What!

I would like to be more trusting of people, but when I'm solo like this I just can't. Yeasterday, I was approached by five different people who wanted to take me to silk facories, scented oil factories, music festivals, incense rolling competitions, and other various things. I was approached again today and told about an incense rolling competition. I told the guy someone told me it was yesterday. He told me no it was today and just up this way.

The other thing that bothers me a bit is everyone starts to walk with me to engage in conversation. When this happens I tend to shuffle around, just in case someone is behind me trying to fuck with my bag. No one has been there, yet. They usually walk with me for a while and ask questions I'd rather not answer like: where are you staying, how much is it for a room there, how long are you going to be here, and some other shit. I want to tell them to get the fuck away from me. I just want to walk around and be left alone. I'm not taking as many pictures as I'd like to because that seems to send up a flag for people to bother me.

Usually people seem harmless enough, but I just feel constantly on guard. I sometimes think about an old Chris Rock standup routine where he says "...women see me and they dial 9-1- just waiting for something to happen."

I'm waiting.

If I had a loving and hating section like JP does on his website, India would be on both lists every day.

Always in the matrix

Internet places in India are interesting. Fortunately, since India is becoming a powerhouse in the IT industry internet hubs are everywhere. The only thing is you never know when the power might cut out or how fast the connection may be. Some days in the same place it might be lightning fast and others dial up slow.

The locals who spend time in these places are unique as well. I saw the same girl (who saw me in the same clothes) two consecutive days just chatiing online. Others I've seen surfing for porn (in public). Some places have put up signs saying porn watching is not allowed, but when they give someone a little cubical for privacy? I don't want to think about it.

Off on a little tangent here. Two guys who were "working" at one of these internet places both had no qualms about sticking their finger up their nose digging for treasure, while they were talking to me. Then after they found it just flicked it away. One guy sat down at my computer shortly after he was done in order to enter the password for me. I disinfected my hands with hand sanitiser as soon as I could. Incidentally he was the guy I caught watching porn.

I've spent most of the day today in a nice little internet place in Mangalore uploading photos. The younger guys like to come in here and play shooters or strategy games over the network. Most speak english so it's funny to hear them talk shit to each other while shooting each other. I don't know why, but it's amusing to me to hear them call each other bitch, asshole, and say "shit, shit man" in their accent. By the way most don't speak Hindi here. The major languages here are Kannada, Urdu, and Telugu. I can't tell the difference, but one thing I do notice is the pitch of one of the languages is very high.

So anyways new photos up now, but I'll work on the captions slowly. Sorry.

Monsoon

I randomly approached someone with a Lonely Planet because it is the badge of a traveller, and so far the people who want to talk have been cool. If they didn't I would leave them alone. The guy is called Ferris (like Beuhler?) and he's half Palestinian and half German. A crazy little thing we found out while hanging out yesterday was he was an exchange student at Grand Haven High, which is about an hour from Grand Rapids, where I grew up. He also knew Grand Valley State University, where I went to college. It's crazy what a small world it can be.

I thought I had witnessed monsoon rain. Yesterday while walking around Panjim, nature decided to show me what real monsoon rain looks like. Ferris hadn't seen the big market yet so we went to check that out. It was raining pretty good, so water was gushing out of the market. We headed in anyways.

It's basically an open air market that's been covered up to protect it from the rain. Water was still getting in, so the paths I walked the previous day were flooded. We were ankle deep in water, some areas were worse.

As Ferris and I made it out to the open street, the rain decided the open act was over and it was time for monsoon to come out. Eight inches of rain fell from the sky in less than an hour while we watched the street we were on flood. Locals with long sticks were trying to clear debris from the drainage pipes. It didn't look like they were clearing it fast enough. Either that or pipes were just too clogged. We had no choice but to do what the locals were doing, wade into the water to get to a non-flooded street. I don't want to think about what was living in the water we walked through.

We had to be careful stepping off the curbs because of the gaps between the high curb and street that is meant to drain the water. Since the water wasn't draining, the gap filled with water and you couldn't tell where the gap ended and street began.

After maybe an hour the rain turned into a light drizzle. We continued to wander a bit more, and headed to a restaurant near the guesthouse where I stayed. As we were walking, it sudenly felt like someone was pouring buckets of water on our umbrellas. The monsoon rain decided to come out and play again.

We found some shelter under an awning, and waited. Again we witnessed the water level of this street rise. It was at least six inches of rain in half an hour. I thought about the other street and what might be happening over there. They might be knee deep in water at that point if they didn't manage to clear the drains.

Once again the rain subsided, and we waded our way back to Ferris' room so he could change his pants. We had dinner at the restaurant attached to the place he was staying, and around seven last night I set off to catch my bus to Mangalore.

Just as I headed back to grab my bags the rain started up again. By the time I set off for the bus it was pretty dark out, and the rainjust kept coming. I wasn't quite sure where the bus left from, but I had a general idea of the area.

I had to wade through anle deep water again, and work my way through traffic to find it. It's a harrowing experience to be walking inbetween cars, motorcycles, buses, and autorickshaws in the rain and darkness. Somehow, I made it across the street. Then I found out I had to cross the street once more.

When I found the bus, I happily got on and out of the rain. What I found on the bus was not better. I had booked a sleeper, not knowing exactly what that meant. THey basically built little bunks into the bus, not bad unless you wnat to sit and read. Also as I was getting on, the guys told me I would be sharing the bed, not the bunk, but the bed.

I took that information in stride, and wondered why the fuck they booked it that way for me. If anyone books with Paulo travels, make sure to get as much info from them as possible.

I changed my pants, and took everything out of my day pack. Everything was wet. My bed mate wasn't at this stop so I laid everything out so it could hopefully dry out a bit. In the meantime, the non AC sleeper was getting on my nerves. The road was insanely bumpy, I could smell fumes from the engine, and it was uncomfortably hot and damp. Some of the other beds were just straight up wet.

As I was close to losing it, I had to concentrate, I won't use meditate because I'm not sure that's what I did. I had to focus on the good things in my life. I thought first about my nephews. My sister told me their cousin from Germany was visiting them and Stefan was telling her a story about me. We were playing Spider-Man once, and I told him when I was around his age, I tried to get a spider to bite me so I could become Spider-Man.

I could just imagine him telling the story in his coy manner, his smile, and just the sound of his voice. I thought about Alex, Jacen, Chris and Steven and the rest of my family and my friends because they are the only thing that could help me get through that hell.

I'm in Mangalore now. I'm ok. It's raining and I'm wondering what the hell I'm doing here. I should just bite the bullet and head back north, but I'm hoping to find something in Hampi.

Go Go Goa

Well nothing is really happening in Goa right now, except the monsoon. I don't know if I've ever seen rain coming down that hard before, literally sheets of water for five to ten minutes. Still it's nice to be here because of very few tourists.

I went to Old Goa, which was once a city that rivaled Lisbon in beauty. Goa was once a colony of Portugal and is still today primarily Catholic because of that. I met some fellow travellers (James - England, Maria - Nova Scotia, Karla - Nova Scotia) in Old Goa and went to mass with them at one of the churches. By this time we were back in Panjim, the capital of Goa. Mass was in one of the 18 official languages of India, so I couldn't follow it. Instead I thought about basketball. I felt bad about it, and I think God decided to punish the Pistons because yet again Robert Horry hit a three near the end of overtime to beat Detroit and give the Spurs a 3-2 lead in the finals.

After mass we went to a Bollywood movie. It was typical Bollywood - singing, dancing, attractive guy and girl, and some over the top story. The movie was nearly three hours long and a kid, maybe three years old, sitting behind us took turns kicking my chair and Maria's chair. It was stil a lot of fun, even though most of it was in Hindi.

The movies experience here is interesting. First of all like in Euope you buy an assigned seat, which I think is pretty cool, that way if you're there first you get a good seat no matter what. Second just before the beginning of every feature you rise for the national anthem. Last, there is an intermission during every movie. I think it's about five minutes. I've gone to the movies three times now, and paid about under $7 US dollars for first run movies.

I don't want to get into it at the moment, but my last day in Mumbai was a tough one. The city was getting to me, and I nearly brokedown in tears. I'm glad to be away from there. I'm going to try to meet Maria and Karla somewhere in Goa, and maybe try to convince them to come to Hampi.

They were just in Nepal, and said things were relatively safe there. I've heard this from a lot of people, so 'm going to head to Nepal and hopefully do the Everest basecamp trek.

More about Mumbai

First of all, I just saw Batman Begins at the Eros theater in Mumbai. This is the best batman movie ever made! Go see this movie after you're done reading this post.

So to explain more about the time in India, it's 5 1/2 hours ahead of GMT, 10 1/2 hours ahead of the east coast, and 13 1/2 hours ahead of the west coast. Why? I haven't asked yet.

Now on to first impressions of mumbai. Fuck I just typed it and will have to retype.

The air not only has a smell, but a taste as well. It is somewhat metallic.

The other thing you notice is the poverty. People are everywhere. A bed is any flat surface. Little kids barely dressed, sometimes naked, was amongst heaps of rubbish. The disparity between the modern world and the slums sends my head spinning. I've seen the homeless in San Francisco, but this isn't like that. This is poverty. There are so many images burned into my mind. I saw a leper last night. Fortunately it was too dark for me to see him. Two kids, maybe in their teens were drinking water from the gutter. There was a little girl no more than 4 begging for money. She ws hopping in front of Niki holding out her hand while he was tryiong to side step her.

The sound of engines and horns fill the air. Sometime to the point where thats all you can hear. People are always all around you and the humidity makes eveything a little less bearable. It's opressive and pushes down on you.

Today was better. It didn't feel so hot, and there was a breeze that circulated the air. Niki and I have walked most of the two sections of Mumbai (Colabda and Fort) covered in the Lonely Planet. We've gotten to know the city a bit better and even have a local restaurant where we've had lunch twice now. An order of two samosas and a coke costs 23 rupees (just over 50 cents). So far the stomach is ok. Last night I wrote in my journal, "I'm still not sure if I can handle this place." Today, I think I'll be ok.

First Impressions

The updates on the endof my european tour will have to wait. I landed in India this morning, the city of Mumbai otherwise known as Bombay. I thought I was prepared. My instinct to flee was building up during the cab ride into the city from the airport. Luckily, I met a Finnish (Niki) as I was prepaying for a cab. The Lonely PLanet book is a dead giveaway that you're a traveller, and we both had ours out.

Getting the cab was a little sketchy even though we had already paid for it. These guys kept running around with our certificate and we had to grab it back from them. They finally pulled up a cab for us, but it just didn't feel right. Niki didn't want to put his bag in the trunk and I agreed with that. When we got in the cab one of the guys out of the five running us around wanted a tip. We gave him a little bit and he wanted more. The driver took off and we left him with what he got.

Still not feeling quite right, I asked the driver if he knew where he was taking us. I'm not sure he quite did, which unsettled me further. Based on where the sun was in the sky I knew we were heading south, at least it was the right direction. It was the scariest cab ride I've ever taken and I'm glad we made it to the hotel. The things we experienced on the way are something I'll not soon forget.

Mumbai is a full assault on the senses. People talk about the smells. When it didn't immediately hit me when I got off the plane I let my guard down a bit. The cab ride slapped me back into my reality.

The air is hot and thick with humidity. Riding on top of that is the polution from the various motorized vehicles. Layer that with hot tar which I'm assume is being used to fix roads. At one point we pulled off the highway and were hit with the stench of rotting garbage. I tend to think I have a strong stomach, but I was greatful my stomach was empty. Attempting to breathe through my mouth was no comfort since, in my mind, I thought I copuld taste garbage in the moist air I was breathing. When we drove out of that I was only too happy to breath the regular air. The only places I seem to take deep normal breaths are in my room and places with AC.

I have to stop this entry for now, because time is running out at this internet place. I'll continue later or tomorrow.

Did you know India is 1/2 an extra hour ahead or behind everyone else.