Richard's Travel Blog

It’s been nine years since I did that two month stint at the Shan health clinic in Maung Na, on the border with Myanmar almost directly north of Chiang Mai. Fror those of you who didn’t know me then or have forgotten the story, I came to Thailand with the intention of “doing something good”, and hooked up with a little NGO called the Burma Relief Center. Pippa Curwen, the woman running that operation but I couldn’t find this time, sent me up to this village to work with Shan people who had come across the border about a kilometer away. Many people came across from Myanmar to escape the persecution, flee the army if they were thought to be involved with the resistence, were actually part of the resistence, or were driven across with amphetamines and expected to turn that over to Thais on the other side whereupon they would probably be transported to Bangkok or some other city to be put into brothels. Obviously, many therefore got trapped between the border and the border patrols and forbidden to go further. Hence, it was basically a refugee village.
To make a long story short, that clinic was also a Shan resistance medic training center. I trained medics and ran the clinic for the Shan who did not qualify to get help at the Thai government clinic in town after the real doctor disapeared shortly after I got there. He got a kidney stone, took off and was never seen around there again. I did that for about two months before it got hot politically. The Shan resistance leadership thought I might be unreliable, tore down the clinic, took the supplies and meds, and headed into the forest. Even though the experience lasted only two months, it was one of the the most interesting experiences I’ve ever had.
At the time, Maung Na was hardly developed. There was a gravity water system to a few places which didn’t work during the monsoon or after the dry period was well in progress. There was little electricity. By far, most of the buildings were bamboo and thatch. There was pavement on the main road through town, but not before or after you got there. There was one phone that wasn’t at the police station. It was surrounded by forest. The clinic was rudimentary, and with me in charge you can imagine the lack of quality care those people had. Malaria was a big killer. Dengue was common, and I had no good way to tell the difference. Plus, they had everything else anybody anywhere might have.
Myung and I rented a jeep and took a one day trip up there. It was unbelieveably different. One thing that wasn’t different was that finding someone who spoke English was nearly impossible. We found a school teacher who spoke a little. She directed us to a house where a young man spoke a little better. That man told us there was a new clinic between the Shan village and the nearby Lahu village, and that that was now the one clinic for all. We didn’t pick his brains totally, but it does seem that the Shan are now getting care at an official clinic. There is an eversomuch higher standard of living there now. It doesn’t seem like a refugee village at all. There are many sound buildings and the people just don’t look like refugees any more.
There are eateries, after a fashion, a couple of decent shops and a market. The road is paved all the way to town and for a few kilometers beyond. There is electricity all over the place. People have cars and motorbikes. The forest has been largely cut down or burned, presumably for agriculture. The dirt lanes are gone and I had a terrible time finding my way around on the roads and through the modern development.
I’m sure there is a long story. Some day I may try to go back and find it all out. This time it was all we could do to find one person to help us as much as he did. For sure, the people of Maung Na are in a lot better shape than they used to be. I may not have learned a lot, but it’s good to know that much has definitely happened.

It occurred to me today that that I may be living in the best of two worlds. Though Myung and I sometimes take forever to communicate a thought, we are getting better at it. This means there is some content to our conversation. It adds value to our relationship and fulfills the need in us to release our pent up desires to be understood and to understand. At the same time, we don’t just babble away like most native speakers. Yes, there is chit chat, but when you have to actually put some effort into talking this way, it loses the point of making just any kind of contact or satisfying a tiny need. The little efforts to reach out are then more satisfying. So, too, are the frequent silent periods. During these times we can both retreat into our reveries, compose out thoughts, mull over the issues that we have in our minds. I’m finding I like it in there. She says she does too. It’s easy to read or space out around each other, so we’ve come to be fine just sitting together and sharing the experience of knowing we’re in our own places with our playmate outside when we want to come out. It’s too early to know if we are compatible, but there is an ease to this which instinct tells me is a good sign. It’s hard to believe I’ve only been back with her for 11 days.
For that matter, it’s hard to believe I’ve only been back on the road for 11 days. It’s almost like I never left. I guess not remarkably, it feels like I’m not so much in Thailand instead of India now, but “on the road”, whatever that state of mind is made of. It just goes to show what feeling at home really is, definitely not being at a physical place for everybody, not me. At home for me seems to be about moving on. I’m moving on to the next stop, the next mood, the next experience of whatever. This time it’s not so much about the next place as the next step with Myung. Obviously this is a time of relationship development for both of us. We’ve gotten past asking if this will amount to anything. It has amounted to something and we’re trying to make more happen. Do I care if I’m in Thailand? Well, yes, it’s interesting and all, but I can’t honestly say it is in the forefront for me. It gives us something to chit chat about.
We do a lot of comparing and contrasting with our previous experiences here. I was here nine years ago and she was here four years ago. As you can imagine, a lot has changed and a lot has remained the same. Some things will never change much. The Royal Palace and wats (temples) around Bangkok are just as they were, picture postcard perfect images of Thai tradition.

Of course, there is the present. Here is a “water bus”, a comon mode of public transportation along many of Bangkok’s canals.

We hung out in Bangkok for a few days, refamiliarizing ourselves with each other and going on some of the basic excursions to a few of the popular places. She had been there for a while before I returned, and I didn’t feel the need to hang around much, so we went up to Ayutthaya, the site of the capital of Thailand before it was moved to Bangkok in, what, 1763 or around then. There are a number of often heavily restored temples, stupas (called chedi here), palaces, etc.. I’ll just put in pictures of one place, one taken during the day and one at night.

Here is a famous Buddha statue. All that shows of this stone image is the face peering out through the tentacles of a banyan tree.

Something has to point us in a direction, so so far it’s been the tourist trail northward. The next stop was Sukothai, the 13th-15th century Thai capital before Ayutthaya. It was the first capital of a united Thai people not ruled by Burmese, Khmer or earlier nearby civilizations. We’re here now. Today we’re just hanging out. Yesterday we went to the Historical Park. What a lovely ride around on a motorbike that was! I had forgotten what a pleasant place it is.

I remember this elegant, androgenous Buddha from when I was here before. This replica of statuary of this type during the Sukothai period was new and still shiny black when I was here before. It’s the rust brown of the brick ruins now, fitting in well. I still think it’s beautiful.

Tomorrow we’re going to step off the tourist trail a bit and head over to Mae Sot, on the Myanmar border not far to the west of here. I was there before. It, and all along the border, is an interesting mix of Thais and minorities from Thailand and Myanmar. As I recall, the streets are full of people of many different look, dress, color aesthetics and behaviors. I think it will be interesting. Interesting also should be trying to see through the surface. These border areas are a a haven and a hell for many. Trafficking of all sorts, illicit and otherwise goes on here. Most of it is below the radar of the average tourist. It will be interesting to see what I may still have the ability to discern regarding that. Of course, it will be even more interesting to see the village where I spent a couple months working with refugees for a couple of months back in 1999. That is a couple of weeks off, though. For now it’s to Mae Sot and up to Mae Hong San in the far northwest.
I’ll write again before too long. It shouldn’t be as difficult as in 1999. At that time there was exactly on computer in Mae Hong San where the public could access the net, and it was long distance dial-up at a prohibitively dear cost. Be well, all of you.

Postscript first: I wrote this a couple of days ago while I was still in the States, but didn’t get around to including the pictures. I’ve been in Bangkok for a couple of days now and everything is great. More on my so-called adventures later.
Hi everyone. It’s been about 7 weeks since I returned to California from India. Again, it’s been interesting. In some ways it’s like returning home, and in some ways it’s like my life is on the road and this has been a “vacation”. It’s been a time of touching base with my friends and loved ones, and a time of loss as at least one has drifted away. In any case, certainly peripheral friends could be possibly disappearing for good unless I spend a significant time here. Part of me is still a Californian and an American. Part of me is no longer those.
In general, I’ve had a good time here. I got done almost all the things I needed to. Some business and personal matters will always be around, needing attention from time to time. And like I said, I touched bases as well as I could, though I’m leaving for Thailand now with wishes I could have done more. At the same time, I am really excited about hitting the road again and meeting up with Myung in Bangkok. There are always some feelings of ambivalence. It goes with the territory. You can check out any time you like but you can never leave.
I have few specific plans for the foreseeable future. The only thing I really want to do is go the the village on the border with Myanmar north of Chang Mai where I once acted as a health professional for mostly Shan refugees. It must have changed a lot since I was there in 1999. Myung and i have talked about going to Myanmar and Laos. I will of course let you know what is going on.
While I was here, I spent most of the time hanging out with my friend, Barbara, who lives near Sacramento. One of the reasons i came back this time was to replace my expired passport. I gave myself plenty of time for that to be returned from Homeland Surveillance, so we took a two week road trip over the Sierras , back down the east side of those mountains to Death Valley, to Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon and Sedona, Arizona. I’d have forgone Las Vegas, but Barbara hadn’t been there before. Here are some pictures in and from the Sierras.

We had the good fortune to be going over after the roads had been closed for several days due to snowfall.
Death Valley wasn’t quite at it’s “peak” when the most flowers are blooming in the winter ravines and dry out around March. It’s still beautiful.

This last place is the lowest point in North America, 282 ft below sea level, or about 70-something meters.
Just east of Death Valley is a ghost town from a hundred years ago called Rhyolite. They found a little gold there and it boomed for about 20 years. Well, it boomed for about 10 and took 10 more to die.

Most of you have seen pictures of the Grand Canyon, but here are a couple more. It was really pretty in the winter, and not too cold. I’ve been there in the winter when the wind comes across that wide open “sky” above the canyon and chills you to the bone immediately.

And here’s Barbara. She has been such a good friend. I feel lucky to know her.

I will be blogging again as I travel, obviously. I urge you to click on maps to follow the route. If you go to Google Maps, there are all kinds of fun links and other things to click on. I will catch up on drawing my lines ASAPTo those of you who have stayed in contact, thanks. I appreciate your efforts to connect. Be well, all of you.

We went to Hampi and Badami, then to Bijapur for a couple of days. Now we’re in Hyderabad. There are pictures of Badami and Hampi in earlier blogs, or you can search those words. Bijapur has a couple of sites from the time of Persian rule before the Moghuls. Its been hard to find an internet place that functions, and even here in Hyderabad where you’d think there would be amazing connection, there isn’t in the part of town we are in. They won’t let me tie up the line with uploading pictures, so there isn’t anything at this time from Bijapur. When I was in Hampi, I did upload a picture of the ferry across the river there and me maneuvering our bike in that…thing… that passes for a boat. They call it a coracle. They half built a bridge over the river five years ago, but cionstuction was stopped because UNESCO had reservations about whether it was a good idea to develop the area which is so rich in archeological treasures. I don’t know why they were making a special case out of this place, but the UN finally approved it. This all had something to do with assistence India was getting to build the bridge. That part I didn’t get an explanation for. Why did they need assistance with funding just this particular bridge? Oh well.

We spent Christmas Eve in Badami and Christmas Day and the day after in Bijapur. These are decidedly not Christian places, so our holiday was decidedly low key. There was a Christian church on the street where our hotel was in Bijapur, and they had lights up and music blaring. Other than that, it passed unnoticed except for some occasional reminder. I heard a cell phone ring tone with “Joy To The World”. Also, sometimes trucks and busses have backing up music instead of just beep-beep-beep. One small bus had “Silent Night”. That was about it for my Christmas.

That’s not to say I didn’t have a good time. We’re having fun, though it’s kind of weird again, doing things on something like a schedule because of my returning to the US and Myung’s going on to Nepal. We’re passing though Hyderabad now. There are thousands of people here now taking the exam for jobs with the railway, so we had to take a pretty grotty room. It’s so bad we’re just moving on tonight to Aurangabad. From there we’ll visit Ellora and Ajanta. There are a few things someone going to India should NOT miss, and these are a couple of them. Let’s see, my blogs about those places should be in last February’s list, if you want to go back and look at pics or whatever was on my alleged mind then.

Be well, all of you, and I hope you’re holiday season is wonderful.

Myung and I have been mostly going to places I went to about a year ago. For pictures of Cochi, Kathikali, other sights in Kerala, look back on my blogs for last January. We’re in Hampi, Karnataka now and Badami tomorrow, so look back on last December for pictures from there. Of course you can search those words too

I remembered this picture in the Kathikali theater in Cochi of Narissiman eating the heart out of his father. It’s supposed to be about killing your ego, but I can’t explain it any more. I do know it kind of gripped me, so I’m passing it along. I like the look on this Krishna too. At least I think that’s Krishna.

One place we went to in Kerala that I didn’t go to last year was Varkala. It’s a regular Indian beach resort town, probably less obnoxious than most of Goa’s beaches. There are a couple basic pictures everybody takes.

We kicked back there for a while, not doing much but eating good food and walking around. I met a friend of my friend, Frank’s, at Frank’s place last year and looked him up. He has a guesthouse there and is doing great now that his plae is listed No. 1 in Lonely Planet. He has a lovely daughter too. I didn’t meet his wife, but I’m sure she’s lovely too. We also went to a concert. Prem Joshua is the biggest name in a genre known as Goa trance music. You hear his stuff constantly, especially at the chill out bars. “Chill out” is code for dope den. It was pretty good. I was wondering where old Deadheads go. Omygod, we’re getting a little long of tooth anymore.

I’ve got a picture of a 19th century traditional Kerala building in Thiruvanandapuram (Trivandrum), the state capital. It houses a museum in the town park now.

We also went to Goa. It’s still okay, but this is now the third time I’ve been there. I don’t think I need to go again. Whew. I hadn’t been here during the peak tourist season though. Here’s a picture of Baga Beach near Calangute. You can be sure we weren’t among the package tourists who find themselves here.

Again, I hope you are all having a happy holiday season. Christmas is hardly noticeable here, but I’m having a happy holiday season nonetheless. Myung has allowed me to keep a couple more pictures of her. I’ll close with one of those. One day she’ll not make me delete one which shows her eyes. Talk to later. Be well.

 

Happy Holidays

Myung and I have been taking much the same route I took almost a year ago, though a little in reverse. We went to Mamallapuram, Pondicherry/Auroville, Kanchipuram (where I didn’t go before), Trichy and Madurai before going to Kerala where we are now. For many pictures from these places, you can go back to last January’s blog entries. I’ll insert a few here. This is the shore temple in Mammalapuram.

Mammalapuram is on the must see list of places in Tamil Nadu, so it’s nice to see there are some normal locals there.

I didn’t post pictures of Trichy last time, so here are a few. It’s the Dravidian temple scene again.

Kanchipuram has Dravidian temples like in Trichy and Madurai. (Again, look at photos from last January if you are interested.) The only picture I uploaded to this blog site is of the “thousand pillared hall” which has only 96 pillars. They are all different, which is often the case with these places.

Here is a similar picture, though this one is of a similar hall in Madurai.

Okay, enough with the travelogue. On a personal note, Myung and I are getting along quite well. I’m having a wonderful time with her. We feel like “doing” these places in about the same way. That is, we are comfortable in about the same standard of room, we like to eat at about the same standard of  eateries, we can handle the public transportation approximately equally, and we seem to basically feel fine wherever we are without needing to stay all that busy. For me it’s been nice to share my experience with someone. It’s almost always been mine alone, with maybe a few people reading this blog. And, of course, there is the personal attachment and goodies which seems to be getting better all the time. It’s been a month and a half now and really doesn’t feel like it’s going to come to an end. We talk about that, and I think we are on about the same page.

That brings us to our plans. She has a few months at least before she needs to return to Korea or China to tend to her business concerns. Her Indian visa expires on January 11, and she wants to go to Nepal for a couple of weeks then go to Thailand and Laos. My passport expires March 17 and I cannot enter Thailand or Laos with such a short time remaining on it. So, I’m going to return to the US probably on January 10, just before she heads up to Nepal. I figure it will take about 6 weeks at the most to get a new passport. While I’m waiting on that, I’ll take care of taxes and my business and other stuff. Then, so far, the plan is for me to meet up with her wherever she is, maybe Thailand. This is a little scary for both of us.  While we are apart, we may redefine what seems now to be arguably sane, but we are both looking forward to it. It’s only been a month and a half, so we’re just bumbling forward and hoping for a stroke of luck.

We’re in Kerala until tonight, and taking the night train to Goa. We’ll lounge there for about 4 days. With only three and a half weeks left, we’re having to actually budget our time and have an itinerary if we are to see the things she wants to see. I’ve seen most of it, but I don’t mind because, as I said, it’s nice to be able to share the experience.

I’ll close with a picture of the back of an ambulance in Pondicherry. When you look at this, bear in mind that this is India and I would be shocked, SHOCKED, if an Indian ambulance company would ever stall the negotiating on ambulance fare in order to get another deal going.

Few foreign tourists visit Orissa. The few that do go to the coastal area near the capital, Bhubaneswar. The main haunts are Puri and Konark. Some people take trips to Chilka lake about 50 km away, to nearby villages to see handicrafts, or to tribal areas. Myung and I first went to Bhubaneswar, then based ourselves in Puri. We hung out here for about a week, doing not much, going to Konark, to a nearby crafts village and to Chilka.

Bhubaneswar is one of those places where you see some Indian pilgims and tourists, but few foreigners, therefore, it’s nice and friendly. The man thing a foreigner does is to walk around town and look at temples, which is what we did. The most popular deity here is Jaganath, who is easily the cutest little god I’ve seen, with his black face and red, ear to ear smile. I don’t have a picture, but you could search it. You’d never know that even without hands he slays demons by the millions and is the source of the word “juggernaut”. He is revered as a protector by millions in Orissa. Here are some temple photographs, as if you haven’t seen enough. They are cleaning one of them up nicely, doing the whole thing with toothbrushes.

This one is of a more ancient temple from around the 9th century, as I recall.

In the south, meals are frequently served on banana leaves. These disposable plates then become animal food. Nice system.

Many tribal people live in Orissa. Not surprisingly, then, Orissa is one of the poorest states. There is constant conflict between Hindu caste members and the “scheduled class”, as they are called. I was just reading in today’s paper about a demonstation by tribals up in Guhawati which resulted in a backlash by the dominant non-tribals which left five to twenty dead (Some will probably stay missing.) and hundreds injured yesterday. Maybe some of the parades we saw up there were demostations. I never quite know what is going on with those. All this stuff is going on around me and I find out later what it was. The day after we left Kolkata, there were riots right in the area we were staying.  In that case, some poor farmers successfully resisted a government plan to dislocate them and build a factory. The communist government of West Bengal sent some cadres out to kill a bunch of them and knock the snot out of hundreds more. The result of that has been a major national controversy. A curfew was imposed and the army was brought in to restore peace. The Gurkhas acted up again in Darjeeling the other day with a pitched gun battle witht the army. In Bhubaneswar this parade was going on. I’m pretty sure it was just a peaceful cultural display, but you never know. At least there hasn’t been any bad news in the last several days since I took these pictures.

Here are some more locals who were walking along in different groups.

Near Bhubaneswar are some rock cut caves. They aren’t much compared to Ellora and Ajanta, or even Elephanta Island in Mumbai, but some of them are a lot older, dating back to the first century BC.

Here in Puri is the main Jaganath temple. It like almost all the others in this area is closed to non-Hindus. I did wander in to the the temple above where they were doing the restoration, but was summarily booted out. The temples here aren’t that photogenic from the outside. The beach here isn’t anything special, so there are no pictures of that either. The brackish Chilka lake is most noted for having had deposited in it some dolphins during a severe cyclone in 1999. They still live there and we went to see them and walk around on one of the islands. I was unable to capture any of the dolphins “on film”, but here are some pics from that ride.

They raise oysters there. Here is a guy shucking them for pearls. He was asking 85 cents for a pearl, which I think is a rip. They are 50 cents sometimes elsewhere. See them in the plastic cup?

Near here is Konark, with it’s World Heritage Site temple complex. Jaded as I am, I want to say it’s a  poor man’s Khajuraho, with it’s most interesting sculpture being erotic. Generally it’s not as graphic or well preserved as Khajuraho, but I thought this one of three lepers making love was interesting. The human-snake mitif reoccurs a lot. The rest of the detail is better than most of what has been largely eroded away over the centuries.

Here are a couple more. Myung even consented to a few with her in them.

   Yesterday we went to Raghurajpur, near here, which is known for it’s crafts. I bought some stuff there and in Pipili which I’m sending to the US and should get there is a month or so. Here is a picture of some boys working on palm leaf art and some shots around town and on the way back to where the road is where you can catch the bus.

So that about brings you up to speed. Tonight Myung and I are taking the overnight train to Chennai and will contunue on by bus to Mamallapuram. You can go back to my previous entry about that for pictures and my impressions at that time. Just type it into the search box. Let’s see, that would have been last January or maybe early February, if you want to do it that way.

I hope you Americans are having a good holiday season. Talk to you later.

When I wrote last time, I had a little secret. I met a very nice Korean woman in Pelling, Sikkim, and had been traveling with her for about a week. Neither one of us wanted to go public at that point, so I kept it under my hat. Now we’re okay with it. She’s very camera shy and rarely lets me take a picture of her, but here’s one of her behind her sunglasses and hat. Her name is Myung.

After doing the last few days together in West Sikkim, we swung through Kolkata to get my glasses and went to the northeast states of Assam and Meghalaya. Again, these are different places than anywhere else in India. I’ll never get over how diverse India is. Just when you think you’ve seen it all…, as they say. They are fairly isolated, situated to the northeast and east of Bangladesh and connected to the rest of India by a narrow strip of territory in northeast Bengal. there are seven northeast states, of which three can be visited by foreigners without time-consuming and expensive permits. Assam and Meghalaya are two of them. Tripura is the third. Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram and Manipur are next to the Chinese border, have sometimes active rebellions, and sometimes hostile tribal people, so access is controlled. We thought about going there, but decided not to go through the hassle. We were going to go to Tripura, but to get there from Meghalaya would entail an overnight 10 hour bus ride just to the first leg of the 20 hour trip. also, there was a severe cyclone just next door in Bangladesh which killed thousands. At the time, we didn’t know how bad it was going to be and we would have had to take this ride right into the teeth of it. The weather was foul enough where we were. So we only went to Meghalaya and Assam.

   Guhawati, the capital of Assam is nice enough. It’s a work-a-day city, not too big or dirty. There’s a village about 30 km from there, Sualkuchi, which is known for it’s golden colored silk. We went out there on our way back through and looked at “factory” there and bought a piece to make into a camisse for Myung.

   Up the main road from Guwahati is Kazinanga, a nature preserve with about 1700 one-horned rhinos, along with some tigers, elephants, boar, bison and other big mammals. UNlike looking for tigers in Ranthembore, there are plenty of rhinos to be seen. You can go out on an elephant and wade out where they wallow and/or go by jeep within several hundred meters. We did both. The elephant “safari” was well worth it. The guy in the back with the gun is in case one of those nearly blind rhinos gets perturbed and charges. Fortunately, they’ve never had to shoot one. The gunshot unpreturbs them.

Here’s a baby.

   After thaty we went to the 800+ sq. km Majuli Island in the middle of the Brahmaputra River. It was very peaceful out there. It’s gotr a paragraph in Lonely Planet, but it won’t be jaded any time soon. Below are pictures of a ferry like ours passing the other way, just a pretty picture of the water, and a couple of pictures of a nice looking woman on the ferry and her kid.Â

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Here is a lane in the village where we stayed, our guesthouse and a couple of idols set up for a puja going on there. That’s Paravati, wife of Siva, with the body of a cow. This explains a lot about India and Indian women, I think. Just kidding. The other one with the blue tongue and the nassty disposition is Gurga. She smotes countless evil beings and eats their hearts out.

The capital of Meghalaya is Shillong. It’s a small city by Indian standards and has kind of small town feel to it. Here is the State High Court building. How can you not like a place with a pink High Court building? Those stiffs with the starched shirts out front were probably prominent figures, even though their demeanors appeared quite informal.

The northeast states are, as Lonely Planet says, “the road less traveled”. There are few tourists here and no tourist ghettos. It’s so nice to not have to be part of the tourist scene. That really gets awful sometimes. Here, you can just wander around and mind your own business. About the nicest thing we did in Shillong is go to this nice park and wander around with all the nice couples.

Here’s another one of Myung, sitting on the grassy bank of the lake.

And finally, here is a picture of a waterfall we saw while on a bus tour of the area south of Shillong. That area is the rainiest place on Earth, with aver 650 inches of precipitation a year. And with the cyclone coming in to the southwest, it was quite rainy. There are other pictures, but none too good. Also, I just didn’t bother to get out and photograph vistas you couldn’t see through the weather.

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   We’re going to Babuneswar then Puri, Orissa, tomorrow. I don’t know much about Orissa. They say the coast is like Goa about 20 years ago. Orissa is famous for the arts and temples. I’ll let you know what I find out, of course. I wish I could write everything and show you all the pictures. Until then, be well, all of you.

    

   Hi again. I’m in Guwahati, the capital of Assam. It’s Diwali, but so far there aren’t any fireworks or firecrackers. It’s not going to be anything like Jaipur last year. Anyway, I’m just killing some time here before getting some dinner. Here are some more pictures from Sikkim.

   I’ve got some of working people. Here’s cutting wheat and it lying in rows ready for bundling.

This is how most farmers plow. Many, however, have to do it without animals.

When the guys get home, these women with have the fire and some tea and dinner going.

   Sikkim was actually a little empire in the 17th-18th centuries, though Tibet and China would have disputed this at the time. There is a place where three leading lamas got together and forged the agreement leqding to the unifying of their areas of influence. It’s in a lovely jungle setting now. You walk around and stuff like this is buried in the trees. It reminds one a little of Anghor Wat.

    The last two pics I’ve uploaded are of the Rumthang monastery where it is hoped locally that the Karmapa, the head of the Kargyu sect of Tibetan buddhism who I got a blessing from last year in Dharamsala, will come one day. It’s a long political story why he is not here. It is quite large, anyway. I think the only larger one is in Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh. That one is the second largest in the world, after the Potala in Lhasa, Tibet.

And here are some older novices and young monks playing cricket out behind the place.

   I just laid around today after getting here from Kolkata yesterday. I thought this semi-big city might be fun on Diwali. So far, I think it’s going to be pokey. There is a nice museum here and some nice views of the Brahmaputra River, but generally this isn’t much of a place. Tomorrow I think I’ll get out of here. There is a place famous for it’s golded silk. I may go there. And I’ll definitely go to one of the nature parks which has something like 1700 one-horned rhinos. I’m always up for seeing some wild animal in it’s natural setting. There are other picturesque areas around. I’d like to go to Tawang and some tribal areas, but I haven’t decided whether to go through the hassle, expense and two week wait to get the necessary permits. If I don’t do that, I’ll probably head out of here to somewhere in a couple of weeks.

   In the meantime, be well, all of you.

It’s been, what, almost a month since I wrote? Well, I didn’t have much choice. Blogging requires broadband. There is broadband in Gangtok, the capital, but electricity and connection are so spotty it was impossible to upload more than about four pictures during the whole four days I was there. Now I’m in Kolkata again after having picked up the new glasses I ordered last time I was here. This afternoon I’m headed back up to Assam which is the principle state among the northeast states. If I can write from there, I will, but after my experience in Sikkim, I have doubts.

I’ll let pictures do the talking again. In short, though, I went to Gangtok first and up north on a tour of Yumthang, then the area around Ravangla, then to Pelling and around, then to Namchi before returning to Kolkata. All these places are pretty close, as the crow flies. Roads are generally poor and the main way around is by jeep like this one I took from Geysing to Pelling. My crowd is out; this is the new crowd piling on.

Sikkim is in the north of India, wedged in between Nepal and Bhutan, so it’s Himalayan. The mountain range containing the third highest peak in the world, Kangchendzonga, is visible from throughout the south and west of the state. This is the view of part of that range from one of my guesthouse rooms.

Gangtok is not too photogenic, so I’ll skip posting pictures of there. The best thing I did was book a tour with three other tourists to an area about 120 km north of there, Yumthang. It’s up next to the Tibetan border, so you have to go with a tour and have a permit again, like in Ladakh. It’s just gorgeous.

Here is one of the two guesthouses we stayed in and the view from out front. It’s pretty foggy, I know.

There were sights along the way. One thing is that there are SO many waterfalls. You go to Yosemite and there are maybe six good ones. Here are dozens.

It has taken a long time to upload these, and I need to check out of my guesthouse in 45 minutes. So movin’ right along, near Ravangla is a small village called Ralong. there is a small monastery there where they are famous for creating butter and wax sculpture, meant to melt to demonstrate impermanence. Here s the place and a couple of pictures of monks making the figures and decorations.

I’m a little under the gun here, time wise. I’m not going to get this done right now, so I’m going to post what I have and hope to get back to it before leaving town.

As always, be well, all of you.