Something to tlak about

Well, given the crappy job I've done keeping my blog updated, and the general mishmash of material floating around in my head, I figured I'd try and dissect and defragment it through a long email recapping the various adventures I may or may not have had for the past one month. As I'm leaving in just a couple days, now seems as good a time as ever.

One month ago, after tearfully waving goodbye to the children who have added sunshine to my life for the past 10 months, I hopped on a train alone to that fantastic paradise of beaches and (even brighter) sunshine. I arrived in the Goa region and promptly got ripped off by a motorcycle taxi who dropped me off at the bus stand... the completely opposite bus stand from where I needed to be, before jumping back on his bike, a fairly significant feat given his size and the bike's size, and speeding away before I could hit him. This anger was only inflamed when I remember the previous warnings I had told my friend Norm (arriving soon) to not trust anyone, ever, especially when they speak english. Luckily anger and stubbornness guided me past dark alleys through which in the flickering light drunken indian men, bastard rickshaw drivers (also drunk) and the normal cow and packs of stray dogs could be seen... a few feet away. I finally find another motorcycle taxi willing to take me to the nearest beach, negotiate a cheap room and leave only asking for a little extra baksheesh. Dinner was fairly bad, but edible and conversation was good, so I consider my time at Benaulim well spent.

Finally arriving in Palolem after a short 2 hour bus ride, I begin searching for my friends through marginally skin frying sand, slipping and sliding up the beach with my 40lb rucksack and a nice "home" feeling. They spot me, we get together, start drinking, Norm comes up behind me, taps me on the shoulder, manly pats on the back, more drinks ordered, tapped glasses, repeated realizations of the fact its been over two years, friendly and then pleasantly violent bickering begins (he's leaving soon so hopefully it will end). I'm happy.

We hang out listening to music played by my new friend Karl, always a very good name for a new friend, on his classical guitar while Norm bumped his fingers against a taut canvas sheet shaped like a drum, well. This went on and on while we lazed in the sun, until finally people started dropping off like flies for their own separate adventures, until just Norm and I were left, walking through the sand at another beach, Anjuna, at 4am after having failed to find the rumored rave hyped up earlier in the day. While walking, the wind shifts and my party spider sense picks up the faintest whisper of a heavy trance beat, somewhere to the left. Naturally I turn away from the well lit beach, well lit streets and rather comfortable surroundings of a quiet beach town, to begin my trek through rather dense fields, past dimly lit houses and the occasional vicious looking barking dog, following that deeper and deeper bass note. Norm angrily follows, I smile to myself, but keep a couple extra feet in between the two of us knowing that he's carrying a rather wicked looking sickle knife and was still angry over talking to one of the most ignorant people in the world earlier that night. Low and behold, after only 6km of barefoot walking through every terrain you could possibly imagine, we arrive at a scene from a Jennifer Lopez or Madonna video, with orange and green laser lights flickering against silhouetted trees, 100-200 people laying around carpeted flat areas smoking who knows what while another 2-300 danced to a deep deep bass that as you know, could be heard from the beach, quite a ways away. As we arrived at 4am, we had to put our good faith time in, I danced while norm flirted, and by the time we left, the 8am sun was beating down on our heads with a rather frenetic energy, only matched by the crowd of undulated half naked people dancing to the beat of a song that showed no signs of slowing.

Enter Recovery for two days.

After finding our way up to Mumbai (bombay) we ate mcdonalds, watched Syriana, went to some TGIFriday's ripoff, and got on a train later that night. It was ok.

A pretty short 7 hours later we departed the train, barged into a hotel lobby at 4am after fending off rickshaw mosquitoes (risquitoes), and then I was denied the chance to barter for the room by Norm's inconvenient collapsing onto the bed, probably for the best as it was only 5$ a night and the guys actually let us into this place.

From this town, Aurangabad, we went to these ancient, 2-3000 years old caves which we climbed on, profaned to a small degree, and then found that if you go up a river bank, you leave settled areas and have trouble finding your way back in the dark. This email is testament to our finding our way back, not being slowly eaten by bandits, and not having offended the gods too much with missplaced feet. To our dismay, the caves we were heading to the next day were closed, and so the first of many travel plan changes went into effect. There were no direct buses to our next destination, so we got on an 9 hour suspensionless sleeper bus ride to Indore (allowing us to bounce higher and for longer times than any well tensioned trampoline), which broke down at 5am, from there we transferred to an already crowded much smaller bus which we sat on for 20 min Indian Standard Time (2 1/2 hours in the rest of the world). This was fun. Then we jumped on another bus for only 4 hours and we were in Bhopal, where we promptly found out you couldn't leave because it was one of the holiest days in the Indian calendar (Holi, a week or so of multicolored hand grenades being thrown at anything that moves, only slightly toxic). So we're stuck, we go to the zoo, check out some tigers (not as big as you'd think, though still hungry looking), walk around, begin another period of unabridged laziness, finally get to Sanchi the next day, the stated reason for stopping in Bhopal, enjoy a thunderstorm in a leaking bus, go back to sleep, leave Bhopal on our way to Khajaruho.

If you have trouble imagining a city of temples totally dedicated to the act of wild orgiastic sex, then you should visit this town and complex of history. Internet sites get shut down for some of the stuff they prettily carved on those walls, as there are discerning readers on this list, I wont go into details, but man o man...

From there we went to Varanasi on a 15 hour public government bus. To describe this ride would take far more energy than I could possibly exhume from my body. To describe it with the sick stomach I had from eating too much fried food, might kill me. The town of Varanasi is nice, if you like cows (and their byproducts) shoved into spaces only wide enough for the cows (and their byproducts), or if you don't mind the occasional burning (or not so burning) body floating down the most disgusting water you've ever seen, which the average citizen of Varanasi is frolicking around in. Otherwise you may have problems.

Then we went to the mountains, those being the Himalayas of great fame and fortune, of which neither is enough to possibly describe their beauty and splendor. Absolutely amazing. Naturally our plans didn't work out exactly as planned. After another 12 hour sleeper bus ride in which no sleep was had because of the continual precipice-lined roads we were swinging around at much greater than safe speeds, we arrive in Manali, or in translation, Paradise. I'll leave the description of that and the Dalai Lama for later, because I have to go meet friends, but I'll be home soon and I hope anybody worried about me stops, because it looks like I'm making it through this here trip all right (finding my peice of wood to knock on).

Something to tlak about

Another one

As anyone who may know me may know (I've confused myself and just started), I am now thinking about virtually nothing, meaning I have emptied out all meaningful thought into a blog description that will undoubtedly leave you unsatisfied yet craving no more.

Anyone who has been praying for me, I thank you very much and appreciate it. I went to these amazing cliffs a couple days ago, and was planning to go to another set the next day. But then I found out those ones were closed on Mondays. So we had to change plans a teensy weensy, and ended up taking a direct bus past the place we were going to stay that night. We get to the new place, find out the next day is a national holiday and we can't go anywhere and nothing is open. We proceed to sleep through it, but, we also managed to notice that the place we were going to stay the night before, (when the bus broke down after failing to roll us down a cliff) happened to have been quarantined for bird flu after some blood tests got checked out. We missed that. And just in case you're wondering, Erica got me some Tamiflu (thank you!) which will prove to almost certainly be unuseful for any mutations, but will definitely be better than sticking a leaf in one ear while munching on my fingernail (the standard ayuverdic/indian way).

Long story short, narrow miss, but we got past it, no bird flu for the evmeister. Saw some more temples today, great, nice, whoopdeedoo, (actually quite impressive buddhist monasteries from the 3rd century BC), wow, like totally rad...not, super, cowabunga... anyway, getting worn out on the temple trip, gonna start making it interesting, lighting fires, eating monkeys, that sorta thing... yeah, before you think I caught some other indian bug, I'm not crazy, no more than the average person confronted with psychotic fatalism every other few minutes. Must stop.

On and off the road again

Imagining i'm floating again... waking up... still floating... realizing bus has hit a bump the size of a small cow... still in the air... gently knock the wind out of me as I return to the mattress... fall back asleep... repeat

No more bumps... heavenly sleep... abruptly woken up... bus is broken... grab gear... file into crowded bus 1/4 the size already half full of people... others from my bus join... stand for awhile... sit for awhile... get off the bus... get on another bus... sit for awhile... begin praying for accident... sit for awhile... repeat

Walk around town... see tiger... blink... tiger still there... notice wiremesh cage... sigh happily... stick out tongue... begin running almost immediately after tiger charges... repeat

Sit in Internet cafe... watch mosquitoes feast... try to kill them... miss... repeat

Trials of another sort

Delving back into my mind I slip past Tuesday and enter into Monday in my attempt to find a valued experience worth relating... I'm sure a couple exist.

The hour has passed and the moon begins its silver arc down the bottom half of the sky. Norm, Karl, Robin and I sit uncomfortably on the wooden sunbed firmly planted in the silky soft sand shifting beneath our feet. Norm's hands beat out an irregular, yet steady beat as the drum speaks to the wind and mingles with the crashing surf. There is no doubt who will win in that contest of endurance and power, yet his hands continue their path through the seams of music and the contest endures. Karl compliments the setting, more weary than in previous nights, but his classical guitar streams out flamenco as bright and pure as the silver arrows flickering on the crests of those slightly surging waves. With my head falling between the notes of nature and experienced fingers, I rest my mind and relax my soul.

We left Palolem Wednesday morning on a voyage up the world to another beach, Anjuna, land of the forgotten salesman. That sorrowful face who reappears every wednesday to try his fate against the horde of callous moneyholders who don't realize how little time he has to win bread for his family's survival in the next lowseason. I do realize, and yet retain my callousness proudly. Sticking to my firm conviction that you should never wear shoes within a kilometer of the beach I wander through the rainbow colored stalls, 4olb sack biting into my shoulders as my attention wanders and returns, searching for those items which flit from consciousness to reality, brushing past Kashmiri hawkers, bikini clad adventurers and Tibetan silversmiths. Each irregular stone bites into my beleaguered feet but stubborness does wonders for endurance. Finally finding my way to a Canadian hippie's leather stall, I fortuitously find the leather hip satchels I'd been searching for the past few months and make my one nonconsumable purchase for the next few weeks. After a spirited discussion regarding the "police states" of America and Canada we part our ways and I rejoin my slightly annoyed companions, who deigned to show up 15 minutes early at the ordinated time. Obviously they did not understand how Indian time works and chose to use their watches rather than their internal organs and the sun to dictate their timetables. Having found potential parties, Norma and I part ways with our erstwhile companions, wishining them well and begin our solo journey to find accomadation down even more pebble strewn paths.

The party never appeared... wandering from bar to bar, club to club, meeting other unfortunate Magellans, we begin our trek home down the moonlit beach. All of a sudden my abnormal, and slightly psychic senses pick up a taste of bass over the crashing of the waves. Stopping on the beach at the head of a short trail from which only fields and trees could be seen, my ears tune to the sound, du du du du... silence... a whisper in the night, one which my exasperated comrade wants to ignore in his search for the peace of sleep. Luckily, I am far less "wimpy" and choose to follow the thrumings of the earth to their source. Perhaps in kindness but more likely in fear for my life, Norm decides to join in my quest. "Do you know how far sound can travel at night?" should have been a question I paid more attention to when we began, yet after the first few steps and the definite retrieval of those deep frequency waves from the atmosphere, my heart was set and my soul in motion. Still barefoot we set off, down darkened lanes, beneath shadowed trees, across moony fields of snakes and cow manure, up stony paths of pain and misery, our travails finally paid off, finally bore fruit, when all of a sudden, the sounds, so promising from afar, grew and encompassed us. In eden they talk of nice apples and the occasional scantily clad female depending on how many times you wanted to turn 360 degrees. In front of us blossomed a scene from another eden. One which expanded and contrasted with the glow of laser lights against the canopy of the jungle, where the red sand of the dirt mixed with the sweat of undulating bodies crisp in the darkness of the fallen moon. Where the relentless pounding of the speakers bounced waves of music to crash against those more natural brethren of the ocean 6 km distant. Our journey complete, we settled into the hilarity of our arrival upon this rave of indefinite proportions, where beautiful women danced in spheres of isolation next to the ironclad bodies of those tan conquerers of the sun.

Success.

Falling into the pounding of the Earth, I barely noticed when the sun clipped the edge of the trees from their anonymity, or when the clouds spoke in tones of red and blue. Only the beat preached to me, its rythym carrying me in turns and circles, beyond dimensions of sanity and rationality. I danced, and was free. Well, until Norm tapped me on the shoulder, reminded me it'd been 30 hours since we'd last slept, and guided me to the taxi we bartered to fit 8 people into, and led me home. Dawn arrived, and left, and arrived again, or so I believe.

Somehow, with some people, the cycle reoccurs and hangs out, then says see you later, only to stop by again... So it is with the two of us. Somehow we always end up on buses 10 minutes from breaking down, heading down hills with no brakes on the wrong side of the road, glimpsing magnificent forts on hills and eating food made to tempt man from the realm of healthiness. To say I do such things on my own would not be a lie, but when I continually end up with my life above my hands, out of reach, clambering of the cliffs of riverbeds while surrounded by some God's creations, whether manmade or natural, I begin to think there may be a similarity of motive and of presence. So it is.

With pictures I might elaborate, adding a thousand words for every captured moment, but then, I don't have any of those, except in my head. I wish I could relate to you a sunset in Hampi, where dozens of those of us who enjoy watching the sun slip behind its own shadow listened to a lonely Indian girl find her friends through the power of her voice as she sang to the gods who darkened the cliffs and spires of temple and monolithic statue. I don't think I can express to you laying on a marble surface as the guitar sings and the drum beats to the crash of the relentless surf while the sun lends its heat to the warmth of the cool beer sliding impatiently down a throat wet with the insignificance of time. Its not possible to give you a dance that pulsed and streamed through countless hearts from dusk until dawn and beyond, with feet red from the earth, and eyes black, blue and red from the sky. Who can describe a temple stolen from the pitch black of a mountain to form slender curves and squares of overwhelming complexity and outstanding quality. Can you see the bats as they stream away from the light of my torch, screaming in their voices of tiny fury as they echolocate past our placid and flinching heads. Unless you've been there you won't understand sleeping in a compartment of six elderly indians, waking and finding one leaning over you and your bag and watching nervously as he scratches his head and deciphers incredulity from the chaos of his beleagured thoughts while deciding whether to kick his wife out of his bed or not.

I have no pictures, and can not give you these images, but maybe these words will help.

When laziness becomes an issue

When in Rome...

[Here is where the imagination should be used]

Actually nothing that interesting will be said that I haven't already said numberous times before on blogs, I'm in a beautfiul place, sand keeps on getting under my toenails, and beers refuse to cost more than a dollar, so I guess I could end it right there and you would have the short boring version that lets you know practically nothing of whats been going on in my life recently.

To broaden the horizons a little... I refuse to wear shoes, and I haven't worn them for the past 4 days. There's no need. As the air conditioner other people know as "wind" erased all traces of other people's passage, Norm and I look at each other and with a simple glance, agree not to move for another 2 hours, bringing our grand total lack of acceleration in any direction to 5 hours for the afternoon. The beach stretches out in a perfect crescent shape that many people have tried to capture but sthat pictures simply don't do justice to for the unfathomable reason that when youre here, you lack the energy even to think about taking the pictures and when you do they are so inferior to the setting that you feel the need to destroy the camera, run out screaming and send a bomb to Nikon, Canon or whatever affilated camera brand created such a shoddy product. Shortly hfter bashing your head into the coconut you just drank, you realize its better just to sit down at a bar, drink a beer, and plan for the next meal while eating the one in front of you. Other people can expend the necessary energy to effect revenge upon those filthy light catching companies.

A coconut could have fallen on my head yesterday while I sat in the sand.

But it didn't.

Can't tell you what its like to see one of your best friend's after 2 years and just fall back into the routine like yesterday you were riding next to him on some DC street. Laughter is there, as normal.

It seems that to try and describe something, my vocabulary has shrunk to the average Bangalorians descriptions or affirmations. For instance, if you want to describe the most delicious meal you've ever eaten, with such savoury tastes and hints of taste that your mind boggles at the attempt to recall it once its been consumed, you remark, "good is there" and while noone understands what just passed, a longer description is frowned upon. As far as the beach goes, good is there...

Next up, old stuff, that man made, because when it comes down to it, everything around us is pretty antique, its just how long its been in the shape its been.

I'm now deleting the disclaimer I added at the beginning because as I think back on the past couple nights, it hasn't been so bad, feel free to use your imagination to fill in the blank I will leave in its place.

Super 8

The reason why I don't normally listen to myself is because the advice I so often give is obviously too good to be taken serious and inevitably lands me in less of a hotspot than if I ignore my opinions and logical reasoning and simply let the winds guide my feet. Which is harder than you might suspect considering the size of my feet.

In any case, don't trust Indians who approach. Case in point, walking several kilometers after one takes you on his motorcycle, drops you at the "bus stand," gives a vague explanation leading you to think this city may exist on the map, and then driving off... If I EVER see that guy again... Rocks and Tomatoes baby, Rocks and Tomatoes...

But then again, now I'm on the beach, eating everything, well no, because my stomach has this weird affliction that every time I get to Goa, it decides to turn inside out, hence this morning. Grr, if I ever see that guy again, Rocks...

Life on the run

Amazing this internet connection, I overheard them talking about updating to a 14.4k modem soon, so hopefully if I ever come back, I'll be able to send a message in under an hour.

Hampi is absolutely beautiful, but inordinately hard to explain. I will however try, as this may be the only time I give myself the motivation required to try and extract the various alchemical essences that pervade the atmosphere here.

I've done my best to acheive a sunburnt state of being, and by all accounts I've succeeded. I wouldn't be surprised if Vogue called and tried to line me up for their cherry fall line. While piggybacking on my poor knees up endless winding 2 ft stairs, I fell into wondering how it it is you could have massive piles of boulders stacked up on top of each other in the middle of a otherwise flat terrain. The answer I came up with was surpisingly simple... magnificent, extraordinary, giant gophers! Why else put goliath temples in the middle of nowhere if not to celebrate the extreme digging skills of those beautiful rodents.

There, solved it, no need for you to come all the way out to India and ponder this question anymore, case closed. However, if you were still looking for a challenge, I could pose you this one, how come the culture that came up with KamaSutra is one of the most conservative sexually, morally, polically, etc., in the whole world. I've been wondering, wondering and wondering.

I already miss my children and the Robertson House (home of iniquity and good people), but I'm meeting up with one badass dude in a couple days and life will be good! Ok, time to go broker a peace deal with Pakistan.