Jacob Resneck’s

DILLINGHAM, Alaska – The story begins in Bangladesh. For the past week it had been a game of hide-and-seek with poodle-sized cockroaches: I would hide, they would seek. I was learning a lot about myself. One such lesson is that I scream like a damsel-in-distress when confronted with an insect larger than my thumb that can scurry at 15 mph. Also that this densely populated country of more than 160 million didn’t really appreciate another nosy journalist in its midst – a representative of the country’s secret police had made that abundantly clear.

So when I saw the job ad for a fisheries reporter for Bristol Bay, Alaska my imagination went wild. I was sitting inside the fortified compound, a whitewashed colonial affair of a mansion that belonged to the family of my new friend and ally, when I came across the want ad: “… will require some in-region travel to remote fishing communities to bring our listeners firsthand accounts from the fishing season as it unfolds from the entire Bristol Bay region. We are looking for the adventurous candidate with at least one year of…” The deadline was the following day.

One month, nine flights and seven countries later I had arrived in Dillingham, Alaska the largest community on Bristol Bay, home to the world’s largest wild salmon fishery. Really it’s the last great run in a world where salmon across the globe have been dying out from overfishing, runoff from farms and development, climate change and general poor stewardship on the part of humans. Bristol Bay is different. Following some over-exuberance in which the fishery was nearly wiped out in the 1940s, the state of Alaska has been closely managing its salmon runs on a day-to-day basis that ensures that enough salmon escape the salmon slaying gill net boats and set nets to ensure there’ll be a run the following season. Alaska Department of Fish and Game technicians literally count the fish as they swim by – I watched them – and that’s recorded as escapement. If enough fish don’t get upriver to be counted as escapement – where they’ll eventually spawn – they shut the fishery down. No ifs buts or what-the-hells. People understand what’s at stake even the fishermen whose livelihoods depend on their catch of the season.

***

Dillingham is not a scenic place. In fact little of the Bristol Bay region could be described as such. It’s low country, mostly tundra with scrub brush and withered conifers that grow on a thin band of soil that covers the permafrost. The community itself has about 2,300 souls or so and much of the buildings are of the corrugated metal modular school of design. What does make it interesting is that it’s predominately Alaskan native – Yup’ik – to be more specific. The native language can be heard in the supermarket aisles and post office. It’s a difficult sounding language to the English ear. It is very guttural with back of the throat sounds and clicks, but it has a lyrical rhythm like one hears in Norse.

***

My employer was the local school district. The radio station KDLG. I’d hit a home run with my cover letter in which I’d cataloged my experiences as a small-town reporter where – and I quote – “most of my life living in very small towns where everyone is in everyone else’s business. It can be challenging as a hard news reporter because accountability is immediate and self-evident when your audience are the very same people that sell you groceries or pour your beer. That’s why it’s important to temper one’s tenacity with a healthy dose of humility and a sense of humor in order to gain confidence and ultimately serve the community.”

For little did I know that just a few months prior KDLG’s news director had made the front page of the Anchorage Daily News for her personal blog in which she mocked the tragic death of a young woman and accused a good portion of the community of being a bunch of incestuous alcoholics. She’s no longer welcome in Dillingham.

But this town is not the horror show detailed in the woman’s blog titled Chilly Hell but it does have its challenges. What saddens me is that as news director of the only news organization in the region this woman was in a unique position to play a positive role in shining a spotlight on the social ills that plague much of rural America and ‘Bush Alaska’ in particular. Instead she chose to belittle her own community and mock her audience. To paraphrase a Russian proverb, one should never spit in a village’s well – for you may one day need to drink from it.

***

Arriving in mid-May there was little color to be seen – the snow had only recently thawed and the sky clouded up and always seemed threatening to open up. In many cases it followed through on its threat and about 80 percent of the summer was a steady drizzle with a brisk wind to back up its bite.

A word or two about Dillingham’s nightlife. Unlike the surrounding villages alcohol can actually be bought and sold – though not on Sunday. Alaska has what is known as the ‘local option’ in which its citizenry can – through referendum – enact or repeal specific liquor laws. Many villages are dry, damp or wet. One can be jailed for even possessing booze in a dry community. You can’t buy drink in a damp town but neither can you be jailed for it and where it’s wet– well, you get the idea.

That’s not to say there aren’t bars in Dillingham. There are exactly two and they are crap for different reasons. Toward the airport is The WillowTree Bar, where the beatnik poet Gary Snyder once wrote these lines in its honor:

Drills chatter full of mud and compressed air
all across the globe,
low-ceilinged bars, we hear the same new songs

All the new songs.
In the working bars of the world.
After you done drive Cat. After the truck
went home.
Caribou slip,
front legs folded first
under the warm oil pipeline
set four feet off the ground –

On the wood floor, glass in hand,
laugh and cuss with
somebody else’s wife
Texans, Hawaiians, Eskimos,
Filipinos, Workers, always
on the edge of a brawl –
In the bars of the world.
Hearing those same new songs
in Abadan,
Naples, Galveston, Darwin, Fairbanks,
White or brown,
Drinking it down,

the pain
of the work
of wrecking the world.

(Probably © Gary Snyder – used without permission).

The Willow is pretty dull. Its main attraction are the $3.50 cans of Keystone Ice and discount shots of Black Velvet (a guaranteed hangover-inducing combination in even the smallest doses). There’s little crowd, little combination and the bandstand remained perpetually underutilized.

In contrast, the Sea Inn (”where you drink so much ’till ya can’t see out”) is likely the only nightspot from Goodnews Bay to Naknek. There are a few, basic elements that make a watering hole enjoyable. In each category this bar goes the distance in being anathema to all.

Expensive drinks, surly service, bad music, patrons that swing from confrontationally friendly to coldly indifferent to outright hostile. After clearing the door check (the Sea Inn has more black t-shirt wearing “greeters” than my hometown bars usually had patrons) I looked across the pulsating mob to the stage. Sitting on a folding chair was a grinning youth with a backward baseball cap receiving a lap dance from an inebriated woman in her 40s that was pushing 300 pounds. It’s an image that’ll be indelibally burned into my subconscious. The sad part was that it was downhill from there. Never again did I see such unabashed hedonism, rather it would be just as loud, just as heaving but never so light-hearted as seeing a 22-year-old being pleasured by a gyrating walrus.

***

But more about the job. As the fisheries reporter it would be my role to keep tabs on the efforts on the bay and file radio reports from the various communities that play host to the legions of fish slayers that pilgrimage each summer from their homeports in places like Astoria, Oregon and Seattle. It’s a short salmon season – the fish sometimes complete the bulk of the run in a 10-day period – so getting access to the fishing boats can be a challenge. The best way we could deduce would be to get aboard a larger “tender” these are 60-120 foot vessels that often work as crab boats in the winter or fish in deepwater when they’re not servicing the smaller salmon boats. They anchor themselves in central locations and the fishing boats deliver their catch after they’re full or the fishery temporarily closes to allow for more fish passage – “escapement” – where the salmon is stored in a refrigerated hold.

Some of these boats are the very same vessels featured in that idiotic ‘reality television’ serial known as ‘The Deadliest Catch.’ My first assignment was on such a boat, the Arctic Dawn, which due to its crew’s rabid Maoist politics (”kill the fatcats!”) we decided to rechristen the ‘Red Dawn.’ As we would anchor off in a sheltered cove waiting for boats to bring us fish, I suggested we commission our own reality TV show called ‘Easiest Catch’ as we sat anchored waiting for boats to bring us the fish.

***

On most of these assignments the fun was getting there. The communities of 300 to a 1,000 people are all off the road system and only accessible by boat or aircraft. The airline Pen Air has a virtual monopoly on air traffic unless you want to hire a bush pilot as a charter. My station KDLG is given a $20,000 annual grant that comes from an organization funded by the fishermen themselves so I had a generous travel budget. Why it costs the same airfare to fly 30 minutes (60 miles) as it would to fly from Anchorage to San Francisco (nearly 3,000 miles) is a question I can’t answer. But then again I’m not an economist and can’t grasp the rationality of the free market.

My first assignment involved touching down in Egegik (population 300) and then literally begging fishermen and whoever would listen to take me out on their boat to deliver me to the Arctic Dawn, the tender that had given me permission to park my overpaid journalistic ass and interview the fishermen as they made their deliveries. That night the tender would steam back to its home port and it would be a mere 25 mile hitchhike back to the airport (I am too good for taxis) and I would be back in Dillingham to file my report for the weekly Bristol Bay Fisheries Report.

It was a top notch crew with good stories, fiery politics and capable cooking that whet my appetite for the tender life. The rest of the season I tried to finagle my way onto the water as much as possible and was successful in many cases. Being deskbound meant phone interviews with seafood economists or biologists which while informative, didn’t have the same pinache as being fed steak dinner on a 120-foot boat adrift in Bristol Bay.

***

It was at the end of the season and the travel budget was running low. My saintly news director had given me the green light to visit the village of Togiak where there was some late fishing. The manager of the main seafood processor was my new buddy having hosted me there before. A Czech who had been coming to Alaska the past half-decade on a student visa, he was a wise cracking, fast-talking Slav that I could relate to. Neither of us could quite figure out what twist of fate had delivered us to the stark, windswept wasteland that is Bristol Bay but both were making the most of it. This guy wasn’t doing badly. He had befriended a number of local families and the cultural exchange between the young Central Europeans and Yup’iks was edifying to behold. On my first trip to Togiak we’d been invited to a traditional sweat lodge called a muk’ee though I still can’t pronounce it properly. On our way up to the muk’ee which is a wooden hut with a woodburning or gas furnace powered sauna we watched as the Togiak Volunteer Fire Department sprayed water on the smoldering wreckage that was all that was left of a neighborhood muk’ee. They’re a bit of a fire hazard, these muk’ees.

This would be my second proper visit to Togiak. No visit to the muk’ee time unfortunately. It was a shame – I had enjoyed hearing stories from the shriveled elders whose pain threshold was exponentially stronger than mine. There’s a macho element to the muk’ee where one conditions themselves as to how much heat they can stand. It isn’t just the air – boiling water is poured over the coals and the scalding steam is something many people can’t bear for long. I for one couldn’t and had to constantly excuse myself to cool off in the cold midnight sun that would stubbornly refused to set properly until mid-July.

***

The fish processing plant was in full swing and run by 40-odd efficient Czech university students working side by side with Togiak locals. These hardworking Central Europeans work hard all summer in Alaska so they can blow it in a weekend in Manhattan. They come from Turkey, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Russia and Kazakhstan to name a few and they are the main labor force in the canneries of Bristol Bay that a hundred years ago had imported labor from China, many of whom rest in shallow graves protruding from eroding hillsides on the bluffs around Dillingham, victims of a particularly virulent strain of influenza that displaced the entire settlement of Dillingham about 90 years ago.

My goal was to get back on a tender to interview the skippers of fishing boats. The 18-year-old sister of the seafood plant’s office administrator was going out to a set net site the following morning with her father and after making a nuisance of myself they agreed to drop me off at a tender I’d reached on the radio. They were to pick me up before the next tide.

Fishermen are by nature a superstitious lot. They don’t like to tempt fate. So it was with some trepidation I learned the name of the vessel: the Fate Hunter. Strike one. It was only later that I’d learn that they’d changed the name – a big no-no according to fishermen lore and a sure-fire way to fall out of favor with the sea gods. The original name, the skipper told me, “was something Catholic – Mary-something…” This wouldn’t be good. I suppose the third strike would be the curse of having a woman aboard – the captain’s girlfriend – which is also reputedly bad luck though that superstitition is rapidly falling out favor in these more enlightened times.

So when the set netters ditched me and returned to Togiak without me I wasn’t all that surprised. I was on a cursed vessel and might as well see where this hunter of fate would take me.

The upshot was that the tender soon received order to return with its fish to Dillingham. Rather than a 45-minute skiff ride and a 30-minute flight, it’d be a 20-hour journey. But hey, sea travel is the most elegant form of transportation and we had plenty of movies and fully stocked galley. So I’d be a little late for work – roll with the punches.

Also aboard was a 31-year-old Tanzanian whose business card recently boasted his recent graduation from Columbia University. He was on a fact-finding mission to Alaska as his family ran its own seafood operation in eastern Africa. He was an interesting chap so I tried not to resent him for having already claimed the extra bunk.

It was 4:30 a.m. A crew member and I were on watch in the wheelhouse. Actually we were watching some schlocky romantic comedy. All around us was the stark windswept treeless shores across the boiling dark sea. But to escape these harsh realities and relieve their eventual boredom, these grizzled seafarers spend hours watching and rewatching soppy romantic comedies on DVDs. They seemed genuinely hurt when I failed to appreciate the poignancy of Avatar and kept making cracks about a Starship Troopers-meets-The Smurfs saga.

Up in the wheelhouse, we were engrossed in some schmaltzy romantic comedy and the lead blonde was fretting about something that would certainly be resolved in the next 80 minutes.

The Fate Hunter lurched violently to the right and we stopped moving. This wasn’t good. Looking at the GPS we realized we’d strayed off course and had hit one of the many sand bars in the narrow channel.

The captain appeared in the wheelhouse, his hair askew, and immediately tried to set things right. We were on a flood tide – so the water was rising – but he gunned the engine repeatedly in a desperate attempt to free us. One of the lower ranking crew members muttered the folly in this as he could do more damage to the rudder but knew better than to open his mouth. After some time we were free from the sand bar and drifting but had no steering. A cable had snapped or bolts had sheered off – the crew couldn’t be sure – and had no choice but to drop anchor in the middle of the bay and await rescue.

***

The “three hour tour” ended up into a 36-hour saga as tide times and commercial realities meant we’d have to be towed by two separate vessels. One good thing about commercial fishermen as they are always ready to lend each other a hand. On a previous trip a tender towed a fishing boat whose motor had failed and they had been fishing for a competitor; it didn’t matter.

Coming into port that evening I was relieved feel my rubber boot hit land. I couldn’t complain this crew had spent the vast majority of their time being pitched around in that rusty tub since the middle of June. To compensate I made a booze run in a borrowed truck so they could find solace while waiting to see if their boat could be repaired.

***

It was this week that one of the biggest stories in the nation broke twenty miles away and I could do little to cover it. Filling in as the morning host I was tied to the operating board from 6:30 to 9 a.m. I awoke at 6 a.m. to hear something on NPR about a plane lost near Bristol Bay. Crap! I high-tailed it to the station. Just days before KDLG had canceled its membership to the Associated Press and we no longer had the wire. We did have the internet and I tried to scan for information while doing the normal chores of the morning host, compiling the weather, local bulletins, etc. All I knew was that a plane was missing – there were little details but former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens was thought to have been aboard.

Instead of reading the weather, I filled my normal 30-second spots with what was on the wires and careful to attribute the information. I was fielding calls from bureaus of national networks looking for information but there was little I could say. It was hours ahead in Seattle, Chicago, Washington – the nation had already had its coffee and wanted answers. I’d been awake 45 minutes and was scrambling frantically to get some kind of local report. At about 7 a.m. a fire department member called and gave me some sketchy details. The next phone call was from a Fish and Game biologist to remind me to turn my microphone off – I had been broadcasting myself talking on the phone to the fire department guy.

Thirty minutes later the news reporter and normal morning host Adam arrived. “Ted Stevens isn’t gonna die on my watch!” he proclaimed. He has a car and was able to get out to the airport. He was chased off by surly airport officials but not before getting a quick snippet from an NTSB investigator that had arrived and we were able to do a live 2-way at 8:30 a.m. which made me feel like we were at last covering the story.

As the living were extracted the story moved to Anchorage. The governor was to make a statement at 11:30 a.m. – which in an election year I took to mean the senator was dead and Gov. Parnell wanted to sound gubernatorial and make the somber announcement. The Stevens family preempted him by about an hour and the governor was denied some cheap political points.

The frustrating part came as we called around to local people involved in the search-and-rescue. They either wouldn’t talk on tape or didn’t bother to call back. Only later would I read their named in national newspapers or attributed in national networks. So much for the homefield advantage. But this is not a community where people relish hearing their own voice on the radio. Not even me, but the difference I suppose is that I get paid.

As the media frenzy died down that afternoon and as soon as the names of those aboard were released, I figured the story would move to where it really had been center all along: Anchorage and Washington. Those are the financial and political centers of Alaska and the U.S. and it was only by fate that the crash had happened so close to Dillingham anyway. None of those aboard had strong local connections even though many people here do I have a story or two they can relate about meeting the late senator.

So with the day’s work done, I wandered into the Sea Inn to meet a fisherman friend. I felt like I deserved a diversion after early morning madness. A friendly local in town from his job away in Anchorage began buying us shots of Crown Royal. He was immensely friendly but as the conversation flowed his mood changed and he sat with his back away from me. I asked what was wrong. Apparently I thought I had made some slight against Native Alaskan culture. I was taken aback; I hadn’t, even in fun made any wisecracks on what is a very sensitive subject and was dismayed to have somehow hurt his feelings. He wouldn’t explain his anger and I didn’t want to press as I realized the whisky may have something to do with his darkening mood. I went to the toilets and came back to find my friend gone. “Your buddy left,” a observed a woman from down the bar as she saw me looking puzzled. His shot of Crown Royal sat untouched on the bar. My ex-Native friend still scowled. I retreated out of there – but not without shamelessly downing the whisky of the friend who’d done a runner. I fell into a deep sleep at 7:30 p.m. that evening.

***

Now my time in Bristol Bay – three months it’s been – is drawing to a close. Tomorrow I fly out to Anchorage and then California. But this fishy public radio is turning into somewhat of a career. For during my tenure here I managed to land my job as a full-time news reporter at a community radio station on Kodiak Island south of the mainland. It all starts in September.

Sitting on that mat in Bangladesh I’d never imagined that a hastily fired cover letter could set things in motion that might bring me back up to Alaska. But that’s why the name of the ship ‘Fate Hunter’ still doesn’t make sense to me. For we can’t hunt that to which we are already destined. For we are fate’s quarry, not the other way around.

Jaco out

DILLINGHAM, Alaska – When the voice at the other end of the line said he was a police inspector curious about my activities in Bangladesh, I can’t say I was too surprised. I had been warned by foreigners and locals alike that poking around the country would attract suspicion from the authorities and that surveillance of citizens was commonplace. But being a reporter working on a tourist visa a mere 72 hours into my 30-day visa made it a particularly delicate situation.

And how did they get my number? I’d only had the phone for a couple of days. I had just wrapped up a meeting with the International Labour Organization, a UN agency given the unenviable task of trying to promote human rights and common decency for the country’s workforce. The ILO’s task in Bangladesh is not an enviable one. As the most densely populated country in the world, Bangladesh is hemmed in by India and Myanmar (Burma). It exists as a virtual prison for nearly 180 million souls hemmed in by the creation of East Pakistan when colonial India was split along religious lines. Since the “War of Liberation” in 1971 East Pakistan has become Bangladesh, a predominately Muslim nation of Bengalis while their Hindu brethren live across the border in India’s West Bengal with Kolkata (Calcutta) as its capital.

The ILO bureaucrats had all filed out of the conference room as I mumbled my replies to the inspector who wanted to know what exactly I was up to as a tourist in Bangladesh. There was no way in hell I was gonna tell them. For what drew me to Bangladesh was the golden goose of the country: the garment industry. Since the late 1970s and early 1980s this impoverished nation has become a massive sweatshop for international textiles and more recently for big name fashion brands like H&M, Levi’s and secondary brands like Wal-Mart.

As I said, I had been in the country a mere few days and had spent the bulk of my time sitting in Dhaka’s infamous traffic jams shuttling myself from one NGO office to the next meeting with smiling, good-natured self-proclaimed labour leaders that gave one the impression they didn’t know what the hell they were talking about. For Bangladesh is the land of the NGO. As one of the poorest nations in the Asia, it is the place to be and be seen if you’re of the Oxfam, War on Want, CARE set. There are literally thousands registered all vying for foreign funding including some forty-plus labor unions that claim to represent garments workers. But when I would explain my concerns about garment worker health by these so-called labor leaders, I would be met – at best – by quizzical looks, cups of tea and promises to “look into the matter.” That said, the tea wasn’t bad.

***

The conversation with the inspector was brief. He had sounded surprised when I told him I was a tourist – something I took as an ill-omen as he’d probably been tipped off that there was a foreign journalist skulking about. I didn’t feel ill-at-ease until I looked at my phone and realized there was no record of the phone call in the log. A number had flashed on the screen – too quickly for me to jot down before I answered – but now there was nary a trace. Yet as a cocksure U.S. citizen I figured the worst thing that could happen is I’d be deported. I’d seen Midnight Express and (still) dismiss it as Greco-Armenian propaganda; I was interviewing registered NGOs, not wearing a girdle made of hashish. But I didn’t want to get my friends in Bangladesh in trouble – and therein lay the problem. I’d been staying with a very well-established and wealthy family who I’d been given a letter of introduction from through a mutual friend. Hosting a foreign journalist could prove a liability for the family and its business interests. Not wanting to attract undue attention from politically connected secret policemen which could bring retribution against the family, I immediately checked back into a hotel.

****

Not one to forsake a dinner invitation, I was was dining with my new friends at about 10 a.m. when a new number flashed on the phone. Special Branch again. Where are you now? They wanted to know. “I’m on my way back to the hotel,” I said. The reply was immediate: We’d like to meet with you. Tonight. I became the haughty tourist. “I’m about to go to bed. But I can meet you first thing in the morning – at my hotel.” That seemed to placate the inspector. Who was that? My host inquired. “Umm… that was Special Branch. Again.” The color drained from her face. She gave me a hug good bye as I left to meet my fate. Yet despite me being a political liability, the dinner invitations kept coming – secret police be damned – and was continuously plied with tea, sympathy and beef biryani.
***

It was pitch black as I motored back to the hotel. The power was out in the neighborhoods, not an unlikely occurrence as the temperature has been rising leading to air conditioner use, and the streets were chock full of desperate-looking internal migrants who had fled their villages seeking work in the sprawling metropolis of Dhaka, population 18.5 million. I was riding in what’s known as a CNG – it’s a three-wheeled contraption fueled by compressed natural gas – hence the acronym. Now a word or two on the CNGs of Dhaka. Several months back it was mandated – presumably for safety reasons – that all passengers be enclosed in a metal cage. The result is that the passenger is often locked inside a wrought iron grid and can only be let out by the driver. A friend told me a recent anecdote of a CNG tipping over in a flood – this was before the cages were mandated – and he and the driver were able to swim to safety. Had the cage been installed both would have surely drowned. So CNGs in Dhaka are not my preferred mode of transport. Some found the cage reassuring, others told me not to take them late at night as crooked CNG drivers could drive you to a back alley and you’d be at the mercy of the guy and his accomplices.

So we’re motoring through the not-so-deserted streets riddled with the day’s filth and debris with brown, grey and black high rises mostly built during the East Pakistan era. Just before reaching the hotel, a traffic policeman flagged us down. Fortunately the cage was unlocked and I was able to climb out to observe the proceedings. I felt that – as a foreigner – I may be able to keep the cop from shaking down the hapless driver for too hefty of a bribe. The policemen looked malevolent with their khaki uniforms, long bamboo whacking sticks and low-slung bolt-action rifles. Their eyes were afire with the power vested in them by virtue of the arms they carried and the impunity that a police officer operates in a developing country. In essence, they scared the shit out of me. I didn’t see any money exchanged but the look on their face told me that downtown Dhaka was not somewhere you wanted to be after hours.

***

As I walked into the lobby I knew right away something wasn’t right. The bellhops and front desk were eyeing at me strangely. I pressed the button for the elevator and as I waited for it to make its descent the stares were unabated. I couldn’t stand it and asked what it was all about. Men have been here. Asking about you, the desk manager told me. He seemed concerned. I asked if he had left his details. He produced a business card from a Special Branch inspector; I hastily copied down in my notebook in detail and thanked him.

***

When I got into my room I was not alone. With the flick of the switch, several poodle-sized cockroaches scurried – not to safety – but just this way and that. I am not normally a squeamish person but when an insect is larger than my thumb and has no outward fear of my presence… I’ll admit it, I lost it.

Trying to move my luggage to high ground I realized they were everywhere. I was ashamed to hear myself crying out audibly as I shook my luggage and one cascaded down to scurry up the wall. I drained what little I had left of my duty free scotch, left the light on and passed out in exhaustion.

***

The next day I emailed a fellow couchsurfer from the eponymous website explaining the situation. A fellow foreigner teaching at one of the international schools, kindly offered to let me stay in his palatial apartment in the diplomatic quarter. As I checked out of the hotel I could tell the staff were curious.

Was I a spy? Or just another stingy journalist? We all know the answer to that question.

Jaco out

An article on deadly fashion practices in Bangladesh appears in the July issue of The Caravan.

CHITTAGONG, Bangladesh – I had been waiting a half-hour in the police superintendent’s dingy office, a greasy photocopy of my permission in hand, when the woman with a toddler on her hip appeared. I had gotten as far as the administrative capital Rangamati. My entry had been smoothed over through the generosity of a public welfare NGO which had invited me into the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Until a decade ago no foreigner had been allowed to enter and my presence there was unusual. The hill tracts themselves are a 5,000-square-mile wild area that had – until 1997 – been the setting of a low-intensity civil war between indigenous tribes and the Bangladeshi military and ethnic Bengali settlers.

Rangamati seemed nothing short of a man-made disaster. Hydro dams completed in the early 1960s had flooded the valley to create a massive lake and displace hundreds of thousands of tribal peoples. The tribal people took refuge in the upper elevations or crossed into the tribal areas of India, only a few days hike through the jungle.

What once must have been a lush, verdant valley with small hilly peaks, is now a fetid brown lake with the hill tops acting as islands where people paddled to and fro in long wooden skiffs. In half a decade the inhabitants have been transformed from an agrarian hill people to lakeside communities complete with garish tourist amenities to cater to urban Bangladeshis.

So despite the generosity of my hosts I was eager to get out of Rangamati and into the southern, wilder district of the hill tracts. This would require additional permission from that powers-that-be that control the comings and going of foreigners.

After wandering the dusty streets of Rangamati, being hooted at by school children and hissed at by feral geese, I came across a walled compound that could only be the residence of a senior police official. I was allowed in and told to wait in the office. I passed the time watching a doomed dragonfly continuously bash itself against a fluorescent light in a futile attempt to escape the oppressive air. It ignored my coaxing toward the doorway and finally settled on a wall, apparently exhausted and consigned to its fate.

Which brings me back to the woman with the toddler. A sari-clad woman with a six-month old boy on her hip appeared after about 30 minutes and asked a few cursory questions in English. She was polite but suspicious. The toddler eyed me up and down with a cold appraisal I’ve become used to seeing in countries where children are wise beyond their years. After a few seconds his face beamed a 100-watt smile of approval and the woman sensing the change left the room. Almost immediately the commandant appeared with a servant in tow carrying a plate of fruitcake and small, ripe bananas.

The toddler’s approval secured, the police commander was at my service. Had the kid started to howl and cry, I’d probably have been thrown in the stockade; I’ll never know.

***

I shouldn’t give Rangamati such short shrift. After all touring the hills-cum-islands had its allure as long as one didn’t think too much about what lay underneath. Our boat passed by the current reigning king of the Chakma tribe. Thick trunks of ancient hardwoods protruded above the surface of the lake which was low it being the dry season. I was reminded of photographer Dorothea Langes’ photo essay Death of a Valley, the chronicle of the lost town of Monticello in my native Northern California that’s now Lake Berryessa. Its only remnant is a stone bridge that’s visible protruding above the water’s surface during drought years.

Our boat called in at an island resort. Well-heeled Bengalis were lapping up rice and fish dishes and drinking tea and soft drinks. We retired to a shaded gazebo. My hosts were a Buddhist monk named Sambodhi who wore a saffron robe and was constantly fingering his Nokia mobile phone and his friend Rupayan. Both ran small NGOs of which there are literally thousands in Bangladesh.

Sambodhi told me he was of the Marma tribe and born in a village on the border with the hill tracts. He took me to his NGO headquarters where scores of impoverished children live. After staring at me for several minutes Sambodhi and I sat down to drink soda and eat a package of biscuits. The children queued up to ceremoniously bow and touch our feet in a touching show of respect that made me squirm.

His friend Rupayan was a Tanchangya. He spoke halting English but understood my own stammering well enough. He brought up the subject of the infamous homemade spirit that some of the hill tribes are known to indulge in what is a dry country. His eyes widened with excitement as he described how it was triple distilled and “very dangerous.” He added that his wife wouldn’t let him go near her after he’d been on the sauce. Such things are universal.

We stopped at a magnificent Buddhist temple. A wizened monk gave me an overview of the hill tracts’ turbulent history in surprisingly fluent English. He told of how tens of thousands of tribal people were displaced by water and thousands of the landless Bengalis were settled as per government policy.

He also told of the 92-year-old monk Bana Bhante who had, he said, achieved enlightenment and was capable of supernatural feats including levitation, teleportation and the like.

“Of course it is impossible for you to see these things,” he said lest I ask for a demonstration.

He asked if I wanted to meet the holy man, who would be due in about an hour. But my hosts immediately began looking at their watches. We made our excuses and continued on.

Soon we arrived at the residence of Raja Debashish, the current king of the Chakmas. A friend of mine had been here a decade ago and met the man and found him to be quite cultured, having been educated in England. She described the grand piano in his living room and I was eager to see it. But as no one appeared to be home and I didn’t feel like bugging the monarch. Earlier Rupayan had called the guy’s mobile phone but he wasn’t picking up. I took that as a sign to leave the poor guy alone.

***

Itching to see more of the hill tracts I was intent on securing permission for the Bandarban region. I had been given the number of some American Christian missionaries before leaving Chittagong. They were incredulous that I was in Rangamati and said they actually lived outside the boundaries of the hill tracts and only traveled in the region with a military escort. So needless to say they didn’t have much advice. A quick browse on the internet turned up writings about a high altitude lake not far from the border with Myanmar (Burma). Details were sketchy but I decided it was worth a try. It said it was a 12km hike in and from the description sounded like an oasis of peace and tranquility that’s relatively unknown in what is the most densely populated country in the world.

The police in Rangamati had instructed me to pen my own handwritten permission for the Bandarban region. They then faxed it to the deputy commissioner but my own handwritten note was my only proof of permission. Not exactly a water-tight system which I figured would work in my favor. Arriving in the town of Bandarban I quickly realized there wouldn’t be much keeping me here. Wandering the backstreets I looked into some carpentry shops that were making beautiful handcrafted furniture but not being in the market for a four-post bed, my interest dissipated rapidly.

The highlight of the town was probably the long walk down to the river at dusk. Men and women were doing their washing in the Shangu River, an altogether tranquil scene with the noises of the village in the background with the dusty hills rising dramatically from the river bank.

***

It was at dawn that I headed to the out-of-town bus depot to catch something headed for Ruma Ghat. From there it would be a 3km trip down the river and then, if the internet was to be believed, a 12km trek through the woods before reaching the lake. The bus ride was a bone-jarring journey with the seats designed for pygmies so that I could barely walk after the 180-minute journey over sandy roads that plowed deeper into the jungle towards the Burmese frontier.

At one point we all alighted from the bus and walked over a severely damaged bridge while the driver tempted fate by driving over it – sans passengers – and fortunately the bridge held. At the river launch I struck up conversation with two friendly Bengalis who despite their portly appearance were constant visitors and keen hikers. They ran an excursion club and were bound were one of the nearby peaks. They had been to Boga Lake many times and quickly shattered my preconception of it being a remote and uninhabited oasis of tranquility. It was beautiful, they said, but also had an established settlement complete with Army camp and the soldiers required all visitors to hire a guide. I counted my meager Taka notes and realized that while I had enough currency for meals and accommodation for one; feeding and sheltering a guide would be a different matter. I accepted their offer of a short-term, no-interest loan with the promise of payment when I returned to Dhaka.

Being the dry season the river was extremely low. I sympathized with the boatman who had to keep jumping out and literally dragging our narrow skiff over the many sandbars. On the bank, tribespeople on foot, laden with heavy burdens in baskets were passing us as our boat made miserable progress.

At the village of Ruma Bazaar my new friends treated me to lunch and took me to the Army camp for a chat with the Bangladeshi military about this lone foreigner who wanted to trek into the wilderness. They didn’t know what to make of me, frankly and I didn’t blame them. At first they said it would be impossible. The area was off-limits to foreign nationals. But after some cajoling it was agreed and with a few smiles and backslapping I was on my way.

I negotiated with my guide, Rahad, a young guy from the village. He pretended to speak better English than he did but that was okay as he told me later he had only a second-grade education. He said he was 20 years old but frankly I wouldn’t have sold him cigarettes.

It was too late to hike to the lake so he suggested we grab one a chandergari (“moon car”) to the lake. With regular public transport I guessed it wouldn’t be so desolate after all. We had to hike past a second police checkpoint because the battered blue Toyota Landcruiser would be over the legal limit of passengers. When it finally arrived I could see that Rahad wasn’t kidding. Clinging to the back of the roll cage was a baker’s dozen so that Rahad and I were twenty second and twenty third passengers respectively. Over the next hour and a half the jeep lurched crawled and sputtered over a dusty track with everyone ducking from low branches and trying not to be thrown from the vehicle.

Boga Lake was more pond sized but it still was an impressive sight in the reddish twilight. Coughing up the dust from the last 15km I was eager for a dip.

But first more formalities.

We checked into the police checkpoint and sat down for another Q&A session. I began to realize that much of the time in the hill tracts had been convincing the local officials that I wasn’t a threat. They were affable enough and I managed to steer the conversation more toward the soldier’s brand of mobile phone or the climate in Northern California and less to what the hell I was doing in that part of Bangladesh in the first place.

After satisfying their curiosity we were free to go. Immediately we checked in to the rest house which agreed to lodge and feed both of us for an incredibly small sum. I dove into the water amidst the snickers of a couple of young women washing in the lake. Their lack of modesty compared to mainstream (Muslim) Bangladesh was striking and a bit refreshing. I dog paddled around until the sun disappeared behind the hills and it was getting dark. Taking a quick walk I came upon a survey team doing a census. There were 24 families living there, I was told.

During our delicious vegetarian dinner of rice, spicy vegetables and lentils an Army commander in plain clothes along with two soldiers with rifles slung over their shoulders waltzed in and started poking round with a flashlight. My hosts were stone faced neither showing welcome nor contempt. I paused from the meal and asked what they wanted.

Just checking, I was told.

Winning hearts and minds they were not.

Later I met a Bangladeshi hippie burning a trash in a pit. That might not sound very ecological but when the national practice is to spread your rubbish around as thinly as possible, a trash pyre is about as close as Bangladesh gets to the Swiss aesthetic.

We fell into conversation. He was from the city of Khulna – far away from the hill tracts. He had been coming there for four years and had long played a game of cat-and-mouse with the Army as he had no guide but had instead (pardon the phrase) gone native.

The families had moved in the early 1990s when the village was built from scratch. Before that tribes had hunted, fished and gathered only seasonally. But as hostilities died down between tribesmen and the military a permanent settlement was established to cater to visitors. Nearly the whole town, I came to realize, was for tourists. Bangladeshi tourists. During the wet season (June) the place would be lush, verdant and full of visitors who would hike in and spend several days eating, dancing, cavorting and littering – much to his and the tribes people’s annoyance.

He told me he did odd jobs around the village had been accepted pretty much as a permanent resident. I had to take most of what he said at face value but judging from his interaction with the local tribesmen he seemed to have an established a good rapport.

Our conversation went late into the night about materialism and the evils of modernity. He seemed wise beyond his 26 years and my asinine questions about whether he ogled the local girls or comely female tourists were met by stares of indifference and well-deserved contempt.

The arrogance of the military – I had told him about the military incursion during dinner – was commonplace, he said. Relations between locals and the soldiers are “so bad” he said. Some of the officers weren’t bad people but most were “uneducated” and had little time or interest in the setting or the feelings of the people who made this area their home. Most had come from villages bordering Mizoram, a tribal state in India and had moved here to make a living on the brusque tourist trade. He complained bitterly that in just a few short years that tribes people had become more commercially oriented and were just chasing dollars from visitors.

Still, it was a long way away from anything I’d seen in the rest of the country.

Awake before 6 a.m. the next morning Rahad and I set off over the dusty hills. The path mostly wound around along the river bank so that by the time the sun was over our heads we had made good progress. We passed many tribes people some Bawm, some Marma, some friendly, some simply gawking. It was a long walk and with my pack crammed full of all of my worthless valuables (laptop, camera, recorder, things I couldn’t afford to replace had they been stolen) checked my progress while the light-footed Rahad kept ahead always just almost out of view.

More than three hours later we were back in Ruma Bazaar. Rahad exhibited me to the soldiers at the Army post to prove I hadn’t been robbed, kidnapped or eaten and I collected the bulk of my luggage and went down to the water. The next skiff wouldn’t set off for an hour. The perfect amount of time for a leisurely lunch before we paddled upstream. But my heat-stroked mind doesn’t work like that. I could be at the ghat by the time the stupid boat sets off, I reasoned.

To the horror of Rahad and several onlookers I set off down the riverbank to scramble my way back to the river launch where the buses depart. My soggy Syrian sandals sloshed along and I could feel them giving way. About 500 yards before reaching the bus stand, a sandal broke sending me sprawling over.

“Scheisse!” I instinctively cried. I’ve taught myself to curse in a foreign language when something truly embarrassing happens that way my own nationality won’t suffer for my foolishness. Apologies to Germany.

Indeed, my misfortune sent a washing woman with a keen sense of schadenfreude into hysterics as I picked myself up and inspected the damage. Nothing broken I sauntered up to the ghat.

Forsaking the 7-year-old boy who acted as ferryman to cross the river, I decided to ford the river like I had had done several times already. But I realized that there was a deep channel and got pretty soaked, albeit in a refreshing sort of way.

On the bus ride out I was of course pulled off the bus one last time where I was lightly interrogated by a soldier who had to rely on English phrases he’d written out on a piece of paper. He asked where my guide was. I didn’t have one. He asked when I had signed in. I had come from another district. None of my answers synced with his flow chart and in exasperation I was waved through.

As the bus sped into Chittagong I quickly became reacquainted with the urban maelstrom that is Bangladesh’s second city. Sitting near the rear I watched in horror as the bus sideswiped a bicycle rickshaw, sending the driver, a small boy and what was likely an older female relative sprawling and tumbling into the street. The bus accelerated and my instinctive shout of “Oh shit!” was met by casual indifference.

I have never liked the phrase life is cheap. But it certainly seems undervalued.

Jaco out

It’s been exactly a month since I arrived in India. By tourist standards, I’ve seen very little as I’ve been focused on some journalism projects. But in the last calendar page I’ve made a few observations, a few friends and continue to be holding my head above water in the loud, crowded and incredibly complex Indian subcontinent.

BHOPAL, India – Just one guess why a freelance journalist might be going on more than a week in Bhopal – site of the deadliest industrial disaster in history nearly 25 years back. Just one guess.

Anyway, so far I haven’t been seeing the India most westerners seek out. No Thomas Cook-all-inclusive-yoga-resort-ashram-by-the-sea with lily-white buses whisking throngs of immaculately robed tourists from the international airport in their natural fabrics, bypassing the urban poverty and despair to deliver them to an impregnable fortress of new age bliss filled with like-minded world spirits with lavish lines of credit, finicky eating habits that gather together to achieve “consciousness” and only breaking the rigors of their meditation to eat, sleep, drink, smoke and partner up for the afternoon tantra clinic.

I guess I’m just jealous.

I’d been cautioned that as a fair-skinned westerner I might be treated with far more deference and respect than I probably deserved. I recoiled at this idea. For I don’t like to be treated better or worse than the next person. I’ll wait my turn with the rest and am equally indignant whether it’s the level of service or the price that’s being raised owing to me being a foreigner.

But when I saw how brusquely people can be treated in this country I learned to shut up and accept it. What would pass for fight-starting-behavior where I’m from is standard fare in this country. In India, blaring your horn as you overtake someone is considered a courtesy to the extent that many trucks have HORN PLEASE emblazoned on the rear.

It continues to amaze me how status conscious everyone is. This morning as I leafed through the Sunday paper, I found the “brides wanted” and “grooms wanted” section. These sections are classified by religion and caste. Most state family background and professional status in the first one or two lines. There are a few in the “cosmopolitin” section that state “religion / caste no bar” which was also repeated in the small section for “Divorcees.”

I’d also been warned of the dirt, the noise and the poverty. My first evening in Delhi I had to literally side-step a fly-covered toddler that was sleeping in the entrance way of a ramshackle internet cafe. This was in the heart of the capital city. With so much population dreadfully poor many make a bee-line for a foreigner with palms outstretched begging for alms. It’s not just for foreigners, but we’re known to have more money and be a softer touch.

Riding the trains is no different. Often when a train alights at a station some of the most heart-wrenching cases of human misery board so they can limp, crawl or drag themselves down the aisles of the second and third class compartments begging for alms. Small children will ride two or three stations sweeping the carriages - I feel obliged to tip them as the trains are in dire need of a tidying up - but there are much more desperate cases.

It gets to be that I dread the stops for I know not what manner of human horror will convey itself down the aisle searching for some morsel of charity.

Young and old alike with deformed limbs will thrust their affliction in your face in an entreaty to help. Most people are moved by such desperate sights.

Not me; I’m an asshole.

I find myself being unmercifully stingy while the Indians next to me reach into their pockets to give a few rupees to a young mother with an infant at her breast. There have been exceptions but they are rare. If I start I won’t know where to stop.

At least that’s my rationalization.

While the noise, the grime, the dirt and – did I mention the noise? – continues to grate on me from the onset I’ve tried to just go-with-it. In my first days here I met a group of Belgian girls who’d traveled more than a month in India and were appalled. Appalled that things weren’t like back home in Belgium. They’d booked all-inclusive package trips (never a good idea, especially from abroad) and were shocked – SHOCKED – to find that standards weren’t up to snuff. Trains were late; the shower pressure had been a trickle; there were mysterious masculine stains on the bedclothes. All pretty pedestrian stuff in the developing world, I’d thought.

They informed me rather smugly that they intended to use their last two days in the country to hound the travel company to try and get some of their money back.

“We can be very, very annoying if we want to,” said one girl. I rather believed her.

There’s was that sort of cultivated arrogance that Europeans seem to have mastered. Talking about “Belgian efficiency” I imagined King Leopold discussing “the blacks.” They posited that if Indians were as efficient as Belgians, the country would be much more powerful.

“We work 38 hours a week,” one said. “But we work really hard in those 38 hours.”

I guess during that month they’d missed seeing the porters, builders, bicycle rickshaw drivers, and other of the labor class that often literally sleep at their worksite and toil for more than half the day for pennies an hour.

****

Bhopal, in the heart of the country, isn’t a place to capture a visitor’s imagination. Like most Indian urban centers its open spaces have been cemented over as the progress of industrialization and population pressures of modernity plaster over thousands of years of history.

And its history is fascinating – for hundreds of years by Muslim women and the old city still has crumbling palaces that are now being used as orphanages, schools and other civic departments. The UNESCO heritage sites are reportedly under renovation but one has to overlook the tar-blackened crumbling masonry to appreciate how grandiose this place once was.

Arriving in Bhopal at dusk, I trudged through the twists and turns of a predominately Muslim bosti – that’s a slum – looking for a guesthouse. Having failed, I hiked over a bridge with a small boy tailing after me begging for a handout. After five tries, I managed to find a hotel with vacancy and settled in to my relatively expensive single room which was host to a thriving colony of cockroaches.

Venturing outside it was the usual whirl of noise and traffic. Amidst the chaos I witnessed the deftest bribe I’d ever seen. At a traffic circle, a young man leaned out of a speeding van to complete an impossibly quick hand-off to a stick-wielding traffic cop posted at the intersection. It was admirably efficient though not all that discreet.

****

That’s not to say that the state of Madhya Pradesh – of which Bhopal is the capital – doesn’t have its charms. Recently, I spent two days in Pachmarhi, a hill station resort developed by the British looking for respite from the stultifying heat and humidity. The town was just another undulating mass of noise and filth from too many vehicles competing for not-enough-road and I was determined to see the surrounding national park.

Too cheap to fork out the 500 rupees ($10USD) for a jeep tour, I rented a rickety one-speed cruiser bicycle from a guy on a corner for a tenth the price. As soon as I set off I realized I should’ve test-ridden the cycle first. At the first hill I yelled at the top of my lungs, “Noooo braaaaakes!” as I careened down past bemused Indians riding in their rented jeeps.
I spent the day alternating between pushing the hulking bike frame up tortured switchbacks that cut through the mountainous terrain and using using my feet to slow myself enough to negotiate hair-pin turns so I wouldn’t meet a grisly end head-on with a rented jeep.

****

Before Madhya Pradesh and Bhopal, I had been in the northwestern province of Punjab in Amritsar. I was squinting through an alcoholic haze when the driver leaned toward me.

He said: “We have two-and-a-half liters of illegal alcohol in the car — we really shouldn’t be doing this.”

It was my new friend Aaftab. Piloting his white Fiat through throngs of highway traffic at high speed, he’d just cut-off a heavy truck and threaded the needle between a bicycle and three-wheel autorickshaw.

I wasn’t sure where he got the we part. All I’d done was guzzle the desi – Punjabi moonshine – that had been proffered. Other than choosing his and his cohorts as company for the afternoon in which we got liquored up at a building site and then drove at high-speed to the Pakistani border, I felt positively blameless for whatever might happen next.

Amritsar is a city held most holy by Sikkhs, an offshoot of the Hindu religion whose male faithful are easily identified by their turbans. It’s in the north of India not far from one of the main borders with Pakistan on a road and rail line that connects with Lahore.

I had checked in at a free flophouse run by the faithful who guard the Golden Temple – the most holy shrine – that feeds and shelters pilgrims and deadbeat foreigners alike within the massive complex. I’d arrived at about 6 a.m. from an overnight train and arrived in the steamy dormitory. The turban-clad attendant had flicked on the light to reveal a writhing mass of pasty hippies recoiling from the bright fluorescent lights. A couple of hours later I had met Aaftab, a fellow ‘couchsurfer’ who gives hospitality to strangers from the internet, and we were soon pounding desi – a white spirit made from cane sugar – and smoking bidis in a field with his friends.

After everyone was suitably buzzing, we got in the car and headed for the Wahga border. Anyone who has visited this region knows that Wahga is the second-largest tourist attraction in the area, after the Golden Temple itself. That’s because the Indian and Pakistani armies parade for each other at dusk each day as they ceremoniously close the border gate that’s divided the two nations since Partition in 1947.

There are literally bleachers erected on both sides and we could see hundreds of Pakistanis on the other side watching from a few hundred yards away. For some reason the armies weren’t parading – for all we got was a group of young girls twirling in their saris to Punjabi and Hindi music waving the green, white and orange banner of India.

My Indian companions had seen this all before and were much more interested in gawking at the sunburnt European women who show off more flesh than they’re accustomed. These desi-crazed 30-something youths gazed longingly at a group of frumpy British women in pastel colors parading past in the VIP line. Fair-skinned foreigners are often given special treatment in class conscious India.

****

I had arrived in Delhi a little more than two weeks back. How or why I stayed so long in that city I am still trying to figure. It has to do with friends and contacts and myself angling for some sort of paying work while in South Asia.

I spent considerable time trying to fall in love with Delhi. Still trying. Like cities the world over, it’s experienced a considerable crush from people fleeing the countryside in search of work. Its infrastructure is crumbling beneath the weight of all those bodies. Fortunately the government has constructed a metro subway that’s in the midst of an expansion at a frenetic pace that’s been particularly deadly for its construction workers.

Obviously modeled in part on the London Underground, a pleasant Oxbridge-accented woman’s voice admonishes you to, “Mind the Gap,” at each station. Then, as if to remind you that you’re in New Delhi and not Tottenham Court Road, she reminds passengers not to sit on the floor or spit inside the train.

There’s also a very paranoid undercurrent. Still reeling from the Mumbai attacks and past bombings, police search passengers before they enter the station. That isn’t so disturbing as much as the recorded announcements reminding you that ordinary items might be packed with explosives.

There’s also this don’t talk to strangers imperative that I think crosses the line: “Passengers are reminded not to befriend unknown persons.” Hey, this is India. Nearly everyone’s a stranger and a good portion of them still wanna chat and exchange emails. Not gonna let the threat of terrorism make me into a rude person.

I also took the time to read the rules pasted on the walls. Apparently you’re forbidden from bringing human remains, manure or combustibles on the metro. As if a funeral procession would take the tube across town.

I was also amused to see that riding on top of the metro train would incur a fine of Rs. 50 (about $1USD) as if there would be anything left of the hapless person who clamored atop a metro train before it descends underground.

But the metro is child’s play compared to the buses. Anyone who’s accustomed to jumping on or off moving freight trains would have no trouble using Delhi’s bus service. The drivers – some, not all – seem to take malicious delight in forcing passengers to run run one or two blocks before he decides to stop. All the while the conductor leans off the side urging them to run faster and catch up. Then as about only half of the passengers have managed to climb aboard, the driver impatiently guns it with men, women and children running for their lives and being scooped up by fellow passengers.

Getting off is no better.

I remember telling my Delhi friend I’d managed to figure out the buses one day.

“You rode the bus?!”she shrieked incredulously. “Seriously, Jacob, don’t take the bus. People die every day on those buses.”

She does work a beat for a daily newspaper so I’m sure she was only half exaggerating.

The darker side of the city – if there even is a lighter side to India’s capital city – is definitely East Delhi. A friend studies at a college in East Delhi and told me about a colony of solvent-sniffing kids that are falling through the cracks.

We decided to go treat a few to veggie burgers and hear their stories. Naturally, they were wary – especially of me, this hulking pale-skinned giant that doesn’t even speak Hindi. The veggie burger stand was closed so that plan fell through and most were too shy to chat for long.
We did talk to Golu, a 13-year-old who said his father drives a bicycle rickshaw and mother cleans houses. He doesn’t live at home, he said, preferring to sleep in the subway with his friends. Many of them had white-out on their lips and chins from the solvent they’d sniff to get high. They spent a lot of their time collecting bottles and using the deposit money to buy a bottle of the solvent at the corner stationery shop or pharmacy.

The workers at surrounding restaurants and shops barely glance at these skinny boys who sift through rubbish with a stick to find bottles. As the sun came out they played a game of sorts with sticks and blocks of concrete.

“I just want to be able to do something for these kids,” my friend – who himself had dabbled in solvents and other drugs at an earlier age – told me.

****

My first trip outside of Delhi was to the sacred city of Varanasi. Built on the banks of the Ganges it’s one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Or so they say. I also learned it’s got somewhat of druggy reputation for travelers who turn up to smoke hashish and crust.

But for Hindus, it’s the place to die. According to belief, if one’s body is immolated on a sacred pyre on the banks of the Ganges and then thrown in the river, the soul attains Nirvana. Which is not a bad deal except the firewood is incredibly expensive so the poor have to be burned in electric crematoriums – or in some cases – tossed wholesale into the sacred river.

Walking up and down Varanasi’s twisted streets and broad thoroughfares I would inevitably get hassled. I didn’t blame these touts and hustlers – work is scarce and there’s probably no softer touch than a stoned foreigner lost amidst the speeding rickshaws, cows, chai stalls and stick-wielding traffic police.

I learned to walk quickly and be brusque to shake them off. It was always the same: hashish? wanna see my silk shop? taxi?

As I was walking down one street, a young man sidled up to me.

“From what country?” he used as an opener.

I turned on him and hissed: “I don’t want to buy your hashish.”

His face twisted into a mask of righteous indignation. It was his turn to be angry.

” I am not selling any fucking hashish!” he barked. “All people here aren’t the same, you know.”

I was ashamed and embarrassed. Apologizing profusely I introduced myself and we spent 30 seconds exchanging pleasantries.

After a bit of a pause, he broke the silence. “Anyway, I’m selling handicrafts…”

****

That’s my dispatch from India so far. Maybe once this Bhopal project is over I’ll sneak a glimpse of the Taj Mahal or something equally touristy.

As an aside, I have noticed a lot of ads for ‘personality development’ courses. As it’s something I could probably never afford in the states, I may give it a try.

Sort of like getting discount-rate plastic surgery in the Philippines. What have you got to lose?

Jaco out

DELHI, India– I’ve never asked for money and I’m not gonna now. Rather this is about my occasional employer, Free Speech Radio News. http://fsrn.org

They’re the ones that gave me my first shot at international reporting from Georgia and for that I’ll be forever grateful.

http://www.fsrn.org/audio/south-ossetia-refugees-still-displaced/4678

http://www.fsrn.org/audio/newscast-friday-april-10-2009/4524

Now it seems they’re about to go belly-up. So as they’re teetering toward insolvency, I thought I’d lend ‘em a hand and blast out their appeal.

Those in Northern California hear their half-hour broadcast on weekday afternoons on KPFA; in New York it’s WBAI. They’re on more than 80 stations from what I understand and do some good work.

As they’re one of my primary sources of income abroad, I’ve taken a somewhat self interested interest in their ability to keep treading water. But it’s bad. They’ve cut our rates and suspended payments until at least next month. But they’re a worker-owned collective, not a private company so I’ll take them at their word that they’ll pay as soon as they can.

So here’s where you click…

http://tinyurl.com/SaveFSRN

Thank you and gawd bless.

Jaco out

BECHARRE, Lebanon – Hurtling down the highway at 140 kilometers an hour, Khaled the friendly taxi driver had an idea. We’d been drinking countless cups of black coffee and choking down innumerable cigarettes: it was time to switch to beer.

Khaled didn’t speak English and I don’t speak Arabic. But after a can of syrupy Turkish beer (9% abv) the language barrier wilted.

We were onto world politics and he was telling me what he thought about Osama bin Laden.

Earlier at the bus station, is cohorts were jokingly pointing to him and calling him “Bush.” As he was a bit portly I said he more resembled Cheney. A bearded guy showed up and was introduced as bin Laden.

This is Syria – where discussing and joking about politics is very light-hearted; provided it doesn’t touch on domestic affairs.

‘Cause they’re listening, you know.

But back to Khaled whose tongue by now had been thoroughly loosened by liquor.

“Bin Laden is no Muslim,” he said in Arabic. “Anyone who kills Jewish children is not a Muslim.”

It’s been a long time since I’ve checked in so perhaps I should explain how I came to having a conversation about Islamic ethics with a taxi driver who was drinking beer through a straw.

It was the Fourth of July when I crossed from Georgia into Turkey. It was bereft of traffic and I lodged in a tiny town in the Caucasian foothills. From there my itinerary took me through the heart of what is Turkish Kurdistan. The police presence is unbelievable given the simmering shooting war between the military and Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK).

I was couchsurfing (read: sponging off strangers from the internet) which afforded me diverse points-of-view. In one city, I lodged with a helicopter pilot who described coming under small arms fire or seeing rockets streaking past in his Black Hawk chopper.

In another town, I was sipping tea with the elderly father of my Kurdish host who made a pistol with his fingers every time a chopper flew overhead.

I practiced the art of listening and kept my trap shut.

Turkey was – and probably still is – fantastic. I felt for the ordinary Kurds living in the extreme southeast as it is in effect a military occupation. During one bus trip our vehicle was stopped, documents checked, luggage lightly examined, every 10 kilometers.

I listened to these people, young and old, clucking their tongues at the young conscripts from cities like Ankara, Istanbul, Mersin who cross-examined their reason for traveling from one town to the other.

They weren’t winning hearts and minds.

Pining for the Islamic Republic of Iran, I hitched to the Persian border. I had a half-baked idea to try and interview some Iranians about the street battles we’d all been hearing about. It was a Sunday and the only people about were Turkish truck drivers queuing and drinking tea and local Kurds crossing over.

I got a sunburn and free tea for my trouble, but it was worth it just to gaze up at the mural of the Supreme Leader Ayotallah Khomenei who beamed down benevolently. (I just hope the Islamic Revolutionary Guards are reading this and my obsequiousness will grease the wheels for a visa).

But I digress.

After managing to suppress the urge to visit Iraqi Kurdistan, my appetite for the Arab world was whetted by towns like Mardin with a healthy Arab-speaking population.

Soon I found myself sitting in a Syrian border guard’s air conditioned office watching him type entries from a ledger into an old PC. My crossing in 2005 had been a breeze which must’ve been a fluke as every other

American I’ve spoken to has since reported waiting hours.

This time I would be no exception.

Officially you’re supposed to pay $131USD in Washington D.C. for a Syrian visa. Officially.

Unofficially, Americans are more than welcome in Syria. In fact, U.S. passport holders pay one of the lowest fees – just $16USD. The only catch is our visit has to be approved in Damascus so waiting time is contingent on the length of the ministry’s lunch break.

In the end, I waited five hours. At first I was fired up with righteous indignation. But then I thought about how much Syrians have to go through to enter the U.S. and I decided to chill out and quit feeling sorry for myself.

After having my temperature taken by a doctor, presumably to see if I had the dreaded pig fever, I was cleared to enter. Darkness had fallen and the buses had stopped running. I angrily – and a tad rashly – brushed off a taxi driver’s offer to take me to the first town for $5 then $4USD.

As I trudged through the blackness in the Mesopotamian desert I realized that I had been perhaps a bit hasty. The lights of the next town were not as close as they first appeared.

Walking past a small house, there was a group of young men sitting around, shooting the breeze the way that Arabs seem to have mastered. They offered me to come over for a drink. I noticed there were no drinks but there was a motorcycle.

I asked a few questions and learned I’d  have six kilometers to drag my sorry ass.

The motorcycle was suggested. I offered $4USD. My rucksack and 200 lbs. of girth were strapped to the back of the aging 125cc moto and were off, hurtling through the darkness.

Despite voiding every insurance policy I’d have in the past, present or future, I arrived in one piece and was able to get a minibust to the ancient city of Aleppo.

It was good to be back. Not much had changed. President Bashar’s face still beams down from billboards, signposts, stickers and just about every imaginable surface reminding his countrymen what a strong leader they have. Some of the older buildings still have his father, Hejez Assad leering down and other places show them both, side-by-side, which intimates that if you cross the son, the father will rise from the grave and beat you down. No kidding.

I did touristy stuff. Castles, souqs, a bit of bargain shopping and a lot of eating. But the main attraction, I think, is still the people. Syrians are insanely friendly and hospitable. They are also very eager and curious to meet people from the United States.

It was edifying that the old “It’s an American! Feed him!” attitude hasn’t changed.

After scuttling the idea of taking a ferry to North Cyprus – it’s too expensive – I found myself at the bus station waiting for more passengers to fill up a shared taxi to Tripoli, a port city in northern Lebanon.

None were forthcoming and when Khaled – our aforementioned protagonist – offered a bargain, basement rate, I agreed and we were off.

I was glad of the beer as the border guards on both sides thoroughly fleeced me in “fees.” So much so that I fear I won’t be able to afford to leave Lebanon, enter Syria, exit Syria and enter Turkey again.

After crossing into Lebanon, I decided it was my round as Khaled had bought the last beers. I gave him 2,000 Syrian Pounds in crumpled notes and he stopped the car and darted across four lanes of traffic – twice – to return with more extra-strength lager.

Sipping my “Bear Beer” (8% abv)  through a straw, I knew I’d made the right choice.

More about Becharre and its Maronite environs when I’ve reconnoitered the place properly.

Jaco out

TBILISI, Georgia – My money was no good in this town. I was in Gagra in the northern edge of Abkhazia – that breakaway republic of Georgia that was once the jewel of the Soviet Union. Expansive beaches along the Black Sea and crumbling 19^th century hostelries and sanitariums dot the coast line that still attracts flocks of sunburnt Russian tourists seeking a cheap holiday away from Mother Russia.

My companions had to get back to Tbilisi but I wasn’t ready to leave. I’d spent almost the last of my Russian rubles but still had dollar reserves. That’s where the trouble lies. The one bank was closed and no one – and I asked half the town – wanted to change money.

I went back to the guesthouse and explained the situation. The landlady waved her hand dismissively and said I could stay another night – gratis. Fortunately I was able to fish out a $5 dollar bill which she accepted.

With 100 rubles ($3USD) left in my pocket I was able to maintain a slight beer buzz thanks to Baltika 7 – a strong Russian beer from St. Petersburg and maintain my blood sugar with the help of my old friend, canned fish and a crust of bread.

The next morning I thumbed it alone down the coastal highway. I had about 10 rubles left – that’s about 30 cents American — and my stomach rumbled. I stopped for a swim at a desolate Black Sea beach. Two men in parked cars eyed me as I splashed around in the warm, clear water that’s pleasantly not-too-salty.

I finished the swim and they called me over. They asked the usual questions about where I was from, what I was doing, where I was going. They were Abkhazians who lived in Russia but back visiting. They seemed amused that I was hitching alone. One handed me a 100 ruble bill. I refused thrice but on the fourth time accepted gratefully. In the next town I was able to cash it in for another Baltika 7 and what looked suspiciously like a Mingrelian khachapuri – a signature dish of the Abkhazians’ sworn enemy — but we all know that good food trumps nationalism.

Back in Sukhumi – the capital city – I pounded the pavement looking for something to be open. After an hour wandering from closed money changer to closed money change I found some taxi drivers willing to strike a deal on the hood of one of their taxis. At first the rate they offered was appalling. But after the usual theatrical walking away in disgust we settled on a fair rate and I was back in business with a fistful of rubles.

Soon dark clouds swept in and pummeled the town with a ferocious lightning storm. I huddled in the guesthouse after the city lost power and spent the early morning hours trying to fend off mosquitoes that had also decided to shelter from the monsoon.

It was back to work the next morning. I tried – albeit unsuccessfully – to interview UN observers at their luxurious compound south of town. Everyone suspected Russia would veto their mandate and I was trying to get my story. After 20 minutes wasted shooting the breeze with the Bengali peacekeepers outside, and a few curt telephone exchanges with a public information officer (a total misnomer as the guy gave no information and seemed to relish hiding from public view) I went to interview the Abkhazian Foreign Minister which proved to be quite interesting and turned into a brief radio report.

It was late afternoon and all transport south had finished so I started hitching. One of my first rides was with an enormous police officer in a gray camouflaged uniform with a single star. A major in the police force, his tiny automatic pistol was barely visible beneath his enormous gut. We hadn’t gone five kilometers when he suggested we stop for a drink. He had the gun and badge so I was in no position to argue.

We sat around drinking beer with one of his colleagues and some suspicious characters with a lot of gold jewelry. Some said they were cops. Others were circumspect. Criminals? I asked. They answered with a nervous chuckle. A guy walked past our table, bought a bottle of sickly sweet Ukrainian champagne and promptly disappeared. The others were understandably not interested in the champagne but the good major offered with such flourish I could hardly refuse. A bit light-headed we both got back into the car.

“What about the bill?” I asked.

“Ach! Leave that for the criminals,” he replied.

We proceeded barely 10 kilometers further to a police station and checkpoint. He had to work but would have a friend heading south to the next large town – Gali – in about an hour and I should wait, he said.

I walked past the checkpoint and the explained to the cops that I was hitching. They looked skeptical but offered no resistance so I continued walking. As the next car stopped at the checkpoint I could see the officers pointing toward me. They motioned me over. The cops had found me a lift, apparently.

It was a slick-black SUV and the driver spoke some English. I got a pain of homesickness as we weaved through a stand of Eucalyptus trees as the driver drained a bottle of Miller beer. It was a scene I’d lived many times in my native northern California.

I protested as he threw the bottle out the window.

“Abkhazia. It’s India. It’s Africa. Wooo! Woo! Woo!” he flopped his hand over his mouth in a crude Native American war-whoop. I tried to disguise my amusement.

I haven’t been to India. Yet. But one parallel are the sacred cows.

Wherever we went cows would sit in the middle of the road, chewing their cud lackadaisically as automobiles would scream by at 70 mph on either side. One driver explained that to hit a cow incurs an automatic $500USD payment to the farmer – no matter what. I made a point of practicing how to say sacred cow in Russian as a conversation piece.

He left me along a lonely road and I walked for more than an hour as the sank lower in the sky. I tried to keep my spirits up but was dismayed by the number of UN trucks and SUVs from international NGOs that refused to stop for me. Eventually I came upon another police checkpoint and the situation was repeated. The next car to arrive was instructed to take me as far as it could.

This time I was with a group of teenage boys. They tried to scare me with their fast driving and I made a point of not letting them get a rise out of me. One kept asking to see my passport but I refused. When they swerved down a side road my patience was at an end. I protested and when they didn’t stop, opened the door as if to jump. They stopped and I grabbed my bag and started walking back to the main road.

One of them grabbed me, again asking for the passport, but I shook him off violently and he backed down.

A black Mercedes and Land Cruiser sped by from the opposite direction and seeing me hit the brakes. They backed up quickly and about a half-dozen armed police jumped out. The same questions. Where was I from? What was I doing? They were incredulous that I was hitching alone down to Georgia – their enemy’s territory. They explained it wasn’t safe and that I would have to wait for transport. The questioning lasted about two minutes and soon it was back to bullshitting, backslapping and chewing sunflower seeds by the roadside.

A police jeep appeared and whisked me to Gali. We drove at breakneck speed and the cop in the passenger seat kept trying to “buy” my watch off me. I kept refusing. Then he pulled his revolver.

“What are you, a bandit?” I asked. He laughed. In retrospect, I think he was offering to trade.

An Abkhazian police officer’s service revolver would’ve made quite a souvenir. Hindsight is always 20-20.

We picked up some more police and continued down the road, avoiding the cows. One handed me his Kalashnikov rifle to hold which I cradled between my knees. He thought it hilarious but the commanding officer thought better and disarmed me.

After some cursory questioning at the Gali police station where my documents were copied, the cops took me to a taxi stand and instructed an elderly driver to take me to the border. He agreed to take me for a pittance and I realized it was largely out of police pressure. He was an ethnic Mingrel – a Georgian tribe that speaks its own language – and told me the cops sometimes hassled him. I felt sorry for him as he piloted his ancient Soviet-era Volga sedan over pitted roads in a rainstorm. So I tipped heavily before making a dash through the rain to reach the border guards’ hut.

Inside awaited a champagne reception. It was the same brand of sickly sweet Ukrainian champagne. They’d obviously started without me as one of the guards was slumped over the table with his head in his arms. They poured me a glass and I toasted to a free Abkhazia. And a free Georgia and in peace, I added as I left.

I made my way across the Ingur Bridge that separates the no-man’s-land between Georgia and Abkhazian territory. The Russians were inside their huts staying dry even as the downpour slowed to a drizzle.

On the Georgian side the soldiers were in mid-meal. In typical fashion they offered to share but I had a night train to catch, I told them. After a few cursory questions and them recording my name (incorrectly as “Jacob Alexander” - but I didn’t quibble) in a ledger, I was free to go. Soon I was boarding the night train to Tbilisi and leaving Abkhazia behind once again.

Jaco out

Little boxes, little boxes, Little boxes all the same There’s the green one and the pink one And the blue one and the yellow one And they’re all made outta ticky-tacky And they all look just the same… � Malvina Reynolds (sung by Pete Seeger, 1963)

TBILISI, Georgia � It all started out with the best of intentions. A local non governmental organization had purchased scores of native saplings to plant in a settlement for people displaced in the August war. Around 160,000 people fled their homes last summer during Georgia’s disastrous tangle with Russia over South Ossetia and Abkhazia.That added thousands of displaced families to the more than 200,000 internally displaced people from the wars of the early 1990s.

The latest wave has been �resettled� by the government in sprawling grids of concrete huts, many of which lacked even basic sanitation and are below international standards for housing refugees.

Erected on a floodplain off a major highway, Tserovani is more than 2,000 small structures that stands as a damning indictment for a failed policy toward the two breakaway regions. Painted in garish pastels, it’s nightmarish version of Levittown; it resembles an American suburb from a distance, but a closer look reveals something even worse. The roads are unpaved. There is little space between each house for a vegetable garden or anything useful. Many of these people had been rich farmers but now they are squeezed into a space without arable land and far from an urban center where they might find work.

I asked a Georgian architect for his opinion on this type of urban planning. �It’s a disaster,� he said. �It’s nothing but a show. To make it look like they are doing something.�

Our plan was to plant trees around some of these homes in what at best would be a beautification project. As a journalist, it would give me a chance to meet some of these people � and I hoped � conduct some interviews that I would be able to weave into my reporting.

Enter the government and their minions.

The day before our outing, two top apparatchiks � Environment Minister Goga Khachidze and Minister for Refugees and Accomodation Koba Subeliani � got wind of the day-out and decided it would be the perfect PR stunt. When we arrived the two men were surrounded by local camera crews as they drilled holes in the earth along a river bank planting conifers underneath power lines.

Our contact with the NGO was furious. We had meant to be helping the refugees beautify a kindergarten. But when the government showed up with their legions of young helpers, machinery and a media circus, most of the local people understandably hid in their homes. They wanted no part of an exercise that would suggest their government cared for their welfare. This was the same government that had tried to convince a German housing agency to provide fewer amenities � like running water and flush toilets � lest is would raise the expectations in settlements elsewhere.

We stood to the side drinking homemade wine from the hood of the truck while the environmental volunteers vainly pleaded with the government workers not to plant the trees beneath powerlines and in a grid that would resemble less of a park and more of a Christmas tree farm.

�I feel like I am part of some show,� one Georgian volunteer remarked bitterly as he swallowed a mouthful of his homemade wine.

A gaggle of refugees stood at the side watching the pageant. Their impressions filtered back to our group. This is a flood plain where cattle graze; the saplings won’t stand a chance.

After the ministers and their legions of green-vested helpers and television reporters who had enough tape to beam back to Tbilisi in time for the evening news � we went to work uprooting the poorly laid conifers and lending volunteers to refugees who were now venturing out of their huts and accepting help tilling their garden.

To our delight we discovered that some of the more enterprising refugees had stolen the better trees for their own use near the huts, so it wasn’t a total waste.

As a journalist the day was a bust. The presence of higher-ups and television cameras had ruined any chance for speaking to these people in a frank manner. But in the end we got plants in the ground and polished off a few liters of wine � which I consider a qualified success.

YEREVAN, Armenia — For an interrogation it seemed awfully genteel.
“We hope you go back to your country and tell everyone good things about Nagorno-Karabakh, that we want to be independent.”

These words came from a local primary school teacher commandeered by the police to translate while they held us for questioning.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. To understand why we were detained you have to understand what Nagorno-Karabakh is. Like all unrecognized republics its history is tragic.
Getting the visa in Yerevan could hardly have been simpler. A passport photo, a nominal fee and some cursory questions and we had permission to visit this former territory of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic whose ethnic Armenian population fought a bloody war of secession.

The conflict killed and displaced thousands over six years before simmering down in 1994. Today this beautiful backwater is only accessible by a winding highway paid for by the Armenian diaspora. The territory has since been ethnically cleansed of Azeris and Armenia and Azerbaijan remain in a state of undeclared war that continues to this day.

The two country’s armies continue to skirmish and and kill each other’s conscripts - a few at a time - along the mountainous frontier. This is the principle reason why you can’t place a telephone call from Armenia to Azerbaijan and the train between from Baku and Yerevan is only a memory dating back to Soviet times.

Visas in pocket, we began to thumb it out of Yerevan.� My traveling companion was a Spanish woman with similar misguided aspirations to be a foreign reporter. We got many lifts with rickety Ladas, Nivas and other Russian cars. The drivers were bemused by our lack of Russian language skills but all seemed sympathetic that we wished to hitch the 400 kilometers to Karabakh.

The road narrowed as snowy peaks rose from the valleys and we began to climb. Dusty villagers dressed in black cheerfully took us further into the interior. One Lada had its rear window spray-painted black, presumably because the driver couldn’t affort the tint-job.

Rain threatened as dusk set in. We still had at least 100 kilometers to go over the roughest terrain when a Japanese SUV stopped. The occupants were three architects from Yerevan on their way to present plans for a new open-air market in Karabakh’s former capital Shushi. All three spoke English - the Armenian raised in Iran spoke the best - and they agreed to take us all the way. Their musical tastes echoed mine and we raced through the darkness singing along to Jimi Hendrix’s “Catfish Blues.”

The next morning in Shushi we made our first contact with the plainclothes police. We had only walked across town to use the internet in the “state” controlled telecom building with the ominous-sounding slogan, “Karabakh Telecom: Always at Reach” when the cop flashed his identification.

Documents were shown and we left building trying to figure who had called the cops on us. In Stepanakert, a largish dusty town with a provincial air and little in the way of sights, we remained conspicuous.

Young Armenian men wear black leather, smoke slim cigarettes and have pointy shoes. Armenian women wear flashy fake leather and carry large handbags. With our dusty jeans and disheveled hair we received long stares that showed neither friendliness nor malevolence.

On a dusty side street and elderly man called to us to join him for coffee. We hesitated.

“??????????!” he implored.

We ascended a staircase into his two-room hovel. He dusted off the table to make tea and coffee and we proffered maple candy and Russian sweets we carried just in case. He went to the shop and came back with a small bottle of Armenian brandy. In broken German sprinkled with Russian, he explained that his three children all lived in Moscow. It was obvious he was bored and lonely so we chatted amiably about this-and-that.

He made a remark that I heard a lot in Armenia about how good the United States (and Spain) are because they are Christian countries. Muslims are fanatics, he said. Not all, I argued, and with a shrug he agreed. Yes, not all. I knew better to expect a people who had endured Civil War to break out in Koom-Bah Yaw and sing about brotherly love, yet it never ceases to depress me.

After wandering dusty streets for more than an hour we finally found our boarding house. The next day our destination was Aghdam, a former city that was completely razed by Armenian forces after the war to prevent its Azeri majority from ever returning. It lies on the buffer zone with Azerbaijan and, while not dangerous, is not something Armenians encourage tourists to visit. After hitching there we could see why.

The outskirts were an abandoned Azeri cemetery. Weeds and bushes pushed up between the Muslim headstones. It got worse

Every house, every building, everything had been systematically destroyed. We marveled at the attention to detail that must have gone into razing a city that used to be home to some 50,000 people.

We stood there not five minutes - mouths agape - when a blue BMW was a professional tint-job pulled up. At first glance the passenger wore a Marine marching band uniform, but no this was a Karabakh authority figure. The driver was plainclothes. Both wanted to see documents. We had no permission to be here, they explained. They pocketed our passports and drove us back to Askeran, a dusty town flanked by an ancient fortress outside of Stepanakert. I can’t say we were maltreated - the driver asked our permission before he lit a cigarette in his own car.

We were ushered into a dimly lit office. We waited quietly while they fetched the English teacher from the local primary school. Before the police inspectors returned I tried to warm her up.

You’re getting paid for this, right? I asked. She shook her head sadly. They really should be paying you, I insisted. We wanted the interpreter to be on our side.

It wasn’t a stretch to play the part of moronic tourists that had wandered astray. I explained to them that Aghdam is listed in a popular tourist guide called Lonely Planet and that we wanted to see it. I had read the Karabakh entry from a borrowed copy in Georgia.

“And this book you write- Lovely Planet - what will be its theme?” she asked.

I suppose I had overestimated her English skills and explained again. This satisfied them. They explained that Aghdam is in the buffer zone with Azeri forces and not safe for tourists. Funny, the farmer who had given us a lift hadn’t seemed concerned about safety.

They asked us our opinion on the conflict. Being a hayseed kid thousands of miles from home with little background in a long-running ethnic civil war, I didn’t take the bait. We both shrugged and looked at the door. They told us to go back to Stepanakert. They released us but only after deleting each and every photo I had hastily snapped from the back of their BMW.

Defiant, we didn’t leave immediately but instead scaled a ruined fortress. A local man told us there were no mines and we took him at his word, though as a precaution we didn’t stray from the visibly worn footpath leading to the summit.

The next day we hitched a lift with a jovial truck driver that took us the whole way from Stepanakert to Yerevan in his dusty Russian semi-truck. We nearly had to fight him to allow us to buy his lunch and it was a scenic eight-hour trip back over the twisty highway.

And that was that.

TBILISI, Georgia � Admittedly, I’ve developed somewhat of a penchant for quasi-independent nation states. In my school years, I was an enthusiastic Northern California secessionist and have long harbored ambitions of one day starting my own country. What better way to educate myself than to see how it’s worked out breakaway republics like Transinistria near Moldova and Abkhazia on the northern frontier with Georgia.

The name Abkhazia may may sound familiar � Georgia fought a brief but bloody war with the Russian Federation over this territory and South Ossetia last summer � but that wasn’t the reason I wanted to visit.

Its capital, Sukhumi, was once one of the most pleasant spots in the whole USSR and a popular vacation destination for Soviet elites. Getting there appeared straightforward enough, despite the official warnings of trigger happy militias, bandits and heavily armed Russian �peacekeeping� troops.

It all started with an email to the Abkhazian Republic’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Two days later, I received a letter that I would show the Abkhazian authorities that would grant me passage to Sukhumi where I could apply for my visa.

A night train took me across Georgia to Zugdidi which is now home to thousands of displaced people from the series of wars that Abkhazia has fought with Georgia since the early 1990s. It was still dark in the early dawn hours and weary passengers stepped off the platform as a steady rain fell that shown in the headlights of waiting taxis and minibuses. Elderly men and women clamored into a blue Mercedes diesel which the driver told me would take us to the Ignuri Bridge � the only land crossing into Abkhazia with Georgia.

Paranoia had gotten the better of me. Tales of banditry, suspicion of non-Russian foreigners or the resumption of armed conflict had led me to stuff dollars into my sock. With no consular representation� in Abkhazia, I would be in a tough spot if I lost both my passport and my money.

We motored off through the darkness winding on a narrow pothole filled road and minutes later arrived in the Inguri River valley. Concrete barricades on both sides block all but a narrow passage for vehicles. The only ones I saw crossing were white United Nations trucks delivering food aid or shuttling international bureaucrats.

The men, women and children from the minibus gathered their belongings and began the half-mile walk across the famous Inguru Bridge. A plaque in Georgian and Russian tells of its construction � in 1948 by German POWs � which extends over the vast river delta from which a chorus of frogs sang in the darkness. A giant sculpture of a pistol with its barrel tied in a knot faces Abkhazia in a bizarre and cynical nod to the spate of hostilities between the Georgians and Abkhazians. I’d like to know who commissioned it.

Out of the darkness came the sound of two coconut shells being banged together. A cart being pulled by the skinniest horse � at first I mistook it for a foal � passed by. With motorized access limited, this enterprising cart driver ferried passengers too lazy or infirm to walk themselves.

The Abkhazian border guards were dressed in green camouflage fatigues and spoke only Russian. Locals offered them gifts of phone cards and small denominations of Russian rubles and I felt like an idiot having forgot to bring anything that could pass as tribute aside from my camera or a $20 bill.

Seeing my blue passport and clearance letter, the guards explained that they’d have to make some phone calls. I sat down to read and watched the bored guards literally drive around the post in circles while I admired the bullet holes that had been riddled through their hut’s tin roof. Outside it rained but the strafing had been limited so I stayed dry.

Nearly an hour later � after the minibus driver got sick of waiting for me and left - I was cleared to enter and walked on the other side. The Abkhazian banner with its green stripes and red hand welcomed me and I sat in an empty minibus waiting for enough passengers to make the short trip economical for the driver to take us to the first town of any size, Gali.

Gali was a ramshackle market town that’s home to a mix of refugees and displaced people. I didn’t linger long enough to get the story. I caught a minibus headed for the capital. We came into Sukhumi which was very attractive with its white washed palatial buildings and palm trees � and even eucalyptus � that thrive in the Caucasian subtropical climate. The town wasn’t as big as I’d reckoned and before I knew it we were heading north. I quizzed my fellow passengers in a mix of sign language and pidgin Russian. Yes, Sukhumi was back there they told me.

Stop pajalsta! I blurted to the driver. I paid and got out. The rain began to fall and I was a good two or three miles north of town. I walked along the highway with my thumb out as Mercedes and BMWs with tinted windows sped past.

Before long a silver-haired man in a Lada sedan stopped for me and I climbed in. He said he spoke a little English � but soon I realized that wasn’t true. I showed him my clearance letter and explained that I was due at the ministry for my visa. He proceeded to drive me around town until we found the building. He refused a proffered 50 ruble bill brusquely and I had to force him to accept some maple candy and Ukrainian caramels as a gift.

The ministry building was spartan and efficient. Trim and attractive young women walked the hall ways as I stood waiting for my visa to be processed. I excused myself to go to the toilet so I could fish out some dollars to pay the $20 fee. The process was straightforward enough and I later found out that I had been handed my visa by none other than the deputy foreign minister of Abkhazia.

As I had put my profession as journalist I was directed to the Abkhazian Press Agency to register. I expected a grilling but instead was served tea and the closest thing I got to a grilling was the quizzical stares from one of the press agency woman’s toddler son.

Outside I met up with a Spanish woman I’d met on the Black Sea ferry to Georgia who had waxed lyrical about the wonderful absurdities of Abkhazian and convinced me to visit. Like me, she was trying to make a go of doing some freelance journalism. Having just been fleeced and then lied to by her interpreter � who she later realized was in the employ of the Abkhazian government � she was fed up with trying to get a story during her visit. The weather was fine so we caved in and turned the visit into a Black Sea holiday walking the long promenades and sampling the tourism infrastructure that normally only caters to Russians.

The people were very friendly and more than a little surprised to see a Western European and American making a holiday in Abkhazia. About a third of the cities stately buildings were vacant. Some obviously from the war of the early ’90s while others seemed the victim of economic stagnation.

Two days later, I convinced the Spaniard to save $70 in taxi fare by hitching back to Georgia with me. We walked southward and caught and electric trolley bus headed several miles out of town. When it ran out of cable and began to turn around we alighted and started to hitch. Two out of three of our lifts were with armed members of the Abkhazian military but they kept their weapons holstered and shared their cigarettes so no complaints there.

Crossing back into Georgia was a breeze. There was a few cursory questions and the Abkhazians caught me photographing the scenic mountain panorama that had their defensive positions in the foreground. After I duly deleted the offending shots they let me pass and we were back in Georgia proper. After delightfully spicy meal in Zugdidi, we caught a night train back to the capital.

For visiting a supposedly war-torn and lawless area, things were remarkably well ordered and civilized. I am happy to report things have gone swimmingly which has been great for me � though likely dull for the readers of this dispatch. Ho hum.

Jaco out