On the plus side, there's an awesome beach in front of me

Namaste (is what they say here),

After 2.5 days of travel with minimal sleep, I have arrived at my intended destination, Gokarna. It is a small town several hours south of the notoriously hippie but now unfortunately crowded and commercial Goa. Thus, I skipped Goa, spending 2 hours there waiting for a train this morning after spending 16 hours on a bus from Mumbai last night, and headed directly here.

To recap, my journey began two days ago in New Jaipalguri, the Northeast corner of India (not counting Assam), where I caught a flight to Mumbai via Delhi. The entire traveling experience took about 14 hours because of a delay during my layover in Delhi. At the end of the delay, as we were exiting the terminal to board the plane, I saw a girl outside very obviously smiling at me in a very clear "hi! I'm trying to get your attention!" repeatedly kind of way. I smiled back, and as soon as I got outside, she asked if I was going to Mumbai and if I had a hotel yet. I did not, since that seems to be the way I've been doing things lately, and neither did she, but she knew of a place that wouldn't be too expensive if we split a room. The guide book said that finding a cheap place to stay in Mumbai upon arrival can be Hell, and I'd imagine arriving at 1 in the morning doesn't help. So we split a taxi when got to Mumbai and shared a room. It's not every day you share a room with a German girl who flags you down at the airport...unless you have a German girlfriend who picks you up at your airport job, I suppose.

The next day I found out that indeed all of the trains to Goa were full, even the special tourist quotas they set aside for last minute people like me. So I bought a bus ticket, even though the guide book specifically said "no matter what your budget, think twice before considering the hellish overnight bus journey, which ranks among the worst in India." We left at 2:30 pm and arrived at 6 am, which was actually on schedule. The roads were windy and bumpy, but I didn't expect to sleep, so it wasn't that bad. Plus we got to watch the first half of 2012. It was in Hindi, but I think I got the gist of the plot.

This morning I was understandably grumpy after not sleeping all night or bathing in two days, so the 2 hour delay at the train station didn't help my temperament. I caught a 1.5 hour train to Karwa, and then instead of waiting a few hours for a bus, spent a little extra to split a taxi with two Welsh people to go the rest of the way.

Gokarna is small, crawling with barefoot hippies, but still full of laid back Hindus. The beach is right there too. I walked a little further to get to Kudlee Beach, which is more secluded than the main beach, and therefore rumored to be completely booked since it will be New Year's Eve tomorrow. After being told "sorry" by 3 places, one mentioned that his brother had one hut available behind a nearby hotel, so I followed a boy who didn't speak English to a row of thatch huts with clay floors, and they cleaned some trash out of the last remaining hut, set up the mosquito net and gave me the key. The mattress lies atop a raised rock structure of some sort. But at least there's a working light bulb. And I'm right by the beach for only 200 rupees (between 4 and 5 dollars a night). Supposedly there will be a crazy party on the beach tomorrow night. After that, I'll search for better accommodation either on the beach or settle for something in town that's a little more with the times. The upside of being so close now is that it's supposedly not a good idea to walk to and from this beach after dark, so that would put a damper on celebrating New Year's where the party appears to be.

I'm not sure if much of this made sense or was blandly descriptive of travel details, but I haven't slept in a long time, so my next post will be better.

Swimming in the Indian Ocean (I've hit the big three now!) was great for shaking off three days of dirt, even though I am very salty now.

Enjoy this decade while it lasts,
Ben

One too many mornings, and a thousand miles behind

Hi people,

I figure it's about time to update this. I have a what I hope is a pretty good entry about my hiking time in the Himalaya last week, but I wrote it out longhand when I got back from the mountains and don't have it with me right now, so I'll probably post that closer to New Year's when I'm hopefully very far from where I am right now.

Speaking of which, right now I'm in New Jaipalguri, India, which is about 5 hours south of Darjeeling. I was here for about an hour two weeks ago when I took a train from Varanasi (the Ganges place), but hopped into a jeep immediately because everyone likes to get out of here as fast as possible because there is nothing to do or see here.

Well, I had the same mentality coming back from Darjeeling. There is a major railway station here, and I hoped to move West ASAP. Unfortunately, all trains toward Rajasthan (desert in the West) had waiting lists for a week. Same with anything to Calcutta or south. So I checked into a really cheap and really shady hostel right by the railway station, hoping for better luck the next day (sometimes they set aside a certain amount of seats for foreign tourists, but you can only get them a few hours before the train).

The next morning I woke up with the dreaded traveler's runs and could barely keep my head up, so I checked into a better, costlier hotel called the Sahara Lodge a few minutes away from the station, which was a good idea because the area around the station is very grungy and noisy, what with all the trains and everything.

This was a very good move, as my digestion affliction lasted 3 days. But it turned out there were 3 decent American movie channels on my tv, and I'm Not There (the Bob Dylan movie from a few years ago, which always gets me in a rambling artist mood) happened to be the second one that came on. So that's what I did for three days. On Christmas Eve, Prince Caspian came on at 11:15 pm (a good way for me to start Christmas, as those of you who have heard my Prince Caspian-stitches story might understand. If you haven't and would like to, I can send it to you).

So my first ever Christmas away from home was spent in a hotel room in a city in India without much going on, just happy to have a bathroom attached to my room (although there was no actual toilet...more like a...hole.)

I also called my parents, the first time I've heard any familiar voices since I left on December 1, which was obviously a good thing.

I started feeling better yesterday. After getting sick of all the hassles and confusion of railway tickets, I decided to scrap the desert plan and just go somewhere relaxing, like the beach area in southwestern India that I first heard about soon after I bought my ticket called Goa. It used to be hippie Mecca. Now it's very commercial and especially expensive the week between Christmas and New Year's, so I'm thinking of heading further South to a place called Gokarna. Thus, I spent more money than I would have liked but still less by Western standards to get a flight from here to Mumbai tomorrow afternoon (saving myself about 50+ hours of train travel), and then spend a little extra cash on some foreigner exception to get from there to Goa by train the next day, and if that's too crowded, get a bus to Gokarna the day after that. So I hope to be looking at a full moon on the beach by the Arabian Sea for New Year's. Then again, a week ago I thought I would be in Jaisalmer right now, so who knows where the movie director in my head will take me. But Gokarna's the only place I actually knew I really wanted to go to when I arrived here, so I'm just going to do what I can to get there ASAP. I'm a little restless after a very American week of sitting in bed watching movies (although that was a very nice way to deal with being temporarily incapacitated).

That's all for now. I hope you're all having beautiful snowy holidays with the one's you love and looking forward to an exciting beginning to a new decade (albeit an arbitrary demarcation in the constant flow of time, it's still going to be cool to write 10 as the year. Nice and round).

Peace,
Ben

Worst strike...ever

So I was all prepared to hole up in my unheated room for 4 days with nothing but a box of corn flakes and a guidebook of India to console me when I hear that the strike has been called off half-way through the first day. Apparently there is a "tripartite meeting" on the 21st, and it made no sense for them to strike beforehand. So after one day with no shops and services, the town is open again. Which is nice, because I was able to buy some gloves to keep my hands warm.

Speaking of warm, it is not warm here. It is much colder outside back home in New York, but not indoors. There's no escape from it here. Not anywhere. They are poor, so they don't have heat. And the power goes out randomly for unknown amounts of time. I think that's why they're striking (albeit half-assedly).

Yesterday, I decided to bathe since I'd been traveling for a few days and feeling pretty grubby. Unfortunately, the shower only had freezing cold water, and upon arrival I was told that I was to bathe using a bucket provided in the room. So I filled the bucket with water, which was still ice cold. Then I did my best attempts at manly growling for the next 10 minutes as I subjected each section of my body to extreme pain (keep in mind it's below 50 degrees to begin with). Shampooing was the worst, because for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to just plunge my whole head into the bucket to clean it faster. Well, it did make me feel very... awake.

I went upstairs to the restaurant in the hostel to eat some warm stew, where I met two Canadians, one of whom teaches English in Taiwan and has been all over Southeast Asia. A Dutch man joined us soon afterward, and he informed me that the hostel provides a bucket a very hot water for bathing purposes. I said, "Ohhhh," through shivering teeth.

After a nap and an attempt to warm myself up with the old "mind over matter" trick, matter defeated the mind with the old "mind is composed of matter" argument and I asked for my bucket of hot water. I didn't need to get clean anymore, but I needed some relief from the shivering. Once I began to enjoy the ritual of pouring scalding water on myself, the power naturally went out, and I was in the dark, alone and naked. I attempted to pull the curtain back so that the neighbor's fire would shed some light on the situation, and of course pulled down the whole curtain rod. Then the neighbor put the fire out, possibly out of embarrassment from having seen me. Anyway, thanks to the magic of iPod display lights, I managed to find my clothes and felt that the whole ordeal was worth it.

I spent the evening in the restaurant writing by candlelight until the power came back on, when the Dutch hot water informant came in and we talked about politics and religion until they closed down/got sick of us.

Today the streets are full of people again and I'm set on beginning a 6 day trek tomorrow along the Singalila Ridge. It's right near the Nepalese border, and apparently affords magnificent views of the Himalayas around the 5th day. I've talked to guides around here, and supposedly the best bet is to just go to the start of the trek and hire a cheap one when you get there (they are mandatory). After all of this cold weather it might seem counterintuitive to escape to the rough higher elevations, but quite to the contrary, I think it will be warmer. I'll have a backpack on, I'll be constantly moving (about 6 hours a day), and at night there will actually be a fire going in the lodge. And hopefully some starry nights. I think I'm homesick most for those. You're lucky to even see our closest star during the day in this country.

Overall, I like the people of Darjeeling more than any other place I've been, because they don't come up to me every few steps and try to sell me something. They just stare a little at my red beard to confirm that I'm not from around here, and then continue on their way. No one's even offered me drugs once (on this trip I've already set personal records for drug offers turned down in the categories of one hour, one day, and one week).

That's all for now. Hopefully your lives are beautiful and warm right now.

Peace,
Ben

December 13, 2009

I am now in Darjeeling. I was going to wait until more happened before updating again, but it's going to be a while.The thing is, after riding a train for 16 hours overnight to New Jaigalpuri, I got into a jeep to take me the remaining 3 hours when some native Darjeeling(ins?) informed me that due to a political strike, there will be no services here for 4 days, starting tomorrow. My hotel is running (I found one when I got here), and they have a restaurant, so I do not expect to starve, but it sounds like I won't be doing much except writing and trying not to freeze (high of 55, low of 36, which isn't bad, but there's no heat in my room and really no insulation either since there's a hole by the door). But I have an awesome view of the valley below from my balcony.The ride up here was an adventure itself. Our jeep went up these incredibly windy narrow roads with traffic coming the other way and no guard rails. Drivers here are talented, albeit somewhat reckless. Luckily, whenever I'm in a situation where the traffic conditions should frighten me, I'm so tired that I don't care. Plus I'm used to the insane driving, and all the other tourists shrug their shoulders as well. Jumpin Jack Flash on your headphones makes the chaos more fun too.I hope to go on a mini-trek around the mountains here, but it may have to wait after a few days of solitude and reflection.Peace,Ben

Written December 11, 2009

Hello friends,So much to write, but not much time to do it, as I just checked out of my hostel in Varanasi, en route to Darjeeling and the Himalayas.Varanasi is the holiest Hindu city in India. I've been staying in a hostel right on the Ganges, where people bathe and put floating candles on the water at night. I hung out with a "holy man" who lifted a giant rock with his..."unit", saw dead bodies burning on funrral pyres, and watched large families of monkeys run around a few feet away while ate on the rooftop restaurant.It was a good experience, and I'm told by other backpackers that Varanasi is a very culturally hard core way to start your trip. I thought Dehli was crazier, since I've seen dead bodies before (that weren't wrapped up in ceremonial clothes). Speaking of which, it's hard to take the rituals seriously. For example, you're not allowed to take pictures of the burning pyres, but as the families or whoever walk around the body ten times saying prayers, some of them are on their cell phones. And there was a big ad for a Pizza Hut right nearby. And everyone who wants to tell you about the proceedings then asks for money because you'll have bad karma if you don't contribute to the burning of already dead bodies (of course, you don't know if your money is actually going toward that or not). I'm getting sick of hearing "karma" so much. It's no different from priests saying you'll go to Hell if you don't put more in the collection plate.I took a cool boat ride on the Ganges yesterday, which was peaceful, but I'm having trouble perceiving it as a holy river. Anthropologically, I understand why these people worshipped here for thousands of years, because people tend to worship bodies of water since water means life. But now the life is drowned by over ten years of pollutants dumped by factories and sewage dumped by people. But they still bathe in it...we all gotta believe in something, I guess.Lots of kids fly kites here and play cricket. Overall, everyone seems happy except, of course, the beggars. My second night I was treated to a private sitar and tabla concert in a music shop, which was awesome. My third day I spent in bed with a fever, aches, chills, fatigue, and trips to the bathroom. But I felt much better each day afterward.Last night I hung out with a fellow American who I met on the train over here. He also has a red beard and loves Phish and Tom Robbins. He's been traveling the world for almost 3 years, getting whatever kind of job wherever he can when he gets low on funds. He started in New Zealand too. So it was great to commiserate with a more experienced drifter on what it's like to constantly be an outsider.So far, my favorite part of the whole trip has been the train ride from Delhi to Varanasi. I think it's the motion that gets me going.Peace,Ben

Written on December 6, 2009

So if you ever go to India, flying to Delhi is a good idea because it's cheap, but plan to leave ASAP. The forecast every night is "smoke". There are 13 million people, and many of them are poorer than you can imagine (please disregard if you've already been to India or anywhere similar). Well, maybe you can imagine it, but it's different if they're right in front of you constantly. There's poverty in New York, but you don't constantly see street children without any legs or missing eyes.Also, there are no road rules here. Might makes right. It's like going on a crazy theme park ride any time you go anywhere. I'm not complaining though, because as long as you decide to enjoy the chaos, it's fun. I'm even starting to become somewhat skilled at haggling. A lot of these guys take you to a different hotel that pays them a commission, and you have to get out of the auto-rickshaw and threaten not to pay anything until you get where you agreed upon.You really need your wits about you, both physically and financially. Whether it's the motorcycle speeding through the crowded bazaar or the people sending you to a travel agent who wants to book you on a 2 week trip for $600 or charge you 20 times the cost of a train ticket and tells you a bunch of BS about your options, you need to stick to your guns. But you can't get angry at them, because they know and I know they're stuck in a crowded polluted city and have to make their money somehow, and western tourists are large sacks with dollar signs on them. You have to strike a balance between remembering it's your trip and your money and that they're just trying to feed themselves like anyone else.The Taj Mahal is amazing, but obviously crowded with tourists and scam artists.The people are very friendly. They all want to chat you up. Most of them want you to buy something, but a few have actually just been helpful and tried to practice their English. My second night I hung out with two Muslims from Kashmir and a Swedish girl in a tiny one-room apartment. They made us dinner, told us how life is great (even though they're very poor) and how much they love meeting people from around the world.I'm on my way to Varanasi tonight, one of the oldest cities in the world, and source of the Ganges. People say it's the biggest culture shock in India, so it's a good thing Delhi smacked me around (jet lag is still hanging on, too).I've already met a lot of fellow travelers too. Some have been here before, and but most are rookies like myself.Anyway, thanks for reading.Peace,Ben

I should probably make a blog

So I will.

I've avoided blogging for some reason, probably because it's called blogging. But now I'm on a journey where I'm updating you amazing people quite often, so it's probably just easier to do it this way. I won't have time for a real post for 4 days because everything in this town (including internet) will be unavailable until Friday due to a strike (Darjeeling is sick of being part of the state of West Bengal, apparently. You learn something new every day).

Peace