I kinda forgot I'd made "friends" out here in Delhi. Last night I drove straight into the Bullet Wallas shop/hangout after 12 hours of driving, and it was like running into an old group of friends I hadn't seen in a while. I guess I'm going to have to start getting used to that feeling...
I sold my bike, then went to the bank and liquidated my account to pay for this bike I'm getting shipped to LA. Somehow, magically, I'm down to a hundred bucks total assets. OK, three hundred with unused travellers' checks...and I guess reiss and jael owe me some money...but that's not the point. The point is that this trip is over, physically and financially, and it's pretty neat that they coincide. Not bad, I guess, for a year's worth of savings: 7.5 months travel and a motorcycle. A whole lot of fun was had, and I'll have something to remember it by as I'm cursing the LA traffic. Great. The end.


Section Break


Now the problem is that I've liquidated my bank account and still have 3 months worth of traveling to do. Luckily, the wizards over at Citibank have devised some way to warp the fabric of time-space and let me borrow from my future earnings as a doctor 10 years from now, but it's all a bit mystical and fine-printed. In any case, it would be a lot more fun to try to do cheaply. So far, I've found 3 options:

accordioning across the country, which might get me beat up.
craigslisting across the country, which also might get me beat up.
couchsurfing across the country, which might get me beat up AND raped.

I think a mixture of all three would be safest, but there's no denying that the internet has massively changed the American Road Trip so I might as well use it to my advantage. Some Aussie told me about Couchsurfing.com as a way to match travellers with couches, and it sounds like a great way to "do" America. I could also post on the Craigslist Rideshare board in every city I plan on driving through, and see how many people I could push into the car. Could be an interesting way to meet people, anyway.
Jeff's not coming, which would make the accordioning either extremely free or massively depressing. I'll take it along, and see how it pans out. He brought up a good point, that most American's don't give a rat's ass about two wierdos from San Francisco playing for money. True as that might be, Canadians might just dig it. Anyway, if I end up going up north, it might be a good idea to set up shop on a few streetcorners.

I'm leaving for the airport in 30 minutes. 20 hours of flight time ahead. whoopee. I'm up for any suggestions with how to get across the country, so let me know if you know of a cross-country zip line or something. I'm out. So long, Asia.

I figured out that having sex out here is a lot like eating meat; you have the desire in you but then you look at the rotting pieces of flesh lying in the heat covered in flies and you forget you ever wanted it. That might be why India has one of the lowest HIV rates in the world. Bad hygene, they don't teach that trick on MTV. See Jael, eating garbage can save your life.

I've been doing absolutely nothing for the past 3 weeks (except thinking of things like that). OK, I've been driving a lot. And getting the bike fixed. I saw that Beatles Ashram. But aside from that I've been smoking hash with whoever's at the guesthouses I've stayed at 'till 1AM, then waking up and doing it all over again. They're nice guesthouses, usually have a nice table overlooking the himalayas, and have a "please do drugs here" policy. It's a good policy, really beefs up the grilled cheese sandwhich market. Makes a whole lot more sense to come here than to Amsterdam for the same thing, anyway.
But that's not why I came out here. I came out here to see shit, do shit, and find shit, not smoke shit. Still, no matter how hard I try there's not one tiny little bit of me that has ANY inclination whatsoever to step out the door and walk down the street to look at a temple. I'm used to the heat, I'm used to the smell of horseshit, dogshit, cowshit, goatshit, peopleshit, I'm used to smelling like that myself, I'm used to the squat toilets, the dirty food, the dirty water, the barking dogs, the barking shop owners, the beggars, the con artists, the persistent needy children, I'm finally over having every shopowner say "hello Friend" or anything it'll take to get me into his store as if he was a porn site trying to lure me inside by sending me "friendly" junk emails. It's not so bad, all that. In fact I can pretty surely say I'm accustomed enough to it all that it doesn't bother me anymore.
So then what went wrong? I've been trying to figure this one out. It's not that India's daunting, or that there's not much or too much to see out here. It's that I have absolutely no desire to tread through all that muck just to see it when I could be perfectly content talking metaphysics with similarly lazy travellers from all around the world. The metaphor is spot on: India is like the leftovers of a diamond smuggler after he gets off the airplane; you have to swim through all that shit to get to the diamonds. I've been swimming through rubies, saphires, AND pearls for the past 7 months so I can't see any reason to go outside and swim in shit when I could be getting grilled cheese sandwiches and fruit lassis served to me as I'm rolling the next spliff.
That means I've gotta go home. When I've lost the ambition to swim through a subcontinent of shit to find even a few places of interest, I've lost the will to travel. I'm wasting time here. Hopefully when I get home to find out how boring things really are, it'll defibrulate me into wanting to get the hell out into the world again. That's the plan, anyway. Flight leaves in 24 hours...

May 31st.

There it is.

I have no idea how Melissa figured out exactly when I'd be leaving (particularly since I wasn't even sure at the time), but I just booked a plane ticket back to San Francisco for exactly one week from now, thereby clicking the proverbial "section break" button on my metaphysical word processor. I'm now officially on my way home, and so ends my time in Asia.

It's not at all over here yet, though. I've taken my motorbike back down the marijuana infested Manali-Kullu valley to Mandi, the crossroads town where I'd written my post after having spent 3 days fixing the bike. Now I'm taking the other road to New Tibet, where places have names like Mcloud Ganj and Dharmasala. I dropped my muffler on the way down here, and if I thought my bike was loud before, I had NO IDEA how loud these things can get. People don't just look at me anymore, their faces are irresistablely attracted to the monstrosity I'm driving by the 18 massive horses screaming out my right foot. It happened as I was picking up a hitchhiker (I started playing Himalayan Crazy Taxi with the Saddhus walking along the highways). He might have accidentally stepped on it, but 500 miles of bumpy roads had finally pulled the not some bolt and I heard a loud "KALUNK" as the hitchhiker yelled some Hindi version of "What was that?" in my ear. I pulled over, figured out what had happened, and just as I went to get the muffler so I could find some duct tape and put it back on, one of those giant diesel trucks honked a "sorry, dude" and proceeded to roll directly over it without slowing down the slightest. So now my exhaust pipe ends just below my right foot and the whole valley can hear me coming. Man, is it fun. So much fun that there's gotta be a law against it back home. At least I'll have the freedom for one more week to go deaf in the right ear.

But all this thinking about dynamsim and rates of change has got me thinking that maybe it's not the places I should be going that needs changing, but the whole format of my travelling. I think I've figured out a way to bring that "whatever it is" back to my trip. Change continents, first of all. But more importantly change what I'm doing. After buying that plane ticket, financing a further road trip across America would involve some borrowing somehwere. I could sleep in my car, but it'll cost about $800 for the gas alone. So here's the proposal:

America by Accordion. The objective is to drive a circle around America, making New York in time for "The" wedding and coming back by the end of July, by playing street accordion for gas money in cities along the way. Personal money could only be used for food and lodging, so I wouldn't be allowed to refill my tank without having earned it. This would only really work with Jeff's help, whose phone number is (650) 678-9346 and who really loves when people call him to tell him to go on road trips... because he's deciding... It doesn't quite beat "Around Ireland with a Fridge," a story about a guy who lost a bet and had to hitchhike around Ireland with a small refrigerator. But it could be fun...

Last night I went to a "bar" out here in Manali, the first true bar I've been to in India. It looked just like any upper-mid range bar in San Francisco, with a big half-circle bar and mirrored glass shelves supporting top shelf liquors. Not surprisingly, the patrons were mostly members of the Yuppie Indian class, exactly the same people I've seen in the same bars in New York. They seem to do everything seriously, which works well in the business world. But there's nothing they take more seriously than their vanity. I thought it was a racist generalization to see rich, perfectly clean cut Indians dancing in the clubs of New York as if every move was a perfect pose, with tight silk shirts and trendy Diesel jeans, moving just carefully enough to hint at how much they've pre-empted every move to make them look the best. It turns out this an invalid generalization of all Indians, but surprisingly accurate for this class of Indians, and since so many of the Indians in America are from this business-centered group of people out there to "make it," it seems to discribe a lot of the Indians in America. But it wasn't American vanity that did it to them, from what I learned last night, they were like that before they left.

There was a Tibetan looking man sitting next to me, with long hair and a distinctly Native American look to him, who was wearing a white shirt with bright red letters spelling "WHERE ALL DA WHITE WOMEN AT?" On one hand, this was the kind of shirt that, in New York, I'd wouldn't be surprised to see on a young uptight Indian businessman "going loose and crazy on Saturday night," but this time it was worn by a stiff looking Tibetan who then "dance-walked" around the dancefloor for the rest of the night with his ultra stiff head-bobbing, foot tapping, and arms twitching. It might have been the joint recently passed to me, but I couldn't help but thinking of where this man came from. What kind of family, from ancient Tibetan traditions, had moved as refugees to India in the past fifty years to raise their son into this head-bobbing product of the new globalized pop culture? It wasn't just him, though. Aside from the slick-back hair silk shirt playboys, a lot of the poorer looking people danced with an anything goes craze I've so far only seen at weddings here. There was a pop song I've heard a lot here (that's apparently been a pop song for as long as I've been traveling) that goes "rakada RAJA RAJA RAJA RAJA RAAAAAAA JAA." When this song came on, all the headbobbers from the corners flooded the dance floor. When it came on a second time, 45 minutes later, everybody went even crazier, into a near epileptic fit with the ferocity of a mosh pit. You might call it the traditional old village happy-as-fuck dance, but here they were moving every part of their body the same way when Ja-Rule came on. Within a year, I bet, they'd be dancing in exactly the same way in front of some elephants and a dressed up groom on a fancy rickshaw.

With all this talk about Dynamic Quality, I completely discarded the fact that I was sitting in the middle of one of the most Dynamic places in the world. Here are millenia-old cultures coming out in the past few decades into the new gobal culture. Fair enough, America might have seen some changes in the past 30 years, but these people were coming from a culture that, presumably, has maintained relatively static over the past several thousand years. And here were its children, going crazy to music from around the world, taking on values that are diametrically opposed to those they were brought up with. Interestingly enough, the Israelis have made a pretty significant impact on the youth out here, as the music in the bar eventually turned to Psytrance... and there's no better gouging rod out here for finding Israelis than to hear psytrance being played way too loud behind some bushes.

Maybe it's all this dynamism that's responsible for the change in traveler culture I noticed in this country. There seems to be two types of travelers I've met so far. There's a 18-24 year old European/American group with an "uncertain" look in their eyes. It seems to be a pretty common thing for high school and college graduates to come out here to "do" India for the summer, only to spend their trip trying to stay alive instead of actually enjoying themselves. It's as if, in their first trip into the third world, they dive straight into the deep water and try to stay afloat for three months. Some come to "find themselves," some come to test themselves, but one way or another they end up having to frantically tread water until their rescue at the end of the summer. The Israelis seem to have built metaphorical party boats on the surface, and can spend their entire vacation eating Israeli food, doing good drugs, and dancing to Psytrance. Then there are the legitimate "cool" people, who've become official travelers (in the Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles discribes a Traveller, as opposed to a Tourist, as someone who no longer associates "home" with his original culture. I'd say that's about right). These people include the Shiva Riders, the Bullet Wallas, expats who're making business here, foreign tour guides, journalists, people legitimately studying yoga or mysticysm, and generally those people who tend to look comfortable out here. They, in the Lake of India metaphor, are the snorkelers or even scuba divers who feel just as comfortable under the water as above it.

If we take this poignant metaphor to its unneccessary end, my problem is not that there's not enough dynamism out here to keep me interested, it's that there's too much. Instead of diving down into its depths, I've had a chance to learn to float comfortably in the sun, or with the motorcycle, "jetski" over its surface. It's so nice up here that I've lost the drive to dive down and explore the dangerous cold waters beneath the thermocline, and the unknown depths are just scary enough for me to see no reason really going down there.

This means it's time for me to go home. When I've lost that drive to dive in head-first into the unknown, I'm no longer a Traveller but a tourist on vacation. I'll spend another week or so in Dharmsala, where the Dalai Llama is absent at the time, then I'll head home. So ends the Asia part of the trip, now the trick will be to start all over again in America. I've still got 3 months left...

I saw Hunter S. Thompson's Indian doppelganger at a rave last night. Actually, if you could breed Hunter Thompson with John's uncle in Kennewick, you'd have whatever it was that I saw last night. It took an hour of finding the trailhead, and then another full hour of hiking up the steep climb in the dark with an LED light before I finally got to the party at midnight. The party just got groovin' at about 3, and it was freezing out (one of the "should have been obvious" pitfalls of having a party in the Himalayas). All of a sudden, this shaved-head fat guy wearing shorts, a hawaiian shirt and carrying a walking stick marches into the middle front of the dance floor as if he just got to the party. He stands there, feet apart, hands on his hips, surveying the crowd like he was a five-star general looking over his troops... except he looked like the mad genetic scientist from Southpark. He yelled "HEY," just to let everybody know he was there, and then marched directly into the middle of the dancefloor. Nobody knew what to do, so we just pretended not to notice him. Then the music moved into one of those Trance buildups that somehow never fail to get people "WOOOOO!!!"ing, and the strange man stood there resulutely, and raised his walking stick, slowly, into the air as if he were summoning some kind magical incarnation. As the rest of the crowd got all excited about the perfectly predictable buildup, this man stood in the middle of the dance floor pointing his cane at the stars. Then the climax came and he started shaking his knees as if possessed, yet all the time maintaining the perfectly straight face as he looked up at the stars. That was the way he danced, with his cane up in the air like that. Later, he'd walk around as if inspecting the place. Perfect Hunter Thompson if I'd ever seen one. And he was Indian.

In the last post, I described the scene when I'd found out how much this mechanic had gone out of his way to help me. What got to me about it wasn't just this mechanic, it was the sudden realization that I'd fallen into the trap of generalizing Indians. All I've heard, from travelers and even Indians, was how malicious Indians can be. They'll take your bag if you're not watching, and they have no morals when business is involved. So, I started to see all Indians this way, and wondered why I wasn't making as many local friends as in other countries. But the Indians changed as soon as I crossed into the borders of Utternachal and then Himalchal Pradesh, and I didn't. Until the mechanic.

Also last night, I had heard of this party through some Israeli sources. It was supposed to be a past-dawn psytrance party out in the woods so, naturally, I assumed it was an Israeli party. It was all Indian. It was fully put on and attended by Indians. The Israelis showed up after 3, and I ran into several groups of them on the trail down when I left at 4, so maybe they had yet to overrun the place. But it was an Indian party.

OK, now I'm gonna talk a little metaphysics, since I've been kinda in withdrawl since Rishikesh (all the hippies out here have been replaced by Israeli ravers). I've been reading Lila, Robert Persig's continuation of Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance and a further discourse on the Metaphysics of Quality (which seems to be his thesis in life). The idea is that reality is composed of Qualities, not of substance, and that there are two different forms of Quality: dynamic and static. Static quality is everything we know, from the static qualities of a chair to static ideas of the cultures we live in. Dynamic quality is the force of change against these static forms, the driving force behind Evolution (challenging static biological forms) and the source of chaos in the 20th century (challenging static social forms). If this doesn't make any sense, there are two full books written about the subject that there's no way I'd be able to fully summarize here. Go read them.

The reason I've gone traveling, using this form of thought, is to get as close as I can to this Dynamic force, to change my situation every few days, change my ideas, encounter new ways of thinking, etc. That's what was so special about that mechanic, he broke through my generalizations and brought me back to Dynamic quality. This is Life. This is Adventure. This is Constant Change.

But it would be easeir to chase my own shadow. Dynamic quality exists at the "leading edge" of consciousness (sorry, Barber lab), that point just before future becomes present. Impossible to catch. Instead, my reality has become this constant race for change and, in so doing, has become static. I'm constantly changing, my ideas are constantly changing, and so consistantly that it's become static. Driving through the countryside, never seeing the same mountain twice, has gotten boring. It's this static quality that I've been trying to get away from, and if I can't do that by travelling any more, maybe it's time to go home.

I was right in the middle of these thoughts when Hunter Thompson walked into the middle of the dancefloor and I found myself, once again, happy to be travelling. It was just so far out of my realm of comprehension to see an image I'd thought only existed within the strange subculture of America, encorporated by an Indian at an Indian rave I'd also thought was solely Western.

So I've figured it out: given my current Rate of Change has gotten stale, I can either go home and return the static world, or find a way to make things massively wierder. My mission for the past few days has been to figure out which road to take, and whether or not to go home just yet. That's why the mechanic and Hunter Thompson were so much fun, they brought me another taste of Dyanamic Quality. On the other hand, these mountains are beautiful, but they look like Nepal and Switzerland. Having to walk my motorcycle through a herd of cows is annoying, not exciting. Going to a rave in the wilderness: "It's been done before." Yesterday I walked past a motorcycle gang called the "Shiva Riders," a group of old punk rockers from England whose ringleader had built an honest Throne with the Shiva trident on his motorcycle seat. I walked by, thought "huh." and kept walking. Unless I find something REALLY out there soon, maybe it is time to go home...

I just figured out that most of my problems with Indians are a direct result of my taking everybody's advice that all Indians are out to cheat you. Keeping a constant vigil on the society around you is exhausting, and more so when everybody's trying to be your friend. I think it might be a regional thing, but I've been surrounded by genuine talkers ever since I got out of Dehli. It's almost frustrating, actually, trying to not feel bad for being a complete dick to somebody who's trying to be your friend in order to sell something, and then finding out he's actually just trying to be your friend.

This, and a handful of other revelations, came to me about 10 minutes after leaving a mechanic's shop, slightly drunk and significantly more stoned, wind blowing through my hair and in a state of pure enjoyment. This dream state was abruptly and abnoxiously broken about 2 minutes later when I had to turn around because the engine started misfiring.

For the past three days. Yes, THREE days, I've been stuck in or around Shimla with a motorbike that just doesn't know how to keep a rhythm. Granted, it was the most frustrating experience I'd had traveling so far, but throughout it all I couldn't believe how far the mechanics went out of their way to make me happy. If they spent half of the time making me feel better as they spent on the bike, maybe I'd be in Manali by now. Here's what I mean:

I passed through this town called Shimla riding the bike as if it were a sick horse, thankful for every engine fire and becoming increasingly aware of its hiccups. The bike absolutely refused to make it up the driveway out of the hotel in the morning, so a crowd of 4 Hindus helped me push it up. I was hoping it would at least get to Manali, since it got this far already. 6km out of town, I stopped at a crossroads and somebody ran up to me and asked if I wanted air in my tires. He looked nice, though, not like a sleezy mechanic salesman. Then he pointed at my engine and said the head gasket is leaking. Then, and here was the selling point, he offered to fix the head gasket for $5, including labor. $5! I spent $500 on fixing the head gasket of the thunderbird a few years ago, and that was after shopping around (initial estimate was 2 grand!). So, OK maybe that would fix the problem.

He didn't speak much English, so he dragged his friend over who immediately thrust himself on me as a "temporary english speaking friend" until my bike would be finished. First it should take an hour, then they had the wrong gasket so they had to drive another hour to get the right one. All the while I was watching the time tick by, trying to figure out how I was going to make the 7 hour trip to Manali before dark. Eventually, I got pissed off and ran off to have a tea and read my book, but the English speaker wouldn't leave me be. He had tea with me, all the time asking questions about me, about the bike, about America, all questions I'd heard so many times that they just all pissed me off. Finally, the head gasket arrived and they started putting the engine back together. This job was relegated to "the boy," not the original mechanic, so I kept an eye on what he was doing. Then I heard a loud snap, and looked over to see he'd overtightened a large bolt and snapped the end into its thread in the cylinder block. That was a big deal. I'm not even a mechanic and I know that was a big deal. It was one of two bolts holding he cylinder head piece onto the cylinder block, without which there'd be a whole lot more oil leaking than with no head gasket at all. As if that wasn't bad enough, I had to stare at this boy wide-eyed as he looked around, gave me a quick glance, and then proceeded to put the engine back together AS IF NOTHING EVER HAPPENED.

I casually walked over to him, gritting my teeth, and watched him drop as bolt and then hit his head on the handlebars just before I spoke. That was funny. He knew he fucked up, and he was nervous. I found the snapped bolt, put it in the hole where it should be, and said "problem." He looked at me wide-eyed, looked at his boss, and said "no problem" and kept putting the engine back together. I said "PROBLEM!" and motioned for him to take the engine back apart, to which he replied "no, no problem" and kept working as if I weren't even there. I took the bolt over to his boss, who only had to see the pissed off look on my face and the snapped bolt to figure out what was going on.

The boss wasted no time in getting "the boy" to take the engine apart again, and then spent a half hour pounding a screwdriver into the hole to dig the piece out. I don't know what they intended, but every hammer blow on the engine made me quiver. That didn't work, so they brought out the welder and tried to weld the broken bit of the screw to a nut so they'd have something to grab it by. But, since they only had an arc welder, they ended up just welding a big lump of metal onto the supposed-to-be-completely-flat cylinder block. All the while, my teeth were getting ground to dust.

Finally, they left it alone. The english speaker had left, and I they stopped talking to me. I knew this would happen, all the stories of having these roadside mechanics totally fuck up your bike and force you to pay thousands of rupees to get them fixed again finally happened to me. I asked the boy one last time to fix it, and all he could say was "no problem." That did it. I blew up.

Now, anybody who knows me knows that I don't blow up very often. But I spent not an ounce of effort concealing it this time. TAKE OUT THAT PIECE! NOW! WHO THE HELL ARE YOU TO TRY TO FIX THIS BIKE? I SHOULD BE IN MANALI BY NOW! WHY, FOR FUCK'S SAKE DID YOU EVER STOP ME AT THAT INTERSECTION?????

I realize in retrospect that this had a profound effect on the mechanic. It turned out, contrary to everything I'd been told about Indians, that this guy really just wanted to make me happy. He was one of these people I've seen a lot of in Thailand and Nepal, with that innocent look of happiness behind their eyes that's most common in buddhist cultures. At this point, however, he looked more like a guilt-ridden child who'd just upset his parents. The english speaker came back and told me the mechanic would take the piece over to someone who could fix it, and that it would take more time. I was pissed off. I had lost a full day at this rat-bastard mechanic. I told him to fix it and ran off before the english-speaker before could ask to come along. I'd been fucked by mechanics enough for one day. I just wanted to be alone.

Almost 2 hours later, I was feeling much better when the mechanic drove his scooter by the restaurant I was eating at, motioning for me to come back when I'd finished. Apparently he had been looking all over town for me. Instead of coming back to a functional working bike, I came back to my bike all in pieces with the cylinder block still unrepaired lying on the floor. I got ready to blow up again, but the english speaker was right there to explain the situation. Apparently, this mechanic had driven up and down the road for 20km trying to find somebody to fix it, but as it was Sunday there was no shop open that could bore it out. So, because they knew how important it was for me to keep moving that day, they offered to replace the entire cylinder and piston from a newer Enfield bike they had for sale in the shop. I'd be driving out of there in another hour. For no extra charge.

I was almost ready to cry. It wasn't just the conflict of emotions, or the fact that I knew I needed a new piston anyway and he'd saved me a lot of extra money. He had this puppy-dog look on his face of that young kid who'd broken his parent's expensive something and would do anything to make things the way they were again. This, in the country that was supposed to be full of cheaters, was too much to deal with. Then they offered me a smoke, and brought me up to a balcony, rolled a joint, and passed it around between the three of us until we were all in a much better mood. The English speaker gave the mechanic's defense, saying that I was a foreigner and therefore diserved some kind of respect, and would do anything in his power to make sure I left happy. Then we talked for a while longer while "the boy" put the bike back together. They probably knew to bring me up there so I wouldn't be breathing down the boy's neck, but I guess they were right that it made everybody happier that way. It took longer than expected, as expected, so we rolled another. Then another. Then I brought out a half pint of brandy I'd been carrying around since Nepal. Then it was finally finished. I was on my way. I gave him an extra dollar tip, and left.

So it was at this point of riding through the lower Himalayan countryside in the afternoon of a beautiful sunny day that I came to the other revalation that this whole trip closely resembled a video game. Final Fantasy, or something like that. I passed towns like Sharog and Mantaur, swerving to avoid trucks and goats, meeting companions along the way and having to negotiate tenuous deals with strange new civilizations. Or maybe it was like Zelda, where I had to get somewhere but there was always something blocking the path, in this case the bike keeps breaking down, and I'd have to meet some new characters to help me through. And the whole time I was getting experience points in bike mechanics, and once I'd reach a certain level of experience, I wouldn't need the mechanics at all and could fix the bike myself. Low level problems, like timing and carbeurator adjustments, I could do, but things like changing head gaskets I'd need like a level 8 mechanic or something.

Then my engine started coughing and misfiring. Maybe it's nothing.

But yeah I'd gained experience points in all sorts of stuff. I was a Level 1 Reiki healer. I had training in Vipassana. I had rudimentary knowledge of Thai and Vietnamese. I also had found a few buddies that I might meet up with a gain to help face a new challenge. Best of all, I was going ot a Bullet Wallas hotel in Manali where there'd be all sorts of motorcycle groups leaving in all directions for day and week trips. OK, I've never really played Final Fantasy but I'm sure it's a lot like this.

Then the engine sputtered again. FUCK. I KNEW this would happen! I drove all the way back, about 30 minutes, except it was uphill on the way back and the engine was coughing so much it would hardly chug up the hills. I barely made it back to the shop, all pissed off again. The main mechanic took me back upstairs, and smoked another two joints with me while four people in the shop gathered around my bike to try to figure out what's going wrong. They were working on the timing, and I didn't care anymore what was going on so long as it worked. Almost 2 hours later, they did something to fix it. I drove it really hard for 10 mintues to test it, came back to the shop full of smiles, and offered them money. This was the test. THEY REFUSED MORE MONEY!!! This was a big deal for me. I left full of smiles and feeling guilty for ever having doubted their intentions.

An hour later down the road, the engine started sputtering again. I found a hotel for the night and gave up. In the morning, I found another local mechanic and asked him to look at it. Just as I pulled up to the mechanic, the bike stalled and wouldn't start again. This was about 10 O'clock. If I left by noon, I could make it to Manali. He also had his english-speaking friend who had exactly the same questions I wasn't in the mood to answer. Long story short, at 1 O'clock he showed me that the timing plate had been cracked and the only replacement was at the Authorized Enfield repair shop back in Shimla, and that the only way I'd be able to fix it would be to stick the bike in the back of a Jeep and drive all the way back. This took me a while to get over, and eventually I summoned the jeep and we somehow hauled the thing inside.

I was in no mood for any kind of talking. But, this English speaker had exactly the same questions to ask me and wouldn't leave me alone about it. He asked me about sex in America. For some reason everybody who talks to me for more than 5 minutes wants to know how much I paid for my motorcycle and how many women I "make sex with." After telling me how Indian women like "polite sex" and American women "like two hole sex," I loosened up a bit. Then they stopped the jeep and bought us all beers, lowered the windows, and drove along drinking and blasting Punjabi pop music as loud as the stereo would take it...all the time my bike not rolling out the back because of a rope and a brick behind the tire. They made me feel better. That was twice in two days that I've been pulled out of a very bad mood. When we arrived, the mechanic didn't ask for any money, despite having spent all day working on my bike. Granted, he did get a free ride into Shimla and probably some kickbacks from the driver (to whom I paid 15 bucks, a shitload out here), but I gave him two bucks for the help and the beer.

So they took me to an "authorized" mechanic, who cost a whole lot more ($30) but actually fixed the bike. Turned out the valves were all sorts of fucked up becuase the engine had overheated so much (because of the busted head gasket). Oh, the domino effect. They, too, saw how upset I was at having to spend another day there, so they personally drove me to town and found me a cheap hotel.

I'd driven straight through Shimla without even seeing the city center because I was on a mission to get to Manali. Now I was stuck there, so I thought I might as well look around. And HOLY SHIT was I an asshole to ever skip it. In the midst of my struggles to find something that resembled home, this place was like a little Britain tucked away at the base of the Himalayas. It was like walking into Gibraltar, with quaint English houses and a large Protestant church towering overhead. Wierd. They had a Domino's Pizza. They had a real, deliciously overpriced coffee chain place. They had a CITIBANK. It was exactly what the doctor ordered. I was overwhelmed, not just at the city itself, but of my own initial refusal to ever give it a chance. It was a carnival, full of obnoxious Indian tourists, but nonetheless it was a place of interest. I'd lost sight of the fact that I was traveling to see India, not to get to Manali. It took three days of getting stuck in Shimla to actually ever see it.

So I got my bike by Noon the next day, giving me just enough time to make it to Manali before dark. Five hours up the road, a storm hits. I'm 100k from Manali, in a nice town called Mandi, but I get it now. I get what makes the motorcycle trip fun. It's not about the actual destination as much as the chance places you end up. Back in Rishikesh, I was riding with an Israeli couple who had rented a scooter for the day. There was a wedding in the street, with animals and a band and confetti and lots of dancing. They motioned us to stop and dance. We stopped and danced. They sprayed us with silly string, and then kissed us all goodbye as we left a few minutes later. It's these kinds of things that make the motorcycle trip what it is. And as much as it sucks to be stuck with mechanics, it's more fun to be riding in a jeep drinking beer and singing Punjabi dance tunes with actual Indians than getting stoned on a balcony talking cheap metaphysics with a bunch of dreadlocked bums. Definately a challenge in every sense of the term, but it wouldn't be "traveling" if it weren't. That would be a vacation.

Rishikesh was enough fun. A nice place to smoke a lot of pot by the side of the Ganges and watch Western hippies walk by with their gurus and this "all-knowing" look on their faces. I've never felt any kind of scorn for hippies 'till I got to this country, and now it's almost pervasive. It might be wierd that in two months I've gone from spending 10 days locked in a meditation ward to hating hippies, but I think when it comes down to it, I loved the idea of coming to India to "find yourself" until I started meeting people who came here to find themselves.

It's not that I disagree with some of the things that come out of their heads (except for their ideas on science; they always hate to find out I have a degree in Biochemistry), it's that the words of the Griz, the old sage of the Beer Store on Clement was right: "Most of it's just to get into your pants." To have to listen to some of the WORST metaphysical conversations on a daily basis didn't do much to help my spiritual self-esteem. But to have to consistently see wide-eyed, dreadlocked, hairy legged girls wearing saris follow these western guys with beards, sarongs and "the guru walk..." That's what did it. It's not about mind-expansion. It's about getting dumb girls into bed.

OK, I'm basing this on a handful of people I've met. But there's definately a pattern of wide-eyed girls following solemn, "all knowing" guys around. And most of them, when you try to talk to them, look straight through you and can never really answer the questions you ask.

Maybe I'm not giving them enough credit. During my 10 days, I would have looked you straight in the eye and been to self-absorbed in what was going on inside my own head to answer any kind of question. But watching other people go through the same process made it seem so futile. OK, go to India. Find yourself. But then come back a better person! So many of the people I've been meeting here have no plans to go back. In fact, they have no plans to do much of anything, until the money runs out. Then they'll find something to do.

What kind of benefit is that? Spending your whole life "finding yourself." I guarantee that nobody here is going to attain enlightenment. Fine, I'm being short sighted. Nobody here will find enlightenment this life. Or the next. Buddha had to wait 300,000 generations after somebody told him he'd one day reach enlightenment? Brahmin yogis, maybe. Western hippie tourists? Not just yet. So why lock yourself in an ashram in Rishikesh?

The Beatles did it. I went to the Maharishi's ashram here where the Beatles (and a few hundred other people) lived in tiny smurf houses for a few years at a time. These bungalows are awesome, and really 60's psychedelic looking, made from a 10 foot diameter cylinder with a spiral staircase around the perimeter, leading to an 8 foot tall dome on top with a 4-foot door. I guess only pictures would do them justice. Anyway, the place looked like the most fun in the world. But they came back (except George really) and made the world a whole lot trippier with some really psychedelic albums. There's a benefit. I just wish people would bring something better back to our world than more organic vegan restaurants.

Back on the motorbike. Back to India.

I went to Renuka, which was neat. Not only was it named after Anitha's sister, it's also (quite fittingly) a wildlife preserve. They keep a small lake absolutely brimming with fish so that all sorts of birds stick around. They also put some of the sickliest looking lions in a cage together to hope they'd breed and make more. AND BREED THEY DID. About 20 minutes after walking away from them, I heard the repetative grunting of one lion followed by a few long, drawn out roars from another. It was a lot like having noisy roommates, except I was a HALF MILE away. It was probably the funniest thing I've ever heard, I only wished there was a way to record it.

On the way out I got seriously lost and spent about 8 hours driving what should have taken 2. All the signs were in Hindi, so I think I went to the other end of the state. Whatever roads I took, none of them were on my map. It's an Indian made map. I can't complain to anybody here because they'll just look at me funny and say, "what? It's an Indian made map."

So the bike's not broken and, Ganesh willing, I'll be in Manali by tomorrow night. It's a good 250km through hills (that's a lot out here), but my bike's almost burning as much oil as petrol. There's some gasket in the cylinder head that the mechanic in Dehli GLUED back together, so now I have to wear jeans to prevent the boiling oil from frying my calves. I should have went for a newer engine...

Thanks, Cromie for the dragon suggestions but I don't think my bike is quite up to the challenge of being named after a dragon (kinda like naming my housecat Tiger). Unless there's a dragon with Emphesyma.

I am tempted to call it Nuts 'N' Gum, but because it represents what the thing's made out of (I had to get the engine glued back together when it stopped an hour outside of Dehli because the valve nuts had shaken off) and not for whatever "else" that could mean. But you're right, John, about the fecal references. When you suggested the "Turn Rattler," I began to wonder at the source of my diarhea (the rear shocks need replacing). So I've settled on it:

The Liquifier.

Now THAT's Badass (pun intended).



OK So here's what I've been really spending my time on in Dehli. I was going to not talk about it 'till it's finished but it's what I've been doing and I guess that's the purpose of this blog. Why else would anybody WANT to spend a week in Dehli?

I'm sending a bike home. I just bought the frame before I left, a 1964 Royal Enfield rusty jumble of steel that RUNS hilariously. The steering pulls to the left, the front brake doesn't work at all, there's no battery, it basically looks like it's been buried since '64. But parts here are cheap, and labor's even cheaper. So, I bought it for about $500 and for the same price, I'm replacing everything and sandblasting the rest. Totally rebuild the engine, gearbox, clutchbox, and drivetrain, sandblast and chrome up the original front wheel, get the old tan seats with the springs under them. But more importantly, I'm lowering the back wheel and getting longer front forks with the wraparound handlebar. It'll be a chopper. A British Colonial Chopper. It'll be "something else" anyway, but it's been so much fun deciding the details over the past few days that I haven't got to much traveling. I'm driving up to the Himalayas right now, and the bike should be finished by the time I get back (an American's putting it together, otherwise it definately would not) and I'll get to see it and make some final changes before it gets shipped to LA.

So if anything will need a name, it'll be that one. But I could use some help with this one thing I've been battling over. It's a 350cc engine right now, and gets just over 80 miles per gallon. But it doesn't go much past 60mph, and anything over 50 is bad to sustain. I could have it converted to a 500cc (22 horsepower instead of 18), and it'll eat 60mpg but get up to 70mph if I need it to. I've been driving in India and Southeast Asia for 6 months, and out here there's rarely a chance to do 60, but will I need the 500cc for a city bike? It'll cost $200 more for the conversion, plus the extra gas costs. In either case, it'll be a slow cruising bike, so maybe I should just keep the gas milage? Any advice?

But oh, man it's a fun project.

Moving on, last night I stayed at the worst hotel yet. There was a HIVE OF WASPS in the bathroom. I made the mistake of killing a mosquito by smacking the wall it was on, and in few seconds the room looked like a scene from "The Birds," except I was the screaming girl with the arms flailing. So they moved me to another room, which had almost as many mosquitos as the first, and when the power cut out at 1AM (for good because of massive electrical storm), there was no fan to save me. Back too Malaria pills for me.

I checked into another hotel here in Rishikesh (oh yeah, I drove 6 hours in the teeth-grinding Indian traffic to get here, and broke down an hour outside of dehli right across the street from a mechanic. $3 and one hour later I was back on the road, getting run off the tarmac by the big diesel trucks going against me in my lane), and it's nice here. For the first time in India, it's just real nice to be around. The hotel restaurant overlooks the Ganges, and I just sat there getting gradually stoned as all the people who stayed there came in for a meal and eventually stayed and talked.

Everybody here talks about India. People in Thailand talked about Thailand, but not nearly as much as they talk about India here. But I haven't heard it all yet, so it's still interesting.

So advice about the 350cc to 500cc conversion would be appreciated (John, I'm looking in your direction)

...I meant Biker Shubes rides on Sunday. Apparently the rear axle needs fixing. I found a dreadlocked Israeli dude to ride with me to Haridwar and Rishikesh tomorrow, so I got someone to help me push the bike after I've been stuck trying to crank the engine for half an hour in the scorching heat. WAhoo...

I didn't really realize it until talking with Cromie a few minutes ago, but I guess I just joined an Indian motorcycle gang. Yup, that about sums it up. I'm a Bullet Walla and in two days I'll be riding up into Dalai Llama territory on my awesomely awesome 1980 Royal Enfield Bullet motorcycle.

I should probably back up a bit...

I got to Delhi off the worst train ride ever endurable to my rich Western upbringing. This diserves a whole post devoted solely to these 15 disgustingly gruelling hours, since the memory has (thankfully) faded in the past three days, but let's just say I wouldn't wish an overnight Indian 3rd class ticket on anyone. I got to the train station at 1PM for a 7PM departure, assuming I could book a sleeper train the same day. They were all booked, and after a whole lot of runaround I bought a General Class ticket and asked the conductor to upgrade me to a sleeper if anybody cancelled. In retrospect, I fucked up in refusing to bribe him (I thought at the time he was just overcharging me) and, as a result, he left me with the heathens and lepers in General Class. OK, it wasn't so bad, and I got to see firsthand what the lower castes have to deal with out here, but I'm really happy to be traveling alone so I wouldn't have had to feel guilty for bringing someone else to it. And it was kind of nice to bond with complete strangers (literally, for the worst 4 hours of it I counted 12 people in a 3 foot by 12 foot corridor and was sitting on my backpack with two others with my legs pressed neatly into the legs of everybody else with tiny pockets of unfilled space). Anyway, I did it. It's over. I got off the train and ordered the most expensive hotel I'll ever take here (20 bucks) with AC and a full night's sleep.

So as I mentioned in the last post, I came to Dehli looking for this Bullet Wallas shop. In case you were wondering, a "walla" is the term used here to describe a person who "does" the preceeding noun. For example, there are Bike Wallas who fix your bicycle on the side of the road, Shoe Walas who fix or shine your shoes, Water Wallas, and so on. So thes people like the Royal Enfield Bullet. A lot.

Sure enough I found some small shop with a comically oversized sign and, after stepping into an empty room I hear "Hey Bro, come up here" in the most refreshingly Southern accent I've ever heard. Turns out the club's run by this American biker from the South who took it upon himself to stop Westerners from being so brutally ripped off by the Indian bike shops. We sat there for a few hours, talking of America, of motorbikes, and of riding around India while other friends and members would walk in and out of the office with certain things to bring up. There's no "business time" here, just time spent chatting in offices. So, inevitably, nothing ever gets done. A good example of this is that I'm still in Dehli fixing up my bike.

He's not much of a shop, but he happened to have two bikes on hand. One, for about $580, has been passed around between members for several years and he knew it to be reliable. The other one, for about $425, he had just bought a few days before and didn't know much about it except it had a new clutch and alternator system and the engine sounded fine.

So I took the risk. Thought it'd be fun. I spent all of the next day working in his shop to fix it up. Now, I have no idea what's up or down with motorcycles, but one of the things he kept saying was how much of a precision instrument thes bikes weren't. You can set the spark plug gap with your thumbnail. You can clean the carbeurator with a toothbrush. You can just about pull and twist any bolt into position, and if it doesn't work, you can drill out a new hole for it until it all comes together somehow. They're not high performance, rediculously high-tech machines alligned to within thousanths of an inch like the Harleys back home. They're nostalgic hunks of metal that were meant for British Army brats to work on in their spare time. So he took me to a parts store to get what I wanted and needed, and let me use his shop (looking over my shoulder occasionally to make sure I wasn't breaking the thing).

I started easy anyway, replacing the dorky English handlebars with lean-back cruiser ones. This was a whole lot harder than it seems, actually, and involves changing all four cables (there's an extra "decompression" lever which isn't worth going into) and a whole lot of elbow grease in getting everything off. There was even some welding involved, but I just drove down to the Welding Walla and gave him a quarter to do it. Then the oil, filter, air filter, lamps, electrical switches, and other random shit like that got replaced. So now I feel almost like I know something about motorbikes. But I've gotten over the "no way can I work on a bike" barrier which, ultimately, is a whole lot important than learning to change a clutch cable.

There's also a fleet of young Indians willing to work for next to nothing on whatever you tell them to do. Not very smart, but they're great at muscling stuff on. So I had a squad of 4 of them spend almost an hour trying to get this luggage rack and front crash bars on. Watching the group of them working so hard in the sun to bend this giant metal luggage rack to fit the back of this bike made me so happy to have them around, especially when they cost just under $1.50.

So then I gave it a good, heavy test drive and learned that the 3rd and 4th gears don't work, and switching between any two gears was next to impossible. I don't know if this had changed since I first rode it, but anyway today I took it to a "real" mechanic (one recommended by the Bullet Walla dude) who spent four full hours taking apart the gear box, the clutch box, and the entire rotary mechanism to find a bent rod all the way on the inside. The whole thing was like a lesson in motorcycle maintenance, with his "trusty boy" running around like a medical assistant handing him tools to perform the deep surgery. Actually, come to think of it, it was just like watching surgeons perform deep abdominal surgeries my senior year of High School. OK, it was a little more boring, but a lot greasier. So at he end, he charged 10 bucks labor and about 12 in parts. Now I understand why you'd have a motorcycle out here. That same thing would have cost at LEAST $200 back home.

So I take it back to him tomorrow morning for a full inspection, and then I'm off to the Himalayas (again). Oh man, am I excited though. Especially knowing I'll never have to deal with he trains out here. Granted, I didn't give them a fair chance but I did see the sleeper carriages and they were pretty shitty as well. But all the Bullet Wallas are up in that part of the country for the summer, and they're usually pretty easy to spot (dreadlocks, tatoos, awesome bikes) so it'll be fun to get to know them. The ones here in Dehli have been all way too cool for me.

That brings me to this rediculous thing I decided to grow on the front of my face. I came back from the mountians with a full beard, and turned it into the most Redneck goatee-with sideburns HickStash I could fashion. It looks awesome. It would look better if I had a mullet, but my hair's still growing back from having buzzed it 2 months ago so instead I got this round poofball thing going. Basically I look rediculous. Unfortunately, since none of you guys who would get the joke are out here, I'm just sitting here laughing by myself. But it's still funny enough every time I look in the mirror, and it somehow works well enough with sunglasses and a big black motorcycle, so I'll do my best to get a few pictures before turning back to normal. Or maybe I should just go all the way and sleeve up in tattoos and get real fat. This Dehli Belly would have to let up before I could conceivably gain any weight...

Right, so Biker Shubes rides at dawn on Friday. As the central breeding grounds for all New York Cab Drivers, I think I'd go nuts if I get stuck in it for the two hours it takes to get out of the Dehli suburbs. I'll spend a day in Hardiwar, then a few in Rishikesh, and eventually further up. Once I get into the mountains, it should be nothing but road and me (and maybe a few other riders by then). Bill Gates and Bill Clinton (for some reason) each spent tons of money fixing up the Indian Himalaya roads in the past few years. Supposedly, it makes the drive like a dream. Thanks, Bills.

I'll email again after the first 8-hour drive up to Hardiwar. Or from some intermediate town while waiting for a mechanic...

Speaking of which, I've been told by Mr. Bullet Walla that it's IMPERATIVE to bless every new bike out here, so tomorrow I'm heading to the giant Hanuman temple (monkey god) to bless it. I guess I should also give it a name. I'm up for suggestions.