Nomad Codes

roost in silent temples encrusted with jesters and monkey gods. Rice paddies line the nearby Tunghabhadra river, which snakes past huge mounds of desert boulders. Across the river, a number of sadhus tend Shiva shrines and pass the pipe with hearty Caucasians who have turned their backs on the minimal comforts of the village and gone totally caveman.
    Hampi is far mellower than Anjuna. I waste away my afternoons flopped out on the shaded mats at the Mango Tree, a peaceful outdoor cafe on the banks of the lazy river. The cafe’s mandatory “Smoking Psychotropic Drugs Not Allowed” sign is cloaked by a poster, so all you can see is the word “Smoking.” Sometimes the white sadhus from across the river show up, with their orange robes and mala beads and fading biker tattoos. A few days before the full moon, a noticeably trendier crowd moves into town: nattier threads, better cheekbones. Rooms fill to capacity, kids sleep on roofs or in temples. Finally a huge tour bus drives up and parks in the dusty bazaar. Slogans blaze across the side: Techno Tourgon, LSD 25, Shiva Space Age Technology. Jörg the DJ has arrived.
    When I finally catch up with Jörg, it’s the day of the full moon. “Come in, come in,” he says as I climb onboard. The BBC has just finished interviewing him, and the man is beaming, his blue eyes glowing with an intense lucidity. A huge dancing Shiva statue dominates the dashboard, and Jörg’s taut naked belly is tattooed with an image of the Shaivite yogi Shankar.
    Jörg is pure freak, too maniacally enthusiastic to cop a snobbish DJ attitude. “I used to be a typical heavy-metal rock’n’roller. Now I am addicted to techno,” he says in his heavy German accent.“For five years’ time now I listen to nothing else. Except meditation songs in the morning.”
    Like many technofreaks, Jörg’s first Goa party was nothing less than a conversion experience. “You can laugh, but it was like seeing a keyhole to God,” he says in a hoarse voice. He’s been back and forth to India ever since, selling land cruiser parts at the Chinese border, DJing parties around Kathmandu, dipping in the Ganges with the sadhus at the holy city of Haridwar. The last time he made the overland trip from the West, he was cruising through Iran in the middle of the night, trance blasting, multi-colored lights flashing along the side of his Techno Tourgon. The police pulled him over. He stepped out the door, wearing a pair of goggles ringed with blinking lights. They trained machine guns on him.
    It dawns on me that Jörg is in some fundamental sense insane. But like a reincarnated Neil Cassady, he rides his lunacy the way he guides his bus along India’s suicidal roads—with spontaneous grace.
    “I’m a little bit extremist,” he admits, grabbing a cigarette from a pack lying next to a crumpled photo of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. The previous year, after a month in Goa packed with drugs and dancing, and with hardly any DJing experience, Jörg set up his gear in Hampi’s underground Shiva temple and threw the archaeological area’s first rave. “After that party I feel like this big hole. I sat for another month under a tree. Nothing inside anymore.” He fiddles with the 5-inch Sony minidiscs he uses instead of DATs. “But believe me, to be empty and open to everything is exactly the right position when you come to India. You have to improvise.”
    And today, just hours before moonrise, Jörg’s still improvising. After spending days finding the right official to bribe in order to throw a party, he made his case. “ We talked for hours. We got to know each other very well. Then he said no.”
    So in the fading sunlight, Jörg decides to cross the river into another district. He and his crew lug their gear down the river’s edge, and load the equipment into the same round, leather-covered basket boats the Portuguese explorer Paes noted when he passed through Hampi in the sixteenth century. Darkness descends upon them, and they have no idea where they’re going.
    Hours later, hundreds of us ferry across the river in the same leaky boats. We thread our way past crumbling walls and along paths lined with ominous palms, following a trail of lanterns a mile or so onto a treeless plateau of moony rock. We glimpse black lights in the distance, hear the dull thud of techno. No chai ladies tonight. We’re partying in Bedrock.
    Jörg crouches over his machines beside a large boulder dry-painted with the appropriate