aside aside

So as Day mentioned below, we're both feeling some traveller burnout. Last night we took a cross desert night train (11:00PM-4:30AM) which we both actually slept soundly on. We woke covered in a film of fine red dust and sand, shook off, grabbed a little pot of chai tea (the milk had burned, a shame), and headed of into the darkness to find a bed. You can do that here: wander around semi-lost through unlit streets with huge backpacks, stepping over people sleeping in stoops as you bang on shuttered doors to wake the night watchman at some anonymous strip motel. Maybe not in the Downtown East-side, but here, yes.

India has two kinds of hotels: the ones dolled up for the tourist trade, often in pretty old buildings with staff who speak great English. They can be quite cheap, especially in the off-season as the desert is now, approaching summer, with the smarter tourists retreating to the Northern hills. The trade-off is that the food in these districts is almost always monstrous and over-priced. The second kind of hotel is what we're bunked down in now: a massive faceless concrete cube, plopped right on the busiest street in front of a transport hub. These hotels are intended for the Indian business traveller. They range from fetid and musty deathtraps to...way out of our price range. The advantage is they are surrounded by cheap, fresh, local food joints: the chai shops, sweet shops, and veg restaurants where two can get full for less than two dollars.
So, rather than rushing off to see the amazing ancient fort this town apparently has, we spent the day lazing under the fan reading, writing, and wandering from cheap eatery to cheap eatery. Tomorrow: likely the same.

There's a photo in a climbing mag I remember. It shows some dude, way up there, leaning out of his soaked portaledge, looking down. He's got that classic shit-scared what-now look. There's obviously been some weather: thick cloud in the background, the rock streaked cold grey with rain. The caption reads: "If you're wondering what you're doing up there, maybe its time to come down."

The caption precisely misses the point: sometimes you go up there because you're not sure if you can finish, and that question alone is compelling. Maybe you go simply because being in that position, that stark, commanding verticality, puts you in such a strange and foreign place that the mundane requires constant recalibration. So you go up there because you want to wonder what the fuck you're doing; want to feel the desire -the need- to quit, go down, have a beer, take it easy, get back to normal.

Maybe long-term travel is a little like that.