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!