Privileged White Folk Don't Have to Spill Blood for God

The last entry was rushed a bit, if you couldn't tell, so let me fill in a minor point.

We arrived at the embassy of India at 1:00 in the morning, where we were the fifth and sixth people in line to drop off form #1 to acquire a visa. Around 2:30, there were close to fifteen, one of whom was an obnoxious German man who wears a beret and a blanket over his shoulders like one would don a shawl. He immediately begins bitching and moaning about every detail of "the list," which is now in the charge of the Chinese man in spot number 1. "It's too small." "There are people on it who aren't here right now." "Why is he so anxious to get it back after I put my name on it?" At one point, I considered calling him the List Nazi, but thought better of it out of respect for the most probable of his family heritage (if I ever run for president, please omit this line from any press documents).

Anyhow, he eventually left everyone to sleep on their staked out section of icy concrete slab; only to open the mic to the new moaners arriving every few minutes. In fact, by 7:00 there were over 70 or 80 (we stopped counting, really, as they'd no chance in Lucifer's abode of getting their forms in at that point) people in line - and every last one of them seemed incapable to talk (read: bitch, moan) about anything but the visa process at the Indian Embassy. Whine whine whine whine whine whine. The worst of it? The vortex is nearly inescapable - before long, you too are enjoying your cheese desert in Paris. You're one of them.

Talking to Jenny, she brought up a great point - it's something we have in common, so we talk about it. True. Except, of course, that the entire point of traveling is to get so far away from anything with which we have in common we can't even remember what it's like to be around the similar. The Indian Government, it seems, has taken the visa process to a new level by not only robbing travelers/tourists of valuable dollars for absolutely no reason; but by robbing travelers of a week or more of the extraordinary. A week or more of movement.

Determined not to let the sovereign entity of a billion people in South Asia cramp our style, we firmly stomped our feet in its face with the purchase of an airline ticket. Take that, India. We'll see you in a week - on our terms.


First, though, we drop by the US embassy to fetch a letter of "no objection" - "The United States Government has no objection to Michael Lane with passport number...to travel to..." - However, the consular section of said embassy is not at said embassy but at the Yak and Yeti hotel. Wondering at this bizarre turn, we arrive at the hotel to see a small army surrounding it. We're literally waved through just by saying that we're US citizens. Waved through, that is, to the first steel reinfoced door leading to the security point leading to a bullet-proof window where your purpose is verified and you pass through steel-reinforced door number two. Inside lay seven windows (all bullet-proof, of course), six of which we walk by on our right, with perhaps 50 Nepalis waiting in the area on our left. Looking like complete trash after our night on the street, we feel awkward zipping to the front of the line; sitting on our pedastols like over-privileged goons. While our request is processed, the woman at the next-nearest window drills prospective visitors to our homeland. "WHY do you want to go...yes, but WHY?" "How will you AFFORD this?" "But you have no real PLANS!" "Your English needs HELP!" And right there, watching all those Visa denials; seeing the sentiment, "it is very difficult to go to the US" manifest to reality, the revelation is complete: Mike and Jenny, quit your sob story about the line at the Indian Embassy, you little white pricks. Oh boo hoo, you have to wait a few hours to go wander around India. The injustice. Oh the humanity.


Afterwards, we walked out of the modern Sinai and into the airport. After waiting an hour or so, the flight is cancelled. Apparently, Gorkha airlines can't afford the fuel to fly today. So we waste an afternoon back in Kathmandu again while we hold out hope that Gorkha Airlines will sit out on the road with a little cardboard sign to get enough gas for us to fly the subsequent day. No go.

Instead, we jump a bus to Gorkha - back West. Somehow by this point Jenny and I are both sick in our own special ways, and we both feel like crap. Nevertheless, we awake and meander up the nearby mountain to the palace at home on its top. The most eventful part of the fortress must have been the orange salesman outside, from whom we devoured a total of 15 oranges almost all at once. Moreover, it was during this orange extravaganza that we met a group of Nepali students out to Gorkha for the day. They stuffed me full of Daal Baat down below, while Jenny looked on in ill agony. Afterwards, they solicited relationship advice a-la-third grade "see that girl over there, I like her. NO don't tell her" despite their being our peers.

Soon after we left them, we ran into Sobin and Sobin, and spent the afternoon with them as Sobin #1 was an, of course, English student nearby anxious to talk of any and everything - such as how Maoists are a miserable people, and how he doesn't really blame the Royal System either and he thinks the political parties need to get out of the way, anyhow (they are pretty terrible, too, from what I hear). Eventually, we duck away for respite and rest, but only to return an hour later so they can cook us dinner - what else but Daal Baat? Interesting about Sobin is his versatility in English - he refuses to relegate himself to tour guide English as so many others do, and instead forces us into English games in which he's the talk show host and we the participants. Bizarre though it was, I do believe it was beneficial to him.

We bang on the gate at our hotel as we are past the curfew of 8:00 imposed on this town in the heart of Maoist influences, and pass out. In the a.m., we plan to hike to Manakamana - about six hours away walking. On the bus to the "trailhead," however, we find that we have somehow swapped our illnesses and switch gears to a different trailhead that only takes two hours. When we arrive there, our illnesses are enough to persuade us away from that option as well and toward the Gondola. Read that one more time. Yup, you got it. Gondola. Like Vail, Aspen, Beaver Creek...such is Manakamana, but sans snow.

In fact, this ancient holy pilgrimage site is now similar to Disneyland. One emerges from his steel cage 3 kilometers and 1000 vertical meters away from his beginning, and into a land where a temple on a postcard can be purchased at every turn. A land where one can have his picture emblazened on a dinner plate. Where he can toss a beachball and buy a keychain. He can eat ice cream and drink beer. And, of course, he can sacrifice a goat to the God Manakamana so that she might fulfill his wishes. (No, the 130 ruppee fee to lug a goat up the Gondola is not a joke)

In fact, this morning we witnessed hundreds of followers with offerings in tow - and we witnessed their final destination. Head bent back, the screaming "baaaaaaa"s abruptly end with a swift fall of the Khukuri as the blood spurts toward the drain. The head is placed in front of the shrine with flowers atop it, then moved to a platter to transport it to the temple - the home of Manakamana herself. Just how large the pile of goat-heads inside could be we may never know - "Hindus Only allowed to enter."

Now, then, what should one do after one sacrifices one's goat to one of one's many Gods? Why not take a photograph alongside the only white people in sight. But who will start it all off? How about the thirty middle school students with their principle. That's right, they hounded us, and then the rotations began. Often without so much as a word exchanged, locals would stand next to us while their friends captured this once-in-a-lifetime experience on film. Just when we thought we were off the hook, another would come. Some would leave email addresses, some would take ours, most would act as though we were old friends. Mostly, though, they just wanted pictures along white folk. We realized here that being famous is bunk, and that Eminem's lyrics are wholly justified.

While hundreds of people piled up in line during the 2 hour intermission (only Vishnu knows what Manakamana could be doing in the temple for all that time), we bought a keychain and hopped back in the Gondola and touched on the impermanence of life while watching goats zip by unknowingly toward their deaths. -- Is it better to kill a goat for your stomach or your God? Is there really any difference? Perhaps only one thing was decided for sure - such a temple would suffer innumerable protesters were it located in the land of the free.

Then we solidified the impermanence of our time away from the Indian Embassy with a ride atop a bus with a bag of dried yak meat; followed by a taxi ride to the embassy gates, where a sign has been convenitently placed. It reads "please do not line up here early in the morning." The guard seemed to shrug off the very idea of a line as if to say, "that's for stupid white boys." Instead, he insinuated that we should show up at 9:30 and push our way through the masses in true Indian style. So here we go...