“I must use a jeton to ride the funicular!”
This has taken on the tone of a schoolgirl rhyme for skip rope, we are singsonging our talisman sentence back and forth to each other in a cascade of giggles and our Italian friend is mostly just tolerating us as we clutch each other's arms and laugh until our cheeks hurt, "I must use a jeton to ride the funicular!”
And we haven't even starting drinking for the night, either. Well, that's not exactly true; we did have a beer on the terrace after our Bosphorus cruise adventure, and our Italian friend, I wish I could remember his name but it fled my mind instantly in a slur of Mediterranean pronunciation, our Italian friend is chugging a pre-dinner beer as we walk from the hostel to the tram. He tries to insist that we share his beer, and between giggles we demur, we are drunk already on something, the jetons, the funicular, the Bosphorus, or just being here. I peal out into fresh giggles as I realize that we are walking past the Blue Mosque, us infidel women smoking with bare arms and our friend with an open beer, this would get us stoned to death in some places but here its just funny.
We arrive at the Sultanhamet tram stop, and with fake solemnity redeem our jetons to enter the platform. The Italian is still drinking his beer, and we are still smoking, none of which we are allowed to do on the tram platform but we are pretending tourist ignorance. An older man approaches us, points to the beer and shakes his finger, "No, no, is not good," and the Italian replies, "Yes, yes, is good!" "No, no, you must not," "I guess I have to finish it, then!" and he turns the bottle up, throat moving in smooth waves as he gulps down the last dregs of his liter of beer.
The old man looks at us sadly, reproachfully, and we giggle disrespectfully onto the tram. We will be on the train for several stops, we are going over to New Istanbul tonight, to Taksim Square across the Golden Horn. Across the Golden Horn, across the Golden Horn... the phrase has a musical, mystical sound almost, across the Golden Horn. As we sit on the tram, Ariella and I again turn our attention to the funicular. Istanbul is webbed with several different types of transit, trams and light rail and buses and trains and ferries and now, a funicular. What on earth is a funicular, other than a ridiculous sounding word? What will it look like, how does it travel that is so different from a tram or a light rail or a train or a ferry or a bus? I am hoping for something like a ski-lift, with gondolas suspended from a cable swinging gently through an underground tunnel. Ariella thinks that maybe it works with spring action, bouncing us from one end of the track to the other. Funicular, funicular, funicular! We must use jetons to ride the funicular!
The Italian leans over, what is so funny now? We explain our fascination with the funicular, and his eyes light up: "Funicular? But I know what this is!" Is it a gondola? Does it bounce back and forth? Sadly no, it is much more mundane and quotidian than that, it is merely a train that goes uphill. We refuse to believe this, that is far too boring a function for a word like funicular, but the Italian goes on, "No, it is very cool, you see the train goes up but you do not feel like you are going up, the floor is level and the train is built on the slant of the hill," Okay that is a little bit better but I am not sure this funicular deserves a new jeton from me.
We arrive at the transfer point and disembark the tram. I have told my new friends to follow me, I have an excellent nose for sniffing out urban mass transit and finding the right train and it holds me in good stead despite the lack of directional signage. A fresh wave of giggles as we deposit our jetons at the turnstile for the funicular, I am still hoping to see a gondola and Ariella is still hoping for a spring action tube, but alas the Italian was correct. A short, smooth ride uphill and then we are off at Taksim Square, the heart of new Istanbul.
The first thing we see in the heart of new Istanbul is a protest. There is about a two to one ratio of cops in riot gear to protester with picket. "Kate! This is your chance to get thrown in Turkish prison!" I agree, is it an excellent opportunity to get thrown in Turkish prison, which was one of my travel goals. It's been a running joke for a long time, for some reason, and now that I am here in Turkey I have been determined to somehow get inside a Turkish prison if only in name. However, my plan was more along the lines of 'go to the Hilton and have a cocktail in the bar, the building used to be an imperial prison' than 'get beaten up by cops in riot gear while protesting some unknown social evil.'
We skirt the protest and move on, down the wide pedestrian boulevard lined with shops, an antique tram huffing up and down the street through mobs of people. This is new Istanbul, young Istanbul, the modern dining and shopping district, where the Istanbuli come to see and be seen. I can't resist the obligatory snapshot down the street, this reminds me most of Japan, the arcades in Tokyo and Kyoto lit up in neon between the skyscrapers, there is certainly nothing like it in North America or Europe that I've seen, although technically we are still in Europe we are only there by a few hundred meters.
We wander up the boulevard, Ariella has a goal but not a map, we are seeking a particular restaurant in a particular alley. We ask if we've gone too far, no, it's just the next right up there, or maybe the one after that, so we turn at the next right. The alley is narrower than the boulevard and every storefront is a restaurant, with cafe tables spreading into the street to leave only a narrow footpath between the shouting touts for the masses of potential diners to find their way. Every table is full outside, and with good reason; it's a beautiful clear night, perfectly temperate, who would sit inside? Not us, but we can't find a table outside anywhere as we wend along to the end and are spat out at the end of the alley. A moment to breathe, did Ariella see her restaurant? No, so back in.
We find her place, but there are no tables outside. Next door, though, there's a roof terrace with seating. I'm tired of looking for food and ready to eat, so are we all, that press of people was stressful so up we go. Three narrow and steep flights of stairs, crabbed in past the kitchen in the back, and then the beautiful night sky of Istanbul spreads over us. A tuxedoed waiter fusses over our napkins and distributes menus, the first bottle of wine shows up and we're off.
We peruse the menu for the weirdest things we can find, we are in new lands and will try new things. Let's start off with some brains.
Lamb brains, to be precise, not spicy with a little lemon and olive oil. I will try anything once, as long as I have a napkin and a large glass of water handy, so I warily take a small piece on my fork. Chewing thoughtfully and trying to be clinical about it, I don't like it but is that because its brains and thus inherently gross or is it just unyummy? Un-yummy, I decide, a mushy spongey texture, and very little flavor, quite bland actually. We move on to the fava bean paste with dill, which is superb, and dolmas, can't go wrong with a dolmas. In the meantime we are spying on other diners, there are two couples that are practically dry-humping by the edge of the terrace, and what appears to be a business meeting at another table. It's starting to fill up, and then the band arrives. Oh no, there's a band, so much for conversation.
But we are lucky, or rather, they have sized us up and determined that the tipping will not be good at our table, perhaps the Italian's backpacker attire has clued them in, counteracted Ariella's LBD and Louis Vuitton accessories. Drinking our wine slowly and waiting on our main course, Ariella and I somehow begin discussing Breakfast at Tiffany's, and then the wonders of Tiffany's, and our Italian friend is very, very bored.
I belatedly exclaim, "Wait! We just ordered and ate brains, and not one of us made a zombie joke! We have failed, my friends," and Ariella giggles back, "Perhaps...that means... we are adults!" "No, no, no!" a chorus of nos, we'll have none of that but we will have more wine please and thank you.
More organ meats for the main course, fried liver for the Italian and I end up with some kind of fish, Ariella with kebabs. Again we share plates, I don't like the liver but the fish isn't bad. The musicians have made the rounds of all of the tables twice, and at last they shrug and give us a try. Ariella has a request after all, "Hava Nagila!"
Lo, we must all clasp hands and dance around the table. Yes, yes, more wine!
As the song ends, we are smiling and joyful and suddenly it must be said, "I must use a jeton to ride the funicular!" Indeed, we must return to the funicular, we've hit our wine limit for navigating back down those stairs and the funicular stops running at midnight, and so back down the stairs, and through the alley, and down the boulevard, and into the station and a jeton for the funicular! and the tram and back, back across the Golden Horn, across the Golden Horn, a magical, mystical phrase evoking Istanbul's indescribable appeal, Constantinople's beckoning, across the Golden Horn or up the Bosphorus or a jeton for the funicular!
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Club Chaos, Tokyo, Japan (Feb 2006)
It is Saturday night in Tokyo and we are going out on the town. I planned this weeks before we got on the plane, laboriously poring over tourist attractions, maps, and train schedules, to route us here on a Saturday night while still being in Kyoto for the flea market and having time for our jaunts to Hiroshima and Mt. Fuji. I’m tired, we’ve been here a week and go go go, out like a light every night when my head hits the pillow, or the floor as the case may be here in Taito Ryokan, up before the sun and out the door to see what we can see, do what we can do. I may not have much gas left in the tank but I’m determined to hit the Tokyo club scene.
Carefully planned and timed, as always, we are headed out to the train station at 11:40pm. The trains will stop running at midnight and not begin again until 5am, and we are going to Roppongi which is all the way across the city so we are going to stay out until the trains go again. There’s a Canadian couple at our ryokan, they are going out too, we have both selected goth/industrial clubs to visit from fragmented internet information and word of mouth referrals. Different clubs, but in the same district, the nightlife is mostly in Roppongi and Shinjuku, so we are headed to the same station at the same time.
The five of us foreigners are the only people in the station, elaborately attired in crenellated shades of black. Two lines intersect at this station, the red and the mauve, a train pulls up and we get on. The Canadians question us briefly, are we sure this is the right train they don’t think so, Debi assures them that I am fantastic at this, Navigatrix Extraordinaire, I have not led us astray once in my untangling of the various transit systems.
They get on the train with us, we go one stop and it’s the end of the line, I have led us astray and it is nearing midnight, the witching hour or perhaps it should be called the taxi hour here in Tokyo. We got away with it, the last train of the night pulls up and off we go, a smooth ride across and around the sprawling, dense, alien city, picking up more passengers as we progress, everyone is headed to Roppongi on the last train of the night.
Disembarking, midnight. In our calibration of transit timing and disco napping, a few salient details got missed, like bathrooms and cigarettes, but we have time, lots of time, we will be out until 5am. The train station in Roppongi is surrounded by slick clubs and restaurants, seems to be mostly geared towards tourists but this is not for us, we are wending our way further out to the edges to a local club but first we need to find a bathroom. There’s a Starbucks here, there’s a Starbucks everywhere and I have thus far refused permission to Debi and Chris to stop in one despite their desire for familiar coffee, it’s bad coffee in Seattle and it’s still bad coffee in Tokyo, they are consistent that way. However, Starbucks does have a very lenient bathroom policy, so they are going to get their lattes this time as we visit what I have dubbed Bathrooms Around the World.
Caffeinated anew, we set forth again, we just need to find cigarettes on the way to the club. We walk, and walk, and the clubs and restaurants peter out, thinner on the ground, the stores are all closed and strangely not a cigarette vending machine in sight, surprising in this country of whiskey, beer, condoms, cigarettes, porn, and small plastic totems all available for a quantity of yen coins inserted in anonymous slots.
We are almost to the club when we see a convenience store, rush towards it only to determine after a great deal of pantomime that they do not sell cigarettes. It’s a nightlife district, and we are puzzled by the lack of readily available implements of sin, isn’t that kind of the point? There is more gesturing, there is a place further down, we will overshoot the club and go there and then retrace our steps.
A deserted block or two later and we see the sign for the club, discreet but present, and at least I was right about that, I have not led us astray twice in a row. We keep walking and there is nothing out here, past a small park, over a highway and I think we are no longer technically in Roppongi who knows where we are and this is taking a long, long time but we have time tonight. Victory, and we climb the steps and walk back through the rattling cage of the pedestrian overpass, this is not glamorous at all, there are no beautiful people here revelling but we will be there soon.
Now it’s after 1am, a perfectly appropriate time to arrive at a nightclub in Tokyo. Back to the Cube, and down the stairs below the discreet sign. We can hear the pounding music but it’s a wall of noise, not sure what’s playing but hoping it will be stompy and weird and crunchy industrial. We pay the admission fee and receive drink tickets in exchange, push through the curtain and then stop dead in our tracks, a clot in the flow of the club.
This is not goth/industrial.
It’s Japanese Pop.
But we are here, and we have drink tickets, and mostly we are here, dammit, we have committed to being out until 5am and so we shall, we can make this work but it is going to take a lot of booze so let’s get started on that as soon as possible and hopefully I can ignore the techno remix of Chumbawumba long enough to get so drunk I don’t care.
Fruity cocktails in hand, and we are hovering in a corner of the smoky, foggy dance floor, there’s a projection screen and a disco ball and some flashing lasers illuminating the giddy teenage girls in candy-colored clothes. Finish our drinks and even dance a little bit, or try to, not finding my groove here, float to the other side of the dance floor and look who’s here, our Canadian friends. It seems their club selection has also gone awry, not even open anymore, so they followed us here and I have led them astray again, the next song sounds so familiar and for a moment a brief bubble of hope rises through me, perhaps this is something I know, something I want to dance to, something to get my party started for real, this the night that we experience Tokyo nightlife dammit.
Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no. I recognize it, allright; oh, it’s familiar. It’s a dance remix of “Under the Sea,” from Disney’s “The Little Mermaid.”
Time to go.
I collect Debi and Chris, we leave our Canadian friends behind they are going to make the best of it and we are off to prospect for new frontiers, it’s a nightclub district after all there has to be something else, somewhere else to be, somewhere that we are not dancing to Disney in our stompy boots and short skirts and elaborate eyeliner. It is a little after 2am, three hours to go and I am sure we can find something.
We start walking.
Pass through a more populated area, but the patrons heaving in and out of these clubs are certainly not our target demographic so we keep going and eventually the crowds subside. We stop after a few deserted blocks, do we really want to keep going this way? Well, we know there’s nothing back the way we came, nothing we want closer to the train station, so we will walk along the train line underneath the tracks to the next stop and see if there’s anything there, it’s on the way to Shinjuku, the other club district, there’s got to be something between the two.
There’s not.
We have been walking long enough to sober up and are still far from Shinjuku. We could hop a cab, but we haven’t seen a cab in a while and who knows what we would find in Shinjuku anyway, Roppongi was supposed to be a foolproof night out and has failed us despite detailed research. It is right about then that we see a small neon sign: Chaos.
It’s not the dance club we’re seeking, but it’s somewhere and it probably has booze. We beeline for it.
Inside the unassuming door and it’s a lush lounge, red banquettes and velvet everywhere, a long, immaculately polished bar. There are a few Brits at the far end and a smiling Japanese bartender. He speaks English, thank god, and we settle onto barstools and order Manhattans. I am peering about after we order, fortunately Debi is keeping an eye on the bartender and nearly shouts, lunging across the bar to prevent whatever sin he is about to commit on our innocent drinks. There follows a brief multilingual lesson on how to make a Manhattan, as Debi mentors the eager to please bartender.
They don’t turn out so bad, and it’s nice to sit here, so tired after days of touristing, it’s comfortable and warm and welcoming. We chat with the Brits a little bit, have another round. It’s after 3am now, we’ll get going again soon, there’s still a chance for tonight although it’s narrowing quickly, we are approaching 5am and I am starting to lose the equilibrium between being tipsy enough to keep going and being too drunk and exhausted to stay awake, I need the adrenaline of the dance floor to moderate that delicate chemistry and let’s have another round. The bartender can’t hide his shock that the gaijin want yet more, bad bartender your job is to pour not to judge and we have to keep going until 5am the trains won’t run again until then so more Manhattans and make it snappy.
Sitting on the stool and slumping into it, I spill my drink on the bar. I am still chatting lazily with Chris and Debi but my eyes are closed, I am resting my eyes I am not sleeping, just leaning my head on my hand a little because its so heavy and I’ve been holding it up all day and its not 5am yet and I am so tired, go go go for a week and always alert, always navigating and taking charge and determining vectors and leading the charge and its nice to rest my eyes for a moment, still awake, game on, see I’m still sipping my drink just resting my head a little bit in between sips. The rests are lasting longer but its still to early for the trains so maybe I will just close my eyes for a few minutes more and lean my forehead down on my arm on the bar, just a few minutes.
I am vaguely aware of voices above my head, Debi saying “Kate do you want to go,” I mumble back something like “No trains yet, just gotta make it another 20 minutes” but I think it probably comes out as “shtrains….shoon…” More voices over my head, and then clearly I hear “I think it’s time we got her home,” they are in charge now I have ceded all tour leader responsibility, they don’t know what they’re doing, they are not Navigatrices but they are going to have to work it out.
Apparently they do, because a few minutes later I am being led out the door, Debi’s arm around my side, and poured into the back of a cab. I give up all pretense of being awake and sleep instantly, missing our late night ride across the entire city. They shake me awake when we reach the ryokan, I start up and plunge towards the door, towards the pillow or the floor as it may be here, must be horizontal, but I pull up sharply in the vestibule. After a week of culturally insensitive stomping into various temples and museums and forgetting to remove my shoes, it has finally sunk in here, now, at 5am, drunky drunk and wearing boots that lace up to my knees. I sway as I lean over, clawing the laces out and ripping the boots from my poor tired feet, toss them on the pile of shoes. Stagger forward, fingers trailing on the walls but can’t lean on them as I’d like to, they’re made mostly of rice paper, end of the hall and fumble with the tiny lock, Chris takes it from me and opens the door I nearly fall onto the thin mat that passes for a bed and I am probably asleep already while falling.
Carefully planned and timed, as always, we are headed out to the train station at 11:40pm. The trains will stop running at midnight and not begin again until 5am, and we are going to Roppongi which is all the way across the city so we are going to stay out until the trains go again. There’s a Canadian couple at our ryokan, they are going out too, we have both selected goth/industrial clubs to visit from fragmented internet information and word of mouth referrals. Different clubs, but in the same district, the nightlife is mostly in Roppongi and Shinjuku, so we are headed to the same station at the same time.
The five of us foreigners are the only people in the station, elaborately attired in crenellated shades of black. Two lines intersect at this station, the red and the mauve, a train pulls up and we get on. The Canadians question us briefly, are we sure this is the right train they don’t think so, Debi assures them that I am fantastic at this, Navigatrix Extraordinaire, I have not led us astray once in my untangling of the various transit systems.
They get on the train with us, we go one stop and it’s the end of the line, I have led us astray and it is nearing midnight, the witching hour or perhaps it should be called the taxi hour here in Tokyo. We got away with it, the last train of the night pulls up and off we go, a smooth ride across and around the sprawling, dense, alien city, picking up more passengers as we progress, everyone is headed to Roppongi on the last train of the night.
Disembarking, midnight. In our calibration of transit timing and disco napping, a few salient details got missed, like bathrooms and cigarettes, but we have time, lots of time, we will be out until 5am. The train station in Roppongi is surrounded by slick clubs and restaurants, seems to be mostly geared towards tourists but this is not for us, we are wending our way further out to the edges to a local club but first we need to find a bathroom. There’s a Starbucks here, there’s a Starbucks everywhere and I have thus far refused permission to Debi and Chris to stop in one despite their desire for familiar coffee, it’s bad coffee in Seattle and it’s still bad coffee in Tokyo, they are consistent that way. However, Starbucks does have a very lenient bathroom policy, so they are going to get their lattes this time as we visit what I have dubbed Bathrooms Around the World.
Caffeinated anew, we set forth again, we just need to find cigarettes on the way to the club. We walk, and walk, and the clubs and restaurants peter out, thinner on the ground, the stores are all closed and strangely not a cigarette vending machine in sight, surprising in this country of whiskey, beer, condoms, cigarettes, porn, and small plastic totems all available for a quantity of yen coins inserted in anonymous slots.
We are almost to the club when we see a convenience store, rush towards it only to determine after a great deal of pantomime that they do not sell cigarettes. It’s a nightlife district, and we are puzzled by the lack of readily available implements of sin, isn’t that kind of the point? There is more gesturing, there is a place further down, we will overshoot the club and go there and then retrace our steps.
A deserted block or two later and we see the sign for the club, discreet but present, and at least I was right about that, I have not led us astray twice in a row. We keep walking and there is nothing out here, past a small park, over a highway and I think we are no longer technically in Roppongi who knows where we are and this is taking a long, long time but we have time tonight. Victory, and we climb the steps and walk back through the rattling cage of the pedestrian overpass, this is not glamorous at all, there are no beautiful people here revelling but we will be there soon.
Now it’s after 1am, a perfectly appropriate time to arrive at a nightclub in Tokyo. Back to the Cube, and down the stairs below the discreet sign. We can hear the pounding music but it’s a wall of noise, not sure what’s playing but hoping it will be stompy and weird and crunchy industrial. We pay the admission fee and receive drink tickets in exchange, push through the curtain and then stop dead in our tracks, a clot in the flow of the club.
This is not goth/industrial.
It’s Japanese Pop.
But we are here, and we have drink tickets, and mostly we are here, dammit, we have committed to being out until 5am and so we shall, we can make this work but it is going to take a lot of booze so let’s get started on that as soon as possible and hopefully I can ignore the techno remix of Chumbawumba long enough to get so drunk I don’t care.
Fruity cocktails in hand, and we are hovering in a corner of the smoky, foggy dance floor, there’s a projection screen and a disco ball and some flashing lasers illuminating the giddy teenage girls in candy-colored clothes. Finish our drinks and even dance a little bit, or try to, not finding my groove here, float to the other side of the dance floor and look who’s here, our Canadian friends. It seems their club selection has also gone awry, not even open anymore, so they followed us here and I have led them astray again, the next song sounds so familiar and for a moment a brief bubble of hope rises through me, perhaps this is something I know, something I want to dance to, something to get my party started for real, this the night that we experience Tokyo nightlife dammit.
Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no. I recognize it, allright; oh, it’s familiar. It’s a dance remix of “Under the Sea,” from Disney’s “The Little Mermaid.”
Time to go.
I collect Debi and Chris, we leave our Canadian friends behind they are going to make the best of it and we are off to prospect for new frontiers, it’s a nightclub district after all there has to be something else, somewhere else to be, somewhere that we are not dancing to Disney in our stompy boots and short skirts and elaborate eyeliner. It is a little after 2am, three hours to go and I am sure we can find something.
We start walking.
Pass through a more populated area, but the patrons heaving in and out of these clubs are certainly not our target demographic so we keep going and eventually the crowds subside. We stop after a few deserted blocks, do we really want to keep going this way? Well, we know there’s nothing back the way we came, nothing we want closer to the train station, so we will walk along the train line underneath the tracks to the next stop and see if there’s anything there, it’s on the way to Shinjuku, the other club district, there’s got to be something between the two.
There’s not.
We have been walking long enough to sober up and are still far from Shinjuku. We could hop a cab, but we haven’t seen a cab in a while and who knows what we would find in Shinjuku anyway, Roppongi was supposed to be a foolproof night out and has failed us despite detailed research. It is right about then that we see a small neon sign: Chaos.
It’s not the dance club we’re seeking, but it’s somewhere and it probably has booze. We beeline for it.
Inside the unassuming door and it’s a lush lounge, red banquettes and velvet everywhere, a long, immaculately polished bar. There are a few Brits at the far end and a smiling Japanese bartender. He speaks English, thank god, and we settle onto barstools and order Manhattans. I am peering about after we order, fortunately Debi is keeping an eye on the bartender and nearly shouts, lunging across the bar to prevent whatever sin he is about to commit on our innocent drinks. There follows a brief multilingual lesson on how to make a Manhattan, as Debi mentors the eager to please bartender.
They don’t turn out so bad, and it’s nice to sit here, so tired after days of touristing, it’s comfortable and warm and welcoming. We chat with the Brits a little bit, have another round. It’s after 3am now, we’ll get going again soon, there’s still a chance for tonight although it’s narrowing quickly, we are approaching 5am and I am starting to lose the equilibrium between being tipsy enough to keep going and being too drunk and exhausted to stay awake, I need the adrenaline of the dance floor to moderate that delicate chemistry and let’s have another round. The bartender can’t hide his shock that the gaijin want yet more, bad bartender your job is to pour not to judge and we have to keep going until 5am the trains won’t run again until then so more Manhattans and make it snappy.
Sitting on the stool and slumping into it, I spill my drink on the bar. I am still chatting lazily with Chris and Debi but my eyes are closed, I am resting my eyes I am not sleeping, just leaning my head on my hand a little because its so heavy and I’ve been holding it up all day and its not 5am yet and I am so tired, go go go for a week and always alert, always navigating and taking charge and determining vectors and leading the charge and its nice to rest my eyes for a moment, still awake, game on, see I’m still sipping my drink just resting my head a little bit in between sips. The rests are lasting longer but its still to early for the trains so maybe I will just close my eyes for a few minutes more and lean my forehead down on my arm on the bar, just a few minutes.
I am vaguely aware of voices above my head, Debi saying “Kate do you want to go,” I mumble back something like “No trains yet, just gotta make it another 20 minutes” but I think it probably comes out as “shtrains….shoon…” More voices over my head, and then clearly I hear “I think it’s time we got her home,” they are in charge now I have ceded all tour leader responsibility, they don’t know what they’re doing, they are not Navigatrices but they are going to have to work it out.
Apparently they do, because a few minutes later I am being led out the door, Debi’s arm around my side, and poured into the back of a cab. I give up all pretense of being awake and sleep instantly, missing our late night ride across the entire city. They shake me awake when we reach the ryokan, I start up and plunge towards the door, towards the pillow or the floor as it may be here, must be horizontal, but I pull up sharply in the vestibule. After a week of culturally insensitive stomping into various temples and museums and forgetting to remove my shoes, it has finally sunk in here, now, at 5am, drunky drunk and wearing boots that lace up to my knees. I sway as I lean over, clawing the laces out and ripping the boots from my poor tired feet, toss them on the pile of shoes. Stagger forward, fingers trailing on the walls but can’t lean on them as I’d like to, they’re made mostly of rice paper, end of the hall and fumble with the tiny lock, Chris takes it from me and opens the door I nearly fall onto the thin mat that passes for a bed and I am probably asleep already while falling.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
There Are Perfectly Good Trains in This Country, Frankfurt, Germany (Aug 2005)
I disembark from the slowly chugging commuter train and exit the station. It’s been a fun weekend visiting Kris in her hometown of Mainz, I haven’t seen Berlin or any of the tourism highlights of Germany but I think I enjoyed this more, seeing a small German city with someone who lives there. It’s time to go back to Amsterdam, though, I need to back by early morning, and much as I wish I were transferring smoothly from a slow train to a faster one I’m not, I’m headed to the parking lot to the bus stand.
It was a tough decision to choose bus over train, not really difficult because the price differential was enough to get me on a budget Eurolines bus but difficult to give up the romance of trains in Europe, the ease and civilization and speed of the thing. I know its possible to travel by train in America but it doesn’t feel the same, doesn’t feel like a romantic trip back in time fifty years to when people traveled with trunks or fleeing an encroaching army with an elaborate hat on. It’s not like this is the Orient Express or anything, it’s just a train and the romance is in my head, and apparently romance sells relatively cheaply at a price point of around $40, which is the difference between what a train ticket would have been and my bus ticket.
It’s late when I reach the bus stand, not middle of the night late but late for this country where nothing is open 24 hours and in fact after 8pm you are going to have to pay a premium for any services or products. The bus is supposed to leave in around thirty minutes and drive through the night, arriving in Amsterdam at 6am or so. There are a few others waiting there, I join them but don’t greet them, two days here has reinforced my monoglot humility and while they probably speak English I sometimes get a little tired of being the American with no languages. I speak French, a little, and I tend to protest this at some point or another in any conversation, but I don’t speak it that well anymore and everyone speaks English anyway so I end up letting everyone condescend to me.
It is a pleasant summer evening, a comfortable night to pull up a chunk of pavement and sit outside. I lean back and muse over the past couple of days, the statue of the river spirit on the winding banks of the Rhine, the jazz festival we went to and the house party later that night, the beautiful jewel of a church with stunning stained glass windows by Chagall. A fun time and I wish I could bump around Germany a bit more, maybe go see the Reichstag after all, but I am out of time and money for this little jaunt and I need to be back in Holland by the time the sun comes up and so here I wait for my budget bus to serve as an uncomfortable traveling bed tonight., leaving the romance of those trains coming and going on vectors flung across the continent inside the station.
And waiting. The bus is late by now, not terribly late but this is Germany after all, Western Europe and things are supposed to be on time here. I consider walking into the station for a snack before it shuts down completely for the night, but I know that Murphy’s Law applies here just as much as it does everywhere else and if I do that the bus will screech into the parking lot, everyone will leap aboard and I will be left here holding a candy bar in bewilderment.
And waiting still. We are Westerners, we wait politely but anxiously. I am still not really talking to anyone, and as a slight delay of fifteen minutes stretches to thirty and then forty-five, the loose collection of disparate strangers begins to coalesce. We have nothing in common but a shared point of departure, a destination, and a schedule, but that is all it takes to bridge social conventions sometimes. I watch a couple begin to chat with another couple, there is an examination of the sign and a brief huddled conference, a phone call is made in rapid German. Another two people join the clump of four and I am the only one sitting separate now, I’ve thought of doing something but I don’t really know what there is to be done, the bus should be here but its not, I can’t think of any action I could take in this country where I don’t speak the language and don’t have a context that would manifest a bus. I could have figured out a missing train, just get on a different one and spider through all those crossing vectors, take the scenic route, but the trains are all gone for the night now, it’s Sunday and its late and we are a group of strangers hanging out in a deserted parking lot with no bus to validate our presence. This is not supposed to happen in first world countries, and yet c’est la vie, here we are. I don’t know the German for that expression.
A lanky man breaks off from the clump, an ambassador sent to recruit me towards the shared goal of bus manifestation, or perhaps more accurately to humanely help the stranded foreigner, more stranded than they by the simple fact of my clear foreigness. He introduces himself in accented English, doesn’t even bother testing me with German or Dutch. They have called the bus company with the righteous anger of first world travellers, and he tells me that they were told that the bus is late. We figured that part out. They also said the bus was coming. Sometime. It has to come this way sometime, this is the route. Also immensely helpful.
I move over ten feet and become part of the group, solidarity, and listen while a young woman makes the next call. More rapid, agitated speech in a language I don’t understand, and a frustrated farewell at the end, punctuated by the abrupt snapping shut of a cell phone. More news, there will be no refunds, exchanges, discounts, or vouchers, we have been instructed to read the back of our tickets which clearly states that there will be no refunds, exchanges, discounts, or vouchers for our trouble. I can’t read it, it’s in Dutch, but I’ll take their word for it. The woman’s face twists as she says, “This is why it’s so cheap,” and we all concur that we are being abominably treated, yes it is an economy bus but we are in Western Europe. I guess the motto is that if we wanted first world service we would have ponied up the extra $40 and gotten on a romantic train.
We continue to wait. We haven’t been given an ETA on the bus, just “sometime,” and this isn’t even the Mediterranean with siestas and manana time, this is Germany, former home of lockstepping Nazis not to put too fine a point on it. I have been fairly sanguine about this whole thing, as it’s all entirely out of my control, but we are now all comparing notes about where we need to be and when, and how much this is inconveniencing us and may disrupt further travel connections or arrangements. I had some time to burn, but this tardy bus has already burned through most of it and I am beginning to fret as well.
We discuss options--perhaps we could just rent a car and pile in, drive through the night on our own? If we split the cost it wouldn’t put us out that much, although nobody wants to blow the budget that way, we are all waiting for the bus because that $40 meant more to us than comfort and it would just stink to blow our modest savings on a triage solution, but we do need to get from here to there. There are other problems with this plan, the first being that it’s late, where would we even find a car rental agency? We send an emissary to talk to the night guard in the station, he comes back and informs us that we can call a special service that will bring us a rental car for an additional charge. The bus still isn’t here and this is looking more and more like a necessity, but wait there are other issues to overcome with this plan--does anyone know how to get there? I don’t, clearly, but the young woman does, she can navigate but doesn’t have a valid driver’s license. Hmmm. New problem, does anyone have a valid license?
Well. I do.
And suddenly this is starting to seem like a grand adventure, a madcap midnight drive with a carload of strangers across Europe, I warn them that I’m not a very good driver and I don’t really know how to drive a stick shift, automatic only, but we are beginning to convince ourselves that this is feasible. We will wait another ten minutes for the bus and then we are taking matters into our own hands, we will be cowboys not cattle and hopefully the American girl won’t drive off the road and hopefully the German girl actually knows where she’s going and this is going to be a story for sure.
The bus pulls up five minutes later.
It was a tough decision to choose bus over train, not really difficult because the price differential was enough to get me on a budget Eurolines bus but difficult to give up the romance of trains in Europe, the ease and civilization and speed of the thing. I know its possible to travel by train in America but it doesn’t feel the same, doesn’t feel like a romantic trip back in time fifty years to when people traveled with trunks or fleeing an encroaching army with an elaborate hat on. It’s not like this is the Orient Express or anything, it’s just a train and the romance is in my head, and apparently romance sells relatively cheaply at a price point of around $40, which is the difference between what a train ticket would have been and my bus ticket.
It’s late when I reach the bus stand, not middle of the night late but late for this country where nothing is open 24 hours and in fact after 8pm you are going to have to pay a premium for any services or products. The bus is supposed to leave in around thirty minutes and drive through the night, arriving in Amsterdam at 6am or so. There are a few others waiting there, I join them but don’t greet them, two days here has reinforced my monoglot humility and while they probably speak English I sometimes get a little tired of being the American with no languages. I speak French, a little, and I tend to protest this at some point or another in any conversation, but I don’t speak it that well anymore and everyone speaks English anyway so I end up letting everyone condescend to me.
It is a pleasant summer evening, a comfortable night to pull up a chunk of pavement and sit outside. I lean back and muse over the past couple of days, the statue of the river spirit on the winding banks of the Rhine, the jazz festival we went to and the house party later that night, the beautiful jewel of a church with stunning stained glass windows by Chagall. A fun time and I wish I could bump around Germany a bit more, maybe go see the Reichstag after all, but I am out of time and money for this little jaunt and I need to be back in Holland by the time the sun comes up and so here I wait for my budget bus to serve as an uncomfortable traveling bed tonight., leaving the romance of those trains coming and going on vectors flung across the continent inside the station.
And waiting. The bus is late by now, not terribly late but this is Germany after all, Western Europe and things are supposed to be on time here. I consider walking into the station for a snack before it shuts down completely for the night, but I know that Murphy’s Law applies here just as much as it does everywhere else and if I do that the bus will screech into the parking lot, everyone will leap aboard and I will be left here holding a candy bar in bewilderment.
And waiting still. We are Westerners, we wait politely but anxiously. I am still not really talking to anyone, and as a slight delay of fifteen minutes stretches to thirty and then forty-five, the loose collection of disparate strangers begins to coalesce. We have nothing in common but a shared point of departure, a destination, and a schedule, but that is all it takes to bridge social conventions sometimes. I watch a couple begin to chat with another couple, there is an examination of the sign and a brief huddled conference, a phone call is made in rapid German. Another two people join the clump of four and I am the only one sitting separate now, I’ve thought of doing something but I don’t really know what there is to be done, the bus should be here but its not, I can’t think of any action I could take in this country where I don’t speak the language and don’t have a context that would manifest a bus. I could have figured out a missing train, just get on a different one and spider through all those crossing vectors, take the scenic route, but the trains are all gone for the night now, it’s Sunday and its late and we are a group of strangers hanging out in a deserted parking lot with no bus to validate our presence. This is not supposed to happen in first world countries, and yet c’est la vie, here we are. I don’t know the German for that expression.
A lanky man breaks off from the clump, an ambassador sent to recruit me towards the shared goal of bus manifestation, or perhaps more accurately to humanely help the stranded foreigner, more stranded than they by the simple fact of my clear foreigness. He introduces himself in accented English, doesn’t even bother testing me with German or Dutch. They have called the bus company with the righteous anger of first world travellers, and he tells me that they were told that the bus is late. We figured that part out. They also said the bus was coming. Sometime. It has to come this way sometime, this is the route. Also immensely helpful.
I move over ten feet and become part of the group, solidarity, and listen while a young woman makes the next call. More rapid, agitated speech in a language I don’t understand, and a frustrated farewell at the end, punctuated by the abrupt snapping shut of a cell phone. More news, there will be no refunds, exchanges, discounts, or vouchers, we have been instructed to read the back of our tickets which clearly states that there will be no refunds, exchanges, discounts, or vouchers for our trouble. I can’t read it, it’s in Dutch, but I’ll take their word for it. The woman’s face twists as she says, “This is why it’s so cheap,” and we all concur that we are being abominably treated, yes it is an economy bus but we are in Western Europe. I guess the motto is that if we wanted first world service we would have ponied up the extra $40 and gotten on a romantic train.
We continue to wait. We haven’t been given an ETA on the bus, just “sometime,” and this isn’t even the Mediterranean with siestas and manana time, this is Germany, former home of lockstepping Nazis not to put too fine a point on it. I have been fairly sanguine about this whole thing, as it’s all entirely out of my control, but we are now all comparing notes about where we need to be and when, and how much this is inconveniencing us and may disrupt further travel connections or arrangements. I had some time to burn, but this tardy bus has already burned through most of it and I am beginning to fret as well.
We discuss options--perhaps we could just rent a car and pile in, drive through the night on our own? If we split the cost it wouldn’t put us out that much, although nobody wants to blow the budget that way, we are all waiting for the bus because that $40 meant more to us than comfort and it would just stink to blow our modest savings on a triage solution, but we do need to get from here to there. There are other problems with this plan, the first being that it’s late, where would we even find a car rental agency? We send an emissary to talk to the night guard in the station, he comes back and informs us that we can call a special service that will bring us a rental car for an additional charge. The bus still isn’t here and this is looking more and more like a necessity, but wait there are other issues to overcome with this plan--does anyone know how to get there? I don’t, clearly, but the young woman does, she can navigate but doesn’t have a valid driver’s license. Hmmm. New problem, does anyone have a valid license?
Well. I do.
And suddenly this is starting to seem like a grand adventure, a madcap midnight drive with a carload of strangers across Europe, I warn them that I’m not a very good driver and I don’t really know how to drive a stick shift, automatic only, but we are beginning to convince ourselves that this is feasible. We will wait another ten minutes for the bus and then we are taking matters into our own hands, we will be cowboys not cattle and hopefully the American girl won’t drive off the road and hopefully the German girl actually knows where she’s going and this is going to be a story for sure.
The bus pulls up five minutes later.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Let’s Pave the Rainforest, Misahualli, Ecuador (Jul 2006)
I fell asleep last night listening to the rain plinking steadily on the roof of my breezy cabana, smiling at the sound but also hoping that it would stop before morning. I am, after all, in the middle of a no-shit rainforest, so it is a happy surprise to wake up to clear skies dotted with fluffy clouds. The horizon over the flagging treetops is blue, but a different kind of blue than the sharp, clear air of the mountains; it is hazy and soft somehow.
My hygiene habits have adjusted on this trip, I no longer shower in the morning. There’s no point, as I will immediately set out to get as dirty as possible stomping around exploring, so despite the slight sense of being off-kilter from not following my morning routine, I pull my hair back in a ponytail and spray myself liberally with my precious 100% DEET. It is the most toxic insect repellent commercially available, and I can feel it tingling and stinging into my pores. I throw the bottle in my bag, anticipating relayering myself with poison at some juncture, I am paranoid in my assiduous application of DEET and it’s worked so far, no malaria so far, in fact I have watched lumbering giant mosquitos circle and fly away from my probably melting skin.
After breakfast, I go with my guide to get geared up. Unlike most others here, I am traveling alone, so I get a guide all to myself. He gives me wading boots, encasing my legs in sweaty rubber up to the knee. Already my hiking boot plan has failed. Off we go, and we are doing this a little differently because I’m not a tour group, instead of having a dedicated jeep for our adventures we will hitch a ride to our first trailhead, and it will be a combination of buses and walking afterwards.
The jeep drops us off after a short ride on fairly well-paved roads, and off we go to the Sacred Waterfall. We climb slowly up a rough set of steps set into the muddy hillside, stopping every few minutes so that my guide can show me a plant or flower and explain it’s medical uses. The day is starting to heat up, and the sweat beading all over my body is mingling with the DEET and creating a slick layer of poisonous, dirty sludge. We are just beginning our day.
We go on, stopping less now as we move into the taller trees. The path is not too steep, its not a vertiginous climb, but it is a river of mud still steaming off last night’s rain and it goes straight up, the rude steps of the first section have fallen by the wayside. I slip with every step, clutching at branches and roots as the rubber waders slide treadless in several inches of glop. Every yard of progress I’ve made has been tempered by a foot of sliding, and I am getting dirtier and sweatier and wondering how the hell my guide proceeds with such sure footing, I am stepping exactly where he is and yet here I go sideways and only catch myself from a complete face-plant by thrusting my hand down into the mud. I ask him to slow down, I am panting too because the air is so thick and humid, some rain would be nice right now this is a rainforest where’s the damned rain?
We reach a smoother section, there are some actual stones sunk into the mud on this stretch, some rough indication that this is something other than a wild pig track that humans have adapted to their own purposes, and not that well. My boots are caked with mud, making every step heavier and now I’m carrying my own treachery on my shoes, sliding on the stuff stuck to the bottom even where the ground has traction. We reach a stream and the path ends, will we go upstream or downstream along the bank until we reach a bridge?
How foolish of me to think that there would be a bridge.
My guide leads, the path, it would seem, is to wade upstream for several yards until we reach a break in the foliage on the other side. I am mud all the way up to my thighs, and smeared down my naked arms as well, I have much earlier ditched the long loose layers recommended for jungle weather and also keeping mosquitoes off, it is too fucking hot for that. Rivulets of sweat have traced lines of cleaner skin through the muck all over me, and there are smudges of mud on my face as well where I wiped my brow without thinking of the hand I’d thrust down to save my balance earlier. I am gamely following, teetering against the water’s current and gingerly picking my way step by step in the river, not stepping stone to stepping stone mind you. It occurs to me to wonder, what happens if I fall and, say, sprain an ankle or worse? Is that what it will take to get a helicopter in here to get me out of this jungle hell? Who am I kidding, the closest heli is hundreds of kilometers away, the only way I am getting out of this jungle is the way I came in, sprains, breaks, cuts, and venomous bites be damned.
I stagger and lurch from the water, clumps of mud still clinging to my waders. Oh look, it seems there’s a small hole in the left one, as evidenced by the sloshing wetness covering my foot. This is just getting better and better. There must be a different path out of here, we aren’t even at the waterfall yet but surely we won’t have to backtrack down this path, there’s probably a wide paved access road on the other side and he is just taking me up this way for an authentic experience.
I lean against a tree, panting a little bit, and am torn between wiping the crud off my skin as best I can or adding to it with another layer of DEET. My guide has a slight amused smile, I snarl up at him, “Ever heard of asphalt?! It’s great! You pour it, and then it hardens and it stays that way and you can walk on it ALL THE TIME.”
“Oh, but this is the easy path! Everyone takes this path, groups with senior citizens and small children come up this way, this is easy, very easy.”
I glare. “Easy? Easy? Easy for you, but how about I take you to New York and drop you in Times Square and leave you to navigate the subway to meet me in Tompkins Square thirty minutes later.”
I don’t think he realized how frustrated I am, he backpedals and agrees soothingly that yes, this is easy for him, this is where he’s from but it would be hard for him to be where I’m from. And we are almost there, really. He promises.
One last set of muddy steps, up and up and up, and finally a rickety gate, we have reached the waterfall. Oh no, we have reached the access path for the waterfall, my notion that we had been on the access path was foolish indeed. At least it’s downhill now, but treacherous, treacherous, steep stone steps slick with moisture and I am going very carefully, and we are wading downstream this time it is old hat by now I just want to get to the waterfall, I cannot imagine a greater pleasure right now than plunging into a cold pool of water in the midst of the moist forest and I think I understand why it’s sacred now.
There it is, beautiful manna from heaven, water from a rock, and I tug and yank and pull the rubber prisons from my feet and only then realize that I have forgotten my bathing suit.
My hygiene habits have adjusted on this trip, I no longer shower in the morning. There’s no point, as I will immediately set out to get as dirty as possible stomping around exploring, so despite the slight sense of being off-kilter from not following my morning routine, I pull my hair back in a ponytail and spray myself liberally with my precious 100% DEET. It is the most toxic insect repellent commercially available, and I can feel it tingling and stinging into my pores. I throw the bottle in my bag, anticipating relayering myself with poison at some juncture, I am paranoid in my assiduous application of DEET and it’s worked so far, no malaria so far, in fact I have watched lumbering giant mosquitos circle and fly away from my probably melting skin.
After breakfast, I go with my guide to get geared up. Unlike most others here, I am traveling alone, so I get a guide all to myself. He gives me wading boots, encasing my legs in sweaty rubber up to the knee. Already my hiking boot plan has failed. Off we go, and we are doing this a little differently because I’m not a tour group, instead of having a dedicated jeep for our adventures we will hitch a ride to our first trailhead, and it will be a combination of buses and walking afterwards.
The jeep drops us off after a short ride on fairly well-paved roads, and off we go to the Sacred Waterfall. We climb slowly up a rough set of steps set into the muddy hillside, stopping every few minutes so that my guide can show me a plant or flower and explain it’s medical uses. The day is starting to heat up, and the sweat beading all over my body is mingling with the DEET and creating a slick layer of poisonous, dirty sludge. We are just beginning our day.
We go on, stopping less now as we move into the taller trees. The path is not too steep, its not a vertiginous climb, but it is a river of mud still steaming off last night’s rain and it goes straight up, the rude steps of the first section have fallen by the wayside. I slip with every step, clutching at branches and roots as the rubber waders slide treadless in several inches of glop. Every yard of progress I’ve made has been tempered by a foot of sliding, and I am getting dirtier and sweatier and wondering how the hell my guide proceeds with such sure footing, I am stepping exactly where he is and yet here I go sideways and only catch myself from a complete face-plant by thrusting my hand down into the mud. I ask him to slow down, I am panting too because the air is so thick and humid, some rain would be nice right now this is a rainforest where’s the damned rain?
We reach a smoother section, there are some actual stones sunk into the mud on this stretch, some rough indication that this is something other than a wild pig track that humans have adapted to their own purposes, and not that well. My boots are caked with mud, making every step heavier and now I’m carrying my own treachery on my shoes, sliding on the stuff stuck to the bottom even where the ground has traction. We reach a stream and the path ends, will we go upstream or downstream along the bank until we reach a bridge?
How foolish of me to think that there would be a bridge.
My guide leads, the path, it would seem, is to wade upstream for several yards until we reach a break in the foliage on the other side. I am mud all the way up to my thighs, and smeared down my naked arms as well, I have much earlier ditched the long loose layers recommended for jungle weather and also keeping mosquitoes off, it is too fucking hot for that. Rivulets of sweat have traced lines of cleaner skin through the muck all over me, and there are smudges of mud on my face as well where I wiped my brow without thinking of the hand I’d thrust down to save my balance earlier. I am gamely following, teetering against the water’s current and gingerly picking my way step by step in the river, not stepping stone to stepping stone mind you. It occurs to me to wonder, what happens if I fall and, say, sprain an ankle or worse? Is that what it will take to get a helicopter in here to get me out of this jungle hell? Who am I kidding, the closest heli is hundreds of kilometers away, the only way I am getting out of this jungle is the way I came in, sprains, breaks, cuts, and venomous bites be damned.
I stagger and lurch from the water, clumps of mud still clinging to my waders. Oh look, it seems there’s a small hole in the left one, as evidenced by the sloshing wetness covering my foot. This is just getting better and better. There must be a different path out of here, we aren’t even at the waterfall yet but surely we won’t have to backtrack down this path, there’s probably a wide paved access road on the other side and he is just taking me up this way for an authentic experience.
I lean against a tree, panting a little bit, and am torn between wiping the crud off my skin as best I can or adding to it with another layer of DEET. My guide has a slight amused smile, I snarl up at him, “Ever heard of asphalt?! It’s great! You pour it, and then it hardens and it stays that way and you can walk on it ALL THE TIME.”
“Oh, but this is the easy path! Everyone takes this path, groups with senior citizens and small children come up this way, this is easy, very easy.”
I glare. “Easy? Easy? Easy for you, but how about I take you to New York and drop you in Times Square and leave you to navigate the subway to meet me in Tompkins Square thirty minutes later.”
I don’t think he realized how frustrated I am, he backpedals and agrees soothingly that yes, this is easy for him, this is where he’s from but it would be hard for him to be where I’m from. And we are almost there, really. He promises.
One last set of muddy steps, up and up and up, and finally a rickety gate, we have reached the waterfall. Oh no, we have reached the access path for the waterfall, my notion that we had been on the access path was foolish indeed. At least it’s downhill now, but treacherous, treacherous, steep stone steps slick with moisture and I am going very carefully, and we are wading downstream this time it is old hat by now I just want to get to the waterfall, I cannot imagine a greater pleasure right now than plunging into a cold pool of water in the midst of the moist forest and I think I understand why it’s sacred now.
There it is, beautiful manna from heaven, water from a rock, and I tug and yank and pull the rubber prisons from my feet and only then realize that I have forgotten my bathing suit.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
The Big Square is This Way, Marrakesh, Morocco (Feb 2008)
We are going to get lost. I planned it that way, on purpose, because ‘getting lost in the souks’ is both recommended as the best way to experience them, and also seems to be inevitable, so we may as well give ourselves permission to not know where the hell we are and try to enjoy it. Arrival in Marrakesh has gone sort of smoothly, we got off the train from Casablanca and only had to argue with two cab drivers before we were able to bargain the rate down to something vaguely acceptable, and we only wandered down four or five blind alleys before we located our riad. Climbing the steps through messy construction to our room was a minor detail, the joys of travel, we are going out to get lost.
And so it begins, we start from the Djama el Fnaa, The Big Square. This is described as “the beating heart of Marrakesh,” and first observations indicate that the beating heart of Marrakesh is pumping tourists into the city at an alarming rate. We were nervously prepared to cover our heads and wear loose clothing from neck to ankle, but even the process of getting to our hotel revealed hordes of European women in tank tops and shorts. It’s not like a veil is going to make us look local anyway, it will just make us looks like uncomfortable Americans with scarves on our heads so we skip it.
My map says that from the Big Square we follow the narrow alley from the north end, bear left and that will lead us into the old market district. There are warrens of interlaced souks, or markets, within the walls of the old city, each souk with a different specialty such as carpets, or leather, or slippers, or musical instruments or metalwork, all spilling over into alleys narrow and full of pedestrians, donkeys pulling carts and the occasional motorbike roaring through and scattering foot traffic left and right. So far the ‘specialty’ on these first few blocks seems to be ‘tourist crap,’ we are hoping to find something a little more authentic as we wend our way deeper.
There is a slight widening here, a courtyard with a crooked tree, and we pause for a moment as I turn around surveying all the different offshoots leading asymmetrically deeper into the old city. A young man passes us, stops and says, “Are you looking for the Big Square?” and points back the way we came, “No, we are going to the souks,” he nods and points at the third alley from the left and continues past us. Third alley from the left it is, picking our way over ancient paving stones covered with a patina of dust, and a turn or two later we are in the market for real.
It is an eruption of color and smells, I can walk down the middle of the alley with both hands outstretched and touch souvenirs and handicrafts with the tips of both fingers, except if I did I’d be mown down by one of those scooters within seconds. Welded metal lanterns piled upon each other in varying sizes, insets of stained glass, elaborately decorated daggers in tooled leather sheaths, ducking under rugs hung from the eaves of these shacks, looking and touching and moving without stopping because even without stopping the shopkeepers are leaning out of their booths, “you like? Is very nice! Come look in my store, best prices in Morocco!” I might want to look at some of these things but the pressure is so intense I don’t want to stop, if we are being swarmed while in motion it is only going to be exponentially worse if the target stops moving and becomes a sitting duck.
Debi wants to check out spices, so we stop in the first spice stall we see. They are gracious, bringing us many samples of different spices and teas to taste and smell, I don’t want to buy anything on the first day here but Debi does, we pack up a couple of small sacks and begin to move on. The vendor asks us what we’d like to see, offers to take us to his friend’s carpet shop, no thank you, do we need a guide, no we don’t thank you, thank you, thank you, we are leaving now, thank you.
Another turn and a duck down an alley completely roofed in tin and the motorbikes still roar through this arcade, these are the soap makers and we don’t stop, there is a special price just for us but we don’t stop, emerging out into another courtyard and thoroughly lost now, stop to shake our heads and squint in the sun looking at the different capillaries leading from here deeper in, the beating heart of Marrakesh pushing us ever deeper into the old city, and a young man sees us standing there and says, “Are you looking for the Big Square?” No, we are not, we are looking for the carpet souk, he points to the second alley from the right and continues on, and we dive back into the second alley on the right and continue getting more and more lost.
Emerging into another arcade after we’ve passed some of the metalworkers, bright sparks showering from their handheld welders and other tools, and rich carpets are piled and hung everywhere in layers, a dizzying profusion of hues and patterns and styles and the carpet souk is supposed to be the most aggressive, this is where we will be subjected to the hardest sell. The mosque bells are ringing though, it is prayer time, so we arrive in the souk just in time to see all the merchants abandon their stalls, thirty pairs of shoes are lined up unevenly across the central space and they are all on canted prayer mats bowing east, east to Mecca, Mecca is more important than trying to sell us a rug. I step back, I am not sure what to do, I have never seen anything like this, is it inappropriate to walk across the courtyard while they are praying? Is it disrespectful to sneak glances at their wares in the brief moment that I will be able to do so before they start telling me how very fine this rug is, and that they have a special price just for me?
We sneak unobtrusively down yet another pathway as the call to prayer subsides into silence, now past mountains of glazed ceramic tajines and elaborate woodwork and turn blindly to the right and we have been down this alley before, the shopkeepers recognize us and this time their calls are different, “What are you looking for, girls?” They are laughing a little but I think mostly they are laughing with us, we are equally bemused by the degree of lostness we have achieved, I give them my Patented Rueful Lost Tourist half-smile and keep moving, eyes still shielded behind mirrored aviators. This looks familiar, and this, and the afternoon is bleeding away and we are tired, it is time to try and get un-lost.
I backtrack, or try to, everything looks the same because every stall seems to have the same things for sale so it has been difficult to landmark but this little courtyard with the crooked tree looks familiar, yes I think we are headed in the right direction and then a young man passes us as we stand there contemplating the different alleys leading off from here, lady or the tiger or something else there are more than two doors to choose from, “Are you looking for the Big Square, it’s that way” not even stopping as he points, for the first time today the answer is yes, we are looking for the Big Square, we are ready to circulate back to the heart to be cleansed and pumped out again, he has continued on and we are about to follow his directions when he loops back, says, “You see that man? That is my friend, he is going there, you can just follow him.”
We are wary, as we should be, but nobody has lied to us yet today in fact they have all been very helpfully approaching us in English and pointing us in the right direction, and that alley looks like the right alley so we follow his friend. Turn and bear right and down another alley and yes, this looks right. We walk alongside our new friend for a bit, he asks us where we are from, he says “welcome to Morocco.” Then he pulls ahead again, we drop back but he is making sure we follow him with each turn, making sure he doesn’t lose the American girls headed to the Big Square.
We’ve been walking for a while now, we’re tired and our feet are sore but we must be close and yes, this is all looking familiar as we seed back into wider and wider alleys almost becoming streets but not quite, not here within the walls of the old city. We must be close, I think this is the road we came in on and he turns again. I’m not sure about this, I think we’re close, I think this is it, but he waves urgently and what do I know, we wandered for a long time probably in circles but maybe not and we have to be getting close, the sun is slanting further down as we heave ourselves up cobblestone alley after cloistered arcade after dirt track. I am seeing fewer tourists and they are all heading in the other direction, this does not bode well.
We walk, and walk, and walk. Our friend is still ahead of us, gesturing urgently, and we follow, what else are we going to do, there was a brief moment there when I thought I knew where we were but that was several turns ago. To my left a wall opens up onto a deep pit.
Wait one stinking minute.
I step over to the gap and look in. Our guide circles back to us, I look at the activity inside and then turn accusingly to him: “This is the tannery!” “Oh yes, you want to see, all the tourists come here I will show you.”
I do not want to see the tanneries. I particularly do not want to see the tanneries right now as the sun is going down and we are tired and hungry and have been lost for hours and are trying to find our way back to the Big Square, because it’s not like I studied my map closely before we set out but I looked at it enough to remember that the tanneries are as far away from the Big Square as you can get and still be in the old city.
There are no other tourists around, it’s just us and vendors smirking from both sides of the street, they had this figured out as soon as they saw us here and we are just catching on. We had been warned about this, about people trying to make themselves our guide, leading us astray and then demanding money, I should have known better but I guess we got suckered by all those good directions earlier and I do not want to see the tannery, I want to go back to the goddamned Big Square and I tell our false friend this in no uncertain terms. He tries to convince me but wilts under the heat of my righteous anger, just point us in the right direction and I will figure it out. His shoulders slump, he will take us back, his gambit has failed.
He leads us up yet another path, not back the way we came, and it is even more deserted here there are no shops at all. He’s ahead of us again, about a block, and at a fork in the road he starts to head up the one on the left, glances back at us and suddenly switches directions and takes off at a full run up the other path.
We are well and truly screwed here.
Debi and I consult. We have got to get out of the old city, if we could at least get out of here we could grab a cab but there are no cabs within the walls. We have also got to get out of this part of town before the sun goes down. We start by backtracking and all these vendors have seen us moments before, trudging behind our guide and they call out to us but it’s not friendly anymore if it ever was, they are jeering at the naïve lost tourists who are at their mercy. This looks familiar, this looks right, maybe, this courtyard with a bent tree, but it all looks familiar and we are no closer to getting out of here. We hear music.
Down another alley to the left and there is a street procession in the alley, a group of percussionists and costumed men dancing behind them. “Let’s follow them! They must be going -somewhere-!” We fall in behind the parade. I am hoping against hope they will end up in the Big Square, that is where these performing troupes and processions seem to end up. We are following them deeper and deeper into narrow alleyways and the dirt is more prevalent here and there are no shops, we are in the poor part of the old city and the only tourists in sight, we may be getting deeper into trouble rather than out of it but options are pretty limited and we don’t have a lot longer until full nightfall and we have got to be out of here by the time that happens.
Suddenly there is a crashing finale, a final atonal wailing accompanying the crashing brass, and the crowd disperses almost instantly as people rabbit down alleys, absorbed into the secret nooks and crannies that perforate this city.
Fuck.
But wait! I see something ahead, I step forward, speeding up, are we really that lucky, yes, yes, yes, yes! There is a gate here, we are at the walls of the old city, no idea which side but at least we can get the hell out of here. We nearly run through, suddenly thrust back into the more modern city with paved roads and cars and traffic, a kid offers to be our guide and I just scream at him wordlessly, I am no longer trying to be an ambassador for my country, representing Americans as respectful yet savvy. We walk in circles for a couple of blocks, I am peering around trying to find the spire of the big mosque, if I can see that I’ll have some idea where we are and therefore some idea of how to get back to where we need to be. Nothing, but there’s a Western Union office there, someone there must speak English and as a representative of a international company will hopefully not try to scam us. We cross the street, the office is closed. As we walk around the corner I glance down and narrowly avoid stepping in something that is shining slickly at me up from the pavement.
A closer look reveals a disturbingly anonymous pile of entrails, flies glutting themselves on this found feast.
“TAXI!!”
We dive into the cab headfirst, slamming the door behind us. The driver turns and looks at us. “Are you looking for the Big Square?”
And so it begins, we start from the Djama el Fnaa, The Big Square. This is described as “the beating heart of Marrakesh,” and first observations indicate that the beating heart of Marrakesh is pumping tourists into the city at an alarming rate. We were nervously prepared to cover our heads and wear loose clothing from neck to ankle, but even the process of getting to our hotel revealed hordes of European women in tank tops and shorts. It’s not like a veil is going to make us look local anyway, it will just make us looks like uncomfortable Americans with scarves on our heads so we skip it.
My map says that from the Big Square we follow the narrow alley from the north end, bear left and that will lead us into the old market district. There are warrens of interlaced souks, or markets, within the walls of the old city, each souk with a different specialty such as carpets, or leather, or slippers, or musical instruments or metalwork, all spilling over into alleys narrow and full of pedestrians, donkeys pulling carts and the occasional motorbike roaring through and scattering foot traffic left and right. So far the ‘specialty’ on these first few blocks seems to be ‘tourist crap,’ we are hoping to find something a little more authentic as we wend our way deeper.
There is a slight widening here, a courtyard with a crooked tree, and we pause for a moment as I turn around surveying all the different offshoots leading asymmetrically deeper into the old city. A young man passes us, stops and says, “Are you looking for the Big Square?” and points back the way we came, “No, we are going to the souks,” he nods and points at the third alley from the left and continues past us. Third alley from the left it is, picking our way over ancient paving stones covered with a patina of dust, and a turn or two later we are in the market for real.
It is an eruption of color and smells, I can walk down the middle of the alley with both hands outstretched and touch souvenirs and handicrafts with the tips of both fingers, except if I did I’d be mown down by one of those scooters within seconds. Welded metal lanterns piled upon each other in varying sizes, insets of stained glass, elaborately decorated daggers in tooled leather sheaths, ducking under rugs hung from the eaves of these shacks, looking and touching and moving without stopping because even without stopping the shopkeepers are leaning out of their booths, “you like? Is very nice! Come look in my store, best prices in Morocco!” I might want to look at some of these things but the pressure is so intense I don’t want to stop, if we are being swarmed while in motion it is only going to be exponentially worse if the target stops moving and becomes a sitting duck.
Debi wants to check out spices, so we stop in the first spice stall we see. They are gracious, bringing us many samples of different spices and teas to taste and smell, I don’t want to buy anything on the first day here but Debi does, we pack up a couple of small sacks and begin to move on. The vendor asks us what we’d like to see, offers to take us to his friend’s carpet shop, no thank you, do we need a guide, no we don’t thank you, thank you, thank you, we are leaving now, thank you.
Another turn and a duck down an alley completely roofed in tin and the motorbikes still roar through this arcade, these are the soap makers and we don’t stop, there is a special price just for us but we don’t stop, emerging out into another courtyard and thoroughly lost now, stop to shake our heads and squint in the sun looking at the different capillaries leading from here deeper in, the beating heart of Marrakesh pushing us ever deeper into the old city, and a young man sees us standing there and says, “Are you looking for the Big Square?” No, we are not, we are looking for the carpet souk, he points to the second alley from the right and continues on, and we dive back into the second alley on the right and continue getting more and more lost.
Emerging into another arcade after we’ve passed some of the metalworkers, bright sparks showering from their handheld welders and other tools, and rich carpets are piled and hung everywhere in layers, a dizzying profusion of hues and patterns and styles and the carpet souk is supposed to be the most aggressive, this is where we will be subjected to the hardest sell. The mosque bells are ringing though, it is prayer time, so we arrive in the souk just in time to see all the merchants abandon their stalls, thirty pairs of shoes are lined up unevenly across the central space and they are all on canted prayer mats bowing east, east to Mecca, Mecca is more important than trying to sell us a rug. I step back, I am not sure what to do, I have never seen anything like this, is it inappropriate to walk across the courtyard while they are praying? Is it disrespectful to sneak glances at their wares in the brief moment that I will be able to do so before they start telling me how very fine this rug is, and that they have a special price just for me?
We sneak unobtrusively down yet another pathway as the call to prayer subsides into silence, now past mountains of glazed ceramic tajines and elaborate woodwork and turn blindly to the right and we have been down this alley before, the shopkeepers recognize us and this time their calls are different, “What are you looking for, girls?” They are laughing a little but I think mostly they are laughing with us, we are equally bemused by the degree of lostness we have achieved, I give them my Patented Rueful Lost Tourist half-smile and keep moving, eyes still shielded behind mirrored aviators. This looks familiar, and this, and the afternoon is bleeding away and we are tired, it is time to try and get un-lost.
I backtrack, or try to, everything looks the same because every stall seems to have the same things for sale so it has been difficult to landmark but this little courtyard with the crooked tree looks familiar, yes I think we are headed in the right direction and then a young man passes us as we stand there contemplating the different alleys leading off from here, lady or the tiger or something else there are more than two doors to choose from, “Are you looking for the Big Square, it’s that way” not even stopping as he points, for the first time today the answer is yes, we are looking for the Big Square, we are ready to circulate back to the heart to be cleansed and pumped out again, he has continued on and we are about to follow his directions when he loops back, says, “You see that man? That is my friend, he is going there, you can just follow him.”
We are wary, as we should be, but nobody has lied to us yet today in fact they have all been very helpfully approaching us in English and pointing us in the right direction, and that alley looks like the right alley so we follow his friend. Turn and bear right and down another alley and yes, this looks right. We walk alongside our new friend for a bit, he asks us where we are from, he says “welcome to Morocco.” Then he pulls ahead again, we drop back but he is making sure we follow him with each turn, making sure he doesn’t lose the American girls headed to the Big Square.
We’ve been walking for a while now, we’re tired and our feet are sore but we must be close and yes, this is all looking familiar as we seed back into wider and wider alleys almost becoming streets but not quite, not here within the walls of the old city. We must be close, I think this is the road we came in on and he turns again. I’m not sure about this, I think we’re close, I think this is it, but he waves urgently and what do I know, we wandered for a long time probably in circles but maybe not and we have to be getting close, the sun is slanting further down as we heave ourselves up cobblestone alley after cloistered arcade after dirt track. I am seeing fewer tourists and they are all heading in the other direction, this does not bode well.
We walk, and walk, and walk. Our friend is still ahead of us, gesturing urgently, and we follow, what else are we going to do, there was a brief moment there when I thought I knew where we were but that was several turns ago. To my left a wall opens up onto a deep pit.
Wait one stinking minute.
I step over to the gap and look in. Our guide circles back to us, I look at the activity inside and then turn accusingly to him: “This is the tannery!” “Oh yes, you want to see, all the tourists come here I will show you.”
I do not want to see the tanneries. I particularly do not want to see the tanneries right now as the sun is going down and we are tired and hungry and have been lost for hours and are trying to find our way back to the Big Square, because it’s not like I studied my map closely before we set out but I looked at it enough to remember that the tanneries are as far away from the Big Square as you can get and still be in the old city.
There are no other tourists around, it’s just us and vendors smirking from both sides of the street, they had this figured out as soon as they saw us here and we are just catching on. We had been warned about this, about people trying to make themselves our guide, leading us astray and then demanding money, I should have known better but I guess we got suckered by all those good directions earlier and I do not want to see the tannery, I want to go back to the goddamned Big Square and I tell our false friend this in no uncertain terms. He tries to convince me but wilts under the heat of my righteous anger, just point us in the right direction and I will figure it out. His shoulders slump, he will take us back, his gambit has failed.
He leads us up yet another path, not back the way we came, and it is even more deserted here there are no shops at all. He’s ahead of us again, about a block, and at a fork in the road he starts to head up the one on the left, glances back at us and suddenly switches directions and takes off at a full run up the other path.
We are well and truly screwed here.
Debi and I consult. We have got to get out of the old city, if we could at least get out of here we could grab a cab but there are no cabs within the walls. We have also got to get out of this part of town before the sun goes down. We start by backtracking and all these vendors have seen us moments before, trudging behind our guide and they call out to us but it’s not friendly anymore if it ever was, they are jeering at the naïve lost tourists who are at their mercy. This looks familiar, this looks right, maybe, this courtyard with a bent tree, but it all looks familiar and we are no closer to getting out of here. We hear music.
Down another alley to the left and there is a street procession in the alley, a group of percussionists and costumed men dancing behind them. “Let’s follow them! They must be going -somewhere-!” We fall in behind the parade. I am hoping against hope they will end up in the Big Square, that is where these performing troupes and processions seem to end up. We are following them deeper and deeper into narrow alleyways and the dirt is more prevalent here and there are no shops, we are in the poor part of the old city and the only tourists in sight, we may be getting deeper into trouble rather than out of it but options are pretty limited and we don’t have a lot longer until full nightfall and we have got to be out of here by the time that happens.
Suddenly there is a crashing finale, a final atonal wailing accompanying the crashing brass, and the crowd disperses almost instantly as people rabbit down alleys, absorbed into the secret nooks and crannies that perforate this city.
Fuck.
But wait! I see something ahead, I step forward, speeding up, are we really that lucky, yes, yes, yes, yes! There is a gate here, we are at the walls of the old city, no idea which side but at least we can get the hell out of here. We nearly run through, suddenly thrust back into the more modern city with paved roads and cars and traffic, a kid offers to be our guide and I just scream at him wordlessly, I am no longer trying to be an ambassador for my country, representing Americans as respectful yet savvy. We walk in circles for a couple of blocks, I am peering around trying to find the spire of the big mosque, if I can see that I’ll have some idea where we are and therefore some idea of how to get back to where we need to be. Nothing, but there’s a Western Union office there, someone there must speak English and as a representative of a international company will hopefully not try to scam us. We cross the street, the office is closed. As we walk around the corner I glance down and narrowly avoid stepping in something that is shining slickly at me up from the pavement.
A closer look reveals a disturbingly anonymous pile of entrails, flies glutting themselves on this found feast.
“TAXI!!”
We dive into the cab headfirst, slamming the door behind us. The driver turns and looks at us. “Are you looking for the Big Square?”
Sunday, March 29, 2009
There is No Train Today, Maybe, Kangra, India (Aug 2008)
I am trying one last time to snap a photo of the monkeys playing on the roof, to no avail; they are uncooperative in the extreme, coming within five feet of me and staring until I fumble for the camera and then merrily scampering over the roofline. I have a lot of pictures of the roof, or a monkey tail vanishing over the edge, but no monkey pictures and I am leaving McLeod Ganj in an hour so I suppose the monkeys will just remain undocumented, lost to posterity. I’ve been in this town for less than 24 hours and have been waiting to leave for half of that, the monsoon rains are the most intense I’ve seen and the Dalai Lama is out on tour, the rock star of religion, and there is not much to see or do here other than fail to take pictures of monkeys.
The up side of leaving earlier than planned is that I will have time to ride the Kangra Valley toy train. The famous one is in Darjeeling, but that is on the other side of the Himalayas and not on my itinerary. The Kangra train is the little known, poor cousin version, but it is nearby and Darjeeling is not. Information on the train is scant, as its not a tourism highlight, but I have assiduously scoured the Rail System website and determined that if I can get there by 10am I can catch one that will get to Pathankot in time to connect to the main rail system and head on to Amritsar by the end of the day. Getting to Kangra by 10am on public transportation was going to be a hell of a trip, it’s not that far from McLeod Ganj but it is not really the distance that determines the difficulty, it was going to be a 5am bus down to Dharamsala and then waiting for another bus to Kangra and then a rickshaw out to the train station, I wussed out and went the non-shoestring route and booked a cab to take me directly to the train. I am losing shoestring backpacker points, but I will also probably get there on time and not get stuck in Kangra.
I pack up the last few items in my room and lock the door behind me, I am going to the café to wait for my cab to arrive. While I am sipping coffee on the veranda, overlooking the mist obscuring the mountains and keeping an eye out for a glimpse of monkey tail, a monk joins me. This is not uncommon in McLeod Ganj, seat of the Tibetan government in exile, and as we talk he tells me he is actually from Delhi. I comment that I haven’t gone there yet, but will be there in a week or two, and in the liltingly accented English that is common here he says, “Oh but Delhi is terrible, terrible! It is full of murder and rape and death, all the time people being murdered and robbed. Terrible, terrible, not even safe for tourists, nowhere is safe, there is rape and killing and murder…” This is not comforting.
The man at reception waves at me, my taxi has arrived. I bid farewell to the monk who is convinced that within a week my body will be found in a dumpster somewhere in Delhi and duck outside in the rain, not worth popping my umbrella for the two seconds it will take me to climb in, I haven’t bothered snugging the rain cover over my pack either. We careen down twisty rutted paths in the pouring rain and I am grateful that I have eschewed the bus, I have had enough of lumbering vehicles wheezing around curves on glorified goat paths, I am looking forward to trains, trains, trains. A monkey! But he is gone too fast or I am, and I have a picture of a blurry roadside.
We don’t talk very much, my driver and I, and I prefer it that way. We get to Kangra and wend our way through town and out of it, over a bridge and then he pulls over. There’s no train station here. He explains that there is no road to the train station, I will need to follow a cobbled footpath through this little hamlet, then over a bridge, and up the hill. I am not sure I trust him, my guidebook said nothing about this, and why the hell have a rail station that is inaccessible? This is India, I have given up expecting things to make sense, so I shoulder my pack and pull the hood of my sweatshirt over my head. Not worth popping my umbrella, not in this crowded alley, and it can’t be that far anyway.
I am the only farang in sight. I orient one more time from the taxi, confirming that I am headed up the correct alley, and feel a little abandoned as I watch my driver turn around and drive off. He was supposed to make sure this went smoothly, that was the point. I walk up the path, it’s steep and the rude steps are slick with streams of water running off from the monsoon rains. I’m a little hungry and there are a couple of street meat stalls, but there is supposedly food available on the train and I will trust that a little more than this. I’m wearing sandals, and they slip off my feet once or twice, I almost want to kick them off and go barefoot.
A few minutes and I have emerged by a riverbank, the same one we crossed earlier. Sure enough there is a bridge, for foot traffic only. I walk out from under the close eaves of the shacks that have been shielding me from the rain onto the bridge, and stop to take a couple of pictures. There are life size statues of Shiva or maybe Vishnu, on the riverbank, or I suppose human size since they don’t exist in life really. I have been mostly up in the high mountains, where there is some Hinduism but mostly Buddhism, so this is a change and I am still having trouble really getting the idea that the people here make sacrifices to these statues by the river, and worship here.
Over the bridge and another twisty pathway leading up into the thickly wooded forest and there had better be a train here after all but the path must go somewhere and I am going wherever this path is going. I pass a group of Indian businessmen cowering from the rain, they are headed the same direction in their damp, ill-fitting suits, yes the train must be this way.
It is 9:15am when I turn the corner and arrive at the station, dank and dirty as it is. There are some people waiting here already, this is a good sign. The ticket window is closed, there is a sign explaining that it will be open 15 minutes prior to the train’s scheduled arrival so I sit down to wait, trying to be unobtrusive.
I am failing spectacularly at being unobtrusive. The women are staring at me with eyes shielded by saris, and the children are not even trying to shield their curious eyes. A man eating something fried out of a paper envelope walks up to me and offers to share, I shake my head and smile and try to pull myself in, I am waiting on the station agent and scribbling in my travel journal, notes about the monkeys and the annoying Belgian who was stalking me in McLeod. A younger man, actually quite handsome, walks over to me and says, “There is no train today, you must not wait here,” but I don’t trust him. He says, “Where do you want to go, I will help you, come with me,” but he is too smooth, his English is too good and there are people here waiting for a train and I will wait with them. He writes his phone number on a scrap of paper and presses it into my hand, says “Call me if you need help,” and leaves. I didn’t think he would actually leave, if this is a bluff it’s not too shabby but I will wait, the station agent hasn’t arrived yet and these people must be waiting for something.
One of the little girls has been slowly sidling closer to me, sneaking up on the tall pale stranger. She tugs on one of the straps of my back and smiles at me, says hello in Hindi, “Namaste,” and I smile and say hello back. Then she asks me if she can have my pen. This is pretty common here, for some reason the kids always ask for pens, and I say no, it’s the only one I have. She pouts. If I thought kids were cute I might think this were cute, but even then I wouldn’t give her my pen and I don’t think kids are cute anyway. I am trying not to growl, though, I am foreign enough without violating the social precept that anyone with a womb must love children, so I smile as I wave her off.
She does not wave off. Oh, a few feet but then she sidles back and starts tugging on the straps again. Her mother is watching her, and by the time I am seriously considering nudging this child with my foot in a way that is probably going to be more like a kick mom calls her back over, giving me a complicit smile over the child’s head. Oh, aren’t they so cute. Not really, but the brat is gone so I can smile about that and I do.
At last, the station agent has arrived, a figure of authority. The other group of Indian businessmen has left as well, they too approached me to say that there were no trains today and offered to take me where I needed to go, but I didn’t trust them either, and these families are still waiting so I will wait with them. I hover as the middle-aged man in a smart suit opens up the office, but he doesn’t open the ticket window. I stand outside the door that says “No Entrance” and peer through the screen, knocking at last. Can I buy a ticket for the train to Pathankot?
“No, there is no train today, the tracks are washed out.” But I saw a train go in the other direction! “Yes that is a different train on a different track.” Now I know that can’t be right, there’s barely one track out here much less two, there’s not even a road to this station for Chrissake. Was there a train yesterday? “Yes, there were trains yesterday, but not today,” and he gestures at the rain pouring down all around us. What about tomorrow, will there be a train tomorrow? “Yes, there will be a train tomorrow,” really? For sure? “Yes, they will fix the tracks today,” well does that mean there might be trains later today?
Right about then a train pulls up, heading in the direction I want to go. I start to scramble for it, the families are all packing up their things and squeezing aboard, but my oily, unctuous station manager smiles beatifically and says, “That is not your train.” I almost get on board anyway, it is at least going in the right direction but I hesitate, I am kind of stranded here in Kangra but at least it is listed in my guidebook and I have some resources here, if this train in fact does not proceed on the only track out here to my destination I may well end up stranded somewhere in between.
I watch the train pull out of the station, mouth slightly open in disbelief. Obviously the track is not completely washed out, and I ask him again if there will be a train later today, even if there is not one at 10am. “Yes, it is possible,” Really? I am questioning him closely, because if there is going to be a train I can wait here, it will mean a later train at Pathankot and getting Amritsar later at night but I will still get there and I will have gotten my toy train ride so it is worth considering, the other options are pretty grim, he reverses, “No there will be no trains today. …Maybe.”
I want to strangle him. At this point I know I can’t believe anything he says, he is now just casting about for the right platitude to make this tall blonde farang with the light eyes stop glaring at him. He wants to tell me what I want to hear, whether or not it is true. I sit down again to wait for a little while. Another family comes into the station, and there is a reprise of the Small Child Being Fucking Annoying act, and then another train! I get up, look around for the station manager, that oily smile again as the families climb on board, if he is not actually waggling a forefinger at me he is thinking about it so hard that he might as well be, “That is not your train.” Will my train come later? “Yes, it will come later.” Really?! “…Maybe.”
I retreat to my bench, light a cigarette, and flop open my guidebook again to study options. He approaches me, “You would not see anything today anyway, bad weather,” he’s trying to mollify me. I ask again if the train will come later, he firmly says, “No.” Are you sure? No words, just that smile again. Ok. This isn’t working. I can wait here for a train that probably won’t come. I can retreat to Kangra, spend the night there and then try again tomorrow, or I can backtrack all the way to McLeod Ganj and take the direct bus from there to Amritsar the following morning and chalk up the past two days to a waste of travel time. But I want trains, trains, trains, I am so sick of buses I want a train.
My guide says that there are local buses from Kangra to Pathankot. If I leave now, I can probably get there in time for the train to Amritsar, but it going to mean admitting defeat here. The Indian trains have defeated many a lesser mortal, and they seem to have conquered me as well, so after two hours sitting in the dank station I sigh and stand up, buckling my pack back around my waist, and head out into the rain towards Kangra proper. Back down the trail, across the river and I’m not bothering to take pictures now, through the cobbled path and down the wet stairs and back out to where the taxi dropped me off hours ago. I have a new problem, I don’t know where the main town is. I know I need to get there to reach the central bus station, but should I go back the way the taxi came down from McLeod, or further on down the main road? There are bus stops on both sides of the road, I just need to figure out which one I need.
I approach a group of women standing on the near side of the road, I am trying to talk to women rather than men because I have been so thoroughly warned about devious rapacious men in this country. Unfortunately, the women are far less likely to be educated, they don’t speak English at all, just shyly shake their heads and avert their eyes. In frustration I turn to a man standing alone, ask him if he speaks English. “A little,” he says cautiously. Where is the bus to Kangra? “Yes, yes.” Kangra. The town, where is it? “Yes, yes.” Kangra! Which way? I point one way and then the other, hoping he will give an affirmative to one and not the other, but again “Yes, yes.” These people do not know how to say no. The bus? To Kangra?
We have been doing this little “who’s on first” routine for a few minutes when a crowded bus pulls up on the other side of the street. I point at the bus and say, “Kangra??” and he says, “Yes, yes.” I wish he’d said no to at least one thing so I could feel confident that he differentiates between yes and no. I cross the street and squeeze onto the bus. I ask the driver, “Kangra?” and he nods. Off we go, shuddering and shaking and we are crossing the bridge again and turning into a town, we reach what seems to be a central stop and the bus driver gestures to me, this is where I want to get off. How can he know that? But I guess where else would I be going but out of this place. I step off the bus onto the corner and look around. I ask someone where the bus station is, they tell me I will need a rickshaw. How far? Too far, you must take a rickshaw. Really, if it’s less than a mile I’d rather walk, if I get lost on my own two feet at least I know how I got there but nobody will give me directions they just say “rickshaw” and “yes, yes.”
There is a rickshaw waiting on the corner, I run over and say “Bus station” and he nods, I squeeze in with a couple of others. Off we go, wheezing and rattling up the road, and a few minutes later I get out at the bus station, it was less than a mile away. This place is actually pretty big, a columned hall with many windows and a couple of snack bars. I grab a couple of bags of potato chips and some crackers and wander around until I find the inquiry window. Where is the bus to Pathankot? He tells me it is in berth 37, and it leaves in 20 minutes. I can buy my ticket on the bus. I walk outside and look up, there are numbers on all of the columns, I just need to find 37.
I circle the building twice, the numbers stop at 35.
I go back in to the inquiry window--where is 37? He points. I shake my head. He points again. I shake my head again, and if this dude starts saying “yes, yes” I probably am going to try to kill him. He rolls his eyes and steps outside the booth, walks me over to the door and points to the next building. Ah. There’s a 37 painted on a small stand there with a bus in front of it, empty. I walk across and find the driver standing beside the bus, I ask him, “Pathankot?” He nods and I climb on board. I’m the first one on the bus and I sit up front, squeezing my bag above me into the luggage rack I am glad I got here early, otherwise there might not be room. I lean into the window and open my book, waiting for our departure as the bus fills up.
Ten minutes later everyone starts to move, I look up in confusion. We are all getting off the bus, it seems, a man stops to tap my shoulder and point at another bus, it seems that is the bus to Pathankot after all not this one. I pull down my bag and scurry over, but now I am the last one on the bus instead of the first and end up teetering precariously on the edge of a seat in the middle with my bag finally crammed in overhead. Shortly after we rumble off.
I have no idea where we are, this road, whatever it is, isn’t marked on my map. I am trying to stay alert, wary about all the strange Indian men around me, ready to fend off lewd advances on a crowded bus if necessary. We stop frequently, people get on and off and the Punjabi conductor, or whatever the appropriate term is, squeezes up and down the aisle and over bags to collect fares at irregular intervals. There are no lewd advances, but man I wish I could feel confident that everyone had showered within the last week but it certainly doesn’t smell like it. I zone out, a little, not even reading just hunching into myself on this sweaty, humid bus.
A beautiful young girl boards the bus in a fuschia sari. She’s with her mother, and they crowd onto the edge of whatever seat they can find. She’s gorgeous, and fully decorated with henna in her hair and a bindi on her forehead and intricate patterns dyed onto her hands and feet. She is also apparently carsick. Every ten minutes or so she rushes to the door of the bus and vomits on the side of the road. The bus doesn’t stop moving. I am alert now, because this gal is actually pretty close to me and of the many ways that this day could probably get worse, being covered in vomit is one of them and I am preparing to fling myself out of the way if called upon to do so.
That doesn’t happen. What happens instead is that the bus stops. There’s a incomprehensible negotiation between the bus driver and the conductor, and suddenly everyone is getting off the bus again, but this is clearly not Pathankot. I follow, what else am I going to do? As we disembark the problem becomes clear. The road has washed out here, the bus can’t get over the bridge its too unstable. There’s a bus on the other side in the same predicament, so we are applying a typical Indian solution: we are switching buses. My busload of people trudges over the bridge, the opposing busload of people pass over to our bus, and all aboard… again.
This time there’s no room overhead for my bag, so I have it crammed onto my lap. We are degenerating slowly here, taxi to train to bus to bus to bus and I am not sure where the bottom is but I’m pretty sure I’ll find out by the end of the day. At least the vomiting girl is further away from me now. We continue on, and on, some interminable time of rain-streaked windows, and then we stop. I look up, peer out the window, this doesn’t look promising, but everyone is getting off the bus. Again.
We all get off, and half of the crowd disperses, we are in some kind of town but I have no idea where. I turn around a couple of times, I am about to ask my eternal question, “Pathankot?” and wait for the inevitable “yes, yes,” when a skinny middle-aged man takes pity on me in my evident confusion, touches my arm gently and points me to yet another bus. How does he know where I’m going? Where else would I be going, I am not waiting for Godot per se but it is pretty similar.
Another bus and we are coming out of the mountains now, the rain is clearing up so it is less humid but still hot, hot, hot. We turn onto a smooth, paved highway. There are road signs here, they say “Pathankot 22 km.” I am counting down kilometers, and we are still on the outskirts of the city and I’m not sure that this bus goes all the way to the train station, we stop and everybody is getting off again, this must be Pathankot, I turn a quizzical look to my helper from earlier in the day and he nods, this is Pathankot.
Now I have to find the train.
The up side of leaving earlier than planned is that I will have time to ride the Kangra Valley toy train. The famous one is in Darjeeling, but that is on the other side of the Himalayas and not on my itinerary. The Kangra train is the little known, poor cousin version, but it is nearby and Darjeeling is not. Information on the train is scant, as its not a tourism highlight, but I have assiduously scoured the Rail System website and determined that if I can get there by 10am I can catch one that will get to Pathankot in time to connect to the main rail system and head on to Amritsar by the end of the day. Getting to Kangra by 10am on public transportation was going to be a hell of a trip, it’s not that far from McLeod Ganj but it is not really the distance that determines the difficulty, it was going to be a 5am bus down to Dharamsala and then waiting for another bus to Kangra and then a rickshaw out to the train station, I wussed out and went the non-shoestring route and booked a cab to take me directly to the train. I am losing shoestring backpacker points, but I will also probably get there on time and not get stuck in Kangra.
I pack up the last few items in my room and lock the door behind me, I am going to the café to wait for my cab to arrive. While I am sipping coffee on the veranda, overlooking the mist obscuring the mountains and keeping an eye out for a glimpse of monkey tail, a monk joins me. This is not uncommon in McLeod Ganj, seat of the Tibetan government in exile, and as we talk he tells me he is actually from Delhi. I comment that I haven’t gone there yet, but will be there in a week or two, and in the liltingly accented English that is common here he says, “Oh but Delhi is terrible, terrible! It is full of murder and rape and death, all the time people being murdered and robbed. Terrible, terrible, not even safe for tourists, nowhere is safe, there is rape and killing and murder…” This is not comforting.
The man at reception waves at me, my taxi has arrived. I bid farewell to the monk who is convinced that within a week my body will be found in a dumpster somewhere in Delhi and duck outside in the rain, not worth popping my umbrella for the two seconds it will take me to climb in, I haven’t bothered snugging the rain cover over my pack either. We careen down twisty rutted paths in the pouring rain and I am grateful that I have eschewed the bus, I have had enough of lumbering vehicles wheezing around curves on glorified goat paths, I am looking forward to trains, trains, trains. A monkey! But he is gone too fast or I am, and I have a picture of a blurry roadside.
We don’t talk very much, my driver and I, and I prefer it that way. We get to Kangra and wend our way through town and out of it, over a bridge and then he pulls over. There’s no train station here. He explains that there is no road to the train station, I will need to follow a cobbled footpath through this little hamlet, then over a bridge, and up the hill. I am not sure I trust him, my guidebook said nothing about this, and why the hell have a rail station that is inaccessible? This is India, I have given up expecting things to make sense, so I shoulder my pack and pull the hood of my sweatshirt over my head. Not worth popping my umbrella, not in this crowded alley, and it can’t be that far anyway.
I am the only farang in sight. I orient one more time from the taxi, confirming that I am headed up the correct alley, and feel a little abandoned as I watch my driver turn around and drive off. He was supposed to make sure this went smoothly, that was the point. I walk up the path, it’s steep and the rude steps are slick with streams of water running off from the monsoon rains. I’m a little hungry and there are a couple of street meat stalls, but there is supposedly food available on the train and I will trust that a little more than this. I’m wearing sandals, and they slip off my feet once or twice, I almost want to kick them off and go barefoot.
A few minutes and I have emerged by a riverbank, the same one we crossed earlier. Sure enough there is a bridge, for foot traffic only. I walk out from under the close eaves of the shacks that have been shielding me from the rain onto the bridge, and stop to take a couple of pictures. There are life size statues of Shiva or maybe Vishnu, on the riverbank, or I suppose human size since they don’t exist in life really. I have been mostly up in the high mountains, where there is some Hinduism but mostly Buddhism, so this is a change and I am still having trouble really getting the idea that the people here make sacrifices to these statues by the river, and worship here.
Over the bridge and another twisty pathway leading up into the thickly wooded forest and there had better be a train here after all but the path must go somewhere and I am going wherever this path is going. I pass a group of Indian businessmen cowering from the rain, they are headed the same direction in their damp, ill-fitting suits, yes the train must be this way.
It is 9:15am when I turn the corner and arrive at the station, dank and dirty as it is. There are some people waiting here already, this is a good sign. The ticket window is closed, there is a sign explaining that it will be open 15 minutes prior to the train’s scheduled arrival so I sit down to wait, trying to be unobtrusive.
I am failing spectacularly at being unobtrusive. The women are staring at me with eyes shielded by saris, and the children are not even trying to shield their curious eyes. A man eating something fried out of a paper envelope walks up to me and offers to share, I shake my head and smile and try to pull myself in, I am waiting on the station agent and scribbling in my travel journal, notes about the monkeys and the annoying Belgian who was stalking me in McLeod. A younger man, actually quite handsome, walks over to me and says, “There is no train today, you must not wait here,” but I don’t trust him. He says, “Where do you want to go, I will help you, come with me,” but he is too smooth, his English is too good and there are people here waiting for a train and I will wait with them. He writes his phone number on a scrap of paper and presses it into my hand, says “Call me if you need help,” and leaves. I didn’t think he would actually leave, if this is a bluff it’s not too shabby but I will wait, the station agent hasn’t arrived yet and these people must be waiting for something.
One of the little girls has been slowly sidling closer to me, sneaking up on the tall pale stranger. She tugs on one of the straps of my back and smiles at me, says hello in Hindi, “Namaste,” and I smile and say hello back. Then she asks me if she can have my pen. This is pretty common here, for some reason the kids always ask for pens, and I say no, it’s the only one I have. She pouts. If I thought kids were cute I might think this were cute, but even then I wouldn’t give her my pen and I don’t think kids are cute anyway. I am trying not to growl, though, I am foreign enough without violating the social precept that anyone with a womb must love children, so I smile as I wave her off.
She does not wave off. Oh, a few feet but then she sidles back and starts tugging on the straps again. Her mother is watching her, and by the time I am seriously considering nudging this child with my foot in a way that is probably going to be more like a kick mom calls her back over, giving me a complicit smile over the child’s head. Oh, aren’t they so cute. Not really, but the brat is gone so I can smile about that and I do.
At last, the station agent has arrived, a figure of authority. The other group of Indian businessmen has left as well, they too approached me to say that there were no trains today and offered to take me where I needed to go, but I didn’t trust them either, and these families are still waiting so I will wait with them. I hover as the middle-aged man in a smart suit opens up the office, but he doesn’t open the ticket window. I stand outside the door that says “No Entrance” and peer through the screen, knocking at last. Can I buy a ticket for the train to Pathankot?
“No, there is no train today, the tracks are washed out.” But I saw a train go in the other direction! “Yes that is a different train on a different track.” Now I know that can’t be right, there’s barely one track out here much less two, there’s not even a road to this station for Chrissake. Was there a train yesterday? “Yes, there were trains yesterday, but not today,” and he gestures at the rain pouring down all around us. What about tomorrow, will there be a train tomorrow? “Yes, there will be a train tomorrow,” really? For sure? “Yes, they will fix the tracks today,” well does that mean there might be trains later today?
Right about then a train pulls up, heading in the direction I want to go. I start to scramble for it, the families are all packing up their things and squeezing aboard, but my oily, unctuous station manager smiles beatifically and says, “That is not your train.” I almost get on board anyway, it is at least going in the right direction but I hesitate, I am kind of stranded here in Kangra but at least it is listed in my guidebook and I have some resources here, if this train in fact does not proceed on the only track out here to my destination I may well end up stranded somewhere in between.
I watch the train pull out of the station, mouth slightly open in disbelief. Obviously the track is not completely washed out, and I ask him again if there will be a train later today, even if there is not one at 10am. “Yes, it is possible,” Really? I am questioning him closely, because if there is going to be a train I can wait here, it will mean a later train at Pathankot and getting Amritsar later at night but I will still get there and I will have gotten my toy train ride so it is worth considering, the other options are pretty grim, he reverses, “No there will be no trains today. …Maybe.”
I want to strangle him. At this point I know I can’t believe anything he says, he is now just casting about for the right platitude to make this tall blonde farang with the light eyes stop glaring at him. He wants to tell me what I want to hear, whether or not it is true. I sit down again to wait for a little while. Another family comes into the station, and there is a reprise of the Small Child Being Fucking Annoying act, and then another train! I get up, look around for the station manager, that oily smile again as the families climb on board, if he is not actually waggling a forefinger at me he is thinking about it so hard that he might as well be, “That is not your train.” Will my train come later? “Yes, it will come later.” Really?! “…Maybe.”
I retreat to my bench, light a cigarette, and flop open my guidebook again to study options. He approaches me, “You would not see anything today anyway, bad weather,” he’s trying to mollify me. I ask again if the train will come later, he firmly says, “No.” Are you sure? No words, just that smile again. Ok. This isn’t working. I can wait here for a train that probably won’t come. I can retreat to Kangra, spend the night there and then try again tomorrow, or I can backtrack all the way to McLeod Ganj and take the direct bus from there to Amritsar the following morning and chalk up the past two days to a waste of travel time. But I want trains, trains, trains, I am so sick of buses I want a train.
My guide says that there are local buses from Kangra to Pathankot. If I leave now, I can probably get there in time for the train to Amritsar, but it going to mean admitting defeat here. The Indian trains have defeated many a lesser mortal, and they seem to have conquered me as well, so after two hours sitting in the dank station I sigh and stand up, buckling my pack back around my waist, and head out into the rain towards Kangra proper. Back down the trail, across the river and I’m not bothering to take pictures now, through the cobbled path and down the wet stairs and back out to where the taxi dropped me off hours ago. I have a new problem, I don’t know where the main town is. I know I need to get there to reach the central bus station, but should I go back the way the taxi came down from McLeod, or further on down the main road? There are bus stops on both sides of the road, I just need to figure out which one I need.
I approach a group of women standing on the near side of the road, I am trying to talk to women rather than men because I have been so thoroughly warned about devious rapacious men in this country. Unfortunately, the women are far less likely to be educated, they don’t speak English at all, just shyly shake their heads and avert their eyes. In frustration I turn to a man standing alone, ask him if he speaks English. “A little,” he says cautiously. Where is the bus to Kangra? “Yes, yes.” Kangra. The town, where is it? “Yes, yes.” Kangra! Which way? I point one way and then the other, hoping he will give an affirmative to one and not the other, but again “Yes, yes.” These people do not know how to say no. The bus? To Kangra?
We have been doing this little “who’s on first” routine for a few minutes when a crowded bus pulls up on the other side of the street. I point at the bus and say, “Kangra??” and he says, “Yes, yes.” I wish he’d said no to at least one thing so I could feel confident that he differentiates between yes and no. I cross the street and squeeze onto the bus. I ask the driver, “Kangra?” and he nods. Off we go, shuddering and shaking and we are crossing the bridge again and turning into a town, we reach what seems to be a central stop and the bus driver gestures to me, this is where I want to get off. How can he know that? But I guess where else would I be going but out of this place. I step off the bus onto the corner and look around. I ask someone where the bus station is, they tell me I will need a rickshaw. How far? Too far, you must take a rickshaw. Really, if it’s less than a mile I’d rather walk, if I get lost on my own two feet at least I know how I got there but nobody will give me directions they just say “rickshaw” and “yes, yes.”
There is a rickshaw waiting on the corner, I run over and say “Bus station” and he nods, I squeeze in with a couple of others. Off we go, wheezing and rattling up the road, and a few minutes later I get out at the bus station, it was less than a mile away. This place is actually pretty big, a columned hall with many windows and a couple of snack bars. I grab a couple of bags of potato chips and some crackers and wander around until I find the inquiry window. Where is the bus to Pathankot? He tells me it is in berth 37, and it leaves in 20 minutes. I can buy my ticket on the bus. I walk outside and look up, there are numbers on all of the columns, I just need to find 37.
I circle the building twice, the numbers stop at 35.
I go back in to the inquiry window--where is 37? He points. I shake my head. He points again. I shake my head again, and if this dude starts saying “yes, yes” I probably am going to try to kill him. He rolls his eyes and steps outside the booth, walks me over to the door and points to the next building. Ah. There’s a 37 painted on a small stand there with a bus in front of it, empty. I walk across and find the driver standing beside the bus, I ask him, “Pathankot?” He nods and I climb on board. I’m the first one on the bus and I sit up front, squeezing my bag above me into the luggage rack I am glad I got here early, otherwise there might not be room. I lean into the window and open my book, waiting for our departure as the bus fills up.
Ten minutes later everyone starts to move, I look up in confusion. We are all getting off the bus, it seems, a man stops to tap my shoulder and point at another bus, it seems that is the bus to Pathankot after all not this one. I pull down my bag and scurry over, but now I am the last one on the bus instead of the first and end up teetering precariously on the edge of a seat in the middle with my bag finally crammed in overhead. Shortly after we rumble off.
I have no idea where we are, this road, whatever it is, isn’t marked on my map. I am trying to stay alert, wary about all the strange Indian men around me, ready to fend off lewd advances on a crowded bus if necessary. We stop frequently, people get on and off and the Punjabi conductor, or whatever the appropriate term is, squeezes up and down the aisle and over bags to collect fares at irregular intervals. There are no lewd advances, but man I wish I could feel confident that everyone had showered within the last week but it certainly doesn’t smell like it. I zone out, a little, not even reading just hunching into myself on this sweaty, humid bus.
A beautiful young girl boards the bus in a fuschia sari. She’s with her mother, and they crowd onto the edge of whatever seat they can find. She’s gorgeous, and fully decorated with henna in her hair and a bindi on her forehead and intricate patterns dyed onto her hands and feet. She is also apparently carsick. Every ten minutes or so she rushes to the door of the bus and vomits on the side of the road. The bus doesn’t stop moving. I am alert now, because this gal is actually pretty close to me and of the many ways that this day could probably get worse, being covered in vomit is one of them and I am preparing to fling myself out of the way if called upon to do so.
That doesn’t happen. What happens instead is that the bus stops. There’s a incomprehensible negotiation between the bus driver and the conductor, and suddenly everyone is getting off the bus again, but this is clearly not Pathankot. I follow, what else am I going to do? As we disembark the problem becomes clear. The road has washed out here, the bus can’t get over the bridge its too unstable. There’s a bus on the other side in the same predicament, so we are applying a typical Indian solution: we are switching buses. My busload of people trudges over the bridge, the opposing busload of people pass over to our bus, and all aboard… again.
This time there’s no room overhead for my bag, so I have it crammed onto my lap. We are degenerating slowly here, taxi to train to bus to bus to bus and I am not sure where the bottom is but I’m pretty sure I’ll find out by the end of the day. At least the vomiting girl is further away from me now. We continue on, and on, some interminable time of rain-streaked windows, and then we stop. I look up, peer out the window, this doesn’t look promising, but everyone is getting off the bus. Again.
We all get off, and half of the crowd disperses, we are in some kind of town but I have no idea where. I turn around a couple of times, I am about to ask my eternal question, “Pathankot?” and wait for the inevitable “yes, yes,” when a skinny middle-aged man takes pity on me in my evident confusion, touches my arm gently and points me to yet another bus. How does he know where I’m going? Where else would I be going, I am not waiting for Godot per se but it is pretty similar.
Another bus and we are coming out of the mountains now, the rain is clearing up so it is less humid but still hot, hot, hot. We turn onto a smooth, paved highway. There are road signs here, they say “Pathankot 22 km.” I am counting down kilometers, and we are still on the outskirts of the city and I’m not sure that this bus goes all the way to the train station, we stop and everybody is getting off again, this must be Pathankot, I turn a quizzical look to my helper from earlier in the day and he nods, this is Pathankot.
Now I have to find the train.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Bus Go Crash, Antigua, Guatemala (Jul 2007)
It’s starting to rain as I cross the main square to meet Dana and Assaf. Not hard, but it will get worse and I don’t have a raincoat or an umbrella, at least not with me now, and there’s no time to go back to the hostel to get gear so I guess I will just get wet. Assaf and Dana are waiting for me, a bit anxiously, and when I arrive Assaf gives a dubious look at my footwear and distinct lack of weather-appropriate clothing. A tone of disbelief, tinged with the kind of concern you’d hear about a mentally challenged child, “You’re not wearing those shoes, are you?”
“There the only ones I have, so I guess so.” I had ultimately decided not to pack my heavy-duty boots for this trip, it wasn’t going to be worth the weight and it’s steamy and tropical here. My runaround shoes are slip-on Mary Janes, not really qualified for hiking but the hike is supposed to be fairly easy, then again all the hikes here are supposedly easy and almost never are, they have a different definition of an easy hike than I do. Mainly my definition involves wide, smooth paths that incline gently. The hike is not the point of this little excursion, however, the point is the caldera of Volcan Pecaya, a spectacularly scenic active volcano just a few miles from Antigua. We are anticipating explosions of lava showering up into the sky, and as we confer we are disappointed that no one remembered to bring marshmallows, someone told us that you can toast marshmallows over the lava flows up there and that would have been awesome, if we had remembered it.
We are all here and accounted for, a group of around ten tourists from all over the world, there’s a Spanish couple and an Italian couple, a Canadian guy and someone from Germany, the Israelis Dana and Assaf, and of course me representing for the U.S. I met Dana on the flight from New York yesterday, and that has turned out to be quite a fortuitous meeting as we got delayed in El Salvador and ended up traveling to Antigua from Guatemala City late at night, since we had both independently made reservations at the same hostel. She has come here to meet her brother, Assaf, who is rounding out his year in Latin America, and he met us at the hostel last night. He’s been in Antigua for a while and knows his way around, and he took care of making arrangements for all three of us to join this tour, he is one of those guys that gets things done even for strangers that aren’t his sister.
We clamber into the van, or minibus, or “tourist bus” as they are called here, Dana and Assaf first in the back row and I end up teetering on the edge of the second row, odd man out and the only tourist not paired off in some way or another. We pull out of the square and head up the road out of the city, and its raining harder now as conversations spring up awkwardly amongst the group of disparate strangers who share only an origin that is Not Here. We chat about where we’re from, where we’ve been, how long we’ve been in Guatemala, the things that travellers always talk about with each other, getting cozy in this sweaty little vehicle where we’re practically sitting on top of each other and the idea of a seat belt is laughable.
One of our number ended up in the shotgun seat next the driver, necessary to fit everyone in, and breaking through the rising babble of cross-conversations is a crisply accented “Watch out!,” there’s such urgency in it that it grabs everyone’s attention and look forward and see the wall of the cliff sliding towards us, or we are sliding towards it and its looming so close so fast it shouldn’t be that close and
Impact
The van stopped moving but we moving within it are still going, I am flung forward and end up in the console area between the driver’s seat and the passenger seat in the front and thunk something is on top of me and we are moving for a long time even though it’s only a couple of seconds at most and everything is shuddering to a halt and it’s silent now it was so loud a moment ago I guess everyone was screaming but I didn’t scream or at least I don’t think I did but I probably was. The weight on top of me shifts, Dana has landed on me from behind where she was flung over the seat, everyone move up one peg, like musical chairs but not really and we are collectively struggling to move back one peg, we have to get out of this van because we are on the shoulder of a road that doesn’t really have a shoulder and I can’t really think yet but what if another car slams into us while we’re trapped here we have to get out, someone next to the door is trying to slide it open and it’s jammed and he shouts “It won’t open” and we’re trapped here, but before I can even begin to panic Assaf has levered himself out of the broken window and climbed around to the door and is prying it open from outside, we tumble out into the pouring rain and traffic veering around us and my feet hit the ground, wobbly, I have a vague notion that I shouldn’t move because I might be injured and in shock and I could injure myself even more but we had to get out of that van and my knees are shaking my whole body is shaking and quaking and I step to the side of the road, Assaf is making sure everyone gets out safely and I am so glad he’s here to do this, that he hasn’t even paused to panic or think about it he just did it, I feel my muscles turn to water and sit down abruptly and I shouldn’t be moving or at least not this fast I should be moving slowly and carefully and testing and examining everything but I sit down fast before I fall down and just barely manage to lift my feet above the rill of water in the gutter and Assaf sees me and immediately steps towards me, “Are you hurt?” “Shock,” I yell back over the noise of the traffic and the rain and the buzz of the world that is receding and advancing in distorted waves, I am cogent enough to let him know that he can triage others before he gets to me, I drop my head between my knees and I shouldn’t move my back probably but fields of gray geometric triangles are swarming in on the edges of vision narrowing down to a tunnel and if I don’t get blood to my head I am going to faint here and that is not going to do anyone any good.
I breathe deeply for a few minutes, or maybe less than that or maybe more I have no sense of the passage of time right now and in part of my awareness my body is still accelerating forward towards the window and the wall in front of me looming closer than it should be and so final in its proximity. By the time I look up everyone is gathered around the back of the van, the hatch is open and the driver is sitting there, nobody is sure how badly they are injured, we are shaken but moving and huddling out of the rain and waiting for someone to come, surely someone has to come.
Someone does come, because Assaf got a cell phone from the driver and called it in. A police car arrives, and two policeman swagger warily over to the group of first world tourists with ashen faces and shocked open eyes. They talk to the driver, and then there’s a long conversation with the Spanish tourist about what happened, and then he talks to Assaf for a while. The policeman steps back and looks at the van, and the wall, and us. His eyes run that circuit a couple of times, settling back on the wet huddle of tourists who are all waiting for him to do something, we come from places where once the cavalry has arrived they take over and do things.
He comes over to us and flips open a little notebook, holding a very small pen awkwardly in a rather dirty hand. He asks us what countries we are from, and laboriously records that we are Americans, and Spaniards, and Italians, and Germans, and Israelis, and Canadians. Then he closes his notebook and asks if anyone is hurt. We are all hurt, we clamor, but we are all moving and functioning or so it seems. I can feel that something is wrong in my left thigh, but I don’t know how wrong and I’m scared to look. I tried rolling my pants leg up to get a look at it, I could see the bruise coming up already and it’s enormous and if it’s already starting to come up mere minutes after the impact it is going to be really bad, but maybe it is just a big bruise, it will hurt but is that enough reason to subject myself to a Guatemalan hospital on the first day of my trip?
Danna and Assaf go with the cop, Dana’s wrist is hurt and Assaf is going with her to get it checked out, he asks me if I need to go too and I say no. If he were my brother he would probably make me go anyway, the way he’s making Dana go, but he’s not my brother and I’m not his sister and his sister is hurt, and everyone here has been triaged. I tell him how grateful I am that he’s here, that he’s a good person to have around in an emergency, and he shrugs it off, says “I’ve been through worse.” “What’s worse than a third world car crash?” I ask, he stops for a second to see if it’s a real question and then says “People shooting at you.”
Oh.
I forgot, he’s Israeli, not only does he live in Jerusalem itself but he has of course had to serve his compulsory term in the army.
So they’re gone with the cop now to the hospital, and soon after an ambulance shows up to pick up two other people, the driver who probably has some broken ribs and another woman who thinks her back may be injured, they strap her to a backboard and load her in, we are a diminishing quantity here waiting in the rain, the only ride out so far has been with serious injury. We were told that the tour company was sending another bus to pick us up, raising the new question of whether we want to get in another vehicle by this company because in the hours that we’ve been waiting here I took a look at the van and found to my horror that tires were completely bald, no tread whatsoever to grip the slick asphalt and hold it on the tight mountain curves.
It is about three hours from impact until when our ride shows up. We climb gingerly into this new potential vehicle of death, and my leg is talking to me now and louder but it’s not disabling, I just suspect that it will be once the shock wears off. I feel sick, now, and increasingly uncomfortable as all the water I drank is sloshing back and forth in my body, still moving towards the window and the wall beyond the window so close closer than it should be.
The driver gets lost.
It takes us twice as long to get back to Antigua, and we want to get back as fast as possible to put some distance between the helpless group cowering in the shelter of a crashed van but we also tell him over and over to go slow, go slow, be careful, take his time, any illusion we had of safety has been shattered along with any further illusion that anyone here cares if we are safe.
It’s fully night when we arrive back, I am helped out of the car by the Spanish guy and rush for the bathroom first before doing anything, I shouldn’t be rushing anywhere because I still don’t know how badly I’m hurt. When I come back the remaining members of our group are arguing heatedly with the tour operator official representative. She is blatantly uninterested in our complaints and our pain, she blandly offers to refund our tour fee of $5 each. We protest, we are first worlders and we can protest like nobody’s business, I am fully prepared to go all kinds of Ugly American on this woman, we will sue, we were injured, gross negligence, bad driver, unmentioned vehicle, but she knows our threats are empty here. She gives us all business cards with a number we can call tomorrow to file our complaints, and then informs us that she is shutting down the office for the night.
I am not limping, exactly, as I navigate back to my hostel, but I probably should be. The Spanish couple is escorting me, they are a little concerned that I am more badly hurt than they or I at first realized, but I assure them that I am ok and they accept my assurance without too much convincing required, I wish they hadn’t swallowed it so easily because I probably do need help but I don’t want to ask for it, I don’t want to need help here I am traveling alone because I can handle whatever happens all by myself I don’t need the security blanket of others to get through these adventures and misadventures, I am brave and resourceful and competent and strong and if Assaf hadn’t climbed out that window maybe it would’ve been me instead.
I let myself into the Black Cat hostel and go to reception. I ask if Assaf and Dana have returned, explain the crash and that they went to the hospital. I ask her if she has a private room available, that I’d like to switch out of the dorm if possible because I hurt my leg, but they are all booked up. She suggests I ask the other girls in the dorm to switch and let me use the bottom bunk, no way I can climb that ladder tonight or maybe I could but I shouldn’t be moving so much, I am still moving towards that window and the wall beyond.
I thank her, and slowly climb the stairs to my room. There’s a group of British girls in there now, they just arrived today, and I tell my story again and of course someone will swap bunks with me, is there anything they can do to help am I sure I’m ok? Oh yes, I’m fine, laugh it off, what a story and at least my laugh isn’t shaky and hysterical anymore. I finally have a chance to take off my pants and see how bad it is. A bruise the size of a serving platter is stamped on the outside of my left thigh, a bubble of purple blood rising to the surface of the skin with vessels not just ruptured in there but likely flat out obliterated. Everyone gasps in sympathy, I lean over to pull a dress out of my bag and suddenly scream I didn’t even know I was going to scream didn’t pull in extra air for it but oh my god the pain is radiating and knifing out from deep, deep inside the muscles of hip and oh god its not stopping I’m not moving anymore I’ll never move again I promise I swear and I am still screaming and tears are exploding from my eyes my tear ducts violently and suddenly evacuated and it is subsiding a little its not gone but I’m not screaming anymore but I can’t move either, I have finally stopped moving towards that window with the wall looming too close closer than it should be and I am not going to move again I will be still and solid like the rock wall and never move again because moving hurts it hurts so much and how did it not hurt in the hours before this, climbing in and out of cars and sitting on a toilet and up stairs and bending and sitting and rising because I will still moving then I was ahead of it and I have crashed through that window and into that wall at last after all these hours in motion, the shock-induced adrenaline has drained out and left agony in its wake.
One of the British women is a nurse, she tells me I have torn at least one muscle maybe more, and rummages through her med kit to dose me with heavy duty codeine. It’s altruistic for sure, but also the only way anyone will be able to sleep tonight otherwise I will scream I can’t help it, I have no control over it my body dictates that screaming is the only possible response.
I still don’t go to the hospital.
“There the only ones I have, so I guess so.” I had ultimately decided not to pack my heavy-duty boots for this trip, it wasn’t going to be worth the weight and it’s steamy and tropical here. My runaround shoes are slip-on Mary Janes, not really qualified for hiking but the hike is supposed to be fairly easy, then again all the hikes here are supposedly easy and almost never are, they have a different definition of an easy hike than I do. Mainly my definition involves wide, smooth paths that incline gently. The hike is not the point of this little excursion, however, the point is the caldera of Volcan Pecaya, a spectacularly scenic active volcano just a few miles from Antigua. We are anticipating explosions of lava showering up into the sky, and as we confer we are disappointed that no one remembered to bring marshmallows, someone told us that you can toast marshmallows over the lava flows up there and that would have been awesome, if we had remembered it.
We are all here and accounted for, a group of around ten tourists from all over the world, there’s a Spanish couple and an Italian couple, a Canadian guy and someone from Germany, the Israelis Dana and Assaf, and of course me representing for the U.S. I met Dana on the flight from New York yesterday, and that has turned out to be quite a fortuitous meeting as we got delayed in El Salvador and ended up traveling to Antigua from Guatemala City late at night, since we had both independently made reservations at the same hostel. She has come here to meet her brother, Assaf, who is rounding out his year in Latin America, and he met us at the hostel last night. He’s been in Antigua for a while and knows his way around, and he took care of making arrangements for all three of us to join this tour, he is one of those guys that gets things done even for strangers that aren’t his sister.
We clamber into the van, or minibus, or “tourist bus” as they are called here, Dana and Assaf first in the back row and I end up teetering on the edge of the second row, odd man out and the only tourist not paired off in some way or another. We pull out of the square and head up the road out of the city, and its raining harder now as conversations spring up awkwardly amongst the group of disparate strangers who share only an origin that is Not Here. We chat about where we’re from, where we’ve been, how long we’ve been in Guatemala, the things that travellers always talk about with each other, getting cozy in this sweaty little vehicle where we’re practically sitting on top of each other and the idea of a seat belt is laughable.
One of our number ended up in the shotgun seat next the driver, necessary to fit everyone in, and breaking through the rising babble of cross-conversations is a crisply accented “Watch out!,” there’s such urgency in it that it grabs everyone’s attention and look forward and see the wall of the cliff sliding towards us, or we are sliding towards it and its looming so close so fast it shouldn’t be that close and
Impact
The van stopped moving but we moving within it are still going, I am flung forward and end up in the console area between the driver’s seat and the passenger seat in the front and thunk something is on top of me and we are moving for a long time even though it’s only a couple of seconds at most and everything is shuddering to a halt and it’s silent now it was so loud a moment ago I guess everyone was screaming but I didn’t scream or at least I don’t think I did but I probably was. The weight on top of me shifts, Dana has landed on me from behind where she was flung over the seat, everyone move up one peg, like musical chairs but not really and we are collectively struggling to move back one peg, we have to get out of this van because we are on the shoulder of a road that doesn’t really have a shoulder and I can’t really think yet but what if another car slams into us while we’re trapped here we have to get out, someone next to the door is trying to slide it open and it’s jammed and he shouts “It won’t open” and we’re trapped here, but before I can even begin to panic Assaf has levered himself out of the broken window and climbed around to the door and is prying it open from outside, we tumble out into the pouring rain and traffic veering around us and my feet hit the ground, wobbly, I have a vague notion that I shouldn’t move because I might be injured and in shock and I could injure myself even more but we had to get out of that van and my knees are shaking my whole body is shaking and quaking and I step to the side of the road, Assaf is making sure everyone gets out safely and I am so glad he’s here to do this, that he hasn’t even paused to panic or think about it he just did it, I feel my muscles turn to water and sit down abruptly and I shouldn’t be moving or at least not this fast I should be moving slowly and carefully and testing and examining everything but I sit down fast before I fall down and just barely manage to lift my feet above the rill of water in the gutter and Assaf sees me and immediately steps towards me, “Are you hurt?” “Shock,” I yell back over the noise of the traffic and the rain and the buzz of the world that is receding and advancing in distorted waves, I am cogent enough to let him know that he can triage others before he gets to me, I drop my head between my knees and I shouldn’t move my back probably but fields of gray geometric triangles are swarming in on the edges of vision narrowing down to a tunnel and if I don’t get blood to my head I am going to faint here and that is not going to do anyone any good.
I breathe deeply for a few minutes, or maybe less than that or maybe more I have no sense of the passage of time right now and in part of my awareness my body is still accelerating forward towards the window and the wall in front of me looming closer than it should be and so final in its proximity. By the time I look up everyone is gathered around the back of the van, the hatch is open and the driver is sitting there, nobody is sure how badly they are injured, we are shaken but moving and huddling out of the rain and waiting for someone to come, surely someone has to come.
Someone does come, because Assaf got a cell phone from the driver and called it in. A police car arrives, and two policeman swagger warily over to the group of first world tourists with ashen faces and shocked open eyes. They talk to the driver, and then there’s a long conversation with the Spanish tourist about what happened, and then he talks to Assaf for a while. The policeman steps back and looks at the van, and the wall, and us. His eyes run that circuit a couple of times, settling back on the wet huddle of tourists who are all waiting for him to do something, we come from places where once the cavalry has arrived they take over and do things.
He comes over to us and flips open a little notebook, holding a very small pen awkwardly in a rather dirty hand. He asks us what countries we are from, and laboriously records that we are Americans, and Spaniards, and Italians, and Germans, and Israelis, and Canadians. Then he closes his notebook and asks if anyone is hurt. We are all hurt, we clamor, but we are all moving and functioning or so it seems. I can feel that something is wrong in my left thigh, but I don’t know how wrong and I’m scared to look. I tried rolling my pants leg up to get a look at it, I could see the bruise coming up already and it’s enormous and if it’s already starting to come up mere minutes after the impact it is going to be really bad, but maybe it is just a big bruise, it will hurt but is that enough reason to subject myself to a Guatemalan hospital on the first day of my trip?
Danna and Assaf go with the cop, Dana’s wrist is hurt and Assaf is going with her to get it checked out, he asks me if I need to go too and I say no. If he were my brother he would probably make me go anyway, the way he’s making Dana go, but he’s not my brother and I’m not his sister and his sister is hurt, and everyone here has been triaged. I tell him how grateful I am that he’s here, that he’s a good person to have around in an emergency, and he shrugs it off, says “I’ve been through worse.” “What’s worse than a third world car crash?” I ask, he stops for a second to see if it’s a real question and then says “People shooting at you.”
Oh.
I forgot, he’s Israeli, not only does he live in Jerusalem itself but he has of course had to serve his compulsory term in the army.
So they’re gone with the cop now to the hospital, and soon after an ambulance shows up to pick up two other people, the driver who probably has some broken ribs and another woman who thinks her back may be injured, they strap her to a backboard and load her in, we are a diminishing quantity here waiting in the rain, the only ride out so far has been with serious injury. We were told that the tour company was sending another bus to pick us up, raising the new question of whether we want to get in another vehicle by this company because in the hours that we’ve been waiting here I took a look at the van and found to my horror that tires were completely bald, no tread whatsoever to grip the slick asphalt and hold it on the tight mountain curves.
It is about three hours from impact until when our ride shows up. We climb gingerly into this new potential vehicle of death, and my leg is talking to me now and louder but it’s not disabling, I just suspect that it will be once the shock wears off. I feel sick, now, and increasingly uncomfortable as all the water I drank is sloshing back and forth in my body, still moving towards the window and the wall beyond the window so close closer than it should be.
The driver gets lost.
It takes us twice as long to get back to Antigua, and we want to get back as fast as possible to put some distance between the helpless group cowering in the shelter of a crashed van but we also tell him over and over to go slow, go slow, be careful, take his time, any illusion we had of safety has been shattered along with any further illusion that anyone here cares if we are safe.
It’s fully night when we arrive back, I am helped out of the car by the Spanish guy and rush for the bathroom first before doing anything, I shouldn’t be rushing anywhere because I still don’t know how badly I’m hurt. When I come back the remaining members of our group are arguing heatedly with the tour operator official representative. She is blatantly uninterested in our complaints and our pain, she blandly offers to refund our tour fee of $5 each. We protest, we are first worlders and we can protest like nobody’s business, I am fully prepared to go all kinds of Ugly American on this woman, we will sue, we were injured, gross negligence, bad driver, unmentioned vehicle, but she knows our threats are empty here. She gives us all business cards with a number we can call tomorrow to file our complaints, and then informs us that she is shutting down the office for the night.
I am not limping, exactly, as I navigate back to my hostel, but I probably should be. The Spanish couple is escorting me, they are a little concerned that I am more badly hurt than they or I at first realized, but I assure them that I am ok and they accept my assurance without too much convincing required, I wish they hadn’t swallowed it so easily because I probably do need help but I don’t want to ask for it, I don’t want to need help here I am traveling alone because I can handle whatever happens all by myself I don’t need the security blanket of others to get through these adventures and misadventures, I am brave and resourceful and competent and strong and if Assaf hadn’t climbed out that window maybe it would’ve been me instead.
I let myself into the Black Cat hostel and go to reception. I ask if Assaf and Dana have returned, explain the crash and that they went to the hospital. I ask her if she has a private room available, that I’d like to switch out of the dorm if possible because I hurt my leg, but they are all booked up. She suggests I ask the other girls in the dorm to switch and let me use the bottom bunk, no way I can climb that ladder tonight or maybe I could but I shouldn’t be moving so much, I am still moving towards that window and the wall beyond.
I thank her, and slowly climb the stairs to my room. There’s a group of British girls in there now, they just arrived today, and I tell my story again and of course someone will swap bunks with me, is there anything they can do to help am I sure I’m ok? Oh yes, I’m fine, laugh it off, what a story and at least my laugh isn’t shaky and hysterical anymore. I finally have a chance to take off my pants and see how bad it is. A bruise the size of a serving platter is stamped on the outside of my left thigh, a bubble of purple blood rising to the surface of the skin with vessels not just ruptured in there but likely flat out obliterated. Everyone gasps in sympathy, I lean over to pull a dress out of my bag and suddenly scream I didn’t even know I was going to scream didn’t pull in extra air for it but oh my god the pain is radiating and knifing out from deep, deep inside the muscles of hip and oh god its not stopping I’m not moving anymore I’ll never move again I promise I swear and I am still screaming and tears are exploding from my eyes my tear ducts violently and suddenly evacuated and it is subsiding a little its not gone but I’m not screaming anymore but I can’t move either, I have finally stopped moving towards that window with the wall looming too close closer than it should be and I am not going to move again I will be still and solid like the rock wall and never move again because moving hurts it hurts so much and how did it not hurt in the hours before this, climbing in and out of cars and sitting on a toilet and up stairs and bending and sitting and rising because I will still moving then I was ahead of it and I have crashed through that window and into that wall at last after all these hours in motion, the shock-induced adrenaline has drained out and left agony in its wake.
One of the British women is a nurse, she tells me I have torn at least one muscle maybe more, and rummages through her med kit to dose me with heavy duty codeine. It’s altruistic for sure, but also the only way anyone will be able to sleep tonight otherwise I will scream I can’t help it, I have no control over it my body dictates that screaming is the only possible response.
I still don’t go to the hospital.
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