Lahore, Pakistan

Where are you from?

-America

Oh! America!?! I have America in my veins! (Points to his arms) Where in America?- Big Apple, City of Angels, The Lone Star State, Sunshine State? (getting excited)

-Hawaii

Oh! Like New York City! What is your name?

-Beau

Bob, tell me, in the Big Apple everybody is so busy, much crowds, with no free time. Ha, Ha! Have you been to New York City, Bob? Is it so busy? In Lahore, we have much free time! Ha!

-Yeah, it’s pretty busy

(Lowering his voice) It’s running through my veins, Bob. I can feel it. I watch the movies, Bob. It is like the movies, America, yes, Bob?

-Sort of

And Las Vegas! This is very magical place, yes, Bob. There is much freedom and lights there, yes. (His questions have turned into statements ((this always happens))

-Uh-huh

Bob, have you been to Miami Beach? Tell me Bob, I am thinking that they are not wearing clothes, anyone, at Miami Beach. Ha Ha!

-Just a little bit of clothes

Yes, clothes for name’s sake! Ha! Bob I am thinking of a good idea- at the seaside’s edge, at Miami Beach, you make kissing with woman, and then you go for a swim. And then you make kissing WHILE YOU ARE SWIMMING!!

This is tasty, yes? A very enjoyable idea, yes?

-Yeah, sure. (getting impatient for my pizza; my order has not been taken yet)

Bob, come with me! (takes my hand and leads me to the back.) You meet my boss! This is my friend, Bob- he is from America! (I am introduced to a man with a clipboard)

Oh! America. (awkward silence) Wow! You have nice body! What do you do to get this? You are lifting weights? Lift up your shirt, I need to see your abdominals! Please, Bob.

(Officially creeped out; I leave Pizza Hut)

As a surfer there are moments now and then when you want something else. You get ‘surfed out.’ We slip out of the saltwater like some primordial de ja vu in our evolutionary path trudging onto land in search of some new adventure. On a local scale, we get out the water and go to Town for a little excitement. In my case Town was Pakistan.

There were a few reasons not to go. Labeled a breeding ground for Islamic fundamentalists and terrorism because of its lawless and ungovernable Northwest Territory bordering Afghanistan. The many travel advisories/warnings. It’s continual reputation for black market arms dealing. On the brink of war at times with neighboring India for possession of the disputed Kashmir area. The recent assassination of the hopeful democratic leader Benazir Bhutto. Yes, if you just got your news from the media then yeah, Pakistan seemed a little dangerous. But on the ground while in India, I had met a few travelers who had gone there. They spoke of some Utopian-like society in the north. About a place called the Hunza valley- a seemingly fabled Shangri-la where modern day descendants of Alexander the Great lived in a lush land guarded by the Hindu-Kush Himalayas.This sounded interesting.

So we went. We left colorful, chaotic India and suddenly found ourselves being driven in a rickshaw through Lahore, a major city shortly over the border, by a man who suffered from a horrible case of Tourette’s. Our small cart tipped and swerved with every violent tick or bob the poor man made. I thought we were going to crash. Then at an intersection a woman approached us begging for money. One of her arms was a stump at the wrist, like her hand had been chopped off by something; the thin bandage covering it was surprisingly bloody and fresh.

A man walking by with a pet monkey on a leash stopped and greeted us with a big smile. But although Lahore still had its share of shock, it was actually much more modern and orderly than a big city in India. People were relentlessly friendly, waving hello to us from motorcycles or welcoming us to their country. By people of course, I mean men. Because of the country’s strict Islamic code, women are nearly out of the public eye, or are covered in full-body burkhas. We call them ninjas. At dusk the Muslim calls to prayer sounded throughout the city in a mix of muffled, megaphonic whines and moans. Both eerie and comforting you’re haunted every sunset by the sound of a thousand ghosts.

Surprisingly, when politics came up in conversation, most Pakistanis liked to joke about it. When we told them we were Americans, we were commonly asked, “Oh, you are looking for Osama?” Usually we’d reply, “Yeah! You know where to find him?” Then everyone would be laughing. Besides being a high hostage risk, our nationality became a great ice-breaker.

Heading north towards Hunza, we were closer to Kabul or China than we were to India anymore. The landscape turned raw and apocalyptic. In the north of Pakistan there are only three colors- brown, grey, and green. The setting looks like it’s frozen between growing and dying- what is this called? We finally reached Hunza which was and wasn’t as we expected. It was an extraordinarily fertile valley surrounded by a Matahorn-like mountainscape. Life in the villages was like stepping back in time a hundred years. There wasn’t anybody there (as in other travelers). Because of the global effect and travel sentiment after 9/11, the tourist biz had slowed down, more like stopped, in this once vibrant place. Guesthouse owners kind of gazed out of their inns with looks on their faces like, ‘When’s everyone coming back?’ It was a little weird.

But we still had fun in this twilight zone. We traversed rickety, 500ft. long, Indiana Jonesish suspension bridges or walked to who-knows-how-old glaciers. We heard intermittent gunshots and small explosions in the distance, echoing not far from where we were staying. We heckled some contestants at an unusual footrace in a small village. Which we soon found out was a Pakistani version of the Special Olympics. Then we just felt like assholes.

Really, in this renowned terrorist hotbed, our lives were not threatened. There was really only one time when I thought things were going to get sketchy. We were on a bus at the beginning of our trip. At a truck-stop bathroom break, we all filed out of the bus and as I looked behind me, I saw a guy wearing a black turban and traditional cleric garb kind of eyeing me out. I had been told by the only American I knew that had recently been to Pakistan that the Taliban were known for wearing the black turbans, that this was how you recognized them. ‘Ahhh crap, ahhh crap,’ I thought. Trying not to look panicky, I sort of strayed away from him and his crew. He looked a little cagey. Just my luck, as I walked by them to go to the bathroom, one of them (who spoke English really well) asked if I might join their table to ‘talk about things.’ “Yeah, sure,” I replied, trying not to piss myself. The guy in the black turban still looked evasive.

“Are you a Muslim?” he asked. (I had a two month beard and was dressed in their national pajama costume)

“No.” I said.

“Where are you from?”

“America.”

“Really?! I live in Houston! What are you doing here- looking for Osama?”

[Big sigh] We shook hands and drank tea.

We are the antithesis of cute. We fall asleep whether tired or passed out from chemicals on coarse filthy city concrete and awaken, zombie-like, begging you for food and money and cigarettes with crusted scabs on our cheeks because cement is such a rough fuckin’ pillow.

We surround you.

While you slowly slip one hand into your [important] pocket and rest one arm over your backpack now awkwardly lying on your chest.

We are the opposite of invisible.

You can’t not see us passing a grimy who-knows-how-many-times used plastic bag full of glue to each other as we inhale fumes of the fakest euphoria we can barely imagine before the next ‘friend’ snatches the bag from my still gaping mouth.

And we do this in broad daylight. We were so hungry one winter that we devoured Shame, and some of the younger ones didn’t even get a taste.

Give me money. Of course I’m gonna buy glue or smokes; if I wanted food I would have told you I’m hungry.

And when we beg from you, we never leave empty handed because if it’s not change or food you give us, then it’s always that unanimous expression of bewilderment- the ‘what the fuck?’ one- and that’s something, isn’t it?

And our pathetic “I’m hungry; help me” looks that we can switch on and off on a dime are not nearly as pathetic as the way we look when you’re not even looking.

Now and then we twitch in the numbness of our high or daze into the nothingness of this tourist mecca. We are caught somewhere between the mysterious adage of ‘street rat’ and ‘brain-dead.’ We huff and huff and with each new year, oddly we grow- backwards.

Rag tag, rascal, orphan? ‘Street rats’ can’t gamble in the middle of busy streets with stolen change like we can. We are a pack of motherless wolves.

We are the saddest thing you have never seen. And some lives are too scary for regrets to haunt them.

Try not to stare too long. I know it’s tempting. This bed-head is forever. This dirt and dust will not come off. We are the opposite of invisible. We grasp at your arm for recognition or coins and I can’t be more than eight fuckin’ years old but there’s a cigarette hanging out the corner of my mouth and as you twist away from me there’s a streak of grime on your sleeve that won’t wash out because it takes a life time to the better part of one week to clean a conscience these days.

Who knows where we sleep. [I don’t] But I’m sure it’s so cold.

We are the real lost boys. And if only we could actually read Peter Pan. Somebody give me a new fucking T-shirt, or a new drug, or some sort of religion that is real, or a goddamn hug.

We are the saddest thing you have never seen.

At [spit] times [cough] our [take] life [scream] seems [beg] a [smoke] series [hit] of [run] consecutive [huff] crude [snort] and [cry] evil [collapse] verbs. [exist]
And do you know what’s sadder than a forgotten orphan boy?- A forgotten orphan girl. Because these kind too, travel in packs like wolves, but with less snarl and more hiding.
With bold smiles and puerile grins that almost mask their tired, frightened eyes.

We’d been trekking through Royal Chitwan National Park with our two guides for the last few days. A lot of walking, but seeing a lot of cool stuff. Dozens of huge crocs, exotic birds and monkeys in trees, barking deer, and of course, rhino sightings/chasings which were paramount. But maybe we were getting a little cocky; trying to get too close for shots of the rhinos. Provoking some reactions from the wild. Our guides seemed to know what they were doing though, just as long as Quinn didn’t do anything too abnormal to threaten our group’s safety. And seriously, when someone says ‘sloth bear’ I’m not thinking of anything too viciously fierce.

Headed into the jungle that afternoon, Quinn tastefully jokes (these are his jokes) ‘I feel like somebody’s going to die today, like seriously get attacked and killed.’ So with that in mind, the five of us hiked, off trail, into the brush to see where some sloth bears slept, and maybe spot a tiger before the trip was over. We had been walking through the forest for about an hour when one of the guides stopped us and pointed with their weapons [skinny bamboo sticks] at some movement in the bushes about a hundred feet in front of us. It was a sloth bear, wait, no two, no three of them. And with ‘oh, how lovely’ thoughts dancing in our minds, we began to unsheathe our cameras for a possible shot. And then they all stood up on their hind legs. And then we noticed how big (bigger than men) they were. And then, pissed off and growling, all three of them charged at us. And then I was up a tree trying to tell my dad and whoever else to get-the-fuck-up one (the wrong thing to do in these situations).

While two of the bears stopped short of us, one-the biggest one- committed and zeroed in on my dad. Before I knew it, I was looking down at a huge, wide, black creature attached to my dad’s lower leg, shaking him left to right like a dog would with a toy. Luckily, in the heat of the moment, the two guides held their ground and began to wail on the bear’s head with their bamboo sticks. After about ten harrowing seconds, the bear retreated, I slid down the tree, and all five of us tried to make sense/a plan in the midst of panic. And then the bears charged at us again. (They’re known to make multiple attacks on resisting victims/prey) But the guides backed them off with sticks again.

As quickly and carefully as we could, my dad limping and bleeding gradually, we got to a dirt road miraculously close to where the accident occurred. White-faced and in shock, he wasn’t going to be able to limp much further. Within a few minutes though, a jeep full of guided tourists drove towards us, picked us up, and took us to the river to catch a canoe to the nearest town with a doctor. Along the way Quinn is cackling, ‘This is so bad-ass: you just got attacked by a fuckin’ bear!’ In the clinic, peeling off his sock, one side of his lower leg had a few deep puncture wounds from the bear’s canines- nothing too life threatening, however when we looked over at the other side, there was a substantial gash about 8 inches long and 3 inches wide, nearly hitting the bone and definitely slicing through tendons, muscle, and all layers of flesh. Said the doctor, “We must operate at the theater in the bigger hospital in town.” Theater? So we did. And he got all stitched up in a [malarial] mosquito-infested hospital and back in a hotel room by midnight.

And I guess it could’ve been a lot worse, really. Disembowelment, attacked by all three (not just one), slowly eaten alive? Today we asked one of our guides if he’d rather be attacked by a tiger or a sloth bear. He said, “A tiger will just rip your head from your body- very fast. But sloth bear keep attacking and attacking- slow death.”
I hate nature.

It’s all fun and games until the bushes fifty feet in front of you explode into a charging rhino and the low sound of galloping mixed with a twisted snorting is getting louder and louder. It’s at about this point that you stop fiddling with your video camera and start negotiating the fastest way up the nearest tree. Which brings us to the climax of said situation and the zenith of my own ‘rhino tracking’ expedition. Anyways, the rhino, pretty pissed off and ornery looked around (thankfully its vision sucks) and lifted its nose to the sky to catch a scent of the perpetrators [me and Quinn] that have crossed its personal bubble. Luckily the rhino stopped charging before I had to get up the tree, and slowly I slipped my camera outta the bag to get some sort of shot. But my hand is shaking from the initial brush explosion, and the shot comes out blurry. Like I’m a fuckin’ photographer anyways-? How did we get here?

Out of the human jungle of India and into the, well, jungle jungle of southern Nepal, I crossed over the border by foot and immediately notice flags everywhere. Elections (twice postponed) are happening soon, and there are political flags and banners hanging from every telephone post, rooftop, and motorcycle handlebar- mostly all Communist. I’d known that there was an ongoing bloody conflict between Maoist insurgents and the congressional Nepali government, and now I was seeing its present day politikas. I had also just begun traveling with my old friend Quinn. Who is Quinn? Quinn is the kind of guy who not even ten minutes after meeting someone feels he’s created enough personal trust to deem giving them a ‘tea bag’ or ‘fruit bowl’ an acceptable gesture of friendship. And not the kinds from Safeway. Unashamedly American, the opposite of P.C., frequently immature, yet always on point, Quinn is going to get us killed.

We had heard from an American couple in India that there was a really cool wildlife park in southern Nepal they’d gone to to see tigers, rhinos, crocodiles, leopards. deer, blah, blah, blah- you might get chased by rhinos. And though pretty stupid and dangerous, that this was the funnest part about the park. This bit of info was enough for us, so we were on our way though Maoist territory to get to Royal Chitwan National Park. Dropped off by the bus in a town a ways before the village near the park, we got aboard a rusty rickshaw manned by a frail yet feisty old man named Ramupandi. Within a couple of minutes Quinn was belting out hits like Fergie’s “Lady Lumps” and Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” into the crisp, night air. It was a long-ass ride though and being the old man that Ramupandi was, we had to get out and help him up the tricky parts and inclines of the road. But he was grateful, and along the way introduced us to his family. It was nearly midnight, but we all had time. Going deeper towards the jungle, the town lights faded and fireflies or maybe animals’ eyes flickered all around us along the way. By the next morning we had met two guides and thus began our excursion through the park.

And although we were at least 1000km from the nearest ocean we were ‘rhino chasing’ in Nepal. The original form. Or maybe more like furtively-sneaking-up-on rhinos, really. Seriously, those things are massive; some the size of a small two door , I dunno, Hyundai for example? And the rest of the blah, blah, blah’s were cool too: crocodiles lazing on riverbanks, wild boars darting through bushes, or herds of deer jumping in unison behind distant trees like some mythical apparition, or maybe like in Lord of the Rings

.

By now, Quinn has gotten the two guides provoking each other; taking turns tapping one another in the gooch with their walking sticks. This is the form in which America shares its culture. Occasionally we see women, bless their hearts, carrying heaving loads of grass on hunched backs back to their villages. Quinn turns to one of our guides- Sauras- and asks, “How come in this country only the women carry the heavy loads? Why don’t the men do any work?” Sauras casually replies, “What we are- da girls?”
Sheesh.

First awakening from an overnight sleeper train coming from Bombay, I rubbed my eyes as they adjusted to a creeping dawn and quickly noticed a drastic change in landscape. This looks like desert. Dry and arid, bushes over sand. But suddenly, disrupting the geographic monotony in clumps of two’s and three’s seemed to rise various pillars of color and light. Veiled and hooded figures wrapped and cloaked in every shade of the spectrum. Individuals layered in psycadelic, neon hues blended with deeper, solid, yet nonetheless brilliant shades, and bordered by strips of gold and silver. They were Rajasthani women, dressed in the incredibly modest and common sari of India- an article of clothing that somehow within its ability to conceal retains an indescribable power of seduction and sensuality. The attire of these women- thought to be the mothers of the first descendants of the Gypsies- and the fabrics that flow and fall from their shoulders and bodies, seemingly dripping into the ground beneath them.

If Bombay was the ‘real world’ of India, then now, Rajasthan was virtually surreal. The name itself alluding to some both distant and near exotica. I had arrived in a small town called Pushkar, and as I ate thali in a chair lining the main street I watched as some ridiculous caricature of India played out before my very eyes. Turbaned men with up-turned mustaches rode by on camels followed by children on huge, waddling elephants whose ears brushed opposite sides of the awnings bordering shops, followed by sacred (and mischievous) cattle, followed by dreadlocked, barefoot sadhu’s (holy men) in bright orange garb, followed by gawking tourists, followed by stoned travelers. I feel like I’m sounding like a hollow travel guidebook-

So fuck it, the ‘surreal’ can always be viewed on any travel channel on television. So what within this picture of old India is real? Noticing how everything in India is done openly, and visually on the streets. Eating, praying, shitting, talking, holding, joking selling, poking, begging, et cetera, et cetera. A people who are implausibly fervent. Stopping at every shrine to god to close two palms and raise them respectfully.

‘when there was no distance between what was said and what was felt…’

Learning the reality of how when you travel and go to some places you don’t necessarily ‘do’ things there, as in the phrase- ‘What’s there to do in____?’ Fucking nothing. And everything. At the same time. You go there, take it slow, joke with local people and/or travelers and make friends with local people and/or travelers.

‘Because good friendship is hard to find, and life is long.’

In Pushkar where you hear the Indians coming a mile away by the sound of their anklets and wristlets and arms stacked with clanking bangles. Every step- devoted. And they’re probably singing aloud together to a god. Praying the opposite of silently, in a relentless noise. In the language of drums and cymbals and rattles.

A long time ago when I was young, I overheard a conversation my dad was having with one of his friends who had just returned from a trip to India. The guy-Tom- was one of those spritual-jack-of-all-trades guru types; I guess he had gone to India for some enlightenment seminar or what not. But what I remember that really intrigued me was when my dad asked Tom how the weather was, and he honestly couldn’t say. Tom said that he had never had a chance to look up. After just two days in Bombay, I can see how that could happen. Shit, the taxi ride from the airport to the city center is enough to break your travel-toughened spirit. I swear, ghetto, ugly, impoverished- these words hold no weight to the scene. The sight of some of these slums or slum-cities could only be described in terms like post-apocalyptic, quasi-animalistic, nightmarish. I mean, I’ve driven through favelas in Rio or the shanty towns in Soweto, South Africa, but now, I can honestly say, ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

The term ‘living on the streets’here is in every way literal and a lot of times, seemingly in no way disgraceful? I’ve seen families of squatters who have fenced off a segment of public sidewalk to form households with (minute) bedrooms, open air kitchen, and den in full view. And then a man walks out of a stooping, hovel like opening of the house in a dapper suit and tie.

But then there’s early in the morning, when you see those who don’t even have the luxury of slum or shelter or settlement. Crooked forms and shapes of children contorting their bodies to fit in a stretched out t-shirt in order to fully cover themselves from the night air or notorious Bombay rats. Clumps and small piles of sleeping life, scattered on the streets, that from a distance I myself have shamefully mistaken for trash. My Lonely Planet guidebook recommends its tailor-made trips to Rajasthan to see ‘the real India,’ but after witnessing some of this, I wonder, how more real can it get?

I walked around the touristy part of Bombay- Colaba- hoping to meet any solo travellers like myself but right now all I’ve seen are separate regiments to a small army of middle-aged women whom I think have all just been inspired by Eat ,Pray, Love, but all have that look on their faces like ‘We’re supposed to do which one of those things in this fuckin place?’ Them, and then European couples with their hippy-traveller-baggy-light –linen uniforms on, and in some cases, one of the mates in tears.

Two days, and I’ve seen four car wrecks (two serious), and mostly from the window of my own speeding, maniacal cab. But my driver’s name was Mohammed Ali, so that had to count for something. But walking into this internet café, I think I saw the best thing. A man who- I think was trying to sell my an oversized balloon (why would I want that?)- with a t-shirt on that prophetically said, ‘Welcome to My World.’

At home, thanks to my island’s perfect position in the Pacific ocean coupled with my island’s blessed nearshore reef formations I can and do surf nearly every single day. But probably, maybe even moreso than surfing, I enjoy travelling. I’ve been to nearly forty different countries, studied abroad in Europe and South America, and since the renewal of my passport in 2003, I’ve had to get (2) US embassy issued extra pages add-ons. The look on a Samoan customs officer’s face after you’ve just kindly asked her to ‘try and fit one more stamp on this page’[pointing to the specific box]- priceless.

So yeah, basically I save a small, and I mean small, fortune half the year and then I blow it- the next half of that year. Usually to some exotic surf destination. Right now, I’m currently engaged on an 8 month RTW trip to some lesser known, yet hardly unknown, countries in search of surf and hopefully some memorable human interactions along the way. Many of these countries are ‘hot zone’areas (regions of political conflict or tension) which though positive for the crowd factor inversely equates to kind of negative for the safety factor. But with a little common sense, a cigarette for a tense soldier, and a polaroid picture-gift for a shifty taxi driver, you’d be surprised how a ‘hot zone’could become so cool. Aaaaahh-I think I’m gonna barf.