Our Paper Airplane

All we did for four days straight was eat. Every “meal” turned into an extended three hour period of wandering around to seek out whatever caught our senses, whether it was the sizzles and spatters coming from woks as they stir fried shallots and chili, the sweet charcoal smoke coming from barbequed pork, or the collage of greens as piles of fresh herbs as they lay ready for cooking.

In Bangkok, food is their culture, and we found ourselves being sucked straight into it from day one. The biggest difference seemed to be that good food here was abundant, accessible and affordable for anyone, anywhere, anytime. Good eating was not a luxury reserved for the financial elite; it was the common man’s daily bread. Over the course of those four days, we ate in a restaurant once and were disappointed with the mediocre food – the real food was found on the streets where plastic stools, folding tables, curbs and the odd tree became the décor. Seemingly every street was lined with small food carts, each specializing in one or two dishes, often times run by the same person or family for decades.

In the mornings you could find strong coffee, Thai iced teas, chili seasoned fruit salads; in the afternoons the tom yam soup carts, spicy papaya salads and sweet thai pancakes would appear; and by dark it broke into a fever pitch of every imaginable food, sometimes shutting down entire streets, except for the rare moped willing to weave through the crowds. We learned that Thai food is all about balance – complimenting soft with crunchy, sweet with sour, salty with bitter in every dish. Ingredients were often bought twice a day at the local market to ensure they were never more than a few hours old – which made for some of the healthiest, freshest and safest food we’ve eaten. We even inadvertently ate a raw pork salad (thinking it was something else) and still didn’t get sick!

Although Bangkok is known for many other things, both good and bad, it was the food here that stood out among everything else and I think immortalized this city in our minds. Not just the quantity and quality of the food, or our love of Thai food before we arrived, but the way they’ve managed to turn it into a thriving culture and into a part of life for everyone: poor or rich, good or bad, young or old; good food is the one thing the Thai people have decided not to compromise on – and that made us, and our stomachs, really happy.

Over the past week as we rattled down train tracks and bounced along in buses across the southern half of Sri Lanka, we realized that this may be the first country we’ve visited where we’ve felt a distinctly anti-American sentiment in the eyes of the people – not for Americans, but for our public policy. This was the first place where we were routinely asked – why? Why doesn’t America support us? Why don’t they understand us? While wandering the streets of Galle, we met some incredibly warm and friendly boys who we ended up spending a whole night with, and of course we had to know why they didn’t like America. So here is the story…

Nobody was safe during the war: public buses were not safe; trains were not safe; the capital city of Colombo was not safe; everybody lived in fear of the Tamil Tigers or LTTE, one of the most potent terrorist organizations in the world. Among other atrocities, they were responsible for the assassination of two world leaders - the prime minister of India in 1991, and the president of Sri Lanka in 1993. The LTTE wanted a solely Tamil nation or state in the north and for 30 years, the government tried to negotiate with the LTTE, to eradicate the violence and terrorism from their country and to restore peace, but with little success. Every attempt ended in a surprise attack by the LTTE, with more casualties and reopened scars – which often came from trained women and children suicide bombers. During this time, almost no international support was provided – since the LTTE operated within Sri Lanka, it was considered a civil war, and solely left to the Sri Lankan government to sort out. After 29 years, when it seemed there was no alternative left, backed by the support of the rest of the nation, the government declared an all out war on terror and the LTTE terrorists from the north. Within the final few months of the war, the Sri Lankan government was able to dismantle the LTTE through targeted attacks and an offensive that caused them to surrender.

Since the end in 2009, Sri Lanka has been steadily progressing as a nation. They have begun to rebuild schools, hospitals, create more jobs, and raise the standard of living at an impressive rate. However, the catch is that since the Sri Lankan victory, the international community, headed by the United States, has put Sri Lanka under close scrutiny for possible war crimes and human rights violations as a result of their “civil war” – and as a result is threatening to reduce all aid and assistance in the future.

Immediately, their frustration made sense – our friends had spelled out the hypocrisy they saw in our country. We have declared our war on terror to be the most noble of intentions, while we take any action required to kill people we call terrorists in any country we find them in and write off any civilian casualties as the unfortunate cost of this war. But when Sri Lanka declares a war on terror, and aims to annihilate their terrorists, we watch from afar and then accuse them of war crimes and human rights violations. Have we not done the exact same thing?

Can America not appreciate their desire for a society free from the burden of fear and terrorism? Or are we blind to the cost of our own war on terror and the way it destroys lives of the innocent in our pursuit for justice? After hearing this story, I couldn’t argue, I could only sympathize with their frustration – if America can hunt down terrorists around the world, why can’t Sri Lanka hunt terrorists within its own borders? And if that’s unacceptable, then what has America been doing waging our wars over the last decade?

The ironies of this situation had begun to multiply. The boys who befriended us on the street, spent hours patiently helping us understand what they believed, even took us on a midnight fishing expedition in a search of fresh octopus, and wouldn’t allow us to leave without multiple cups of tea and gifts they wanted us to keep as reminders our time there. They were Muslim, and some of the most genuine people we’ve met in Sri Lanka. The same group of people that many Americans mistakenly stereotype as terrorists were themselves showering us with kindness and begging for our sympathies for their nation who only wanted the same thing as we did – a country where they can live in peace and be free from the burden of fear.

Sometimes nothing goes according to plan, sometimes you wind up in a place so distant from where your intentions tried to take you that all you can do is laugh about it. Although it’s not always easy to resign yourself to a new plan, these times often make the most memorable days of our trip and remind us why we love to travel.

We were sitting cross-legged on a Persian rug inside a tiny Hindu temple up in the hills of Sri Lanka. We weren’t sure what was happening as we made a vain effort to meditate while a chorus of kids sitting behind us began to chant. Meanwhile, thehindu priest turned on his 9V battery radio that played an endless loop of a droning harmonium while he burned incense behind a front curtain. When we finally opened our eyes, we had rings of flowers around our necks, roses placed in our palms and various colored dots on our foreheads. After our extremely confusing introduction to Hinduism, theSinhalese speaking priest tried to prepare us lunch, but we insisted we weren’t hungry, and we got away with only sharing a cup of sweet milk tea with him.

What had begun as a well-planned effort to ride bikes to a waterfall, ended up as a complete failure, as we had rode off the edge of all three maps we carried, far from any major roads and into the endless hills that made up the center of the island. When asking for directions in Sri Lanka, the response - although good intentioned - is usually hopelessly useless. It takes on an entirely different style than we’re used to, with an extravagant display of hand waving, grunting, swaying of the body and phrases like “go small small, maybe see tree, go up road”. And although the literacy rate in Sri Lanka is an incredible 97%, their map literacy rate may be the opposite of that.

After two hours of searching for the waterfall, we decided to resign our plans when the road finally came to a butt end at the edge of a farming community. We took to foot and continued along narrow dirt paths, up rudimentary stone stairs and through fields and plantations. It started slowly with a few cautious glances from working farmers, and then we heard the yelling of children as they stood on an opposite hill, alerting everyone to our presence. By the time we had reached their small village, just about everyone had come out of their homes or their fields or from whatever they were doing to stand and wait for our arrival. Then one appointed girl, one of the few who knew English, came forward to greet us and politely insist that we visit her home and take tea. As we sat inside her home making conversation and learning about her village, many of the elders and children squeezed in to watch with anxious, but contented glances.

She suggested we continue up into the hills to explore, saying not many people came this way and that we might enjoy it. Back on the pathway, we had quickly acquired a small army of children and an older man who wanted to practice his English acting as a tour guide of sorts. Along the way, he stopped many times, running off into the neighbor’s fields, picking fresh veggies for us to taste: carrots, leeks, scallions and even raw tea leaves. Each time he’d wait with glowing eyes and an itching smile to see if we enjoyed eating his villages’ produce. Eventually he took us to a Hindu temple, where the priest wanted us to experience a ceremony first hand, which is what led to the meditation and to the flowers we were now carrying through the fields.

On the way back, our friends summoned a tea truck collecting leaves from the workers and sent us along the bumpy paths back to their factory, so we could see how they processed the tea. I felt pretty ignorant learning that Sri Lanka and Ceylon were one in the same. In 1978, the country changed its name to Sri Lanka - and consequently we had both been drinking Sri Lankan tea our whole lives and never knew it! I was still shocked to hear that Sri Lanka produces the majority of the world’s black tea today. As we rode out of the hills back towards the city, we almost felt like we were back in Africa – the warmness and eagerness of the locals to welcome us had completely surprised us. Although Sri Lanka is only separated from India by a tiny stretch of water, so far, it feels like it’s an ocean away.

~Tim

This wasn’t the first time I woke up to a girl screaming on an overnight train. The last few times involved men that by western standards, would have been categorized as creepy perverts with staring problems (by Indian standards, they may be less of an extreme), opening the curtain of our train compartment around 3am to oogle and rub the feet of one of our female neighbors. But this time, it was Emily who woke up with a strange man hovering over her, and the shriek was enough to send him running to the next train car.

Thankfully at that time, our train was moving away from the madness of the north and towards the steamy and more laid-back southern tip, where India starts to take on a different personality. The heavy butter thickened curries became ornately spiced and coconut infused; the mutton and chicken changed to fresh fish and veggies; the economy changed from arid and forgotten rice paddies and brick factories to fishing villages and working professionals. The population slowly became more literate, better educated, and what seemed like a little less eager to play the same games as the north.

Our train arrived in Goa during the Holi celebration. We inadvertently became a part of that celebration when we drove our rental scooter towards a road block, held firm by a mob of children. At a standstill, they rushed in with fluorescent colored powders, smearing everything in sight until our skin, our clothes, and our scooter looked more like a scene from a kids coloring book than real life. They let us pass as they smiled and yelled “Happy Holi!”

As we continued south into the state of Kerala, we found ourselves having more conversations with the locals without them expecting a tip in exchange. What should have been a 30 minute stroll took us 2 hours. Seemingly everyone we passed invited us into their homes for tea, sweets, or fresh fruits from their yard. Returning back to our room afterwards with a handful of fresh mangos, full stomachs and some photos of the nicest Indian people we’ve met was a welcome surprise – and so as crazy as our first few weeks were here, I think we’re parting with India on good terms.

Even so, it’s difficult to forget the frustration we’ve faced travelling here. The general opinion we keep hearing on India is that most people have a love / hate relationship with it. There are many things I found myself hating about it, and a few things that I love about it too – but I have a hard time committing to either one. It’s been a challenge to look past the way people here treated us in the north, but I also can’t condemn a country where we’ve found some really genuine and gracious people. Although I’m happy we’ve had the chance to explore and be challenged in many good ways, I don’t think we’d go out of our way to come back here anytime soon.

Battling the streets of India has shown us an uglier side to ourselves. Though it felt necessary at times to wear that protective shell, the longer we wore it, the more natural it felt, and the more cold, selfish and defensive we began to see ourselves. In the same way that a prolonged, unhealthy relationship can damage your future self, sadly, I worry about how healthy it would be spend much longer here.

~Tim

A firm tug at the hem of my skirt stopped me in my tracks as I was pushing my way through the crowded streets of Mumbai. I turned around, half ready to fend off another tuk-tuk driver looking to give me a city tour I didn’t want, but instead found myself staring into the distraught little eyes of a boy, no more than eight years old. I couldn’t help but notice how calloused and dirty his feet were, or that the tattered clothing he wore looked two sizes too small to fit his frail frame. “Madame…Sir, very hungry…please help…need rices for my family,” squealed the little child, desperately wanting us to follow him through the crowds towards a rice shop.

As much as our initial experiences in India had hardened us, we still hoped to be proven wrong, and wanted more than anything to help feed this child and his family. We bought him a kilo of rice, but our suspicion got the better of us and so we waited half a block away peering from around the corner at the rice shop. Soon enough, we saw the child return the bag of rice we bought him and emerge gleefully with a wad of cash in his hands. After confronting the child and shop owner, we found that we were charged triple the price for the rice, and that the two had a pre-arranged agreement to share their new profit.

After that experience, we began to research and learned that our experience was only the tip of an enormous iceberg of organized corruption, crime and human rights violations common to the streets of Mumbai. It is estimated that 50,000 children under the age of 8 disappear every year in this country, often being forced into organized begging. Kidnappings run by the “begging mafia” often led to the surgical removal ofchildren’s limbs in order to help them entice pity (and money) from passersby. Other children are rented out by parents or mafia kings as cheap labor at illegal factories, or sold into brothels as sex slaves. Complicity between lawmakers and lawbreakers, police and mafia, make it inherently difficult to convict perpetrators, turning not only the streets, but the economy of many of India’s cities, into an open market for human trafficking.

For the rest of that day, we felt dejected and defeated. Instinct told us to ignore and walk away from anyone asking us of anything, even though in doing so, we felt like we were falling victim to values we didn’t believe in and were becoming less and less human. Skepticism and distrust were winning our hearts over hope and love. How could we share ourselves or our resources with others, knowing there was a good chance we were encouraging and supporting a system of corruption and human rights violations?

The following day, we found a ray of hope in the most unlikely of places, and without it, perhaps we would have coldly turned a blind eye and shut our hearts on India completely. We had gone to visit the Dharavi slum, home to over a million souls all living within less than two square kilometers – one of the densest and highest populated slums in the world (If you’ve seen Slumdog Millionaire – it was filmed here). Fully expecting this shantytown with open sewers, mountain high piles of garbage and only one public toilet for every 1,440 residents to send us running back to the other side of town, we were shocked when we found it to be home to some of the most kind and industrious people we’ve met in India yet. Just beyond the façade of dirt and grime, poverty and despair, there was something truly remarkable. What seemed like a light in a very dark place, Dharavi is a city within a city, filled with migrant workers who have created an unbelievable amount of industry – from leather tanning to pottery making, from turning plastic waste into the plastic used in your iPhone, from papadam makingto aluminum recycling. But here, nobody bothered us, except to give a handshake, a smile, or a welcome. We learned that even though some of the residents had moved up the economic ladder, they still chose to live in the slum, not because of living conditions, but because of the community. The community always came together, always shared, always took responsibility to organize and govern themselves in ways that, in our eyes, put the rest of this “civilized” city to shame. This was the first time in 3 weeks of travelling in India that we had truly felt welcome to be here.

Mumbai has certainly helped us to put a little more perspective on India.Not only to the wicked capacity of the human spirit, and the secret world of crime and corruption, but also to the flicker of hope that shines out of the most forgotten of places.

~Emily

In our desperation for some peace and tranquility, we made India’s holiest city our next destination. As we stepped off of the rusty blue train onto the dirt roads of Varanasi, the densely polluted air, which cast the skyline permanently in sepia tone, was a shock to our lungs and immune systems. If spices and tandoor smoke tickled our noses in the bazaars of New Delhi, the smells of rotting garbage, burning plastic, raw sewage, cow dung and goat piss hit our senses in a wave of uncontrollable nausea as we made our way towards the banks of the Ganges river.

Despite the apparent unattractiveness of this city, Varanasi, one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world (since 1200 BC), is the holiest of seven sacred sites if you’re a Hindu. Every year, hundreds of thousandstravel to Varanasi to wash away a lifetime of sins in the Ganges waters; Every year,thousands of elderly come from all over India to wait for their death in one of the many dimly lit guest houses along the banks. Hindus believe that dying here and being cremated brings moksha - liberation from the cycle of reincarnation.

Snaking past the wasted backstreets, we were introduced to this mystic world as we traversed one of the 100long and broad stairways (known as ghats) that descend down to the western banks of the Ganges. The amount of activity in the river was baffling: men bathed in their underwear while others performed the rituals of puja (offerings) in the holy water; women washed their clothes next to men washing cows; young mothers doused their bodies in the river to heal themselves of disease, while families doused the bodies of dead relatives in preparation for cremation. Along the ghats, makeshift tents became the homes of religious sadhus - Hindu monks who have renounced all forms of earthly pleasures in order to devote their lives to their god(s). Some sadhus take an oath of silence, sitting idle and naked, only covered in a film of white dust – ashes from those recently cremated.

Some sights are more disturbing than others, and with so many rituals of life and death in plain sight, it’s often hard to look and to look away all at the same time. At one “burning ghat,” we watched dozens of men performing the rites of cremation – some carried the wood to burn; others weighed it to calculate the price of cremation; still others carried the swathed corpses on straw stretchers down to the water. (We later learned that when families can’t afford enough burning wood, the remaining corpse is left for the flesh eating river turtles to finish off).

Every day 250 bodies are cremated here, and as we stood watching six charred bodies burn, the reflection of the flames danced on the river and the smoke (vaguely reminiscent of barbeque) rose and meshed with the other smells in the damp air. It’s not every day you see the waning of death before your eyes, or smell it on your skin. But in Varanasi, the fullness of life and death are experienced in so many seemingly impossible ways by both young and old, poor and rich, devout and irreverent, Hindu and foreigner alike. And just like our experience with the rest of India thus far, though in a slightly different way, it has left us with a greater sense of mystery and confusion for this country; with far more questions than answers.

~Emily

We’ve traveled for almost 8 months across the Middle East, Africa, and South America with a seemingly endless supply of enthusiasm and excitement, but in only 4 days, India has broken us. We realized this as we made a desperate beelinetowardsa Pizza Hut we saw…seeking any type of refuge from outside chaos that we could find. As we somberly munched on paneer makhani pizza and masala potato wedges– we couldn’t wait for our train that afternoon that would take us somewhere new.

Twenty-eight different people tried to scam us out of money in our first three days in India according to our count. In fact, we can’t recall any interaction with an Indian that didn’t result in an attempt to do so. Some of the more notable examples include:

1. Checking into a counterfeit hotel with the same name as the well rated one in the Lonely Planet guide – except it wasn’t the same hotel. They even gave us a fake map with other counterfeit agencies on it.

2. After hiring a rickshaw to take us to the official train ticket office, our drivertook us to three scam travel agents in a row to book our tickets, telling us each one was the official one – then I was ignored by a corrupt policeman when I asked him where we were.

3. We asked our hotel for a recommendation for a restaurant and were immediately ushered to a friend’s roof who cooked miserable food for us at obscene prices.

4. After telling our pushy driver we did not want to be ushered to anymore shops (we realized halfway through that he would get commission for anything we purchased), we were taken to visit the “official government museum of music” which turned out to just be another store selling preposterously priced sitars made in China.

5. While walking to the subway, I was assaulted by an “ear doctor” who jammed a Q-tip in my ear before I knew what was going on and began trying to sell me pills to fix my ear problems.

Hoping to cut our losses and salvage our impressions of India, we ate as much curry and tandoori chicken as we could and immediately left New Delhi. Unfortunately, we were no less hassled as we made the circuit around India’s “golden triangle” (The golden triangle is the most visited part of India, and includes the cities of New Delhi, Agra and Jaipur – we figured we couldn’t come to India without seeing them). Every side of this triangle became a battle to navigate unsavory touts, scams and hoaxes.

As much as I wanted to immerse myself in the chaos of New Delhi, savoring the death defying rickshaw rides, sneezing and coughing my way through spice markets, enjoying the freshlassis and curries…as much as I wanted to revel in the grandeur of the TajMahal at sunrise, or appreciate the Moghul Forts and the Persian and Kashmir art – all I could think about was how to defend myself from the next scam attempt.

We thought we were prepared for India - and technically we were, but not for the psychological toll it would take to constantly be on the defense. If Africa had softened our hearts and given us faith in humanity – India isbeginning to take us in the opposite direction. I hope for us and for India, that we find a different side of it once we venture beyond this “golden triangle”.

~Tim

Buenos Aires is a city brimming with passion, so much so that it’s hard notto fall in love with it. Whether it’s the tango, parillas (barbeques), futbol, matés or the endless public displays of affection you witness everywhere you go, the “porteños” as they call themselves, are proud of their city and are not shy about letting the world know what they think or wearing their heart on their sleeves. In comparison to everywhere else we’ve been in South America, this place was refreshing – late nights and slow mornings, artisanal food, strong coffee and a city full of people who didn’t seem to give a crap where you came from, what you wore, where you worked, or what you did – you were just accepted. In many ways, it reminded us of New York City.

I have always imagined Buenos Aires to be this magical city where sultry, late night tangos would overtake the dimly lit cobblestoned streets and where you couldn’t help but get drawn into the romance. My romance with the tango began with an 86 year old porteño who begged Tim to allow him a dance with me. And as I awkwardly attempted to follow the complicated steps and feel the sway of the music, I knew as foolish as I looked and felt, I was living in a moment close to what I had always imagined this place to be like.

But as much as passion may exude out of the seductive steps of the tango or the screams from the bleachers of futbol games, passion also rises from the throats of everyday workers, who march daily between the Parliament building and the Presidents’ house, in over 30 organized protests that take place each week; cries for housing for the poor, for teacher pay raises, for rights of indigenous people, for a government to help stabilize their economy. For as much passion porteños feel for their culture and city, an equal amount of passionate distaste is shown and felt for their own President, government and political past. In a story that is similar but even more extreme than Chile’s, over 30,000 people “were disappeared” from Argentina under their military dictatorshipin the 1970s. During this time, torture and execution were the preferred tactics of their corrupted government, (with the help of the US), targeting anyone who was thought to oppose the government, particularly the young and fervent. To this day and for over three decades now, the mothers of children that “disappeared” still march weekly in front of the President’s house, a house that has a permanent barricade built in front of it because the protests are so frequent.

Argentina is a young democratic nation that feels somewhat like a dysfunctional family trying to find the right working balance. But perhaps it’s this political mess that Argentina has found itself in that has fueled the passionate nature of its people and has given shape to the identity of its culture.

~Emily

And the winner is…

Time for a contest!