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