Notes #1 - Spiti

September 10, 2013

While I was in Spiti Valley the electricity was out, and I was unable to cobble together ideas using a keyboard, which I now prefer to actual writing. Occasionally, I would scribble down random thoughts in a passport size notebook which I keep in my back pocket when I travel. These tiny notebooks are usually reserved for making to-do lists which never get done. Alternatively I use them to collect peoples contact information, which I later realize is illegible either because they have horrible handwriting, I have horrible hand writing, or the ink has run. The notebooks, which ride around all day mere millimeters from my rear-end, routinely get soaked in ass-sweat.     

About a year ago I came up with a grandiose plan which would more fully realize the potential of these notebooks which I obsessively cart around every trip. I had the idea of writing down a small synopsis of each passing day, and assigning it a score of on a scale of one to ten. The scale would be arbitrary; a generic barometer of how “good”, or “successful” each day had been, all things considered. Eventually, I would chart each day using some meaningful schema, and see if I could detect any correlation between either high or low scoring days, and my account of that day. I could even do some hard statistical analysis if I wanted. That project survived intact for about ten days. Almost a month had passed before I realized that I had abandoned the project.

Next, I decided I would write down thoughts and observations I found amusing during the day. The idea was to capture the little things that I love about travel, but had begun to register in my consciousness. At some point it just becomes normal to see livestock roaming in the streets, to go out to dinner for $1, to have a maniacal tuk-tuk driver, or to see a raucous group of people strolling down the street dressed like circus performers, for no apparent reason. That idea is now a year old, and it managed to last almost two weeks before I forgot about its existence. I recall thinking that I had memorialized some good moments which might have otherwise escaped my notice. However, in due time, I lost the notebook, and can’t recall a single thing I had written there.

I resurrected this procedure for capturing the seemingly mundane while in Spiti Valley. From the start, the projected morphed into something other than I expected. I had ample free time, and notable things don’t happen all of the time when traveling. Instead, it became a place to put down whatever crazy thought came to mind while riding; a place to record sound bites from my mind.

I didn’t return to my mini-journal every day, but I did get some things down which I might have otherwise forgotten. In an attempt to make a permanent home for these snippets from my stream of consciousness, I am officially transferring them to a place where I probably won’t lose them: here.

August 16 – 30^th, 2013. Spiti Valley.

The kid at our home stay in Tashigon, population 24, has a facebook account. Wish I had said: ‘W-T-F?’

Haven’t showered in four days. For a contemporary person, a clean soul is inversely proportional to a clean body.

When cows ruminate, they chew cud. When people ruminate, they chew ideas. Either way, it should be done with the Zen-like poise of our ungulate friends.

The surest path to riches is contentment without. Attainable and boundless, such an ability continually purchases happiness where ever one goes.

[A friend] once told me that walking in the rain actually gets you less drenched than running through the rain. I just rode my motorcycle briskly through a storm and concluded that [my friend] is an idiot.

The people in Spiti lead such arduous lives, but have a kind and gentle way about them. Note to self: always be kind, no matter how hard things get.

At the apparent level, other people and external circumstances occasionally upset me. In the final analysis, I only ever upset myself.  

Camping is awesome.