I knew I shouldn’t have gone to KFC here in Guwahati. I mean, it seemed so out of place. But so did the one in Chengdu 22 years ago and I mean, how can you f up chicken right?

Well I walked in “just to look” and it had A/C. I had just succumbed to a one hour car ride from Guwahati airport and the dude wanted to charge me 100 rupees for AC during the ride! I’m like, do you m know who I am? Haha. No I tell him with my silent monologue saying “it’s only 12 miles”. High noon. 95 degrees. 90% (at least) humidity. The sweat starts the minute I, well, leave the airport. Long pants. Long shirt. T shirt under it.

By minute 15, I’m drenched. By minute 30 i consider ever so briefly to ask him to put it on. Pride took over again. The crotch sweat was back with a vengeance. The traffic thru town was horrific so no wind to aid me. After an hour I got into my AC room and crashed.

I needed food though and the KFC seemed like a great answer. I mean why would I sit in a sweaty local place and likely get sick from spoiled meat. I walked out. I walked back in. Self justification wins out. I DESERVED that chicken sandwich and wings. Likely fresh. Haha.

When she put the ice in the coke i raised an eyebrow. No. She knows I’m a traveler. She knows better. They must be purified as she handled them oh so delicately.

The rumbling began about 2 am. Oh it’s just the chips I ate after. It continued. It’s just me getting used to stuff. 6 AM. Kablooey. Uh oh. I gotta jump in a shared jeep for 2 1-2 hours at noon.

I got time. Back to bed. At 11 after my 4th trip to the can, I succumbed once again. Ciproflaxin. Come to my rescue.

I had had little water that night and no brekkie. I got this. We will be up in the hills and cooler in no time. I can hold it.

Well the “shared” taxi guy caught my eye. Shillong? Why yes. My head told me take a regular taxi. My ego again said shared taxi. I got this. When you leaving? 20 min he says. It high noon again. I put my pack on the roof and after 10 min decided in my infinite wisdom I wanted a window so I jumped into the back seat that were all black and waited. He’s gotta go soon right? He’s not full yet. Shit.

He pulls away after 30 min and does a slow loop thru traffic. Shillong Shillong. Ending back where we started. Jesus dude. You’re gonna have a sweaty shitty mess back here. Get on with it!

Our two and half hour ride turned to four counting the waiting. I was lucky enough to sit next to a local that spoke English and wanted to describe every banal point of interest on the road. There’s a lake. No a river. No a lake. All the while I’m inching towards defcon 5.

We stop to wrap the roof bags as rain is coming. The driver gets food. Here is my insurance policy. I sprint to toilet out back (if you want to call it that) and squatted with my day pack on and averted disaster. Try using toilet paper in that position. Ain’t easy.

So both Guwahati and Shillong are dirty hot places that I have no desire to see. It’s higher and cooler thank god up here. But during the day. Pain. I have to kill two days waiting for my permits.

The locals rarely embrace their culture and dress like frat guys from the 80s. I know. I was one. The locals are not particularly friendly or communicative except with their horns.

So I walked my extremely sweaty and stinky ass thru the traffic jam and up the hill. Denied by two hotels the third was like heaven. I mean, it had a bucket shower sort of but it saved me.

I used to say to friends I don’t need no stinking gym membership to lose weight. I’ll go to Asia and eat and drink and trek. It works. I’m bulletproof with Cipro for three days. Wish me luck!

A pretty recent article on the area of Arunachal Pradesh where I am going end of the week (well assuming the guy arranging my ride doesn’t run off with my passport. Rookie move? Hope not!) that gives some history and an even handed view on the border dispute between India and China.

https://www.google.co.in/amp/m.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2083799/why-china-india-and-dalai-lama-are-pushing-boundaries-tawang%3Famp=1

It’s an epic trip through the mountains I am told and neighbor Frank James coincidentally is involved in a clinic there.

It also happens to be where his Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959 nearly ten years after China invaded.

Most everyone that knows me knows I’ve been practicing Buddhism for about 19 years. I traveled independently in Tibet for about a month in 1998, traveled Nepal extensively in 95, 98, 2000 and briefly in 2006. That same trip I visited Dharamsala (home of the Tibetan Govt in Exile) and got within maybe 50 feet of His Holiness before he gave his talk. I also spent a month in Ladakh and Kashmir in 2010 and a month in India and Bhutan in 2012. Yeah I work believe it or not. Well not now for a bit.

It is my spiritual home and I have not even scratched the surface of many facets of their culture and religion. The Dalai Lama is likely the single most influential person in my life.

The area I visited in Tibet in 1998 had this stunning mountain range off in the distance. I have attached a pic but I dreamed of going there. It seems Tawang is in the area of that range. I also was told by the guide I hiked one of the passes (in reverse) that His Holiness took in 1959.

I will be up where Bhutan, India and Tibet intersect. I will write more about the emotional aspect of Tibet and the Dalai Lama once I am there, but when planning this trip I had no idea the spiritual and cultural significance of the place. I guess you could say I was winging it and got kinda lucky. Stay tuned.

I feel like I live in a bubble. Bellingham is the last great town that is finally succumbing to greed. When I’m with my backpack or in my van and long ago with my dog, I created an insular world that kept some kind of barrier between me and violence and sadness like what just happened in Vegas. 20 people were also trampled to death here in Mumbai India two days ago.

If you happen to know someone, or know someone that knows someone. Or connect with one of the poor souls you see on TV. Your heart breaks.

Add the madness of the three hurricanes and the Brutish childlike figure in the Whitehouse who has never had a non staged heartfelt empathic response in his life and I just feel devastated inside.

For years we blamed the “other”. You know. The dude that just got here from a faraway land. Or the sometimes mythical terrorist who always seems to be Muslim until you read the paper the next day and someone jumped to a conclusion. WE, the people of the United States have contributed to this shit. We put mental health on the back burner way too much, we make questioning unfettered gun ownership a political battle because some boogeyman is coming for your assault weapons you need to kill deer or zombies or whatever. We make the almighty dollar the benchmark with which we measure our success, our pride, our ego and put that above compassion, not making sure your neighbor is not hurting and your kids have a life where they can grow up to be productive compassionate people. Not Americans. PEOPLE!

We are humans before we are Americans. And we are no better than any other race or culture or religion or creed. And we are failing.

We sometimes force people to play along with this sick race to accumulate as much as possible. Til one day they wake up and find they’ve failed based on our rules we have jammed Down their throats. Or they wake up and realize they have made a mockery of their internal life intentions and ambitions just to grab the brass ring. So they’ve failed twice. Then they snap. And pain is passed all around.

This breaks my heart. Glad I’m going to hang out with the Buddhists. Oh shit. Not the ones in Myanmar! Not Buddhists too!!

Meanwhile I will be in Arunachal Pradesh next. This is what’s going down nearby  if you haven’t noticed. It won’t affect me.

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/09/26/opinions/the-rohingya-are-being-ethnically-cleansed-why-wont-the-world-take-action/index.html

I can’t imagine our dumbass in chief can even find it on a map let alone prioritize it.

So I am leaving for Guwahati in the morning. No offense to Mumbai but it’s not my, um, cup of tea. I was only planning on spending two days here but the part of town I am in (Colaba) is very touristy and small. I am not interested in seeing the show of opulence surrounded by abject poverty. Of course the people are all nice here (except when I visited the famous Taj Majal Palace Hotel for a $10 martini). Man, I thought the Chinese invented selfies!

I finally found some great street food last night. Chicken tikka rolls are my calling! Had the usual inquiries as to whether I wanted a tour, a taxi, hash or cocaine. Normally all from the same person.

It’s a holiday here. I think it’s Ghandi’s bday today. I couldn’t do a tour etc. I am not against them per se. But there is something about an organized tour THROUGH world famous slums that I can’t get my head around. Call me close minded.

I am heading northeast in the morning via plane on my quest to get to the Tawang Valley near Tibet. Then will make my way thru to Bhutan to see my buddy Chhimi from Grad School and finally get a new hat!

Stop raining up there! Doesn’t the monsoon end EXACTLY on Oct 1?

At the stoplight she came and looked me in the eye. She tapped on my window and pointed to her mouth. A girl no older than my youngest nephew, yet tall and skinny. I shook my head no as years of traveling here has taught me not to encourage begging. She tapped again. No. Again. No. Again. No. I stared back at my smart phone. Riding in an uber (more on that later) and was like wtf? Why must I make this decision? As the light turned I pulled out 100 rupees (about a buck fifty) and gave it to her as she dodged traffic to get back. Was she part of a begging ring? Is that her life? Is it a scam? I’m not the first person nor the last to be put in that conundrum. But for some reason when in another, poorer culture it seems more vivid. What part of that life did she choose? Or did her karma choose it for her?

So Mumbai is big and crowded and dirty. Since I arrived at midnight, I stayed at the airport Holiday Inn. At 60 bucks easily the most expensive hotel I think I’ve ever stayed in in India. I booked on Orbitz.

A friend of a friend said to use Uber to get around. Prices are set. No ripoff. Now I have my issues with Uber aside from the dickhead founder. Yes it provides some work. Yes it can break the monopolistic hold taxis have on some communities. However, what it really does is exploit inefficiencies in a market, pass a small amount of the savings to a person, and aggregate the majority of those inefficiencies outside the community to a small group of shareholders. Is my 2 dollar savings worth sucking that money out of the community? Ask yourself. More on accumulation at a later date. Likely my rant on Buddhist economics.

So the second Uber of my life was to get downtown today. Of course I booked another $50 hotel as I normally would just show up but there is some holiday here and I didn’t want to walking around this huge downtown with my sweaty pack and no clue. As the dude pulled up I checked the first few digits of his license. I jump in. Uber? I ask. Yes. He says. As we drive he points to where we are going on his ubiquitous smart phone attached to the dash. That doesn’t look right. His English is bad. Hmmm. My cell phone rings. It’s the CORRECT Uber driver at my hotel. He asks me to cancel. My current driver dumps me on the side of the road (shakes me down for 100 rupees) and I summon another Uber at 50% more, all the while succumbing to the sweaty crotch I was so desperate to avoid in the 90 degree heat with 95% humidity.

It seems India is more dialed in tech wise than we are as their economy has grown up this way. However, it seems to enhance the digital divide and make that first big step out of poverty a much more giant leap. I doubt that little girl punched her 100 rupees into her account or converted it to Bitcoin……

Over lunch I had a nice micro and macro economic discussion with Michelle about our dear president’s misguided approach to America First. About how fully 1.2 billion people on the planet don’t have electricity yet they, and many Americans fully feel broad swings in the economic, political and environmental arenas. They rarely have a chance to affect those swings individually. Interest rates, cost of firewood, cost of corn, access to capital, super storms, rising sea levels. But those at that subsistence level of the economy bear the extreme brunt of those swings. Geez see Puerto Rico. And earlier this year India, Nepal and Bangladesh. From a global economy standpoint one can argue that the free movement of capital fosters growth and creates opportunity. But does it? What are the true impacts?

I have a philosophy that the farther one gets away from his/her money the more the planet suffers. You don’t see how the local environment is affected by investing in property in another state. Your corporate stock holding does not identify fully its investment in a large damn that creates 100 temporary jobs but cuts down trees and displaces villagers. You don’t take notice that your Monsanto stock does well but it’s GMO products have cross contaminated the original corn plants in Chiapas Mexico. So in the interest of keeping up with your investments, you can just possibly wreak havoc on the most vulnerable in our country and others. It is not necessarily an intentional damaging of other peoples and cultures and environments. But rest assured, globalization and the free movement of money and investments, unfettered and unwatched, DOES hurt those most vulnerable. Both directly and indirectly. Consider that (and I will too) when you have the extra little bit of cash to invest. What impact do I have with my choices and who am I impacting that have none?

So London was my first big city and my first real out of USA travel stop 23, yes 23 years ago. There was no internet then and strangely I got around better. What has changed? Well me walking around in my white T shirt still had me standing out amongst the goth like garb. Similar to the little girl in the red dress in Schindlers list. No metaphor there. Just obvious. London still is this incredible melting pot like no other. Friendly. Fast. Everyone looks like Conor MacGregor or Jon Snow. Fun to see all skin types with an English accent. Everyone is chasing a life or a nickel or a dream. Shit you need two jobs just to not wear the same outfit everyday it seems. It seems everything is centered around some new way to get fucked up again. Saw a show last night. Portugal. The Man. Great show but bad sound. I think I might have seen three people older than me. Why is Bud Light on tap? Who drinks that shit still? Kids seem bored. Out of touch. Connected to their devices.

I got lost and turned around at least five times today. Using this app and that app. 23 years ago I never got lost as I ASKED people. What a concept. Not a new idea but technology certainly closes people off. It makes you feel unconnected. And I can’t wait to get rid of this phone for a travel book and asking some Indian grandma where the hole in the ground is.

Yesterday I did help a lost Salvadoran find his way to a hotel. Even got to bust out my Spanish.

Lesson learned. Don’t forget to look both ways. They drive on the “wrong” side here.