Global Nomad Travel

Burning Bodies, Kathmandu

03/15/10

My eyes must be playing a trick on me, I thought, paused mid-step, asleep in my own thoughts, inside myself fully awake, at this place by a river in what seemed to exist within a dream. Before me, smoke floated with black shining feathers, seizing each of my sense one by one, surrounding me like echoing expressions: The faces amongst the smoke, where like apparitions, these men walked, appearing pulled forward by the sweeping wings of death. The smoke. In this strange nocturnal world, there were a hundred variations of shadow, a calming, inconsistent wave of smoke, where through the incoming heat and smouldering flames, six men, six different expressions, carried a recognizable image through the fog, dark and dense, moving past me without eye contact; their shoulders holding the shape of a human body, wrapped tightly in a yellow blanket. This cannot be, I thought, the pulse in my wrist jumping, while the ash landed against my skin.

The air became thicker with smoke as we entered a bridge overlooking the Bagmati River, where along the shorelines covered in garbage, more bodies wrapped in yellow sheets were spotted, some carried by men casually smoking cigarettes. There, ricocheting down this fiery corridor of stacked blazing wood, the sleepless blood – heated by erupting flames – lugged through the veins of the dead one last time, boiling, while the pungent hellish stink of smoke resided and my understanding of death crumbled. I looked at the transition we will all face, naked and open, where bodies burned, children played and mothers scrubbed clothing on the shoreline opposite, all of them smiling obliviously to burning of human flesh nearby. Feeling as though we, the three foreigners, were the only ones to react to the blazing bodies, left me feeling out of place, as if we were unseen ghosts hallucinating amongst the living.

It is along these shorelines of the Bagmati River near the Pashupatinath Temple where “Ara Ghat” resides, the most widely used place of cremation in Nepal. It was a scene set with maddening fire and amused conversations, like looking into the smoking end of a smiling gun, where by the river bodies turned blackened by burning smoke, making the combusting flames appear bone-white on top of the corpse, as if witnessing the departure of a soul. I thought of what is left behind, the dreams and aspirations, and I sensed those solid words and hollow memories, a feeling as though I was eavesdropping on a person’s last thoughts: The secrets heard by lonesome church pew. The prayers of a sleepless night. The words of drawn-out tears.

We stopped on the bridge, listening to locals casually chat nearby. I waited for a silence that never came.

The dead encroached on the living, circle after circle in passing smoulder, creating a wall of smoke almost too dense to breathe in. There was a strange richness in the air I had never experienced before by knowing my body was breathing in the remains of another: Darkened flesh, the boiled and evaporated blood, entered my lungs.

Looking over at Boxie-boo, her eyes hardened wide open, silver and blank, reflecting the smoke. In them, she tackled across each body scorched by the fire and the hot, Nepali sun. She bravely looked on, one by one, at each body lined together in a singular fate, appearing to care for them. There was something that was left unsaid about this setting, where death was faint as dust. Our mutual gestures, her blinking, my blinking, were becoming hypnotic to us both, as if we were dismantling our own understanding of death. There, publically, all the pains of the world were cleansed, all that was known and forgotten felt unlocked and set free, and as her eyes strolled towards the crackling and snapping, we bid them farewell – burn on, burn on – and the pulse in my wrist cooled to a pray-like whisper. Liam, Boxie-boo and I said nothing on the bridge.

A Nepali man tapped my wrist and pointed towards a small building, and I came back, suddenly, back with the living. As we crossed the river with him - a salesmen keen to sell wooden flutes - I looked towards the darkened room he had pointed my direction towards. He explained it was a place where people were waiting to die. I thought about this, trying to somehow rationalize my culture shock. On one hand, I felt sorry for these people, dieing beside one of the most disgusting and garbage-polluted rivers I had ever seen, knowing full well they will burn beside piles of trash. On the other hand, I realized these people would die amongst religious leaders, feeling comforted by their beliefs made stronger in the shade of the Pashupatinath Temple. In the West, people often spend their remaining days in cold, unwelcoming hospitals alone, away from their loved ones. My Great Great Uncle was no different. Maybe, for them, this was a beautiful way to die.

The Pashupatinath Temple is one of the biggest Hindu temples of Lord Shiva - the Hindu destroyer god - in the world and is known as Nepal’s most important Hindu temple. Believers in Pashupatinath are allowed to enter free of charge, while we paid a staggering 500 Rupees each ($6 U.S./Canadian). We did not complain about the price, as many Hindu temples in Nepal were closed to non-believers.

Sitting on the elevated walkway above the river, locals watched the bodies’ burn, seemingly unaffected. Multiple bodies are cremated here every day, and I supposed, this sight was as common for the Nepalese as scooters. In the water, men with what appeared to use rakes moved the garbage around the gentle currents. Above them, monkeys walked along the steps leading to the water’s edge. By the bridge, the monkeys walked amongst the onlookers, sneaking up behind and sometimes successfully stealing their food. As the smoke rose, we decided to hike up the man-made funnel towards more temples; the walkway of white concrete looked as if we walked in the middle of frozen ocean waves that had turned tos tone.

Well above the river, we continued through smaller temples, looking like large tombstones. Religious followers walked by ringing the large bells attached to the stone structures. To combat the monkey population, poles were covered in jagged glass to keep them from climbing. Monkeys seemed to run this section of the city, especially one alpha male, which walked towards me as I attempted to take a closer picture of his temple, before showing me his teeth. I thought of showing him mine as well, but instead, I backed off.

A closer look at these temples revealed small carvings of deities. Some held blankets inside, which we were told we often for final prayers of the sick and dieing. On the outside of other temples, metal bars were positioned to allow followers to hold on while they bowed to their gods. Around the corner, young couples listened to romantic songs on their cellphones, resting their backs against the stone, flirting. This is a strange place for romance, I thought, so close to the river. But this confusion was caused by the mindset of my western upbringing. Death, back home, is behind closed doors. I think this may be one of the reasons it is so feared in our culture. Maybe the Nepalese were onto something, sharing the end of life in public.

After all, many people were happy to relax beside the river, casually watching the bodies’ burn, smiling with their faces in the sun. Businessmen were busy trying to sell souvenirs to tourists; Hindu’s dressed in traditional gowns chatted away, their facial expressions exaggerated by the paint on their faces; children giggled and played tag, couples fell deeper in love; all of them, smiling.

And below them, a smoke-choked river reached up towards the light of the sun. The fire gave nothing for the circling birds to feast on, where the bodies burned without wind in a be-stilled fire, the way stars appear motionless, while they travel at the speed of light. There, grown bright, almost whitened, like the bodies of angels, they departed from the hollowness of shadows, into faltering yellows, orbed into pearls of red glow. The flames alit low with indigo blues, lighting up the happy faces of onlookers. Unseen to us all, was the mistress of music, the nightingale of our last sleep, the widow to our thoughts, amongst the cacophony of crackling fire, above it, beyond, below and through the center, watched by our neon-lit eyes, engulfed in her dancing flames: Death was there, the oldest of the old, and she was a welcomed visitor.

Yet still, something more was happening along these glazed waters - the drifting of the gold-pieced light - where looking at the bodies, I felt I existed within the thin boundary between sleep and waking, between life and what is beyond. I had become a part of the process, sharing a stony grin, bidding my own farewell to them, burn on, burn on.

All those that were cremated that day had likely watched the cremations of others. They had come here, by their own choice, to die, one in the same as those before them and those after, unmasked by the fire, this grinding of stars, to hover in smoke one last time, breathed in to the grinning lungs of the living. Maybe this was the peace here; maybe the crowds sucked away their last tears with their smiles, before turning them away, breathing them outwards to what exists beyond our world here on Earth. I, too, came to realize I would rather die amongst laughing children, romantic lovers and caring mothers, then alone in a hospital bed, before being cremated in the dark of some trapped basement room, cradled by cold rock and a concrete-framed building.

Death was all around them, and by this river, the people were full of life.

That’s all for now.

Thank you for visiting Page59.com.

Nepalese Food Adjustment

03/14/10

Before we left on this trip, I had told lots of my friends and Boxie-boo’s our route of travel and flight schedule, which I hoped meant people would join us for various sections of our grand world tour. I did this through email. Some people I emailed twice and pissed off. Then I later emailed everybody again, pissing off the angry ones some more, by letting them know the address to my blog. One friend even told me “Spam me again and I’ll shit on your car” (we’ll call him Doug). Back home, I never felt I had enough authority in my life to say such things. I received a lot of curiosity about the trip and tons of ball busting from my friends, including some soccer teammates, who claimed they had started a gambling pool with each other, where they bet on the date in which Boxie-boo would return home early from the trip without me.

I suppose they were right about having reservations with me taking Boxie-boo around the world in often discomforting and unsanitary conditions. She had it great at home. Her house was always spotless, her mom cooked high quality dinners each night, which Boxie-boo often followed by doing her nails, watching HD television and ridiculous shows like the Jersey Shore or taking long baths surrounded by scented candles. This is not to say she needed to be more outgoing or adventurous – if that were true she would have never agreed to backpack – but it was safe to say the concerns of friends and family were warranted. She had, after all, never backpacked before and never spent so much time away from home. She was also traveling with a man who wore a battered brown hat, baggy and stained shorts, and often, a bright yellow shirt with a bear holding two guns, who was drenched in sweat, with a patchy beard, habitually battling diarrhea and likely smelling like someone drenched in sweat who was battling diarrhea.

Prior to leaving, we were invaded with horror stories about travel from well-meaning friends and family. People had warned us that tourists get shot right outside customs in Johannesburg. They shared stories of travelers having spiders climb into their ears in places like Nepal and India, then months later, their brains giving birth to hundreds of spider babies. They warned me about developing bizarre stomach bugs, waking up missing organs in hostels, getting raped or kidnapped for political reasons, though that never made much sense to me, as I think I would be raped for sexy reasons. While I had backpacked a couple times before in third world countries and been relatively fine, I did my own research on safety at the library with Boxie-boo and felt confident; however, such tales did not really help Boxie-boo, especially when we watched nature shows detailing all the poisonous animals that are home in countries we were set to visit. Like Nepal.

Sitting at an internet café catching up on emails, I received an email from formerly pissed off Doug with a forwarded emailed entitled Monkey Pissing In Its Own Mouth. He had also told me how jealous he was of my trip. I watched the video and laughed. Others that were invited on the trip had said they were following the blog, some even noting how envious they were of our travels. This always felt very ironic to me, such emails, especially from those who said “I wish I could do what you are doing” when I knew they were more than capable. The problem I have always found with people is they get too caught up in their lives to free themselves from the clutches of routine. The idea of budgeting for over a year to save money, only to put your career on hold for six months, was seen as impossible for many people who could, if they put their mind to it, leave their tedious lifestyle for an adventure, if only, somehow, they could find the courage to be in full control of their lives – no bosses, no schedule, no rules.

I was in power now. I no longer had editors telling me what to write and when the story was due. Neither of us had bosses or a work schedule. Boxie-boo and I decided where we were going and what we were doing every single day. We were the ones in control. I had the full authority over my life. I could tell people I was going to shit on their cars. Instead, though, I focused on telling people the truth about traveling through writing, even things they may not want to hear, just not the misplaced organs stuff.

Perhaps, though, this fear has its place. Maybe those that warned us about horrific things, even ridiculous scenarios, helped us to keep safe, but I always found the most comfort in being prepared and educated on where we were visiting. I thought about this in the internet café, thinking of what illness Boxie-boo was battling, while beside me, another tourist’s breathe smelt of old goat cheese. I thought of what little I could do to make her feel better in the morning…

Boxie-boo laid flat on her stomach, her eyes looking at our small travel clock on the bedside table in search of time. The wood creaked as I moved off the bed, down on my knees, entering her sleepy gaze. The filtered light from the curtain made her cheeks a shadow, toned in this darkness, brightening her brown eyes, the dusk settling around us within the sound of the creaking bed. Beside her, two pillows leaned against the backboard. Boxie-boo’s head was against a lump in the sheets. Nothing else, only the two of us and the presence of the untouched pillows below a darkened ceiling.

“How are you feeling?” I asked, rubbing her back. With my hands moving through the incoming sunlight, shadows and glare set her face in movement with each stroke.

There was no tension, a face at comfort with itself. Her eyes grew up, glowed, accustomed to the early morning darkness, where she could see the rounded crown moldings and below it myself kneeling motionless, looking through the blackness towards her. She sat so still that I heard no sounds until I thought of listening for them: I heard the familiar horns and salesmen shouting from outside, motoring through the air. Minutes seemed to pass without a reply to my question.

“Not so good,” her silk soft voice responded. She added nothing more, continuing to look at the clock.

She had spent the night visiting the bathroom, battling a fever, as something she ate upset her stomach. Rolled in the blanket, her position was influenced by the curves of the comforter. She had cocooned herself in the blankets. She was either hoping to turn into a functioning adult or a butterfly, neither of which was possible for us, the immature couple. I continued rubbing her back and running my fingers through her hair. As the sun rose, light freckled across bed through the curtains, illuminating the arch in her slender back, the smooth collar bones, her beauty. I did what I could to bring her comfort. From my bag, I gave her medicine, reminding her to drink as much water as possible.

Throughout the day, she asked me to leave, feeling bad her illness kept me by her side in the bedroom. I, of course, did not go anywhere until she was up to leaving. There was no where else I would rather be. Nobody likes to be alone while fighting an unknown illness, especially in a third world country. I read to her from my journal and packed novel, allowing the stories to accompany her into her dreams, adding characters and a setting to the world beyond (and hopefully me as well). She was able to travel away from what troubled her, leaving her unaware of the world outside, where as she slept, a place where the honking and shouting had vanished. By the late afternoon, she joined me in the guest house’s internet café.

And there we were, side-by-side in Kathmandu catching up with friends back home. She was comfortable wearing a dress she had bought in Bangkok, where I was forced to hold her purse, as she tried on five others indistinguishable to this one before buying it, myself drenched in sweat and inhaling the scent of garbage and fish from a nearby street vendor. When she was shopping, she was immune to the discomfort of her surroundings, something friends back home would be shocked by. She could have been standing in elephant poop in an acid rain storm, and still, she would have been focused on trying more identical dresses.

After I updated my writing, I thought about how much tougher she was than people back home gave her credit for. Then I thought about all those people, reading my blog and feeling envious briefly, before they watched a video of a Monkey Pissing In Its Own Mouth. They told me they were jealous of me, this man they did not know I had become, sitting in stained piss yellow t-shirt, battling diarrhea and hoping I would not poop my pants. I wrote back to their emails quickly always, telling them how wonderful the trip was but also exhausting. Inhaling more of the goat cheese breath, I decided using words like “wonderful” did not help. I then thought of a way to tell this poor woman her breath stunk, but shouting out, “Hey, I’m bored, wanna go brush our teeth together?” was all I could come up with. I choose instead to say nothing.

In the early evening, when Boxie-boo fell asleep again mid-chapter, the sun hid behind the horizon. There were no shadows on her while my flattened left hand moved back and forth along her back, as if I was trying to brush away her illness. She woke once to kiss my arm, magnifying her appreciation more than words. Each sleeping gesture was a kind of talking. A deep exhale. A shift in position, bringing me away from myself. I hoped these movements were a sign of improvement. I turned the page of my novel, listened closely to its lonely echo, the flip and turning, the stillness between lingering, a lonely echo, continuing to read. I missed her, strangely enough, even though she was right by my side.

When she woke, we walked downstairs to watch the lone, tiny television in the lobby. For the first time in over a month, we were able to find a western station. The Discovery Channel in English, which of course, was focused on the poisonous insects of Asia. It was short-lived, only 30 minutes, until the transmission was lost due to wind, according to staff.

As the night darkened, Mother Nature whirled into life; her voice of thunder sparking lightning through the clouds. Each flash turned this city into mere outlines of architecture, the rib cage of the metropolis. The smell of fresh rain on dry concrete was drawn from the air, entering our windows. From our room, we could hear the broken voice of the wind, crackling through streets and branches. The dogs were barking, mixing in with the ever-present sound of engines and horns. In preparation for another power outage, we removed everything between the bed and the bathroom to avoid bumping into things in the night, then took our malaria pills and listened to my stomach. It grumbled in unison with the thunder.

It was a strange night of lightning with little rain. When the thunder calmed to a murmur, my stomach followed suit. Boxie-boo was fast asleep, cloaked in the darkness. The power went out again. The revved up engines continued. The horns honked. I put in my ear plugs, silencing the world outside, wondering what our future will hold.

I thought again of all those who envied us, while the humidity drenched us both in sweat and I wrapped my flashlight around my arm in preparation for midnight bathroom runs, noting another night ahead with little sleep. I knew it was time for people to know the truth about traveling, the diarrhea and the dehydration, to the glory and the adventure. This way, people would understand travel, not just the baby-spiders-growing-out-of-a-brain bit they hear in the media and the misuse of the word ‘wonderful’.

And in the darkness, she woke once more. I saw the same storm in her eyes I heard from outside, and I waited, patiently, to ride the lightning. I knew something was wrong, and somehow, I was to blame. She was staring at her Bangkok dress on top of her bag on the floor, and it was in this moment, I learned that once a month, women go completely crazy for about 30 days. There she was battling a stomach bug in Kathmandu, getting over a fever, with no electricity and any real certainty on where we were and where we were headed next. I asked her what was wrong.

“I should have bought the other dress, but you rushed me,” she responded.

That’s all for now.

Thank you for visiting Page59.com.

First day in Kathmandu

03/13/10

We stepped into the alleyway narrow streets, passing a man washing his underwear in a blue bucket sitting in brown dirt, a couple feet in front of his house. He held his underwear up to me, between scrubs, presumably to show how clean he had made them. I did not know how to respond, though had I been wearing tear-away pants, I could have instantly shared his enthusiasm for showing off clean underpants. I choose instead to nod and smile. Meanwhile, cars flew by within inches of his bucket, but he did not even react. Behind him, his wife hanged clothes to dry. Out front, their children yelled “Hello” to us, giggling and taking turns piggy backing each other across the street between fly-by motorcycles. Rickshaws bounced along the potholes beside us as we made our way towards the center of the city under a beaming hot sun…or so I hoped.

I had asked the manager of our guest house for directions. His route of travel was confusing, especially since he had no street signs to really speak of, just landmarks that described things I had never seen before. Plus, it probably did not help that I made a common mistake of mine in my recently-woken-up state of mind. I have definitely asked a question, ignored the answer and been too ashamed to ask again, way more times than I would like to admit. I have this strange problem. Whenever I ask someone something and they respond “Great Question!” I’m too busy congratulating myself to hear them answer the question. For this reason, I was only slightly confident on how we would get to the Monkey Temple.

Within minutes in Kathmandu, we saw what we missed last night in the darkness. My pupils were already dilated with sights and we had only turned one corner. The world around us was shaded brown. Brown gravel roads, to the brown concrete and brick boxed buildings that surrounded us; the buildings looking like old baked good, the falling bread crumbs, which seemed ready to turn into a cloud of dust. White was easy to spot, available in many directions, on the teeth of smiling faces of Nepalese people, which was a welcome change for us. They were happy living amongst garbage-strewn streets with few possessions. It came to show, as I’ve said before, that happiness is disposition, not circumstance.

Ahead of us was a steep, Dr. Seus-shaped wobbly street. In the foreseeable distance, I spotted what I hoped to be our destination, the infamous Monkey Temple, perched golden on top of a hill of trees. I pointed at the temple, something everyone could easily see. Boxie-boo gave me the same impressed look I received in Australia after I bragged about using a payphone. She looked at me like I was the reason companies have to write “do not eat” on stereo equipment.

The route in front of us was, however, scattered with waterways, narrow swerving streets and tight-fitted bazaars, looking like a brown maze cluttered with strewn-garbage, bridges and cresting hills we could not see beyond. I realized that taking people on a walk when you are uncertain of your destination is like making a dog wear a costume: I knew it was wrong, but I convinced myself that they were enjoying as much as I was.

Walking across a bridge, the water was so polluted that garbage piles made small rapids. Pigs and dogs walked amongst the slow current, tearing at bags of discarded food. It smelt of heated sewage, while the midday sun rose, surrounding us as we crossed the bridge single file trying hard to breathe out of our mouths only. For a moment, all I heard was water, the bending of plastic and the murky footsteps of diseased-looking animals seeking food out of filth.

My arms were already a shade darker from rising dust of passing vehicles that stuck to my sunscreen. The sun felt good as it returned to my face after our time in China, while the world around us constantly changed. At times, the streets were so busy I felt like a single oxygen bubble in the veins of this crowded city. I worried one of us might get knocked over by a car or fall into one of the road side puddles. At one point, when two opposing cars met, I stood, my feet wide, back against a brown building, stretched in dry pockets over nauseating puddles of brown water, while the garbage floated near my shoes. Other times, we found soundless side streets, where quiet worshippers kneeled to make prayers at small, roadside temples.

Before the Monkey Temple, we entered a small Hindu temple, stepping over a white dog, lying motionless in the dead of sleep at the entrance. As is customary, we walked around clockwise, passing locals ringing bells and spinning prayer wheels in praise of their deities. Golden candle holders burned incense on shelves permanently stained black with smoke and bizarre shapes from fallen wax. In front, followers left offerings of rice and flowers. When I was handed rice, I followed their lead always, placing the offerings where others had been left behind.

The temple centered on the goddess Durga (below), depicted in bronze with eight arms. Goddess Durga is the mother of the universe and believed to be the power behind the work of creation, preservation, and destruction of the world. Hindu followers worship her as the supreme power of the Supreme Being and she has been mentioned in many scriptures - Yajur Veda, Vajasaneyi Samhita and Taittareya Brahman.

She is often depicted with eight or ten hands in temples, which represents eight quadrants or ten directions in Hinduism. This suggests that she protects the devotees from all directions. She is armed with many weapons, rides a lion, which signifies that she can release her followers from their fears. Not only a warrior, Mother Durga controls both aspects of energy, the potential and kinetic, and invokes her devotees to attack the challenges they face in life without losing their confidence.

According to some Hindu texts, Durga was created as a warrior goddess to fight a demon named Mahishasura who had unleashed a reign of terror on the earth, heaven and the nether worlds. Upon initially encountering Durga, Mahishasura underestimated her for being a woman. In response, Durga roared with laughter, creating an earthquake, before later defeating him with a sword. This weapon she is often depicted as holding symbolizes knowledge, which for Hindus represents freedom from all doubts.

Outside the temple, the elephant god Ganesh had many tombstone-like concrete carvings throughout the streets, allowing locals, I supposed, to pray to a deity on their daily commutes. He is the Lord of success and destroyer of evils and obstacles. He is also worshipped as the god of education, knowledge, wisdom and wealth. Beyond Ganesh, prayer flags were seen covering many small homes. We watched monks stroll by, chatting with market owners and offering blessings. Temple after temple, statue after statue, Religion and Kathmandu were one, as if they whole city was designed for worship.

I was thankful for all these temples. Not only were they culturally important and interesting, they distracted our group from being aware that I had little idea of where we were going.

“Do you know where you are going?” Boxie-boo asked me.

Maybe the temples weren’t as distracting as I thought.

I pointed at Ganesh. Boxie-boo did not even glance in the deity’s direction. This did not distract her either. Thanks Ganesh, I thought. We seemed to have entered another residential area, with no giant temple in sight.

“Umm,” I murmured, then paused. I paused long enough to make it appear that I was thinking.

Above us, monkeys walked along the power lines from outside apartments as if they were renting rooms. Boxie-boo and Liam both enjoyed watching the monkeys, which was a much appreciated new distraction possibly sent by the god of education. Thanks Ganesh, I thought again, this time not sarcastically.

“Yes, it’s this way,” I responded in albeit an unnecessary delay, feeling proud, looking up at monkeys who gripped the thickened electrical wires, before swinging themselves to neighboring buildings. I looked around the streets, rather bigheadedly, as if I had just answered a very tough question on Jeopardy, but no one around me seemed to be impressed. Some of the Nepalese people were even laughing at me.

It turned out the locals found amusement in our admiration of the monkeys, finding it strange how much we enjoyed watching them jump from building to building. To them, the monkeys were nothing more than annoying pests. They proved this by attacking them with brooms and tossed rocks.

Thankfully, a few blocks further, we met the base of the small mountain that held the Monkey Temple.

Boxie-boo and Liam led the way, pointing to a street-length wall of prayer wheels that surrounded the hillside. Boxie-boo moved under an archway, which featured a golden Buddha in the middle, guarded by paintings of white lions. Inside, Buddha statues sat in a meditation positions behind concrete lions. Monkeys were everywhere, focused on stealing the food offerings of believers. The trees were lined with prayer flags, creating waving shadows and the flickering of light across the walkway. We were followed by begging children, tugging at our pants and felt horribly sorry for them. Their little hands and faces were stained with caked-on dirt. Some of them mimicked for food, while others looked ready to cry. We had to keep moving, as in my experience, when you stop, you are quickly surrounded and risk being pick pocketed. Looking back, it is to think how quickly we almost got used to such sights and detached from the rawness of poverty that is common place throughout the world.

All the while, Boxie-boo’s Italian skin tone left locals confused, as many market owners asked her whether she was from Nepal or India, while some young men glared at me, thinking a foreigner had stolen one of their local beauties. Greetings came to her in Nepali language. This we would have to get used to as it only became more commonplace later in India. While she blended in, sharing their welcoming smiles, I often felt like an intruder.

The stairs led the way with three steep and narrow steps, followed by a larger wide one, over and over again. Reaching a market partway up the hillside to the temple, a local woman chiseled a Tibetan calendar out of rock, complete with symbols into circles of flattened stone. She wanted 3,000 Rupees for one, a special price for tourists. In the end, I bought two for a 1,000 total. “

You bargain hard like Nepal man,” she said. “You win, I lose.” We both knew, even with such a price drop, a local would have paid far less.

Towards the top of the temple, Boxie-boo pointed at monkeys grooming each other in the shade of concrete statues. When they looked at her, she jumped back, hiding behind me, while Liam and I focused our cameras. It was only our first full day and I had already snapped tons of photos. It was easy to become photo happy in Kathmandu, a city that seemed to constantly cause sensory overload.

It cost us 200 Rupees each to enter the top section of the temple. The area was centered around a bronze pole of circles, gradually getting thinner towards the top. It was surrounded by prayer wheels, which at times, were almost constantly spinning by circling worshippers. From here, we looked across the expanse of Kathmandu, while pigeons flew around us, landing to eat the thrown rice. In some sections, there were enough pigeons to block the concrete below. From above, they looked like a one large grey shadow that moved gently in unseen wind.

…Hours later…

Have you ever been so disgusted you did not know whether to laugh or cry? This was Boxie-boo’s end to a day of sightseeing. Let me explain.

Liam was busy bartering with taxi drivers outside Patan Durbar Square. An outdoor concert had the streets sardine packed around the corner. Suddenly, the crowd changed, slamming tsunami-like towards us. They ran forward, looking back behind, with the faces of fleeing, harsh, stony and frightened. Liam stopped bartering immediately and was smart to usher us into a cab as quickly as possible. Kathmandu is sometimes the focus of political demonstrations, strikes and even forced curfews. These crowded situations have a reputation for leading to violence, which of course, is not necessarily the case. We decided it was better to be safe than possibly sorry and get away from the chaos.

(I apologize for the following description)

There is no easy way to write this, so here it is: The cab smelled like semen. The car may have been small, but the scent of sex was so strong in the backseat, there may have been an orgy of midgets in it minutes earlier. The sex-scented parade entered our nostrils, swinging across the nose hairs like chandeliers, propelled by what smelt of tuna-scented farts. Boxie-boo and I immediately rolled down our windows. She gagged once. I told her to focus on breathing from her mouth and to relax her hands. She did. On a damp seat. This wet feeling of a soggy cushion only increased the lingering smell, while we felt our clothes moistening as the smell worsened to dead fish. She instantly lifted her hands off the seat, a little too quickly, as this caused her hands to rise up near our faces. I felt vomit rise up in my mouth and hung my head out the window just in case.

By the time we got out of the cab, our bottoms were soaked through to our skin. In something wet that smelt of semen. It is safe to say this was not the highlight of the afternoon.

“Only in Nepal,” Boxie-boo said, feeling the dampness of her pants. She began to laugh while crying.

“It is on my pants,” she screamed, her fingers outstretched, hands pushing downwards as if trying to push away the smell.

“Eww,” she said laughing.

“Eww, eww,” she repeated, this time crying.

We hugged while avoiding each other’s lower backs in the slow dance position of a young man trying to hide his arousal, then chaotically into the hostel. Our day of sightseeing ended with Boxie-boo running into the shower, then scrubbing our clothes in the sink. By nightfall, Boxie-boo had reinvigorated her skin with her body lotion. We went to bed, shuddered occasionally when we thought back to the smell, armed with our flashlights under our pillows as we faced another electricity cut, a fact of life in Kathmandu, as electricity was rationed throughout the city.

That’s all for now.

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China to Nepal

03/12/10

Many travelers had them. Most did not know why. There was no real way of knowing its potency, like that of death, the terrifying peace, the eternal sleep that waits for us all. Held so closely to me, it traveled along my side without a shadow. It was my blank canvas, my white pages without words; waiting for my pen, the scars that remind us that the past is real, where new thoughts and forgotten epiphanies traveled together at the speed of light, to be placed together, these little bones, the unspoken verses that slipped through the fierce snap of a tensed jawbone. A person is at their most honest when they write to themselves. My notebook – and there were eventually three - was uniquely mine and came to bring me a sense of belonging no matter where I was in the world.

I can quite confidently say that there were many times on the trip when Boxie-boo did not like my journal. There were only a few times she ever said anything directly about it. Her comfort was always put first before my writing, but maybe, there was a sense of jealously, as I can confidently say there were times I shared more of myself with my notebook than I did with her. No matter how sleep deprived I was, how stressed or uncomfortable, I always took the time to write, not only at night before bed, but during the day – walking, riding an elephant, hiking, off-roading, waiting, listening to the lull of waves, etc. – to ensure moments turned to memories and memories turned into stories.

With her head rested on my shoulder on our eighth airplane, I focused on remembering my thoughts, waiting for her to nod off to sleep. I noticed she smelled of expensive body lotion; something she swore was a necessity for the trip. Perhaps, she was right. With her eyes opening and closing, she scrolled through my researched notes with photographs and ideas of things to see and do in Nepal. Turning the pages, she sketched her excitement with her hands. Through my imagination, I could see the energy, the flip and turning, her sudden excitement moving towards me. No matter how tired we ever were, there is something to be said about flying to a country you have never visited, to feeling exposed and alive, naked and reborn, vulnerable and free, where your bravery battles your fear, especially when you know you are to land at night, overcome with uncertainty and that ever-present, pure sense of adventure.

As Boxie-boo nodded off, I pulled out my notebook and thought hard about where we had been and where we were going, not only on this trip but in a greater sense. One of the biggest benefits of travel is the ability to take the time to reflect fully, honestly and openly with yourself and yourself alone. I realized what I was doing was more than traveling, but saving myself from myself.

If I knew I would regret not doing something, I would do it before it was too late, giving me a sense of peace for that horrifying end, the sweet oblivion. Then instead of crying towards my death, I knew I could smile at the memories, while allowing the air to lighten around me, so gently that my life could no longer exist within it, leading me to find my pathway away from the seasons, taken in by the spell of music, the song and dance of days spent in full control of my life. In death, I believe those that accomplished their dreams are sheltered by them, warmed, consoled, loved, who need nothing more than the release of one last relaxing exhale. It was easy to think of death both before and during Nepal, a country where bodies were burned publicly and death has its blinds broken and doors wide open for all to see.

Before I left Canada, if someone had asked me what I would do if I knew my time on this planet was limited, I would say, travel the world. The truth is our time is limited. I believe it is only when you accept your mortality that you truly live. I have thought about this often in my life, about what I would say on my deathbed that I wished I would have done. If your answer to that question – possibly one of the most important you can ask yourself – is where you are presently, then you, my dear friend, are living the dream.

If not, be the change you want to become. Nobody is buried with their possessions. And even death, I believe, cannot take away our memories. Discover your dream. Live your dream. Wave goodbye to your fear of death.

I thought about this on our flight from Kunming, China to Kathmandu, Nepal. I was exactly where I was supposed to be. Although, the plane was fireplace hot and served a hard boiled breakfast at night, leaving the cabin smelling of eggs. It was midnight Kunming time. Most passengers slept while one ‘”gentleman” watched a movie with the volume on full blast on his laptop without earphones, with complete disregard for those trying to sleep. Oh China, I thought, it is time to say goodbye.

I was living the dream, yes, but this flight left me damp with sweat, feeling near feverish, exhausted and nauseaus from the food. I was glad I went to China - an unforgettable and exciting experience - but the often rude, pushy and selfish nature of the Chinese culture had gotten to me and it was time to move on. The worst part of China, in my opinion, was in many major cities it was hard to spot someone happy, their faces almost all sad, while the sky beyond them was constantly overcast and depressed with pollution.

After three hours, we arrived at the same time we left, 10 p.m., due to the time difference. I was excited to enter this country in classic third world fashion – by walking across the concrete runway, passed parked airplanes, into an old building of red brick. Inside, a smiling custom’s official, the first friendly I had seen in over a month, showed me where to fill out my visa application. The cost was $25 U.S. per person and I received my visa within two minutes of filling out my application. This was the fastest visa on the trip. Boxie-boo and I were smart, leaving Canada with money for visas, job letters and paystubs for employment proof and the necessary passport photos.

After receiving our bags, we walked up to the x-ray machine for luggage scanning. A custom’s official gestured to us to not bother. We skipped the scan, looking back at the line-up of Chinese being examined. We had no idea where we were headed and how we were getting there, just that we had paid a small deposit online for a cheap guest house with great reviews in what we believed to be the heart of Kathmandu.

Outside in the darkness, we could see only the passing lights of scooters and hear the random honking of cars. There were no streetlights on, no police in sight and no sense of direction. A tense silence loomed beyond the horns. Boxie-boo asked tentatively with her eyes for a connection and I quickly grabbed her hand. I had seen this look before - vanished, frightened, frozen and fretful – looking out at a world so bizarre I’d swear the universe was upside down. In this half-lit glance, seen only in the spray of moving vehicles, I pulled her in close, while she stepped more than into my embrace, but towards what was familiar and understood. I lifted her hand to mouth, smelled the lotion once more and gave her palm a kiss. Our hands joined and uncontrollably gripping, were all we needed to know, while the unseen depth of Nepal waited, whirling this clasp alive as we moved together finding a way through the darkness, as if letting go would release a curse held from within. With no options available beyond a transit booth, we pre-paid a taxi for 600 Rupees (less than $8 U.S./Canadian) for our ride to the International Guest House.

Our taxi was a tiny van covered in giant Suzuki stickers, a late-70’s model at best, sounding broken in its own roots and weakening, twig by twig, like some shattering tree in a storm. Liam, Boxie-boo and I sat in a tight row. The roof was covered in dotted green, red and blue lights that were cheaply sewn and taped into the ceiling, powered by a dangling wire into the ashtray lighter plug. The van had one working headlight, causing us to drive half in darkness in the unlit streets of Kathmandu. There were few buildings with lights on, only those with generators as the power was out and there were no street signs in a city without names. We drove down the left side of the road, dodging the dips and occasionally bottoming out, scraping the battered metal against the pothole dissolved concrete.

I looked out the window above the tightly-fitted buildings, like blasted mountain trails for trains, blackened by the night, scanning upwards to the sky to see the stars for the first time in over a month. Finally, freedom from China’s pollution, I thought. The poke-a-dotted sky overwhelmed me, as if I saw the constellations that were guiding us on our long way home, and I knew Boxie-boo saw the same thing, where like glowing crystals the stars exploded in the reflection of her eyes, proof to me of their passing. I saw them as she looked into me for support, while the van reared and bucked, the metals turning and cracking with the sound of breaking ice, as if the engine gently cried over top of hard fought tears. She stayed still like a slim cat under my right arm, my left hand massaging her right, and I saw her fight that flicker under her eyelid, the twilight state between the current of adventure and the blood rush of fear.

This whole time, I ignored the driver’s colleague, who was trying to convince Boxie-boo and Liam that our hotel was attached to a loud disco in the party district. He told them he will show us another one on the way. At one point, I intervened and said aggressively and politely, “No thank you. We will go to the guest house we reserved.”

He persisted, showing Boxie-boo a catalog. “It’s on the way. Look at the rooms,” he demanded.

“No thank you. We hired you to take us to this hotel. We will make no stops,” I replied firmly. This time I raised my voice, folded up the catalogue and passed it back to him. It was safest to go to a hostel that received strong reviews online and not to go exploring our first night in the darkness with a driver we just met and his forceful companion. In many third world countries, taxi and tuk tuk drivers earn a commission by taking you to a colleague’s establishment.

He tried to show me the catalog. I felt I had to give him some sense of victory and saw business cards in his cup holder. I then asked him for his card in case we were unsatisfied with our hotel. He agreed, finally, to take us to the International Guesthouse, seemingly upset. Five minutes later, we arrived at our graveyard silent hotel with no disco in sight.

In our room, the ceilings were pink, lined with spray-painted gold crown moldings and hardwood creaky floors. It had two single beds. The next day I lied to hotel staff, stating we were married, a necessity, in order to switch us to a room with a large enough bed for us to share. Boxie-boo got scared, sometimes, sleeping on her own in foreign countries, especially in Nepal, where power outages often left us in the uncertainty of darkness.

We discovered that Boxie-boo’s backpack was damp. Her hair mouse exploded inside her bag. Luckily, she remembered to place the bottle in a plastic bag so most of her clothes were dry. It was near 3 a.m. and after hanging up her clothes to dry, we pushed the two single beds together, and prepared for much needed rest.

I loved and hated this common exhaustion we battled on the trip. Ironically, it was something I longed for at home, where in my day-to-day life my adrenaline ran thin and in my future all I saw was more of the same dull routine. The thought of what I had left seemed so abstract, even more so than this city without power. It came to me, suddenly, that I was in exile.

I made my way back to my notebook, using a small flashlight to illuminate the page as to not to disturb Boxie-boo’s slumber. I felt a sense of conquering my own dare – to travel around the world – as although I was organized and well-researched, nothing could have prepared me for where we were presently, without power in a city where we could not see the surroundings we were living in. The faces I had met in the building were unacquainted, but also open. The unaccustomed, the openness, the hunger to understand: That was who I had become. I held little knowledge of each country we visited, Nepal included, but I was willing and enthusiastic to soak it up, the same as the blank pages of my notebook.

The room faltered in the expanse of the narrow flashlight. I pulled the pen from my pocket – always wet-tipped and dripping – and I was stuck with myself and this peculiar place. I fought to figure out how to describe the experience.

I reached into our small carry-on bag and took out Boxie-boo’s lotion, spreading it evenly over my hands that had been dried by China’s winter. I was sure to use very little, as Boxie-boo always did, to see how long we could make it last. I would not find the same kind for her for some time. She was always very sentimental of these little things, of tiny pieces of home she brought with her around the world – the stuffed turtle, Ipod with family photos, her favourite lotion. My hands begin to smell of her hands, and in writing, my notebook began to smell one in the same. It seemed as though my pen was about to write, but I placed the words elsewhere.

I wrote in lotion on both my forearms and felt reminded, suddenly, that though different, we both had our own ways to connect with where we were from and where we were going. Perhaps, this is why she was always so helpful when I searched for new pens and why without realizing it, I too, felt it was important to hand her the stuffed turtle when she was feeling ill in Shanghai. Placing her Body Shop cream back in her bag, I aimed to find her a replacement, which came later when needed most; a welcomed surprise on a day when Boxie-boo was most homesick after a long tiring safari in Africa. It may have been that which brought her a sense of belonging, no matter where we were in the world.

That’s all for now.

Thank you for visiting Page59.com.