Q: If a hipster dies in the Tour, does anyone care?

Thought of the day: do hipsters follow the Tour de France?

Although i'm definitely not what you would call an avid cyclist, i've been following the Tour somewhat obsessively in India. I blame my father, who is definitely an avid cyclist. Come the latter parts of July he could reliably found watching the Tour far past his bedtime, and i have fond memories of coming home to work to a darkened family room illuminated only by sprinters and the Peloton.

And i was thinking: it would be so very, very hipster to follow the Tour. Cycling, obscure sports, foreign things: it all clicks! And that's not necessarily something i want to be a part of. All my life i grew up around cycling and the Tour and now those damn hipsters are invading.

So let me know--there are no hipsters in India. So far.

Something should now be said about the stupefyingly alienating experience of being an American minority abroad. I'm speaking generally but i would like to focus on Korean adoptees, because it seems we have a penchant for going abroad. You have Christina in Uganda, Martin in China, Ashley in Ireland, and yours truly in India.

Your average Indian or Ladakhi in Ladakh doesn't really grasp the concept that one third of the population of the United States are not white, in the classic sense. This says a little about Indian education and a lot about the type of Americans that travel to India (read: Lily-white). And aside from said Lily-white Americans, absolutely no one correctly guesses my country of origin. Instead, what i get are Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and once (inexplicably) Thailand. Your stereotypical Asian tourists--herds, cameras, broken English--are here in force. Despite the fact that i'm travelling alone and speak pretty damn good English, i'm inevitably lumped in with the real Asians.

In some ways i feel as though this works to my advantage. The behavior of Asian tourists abroad often defies reason to the outside observer, so i feel as though i can get away with a lot of things--breaking rocks and collecting dirt--that might otherwise induce undue scrutiny from the locals and the law. I also feel relatively free of the Sahib mentality and Raj-era white man's guilt, but more on that in another post. On the other hand, it definitely means you have to make much more of an effort to engage people in conversation, since they tend to assume your grasp of English is pretty tenuous. You also get the novel experience of people approaching you and spitting out a mass of Korean.

It's certainly not as bad as Martin "Wo shi hanbuguo" Fisher's experience in China. He was taught how to say "I am a hamburger" in Mandarin to dissuade native Chinese from assuming he was the white folks' translator. Chronic misunderstanding is something you ultimately get the best of before it gets the best of you. On the other hand, briefly explaining exactly what you are, as a Korean-American adoptee, is a task that i might never resolve to my satisfaction.

Scenes from a Recession?

A typical Old Manali scene. In the foreground are cables with harnesses strung across the river. When a tourist was halfway across the operators would start jiggling the cables to dip their feet and sometimes more, usually over vocal protests from the person stranded on the wire.

Yesterday i mentioned that the tourist season in the hills is better than ever, due in no small part to the unseasonably hot weather in the Punjab and Gangetic plain. Although i take it for granted now, when i arrived in country i was intensely interested in the effect of the "global" recession on the Indian economy. Focusing, obviously, on the tourist sector.

In brief: It's not here.

Talking to Naveen in Delhi, he emphasized the "internal" nature of India's economy. Despite massive overhauls to India's economy since the decades of state planning (see Hindu rate of growth), much of India's economy remains domestic. This makes good sense, given a market of 1.1 billion people not going anywhere fast. At a very basic level, it's this lack of intimate international connections that spared India from feeling our own financial disaster.

India's insulation from severe recession was reflected in the throngs of domestic tourists in Manali. "Obviously," Vijay said, "business is booming." I was curious to hear Dorje's side of the story in Leh, where a much larger proportion of tourists typically come from Western nations. But if Dorje was suffering businesswise (unlikely, judging by the hours he keeps), he didn't make it known to me. Like always, he said, he experienced a little bit more growth this year, and rattled off a list of groups he was organizing--most Indian.

See, there are fewer Western tourists in Leh this summer. Talking with some of the guides confirmed this--they're really hurting, as only Westerners find recreational appeal in walking around with 40 lb loads three miles above sea level. The "middle men," though, are doing a brisk business, as the tardy monsoon drives more and more domestic tourists even further north, to Ladakh. They're easy to spot--pressed pants, collared shirts, sunscreen, rockin' the fanny pack. The quintessential middle class tourist changes very little with longitude.

High and much drier

Sorry for the lack of updates; this just means i've been doing a lot of working and sleeping. There's a lot to talk about, but let's start with the weather.

This year has been unseasonably dry in all of Ladakh; indeed, most of India has been "suffering." More on the suffering later. The primary cause of the drought in Ladakh is the weak and late winter. The Indus Valley proper receives almost no rainfall year round. Instead, most of the water in the entire region comes ultimately from snow and glacier melt. This year snowfall was unusually light, what snow did fall came very late, and Dorje adds that there is a "problem" at altitude, where snow is not melting properly. Irrigation ditches that usually run daily are dry for weeks here. Entire crops are seriously behind schedule, if not abandoned outright.

The second cause of the drought is the late monsoon. This is primarily an affliction of the rest of India, where the monsoon not only brings water but also a relief from +100°F heat. Many districts in the north delayed the beginning of the summer school year, Uttar Pradesh is/was in the midst of a power crisis from so much AC, Mumbai was contemplating water rationing, you get the idea.

This has been a major problem for all of northern India with the exception of the hill states. There has been a "mad rush" of domestic tourists flocking to the cooler higher-altitude regions, which is nothing if not great for business. Surely the delayed monsoon also has something to do with the influx of domestic tourists in Leh, which has somewhat helped the region buck the global recession. More on that next time.

Happy Fourth.

Infidelity

Dorje’s preferred bike mechanic is Mohan Sharma on the main highway, and for reasons that are not clear to me he's always referred to as "the Mohan." The Mohan would later tell Dorje that i shift very badly and that was the cause of Penelope’s mechanical problems, but a few days ago all i knew was that getting from first to second was exceedingly difficult and Penny needed repair.

So while the Mohan tinkered with Penelope, i pulled a John Edwards and took Dorje’s Bullet 500 for a spin. Technically speaking it's not Dorje's. A client of his rented the bike from a mechanic in Manali and had major altitude trouble in Leh, meaning he had to fly out the day he arrived. Hence the bike is here without an owner. Dorje asked me to drive the bike back from the Mohan, and stated that i could "take a little drive." Which i did.

The Bullet 500 is essentially similar to the Bullet 350, except with a larger engine. It's still 1 cylinder, so when you get it up to speed the thing rattles like an airplane coming apart. Being the largest bike on Indian roads, it is also the one with the worst mileage, so coming back from Basgo i actually ran the tank dry near the Ladakh Scouts base. Fortunately this one had a reserve tank (Penny lacks this), so i was able to switch and get to a gas station before major misfortune set in.

Travels with Penelope

"Actually a root word of technology, techne, originally meant 'art.' The Ancient Greeks never separated art from manufacture in their minds, and so never developed separate words for them."
-Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

So recall that i bought a Royal Enfield Bullet Classic 350 last summer from Santa, christened her Penelope, and promptly left her to fulfill nine months of academic duties. I returned to find her in Manali under a tent. After a few swift kicks she started just fine. Here, between Keylong and Jispa, parts of the road—the only major highway between Himachal Pradesh and Ladakh—could resemble an intermittently-maintained county road somewhere in Colorado, or the Cascades.

Other things are utterly unlike anything i’ve ever seen before in my life. The road at Baralacha La, although dry, was quite literally carved into a mountain of snow.

Once things smoothed out a bit after Pang, into the Morey Plains, i could finally get into fourth and Penny was in her element.

Four passes

What i did not tell mom, for fear she’d have a stroke, is that i was making the trip from Manali to Leh by motorcycle. I felt as thought it was preferable to say that i made the trip from Manali to Leh by motorcycle. So there it is. I made the trip from Manali to Leh by motorcycle, and both Penelope and i are mostly in one piece. More on the “mostly” later. But i’m here, i’m safe, and i hope i never have to drive that road again.

The Manali-Leh Road crosses four major mountain passes (the “La”): Rohtang La (pictured), Baralacha La, Lachulung La, and Tanglang La. Each one is progressively higher than the next.

Baralacha La was snowed in. Winter came very late this year. The picture is off-center because my helmet is my tripod.

Lachulung La.

Tanglang La tops out the passes at about three miles high (17,350 feet). For comparison, Mount Whitney—the highest point in the lower 48—is about 14,300 feet. This photo was taken by an Australian, Yuen, who was also doing the road by motorcycle. We kept bumping into each other throughout the trip.

In India, No Clothes!

Am presently in Manali. I’ve had some problems. Lufthansa (probably United, actually) lost my bag, meaning i quite literally have only the clothes on my back, plus a backpack full of everything that was too valuable to risk keeping in my checked baggage. Good move. I still have the laptop, camera, and the absolutely essential field equipment, e.g. my field notebook and GPS. Nevertheless, that's still more than $1,000 worth of gear that's lost if the bag doesn't show up sometime. Furthermore, Indian law prohibits me from declaring more than Rs.8000 of lost items going into the country, which is about $160. That's my stove. Suck.

When i arrived in Manali yesterday morning, Dorje/Vijay/Naveen had conferenced and decided i needed a few days mandated rest before making the fairly unpleasant overland trip to Leh. I do not have any other clothes, aside from the heavy jacket i wore on the plane. Today i'm in Old Manali to buy some shirts, a sweater, and hopefully some long underwear.

Manali is presently in the middle of its summer tourist season, and it’s easy to see why. The temperature maxes out at about 75F and dry in the sun, which is abundant in the pre-monsoon months. The hills are cloaked in pines, the last i’ll see before Ladakh, and framed in the background are spectacular peaks still above snowline.

The downside to this is that Manali quickly becomes nothing short of chaos in the primary tourist areas (New Manali). The secret is to follow the hippies. I prefer Old Manali’s setting—entrenched on a wooded hill next to the Beas. Vashisht rhymes with Hashish, and that’s all you really need to know about Vashisht.

Oh, yeah.

I leave for India tomorrow morning. I'm currently two months behind on last year's India posts, which is ok because the only thing really of interest were the pictures.

In any case. I'll be stuck in Dulles for half of tomorrow so i may do some updating there, with Dorje's computer. Who knows.