Playing House in Yerevan (9 July 2017)

Once I returned to Yerevan after my stay in Gyumri, I quickly moved into a AirBnB I had rented for most of the time I have left in Armenia. My main motivation being that ever since I began staying in Yerevan my cousin has refused to sleep in his own bed. To rebel against their hospitality I got my own studio apartment. A sofa mattress and a fridge of lavash (Armenian flat bread), cheese, sausage, Nutella and beer and I was set to go about playing house.

I knew that I liked Yerevan, but over the past few days I have grown to love it. Yerevan is a city of just over a million people. Not too big and not too small. Just right. Walking around there is something benevolently seductive about the city. There is a slow bustle to the streets. Most people seem to make their way leisurely around at whatever pace they wish. Tall warm stoned buildings line the sidewalk but you are never more than a stones throw from a park or a boulevard reserved for pedestrians only. It seems on every street corner there are people eating and drinking on sidewalk cafes. Every park seems to be made up of about fifty percent lovers, holding each other and speaking softly so only each other can hear. The men who play backgammon don't mind sharing their territory with pairs. It is easy to enjoy the beautiful dry weather that makes 90 degree heat feel more relaxing than anything else. Even if the back of your shirt clings to the seats a tad. If there is anything that Armenia is suffering from a lack of it is a state sponsored siesta. Something that I was perfectly able to implement myself at my own apartment.

At night the city truly comes alive. It is not uncommon to see families playing together in the parks until late in the evening. On my walk to different bars in the area I found many of the children would be up later on the monkey bars than I would be after a few drinks in a pub. Of the bars in Yerevan there is no shortage of diversity either. The basement bar Hemingway, that displays multiple murals of a certain old bearded man and stormy, shark riddled seas. However they use the power of funk music to serve as a lighthouse of positivity among the late writer's portraits and musings on the purpose of life. 

 There is the strangely ethnic lounge Calumet, where the band Rozen Tal rocked the sardine can of people and densely packed Indian art we were all were nestled into. Finally one of my favorites, The Venue. A bar that serves just as well to sit at a table to drink and talk as well as let loose. A place where you can hear everything from Grand Funk Railroad, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Kendrick Lamar. Never light on the liquor it is easy to get swept away there in conversation, in dance or beer pong.

There is still much for me to see in Armenia though. It seems like every nook and cranny of this country is steeped in lasting tradition that sadly is relatively unknown to the world. A notion I was reminded of the other day when I took a tour of the Ararat Brandy factory just outside of the city. The tour consisted of a brief trip through the Ararat Brandy museum. Here guests learn about the process of brandy making. From selecting the perfect blend of grapes to hand making the aging barrels and even replacing the corks of brandy bottles so that the corks don't dry out and allow air to taint the brandy. Of all the long history of the Ararat company I was presented with two things stood out to me the most. In February of 1945, while the heads of the Allied Powers met in Yalta to discuss the plans for a postwar Europe, Winston Churchill was presented with a bottle of Ararat Dvin Brandy by Stalin. He took such a liking to Armenian brandy that he began to import it straight from the USSR. He would import over three hundred bottles a year for the rest of his life. A bit closer to the current era, the Ararat Brandy Company was intensely disturbed by the ongoing territorial conflict between Armenia and its neighboring country of Azerbaijan. In an effort to highlight the conflict the brandy company filled up a special barrel that would only be opened when Armenia and Azerbaijan come to an official end to the hostilities. Here guests were invited to sign anywhere they could find a place to write a message of peace. The walls were coated with well wishes from all over the globe. 

The following day I jumped on a tour bus to take me around to a few historic sites in Armenia. The first stop, Alphabet Ally. Here thirty eight giant statues sit against a grassy hill lined backdrop. One statue for each character in the Armenian alphabet. The Armenian alphabet was first created in 405 CE by Mesrop Mashtots. It was used to create a common link between the Armenian people who at the time were divided between various civilizations. The language spread like wildfire and became a widely visible sign of Armenian culture. After a the quick stop we continued on up the Aragat Mountain Range. Aragat translates to "Ara's Throne" it is believed to be the location that former King Ara's throne was hidden from a jealous want to be lover after he was slain in battle.

As we climbed up the mountainside we passed flocks of sheep and tents of the shepherds who tend them. In these tents live the Yazidi people. A nation of roughly 700,000 without a home, the Yazidis are spread out through the area. Making homes wherever they can in Armenia, Syria, Russia, Iraq and even parts of Europe like Germany and the Netherlands. Adhering to their own belief system that contains parts of Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism they mostly keep to their own, almost never marrying outside of their faith. In Armenia these people have found a home with welcoming arms. Some Yazidis even serve in Armenia's governing bodies. As we moved through the small Yazidi communities we came to the Fort Amberd. A 7th century fort nestled secretly in the mountains. I took a seat on a rock and began to draw while a few young calfs nibbled at the grass around me. Soon the cows were chased off by a group of children who came and surrounded me. As I drew thy watched silently and when I finished they flipped through my sketchbook before asking me to take selfies with them. 

Back on the bus I tried to paint my sketch as delicately as I could on the bumpy road to the Armas Winery. Here we were treated to a tour of the facility and a tasting of all the vineyards had to offer. We took seats around tables and a feast of cheese, mushrooms and bread was laid out. Each of which was produced right on the winery grounds. Then came the wines. First came Kangun, a white, dry wine that you could taste the apricots, white flowers and herbs so prevalent in Armenia. Next came a special Rose. Made from the Karmrahyut grapes that grow native in Armenia. In most roses, the juice from the grapes is distilled with the skins only for a short while to give it that tint of red. The Karmrahyut grapes however have a deep red juice so there is no need to distill with the skins. What comes out it is a plesant and soft taste that cannot be duplicated in any other rose that I've had. All three of them. Next came a dry red made from that same Karmrahyut grape. The soft finish of the rose became hard and powerful. The red of the wine was as deep as the flavor. Acidic, firm and fully balanced between the taste buds. Lastly a semi-sweet white wine that finished off the the experience with a sweet and fruity taste. Slowly and slightly buzzed we boarded the bus heading back to Yerevan. I passed some mints to the tour guide who didn't want to return to work with wine on her breath.

 

Walking Through the Past of Gyumri (1 July 2017)

Yesterday morning I took off from my BnB out to a 10th century monastery just outside of Gyumri. My host was kind enough to give me a lift in his 1955 GAZ Volga Star. A Soviet made automobile that looked as clean and well polished as it must have when it was delivered from the factory. As we made our way out of Gyumri it was almost like driving through time. Right in the heart of the city new renovations were everywhere. New sidewalks, men installing windows, even entire buildings beginning to be erected. As we made our way out of town and into the sprawl of Gyumri the Soviet era apartments became more frequent. Grey, dirty and uniform they stood at a attention. Then came skeletons of the apartment buildings that had collapsed in the earthquake that rocked Gyumri in 1988. Mostly all that stood of the giant formations were the exterior elements. The floors had collapsed through leaving a husk of what the building once was. We must have driven past fifteen abandoned and collapsing buildings on the way to the monastery. It was like seeing ghosts in a graveyard. After driving through some countryside we reached Marmashen. 

As the old automobile slowly and carefully made its winding way along the potholed and water logged roads we descended down into a small canyon. Nestled at the bottom, next to the lazy Akhurian River, sat the remnants of five churches. All that remains of the original five are two churches in still standing condition, the nave of another and the ruins of the other two. The rust red stones standing out blazingly against the green hills and shrubbery that accent it. A young Armenian woman came up to me and began to give me the history of the monastery in a spitfire and densely packed assault. After about ten minutes of leading me from one area to another my tour had come to an end. She asked if I had questions and I didn't have the heart to tell her I missed almost everything she had said. She showed me where her stand was for the items she was selling and I promised her I'd be back before I left. I wandered a ways away from the main church complex and began sketching. A shepherd across the river was moving his flock from one hill to another. The soft bleating of the sheep combined with the soothing sounds of the river acted as a tranquilizer for whatever else was happening in the world around me. I was alone with this thousand year old church grounds. Apart from the birds that jetted to and fro around the steeple. Not giving out so much as a chirp of  uneasiness in the mid day sun. Before we made our way back into town I bought a small doll from the friendly woman who had lead me around. She gave me my change, an apricot and a smile as I walked away.

Once we returned to town I made my way out into Gyumri to walk around. I remembered walking around the main square and found my way to a cafe Santiago, Levon and I had eaten at a year before. Trout with risotto and a Gyumri beer to wash it down. After lunch I made my way to the Domik district in Gyumri. After the earthquake of 1988, thousands of people in Gyumri were left without housing. With having most of their possessions destroyed when apartment buildings crumbled they had next to nothing to rebuild with. The local government promised to get these citizens new housing as soon as they could and in the mean time they could live in temporary housing. After all, it was no fault of their own that these people's homes had been taken from them. They weren't in gambling debt or drank their money away. They were just ordinary people who drew an remarkably disastrous, unlucky hand. The temporary housing consisted of developments scarcely better than shipping container with windows. I should not say consisted of, the temporary housing consists of is more apt. After all, the majority of families left homeless after the earthquake still live in these "Domiks". In these temporary homes they are plagued by rodents, freezing temperatures and all manner of ailments that come from living in such conditions. According to data collected by the Tuff Armenia group out of the University of Virginia, many have chronic health problems that they are unable to get treatment for. Many young men who were bread winners for their households have left the area to seek out employment in other areas of Armenia. Sometimes they even go so far as Russia to find a livable wage to send home. 

Last year I spent a day in Gyumri walking around the domiks with Santiago and Levon. The two of them make up part of the Tuff Armenia team that is aiming to bring housing to these families left behind over thirty years ago. Santiago and I would take pictures while Levon talked to the residents. This year it was just me. My aim was to take some photos that could be combined with work I had made last year. Together Santiago and I had spoken of submitting a show to galleries to raise money. However, this time Santiago wasn't with me. I began to feel a bit like a tourist to other people's misfortune. Standing among the converted shipping containers with a camera felt cheap, exploitative even. I decided to make my way back to my BnB. As I walked out a little boy sped past me on a bike. It was the boy in the Barcelona jersey that I had photographed a year before in his family's home. Before I leave Armenia I do intend to return to the domiks, even if just for a day, and try and pull some work together that can be turned into something useful for the people who live there. But in the moment I only felt like I was intruding on the lives of the people who had been so welcoming to me a year past. 

This morning I returned to Yerevan. The train ride took three and a half hours through the Armenian countryside. As the train crested over hills and we rocketed on bridges suspended what felt like miles above valleys, all I could think of was the families I had met last year. Each home was more welcoming than the last. All unloading what seemed like a lifetime supply of apricots and Armenian coffee on us as we moved from house to house. Though almost all they had was robbed from them in a force of nature in the recent past, they had been so quick to amply share what they had with us. 

Here is a link to an article written in UVAToday on the Tuff Armenia Project. You can find out more about the project and the timeline for goals they have set.

https://news.virginia.edu/content/uva-student-leads-work-rebuild-armenian-homes-devastated-earthquake

 

Football/Farewells/Fathers and Sons (29 June 2017)

A couple days ago I was lucky enough to attend a football match in the heart of Yerevan. The Armenian title holders, Alashkert were squaring off against a team from Andorra, Santa Coloma. Levon spent some time earlier that morning trying to get ahold of someone who could tell us how to get tickets. After waiting for call backs and fruitlessly searching for tickets online we received word that tickets would not be necessary. We could just walk right in. So right before game time Santiago, Katie, Lillie, Bethany and myself piled into a taxi for a trip to the stadium. There were police officers everywhere. I had a my green backpack with me and expected a search of some sort, at least a pat down or a once over with a wand. Especially considering how many policeman there were holding up the walls by leaning on them. However we were able to just stroll right through. No one seemed to give us a second look. We took some seats and watched ninety minutes of Armenia's home team playing quality soccer and Andorra's making a mockery of themselves. It seemed there wasn't a three minute stretch of the match when there wasn't an Andorran on the ground writhing in pain. After dominating play most of the game and skillfully dribbling in between downed Santa Coloma players, the Armenians came out on top.

This morning Santiago, Katie and Lillie all made their way out of Yerevan and back home. I left as well, heading to the second largest city in Armenia, Gyumri. The driver who typically would be recruited to take me from A to B could not make it this morning so he sent his son in his place. He looked to be in his thirties, still carrying a goofy schoolboy grin. The boyish manner matched with the black and white paisley shirt he wore might have made him look younger if it wasn't for the bald spot forming on the back of his head. Apart from appearances he was remarkably similar to his father. As soon as we pulled out music began to come through the speakers. It wasn't ABBA or various other 80's hits though. Rap began to thump in my chest. The car was filled with what almost sounded like what a Russian Geto Boys concert would be like. As we drove down the bumpy hills to Gyumri we tried to make conversation with each other as best we could. Him speaking Armenian an Russian. Me speaking English and English. After about an hour we pulled off at the same gas station his father had stopped at a year before on our trip to Gyumri.

 As I walked around outside taking pictures he bought me the same coffee as his father had. It was comforting in a way. I had never met this man and I was going off on my own to a town where very few people would be able to communicate with me unaided by a translator and yet I had been exactly here before. Same gas station, almost the same driver, music blasting as we scurried through the Armenian countryside and the same coffee his dad would buy for me. The only thing missing were the cigarettes and jokes about sex workers told only with the hands.

Once we got to Gyumri, my driver dropped me off at a BandB. A small woman met us on the street and lead me inside. In typical Armenian fashion, food began to seemingly pour itself onto the table. It seemed every minute there would be a new dish or drink for me to enjoy. Gata (Armenian sweet bread) came out first. Followed by a large class of something that had consistency and taste of yogurt and some hazelnut wafer cookies. I had finished a piece of gata when Turkish coffee, chocolate and apricots all appeared before me. I looked up for a second and by the time my eyes were back on the table lavash (Armenian flat bread), cheeses, sliced tomatoes and cucumbers were all waiting for me! My host joined the table across from me. Pouring herself a Turkish coffee and breaking off a small piece of the mountain of chocolate sitting in front of me.

Not long into the shared silence I was expecting when there is a considerable language barrier, she pulled out her phone and began to type away at a translator. I did the same. Soon we were talking as naturally as two people can. Her talking into her phone in Russian and it relaying the message to me in English and myself typing a response into my phone in English and replying to her in Russian. I was blown away at how easy and almost innate this was. We were just sitting there, drinking coffee, having a conversation. She told me she had lived in Gyumri since she came to the city as a bride. Once here she picked up teaching math at a local school. She had been working the day when the earthquake struck in 1988. I asked her if it was scary. She said the ground rolled in waves like that of an ocean, all the glass exploded out of the windows in the school and the children were caught in the middle of all of it. "It feels like yesterday." she said. I imagine that events as colossal as that must always feel like only a few days ago. I told her that the effects of the earthquake are very much part of the reason I first came to Gyumri. I explained the work of Levon and his Tuff Armenia team. She listened but seemed skeptical that much change could truly happen at this point. Thirty plus years after the event. I asked her if she thought the local government did enough to help out after the city was rocked. She didn't need her translator for the answer. She chuckled, "нет" and mimed taking money from someone and putting it into her own pockets.

 

Georgia But Not Savannah (26 June 2017)

At 7:15 this morning a van picked me up outside of Levon's home. Katie, Bethany and Lillie were sitting inside waiting for a trip we would be taking to Tbilisi, Georgia. I knew next to nothing about Georgia. I knew it was a former Soviet state that was given the responsibility to produce wine for the USSR and that during the Crusades, one of Genghis Khan's generals and a scouting party came sweeping down from the mountains and decimated the entire Georgian army. The King of Georgia was killed in his land's defense. The queen had to write to the pope saying they would not be able to contribute to the Crusades as the army it had been amassing had just been wiped off the Earth by a scourge they had never even known existed. Needless to say, these didn't help me too much with the Georgia I would soon become acquainted with.

The drive from Yerevan to Tbilisi took five hours. When I was not busy trying not to vomit of carsickness as we zipped through the mountain passes of the lush Dilijan, Armenia, or having an old woman walk in on me as I squatted over a hole in the ground to do my business in the woman's bathroom as the men's was out of toilet paper I was gazing out at the changing scenery. The dusty hills of Yerevan gave way to rich plains with bright white wildflowers and hills of dazzling black obsidian. The Lake Sevan was as vast and blue as it had been a year before and after a long tunnel that burrowed under the mountainside we were spit out in the middle of Dilijan National Forest. A place where pine trees tower above you and artists and composers of Armenia find solitude. Soon we left the forest and entered Georgia. Rolling plains and tall cypress trees that waved their tall limbs in the strong winds as if they were grasping for the sky. After this it went black for a while as I tried to gain a few more hours of sleep to add to the three hours I had stored away from the night before. I woke up just outside Tbilisi proper. Tall soviet high rises covered the landscape. Uniform and a dirty grey. They seemed almost like separate and silent giants that liked being alone if it wasn't for the brightly colored clothes lines that joined one building to another at the windows. After some navigating we were soon in the Old District of Tbilisi. 

We had rented an AirBnB for the night and searched a while for it before a lady who happened to be Armenian was able to help us locate it. Nestled back in between a few houses, we had our own private Georgian home. A small place, just three rooms shooting straight back almost like a shotgun house in New Orleans. A kitchen, a living space, a bedroom and a porch overlooking the city. We made took no time dropping our gear and heading out for lunch. On the way we explored a bit of the city. The first thing we noticed is just how colorful Tbilisi is. Houses are painted all different shades of a multitude of colors and they all seemed to be standing artifacts of times long since passed. There is an air of antiquity to the city that takes the beauty and respect we hold for the past and breathes new life into the present. By accident we made our way into a small coffee shop that more resembled a cave then a business. There a large man sat at a tiny table watching a program on Georgia's role in World War 1. When we entered he got up excitedly. His belly brushing the table so that the plate of diced tomatoes he was working on popped up with him. He introduced himself and upon hearing where we came from quickly made sure we knew that he had been to the United States twice. Boston and New York for Judo competitions. Nothing about the man's physique or affectionate personality seemed to support that he was once a competitive fighter but I believe him. He sat us down and busied himself in the kitchen before he brought out coffees and Georgian style baklava that he pulled from out of a cabinet. 

Back on the streets we continued our search for lunch and found a beautiful restaurant. A place made more resembled the home of a Georgian family than anything else we took seats in the backroom. A green and purple, paisley table cloth underneath our starch white plates and a fresh load of laundry hung up to dry rapping against the window next to us. Beet and spinach purees, charcoal grilled trout, veal stew and kninkali (Georgian dumplings) were soon brought out and we tore into it. In no time our plates were empty and our bellies full.

We continued to wander around aimlessly making our way in the direction of a book shop that sold books in English. Along the way we stopped briefly in Saint George's Armenian Cathedral. The interior was a deep blue and seemingly every inch was decorated in some manner. Frescoes painted onto the walls depicting Christ, the Virgin Mary and various apostles and saints. The floor was made up of separate burial spaces of various people important to the church. So many in fact in areas you had to dance to move without stepping on the dead. Framed paintings of the patron saint hung on the walls. Their gold leaf details flickering like fire in the candle light as pilgrims carefully walked close up to the pictures as if not to disturb the peace of the subject and gently kissed the paintings to display their devotion. A tall serious priest in long black robes and a young hairy face waled around the church grounds relighting extinguished candles. The only betrayal of his youth being the balding spot on the back of his head. 

After a great deal of walking we found the book shop. It was hiding in an alley. Sitting there in front of a little plaza it shared with a coffee shop and the Canadian consulate. From here we began our journey back through the town. You could be forgiven at one of the many churches, synagogues or mosques in the area for mistaking this area of the city for one of the trendier parts of New York. People dressed with such varying fashions. A dance troupe practiced routines in front of a long fountain in a local park under the direction of an assertive British man who just wanted one more take easily five times.  Every corner was the patio of a coffee shop and Georgians of all ages sat and read, conversed or staring off into the distance as they drank their coffee or their wine. Seemingly everyone in Tbilisi was on the verge of making it in some big way. But none to caught up that they couldn't smile at you or make polite conversation as you passed.

In Freedom Square a blindingly well polished Saint George speared a dying dragon on top of a large pillar that seemed to raise the sculpture up to height and brightness of the sun itself. As we were passing I turned to look at a hotel and saw the Marriott logo. My cousin Casey was staying in a Marriott in Tbilisi this week and I had been unable to get a hold of him once we entered Georgia. With some help from the front desk soon Casey had began walking with us through the town. This would be the second time I had run into Casey as he went about his duties for the State Department overseas. Turkey is his next out of town trip for the government, I don't believe I'll be joining him on that trip. We settled down for dinner at a nice outdoor cafe where a duo played Georgian music. The man singing and strumming his panduri (a Georgian string instrument) and a woman sang in support. We drank Georgian wine for the first time and settled into our meal. Cheese stuffed mushrooms, a kind of Georgian deep dish pizza with spinach, beans and cheese, stuffed tomatoes, barbecued lamb and boiled cow tongue which came with some of the spiciest mustard I have ever had in my life. 

After dinner Casey returned to his hotel and we boarded a cable car that lifts you from the center of the city up to a peak just outside of it. The home of an ancient fort that lays in ruins and a church inhabiting its grounds for the time being. We climbed up a steep elevation in the church yard that put us far above the ruins which already lay high above the city. We sat there for a long time. Watching the sun go down and cars crawl like florescent ants through the winding streets of Tbilisi. Fireworks began to go off over the Mtkvari River that divides the city into the Old District we had spent the day exploring and a newer one that housed all the more recent developments. The wind picked up and the silence we shared covered us like a warm blanket. After a long while we walked back to our AirBnB where after some quick showers, we were sleeping off the day's miles.

 

Jameson, Cards, Prayers, Wishes and Weddings (24 June 2017)

The other evening I went with some new friends to a local bar in Armenia. After stopping in at a brewhouse for dinner and flights of beer we made our way on through parks and alleyways and finally down a flight of stairs to The Venue. I had come to this place last year. Then it had been seemingly filled to bursting with dancing and singing Armenians. Dancing their traditional dances of which I knew none and singing System of a Down songs, which I also knew none. It was raucous, it was wild, it was beautiful.  It was that free cry of expression which I think we all yearn for at some point.  The only tradition I came away from that night with was a firm grip on the fact that if you finished a bottle of liquor in the bar you got to sign it and it would be displayed above the bar. That was the tradition our group intended to carry on. When we got to the bottom of the stairs and through the door to the Venue, we were greeted by a scene I wasn't expecting. Everyone was seated quietly in the deep couches and high barstools. Silently they listened on as a trio of musicians played out soft music to the crowd. A man with a full grey beard and bright wrinkled eyes sang softly in Armenian while he strummed his guitar. A tall woman with bright red lipstick poured all she could into a flute, leaving her lipstick on the mouth piece. The pianist bounced around on his stool. Mouth popping open joyfully with every note. When he switched his keyboard over to the sound of an organ he began to make sounds as he played as soulfully as he could. We were seated right next to the stage and worked our way through a bottle of Jameson. By the end of the evening we were dancing and singing as much as those Armenians I had seen a year before. Our bottle sits above the bar now. For the time being here will be solid evidence that Levon, Santiago, Katie, Lillie, Bethany and Eamon had a night to remember there.

The following day was mostly spent reserving the little energy we had spared from the night before for a trip out today. I was picked up this morning by a cab playing Louie Armstrong's Go Down Moses as he rocketed through the morning traffic in Yerevan on the way to meet up with the group. Not long after the last warning to the pharaoh, we were all in a van cruising along to the historical sites of Garni and Geghard. Garni is a first century CE temple that has been inhabited on and off since its construction. A temple was built, kings moved in, the town grew, kings died and so did the town. In the 1600's the temple itself came crashing down after an earthquake. It was largely left alone for some time, only being mentioned in passing by a handful of European travelers. Not till a couple centuries later did permanent residents return to the area. Markers at the temple say it was Armenians seeking safety from some persecuting power. A story that is sadly all too similar in Armenian history. A town grew and the temple was rebuilt to its original form. To this day Garni stands on a cliffside surrounded on three sides by the ravine the Azarat River that has carved through the landscape over time. It is the only standing Greco-Roman structure to survive the rule of the Soviets in all of the former USSR. 

Walking around the grounds I ran into a small group of boys playing cards. They'd shuffle, begin slapping down cards and continue on for a while before someone would be caught cheating or play a hand that blew everyone else's away. Then the cards would be tossed down and the slaps would be directed at the offender as they all laughed and carried on as boys do. They'd be back into a new round as quickly as the last had ended. 

Soon we were off to Geghard, a Christian temple built in 1215 to be part of the mountain side. To step onto its grounds is nothing short of breath taking. Nestled in the Azarat river gorge, a temple sprouts out of the mountain side. Parts of it even receding into the cliffs. Dark caves turn into beautifully carved rooms where you can hear the echoes of time. Geghard translates to "The Monastery of the Spear" named as such for the spear that is believed to have wounded Christ as he hung on the cross in his dying days. It is believed that the Apostle Jude brought this spear to Armenia after Christ's death. Along the exterior of the chapels you can find little niches carved out of the stone walls and it is believed that if you can toss a stone into the small holes you will have a wish granted to you. Children work at the walls in a frenzy of stones flying through the air. Most with too much power behind them and they come rocketing down into the crowd as fast as they flew up. Every now and again though someone will land theres neatly into the small pile of stones that already sits in the niches. Adding their wish to the rocks that had been thrown before. 

If you walk through the courtyard you can find your way over a bridge to a grove of trees. Each branch tied with dozens of strips of cloth from the thousands of visitors the monastery hosts each year. Each strip holding some intimate prayer or wish from someone who had come before. We made our way through the trees towards a small peak overlooking the grounds. When we came into a clearing on our way up, we crawled past a couple who sat together quietly enjoying the time spent with each other. As we passed they offered us coffee to take up to the top. They poured some into a small plastic cup that we carried up to the outlook as delicately as we could. At the top the group of us sat for a while talking and sharing the coffee. After some time we made our way back down. On the way out a crowd had gathered in the parking lot as a newlywed wife and her groom made their way slowly into the chapel. The crowds stilled as they moved past. They moved through grinning at each other with their family tailing behind them walking proudly in their Saturday best.

On the drive back I asked my cousin Levon what the the strips of cloth tied to the trees had meant. He told me he had been told a few things. One person had said you tie a strip for the passing of someone you love. Someone else had said you tie a strip for the birth of a new love. As we drove through the beautiful Armenian countryside I couldn't help but think of the newlyweds we had seen. Had he wished for her hand one day by tossing a rock into one of the small holes on the church walls? Did they stand together in the grove of trees that sat next to the Azarat River? Did they tie a tiny strip of cloth to a tree branch dotted with countless other tears of fabric as the water whispered blessings behind them? From the looks on their faces as they caught sight of each other out of the corners of their eyes as they parted the crowded church grounds, I think they might have. 

 

Yerevan: Running Over the Same Old Ground (21 June 2017)

I landed in Yerevan, Armenia yesterday around two pm local time. I grabbed my pack from the baggage claim and made my way out of the airport. Not knowing who would pick me up I scanned the crowd gathering around the the exit of the airport. I couldn't find who might be picking me up. Then I heard it. "Eamon! Eamon!" I spun around to find an old familiar face. The cab driver who had driven me around last year was standing there holding  sign reading "Eamon Burke" a grin on his face and a cigarette clutched between his fingers. We hopped in his black cab and made out back to the main area of Yerevan. We weren't in the car more than two minutes before he was passing smokes to me and turning the radio up on obscure 80's dance music that most people who grew up then would struggle to place. It felt exactly the car trip I took with him last year towards the end of my stay in Armenia. The only difference was ABBA had been temporarily replaced. As we made our way through the bustling streets of Armenia we passed under a banner that hung over the street. "Welcome Home" was all it said.

This morning I made my way to the Armenian Genocide Museum and Memorial. A little under three miles away so I chose to start early to avoid the midday heat. I walked through the familiar parks outside of my cousins's home. The pedestrian tunnels to void the city streets where the only change was new graffiti on the walls. Most notably lyrics of Tupac Shakur urging me to "Keep your head up". After about a mile and half I began to walk down a road that winded down along the valley next to the Hrazdan River which divides the city. Trees that reminded me of cottonwood trees out West lined the road and their wispy, white seeds created almost a haze in the morning light. Dotted along the street were cab drivers. They busied themselves washing their cars in preparation for the day's work. I passed through largely unnoticed. It seemed like most were still coming to terms with the dawn that passed a number of hours ago. They worked. Most in an isolated silence. Some humming or singing along with the radio that danced out of their car windows. My Heart Will Go On became stuck in my head all day while passing down the road. Courtesy of a eccentric Armenian who was hastily sudsing his car while getting about as much soap on his white polo shirt as his white car. 

The Armenian Genocide Museum and Memorial are beautifully laid out. The museum is built as a spiral leading you further down into the horrific events that seemed the engulf the Armenian people from the late 1800's through the 1900's. Each step was greeted with a new story, a new face. The portrait of starving Armenian orphans being driven from their homes into the desert. The faces of the Ottoman political party of the Young Turks, the main perpetrators of the genocide. The story of a young woman named Aurora Mardiganian who miraculously escaped the genocide and found her way to safety. She would later write a novel titled "Ravished Armenia" which would become a silent film in 1919. As you walk around the galleries it is easy to become enveloped in the past. You may ask yourself why these things that happened over a century ago matter today. How all these black and white photographs and old stuttering movie clips play into the world we live in. One of the last stops out of the gallery is focused on the world reaction to the Armenian genocide. To this day only a handful of counties recognize it. As you climb the steps out of the museum galleries, out of the horrors of the starving children and the ravaged women, you pass by a quote on the wall. "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?" a question posed by Adolf Hitler. 

After the sad but incredible museum trip I began to make my way slowly back to the apartment. Along the way I passed through a long pedestrian tunnel where a man sat busking to a crowd of no one. His guitar and voice echoed off the walls of the tunnel that seemed to stretch on for miles.  I listened to him for a while before we began to talk. He asked where I was from and what I wanted to hear. After some indecisiveness on my part he began to play saying he knew what I wanted. A slow tune sung out from his guitar. He sat in this dark tunnel and strummed a quiet storm that bounced off the walls. "So, so you think you can tell heaven from hell? Blue skies from pain?" he asked the air around us. I kneeled down next to him and we both continued on. Singing Pink Floyd as a handful of people passed before us. At the end he took a swig from his flask and I tossed him some money and went on my way. Slowly I made my way back to my cousins home. Giving myself ample time to do some wandering and chatting in broken English and unknown Armenian along the way.

It feels good to be back in Yerevan. Running over the same old grounds as I did a year ago. Finding the same faces as before. It does feel a great deal like the banner from the airport suggested. It feels almost like coming home. 

 

Leta and Loving the Dalai Lama (25 July 2016)

There was a small list of things I was hoping to do in India before I left. One of them was to go on a nice hike through the countryside. Dharamsala seemed the perfect place to complete this goal. And also I am rapidly running out of time in India. I woke up at 5 am to get an early start to the day. I packed a daypack full of water and snacks and set my eyes on a little campsite about four miles outside the small city of Dharamsala. Rain wasn't forecast until three in the afternoon so I figured I had plenty of time to make it back. India, as it always seems to, had other plans though. 

I had made it a mile out of Dharamsala, just on the cusp on what you could call a suburb of Dharamsala but it is little more than a few tea stops and one or two guest houses. I stopped into one tea house just as rain began to come down. I sat with a cup of chai and a sandwitch and watched for a while as rain began to come down by the bucket it seemed. The small shop filled up with folks trying to escape the rain. A few Belgians looking for a place to stay, a few groups of Indians all chatting amongst themselves and a couple Tibetans trying to keep their wool vests from becoming soaked. A motorcycle came to a screeching halt outside the shop. A boisterous Australian in personality and size alike came in. "BLOODY GREAT TIME FOR THE RAIN TO START, ME BEING RIGHT OUT FRONT, HOW YA DOING MATE? IMRAM YOU BACK THERE?" He came in through as more of a storm than the monsoon. Moving deftly among the jumble of chairs in the store so to keep people safe from his soaked clothing. I have never encountered someone who seemed to be more out of place and yet right where he is supposed to be in my life. Grinning and bald he towered above us, an Aboriginal design tattooed to the back of his neck. The staff knew him and greeted him with open arms. We didn't know him but it seemed like it was like we were compelled to do the same. "WHERE YOU OFF TO IN YOUR THONGS?" He asked me. I told him my destination to which he let out a bellowing yawp. "GOOD BLOODY LUCK MATE, IT'S A BITCH TO FIND WHEN IT ISN'T PISSING OUTSIDE!" We all stood in the doorway, watching the rain and drinking tea. Steam rising off our damp bodies and traditional Indian music playing softly in the background. As the rain let up and he clapped me on the back so that I lurched forward out onto the road. I could hear him suiting up revving his bike to take off from whatever strange dimension he roared in from. I desperately hope he pops up somewhere else in my life sometime. 

As it would turn out, he was quite right .The path to the Triund campsite was indeed a bitch to keep track of. I got to a fork in the road that didn't appear on my map when I decided to turn back. I am up for adventure, but being lost in the dense Indian mountainside forests during monsoon season isn't ideal. I set my sites on a closer campground named Leta. It was on a road just past a beautiful waterfall that has a few swimming holes as it descends the mountain. I followed a Tibetan monk up the winding stairs beside the waterfall, stopping at each swimming hole to dip our feet in the water for a little while. When we reached the top it was my time to veer off across the river and up the mountain side. 

A two miles of steep switch backs up rock scrambles still slick and wet from the recent rain. A few scrapes to the knees and palms as I lost footing under loose rocks. More than a few stinging nettles to the ankles. from the overgrown trail, better suited for mules than men. The dense pine trees gave way to broad leaf trees as the elevation and the temperature rose hand in hand. After sometime the trail began to level out. I stopped to catch my breath when I heard a branch snap not far from me but concealed by the trees. I crouched down trying to listen. Tigers leaping from my mind into the forest around me. Heavy breathing behind the leaves in front of me. Rustling. Movement. Branches began to shift in my view. A big black cow stumbled out of the brush in front of me. It looked at me curiously, then right back to grazing. I hadn't expected a cow of this high with that climb. Feeling a tad foolish I walked on.

At the peak of the mountain a small village sat. Eight stone houses with tin roofs. The roof had caved in on two making only six appear habitable. A man came out of his house followed by a jumpy white dog. He looked at me and walked up over the crest of a little hill. I followed him to a small spring in front of a temple where a woman was washing pieces of a goat that had been freshly butchered. I took a seat on a rock and began to sketch. The eyes of the man, the woman and the decapitated goat all seemed to make glances at me suspiciously. "Triund?" the woman asked me. "Leta." I said in return. She spread her arms around her, motioning to the land. "Leta." was her response.

After a short while I descended the mountain and made my way back to town. At each swimming hole I did a couple rounds in the shallow pools. I made it back to town around 4pm. Just in time to head to LHA. LHA is a local organization designed to help Tibetan refugees. They offer classes in different languages, employment skills and basic living in India. Every weekday from 4 to 5 they host English conversation classes where volunteers come in just to speak to Tibetans for an hour to practice their English. I made my way up the dark steps to the offices. I poked my head in the secretary's room and asked where to go. He lead me to a small library where I had a seat with other foriegners. After chatting for a few minutes and filling out some paperwork we were all lead down the hall. Three doors opened. We all poked our heads in the nearest room. I was greeted by what must have been twenty some Tibetans sitting cross legged on small cushions. Every few seats were open for one of us. As I stepped in they all motioned to the nearest cushion to them excitedly, all eager to practice their English. I grabbed a seat among three Buddhist nuns and a middle aged man and woman. Quickly I was being shot questions from every direction. A couple were too embarassed to say much but the rest latched on to any conversation they could. Pausing every now and again to ask how to say something to a twenty two year old nun who sat next to me. She was by far the most practiced. They asked me about my sister, how America is, what sports I liked, any range of questions.

"What's your sister like?"

"You're not married?"

"Do you love the Dalai Lama?"

"Do you sing?"

Dance?"

I had an absolute blast speaking with my small little group. In seemed like we had barely started when the door opened up. We all looked at the clock on the wall. 5pm. We said our goodbyes and parted ways. If the already long list of things to bring me back to Dharamsala is not enough, more conversation with Sonam, Palmoi, Dolma, Lobsang and Wozer is more than enough to bring me back.

 

Days in Delhi and Dharamshala (23 July 2016)

After I left Kerala I spent a few days in New Delhi. Luckily for my lack of planning and thin wallet my cousin works in the US Foreign Service so I was able to stay a few days with him on the embassy. As soon as I got into his house I grabbed one of the first hot showers in a couple weeks and went straight to the dinner table then the bed. My first day in Delhi I decided to make my way to a step well in the middle of the city. It wasn't long into my trip when the rain began to pour. I was half way to the step well when I found myself in the middle of a massive protest. A street had been barricaded and people had set up booths and podiums everywhere. Rain had washed away a bit of the crowd but the rest stayed still like rocks in a stream. In front of the main stage a multi color patchwork quilt of umbrellas, tarps, plastic sheets, anything remotely waterproof was laid out. Under each section the quilt stood many men and women holding up their roof. The blue color of the tarps reflecting down onto the solemn faces of those that had come to make their points heard. It seemed to me as if the causes that brought people here were as varied as the rain protection people stood listening under. Signs calling for the resignation and imprisonment of a police officer who had raped a woman in Punjab, teachers from across India calling for education reform, people from the rural areas wanting to halt the rising prices of their goods, a group there on the behalf of 102 deaf and mute girls who were being housed in a facility that was little more than a prison. Every cause had hundreds of supporters rallied around them. Each supporter was more driven to facilitate change than the last and each had some emotional stakes in their matter. It was tough to be there because each cause seemed worthy of attention. But each was being drowned out by all the others. It was clear to me that nothing would come of this protest. There were simply too many voices in the same place seeking to be heard. When the rain began to let up I pulled out my camera. Every step I took I was greeted by a new person asking if I was a reporter, desperately trying to take their story to the public. After a while of wandering I returned to the embassy. I was telling my cousin Casey and his wife Becca about it. Casey laughed and told me that those happen all the time. I thought there was no way for that to be true. The next four days as I would journey through Delhi I would come across more large protests near government offices. Each having large crowds and making loud demands. Each largely being ignored by the people going about their daily lives.

I chose to take my time easy in Delhi. Sleeping in, enjoying the comforts of the embassy, warm showers, a pool to swim in. I would go out for a few hours each day. Most of those days I would find myself sitting somewhere with a cool Kingfisher watching the city of twenty five million people swirl around me in a dusty, colorful mix of rickshaws, cows, clothing and cars. One night my cousin and I went out for a drink. We made our way to a bar called the Piano Man. I stepped off the Indian street and into what could have been a nice jazz bar in New Orleans. Two floors and a spiral staircase separating the two. On the bottom tables centered around microphones and a piano, on the second a bar and nice view of the stage below. Both floors left so little shoulder space we had to make our way through the kitchen to get from one floor to another. I ordered a Mint Julep on the balcony and made my way to the spiral stair case to rest half way in between the two floors and watch the show. A women stood with every eye in the room on her and a man sat in front of a keyboard to her left. The owner of the bar stepped forward asking for complete silence for the next song. He asked for the bars to stop serving and waited until the folks on the second floor slowed their chatter to the volume of a door mouse. He returned the microphone to the woman. She stood silent for a moment that stretched for an eternity as she looked around the room with her amber brown eyes. A soft and faint melody began to come through the speakers as the keyboard keys gave way to the mans fingers. I could place the tune. She began to whisper softly. "Raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens..." Slowly she raised her voice into Julie Andrew's beautiful song of favorites. It seemed as everyone was waiting to exhale for the end of the song. And when it came the place erupted in applause. The next few songs brought with them noticeably less chatter from the crowd upstairs. After a couple melodies she began to speak to the crowd. Explaining why they chose the next song, the weight of it in our world today, a call for help of sorts. Or more precisely a call for love. Her soft voice and barely noticeable Delhi dialect grew into a powerful chorus that still seemed as if she was singling a lullaby as she began to sing Marvin Gaye's What's Going On. The rooms seemed to shrink. The world outside of that moment disappeared as she called to mothers and brothers in a plea for love. I could feel the music in my chest but there was no bass. Soon I noticed that same pressure behind my eyes as she entered the second verse and it felt as it I was on the verge of tears. I could have drowned in the moment. As her voice carried the last few words into the air around us the room started to come back. I became aware of everyone around me again and I turned to my cousin and we exchanged the best explanations of a speechless moment as we could.

It wasn't long after that I left Delhi. I took off yesterday evening from a bus stop. A twelve hour trip to Dharamshala. It wasn't until the last couple hours when I woke up did I notice we were deep in the hills. One could almost be forgiven for mistaking the area for the Blue Ridge Mountains not far from my home. Until you realize it is no ridge but a sea of hills jetting up and down. In the background steep mountains overshadowed all of them. After about thirty minutes of driving though the hills on an empty stomach I became acutely aware of just how empty my stomach was. With nothing to weight it down I could feel each turn in the road. It became a race between reaching Dharamshala and my rapidly failing stomach capacity. I kept track of how far we were. At twelve kilometers out my arms began to twinge. At eight my legs began to feel numb as all my focus shifted to keeping my stomach in check. We pulled off at the bus stop and I have never been so relieved in my life. It seems my home made idli and sambar salsa was safe from being shared with the public. 

I spent the day exploring the city. On the suggestion from a kind traveller I met over breakfast I went to the Tibetan museum. Dharamshala is home to the exiled Tibetan government as they continue to try and maintain an autonomous nature though China rules Tibet with little regard for their tradition and customs. Many refugees have made their way to this area of India, the Dalai Lama among them. The museum was closed sadly but I did get to spend some time walking around the temple speaking to monks. Dharamshala is a small area. It's population seems to be equal parts Indian, Tibetan and multiracial backpackers who take up residence for a short time. I have heard some areas described as "backpacker ghettos" and so far that seems fairly accurate. It seems to be a nice place to hunker down for the next few days before I make my way to Kolkata and a plane ride back home.

 

Lunch with Children and Communists (16 July 2016)

I had booked a taxi to take me around today. I met my driver after breakfast. A short man, twenty eight, a small mustache, white silk tied around his waist and a jean jacket on his back. He asked where we'd be going today in a slightly cracked English. I told him Thakazhi. He looked at me with a slightly confused look on his face. "Why?' he asked.

Thakazhy is small town roughly seventeen kilometers (10 miles) outside of Alappuzha where I am staying. I had spotted the town on the train in from Kerala yesterday and was quick to mark it on my map for a visit. Town I suppose is a rather grandiose term for Thakazhy. Village would be more apt. There are about fifteen thousand people living in an area roughly have the size of Manhattan. They are spread out among the backwater channels and raised farms where rice grows. We made it into town about a month before the rice stalks raise out of the water. The way around town is simply either dirt roads wide enough for a motorbike to fit on or simply walking on the lines of piled dirt that are about a foot thick that rise up out of the waters to separate different crop fields. The people of Thakazhy were just as startled to see me as they might have been to see a submarine rise out of the rice paddies it seemed. Every person we ran across would give us an curious look before a beaming smile broke across their face. Everyone was incredibly welcoming and friendly. To get from one side of town to another you had to cross a bridge. By bridge I mean two discarded pipes lashed together and thrown across the canal. My foot was wider than the two pipes put together. I struggled as I crossed, holding my camera in case I fell so I could try and keep it above the murky water as best I could. Once I gingerly crossed a woman who looked to be in her fifties walked across it carrying a large jug of water as if she had never left the road at all. 

We took our sandals off and walked into the rice fields. Trying our best to stay on the soil that separated the fields. A man took us to his own rice paddy which was barren for the time being so I stepped down into the water from the bank I had been walking on. He pointed out the layout of the town. There were a few areas reserved for fishing, a few outcrops of people's homes and vast amounts of water divided up into neat squares. As we talked a tractor worked away tilling one of the fields before us. Wheels designed to work through the muck below the water kicked up the mud all around and flocks white egrets flew off so not to get their pristine feathers tarnished by the mud.

The area reserved for fishing was another sight to see. Men worked to pump the water out of one small field into another. While they pumped a square of piled mud was built up in the center of the field and men would toss whatever fish they could see trying to escape the mud to open water into the square enclosure. While fish were dumped into the pen men inside either placed the fish into large metal jugs or shoveled mud out of the enclosure. The combining of the pumping water out and the stirring up of mud left the inside of the field a dark brown mess. My driver decided not to follow me in as I waded into waist deep, thick brown sludge. All around people were coming over to watch me try and navigate with a camera in my hand and the other trying to avoid being put into the mud.

Once we washed off the mud as best we could from our legs at a the house of a kind family who gave us some cold water to cool off we continued on. After some walking we found our way to a small primary school. As we peaked in, the six small girls erupted and soon we were seated on a bench made for people a fourth of my height while the kids performed choreographed song after choreographed song. The teacher joked that once they started they couldn't be stopped. Each girl looked as if she were wearing a princess dress to school. All had wonderful bright fabrics adorned with beads sewn in, earrings dangling from their ears and necklaces and bangles hugging their skin. It was lunch time so I sat on the floor with them and ate their food while they tried to sing and dance as best they could with mouths full of rice and hands full of food. 

After a while though it was sadly time to go. We said our goodbyes and went on our way back to Alappuzha. I hadn't mentioned this in past posts because I wanted to find out more, but there are a shocking number of walls adorned with hammers and sickles in Southern India. It seemed like every other wall had the symbol painted on it. I was asking my driver who explained the communist situation in Kerala to me. The Left Democratic Front (LDF) is a Marxist party in India. Within the local government of Kerala they control ninety one of the one hundred and forty electable seats in the Kerala legislature. They are incredibly popular and most people I've met are quite proud and happy to be represented by them. It is strange to come from America where communism in every form is taboo, reviled even. From America I went to Armenia, an old Soviet country where the remnants of the USSR are still everywhere as a nation tries to establish an identity the world can recognize. Finally, Kerala where a democratically elected communist party runs the government and people for the most part seem overjoyed to have it so. My driver explained to me as we pulled up outside the LDF party headquarters in Alappuzha, "Communism in Kerala, good. Much good for the people, for the community." I was hoping to speak to someone in the LDF headquarters but sadly it was closed for the weekend.

If life for most people in Kerala is anything like life for those in Thakazhy I saw today, I can understand why Marxism would be so popular. The people there labor in mud and silty water day in and day out. There is a one room school house that can only cater to the youngest members of the local community. There is no hospital near by and infrastructure is a dubious notion at best. Granted I only saw a small area of Thakazhy, but my driver explained the whole village doesn't differ too much. According to the LDF election manifesto, the party is working to guarantee education, employment, welfare access and modernized infrastructure and economic variety to all people in Kerala. I cannot speak on how much the party has been able to accomplish so far. I believe the party just recently came into power in 2015. But I can say while I was in Thakazhy, walking the dirt banks that served as roads, a team of men were working on the roads there. Solid, concrete walls lined the dirt banks with small steps down into the fields. Secure infrastructure, for those who need it most, seems to be on its way in Kerala. 

 

Trivandrum to Alappuzha (15 July 2016)

Yesterday was the last day I spent in the small city of Trivandrum. I didn't really know what to do with myself so i walked to the sea wall to sit and draw for a bit. Down the wall a ways two fisherman were standing on the rocks fishing. Well, the man with his shirt off was fishing and the other with his stomach poking through his shirt was drinking. They waved me over to them. "We always see you writing things in your book. What do you write." They flipped through my notebook and saw my sketches. The man who had been fishing excitedly pointed to the market and in my sketch book to where I had drawn it. After talking for a bit they offered me some pickled mango. After eating mango and chatting for a bit longer they offered me rum. They had one small cup they would pour some rum into and then cut it with water. I poured my self some rum before I knew they were cutting it in the cup and started to sip on it. They seemed laughed that people would drink liquor straight. When they learned I was twenty two they laughed even more. They were in their mid to late thirties. They each had wives and kids and we spoke for a while on the subject of families. After a while that same question that is almost always the third question popped up. The one that follows "Name? Where are you from?" and the fisherman weren't about to let it slip. "Are you married?" "Nope." "Why?" It is almost like being at a family reunion I imagine. They started telling me all the wonderful things the women of Kerala have going for them. I changed the subject. All the while one of the men kept fishing. He didn't have a pole, just string, weights, hooks and small fish for bait. He'd cast his line out and feel it move through the current, guiding it with one hand. If he felt a small pluck on the line he would give it a tug and hope to hook whatever was nibbling. Time and time again he would cast out above our heads. Each time he was coming back empty handed with a bit smaller piece of bait.

When are stomachs were empty and the bottle of rum was as well they offered to cook lunch. They would try to catch fish a while longer before turing to the market. I thought that sounded like a fine plan so after a while of no luck with the fish we all chipped in. One of the men ran off while I talked to the other. He was a snorkeling and boating guide at one of the resorts during tourist season. In his three months with out a job he just likes to fish each day. He had a permanent ring around his finger where he had looped fishing line around it each day. When the one man returned from the market he had four fish, tinfoil, green chilies, lemons and more rum. One man gutted the fish with hand while the other cut the chilies and lemons. They wrapped the fish in tin foil with some sliced peppers. One foil pack of the fish from the market, another of the would be bait. I was wondering how we would cook our lunch when they hopped off the rock and started breaking up palm branches that had fallen. In five minutes there was a make shift fire roaring with the foil packs placed in the center. I had always wondered why there was a continuous smoky smell in India. I wonder if it's all from cook fires of people just wanting to eat a decent meal. After a few minutes on the fire the man grabbed the packets and placed them on the discarded lid of a styrofoam cooler that laid on the ground near by. He tapped the foam and said "Plate." We hopped back on the rocks and opened up our meal. We squeezed the lemons over the fish and chowed down on what was one of the best meals I've had in a long time.

Today I left Trivandrum to head to Alappuzha, a town on the backwaters up the coast a little ways. When I got up here, I dropped my things in my room and took off to explore the town. I stayed in a small residential area about a mile from my hotel. I walked for six hours and barely covered all the streets. There are two main roads that run parallel to each other in this community. They are set about a half mile apart and in between the two is a maze of smaller roads that don't show up on maps. Roads of dirt, grass, tile, pavement, water. They span the half mile distance at all sorts of angles and cut throughs. I walked in a few circles but the people were always there to direct me around. This was small town India. Coming from a small town, this is the type of India I like best. I was walking around just as school let out so I could barely walk a few blocks before I would hear "Hello!" in a high pitched voice. I'd look around and see a small child in a blue or green uniform each time. They would all be so excited to practice their English. I made the mistake of walking by one school yard before they had been released and girls ran up to the gate to wave me down. Two boys came over and chased them all off by throwing an empty water bottle at them before turning around and stealing their place at the gate. It always feel so nice to go somewhere and just walk around meeting people. I enjoy going to tourist sites and doing the things you go to these areas to do. But the people are what really make a trip for me. Especially when they are as friendly as everyone here has been. 

 

Last Day in Mysuru, Meeting Up With Old Friends (11 July 2016)

Today was my last day in Mysore. Before I left there were a few people I wanted to see. After waking up a little late from watching the final to the Euro Cup (Vive le France over Portugal any day), I made my way just outside the city to the suburb of Gokulam. Gokulam is, from my understanding, essentially the yoga capital of the world. Practitioners and instructors from all over the globe make their way there through out the year to learn from local instructors. It was in Gokulam I sought out Anu and Ganesh. Anu runs a small café on the roof of her beautiful home situated on a hill in Gokulam. Yoga practitioners seem to flock to her house to eat delicious vegetarian food, indulge in decadent chocolate semolina, work on their mindfulness and present state of mind while ingesting the phenomenal brownies made of what I assume was beets and hang out with her remarkably relaxed black lab. Maybe not so remarkably as the lab lives in the middle of the yoga mecca, eats what I imagine to be some of the best dog food on the planet and is surrounded by exceedingly kind yoga students all day. I enjoyed a small lunch from Anu’s roof before meeting with her and discussing the organization she helps run. Admittedly I don't currently have the name or a link to the organization's website but I can tell you what I know. She works to bring children who have been raised on the street into a boarding school and give them all the opportunities she can. The organization she partners with provides meals, vitamins, education, recreation, anything you can think of for those who have so little. When I hear from Anu again I will add in more detailed information, a website link and how you can help her organization at the bottom of this entry. 

After an afternoon in Gokulam I returned to the hotel briefly before venturing out to Chamundi Hill. Chamundi Hill sits just outside Mysore and is a very holy site for Hindus. It is here, Hindu tradition has it that it was on Chamundi Hill where the goddess Chamundeswari defeated the ancient demon Mahishasura. To reach the top of the hill one must climb 1,008 steps. I had climbed Chamundi Hill in the past, three years ago. The last time I climbed it was on a day where it seemed all of Mysore turned out to race up the hill as part of a competition to build awareness on forest fires. There were people of every age range then, all wearing the same white shirt with a picture of a cow escaping the burning brush that surrounded it. This time it was a much more solitary climb. I didn't have any of my friends with me. No one to break with and catch our breath up the steep stairs. No camera crew from the local news documenting the foreigners who had travelled all the way to India just for the race up the hill. It was me, my camera, my water and my laptop. I had brought my lap top along because near the top of the hill there is a small community of people that live there. It was there three years ago where I took a detour through the village and photographed a girl and her baby brother. I was hoping to find them.

As I made my way to the top I could hear the village getting closer. Children yelling and enjoying the hot summer day. As I rounded the corner where I came face to face with the village square I saw a volley ball net had been set up and a group of ten middle school aged boys were playing a game. As I walked past them one called out to me "Hello, what is your name?" I responded with Eamon and he bobbed his head and turned back to the game. As I passed I could here another boy mocking him. I reached where I had remembered taking the picture of the girl and her brother only to find that the house I remembered was no longer there. A new house was being built in its place. Dismayed I was wondering if I'd find them or if they had become another connection I'd never see again. I decided to ask the boys playing volley ball if they recognized the girl in the picture. I called over the one who had shouted out to me and he sheepishly came over. i showed him the picture and he became very taken a back. He didn't speak much English and he was asking quite a few questions in Kannada (the predominant language in the area) and broken English that were a bit too rapid fire to comprehend. The other boys came over and saw the picture. As it turned out the girl was his sister. So they all began to speak to him in Kanarese and punching him in the arm. Teasing him for what I would rather not imagine comes out of a middle school boys mouth when a stranger from far away shows up with pictures of your sister. But I was able to explain I had met her and his brother on the day of the race three years ago and how I was looking for them to share the pictures. He shrugged it off and guided me to a house and ran off back to return to the game. I knocked on the door of where he had lead me to find no one was there. I asked a young boy in the street who looked at the picture and promptly raced around the corner beckoning me. I hastily followed him and found three women sitting on the ground. I showed my pictures to them and they became overjoyed. They were sharing stories in a language I could not understand but I can understand when a voice cracks unexpectedly and a person must clear their throat and wipe at their eyes. It turns out the siblings I had photographed were one of the woman's children. She asked for three copies of each of my pictures and I eagerly tried to explain I's mail them as soon as I got home. I didn't get a chance to meet the daughter who had had such a warm smile and was so eager to show off her brother, but my suspicion is the little boy who darted around the corner in such a flurry and lead me to the women was none other than the boy in the picture. He followed me around the rest of the time I was on the hilltop. He would lead me to the tops of houses to see the view before excitedly going off in a tangent in Kanarese and bashfully knocking things on the ground about with a long stick he had been carrying around.

It was the perfect way to end this leg of my journey. Up until now I have been following the same path I had been the last time I came to India. I had been following where Professor Mergen lead us three years ago. Even down to the hotels. But tomorrow I leave for Kerala. I have never been so far South in India. After Kerala comes Dharmsala, a mountain town home to the exiled Tibetan government in the North. From here on out I am making my own way. I couldn't think of a better way to get ready for this leg of my trip than seeing some old friends from before that I wondered if I'd ever see again. 

 

From Bangalore to Mysore (9 July 2016)

I left Bangalore this morning. As our rickshaw careened through the streets a light rain started to fall. Everything seemed to glisten in the sunlight and the mist. As we stopped at a stoplight a couple on a motorcycle were waiting by our side. The man would reach back and gently touch his partner’s leg while trying to shield her as best he could from the rain. The woman would press her cheek to his back and plant a light kiss on his shoulder, leaving the imprints of her lips on his purple shirt. A child in a rickshaw to our right reached out to feel the rain on her small hand. All the while her mother was holding her at the waist to keep her in the car. The mother’s face smile was hidden by her hijab, but in her eyes the love for her child stretched for miles. There was so much love and tenderness and love at this one traffic stop in the rain in the middle of the city. It was almost like walking through your high school a few days before graduation. My Bangalore graduation glasses.

Once we reached the train station I bought a ticket for my ride. Sixty rupees for a one way ride to Mysore. Less than a beer and barely more than a dollar. I made my way down to Platform 10 where our train was boarding. I had no idea what car to hop on so I nervously passed my ticket to a small man standing in the doorway of train car. He looked, gave me the traditional Indian head bob, a language all to itself that I could not decipher in that moment. After a few head bobs another passenger came back. He looked at my ticket and beckoned me onboard. I took a seat in the row across the aisle from the guy who helped me and his friend. Soon a man came through the car selling chai and lightly roasted peanuts. My helper bought both and sent an order of each to me. Soon we were deep in a very limited conversation. He spoke little English and I speak little (no) Hindi. For some reason one of the first questions people ask me over here is if I’m married. It’s a lot like going to family reunions. He spoke of his wife and his seven-month-old daughter. His friend was single and we joked about being of the same bachelor class.

As the train rolled through the countryside the generosity of the pair I had found became readily apparent. Anytime a vendor came through our cramped car to sell snacks they would hop on it, giving a share to me. Even when I’d try to beat them to it, they would have none of it. Maddur vada, vadai, chai, nuts, a fruit I had never heard of sliced with salt pushed into the cuts, they shared everything that came through. More than this, at every stop people would come through the train car asking for money. A man in an old army sweater and a fake leg dragged himself through the car, a small man with one hand a clubbed feet, a blind man and an old woman with a cleft palette. For every single person they would give them money when few others on our car would. They would share anything they could with the people around us. A baby sat in the row in front of them with her parents and every time the baby’s bottle would run out one of the pair would dart to the back to refill it so the father wouldn’t have to leave his wife and child. They insisted on getting my phone number. So I gave it to them but tried to explain I wouldn’t be able to receive a call until August. “Ok then…August fifth, I call.” He said to me as we were nearing Mysore. Once I got off the platform in Mysore one of the pair insisted on carrying my suitcase to my rickshaw. The driver was a bit annoyed but my new friend couldn’t be dissuaded. As we parted ways he shook my hand for the last time and disappeared into the swarm of people outside the station.

 

An Urban Jungle in Bangaluru (7 July 2016)

I had no idea what to do today so I got up early and decided to start planning the rest of my trip out. I figured out where I'll be heading after my next stop but that's as far as I got. While browsing things to do in Bangalore, I found a national park near by. Bannerghatta National Park is situated about 15 miles from my hotel in the city and the staff here generously agreed to help me find a rickshaw driver to take me there and back. One pulled up and we zipped away. When we got to Bannerghatta, I was looking at the safari options. It seemed to be that I could either take a bus or a personal Jeep. I elected for the jeep so my rickshaw driver and I hopped in the Jeep and we sped off through the gated facilities. 

They keep the herbivores and the carnivores in separate areas so things in the park don't become to natural for the visitors. We drove along winding dirt paths with the jungle inching itself to the road on either side. Around one bend we came to a clearing. A small lake opened up before us as the trees parted and standing down on the bank of the river was an elephant going for a swim. It was the closest thing I've seen to an elephant in the wild and it looked so peaceful. It's enormous grey body soaking up the muddy water of the lake. It would suck some in with its great trunk and blow it into the air. After a brief moments pause we kept going.

Finding more a species of deer native to India called Nilgai. A family was feeding on some clippings laid out for them by the park's staff. We were whisked away again to another clearing. This one with many more elephants. There was one noticeable difference though. Some of these elephants had chain manacles around their feet. I wondered if the other did as well and I could not see it. I am not fond of zoos or companies that exploit animals for people's convenience. I was suddenly faced with an ethical dilemma that I really would rather not be part of. But I suppose that's the point of ethics. I choose to believe these elephants were more happy than the one who cart visitors up and down the steps of palaces all day. They seemed to be enjoying themselves from what I knew of elephant body language which is none. But I couldn't shake the feeling of regret I felt when I saw the chains around the elephants feet. 

Once we had spied a few more nilgai, buffalos and elephants we started to go through the various carnivore habitats. First came the bears native to India, the sloth bear. Which is predictively as lazy as their names may suggest. While passing one that was grooming itself off in the woods the rickshaw driver and myself were excitedly jabbering and taking pictures. Our guided pointed to the road ahead where there were four sloth bears laid out in the road. They were all snoring. As our driver maneuvered us through the minefield of sleeping bears, they would lift their heads to see what was happening then place them gently back down. Sloth bears were all over in various states of relaxation. It was quite a thing to see these massive animals in such a lethargic state.

After the bears came the lion enclosure. As we drove through slowly, all of us peering around, we saw one. One lion sitting out in a small clearing in the jungle. His mane illuminated by the sun that passed through the trees outstretched branches and landed to cast golden light all around the predator. He was gazing off into the distance. Sitting in the warm sunlight and silently waiting. After a while he got up, stretched and gave a loud grumble. I have never heard a lion make noise before. It caught me off guard. There is so much base in a lion's voice that it reverberates in your chest. You can feel it. It hits this long forgotten, near primal center of your brain and you can't help but acknowledge the power he has.

After lions and bears only tigers would logically follow. So we drove through the tiger enclosure. White tigers lounged in the bushy undergrowth grooming themselves and bengal tigers stalked through the forests. Sometimes the bengals would get terribly close to the car and you could see their fierce muscles laying just below that orange and black pelt. They are a sight to behold. 

On the way back into town my rickshaw driver swung me by a silk factory. I could see beautiful fabrics being woven together in the dark rooms sitting next to the stores. It was very interesting to see the hard work in the dark and dingy rooms. The two men weaving the machine to form beautiful flowers and peacock feathers. Through the grime that coated the old machines and the sweat on the men's brows glistened the iridescent colorings of what would become shawls, gowns and beautiful saris next door. One blend of orange and black in a shawl shined so seamlessly with the colors moving so smoothly together it reminded me of one of the bengal tigers, stalking through the dense under growth as the sun bounced off its hide as the tiger creeped in and out of shade. I stepped into the store for some chai while the store owner laid out dozens upon dozens of beautiful silk wares for purchase. After being doped up with coffee and beautiful fabrics I had some laid out to buy. It wasn't until I caught myself that I decided to see how much they were ready to have me spend. Just shy of eight hundred dollars they had saved at the counter for my purchase. I asked them kindly to put the vast majority of that back and I made out with a few goods. 

 

First Day Back in India (6 July 2016)

I got into India at 3 am today. As we were taxing the runway in the airplane the cabin depressurized. Air from outside began to filter its way into the cabin for the first time since we had left the hot and dry city of Doha. As India started to infiltrate the airplane I could smell that old somewhat smoky air, the dampness that clings to the inside of your nostrils. I couldn't wait to step foot outside the airport. Before I could do that though I had to go through customs where I was asked to empty my pockets, step through the metal detector, the usual ordeal. When I took the contents out of my pockets I realized I had accidentally taken the cellphone Sylvia and Levon had got for me when I first got to Armenia. It's rather small so I'm not surprised I missed it. Most days in Armenia I honestly forgot it was there. Which lead to one non opened text message from my time in Armenia. It was from Levon. It read something along the lines of "Hey, when will you be back?" I know this was from an early time this week. But it gave my heart a little flutter, sparking again that feeling that seems to have instilled itself in me when I think of Armenia.

After a brief minute of nostalgia I was being driven to my hotel (the Casa Cottage) by a taxi driver. How I missed India's driving. People say chaos and order or opposites. I would challenge them to try and analyze Indian traffic if they believe that to be the case. After a brief shower I laid down and fell into a deep sleep. I woke up to the housekeeping staff buzzing my door to clean up. I groggily asked for five minutes in my underwear while I wiped the crust from my eyes. The two women laughed at me, nodded and began their descent down the spiral staircase outside my room. I threw on some clothes and headed downstairs where I was greeted by the one thing that got me out of bed each day. An incredible breakfast waiting for me. Coffee, toast with jam, dosas, fruit salad and fresh squeezed mango juice. It felt like I had never left. After considering what to do for the day I set out with my camera, book bag and rain coat. It didn't look particularly like rain but there was a 35% chance. I was soon to get my first real lesson in Indian weather. 

After climbing in a rickshaw to take my to the city market I began walking around the vendors. Fresh fruit, herbs, spices, flowers dyes, chai tea bubbling in the pot and people with a slightly sweet sweat from the heat. All of their aromas blending together in the air to form a beautiful blend of India. I walked around eyeing the bustling people. The market was much busier than the last time I was there. There was scarce room for me to maneuver and my backpack kept jostling people on the street. I felt a rain droplet hit my nose. Another hit my shoulder, it was so fat it soaked right through my shirt as and splashed some of its contents on my neck. Then the sky opened up. It poured like nothing I had ever seen before. In a flurry, everyone around me began to disappear under whatever shelter they could fine. In what seemed like less than a second I went from being in the middle of a crowd of people to being nearly solitary standing in open sidewalk. I made my way underneath the plastic tarp of a fruit vendor where a number of people waited for the rain to past. And that's what we did. We waited. All around people were standing quietly under the available shelters. The incessant beeping and honking of India traffic ceased, the busy patter of the people's footsteps disappeared, the hawking of vendors vanished and the chatter of the people died down. It was just us huddled together listening to the rain. A symphony opened up before us as the rain hit off the different surfaces around us. Sharp pinging as droplets struck off an overturned metal bucket that moments ago was a seat. Flat, deep bass notes rung as the rain drenched a piece of heavy wool that hung over one vendor. The rain was playing its music and whether people quieted down to listen to it or not, that's all the sound there was. The rain let up gradually and slowly the streets became full again.

I made my way through the market place that was much busier than the previous time I had visited. Every stand was open. People were yelling about what they had to sell and others were yelling back trying to talk prices down. It was very surreal to be in this crowd of people where everyone was yelling a foreign language. After some chai I left the market to make my way back to the hotel. It was about two miles walk and I have always been fond of wandering. No sooner had I made up my mind than I felt those first few raindrops again. They were heralding the storm that would arrive not but half a moment later. Again it poured and again everyone scrambled to find cover. I did the same but it wasn't near as romantic this time. I had find myself not far from the massive piles of waste the market puts out. Rain soaked through the heaps of old flowers, once fresh vegetables, muddy dyes and stale spices. The once sweet smell that filled the air turned sour. Rot began to seep out of the piles of refuse. Little creeks of mud, food, cow dung and multi colored dyes began to flood the streets. At our feet cars rushed past knocking the blend onto those unlucky enough to pass by. The air became thick and I ran to the street to hail a rickshaw. I jumped in the first one that pulled over and told him I'd direct him as we went while he pushed heavy on the gas. Soon we were clear of the market and the smells turned back to sweet and smoky. 

As we made our way back, school was letting out. Students filed out of their schools and crammed into rickshaws or waited to walk home together. Huge classes of kids all wearing the same uniforms. As we passed they I could hear their high voices in elation as the rains let up and they jumped into puddles or ran to be greeted by the open arms of their parents. I was dropped off outside the hotel. I had no sooner made it back into the courtyard when I felt that solitary rain drop again. I got to my room just as buckets began to fall once again.

 

Last Day in Armenia (4 July 2016)

Today was my last day in Armenia sadly. Last night Sylvia helped set up a trip to Lake Sevan for me. It's about two hours away from Yerevan. The driver who took Levon, Santiago and I to Gyumri would be driving me again. Just me this time. I met him downstairs a 9 am and soon we were off. H brought his mp3 player and gave me a sampling of Armenian music. Driving through the beautiful hills of Armenia listening to the Armenian variants of the Beach Boys and Donna Summers. The hills were cut through to make way for the roads and in the exposed rock veins of obsidian glittered black in the mid morning sun. It looks almost as if the mining companies and cut straight through the heart of the hills and the veins of ore burst and were spilling their black glassy contents down the rocks. They looked like streams of darkness flowing down the rocky road sides. It was so beautiful to see.

We made it to an old cemetery called Noratus. It is home to over 800 khachkars, some dating back to as early as the 9th century CE. They stand as solid stone giants. Surrounding two old chapels built in the 13th century CE and abandoned not long after. Now the main inhabitants of the grounds are sheep that range and graze on the grass that grows from under the colossal rocks and the old women who wait and sit, knitting woolen gloves to sell to passerbys. After wandering around the old graveyard I headed to the newer monuments that stood next door. Row after row of gravestones and statues. Almost all featuring the portraits of the people who lay below the ground beneath stones laid over them. As I walked around I came across three men digging a hole for a new member of the community. They worked with picks and shovels knocking away rock and earth to reach six feet deep. I met them when they were at their shoulders. They worked as we talked. They offered me cigarettes and we smoked as they rested. Oram, Arta and Valik. We spoke in broken English for a while as they told me of their relatives in Glendale, their favorite sites to visit with their family. 

After a while I left and went off to Sevanavank, an chapel built in 305 CE. It sits on what use to be an island in the vast Lake Sevan. Since then it has become a peninsula that stretches out into the lake. Steep stairs climb up to the hill where the church sits. It is settled with the beautiful water on three sides, seagulls calling out above your head, wild flowers sprinkling the grassy meadows around it, bulbs of purple and yellow standing out against the stone walls of the church. We left to head to lunch. A wonderful spot sitting right on the lake. We ate outside on a porch so low you could almost feel the waters of Lake Sevan splashing your feet. When I say we ate I mean we feasted. Salads, cheeses, barbecued lamb and lavash bread to wrap it in. We ate in silence, drinking our beer and soaking in the wind off the lake. I studied his features. Crosses tattooed on the knuckles of one hand, an M dyed into the skin on the other between his thumb and index finger. His pinky nails had been left untrimmed for some time and the smoke from his cigarette only occasionally cleared to see the blue of his eyes. Nestled into his wrinkled olive skin were two swirling lakes with black voids in the center. His peppered hair blowing around in the gusts. He was an incredibly kind man but you could see he was weathered. 

On our way back he continued to play songs from his mp3 player. Songs would split the silence and as ones came on that colored the interior of his car grey with sadness he would listen for a while before changing them. After a song I never expected to hear came on. Agnetha Fältskog came busting out of the speakers. Hasta Mañana by ABBA hit just as the realization of this is my last day hit me. I was struck by the strangeness of the moment as she Agnetha sang "Hasta mañana till we meet again, don't know where, don't know when." My mind became flooded with everything that has happened this week. The sites I've seen and the places I've gone to. The chapel carved into the side of the mountain, the pagan temple left standing against all odds. "Hasta mañana till we meet again, don't know where, don't know when." The road stretched on line by cypresses on each side. The people I've met and spent time with. The women in Gyumri, struggling to make a home out of a broken dream for their families. The men digging the grave for someone I'll never meet sharing stories of their families. "Hasta mañana till we meet again, don't know where, don't know when." Levon so driven to make a better life for the people that no one else seems to be able to. Sitting on the balcony with Hilda nightly too deep in conversation to realize 3am had come and passed. Sylvia striving to change the pace of a nation starting with the children. Vasken working without pay day in and out to better Armenia for the future. To everyone I have met, the people I've seen I can't thank you enough. Hasta mañana till we meet again. I don't know where. I don't know when.

 

Vardavar in Yerevan (3 July 2016)

Levon and I woke up, donned our clothes and headed out into the madness of Yerevan. It is Vardavar today. It's an ancient tradition often associated with Astghik, the goddess of love, beauty, water and fertility. Now the festival takes place ninety eight days after Easter. People celebrate by creating the biggest drainage problem Armenia experiences once a year. The people wake up early, they grab water bottles, buckets, super-soakers, the containers ice cream comes in, anything at all that can be used as a weapon in the upcoming battle. Once they are ready everyone heads out into the streets to dump ludicrous amounts of water on anyone unlucky enough to get caught in their warpath. As Levon and I walked to the city center, I have never been more acutely aware of all open windows on the floors of buildings towering over us. Knowing that every step I take leads me closer to being drenched in water from unseen foes. We would stick to the trees, try to stay under cover or out of range. They would probe us. As we walked a gallon of water would rain down to our left, a balloon would burst to our right. But more frightening than the rain of balloons from above were those packs of insidious people that stalked the ground. Multiple times I witnessed first hand a pack leave weaker members to the beasts as they were set upon. Water would fly everywhere as screams of elation filled the air. By the time we got to the park, pandemonium had erupted. There was no law, no safety. Police officers cowered in their cars full of fear, children ran manically into the fury. Water flowed in the streets like...water. I cannot describe the incredible scale that these water battles took on and I am left bewildered by the realization that people were literally participating in the festival all day. 

Levon and I went back to his home after a while. Still being ambushed by people and then in turn attacking back. What beasts we all became. I sat on the balcony and dried off for a while. Before heading to the Sergei Parajanov Museum. Sergei was a very well known and respected artist and film maker in Armenia. After he came to fame on the international stage for his film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, he became a target of the Soviet system he worked under. All of his projects from 1965 to 1973 were banned by Soviet film administrators. This all culminated with his arrest in 1973, on charges of rape, homosexuality and bribery. After being released in 1977 he was still kept out of the film industry and wouldn't be able to complete making his work until 1980. 

Sergei Parajanov has to be one of the most artistic souls I have ever come across. His house (now the museum) is filled with his art. Art from his youth which centered around the troubles of his family, art from when he was imprisoned that evoked heavy emotions with subjects of his fellow inmates and finally art from his relief and his subsequent films. He had a whole series on the Mona Lisa, which he almost had a love affair with one could say. She was an enigma to him. It stemmed from seeing her tattooed on a fellow prisoners chest one day in a work camp while they were breaking rocks. When he raised up his pick she would smile, when he brought it down against the rock she would grow sad, when he was relaxed so was she, his pain was her pain. His work was so expressive and beautiful and strange for Soviet Armenia and it was a such a phenomenal pleasure to see a glimpse at his genius.

After the museum I went off to a Yacobian family gathering with Levon's family. We drove up to a hill overlooking Yerevan and got out of what is easily the most impressive house I have ever stepped foot in. We were greeted immediately by a large guard dog, a German Shepard, running up to us howling and ramming his butt into us looking for petting. The Yacobian family was incredibly welcoming to me. I even found myself in family photos  practically in the front row. We feasted, I learned backgammon, we drank, we celebrated a wedding. I can't thank the Yacobian's enough for their hospitality. 

 

24 Hour Day in Gyumri (1 July 2016)

We woke up early on Thursday to get on the road quickly. It seemed no sooner was I out of bed that I was on the road to Gyumri. I sat in the front seat with our driver while Levon and Santiago dozed off in the back. He only spoke Armenian and I can only use English so there wasn't much conversation between the two of us on the two hour trip. This wasn't too bad though, I was mainly glued to my window watching the landscape pass by sporadically taking photos every time the car slowed down. I would shoot photos and he would drive a long, every 15 minutes or so taking a cigarette out of his pack and hold it to his lips while he tried to light it while hiding the flame from the wind rushing in our windows.

We soon got to Gyumri and began walking around. In 1988 a horrific earthquake struck the region and collapsed over 320 buildings, leaving a lot of families with no place to live. Levon and Santiago are working on a project called Tuff Armenia. Their goal is to eventually build or create a space for these people effected by the earthquake to live in. Thursday we spent the day walking around the neighborhoods of homes of the people and witnessed firsthand the destruction of not just the homes but the lives of the poor people who fell victim to the earthquake. 

After the earthquake the government erected what is almost a shanty town in which they left the people to live while they built new homes for them. Twenty eight years later and the families are still waiting to have a safe place to live. Many of the "homes" the government have provided are little more than shipping containers with doors. Some were even old gas tanks that were cut and half and turned over to provide shelter. These shabbily made houses are sweltering in the summer and freezing in the winter. We met with one family who squeezes nine people (seven women and two kids) into a small house that had two beds in it. They said in the winter they burn everything just so they can survive. They showed us a closet of cardboard boxes, cloth, paper scraps, even shoes. All of which would be burned in the winter to provide some heat to them. It is not out of a want of comfort that they do this but necessity. We stopped in to visit several families and each one would present us with coffee, apricots, chocolates, whatever they had. These people live in the margin of society. It seems like most people are quite content to avert their eyes from the neighborhoods of metal homes rather than look into fixing it. Since 1988, a shack and some money are all these people have gotten to help them. The government states that if anyone does any work on the structures they provided to the families they become private residences and as such won't be eligible for assistance in finding a new place to live. After twenty eight years, how could you not perform maintenance? Still many were hesitant to. In many houses you could see through the roof where it rotted and rusted into dust. Holes were plugged with styrofoam for insulation. Mice come in the night and eat up the food the families have before scurrying out of the cracks in the foundations. Many don't even have toilets and showers cost 1000 dram. The family of nine said the government gives them 28,000 dram a year to live off of. 

Levon and his team are trying to do what the government seems to be unable to, help. It was a very emotional time meeting the families. Conversation would give way to tears. Then anger would boil over and more than once the people would begin yelling about the corruption in the government. Many people had so many questions. "What can I do" "When will be able to live?" I could see the frustration in Levon's face because he did not have the answers they so desperately needed. But he's trying to find them. After we left each family he would turn to Santiago and myself and explain what the family had said, what they had been through, what they were in need of. He would go through each situation with us trying to contain his own anger at the situation. 

The car ride back to Yerevan was quiet. Levon and Santiago let exhaustion take them in the back seat while I sat wordlessly in the front with our driver. After thirty or so minutes had passed we began a conversation of charades. Laughing and trying to mime jokes and observations to each other. More than once he would hit my leg, point out to something in the distance and pretend to take a picture. When a truck would let out a big black cloud of smoke we would hold our breath exaggeratedly as it whisped over the windshield. As we entered the city he would point out which of the women on the side of the road were prostitutes by repeatedly jamming his index finger in a little hold he made with his other hand. He would offer to pull over before chuckling heartily. After some time of this he pulled out a cigarette, held it between his lips then handed another to me. I am not a smoker but it felt rude of me to decline. We couldn't share a language so instead we shared laughs and smokes all the way back to the city.

When we returned Santiago and I went out for a beer while Levon did some work. We drank until Levon joined us and from there we left to take Santiago to work. Once we got to the architecture office where he interns. We didn't stay long before we grabbed the metro back into town. The metro system is Yerevan is very easy, even for those of us who can't speak Armenian. There is one line. You either go North-West or South-East. Each subway train has two cars and they move between a handful stations. The intriguing part of the Metro is that it is built in an old Soviet bomb shelter so it is deep in the earth. The escalator down to the subway platform is almost a minute long of slowly descending.

From there we headed to grab a quick dinner while we watched the symphony that plays over the loud speaker in the main city square while the fountain dances in perfect timing with the music. A show that is performed every night at 8pm. After a while Levon and I went off to a bar to drink and watch Portugal play Poland. We were joined by Hilda (Levon's sister) and one of Santiago's coworkers.  We all would sit up in our seats any time Poland had possession and jeer when Ronaldo flashed across the screen. It was a bitter ending to our time at the bar. Levon went back to his house and I accompanied Santiago to another bar. From the street I could hear a murmur Armenian music playing and the crowd cheering together. As we walked down the steps the murmur became an exclamation as we were greeted by a swarming flurry of people dancing together to Armenian music. The atmosphere was infectious and it filled me with such joy to see these people (many of whom were from Europe, South America and the US) celebrating their culture. The girls would whirl and the men would perform choreographed dances. I did not know the moves but a couple of girls attempted to instruct me before they realized I was a lost cause in terms of Armenian dancing. 

I left Santiago  and headed back to Levon's. The streets were dark as I stumbled back. I was so worried I made a ruckus when I opened the door to be greet at 2am by Levon's sister and grandmother. I sat out on the porch for a while talking with Hilda before she retired and I waited for the sun to rise over Yerevan. I went to bed finally at 5:30 ending the longest day I've had in a while. 

Here is a link to the Tuff Armenia Project. A team from UVA working to help these people in need by any means they can. You can donate to the cause or share it to bring some light to this issue that has been pushed into the shadows for too long.

http://armenia.eswb.org/

 

New and Old Architecture in Armenia (29 June 2016)

To start the day I woke up rather groggily to make my way to Hyur travel agency not far from where I'm staying. My exquisite hosts continue to outdo themselves with my lodging by finding then in turn booking a tour of two of Armenia's most beautiful sites of antiquity. Garni and Greghard. 

The tour bus left at 10 o'clock and it wasn't too long of bumbling down Armenian roadways out of the city of Yerevan that we stopped to soak in the views of the Ararat Plain. Miles and miles unfolded before me and I was quite anxious to begin taking the pictures I wanted to. I made my way to the cusp of the plateau only to realize I had forgotten my memory card for my camera back in Yerevan. But soon we were back on the road to Garni and I was too absorbed in the history our tour guide was relaying to kick myself too much. When we arrived at Garni, we toured the grounds and our guide explained every little piece of its history to us. Garni was originally an ancient fortification that was believed to be impregnable, and given its placement, I could see that to be the case. It is sitting almost on a peninsula jetting out into an incredibly steep valley below. An enormous wall separates the grounds from the rest of the world. Right as you entered the site you are greeted by a large slab of rock propped up. The inscription on the rock was in ancient Roman and told of a gift from the Emperor Nero to the people of Armenia. He was repaying a debt he felt the Roman Empire owed them, a debt of some 1,000,000+ gold coins from Rome's treasury. We walked on to the large temple at Garni, the only remaining Pagan temple in Armenia. Somehow, this ancient, beautifully decorated temple had survived close to two thousand years. It has remained standing through countless attacks from enemies, the creation of Armenia as the first Christian state, Soviet rise and fall and earthquakes that crumbled the structures around it. I was blown away by the beauty of Garni nestled in its quiet fortitude standing on her rock in the valley. But I had no idea what I was in store for. 

From Garni our bus set out for Geghard, a beautiful church carved into the rock of hill in the 4th century CE. From the outside of Geghard all you can see is a wall and a beautiful valley with a river flowing below you. But if you look closely at the rock face as you walk up to the monastery, you can see the beauty truly begin to unfold. Nestled away and almost hidden from view are little rooms carved into the wall of the canyon. Windows and elaborate, interlacing designs weathered by time adorn the walls. As you walk through the main gate of the enclosure a beautiful church stands before you. I say church and it is a church in stature, but in it's presence it feels more like a cathedral. Half of it is built standing out from the rocks and the other half of the church is carved out of the rock. There are a number of various cambers to the church. In one a skylight casts rays of sun through the light dust of a beautifully carved round room. It would be easy to think this room is just that until you hear someone sing in it. I was lucky enough to hear a group of girls singing old Armenian songs to the small crowd gathered in the room. I cannot do it justice, the acoustics of the room transformed these four teenage girls from America on vacation into a choir of angels that I believe heaven would struggle to match. The sound filled the room, your ears, your soul. It lifted you up to the point you were almost accidentally standing on your tiptoes. I could only part with the room when the singing stopped. In another chamber a spring from the rock empties itself into a small pool, people travel from all over to visit this spring for its spiritual significance and a line formed to only stick your hand out and take a sip from it. Everyone was so quite and peaceful. Waiting their turn to taste this pure water. The silence was only broken by the steady stream, flowing down to the pool, along a small channel that ran the length of the chamber and darting back underground. One of the final rooms was the actual church. Candles lined three of the four walls and their lights flickered and danced along the columns, in and out of the carvings only scattering to the darkness where light could not bend to keep up.

After leaving Geghart (which was quite a chore in itself) we made our way to a small orchard. Apricots and cherry trees littered the grounds while women worked to bake a special native bread called Lavash. The bread is much like pita bread except it is cooked along the walls of an oven dug into the ground. Dough is laid out on these things quite similar to pillows then pushed with the most graceful force alongside the walls of the oven. I enjoyed a lunch of lavash wrapped around goat cheese and various fresh spices still on the stems. After our meal I wandered the orchard sampling some of the fruit. I must have eaten all the cherries off of one of the trees they were so delicious and juicy. You could pull on the fruit and there would be a little pop of their deep red juice as it separated from the stem. They tasted so fantastic I didn't even want to spit the pits out.

Once I returned to the city I took a GG (the equivalent of an Uber) out to the AYB School where my host Sylvia works. She showed me the elementary school and then took me up the street to the facility where the middle and high schools are located. Astounding cannot even begin to describe how it was. The design of the buildings was quite nice. A modern look nestled just outside some of the oldest buildings in Yerevan. But that wasn't what sold it for me. Walking up there was a tube that snaked from the outside wall of the third floor down to the second. It was a slide. And this wasn't even the only slide students can use to get to one floor from another. There was another indoors. If I was a staff member there I'm not sure I'd be on time to my own class if I had unlimited access to slides that take you between floors. This isn't even where the magic stopped though. Every classroom is as close to state of the art as you can get. A beautiful theatre that at the top opened into the art studio, a robotics lab where students never use kits to build what's in their head, a fabrication lab where students work to create planes, 3D models and even award winning sumo wrestling robots. It is truly as Sylvia described it "The Google of schools". The vision of the school was something I believe a great many school systems couldn't have even if they were looking through the Hubble telescope. 

The last building I visited today was home to the headquarters of The Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU). It is a five-story structure with a roof terrace right in downtown Yerevan. The first three floors all are designed on the outside to mimic the design of old government buildings. Beautiful and colonial in a dark grey stone. But the top two floors spring to life out of the grey with two floors of almost pure glass. Once inside any trace of the old architecture is lost and it gives way to an incredibly open space with so much natural light and air if it wasn't for the hazy blue steps next to the reception desk you think you'd walked right back outside. Every floor had seemed to be the model of what an office could be. Open doors and walls of glass, everyone was accessible and it seemed eager to be so as well. To top the day off I got to sit on a screening of an old 70's spy movie, The Serpent. French, British, American and Russian spies all struggle to uncover the truth. It seemed like there would be no resolution, spare for one Armenian lab technician who found his way to the truth just in time.

 

First Day in Armenia (26 June 2016)

 I woke up this morning to a captivating view of Yerevan. As I stood out on the balcony, I shown all the city had to offer by my wonderfully hospitable hosts Vasken and Leon. The Mother of Armenia, the monument to the Genocide, Mount Aragats and so much more stretched out before me. There was so much to see I stayed out on the porch for some time just trying to soak it all in. 

Leon was kind enough to take the morning off from work to take me to breakfast and get me oriented in the city. On our way to the ArtBridge Cafe we passed what was described to me as an existentialist cafe. I have not investigated it any further yet, but I can only hope to take a break from this truly lovely trip at some point to contemplate the soul crushingly meaningless nature of existence and man's futility to justify our continued being. Despite this, the apple/raisin/cinnamon crepes at ArtBridge though was enough to put a smile on Jean-Paul Satre's face. 

From breakfast I wandered the city. The picture above is that of an old Armenian church undergoing restoration. The smaller one wrapped in green is actually one of the only (if not the only) churches in Yerevan to survive the Soviet era. It managed to outlive the Soviet state by hiding. The chapel is remarkably tiny and to make it so the Armenian people could continue to attend church (which was strictly against Soviet policy) they built numerous buildings around the church to hide it. When the USSR came down, so did the buildings. Now they are actually augmenting the small chapel with larger areas of worship around it (as you can see on the right).

I walked to a beautiful set of steps that climbs up a large hill called the Cascades. The Cascades are about as wide as a four lane road with beautiful flowering gardens on either side. The steps are tiered so there are a few stops with fountains and beautiful sculpture gardens at each break. There is also an art gallery at every stop nestled under the stairs. 

At the top of the Cascades I crossed the street into a public park. There were quite a number of fair rides that were overgrown. Signs asking for 300 dram to ride a merry-go-round with no one staffing it. Plants and ivy growing up along the tracks of a cart ride. It seemed almost like walking through a long forgotten place for bits of time. But then around the corner, life sprang into view. Kids were running with ice cream in their hands, old men played chess and lovers sat with their arms around each other enjoying the shade on the hot day. People were even enjoying the rides that looked as though no one had taken a ride on them in ages. There was a burst of life in what was otherwise seemed a bygone scene. Further down the path Mother of Armenia towered over the trees. She stood there, sword in hand facing Mount Ararat (a national symbol of Armenia that now lays beyond Turkey's borders).

Yerevan is such a beautiful city. There are so many nooks and crannies I believe no one has seen all of it. Hidden gardens tucked away behind soaring buildings and tunnels decorated with beautiful murals running through them. Areas so low and busy you feel as if the city will engulf you if the bustling cars don't first and spaces so high and open you can see for miles and miles past the sprawl of the city.