so many things we saw, so many people we met, countries we visited, so much happened and I have been rather lazy when it came to writing about it all.

there is a german song with the line ‘wir reisen durch die welt und haben nichts zu sagen…’ (quoted from memory) ‘we travel the world and have nothing to say’. I hope its not that bad, but sometimes all that is left for me is to stare in wonder, in utter cluelessness, sometimes in disgust too.so, we travelled through south east asia.

bangkok is an amazing city, full of selfesteem and with a great city grid, that has big streets and little pockets of sidestreets and quarters packed away in the middle of the city which gave me the feeling of escaping the metropolis when I felt I had to. the only really disturbing issue in this city, and also all over south east asia, are all the european men who seem to hunt the area for fun with the local women. one can see a lot of couples in thailand, cambodia and vietnam, which consist of a white guy and a local girl. often enough the white guy is one generation the elder. I do have a lot of respect for intergenerational and intercultural relationships but in this local context I often just felt bad for being a white guy, seeing what looked like exploitation in too many cases….

crossing over into cambodia was like entering another world again.the country is a lot poorer than thailand and this is outright visible on the street. cambodia has suffered like not many others have and the scars must be everywhere. amazingly enough the people are outgoing and friendly and not only because of touristic business they expect.

speeding through parts of the country as we did, we saw an endless amount of farmhouses on stilts,  with little miniature temples or palaces also on stilts, placed right in front of the living quarters. as we learned, the cambodians believe in local ghosts who still dwell on their former grounds. in order to keep this ghosts happy they built these little houses, which are definitely more beautiful than their own, so the ghosts of former inhabitants and forefathers rather choose these accomodations and nobody gets in the other ones way. a very sensible way of dealing with the past it seemed. 

there is a lot of past to be taken in in cambodia. the amazing ancient temples of angkor are an impression as well as the killing fields and the S21 prison in phnom penh which are today memorial sites for the commemoration of the khmer rouges crimes. this country’s past is a big part of the present. there are still lots of areas which are infested with landmines and in the locations of the former killing fields there are still pieces of clothing and bones of the victims coming up as the earth corrodes during the seasons.

what is truly amazing is the way the cambodians deal with this dark and heavy past. forgiveness seems to be the leading principle. and people talked about the past, surviving victims as well as perpetrators. it is truly interesting in comparison to the way the holocaust was dealt with in european post war societies.  

vietnam as the last country on this fastforward tour was most of the time simply very beautiful. again, an incredibly welcoming people and again a society that seems to have come a long way in a very short time in terms of reconciliation. vietnam – another country with a war ridden past – today accomodates tourists from nations that lead a bloody war and never apologized for war crimes committed.  also within the vietnamese population the conflicts of the past seem to be dealt with in a very peaceful manner.

also there is politics all over the place. people were forcefully removed from their homes, because they were too close to major sights. people were forced to built the highways which are now quite empty except for the occasional tourist bus, everything has the aura of minor depression. at the same time, I kept repeating to myself, this country is changing,  there has been some sort of a democratic turn, etc etc.

in mandalay we went to see the moustache brothers, a group of comedians, who have been sent on seven year prison sentences for telling critical jokes. after that they were only allowed to perform in English, as not to influence burmese people, and they were limited to perform at their home only, and only cover traditional burmese dances. they still stick to this programme. using the time inbetween the dances for political jokes and remembering their audience that there are still more than 200 political prisoners waiting to be released.

leaving burma and coming into thailand was quite liberating, even if they have political unrest at the moment. they stopped their protest on the day we came in to celebrate their beloved king’s birthday. 

thomas schrom made us a map and off we went on a hired motorbike. stephan was very brave, sitting in the back although i had not been on a bike in years and although the streets did not always sport any surface that seemed rideable. the trip was fantastic and we did not mind at all that the mountains hid constantly behind thick fog, we also did not mind that the tigers and rhinos and the wild elephants had better things to do than to hang out in front of our eyes and cameras. we saw a spider and a lizzard though.

instead we did spent some time talking with nepalis. we got to explain that there is neither an emperor nor a relevant maoist party in austria, we had a lively discussion on the merits of arranged marriages (our conversational partners, a couple that was living in an arranged marriage, loved the mutual respect and understanding, that supposedly is the advantageous result of arrangement rather than love).

thanks to thomas we got to spend the holiday of divali at the home of a local family. there we witnessed the slaughtering of a chicken (which we ate right after) and listened to the children of the village as they performed songs, which is a divali tradition. in the end of the evening we all slept in their house, which is mostly one room on three floors. great experience.

the father of the family frequently has to walk to work (whenever public transport is not working), which takes him via a dirt path down the mountain and through the kathmandu valley for four and a half hours. talking about his work he had a laid back attitude explaining that his wife made more money than he did last month by making raksi (the traditional home made liquor) and selling a goat on the market…

finally we got our energy together and started on a little trek into the mountains. again, for the first two days there was the fog we were used to in the meanwhile. while hiking over a 5000 meter mountain pass the fog even turned into quite a snowstorm and into icy cold. and finally, the next day, we got up early into clear and sunny weather,  walked over a little ridge  and suddenly right in front of us there were all the mountains one can ask for, the annapurnas, the manaslu, the himal ganesh, the whole tibetan himalayas, the lang tang mountain range and for sure a lot of other mountains we cannot name out of ignorance. 

off the mountains and wanting to get back to kathmandu, a general strike had stopped all traffic (one maoist fraction is not so happy with the upcoming election).  finally we found space in a jeep and were taken over the mountains back into the valley. on the way, the driver hit a motorbike which was transporting two gigantic sacks of freshly harvested peanuts. while our driver and the motorcylist discussed agitatedly whose fault the accident had been, our driver picked up peanuts that had fallen out of the sack and was happily snacking away. once he had realised we were watching all this, he started collecting more and handing them into the jeep for all his passengers. the argument ended in a friendly enough nod. nepalis seem to be the most relaxed people i have ever come by.

for seeing the good photos as usual go to nikoundstephan.wordpress.com

as the nepalis are not yet very much used to casting their votes the city of patan is plastered with posters explaining how to do this. the posters, which are probably put up by the leading maoists, show that the right way to vote is to put a swastika-stamp at box of your party of choice and sign it.

so, go along nepalis, put swastika in place for a maoist, communist or socialist future!

today the historical crime scene is like it used to be at the moment of the massaker, an inner city square and park. it is fitted with an eternal flame (that comes with a rather large sponsoring logo of indian oil) some inscriptions and a little gallery in memory of some of the victims biographies. the biggest part of the square is still just a lawn. people visit for commemorative reasons and also for lunch break. they  come to sit on the lawn, to eat, talk and rest.
before they step on the lawn they take off their shoes and while they are chatting with each other and seem to be completely uninhibited, they still maintain a calm which i never experienced in any other indian city square.

earlier this year back in austria when we worked on the new exhibition for the mauthausen memorial site a dear friend suggested, to get rid of all the nazi time buildings and structures that populate this area and instead just have a meadow, where people can sit an commemorate if they feel like doing so. this, of course was not happening.

while back in austria i was taking this suggestion for a provocative conversational input, in amritsar it is implemented and it seems to work for the people. if you know how loud, and crowded and chaotic indian urban spaces are, it is interesting, that seemingly by itself the memorial site of amritsar seems to function.

some weeks later, at the end of our time in india we came to bombay. massive security in official and otherwise busy buildings reminds us of the terrorist attacks in 2008 which targeted the jewish community, two upscale hotels and a popular inner city coffee place. the coffee place, leopolds cafe, is still there and a favorite tourist hang out. in a window to the street and on the walls inside the place one can still see the holes which are the remnants of the terrorists shooting with automatic rifles. several people died that day in leopolds cafe. a lot more in the other crime scenes.

the commemorative response was not to put up memorial plaques but just to leave the holes which are visible to visitors who now where they originate from. compared to the western memrial culture which is showing itself for example at new yorks ground zero this is a very different approach: by far less educational in any case but at the same time these indian spots of commemoration seem to be included very deeply into everyday life, which is somehow a good thing, i think.

The Jains are an old Indian religion. they have contributed glorious temple architecture to the Indian cultural heritage. today the temples remain, but the jains are only counting four million faithfuls. this might have to do with various schisms and their radical religious views that have quite an impact on their members’ lifes.

like others they do believe in every living thing having a soul, but they take it as far as wearing masks in order to avoid unwillingly breathing in and thereby killing insects. also some of them tend to use a very light broom to clean the path ahead of them to avoid accidentally stepping on an insect. it is just another logical step for the more fundamental believers to advise against physical movement in general – you never know what you will be triggering with a simple physical movement! a wise man said, that most problems of humanity could be avoided alltogether if people could simply stay in their rooms and sit still on their chair. forever that is, if you are a true jain believer. 

another thing that did not really help spreading the jains creed might be that one of their schismatic groups, calling themselves ‘the-ones-dressed-in-air’ do additionally not believe in clothing of any kind. however their temples, they look just like a magnificent architectural fantasy dedlicately carved from stone.

more interaction (e.g. movement) we experienced at some hindu temples in the last week. outside of jaipur we visited an ancient temple dedicated to hanuman. hanuman, a god with a monkey face and a very good friend of the even more powerful godess shiva (as the local priest told us) is worshipped at this temple by humans as well as by monkeys who live in and around the temple. part of the rite that Hindu worshippers perform is to bring food, which is subsequently eaten by the monkeys. and as the monkeys lack any form of formal manners and behavior,  it is quite a fight for the food as soon as the worshippers enter the temples grounds – this kind of service is by far more lively and entertaining than your usual jewish, christian or mainstream muslim services i have to say.(go and see for yourself, pictures at stephans blog nikoundstephan.wordpress.com)

we did see a lot more temples of different denominations, for different gods and goddesses (as the hindus seem to have a never ending amount of godly personell!), but i am not getting into even greater length here. besides all the temples we also got to see quite a share of rajasthan’s maharadja palaces and fortresses. some of them in great despair,  some very well maintained and some even inhabited by some sort of royal families. the palaces are a fantastic array of ornament and architecturally demonstrated strength.

in jaipur our visit coincided with the celebration of the maharani’s 70th birthday. the city was festive and decorated with posters congratulating her to the accomplishment of 70 years and often also mentioned that her year of birth was 1937 – an indian bargaining style miracle of numbers.

in jodhpur the royal family left their incredibly impressive castle on the rock above the town a hundred years ago and moved to a megalomanic art deco palace outside the city. the current maharadja had the castle restored and opened a museum in which his voice is featured prominently on the audio guide. the same guide also frequently mentions the beloved maharadjas philanthropist streak. this is truely astounding, because the delicate and renovated castle on the rock forms a harsh contrast with a rather dirty and poor looking city at the foot of the rock, a city that features at least in some parts still an open sewer system. this is not so astounding in india, but it definitely does not shine a great light on the local maharadjas great governance (in the past some-hundred-years) and their present benevolent spreading of their wealth.

so, in agra, just yesterday, I learned that cows (?) are much more fun, when you pretend they are something else (leopards?  giraffes? )…

just a few days before, i learned that even when the whole city (delhi) seems to succumb to dirt, regular people sleep in the middle of the streets and fight for their sleeping spots with the cities dogs, the metropolitan muslim youths go for little walks through the inner city parading spotlessly clean goats as pets who follow every step they do….

to make us feel more at home, some historical indian, sikh, bolschewiki revolutionaries and nationalists – heroes or terrorists, depending on your individual take are presented on pictures with traditional austrian hats – it might well be that I got everything wrong about this history – go, look yourself on the net and find out about bhagat singh – I have to move on…

one thing I learned, my dear friend fu learned allready approx. 15 years ago in kathmandu…, people in some parts of india (obviously also in nepal) have not participated in the more or less global invention of the the broom stick, they just use the broom without the stick, which results in people having to bend over all the time while sweeping floors etc. connected to this I also learned that indians like to sweep every surface (despite of or maybe as a result of people constantly complaining of the dirt in india)- they sweep mudcovered streches beside the road, without getting rid of the mud and they swipe lawns dusting off the grass or so……

all this sounds very arrogant maybe. but like most things which are coming off as arrogant, this is the result of my non-understanding, there are so many things in india which are not self-explanatory,  which make me stare in wonder. indians have an own sense of order, have an own idea about respectability, family etc. etc. we do try to talk with people, to find out what makes them go, but language and culture do not really make it easy, as well as the constant commercial hassle: since we left the himalayas, a lot of people we meet would be ready to tell everything they think we want to hear, just in order to close a deal with us. two days ago we were standing in front of delhis central mosque and a rickshaw guy who wanted to score a ride with us, shouted ‘the mosque is not here!’  an austrian friend said ‘they are all liars as soon as they want to make business’ – I guess we all are to a certain degree, but as long as we stay at home, it does not seem so blunt to us ourselves.

Doubts: Often I am ready to credit everything to the cultural differences, but then, in moments when I’ve really had it, I usually tell the hawkers who try to sell something, that it is really a bad moment, and that they should stick it, and, to my amazement, they understand immediately and leave me alone – so, at the worst moments everyone seems to magically develop intercultural abilities.

there are so many moments that make me think, I learned! I learned something! but now, writing them down, most of them are forgotten – this could easily be my personal learning tragedy! 

trekking: stephan will post spectacular photos on his blog – we have been trekking for a week in markha valley, one of laddakhs most famous treks.  a valley with several little villages flanked by mountains 5000 meters high and higher. we took the longest route there is, walked over three mountain passes, slept in the houses of laddakhi families and had a great time. in markha valley one knows that one is not the first tourist, many of the valleys inhabitants livelihoods de pend on tourism, but at the same time, the valley still has no streets, depends on mules horses and donkeys for all provisions and has a widely unchanged traditional lifestyle. the local people carry the harvest on their backs to their houses, they let their livestock graze communally on the limited greens in the valley and seem to live a lifestyle which has vanished in the remotest areas of europe at least 50 years ago.  

coming back to leh after five days in the mountains was like entering a modern megalopolis, although our guesthouse has a little stable with a cow underneath the stairwell and the electricity is as infrequent as the public transport connections. the direction in which we  would like to head on, south, is closed now alltogether,  the last bus to manali left on the 15th of september the next one will leave in april 2014. 

leh as a megalopolis: one of the things we did here, was to spend a morning with a guy from the tibet heritage society. these people, who used to work in lhasa until they got kicked out by the chinese government, try to preserve the old city of leh with all its traditional houses built in the tibetan style. the good thing about them is, they are not only concerned with architecture, but they are interested in the lives, livelihoods and culture of the people who populate the houses: there are laddakhis, there are moslems, who had started out as silk road traders, there are tibetans, sikhs, hindus and others. the organization tries to convince the people to stick with traditional building methods (dry toilet systems, building materials which are mud based, rooftop loggias that catch the sun also in the long winter months, etc.) and help financing these as well as traditional businesses.  as far as we saw they try to keep up the cities life. another organization in the city, the laddakhi art and media organization, lamo, takes an art based approach in the same direction. they conduct workshops and organize exhibitions with artists and the local population focusing on life in the old city and show the outcome in exhibitions in their headquarters,  an old house half way up to the old royal palace which doubles as a learning center, a library and an exhibition/gallery space – a place where I would love to work for a while. 

on tradition: trying to prolong the tourist season, the local government introduced the laddkhi festival which started today. this is a festival of local music, dance, costumes, polo and tradition.  meanwhile the is very calm, most tourists have left already,  many shops have closed down for the winter taking their businesses to goa. the festival is left to the local population mostly: our hosts, the family which keeps the cow underneath the stairwell,  left this morning to take part in a parade leading to the central polo field in their traditional costumes. tomorow there will be a mask dance, also by locals for the sake of locals mostly. 

in a few days we hope to get from leh to dehli. the moutain calm exchanged for the hassle and noise and heat of the plain – i am curious how we will adapt to that. 

our temporarly found indian travel companions (like us, they tried to find transport out of srinagar, and with their help we actually made it – and the obstacle was not public unrest, curfew and the like, but the spontaneous policy of the transport authority) they mentioned a museum and as we had some hours, we went. a silkroad museum it was, connecting Kargil with our days in usbekistan, featuring a pipe of tsar nikolaus II and several embroideries from the other ‘stans’. the next day, after very few hours of sleep in a really run down hostel, we got on a bus by 4.30 and stepped out of it again by 9 in the morning, in the wonderful little monastery village of lamayuru.
our first buddhist village – what a culture clash for us. here there are women on the street and they even say hello (or rather ‘julley!’ what seems to have a whole range of meanings like ‘hello, thank you, have a good day, etc’). we stayed in the home of a lovely women, who cooked for us and even heated some water, so we could wash with a bucket – we are completely used to this rather old style showering method in the meantime. she was a lot of fun, we had the feeling of living her family, if only for a day. 

and then we got to leh, details on our stay here, which should include some monastery visits, maybe some meditation period and at least two 5000m peaks will follow. the altitude is quite a challenge, no fast movements etc. one can imagine that meditation was invented here.