LAX to Portland, Oregon - LAX Flyaway is Cool!

Terminal 3, LAX

I should fly Alaska Airlines midweek more often. ;-) There's nobody around this morning. How cool it is to go to the airport in Los Angeles and spend no time in lines. Moreover, by taking the FlyAway bus service from Union Station, I didn't even have to spend my morning driving through traffic. These buses run every 30 minutes from Union Station to LAX for $4. They depart at nearly all hours of the day and night and, by using the carpool lane on the 110 freeway, get you to the airport quickly and pleasantly. Now I've just got to kill some time in the airport. Thanks to my new Acer Aspire One for making web connections and blog updating so easy. This little laptop is the first portable computer I've owned that really is small enough for a lap. It weighs only 2.2 lbs, works great, and costs less than $400. The future is now.


When I arrive in Portland it will be raining. It's already raining hard up there now as a winter cold front moves through the area. As much as an inch of total precipitation is expected. It looks like I'll get the proto-typical Northwest experience this weekend, which is just as well. When I was packing I realized that I don't own a raincoat of any sort. Only in Southern California could I get away with living 15 years without one. I brought my snowboaring parka, but it's not really waterproof. I may need to upgrade during the trip. It's a good excuse to do it and the Columbia Sportswear outlet store and flagship store are both in Portland.

It's really nice to not have any specific plans for once. On the other hand, in addition to drinking great microbrewed beer and local wines, and eating organic food, I do have a few places I hope to visit during this quick four day trip:

• Powell's City of Books, one of the world's largest bookstores


• Forest Park, west of downtown, for a hike through rainforest inside an urban area. There are beautiful maps of the park posted at The Art of Geography, a cartography and wilderness photography project


• Hit some of Portland's great happy hours. Check out UrbanDrinks.com, a great tool for finding a happy hour at any time in Portland or Seattle. This could be dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands. Somebody better contact the authorities. :-)


• Columbia Sportswear Outlet


• Wander the neighborhoods in Portland


• Drive to the Columbia River Gorge and, hopefully, see Mt. Hood

Back to Bangkok - All Aboard the Night Train!

11-9-2008 Suvarnabhumi International Airport
Bangkok, Thailand

I just devoured the most wonderful fresh spring rolls ever made. Strange that a kiosk at the airport is the first place they've been on the menu. This airport, like much of Thailand, or Asia for that matter, is a curious mix of the very new and the traditional. The structure is a gleeming blend of polished steel and glass. Long escalators ferry travelers and staff from the ground to the departures area four floors up. Japanese and Thai restaurants, book shops, and Starbucks entertain a noisy throng of international and Thai voyagers. Once again, every petty desire can be satisfied here, but as a result it is far less interesting than more authentic (read: impoverished) destinations. Travel is remote and less-developed locations is continually fascinating, but it is also exhausting and sometimes frightening. There's nothing novel about this observation. It's just that I'm only starting to appreciate it personally. Having traveled now in Mexico, Costa Rica, Canada, France, Italy, Denmark, Norway, India, Thailand, and 49 of the United States, I'm finally starting to have a sense of both the range of human and physical landscapes and my own responses to these places.
Spent last night on an overnight 2nd class sleeper train from Chiang Mai to Bangkok. They were sold out of 1st class air-conditioned seats, which I'm embarrassed to say I would prefer at this point in my life. It was miserably hot and humid. I had the upper bunk, which made things worse and the curtains the conductor installed only served to block the fan, not the light, which was never extinguished. Foolishly, after having a double-sized Singha beer with dinner, I forgot to purchase water before going to bed so I essentially roasted away with dehydrated with heat acne spreading across my back and shoulders as my legs continually cramped up. I may have slept three or four hours, if that. Normally the silver lining of such basic travel would be the chance to talk to, or at least observe, locals. Sadly, the entire car was filled with foreign tourists on holiday so I could only listen to loud-mouthed Canadians boast about which professional athletes hailed from their towns. I have no idea why they chose this topic, but they kept at it for longer than I would have guessed possible.

Now that I think about it there was only a single time on this trip that I feel I managed any insight into Thai life. This was when Ken took us to a local barbecue and we were the only farang present. It was great to see Thai families, couples, and small children enjoying themselves in the open air restaurant. Basically a sheet metal roof, about thirty feet above, shields 25 long tables and hundreds of simple chairs. Plus their idea of a barbecue is quite different than ours. At a Thai barbecue everyone grills the protein, not just the men. Everybody has great fun collecting small amounts of various meats, fishes, and god-knows-what. It's all carted back to the table where it's grilled on small tabletop metal grills that are ringed with boiling water. In this water, the juices from the meats and fishes, plus the various greens and noodles that are dropped into it, create a flavorful and fragrant soup. Meanwhile, large bottles of Singha beer and soda pop are brought around to each table.Like the Thai, I used the same chopsticks to grab the raw meat as I did to collect it off the grill and consume it. I was having so much fun that I didn't realize this until about half way through the meal. At that point it was way too late to worry about it, though I soon caught myself unconsciously boiling the ends of my chopsticks in the soup from time to time.

Since my tour ends today (I canceled the second half because I'm sick with longing to see Catalina), I had to crash clandestinely in Les' room. We both fell asleep at 8 AM, immediately after a breakfast that only served to make me feel even more nauseous, and slept until 10:30. I then shoved my things in my backpack and made my way to Khoi San road for a bus service to the airport. I pray there are none of the crazy delays I experienced on departure from LAX. I'm not sure I could handle it very well right now, though I guess I would just sleep on my bag and ask an airline employee to wake me when the plane finally boards.


There are so many photographs and statues of the king and royal family scattered throughout this country that I can't help but think of the kind of repressive regime depicted by Orwell in 1984. Of course, the decentralized chaos and technology of contemporary life make such complete control impossible. Still, there's no doubt that the state is working hard to instill strong nationalistic fervor in the populace. Every morning, all Thais stand for the national anthem, which is broadcast on all television and radio stations. The television version depicts happy, altruistic types going about the business of saving people or defending the country. Strangely, many of the Thai music videos played on public buses fit this mold as well. Saccharine sweet singing by overly earnest young men and women is interspersed with scenes of tragedy, school collapses, floods, and the like. Our heroes rush to aid the victims as mothers and wives weep openly. Also, in the center of Bangkok, near the Grand Palace, civic architecture is a combination of impressive Buddhist temples and even larger government edifices and boulevards. Over many streets, on many intersections, there are elaborate golden archways commemorating the king, the queen, their siblings, and the like. On the first day of our trip, the park across from our hotel (not coincidentally called the Royal Hotel) was deployed with seemingly hundreds, if not thousands, of soldiers, musicians, citizens, and police, all in their ceremonial best. Apparently, we stumbled on a dress rehearsal for the memorial service for the king's sister.

Finally, I failed miserably in my attempts to communicate with locals. After nine days here I can say exactly two things in Thai: "hello" (Sawasdee Khrap) and "thank you" (Kap Kun Khrap). That's a pretty miserable showing, my worst ever. The language is damned hard to grasp and this is especially true if you spend every night drinking beer with European tourists. I better do the next trip independently.

Chiang Mai, Thailand - Fireworks, Lanterns, and Junk Food

11-8-2008 Starbucks
Chiang Mai, Thailand

I have landed in tourist Mecca. No shortage of English language books, junk food, memory cards, Thai massage parlors, eager tuk-tuk drivers, Italian restaurants, travel agencies, and coffee joints here. There's a beautiful riverfront lined with attractive restaurants but almost no historic architecture is left. Sadly, while Thailand has protected much forest in national parks, there are no laws for the protection of historic neighborhoods or architecture. There are a few old teak houses that survive near the riverfront restaurant district. In these restaurants you find heaps of foreign tourists, despite the recent bombings and protests that have greatly reduced Thai tourism. The live bands all play American pop music, sometimes well, but always too loud. They all seem to be working hard on their American accents.

At night people crowd the riverfront and incautiously light all manner of fireworks. Teenagers shoot bottle rockets over the river. Men launch large exploding rockets of the sort we use for Fourth of July celebrations into the night sky. Massive noisemaker fireworks, small bombs really, periodically make your heart skip. And, most impressively, paper lanterns, fueled by small attached fires, rise glowing towards the moon.

While no one was paying much attention to the U.S. election in Thailand, the covers of magazines and newspapers from all over the world in the English language bookstores made it clear that the rest of the world was celebrating.

Sick Elephants, 21st Century Buddhism, and Obama Wins!

11-5-2008 Lampang Elephant Hospital, Thailand

When the U.S. presidential election was called for Obama I was riding an elephant in Thailand. This was odd, of course. Shannon called immediately to let me know and I passed the information to my fellow travelers. A shout of joy went out. Then Cyril, a witty Lebanese guy who is now a Bostonite, said we might expect another call in a few minutes letting us know Obama'd been shot. We all laughed nervously. It was dangerously funny, seeing as how it aimed so clearly at a terrifyingly real fear. Nobody in Thailand seemed to pay much attention at all, so I certainly missed the parties.

Dinner tonight was at a great restaurant in Chiang Rai. It's called Cabbages and Condoms and all of the proceeds go to family planning efforts. While the live music was typically too-loud Thai pop, the food was excellent, the waif-like waitresses were attentive, and the decoration was hilarious. "Our food is guaranteed not to cause pregnancy" is the motto of the restaurant and it's proudly displayed on the menu and on the wall next to the giant Santa Clause, which is made entirely of colored condoms. All of this silliness actually encouraged me to look up the statistics on Thailand's national fertility rate. I was surprised to find that Thailand has had one of the most remarkable decreases in fertility in history. In 1974 the average Thai woman birthed 7 children. Today she has 2, which is the replacement rate. This shouldn't have surprised me so very much because I had been openly wondering days why there were so few children around. The difference between here and northern India was immediately apparent. This may help to explain why just about every car in Thailand was in better condition and worth more money than the average car at home. Large trucks and sedans are popular. The Thai are thriving.


Wat Rong Khun, near Chiang Rai

This strange and ever-growing temple complex is the brainchild of a popular local architect with a wildly imaginative vision for what will inspire people to Buddhist belief. As a child, he was the temple boy. Now he has designed and built a collection of ornate temple buildings and stupa. The main temple is entirely white and looks to a Westerner like someplace Santa Claus and his elves might prepare for their holiday work. It is entirely covered by small glass mirrors, which have had to be replaced three times due to the tropical climate oxidizing the plates to black. Finally a Belgian mirror was found to withstand the heat and torrents. Inside the still-uncompleted structure is the requisite gold Buddha figure.

Adding to the surreal oddness of the place is a wax statue of a monk in meditation that is so life-like in its depiction of the artist's original benefactor that we were debating whether he was real for half an hour after leaving. I was convinced that he was so deep in his meditation that my gaze couldn't faze him.

On the inside walls a massive mural is underway. It is the strangest element. The one completed scene surrounds the entrance way. It is shockingly secular, even tacky, in its dramatic depiction of the psychic struggles faced by modern Buddhists and, by implication, all of us. Mundane concerns and even the most horrible violence are depicted near the floor. Military aircraft fire at civilians. Keanu Reeves, dressed in black for his role in the Matrix films, stands ominously to one side in black sunglasses. A large, battleship from Star Wars attacks a wrist watch with a blazing laser beam. A hand gun fires. Above this, a massive nuclear explosion erupts from the surface, destroying all life. Higher up the wall the themes start to depict more enlightened themes: clouds, idyllic scenes of nature, family life. Even higher, centered near the top is a terrifying skull. Just above it a large lotus flower emerges from the skull and from it rises a beatific golden Buddha image, surrounded by adherents and bathed in the light of Truth. Adding to the surreal oddness of the place is a wax statue of a monk in meditation that is so life-like in its depiction of the artist's original benefactor that we were debating whether he was real for half an hour after leaving. I was convinced that he was so deep in his meditation that my gaze couldn't faze him.

Sukothai

11-3-2008
Sukhothai, Thailand

This morning we visited an official "touristic town." I'm not sure what exactly this government designation denotes, especially since the place seemed very much like just another Thai village. First we stopped at a clay pottery factory and saw how local clay from the fields is used to create planters and figurines for trade. The man working the potting wheels was able to throw large, simply decorated pots in less than three minutes (I timed him). The fire for a massive earthen kiln at the back of the facility was being stoked by a skinny, middle-aged woman wearing a ski mask. Many gardeners and others who work outside wear black or blue masks covering their face and head here. I'm told its to "keep the sun off." Strikes me as insanity because of the heat and humidity, but apparently vanity and style here require light skin. I was interested in the large pile of bamboo and sticks being used to fire the kiln. Thai law is very strict regarding deforestation and essentially no wood can be logged at this point, even for the domestic market.

After the factory, we moved down the road to the local school. This was wonderful, if a bit intrusive. We showed up when the smallest children were just laying down on their blankets for nap time. The school principal and teachers essentially stopped everything they were doing to introduce us to the students. It was a large school and seemed well-equipped and professional. Whether this is typical is hard to tell, of course, but schooling is compulsory here and the economy has been mostly improving for many years in Thailand. Many of the students were as interested in us as we were in them and their smiles and giggles and flirtations were infectious.

Sukhothai was the first capital of the Thai kingdom. Ancient Thai cities were walled squares along river courses. Although, Sukhothai was abandoned eventually for Ayuthaya, near Bangkok, and the area fell into decay. Today, grassy expanses and scattered ponds surround decaying stupas and giant Buddha statues. The impression it gives is of a holy golf course. We rented inexpensive bicycles and explored the area at a leisurely pace.

Trying to understand T'hai politics is a real challenge. T'his is despite the recent protests and bombing, which usually would focus my attention and provide press coverage that helps me understand other cultures. First of all, few Thai speak English so I've been unable to have a conversation that last for more than a few moments with anyone. My own guide, even, has limited English. Moreover, its not legal to criticize the monarchy here, either in the press or in private. Since the king wields substantial power still (over the army?) this forces discussions to omit much of the power structure. Also, the English language newspaper, The Bangkok Post, is hard to find and is severely limited in what it can say. Finally, there is no local or national news in English here. Thus, I feel about as confused as possible regarding local politics.

Here's what I think I know. The current prime minister was elected, but it's not at all clear that these elections were free and fair. There are ongoing protests in Bangkok against the current prime minister. These protesters are demanding the return of the former prime minister who left Thailand after being charged with corruption. As far as I can tell these protesters, who are largely professionals and public employees, are essentially anti-democratic and seek to circumvent the voting power of the rural poor who they see as susceptible to manipulation by politicians. They argue that a fixed number of seats should be set aside for each professional association in their House of Commons. I keep trying to imagine an analogy to U.S. politics to help me understand the situation. Thus, at the moment I think this would be similar to a coalition of liberal elites and union workers, say the Sierra Club and the National Federation of Teachers, seeking to sack the U.S. government and permanently limit democratic voting rights after George Bush's election, mostly by rural folks, in 2004. Regardless, it's clear that freedom of the press is lacking here and that there is a constant concern that yet another coup might rearrange the government of T'hailand. It's happened many times before.

Bangkok - Chinatown and Flooded Canals

10-31-2008 Royal Hotel
Bangkok, Thailand

Thailand's roads and infrastructure are highly developed. Driving from the airport to the city feels much like being at home, though the green road signs are in an unintelligible text. The highway into town was elevated above the city below for nearly its entire length and carries cars only, no tuk-tuks, no bicycles. There is gridlock, however, on a Californian scale. Once you exit the freeway this gridlock is even worse. The "half-hour" ride to my hotel took two hours and fifteen minutes. Exhausted from hours and hours of travel, I slept on the back seat for most of the ride.

Bangkok is now a modern city with many office towers and more on the way. The airport is brand new and works well. A new train station is being built, I could see the red scaffolding above the construction. The city is in the delta of the Chao Phraya River. I learned this from a map, but you can see it immediately when you arrive and travel throughout the city. There is water in ponds, puddles, and canals running all through the city and much of the city is along the waterfront, where longboats and barges ply a surging brown current.

Virtually no one honks their horn while driving here. It's blissfully quiet given that there is absolute gridlock out there. My flight, already scheduled to leave LAX at 1:30 AM was delayed until 3:15 AM. Then, after 15 hours in the air, I missed my connection and had to wait another five and one half hours for a flight to Bangkok. My driver had apparently been waiting since 11 AM when I should up at 4:30 PM. It then took 2 hours to make it from the airport to my hotel in the city center. There are many pickup trucks on the road here. Didn't even occur to me that they were completely absent in India. Too much else to notice, I suspect. Also, I've already seen many women drivers here. Also, about one half of the immigrations officials at the airport are women. I left a message at Ron Knapp's hotel since he wasn't answering his phone. I'll try him again tomorrow. I must rest tonight.

11-1-2008 Royal Hotel
Bangkok, Thailand

I managed to meet up with my father's old friend Professor Ron Knapp and his photographer friend, Chester, yesterday. Ron is a cultural geographer who was my father's first college roommate at Stetson university nearly 50 years ago. Although I talked to Professor Knapp before applying to graduate school to study geography, I had never met him in person. Ron's specialty is the architecture of traditional Chinese houses which he has studied for nearly 40 years in his career at SUNY, New Paltz. So, after contacting him by phone, I took a taxi across town to meet him. I made the classic mistake of getting in a taxi that had no meter and paid the equivalent of $8 for a taxi ride that should have cost me $2. The driver, who spoke a little English, offered to take me to see some nighttime entertainment later in the day. These shows had brazen medically descriptive titles that I can't repeat publicly. I passed on these. He also offered to immediately take me sight-seeing, shopping, or to lunch. Pass, pass, and pass. It seemed that an American man traveling alone in Bangkok was a tempting target and a likely customer for all kinds of profitable consumption. But it was my first day here and I was glad to be out and glad to have found a taxi quickly so I didn't bother to protest him overcharging me. I simply thanked the man for his services. Despite my jokes I should make it clear that, like most cities in the world, the sex industry is clustered in a red light district and is not apparent as you move about town. Just as visitors to Los Angeles who expect to see freeway shootings or violent crime will be disappointed, visitors to Thailand who fear brazen vice will be pleasantly surprised to not find it. It's not as if prostitutes roam the streets, that's how we do it at home.

Ron Knapp is a thin, energetic man in his sixties. Dressed in shorts, walking shoes, a polo shirt, and a khaki vest of the sort that is popular with photographers and international journalists, he has about him the pleasantly agitated air that many scholars project when they're doing field work, hunting as they are for some esoteric gem that the more mundane world isn't even likely to notice. He seems to take great joy in chasing down a unique old house or a novel Chinese neighborhood. After chatting a bit, we met up with a young Thai finance student, Ploy, and a friend of hers who were assisting Ron in Chinatown. We headed to Chinatown in Ploy's small SUV. At first the streets were relatively empty and I wondered if Saturday morning might be the quietest time in Bangkok. However, by the time we got to Chinatown the gridlock had returned. Ron was planning to revisit a very old Chinese house that has been saved by its Chinese owner who added a four meter deep diving pool and a small kennel, each of which is used commercially. Ron explained that Chinese inheritance traditions tend to divide wealth among all the sons so it is rare to be able to afford to keep large, old properties in the family unless each generation is creative about income.


Chester was hoping to take a few more photographs at the house, but the previous night's rain storm had flooded most of the block with about half a foot of water, including the area immediately around the house. Instead we headed off to a two-hundred year old Chinese temple. Aromatic incense filled the inner courtyard where people were making offerings of bananas and coconuts and lighting candles. The clickity-clack sound of an old woman throwing prayer blocks repeatedly broke the silence as she slowly approached the alter on her knees. Chinatown is actually right along the Chao Phraya River and many of homes along the river were nearly swamped by the churning brown current and the splashing turbulence. The river was obviously very high from recent rainfall and large clumps of green vegetation torn loose upriver rushed past in the muddy brown water. Edifices of all kinds closely line the river which is surrounded by small cement levies that were often failing to keep the water out of the surrounding neighborhoods. Since Bangkok sits at the terminus of the Chao Phraya River and its delta, like New Orleans and Venice and many other waterfront cities, it is prone to flooding. Despite this, a wide variety of edifices closely line the levied banks of the main channel and numerous sie canals: rotting old teak houses, cement warehouses, shiny new municipal buildings, restaurants. And everywhere there is laundry hung out to dry.

I met the rest of the tourists in my group on Saturday night. They are a typically eclectic group, ranging in age from 18 to about 50 and hailing from various countries, including Portugal, Poland, Canada, Germany, and England. My roommate Les is an affable guy who works in the Gap Adventures office in Toronto and is taking his annual free trip. He's rail thin, 26 years old, well over six feet tall, and always wears a camouflaged cap in the sun because he sunburns easily. Our tour guide Ken is a youngish Thai man who speaks very deliberately. He's all smiles except when he's concentrating and he often makes silly jokes or puns based around language confusion or referencing Hollywood films. These jokes make him laugh too.

On the first morning of the tour we went to the Wat Arun complex to see, among many other Buddhas and stupas, the giant reclining Buddha. It's 46 meters long and over 16 meters in height. The building that houses it seems to stretch to just barely contain the statue. Truly impressive.

Off to Thailand

We'll I've run out of time to sort through all of my India material. I may have to finish writing about India from Thailand. The sheer number of pictures I took in India (963), combined with only hand-written notes and the lingering jet lag I experienced for more than a week made keeping on top of this journal tricky. I'm taking a small laptop with me to Thailand so my posts will hopefully be more timely.

Wish me luck. I'm off to sit at LAX for three hours before flying for another 19 hours via Hong Kong to Bangkok.

Returning Home

10-11-2008 Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Dehli, India

I am more eager to get home from a trip than I can ever recall. I've cancelled my last night in the hotel and changed my airline tickets so that I can arrive home a day early. Now I'm waiting here in the airport for about three hours after travelling for 12 hours by sleeper train from Varanasi and taking a long taxi ride to the airport. Then it's just 20 hours of flying and I'm home. I'm going to be painfully tired seeing as how I'm already weary.

International airports are bizzare and amazing places. They strike me as the closest thing we have to the energy and excitement that a railway station like Grand Central must have engendered in the heyday of train travel. People come and go from seemingly all ends of the earth. The destinations are scrolling off on a large digital screen above my head. Direct flights depart soon for Dubai, Mumbai, Munich, London, Shanghai, Kathmandu, Abu Dhabi, Lahore, Sharjah, Beijing, Hong Kong, Dhaka, Bangkok, Kabul, Karachi, and Muscat. I teach geography for a living and I don't even recognize all of these places.

What's more, I sit now only a kilometer or two from real poverty and desperate need. Air travel reinforces class distinctions more than any other common activity. First, it's only the rich, by global standards, who ever board an airplane. Next, the airports and airlines, even the layout of the planes themselves are all designed to encourage class separation and conciousness. After travelling in India, I can't help but see this as a kind of global caste system. Of course the difference is that no one is condemned to a lifetime or generations in coach caste, at least not in theory.

Finally, though I hate to dwell on the seemingly negative, I have to relate a story that explains well how different India is from home and, for that matter, why travel here is so disconcerting. Last night I purchased and enjoyed a thali, a box dinner, while waiting for the train to leave the station. After finishing, I collected up a small bag of the remaining garbage (a cardboard box, plastic utensils, two small plastic cups, assorted napkins and cardboard plates). I exited the train with this mess hoping, against my better judgement, to find a rubbish bin, knowing all too well that one wasn't likely to exist. I approached an officious and well-dressed security officer standing guard on the platform and proceeded to tell him, using gestures and facial expressions, that I was looking for somewhere to dispose of the rubbish. At first he couldn't even conceive of my need (of course, I'm the one who'se confused; I'm in India, after all). Then, with a shock of understanding, he walked me over to the side of the tracks and indicated, as I'd suspected, that I should throw the garbage on the ground, next to his carefully polished patent leather shoes. I tossed the mess aside, nodding to him sideways as Indians do, and walked back on the train.

Varanasi

10-9-2008 Varanasi

India is the most culturally colorful and photogenic place I've seen on earth yet. It matters not at all which direction you direct your camera. All is interesting. Every scene and image requires interpretation, triggers fascination. In no place in India was this more true than Varanasi, an ancient city on the Ganges river - a city so old that it's known by its Sanskrit as often as by its Hindi name, Benares. The noise and chaos and color of India are strikingly, shockingly ever-present here.

To get a sense of its engergy imagine New York City during rush hour. Now take away 90% of the cars and taxis and add instead large cows, goats, dirty old dogs, emaciated children, rusting steel rickshaws, hundreds of bicycles, thousands of pilgrims, blaring loudspeakers, families of four and five sharing a single motorcycles, cow shit underfoot, human shit in the alleys. Don't forget to add a hundred happy, smiling children in the cleanest, brightest clothing imaginable. Now, make one half of everyone march east in the street and the rest should run west. If you throw in a medeival market and a small circus, you'll get a sense of what Varanasi is at sunset during festival season.

As I rolled from city to city and gazed upon the Indian lanscape outside the window, I couldn't help but lament the fate of India's urban and suburban rivers and streams. They are sewers, full of garbage, pigs, cattle, and human beings evacuating. I pray the future of the world's rivers doesn't look like this. Obviously in the waterways look better, but they're hardly pristine. The EPA reports that in the United States 60% of surface waters are not fit to swim in, let alone drink. I can only imagine in horror what the figures must be here.

The results of this kind of abuse are obvious, especially in communities where the majority depend daily on these rivers. The ecologist E.O. Wilson suggests in his writings that humans have an innate love of nature. Karl Marx too argued that humans normally love nature. He thought that the greed inherent in capitalism was the root cause of environmental abuse. He wrote that in a communistic state the natural world would inevitably thrive, but after 70 years of planned economies the Soviet Union was perhaps the most polluted country on earth. Here in India, where rivers are celebrated and sacred, it becomes obvious that we humans are casual abusers of the land when we crowd together. Capitalism can hardly be the cause of the problem in the rural areas I visited. It's barely taken hold in these agrarian areas. I suspect that only careful, deliberate efforts and action will protect the world's natural resources. Neither the 'free' market, communism, nor human nature will solve this fundamental problem.



Levels of pollutants in the Ganges by the time it reaches Varanasi are infamous. One report I read stated that fecal choliform bacteria levels are 17,000 times U.S. EPA standards for safe drinking. And yet, thousands of pilgrims come to the ghats of Varanasi to cleanse away their sins in its holy water. It's a beautiful and moving spectacle, maybe more so because of what I know about the scientific status of the river. I was amazed to learn that pilgrims collect the water and take it home to store and savor for months.

Rural India, Riding Elephants, and Wild Tigers

While taking a guided tour obviously limits your freedom, there are great advantages too. In Costa Rica I spent inordinate amounts of time planning and making reservations. This involved constant frustration with phone cards, hotel fax machines, and highly varied Costa Rican reservation requirements. Here in India I spend zero time worrying about these kinds of concerns and instead find that there is a planned journey or activity at all times. The downside of this is that serendipity becomes rare and moments of real discovery are uncommon. In fact, at times I felt like I was flying over India, separate and protected in our air-conditioned bus. Much of what I witnessed here was see through the window of a bus, taxi, or train. There is no doubt in mind, however, that I travelled much more widely in India than I would have if I was acting independently. This was particularly true regarding rural India.

We managed to visit small towns like Orcha and Mandu. We visited remote Bandavgarh National Park to search for Tigers. We spent an afternoon at Sanchi, one of the world's oldest Buddhist shrines. All of these places required lengthy journeys into the countryside and I'm so glad that my travels were not limited to urban India.

In Orcha, a small town on the banks of the Betwa River that is littered with Hindu temples, I saw men and women who'd come to the temple in the center of town for the Navratri festival to worship the Shakti (mother)/Devi (Goddess) for nine days. Navratri actually means nine days in Sanskrit. Holy men in orange robes and imposing beards sat in the shade for hours. One of these, bugle in hand, loudly announced our arrival with a loud bleat from the instrument. Chanting and drumming went on from early morning until late in the evening. Loudspeakers blasted highly rhythmic music so loudly that it was distorted at numerous gaily-lighted shrines. These seemed to be constructed for the festival in every town and along every roadside at regular intervals. They reminded me greatly of the gaudy Christmas decorations one sees throughout America during Christmas.

The Betwa was the only relatively clean waterway I saw in India. It's a beautiful river that carves its way across low rolling hills of tropical deciduous forest, exposing the bedrock below as bulbous white mounds of rock along the river course. On the banks of this river stand numerous ancient temples, many of them essentially abandoned today. I kept wondering at the neglect of historical architecture only to remind myself each time that care of such monuments is an incredible luxury afforded to the rich and often neglected even by them.