Moving day...New life...New adventure

If I do the math, and I suck at math, I believe I've moved twelve times over the past nineteen years. I could be wrong, but I think I'm pretty close. Anyway, today, I'll haul all my stuff...mostly books, gym equipment, and my writing office...to another location and start another phase of my life. Another adventure. I'm excited about it, but at the same time, saddened that what I thought would be a permanent relationship has once again gone south. No flinging of plates or shouting matches. No infidelity, no emptied bank accounts, no chemical dependency problems... Just, "Your writing and traveling seem to come first."

Bet this guy moves a lot...

Fair enough. Can you blame her? She was very good to me and we'll always have one another's back. But like Elvis once said, You can love someone, but be totally wrong for them. Or something like that. I'm paraphrasing here on a subject important enough not to relegate to paraphrasing. The Brits call this being cheeky. I call it, just being sort of sad.

My writing is one of the most important aspects of my life (it's how I make my living after all). But lots of things come first. My kids, my health, my mom, and yes, my writing and my traveling. Oh, and did I mention my Jeep? My workouts? My bench presses? My hikes? My pals at the bar? That delicious grilled rabbit at Campo de Fiore in Rome? Florence in the morning. The sun rising in the Sahara Desert or on Machu Picchu? A brown trout snatching your fly off the surface of a clear stream?

Lots of things come first in my life, and it could be the reason why I move a lot. Perhaps I just can't sit still long enough. Anyway, yesterday, we buried one of my best friends from childhood. His name is John Vincent Weglarz. He was only 54. Cancer took him way too young. Like me he loved to be on the move, traveling, seeing friends, working, golfing, just enjoying life. I feel badly, because I missed most of his life, for some reason equating moving on after college with leaving cherished friends behind. Why did I do that? Big mistake.

The last words John spoke to me were, "Docs say I have three days to three months to live. Crazy great life I've had!" My God, can you imagine the dignity and bravery it takes to make such a statement? The resolve? The peace with one's own soul?

Life...living a full life...that's what came first for John. Me too. But damn, if I don't hurt some of the people I love the most sometimes. I'm learning and working on it, however. Like my dad used to tell me even when he was seventy-something, "Vince, I'm a work in progress." I used to think it was silly. But now I know there's a lesson to be be learned there. I can bet my friend John was a work in progress right up until that last breath.  

Now, I'd better get moving. The van is about to pull up.

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End of the Road...

...or is it just the start?

A month on the global road:
--16,860 miles traveled by air, including a perfect circle around the globe, heading on an east-bound course the entire way (NYC to NYC) 
--Seven flights
--Six countries, three continents
--At least four different time zones (I've lost count)
--Temperatures ranging from 45F to 115F
--Modes of transportation: Airliner, boat, rickshaw, tuck tuck, tram, train, 4x4, car, van, elephant
--Food: vegetarian, seafood, mutton, beef

--Average amount of sleep per night: 4-5 hours
--Number of currencies: Four
--Terrorist attacks while en route to Dehli: two (both by Maoist Rebels aimed at the railroads. Total dead and injured: 100+)
--Top memories: The burning of the dead in Lumbini. The cleansing of the body in Varanasi, the giant orange swastika a holy backdrop. Monsoon rain and winds pummeling our little boat on the upper Ganges, and a human skull lying jaw up on the banks where we anchored and held onto our ratted rooftop tarp for dear life. Swimming downstream in the Ganges, nearly drowning when we hit a stretch of water so deep, the clear-over-gravel-color river turned to blue. The overnight train to Agra, sleeping beside dozens of Indians, young and old. The woman who rushed the train on a stop from Occha to Agra, slipping between the car and the platform, her right leg cut off just below the knee as the train pulled out of the station. Touching, for the first time, an elephant's ear, its smooth almost silky texture taking me by complete surprise. The nervousness of a rhino cooling itself with mud only a few feet away from where I stood in the back of the 4x4 ...

Next stop...who knows.

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Border Crossings: Northern India

(Note: Please excuse the grammatical errors. I'm writing on the run...)


The sweat that soaks my khaki shirt has nothing to do with the relentless heat that covers this land like a heavy, hot water-soaked, wool blanket. I'm at the border between Nepal and India. It's six in the morning. Skies ominously overcast with gray/black clouds that threaten monsoon season rain. It's been raining heavily on and off all night and the narrow road that accesses both countries is nothing more than a thick layer of gooey brown mud that, taken along with the ramshackle single and two-story wood, concrete and brick buildings that flank it, looks more like the setting for a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western.

My guide and I are stopped by a soldier dressed in olive green who bears a World War II era bolt-action rifle over his shoulder and a thick black leather belt around his waist. He tosses our backpacks onto a wood table and begins inspecting them inside and out. India's mega Hindu population gets along swimmingly with its smaller, but major Muslim population. However, no one gets along with the radical Islam component that has snaked its way into the country via Pakistan and other ports of entry. That said, the bags are checked thoroughly.

After looking us over ...up, down, and up again...the solider gives us the go ahead to proceed across the border. I've already made it through Nepal customs and received my stamp. But it wasn't Nepal I was worried about. What's in the back of my mind is all the trouble I got into recently at the American India Embassy back in the States. The short of it is that the embassy wouldn't issue my journalist's visa unless I met with them in person in Manhattan and attended one of their "press lectures" regarding the benefits of the "New Era India." An invitation I blew off entirely. I didn't come here for politics, but something else instead. Originally that reason was to research a new Chase Baker novel, and to write a couple of travel pieces while also writing for the Vox. But now, having spent a little more than a week in this part of the world that will slam you with a million different sensory alerts at once (from the persistent smells of curries to cow shit, from huge, colorfully decorated trucks speeding directly for you, to millions of people who peer at you with their dark, penetrating eyes as if you are the very first westerner they've ever seen), I'm not entirely sure I can put my reasons for being here into mere words.

Trudging through the mud past the many overloaded cars, 4X4s, and trucks queued up before the wood-pole gate, my guide points out the immigration office and, heart in my throat, I immediately go for it.

It's not much of an office. A couple of rooms in a very old building the interior of which is shaded by old wood shutters left over from the filming of Gunga Din. There's a counter on one side, and a wood table on the other. An overhead ceiling fan blows the hot humid air around somehow pleasantly, while behind the counter, a pot of tea boils atop a hot plate set upon an old wood desk that also supports a computer and a Royal typewriter from the 1950s.

There's a middle aged man manning the counter. He wears loose slacks and an even looser button down shirt. He collects my passport, along with those of a half dozen other people waiting to cross over the border. College kids mostly who look like they haven't slept or bathed in weeks. It makes me smile inside to know that I must appear as a much older version of their wanderlust-filled selves.
After filling out the immigration form, I hand the passport back to the counter man. He in turn hands it over to a second, smaller man, who takes it with him to the computer. As he runs the passport over a scanner I see my face pop up on the computer screen. This is it, I think. The moment where they'll ask me to accompany them into the back room where they'll spend hours lobbing questions about my intentions for visiting India. "Why did you not attend the lecture in New York?" the men will shout while blinding me with a single bright white light. Eventually, the tall one will turn to the smaller one. "See if you can get him to talk," he'll say. Then, as the tall man leaves the room, locking the door behind him, the smaller man remove his shirt, bearing a chest filled with scars from knife fights too numerous to count. He go behind a desk and pull something from out of a drawer. A pair of brass knuckles maybe. As he slips them onto his right hand, he'll smile at me, bearing a gold tooth. "So what's the weather like in New York this time of year?" he'll say.

But within a few minutes, something far different occurs.

The little man behind the desk takes hold of his stamp, and positioning it above the page that contains my visa, brings the inky business end down hard onto the page. The little man hands the big man the passport. And the big man, in turn, hands it to me. He smiles politely but genuinely.

"Welcome to India," he says. "I hope you enjoy your stay."

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Check out the first Chase Baker adventure novel, THE SHROUD KEY, and look for CHASE BAKER AND THE GOLDEN CONDOR coming early this Fall. 
 

Spiders, Elephants, and Rhinos in Chitwan National Game Park

(Author's Note: I'm writing this stuff on the run. Please excuse all screws ups of a grammatical nature)

If you find yourself in Nepal’s Chitwan National Park, please be warned that where you decide to sit just might be dangerous to your health. I’m not much of a sitter, so I prefer to stand, which is exactly what I was doing in the back bed of our green 4X4 pickup as we were cruising a bumpy two-track through a section of tall elephant grass when my guide, Pardeep, an Indian of about 40, sternly spoke these words: “Vin, don’t move!”

I turned to stone, both my hands gripping the iron bar that runs horizontally across the length of the metal cab roof. A second later I felt the push of two fingers against the center of my spine and something being pulls away from it. The sensation was the same as if he’d pulled a briar off my gray T-shirt.

“Spider,” he said. “Big one too.” As if I needed to hear that.

I turned as the eco-conscious Pardeep, didn’t drop the spider and crush it with his rubber sandaled sole, but instead, tossed it over the truck’s side, so that it might scare the living crap out of the next safari customer it decides to latch onto. Okay, maybe I’m being a bit dramatic, but anyone who knows me well, also knows I don’t like spiders. So then, why come to Chitwan, the 900+ square kilometer game park located at the base of the Himalayas if I don’t like spiders? That’s like someone who pays for a fishing charter when fish scare him to death.

I’m here because of the big game that is still plentiful in these rugged and spectacularly green and lush surroundings. It’s June. Monsoon season. So it’s both hot and damp, with daytime giving way to plus 100-degree temps and the night sky opening up with storms so violent, even the wild elephants can be heard crying from miles away.

We made our way into the game park from our base lodge via canoe on the Rapidi river. The somewhat narrow and winding waterway, which eventually connects with the Ganges across the border in India, is teaming with bird life. Pardeep in particular is extremely knowledgeable about the birds (he’s also a world class wrestler), and his eyesight is so perfect, he can spot a rare bird from a couple hundred yards away, even when its concealed by the thick bush. The tall, thin, balding guide knows everything there is to know about every species of bird in the forest. That is, wing span, place of origin (many species originate in China across the mountain range), mating rituals, and of course, their calls. He raises up his arms, forms a horn with his two hands, and calls out to a Macaw. “Caw, caw, caw…” He then waits in silence until, sure enough, the macaw answers him. The smile on Pardeep’s face screams of success, satisfaction, and a true blood level love of the job.

But it isn’t until we come upon a family of Rhino’s bathing themselves in the river, that my heart begins to tremble. These dinosaur-like creatures weigh five ton a piece, and the spiked horn they don on their long, gray, bone-plated heads, is one of nature’s most perfect defense mechanisms.  I’m told that just a couple of years ago a guide was run down by an angry rhino and paid the ultimate price when the beast crushed him to death. Which is precisely the reason we don’t come too close to the family of rhinos bathing themselves in the river.

Rhinos protect their young at all costs. If we come too close in our flimsy wood canoe, the adult male will likely come after us, flip us, and do his best to kill us. And who can blame him? Nepal’s rhino population, like Africa’s, is under serious attack from poachers looking to kill the animals for their sharp tip, which they then smuggle to the Chinese who grind the bone down into a fine powder that sells for big bucks to middle age ChiCom businessmen who have trouble getting it up.

Fast forward four hours and we’ve left the river and are now motoring inside the game park in the back of the 4X4. We’re still moving through the tall grass and my entire body is still itching just thinking about the spider nearly dug its fangs into my spine. But all is forgotten when we spot a team of elephants that are driven by two young men. Boys really. Both elephants are large, one with both her ivory tusks intact, and the other with only one while its mate has somehow been broken off as evidence by the jagged root that barely sticks out of the jaw.

The driver stops the truck. I climb out of the back and immediately begin snapping pictures of the lead, double-tusked elephant as it makes its way towards us on the road.  I realize I’m taking a chance here because I’m using a flash and elephants don’t like a camera flash exploding in their face any more than your average human being does. But the huge animal takes it all in stride as his driver brings him to a lumbering stop only a few feet away. So close to me, in fact, I can reach out and touch him.

The boy driver is impossibly thin, barefooted, his feet positioned behind the elephant’s ears. He wears filthy jeans and an even dirtier button down shirt which he prefers to wear unbuttoned. His hair is thick and dark, as are his eyes. There’s an umbrella stuffed into the elephant’s neck bridle, which is made up of both thick rope and heavy chain. Gripped in the boy’s left hand is a tomahawk constructed of a metal axe head and a wooden handle. It looks identical to the kind of weapon a Native American would use for protection in America’s Badlands prior to the twentieth century.

I look up at the boy.

“Can I touch the elephant?” I say.

He stares not at me, but into me.

“Give me some water,” he says.

I unlatch my water bottle from my belt, toss it up to him. He snatches the bottle out of the air in a swift one-handed grab, unscrews the top, pours a generous drink into his mouth. Screwing the top back on, he tosses the bottle back to me.

“You may pet the ear,” he says.

With a somewhat trembling hand, I reach out and touch the ear of the elephant. Its skin is incredibly smooth. Like snake skin almost. It’s warm and alive. I can see why the boy likes to stuff his bare feet behind the ears. Not only is he able to steer the creature, but the skin feels extraordinarily pleasant against human skin.

I remove my hand and I thank the boy.

“Bye bye,” he says, giving the elephant a couple of well-placed heel kicks while making a clicking sound by manipulating his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Pulling out his umbrella, the boy opens it wide and holds it above his head to shield himself from the relentless sun. The elephant raises up its trunk, blows a combination mud and snot through it, and then heaves itself forward, like an old fashioned locomotive trying to pull away from a station with dozens of overloaded cars attached to its backside.

Moments later, I meet up with Pardeep back at the truck.

“You must be careful when touching the elephants in the wild,” he smiles. “They are easily frightened. They could hurt you very badly.”

I still feel the majestic animal’s smooth skin. I still see the gentleness in is deep black eyes. I could never imagine the creature hurting anything. It’s a mammoth wild animal that bears long sharp tusks. That’s not the elephant’s fault. But scaring it would be mine.

I climb back up into the back of the 4X4 pickup and we continue on further into the wild. From now on, I’m going to make sure I keep my distance from the spiders.

From the Jungle to the Frying Pan

You know this particular fish from some James Bond movies.

The plane ride home is a time to reflect. You've spent the better part of 48 hours, hiking, canooing, driving, over some of the most difficult jungle terrain you ever imagined on your way to an airport that's nothing more than a shack with some ceiling fans, and you look forward to going home. You stare out the porthole window of the 757 and watch the snow-capped peaks of the Andes pass you by as the plane rocks and rolls from up-drafts. The turbulence sends chills up and down your spine, but it also makes you feel somehow alive. You feel good because you've accomplished something unusual.

In the Amazon Jungle you were taunted by spider monkeys who swiftly moved in packs of 200 or more, swinging from branches only inches above your head. A family of howling monkeys growled at you while protecting their new baby. A tarantula blocked your path on a narrow trail as you and your guide tried to get back to the lodge in the dark of night. A piranha bit your finger as you pulled it in with fishing line and hook. The bite stung and drew blood. It also caused the guides to laugh out loud while shaking their heads. "Who's the silly gringo in the Indiana Jones hat?"

Now you're home to the daily grind (yes, writers live the grind too!). You went straight to the ortho surgeon from the airport only to learn that you snapped a tendon in your right foot during the many hikes through Peru's mountainous jungle and that now you need an operation that will lay you up for two months. "You didn't hear something go POP?" asked the inquisitive doctor. Not an easy thing to accept for someone who jogs and trains with weights on a daily basis. Not to mention hiking, flyfishing, drumming for my new band, etc. I can't bear the through of sitting for more than a five minutes. But like a Russian travel friend of mine likes to say, "Hey, what can you do?"

Here's what I do: I have an email into my fixer. I'm already setting up the next adventure. Until that time, I have the galley proof of The Guilty (the third book in the Jack Marconi series) to get through, plus the first draft of a new Dick Moonlight novel, Moonlight Weeps. There's an article or two I will be writing, and one being published next week about my adventures in Africa from Living Ready Magazine. I'll suppose also be taking time to heal from my surgery. I'll be healing all summer long. Which also means I can't drive. Oh no, how am I going to get around?

Oh well, welcome to Vincent Zandri's real world...From the jungle to the frying pan.

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One step backwards and I become a permanent piece of Machu Picchu history.

  

I'm a Passenger

The grand observatory that the Incas built more than 700 years ago and that Hiram Bingham tripped over in 1911. A significant portion remains unearthed and undiscovered.

What hasn't been written about Peru's great wonder of the world, Machu Picchu that hasn't already been written? The answer is obvious, which is why I'm not about to even remotely attempt to describe the things you can perhaps, already imagine, even if you've never before stepped foot on the 2,430 m high mountain. You see the massive terraces and try to picture what it must have been like for the ancient Incas to carve them out of thick jungle vegetation-covered granite. You picture men literally falling off the mountain while trying to tame it. You see the giant granite boulders on the mountain-top "quarry," some weighing dozens of tons, and you can't help but imagine a man being crushed under its weight during the process of transporting the stones to their final position. Then, you can't help but feel pain for these people who were forced to flee from their sacred home in the night while the Spanish closed in on them, with the promise of death, destruction, and the hording of their precious metals.

I'm not going to describe standing on the mountain as the the sun breaks through the clouds, revealing the massive peaks that surround me, their presence looking almost fake. Like a brilliant projection flashed up onto a gigantic screen. You must fight the urge to reach out and touch these peaks, as if that were possible, only to feel yourself losing your balance. Should that happen, and you go over the side, the only thing that awaits you is a one way ticket to the Gods.

I'm a passenger these days. An observer. A mover. I don't rest. I don't sit down. I stand. I walk. I run. I'm never still, even at home. The itch to explore is sometimes so great, I think it will never be scratched. The itch is located in a spot along my spine that is impossible to reach. Or perhaps it's located in my brain. So the only cure is to keep on moving. I'm coming down from Machu Picchu after one of the most breathtaking hikes I've ever experienced. My body and clothing are soaked in sweat that's mixed with the mist from the clouds that move in and out of these Andes Mountains like foamy waves constantly and never-endingly lapping a seashore. Soon I'm seated on a bus that transports forty passengers too rapidly for the narrow mountain roads that hug cliff-sides thousands of feet high. One false move on this rain-soaked gravel road and we're done for.

You can't take in a life-experience like this one all at once. It has to upload, like a computer program. One day you can be doing the most mundane thing, like the laundry for instance, and it will hit you. I've hiked Machu Picchu...I've entered into the Third Pyramid in Giza all alone...I've jogged Tienanmen Square just a few years after a young man defied bullets and held back a tank with his frail body...I've visited a healer in the Austrian Alps and seen the sun come up on the basin in Venice...I've ridden a Ferris wheel with the one woman I truly loved in Paris...I've been stranded in the African bush and been accused of killing many men by a voodoo Beniois...I've ridden the metro in Moscow and somehow found my way around...I've touched the Parthenon and walked over the Mammar Bridge in Turkey...I've touched the English Channel with my bare toes on the sandy beaches of D-Day's Normandy...I've four-wheeled in the Tuscan mountains with a best friend who's always yelling at me to learn the Italian language...And on and on and on...But that's not enough.

I'm a passenger on a journey that is not only never ending, it's speeding up. In my mind, I'm planning the next stop. India. I haven't yet been to India. I need to see India. So many of you have been there and I am as envious as I am curious.

On the way back into Cusco, the driver of my van tries to negotiate the relentless traffic. After a day on a magic mountain, we're stuck in traffic. Then comes the near deafening and horribly heart wrenching squeal of a dog as a tourist bus runs over one its legs, crushing it. I don't want to look but I have to look. When I see the small brown, furry dog limping away on three legs, my heart sinks into my stomach. Tears cloud my eyes. No one in the van speaks a word about it. Not the driver. Not my guide. No one. But you feel the pain like the mist that still soaks your clothing.

I'm a passenger.

 

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Lost in Time Lake Titicaca

The people here don't have clocks. They don't have watches, they don't have smartphones, and they don't have internet (as far as I can tell). They don't have any kind of device that chimes, rings, chirps, vibrates, or belts out the opening bars to some Lady Gaga song stuffed into their pockets. Thy don't need to be reminded of the time. Like one of my travel partners, Vadmir, tells me, 'In Russia, we have saying: those who are happy do not need to know what time it is." Such is the case when it comes to the Peruvian people who occupy LLachon.

A small community of maybe 2,000 residents who occupy a portion of pristine beach-side property along the north/west side of Lake Titicaca, the dark, leathery-skinned people of LLachon are as oblivious of the outside world and its turbulent troubles as an American toddler is of ObamaCare or the escalating conflict in Syria. They wear the traditional Peruvian clothing. The women dress in a half dozen skirts which are supposed to mimic the English hoop skirt of old. And the men dress very much in the old Spanish way--black trousers, white shirts, short black vest, a colorful hand woven fabric belt that holds both coca leaves and alcohol, and a fedora for a hat.

I'm currently researching the second book in my brand new Chase Baker series, so I came to this place to stay with a family who run a mountain-side farm and, at the same time, to absorb authentic Andean Peruvian culture. Considering Lake Titicaca is already about 12,000+ feet above sea level,  breathing normally is not easy. Nor is climbing the better part of a small, terraced mountain with a fifty pound pack on my back. But my house "mama," a weathered but somehow bright-eyed woman called Francesca, is already cooking for me over a wood-fired stove. A piece of farm chicken, rice, several kinds of potatos, fava beans, all washed down with tea made from coca leaves.

After lunch, I help out on the the farm, watering sheep and stacking barley. It's hard work and at times I have to remind myself that I'm standing on a mountainside in the Andes and not transported back to one of my dad's construction sites for which I was the laborer during my high school and college days. As we near the end of the barley stacking, I turn to "papa," a man who goes by the name Luciano, but whom I am already referring to as Lucky Luciano. I ask him if he hunts the property further uphill. He doesn't understand me at first, so I demonstrate by making like I'm holding a rifle with my hands, and then mouthing the sounds, "bang, bang..." He laughs and in his hunched over, been-workng-far-too-many-years-hard-labor manner, begs me to follow him back to the main house.

When we arrive, he begins to explain to Francesca about what I want. Only, he's not making like a gun with his callused hands. Instead he's making like I want to smoke. Smoke something medicinal perhaps. Something that might transport me from this world to the outer world. He's got a small chin beard and mustache and he rubs them with forefinger and thumb like he, at sixty-eight years old, is ready to do a little partying.

But then Frnacesca begins to explain to him about what I'm really asking, and suddenly his smile dissolves. Sadly, there will be no smoking tonight. Only thoughts of cooking dinner, perhaps enjoying a Peruvian beer, then going to sleep early in a one room mud brick building attached to bathroom with no running water, but only a bucket filled with water for flushing a toilet with no toilet seat attached.

Maybe I should have smoked with Lucky Luciano. Maybe if I had, I would have no more need for watches, or clocks, or smartphones. Maybe I would have seen and experienced another life outside of the life I know all to well. A life of war, poverty, and political agendas. Perhaps there is something to this more or less ancient existence on Lake Titicaca. An existence that is lost in time, but happy to be so.

 -----

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Pigs On a Leash and a Writer Nearly Breaks His Neck

Look at the Writer nearly break his neck at the Da Vinci Childhood Home!

Maybe it's got something to do with April Fools day, but while jogging this morning along the Arno, I passed a grown man walking a pig on a leash. It was a big black pig (as opposed to a small black pig), and the man was walking him/her on a red lease like the pig was your garden variety golden retriever. It sort of made me feel like I was caught up in one of those trippy psychedelic music promos from the late 60s that the Beatles would put out. "I am the Walrus...Goo Goo G'Joob."

I'm nearing the end of a near month long stay in Italy to write, research and just generally have fun. I've jogged around 150 miles, walked more than that, contracted a nasty case of bronchitis, motorcycled the Tuscan mountains, sneaked a peak at a lost Da Vinci, written nearly 100 pages of a new Moonlight book, and rewritten sixty pages of Aziz, plus numerous small articles and blogs.

On Wednesday I fly to Paris for a week of more writing, thinking, eating, and running. Paris is a more or less gift to myself. A place where I can do more research and work while spending some of my T&M advance dough on French food and wines. There's something about walking the river in Paris, especially when it rains. I'm hoping for some rain.     

 On April 11, I'll fly to New York then directly on to San Fransisco, where I'll meet up with my sig other, L. We'll see some special old friends, run on the beach and, if I have my way, take a boat to Alcatraz. I'll also meet up with an old college buddy to plan out a late Fall excursion to South East Asia. Mostly I'm excited to see L.

There's a baby crying outside my open window right now, and the smells of roasting garlic, olive oil, and tomato sauce are permeating the air like a perfume fragrance from newly spread rose petals. It's just as seductive. Sexy even. Food sex....

See you all upon my arrival in Paris....

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