Fighting Words

“Tell him I’m going to smash his teeth in,” were the first words I uttered with conviction that morning.  “Hun Hau,” were the probably the second, gesturing to the dumplings on my plate as a dark purple shiner gained territory around my eye socket.

It’s a good idea when you travel to keep your cool.  You could have easily be offended by a misunderstanding, you might cause someone to lose face (which carries more weight outside of western culture), and, most importantly, the law rarely smiles on belligerent foreigners.  In India, there is another variable to consider.  Indians are generally a peaceable people.  Trouble will generally not find you.  If it did, you're not dealing with people who have thrown a lot of punches in their lives.  If you're a reasonable fit man and have had a scrap or two you'd be the betting favorite to win a fistfight against the average man on the streets of India.  But you will not be fighting a man on the streets of India.  You will be fighting all Indians.  Mobs form quick here and, as anyone who has recklessly caused a traffic accident could tell you, they are extremely violent and short on mercy.  You won't worry about the police arriving, you'll be praying they come faster.
I've only had three brushes with brawls in my travels.  In Shanghai, a relatively safe city, two drunks toppled out of an alley bar just as I was walking by at 2 A.M.  "Hello, hello!" they kept chanting as they walked behind me, keeping up with my accelerating pace.  When one grabbed my arm I spun and cracked him in the face, then took off in a sprint as he floundered back into his buddy's arms.  His face crumpled, his friend's mouth pursed in a giant O.  Probably just drunks being drunks, but when it's two against one in the middle of the night you hit first.  Another time I found myself in a bar in Riga, two sheets to the wind, when a monstrous buzz-cut commando sat in the stool next to me, pulsating vibes of trouble.  I avoided eye contact, but in a couple minutes he was staring right at me.  "Hey.  Hey you.  Where you from?"  "Hey.  You me... we break," he said smacking a closed fist into his other palm.  "I don't understand," I replied with a big stupid smile.  He returned it with a smile of his own, most of the teeth missing.  "We break!  We break!," he said again throwing short hooks and jabs into the small space between us.  "I'm sorry man.  I don't understand.  You are Latvian right?  I love Latvia.  Riga very beautiful.  Nice street.  Nice church.  Nice girls!" I offered with a laugh, desperate to change the subject.  He flat stared at me for five long seconds, considering options.  "Ok," he finally said thrusting out a meaty open hand, "Friend."  This is how it's done.  If you do fight, make it hard and fast and then leave the scene with haste.  But preferably confuse your would be assailant until you can diffuse the aggression.  This was not the pattern I followed in India. 

 We had returned from the state of Orissa with a swagger in our steps and our first episode of a new travel show in the can.  After being on a creative roll of filming, writing, and planning our return to Kolkata was buoyed by a balloon full of energy that had began to escape at a squeak and then, by the fourth day of inactivity, like a flatulent blast.  Unable to resist the draw of free accomodation I’d posted up in New Town, a.k.a under-development town.  High rise buildings springing up slowly from swampland and cow pasture on the extreme edge of the city.  When it rains the muddy roads connecting these concrete skeletons to highways turn into moats.  In a way it captures a reality of India:  cutting edge technology and engineering for the individual, banana republic infrastructure for the public.  It was here, and just then, in this upper-class-isolation-post-festival-cooldown moment, that the region’s world renown microbes rammed down the gates of my immune system and sacked my body like barbarians in Rome.  It was bound to happen, planning to make it through a trip to India without getting sick is like planning the Caribbean without sunburn, Russia without vodka, or Brazil without dancing.  The odds are heavily against you.

I was on the cusp of recovery when the producer announced he’d lined up a full day of shooting.  We had a plan!  We were back in motion!  We were out the door on the way to the action when a cowboy cabbie cuts us off and pulls a stunt.  To be fair, he had a beef.  We’d called for car service the night before.  The guy overslept.  So we called a taxi stand 10 minutes down the way.  20 minutes later I was chomping at the bit.  The forces of evil were conspiring to hold me inactive in this compound another day.  I’d already said my long goodbye to the toilet… going back now would be awkward.  “Jump the first cab we see on the street!” I admonished.  So we did, and then the taxi stand guy caught us.  I’m not going to pretend to understand Bengali, but I do know the difference in tonality and gesture between, “Hey sorry we’re late,” and “Get your ass out of this other taxi right now or else.”  The guy started in on me first, finger waving and barking, and then, unsatisfied with a blank sunglass stare, moved onto the producer and his girlfriend in the backseat.  That’s the moment I snapped like Shia Labeoaf.  I don't believe the two native speakers in the back translated my desire to give the guy some quick dental work, but he definitely picked up on my tonality and gestures, not to mention English vulgarities are fairly universally understood.  I got out of the cab.  It was going down and i was ready.  Mounting frustrations had found an outlet.  Our entourages separated us.  It was anti-climatic.  But not two hours later I had my sweaty arms clasped around a man’s knees, springing forward to drive him to the ground.
Fighting another man, mano a mano is always serious business, but when you step into a cage to do it the intensity doubles down.  The X factor, however, was the camera, and my announcement that I was hosting a show.  No intensity level was discussed, but I assumed these variables might soften the hard reality of two men sealed into a dirt pit.  As soon as our arms grasped, I knew I had assumed wrong.  With a twist of the hips I was tossed to the ground.  Hard.  Too upright.  The secret to wrestling is leverage.  You've got to get low.  We returned to the center of the cage.  I squated and then exploded for the man's knees.  I wrapped my arms around his sweaty legs and drove forward.  For a moment I thought I had him.  Then he reached over my back, clasping my underwear in an iron grip, lifted my legs out of the soil, and piledrove me into the dirt. 
This ass-kicking, of which I was mainly on the receiving end, was official.  Cops, community leaders, and my said entourage lined the outside of the cage and squealed with glee as I got flipped, spun, and pushed around like a genetically inferior caveman.  And make no mistake, by the end of a Kushti wrestling match, dressed in a soiled loincloth and caked with mud, you look like you timewarped in from the Paleolithic era.

There is a lot of leverage in a healthy pot belly

Two Kushti wrestlers doing the dirty

Wrestling in India goes beyond sport and into religious devotion.  Practitioners live together, train together,  and follow strict guidelines of diet, duties, and denial of certain worldly pleasures.  You can wallow around with a fellow wrestler in tighty whiteys, but doing so with a female is strictly off limits, inside a cage or out, for your entire career.  When you enter the cage you offer a puja, a prayer, to Hanuman, the monkey god.  Judging from Hanuman's muscular depiction he was probably the king of the throwdown, an asset that no doubt made him the ideal alley in Rama's quest to kill the demon Ravana.
The rules seem similar to freestyle except weight classes be damned.  When I lost to the lightweight, they gave me a middleweight.  When I couldn’t budge the middleweight a heavy decided he’d show me a trick or two.  The experience was the ying to my yang.  After having 3 different guys own me my gas tank was empty and my aggression gone.  Twenty minutes in the mud akhara had cleaned my soul out as efficiently as yesterday’s microbes had flushed my pipes.

I took a rinse off in the river Ganges (which is like sobering up by drinking a beer) and we headed for Chinatown.  The Sino-Indian war almost put an end to this community, but there were still some holdouts, maintaining temples and cooking scrumptious dumplings on the streets.  It was munching a fish filled delectable, eye socket throbbing, when I realized that occasionally an aggressor is a good thing.  The microbe in your stomach or the muddy Indian who’s got you in a headlock gives you a chance to work something out and emerge a new, stronger man.

How to Play the Foreigner Card to Save Bodily Injury from Blunt Weapons

What can you do when a Japanese police officer pulls you over for speeding, when priests catch you in the bell tower of a church in Poland, or a muscle bound Latvian commando wants to smash your teeth in at an underground bar?  You start speaking English!  The he-doesn't-know-what he's doing rational combined with the I-don't-want-to-struggle-through-this-dialogue dread packs a one two punch that'll squeak you out of most jams, or at least lessen the severity of the consequences.  Two days ago, it kept my skull intact.

The Rath Yatra festival in Puri draws up to a million pilgrims from all over India.  The sight of the god Jagannath, emerging once a year from his temple for a ride, brings all the boys to the yard; and the chance to pull his whip puts them into a religious frenzy.  By yanking the 220 ropes attached to the god's chariot, or even touching one, your sins are absolved.  Woot!  Having a questionable balance on my karmic chart made this sound like an attractive deal.  Sashi, the producer of the show we were filming, also thought this a fantastic idea.  I get to the ropes: Good TV!  I get trampled: Also good TV!  So into the human stew I push, squirm, and slide.  4 ropes means 8 sides of possibilities, right?  Not so fast.  One side of each rope is patrolled by cops, their special guests, and cheeky Indians who think a grab of the ropes is worth a crack from a baton.. and cracked they got. 
The chariot stopped for a moment, and, unbeknown to me, the line when slack with a slight curvature in it.  I pressed forward.. 5 feet of flesh to the rope, 50 feet of bodies behind me leaning their weight into reaching the prize.  Then horns blew, the crowd let out a roar, and the ropes began to tighten.  Our nook in the curve became a trap.  The thick twine clotheslines the first row of devotees and sent the second row back like stones in a slingshot.. I saw a gap and leapt.  If there was any point to the little amount of jump-roping I've done in my life this was it.  The line snapped like a bowstring under my feet and I came down to the pavement on the other side.  What a difference this other side.  One minute I felt like a man in a mosh pit, the next thing you know it was as spacious as St. Peters in low season.  What was a quest is now a cakewalk.  Turning around I grabbed the rope easily.  A handful of other guys made it under or over.  They now put their hands alongside mine.  We looked at each other with the camaraderie of accomplishment glimmering in our eyes.  We did it.  Then the cops came.  The sound of rattan hitting someone's back made me turn.  A tall wiry man in a khaki uniform had a baton lifted above my head, ready to drive its weight down onto my sorry ass.  I let go of the rope and shot my hands up.  "Wait!  Stop!," I barked with authority, and then quickly tacked on a whoopsy shrug and a dopey smile.  He froze.  Then, coming to a decision with the stick still raised, gave a get-outta-here jerk of his head, and brought the baton down with fierce precision... onto the guy next to me.  Whack!

Full Circle: Desert to Desert

Egypt began with sunrise 1/1/11 on the top of Mt. Sinai.  It officially ended 1/11/11 when i boarded a 14 hour bus from Dakla Oasis to Cairo Airport.  I'd just said goodbye to my friends after watching the sun set over the western desert and the horizon go from orange, to red, to the deepest purple you could imagine.
I didn't write as much of this country as I expected.  Maybe it was because someone gave me their LP Egypt guidebook as I was leaving Jordan.  Traveling with a book has its advantages, but it also takes away a level of surprise and a dependence on the help of others which leads to interesting conversations and friendships.  Or maybe I wrote less because Egypt's 3,000 year old tourist industry streamlined things to less story-worthy material.  Or, more likely, it was the company of friends that changed the tone of the trip.  Not that things became uneventful, but they were eventful in a "You had to be there" kind of way.
It's hard to describe what it's like to be in a small room with ten Nubian men smoking hash from three joints, a glass jar, and a sheesha; looking for a polite excuse to decline an invitation for a second night of lung-caking inhalation; and laughing at the proposal for a "Nubian massage" whispered in my friend's ear.  It's a tall order to make you crack up like we did on top of a crumbling monastery wall imagining the comedic threads that would come from Pharaoh Tutankhamen brought back to life, Jurassic Park style, and then demanding all his treasures returned, tourists driven off, and souvenir hawkers set to rebuilding or placed in chains for selling postcards with his image next to camels humping.  I can't convey the sublime moment of laying on a sand dune in the vast western desert, having just soaked in natural hot springs, staring up at the universe and tossing around deep and absurd thoughts.. like future colonies on mars, on which my buddy and I should be the only men.. the first to father martians with the abundance of women who would naturally volunteer for the program.
What I can tell you is that the people in the Middle East are some of the friendliest in the world.  That Jerusalem is magical and Tel Aviv is going to put a dent in your budget.  That I'm much more wary walking around Venice Beach at 2am than Damascus, Syria.  I can tell you that it's good to wake up early on your travels and see things in the soft morning glow before the tour buses start their engines.  That you should bring a laptop because internet cafes are becoming as scarce as payphones.  That it's good to see an old friend on the road and meet some new ones.  And finally I can tell you that there is something about moving that's important for the soul.  Heraclitus said, "You could not step twice into the same river, for other waters are ever flowing on you."  Try to hold on to one spot and the stream will wear you down as smooth as its rocks.  I made like a felluca:  Observant and present when docked, sails up and ready to go when the wind began to blow.  Walks over sand dunes and down ancient alleys, buses that may or may not be going where I intended, overnight trains on which I slept to the thunk a thunk of the tracks below..  the anticipation and unpredictability of the next, the new, the yet to be discovered.  Getting from A to B was always more thrilling than being there. 

Sneaking up into the bell tower of a church in Beirut

An abandoned monastery

Old and new friends at the Funny Mummy cafe in Dahab, Egypt

Dawn of 1/1/11 where Moses got the 10 Commandments

A felluca makes its way up the Nile in Aswan

A souq in Aswan

The fastest way down a dune

On the trail from the Valley of the Kings to Hatshepsut's temple

Egypt and Egypped

Imagine walking into a coffeeshop in any American city as a German tourist, backpack still on, Let's Go USA guidebook in hand.  You order a black coffee and the barista says, "Ten dollars please."
"Ten dollars?!" you say.  That seems a little steep.
"Ten dollars," he repeats with conviction and turns to his colleagues for support.  The other employee chimes in, "Coffee?  Yeah, it's ten dollars," as if citing a well known fact.
That's out of your budget so you wave "no thanks" and make your way for the door.
"OK... seven dollars," the barista barks just as you walk out.
Now you are an American traveling in Australia.  You jump on the bus to get across town.
"Five dollars," says the driver.
"Five?  No... one or two, right?" you counter, sure its a misunderstanding.
"Its five dollars to ride the bus!" he huffs with such well rehearsed indignation you'd swear you've offended him.
Such is the experience of a traveler in Cairo, Luxor, Aswan, or any piece of Egypt that's been kissed, or in some cases bear hugged, by tourism.  From the minute you step out of your hotel door every bottle of water, bus ride, candy bar, haircut, cup of tea, or museum fee could turn into a heated negotiation.  Some will let you walk out of their empty restaurant before accepting the same amount of money a local would pay.
Of course suckers do abound.  Get to the ancient temples at 6am, enjoy a serene walk around the majestic past with only the rising sun and waking birds for company.. and then, as you're leaving, slow your walk and watch them arrive.  They come just as the barbarian armies which tore down these great civilizations at their delicate ends.  The warships and cavalry are now oversized blue and yellow buses.  The swords and axes now cameras.  They come from castles they've constructed, fit with provisions so they need not venture outside the high walls.  Fort Hilton.  Citadel Sheraton.  They wear the garb of their tribe:  Hawaiian shirts, daisy duke shorts, spaghetti strap tops.  Continental breakfasts still digesting they march straight through the temple in a direct line from one touted highlight to the next, checking them off.  There is no time to wander and reflect.  Their commander, General Tourguide has 7 more temples for them to conquer before the sun sets.
If they haven't noticed no Egyptian wears shorts in public, they undoubtedly also haven't noticed that the ferry to cross the Nile cost 20 cents, not 10 dollars.  A bottle of water 40 cents, not 2 dollars. 

In the wake of a con I had to rectify with the help of the police, several Egyptians, embarrassed to hear the story, pointed out that there are bad people and good people everywhere.  Absolutely true.  Get away from the tourist trail and you'll find mostly warm, welcoming people.  They'll call out greeting from cafes, help you out with directions on the bus, lend you their phones and even money if you're in a spot.  They want to know where you are from and what you've seen.  They universally say, "Welcome to Egypt.. welcome," with the tone of a proud host ushering a new friend into his house.
Soon I was reminded that a raw deal is not a purely Egyptian specialty.  The carriage rider who switched my money around and claimed, "I am a Muslim.  I don't lie," temporarily had me for a 20 dollar loss.  The Christian cab driver who told me three times "I love Jesus," tried to double my fare for a 4 dollar loss.  A casting agency in Los Angeles, for whom I cut my trip short, tried to take me for a 350$ loss by refusing to refund what I spend to adjust my plane ticket.
The Egyptian police helped me get my 20 back.  Threat of a law suit helped me get the 350.  As my old man says, "The right incentive always motivates people to honesty."

 

 

Aswan PD hard at work on my case

Egypt: Come for the Big, Remember the Small

Sinai Peninsula

The big attraction:  Diving the Red Sea.  Saw lots of fish.  No killer sharks. Damn.

The small ones:  Mt. Sinai.  Made a last minute plan from Tel Aviv, Israel to meet my friend Greg on the summit of Moses' mountain 24 hours later for sunrise on 1/1/11.. going non stop subway, bus, taxi, minivan, walking, microbus, hiking to get there for that magical moment.

Smaller one:  Going into a pharmacy to get some Valium for the 10 hr bus ride to Cairo.  After some friendly small talk the pharmacist asks, "You have lady?"  Then slides me a quaalude and a viagra as a parting present and instructs me to take half of each before getting it on.. but only half!  Get that at Walgreens.

Cairo

Mistaking the Sphinx for another camel ride tout I missed out on ancient words of wisdom by accidentally telling him to "talk to the hand".

The big attraction:  The pyramids.  Amazing sight but lots of touts constantly hard selling camel rides and the best view, honest to God, is just outside the gates on the roof of a Pizza Hut.. you don't even have to buy a slice.

Aswan

Big attraction:  Ancient tombs all around.  Interesting history and hieroglyphics.

Quiet side of Elephantine Island.. not in the LP.

Smaller attraction:  Nubian village next to ruins.  Put away the guidebook and got lost in the windy streets.  Met some kids playing soccer and got schooled as the guest star goalie. Approached a group of guys to get directions home and am now invited to a wedding tomorrow.  At the market my buddy Greg pays for use of public bathroom with a cigarette. Guy hits him up for another smoke on the way out, so Greg makes him shake on the deal that we've got a free piss there tomorrow.  Everyone who hears I'm American smiles and says, "Obama good!"   Down the road I bought a t-shirt in a shop and the owner invites us to Christmas mass in the big Coptic church in town (their xmas is later than ours)  I might give this one a skip in light of what just happened in Alexandria.. as a believer I'd at least be a martyr, as an atheist I'd just be unlucky.  Talked with another guy a few blocks down while munching a falafel and he invites us for tea and hasheesh at his cafe overlooking the Nile... that might be more my speed.

Tea with Ahmad

Jerusalem.  Looking for a place to eat my shawarma, I climbed smooth stone steps to a cafe overlooking Herod's Gate.  The Arab owner, Ahmad, struck up a conversation with the standard, "where are you from?"  Then, "Are you married?"  When I told him I wasn't he quickly suggested I get on the ball and began to give me the advice that led to his blissful union of 25 years...

"Girl who go for drink.. go here, go there, where is party.  This girl is rubbish.  You have to go find.. maybe America more difficult.  You must go find good girl from place and take from good place," he says pursing his fingers as if taking a delicate cholocate from a box.
First point:  Don't marry a party girl.
"She have good family.  Mother, Father good.  She nice."
Second point:  Solid family background.
"She don't here is money, there is money I go.  She make money.  She don't 'Oh you have money I go there, he has money I go there.'"
Third point:  Marry a girl who has her own cash or who comes from money so she's not bedazzled and easily persuaded by whoever has it.

"I will heed you advice," I said as I reached for my wallet, "How much do I owe you?"
"You owe me nothing," he replied with a small wave of his hand.
A free tea and nuggets of marital advice from Ahmad of Jerusalem which I pass on to you, for what it's worth.

Lowest Man on the Earth

This morning I was beneath all of you.  In fact, at 6:30 AM I was probably the lowest man on the earth.  The way it happened wasn't as planned.  I left Petra, the ancient city carved into narrow canyon rock hundreds of years before Christ, looking for a straight bus to a cheap hotel.  Four bus rides later I was sitting next to a toothless driver going down, down, down a dark highway.
Part of this no-guidebook experiment I'm trying is that you have to rely on the good will of the locals, have a little luck, and hope someone speaks at least a few words of English (or can understand my caveman drawings and crappy charades gestures.)  It's great for meeting people, but you could end up seriously screwed.. especially when you can't read or speak the language.
The last bus dropped me off in a dusty no name town in next to a pharmacy.  I was following a guy recommended by the last guy I followed.  This was supposed to get me there.  But it's twenty miles from my destination, dark, and the lone taxi driver in town has got me in a fix.. I've got no leverage. I turn to the pharmacist for aid and he makes this guy swear on the Koran that he'd take care of me.. lead me to a good, budget hotel.  So we plunge down the road.. it just keeps going down.
"Mister.. you America, me Jordan.. face to face," he says, squinting into the darkness ahead.
"Yeah good.  Jordan very jamilla."
"Jamilla.. oh you speak Arabic.  Mister you America, I Jordan, he Israel, he.. uh uh.. everywhere.  All.  We are all."
"Right.. we are all one.  All people."
"Mister you go hotel.  100.  Maybe you stay two days 500.  Mister my friend... hot water.  you hot water.  you sleep.  you eating.  no money."
"You mean stay with your friend?"
"You say hotel.. ok.. hotel.. you say friend.. ok... you say."
And so I ended up on a busted up cot, under the stars, next to a little family run shack that sells tea to truck drivers making the run from Amman (Jordan's capital) to Aqaba (Its only port).  After an hour of slumber the youngest son ripped the ratty blanket off and pointed to his dad.. hard at work at something.
"Oh.. your dad sleep? I go?" I mumbled, thinking shit.. its the middle of the night and a cold wind is howling
"No no.. you eat"
Dad brings over some flat bread and a tomato stew he cooked up.  We all tuck in under lantern light.  Dad gestures that i go back to sleep.
When I wake they are gone.  The sky is just starting to lighten. I walk 5 minutes down the hill and slide into the Dead sea, 1,385 feet below sea level at the surface.  If you were taking a walk along the beach last night, pants rolled up, waves rolling over your feet, I was four and a half football fields below you... bobbing like a cork in the water (nipple deep with head up and feet down).. 200 meters out (impossible to drown).  I watched the sunlight come up from behind me and slowly wake up Israel across the salty water...  and I thought about all you guys, my friends and family, above me.