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Salon Magazine
1) Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright
2) Festival Time in Kathmandu
3) Oscar Night in Angkor Wat
4) Looking for Kathmandu
5) Planet Star Trek #1: Shinkansen to the Stars
6) Planet Star Trek #2: Clarke's Orbit
7) Planet Star Trek #3: The Big Bang (alore)
8) Planet Star Trek #4: Do Aliens Have Buddha Nature?
Wired Magazine
10) India's Dish Wallahs
11) Wired Wonders of the World
12) The Man Who Wired Africa
13) Thinking Big: Malaysia's MSC
14) Arthur C. Clarke on Life and Death
The Cocooning Journals
15) The Cocooning Journals
FUN STUFF
Adventure Travel Writing: The Quiz
Into the Denki Furo
On Maps
Adventure Travel Writing: The Quiz
© 1998 by Jeff Greenwald
It never ceases to amaze me. After centuries of hair-raising testimony
to the contrary -- from the journals of Marco Polo to Joe Kane's
Running the Amazon -- an astonishing number of people still consider
adventure travel writing an enviable career choice. Year after
year, at writers' conferences and book events, the same queries
pop up again and again: "How can I be an adventure travel writer?
What does it take? Do I measure up?"
These are tough questions. Many of the adventure travel writers
I know fell into the profession by accident; most wish they had
taken up software design instead. I got into the trade because
I was too squeamish for medical school. Had I known then what
I know now, I would have sooner majored in field surgery.
But here's the good news: It's no longer necessary to ride a yak
across Mongolia in order to learn if you're cut out for the business.
The following short quiz will let you know, quickly and painlessly,
whether you're better off reporting for work tomorrow or buying
a one-way ticket to Ouagadougou. Just indicate your answer to
each question, and check your score at the end:
1. A great dinner in the mountains of Tibet would be:
a. Lobster tails with angel hair pasta and watercress salad
b. Freeze dried beef stroganoff
c. A can of tuna fish
d. Snow
2. When visiting Morocco, my idea of a good time is:
a. Photographing the runway at the Casablanca airport
b. Hiking along the goat trails in the High Atlas Mountains
c. Watching the jugglers and dentists perform in Marrakesh's public
square
d. Being chased through the souks of Fes by a dozen Moorish "white
slave" traders
3. The best way to deal with inadequate hygiene in Third World
countries is to:
a. Never eat fruits or vegetables without peeling them
b. Avoid patronizing uncrowded restaurants, especially during
the monsoon
c. Always buy meat as early in the morning as possible
d. Learn to love being sick
4. Traveling through South India, my preferred mode of transportation
would be:
a. Indian Airlines
b. Ambassador cab
c. An India Railways first class reserved sleeper car
d. A bicycle rickshaw with a twisted wheel, loaded with headless
chickens and peddled by an 8-year-old with double conjunctivitis
5. If I could bring only one bag on a 'round-the-world trip, the
item(s) I'd most likely forget to pack would be:
a. The latest John Grisham novel
b. Melatonin and bee-pollen capsules
c. My Sony Walkman and Klezmer tapes
d. Clothes
6. Upon losing my passport in Pakistan, I would immediately:
a. Notify the American Embassy
b. Phone home and inform my loved ones of my dilemma
c. Return to Islamabad and await a replacement
d. Grow a beard, buy an AK-47 and attempt to cross the Khyber
Pass with a band of Afghani freedom fighters
7. When traveling across Mali, one should be most protective of
one's:
a. Camera and lenses
b. Wallet or purse
c. Sunglasses
d. Hemmorhoids
8. For a descent into the caldera of a live volcano, it is imperative
to bring:
a. Asbestos gloves and footwear
b. Flame-retardant rapelling ropes
c. A lightweight, polycarbonate climbing helmet
d. Marshmallows
9. The following gambit is least likely to work if one is caught
trying to sneak across the Iranian border:
a. "Sorry, I must have missed the left turn to Armenia."
b. "I've been invited by your government to represent a new line
of conditioning beard shampoo."
c. "I'm here to deliver Salman Rushdie's 1997 tour schedule to
the Ayatolla."
d. "Ease off, pal, I'm an American journalist."
10. A truly hair-raising adventure would be:
a. Feeding sharks along Australia's Great Barrier Reef
b. Parachuting over the North Pole
c. Crossing the Arabian Sea in a hand-made kayak
d. Being home long enough to have a relationship that lasts more
than six weeks
Bonus Essay Question:
A freak shipwreck has left you stranded on one of the Andaman
Islands with Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey and Monica Lewinsky. The
island is also inhabited by leopards, poisonous snakes and a tribe
of natives who have never seen so much as a radio. There is no
hope of escape; adaptation is the key to survival. Describe your
lifestyle after three years in this environment.
Answers: d,d,d,d,d,d,d,d,d,d
Total Score: 1-2 right: Unclear on the concept; you'd best stick
to watching Indiana Jones videos.
3-4 right: You've got pluck, but might want to practice at a Club
Med first.
5-6 right: Right on track -- but your death-wish isn't quite developed
enough.
7-9 right: You've got what it takes, and might want to start planning
a trip. Make sure that your typhoid, rabies, meningitis and yellow
fever vaccines are up-to-date!
Perfect score: Didn't I meet you in that minefield in Mauritania?
Into the Denki Furo
© 1988 by Jeff Greenwald
My God, it was hot in Tokyo. The kind of heat and humidity that
makes the jaw go slack. Morning was to stagger toward the newsstand,
shielding my eyes from the glare off scooters and vending machines.
Afternoons were spent careening through Tokyo in search of information,
or prone dumbly on the tatami beneath an oscillating fan, listening
to Tony Bennett on the Far East Network:
"The little boy lost
will find his way once more/
Just like before/
When lips were tender...."
Our apartment, like most in Tokyo, had no shower. But when the
cool evening finally arrived I climbed gratefully into my yukata
(robe) and made for the sento (public bath).
How I loved our neighborhood sento! Big bright locker-room-cum-gym,
spotlessly clean. Please Leave Shoes At Door. Never crowded. A
handful of Japanese men - I was the only foreigner - attended
themselves naked and unselfconscious, rubbing their bodies with
rough towels.
The walls were lined with low mini-showers. One must squat. Also,
Please Turn Faucet On Slowly: those little Japanese showers can
knock you across the room.
The entire back portion of the sento was occupied with baths.
First there was an olympic-sized hot-tub/jacuzzi. Next to that
was a cold bath; then a green bath; and at the end a small mystery
bath, perpetually empty, with an alarming lightning-bolt emblazoned
in red on the white tile wall above.
Glancing now and again at that placid final bath, the surface
of which seemed supernaturally calm, I felt a nagging curiosity.
For all I knew it might have been a device for sterilizing surgical
tools, or hyper-cleaning jewelry. Why was I seized by a crazy
intuition to climb recklessly in?
There are no beggars, few elderly on Tokyo streets. The city seems
to belong to a youthful post-bomb generation that moves at ease
among high, clean buildings and throbbing electrical billboards.
As if there had been nothing before this. As if Tokyo had elected
to submerge its history under canyons of steel and glass and especially
plastic, infinite quantities of plastic. Flowers wrapped in plastic.
Plastic eel in the windows.
Another day ended. I sweated and staggered from subway to subway,
swooning in the unspeakable heat. Home at last and all I wanted
was a bath. Collecting my toiletries in a plastic bucket, I set
off for the sento.
There were men in the mystery bath.
Two old men, covered from neck to waist with outrageous tattooes.
Their faces wore expressions of the purest transcendence, like
samurai warriors under torture. One of them motioned to me with
his head - a mere twitch really - in what seemed to be a gesture
of invitation.
Silence prevails in the sento, but foreigners are expected to
breach every custom and who was I to disappoint the Japanese?
Pointing to the fateful pool, I inquired of the young man on my
right.
"Denki Furo," he explained. Electric bath.
There is a moment we have all experienced, on the edge of a diving
board or at the threshhold of a bedroom, when we know that to
take another step is to commit ourselves irreversably. I walked,
naked, to the wall of the denki furo. The water within pulsed
invisibly, and I felt the fascination and aversion one experiences
when bending over to touch a completely still animal that may
or may not be dead. But to touch the water hand-first would be,
I imagined, shameful, as if I lacked the strength of my convictions.
Every eye in the room was upon me as I swung my leg into the bath.
Electricity swarmed up my calf, buzzing and stinging. I uttered
no cry. Bracing on rubber arms, I swung my other leg in. Face
be damned; this was as far as I was going to go.
But wait - the bath was doing something, not unlike love, to my
loins. They were turning to soba (noodle). Wearing the resigned
grin of a fall guy in some 50's comedy, I began to sink gradually
into the water.
There was no point trying to escape; my feet would not respond.
The most important thing, I understood, was to remain unflinching
as my testicles went under. Every situation in Japan is a test.
I would not disgrace myself.
Contemplating the wu (essence) of the white tile wall I sank,
expressionless, up to my neck. The men in the adjoining bath watched
my eyes, staring with an impassive, cat-like gaze.
What did it feel like? Imagine the howling physical rush of a
blow to the funny bone, generalized over your entire body. Or
think of yourself as a silver filling, and the denki furo as a
mouth full of foil. Did it hurt? The exquisite intensity went
far beyond pain. My only hope was that there would be no permanent
physical damage; that, like the cartoon cat whose tail is thrust
into a wall outlet, I would sizzle for a while then reappear,
unscathed, in the next scene.
I do not recall how I left the denki furo. Perhaps the two old
men lifted me, a recalcitrant tumor, from their buzzing province.
Perhaps I mustered a supreme effort of will and climbed from the
tub myself, like Batman in a fix. Or maybe I never left the bath
at all. Perhaps I'm still in it, existing in a Borgesian dream-state
of compressed time. It often seems that way.
I live in America now, where the burgers are charcoal-broiled.
People take baths at home. I have never met anyone else who has
taken an electric bath. We have all seen movies or read newspaper
stories of people getting electrocuted when their radio or blow-dryer
decides to take a bath with them, and I would go so far as to
say that electrified water, like darkness or sharks, is a deeply
rooted fear.
The men in the Japan National Tourist Board laughed when I asked
them what I had encountered in Japan. "Denki furo," they replied,
unable to elaborate.
Still mystified, I called a shiatsu school specializing in oriental
healing techniques. "It obviously effects the polarity of your
electrons profoundly," speculated the director. "It can probably
alter your brain-waves. After all, we're nothing but masses of
electrons to begin with...."
Which explains some things. But sometimes, in Japan, there is
no explanation save that single four-word mantra, uttered by the
visitor in awe and italics:
They are the Japanese.
Excerpted from
On Maps
© 1987 by Jeff Greenwald
Map memory from early childhood: the jagged outline of Treasure
Island. A compass crowned with an ornate fleur-de-lis, pointing
due north. Black lines radiating across parchment; roughly drawn
hills peppered with crosses; skull and crossbones. Pirate treasure.
My brother and I used to dig up the backyard with plastic shovels,
looking for our share. What did we know from the Caribbean? They
could've buried it anywhere.
The first maps that most of us encountered were keys to a world
of fantasy. Captain Flint's led to a fabulous cache of gold and
jewels, but equally compelling were the maps that escorted us
over the mountain ranges of Middle Earth, through The Phantom
Tollbooth's "Land Beyond", and along Marco Polo's route to the
Court of Kublai Khan. And then there were the maps that led to
real places, like the giraffes at the zoo, or the Dumbo ride at
Disneyland.
My relationship with those early maps was pretty one-sided. I
was basically a tag-along, following the leads of courageous others.
Directions were simple, rewards were great, and wrong turns were
next to impossible. Then came high school, adulthood, and the
necessity to navigate one's own course through the world. My relationship
with maps abruptly reversed. Before, they had been crude sketches
of ideal, imaginary worlds; now, they were idealized portraits
of sloppy reality.
It was a difficult transition to get used to. I recall blithely
studying a map of Bombay, a clean grid of meticulously ruled avenues
and British place names, as our 747 descended toward the Indian
metropolis. Leaving the airport was one of the rudest awakenings
of my life; nothing in that map had prepared me for the gnarled
streets, riotous bazaars and sprawling slums of the city itself.
At that moment, the famous words of semanticist Alfred Korzybski
hit home: "The map is not the territory." You can read all the
how-to books you want, I realized, but you don't know a damned
thing about boxing until you've climbed into the ring.
Growing up on Long Island, I had map fever. It was more than a
compulsion to cover my walls; it was a need to possess the places
those maps represented, to accumulate destinations. In the tribal
rituals of the ancients, a boy was hiked into manhood by vision
quests, or by bagging a difficult pelt. My American initiation,
a coming-of-age in the land of consumerism, combined aspects of
both. I wanted not only to experience mysterious new places, but
to collect them as well.
Above my desk hung a map of the United States, stuck full of pins,
heavy with the destination voodoo of the post-Kerouac generation.
On the Road was practically mythology to me; I charted Sal Paradise's
route through bop America as a scholar of ancient Greek might
try to trace Odysseus's travels.
In 1974, after two years at the local college, I set off for the
west coast at last, attempting to duplicate Kerouac's journey
and follow that one long red line called Route 6 that led from
the tip of Cape Cod clear to Ely, Nevada, and there dipped down
to Los Angeles. Needless to say, my path across the country took
its own shape. It included some of the cities Sal Paradise visited,
like Chicago and Denver, but for the most part I wound my way
through territories unknown, an eager disciple of the Fates that
steer young travelers into unexpected, but always strangely appropriate,
encounters and experiences. Maps, I discovered, always seem immutable
at first; it's only later, in the heat of an intimate relationship
with them, that one realizes they can be re-drawn to suit new
priorities.
Thinking it over now, I wonder if what inspired Kerouac, and possessed
me to steer my life westward, full of blind faith and optimism,
with only a printed page as rudder, was that illusion of immutability
itself: the notion of the map as God.
***
Howard Sacks was a buddy of mine in Nepal. He was inner-city,
street-wise and bluntly honest, but with a wild, impulsive streak
that sometimes frightened his friends. He lived his life in a
seemingly haphazard fashion, without any discernible plan. As
I think of him now I recall two things: his passion for poker,
and the pride and pleasure he took in correcting maps.
Since WWII, technology has given maps, like parachutes, an awesome
degree of reliability. As a result, most of us have come to take
the accuracy of maps for granted. As we leap out into the world,
huddled against the headwind of possibilities, we rely on them
absolutely.
But on the maps of some remote parts of the world, like the northern
border of Nepal, where the Indian and Eurasian plates collide,
much is still relatively uncertain, or changing. One town will
have three different names, based on how each surveyor heard it;
earthquakes, glaciers or erosion will have sliced off a hillside,
permanently erasing a major trail; a well may have moved, and
only the collapsed stone walls of a recently thriving village
remain.
Howard enjoyed nothing more than pressing into the Himalayas,
usually alone, always in sneakers, into obscure regions where
the caprices of the earth play havoc with the accuracy of maps.
For some of his destinations, the only maps of any integrity were
decade-old topos, drawn from satellite data by the Defense Mapping
Agency.
Defense maps are not for public sale; you can only get them by
writing to the Agency and justifying your need. How Howard got
his first DMA map is uncertain. Maybe he had used his credentials
as a lawyer, or his connections with the Tibetan autonomy movement.
Maybe he had won it at poker; the man was a shark. At any rate,
he brought it back from his first solo expedition full of corrections,
and mailed this edited version to the Defense Mapping Agency.
They wrote back on official stationary to thank Howard, and offered
him a freelance assignment to correct other maps, of his choice,
in the future. The payment for each job would be the coveted map
itself.
Howard showed the letter to everyone. It was as if he had been
given a dare. After some deliberation he followed up on the offer,
requesting a series of maps showing the landscape north of a mountain
called Dhaulgiri, which lay very close to the prohibited Tibetan
border. In March of 1984, shortly before leaving Kathmandu, he
encountered an expedition of Japanese climbers who were going
to attempt an ascent of Dhaulgiri and somehow talked them into
letting him come along. They left in mid-March, 1984.
I left that Spring too, on a relatively well-mapped trek up the
Arun Valley. When I returned to Kathmandu in April, dreaming only
of pizza and a hot shower, I was stunned to hear that Howard was
dead.
Nobody seemed to have any concrete details; everything I know
came by word-of-mouth. According to Singh, his housemate, the
expedition had been driven back by inclement weather. Howard decided
to continue northeast, toward the border, into the shady portions
of his maps. As he climbed, whole Sherpa families passed him,
going the opposite direction, fleeing the ice, warning him to
do the same.
Somewhere, sneakers on ice, he slipped off the trail. The fall
didn't kill him; he was apparently able to call a passing porter,
who took his SOS and ran it to the nearest village by evening.
The following day, a rescue helicopter from Kathmandu was turned
back by the weather. The day after that it managed to fly in;
but only Howard's body could be recovered.
I would like to see a map which commemorates the spots where those
who have tried to correct maps have perished. A map to mark the
sunken vessels of discovery; the beast-eaten expeditions; the
blackened launch pads. The last stands of people like Howard,
who dare to collar territory that turns to bite the leash.
***
Sometimes, in the lonely parts of the world, a strange kind of
love will blossom between the traveler and his map. He will come
to admire the map more and more, and defer to it constantly, until
he is completely seduced by it and utterly lost without it.
In truth, of course, the traveler has fallen in love with the
territory. But in the constant process of bouncing between one
and the other, that distinction has blurred and vanished. Korzybski's
warning has been tossed to the winds.
To see a person thus smitten is a beautiful thing, especially
in the autumn, as red leaves fall over the Himalayan trails and
yak dung, damp with dew, steams in the brilliant morning sun.
In preparing for our three-week walk into the Solo Khumbu - the
region of the Himalayas that includes Sagarmatha (Mt. Everest),
Lhotse and Nuptse - it was decided that Bill, my trekking partner,
would be responsible for the map. Why didn't I get one, too? That's
easy: weight. Like an obsessive bicycle racer who shaves his legs
to cut wind drag, I thus managed to trim a good half-ounce off
my 40 lb. load.
Although I hardly noticed the few grams, I was compelled to watch,
with no little envy, the budding romance between Bill and his
colorful, beautifully scaled topographical map of the Everest
Valley. They were like young lovers; by the end of two weeks Bill
was intimate with every soft swell and lush contour of that map.
He had admired it in sunshine and by candlelight, mastered it
in every position, and, love for a map hath no greater deed, even
learned to fold it up properly, along the original creases.
In spite of all the hardships we encountered on the trail, the
only times I ever saw Bill wince were the rare occasions when
some misfortune befell his map. A leathery Sherpani cook spilled
a bit of dhal onto it; I, in the numbing cold, lost control of
my mouth and dribbled coffee onto it; an ember leapt from a crackling
firepit like the finger of God and touched it, burning a tiny
hole. At each incident Bill dropped everything and sprang into
action, a model of efficiency and damage control.
This vigilance paid off in spades when we reached our destination:
the crest of a round black hill called Kala Pattar. Over 18,000
high, surrounded by an army of rumbling glaciers, sublime white
peaks and cracking, deadly ice falls, Kala Pattar hangs above
the clouds like an island in the sky. The panorama is staggering,
and we were immediately seized by a desperate longing - so uniquely
human!- to identify every landmark in sight.
As we set about slaking that thirst - orienting ourselves, guessing
heights and distances, and deducing the name of each unique mountain
- the landscape underwent a profound change. Before, it had seemed
aloof and anonymous; now it was imbued with personality. It had
soul.. It had a plot, we could see where things had been and where
they were going. There was even a hint of celebrity in it all,
as we let our eyes wander up the flanks of Everest, finding the
paths used by the great mountaineers.
It was a giddy afternoon, wide-eyed in the cold, thin atmosphere.
Gaping at the wind-swept peak of Everest 10,000 above us, the
three of us (Bill, the map and myself) had literally reached the
highest point of our lives.
A couple of weeks later I returned to the richly aromatic air
of Kathmandu, obsessed with the desire to buy my very own Schneider
map of the Everest Valley. It was hard to find, but I finally
dug one up in an obscure bookshop. I ran back to my hotel and
opened it at once, eager to re-experience our fabulous voyage;
to recapture, vicariously, the thrill of standing upon Kala Pattar
with the high, thin wind beating against my ears.
It was no use. The map seemed the same; but something was terribly
wrong. Where was the smudge of dried Spam on the western face
of Nuptse? Where was the ugly coffee stain, meandering recklessly
along the banks of the Dudh Kosi? Or the jagged grin, burnt at
the edges, in the contours of the mighty Chhukhung Glacier?
Where was the soul? I tossed the new map aside as if it were a
cheap imposter, painfully aware that nothing I could do, short
of repeating the entire trek, could imbue that piece of paper
with the power and magic of the map that Bill had hung, like a
lover's portrait, on the wall above his desk.
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