September Journal

In which I cycle across the Himalayas

September 1st, 2005 Lhasa
    This day I finished building the wire racks for my bike and took it on a test ride out of town. So far, all seems reasonably solid. I also bought a mat, tarp, and cheepo sleeping bag. Some nights I’ll have to spend outside. Barring accidents, my plan is to go down the Lhasa River and cross the Yarlung Tsangpo tomorrow. Then along the sacred, scorpion-shaped turquoise lake Yamdrok Tso, to the town of Nangartze. Next to Gyantse and Shigatse, before rejoining the friendship highway to Katmandu. On my test ride, I found out about the many granny gears on my bike. The rapid-fire shifters are so awesome, although they sometimes misfire. I just hope no serious catastrophes occur. I can’t wait to get out on my way to Nepal.

September 3rd, Nangarze
    So far, my bike trip is going quite well. Yesterday morning I set out at 8:30 Am and rode past the Potala and out onto the road South. It rained a bit, and the traffic was quite heavy, but I made it down to the bridge a bit before 2 PM, where I ate some noodles in a dark room crowded with tea-sipping Tibetans. The soldiers let me cross the bridge to the South side. Over there was a beautiful, freshly paved road with no traffic. It was quite sunny now too. I had intended to spend the night around there, but since it was only 2, I decided to try and tackle the high pass over to Yamdrok Tso. Climbing that pass proved to be a lot harder than I thought. The pass is at 4,794 meters (15, 728 feet) and from the bottom to the top is probably a gain of about 1,200 meters. That meant six hours of crawling up switchback after switchback in the lowest granny gear. It was probably the most exhausting, grueling thing I’ve ever done. I still can’t believe I actually rode over that pass. Near the top, I almost started crying, not from the pain (that was fine), but just from total exhaustion. Tourists in their SUVs offered some encouragement. Almost hallucinating with pain and fatigue, I made it to the top at 8PM, a few minutes before sunset. The view of the dazzling turquoise lake and the huge snowy mountains behind it was awesome. I wonder what makes the water that brilliant blue color. There’s a patch of it in Walden Pond where Thoreau built his cabin. I cruised down a few switchbacks and set up camp near some prayer flags on a ridge overlooking the lake. I wrapped my mat and sleeping bag in a bit of plastic tarp, ate some crackers and raisins, stretched, and crawled in. At first I could see a few stars, but soon clouds covered everything. Lightning lit distant thunderheads. It started to rain. My sleeping bag proved itself quite well, to my total surprise. Despite getting totally wet, it kept me quite warm. I managed to sleep for a bit, but the storm increased. There was thunder and lightning everywhere. Around 3AM, it started to rain HARD and a tremendous wind blew up. My bike blew over and all my crap spilled out of the baskets, but I knew that if I got up to fix it, my tarp and sleeping bag would blow right off the edge and into the lake. So, I curled up and waited for a few hours. Towards dawn, the storm died down a bit and I slept a bit. When I got up, the lake was a deep black color. I quickly packed up my crap and set off down hill, then along the lakeshore. I could still see those humungous mountains ahead.
    At about noon, I arrived in Nangartze. Everyone stared at me and it took quite a while to find a hotel. When I set out my things to dry in the sun, the locals minutely inspected everything, as if it came from another galaxy. The dream diary always proves especially mystifying. I think its pages of closely packed, minute handwriting denote occult relations even to the illiterate. Just now I realized that I didn’t even find it weird or rude when the woman showing me my hotel room looked through my diaries and book. Although there is a monastery nearby, I plan to spend the rest of the day resting. Tomorrow I’ve got another big pass to do.

These girls are watching TV through the window of a small restaurant.

Nangarze must be the staring capitol of the prefecture. Whenever I do anything to my bike, ten boys rush over to stare. They were impressed by how I coiled a rope around my arm. Just now, waiting for some food at a restaurant, three girls crowded in the doorway to stare at me. I sat there immobile with my head down, looking at the table for five minutes, and when I looked up again, they were still there staring. So I stared back and they went away in about five seconds. If entertainment was food, these villagers would be walking skeletons.

my bike after I rode over the karo la

September 5th, Gyantse
O my. I finally made it to Gyanstse, with many intervening adventures. At that restaurant in Nangartze where the girls stared at me for so long, I ate some greasy eggplant dish which made me very sick. I think it was only the second time in my life when eating bad food made me barf. The other time was in the first grade. At some point during the night, as I lay in bed next to a vat of vomit, I heard a knock on the door. Thinking the hotel girl had incompetently lost the key, if there even was a key, I got up to open it in time to see a large crowd of police officers with flashlights and nightsticks. For a moment I thought –so, its finally happened. I’ve been traveling all over Tibet without a permit and now they’ve finally caught me. But then all the police just turned and walked back down the corridor! Weird. Perhaps my vomit-encrusted visage, immense height and obvious delirium drove them away.
In the morning I felt very sick and weak, but decided to set out again anyway. That town was so disgusting that I had to leave. The only hotel that would take me had no running water and a horrific bathroom. (Although certain minds might discover a species of entertainment in contributing to a vast mountain of human shit from a height of five meters) The floor in my room was encrusted with black grease. So, I headed out and up into the mountains. It took me seven hours of slow biking and occasional pushing to reach the 5,045-meter (16, 552) Karo La pass. A huge glacier stood next to the pass, as did Tibetans selling giant, brightly colored crystals. A nice Tibetan girl gave me a cup of tea with a big chunk of yak butter in it. It warmed my frozen hands. I mostly had to go at sub-walking speed to get up there. Once over the pass, I raced down into a huge open grassland, then into a river valley with lots of tiny villages. In the late afternoon, I came to some kind of huge turquoise reservoir. I barely had the energy to go up the tiniest slope, so when I saw a huge switchback going 100s of meters up the valleyside I decided to stop for the night. I made my little nest and crawled in. It rained hard all night and everything got soaked. When it got light, some Tibetan dude appeared out of nowhere and helped me fold up my tarp. He must have spent the night nearby, as there was no village for miles around. I biked the rest of the way to Gyantse along terrible, rutted dirt roads, and arrived about noon. Now everything is drying in the sun.

A dung-encrusted house in Tibet.

September 6th, 2005 Gyantse
Today featured a very pleasant 90 km ride from Gyantse down to Shigatse. That was about 7.5 hours of leisurely biking down a sunny, well-paved road with little traffic. Dung-encrusted houses lined the route. Since there is no wood to burn for fuel, the locals collect cow pies and plaster them to walls to dry. They also construct dung palisades, crenellations and mounds. The fields were full of Tibetans cutting the ripe grain by hand and singing songs as they worked. Here in Shigatse, I washed an incredible amount of dirt out of my clothes and hung them on the roof to dry. Tomorrow I’ll visit the monastery.

September 7th, 2005 Shigatse
This day was devoted to repair, recovery and resupply in Shigatse. For some reason only really disgusting, inedible food seems to be available here. I fixed my bike’s front shifter and strengthened the racks. It was a beautiful, dead sunny, cool day, and I somewhat regretted not going on, but my body demands rest. Tomorrow I’ll try to do 70-80 km towards Lhatse.

View of Tashilhumpo Monastery from its kora.

September 9th, 2005 Lhatse.
    So, the notorious megalopolis of Lhastse has at last been attained. Yesterday I set out from Shigatse and rode for eleven hours, covering 92 km. It was another dead beautiful, clear day. The whole road between Shigatse and Lhatse is under construction, so I was slowed down a lot by bumpy diversions around bridges and huge clouds of dust. Mostly the road was dirt and gravel. I slept in a gulley behind some sort of wall near km marker 92, one of the few that survived the construction. Along the way, thousands of men and women were at work, and almost all said “Hello!” or “Tashi Dele!” to me. No one was actually working on making the road, however. They were all just carrying around stones, chipping away at cliffs, or making little concrete walls. I guess the Chinese decided to start this project by destroying the whole road, then concentrating on what they could do best, which is to pay hoards of peasants with shovels to carry around rocks. Actually laying down the asphalt seems a bit beyond them. Today the construction was much worse and the going was really difficult. Sometimes I had to carry my bike over the huge mounds of dirt that blocked the road. I also met a Chinese bicyclist on the road who came down from Kashgar via Ali. Damn. He said he’d been biking for 1.5 months. He didn’t seem at all perturbed by the huge mounds of dirt. After about 7.5 hours I arrived in Lhastse, totally exhausted. I found a great hotel, and have been lying in bed eating mooncakes and drinking Hawthorne nectar.

September 11th, 2005
    O my god. The ride from Lhatse to Shegar was absolutely grueling. This was not so much because of the 5,220 meter (17, 126 feet) pass, but because of the absolutely horrific state of the “road.” The whole 80 kilometers was a huge construction site, clogged with mud and machines. The way varied between deep muddy ruts and 4” deep dust deposits covering jutting rocks. Whenever a truck passed, a huge cloud of dust and exhaust rose hundreds of feet into the air. Almost every bridge was out, so I had to bike through all the streams and rivers. Some were quite deep. Everywhere rocks stuck up from the mud and dust. Most annoying were what I call the striations or corrugations. These are deep parallel ruts running across the road like racked speedbumps. How these form is quite a mystery. I would think that wheeled traffic traveling in one direction would form ruts parallel to that direction, not across it. It must have something to do with the vehicles bouncing at a certain frequency. Anyway, they suck. The road from Lhasa to Katmandu is called the friendship highway. The whole way I kept thinking “Highway? You call this a fawking highway? There’s no highway within 1,000 miles of here. If this is a highway, then my little finger is a fawking sperm whale, allright? How about the friendship linear mudpit?” Yesterday, it took me nearly eight hours to go the 30 km up to the pass. I slept in a field of white stones. Fortunately, it didn’t rain. Now I’m in a little Tibetan hotel at the turn off to Shegar, contemplating tomorrow’s 60 km ride to Tingri and hoping, not very hopefully, that the construction will end.
    With each day, my bike has been making additional creaking, grinding, scraping noises that defy mechanical analysis. I think it’s just grit and dust in all the bearings. Just now I got an auto mechanic to give me some grease for the chain, which actually helped some. Also tightened up the back break. It’s interesting how after hours of biking, it feels totally satisfying and fulfilling just to lie in bed and stare at the wall.

September 12th, 2005
    This day featured a nice 60km ride from Shegar to Tingri. The clouds cleared a few minutes before sunset, allowing an awesome view of Mount Everest and Cho Oyo. Along the road today, the construction continued, but it wasn’t too bad. In some places, the road was even in fairly decent condition. Many deep dust deposits enlivened the journey. This morning was particularly beautiful as the sunlight hit the strangely shaped mountains. It’s interesting how sleeping outside for a few nights makes one get up at dawn. I managed to lose my hat, acquired in Garze, and my water bottle, which I’d had since before Egypt. I found a yellow Buddhist baseball cap to keep the sunlight off. While passing through villages I have terrible problems with hoards of begging children. They blockade the road and demand money, meanwhile trying to pull everything off of my bike. They always damage my wire racks. Stupid rich tourists in SUVs have trained them to beg like dogs. I try various ways to drive them off. Generally my “I WILL SLAY YOU” stare is effective, but sometimes I have to resort to physical violence to get past them and stop them from grabbing onto my racks. Their faces are encrusted with thick masks of dried and wet snot. I really hate beggars and the people who train them to degrade themselves.
    One strange effect of the high altitude is that all the sealed, packaged foods for sale in shops, such as biscuits, cookies, etc… look as if they’re about to explode. They are inflated like balloons. In fact, many have suffered fatal ruptures. It’s odd to see such a graphic visual effect of the intangibly reduced air pressure at high altitude.

September 13th, 2005
    This day I rode an easy 60 km from Tingri around a bend in the river to a small village 11km from the start of the climb to the last twin passes. Huge ruined fortresses lined the whole route. They were made of compressed earth, and stood very tall, like weird isolated towers and fingerlike prongs. Everywhere in this part of Tibet has huge mountainous towers of empty beer bottles stacked against the walls. I guess it’s too remote to bring them back for their deposits, so they just accumulate here. Now I’m staying in a little dirt-floored guesthouse. A Swiss-German couple, also on bikes, are staying here too. They’ve been following me along for a few days. I’ve been playing with the local kids, who are actually quite cute and kind in this place. One little girl took a liking to me and shared a packet of uncooked instant noodles, one of the local staples. She also taught me the word for water-chu. Later I went for a walk part way up one of the nearby massive green mountains, where I inspected some adobe ruins.

soap

September 15th, 2005
This day I finally made it out of Tibet, out of China, and into Nepal. It feels wonderful to be in a new country. So many things are different, even 30 meters into Nepal, which is all I’ve gone. They have weird numbers, can speak English, and the women are so beautiful. But first, I must describe the last part of my bicycle journey here. On the 15th, I got up early, feeling good, and charged up over the first 5,100-meter pass. I slammed on up no problem. It was a long slog up to the second pass, where there was supposed to be a view of Mt. Everest. It was dark and stormy in that direction. This was the beginning of the fabled and much-anticipated longest downhill on Earth, but conditions conspired to make this probably the most agonizing part of the whole trip. Actually, one condition. Wind. The most fierce and absurdly unrelenting wind I’d ever encountered blasted frozen rain and dirt into my face. It was quite an experience to be on a heavily loaded mountain bike, sitting on a steep downhill, yet not moving at all because of wind. After pedaling down a bit of steep downhill, I then faced hours and hours of slogging away in the lowest gear across a flat and uphill valley floor, face on into the wind. Many times it blew me off to the side and I had to resolutely steer back into it. It was blowing so hard into my face that it was actually hard to breathe. At some point, the Swiss-Germans passed me. I stopped to look at Milarepa’s cave about an hour before sunset, but the small chapel was locked. Totally dead, I crawled into the town of Nyalam a bit before 9 PM, after about 13 hours of consecutive biking, with only two small breaks totaling about 20 minutes together. I found a hotel room and crashed. I think all those hours of biking into the wind was the toughest thing I’ve ever done in my life. This bike trip has really pushed me right up to and beyond any limits that I had, both physically and emotionally. So many times, 99% of my strength and 99% of my will were totally gone and it was up to the remaining slivers to push me on. I often totally lost the will to continue onwards and wanted to collapse into an insensible pile, but kept going, because I realized that there was no one and nothing there to help me in any case. Just me, my bike, and thousands of empty miles of plains and desert. At 5,000 meters, even turning your sweater right side out is a considerable intellectual endeavor. I think that there’s about half the oxygen at sea level up there. Things like guerilla repairs to my bike and maintaining focus on the 2-3 meters of road ahead of me for 11 hours a day really put me to the test.
Anyway, this morning the wind was gone, and I set off a little after the Europeans downhill towards the border. The ride down was absolutely beautiful and by far the most amazing part of the trip. In about 30 km, you descend through a stunning gorge from the high, tundra-like zones of Tibet, down into the steamy, tropical forest of Nepal. The vegetation goes from tiny scabrous encrustations to a luxuriant superabundance of lush, heavy, flowery jungle. The smells were amazing too, of the flowers, and the rich, fertile, living Earth. New zones of richer life appeared with every 100 meters of descent. Gigantic waterfalls leapt off of the cliffs and disappeared into the air. Far ahead, through the V-shaped opening of the valley, I saw shelving clouds stacked away over the Indian subcontinent. I caught up with the European bikers in Zhangmu, the Chinese border town, and ate some lunch. We compared notes on the stunning scenery. Zhangmu is a fascinating Chinese/Tibetan/Nepali town built on a series of steep hairpin turns. Weird Nepali trucks blocked the way, and we dodged around them, past customs, then bombed 8km down a mud road to the bridge between the countries. In the small town of Kodari, we went through Nepali immigration easily, then I checked into a hotel, while the Europeans opted to continue.

After cycling from Lhasa to Katmandu, I lay in a collpsed heap.

September 17th, Katmandu
Yesterday I set off from Kodari, down the mudpit serving as a road there. The awesome scenery of the road continued, and soon I came to a beautiful PAVED ROAD. It felt so good to cycle through the Nepali villages, with their lush vegetation, strange script, smells of curry and incense, and beautiful people. It’s not as if the Chinese are exactly ugly, but leaving China after so long, the most striking thing is how beautiful everyone is. I think the Chinese ladies can be either girlishly cute, or maybe beautiful in a thin, frigid, icy, ethereal way, but the Nepali women are just totally HOT. They have long, wavy black hair and wear elegant saris. They also have the advantage of constantly hawking up massive loogies onto the street, screaming incessantly, and laying around with their limbs splayed in all directions. The Nepali men often have a sort of dark, handsome, strong-jawed Mediterranean look.
Anyways, after a few hours of soaring down hill on a beautiful sealed road, the rest of the trip was far from easy. The road climbed two massive hills, one of which seemed longer than any of the Tibetan high passes. The sun was broiling hot, and my dirty clothes were soaked with sweat. Once again, many times I was totally drained of the will to continue, but pushed on. At last I reached the top of the hill. I could hardly walk over to buy some water. In the late afternoon, I reached a few bigger towns, then Katmandu at last, where I found a hotel and had my first shower since Shigatse, ten days of cycling ago. I emailed my parents and sister, and ate a pizza. The Nepalis are so unlike the Chinese it is funny. They all seem to speak at least fairly decent English, even children and veggie sellers on the street. They are also very polite, even servile, carrying my bags and asking if my food is good and so on.

Street scene in Katmandu.

This morning I packed up my bike for the last time and set out to find the tourist ghetto neighborhood called Thamel. After about an hour of aimless cycling, I happened across it. I have no guidebook to the city. I found a very nice hotel, sold my sleeping bag and mat, changed my wad of Yuan into Rupees, and visited an English bookstore. My sensations before entering the bookstore are difficult to describe. I confess that tears actually came into my eyes as I stood on the threshold, looking in at the thousands of English books. After so many months and months on end with nothing to read, I felt, upon entering the bookstore, like I was getting out of jail. And it was a most brilliant bookstore too, crammed not only with classics, contemporary fiction, and travel guides, but with thousands of wonderful and obscure books on Buddhism, Hinduism, Tantra, Vajrayoginis, Chinnemasta, Sadhus, Indology and other topics of especial delight to me. I was so happy I felt like I had somehow brought into reality a wonderful dream. Actually, several times today I had the strong impression that I had just gotten out of jail, not only when looking at the beautiful girls and English books, but when eating actual bread and cheese, or just walking around and knowing I could talk with almost anyone.

September 20th, 2005
This day I spent a lot of time mailing a package to my parents. The Nepali post office was by far the most inefficient, overstaffed, corrupt, obstructionist and expensive third world postal service I’ve ever dealt with. The whole project took an incredible four hours and cost 60 USD. I had to pay some guy 12 USD just to look at the thing and smell it many times. He wanted me to get some sort of archeological certificate for it, but finally relented. Then I had to pay more for a trio of obese, senile cretins to sew by hand some sort of cloth cover for the package and seal it with wax. It cost me so much I had to leave the Post Office and go change money. Then I had to leave the Office once again to obtain a photocopy of my passport, and come back. I could really tell that all of the Post Office employees were really delighted each time they came up with another expensive, time wasting fee, form, or arbitrary requirement. Like they made a clever move in a chess game to defeat me. I had intended to mail another package, but after the third hour in the PO, I decided against it. Can the Indian Postal Service be any more horrific?

After my second 40 of Old English, it was time for a foot massage.

September 22nd, 2005 Katmandu
    This day I found a new hotel on a small square South of Thamel. It seems to have a good balance of the grunge and squalor that I adore, with reasonable functionality. Then I popped over to the Indian Embassy to try and get a visa. I waited in line with a bunch of other foreigners for about an hour and a half, paid 300 rupees, and was told to come back in one week. So, I’ve got to stay in Katmandu for a week now, waiting for the visa. Standing in that long, unmoving line was so frustrating. A comparison came to mind- people waiting in line are like an oil well on fire. All this potential energy, creativity, action, growth and love just going to total waste, standing there letting off the black fumes of rage and despair. A line of people waiting is like the inversion of a dance. People waiting in line are paying homage to the destructive idiocy that their own systems create. Still, lines are better than the surging masses that form in barbaric lands. There the bestial, infestational, insectiodal nature of mass humanity is laid bare. Perhaps this extra week in Katmandu will give me a chance to compose further rants against the machine virus and the god of the monotheists.

September 24th, 2005 Katmandu
Notes on Katmandu:
    1.They drive on the left
    2. Even after a week, eating with a knife and fork still feels very awkward and barbaric.
    3. A huge tourist infrastructure, empty because of the civil war here.
    4. Buddhists and Hindus living together.
    5. Everyone calls me Sir- “Hashish, Sir? Opium, Sir?”
    6. Beer is very expensive- about 1.50 USD, as opposed to 36 cents in China.
    7. The police regularly injure large numbers of protesters and students.
    8. The guys all wear T-shirts with weird English slogans like “No money, no car, no job, no date” or “Sorry”
    9. Everyone speaks at least a little English.
    10. Round numbers are considered unlucky, so everything costs like 101, 104, 202 Rupees.
    11. I find it almost impossible to remember my dreams here, for the first time in years.
    12. Shopkeepers are constantly throwing water in front of their shops.

    According to my observations, there are two types of country on this Earth. In the first type (A), people feel compelled to make some sort of comment about my facial hair, and there is never enough change around when you buy things. In the second type (B), nobody mentions my beard and there is always enough change. Nepal and Egypt are type A countries. China, Turkey, and the USA are type B countries. These distinctions are rigid, and usually become manifest within a few hours of passing through immigration. Of course, this analysis also leaves open the possibility of two further types of country, C and D, in which people comment on my beard and there is plenty of small change, or in which there is no small change and everyone ignores my beard. If these types of country exist, I have yet to discover them. I am led to expect that all 371 of the earth’s nations can be cleanly divided into category A or B.

nagas

September 25th, 2005 Katmandu
    Three more days of waiting around for my Indian visa. I spent most of today exploring the little clogged backstreets of Katmandu. I was searching for a picture of Nagas or serpentine water spirits. I’ve noticed that most of the entranceways of Nepali houses are guarded by such images. They often have a bit of straw stuck on with mud. Sometimes the Nagas are shown rising out of the water, twisted in a knot. Scorpions and sow bugs are depicted on the periphery. Despite hours of exploration, I could not find these magical images on sale anywhere, although I did notice them posted up everywhere. Perhaps only special priests can dispense them or something. I did find, however, a special shop for the garish, brightly colored Hindu devotional posters that I love so much. There is something at once very striking, kitschy, and numerous about them. The proprietor pulled up a stool for me, and I settled down to searching through the big stacks of images. These lovely posters are hard to find and expensive in the states, and here I was buried in a sea of them selling for 10-30 rupees each, a few cents. I ended up buying about 20 of them. I’m a sucker for buying posters while traveling, not only because they are cheap and amazing, but because once you’ve bought one, getting one or thirty more doesn’t take up any more space in your luggage. Just add to the roll. You might as well binge on them.

September 29th, 2005 Katmandu Age 28
    This day I celebrated my own nativity with a pleasant wait in line at the Indian Embassy. Conditions had not improved since my previous visit. Grotesque incompetence and inefficiency flourished. I met one Korean guy who waited there for two hours yesterday in vain. The window shut right before he reached it. Today his paper was rejected because it had a small tear in it. Another was dismissed, after an interminable wait, because he filled out a form in blue, rather than black ink. A third’s passport photo was the wrong size. Hopefully, my $60 visa will be ready today in the afternoon. Tomorrow I can go to Lumbini, birthplace of the Buddha, then to mighty India.
    It’s been pleasant waiting around Katmandu. Even the touts, rickshaw wallahs, and hashish vendors aren’t too annoying. There are some weird things like I find it very difficult to breathe here for some reason. I can’t seem to sleep for more than two hours at a time. I can’t remember my dreams.

September 30th, Bhairawa Nepal
    This day I traveled to the scudzy Nepali border town with India. Nepali busses are quite curious contraptions, very nepali collage

different from normal Chinese or American ones. They are made by TATA and have a separate weird compartment for the driver, with his own little hatch. The windshield is divided, like on old cars from the 30’s and 40’s. The whole thing is covered with naïve paintings of birds, nature scenes, and Hindu deities. Also innumerable doodads, gimcracks, and Sai Baba photos. Weird English phrases are also painted on the sides, such as “Horn Please” “Blow Horn” “Push Horn” “See You” “Good Luck” “God Help Me” “I Love Avril Lavigne” etc….
Staying in Nepal, I definitely miss the breakneck speed of the Chinese mind. Everyone here is so slow, obsequious, hesitant and polite. I often find myself saying “Yes or No?!” in a vain attempt to replicate the essential Chinese Phrase “Yaobuyao!?” (Want, not want?) I think that for each language, there are a few phrases that really get at the core of the cultural mentality. The “Yaobuyao!” pronounced as a sharp bark, gets right to the core of China, and the matter at hand. In China, people will sometimes come right up to you on the street, brandishing some doodad, and yell “Yaobuyao!” before you’ve even had a chance to look at it. But here in Nepal, all my attempts at the yesorno are always met with defeat. I only get “Namaste Sir! Please sit down!” Nepalis are always trying to get me to sit down before anything else can happen. I don’t want to sit down. I want to deal with the situation as soon as possible and then leave. At least people here are willing to listen to me try to explain something, instead of running away from the scary foreigner as the Chinese do.

Like many of its brethren, this Nepali banknote was so worn down as to be nearly illegible.

Being out of China has really helped me to appreciate and deplore the good and bad aspects of the Chinese world. By far the best thing about not being in China is not having to listen to Chinese music. Almost everyday I am thankful for that mercy. Sometimes I’ll randomly remember a bit of one of those five absolutely execrable songs they play over and over again at top volume, and I feel a great joy welling up in me, knowing I’ll never have to hear it again. It’s like being cured of a horrific, debilitating disease. It’s also wonderful being in a place where people treat foreigners like normal human beings. The Chinese still have a big complex about foreigners. It’s like they think that we are rare, special animals that can only survive in unique conditions. What I found especially annoying was how they would refuse to even try and understand what I was saying, or what I wanted. Even ones who had studied English for years would collapse in blushing embarrassment after only saying “Hello.” So many times I felt like saying “So, I’m from a different ethnicity and culture from you. What’s the big deal? It’s not like I’m a mollusk.” Or how foreigners can only stay at certain hotels, as if we’d drop dead if we strayed into a Chinese hotel. Despite these things, I must say that I really love the Chinese people in general. I love how they are so direct, honest and straightforward. The can take care of money without groveling and grubbing after every last cent. In comparison to the Chinese directness, the politeness of other cultures just seems like tedious, obstructionist, and meaningless empty ritual. Like waiters hovering about. But despite my great love of the Chinese people, I would have to say that their entire culture is outweighed by Appetite for Destruction alone.

October Journal

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