Quaking Foundations

Our first full day in the area, we awoke and walked. Just walked.

Walked, that is, up the hill through the rubble, with an occasional unstable yet usable building filled with people eating or taking their morning tea. Entering the center of town as US ARMY men drive their trucks full of rubble past us, we find utter destruction to put the rest to shame. Buildings toppled on top of one another, typically with a man on top, sledgehammer in hand, pounding away at the remains of the building; which seems as though it's ready to topple inward taking him with it. Several people invite us for tea, but we wait to accept until a man with acceptable English skills emerges.

He explains, among other things, that most of the tents within the city are of people from surrounding villages. The locals from Muzaffarabad proper, he claims, have mostly left for safer havens. That is to say, those within the city are now squatting - refusing to return to their homes in valleys surrounding as the comfort provided by UN rations and support is too good to give up. Eventually, he parts ways from us to go claim his losses at some office up the street.

We see the destination of those trucks flaunting faded American Flag decals - the edge of the road. As if they've adopted the local method of trash disposal, they're simply pouring pieces of destructed buildings down a hill toward the river. Between dumps, women and children scour the rubbish to pull old metal supports out. Presumably, the piles they accumulate will be sold as scrap. They must work quickly, though, as before too long the children on watch up top yell to take cover. They flee for the sides of the ravine, just before more potentially deadly debris flies freely downward.

We meet Wazir and walk together toward the mountain that lost most of its previous form in landslides on October 8. Underneath the newly white debris covering the old brown of nature's facade, lay 100 or more people. Nearby, Wazir's house is now flat save one section teetering precariously on now diagonal supports. He shows us the bed where his uncle ceased to physically be. The bed from which he dug on that morning...that morning that means so much more here than in in the technology that flings information thousands of miles away to potential sympathizers and donors.

He demands that we come into his family's tent and join him for a meal, courtesy, of course, of Kofi Annan. Reluctant to accept the offer to take his much needed provisions, we finally give in only because to provide meals without companionship and interaction, is to provide a lonely existence. We could feel his joy beaming just from our presence there, so we partook in lentils and rice from our seats on slightly damaged couches in the more than sufficient tent. The family's faces - women who couldn't speak our language nor we theirs, yet whose joy was unprecedented - were justification enough.

We walked past his grandmother's grave, and I photographed his grandfather at its side. We walked by the ruins and up to the hill. We peered over the edge of the lookout, where down below a river shrugged off its newest diversion - and where a new lake could have been beautiful though inconvenient had the military not been overzealous in blasting nature back to the status quo. We stood there as he spoke broken Kashmiri English amidst the calming gush of the Neelum in the distance.

As he spoke, I realized that life here is no different than anywhere else. He spoke, "wars. always wars, in 1972 there was East Pakistan. And Kashmir. And 1999 again. Always war, but now it's nature and we always kill eachother but now nature does it too." Death came en masse and created the reaction. But death always comes, eventually, anyway. So now, three months later as we arrive with a subconscious expectation of sorrow, grief, agony; we find mostly life continuing on steadfastly. Even as he points to his family's homes fallen down the mountains, and speaks of the lost loved ones; even as his widowed aunt cooks rice one can feel that despite the hardships and hurdles, they continue to look ahead and not behind. As Wazir lights up when he says our names in that quirky accented way, and as he shows more concern for Jenny's upset stomach than for his own plight, we know that the sorrow we thought we'd see may linger, but it certainly does not dominate. Tonight, again, as a professor of Physics at the University that no longer exists looks at a photograph of the Internet cafe worker's niece, who also no longer physically exists; he simply smiles genuinely and says, "we all have our stories here." Quickly, he moves forward - to invite me to meet with him tomorrow night just to talk, and probably not about the tragedy.

He, as so many others here, do not understand Jenny and my purpose. They cannot comprehend that I've been a vagabond in Asia for almost seven months now, and just happened upon Azad Jammu and Kashmir. They expect that we're with an NGO or, failing that, we're journalists. Even when they realize that we're mere travelers, they act as though we're their personal saviours just for being. The fear of imposing as tourists of disaster is calmed as the simple act of observing, of coming to see their lives, seems to lift their hearts. In many ways, their responses let us believe that our role of wandering the streets waiting for people desiring company to talk to us are as important as the role of the relief workers providing tents to keep them alive. It may be a hard argument to make even to ourselves that we're accomplishing good simply by being - or rather by being open - but the faces tell otehrwise. Even while Kashmiris accept this fact - while an aid worker pleas that though we cannot find a role to help with, we should stay just to "be with them" - we question and search for a more self-fulfilling role.

And that search today brought me to the "Foreigner Registration Tent" where three soldiers did not speak English, but who hailed a UN vehicle which picked me up. I rode with the doctor direction the WHO's regional operations, who arranged access for me to get into the MASH unit of the US Army to speak with the Colonel in charge. The US guards at the inner gate (after one passes through the outer gate and the reinforced bunkers zigzagging the entryway) expressed awe that I just happened to be in Kashmir as a traveler. The officers who the Colonel sent to meet me were much more intimidating than any Asian soldier I've witnessed, and mostly marveled at the quantity of stamps in my passport before telling me that they're currently scaling operations down - no need for more help (especially completely unskilled help).

I head back to the UNICEF office, where the director of the Children's Protection Program lets me use her phone to find out that I still cannot be of use. I dodge three invites for tea, but do eat delicious Kabab, on the way back to the hotel where Jenny is sleeping off her stomach ills quietly. Later, I accept an invite from an old man across the street to join him for tea in our hotel, whereupon I meet the man in the room next door - Assistan Manager of an organization involved in registering tent camps. Tomorrow, it seems, we are to go along and see if we can't get in the way somehow.

The old man's tea quickly turns to dinner down the street, where he buys us an entire chicken to share. I don't know if it would have been so delicious had it not been a gift, but either way it hit the spot perfectly. As if it weren't enough for a man who lost his home a few months ago, and who now lives in terror that the next quake will get him soon to buy me dinner; he insists on providing a bag of fruit for my "wife" in the hotel. Again, there's no stopping him. Asia, and Kashmir, is the epitome of "giving is better than receiving," and nearly everyone lives up to the creed.

Even as we stagnate in our desire to do more, we are forced to recognize that simply caring enough to come is comforting to those who continue with their lives here. Our selfish desire to do good may not be satisfied, but despite our self-imposed criticisms we have done some good.

Bureacratic Disaster

We moved away from Islamabad/Rawalpindi where nothing seemed to go our way, and yet nothing went terribly wrong either. Islamabad itself is a reminder of how spread out everything is in the West.... in most of these cities 5 million people live on top of one another and with cattle in the streets. In modern Islamabad not nearly so many people occupy much more space. We did have delicious kababs a la afghani while there, though. And saw Good to Great in a bookstore, which is bizarre.

We moved up to Muzaffarabad, which is in the heart of the earthquake area in Azad ("free") Jammu and Kashmir. A completely different world than Kashmir on the other side, due to more than just earthquake destruction, which is magnificent. There are, for instance, no military bunkers and I've yet to see an armed soldier or a section of razor wire. Also, no snow on the ground though it can be seen on the peaks in the distance.

We wandered into the UN HQ today to see if anything at all was needed, and found only a schmorgasborg of terrible organization. For all the colorful maps, there seems to be no real coherence to what every NGO, Government, and UN operation is doing. Moreover, Mohammad indicated that many NGO's are reluctant to share because, well, who knows... In the meantime, he insists that each family has been given AMPLE funds (25000 Rs for tent/shelter construction and 2 Lakh or 200,000 Rs for each deceased family member - which is a TON), and yet many people either misused the money or hoarded it and now claim they have still received nothing. We were handed a list of maybe 50 organizations here, and told that the best route is to contact them all directly - a daunting task to say the least. In the meantime, we were shown where the UN Internet Tent is for our use and advised on how to get a humanitarian relief workers flight out when we are ready to leave - seems like both of these things should have been saved until we actually DO something, but hey. I don't make the rules.

Turns out the HIC (acronyms galore around here USAID UNHCR UNICEF NCR blah blah - this one the UN Humanitarian Information Center) was the most optimistic about our chance to help, indicating that the NCR (Norweigan something or other) is looking for people to be Camp Managers, which is to say, people to oversee camps of 50 tents or more so that when the next storm comes the fiasco that insued due to lack of tent care in the last storm doesn't repeat itself. The bureaucratic fiasco continued, though, as the UNHCR director (?) implied that they don't hire volunteers normally, and that he couldn't so much as direct us to an NGO that does despite his confidence that some are indeed looking for people. He did agree that we should perhaps contact the NCR to ascertain their volunteer situation which he did not know, despite the fact that they are both working on Camp Management. Not exactly a well-run operation (or rather, conglomerate of operations) - exemplified best, perhaps, in the fact that some people have enough blankets to provide for their goats as well as their families, while others lack any. Most people, it seems, have become unnecessarily dependent on the aid - but then I'm just a schmo who rolled into town this afternoon. What do I know?

In the meantime, the utter destruction is astounding though wholly expected. Canvas Boy Scout style tents line the city sporadically - where a house fell, a tent has been erected on the rubble. Whole sections of road have fallen into the river and mountainsides sport newly acquired gaping holes, with the earth poured down to the valley floor. We rode the bus with a man whose wife and children were killed, and whose house is destroyed (ALL of the houses are destroyed - in fact, many look exactly as one would expect a house built of walls made of rock piles would; a tin roof laying on a heap of small boulders. Crushed in seconds and with ease. Others tumbled down the mountainsides, leaving trails of debris.). We drank tea in a cement house that is cracked, though still standing (a stark contrast to the slumping buildings in its vicinity) and where four people lived before October 8th, and where "many many" people live now.
Yet as we walk past the throngs of white SUV's branded UN, we feel the money and support in the region pouring from them. The helicopters overhead buzzing supplies to neighboring villages provide the exclamation points. The supplies and personnel are here (NATO's first major contingent even left the region a few days ago) - the problem here as in Thailand is organization all over again - and our own lack of definite time commitment combined with the bureaucratic nightmare and a feeling that all is essentially cared for that should be cared for will probably lead us out of Kashmir as quickly as I left Khao Lak; and for similar reasons. After all, Bush Sr. has it all in the bag already, right? Uh huh...


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PS It would seem that my fears of the road from Srinagar to Jammu were not sheer unfounded paranoia - a bus careened off of it into a 400 foot ravine killing 53 people, with 15 more critically injured a few days ago. I wish it were just paranoia.

Pakistani Life

Fear is the most paradoxical of emotions.

Fear keeps us from truly challenging ourselves. Fear leaves us forging ahead on the path toward complacency, where we don't question our ideas, push our minds, or truly use our bodies. Fear keeps a beginner on the bunny hill or in a comfortable hotel in Europe. But, of course, it also stops us from jumping the highest cliff when we're not ready. It stops us from losing control of our minds by making us cling to what we know (in fact, I would venture that the hotel in Europe inspires less fear simply because it is familiar - we think we're more in control there). It keeps perceptions and paradigms in boxes...but it keeps minds alive (at least, that is, until the mind faces an inevitable end). That's the paradox of fear.

The key, of course, is to know when to let fear fall to the wayside. The key is to recognize when fear is misplaced, and when fear is interferring with your ability to love to live .

There are Americans in North Vietnam parading as Canadians; there is at least one Nederland hippy in Nepal with a maple leaf stitched to his backpack; and there is a traveler in Lahore who responds to the question "where are you from" with "I don't want to say right now." To say that these people are blind to the world is of course an overstatement of truth. In fact, the elements most precious to behold may be those hidden from our view - the solitary stranger with intense hatred for America may lurk just around the corner, after all. Perhaps all it will take is a statement of truth to the wrong individual and trouble could trot right up and clock us in the head.

But to make oneself up is to let fear dominate the everyday, to cringe behind an idea of false security in this very uncertain world (all of it, that is. Sitting on a coach at home provides the same false fortress). Those who resist the genuine local interaction miss the greatest opportunity to learn - for responses when Europeans proclaim their country cannot be half as enthusiastic. The repeated "very best country" and "oooohhh. Really? America?!" simply do not apply to, say, France. The lesson is not, though, in the competition between liberal socialist Berets and hamburgers and freedom fries; but rather in the reinforcement of the capacity of people on this end of the power balance to know the difference between people, ideas, and countries better than Western humans.

Yassim in Gulmarg: "if I were able, I would take all the Prime Ministers of the world and send them all to hell." He blames not Americans or America or Kashmiris or Pakistanis: he blames bureaucracy. The lesson learned is that people here, more or less, recognize that the loss of human lives is simply another part of politics - after all, that's the experience they've had with it. America has lived, largely, outside of such political imposition (save military deaths). We just deal with annoying ads bombarding us on television every couple of years.

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The onslaught of 18 unnecessary deaths in the western portion of Pakistan due to politics, it should be noted, occurred in tribal areas. Surely this fact has been splattered across the sporadic newsprint in the US of A just as it is routinely printed about areas of Afghanistan. A key point, though, that could be learned by simple literary research is commonly overlooked, I believe (at least, that is, I overlooked it until today).

The area bombed by the perhaps overly ambitious CIA in Bajaur Agency last week is one of the border tribal provinces of the Pashtun people: people with a moral code requiring vengeance for being crossed and thus openly inciting long-running vendettas; often resulting in 'moral' retributional killings. The areas were under control of the British during colonialism, but only in name it would seem. The lack of federal control continues to this day: the maliks, or tribal chiefs, maintain control over their territories while the Political Agent (PA) scrapes a bit of power for the government mostly through subsidy distribution. This translates to this: a few hundred yards from major highways the rule of law is extinguished and the government of Pakistan has no authority whatsoever.

Thus, the statment by the onlooker at the border ceremony that the people in the bombed region are "tribal. Completely different." Is perhaps an understatement. In this country that has no real sense of nation given that its age of 58 makes it a mere infant, there is no connection. Most people appear to feel more kinship to their Indian neighbors than to the Pashtuns within their own walls. Anti-Americanism throughout the nation, after the incident, then, is minor - certain banners reading "Down with America" nothwistanding,

Moreover, any sentiment among the people directly affected is geared at America, but usually through the personality of President Musharraf, whose military junta is less than respected. (In fact, he gains much of his legitimacy by allowing freedom to criticize him in the press, and I believe I have yet to read one positive comment on his behalf.) The people blame America, true, but more than that they blame their government for letting America bully them. Thus, we will continue for now to push fear aside and let truth emanate from our pores to find new reactions to America and to continue to enjoy the unprecedentedly friendly hospitality showered upon us.

Unprecedented hospitality, that is, by a 350 pound wrestler with armed guards all around his compound to protect both him....and his pet lion. This experience requires no analysis, only observation: we see a group of goats on a street corner in the old city, and go to photograph them. The man sitting behind them with his rifle smiles and shows us to the back, where a group of men including an old army colonel are enjoying kasmiri tea. Soon, we are enjoying as well. Soon after this, a man leading a lion on a chain comes out from the back, and chains said lion to a post near us. We drop our jaws in the fashion that has become all too routine, but this time I may have actually tasted my athlete's foot. We pet the lion. Yes. We PET the lion and pose for pictures.

The colonel departs, and the big man wrestler leads us to his room, where we, along with two Sikh men, are force fed lassis until we simply refuse to drink those poured for us. We are then force fed chicken biryani on the insistance that we need to gain weight and become wrestlers. The pictures above the seats on which we sit are of his brother - murdered a few months back the day before his departure to the US. Okay..one analysis: fishy.

We are eventually led back outside, where we witness a musician filming a music video with the lion as a backdrop. The terror on his face when the lion demonstrated mild discontent with his proximity was priceless. Bhai, the big man, insists that I am now his brother in a voice that may as well have been Italian and binding. Jenny is now his sister. If anything goes wrong, we are to call him.

Obviously, we should just call him Mr. Capone. There is no question.... how could there be? He has a pet lion, after all...

We saw the usual sights of Lahore as well - a big tower, a big mosque, etc. But most impressive was Thursday. It is useless to write about music. Music is its own magic. Descriptions like magic, magnificence, stunning, mind-bending, unbelievable, not of this world, and so mesmerizing that it will lift you to a higher force do not do justice to music. That is, LIVE music - music where the beat doesn't push your eardrum but thumps your soul. Where you feel vibrations from your toes to your hairs. Music in a room where to close your eyes is to engulf yourself in another universe without things - without floors, walls, ceilings. Without tiles, paintings, pillars, marble statues. A universe without others. A universe where sound encompasses the AUM...encompasses existence and everything existence can be.

The woman next to me in the mosque's basement cried at the Qawwali chanting as it engulfed her being. The cries for a better world that she heard actually pained her soul until she knew she would lose herself entirely if she didn't stop it. I, on the other hand, heard through the Urdu a call that the world is beautiful. I saw in the faces of people showering their money on those they respect the connection humanity in that marble catacomb of worship the love and beauty. She felt pain and grief, I felt hope and love. In such a way Music is no different than anything else on the planet in that it is a reflection of the self through one's own customized understanding of what he hears. Music, though, heightens choice in the mind - it colors one's personality, beliefs, and emotions bright yellow on the white page of being. Fittingly, then, the music didn't end. Instead, a crucial point understood perhaps by all in the room save the foreign few was reached - perhaps a specific drum was pounded - and as one the crowd jumped to its feet and made its exit. It left sadness and promise and beauty and whatever else it heard emanating through the air as it departed. The initial disappointment that I would miss the final note soon gave way as I emerged from the steps to the masses of the old city. The throngs of people, dirt, pollution, all seemed a little more pure as in my mind the songs went on. After all, I realized, we will all miss the last note...every single time. What exists exists always.

Night proved no different as I donned my new shaliwar kamiz fit for a hobo while a bearded giant in a shaliwar kamiz fit for a maharaja joined his towering white-clad comrade in bringing life to the forefront as they beat Sufi Dhol into their drums for a crowd packed into temple grounds like hajis at mecca. Their hands did not rest for three hours, as dancers shook their heads and felt their hearts (and most, admittedly, touched the sky in other ways as well). Gonga, who was born deaf, spins as he plays, sending the drum hanging from his neck flying centripedally skyward as he continues the rhythym uninterruped. The music cannot be felt through my words, but the mere fact that it existed (and exists) should comfort even the furthest observer. The mystical experience changed me...and a little thing like fear of an all-male crowd of hundreds of Pakistanis huddled around a courtyard at two in the morning proliferately drugging themselves to new highs would have kept it from me. Of course, in this even I might have quivered were it not for local support - and to Malik I am endlessly indebted.

Now we sit in Rawalpindi - the old city which is now virtually connected to the new capital of Islamabad, built in the late 20th century. We already met our first warm welcome from an autoparts trader from Gilgit, up north. In the next few days we might encounter some good, we might encounter some bad...who knows? But then, that's the point...isn't it?

DOWN WITH AMERICA and other news

Very intrigued and mildly excited in a sort of sadistic way, I suppose, we decided to jump a taxi northwards to Uri - the center of destruction on the Indian side of the Line of Control from the earthquake a few short months back. Feeling confident as any manner by the people in Srinagar that there still exists the dire situation we imagine (and that we imagine the West still imagines), we dispell feelings that we might be intruding in the name of disaster tourism. We go in the name of knowledge, instead: this is one of the biggest natural disasters in recent history. In fact, let's review for a moment:

Hurricane Katrina: less than 2000 deaths.
Kashmir Earthquake: more than 70,000 deaths.

Now go back and see how long each one lasts on the front pages of the NY Times... This either says a lot about the value placed on lives and fear v. acceptance of death in different cultures; or a lot about which lives the NY Times values.

Any way you look at it, we reached the unexpected military checkpoint a few kilometers short of town and were told that we had no permission, so we had no access to this area at the center of one of the longest raging international conflicts on the modern planet. So we turned back - but not before yet another observation that we are stunned that the nearby town, constructed completely of teetering bricks, did not crash entirely to the ground as well. Many buildings in Kashmir seem like they couldn't withstand a calm breeze.

The trip back to Jammu could well have been the most terrifying drive of my life. Passing on curves over thousand foot ravines without guardrails on a two-lane road is not a good idea. We seemed to be the only ones of the ten passangers that realized this. Quite literally, I almost stopped the driver to get out and walk. We did, however, arrive - whereupon we drank beers in celebration of still being alive, not being freezing, and as a final kiss goodbye to booze for a few months, at least.

Night train to Amritsar lands us in the quiet streets of India which at this hour still provide stark contrast to the Islamic culture of Kashmir. We settle in at the free Pilgrim's quarters at the Golden Temple, the holiest site of the Sikh religion, to sleep a few hours.

The Denver Rescue Mission would cringe at the thought of feeding 30,000 mouths from one mess hall every day, while the Golden Temple doesn't flinch. Rich poor middle alike enjoy take a seat on the floor as the "lunchman" pours rations into each plate. Eat as much as you like, 24 hours a day, not a single question asked. Then go retire in your free room.

The calm, just as in Bodhgaya and all the rest, that overtakes places of worship (with the exception, perhaps, of anything Hindi) again rules the day, and we revel in the magnificence of the 24 hour chanting of the Guru Garant, the Sikh holy book, and the union of humanity in this place. An aboslutely wonderful experience, to which these words have not done justice.

We then head to Attari, grab one last Aloo Paratha on the street as this is the first opportunity to eat this Punjabi food in Punjab (and this time it comes with maybe a literal half cup of butter and the option for more), and jump the border to Pakistan; where we are greeted only with smiling faces and warm hospitality.

A few hours later, we witness the stunning closing of the border. Hundreds of spectators from both countries line their prospective benches to witness a truly amazing spectacle. On a continent where the average height is five foot four inches, the Pakistani Military has managed to find literal giants topping out, maybe, at seven feet to don the fanned hats and stomp their feet in a display of near aggression and sure agitation at their Indian counterparts. Moustaches flail, guns are twisted and turned, and patriotic songs are blasted as the crowd chants and tensions between two sworn enemies are displayed in an intermingling of ceremonial necessity. At the end, the flags are drawn and the gates slammed shut - nothing will pass through the Wagah border until morning. There is no better welcome to Pakistan.

In the meantime, we become again cautious at the word "American," only to find students smiles grow wide, thumbs put up, and the now common phrase "the BEST country" repeatedly uttered. Usama, a businessman, and I laugh at the similarity of his name to that other guy probably in this country as he explains that the tribal areas hit by US bombs the day before only resemble the rest of Pakistan in the sense that a line has been drawn around them. He does, however, express that people are less than enthusiastic that the region is slowly being taken over by force. A justifiable point, it seems, as the scroll at the bottom of the newscast last night was filled with McCain wanting Iran on the Security Council Agenda, Iraqi bombings, and Afghan violence.

We hop a bus with some students from Peshawar who insist on paying our fare. They then direct us to a Rickshaw, where we have a conversation on destination and are soon surrounded by the better part of 20 onlookers offering their help and advice - even after they know we are from the "God of Power," America. We take off in our capsule, feeling like royalty and maveling once again at the beauty of Urdu Script (Urdu is the same, for all intentions, as spoken Hindi. But in a bizzarre twist of linguistic evolution, Hindi is written in Sanskrit letters, while Urdu has taken Arabic.).

Soon, we are completely lost. All it takes to summons help, though, is to flap open the rickshaw side and show our face. A man runs over, asks for the hotel phone number, calls it on his cell phone, discusses the situation with us, hops on his motorcycles, and escorts our Richshaw right up to the door of the Regal Internet Inn. This perfect stranger almost insists on paying for our Rickshaw ride, but we deny him the opportunity and simply thank him profusely instead.

Upstairs, there are no available bed, so we sit on the roof and eat and the owner laughs at all the other Americans that have come through and had unwarranted fear for their safety before we hop in his car to sleep at his house - a favor offered because we are "friends" of the employee at the hotel at the border where we spent about an hour in the afternoon. After joking a while with him and his son, some anti-american protests on TV, and some more home-cooked excellency, sleep comes with ease.

Today's headline on the Pakistani Newspaper, "The News," is "DOWN WITH AMERICA." In fact, the entire newspaper is unsurprisingly filled with articles and opinions at how to stop the United States from bombing the world without consequece. Justified, I think. But already the quest to come to Pakistan to re-analyze previous assumptions of the place is paying off. At home, if someone were to ask "what happened in Pakistan today?" I would have had to answer, "The US bombed it" as that would be all the information I had. However, from my seat within this recepient of aggression, I can say that in Pakistan today people expressed sheer joy at the mention that I am an American. People showed me hospitality I would never expect to receive in the USA. People in Pakistan today cooked me a delicious Paratha for breakfast. In Pakistan today tea was phenomenal. In Pakistan today my clothes got cleaned for the first time in perhaps a month.

And in Pakistan today, I am filled with joy at the beauty of the world. I am filled with joy just for being alive.

Customized Research

To put one's experiences into photos or films or words is to alter the most basic essence of reality. Or, if you prefer, to create a new reality which, if believed, is equally genuine. When one photographs, he chooses the exact portion of detail, the quantity of light, the range of subject to portray. The rest, he discards. When he films he edits the uninteresting, the banal. When he writes he makes words jitterbug in just a way that could come only from his particular understanding of that moment combined with a verbal adaptation of the aforementioned editing. Thus, to explain is to create anew through destruction of old.

Everything from the sun's position in the sky to the particular position of the muscles in his face to what his mindset was at that instant (and every instant preceding the birth of that very moment) to the beliefs he holds or has held interfere with an experience. So when I saw Teton Gravity Research's production about skiing in Gulmarg I could not shake the onslaught of annoyance and even anger that they failed to make steps toward altering misperceptions of the region that they themselves held prior to their trip. It is possible to perceive that their ideas evolved from fear of the "guns guns guns. I've never seen so many guns." to one of cultural understanding; yet without a true understanding of the place in question, the viewer would surely miss the point amidst all the jibbing. But then, maybe they were just as correct in their conclusions and portrayals as I.

The place in question: KASHMIR.

On our first day in the state of Jammu and Kashmir we played cricket with the Jammu and Kashmir police force. We ate lunch with them. We ate deserts in a bizarre revolving restaurant overlooking the city of Jammu. We met a Sikh man who explained a bit of his religion to us. We drank a bottle of whisky in the presence of a liquor store owner/Bombay advertising producer who doesn't drink due to alcoholism. We repeatedly mumbled our nationality to those who asked, prepared for openly hostile responses, only to find sheer joy and welcome - and the occasional question of why more Americans don't come through here.

Moving up to Srinagar, we toured the old city and were treated as kings in a mosque where we were poured tea, given bread, and warmly embraced. We saw beautiful lakes (sewage notwithstanding) and met amazing people. We walked the snow-covered streets without fear - either due to or despite the overabundance of bunkers, rifles, and armored cars lining the streets and highways as though ready for war (a stark contrast to Nepal's lackluster roadblocks - these guys actually have bullets in their guns). We relaxed in our houseboat, under the sheets with hot water bottles for warmth.

In Gulmarg, we found an absolutely absurd scene. A government-operated Gondola at a cost of 110 million ruppees has been added to this 77 year remnant of colonial days to open access to 4,000 vertical feet of ridable terrain in a nation where I'd venture not more than four people actually ski. I rented Seth Pistols that, among other gear, had been left by previous visitors as a donation to the Kashmir Alpine Ski Shop in a gesture of ski resort charity. I rode fresh tracks for two days, the second solo as Jenny's knee wasn't exactly up to the challenge.

We sat with 11 other foreigners at a party hosted by Yassim in the cottage where we were staying, while marveling that this hodgepodge group of ski bums and AK heli guides is here to teach 25 "ski patrollers" clad in various technicolor coats how to do a job that would require maybe 10 patrollers, tops (Indian Government run operation, remember). Not altogether ironically, it seems to us that the headman of this training "project" (which may or may not gain all of its legitimacy from the connotation of importance implied by the word "project" and other buzz words variously implemented) is an Israeli ski bum who lives in Whistler and might gain most of his influence via the color of his skin.

Throughout our time sliding down the white stuff, the overall ridiculousness of the place, the sheer irrationality of its existence and operation could not dispell the excitement instigated by the sentence: "We're skiing in Kashmir."

Likewise, the excitement of the sentence, "We've hitched a ride with the Kashmiri Army and are now handing out meal provisions to the troops stationed along the Gulmarg Highway," gains its romance from preconceptions....and maybe a little from the driver's gun, probably loaded, laid on the console such that it pointed directly at the soldier in the back's head; which he didn't seem to mind.

So as I sat there with the conglomerate of skiers turned charity-workers for a questionable cause, I allowed my mildly intoxicated mind to analyze the ignorance of sheltered white Jackson Hole Americans focused on nothing but white bliss and airborne adrenaline. Strikingly, I couldn't shake the fact that the fear I shared with them of this place while I sat in my sheltered white Jackson Hole American house last year still lingers in me. If only as the residue of the adventure danger mystery desire that a mention of my presence here will surely inspire in those still at home, the myth is still alive. The remnants of the misconceptions from the days joking ironically about walking through the streets here with an American flag T-shirt and an I Love Pakistan banner in hand live on even as I walk by stores here selling US flag paraphenalia and as I receive nothing but smiles, enthusiasm, and excitement at the mention that I am and American. The name Kashmir embodies the myth. It has become something entirely separate from the place. The ideas at home that are presented in media, myths, and the mind's selective memory.

So I conclude that my occasional homesickness, the random longing for a return to the comfortable, is unwarranted. For if I returned to ski Once, Twice or all the rest for another three months, I would still be living in ignorance of Kashmir. Of Hinduism. Of people and places that I now know. Movement, though draining at times, is beneficial.

But then, just as the muscles in my face determine experience of place, so too does time. My mind's conclusions at my experiences here may be flawed due to the continuum. Maybe the armada out our hotel door is more indicative of the sub-surface reality of Srinagar. Maybe if the building across the road, still barely standing after its semi-destruction in the 1991 "conflict," could play its story for me on the decayed or destroyed movie screens inside, my conclusions of misplaced fear would be different.

Either way, the thoughts provoked not in Jackson, Denver, or Kashmir, but in Rishikesh before that train ride live on - life is a risk. Some say that I may choose to take a few more than others, and they may have a point. I am willing to travel to Kashmir and risk the one in a million chance that I'll be in that random suicide attack in order to experience the world more genuinely. I'd much rather be here than on a train in London or in a dark alley in New York. So here I am, learning...

Existence. Aaaauuuuuuuummmmmmm.

As I read back through my writings from solo traveling, I find clues of the parts missing from my current lifestyle. Research on time, space, being is still here of course, but not as unavoidable as in, say, Vietnam. Of late, there have been no Hungs randomly buying me cups of xeo and squid jerky. There have been no solo adventures into the Himalaya well past dark. No search parties have been sent of late - primarily because there are so damn many people in this country, so someone knows where I am at all times; but that's not the point. There is not a religion to get deeper and deeper into in India, only a philosophy that encompasses every other philosophy on the planet. Only a system of belief designed to encapsulate every system of belief. That is to say, every time we reach a new destination we find not new aspects of one religion, but an entirely new religion bearing the same name.

This is a decent metaphor for this country - Bharat. India. 22 some odd different languages yet 2 official languages (one of them English). 4 castes historically wearing straightjackets of societal roles. Kali worshippers killing goats. Krishna worshippers loving life. Allah worshippers eating cows. And yet one simple thing unites them in their nationhood - their nation-statehood. India. Bharat. Gandhi, largely, convinced them all that they are the same. That people are the same. That religions are all fallacious on some levels, and based on pure truth on some level; and that all of them must unite as one whole truth. That India should exist.

Thus, while Laos and Thailand are quick to point out the minute differences in their dialects; and while Vietnam and Cambodia bicker about whose communism is best, Gujaratis and Bengalis both pride themselves as Indians. (For the moment please ignore the partition of India and the Pakistani wars. Also the creation of Bangladesh from East Pakistan. Thank you.)

But back to the point - India boggles the mind at every corner, challenges ideas of existence at every corner, but does not provide the constant feeling of enrichment as prior experiences have. Or, perhaps, my mind has simply chosen the benefits of the past to highlight while suppressing freezing cold miserableness in, say, Dalat that provided the buffer between revelries. Which is to say that now there is very little discomfort - the bus rides are still long, the train rides obnoxious; but there is always one person with which to share the inteminable, thus making them far less interminable. Even when we are at each other's throats, at least we're there together.

Somebody whose name or essence I cannot remember said that the traveler's job is to have a miserable time, for if one emerges from journeys with only flowers and sunshine and rainbows and the occasional leprechaun, what fun is there? What challenge? So yes, on some level I am saying that I miss the utter discomfort, the genuine terribleness of traveling alone through Pyay, Burma.

Then again, this isn't all peaches... Walking through Bharat is to walk with one foot in cow dung and the other in Italian leather freshly polished by the shoe wallah prowling the train station. We left Gujarat with a pure mindset of bliss. A recuperated sense of peace. An existence ready to take on the next existence with a new level of acceptance and calm.

Delhi sucks. Delhi absolutely sucks. I didn't quite realize just how many people 14 million is until I sat on the steps at the Jama Masjid and watched thousands pour through the narrow alleyways of the old city. I didn't realize how quickly delicious Chicken Korma (and BEEF in the muslim quarter) could move from the best thing in the universe to something requiring way too much work to get. Dodging the rickshaws to duck into the absurdly tiny restaurants and eating the sometimes cold food, however delicious, lost its novelty quickly. Maybe I've just been in Asia too long, but the discomfort this time was unwelcome; no matter how nostalgic I occasionally get about past endeavors.

So after a journey across the city in autorickshaws in an attempt to get to the Museum of Toilets (uh huh), we gave up and just rode another stupid rickshaw until we somehow stumbled back into Connaught Place - the usually grassy center of town that is now brown and covered in construction equipment for the next phase of subway construction...that is, when it's visible through the smog that the government claims is fog. We jumped on the subway to end our day.

Our hotel refused to hold our bags until our train left, so we walked around the old city to find another hotel that would. Finally, we are free to go to the largest Mosque in India, where Jenny's shoes are promptly stolen (no shoes in holy places). She gets flip flops while I hang out with a Kashmiri who reignites some of my faith in humanity. We head to the Rajghat, where Gandhi was cremated. Finding it as disappointingly uninspiring as his Ashram in Ahmedabad, we sit on the first grass we've seen since Calcutta before heading to Rishikesh for New Years.

Rishikesh is a pilgrimage site on the banks of the Ganges. Being holy, all food is vegetarian and alcohol is prohibited. Bars don't exist. Restaurants close around nine. A Delhi-ite we met here yesterday put it well: "We came here to celebrate New Years. Now we are thinking maybe stupid." We played some short-lived drinking games with Coca Cola in our room before the cold got to us and we just went to sleep. Apparently it turned to 2006 without us, anyway.

Today . After catching up with a couple that I met in the bus station in Bangkok, we headed to the Yoga Ashram recommended to me by the Israelis I met in Myanmar for the second day of Yoga practice. Finally we got a little insight into the purpose of the whole body-twisting business that Westerners have slutted out in the name of fitness: step three in the path to Nirvana. However, I still have trouble with every position other than "headstand." Any enlightenment I achieve may be some time off as yet.

We're excited enough to postpone (or cancel) a trip to the Dalai Lama's crib to discover what we can here. More to come....