Thirteen
Nepal:
Cutting Trees is a Heinous Crime
Got a late start for my Himalayan mountain trek. In keeping with my philosophy of minimizing travel whenever possible I chose a trek just north of Kathmandu. Left the hotel about noon, then wandered around for about an hour trying to find the correct bus to my relatively obscure destination. Even though the trailhead is only eight miles from town, the ride took about an hour and a half; this at least partly owing to the last mile being a poor quality one lane dirt track which required some nimble maneuvering whenever we met someone going the other way.
I finally hit the trail at about three, walked about a mile steep uphill, then stopped for a soft drink and information. Once you get to Langtang National Park, 25 miles and three days up the trail, there are occasional signs but until then, even with a good topographical map, essential for a solo trek, its pretty much ask directions at every village or way station. The "main" trail doesn't look any different than the numerous side trails which connect the villages which can be seen perched on the often steep hillsides in every direction.
I had verbal directions to supplement my topographical map so I thought I knew where I was going but in no time at all I found myself at a dead end by a beautiful little stream enclosed by steep sides, littered with big boulders and it's bed carved out of rock. There was an adequate little shelter near a small religious shrine close to the water but it was too early to stop, so I went back up the hill, rediscovered the trail and presently a local guy pulled up beside me, started talking and soon asked me where I was headed. "Next village to find a place to stay". "Sorry there is no inn at the next village and the closest place to stay is too far to walk before dark. But no problem, just ask anyone, they will put you up."
With the exception of the first couple of villages nearest to the trailhead, almost every habitation on the trail, no matter how small, has at least one "hotel". Most often they are mighty primitive affairs with sleeping arrangements limited thin straw mats on an open wood platform that’s large enough to accommodate several people. Sometimes there is an indoor dining area, sometimes not and by nightfall at the end of October in the higher elevations it can get cold really fast. Primitive as these minus-five-star hotels may be they make hiking a lot easier by obviating the need to carry tents or food.
Meanwhile my friend saw I was uncomfortable with the idea of just asking anybody so when we got to his house, he said, "This is my house, you can stay here if you like". He then gave me a clear warning that there would be no private room - I slept in the storeroom - and the food wouldn't be all that fancy either, just rice and vegetables - but it was very good nonetheless. Then he checked out and didn't return until after I went to sleep - with no electricity and it too cold to relax outside the sleeping bag I was in bed by eight. Till then, I hung out with the wife who didn't speak English and five really nice, dirty faced, snot nosed kids.
The seven year old took out a jar of red powder, mixed it with water and used it to color drawings in her school book. The oldest, nine years, went to English school in Kathmandu and was the only one I could communicate with. I was especially impressed with her science text. It was written and published in Nepal and directed towards Nepal's special needs - the section on water included a paragraph on the importance of keeping one's face clean. The quality of the text was especially surprising considering; English is not Nepal's primary language, the country has a literacy rate of only 40% - an abysmal 20% for women, only 19 million people, and at $160 a year, a per capita income that is one of the world's lowest - only half of India's.
A substantial part of the reason for Nepal's poverty has to be the large number of people who eke an existence out of these steep mountainsides. All but a few Nepalese are dependent on agriculture while a majority are at best a couple of days walk from the nearest road. That is even true here in Langtang only a few miles from Kathmandu, Nepal's capital and largest city.
In the first two days of walking, from 4000 feet up to about 8000 feet, there were many places which looked as if every inch were terraced and habitated. Other times there were hillsides covered with a mostly oak and rhododendron forest of small trees with a few large original trees contrasting with the rest.
In the park there are signs which say, " Cutting forests is a heinous crime". But wood is their only source of fuel. It is okay to cut dead branches except many times the dead branches are in truth very much alive. The result is a forest that takes on an strange unnatural look consisting exclusively of large trunked trees holding only a few scattered branches. The forested areas also alternated with spare but very green, because it’s the tail end of the rainy season, mountains of grass or brush. Whenever there were habitations at higher elevations where wood was scarce, the land looked wasted. There also were frequent and prominent erosion caused landslides.
The second day I did about twelve miles, going from 6000 feet to 8000 feet down to 6000 feet back up to 8600 feet then down to 7200 feet and by the end of the day I was hurtin'. Maybe I was trying to compensate for a short first day. I knew somewhere in my consciousness that seven days was about all I could handle and naively thought I could do a twelve day trek (it didn't look like twelve days on the map) in seven or eight, while carrying a pack with all my winter clothes in it (I wasn't going to take a chance on getting chilled again), while starting at 4000 feet and climbing up over 15,000 feet.
That night I met up with Rolf and Mike, two mid-twenties German guys taking a year off of construction and machine work who had taken two days to cover my one. Their next day was going to be short with only 2800 feet of gain so I tagged along. This day we passed through a single species rhododendron forest with trees up to 30 feet tall, but unfortunately not in flower, and the rhodies eventually gave way to pines and then firs.
By the end of the day we had risen up close to 10,000 feet and I was huffing and puffing and really hurting and really dragging my ass, but it still took another half day of walking for me to gain a touch of sanity and hire a porter to carry my pack over the top.
Almost all of the portage in these parts is by human mule. For $3 per day you can hire one of these guys to carry one, two, sometimes even three packs. They'll carry 60 pounds as a matter of course, and more, but its not fair to ask them. My 20 pound pack was nothing. Most often barefoot or in thongs, even in freezing temperatures, if there are switchbacks in the trail, they make their own trail going straight up. It's easy enough to trek solo but porters make it possible for tour groups to bring along tents, camping equipment, gourmet cooks, tables and chairs, etc..
Much above 12,000 feet the vegetation turns to stunted trees and bushes and grasses that have turned brown because of a hard freeze every night. It's not really warm but comfortable enough in the daytime sun. The second half of the fourth day was a short distance and it only involved an 800 foot elevation gain but even without a pack by the time we got near the end of the day at 12,600 feet, I could barely walk 100 feet without stopping to catch my breath. Just trying to sleep was a chore, waking up many times short of breath. In fact the next night turned out to be a lot worse. It was about the same elevation but my nose had gotten a bit stuffed and I would wake every few minutes gasping for air.
But all that said, I don't really consider that I had problems with the altitude. I didn't have a headache or barf the way Mike did. I was actually between Rolf who was in good shape and way ahead, and Mike who was overweight on top of his infirmary. In the lower elevations Mike and I stayed about equal, but with completely different styles. He kept up a slow and steady pace and never heaved and wheezed the way I did. On the other hand I would charge ahead, be quickly overextended and then be forced to rest. I've often thought about Mike questioning the efficiency of my style. I just can't relax until I reach the goal that's within my sight. It would seem that he must be right and yet that attitude towards life is so ingrained in me, it could be mighty hard to change.
Only one more morning to the pass. We leave before 7 AM. The mountains tend to cloud over as the day wears on so we need to get there early for the view. We actually started out in a cloud then rose above it at about 13,500 feet to a view of the pass - flanked by 16,000 and 17,000 foot partly snow covered peaks - way up there still. It took five hours to reach the pass and happened none to soon, not just because the clouds started moving up but by the time we approached the top at 15,000 feet I would charge ahead my 50 feet then fall prone on a clump of grass or flat stone, dizzy and exhausted, needing more time to catch my breath than hike.
But what an enchanted place, first a view of the peaks of the 50 mile distant 26,000 foot Ganesh mountain chain above the pass, then a bit further the first of seven sparkling pristine alpine lakes, considered sacred by the locals, appeared. All are grouped together but five of them create a stepping stone pattern with each lake feeding into the next.
From here it is an easy downhill walk, especially without a pack, to our next overnight stop, but I was still in somewhat of a daze. We could have stayed near the top in one of the three "hotels" situated on the shore of the largest lake at about 14,500 feet, but it's too cold for my rented sleeping bag (0 degrees F: I should've rented a better one) and I had a hard enough time sleeping back at 12,600 feet.
We arrived at Hotel ABC in the early afternoon in a dense cloud but as the day progressed the clouds dissipated and we found ourselves on an open ridge with full views across a river valley of Ganesh on the left and Langtang, at 24,000 feet, on the right. The outdoor dining area, consisting of a primitive table and benches, has a 180 degree plus, panoramic view of the valley and feels like it's suspended in the clouds. Langtang village at the foot of the peak is a part of the trek my physical limitations caused me to miss but picture a village and peak no more than four lateral miles apart with 13,000 feet of elevation difference between them! Mike and Rolf tried to convince me to accompany them to Langtang, but it was an extra three days of trekking and I knew I was at my limit. Next time!
There are no rolling hills or small features here, everything is in immense relief. Looking across the river valley did not seem that different than looking across a Cascade mountain river valley except here the river was almost 7000 feet down and the opposite ridge 50 miles away. In the morning before the clouds arrived a third mountain chain appeared behind Ganesh and next to it, a small view Annapurna, 150 miles distant.
This is easily on the order of a thrill of a lifetime for the committed hiker. Compared to this, Mt. Hood, Oregon at 11,200 feet is a pimple on the earth's surface. Even the entire Cascade range is a ripple in your bathtub compared to the tidal wave of the Himalayas. Imagine the Grand Tetons doubled in size then multiplied by 50. Most people who come here for the mountain experience go to Everest or Annapurna. I thought 15,000 feet was high but the 21 day Annapurna circuit goes up over 18,000 feet. As impressive as Mt. Langtang was I must assume that it can't compare to these much greater peaks. Still it was good enough for me and held the additional advantage of far fewer trekkers and no beggary children.
The next day carrying my pack again I barely made three miles, all easy downhill. Below 11,000 feet there were frequent patches of old growth firs with trunks sometimes three to four feet in diameter, almost all of this area is protected National Park land. My last day on the trail was all downhill. It was much farther than the previous day and very steep in parts. I was on my last legs but made it nonetheless to the bus line and a hotel with a hot shower.
The "hot shower available" at the Hotel ABC back up the mountain turned out to be a bucket of hot water with a hole in the bottom - state of the art up there. But it was way too cold for me to want to get undressed and stand under one bucket of water. Seven days was clearly the outer limit of my trekking capacity and it would take another seven days to recover. Next time it’s hire a porter all the way, try to pace myself, bring a very warm sleeping bag and some type of sleeping pad, and I probably can go farther.
Trekking season in Nepal is either October to mid November or March to May. Summer is monsoon when the country gets almost 160 inches of rain in just four months, leaving the mountains continuously cloud shrouded. The opposite end of the year it's too cold for most people to want to be up in the higher elevations. Springtime is warmer, but fall has fewer clouds and besides it's harvest time and down in the lower elevations, 6 to 8000 feet, there are occasional wild fields of smelly sticky females left to turn brown with the coming of winter.
Knock on my door at seven AM, " Bus is leaving ". It was a holiday and we weren't even sure if there was going to be a bus at all so I packed in a hurry, rushed out and jumped on. We waited about half an hour, roll started the bus the first of several times, went 200 feet, then stopped to replace a fan belt. That accomplished, we proceeded a quarter mile, then stopped the first of three times so the park rangers could check to make sure we tourists had paid our trekking fees. It's not cheap - $25. It's only 40 miles back to Kathmandu but the route consists of 15 miles of squirrely one lane dirt road mostly on the edge of a steep cliff followed by 25 miles of squirrely one lane paved road mostly on the edge of a steep cliff, so under ideal conditions it takes seven hours.
Ah - but on this day the bus was in high demand and every time it stopped an unbelievable additional number of people crushed on; the crushing, of course, taking lots of time. By late morning the bus' passengers were about equally divided between sitting, standing or sitting in the aisle, or sitting on top. Only problem is sitting on top is illegal so twice before we got in view of a police check point we'd stop and somehow squeeze into the bus all those guys who were riding on top, although admittedly several of them rode hanging half out of the doors. Once we were safely out of view of the cops they'd all pour out of the door and climb back on top.
Meanwhile in the early afternoon a pin fell out of the front spring shackle so we stopped to try to fix it - definitely a wise move considering how overloaded we were and how far down the cliff we'd fall, etc.. But we didn't have the proper tool so we continued on until our driver could borrow a tool from a bus going the opposite direction. He drove a little further, then stopped the bus right in the middle of the road and proceeded to fix the spring. Hard to say what possessed him to stop right in the middle when there were adequate turnouts and it really didn't take very long, about 20 Minutes, but there were several vehicles waiting in each direction before we were finished. We finally arrived in Kathmandu after 6 PM but not to complain, our driver was cautious and sane and we arrived in one piece.
Nepal: No Rickshaw - No Problem
Kathmandu T-shirt, often in black with sewn lettering.
No Rickshaw
No Hashish
No Carpet
No Change Money
No Problem
Walking is my favored personal form of therapy and exercise, so rickshaw drivers or the local equivalent are one of my most persistent, albeit petty, traveling hassles. There could be ten of them all together in one spot obviously eagerly awaiting their next fare and they must know that I know that they could use the work, but they still can't resist asking. A walking white man is fair game, why would a rich man want to walk anyway? They will sometimes follow me for blocks thinking if they discount a nickel off a 20 cent fare I’m bound to go for it. Walking along a road in some areas almost every cab driver has to slow down and beep his horn to get my attention.
Then, of course when I do want to hire one of them we've got to engage in a test of wills over the fare first. If I accept the first fare offered, assuming I'm not aware of a fair price, I'm certain to be taken advantage of. Even if the actual difference is only pennies I feel I have to bargain. Other times I just leave in a huff, much to their dismay because they are ready to bargain, and mine because I have to go through the whole process again.
Kathmandu is easily the most touristed place I've been. On my International Herald Tribune availability index it ranks at the top. On sale in every block in the tourist area, it's easier to get in Kathmandu than in Hong Kong or Singapore where it's printed. Bangkok's Khao San Road is as intense as Kathmandu's Thamel District but its a small street in a big city as opposed to a relatively large area of a small city. The other equally valid tourism intensity indicator which gives it a high rating is spaghetti and lasagna. They're not only frequently spelled correctly but they actually approach tasting the way I remember.
The city's tourist area is a maze of narrow streets and alleys. Many of the older buildings have these odd little storefronts that have very low ceilings and sit partly below ground level. The tourist boom of the last two decades has brought much new construction but it is most often so well blended with the old that there are few breaks in the continuity of the urban experience. The streets are dense with shops and restaurants on at least two levels and crowded with people, motorbikes and cars.
The motorbikes drive much too fast for the conditions, swerving in and out, barely missing people. The cars do the same, but they also get stuck at the bottlenecks - why do they enter the maze in the first place? - blasting their horns in frustration. Nepalese drivers have zero respect for pedestrians and it was getting on my nerves, prompting a "SLOW DOWN!" yell in some drivers ears. That may be partly a function of how long I've been traveling and partly, I'm embarrassed to say, the eruption of a haughty, imperialistic attitude (where'd it come from?) towards very different, very poorly organized cultures. It's been nine months, I must be getting tired. In fact, cars are a relatively new phenomenon in Nepal, and realistically they haven't had the time to learn how to set standards.
It's easy to see why the city is favored with tourism. In addition to a quaint and colorful street life and a people noted for being friendly and honest, there are several grand religious shrines and temples in and around the city. And in the old part of town there is a shrine at every juncture in the street maze as well as smaller ones every few hundred feet. Moreover the shrines alternate between Hindu and Buddhist as a testimony to the country's tolerance.
In fact, tourism is Nepal's number two foreign exchange earner behind the carpet industry which only began in the early seventies as an outgrowth of tourism. They are beautiful hand-woven carpets that sell for about $50 a square yard, but unfortunately half the industry's 300,000 workers are children working long hours under 19th century conditions. Actually they are all boys since employment opportunities for females of any age are severely limited in Nepal. The few you see working in the service industry are invariably the owners or members of the family.
The country was completely closed to foreigners until the 1950's. Then as it opened up, the opportunity to partake of legal drugs in a context in which a few dollars constituted affluence led to Nepal becoming a haven for "dope fiends". The dopers invasion held such sway by the late sixties that one street where they congregated was named Freak Street and a second which intersects it, Dharma Path. The street names have not been changed but drug use was criminalized in 1973. It's obviously no less available, but dope fiend tourism has been strongly discouraged by making it difficult to stay in the country very long without spending money. It's easy to get a 30 day visa, progressively more difficult to stay longer. To stay on in Nepal you have to show receipts for $20 changed legitimately - the black market pays an 8% premium - for each additional day.
It is possible without trying too hard to spend twelve even fifteen dollars a day in Kathmandu - so much good food and so many great trinkets. Whereas on a trek, carrying your own pack, its hard to spend more than five. Beds are less than 50 cents, meals 25 to 50 cents, a cup of tea a nickel. It's easy to understand why the country did not want to be a magnet for heroin addicts but current policy forces many people out before they are ready. The 300 dollars the typical budget traveler might spend in a month is still enough to create the equivalent of a couple of full time jobs. It's not as if they haven't already sold out to tourism. Kathmandu is definitely the kind of place you can feel helloed to death - hello change money, hello rickshaw, etc., - but no problem we're all mellow here.
Actually there is a place where they are not so mellow. I had the worst bureaucratic nightmare experience of my travels at the Kathmandu GPO in the process of sending a mailing tube back home. First you stand in line to your parcel weighed where a little scribble is added, then you wait in a second line to buy the stamps. Two pounds airmail to the U.S. is 460 rupees ($10) but the largest denomination stamp is ten rupees so I almost completely covered the small tube with 46 stamps. When I finally got to the head of the third line where you hand in the parcel and get a receipt the clerk says, "Where's the scribble?"
I started to protest but he did have logic on his side so I went back to the first line to get it reweighed, then back to the third line. This time he inspected the parcel closely and said, "Stamps are damaged", and pointed out that two of them had little slivers ripped off of them. On one of them the rip extended no further than the perforation. Must’ve happened while removing excess paper. I protested, he was adamant, I lost it and called him a bad name and then went back to the second line to buy two more stamps.
After what I said to him I couldn't bring myself to go anywhere near that third line again that day so I took the parcel home and let the situation rest overnight. Starting fresh I tried to find another post office to take it from me, but no such luck, all international parcels have to go through the GPO. Went back to the GPO, stood in a different clerk’s line. This guy looked closely and said, "Stamps are dirty", STAMPS ARE DIRTY?! But I kept my cool. There's no glue on the back, you have to go to the glue table and do it yourself and I used enough to be sure the tube would make it. They sure didn't look dirty to me, but it was a tough call for the clerk who took it to his boss to make sure it was OK. Whew! They passed. Meanwhile the clerk I had lost it with the previous day recognized me and I was sure he was going to sabotage the parcel as retribution for my transgression. Whew! He didn't.
India: We Just Had to Dance
On the beach, close by the Shore Bar, in Anjuna village, state of Goa, on India’s west coast, you can always find a few topless women in front of a public sign that says, "Nudism is Prohibited". On a wide stairway leading up to the bar, in back of another sign which reads, "Abuse of Drugs is a Social Evil and Punishable by 10 Years Rigorous Imprisonment", you can always see dozens of people smoking themselves out every afternoon as they watch a big fat orange sun slowly sink into the Arabian Sea.
The music is pure techno-house, there’s dancing every night on a sandy dance floor, the booze is extra cheap, and if it was going to happen anywhere it would have to be here. Walked into the bar my second night, invited myself to share a table, guy across from me says, "Aren't you from Portland? Isn’t your name Stan? You were my first recycler." We even have a mutual friend. As it turned out I wasn't his first recycler but we recycling legends seem to take on a life of our own.
Pete sold his lawyer business and house about five years ago and has been on the move ever since, though he does have to develop a little cash flow soon. He's spent the last three October to March tourist seasons here. April and May are scorchers, June to September is monsoon. Goa, India's smallest state, is different; it's peaceful and harmonious when much of the rest of India is in turmoil. Half the people have Portuguese names although only a hint of a look that's different from the typical Indian. It's also one third Christian and dotted with centuries old churches as an additional major legacy of nearly 500 years of Portuguese rule which ended about thirty years ago.
It's partyful, cheap and laid back in the most combination of this journey and tends to bring the same people back every year. India routinely gives out six month visas and one and five year visas are not that hard to come by. Goa is a prime destination for permanent residents as well as travelers. Westerners are common, and further it's tolerance makes it a haven for mixed couples which are rare in most of India.
********
Arrived mid morning; there are a few guest houses but relatively spendy at $5 per night. Besides the guide book says most people just wander around until they find a room in a private house, or if they’re a group they rent a whole house. It was end of November, a bit before peak season - there's a thing about being here for Christmas - and I was quickly offered a room for $2.50. The water comes from the neighborhood well and there's no toilet but you can use the one at the owner's restaurant. It seems a bit much for a room with no shower or toilet so I move on. Woman calls out, "Want room?."
Anita and Ankush have five kids, ages ten to nineteen. They have five rooms for rent in their house, a small house in back, and four small motorbikes for rent. As the height of the season approaches when space at the beach is at a premium they vacate two additional rooms they normally live in and rent those also. Anita pretty much runs the show. Ankush has mental problems, been institutionalized and hasn't worked in eight years. He also occasionally loses it and becomes abusive but he's the husband she was given and that's not to be questioned.
Anita's rental is equivalent in size to the other, only half the price. There's a well and makeshift shower enclosure in the back yard but still no toilet, you just shit in the yard out back. It's hot, Anjuna is spread out and requires a lot of walking to get around, and she's got good energy. What the hell. If I'm not satisfied there’s always tomorrow to look for a better place when I'm not lugging my pack. Of course I wound up staying more than a month.
In rural India the primary means of sewage disposal is wandering pigs, dogs and chickens, and most people just shit around. I was therefore suitably surprised when after a few days one of the other renters pointed out that there was, indeed, a toilet. It was your typical Goa-style raised-platform pig-chute shitter. The stuff merely slides down a diagonal chute on to the ground where its not unusual to see one of the (not so) cute little fellers waiting for the next hot and tasty morsel to drop.
When I asked Anita why she didn't tell me about it she said something the equivalent of, "it's gross ", and she did have a point. When the stuff was spread out around the back yard it was less noxious and the critters scarfed it up pretty quick. In the pig chute it got disgusting enough, mixed with urine and toilet paper, that even the pigs would sometimes pass it up for days. These people haven't got a clue I said to myself and therefore was all the more surprised when they built a regulation septic toilet just a month later as I was leaving.
*****
Pete asks, "Did you get to the party, night before last?" "No, just got here yesterday". Three people had already asked me that very question my first day on the beach. Now I like parties but their enthusiasm seemed a bit excessive. Didn't have long to see what the fuss was about; just four days later I saunter into the bar and Pete says, "Party tonight, down at the end of the beach, you can't miss it." It's an all night affair starting at midnight. He advises me to get a little sleep and stop in about 3 AM, it's the best time anyway.
Took his advice, except I woke up, fired up, at 2 AM so I headed down the beach. With two thousand people attending it was quite unmistakable. It's most prominent feature is dozens of "chai stalls" - basically itinerant teahouses - each lit with a lantern. Local women spread out straw mats on the sand and sell home baked goodies and fresh fruit as well as instant coffee and chai - Indian style sweet tea brewed in milk. Other people sell beer, whiskey, cigarettes, soda pop, psychedelics, psychotropics, and who knows what else.
I find a chai stall patronized by acquaintances. It's all super friendly and cozy, but where's the music? German woman sitting next to me says this is like a picnic a few times. English guy bounces from stall to stall saying look at the bright side, look at the bright side. Unaware of what it was intended to be, I thought it was indeed a perfect all night picnic. In fact, I was so taken by the scene, not to mention the amount of hashish I'd imbibed, that I wandered over to a rocky headland at dawn and spent the next six hours sitting in place just watching the tide roll in, then roll out again.
It turns out there was music until 2 AM when the police came to turn it off. Newspaper accounts said those evil all night beach parties, corrupters of our youth, have started again in Anjuna, and that as soon as the police found out about this last one they rushed over to shut it down and disperse the crowd. They axed the music all right but there were still a thousand party goers at dawn.
Besides we soon discovered what had actually happened, the police didn't get their baksheesh. It seems the party's promoter gave the police department's share to a courier who promptly disappeared with the money and everybody knows the show can't go on without police sanction and complicity. Almost anything goes in India if you can pay for it, and the baksheesh system does have its advantages. The state of Goa has banned all night beach parties so no corruption equals no fun. It does tend to get a bit excessive though when you have to bribe the police to fill out an accident or loss form.
I didn't have to wait long for the real thing. One week later was a full moon with a total eclipse and unthinkable without a party. I was a bit skeptical after the last one's hassles with the authorities but sure enough I popped into the bar around sunset and everybody says "party tonight". This time a restaurant-bar owner had come up with the necessary 10,000 rupees ($350 - a college educated civil servant earns about 2500 rupees per month). The bar is located on the edge of Anjuna's weekly Wednesday "flea market", which is actually more of a crafts market and draws people from all the nearby beaches. The market has room for hundreds of vendors, including quite a few Westerners who earn their keep selling things like painted T-shirts and haircuts. At any rate, the barowner merely turned his big speakers outward and there was ample chai-stall space for a thousand and a dance floor for hundreds.
This time I was too energized to take a nap so I just hung out until the music started a little after midnight and danced up a storm till the music went off at two. For some unfathomable reason the police had decided that the music had to be off between two and four. But no problem, we laid back and took a rest as the sun's shadow began to hide the moon at a little after two, and by 3:15 when the eclipse was total we sat enthralled as very bright shooting stars appeared, and then reappeared intermittently during the entire eclipse.
The big speakers came to life again at four, it was techno-house but also twilight zone - otherworldy. The music started gently, steadily gathering intensity. We matched it’s growing force with our increasingly frenzied tribal dancing and you'd swear it was our energy that brought back the moon. The ancients had to sacrifice a few virgins to bring it back, we just had to dance.
After that the parties started coming more and more frequently and I started needing more and more time in between to recover until I could barely make a showing. Actually I was saving it up for the climactic event, Christmas Eve, at which I managed a respectable three hour attendance, but which was really just more of the same, only bigger. Goa for Christmas, but was it even Christmas? There was no hype and no presents to exchange and no Christmas music aside from a Fred Waring type White Christmas type tape played by the Japanese guys in the room next to me. Still it does take a bit of magic to bring together 5000 people, assembled from every continent, on a few hours notice, and see them raising up the dust and having a good time all night.
The only negative? Too many Indian men - 98% of the locals attending were men. Indian women are closeted before marriage and highly restricted after, and as a consequence many of the men have a difficult time containing-restraining themselves in the presence of sensual savvy Western women.
Outside of places like Goa and the hippest hangouts in the few most advanced cities there is no such thing as a female in a bar. It's also common to see only men in restaurants and theaters - workers as well as customers. Even in something as innocuous as walking on the beach it's 90% men, the women, with few exceptions, are accompanied by husbands or boyfriends. Their clothes tell the story. In much of India the men wear Western clothes as often as traditional, which is mostly just a wrap around skirt. Here its the men who wear short skirts, they fold it up or it reaches the ground to suit the occasion.
In contrast, at least in rural India, literally all the women wear traditional clothes even when they are doing things like working construction, mixing concrete by hand. Saris are colorful, beautiful and a unique part of their culture but they are very inconvenient. They need to be constantly adjusted, held onto, or held above the ground - which in India is a repository for everything up to and including human shit. You almost never see a woman's knees, though saris of course expose their bellies, not a few of which would be better left under wraps. Indian men save their lewd streetside comments for women wearing jeans!
The undesirability of girl children, an outcome of women's low status, is pervasive in many Asian cultures but India takes it to an extreme. In a recent survey of rural Indian women in one southern state, 10% admitted killing a girl baby and 50% knew of an instance of the same happening in their family. In urban areas the act of limiting females has lost its gruesome aspect with the advent of modern technology and the ability to determine sex soon after conception. Forgive me for saying this but setting all questions of morality aside this ought have long term benefits. Having fewer women should increase the value that Indian society places on them, and also result in a lower birth rate, a not insignificant consideration in a country of 900 million with a 2% growth rate.
Dowry, the biggest disadvantage of having a girl, was outlawed 50 years ago at independence but millennium old customs die hard. I asked Anita about her oldest daughter. Yes, she would get her a husband next year when she was nineteen, it was going to cost her 70,000 rupees or two years earnings for the typical college grad. Three short news articles: 1. Young couple commits suicide because their parents wouldn't approve their marriage. 2. Woman who is a doctor, sues her husband, also a doctor, and his parents because they wouldn't stop harassing her for a dowry. 3. Woman and her eleven year old son by a previous marriage murdered - tossed into a deep well - by her husband and his parents because her father couldn't or wouldn't come up with the last 3000 rupees ($100) of her dowry.
Physical demonstration between men - holding hands, leaning on each other, sharing the same seat - is seen everywhere I've been in Asia but it's more prevalent in India. This is possibly an outcome of the shortage and inaccessibility of their women. Or maybe they are all over each other because they consider men so superior. But really the men are hardly better than prostitutes. Their families sell them to the highest bidders and if they don't get their minimum price they remain bachelors.