Uncle travelling Gjerulf

On Friday I did meet up with Patrick, and he brought a whole bunch of other travellers he’d met too. I ended up going to the night market with one of them, a British fella who’s name’s escaping me at the moment, and I had a weird and funny experience… We were walking through the market, and came upon a place where a bunch of people were sitting around a big fish tank, with their feet in the water. It turns out that these little fish, who live off of algae in the wild, love dead skin as well! So for three bucks we sat down, stuck our feet in the fish tank, and the fish flocked around our feet and started eating off the dead skin… It tickled at first, but then it was just a very strange, but pleasant feeling, and my feet probably haven’t been so soft since before I could walk!

On Saturday I managed to find the place with the miniatures of Angkor Wat. It was cool to see how it looks from above, and I took some photos, but it was only interesting for about ten minutes… Saturday night I treated myself to Norwegian food at the Soria Moria hotel, where they offer everyting on their menu at half price on Saturdays before eight. I had a feast on Norwegian poached salmon, with boiled potatoes, carrots, cucumber salad and Sandefjordssmør, and for dessert I had Norwegian waffles with strawberry jam… Heaven!

On Sunday I managed to find an international church in Siem Reap on google, and I went to the service at the non-denominational Christian Fellowship of Siem Reap. It was quite nice, but I didn’t really get in contact with many people that go there regularly, although I did speak to a Danish couple who work for an organization operating orphanages in Cambodia.

Yesterday I decided I wanted to learn how to cook some traditional Cambodian dishes, so I headed out early, and signed up for a cooking class at a restaurant called Le Tigre de Papier. At 10am I returned, after a hearty breakfast and an interesting conversation with a German guy who has treasurehunting as a hobby… Not old treasures, but “treasures” left out by other afficionados! They hide something somewhere virtually inaccessible, take a note of the GPS position, and post it on the net, at geocaching.com, then others can go out and try to find the treasure…

Another German, Jan Eric, was the only other person doing the cooking class that morning. We met up at 10am, decided what we wanted to make, and then headed off to the market with the chef to locate the ingredients. We didn’t actually buy anything, but she showed us what everything looked like. As a starter I made Nem, Cambodian spring rolls, and my main course was Amok, a very famous Cambodian fish curry. Jan Eric made a mango salad, and a variation of the Amok with scallops. For dessert we boiled tapioca and bananas in coconut milk. It was DELICIOUS, and we shared the food we ate, but weren’t anywhere close to being able to eat everything!

After the cooking class we decided to head out to a place called Aqua, that Jan Eric had found the day before, which has a swimming pool with a bar in the middle, and a pool table, pun intended, where we played pool in our swimming costumes. He went to Phnom Penh this morning, but I went back to lie in the sun and read, and float around in the pool with an ice coffe in my hand most of today. I am considering moving on into Laos soon, but I’m also thinking about heading to Thailand to spend the Norwegian Constitution Day, May 17, at the Norwegian Church Abroad, Sjømannskirken, in Pattaya.

On Thursday Vietnam was celebrating a special day. It was the 35th anniversary of the Reunification, i.e. the end of the American War. We got on the bus in Hoi An at 6:30pm, and headed south. We spent a couple of hours on Friday morning in Nha Trang, from 6am to 8am, before continuing on to Saigon. As we stopped for lunch in Mui Ne, Gjerulf was the last person off the bus before it was locked, and Annikken was the first person back on after it was unlocked. In the mean time, someone had stolen her cell phone from the top of her day pack… We asked the bus drivers if they had let anyone in during the stop, but they didn’t understand the question. Eventually they called the office, to give us someone who spoke English, but even then all they could come up with was a shrug and a wagging of the right hand from side to side, which apparently means “Shit happens” or “Nothing we can do about it” or something of that sort.

We met some nice travellers on the second bus, who are living in Tokyo, teaching foreign languages; a German, Karoline,  teaching German, and two Americans, Bryan and Jake, teaching English… Jake had his camera and ipod stolen from his bag on the previous bus, so someone was definately making some extra money on that trip.

We went out for dinner with the three teachers last night, along with a Canadian guy from the bus, a Japanese girl that the teachers had met earlier in Vietnam, who just happened to be there, a Japanese guy who had studied with the girl in Australia a couple of months ago, and who also just happened to be walking by, and last but not least a Scottish guy whom the Canadian had met elsewhere in Vietnam, and who ALSO just happened to be there… When you’re a backpacker, these things tend to occur. The night ended early, however, as most of us had just gotten off the bus after a 25 hour bus ride…

Today we met up with Bryan for breakfast, and Karoline a bit later, and then the four of us spent the day walking around Saigon, buying stuff at a local market, and we even managed a tour of the Reunification Palace. The tour was very interesting, and we learned a lot about Vietnam. For example, they had four presidents in South Vietnam during the war, one who was president for three years before he was killed, but managed to start the building of the palace we visited. The second president was in power for eight years, and lived in the palace. The third president lasted about a week, and the fourth president lasted all of 43 hours in office…

Tomorrow is the last night before Annikken gets on the plane to go home, so this will be our last blog post together. To all of you who have been following Annikken, hope you’ve enjoyed it, and see you back home soon.

Gjerulf will continue to travel, and continue to write. He might head into Cambodia with the three teachers we met, on the same day as Annikken goes home, but we’ll see. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

A week ago we arrived in Hoi An for the second time, after a long journey on the bus from Ninh Binh. After checking in at a hotel around half the price of last time we were here, we rented bicycles and headed to the beach. The beach was where we spent the next four days, until sunset, or until we couldn’t take any more. The waves were awesome for body surfing, the palm trees provided shade to retreat into when the sun got too strong, we played frisbee in the surf, read books, bought fresh mangos and pineapples from the beach vendors and enjoyed the beach life, until Saturday night…

After a long day on the beach, we splurged on a splendid three course western meal at the Cargo Club Restaurant, accompanied by a nice wine. While we were eating, it started raining, and the weather’s been gray ever since. We stopped for a Tiger and pool at Before and Now on our way back to the hotel, where we met a couple of nice travellers. We were going to show them King Kong, but when we were getting our bicycles, Annikken’s right calf touched the muffler on a moped parked next to it, and she sustained a deep second degree burn. With a burn like that you can’t go in the water, so the gray weather has been a consolation; at least we haven’t missed any beach days because of the burn!

Annikken also had to return some tops she had made, because the first time she wore one of them, the seams started coming apart. The tailor took them back, and as a matter of course double stitched the seams on all the tops. A dress that was returned for refitting turned out to be more of a problem. She had three fittings before we left Hoi An last time, and the dress was still not ok, but we had to take it, as we were leaving. After we returned, she had seven more fittings, several arguments and much frustration on both her and the tailors’ sides, before the dress turned out the way it was ordered to begin with.

On Monday morning we had cooking classes at Friendship Restaurant, which makes Annikken’s favorite clay pots. We showed up at at 9:30 in the  morning, and started out by going to the market to buy some sauces, vegetables and noodles. In the following hour and a half, we were taught how to make fresh spring rolls, Wonton and Chicken Claypot.

Last night we dined at Treat Restaurant, and spent the evening talking to a Canadian couple on their yearly three week holiday. They were extremely jealous of Annikken who could take two months off, and Gjerulf who’s travelling for a long time…

Tomorrow night we’re taking a 24 hour bus ride to HCMC, and on Monday Annikken is flying home to Oslo. She is really looking forward to cooking her own food, sleeping in her own bed, baking and meeting her friends again. She is NOT, however, looking forward to returning to a place with no tropical beaches, and temperatures below 30 degrees. Gjerulf on the other hand, is still not sure what to do after Monday, except that the plans WILL involve tropical beaches and temperatures over 30 degrees, but sadly no kitchen, dark bread or tasty, fresh, cold milk.

We arrived in Ninh Binh last night at 9.30. We decided to take an early night, in order to get up early, and botched miserably as usual… After our usual breakfast pho, we headed off on a rented moped around 11am. The destination was Tam Coc, where there are karst formations of the same kind as in Ha Long Bay. The limestone has been thrust up from the old seabed and then been withered by wind and water in much the same way, but the difference is that here they are on land. A slow river meanders between the rice paddies, and curls around the jutting karst spires, except where the water has cut a hole straight through them. We hired a flat bottomed sampan, and were rowed up the river, and through three of the caves. The lady rowing, alternated between using her arms and using her legs to push the oars! We even put our strength to use with a paddle ourselves, when we got bored of just sitting and looking.

Our timing turned out to be as perfect as could be, since we had the river to ourselves almost all the way. Only at the very end did the next bus loads of day trippers from Hanoi start moving rank and file up the river, with only a few meters between each sampan. The best moment on our whole 2 hour boat trip, was when our rower stopped rowing in a narrow, uninhabited valley, and the silence was so intense we could hear our own breath… That’s a first in Vietnam, even for Annikken who has spent months here earlier!

After the boat trip, we headed further into the karst scenery on our moped, until the road ran out… There we were befriended by a deaf road construction worker, who insisted on showing Gjerulf a small, deserted valley over a low ridge. It was a short trip in dense jungle, but it was like entering a different world! With his communicative sign language, he explained that the valley was home to both monkeys and huge snakes. Meanwhile, Annikken helped a Vietnamese family build the foundation for a new house… She lifted heavy rocks, tried her hand at chiseling a rock, and helped apply the mortar. At first they were making fun, and pointed to a big rock they wanted to have carried over. Their faces changed rapidly when she just smiled, picked up the big rock, and asked where they wanted it… When she lifted her arms and flexed her muscles to show how strong a Norwegian woman is, they lauged happily at her antics.

After lunch, we just drove around for a while, until the sun set between the limestone towers. As we write this, we are waiting for the sleeper bus to come and take us to Hue and on to Hoi An.

On Wednesday we bought tickets to go to Ha Long Bay, and Thursday morning we were picked up outside our hotel by the travel agent. After a four hour drive, we arrived in Ha Long City, where we transferred to our boat. As we started out from the tourist pier, we were served lunch on the restaurant deck, and we soon reached an island where there were a couple of really nice caves. When we headed out to sea again, we checked into our cabin, and headed out on the sun deck on the third and top floor. The type of boats that take tourists out on the bay are called Junks, but it still looks a bit strange when a boat proudly displays “Paradise Junk” or “Junk Tours…”
Cruising around between the striking karst formations sticking out of the water, Pia, a danish woman who was travelling with her daughter, voiced a question of whether they could be called islands. They were certainly big enough, but they were basicly just huge rocks with vegetation clinging to the tops and sides. We never did find out what the definition of an island really is.

In the afternoon some of our group were dropped off at Cat Ba Island to go trekking and stay at a hotel, while we continued to where we’d stay the night, in the boat. We had a beautiful sunset, and Gjerulf had a little swim in the ocean once we stopped. The next morning we also started with a dip, before going kayakking. The islands or rocks or whatever are just as magnificent up close. The formations are beyond description, the way they just rise abruptly out of the water, with their sharp ridges and sheer walls flecked with clinging trees and bushes.

After kayakking we had breakfast, while waiting for a couple of vietnamese girls who’d lost track of time while kayakking. Our guide set out to look for them, but they got back from another direction immediately after he left, so then the whole Junk set out after the guide. The rest of the trip we spent on the sun deck. Annikken suggested Gjerulf should put on some sun screen. He thought it sounded like a good idea, and then immediately forgot about it. He now sports a fancy sunburn where the shorts and T-shirt didn’t cover him.

Yesterday we were invited to spend the day at a pool in a nice hotel, with Gautier, the Frenchman we met last Saturday. He’s been teaching English here in Hanoi for a year and a half, and has taken Annikken sightseeing on his moped, and shown us nice places to eat and to watch football. Gjerulf was particularly happy about Finnegan’s, the Irish pub where you could get a REAL Irish stew, and where Annikken got to watch footie both Saturday and Sunday nights.

Today we’ve checked out of our hotel, and we’re taking the bus back south to Hoi An. The plan is to stay where the weather is sunny, and a beach is within reach… The weather forecast says Thursday onwards is going to be rainy again, and we might head further south to look for better weather. Nothing’s for sure, though, we just go where we feel like, when we feel like it.

19. March
The medicine against my amoebas has not presented any side effects so far, for which I am very grateful! I had a pizza night with the teenagers at KICC on Saturday. 11 people had said they’d come for sure, 5 that they might show up. We were 25! It was a great evening, and I had six people say they’d like to organize the next Social! For this I am very grateful. The bandh in the Terai area ended on Sunday, and I got the opportunity to go to Chitwan National Park after all! For this I am immensely grateful!

On Monday I got up at 5am, to go take the bus. The bus left at 7am, and we arrived in time for lunch at around 1pm. After lunch, we walked around the village, looking at how the Theru people still live in a very traditional environment, albeit with some modern improvements (and drawbacks) to their lifestyles. The most obvious improvement was tin roofs on some of the houses, instead of the thatch, which leaks and needs changing very often. The most obvious drawback was the everpresent non-biodegradable garbage.

After dinner, there was a dance show, where a local group of men(!) danced traditional dances.

On Tuesday I got up early as well, at 6.30am, and immediately after breakfast, I headed off ride an elephant into the park proper to look for wild animals. We saw a couple of really big deer, but all in all it was a disappointingly devoid of life. Riding an elephant was awesome, but even more awesome was bathing with them! Wearing our bathing shorts, me and one of the French guys who were also doing the elephant ride at the same time got on an elephant without a saddle, and it walked into the river. The mahout (rider) got him to shake us off. When we were getting back on, we stood right in front of the elephant and stretched up. The elephent let his head down so we could grab his ears and stand on his trunk, and then he lifted us up on his back! When we were on his back, he continuously splashed us with water from his trunk, and eventually the mahout made him lie down on his side to be scrubbed. It seemed a bit brutal when the mahout slapped the animal with a stick when it didn’t pay attention, but apparently their hide is so thick that it’s the sound, not the pain, that gets their attention to the mahout’s shouted commands.

After the swimming there was lunch, and and after lunch I decided to take another elephant ride, this time in the so called Community Forests that surround the park. My guide told me that we were almost guaranteed to see rhinos there, because it was a rather small habitat, with a population of about 20 rhinos. In the north side of the park, the water holes were filled in with silt, by a flood 15 years ago. After that the rhinos migrated south to the other water holes, or north to the community forests. The water holes in the community forests were also destroyed by the flood, but since it’s not protected, the local community dug them out again. In the park, ironically, that’s not legal, and thus there is less wildlife… When we came to get an elephant (me and the guide, the French guys, who were the ones who had insisted on going to the park proper that morning, didn’t want to come) the elephants were all busy. We considered waiting, but the schedule for the day being rather packed, there was no time to wait, so we decided to go on foot.

Not long after entering the community forest, we smelled fresh rhino dung, saw tracks so fresh that water was still seeping into them, and trees with their lower trunks covered in mud where the rhinos had rubbed up against them. A few minutes after that, we found the first rhinoceros unicornis (one-horned rhino) in a clearing. There was an elephant nearby, that we had allied ourselves with for protection, and we called them over. We got closer and closer to the rhino, with the elephant between us and it. Soon we were less than ten meters away from this massive, wild rhino bull, when the mahout on the elephant says he’s spotted one more. “No, wait TWO more in the bushes!” One of the ones in the bushes came out, and we could see the last one standing in the shadows, looking at us.

Suddenly the second rhino looks like he’s about to charge us, and we sprint behind the elephant, while throwing sticks at the rhino to make him think twice. The mahout charges the elephant toward the rhino to deterr it from attacking us. He successfully chases it away, but that leaves the two of us vulnerable from the other two, so we leg it out of there before we get completely surrounded! Not thirty seconds later, my guide spots another rhino in the dense undergrowth of the jungle, and the elephant is once more called in as a body guard. We reach the next waterhole, where two grown rhinos are wallowing in the mud, a mother with calf is grazing, and two more adults come out of the brush opposite from where we are! Again the situation suddenly goes from interesting to dangerous, and we decide that it’s time to get out of there before we’re surrounded!
On less than an hour’s walk through the community forest, I saw a total of ten rhinos, and the guide saw eleven!

Immediately after the intense jungle walk, we headed over to the river to go canoeing. The canoe was a hollowed out log, and we were seven people in it, including the guide and the guy poleing us down the gentle stream. The first croc we saw was submerged, with only it’s nose and eyes sticking out of the crystal clear water. Soon after we got ashore to look at another great big rhino bull, this time from a safer distance. Back in the canoe we saw a half dozen more crocs, before we reached the place where we got out to go to an elephant breeding centre. In november one of the elephants had twins, according to the guide the only time such an event has happened! One of the older elephant calves was very curious, and being no bigger than a pony, he wasn’t tied up, so he walked over to everyone and smelled their stuff, and tried to take the things that smelled good! He was about one year old, but a bit sickly, so he was smaller than the other one year olds. When a tame elephant gets pregnant, it takes 2-3 years before it can work again, so wild elephant bulls mating with the tame cows is actually quite a problem! It is also very expensive, and takes a lot of work to raise and train an elephant. The training can’t start before the elephant is about 2-3 years old, and it can’t do any work until it’s about ten. Between the age of 16 and 18 they reach maturity and become able to breed.

We were picked up at the breeding centre by a jeep from the resort, and in  the sunset on our way back, we saw another group of rhinos, and stopped. It turned out to be a group of five, led by a huge bull. I got some awesome pictures, and ended up having seen 16 rhinos in one day!

Wednesday Morning I got up at 5.30am, for an hour and a half of bird spotting, before breakfast and the bus ride home. I was home at 3.45pm, and at four I met up with some of the Norwegians for a going-away-dinner. Immediately after dinner, we had a final meeting between me and the church board, and I was given a very nice letter of thank you for the work I’d done. This morning I was up at 4am, to do some laundry while there was electricity… I went back to bed at five, however, and slept till seven thirty. I packed, returned the bicycle I’ve been borrowing, and then one of my “bosses” was very kind and drove me to the airport. It’s been great, and Ive felt very welcome in the community of expats in Kathmandu.

It is now just past midnight, I am in New Delhi, and will soon be boarding my flight to Bangkok. I’ve been upgraded to first class on this flight, so I might actually look forward to some sleep tonigh, which is more than I expected. The flight leaves at 1am Indian time, and arrives four and a half hours later, at 7am Thai time. There I will wait nine hours before I fly the last hour and a half to Ho Chi Minh City.

20 March

13 hours later… I am waiting for my flight to Ho Chi Minh, boarding starts in 50 minutes. The plane saved up a good half an hour on the flight to Bangkok, so I arrived before 6.30am. First class was brilliant, but I still didn’t fall asleep before we had started the descent, and woke with a start as we touched down. I’ve slept about 5 minutes in the past thirty hours. I tried to lie down for a bit on a row of seats here at the airport, but the world was spinning so bad I started to get nauseated, so I dropped it. I guess I’ll sleep like a baby before we take off from Bangkok…
When I got here, I went directly to the transfer station, at the other end of the airport. There I was told I had to pick up my luggage myself, which meant going through immigration in Thailand. Baggage claim was of course at the end of the airport where I’d arrived, so I walked back. Immigration, which was almost deserted when I arrived, was by then crowded to the point of bursting. By the time I got my luggage it was 9 o’clock, and I headed directly for check in, so I could go back through customs and immigration, and find a place to crash. The problem was that it was too early, check in for my  flight didn’t start till 12, so I had to hang around for three hours. When I finally got to check in, the woman at the counter started asking for some letter from Vietnam that she meant I had to have to get into the country, but I’ve double checked that I, as a Norwegian citizen, don’t need that letter unless I’m staying in Vietnam for more than 30 days. I guess I was pretty convincing, in my rather reduced and sleep deprived state, because she then proceeded to check me in. By the time I got back to the place I’d been at 6.45am, it was 1pm. I can’t fall asleep now, because then I suspect I will oversleep the boarding call, even though I’m sitting right next to the gate. I decided to write this in order to stay awake, so bear with me if I’m not making any sense.

I sincerely hope they won’t make any trouble at the airport in Saigon, and claim like the clerk here that I need some extra letter, because I’m so worn out I’m not sure I’ll be able to explain that I’m Norwegian, and don’t need their stupid piece of paper!

I also hope Annikken is not as beat as I am, because then finding a hotel to stay until I can check for answers from the CS’ers I have sent couch requests to might prove to be a daunting task… (By the time you read this, things will probably be in order, though, and I have slept enough to be coherent again)

Wednesday March 11

Commercials
I’m sure it’s just me that’s blazé when it comes to advertisement but I have a feeling that the ads on billboards and TV down here are a tad on the naïve side. I mean it’s been a while since car and MC commercials back home were fronted by slogans like “Admiration Guaranteed!”, “Always In The Limelight,” “For Real Men,” “Are You Man Enough,” by a deep resonating baritone voiceover, while the hero is surrounded by beautiful young women… Or this amazing TV commercial for an all terrain car: “When you’re on your deathbed, what will you remember? The corner office? The corporate jet? Your portfolio?” *pan camera across gorgeous landscape, ending up at a 4wd on a cliff* “TATA SAFARI DICOR!”
Shampoo commercials are a tad less sex fixated, but they always make sure to throw in the word “Guaranteed” several times for good measure, without really letting on exactly WHAT is being guaranteed.

Religion
On Tuesday the Nepali hindus celebrated a different kind of religious holiday called Holi. I’m not entirely sure what the religious significance of the rituals are, but they consist of everything shutting down, then everyone who can walk, crawl or roll go out onto  the streets to throw water and smear paint on each other. I would’ve taken pictures, but I didn’t dare to bring a camera out into the mayhem… Biking down the street to the shop (which was futile, seeing as everything was closed) literally EVERYONE I saw, young or old, men and women, were covered in bright colors, and dripping wet!

Health
I’m guessing it’s not the most interesting thing to read about, but whenever my health is not as it should be, it is strongly on my mind, so I don’t give a crap. Or rather I do so way too often. For the fourth or fifth time in the past eight weeks I am suffering from diarrhea. This time around it’s a bit different, it started with a strong fever on Monday, and the diarrhea set in that evening. On Tuesday the fever settled down, but my neck got sore and stiff. This morning I went to the private clinic at Patan hospital with a stool sample and a description of my symptoms. It might be a recurring viral or bacterial infection, or it might be a chronic amoebic infection. I’ll get the answer from the lab tomorrow. Until then I will be taking antibiotics to help my stomach fight the infection, and rehydration powder to stop from getting dehydrated. The rehydration solution is basically sugar, salts and electrolytes that you dissolve in clean water, and that tastes like sweetened brackish water. No matter what it is, it will be a relief to find out, and get some professional assistance in killing it.

Politics
I had tickets to go to Royal Chitwan National Park on Monday, and come back today. I have not been to Chitwan, and it is not because of my health. Late last week there was a Bandha (demonstration/blockade) in the Terai region near the national park, and two people got killed. When this kind of thing happens, there are no systems in place to care for their families unless they are declared martyrs by the government. Now the local communities are blocking all the roads in and out of the area, and say that they won’t open them again until the government agrees to declare them martyrs. It seems quite safe to assume they will be declared such but it might take some time. There is a small chance I might be able to go on Monday March 16 instead, but that will be my last opportunity, as I leave Nepal on Thursday 19. Here’s hoping I’ll be able to go bathe elephants and spot rhinos and crocs and bengal tigers! *fingers crossed*

Environment
Elephants in Chitwan can bathe in the river, but the river here in Kathmandu is dry. I mentioned that the water situation is getting worse, and it’s escalating quickly. Kathmandu is now a city where only the rich have clean drinking water. Even the “clean” water needs to be uv-filtered to be drinkable, a single unfiltered drop swallowed can make you sick. However, the trucks that deliver water are now so over worked, and clean water has to be transported so far, that there’s a three week wait to get clean water delivered, and the clean water has become so expensive that a normal Nepali working family can not easily  afford it. You can still get dirty water at a lower price, but that’s so dirty you have to boil it to use it for washing. Kathmandu is a city of about a million inhabitants, and not enough clean water to keep sanitary standards to a necessary minimum. We all try to save water, but even I realize that flush toilets which use about 10 litres of water in a single flush are probably the biggest waste of clean water ever. When I shower, which I now have cut down to a couple of times a week, I stand in a little plastic tub, to gather up the water, so I can re-use that water to flush the toilet later. Still, I use over a thousand litres of water a week, and more when I have stomach trouble and need to flush more often. Right now I am out of water again, which means I have to climb into the cistern again, to scoop up some of the water that the pump doesn’t get to… Some technical genious ought to come up with a system that can effectively flush a toilet with a lot less water! (The squat toilets that are typical for Asia use less water, but they hardly ever flush clean, which is why they so often smell.)

Work
My time working here in Kathmandu is almost over, and although I’ve enjoyed it, I would have to think hard about staying here on a more permanent basis. I think I need a place with less filthy air, and definately closer to the sea! I am really looking forward to moving on, and to travelling Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia with Annikken. Only about a week to go, and I am counting days!

First of all, an important announcement: the title Uncle Travelling Gjerulf is no longer a lie… On February 27 around noon Norwegian time, my little sister Jenny gave birth to my first nephew! This picture is taken the same evening, sent to me by my mother, the proud grandma.

Now for the heading… I would very much like to play some roleplaying games again! I’ve been thinking about this game I’d like to run in the World of Darkness setting, but I’d also just love to play any game of RPG… I’ve just posted on the Nepal forum in CouchSurfing.com to see if there are any other gamers around, wasting for a session of dungeon crawling or blood curdling horror gaming, or any gaming at all, really….

In the past couple of weeks I’ve been to youth gatherings, organized a Sunday Service and had the sermon in church, read books, had diarrhea again, visited a day care centre for mentally disabled children, said goodbye and hello to Mikhiel a couple more times, gone trekking again, and bought plane tickets Kathmandu-New Delhi-Bangkok-Ho Chi Minh City.

Mikhiel came from Tibet, then went to Chitwan National Park, came back, went to a buddhist retreat, came back, and then eventually left for good, to go to India. we talked a bit about his buddhist retreat, and it seems very close to the Christian retreats I’ve heard of, with teaching, silent contemplation, prayer and meditation. Mikhiel is probably the one person I’ve spoken to most in the past four months. I met him, as you remember, at the CS-meeting in Irkutsk, we went to Lake Baikal together, then we met in Ulan Bator for a few days, and now here in Kathmandu.  The other day I met up with another CS’er, Sanna from Finland. She is here for volunteer work, but after a week her coordinator still has to give her anything to do. My volunteer work is also limited, so we spent a day roaming Kathmandu’s Durbar Square (Durbar means Palace) and finished the day with a beer on the rooftop terrace at my house.

Water shortages are a fact of living in Kathmandu. It is most obvious in the fact that there is less and less electricity as the rivers are running dry. It’s been a very dry winter, and the only rainfall since I got here was a couple of weeks ago, and came in the form of a very light drizzle that lasted for about three minutes. The holy garbage dump, (some call it “river”) Bagmati is almost dry, which leaves all the feces, human ashes, and other waste of the city just lying there. At  the house where I live, a truck comes in every once in a while and fills a cistern in the yard, from which I pump up water to a smaller cistern on the roof whenever there’s electricity to run the pump. On the roof is also a setup that very effectively heats water using the heat of the sun. Saturday a week and a half ago, the house manager ordered more water, but because there’s so little water to be had, it took ten days to arrive, and then I only got 1500 liters… The last seven of those ten days, there was too little water in the cistern in the yard for the pump to get any up to the roof, so I had no running water. No running water means no filtered water, no showers, and most importantly: No water for flushing toilets… In order to get water for flushing, and also for washing myself, I climbed down into the cistern in the yard, where I sat scooping water into buckets, that I hauled  in to the bathroom. Impractical you say? Well, I say “At least there WAS water.” If it’d been another couple of days before the water truck arrived, I figure I’d have had to start using a bucket for a toilet, and dig a hole in the yard to empty it…

The service on Sunday was very good. The youth did everything from leading the service and playing to the worship, to preparing and showing the power point presentation and filming the service. I now have about ten gigabytes of  video that I need to send back to Vardeneset, but I’m having trouble uploading photos for this journal, and I can’t imagine trying to upload several gigs of video… I’ve also been told not to trust the postal system here, so I don’t want to send the memory cards back from here. The post offices are complaining about rats eating the mail, but people say these “rats” must be very choosy, seeing as it’s only valuable mail that gets “eaten”…

I mentioned my tickets. I wanted to go to South East Asia without going by plane, but my plans have been thwarted by political circumstances. It is not possible to go from India into Burma/Myanmar, and there are no boats heading around. This means that I have to fly. Originally, I was supposed to meet my friend Annikken in Vietnam in March, then she got into law school, and our Vietnam travels were postponed till summer holidays. Now it turns out she didn’t like law school, and we’re on for March again. This means that I’m skipping India for now, going directly to Vietnam when my volunteer period is over here in Kathmandu. On March 19 I am taking a plane to New Delhi. I wait at the airport in New Delhi for almost eight hours, and catch a flight to Bangkok, where I arrive early in the morning on the 20th. After over nine hours at Bangkok airport, I head on to Ho Chi Minh City. I leave Kathmandu at 15:45 Nepal time, and arrive in Ho Chi Minh City at 17:35 Vietnam time, 24 hours and 35 minutes later… To be honest, I would much rather take the train for three days, than hanging around planes and airports for 24 hours…
Annikken arrives about half an hour later, and after we go through immigration, we’re hoping we’ll have a CS host to head off to.

I have spent a long time typing this out while doing other things online at the same time, so now I have almost no battery left. It’s still two hours till electricity comes back, so I can’t just plug in the charger either… Oh well, at least I got the post up! I also posted some pictures, but I haven’t taken many in the time when I haven’t been a tourist here.

Hoping to get some pics of  tame elephants and wild rhinos, bengal tigers and crocodiles in a couple of weeks… I am going to Royal Chitwan National Park!

As I am writing this, I still haven’t had the opportunity to  upload my last post, so I guess both will be posted simultaneously.

On Saturday I googled churches in Kathmandu, and I got several hits. I chose KICC, Kathmandu International Christian Congregation, and found out where they have their Sunday service. After breakfast on Sunday, I checked out of my hotel room, and took a taxi to the church. It was a very friendly crowd, and lots of people came up to me, asked if I had been in town long, and whether it was my first time there. In the beginning of the service, people who were there for the first time were asked to stand up, and the microphone was passed around so everyone could introduce themselves!

The songs sung during the service were all English hymns that I didn’t know, but it was very nice. Nepal has a serious problem with electricity, and power comes and goes on a set schedule, a “load shedding schedule” in order to keep the grid from breaking down. The “children’s talk” was early on in the  service, and the guy leading the service was talking about how God has no “load shedding schedule”, his power is working everywhere, all the time! After the children’s talk, the children left, and went to Sunday school, and the pastor gave a sermon where he was talking about the situation in Gaza, and how to react to the Isreali attacks. His conclusion was that the history of God’s chosen people in the Old Testament shows that the Jews have a special position with God, but they are still held accountable for their acts, and that this is how he  figured we should look at the current situation.

After the service, some Norwegians came up to me, and it turned out I had found the place where the people from both the Norwegian Tibet Mission and Normisjon use to come on Sundays! I got to film some of them, and got a greeting from one of the Norwegian teenagers there to the teenagers in the congregation of Vardeneset back home. I was invited to join some of the younger people there for lunch at a café, and afterwards I went home with a couple of the Norwegians. I got to borrow a Nepali sim card from them, and the Lonely Planet guides to Nepal and to India! I then called up my CouchSurfing host Milan, who lives in Bhaktapur, 15 km from Kathmandu, and I went to meet him. The 15 kilometers here take about an hour by bus, because of traffic and horrible road quality. I have lived with his family for the last couple of nights.

His nephew Sujan showed me around Bhaktapur yesterday, and we went to a couple of temples in Kathmandu today. The hindu temple area of Pashupatinath was quite special, as there were pyres along the river there, where they were cremating people. before the cremations, they took the corpse to the river and washed the feet, poured some of the water down the throat of the corpse, and then covered it in an orange shroud, flower petals and some red powder. After the pyre was burned down, they flushed the ashes into the river, where street kids were rummaging through it to search for coins. A little downstream, people were washing their hair, themselves, and their clothes! There were holy cows walking around the temple grounds, and lots and lots of monkeys were playing and chasing each other on the streets, walls and rooftops. If anyone took out any food, the monkeys would follow them around until the food was gone, hoping for some scraps. There were people selling fruit, that was given out in small, black plastic bags, and the monkeys would also follow any black plastic bag around, knowing it might contain a snack coming their way!

The second temple we went to was Bodhnath, which is a Tibetan buddhist temple, the only one in the world where Tibetan buddhism is practiced freely, without oppression. The biggest change was that there were pictures of the CURRENT Dalai Lama in the shrines, and it was free of the throngs of military that dominated the monasteries and temples in Tibet… It also has the worlds largest stupa (chörten in Tibetan). There I could pass on some of the things I learned in Tibet to my “guide”, Sujan! The chörten is surrounded by prayer wheels, like everywhere in Tibet, all of them inscribed with the holy words “om mani padme hom.” For the first time, I saw white, western buddhists walking around in the red monks’ robes, or prostrating themselves in front of the chörten alongside the Tibetans!

Tomorrow will be a small festival, and Milan has invited me to stay and experience it. It is the first day of a new Nepali month (lunar calendar) and it apparently marks mid winter. It involves a bath, supposed to be taken in cold water, because in a legend, a monkey fell from a tree into the water, had a bath, and came a long way towards enlightenment as a result (or so I gather.) None of the people here will be taking a bath, however, because it is too cold, and Milan and his family has no running hot water. The water they do have is pumped from a well into a tank on the roof, whenever there happens to be electricity for the pump… It will, however, involve a feast with lots of special traditional Nepali food!

Tomorrow I should also book a place to trek from in Pokhara, and go to Kathmandu and give back the books and sim card. From Kathmandu, I’ve gathered that I should go west to Pokhara, for a two or three day hike in the mountains, and then head south to Royal Chitwan National park, where it is much warmer, and I can ride elephants on safari around the park, and see Bengal tigers, rhinos, monkeys, fresh water dolphins, crocodiles and Gharials. (The latter is described as a prehistoric slender beast of an animal, with a long snout full of bad teeth, living on a diet of river fish) From Chitwan I go to the border, and head into India, before my visa runs out on the 23rd. I’m considering taking a round trip of India before I head east, and if so my first stop there might be Agra, but I haven’t quite made up my mind yet.

In China it seems that most things are described as “The [X] of [Y]“,  so you don’t really have to be a genius to understand how Tibet came to be called “The rooftop of the world.” We’re 3700 meters above sea level, and the train that got me here went along the highest altitude railroad in the world, at 5072 meters at the highest point. It didn’t really seem that high, though, as we were rolling along on a vast plateau, with much higher mountains on both sides.

I spent New Year’s Eve on the train, and it was rather uneventful. It was just another Wednesday night in China, seeing as new year here isn’t until January 26. The lights in my carriage went out at 9:30, and the restaurant car closed at 10… Anyway, I wish all of you a wonderful 2009!

When I arrived in Lhasa, I was picked up by my tour operator Lee Jack and my driver(!), and presented with a traditional white scarf for good luck. When we arrived at the hostel, I was warned that in order to avoid altitude sickness, I shouldn’t shower in the first 24 hours, nor smoke, drink alcohol, eat meat, fat or spicy food, get winded for any reason, and in general just relax as much as possible. High altitude sickness, or Acute Mountain Sickness as they call it, presents with headaches, fatigue, sleeplessness, nausea, or if you will: The Worst Hangover Ever. If symptoms are ignored it may be fatal, so I decided to be safe rather than sorry…

The first night here, I just wandered (slowly) into the quaint Tibetan back alleys, found a food market, and the muslim quarter. I ate a vegetarian supper in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, where the cook/serving woman looked terror stricken at the prospect of having to communicate with a Foreigner… The food was amazing, though, when I finally managed to communicate that I couldn’t eat meat, fat and spice, as it was my first night on the plateau. The dormitory where I stay in the hostel has 12 beds (6 bunk beds) but is only occupied by me, a Chinese guy, and four Chinese girls. It set me back the staggering sum of 15 NOK per night…

I had the best night’s sleep in over a week (the Chinese medicine did the trick for my stomach!) and the next morning I went out to a place called Jokhang, where I had breakfast in a traditional Tibetan restaurant. I had yak dumplings, fried barley flour (Tsampa) and salty tea with yak butter… The place was pretty full, so I shared a table with a family of Tibetan pilgrims who, as a matter of course, shared what they ordered with me, and I shared my food with them!

I got into the Jokhang Temple in the busiest period of the day, when lots and lots of pilgrims were paying their dues to the buddhas in the temple, so I was basically standing in a long line, going through all the little chapels in the temple.

Actually, the way I found the temple in the first place, was when I came out from a small side street, onto a wider pedestrian where everybody were moving the same direction… Most were dressed in traditional style, with amazing hairdoes, involving braided hair, sometimes intertwined with colourful threads. That went for both men and women, although some of the men were wearing ornate swords at their sides! Quite a few were prostrating themselves, laying all the way down on their stomach, forehead to the ground, every three steps! When I reached the front of the temple, there was a roped-off area, where dozens of people were laying down, getting up and laying back down over and over again!

When I’d done the whole circuit of the temple with the crowd of pilgrims, I went up to the roof, which was pretty awesome! The temple was built 1300 years ago, and although it has been partly destroyed and rebuilt several times over the past millennium, it still had that ancient feel of strong spirituality. From the roof it was clearly visible that the whole thing was built much like a maze, I assume in order to let light down into the lower interior rooms of the structure. I wandered aimlessly around on the roof, and stumbled upon a guy making (or maybe repairing) buddha statues, and in another place a couple of carpenters apparently preparing beams and posts that would replace crumbling ones around the massive structure. I also wound up on a stretch of roof that had a distinct off-limits feel to it, seeing as I was the only one there, and there were the occasional monk washing his cape, making tea and generally going about their business.

In the evening, 24 hours after my own arrival, the couple I’ll be travelling with in Tibet in order to share the cost of the obligatory car, driver and guide, arrived. Gabrielle and Christoffer are in their mid forties, and have been (in their own words) semi-nomadic for the past 16 years. In spring and fall they work as teachers back home in the US, to make money for further travelling! Today we went toghether to Potala palace, which is the most famous structure in Tibet. It is pretty easy to locate, it is the one that “touches the sky!” The massive red and white building is (according to a plaque at the entrance) 115,703 meters high, and was the seat of the 6th to the 13th Dalai Lama, from the 17th century till 1959, when the current (14th) Dalai Lama had to flee from the Chinese liberators/invaders. Most people here put on a wide grin when they find out I’m Norwegian, and say something along  the lines of “Oslo! Dalai Lama! Nobel Peace Price!”

It is pretty obvious that Tibet is occupied territory. At every street corner there are four Chinese military guards, two with riot shields, and two with what I suspect are tear gas launchers. They also patrol all large open spaces in fours, sit on rooftops with their launchers, march around in large groups, or hang around the temples in their “civilian” dark blue no-brand track suits. Today I was stopped by one of the latter, had to show him all the pictures on my camera, and delete any pic that had any sign of military presence in it! Because the button that scrolls through pictures on my camera sometimes takes two or event three pictures at a time I managed to keep one; a picture of guards on a rooftop next to the Jokhang Temple… If the government finds this, they’ll probably ban gjerulf.com from all net users in China, and possibly deport me if they find out where I am…

The Chinese name themselves the liberators of the Tibetan people, which to some extent is true, as Tibet was a feudal serfdom before the Chinese arrived, and most people lived basically as slaves, in extremely poor conditions. Whether exchanging one oppressive regime with another one can be considered liberation is a different story. The undebatable truth is that Tibet is a much richer and more developed country today than it was before the Chinese arrived. Another truth is that the Chinese culture is on the verge of overwhelming the local Tibetan culture, which would be a great loss. In the future people might have to go to museums to see the pilgrims, full of grime and with bloody foreheads from hundreds of kilometers of prostrating every three steps, see the colourful clothes and headdresses, the men with the swords and all the things that make Lhasa unforgettable…

I don’t know how internet access will be the coming week, travelling through the inner parts of Tibet, so my next entry might be posted from Kathmandu, Nepal. I’m considering going to the Nepalese embassy tomorrow to get my visa, since it’s supposed to be cheaper here than on the border. I am looking forward to visiting Mount Everest Base Camp, which looks to be accessible even though it’s bloody freezing up there. Can’t get as bad as Mongolia, though. Or can it? Will those be my famous last words?