March - 2008
Mar. 29: Colonias, Uruguay
These last three days have been spent soaking up the cleanliness and tranquility. I´m off to Asuncion, Paraguay on Tuesday, and the Asuncion that I remember from twenty years ago was anything but clean and quiet. I hope to be surprised, but I doubt it.
Having heard from James at CBC that duties on sheepskin are not bad, it seems that the Patagonia order is a go. I´ll try to finish that up when I´m back in Argentina.
Today is the 29th day of the month, which means that gñoccis are served everywhere. I forget the exact reason, something about no money at the end of the month for meat. Gñoccis are indeed what I´ve ordered for lunch.
I´ve yet to find a chink in the facade of perfection that is Colonia, but there must be something. A man that I was talking to yesterday said that all four of his kids had immigrated to the U.S., and he seemed to be solidly middle class. Uruguay has had a few rough stretches, the last one being hoof and mouth disease in what is primarily an agricultural country.
Import taxes must be really high. A lot of the clothes are locally made, but there is a Columbia Sportswear store. Here it´s a Big Deal and a Status Store. Now that I´ve been here a few days, I´ve also noticed, that while the cars being driven are not antiques, they are definitely older. There are carefully maintained 25 year old Japanese models, timeless VW Beetles, decrepid Citroen Deux Chevaux, tiny vintage Fiats. Looking at prices on used cars in Colonia puts it into perspective. As an average example, a 1982 Toyota Corolla sells for $4850. That´s U.S. dollars. You can buy a brand new three bedroom smaller house on a bigger lot in Colonia for $35,000. That´s also U.S. dollars.
Before the ferry this afternoon, there´s a 300 pound pig fish (that´s the local name) that I want to go see. Yesterday´s highlight was watching, along with 40 mate sipping locals, a beached boat get pulled out of the water. As I said, it´s a quiet town.
Mar. 27: Colonia, Uruguay
Boy, did I have a weird flashback today. I took the 9 a.m. passenger boat across the water to go over to Colonia for the next few days, and I´m sitting in the boat, sort of scanning between watching the water, and watching the Argentinian travel movie on the T.V. and there I am on television! It was ancient footage from when I worked at the ski area in Las Leñas, Agentina, and it was a shot of the ski school with me front and center - wierd - I even still have the ski school jacket that I was wearing, I think, I kept it for years in the car as sort of a dog coat, something for an emergency, but you didn´t care if it got dirty or full of dog hair.
I also had a minor flashback when I was in Buenos Aires. I went to the Confiteria Richmond, as I had stolen an ashtray from there 25 years ago (yeah yeah, I know, it was wrong, but we left a big enough tip that it would have covered the cost of the silverware too). Anyway, absolutely NOTHING had changed in its absolute English leather club chaired splendor, except that smoking is no longer permitted, so there were no ashtrays.
I sent out an email to my trusty customs brokers at CBC to see what duties and paperwork are required for importing sheepskin. If tarifs are not too bad, I´m going for it, the Patagonian stuff really is artesanal. They hand trace around each pattern, its all hand cut with leather knives, its a nice product at a good price, shipping cost is excellent, as it just goes, more or less, straight north, so there is still a chance that I´ll send a shipment. In the meantime, I´ve come over to Colonia, Uruguay for the next 2 days. Think Saugatauk Michigan, or Cedarburg, Wisconsin, except surrounded by water, and its a Unesco World Heritage Site, set in Uruguayan pampas and river or ocean delta .
It´s so very calm and laid back, cobblestone streets, parrots in the trees, etc. Uruguay, about 25 years ago, had had a decades-long ban on importing foreign made cars, but they didn´t manufacture cars themselves, so it was like the roads were filled with carefully tended antiques, as you had to keep them going, because there were no replacements. Anyway, that´s since ended, but there are still lots and lots of old cars around, permanently parked in front of stores and restaurants, maybe with plants growing out of them.
Traffic tends to be more bicicyle, motorscooter, golf carts, and the odd horse drawn cart. It´s really clean and pretty, and smells of the water, fresh cut grass, and wood fires from all of the wood grilled meat places. Chris is going to say that I´m goldbricking, but I am also looking at sheepskin here. It´s a little cheaper than in Argentina, but I think that the Patagonian stuff is much better quality because of the much colder climate.
As I said before, I hit absolutely every street fair there is in Buenos Aires, and I´ve already hit the street fair here, but I´ll go back on Saturday when there´s more venders. This is just after one of the biggest weeks they have, Semana Santa, and some of the businesses and street venders are closed, as its starting to become off season. The weather is absolutly perfect, but with a just a tiny chill to the evening air, and the leaves are starting to turn and fall a little. As in Argentina, there is a lot of what I call Hippy jewelry, and enough mate gourds to supply the world. Mate drinking is even more serious business in Uruguay than it is in Argentina. Makes me want to dig out my mate gourd and bombilla when I get home and slurp some down.
Mar. 24: Buenos Aires, Argentina
When I said that Semana Santa was a bad time to do business here, I had no idea the extent of it. It´s like the neutron bomb went off, and the buildings and all are still intact, but there are no people. Just by luck when I called the Patagonian sheepskin people, I actually got a guy in the bodega to answer, but he said that he didn´t know anything about the business part, and to call back on Tuesday. It´s going to be a busy Tuesday, what with the Paraguayan visa, sheepskin, and maybe talking to shippers.
If sheepskin is too expensive, or shipping is too expensive, then I´m just going to scrap the whole idea and go over to Uruguay for a few days, its just a 2 hour boat ride away. I´ve actually had a really good time here, inspite of enforced inactivity. I´ve been to every street fair there is (by far my favorite was in Palermo Soho), although the San Telmo one yesterday was a not terribly distant second. They had the coolest, I guess you call them mimes? They did tableaus, or vignettes, and when you threw in a few coins, they briefly came to life.
The best one was a statue of Carlos Gardel . When I first saw him., I thought it was a bust on a pedestal, but there were a big crowd around it, and I just thought, wow, they must be really tango fantatics. Then when I was leaving, I looked at the bust again, and it MOVED!!! It was a mime standing inside of a box that looked like a pedestal, and when he wasn´t getting any coins, he tapped his elbow on the pedestal - that´s the Argentinian sign for tacaño, or cheap. He was really, really good.
There was also a huge vampire with wings, and a couble who had put wires in their clothes, so it looked like they were walking into a 60 mile an hour gale, with their clothes blowing behind them. San Telmo is also the epicenter of the B.A. antique shops, it gives you a window of what Argentina must have been at one time, I didn´t think that there were that many crystal chandeleers in the whole world. I also went to the Recoleta cemetery. Eva Duerte Peron´s sarcaphagi was actually pretty modest, but it had the most visitors, and red roses.
I think I´ve finally gotten rid of the creatures in my stomach, and have been eating well. Normally I don´t like ice cream, its too sweet, but the gelatto isn´t overly so, and there is an artisanal, or home made, gelateria, on it seems just about every street corner around my hotel. I think I´ve tried them all.
Mar. 20: Buenos Aires, Argentina
Being in B. A. now feels like being in Paris during August- the city is deserted except for the tourists, and a lot of stuff is closed. Well, maybe a slight exageration, but that´s what it feels like. I made the mistake, although there really would have been no other way to do it, of arriving to Argentina during Easter week. This is like the final fling for summer, the last hurrah, and everyone takes to the road, and gets out of town, or if you´re an out- of- towner, you come to the Capital. It´s a 5 day holiday, and hotels all over the country raise the prices by at least 50%, and they are still booked solid, and busses are totally booked, one kid at the hotel was trying to get to Chile by bus, finally he had to buy a first class air ticket . Plus I´ve arrived about 6 years too late.
Argentina had a big peso devaluation about 7 years ago, and inflation has since crept prices up to about where they were before. I´m still going through the motions, checking out the flea markets, and I´ll go to the big antique market in San Telmo this Sunday, but it´s highly unlikely that I will send a container out. Even DHL is about 50% more here than in Turkey, so parcel shipping is out, unless I use the post office, or send an LCL cargo shipment, which only makes sense if I find alot of things. About the only thing that I´m still holding out for are sheepskin rugs and bedcovers from Patagonia, but as it´s a five 5 holiday, I still haven´t gotten a reply from my Patagonian connection, and sort of doubt that I will. It´s ok, I said that I´d take the time to chill out in the mountains after I´ve done enough leg work, futile or otherwise, but even that looks doubtful - hotels are booked up all over. In the meantime, I am enjoying my searches, the weather is beautiful, B.A. is a most excellent city for walking in, and their Subte, or metro, is cheap and easy to navigate.
My hotel room is in the heart of San Telmo, which is sort of the bohemian, artsy Tango enclave. Actually, it feels more like a B and B then hotel , with shared baths and communal kitchen, plus we get to use the owner´s computer, and pet his cranky Siamese cat. I´ve got the garet loft room, it´s pretty small and pokey and undecorated, the whole building is ancient, fading grandeur, but it´s still comfortable, though at $28 a night it costs more than it should, the shared bathroom isn´t even on the same floor as my room.
I´m off to the flea market in El Dorrego now. It´s also really close to La Recoleta cementerio, home of Evita Perron´s grave, and many other notables, but I will probably save that for another day. I am stuck in B.A. at least until the 25th, as the Paraguayan Consulate is closed until then, and Paraguay won´t let me into their country without a visa.
Mar. 17: Istanbul, Turkey
This has been a whirlwind last four days, I can't believe that I'm leaving Istanbul already, early tomorrow morning. The ground-glass feeling in my stomach also really wore me out, but today I stopped taking medicine, and the pain stopped as well, so here's hoping.
Istanbul never fails to impress me as an incredibly beautiful city, especially in the spring. I took a walk out to the Bosporous late afternoon, after doing as much work as I could on a Sunday, and walked through the big park along side the Agia Sophia. The paths were compeletly lined with blooming primrose, hiyacinth, daffodils, pansies, and the tulips looked like they'd be open in 2 weeks or less. Also flanking the path was an allee of huge trees, I don't know what they were, but one area as filled with parakeets, or parrots, and another area was filled with nesting cranes. This is truly where East meets West, seen in the culture and the faces of the people. On any given street corner, you will find blonds with light blue eyes, and pink skin, and exotically high cheek bones, almond eyes and jet black hair on the next person, and they are both Turkish.
Buying was much better than I thought, I had originally just planned on getting Turkoman and afghani jewelry, and the beautiful old velvet Uzbeki chapans, but I did end up buying maybe 10 or so carpets from Aykut. They're the Kurdish soumak..Soumak is sort of like a reverse constructed knotted carpet, so it is thick, but smooth on top, not piled. The colors were very muted and dark for Kurdish pieces, but they will be much more easy to work into a U.S.interior.
I've known Aykut for over 18 years, so he's always been sort of my window into Kurdish/Turkish culture. Business, at least tourist business, has not been good for him since 2001, but his wholesale keeps him going. He says that he can't go back to his village to tend his family's apricot orchard, if business becomes worse, because his wife would leave him, rather than return to village life. There are 30 families still in the village, and the average age is about 60 years old, the younger generations have all moved to the cities. This is why I predict that the Turkish carpet industry will be more or less extinct in the next 50 years. I could take back some of my old Turkish kilims and sell them back to Turkey, and still make a profit, all of the old stuff has been sold out of the country as well. But they are all looking forward, not backward, and it amazes me the amount of modern creature comforts that you find in Istanbul. I took a fast light rail train from the airport, clean, quiet, and to within a 3 minute walk of my hotel door, and there are ATM machines on every corner, no litter, no dirt, its almost culture shock to be here.
I also saw something nice yesterday, the street sweeper had a cat that kept following him, and he was trying to keep the kitty out of the street with little sweeps of his broom. When he got to the cemetary, he was surrounded by cats, he had brought them a big bag of food scraps to eat, and they all knew it was him by the squeek of his trash can on wheels. I'll save my India cat story for another time, I need to go eat. The Call to Prayer has just started as well, and its started all of the dogs in the neighborhood to sing along with it. My next notes will be from Madrid or Buenos Aires, this is going to a long trip, crossing hemispheres as well as continents, going from early spring to early fall.
Mar. 15: Istanbul, Turkey
This will be short, this keyboard at least has english letters on it, but the keys are so sticky tht everything has to be hit twice, and I want to see the Twirling Dervishes tonight, yes, it is touristy, but I've never seen them live before. I just came out of a nargol or water pipe cafe, mostly I went in to get warm, it was packed, and each pipe has it's own little bed of coals, so there was a lot of heat. They also had special carpets put out for the cats to sleep on and enjoy the warmth - that made me happy - will write my own India cat story when I get to a better computer.
Mar. 9: Udaipur, India
If we define ourselves by our possessions, then I am definitely getting a make-over. I'm going to be on my 4th pair of sunglasses so far this trip. Two pair broke (I don't understand, one pair was even Prada, albeit the $5 Pradas) and I've lost the latest pair. I might squint it out until I get to Istanbul Duty Free and spring for something that actually screens out UV and doesn't distort everything.
I'm also on my 3rd umbrella. The first one was left behind somewhere, second one broke, and the third is logo'd with Manchester United. Glasgow hooligans will no doubt beat me up over it. My one nice T-sirt has been left behind in Bali, it mysteriously got a 6' spot on the front that didn't wash out. Whatever make-up I had has been left here and there, I'm down to Chapstick and mascara. Original tooth brush was jettisoned, I mistakenly put Indian anti- mosquito cream on it. Shampoo, toothpaste, soap from home, all used up and replaced with local brands. My luggage lock also mysteriously disappeared today. Non-attachment - its a Good Thing.
I just spent the last three hours sifting through thousands of used silk saris. I didn't think that I'd find them at the price that I paid 4 years ago, but miracles do happen. After the noon thali break (think Blue Plate Special) it's down the hill again to look at the overdyed patchwork and decide what to do. I've got another 3 hours of sari sorting tomorrow, but it's a pleasure for me to see all of the variety. I hope to end up with about 200 of them.
Tonight I also need to start sending out emails for the hotel rooms in Peru and Paraguay It's just weird for me to move through time and space (re: thinking about South America) when the here and now is so engrossing.
Mar. 8: Udaipur, India
Last night's hotel accomodations were an experience. I stayed in an old haveli which more or less had never been fully remodeled. It was at the north end of the lake, next to the last washing ghat. My room hung out over the lake, with a lakeview sleeping alcove, miniscule private balcony, tall ceilings, and lots of room.
The room had natural air conditioning, as the breeze came through huge windows on two sides, at four stories up. It is also situated between a Hindu temple and a mosque. Some kind of warbler lived in the trees outside my windows, and I had bird serenade until dusk. Sometime in the pre-dawn hours I heard the wailing of a Sadhu from the temple. Early morning brought the Call to Prayer sung from the mosque. Dawn was the rythmic spap slap slap of the dhobi wallahs (clothes washers) pounding the clothes clean on the stone steps of the ghat.
Following that were 2 girls singing while they performed their morning abolutions in the lake. And I have since changed hotels. I loved the sounds and atmosphere of the old haveli, but to gloss over details, it had serious hygiene issues. I've stayed in worse, indeed, if that's all that's available you just turn a blind eye to unsavory aspects, walk on tip toe, light incense, and put Singh's Oil on to ward off creepy crawlies. At $30 a night, however, one shouldn't have to take such measures, so I've moved south to the Mewar Haveli, with air con, TV, spotlessly clean everything, and half the character. It does have a great lakeview, though.
I love Udaipur. It's a microcosm of Rajastan - bustling markets, big and little palaces, gardens, forts, desert, lakes, cows, camels, monkeys, elephants, hills, shops, tuk tuks, turbans, it's all here and all within easy walking distance. Ah - this is also where Elizabeth Hurley had her wedding, and it's home of the Udaivillas Hotel, named World's Best Luxury Hotel in 2005. Not that riff raff like me will see the inside of it.
Gandhi ji said that you could tell the culture of a nation by the treatment of it's animals. What a culture in Rajastan, then. Every single horse that I've seen has been in beautiful condition, be it a wedding horse or a lowly cart horse. The horses are very carefully brushed and groomed, sleek and well fed. A cart horse by the hotel was carefully tied to be in the shade, freshly brushed and trimmed, with a full feed bag and a home-stitched feed sack blanket to keep the flies off of him. An old woman was shooing her herd of about 10 donkeys through the street, they were so fat that they looked like shaggy hay bales with legs. It's weird, even the birds don't seem to be afraid of humans.
I used an outdoor toilet today, and when I was washing my hands, I had 2 birds flying around my head. I thought maybe they had a nest nearby, so I moved away to sit and watch them. The male bird thought that his reflexion in the mirror was a rival and his wife kept trying to get him to leave it alone. But they had absolutely no fear of me. Just before I wrote this, a pigeon flew in through the window and was preening himself on the pillows. At yesterday's haveli the warblers were within a foot of me, just non-chalantly doing their thing. It's way cool.
There's a lot of little ground squirrels/chipmonks, they're all over. One was up on the breakfast table, stuffing himself silly from the sugar bowl. With that diet, he'll have a short but sweet life.
I found the patchworks that I was looking for, the quality is there, but not the colors, so I sent several out to be overdyed. I'll see how the samples come out tomorrow afternoon and then decide if I get more dyed or not. Also found jackets, about 35 of them, made of antique tribal textiles. I haven't seen these before. Some are from old Gujarati torans, so they've got baby Ganeshes crawling around on them, in case you need a dose of good luck.
Mar. 7: Udaipur, India
My waiter just told me that it would be about 5 more minutes until the paneer tikka was ready. I told him, don't worry, I've already waited a year for this - he got the joke, he remembered me from last year. I'm at my favorite lake view roof top restaurant in my favorite Indian city, about to have my favorite Indian meal - paneer tikka- at the best place for paneer tikka in town. Throw in a drop dead sunset view, and it more than compensates for any inconvenience, annoyance, or physical discomfort that India might dish out. I've also got a chatty Tokyo shutter bug as a dining companion, does it get any better than this?
The two days in Jaipur were a marathon of activity, with the sanctum of the Madhuban Heritage Hotel to go home to. It's Dickey's (ex-Majaraja) family digs, opened up to the public, complete with mahogony Ray style furnishing, ancestral portraits, and Dicky himself as a gracious host. Most of my time was spent with Kishor and his dad, what a team they are. No matter what you wanted, their reply was always, Yes, we can do.
They are making these real cool coats. First they'd take the merino wool jacquard weave shawls, boil them, then quilt them into long coats. I've been trying to find wool vests, so far without success, so I drew a picture, chose the shawls, and asked Kishor, Can you do? Yes we can do. They should be awesome, I hope.
I also bought a bunch of white embroidered Kurtas and blouses from Lucknow, done on white organza. The embroidery is called chikken work (nothing to do with poultry) and they look so sheer, cool, and summery. Also bought some light coats that I'm not sure if it looks like high fashion India or Madame Butterfly. Again, from Kishor and his dad.
I've got the next 4 days in Udaipur without a heavy schedule, the only frustration is that there's no electricity anywhere for 6 hours a day during peak working hours. That's why I'm plugging away so late - I'm having trouble finding a room in Buenos Aires for next leg of trip. Oops, food's here, and its too dark for Shutter Bug to take more pictures.
Mar. 4: Jaipur, India
Last night while lying in bed, ruminating over the day, I came to the conclusion that the clothes order should have been a no-brainer, if we can work out the logistics. In Nepal, the neo-hippy clothes are all pretty much baggy, shapeless, sad looking tie-dye. But what I saw yesterday in Delhi, it's the 1960's paisley meets Pucci, Gucci, Peter Max, and then throw in Lily Pulitzer On Acid. Paisley is the quintessential sub-continent fabric, and I think it became the quintessential 60's fabric because of it's roots, as some of the 60's ideological roots came from India as well. Think of the Beatles' White Album, much of which was written in Rishikesh. Another advantage is sizing, in Bali where I saw all of the cute clothes, their size medium is a US size 2. I can have the Delhi clothes made to a JJill sizes, and they will work well on US sized people. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed for our Delhi meeting that shipping , delivery and payment will not be insurmountable obstacles.
One of the aspects most conspicously not addressed yet, while writing on India and other travels, is the subject of poverty and human suffering. Please don't think for a minute that I'm blind or indifferent on it. Why the huge differences in our physical condition or comfort? Is it karma, fate, destiny, or simply blind luck on our place of birth? I had pages of thoughts on this, and I don't think that I'm going to write them, it either sounds preachy or pompous or pathetic - Best I can say is that for every situation I encounter, it's taken on a case by case basis - I have no easy answers, the best I can do is at least give thought to it, so I my response (or non-response) will be thought-through, rather than thought-less. There are a lot of bright spots that I run across, such as Oaxaca Street Children, where they might still be on the streets, but at least they are going to school, or there's a program in Calcutta that is a walking tour, run by a former street kid, of what street kid life is like.
Mar. 3: Delhi, India
Today was a pretty productive day, in that I got out of bed by 8 a.m., and stayed out of bed. I am so glad that I started taking the meds early on (I'm no Jane, all I could think about was the image of the little Ghiardia protazoa inside of me, and I'm gleefuly saying "Die, Die!") so I'm almost on the mend from this.
One of the biggest health hazards in Delhi is the dreaded Blue Line, a local bus service. The drivers get paid by number of people that get on the bus, so there is all kinds of jockeying around to pick up people first, and doing the route in record time - safety is a non-issue, and the statistics are dreadful. I thought that Sheila, Sherry and I were going to be statistics this morning, we were sharing a tuk-tuk to go to the Carpet Fair, and one of the dreaded Blue Line busses came over, and almost swiped the tuk-tuk. The other night I was crossing the street with Almost Famous British Author, and we both had to run for it to not get taken out by the Blue Line. He's been coming to India for 20 years, and he thinks the Blue Line is totally out of control.
Carpet Fair was pretty good, but I'd already seen almost everybody while in Badohi, I just was making a wish list of whom to see when in Jaipur. After looking at rugs, I took a walk down to Sundar Nagar, they've got one of the best tea shops in the city there, I almost wish that I was going home after India so that I could take a half-kilo of Darjeeling's Finest First Bloom with me. They have a tasting room there as well, the tea is sold by the gram, some of it is totally amazing, you are content to just smell it. I did buy 2 dragon balls, just for the novelty, and already had one, think I'll give the other to Sheila. It's un-cut tea tips wrapped together in a ball, with various flowers, like jasmine, all dried, and then when you steep it in a tall, hot glass of water, the "flower " opens up. Nice tea, but it is more for the novelty than anything else. Also got Vini and the Boys a box of sweets, Sundar Nagar has one of my favorite sweet shops, all Indian sweets, made with ghee, milk, I really don't know what else, sometimes cooked down carrots and raisins, and some are covered with silver foil, which you eat.
I also looked at clothes buying today, I really like the stuff, it is so The Summer of Love, totally psychedelic prints, but they want me to do a pretty big order, and I don't know if anyone else will think that they are as groovy as I do. The cuts are cute, they will make them to U.S. sizes, nice cotton, but definitely shagadelic, baby.
The YWCA where I'm staying is undergoing extensive outside renovations, so the whole face of the building is covered with tarps and bamboo scafolding, perfect monkey habitat, and they've given up on monkey control, so now in addition to the nightly dog serenade, I get the occasional Who's Alpha Monkey? shreiks and howls - not complaining, it makes me smile. I'm off to Jaipur tomorrow, best go see if I take the bus or train to get there.
Mar. 2: Delhi India
A trip to Nepal wouldn't be complete if I didn't get a case of ghiardia, so I've made it complete. Lost the whole of yesterday, sleeping in bed, but at least I got medicine right away, so am starting to bounce back pretty quickly, and should be out and about, more or less, tomorrow.
I did rally enough to crawl out of bed by 3 p.m. today, and went down to Cottage Emporium on Janpath. They are one of the few stores that are open in central Delhi on Sundays, and they also have a decent restaurant. As I'm traveling very light, I didn't take any Salwar Kameez to wear, planning on picking up something in India, and then leaving it for the hotel maids when I left, as Salwar Kamez would not be appropriate for the rest of the trip. However, I found a beautiful black embroidered silk kurta, which will take up no luggage room, and can be worn amywhere in the world, and a pink chiffon dupatti, or scarve, which may or may not make the cut. It really cuts down on a lot of hassles if I wear a kurta or salwar kameez, street touts know that you've been in India long enough to at least buy some clothes, and the hassle factor goes down about 80%. Plus they're comfortable and pretty. Cottage Emporium also had the wool Kashmiri jackets like I sell, at exactly twice the price as what I sell them at. |
