11-23-03

There is now a sticker on my ratty-tattered orange notebook. It says Hindustan on it. I took it off a toilet.

Done with Bangalore. Strange to think of how used to it all I got. It’s really something else, the difference between how one experiences a foreign country when one is always traveling and moving around, and when one stays in the same place for a while. 8 weeks isn’t long enough to call some place ‘home,’ but it’s enough definitely to develop a routine. It’s really that routine that makes the difference. When one can walk a certain route and do certain things and not have them feel foreign at all makes for a really different way to experience somewhere. It’s so easy to forget Bangalore and get right into traveling mode. But, when I stop and think back to the very beginning, back to my first day when we went out to 100ft. Restaurant and on the way it started pouring like no one’s business, and one of the autorickshaw’s broke down on flooded Thispassandra. And going to the YMCA shelter, and the first day of the deaf school, and the bicycle catastrophe, and just all the wacky moments with the other wolunteers, and going running in the smog, and playing football with the local hooligans… Well, I think maybe, just maybe, Bangalore got to ‘home’ status. But, I’m ready to move on a get moving. And while so many memories have I left in B’lore, so far I haven’t forgotten anything there. Unlike in Ooty, where I left my camera battery recharger. I’ll just look at it positively as another stop towards becoming a monk: shedding my worldly possessions. At least while in Hampi I’ve become a vegetarian. It has been recommended to me to do so due to spotty electrical coverage leading to extended periods of unrefrigeration of the meat.

This Hampi place is unlike anything easily imagined. The once capital of an ancient empire, this whole area while having primarily reverted to farming over the centuries is littered with ruins and temples and crumbling palaces. And the landscape is really something you’ll have to see to believe. Everywhere you look there are massive granite outcroppings the size of hills. Big red dry hills of cubic granite boulders, very reminiscent of a desert. But the plane between these boulder hills rivers and bright green rice patties and banana groves. It almost just doesn’t make sense. My geology teacher would be so proud of how excited it makes me to see this.

11-24-03

Hampi muesli, while a far cry from the real thing, is so damned good to wake up to. Particularly with sliced banana and cold milk. The have this incomprehensible obsession with hot milk in this country, and when it’s always fully whole milk and kinda to very gross anyway, getting a bowl of corn flakes with hot milk is just not pleasant. I have yet to tire of Indian food, and, as with other places I’ve traveled, I enjoy trying all the new and different cuisine. But I must admit that his doesn’t really apply to breakfast. I really get to miss my obscenely large mug of filter-coffee and my bowl of cereal. So when I order a bowl of corn flakes after weeks of morning jonsing for cereal, I really start to look forward to it, making it really that much more painful to find it arrive with the flakes rapidly besogging from steeping in foully hot milk. That’s the best part of Hampi muesli; when you ask for cold milk that’s exactly what you get. Bone-chillingly cold milk. Don’t take it for granted, y’all, don’t.

Hidden up in the cragglies about a 15-minute rented-bike ride away is a damned in reservoir. At one’s own risk one can leap off the boulders into one of the most ideally decorated and ideally tempuratured bodies of water I have yet to come across. Once in the water, if one looks carefully, one can find cracks between the boulders. One can then follow them to little flooded caves – mostly dark, but for some nice skylights here and there. Reports of poisonous snakes, along with the 6″ long 1″ around millipede husk I saw made these caves excellently scary and exciting. Obviously I chickened out pretty quick. I mean, there is a painted sign claiming unconvincingly

“SWIMING PROHIBITED

——– ARE EXISTIING”

Whatever “——–” are or were, they’ve been painted over in blue.

Hampi is surreal. It’s just so different how there are all these 500-600+ year old ruins and one can just clamber all over them, and how they’re surrounded by the rice patties and banana plantations, with all the peasants going about their business (much of which if not farming is hanging around trying to sell me mineral water). Nothing like in Europe with all the fences and railing and admission prices and security guards and systems. Here you don’t get the feeling that someone found something old and built a museum around it. The ruins are still alive. It’s such a fortune to be able to go somewhere like this. But, most likely there are two eventualities: either it all gets enshrined, roped off, and sterilized, or it all gets destroyed. Luckily, at least for the meantime, the remoteness of location and lack of infrastructure limits the touristing population almost entirely to backpacking types (at least half of which are stoned Israelis). This type of crowd keeps anyone from bothering to build any big hotels, not to mention pave all the but the main street. Or keep the power on. It’s off right now, and I must say, really wonderful that way. All the little shops and restaurants are candle and lantern-lit and it’s really quiet and calm. It would almost be better if there was never power here at all. Almost. At least I can have the comfort of thinking that if I hadn’t shed my camera battery recharger I still wouldn’t be able to recharge the battery. This is one tortuous place for limiting myself from taking too many pictures. I’ve just gotten way too used to feeling free to snap off thousands of pictures of anything I want. I really need to fashion some sort of external battery pack or makeshift recharger. Will try my bestest upon returning to parts more civilised.

11-25-03

My little cubby on the second tier on a “luxury sleeper bus” from Hospet (near Hampi) to Palolem (in Goa) is, being at the very back, roughly 6′ behind the back wheels. The axle between the back wheels of this “luxury sleeper bus” is roughly 2 feet off the ground. The suspension must be at least two feet high as well. According to my calculations – and I promise I’ve checked them up and down and am not writing any 6s upside down or any 2s backwards – the trigonometric amplification of every bump in the road is just over seven times.

(6²+(2+2)²)^(1/2).

So 3″ of roadkilled dog becomes almost 2′ of mankilling me-tossing. As you might imagine, it is rather hard to write. I will now cease to do so.

11-28-03

Happy birthday me, and happy Thanksgiving y’all. I’ve already gotten two excellent birthday presents. The first one was waking up and not feeling like I did yesterday. While all of you were getting ready to gorge yourself on turkey I was busy vomiting all day. I t really is a credit to Palolem Beach that I can spend a day practically unable to stand up from stomach trouble, and still not mind too much. Luckily the Cozy Nook – which had been recommended to me by some 20 people – has some very nice hammocks under palm trees by the water. Sleeping all day is much more justifiable when it’s in a hammock. Feeling better in the evening, I thought some soup might do me good. I got the “special chicken soup,” and it really was good. But, I think I would not have made good publicity for Fernandez Bar and Restaurant should anyone have watched me make it about 20 yards down the beach and uncontrollably retch it all up. I kicked sand over it. Counts as cleaning it up I swear. As I said, I feel better today, my breakfast is still right where it should be and shows no sign of going the wrong direction.

My second birthday present was most excellent. I was given by a sock way deep in my clothes bag a new camera battery recharger. OK, well, it’s not exactly new, but whatever. Thinking all this time that I had lost it sure is pretty stupid, but not as stupid as actually losing it. It’s funny, but I swear I checked that bag at least 3 times… and it’s funny how I came up with this whole scenario as to how I could have left it in Ooty. I remembered putting the charger on the bedside table. Then we room-serviced some chai, the tray for which was put on the bedside table. Voila, it was shoved behind the tea pitcher, and that’s how I missed it when packing. I thought about editing my previous entries and taking out all mention of my charger issues, but that would hardly be honest, now would it?

Palolem is such a beautiful and idealic beach; I’m outa here. Want to see Old Goa. Besides, I’m flying to Mumbai tomorrow at 4:20pm, and it’d be much nicer to be a few hours closer to the planestation.