Friends of a Long Year is a weekly, private mailing list bringing stories to your inbox like the olden days. It's written in the spirit of Mary Austin. It was once called Place Without a Postcard, which neatly summarizes what I like to write about.
Attapeu, Lao (PDR) – You would think, if you were the United States and you were illegally and unofficially bombing a foreign country you might not want to stamp "US Bomb" on the side of your bombs, and yet there it was all over Laos: "US Bomb." Clearly somebody didn't think things all the way through, especially given that roughly one third of said bombs failed to explode.
Savannakhet, Lao (PDR) – We piled four large bags, four daypacks and five people in a six meter dugout canoe. The boat was powered by the ever-present-in-southeast-Asia long tail motor which is essential a lawnmower engine with a three meter pole extending out of it to which a small propeller is attached — perfect for navigating shallow water. And by shallow I mean sometimes a mere inch between the hull and the riverbed.
Konglor Cave, Lao (PDR) – The dramatic black karst limestone mountains ringing Ban Na Hin grew darker as the light faded. I was sitting alone on the back porch of our guesthouse watching the light slowly disappear from the bottoms of the clouds and wondering absently how many pages it would take to explain how I came to be in the tiny town of Ban Na Hin, or if such an explanation even really existed.
Vang Vieng, Lao (PDR) – I would like to say that I have something memorable to write about Vang Vieng, but the truth is we mostly sat around doing very little, making new friends, drinking a beer around the fire and waiting out the Chinese new year celebrations, which meant none of us could get Cambodian visas until the following Monday. We were forced to relax beside the river for several more days than we intended. Yes friends, traveling is hard, but I do it for you.
Luang Nam Tha, Lao (PDR) – The next time someone asks you, “would you like to live in a tree house and travel five hundred feet above the ground attached to a zip wire?” I highly suggest you say, “yes, where do a I sign up?” If you happen to be in Laos, try the Gibbon Experience.
Luang Prabang, Lao (PDR) – Jose Saramago writes in The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis that the gods "journey like us in the river of things, differing from us only because we call them gods and sometimes believe in them."
Luang Prabang, Lao (PDR) – Morning in Chiang Khong Thailand revealed itself as a foggy, and not a little mysterious, affair with the far shore of the Mekong, the Laos shore, almost completely hidden in a veil of mist. The first ferry crossed at eight and I was on it, looking to meet up with the slow boat to Luang Prabang.
Doi Inthanan National Park, Thailand – The light outside the windows was still a pre-dawn inky blue when the freezing cold water hit my back. A cold shower at six thirty in the morning is infinitely more powerful, albeit not at long lasting, as a cup of coffee. After dropping my body temperature a few degrees and having no towel to dry off with, just a dirty shirt and ceaseless ceiling fan, a cup of tea seemed like a good idea so I stopped in at the restaurant downstairs and, after a cup of hot water with some Jasmine leaves swirling at the bottom of it, I climbed on my rental motorbike and set out for Doi Inthanan National Park.
Chang Mai, Thailand – The all night bus reached Chiang Mai well past dawn, the city already beginning to stir. I considered trying to nap, but in the end decided to explore the town. What better way to see Buddhist temples than in the dreamy fog of sleeplessness? Chiang Mai has over three hundred wats within the somewhat sprawling city limits, most of them reasonably modern and, in my opinion, not worth visiting. I narrowed the field to three, which I figured was a nice round one percent.
Bangkok, Thailand – The house Jim Thompson left behind in Bangkok is gorgeous, but the real charm is the garden and its orchids. I wandered around the gardens which really aren't that large for some time and then found a bench near a collection of orchids, where I sat for the better part of an hour, occasionally taking a photograph or two, but mostly thinking about how human orchids are.
Bangkok, Thailand – "The city is a cathedral" writes James Salter, "its scent is dreams." Nowhere in Bangkok is it more so than in the view from the top of the Baiyoke Sky Hotel.
Bangkok, Thailand – It's a new year, are you amplified to rock? Ready, set, go.
Bangkok, Thailand – Seasons Greeting from luxagraf. I'm in Bangkok, Thailand at the moment. I am taking a short break from traveling to do a little working so I don't have much to report. I've seen the two big temples down in the Khaosan Rd area, but otherwise I've been trying to live an ordinary life in Bangkok, if such a thing is possible.
Pokhara, Nepal – After about forty-five minutes of paddling I reached a point where the views of the Annapurna range were, in the words of an Englishman I met in Katmandu, "gob smacking gorgeous." I put down the paddle and moved to the center of the boat where the benches were wider and, using my bag a cushion, lay back against the gunwale and hung my feet over the opposite side so that they just skimmed the surface of the chilly water.
Pashupatinath, Nepal – On a hillside beside the Bagmati River, Pashupatinath is one of the holiest sites in the world for Hindus, second only to Varanasi in India. Pashupatinath consists of a large temple which is open only to Hindus, surrounded by a number of smaller shrines and then down on the banks of the Bagmati are the burning ghats where bodies are cremated.
Kathmandu, Nepal – After saturating myself with the streets of Thamel I went on a longer excursion down to Durbar Square to see the various pagodas, temples and the old palace. The palace itself no longer houses the King, but is still used for coronations and ceremonies and Durbar Square is still very much the hub of Katmandu.
Delhi, India – I have taken almost 750 photos and traveled nearly 4000 km (2500 miles) in India, the vast majority of it by train. I have seen everything from depressing squalor to majestic palaces and yet I still feel as if I have hardly scratched the surface. I can't think of another and certainly have never been to a country with the kind of geographic and ethnic diversity of India.
Agra, India – The Taj Mahal is one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and, given the level of hype I was fully prepared to be underwhelmed, but I was wrong. I have never in my life seen anything so extravagant, elegant and colossal. The Taj Mahal seems mythically, spiritually, as well as architecturally, to have risen from nowhere, without equal or context.
Thar Desert, India – The Thar Desert is a bewitching if stark place. It reminded me of areas of the Great Basin between Las Vegas and St. George, Utah. Twigging mesquite-like trees, bluish gray bushes resembling creosote, a very large bush that resembled a Palo Verde tree and grew in impenetrable clumps, and, strangely, only one species of cactus and not a whole lot of them.
Jodhpur, India – The next day I hopped in a rickshaw and headed up to tour Meherangarh, or the Majestic Fort as it's known in English. As its English name indicates, it is indeed perched majestically atop the only hill around, and seems not so much built on a hill as to have naturally risen out the very rocks that form the mesa on which it rests. The outer wall encloses some of the sturdiest and most impressive ramparts I've seen in India or anywhere else.
Udiapur, India – Just out of Udaipur is a government sponsored "artist colony" for various cultures from the five nearby states, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Karnataka, Goa and Madhya Pradesh. On one hand Shilpogram is a wonderful idea on the part of the government, but on the other hand the "artists colony" is slightly creepy. Amidst displays of typical tribal life there were artists and craftsmen and women hawking their wares along with dancers and musicians performing traditional songs. The whole thing had the feel of a living museum, or, for the creepy angle — human zoo.
Udiapur, India – We started out in the early evening quickly leaving behind Udaipur and its increasing urban sprawl. The road to the Monsoon Palace passes through the Sajjan Garh Nature Preserve and there was a sudden and dramatic drop in temperature, but then the road climbed out of the hollow and the temperature jumped back up to comfortable as we began to climb the mountain in a series of hairpin switchbacks. As the sun slowly slunk behind the mountain range to the west the balconies and balustrades of the Monsoon Palace took on an increasingly orange hue.
Udiapur, India – I spent some time sitting in the inner gardens of the City Place, listening to rustling trees and the various guides bringing small groups of western and Indian tourists through the garden. In the center of the hanging gardens was the kings, extremely oversized bath, which reminded me of children's book that I once gave to a friend's daughter; it was a massively oversized and lavishly illustrated book that told the story of a king who refused to get out of the bath and instead made his ministers, advisors, cooks and even his wife conduct business by getting in the bath with him.
Ahmedabad, India – Airport terminals are fast becoming my favorite part of traveling. When you stop and observe them closely as I have been forced to do on this trip, terminals are actually quite beautiful, weird places. Terminals inhabit a unique space in the architecture of humanity, perhaps the strangest of all spaces we have created; a space that is itself only a boundary that delineates the border between what was and what will be without leaving any space at all for what is.