More Than Meets The Eye

Away from the stunning, gold-covered elegance of the main compound lies a small, peaceful shrine under the shade of a beautiful bodhi tree. Legend has it that this robust specimen is a clipping from the very tree the Buddha attained enlightenment beneath in Bodgaya, India.

When we stumbled upon the place, there wasn’t much happening there. Just a few people milling around, the sound of the wind rattling the chimes at the top of the nearby gold-covered pagoda, and some birds who probably have no idea they’re loitering near such a famous tree.

The hordes of tourists make it pretty hard to get a moment to contemplate the remnants of a great civilization being devoured by the insatiable vegetation of Southeast Asia. But if you try hard enough and venture off the beaten track a little, you can almost imagine yourself alone in the jungle with the ruins, the way early explorers must have found them. As always, the binaural sounds are best when heard through headphones.

There’s a lot of Buddhist symbolism going on with the structure of the stupa. I won’t go into it all here, but the earliest stupas were simply burial mounds for relics of the Buddha. Some still contain relics, though no one is sure if there is anything interred in the Boudnath Stupa. The base of the structure is lined with niches filled with prayer wheels, and prayer flags are draped from all around the compound to the very top of the stupa. Prayer wheels and prayer flags contain Buddhist prayers that are “activated” by spinning the wheel or set free by fluttering in the breeze.

The sound here is at the entrance to the upper levels of the stupa. There are two large prayer wheels here, and inside the entrance there are many monks chanting and praying. Behind me is a monastery, and there are always lots of people milling around.

Even though everyone’s going for enlightenment and there’s lots of praying going on, it’s not a somber place. Groups of people walk around the stupa together, often chatting and laughing, all the while spinning the prayer wheels and mumbling a few prayers. When the sun starts to set the crowd swells and gets a lot more colorful, as hundreds of people walk around and around. The most interesting people at Boudnath are the Tibetan refugees, many of whom live nearby. They are easy to identify by their striking dress and jewelry.

Pokhara sits beside the large and tranquil Phewa Tal, and also has beautiful views of the Annapurna range. There is a small temple on an island in the lake, and you can rent boats for the day to take out on the calm waters. We had some really amazing weather while we were there, so we took advantage of it by spending a few days slowly cruising around Phewa Tal.

These are the sounds from our boat on the lake, floating near the island temple. You can hear visitors ringing the temple bells, as well as other boaters, birds, work sounds from town, and those unmistakable bus horns.

Things Get Interesting

The government and the Maoists have signed a peace treaty and are trying to work together, but there are still occasional problems. Once a week in Pokhara the power is out for a couple of hours in the evening. We went to a restaurant in Lakeside that had a generator and was fairly busy. A little while after we ordered we heard all of this commotion from outside, but it was really hard to tell what was going on. They closed the doors and turned off the lights, leaving us with just candlelight.

After a while it became clear that the commotion outside was a large group of people marching past, cheering and chanting. Some Nepali working at the restaurant left, and everything quieted down as the group continued down the street. We knew that something was up because earlier in the day we had taken a bike ride around the like, and the main streets in town were blocked by big trucks. There wasn’t any traffic on the roads at all (which made for a nice ride).

A few minutes later a man walked in and started saying something over and over again. It was obvious by the way he walked and people reacted to him that he was important. The Canadian woman who owned the place started yelling at him, saying things like, “You’re killing the tourist industry!” and, “This is bull$&*@!” He eventually left with all the remaining staff of the restaurant. We overheard the owner explaining that they had to go or they would face repercussions. She also said that she always let them go if they wanted to, but that she didn’t think it was right that they were forced.

That night we met up with our guide, Rob, and another person he was taking trekking. They had come from Kathmandu that day, and it had taken them almost 12 hours. When we came down it took 6 hours. Apparently the Maoists disagreed with the government over an appointment they had made without consulting them, and they had called a bandh, or strike. Lots of things shut down, especially the transportation system.

We ended up waiting in Pokhara an extra day, just to make sure there weren’t any more strikes. That was fine by us, because it was another calm, beautiful day by the lake.

The rickety old bus was packed, with some people standing in the aisle. Even though it seemed like we defied death multiple times during the journey, nobody so much as flinched. Passengers brought all kinds of things on the bus, from giant saws to a large piece of glass plate.

It was definitely one of the most interesting bus rides we’ve taken so far.

There are eight different clips, edited together. In order, listen for: Nepali music from a television at a guesthouse along the trail; daytime sounds from a rooftop surrounded by snow-covered peaks; the swirling waters of a stream on windswept, high altitude plains; one of many waterfalls encountered along the trail; standing aside as a caravan of bell-wearing donkeys passes; howling wind outside at Kagbeni; village girls singing and playing by candlelight; rain falling on day 11.

Everywhere we’ve been in Turkey, people are playing this game. Backpackers play it at their hostels and hotels, and people both young and old spend hours playing in tea houses, nargileh cafes, parks, and bars.

This is the sound of men chatting and playing backgammon while drinking tea in a tea house just below our hotel in Diyarbakir. You can hear the roll of the dice and the clacking of the pieces as they move them along the board.

I recorded this sound while walking through the market. You can hear the shoppers haggling with vendors, sellers shouting out their deals, and several attempts to engage me in conversation. Because I was recording I had to just wave them all away, not always an easy task! The clip is about five minutes long, but I didn’t know how to shorten it. So close your eyes and imagine yourself squeezing through the throngs of shoppers, wooden vendors’ carts, and cornucopia of wares as you make your way through the buzzing marketplace of this town on the frontier between Turkey and Iran.

For the best listening experience, use headphones!

The Chimera was worshipped as a god in ancient times, but now it is just considered a scientific anomaly. This is a place where gas bubbles up from deep beneath the Earth and seeps out, catching fire once it makes contact with the air. Scientists think the gas is mostly methane, but no one knows for sure.

It is a strenuous climb through the dark to reach the Chimera, but once you see the flames up the mountain from below it is easy to complete the walk. It smells like sterno burning, and the rocks are just eternally lit with hissing flames. Standing under the stars in the dark, watching the side of the mountain ceaselessly burn, it is easy to see why people once thought this place was the work of the supernatural.

For the best listening experience, use headphones!

This is the sound of the Mediterranean waters splashing up against the shores of Turkey at Olympos. The beach here has been in use by humans for over 2,000 years. The ancient city of Olympos came right up to the beach, with the Acropolis looking out over the Mediterranean.

If you listen carefully to the sound of the waves crashing against the shore, you will hear something that sounds almost like static. It is actually the pebbles that make up the beach being pulled back into the waters as the waves slide back into the sea.