"yak butter traveling flip flops..."

Saturday.

India.

"If you give us enough coffee we'll trek anywhere...
As long as we can wear flip flops.... And it's level." -J.O.

We started at daybreak.. Walking and walking, all over the sleeping streets of Delhi that would soon be crawling and spinning.

A huge grey monkey with a red face stared at us from atop a closed up building.
I ducked behind a parked taxi to avoid the thing as it walked towards us menacingly, totally freaking me out.
John said he wanted to take it home so Beaker could have a friend.
Typical.

We laughed as we walked and walked....
Ate breakfast at an open cafe-- daal and rice flour things served in the most minute itty bitty tiny portions... Thimbles of coffee and food brought out to us in plates that were literally circles the circumference of a coke can- half a centimeter deep filled with one dollop of food.
We felt like SUCH fatasses wanting to order 10 more orders...
Went paid, left and went over to eat more off the street carts, finally feeling fappy (fat & happy) like the laughing buddahs that line the streets here.

We wandered into (as gross as it sounds) an ear-wax cleaning park where men sat us down on the nasty grass and picked inside our ears with tiny wires... Cleaning them out so fully that I found myself seriously regretting it as soon as we walked back into traffic.

It turns out:
1. This is a deafeningly loud city.
2. I used to be deaf

We made our way back to the cottage yes please in a tuktuk and sat with the concierge, booking our tickets to Ladakh... (we leave tonight)... Checked emails and skyped with Shayno who was back in Padang getting ready to head back out across the great divide and into the Mentawais tonight... And then we went back out - emerging back into the growing hustle and bustle.
Finding a bookstore in Connaught Place circle vortex, we bought (for the second time) the books we had bought in KL and then promptly lost at the Delhi airport 8 hours later.

Ainz texted JohnE from the island... "yak butter traveling flip flops..."

Overwhelm and sensory overload kicks in quickly on the streets -and cafes are like little havens nestled into the mayhem.

We tucked in to one called the Nirvana Cafe because it had "yak cheese salad" on the menu outside and we thought of Ainz and laughed.

Climbing a narrow flight of stairs and sliding into a window-side table, we sipped chai tea and watched the dizziest busiest street ever... 

Pahar Ganj spins and spins and never stops to come up for air.



The horns don't stop. 

From our little eagle eye view, we see a sizable chunk of the hustle and clusterfuck that is this place.

A yellow and green tuk tuk runs into a bike driven rickshaw stacked with people and boxes... A huge white ox pulls an ancient almost gothic looking cart... Men with dark skin wrapped in orange fabrics glow beneath their dusty dirt coating... the pulsating rays of white sun beat down between the buildings... 

This rasta backbacker style cafe, that we chose to take a time out in, plays burning man playa-style beats through a speaker. The song that goes on and on has a sample of a water droplet behind the electronic thumps and whomps.

After ten or so minutes of sipping in silence and watching this all... John said definitively, "This is exactly the extreme opposite of how I live" As he continued staring out at the street through the rusty railing bars in shocked wonder.

Truly... It is the complete polar opposite to Pitojat Island and Togat Nusa Retreat.




We started talking about the joys of being alone... I hated it when i was younger... Always wanting to be with someone doing something, until i learned that i actually really like me... Enjoying my own company in peace. 

The horns continued to wail around motorbike engines and voices haggling prices in Hindi. The odd gaggle of women in saris float through the traffic jams and seemingly sea of men, as though fully unaffected. Desensitized, it seemed. They look so beautiful and fancy, but their calloused feet walk barefoot over dirt and trash piled in potholes that act as a road somehow.

People cook on the road- crouched down in the steam coming off their frying oil...
Here there are juice makers and pop corn poppers, pastry fryers and curry cookers squatting next to endless woks next to more woks and then little side-woks.

But HA! Hows that?
there are only side-woks... no sidewalks.

The roads become more and more filthy with each passing hour.

The open wounds on my feet begin to ache, sting and swell under the bandages that are securely taped on my skin.
(my right foot has 3 reef cuts and a badly infected blister from my famous boots that I insisted on wearing last week eventhough they rubbed on the reef cuts and made my foot swell up like a balloon.)

Back in the peace of the hotel room, I shower and lay back with my feet up the wall hoping to drain out some of the inflammation and let the blood recirculate... Praying and willing that it not be staph.

My brain had a conversation with itself as my eyes adjusted to the lack of action in the room and my brain decompressed a little in the soft light...
"Shit, dude. This is not good for trekking anywhere! Even on level ground... Especially in flip flops... But a real shoe would KILL to wear too. Dammit zani. A gypsy needs her feet to prance and dance around and adventure...
I wonder what is this message? I asked the universe what it wants of me in India. So why is it basically crippling me right now? What's up with that?"

At that moment johnE laying on his back reading the Lonely Planet's chapter on Ladakh again, rolled over, turning to me and said

"So what's this Vipasana? Maybe we should go meditate up there with the Tibetan Buddhist monks."

Ding ding ding.

Done.


Ladakh is the tippy top northern mountainous region of India near Kashmir. It's a desert climate but also up in the Himalayan Mountains (4000meters high in some parts)... the name "Ladakh" apparently means "land of high passes" and according to more then one source, it totally  resembles the moon... But with prayer flags.

Not a bad pitch line, right?

Check out these photos, taken by a friend of a friend...

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.255280154507574.58490.100000767753271&type=3

I am pretty much as unprepared for the frozen Himalayan weather as one can get.
I have 17 bikins.
No long sleeves or socks (obviously).
But hell... As long as we're swinging from pole to pole- finding exact opposites... Let's mosey on out of sweltering, spinning Delhi tonight and fly on up to the moon to sit in dead silent meditation, right?

Right.

So... Stay tuned.

With love,
...in flip flops,
Zanskar

(that's my new self appointed nickname... Since the area of Zanskar, nearby to Ladakh is described in Lonely Planet as "majestically rugged" and I like that a whole lot.)

Namaste y'all.