I wrote this yesterday in Varanasi but then the internet died so here it is again.Straight after writing this, a van stopped outside our hotel and 5 men in plain clothes holding machine guns came into our hotel where we were standing in the lobby. It’s weird, but for some reason it didn’t worry me and I even went to get my camera much to the horror of Shane (hindsight eh). Someone told us they were bodyguards, but as Shane said - “it fits in with the scenery”.

Yesterday it rained in the afternoon for about 30 minutes, and as it hadn’t rained in two days, the ground turned to mud, combining shit, rubbish, dirt, and a myriad of other unimaginable filth. I made the rooky error of going out for a walk in thongs at about 8pm to see the Varanasi nightlife and my feet were instantly covered in slimy mud. It didn’t help that I was wearing thongs I had found halfway through the trek in a room which were almost worn through on the heel.

However once you have a bit of shit between the toes, you may as well have a lot of shit between the toes. I got a rickshaw into the centre of town but got out early as the driver was trying to sell me young prostitutes and after a heated exchange I got off. I then walked for about 45 minutes getting lost in the winding alleyways and markets which were buzzing with people. Everyone was laughing and shouting expressively and I received a lot of attention, mainly beckoning me to check out their stalls.

I was amazed how happy everyone was despite the absolute filth they were in, and it cemented my view that happiness is relational like everything else in the world. The chair I am sitting on now is made of metal and plastic which is constructed in a way so that we label it a chair. It is through the collective agreement that the object I am on is a chair that defines it as such. When we look at a chair, there is no inherent quality that forms its ‘chairness’. It is merely a set of relational qualities or materials arranged in a certain way which we then identify as a ‘chair’.

If you deconstruct the qualities that make up a chair you are left with nothing. Look beyond the metal, paint and plastic and you have elements. Strip back elements and you have atoms. Strip back atoms and you have protons and neutrons? My science is probably off as I failed it from year 7 onwards, but the point is that nothing has an inherent quality to it. Everything is relational and empty of inherent reality. But when does the chair I am sitting on become a chair? At what point do the qualities which constitute a chair make the object obviously definable or recognizable to us? How many qualities of ‘chairness’ do you need to form a chair? If it has three legs is it a chair? Two legs etc? Or does it merely have to be labeled as one?

Whenever I have thought about these things it has always been in the abstract – unanswerable questions which are fun to challenge the mind but offer no real benefit to ones daily life. But the reason I’m writing about this now is that I’m thinking about it in the practical sense because when I saw the dead body floating in the Ganges yesterday, I felt nothing. As though the object I was looking at wasn’t a human with whom I could empathise.

A human is made up of arms, legs, skin, organs etc. If we strip these back we end up with the same thing as everything else in life – elements, atoms and other wacky scientific terms. But is there any inherent ‘humaness’ to us? Something irreducible like a ‘soul’? Or can we too be stripped down to nothing? – purely relational matter held together by laws of nature.

If you are a scientist or an atheist and you believe in the latter – that we are simply made up of atoms, albeit in a very complex arrangement, then when does a human become a human? At what point do the qualities that make up a human define it as such? Consciousness? Self awareness? DNA?

If I saw a dead body in Australia I would be horrified but as I saw the body in India it didn’t bother me. Despite my best efforts to bury the reality of what that indicates, I don’t think I viewed that body as being ‘human’ in the same way a body in the west is. And it bothers me greatly that it didn’t bother me because the reason is a relational one.

As I lay in bed last night I thought about this for quite a while and it perturbed me. Did that body have a soul and was it important? Are all human bodies important and are they all as important as each other? If there is a soul then the answer is yes and that resolves the existential conundrum. I wish I could find solace in that religious notion but I can’t accept it, but I also have a need to answer it.

If there is no soul and our existence is relational, then how do we justify our importance or belief in equality? Why do we all have an equal right to life and why is all life judged equal? And do we actually believe this or do we just need this belief system in order to sleep at night? Meanwhile nameless bodies float down the Ganges with birds picking at their flesh.

Were people grieving over this body floating down the Ganges or was it some poor man who lived and died without making any impact? Of course to act is to make an impact, but I mean an impact to other people’s lives or a meaningful impact to the world.

Equality of life is relational (not in the ideational sense but in reality). We have an egalitarian belief system in Australia, but even this has its anomalies when we walk blindly past the homeless. I guess it’s the acceptance the world can’t be perfect, but in saying this, I firmly believe in the goodness of people - we all do the best we can, some better than others obviously. But on a global scale equality is a novel concept. I’m not trying to be some high and mighty do-gooder blaming the rich, or blaming governments, or trying to solve the world’s problems. I guess I’m just trying to make sense of it in the bizarre mix that is India.

I thought about the idea of relativity further and I believe it extends to everything. As I said in a previous post, happiness is not contingent on ones situation necessarily but rather their state of mind. Many rich people are miserable, many poor people are happy. Many people in positive situations are unhappy and many people in negative situations are happy. On the trek I experienced this in the practical sense for the first time in my life.

On day 12 of the trek I had gone 8 days without a shower. We had been walking about 5-6 hours a day and had done 7.5 hours when we tackled the summit on day 10. Worse still I had been wearing the same socks (worst part), undies, pants and t-shirt for that 8 days as all my other clothes were filthy. We had to pack light as the three of us needed to fit our gear in one bag. Up high many of the places didn’t have running water so there was no opportunity for a shower, and the few chances I got in those early stages (day 2-4), the shared toilet was so putrid that I decided I would get dirtier entering it than the current state I was in. I had no thongs at this point and the floor was concrete with a thin layer of water which was contaminated from the putridity of the overflowing squat toilet. The shower head was about one meter away from the toilet and judging by the smell I guessed this space was rarely cleaned.

So every night I got into my silk liner, sweaty and stinky, between filthy sheets, covered with a moist, dusty doona to keep me warm. This wasn’t actually that bad because I don’t have a problem being dirty although even for me this was testing from day 6 onwards as I started to smell like a hobo rather than a sweaty sportsman.

However on the afternoon of day 12, we had walked through desert-like landscape which I rate as the most spectacular part of the trek, and arrived at a lush green oasis set deep within the barren orange/brown mountains. It felt as if we were in Afghanistan because it was so dry and desolate. In this oasis we found a tea house to stay in and it had an on suite in the bedroom with hot water and it was clean!! Relative to Sydney standards this place was a dump, however from what I had gotten used to, it was like a palace. It is no exaggeration to say that I felt it was the fanciest hotel I had ever stayed at (in relation to the past 12 days).

I had a shower and felt an overwhelming sensation of elation. I derived more happiness from that shitbox than I would have staying at the Grand Hyatt. Now when I look at bottom class Indian people washing in the streets and laughing together at the markets I understand the world is relational. Obviously I can’t relate to their life experience and the constant struggles and it would be arrogant to assume an 18 day trek gives me any real idea; but the notion is now less foreign and it still taught me a valuable lesson of the distinct separation between happiness and money and the situational relativity of life.

Even if you have absolutely nothing, you can be happy from the smallest of pleasures – a cup of water; a wall blocking the wind if you are sleeping outside. In our case it was sometimes toilet paper. And that happiness is authentic and as legitimate as the elation a billionaire may feel from buying a Ferrari and tearing down the street (though I’m sure Doug will disagree with this point).

Happiness is a state of mind. The same is true for immigrants in Australia. I can’t imagine how stoked many of them feel to get a roof over their head and to get hot water straight from the tap, or to get consistent electricity (which fails at the most critical moments in Nepal - like when I’m beating Shane in backgammon).

To experience a genuine lack of resources and then to feel so happy getting something so basic made me optimistic about life and its future and the ability to be happy in any situation. I feel after 5 weeks in Nepal I have a basic appreciation and perhaps even envy for the simplicity of their way of life.

Of course these are just overarching ideas and it doesn’t account for the hardship of being denied resources, the multitude of health issues, housing, clothing and the misery that permeates an inescapable life of poverty and premature death. However I feel what I have said describes one important aspect of life I have previously been unable to understand.

I hope this doesn’t sound too pessimistic because I’m having the best time of my life and life has never felt so exciting and random. Last night we changed our plans and are doing a totally different route for the next two weeks which is going to be awesome! I can’t wait for Tali to get here and for the fun to double. It’s just that at night when the tooting and chaos subsides, I have time to myself and my mind begins to race like the traffic outside, and with the heat of the night, getting to sleep is slow. Normally Tali would bear the brunt of my rants but right now it is just you and I.

Hope you enjoyed the read.

Ok, so I have put some better quality photos up on flickr -

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25947232@N02/

It takes ages because of the internet connection, but once I find another quick internet cafe, I’ll re-upload all the crap quality ones because you really need the high quality to capture the colours and the sheer size of everything. Looking at the photos now makes me miss it badly. It was definitely the most incredible thing I have ever done.

This morning we got up before sunrise and walked to the Ganges to do a boat ride. As we were cruising down the riverside, we saw a dead body floating in the water nearby with two birds perched on top pecking at it. I don’t think that poor fellow made a smooth transition into the afterlife.

We visited the burning ghats again and this time we went right up close. All around our feet were the ashes of people and the smoke was thick with the acrid smell of bodies and the heat of the flames. Both Shane and I felt like we were intruding on a sacred affair so we quickly moved away, but as we got back into the boat, two shovels worth of ashes were dumped one level down onto the ground. Not very dignified! Then they get swept into the Ganges. The Ganges is the mother for Hindus and everything goes in there. I don’t know how their stomachs don’t melt when they drink the water.

Our boat driver ripped us off through a dodgy deal and after an argument we ended up getting off without paying. He was a massive dog and it was justified as he reneged on our agreement.

I promise I wil get around to documenting the trek, but right now I need to go and eat. Tomorrow we head north east to a place called Lucknow. There isn’t much there but Shane wants to see a random Indian town.

Hope everyone is well.

Hello friends!

Well it’s been a long time since my last post and so much has happened that I have no idea where to start. As I am in India, perhaps I should listen to Gandhi and begin with the first step… But first, I’ll tell you a bit about where I am now because the temperature is in the high 30’s and describing the trek will take some time and I’m in too irritable a mood.

After the trek we arrived back in Pokhara and spent two days recuperating. Food on the trek consisted of rice, lentils and curry potato (dal bhat), so we naturally decided on a steak house for our first meal back and it was superb. We smoked 2 Japanese guys in a pool game and sunk a few cold beers which was well deserved. Then we met a Spanish and UK couple at a bar for a few more drinks, But our tiredness soon caught up with us and we crashed out.

Monday morning at 7.15am we got an 8 hour bus to the Nepal/India border. We then rode on the roof of a jeep bumping along a dodgy road holding on for dear life which was awesome fun. Crossing the border was no problem and we then jumped a 3 hour bus to a town called Sunauli which was a crazy place. We were riding down the street on a rickshaw towards the train station and everyone was staring at Nicola and I - her with the blond hair and me with the dreadlock pigtails. It was pretty weird having thousands of Indians staring and pointing but it was fun to shout a few ei ei ei’s at them.

When we got to the train station, Nicola and Shane got their first taste of India - people lying everywhere. Thousands of families taking up every inch of floorspace. We climbed over them all and ended up getting an overnight train to Varanasi which took 10 hours. The journey from start to end took us about 22 hours. The train was great as we had a sleeper and I was so spent that I crashed out straight away. The bus however…

It’s fair to say that Nepalese buses aren’t built for people over 5 foot 8. The bus was a local one and my legs pushed hard into the seat in front. To make matters worse I had an obese American woman in front pushing back in her chair because she was even more cramped than me. So for 8 hours we played a silent battle - her waiting for me to move my legs so she could extend her chair back, and me keeping my knees together so I didn’t lose my precious space. With my shoulders hunched forward, knees getting hit from the seat in front, and sweating like a man wrapped in plastic, we painfully wound our way through the mountains.

However when we finally got to Varanasi it was all worth it. We arrived about 5am and went straight to the Ganga (Ganges) to see the sun rise. The sun rising from the Ganges has to be one of the quintessential Indian sights and it lived up to the hype. Stretching along the bank it was packed with people bathing and in typical Ganges filth, a floating dead cow joined the party. In 100ml of Ganges water there are over 1.5 million faecal coliform bacteria. Water that is safe to swim in should have less than 500.  Oh, and people brush their teeth in there too.

We enjoyed the spectacle for a while and then went to see the burning ghats where bodies are cremated in public. This signifies liberation from the cycle of birth and death as Varanassi is the crossing place between the physical and spiritual world. It was strange seeing a body out in the open and there was a very mystical feel to the experience as Varanassi is the holy place for Hindus - the Mecca equivalent.

Varanassi is one of the oldest continuous living cities in the world going back over 2000 years and it definitely feels like we are in the heart of Indian culture - at least in the religious sense. Tomorrow morning we will take a boat ride down the Ganges and watch the sunset and people from the water. I can’t wait!

I’ll get more photos up from the trek - unfortunately my camera didn’t work up the top because it was too cold so I need to get Shane’s photos. I’ll also begin writing up the adventure of the trek when I can.

Stay posted!

Hi everyone,

Thanks for tuning into the blog and posting all the great comments! This will be my last blog post for the next 21 days as Shane, Nicola and I head high up into the Annapurna region. Nepal has been incredible, but now I’m ready to see the ‘real’ Nepal.

Right now we’re in Pokhara, and tomorrow morning at 6.30am we get a 4 hour bus with our guide and porter, and begin our 300km walk. Shane and Nicola have crushed my idealized opinion of walking ‘into the wild’ and I now see this as a grueling 21 days of pain in basic living conditions. On day 10, we ascend to Thorung La Pass which reaches an altitude of 5,416m, totaling 8 hours of trekking. Walking for 8 hours in one day is difficult enough, but combining this with an elevation of over 1,000m and 50% less oxygen in the air, I’m feeling rather ill prepared.

But we’re all excited by the challenge, and the Annapurna region is one of the most magnificent places on earth so I’m sure it will be worth it. I’ll be documenting the adventure in my diary which I’ll transcribe to the blog as soon as I get back.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to upload the bungee jump and giant swing to youtube. I re-encoded the DVD to avi but I ended up with two files of 27mb each and it’s impossible to upload that on these connections. Might have to wait until we get to London! Some guy took some photos of me though so I’ll put them up after the trek (I’m waiting on an email from him).

I hope you have enjoyed reading the blog so far, and I thought I’d leave you with one last anecdote from yesterday.

I was sitting at the computer on the ground level of my hotel, chatting on MSN to Tali, when I heard a crashing/toppling sound from upstairs followed by an extended scream of agony. It sounded like a woman had fallen down the stairs and broken a bone, so I rushed up the flight of stairs with the hotel staff and looked around. Strangely there was no one around and we all looked at each other trying to identify the source of the commotion.

All of a sudden, the room door opposite mine is yanked open and a woman in her 30’s runs out stark naked screaming. Behind her was a white man who was very tanned with a outrageous beard that came to his nipples and black flaring eyes (true rage is held in the eyes). He was dressed in all the hippy gear and looked sufficiently wild. He kicked her hard in the bum on her way out and yelled some abuse in another language. She went running up the next flight of stairs in the nude while he cursed her from the doorway. Inside their room was a stifling amount of burning incense and some trippy music. I’m not sure if it was some perverse sexual act gone wrong, but it was quite bizarre. The hotel staff were very embarrassed by the nudity and the situation dissipated as quickly as it had begun. I walked back downstairs to MSN and typed “Tali, you won’t believe what just happened”.

That’s all folks. Hope to see you again from the 26th August onwards!

Last night I met up with Lala and one of his friends, Sunil. Sunil owns an export company distributing pasmina, silk, and semi precious stones all over the world. He’s only 24, but already he has 4 people working for him and partnerships with different factories in Nepal and India.

Sunil’s story was incredible and a real inspiration. He grew up in a remote village in north India. From the age of 6-13 he was a fisherman and a farmer. His family were very poor, and until he was 13, he’d never seen a car or a white person. Then, at 13 he came to Kathmandu on his own and begun to work in a factory. Over the next 5 years he went from sweeping the floors, to filling orders, to eventually being the manager. He learned to speak Nepalese as well as 6 other languages (enough to sell things to tourists).

He set up a few companies and a few of them failed. Then, he set up his current export business and took a different approach. He thought that everyone in Kathmandu was too focused on ‘today’ and didn’t think about ‘tomorrow’. Store owners hassled customers to come into their shop, and this meant that every store was in bitter competition with each other. He said they were always trying to pick the fruit off the trees, rather than planting a tree and picking the fruit later.

Sunil focused on developing good karma in which he began to develop relationships with people by doing nice things for them without pressuring them to buy anything. Like inviting people over for dinner, showing them around Nepal etc. Gradually he built up a network of friends from all over the world, and they began to tell their friends about Sunil’s shop. When these people came to Kathmandu, they would come straight to him. So through doing nice things for other people and developing good karma, business began to grow. In the west, relationship building is the key to sales, and what he did was develop a very successful referral scheme. This has now grown into a full export company and now isn’t focused on retail, but wholesale.

I really liked the way Sunil thought about things because his opinion is that ‘what goes around comes around’. He said people have taken advantage of him over time, but he believes if you constantly do good things for other people, then the favours will be returned, and success will come your way.

At his house, we chatted over dinner for a few hours, eating rice and curry with our hands. It was the first time since I have been away that I felt comfortable in the company of friends. I’ve been spending all my time walking around, and then being alone in a small hotel room, and it was nice to chat in a house.

The power was out so we had candles lit all over the room, and Sunil was burning incense. Then we did some meditation and I was amazed at how easily I was able to clear my mind of thoughts. Back home I just hadn’t been able to meditate because my mind was always going 100 miles an hour and I couldn’t silence it. I guess it shows how much I’ve relaxed since leaving, and I now feel like I’m settling into holiday life.

The night went on and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Sitting in the quiet dark with the flickering lights of the candles, the crackling of the incense, and our voices speaking softly about the simplicity of life. It was great speaking to someone who thought in such a fundamentally different way to me, or anyone else I know. However when he started talking about flying to different dimensions when he meditates (for 5 hours at a time) he lost me.

Shane arrived last night and I’m seeing the two of them tonight. I also found a cinema showing Batman so I’m going to see that now. Stoked!

Tomorrow Sunil and I are going to hire a motorbike and  spend the day driving around some local villages in the mountains where I will apparently get the best local food.

On Tuesday Shane, Nicola and I head 6 hours on a bus to Pokhara to begin the trek.