Manali

I am now going to journal or blog or whatever you want to call this collection of word vomit on a weekly/bi-weekly basis, possibly even more scarcely than that. The date is Saturday, October 14th. Exactly a week has passed since Adam and I arrived in Manali. We’re back on the road but things have changed dramatically. I’m sitting on the extra firm bed of a mattress in a small town on a small road leading up to a mountain pass on the way to a town called Mandi. Adam and I have decided to split ways tomorrow. He needs to be in Nepal before his visa runs out and I just won’t be able to keep up, as I’m currently ill from food poisoning and still not moving fast enough.  I feel that this is a good thing, and yet, I’m also terribly sad about it. It’s that feeling you get when something’s going to end and the nostalgia is already settling in and you can’t escape from it. Like those perfect autumn days where you accidentally start thinking about people you haven’t seen in a long time and it makes you unspeakably sad and the sadness feels like it’s sort of drowning you and you’re falling into a hole. It’s almost like getting the spins when you’re drunk, and you have to violently snap yourself out of it before you fall in. I’m also just thinking about how I’ll be lonely again, and how bad I am at being lonely. But I’m here to master my loneliness, not form dependency. This is good. We just had our final embrace outside, as he’ll surely be up before me, and that’s it, that’s the last time I’ll ever see Adam with these eye balls unless I track him down in England. He was finishing a pack of cigarettes he said would be his last, but he also quit last night so we will see how that goes. Manali was a strange time. I think we lingered there far too long but it also flew by without anything productive really coming out of it. I tested the limits of my alcohol tolerance and paid a terrible price for it. After arriving on that first evening it was practically guaranteed we’d have some beers about it. I was already a little upset because Adam had insisted we stay at a hostel that had a nice private room because he wanted a private room but the hostel was kind of sketch, it was called One World Hostel and something was off about it, while the German from Leh had recommended a stay at The Orchard which was clearly the vibier hostel, but as I didn’t want to part from Adam I stayed with him at One World. So we went to the river that borders old Manali and found a place to have a sit and enjoy some cold Tuborg beers. I was hesitant, but as soon as the goodness of the beer hit my tongue I was a happy man and I wanted more. Beer tastes so good after an extended physical effort. We chatted the night away and only had a conservative amount of brew before heading to bed. I woke up the next day and I felt fine. I should’ve just ended it there and gone out to find some rock climbing or hiking or yoga or anything else. But because I was with Adam and because I was feeling a bit lazy I just kind of hung out with him and did my usual hunting for bakeries and other culinary delights. I wasn’t fully unproductive as I spent time on the blog getting things together and editing a couple videos that I had been sitting on from New York. The time flew. The second night we had some more beers, more than on the first night. We met a Welsh woman named Josie and an Indian man from Delhi named Aman. Aman was one of the many Indians working in tech who was taking advantage of the hostel concept to work remotely for months at a time and Manali was his special spot. He also had a fondness for local hash. I went on a fun little walk with Josie and Aman up the hill of old Manali on the morning of the third day. Adam was hungover and stayed in bed. That’s where I had my first urgent bowel movement since the dark days of New York. But it wasn’t so bad. I found a bathroom at a cafe and emptied myself and then I felt better. We walked through an old orchard and picked apples off the trees. The scenery was lovely, the apples were delicious, and the company was good. I took my chances and had beers that evening with our new companions. We found Adam recovered and had some beers and played cards on the rooftop of the hostel. We were all feeling a bit lazy but Aman really wanted to go to this live music bar because his friend was going to be playing. We delayed for so long that by the time we arrived the music was over and just a small group of folks including the ownership were hanging out and chatting by a fire. It was 10PM and everything closed in Manali early. Since Aman knew the owners we were invited to hang out with them and in no time at all there was beer in my hand and I was drinking it. It started pouring rain so we retreated inside. I ended up with an acoustic guitar in my hands and gave an hour long performance of various folk covers, leaning heavily on my Simon and Garfunkel repertoire. It was my first ever time playing a set and it actually went pretty well, although later I saw some videos of it and maybe I wasn’t cut out for the music business. Still, performance is a joy I rarely get to experience nowadays. I hope I get to do that again. It was getting late so we bought more beers to bring the party back home. As we left the bar, I pointed to a hole off the stairs that looked dangerous and mentioned to Josie who was right behind me and quite drunk already that she’d better avoid that, she proceeded to step right in and cut up her leg pretty badly. It was a hysterical affair really. Aman dressed the wound when we got to Adam’s room. It was all good fun. Later that night, however, as I went to lay down, I started feeling an intense pressure in the left side of my abdomen. I thought it was gas. It made sleeping difficult. It was still there the next day. I did whatever I could think of to get rid of it, push ups, sit-ups, walking around, massaging it, but it didn’t go away. The next day it was gone, and I did my usual thing of indulging myself with sweets, chocolate chip banana bread to be specific, masala tea and cigarettes and that behavior brought the cramps right back. This lasted a couple days. Josie had befriended an Israeli girl and she had one of those annoying Jewish girl personalities that you find in the American east coast and I didn’t really enjoy her company. The attacks had happened by then and she was quite upset about it, and I didn’t know what to say, because I was still working out how I felt about it. But I remember being jealous of the Israelis because they clearly had this sense of community that I have always longed for. They were all going to go back and fight for something they believed in together, something integral to their shared identity and purpose, and even though that purpose was manufactured by a political movement that doesn’t value Palestinian life, I couldn’t help but wish I had a community and a life that meant something in a grander sense. We were supposed to leave the next day, and our friends Aman and Josie were leaving, but Adam, seeing me struggle, said it’d be okay if we stayed another night.

So we stayed. And I really needed it. It was sad being in the hostel alone without our new friends, the place felt a lot emptier. Again, I had envisioned myself in Manali going hiking or rock climbing, but I felt so shitty still that I couldn’t do anything but lounge on the roof of the hostel. And a shittier place to lounge would be hard to find. The one guy who sort of runs the place is this military freak who tries to sell military clothes and wears the military clothes and has this off-putting intensity about him and likes to tell us stories about his time in the military and how fast he could run at high altitude. He also plays the same music over and over on loop, it’s this sort of techno stuff and it’s stuck in my head and really annoying. I think I’m going crazy. Why does anyone like techno? It’s just an endless loop, it’s lazy, it’s soulless, and it makes me disassociate from reality like I’m inside of a movie or something. And the roof gets cold after a little while, and then eventually you want to go back into the dorm but that sucks too because there’s all sorts of weirdos in there. One guy, especially, is just awful. He makes strange hacking noises all night and paces around there all day, he took a shower at 1am last time and then turned on the lights to sort out his affairs. Sadly, this isn’t uncommon behavior in Indian hostels from Indian nationals. This guy was some kind of music composer from Jharkand, he gave me his card and was complaining about how little money the university was giving him for his research. He smelled bad and was a total not job and again, that evil piercing hack cough is still in my mind. Anyway, I spent a day doing that, with the idea being that I’d be ready to take off the next day. The hacking guy had left so I was looking forward to finally getting a good nights sleep. It was in the bag, I would be released from this place on the morrow. Adam and I spent the whole day at the hostel eating the hostel food. I had a non-veg thali for lunch. We went out for a quick cup of tea, and I got a slice of banana chocolate cake at a bakery I liked, and back on the roof I began to feel very tired. My mom called me and I told her everything was going well. I ordered some dinner, and I was starting to feel nauseous for some reason. I was only able to finish around half of the veg khadai I had ordered. I’ll never eat veg khadai again. Something wasn’t right. I took a lie down. It was starting to occur to me that there’d be a vomiting episode in my near future. I hate that realization. It’s the worst thing you can realize. Because you know you’re just going to feel like shit until you vomit, and even after that you will probably continue to feel like shit. I was also fully immersing myself in the Israel Palestine issue, and this was adding to my nausea. My instagram feed was on fire. 

I was very angry and upset about the attack and about the way most of my friends on the left were reacting to the attack. Insensitive to say the least. 1200 people dead and hundreds kidnapped. And people are immediately justifying it. Sickening. This anger lasted for a couple of days, and as Israel began its predictable counter attack I started regaining my balance, shifting back leftward, and changing my stance rapidly. I am slowly starting to realize that ever since I went on birthright when I was 19 years old I’ve been conditioned into thinking about the whole thing in a problematic way. And I thought I’d resisted that conditioning, I thought I’d cynically expected it and guarded my mind against it, I thought I’d been skeptical the whole time, but it all successfully landed into my psyche. I learned a selective way of seeing the history that centered on valuing Jewish life above Palestinian life or really any life for that matter. This isn’t just birthright of course. This is how I learned about it in college in my international relations class, years of media absorption post 9/11 about the Islamic Arab world. Why are they so angry? Why are they so ugly? Why are they so violent? This is also years and years of holocaust remembrance and antisemitism awareness, movies, books, college classes, conversations etc… Right after the attack I wrote at length about my views which were mostly a reaction to what I was seeing on Instagram. I revisited it later, and changed it up a bit because I’d written some pretty rash things. But after stepping back and taking more time to think, I realized the whole foundation of my views on the matter was off. I kept peeling back layer after layer of what I thought to be true. And I’m still at a loss. I could still swing one way or the other, given the right image or video strategically packaged to elicit an emotional response from me. Deep down, I want to be wrong. I want everything the left is saying to be some kind of farce, they don’t have all the fact, it’s all a lie. The Jews can’t be this evil. Because if the jews are evil, and I am a jew, am I not evil? But no matter how you slice it, if the numbers are right then there are way too many Palestinians dying. Way too many Palestinians living without dignity, displaced, unemployed, traumatized, in misery. Way too many. Way too many to be able to make excuses or justifications anymore. I was never pro Israel. But I was always an Israel apologist. I always came to Israel’s defense armed with not only decades but even centuries and millennia of selective context. I felt it was my job to prevent Jews from looking bad. And the leftist rallying calls often felt like personal attacks. The genocide label always elicited anger from me, the “river from the sea” slogan always felt like a call to wipe Israel off the map. But I realize now that this was my ego. I am not Israel, even if I am Jewish. I’m starting to see Israel for what it is. Especially as I meet so many Israelis in India, and realize how clueless and naive and ignorant they are. It’s like they’re in some kind of cult. I’m so worried about them. Such a waste of Jewish brain power. Forcing these 18 year olds into the military, pumping their heads up full of zionist ideology, giving them no choice but to hate and dehumanize. This situation only has victims. The Hamas fighters are victims of 1948 and everything that followed, just as the IDF soldiers are. Every single person in that region is a victim of circumstance. They were all born completely innocent, and the vast majority of them still are. They all could have had wonderful lives. The horrific actions they commit are a product of ignorance. Most of their intentions are as good as they can be. This is the case with all humans. One must always remember that before diving into the morass of politics. I’ve always felt guilty as a Jew for the privilege of having been born in the states. Who knows what I’d have become were I born in Israel. And although Israelis must bear the guilt of everything Israel does, I feel no guilt about being an American, a country that has committed far more destruction and terror and genocide than Israel could ever have the hope to. That is a privilege.

I spent the night vomiting as these thoughts and doubts raced through my head. I vomited at the realization that I’m not a good liberal. That I do value human lives differently. I looked in the mirror and saw my ugliness. And I puked. I was so sick. I puked out from the very bottom of my stomach from dinner all the way to breakfast, screaming every time my face was driven back to the toilet, choking on it, gasping, puking until there was nothing left. Everyone in the dorm was concerned. It wasn’t long before everyone in the building knew there was a sick American in one of the dorms. The military dude ran down with some lemon water for me and delivered it with the smug look of an experienced doctor as if that would fix it immediately and someone else gave me an anti nausea pill. I vomited the lemon water and the pill soon after swallowing them. Eventually I was done puking and I feverishly crawled up to my top bunk and had a horrid night of emergency commuting between the bed and the toilet, and being in the top bunk only added to my displeasure. We stayed at the hostel another night. I still felt nauseous so I didn’t eat much throughout that day. I felt bad knowing I was keeping Adam, who was getting restless and chain smoking, back from his Nepali deadline. It was another shitty day hanging out on the roof. I was getting depressed. The state of my gut made me sad. It was doing so well this whole trip. And I murdered it with alcohol. Three nights in a row. I’m such an idiot. Manali should’ve been a time to go hiking and rock climbing and exploring. I ruined everything with alcohol. If I’d had autonomy I wouldn’t have drank. I would have stayed in a different hostel. I would have sought out more wholesome experiences. This is why Adam and I splitting is a good thing. No more cigarettes, no more alcohol. For real this time. The alcohol must have weakened my immune system and opened the door for this horrible food poisoning. After the vomit and the nausea, the fever left and only the most unwelcome guest stayed behind, diarrhea. And now I have diarrhea permanently. The kind that just shoots out of you like you’re pissing out of your asshole. And it won’t go away. I needed to be strong and I told Adam I could go, so we went. We cycled down on a big road and I didn’t like India anymore. Too hazy, too much traffic, too shitty, too many people. I was whining about it. I was upset about my condition and nervous about what this side of India had in store. Could anything really compare to the glory of mama himalaya? But the urgency and frequency of my bowel movements is my primary concern. I have to go like 10 times a day, it’s horrible. I used up an entire roll of toilet paper in one day. I have to go constantly. It’s better than vomiting, marginally. But I have no idea when I’ll be back to solids again. It’s torture waiting for that. I had so many beautiful solid poops in India. This IBD/IBS thing I have, whatever it is, it’s really ruined my life. Not that I’m an alcoholic or anything, but I love to drink. It’s one of those things I never thought I’d have to do away with. I never over did it or anything. I’m going to be the only person I know who’s sober for gut health reasons. That’s just embarrassing. It’d be way better if I’d been an out of control booze hound who hit rock bottom and was reforming myself. This is just icky. Oh look it’s Nick, the loser who gave up alchohol because he has out of control diarrhea, pathetic! And then they throw rocks at me. Or something. It’s raining outside and I don’t want to pack up my bike but it’s 9am and I have to go over this huge hill to get to Mandi and recharge my phone data. And then I need to decide: Nepal or Amritsar? Or something else? What will it be? I’m hitting a wall with this trip. I’m not sure what it is I want anymore. I don’t know what to do. Adam provided a horse to hitch my wagon onto. Now that he’s gone I have to make my own way and be my own motivation again. Here we go. One stroke of the pedal at a time. Just get over this hill and get to Mandi and get over this sickness, then clarity will come.

I didn’t make it far today. Not quite to Mandi. I found another hotel. I’m on a hillside looking over a valley. Rain is pouring down again. The only room available was a floor away from the bathroom. The hotel owner is super weird and came into my room without knocking to sort out my passport and kept slapping my thigh and laughing at things that weren’t funny. I went to the bathroom 5 or 6 times that night, running up the stairs, nearly not making it on time. I’m only eating vegetarian food for now, and avoiding sugar and caffeine. I still need to make my decision when I get to Mandi. East or West. I’m starting to lean back towards the original idea of heading East to Nepal. I want to join an Ashram in Rishikesh and become spiritual. Now that I’m solo it feels like I can breathe again. It’s nice. The choices are all mine again.