Into Georgia (and Back Out Again)

Apologies for the absence; I’ve been traveling in Georgia, that mysterious little post-Soviet Eden on the Black Sea. And as post-Soviet things tend to do, the republic is slowly crumbling, from pockmarked, torn-up stretches of sidewalk on Rustaveli Avenue, the main street of Tbilisi and the most important street in the country, to the Tbilisi metro, which in form looks like a rundown mimicry of the St. Petersburg metro and in size resembles a model train set. But the food is delicious, even the alcohol, which ranges from red wine to the stiff Georgian white wine, a de facto hard liquor, to the grape-based vodka “cha cha.”

And the people are the friendliest I’ve met so far in the former Soviet Union, priding themselves on their maxim, “Guests are a gift from God,” and inviting this traveler into their homes on more than one occasion.

In short, a charming place, which is why it’s hard to watch as its already scarce territory is sliced away by Russia, which has played on Abkhazia’s half-baked dreams of independence and poured its settlers and then its troops into South Ossetia in August 2008. These troops have yet to withdraw from the new swaths of territory they conquered.

The August war is never far from mind. On Rustaveli, there’s still folks living in tent-like “cells” to protest the rule of Misha Saakashvili, who is either loved or hated by each citizen of Georgia in his turn. An American government employee I met in Tbilisi blamed Saakashvili for the August 2008 war, saying he had misinterpreted signals from Washington and gotten overexcited to win back his country’s territory, but also noted that the Georgians don’t have anyone better to lead them at the moment.

When I went to Georgia in the second week of July, word was that a new war was soon to break out …

Ukraine: “Countrybumpkinland” in a good way

On Ai-Petri with Gever the dog, whose forest-ranger owner named him after the "Sturmgewehr" Nazi assault rifle.

Sorry for the absence; I’ve been in Ukraine to get a new Russian visa.  I stayed in Kiev for a week, then hitchhiked down to the Crimea to soak in some sun and see some nature.

Overall, Ukraine seemed like a mini-Russia: Everything looked the same, only the cities are smaller, the distances are shorter and the people are nicer.  No stereotypes shattered here; there really is a little of the podunk “Khokhlandia” about which Russians like to joke (“Khokhlandia” means “Land of the ‘Khokhols,’” “Khokhol” being a slightly derisive word for “Ukrainian” that carries connations of country-bumpkinness; the word comes from name for the single tuft of hair Cossacks traditionally wore).

"Or even worse: Turn into a Khokhol."

You can stop along the highway to buy milk — milk that somehow tastes earthier, farmier — from a farmer who squeezed it that morning, or strawberries from a babushka.  Or listen to the country folk speak Russian with an accent of exaggerated vowel sounds.  Or listen to them speak Ukrainian, which, to the Russian-speaking ear, sounds like a deaf person reciting tongue twisters.

But the ups outnumber the downs — Ukrainians are kind and friendly folk.  And it is a land of adventure for those who know how to find it, from the sea cliffs of Ai-Petri in the Crimea to the abandoned farmhouses of the middle country to the “industrial alpinism” (rappeling off abandoned factories) of the Soviet cities.

Sorokin part 3: Boulevard Ring

The Eros of Moscow (continued)
By Vladimir Sorokin

3. Boulevard Ring

Invite your two closest friends, buy three bottles of port wine, hide them in the pockets of your coats and head down the boulevard arm-in-arm.  You should silently walk the entire Boulevard Ring, keeping hold of each other and deliberately, surreptitiously sipping from your bottles.  I recommend you start the journey through this erogenous zone at Yauzsky Boulevard alongside Solyanka, moving counterclockwise – Chistoprudny, Sretensky and so on.  You need to walk silently, intently peering at passerby on the boulevards.  If you meet any acquaintances, preferably keep silent and turn away your eyes.  You should not drink hurriedly, but rather with feeling.  Having finished the promenade on Gogolevsky Boulevard, you should set the bottles in the middle of the boulevard, embrace each other about the shoulders and perform a slow dance around the bottles, singing and whistling.  Next it is essential to quickly, without saying good-bye and not looking at each other, head off in different directions.

All this was done by Igor Vinogradov, Sergei Kutin and me on one warm June day in 1974 after we successfully passed an engineering exam.

In this section, Sorokin starts to really jump off on a John le Carre-trip.  I mean, who wants to get together with their two closest buds and three bottles of port wine (a pretty stiff drink, even for Russia) only to walk silently arm-in-arm for two hours?

When we attempted this part, we followed the spirit rather than the letter of Sorokin’s story, walking arm-in-arm but conversing evermore jovially as the port wine tinted our mood.  Early attempts to stare creepily at passerby were quickly abandoned, since such behavior can get your ass kicked on the Boulevard Ring, which loops through central Moscow like a never-ending outdoor dive-bar and attracts an even worse clientele.

I don’t know if it was the port wine or just the natural chaos of real-life occurrences, but we diverged from Sorokin after a short time.  Music was definitely a theme; I vaguely remember being nauseated by some buskers with a sound system doing a heavily-accented rendition of “Kansas City Blues,” then later running into a group of kids with a guitar and giving them my own port wine-fueled performance of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ greatest hits.

Photographic evidence emerging after the fact would seem to indicate I also climbed on the shoulders of a bronze clown, only to be joined by my friend Yura, who climbed on my shoulders in a highly acrobatic, drunken formation.

First-hand accounts prove, however, that once all was said and done, we did indeed place our collection of bottles, at that point somewhat more numerous than three, in the middle of the boulevard and danced slowly around them signing at the top of our lungs (in Russia, it’s considered rude/weird to whistle).  Success, dear Vladimir …

Sorokin part 2: All-Russian Exhibition Center

The Eros of Moscow (continued)
By Vladimir Sorokin

2. VDNKh (The All-Russian Exhibition Center)

Entering through the main entrance into the territory of the former Exhibit of the Achievements of People’s Farming, go straight until you see the first fountain, “Friendship of Nations” – 15 gilded female figures in the national costumes of the peoples of the U.S.S.R.  Climb over the side, step into the water of the fountain and walk around the fountain three times clockwise.  Then go further, until you reach the fountain “The Stone Flower.”  Here perform the same action – three times, knee deep in the water, clockwise.  And immediately proceed further to the very end of the exhibit territory, to the fountain “The Golden Ear.”  This is a large, deep fountain.  They used to sail around it in boats.  Undress and swim around the gilded ear of wheat.  Three times clockwise.  If all ends well, as it did for me and the artist Andrei Monastyrsky and his wife Sabina in that memorable year of 1986, get dressed and immediately head somewhere nearby to have a drink and eat something.  Having opened for ourselves this erogenous zone of our home city, we then headed to the restaurant “The Golden Ear.”  The enormous restaurant lay empty in light of Gorbachev’s infamous anti-alcohol campaign –they weren’t even serving beer there.  At the same time, the food was generously portioned.  After our ablution in the three waters we very much wanted to warm up.

“Address yourselves to the porter,” the waiter kindly whispered.  Andrei addressed himself, and within a few minutes a whiskered porter approached and set upon our table a bottle of Bordzhomi mineral water filled with vodka.

“Is this vodka?” asked Sabina in good Russian.  The porter silently nodded.

“But why is it in a mineral-water bottle?”

“It’s hard to explain,” the porter answered and strolled off.

It seems to me, he was speaking not just about the camouflaged vodka, but rather in a deeper, more metaphysical sense.

Anapa on the Black Sea

I’ve returned from my trip to Anapa on the coast of the Black Sea, a beach resort vacation-meets-that Twilight Zone episode where all the town inhabitants have disappeared.  It’s not tourist season for another month or so, and we were the only guests in the lovely Hotel de la Mapa.

Russians often speak of ideas like “the Russian soul” in quasi-mystical terms, but as with stereotypes, there’s often a grain of truth to all the mythologizing.  In the south of Russia, I found that the ideal of “Southern hospitality” (a more common variant: “Eastern hospitality,” but the Caucasus and Black Sea region has always been considered Oriental by Russians) is indeed grounded in real life.

We were lounging in the dunes along the beach one fine day during our visit, drinking local half-sweet red wine and eating adjika with lavash (hot pepper sauce and flatbread) when two dudes rode up on a moped. The exact details of the encounter were lost in the sudden chaotic meeting of people, emotional gesticulating, persistent soft crash of the waves and a bottle of vodka produced from the seat compartment, but Yura and Slava soon offered to photograph us on the moped.

At this time, I’d already been searching for a moped to rent (in vain, they’re “not in-season” yet), so I asked if we could take it for a spin.  They agreed and with a friend a careened up the beach, through the cresting and crumbling dunes and out onto the highway.

By the time we got back, the conversation had moved to shashlik — the Russian barbecue of skewered meat — and why we weren’t cooking some on our beach holiday.  We had no good reason, so Yura and Slava invited us back to Yura’s “tourism base.”

What followed in the next few hours was a mostly happy, sometimes tragic trainwreck of barbecued meat and too much Putinka vodka.  Highlights include a high-speed ride through Anapa in a sports car, vomit, a late-night search for a friend who had wandered off and fallen asleep under a willow tree as if in some vodka-drenched, atavistic fairy tale, and more vomit.

Just some Southern hospitality for you.

Yura took me out shooting on the coast the morning of our last day, and we pinged away at cans and bottles along the cliffs with his 20-gauge.

“Sorry we can’t use my machine gun (‘avtomat’),” he told me. “I lent it to a friend.”

Hospitality.

More pictures from Nepal

Sadhu at Pashinpatinath, the holiest of Hindu temples.

Sheep roam freely at one temple in Patan, Kathmandu.

At Swayambhunath, the "monkey temple" in Kathmandu.

PM Prachanda!

What you can get a sadhu to do for 100 rupees.

A roadside shrine in Bhaktapur, outside of Kathmandu.

Near Pokhara.

In Bakhtapur.

You actually don't see hookahs that often in Nepal.

Near Pokhara.

In Bakhtapur.

Funeral pyre at Pashinpatinath.

Nepali always build with the idea there will be another story in the future ...

Outside of Pokhara.

Sunset at Begnas Tal.

What is Nepal

Boudha stupa, Kathmandu, Nepal.

Yesterday I returned to St. Petersburg and the seasonal depression of the Russian winter.  Snow fell like flour and was churned to wet dough by boots. The icy sidewalks were like Antarctic landscapes under the duress of climate change, krevasses under puddles.  A woman handed out pamphlets advertising the St. Petersburg debut of UGG boots.

I immediately missed Nepal and its shady-garden-in-summer climate, its slow pace of life, its lack of rules and worldly concerns. I thought again about this “landlocked nation between the world’s two largest countries,” and the enigma of its appeal.

But in light of my trip, I’ve often thought about this appeal.   What is it?  What exactly is Nepal?

A pastoral scene in Pokhara.

Nepal is the calm after the shitstorm that is India, the Hindu cow who chews its cud lackadaisically in the face of India’s screeching, scratching temple monkey. Nepal is the Valium lull after the cocaine rush of India; if India looks like a page torn out of “Where’s Waldo?”, Nepal is a page from “Hello, Moon.” Nepal is so peaceful it can be stifling, India is so frenetic it exhilarates you even as the stress wears holes in your stomach lining.

Nepal is the bandh, a small pile of burning tires or blockade that stops up traffic to one side of the country for the day. We sat in one dusty town for eight hours on the way to Pokhara after some young commies (Youth Communist League) set a bandh to protest the suicide of a villager whose husband beat her. And it certainly did raise awareness. For example, it raised my awareness that rural Nepal is a dull place to spend an afternoon.

Nepal is a place where wealth is scarce but time is overabundant among the hut-bound set. These magnates of the hours spend recklessly, sitting and gossiping, waiting for something to happen along the route through their roadside village. With such expectations, the bandh in Pokhara was practically a Fourth-of-July parade and fireworks show in one go; folks pulled out lawn chairs and watched the traffic stand still. For eight hours.

A Tharhu villager in Chitwan National Park.

Nepal is a land of cheap labor and expensive tastes. In other words, a recipe for bitchy expats. White foreigners live like Mem Sahibs, yawning and bitching as wait staff cater their luxurious existence. They only stop to complain that their boy serves them, well, so servant-like. Can’t he learn to take the clothes out and serve breakfast without bowing all the time?

Nepal is a land of white people with backpacks, hiking from teahouse to teahouse, lodge to lodge, on their way through one of the country’s circuits of breathtaking views and steep ascents. The Annapurna circuit. The Everest trek. The Langtuan trail. The villagers look on bemusedly as these bideshis put themselves through the hardships of the trail voluntarily. Sure, it’s beautiful, but why would you leave the comfort of modernity to walk to some godforsaken peak?

Nepal is the thickset, deadly serious Indian tourist who strode purposefully over to my seat on the airplane, leaned over me, and started snapping photos of the Himalayas as they crested over the wing. Nepal is me itching to get my own camera out, fretting but then sitting back in complacent acceptance that it’s just not worth it.

Nepal is a cultural and religious blender on low speed, a place where Buddhists observe Hindu holidays and paint a third eye on their foreheads even as Hindus meditate and spin Tibetan prayer wheels.

Durbar square, Patan, Kathmandu.

Nepal is way too many guys who spend way too much time with their guitars and then play way too many classic rock covers in bars for expats and tourists. I will forever associate Kathmandu with “Susie Q” and “Eye of the Tiger” as a result. It’s a wonder how they find time to rehearse, what with the load-shedding (scheduled loss of power to different neighborhoods, by turn). They must have to get generators for their amps, or just hire street urchins to pedal some sort of turbine.

Nepal is riding on the roof of a bus when there’s no room inside, white-knuckle tight on the baggage rack as it rounds cliff-top corners and navigates narrow mountain roads.

Terraced farmland on the way to the village of Sakhu in the Kathmandu valley.

Nepal is snowy peaks and foggy jungles, placid lakes and burnt shrubland. It’s a place of freedom and beauty that now and then has electricity or hot water.

Good karma

Today’s first order of pleasure: The Helsinki-Vantaa Airport has free wireless Internet!  Praises to you brave Norsemen!  May you achieve neverending glory in the halls of Valhalla for this marvelous feat of modern technology access, which neither New Delhi, Amsterdam, or a slew of other airports have equalled!  I’m ecstactic even as I face the bleak snowscape on the final leg of my trip.

Things weren’t so bright last night.  I found myself in Murkina Market in Vasant Vihar, Delhi, after 10 p.m., with 70 rupees in my pocket and an impending flight departure, the only white guy on the block. In other words, I found myself in shit.

I needed an auto rickshaw to the airport, a drug-addled shop-owner had told me I could get one for 60 rupees, but the cabbies weren’t having it. 100 rupees, 250 rupees, 125 rupees – the prices were elastic and unpredictable. A deal was going down for 90 rupees when my savior emerged from the crowd of sepia faces. Radiant and sublime, her soft chin and languid eyes shining from beneath her maroon shall and red-and-black pullover, she asked me where I needed to go and turned her silver tongue toward persuading a particularly rakish rickshaw driver, the apparent leader.

She told me that 90 rupees would do, to which I replied I only had 70. She only smiled and handed 20 rupees to the driver, then began to fade away.

“Thank you very much,” I said stupidly, like a pimple-faced checkout clerk who’s just rung up the prom queen. I waved as the rickshaw pulled away.

Whence was my serene angel? Why did she give of herself to a stranger, up shit creek due to his own ill-prepared, bullheaded jones for adventure in the far reaches of Delhi?

Was she devoutly determined, on a mission to ease suffering? Was she shoring up her karma? Was she struck by my wit and charm, silver and gold?

I felt like I was living out that Kevin Spacey flick “Pay It Forward.” Which is fine, as long as nobody dies in the end.  I mean, however annoying Haley Joel Osment’s many puppy-dog impressions get, it was still a pity …

Tricycle is highway-ready?

Just saw an interesting apparition in the rush hour traffic of New Delhi: a giant tricycle.  The contraption was a wheelchair with an extra bike wheel out front.  Its occupant was fearlessly booming down the highway with a set of hand-pedals.

That takes some balls, to head out into Indian city traffic under the power of only your arms.

Rickshaw ride through Delhi

In continuing my obsession with auto-rickshaw driving in India, here’s a video depicting the entry into the Chandni Chowk district of old Delhi.  And this is before things get really crowded in the narrow roads.  I didn’t manage to catch any of the elephants, donkeys or horses you often see fighting cars for space on the road.