From Delhi to Rio

Monday, April 13, 2009

I have a 7 hour layover in Delhi. It turns out that, although most of the airport is new and gleamy, the procedure is not. Those in transit must clump together while 3 sweating gentlemen take down our information, such as passport numbers and luggage tags BY HAND. We get grouped by airline and all this takes a long time and is tinged with uncertainty. Finally we have been processed and are hearded upstairs  and put to wait in an airport-limbo surrounded by 18 sleeping Nepalese refugee families on their way to a new life in Pittsburgh. 2 uniformed Air France women materialize, one slender and pretty with her hair scraped back in a a bun and a tiny diamond in her nose, the other more dumpy with a thick plait down her back. Both however must have received that particular French training. 'GIVE ME YOUR TICKET! GIVE ME YOUR PASSPORT! GIVE ME YOUR BRAZILIAN RESIDENCE CARD! they scream in high excited voices adding to the general stress - no 'please' and no explanation. They disappear for an hour at least and then return triumphantly to lead our bewildered group - some young French people who completed the Annapurna trek and myself - to, lo and behold, our suitcases, which we identify. Then they have a violent altercation and disappear again - and we wait - and we wait - with no documents, no tickets, and nowhere to sit. 

We begin to understand why a 7 hour layover is not too much and I begin to plan how I will hack off that thick, black plait if I don't get my documents back! Eventually, of course, we do get everything back and we can face the long dreary security procedure performed by skinny turbanned Indian military personnel with no decision power - they also fight amongst themselves and never once look at the passenger in front of them. Once inside I reunite with my Danish friends - point out to them a jocular bridge playing group of Danes in a corner- and we say our good byes after a short and wonderful vacation, after which I board my flight ahead of them. I will fly to Paris through the night and catch an 11+ hour day flight to Rio from there. 

I am tired, but my head and heart are full. I pursued and fulfilled a dream and found it left me happier, lighter, and with a ready smile on my face. I am ready for more!

The Return

Sunday, April 13th, 2009

 We are scheduled to fly out at 4pm. The local agent assures us we have to leave the hotel by 1.45pm, so we plan to have a quick breakfast and then walk back to Thamel for those last little things we so need. The brisk 20 minute walk turns out to be less pleasurable than we had imagined; the morning pollution is so fierce that many people are wearing masks (I am walking with a Kleenex pressed across my nose and wiping my streaming, stinging eyes) and from time to time dilapidated, hopeless children detach themselves from their family clumps and wheedle and plead with us for something, anything, until they finally give up - as we walk on tensely, head faced forward. It is almost impossible crossing the road - you wait, wait, and then make an awkward dancing dash for it. Jytte and Ole show me some impressive trees hung with rather large bats - which have apparently lived there for more than 30 years. We get our shopping done and also feel quite done with Thamel - a little goes a long way - and grab a Suzuki cab for the return to the hotel, where we have time for lunch in the garden. Then it's off to that airport again - the one where you get your luggage x-rayed at the entrance, where you pay $20 to fly, where you stand in long hopeless lines, where female military personnel touch you all over while your luggage is ex-rayed once again, and where, as a final touch, you join another hopeless shuffling line to have every little thing pulled out of your hand luggage for inspection, before you can finally settle down near your gate - now separated from my friends, who will take a different flight. 

Suddenly I have plenty of time, but I am too disperse to take out a book. I watch the unspeakable tv - worse than RAI I think - looks like an Indian 'novela' where a heavily made up brunette repeatedly turns from cobra to woman, cobra to woman ...and the hero doesn't realize! Most interesting is an actual fight between 2 cobras, watched also by a gentleman in a white polyester suit and dyed black hair sitting next to me in the lotus position on his plastic airport chair. Outside the glass walls some female workers are done for the day. They are dressed in loose pants, a long over shirt and have their hair covered. Shedding their sandals they come over to a faucet leaking water where they clean their feet and grind their heels into the wet cement to remove dead skin as they chat companionably. An airport person suddenly announces a flight and I rush to stand in line. Before boarding the bus it occurs to me to ask whether this is right flight. Well, no, this one goes to Calcutta and mine in headed for New Delhi. I have to return to my seat with several other confused passengers from all over the world. A lady in  a sari, having sat patiently and unnoticed by airport staff in her wheel chair for a long time, and whom I had obseverved laboriously take a long slow trip to the toilet, resolves to move. She starts towards the corridor to the departing flights awkwardly turning first one wheel, then another. Finally a Canadian gentleman gets up and pushes her through to where she wants to go. 

When I finally get on my flight, it's a whole different story. Air France has most generously put me in Business Class and I enjoy a splendid lunch with a cool bottle of Chardonnay, while I happily read my book about Bhutan.

Photos:

http://picasaweb.google.com/schateaubriand/KathmanduAgainAndReturningToDelhiAirport#

Leaving Bhutan, the Extraordinary Himalayas, and Kathmandu

Saturday, April 12, 2009

I talk to Oswaldo before going to sleep in my cottage #433, and when he hears that I am not really fully packed, he strongly urges me get out of bed and finish the job. Realizing the soundness of this advice I take a bath and get everything ready. Thus, when I am woken at 5am, I spring into action, close a few zippers and am ready for our departure in the cold dark morning 30 minutes later. The full moon is slowly sinking behind a hillside and we can begin to see the outlines of the many hills around. There is no time for breakfast, but Tshering assures us that we will be offered one in the departure hall after check-in. We leave his protection outside the airport - he is not allowed to go in. 'Give me a hug,' he says, and I do - what a great guy - and also say goodbye to Ugen, suddenly shy. We join a line of lacklustre early travelers waiting for people to staff the x-ray machines, which the luggage has to pass through, and then the check-in counters. We think back on our arrival here and accept our situation. Eventually everything gets moving, luggage is checked, we are checked in with seats on the right side (to see the mountains), we pass security - now wait: mistake! Breakfast was BEFORE security. Too late now. No way to go back. In the departure hall with access only to a Nescafé, we share whatever food we have and enjoy, yes, the internet. 

I get a window seat and am unprepared for the full, glorious, unclouded display of the Himalayan range. The mountains - the reason for my trip, really - are displayed as clearly as they ever could be. 'We're having a mountain-trip,' says the Nepalese gentleman sitting next to me, probably meaning that in all his years of traveling back and forth he has never seen them like this. I snap pictures like one possessed and then offer to snap his. I notice a frustrated young couple - Argentineans, as it turns out - across the aisle, stretching to see, and offer to snap theirs also. Heart beating, juggling the 3 cameras I look and I look: such beauty, such majesty, such luck to be here to see this. Nature at its most awesome best - my dream come true.

The Himalaya pictures are a must:

http://picasaweb.google.com/schateaubriand/TheHimalayasLeavingBhutan#

It is a short flight and an hour later we are descending through the smog of Kathmandu to find no-one waiting for us in the chaos of the airport having passed through their stringent immigration and security procedures. After a while the agent turns up - very plausibly delayed by the insane traffic, and we are hurtled through the dusty, honking mess of narrow city streets, many of which have construction work going on. We ask for a quick detour to see the 'Stupa', the huge blue-eyed Buddhist monument revered by Tibetan refugees and tourists alike. 'Blue eyes means peace,' explains the guide, but doesn't react when I lover my sunglasses and fix him with my own very blue specimens - mabe the Nordic version doesn't count? Circumnavigating the huge white domed structure in my mountain gear in the blinding sun and sudden heat I feel I can barely take it in. My eyes smart from the pollution and the throng of people is oppressive after our recent serenity. Soon, however, we are back at the Shangri-La, where we can drop our things and change into our summer clothes. Ahhhh. I get out my Indian garb and feel human again.

Here's the arrival in Katmandu:

http://picasaweb.google.com/schateaubriand/KathmanduArrival#

I have a mission in Kathmandu. About 4 years back I lost a treasured earring from Nepal. When I finally gave up ever seeing it again, the Rio dealer suggested I have a necklace made with the remaining earring. He took it to Nepal - and forgot it there. A year later he traveled again and returned with a lovely necklace for which I bought other pretty (and expensive) earrings. Then, one day, the missing earring re-appeared, innocently dangling from a little used long shell necklace. Now I want to reconstitute my original pair of earrings and find a new centerpiece for the necklace.  Squeezing into a Suzuki taxi without air-co we make our way to Tramel, a mecca for shopping - jewelry, cloths, sportswear, pirated dvd's, etc. etc., but first we sit in the calm shade of the Kathmandu Guest House restaurant - which Jytte and Ole visited 30 years ago - and have a little lunch. Then we are ready and hit the streets looking for bargains. Going in and out of stores I eventually find a likable man in the Shangri-La Crafts store, who sells me a pretty medallion and offers to do the whole thing for a pittance in 1 hour. Meanwhile, Jytte and I continue to go absolutely nuts about with the beautiful things on display in all the surrounding stores. I am wearing the other earrings when we enter another establishment. 'Mam, would you mind telling me where you bought those?' asks the owner. Turns out he made them. He won't tell me their price (nor will I), but by now I know I am following in the footsteps of the Brazilian dealer, known also to Mr. Shangri La. 'I have those!' I say surprised to Jytte and point to another pair of earrings displayed in the store. 

When  I later get my original earrrings, wear them, and enter yet another store, 3 corpulent men resting in the cloudy dark  - they have constant black-outs and must rely on the additionally polluting generators - each murmur in turn , 'Beautiful earrings...?'; by then I decide not to ask any further. Tired out we return to the cool Shangri-La garden, where a huge party is in process, and have drinks and dinner watching the people in sari have fun. 

Last photos of shopping:

http://picasaweb.google.com/schateaubriand/KathmanduCrazyMan#5323788874467617170

MARKET DAY IN THIMPU AND ARCHERY IN PARO

Saturday, April 11, 1009

In the morning Jytte & Ole speed sight-see  all the stuff I saw at my leisure while they were trekking. I pack and take a little walk around the neighborhood. We meet for lunch in a nice restaurant near the sports complex, where we eat the usual fare and try the local wheat-based firewater. Unlike other guides, Thsering and Ugen never eat with us, but have their meals somewhere else in the same place - kitchen? Next item on the program is the weekend market, to get to which you have to cross a prayerflag filled wooden pedestrian bridge. There are two sections - the 'antiques' and the clothes. We are not overly interested by either of them. The 'antiques' are expensive, and the clothes give us an awkward feeling of having maybe originated from relief donations - at least some of them. We recross the bridge to the actual market where we see stalls with grains, vegetables, fruits, etc., along with those impossibly short brooms. All very colorful and genuine. We are very intrigued when we see some heavily garbed women with golden noserings. They are Nepalese, we later learn. 

We pile into the car again and drive the almost 2 hours to Paro, near the entrance of which we see an archery field. The archers are divided in two teams with the targets so far apart, that even with glasses I have a hard time making out the bull's eye. Whenever someone gets it close the men perform a little song and dance, which make those, who understand the words, burst into laughter. Tshering tells us that he, too, is an avid archerer, and that the people here have very sophisticated bows made in the US. Meanwhile the women are singing and dancing in a circle, sometimes joined by the men that are waiting out their turn. Hits are marked with colorful banners hung from the waist, and some of the men must be very good, because they have almost little skirts from all the banners stuck in their belts.

We leave him and Ugen there and take a last look at quaint little Paro, the lovely Dzong and the amazing snowcapped mountains. The silence, pure air, and general peace will be hard to replace. We return to the Toyota and to the Olathang, where we are given the same cottages we had before. Our flight out is at 8am, so it will be a 5am wake-up call for us - and an early night.

A variety of pictures here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/schateaubriand/LastDayInThimpu#

ALONE IN THIMPU

Friday, April 10 2009

Today Ugen has to go get the trekkers. He has a long ride ahead of him, passing the Dochu La pass twice. I will be left on my own to explore the city on foot. I have another breakfast-for-one, at the table indicated for the solitary traveler. Being a vegetarian in this country gives you a special status. Word of it quickly spreads to the rest of the staff and they murmur to me, as I serve myself, that this dish is OK, but that is not. Buddhists like to live in harmony with nature, and being vegetarian is definitely a plus. My breakfast today is a curious mix of oatmeal porridge, cornflakes, warmed peanuts with shells that must have soaked overnight, and honey. Canned juice and coffee. Some mornings I have eggs of some sort with toast, but I am really sick of the white bread and long for some grains. There is a young slender waitress I particularly like, and today I stop her to ask about local skin issues. Why are some ladies (and most children) so white-skinned, and why does no one wear a hat? Why doesn't anybody seem concerned to have their skin prematurely age them, which is visibly the case for most people I see? The sun in this thin air is brutal and I, who wear protection 60 and a hat that doesn't let a single sun ray come through, have to use a chapstick all the time. She replies, it is not the custom to wear a hat and that the ladies of the white skin never go out. Possibly in the moonlight only. She however, expresses concern about some freckles on her own nearly unblemished skin, which appeared when she was a student in windy Bumthang. She has been trying to use a special cream, but is afraid to use 'the acid', which a friend of hers used with appalling results. Her English is not really very clear, but I am nonetheless fascinated and share that I too am afraid of using 'the acid', so common in Brazil.

It's a beautiful sunny day and I can see the snowcapped mountains at the end of the main street, the Norzin Lam. I leave the hotel and figure out how to change money fairly painlessly with another beautiful and slender young woman at the Bank of Bhutan. The ornate building in no way reflects the order within (there is little) and outside is a frightening traffic jam reminicent of people leaving a soccer game. I have been plagued with a migraine since I came (only now I realize, due to the altitude, since I stopped taking the Diomax, when I did not go on the trek) and find a little shop that sells soothing Tiger Balm in pretty boxes. With  money in my pocket my main purpose is to buy presents and to use my eyes. I dash into supermarkets and enter each and every little shopping gallery, where in many places I now have friends, like Dawa Choden, in whose shop cluttered with carboard boxes filled with bargains on the floor and the walls hung with all kinds of clothes including North Face, I buy ridiculuously cheap fleece jackets and admire her baby sleeping on a heap of something. As we chat I notice again the Bhutanese position of rest - they squat easily, bottom almost touching the floor and their knees high in the air. You find them like that all over.Different from Hindus (I think) who like to sit with their legs crossed under them - even in a chair.  

Having tired of the (free) buffet lunch at the hotel, I plan to find the recommened Art Cafe, where I have a cheese panini with fries, longingly look at the salad, which I don't eat, and have an interesting conversation with a woman from NYC, who spends half her time in Bali. She informs me she stayed on at the Monks' festival in Paro and that the king appeared on the last day. I ask whether he is as good looking as in his photos. 'He's gorgeous!', she says with conviction. After some more walking around I return to the cafe to have an expresso, my first in Bhutan. It turns out the machine is brand new and the manager offers to make me one for free, so that she can test it, and I can express my opinion. (I also eat a fabulous nut cake....). The expresso turns out to be a delicious capucchino and when we chat I mention my regrets about the salad. 'Oh what a pity,' she says, ' people come from all over to eat my salad. I wash everything with chlorinated water.' Shucks.

When I begin to think about retuning to my hotel - I had thought I would rest - there's a call on my cell and it is Tshering announcing that my friends are back. I hurry home and we have a fun evening sharing our experiences. My cold is almost gone and I am feeling energetic again, but now Ole has a really bad one. 

Here are a couple of pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/schateaubriand/WalkingAroundInThimphu?feat=directlink

THE THIMPU CULTURAL TOUR

Thursday, April 9, 2009

The Toyota van and Ugen are waiting for me at the Phuntsho Peltri door at 9.30 sharp. I have been reading up on the various sight possibilities and have made my choices. Now I suggest, that since he knows the topography better, he can do them in the order he wishes. 'Yes,' he says, leaving me to wonder how much he understood. We stop first at the National Textile Museum, which has an excellent video presentation, and which includes detailed information of the construction of the 'kira' and the 'gho', much more voluminous and complicated than I initially thought. The costumes on displays are impressive, especially their colorcombinations, magnificent hats, and masks. 

Then we are off to the School of Painting where we encounter various schoolrooms filled with indigo-uniformed young people - high-school age, I imagine - doing woodwork, painting and embroidery. Their building levels are separated by the impossibly steep stairs I have found all over so far. I know there was a tradition in the monestaries to make retractable stairs to keep out the enemy, but did they have to keep on doing this? - I wonder as I climb yet another set. When I get to the embroidery class at the very top, I chat with two girls working on a fabulous tiger on red silk. I take their picture, and it is only after several tries that I can get one of them to smile. The bolder one writes down her name in a beautiful hand and asks me to send two pictures each of them - which of course I'll do - Deki Yangzom and Kinzang Dema.

Next stop is the nearby Heritage Museum, a small house set at the end of a garden, the front part of which is in construction. I notice the unusual sight of a woman in the middle of a ditch, shoveling out loosened earth, while a guy is leaning on a red machine, waiting for her to finish. Once inside the museum grounds a young woman guide attaches herself to me and explains about the artifacts, which depict life in a traditional rural home - again those stairs. In the little shop I find a used copy of  Jamie Zeppa's book about her year in Bhutan, 'Beyond the Sky and the Earth', and also a wooden penis, without which I feel I cannot leave Bhutan. When I leave, the man is working in the ditch and the woman is taking a breather sitting in a car.

Our final sight this morning is the zoo, where only Takin - Bhutan's national animal, said to be created by the Divine Madman by sticking the head of a goat on the body of a cow - are kept. They look more like short-legged hairy elks with low self-esteem to me, but are nonetheless vey cute and I bypass a very loud and excited Dutch/Chinese group of recently arrived tourists, who have spotted a couple of Takin behind a very strong and tall green fence, and walk the entire circumference of the enclosure set in a quiet and fragrant pine wood, where I get to see a baby takin with its mom and also a baby deer wanting to GET OUT. While I am walking I suddenly find myself walking through someone's house - a construction built leaning on the fence, complete with dog - but I talk to it soothingly and it leaves me alone. Then Ugen picks me up and drops me off at the hotel for lunch and a rest, but not before noticing some splendid new buildings going up to eventually house ministers and their families, right now edged by the most pitiful houses made of corrugated iron.

He's back at 2.30pm with the rest of the program. We cross the river admiring the Changlimithan Stadium & Archery ground, which also comprises a huge soccer field - the Maracanã of Thimpu -  on our way to the paper factory on the opposite hill. When we enter the shady room replete with several vats filled with papermaking sludge, the air makes my eyes sting. We watch the papermaking process and then a group of women working with some scraps, never sure of what excatly they are doing. The tour ends with the shop, which holds wonderful examples of hand-made paper, most of them unsuitable for a suitcase. I find a souvenir store nearby with very high quality - and also very highly prized articles - where the owner explains he works with his brother and that both studied their crafts for 7 years. Our tour finished with a trip to the National Library, where we step over betel splattered cement to get to the ornate front door. A single lady greets me at the entrance and basically lets me roam the 3 floors alone - those steep stairs again - and the only other people I see in these rooms filled with elaborate Buddhist scriptures encases in wooden and colorfully ribboned cases, are two young women secluded in an office on the second floor. 

When Ugen drops me at my hotel I still have time to take a little walk. My hotel is parallel to the main street and when I ask for directions ('turn left outside and then left down the first lane') I get it wrong and turn down a cul-de -sac, where I am surprised by finding half a skinned and bloodied animal (cow, goat?) lying on top of a wall. I quickly backtrack and find the right alley which is lined by a vegetable market. With my 'carioca' sensitivity (= from Rio) I am reluctant to explore the dirty little shopping galleries, but when I do I discover a mecca of  American sportswear at incredibly low prices, which makes me realize how much easier it would have been to buy everything here, in addition to other clothes. I finish my little walk with a excellent coffee and a dry little cake at the nearby landmark Swiss café, where I listen to people chatting in German and wonder what to do with an anooying headache, which doesn't seem to want to leave.

Pictures here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/schateaubriand/ExploringThimphu#