were all NUTS!! We had a great time there, but the meditations were rediculous. We did a shaking meditation (you just shake your whole body as violently as possible), dancing meditation (a lot of dancing meditation actually), and silent meditation (maybe the only one that was legit). In the mornings, we would get together and breath as hard and as fast as we could, then we would "let out our emotions": "It can be Laugh... HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH!! ...It can be.. cry... AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH OHHHHHHHHH!!... It can be... Anger... RRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!! GRR!! *punching the ground*" and most of the people were crazy enough that it got pretty intense. We had our eyes closed, and everyone on every side was screaming and bawling and laughing histerically, and jumping around and pounding the walls and floors... my meditation wound up being: "I'm in a safe place. I'm in a safe place. etc" Then we did a meditation where we jumped with our arms in the air and we shouted "HOOO!" as loud as we could. We did a giberish meditation where you just made noises and "let out all your confusions" or something like that... and lots of standing in a circle, holding hands and dancing and Sharing Eachother's Energy. Each night we had the Brotherhood Meditation, where we listened to Osho's discourses and dirty jokes and danced and bowed and shouted the name of The Beloved Master...... so so so so so wierd. We only went to a few of the meditation sessions, because they were just too crazy.
Other than the meditation though, we had a really great time there. We swam every day in the Ganges, and one day we all even swam across it. This was a lot harder than I had expected. The current is amazingly powerful, and I had a moment in the middle where I got scared because I felt like I wasn't moving. And that water is VERY cold, and it's really tiering to swim with a current like that. But, we got there safely, and learned to just ride the current a little more on the way back, so it was much more pleasant. One day we left the ashram to go see a waterfall we had heard about. It was maybe the most beautiful place I've ever seen in my life. I brought my violin out and played at the waterfall, and we climbed up beside the waterfall, and sometimes through it, exploring all the BEAUTIFUL little natural pools, along the way up. We swam there all day. When we eventually got to the top (of the place that had a path), we had to do some rock climbing to get up to a pool above the path where it was deep enough to dive. It was absolutely incredible.
After our days with the cult, we paid (750rs for 3 days, room and board, food, and meditation lessons... everything included), and went back to Laxman Jhula where we had been staying. THERE, we heard about a festival that starts tomorrow. A hippie commune is gathering, further up the Himalayas, and they are having a festival called The Rainbow Gathering, and it will last the whole month of April. It's hard to get there, since it's set out in the mountains, in as secluded a place as they could find, but it'll be an adventure to find the place. I bought a tent yesterday with another guy who I'll be sharing with (he's only staying the first week, and then the tent is all mine), and my sleeping bag and tarp and ground mat and everything will finally come in handy again. I also bought a bowl and a spoon, and a hat (since it'll be colder up there... good thing I kept my long underwear and wool socks!), and now I'm all set to go live in a Hippie commune! Wish me luck!
I don't know how long I'll stay, but at least the first 2 weeks. The wonderful thing is, the money I had earned in Switzerland (2 grand), that had gone missing, turned up!! So now I have enough money to go to Nepal, like had wanted. Now that i have my tent and everything, I want to go do some good trekking in the Nepalisian Himalayas... We'll see how it goes!
Missing Canada! Be home in a couple months!
-Ben
Ben Roscoe
The Rainbow Gathering was super fun! It was great to get away from all the money spending that goes on in the cities. It was really cold in the valley where the community was camped, and we did get some heavy rain a couple times; but, camping out in the jungle like that has certainly given me a taste for a lot more outdoorsmanship. We got to do some cool stuff, and I played lots of music and some truly crazy people. There are a lot of people that consider their nationality to be "part of the Rainbow family" and they just go from gathering to gathering. As much as I love peace and love and freedom and grooviness and all that stuff, the really Hippie Hippies were a source of much exasperation. The degrees of veganism became pretty rediculous, and everyone was subjected to it: No meat, no animal products (including butter, honey, ghee, cheese, etc), no onion, no garlic, and sometimes no spices. There was also an awful lot of talk about good and bad energy: avoiding any kind of confrontation, problem, or argument (nommatter how important) because "we would rather just sing and be happy!". When the cops came and were threatening to shut us down (because they were afraid that we were terrorists), some of the hippies just didn't want to hear about it because "maybe tomorrow is not coming! Let's not worry!" and burry their stupid heads in the sand and sing about Shalam... useless hippies. That along with all their wierd yoga and crystal healing and stuff... There was talk of getting a wild boar hunt together to roast on their ceremonial fire, just to mess with'em.
The whole cop thing was very frustrating. One of the guys at the gathering was a blacksmith, and he and I had talked about getting a workshop organized. I would love to learn to make and repair my own tools, so I pitched in some money (along with some other people) and he went into town to buy the supplies he needed to build a forge. It was very rugged and rustic, but he knew his stuff, so (after a lot of work to put it together) a couple of us got to make some little trinkets. However, when we cam back down the mountain (with out fancy new steel nick-nacks) we were told that the locals (and the government) were afraid that were building weapons and we were a threat to National Security, so the workshop was taken down before I got to make anything really serious. Indian police are maybe the most frustrating athority to be subject to... totally rediculous. After the full moon, I left Rainbow with a group of friends I had made, and we all went to Kashar Devi. We ate lots of good food, and since we were all craving meat so bad, we went to a little farm down the road (Kashar Devi is barely a hamlet) and bought 2 kilos of goat to share amoung 4 of us. We each had a massive mound of meat on a plate, and that was it... no veggies, no potato, no beans... just half a kilo of goat meat. Delicious! My jaw was tired and sore for a few days following though.
One of the guys I had left Rainbow with (Jon James, of Whales) was planning on heading into Nepal after the gathering for some trekking, and since I had the same idea in my head, and we get along pretty well, we decided to meet in Nepal. We've been in Pokara for a few days now, buying gear and getting ready to hike around the Anapurnas. We're look at the Thorong pass (at 5400m altitude) and hopefully some of our own stuff, off the trail, since we have a tent and a cooking pot and all the gear we need to just camp our way around (almost) wherever we want. Last night we went out to test our gear, and we got a bus out to a Tibetan Refugee camp (it's the second one we've been to since we were here. These places have such great deals on such great gear!). I bought a Kukri (a wicked camping knife, about a foot long, including the handle) and we walked past the camp into the mountains behind it. We camped on a nice little ledge and had a fire and cooked our food (noodles and tea), and found out what we need and stuff... it was pretty cool. Now we're going to spend another day or two in town getting the last few things we need, and buying the permit to hike the Anapurnas, and then we're off!
It's been great! Although, I've heard a lot about how cheap Nepal is... Lies!! All LIES!! Still very beautiful though.
bye for now!
-Ben
The whole cop thing was very frustrating. One of the guys at the gathering was a blacksmith, and he and I had talked about getting a workshop organized. I would love to learn to make and repair my own tools, so I pitched in some money (along with some other people) and he went into town to buy the supplies he needed to build a forge. It was very rugged and rustic, but he knew his stuff, so (after a lot of work to put it together) a couple of us got to make some little trinkets. However, when we cam back down the mountain (with out fancy new steel nick-nacks) we were told that the locals (and the government) were afraid that were building weapons and we were a threat to National Security, so the workshop was taken down before I got to make anything really serious. Indian police are maybe the most frustrating athority to be subject to... totally rediculous. After the full moon, I left Rainbow with a group of friends I had made, and we all went to Kashar Devi. We ate lots of good food, and since we were all craving meat so bad, we went to a little farm down the road (Kashar Devi is barely a hamlet) and bought 2 kilos of goat to share amoung 4 of us. We each had a massive mound of meat on a plate, and that was it... no veggies, no potato, no beans... just half a kilo of goat meat. Delicious! My jaw was tired and sore for a few days following though.
One of the guys I had left Rainbow with (Jon James, of Whales) was planning on heading into Nepal after the gathering for some trekking, and since I had the same idea in my head, and we get along pretty well, we decided to meet in Nepal. We've been in Pokara for a few days now, buying gear and getting ready to hike around the Anapurnas. We're look at the Thorong pass (at 5400m altitude) and hopefully some of our own stuff, off the trail, since we have a tent and a cooking pot and all the gear we need to just camp our way around (almost) wherever we want. Last night we went out to test our gear, and we got a bus out to a Tibetan Refugee camp (it's the second one we've been to since we were here. These places have such great deals on such great gear!). I bought a Kukri (a wicked camping knife, about a foot long, including the handle) and we walked past the camp into the mountains behind it. We camped on a nice little ledge and had a fire and cooked our food (noodles and tea), and found out what we need and stuff... it was pretty cool. Now we're going to spend another day or two in town getting the last few things we need, and buying the permit to hike the Anapurnas, and then we're off!
It's been great! Although, I've heard a lot about how cheap Nepal is... Lies!! All LIES!! Still very beautiful though.
bye for now!
-Ben
Ben Roscoe
-
JeffOverbo
- Multidex Master
- Posts: 207
- Joined: 30 Sep 2008 19:48
Wow.
What an amazing hike! We spent 16 days trekking through the mountains, carrying our tent, cooking pot, food supplies, Kukri, and warm clothes. We camped most night, and saved buckets and buckets of money by cooking most of our own meals. There was generally no problem finding firewood, and our meals got better and better as we went. Through all the gear we bought, I tried to save on my footwear and just got my footbag shoes repaired (they were almost broken before we left) by a shoemaker on the street. By the end of the first day, I had pretty nasty oozy blisters from all the chunks of thread and folded leather reinforcements he had added, but after a few days of hoping they would turn to callus, I reverted to good 'ol footbag-inspired improvisation and modified my shoes. I got out my kukri and hacked off the toe of my right shoe, and the heel of both shoes, and turned them into shandles. I got a lot of laughs from the Nepalis, but they were actually very comfortable after the modifications. My blisters are almost healed now. We hiked up alongside the river for the first few days, but when came to the fork where we (Jon James and I) had been hoping to leave the main trail, we were stopped by the police. It was the biggest police squad we had seen since we'd been in the mountains, and their job was to protect the entrance to this particular trail. They told us we couldn't come in because we needed special permission that cost 90 dollars each. We hung back a bit and wound up crossing the river as stealthily as possible, but we had to climb over a big mountain ridge, through the forest, to avoid their eye-sight. The "hill" we had to climb over was more difficult than we had expected. We were walking up about an 80 degree angle, pulling ourselves up from tree to tree, over about a foot of loose pine-needles, dragging our big backpacks through the brush. I won't claim it as the smartest maneuver I've ever attempted, but we did make it out without falling to our deaths. On the other side of the ridge, we met some villagers and had a conversation kind of like this: Villagers "So, do you have a pass?" -- us "...yes..." -- them "Ya... well, if you don't have a pass, you have to be careful on the road here because the police patrol it most of the time." We wound up hiding off in the woods for the rest of the day, napping, and eating and such, waiting for it to get dark, and then by night, we snuck over the next river and onto the trail we wanted. We walked for several hours by night, trying to find a flat spot to put up our tent. We camped in a bamboo thicket and the next morning we continued on. We stayed in Meta, and then went to Nar Village where we hung out for an extra day. It was almost entirely Tibetan, and we got to work in the fields a bit with the Yaks, and we ate some really really nice local specialties. It was an amazing place. Really unique and distinct from the rest of Nepal. We met a guy before we left called Unicycle Steve, who had just come from the direction we were going, riding over Kangla pass (5340m altitude) on his unicycle. Cool guy!! We did Kangla pass, and then rejoined the main trail. Kangla pass was a tough trek... really straight up, all the way, and then all the way straight back down. We camped in a building we found on a school campus that night, but when I was preparing our cooking fire, I gave my finger a really good chop with the kukri. It didn't come off, but it should definitely have had stitches. Luckily, the teachers happened to come out of the school and see me sitting with my hand covered in blood. They had lots of crazy ideas to help it heal! They covered it in sugar to stop the bleading, then they took that off and poured kerosene all over it to prevent tetanus, then they crushed up some anti-biotic pills and stuffed the powder into the cut, and then covered it in toothpaste before they wrapped it in gaze. I'm absolutely amazed that it's healing so fast. Within the next day or so, the risk of it reopening was almost gone, and now I've got almost full function out of my finger again. The teachers actually wound up feeding us a big meal that night for dinner, and then again for breakfast too. Similar to the guy who picked me up when I was hitch hiking in Poland! So selfless and generous and helpful without even hinting at payment of any kind. Such amazing people. Anyway, we continued the trek through Manag and up through Thorong pass (5416m), but we crossed the pass in the afternoon (against everyone's reccomendations.) It was very cold and the snow was blowing pretty good, but I had warm socks for my shandled feet, and the trek itself was nothing compared to Kangla pass. It was very gradual, and there was a restaurant at the highest point where you could buy noodle soup and tea and everything.... stupid tourism. I'm so glad that we got off the main trail for our little illegal escapade through Nar and Kangla. We were so fed up with the excessive commercialism when we got to Munktinat, (and we missed being able to buy food for a reasonable price... everything is insanely expensive, way up in the mountains) that we just got a jeep back to Pokhara. It was a great trek and we had lots of fun... such a great experience. We talked to people who spent over 30 000rs on the circuit trek, staying in guest houses and eating in the restaurants. Jon and I were both under 10 000rs, including the transportation back to Pokara (which was very expensive), thanks to our tent and cooking pot and everything. Bathing in rivers (rediculously cold rivers), eating stews of onion, potato, noodles, soy balls, garlic and spinach all boiled together in one pot, sleeping outside, and just walking from place to place through some of the most amazing scenery I've ever seen... what an unforgettable adventure. So fun!
Anyway, back in Pokhara, we met up with a friend from Rainbow, and now all three of us are camped on the roof of the Moonstay lodge, on Freak Street, in Kathmandu. Kathmandu is super cool! So much better than Pokhara... Let the good times roll!
I'll post pictures of my Himalayan Lavers when I get home... soooo shit kicked.
-Ben
What an amazing hike! We spent 16 days trekking through the mountains, carrying our tent, cooking pot, food supplies, Kukri, and warm clothes. We camped most night, and saved buckets and buckets of money by cooking most of our own meals. There was generally no problem finding firewood, and our meals got better and better as we went. Through all the gear we bought, I tried to save on my footwear and just got my footbag shoes repaired (they were almost broken before we left) by a shoemaker on the street. By the end of the first day, I had pretty nasty oozy blisters from all the chunks of thread and folded leather reinforcements he had added, but after a few days of hoping they would turn to callus, I reverted to good 'ol footbag-inspired improvisation and modified my shoes. I got out my kukri and hacked off the toe of my right shoe, and the heel of both shoes, and turned them into shandles. I got a lot of laughs from the Nepalis, but they were actually very comfortable after the modifications. My blisters are almost healed now. We hiked up alongside the river for the first few days, but when came to the fork where we (Jon James and I) had been hoping to leave the main trail, we were stopped by the police. It was the biggest police squad we had seen since we'd been in the mountains, and their job was to protect the entrance to this particular trail. They told us we couldn't come in because we needed special permission that cost 90 dollars each. We hung back a bit and wound up crossing the river as stealthily as possible, but we had to climb over a big mountain ridge, through the forest, to avoid their eye-sight. The "hill" we had to climb over was more difficult than we had expected. We were walking up about an 80 degree angle, pulling ourselves up from tree to tree, over about a foot of loose pine-needles, dragging our big backpacks through the brush. I won't claim it as the smartest maneuver I've ever attempted, but we did make it out without falling to our deaths. On the other side of the ridge, we met some villagers and had a conversation kind of like this: Villagers "So, do you have a pass?" -- us "...yes..." -- them "Ya... well, if you don't have a pass, you have to be careful on the road here because the police patrol it most of the time." We wound up hiding off in the woods for the rest of the day, napping, and eating and such, waiting for it to get dark, and then by night, we snuck over the next river and onto the trail we wanted. We walked for several hours by night, trying to find a flat spot to put up our tent. We camped in a bamboo thicket and the next morning we continued on. We stayed in Meta, and then went to Nar Village where we hung out for an extra day. It was almost entirely Tibetan, and we got to work in the fields a bit with the Yaks, and we ate some really really nice local specialties. It was an amazing place. Really unique and distinct from the rest of Nepal. We met a guy before we left called Unicycle Steve, who had just come from the direction we were going, riding over Kangla pass (5340m altitude) on his unicycle. Cool guy!! We did Kangla pass, and then rejoined the main trail. Kangla pass was a tough trek... really straight up, all the way, and then all the way straight back down. We camped in a building we found on a school campus that night, but when I was preparing our cooking fire, I gave my finger a really good chop with the kukri. It didn't come off, but it should definitely have had stitches. Luckily, the teachers happened to come out of the school and see me sitting with my hand covered in blood. They had lots of crazy ideas to help it heal! They covered it in sugar to stop the bleading, then they took that off and poured kerosene all over it to prevent tetanus, then they crushed up some anti-biotic pills and stuffed the powder into the cut, and then covered it in toothpaste before they wrapped it in gaze. I'm absolutely amazed that it's healing so fast. Within the next day or so, the risk of it reopening was almost gone, and now I've got almost full function out of my finger again. The teachers actually wound up feeding us a big meal that night for dinner, and then again for breakfast too. Similar to the guy who picked me up when I was hitch hiking in Poland! So selfless and generous and helpful without even hinting at payment of any kind. Such amazing people. Anyway, we continued the trek through Manag and up through Thorong pass (5416m), but we crossed the pass in the afternoon (against everyone's reccomendations.) It was very cold and the snow was blowing pretty good, but I had warm socks for my shandled feet, and the trek itself was nothing compared to Kangla pass. It was very gradual, and there was a restaurant at the highest point where you could buy noodle soup and tea and everything.... stupid tourism. I'm so glad that we got off the main trail for our little illegal escapade through Nar and Kangla. We were so fed up with the excessive commercialism when we got to Munktinat, (and we missed being able to buy food for a reasonable price... everything is insanely expensive, way up in the mountains) that we just got a jeep back to Pokhara. It was a great trek and we had lots of fun... such a great experience. We talked to people who spent over 30 000rs on the circuit trek, staying in guest houses and eating in the restaurants. Jon and I were both under 10 000rs, including the transportation back to Pokara (which was very expensive), thanks to our tent and cooking pot and everything. Bathing in rivers (rediculously cold rivers), eating stews of onion, potato, noodles, soy balls, garlic and spinach all boiled together in one pot, sleeping outside, and just walking from place to place through some of the most amazing scenery I've ever seen... what an unforgettable adventure. So fun!
Anyway, back in Pokhara, we met up with a friend from Rainbow, and now all three of us are camped on the roof of the Moonstay lodge, on Freak Street, in Kathmandu. Kathmandu is super cool! So much better than Pokhara... Let the good times roll!
I'll post pictures of my Himalayan Lavers when I get home... soooo shit kicked.
-Ben
Ben Roscoe
-
hacksterbator
- Washed-Up Child Star
- Posts: 4141
- Joined: 12 Jul 2003 18:33
- Location: Winterpeg, Manisnowba
- Contact:
Just got this up on the interweb. My bujy jump in Nepal:
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php ... 814&ref=mf
I'm such a squirrel. Sooo scared and awkward...
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php ... 814&ref=mf
I'm such a squirrel. Sooo scared and awkward...
Ben Roscoe
-
JeffOverbo
- Multidex Master
- Posts: 207
- Joined: 30 Sep 2008 19:48
traveling isn't as expensive as people think. In western countries, after your plane ticket, all you need is to do a little busking to feed yourself until you can find steady work. Then a couple grand can last you many many months in Asia or S.A. or 3rd world places. It depends on how you want to travel... traveling like a bum is obviously going to be cheapest.
Ben Roscoe