430am - indira ghandi international airport, delhi - board an emirates flight to dubai, united arab emirates


600am - arrive in dubai, am completely blown away by the airport. it was amazing, the whole city was amazing. talk about a rich city. all i could see as the plane landed were mansions on huge lots with private forests and lakes, pools, tennis courts, driveways that could be mistaken for a road...a regular house in dubai is what we would call a 'palatial mansion' back home.


i only had about four hours before i had to be back at the aiport and check-in for my next flight. thank god the u.a.e. give canadians a free 60-day visa on arrival. i hopped on the first bus to jumeirah beach and made it to the tallest hotel in the world...the BURJ AL ARAB, a 7-star luxury hotel on the beach. i had seen it before in pictures but didn't think it was actually a real place until i saw the tourism brochure in the airport there. it was a sight to behold. and well, the only sight i really had time to see anyways. i snapped some quick photos and of course the quintessential mailman shot for later and headed back to the airport.


from dubai, it was another 5 hours flight to istanbul. i hopped in a taxi to my friend's apartment where i am now. i've been here three days and love it. i'll have more to say tomorrow.


and now for a chuck palahniuk fight club semi-quote that expresses quite nicely this little life i'm leading these days:


people were asking me did i know jean chretien?
you wake up at incheon.
what's the exact cost of a flight from canada to yangon?
LAX.
you wake up at peking.
IGI. BKK. HKG.
some coffee in KOL, DXB.
we only except dirham notes, sir.
you wake up at attaturk.
chicken or fish. veg or non-veg.
pacific, mountain, central, indian, greenwich. lose an hour, gain an hour.
won, yuan, riel, kip, baht, dollar, rupees, dirhams, lira. how much is that?
check-in for that flight doesn't begin for another ten hours, sir.
this is your life and it's ending one minute at a time.

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goodbye india. goodbye stifling heat. goodbye ancient temples. goodbye flies. goodbye holy rivers. goodbye rabid dogs. goodbye annoying wallahs. goodbye marble monuments. goodbye white sand beaches. goodbye morning chai. goodbye beggars. goodbye palaces. goodbye chapatis. goodbye mosques. goodbye chupples. goodbye bhang lassis. goodbye mango maaza. goodbye open sewers. goodbye ali larter. goodbye one billion four hundred thousand people. goodbye organized chaos. goodbye ancient home away from home. goodbye. i will miss you.


hello...turkey. hello hookahs, belly-dancers and black coffee thick as molasses. hello lira. hello.

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the taj mahal. the third time i've seen it and still just as beautiful and enchanting. glyn and i were up at 5am, paid the 750 ($24) rps entrance fee and spent about an hour and a bit wandering around the marble towers.


later in the day we headed to agra fort, where aurazeb, the son of sha jahan (builder of the taj mahal) imprisoned his father when he wanted to become maharaja. shah jahan was kept in an octagonal shaped room with a glorious view over the yamuna river towards the taj mahal, a mausoleum he built for his late wife. sha jahan died while imprisoned there and was interred in the taj mahal next to his wife.


glyn and i got to delhi around 9pm and made the trip out to my auntie and uncle's house. i spent the next day finalising my eurail pass, selling my india lonely planet and trying to exchange rupees back to US dollars. they wouldn't let me do this (it's illegal to sell foreign currency to foreigners until they can prove that they are leaving the country within 24 hours). i had to return today with my air ticket and take care of all of that...phew $700 us for a 2 month, 10-day travel, eurail flexi pass...that i hope i'll get good use out of.


i fly out tomorrow morning at 6:30 am. i'm flying emirates to dubai for a 7 hour stop-over and then onto istanbul. i'm crossing my fingers that i'll run into scott and jen (the couple i met in pondicherry who work for emirates and live in dubai) at the airport there. that'll be strange.

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met up with my friend glyn in varanasi...i saw him wandering confused along the ghats along the bank of the ganges. we had been planning to meet for days but i didn't know exactly when he would show up.


we went for beers in a tiny (probably illegal) hole in the wall while the proprietors played 'snakes and ladders' and we sat on cardboard boxes and drank out of plastic cups. good times. the next day it was off to the ancient temples of khajuraho.




the temples are covered in intricate carvings depicting the daily life of the people in khajuraho 1000 years ago, along with very detailed orgies and kama sutra positions involving several heavenly nymphs called apsaras. there's even a carving of a man having his way with a horse while a lady looks on covering her mouth in astonishment.


the next day, glyn and i headed to agra, home of the great taj mahal. on the way to the bus station we decided to take a bicycle rickshaw. glyn wanted to pedal and got the old indian man to sit in the back with me. he seemed a little uncomfortable handing his bicycle over to this strange bearded foreigner and was a little reluctant at first. he kept on pointing out the brake and trying to get glyn to use it, doing his best impersonations of english and yelling "slow slow!" we came to a small hill and started descending pretty quickly when the back left wheel of the cycle-rickshaw went over the shoulder. now glyn was in a precarious position, he couldn't get the bike back on the road. the rickshaw driver was freaking out. we were heading towards a tree!!!! glyn pulled the rickshaw off the road hoping to straighten it out as i saw the giant metal cage around the tree smash into the front wheel and then bend backwards. we were stopped, everyone was okay. glyn was embarrassed. the rickshaw driver muttered something under his breath and then took us the rest of the way to the bus station.


the bus trip was fairly uneventful. we arrived in a town called jhansi, from where we were hoping to catch a train to agra. we bought the tickets, had some dinner and climbed on a train. we had bought 'open class' tickets because the train chart had already been prepared. this meant that we had to find the 'ticket examiner' on board and get him to upgrade our tickets before we could sit down. by the time we found him, the train was already moving. he looked at our tickets, shook his head, and then told us that we were on the wrong train, heading in the wrong direction! we had to wait an hour until the next stop, buy new tickets and then catch the correct train to agra. it all worked out, but we ended up getting into agra about 6 hours later than expected. it was dark and the streets were deserted other than wild packs of dogs (maybe rabid?) who rule the nighttime streets. we found a guesthouse without anyone else getting bitten.


tomorrow, we'll go see the taj mahal. our guesthouse has a nice view from the rooftop restaurant as the monument is just a few blocks away.




btw, in my previous post i may have mentioned how the ganges flows from the toe of lord vishnu. i was wrong. it's actually supposed to be the hair of lord shiva. lord shiva tied ganga (the goddess of the ganges) in his hair because she was wild and uncontrollable. he only let her flow out from the knot in the end. so there, now you know.

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CORPSES IN THE WATER




still in varanasi. went by the burning ghat (step-like dock) called manakarnika and watched them burn about 6 bodies. so strange to see the corpses wrapped in gold and orange silk, and the feet sticking out the end. and as i'm staring at this corpse, i'nm expecting it to move or stand up and pull off it's wrapping and walk away...yelling "what are you guys doing?" then it was on fire and as the silk burnt away, it revealed bloody cotton gauze wrapped around a head, then red skin, blistering, and charring and bone turning to ash. i've always heard that the smell of burning flesh is something sickly unique and unfortunately unforgettable, but i swear it just smelt like a campfire. and it was just business as usual, 24 hours a day they're burning bodies here. pile the wood, body on top, more wood and fire. the fire comes from an eternal flame that has been burning non-stop for the last 5000 years.


five types of people cannot be burned at the ghat:

1) children under 10 years old (they are 'sinless')

2) lepers and people with other skin diseases (they've already been 'burned' by god)

3) non-hindus

4) sadhus (holy men who've taken a vow of poverty) (they are 'sinless')

5) pregnant women (they are like 'flowers' and flowers are never burnt)

6) cobra-bite victims (they have also already been 'burned' by god)


the bodies of these people are weighted with a large stone and tossed into the river. it is not uncommon to see corpses floating by, or washed up on shore.


i took an early morning (5:30am) boat trip to watch the sunrise over the river. halfway through we almost hit a corpse stuck on a bamboo pole in the middle of the river. it must've been there almost a week, crows were eating it...the first dead body i've ever seen (that wasn't dissected and floating in formaldehyde). the picture above will give you an idea, i didn't take a picture of the actual corpse. the boat rower just carefully steered around it saying "whoa! almost hit that one!"


people bathing or swimming in the river just swam around it...another corpse, another day in the ganges. i dipped my feet in this morning, so i could say that i've actually been in it. we saw a foreign tourist swimming across, i wonder if he'll get sick?


if this interests you, read more about the ganges here...

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BURNING BODIES ON THE GANGES




varanasi...one of the oldest cities in the world on the bank of the ganges river. this place is wild....and dangerous and creepy. it's an auspicious place for hindus, they come here to bathe in the (extremely-polluted) ganges river. it's believed that it will wash away all their sins and they can begin life anew.


the ganges river is said to flow from the toe of the hindu god Vishnu. there are a number of ghats (small docks with stairs leading to the water) along the river's edge. one in particular, the manikarnika ghat, is where bodies are cremated, 24 hours a day. people of lower caste, women and children are sometimes just tossed, weighted, into the river. vip's and hindus of higher castes are dipped in the river, their bodies shrouded in a gold and orange scarf and draped in marigolds and then placed atop a small pile of wood. each log is carefully weighed at a scale to calculate the cost of the cremation. finally, the wood is set on fire and the body is burned for 3 hours. any body parts that aren't burned after three hours are then dumped, along with the rest of the ashes, into the ganges river. so, as you can imagine, there are several, rotting and decaying corpes and body parts at the bottom.


the river also receives all the raw sewage from the city as well as all the water run off from the drains and open sewers. it's one of the most heavily polluted bodies of water on eartth. incredibly, people still bathe and wash their clothes in it.


as for the city itself...the old part, an area called godaulia, is a maze of tiny twisting alleyways called gaullis, sometimes not even large enough for two people to pass at the same time. not a single one is straight and they are all interconnected and lead to the river. there are houses, shops, restaurants (filthy), flies, cows, scooters, bicycles, sleeping dogs, school-children, sadhus (holy men who've taken a vow of poverty) and shady characters to fight your way through. in a 20 minute walk for breakfast this morning, i had 27 offers for exchanging money, opium, marijuana, silk sarees, restaurants, guesthouses, boat trips, bus trips, train tickets, bloody goats' heads, flowers, new sandals, cotton tshirts, cotton pants, shampoo, a shave, a haircut etc...it's the worst i've ever seen in india...relentless touts everywhere...that follow you and whisper in your ear...not just annoying, but scary. lonely planet said that unofficially 2-3 travellers go missing here every 3-4 months due mainly in part to a small criminal element who drug unsuspecting tourists, rob them, murder them and throw their bodies in the ganges! a guy at the train station already threatened to kill me after i told him to "F off!" by saying "I'll kill you sir, I'll kill you sir!"


it's not a place i'd recommend being on your own in...it's freaky. these scary looking guys are everywhere and you can't trust ny of them as far as you could throw them. i arrived late last night and the sun was setting, i was lost in the maze of alleyways, trying to get to a guesthouse before dark. the old city is dangerous after the sun sets and i didn't want to be out and lost and exhausted.


yeah...and the heat too...it's incredible. it's a scorching 43.5C right now here. add flies, mangey dogs, filthy sewers and alleyways, smelly cows and buffalo and the touts and you've got a interesting concotion called varanasi.

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A PROBLEM


if you're bored and want to try and work this out, go ahead. i read it in the book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon. It's written from the perspective of a 12 year old boy with Asperger's Syndrome. anyways, i thought it was really interesting because it tricked me and i had to spend days thinking about it before i realized that what i read was in fact correct, and i still can't really work out why.


Imagine you are on Monty Hall's game show Let's Make a Deal. There are three closed doors. Behind one of these doors is a car; behind the other two are goats. You don't know where the car is, but Monty Hall does.


You pick one door. Monty then opens one of the remaining doors (obviously one he knows doesn't hide the car) and shows you a goat.


He then gives you the option to stick with the door you originally chose, or change to the other one.


You can:

a) STICK or b) CHANGE.


There's either still a 50% chance of the car being behind either door, or you have better odds on one of the doors now.


What should you do?

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for any of you who've lived in south korea...you'll know that they don't tend to be the best drivers...now, i know i'm just generalizing, but nobody wears seatbelts...in fact in almost every taxi that i ever rode in, the drivers have actually stuffed the seatbelts in under the seats or in the trunk, so that even if you want to wear yours, you can't...and there were many a night where i would grip the handles and the seat in front of me with white knuckles as the ajeossi ripped around corners, going as fast as possible when there was obviously no real need to do so...

so...i just read this on Yahoo! News...Seo Sang-Moon, a 70 year old South Korean man, just passed his driver's licence examination on his 272nd attempt. what really surprises me though is that they actually have driver's licence examinations at all...and jessica when you go, you'll know what i'm talking about...shya!

now, i'm in the state of punjab, very close to the pakistani border. the majority of punjabis are sikh and just outside my hotel is the sikh holy pilgrimage site, the Goldden Temple of Amritsar...it's open 24 hours a day and i've been told that people are praying at all hours of the night...there are a few temple priests who recite holy verses non-stop, i wonder if they do this while eating and pooping too...?

yesterday, i was in chandigarh, the capital of punjab. it was planned in the mid 1900's by a french architect. it's laid out on a grid and each block is called a sector. there's a man-made lake, and lots of seventies-style "contemporary" architecture, concrete and steel. there's also this place called the "Nek Chand Rock Garden" which was one of the coolest places i've seen in india so far. a garbage collector, Mr. Nek Chand, secretly collected garbage and in the dead of night, in the forest, fashioned a gigantic sculpture and rock garden from pieces of garbage. it's really beautiful, with waterfalls and humans and animals made from old bangles, light bulb sockets and old tires. there are also huge mosaics made from smashed up urinals, toilets, plates and old tiles. the path weaves through for about 30 minutes and the garden has walls and towers that rise up to 3 or 4 storeys high. the garden was discovered by accident about 20 years ago and was slated for destruction because it was on government property, but Mr. Chand lobbied the local people and now his garden is the most popular tourist site in the city. the government even gave him a salary and let him work on his creations full-time. he's still tinkering around and now a number of foreigners from the US, Canada, England and Australia have come as well and volunteer building mosaics and sculptures...

and i now have lots of great pictures of india on cd that i'm trying to post for everyone. but this stupid pc bang (internet cafe) doesn't have any drives, so you'll have to wait...

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the average temperature in delhi today was a whopping 42C (that's 116F for you yanks out there!), and that is HOT! my sandals were melting and sticking to the metal grates...and it's not just the heat that gets you...it's the intensity of this sun...it's like a floodlight 30 cm (that's a foot for your yanks out there!) from my face...all day long.


i was riding on the bus and i opened the window to get some air. usually, no matter how hot it is back home, opening the window will at least give you a nice breeze...but no...it was like there was a giant man, holding a giant-sized hair-dryer, on high, outside the window and pointing it at my face. imagine that and you know what it feels like here...


my mom would say it's "hot fedori!" whatever that means...and i just found out that she reads my blog...which is kind of scary...for me...


glyn...you stay in those mountains as long as you can...

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IT'S ALIVE!


yes...you can thank Buddha, i am still alive today. i'm in delhi now with my auntie and uncle and my cousin staying at their big house, getting lots of good food and i have the whole third floor to myself, it's sweet. i went and had my third (of six)anti-rabies injection today...another 400 rupees ($12) gone and then went downtown for awhile. this city is probably the most westernized place i've seen in india yet. there's mcdonald's, pizza hut, dominos...even a wimpy burger, and all kinds of fancy cafes and bars...there's a coffee bar called "starbeans." i've also seen a lot more foreigners here...apparently there are also quite a few that live here and work for embassies or various other foreign organizations based here.


oh yeah and there's no cows on the roads. there are crazy rabid dogs...but no cows.


i'm only here for one more day and will try and fit in most of my sight-seeing tomorrow. then i'm off to punjab in the northeast as far as the border with pakistan. then i'll be taking a 22 hour train ride all the way backwards to central india to varanasi, a holy city on the ganges, to meet glyn and raphaelle. lonely planet says that unofficially three to four tourists go missing in varanasi every few months...so i'll have to be careful of all the shady rickshaw drivers. you're not supposed to go out in the old city past 10pm and most guesthouses bar their doors at that hour. it's going to be interesting...


there's this one blog that i post comments on sometime and everytime i do, the post disappears forever and the person keeps posting new posts but i can never find the one I posted on again. what does this mean?


oh yeah, and yes..ali larter is in india, filming a movie called "marigold: an adventure in india" where she plays a hollywood actress who becomes immersed in the bollywood movie scene. (thanks soutthida) so when the movie comes out back home, go and see it...i was there!!! mouhahahahahahah!!!!


my leg is much better now, thank you.

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this, you're not going to believe. last night i walked through downtown jodhpur, through sadar market, past the clocktower, admiring the views of the fort on the hill. i was out for some dinner and was planning on being back in bed by 10pm. i had to catch an early morning train to jaipur at 5:45 am.


after dinner, i headed back to my guesthouse. i was about 15 mins away and i saw a little poor dog lying on his own, nobody to love him. i'm not a big fan of dogs at all...they're freaky, but in india you see them everywhere and they look lonely and skinny and sad. so i said "hey puppy!" and he got scared and moved backwards...two seconds later, two giant ferocious, barking dogs came booking it out of a dark alley...one ran straight at me and chomped down on my left leg...


yes...chomped down...and i yelled at him and he backed off...i limped away. back at my guesthouse, i had to call the lady that owns it and get directions to the hospital. of course, the rickshaw driver ripped me off, seeing me standing there bleeding and knowing that i had to go with him. i got to the hospital, went into emergency and got admitted right away. my god, it was a government hospital for the poor, but the only one open at that hour...the bathrooms were filthy, the dirtiest bathrooms i've ever seen in my life. ants, cockroaches, red stains on the floor and walls...dripping water...anyways, the doctor gave me a tetanus shot in my ass, while all the local people in the waiting room watched with bugged-out eyes. he gave me a prescription for antibiotics and a pain-killer and told me to start the anti-rabies course the next day in jaipur.


in the morning...the cuts had bruised up, my leg was twitching and stiff. i made it to the train on time and went to the first hospital i could find as soon as it stopped. the doctor wasn't in, and after waiting 45 mins for him, i went somewhere else. the second hospital was the government hospital and they told me that no one there could help me and to come back another day. i went to a third hospital where the man was very helpful, but told me he couldn't administer the injection. he helped me find my way to yet another hospital (a private, expensive one) where i was finally given my first of what will be five anti-rabies injections. i will be taking them at various times, and at various places throughout india, turkey and greece over the next month.


so, yeah, i'm rabid. it's a 100% fatal disease if treatment isn't given within 24 hours. no person has ever survived once clinical symptoms arise. i was scared as hell after i couldn't find anybody to give me the injection...but now i should be okay. there's nothing i can do but wait....and keep up with the treatments. hopefully, my insurance will cover them, it's about $15 per injection plus $10 consulting fee for the doctor. so all in all, i'll be out about $125 and have a helluva story to tell.

i researched the disease a bit on the internet, and read that the first symptoms include a tingling sensation around the bite (yep, got it), stiffness (yep, got it) and a general felling of uneasiness (yep, got it).

i hope i don't die...

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Ali Larter



so, if you've looked at my biography page and found my list of 'celebrity encounters', you'll know that i happen to run into 'celebrities' quite often. i think it's just that i remember faces and if i see them crossing the street or going to the post office or eating dinner or buying underwear, i know who they are. well, i thought i would have to put my 'celebrity' sightings on hold for awhile, while i was travelling...at least in asia...but oh no, i've done it again...and this is a pretty good one. today i went to the majestic mehrangarh fort overlooking the city here in jodhpur. this place was wonderful, other than the taj mahal, probably the nicest site i've seen in india ever. well preserved, with an audio tour, resonably priced, organized and clean. i'm listening to the audio tour, wandering some corridors, with a big pair of headphones on and a giant audio player hanging around my neck when i come to a part that's blocked off. damnit! i'm going to miss audio tour hot spots #26 and #27. there was a sign that said "Filming in Progress" and then there she was, in a sari, with indian makeup and a golden teardrop bindi...ali larter! i knew her from final destination 1 and 2 and jay and silent bob strike back...all great films, by the way. i don't know what she was filming in jodhpur, but if anyone back homes sees a movie where she's in india...let me know. so there...another one for the books. we were the only foreigners around...but i was ushered past her by some indian security guards. so i guess i didn't meet her, more like she saw me and i saw her...and in a moment of confusion...what are you doing here? not a big deal, but worth a mention...it would've been better if it was brad...








The Blue City of Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India



i hate homestays. i just hate the feeling of living at home and it's not your house. it's like being back with my parents and that scares me. i always try and avoid these kind of places at all costs...unfortunately they are usually cheap. in bangkok i stayed in a guesthouse where the bathroom sink was in the middle of the owners living room. she did nothing but watch TV all day with her friends and slept on a couch right there in the hallway. i hated brushing my teeth with all these old thaio ladies watching me and walking past me from the hall. but the place was cheap and i dealt with it.



here in jodhpur, as soon as i got off the bus from udaipur, i was assaulted by about fifteen rickshaw drivers all trying to get me to come with them. when this happens i walk straight past them, tell them i'm not interested and take another rickshaw somewhere around the corner. these guys were unrelenting though, they were grabbing me by the arm, trying to pull my pack off my back and shove it into their rickshaws. one guy grabbed my hand and wouldn't let go, then twisted it behind his back and was focing me over towards his rickshaw. i was yelling..."get away...f off...i don't want to go in your rickshaw!!!" finally i had to run across the street just before a big bus so they couldn't follow. it was too much!




anyways, i ended up going to this place called "the blue house" but the only rooms they had were about 5 times my budget, so the guy took me to his other guesthouse called "heaven." it looked okay and i managed to talk them down from 150 rps a night to 100 rps a night. i did some laundry and was getting ready to go out when a man knocked on my door, "come upstairs...my wife wants to see you." i thought, "what? your wife wants to see me...ummm okay, i'll come up when i'm ready." i went up about 15 mins later and she was asleep so i left without talking to her. i got back at about 11pm, exhausted and as i'm going into my room i hear this lady yelling "come here, come here, i want to look at you!" i go upstairs and she takes me into her living room and starts asking me all these questions, "what are you doing with your life? what's your job? where are you from? how old are you? are you married? etc" and there i am stuck, just wanting to sleep...and i figure out this place is a homestay and i'm in their house and now i have to act like i'm meeting family friends that i don't know and answering all these questions...i hate homestays...




well, the fort today was great. i took some amazing photos of the views from the hill, all the little blue houses fading into the distance. on my way back into town, i got caught up in a rajasthani wedding party...about 300 people parading down the street with drums and loud singing. the groom was on a donkey covered in so many garlands of flowers you couldn't see his face. some indian boys pulled me into the middle and we all started dancing, hands in the air, legs kicking...in the crowd...it was wild! the drums were beting and ladies in brightly coloured saris were throwing marigolds at the crowd...




tomorrow morning i head to the 'pink city' of jaipur...

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Lake Palace Hotel, Udaipur, India

sorry..there was supposed to be more when i said that indian man popped out his head and said "NO!"


he wouldn't let me go into the jagmandir palace...i had walked like 3 km across the dry lakebed to see it...offered him some baksheesh (tip money) and still nothing...so i walked around to the backside and tried to scale the wall and then i was just gonna say that the door was open...but those ancient indian palace walls are hard to get over with the spikes and stuff.


then along comes a sheperd with about 500 sheep and goats...and i gave gim 10 rps for what should be a great picture...


i started back to the city across the lakebed and went to cross in front of the lake palace hotel when another guard ran out and said i couldn't pass around the front of the hotel as it would disrupt the guest...bullcrap. so now i was stuck between two palaces in a giant dry lake and couldn't go anywhere. i asked him what he expected me to do now...i had walked past the hotel on my way out there but now he wouldn't let me go back. i had to think quick, he was wearing a funky uniform with fancy shoes...i knew he couldn't catch me and i wasn't about to walk to the other side of the lake (a good 5 or 6 km away) and then take a rickshaw back to town...i deked him out and ran past the front door...he didn't know what to do as i left him in the dust...mouhahaha!


all the restaurants in udaipur play james bond's "octopussy" at 7pm every night. a large portion of it was filmed here and 007 was held captive in the lake palace hotel in one of the scenes.


it's funny how in india the difference between a hot and a cold drink is the difference between a blister-administering chai and a slightly above room temperature beer. i guess it's all relative...


tomorrow at 8am, i'll be on a bus to jodhpur, the 'blue city' in the northwest...and then i'll go a bit further to the deserts and forts of jaisamler...


sorry, my last post got erased and then it appeared again, but i don't know if any comments were left with it...stuff is weird here...and there are too many damn mosquitos

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and now udaipur...the 'white city', tiny alleyways, men in brightly coloured turbans, elephants, camels, the ubiquitous cow and palaces; palaces to the left, palaces to the right, here a palace, there a palace, everywhere a palace palace! the lake is completely dried up, tiny columns of rock hard mud...some of the fissures look like they go down 3 or 4 metres. i walked around the lakebed today and walked around the Lake Palace Hotel (used in the James Bond flick 'Octopussy') and then to jagmandir island just behind it...a good 2 or 3 km walk in the indian sun...i got to jagmandir island and this little indian man pops his head out of a door and says 'NO!'


whenever you don't want something, it's everywhere, and whenever you want something, it's so fricken hard to find. i just don't get it? how can this be possible? i'm in india, i'm looking for a beggar. usually i can't get away from them...they come out of the walls and the floors and start pulling on my clothes and poking me. but today...the one day i was actually looking for a beggar (i have something that i think they'd like) and i can't find one...not a single one...in INDIA! i must've walked around for an hour today searching...


people leave some comments...you know, you come on here, you read my stories...my entries...i give and i give and i give...this can't go on forever...see where it says "Post A Comment"...DO IT!

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after another grueling 14 hour bus ride, i arrived in ahmedabad, gujurat yesterday morning. my uncle came and picked me up from the bus station and i'm staying in my cousin's apartment. this is a really hot city...hot and polluted. i started getting sick again within hours of arriving. i don't know if it's just built up to now from all of india's pollution, or it was just the utter lack of sleep ive had over the last four or five nights...i think i've had no more than 11 hours since i left goa...anyways, my tonsils have swelled up and the pain is excruciating. i'm used to this though, went through it about 3 times in bangkok's dirty air in about 2 months and about 7 or 8 times in as many months in korea. the doctor's just won't take them out anymore...even when i beg them!


so...some people may have got the wrong idea about my time here in india. first, i'll say that india is a tough country to travel in, yes, it's an assault on you mentally and physically and i wouldn't recommend it as a relaxing holiday to anyone. (if you wish to contradict me on this, go fo it! even goa's not for the fait-hearted) but the experience of a lifetime, yes, that would be india. it's a giant country, crowded with people trying to get by as best as they can. and there are things, of course, that i don't care for here (read back a few posts), but YES, there are as many things that i love about being here. now the staring can be a bit much...but it often drives me into uncontrollable laughter which then, in turn, causes more people to stop and stare. now just imagine, getting off the bus, hot and sweaty, you haven't slept in days, you sit down and before you know there are about 30 faces, all ages, shapes, sizes just looking at you. everything you do. i open a zipper on my bag, everyone watches, i take out a water bottle, everyone stares, i take a sip, they stare intently, as if i'm putting on a show...and i'm completely aware of this at all times, i put the bottle down, they are looking, i stand up, ohhhh!!! they are looking....all standing in a semi-circle around me just watching, bug-eyed, like they've never seen the likes of me...and what do i do, i start laughing, not at them, but i guess at myself, because what! what are they looking at that could be THAT interesting?


then there's the food...i love the food. it's cheap, healthy and fast. whether i'm eating perfectly marinated tandoori chicken, spicy chicken tikka, some paneer naan bread, rotis, chipatis, dahl, bhuji vegetables, yogurt, lassi, biryani rice, chicken 65, pani puri, behl puri, masala dosa...it's all good!


and even though i hate how everyone tries to rip me off. this too can be funny. everybody wants my money, but they really don't want to do anyhing for it. say there's a guy whose job it is to put luggage in the back of the bus. okay, he is paid for this, it is his JOB! so i hand him my pack...he's loaded everyone elses luggage without fail...as soon as he sees my face though, now he wants 5 rupees. 5 rupees extra for a cup of tea, 5 rupees extra for a bidi, whatever. and what can you do? i say "WHAT, 5 rupees, did he give you five rupees (pointing at someone), did he give you five rupees (pointing at another person)?!" but no...of course, i have to give him five rupees to do HIS JOB! and then, he asks for a cigarette on top of that, he lights it, and then wants another one to go in his ear for later. and of course, the same when he has to unload my bag...only MY bag! this is frustrating, but it's funny, it's so blatently obvious what he's doing...they don't hide it, they have no shame. it's india and i'm starting to laugh at these things now.


here's another thing that's hard to believe. women are treated so differently depending on the situation. to a westerner it seems shameful. most suburban and inner-city trains will have a women-only cars, where women can ride without the fear of being groped or stared, they'll have women only queues in railway stations and stores, there'll be women only rooms in restaurants and at the airport. you'd have the impression that women are treated pretty well for the most-part and i guess they are, until you get to the house, and this is what is so shocking for me...but the woman is the cook, and the maid, and the servant, and it's just the way it is. you eat, and when you're done, the woman cleans up and you sit there, she serves you your food and you sit there, and there are no ifs ands or buts about it, you can't lift a finger to help, that'd be ridiculous, just let them take care of it. they do the washing, they clean the floors...when the man gets home from work, his wife hops out of her chair, brews up some chai and snacks...it's all about the men...
and sometimes i can hardly believe my eyes, but it's the way it is. even if a woman is head of neurosurgery at a major hospital, in most cases, she quits her job when she gets married to be home and do the "domestic work" and i guess, make babies. this is how it is. it's india...it's wild!

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