What am I doing here?

10.2 Thursday = Colombo Fort Train terminal to Kandy

Kandy:  Hotels-Majestic Tourist Hotel, Hotel Mango Garden, Hillcrest Home

10.4  Saturday = Bus to Dalhousie via Hatton

Dalhousie:  Hotel-Slightly Chilled Guesthouse

10.6  Monday = Hikkaduwa

10.9 Thursday = Colombo

Colombo:  Hotels-Drift B&B, House of Art, Mt Lovinia

10.3.14  1:08am Sharjah

What the hell.  You planned this trip for a month, you bought the ticket a month ago and eight hours before departure you bought another ticket to KTM and on the way to the airport you buy a Leica!  Ha.  Oh wait it’s a low end compact Leica, ha ha.

Boarding in 2.5 hours, ha ha.

Job interview in Beijing

Employer:  Explain in brief your current employment situation.

Man:  I inspect pigeon butt-holes.

Employer:  And what is it exactly you are looking for?

Man:  explosives, subversive propaganda

Employer:  And could you tell us why you believe you are qualified to work at McDonalds.

Man:  It’s all the same shit, dude.

I’m so tired I can’t believe Beijing anymore.

So the plan is to fly to Kathmandu on this 4am red to purple eye, and then I'll go direct to the domestic terminal for a flight to Pokhara.  I want to reach Sarangkot by dusk.

There must be a reason I am going to Nepal.  And it can’t be Laxmi, and it can’t be Jamuna.  I can give them money, even children, and I get my visa, not good motives, son.

Air Arabia, the discount airlines, buy what meager offerings they have.   My ninety minute taxi arrives at Wafi Mall at 10:30pm and the glitzy place is empty, really and I walk around looking for a camera.  I wasn’t thinking Leica and I didn’t expect I’d buy it in minutes. At 11:00pm there’s a Starbucks and I buy one of them pumpkin lattes I hear about and for the next hour I breakdown the purchase and it fits easily in my half empty day pack. 

10.3.14  2:30pm

A ninety minute wait in KTM’s airport, October’s high season has arrived with the masses, how is it I stayed on my feet I don’t know.  Five American girls are ahead of me in the line but they are not in the line and they consider jumping the queue but I am looking right at them and I conceded a night’s sleep and I don’t think their idea is smart and two girls see me burning holes in their overpriced backpacks and they know they’re in the wrong and move to the end of the horribly long line and finally I reached the customs counter, to my left, hundreds of tourists waiting to get their two week visa, to my right two people waiting to get a month visa. I’m staying a week and I don’t want to stand another hour.  Yes, a month visa, please.  A ten minute walk to the domestic terminal, outside very large monkeys roam freely foraging in garbage cans, and inside I buy my ticket to Pokhara and wait three hours in a fairly miserable waiting room.  How am I staying awake, small cups of tea, cigarettes.

I arrived in Pokhara at 3:30pm and took a taxi to the beginning of the steps up to the top.  We drove through an empty city for today was the first day of Dashain.  I didn’t know I’d arrive on such an auspicious day. 

The sun, the clouds, the fresh air intoxicates and hardly had I known I was sweating when I reached the Himalayan View Guesthouse and had a beer with Balram, a man who is too angry for his own good and needs help and what kind of help can be offered on top of a mountain I don’t know.  I said my goodbyes, promised I’d try to come back. 

6:00pm—Twenty four hours ago I left my flat in Oman and here I am, at the top, holy shit, a sunrise for kings and queens, great comforted fatigue, Laxman’s parents are set up in the dining room administering the puja which consists of tikas and blessings on this special day to family members and I sit down in front of them and the exhaustion, the beer, a little bit of the chillum and I lost it, the overwhelming emotion that I was supposed to be here but didn’t discern it left me awash in tears. 

Instincts, anticipation = spirit

Instincts are a result of our spirit knowing the future.  Anticipation is a by-product of the spirit world’s presence in our heads.  Suman understands it. 

10.04.14

The sunrise is perfect, free from man’s influence, thank god for that.  The buildings are a little taller, five weeks since I stood in the village. 


Women jockeying for water at the pump below, this is a little early in the season to be fighting for water, folks. 

Laxmi and Maya have a chat.  Laxmi is in the house next above the Superview.  Her new digs are a month away from completion, what about this place to live in, a gallery, a family.  Look, Maya’s new washing machine.  I admit I was wrong to think anyone should be denied an appliance that makes life easier.  Washing clothes and bedsheets by hand is back breaking labor, but darn it,  Nepali taxes make this necessity out of reach for almost everyone.

Tourists climbing up ask for ice cream, sorry, someday, hey look, the first washing machine in the village.  Progress is good.

Suman had an enlightening experience with instincts and anticipation and I asked him to relay this experience in my journal but he never did.  What was it?  I explained the connection between humans and spirits in August and when he was in school these ideas came up in a class and a light bulb went off in his head.  A coincidence occurred I can’t explain it but I knew it had to be true.  My spirit gave me the answers at just the right time.

10.6.14

I woke up two minutes before the alarm, 3:28am.  I do it every time, is this normal?  God forbid I’m late for my own cremation. 

Back in room six by 11:30am.  Highlights and a lowlight on our trip to the Peace Pagoda:

Tea in the dark with Suman and Krishna, our driver at a tea shop below the stupa.

A glorious sunrise

Suman and I walked down to the boats that took us back.  We crossed a terrible landslide that occurred in August, killing four people. The landslide began directly under the pagoda leaving twisted metal and trees at the water’s edge. 

Mike’s breakfast, American pancakes, scrambled eggs, orange juice, coffee refills along lakeside.

On the first night I used the chillum for the first time in five weeks and that first higher consciousness smack down I whooped and laughed and believed I knew why I was here, why I changed my itinerary at the last minute to everyone’s surprise.

10.7.14

A typical serene silenced sunrise, all is good, all is quiet.  The overwhelming epiphany has tempered and I wonder how true it is, I am no closer to a handshake agreement regarding my future here on the mountain.  Laxman called a woman who is looking for a husband and she sat across the steps and we checked each other out and there was nothing.  This is the easiest way to get a visa but if my heart says nothing for crying out loud how can I do it?  Suman is eager to look at ways to renovate the house Laxmi stays in.  We inspected the two rooms, an ideal set up for a gallery and an office to produce a line of photos, calendars, key chains promoting Sarangkot.  This has to be the reason I am here. 

10.8.14

This is a phenomenal camera seeing light I don’t see, and without a lick of knowing what I am doing, 90% of this machine’s functions are unknown right now, a few modes and playing around I’m lucky so far.  How much credit goes to the man when the machine does all the work.  Ok, composition is mine and clicking the dial, choosing the mode, focusing and snap.

The monochromatic mode is stunning on the lcd, sharp, vivid, clean.  I am kind of shocked. 

What do Sanilurfa and Salalah have in common and why am I in the middle of them.  One can have ambition without the dangers of pride and that is ok.  Share the gift and I’ll go back to the states, a small Midwestern town, South Bend, get a part time job, take classes in management, writing, photography.  Am I too old for this, have I missed the boat to change?  Learning the business, if you’re ambitious, is what motivates your leap.  Have a plan, find motivation, it’s not a cliff you’re jumping off, you got your default profession it’s only age that hinders the change. 

Maya finishes making the beds and emptying the trash from all the rooms, which have been full since I showed up, surprisingly.  She lays down on the single bed and breathes a sigh.  They are short of help, Ram the wild child hasn’t returned and probably won’t.  Everyone is pitching in and there is talk of building another 14 rooms for crying out loud you need more water you need more reliable people working here, get me a damn working visa and I’ll clean the toilets for a hundred dollars a month. 

It is good to go somewhere where you don’t need to make a reservation.

The highlight of the kitchen:  Suman cooking 17 meals in ninety minutes!  Wala.  I’m telling him he should go to chef school and he’d probably make more money than running a business manufacturing airplane parts.  Ok, maybe not. 

Andy from Cologne and his six week pregnant girlfriend stayed two nights and the dude drank 22 liters of beer, two of which I shared.  ‘Look we have a photo’, the peanut should have a name, look, honey he’s got your dimples.  Badem, Nepali for peanut, name the kid if he’s a boy Andy Badem Wurslitcher. 

A blood red moon was mostly orange as it lowered into the west, and the Leica’s nighttime hand held mode is remarkable.  Wow, such luminescence mischievous light you capture, they look life changing on the small screen.  What’s there not to like about a Leica?

South Bend, Detroit, Pittsburgh, any place else?  Remain in the gulf, it’s your net.  Salalah is still ideal, close to the ocean and a ring of mountains I barely explored, a place to begin a new business on the side, bring in the equipment, spend the money, develop.. 

3:20pm

Upon request Suman made some delicious apple fritters, spot on with a cup of tea.  Maya gave me a ¼ full bowl of noodle soup and back in room six Laxman came by with a liter of Ghorka and a half dozen fried chicken momos, yum!  Room service is good and always surprising here.

Thunder rumbles, rain spits, it’s been a good stay, Laxman told me to call ahead next time, why, you don’t like surprises, shit, I didn’t know I was coming until I bought the ticket a day earlier.

We talked about the house, let’s wait until February.  This is my last year here in Buraimi, where I go next is unsure, Laxman could get me a business visa and I could wire him money every month to renovate the house.  He is reluctant I understand, I am like the wind and it is hard to nail down a breeze. 

Rain falls harder, the remains of a monsoon. 

10.11.14

I don’t mind the seven hour bus back to Pokhara.  Theroux’s ‘Blinding Light’ is engaging but geez he is unmerciful with the foreign tourist and they always end up bad in his books.

Omanis are closer to nature, naturally, therefore are more likely to make decisions using nature’s wits.  Can you teach logic in an ESL classroom?

Making choices, discerning puzzles and patterns, life really sucks when you have to flee your home.

Logic and memory work together with practice and in the room of knowledge who knows, reach one individual and you’ve done your job. 

I miss seeing women in western clothes.  The black monoliths suppress me totally though a pretty smile and twinkling eyes restores civility, albeit in brief.