Do You Sprangle?

Sprangle – (definition: “going in all directions“) That’s what I’m doing. No, this is not about my uncontrolled waistline, nor does it refer to my expansive ego. It’s about travel – travel in many directions, local and far – and in many modes, formal and informal. BTW – speaking of “all directions” that’s not a rug in this photo, just a lousy haircut.

On Sep 14th, 2006 I’ll be off again on another pilgrimage from Jersey City, NJ USA to Manly Beach, NSW, Australia. In addition to the 4 weeks in Oz, I’ll finish up that trip with my usual sprangle (see what a great word it is?) with a few weeks in India

BTW – in case you haven’t noticed, I’ve tweaked the blogging code so the entries read in true chronological order (not reverse chrono as blogs usually do).  This is the way a travel journal should work.

This year I will sprangle India! Stayed tuned (as in, subscribe to an RSS feed) for irregular updates.

If you wish to add a comment or question to any post, click on “register” in the menu on your right or “log-in” at the foot of most posts. Thumbnail images will expand if clicked on. Objects may be closer than they appear.

Next year’s Sprangle, around June 2007 or so, probably will be more civilized and with better food, to a more accessible destination, such as Tuscany or Spain. I’m looking for 5 or 6 simpatico travel companions of the same sensibilities and senior age range, both genders, to enjoy its simple pleasures. Maybe we’ll rent a villa for a month. Click above on “Contact Joe” if you are interested.

UPDATE – 2009 – Things happen. Here we are closer to three years later and I never made that trip to Tuscany. But that’s on now. Still looking for travel buddies.

UPDATE #2 – Well, I did it. Most of the month of September 2009 was spent in Tuscany. As of today (Sept 30, 2009), the new web page describing the trip (www.twoweeksintuscany.com) has only an introductory page. Over the next few weeks I will fill it in as a travel journal, together with photos.

. . . in my pants. Sand in my shoes. Wander in my lust.

Manly Beach - 2006

It’s been an entire year (August 2005) since I lived out of my suitcase and I’m getting horny for it’s intimate embrace.

Of course, thanks to the war criminals in the White House, our economy – and more specifically – the value of the US Dollar as international currency, has declined near to that of toilet paper. When you persist in an illegal war that costs billions per month – and hide its fiscal consequences by failing to either raise taxes or sell war bonds to pay for it, your currency suffers.

It’s a good thing I prefer to travel on the cheap. Other than air fares, not much of what I need during travel has greatly changed in price. Of course, what with the war crimes commited in our formerly-good-name by the Bush-Cheney administration, there’s much more hostility to Americans. One of my small ambitions as traveler is to give a face and voice in opposition to the terible things done in our good name. 

So, I should go, right? Isn’t “should” a four-letter word with baggage?

Go? As in Samuel Beckett’s, “Waiting for Godot.”  ??

Estragon: I can’t go on like this.
Vladimir: That’s what you think.

So, I’ll go . . . on.

Defining an itinerary and buying the air tix are a test of the sincerity of one’s belief that it’s the journey, not the destination, that matters. Every step is an act of faith in someone else’s integrity and competence.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Emperor Franz Joseph famously complained that Mozart’s music has “too many notes.” My version of that, probably as lazy and ill-informed as his, says there are too many choices online for buying air tickets. Read the rest of this entry »

In years past, when I’ve taken trips of similar length, I’ve either left my apartment vacant or participated in a home exchange through one of the online services that facilitate them. The home exchanges have been great and satisfying and have expanded the range of friends around the world – but this time I’ve decided to sublet for the 6 weeks I will be traveling. Read the rest of this entry »

For those who may not know, Craig’s List is the Google of the online classified advertisement world. In just a few years, it has become such a powerful free tool that many newspapers around the world are losing serious revenue to its superior and cost-free service. I’ve never used it. I’m looking forward to discovering how well it works – or if it works at all. Read the rest of this entry »

What a ridiculous conceit, to research India, armed with a Google search button, a Barnes and Noble discount membership and a Public Library card. I don’t want the pale lightbulb of vicarious information; I want the fire of experience.

I know that even a few weeks of that will be inadequate. After all, India is the source of the cautionary tale of the blind men invited to describe an elephant after running their hands over the part nearest at the moment. The one at the trunk said it was a firehose; men at the legs said it’s a tree; the man at the tail described a snake, etc. Read the rest of this entry »

Oh, that was a close one. It’s now Sunday, Sep 10, 2006. For weeks I have been telling people my first outbound flight is Friday, September 14th.

Earlier today I was speaking on the phone with a friend. She asked, “Are you ready for Thursday?”

“What’s happening Thursday?”

“You’re leaving on the 14th, right?” Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier today I visited a client of my web site business in Lower Manhattan. Their office is a few blocks walk north of the World Trade Center.

Few – and maybe none – New Yorkers, other than media types and those peddling goulish day tours, refer to “ground zero.” We stubbornly call it the World Trade Center, partly out of memory but largely out of defiance and a refusal to allow the 911 scum to think they took away anything more than the physical.

It’s another insight into local character that, until that day, both the World Trade Center and Mayor Rudy Giuliani, were seriously disliked and even reviled, by most New Yorkers; one for ugliness, the other for arrogance (you figure out which is which; could be either or both). But once something of our own is attacked by “outsiders,” it immediately becomes beloved. Well . . . maybe that’s too strong a word; try “tolerated.”

For all of New Yorker’s alleged modernity, we do not easily abandon place names. We require time before we will accept a name change. That may explain why Sixth Avenue, whose name was changed only 64 years ago to Avenue of the Americas, is still Sixth Avenue on local maps. The West Side area between 23rd and 34th streets that real estate developers want to call “Clinton” remains “Hell’s Kitchen” to the rest of us.

It was no surprise that bureaucratic post-9/11 attempts to change the World Trade Center PATH Station name to something else met with cries of outrage in the distinct local accent.

This morning, as usual, when the PATH train from Jersey City pulled into the open wound known as “the washtub,” the deep space at the foot of the former towers, I averted my eyes. I can never look.

The one time I did that, in 2003, on my first visit since 2001, as I stepped from the train to the platform, I was clobbered as if by Gorgon’s Gaze of mythology. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s widely agreed that the most important foreign-language question for travelers is, “Where’s the nearest bathroom?” Having read of Delhi Belly and the Mumbai Trots, I want to be perfect in my annunciation of this need, and even more important, be able to understand the answer. Read the rest of this entry »

As soon as I plugged in the Fujutsu laptop’s AC power and re-booted, I knew I was in deep trouble. The display was 20% scrambled.

Maybe it’s a software glitch or static buildup? I shut down and re-boot again.

Now almost 50% of the screen, the entire left side, was a mess. Read the rest of this entry »

One of my reasons for choosing this route to Sydney instead of the more obvious one across the USA and over the Pacific Ocean using a United or Qantas Boeing 747 is that Malaysia Airline uses a Boeing 777.

The center rear rows  on the Malaysia Boeing 777 are five seats across. (Seat Guru) In most of those rows (but not all) the armrests can be raised to create a bed-like space roughly 8 feet long. It’s a bit narrow for a guy my size but still sleepable. I’ve yet to see a Malaysia Air 777 on these 7 to 10 hour flights anywhere near pax capacity. However, whenever I inquire at checkin about the flight load, I invariably have been told that the flight will be “full or almost full.” I think that statement reflects a capacity definition that requires them to fly with empty seats because the aircraft’s fuel capacity will not allow it to fly that distance whilst carrying a pax in every seat.

But the 747, with much greater fuel storage, can carry full pax load. So, assuming the ability of the airline to sell – and assuming the demand – empty rows on a 747 in this kind of service are less likely than they are in a 777.

It should be interesting to how this works out on the flights during this itinerary.

UPDATE POST TRAVEL:  I have yet to see  a 777 fly these long segments with a full pax load.

The Stockholm Syndrome is famous among pyschologists and sociologists. It refers to the intruiging concept, based on a prolonged bank robbery during which the hostages protected their captors when the police attempted a raid. Psychologists say that hostages often form sympathetic bonds with their captors as a survival mechanism. Survivors of an extended ordeal sometimes need to be deprogrammed back to the reality that they have been abused.

International air passengers at Stockholm’s Arlanda Airport may well need some shrink-service. Read the rest of this entry »

My first day back visiting beloved Australia started just after dawn in Manly with a brisk walk north along the beach, from the Gazebo near the Corso, about a mile to Queenscliff and back. If the Gazebo looks familiar to Americans, it was the centerpiece in a television commercial for Old Navy clothes, shown frequently across the US in August Prime Time. Teenage dancers were romping around the Gazebo, showing off the Old Navy fashions. Read the rest of this entry »

The Fujitsu Lifebook P7120 laptop computer is out of service and the situation is not good. Only a few months ago I paid $2,000 for it and invested roughly $1,000 more in software and memory upgrade. Now its only dependable function is to keep loose papers from blowing away in a breeze. Read the rest of this entry »

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
W. B. Yeats, poem

As usual, I’m clueless about what, if anything can be done to salvage the relationship with “E.” She’s totally withdrawn. I’m in the spare bedroom (says she can’t sleep with me in the same bed). Won’t talk (“nothing to talk about”). Goes off on her own for hours (“I need to be alone.”). Read the rest of this entry »

The 29th Manly Jazz festival opened today. Despite a great deal of anxiety about the incomplete condition of the Corso reconstruction, everyone seemed satisfied. My son, John Harkins, was the afternoon’s attraction on the Main Stage overlooking Manly’s mile and one-half long beach.

I’ve never heard John play with such fire. His runs were awesome and his improvisations full of joy and excitement. I’m sure the crowd’s response added to his enthusiasm.  (Click on the “read more” links for photos) Read the rest of this entry »

This afternoon, the John Harkins Trio were the backup for Delilah, an American singer. A huge crowd stayed seated and standees filled all the space in the plaza during the entire show despite the bitterly cold wind that came in off the ocean.

After the cold wind that drove out the audience for yesterday’s last set, this morning’s calm warmth is welcome. But spring in Australia is as full of shiny promises in the morning that become afternoon disappointments.

It’s not quite 6am. The same sun that is setting for the west coast of South America is now offering itself to the eastern edge of Oz as sunrise.

The plaza before the main stage is empty and expectant. The street that parallels the beach is deserted. The guest house I’m now living in it just around the corner in that photo. There’s more text below the photos. Click any to expand.

Read the rest of this entry »

Travel confounds your assumptions and habits.

Where I am now, in Australia, exit signs are green. Cars drive on the left side of the road and pedestrians generally follow the same sinister path. Read the rest of this entry »

News online says there is a dengue fever outbreak in Delhi. Here’s the report from a newspaper there. Read the rest of this entry »

Today – and almost any day – is “fly day” in Manly. Spring or Summer brings swarms of flies that would carry off small dogs were they not well tethered. They drive pedestrians to mad semaphoric wavings.

The phrase “bloody flies” is the local equivalent of the American reference to inappropriate maternal affection. Read the rest of this entry »

This modern transit system (Delhi Metro Wikipedia entry) is a hugely refreshing surprise. It’s also a bit humbling. I don’t know a single city in all the USA that has anything of this size and quality even under discussion . . . and Delhi’s system here is almost 90% complete. See the Delhi Metro web site. Read the rest of this entry »

This morning I did two hours of walking at best speed. Had to stop a few times to ease the thigh-burn. The rain let up as I began but the wind blew so hard off the ocean that at one point the steady breeze across the mouth of the water bottle I was drinking from produced a perfect “A”.

Fairy Bower is an upscale community that hugs the top of a steep cliff that juts eastward out to sea, directly south of Manly Beach.

Read the rest of this entry »

What’s in name? Well, as I learned, the real name of Bangkok is a bigger, hotter mouthful than a cup of harissa sauce.

Meaning?? Try this (from Wikipedia) . . .

Krung-d?vamah?nagara amararatanakosindra mahindrayudhy? mah?tilakabhava navaratanar?jadh?n? pur?ramya utamar?janiv?sana mah?sth?na amaravim?na avat?rasthitya shakrasdattiya vishnukarmaprasiddhi. It translates to “The city of angels, the great city, the eternal jewel city, the impregnable city of God Indra, the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated god, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnukarm.”

And, all that is absolutely, indispitable, totally true.

My flight from Kualah Lumpur landed at Bangkok’s throughly modern airport at 6am. Shortly before landing, Thai Airlines served an excellent westrn style breakfast. I had only my carry-on bag, so after swift and trouble-free movement through customs and immigration, by 6:30 I was ready for a day of touring. I needed to be back at the airport by 6pm to catch my flight out.

Now I’m one of those people who think that spending less than one week in any new city is a waste of effort. Here I am, ready to “do” Bangkok in les than a day.

To complicate matters, I was unable to sleep on the plane during the 10 flight. I’ve arrived exhausted. At 73 years old I do not lack energy, but it just doesn’t last as long as it used to without sleep.

Before I can take any tour, I’ll need at least an hour of sleep and the only way I’ll get it is in a real bed. First order of business, is find a hotel that I can crash in for that long.  That’s how I wound up in a whore house. Where else can you rent a bed by the hour?

This is just a photo album of scenes at the entrance The Grand Palace.  Other than the basic details about when, why, and how it was built, the Grand Palace is a visual experience.  But if you want those details, here are a few links that will spare me the time of repeating what I’ve looked up.

• WikiPedia entry for Grand Palace
• Into Asia Guide
• Bangkok Guide

click to enlarge

About 600 years ago, give or take a century, an unknown group of Buddhists in Thailand created a statue slightly more than 10 feat high, weighing more than 5 and 1/2 tons. That’s heavy because solid gold tends to be heavy.

At the current price for gold, in the range of $600 per ounce, it also tends to be pricey. To that equation add the elegant beauty of its design and the excellence of its workmanship. Then you’ll have a definition of “priceless” that mocks the insipid pretensions of that credit card television commercial.

The temple in which it sits (Wat Tramit) is surprisingly small, tucked away in a corner of Bangkok’s Chinatown. Thereby hangs a tale.

Around the same time as the Battle of Agincourt,  not long before the Incas reached the height of their rule in Peru, the creators of this mountain of solid gold apparently realized that there were violent, greedy people who might just want to melt it down to buy booze and oysters and women, not necessarily in that order. Warlords from neighboring countries were a particular concern.

So they covered the statue in a dark clay that hardened to the consistency of concrete, hiding its true nature. I’ll leave it to your imagination how the plasterers were persuaded – or prevented – from gossiping about what they had done.

The secret remained just that through the rise and fall of cultures, warlords and empires for at last one half of a millennium. The ugly, dunn-colored Buddha statue, and the modest little temple became neglected – and was abandoned. It sat empty and vandalized.

In 1950, due to a local version of Urban Renewal, the building and its contents were scheduled for demolition. A salvager bought the real estate package and prepared to remove the statue to a junk yard for crushing into rubble. As the story goes, in the process of trying to lift it off its base, a worker accidentally chipped off a chunk of the plaster covering.

The little temple has been rebuilt. The grounds are walled in again. Elaborate minor statues have been added to replace those that had disappeared long ago.

Today it’s not really a temple. There are no religious services nor is there a congregation. I saw no priests or acolytes, only ticket sellers and vendors. It’s a tourist attraction, pure, simple and unashamed. Admission is the rough equivalent of US$5.00.

Is that surprising? Unless you would commit the unspeakable atrocity of conversion to its base metal, what else do you do with an amazing chunk of bong like this? Well, for one thing, you put a few collection boxes around the area. You rent out space to shopkeepers who sell bottles of cold water, joss sticks and postcards.

Also, you install a row of boxes along one wall opposite the buddha. They are about the size of the newspaper vending boxes found on many downtown streets in America, each assigned to a birthday month. A tourist drops a coin into the bin and receives a piece of paper, about twice the size of an ATM receipt, printed in Thai, Chinese and English. Mine says . . .

No. 6 Do not panic. Do not keep changing your mind. You will eventually succeed, though it seems unfavorable at present. Good fortune envisaged. Outstanding debts refundable. All matters are fine in general. Patient recovering. Likely to find a nice mate who could become a good match.

Doctor Pangloss was briefer but I prefer the particularity of the advice from this Oracle For A Quarter to the doctor’s diffuse platitudes. It was like finding one fortune cookie containing 10 fortunes.

Like the previous post, this is a visual experience. Just photos. (But I must comment on the photo, in the last row below, of the fat man with the dribble down the front of his shirt. He insists that it is not the result of a poorly managed ice-cream cone or some other personal sloppiness. He claims it is simply the result of the fierce humidity.)

In the midst of the clamour of the Paharganj market district, about 100 yards in from the busy 6-lane road and the massive concrete structure of the Metro overhead at one end of the main street through the marketplace, I saw a sign and gateway. Read the rest of this entry »

For henna painting on your hands, world-class artists are sitting on the main street that runs through Delhi’s Paharganj district. Here’s a sample . . .

This is done every year at this time for the festival of Karwa Chauth.

(http://www.karwachauth.com/the-legend-of-karwa-chauth.html)

Two artists, no waiting. This work took about 20 minutes.

I didn’t ask the price because there’s a basic marketplace rule around the world . . . if you are not serious about buying, don’t ask.

When much of your life has been lived in cities like New York and Chicago, it is hard to imagine a city that is so different from those places, yet as exciting and inspirational.

Kuala Lumpur is one such.

Like all great metropolises, KL has at least one icon, in this case, the 1,381 ft tall Petronas Towers, for a while – and thanks to a tricky definition that would have put Texas voter redistricting to shame, the tallest building in the world. There is more text below the photos. But, as everywhere else in this web site, you can click on an image to expand it.

The gentleman in the dark suit and golden tie is no gentleman. He’s a King. Malaysia has 7 Kings, each ruling over what we might call a state or province. But while he has duties such as the event he was attending this day, and some regal authority within his own region, the nation is a democracy of great ethnic, cultural and religious diversity.

They seem to get along very well, with a concious and constant sense of the importance of tolerance and respect.

My hotel was about a quarter-mile from the towers but when I first checked into my hotel, my “standard rate” 5th-floor room was on the side of the building that faced away from the towers and was directly above the 24-hour construction site of a huge property under development next door.

After a sleepness night, I sought out Mr. Grant, the hotel manager, and negotiated a deal with him. I promised I would buy at least one meal per day in the hotel restaurant if he would move me to a room on the other side. He more than kept his part by putting me on the twentieth floor, with the Petrona Towers perfectly framed by my fl0or to ceiling windows. The fact that the restaurant was excellent made it easy to keep my part of the deal.

On my first visit to the towers I discovered they are not at all the tourist-delight I had expected. There is a certain misunderstanding of a tourist’s expectations. If you open an observation deck in the “world’s tallest building,” there is a reasonable expectation that a visitor can go somewhere near the top.

In the World Trade Center, The Empire State Building, the RCA Building, Sears Tower, and so forth, the Observation Deck is within the upper 3 floors.

At Petronas, tourists are not allowed anywhere near the top of either tower.  Public access is limited to the sky-bridge that links the towers less than halfway up the building.

Passes to the sky-bridge are limited to 1,700 per day, spaced out over 1/2 hour intervals.  When I arrived at 8am, thinking that an hour in advance of the ticket office opening would be early enough, I was shocked to see hundreds of potential tower visitors already in line ahead of me.

Someone near the head of the line said she had arrived at 6:30am.

I joined the end of the line. At 9am, they opened a single file line to a desk where each visitor showed an ID, had the details recorded and was issued a pass. I timed the first first dozen or so. Each transaction was taking 5 minutes to process. I did the math and said, “The hell with this.”

I had read a guidebook entry about of one of KL’s open secrets. And that’s where I headed on foot, about 30 minutes away.

Menara Kuala Lumpur (also known as KL Tower) is, from its base to the roof of the slowly rotating observation level, substantially shorter than the Petronas Towers. However, the KL Tower sits atop a steep hill, putting visitors to its observation deck at . . . 1,381 ft- the same height as the TOP FLOOR of Petronis Towers on the low flat plain below!

With a 360 degree view from a vantage point twice the height of the sky-bridge, no waiting lines and even a free shuttle bus up and down that hill i sits on, the KL Towwer, it’s a much better all around deal that halfway up those twin towers.

To be fair, the Petronas Towers contained other excellent attractions that I enjoyed on other days.

Dewan Filharmonik Petronas is a world-class concert hall in the ground-level building between the two Petronas Towers. It is home to the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra. I attended a performance that included Brahms, Mozart and Gershwin in a performance that was the equal of any I’ve enjoyed in New York and Chicago. The acoustics were excellent, seating and sightlines very good, and the performance wonderful.

Underneath the Towers is  vast multi-level concourse and shopping center that seemed larger than Woodfield Mall in suburban Chicago.

Shopping malls in KL are an amazing things. The typical mall in the USA opens sleepily at 10:00am bustles for 8-plus hours and is almost certainly deserted and shut down by 10:0opm.

KL shopping malls are 10 story, open-atrium structures on expensive urban  space, not the US midwestern commercial battleships sprawled across a suburban sea of asphalt-covered parking lots where once there had been fields of waving grain.

Malls in KL open at 8am to admit the crowds standing at their entrances. The malls I saw did not close until Midnight, active with shoppers to the end.

BTW – all the Starbucks in KL have FREE WiFi. (hello Starbucks USA. Do you wonder why millions of us decline to spend $4 on a cup of coffee?).

I was fortunate in the taxi driver I’d hired for a day-long tour of New Delhi highlights chosen from my guidebooks and research. Read the rest of this entry »

New Delhi is one of the most over-populated, dense, crowded, jammed together, claustrophobic, delimited, pressed in, bethronged, enjostled, cramped, packed, crushed, squeezed, tight, heaped, swarmed, mobbed, clogged cities in the world. Even more so than the previous sentence. Read the rest of this entry »

I had spent too much time shopping in the Karol Bargh Market and the other in Paharganj, followed by a final afternoon enjoying rest of the fantastic Delhi Metro system, that I  did not get back to the Megha Sheraton, to pick up my bags, until 5:10pm, almost 1/2 hour later than I had been advised.

That put everything at risk. I was to pay the price, literally, in sweat and rupees. Read the rest of this entry »

What a shock.

I just used my debit card at a Bank of India ATM in Delhi to withdraw pocket cash.

WARNING – do not casually discard the little printed receipt that the machine spits out at you along with the cash. Read the rest of this entry »

It is a scene that Bruegel might have painted in a fever or Dante reserved for one of the innermost circles of Hell. Read the rest of this entry »

At Noon I am in Varanasi in an Internet carrel at The Brown Bread Bakery, also known as Olio Restaurant and Ice-Cream Parlor, also known as OM Cyber Cafe, also known as Harashita Sarees and Silk Emporiium, all in a space not much larger than the necessary room in modern home. The welcome is much larger.

The computer I used to check my email contained a ton of spyware but after downloading, installing and running Ad-Aware, the free spyware cleaner from www.lavasoft.com, I found and removed 160 infections. I also showed the owner how to do this daily from now on.

In compensation, instead of the $100 per hour fee I usually charge for computer consultation, my buddy Marshall and I each got a free liter of cold water and free use of the Internet to check our respective mail.

We also had the satifaction of knowing we’d done good.

This was not the deluxe train I’d expected. The carriage was probably 40 or 50 years old. Everything was the same shade of pale green one sees in the below-ground corridors of hospitals and governmental buildings around the world. Read the rest of this entry »

The arrival platform at Varanasi was no less tumultuous and disorderly than the departure venue at Delhi the night before . . . utter, absolute, overwhelming chaos. Read the rest of this entry »

The free ride in a three-wheeled auto-rickshaw from the Varanasi train station to the Scindhia Hotel was far and away the wildest I’ve ever had in my 73 years of traveling the world. It was a real live version of the roller coaster that many know as “The Mouse.”

The driver was the most aggressive I’ve ever seen, passing on the outside of  curves at full speed against oncoming cars, trucks and rickshaws. At some places along the way, the opposing streams of traffic were divided by a low, narrow wall of concrete – which we ignored. At some intersections we crossed over and went against the oncoming stream – and then at the next, if traffic was lighter on “our side,” we went back where we belonged. Read the rest of this entry »

Standing on an open, stone-surfaced platform that was like a “thrust stage,” jutting out from the buildings to the rear and either side, I confronted great contrasts. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the course of my days in Varanasi I learned there are other places to stay along the river. Some of them will appear high up and in the background of photos taken during the Dawn on the Ganges below. But, as the photos here and in other posts demonstrate, none have the broad, open-air balconies that give virtually every Scindhia room these awesome vistas. Click on photos to expand them.

9am - Ganges, looking south

another watcher

For example, look at the range, down and across the Ganges. These are the views directly outside the door to my room. 

The hotel layout offers one long, common balcony on each of the five levels. As you can see other  guests also think them an excellent vantage point.

The double-ended rowboats are used in the dawn and dusk rowing tours along the ghats. I’ve scheduled that tour for the morning. Strangely, the hotel books the 5:00am tour, but doesn’t offer a wakeup service. I’ll depend on the help of another guest who has an alarm clock (A German, of course; they and the English are the keeprs of apointments.)

a good breakfast

foot of the steps

off to the right

At the moment, 9am on my first morning,  I’ve had a hot shower, clean, dry clothes and I’m revived. I’m late for breakfast in the common room. But first, a few more photos of this scene from another world . . .

As I was taking my final shots of this first morning, a lovely young woman appeared from the next room. She was taking her last look before checking out. She’s Mexican, obviously from a privileged family, on a six-month tour of the world. We chatted in Spanish.

hablo con una mujer bonita

Once again, I silently thanked my patient and persistent high-school Latin teachers who told me that someday I would be glad I had studied the key to most European languages. Decades later I found Spanish needed only just a slight adjustment in vocabulary.

Varanasi is widely spoken of as the holiest city of all to the Hindu faithful. Here, the democracy of that faith’s theology – and its contradictions -are evident.

Read the rest of this entry »

The wide balconies of the Scindhia are the very definition of what American southerners call “a catbird seat,” the perfect spot where one sits just high enough to be un-noticed from below and just enough to the side that you can see faces, not merely the tops of heads. Life on the path and plaza and nearby temples and schools flows as steadily as the river itself. 

Directly below to the left, stairs lead down from the heights and continue right on into the river. Next to them is a patch of land that is literally covered in cow dung. When I say literally, I mean literally.  

There is an unstructured dung pile that is constantly added to by collecting the dropping of some huge beasts that wander the plaza and nimbly clunk up and down the broad steps. Next to the pile there are rows and rows and rows of carefully shaped and hand-decorated cow-patties, laid out to dry. When dry enough to be sold as fuel, they are as hard as a rock and will burn like a lump of charcoal.  

A double decked rowboat – something I have never known to exist – passes up river, powered by one man. A dozen or so men on the upper deck, unshaded from the blistering sun, are happily chanting and and clapping to  a complex best.

On the far shore, a bleak flood plain streaches without shade or mercy for miles in each direction. The group you see in the photo remained there, uncovered to the fire of the day, from late morning until  shortly before sundown. 

Click on a photo to enlarge.

click on photos

It’s 5 am. The Ganges River tour along the waterfront of Varanasi starts from the bathing ghat directly in front of the guest house, just as the sky to the east begins to lighten sufficiently to reveal the steps down to the water’s edge. The air is calm. This morning, there is a layer of clouds just high enough to be picking up a diffuse pink glow.

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Last night at twilight, as I was standing on the balcony of my hotel room, high above the broad sweep of the Ganges River, temple bells were tolling and puffs of the late freshening breeze carried small gusts of distant chanting. (Now tell me, honestly, could there ever be a more promising start to a story than that?)  Read the rest of this entry »

No text . . . just an album of what I saw this morning from 6 am until around 8:30am. Click on any photo to enlarge.

I’m not going to try to describe the Taj Mahal. To do so is impossible. Far better writers than me have said so.

Confronted with it at dawn, and then at sunset, and again in the moonlight, Mark Twain declined to describe the monument except in an oblique way. The handful of pages he devotes to the Taj Mahal include the most candid passages he ever wrote about the limits of his skills. Read the rest of this entry »

After a nap, a great hot shower, fresh clothes and an excellent sandwich in the garden of the amzingly cheap and cheerfully green garden of the Guest House, I climbed into the back of a three-wheeler and roared off to see the Taj Mahal before it closed at 6pm.  

The authorities have wisely banned motor vehicle traffic at a point some 200 or so yards short of the western gate to the grounds. This not only cuts down on the air pollution and motor noise, but it requires that tourists walk the narrow street lined with souvenier shops and food stands, and even a few guest houses whose rooftop patios promise special views above the wall. Read the rest of this entry »

I was the first person at the ticket window when it opened at 6am. Once inside the gate I lingered briefly along the pathway to the portal that frames the Taj Mahal itself. I wanted a little more light before I encountered the view.

5:50am- waiting for the Taj Mahal to open

Birds in the trees that lined the tiled path were warbling musically to each other. The air was calm. The heat of the day had not yet intruded. A fountain splashed water on the flowers at its base.

As I passed through the portal, I saw a couple who had preceded me by a few minutes. They were on the raised marble platform that is halfway between the portal and the still higher platform of the Taj itself.

There was not one person between them and the monument.

For that moment, and forever thereafter too, they owned the Taj Mahal. Click on the photo below to see what I saw.

The Embrace

The sun was still ten minutes below the horizon of trees to the right. But there was enough light to capture the scene. Click on it to see the full-sized view from which it is cropped.

After the crowds behind us had pressed forward to the monument, after the intimacy of the moment was gone, I spoke with them. They are from Chicago’s North Shore. They were celebrating a wedding anniversary that I might have been marking with someone had things gone differently.

Yes, I envied them. They have seen a Taj Mahal I will never see.

Understand up front that I’m not going to fudge on my resolution to avoid attempting to describe the Taj Mahal. But the photos in the mini-album embedded in this post deserve explaining.

The genius and artistry of the Taj Mahal is not limited to placement, form and scale. The masterful exploitation of light, within and without the tomb, raises the site to a level not seen, before or since, anywhere in the world.

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Now the sun is rising, just clearing the line of trees to the east, sliding from behind one of the corner minarets. The richness of its palate is revealed. The warmth of the sun is displayed across the eastern surfaces of the monument in appropriately butter-bright shades of yellow. Click on the photos.

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Shoes must be removed before going up the narrow marble stairs to the plaza and into the dome. The quiet intimacy of the past half-hour is rapidly dissipating as more and more people arrive.

Now the shaded areas outside the perimeter of the plaza are attracting photographers seeking the right angle to capture the color.

Examine the two last photos above. They are closeups from one of the larger pix further above. The spots of color are polished jewels set into the marble shell. In the low rays of the early morning sun, when you are in the same visual plane as those rays, they sparkle, reflecting light back to you.

The white spots in the closest shot are sparkles thrown back at the lens. To the human eye, they shimmer as you move through each reflected beam. Curved surfaces present themselves differently to the moving angle of the rising sun with the result that different parts of the building, depending on where you are standing at any moment, pick up the sparkle.

Inside the dome, especially in the height of the day, when the sun is high above the shell, they transmit their colors across the opposite surfaces like a ballroom mirror-globe. But, because photos inside the tomb are not permitted, you’ll have to go there and see that for yourself someday.

I noticed that without a single posted sign or admonishment by staff – for there appears to be none but gardeners and tourist guides – most conversations were held in a subdued, respectful voice. Alone, or as couples, or in small groups, people sat quietly absorbed in the experience.

No one dropped a single piece of litter. Consider the significance of that.

Here, in the heart of a continent covered with cow dung and garbage and junk and refuse and rubble and shacks that tremble in the lightest breeze and open sewers and the public disgrace of entire families living totally exposed to the elements on orban traffic islands, in sum what must be the world’s most pervasively polluted and outrageous insult to the environment, there is not a candy wrapper or cigarette butt.

Nor, on reflection and after expanding and studying the incidental details in the hundreds of photos taken over the course of two days within the walls of the monument, can I recall seeing a single waste bin.

That may be the most amazing thing of all about the Taj Mahal!

I am not one for souveniers. They just add to the baggage. Back in high school, studying Ceaser’s Gallic Wars, I learned that the Roman military word for baggage is “impedimenta”; just something that gets in the way. Read the rest of this entry »

By now, my fantasy of  ”Overnight Train to x x x ” has been exposed as poor romance, frustrating adventure and less than ideal transportation.

Guess what?

The overnight train from Mathura Junction to Mumbai reset the template. From the moment of arrival on the platform at the Mathura Station, to getting down on the platform in Mumbai Central, it was the train ride I’d been anticipating but didn’t find between Delhi and Varanasi – or between Varanasi and Agra. Read the rest of this entry »

By the time I arrived in Mumbai, I had a fever of 102f (I keep a thermometer and a small first aid kit in my toilet kit).  Every deep breath and cough caused a powerful, sharp pain in my lower lungs. I was sweating and shivering at the same time. I was panting and slightly delirious. I suspected pneumonia – or worse. Read the rest of this entry »

I just got an email from the online agency where I had booked the Heathrow Lodge, the budget hotel I stayed in during last week’s brief London layover. They want my review of the experience.

Too late.  This detailed indictment had already been drafted and was being made ready for publication when that request arrived.
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Today I filed a lawsuit in Hudson County, NJ against Fujitsu for:

1) selling me a laptop computer that fails the implied warranty that it is designed and manufactured for the purpose for which it is advertised and sold, as a reasonably robust portable computer.

2) failure to honor their own warranty by repairing the defective and useless computer.

3) failure to return the computer to me some 8 weeks after it was handed to them and despite frequent explicit written and phone requests that they do so.

The suit demands a full refund of the purchase price, refund of the cost of the memory upgrades and software I installed on the computer, cost of work needed to reprogram access codes and passwords compromised by the loss of the computer and the costs of the lawsuit.

The court will advise me before Dec 1st, 2006 of a hearing date. I’ll post it here when I know.

When LBJ was a Senator from Texas and famous for getting his way against strong opposition from fellow congressmen and government bureaucrats, he was asked to explain his negotiating secrets. He said to the questioning newspaper reporter:

“Son, it’s really simple. You grab ‘em firmly by the balls. Their hearts and minds will follow.”

It turns out that what charms reluctant politicians works just as well on corporations . . . case in point, Fujitsu. Read the rest of this entry »

It has been roughly 4 and 1/2 months since the above was reported on. Considering how negative the experience may appear – but with proper respect for what is right – here’s an update. Read the rest of this entry »

When I was in India I was shocked that the credit (and debit) card receipts at bank ATMs were displaying information that could make it easier for someone to access my account and steal money. (see SprangleBlog post)

At the time, I thought the issue did not exist in the USA. Read the rest of this entry »