My last entry.

Soooo....

I'm home and this is all going to be a little disjointed and probably missing stuff that my feeble memory has already lost. I'm sitting in a cafe in Naples Florida, which aside from the weather has, lets see.....nothing in common with India. I'd written a bit of a draft from Mumbai the day before i left, I'll start with that, and then add on.

This is one of my favorite places in India. Mumbai, a city I knew I would love, a city I've been wanting to go to my whole life. Seeing it so soon after a tragedy is an interesting thing, the city has almost let me in to experience an intimacy that most foreigners would never get to see. We came in 2 days ago, I didn't write for fear of worrying people. It was the day after everything had subsided. We'd met up with Steve and Rob in the kind of bland countryside of Lonavla, apparently business people's town of choice for conferences and so crazily inflated hotel prices for bad quality rooms. But we had fun, it was such a relief to see them an we had our Thanksgiving dinner that night in, amusingly, a vegetarian restaurant.

That night was actually really great and special, though it was a day later than thanksgiving it really felt like thanksgiving. We went around the table saying what we were thankful for, and though its amazing I'd only known these people for a couple of weeks, they were a pretty convincing makeshift family. I was really lucky to have their company.

After seeing the caves the next day, which were pretty great actually, following a long hike up to the top,, (Buddhist caves dating from 200 bc that nobody goes to because they are smaller than the ajanta caves) we took off for Mumbai on Sunday. We were a little nervous, or at least I was, and we insisted on taking a taxi ride into mumbai, no more public transport for me, and as soon as I arrived here I knew it was not a mistake.

We checked into Bentley's hotel in the heart of Colaba, nicely placed though on a side street, a little boutique hotel, and we talked to the owner for a while. He had a perspective that I'm beginning to see as an Indian resiliency. He spoke about how this is something that we will have to live with now as a world, the knowledge of this kind of street terrorism, that it is going to have to feel like how we have to deal with bombings sometimes he said. He said that the situation with India and Pakistan will only escalate through all of this, the pakistani CIA being rumored to be involved in this, and i can see that happening. He thinks India is on the edge, I wonder if its true.

Walking around Colaba for the first time, I saw an area that I would have loved a week ago, and still do, but seeing it for the first time the day after the shock was very, well, special, in a way. I hadn't realized how close Steve and Rob's hotel had been to Leopold's cafe. It was actually next door to it. And they had checked out the day before. WE thought that was as close as we could possibly feel to this whole thing, but we were so wrong. In the course of the past couple of days I have heard more first hand stories than I'd ever dreamed possible.

Perhaps the most unbelievable story I heard out of the whole thing was an australian friend of Rob's that they'd met the week before, at Leopold's Cafe, actually. His name also happens to be Steve. This steve is in his late 40's kind of a stocky type, not someone you'd want as your enemy, but with a wry and sort of jovial sense of humor. The sort of guy you know has a lot of life experience behind his eyes, someone who at the end of it all reminded me of Shantaram (main character in that book I'd mentioned before.) So steve told us what had happened to him in the attacks. He'd been sitting in the cafe with a japanese model, having dinner with her, when the first shots rang out in the cafe down below. They were eating upstairs in the little mezzanine area, and shots shattered the glass windows next to them.

Steve, who'd had some early military training, instinctively grabbed his date by the scruff of her neck and shoved her to the back wall. He remembered that the day before he'd seen a waiter opening up the grain cabinets and that there was nothing inside them. At that moment he threw open the cupboards and literally started grabbing people and shoving them into the cupboard.  Then he took one of the tables and threw it down the stairwell to block the doors, to try to keep the terrorists from coming up the stairs. It was a mad bloodbath downstairs, the gunmen killing in cold blood. When Steve threw the table down, unfortunately it was at the moment they were reloading their guns, and it was quiet. They heard the commotion, and bounded towards the door of the stairwell. The table wasn't going to jam the door enough, so steve threw the weight of his entire body up against it, ducking down as they shot right above his head. He told us later that he felt like his kids were going to know how he died; it could either be in a cupboard, or fighting to save others lives. He just did it instinctively.

There have to be two types of people in this world, because I don't see everyone doing what Steve did. I don't know if I would have been like that, probably woudn't have been strong enough anyway but you want to hope that you would be the kind of person who would help people out. When our Rob and Steve heard about this, they felt such a surge of emotions; how close they came to being there with steve, what would they have done? etc. Our Steve even felt a bit guilty he wasn't there to try to help people as a doctor. Anyway this Steve then took 2 german stewardesses and his japanese date down the street to his hotel to hide out, when the gunmen had left, after killing 9 people. he'd called his brother before holding down the door, and waking him in the middle of the night, his bro didn't believe him! thought he was drunk or something, and then upon seeing it on the news guiltily called him immediately, then alerted the news, and within minutes steve as being hounded by the australian version of Good Morning America. who of course he didn't want to talk to.

This guy was just tough as nails, he didn't show much emotion, but I was sure he must have felt some, I can't imagine going through something like that. Rob said that he felt had they been there, they wouldn't have made it. He just had a feeling about it, we all felt eerie. The man who'd measured Steve's suit only days before was shot in the head and killed. The guy who worked at the chemist was shot while closing up his shop at the end of the day, the guy who sold me some earrings spilled his story of seeing ht gunmen running through the streets killing people and hiding out in the alleyway. There were just stories upon stories. The cabdrivers seemed eager to talk about it too. Everyone seemed to want to talk about it, which surprised me a bit. Maybe that was their way of dealing.

Amazingly, Leopold's reopened only 2 days later, the waiters went back to work, and the bullet holes were covered up by paintings. So no workers comp or time off for post traumatic stress disorder there, oh no. Same waiters, back to work, minus the couple who jumped on hand grenades to try to save their fellow man. Amazing. And here was a city, hit by tragedy, just pulling it together, but trying to make a statement to the world, to the government, that they aren't doing enough, that there is too much corruption (I've never seen such a corrupt and virtually ineffective police system) and had it been more organized or the police more trained that it wouldn't have been able to get this out of hand.

The day before my last day, I did something that at first seemed unconventional and maybe unethical, i signed up for a "slum tour" of the biggest slum in Asia. 1.7 km and home to 1 million people. Unbelievable. And it turned out to be a very rewarding experience. When I got in the car with our driver I was expecting to be whisked away into a Christian Children's fund ad, where everyone is crying and a child has a single tear coming down her cheek as she sits on a pile of trash. The pile of trash part and the child was true, but there was a remarkable difference in attitude from what I expected. The reality is, this is their reality. The conditions in where they live, and its a day to day thing. They aren't going to be sitting here crying about their daily life, in fact it was like a colony of worker bees. Ive never seen such a humming factory like society. This slum puts out 660 million dollars worth of products every year, and we took a tour of their plastic recycling department; of course there are no health codes and it is clearly dangerous with all the metal instruments, but people are going about their jobs. We saw people making clay pots, people recycling vegetable oil cans, people sewing clothes in a factory, putting labels on it (labels, our ever important labels), people making bread and cookies. Each part of the slum its own little factory.

And the people were so warm and welcoming, big grins lighting up their faces. WE walked through the residential part, the tiniest little rooms and alleyways, felt like we were underground but we weren't. And little convenience stores set up inside! We visited a nursery school set up by the government, and I actually felt a tangible feeling that I could teach in a place like that someday, It doesn't feel like a far off notion to me anymore, and its something I'll think about for the future.

I'm not saying this place is an ideal living situation, or that things shouldn't be done to help people who are living with terrible health conditions, but I was absolutely floored by, once again, the resiliency. This was an NGO set up tour, and the proceeds go to help the people, I think an organization like that is amazing to open peoples eyes to the reality of these places in a way that you wouldn't imagine, and it was a real highlight of my entire trip to India.

The last night I was in Mumbai, my last night in India, my friends and I were doing some last minute shopping, when we walked out it turned out we were smack in the middle of a march. Thousands and thousands of Indians, fired up, a lot of them young college students, just lining the streets, everyone marching towards the gateway of india, some chanting, the only word I recognized was "pakistan" chanted with disdain. Waving of Indian flags, and everyone in shirts which read "Mumbai Meri Jaan" or "I love Mumbai"... (I noticed the indians wore it written in english and the handful of foreigners we saw had it written in hindi, including us.) The protest/march was one of the memories that I think will be with me always. Never had I been in the company of more people, never had I felt almost carried away by the palpable energy/anger... it felt like it was on the edge of erupting to me, especially the rhythmic chanting about pakistan. I was trying while steve was taking pics to remain on the peripheral, thinking, worst case scenario, if they throw a hand grenade into this crowed I want to be able to run away, not get trampled to death. How easy would it have been for that to happen, for everyone to then join a stampede, you can see how this stuff happens in india, especially in a culture where clamoring for public transportation could result in bruises and broken bones, all to be followed by a cordial attitude the whole ride, by the way, a concept which i find amusing and bizarre.

I reached my limit at last, and almost started to panic as I realized we'd been all but swallowed by the crowd, and it took us a good half hour to get out of it. The noise, the heat, the crowd, it was too much. Something that moved me substantially was a man that came up to us, seeing our shirts, and smiled broadly. He extended his hand and shook ours vigorously, proclaiming with great emotion "you are saving India. People like you. You are not scared. Please still love India. Please come back again and again. Tell your friends not to be scared. India loves YOU!"

After being in a country for almost 4 months and feeling every emotion possible in a human being, sometimes you don't know if you are really liked or loved by a country's people. At that moment, I knew this man was really sincere, and it felt amazing to be there, right then. To keep walking with the people, fearful or not, to be privy to a scene that people would only see on their TV screens for a brief moment on CNN, another troubled story from another "troubled" part of the world. The only other foreigners were journalists, and for a moment I almost felt like one of them. I almost wanted to BE one of them. I felt part of it, I felt unified with Mumbai, and in a way, unified with Indians in a way that didn't happen until that very last night.

Drained, we returned to our hotel rooms covered in sweat, and then did a quick about face getting into our finest clothes to go out on the town one last time. The four of us, Brit, Rob, Steve and I went out for a nice dinner and then to the top of the Intercontinental hotel for a very overpriced beer by the poolside. The next morning Steve and Brit left for the airport, and Rob and I had one day to finish our shopping and for me to get ready to leave. We hit Chor Bazaar, a place I went more than a couple times in my few days there, (oh and I bought an amazing glass lamp there, like huge and amazing and it was a SAGA trying to get that thing as a carry on on the plane, I even ended up in tears begging them not to check it saying "you have no IDEA how important this lamp is to me!" (I am clearly my mothers daughter), but they finally were tired of dealing with me and I was very very very late to the airport cuz of a traffic jam so they just told me to get on with it already and I could take it!)

Anyway, Chor Bazaar is a mostly Muslim market, teeming with Goats we weren't sure what for, don't think they were just for mutton, though the street we were on was called Mutton St! There seemed to be one on a leash in front of every store! The whole bazaar seemed like a step back through time, everything seemed covered in an inch of dust, old relics from a different age. i bought several antiques, and we went into the back of this old mans' store into a veritable treasure trove of old wooden items, boy would I like to run an import/export business sometime! Truly amazing stuff. And right up until that last possible moment we were in that bazaar, and then eating my last indian meal in a restaurant in colaba, and then a 3 hour harrowing taxi ride, where the driver insisted we'd have to pay him 600 more rupees for AC so we just opened the windows and got covered by a thick layer of grime, and coughed up a lung. And I almost didn't make the flight.  I cannot think of a more appropriate way to be spit out of India. Crazy, chaotic and wonderful, as always.

So... I am almost ready to bring this thing to a real close. But I have left out a good little story about the International Indian Film Festival held in Goa... that we crashed! A total non-sequitur yes, but it needs to be told.

So Kristin and I knew about the film festival, we wanted to check it out. It is held in Panaji, the capital of Goa. Goa is kind of a big place though so it was a bit of a taxi ride away. I couldn't imagine being there though and not at least trying to see how far in we could get. Being backpackers of course we didn't have quite the right apparel, but I had just bought this simple black linen dress and I had my silver tibetan necklace, so I thought, make yourself look classy and understated. No one knows the price of a simple black dress! (in this case 6 bucks!)...Kristin didn't really have anything to wear, but she did have a cute shirt, so we were on a mission. We found her a perfect pair of black linen pants, and some great jewelry on the street. We bought a little bottle of Fenny (Goan coconut liquor, only sold in goa!) and mixed it with Limca, this lemon lime soda, what a fabulous little drink! And turned on the music as we got ready.

An hour later, we were standing in Panaji in front of the main theater where the festival was held, right next to the red carpet! We had just walked up to the security gate, and they said "passes?" and kristin just said "film festival!" quite confidently, and though a ridiculous thing to say, it seemed to do the trick! They nodded and waved us in. We got a glass of wine at the wine kiosk and started making small talk to the wine guys! After a few minutes, this little man with a huge professional camera and a big press badge started taking photos of us! Kristin looked blaze, and I flashed a big cheesy grin. The man introduced himself as St. Andrew, which is exactly what he turned out to be, he was like a little sprite, an appariton, arriving at the exact time we needed him!

Kristin basically said "do you know where the afterparty is tonight?" and he said "well its on a boat but unfortunately i don't have any invites"... and she was just basically like "oh, we'd really like to go, actually." just totally matter of fact!  and after conversing like this for a bit, he told us that he'd give us a call. We never expected what happened next. The phone rang and he said at first he couldn't get us on the boat, but he'd take us somewhere else.  "no, we really would like to go on the boat, kristin said. the vip party." 

She put me on the phone. and I pulled the acting card out, "im actually an actess in new york city, and I would really like to be a part of this tonight." unbeliveably, it worked. he called us back 5 minutes later, and said "where are you now, we hve to go right now!" and minutes later we were at the entrance of a giant cruise ship, being introduced to Dominick and Vanessa, the technical director and his wife, given beautiful cream colored invites with gold writing, and then there we were, going through a security check, and then we went into these little lifeboats, to the REAL BOAT! A casino boat, where we were greeted by a long line of hosts, and whisked away to a beautiful buffet and casino! We had dinner with the general manager, of the entire film festival! The entire evening was unbelievably surreal.  Afterward, St. Andrew took us to all the premier clubs in Goa, where everyone seemed to know him and like him, and waved us in for free in front of the line, stuffed to the gils with people. What an incredible night!  

And I know I wrote about Osho ashram already, so I'll leave it at that. An experience in its own. Matching robes, dynamic meditation I can't posibly describe, and an oddly materialistic capitalistic approach to meditation for westerners. Odd, interesting, bothersome, and something I'm happy I did.

And I guess that just about sums it up. I never knew what was coming next, the way you never do in life really, except that in traveling everything is more concentrated and sped up.  I'm sitting here in Naples Florida, still recovering, from jetlag and from a different pace of life. I almost miss the sound of the tuck-tucks honking their horns outside, the dirt roads, the music everywhere, the people living every single aspect of their lives in front of your face, expressing themselves, their opinions, selling you things ...  "madam, do you want to buy a drum?" echoes still in my head.  I close my eyes when I go to sleep at night and I see images, almost like I just got back from some kind of war, clearly not war, but images accost me. I already miss it. I already miss the amazing friends I met there, solid, good, kind loving people. My trip could not have been better, and i know I'll adjust to this all again eventually, though I don't want to lose all of India and settle here without thinking about what I've seen, what I've experienced. India finally became what I'd always hoped it would be, and then some.

One thing I do know.... I"m going back.

Another Update

(papa Andy)

Arjana has been in Mumbai since the weekend, staying with friends, not far from the Cafe Leopold.  All is well with her, and Mumbai is quickly returning to normal.  She commented to me about the amazing resilience of the Mumbaikers, who want to get on with daily life as quickly as possible. The Cafe Leopold is back in business and buzzing with customers (bullet-ridden walls now covered with paintings), as are the street markets.  She says everyone wants to talk about what happened, from the store owners to the cab drivers, so she has heard many absolutely amazing stories of courage and heroism which she will hopefully add to this blog.   Take a look at these pictures, recently posted by the Boston Globe.

In her remaining few days, she is enjoying the exciting city of Mumbai and all it has to offer.  It is  in stark contrast to the emotional depths of the tragedy, but its also the best way to help the Mumbaikers return to normalcy.  

Arjana returns to the US on Friday ... and boy, will we be happy to see her!

Update

(posted by papa Andy)

Talked with Arjana this morning (evening her time).  She and Kristin took a pedicab from Pune to a small place halfway between Pune and Mumbai, reuniting with their two friends (the American doctor and the Aussie miner) who left Mumbai after narrowly missing the carnage at Cafe Leopold.  They will stay in the village together for the next few days, visiting some sights in the area that are off the well-traveled tourist route.  They don't want to be in any crowds of foreign tourists ...

So in short, the four are in good moods and celebrating their good fortune ... counting their lucky stars ... while watching the ongoing horror of Mumbai via their TV set. 

A very, very weird thanksgiving.

I'm feeling better than I was. I finally got in touch with my friends, who, to my delight, went to his girlfriends uncle's house yesterday before it all happened, and were, like i was afraid of, in Leopold's Cafe the night before the attacks. Had they been there at that time the next day.... or had the attacks been one day later... i don't wanna think about it. Leopold's is featured in the super famous "Shanatram" which I'd just started reading, and was excited to go there tonight after thanksgiving dinner, at about 9 :30, the same time they opened fire on the place last night kicking off a series of attacks so far killing over 100.  it is just mind boggling how close it was in a way.  kristin and i, my friend i met up with the other day, were supposed to go to mumbai today for a thanksgiving dinner with rob and stever. got frantic calls from the parents last night alerting me to the fact any of it even happened, since i am in a bubble that yesterday felt really awesome and today is tinged with a feeling of resentment that everyone has continued on their blissed out, ignorant, self serving journeys toward enlightenment and there hasn't even been an announcement made that people are dead and a city is under lockdown.  Finally talking to steve on the phone just now, i learned they'd tried me but hadn't been able to get through, tons of times, and were going into the worst of it to try to find me later when i called them. tomorrow, they are hoping to get into a taxi and drive down here to pune, pick up kristin and i, and take us to the uncle's  country house in the middle of... the country. thank god, if that happens i couldn't ask for anything more. there we were, going to take a train to mumbai, into the central train station, where there are horrible graphic pics in the newspaper of blood stained floors, and a white couple dead by the Taj pool. I ran into my friend Raynor from a couple of weeks ago here at this ashram, completely crazy coincidence, and he told me this morning that he was going to stay at the taj but declined because of a new aversion to overpriced things - helped, he said, by his recent lessons in frugality by his new backpacker friends. god its lucky he wasn't THERE.  This morning and last night I was so blase with mom because i didn't get the severity of this. When we finally moved out of our hot shower, light as a feather bed in the ashram guesthouse, down the block back to india in a little room with a tv and i could see some coverage, i was really affected. Ill tell you, knock on wood, luck has really been on our side today. And for that, on thanksgiving, i think thats reason to give thanks. I'm not in the right mood to write about the brilliant time kristin and i had in goa together, and how we tore up the film festival, im not even in the right mood to tell you about the infamous Osho Ashram, which was pretty darn cool yesterday i might add, though ive never been wearing a maroon robe with everyone else also wearing one before, or having to wear a white dress resembling a bedsheet while listening and watching the audio/videotapes of a 10 years dead Guru with a thick indian accent talking about the celebration of the joys of life, a message i totally agree with actually but today just seems self serving. I"m not in the mood, but I'll write it later. I am sad today I'm not home, sad I'm not in Boston with the traditional crew, and the artichoke dip! :), sad I'm not with Chris in Florida like I'd said I'd be, and sad that there's no turkey tonight and i think we're saving the tandoori chicken for tomorrow night. Tonight there is a japanese place kristin and i will try outside the walls of this fake utopia. I'm happy i stayed the extra days, being here and experiencing this and all these meditations is crazy and cool, my time at the film festival was awesome, and hopefully in a few days things will simmer down and i can at least hire a driver around mumbai and maybe be an extra in the bollywood movie i really wanted to do. I think the caves might be scrapped, you can't see everything, and clearly my first priority is safety. I"m so disappointed this happened, im so irate peoples lives have to end over this nonsense. Steve told me that the guy who'd measured his suit two days ago in colaba (they used to be staying next to the taj) died from a bullet through the brain last night. and today the other man is still trying to do business, in a total daze. How tragic. And I'm in a "meditation resort" that's supposed to be all about heart. Where's the vigil that should be happening tonight? My heart goes out to all those lives lost today, and to the folks from the US, who've lost their parent or their sibling this thanksgiving. Sorry for the total holiday buzzkill of a blog, but I hope you have good thanksgivings and I miss you all. Next time I"ll talk about the film festival, hopefully from a beautiful country estate. Love xoxoxxo Arjana

im safe.

im ok, im not in mumbai, im still in pune at a meditation resort ashram type place. i don't have time to write right now, ive gotten scores of worried emails, my friends im supposed to have T-giving dinner with tonight are in mumbai in the area where everything is happening, can't reach them and havent heard from them since before it happened, i am very concerned about them, and so do not feel like writing a typical blog today, though i would have cranked a great one out yesterday if id had access to internet. today is definitely getting scarier by the hour, all i can say is im with my friend kristin and we are safe. ill keep you all posted as much as i can, no worries. love arjana

GOA!

I've just waded through water on the shores of a long, overcrowded goa beach, and waded through the guys asking "darling, how about a jet ski?" or "how about some cocaine?" i kid you not. I have, to your approval I'd guess, declined on both offers. I"m sitting in an "internet cafe" more like the kitchen of someone's house, looks like, on a side road off the beach, you get two blocks away from the main drag and you feel like you are in inidia again, not a sea of rotund white whale-like russian tourists wearing gstring bikinis.... yeah. india? odd. all I can say is there must be some really good rates from moscow to goa, though where are these people in the rest of india? must just come here for a cheap beach vacation. heh. Not to sound like a hater. or a "superior tourist." I've been basically living life in the lap of luxury myself. well not really luxury, i still don't have ac or a tv, but im within 100 meters of the beach for god's sake. I"ve been galavanting around Anjuna beach for the last 4 days, (Goa), and now today I moved all of 4 kilometers south to Calagute/Baga beaches and changed hotels to "Johnny's Hotel" where Johnny and his wife and son have given me a good room with a view of the ocean and tons of palm trees out my window and hot water! I moved from Anjuna because it was very quiet (which is nice in theory or when you have friends) and very spread out (which is fine if you are on a scooter, which a zillion people are, a lot of them foreigners and you don't even have to show a license..... seriously. So there are all these people driving around trying to remember to stay to the left of the road... I chose to pass on that. But I did ride on the back of my friends' scooters this week, and it was fine... except one time trying to park we rolled over... but only a big old scrape on my leg (and my friend is an ER doctor so it was all good! haha) but im done with the scooters now, so don't be worried.

Yeah, so I've been hanging out with 2 guys who live in Australia, one from Perth, Rob, and one from the States living in Alice springs and working as an ER doctor... Steve. These guys were just superb guys. Awesome... met them the frist night I came to goa, which was a total bout of good luck, because I had taken a train from fort Kochin in Kerala overnight to  Gokarna, a peaceful beachtown, and in the morning there I was talking to some old indian guys on the train when i asked the conductor how much longer to gokarna, and he said we'd just passed it! For the first time in India's history, the train was 1 hour early!! what?! so i decided just to forget it, i didn't want to backtrack, so i just moved right on to goa. I think it was a fine move, I really can't be bothered moving every day now I have just too much stuff and my energy is lower, and the pace of life slows down considerably when all you do every day is sample Goan curries, swim in the tranquil waves, and have a kingfisher pint by the sea every day. Yeah, life continues to be sweet. The three of us really just had the greatest time, hitting the super huge flea market on wednesday in Anjuna beach.  I helped my friends find some souveniers and yes, maybe picked up a couple more textiles for myself.  Steve and i sent some stuff home yesterday in the post, i really ran out of room! (and he is from NH and was wearing a newton south baseball hat cuz his bro used to be a guidance counselor there! what? such a small world!!)
Every day we went to Vagator, the neighboring village/beach and went swimming by the cliffside, on top of which is a fort overlooking the beach. Every day we bought a coconut from a fruit seller woman named Lotus, every day we'd rate the coconuts as being better or worse than the day before. Really important topics I have to deal with now, gotta say. 
Every morning I am compiling creative breakfast choices, ive gotten in the habit of doing a 2 fried eggs with vegetable curry combo, with an avocado shake and a cup of chai to top it off. Another favorite for dinner is tikka calamari, oh my god you are in heaven. There are some really trippy looking restaurants, one we were eating in a little hut with these weird globe lights, and these giant mushroom statues, kinda like eating in alice in wonderland, you can see how the place both attracts and was furthered on by aging hippies, or maybe some new hippies too. There are a lot of middle aged foreigners looking like they live here at least semi permanently, going to the grocery store on their scooters, etc... part of the society here, it is interesting. 

so i said goodbye to steve and rob today, they took a train to mumbai and might be staying in his girlfriends' uncles' palace out there... hey hey, nice work if you can get it, and we are thinking i might meet them up there for a good thanksgiving dinner, and i'll be with a fellow american! So im thinking i might roll into mumbai on the 27th, would be nice to not be alone for thanksgiving dinner. Though i wonder what we'll eat, i m thinking a tandoori chicken and maybe some weird fruit chutney instead of cranberry sauce? we'll see. 

The last time that I wrote, I was on my way to Allepey for the houseboat. Wow that was fun, it was a real deluxe boat. unfortunately most of our people were coming from the ashram and didn't arrive till 4 so we only had limited time to really cruise along the water, but it was basically a party of 13 people on a beautiful boat, sound system and everything! we danced on it, talked, had amazing keralan food made by our own chefs, and they even balanced 4 cups n the tops of their heads for us after we gave them a rum or 2, was pretty funny. The next couple of days, I headed up to fort kochin, where I went to a martial arts performance of special keralan martial arts, and i saw another katakhali show like i did in kumily, complete with the natural green facepaint and the live music, pretty cool, and kochi was really interesting. portuguese influence from the days of the spice trade, it reminded me a little of the french quarter of pondicherry, it was very quiet and semi european. There were huge chinese fishing nets hanging over the pier, and there is a quarter called jewtown, though only 18 jews still live there! There I saw a beautiful synogogue, and couldn't resist buying a wooded "malabar box" like my mother bought on her trip 35 years ago, its gorgeous but totally huge and heavy, and the hanging candleholder i bought didn't help matters either! but they are totally unique and I swear my apartment is going to rock. I happened to bump into Sarah, a londoner I met briefly in the ocean in varkala, and we moved right in to the same room together! it was great to get to know her as well, man all of these great people i'll tell you, you really meet some great ones while travelling. i've really enjoyed the company of so many of these people, in fact tonight my friend Lea from the ashram is in goa with her husband, about an hour away statying at a really nice hotel, so i'm going to join them for dinner there tonight! how nice! love it. 

Anyway sarah and I spent a couple of days together, having amazing dinners at this place right on the boat jetty, and one day i took another cruise through the backwaters which i was really glad i did because i got to see so much more than on the houseboat. It was a small boat, and there were 4 of us, 3 germans and myself, and two guys rowing us around. we got to float through the smallest of the canals, surrounded as far as the eye could sea in a flourish or green foliage, palm leaves, and the sound of crickets, and the occaional cow standing in the swamplike marshes, so surreal. And we got to see how they use the coconuts to make rope, etc. kerala means land of the coconuts and you can see why. the little villages on the waters edge were tranquil, and people would be washing their clothes or even taking a bath in the water, everything was very quiet. that was a great day. 

I will share some tremendously bad news though, waited till the end of the email because i wanted to stress how great everything has been but when i left kochi, i went to the train station, and in the time of less than 5 minutes on the platform, someone stole my camera. 500 pictures, some videos, all my pics of kerala and my friends, i was just gutted. i still don't konw how it happened, it is mind boggling, and i discovered it as soon as i got on the train. oh my god was i sad. but what can you do? i have to remind myself it is a material item, and though i like to take pics, we never look at them every day anyway and no one can take away my memories. its still mad dissapointing though. so now i have purchased a seriously ghetto old school film camera for 10 bucks, and 8 rols of film and free batteries, totalling 30 bucks. i'll get it all put on disks in mumbai so they'll be digital files, but the insurance deductable is more than the cost of the camera, so i'll probably be buying yet another new one when i get home. terrible.And im using an old school nokia phone from 2001 that barely holds charge! me and technology. im just lucky nothing else was stolen, i had all my important papers/iphone under my shirt, thankfully!

Train platforms haven't really brought me much luck... one time Camille and I (forgot to put this in an old blog, cant' believe it) were trying to get on a womans compartment of a train, and we were riding general calss, and the train pulled up after we'd waited for 2 hours, and we had asked where the compartment was going to be, and he said all the way to the left. well, when it pulled up it was all the way to the right! and we had all of our bags on us and so we started to run all the way down the platform when the train started moving! so camille jumped on the first car we could, and then it was moving faster and faster and i screamed for this guy to help me, and i had to take off al lmy bags cuz the weight was pulling me back, and my magazine fell into the ample space between the tracks and the platform, and i was worried my leg would follow suit. but the guy got my stuff in, and then i realized i had no choice but to make a flying leap into the train, grabbing his arm with one hand and the rail on the side of the train with the other i hoisted myself in, hanging on the side of the train i brought myself in on my stomach. i shook for about an hour, it was absolutely terrifying. i am never going without a designated seat/car again!!! ever on this trip! it was enough for me. 

ok i have to go walk a couple of kilometers back to my beach house and get ready to go to my friends for dinner, hope i will get to writing in a couple of days again! miss you all getting to the end kind of excited but it will be weird at the same time. xxx arj

Beach Bum. No joke.

I'm getting worse and worse with keeping up with this writing thing, the more i hang out with people and get distracted at the beach! I am in Varkala, still, the same place I was last time i wrote! but ive been in and out of an ashram, and am now enjoying a very slow paced and tranquil life, getting up whenever, spending waaay too much time at  beachside cafes on the clifftop overlooking the ocean with maybe a newspaper in hand, chatting to my canadian friends Brit or Raynor, or Chris the aussie, very interesting people, she an art exhibition designer and Raynor a kind of semi-retired bank executive... and all of us currently without jobs but i doubt for long with them; two really intelligent and interesting and fun people. I spend time by the beachside, or like today, venture into town on an autorickshaw to try to get some business taken care of, like my phone really breaking (maybe because ... see 3rd paragraph haha) and needing to get some money out of the bank. By night, there are funny indian beach parties, taking place at one of the beachside restaurants on the strip, like "rock and roll" where the guy stands outside and smiles, beckoning people to come on in and "boogie!"... misspelled menu items galore, creative attempts at cocktails (we bonded with a waiter one night when eating in a tree hut suspended above the restaurant, found out i was a bartender and came running back with a notepad and pen asking for drink recipes and names, i named my favorite maritini after myself and told him to credit me on the menu when they add it!! haha)... or the "funky art cafe" we went to last night where they had a demonstration for what felt like hours of little kids bollywood style dance troups, these kids were absolutely fantastic! had tons of costume changes and were obviously proud to show off their skills, the music punctuated between bollywood wonder hits with britney spears... ha. And then a spontaneous dance party last night where i was selecting the music on someones ipod... some slim pickings but we got down to jackson 5 and james brown at least!  The other night brit and i returned home at midnight to call it a night, and we heard this reggae coming from across the way, we decided to go back out and check it out and ended up part of another dance party, breaking it down to such timeless wonders as "fame" "ymca" and "flashdance"... clearly i was in heaven. and the indian guys who are out there on the dancefloor are out there from beginning to end, an endless supply of energy.... sometimes as a westerner its hard to believe people want to dance that much, especially guys, without being drugged out with something or other, maybe they are but i have a feeling its a cultural thing and its cool. they are literally possessed by the music, and they just dance on their own, no women involved! pretty interesting.   So thats what life is like around here. We spend too much time in kasmiri and tibetan refugee jewelry shops, let me tell you, and today i just spent 60 american dollars!!!! on a silver necklace... but it was an amazing piece and it'll last forever and it is all solid silver worth more at home... so im happy. bargaining and haggling for the best prices everywhere, usually done with a smile here in this resorty beach town, but you can still get good deals, my friend even had some shirts made for herself and a dress!   The other night we were kicking round in this kasmiri jewelry shop and this guy who ran the store who must have been younger than me was telling us how we both had just the most beautiful blue eyes, etc etc, and was swinging this special stone around (like a magic 8 ball or ouiji board, you ask it personal questions in your head it answers yes or no, some interesting ones there haha) and he proposed marriage to me! finally on our way out the store, he said that if i said yes, he'd give me a really good discount on the rings!!! ha, i screamed the rings should be free! it was pretty funny at the time.   oh my god and the night before last i woke up screaming as i felt this large heavy slimy thing land on my face and then scurry away across it! it was absolutely shocking and i was catapulted out of sleep, thankfully brit was there too and shrieked "what is it?" we looked down and there was a gecko scampering way!! it had clearly gotten a little over-zealous and was attempting to crawl across the ceiling when it lost its grip and fell right down onto my face. the shock was mad! we laughed and laughed. you really never know what is happening next.   I've been eating exquisite food the whole time ive been here, ever since i got out of the ashram (which im getting to!)) The other night i feasted on grilled marlin and fish tikka (fish roasted in the tandoori oven after being marinated in special spices... my god it was good.) and you don't have the regular indian food problems either, everything is rinsed in filtered water, etc. my god im spoiled here. sometimes i get up in the morning, and over a glass of hot ginger honey think about how truly lucky i am to have gotten myself here.  i really don't know how this is my life but somehow it is, and i am certainly enjoying it before returning home to the impending deep freeze!!   Which brings me to the next thing, after harrassing the airline hardcore for the better part of the day, i was able to increase my stay by 10 days! if you'll remember, i was deciding to come home early before thanksgiving and go right to florida to see chris, but i came to the realiztion that i wasn't going to be able to see and do everything i wanted in that time and when am i going to be able to come back? Also in the Ashram my friend Raynor told me about an international film festival going on in goa at the end of november... he knows a producer from home that will be there, and if luck is on my side i might be able to be a part  of it all! I am also interested in going for one or 2 days to this other ashram basically catering to the notion of western/eastern fusion, active meditation, in basically a resort setting. other travellers have been raving and i have to say it peaked my interest and i want to go and check it out. I wouldn't have decided to stay without Chris' blessing, dropping out on thanksgiving plans would have made me furious if the situation was vice versa but he was amazing about it, supporting me all the way in my trip, saying he knew me better than to think i was really coming home early~ har har... and i couldn't be luckier really. im going to come home december 5th in time for my mom's bday and then take off to florida for a week or so before xmas.   so... the ashram. wow, i was there for only 2.5 days and it felt like a week at least. It was like entering another world, a world full of rules, trying to navigate through the system, do more yoga than i ever have in my entire life, and try not to talk during lunch and dinner, all fully vegetarian, all with our hands, kinda silent cafeteria style. Mornings the bell woke us at 5:20 AM! At 6 we were expected in the temple for chanting, "jaya ganesha jaya ganesha... etc" for about 2 hours, (im telling you only 2 days and it is completely stuck in my head), with meditation. To follow the first day was a special ceremony by the swamis down by the lake, i only half understood all that was going on, everyone walked to the lake and jumped in and swam, including me, but that first morning it all seemed a little weird, though i think it was because id just arrived. The yoga class the first time i found frustrating, as i usually find yoga classes, but invigorating at the same time. i felt very awake and healthy, though my body was aching. the whole program was a 2 week thing, but most people don't seem to make it through the whole 2 weeks, for various reasons. My friend got tired of all of the somewhat arbitrary rules (depending on your perspective) as would i have i think, and when he was declined the ability to leave during dinner to check out an orphanage he wanted to donate money to, he got out. and came to varkala to hang out with us. Made everyone see the not so pretty side of these supposedly "enlightened" people... but it works for some.   As my friends and i were saying, we think we might be more inclined to be a part of a more buddhist type ashram, the meditation and yoga are fine but some of the religious overtones and chanting can be a bit much if thats not your game. 2 yoga classes a day though, total of 4 hours a day. meditation 2 times a day, 2 meals a day, and youre just so busy all day and it feels like weeks in a day! but i was with camille and brit and i was happy about that, i lived in the women's dorm, and attended a lecture session that was a talk on vegetarianism and some spiritual stuff, staying away from pungent tastes and aromas like chili and garlic and onions, etc... i have to admit i laughed at myself when i found myself eating all those things my first meal out!   I admire the people who are so diligent they keep up the pace of that every day, exhausting but also exhilarating for a lot of people, and i was happy that i was able to see it all firsthand. my 2 days there were aboslutely worthwhile and also it gave me all these new great friends too! and we didn't even go into it with the intention of making it a social thing, but you just never know who you are going to meet do you.   So i still have about 3 weeks left then! and tomorrow i am going with a couple of friends from the ashram to allepey where we are meeting others and going on fully furnished houseboats for 24 hours! complete with our own cook and everything! truly the lap of luxury. this is something ive been wanting to do the entire time and hopefully if it all falls into place ill be joining up to do it tomorrow, hopefully there is room for me but they are saying they can squeeze me in, heck ill even sleep on the floor i don't care. we will be able to see all of the backwaters, the little villages on the banks of the rivers, should be great.   ok im off to get some dinner, i think its going to be a crab curry tonight, they advertise their seafood right there in front of the restaurant, a la miami beach, pretty awesome. hope you are all well and wish you could be here on the beach with me!! xxx

Goin to an ashram...?!

I don't believe this. I was almost done with my blog, and then it all disappeared and they couldn't retrieve it and it saved itself as a deleted file... in short, i lost it. ok i'll start over, basically Ican't believe its been a whole week since I've last written a blog. Between frequent power outages, literally a daily thing, and me being in the "jungle" and all, it hasn't been easy. I am writing right now from Varkala, a touristy beach town thats really laid back and plays a lot of bob marley. Lots of dreadlocked backpacker types, some people seem to come here and stay for quite a while and i can see why. big sweeping cliffs, and a beach set at the bottom. the town and strip is basically on the cliffside. the beach is clean though the chairs and umbrellas are ridiculously expensive, because of all of the foreigners, but you don't feel weird in a bikini which is kind of amazing and nice but it certainly feels like bizarro-india.  no honking horns or even rickshaws, and it is funny to me to think about people who make whole trips to india about the beaches like this and must never really see the country at all. Yesterday i was in kovalum, another beach town, but i twas told over and over that varkala was better anyway, so i left after one day. a lot of old retirees on bus tours came through there, and i was starting to feel like i was in florida. ill save that fora few weeks from now, thanks. In any case there are lots of cute handicrafts and souveneirs, i of course want them all but am bursting out of my newly bought extra backpack already! of course i couldn't make it through these whole 3 months with only one little bag! i really had every intention... but its impossible there is too much good stuff and im going to decorate my whole apartment with it all im so excited!   Today I had a huge suprise... Camille, my friend ive been travelling with for the last 2 weeks until yesterday when we bid a sad goodbye, she went off to a yoga ashram for a  few days and we didn't think we'd see each other again, and so here i come to varkala, where i wasn't even supposed to be yet, and im walking down the beach when she yells out my name and there she is swimming in the ocean! with our other friend brit from pondicherry, who apparently is at the same ashram! total coincidence, and it was the ashrams day off, so they all came to varkala for the day. absolutely crazy. so i spent the day with them both and a bunch of people from the ashram, who were a lot less weird than i would have thought they would be i gotta say, except for the odd but amazing 7 year old japanese girl there with her mom who is apparently better at yoga than everyone combined, chants out the mantras, and did "magic" on my soup and my drink by waving her hands over it, actually totally seriously and deeply focused... it was odd but quite amazing. she is also very wise beyond her years... interesting to think about a 7 year old in that atmosphere but she seemed totally at home.   sooo... after talking to all these people about what they are doing there, a full program of daily yoga and meditation, meals included, dorm housing in the ashram, 5 am wakeups, and classes all day, they all told me i should come out there tomorrow and stay for the minimum of 3 days... and i agreed!!! unbelievable, tomorrow i am going to this ashram! i can't even believe it, i thought that kind of thing just wasn't going to happen this time, but now that this chance is here just for a couple of days i don't think i can pass up the experience, and i already have 2 friends there! so tomorrow afternoon i will take an autorickshaw an hour into the countryside and we'll see what happens! im pretty eager to see it all in action, a swami (teacher, guru type thing) leads it all, i really have no idea what to expect. so next up, arjana goes to an ashram after all. ha. i'll have to scoot through goa a bit faster to make it to mumbai by the 25th though!   This last week has been a whirlwind. after i last wrote, camille and i (wow this russian girl talking on video skype to her family is suuuupppper loud and obnoxious, jsut couldn't figure out the video and actually yelled "hey you! indian boy! get over here you told me this video is working and you liedto me!" and she couldn't turn it on. and shes really really loud. anyway.) camille and I took off for madurai on the train. we were unbelievably lucky and landed in the woman's compartment! the train guys even got on and kicked all the guys out, there were guys hiding under the seats, probably to stay with their girlfriends or something, i really don't know. but it was dramatic as they screamed for them to get out. We had a 7 hour ride through the countryside of tamil nadu, a truly scenic place, and the women were very curious about us. we did have prime seating though, we sat in the doorway of the compartment, looking out at the open scenery, no window. it was the best... apparently you can be fined for it but we didn't know it at the time.   Madurai was good. It is a big city but it wasn't as intrusive as chennai. Camille and I walked around, saw the main temple thats the main attraction, all wooden and colorful, and of course it was being remodeled and was under scaffolding! so dissapointing! but we walked around the inside, though most of it was for hindus only, which i understand but really cuts down on what we can see. We also ducked into some little stores, picking up ceramic tiles printed with hindi gods! yes, so practical, im now carting around ceramics in this new huge backpack. At night we sat on the rooftop restaurant, and we met a british guy who lived in bali and was on vacation... so many peoples stories here its unreal. worked in algeria too.   anyway from Madurai, we headed to Kumily, because we decided we'd go try our luck in the jungle! there is a place called periyar wildlife preserve, and there are 40 tigers there, as well as a couple hundred elephants, and some other stuff. we took a morning safari trek for 3 hours, and it was great! the funniest part of it was the guide, who took his job ultra seriously, and when we actually heard some noises in the forest, he darted across the field very spry and nimble, shushing everyone and saying "this here is not safety. we must move!" and acting like our lives were on the line... we were quite far away btw. i don't know if the drama was an act for us to feel more involved, or if he was really that insane. but it was pretty funny. we saw an elephant far away walking around, and heard a tiger! which i guess is rare, and we were up to our knees in mud and my shoes are just black, and we wore these handy leech socks, thankfully, cuz i got a few of them on them, luckily not on my flesh! it was great to be in nature, totally removed from the rest of india, and we even got to stay in a treehouse! that was our actual accomodation, a little hut in a tree you had to climb a ladder to with a bed and a mosquito net in it, it was kind of like camping, we'd just spit out the window into the forest when brushing our teeth! they also had a little lookout hut where you could see into the sanctuary, and we spent a couple hours just sitting up there. it was awesome. we also hit up a spice plantation to see how things work, where our spices come from , the original plants, it was so cool! we got a guided tour and sampled raw cocoa plants, coffee plants, all sorts of herbs and spices, you never really think where these things you eat all the time are coming from, and you don't even recognize them when they aren't prepared the way we are used to! We tried to take a boat ride that day but unbelievably everything was full/sold out, a recurring theme here at this time of year. it is all the indian tourists from the north who have holidays now and are flooding into the south, a popular destination... and you can see why. kerala is beyond lush and gorgeous, it is a greeen palm laden heaven. the scenery is maybe the most picturesque ive ever laid eyes on and its just amazing that people live here full time. anyway the boat ride was sold out so of course an enterpeneurial rickshaw driver talked us into an elephant ride! which was actaully pretty fun! a total tourist trap, mostly indian tourists though, and we got good pics of an elephant getting a bath, and some cute ones of a baby one, and a ride through the jungle for half an hour on the top of this absolutely mammoth animal! pretty fun.   when we left periyar, we started probably the most frightening day i've had in india. i mean seriously physically scary! the bus ride was absolutely out of control, i mean literally whipping around corners at breakneck speed, and we were on windy roads in the teahills! it reminded me of the rickety cliffside roads i drove on in puerto rico, only at 60 mph... you could feel the centrifugal motion of the bus, camille and i were kind of freaking out and also having a laugh, not much else you could do! of course next to us were peaceful indians, taking a nap! And that very same day we had to take a train to trivandrum, capital of kerala, which we had to wait for for a couple of hours, we killed the time by eating a less than steller cool pea curry... meaning not heated in quite a while but we didn't get sick... and we asked the guy to tell us which side the ladies compartment would be on so we could get the same deal worked out as last time. well he said all the way to the left so thats where we went, and then the train pulled up and of course it was at the total other side of the train, now these trains are really really long and we knew we only had a couple of minutes before it started, but we ran down the platform, couldn't just get on cuz the cars dont all have doors between them, and we were not in AC class, just general, which is insane and packed, but way cheaper, and so we didn't make it in time. The train started to move. Camille jumped on the nearest car, and i tried but my bag was pulling me back, so in one terrifying series of events, i ripped my bags off me and threw them to the guy on board, and then lost my magazine in the huge gap between the moving train and platform, thankfullynot my leg, though i had started to lose my footing. i knew i had to get on that train, all my stuff and camille were on that train, and so i screamed to the guy "help me!" and he held out his hand and i grabbed his arm, and with my other hand grabbed the rail on the side, and he hauled me up, as it sped up underneath me. once i got onboard i felt like crying, my hands were shaking so badly for an hour after! it was soooo scary! now i feel a bit scared from trains, but i have to take one in a few days so oh well...   Trivandrum to me now is remembered as the city where i got to watch a truly historical moment in America that I am finally proud of! Soooo proud of us, of Obama!!!  I demanded we have cnn where we stayed and we worked it out! i woke up at 5 am on the 5th and watched live streaming cbs coverage until his speech! i was thrilled, camille was even thrilled! we were totally into it. still would have loved to be in the country for that, but it was still pretty awesome from the other side of the world. We wrapped up our days together with a special dinner, the fish curries here are fabulous! And now, i saw her again and im going to join them tomorrow!you just never know whats around the corner around here.   there are just tons of backpackers in this part of india, and i see how differently they all react to it here. from the rude girl here in the net cafe to the totally well adjusted, to the old guy i met last night who moved to sri lanka after deciding to go there for a  week,and then ending his 25 year problematic marraiage cuz his wife wouldn't come out of england to live in sri lanka... wow. started a whole new life... as controversial as i think his move was, it really shows you how some people know they have to change something, and they just up and change their entire life in one move. on less of a drastic scale, it is nice to know that life is what you make it, that you have control over it, that it is up to you. i have no plans to relocate to sri lanka, but it is nice to know that you are only trapped in one place and one life if you make that choice, at least for us privileged sorts in these western countries we live in.   today an indian woman selling fruits and carrying them around in a basket on her head came up to me while i sat looking at the ocean in a restaurant for breakfast, and wanted me to buy her little red bananas. "how much?" i asked... "150 rupees!" (they should be about 15).... i laughed. but today i just felt like giving it to her anyway. i said, its not about the money. you just tell me how much they are really worth... and she smiled sheepishly and replied "about 20! heheh" and i just tossed her the 150... and then she started throwing mangos and bananas into my hands, no doubt now feeling bad she'd tried to dupe me! i told her to keep all of it, and i just took my 3 red bananas, she walked away with a giant smile on her face. and the boy this morning trying to sell me a plastic cobra or a political map of india (those were his two specialties, naturally) made a kissy face at me after i had smiled and politely said no... when he came back my way i summoned him over and just said, quite relaxed "you know, don't do that anymore to women. foreign or indian or whatever. ok? its really horrible and rude" and he looked at me and kinda smiled and said "yeah you are right, sorry madam" and you konw he's probably not going to stop but it made me feel good that id finally voiced my complaint to an indian guy about this! and it hadn't even made me angry.   i feel a familiarity with the people i didn't have before, an entertainment rather than an annoyance sometimes, and of course other times it is really an annoyance, but there is so much cool subtlety going on sometimes and you dont really "get it" for a good long time. and i think itll take another visit or two to really get it, but so far i haven't been so turned off to it that i'll never come back, and i think that is what is special about india.  it is so completely indescribable, just like everyone always says, you just have to see it for yourself.   ill let you know how the ashram goes!!! love arj

Aw its almost Halloween!

First off, yes there were 13 explosions in the northeast part of india today, they think its related to border tensions up there and i am of course ok, i hate hearing about bombings but i can't think about it, and it was very far away from me thank god.   but anyway... Life is good! Things have been great. The day after I last wrote, Camille and I ended up taking a walk through the main markets of pondicherry... it was a monday, and the day before had apparently been when everyone does the markets, but we were actually glad we went when we did. Most everything was closed but the flower market was in "full bloom". lord i make myself sick. anyway it was awesome. the women wear jasmine wreaths in their hair, i think especially on the holidays, and so there were tons of vendors weaving flowers. we bought some, and some guys working at one of the stalls stopped us and pinned them in the proper way, of course wanting pics with us and giving us addresses to have us send them! we bought little sweets and talked to the vendors and locals, the best thing about it was how friendly everyone was. seriously sweet, and not looking to sell us anything. they seemed pleased we were there, not always the feeling i get in india but very very welcome when i do. camille is so smiley and nice to everyone, full of energy of just arriving here, and a real pleasure to be around. im impressed/happy she is still seemingly not sick of me! haha, we are still travelling together, and her boyfriend is delayed by a few days, trekking in the north, so we might even have a little more time! im so happy to have her here, the days go by so fast and are so much fun (except for today partly but thats not her fault, get to that) and some of the places in the past couple of days i think would have been lonely and tough alone. so thankul for that!! Anyway wandering aroudn that day was the best part of pondicherry i think, and sitting outside a temple with a guy who sold coconuts (mostly for offerings i think but idiot tourist i am had him open one and cut the coconut out for me to eat! but he seemed not to care. some of the people in the south are really sweet and friendly. we had some chai on the street too, the cheapest ever, 3 rupees and just simply the best. im totally totally hooked on chai now and consume more sugar than ever. great.   It was the second day of Diwali, the national festival, and the fireworks were still an issue for a couple of days. literally they look like little bombs about to go off and when they do the sound is unbearably loud, so we were plugging our ears walking down the street and undoubtedly causing a lot of entertainment for the locals, i found myslef actually worrying about the safety of my eardrums and wishing i had some of the custom made earplugs you do, duff! We ended up staying in that terrific apartment for a total of 3 blissful nights, (the "house" we were supposed to stay in with the french girls started sounding sketchier and sketchier and further away so we opted out) but enjoyed meeting up with friends and having a drink overlooking the ocean with our canadian friend Brit. 2 days ago, we took a bus out of Pondi.   Finding the right bus at the main stations is always  a treat, and we had more than a bit of trouble finding the one to trichy... we even got on one as it was moving and hten were told to get off cuz there were no more seats... not a reason any indian has been given thats for sure! but we ended up through a series of things on a deluxe bus for a few hours, in the back (after the man in front told me it was full and we couldn't get on and i saw an open seat and insisted on seeing for myself, just to have him laugh and admit there were two in the back.... WHY? why the constant and seemingly pointless deception? pure pleasure from someone's pain? dunno. james, no offense, but i think you might find this all pretty amusing. no wonder you find my blogs entertaining! ha.)   So there was a constant stream of bollywood movie bliss pumping out from the very very effective speaker system on the bus, loud as anything, and then after the movie some classical indian singing, very high pitched, extraordinarily loud. and people sleeping through it. and BEST of all, a guy about my age that sat right next to me on my left in the back row, and whose arm was constantly drifting over to my leg, and his head over to my shoulder while he was "sleeping". i wasn't convinced then, and i certainly wasn't convinced when he was awake and we were going to be there soon and he literally had his hand on my thigh and moved it up to my stomach and kind of scratched it! i pulled back in shock and said something stupid like "i can't see any reason for your hand to be there!!" and he pulled back. i had told him 3 times through the ride to please move over! unbelievable. and gross.   We found Trichy to be busier than we'd hoped, and kind of with an agressive and loud urgency to it unfamiliar to us after blissful Mammallapurum and pondicherry. However the temples were fabulous! Full on south now, the termples are often wooden or stone and painted in fabulously bright colors, they almost look like set pieces or something oddly disney-like. next to palm trees and lit up by almost constant sunshine (ive only had that raiin in chennai, i lucked out!) its pretty sweet. I had an elephant bless me in a temple! They collect rupees with their trunks and then bop you on the head with their trunk, and then pass the money back to their owner. In return for extra food, I guess. The elephants are all adorned with colored powder designs, and I feel ok about them being in captivity at least becuase they are government subsidized and well looked after because india can only legally have so many in captivity, and I think they are also sacred because of Ganesh, the elephant god.   Anyway, apparently Triichy was the capital for odd tin kitchen goods, so we walked through all of that for a while and climbed 450 steps to the top of a temple summit at dusk and saw some spectacular views. We decided we hadn't been roughing it enough in the past few days so we have gone exclusively indian local restaurants with indian local foods and are staying in non ac rooms and splitting the price which is nice on the ol' wallet. We had some SERIOUSLY spicy crab masala curry, i was thinking the crab would be in pieces in the curry but it was literally a hard shelled crab IN the curry. and no utensils, of course, served on a banana leaf. and in the sort of restaurant where they seat you across the table from locals with your friend next to you, so some guys were watching me intently as i tried to crack the crab legs with my teeth, extract the meat with my hands, and get the curry all over my face. i already do that WITH utensils! imagining what its like here must not be a pretty picture. all i can say is hand sanitizer. camille is adapting to the spicy food but its not her taste buds, so i pretty much devoured it all and then my mouth burned for ages. they have these convenient little cardamon seeds covered with sugar that take the edge off at least!   Walking down the street before the temple we spotted a sign saying "beauty parlor" and thinking we've become pretty hairy... i was getting the very fetching ol' hitler mustache/mcdonalds sign eyebrows combination and was hoping there'd be threading... (ancient indian hair removal technique i do in nyc... painful but so effective!) and we ended up on the 4th floor of an apartment and the woman who lived there ran a salon from her house. not only was she the master threader of the world, we made apts to come back for henna tatoos on our hands and feet, so we came back at 8:30 and shed brought in 2 girls and her son was in and out as an interpreter, as was her daughter by phone who took us through pattern possibilities and asked me if "there was any doubts" about her mothers work. haha. they were really sweet and made us chai and painted our hands and feet for 2 hours and did a wonderful job. we tipped them and then they gave us matching anklets! oh and the neighbors were all peering through the windows at us and all yelled goodbye and waved as we left! we were definately the talk of the building im sure, it was hilarious. but i felt so comfortable in this woman's place, so freindly and welcoming.   This morning we headed out for Tanjore, what we thought was a small town (yeah not too much) and relaxing and friendly. (again, not so much.) we walked for what felt like miles with all of our stuff after a bus ride (the busses play music inside, pretty bumpin'!) and found that our hotel was full. we always make reservations but didn't. and everything is full for diwali. we're dumb. so... the dumpy place next door called "raja's guesthouse"... nothing kingly about it, ill tell you... is our accomodation du jour. i don't even know how to write about this piece of *$#@. except we had to change rooms when we realized there was some, *$#@, literally, in our toilet when we got there, along with a plastic bucket floating in the toilet, and this was after they;d put a lightbulb in there to illuminate it. when i said "please clean the toilet" they said the guy would come tomorrow. too late i said. we moved. dust an inch thick on the "furniture" and a nice huge spider and web. halloween came a day early this year! yay! so thats what we get to go home to tonight, im so happy i bought a little silk sleepingbag/pillow protector thing. basically like an envelope for your body so you don't have to touch the filth. when i told the guy to please clean our sink (there were wrappers from soaps there, etc... he removed the wrappers and threw a bucket of water over the sink. "there" he declared. reminded me of the commercial where the guy says to the waitress "i didn't want mayo on this" and she takes the bread and rubs the mayo off on the side of the table. there was that much care.   It was a harrowing afternoon. every restaurant had just stopped serving for their midday break, and after a quick 2nd dosa of the day, and more chai, we went to a palace where we basically had to buy a new special foreigner entry ticket every time we went into a new room. fed up, after paying a guy 50 rupees so he'd let us take pictures, we hadn't wanted a picture permit in the beginning but after seeing the beauty of this palace changed our mind, and the employee told us the ticket center was closed at  4 30.. so we "bought one" from him, only to go to the next area and take pics where we were literally, verbally assaulted in hindi by a crazed indian raging maniac, tender to the "cafeteria" who lost it because we didn't have the 30 RUPEE picture ticket. though we'd just paid the guy. more. and he LOST IT. we said we wouldn't tae more, pics, that didn't satisfy him and he started screaming for backup, and forced us up the stairs to the museum to be "dealt with"... the guys there were fortunately reasonable, told us he was kind of nuts, and had a huge verbal fight with the guy in the stairwell. he was a maniac. we were escorted out when we were ready to leave by the reasonable guy... i think they were worried about us, rightly so! good grief what a day. we were so irritated by it all.   The best part of the day was the temple this evening, all backlit, with people going for prayer, no other tourists, and we could go into the temple.. usually we can't cuz we're not hindu. but they said we could. a magical, huge, pyramid like thing (but 4 sides, tapering up at the top, what IS that shape?) all done in elaborate sandstone carvings, just natural sand color. really exquisite place that made us happy we'd come here. we bought tix on the train (there is only one class on this train, general class for 6 hours tomorrow, but middle of the day, tell u how that all goes) to madurai... another big city, and then a possible jungle trip in the near future on our way to kerala where i will leave camille! :(.... and i have to find a room with CNN on nov 4! man thats tuesday!   Crossing fingers for my man.... get out there and vote all u Obamans! Killing me i can't be there! Ok more soon... write me! And happy halloween and enjoy your parties and parades and costumes aww i wish i could be there for that one day! and then come back here hahah. ok bye!

Parisians, Parties and Police (I love the alliterations (sp?) don't I)

Wow... the last couple of days have been a whirlwind. I have to sit down and think about everything I've done in the past couple of days. First of all, I am travelling with another solo girl! In Mahabalipurum, from where I last wrote, I met Camille, a french girl on her own who just arrived last week in the south. She's awesome, speaks english amazingly well, a real talker, tell it like it is parisian and im sure i will visit her in paris in the next couple of years. We were at dinner togetherand ended up hanging out the next day, wandering the beach the whole day and going into forbidden resorts, swinging in their hammocks till getting kicked out, etc, and eating in weird dark resorts that were hit hard from the tsunami and being rebuilt. we had a great day though,and that night we wereat dinner again and then heard these people singing happy birthday at this upstairs restaurant, so we went to check it out and there were like 30 travelers and indians together and a bday cake and it was a little party! after 11, the curfew hour, the cops went by,and the manager shouted to get down! the lights went out and we all ducked underthe table for 10 min! i was amazed that 25 backpackers whod been drinking beer and whisky could be that quiet! after they passed the party was back full force and we all went to the beach, i met an awesome scotsman named daines who was keen on psycological discussions by the sea with us, truly awesome talks till 3 am!  We had a late night, but Camille and I got up the next day to go move on. Her boyfriend is coming in about a week to join her, how nice, but until then she is alone and covering similar territory to me, so we hit it off and joined up and she was with me yesterday when we came here to Pondicherry, which is the remaining french colonial territory, we are in the french quarter right now and its like this weird other world here, the french quarter looks nothing like india, with its palm tree lined cobblestone streets and big white colonial buildings. Its beautiful! It is next to the ocean promenade, not quite the pretty walking beaches of Mamallapuram but scenic enough, with enough people trying to sell you cheap kitchy things to remind you you are still in india. Im sitting in this cool, hip coffee house next to a huge flat screen tv and an imposing dvd collection, theres a little coffee bar and I'm waiting for my iced vietnamese  coffee made with filtered water! We got here last night, after a truly harrowing bus experience. We were to take the bus here, only 2 hours away, but the problem is that today is the first day of Diwali, a major weeklong holiday throughout all of India. This of course means travelling anywhere here this week is like trying to get through an airport the day before thanksgiving. People were hanging off the sides off the bus. (mmmm just got my coffee. just like vietnam. strong, sweetened condensed milk. absolute heaven. this is my second cup of coffee today! And we're meeting 4 of our other friends in an hour at another cafe for some more! hahaha4 other friends when did this happen) anyway, the busses were so full that every time one would come by, we'd pick up our bags and run, but then weould get pushed out of theway by frantic indians, pushing and shoving and packing in like sardines. An autorickshaw all the way was too much money, so we ended up talking to a tourist car who i bargained down to 500 r for the two of us, although there seemed to be a lot more indians getting in the carand i dind't think they were possibly paying that much. The guys were quite rude to us, and demanding the money. Then a minibus came, special one for diwali, and the guys were like, everyone get on that bus. and i said "this cant be the same price its a bus not a car" and he just wagged his head and stared at me and demanded the money. we were kind of furious, because its not the money as it is the feeling of being manipulated in front of like 20 people who knew full well we were being cheated. so we got our stuff in this minibus, and then i stand up and say "ok, how much are you paying for this bus?" no answer. "how much?" i demanded again. i was frustrated. they all looked at me like they didn't understand, one guy sort of gave us a look like "what do you think" but i was clearly putting them in an awkward position, if they told me, they'd be betraying their fellow indian guy, and why do that for a foreigner. so they banded together. we sat down and told eachother to let it go, nothing we can do. leaves a bad taste in your mouth though. a man who said he was a christian man and showed me his cross told us that he and his wife were paying 500 r... i did'nt get the feeling he was telling the truth. and then he kept throwing his daughter at us, and pointing to my necklaces and gesturing for me to give them to his daughter! who was staring at us the whole time, we were nice to her, and i asked her questions, and all she kept doing was telling me to give her my necklace! and this was a well dressed family that were certainly not begging. it was odd. anyway before she left i gave her one of them anyway and she seemed thrilled. but when we got near pondicherry, this guy who'd given us the look before was about to get off the bus. he stood next to camille, and kind of touched her arm, and hidden away from everyone slipped her a note! She opened it after he left and we saw a phone number. we thought maybe he gave her his number but upon closer look we saw a note that said "the cost for this ride is 100 r. no more. they are cheating you. if they give you trouble here is the number of the tourist hotline!" and he gave that number. and thats all there was to it! he had nothing to gain, but just decided to do the right thing. in the midst of a dishonest busload of people comes a seriously nice guy who redeems the whole situation. a true combination of  polar opposites, just like this entire country. well, thats all we needed, the information. we made up a plan. when it came to our stop, we got our bags, camille went out first and grabbed most of them, ready to make a break for it. i handed over two 100 r notes and said "here you go. I made a phonecall to the national tourist line and they told me that the charge for this ride is 100 r. i know, and you know and this whole bus knows you are trying to scam us. if you dont accept this money and let it be the end of it, i will report you. ive already notated your bus number." and the guy goes "madam, madam, please please madam. no no no" and the other guy is kind of laughing like "guess we didn't fool them" and the bus is clearly entertained by the whole thing, oh gee, guess they do understand english! and im like "why are we still standing here? lets go!" and we took our stuff and walked off, the guy shaking his head and the bus pulled away. Victory! Triumph! The two of us shrieked with delight when we got a block away. And then looked at our hands which were just shaking like leaves. IT was hilarious, but you wouldn't believe how intimidating it is to fight your case in front of a busload of unfriendly people who are cheating you! It felt damn good though, I gotta tell you. Might seem like a very small and pointless victory to those reading this, but however small, it felt really good to win this one. ive been so tired of getting scammed in so many little ways, and we have our angelic indian guy to thank, wherever he is.   Well the adventure yesterday didn't end there! our plan was to stay in this beachside ashram, and though we'd tried to call earlier, the number was wrong in the lonely planet, so we were on our way to the door when we ran into 3 french girls we'd met in mamallapuram! they told us they had a huge room full of 4 beds and room for us. but upon arrival to the place, they wouldnt let us share a room, said we all had to have checked in together, and there was no budging. oh and it was full so we couldn't stay there. great. well, it being the first day of diwali, everything was full. we tried like 6 places, with our heavy bags. i was dying of heat, we ended up at this french restaurant, and this guy had apartments that he rented for nights. so for 1000 r ( a splurge)... 20 bucks for the night! we got a seriously pimped out apartment! Air conditioning, HOT WATER, full kitchen, flat screen cable tv, and a couple that lived in the other bedroom with a laptop computer and internet and two cushiony chairs! our bedroom had this crazy ornate wooden bed and a glass red lantern. it was an old french colonial house with crazy cast iron gate doors and old harry potter type keys which are a serious pain to use. it provided refuge last night fromthe crazy mini-bomb firework weilding maniac hellion children throwing them at each others feet and causing seriously loud explosions, and of course the nightly thunderstorm. it was paradise! and we ate at the french place, and horrror of horrors, i ordered a rocqfurt steak!!! it was amazing! and a glass of french red wine with camille as a celebration for a day well done! of course we met a chinese american girl named anjuna (her new hindi name her guru gave her, she wouldn't reveal her chinese one, and her american one was nicole) and a torontonian named brit, fascinating, smart interesting women, couldn't believe all of a sudden there they were! all these great people! so our new group went to an art cafe where we sipped mojitos ( a little hurridly since we bought them and they promptly closed at 11, like 5 min later and rudely kicked us out, we think they've adapted the parisian rudeness aswell as the food!) and we ran into david and celine (married couple he's german shes french live in germany met in an improv troupe hes getting his phd very cool, he's hilarious) also from mamallapuram and so we're meeting them all for coffee in 20 min!!! craziness. and the first french girls have hooked us up tonight with their indian friend they work with's actual house that's apparently this huge mammoth house they are renting to us for 300 a night for all 6 of us! thats about a dollar a night for me, 5 km out of townbut im ok with it cuz we can take autorickshaws and we are all having dinner out there together tonight. last night i thought to myself... this is the india trip i invisioned! crazy and absurd but so much fun!! im so glad ive had all these different sorts of times and places in one trip, i think about my misery last week with the weird cat in my room, and the excitement of now with new and interesting friends and amazing scenery and good times and i realize it is all part of the general adventure. ok im off for yet another cup of coffee, and i'll let you know how this huge indian house is... write me! oh and a shout out to my pops.... HAPPY 60TH BDAY TOMORROW! LOVE YOU!