Very Hampi to Meet You

No, I haven't read Shantaram. I don't want to borrow your copy of Shantaram. I'd rather give Yann Martel one of my kidneys - a highly unlikely event. Call it spite, pigheadedness, or good taste: I'm never going to read Shantaram.

As it turns out, I succeeded in driving my motorbike into the ditch; minimal injury and maximal embarrassment. My revised plan is to buddy up with more competent drivers... small scooters have room enough for two people, or a family of eight, depending on your approach.

Yesterday I hopped on with a friendly Irish fella and spent some time at the Sanapur Reservoir, jumping 8-10 metres off giant boulders into the lake. Sweat-free for a precious few minutes! Apparently the "no swimming" and "beware crocodiles" signs were just for show. If only every destination allowed tourists to jump off tall things into cool, predator-free freshwater. Alas.

The town of Hampi is nestled within the ruins of Vijayanagar, a once-great Hindu empire. I think the main city was home to some 500,000 people at its peak. The big draws, with good reason, the Virupaksha Temple and Hanuman (monkey god) temple on Anjanadri Hill. I quite liked the monkey temple, but scootering around the countryside is the best part. Enormous mounds of pink boulders balanced precariously all around. Rice paddies. Lazy rivers. A healthy portion of emptiness. I wish I could describe the visual combination. It's otherwordly.

It's hard to find a place on the backpacker circuit that enjoys unmixed, all-positive reviews. Hampi is one of those rare places that everyone likes. Seems that Mysore has a similarly good reputation - good news, as it's on the itinerary for the Shore Family Jam Band's Christmas tour.

Bangalore in a couple of days. (My next post will be rich with wisdom pertaining to e-commerce.) To be honest, I just want to hit a big city with English-language movie theatres. The cast of Harry Potter is finally old enough - let's get with the lewd comments already.

baby's first ________

I've spent 40 seconds driving my very first scooter/tiny motorcycle. There are many reasons to be fearful - my lead foot (or right hand in this case), narrow roads, giant potholes, Indian drivers, unsupervised toddlers everywhere.

If I manslaughter an innocent child or throw myself into a ditch (helmetless, natch), it really was very nice knowing you. Then again, I'd rather go to Indian prison for criminal negligence than smuggling jewelry to avoid export taxes. Srsly. How embarrassing.

Wish me luck, I'll need it.

P.S. I'm in Hampi and it's soooooooo beautiful! Too lazy to post a link. Just Google it, you bums.

Sex on the Beach

Cocktail or horrible reality?

A couple of nights ago I spent many hours drinking rum. At 5:30 am, it was finally time to fall into bed; on the way home, me and my new pals Rick and Tom stopped on the beach to smoke a left-handed cigarette. We spent a few minutes wondering about the low moans emanating from ~15 feet away, audible between crashing waves. Pitch dark, so I stepped a bit closer to discover a tangle of pale limbs. Yes. Indeed. The sweet romance of making love on the main stretch of a public beach. Meanwhile, three drunks pause next door to argue loudly about the relative merits of the Aladdin soundtrack. We concluded that "One Jump Ahead" is the best song, and that getting sand in your private bits is never worth the trouble, and hastily parted ways.

I've spent the last five days or so on Palolem beach in southern Goa. It's fairly developed - beach huts and restaurants everywhere. But the beach itself has nice sand, small waves, no sharks, and surprisingly little garbage. I'm probably the only woman on the entire beach, including the morbidly obese and the elderly, not wearing a bikini. (Good luck buying a decent bathing suit in Dawson - no, in the Yukon.) So twice a day, I stick on my ill-fitting WalMart one-piece and wallow in the waves. I actually almost fell asleep in the water this morning, star-fished out in the shallows. Add 'Arabian Sea' to the long list of places where I'm capable of napping. Had I fulfilled my half-assed childhood dream of becoming an astronaut, perhaps I'd enjoy the distinction of being the only person in history to doze off during a space-walk.

Before Goa, I was in Mumbai. It seemed like a good place to do a bit of shopping. I decided to buy some Indian clothes, see if I can pull them off. I went to FabIndia, a big chain of shops... nice selection, good quality. Bought a couple of knee-length kurtas (tunics), a pair of white churdiwar (leggings), and a beautiful fine cotton dupatta (narrow scarf). Wearing these more traditional clothes in Goa, of all places, is quite funny, because it's the one place in India where Western women seem to get away with skimpy clothes. But, wow, what a difference! Positive attention versus questionable/negative attention. Fewer googly stares and more friendly remarks. I get it! Wearing ankle-length leggings feels somehow wrong during those sticky, hot afternoons, but white truly does make a difference. I'll probably buy some more light-coloured kurtas and churidars to see me through the rest of the trip. It feels a bit unfair when you see Indian women strolling about in Western clothes, but there are different rules applied to foreigners. So it may be worthwhile to just roll with it and dress more conservatively.

It's been more than two hours since my last meal, so I'd best get moving toward lunch. All of the best holidays are based from meal to meal. There's buckets of fresh seafood all around - perhaps some kind of fish curry. Also, if you ever get a chance, try the traditional Goan dessert bebinca [left], it's outrageously tasty.

Goa

Hey guys, you can stop looking - I found all the white people! (They were here all along.)

High Cinema or: Satyajit Ray Can Suck It

The Elephanta Caves are located on an island across the harbour from Mumbai. The site is small but interesting, though I enjoyed the boat ride far more than the caves! OK, I'm not an architecture buff, I'll admit it. And the heat was making me coco loco. Here's an excerpt from the overpriced guide booklet that I bought at the entrance: 'In 1534 A.D. the island passed into the hands of the Portuguese... ...The Portuguese soldiers fired several shots from a big gun into the cave to test the echo, thereby breaking some of the sculptures and pillars.' What a bunch of dicks. I suppose they eventually got tired of shouting "Ronaldo is an asshole!... ldo is an asshole... an asshole... hole" Big guns then enter the picture.

Arriving on the jetty at Elephanta Island, I passed a young guy wearing a t-shirt that stated "Bollywood Sucks!" He must not have been at the cinema the night before, as I was, enjoying the shit out of Golmaal 3. When I entered the theatre it was with great wariness - how could I view Golmaal 3 without having enjoyed its predecessor Golmaal Returns? Ánd I assume Golmaal had original adventures even before he returned. How presumptuous of me! Would you sit down to watch American Pie 3: The Wedding without having first absorbed the nuanced humour of American Pie and American Pie 2? Not likely!

Most foreign language films would be unbearable to sit through without English subtitles, but Bollywood is mostly about enjoying universal themes: lurid colours, butt injuries, exploding jet skis, fistfights, choreographed dance, miscommunications with the hearing impaired, lost love, and practical jokes using crazy glue. You know - the essential things that make us human.

fear and loathing on the obama trail '10

I just missed celeb spotting Maestro Fresh Barack.

Oh well, there are several thousand Bollywood stars walking the streets of Mumbai at this very moment - just waiting for me to not recognize them!

diwali: i can't believe we almost made it

My inconsistent blog posts mirror my failed efforts to keep a journal over the past ten years. Oops.

I've been in Calcutta (renamed Kolkata in 2001) since the 2nd, though I took some time mid-week to visit Sunderbans National Park, the largest mangrove forest in the world. The overpriced tour was ostensibly designed around viewing wildlife - but the tigers, crocodiles, spotted deer, wild boar, and other animals that supposedly call the Sunderbans home were in hiding. But wow, did I ever see a lot of trees. It was quite pleasant to get out of the city to spend some time among villages and rice paddies. And the relative silence of the countryside - ah, the blessed quiet.

Kolkata is a madhouse. The roads and alleys are more thickly congested than arteries on a grilled cheese diet. Imagine three standard-size road lanes in Canada. Now squash four cars, three motorcycles, and two cycle-rickshaws into those three lanes. And some poor schmuck trying to weave across these lanes on foot. Yes, Kolkata! The ubiquitous Hindustan Ambassador taxis are pretty slick, and more pleasant-looking than a sea of auto-rickshaws, which are somewhat less common here. Crossing the street on foot is much like unprotected sex: an adventure every time! The neat thing about Kolkata is that the original human-powered rickshaws are still kicking. Everywhere else I've only seen auto- or cycle-rickshaws. These guys can really zoom around a traffic jam. Yesterday I was in a taxi and the driver was yelling into his phone, "[something in Hindi] jam! [Hindi Hindi] jam [Hindi]!!!" Why invent a word for all the shitty concepts when English is already on the job? Hooray for the British empire, hooray for us.

Like other cities, Kolkata contains homelessness, child beggars, amputees, and mountains of evolving garbage. And multitudes. But it's really very decent - let's blame Mother Teresa's press for lending Kolkata the terrible reputation that persists to this day. My major trouble is developing an unseeing stare when sad old ladies and naked kids tug at my sleeves in supplication.

West Bengal is a confusing title as this state is located in eastern India; Bangladesh, before splitting off, was formerly East Bengal. Anyway, being in West Bengal, I'm really noticing India's regional differences. Curries are sweeter, the skin is darker, the religion focuses on Kali, who is by far the scariest of Hindu deities. And of course, language changes everywhere you go. In Darjeeling, people were speaking Hindi and Nepali and Tibetan. In Kolkata, it's Hindi and Bengali and I don't know what else.

Something that spans India and the world's Indian diaspora is the holiday of Diwali. November 5 was Diwali proper but it seems the celebrations will continue until the 7th. I still haven't figured out what it all means, and it's celebrated in different ways wherever you go. In Kolkata: lighting candles, setting off firecrackers, worshiping terrifying Kali statues, dressing up in fancy duds, doing family things. *Note: if I'm ever engaged in fisticuffs, I hope the goddess Kali's got my back. A ritual beheading is a definite 'win'.* At first glance, Diwali is like a complex and noisy Christmas. I leave on a train for Mumbai on the night of the 7th so perhaps the mysteries of Diwali will unfold before then.

I keep meaning to blog about the food... what an undertaking. India's tasty miracles probably deserve their own post.