Nepal: An outdoor enthusiasts paradise....

I was planning on spending three weeks trekking the Anapurna region. The route that i took was 120 miles and in stead of taking my time I pushed myself and finished in 9 days instead of the usual 16-18 days. My longest day was 27 miles, and it was a long day. The pass, which is the highest pass in the world is 17,769 feet. You are supposed to take your time when going to altitudes such as this but since i only slowed down for the last two days before the summit, i didnt allow myself enough time to acclimate and i got altitude sickness pretty bad. I pretty much never take pain killers but this headache was incredible and probably one of the most painful experiences ive had. So i took a half a pain killer and a altitude sickness pill after spending 30 seconds on the top and rushing down the other side. Along with the pain, I was overcome with tiredness and had to take a nap for an hour under a boulder before i could finish the decent.

On the way up to the summit, we went from a subtropical jungle area filled with marijuana fields to pine forests to glaciers and massive peaks that towered over us. When coming over the pass, the terrain changed vastly. The trail was ridiculously steep, killing my knees, and led down in to a mountainous desert. The next few days down were long but easy in comparison and went from the desert to the pine forests and back into the subtropics. All along the way I was confronted by rolling expansive views with local porters trudging up and down the paths carrying insane loads on their backs with straps around their foreheads instead of their shoulders. They carried everything from crackers and cookies to cast-iron pipe assemblies. Their calves bulged so much that they looked ready to burst out of their skin and run up the trail on their own.

The last day of the trek, I started my morning with a soak in some hot springs next to a rushing river before walking the last 5 hours to civilization where i took another 5 hours in a bus to get to a city called Pokhara where i stayed for the next 4 days next to a fog-shrouded lake eating vast quantities of food and resting my sore knees before going back to Kathmandu.

After another week of rest, my friend Keano (that I met in India with Madeleine) and I went on a rafting trip for two days with rapids varying from class 2-5 and on one rapid, a class 2, our psychotic guide made our massive 9 person raft capsize and we were briefly stuck under the raft while be smashed against rocks. It was Badass!! Even though I severely bbruised my knees. The views were gorgeous, my team was really energetic, and our crazy guide was bent on smashing into and up on any rock that poked its head out of the water. It made for an exhilarating day.

The next day Keano and I got up at 5:30 am and walked/hitched for half an hour to a site, aptly called "The Last Resort": and Adventure resort that hosts numerous activities such as Canyoneering, rafting, kayaking, Bungee Jumping and The worlds Longest Swing. Both the Swing and the Bungee are 160 meters (about 525 feet). We were supposed to Jump straight away, but a break down in communication held us up for an hour and a half. So we sat and drank chai in a well groomed resort while we waited. We also got a "Bindi" put on our forehead by a really cute little girl that was running this shop we popped into.

We first went on the swing, which required a ridiculous harness that also acted as a seat. The free-fall was amazing. You drop for a good 5 seconds before the rope gently catches and swings you across the gorge where you proceed to pull yourself back to the canyon wall hand over hand using another rope and climb up the 500 feet to jump down again.

Bungee Jumping was nothing short of incredible! It was one of the most peaceful experiences i have ever had. Free Falling is a feeling thats hard to describe. its like imagine all your tension built up the moment you jump off the platform and you feel so tense your like a stone falling through the air and you don't notice anything except how rapidly the ground is approaching. Then, in nearly the same instant, you (hopefully) tell yourself to let go of the tension and a whole new world opens up and its like your breathing for the first time.

Standing on that edge, I felt like I had this massive weight that was increasing with every millisecond trying to pull me back onto the bridge. So before it got any heavier, I shoved over the edge and followed it down. Except I left it at the bottom of the gorge and (metaphorically speaking) dove back into myself. I feel strangely centered and calm Now.

After Bungee jumping, we raced back to our resort to make sure we didn't miss the rafting trip. We luckily caught a bus and made there in time to scarf down a gigantic, fabulous meal before shoving straight off into the rapids for our 2nd and final day of rafting. There were two girls in our boat who didn't much like the capsizing from the day before, but the rest of us did. Most of the trip went without incident aside from the occasional thrashing around as we bounced off rocks and shot through rapids until th very last rapid. We got sucked back into it and were stuck there. My side of the boat (front-right) was being pulled in and I almost was sucked in. Luckily I was able to grab a rope before it ripped me off. We miraculously got free before being run down by the following raft. We proceeded to the edge, let the raft go by, and our new guide (who until this moment seemed quite sane) decided to have us paddle at full speed and vigor, back into the rapid to ensnare us again. After a couple minutes of fighting and screaming (screams of joy from the guys and "why are we going back in" and "No" from the girls, though they kept paddling) against the current, we manage to lodge ourselves in the violent convulsions once again. This time one of the girls really freaked out, but the rest of us were having a blast as the rapid would push us away just to suck the other end back in and shove us around. We tried to row the best we could while we were all flopped over one another to no avail and after a few minutes the guide told us to abandon ship. Everyone eventually jumped except me and the guide. We tried to get us free but couldn't so I jumped to have a swim while he got assistance via a rope from the shore. It made a perfect end to my day, though not so much for one of us (who we later found out had a near drowning incident a few months back).

Since I got back Ive been hanging out and enjoying my time just sitting and being in one place. I go out and meet friends for lunch and dinner, play guitar, and read alot. I am planning on going back to India to Daramshala where the Dalai Lama lives to take a course on Buddhism and meditation before moving on from India. But right now i cant be bothered to take epic local bus rides through crazy terrain and across borders for 40 hours, so im stuck in kathmandu until I gather the motivation to leave.

Rajasthan

After 30 hours of train rides, i arrived in Jodhpur, Rajasthan; home of the blue city surrounding a legendary, semi-ancient Raj fort among giant mechanical-legged camels, rickshaws and the typical beauty and filth that encompass India. I arrived at night and stayed at a rooftop restaurant in my hammock. The view from the roof was one of the most awe-striking sights I've seen. While staring up at the magnificent lit-up fortress poised above a sea of blue run down homes, restaurants and hotels lavishly built with rolling curved architecture, a very strange feeling came over me and tears welled up in my eyes at the sight of it and I was entranced. I sat there for a very long time before roaming the streets and taking in the culture and life of the area with all it's friendly inhabitants and aesthetically pleasing buildings.

The following day I went to the fort and payed my 250 rupees (about 6 dollars) and walked around with my self-guided MP3 headset tour. I felt like a typical tourist but it was totally worth it. The tour was incredibly informative and really gave you a sense of what it was like to live in the fort during its glory and wars. Nothing was shabbily done, everything was created while striving for the best quality possible and it was quite evident by the weapons and palaces and the general lifestyle that they lived. They lived by the code of "Death before Dishonor" and when Kings died, mistresses often willfully torched themselves at the funeral pyre along with their fallen king without even a scream of pain. Or so the stories go. You cant leave that place without a very romantic, glamorous picture in your head. And when I left, that's exactly what I had. I felt as though I was falling in love with the place.

I left to the furthest western for town called Jaisalmer where the fort was actually used for hotels and restaurants and stores and all. Hotel rooms had windows with their own little window balcony equipped with overhead "Arabian-style" arches. It was a shame to come to Rajasthan as a single man. I met some friends there that I knew from earlier on in my trip and I went with them on a camel safari. We were meant to go on a 2 day, one night safari but it wasn't meant to be. The 9 Israeli's and I set off on our camels with our guides in the desert and stopped off at a tiny village that looked like it was an Afghani bombing site. We met some very nice local people, gave the camels a rest and trudged along on our "star-warsesque" beasts into the desert where we were made a great meal by our guides. While eating, drinking chai and chatting, I noticed that some serious looking clouds were rolling in, and being from the northwest I could tell that these were no fleeting clouds. And sure enough it started pouring down rain for the next two days. Most the people I was with got irritated and really wanted to go back, so we huffed it back to the village where we hunkered down and waited for our ride to come. Overall it was a good time even though quite short.

I promptly left the following day to Udaipur, a captivating lake town beautiful island palaces, where I met up with Madeleine again. While there we took a cooking course and made the best food i've had in india (possibly a biased statement) and i plan on making indian food alot when i get home, providing that i can find the spices. Madeleine then went further up north to check out the yoga scene and i went to another rajasthani city called Pushkar that's know for cheap....well basically everything. I bought a bunch of clothes and a ton of ear-rings and then skipped out to Agra to see the Taj Majal. The Taj was incredible but dwarfed by the sheer number of tourists, the horridness of the city and the ridiculous entry fee. I would up taking a rickshaw to the back of the Taj to get some good photos and then left for Delhi on the next train.

I was planning on spending just a few days in Delhi and meeting some people through couchsurfing, but i wound up staying for three weeks and made some great friends. I spent most my time playing X-Box and moving from couch to couch, watching movies and generally lounging around. It was really nice and reminded me of home. Im going to come back to Delhi when I come back from Nepal and hang out with my new friends a bit more.

After three weeks, I left for Varanassi (the supposed spiritual epicenter of India where the dead are cremated along the Ganga river banks). Though I met many people who said that Varanassi was their favorite place in India, I didn't share their sentiments. It was a very dirty, crowded city who's only redeeming feature (In my humble opinion) is that it was an ancient city on a holy river. You see people swimming in this river and bathing right where sewer drains dump into the river. There are massive sewage treatment plants as well that constantly cause blackouts throughout the city since they are operating on max capacity. The river is home to the ashes of the cremated dead, as well as dead babies, dead pregnant women, snake-bite victims and countless other corpses who for one reason or another were not decreed suitable for cremation. And people swim and bathe in this thing and say it's cleansing!! Well I wasn't bgutsy enough or foolish enough to brave the waters. I arrived early morning and left late the same night so I guess I didn't give myself the chance to really experience the charm of Varanassi.

I took a train near to the border of Nepal where myself and many other travelers took a bus to the border and then a cab to Kathmandu where I now have been for the past three days. I really like Kathmandu, aside from the pollution. Its got clean, narrow streets winding everywhere and its a paradise for mountaineering gear fans. Though all the gear are knock-offs of the originals, they do an incredible job. They buy all the gore-tex and fabrics and then create everything here by copying North Face and various other brands' designs for a fraction of the cost (around a tenth of the price). The quality is probably a bit less but its definitely worth the money if you can bargain well. I spent my birthday here last night and went out to a bunch of bars with live music and topped it off with a dance club where we danced till 3 A.M. Today is The Nepali New years (something like 2064) and its beautiful madness everywhere with decorations and people milling about and live music filling the air. Im going to head out and take it in right now. Im leaving in a couple days to trek for 3 weeks so I wont be posting for a while.

Danger Abounds in a small beach town.....

As usual, I got stuck in a few more places for longer than I expected due to great people and beautiful beaches and incredible food (so no regrets). I didn't wind up doing the backwaters tour because i got tired of waiting for people to meet me there. So my American friend Julie and I left and I went to a place called Gokarna with the beautiful beaches and cheap mouth watering food and all. After being there for 4 or 5 days and playing guitar and hanging out in my new hammock that i bought for 3 dollars and swimming and gorging myself on various delicacies, I decided to pry myself from the beach and leave to another beach further north.

A German friend of mine met me in Gokarna and then we left to Northern Goa to a place called Arambol. We were in Arambol for a few days and had a pretty nice time which was only marred by one potentially disastrous experience whcih I will descibe in a moment. I found a place there called Arambol hammocks (www.Arambol.com) where a german man designed, made and sold hammocks; one of which was a hammock unlike any i'd ever seen and i had to buy it (2000 rupees which is about 50 USD). It was shaped kind of like a normal sitting hammock but it had a section that hung down lower like a foot rest and when you put your feet into it, you had a really comfy chair. And if you laid back and straightened your legs it would go flat and you could lay in it like a normal hammock. Plus it was for two people. So enough rambling about intelligently designed hammocks.

Now for my moment of danger and excitment! While in Arambol, my German Friend Marike and I were walking down the street chatting and looking at shops when there was a "traffic Jam" in the narrow street which involved a couple rickshaws and a mini-mini van and we couldn't get past until they worked it out. While we waited, I stood up on the back bumper of the mini-mini van, looking over and just messing around. The driver didnt seem to care, but the man next to me on a bike did. He immediately freaked out and started berating me, saying things like "this isn't your father's car" and "what were you thinking" and kept repeating "why did you do it" rather aggressively. Even though I told him I was just fooling around and it didn't matter cause it was a bumper and meant to crash into things and my weight really wouldn't hurt it, he carried on ranting shouting "why did you do it" and getting all up in my face. So I went past him trying to pay him less attention and as we walked away after the traffic jam cleared, he shouted many things at me; one of which was "you mother fucker!" which i though was strange and rare for an indian to say and i replied stupidly, yet not very loud in the direction i was going "whatever, you're the mother fucker" as we kept walking. About a minute later he pulled up and cut me off on his motorbike and jumped off shouting and pushing me around, screaming "why did you do it, tell me why you did it". Obviously i thought this whole thing was utterly absurd and this guy getting on my nerved so i told him that i already told him why but he wasn't listening and i told him again. But he wouldn't let me go past him even with the explanation given and kept pushing me. So i told him to "fuck off" and leave me alone, but he wouldn't. He kept getting more aggressive and I wouldn't up having to shove him away from me to get past him. Then he ran to the side of the road where a pile of rubble was sitting next to a wall.. I knew instantly what he meant to do by running over there even though i couldn't see the rubble. So i booked it in my flip flops and my bag to the restaurant that we were heading to with this loony chasing me with a decent sized jagged rock. I cause a bit of commotion in the restaurant b running in there and asking for help cause there was a nuts Indian guy chasing me, but he stopped outside the place. The guy called up a bunch of his buddies and when the waiter and owner got me to go out and apologize to him to calm things down,even though i had no reason to apologize, there were a dozen guys out there ready to stone me to death. So i came out in the protection of the staff and tried to make peace but the guy wasn't having it. He was screaming and other guys were coming towards me and one was poking em violently and accusing me of strange things. SO when it was clear that no apology would be accepted, i was ushered back into the restaurant where i remained until 11 or 12 that night because the mob stayed outside until late into the night waiting to bludgeon me. With thew aiter escorting us back down the road a little ways, we amde it home safely, but quite alert and prepared to run. It was the strangest thing i think has ever happened to me in terms of aggression being directed at me and my friend and i were both a bit disturbed by it.

I stayed in the town, cautiously walking where i would for the next couple days before heaidng north to Mumbai where i stayed for 3 days with a fellow couchsurfer in a hosts flat. The guy had just moved into a new flat but still had the remainder of march for the old one so the two of us Americans had the flat all to ourselves. It was cool. I spent my days down in Colaba (the really touristy area where movie extras are hired). I was offered a job doing a voice over for a film for 500 rupees (about 12.50 USD) but i wound up missing the guy and didn't make it. Then I headed north to rajasthan. But i will update that part a bit later.

Kerala

After another 3 day ferry ride marked by days of lounging in my hammock, reading and smashing open coconuts, I made it back to the mainland where i spent a couple days with a local family through couchsurfing.com. They were incredibly nice and gracious hosts. I got to meet allot of their family and hang out at their office where they run a technology company that is very family-like. All the employees are close to one another and spend time hanging out and they all go to movies together and eat lunch together and what not. It was a really neat thing to see. wish I had more time to spend with them because i left the next day after meeting them. They offered to have their restaurant's chef give me north Indian cooking lessons and i just may take them up on their offer when i come back to Chennai to see them.

And then another night train for about 14 ours through beautiful rice fields and villages (of which i could only see the next morning) to South-Western India and the state of Kerala. I went to a beach-town called Varkala where I wound up staying way longer than I though I would because I, as always, met alot of great people. The beach was a nice whitesand beach with a big cliff behind it where springs ran down the sides and washed over the pristine sand, staining it like green halva (a sweet that looks like swirled marble). It was very easy to just stay at Varkala and never leave. We would keep saying, okay I am leaving tomorrow, but that tomorrow wound up being 4 days later.

Now A few of us are all meeting up 4 hours north of Varkala where we will hopefully take a "backwater tour" which is a houseboat, rented for 22 hours. You cruise down the canals and you have a chef on board making you meals and drinks. If it doesn't work out; oh well. I'm sure i will be back to do it again sometime.

Andaman Islands

After Madeleine and I returned to Pondicherry, we spent the remaining few days of our two week term at Sadhana and then left. i went to Chennai to get us tickets for the Andaman Islands and she stayed in Pondi for a few days. I used www.CouchSurfing.com for the first time in Chennai and stayed with these two really interesting and cool Indian brothers and had a great time. I had some issues getting our cheap ferry tickets and wound up getting tickets that cost as much as a one way flight, but instead of it taking 2 hours, the trip was 3 days. We got the expensive tickets and had a great time in a nice cabin on the ship for 3 days.

We are now in the Andamans and are hanging out with a bunch of people from the boat and camping on beaches in our hammocks. We explore during the day and swim in the clear turquoise tropical waters and at night we sit around the fire and sing and dance while I play guitar and we swim under the moonlight and howl at the moon. Its been great here so far. Tomorrow, Madeleine and i and a bunch of people are possibly going to another island.














So I did go to another island; an island call Havelock where there is currently a film in production called Shantaram, based on a non-fictional book about an australian prisoner that broke out and escaped to india being filmed there. There is a beach on havelock that is dubbed "Asia's most beautiful beach" and I have to agree that its beauty is astounding; rolling white sand beaches with giant jungle trees overhanging from the tree line to make perfect places for your hammock all along the beach. But back to the movie. it starts Russell Crowe and Johnny Depp and a few other big names and is being directed by Weir. I dont think the actors have shown up yet but theres a lot of hoopla about it on the island.

I left the island to come back and spend time with Madeleine after she cut her foot and it got really infected, swelling her leg so that she was in too much pain to walk hardly at all and had to go to the hospital. She bought a plane ticket for the 11th because she felt like she needed to get going and get to the north of india even though she hasn't been to many places here in the Andamans. She has been having a great time here at a hotel where she met some cool locals as well as other travelers. She got some antibiotics and is walking just fine now, so don't worry :)

We took a day trip to a nearby island called "ross island" which was at one time a British administration island, but after an earthquake it was abandoned and is now being devoured by the jungle trees here. It was incredible to see how these trees had shredded these buildings. We'd see remnants of roofs and metal stuck in the trees as gently reminders that nothing here is permanent. The trees in India are definitely one of my favorite things about this country. There was one giant tree on the island that had two over-sized swings that entertained us for quite a while swinging around and jumping from one swing to the other.

There has been one bad thing thus far. Some of you may have noticed that my site has been suspended multiple times over the last coupe of weeks due to some disputes with my website service provider about my storing file (mainly pictures) on my site of which i have 10 gigs designated for "storage" use. Anyways, they wound up deleting ALL of my stored pictures without notifying me. So I have lost most of my pictures from India as well as allot of other things. It sucks and i don't think that there is any way of retrieving them. So In the next few months there may be more disruptions in the websites up-time since I will most likely be changing service providers.

I have now decided to leave the Islands earlier than expected and I will be leaving on the 10th. Madeleine is flying out on the 11th and continuing her trip up north while i am heading south and then north.

Podicherry (Auroville)

Ok so pictures are hard to get posted, but hey I finally did it! :)

I arrived in Auroville (a huge eco village that is very strange and cool at the same time and quite touristic) and met Madeleine here and we have been having a fantastic time. I met her crazy energetic friends and had an exciting holiday week or two. After all the excitement of playing on the beach and partying and hanging out, Madeleine and I decided we really needed a break.

I fasted for a day and then we left to a place called sadhana forest: a reforestation project on the outskirts of Aurovile. When we arrived here we found out that two days later, half of the people were starting a 7 day fast. Seeing as how i wanted to fast for longer than a day i was really pumped about it and am now on day 4. Day 3 has been the most difficult and just walking 500 meters was incredibly taxing. I guess I will share with you the implications of this fast. Basically it is no eating for 7 days and if you drink, it is only water or urine unless you really feel that you need fresh juice.  I wont go into the supposed benefits of urine drinking right now as it would take a while, but yes it is as strange to me as it is to you. They are recommending Urine/water enemas, urine nasal cleansing, urine drinking and putting urine on our skins, we shall see about all that. This so far has been an incredibly taxing and intense experience. I have waves of energy but mostly i am exhausted and feel like my body is a great burden. Some minor exercises give us an energy boost and swimming in the mud pond is helpful as well, but other than that, I do very little aside from laying down, drinking, talking or reading, sleeping, and peeing quite often.

The people here are all really cool and interesting. half of them are Israeli and the rest are from all over the world. Only four of us are American. My Hebrew is improving slightly and I can understand a bit more than when I came here. Since I am fasting i am not working on the reforestation project, but after the fast i will start working here for at least a week. We are all having dreams and fantasies about different foods and it is slightly torturous. had the words "quattro formaggio" going through my head for half the day yesterday. I wont get to have any pizza or real food for a few days after the fast because we need to slowly integrate foods back into our diet.


Here is another update:
I finished the fast on the 6th day because my body felt it was time. I wound up getting sick from eating too much soup (probably because my body rejected cooked food after such a long time of no food). I am pretty much good now and have worked up to eating cooked foods with pretty much no problem. After the fast, I have been eating slower and enjoying my food more and am attempting to eat more responsibly. I feel good and have started working on the farm now. We are building a clay oven as one of our projects and that is the one that holds my attention and enthusiasm most. I am leaving the forest in a couple days so i can go be by myself for a bit before I take a 3 day ferry ride to the Andaman Islands where I will spend the last of my time with Madeleine before returning and traveling more through the Indian mainland.

Madeleine and I went to Chennai (a big city 3 hours north of here) to book our ferry but when we got there we found out that we cant buy tickets more than 5 days in advance for any sailing. The sailings are erratic and that day all the people there freaked out and had a protest and blocked off the main road outside the port because their boat was rescheduled. It was a pretty intriguing thing to be in the middle of. The cops wound up coming and got them out of the road and tried to calm everyone down and then we left back to Pondicherry.

India.....

I haven't posted in a long time, but hey absence makes the reader grow fonder....Right? So I left Orcas and spent a week with my bro Nathan and my Dad and did a lil rock climbing in the Gym (more like plastic climbing but hey it does the trick). Then I got a ride from Seattle straight down to San Francisco where I stayed at my friends' Sid and Quinn's apartment for two weeks and had a great time. Sid and I started ice skating alot and rocked it. I ate it alot and still have some gnarly ice scabs but it was well worth it. It was really nice getting to hang out with Hailey, Sid and Quinn. The four of us had a fantastic, gut-swelling thanksgiving together as well.

I finally got tired of my Dreads and they cut them off and Hailey shaved my head with a razor (she did a great job and was very gentle, though I cut myself once pretty bad before she took the razor away from me :)

I left San Fran on Sunday, Dec 3rd and made it down to my relatives on my Dads side that I stayed with last year and went rock climbing (again at a gym) and got good and sore and wound up with plenty of blisters (which were well worth it). I also played a lot of video games, which I don't get to do very often so I played hard. It was really nice to see them again, even though it was only for a short time.

My cousin Ryan gave me a lift to the airport on Wed and I flew out at 6pm and had a 13 hour flight to Moscow, Russia with a 2 hour layover before a 10 hour flight to Bombay (MumBai) and another 8 hour layover where they graciously put me on an earlier flight and took my last flight for one hour to Goa. Altogether it was about 35 hours of airports.

My initial impression of India (from the airport) was one of slight disbelief that I was even there. All outside the airport it looked like a jungle with the other-worldly trees and palms everywhere and the lack of white people. In MumBai I had to get a shuttle from one side of the airport to the other (domestic) side about 7 km away and on that drive along the airport's perimeter was the worst slum I had ever seen; It was a mass of corrugated rusty roofs and tarps and walkways with shack built upon shack and jammed next to each other and supporting one another. My first thought was, there is no way people live there and sure enough I saw people walking around and stringing up laundry. I wish I would have taken a picture as it is difficult to describe the filth and discord that the picture in my mind conveys. After that when I landed in Goa, I got pretty depressed (which is quite rare for me). I had no idea where I was going or what to do so I asked the first white guy that appeared to travel as I do about places to go. He was from Finland and helped me a lot. He sent me to a place called Baga with high praises. But when I got there I found a filthy little tourist ton loaded with fat white people and not a budget/holistic worldly traveler to be seen anywhere. I had to haggle for a couple hours at different hotels before I found a price I was reluctantly willing to accept. All I wanted to do was get out of there. Just being there made me want to get back on a plane and go home and get away from all these Can-Cun parasites (Both the tourists and the "Locals"). The Locals I later found out weren't even Local. They cam from Dehli and other big cities to rape the place and make money, but there are so many of these people that few make any money at all and spend there life saving in the hopes that they can make a good living off the tourists here. The Locals had pretty much all moved away. Goa was at one time a British/Portuguese colony for hundreds of years and didn't become part of India until the early 60s and at that time most of the locals left to England and Portugal when it became a part of India. So the place was now soulless. You cant even walk on the beach without a million Indians screaming at you "My friend, Good morning" "Good Morning my friend" and then adding in what they wanted to sell you and what not. And I quickly found myself thinking "you're not my friend, you just want my money". I am used to that kind of mentality from Central America. Everywhere that's moderately touristic is full of beggars and people trying to make a buck off the "rich" tourists. I am not saying that it is wrong at all. It is only natural that people would think that way, but the happiest people I see live the simplest; they have very little money and very basic lives that are family based and money is but means to a very small end and the love of their family is the important thing to them. All these other people hustling to make a buck seem utterly miserable in comparison. But we are taught our values now from billboards and commercials and entertainment almost as much if not more so than from family structure and it seems to be ever the worse in these third world countries so it's not very surprising.

But even with these annoyances and disheartening aspects, the inspirational beauty and color in this country are astounding. The food is nothing short of incredible and makes Indian food from home seem fraudulent. I can get a massive meal here of epic quality for less than a dollar. Of course I have to be very careful about what I eat and it all needs to be cooked very well since the water here is all heavily contaminated. The roads are insane. They are all very small, probably a foot wider on the average than our one lane roads at home, but they are meant for a two way road. The roads are seemingly one way and you drive on the left side of the road, but basically you drive where you fit and play a perpetual game of chicken with any oncoming cars. Both ways, the road is considered one-way until an oncoming car appears. The most popular way to die here is in vehicular accidents, which is why I will be taking the train when ever possible.

I am currently in Hampi; a little town surrounded by beautiful, sprawling hindu temples that are 700 years old. You can spend days here seeing them all and what you see is supposedly only 10% of the ruins that still lie uncovered. This place in the middle of a boulder-strewn are that is a boulderer's (rock climbing without ropes) paradise. I went bouldering with some friends the other day here and my feet are raw from walking and climbing barefoot all day but it was totally worth it. The Local Legend of how these oddly misplaced-looking boulders got here is as follows: Hanuman (the monkey god) was on his way to build a Bridge from India to Sri Lanka and he and all his monkey minions were bringing these rocks for the bridge but were, for whatever reason, detained here in hampi and have been here ever since. And there are a ton of monkeys here. And I never quite knew how disgusting monkeys really were until now. But the description is far too graphic for me to post so I'll refrain.

Well tomorrow I am making my way to Pondicherry to spend Christmas and new years with Madeleine and then continue my way south.