Hey, an update again at last! I finally am back in India, well, have been now for 6 weeks or so, and feel a world away from where I was in the last update. I came back through the border with Jenny, Mikko and Andy, and we headed straight for the Golden Temple, my second visit to such an amazing place. But back to the border for a second, it really is a different feeling almost immediately as you cross, and was interesting doing it in reverse this time. Before I was crossing into Pakistan with a slightly nervous energy wondering what lie ahead. Crossing back we already all knew… more chaos, slightly less friendly people (ok, a huge generalization, but hey…) and most importantly for Jenny, women visible in public!
Dealing with border crossing officials is rarely fun and sometimes a nightmare, but fortunately for us Andy was carrying a guitar, strumming as we walked through, making people smile and even had the border officials asking him to play more… not a tactic I would recommend normally, but hey, it worked well that time. On the Pakistani side they even invited us to sit behind the glass with them in their office as they typed in our passport details so they could hear the guitar better. Upon finishing with our passports the official told us he was a qawwali singer and then began singing beautifully for us, yet another surreal experience. I'll have to savour that one as I know there will never be another border crossing anything like it. Seriously, I challenge any one of you (and your friend's friends) to tell me a story about being sung to by an immigration officer. I mean really.
Mikko and Andy hit the bottle (a large Kingfisher) at the little restaurants on the Indian side, breaking free from the 'dry' status of Pakistan. And then we spent two relaxing days at the Golden Temple, which I told you before I love. What a nice place. Staying in the complex, eating in the massive dining hall, and soaking up the atmosphere there is not easily top-able as far as temples go. I was there again for the book closing ceremony in the evening, but we stayed afterwards this time for a couple hours and watched them clean the temple and change the flowers, all of the workers chanting and singing in unison as they worked, absolutely beautiful.
We then headed to Delhi for a few days before all parting ways. Unfortunately the fumes and who knows what else got the better of me and finally transformed the cough that I had been nursing into a full-blown respiratory infection. If ever in Delhi avoid Pahar Ganj, truly a shit-hole of a place. I already knew that as I've been there a couple times before, but it's cheap. Never again. Yuck yuck yuck. With only two weeks left before Kim arriving in Bombay I decided to head somewhere to relax and get better, finally. Between chest and stomach upsets I was sick for about 2 months, not a good thing. So I found myself in Pushkar, a nice little Hindu pilgrimage town in Rajasthan, set around a small lake. No traffic, entirely walkable, decent-ish food (and most importantly a large variety of food, at last!), and an awesome little hotel to sleep all day in were the perfect cure. I think I left Pakistan at just the right moment, my health was heading down a not so nice path, I could feel it building for a while. Unfortunately Joost whom I mentioned in my last email (he stayed in Surul working there) became really really ill, and has been in the hospital for a few weeks now in Islamabad with pneumonia and other problems. Truly a hero he is. As far as I know he's still there and plans to go up into the mountains again when his health improves.
I'm loving (mostly) being back here and dealing with the Indian idiosyncrasies. Although not as bad as in Pakistan, they sometimes have a similar problem in restaurants where they only cook a few things for the day, and that's all that is available. It's not so much a problem in itself, the problem comes more when they hand you an extensive menu of international and Indian dishes, including Chinese, Italian, Israeli, etc. You spend several minutes looking it over and decide on the perfect dish (oh my goodness Sarita, tonight is aaaaallllllllllll about spaghetti!!!!), yet when the waiter finally comes back to take your order he informs you that all they have is rice, dhal, and spinach. Nobody ever thinks to just tell you that from the start, they'll let you browse the menu for hours first and savour the things that they might one day feel like serving. At a restaurant in Pushkar, craving soup and fully aware of this policy, I decided to ask which soups were available before getting my heart set. After all there were about 10 on the menu… so in perfectly good Indian English the conversation went:
"Namaste Ji, are ALL of these soups available today?"
"Of course, why not sir! Sab Kuch Milega! (Everything is possible)."
"Okay then, I'll have corn chowder."
"Oh, sorry sir, corn chowder is finish."
"Achaah, then I'll have chunky vegetable."
"Oh, sorry sir, chunky vegetable not possible."
"OK, maybe you should just tell me which ones you DO have?"
"No problem sir (with a head wobble), lentil soup."
“Anything else?”
“No sir, we are only having Lentil today.”
"Well then, Lentil it is…"
Pushkar is a holy pilgrimage town and many people come to bathe in the lake and visit the MANY temples. It's a beautiful city with nice atmosphere, heavily decorated cows, and many babas (holy men), some on a spiritual quest, and others perhaps just looking that way. I witnessed one by my hotel abusing a cow. I mean seriously, are you retarded? Who picks on cows? Let alone a Hindu holy man. Cows are holy in Hinduism, what are you thinking? I literally watched him (on two occasions) look around to see if anyone was watching, and then start smacking the cow on the head. Totally unprovoked. If I'm missing something and this is actually a sign of cow respect someone please let me know and I'll retract my accusations in my next email. But I suspect he was just psycho. Another feature of Pushkar is constant chanting and singing through loudspeakers from different temples, vehicles, etc. Sometimes even in the middle of the night! 1am, 4am, anytime's a good time to pick up the microphone and do a little ditty to Saraswati.
It took over a week to feel better, but finally on my feet and feeling good again I made for Bombay to pick up my little sister and teach her how to survive here. Except I forgot that while younger, she's always been MY teacher. She got off the plane ready and willing and is sinking her teeth into learning how to bargain and fight for correct taxi fares at a remarkable rate. It's fun for me to remember back to what I was feeling when I first arrived here, and some of the experiences I had. And she brought me blue corn chips and salsa from California for fucks sake, tell me she's not awesome. I really miss Mexican food. Why are there no Mexicans in India? I think Baja Fresh would do just fine in Bombay. Or at least an El Torito. Ok I better stop.
Unfortunately some friends of Kim’s had recommended Goa, which I've thus far managed to avoid, but they made it sound like paradise. I went along with it, so after a few days of soaking up the atmosphere and shopping and eating at shi-shi cafes in Bombay we left for Palolem Beach. Goa for me has always represented crusty burnt-out hippies and massive rave parties on the beach with shitty techno music. Well, that's because it's the reality. But once I was there, I realized it wasn't as bad as I had made it out to be in my head. I’ve despised it for the simple fact that people come to India and make a beeline for it, and then don't experience India. Goa should be a different country, it has nothing to do with India. It should be in Europe, or maybe the Caribbean. But the reality is that on it's own, it's a fine beach state, decent sandy beaches, and not that different than maybe Orange County, or Santa Cruz in a lot of ways. It's not evil. It just doesn't belong in India. So I was able to relax and enjoy it for a while. 
We rented scooters and had an amazing day driving around seeing the lush countryside, something I hope we'll do more of further south too. I hadn't gotten around to swimming yet in the beautiful alluring sea for the first few days, but after meeting a lovely girl named Stephanie who's been living there for a couple months, we were both glad we hadn't. Apparently all of the restaurants and hotels don't have anything to do with their waste, and so empty the septic tanks by bucket into the sea every night after everyone goes to sleep.
Which leads me to a major complaint that Kim and I keep coming back to. This country is f*cking filthy. There's over a billion people in India, which creates a LOT of trash, and all of whom shit mostly on or near train tracks. And throw their trash EVERWHERE. There is absolutely no awareness here about pollution, EVERYONE throws everything out the window of their car, the train, etc. On the train people will look at us funny if we hold onto our trash or put it in our bag. Every time you pass a body of water, a river, a lake, the ocean, it's completely littered with garbage. Do they think it will just go away? We went to visit a beautiful waterfall the other day, but the pools at the bottom, which are supposedly nice for swimming, were completely littered with trash and dirty underwear. Why? This is in a remote place, not near a village. Everything that was there was left by people who came to enjoy the beauty of the waterfall, yet destroy the atmosphere in the process. Wwwhhhhyyyyy???????? I'm not interested enough in waste management to conduct an in-depth study of it, but I'm really curious to know if there really is nothing to do with all of the trash, or if it's simply a lack of caring and/or awareness. I’m suspecting more the latter, leading to nobody taking the effort to even try and do anything about it. Whatever the case, it’s truly appalling.
While I’m ranting, what’s up with the bombings in Pakistan? I don’t know what the right thing to do is, all I know is that it sickens me to see our country doing things that will only worsen the view others have of us. Is it Bush’s goal to give every country in the world a reason to hate us by the end of his presidency? I’ve told you all about the amazing people there, but what’s their limit? I’m just not a fan of the way things are going at the moment. Check out the KFC picture attached, I ate here while in Lahore. (stop laughing, it was all that was open at 1am). This was a peaceful place while I was there, now they’re burning cars and rioting just a block from where I was staying. What is happening? (Sorry, I know that’s not related necessarily to the bombings, but while I’m talking about Pakistan yet again…)
On a lighter note, Kim and I want to start a cow tipping trend in India, I think it would be a nice merging of cultural traditions, and will hopefully bring us all closer together. They love cows, we love to tip them. I don't mean being cruel to the cows like the crazy baba in Pushkar, more just playing a friendly game with them… helping them to lay down quicker, if you will. We haven't tried it yet, but I think it's going to be a success. Just looking for the right venue. Stay tuned…
After a couple days in Goa we headed further south to Karnataka state and to a lovely seaside pilgrimage town called Gokarna. The little town is cool and atmospheric and there are a few great beaches to the south of it. Being in the south is so nice now, what a different world to northern India! So much less hassle, more laid back, more beautiful, tropical, lush, coconuts, beach huts, warm breezy train rides, superior in most every way. Except, that is, for the heat! It's only February, and it's freakin' hot and muggy down here. We also visited Hampi, an incredibly beautiful town filled with ancient ruins and amazing HUGE boulders everywhere. It's hard to describe it so I won't, but if you get the chance, a very nice place to spend time. OK, it’s mostly hard to describe because we didn’t actually get out and see much of it. Whoops! It’s surrounded by amazing ruins and landscapes, but it was incredibly hot, and time just seemed to fly by there, and we enjoyed the town itself enough, so oh well. I get a little bored at ruins and tourist sites anyway. Hehe.Bangalore is a big bustling city that didn't appeal to us much, but while nearby we found out that Amma, ‘The Hugging Mother’, would be coming through there. She's one of the few female saints in India, has an Ashram in Kerala, and spends a lot of the year traveling around and hugging people in long, drawn out, all-night sessions. Who could miss that? I would love to say that I traveled on a train for 4 hours just to get a hug. It was interesting, we waited in huge long lines, then attended a long and involved puja (not in English) where we had the help of the ladies sitting around us to get us through the meticulous rituals. At the end we carried pots of oil on our heads through a crush of people to the temple where we dropped it off before heading to the canteen and fighting in line to get dinner. Kim handled that one well, clawing her way to the front and almost jumping over the railing.
Then back to the main auditorium to check the tv screens and see what numbers she was hugging at the moment. 3000. We were holding tickets that said 17000. Considering it took over an hour to get to 3000, it was looking like a loooong night. It was already midnight. Sorry Amma, no hug for you. Yes people, we went to see the hugging mother and didn't get a hug. Is it really necessary though? Throughout the Puja I couldn’t help but notice that many of the attendees were looking rather bored and paying more attention to their cell phones than to anything else. Their focus is more on going through the motions, and making sure to light their incense stick at the right moment as opposed to paying attention to any message that the speakers were there to convey. I love that Amma hugs people, but many of the hug getters I think attach far too much importance to it. It’s seems to be that you just show up at this event, go through all of the mindless rituals while not paying attention, and then receive a hug that is supposedly going to change your life. I’m not so sure that life works that way. Of course there were plenty of others that were really into the whole ceremony, which was nice. Anyway we got plenty of sleep before catching the train the next day to the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary, our first stop in Kerala! (I later saw on her website that the hugging went on until 8:30am! We were just about the last ones in that night, so our hugs would have been around 8:24 and 8:25, respectively)http://www.amma.org/
Around this time Kim decided to tell me that she's not just staying here for a month like she had planned, but was staying for at least 6 months, and will take some classes in Kerala. Woohoo! Obviously quite a surprise, but I'm so happy for her that she is taking such a big amazing step in her life, letting go of all the crap at home and trying to do something new. So we've got about 3 weeks left to travel before heading to school there. I'll join her a month later and take some classes myself. Keralan cooking, yum! And maybe some music classes. I've been wanting to stop now for a while and spend time in one place, it gets pretty tiring moving as much as I have. I've been gone almost a year now! I really can't believe that. Who knew that after this long away I wouldn't be anywhere near ready to come home? Ok, actually Andrew predicted that. Good job. Home is a subjective term anyway. But funding home-away-from-home is another story. If anyone has ideas on how I can make money from the road, by all means, let me know! But I suppose many of you would be doing it yourselves if you knew. Hhhhmmmmmmm.
The best thing about south India by far is the food. I feel like a genuine pig being down here, I literally can't wait until the next meal. Lunch is usually all you can eat Thalis – lumps of vegetables and rice all laid out on a banana leaf, and eaten very messily with our hands. Or masala dosas. Truly in heaven. After which we head to the nearest sweet shop, where our goal is to try EVERYTHING. We usually buy one of everything that looks good, and just take 1 bite of each and toss it. It’s seems to be working well and our knowledge of them is growing nicely. As are our stomach aches.I leave you there, mostly because it’s lunch time and quite frankly I would rather be eating.
Much love… Wes
