On the Other Side of the Fence

Delhi

cmeier — Sun, 28 Dec 2014 04:36:00 GMT

Delhi: I Could Live Here

I have been in and out of Delhi three times now, and I'm a fan. Important note: a lot of travelers don't like Delhi, but most travelers also fly into Delhi, and if I showed up in Delhi my first night in India, I'd probably freak out more than I did than when I arrived in Bangalore. Note to mention that almost everyone who first arrives in Delhi has a Delhi story about how they got scammed, some stories are worse than others. Delhi is crowded, it's loud, it's old, it's new, it's poor, it's rich, it's as an exaggeration of all that India is, in short, it's intense. But I never reached Delhi until I had already been in India for nearly two months......and I love it.

I stay on the border of old and new Delhi, where many good budget options are, and via their amazing subway system, I can get anywhere cheaply and easily. As I think about how to describe it right now, I'm already overwhelmed. It's literally such an awesome, awesome in the classical sense, that any words I try to attach to it would not serve it justice. All I can say is this......

If you want they old, they have forts and ruins. If you want religion and spirituality, they have yoga, meditation, and some of the most magnificent temples. If you want shopping, they have the western boutiques and old school bazaars. Entertainment, name it, they have it. If you're white, suburban, and young, and miss the hipsterdom of you own metropolis, have no fear, Delhi's hipsterdom is hipper than what your used to, given that it's right next to a giant park full of ruins. Indian's love to proclaim that anything is possible in India, and really, if you know the right people and have the money, then everything is possible. But Delhi takes this sentiment to a new level. All the options are on the table, anything and everything you might want.

All and all, I could totally live here.

Rishikesh

cmeier — Sun, 28 Dec 2014 04:32:00 GMT

Rishikesh: This Guy Took Too Much Acid back in the 60's

Rishikesh is a world renown yoga destination. It's filled to the gills with ashrams in which people stay to practice yoga, meditate, and live the life of spiritual contemplation. It nestled at the base of some mountains, and it's built around the holy river, ganges. Back in the day, the Beatles crashed here for up to 6 months (or something like that). What does this amount to? A lot of older, grey-haired people on the verge of turning 70 walking around in long flowing clothes pestering the local provisions store for better quality trail mix and peanut butter. All one can think to themselves, is that this person must have eaten a lot of acid back in the day, and now that they are old and retired, are trying to get the 60's back. Not to sound harsh, I've always been envious of the generation that comprise the 60's counter-culture movement. Seemed like a fun time.

I too fully intended to stay at an ashram during my stay in Rishikesh. Do some yoga, hear some lectures on the guru's particular version of the classical "good life," and spend sometime away from the material world. BUT.....unfortunately, I was attached by quite a LOOSE MOVING bug, if you catch my FLOW. Day one of my adventures consisted of a trip to the druggist to buy lots and lots of electrolyte mix and hunt down the closest thing to saltines that I could find. This was not food poisoning, so my anti-biotics couldn't save me this time. I simply had to let it RUN its course.

Thankfully, by day two my situation was less urgent, so I was able to venture out. Given that I really didn't make a full recovery till my second to last day there, I chose to not partake in yoga. If you've ever done yoga before, then you know, probably first hand, that passing gas during the practice sometimes just happens. You don't even feel it coming, and all of a sudden, pooooof. So you'll be sympathetic to why I chose to not do yoga in my situation.

Beyond how I was doing, Rishikesh has some wonderful hiking. Lots of trails, though not neccessarily marked ones, so keeping track of some land marks to find you way home is crucial. My method of not getting lost was staying close to the water. Follow a stream up hill, then even if you don't go down the exact same way, by following the waterway you can be sure you'll get home. Truly some stunning sights, were seen. I'm not even going to try to recount, you'll just have to go yourself.

Another interesting aspect of Rishikesh are all the wandering ascetics. They dress in orange, wonder the mountain, and devote their live to achieving a level of being beyond their human form. However, you do have to be somewhat careful with these guys.......some are more criminal than authentic. Regardless, none of them are going to mug you in broad day light, and its at least entertaining, if not enlightening, to chat with them for a bit.

Overall, Rishikesh is a wonderfully serene place. Plenty of places in the mountains, along the river, or in cafes to post up to read, write, or just reflect. While staying at a ashram and doing yoga was out of the question for me, I still did a lot of reflecting. Most days I just hiked around, absorbed the environment, and sat and let myself get bored. You'd be amazed where your mind will take you, and realizations that arise when you just sit, let your self get "bored," and see what naturally arises in your thoughts.

In Rishikesh I formed a new view of what it is to travel, or rather I added something to my view. Traveling for me gave me chance, for once in my adult life, to not really plan or be concerned with anything, it gave my head a chance to STFU (if you don't know that acronym, all you need to known is that it means to shut up), and just let myself be however I was going to be, and see what boiled to the top. I realized that between all the planning of what I thought I SHOULD do as an adult, began to overshadow who I really am. Just hiking and thinking in Rishikesh really allowed me to get back in touch with how I feel about stuff, what I think about stuff, and who I am really, rather than how I thought I should feel, or how I thought I should think, or who I thought I should be. It was this part of my trip and that I really began to save myself from myself.

Shimla

cmeier — Sun, 28 Dec 2014 04:25:00 GMT

Shimla: The Ski Town without Slopes

Shimla was a little vacation form traveling. There is basically nothing to see in Shimla, or at least not much you could see else where. Why go to Shimla then? The Toy Train. What in the world is this fantastic sounding contraption? Back in the days of the british rule in India, they built quite the railway system. After all, India is a pretty big country to rule from a far, so a efficient manner to travel across it was necessary. Anyways, there is a an old narrow gauge railway built, from the british era, and goes up into the mountains, up to Shimla. Since the rails themselves are more narrow than typical train tracks, they only support smaller, slower trains, or, as they are lovingly called, toy trains. These trains wind back and forth, to and fro, up and up the mountain, providing excellent views. THIS, is the only reason I visited Shimla.......I had to take toy train.

All and all, Shimla surprised me. It's actualy quite a large city for being so high up, and the main area is reminesent of any major ski town. It's quaint. I mostly just bummed around and took in the mountain air. There are two things worth mentioning. One, the old Viceroal Mansion from the british ear is astounding. It's like a hogwarts building, which is fitting as it is now a post-graduate research facility for academics in the social sciences and the humanities. It's just a really cool building to take a tour through, and the gardens that surround it aren't too shabby either.

The one other note worthy part of Shimla is the hiking. You are in such a well developed mountain city that you can pretty much hike anywhere, in any direction, without worry of getting lost. Walk long enough in any which direction, and you will end up wandering onto a road or someones residence, in either case you simple just ask for directions to where you are trying to get to. Shimla also has some stunning views and hikes. One day, I hiked for hours, getting entirely lost and turned around, but eventually I happened upon someones home, and after being greeted with a smile, was told how to get back to the main road. It's kind of fun to just wander aimlessly through the woods, although, and while you might end up further away than you expected, as is what happened to me, at least you can feel secure you won't be lost through the night and freeze to death.

Overall report, Shimla is cool for a quaint little mountain stay.

Khajuraho: Pronounced, Cause you're a hoe

cmeier — Sun, 28 Dec 2014 04:17:00 GMT

Khajuraho: Pronounced - Cause you're a hoe

I won't ever bother to do a list of interesting things seen and done here, cause there is only one thing to see in Khajuraho. Namely, temples covered in sculptures of naked people, mostly women, and couples performing some very impressive tantric sex feats. The people posing for these sculptures must have been very well practiced in tantric yoga to be doing this, and that, while on their heads.

But really, these impressive sculptures have one main theme.....sex.....and all sorts of it. I guess nakedness is also a theme, but the explicit depictions of couples and groups getting it on are what really catch your eye. 9 person orgy, man on horse beastiality, and couples copulating in ways you've never imagined, unless you have visited Khajuraho, are all represented. Did I mention these images are carved onto temples?

The temples of Khajuraho, beyond their most unique quality, really are very well preserved and impressive structures, and perhaps I exaggerated just a bit about how frequently explicit fornication is depicted, although, don't get me wrong, there is a lot. There are indeed depictions of bestiality and orgies, but those are infrequently found and somewhat hidden in the smaller details. However, couples engaged in tantric sex are a consistent theme among the temples, and placed with purpose.

I don't have my travel book right in front of my face, and I don't remember the proper terms, but essentially all of the temples with depictions of tantric copulation were comprised of both a corridor, or entry way, and the primary room which houses the main deity. At the point where these two parts of the temple meet is where the tantric depictions are. According to my audio guide, many scholars believe that this is suppose to symbolize an intense union between the divine (my word spell check just died, sorry not-sorry for the misspelling) and the worldly. The key is that the couples just aren't having sex, but tantric sex. Tantra is not just a kinky way to get it on, but rather an intense union in which two become one. Thus, these couples are suppose to mark where the divine and the world becoming one.

Beyond the temples, Khajuraho is a pretty small town, and not much else going on. There is the new part of the city, close to main group of the temples, which entirely caters to tourists, and the old city. I took a stroll through the old city, which is divided into four quarters, one quarter of each caste. This part of the city is mostly comprised of farmers and small business owners, and they still live life the old way. Grinding grains by hand, cooking in traditional clay ovens and pots, etc.

Overall, the temples are so unique, it's worth a quick stop to check them out, albeit it's bloody hard to get there and away......it's very poorly connected, and there aren't too many busses or trains to other major locations.

Varanasi: An Unholy, Holy Place

cmeier — Fri, 26 Dec 2014 06:40:00 GMT

Varanasi: An Unholy, Holy Place

Interesting Things I Did and Saw:

- The Ganges River

- Burning Ghats

- The Old City

- TWO famous Lassi Shops

- Lots of drug dealers

Story-Time and Reflection:

To start with, my 12 hour train ride to Varanasi was 8 hours delayed. Even by India standards, this was pretty bad. But if there is one thing that India has taught me, it's patience. The train will get there, when it gets there. While there are lots of trains between Delhi and Varanasi, this particular train, which I didn't learn until I reached Varanasi is notoriously extremely late.

My initial impressions of Varanasi was that it was your usual very busy/crowded small city. Traffic on many of the main roads no matter what day or time. Once I reached the river area, it was like its own little world. Not that it was less busy, but there it really has its own atmosphere.

Varanasi is certainly unique. A mix between holy and incredibly unholy. I could be sitting by the Ganges, regarded as the holiness rivers in India, watching people bath in its banks, and have someone come up to me every 5 to 10 minutes asking me to if I wanted to buy any drugs. Not just weed, which really seems to be all over India, but also opium, mushrooms, ecstasy, acid, and brown sugar (really low quality heroin). It was crazy. "Sir, I have grass. No? Hash? Shrooms? Brown sugar? Good Price, sir." You cannot say no enough times, they will continue to pester and ask. They'll ask why you don't want to buy their drugs, as if you need to explain yourself to them. Some days, I wanted to hit these peddlers in the face because they were so pushy.

No good personal stories here, as I didn't indulge, but I did meet one young man from the area who apparently loved to indulge in everything, and his teeth told that tale. They were red and rotten. And while red, rotten teeth is a symptom of too much paan (which is a legal narcotic that you chew), when he told me how much he enjoyed brown sugar with a grin that framed his stained, decaying teeth, I couldn't have looked more like a avid and excessive drug user. He invited me back for dinner, apparently his wife is a great cook.....I politely declined.

Varanasi is a huge tourist destination, and while in Goa, tourism is produces much of the demand for the drugs sold, Varanasi doesn't seem to fit the same mold. It's not at all a party place, no night life, young white suburban kids are not traveling here to rage all night and buy the drugs that are going to help them party on. I still don't have much of an explanation, but I have literally never been asked to so many times throughout a day if I wanted to buy any drugs.

Other than that, Varanasi is still a pretty unique place. The whole water front is developed with walkways and ghats, which are nothing more than stairways that reach all the way down to the water, so you can spend all day just walking up and down the river, posting up somewhere to just hang out and people watch. This is definitely a great place to people watch. Watching the tourists go by, ranging from young backpackers to the grey-haired recently retire. Watching the locals just hang out, sell random trinkets as if they are particularly unique to the area, watch them wash clothes in the ganges, watch them bath.....no, they don't get completely naked for this.

It is particularly interesting to watch them bath. There is a particular ritual to it. They all go about bathing in the same way, with certain steps performed in a certain order. I asked my rotten-toothed friend about it, but he just said that's what he was taught to do. Maybe someone explained it to him at one point or another, but he's probably missing those brain cells now.

One very interesting point about Varanasi are the burning ghats. These are ghats where they cremate people. In Hinduism, being cremated by the holy ganges increases your chances of achieving moksha, which is the release from the cycle of reincarnation, meaning you go to heaven rather becoming another life-form. For this reason, everyday, throughout the year, people are being cremated on the banks here all day long. If you hang out at one of Varanasi's famous lassi shops, Blue Lassi, which is located not so far from the most popular burning ghat, you can eat your lassi and watch swaddled dead bodies being carried off to be cremated at the same time. The Old City, which is the area that is built up along the banks, is comprised of narrow snaking paths, easy to get lost in, but also creates interesting situations in which you're preferred lassi or tea shop are on the way to a burning ghat. When you're you're not watching the dead being carried by, the old city is fun to just ramble around in.

Back to the burning ghats though, I did watch a cremation for a bit, and it was interesting. The body is wrapped in cloth and sandwiched between a bunch of wood, so it doesn't really hit you what you are watching until the cloth burns away and there happens to be a foot sticking out of the pryer. Which is precisely what happened to me. I could only watch for so long after that before it was just too real for me. Honestly, it really didn't make me think, but it made me feel very uncomfortable. Yup, that's a really body in there.....just burning. It's not like the person was alive, and this act has a lot of religious meaning, and a lot meaning for the family, but I just couldn't help but only imagine flesh burning. For me, it was just gore.

All and all, Varanasi was cool. Shop keepers and drug deals might make you want to hit someone, but it's just such a fascinating mix of everything. Rambling, narrow pathways, gore, religion, holiness, unholiness, continential food, one of the best thalis I have had, people watching, and the serenity of a river flowing by. Lover it or hate it, Varanasi is like none else.

Jaisalmer and Desert Safari

cmeier — Thu, 25 Dec 2014 04:32:00 GMT

Day 39 - 44: Jaisalmer

Interesting things I did and saw in Jaisalmer:

- Jaisalmer Fort

- Fort Palace

- Two night camel Safari

Story-Time and Reflection:

Jaisalmer is a desert city in western India, not so far from the the Pakistan boarder. And when I say "desert city," I mean it's literally a little oasis of civilization in the middle of the desert. All one has to do is soak in the view from any of the forts roof-top cafes and restaurants to confirm this description. You can see where the city ends and where the nothingness of the desert begins in all directions, seated atop the fort. It's quite peaceful. Just staring off into the flat distance, where the desert begins to blend into the horizon and then the sky, without any clear distinction of where any of them end or begin.

The city is towered over by the fort, which is frequently described as giant mirage like sandcastle rising out of the desert. By far being the tallest construction in the the city, I can only imagine spying it from afar, after traveling through the desert for days on end without any sign of human life.....it must truly seems like a mirage.

Beyond this hypothetical, Jaisalmer is definitely somewhat of a dreamy place. It's not just that it's, quite obviously, in the middle of the desert, that might make you think you are in a waking-life dream, but it's the fort life too......and the entirely legal and government approved "special" concoctions that they serve up at the infamous Lassi Shop here, might also have something to do with it's "enchantment."

I have seen many forts since I have been in India, perhaps too many. But the fort in Jaisalmer is unique, in that it is a living fort. People live in it, and work in it, it doesn't close, you don't have to buy a ticket, it's a attraction, yes, but it's also a home to hundreds, maybe thousands. As you wander through it's narrow pathways, past the shops, hotels, guest houses, cafes, and restaurants, you find yourself in residential areas, with people doing laundry and other chores out front of their homes. There, perhaps, isn't much to say about it, other than it's simply magic. The views of winding pathways and architectural views from within, the view of the city below and the stretching desert beyond as you peer over the edges. While there might not be a lot to do here, I could have spent weeks here, doing nothing other than reading, chatting with locals and travelers, and, in general, just relaxing.

Venturing out into the desert, and the surroundings are no less enchanting. A major attraction in Jaisalmer are the the camel safaris out into the desert. You can sign up for day trips, over-night trips, two-night trips, or really for as long as you'd like. I originally opted for a 3 night trip then later decided two days of bouncing up and down on a beast of an animal was plenty. After riding a camel for just a day, I can definitely understand why cowboys are always stereotypically depicted walking in that awkward, wide-stance manner......to just say chafing would be an understatement.

Besides the less then pleasant parts, roaming through the desert has it's own magic. Just miles and miles of shrubs and sand. Looking across it is like looking across an ocean of gold. It's quiet. It's peaceful. It's serene. The sun beats down on you like an explicit-word, but if you can beat that, the rewards are rich.

When in the desert, you want to do most of your trekking in the morning and early afternoon, till maybe around 2pm. Most might imagine that the hottest part of the day is 12-noon, when the sun is at it's highest point in the sky, but this is wrong. Something I noticed when I used lifeguard during my summers in high school and college, the hottest hours of the day is around 3 pm, let's call it 2 to 4 pm. Why? While the sun is highest at noon, it takes sometime for things down here on earth to heat up, so typically the heat really gets to you in the afternoon. Thus, luck break in the desert, in whatever shade you can find, is typically closer to 1:30 or so. These lunch breaks are not short either. Once the food is cooked, and once out eat up, it's nap time, for everyone, humans and camels. Things get going again in the later afternoon, early evening, and at this point, you really only have a few hours before the sun starts to set, granted this is winter time, so the days are shorter.

Dinner time in the desert is filled with veg dal (food), chapati (food), and singing around the campfire. Granted, singing along to lyrics that were an entirely foreign language didn't work out so well, it was still a wonderful experience being out in the desert, listening to songs about romeo/juliet style forsaken love and desert life being chanted, accompanied by some serious expert drumming on a not quite empty 15 gallon water jug.

Once the fire began to die down, it was bed time. I know we have all heard about this on National Geographic, and in other documentaries, but it gets seriously cold at night in the desert. Thankfully, we had some bed-rolls, which are basically just two thick blankets. One to sleep on, to protect you from the cold of the sand, and another to sleep under, to protect you from the cold in general. Waking up to the rising sun, it's still pretty brisk out, and actually one of the coldest points of the 24-hour day, which is a pretty dramatic difference when you compare it to how brutally hot it gets during the day.

Perhaps the most enchanting part of being out in the desert, is sleeping under the stars. I have never seen so many in my entire life, and you can even very clearly mark out the milky-way. You don't even need to know what exactly to look for in order to notice the streaming cluster of starts that waves through the sky, to know that this is the milky-way. It's remarkably obvious. If you know any constellations, it's also fun to track them through the sky throughout the night. I personally, can always find Orion's Belt, and Orion, if and when the constellation is visible, which it was during my time in Jaisalmer. So as I went to bed I noted where it was in the sky, and whenever I woke up throughout the night, I could track the direction in which it was crossing the night. Something I had never done before.

In general, Jaisalmer, was wonderful. A little slower than many other places I have been in India, and while some other travelers complained about the badgering by shop owners and rickshaw drivers, I actually felt like they badgered me much less than most of the other big tourist destinations I have visited. Maybe me and Jaisalmer just clicked, in a way that it doesn't for everyone. After all, I met a lot of people who loved Varanasi, and while I enjoyed a lot about Varanasi, by the time I left, I felt felt so badgered I was beginning to imagine myself knocking people out when they solicited me to eat at their restaurant, to buy their stupid tourist shit that you find EVERYWHERE in India, to use their rickshaw, to buy their drugs. I don't blame people for trying to find new clients, but when you follow me down the street, asking me why I'm not hungry......or why I don't want to buy your drugs, or where I am going when I already said, "for a walk"........REALLY?! The worst part is I know they behave this way because they live in a tourist economy, so it's partially our fault that they harass foreigners like this. But at end, I can only sympathize so much before I'm just annoyed as all hell. One thing I have learned is that Indians do seem to understand the seriousness of dropping the F-Bomb.

Why I am so far behind on my blog

cmeier — Sun, 7 Dec 2014 15:11:00 GMT

Why I am so far behind on my blog........

So I am, perhaps, maybe, just a tad behind on my blog. Maybe a week behind, maybe two weeks behind, honestly, I have no idea, and I don't see much reason to spend the time and energy trying to recount the exact days. Why is this?

The way I have been traveling has changed. When I arrived, I needed to have planned activities to feel comfortable. By this point, what I really enjoy about traveling is finding a place I enjoy just hanging out around, and then doing just that. Sure, I'll see some of the sights, if they seem particularly unique and remarkable.....one can only visit so many temples, forts, etc. before they all begin to seem the same.

For example, I fell in love with Jaisalmer. I stayed for 6 days, and I could have easily stayed longer. Other than going on a two night camel safari and taking the audio-guided tour of the Fort Palace, I spent my time just roaming around the old fort, which is a living fort, as in people live and work in it, lounged at rooftop restaurants, lassi shops, and cafes, and chatted up fellow travelers and locals. It was relaxing to not have a plan, and to some degree I feel like I took more of Jaisalmer in by doing less. Perhaps it is the case that sometimes you SEE more, when you look at less.

Another example. I just left Varanasi, and I didn't visit a single sight. Again, I spent my time wandering the snaking pathways of the old city, talking to people, just sitting by the Ganges, staring off over the waters or up at the kites flutter higher and higher into the sky, and people-watching, lots and lots of people watching.

By looking at less, I have been seeing more. One might think that I'd have more to report then, yeah? Which brings me to another reason I haven't been writing as much. Namely, the culture shock is over. I love talking to people who have only been here for a couple weeks or less, because for them, everything is so new and surprising. Cow just laying in the middle of a busy road. I don't even notice anymore. Train is several hours behind. Not a big surprise. The fact that no one in India waits in a line, but rather just crowds around whatever they are trying to get to. I shove past men, women, and children alike, to get what I need. But for the newer travelers here, all this is new. It's more exciting. It's more annoying. It's more shocking. It's more novel.

Now that I am comfortable in this backwards place, it's less surprising. Between that and seeing fewer sights, I have less to report on. At this point, I notice the little things, which are perhaps more personal. I notice more about myself, more about how I feel in this or that situation, more about what I think about this and that occurrence, more about what I SEE around me. Fewer major revelations, and more little bits of knowledge that are mostly about me.

It's funny, in the beginning of my trip, if I didn't see a lot, or do a lot, or slept-in late, I would get annoyed with myself for not being productive. Now, my least "productive" days, are actually my most productive days. By being less productive in an external sense, I get a chance to really be personally productive.

Part of me wants to break all this down in a more academic manner, which really means to describe the dynamics of this experience in as many ways as I can, in order to provide a really fleshed out and wordy analysis of what exactly in the human experience I am talking about. But really, I don't think it's so hard for any of you to relate to what I am saying. It may have been a while since any of us has just sat, watched, and contemplated to ourselves. Between work and netflix, who has time. But I am sure we have all had this experience at some point or another: that when we just sit around, without worrying about whats next, or ruminating over whats happened, we begin to notice more about ourselves as ourselves surrounded by a world.

Jaipur

cmeier — Sun, 7 Dec 2014 15:08:00 GMT

Day 34 - 38: Jaipur

Day 34

- Arrive in the afternoon and rickshaw over to my hotel.

- Checkin, settle in, hit the streets.

- Walk to and around the Old City, or Pink City. This part of the city is entirely painted in pink, and property owners, by law, must maintain this tradition. It's funny though, the "pink" paint really isn't pink.....its more of rosy-orang, or maybe it's a dirty/sandy-pink, either way, if your expecting everything to be vibrantly pink, you'll be disappointed. Regardless, it's cool to see such uniformity. The old city, if you didn't already deduce, is the oldest part of the city, and is enclosed within tall concrete/stone walls, which are also painted "pink." Needless to say, it's impossible to walk by and not notice. The inside is filled of shops, restaurants, hotels, residences, and all sorts of historical landmarks.

- Grab dinner, head back to hotel.

Day 35

- Wake up, walk back toward the Old City.

- Stop at a famous Lassi shop, LassiWala. Lassi is a cool drink made from yogurt.....kind of like a yogurt smoothy, but with less fruit or no fruit. Funny thing about India, no one seems to be concerned about copyright laws, or maybe they don't exist here, but either way, if there is a well known Lassi shop, Kabob stand, ice cream place, etc, you can bet that their will be several other store fronts in the same area with the same name, all of them claiming to be the original. Luckily, the real LassiWala is easy to distinguish. The imitators all serve other things other than lassi, and have different flavors, but the original spot only serves lassi, and it only has plain lassi served in clay cups.

- Visit the City Palace, where, surprise surprise, the royal family use to reign from. Their is still a recognized, yet non-functioning, royal family in Jaipur, and they still maintain part of the City Palace as their residence.

- Visit Jantar Mantar, an observatory built in 1728. What appears to be a collection of large abstract sculptures are actually tools of astronomical calculation. It's a weird sight, but weird in a cool way.

- Visit a couple of other historical sights in the Old City.

Day 36

- Hire a rick driver to drive me to the surrounding forts and Monkey Temple.

- Visit Amber Fort, which is the best preserved and most popular of the 3 local forts, is not actually located in Jaipur, thought few people visit Jaipur without visiting it. Amber Fort is in the town of Amber, maybe 10 km from the Old City. It is magnificent. Nestled into a mountain side, it has grand views of both the town below in the valley, as well as the mountains surrounding it. Enclosing the the fort and the town, there are long stretches of protective walls built along the mountain ridges. The fort, which is majorly comprised of the palace, itself its equally grand, built off yellow and red sandstone, as well as marble. This is definitely one of the cooler forts I have seen. I opted for the audio-tour, which was alright, but I had more fun just wandering through the maze of corridors and interconnecting rooms.....there always seemed to be multiple paths to move between any two points in this place. I won't attempt to describe the palace/fort too much, as once again, it's just something you have to see for yourself to really appreciate.

- Visit Jaigarh Fort. This fort was bare-basic. Not a lot of upkeep, pretty run down, not a lot of staff. Honestly, and especially after Amber fort, it wasn't that impressive. The one thing it had over Amber fort was the view. Jaigarh is probably just 1 km away from Amber, but Jaigarh sits on the peak of the same mountain ridge that Amber is built into. Jaigarh has a great view of Amber, and an even more splendid view of the landscape below. Other than the view, the fort is unremarkable.

- Visit Naharagh Fort. Again, not maintained very well, but this fort too is situated atop a mountain peak, and it has a great and complete view of Jaipur.

-Visit Monkey Temple. Monkey Temple is also located up on mountain top that overlooks Jaipur. I don't know if the temple itself is actually named Monkey Temple, but given the insane number of monkeys that hang out on the path that leads you up to it temple, I would guess it's just a nickname. Walking up the path is a very......unsettling, experience. There are literally just so many monkeys just hanging out, that if a fraction of them decided to swarm you, you'd be dead pretty quickly. It's kind of intimidating at first walking through so many monkeys, especially because they are so acquainted to human presence that they have no concern walking right up next to you. After a while, the anxiety of a possible monkey attack disappears.....after all, if monkey attacks were a common occurrence, it probably wouldn't be such a popular attraction.

Day 37

- Hung out, moseyed around town, ate food, drank beer, etc.

- Made friends with some young India guys. Real friends!!! They were rick drivers, but I met them when they weren't working and just wanted to hang out. This was actually kind of funny. One of the typical convo starters for scammers is: Why don't foreigners like us? Or why do foreigners ignore us? By asking questions like these, the scammer sets an expectation that you too, as a foreigner, won't be friendly toward him, and thus of course, we want to show him that foreigners can be friendly by being friendly to him. I have heard these lines a lot, so it's interesting I actually met some indians who just wanted to kick it and show me around a bit, who opened with such a line. Over the next two days we hung out, played snooker, which is similar to billiards, but has different balls, different rules, and a larger table, ate together, and drank together. It was a lot of fun to see and do what young India guys do in Jaipur.

While traveling alone can be very hard, or at least at first, it also makes you more approachable, and more interested in interacting with other people you don't know. This can be both good and bad. Scammers typically go for solo travelers, but as a solo traveler you're more likely to make local friends. I have met a lot of other travelers, who are traveling with partners or groups, and they just don't have the same stories as me. They never made friends with an older couple who made them their surrogate children, they never met an awkward young couple who insisted they stay with them in their apartment, they never followed a random guy in Mysore into "incense factories" through alleyways at night, they never made great friends with boys in Goa who actually wanted to scam them, they were more careful, and more comfortable with the company they already had, and maybe because of this they didn't really experience, learn about, and meet as many Indians as I have.

That being said, by travel with a partner, someone you know from home or will keep in touch with, you have someone who shared the same experiences as you, you have someone you can reminiscence with about "that one time," someone to relive the past with. I have grown to love traveling, to love the chaos of getting around without a set itinerary, to go with the flow and roll with the punches, to love moving from place to place whenever and whenever without having to consider responsibilities to others, which is all a little more complicated when you are traveling with someone else. But each and every day I find something that reminds me of someone at home, something that makes me think, "Man, this person would love that. I need to bring them here one day."

Traveling alone and traveling with someone both have their benefit. This is just another example of something that this trip has made me realize. Namely, so much of what we think is good or bad is a matter of perspective. It's not better to travel alone, and it's not better to travel with someone, they are simply different, and perhaps each is better suited for different people, but for me, I think I can appreciate both.

This past summer, me and my buddy Chase took two trips. One, we biked up to Milwaukee. The second, Chase, myself, and a third guy, Esau, road tripped it up to Toronto, Montreal, and Quebec City. Being aways from the familiar was easier, because I was with people I knew, and for the rest of my life, when I see them, we'll have those memories in common. Just thinking about reminiscing makes me feel happy. This is something I won't have when it comes to my India trip, but again, perhaps, maybe, I have seen more, experienced more because I did this solo.

Each have their benefits, each has their hinderances, and at the end, neither is better, neither is worse, each is simply what it is and nothing else......they are different. Look at them anyway you want. You might prefer one over the other, and that's fine, to each their own, but for me, each one provide different opportunities and different struggles, and all of these add to who I am as a person.

Day 38

Hmmmmm.....what did I do on this day.....guess I'm a little far behind on keeping up with my blog.

Hung out, read, wrote, ate good food, caught a night train to Jaisalmer......only 3 hours behind schedule.

Story-Time and Reflection

Jaipur was cool. An interesting mix between new and old. I saw a hollywood movie at a top of the line movie theatre, and wandered the bustling bazars in the streets of the old city. Lots of attention from rickshaws and shop owners here, but not as pushy as in other places in India.

I was invited back to some dudes house who gave me chia, showed me his miniature paintings, which I doubt he painted, and then told that all proceeds go to a charity, though he has basically no info on the charity other than a bunch of pictures of kids. Surely, this charity was non-existent.

I was invited back to another guys place for chia, and again, he showed me all the precious stones they deal with, and suggested I learn the business......the exporting business. This one was funny, cause he warned me about the scam in which people suggest I export jewelry for them, I told him I almost got involved in that scam, and then he still continued to try and get to buy "precious stones" to bring back to the states and sell at a profit......even if any of the stones were real, he was definitely not a real businessman, and there is no doubt in my mind that he was going to do some serious over-charging. But at least he did gave me a few free items as gifts.

The street food in Jaipur was awesome. Dishes I had yet to come across since in India. I never learned the names of the food I was eating, unfortunately, as most of the street food vendors didn't speak english. Of all the people on the streets of Jaipur, I trusted the food vendors the most. For one, they don't get a lot of business from tourists, so they aren't caught up in the "lets see how much I can get this white guy to pay game." Another reason I trusted them is that they always seemed to find it very novel that this white boy was among the crowd of Indian men around their stand. They always served me before everyone else, they always looked over at me as I ate (presumably to observe my reaction), and they always seemed to really appreciate my compliments, in the form of thumbs up and a smile, when I was done.

One thing I noticed in Jaipur, as well as other areas in the north, is that fewer people speak english......even some of the more affluent looking Indians. It seems that the north has stronger remnants of the old aristocracy, and perhaps these attachments have created somewhat of a resistance against change and modernization. Many Indian's I have met see the english language as an international language, and something that will help them get a top level job or move out of India. It seems in the north that those with ties to the old aristocracy are still trying to hold on to this heritage, and learning english, while not seen as a bad things, is not seen as something that will help them reach new heights.....after all, they have royal blood. Given that these old aristocrats have held many of the government jobs in the north, there has probably been less of a focus on teaching and learning english, in general. IMPORTANT NOTE: this is total speculation on limited knowledge.....and educated guess if you would.

All and all, Jaipur was cool. A nice mix of Indian heritage and modern city amenities.

The 18 Hour Train Ride

cmeier — Sat, 29 Nov 2014 16:42:00 GMT

Day 32: 18 Hour Train Ride

- Wake up bright and early to catch my 6 am train to Agra.

- Train arrives only 30 minutes late!!1 Pretty good by India standards.

- Once on the train, back to bed for a few hours.

- Wake up around 9:30, and settle in for the 18 hour train ride.

- Make friends with the one other young man in my section of the sleeper car.

- New friend, Jagat, hops off the train around 3 pm, and I spend the rest of the time reading, writing, eating, and napping.

- Reach Agra around 1 in the morning, check into hotel and in bed by 2 am, with plans to wake up to see the Taj Mahal at sun rise.

Story-Time and Reflection:

So I thought about not really writing anything about this day, but since long distance trains is such a popular way to travel in India, they have built up quite and infrastructure surrounding it, and the whole thing is quite an experience.

To start with, taking the train is a great way to see India. Granted, you can't just hop off the train and visit the passing villages, but just starring out the window at the various passing scenery is quite entertaining in itself.

Second, everyone in India uses these long distance trains, so it's a "when in Rome" type of thing to do.

I made a friend on the train, and I will touch on that later, but first I want to just talk about the experience of riding on the train. These long distance trains have several classes that you an travel by. First Class AC (yes, AC stands for air conditioning), Second Class AC, Third Class AC, Sleeper Class, and General Unreserved. In AC1 cars have sections with 4 beds, 2 bunks, and lockable doors, however AC1 is twice as expensive as AC2. AC2 is what I have been taking. It has the same arrangement of 4 beds, 2 bunks (as in 2 lower beds, and 2 upper beds), but instead of doors their are only curtains. I take AC2, less so for the comfort and more so for the peace of mind. In AC2 you are still among the more well off people of India, and you really don't have to worry about having your stuff stolen while you sleep, or people trying to feed you drug laced snacks. AC3, again, is pretty safe, but each section has 6 beds between 2 bunks, so there is an lower, middle, and upper bed in each bunk......which means there is no option for sitting up. Sleeper class has no AC which, wouldn't be a major problem, but again here you can't really sit up in your bed, and you have to keep a better eye on your stuff. General Unreserved is just a car with some benches along the sides, and, as the name suggests, there are no reserved seats. It is every man for himself to find a place on the bench or a spot on the floor. For a short distance trip during the day, this class is fine, as you won't get stabbed or anything, but if you are going the distance, good luck finding a place to sleep, and if you do sleep, don't be surprised f your stuff is gone when you wake up. When the train begins boarding, people crowd around the unreserved class car, pushing and shoving toward the front, in hopes of getting a seat. Watching this happen is quite the sight.

Beyond the various classes, there is a train culture here, or really, a food culture, as many trains do no have food cars. Many stops serve food that you can grab and go, or eat quickly at the stop before the train takes off again. Some train stops even have reputations for specialty foods and snacks. If you choose to stay on the train, no worries, you will find plenty of chia guys rushing through each car chanting, "CHIA CHIA CHIA." You will also find people selling plastic wrapped sandwiches, people passing out menus advertising that if you call in an order before a certain stop, they will deliver food to you when the train stops, and people selling plastic trays of thalis. Once again, have no fear, it's near impossible to lose weight in India, even when on a train with no food available. The best part, in general for India, is that you'll probably eat more than normal, and maintain your weight, because all the food is home-cooked, and veggies are the star, given that meat is too expensive for most to eat everyday. Quick tangent, FOOD is what I will miss most when I return to the State. They use such basic ingredients in their dishes, but they know far more about how to spices and any american home-cook I have ever known. Sorry, mom. Sorry to both my grandmothers. Your food is delicious, but India's work wonders in how they spice up the bare basic ingredients that are readily available to them.

Moving on to this particular train ride, I made another friend, Jagat. Just a few years older than myself, he lives in Mumbai, although originally from Jaipur, and is an Actor. He has acted in several smaller Bollywood productions, as well as a TV series that is now being broadcasted beyond India.

When I hopped on the train at Jalgaon, the other 3 beds in my section were full, but by the time I awoke, it was just me and Jagat. We started chatting, politely at first, but things took off from there. We awoke around 9:30 or so, and we pretty much talked till he got off the train around 3. We talked about our families, our significant others, our lives, our goals, each others cultures, all the good stuff. He also helped me figure out the food situation as it pertained to lunch time. He is certainly another person who I will keep in contact with, and when I visit India again, someone who I will meet up with. At one point, when he was telling his wife over the phone that he made a friend from Chicago, she joked that now they have a house in Chicago, and I have a house in Mumbai. Over and over again, Indian hospitality is like none other.

Over all, the train ride was a fun experience, and if was wonderful to meet make another friend in India. It's easy in India to become too suspicious of people who are interested in talking to you, or inviting you over, or engaging you in general. Yes, about half the time someone wants to engage you, they want to do some business or take advantage of you, but that is still only half. Even after the time I have been touted around from shop to shop in Mysore, and the time I was almost scammed in Goa, I still will at least respond to people who want to talk to me, and not just blow them off. At this point, I am well equipped to judge if someone is truly interested in forming a personal relationship, or if they are going to try and get me to buy something or scam me out of my money, so I give everyone the chance. I trust first, and if they begin to talk too much about what they sell for a living, or good karma, then I put my guard up. And because I chose to trust first, I have made a more friends, and have experienced more of India then I would have if I was touring myself around by my guide book and not speaking to people.

A fellow traveler in Hampi told me that people tend to fall in love with the first place they travel to, and he was right. I love India. But I also recognize that you have to be smart when you travel here, which is something my father told me when he dropped me of at O'Hare airport....."Be smart." But as a white suburban boy, who dropped himself in the middle of a backwards place, you have to learn what it means to be smart here. I know I have talked about being fooled and almost being fooled in earlier blogs, but honestly, it was only through making mistakes and almost making mistakes, that I have learned how to be smart while traveling in India, because being smart in India, is not something you can learn from a book. No matter how many times you have read not to do such and such thing in India, you really don't know why not to do it until you have done it or almost done it.

I love India. I want to bring everyone I know here. But at the same time, it's only after being here for a full month that I feel entirely comfortably and confident to travel on my own here. It's an amazing country, but just as everywhere in the world, you find both the good and the bad, side by side.

Day 29 - 31: Rolling with the Punches

cmeier — Sat, 29 Nov 2014 16:35:00 GMT

Day 29 - 31: Jalgaon, Ajanta and Ellora Caves

Day 29

- Arrive in Jalgaon around 7:30 in the morning.

- Check into Hotel, which is owned and operated by a wonderfully helpful, and kind of corky, man......another lonely world suggestion.

- Shower up, have dosa at a stellar food stand, and head to bus station to just barely catch the public bus that will drop you near Ajanta Caves.

- View cave temples and monasteries. Amazaing.

- Rickshaw to nearest town for bus ride home.

- Chat up locals while waiting for bus. Even in rural areas, someone always seems to speak english.

- Bus home, feast at some amazing thalis place, which again is all-you-can-eat, and for about $1.34.......just one more reason to love India.

- Look into transportation options to reach Agra. Realize that Agra is much further than I originally thought, and taking a bus, which is easy to book, will not be an option. Look into trains, all of which are fully booked for the next couple of days. Looks like I am spending a couple extra days in Jalgaon.

- Pass out from food coma.

Day 30

- Sleep-in, cause why not, I have nothing to do or see today. Jalgaon, other than being fairly close to Ajanta Caves, doesn't have a whole lot to offer to tourists.

- Book train ticket, leaving the morning after next.

- Decide to go see Ellora Caves on day 31. They are about 3 hours away by private taxi (6 hours by public transit), but since I am stuck in Jalgaon for couple more days, I might as well see something interesting.

- Bum around, go see another Bollywood movie.

- Meet some people to share my private taxi tomorrow. Yay for saving money!

- Dinner at the same Thalis place.

- Bed time.

Day 31

- Wake up at a decent hour, shower up, and head for the 3 hour trip to Ellora Caves, which are similar to the Ajanta Caves, but not as old, and encompass not just Buddhist, but also Jain and Hindu, temples as well.

- View the Ellora Caves, which sorry to say, were not, or at least didn't seem, as impressive as the Ajanta Caves. Still cool, but perhaps I was caved-out.

- Head back to Jalgaon.

- Dinner, and in bed at a decent hour as my train is scheduled to leave at 6 in the morning.

Story-Time and Reflection:

Honestly, I can't say too much about the Ajanta Caves, other than that they are amazing, and not really caves. They are a series of Buddhist monasteries and temples, that were carved out of a cliff face, some of which date back over 2000 years old. They are amazing. There is no flash photography within the caves, as there is very well preserved ancient paintings in many of them, and apparently, the flash decays the pigment. Again, this is something you have to see to believe. Truly amazing.

The Ellora Caves were similar to the Ajanta Caves, and while they were equally magnificent, they just didn't seem as cool. It just kind of seemed like more of the same. Which I think demonstrates something I have learned on this trip. When traveling for a long time, big tourist attractions begin to loose their a flare, or at least the attractions that fall into similar categories. You can only see so many temples before they aren't new and interesting anymore. You can only see so national parks before their not interesting anymore. Etc. After a while, somethings become redundant. After a while traveling is less about seeing the sights, and more so about finding areas you enjoy spending time in, places you enjoy just hanging out in, places you can just sit around and spend a week at, places you actually enjoy rather than a place you can snap a lot of pictures at.

Here is a major need-to-know while traveling in India: Trains book up very quickly. The train system in India is awesome and extensive, but for this reason, it's incredibly hard to make bookings just a few days in advance, as it's by far the most popular mode of travel, and trains fill up quickly. In major cities, and big tourist destinations, you can utilize the foreign tourist quota, which sets aside a number of train tickets for foreigners who have a tourist visa, but you cannot get these tickets in every station. I was able to get one of these tourist tickets in Mumbai for my Mumbai to Jalgaon trip, but I didn't realize I couldn't get one in Jalgaon to move on to Agra. Here is the funny thing, I could have bought a tourist quota ticket in Mumbai for my Jalgaon to Agra ticket, but I couldn't buy such a ticket in Jalgaon......again, this is a strange, strange place, that sometimes just seems entirely backwards. But you get used to it after a while. The only way to make it while traveling through India is being able to adjust and be flexible, because unless you book all your train tickets months in advance, and unless you only stay at top-notch hotels, things will not always work out how you want or expect them to, and you have to roll with the punches.

Day 26 - 28: Mumbai

cmeier — Thu, 20 Nov 2014 14:39:00 GMT

Day 26 - 28: Mumbai

Day 26

- Arrive in Mumbai around 1 pm.

- Check into Hotel, shower, head out to explore.

- Ate the best thali I have ever had.....ever. How much to partake in this astounding meal, attended by both waiters and servers (yes, apparently there is a difference, which I found out when a waiter came by for me to repeat my request to him after I had asked a server for something), in this white-table-cloth level establishment.....a mere $5, or 300 rupees. Oh how I love the purchasing power of the all-mighty american green back in other countries.

- Venture back out into the city for a self guided architecture viewing walk, complements of my Lonely Planet travel guide. Make a new friend, who initially just wants to talk and practice his english, but later wants to buy me chia and take me to a "government travel agent" to hear about the railway pass in India, because he's just trying to "help me out, because he "believes in building up good karma." Yeah, right. Every time I have been told someone just wants to "help me out" for the "good karma," they just want me to buy something. I allow him to buy me chia, because I might as well get something out of this, and tell him I can tell he's just trying to get me to buy something and that there is no way in hell there would be a government travel agency this far off the tourist-beaten path. He can't even look me in the face at this point and bounces. Yay for free chia!

- Continue my architecture walk, and meet yet another young man.......let's see what this guy tries to get me to do. Only time will tell! We chat, we chat, I continue my architecture tour and he even helps me navigate. He's not trying to impress me like the Goa scammers, in fact he is quite humble about his circumstances. He didn't ask me for money, or for me to invest my time in anything. He didn't even try to take me to any shops or anything. In fact, he asked me what I wanted to do or see, suggested some places to just hang out and chill for the evening, and even intentionally didn't bring me around his friends, just in case they might try to pull something on me. He legit just wanted to hang out. I told him that I trusted him because he hadn't tried to sell me anything, take me to any shops, or enter into barely legal business ventures with me. It became our running joke that our next stop would be his uncles shop, and that after that we can talk about how I can help him transport valuables to the US. It was nice to make a legitimate friend who was around my age and who I could relate to and joke with. I've met a lot of Indians, and I've spent a decent amount of time with some of them, but I'd say this guy was my first legit Indian friend.

- Part ways with Rahul, see Bollywood movie in iconic theatre (after all, Bollywood movies are produced here), and head to bed.

Day 27:

- Wake up bright and early, quick breakfast, head to harbor to catch ferry to Elephante Island.

- Depart on hour long ferry ride to the island, check out some cave temples, head back to the mainland.

- Eat a burger that didn't really taste like a burger (I suspect they might have used bull instead of cow), drink a couple of beers, and relax.

- Finish the architecture walk, as I wasn't able to finish the day before due to the sun setting, and head back to hotel for a quick mini-nap.

- Meet up with Rahul again, drink some India country liquor (it doesn't have a name, I asked), and roam around Mumbai. This indian country liquor is basically moonshine. It's made illegally in rural India, it's sold illegally, but no one enforces it, it's cheap, and it made from whatever the distillers can get their hands on. The batch we had was made from oranges, and it was delicious. We mixed it with water, didn't taste like much on the front end, and had a nice fruity after taste.

- Get some famous ice cream, and head to bed.

Day 28:

- Wake up, head over to train station to buy foreign tourist quota train ticket to Jalgaon. These things are awesome, even though it was the first time I took advantage of it. They set aside a handful of tickets for people with tourist visas, which is great because everyone takes the trains in India, and often times long distance trains are fully booked weeks ahead. You just have to actually go to the train station in person to buy one, and you can only get them at select train stations.

- Acquire a random guide for 100 rupees/hour to take me to "washing laundry" and the slums. Washing laundry is a quick stop off one of Mumbai's local transit trains. It's an area filled with little cement cubicles where people wash laundry. A little makeshift town is built up around it where the migrate farmers live who do all the washing. They rent the stalls for just a couple of rupees per day and are hired by laundry companies to wash the laundry they get from their clients. It's quite the site. All these cement cubicles filled with water and surrounded by shacks, migrate workers smacking laundry against the water to break loose dirt and build-up, miles of laundry hung up to dry on the roofs.....it's pretty cool. Next we saw Mumbai's slum, which is apparently the biggest in the world. I wasn't sure how I felt about take a tour through it, but I was curious, so I did. I'm glad it was just me and the guide strolling around, rather than a group of white people being shown around like as if it's an entertainment attraction. The slum walk was interesting, and I'll elaborate more on that later.

- I part ways with the guide, and head up to the Global Pagoda, a golden-domed Buddhist stupa out on an island, which houses relics of Buddha, and is a major place for meditation. They even have 10-day meditation work shops.

- Local train back into the city. Btw, the local trains here always leave the doors open. Thus people line up in the doorway, hanging their heads and half their bodies out door, presumably to catch some breeze, as it's incredibly humid in Mumbai, as well as to enjoy the beautiful view of the endless train lines. I of course, was also among the row of men hanging half their body out of the doorway on my return trip home. The sun had set at this point, and the red and green train signals scattered across the darkness of the the unlit train lines was quite hypnotizing. I just couldn't help but to think that something like this, something so wonderful, would never be allowed in the US. Here, if you hurt yourself while hanging out the door of a train, then it's your own fault for taking the risk. I only read about a time in US history where this was the mentality. Now of days, we get to enjoy parternalistic laws and regulations, which keep us from having such fun. Lame.

- Have more famous ice creme, and enjoy the festival like atmosphere of Mumbai's beach.

- Get lost looking for a restaurant that is no longer open, and pay way too much for a cab to take me back to my hotel.

- Head to train station, and take sleeper train to Jalgaon.

Story-Time and Reflection:

Am I back west? Is this Europe? No, far to many indians here. HOW IS IT SO HUMID!!

These were my first thoughts as I began to explore this supposedly Indian city, Mumbai. It has the modern attributes of a western city, victorian architecture everywhere, it has the hustle and bustle of any major western business city, I didn't feel like I was in India, other than when I noticed it was filled with Indians, and they didn't even have rickshaws!!! It was a nice break, having all the creature comforts of the western world readily at my finger-tips. Easy to find beer, good food, GREAT street food, tons of movie theaters, sea views, plenty of things to attractions to check out. The only downside is that some random dude might walk up to you, saying their is something in your ear, and before you know it he already is pulling "ear wax" out of your ear.....but don't worry, he's an ear cleaner, and has all the things one might need to clean out your ear. Bullshit.

In general, Mumbai reminded me a lot of Bangalore, except, sorry Bangalore, Mumbai was way cooler. Cooler buildings, cleaner streets, all the same western comforts, and probably more of them. Yes, Mumbai is pretty expensive, but it's worth every penny. Would I come to visit India, just for Mumbai, no....it doesn't feel very Indian here, but it is a great backpacker pit stop for a much needed break.

One really surprising and interesting part of my time in Mumbai was my visit to the slums. The Mumbai slum is the biggest in the world. I have never seen Slum Dog Millionaire, but this is where it is based. I didn't originally plan to visit the slums, because I felt like it was kind of unethical to make someones misery my entertainment, but when my guide suggested it as possibility, I couldn't help by to satisfy my curiosity. I'm definitely glad it was just me and my guide walking around rather then me and a group of gawking white people with cameras that cost as much as some of these people live on in a year.....this made me feel more comfortable.

We reach the slums, and begin our walk. I was actually expecting something a lot worse than what I found. The slums are relatively safe, no gang presence, and not a lot of violence or muggings. Most of the people do have jobs, usually right there in the slums, and really, the whole place is like a poorly planned/creatively constructed lower-class blue-collar neighborhood. Some people do very menial labor, like collecting recyclable material else where in Mumbai, and bringing them back to the slums to be recycled into new products. Some people work the shops and stands in the slums, which sell all the same items you would find in the rest of India, ranging from produce and snacks, to cell phones and electronics. Many of the owners, who own cars and dress very well, of the factories and shops live in the slums to ensure that their business is running smoothly. Their are community leaders/politicians, again who aren't scraping by. And some people, who were born and raised in the slums, who now have white-collar jobs downtown, still stay in the slums, because it's home.

The population doesn't seem outrageously poor, but rather it just seems overcrowded, poorly maintained, dirty, and lacking any sort of proper infrastructure or urban planning. Buildings and shacks seemed to be haphazardly built on top of each other, there is only make-shift plumping, and a sewage systems is non-existant. It's not that the people are jobless, homeless, and hungry, it's that the standard of living is unbelievably terrible. You'd have to bulldoze the entire place and start from scratch to fix it.

In general though, the people seem happy. This is their home, this is their community, and they get by. It's funny, in the downtown area of Mumbai, people use their children as begging tools. Constantly I would feel a little tap on my leg and turn around to find a small child asking for money. Some of these kids can even get pretty aggressive too. But in the slums, the kids were more timid, and often times they just wanted to say hello and receive a wave and smile in return. Again, the slums are not a dangerous place, and there is no business in taking advantage of foreigners here. People here, in general, make an honest living.

I'm glad I went on the slum walk. It was interesting. I discovered something I wasn't anticipating. I was expecting extreme poverty, and sickly people. But the people seemed entirely normal, it was just the condition of where they lived that wasn't up to par. Honestly, I'd feel safer walking around the slums at night by myself than other parts of India I have visited. The slums are a tricky problem. Like I said, things are so built up, that you'd have to bulldoze the entire place to install proper infrastructure, but this place is a community, and to do such a thing would be to relocated and radially alter how and where these people live together. I imagine they wish they had better plumbing and more of the basics, but at the same time I don't think they'd want to tear apart their community for the amount of time it would take to fix things up.

Day 25: The American Dream Abroad

cmeier — Thu, 20 Nov 2014 14:34:00 GMT

Day 25: Pune (Pronounced, POO-NAY)

Story-Time and Reflection:

Soooooo.......I made these friends in Ooty, a young couple. They seemed nice enough, and mostly my impression was that they were entertained with the fact that I was a foreigner. They insisted that when I made it up to Mumbai that I contact them. So after buying my ticket to Mumbai, I let them know that I will be in their neighborhood. Ends up, they don't actually live in Mumbai, and not even all that close (3 hours by car, without stops). However, they are on the way, between Goa and Mumbai, and invite me to stay with them. I'm not terribly excited about this idea, I was really hoping our meeting again would be for dinner one night, not a full 24 hour period. But like I have said before, I'm trying to keep myself open to the possibilities and to connecting with other people. So I agree to stay with them.

So some background on these two. The wife is absolutely delightful. The husband......the husband, to put it nicely, is like an over grown child, a child that ate too much speed and thus behaves erratically and has zero filter. He is exhausting to be with. One major factor is we really have nothing in common. He comes form a tiny little indian village, doesn't have a lot of education, and is very extroverted. I think he would go crazy if he couldn't talk to anyone for 24-hours. I know I sound harsh, but I tried so hard to appreciate his "energy" and "child-like playfulness." But at the end of the day, we can't expect to be compatible with everyone. For the record, he was very hospitable, but sometimes he was just so overbearing, I felt badgered.

Anyways, it was certainly a new experience. I showed up early in the morning, and him and his wife took the day off to show me around. They only have a motorcycle, so they ask their landlord if they can barrow his car. Not only does he agree, but him, his wife, and their son, all take off of work to show the foreigner around. His landlord and family were delightful. Before we took off to see some sights, they invited me into their home, gave me some snacks and tea (no one else was having tea......the spot light was clearly on me). Once I finished my tea, all 6 of us pack in to the 5-seater car, and we were off. It was fun bouncing around town with them, we were like a little family.

One interesting thing I discovered on my Pune pit-stop is that people still fantasize about moving to and working in the US. While the american dream seems to be dying at home, it is still very much alive abroad. Over lunch, both men started asking work visas to the US. It was a difficult conversation for two reasons.

First, I really know nothing about visa's to the US. I was born there, I live there, I have not close friends or relatives who have had to immigrate to the US, I have zero experience, firsthand or secondhand, about this topic. But for some reason, since I live in the US, they have the impression that I have golden tickets to hand out for entry into the US.

Second, these people, while some of the most friendly and hospitable people I have met anywhere, are not particularly well educated. They might have taken some courses for the industry that they work in, but they don't have a well rounded education, their english would not suffice to work in a US office, and they don't have what would be the equivalent of a 4-year degree. And while they are the most lovely people, I just don't see their resume warranting an easy visa into the US. How do you tell the people who have treated you like family that they don't have what it takes to fulfill their dream? Or that they'd need several more years worth of a lot of education to maybe have a chance?

Part of me was kind of surprised to hear that they were so eager to the move to and work in the US. Neither of them are particularly poor. They both had good middle-class jobs in India. What exactly do they expect to find in the US? Honestly, they are probably better off, regarding the standard of living they can sustain here in India then in the US.

It used to be that people moved to the US to give their children an opportunity at a better life, but now of days, if you are a middle class Indian, you can afford to send you children to good schools, where they will receive a well rounded education, where they will learn english starting at an early age, and ultimately, where they will gain the things they will need to become well-to-do doctors, lawyers, engineers, or businesspeople, even on an international scale.

If we are talking about the advancement of these two men and their careers, moving to a more educated and industrialized country is not going to help, based on what they have to offer. They have the impression that if they move to America, then they will automatically have more material wealth. (Quick side-note: While we look toward the east and wish we had their cultural and spiritual riches, they look at us and wish they had our material wealth.......the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.) They think that if they can move to the US, they will instantly become a rags to riches story. Yes, the US is a land of opportunity where you can come from nothing and make millions, but this is still only accomplished by being a valuable commodity to big business or consumers at large. Hard work is only the first part of being fiscally successful, most of it is about what you have to offer, and how much someone is willing to pay for that.

It was a very uncomfortable conversation. They want to move to the States so bad, but they didn't even know that the mainland US is split between 4 time zones, or that Chicago is not really at all close to either New York or California. This is not to say they're stupid, it's to demonstrate that I just really don't think they know what they're asking for. What they want, is not what they'd get if they could move to the US. They have a dream, its the american dream, but this is not a possible reality in this case.

My experience with the Goa gem scam

cmeier — Sat, 15 Nov 2014 16:40:00 GMT

Goa: Days 22 - 24

Day 22

- Arrive in Goa at about 4:30 in the morning. The bus drops me off at what looks like the middle of nowhere, but luckily, one other girl also gets off at this stop, so at least we're not entirely alone.

- Rickshaw drives by within 10 min, and I have him take me to one of the places in my guidebook. We show up and a man on a scooter is hanging out near the intersection. He tells me that he runs a guesthouse and that he has cheaper rooms closer to the beach. I hop on his scooter to go check out his place. Book room......mostly because it seem like the only option at this point.

- Back to sleep till about 9 am, buy bathing suit, buy flip-flops, hit the beach.

- Discover not-quite-open-but-operating bar on other side of cove. When the tide is high, you have to wad through waist deep water, and this is when they are not-quite-open-but-operating. Not to say that they won't serve you, but the kitchen is closed and you might have to call someone over if you need something, but the seclusion is nice, and in my case, their was already one patron there, who was staying in a not-quite-open-but-operating-hut. Needless to say, rules, regulations, and standards tend to be very flexible in India. FYI, during low tide, the water recedes such that you can walk to this bar/resort.

- Continue to explore the beach, taking a dip in the water on occasion, and in general, getting a lay of the land.

- Meet a couple of young India's, and have dinner with them.

Day 23

- Wake up at a decent hour, aka before restaurants open and begin serving breakfast in this lazy part of India. Literally, not even the local places, that don't cater to foreigners, were open.

- Find a place that will let me sit, write, and drink chia till they do open.

- Beach it up, which includes day drinking, walking up and down the beach, and body surfing.

- Meet my new young India friend, Sid, for lunch at his apartment. Scooter ride with Sid down to Cola beach, or rather, best described as, the hidden paradise of Goa. This place is off the beaten track, as in you have to take a dirt road and then hike a bit to get to it. There is no town their, just seasonal pop-up tents and restaurants/bars, all secluded from any sign of sedentary civilization. Beautiful.

- Back to my beach, continue to beach it out.

- Swanky dinner with Sid. Free of cost for me! Boom.

- Make some new friends from Mumbai at some beach bar and hang out with them until.....well, until I feel like I need a second dinner. Drunchies (Drunk-munchies), for those of you who don't know.

- Sleep time.

Day 24

- Wake up and meet Sid and his cousin to begin new "promising" business venture. La-dee-da, read the story-time and reflection part of my Goa blog for more info, la-dee-da. Narrowly escape pretty intense scam, and head back to the beach to enjoy the rest of my day just beachin it up.

- Enjoy my final hours in Goa eating delicious and fresh seafood, body surfing, and bumming around.

- Travel to Madgao in order to catch sleeper but to Pune.

Story-Time and Reflection

Goan beaches are renown in India, and like Hampi, it was another item on the must do list in my travel guide, so of course I had to stop in. Goa, particularly Palolem, is another big tourist destination, and on the beaches, easily 80% of everyone is white. The place is packed with Australians, Europeans, and tons of Russians.....didn't meet one American here, and I talked to a lot of people.

While Goa is certainly a big tourist place, you don't find as many backpackers here. Most people are here for their entire trip, exclusively here to beach-out, at a very affordable rate I might add. Beach side huts from 500 - 2000 rupees a night. Fresh seafood dinners are 200 - 300 rupees. Beers around 70 rupees, and cheaper if their is happy hour. ($1 US = 60 rupees). It's a wonderful little place.

However, being a big tourist place, everyone wants you to come look at their shop, and if you do need to buy something, like flip-flops, they'll try and get you to pay at least double for what they'll settle for. Another thing that comes along with the tourist territory, are some serious scams, and I actually got pretty far down the road in one before I knew things weren't right. So here is my story about how I almost made one of the worst decisions in my entire life.

My first evening on the beach here I was approached by a couple of young Indian guys. I didn't even hear what they initially said, but once they had my attention, the conversation began and flowed quite nicely. They were both dressed very nicely, spoke english well, and in general, came off as affluent. One of the two seemed particularly chatty, but this didn't strike me as odd, as I've met plenty off young, affluent men, particularly from south central asia, who never run out of things to say or questions to ask. By the end of the exchange, I had agreed to have dinner with them at their apartment. They seemed entirely genuine.

I meet the chatty one, Sid, at the agreed upon place at 8 pm. We take a short scooter ride to his apartment. We show up, and the apartment seems pretty nice, or at least for the area. Inside their unit they have a flat-screen tv mounted on the wall, nice leather furniture, the works. The other boy from the beach is there too, but he seems to disappear after greeting me. Me and Sid sit down, drink, chat etc. Another young man arrives with a couple bags of groceries. Sid explains he is the cook. So far it seems that Sid is indeed from a very wealthy family, given that he seems to have both a lackey and a cook with him.

I "learn" that he is from Mumbai, and him and his cousin are just down in Goa buying some land to build a resort. He talks about throwing large parties and inadvertently mentions things that would only be possible if he came from a lot of money. Soon enough, his "cousin" shows up. They tell me about how their families primary business is crafting jewelry and sending it abroad. But mostly, the conversation is general, flowed, and didn't seeem particularly guided any which way. After dinner, Sid takes me back to the beach, and we agree to meet again tomorrow for lunch.

I wake up, do some beach stuff, and head over to our meeting spot. Sid is waiting. I hop back on the scooter and we head back to the apartment. His cousin is there, and we get down to visiting as lunch is prepared. Again, the conversation is quite regular, nothing out of the normal. Some how, the conversation turns to how the government charges outrageous taxes on their exporting jewelry and how they have partners who use their tourist visas and tourist quotas to transport jewelry for them, getting a substantial cut of what the jewelry is worth abroad. Again, all of this is presented in a very casual and slow manner. It comes across as if they are simple talking about their business, which they have been doing on and off since I met them. They ask when I am planning to go home, and surprise, surprise, they have an order that needs to get to New York right around that time. They don't bring up the idea of us working together quite yet though, instead, we have lunch.

Conversation over lunch is back to non-business chit-chat. Shortly after lunch the conversation turns......maybe we can help each other out. "You have tourist visa, maybe you can help us get our shipment to the states." I don't instantly agree, but ask A LOT of questions about the legality of it all. They ensure me that while they are certainly circumventing the law, they still work within the law. Basically, you "buy" the jewelry from them, ship it to yourself in the states as a personal purchase, and then meet a representative at your destination to collect the package with, and "return" your purchase. You get cash, several thousand dollars upon handing over the package. They say, this is what our lawyers have come up with, and they have never had any problems. They even emphasize that they are placing a lot of trust in you, and told me a story about one man who took the package, and never met the representative. The whole time, they make it seem like they would be the one's taking a risk.

I continue to ask all the questions. This is legal in India, but can I get in trouble in the US? No. Once I send the package, and it clears customs, are their any other barriers that we could run into? No. Will I have to put forth any investment what so ever? No. Will I have to provide any sort of bank or credit card information? No. etc.

I tell them, I'm in.

Honestly, it sounded really exciting. Make a quick and easy $8000, the only thing that could go wrong is that customs doesn't let it through, in which case, I still wouldn't get in trouble. And they were offering to provide me some extra cash up front to help with my travel expenses as I toured around Asia. We agree to meet again tomorrow morning to get the ball rolling, and me and Sig head off by scooter to check out another, and more exclusive beach, in Goa.

The beach is amazing. You have to take a dirt road to get there, but once on the beach, you can tell this is not a cheap place to stay. Big white tents, couple of open air, seasonal bars and restaurants with fresh seafood on display and way over-priced drinks, beautiful people everywhere. There is no town, no locals, it is secluded, and seems unreal. We chat about our lives, our goals, our girlfriends, our families, we talk about our going on trips together, when we do more business together in the future, we "bonded." Eventually we head back to my beach, but not before having a swanky seafood dinner.......none of which I had to pay for, of course.

We meet up the next morning, and again, his cousin is there. The plan, begin the transaction paper work, package up the jewelry, mail it, and then head to Madgao, one of Goa's larger cities to complete the customs paper work with the lawyers, ect. But this is when some red flags begin to pop up.

Red flag number one. The cousin seems on edge. Why? The jewelry is that much closer to reaching it's destination. But whatever, I'm not the most temperate person either.

Red flag number two. The jewelry is ugly. What american would want these pieces? Again, well maybe this is an traditional India design, and the buyer is India.

Red flag number three. They have me write out the purchase agreement on computer paper. Big time jewelry dealers don't have standard forms? They do have a standard form for insurance, maybe they forgot the other standard forms.

Red flag number four. We take the package to a shop that sells clothes to send it. They tell me, since it's Sunday, DHL is closed, but this place is authorized by DHL. However, there are no DHL signs on the windows, their is no DHL materials in the store, and no computer was used to enter any information about the package. This package is supposedly worth $50,000 in the states, $10,000 US in India. This is not the type of place you simply drop off a package like this. I've run out of explanations, and I'm not feeling good about this.

Red flag number five. The supposed insurance was registered over the phone......before I told them the tracking number. Beyond that, I have sent stuff from India with DHL, and they were very particular about what I could or could no send because I couldn't provide a receipt. Not to mention, wouldn't DHL be the group insuring the package? It is in their hands after all. Again, I have no explanation I can tell myself.

Red flag number six. The car they want to take me Madgao in is not that nice, and the trunk is filled with trash. F#@&! WHAT HAVE I DONE! I begin freaking out. This is a scam. I don't know how they plan to get screw me over yet, butt this s not the car some jewelers would be driving around in, not to mention, the supposed driver is no where in sight. Wealthy Indians don't drive themselves, unless they are going for a joy-ride in a super swanky car. I'm just praying I'm not too deep.

I tell them, I can't do this. I tell them I need to leave. They calmly take me back up to the apartment, saying it's fine, we're not too far down the line to cancel. We get upstairs, they ask what is making me change my mind. They're not behaving aggressively, but we're not in public, so I don't feel safe calling them out on trying to scam me. I tell them it's a gut feeling. That I literally feel physically sick, which was not a lie. They try to reassure me, I tell them I'm leaving, they tell me I have to at least write out a cancellation. The cousin seems upset about the money they invested in the insurance.....probably trying to make me feel guilty and pony up cash. I ignore his concern. And continue to stand up and head toward the door. I guess to keep the impression of the whole scam, they say I can leave but they still need a letter of cancellation. I write out a cancellation letter, and we don't shake hands when I leave.

I'm relieved to get out of their and I instantly search "Indian jewelry scam" on my phone. The very first result is "How did I manage to fall for a Goa gem scam?" I head back to the beach and down a couple of beers, as I am really shaken up, and read articles about the exact scam I almost fell for.

Basically, once you have filled out all the customs paper work, you get a call the next day from a "customs officer" saying that your package has drawn their attention due to the lack of receipt. They continue to tell you that if you cannot provide a receipt, you'll end up in India jail for a few years. Soon enough, you hear from your "partners" who are equally concerned about losing their business. They tell you that you'll have to make a purchase after all to satisfy customs inquisition, but that you will be reimbursed, of course. This is where they get you.

Their is no customs officer, the jewelry is fake, even the addresses they use are fake (they tell you they will send it to your destination's General Postal Office, but these GPO's don't even exist). Once you pony up the cash in hard money or debt transaction, as they can't except credit card (credit cards can back-charge), they tell you they will get all the records over to the customs officer. They even go as far to tell you that it would be best if you leave the country, and buy you a plane ticket home.....after all, the jewelry is coming in the mail and their money to be made. Surprise, surprise, you arrive, their is no representative to meet you, their is n GPO at which to pick up any pack, and their numbers are no longer active. You realize your life savings is gone, and that you have been had.

This is a newer scam, a modified version of an older gem scam which is now well documented on travel web-sites and travel guides. Once it was all said and done, I checked the scam section of my travel guide. I didn't find it, but I did notice something funny.......their was a page missing in the scam section. I had shown them my travel guide, and they asked to flip through it, I of course obliged. At some point they must of had enough time to remove that page.

I'm not embarrassed about almost falling for this. It's an amazing performance where they wine and dine you, where they have really personal conversations with you, and make you their friend before the topic of doing business together comes up. I am however, pretty disheartened.

As a traveler, I try to remain open to people, invitations, new experiences, and possibilities in general, often times I go out of my comfort zone to push myself to become a more cultured and understanding person. I think most people would agree that this is a noble pursuit. But it is exactly this trait that this scam feeds on. I wanted to blow them off for dinner the very first night. I thought, what if it's an awkward evening? I can have fun on my own for sure, why risk ruining an evening? But I stepped outside my comfort zone and showed up. They seemed so genuine about inviting me to a meal, and I didn't want to let them down. I thought, I'm pushing myself to make myself more open to connecting to other people, and in the process making me a better man for it. In the end, my good intentions played into getting as deep as I did in their scam, and this is what is disheartening.

I opened myself up, went outside my comfort zone, thought I was really connecting with someone from the other side of the world and taking on some exciting task, which all would have made a great story. However, I guess in the end, I still ended up with a pretty interesting story, and I'm certainly more worldly.

Hampi

cmeier — Sun, 9 Nov 2014 21:26:00 GMT

Hampi: Day 20 & 21

Day 20

- Arrive in Hampi around 7 in the morning, rickshaw to hotel, hire rickshaw driver to show me around for the day, check-in to hotel, settle in.

- Rickshaw picks me up around 9, and the day begins. I agreed to pay him 100 rupees per hour of touring, and the plan is for an 8 hour day of sight-seeing. Hampi is an incredible place. To start with, you are surrounded by these hills of giant boulders. Don't be mistaken, they are not grassy hills with boulders on them......it's literally giant hill-sized rocks, with other smaller, but still huge, boulders piled on top. Some of these boulders are perched in such a way that they seem to defy physics. On top of that, there are ruins......everywhere! I traveled to Hampi thinking the ruins might be outside of the city area, I was wrong, they are throughout the city, surrounding the city, walk in any which direction and you will run into ruins. None of them are fenced, and while several important areas have says saying vandalism is punishable, climbing on them and through them is entirely allowed. I spent all day climbing around the various sights. Basically, I felt like India Jones in a foreign world exploring alien ruins. It's amazing. I probably took about a million pictures the first couple hours I was there because it looks so.....strange.....awesome.......astonishing....more like something you would imagine coming out of sci-fi than reality. Did I mention the crazy amount of awesome ruins?

- To finish off the night, my rick driver too me up to this one hill top which is renown for the view. I get up there, and as I hike up to the tippy-top, I come across a little temple. A priest is standing out front, so I wave hello, and he calls me over. He takes me into the temple, which is a cave, and shows me around, provides a little explanation, and of course, gives me a blessing. I head out an watch the sunset. It wasn't the most clear night, but beautiful view none the less.

Day 21

- Wake up around 6:30, try to figure out how to bus to Goa.....unsuccessfully. - Have the hotel owner arrange my overnight bus to Goa, regrettable, for that night.

- Make my way across the river to Tom and Jerry's.....a couple of guys who run a bouldering outfit. BTW, their real names are not Tom and Jerry, but these names are easier for tourist to remember. This using pseudo names is not an uncommon practice in Hampi, since a large portion of it's inhabitants are westerners.

- Reach the outfit just in time to depart on their morning 3 hour bouldering class. Bouldering is kind of like rock-climbing but much more technical. Basically, instead of climbing a large rock face, which are typically more jagged, and have more holes, to use to climb up the face, in bouldering you have to maneuver up the top of a boulder by using the tiny dimples and finger tip-sized ledges to hoist, push, and pull yourself to the top. You can start from a standing position, but if you really want to challenge yourself, you started seated......which is nuts. It takes a lot of endurance, especially from a seated position, and its easy to wear your arms out if you don't do a lot of arm excersices. It's pretty challenging physically, but it's also a mental work out, in so far as you kind of have to plan out where and how you will move your various appendeges in advance given that their aren't an infinate amont of dimples and ledges to utilize. It's kind of addicting......wish I had another day to reattempt some of the boulders I didn't complete that day.

- Lunch at Laughing Buddha with random guy from Texas. Interesting guy, a little older, and avid traveler. He is business consultant who works contract jobs here and there, and travels most of the time. We chatted for a couple of hours. He was the first american traveler I have met while abroad, and it was nice to bond over how things are done in the good ol' U S of A.

- Visit temple and take picture with temple Elephant.

- Pack up, and head out. Board sleeper bus to Goa.

Story-Time and Reflection:

Hampi is awesome. Super cheap, almost unreal scenery, and a west-coast-like laid back feel. For these reasons, the place is crawling with back-packers, which honestly, felt a little weird. It was the first time I had seen so many white people in India......not sure how I feel about that. Literally, at any given moment, you could spin around, 360-degree, and see at least one white person, if not only white people. It was nice to be able to chat with almost anyone, as nearly all of them spoke english, but it took away from the western-fraternity I have found in other parts of India. All the foreigners just blended into the background, and the special bond of hailing from the west was lost.

I also realized that I'm quite different from many of the other young travelers here, which I never noticed when it was a one-on-one interaction. There are sooooooo many dirty, hippy-looking, young 20-somethings here, many of which are wearing loose, linen eastern-style pants, and other Indian clothes, particularly the kind you don't even see Indians wearing. Don't get me wrong, everyone I spoke with was very friendly, and many remind me of friends of mine from the States, but place me, in my Eddie Bauer travel pants, which are light weight, water repellent, quick-dry, and anything else that makes them the most practical choice for a traveler who will be navigating all types of terrain and urban settings, along with my basic black or gray v-neck, among these throw-back, hippy look-a-likes, and it's quite obvious that one of these things is not like the others. Honestly, at times, I felt more out of place amongst them than when I'm the only white guy amongst a bunch of Indians.

Overall, amazing place, but between the scenery and the foreigners......it's really, REALLY, strange.

Day 19: DAMN YOU, MCDONALDS

cmeier — Sun, 9 Nov 2014 21:24:00 GMT

Day 19: DAMN YOU, MCDONALDS

Laundry List:

- Wake up, buy overnight bus ticket to Hampi, and book hotel room.

- Realize I have spent almost 3 weeks in just Karnataka and Kerala, and decide to plan out the remainder of my trip in India, or at least figure out my destinations and in what order I will travel to each one.

- Spend the remainder of day bumming around the MG road area, which has become my home away from home in Bangalore, writing my blog at a ridiculous roof-top bar/pub where they blast poorly DJed electronic music and the the servers wear sailor outfits.

- Decide to explore into what India McDonalds has to offer. WORST DECISION EVER.

- Check-out of hotel, take a rickshaw to bus station, and overnight myself to Hampi. Thank god I didn't have to share my bunk with a random Indian man!

Reflection and Story-Time:

So today, I got curious. What does India McDonalds serve for lunch and dinner. I had had Micky D's once before, for breakfast, on suggestion of my Dad's colleague, on the day she let me use her driver, and it was fine, but not really great. I had some sort of veg breakfast sandwich. But as I walked by a McD's in Bangalore, my curiosity got the better of me, so I walk in. The "meat" options, regarding their sandwiches included chicken, paneer (cheese), egg, and veg patties. One option was the Maharaja McChicken Mac.....the Indian version of of a Big Mac. That, along with the Peri Peri seasoned fries, is what I ordered for myself. It was fine, again, not great. The chicken was clearly very processed, and the seasoning over powered the fries with a powdery texture.

That night, I was outrageously gassy, but I figured it would pass. The entire next day I was, excuse my french, SHITTING MY BRAINS OUT!!!! Luckily, I was still able to hold my bowels, but whenever I did go, it was like Niagara Falls. I was popping homeopathic digestive medication like candy to keep my stomach feeling OK. By the end of the night, I broke the seal on the western antibiotics I had brought along for just this occasion. YAY for travel nurses, and their foresight that such an event might occur, because after the first two antibiotic pills I was feeling much more.....umm....regular.

I thought this was pretty funny. McD's is not the poor mans food in India, it really rather caters to the middle and upper classes. I have eaten plenty of street food since being in India, and I have eaten at a few hole in the wall type joints too, but in the end, it was the supposedly hygienic McD's, the international chain, that got me sick. Ridiculous. NEVER. AGAIN.

Kerala Tour: 13 - 17

cmeier — Sun, 9 Nov 2014 21:21:00 GMT

Kerala Tour: Days 13 - 17

Trip Laundry List:

Day 13

- Wake up in Bangalore, and it felt great to be back in a familiar place

- Continue to bum around, writing, reading, etc.

- Send package of goodies home for the fam-jam, as my sole backpack had become completely packed. By the way, when sending packages from India, you have two options. Option one will get there within 5 business days, but it will cost you a pretty penny. Option two will be cheaper, but it will take around a month, is more likely to get damaged. ALSO, they wouldn't let me send half the stuff cause I didn't have receipts!!! You don't get receipts in most stores here! Needless to say, I won't be buying many more gifts.

- Go to lunch with my Dad's colleague. Chat and learn about certain events in India history, particularly about Indian politics since independence. As well as hear about the new PM, Modi, who seems to be quite the uniter and game-changer here in India.

-Return to hotel, and meet the tour bus for 7:30 departure to Kerala. Attempt to get as much rest as possible on overnight bus ride. In effect, learn to sleep in whole new positions.

Day 14

- Wake up a 5 in the morning to "freshen up" in the least "fresh" hotel I have yet to see in god-knows-where, India. WOW. Just, wow.

- Back on bus for several more hours, heading for Munnar, our first stop on the trip. Continue to sleep, and enjoy the mountainous environment. Also, almost have monkey sneak through my open window on bus when stopped at Kerala boarder. Brave little fellow, probably seeing if there is anything cool tto steal. Closest I have been to a monkey yet, and by close I mean 6-inches from my face. CRAZY.

- Reach first stop, Eravikulam National Park. Wait for 3 hours in a giant line for who-knows-what. Make friends with the one on the tour who speaks flawless english on the trip. Become adopted by him and his wife, and embrace my new pseudo parents as my own. These people were wonderful.

- Finally reach end of the line we had been waiting in. While everyone else pays 60 rupees, lucky me, being a foreigner, pay 450 rupees! Not that this gets you any special privileges, they just like your money more. Best part is, no one seems to have a clue about what exactly it is that there is to see here. All we know is that you take bus into the national park. I figured that maybe the bus tours your around, but nope, they take you up a mountain, and drop you off. To come back down, guess what.....you stand in line again. However, you do get to walk through the clouds on the 6 km trail, taking in the wonderful views, and check out a bunch of billy-goats......if you're brave enough, and like annoying animals, you can even try and touch one.

- Reach hotel in Munnar, which was actually a lot nicer of a place then I would normally book for myself, and left to our own devices for the evening. I wander to a restaurant that my 2012 Lonely Planet Travel guide suggested, saying they have some traditional Kerala dishes, and once I order, read about how the restaurant has gone down hill lately. Excellent. So that's why I am LITERALLY the only person in it. The food was bad, but it definitely wasn't good, and given that they were going for upscale, it was way over priced. We live and learn. Lesson learned: read the updated online reviews before you order your food.

Day 15

- Wake up, eat breakfast at hotel, embark on Munnar sight-seeing part of tour.

- Munnar sight seeing: lots of tea plantations. Literally mountains covered in tea plants. A new and interesting sight that gets old fast. Visited some other stuff that just really isn't worth mentioning. My impression: You consider these interesting sights? Really? But like no, for real? Ok, we took a boat ride in a pontoon, and the view of nature was nice, but we've been surrounded by nature this entire time......at this point, it's nothing new. The rest was truly unremarkable.

- Return to hotel, left to our own devices.

- I explore the town centre of Munnar, mostly just wandering in and out of shops. Buy some chocolates, which are big up in the mountain areas, and grab some dosa at a sketchy looking hole-in the wall place that was suggested by my tour guide. Surprisingly quite delicious, and insanely cheap. Furthermore, again, based on the looks of the place, I was pleasantly surprised that they didn't make me sick. WIN.

Day 16

- Wake up insanely early to hit the road by 5:30.

- Travel to Kumily, and arrive at Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary. Another not-so-interesting forest preserve, where again, I get to pay 15 times what it cost an India to visit, which is no embellishment. 450 rupees (what I paid), divided by 30 rupees (what everyone else paid), equals 15. Math.

- Once we enter, continue on to the sole attraction they have there.....a wild-life viewing boat ride. Guess what? You wait in line again, for several hours, for this exhilarating 90 minute long cruise in which you will pretty much only see water, trees, and birds. I won't go into the million different ways they could streamline this process, or make it more organized, because more often than not in India, they just don't really seem to care. Which is not to say that some Indians don't get frustrated about this, they do, but in general customer satisfaction is not something that is usually a concern here. Which is stranger, coming from a place on this earth where bad online reviews can destroy your business.

- Return to hotel, and look up Kumily in my travel guide.

- Kumily, is actually a pretty cool little town. It is relatively close to some attractions and tends to be a usual host to tourists and travelers. Both Lonely Planet, and the random Indian guy I had dinner with in Madikeri, had the same suggestions for entertainment in Kumily. First, a demonstration of Kalari, the local martial arts from the Mudra culture. This show was nuts. Jumping and throwing each other, all the while fighting with sticks, knives, swords, ropes, fists, and legs. I tried to take some pictures, none of which turned out, but I did get some videos.....maybe one day I'll actually upload some media on my blog. Second was another demonstration, whose art form again comes from the Mudra culture. This demonstration explained and displayed a style of theatrical performance known as Kathakali, which involves very elaborate, decadent, and exasperated costumes and make-up, and is while it involves no spoken language, communication is made with technical and specific body language, including eye movements, head movements, hand signals, etc. The first half of the performance they review the make up, customs, and communication style. The second half they give a performance. Both were quite interesting.

Side note: I've talked a little bit about this before, but it is astounding how boldly some India's will behave. Throughout the seconding demonstration, people were talking loudly, standing up and walking over to one another, and in general, behaving in a way that a westerner would interpret as being very disrespectful to the performance. It was very annoying. As my pseudo India father would say, India's have too much freedom. They get away with behaving ridiculously sometimes, and no around puts them in their place. Again, the tolerance for other peoples behavior here is very high, which to a westerner, is very very strange. This is something I don't think I can get use to. It as made me a little more a chill person, but they still cross certain lines that will just never be OK in my eyes.

- After the performances, I wander to another place suggested in my guide book, Ebony Cafe. They mostly serve american breakfast food, and they even have beer, although their beer offering is very hush-hush, as they are not licensed to do so. ALSO, they play classic rock. Playing classic rock is a trend in pubs in Bangalore, but it was quite the surprise for a little town like Kumily. Apparently the owner spent sometime in the US during the 60's and 70's.

- What started off as not the best day, ended with a wonderful evening. At the end of this day, I formed a new perspective on tours in India.....they are hit or miss. I have had one wonderful tour, and several tours that have some nice highlights, but had a lot of disappointing points. I know I said early that tours can be a great value here, and the right ones still are, but perhaps more often than not, it's probably more worth while to just check out the major attractions on you own. You can skip all the randoms stuff they throw in there, and really give your full attention, and time, to whatever interests you.

Day 17

- Another early morning, and off to the backwaters of Kerala, the crown jewel of the trip. Near the coast of Kerala, their is a large inlet of water from the Arabian Sea. The land between this inlet and the open waters is ribbed with snaking canals. In fact, there are so many of these wandering canals that the people who live their use them for regular means of travel. Docks everywhere, storefronts face the waters, their are even a public boat routes (like a public bus system), with various stops that people use to get around.

- Our tour booked a ferry to take us across the inlet and then through the canals, into the city of Alleppey. The waters were calm, the ride was slow and wondful. Houseboats, usually simple thatchet and wooden huts built on widespread boats, but typically including bathrooms and kitchens. Some can be quite luxurious with glass windows and air-conditioning. Houseboats are a big thing in the area, although they are mostly rented out, and few people live on them regularly. They can be rented out for a day cruise, which usually includes a meal or two, or they can be rented out for several days......you can probably rent them for as long as your wallet will allow. You can also rent canoe, if you want to mosey around at your own pace for a day.

- Overall, this is definitely a must do in when in southern India. I've never seen anything quite like it before. I could have spent all day long just cruising along and taking it all in. Next time, I'll definitely be renting a houseboat.

Story-Time and Reflection:

So, like I noted above, this tour was not the best I had been on. A couple of days, I had more fun exploring on my own after the tour part of the day had ended. However, if not for this tour, I would not have met my pseudo India parents, Vee-Jay and Reena. They had perhaps just a couple of years on my own parents, and both spoke english very well. They were from the suburbs (yes, apparently some major cites in India have suburbs!) of Delhi, but they had lived all over India, due to Vee-Jay's job as an India Army Engineer, although now he is retired. They have two children, a girl and boy. The girl married a Canadian and lives in Toronto, the boy lives somewhere in the States, on the east coast.

When I first met them, my impression was that they totally looked like westerners, due to their style of dress. Later, I found out that they buy a lot of clothes while in North American......not entirely sure why, because clothes are so cheap in India.....maybe it's a quality thing? But anyways, they were wonderful. I happened to be next to them on the first real day of the tour when we had to wait in line forever, and they kept feeding me all sorts of snacks, and refused to take no as an answer. Normally, it's not the best idea to take food from strangers while traveling, but given that we were on a state run tour, all my luggage was locked away in the bus, and this couple were nowhere close to the criminal type, I knew it was safe. They couldn't just drug me in a 3 hour queue, and expect my unconscious body to not draw attention.

Me and Vee-Jay started talking about social and political topics, and conversation launched off from their. I was very curious to hear about the life-styles and traditions in India, as well as to learn about the usual dynamics between between government and the people. He certainly knew more about the US's international posture, compared to what I knew about how India reacts and behaves on the international platform, but being a liberally-educated and well rounded (aka, unfocused) college graduate, I was able to enlighten him on a couple of issues he just couldn't make sense of.......particularly concerning how the US interacts with Pakistan. Needless to say, we had wonderful conversation over the several hour wait. He was an interesting fellow who had a lot of national pride, but recognized it's short-comings too.

Over the course of the tour they insisted I eat with them, accompany them when we stopped at various places, and pretty much treated me to everything we did, save the entrance fees to places. I attempted to buy them lunch once, and again, they sternly refused. Reena, was not shy about expressing that I reminded her of her own son, and they both said they enjoyed having an adopted american son to parent a little bit during the tour. Again, they were truly wonderful people, and I enjoyed their company.

I don't think Indian hospitality will ever cease to amaze me.

Day 18: Bollywood Movie Day

cmeier — Wed, 5 Nov 2014 13:59:00 GMT

I have been told my multiple people since I have arrived that I must see a Bollywood movie while in India, otherwise, my adventures will be incomplete. Well today I arrived back in Bangalore at about 7:30 in the morning, with no plans till I leave tomorrow, at 10:30 at night. Basically, I have two full days of just chilllin. I have grown to love the days where I have no plans, and just kinda wander, taking up opportunities as they arise, plan out more of my trip, and just kind of do some general maintenance stuff, such as much needed laundry.

Since I had so much free time, and since I am back in Bangalore, I figured today would the perfect day to catch a flick.

Two reccomendations have been made to me for Bollywood movies since I have been here, "Bang! Bang!" Which is the Indian remake of the American movie, "Knight and Day." Apparently, this is pretty usual here, Indian remakes of American films. The second is a movie called, "Happy New Year." This one I believe is an Indian original.

(By the way, for those of you who know grammar too well, I realize these blogs are not the most clean and neat, as far as essays go, and I often notice where and how I could make them shinier and clean-cut, but honestly, I'd rather spend more time exploring then going back to fix things up and make them pretty.......soo deal with it.)

Anyways, I really had no basis by which to choose which movie to see, given my lack of background knowledge and understanding, as far as Bollywood movies go, so I look up show-times for both. Luckily for me, "Bang! Bang!" is no longer playing in theaters, so my choice was made for me....."Happy New Year." (From here on out referred to as HNY)

The description of HNY suggested that it was a action, comedy, and romance film, and honestly, you could probably throw drama in there as well, for good measure. This movie literally had a little bit of everything. It had the the outright silliness of an old Adam Sandler movie, the over exaggerated effects of children's movie (think Space Jam), the slapstick of Charlie Chaplin, the revenge and drama of a mexican day-time soap-oprah, the music and dancing that come along with any Bollywood film, the action and criminal mastermind of Bourn Identity meets Oceans Eleven, and the romance of Grease. It was literally a 3 hour crazy hodge-podge of everything. The production quality was on par with any major american film, and albeit it being in Hindi, it was really entertaining.

A couple of funny things. TONS of american pop culture references, honestly, probably far more than what we would ever consider to be appropriate in an american film, even in a dumb comedy. But given that this was an Indian movie, I thought it was hilarious. Also, they'd have smatterings of english throughout. Typically this would happen when they were using\saying an american phrase or saying, something that probably just doesn't hold the same meaning when translated. In general, they seemed to lift a lot of material from american films, in general, but they way the glued it all back together could, truly made it their own, and could only be described as India.

Now for the story. It really seemed to follow the same premise of Oceans Eleven. Starts with the main character, who has some grudge, and wants revenge, against a very wealthy individual . He collects a well thought out team of criminals for various aspects of the revenge motivated heist, and the vast majority of the movie is about their putting the plan into motion. One interesting twist is in this flick though, is that a vital element to the plan, or perhaps its more of a restriction, or perhaps best described as an externally imposed requisite for the plan to work out, is that they must enter and become a finalist in a world dance competition.

Again, all of this is going down in Hindi, so I'm sure some of the specifics were lost on me, however, I was actually able to follow the movie quite well based on the visuals, the mood set by the music, and the actors reactions to each other and the situation. Here is what I was able too collect.

The antagonist (from here on referred to as the jerk) of the movie is a wealthy ass-hole, his wealthy having nothing to do with the fact that he is a jerk, these two things just happen to coincide. The protagonist's father build the jerk a custom and state of the art safe, which it seems he uses to project other people's valuables rather than his own. Given that the protagonists father has a detailed understanding of the vault, the jerk sets him up and blames him for stealing valuables that were being kept in the safe. The hero's father goes to jail, and having been disgraced kills himself.

I guess the father tells the hero that he was set up by the jerk, and thus the hero is out for revenge, otherwise I don't know how else he would know who set his father up.

The hero recruits an old army buddy, who is an explosives expert, one of his fathers old colleagues, who has some knowledge about this vault and who is also skilled at breaking into safes, a young man, who is an expert hacker, and drunkard, who will play the roll of a look-alike of a key individual. Later in the movie, they also recruit the drunkards sister, who dances at a burlesque type club, and is their dancing coach. At first she doesn't want to help, but once she meets the hero, she is love-struck and goes along. This is where the romance aspect of the story starts up.

The plan is pretty much organized prior to the recruiting, and while parts of the movie show them preparing for the actual heist of the diamonds, that will be kept in the vault during the dance competition, most of the movie is them getting ready for the competition and their performance in it.

One thing about their dancing though. The girl is not particularly successful in making them good dancers, in fact they suck. Thus they must hurdle this barrier as well. First they must pass the auditions. Again, they are horrible, so they somehow get their hands on a video of the two judges in very compromising and career devastating positions......with each other. So they blackmail the judges. Next they must get India to vote for them to represent India in this world dance competition. At this performance they literally get booed off stage and have all sorts of stuff thrown at them. But they hack the system that tallies the electronic votes and flood it with phony ballets in their favor, they end up winning by a narrow margin of less than 0 votes. Again, people are outraged that they won. But they get what they need, and that is to to move on to the world finals, hosted at the hotel where the vault is located.

They reach the hotel where the finals are and continue to receive the unwelcome greeting they get everywhere. Their first dance at the competition is against a reigning campions, the south koreans, in a dance off. But at this point, team India has embraced their sub-average dancing, and seem to theme their routine around mocking their bad dancing, and embrace their being the underdogs who dance like the average joes and janes of the world. During the first dance off, the hero sacrifices their routine, when he see's the sole child on the korean team is about to fall from a giant human pyramid, in order to catch him. The crowd, the world, the judges fall in love with him and team India.

After they perform, they are suppose to carry out the heist, but they find information that the diamonds had not made it to the vault yet. Counting on th fact that they won't make it past the first round, they are devastated. But, give the hero's act of self-sacrifice to save someone n the other team, they make them a wild card.

They carry out the heist, win the competition, and the jerk is blamed for stealing the diamonds he was suppose to guard. And of course, the girl and the hero end up together. It was actually kind of a heart-tugging ending. It was thoroughly enjoyed, even though much I couldn't understand exactly what was being said. One surprise was that I could often understand what was generally being said, such as when someone was mocking someone, what people were arguing about, when people were coming to terms over something and what they were resolving, etc.

Being in a trendy area of Bangalore, and it being peak hours when I got out, I decided to try out a bunch of the street eats close by. I am careful about the street eats here, especially when it comes to meat. Basically, if its meat, and its not cook in front of me, I won't touch it. But as I made my way back toward my hotel I noticed this one guy cooking up a bunch of chicken. He had a small crowd in front of him, and it looked delicious, so I stopped by for a chicken kabob wrap. It was AMAZNG. I don't know what the chicken was marinated in but it was dankity-dank-dank. it was wrapped up in a freshly fried flat bread and served with pickled red onion. It was perhaps one of the greasiest things I have ever consumed, but it was wonderful.

Another thing you will notice in India, there is a lot of chinese food. I walked past another stand serving steamed dumplings, with again, a small crowd in front, so I figured it was a safe bet for good food that wouldn't make me sick. Not as crazy delicious as that chicken wrap, but still quite tasty. I continued on and stopped at a place serving indian street foods. I see these places all over, serving these crunchy puffed balls, stuffed with a potato based filling and dunked in broth, but had never tried them, so to keep the trend up, I order some. Again, bomb. They could tell I had never had them, and they ended up giving me a few free one's of difference varieties.

Continuing on my street/trendy food binge, I stopped into a fancy donut shop. You don't see donuts everywhere in India, but Bangalore is pretty international, and you can find pretty much everything here. It's not always exactly the same as home, but still good for being abroad. If you know me, you know I have a sweet tooth. I can't eat sweets all day, but I gotta get something sweet pretty much everyday. Donuts are one of favorites. I pick one out that has dark chocolate gnash frosting with coconut. Funny thing here, they microwave their donuts when you order them. I don't know how I feel about that, but it was nice to have something that was similar to what I have at home.

To finish off my night I stop at a three story bar, the top leveling being open air. The only had Fosters, oddly enough, and they played classic rock. Its funny, this whole classic rock thing seems to be something of a trend here. Again, it was nice to listen to something familiar while enjoying the roof-top view.

All in all, it was a great little night. I really enjoyed just wandering around, checking out the area, and seeing how they do things here in a big city in India. I wasn't thrilled with Bangalore when I first showed up, but honestly it is beginning to form a special place in my heart. It's no Chicago, but urban life here has a lot of the same stuff, just carried out differently.

Something's to Bring Home--Madikeri/Coorg Region

cmeier — Mon, 3 Nov 2014 05:11:00 GMT

Day 9

Laundry List:

- Wake up and pack up

- Check out at 11 am, head to bus station to get situated for 2 pm bus to Madikeri

- Bus and blog

- Check in, book hiking trip, dinner, sleepy time

Story-time and Reflections:

At this point in my trip, traveling from place to place makes me more anxious than just being in a new place. Will I be able to find my bus or train? Will I be able to find the station? Am I going to the correct station? As often times there is little info to be found online about which bus stand in such and such place you particular bus will leave from. In general, all the thoughts of what could go wrong race through my head. Which is kind of funny, because it use to be just the opposite.

My anxieties were found in my days plans. Will I have enough to do? Am I making the most of my time? Will I be able to find my way around? What if I get lost? Beyond the language barrier, why did I come to such an unorganized and confusing place?

It used too be that traveling was the easy part. I had a plan that day, and it was simple to get from point A to point B, and write, read, or sleep along the way. Easy. But now that I have settled in, my worries lie mostly in missing my bus or train. Which when I write it down, really doesn't sound like that big of deal, but regardless of the actual seriousness of the situation, the matter of fact is this is how I experience it. Thus, I always give myself at least a couple hours to get there and find someone who knows where I need to be.

So right after I check out I head down to the bus station. My ticket says I am to board at Mysore Bus Station, however when you look it up on google maps, 3 different bus stations pop up. Excellent. The night before I tried all kinds of various searches to see if I could find more info on which of the three I needed to go to, but nothing solid came up. The closest thing to an answer I found was on some Mysore tourism website. It talked about how one can easily bus into Mysore, as the main bus station was n the heart of the city. So I deduced that of the 3 different bus stations, which ever one was the most central was the one I would be leaving from. Makes sense, no?

I arrive at the bus station which is literally in the heart of the city, nearly dead center. I start asking around only to discover that I was, of course, at the wrong station. This station, was just for local city buses, no buses destine for Madikeri would be leaving from here. A couple of young men give me some directions to the correct bus station, and I begin my trek back the way I came from.

One lovely thing about my experience so far in India, is that almost anyone on the street, whether they speak english or not, will at least try to help you get to where you are going. At this point, whenever I am walking anywhere, if I haven't been there before, I pretty much ask someone at every intersection if I am walking the right way to get to such and such place, even if I am confident in my own directions. It's easy, it's reaffirming, and sometimes it even starts a nice little conversation. However, I have been warned that this may not be the case further north, around Delhi.

After continuously asking people how to reach my destination, I eventually make it. I start looking around for someone who works there to confirm I am in the correct place. Once I am certain I am in the correct spot, I settle down, order some Dosa, relax, and grab specifically a Coca-Cola for the wait. I have nearly 2 hours till my bus leaves, but hey, today my worrying pad off, as I did indeed need some extra time to walk from where I thought I was suppose to be, to where I was actually suppose to be.

Now, I feel like I owe you a bit of an explanation about why I intentionally got a Coca-Cola. In general, I'm really not a soda drinker. Even if I get fast food from time to time, I rarely get soda with my meal. I'd much rather have a beer. However, remember the young student who helped me at the Bangaluru train station when I was heading to Mysore? Well during our chat, he asked if I wanted to try his Coke. I declined, but he mentioned that Indian Coca-Cola tastes different than its American counterpart. Thus, since once upon a time I was the type of avid Coke drinker that would forgo drinking cola if you only had Pepsi, I made a mental note to myself to give it a try. I tried it, and honestly, it taste just as I remember American coke tasting. I checked out the label, and one notable difference was that Indian coke uses good ol' fashion sugar, rather than high-fruitose corn syrup. I won't mention now how America has a ridiculous corn problem that includes archaic subsidies and throwing away food, all to satisfy the people who have stakes in this over-saturated industry.......oh wait, I guess I just did. But all in all, the taste was not that different.

The Mysore bus station quite hectic that day, with major traffic in the station alone. It seemed like every bus was in every other buses way, and god forbid the drivers listen to the station employees trying to direct them so as to make some order in this chaos. Needless to say, and per usual, the bus was late to dock, and late to leave. This untimeliness is something I have grown use to, and really it doesn't bother me. I'm gonna be in India for quite sometime, I pretty much plan as I go, and I'm on vacation.....I have all the time in the world.

We eventually depart, I write, and soon enough, we arrive in Madikeri. I find my hotel, again, mostly by asking people where it is, and begin looking into hiking trips. Madikeri, is a bustling town in the mountainous region of Coorg. It's not as high up as Ooty, but rather it is nestled among the peaks. It has some very beautiful views, however, no wifi.......anywhere. I even asked several of the local travel agents, no one knew of any home-stay or hotel that provided wifi. Not a problem, good chance as any to practice my phone skills and etiquette.

I end up at a little shop called Coorg Trails. They seem to work with all things Coorg related, including, but not limited to, booking home-stays, which are essentially B&B's, booking hiking trips of various lengths, selling local goods, and they even had a real estate office. They seemed like a very professional shop, and they were recommended in my travel guide, so I signed up for one of their treks that included an overnight stay out in the mountains at a guest house.

Next I stopped for dinner at a restaurant called Coorg Cuisine, which was also suggested in my travel guide. India is actually a very diverse country with many different cultures, backgrounds, and heritages. The fact that there are at least 30 different languages spoken in India is a testament to this diversity. Thusly, India has many different kinds of cuisine, all regionally based. Coorg cuisine is well known for there pork curries, bamboo curry, rice ball dumplings, as well as a rice flat bread (think rice tortilla). In many of the standard restaurants in Madikeri you will find the typical generalized southern Indian and northern India food (and funny enough Chinese food is everywhere), but not the traditional dishes of the region, which, if you couldn't tell by the name, is where Coorg Cuisine stands out.

As it was a Sunday, and the last day off after the Diwali break, Madikeri was still flooded with out-of-towners, and Coorg Cuisine was no different. There were probably fewer than 10 tables, all of which were family sized. I saw one man, alone, standing next to a vacant table flipping through the menu. I asked if he was planning to sit there, or get take out. He said he was planning to stay, but with a smile added that I was more than welcome to join him, so I did. I ordered Pork Dry Fry and Rice ball dumplings, just like my travel guide suggested as traditional Coorg food, and we got down to chatting.

He was a young man, maybe in his early 30's, and he too had a bit of an adventuresome spirit, which honestly, is a bit unusual for an Indian. Many of the people who I have met do not travel far from their home town. On countless occasions other have mentioned that by the time I am done with my trip, I will have seen more of India then they probably ever will. It was nice to meet someone from India who has traveled in the country a bit to learn about some of the secret gems that are often left out of guide books.

He was originally from Mumbai, but recently moved to Bangaluru with his wife for work. Being an only child, his parents moved with him. This is usual in India, a whole nuclear family moving together. Family is very important in India, and often times children don't move out until they are married, and even then sometimes the parents end up moving in with the newlyweds.

In some conversations I have had with locals in India, they are surprised to hear that I lived on my own in the Chicago, while my parents lived in the suburbs. Although I guess I was equally surprised the first time I was chatting with a young 30-something year old man who received a call from his mother inquiring about where he had been all day, to realize that he still lived with his parents.

It was a very pleasant meal, and as usual, it was wonderful too learn more about the culture and people here first hand, by talking with a native. He was even particular curious to hear about the things that stood out to me as an foreigner, as he has yet to travel to the developed west. Although out of many of the people I have met so far, he seemed too have many western sensitivities, and would fit right in in any cosmopolitan city.

After dinner, he was back off to Bangaluru, and myself, back to my hotel to rest up for an early morning of hiking.

All and all, another lovely day or exploring new places and meeting new people.

Day 10

Laundry List:

- Wake up bright and early, head to bus station

- Travel by bus to local village for hiking trip

- Arrive, hike up Kotebetta, the 3rd tallest peak in the Coorg

- Back down the mountain, have lunch, wash clothes

- Bum around guest-house

- Dinner, bedtime

Story-Time and Reflection:

I wake up at about 5:30 am to shower up and head down to the bus station to catch a ride out to the village of Mukkodlu for that day's hike. The hotel I stayed at supposedly had hot water, but this did not seem to be the case. Needless to say, I took more of a rinse than a shower that day. But I was going hiking, so I figured it didn't much matter if I was my cleanest.

The bus station was only maybe 10 mins away, walking, but as usual I wanted there a little early to figure things out. The bus was to leave at 7:00, so my goal was to get there by 6:30. I arrive, figured out which bus to get on (none of the signs were in english, by the way), and settle in for the trip. Again, luckily I got there early, because the bus ended up taking off at 6:45! This was kind of funny. It's not unusual that things don't go by the schedule in India, but it's very unusual things run early.

On the Mysore sight seeing tour, at our second stop which was Mysore Zoo, the guide told everyone to be back by 10:50. As 10:50 approached, I raced through the last quarter of the Zoo to ensure I was back in time, because if you are too late, they will leave you behind. I get back right in the nick of time at 10:49, and I'm the first one to show up. The guide speaks some english and tells me to have a seat with him while we wait.......because I am 10 minutes early. I asked if he didn't tell us to be back at 10:50, he just smiles and nods yes. For the rest of the day, whenever I was getting off the bus, he always told me the real time we were to meet up to leave, knowing that I would be punctual.

On the hour long bus ride out to the village, I met the other people who would be be going along on the hike as well. A family of four from the Mumbai area, taking a couple extra days of vacation after Diwali. They all spoke very good english, and the mother had even been out to Chicago before. They were very friendly, engaging, and good hiking buddies.

We get to the guest house and meet our guide, Abduhl, and head off on the trek. First part of the trek we are walking a long a narrow little deer-trail with brush overhanding over the path. Once we get through the brush I notice Abduhl knocking and flicking things off his big rubber boats with a stick. He says something in presumably Hindi, and the mother tells me he is getting ride of the leeches. I look down at my boots, and sure enough, it looks like leech city, India! I too begin to squish them, flick them, and knock them off of my boots. I had never seen leeches before in the flesh, and they are pretty creepy looking. They look like little single tentacles, that crawl........and quickly at that.

Once my boots are clear, I lift my pant legs up to find that several leeches had made it to my socks and even a couple actually attached to my leg! I flick them off....no not with my middle finger, with a stick. Leeches release a anti-clotting substance when they attach themselves so it's important to put some pressure on the bit to keep things from turning into a bloody mess. So I do my best to put some added pressure on the bites with a leaf or two and pulling my socks over them to keep them in place. Luckily, I was wearing long socks. I notice others checking their shoes, so I do the same, again to find several more. With great worry, but without hesitation, I reach into the toe of my boots to see if I can find anymore.....the ghost is clear, I am leech free! We continue onward.

It took us about 3 1/2 hours to reach the top of Kotebetta. It was a great hike past a waterfall, through forest, low shin-high brush, and grass, as we ascended to the top. Maybe about half way up there was a fresh spring water stream that you could drink from. It was a nice stopping point, given that the water was ice cold and the stream was shaded. Between the sticky humidity of the forest, and the unhindered direct heat from the sun in the low brush and grassy areas, this was a little slice of heaven.

Toward the top of the peak, you could no longer simply walk along, but rather one had to do some climbing. From boulder to boulder, through little shoots and crevasses, often having to to grab hold of roots, trees, and solidly planted bushes to pull yourself upward. I had a blast.

At the very top of the peak there is an old small temple dedicated to Shiva, which according to India Folklore, was built by a character from one of the India Epics. About a 100 meters from the top, you must remove your shoes if you wish to continue onward to check out the temple. And despite the rocks, the piney brush, the ant hills, and bull crap (but really, there are literally piles of bull crap everywhere, and chances are you'll even see people herding them around on the mountains), I removed my shoes and continued on.

I was the only person in our group to hike up to he temple, so when I reached the top, it was just me and the temple. It was small, such that only one person could really fit inside of it, and there was a waist-high stone wall built around it, with a little entry way in the front. Off to the side, just several dozen steps away, there was a concrete building, about the size of a room. In the back of my head, I thought I was going to find a yogi or a priest up there, living in solitude, and as I approached the building I was expecting this holy man to stroll on out......I didn't happen, the building was pad-locked from the outside. Clearly, no one was home.

What I did notice as I approached the building, however, was a little trail that lead off into a small patch of trees. So, obviously, I go on to explore. Not very far in there was a small pond. This pond was clearly intentionally constructed, as it had stone walls and an entry way with steps. At this point, I was really hoping that out of nowhere some holy man would appear to tell me all about this place. Just being their alone felt scared, and I wanted to know more about what it was I was in the presence of. But again, this did not occur.

After a while longer of just soaking it all in, I headed back down to meet the rest of my party. We rested for a bit, enjoying the amazing view. I took several pictures, but I don't think any of them do the view justice. Cloud-crowned peaks far off in the distance, rolling hills of green studded with little homes and farms, and deep blue skies. They call the region of Coorg the Scotland of India, and while I have never been to Scotland, have a hard time believing it can compete with these views.

We make our way down the mountain, and thankfully avoid the area with all the leeches.

When we arrive back at the guesthouse, lunch is waiting for us. We waste no time sitting down and digging in. Something about hiking around always energizes and calms me, and it wasn't till I sat down and started eating that I noticed just how hungry and exhausted I was.

We finished lunch, and it was probably about 3 or 3:30. Having not done laundry since I started my trip, I figured I should use this free time to wash my socks and underwear. While backpacking around, laundry has been the last thing on my mind, so underwear and socks are easily used twice. The policy has been, if they don't smell rancid, they're clean.

I get out my spare bar of soap, get the bucket from my bathroom (there are buckets in all Indian bathroom for purposes of cleaning yourself.....I won't go into too much detail here, but if you're curious, look up how to use an India squat toilet), and head outside to clean some clothes. The workers at the guesthouse spotted me and laughingly led me to the very back of the residence, on the edge of the forest, where their own living quarters are, and where the do their own laundry. They had buckets, bars of detergent, scrub brushes, and all.

These employees are actually the residences' servants. They are paid, and get time off, but in India, the cost of basic labor is so cheap, that many affluent households have servants who cook, clean, drive, nanny, etc. This back area is their domain, and once I am back there cleaning my clothes, they treated me as their own guest. We chatted over some tea, and they introduced me to indian hand-rolled cigarettes, which they call bee-dees (I'm sure that's spelled wrong), which taste like Clove cigarettes , if you have ever had one, and if not, it tastes like christmas spices. It was actually a lot of fun to be included in their joking around in the back, as they tend to keep to themselves as they are going about their duties. It was enjoyable to interact with them as simply people, for as a western, sometimes it feels a little weird having someone wait on me hand and foot, and kind of archaic.

I finish up my clothes, hang them up to dry, and as I was the only guest that night, I spent the remainder of the evening reading and writing. It was very nice to just sit on the porch relaxing, with only the sounds of nature to keep me company, however, at a certain point the number of flying bugs being attracted to the lights of the house was insane. This wasn't too much of a bother, except for the occasional haphazard moth that would bump into my head.

It was a great day. Met a delightful and engaging family, did some serious hiking and climbing, hung out with some working-class natives, and finished it off just relaxing to the sounds and sights of undisturbed nature. Definitely one of my most enjoyable days thus far.

Day 11

Laundry-List:

- Wake up, pack up, head back to Madikeri

- Find a hotel, and check-in

- Madikeri sight-seeing

-Dinner, and bed time

Story-Time and Reflection:

I wake up bright and early the next morning in order to catch the 8 am bus back to Madikeri. This guest house is band new, and pretty nice, so one would expect hot water......nope! At this point, however, I'm not too surprised, so I take a quick rinse, and at least get my hair washed. Before this morning I had not seen the master of the estate, nor his family. They were gone most of the day before, and once they did arrive, they just hung out on the top floor, which is presumable their suite, yelling and talking loudly on the phone. So when I made it out of my room the next morning to find him stomping around, I was surprised.

Now when I say stomping around, I literally mean he was just stomping around his plot of land. At first I thought he was inspecting the place but I quickly realized he was just walking around, or rather marching. One look at this guy and you just instantly know he is douche-bag, caught up in his material wealth, and if he doesn't want something from you, he sees no reason to interact with you. I sat on the porch, just hanging out, watching him march in pointless circles, and the only thing he said to me was, "We'll leave at 7:50 for the bus." Not even a, "Good morning," or "How was your stay." Given that there was a hot water faucet in the brand-new shower, and how much of tool this guys was, I can only presume he just didn't turn the hot water on in the guesthouse. After all, he already had my money, and clearly had no interest in being hospitable, which is VERY unusual for what I have experienced of India so far.

Eventually, it's time to go, and after another hour long bus ride, I am back in Madikeri. Normally, I like to make my arrangements for accommodations in advance, but when I was out in the mountains, I had neither wifi, nor signal on my phone, so I went to the first place my guide book suggested as a good basic and cheap hotel. I show up, and they literally have one room left, and only for that night. Perfect! That's all I needed as I planned to travel back to Bangaluru the next day.

I book the room, drop my stuff off in it, and head for the streets. Before I make it out of the hotel however, I meet a man who seems to work there. He not only speaks english very well, but he has a very fun and flamboyant energy. He tells me that he runs a morning walk out to one of the mountain villages, starting at 7:30 and back before 12:30. Figuring I wouldn't be doing much that morning anyways, given my plans to travel back to Bangaluru, I tell him I'm down and we part ways.

I head over to the bus stand to purchase a map of the area and a little booklet that details some of the sights. The random gentleman I had dinner with the first night I was in Madikeri told me about this one Buddhist temple in the area called Golden Temple. During the Chinese occupation of Tibet, a large community of Tibetan refugees settled down in the Corrg region of India. This particular community of refugees in one of the largest outside of Tibet. So to switch things up a bit, I thought I would go check it out.

I ask one of the local Coorg tourism offices how I can get there and they wrote down the name of a bus that would take me out in that direction, as well as the stop/town I would need to get off at. The buses in Madikeri, as I mentioned before, do not have english signs, so to me the signs literally look like a bunch of scribbles.

Even though I had taken the bus out to the village and back for my hiking trip, I was given very detailed instructions of how to go about it, plus, in that case I boarded where the bus started and exited at the last stop....pretty simple. This time I had to find the bus, make sure I got off at the right stop, and get a rickshaw to the temple and back to the same bus stop, and board a bus that would take me back to Madikeri. But it was still morning, and I had all day to figure things out, if worse came to worst. So I set off.

I made it out there just fine, and found someone who got off at the same stop as me to get a rickshaw driver to take me to the temple, wait while I looked around, then take me back to the same bus stand. Again, so far, Indians have been nothing but wonderful it helping me get where I am going.

As noted before, the Golden Temple is in the middle of a Tibetan refugee settlement. It's really funny as you get close to the settlement given that India is pretty homogenous and you begin to see a decent number of east asian folks, and most notably, a lot of monks and monks in training, who wear the traditional standard maroon and gold outfits. The temple is also home to monastery, so once you're in the little compound, its like you're in a whole new country. It's named Golden Temple for the 3 giant gold Buddha statues they have there. The whole place is very detailed, and quite decadent.

I spend about a hour, roaming around and then hop back in the rickshaw to go back to the bus stand. I flag the first bus that comes by and simply show the bus attendant the name of the bus that takes me back to Madikeri, he nods yes, an I jump aboard. After a short drive and we stop at a bus terminal. Everyone begins to get off, and this not being Madikeri I am a tad confused. As I exit the bus attendant pulls me aside and points to another bus, and simply says Madikeri. Again, this guy speaks virtually no english and is going above an beyond to get me back. And honestly, even though I had a lot of help along the way, I'm pretty proud of myself for successfully navigating the local buses. SUCCESS.

The trip out to Golden Temple, took a little longer than I expecting and by this time it's well into the afternoon. I grab some lunch, see a couple more sights, and finish off my day at Raja's Seat, which means Royal Seat. Situated up on a peak not far from the city of town, it has an incredible view of the land. With clear shots of valleys, hills, mountains, and sky, this is where the old rulers would lounge in the evening time an watch the sun set into the distance, and this is just what I did as well. They have constructed a nice little park area with plenty of benches and overlooks, so I posted up on a bench, read, and soaked in the view as the sun disappeared behind distant clouds, and its glow was extinguished as it crossed over the horizon.

I again, grabbed some food from Coorg Cuisine, making sure to try more local specialties, and head back to the hotel.

Day 12

Laundry List:

- Wake up, pack up, check-out

- Morning Walk to village in mountains

- Bus back to Bangaluru

- Check-in

- Dinner, bedtime

Story-Time and Reflection:

Originally, I hadn't planned to do much today except to travel back to Banaluru. I signed up for a 6-day trip through Kerala, a tiny coastal state in the south, which leaves on Tuesday by bus, so I wanted to give myself one full nights rest in a hotel between my bus trip from Madikeri and the bus tour. However, one of the joys of traveling for a long time is having the flexibility in your schedule to take up opportunities as they arise, such as this morning walk into the mountains.

I meet the "guide, " at 7:30 and we hit the streets. He is a delightfully flamboyant man and over the course of our walk, I learned a lot about him. He loves to sing, dance, and remark on how beautiful things are. He has a taste for the city life and fancy things. If he could have it his way, he'd be a socialite, not that he said that, but from what I gathered, he'd love to be part of the high-class social scene, with all the movie stars, music artists, and parties. He's never beeen in a skyscraper, but his dream is to live in one, and he's never been in a plane, but he'd kiss one if he had the opportunity.

As we get into the mountains, he starts pulling off flowers and tearing leaves, crumpling them in his hand, in order to release the fragrance. Then we'd play, "what's that smell," having me guess what the plant was, or rather what spice or food came from that plant. It was actually pretty interesting. He showed me a whole variety of plants along the way, including ones that you can eat, or have fruits you can eat. It's amazing how many different items you can find to snack on that are just randomly growing nature if you know what to look for.

One such plant is the plant that we get black pepper from. It fruit itself grows on vines that crawl up trees, forming almost grape-like clumps. They are green, when on the plant, turning black once they are dried, and they make for a nice little bite as you are walking around. Freshly picked, they taste kind of like a jalapeños, but perhaps less spicy, and have more of a kick to them. After eating a few, your mouth feels fresh and clean.

Another was a flower that literally spelled and tasted like a fruit salad. Another, a firm green, wrinkly looking thing, that tasted much like a crab apple. The list goes on.

Eventually we get to our destination, which is someones house. At first I didn't realize that this was our stop, since he said we'll trek up to a village, which I imagine to mean a little village center with little local shops and stalls, in general, a centre for socializing and commerce.

It was really interesting to see someone's home. Very basic, only a few electrical lights, a couple of rooms, a little garden farm, a few animals, including a kitten, a dog, and a couple of cows, and while the residence, a young woman and an elderly women spoke zero english, this did not keep them from being hospitable, nor did it keep them from continuously talking to me in their own language, as if I was catching any of it. They put some spicy ginger-chai tea on, and we sat out on the front stoop, them talking, and me just looking around and taking it all in.

The elderly lady looks at me and points to a plant in her garden, and I recognize the long slender stalks from people squeezing juice of them on the street. It's sugarcane. However, over the course of the 15 minutes I had been there, I had still not learned to speak their language, so I still had no idea what she said. I only knew that sugarcane was the topic. I look to my "guide" and he tells me that she is asking if I want some. If you have ever had sugarcane juice touch your lips even once, the answer will always be yes, if someone asks if you want any. I nod excitedly, yes.

She hobbles over to the plant, and with a swift slash of her machete, a stalk falls. She skins it with the same machete, and slices it long-ways into quarters. I reach for one, and she hands me all off them. No complaints here. I tear of a bite with my teeth, chew it up for a bit, spit out the fibers, and repeat. Before I am finished with the sugarcane, she is pointing to other fruits in her garden. Before I can respond, she's walking toward the grapefruit tree, plucks one, tears it open, and begins passing out pieces of it. Delicious.

By now, the tea is ready, we all return to the stoop, and drink large hearty glasses of this mocha colored greatness. I know I have mentioned it before, but I'll say it again. I love chia here. They only serve it one way, brewed with milk, and probably plenty of sugar. Every once and a while they might throw ginger in there, or other spices, but its never by request, they just make it how they make it, and it's always delicious.

Funny story. Coffee is big in the mountain regions, and they prepare it more or less the same as chia. With milk and sugar. I have only seen black coffee once in India, and that was in Bangaluru. Anyways, I was in a town called Munnar, and I walk into a little cafe, I look at their menu, and they have espresso! Not having had this in weeks, I order one. Several minutes later they bring me what looks like a normal coffee (normal as in the way they make it). I smile and tell them I ordered an espresso. They look at me confused. They say this is an espresso. After some chatting I figure out that this is a cappuccino. What they call espresso is just how they make their usual coffee but with a shot of espresso rather than brewed or filtered coffee. I tell them, I'd just like the shot of espresso without the milk and sugar added. They think this is the strangest request in the world, but they oblige. They bring me the espresso shot, and literally stand there, watching me take the first sip. They found this to be highly entertaining, and I was glad to share something new with them. Anyways, long story short, if you order coffee in India, except at a trendy place in a major city, it will come with milk and sugar in it. Actual, even if you are in a major city and ask for black coffee, they still might ask if you want sugar. It's a funny, although usual delicious difference.

After our tea, it was time to head back to town. I thanked the residence for having me, and we hit the trails.

On the way back I was asking the "guide" about how frequently he takes me out here, how many people he usual takes, etc. I was really curious because obviously these people we visited were just friends of his, and this was not a strictly professional tour. Don't get me wrong, this has been one of the most valuable tours I have taken, given that he shared a lot about various plants in the area, and that I got to meet real rural Indians, check-out where they lived, and saw how they lived. It was one of the most unadulterated things I have experienced so far. But again, this seemed like some random thing he offers to tourist that come through the hotel.

I learned that he doesn't strictly work for the hotel either. He does odd jobs for the hotel such as laundry and cleaning, getting paid cash for whenever their is work for him to do. Similarly he does odd jobs around town, again for cash. These tours, are indeed, something he offers to tourist when he sees them in town, in order to make extra money. When we got back to town, he even had to run off straight away to do chores somewhere. And when I paid him the 600 rupees we agreed upon for the nearly 5 hour tour, he kissed the cash, smiled, and waved goodbye as he went off.

I didn't really know how to process this, and I still don't, or not completely. Most of the Indians I have interacted with as extensively as I did with him are upper or middle class, or at the very least have regular and stable jobs. This guy didn't. Obviously when I paid him, and when he had to run off right away to go do odd jobs, he was thinking about making ends meet, but honestly, the restt of the time I was with him, he was engaging, talkative, eager to learn more english from me, and in general, had a very light spirit.

Like I said, I still don't entirely know what to do with all this information, but I have realized that my worrying about money is just silly in comparison. My worrying about money has to do with feeling like I should be worth more, or being concerned about living at a standard I have grown accustom to and still being able to put some away to save. His concern about money is nearly day to day survival. It's eating, it's washing his one or two pair of nice clothes so that he can continue to work, it's helping his family, it's just entirely more basic for his continued survival than my high-maintenance concerns.

I've also come to the realization that I need to regularly reflect on this fact, for it to really sink in. It's easy to realize how incredibly well off I am when I am here, because I see it when a couple hundred rupees is that much easier for me to spend than my social class equals here. I did the math. What I was making at my entry level job when I left, is basically as much as what upper management make here. When I get back, I will need to regularly take some quite time to revive these memories, to relive these experiences, and remember just how well off I am, to remember that I make enough money, remember that my standard of living, if not always as easy and ideal as I'd like, is way better off then a large population of people. If I don't make a point to always reflect back on this, I will assuredly fall back into my own silly high-maintenance mindset, which now seems like some sick delusion, or really, a sickness in general.

And now that I have made things all heavy, back to the rest of my day!

As traveled by bus back to Bangaluru, I met yet another friend. He was the one who I mentioned was reading over my shoulder a little way back. The guy who wanted to inform me that Mysore will soon officially be spelt, Mysuru. Similar to how Bangalore is now spelt both "Bangalore" and "Bangaluru." But anyways......

After a while of typing on the bus, I began to get a little sick of looking at a screen so I close my iPad, and strike up some conversation with the guy next to me. He was traveling to Bangaluru on business. He explained that he was a goldsmith, and he needed to pick up some silver chain for a custom order he was working on. He came from a long lineage of precious metal workers, and his father and grandfather were royal artisans, and worked for the royal family in Mysore, doing much of the metal work on Maharaja Palace, the same palace that I have described as being beyond words given its level of detail and decadence. Having family that worked for the royalty there, and particularly leaving their mark by having contributed to the design of the palace is a major deal. He was very proud of this.

We got to chatting more and more. We chatted about my trip, the motivation behind it, and what I have learned thus far. We chatted about his line of work, and particularly some of his own projects. We had a really great chat. We both connected over the feeling that what we have to do to survive in todays way of life just doesn't fuel the fire in our hearts, doesn't get us excited, doesn't seem to fulfill us. Ultimately, again, this was one of the prime reasons for my trip.....I felt I was getting boring, and needed to do something worthwhile. Similarly, he finds that the jobs his father and grandfather did, is different from what he does, even though it's the same profession. Back in the day, the goldsmith was treated as an artist, and the when you approached him, you solicited his vision, you asked him to make something great and trusted that the artisan knew best. Time-tables and price were secondary concerns. Now of days he finds that his cliental are consumers. They want their vision, and they want it on this day, and for this price. He finds that a lot of the creative freedom his forefathers had is dwindling within the profession, so he comes up with his own projects.

Him and his brother, who is also a goldsmith, make wooden watches. It takes both of them 3 full days to make one. Unlike a watch made of metal, you cannot simple create molds for the gears, but shave and carve each gear by hand. Think about that for a moment. Think about how very specific each gear must be, and how precisely they must fit together in order for the watch to keep good time. Incredible. Once the inner workings are crafted and arranged, they incase them in a water proof glass casing, so that you can see and appreciate the fine wood and detail inside. They have shopped this to various companies, and in each case, the company loves the idea, but expects them to turn them out in mass quantities to make the product viable and profitable. Again, it takes two men, 3 days, to make one. What they make is not meant to be a cool trinket that is consumed, but a fine craft meant to be appreciated and valued.

While he wishes he could make some money with the projects that he puts his heart and soul into, he is not down-trodden by the fact that his personal projects haven't lifted off in a business sense, because ultimately he is still making something that he feel incredibly proud of, something that he feels fulfilled by, but we all have to pay the bills at the end of the day too.

Eventually we reached Bangalore, and we part ways. It was wonderful to meet someone who also strives to find some outlet for their own personal fulfillment, once they have gone about the daily grind to get the daily bread. He gave me his business card, and I shot him an email from my phone to get him my contact info. I doubt I'll ever hear from him, and I doubt he'll ever write, but one thing I have enjoyed about my travels is connecting with random people. I have certainly found that I have one thing or another in common with a lot of people out there, and all it takes to find these connections is to simply take the time to talk with a stranger.

This is something another thing I need to bring home with me......talking to strangers. I am no longer 8 years old, where talking to random strangers when your parents aren't around is supposedly dangerous. More often then not, people are not out to cause others harm. And should remember, on my train ride home from work, when I'm exhausted and dead, and feeling like a zombie, that maybe chatting with a stranger isn't just another common curtsey, and it's not another chore, but rather, it's a chance to connect with another human, as a human, a chance to actually feel a little more alive.

Mysore--Feeling Like A Native

cmeier — Wed, 29 Oct 2014 12:27:00 GMT

As many of you know, I am not the best planner....it's just not my thing. Honestly, other than having a very general path of travel, I really didn't prepare much of my journey before I left. In fact, I didn't even know what there was to see in Bangaluru before I left, which is the city I flew into. I basically chopped up a bunch of general itineraries that were suggested in my Lonely Planet travel guides and figured it would be easy to travel between these places and find lodging in each place......I was wrong.

Something I discovered since being here is that it is easiest to stay somewhere centrally located in the cities, in order to easily access restaurants, stores, sights, and activities I can do on my own, and then utilize day trips/tours to see the attractions and the sights outside of what I can easily reach by rickshaw or walking. Tours here are incredibly cheap, and the state of Karnataka, where Mysore and Bangaluru are, provides a whole variety of great tours to incentivize the natives to actually see what their own country has to offer.

Given all of this, and my decision to write less, and focus more on the interesting stuff, I will write a blog for each of the destinations I stay in, as I will be at each place for several days.....probably. However, in the spirit of keeping everyone updated on what all I have seen and done, I will also provide a brief laundry list for each day, beginning right meow.

Day 5

Laundry List:

- Wake up and pack up to train to Mysore. (After having sleekly maneuvered India's backwards regulations on train travel the night before. SUCESS!)

- Take a rick (as in rickshaw) to train station. (Rickshaws are great, I love them--no rhyme or reason)

- Navigate my way through the train station, which surprising was not too difficult, and board train.

- Write more in my blog on train and enjoy India's scenic rural areas.

- Arrive in Mysore around 2pm, and walk to hotel, which to my delight had two english speaking channels!

- Sign up for a couple of tours and head out into the streets of Mysore to explore

- Make new local friend in one of Mysore's markets

- Explore the back streets and non-touristy areas with new friend (much more on this later)

- Go to bed

Story-Time and Reflection:

I wake up excited to head off to a new place to explore. Bangaluru is fun, but unless you live there and speak some Kannada (the regional language spoken there), you might as well be in a maze in which you can't even see the walls, and thus keep bumping into dead-ends and wrong-ways.

I leave my hotel 2 hours before my train to ensure I have plenty of time to get there and find where to board, given that both not-having-traffic and organization are not always India's strong suites.

I walk outside to hail a rick to take me to the train station. As mentioned above, I have grown to love ricks.....there are so many of them, and they are so cheap (given the cost of living relative to the States), that they are a great asset to any tourist who doesn't know where they are going and need to get somewhere by a certain time. HOWEVER, every rick driver wants to set their own price for where you are going. At first I thought that this was just how it worked, and that the meters were just old relicts that just didn't function, but again, I was wrong, they work perfectly fine.

The trick to dealing with a rick driver, or any working class person in India, is being assertive. It is all a dual of wills here. Never be afraid to offend or challenge, because otherwise you will be taken every time.

Once I hail a rick I tell him where I am going, and that I will only pay what the meter says, no pre-set price, no meter and a half, just the meter price. "Sorry sir, meter is broken." Yeah right. I tell him, not a problem, I will use the rick directly behind you. "OOOOHHH, meter sir, yes meter only." Funny how the meters suddenly work when you threaten to use another rick with a working one.

I get to the train station and find the platform where I board my train fairly easily. Once I get to the platform, a plain clothes man comes up and asks if I need help figuring out my train/ticket, thus presume he is an employee there. I hand him my ticket, and in his poor english he seems to be conveying that my car will be further up, and sticks his hand out. He is looking for a tip. A young man close by over hears my attempt to confirm that this is my train. He steeps in and presumably tell the man to scram in Kannada.

This is another weird thing in India. People who don't work at hotels, travel hubs, parks, and stores will just show up, ask if you need help wit something, and if you accept any advice what so ever, they expect a tip. The first clue too picking them out is they are plain clothes, but this is not a dead give away, as many people here where plain clothes to work at their service jobs, such as the security check point people at the Bangaluru airport.

Once the non-train station employee bounced, the young man who stepped in explained this to me and invited me to sit and wait with him as we were both waiting for the same train. Ends up, the guy was only 17 and a college student coming home for Diwali, a Hindu holiday, during which many students and places of work get a few days off. His father works for the US military and while he had never been to the States himself, he knew enough about our differences to give me a lot of great advice about I should or should not do in India, such as not taking food from fellow passengers while traveling, beware of working class people who are being particularly friendly and helpful, and what an appropriate tip is when a tip is actually warranted.

As a young man he was interested to here more about how young people in the States live, and I was more than happy to answer all of his questions, which were mostly about nightlife and romance for a young person in the States. By the end his eyes were all lit up and he expressed to me that he wished he could have that sort of american-college-wild-life for a few years. Which is not an uncommon theme I have found. Several young Indians I have met seem to have this romanticized ideal of what being a young american is all about, and they pretty much think we live in Girls Gone Wild commercials all the time.

The train arrives, we head to our separate cars, and before I know it, I am in Mysore.

As I walk to my hotel, I stop for a quick sugar cane juice. I don't remember if I already talked out this, but sugar cane juice is the bomb. It's sweet, it's fruity, it's just simply amazing. As the vendor continuously pushes and pulls a long stalk of sugar cane through his pressing machine, I look around and soak in my new environment. I can already tell I will like it more than Bangaluru.

Bangaluru seems to have an identity crisis. It has all the old cement buildings, as well more modern but rundown buildings, and then big new skyscrapers too. And the are all intermingled, which just comes across as unnatural. Mysore on the other hand, while granted being smaller and not really a center of business, flows more naturally. It is still a bustling city with a lot of people out and about, and plenty of stores an shops, but it has kept it's style. No skyscrapers, the tallest buildings are maybe 6 stories, and pretty much everything is pastel colored cement. Basically, if you were to think of a stereotypical Indian city, you'd have a good idea of what Mysore is like.

I get to my hotel, drop my things off, sign up for a couple tours at the travel desk, and head out to explore the streets.

I walk down one road and grab a bowl of fruit from a vendor, with LOTS of salt and pepper please, and continue on toward one of the markets. Now at this point, had yet to see a real Indian market, so I wasn't quite sure what I was looking for. I knew I was on the right road, in the general area according to the map, and there were lots of shops and people selling things of the side walk, so I presumed this was it, again, I was wrong, but I at that point, I still didn't realize.

I walk up and down the street, checking out what all was being sold. Which was literally everything from produce, fresh flowers, toiletries, kitchen ware, crafts, clothes, luggage, bags, purses, basically everything you could get in Wal-Mart, and then more. I come across a little puzzle wooden jewelry box that only opens up if you remove the pieces in the correct order, and I began to haggle. It must be because I am white, and thus mostly likely a tourist, but as soon as I show interest in purchasing something off the street, others flock to to me to show off what they have to sell, drawing plenty of attention.

I ended up getting the little puzzle box, and soon after I was approach by a guy on the street. "How much did you pay for the puzzle box friend." I tell him 300 rupees, and he expresses to me that I paid too much. He begins to tell me about his friends factory, where they make many of the trinkets that one finds out here on the streets, and insists they are cheaper. He says they have it all, but mostly talks about incense and oils. He tells me Mysore is well know for its oils and but that the stuff at the market is diluted with alcohol. "I'm not telling you this for the money my friend, I have a job at a jeweler, I just saw you out here and thought I would build some good karma and help you out." He insists on leading me off to the "factory." I tell him I want to finish looking around and he suggests this is not a problem and follows me around, chatting me up.

He seems friendly enough, and wants to take me through a part of town that only the locals see, so I figured, what the hell, and go with him. We begin winding through the side streets off the factory, and as we get further and further away, I keep asking how far is it, to which he replies, just up here. After a bit, I ask, why are you doing this. He says for good Karma. I help you, then you help someone else. Fair enough, I think, but still not fully convinced.

Eventually we come to not a building with no sign and enter through what seems to be the back. I see a young lady sitting on the floor rolling out sticks of incense, and Elou, my new "friend," introduces me to his friend. While I was mildly suspicious before, now I'm half freaking out inside. $&!#! This is like the one thing that every single guide book and travel sight tell you not to do! I'm continuously looking over my shoulder at the door, half expecting it to close and be hit over the head at any moment. But nothing happened. He invited me to have a seat in an adjacent room filled with bottles of oil and hands me a sheet listing the various oils, their properties, and uses. He begins going through various ones, having me smell them and dabbing others on my hands and wrists. I'm still half thinking that this is the end, that I really messed up, and I'm definitely going to die, but as the demonstration goes on, I begin to feel more comfortable.

Eventually, I did purchase several bottles of oils as gifts, and we move into another room for tea. At this point, the thought of, is this tea safe, crossed my mind, but II figured if they were going to hurt me, they would have done it a while ago. We hung out, chatted, drank some tea, and then....another pitch. "Marijuana is legal in Mysore, you know." Hmmmm.......for some reason Indian cities making their own rules regarding the legality of marijuana doesn't seem like a thing that would be permissible in India. "Have you smoked before?" And they pull out a jar of the stuff. Sure, a lot of kids my age have at least tried it, but I'm not about to make two bad decisions in one night, especially in a different country. I tell them I am perfectly fine with just the tea. They don't push, but Elou let's me know if I change my mind to let him know.

Shortly after Elou and I head out and he returns me to my hotel. He suggests we meet up tomorrow and he will show me a silk museum. I tell him sure, but I have a tour that won't get back till 9pm or so. "Not a problem. I will wait in the chia shop across the street."

I head up and get ready for bed. Kind of happy I did go wit Elou, because I definitely did see parts of the city I wouldn't have otherwise as a tourist, but also realizing that I need to be a little more careful about following people I just met. As in most instances across the world, most strangers do no mean to cause you harm, but you do open yourself up to the risk when you allow a person who is basically a stranger to tour you around town like that. It was cool, but from here on out, better safe than sorry.

Day 6

Laundry List:

- Wake up bright and early to catch the Ooty Sight Seeing Bus Tour

- Take Otty tour, which includes Bandipur Wild Life Sanctuary, Madhumiai Wild Life Sanctuary, Nilgiri Hills, Kallahatti Water Falls, Tea Eastate, Ooty Lake, Ooty City Shopping, and Ooty Botanial Gardens (as well as write more for my blog along the way)

- Return to the Hotel, and meet up with Elo to see "Silk Museum"

- Sleepy-Town Time

Story-Time and Reflection:

So day 6 is definitely a day that happened, but honestly, I feel like not that much happened. Yes, there are stories, but far fewer than just the second half of day 5, but anyways, here we go.

On day 6 I wake up and realize, I never received my ticket for that days tour. (Insert four letter word here)! I run downstairs too the lobby of my hotel and find a couple of employees sleeping by the front desk on the floor. And while this might be surprising at first, this has actually been standard practice at every hotel I have stayed at so far (I am writing this on day 9), and this hotel was even one of the nicest in town. If you asked, I'd say it seems that many of the people at these hotels work far more than 8 hour days, and handling the night shift is just part of the territory.

Anyways, I wake them up and tell them my situation: I bought a ticket for today's Otty tour from the travel desk guy at this hotel yesterday, he said he'd get me the ticket by that evening, but I never received the ticket......did I mention the tour is today? They tell me he will be in at 9am and roll back over, pulling the covers over their head. Great! However, I explain, the tour is suppose to pick up at 7:30. They look with a confused stare......clearly between their morning grogginess and their incomplete mastery of english, the full message is not being understood. I try again, "Voucher. Ooty bus tour voucher." He gets up, goes through some drawers, and hands me the Otty tour itinerary. Excellent, I have this already. I try again, he says not to worry, the bus won't actually get here till 8, and he will call the guy before then. Alright, at least I have gotten something out of all this.

I get ready and return downstairs around 7:30. "No ticket needed sir, just wait in your room and we will call when the bus is here." A tad annoyed with the lack of efficient communication and organization, I'm mostly relieved to know that I will indeed be able to get on the tour.

Bus shows up. This is what I paid for? It's pretty rickety compared to the bus that the Karnataka state tours run on......and I paid more for this somehow? I accept the fact that I got cheated, but hey, again, the cost of living is so much cheaper, its really just the matter of a few bucks. The bus makes a few more stops and we are ready to go. At this point the bus is entirely filled and lucky for me, I'm sitting next to a big ol' fat indian guy, in seats that don't even really accommodate my own shoulder-width. But again, this is India, this is what I came for, for something new and......um......different. I slide open the window, put my elbow out the window, and start poking away at my iPad keyboard and write more for my blog. SUCESS.

A couple hours in, we stop, and the tour guide rattles something off in presumably Kanada. The tour guy didn't really speak english, so I asked a nice Indian couple I had met when I first boarded the bus to give me the run down. "30 minutes break for breakfast."

I exit the bus with the couple, and given that we had already chatted a bit on the bus early, I asked if I could join them for breakfast. They obliged. We plop down in the "Family Restaurant" (there seem to be a lot of "Family Restaurants" in India, but I haven't quite figured out what that means) next to the convenience store that the bus stopped at, and order up. The young couple is a delight. Super friendly, very interested in myself and where I am from, and in general, very engaging. We wrap up breakfast and back on the bus.

We eventually get to the first "stop," but don't actually stop. We just kind of fly through the wild life sanctuary, and the next 4 stops. It was a nice drive, but between being squished, my suspicion that I paid more than everyone else, and the lack of actually stopping at stops, I was getting irritated. Once we were up in the mountains, however, I was feeling much better. Something about being in the mountains always calms me. The views were beautiful, the air rushing through the open windows was cool and refreshing, all was fine.

We arrive in Ooty, which is a quaint little town high in the mountains. As we drove through, I was surprised with how big the community was up there, with regards to the number of buildings as well as the number of people. It was a big small town, I guess you can say.

We reach Lake Ooty, and actually stop! Lake Ooty is a little lake up in the mountains, as you might have guessed, and seems to be quite the attraction. There were food vendors around, a pleasant little park and garden, a paddle boat area, a miniature train ride, a motor boat cruise around the lake, and some other unique and peculiar things that I can't even begin to describe, because honestly I have no idea what they were and have never seen anything like them before. Overall, it very much had a fair-like atmosphere.....definitely a place people to go to have fun.

Myself and the young couple take a cruise around the lake in one of the motor boats, which was stunning, peaceful, calm. Absolutely serene. As I we exit the boat ride, the large Indian gentleman who I was seated next to on the bus walks over and asks the young couple to snap a photo of me and him together......and so it begins. We snap a photos and all of a sudden it's time to continue on.

The young couple were staying up in Ooty for a few days, and thus this is where we departed in our separate ways. This was an option the travel desk guy at my hotel forgot to mention, strike number three. As we drove through Ooty, stopping here and there, I wish I had more time to explore around this quaint little bustling mountain city. I wish I could have spent at least one night before heading back, but thanks too the most untrustworthy and incompetent travel desk guy in the world, this was just not a option as I didn't have my belongings, had already paid for my stay at the hotel in Mysore, as well as booked and paid for another tour the next day.

Last stop before heading home was at the Ooty Botanical Gardens, which again, very much had a fair-like atmosphere. Tons of vendors outside selling chocolate (which you don't find in most places in India), sweets, street foods, trinkets, brightly colored fuzzy hats and scarves (which a large number of people seemed to be wearing), and other random fun fair-like stuff. The gardens themselves were magnificent. I was only able to scratch the surface with the hour we had to roam around.

Everyone is taking pictures in the garden, which is hilarious to watch because it seems that India's love posing and having their picture taken. Not long after I entered, some one comes up to me and is making the "take picture" gesture with her camera. I presume she is asking me to take a group photo of her and her friends and I nod yes. As I reach for the camera, she turns and passes it off to someone else, and positions herself next to me. Oh, so this is happening again now. I smile, put my arm around her, and they take a couple quick shots.....and all of a sudden the flood gates open. Other Indians see people taking photos with the white guy and they too want one. Group after group, hop in front off me, make the camera gesture, and I oblige.

It's not long until a mid-30's to early 40-something year old man comes up to me with the same request in broken english. Again, why not. After all, I find it amusing that they find it amusing to take a photo with a white guy. His friend takes a picture, but then he turns to me and says with a questioning inflection in his voice, "Titanic?" I look at him confused. He again asks, "You, Titanic, movie?" Awesome, this guy is seriously questioning whether or not I am Leo DiCaprio. Clearly he's probably only seen a boot-legged copy of Titanic and none of Leo's more recent films. I smile and shake my head no. He smiles, turns, and walks away.

I finish strolling around the garden and it's time to load back up on the bus for the several hour journey back to Mysore.

I get back, and as promised, Elou is awaiting my arrival. He waves to me from across the street and I go over to greet him. "Ready for the silks museum?" I say yes and we are on our way. A we walk there he talks and talks about how well known Mysore is for it's fine silk, cashmere, and sandalwood, mentioning how they make great gifts. And with just a hop, skip, and a jump. We arrive at the "silk museum." Which, if you haven't guessed already, is not at all a museum.

We walk in, the people working there greet us and sit me down in front of a counter. The whole wall behind the counter is literally filled with shelves of stacked up silks and cashmere, and they begin to just pull things off the shelf, unfold them and lay them out in front of me. I'm already thinking to myself, I'm not buying silk, but I touch the cashmere and it does indeed feel quite soft. I like it. I ask how much and begin to bargain. I give him my final price, and he says no, I get up and begin to leave when he calls me back over......all of a sudden my final price is sufficient (Thank you Dad for teaching me that sometimes you have to walk away from the negotiating table to get the price you want). I do end up with one cashmere shawl. They move me to a room with jewelry, again same story, they just pull stuff out and start showing me. "I'm all set, thanks though." They tell me how keep jewelry is here, and after a while of saying no thank you, I give a firm NO. They don't push anymore and I begin to make my way out.

Elou is waiting by the front, and we walk back to my hotel. He suggests we meet up again tomorrow. At this point, however, I've figured it out. He just wants to take me from shop to shop in hopes that I buy something, on which he probably gets a commission. I tell him I'll be busy all day again and have plans for the next evening. He continues to talk up the local products and at this point I just give him a friendly, but firm, "NO, I'm not buying anything else. Im all set, and I need nothing else." We part ways on friendly terms, but everyone knows the gig is up.

Later, I was reading other blogs about people's experiences in Mysore, and what happen to me, seems to happen to a lot of people. They are engaged by someone around the market areas, or even a rick driver, and are told about Mysore's signature products. This "new friend", who has no concern for money, tells them about the better deals at the "factories," how their "uncle" or "cousin" will cut them a good deal, how they'd like to take them to the "silk museum," and how marijuana is "legal" in Mysore (I checked, it most certainly is not). These "new friends" receive commission on the people they bring to purchase. So, for anyone going to Mysore, or probably India in general, here is my advice. A lot of times these local specialty products are truly regional signature products, however, you can find them EVERYWHERE, and EVERYONE will tell you they are giving you the "friends price," and that other places are lying about their quality. So shop around, bid people against each other, and if they are insistent that you're price is not good enough, then walk away....they will usually call you back, willing to settle for your price, or something reasonably close. I will say, I have probably been taken a few times since being here, but I've also paid fractions of the original asking price too.

Day 7

Laundry List:

- Wake up and have breakfast as I wait for the Mysore Sight Seeing Bus

- Go on Mysore Sight Seeing Tour including, Jaganmohan Palace, Mysore Zoo, Chamundi Hill, Statue of Mahishasura, Big Bull Temple, Maharaja Main Palace, St. Philomena's Church, Sriangapatna Fort, Tippu's Death Place, Rangantha Swamy Temple, Krishnaraja Sagar Dam, and Brindavan Garden.

- Dinner and Sleep

Story-Time and Reflection:

Day 7 was a fine, but perhaps fewer interesting stories, and I realize I said that about day 6 but this time I'm not lying.

On day 7 I was picked up by a car rather than a bus, and my first thought is that this is great! Instead of a tiny old bus, I get a nicely cushioned seat in car with A/C and all! However, soon we have picked up several more people than seats in the car, such that no single person has their own seat, excellent. They drop us off at our first stop and say something in not-english, realizing I only speak english, they turn to me and merely say a time, which I understood to be the time I needed to meet back at the car.

The first stop was fine, although nothing too interesting to really speak about in length. It was an old palace, pretty run down, with a bunch of old art, furniture, and knick-knacks from the olden days. As I make my way outside to find my ride, the car is nowhere in sight. (Insert four letter word)! I continue to look around in hopes that they moved the car, or that a bus is hiding it. No such luck. Great, first stop of the day, and I already lost my tour. Money well spent. I begin to look around for people from the car, in hopes that they know something I do not. Again, no luck. All of a sudden, someone calls me over to their bus. "Time to go!" I don't recognize him, but apparently he recognizes me. I discover something that was lost in the translation of simply telling me the time to meet up. Namely, that we were meeting several other cars stuffed full of people and all moving into one bus from here on out.

I get on the bus and grab a seat. A couple of the guys from the car I show'd up in are sitting close by, and they look fairly affluent. I figured they spoke english, so at the next stop I asked them to help translate the important parts of the message to me. Again, much of the tour, while not boring, doesn't really warrant me discussing much about it, but for the rest of the tour I tagged along with them to explore the various stops. They were young men, like myself so we had plenty to chat about.

One interesting stop was Big Bull Temple, at the top of Chamundi Hill. Our visit happened to be during the holiday Diwali, during which many people come to make offerings and receive blessings at the temple. It was packed, and I don't mean full, I mean as you entered and walked through the temple, you literally were touching everyone around you, and everyone was pushing. It was intense, and quite the experience. I thought it was a it ironic at first, given my western sensitivities and what we consider to be civilized, but again, India is a different place, and there is a much larger tolerance for other's behavior here. While everyone pushed each other, it was not aggressive, nor violent, it was just accepted that everyone wanted to get in as quick as possible and pushing was thus natural.

Another note worthy stop was the Maharaja Main Palace. This place, unlike many of the other historical attractions in India, was very well maintained. It was absolutely stunning inside and out. It is a massive palace, that has housed a sorts of royalty and rulers throughout the years. They don't allow pictures to be taken inside, and honestly it's so detailed, flamboyant, and decadent to describe. One simply must see it to have any just idea about it. It is India's second most visited sight/attraction, and it is magnificent.

We finished off our day at a garden. India seems to be full of gardens. Often time they seem to generate a festival or fair type of environment with food vendors and random trinkets, and this on was no different. After trying a giant battered and deep-fried pepper, which was delicious, by the way, I entered in to the garden and began wandering around. It was night, and the garden, and its various waters, were illuminated with different colored lights. Again, many people taking photos and asking to take, or simply taking, photos with me. If I charged 20 rupees per person, per photo they wanted to take with me, I could probably finance half my trip.

I met a nice group of young men who were truly fascinated with me. They didn't just ask where I was from, take a photo, and bounce. They had all sorts of questions about my life, why I was there, what I thought so far, and even about American politics and my position on them. Their english wasn't the best, so our conversation as far as politics went was limited and at times confused, but I enjoyed their forwardness in terms of the topics we discussed.

Eventually, it was time to go. We loaded back up and headed back. It was later by the time I arrived at my hotel, so I just grabbed some dinner and went to bed.

One thing I did think about that day was how frequently people remove their shoes before entering an establishment. Not just hindu temples, but homes, at least some churches and mosques, buddhist temples, some major historical sights, pretty much any really important place, or so it seems. We had to take our shoes off and both St. Phillomena's Church, and at the Maharaja Main Palace, which I wasn't anticipating. At most temples, there are shoe minders, who kinda of watch over the shoes for a small tip. But at the Palace, there was no such person. Literally, tons of shoes, everywhere, and no thinks twice about leaving them unattended.

At the Palace, I was a bit nervous to leave my boots in such an unsupervised and crowded place. I'm not big into brands, but I have a pair of really nice, good quality Merrell boats. They are leather, they are waterproof, they have taken me through snow, forest, and mud. But it almost seems like here in India, you just don't steal someone else's shoes. It's almost as if even criminals recognize the importance of removing one's shoes before enter certain places, and they respect this importance by not stealing shoes. It's new and a little weird coming from a country where it is not unusual that your shoes cost more than the rest of that days out-fit combined. So feel free to bring your insanely expensive shoes to India, and take comfort in that shoe theft at important places is off limits.

Day 8

Laundry List:

- Woke up, had breakfast

- Finalized plans for the next week or so

- Wandered around Mysore (soon to be officially spelled, Mysuru, according to the man on the bus reading over my shoulder) , and generally taking it easy while soaking it all in

-Sleepy-town time

Story-Time and Reflection:

Day 8 ended up being absolutely wonderful. No real plan other than to bum around and get my ducks in arrow. This lack of having plans did make me a tad anxious at first, but once I was out in the streets of Mysore, it was a wonderful and glorious day, filled with random conversation, and leisurely strolling around.

I woke up and had some breakfast sent down to my room from the hotel restaurant. Since being in India, I have fallen in love with Dosa. All varieties of Dosa. Dosa is like a pancake or crepe, depending on what kind you get. Plain Dosa is like a large crepe, cooked to a crisp on one side, and usually served rolled up into a large cone shape. Dosa Masala, is this same large crepe-like deliciousness, rolled up in a large cylindrical shape with vegetables (although usually mostly potato) in the middle. Dosa Set is the same batter, and still only cooked on one side, but it more like a pancake, given it's thickness. The list of various Dosa continues, but you get the picture.

Along with breakfast I finalized some of my plans for the next couple of handful of days, including a trip to the Coorg Region, and then a Karnataka state run 6-day tour to Kerala, a silver of a state known for it's coastal line and backwaters. Once my bookings were in order I hit the streets to mostly just wander around, and hopefully bump into some other foreigners to share about our experiences away from home. I thought a walk down to Maharaja Place would be a good place to start.

I made my way down to the Palace and wandered up to a Chilean girl who was sitting in a park near the Palace. She was just sitting in the grass reading, what looked to be a travel guide book, so I figured it was a safe bet that she was a fellow traveler. As I walked up, I just said, "English?" Which is what I typically do when I am trying to find out if someone speaks my language. She smile and said yes, so I asked if she cared if I sat and talked with her a bit. Again, smiling, she said not at all.

We talked about what brought us to India, how long we were staying, where we had been and where else we planned to go, what we thought of the place, as well as some of the experiences we have had since arriving. All the usual questions a traveller might be asked.

It was nice to chat with someone who can relate to struggles and strife of traveling, not just in a new place , but also in country where, again, organization is not always it's strong suite. One of her friends, also a traveler from South America, soon arrived, and again the same questions were asked and answered, and similar stories were shared about thinking things like, "Why did I do this?!" or "This is it, I'm gonna die!" and "Yes, I overcame! Sucess!"

They were both staying in Mysore for a while longer, and I still had a couple more things I wanted to check out on my last day, so after a bit, I head off on my own way toward the market.

Now, I had visited what I thought was the market on my first day, but I suspected there was more than what I saw, and also I reallly needed a pair or nail clippers. So I head back over.

It was a weekday afternoon and the market area was much less crowded compared to the first day I had visited it. I begin wandering around parts that I had skipped over previously and as I am leisurely strolling around I see an engraved sign above a little stone entryway, "Devaraja Market." I realize all these vendors selling things off carts and blankets on the street are not properly apart of the market. I walk in through the entry way, and instantly, without doubt or hesitation, you can tell this is the market. Open-air, snaking and criss-crossed pathways, vendors in actual permanent stalls with awnings shading the front of each one. It is exactly what you'd imagine an asian street market to look like, with the sale of produce, baked goods, fresh flowers and stringed flowers, dyes and oils, of ever imaginable variety. Granted, you can buy many of the same things on the street front, but being in the market-proper has a special aura about it, it has it's own atmosphere, as it is secluded from the hustle and bustle of the sidewalks and the by-passers. It's really a magical place, and I'm glad I thought to give the area a second look.

I stroll around a bit in the market and on the streets close by, bumping into other westerners as I wander, stopping to stay hello and get the lo-down on there trip. It's kind of fun being a westerner in India, for two reasons. One, the locals stare at you, not in an aggressive way, but in a curious way. I always smile and them, and very rarely do they not smile back, sometime even asking me where I am from. The second reason is that there is a special fraternity between fellow western travelers. You see them on the street, at a sight, or wherever, and when your eyes meet, there is always at least a smile share, a small recognition of, "Yup, we did this, we left the comforts of our familiar lands to come explore this seemingly backwards place." We are attracted to each other just like how dogs ALWAYS need to go check out a dog they have not met before. It's a lot of fun running into your fellow traveler for a quick taste of the familiar, and while often it is just a smile or short conversation shared, other times it's a nice stroll together, a chat over a chia from the ever present chia stands and shops, or even a quick bite. All and all, I have never been dismissed by another western, there is just an instant bond over the best and toughest experience we each have ever had.

I spent the remainder of my day walking and reading in one of Mysore's larger parks, flipped through my travel guide as I drank a giant King Fisher at a beer garden, ate a tradition Souther Indian Thali, which is an all you can eat meal comprised of several ever changing dishes served with rice and maybe roti, which in this case was even served on a banana leaf, and gazed at the dazzling Maharaja Palace which was all lit up for the holiday. All and in all, one of my best days yet.

While I first, I needed constant distraction, constant entertainment, to keep my mind from wandering, I have not come to really enjoy my free time while I am here. I no longer feel like I need to be seeing something new constantly to feel like I'm getting something out of my trip. I can just sit an read in a wonderful new environment, talk to strangers without worrying about my next activity or schedule, and in general, just wander around and letting my inclinations guide me. I finally feeling like a native.

This White Suburban Boy

cmeier — Wed, 22 Oct 2014 05:02:00 GMT

By Monday, I was feeling much more comfortable in this new place. I spent my morning planning out the next couple of days of my trip before embarking out to do more sight seeing with my Dad's coworker's driver. The plan at this point was to leave for Mysore the next day by train. Spend a few days there doing Mysore sightseeing as well as take a day trip or two to some of the near by attractions.

Once I had my plans set, I went too book my train. Lo and behold, it's Indian regulation to not book any train tickets between the hours of 8 am and noon. Most excellent. But at this point, I'm used to all this backwards-ness. After all, this is why I came to Asia right? Experience something new.

The driver picks me up around 11:30 and we're off. First stop, another temple. This one is ancient, and also in the hustle and bustle of Bangaluru. This temple is no fancy stone structure, but it is stone.....this temple is in a cave. Yes, as in you go underground, to enter this holy place.

Side note: I am at this very moment I am being very India, as i am on an uncomfortable and crowded bus, on which I realize how lucky I am to have a widow seat such that I have enough elbow room to type on my iPad, which more so situated on my crotch rather than my lap, by sticking my elbow out the window. Why do I mention this? Well, I could look on my phone for the name of this temple, but honestly, it'd be near impossible right now given how closely I am seated next to someone......it just not worth the difficulty. So look it up, if you'd like to know the name, and then be grateful you have the capacity on your phone, cause guess what. Most the world doesn't. Also, unless your on a delayed CTA train during rush hour, you're not as cramped as I am.

But anyways, this cave temple was very cool, unground, in a major city, and incredibly old. Later I learned that one day a year, the suns rays reach deep into the cave and fall at the main deities feet. An astounding feat for something set up a thousand-something years ago.

Next we went to Tipu's Palace. Tipu's was a sultan back in day when the British decided they knew what was better for India then India did. This particular palace of his is not as grand as his summer palace, which is in Mysore, but cool none the less. The structure is two stories and mostly open air, with several rows of pillars before you get to actual enclosed rooms in the middle of the building. Honestly, I thought it would be bigger. Reading up on Tipu, he did seem like a persevering, organized, and intelligent leader, who did a lot to improve the condition of his people's lives. He even defeated the british in a few battles before they finally took over.

Next I had a quick lunch with my father's coworker, who I met once in Chicago. It was great to see a familiar face, as well as someone who knew about how things are in both the west and here in India. We chatted about how the trip had been going and she provided more advice and suggestions for my travels. Which is always eagerly accepted as my learning curve about how things operate here has been slow, and mostly figured out on the fly. She has been a major help with getting my feet on the ground here. I continuously cannot thank her enough.

After lunch, me and the driver went over to Lalbagh Garden, which is a huge garden that was established a few hundred years ago. In American terms, its best described as a park rather than a garden. It's pretty large, and unfortunately we didn't there until later, closer to when it was closing, so we were only able to stroll around for maybe 45 minutes or so before it was time to head home. Of what I saw, it was a beautiful place though, with ponds and different gardens throughout the park, including a massive rose garden.

Once I got back to the hotel, which was well into the evening at this point, I sat down to book my train to Mysore. I begin booking only to be prompted to create an account with the India railway authority. Ok, I think to myself, just another seemingly unnecessary step in this process. I go to create an account, I enter my address and mobile number only for it to tell me that what I entered is incorrect. Excuse me computer, but I think I know my own address and phone number better than you do. I look into the problem to discover that I'm required to have an India address and India mobile number. This seems ridiculous, given that training around the country would be an easy way for a tourist, who spends money in the country, to continue to tour around and boost their economy by spending.

At this point though, I am a bit frantic, given that I had already made hotel reservations in Mysore for several nights. I used a random, but real India address, but I couldn't so easily fake the mobile number, as they send a confirmation code via text message that you need to confirm your account. I run down to the lobby of my hotel and ask the people at the front desk if there is a place close by that I could get an India sim card, but they look at me with a blank stare. I take my phone apart to show them the sim card.....still nothing. Luckily, one man in the lobby knew what I was talking about and sent me around the corner to a cell phone store.

I run around the corner and walk in asking for a sim card, and they tell me to come back tomorrow. I tell them I really need a sim card tonight. He tells me he will get me one tomorrow morning. AGAIN, I tell him that is not an option for me, but he insists that for me he will do it first thing in the morning. I ask if he doesn't have them in the store. He tells me no, which i found hard to believe, because really????? YOUR A CELL PHONE STORE. I ask if there is somewhere else I could go to get one right now, and I guess this potential loss of business changed his mind about getting me one tonight. He tells me to come back in 20 minutes with a copy of my passport and he will hook me up for 300 rupees.

I presume this is significantly more than they would normally charge, but considering 300 rupees is not even quite 5 dollars, it's basically on part, if not cheaper than what a sim card would cost in the US. So, I of course agree and run back to the hotel to get a copy of my passport.

I return well before 20 minutes has passed and walk in passport copy, 300 rupees, and cell phone in hand ready to go. He sees me, walks over too a drawer and pulls out a sim card. Given that maybe only 5 minutes has passed, I have a hard time believing that he had to run out to get it, but whatever, most importantly, i'm getting my sim card. He pops in the new sim, makes a call to get it programed and I'm good too go.

Back to the hotel, set up my seemingly unnecessary India Railway Account, book my train, and sigh. The most successful sigh that has ever passed my lips....well at least since the college days when I would finish papers minutes before class started. The real satisfaction from this win came from the fact that this was the first time I was able to maneuver through the backwardness of India successfully--I finally found my feet firmly planted on the ground.

This day, this event was a major turning point for me on this trip. I was no longer anxious about being in a place that I just didn't understand a lot of the time. Will I get into more situations that make me want to curl up into a ball and cry? Absolutely, in fact I already have. But after my initial freak out, my first thought won't be catching the next flight home. It will be that I overcame once, and I can do it again.

I'm not going to lie, traveling alone has been a lot harder, and at times more lonely, than I thought it would be. And it probably doesn't make it easier that I can't really communicate with more than half the population. But so far, I have experienced so many new and wonderful things, I have met so many people who are incredibly friendly and kind, and none of that would have been possible if I stayed home. Not only am I seeing a new kind of world and meeting a new kind of people, but in the times of struggle, I'm figuring out how to deal with it, and all of this is making this suburban white boy a stronger, better, and more worldly person.

BEE TEE DUBS, from here on out, I probably won't be trying to write every day. Between exploring and planning, there just isn't enough time or energy. However, I have been taking pictures, so maybe I will get some of those up on the blog by not trying to write my face. Also, I realized the parts of my writing seem more like a laundry list of what I have done, which is simply not good story telling, so by writing less, you'll just get the interesting stories and reflections.

With love, confusion, and strife from abroad,

Colin