In Brief

I haven't written about my individual travel experiences for some time now as they seem to have all coalesced into one homogeneous learning experience. I look back now, not on highlights, but rather on the process of becoming something new, something rooted not where my feet meet the ground, but rather where my life meets experience. I look back now and no longer try to dissect who or what got me here.

Sometimes though, the important experiences draw an obvious connection to their end result. As simple as 70 metres of rope between my harness and a new friend's belay device.

The world is our testpiece.

Manali Weather Report

There are words that we haven't discovered yet
words which archaeologist are still excavating
one of these words is Manali
And the reason I hadn't discovered Manali and the northern (though still sub-Kashmiri) province of Himanchal Pradesh is because I'm a huge idiot for spending too much time in the southern beaches of Goa. Don't, simply don't bother with any part of India but Himanchal Pradesh. There's no point. You're wasting your time, and here's a testament as to why:

After finally succumbing to the heat of Hampi (52 C during the day as you may recall) and acknowledging that I couldn't climb sun baked granite any longer I started my ascent through India. I proposed a quick stop back in Palolem to visit some wanderlusting Norwegians and a rogue Iranian or two before heading north. "Quick stop" quickly turned into "1 week bender" involving a random "4 chicken slaughter" plus "1 drunken palm tree ascent" to steal "5 coconuts." A little wild with the quotation marks there, sorry.

Eventually though I did manage to extricate myself from the beach and the binge and start my epic B-line journey to Himanchal Pradesh and the foothills of the Himalayas. On the way though, a brief stop in Rishikesh, the world capital of yoga and one of the holiest cities in India was due...if only to visit yet another Norwegian, Christian the film student.


Lucky me, I picked up a bit of food-poisoning/hacking-chest-caught-action on the way though. I don't think that it was the 15 hour connection from Madgaon to Mumbai that did it, but it may have been the street food in Mumbai, the dodgy hotel in Mumbai, the 26 hour connection from Mumbai to Delhi, the "sleeping" on the floor of the second class waiting room in the New Delhi Station, the dodgy meal on the train from Delhi to Haridwar, or the train itself and it's overclocked AC. Not sure really.

Rishikesh (through the sickness and surprising heat) wasn't really my scene. I was all geared for relaxing in mountains and seeing a few babas and sadhus kicking about, but what I got was a full on assault of beggars and angry Hindus. Not cool. I don't get it though, most people seem to really love Rishikesh, but it could be that my sick lungs just couldn't take the constant assault of Charas smoke. Perhaps I was just too jaded to really appreciate the magic of the Gangas and I've really crossed off one of the most magical places in India. I don't really know. Hindsight aside, the sack of antibiotics, pain killers, hydrating salts and bowel stabilisers that I picked up from the doctor next to our Ashram cum Guesthouse did put me back in the mood to shoulder my bag again.

So, onward bound, I hopped through a grueling set of connections (including a 2km hike with all my gear, Djembe included) to catch the 3pm overnight (17 hour) public bus from Deradhun (just outside Rishikesh) to Manali. Most people opt for the easy and cheap availability of sleeping pills and/or raw Valium from a local Chemist to get them through a journey like this, but I've never been one for superfluous medicines...I'm tough like that. Tough though I am, I am also a bit of a hypocrite at times and currently have a pocketful of tablets for the next such overnight public bus. May that journey never come.

"Manali" though, that's the topic of this particular blog, and while some people may think that Manali is something you can contract from going barefoot into public bathrooms, I knew it to be the place where three English climbers (whom I had met in Hampi) had been developing some sick bouldering on previously unclimbed rock. It was also the opportunity to escape the manic honking and constant heckling of Charas dealers and shoe polishers of the rest of India.

Refering back to my "steadfast" and "conservative" view on pharmaceuticals wherein I did not take the Valium, I got to enjoy all 17 hours of overnight public bus ride sharing my tiny alloted space with my rucksack, drum and daypack. Cozy though that description may sound, it was more like a drop-in course with a carnival contortionist on speed. And so, from my contorted position I watched as the sun came up to bring life to the villages, rivers, cedars, oaks, rotadehndrons, cherry orchards, wheat fields, wild ganja and of course the snowy peaks of the Himalayas themselves. Completely in awe of my surroundings, I silently congratulated myself for making a good travel decision. I unfolded myself somewhat to pull out my jacket and socks, as I suddenly realised that the temperature was approximately 30 degrees lower than it had been in Rishikesh. It was all feeling a bit like home.

On having abandoned travel guides in the last few months I find that the biggest shortcoming in my travels is arriving at a new place completely disoriented and without even the slightest idea of the layout of my new surroundings. Arriving in Manali was no different, and all I knew of the place was that there was an "Old Manali" and a "New Manali" and that I had just been dropped off in New Manali and that my English climbing friends where in Old Manali and that the ammounts being offered for rickshaws to Old Manali were simply preposterous. I decided to walk. With my gear strapped to my back I was soon directed, and indeed led, by a friendly local carpenter who spoke no more English than the word "Old" as in "Old Manali" which is quite conveniently exactly where he was headed.

After a series of misdirections, largely my own fault, I was having trouble locating my friends and stopped for a chai in hopes that my sleep deprived brain would collect itself fo a few moments and I could remember where the climbers where staying. I noticed that the Dhaba I stopped at, in all its delapitated glory, made fresh momos (the Himalayan version of Gyoza) and I made a point to return later that day for lunch. Eventually the milky, sugary goodness did help me to remember something that sounded like, "anand" which was incidently the name of the guesthouse where my friends were staying. After another kilometre of uphill trudging (and no less than 5 early morning offers for Charas) I did find my friends and sat down, sleepless and unshowered to start immediately discussing the climbing plans for the day.



In the two weeks that the English crew (Richard, Andy and Luke) had been in Manali they had discovered some three or four epic boulders within short walking distance, each offering up at least 5 routes per face, ranging from balancy slab problems to full power, overhanging and almost surreal mixes of slopers, crimps and dynos. It was as though the monkey god Hanuman had designed a little climbing heaven and covered it all in moss and lychen, not to be discovered for many thousands of years. And indeed, it was that moss and lychen that had restricted the climbers to having discovered only a few boulders in the time they had been in Manali, as it just didn't seem logical to spend time cleaning off a single route boulder when a buffet of routes could be cleaned off on any of the larger ones.



A couple of days after arriving and having explored the established rocks, I spent some time alone in search of a new rock to clean and managed to expose a mean granite problem (which remains unsent and inasmuch unnamed) within a few minutes of leaving our initial climbing area, while a family of curious monkeys watched from the bushes. It was the first problem I had pioneered in the area and I at once felt a sense of pride mixed with just a bit of shame for having alterted the natural settings by rasping the moss from the rock. Perhaps the monkeys were simply looking on in discust. Nevertheless, I spent a good couple of minutes happily suspended on the double sloper dead-hang which I assume constitutes the crux of the initial traverse on this boulder. Hanuman's little climbing arena was fast becoming my Shambala.

For the next two weeks the four of us (which eventually became the eight of us as we were joined by fellow Hampi climbers and a couple of tree surgeons) climbed hard, ate momos, enjoyed the natural hotspings in the nearby rival town of Veshisht, and contemplated trekking up to the top ridges of the Valley in search of the distant sillhouettes of boulders we could just make out on the horizon. While other travellers disapeared for days into thick clouds of Israeli chillum produced charas smoke (not that we were particularly adverse to the activity) and bargained over treks into Kashmir, we found ourselves in the serenity of the gogeous montain views and the seemingly unending boulders.

In Manali I at last aquiesced to the fact that I'm a mountain man, not the beach seeking traveller I once thought I was. I finally succumbed to Indian food poisoning and spent a day in bed for a reason other than being hungover. And I learned that the English colloquialism, "innit" is interchangable with the Canadian equivalent, "eh."

The Hampi Times

I made it! I friggin' made it to Hampi at last!

After two years of drooling over the idea of climbing in Hampi, I've finally arrived. Though, perhaps I came a little late in the season as the average daily temperature is now floating somewhere around 1,009,863 degrees Kelvin. It's rough, and the granite is vicious on the finger tips but I wouldn't trade this for any other boulder I've met so far.

Though I came here for strictly the climbing I've (as traveling randomness will always do) found countless other reasons to stay. For one, I can easily manage a day here on no more than 10 dollars. That, in itself, is enough of a reason to spend a month here. But there's more! Colourful characters are abound in this place; not the least of which is Petrol Baba, a Hindu holy man notorious for his wild consumption of petrol to get high when there aren't enough foreigners to donate hash to him. Last time I saw him he was sporting a mean leg wound (no doubt as a result of some petroleum bender) and was happily borrowing my camera to take some candid shots of my Swiss friend, Dominik and myself climbing a new problem. He also had me pose for a few shots, pointing off in the distance to Monkey Temple, his old pension. His new temple, the Sun Temple is much more humble, and I imagine that it is his new post after he was excommunicated from Monkey Temple for simply being too damn crazy.

Today he invited us up to Monkey Temple for the "annual Baba reunion" where we would be welcome to join countless Chillums (Indian hash pipes that require a certain dexterity to smoke) and probably some completely inane discussion of Shiva's return to this physical plane (I've had a few such Baba times).

More importantly though is the rock here. Sweet mother of Ganesh these rocks are mad! Everything here is stable granite boulders, some big, some small and most of them precariously perched atop one another. My poor fingertips and toe knuckles have had their share of the composite crystal and I'm afraid that I'll have to take a day or two off. Too bad there's no way that will ever happen, as I've just made plans to solo a 20 metre tower/chimney/dodgyfest and camp on the top for two days with Dominik before he heads off to Kathmandu. We'll need alot of sandwiches, I think...

In the off hours (the "on hours" are 6am to 10am and 4pm to 7pm, when the temperature drops enough to actually step out of the shade) we all post up in Shanthi Guesthouse make our way through the epic menu. So far I've managed to sample the entire Indian menu...twice. Next up is Israeli cuisine, and then perhaps Mexican. Why they have Mexican options on the menu, I really don't know...although I did meet on Mexican here.

Welcome David, the holistic Mexican healer from Arizona. Just the other day he introduced me to some inane crystal health reading machines (which you can make yourself by wrapping a copper wire around a quartz crystal and arbitrarily connecting it to an array of dials, lights and switches). I'm pretty sure that I saw one of these on the South Park episode about Scientology...

He did however, make me up a mean batch of colloidal silver and spash some lavender oil on my newest climbing wounds. For this I am thankful...for the 2 hour conversation I entertained about space-time-travel-retro-brain-wave-energy-healing with him, I am not.

So yeah, come to Hampi...the monkeys don't bite, but the buffalo that chased us for half a kilometre because she wanted to gore our crash pad and forced us to speed climb a rock to hide in safety may be a small deterrent for some n00b travelers.

A Short Tale Of Interesting Folk

I sincerely apologise for the blatant lack of effort I've been putting into this blog. I'm a douchepickle, I know, but please understand that at a topical level, Iran was very dull, polluted and generally uninviting. For these reasons I have been really struggling to put together an entry about why I did actually enjoy my time there so much. Was it drinking illegally homemade wine in a ski lift? Was it haggling over a carpet after a few too many tokes? Or was it hand drums in the desert? I'm not really sure yet, and that's why this post has absolutely nothing to do with Iran.

Rather, this is about India, and a fellow named Duncan.

Walking back to my beach hut at about 1am the other night, I came across a not-so-unusual gathering of hippies around a bonfire, setting up djembes and poy. Why not join them, I thought, there's bound to be someone worth talking to at this gathering. And indeed, after exhausting my interest in a pair of rather ambitious 19 year-old Swedish guys (working in an orphanage outside of Pune, India, but on vacation for a few days here in Goa), my conversation turned to the attention of Duncan.

The rudimentary details of travel conversation where gone through, valiantly seeking something that could ignite some alternate topic, and we found it, right at the question, "so where are you from?"

Duncan, as it was revealed, had once lived in The States, but had been somehow deported and stripped of his citizenship after being caught with some 30kg of marijuana. Hard to argue, "personal use" with that quantity or drugs, I'm sure. He had moved to Bombay at the time, and with nothing in his pockets, lived on the streets for the last 3 years...or so...he had kind of lost count.

Being given the gift of street-life and the meditative state is can sometimes bring in the everyday quest for a few rupees to survive on, Duncan's mind had spend numerous hours contemplating peaceful and soul-fulfilling topics like, "vendetta," "guerrilla militia," and "pornography racketeering". But as much as he was telling me about this, he was still remaining quite cryptic about the whole process. Fortunately, he was one of those people ruled by their ego...perhaps even a bit of a narcissist, and I took advantage of this to learn more.

From what I could discern (not that there was a language barrier...he speaks perfect English...I just found this all a little overwhelming) this is his plan:

After feeling a bit of regret for burning his Indian passport and only source of indisputable identification, Duncan decided to take it out of "The Man" but convincing a sizable force of armed militants to "pledge their lives to [him]" under the pretext that "it's for the good of mankind". He would then station these outside an unspecified embassy for which his has a list of relevant officials which may or may not be able to supply him with a diplomatic passport. Once he found the one with this capacity he would enter a game of blackmail, which is apparently much easier to do that I had ever imagined...in truth I was feeling a little enlightened, to encourage a trade for said passport.

I know that there was more to his plan after getting the passport...and I'm pretty sure it involved porn, but at this time I was still trying to process the feasibility of Duncan's plan in relation and/or contrast to just how crazy he was/was not. I walked home that night sorting the variable out in my head...but I needed to talk to him again to really get it going.

A few days later I headed into the jungle to a place called Banyan Tree. It's a hippie hideout managed by some old Italian expat who has apparently reached enlightenment. Mostly I just think he's baked out of his gourd all day on cheap local hash...but having been up there for 4 years I do have to give him some credit. I knew that Duncan was staying up near the tree, and trudged in, braving the wall of mosquitoes I walked into to meet with him.

After a kilometre or so of hiking I heard a distant, "hello, Kaare, come in!" and somewhere down the hill toward the river was Duncan, in his remarkably comfortable tree nook he had established for himself. This time there was a mud covered Swedish hippie with a didgeridoo made of PVC piping sitting around to join the conversation, and together we grilled Duncan on his plans:

Swedish Guy (Anton): So, do you carry that sleeping mat with you everywhere? Why don't you just leave it here where you sleep?
Ducan: Well, I'm a little bit worried about theft, but also it's rifle simulation. I know that there are dark times ahead, so i just need to get in the mindset of always carrying my rifle with me, you know?
...
Kaare: Is that an old keyboard in your backpack?
Duncan: Oh yeah man, it's just like how the old Samurais would train with wooden swords that they carried everywhere. I always keep a broken keyboard with me so that I can just meditate with it and be in the zone...so that when it's time I'll be able to just hack right in, yeah?

...and so on...

Duncan also shared a crumpled old picture of his computer setup at home in The US which involved some 15 monitors. Apparently, by doing a combination of LSD and MDMA, Duncan (who goes by the hanger, "Zero Cool" by the way) was able to attain the same state of mind as those who invented our modern ideas of hardware and software and just dive in to any part of the hacker's realm he desired. This, of course, was because it was college kids on LSD that invented computers. Of course.

Göreme

We walked under a moon
painfully bright
leaving footsteps where before
there were none
only the
track
of
animals
we knew to have long frozen to death
and here we stopped
made fire
under a rock spire where
1000s of years ago
Christians made their homes
straight into stone
we drank wine
and were at peace with this world

this is not poetry

I stepped outside a little bit late
so me and my Chesterfield
watched the city lights
burn away the smog
while the rooftops
and smokestacks set into the night

Communism and Tits

I'm going to start completely off topic here and just outright tell you all that I bought the Canon 20mm f2.8 ultrasonic lens. Now stop touching yourself in naughty ways while you think about it and read the rest of my blog.
Marty and Deanna where kind enough to drive us all the way from Brussels, Belgium to Krefeld Germany. Angie and I were kind enough to sleep the whole way...giving them some "alone time". We're nice like that.

Krefeld ended up being incredibly dodgy, or at least the area around the car park was. We had fun finding a staircase out of the basement that wasn't inhabited by semi-dead heroin users and eventually made it to the street by walking back the way that we drove in. At street level we came to the conclusion (judging by the general populace and their vacant eyed state) that we had, in fact, arrived at the heart of the Zombie apocalypse. Later we would discover that they were just Russian immigrants...not all that different really.

Since we had arrived earlier than we had planned, we decided to take the opportunity to search out a restaurant for lunch. MoneyPenny (the onboard GPS system in the BMW) had informed us that there was a nice place just around the corner from where we parked. This was a complete lie and instead we got lost in a town with nothing open. Eventually we found something that resembled a restaurant, but when Marty stuck his head in to check he got stared down by a bunch of scary old German men who had clearly been drinking since 8am. We proceeded to the Cafe & Bar Celona (witty name) for Schnitzel.

A few hours later and it was 2pm, time to meet up with my German friends, Olaf and Vicky. We found their flat without too much trouble and I got a big happy German hug which, in no way, smelled like Sauerkraut as I expected it to. We were introduced then to another artist's apartment, similar to our friends in Finland, but substantially more 60's influenced (as they are both Mods) and with fun slippery wooden floors. Olaf showed us some fun tricks for sliding across the entire length of the hallway. I fell down.

After some catching up, Olaf and Vicky piled us into their car to head to the nearby city of Duisburg, a factory city with some sort of amusement factory light show thing.

Wait, I have to describe the "car." This vehicle, as Olaf described it, is more of a philosophy than a car. With only 29 horsepower, I can begin to understand where he was coming from. Driving on the Autobahn at it's top speed of 100km/hr it seems to float, more or less, in the general direction where you point it. This floating requires constant attention to a complex array of knobs, dials, and switches, which I imagine without care, could lead to a complete loss of control and certain death as the car is no bigger than the 4 passengers it maintains. There is also a panel of unmarked lights which sporadically flash and flutter as the car seems to make an attempt to communicate with its limited vocabulary. It's all rather like Flight of the Navigator...but much more terrifying.

Somehow Angie managed to peacefully sleep through this whole proceeding as though she was being craddled in the arms of safety. I had been on those suicide buses in the sub-continent of India where drivers enjoy a mortality rate approximately on par with military convoy drivers, and felt no fear. But in this vehicle, this French "thing" which was commissioned to "travel on French country roads with a backseat full of eggs and milk and not break either the product, or the driver's bank, kept me awake like a nose-full of speed.

It did, however, successfully bring us to our destination and, admittedly, it was well worth the risk. Duisburg has prematurely begun to preserve its history. Here, they have closed off an old steel factory and adorned it with all sorts and arrays of neon lights. It's kind of like being on the set of a Zombie movie shoot. Here's an example of what a Zombie movie might be like there...

You may notice that anything said in German sounds like a Zombie hungry for brains...

After watching the sun set from the top of the slag furnace, we headed off back to the suicide car. Somehow we got lost on the way though, and discovered a visage of that stereotypical Germany factory that we all know. Walking around at night, aided in some places with placards of old photos, we were really able to capture the feeling of working a shit factory job. For those of your who are metallurgists out there, be thankful that these poor slobs managed to prove that automated operation of a steel factory is more efficient that burning off the soles of your feet on hot slag.

A quick drive and we were back in Krefeld with the night still ahead of us. Olaf, Vicky, Angie, a new friend Jo, and myself all piled into a cab and booked it to a local rock bar. Here we learned the joys of various beers, musics, and local youth. I also discovered that walking into the sharp edge of a bathroom door will:
a) solicit a surprising amount of blood
b) promote the purchasing of free beer from the nice fellow who threw the door open into your face, and...
c) give you a concussion that will keep you bed ridden the next day.

I'm just hoping that it scars well enough that I will have a proper souvenir from this place.

Somehow, despite the head wound, heavy beer consumption (you will remember that beer is my enemy as it poisons me in ways that other alcohols cannot compare) Olaf and I managed to stay up until some ungodly hour on YouTube, laughing at the folly of those bamboozled by Sasha Cohen's gay Austrian Hairdressing character, Bruno. Oh, Bruno, those homophobes are such a neich neich.