Bang! Bang! Part 1

Sasha

First there was Bangalore.  Trying to book anything out of Gokarna was a challenge.  Who knew that almost all trains were completely booked 3 weeks ahead of time?  We found a cheap overnight bus to Bangalore, and a direct flight to Bangkok from there.  We also gave ourselves enough time to go to the Thai visa services in Bangalore so we could have 2 months in Thailand instead of just the 30 days they give you on arrival.

At this point, our tolerance for Indian cities is minimal.  They are loud, polluted, more expensive, and the traffic is enough to give you a heart attack from the stress.  Oh, and rickshaw drivers are devilspawn. In order to give Bangalore a chance to redeem itself, we arranged for a couple of couchsurfing homestays.

Within the first 20 minutes on the overnight "sleeper" bus we realized that we had made a big mistake.  No, the bus was not AC (which had been my assumption) nor did we do any actually sleeping while on the bus.  It was like trying to sleep in a bouncy castle on wheels that was driven by the wicked witch of the west (thanks to a friend for giving that description.) The roads are hardly highways, and weave around the mountains, and the driver was intent on taking advantage of driving at night by pushing that bus as hard and fast as it would go, right up until hit hit a set of speed bumps where it would slam on the breaks, sending us rolling around our double bed bus compartment.  Our 2 backpacks didn't quite fit on the luggage rack, so sometimes one would fly off, landing on our legs with a hard thud.

Once that experience ended, we hoofed it over to the main bus station.  There were well over a hundred different buses in the station at any given point in time- three large concentric circles had platforms, that were labeled with suggestions for where each bus should stop.  We waited for our bus number for 45 minutes before the lack of sleep and low tolerance for chaos caught up with us.  Ra went to the info desk where the customer service representative assured him that the bus was running, and then told him to wait at the completely wrong platform.  After some awkward silence, the man informed Ra that perhaps if he walked 20 meters away, there would be someone else who could help him.  At that point Ra told the representative that there was no one over there and that clearly he was just trying to get rid of him!  The rest of the people in line laughed at the fact that Ra called him on his shit.  So, we hiked over to get a rickshaw, whose driver promptly ripped us off.

The next day involved more arguing with rickshaw drivers in an attempt to not get ripped off, and then onto the Thai visa service.  Note: this is not an embassy, and it seems as though 10 other countries have also outsourced their visa service to the same company. In fact, our passports would have to travel to Chennai and back for us to get the visa.
"So, what do you do if the passport gets lost?" Ra asks the woman.
"That never happens." The woman behind the Thailand desk tells us. Yeah, uhuh.
Despite printing out our checklist of all of the necessary documents, we found ourselves being rejected from the Thailand desk 3 times before we had everthing we needed (copy of the passport, the passport, a plan ticket in to the country and proof of a plane ticket out of the country, two copies of the application, 2 photos. . . did I miss anything???) Until we had everything filed and paid for, and crossed our fingers that the passports would come back to us in 3 days.

At this point, we are exhausted, hungry beyond measure, and both of us with head colds from the sleeper bus.
After eating, we try to find a ride back to our homestay.  The first driver quotes us a price more than double the proper amount.  The second driver says he'd take us using the meter- plus an extra 40 rupees.  Finally, a quite driver agrees to take us there on meter alone.  The other drivers curse him for screwing up their racket, and we crawl into the back.

I turn around and say, "If we were anywhere else I'd say that those are some bumping speakers in the back of this rickshaw."

"Those are some bumping speakers." Ra says after inspecting the setup.

He taps the driver to ask him to play some music.  The driver stops the rickshaw, gets out to grab the speaker face, and using his one good arm (the other hand is lame) he hooks it up, and hooks us up.  The next thing we know, were are cruising through Bangalore with a thumping subwoofer beneath us.  We are in our own private bubble of gangsta rap and daft punk, and the honking of India gets pushed back outside of our rickshaw.  For the first time all day, we have smiles on our face.

That night we cook dinner for our hosts, and 3 of their friends.  Vijay is a furniture designer, and a guitar player, his wife Nia is an interior designer turned stay at home mom.  Their friends were also in creative fields.  A couple days later, we were to visit Sam, one of the friends, at his photo studio.  There we talked about India and creativity.  We noticed a decided lack of imagination with the people we dealt with.  I tend to use a lot of miming when trying to communicate with people and Indian people really didn't get it at all. When I'd ask them to make a dish a different way in a restaurant, for the most part they would be flabbergasted.  Sam confirmed that creative thought just wasn't emphasized in India.  When people are hungry, or worrying about where they are going to sleep, creativity just doesn't fit in.  Even in upper middle class families, kids are pushed into law, engineering, and other such practical occupations.

Our last night in India, we get taken to a ritz-y bar in UB city.  We sit in a clean lounge, with a good sound system, and sip on stupidly priced cocktails.  But it feels like a bar that could be in any city in the west, and it is nice to take a break from India.

The next day, we go to the Bangalore Botanical Gardens, where all of the flowers are gated off from the general public.  The gardens are quiet but the drive there and back is relentless in the way that Indian traffic can be.  We gather our bags, walk to the bus stop- which has no signs, or any indication which bus might stop  there, but we are told that eventually the bus for the airport might stop there.  While waiting, a taxi- not a rickshaw!!! stops to ask us if we are going to the airport, and that if we are he will take us there for the same price as what we'd pay for the bus- which is a 200rupee discount from the standard taxi fare.  Yes, haleluja.  The airport is clean, orderly, though the wifi is not free, but we are leaving India, we breath the sighs of relief.

On the road again - Thai version...

RA:

man, i realized it's been since egypt and since i blogged, and when  went back and read the egypt blog, i saw  why - egypt really took it out of me. that was NOT a good place to start our travels in. but enough about egypt, with one side note: i have a fantasy of going back in 25 years, and egypt  - now ruled by a democratic, left wing government that managed to completely turn things around, and clean up that god forsaken city, Cairo - is now an awesome place to visit. we'll see how that works out....

2 months in india also managed to drain the excitement of travel out of me. as we flew into Bangkok, i explained it to sasha. i believe that if you move, as an adult, to a different country, and stay there for long enough, the sense of "newness" is eventually gone, and the excitement associated with it is gone - perhaps for ever. so, it was hard for me to get excited about going traveling, and once we do get to places - they all look alike to me. it's kinda hard to explain - the architecture is different, the language is different - everything is different, but it's not NEW or exciting. it just... is.

India was..... well, just as i remembered it. dirty, full of people who look at you and see dollar bills, with some diamond in the rough places in there. and when i say in the rough, i mean dirty. although there were some pretty places we saw - Humpi comes to mind - the entire time there - Gokarna excluded - was marred by how hard it is to do anything. take walking, for example. i love walking. it seems to help my pain in my body. but in india, walking means you're walking in a cloud of smoke - cars, trucks, rikshas - a cloud of sound - horns blaring everywhere from anyone to anyone and anything. there are no sidewalks in most places, and when they exist, no one really uses them. so, a five minute walk out from wherever you're staying turns into something you just don't wanna do. and that's before you even started your day!

although India is a place that values the right side of the brain quite a lot - hence the many computer programmers - i found the vast majority of people there unwilling - or unable - to understand that there are other ways of living your life - something i was quite surprised by, considering how this is one of the cornerstones of Hinduism. see, in the Caste system in India - which although outlawed a while back, still exists everywhere - foreigners are BELOW the lowest caste. and because most of us were educated somewhere else, with a completely different set of values and rules, we simply don't follow what they consider common sense. so, they think we're idiots. interestingly enough, we also think of them as idiots - most of the time, not always, of course - since they don't follow our values and rules. so, both sides seem to think they are the smarter one of the two ;)

there are many things that india makes you wonder. such as, how does a country of a billion people not figure out a trash removal system that's better than just burning it. or how to build roads that aren't awful. or how to put people in a bus terminal help desk that speak english (one of the official languages of india), or even know information about the buses - to that guy, i was nothing but a nuisance, someone that bothered him as he tried reading his paper - not a traveler that might need help (HELP desk, dude!). sigh.

so, after a month of this, and 7 places in one month, we landed in Gokarna. of course, we missed our stop off the train, since there's no way of knowing which station you're in/on, but that's another story. as we drove into the town of Gokarna, i looked around and thought: "ahm, yuck. this looks just like any indian town i've seen so far, which is to say, dirty, full to the brim with people, and loud".

luckily for us, we realized the town is for day excursions only, and the beaches are where it's at. now, i've never been a beach person. i never liked hanging out on the beach - never been my thing. but here.... the beaches are beautiful. the people were super nice. restaurants with vegi food everywhere, and toward the end of our stay there, we spent quite a lot of time with a nice group of israelis - which i enjoyed. we got to go hiking every few days, did yoga 5 days a week - first time and type of yoga i've been able to do since the accident, and i found myself actually relaxing - from the stress the past month in India has put me in.

we stayed on Kudle Beach, (pronounced kud-lee), drank Rama Temple water, had our favorite spots where we became the locals, and generally got to decompress. i <3 that place, and will forever.

our next stop after that was Thailand - something Sasha's been talking about since we started dating. but first,we had to stop over in Bangalore and get a 60 day Visa for Thailand, since the one given at arrival is only 30 days. we ended up couch surfing with some very nice people, and some.... not great people... the first time i've met anyone through couch surfing i didn't like. Bangalore was... well, if you read my description of indian cities on top, you get the idea. i was happy to get out of there.

and now, Bangkok. as always, it took us a couple of days to find our bearings, but once we did, we're enjoying it. it's MUCH cleaner, almost no honking, and although the taxi and riksha (here called Tuk Tuk) drivers are still "devilspawn", as sasha calls them, they are a minor inconvenience in our day. we wake up late, do yoga if we're lucky, have breakfast, take ferry rides to temples, hang out with Limbo. much better.

tonight we're taking an overnight train to an island called Koh Phangan - well, it's actually an overnight train to a place we can take the ferry from. i'm envisioning Koh Phangan to be kinda like Kudle Beach, and i'm wondering - is that wrong? is it wrong to want a fairly easy travel, or does travel have to be hard to count as travel?

to keep traveling like this - for the extended period of time that we are traveling for, i realize that i would HAVE to find these kinda places every once in a while. but, to go somewhere that isn't as nice and easy as what i imagine kho phangan to be, there needs to be a draw for me. something to excite me, and make me WANNA go there.  right now, i don't know where that place is/will be.

Pune- Big money and maroon robes

Sasha:

I am lying down in a huge pyramid-shaped meditation room with 75 other people as I follow the instructions to let my eyes make clock-wise circles as I stare up at the ceiling.  I, along with everyone else in the room, am wearing a maroon robe, and am activating a temporary suspension of disbelief as I ponder the questions, "What does it feel like to swirl your eyes around the ceiling for 15 minutes after first dancing with my eyes closed for 15 minutes, then circling my torso for 15 minutes? "  As it turns out, my head started to buzz and I think that the muscles that control my eye movement got a major workout.  Did it actually help me advance my meditation practice?  That remains to be seen.

How I ended up tasting the cool-aid at the Osho Meditation resort is only a slightly easier question to answer.

This story begins in Agonda, at the Garden of Eden- a yoga and meditation center.  An aquaintence in Agonda had stumbled upon the Satsang meditations there, and recommended that we check it out.  Our timing was off, but we were invited back for an afternoon Kundalini Meditation.  He asked us if we were familiar with Osho, the guru who invented the form of meditaion.  We had heard the name, but knew nothing else about it. After spending an hour shaking, dancing, sitting, then finally laying down, we looked it up. 

Osho was a a guru, Indian mystic, and  spiritual teacher who gathered a large international following.  He opened an ashram in Pune, India, and also taught in the US (where he was thrown out on Imigration fraud charges).  He was controversial, open about sex, and came up with numerous meditaion styles that involve actions like humming, screaming, talking in gibberish, dancing, whirling, jumping, vibrating, in addition to more traditional sit and observe meditations.  What once was an ashram, is now a "Meditation Resort," with such luxuries as a hot tub, swimming pool, cafes, and a number of state of the art meditation areas. It was a place where you could do meditaion and yoga on your own schedule, in your own accommodations, and are not required to wake up at 4:30 am, like at many ashrams where you have to follow the set schedule.  From that point on, we put Pune on our list of possible destinations.

Flash forward to Anisa and Taylor's wedding reception in Mumbai at the end of December.  We danced the night away at the Sangeet held at club Indigo in Coloba to the sounds of dj's Cheb i Sabbah and Talvin Singh as they were accompanied by amazing drummer Shivamani, and several others.  Two nights later, we were talking to Sivamani at the reception, and we told him how much we had enjoyed both the performance we saw at Indigo, and the concert we went in Panjim with Sivamani, Zakir Hussein, Shankar, and Ganesh.  He remembered us from Indigo, and asked us if we'd like to go to a party he was playing the following night in Pune for new years. He asked us if we'd like to join him on the private jet that the party's host was chartering for him, but after he called he told us that all foriegners flying into Pune have to register at least 48 hours in advance because it is a military town and there was a terrorist bombing a year ago. So instead he arranged for  a car to be sent to pick up Cheb i Sabbah and the two of us.  Sure, we had a reservation at the YMCA that was nonrefundable.  And we had a couple of different invites for New Years Eve events in Mumbai.  But somehow this seemed like the most interesting thing we could do, so we jumped on it. 

After countless phone calls between Sivamoni's travel agent and the car service, our car arrived at Cheb i's hotel to pick us up. Only, then Siva calls to ask us to pick up a drum for the show.  Unfortunatly, there would be no place to park, so Ra and one of the hotel's employees run down the street to carry it back to the car.  With skill, all of our belongings fit into the car.  This is not the rickshaw, or bench seat vans we are accustomed to traveling in here in India, but a luxury vehicle.  The car comfortably seats 6 or 7 westerners, though our bags and the drum take up the 3rd row of seats.  I'm thinking that we have 2-3 hours of driving to do the 175 km, but of course we are in India and Mumbai has some of the worst traffic in the entire country, in my experience only rivaling the traffic of Cairo, and it takes at least an hour before we are out of the city, but still the traffic doesn't stop.  And despite the comfort of the seats, all of the stop and go, and swerving meant that none of us managed to catch up on any sleep on the way.

Once in Pune, we drive directly to the party to meet up with Sivamani, and to deliver the drum.  Instead of being in a night club, the party is taking place on a private estate. The guy throwing the party, Ahasan Ali Syed, made his billions in the chicken industry, and is the first Indian to own a UK football (soccer) team.  Looking around at the party in the daylight revealed one of the best sound systems we have every seen- it was massive, with array after array of speakers.  In between were panels of LED.  Scores of people where hanging cable, and doing the carpentry work necessary to build the temporary club on the lawn.  Later that night, the space was completely transformed- dj's, 5 different food buffets, open bar, lines of people out of the gate, extra security that we got to bypass as personal guests of Sivamani. . . The people who were waiting in line had to have a laser-engraved 2lb piece of crystal that was the invitation. (can you imagine delivery charges alone for that?)  There were also hundreds of little tiny candle-lit hot air baloons that someone was lighting, and sending up into the sky all night long.  There were about 3000 people at the party, and about 15 of us were foreign. As backpackers, the only dress clothes we have at this point are our traditional indian clothes from the wedding, but everyone else at the party is in western clothes- suit jackets and teeny tiny cocktail dresses.  How do I say. . .  awkward!!

We danced a little, ate a little, socialized with a group of Iranian girls who were in Pune to get their MBA, but were generally ignored by the Indian people there (minus the women who actively shoved me out of their way).  Aparently, this was the hardest invitation to get in all of Pune, and the best party of the year. In other words, the people at the part felt like they were very special and very important.  Sure, it would have been a great party if we had known a bunch of other people there, but as it was, we were ready to go by 3am, and didn't make it to the 8am champagne brunch.  However, VERY lucky for us, we had a 5 star hotel room to go home to, courtesy of being Siva's guest. So home, and to bed we went.  

We woke up, relaxed in bed, and ordered room service.  Eventually we tried to figure out what we were going to do next.  It seems that fate had delivered us to Pune, so we might as well hang out for a bit.  Fanoos, an Iranian girl from the night before, had offered to help us find a cheaper room than the most of the local hotels, so we called her up and made arrangements to meet up.    

Fanoos told us to meet her at a place called the German Bakery in Pune.  This is notable for two reasons, first of all, almost every touristic city in India has a German Bakery, which usually have nothing to do with traditional German baking.  Second, the German Bakery in Pune was bombed a year ago by a terrorist.  Many people were killed in the bombings, and as a result there is a lot more security in the city than there otherwise would be. So, we check out of La Meridian, the shi-shi hotel, and scoot into a rickshaw towards the German Bakery.  The funny thing is that we are actually surprised when we arrive at the German Bakery and find it a bombed out shambles.  Why we would have assumed that it would have been rebuilt by this time, I'm not sure.  

Finding a reasonably priced apartment in Pune is quite easy.  There are brokers who hang out on the corner next to the bombed out bakery who will take you to an assortment of rooms- some with private bathrooms, some with shared, some with kitchens attatched. . . It is clear that a couple people figured out that there are travelers willing to pay for apartment rooms, so soon everybody and their uncle jumps on the bandwagon, and soon the neighborhood is more filled with tourists living there than locals.  We bounce from complex to complex, trying to find one with an acceptable bed, and in a quiet street, and begins to feel like a wild goose chase.  We wander to a different block to pick up a key so we can open up an apartment, and this one is different- so much quieter than all of the rest.  So after a landlady hands us a key, and sends us to look at a place 5 blocks away, we start knocking on doors to see if anyone else has an apartment on this street.  We talk to a guy who says, sorry but all the people staying with him are artists- dancers, musicians etc.  We tell him we are fire spinners, and suddenly he is inviting us into the house so he can call the guy who arranges rooms.  The other people in the living room are fire spinners and dancers from Russia, the UK, and another girl from China.  For a moment the guy starts actually offering us 5,000 rupees to do a gig for a military party, but we don't have any fire poi on us.  There are no apartments there, but there is a guy who knows of a place a few blocks away.  

We enter a nice quiet courtyard, which is only disturbed by the sounds of construction in a corner unit.  They start taking us up to a place right next to it, but we say hell no are we sleeping next to a construction site (again).  Really, at this point all we want is quiet.  We walk into a place on the opposite side that feels quiet, fairly peaceful, mostly clean, and has a kitchen. Meanwhile, the landlord has shown up- a white haired guy with a big belly and a sharp nose, and the person we took the key from is madly calling us asking why we never turned up.  So the landlord sends us on a rickshaw to return the key, look at one more place with the (which  we immediately don't like because of the noise) and then return.  We agree on the apartment, on the rent.  Then the rickshaw driver asks us for money.  

"For what?"  We ask him

"For the back and forth." He replies

"We didn't realize that we were buying your time. We thought that you worked for the landlord."

"Him?" The rickshaw driver asks incredulously, "Ha, I know him for 30 year and he never gives me money."

Needless to say, we paid the man.

At this point, we have committed to an apartment for one week, and need to figure what the heck we are going to do with our time.  We read that we can go for a 1 hour tour of the Osho Meditation resort, and decide to do that the following day.  In the meantime, we meet our flatmates- 2 people who have their own room and bathroom, but share the kitchen with us.  They are both in Pune for Osho.  At this point we realize that we have moved into an apartment that is practically across the street from the compound. (There are high walls an lots of trees surrounding it, so it isn't obvious. ) Our plans are foiled when we find out that since the bombing, Osho no longer does tours, and the only way to see the compound is to shell out a 950rupee initiation fee, an 800rupee day use fee.  On top of that, in order to enter the compound Osho requires you to wear maroon robes (which you can conveniently purchase at the Osho store) unless it is evening, in which case you have to wear white robes to the evening meeting. If you want to use the Osho pool or hot tub, you have to buy special maroon swim suits or trunks. Sigh.

Ra and I go home for the day to decide what we are going to do. We are both burnt out from the noise and traffic in Mumbai,and  from not getting enough sleep after the wedding reception, or on new year's eve. I reason that the universe supplied us with a ride and an excuse to go to Pune, then plopped us down in the most convenient location possible to access Osho. I figure, lets just jump in and try it out.  Ra is more skeptical: the cost is a lot of money for India, and sounds so much more like a way for someone else to make money than a spiritual endeavor.  Also, any institution that requires you to wear a uniform begins to sound more and more like a cult. I tell Ra that in my mind, the best case scenerio is that we find a way to relax, decompress, and to spend some time in meditation.  Worst case scenerio, we can point and laugh at the people who join the cult, and will have a good story to tell. In the end, Ra agrees to join me to see what Osho is all about. 

The day begins at the registration center.  You pay your first 950rup, then go get your HIV test (a requirement to being on the compound), you then pay for your vouchers, since the cafes and clothing store don't take regular cash.  They then take you across the street where you buy your robes.  You then put your robes on, then pull out MORE cash to pay your daily fee. . .why they don't have you do it all at once I can't tell you, because spreading it out like that just reeks like a scam. At this point, they lead us inside to join the first day "welcome morning."  The three women who are leading our session seem frighteningly happy and enthusiastic.  They begin the morning by doing a few icebreakers where we learn how people say hello to friends in different cultures, and proceed to mimic this around the room.  Then they play stereotypical music from different countries, bringing people from those countries to show how someone dances in Germany or India.  They yell out "USA!" and Elvis Presley comes on the stereo.  Only two of us do a demo of 1960's american dancing style  (Ra decides that he is really more Israeli than American at this point, so he doesn't step forward.)  After all this is done, they tell us that the point is for us to realize what our conditioning is, and to work on shedding it. We reach the break in our welcoming morning and they tell us that there is free chai (!) for us to enjoy, "the only free thing you'll get here!!" they laugh.  

At this point we are both a little wary.  Even in the Osho resort, there is construction noise, and the women grate on our nerves.  I am pretty happy in my new maroon dress, but Ra is visibly uncomfortable wearing the prescribed uniform and doesn't take well to being indocrinated.  "Wearing the robes is great!  This way you don't have to think about what to wear and it create a pleasant color everywhere you look!" they tell us, but I have trouble with anybody who tells me that not thinking for yourself is a good thing. 

After the break, they have us do mini-sessions of their two primary meditations: dynamic and kundalini.   Dynamic mediation happens every day at 6am.  Here is my unofficial description:

The First Stage: 10 minuets of intense breathing. Hyperventilate without letting your breath settle into any kind of regular rhythm.

The Second Stage: 10 minutes of self expression.  Pretend that you are a ward in an insane assylum, scream cry jump shake, dance sing and try not to throw your back out while you throw yourself around.  It is about as pleasant as it sounds to be in a room with a bunch of other people doing likewise.

The Third Stage: 10 minutes of Hooing! Raise your arms, and jump up and down shouting the mantra HOO! HOO! HOO!  Not for the out of shape, or those at risk for a heart attack.

The Fourth Stage: 15 minutes of keeping still while holding your hands up in the air.  From having your hands raised while you are hooing, freeze in place, and prepare to have a test of will with yourself to see whether or not you can keep you hands in the air for 15 minutes after exhausting yourself by jumping up and down.  Good luck. Oh, and be a witness to everything happening to you. The Fifth Stage: 15 minutes of Celebration.  Dance with your eyes closed to celebrate the fact that you don't have to jump or hold your hands up in the air any more!! When all is said and done, here is my assessment of my time at Osho: -I enjoyed several of the meditaions; the kundalini, the mandala humming meditation, and the 1 hour vipasana meditation.  The more exotic ones I could do without. -It turns out that 5 hours of meditation is exhausting! -We never bought the white robes, so we never attended the "evening meeting" so we never fully drank the Osho coolaid. -I did enjoy how clean the resort was after the trash in the rest of India, and enjoyed the aesthetics of the pyramid shaped meditaiton center, the clear reflection pools, the gardens, and the over green-ness of the place. -I am still mistrustful of a place that makes you conform! or invents new meanings for words like aloneness. And here are my thoughts on Pune: -The traffic sucks, and because of it walking around is pretty miserable because you have to deal with all of the traffic. -The local people were more standoffish than in any other place we've been.  It felt like the local up and coming population looked down at us- maybe because we were backpackers, or maybe because they are used to thinking that westerners are crazy people who are in Pune for Osho.

Gokarna

Sasha:

We are in Gokarna (still) and decided to stay here for a total of 4 weeks.  We'll take a bus to Bangalore on Feb 5th, try to sort out a visa then fly to Thailand on Feb 11th.

Right now I'm sitting in an internet cafe just off of the beach.  This one actually has walls!  Most of them are made from bamboo and dried palm fronds.  We are staying up the hill from the beach in a cottage that is about $18 a night. It is a splurge compared to the beach huts which are only $3-5 a night.  But we have a western toilette and our own shower.  Oh, and we have a tile floor instead of sand or dirt :-)

We wake up in the morning in time to throw on some clothes, then head to the main office to use our netti pots, before doing 90 minutes of yoga and meditation.  Then we wander either town to the beach, or up to the top of the hill, or over into town to get breakfast.  Today's was a spinach omlette, chopped salad, and really yummy laboneh along with a masala chai.  Usually at about 2 or 3 I order either a coffee or chocolate shake.  At 4:30, we read on the beach, and when the sun is gentle enough, we spin poi until sunset.  Then, back to a cafe for dinner. We've met kiwis, americans, brits, germans, south africans, and so many israelis. We spend the afternoons either hiking to a neighboring beach (there are 5- gokarna beach, kuddle beach where we are based, Om beach, half moon beach, and paradise beach) possibly taking a large motor boat piloted by 3 indian men back at sunset.  We 3 dolphins together on our first boat here, but haven't seen any since.

Or, we whittle away the heat of the day playing cards with friends, or we hike back up to our cottage and swing in the hammock while reading a book.

All of the waiter in our usual cafes have begun to remember us and my strange food requests- substituting an omlette for bread, or adding a little bit of rice along with my veg soup.  I like the regularity. 

I've made an attempt to get a tan, and almost burned my arms yesterday.  It is stupid vanity- making me more prone to skin damage and cancer later on, but most of the bodies here are so lithe and tan, I felt like working on it.  I've never lived on the beach like this, and it seems silly to be in this kind of place, and to still be so pale.  Ah, well. 

Ra's birthday is on Thursday, and he says that he doesn't want anything, but I feel lame not to try to do something special for him.  I'm trying to figure out how to throw him a little birthday party to mark the occasion, but the thing about hanging out with travelers is that everyone comes and goes so quickly.  Not many people stay places for more than a week or ten days. 

Mumbai

Sasha:

Today is a bit of a crunchy day. And by crunchy, I mean that we are feeling cracked-out and tired, weary of the traffic and the constant noise around us. Weary of the people, and of the guardedness that comes with being a tourist. And so I sip my latte with my headphones on, and take comfort in the company of my own thoughts. It isn't a bad way to take a vacation from our vacation.

I'm writing in a cafe in Mumbai. As in a proper cafe that serves 10 different varieties of coffee beans, and offers thick foamy lattes with hearts drawn in esspresso circles. For some reason, in this part of the trip, I am craving coffee. Or maybe I am just craving a little bit of something western. As it turns out, the 25 other people in the cafe (all Indian) are appreciating it too.

Mumbai is a modern city, filled with nightclubs, high rise buildings, train stations that have more to do with European Cathedrals than with any Asian tradition. The soundtrack to the city is a constant symphony of cars, scooters, and buses buzzing around and honking at one another. In a city of 16 million, that is a lot of motor vehicles. The young men walk down the street with their arms around one another, and holding hands, while couples walk a more modest distance from one another. In peak hours, the commuter trains in and out of Bombay will squeeze 16 people per square meter in their cars, creating a “super dense crush.” While we stand on the sidewalk, looking at our guidebook map, strangers will appear over our shoulders eager to help. This has mixed results since only the more educated speak English, and our ability to communicate in either Marathi (the language of Mumbai) or Hindi (the official language of India) is minimal. Personal space and privacy aren't a high priority in Indian culture. A family of four can make a motor scooter look downright roomy. There is less space allotted to each person here, both because the people are typically smaller, thinner, and shorter than the average American, and because they don't need the buffer zone that we do. “The Indian people have a strong need for touch,” we were told by our couchsurfing host, Ashish. I can't say that they eager look forward to being canned sardines on a train car, but they relax into physical contact in a way that we don't. We took a bus from Panjim to Palolem Beach, and they bus seats were a challenge for Ra and I to fit into. For a little while, an Indian man sat next to me, and I strove to keep and elbows width of room between him and I.

One of the things that I enjoy about Mumbai is that it so much more than a tourist destination. It is a world class city, buzzing with people in their everyday lives- dealing with design, finance, government, and transportation. We ventured into the tourist districts, and our blinders come up, guarding us from the vendors and scams. In Palolem, it was inescapable (which is why we escaped to Agonda Beach). In Mumbai, all we have to do is cross the street and I can look up, make eye-contact and smile with out being accosted with dolphin rides, bangles or tshirts.. I've read about how men here would interpret the smallest encouragement as a come-on, so I reserve my smiles for women. Having spent so much time in the past month and a half being on the defensive against the press of shop keepers and taxi drivers, I take so much pleasure in making a momentary connection, and opening up for 4 seconds at a time. Almost all of the women return my smile. In fact, it sometimes goes farther than that. With a little encouragement, they approach us and ask to take a photo with us. Usually we say yes, although this can get out of hand by the time the 5^th or 6^th person in a row asks. We've decided to take these requests as a compliment. Part of me wonders how different the two experiences are- in one we walk through India as a set of dollar signs, and in the other we are a novelty- a pair of white faces. In both cases, we are objectified. However, I'd much rather offer a smile, than the rupees in my wallet. I'd rather trade a hand shake for a handshake, than haggle over the price of a cheap trinket. The question we ask ourselves is how do we interact as individuals here, and not as anonymous objects.

We have found that it is easier to make a connection with other tourists than it is with locals. Part of the reason we liked Agonda Beach in Goa so much is because of the other travelers we met. It was so much easier to meet people when we aren't being hassled every moment. The defensive blinders come off, and suddenly we are being invited to pull up a chair at our regular cafe (we had two of them in Agonda, Arabian Nights and Lily Moon.) Before we knew it, we started seeing the same people every day. Annie and Cambell from Scottland (by way of Lisbon) and John from Manchester (by way of Sri Lanka) Brandon from San Diego, Carol, Moon, and Lily who ran our favorite restaurant, and Bobby from Albuquerque (who surprised us by being 21 years old, on his third trip to India, who had a wisdom and curiosity beyond his years). In 6 days we had built up a nice little community that we were sad to leave. 5-6 days seems like the minimum time it takes to get a regular routine, and to create a circle of expat friends. On our last evening, Cambell (who is a professional musician) got out his guitar and we had a sing-along at the Lily Moon cafe that lasted 6 hours.

Couchsurfing.com may also be a saving grace for us in our travels. Sure, it is great to save some money on hotels, but it offers a way to meet local people in a meaningful way. Ashish hosted us in Mumbai for 3 nights. He is 31, and has a masters in Finance, and clearly loves his wife. The irony is that his wife was out of town while we were there, but it was really sweet to hear the way he talked about her, and about their life together here. They bough an apartment in the suburbs 6 months ago, and it was the nicest place we've stayed in India. It had double paned class, AC, and a hot water heater that worked within 5 minutes of being turned on. We met him at 10pm the first night we got into the city. He met us, drove us to dinner, and got the tab (despite our best efforts to pay instead). Turns out buying an apartment in Mumbai is almost as expensive as buying real estate in the Bay Area. However, people in Mumbai make $.19 for every dollar that they would make in the states. (These are the things you learn when you stay with someone in the finance industry.) Ashish was smart, open, and an all around great host. Our only regrets was that our schedules didn't permit us to hang out with him as much as we would have liked, and that we didn't get to meet his wife. The beauty of it all, is that as a guest and host, the usually boundaries fall away, and we get to make an actual human connection.

Land of Palm Trees, Beaches, and Prem Joshua

Sasha:

Ahh, we landed in Goa.  And what a welcome landing it was after the craziness of Egypt.  We had a one hour flight from Mumbai to Goa with King Fisher Air, and in it they managed to serve us a full meal.  We had tasty vegetarian dal, paneer, and rice.  Ra and I looked at one another and said, 'We're home."

My first impressions were of the lushness here- the weather is sultry, humid, and almost-but-not-quite too hot.  There are green grasses and palm trees, interspersed with lots of dogs and half sized cows.  At night you can hear the alarms of howls as people walk past the packs of canines, and all the time on the road you play chicken with the cows.  (Hint, culturally the cows win).

We are paying too much for our hotel- about $37/ night, but we have a pool, air conditioning, and the food here is pretty good.  What is even better is how awesome the staff is.  Bejamin, Lucky, Mengel. . .  We have been here 3 nights now, and it feels good to know people's names.  We have also met other travelers- Emma from Cambridge with the dreadlocks who is here to volunteer at the animal shelter, Sabastian (like the crab) who is French and was able to guess that Ra was from Israel within the first 5 minutes with whom we engaged in an intense political discussion about the occupied territories, and the two, blonde,  22 year old guys from Sweden, who picked up the poi and got the 2 beat weave in about 45 seconds and the 3 beat weave in about 20 minutes.  But he was drunk, and probably won't remember today.

Last night we went to Mackey's Night Market in Baga.  Every 3 stalls was playing a Prem Joshua mix, and everywhere were strappy dresses, cotton shirts, and carved elephants.  I got a so-so dress for 150 rupees that I probably didn't want, and a leather belt pouch for 475 rupees (about $10.50 instead of $90-150 in the US).  Within 5 minutes of being in the market, Ra recognized a passing couple.  Turns out they are Emam and Yashoda, good friends of Ra's uncle Shabda. Hopefully we will meet up with them later on today.  After shopping, we saw some acrobats from Africa who tumbled, balance, juggled, and put fire torches out with their breeches.  For a moment, I couldn't remember where I was. The people around us were from all over the world, and we had just looked at some earrings for stretched lobes that would fit in as easily in Berkeley as it would have in Baga, or Barcelona.  It was as if we were at a county fair for The World.

I am loving it here.  My skin eats up the humidity, and for the first time since march, my face has cleared up.  Speaking of eating, my body is loving the food.  I have been traveling for a month, and this is the best that my stomach has felt.  My meals of rice, dal, and curry last me a perfect 5-6 hours before I need to eat again, and am starting to loose some of the hummus weight I put on in Israel. And finding something to eat here is so much easier for me!  I have eaten enough Indian food in the states that I know what dishes are safe for me, and which ones aren't.  (okay, I accidently ordered Veggie kufta hoping that kufta was sauce, not the dough balls, whoops.)  My only complaint is that the tourist restaurants make the curries too bland. 

There is poverty here, but I know that it gets much worse.  This is the wealthier part of India, thanks in part to tourism, and in part with some of the local traditions. So far nothing has shocked me- god knows that they drive far crazier and with less clearance between vehicle in Cairo than they do here.  The cars are so narrow here, to go with the narrow streets where cars pass one another with a couple extra motor scooters between them for good measure.  Exploring India by starting out in Goa is kind of like easing into a cold swimming pool by beginning in the kiddie pool.

We haven't decided how long we will stay in Anjuna, much less how much time we will be in Goa.  I am hoping to be in North Goa for perhaps another week, then head down to Palolem Beach and Gokarna.  We will be in Mumbai for Anisa Qureshi's wedding reception from Dec. 28-30th.