it was a 12 hour bus ride from new delhi to dharamsala, at the foothills of the himalayan mountain range in northern india. we started out and the night cooled and turned black, mosquitoes bit our ankles under the seats, bearded men cried 'bapu!' and begged for money through the window, fighting for space with turbaned sikhs selling water and juice or chips. "we said no seven times sir, please leave us alone."

we arrived in dharamsala, then a bit further north to mcleod ganj around 6am. rickshaw drivers drawn to us, our white skin, like moths to a flame. we followed a man in the background, short with a moustache ten minutes down the valley to a beautiful guesthouse perched on a cliff. the rocky himalayans disappeared into the distance, the valley fell below our balcony, dogs howled, the sun rose. we slept.

later in the day we wandered the hilly streets down to the tsulgukgang complex, a tibetan buddhist monastery. the dalai lama lives behind it. we turned the prayer wheel, bowed before golden buddhas, walked around barefoot. we looked through the gu chu sum movement gallery depicting the horrors of the chinese cultural revolution on the tibetan people; many of whom are now refugees in dharamsala. the tibetan government-in-exile meets at the secreteriat around the corner.

the next day we went on a short hike down the valley to the tibetan men-tsee-khang medical instiutute and looked at thangkas (tibetan fabric paintings) depicting the main ideals of ancient tibetan medicine. later in the afternoon, we sipped lemongrass tea on a balcony and ate tibetan momos (like perogies or dumplings), steamed and with hot sauce. from there it was a hike up the ridge to the village of dharamkot, sweeping views over the moutains, past crazy monkeys, who play on the old temples in the forest and to the top of a mountain where hundreds of tibetan prayer flags were tied in the trees and flapped in the wind.

monkeys roam the streets of these northern hill towns in india. they're a menace; stealing sunglasses, rifling through unsuspecting tourists pockets. we were warned not to make eye contact, or that we should carry a stick so the monkeys know you mean business. they seemed to not care as we passed though, too busy doing monkey things...

shimla and chandigarh next...

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our last couple of days in Beijing were nice. the weather turned a bit cloudy and the sun refused to show his face, even for a moment. we spent one morning at the MAOsoleum, were the preserved body of Mao Tse-Tung lies in state in the center of tianamen square. going to see it is a wild and bizarre experience in communist policing.

no bags or cameras are allowed. you have to check them at a cloak room near the national museum, then make your way back to tianamen square. yellow lanes have been painted on the ground and everyone...and by everyone, i mean, thousands of devout chinese and a few foreigners, mash their way into the lines. soldiers and security guards, direct the foot traffic, perionically pulling people out of the line to search them or to question them. you're expected to be silent at this point. and everyone bows their heads and shuffles their feet. for me it felt like lambs being led to the slaugher.

as we entered the building, you are again searched up and down by many prying eyes. signs on the wall ask for "SILENCE!" just inside, a giant white statue of mao smiles and sits with crossed legs, in a giant white chair. hundreds of yellow and pink flowered boquets are spread out on the red carpet before him. you shuffle past and into the chamber where Mao rests in a sealed glass coffin, in a sealed glass chamber, with two fully armed soldiers at his side. you move past, and you're out and into the Mao gift shop. i wanted to purchase a very cool Mao bust in white porcelain but they were sold out. it's okay, i found it in a shop just outside of the forbidden city a couple of hours later.

we went to the beautiful and enormous Temple of Heaven in the evening and then spent the rest of the night drunk in a hutong laughing at all the spelling mistakes in the english signs around us. this one takes the cake, at a beauty shop, in giant yellow letters on the window: GEFVIDOF MOLE. it took us awhile, but eventually we got it: 'Get Rid Of Mole'.

off to Delhi the next night and arrived at 1:45am. there was a man with a sign with my name on it (the first time that's ever happened) waiting to pick us up and take us to our hotel. he stopped for gas, and then sped through the drunken truck drivers, rickshaws and buses, to central Delhi and our hotel in the Parharganj Area, just north of colonial Connaught Place. packs of wild dogs roamed the streets and chased the taxi as we turned corners. dogs...dogs everywhere at this hour. they kept us up all night, howling and attacking each other. i think i slept for an hour. oh yeah, forgot to mention the little cockroach who was there to greet us when we opened the door to our room...sitting on the bed. his friends came the next day and we had a party.

the next morning, we were up and off to Raj Ghat, the place where Mahatma Gandhi was cremated. it's in a beautiful park on the banks of the Yamuna river, just east of central Delhi. in it's place lies a black slab of marble and beside that a small group with drums keep up the mourning and prayers all day long. across the street was the Gandhi memorial and the Gandhi museum, which always makes me shed a tear. it houses a beautiful collection of paintings and Gandhi relics, as well as the blood stained dhoti he was wearing when he was murdered by a Hindu extremist in 1948.

later that day we went to my auntie Yaminifoi's house for lunch and chatted about India and our trip so far. we'll see her again at the wedding in Ahmedabad in a few weeks. from there we took a rickshaw to the Qutub Minar, a 2000 year old, enormous stone tower, surrounded by old mosques and crumbling ruins. it dates back to the beginning of Muslim rule in India.

Amanda's feet are destroyed. cuts and brusies everywhere. she walked into a boulder someone had carefully placed on the street yesterday night. all the street lights were burnt out so we were walking in the dark. oi!

tomorrow night, we head north towards the Himalayas and the Dalai Lama's residence at Dharamsala and Mcleod Ganj. today we'll be in old Delhi, at the Jama Masjid mosque, Chandni Chowk market and Spice Bazaar and the Red Fort.

Bysers!

Labels: india, travel

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the smog, the heavy air, the chattering mandarin, the colour red...it all hit us like a slap in the face stepping out of the airport into beijing on saturday. the crowds, the taxi drivers trying to charge us double, the communist mao-green and blue uniformed police men. each one holding clear flasks filled with floating green tea leaves in steaming hot water and a cigarette puffing away.

we took the airport shuttle to downtown, passing by congested tianamen, through 8 lanes in each direction and got off just around the corner from the forbidden city palace. passing by the giant concrete buildings that surround the infamous square, each topped with red flags, the yellow star of mao, his portrait hung proudly at the gate to the forbidden city...but "NO PICTURES please!", as amanda is learning. it seems the police don't like her too much and she gets yelled at left, right and center.

back at the same hostel...and i think the same exact room where i was three years ago. i'd say the streets are cleaner, the ancient alleyway hutongs that i loved so much are being bulldozed to make way for new apartments, but many still remain around the hostel. amanda and i spend our evenings sitting on curbs drinking 2.5 yuan beers (40 cents for 700 mL) mostly yanjing pijo and tsingtao pijo. we watch ladies bent at 90 degree angles putter by, bicycles, mopeds, short stumpy dogs running. whole browned ducks, with the beaks on, turn in giant glass ovens. children play hop-scotch. men rumble their throats and shoot green snot out of each nostril. everyone wants us to come in and look, to come in an buy. we drink our beers. who needs the theatre when there's a free show every night in the hutongs...this is china, i repeat to myself.

we saw the forbidden city on sunday. most of the main buildings are being restored, but it's still impressive. spanning almost 100 city blocks, it was the home of the emporers of china from hundreds of years ago until just recently. the park behind the city houses a massive buddhist pagoda in a park with a lake. families paddle swan shaped boats around and couples walk arm in arm around its inner side.

we wandered through tianamen square, through thousands of people snapping photos of the 'monument to fallen heroes' or the concrete block that holds the preserved body of mao tse-tung 'the father of china', which we'll go see today.

it seems that every morning there's something secret going on at tianamen and we've had to make enormous detours to get around the massive police lines and groups of soldiers "protecting the country". i asked one what was going on...he said 'it's a secret' with the kind of smile that told me that he had no idea why he was there either. the soldiers clear out by early afternoon and the square opens to the public again.

yesterday, we hiked the great wall from jinshanling to simatai. it's something most people rarely have the chance to do once, and i'm lucky enough to have done twice. it's a pretty grueling hike, up and down steep inclines of crumbling bricks over 10 km. the views are incredible and by the end of it i was exasperated both by the constant climbing and by the hassle of poor farmers who follow you the whole way trying to sell 'water-coke-beer' or giant great wall picture books and t-shirts.

i've taken hundreds of photos and should get some up soon. for now it'll just be these stories.

flying to india tomorrow night...

Labels: china, travel

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when i was maybe twelve years old, i got a birthday gift from a family friend. i still have it today, and it's provided me with years of weird, nerdy enjoyment.

the gift was a hand-held micronta microscope that magnifies 30 times. i'd run around the house and look at everything up close.



recently, i found a discussion on a photography website somewhere about taking pictures through the eyepiece of microscopes. i tried it, and came up with these photos. they aren't the best because, obviously it's not an easy task. i had to hold the lens of my camera up against the eyepiece and then just hope for the best lighting and focus. i could adjust the focus by moving the lens slighty away or closer to the eyepiece, but even then i was still winging it.


Yellow Thread


Skin from the inside. See the pores?


A mosquito larva I found in my pond.


A hair follicle and red thread.


My green AE shirt.


I found some eggs something had laid on a plant on my deck.


The eggs through the microscope.


This is what hatched out of the eggs. Hundreds of these tiny caterpillars.

Labels: macro, photography

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well, another summer has come to an end. vancouver's nights are cold and the days are rainy and i miss the sweaty heat of july. work has been fine, and i enjoy it, mostly because of the people i work with, but something else is calling me eventually...i hope.

i've started doing some volunteer work with a community police station in Vancouver. mostly, we recover stolen vehicles for icbc and clear needles off the sidewalks. uncapped needles all over the place. we are a welcome presence in the area and i also like that i have something to do on my days off that doesn't involve going to the bar.

yesterday was my last day of work for a couple of months. i'm heading back to India and China on friday with Amanda.

only in Beijing for four days. i've been there before and am confident it's long enough to see most of the sights. i was there in december 2004 and three years of progress towards the 2008 summer olympics mean a lot will be different. we'll spend an afternoon in Tianamen, walk through the Forbidden City, and be sad while viewing Mao-Tse Tung's mummified corpse in the MAOsoleum. we'll hike the Great Wall from Simatai to Jinshanling, and listen to our voices echo at the Temple Of Heaven. we'll drink beers on a sidewalk and watch men spit, smoke Marlboro red's and listen to the chatter. we'll take a bus to the Summer Palace, pray at the Temple of The Fragrant Buddha and view the smog over the city from Beihai Park.

ahh yes...and after four days we'll hop on a plane and fly back straight into Delhi.

the trip will take us north, through Punjab, to Dharamsala, home to the Dalai Lama, and Shimla, on the edge of the Himalayas. We'll train in deep into the heart of the country, to Varanasi, and spend a few days floating on the river, inhaling the scents of sandalwood and burning corpses. A quick flight to Mumbai for a few days, then south to Goa, for some time chilling on the beaches at Mandrem, Anjuna and Vagator. From there it's back north through Mumbai to Ahmedabad for my cousin's wedding, then north further to Rajasthan. We'll stop in Udaipur, Jodhpur and Pushkar to see the great lake and just in time for the Camel Festival, then north still, to Agra and the Taj Mahal, then back to Delhi and home on December 6th.

Seven weeks is hardly enough time to enjoy India comepletely, but maybe just enough to get a taste. I'm really looking forward to going with my new girl and being back in the dirt and smell and filth and heat and pure bliss of India.

Jack Johnson plays on the stereo...
he sings about India...

The air was more than human
And the heat was more than hungry
And the cars were square and spitting diesel fumes



The bulls were running wild
Because they're big and mean and sacred
And the children were playing cricket with no shoes



The next morning we woke up, man, with a seven hour drive
Well there we were stuck in Port Blair
Where boats break and children stare



Officials were quite friendly
Once we drown them with our sweet talk
And we bribed them with our cigarettes and booze
Disembarking from the port
With no mistakes of any sort
Moving soundly engine running smooth

And there were so many fewer questions
When stars were still just the holes to heaven



keep checking back, i'll be updating regularly once we're on the way. i've got a canon powershot sd400 point and shoot that can take video and a nikon d70s digital slr....and gigabytes and gigabytes of space so there'll be tonnes of great pictures coming.

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