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“Should you, or should you not go to Burma ?” is pretty much the first thing you’re likely to read about Myanmar. This refers to the tourism boycott proposed by Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize winner, freedom fighter and democratically elected prime minister of Myanmar, who is once again locked up in her house in Yangon, unable to see her family, or probably most frustratingly, run her country. The Lonely Planet, itself ringleader of a dubious revolution in tourism, attempts to clear its conscience with a “hey, it’s your call buddy” list of pros and cons, safe in the knowledge that you’ve already bought their guidebook. The most obvious con is that the development of tourism not only finances the military regime but to a degree legitimises it.

Possibly what irritates me most about LP’s stance, is that it only thinly disguises the true colours of the independent traveller - myself included. Firstly, we are by nature irresponsible, believing that the rules were made for the masses, not us, the ‘responsible individuals’. And secondly, closer still to the bone - show us a locked door, a country cloaked in mystery, where one of the most ethnically diverse mix of peoples on the planet have been largely shut away from the world for over half a century, where people ’shouldn’t go’ - and you’re practically selling a secret treasure map to a pirate. To complete my self-delusion, I like to think of myself as a moral person and believe going there was the right decision with the benefit of my illicitly gained hindsight. But if I’m honest, I basically couldn’t have said no. Anyway, more about my conscience later.

Myanmar has an amazing amount to be proud of. It’s borders not only enclose a huge variety of terrain, from the Tibetan Himalayas and remote mountain forests of Yunnan and Laos down to the amazing beaches and limestone coastal formations of Southern Thailand but it’s also home to 21 distinct ethnic groups with well over 100 languages ! I had days walking through mountainous tribal regions where I would have to learn ‘Hello’, ‘Goodbye’ and ‘Thankyou’ in 3 or 4 completely different tongues. Having skirted around Myanmar from a few sides now (I write this from Yunnan, China) it seems that the most tribal, wild and ancient part of any country, is where it meets Myanmar.

Before you get your hopes up though, all but a carefully selected few of these areas are technically off-limits to foreigners. I know because I tried. Permits applied for months in advance and $500 fees will get you into some places, but drug wars, armed ethnic insurgencies and a host of areas where the government just doesn’t want you around will keep much of the country hidden from our prying eyes. The regime isn’t highly visible in terms of soldiers, uniformed police and checkpoints but rather more sinisterly, people just won’t take you where you’re not allowed to go. And it’s their safety you’d be compromising (or should I say compensating) if you found someone prepared to take the risk. There’s a nasty statistic going around that 1 in 10 people are still government informers. While things don’t seem quite as bad as they were in the past, the elusive, faceless influence of the junta is (ironically, given his connection with the country), pretty Orwellian. So in some sense, my ability to ’see the country for what it really is’ was impaired by the fact that I only really saw what I was allowed to.

I didn’t see much of anything for the first 3 days. The monsoon rains rolled in behind my plane and I was held hostage in my dingy, Yangon hotel as they thundered down relentlessly day and night with such volume that I had to sleep with ear plugs. I had to change room 3 times as the roof succumbed to the deluge and combined with the humidity, my laundry still wasn’t dry when I checked out in 3 days later in search of somewhere more fancy to celebrate Lidka’s arrival. I showed up at the airport smelling like a sailor though fortunately for Lidka, bathed in the first rays of sunshine.

Yangon (formerly Rangoon) is not a pretty city. The flooded streets cleared quickly but the crumbling buildings of downtown still looked like they needed a wash. In fact, with the tangle of power cables and satellite dishes like fishing nets washed-up on rusty tin roofs and the drilling of diesel generators powering the city through its near constant blackouts, it feels as though the whole city was once submerged and is struggling on with emergency power. Yet this is daily life here.
You can’t see repression, but you do see bold, propagandist sloganeering juxtaposed against chronic shortages - an almost cliché dictatorial image. We changed our money at a watch shop a taxi driver had clandestinely informed me about. Out back, our big dollar note was transformed into a plastic bagful of kyat in accordance with the black market rate of the day. As with electricity or petrol, the government has been effectively sidelined due to its inability to perform. In the last 6 months inflation has again doubled the price of everything in the country, with no change in earnings. I have no idea how people can survive this. The economic crisis would seem to have less to do with EU and US sanctions (Russia, India and particularly China are happily trading) and more to do with things like the regime apparently spending over 50% of the GDP on the military compared with less than 1% on healthcare and education combined.

One thing the government does seem to spend money on is gilt for the countries major temples. The legendary Shwedagon pagoda complex is Yangon’s star attraction and it doesn’t disappoint. I really like the style of Burmese temples. They’re not as prissy and overindulgent as Thai temples and there’s something of the ‘presence’ you feel around all the chintz and tingling bells of Tibetan buddhism. Most of all I like the powerful shape of the stupas (or zedis), like enormous divining rods that seem to invite lighting bolts from the heavens. It’s a simple trick, but building enormous arrays of these things does enhance the ‘awe’ effect. One of the most beautiful moments we had was wandering by ourselves though huge, ruined fields of them near Inle Lake. Many Burmese also believe in the Nat; mischievous sounding spirits that need to be appeased with offerings, a sign that Burma hasn’t completely let go of it’s superstitious, animist past. I saw quite a few little spirit houses with beds made up for the Nat though sadly never saw a coconut wearing a red dress which apparently has something to do with it all.

We headed first up to the city of Mandalay. Like on so many trips, our bus snarled and shuddered for a while before breaking down in the middle of the night. While the driver worked miracles with a towel, a brick and a couple of ancient spanners, Lidka and I were invited to shelter from the rain in the front porch of a local house. The guys were sat around an old stove playing guitar and were desperate for us to sing one of our songs. We couldn’t think of anything they’d know until out of nowhere they came up with “I just called to say I love you” by Stevie Wonder. We’d just cobbled some chords together and sung a triumphant chorus when the bus cranked up and we rushed off, waving like old friends. I have a new found love of this song.

The impression I got of ‘Burmese people’ (or I should say of the Barmar and Shan folk I met), was of a warm, down to earth people with a dry sense of humour. They’re not as excitable as the Thais and with a level of common sense in dealing with foreigners that Thailand just seems genetically challenged in developing, despite considerably more experience. Maybe this is a trace of the now almost invisible British influence. Probably due to the complexity of their history, outwardly, they’re not stoically proud of their ‘national culture’, yet there is an undeniable character about everyday life. They get through gallons of tea every day, chatting and smoking around miniature tables on miniature seats in tea houses and street stalls. At night, fumbling around in the power cuts, you hear guitars and singing teenagers sitting out on the street. There’s a neighbourly, easy going-ness about life that seems noble to me in the face of such obvious hardships. Life goes on.

Political satire and stand-up comedy fused with dance and cabaret is actually a traditional entertainment format that stretches back hundreds of years in Myanmar. Only the present regime have lost their sense of humour. We went to see the Moustache Brothers, an infamous ‘A-Nyeint’ troupe to check it out.

I’d read about an A-nyeint performance in Aung San Suu Kyi’s memoirs that her party had organised as part of the celebrations for a national day. Despite ubiquitous harassment and paranoiac scrutiny from the junta, they were finally granted a licence to hold the celebration for 1000 people in her garden. The party was a great success and seemingly intoxicated by the spirit of it all, the a-nyient troupe opened their show with some political comedy that pretty much announced that tonight, despite the obvious consequences, they were going to perform true to the art handed down to them by their fathers and make fun of the government. Within a week, two of them were beginning prison sentences that lasted 5 and 7 years and ensured that they would never be given performance licences again. It brought a tear to my eye, imagining the atmosphere at this gig. Not just the courage and rebellion of it, but the fact that it was restoring an older order and rightful Burmese tradition - and not a freedom song, but humour ! Man, that crowd must have laughed.
It was my great pleasure to find out that this was the Moustache Brothers. Now reunited again, they have found a way to get round their blacklisting by ‘demonstrating’ an a-nyient show to tourists from their home in Mandalay. They are old men, who clearly still depend on the show for a living, performing to a handful of backpackers every night. Lu Zaw and Par Par Lay don’t speak English so you are left only to wonder at the price they’ve paid for their art. The show itself doesn’t shy away from the politics that got them locked up, they milk it, but despite an energy and spirit that defies their age you just can’t help feeling that behind the smiles, life is still tough.

Aung San Suu Kyi herself was put back under house arrest a few months later but when she was released several years later she came to their little home theatre to pay her respects and watch a performance (or ‘demonstration’). They have a photo album of the occasion. The near empty room where we now sat was packed. The quiet dirt road outside swarming with people trying to catch a glimpse of ‘The Lady’. You could see her natural ease with the crowd and the looks of sheer joy on peoples faces. Like I said, I didn’t see repression but these were the most graphic images of hope.

After Mandalay we tried to head ‘off the beaten track’ as it’s known by heading up through Northern Shan state towards Hsipaw. Given the restrictions, it was pretty much the only track available. A lucky break came our way in Pyin Oo Lwin though as we haggled in vain to further our passage to the next town. Pick-up trucks, shared taxis and pretty, old horse-drawn stagecoaches pretty much make up the local transport network. The only bus heading our way did so at 6am as we desperately tried to build up some sleep credits after 2 days in sauna-like conditions. Then Francis appeared, a shifty looking guy with whisky breath who looked like he’d slept in his clothes and offered to take us the 4 hour journey on the back of his less than reliable looking moped. For some reason we didn’t immediately dismiss this idea. Before long though he’d thought it through, realised it was an awful plan and instead offered us the bike minus the driver. Technically, renting a motorbike to a foreigner in Burma is still an extremely dark grey area. “We won’t be back for 2 days, it’s OK ?” we said to make sure. “No problem, no problem. If you come back, you find me, you give me the bike !!”. So, without much of a deposit the thoroughly trusting Francis waved us cheerful farewell as I swerved about, practically stalling an automatic.

OK so it wasn’t a Harley, it was a whiny, sputtering, decrepit little thing that a Thai teenager would be too embarrassed to mount, but Lidka and I were so overjoyed at the prospect of cruising the open road, you could practically hear the strains of Steppenwolf. Lidka has been banned from riding motorbikes by her mother since before she was even a teenager so the James Dean flag was flying. I’m completely won over by motorbikes as I’ve said before, it is such a romantic way to travel. The wind was in our hair (as there were no helmets of course), but in a country where most vehicles are ancient and lugging outsized loads, it’s certainly not speed that kills.

We took detours through little villages, chatted as we rode and marvelled at the mountain views spread out all around us. Towns we passed though were largely made from teak wood, adobe, or woven bamboo panelling. People working the fields with buffalos, riding bullock carts, wearing bamboo hats and unbranded clothes … it’s a neat, tidy, older world. Kind of Asian-Amish in style with excellent, functional carpentry all around.

At Kyaukme, local farmer called guided us on a day’s trek into the mountains to the village of Lwe Sar. In the hills practically the only trace of the 21st century are the cheap Chinese lighters people use to light their cigar-like cheroots. The Paulung people aren’t what you’d really call ’tribal’ in appearance, aside from a few strange tattoos that ’insure’ their limbs against injury. They have excellent (again, to me a little Amish-like) teak and bamboo villages and till the land into terraces as they have done for centuries.

Shan state contains the biggest ethnic group outside the dominant Barmar culture. Our guide was Shan, as is his wife, he says, though she’s from neighbouring Yunnan in China. If he wants to visit his inlaws he can be there in a day’s travel he tells us and despite not possessing a passport, most of the time they’re just waved through. “We’re all Shan” he says. This is strength of ethnic identity you see all over Burma. The word Shan is a bastardation of Siam (Thailand) where the group stem from and in China they are known as Dai (from Thai). Yet these borders, I don’t know how many hundred years later, seem slightly artificial to them. I’m amazed, coming from a country where Gaelic can’t seem to be kept alive, that these 100 languages and cultures remain happily distinct. The government of ‘The Union of Myanmar’ does seem to be trying, (behind the tourist gloss of ‘unity in diversity’) to make everyone tow the Burmese (Barmar) line. Shan state now has no schools permitted to teach in the Shan language. This kind of torment only seems to increase separatist desires among the states. Democracy, whenever it is finally won, seems certain to face some pretty tough challenges.

Even with no-one but the trees and the birds to overhear us, asking about the regime still felt taboo. Presumably communities here are tight enough not to have to worry about ‘denouncements’ from hidden informers but still, it was as if people didn’t want to get into the habit of talking about it. What I did manage to garner over the course of the trip verified what I’d read - villages used as forced labour to build roads, bridges, airports and hotels, many connected to the governments recent tourism drive. The army commandeering livestock and land from villages at will. The constant bribes or ‘tea money’ people have to pay to keep the wheels of the greedy bureaucracy (itself badly underpaid by central government) turning. Ach, it’s all on the web, I’m just reciting.

After a long day trekking and drinking tea with just about everyone we met, we made it back to the main road and waited for a bus back into town. Men and women carrying their hoes, sickles and bamboo lunchboxes came in from the fields and stopped at the bus-stop to smile and inspect us. Lidka built up quite an audience giving a presentation of her photos on the little screen. Our guide translated as one woman looked on, awe-struck “Beautiful. Beautiful lady. When I am re-incarnated, I want to come back as a foreigner”. By far the most profound statement of the trip.

Our little motorbike did us proud, sputtering in to Pyin Oo Lwin just ahead of a menacing thunderstorm. Unfortunately as I sloshed around identical mud streets looking for Francis’ cherry wine factory to return the bike, it died. He met us at a cafe and after fronting him some ‘guilt money’ he left, still more concerned about our trip than the future of his bike. We felt pretty terrible.

We split the remainder of Lidka’s time between Bagan - a vast, atmospheric plain littered with Buddhist pagodas, some say rivalling Ankor Wat - and Inle Lake. Inle Lake is home to several groups - Shan, Pa O, Intha and the Padaung who are one of the famous ‘long neck’ tribes who lengthen their necks with zebedee-like brass rings. Unfortunately their home in Kayah state at the foot of the lake is currently off-limits due to heavy fighting. The Intha actually live on the lake in large villages on stilts. They’re pretty industrious too. We went on a boat trip around silk weaving factories, silversmiths, blacksmiths and the like. There’s also bars, restaurants, temples and shops all lining the crafty little water streets. Everyone has their own little teak canoe to get around. Like an alternative reality I’d prayed for aged 10.

Their main industry believe it or not though, is farming. I have no idea how it all got started but an enormous acreage of the lake has been converted into meticulously maintained floating vegetable gardens. There is some kind of floating ’seaweed’ as they called it, that occurs naturally and forms beds which are then covered with rich topsoil. They’re apparently buoyant enough to be stepped on, but I suppose the true innovation about farming on water is that you can effortlessly glide around the beds filling your canoe with vegetables and then take them directly off to market. Floating markets, of course. The lake is pretty shallow for most of the year but does rise by as much as 2m in the rainy season. Each bed is tethered to bamboo poles lodged into the lake floor and rises with the water level. It really is pretty clever stuff. And apparently they’re the best tomatoes in the country.
 

Part 2 will be along soon …   

The last month has been a strange journey, as much mental as physical. Despite being surrounded by the staggering beauty of Southern Thailand, I realised I was pretty much out of steam. By some series of accidents I ended up on killing time on Koh Pagnan at a full moon party which was predictably awful and my “what the fuck am I doing here ?” gland was fully raised. I went to visit Marten in Krabi and managed to go diving and look around a bit but what I took to be yet another parasitic illness turned out to be dengue fever when I got it checked out later in Bangkok. I managed (obliviously) to drink my way through it, but talk about kicking a man when he’s down.

I’d been kind of worried about the number of illnesses I’ve been struck down with this year, not to mention the fact that (due to 8 months on anti-malarials as I now find out) my hair has visibly thinned out, so you can imagine my joy when the unsympathetic doctor looked at my blood results and said casually that she thought I probably had HIV, did I want tested ? A common Bangkok line of questioning ensued - was I absolutely sure I hadn’t had sex with a prostitute ?

Well, this was pretty much rock bottom, but I guess no journey into the unknown would be complete without a near death experience. I wondered around Bangkok in a daze for a day, convinced my homecoming would be nothing more than a chance to say good bye to a home I was already pining for. They wanted me to wait 3 days for the results but by that evening I couldn’t take any more and phoned to tell her I was going home and to send the results home. I practically had to restrain myself from running down the Kao Sahn Rd shouting “I’ve got Dengue !! Woo-hoo !!”

So, given another chance at life I decided, what the hell, I’ll have a look at China. My dengue must have been pretty mild as I’ve heard horrific stories, but for me it pretty much ruled out trekking in Yunnan and Sichuan, which judging be the impressive mountain ranges and gorges I drove through, must be quite an experience. I flew into Kunming, a pretty uneventful modern Chinese metropolis. It has all the the aesthetics I’d expected - harsh sunlight blanching a mild smog, canyons of identical faceless suburban highrises, brand new roads and motorways triumphantly carving their way out of surrounding mountains and paddy fields flowing into a city centre full of ‘glass curtain’ office blocks, giant screens and lashings of hieroglyphic Chinese neon. But, the first contridiction to the kind of inhumane stereotype of ‘factory living’ I had was the warmth and easy pace of life on the streets. Little pockets of people everywhere were drinking tea, playing cards or majhong in the long afternoon shadows. Rather that the incessant beeping of tuk tuks, of the main expressways there was just the ringing of bicycle bells and to my complete surprise (as I was nearly run over several times) the noisless manouvering of electric scooters. They’re all over Western China (can’t say about the East) but hey, Holland hasn’t even managed that !

Acht … I’m going to have to cut the China commentary short, need to go to the party. I’ll update this post with the full story, a few people have been curious about China.

Hong Kong is a funny little place. A big city plagued by smalless. As if central London was detatched from the UK and floted off down to Jersey. It’s been an interesting time to be here too, in the run up to tonight’s big 10 year celebrations. President Hu is here, pro-democracy marches are trying to bolster Hong Kong’s confidence in it’s own future as much as that of China’s. More about that later too …. and Burma … dammit if I wasn’t trying to make the most of my time here I’d have finished that too. Paragraphs from finshed.

So. The meaning of life. Well … I’ve yet to meet a traveller for whom travel made anything clearer. Haven’t a clue. Travel until you’re lost. The point of going away is to be able to come home. I’m sure I’ll work it out when I get there.

Anyway, I’ll have some tidying up to do on this site. See you all soon ! Take care all.  

I didn’t learn the name of the album until years later and whenever I hear it now - pure, sonorous notes in some strange organic pattern, like chimes colliding in deep space, set against vast, minimal soundscapes that build and diffuse like sunspots - I remember how ’sci-fi’ the great departure halls felt. A complete contrast to the frantic, colourful chaos of Asia just outside.

I’ve always assumed the choice of music was an accident. The sort of cultural mistranslation that is sadly dying out in the age of information. I like to think of a straight-backed Thai airport official on a business trip, killing time at at the Heathrow ‘Our Price’. I see him picking up the CD box and sounding out the words to himself - “Myu-sic faw aya-ports” - before the penny drops and he rushes proudly off to the counter.

Touching down 9 years later at Bangkok’s new Suvarnabhumi airport - a futurist Thai temple of industrial steel, glass and tensile fabric - I was made instantly aware of how much Thailand had moved on. I floated above the city on a slick airport bus as it banked and weaved between glittering highrises like an urban rollercoaster along 2 and 3 tier expressways. The foundations for some of these enormous concrete spines were being laid 9 years ago as I sat choking in a gridlocked sea of tuk-tuks, old cars and overloaded trucks. The flyovers that were finished had whole communities living under them. The tuk-tuks are almost all gone now. Instead, squadrons of sporty new Toyota taxis with split colour paint jobs race around the multi-level streets like a playstation driving game. And the tarmac no longer wears thin at the edge of Bangkok; a monster 6 lane highway (politically entitled ‘the Beijing-Singapore expressway’) connects it to the North and flows comfortably with an almost entirely new fleet of Japanese cars and show-off pick-up trucks of American SUV proporttions. Personal debt, my cousin tells me, rivals that of even the UK.  

I don’t know whether it’s a general concensus but I would find it difficult to now call Thailand a ‘developing country’ perhaps with the exception of the poor North East where I’ve never been. Modern Thailand feels confident, organised and highly consummerist with one foot firmly planted in Japan and the other in America. Not the ‘Land of Smiles’ I remember … but then the iscessant smiling always did strike me as a bit unnatural.

The next day I went to the main bus terminal to make my way North to my cousin’s place in Phitsanoulok. It was a few days before Thai New Year and an exodus was in full swing as Bangkok’s workforce deserted the capital to spend the holidays with their families in the provinces. More importantly, New year coincides with the Songkhran water throwing festival, which is about the most fun you could hope to have in the height of an Asian summer. It was also mine, Iain Scrimigeor and the Buddha’s Birthday - but they seemed to be less well publicised.

I’ve sat in more than a few bus and train stations in my time and would say it’s a fairly reliable way of seeing a large cross-section of society in one place. I’d expected to find that the consumer riches I’d seen so far were in the hands of the Bangkok middle-class but as I waited, seated in front of an HD plasma screen, eating a sandwich from 7-11, I couldn’t see a single toothless old man or a family with all their worldly possessions neatly bound up in sacks; a standard sight across Asia. Instead what I saw was Thai individualism and plenty of disposable income - Kids with punky Japanese haircuts fiddled with mobiles and mp3 players fiegning moodyness, couples smooched, shared take-away iced coffees and picked at sweets, families argued over where to sit, what to buy for the journey … Everybody had on branded clothing but not derivative Western fashions - you won’t catch a Bangkok teenager with some generic ‘Sports USA’ t-shirt. Though many of the brands are ours, they have a well-developed understanding of Thai fashion and style.

It’s amazing how only this surface layer of global products and services can take so much of the foreign-ness out of visiting a country. Desipite still not knowing much about Thai culture, they now use more codified global language I’m led to think I understand. Familiar fashion statements divide people into familiar social groups, familiar shops sell familiar goods and function predictably. Phones, magazines, ticket machines … they’re all a little different but on a fundamental level, familiar and unthreatening. Not that I’m a fan of Tarantino Philosophy, but remember his Pulp Fictional wisdom about Europe’s “little differences” ? Well, you know the BK here doesn’t have ‘Royale with cheese’ …

Obviously Thai culture is alive and well and still as wild and incomprehensible as ever, but I reckon Globalisation does rob us of the ’sights and sounds’ level of foreign-ness that pretty much defines a short holiday to a place. Thankfully I’m on a long trip and while sounding like I’m lamenting the past a bit here, my attitude to each country I’ve visited is to look at 2007 - a brand new country very few explorers have ever been or written about ! Thailand, more than anywhere, has the most to be happy about. When I think back now to India’s dusty, crowded, non-consumer streets and the people of all ages and backgrounds who confidently assured me “We are going to be the next big superpower” it seems so naieve.

Phitsanoulok is a fair sized commercial town, the capital of it’s province but not famed for anything in particular and with little to attract tourists other than a particularly shiny Buddha. Comparible perhaps to Perth (Scotland) where Al used to live. I liked it. And it was interesting to get to know an ordinary Thai town - something I’m always feeling I should do in every country. Al is teaching English in a local school with a handful of other native speakers. Of the 10 or so non-teachers who live there most are retired or work overseas in the oil industry and have settled here with their Thai wives. I met them all at the expat bar and like at all such outposts that chat was gossip, scandal and “Bloody Thailand”.

Even for the ones who’ve mastered the language gave the impression that tue integration or acceptance is difficult. The strict laws of ownership that have long protected Thailand against foreign exploitation don’t show any signs of weakening and work permits, immigration and residency appear to be becoming tighter. Even for people who’ve invested years in the country, married and had children it seems difficult to be anything other than farang (foreigner).

The origins of the Songkhran festival were in showing respect for your elders by wetting their brow with scented jasmine water. It is now a nationwide, anarchic, drunken carnival of waterfighting that takes over every town, village, and city centre for between 3 and 14 days depending on the regional tradition. Groups of family and friends get dressed up and either gather outside shops or houses where they dance, eat, drink and throw water from big barrels at passers-by or they climb into the back of their bling new pick-up trucks, dance, eat, drink, and throw water from big barrels at everything in sight. The main streets in Phitsanoulok were gridlocked with this from 10-6 for 3 days straight. Mental. Sadly after being run-over by a pick-up, Al was in no fit state to hang off the back of one fighting drunken Thais all day, so we mainly drowned ourselves at the bar. I took a couple of solo missions into the mayhem and was soaked, splatted, covered in clay, made to down brandy, whisky, eat fish balls, groped by ladyboys, cheered, feared or revered by group after group of ecstatic, hyperactive Thais. As Wendy rightly warned me, a few people do indeed slip ice into thier buckets. Sobering.

There’s an unofficial ceasefire at sundown. People hang up their water-pistols and head down to the food festival by the river. Food is Thailand’s no.1 hobby and alot of the stalls looked pretty gourmet. I bumped into another Weegie and we headed to the insect stall where we each bought a deep-fried scorpion and a bag of crickets to share. Leg by leg, claw by claw, we slowly worked our way through them with Grossman-like procrastination no doubt to the irritation of the other Europeans - drunk and extremely proud of ourselves. I took one home for my cousin and failed to scare him by putting it on his leg and waking him up. “What the fuck am I supposed to do with this ?” said Al, half asleep. “Eat it. They’re good”. Said me, smugly. Without pausing consider it Al crunched through it like a biscuit in two bites. “Morg, after 4 years in this country, nothing disgusts me anymore …”

Al managed to get us a vehicle (surprise, surprise … a pick-up !) and we decided to have a few days at the beach in Hua Hin. Before we could head off Al had an appointment at the police station about his accident compensation settlement. When the day finally arrived nothing was resolved and ‘the other party’ was nowhere to be seen. I came back from the toilet to find a farmer making a show of giving a bag of mangos to Alasdair and to the policeman. I looked over to Al after he shook my hand. “Who’s this ?”. “That’s the bastard who ran me over !”

Hua Hin is a nice but pretty generic beach resort with none of the stunning limestone cliffs of the South. Tourism in Thailand continues to mainstream and from what I can see is becoming ‘the New Spain’ for a wide international audience. Pizza places, Swedish restaurants, Mexican food, even a Celtic pub. And of course, go-go bars and sex tourists.

The whole issue of sex in Thailand is a complicated one that’s puzzled me since my last visit. Thailand has always seen itself as a country with a strong moral code and the media and the King at times blame foreign influence for the rise of prostitution among other evils. There is obviously a case for this as towns like Pattaya, ‘The Biggest Brothel in the World’ were founded with GI paychecks on R+R visits during the Vietnam war. Despite the the governments complete co-operation with the Americans I can’t help think that compared to a country like India - where just kissing sex tourist Richard Gere can cause moral outrage even today - Thailand must have had some history of concubinage for the enterprise to have been such a huge success. More than that, a figure I’ve heard a number of times, is that foreigners account for only 15% of Thailands sex industry. That’s a big number when you think of the relative populations of tourists and Thais. But 85% of what’s left is enough to make me think there’s something indigenous within the culture.

This is a culture that is more open and indiscriminate against transexuals (ladyboys) than ours. Being served in a restaurant or shop by one is a everyday occurance. My cousin tells me out of a class of 30 fifteen yearolds, he normally has around 4 or 5 camp or ladyboys. Girls here aren’t hidden under burkhas or giggling from behind saris, they’re wearing little tops, tennis skirts, hotpants, getting tattoos and flirting. Yet you can’t see kissing on the TV and all ‘good girls’ are still expected to virgins when they are married. Confusing.

A trip to the bookshop put me straight on a few points. Thailand does indeed have an impressive history of brothel keeping stretching back before the Ayuthaya period. The countries ingrained sexual double-standard where girls have to remain chaste or are effectively worthless and men are encouraged to be ‘experienced’ apparently being a driver in their existance. Polygamy was also commonplace, indicating a fair amount of fooling around and abandonned wives turning to prostitution. ’Modern Thailand’ as we know it, emerged at the start of the 20th century and as trade flourished Chinese labourers poured into the country and a whole new sex indursty was born. The country ceased to be an absolute monarchy in 1932 and adopted monogamous laws to appear more ‘civilised’ in puritanical European circles but old habits and double-standards live on it would appear.

I’m not sure what the story is with young Thais. I headed down Bangkok and went clubbing with a friend before heading to Myanmar. We went to RCA, a street full of new-build designer clubs with impressive interior design and soundsystems. Immaculately dressed, young Thais guzzled down whisky as their assigned waiters fussed around them like parents filling their glasses with ice. Hip-hop is big at the moment though there wasn’t much in the way of homeboysleaze bumpin’ and grindin’ … just lots of fresh faced younguns smiling and jumping up and down.

It must be an exciting time for them. A whole new city of skytrains, undergrounds, mega-malls, cineplexes, nightclubs, bars and gig venues has propelled Thai culture into the future and they’re at the front of it. One of the malls there - The Siam Paragon - just left me speachless. Waterfalls, fountains and flaming torches flank the exterioir as you decend from a skytrain station, suspended above a major junction. Inside is light, airy and extremely spacious and every single shop is a flagship designer store. Think of a high end brand and it will be there. You can buy a Porsche, Ferrari or Lambourghini on the 3rd. The world’s largest aquarium is in the basement. Some of the cities best restaurants on the first. A 15 screen cineplex with IMAX on the top. Two music venues. Mega-Asia. We just can’t do that sort of thing. We have our Bond and Bucchanan streets and we’re unlikely to build giant bladerunner skytrains down the middle of them. But brave new Thailand can.

I know most of you, quite understandably, don’t like posting your opinions on the internet for all the world to see. Just send me an e-mail. I’m more curious than ever to know what you’re reading.

I had an idea ages ago, back in Sri Lanka when Sarah and Brian were recommending ‘further reading’ to me on the subject of the British Empire. I suppose one of the things travel has taught me, by having to find out information on a daily basis, is that people will always be more useful than guidebooks or computers. Not only can people quickly tell me exactly what I want to know (and sometimes things I hadn’t even known to ask about) but I can also make a judgement as to how applicable this information will be to me based on what I can pick up about them. Dead sophisticated stuff - it’s called ‘a conversation’. Aren’t humans amazing ? 

Computers are useful though. This was actually the central premise of mine and Rob’s unrealised masterplan for an internet video travel guide - it allowed you to meet the sources and guage for yourself whether you thought their information was your sort of information. As I’ve travelled about so many books have come my way from such people I’ve met along the way, not to mention the inspiration to learn more about subjects I knew nothing about. And while I have you guys - my peers - reading this stuff, you no doubt have many a book in mind for me. Tell me. Or perhaps I’ve inspired you and you’re after a book yourself. It’s so much better than browsing a bookshop apathetically looking for the inspiration to buy something - I am a man, and by definition crap at shopping.

Anyway, this whole blog thing has evolved along a path I could never really have predicted. I had the idea long ago to have a little book exchange section at the bottom of each post but it’s a bit late in the day now. I did buy ‘The Scottish Empire’ as Sarah recommended but I’ve seen slimmer volumes of the phone book and had to strap it back onto Lidka’s rucksack and send it home for practical reasons. 

So a compromise of the idea is this - you lot can post ideas anywhere if there’s something you really enjoyed that I’ve jogged your memory of. I’m definately on the hunt for books about China, fact or fiction, from any perspective - though any of the countries, topics or random suggestions would be great too. Even if it takes me years to get through them !

And I’ll make this page an updateable bibliography of books that have really inspired me along the way. I imagine my Dad and Susan’s jaws will now be hittng the floor - Morgan, the boy who didn’t ‘read’ until he was 18 is now proposing something that sounds scarily like a book club. I’m not going to pretend it’s cool.

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BIBLIBLOGRAPHY

Book: How We Believe : Science, Skepticism and the Search for God by Micheal Schermer

Related Post: The Indescribable Varanasi

I bought this hoping to continue with the train of thought I was on when I met Dr Mishra who is both priest and scientist. It amazes me how little Hinduism conflicts with the modern world in India and the book is good in the sense that it is not just a scientific counter-argument to God and more of a ‘critical thinking’ approach to understanding why humans inherently tend to believe in things. Neuroscientists, psychiatrists, cosmologists, evolutionary biologists and the like all present the latest findings. Schermer is an ex-Christian and theology graduate who now contributes to Scientific American works within Caltech and MIT circles. 

To me it raised a completely new story without answering it - belief in God in America has increased to over 90% in recent years. Belief in Creationism (God literally created the earth and humans in 7 days, Darwinism is to be countered) is up to over 40% along with belief in UFO’s among other completely mental things. Interestingly enough it’s largely the stubborn Creationists who don’t believe in UFO’s - crikey ! Apart from Europe, belief in God seems to be going up in alot of coutries. I read today that due to a few landmark legal cases in China where the police have been forced to stop imprisoning Christians, Christianity is on the rise. The article predicted there could be 100 million of them by 2010 - the largest Christian nation in the world. God, or something like him, is alive in the modern world.

Books: City of Djinns; A year in Delhi, The Age of Kali - both by William Dalrymple

Related posts: All India - I never got around to a Delhi post but his book was the reason I spent a whole week there.

Without a doubt the best books I have read on India. He wrote City of Djinns as a young 20-something Scot just married and moved in Delhi. It’s fantastic whether you’ve been to India or not, as he somehow manages to weave the amazing story of a city invaded and abandonned by 8 successive rulers around his own struggles as a newcomer amongst the big, dirty, crazy product of influences that remains. Almost like a detective story he rumages around among the backstreets and finds living remnants of every one of it’s incarnations. Hidden Glasgow readers take note.

Age of Kali is a sharp series of portraits of modern India giving a sense of where the country has come from and where it may be headed. Might not be the most optimistic prediction but as always, along with his vivid, colourful writing, you feel he’s being honest and objective. He has style and integrity.

Others to type up later:

Letters from Burma - Aung San Suu Kyi

Forest Life in Ceylon - K. Knighton

Mikhail Bulgakov - The Master and the Margerita

Ghandi; His Life and Message to the World - Louis Fischer

Small is Beautiful - A study of Economics as if People Mattered - E F Schumaker

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Right … bugger this. I’ll add more later. Enjoy. And give me some books !

Anyway, the next entry, once I’ve cobbled it together, will be observations from 3 lazy weeks spent with my cousin in Thailand. Riveting stuff.

Well, I hope May is filling all of you with summer optimism. Lidka and I are having a great time (Lidka: despite the mosquitos!), tell you all about it someday soon.

After a torturous 36 hour bus journey from Varanasi to Kathmandu I practically needed crutches myself. I was captivated by the city though and made the most of what little time I had walking about till I had feet injuries too. I really don’t know much about Nepal. While in other posts I’ve at least tried to sound informed, I didn’t even have a guidebook, so most of what I write here is based on local hearsay and my own musings.

Somehow, I’d always imagined old Kathmandu to be a melting pot, like a rich, dark and spicy Himalayan broth. And it is. Whilst remaining isolated by its extreme mountain geography, it grew rich culturally and financially through trade with its powerful neighbours. It took a couple of days of wandering through old Kathmandu’s strange and beautiful architecture for me to make any sense of it.

Traveling from the French Alps through Switzerland to Austria or Germany is as you’d expect, a transition of cultures. Rustic, hardy French barns and chalets become more like chocolate box log cabins with flowery window boxes. Languages, food, music, all mingle to a degree. In this way Nepal does feel like the border between India and the Oriental or Mongol East. But much of the weird variety of buildings from Kathmandu’s golden age seem to come from somewhere entirely different. At each turn of a corner I would feel like I was in an Asian inspired France, Poland, Italy, Denmark or Holland. I assume this is coincidental and is more a product of the amazing skill and creativity of the Nepali craftsmen.

Walking down the narrow red brick streets I decide the best I can do for an umbrella description is an Asian Amsterdam. That place again. Like Amsterdam its grandeur isn’t a product of wide, imperially proportioned spaces but the rich detail packed into the brickwork of every street and alleyway. The pagoda roofs (which the Nepalis claim to have invented) of Hindu temples and Buddhist stupas slot neatly into residential courtyards like Dutch churches. The hot, dusty summers and monsoon rains might be familiar to South Asia, but the carved wooden shutters and pitched roofs with Alpine eaves are built for the harsh Nepali winter, again giving it a ‘European’ feel - maybe I’ve just been away to lon ! Wood carving is to Nepal what stone carving is to India, and everywhere you can see stunningly intricate window and doorframes, like the backend of old Spanish galleons.

While the woodcarving is apparently a dying art, I did see some evidence out in the ever-expanding Kathmandu suburbs that Nepalis are perhaps just inherently creative. In India and Sri Lanka 90% of all residential new builds are dull concrete cubes often with the reinforcement rods left poking through the roof to allow later addition of more storeys. Despite being no doubt as un-regulated, Kathmandu residents lavish an enormous amount of extra effort moulding concrete facades to resemble Greek columns, American woodpanelling or Spanish villa archways and verandas, often all in one home ! Not one of these bizarre architectural chameleons look alike. Some are actually pretty grand despite the cheap building materials used, yet most are not even served by paved roads, dotted about, in semi-urban farmland.

Outside Kathmandu there are few proper roads never mind cities due to the fact that only a minute amount of the country is not on a slope of at least 30 degrees. Valleys are so steep and narrow that rivers tend to take up most of the valley floor. Roads are forced to follow the death defying contours of the mountains, often thousands of feet up. Near misses are frighteningly common and apparently every week, the newspapers report at least one bus tumbling off the edge, killing all but a lucky few. Packing the roof with passengers is common too - best views and best chance of jumping to safety I was starting to think. But, it was these mountains I’d come trek in and inevitably it’s these sorts of risks travelers are forced to take. Unlike the poor locals, only once or twice.

I booked a guide for an extortionate price and picked up everything I needed for the trek in a few hours for buttons. Possibly not entirely to North Face’s displeasure, Nepal is a country that at times seems sponsored by the brand, with locals, guides, porters even remote mountain communities wearing their gear. It’s a funny sight - like arriving in Mongolia to find nomadic tribes kitted out with the latest camping equipment. While it might do wonders for North Face’s mountain credibility, I doubt they’re making a penny from it. In downtown Thamel, Kathmandu, shop after shop will flog you everything from hiking boots and walking poles to down jackets, expedition tents and sleeping bags and nearly all of it is cheap Chinese fakery. It will be Gortex but it will fall to pieces within a month - presumably the locals do their own stitching. My guide told me about some unwitting Tibetans who’d shown up trying to sell a mysterious brand called ‘Orth Face’. Anyway, more than good enough for the likes of me.

After an 11 hour ‘adventure bus ride’ (as my guide called it), we reached Syabru Bensi, our jumping off point for our trek into the Langtang valley. Staring into the mouth of the valley in the late evening light, my first sighting of a snow capped Himalayan peak looked exactly as kitsch and unrealistic as the backdrops to psychedelic Hindu illustrations of Krishna I’d seen in India. Because of the hazy light filtered through dusty air, cascading silhouettes of mountains appeared as one dimensional as stage scenery. Crowning this enormous wall of ‘view’ was a single snowy peak, glowing pink in a hazy aura of light that appeared to come from another world. In reality the peak, Naya Kang, was 100km away and over 4000m closer to space - it is a different time of day up there. I apologised to the Hindus for my ignorance.

For the next 3 days we climbed up through the valley as it arcs its way round to Kyanjin Gompa, the last settlement before the valley turns to glacier. The region is populated by a mix of Tibetan exiles and the Nepali Tamang, who are traditionally yak and oxen farmers. As tourism increases, there are an increasing number of guesthouses and crafts for sale in their villages. Tourists are often outnumbered by porters however. What we are sold as ‘trekking routes’ are essentially roads connecting the galaxy of little villages that make up Nepal, each clinging to their own perilous mountain outcrop. Everything has to be carried by these guys (and girls) and most think nothing carrying as much as 120kg uphill for 8 hours a day. Like a procession of hermit crabs, I saw some bizarre and enormous ‘outsized baggage’ attached to these peoples backs - 3 colour TVs, an entire henhouse of live poultry and in a specially constructed metal cage to take the strain, 3 full gas canisters. I got twinges just watching. Many of them are carrying base camp supplies up to the high altitude expeditions or several backpacks of lazy tourists. One French group had laden a guy entirely with baguettes, wine and cheese. Ah … the French.

I was accompanied by a pretty wacky cast of characters. Sonam, my fiercely loyal but slightly unhinged guide. Bianca, a Dutch civil engineer with a chronic stutter, and her guide. And every so often a voice would boom out from the trees “My frieeend, Cap-i-tan Morgan !” signaling the arrival of Spanish surrealist painter, José de Léon.

José was a romantic creation. Rugged but slightly out of shape. A proud, manly beard and moustache. Round his neck a tangle of Catholic, Buddhist and Hindu regalia and a flowing silk scarf or cravat. And resting on a Victorian walking cane, one hand adorned with an enormous ‘Godfather’ ring. He carried himself like a companion of Picasso or Hemmingway with a penchant for introductions in the style of Zorro or some flamboyant Spanish conquistador - “My name … is José de Léon !”. He had a small chess set with him and insisted I play him each time we met, against some amazing mountain backdrops.

My guide, Sonam, was also a funny character. An energetic wee guy, not stupid but wildly idealistic with a tendency to get himself worked up about Nepal’s many injustices - perfect recruitment fodder for the Maoists or any other revolutionary army. Despite his many strange contradictions he was consistently honest and told me a number of interesting stories about himself and the Maoists.

He considers himself to be a reformed character. Now a vegetarian he told me with a high pitched laugh that when he was a child he was obsessed with killing animals. Strangling chickens and bringing an axe down into the skull of a yak being his enduring favourites. He is from the Gorkha region and like the Sherpas from Sherpa, with ancestral pride wanted nothing more than to fight for the British Gurkha army. He was rejected due to some unexplained psychotic episode and spent a short spell persuading the families of pretty young village girls they should send their daughters to promising jobs in Kathmandu, whereupon they were bundled into vans and sold to brothels in Delhi. Somehow his mother and young wife kept him from joining the Maoists (perhaps because none are paid or even fed) where his high moral sympathies now lie.

As I said earlier, I don’t know enough about Nepal to say anything objective about the Maoists but it is obvious that the King is a psychopath and his corrupt military-backed government have reduced the country to a political and economic mess that has tested the Nepali people understandably to breaking point. From what Sonam told me about the Maoists they sound a little like Marxists or even Leninists. At a village level, rich high caste families are forced to surrender land and sometimes money to the poor (sometimes with revolutionary guns being used to settle old scores). They also attempt to influence the agricultural economy by running village workshops educating people about crop diversification and market forces. Their ambition ultimately seems to be to defeat the King and become a Mao-communist state. The plight of Tibet, through Tibetan exiles eyes, can’t look particularly rosy.

Using Kyanjin Gompa as a base, we followed the valley round to the edge of the glacier at around 4000m. A huge wall of rock stretching up to almost 7000m marks out the border with Tibet. We also hiked up a small peak in an afternoon that, due to the altitude of the whole region, easily took us up to the height of Mt Blanc. The scale of the mountains felt alpine, but with this increased height, the whole range sits among darker blue, oxygenless skies.

Although the predominant religion in the Langtang region is Tibettan Buddhism, on the whole Nepal is largely Hindu. It’s interesting to follow a religion through a continent and see how it changes when assimilated by a different culture and crossbred with the roots of ancient beliefs that existed before. I read a strange article in India by a guy with ‘Borat syndrome’ about ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’s depiction of Himalayan India as blood sacrificing, child enslaving savages. Pah ! he went on, with pent-up rage from 1984, the West wouldn’t dare do that now with our burgeoning economy and reputation for high-tech software development. Of course not. What surprised me (aside from the fact that it was supposed to be set in a real country at all) was that Kali worship, though exaggerated and villainised to Bollywood proportions, does exist. Kali, a scary looking female goddess with a long tongue and a necklace of skulls, can exorcise evil spirits from people believing themselves to be possessed, in exchange for a few litres of blood (normally animal). A book I read later claimed that in Calcutta, until 1835, when it was outlawed by the British, a young boy was beheaded every week for Kali !

Before Hinduism and Buddhism, the Himalayas were animist, appeasing the spirits they believe lived all around them. Perhaps this is why Kali and her reincarnation Durga are so popular here. Tibetan Buddhism too, absorbing the ancient Bon animist customs seems so superstitious and ritualistic compared to the gentle, pragmatic Sri Lankan Theravada Buddhism. The aesthetic of the religions too is different - Wood carved pagodas replace the towering Hindu stonework of India. Prayer wheels, prayer flags and purple rather than orange denote Buddhist monks or lamas.

I’d chosen the Langtang trek partly to see some of the ‘traditional village culture’ which tourists like me had kind of eroded. On the route back I persuaded Sonam to take me through a lower level valley that sees far less white faces. It was a good move, for the last 2 days we wandered among beautifully still, quiet forests, through farming communities with their terraced, hillside fields, along rivers and gorges and met barely a handful of tourists. The real highlight was staying with a Tibetan family in the picturesque village of Briddhim. While the local tourist authority have definitely trained them on how to cater for tourists, there’s nowhere near enough of us for them to rely on it, so it feels like a working (though not particularly active) village.

Inside the dark, carved wood interior of Nangsa and Pieche’s home, the only trace of the 20th century was a radio and a colour photo of the Dalai Lama in a small shrine. Nangsa, a big and at times stern lady in colourful costume, busied herself making tea over an open fire in what, to me, looked like a fairytale kitchen. Huge blackened pots and pans hung amongst an armoury of hand beaten spoons and ladels. Intricate metalwork of brass storage pots and vessels glinted out from the darkness of a ship’s larder. We sat on the beds on thick, woven blankets and watched.

Like in India, men are ultimately the boss and are not expected to lift a finger at home. To me this at times makes them look ironically dependent and powerless as most are not able to do much by themselves. Unlike India however, ‘power’ seems to be less of an issue and society is far less segregated. Women sit next to men on busses, do a wider range of jobs and on the whole seem perfectly comfortable laughing, joking and arguing in male company. Whatever bizarre, repressive force that makes Indians spend their lives huddled together in giggling same-sex groups, doesn’t seem to exist here.

We left Nangsa to prepare dinner as Pieche took us on a tour of the village. Again, this is no doubt something they were advised to do by the tourist authority but have adapted it to suit the locals. For Pieche it was a pub crawl with free drink and for the friends and families whose homes we stopped by, a chance to flog crafts to the foreigner. I liked it. I’m used to being seen as a dollar sign and would take up the chance to stroll into a streetful of houses in any country in the world. Each family lit their fire and heated us up a glass or two of millet wine. ‘Wine’ is a bit of a euphemism for a drink fermented in less than a week and suffice to say, when we rolled home 2 hours later, Nangsa was less than happy with us. Pieche in particular was in the doghouse. He’d neglected to mention his wife’s weaving abilities. On seeing the scarf and trinkets (I’d at least had the sense to try and conceal), she spat out several angry mouthfuls of Tibetan at him as he grinned sheepishly, swaying on the spot.

Immediately after wading through a mountain of dahlbat (the Nepali staple diet) we all got under the covers and went to sleep. Nangsa’s deaf old auntie clattered about washing the dishes and preparing a meal for the animals for another hour. I drifted off to the sound of flames licking at the pots and her belching up dahlbat.

On our last day we walked to Timure, a few kilometres from another stretch of the Tibetan border. A small army camp just outside the village restricts most outsider access to the region by way of a funny little door erected on the path, manned by a couple of bored soldiers. I arrived just as a man with two Chinese TVs on his back was being waved through. Like many borders, it was a strange, surreal sight given our location. It marked the end of the road for us however. And just as well, we underestimated the grueling walk back to Syabru Bensi and arrived just before nightfall.

Back in Kathmandu, my trip ended with a flight over Everest with Buddha Air (a Birthday present to myself) and a dose of food poisoning at the hands of Sonam’s beautiful wife - the first meat I’d eaten in months. Vegetarians. A small price to pay for an amazing trip.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/el_morgo/sets/
 

Western travellers play their part in preserving the town’s almost mythological aura. As if describing some rite of passage they’ll say “Oh you HAVE to go to Varanasi !”. Finding out more is like a virgin asking a big brother about sex or a rookie soldier about Vietnam, no real descriptions are forthcoming. “Indescribable” they say, with oscar winning far away looks, “You just HAVE to go”.

Like teenage Amsterdam, it’s billed as an alternative reality - a mesmeric circus of strange rituals and behaviour, a relentless orgy of devotion, dirt and in the darkness, danger. Bells ringing, babies bathing, bodies burning. A city alive with life and death.

The heart of the action, as you’d imagine, is at the waters edge. The riverbank is buttressed by towering, austere walls of crumbling palaces, temples and decadent, balconied boarding houses. The winding passageways of the old town emerge from between the gaps and decend down long staircases, that fan out into public, ceremonial ghats and pavillions along the bank. Ghats are essentially wide stone steps that decend into a river or water tank and are a common feature across India. They are lively, community places where families bathe, women gossip whilst pulverising clothes and kids splash about in the water. Here though, the bathing is more reverential - fresh flowers and candles float around sadhus and priests repeating mantras, meditating and smoking hash. At the same time however, there’s an Indian festival atmosphere, with the exitable bustle of ordinary people in their best clothes, making alot of noise and enjoying themselves.

The main promenade is lined with kitsch fairy lights among traditional parasols and swarms with palm readers, mystics, sadhus, pilgrims, tourists and stalls selling religious paraphernalia. Floating alongside are old rowing boats, taking honeymoon couples and snap-happy groups on pleasure cruises.

Looking along the shoreline there’s an almost complete abscence of modern buildings. As the sky turns pink and the candles begin to twinkle on the water, the scene reminds me of old paintings of the Grand Canal in Venice, but with an air of something as ancient and mysterious as the Nile. I’m sure a historian could come up with a better analogy but suffice to say it feels like something from another world and another time.

At night the ghats feel edgier as the town becomes ‘possessed’. Hinduism is really good at creating this atmosphere. The interior of all temples are dimly lit by the glow of ghee lamps and fires. Carvings of gods with multiple arms, provocative breasts or animal heads emerge from the stone walls, stained oily black or red from thousands of years of offerings of coconut oil or powder. Westrern film makers have long used this aesthetic to denote anything ‘ancient’ or ‘ritualistic’ and compared to our neat little choirboys and church candles, it’s easy to see why. Across the city I can see fires burning, hear bells ringing and the beating of drums. It’s the prefect time to visit the burning ghats.

The burning ghats are just a minutes walk from the party-like revelry of the big evening puja (offering to the Ganges). After all the pomp and ceremony elsewhere in Hinduism I’m surprised how basic they are. 2 tiers of packed earth, each with room for 4 pyres, step up from the river and are bisected by a simple stairway leading up to a small temple complex. There is no light other than the flames from the funeral pyres. On the edge of the darkness, a wall of chopped wood stretches down to the muddy bank, where two boats are waiting to be unloaded. 3 bodies are ablaze when we arrive. It’s a powerful, primal atmosphere - like vikings preparing to sail to Valhalla.

A knowledgeable con-man showed us around the ‘forbidden’ areas. Women aren’t allowed to attend the cremation - they cry too much and this is bad for the karma of the soul leaving the body. The emotionless men carry the body down to the river and bathe it briefly before placing it on the pyre. A flame is then taken from the eternal fire (3000 years and counting …) and the kindling lit. The resultant ash is later tipped into the Ganges.

Babies and children are not cremated as their souls are pure and are instead taken out and sunk to the bottom of the river. Many appear to bob back up and scare the tourists however. Lepers are also not burned as leprosy apparently represents bad karma from a past life. So it’s ‘do not pass go’ for them, though they are relieved of the burden of leprosy in the following incarnation. And strangely, people bitten by cobras are not considered to be dead but under the influence of spirits. These bodies have a piece of paper with their name and address strapped to them and are floated down the river where jungle people will recover the body, perform sacred rites and return the victim home alive ! I did hear this from a con-man however. 

As this was being explained to me, my American friend Sadie, had grown quiet. I followed her gaze to the pyre behind me which had been lit while I was being lectured. I’d missed the sight of the first flames transform the body into a human kebab, but it was still a powerful experience. The body, once exposed to be nothing more than flesh and bone and eventually, an empty charcoal statuette, gives emphasis to the idea of the soul. The men sat casually on rocks or logs, like friends around a campfire, looking out at the water.

As a way to go, I really like it. By institutionalising such a simple, natural form of disposal, Hinduism really makes it strongest existential point - It’s not really about YOU. There is no YOU. There’s no monument to mark your existance or speech to sum up your life. Your body has been returned to the earth and your soul to the continuum. It’s complete impersonality serves to reinforce the point that you are part of a larger order, not an isolated existance. I dig that, even without faith in god.

I remember my Mum saying she thought funerals were becoming harder as we move away from the standard Christian format into New Age territory. I guess you’ve got to question whether clinging to Bob’s favourite pop songs and composing poems about what a great guy the miserable old bastard was, is spiritually or psychologically that healthy a thing for a culture that is actually pretty hands-off when it comes to death.

“Oh well, cheerio.” will hopefully be my last words, though more likely it will be “Aaaaaaaarghh”.

The next day Silu the con-man took me to visit a grand but decaying old building overlooking the burning ghats. It has the look of a bombed palace, it’s ornately carved balconies blackened by years of funeral smoke. It was donated by a rich industrialist to house people with no families who come and wait to die. Their cremation is then assured by the temple staff. I’m not quite sure how it works, but apparently when they are on their last legs they can obtain their own death certificate from an office in town to make the burning legal. That has to be the most efficient bit of paperwork in India !

It takes some 3 hours to burn a body properly. This takes around 60kg of good quality wood, which comes at a price. Many of the bodies found floating in the Ganges are from poorer families who just couldn’t afford to cremate them. The people who live out their last days here spend their time praying, meditating and saving for wood. There was only one old woman in the vast empty room when I visited. 3 people, including and Australian who’d been there for 9 years, died in the last few days. I’d hoped to talk to her and get a sense of how someone goes about waiting to die of natural causes, but she was cranky and I was tired. I gave her some wood money and left.

The Ganges I must point out, is not a clean river. Earlier this year it was added to a list of the top 10 rivers in the world in danger of being lost to irreversible pollution. Most travel guides revel in the image of ash and bodies being dumped metres upstream from bathers swimming, washing and even brushing their teeth in the same water. In reality though all of these activites combined make up only 5% of the pollution. The other 95% comes from the sewage and wastewater of Varanasi’s 1 million residents. It’s a classic Indian paradox; worshipping mother nature while at the same time choking her to death.

Sadie, the American girl who I’d been hanging out with, is a developing world water treatment engineer. I’d just been read in the paper about a symbolic protest the day before organised by a local group to mark World Water Day. We decided to pay them a visit to find out about Indian Environmentalism and try to meet their infamously charasmatic leader.

We were just about to give up. I tried one final time: “Professor Veer Bhadra Mishra, he’s here ?” in my best Hinglish. We were immediately lead into a large, simple chamber overlooking the river.

It was not what we’d expected. We’d assumed we’d find him behind a desk or maybe in the riverside laboratory they have set up. Instead Prof. Mishra, a warm, dignified man of at least 70, is sprawled a cushioned platfrom, barefoot and dressed in white robes. On chairs surrounding a small coffee table, a respectful audience sit in silence, patiently waiting to be heard. Our guide introduces us and motions for us to sit down before bowing reverently, touching the professors feet and dismissing himself. The old man nodded and continued his conversation with a man in a suit (a rare sight outside Delhi) who is holding up a piece of paper. From what I can gather the BJP have pledged money to a project. Prof Mishra, continually smiling, says he’ll only believe it when he sees the bank statement, despite the mans insistance. Several times he’s forced to stop talking as two young children tumble into the room and are given the full attention of a loving grandparent. After 15 minutes of this, he has yet to acknowledge us.

It’s like watching Ghandi or the Dalai Lama. He is the archetypal village elder or wise man, commanding unconditional respect with a gentle, familial informality. Only in Asia …

Eventually when it’s our shot, he turns to face us with an expectant smile and twinkling eyes, like a man who spends all day opening presents. He begins by giving us a full technical breakdown of the gravity flow treatment system they have designed and want to implement. I nod and pretend to understand. Then, without much prompting he tells us the story of his life. It’s a great story. He told me the best thing I could do for the Ganges was spread the word about it’s plight, so if you can bear to read any more of this mammoth post, please do.

At 14 his father died, passing on to him the responsibility of Mahunt (high priest) of the Sankat Mochan Temple. A pretty big deal. (This explained the feet touching …). Despite resistance, he went on to pursue his dual passion for science and studied engineering and until retirement was a professor of hydraulics and fluid mechanics at Varanasi university. Varanasi is a major centre for 3 things - god, higher education and classical music. He is also a classical musician.

In 1982, long before even the West had a notable green conscience, he set up the Sankat Mochan Foundation to raise awareness about growing pollution in the river. It drew opposition from both government and clergy that continues (if not only in private) to this day. The government are keen to avoid expense and responsibility and for the Hindus, accepting that their ’mother’ is diseased is like admitting the Vatican is haunted or Mecca is radioactive.

So began a battle against bureaucracy and bare faced corruption that 25 years later, is still unresolved. It’s such a high profile case, that has attracted international attention numerous times, it seems completely inconcievable that almost nothing has been done. And still to this day, this 70 year old man and his small staff are the only agency working on the problem. It really is a story of defeat being snatched repeatedly from the jaws of victory.

In the 80’s Rajiv Ghandi’s reforms decentralised many government powers enabling Varanasi to take control of its own sewage system for the first time. Their design, approved by experts worldwide, was given the green light only for council decision-making powers to be mysteriously revoked in the case of one city, Varanasi.

In the early 90’s after an article on the Foundation appeared in the New Yorker, an impassioned Ted Turner secured full funding for the project through the USAID development agency. In New Delhi several brand new Ganges NGO’s miraculously appeared and claimed the money.

Years later, Time Magazine listed Prof Mishra as one of their Global Environmental Heroes. Bill Clinton, on his first visit to India, keen to push his environmental agenda, asked to share the podium with (the still unknown in India) Prof Mishra.  New Delhi once again took notice but still, after the fanfare had died down, not a penny made it to Varanasi.

I ask him about the latest turn of events; Prime Minister Mohan Singh has responded to the top 10 endangered river posting by admitting that “… despite worshipping our rivers, we treat them with shocking disrespect and the fact is, they are badly polluted”. He beams, almost amused “once again the government pretends to be interested in the face of international pressure … let me tell you a story”

Two months ago was the Kumbh Mela, possibly the largest festival on earth, where around 70 million people come to bathe in the Ganges at Allahbad. So concerned were some of the religious groups about the pollution that the entire sadhu population (the stars of the show) threatened suicide over the issue. The government responded by issuing a statement saying the water had been tested and was found to be Class B, fit for purpose and no cleaning was required.

I’m now beginning to understand his reaction to the man with the piece of paper.

Ghandi never claimed to be a politician or a religious leader though was clearly both. Prof Mishra must be a similarly difficult adversary for the government to be able to dismiss. Despite being a scientist, in possession of raw data on pollution levels and their chemical compostion and even an engineering solution to the problem, he is also a high priest and views this primarily as a religious issue. “We are like the fish” he says “we cannot live without this water. It is our mother. How can you classify it as A or B or C ? Fit for what purpose ? Who are they to say ?”

This is what really fascinates me. I’ve always wanted to meet a scientist who has faith in God. For Prof Mishra though, the issue is far from esoteric. I’m dying to know if he can still embrace the water as a soul purifying goddess, knowing what he knows about its composition: “The rational mind and ‘here’ (puts his hand over his heart), the place where faith, love, music and decisions come from, are parallel lines. I have been blessed with both. But it’s what happens in the space in between them that is important”.

It’s a beautiful answer, but a bit of a tangent. I pushed him him again: “Yes, in my heart is a great dilemma and sadness. But the Ganga is my mother and as long as I can walk, I will bathe and drink the water every day. And after that, I will have it brought to me”.

I felt like I’d just hosted a TV interview, peppered with the names of celebs and world events. The man is a pro. As if to conclude this very ‘article’ he answered Sadie’s question about what kept him fighting on happily after all these upsets, with a quote from Pete Seger. Pete and the kids had apparently stopped by on a recent tour, jammed with the Prof, talked politics and even did a small benefit gig. Summing up the long struggle Pete said “I believe in miracles … Show me the report that predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall or the article that said Nelson Mandela would be released let alone go on to become president”. In a word, Faith.  

The Sonkran Festival is about to kick off here - 3 days of nationwide drunken waterfighting - My cousins mobile is +66 86936 8633 if you’re feeling flush.

OK, hope you’re all well. Thanks for my present mum !!