The Hike

Perhaps the toughest difference between India and Southeast Asia is that in south Asia we can not fly out to our sites in helicopters. This resulted in us having to hike for two days to get to the base camp.

Getting ready to set out.

We hiked through fields of grain.

This is where I slept at the intermediate over night camp. We were lucky and it did not rain that night.

I am not going to lie. It kicked our butts. I am proud of the accomplishment. While I was certainly not the fastest hiker, I was always somewhere near the front, which is not bad for a civilian science geek.

Flight to the Abor Hills

After a delay in Dibrugarh due to getting all of our final permits, we finally flew on to a small town in the Abor Hills to the north of the Brahmanputra River. The image below from google earth shows the large braided channel. It is about 5-6 miles wide at Dibrugarh.


This is what the river looks like when you are flying over it in a helicopter.



This is a panorama of the Abor Hills as we circled in for our landing.


The helo's shadow on the trees.

Hindu Deities

Hinduism is a very large and diverse religion. For an outsider not raised in the tradition it can be difficult to understand and down-right complicated and confusing at times. The deities in particular. While there is one god, Bhagavan/Ishvara, there are numerous manifestations of this god in terms of Avatars and Devas and Devis. There are 10 main avatars, 23 primary devas (male deities) and three principle devis (female deities). There are also often multiple forms of each of the Devas and Devis, all of which have unique names and are depicted differently. The devas and devis also have numerous avatars, each with their own name. Oh, and the different sects and branches of Hinduism places varying levels of importance on all of the things that I just mentioned. See what I mean by complicated.

The numerous deities are represented in countless iconographies which are displayed in almost all aspects of daily life. Fortunately, these common artistic manifestations be appreciated without having to understand all of the subtle intricacies.

A Vishnu tile outside a temple. Vishnu is the all pervading essence of all beings in the past, present, and future.

A Durga outside of a temple. Durga is the one who can redeem an individual in times of extreme distress. She is also the embodiment of creative feminine force.

An intricate ceramic depiction of the elephant-headed god of luck, Ganesha.

Hanuman, the monkey king, who famously helped Rama defeat the evil king Ravana.

Kali, and incredibly powerful warrior is often considered to be the goddess of death. At the same time she is also thought of as the goddess of fertility because she is considered to be the controller of eternal energy. The statue above was inside of a small shrine along the river. The statue below was in a public park.

Small pictures and paintings of the various deities were

Shops and Stalls

One of the best things about exploring a city is seeing what is available for purchase. A traveler is surrounded by a brilliant rainbow of color, varieties of aromas both enticing and repulsive, and a cacophony of sounds including ringing bicycle bells, hawkers selling their wares, and people haggling in seemingly incomprehensible tongues.

As usual, I did some serious damage at the fabric store

Hand embroidered Kashmiri shawls.

A fruit stall next to a religious paraphernalia merchant.

The spice guy.

Much to my dismay, I forgot to take a picture of the chai shop where I purchased tea with the goal of making the same delicious beverage at home that I had been drinking while in India.

Details of my chai recreation adventures will appear in a future post.

Cows

It is time to discuss cows. Yes, the sacred cows according to Hinduism. For the most part, Hindus do not eat cows. They do milk them, but on the whole they seemed to be treated with a mild neglect and were allowed to wander around wherever they liked; and I do mean wherever.

Hangin' with the guys.

Checking out the fabric store.

This cow was just standing in the middle of a major street.

Regardless of wherever they may roam, they are NEVER harassed. They will be gently pushed out of a shop if they have wandered into too far, but they can lie down in the middle of the busiest road and will not get touched. Drivers would hit a human before they hit a cow.


One of the most interesting things about the sacred cows is that they are left to forage on the piles of trash that accumulate around the city. The piles are left on the street for a couple days as they accumulate so that the cows have somethings to eat. When the pile gets too big, it is burned. The one shown below was about 50 meters from our hotel and it was not uncommon to see up to 6 cows, 4 dogs, and numerous chickens dining at the same time.

Dibrugarh

After two nights in Bangkok we flew on to New Delhi where we remained for approximately 10 hours before pushing on to Dibrugarh, Assam Pradesh, India. This is where the waiting game began. While the final approvals for all of our permits were getting taken care of we had a few days to explore the small city.

Map of India with Dibrugarh highlighted by a red oval.

Our hotel sat on the south bank of the Brahmanputra River, which cuts a massive six mile wide braided channel through the Assam Valley. The hotel had a very large rooftop patio that we spent a lot of time on. It afforded wonderful views of both the river and the town.

View to the north over the Brahmanputra River from our hotel roof.

View to the south over the city of Dibrugarh from our hotel roof.

In our attempt to fill the time, we started a rock climbing training regiment using a set of rock rings. The training involved a ten minute workout combining pull-ups and hanging from the various sized pockets. It kicked our butts at first, but as time went along we got much stronger.

Feeling the burn during a 10-second offset bent-arm hang.

We also got out and explored the town on foot. In some respects Dibrugarh was very much what I anticipated India to be and in other facets it was not what I expected at all. As I figured, it was noisy, crowded, dirty, and very dynamic. The traffic on the main streets was very intense and the general rule was mass makes right. The larger the object the more right of way it had. Pedestrians were expected to get out of the way.

A typical street in the city center.

For long distance shipping. These trucks, affectionately called lorries due to the British, had to have been made in the 30s and 40s.

I expected the city to be dirty, but not to the extent that it was. There are no public trash cans. When you finish with a wrapper, water bottle, piece of paper, or a plastic bag you simply drop it wherever you are. Street, gutter, sidewalk. It didn't matter. Eventually someone would come along, collect the recyclables, and sweep the rest into a big pile. Eventually, after the pile of trash has accumulated over a few days, it is burned at night.

Playing cricket on a giant pile of trash between two buildings.

A stream that runs through the middle of town.

One of the most unexpected things I immediately noticed about Dibrugarh is that the population does not look very "Indian" like you see in Baliwood movies. Because the city is so far east and tucked between China, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Burma a large portion of the population looks very "Sino-tibetan/SE Asian". I would say that the split is somewhere around 50:50. I also did see a few people who looked as if they had varying mixtures of the two gene pools.

India Basics

Time for a geography lesson:

1. India is the 7th largest country in the world (1,269,210 square miles).
2. It is 1,200 miles from west to east.
3. It has one time zone, set to UTC+05:30. Yes, the half hour.
   
4. It has 28 states (pradesh) and 7 union territories.
5. 7 of these states comprise the "northeast". They are that small chunk of India wedged between Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, and China.
6. Of those seven, the two states I spent time in were Assam and Arunachal.
   
7. India has 1,198,003,000 people (2nd behind China).
8. There are two official languages, 22 constitutional languages, and countless languages spoken by much smaller groups of people.
9. It is governed by a parliamentary democracy.
10. India is the birthplace of the Dharmic religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism.
11. 80% of the population is Hindu.
12. 13.5% of the population is Muslim. The only country with more Muslims than India is Indonesia.
13. Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and the Bahá'í Faith are also present as well.
    

The main point that India is VERY big, VERY diverse, and VERY VERY dynamic.

Movin' On Up

The last time I came through Bangkok, I was a poor grubby backpacker staying hostels a guesthouses along Khao San Road. Times have changed. Somewhat. I know that I am still grubby, but at least I am now staying in much nicer accommodation on Wireless Road near Siam Square.

In the States we have yellow rubber duckys. In Thailand, they have elephants!

Too cute!

Jim Thompson's House

Due to last minute changes to my recent trip I spent a couple of night in Bangkok on my way to India. I managed to get out and see a few of the sights that I had not seen on my previous trips to Bangkok.


Jim Thompson was an American designer who traveled to Thailand just after the end of WWII as a member of the OSS (precursor to the CIA). While in Bangkok, he discovered the nearly lost art of hand woven Thai silk. After exiting military service he returned to Southeast Asia to bring the industry back to life. He is generally credited with bringing Thai silk to the attention to European and American fashion.


He build a beautiful house which now sits close to the middle of the city along one of the many canals. It is a traditional house on raised stilts as protection against seasonal floods. He also collected a lot of very nice Buddhist art including stone sculpture and tapestries. It is a quite peaceful oasis amidst the chaos that is Bangkok.


He went for a walk in the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia on Easter Sunday, March 26, 1967, and disappeared. He was never seen again.

Home from India

I have been in India for work over the last 50 days or so. I got home today. Now that I am back I am going to be posting a whole bunch of pictures of the adventure.

To start off, here is the giant pile of gear. As long time readers may remember, I have a habit of posting pictures of the gear that I pack for each trip.

Here is all of the gear that I took for a month long stay in a base camp in the foothills of the Himalayas at 9,000 feet above sea level.

Mauna Loa and Hualalai

High Altitude Training

So this is a first for my blog despite the fact that I have been writing it on and off for more than four years now. A post about Hawaii!

Sunrise from the Onizuka Visitor Center.

My next mission for work is to the eastern foothills of the Himalayas in India (more about that in a future post). As a result some of us who are going on the mission were sent out to the Big Island of Hawaii for training in basic climbing/mountaineering techniques and high altitude conditioning.

Lodging at PTA

The inside of the lodging.

We flew out to the Big Island last Thursday and drove up to the Pohakuloa Training Area, an army installation in the saddle between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa at about 6000'. We spent Thursday afternoon and all day Friday going over basic climbing techniques including knots, ascending a fixed line, rappelling, belaying, etc... In the evenings were had classes on altitude induced illnesses. We also went out for two short hikes.

Tying knots on the rope corral.

Saturday morning we drove up to the Onizuka Visitor Center located at about 9300'. Over the course of Saturday and Sunday we practiced steep earth patient movement, or how to move an injured person on tough terrain. We also completed two more hikes that were slightly harder than the first couple.

Most tourists to the big island simply drive from their resorts at sea level up to the visitors' center, wait an hour, and then drive to the top of Mauna Kea. The point of us spending four days acclimatizing was that we were planning on hiking from 9300' at Onizuka to 13796' at the top. The extra waiting time and short hikes allowed us to stack red blood cells, which carry oxygen. Experienced mountaineers are probably thinking "four days is way too many in that situation". Please remember that I work for the U.S. military, for which safety is always the number one concern.

So at 7:00 on Monday, 28 September 2009 eleven guys set out to hike the Humu`ula trail to the top of Mauna Kea.

Long shadows of early morning

Looking south to Mauna Loa.

Lots of lava field that had to be crossed.

Big O, still going strong.

Almost there...

U.S.G.S survey marker.

Hikers at the top.

Northeast view from the top.

The hike was tough, but there were no technical sections. It was a long slow hike across about 7 miles of shadeless lava fields. Aside from the practical skills I learned three very important things. First, I am going to be able to handle the altitude in India. Second, I will have to take my foot off of the accelerator when it comes to the pace of excavation. I usually like to run my sites at 100 mph, but I am going to have to dial it back. Third, mental abilities are hampered due to altitude. Simple word games and basic multiplication that would normally be very easy at sea level are very hard when their is not much oxygen. This translates to me needing to take more time with my notes and evidence collection in the field.