The Fear of Familiarity and Another Story About Tourists

I woke up this morning before 6, spending another thirty minutes or so awake, but not so awake as to actually get out of bed. As is always the case during my first few days acclimatizing at high altitude, I have woken up, like clockwork, on an hourly basis during the night. The first time this happened, way back in the fall of 2008, I was a little bit freaked out. Now it’s just become part of the process. It should go away in a few days. Funny, how this blog so often delves into the most tedious matters of my biological wellbeing…anyways, it is my third time in Ladakh, and I find myself finally acknowledging that which I knew was fast approaching, but refused to see. Ladakh is beginning to lose its luster. Actually, I take that back. I have barely even scratched the surface of Ladakh’s beauty and culture, there is so much more to experience, so much more to see. On the other hand, Leh, Ladakh’s capital, and its surrounding environs have become, dare I say, familiar. Don’t get me wrong, I still love Leh, but as I begin round three of my misadventures here, it is now obvious that a great deal of this city’s almost frightening majesty has evaporated as its familiarity has grown.

            This is only natural, but I have never wanted to admit to it. Part of the reason I have become so enthralled by India, and Ladakh, and Nepal, and the hinterlands of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism stems from their oriental splendor (I can see my professors cringing now). When I first encountered India, and Ladakh shortly thereafter, it was foreign, exotic, and frightening. My senses were bombarded by a million new sights and sounds. As I endured new lows of suffering, I was also propelled to new heights of joy and fulfillment. There was a lot of crying and a lot of laughter, all of it pure and resplendent. I have clung to these first experiences, and in doing so, as the Buddha cautioned, I have only brought suffering upon myself and in some cases, those around me.

Let me now attempt to bring this back to my present quandaries concerning my existential relationship with Leh. My first experiences in India, and the lengthy (and ongoing) soul-searching that followed have led me to at least two conclusions: the first is that I am a Buddhist; the second is that deep down I am a nomad, a pioneer. I am desperately in search of that feeling of unfamiliarity and excitement. I long to climb new mountains, travel new roads, wade through new rivers, meet new people (clichéd), and face new demons. The notion of spending the rest of my life in a single context is absolutely terrifying. I know why this is, and why, if I am ever to be more than a Buddhist in name only, I must confront and ultimately liberate myself from such fears. This world is but an illusion, an infinite flux of causes and constituents devoid of permanence or inherent meaning. No wonder then that as I familiarize myself with the illusion, and Ladakh is part of this illusion, the uncomfortable truth reveals itself: my desperate need for new experiences is only a stop-gap measure, a means of finding temporary happiness on the long and arduous road to the state beyond suffering, nirvana. I didn’t mean for this to turn so negative, but I guess it fits, giving my uncomfortable realization.

On an unrelated note, I told myself that this time in Ladakh, I am not going to get so frustrated by tourists. Israelis, the French, whoever, let them go about their experience as I go about mine. Now I told myself this, and have been pretty open minded and non-judgmental over the last couple of days, but just now, as I sit in my good friend Namgial’s coffee house, I again find myself quite pissed off at my tourist kin. A white male, early-mid 50’s, Italian by the sound of his accent comes up to the counter; his tone is dismissive, as is his body language. It is obvious that he suffers from old Europe syndrome, and that these archaic, uncivilized people are beneath him. He begins complaining that he has not received his coffee, some weird chimerical half Americano, half Macchiato, but in a certain type of cup with a side of espresso. He badgers Namgial’s employee, a very nice young Ladakhi woman who is less than five feet tall and cannot weigh more than 90 lbs soaking wet, “Where is my coffee? Twenty minutes ago I ordered a coffee, what is taking so long? It does not take twenty minutes to make a coffee. This is ridiculous!” Having sufficiently swung his dick around, he goes back outside to smoke a cigarette. I don’t know how long it actually took to get his coffee. I don’t think it was twenty minutes, but it doesn’t really matter. Besides simply being an asshole to this very nice lady, Steve Job’s Italian doppelganger needs to pull his head out if his ass and look around. He is in India, in a trans-Himalayan cold desert. That he can even get coffee here is a miracle (and also a curse) of industrialized civilization. If he can’t wait twenty minutes to get his coffee, because he is clearly so busy on his vacation, he should have went somewhere with a Starbucks. But that too, would no doubt be beneath him. Tourists aren’t dicks, some dicks are just tourists.

Okay, with that out of my system I can get on with my life and you can get on with ours.

The Frequency is Courage.
- Doug B.

Quick Musings, Some of Which are Quite Outdated

13/7/12

Nearly every single faucet in Phey Gompa tells me to ‘Smile.’ This really is a wonderfully uplifting reminder, particularly when violently evacuating one’s bowels. I am not being sarcastic (well, a little bit), but it really does lift my spirits whenever I go to the toilet for a pee or a poo, and am reminded to smile.

Every morning, like clockwork, roughly half-an-hour before 10 a.m., based on quite a strong feeling in my bowels, I find myself reasonably compelled to go to the bathroom. And surely enough, every morning for the last few days, I have taken a poo at nearly the exact same time. I suspect it might have something to do with the various pills I have been taking for the allergic reaction and infection that developed in my right hand thanks to a very nasty bug bite and muscle fatigue.

Only after the fact, have I realized that the antibiotic I was prescribed for the infection inside my right hand is Amoxycillin, a derivative of penicillin. I used to be allergic to Amoxycillin, penicillin in general, as the first and, until now, only time I had been given Amoxycillin was as a child. I vaguely remember being given it for the stomach flu, but this would not make much since as the stomach flu is a virus, or so I am led to believe, as antibiotics do not work against viruses. Anyway, several hours after taking the first dose of Amoxycillin, which I remember being a foul tasting pink liquid—though less chalky than Pepto-Bismol—I found myself doing a lot of scratching all over my body. And soon enough, my mother noticed I had developed a great number of red blotches, all of which I found to be quite itchy. We rushed to the doctor’s office, or maybe it was the hospital as it was the evening and the doctor’s was likely closed; they declared I was allergic to penicillin and all its lovely derivatives, and that was the end of that. I’m pretty sure I was able to get a new toy out of the whole ordeal, so all in all, not so terrible an experience. Now, however, it seems that I have outgrown my penicillin allergy, as for the last five days I have been taking two tablets of Augmentin 625 Duo daily, of which one tablet is, according to the box, “Amoxycillin Trihydrate IP equivalent to Amoxycillin 500 mg [&] Potassium Clavulanate IP (as Potassium Clavulanate Diluted IP) equivalent to Clavulanic Acid 125 mg.” Therefore I have been taking a gram (that’s 1000 mg for those of you unfamiliar with the metric system) of Amoxycillin on a daily basis with no side-effects, at least that I know of, on top of 250 mg of Clavulanic Acid, the effects or purpose of which I haven’t the slightest clue. No itchy red blotches, no evening trips to the hospital, no new toy. Things sure have changed since I was five years-old.

30/7/12

Back on Amoxycillin following the motorcycle accident, this time with no obvious gastrointestinal side effects; I’m pretty sure it dries out my skin though.

There are so many attractive blond girls…why are they here?

My mind is in the gutter. Or rather, my mind is the gutter.

4/8/12

The Israeli children, blond-haired and blue-eyed, are among the least Jewish-looking children I have ever seen. What is strange though, is this is only true of girls. The male Israeli children are for the most part, unremarkable in their Aryan qualities, but by Moses, the little Israeli girls look as though they could be in 1930’s Germany’s Mickey Mouse Club.

I can quite safely say, without exaggerating in the least, tourists now completely outnumber the Ladakhis, at least in the more frequented parts of Leh. The tourist demographics have shifted as well, with White people now far outnumbering Indians. This does not sit well with me, and it is now easy to see why traditional Ladakhi culture is disappearing as fast as it is. With each successive season, a new tsunami of tourists washes away ever more of the Ladakh with which I first fell in love. It is a very real fear of mine that before this decade is through, the soul of Leh will have died, replaced by or rather subsumed by materialism and hollow Western tourist culture. This once fertile oasis of unique culture and religion thus rendered a soulless backpackers and tourist ghetto, Nubra and Zanskar soon to follow. Fuck Lonely Planet, they may mean well, but the effect of guide books on Nepal and India (and elsewhere I am sure) has been to stifle the dynamic nature of life; transplanting the cage of order, constancy, and control that dominates life in the West onto life in the East…and strangling it in the process. A life lived according to a schedule is not lived at all. As people become more and more reliant upon the order of things, upon schedules and reminders and SIRI, they lose the ability to respond spontaneously to difficult situations, to remain calm in turbulence, and to appreciate life as it unfolds, regardless of whether or not in conforms to our best laid plans. Life is full of river crossings where there are no bridges, something learned quite readily here through personal experience. You either get your feet wet, or you don’t cross. In the West, we build up so many layers of insulation between us and the world we inhabit in a vain and misguided attempt to escape the pain of life. But in doing so, in subscribing to a life solely of comfort we lose our connection to the world, we become numb to existence and fail to appreciate the dynamic nature of being. Any real reward demands struggle and sacrifice, the sort of experiences which touch and uplift the soul cannot be ordered with a few clicks on Amazon.com. A golden cage is still a cage.

Why do so many (White) people who come here dress like hippies and bums? I truly do not understand it. No living being ever native to India has ever dressed like this…ever. There is no basis for it at all, no cultural precedent or antecedent. Is it that people (tourists) are so ignorant as to think this is a part of the traditional culture? Or is it that by dressing as hippies they are somehow convincing themselves that they have achieved some sort of materialistically endowed equanimity? Truly, I am at a loss. And the jorts! So many people in jorts! Here’s some advice, take it or leave it: if ever you find yourself wearing jorts whilst in India or Nepal, it is time you go home.

Tattoos are stupid; they are either an advertisement or a reminder, the epidermis being a terrible place for both. That’s just my personal opinion. Here are the only things, I think, permanently worth etching into one’s skin: “All life is suffering.” “Everything is impermanent.” “Go read a book.”

-Doug B.

Sacré Bleu, or The Tantric Approach to Unpleasant French Women

What follows is perhaps, almost certainly, the least pleasant interaction I have had with a human being, indeed any sentient being, whilst in Ladakh. And yet, as I have reflected on it since it happened this morning, I have thus come to realize this incidents value as a quite profound teaching as I attempt to walk the path of the Buddhas. It unfolded as I was going for kora, ritual circumambulation, around the Chokhang Vihara, also known as Gompa Soma (New Gompa), which is the main Buddhist gompa (monastery) and lhakhang (temple) in central Leh. To the best of my memory, this is how it unfolded.

I walk into the Chokhang, and as I begin my kora, I notice on older Caucasian woman, European by the looks of it, attempting to light up a cigarette. I can stomach and ignore tourists being loud, or rude, walking the wrong directions, wearing shorts and other revealing clothing, and most of the other disrespectful things they do while in Buddhist gompas and sacred sites, but not this. This was intransigence at its highest. The Ladakhis might be too nice to confront her, but I am not.

Doug: Excuse me, but you cannot smoke here.

Old French Woman:   [Looks up in annoyance]

D:        I don’t mean to be rude but…

OFB:   Go away [gives slight wave of hand, by which she clearly means ‘fuck off,’ and resumes attempting to light cigarette]

Realizing that this woman is far more determined to smoke her cigarette and disrespect this sacred place than I am to stop her, I continue with my kora and leave this foul soul to wallow in carcinogens and her even more noxious personality. Having finished my circumambulation of the Chokhang, I stand on some stone steps shaded by a few trees near the front of the main lhakhang, reciting some last few mantras of OM MANI PADME HUM (HRI), when the Old French Woman, walks up to me.

OFW:  You cannot talk to people like that.

I attempt to be conciliatory, and indulge her with an apology that she does not deserve.

D:        I am sorry. I didn’t mean to come across as rude, but I realize that I did.

OFW:  You cannot tell people what they can do.

D:        I know, but really, you cannot smoke here.

OFW:  [Clearly perturbed that I will not give up my admonishment] According to who, to you?!

D:        According to them…[I motion to the Ladakhis behind her and the literal writing on the wall behind them which states in big bold letters ‘YOU ARE SITTING IN A HOLY PLACE, DON'T USE ALCOHOL, TOBACCO IN ANY FORM’]…it’s actually written on the wall.

OFW:   [Boiling with anger] You’re from the States aren’t you?

D:        Yes.

With my affirmation, I have virtually no doubt as to the vitriol that is to follow.

OFW: You know you should just stay there, closed.

She pauses, so consumed by her spiteful emotions that she is clearly at a loss for words; unable to convey in English the disgust inside her that only knows the language of French as a vehicle.

OFW:  You truly are an unbelievable country!

Shaking her head in utter contempt and disgust, she turns around and walks away. Now I am at a loss for words, so taken aback by her odiousness. As she walks off towards the side exit, completely failing, as do so many other foreigners and Indians, to walk about the temple properly—in a clockwise manner, I manage to get in the last words, which are the only words (other than expletives) which suddenly pop into my mind.

D:        [Somewhat sarcastically] Have a nice day.

The End

Welcome to Qatar: A Momument to Capitalism

As-Salamu Alaykum from Doha, Qatar. I still have another four hours to wait before my flight for Kathmandu is scheduled to leave. For those of you that don't know, Qatar is a small emirate nestled in the Persian Gulf that is rolling drunk on petroleum. Like Bahrain and the U.A.E., Qatar has used its tremendous energy wealth to create a modern, westernized, and wholly capitalist oasis of sorts amongst the rolling sand dunes of the Arabian peninsula. Behind the facade of skyscrapers, five star hotels, palm tree shaped islands, and per-capita GDP figures which eclipse those of Monaco and Lichtenstein is one of the largest human trafficking operations in the modern world. Anyway, the Doha International Airport would be largely unremarkable were it not for the Mecca to shit that is the Duty Free Qatar shopping mall. $400 bottles of scotch, hundred foot-long walls of nothing but cologne, netbooks, ipads, candy, cigars, DVDs, a Porsche, a Mercedes Benz, and more! Here's to Johnny Walker Blue Label and Toblerone!