Glue - Kathmandu, Nepal

I used to sniff glue.

I was 8 years old and intrigued by my Alymer's "super duper fun" purple glue stick. It smelled of grapes. It didn't stop there though. Inquisitively I took my tiny, sticky hands, wrapped them around the tube and begin to twist.

Twist and sniff, twist and sniff, twist and sniff.

But it wasn't enough. I thought if it smells of grapes, looks like the colour of grapes then surely, and without a doubt it must taste like grapes. It didn't. And neither did the next stick. Or the next.

17 years later, at the age of 25, I walked through the streets of Kathmandu.

Kathmandu is filled with smog, cycle rickshaws, pashmina shawl shops, chai wallahs, temples, tourists in barefeet finding their hippy karmic ways, sadhus and babas, a crazy legless man, dozens of urchins offering charas, lsd, cocaine, mushrooms, ganga and the lot, and street kids - over 1200 of them.

We (Richard and I) walked through the dark deserted streets of Thamel, the downtown and main tourist area of Kathmandu. We stepped around sleeping bodies and trash heaps, dodged the one cycle rickshaw vying for our rupees and came crashing into a body. His hands groped our pockets as he head-butted our torsos. He spat out nonsense and as we checked our pockets gave him a swift shove into the shadows. To our left another person appeared out of nowhere, accept it wasn't nowhere, it was a trash heap, piles high, with a little boy covered in it, sleeping - his home for the night. In the commotion we had woken him, and he had come to defend his mate or take us on. We ran around the corner under a street lamp, our pockets still full of rupees.

They, these kids, no more than 10 years old, homeless, parentless, shoeless, and in rags were higher than kites, their hands sticky with glue, and definitely not with the non-toxic, 'super duper purple fun stick' of my youth.

The next day I see excited, happy, boisturous kids. I smiled wandering what they had pilfered. Glue. Their hands, shirts and faces smeared with toxic brain cell killing glue. Happy as hell, and high as kites.

1200 street kids in Kathmandu. 95% sniff glue. I didn't know what to do. I don't know what to do. What can I do?

Holy Mao(ists)! - Kathmandu, Nepal

It was Sunday.

Richard, Betsy (the bike) and I were surrounded by a sea of red. Thousands of Maoists and their supporters had taken to the streets, shouting slogans, waving flags and pumping their fists into the air. The streets were blocked by a mass wave of angry protesters and we were in the thick of it.

Our options were slim. To the left was a drop, a path impassable with our 350cc Enfield. To the right and infront hordes of protesters blocked our path.

A man once said, "choose your battles wisely."

We had tried to plow through, using our horn as a warning. The mob was slightly more aggitated and slightly less than amused. A middle aged man yanked the keys from our bike. Richard started a tug-of-war.

Who were the Maoists to take away our transport?

I got angry. We were undersiege. A man started to beat my bike with a large wooden stick. I started to push. I yelled obscenities. Richard got the keys, started the bike, I jumped on, we pushed through the crowd and left the Maoists in a cloud of dust.

It was Sunday. Usually reserved as a day of rest, or more importantly, Sunday Roast Dinner. Not in Nepal, definitely not in Kathmandu.

The Ghats of Death - Varanasi, India

The Bangalore-Patna 'Express' it was not.

We had survived enuchs (India's answer to Lady Boy's), Fakirs (holy beggars), blind singers, lepers, men with snakes, +45 C in a non-ac compartment, little boys urinating on my shoeless foot, and 'Sleeper Class.' Sleeper Class; not a mobile slum, but not exactly the Hilton either. I was okay with this, for $10 Canadian you can't really go wrong.

51 hours after a 44 hour train journey Richard and I staggered off the train into North India, Varanasi to be exact. The site of the Hindu's holiest river, the Ganges, the place where Hindus wash away their sins, but more importantly, where Hindus go to die.

We were sweaty, filthy, and sick. Very sick. Varanasi and its burning ghats loomed heavily as the ash of human flesh singed my nostrils. We spent 3 days sweating in bed sheets in a room with sporadic power in +45 degree weather feeling like death in a place filled with death. The thought that Richard and I had accidentally taken a pilgramage to the Holy Ganges was not far from my mind.

Bodies are wrapped and humbly carried throughout the winding alley ways of the Old City. Drums bang, Doms (Outcasts) stoke the fire, and men sit silently on the stoop, watching their loved one burn. 24 hours a day. 365 days a year.

To describe it seems peverse, and to watch silently in the shadows of death is surreal.

In the end I didn't die, nor did Richard. Even after excited boys splashed their beloved, Holy, absolutely filthy river Ganga on me.

I'll be back to Varanasi one day, but definitely not too die.