Sweaty and Exhausted from the Sunday Market, we stopped into a very local establishment, which we selected by the loud music and overflowing of its clientele. While we were ordering, a fight broke out between two of these persons. They began violently grabbing and pushing on each other, dodging dangerously close to the fine woman hard at work making lamb dumplings nearby. This fight was put to a stop when (what I can only assume was) the owner of the establishment appeared from the back, bellowing.

With the fight over, our view of the opposite wall was now clear. And on it we saw hanging a number of official documents, among which was the review from the chinese department of health. On it, a large green unhappy face glared back at us. A key below the frowning visage indicated that it was the least cleanly a restaurant could be and still stay open. In Kashgar. I, however, think that by this point on the journey, we had developed the iron stomachs of seasoned 3rd world adventurers. And, hoping this was indeed the case, we dug in.

Refreshed by some medium cleanly dumplings and hand pulled noodles, doused with an oily chilly sauce, which was quickly becoming my favorite part of Uighur dive restaurants. We remounted the cycles and began asking random pedestrians in giant fur hats where the musical instrument factory was.

A short while later we were riding down a street which was lined exclusively by hand made musical instrument shops. We chose one that looked especially explosive, and stepped inside. The propitiator was raging on one of the same instruments we had seen after dinner the night before. I set in to playing a little of everything he had in the store. Meanwhile scott visited the back, where he found the workshop and another instrument builder, sleeping on the floor.

After much hemming and hawing, we decided that the Rawap which the guy had been playing was the one, and we set into intense negotiations. Originally, the fellow was asking 1800 RMB. Fifteen minutes later we shook our hands over 1000 RMB for the instrument, a hard case, and a set of spare tuning pegs and strings. This was likely not a great deal, but not a rip-off either. We were after all, a couple of white guys in Panama hats.

The instrument was a beauty, covered with inlay of different woods. And the resonating cavity was covered with a large swath of snake skin. As soon as we had made the deal, the entire atmosphere of the joint changed. The guy started smiling. The napping fellow awoke, out came the cigarettes, and the two fellows grabbed instruments from the wall. They began smoking and playing and generally making merry. There was much laughing, exchanging of business cards and Scott and I were treated to a mini-performance.

We shook hands one last time and set back out on bikes.

At the giant central Kashgar China post office, we found that the customs master was not in on sundays and we had to come back the next day. So first thing the next morning, not long after the sun had begun heat up the streets, we arrived back at the post office. Outside, we stopped into a corner store and bought 10 packs of chinese cigarettes.

These, along with three Uighur cassette tapes from the Sunday Market, went into the case with the rawap.

Inside the post office, we travelled from table to table, and eventually upstairs in search of the customs master. In stark contrast to the hectic and noisy hubbub of the downstairs, the upstairs room was silent and empty. After a short time, a woman emerged from a nest of cubicals in the back and we were told the customs master was out to lunch. So we sat down with the rawap and started to deal whist. Before we had even dealt a hand, the woman came over and began to wildly gesticulate, yelling, and pointing us towards an adjacent door.

No one had come or gone our entire time in this upstairs room, but now, it seemed the customs master was back from lunch. We opened the door to find a small and intense man, sitting on a couch and staring into an abacus, which lay on the coffee table in front of him. He looked up at us and our rawap. “What is that?” he asked. “A rawap,” we replied. He looked puzzled. “A Uighur instrument,” Scott added in chinese. “Oh, ok, fine. You can go” We stood, looking puzzled. “Go, go.” We left… then returned. “Do we need some kind of a… er… receipt?” “No no no. Go.”

Back downstairs, we moved from counter to counter a little more and then, under the sign which translated itself into english for us as “Synthesize Service,” we finally were invited to open the rawap case. The woman at the counter began to take the cigarettes out one by one smelling them and scrutinizing them inches from her face. She let not a millimeter go un-scrutinized. But, slowly, each pack was accepted, and placed in a neat pile to the side. Until she reached a pack of “Pine” brand cigarettes. There was no Chinese on this pack. And she asked accusingly in chinese, “are these cigarettes?” sniffing the pack deeply. Then she took out the rawap. She plucked it suspiciously, and ran her hands over its long neck and snakeskin top. She shook it to see if anything was inside.

It was then that she saw the cassette tapes. She dropped the rawap like so many paper beer cups and began speaking animatedly. She gestured to her companion postal workers, and picked up the phone. In no time the customs officer was downstairs and snatched up the tapes. “Come with me,” he said to Scott and I. As we walked up the stairs. He asked very seriously “what else did you not tell me about? Do you have any books? Books, do you understand me? Are you sure?” It was now that we realized the problem. He was afraid we were transporting ideas, be they secret government intelligence, or some sort of cultural poison.

Back in his office, he removed a cloth from a large tape-set in the corner of the room. He took our tapes, on by one and put them in. He played them slow and fast, backwards and forwards, moving to different parts of the tape, listening closely. He frowned. The man obviously spoke no Uighur. He got on the horn, and a local woman was called into the office. She listened, and began to shimmy and snap her fingers. This seemed to be the signal he was looking for. And we were sent off.

Back at the counter, another couple, who we believe were from Holland, had a collection of instruments and souvenirs they were trying to send. As we went about repackaging the rawap, the tapes and cigarets, things began to heat up next-door. It seems that they were bumping up against some new rules regarding sending hollow items during the upcoming olympic window. Our woman, realizing that the rawap might be considered one of these and therefor also in breach of the rule, began to hustle us along. She removed five small boxes from under the counter, and we began to slide them one by one over the length of the rawap case, taping them together into one long box.

Things were moving faster and faster. Now the dutch were yelling, and Scott was called in to act as translator. I hurriedly rushed to fill out the form , apply extra tape, and decipher the shipping rates. Scott began to play both sides of the net, helping me and translating the odd phrase next door. I had to address the thing. Faster. Faster. Then there was no pens to be found anywhere. We scrabbled and clawed. Everyone started sweating and the yelling ramped another notch. Then there were pens everywhere, raining from the sky. The woman in front of me slapped a mailing sticker and a customs pass on the rigged boxes and then we were out in the open air of the street.

The sun was shining, people were perusing local shops and stands. All was well. Scott and I turned to each other. We whaled a savage high five and hopped on our cycles.

AsiaWheeling strikes again.

We awoke as the sun was just beginning to spread grey light over Kashgar. We quickly showered and hopped on the bikes. Our first way point was the Kashgar Animal Market. It was located on the outskirts of town, so we wheeled hard through the golden sunrise and spiraling dust, stopping occasionally to scrutinize our already sweaty and melting map. We knew we were getting close when the traffic around us changed from bikes and taxis to three wheeled carts, piled high with cows, goats, and chickens, carts full of rope bridles drawn by donkeys, men on bicycle rickshaws transporting lengths of fencing and saddles, and the rich stench of a fearful beast.

We rounded a corner to find the market sprawling before us. We first turned off into the used motors and animal fencing section of the market for a bite to eat. We struggled to communicate with our waiter, a 14 year old boy, covered head to tow in blood spatters, who seemed completely baffled by our attempts to communicate. All but defeated we began to discuss leaving. Just then, he arrived back with a couple of steamed buns, covered in a sauce of vinegar and stewed vegetables. We stabbed our chopsticks in and ate hungrily. All around us, men covered in all manner of bloody filth ate similar dishes. Many of them seemed to have their steamed buns accompanied by a plat of oily lamb mush. And some gesticulation later, we too enjoyed this local combo. We payed our bill (80 cents) and climbed back on the bikes.

We rode past fellows welding and pressing metal into fencing, and children playing with the severed testicles of some beast. Soon we found ourselves in a giant open yard, which was quickly filling with persons in all manner of dress selling used vehicles. The space was sectioned off into trucks, cars, three-wheeled auto-rickshaw type things, and motorbikes. We found bicycles oddly abscent. And, disinterested with these motored wheels, we rode across the highway (now jammed with animals, trucks, oxcarts, people, and bicycles, and into the animal market.

(more…)

Attention: For maximum viewing pleasure, listen to this song while reading the post below.

Then we were wheeling. And, dear reader, Kashgar is a great city for wheeling. It felt good to move after being cooped in the sweaty train. We, however, had been deprived of electricity during that journey, and so we must regret to inform you, there is no GPS data for this first day of wheeling in Kashgar. But trust us, we wheeled hard. Our first stop was a local Uighur breakfast joint, where we got a bowl of pilaf, the standard Uiger breakfast dish, and a piece of nan.

The nang was hard and old. Thus continued our quest for the perfect nang. The lore described it as a delicacy, but we had as of yet only had the old hardened version. Nourished none the less we hit the road.

We stopped at a ridiculous public exercise park, with bizarre painted metal equipment, all in various states of disrepair, some with dangerous metal shards protruding. After a brief test of the machinery (I give it a C-), we wheeled by the location of tomorrow’s giant sunday market, past mosques and blocky soviet buildings, up the only hill in town. The road was lined with endless melon sellers. Each had a giant pile of the fruit, shaded with a mixture of beer umbrellas and rigged together tarps.

Over the hill, we wheeled on to visit a local Uighur housing development. It consisted of large concrete buildings, with playgrounds in between. Not bad at all, Kashgar. We stopped to pick up some water at a local shop, where they spoke no english and no chinese. The proprietor, who may be well described as a large  white guy, asked to take my bike for a test spin. He spoke in approving tones, riding around the road outside his shop, and lifting a foot off the ground, then dropping it. He approved of the bounce hight to noise ratio.

While our shop-keep administered tests to the cycle, other members of the community began to appear from the woodwork. Soon a crowd had formed. We gave then our business cards and a couple of asiawheeling stickers, though they could read none of it. Then the shop-keep began entering negotiations with your humble correspondents, wanting to purchase the bike. We were able to communicate that it was a rental. He asked how much we were paying, and sputtered in laughter. And with our bottles of water, tube of ridiculous toothpaste made in Dubai, and a tip of the Panama hat, we struck forth once again.

We continued to wheel through the expanse of Kashgar. It is not so large a city, and we traversed a good chunk of the downtown section. Everywhere we saw new chinese bank buildings and China mobile shops. And everywhere they were building.

The sun blazed, dust swirled, and women walked around in full muslim garb.

We entered an older part of town where the steel concrete buildings gave wat to mud structures. Stands sold wooden trinkets, nan, and a likely deadly yogurt and ice drink. The sellers of this drink had only 3 or 4 grubby cups, which sat on a wooden board spanning a central a central vat, in which a large and solid chunk of ice bobbed. From time to time they would dump the current cup and refill it and replace it on a wooden plank, hoping to entice people with the freshly sweating cups. Poeple would walk by, pay the man 10 cents, and drink a glass right there and then. A second later, the same glass was refilled and returned to the wooden plank, where it sweated with its brethren.

And the sun blazed. The people of Kashgar lazed in the shade of umbrellas, trees, or whatever they could find to break the sun. They played cards, mahjong, and chinese chess. The more we rode, the more be became certain that Kashgar was a very special and fascinating place. Also, coincidentally, it is a land of Panama hats and two wheeled vehicles. I cannot say that we fit right in. To be honest, everywhere that we rode, we were met with stares, pointing, and not uncommonly laughter, but something felt right about the place, and we seemed to make friends easily there. Bikes and mopeds easily outnumbered cars and trucks, and one did not have to look more than twice before finding an old Uiger fellow, raging along in a savage Panama hat and giant reflective sunglasses. So you, dear reader, will find it no big surprise, that we found ourselves at a stand which sold some of the most raging Panama hats conceivable by the human mind. While I have been quite happy with mine (credit must be given here to Marshall’s), Scott’s (hmm… Target) had proven all too prone to misshaping itself and proved a poor ventilator of the cranium. In short, Scott was in the market for a new one. And buy one he did. Submitted for your approval, Scott’s AsiaWheeling Panama Hat 2.0.

Exhausted from the wheel, we stopped back at the hotel and collapsed. Three or four bottles of water later, we headed to Altun Orda. The interior of the restaurant was even more baroque than the exterior. Everywhere we looked there were layers of hand made complexity: on the walls, the ceiling and the dishes off which we ate. We once again ordered way too much food. We simply asked the waiter for two of the finest vegetable dishes and two of the finest meat dishes. What came was a savage plate of sheep spine meat, 2 kabobs, a chopped lamb dish, a plate of marinated chickpeas, and some of the most succulent eggplant I have ever experienced. “And you want yoghurt right?”, the waiter said in Mandarin. Oh yeah we want yoghurt. Once again I was blown away by the intricate flavors of Uighur food. The yoghurt was a perfect accompaniment, served room temperature with a thick layer of yellow cream on top. We sat on the the third floor of the large restaurant. On the floor below us, a trio of Uighur instrumentalists raged on traditional instruments. After we were well beyond sated, we ventured down for a closer listen. The stuff was great. Much like what accompanies this post.

Once again bursting at the seams, we walked back to the hotel. Back at the Seman, we found a giant red tour bus full of germans. “Rondel Tours,” it said on the side. We wandered over to investigate further. The tour company, we found, offers savage tours through some 50 of the most fascinating parts of the word in a giant red bus. We sat down an were introduced to a couple of retirees: an airplane parts broker from Lufthansa and a film graphics producer. As the sun set, the two regaled us with tales of airplanes and german history until we all knew we had better retire. We had to wake bright and early the next day for more wheeling at the sunday market.

Nevada-like desert flew by outside the window of our hard sleeper on the N886 to Kahsgar. In the distance savage mountain ranges slowly drifted in the same direction. It was 1.5 hours to Kashgar and since there were no more stops (and as far as we could tell, no more human settlements) until that place, our conductor, a very official woman, collected out plastic re-boarding passes and returned our flimsy little paper tickets. In no time (well 1.5 hours) we were in Kashgar.

We exited the train, happy to move our legs again. The sun glared and Uighur language babbled slavically from the mouths around us. Kashgar station was large, but not too crowded. We found our man, Memet, nephew of our capable and affordable travel agent, Abdul, whom Scott had stumbled upon using wikitravel. His very unlike the stereotypical Chinese face grinned widely and he spoke in very good English. As we drove to the Seman hotel (or Bingwan as they say in China), he made small-talk and pointed out sites of interest, not the least of which was a ridiculously decorated Uyghur restaurant, with redundant inlay, czarist lighting, and an absurd amount of men chopping up lambs and roasting kabobs on smokey charcoal grill. “This is the best restaurant in Kashgar,” he said. We made mental note: Altun Orda.

(more…)

We rolled out of bed at the Cornfield Xinjiang etc. etc. hostel to find that the building’s pluming had backed up and our bathroom was full of a grey and reeking water. Crossing showers off the list, we packed our things and checked out. I still felt full from last night’s giant Uyghur feast, so we breakfasted lightly at the same divey restaurant around the corner from the hotel that we had visited the day before. Finally, Scott was able to have his Baotza, a meat stuffed steamed bun which for him had been a much romanticized, but unattained breakfast earlier on the trip.

We paused for a photo with the owners of the restaurant who had been hard at work, outside in the sun, chopping meat for kabobs. The younger one with the knife was enthusiastic. As you can see, his father still harbored some skepticism about these panama hatted foreigners.

Meanwhile in the taxi, in our attempt to communicate to the driver our wish to visit a super-market, we ended up at a giant fresh vegetable market, also sporting some 15 large cages filled with roosters. While enthralling, this was not exactly food we could take on the train. Our next attempt hit gold, though, and we were soon in the midst of the humongous Chinese shopping complex, with a huge market on the top floor, and Jetsons style moving walkways stretching diagonally from floor to floor. Our backpacks were, of course, to voluminous to put in the small locker provided there for shoppers. So, despite Mandarin protests from Scott’s end, one of us was forced to stay behind as the other shopped.

Scott volunteered to stay behind, as I had the greater experience in Asian groceries. And with a glance at my watch (10:35; our train left at 11:20) I dove into the fray. The selection was bewildering and the products nondescript. Many products simply showed healthy looking people on the front, with no hint at the contents. Sweating, and careening my cart around the calmly perusing Chinese, I threw things in with abandon. Stopping from time to time to remove some items, placing them in a haphazard stack on the nearest shelf.

In the end I checked out with:

2 tubs of instant noodles (darkish meat flavor)

1 package digestive biscuits (alpha brand with Xytol!)

2 cans of chinese stout (looking much like Beamish knock offs)

2 hunks of dried yak meat (good one, right?)

1 bottle of Nutri-Express (some kind of fruit/soymilk vitamin drink)

I paced in line, fumbled cash, and threw my pack on. We ran back down the Jetsons style inclined moving walkway. We got caught behind a woman struggling to hold her cart on the incline, and waited anxious and sweatily for the ride to end. Outside there was a fine cab driver waiting as if for us, and we thew our bags in the back. In no time we were running up the giant and quite endless stairs of the Urumqi train station and to our platform on the third floor. We had just found our cabin and thrown our stuff down when the train began to leave, first heading east towards Turpan (where the con artists had been arrested) then swinging around westward towards Kashgar.

Scott and I had the two bottom bunks of the 2nd class, or so called “hard sleeper,” the two top bunks were occupied by two pleasant, but un-talkative Chinese gentleman. One of these fellows did inform us that he was from Kashgar, and proceeded to spend a large amount of time scrutinizing our lonely planet phrase-book and muttering under his breath.

Chinese trains are nice. Unlike Indian trains, there are many many sleeping cars, and each is not too crowded. There is also a genuine dining car, with (I was quite astounded to learn) affordable prices. Every car has unlimited hot water, steaming forth from the rusty nozzle of a somewhat groady machine. I guess you could call it a samovar of types. And there was an unceasing flow of people using it to make primarily tea and instant noodles.

The desert raged by outside the window, looking quite a bit like mars, with the occasional oil drilling or refining site. As the ride continued, the landscape became more rocky and mountainous. After a few rounds of whist we headed to the dining car for a hot meal. While the scenery changed to something more like eastern Montana, then something like the deserts of the southwestern United States, we ate and watched the increasingly dramatic geology.

It was a meal of Uighur Chicken, Chinese cabbage, and a cold salad of spiced white things (we think they might have been raw potatoes). For 90 cents we got a bottle of non-alcholic, cool-ade-like wine, and felt like kings.

At one point the chef emerged from the kitchen and sat down at a table one down and across the isle from us. The burly fellow asked Scott in Chinese where we were from. When Scott said America, his face twisted into a terrible scowl and said no more to us. For the remainder of the meal, in fact, he would make a point of looking over and scowling most disapprovingly in our direction.

This is, I am quite glad to say, the first real encounter with such behavior that we have been as unfortunate to experience. I had, before the trip, wondered whether this would not be the norm. It is, after all, true that our fine nation has been abusing the rest of the world somewhat recklessly as of late. Also, though we obtained visas so far in advance that at that point there was no problem, we had been hearing rumors that even the Swiss were finding it difficult to get visas into China, what with the impending Olympics and the trouble in Tibet. I tried to shrug off the feeling, as our fine chef continued to press the point.

All was forgotten however, when we encountered a Russian speaking Swiss couple on an ornithological trip through Kirghistan and western China. They were most pleasant to speak to, and our short exchange in Russki Yisik gave me a harsh reminder of how poor my Russian has become. They did say that there were many Russian speakers in Kashgar. So perhaps I would get a chance to flex that old muscle a little more soon. If not then certainly on AsiaWheeling 2.0.

The scenery became greener as we began to follow a meandering river through a desert that was becoming jagged scrubby mountains. I could not shake the feeling that the land outside looked so much like America. If you had told me I was riding the Amtrak through Colorado, I might have believed you for a moment. Then the Chinese pop music would start up, and a woman would come by the door hawking instant noodles and mysterious pouches of pickled vegetables and.

We had been riding in the same car with a particularly audible Australian gentleman, also bound for Kashi (the Chinese way of saying Kashgar). He had been explaining many things to a young woman from that destination, a student of English. The topics ranged from genetics to world politics. Hearing spoken English reminded me how rare it has been on this to hear ambient English. I found it very hard not to eavesdrop.

We also we riding along with a number of other English speakers. A group of these returned,from the dining car just as I was waking from a nap, chattering loudly in somewhat of a fury. It seems the waitstaff in the dining car had produced one menu which had, I presume either pictures or English, and when they found nothing there to satisfy them, they waitstaff produced the Chinese menu, which had on it different prices (and perhaps for that matter, different dishes). This act provoked a screaming fight between the two parties, and in the end the English speaking crowd had come back to the car, empty stomached to find their English translator. I was just drifting back off for nap part II as they strode back, exclaiming, “now they’ll see I’ve got a friend who speaks Chinese.” Indeed, this might be a good time for me to restate how very grateful I am for Scott’s most capable Chinese. May his mustache grow ever longer.

Our first AC room on the grand trunk express was delightful, as was the train car in which it rode. For the majority of the ride, we were the only people in the entire car. With two bathrooms to our-selfs. There was no dinning car, rather food was delivered from the pantry car, and the rest of the train was other cars simply full of people.

Though the scenery was quite striking, the highlight of the grand trunk experience was our interactions with our chip-wallah; that is the guy who walks the train back and forth all day and call out in Hindi that he is selling chips. Not speaking Hindi, his cry befell our ears as something more like “contaminated chips and cake,” endlessly in the same nasal incantation. Since the first AC car is nice and cool, our dear friend (on whom we have now bestowed the esteemed title of Official AsiaWheeling Snack Packages Distribution Manager) began to stop by our room, and linger.

We were inside, of course, as we were for the whole ride –there being no dining car and no lock on the door– playing whist or carefully preparing correspondence for you, dear reader. Soon this became a staple of his walk back and forth on the train. The man spoke no English and we no Hindi, but indeed I believe a bond was formed. It was while sharing popular American music and eating biscuits with the chap, that we realized this fellow is badly in need of an AsiaWheeling t-shirt. So the next time he came by our room (this was likely the 12th or 13th time) we offered him the position. Needless to say, all concerned were thrilled.

As one of his first duties, we give him the AsiaWheeling cell-phone so that he could call his home. What he said, we have no idea, but it was a heartfelt and tearful conversation. We were later to learn that this was the first contact he has had with his mother in weeks.

The grand trunk ran into the night, loosing time steadily, until our 3 am arrival we pushed until 6 am. We considered this a boon. And that assumption was soon confirmed as we found Agra not as easily navigable as one might hope.

We awoke this morning earlier than we would have liked after a charming evening with two ravishingly capable Indian women. I mean, of course, the lovely Mendakini and Jagruti, newly christened members of the AsiaWheeling team, and official Pondicherry field command. So you, dear reader, may find it no great surprise that we were awaking at this ungodly hour to have a fine breakfast with those same two women to commemorate our last moments in beautiful Pondicherry. By the time we got a call from Jagruti, we were sipping strong south Indian coffee, chasing it with Malarone, and reading the newspaper in the courtyard of the l’Orient.

We parked our bikes outside a french restaurant, just as the two of them arrived on motor bikes. We dined like imperialists, with more strong coffee, soft-boiled eggs and homemade bread with rich butter and jam. We dropped off the bikes with some tinges of sadness. They had served us well in this city and we would surely miss them. Who was to know what unruly, or easily spooked cycles might lie in our future? We rode back, the four of us, on the women’s mopeds. It was not the first time that I thought it might not be so bad to simply spend the rest of my time on earth clinging to a hurtling chunk of metal, piloted by a beautiful woman. But nay… there is more more wheeling to be done before I sleep.

We packed quickly, and, in my case, somewhat frantically. Both Norton and I have been paying no small attention to the mounting evidence that malarone has a somewhat jittery anxious effect of the psyche. We settled the bill and made sure to leave our mark in the guest-book before we went outside to meet our driver.

The cab company, Selvi Travels, is was started by Scott’s former colleague Maran (we thoughtfully approve if his lack of a last name) so we were given a king’s treatment. It was our first time in an AC cab, and to be honest, I prefer to sweat, windows open, and feel like part of the world which I traverse. Regardless, it was the safest I have ever felt on the insane, lane-less roads of Tamil Nadu. On the way, our driver, a tenacious man named Shiva (the name of our last driver also… more data needed before we draw conclusions here, though) pulled off at a ruined temple complex, which had turned into a tourist bonanza. The temples themselves were stunning, and Shiva walked us to the beach via a secret back rout, so as to avoid paying the 250 rupee entrance fee. Instead we made our way to a beach where a little bazaar had been erected, and a a crowd had formed around the shore where largish waves crashed, disrupting the trajectories of the many swimmers which chose to enter those treacherous waters.

This was also my re-introduction to the world of panhandling children. In my time in Russia, I had developed some utility in the navigation of aforementioned emotional and delicate situation. But these skills had all but disappeared and I found myself heartbroken and guilt-ridden as we were pestered by adorable starving children. Shiva did his best to keep these children at bay, but as we left, a child was still tapping on the window of our cab, and a thin woman was begging at Scott through the glass. It was about then that we realized the aforementioned drug interaction –perhaps between Malarone and caffeine?– was in full engagement. The two of us began to get nervous (about getting sick: India is many beautiful things, hygienic is not one of them), finding a place to stay in Agra, the looming vastness of the trip, our own fortitude. We stopped for a thali at a vegetarian restaurant by the side of the road, and Scott and I sat at the table, gripped by the mild, but persistent hysteria, and ate giant piles of rice.

A full stomach was no solution, though. What we needed was progress, a feeling of accomplishing something, of bending just some modicum of the randomness of infinity to our will. We needed the internet.

So we asked Shiva to take us to an internet cafe in Chennai. Though, he spoke essentially no English, the man was able to communicate to us that he had no knowledge of Chennai and wouldn’t know the first thinga about finding an internet cafe. Our cell rang and it was our good man from the clock and breakable nick-nack shop, calling to tell us that our Jaracks (the card proving that we had a residence and some legitimacy in India) was not 2 sided, and necessitated our return to his shop for some reconnoiter of the situation.. This, we attempted to inform him, was not possible due to our imminent departure on the grand trunk express towards Agra and the Taj Mahal. Upon hearing this he promptly hung up. At this time we still know not what the situation is with the insufficient jaracks, and whether at any moment, Airtel may simple cut our service. Please, dear readers, pray with us that this does not happen. For our mobile is our only lifeline to Tamil, Hindi, and Bengali speakers that may approximate directions to our motorized vehicle drivers and paternalistic civil authorities.

As our cab drove deeper and deeper into the throbbing and scattered nervous system Chennai, Shiva began to pull over and roll down the window, asking people in Tamil/Hindi/English where we could find an internet cafe. We asked pedestrian after pedestrian, each giving us uncorrelated directions. Twice we arrived at a cafe only to find it closed on Sundays. At our wits end, we finally rolled into Chennai’s swankiest, most sprawling, most confusing, beehive of a mall.

Inside the mall we found a microscopic version of the days earlier meanders. Shopkeeper after shopkeeper pointed us in conflicting directions, across multiple floors and “phases” (your guess is as good as ours) of the mall. Finally, though, we got there. It was like a drink of cool water after days in the heat of the desert.

Refreshed and re-fueled by the interwebs, we bid Shiva farewell at the Chennai train station, tipping him a sum that must have been close to his monthly wages, just as a 10 minute summer monsoon began to pour down in heavy curtains over the expanse pavement outside. We ran through the liquid onslaught and into the station. Indeed it too was a sight to behold, and another chance to sharpen my tolerance and composure under the assault of heartbreaking child beggars. As Scott once, I believe very wisely, said “giving money to panhandlers supports the market for panhandling.” Put another way, if one wants to help those less fortunate than he, that person is much better off giving money to an organization whose business it is to redistribute, invest, and create wealth, than to attempt to do such a fragile operation at the random whim of your choice. Such a philosophy seems sound to me, and paired with the fact that, once you have given a rupee to one child beggar, you are soon swarmed by the all the rest in sight, becomes attractive enough to simply embrace.

Now, laden with 1 box of English digestive biscuits, 4 huge bottles of water, 1 Sprite, 1 Pepsi, 2/5 bottle of Indian scotch whiskey, 10 pounds of digital technology, and a 1st AC room on the Grand Trunk Express, we are settling in to blog, rage on php/kml/css, eat the Indian snacks that are being sold by fellows wandering the train, and engage in our own special blend of railroad intrigue.

What are we listening to? Scott’s digging Luke Harris’ Day for Night Mix and Woody’s chiefing out on Cha by Steven Bernstein. Oh and of course our Tamil Classics.

Loading image

Click anywhere to cancel

This morning we awoke to the sound of our room phone ringing. Still disheveled I passed in to Scott, who transitioned instantly from deep sleep into business mode “Yes, hello, put it through.” It turned out that for today’s activity to have any chance of working, I would need to go consume an orientation film (or “flim” as they say it in Tamil since the “lm” phoneme is difficult), and this would require we arrive by 2:30. So be it, we thought. It was to be our first full day, waking and retiring in India. Spirits were high in our fine room at the hotel l’Orient and we bustled excitedly. We had a breakfast of masala dosa –a kind of crispy flapjack filled with spicy potato– and a very tasty south Indian coffee. How’s south Indian coffee made, you ask? Play the video below.

With full stomachs, we vetured out into the steamy day. We had, as you dear reader are no doubt aware, acquired a cellular telephone and indian sim card the day before. And we find here a perfect example of how india continues to surprise me with its strange mixture of bureaucracy and ambivalence. Though we were technically required to present a passport, a passport size photo, and proof of residence before we could get a sim card, the owners of the fine shop which we entered. Mobile phones did not seem to be thier main business, rather they sold clocks, watches and breakable nicknacks.

They did a number of head wiggles and just gave us the phone on no more than an almost unreadable passport copy and a set of AsiaWeeling business cards. So providing them with these materials was the first order of the day. We stopped to buy some $3 shirts and flowing Indian pantaloons on the way back the l’Orient.

We arrived back at the hotel (or “hotle” as the Indians would say it) to find our friend Jagruti and a white ambassador waiting to take us to a Utopian-style cashless society which exists outside of Pondicherry called Auroville. I had the night before been introduced to� the beautiful Jagruti and her devastatingly charming friend Mendakini when we took them out for seafood tandoori at the rooftop restaurant of the hotel Promenade and she had promised to the next morning to do what she could to get us into a meditation session in what I had only heard was rumored to be a one of a kind structure, housing the worlds largest crystal in the world (I mean here the kind one makes nice wine glasses out of– not the regimented molecular kind). The cab ride was delightful. Our driver was significantly older and more cautious than the previous days’, though I am still unsure which was the more dangerous of the two rides. As we neared the expansive grounds of the community, the crumbling fruit stands, nicknack shops and patched together houses dissolved into beautiful jungle, the road transitioned from cracked cement into deep red packed dirt, and soon we were passing into Auroville. We followed well marked signs towards the visitor center and arrived just as a crowd was forming outside. My first impression of Auroville was attributable (as many first impressions of places are) to the architecture. It was phenomenal, proving that despite the cashless society there was plenty of money here.

Our driver left to go park the car and relax while we entered the orientation. The first part was just about the Matrimandir, an orbular building located in the center of the very much still under construction community of Auroville. The community is shaped like a galaxy, centered around a very special banyan tree, and just to the side of the banyan tree was the Matrimandir.

During the film, a photo of the Matrimandir dissolved into a schematic of the interior. Inside there were spiraling walkways and a smaller orbular room in the top. Giant mirrors on the roof collected sunlight and focused it into a beam which shown down through the center of the building and through the giant crystal ball in the central room. I was honestly stunned. I thought such places only existed in science fiction novels. The second part of the film detailed the philosophy and history of Auroville, with regards to which I will refer you elsewhere for details.In the interim between the end of the orientation and the beginning of the meditation, we had a breakneck tour of the campus.

Everywhere we went, we saw healthy looking European and light skinned Indian people lounging or doing administrative work, all very peaceful, most were smiling. We passed outside the entrance the the inner circle of Auroville, where the great golden dome loomed over manicured lawns and curving brickwork. We were told by the woman at the gate that it was likely we would get in but only be able to stand, but Jagruti worked some magic and before we knew it we were holding deep blue translucent tokens which were to redeem our passage into the Matrimandir. We strolled around the grounds of the inner sanctum, freshening up, drinking water from a large tank with a single metal glass atop it to be used by all who wished to drink, and in no time we were in a large group of Indians and foreigners heading for the golden sphere. We stopped outside to wait until 4:30. At that time the workers )mostly dark skinned indians with singular dress and large turbans were to finish their work. We must have total silence inside the matrimandir. The crowd was given explicit instructions: do not say a word; remove your shoes; put on the socks that will be provided to you; do not cross the inner concentration room, walk only along the parameter, touch nothing but the handrails, move nothing but your own body.

So this we did. As I walked towards the great sphere, it became apparent that its many gold panels were made of smaller gold panels, forming an intricate and glittering design. At the entrance of the matrimandir we we descended a great sloping walkway of red brick, great walls of the same material rising smoothly on both sides. We silently arranged our shoes along this walkway and entered the golden door.

Inside it was cool and dark. In the antechamber, which was lit in a deep red light, we donned the socks we were handed by a smiling woman and began to file into a white marble doorway. Inside the matrimandir there was more marble, arching skyward towards a second sphere, which floated high above us. From the bottom of this sphere, a brilliant ray of light shown down into a tall obelisk, with a lens at the top. All around us were the elegant curves of the interior support structure, all lit in cool blues reds and yellows. Fountains ran along the walls, next to plaques with inscriptions in Hindi and English.

We heard only the trickle of the water was we ascended the ramps. Our feet made no sound on the ramp which, upon steepening slightly, became thickly carpeted and gripped the foot. As we neared the top of the ramp, we could see the great dome, with its single door. At this point I had become separated from scott, and was near the head of the line, so I entered an almost empty space. Once again, the temperature dropped as we entered the interior of the inner orb. The room was very dim, lit only by the light which reflected from a great crystal ball which sat atop a golden stand made of four six-pointed stars. A brilliant beam of light shown in from the sealing, so bright that the light scattered by ambient dust was stark and purest white. The beam fell directly into the center of the crystal, and passed out the bottom of the marble floor on which we walked.I took a seat with a cushion that leaned against a pillar, and sat down. I must admit, the sight of this great orb and the beam so bright as to seem almost solidified, had a profound effect.

It was the entire experience, the architecture, the silence, and the inner room itself, which transformed the consciousness of those who chose to “concentrate” as they called it. I sat town and stared into the light. I know that meditation is supposed to be about clearing ones mind, but I have never had any luck at that. The closest I can get is wheeling, or swimming laps with a snorkel… but oh… the torrent of processing that I had. in that room My mind began to churn over so many things: from Asiawheeling logistics to the meaning of existence. It seemed like only a minute later that the lights flashed silently in the room, telling us to leave. I stood and followed orders, thinking: perhaps this is indeed a step towards mind like water…

Update: we’ve closed down shop on the asiawheeling pilot study t-shirt orders.

Time is just raging by here in providence, and the aforementioned has come to send the orders to our t-shirt man Bradely Thompson, at Row Apparel. Thanks to all who ordered. The trip continues to loom ever closer. I can barely contain myself…

As much as anything else, this trip will be an experiment in rolling with the punches. While we have spared no time in the meticulous planning of this endeavor, we recognize also that much must be left to chance. Our first flirtation with that fickle mistress occurred some days ago when your corespondent Mr. Scott Norton received an unexpected communication informing him that his subsequent employer would be requiring his services, beginning at the unanticipatedly early date of July 13th.We immediately set to reformulating the plan.Some things were for sure: we could not cut our visits to Varanasi, or the Sunday market in Kashgar. So we began to assemble a new itinerary.The gods were with us for the time, as we were able to construct without too much difficulty a new itinerary, which achieved these goals. Major components to be cut were the entire west and norther components of the India portion of the trip and bicycling across South Korea.

Having already purchased tickets from Kolkata to Hong Kong on Jet Airways, we needed to change those reservations. Yet, after some conversation with Jet’s customer service executives, we discovered this task could only be done in person. Enter Nakil Kulkarni, head of the AsiaWheeling Bangalore office, and Chief Snakcharmer for AsiaWheeling global. As always, Nakil’s reputation precedes him, in the same way lightning precedes thunder. So you, dear readers will find it no great surprise that, against fantastic odds, Nakil traversed miles of treacherous terrain and plunged himself into intense negotiations on our behalf with officials at said airline. After some hours a deal was struck, and AsiaWheeling once again enjoyed the calm which precedes an upcoming storm.May we, your humble correspondents, never cease to be reminded that we ride only on the shoulders of such giants as comprise the AsiaWheeling board of advisers.