What makes you happy?

Splendid road trip documentary, and not just for the ride and the stunning locales, but the amazing conversations with the funniest wisest people they meet on the way, in remote mountain towns and villages.  Interesting, how so many of them answered "Work" when asked what makes them the most happy.

Ashes Before Dust

http://vimeo.com/76342730

"This documentary tells the story of a 5,500 mile motorcycle adventure from Seattle to the Arctic Circle and back. While traveling the back roads through British Columbia, the Yukon Territory, and Alaska, we interviewed the unique and inspiring characters we randomly met along the way. The tale of our journey is flavored with these interviews, providing a glimpse of life in the North Country."

"I would rather be ashes than dust.
I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
The function of man is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time.”

Jack London

Helen Llyod Solo Cycling albums

Helen Lloyd is a British cyclist who cycles solo through remote parts of Russia, Ukraine, Central Asia. Watching these in slideshow full screen mode  - see box-like icon on the right-hand top - is like watching a peaceful quiet movie, travelling across stunning landscapes.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/helenlloyd/sets/

The Trail of Genghis Khan

The most beautiful and mind-blowing travelogue I've ever seen. Tim Cope's solo journey across the steppes from Mongolia to Hungary, recreating the journey of Genghis Khan and his soldiers, with 3 horses and a dog for company, a journey that lasted three and a half years. Stunning landscapes, and encounters with the most amazing people, making all the unimaginable hardships more than worthwhile. Above all, a great history lesson, and a lesson in being human.

6 stunning videos of 26 mins each. I couldn't stop.

"From the former Mongol capital Karakorum to the Danube, young Australian adventurer Tim Cope retraced the path of the first nomads and followed the route taken by legendary Genghis Khan as he forged his great empire. Over three and a half gruelling years, and guided by an old Kazakh wisdom - "to understand the wolf, you must put on the skin of a wolf and look through its eyes" - Tim lived just as the ancient nomads did.

Tim travelled 10,000kms alone on horseback across the Eurasian steppe through Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine and Hungary..."

The Trail of Genghis Khan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsirF1WeE54&feature=share

Girmit!

A friend loved this description in one of my mails, so storing it here.

Girmit - the North Karnataka version of the bhelpuri.

It tastes like it sounds (roll that sexy r!) - crunchy-soft, an unabashed flaunting of chilly and raw onion and lemon and still-crisp bhel, functional food served without any flourishes on a piece of torn newspaper on a rough wooden table. The food of real men (!), the weather-beaten men of the the land who have no time for frills and fancies, the men of the highway who can but stop briefly and eat light, in silence, still and contemplative, the sound of the engine still reverberating somewhere inside them, possessively holding them in its grasp.

Washing it down with a cup of strong over-boiled potent tea made in a dilapidated samovar, they are ready to stride out, back to their purpose, the journey. The girmit a mere pause, a tangy punctuation that briefly breaks the flow, the headiness of the road unfurling into the distance once again taking over all sensation, their eyes once again glazing over into the trance of moving ahead at great speed, with the wind for company...

Okay, this just means that I have cheap plebeian tastes, am just trying to pass off as an epicurean :) :)

Moments

"In 1953, twenty-four-year-old Nicolas Bouvier and his artist friend Thierry Vernet set out to make their way overland from their native Geneva to the Khyber Pass."....Bouvier so beautifully reiterates your belief that happiness is never a long stretch, but just a collection of brief extraordinary moments - moments that  you need to notice, underline, open up to and soak in with all your being, otherwise they fade away unnoticed.

The Road to Anatolia

....East of Erzurum the road is very lonely. Vast distances separate the villages. For one reason or another we occassionally stopped the car, and spent the rest of the night outdoors. Warm in big felt jackets and fur hats with ear-flaps, we listened to the water as it boiled on a primus in the lee of a wheel. Leaning against a mound, we gazed at the stars, the ground undulating towards the Caucasus, the phosphorescent eyes of foxes.

Time passed in brewing tea, the odd remark, cigarettes, then dawn came up. The widening light caught the plumage of quails and partridges...and quickly I dropped this wonderful moment to the bottom of my memory, like a sheet-anchor that one day I could draw up again. You stretch, pace to and fro feeling weightless, and the word 'happiness' seems too thin and limited to describe what has happened.

In the end, the bedrock of existence is not made up of family, or work, or what others or think of you, but of moments like this when you are exalted by a transcendent power that is more serene than love. Life dispenses them parsimoniously; our feeble hearts cannot stand more.

Page 94, 'The Way of the World' Nicolas Bouvier

Photo: Google Images

Foreignness

"Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are, or no longer possess, lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places."

From 'Invisible Cities' by Italo Calvino

Rediscovered this excerpt, here.

Photo: Luang Prabang, Laos

Patmos

"I decided that islands were natural monasteries. (After all, monasteries are often compared to islands, and are called islands of peace, or serenity, or civilization, so why should the reverse not be true?) This explained why Selkirk was " a better Christian in his solitude", why Marietta believed she could listen to herself on Isla Crusoe, and why Lax found he could write poetry on Patmos.

And, like monasteries, islands were refuges offering the community life, silence, and solitude that encouraged contemplation and creativity. This explained why when islanders went to mainlands they suffered the dislocation of monks outside the cloister. Patmos was a double monastery: a natural monastery whose landscape and life was dominated by an actual one, and thereby doubly hospitable to miracles and visions, and to listening to yourself, and hearing God."

Page 164. "Searching for Paradise (formerly titled Searching for Crusoe) - A  Journey among the Last Real Islands."
Thurston Clarke

Excerpts and Amazon link- http://www.thurstonclarke.com/id4.html

Breathing/Not Breathing in High Places

On the back-breaking, nerve-wracking 2 day journey in a mini-bus from Manali to Leh in Ladakh (in the Himalaya mountains, on the border with China)(July 2006), we Indians are a minority in a motley crowd of foreigners. After hours of steep climbing up to 14, 000 feet on the first day, you are rapidly succumbing to altitude sickness, but struggling against it, since everyone else seems to be all healthy and fit.

What the hell, how can they all be so happy and cheerful and talking and laughing? How come they all can breathe? Idiots. The heat is killing. Dry desert mountains all around. No human habitation anywhere. The chattering of the Korean girls ahead is driving you mad. You have just had some Maggi noodles and biscuits the whole day, that’s more or less what you get in the few tent stops along the way.

Just when you think you can’t take it anymore, you look at the Israeli woman sitting on your right. She is reading a book from back to front. Yes, from back to front. The back cover of the book is in the front, facing you, and the front page is at the back.

Oh God, you have started hallucinating. Oh God, this can’t be happening.

Island Taxi

Easter lunch at the the F… family reunion, on the beautiful island of Ile d’Orléans, Québec (April 2006). You are the only foreigner in this 40-strong crowd of French Canadians. M himself does not know most of the crowd as they meet very rarely, and this is his rich uncle’s house by the way. Many of them assume that you are M’s Indian girl friend because he’s “the mad guy who set up the music school in an Indian village.”

A doubt that has to be dispelled by introducing M’s very pregnant wife A to other people you have started conversations with. You are slowly getting used to the weirdness of it all. Especially enjoying the high regard people now seem to have for India. No more mention of elephants and kings, like during your visit to France 10years ago.

After lunch, served at a huge table with a vast variety of dishes, many of which you have to ask A to explain, you go Easter egg hunting with the kids in the huge beautiful garden outside.

Si, si, Indio!

On that hot summer day in Strasbourg (Aug 1997), you are unable to walk anymore with the group, your asthma is acting up. Pollution levels are high, the TV had warned the previous night. In front of the ancient Strasbourg cathedral, many things are happening to attract tourists.

Among them a small group of short South American native Indian men are dancing in a circle, in their colorful ponchos and long braided hair. One of them is playing a flute with many reeds. You are captivated by the music, there is something primordial and familiar about it apart from its haunting notes. You sit in the circle of people standing around them. You tell your friends to go ahead, you are staying here the rest of the afternoon.

So people come and go, but you are still sitting, watching the dance, entranced. The dancers have noticed you, and are now smiling at you as they pass you in the circle. Their faces are deep brown, their skin is polished and taut, their smiles are very warm.

Mongolia on my mind

The nine sets of nine days of the Mongolian winter: http://fellowsblog.kiva.org/2011/01/20/nine-sets-of-nine-days-of-mongolian-winter/ - it says the current temperatures are around minus 41 degree Fahrenheit, and they live in these round ger tents, with minimal heating. Don't forget to click on the ger link.

The First Nine: Milk vodka congeals and freezes
The Second Nine: Vodka congeals and freezes
The Third Nine: Tail of a three-year-old ox freezes
The Fourth Nine: Horns of a four-year-old ox freezes
The Fifth Nine: Boiled rice no longer congeals and freezes
The Sixth Nine: Roads become visible from under the snow and ice
The Seventh Nine: Hilltops appear
The Eighth Nine: Ground becomes damp
The Ninth Nine: Warmer days set in

The fourth one is the worst – and that’s where they are now.

Mongolia has been on my mind the last 2 years, ever since I saw the most beautiful film ever - Mongolian Ping Pong, each frame a painting by a master, a paean to innocence.

And since I read the biography of Genghis Khan by John Man,

And finally own a CD of beautiful Mongolian throat singing, Alash: http://www.alashensemble.com

L’Asie en notes et en motocyclette

http://voyages.liberation.fr/voir-et-lire/l-asie-en-notes-et-en-motocyclette

«Vingt-deux ans d’Asie, en chemin de fer, en chars à buffles, cahotant sur de grosses roues de bois peint, à motocyclette, à dos d’éléphant, en prahu, en catamaran, à cheval, en Rolls Royce - elle ne m’appartenait pas - ou en camion parmi les choux et les sacs d’oignons.» Gabrielle Wittkop n’a ménagé ni sa peine, ni ses différentes montures pour sillonner cette Asie qui exerce sur elle un pouvoir d’attraction irrésistible. Elle y est souvent allée pour des reportages parus dans le Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Les carnets que publie Verticales ne sont cependant pas une recension d’articles mais bien une sélection des notes qu’elle prenait au jour le jour, au gré de ses vagabondages tropicaux.

Née en France, Gabrielle Ménardeau, lesbienne, mariée à Justus Wittkop en 1946, écrivain déserteur antinazi et homosexuel, s’installe avec son mari à Bad Hombourg, près de Francfort. Elle écrit des romans vénéneux (le Nécrophile, Sérénissime Assassinat ou les Rajah blancs), qui ne seront remarqués qu’avec le travail des Editions Verticales. Elle ne goûte que brièvement le succès littéraire, se donnant la mort à 82 ans, en décembre 2002 après avoir appris qu’elle souffrait d’un cancer. Elle envoie un dernier message à son éditeur : «Je vais mourir comme j’ai vécu : en homme libre.» .......................

No feeling is final

From a Lonely Planet guide on Laos, left by some other backpacker, one rainy afternoon in Luang Prabang:

"...The Theravada doctrine (of Buddishm) stresses the three principle aspects of existence: dukha (suffering, unsatisfactoriness, disease) anicca (impermanence, transcience of all things) and anatta (non-substantiality or non-essentiality of reality - no permanent 'soul').

Comprehension of anicca reveals that no experience, no state of mind, no physical object lasts. Trying to hold onto experience, states of mind, and objects that are constantly changing, creates dukkha.

Anatta is the understanding that there is no part of the changing world we can point to and say "This is me" or "This is God" or "This is the soul".

(Photo by a friend)

A language only for Travellers

Shelta is a language spoken by Travellers, particularly in Ireland but also parts of Great Britain. It is widely known as the Cant, to its native speakers in Ireland as Gammon and to the linguistic community as Shelta. Although this aspect is frequently over-emphasized, it was often used as a cryptolect to exclude outsiders from comprehending conversations between travellers.The exact number of native speakers is hard to determine due to sociolinguistic issues but Ethnologue puts the number of speakers in Ireland at 6,000 and 86,000 worldwide.

Linguistically Shelta is today seen to be a creole language that stems from a community of travelling people in Ireland and Scotland that was originally predominantly Irish and Gaelic speaking which went through a period of widespread bilingualism that resulted in a language based heavily on Hiberno-English and/or Scots with heavy influences from Irish and Gaelic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelta

Sometimes

Sitting alone on a rocky coast one calm grey monsoon morning, watching poor fishermen cast their nets into the sea, wait patiently for hours, pull up an empty net, move to another place and try again, I re-learn the lesson: Sometimes there is fish, sometimes there is no fish.

Sometimes our hands seem too small to hold all that we have been given. At other times, all we can see is the gap between our fingers.

Landscapes, Mindscapes

Does the landscape we inhabit enter our characters, define the people we become? Do mountain people know patience, and the humbling truth that you cannot control everything? Do forest people know courage, that buds break forth from ravaged trees? Do farmers know waiting, that there are things that you cannot hurry? Do river people know change, that you "step and not step into the same river"?

And in what way does the city enter us? Would we have been different people if we lived by an ocean and knew the endless comings and goings of the tide, the quietness of moonlight on water?

Oct 13, 2003

Passing

Met C on the flight from Quebec City to Toronto 4 years ago. Lover of trees and books (like me), she teaches English to immigrant kids from lower income groups, and is more of a mentor and guide to them.

She has a lovely vegetable garden in the backyard, and a tree, planted in memory of a friend who passed away. She made me pancakes with maple syrup and strawberries and blueberry jam made with her grandmother's recipe.

Told her how I mark the changing of the seasons by the arrival and disappearance of various fruits on the wayside carts. And this is what she replied:

.................................
.
"I also mark the passing of time with the ripening and harvesting of fruits and vegetables! I wait all Spring for the first green shoots to peek from the earth in my garden so that I can snip them and add them to my salads and soups...then the radishes beg to be picked...I gleefully anticipate the first strawberries that come in Spring.


By the time school is finished in June, it's time to go and pick those strawberries and bring them home for jam-making and freezing and, well, gorging...Raspberries get picked in huge quantities a few weeks later. We all go picking, and bring them home in buckets to process. It's difficult not eating them all in a day...with yogurt...ice-cream...custard...on their own... Oh my! They're so sweet and delicate!


The salad days of summer progress into the sweet corn-tomato-cucumber days...then the peach and pear days....the zucchini and pepper days...We'll soon be entering the apple-pumpkin days of the year but not before I harvest the concord grapes from the back yard... and the hazelnuts that abound... and those BEANS!! They have to be picked every day; they're so plentiful!

My goodness! We revel in bounteous splendour and I am grateful."

Fear

"...For what gives value to travel is fear. It breaks down a kind of inner structure we have. One can no longer cheat - hide behind the hours spent at the office or at the plant (those hours we protest so loudly, which protect us so well from the pain of being alone).
I have always wanted to write novels in which my heroes would say:" What would I do without the office?" or again: "My wife has died, but fortunately I have all these orders to fill for tomorrow." '

Love of Life
'from' Lyrical and Critical Essays' by Albert Camus
Translated by Ellen Conroy Kennedy

On Defining Oneself

Michael Crichton climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. And says:“…..

What I learned was this: that I had defined myself as a person who didn't like heights or cold, a person who didn't like to be dirty, a person who didn't like physical exertion or discomfort. And here I had spent five days cold, dirty, and exhausted; I had lost twenty pounds; and I had had a wonderful experience.

I realized that I had defined myself too narrowly.

The experience of climbing Kilimanjaro affected me so powerfully that, for a long time afterward, if I caught myself saying, “I am not a person who likes to do that activity, eat that food, listen to that music, " I would automatically go out and do what I imagined I didn't like. Generally I found I was wrong about myself-I liked what I thought I wouldn't like. And even if I didn't like the particular experience, I learned I liked having new experiences.”

Chapter: Kilimanjaro
from'Travels' by Michael Crichton

The need to travel

"...I have often noticed that the eyes of sailors and hillmen are free and quiet. Countrymen, too, when they walk among their fields, and women who surround themselves with love in their homes and think rather little of what lies beyond, old men contented with the end of their journey, and painters, carpenters and all makers, when happy in their jobs - these and many others, men and women who have found their true vocations, share the same atmosphere of certainty and peace.

I have noticed, too, that the business of these people is never such that it makes them consciously share in the wounding of their fellows, whether through rivalries, or vanities, greed or envy; not only are they free of such impulses in themselves, but the happiness of their condition is such that they are largely exempted from watching this strife in others, either through the solitude of their lives or through the absorbing interest of what they care for.

For it is to be hoped, and I think believed, that the worried look visible on so many city faces is more due to the constant witnessing than to the constant infliction of pain - though both must take their share in a competitive life. Those who are so happily free from this affliction have no need to travel; they can sit quietly and continue to be philosophers at home.

"Page 5, "The Philosophy of Travel", by Freya Stark
Views from Abroad, The Spectator Book of Travel Writing