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.