Out of the Air

Generally, as airplanes approach my destinations my curiosity gets the best of me and I stick my head to the glass of the window, straining my neck to see what there is to see. I push at the pane; I get frustrated that my view is limited to what I can see through this tiny immobile peep hole. And at night especially I am annoyed that so many cities look the same. I remember gazing down at Bahrain and thinking it looked just the same as Samoa or Bangkok. Small lights forming a conglomerate of one to form a golden puddle - a glowing bruise on the landscape.

But as we lowered to Mumbai the patches of light seemed somewhat different. They crept up onto hillsides in the outskirts of town, and were boxed in by clean lines where white turned to black. But the difference was that if I looked closely, the lights almost seemed to be pulsating; beating to a rhythym both chaotic and harmonic. I felt I could actually see India's heart.

And immediately upon exiting the airport I remembered the India we touched four years ago. And the memories envigorated me - this is the asia that bustles with its own life, even as it is influenced by the West. This is the chaos of taxis actively plowing through red lights forcing trucks to stop; this is the random serenity of a cow in the street in a city of 16 million people.

Two days ago I had felt that my memories of India might have been misleading me. That perhaps in storing my previous experiences for later viewing, my mind had edited them and made them more foreign, more extraordinary. And I thought that perhaps Mumbai would prove the most calm, most familiar of all of India's cities, given its strong British history, given its high (for India) GDP, given everthing.

But Mumbai is not New York, it's not Jakarta, it's not Kuala Lumpur. Mumbai is Mumbai; and the enchanted India that my mind remembered is still very the enchanted India that we see around us. India is still exponentially foreign; and she still ignites the senses as no place else is able. It feels good to be out of Asia, and back to the Subcontinent once again.

Back on the road

Indonesia is good - but it is hard. Travel for us was brutal, as we had apparently become more used to the comforts of home than we would like to admit. We were forced to this realization, though, as we landed in 90 + degree humidity in a massive, dirty, massive, sprawling, massive city. Massive. Jakarta is HUGE and HOT. So we spent some time wondering why we were sitting around sweating so much instead of skiing Berthoud pass or climbing in the desert. But at least this time around we knew the culprit was largely travel shock - and had more to do with our own states of mind than with the actual objective reality of our locale.

We stuck around JK long enough to see one night of the Jazz Festival, which was bizarre - and attended by tens of thosands of people. Tens of thousands of Indonesians lined up to hear Big Band lounge singers from the US. Sinatra songs. Weird. But cool. And by cool I mean HOT. It's HOT.

We went to Jogjakarta in mid-Java as well, which is a better city. Saw some ruins, some dancing, and then back to Jakarta via a horrendous train ride, in which we had the front seat on the train,
and thus had only about 1/2 a foot (no joke) of leg room in front of us, and received none of the breeze from the window, which was behind us. A pretty miserable night overall.

From Jakarta where we flew to Medan in Northern Sumatra. We saw Orangutangs in Bukit Lawang, and then came up to Aceh. We went to Pulau Weh and went Scuba diving for two days, and hung out almost exclusively with a swiss guy and a dutch couple for 3 days eating bannana pancakes - which is pretty much everything I'm against, and yet is exactly what we needed.

We came back to the mainland via ferry (on which at least 10 people asked to take a picture with us - the white foreigners. This is even more odd in Aceh, where many white people have worked for NGO's for the past 5 years) to Banda Aceh, the main town in Aceh, which was completely obliterated by the Tsunami in 2004. There's a massive - MASSIVE - tanker ship sitting 4 kilometers inland in the middle of a neighborhood, which is where the water left it. There are photos in which the entire landscape of the city is crushed, brown buildings except in the very center stands, nearly unscathed, the giant mosque that marks the center of town, which looks virtually untouched. We sat right next to that Mosque , and the entire city has been re-built in the past 5 years. You would never know that there had been a devastating Tsunami at all, unless, of course, you do know.

Aceh is also known for having a government based on Sharia Law (i.e. Koranic Law), and is the most devoutly Islamic part of Indonesia. However, it's very easy to travel in (or, at least, Banda Aceh is) Some women have headscarves, others don't. Most men are wearing short sleeve shirts, and only a few have the traditional caps on. I think I've deduced that businesses close from 12 to 2 for prayer (and probably also because it's hot), but the mosque was far from full. I
can only imagine that people use the time to nap and eat instead. So, while there certainly are mosques everywhere, and while those mosques are certainly much more detailed, elaborate, and ornate than elsewhere in Indonesia, this "sharia state" still seems to be not quite as rigid
as one might think from reading the paper. For instance, though drinking alcohol is officially banned and punishable by 40 lashings, the store right around the corner sells beer. And Aceh, along with the whole country, seems to be very diverse and very welcoming - last week was the Hindi New Year (from what we understand) and it was an official holiday. Our guide at the giant Mosque in Jakarta said that a Christian architect designed the mosque, and quickly said "I
think this is very good." Our Muslim guide at the ruins at Prambanan outside of Jogjakarta showed us the ancient Hindu buildings, and commented that all religions are very good, and hinted that there may be many ways to worship the same God. Again, probably not what you
read in the newspaper. Instead, if you Google Aceh right now I imagine you'll come up with mentions of sharia, extremism, conflict, or even terrorism.

Overall, though, I don't feel we got to know much of any true depth about Indonesia. Almost nobody spoke English well enough to get beyond "what's your name" or "can I take a picture with you", and the culture doesn't seem particularly unique from our outsider perspective. There are very few, if any, unique customs that we came across; the food is basically rice plus whatever else is around (chicken, egg, fish, tofu) (though the peanut sauce they put on gado
gado (salad) and sate (meat skewers) is delicious, if sometimes overwhelming); and the architecture rarely strays from the average cement block buildings one would see in the tropical world around the globe (save for the mosques, which on Java and around Medan generally
had a two-tiered oriental style roof; and which in Aceh have various styles from arabesque, to Arabian, to Indian, to (near as I can tell) uniquely Aceh-ian).

Perhaps most of what we learned in Indonesia had more to do with what Indonesia is not, than with what Indonesia is. Indonesia is not so blatantly, outwardly muslim as other nations we have traveled in (namely Pakistan). Indonesia is not cold. Indonesia is a nation that is not hard to ignore - it has 200 million people, making it the 4th largest country on the planet, but the culture does not seem strongly oriented toward progress. In a newspaper article the minister of the economy expounded upon how great Obama's upcoming visit to the island nation can be - for once, Indonesia will appear on front of newspapers world-wide for reasons other than earthquakes, tsunamis or civil wars. In a nation of 200 million, government leaders anxiously await a 24 hour visit from the President of the United States as their one big break. It is not particularly difficult, then, to understand why the country settles in nicely to the periphery of international affairs.

But we did re-learn of the generosity that spans the globe. Jenny asked a shop owner if he knew where we could rent a motorbike for the day, and he insisted that we take his free of charge. He adamantly refused payment, saying "I just like being helpful. I have money, and I don't want yours." This generosity is sometimes obscured from everyday life as one settles into the comforts of home, and avoids the random interactions that everyday can provide; and to rediscover this kindness is, I think, reason enough to travel.

Now we sit in Penang, Malaysia. Malaysia, for us, will be more a transit point than a destination, as we fly from Kuala Lumpur to Bombay on Tuesday.