Varanasi (a.k.a. Very Nasty)

Mitch tries to serenade us with a Sitar.

Crossing the border between Nepal and India provided a sudden insight to the way that we would be living for the next three months. Without delay, there were far more people. Buildings were taller and more crowded together. The streets were full of ever kind of garbage imaginable, and my sole focus became trying to avoid stepping in one of the innumerable cow, dog, and human organic landmines. Burning garbage on both sides and in the middle of the street added to the filth. People were smiling less, walking faster, and speaking much more loudly; often yelling. Though it sounds awful, and in a way was, it was also fresh and exciting. As wonderful and relaxed as Nepal was, we were ready for India’s excitement, energy, and potential for exploration.

We walked through the border crossing, and once we were 500 meters from Nepal, we got on a bus bigger than anything we’d seen on a road anywhere in the last month. The bus defied almost everything I’d expected. When I try to conceive of a bus in India, I think of a rickety old machine held together by an assortment of odds and ends. In my mind there are people everywhere: in all the seats, standing, on the luggage racks, hanging out the windows, and trying not to fall off the roof. I also imagine there being an assortment of goats and chickens accompanying the many travelers. Instead the bus was massive, consisting of nearly 100 seats with ample legroom. However, it was incredibly dirty and broken, with sharp things sticking out all over the place. The best part was that we (Ben, Danielle, Grayson, myself, Mitch, and Ryan) were the only ones on the bus for the first few hours, and it didn’t really fill up until around hour #10 (the entire ride was about 15 hours). Even when it did fill, they never stopped for more people than there were seats, and there certainly weren’t any animals. It was a good first lesson for India: never expect.

Chai man on the street - Ten cents for tea.

All in all, the 15-hour bus ride was a great deal of fun. Mitch and Ryan sat behind us, occasionally blasting out classic rock hits to which we would all momentarily rock out. There was always something to look at out the window, and it was comfortable enough to have the occasional nap. At our first stop, the boys got to use the bus stop urinal (a designated wall) while Danielle walked around a bit confused until she managed to find a shop owner she could pay. We filled up on 3 rupee samosas (and made sure to eat them with only our right hands) before getting back on our new home, the bus. The best part of the ride was the incredible coincidence: seeing Valentine walking down the street. Ben yelled at him from the bus window, which was followed by a moment of stunned silence, before the bus rolled away out of sight. He had been the first tourist we’d seen all day (and we weren’t even sure of the city we saw him in or what he was doing there).

We abandoned our bushome for Varanasi after living in it for around 15 hours. I’m going to have trouble talking about Varanasi, as it was simultaneously the ‘greatest’ and ‘worst’ place I’ve ever been (but mostly just the greatest - it has since become the #1 city I hope to one day re-visit). We expected to be instantly swarmed with touts and rickshaw drivers after exiting the bus, but were happy to find that there were only two or three milling about. After negotiating a price, we decided to take 2 rickshaws between the six of us. For those of you who have never done this sort of traveling, note that getting a taxi or a rickshaw from a train station, bus station, or airport almost never works out. The driver always, always tries to rip you off.

A woman begging on the ghats.

After awhile, most people figure out what the common tricks are, and avoid being had. However, in Varanasi we done got had real good by these rickshaw hoodlums. What we later learned was a 20-minute walk (and thus 3 minute drive) to our guesthouse ended up being a 10-minute drive to a place further away than we had started. Following this, we split up: four stayed behind because the rickshaws “couldn’t get through the narrow streets”, while Grayson and I went into the narrow spaghetti streets with our guide to find our hotel. We walked for at least half an hour before arriving. Once we arrived, we checked to make sure our reservation was still good before heading back. The walk only needed to be about 2 minutes, but the idea is that you get so sick of walking the long distance that you decide “screw it” and you go somewhere closer after going back to get your stuff. The change in guesthouse results in a nice commission for your faithful guide. Fortunately for us there was a great someone at our hotel (Leslie) who was not too impressed with our driver. He walked back with us, the entire time lecturing the guy who tried to cheat us. In the end, we had a great pre-tour of the old city streets, though it took about 2 hours to do what should have taken 10 minutes. Chris and Caitlyn were at the same guesthouse (our reason for going) and the eight of us chatted briefly over veg korma before collapsing into bed.


We didn’t really get to see Varanasi until the next day. I woke up early, as I usually do, and since nobody else was in operation I decided to go for a walk on my own. Being a city of around one million, there are a number of large, dusty, noisy, and dirty streets. However, these can be avoided if you stay in the “old town”, which is the carless (motorbikes fit, so people ride them, though they should never be allowed) area just behind the ghats that line the Ganges. The place is a labyrinth, full of shops, street food, delicious smells, awful smells, crazy colour, crazier people, and you name it. It’s almost impossible not to get lost at first, as the buildings are all several stories high, and all the alleyways look the same. You feel like a rat running through a maze (though you then see rats running through the maze, which confirms that you are, indeed, only a human much less knowledgeable of the puzzle than said rat, and with fewer shortcuts at your disposal).

A man selling useless plastic junk.

Needless to say, I was very careful when venturing from our guesthouse alone. I would count each turn and make note of several landmarks as I changed direction. The roads were beautiful: stone paths surrounded by old buildings and, despite being between around 1-4 meters in width, full of people, motorbikes, and huge grumpy bulls, unwilling to budge from their pile of delicious garbage if you need to pass. While the senses are on fire, the most exciting stimulus for me was the human diversity. Within 6 strides you pass a grumpy police officer, a beggar with missing limbs, a great fat man resembling Chinese Buddha deep-frying samosas in a blackened wok, a group of women in saris, a camera-toting tourist, and a saddhu in saffron robes and covered with face paint, a long white beard, malas, and dreadlocks exploding in every direction. And they’re all yelling, eating, farting, spitting, singing at the top of their lungs or staring at you as if you’ve got a cucumber growing from your forehead. Then add the sounds: a pinch of hindi trance music, a dollop of hair-pullingly loud motorbike horn blasting, a dash of tabla, and a touch of unapologetic throat flem clearing. Just as you feel as though you couldn’t experience one more thing without your brain melting, a monkey tries to steal your bag and a group of chanting men rush by you carrying on their shoulders a dead body.

After exactly 3 left turns and one right turn (and not in that order) I found the Goddess Ganga, flowing eternally from the top of Shiva’s head. The Ganges is the massive holy river that flows through Varanasi, and is the central attraction for Hindu pilgrims (and the occasional non-Hindu tourist). It is lined along the North shore with ghats, which are essentially just stairs leading down to the river. Pilgrims come to Varanasi to pray, to be cleansed by the river, and to die. To die or be cremated in the holy city is considered auspicious (if you do, it is said that you are freed from the cycle of rebirth/reincarnation).

I didn’t want to stray too far and risk not being able to find my way back. I had also been warned countless times about the many people who hang out along the ghats waiting to rip you off or take your money in any possible way. Though I still wanted to stand beside the famous river, so I walked carefully down the huge staircase covered in a green slippery substance (among many other things). After almost falling at the bottom, I met Chen-Tu, a local silk producer and University student. He was a gem, and I was very lucky. We walked together for a while, and he told me all about the ghats. We sat together beside the bigger of the two burning ghats, and drank chai while we watched human bodies burn over wooden debris. He told me how 300 bodies were burned daily between the two ghats and that each body takes almost 3 hours. Later, when I came back, I counted 15 bodies burning at one time. Afterwards, the ashes and whatever unburned remains are shoveled into the river. Bodies are burning 24 hours per day, and at night it’s an incredible sight. In the morning is the most quiet, but there are many more people who take advantage of this to pan for gold jewelry in the water. Chen-tu also showed be the hash smoking temple, the heroin-addict hangout, and the burning ghat wood stock before I finally returned back to the guesthouse (to find Ben just waking up).

A firee guy (holy cow) on the banks of the Ganga.

We spent the majority of our time in the marvelous Varanasi just experiencing. There aren’t really “things to do” or tourist attractions. You walk along the ghats. You get lost in the labyrinth of ancient alleyways. You try to avoid being overwhelmed by doing nothing. You escape for a little while to a western-style café with espresso. It was a perfect reintroduction to India.

If you ever make it to Varanasi (if I could add only one thing to your bucket list, it would be to go) you absolutely MUST go to Blue Lassi. In fact, this hole-in-the-wall lassi shop is a good enough reason in itself for you to quit your job, buy a plane ticket to Delhi, hop on a hot and crowded train to Varanasi, and fight your way through the streets and alleys to get there. For those of you who don’t know what a lassi is - google it. For the rest of you (and the now newly enlightened) I will tell you that there is no better lassi on earth. The shop is several generations old, and the old man making your drink looks as if he’s done nothing else for the last 60 years (and he probably hasn’t). You can get apple, banana, coconut, chocolate, orange, plain, salty, mango, any combination of the above, and more. Each one takes about 10 minutes to make (I took a video of the entire process). During this ten minutes, don’t be surprised to witness two or three mobs run by carrying a human corpse on their shoulders and chanting in Hindi. They’re running to the ghats to burn it and throw it in the river. When your lassi arrives, if you’re lucky enough to have found a seat, you try to simultaneously drink it and prevent it from spilling all over your lap, as they are always overflowing. The flavour is like nothing your mouth has ever experienced.

Ryan (back), Ben, and Mitch (front) as we shimmy along a
metal bar so as to avoid walking through a river of sewage
and mud as the ghats are cleaned after the monsoon.

Varanasi is mind-blowing because of the little things, yet it still manages to be greater than the sum of its parts. There are monkeys everywhere, and they live on the roofs. Ninety-nine percent of buildings have flat rooftops where people dry laundry, grow plants, and hang out. They provide optimal monkey-watching towers. My memories seems surreal: monkeys soaring gracefully across the urban landscape, with the setting sun behind them, and hundreds of children, one standing on nearly every roof, flying homemade kites.

We couldn’t keep away from the burning ghats. Understandably, photography isn’t allowed, but if you google image search then you can see better photographs than I would have been able to take anyways. My most vivid memory of the ghats is standing within 3 meters of a burning body, and having the smoke blowing in my face. I was slowly being covered with the smell of burning flesh and a thin layer of black burning human sludge. Meanwhile cows and dogs are milling around, and some of them are eating left over bits of flesh and licking the ground where a corpse was recently burnt. I stare into the fire and realize what I had previously thought was a log was actually a large, intact femur. I can nearly reach out and grab it.

Candles lit and lined along the rim of our boat; waiting to be set afloat in banana leaf cups.

We met some Calgarians in Varanasi, Jason and Sarah. They were the ones who told us about Blue Lassi. They also told us that they had seen a number of bodies thrown directly into the river without burning, and watched them drift slowly away downstream. After asking some locals later on, we learned that they akip the burning step if the body is that of a holy man, a pregnant woman, or a child. I can’t imagine how many bones are in the bottom of that river, or the types of creatures that, over the centuries, have evolved to take advantage of this unique niche. I can’t imagine anyone would actually want to study that. To be honest, with dozen or so point sources of raw sewage entering the holy river in Varanasi alone, I can’t imagine there would be much living in there.

We had initially planned to only stay in Varanasi for about 4 days, as the majority of people you talk to will tell you that it is a complete shit-hole and that you should leave as soon as possible after doing the essentials. Danielle, Ben, Grayson and I all had train tickets for Bodhgaya, where the Buddha achieved enlightenment. I was so in love with Varanasi that I decided to cancel this ticket and stay for an extra couple of days. The biggest factor responsible for helping me to make this decision was the occurrence of a huge festival on the day following our scheduled departure. So Danielle and Grayson left, while Ben and myself stayed behind. Mitch and Ryan also left the morning of the festival (after a couple hours of frantic searching for Mitch’s suddenly lost passport - a horror story for backpackers in India), leaving us there with Jason and Sarah to celebrate.

During the day, the festival was wild. There were so many people in the streets and along the river that you actually couldn’t move. It was loud. It was hot. People had come to bathe, be cleansed, pray for luck, bathe their water buffalo, eat, die, steal, beg, and so on. Everyone was there. Kids painted entirely blue as Kali, a cow eating marigolds, a man rushing around in a suit, yelling into two cell phones at once, people throwing rice on the mats of disfigured beggars for good luck, and hairy wet men in underwear everywhere. I’ve never experienced an event like it. It was like my previous description of Varanasi times 10. I took a video, and I’ll try to make it available.

Ben, Sarah, and Jason.

As the sun set and disappeared, the chaos turned to magic. Jason had heard of a “free” boat ride, apparently put on by the owner of our guesthouse. Ben and I weren’t too keen, as we have become more than a little bit wary when it comes to the F word (free) in India. However, we didn’t have a set plan, so we decided to walk along the ghats and look for this boat. It was scheduled to depart an hour before the time when we started looking for it, yet we found it anyways, docked and just getting ready to go (we weren’t surprised to find it waiting… Indian time is something else). As we walked down to the boat, which had about 30 people in it, we were stopped in our tracks. Inside the boat, out of the hundreds of boats full of peopl (and thousands of people all around) was Lucie! We couldn’t believe the coincidence. She was apparently visiting from Kolkata for a few days only, and was walking along when someone invited her into the free boat. For a few minutes we were stunned by the coincidence, and had trouble saying anything at all.

The boat finally left just as it was getting dark (at about 6 o’clock). As we paddled out into the dark water, with hundreds of other boats all around, we started to get a better view of Varanasi and the ghats lining the Ganges. It was an incredible sight, and one I’ll never forget. On every ghat and property there were candles lined on the ground, each separated from the other by only two feet (it reminded me fondly of Lethbridge, where you can’t even keep a match lit long enough to light a cigarette). There were also Christmas lights everywhere. There was music too, and it was everywhere. The moon was full, and a steady stream of fireworks poured into the sky all night long, lighting the river with blue, green and gold fire. The burning ghats seemed to have been intensified along with everything else, because even from way out in the river we could see the flames of more than a dozen bodies soaring high into the air.

We were on the boat for 4 hours. During that time, we collectively lit 5001 candles (the 1 for good luck) and placed them in banana leaf boats on the river. As the river flows slowly at this time of year, and there isn’t even the slightest breeze, you can almost imagine what the river would look like with all of the boats out there doing this. Almost. We had to tow an extra boat behind us that was filled exclusively with candles and banana leaf carriers. Everyone on the boat worked hard for 4 hours, but it was completely worth it. A month later, my clothes are still stained with wax. I couldn’t imagine a better way to cap off our stay in Varanasi.

The next day was our last day in Varanasi. We had booked a train to Jaipur followed by a train to Jodhpur, in Rajasthan (the opposite side of the country). This is where we were to meet Danielle and Grayson. Our train was waitlisted number 4 and 5, but everyone we talked to said that it wouldn’t be a problem, as people that close on the waiting list nearly always get on.

Bhang: The leaves and flowerheads of cannabis, used as a narcotic.

Since our first train (18 hours) was scheduled to depart in the evening, we went in the morning for a lassi with Lucie and some other friends. It turns out that we got Bhang lassis (even though I had asked for one without). I only ate half of mine, since I was worried about getting on the train, and I had never experienced the effects before (though was told that they were quite mild- all in all I am fairly risk averse). Everyone else finished theirs. I was not prepared for the effect that they had, and, though I won’t go into detail, can say quite confidently that my first bhang lassi will also be my last bhang lassi.

I was still “uncomfortably altered” 7 hours later when we went to catch our train. After an awful rickshaw ride, during which we got stuck in a gridlock traffic jam (like a Chineese finger trap - where the vehicles are all interlocked and nobody can move without the other moving), we arrived to have our first ever train station experience. Now, when I arrived to the airport in Delhi, I expected it to be BAD… really really bad… but it was fine. I had heard the same horrific warnings about train stations, but was not so concerned after the airport false alarm.

Enjoying some chai after a refreshing swim.

Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that the festival was the day before. We walked in and we couldn’t move. We were in a massive dark room, resembling a warehouse, and it was full of yelling and pushing people. We had no idea where to go, where to ask where to go, or where to even begin. There wasn’t even a train in sight, so we left the building immediately in hopes that maybe (just maybe) we had accidentally walked into a prison or government building. No such luck. Eventually we found our train, and were able to talk to the station attendant standing nearby (none of this would have been a problem if we had seats). He took one look at our waitlisted tickets, took out his pen, and wrote “TICKET CANCELLED” in capital letters over the piece of paper. I almost had a nervous breakdown. The situation was desperate. We ran around with our luggage for the next 30 minutes (the train left in 60) trying to find some way, any way, of getting on the train. We found a nice security guard at a tourist help office in a corner who didn’t speak English, but dragged us along to a dark hidden room. They made Ben wait outside, and pulled me into the room. We walked down a hallway, and entered a room without windows full of people. He point to a long thin room, and told me to go in (supposedly to buy tickets). I went in, and immediately saw that he had brought me into the staff entrance for the ticket booth. Before me were a dozen ticket sellers at their booths. Before them were over a thousand people lined up in Indian style. If you’ve never seen a lineup in India, you’ll know that this actually means “a large mob of desperate yelling people waving their arms in the air because there isn’t enough room to bring them down by their sides again”. It was true chaos, unlike any that I’d ever seen before.

I bought both our tickets from the man at the booth, and was confused at how the cost for both of us was only 258 rupees (5 dollars) each for an 18-hour ride. Nevertheless, we got on the train and we left Varanasi.

Varanasi was one of the wildest experiences of my life. From the cobra charmers to the rats; from the river ceremonies every night to witnessing a sketchy opium deal at a government hash shop; from the Sadhu who claimed to sleep only 3 hours per night to the people sleeping on the ghats for the festival; from the beggars to the cop breaking his bamboo rod over a rickshaw driver’s back in broad daylight. I won’t ever forget Varanasi. I plan to one day return.

Thessaloniki

The Kavala crew left us on the side of the highway at midday on the 6^th of February. We walked up a roundabout and found a place as good as any for hitching to Thessaloniki. There was a small shoulder and about one in ten cars was merging in and going slow enough to be able to stop safely. The weather was far from terrific, and we weren’t sure whether or not we would get a ride, but we figured that if everything went wrong we could easily walk back into Kavala and spend another night (I think we secretly wanted to do this anyways).

We were picked up after not so long by a woman who was kind enough to drive us only 10 km (just far enough to eliminate the option of giving up and heading back Kavala). She left the main road, and us along with it, in the middle of a very cold nowhere. We waited a long time for our next ride. The Mediterranean Sea was beating violently against the cliffs and shores of Greece. Dark cyclonic activity was brewing in the distance and appeared to be headed our way. We were lucky with what turned out to be our second but last ride of the day. Two sisters picked up us brothers and carried us all the way to Thessaloniki. They were slightly older than Ben and I, good English speakers, and not incredibly interesting. We were so happy to finally be warm again. Ben fell asleep in the back seat with the guitar wedged between his legs. I managed to stay awake and listen to the younger of the sisters (who was wearing what might just have been the most vibrant red lipstick in the universe) as she postulated rhetorically about how we might be serial killers or rapists and how she probably shouldn’t have stopped to pick us up.

Pretending to be pensive in a Thessaloniki café.

Thessaloniki is a huge city, and we were relieved to have been left by the sisters in front of the main port downtown. If you’ve ever been to Europe, traveling from place to place and trying to reorient yourself in a new environment on a daily basis, you’ll quickly learn that everything revolves around a city square or, in the case of coastal cities, the harbor. Ben and I Skyped with Danielle and had a hot chocolate while waiting for Steve, our Canadian Couchsurfing host, who showed up and paid our entire bill at right around the same time that he introduced himself.

We drove back to his place in his new car, which was driven by his fiancé Mahi. We rolled in and wasted no time in having a delicious meal of Pastichio (which was in fact so good that I proceeded to write an improvised song about it on the guitar). Steve is a great guy. He was born into a Greek family in Montreal, though moved to Greece when he was still quite young. He has a ponytail, his English is near perfect (maybe better than mine), he works for some kind of agricultural pesticide company, and he’s the reason I started this blog. Steve was so good to us that I don’t think we paid for a single thing (despite trying) throughout the duration of our stay. According to him, we were only staying with him because he wanted to prove to Mahi that Couchsurfers are good people so that he could invite hot Russian girls the next time (apparently he gets a disproportional number of couch requests from this demographic).

"Just wait, I have to look cool
for this photo"

We spent two days in Thessaloniki. Steve took a couple of days off work to hang out with us and show us around. There isn’t all that much to see, but it is nevertheless a fantastically Greek place. We spent time eating Mahi’s great cooking (best pizza I’ve ever had - even better than in Italy… props!), smoking a massive cigar, visiting various pubs, drinking one and a half litre plastic bottles of wine (only 3 euros a pop!), shopping for warm clothing in the cheapest parts of town, complaining about the unprecedented cold weather, and trying to convince Steve to quit his job and go traveling. One of the highlights of the stay was buying a new razor and having the most incredible shave. It was then that I learned that Indian razors are more like chainsaws than devices used for shaving.

We wrapped up our visit to Thessaloniki in a downtown bar. Steve bought us beers and shots of tequila. We were served free nuts, pizza, and so on, which is a business tactic that seems to be prevalent in Greece and which I very strongly condone. We sat around having our last chat as Steve explained to us that Greek people don’t dance (the subject had inevitably come up when a great live DJ was playing dance music and nobody was moving a muscle). According to Steve, dancing is an “unnecessary step” (the pun was almost surely intended). I am still unable to decide whether the free pizza is worth the lack of dancing.

The next morning we decided to skip Skopje because of the weather (it was almost to the point where we weren’t able to leave Thessaloniki at all). Our plan was to hitchhike to Macedonia. Steve was so kind that he drove us 25 km out of town to a poll station that would make hitchhiking easiest. He also gave us a pack of cigarettes, which once again foiled our plans to quit by having a “no buying of tobacco” policy. It was cold, windy, snowy, and miserable. Steve took a Hanuman sticker and the weird unidentifiable guru dude who was probably responsible for making the stickers (and decided to make one of himself while he was at it). He said they reminded him of us. I’m guessing that Ben was Hanuman.

Steve and Ben in the same café (I seem to have not taken all that many pictures in Thessaloniki).

Kavala

Oranges in Kavala

We crossed the border by foot. There didn’t seem to be anyone too interested in going to (or coming from) Greece that day, apart from a few truck drivers. When we left Turkey, to our delight, the border guard informed us that it was against the law for us to walk across the bridge to cross the river delineating Turkey from Greece. We had to drive. We waited about 15 minutes before getting lucky. Some Turkish guys crossing the border let us get in the back of their scary, windowless, creepy-guy-who-gives-candy-to-children van. It must have looked slightly suspicious when we crossed the border and proceeded to tumble out of the back of the van (though nobody seemed to mind - I don’t think too many people are trying to sneak into Greece at the moment - it could have something to do with its current economic problems).

The charming and hilarious Nikos

Once finally on the other side of the border, we found a great place to hitchhike. In fact, it was such a great place that we only had to wait two hours for a ride. We were eventually picked up by one of the first cars that passed (it was a pretty deserted place - there was nobody around apart from us and a truck driver cooing his dinner over a fire on the side of the road). The old couple that saved us from the freezing cold was very friendly, gave us chocolate biscuits, and provided us with about an hour of luxury transportation in their new BMW. They didn’t speak much English, but they were able to teach us Greek words such as efreristo (thank you) and oreila (beautiful). The old man drove fast, and I have a very vivid memory of simultaneously being on the cell phone with their English-speaking daughter (trying to figure out where we should be dropped off), eating a cookie with the other hand (the same mouth mind you), and cruising along at 160 km/hr.

 The transition from Muslim to Christian was very sudden. I also immediately began to understand why Greek Gods were worshipped. The skies were dark and turbulent; the sea to the one side of the highway was angry and vast; the rivers we crossed were violent and swollen; the sky was filled with prototypical, jagged lightening bolts; the mountains loomed aggressively over us. It was straight out of Mordor, but with more vegetation and fewer orcs.

The old couple pointed out their village as we were driving, but for some reason they didn’t turn off the road or let us out. The eventually let us out about 30 minutes later, gave us a loaf of bread (they had been grocery shopping in Turkey - it must be significantly cheaper), and bit us farewell. We weren’t sure why they had left us where they had, but it soon made sense when they turned around and we watched them drive back in the direction we had come. They had done us a big favour by bringing us half an hour further.

Greek flag on the castle in Kavala

Our fourth ride of the day picked us up just as the first drops of rain were starting to fall. He was just in time, as it started to pour just as we set off again. From what I remember, the guy was a mechanic of some kind, played an accordion, was sick, and was a pseudo-hippy. Though he wasn’t going there, he drove us right into the outskirts of Kavala, which is a little ways off the road. He saved us a lot of trouble- it would have been a long walk in.

Now Kavala, our first destination in Greece, turned out to be your stereotypical coastal Greek paradise, with white buildings built along one side of a mountain leading down to the sea. We stood at the top of town, looking out in wonder at the beautiful city before us, and smoked what might have been our last clove cigarettes from India. It was a great moment in a great day. It only got better when we heard a voice yelling from behind us: “What in the world are you doing?”

The sweet and kind Kostakis

I suppose it must have looked a bit strange: us with our feet dangling off a cliff in the middle of winter; our backpacks to the side; wearing toques, gloves, and every other article of clothing we had available. We turned around to find that a very blonde 60-year-old woman with very red lipstick and a very furry fur coat was approaching us. It turns out that she was British, but living in Kavala. She was very animated, very honest, and a little bit crazy. She invited us in for a drink. We obliged.

So there we are, sitting at a table full of at least 12 old Greeks in a fancy hotel with free cakes and little desserts and other such delicacies. She bought us espresso. She bought us amaretto. She bought us a pack of cigarettes (in fact, she only wanted one cigarette, which is why she bought them in the first place - her regular brand were waiting for her at home). After drinking with them for a couple of hours and repeatedly turning down invitations to join her that night at her place (her husband was out of town), we decided that the time might be right to go and meet our Couchsurfing host. We said goodbye and her friends (who didn’t speak English) drove us down to the city square in their luxury SUV.

Kostakis' sister, Anastasia

Our hosts, Kostakis and Nikos, were pure gold. There was a little bit of a language barrier, but we got along right away. We had a good walk around, and they bought us pork gyros stuffed with French fries and some Amstel beers, which we drank in the rain next to the harbour. Their generosity was astounding in light of the economic problems plaguing the country. In only one day we were already beginning to develop a fairly good understanding of how serious these problems were/are. We met a large group of their friends that night, who all sat around chatting and smoking rolling tobacco. There were about ten of them, but only Nikos had a job. Many of them had University degrees and work experience, but they still spent most of their time each day looking for work. Nikos was working every night in a fish factory, from 23:00 - 07:00, and was very grateful to have a job.

We stayed up late, chatting and enjoying each other’s company. They were all such friendly people; somehow full of curiosity, optimism, and plans for the future. I devoured some anti-histamine to spite their cat before crawling into bed and having a great sleep.

The next day I got up early and went for a walk to buy new guitar strings. We then all met up for coffee at a place where they meet and hang out each morning. Anastasia brought us breakfast. After a deliciously murky Greek coffee (which turns out to be exactly the same thing as a Turkish coffee) we (Ben, Nikos + girlfriend, Kostakis + sister, and I) set off to explore the old town and the castle. It was a lovely day of navigating the old labyrinthian streets and standing on top of the world in the turret of an old castle-turned-museum. Our lunch together was Greek salad (of course),that was delicious and made by Kostakis. Nikos put 10 Euros worth of gas in his car so that he could drive us to the highway. We exchanged stickers of Indian Gods for an autographed seashell.

Left to right: Kostakis, Thomas, Ben, Nikos

Kesan

We left Istanbul as prospective hitchhikers. Young pioneers in a world with an overabundance of automobiles. Ben had never hitchhiked before, and I had never done so successfully, apart from short rides to and from the ski hill when I lived in Fernie. Our intended destination for the day was a city called Kesan in the North-Western corner of Turkey. In the early morning we took first the tram, then a metrobus, and rode for three hours, going pretty much as far out of town as we could. We carefully selected our hitching spot and stood by the side of the road for about 30 minutes, watching hundreds of cars pass, before relocating. After repeating steps 1-3 a couple of times, we were pulled off the road by a couple of guys who had been laughing at us. They didn’t speak English, but did help us to get on a bus that brought us about one quarter of the way to our destination. After getting on the bus (which was next to free) we realized that Istanbul doesn’t really end. The city goes on and on, and there really isn’t a suitable place to hitchhike. That was hitchhiking lesson number 1: it doesn’t work in a city.

Once in the countryside, we found a highway and were just about to stand confidently beside it when a bus stopped beside us. Out popped a chubby little man who immediately started running frantically towards us, looking flustered and waving his arms in the air. Despite not being able to speak English, he still managed to ensure that our hitchhiking plans were thwarted for the second time that day. We got on the bus and handed over nearly all of what little money we had in our pockets. We were left with only a couple of dollars worth of Turkish lira. Ben fell asleep to the song of the bus engine while I watched Wall-E in Turkish (which is about the same as in English, since there is hardly an dialogue in the movie). When we got off the bus we found a phone and called our Couchsurfing host, who arranged to come and meet us at a grocery store near the start of town.

Ben and Talat preparing to chow down

There are only three people on Couchsurfing from Kesan. One has no information or photo on the profile, another doesn’t have a photograph of themselves (only some cartoon drawing of a scary guy with sunglasses), and the third seems relatively normal. Thankfully, I managed to convince the third to let us stay with her while we were in Kesan. However, she did cancel at the last minute. I immediately sent a request to cartoon profile picture guy, who was also kind enough to accept.

His name was Talat, and we didn’t really know what to expect from him. Turns out that he was, like everyone else we’d met in Turkey, incredible kind and hospitable. We bought some things at the grocery store and he cooked us dinner in his apartment. Since there isn’t really much going on in Kesan, we didn’t do much apart from walking around a little bit. To be honest, it is a bit of a creepy town. People walk around without smiling or looking up, and the day that we were there seemed exceptionally dreary and stagnant, as if time moved slower and everybody had a secret to hide. I felt almost as if I were in a Goosebumps novel. People would speak to us in Turkish, and when we didn’t understand, they would speak to us some more in Turkish, casually, as if they were certain we understood all that they were saying. The public transportation in Kesan consists of a few large vans that drive around at 15 km/hr on a single route through the city. Still cheaper, better, and more widely used that LA transit (the nostalgia is overwhelming when I remember trying to get around as a student using public transportation in Lethbridge). I think the most interesting thing about Kesan was the way that they announce each day over municipal loudspeakers whether or not anyone had died the day before. If people had died, they proceed to list their names in a monotonous drone, while residents stand around and listen respectfully.

Jamming by candlelight

Since Talat is a bit of a musician, we sat around and played some music after dinner, and he eventually had his friends over as well. We had a full band (nearly) with two guitars, a flutist, and a drummer. We played well into the night, and made arrangements for the following morning to bring our skills to the streets. Over an incredible “students” Turkish breakfast, Talat explained to us that he had never before seen anyone busing in Kesan, and that he had always wanted to, though had never found the courage. We played for about an hour in the city centre square, attracting absolutely no attention. Not one single person stopped to listen, though one guy did drop a lira (50 cents) in my guitar case while walking by. In fact, the only things that we accomplished was to 1) break Ben’s camera, which was blown off a wall by the wind, 2) break a guitar string, and 3) get some teenage groupies, who were apparently hiding behind a bush listening to us, and who came out to talk to us after we had finished playing.

We left Kesan immediately after busking. We bade a warm farewell to Talat, who gave me a guitar pick for the road (which has since been in my pocket), and proceeded to go stand on the side of the road. We were actually going to hitchhike this time. Nothing would stop us.

It turns out that we weren’t the only ones trying to get a ride. When we arrived, there was already another guy standing on the side of the road. After nobody picked either of us up for 10 minutes, a fourth person came and started waiting with his thumb out as well. There didn’t appear to be a line or an order, and Ben and I were getting concerned that we would be standing there for a long time. Eventually someone stopped, and since Ben and I didn’t want to be left behind, we ran frantically to be the first ones in. The guy let us in, and proceeded to stop two more times to let the other guys in as well. He was initially alone in his car, which was now completely full with 5 big men. He didn’t say a word, and for the most part seemed quite grumpy. He drove us all the way to the Turkey-Greece border before turning around to drive back the other way with his passengers. Turns out he was a pretty nice guy. We sat in no-man’s-land for 30 minutes and used our last lira coins to buy a grilled cheese salami sandwich. Then we went to Greece.

Busking in Kesan