Below is an actual conversation I had with a guy I met on the bus on the way to Kashmir. His name is Pushkar and, as he likes to tell EVERYBODY, he is from Punjab state of India. He is very proud to be from Punjab and touted his sharp intelligence as evidence that he is Punjabi. Imagine the voice of Abu, from The Simpsons, whenever you read his voice.
Pushkar: What are you reading?
Ben: A Train To Pakistan by Khushwant Singh - a novel I picked up in Pune. I think it's pretty well known here, right?
Pushkar: Never heard of it. I don't read novels. I read scientific texts and communication journals. Since I am a communications officer on board a ship, I must maintain knowledge of such important subjects.
Ben: That's good, but novels can teach you a lot about -
Pushkar: I am an expert in communications and I can solve any communication problem that could arise. Ask me a problem.
Ben: Ask you a communication problem...? I'm not sure what you mean.
Pushkar: Say you are stranded in the forest with no tools. How would you communicate with others.
Ben: I guess I'd build a fire and hope that somebody saw the smoke.
Pushkar: No, the forest is too thick. They cannot see your fire. Besides, how will you make the fire? You have no tools!
Ben: I suppose I'd rub sticks together, but ok, what's your solution.
Pushkar: Radio waves travel through the troposphere, so all one needs to do is construct a tower into the troposphere to send out a radio distress signal.
Ben: Wait. Build a tower? How are you going to do that? I thought you said you didn't have any tools?
Pushkar: Yes, I will use a sharp stone to cut down trees.
Ben: Ok - so how tall does this tower need to be to reach the troposphere?
Pushkar: 200 meters high.
(At this, he rests his case with a confident smile, leans back in his chair and looks at me like I'm a struggling freshman engineer student.)
Ben: So you're telling me that you're going to build a 200 meter tower - roughly equivalent to a 60 storey building - by yourself, using logs cut down by a sharp stone?
Pushkar: Yes.
Ben: You realize that it takes quite a bit of engineering and design raise a structure up 200 meters and that it would take quite a bit of steel or concrete to make it stay up, right?
(At this point, I was ignoring HOW he would transmit radio signals if he could get the tower up. I assumed he could fashion a microphone and wires out of pine cones and grass, or something.)
Pushkar: The human body can do amazing things when someone is in danger. I have read about women picking up automobiles to rescue their babies! Therefore, I could build a 200 meter tower if my life depended on it..
I dropped the conversation at this point. The two of us had MANY arguments very similar to this one. Pushkar embodied the danger in giving someone who was otherwise superstitious and acted on emotion access to something like the Discovery channel. He had picked up some scientific jargon from his studies and, mixed with a little Bear Grylles, he thought he was master of the world.
I met Pushkar and his father in a jeep from Jammu that went over the mountains to Srinagar - the largest city in the Kashmir valley. Our trip should've taken about 5 hours, but after 11 hours of traffic jam caused by landslides, our jeep stopped in Banihal for the night, about 3 hours short of Srinagar. I liked Pushkar's Dad. He was a teacher in a little village in the Kashmir valley and seemed to know his way around. I happily took his invitation to stay with them for the night. I have found that it is very important to make friends when travelling alone. Especially in a place like India, people prey on lone travellers and will scam you. I've found that it's better to move in packs here, and I'd rather choose my travelling partners on my own terms.
The above conversation occurred that night in the Himaliya Hotel in Banihal. Despite his father being a confident, silent, austere man, Pushkar, I came to learn, was an out of control brat who craved attention and wanted everyone in that little almost-Kashmiri truck stop of a town to know that he was from Punjab. Pushkar's sermons at the dinner table about how worthless Kashmiris were also unsettled me. He dismissed my protests to him to be quiet by saying that nobody there spoke English. He was probably right.
India is full of regional rivalries and, while the Punjabis and Kashmiris don't necessarily have it out for each other, given the situation in Kashmir, I thought it would be best to just lay low and keep quiet. Pushkar's father thought so, too, but he didn't seem to have any control over his chest-thumping, 20 year old piss-ant of a son.
The next morning I rode on with them to Srinigar where we parted ways. They went on to the father's village of Bandipore and I stayed in Srinigar to stay the week with my couchsurfing host. Despite Pushkar and his father's invitations to me to come visit, I really didn't plan on going to see them. Pushkar seemed way too volatile and way too much of a liability in a place like Kashmir. Even thought it's pretty quiet there now, I didn't want to take the risk.
But my host in Srinigar turned out to be a wash. He was a tour guide who was just using couchsurfing as a medium to attract business. After two days with him, I was disgusted by his constant attempts to get money out of me, so I started reconsidering the Pushkar option...
I called Pushkar's father and discussed the situation with him. He ensured me that it would be perfectly fine if I went up to spend a couple of days with them. Srinigar was just another city full of tourists and Kashmiri tour guides starving and ravenous after 20 years of bad business. I wanted to see the Kashmiri countryside, so I decided to give it a chance and go see Pushkar 2 hours away in Bandipore.
I came to find out that Pushkar and his father lived on a Border Security Force base in Bandipore and that his father was a teacher on base. Staying with them, then, meant that I also got to stay on base - a bonus as far as I was concerned, as not many travelers to India get such an inside peek.
The first 24 hours on base went well. I met a lot of the officers, ate mess with the enlisted guys and got lots of tours around base. But then, on the second day, when Pushkar and I tried to leave to go hiking in the mountains nearby, the guard stopped us and started asking questions about me. Later that day, when I was refused access back on base, I found out that during that morning interaction, Pushkar had called the guard a "sister-f***er" and many other bad names that don't translate as well from Hindi. Pushkar assures me that his name-calling was not the cause of my banishment from the base, but I am pretty confident that it is. The next day, even Pushkar had trouble getting back onto base and had to call his father to come let him in.
Luckily, Pushkar had a friend who was local and lived near by. After learning that I couldn't come back on base, Pushkar sent me to stay with this friend. The friend's family was a traditional Kashmiri one that lived in a traditional Kashmiri home. That means no furniture. I was directed into the front room and offered a pillow to sit on. It had been an exhausting day of hiking and dealing with a drunken Pushkar. My banishment from the base was only the last in a string of offences that eventually made me blow up at Pushkar for his arrogance. I was extremely tired and mentally frail when I sat down on the pillow in that Kashmiri house. All I wanted was some water and some sleep.
But seconds after I sat down, the whole family - 9 of them, I counted - filed in and sat around the wall on similar pillows. And stared at me.
I have grown accustomed to people staring at me. It happens to every foreigner on the streets of even big cities in India. We're just fascinating, I suppose. But this was a more extreme case. After my long day, I was not prepared for dealing with this. Hardly anyone spoke English, either, so all we could do, really, was smile and nod back and forth to each other. It felt ridiculous.
Luckily, or so I thought, the electricity went out and it was dark. I could deal with that much better than with 18 eyes staring at me. But then, the woman sitting closest to me turned on a flashlight and set in front of me so that my face was lit up and they could see me better. I could only laugh.
Later on, I thought that it would have been funny and it would have broken the ice much better if I had stood up and danced or something wildly silly but, as I said, I wasn't all there mentally. The best thing I could think of at the moment was to show them pictures on my camera. Indians are fascinated by romance, so I pulled up a picture of Bryn and passed it around telling them that she was my girlfriend. I think they were more fascinated by the digital camera than by the picture of Bryn and me in the Ukraine, but at least it stole the attention away from me and diverted it to the camera. It put a big, goofy grin on my face to think about Bryn and how silly the situation was and how funny and un-tense it would have been if she had been there. I relaxed and let go, and suddenly the staring didn't bother me anymore.
Eventually, they lost interest in me and filed off slowly to go make tea or finish some chores or put babies to bed and from that point on, I was able to deal with family members individually, or in groups of 2 or 3 instead of all nine at once. Despite the initial discomfort, my unexpected stay with that family was wonderful and they were all incredibly kind. They had a beautiful home and surrounding farm that I'll post pictures of later. I'm sure that my last 24 hours spent in Bandipore with them were much better than they would have been had I stayed with Pushkar.
But Pushkar embodies a lesson of travelling. You can't always be with people that you like or want to be around, but sometimes you need to deal with unsavory characters to access unique opportunities. He was just a stupid, insecure kid trying to be a man the Indian way which, unfortunately, is very similar to being a man the 15 year old way in the US. I think it's more important to know how to deal with these kinds of people rather than to dismiss them entirely. Part of the fun of travelling is being exposed to new people, and you can bet that you aren't going to like all of those people.
Pushkar: What are you reading?
Ben: A Train To Pakistan by Khushwant Singh - a novel I picked up in Pune. I think it's pretty well known here, right?
Pushkar: Never heard of it. I don't read novels. I read scientific texts and communication journals. Since I am a communications officer on board a ship, I must maintain knowledge of such important subjects.
Ben: That's good, but novels can teach you a lot about -
Pushkar: I am an expert in communications and I can solve any communication problem that could arise. Ask me a problem.
Ben: Ask you a communication problem...? I'm not sure what you mean.
Pushkar: Say you are stranded in the forest with no tools. How would you communicate with others.
Ben: I guess I'd build a fire and hope that somebody saw the smoke.
Pushkar: No, the forest is too thick. They cannot see your fire. Besides, how will you make the fire? You have no tools!
Ben: I suppose I'd rub sticks together, but ok, what's your solution.
Pushkar: Radio waves travel through the troposphere, so all one needs to do is construct a tower into the troposphere to send out a radio distress signal.
Ben: Wait. Build a tower? How are you going to do that? I thought you said you didn't have any tools?
Pushkar: Yes, I will use a sharp stone to cut down trees.
Ben: Ok - so how tall does this tower need to be to reach the troposphere?
Pushkar: 200 meters high.
(At this, he rests his case with a confident smile, leans back in his chair and looks at me like I'm a struggling freshman engineer student.)
Ben: So you're telling me that you're going to build a 200 meter tower - roughly equivalent to a 60 storey building - by yourself, using logs cut down by a sharp stone?
Pushkar: Yes.
Ben: You realize that it takes quite a bit of engineering and design raise a structure up 200 meters and that it would take quite a bit of steel or concrete to make it stay up, right?
(At this point, I was ignoring HOW he would transmit radio signals if he could get the tower up. I assumed he could fashion a microphone and wires out of pine cones and grass, or something.)
Pushkar: The human body can do amazing things when someone is in danger. I have read about women picking up automobiles to rescue their babies! Therefore, I could build a 200 meter tower if my life depended on it..
I dropped the conversation at this point. The two of us had MANY arguments very similar to this one. Pushkar embodied the danger in giving someone who was otherwise superstitious and acted on emotion access to something like the Discovery channel. He had picked up some scientific jargon from his studies and, mixed with a little Bear Grylles, he thought he was master of the world.
I met Pushkar and his father in a jeep from Jammu that went over the mountains to Srinagar - the largest city in the Kashmir valley. Our trip should've taken about 5 hours, but after 11 hours of traffic jam caused by landslides, our jeep stopped in Banihal for the night, about 3 hours short of Srinagar. I liked Pushkar's Dad. He was a teacher in a little village in the Kashmir valley and seemed to know his way around. I happily took his invitation to stay with them for the night. I have found that it is very important to make friends when travelling alone. Especially in a place like India, people prey on lone travellers and will scam you. I've found that it's better to move in packs here, and I'd rather choose my travelling partners on my own terms.
The above conversation occurred that night in the Himaliya Hotel in Banihal. Despite his father being a confident, silent, austere man, Pushkar, I came to learn, was an out of control brat who craved attention and wanted everyone in that little almost-Kashmiri truck stop of a town to know that he was from Punjab. Pushkar's sermons at the dinner table about how worthless Kashmiris were also unsettled me. He dismissed my protests to him to be quiet by saying that nobody there spoke English. He was probably right.
India is full of regional rivalries and, while the Punjabis and Kashmiris don't necessarily have it out for each other, given the situation in Kashmir, I thought it would be best to just lay low and keep quiet. Pushkar's father thought so, too, but he didn't seem to have any control over his chest-thumping, 20 year old piss-ant of a son.
The next morning I rode on with them to Srinigar where we parted ways. They went on to the father's village of Bandipore and I stayed in Srinigar to stay the week with my couchsurfing host. Despite Pushkar and his father's invitations to me to come visit, I really didn't plan on going to see them. Pushkar seemed way too volatile and way too much of a liability in a place like Kashmir. Even thought it's pretty quiet there now, I didn't want to take the risk.
But my host in Srinigar turned out to be a wash. He was a tour guide who was just using couchsurfing as a medium to attract business. After two days with him, I was disgusted by his constant attempts to get money out of me, so I started reconsidering the Pushkar option...
I called Pushkar's father and discussed the situation with him. He ensured me that it would be perfectly fine if I went up to spend a couple of days with them. Srinigar was just another city full of tourists and Kashmiri tour guides starving and ravenous after 20 years of bad business. I wanted to see the Kashmiri countryside, so I decided to give it a chance and go see Pushkar 2 hours away in Bandipore.
I came to find out that Pushkar and his father lived on a Border Security Force base in Bandipore and that his father was a teacher on base. Staying with them, then, meant that I also got to stay on base - a bonus as far as I was concerned, as not many travelers to India get such an inside peek.
The first 24 hours on base went well. I met a lot of the officers, ate mess with the enlisted guys and got lots of tours around base. But then, on the second day, when Pushkar and I tried to leave to go hiking in the mountains nearby, the guard stopped us and started asking questions about me. Later that day, when I was refused access back on base, I found out that during that morning interaction, Pushkar had called the guard a "sister-f***er" and many other bad names that don't translate as well from Hindi. Pushkar assures me that his name-calling was not the cause of my banishment from the base, but I am pretty confident that it is. The next day, even Pushkar had trouble getting back onto base and had to call his father to come let him in.
Luckily, Pushkar had a friend who was local and lived near by. After learning that I couldn't come back on base, Pushkar sent me to stay with this friend. The friend's family was a traditional Kashmiri one that lived in a traditional Kashmiri home. That means no furniture. I was directed into the front room and offered a pillow to sit on. It had been an exhausting day of hiking and dealing with a drunken Pushkar. My banishment from the base was only the last in a string of offences that eventually made me blow up at Pushkar for his arrogance. I was extremely tired and mentally frail when I sat down on the pillow in that Kashmiri house. All I wanted was some water and some sleep.
But seconds after I sat down, the whole family - 9 of them, I counted - filed in and sat around the wall on similar pillows. And stared at me.
I have grown accustomed to people staring at me. It happens to every foreigner on the streets of even big cities in India. We're just fascinating, I suppose. But this was a more extreme case. After my long day, I was not prepared for dealing with this. Hardly anyone spoke English, either, so all we could do, really, was smile and nod back and forth to each other. It felt ridiculous.
Luckily, or so I thought, the electricity went out and it was dark. I could deal with that much better than with 18 eyes staring at me. But then, the woman sitting closest to me turned on a flashlight and set in front of me so that my face was lit up and they could see me better. I could only laugh.
Later on, I thought that it would have been funny and it would have broken the ice much better if I had stood up and danced or something wildly silly but, as I said, I wasn't all there mentally. The best thing I could think of at the moment was to show them pictures on my camera. Indians are fascinated by romance, so I pulled up a picture of Bryn and passed it around telling them that she was my girlfriend. I think they were more fascinated by the digital camera than by the picture of Bryn and me in the Ukraine, but at least it stole the attention away from me and diverted it to the camera. It put a big, goofy grin on my face to think about Bryn and how silly the situation was and how funny and un-tense it would have been if she had been there. I relaxed and let go, and suddenly the staring didn't bother me anymore.
Eventually, they lost interest in me and filed off slowly to go make tea or finish some chores or put babies to bed and from that point on, I was able to deal with family members individually, or in groups of 2 or 3 instead of all nine at once. Despite the initial discomfort, my unexpected stay with that family was wonderful and they were all incredibly kind. They had a beautiful home and surrounding farm that I'll post pictures of later. I'm sure that my last 24 hours spent in Bandipore with them were much better than they would have been had I stayed with Pushkar.
But Pushkar embodies a lesson of travelling. You can't always be with people that you like or want to be around, but sometimes you need to deal with unsavory characters to access unique opportunities. He was just a stupid, insecure kid trying to be a man the Indian way which, unfortunately, is very similar to being a man the 15 year old way in the US. I think it's more important to know how to deal with these kinds of people rather than to dismiss them entirely. Part of the fun of travelling is being exposed to new people, and you can bet that you aren't going to like all of those people.
