Shahar's from Israel, Tel Aviv to be exact. But he's not one of the ones bent on informing the world about the atrocities and incivilities going on in his country. The land disputes. The Jews. The Palestinians. In all our two days with him, these things were never once brought up. I can't even tell you if he was Jewish or Muslim, or if he even viewed himself through these secular filters. What I can tell you is that he has very long hair that skips and trots, always falling to about his shoulders. His chin's equally long, made only more so by his prominent chin covered by a scruffy puff of goat tee to compliment his mustache. Like his chin, most of his facial features are quite over-emphasized. There's the nose that clearly dominates his face, followed closely by a mouth which, along with his ever present smile stretches ear to ear. This coupled with some massive chompers and a tendency to never wear sleeves and always wear parachute pants makes it hard for your first thought upon meeting to not be some kind of hippy Mr. Tumnus frolicking through some magical Narnian forest. Except that forest is his life, and we were just four unknowing Americans chanced upon The Wardrobe.
We talk. He tells us about all his friends back in Tel Aviv, about how he's a party promoter, and about how he hasn't been in Israel for eleven months. Among other adventures, Shahar had spent seven months traveling around India with two friends and throwing parties. Their mode of transportation? Motorcycles. Yes, motorcycles. The fact that he had smuggled back roughly nine grams of Indian hashish (he coated it all in beeswax and swallowed it before going through security at the New Delhi airport), and for the entirety of the time he's staying here in Berlin we're blitzed and smoked sky high on almost continuous weed/hash king spliffs does not detract at all from the magnitude of Shahar’s dictated journeys through India. If anything, it makes his stories exponentially more incredible and unbelievable.
According to Shahar, he and his two buddies purchased a pair of motorcycles as soon as they were off the tarmac and fashioned together a few racks to carry their party speakers and equipment on said motorcycles. Shahar and company traveled up and down and all across India, taking turns doubling up on one of the motorcycles. In the bigger towns and cities, pretty much anything with a decent-sized bar/club, they would set up shop and proceed to burn the house down with every type of electro/techno/trance you can think of. Naturally, I don't believe half the stock he's selling. But it just so happens that Shahar's a prolific picture taker and provides photographic documentation of all these hair-brained tales of his.
“See now, this is when we were riding from Jaipur to Mumbai. It was something like 1200 kilometers and it took us just about two days. I loved those bikes…” and he goes on in his thick Israeli accent, emphasizing words and syllables I would never dream emphasizing. All the while, Grant, Max, and I are sitting there stoned out of our gourds looking at photos; some taken from behind the handlebars of a motorcycle on highways, on mountain roads, through dense forests, sometimes behind another motorcycle ladled down with speaker equipment on either side of the back wheel, sometimes with nothing but open road and Shahar’s wonderfully detailed backscapes ahead of them. He's a hell-man, Shahar, bent on living.
