This blog is over.

We are back in San Francisco.  Reunited with friends, reunited with my beautiful bicycle, reunited with the USA... or at least working on it.  It is good to be back.

Seattle arrival time: approx. 2:30 pm Sunday. 

See you soon.

Chance

Goodbye, India.

Dear India,

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to:
-Get pissed on by Sampson the Rat
-Find my temple
-Eat delicious, copious food on the Camel Safari
-Experience the Mughal restaurant in Mumbai
-Down the saffron lassis in Jodhpur
-Serve as a target for that woman's puke on the bus
-Get attacked by that cow and it's curious tongue, in Rishikesh, while being lain on by Abi Sheik
-Come to a better understanding of my relationship with Josh
-Find a more assertive, self-rewarding relationship between myself and the world
-Read.
-Projectile spray shit all over the walls, toilet, and floor of the bathroom of our ashram in Rishikesh, unable to sit down in time because I was busy vomitting in the bucket full of used toilet paper (napkins)
-Fill myself up with chai
- Learn some tasty cooking
-Acquire a perspective from which to view the U.S., the bicycle trip, and my life in the PNW as so much more gifted, more beautiful, more valuable, than I had ever before managed to understand

Also , thank you for:
-not hurting me significantly, besides depriving me from cardiovascular exercise and bombarding me with copious amounts of refined carbohydrates, fried oil, bacteria, and parasites.
-remaining, despite my sometimes determined animosity, exactly who you are, and forcing me to come to terms with that-- and then throwing me the occasional mind-blowing bone-- the perfect sunset, the right rock to climb, the cool air in my temple, the view from Triund-- that would make all my doubts fall away, leaving me with something pristine, true, and beautiful, a gift I will never forget.
-the thali.  The concept of the thali, India, is one of your crowning culinary achievements-- at least on the cafeteria end of things.  All you can eat curry, dhal, sabji, rice, chapattis, less than a dollar, sometimes as little as 25 cents...  I ate lunch an hour ago and I am already slavering.  Well done. 
-the Dosa.  Look it up, cook it up.  Breakfast of champions.
-introducing me to yoga.  Aspects of yoga will play a part in my life from now on, I think.
-accepting the donation of my wallet.  I know you are into surprises-- I have been experiencing this aspect of your quirky nature ever since the first hour we hit Delhi-- but I must say, that whole wallet thing... I didn't even see it coming.  But you made it easy for me.  You just collected, all of a sudden, that night on the bus to Mumbai.  I suppose you think of it as a sort of tax-- rich-person tax, perhaps.  Well, India, spend it well.  I might not have.
-always changing the menu-- in restaurants, on the road, in the cities, the people, and the experiences, always shuffling things up, always dishing out something  new.  Thanks for keeping me on my toes.
-giving me a healthy respect for healthy food, and the places where it is available-- places which are very seldom found in India. 
-Teaching me not to take good health for granted.  This was not just through seeing all the unhealthy, bodily mangled people making their lives on the street, but also in myself...  This India trip may have been the least healthy 96 consecutive days in my life, as my weak, pampered immune system has had to do battle with bacteria, parasites, and multiple colds, all while running on poor nutrition and little exercise. 
-And, in the absence of more time, Everything Else.

Thanks India. 

I will miss you.

Love,
Chance

Delhi, morning.

This is what I am leaving in three days.  We are leaving.  It has been good.  It really has been good.

The circuit.

complete

!Holi

Aftermath

The End is Nigh

March 4th.  Only 6 days left in our trip.  I think I can speak for the both of us when I say we are ready for that plane home.  We're ready to see family and friends, and feel the comforts of home after 5 long months of travel.  We miss you and we'll see you soon!

1/3/10
"Happy Holi shit!  A festival of color gone haywire.  Dye is everywhere.  In my hair, mouth, eyes, ears, nails, anywhere!  I think the dye is oil based.  Probably motor oil.  It's got a similar sheen.  Starts green, ends purple." 
The hotel guys said people get crazy (drunk) down on the streets, and advised us to stay at the hotel.  Not particularly interested in eating dye, we obliged and watched from our seven story hotel as processions began.  Children littered the rooftops with buckets, balloons, squirt guns, and worst of all, deadly precision.  Relentless in their attacks, they pelted neighbor kids, and occasionally preyed on unknowing tourists down below.  We were safe in our tower.  But safety grew old, and in its place, a sense of restless adventure was born.  We had no dye, and neither did the hotel guys.  I asked, and they said all the shops were closed.  But what went in one ear went straight out the other.  There was no way I was going to miss out on this one.  So I took to the streets.
Paranoia.  I was walking through a maze.  The walls were three stories high.  The streets, four feet wide.  Distant screaming rang in my ears, but all around me was silence.  Water bottle in hand, I persevered.  My weaponry was weak, but I was quick on my feet.  All I needed was a little bit of dye and I might make it back.  The corridor ended in a turn.  I heard mumurs ahead.  They couldn't have seen me, impossible.  The murmurs grew into voices.  My body grew tense.   I gripped my bottle and was ready to spring.  Steps.  Two of them. I don't think they're kids, but I'm not about to let my guard down.  I creep forward until they turn the corner.  Defensless.  Just some old men.  Clean too.  I must be in a safe area.  I let my guard down some and continue forward.  As I passed the men a balloon came from nowhere.  I swung my hips and narrowly dodged it.  No such luck for the man behind me.  I saw where it came from.  A small square, if I run fast enough I might make it.  Left or right?  Another balloon.  Left!  In a full sprint I rounded the corner and saw five kids waiting for me.  I was too fast, the barrage was a failure.  I kept running looking side to side only to see closed shops.  Suddenly I felt cold.  My left side ached.  I put my hand to my stomach and felt it wet.  Looking down, I saw that they didn't fail... they got me.  Bastards!  I've been purpled!  Soon I found dye.  Now those kids won't be so lucky.
"I was out on the street, trekking back to the hotel.  I turned the corner and caught the eye of a kid.  He yelled.  Four more came from behind cover.  I ran."  This time they were ready.  "All five were pelting me as I fought back.  They grabbed my shirt and pulled.  I began to worry about not making it back.  I desperately squirted the kids, but they clung tighter.  The pulling got harder. More kids came, more dye.  I chose one kid and relentlessly dumped dye on him, he gave.  That was it, my escape."
I sprayed in full circles, tearing away from their clutches.  Suddenly I was free.  I turned and ran, continuing my sprays.  I rounded the corner and was there.  The hotel. I made it.  I climbed the seven flights, dye in hand and returned a hero.  Now, it was time for my revenge.

"We're on the roof, we used the high ground to dump buckets and spray with water bottles.  People didn't appreciate it.  I did."

In the end, "our safe haven" turned into an all out battle field.  The guys from the hotel pulled out the buckets, hoses, water bottles and dye.  It wasn't pretty, but it sure as hell was fun.

Happy Holi shit.

Love,
Josh

Magic Bag-fixin' boyz

This is where they work and live.  I am standing in the doorway, the exit to their place.

Calcutta

Cheap, good food.  Busy streets.  Lots of beggars.  Closed zoos on Thursdays.  Big library.  Decent tailors.  "They really fixed my bag, dude.  Like, it's workin'." -Josh.  note: this is quite a statement.  Josh's bag was amazingly bad.  The zipper-- no, the failure-to-be-a-zipper-- well-- you get the idea.  But they fixed it.  He did.  Thanks, Mr. Tailor.  Bag man.  Good work.  You did the impossible. 

The 30 hour train ride wasn't too bad...  I am not sure if I can use that statement anymore.  I am not sure what 'too bad' is...  I keep having to reevaluate my standards on that issue.  Anyway-- train ride: survivable.  We did have nine people in our six person compartment.  One was blind, and one liked to rest his feet in between my legs, in my crotch, while I read.  One guy stole a good portion of Josh's bed space, but made up for it by giving us some food.  Our bread somehow got infested by little ants, but they were tasteless, so all was fine.  To save a few dollars, we spent 3-4 hours sitting in the train station at the end of the run, so that we could check into a guest house late enough to avoid paying for that night.  We made it.  I am pretty sure I have been train-lagged for the last few days.  This morning is the first time I have felt fully awake-- and we are leaving this city at 7pm.  Ah, Calcutta.  Your egg rolls-- which bear no resemblance to any other egg roll I have ever eaten-- were quite tasty, despite the oil.  I will miss the cheap, tastiness of your food most of all.  That street thali, for roughly 25 cents, was superb.  Keep scraping things out of gutters, frying it up, and serving it to the populace.

We go to Varanasi.  This is a place where people bathe in the river Ganga for religious reasons, it is the music capital of the country, it is an intellectual center, it used to be called Benares, ...  Yes.  That is where we are going.  And when I say people bathe in the river Ganga, I don't mean people clean themselves in it-- if anything, the river comes out on the better side of the deal, having been able to lose some sludge onto the bodies of the holy penitents, or whoever is crazy enough to take a dip in that swill.  The Ganga is essentially sewer water-- Josh looked it up.  I think I am dwelling too much on this river.  I hope it is as exciting as everyone says it will be.

Yar, we go.  Later, folks.  See you all so soon!

My Temple

This is a glimpse of my temple in Hampi. 

Auroville

"Auroville wants to be a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realise human unity."  -the Mother

We were not aloud to stay in Auroville because Auroville has policies requiring guests to stay for at least a week, and still frowns on those staying less than two, and seeing as we could only spend three nights (and promise to contribute a mere three days of labor), we were told that we were "not serious enough" for Auroville, and were kindly advised to go and realize human unity somewhere else.  So we went to a small town outside of Auroville, and we have spent our last several nights here, spitefully declining to volunteer our labor to support a cause that similarly declined to support us.  No, that is not true...  It would have been a long walk back into Auroville, and I was nearing the end of my book, and we needed to go into Pondicherry to buy rail tickets, etc...  We will head out to Auroville today to see what is going down.  The UW group will be back tonight from their weekend trip, so there will be a place where we are welcome.  And we rented a scooter, so it will no longer be a 5k walk in 90 degree weather.  

 We rented the scooter for today because we needed to head into P-town for those train tickets...  Scooters are expensive-- almost 2 dollars for a whole day-- so we only rented one.  We had already talked, a few days earlier, about the fact that Pondicherry is quite evidently one of the worst places to drive in India.  It is way overcrowded, with bicycles, rickshaws, mopeds and motorcycles rushing and flowing like water in a stream, interspersed with fast fish, cars dodging around and honking their way through motorcycle sized gaps, and great, blunt canoes, buses overloaded with 100+ people, counting on blaring horns and roaring engines to clear a path through the inferior transportational debris with which they must marginally share the limited roadway.  Buses trying to pass buses during rush hour on small, crowded streets, vehicles darting from side roads, or nosing out into traffic so as to stop enough of it to be able to cross the street-- that is, if they didn't just wing it, floor it, and hope for an opening-- these were, these are, the every day, every hour, every minute happenings of the streets of Pondicherry, and to a greater or lesser extent, the streets of most every city in India.  I expected it to be difficult and scary to navigate in these conditions.  Surprisingly, however, it really wasn't that bad.  Moving along at 40k, flowing with the stream of movement, feeling the changes in conditions around me as they occurred, weaving, dodging, braking and accelerating in that giant game of frogger (calculators, anyone?), driving in those wild streets quickly became natural and easy, even with Josh on the back of our little 50cc bike (/lawn mower).  This was good.  We were able to get our errand accomplished, and we did not die, not even partially.

The coolest thing here: the bakery.  The Bakery!  Auroville's bakery is located about 200m from our room, and it is the first real bakery we have come across in India, baking real bread, real pastries, real cakes and sweets and whole wheat pumpernickel giant muffin loaves that are thick and dense and strong and weigh a ton and barely set you back 70 cents........!!!!   Oh, bread, how I look forward to baking and eating so much of you when I get home (in three weeks!)!  This bakery was unfortunately closed this morning when we walked over for breakfast, I believe due to the fact that today is a big Auroville holiday, the birthday of the Mother, one of two major spiritual philosophers (?) who were the founding idealists of Auroville.  I was bummed not to be able to get my hands on some of that fresh bread...  But we ended up getting lost in Pondicherry, running across a woman cooking up some breakfasty goods on a back street, and giving her the equivalent of about 70 cents to feed Josh and I up with some tasty brekkers.  So it was ok.  But bread is better.  Her food was rice flour, white flour, and oil (throw in some spices, sauces, etc).  The bakery has whole wheat.  No contest.  

Ok.  Tomorrow night Josh and I will hop on a train in Chennai, to ride up to Calcutta.  Hopefully we can stock up on bread for the ride tomorrow morning at the bakery.  We have 2.5 weeks left in India.  General excitement.  See you folks soon.

Rock Climbing and Ruins

Hampi is renowned for two things, both made of stone.  One is the ruins of a civilization of over 500,000 that lived here during the early part of this millennium, before being entirely razed by a rival empire.  The other is a whole lot of giant boulders.  Yesterday, we explored some ruins-- only 'some,' because this place is carpeted with ruins-- and climbed some boulders.  Climbed a sort of mountain/pile/stack of them, actually.  And, fittingly, on the top were some more ruins.  Which we explored.  The best bit of exploring yesterday found us in a dark series of corridors, connected in a U shape about some central room, lit only sparingly by a few shafts of light that slanted down through small holes crumbled in the granite ceiling.  Bats clung to the roof.  Except for the occasional flutter of wings, the room was filled with a heady silence, and the must and dank of ages.  The shadowed walls and columns were adorned with mysterious carvings.  Black recesses loomed with potential.  I felt like I had discovered something real in History, that I had stepped into a piece of History that, unlike the the Hampi civilization, had not fully died.  Secrets seemed to still swirl about, roused from the motes of dust to which they had clung for centuries, disturbed by my unsure steps in the darkness.  We stayed there for a little while, before moving on.  I am going back there today, to that little cave of history.
    Tonight we take a sleeper bus to Bangalore.  Tomorrow we will see a little bit of Bangalore, perhaps no more than the inside of a restaurant, before taking another bus to Puducherry, to check out Auroville.  A few days after that, we are booked for a 30 hour train from Chennai to Calcutta.  It is worth noting that one only has to remove a few letters from 'travelling' to get 'raving.'  30 hours on an Indian train may have us closer to the latter.
    3 weeks remain.  The trip is planned (yes, 'plan' is a part of my vocabulary) from here on out.  Delhi is in sight.
    Dance.

Chance

A 10 second auto-timer barely gave me enough time to climb/jump/scramble into this shot...  Overlooking Hampi, a big temple, a bazaar (not the one in the Josh pic), etc.

What remains of a Bazaar, perhaps, from 500+ years ago.  And Josh.

Blast!

Alas dear friends, along with Chances wallet, my camera seems to have grown legs and run off.  Damn!  This is a sad moment because we had some good pictures in there.  We won't have any pictures from Mumbai, where we found architecture straight out of Batman, enjoyed a beer at Leopold's, indulged our carnivorous selves at our favorite Mughal eatery, and strolled down the Queen's Necklace after having watched the sunset from Chowpatty beach.  Memories I hope will remain as vivid in my mind as they would have on the camera.  But nothing else is gone.  It was a mistake on my part for leaving my bag so close to the door and I've learned my lesson the hard way.  Grandma, Liza, and Joe, thanks for that camera, it did me well.  And Karen, thanks again for the batteries.  Hopefully I can get my hands on another camera that use the same kind.

Love,
Josh

Posers

Om Beach

The majority of the beaches are stretches of sand without rock..  But rock is beautiful.  So I take pictures of the rocks.  The sand is understood.

View from our current home

We are still here

We live in a hut thatched with palm leaves, behind a restaurant that knows how to make both muesli and pasta pretty well (a rarity), on Kudle beach, a stretch of sand roughly half a mile long, bounded on each end by palm-forested headlands of black rock and red earth.  We share our hut with a lot of inquisitive, hungry, rambunctious little rats, all named Sampson, too many mosquitos, and a load of other mysterious insects that appear to enjoy the warmth of a human body throughout the warmth of the night.  We read all day, interspersed with swimming and body surfing in the ocean to cool down, and eating to power ourselves on for further reading.  Cliff-side trail running on the headlands, south to further beaches, provides a welcome break from an otherwise sedentary lifestyle.  Long swims in the ocean, out to small rocky isles, serve this purpose as well.  The sun is very hot.  It is good that we are here during the winter.

Our spot

Cooking happens to the left, sleeping and reading happens to the right. 

I accidentally poured red paint all over myself-- this is not the worst sunburn I have ever had in my life.

No paint.  This is definitely the worst.  Feel sorry for me.  I do.

Gokarna

More than 24 hours and precisely 5 buses after leaving Mumbai, we are in Gokarna.  Sitting in buses is not too bad, but it isn't very comfortable, especially when the temperature is... whatever it is...  bloody blazing...  and the guy sleeping on the seats to your left seems to want to rest his head in your lap, and the guy sleeping on the floor to your left is determined to engage you in a nocturnal game of footsie.  This is not a complaint, this is just a statement of conditions.  But I am happy to be done with that leg of the trip.  It wouldn't have been so long, but we decided to skip Goa and go straight through, south, all the way to Gokarna.  Goa is supposedly beaches, tourists, and parties, whereas Gokarna has the beaches, but far fewer of the other two.  We spent the night last night in Gokarna town, but plan on walking a few kilometers south today to a beach, where we can set up our recently acquired hammocks and mosquito nets and hunker down for a few weeks.

Since we are planning on living on the beach for a while, in hammocks, replete in tattered clothing and straggly hair, we decided we are basically shipwrecked sailors.  So, in the interests of consistency, we purchased some rum.  Actually, I got an odd feeling yesterday, a sudden, powerful jones'ing for rum balls, so I decided we must make some with all haste.  What is the recipe for those magical little creations, Karen?  I mixed roughly equal parts flour, sugar, and rum.  I know they are supposed to be rolled in powdered sugar and refrigerated, but that is not possible for us.  The sugar available down here is only in very large crystals, so our rum balls did not form into balls very well, and ended up being really crunchy-- sort of more like rum dough balls with sugar crystal chips, but still quite good.  Hard to mess up those ingredients.  Anyway, now we have a bunch of leftover rum-- 750 ml for $2.50, it's a good thing there are no colleges around here-- and a beach just calling for us.  I can see blurry times wavering in the near future.

We finished off our time in Mumbai with a trip to Leopold's.  We honestly did it for Shantaram alone, because the place was way too expensive, but we had to do it-- had to order a beer, had to sit back and pretend we were the Mumbai mafia of the 80s, had to take a few posed pictures, just to show Olivia and Lynn and all the Whites.  You guys beat me to Shantaram, but I beat you to Leopold's!  Went to Chowpatty beach too...  The place we were staying in Mumbai is kitty-corner to the Taj Hotel, which was one of the bombing targets in the terrorist attacks of 2008.  They are still repairing the damage.  They recently caught another guy who was planning more bombings.  How is that for safety?  Safe enough.  Mumbai is crawling with people from all over the world, by the way.  And the streets are really wide!  At least in the Colaba, which was developed by the Brits, the streets are huge, double lane affairs with great, big sidewalks-- sidewalks as big, bigger, than many of the streets in Delhi, as well as just about every other city we have been to.  Walking on sidewalks: such a delicacy!  Loved it!  Of course, where it was possible, cars would drive up onto the sidewalk to park, and street sellers set up all over the place, so there was not as much room as those British folks planned, but it was actually possible, much of the time, to get from A to B without walking directly in the street.

My grandmother recently asked a few questions that need answered, and I am sure other people have things they would like to know about our experience, or about parts of India in general-- please feel free to comment with questions, and we will do our best to answer here.  I want to tell you people what India is like, but I am bad at being able to tell what aspects of India are left out of my jumbled writing, so let me know.  Now, to those questions...

Language.  Not really learning it.  Everyone speaks English, different parts of the country speak different local languages, learning materials are hard to come by, and I don't see myself needing/using Hindi in the future-- these are the reasons why I am not learning the language.  If I were to really pursue it, it would be as an intellectual challenge alone, and I have chosen to occupy myself intellectually through other avenues.  I had the luck to run across Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in a book shop, which was on my list, so I am currently reading that.  


Josh and I are not separating, at least not for a while.  We are both interested in the same parts of this country
from this point forward, so it is likely that we will stay together.  


I am spending around $100 a week.  Roughly.  Some weeks are really good.  Some weeks are really, really bad.  Lose a wallet.  Buy an MP3 player.  Buy a guitar.  These things can really do damage to a budget.  On the whole, it is possible to live here for less than ten dollars a day, but it costs money to go places and do things, so we have been spending a bit more.


Grandma's final question:
How do you think it will change how you live
here compared to last year?

Good question, Gma.  For one, I will want to see you more often.  I think that perhaps this India trip's greatest impact upon me has been to reveal to me how powerfully I care about those people who I have forcibly removed myself from.  This means you, Grandma, and Grandpa, Mom and Dad, Drew and Tyler.  Others.  Don't go and write this off as homesickness-- this is personal realization.  Perhaps I have managed to grow up a bit.  I know that turning 20 gave me a lot to think about.  I know that I am still very young, still have my whole life ahead of me, and all that...  But I have also come to a different perspective in relationship to my childhood.  A childhood that is over.  A teenage life that is over.  I am now rather inescapably an adult, vaulting off of that cliff to whatever adventures await.  There is a significant portion of my life that is behind me now, and those big numbers-- you laugh, Grandma, I can hear you from here-- that big '20' staring up at me from the pages in my journal shook me up a bit, and perhaps-- don't take take this in a bad way, I am not being fatalistic here, I think-- but just perhaps, that '20' took me a decade closer to my grave.  It made me value my relationships more, I think, as I should.  So, to answer your question, I think one aspect of my life that will be different will be that I will more readily seek out and appreciate the time I spend with the people who are important to me.  I really do look forward to seeing you, grandma.  Did I mention that I love you? 

Other ways my life might be different, I cannot really predict.  I definitely have a new-found comfortability, and dare I say even aptitude (inherited from you, I am sure, grandma), for haggling.  I am not sure where that might be useful, but it may come in handy.  I look forward to cooking immensely-- I think I will be spending a lot more time cooking when I get home.  I used to enjoy cooking to some extent, but still considered it a bit of an imposition upon me to spend any great amount of time doing it.  I would say, now, that cooking can be very enjoyable, and that in some situations, the longer it takes, the better.  There is nothing like hanging out over food.

Other changes as well, I am sure.  For now, I am heading out to explore Gokarna a bit, and do things.  Josh is going to hop on now for a quick dealyo...

love chance!

And this is for Karen (from Josh).  You're a lifesaver!  Those extra batteries you gave me for my camera are great.  I was able to use my camera for 10 days in the desert without a single worry of it dying.  Thanks to you, I have an everlasting camera.  Thanks again.

Josh

Movie Stars and Explorers

We are still in Mumbai.  I am not sure how long we have been here... maybe it has been four nights now, maybe five, I have lost track.  I did not expect to be here at this point.  My first perceptions of Mumbai, having recently lost a wallet and struggling with a bacterial sickness, were not favorable.  I thought we might stay a few days, then move on.  But the scout from Bollywood said he could hook us up with a gig, so we stayed a little longer, and then we missed the gig, but got another that would require us to stay a bit longer still, and we managed to make that one-- five oclock last night until five oclock this morning-- which brings us to today, and the fact that I am currently running on about half an hour of sleep. 

During our days here in Mumbai we have:
-Taken a ferry to Elaphanta island, where, among other things, we...
   -Saw a roughly 20 foot tall stone bust of Shiva meditating, carved 1500ish years ago.
-Walked about, with aim and without (largely without)
-taken a double decker bus tour
-eaten a surprisingly large quantity of meat (chicken and mutton)
-failed to eat at Leopolds (of the Shantaram fame-- it is expensive, but we are splurging on it today)
-stayed in a dorm with lots of folks from all over the world and made some friends
-eaten three slices of white bread with jam and butter, one banana, one hard-boiled egg, and several mugs of chai every morning for breakfast
-mingled with the natives(?)
-and participated as extras in a Hindi film.  They paid us rs500 each.
-oh, and waded our way through a crazy fish market (apologies for any more weak adjectives from here on out...)

I am going to write a little more detail about the Hindi film because that seems like the exciting (sounding), new, unusual thing we have done recently.  I am really dragging here...  I have ten minutes left on this internet...  Let's see what this sedated mind can pull out for you folks.

K.  So, the green shirted man-- call him Jimmy-- was like, hey.  He came to the Salvation Army Red Shield House (the dorm where we are staying) and started throwing around brown little business cards... This is too much detail.  We will capitalize the next sentence to aid in the image of a mantage.  A DAY AND A HALF OF WALKING AROUN EATING THINGS, AND THEN 30 WHITE PEOPLE ON A BUS FOR AN HOUR AND A HALF ON THE WAY TO FILM CITY.  We lined up to get our costumes, drinking chai, as per usual...  I got a traditional sort of Maharaja tunic thing and tight pants, and josh got a business suit.  They wanted me to shave, I said no.  The guy tried to comb my hair a little, gave up, and told me I was ready to go.  STRANGELY DRESSED WHITE PEOPLE MOSY TOWARD BRIGHTLY LIT GRASSY AREA WHERE THERE IS OBVIOUSLY GOING TO BE A WEDDING BETWEEN A COUPLE OF THE RICHEST PEOPLE IN INDIA, BOTH IN MONEY AND WHITE FRIENDS (APPARENTLY IT ADDS A WORLDLY FLAIR, OR SOMETHING...).  GENERAL MILLING ABOUT.  Essentially, I sat around drinking chai for 9 hours because my hair bore too much resemblance to the wildest parts of the 60s and my beard bore too much resemblance to the wildest parts of a jungle.  Josh got to stand around and walk back and forth over and over again, take after take after take.  For the final shot, they deigned to allow me a spot, and I got to throw flower petals at the bride and groom with the rest of the crowd.  I did my best to throw them hard. 

Etc Etc.  End of story, Josh and I are famous, Josh more so, and everybody should watch the bollywood remake of Hollywood stepmom, or something, when it comes out, because the best seconds are Josh's, and the very best milliseconds, and micrometers on the screen no doubt, are mine. 

We might leave this city in a couple of days,
I need sleep,
I love you people,
CHance.

My wallet was stolen.

And I am not pleased.  I am bummed.  It had some money in it, and some cards, including my debit card.  Speaking of which, Mom, Dad, if you haven't checked your email yet, please do, and then please call Chase and try to get them to put a hold on my accounts..?  I hope this works out...  I don't know my account number, card number...  I am only moderately sure of the name on the card.  I think it is C Chance Campbell.  Good luck, folks-- things depend on you.

We were taking our jolly 24 hour bus ride, which was actually really uncomfortable, plus I was sick, and the "bed" was exactly 5 feet and 9 inches long, and rather narrow...  Here I am complaining.  Anyway, I woke up around dawn, and looked out the window for a bit, then looked at my pocket, which was unzipped, and no longer contained my little wallet.  So, I marshaled my scant energy and looked under all of the beds in the bus, and asked other fellows it they had seen it, which they had not.  It is gone for sure, now.  We made it to a salvation army dormitory place where we will be spending our nights, so that is good...  But my wallet is no longer with me.  It was black synthetic leather and duct tape, and it had a little key ring with a nifty little can-opener and a funny looking key, which is the type of key they use in India to lock things.  But now it is all gone.  Ah, no.

We are in Mumbai, though, which is a big deal.  Mumbai has some 16.4 million people living in it.  60% of these folks live in shantytowns and slums.  I guess I am not that bad off.

Alrighty then, goodbye.

Chance

Sasan Gir

The Lion!!!!

Girnar Hill, Junagadh

Actually, when I took this picture, we were already at the top of Girnar Hill (semi famous for the 10,000 stair climb to the summit).  We continued on from this position to that temple, which required climbing down quite far-- roughly 10-15 minutes, taking stairs two at a time-- and then climbing a whole new set of stairs.  If you look closely at the lower, right flank of that jut of rock, you can see the angular shape of a small walking area.  We climbed down there, then up to the temple, then down even further to a small temple area with free food, then back up again to the vantage point of this picture, where we could finally begin our two-hour decent (in the opposite direction from where the camera is pointing) down the mountain.

On our hotel, in Jodhpur

You can see, behind him, a tent pitched on the roof.  We stayed in one here.

Ode to The Bicycle Trip

Diu

And its boats.

Home

The mud hut we stayed in our last night in the desert.

The Sahara

Scoot scoot!

Wild Asiatic LION! Oh man.

IT! Yes. It. The moment you were waiting for.

7000 stairs later..

Jodhpur: The Blue City

We made that. We're pros.

Jaisalmer: The Golden City

The Dunes

Day 9

Day 1

Ava's Artwork

Ava, thank you for sending me this piece!  When I get back home, in less than two months, hopefully we can trade artwork more regularly again.  Say hi to Sal and Erin for me...

Luke's Lion

Luke: yesterday, we saw a real, wild Asiatic Lion.  When we can plug a camera into a computer, perhaps tomorrow, we will post a picture of it.  Thanks for your picture-- you sent it at the perfect time!

Since the last time we posted, we have done this:

We last posted in Bikaner, Rajasthan.  We are now in Diu, Gujarat.  Here are the places we have spent nights in between:

Jaisalmer.  A fort town in the desert, with a huge, 800 year old fort (we stayed inside it).  Jaisalmer itself was great, the people were nice, and the food was quite good, some of which we cooked ourselves.   One evening we went on a sunset safari out to some Sahara-like dunes.  Jaisalmer is advertised as the Golden City, but it is, at best, a dusty brown.

Jodhpur.  The Blue City, they say, and it does a decent job of living up to its name, to the extent that the bright blue paint job of our hotel was no help when we were trying to find our way back to it through those narrow, winding streets…  The layout of Jodhpur is so convoluted I doubt if many of the streets themselves have any idea where they are going.  I believe the city planner may have based the design, from an aerial view, on a snapshot of an octopus brawl.  But that can’t be—the only city planners ever to contemplate Jodhpur were probably tourists.  There are two planned cities in India.  Two.  The rest…  They are, shall we say, creative.  Jodhpur had excellent saffron lassis—a yogurty, sweet drink.  Beyond the lassis, the city had little that moved us to stay.

Udaipur.  The most romantic city in India, some claim.  Very touristy.  The site of much filming in the James Bond film, Octopussy.  Not a very enjoyable place.  Too many tourists, too expensive, too hyped.  There is a palace in the middle of a lake, and, I admit, it looks pretty cool…  There is also a palace in the city itself, which Josh and I toured.  It was cool.

Junagadh.  Excellent.  No tourists.  Cheap living.  Cheap thalis (all you can eat Indian dishes—we were paying roughly 70 cents in Junagadh).  We climbed Girnar Hill, a 10,000 step staircase up a mountain, on the peaks of which (there are three) balance little temples.  We went to them all, and ate some free coconut.  We actually didn’t climb 10,000 stairs—I think it was closer 6,000 or 7,000.  Where all those other stairs went is anyone’s guess.  We may have started part way up.  In Junagadh, we also had a good time with a man named Kishn, and his family, which Josh writes about in his piece.

Sasan Gir.  The last remaining home of wild Asiatic Lions, and—Luke, this was for you—we went on a jeep safari, and we saw one.  There are 359 remaining lions (according to a 2005 census) living on this 1400 square kilometer preserve, so we were fortunate to get our glimpse. 

Diu.  We just arrived in Diu last night.  Diu is a small Island on the Arabian Sea that used to be a Portugese colony.  Today we plan on renting some scooters and riding around the Island in search of beaches that are not covered in trash and feces.  Wish us luck.

From Diu, we plan on taking a 24 hour bus to Mumbai.  That won’t be as bad as it sounds—they stop occasionally, and we will be riding sleeper class, so we will have beds.  

India is cruising along—we have almost reached the halfway point of our stay here (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)—and we are having a good time.  I hope everybody reading this, wherever they are, is well.  See you guys soon.

Chance

Oh yes, and everybody

I miss you.  And my guitar.  And we're in Diu now.  A little Portuguese island in Gujarat.  We'll be heading to Mumbai in a day or two.

Thanks for the birthday wishes.

Lots of Love,
Josh

Now it's my turn to be 20!

It's been 13 days since we wrote to you.  Our followers.  Our precious...es.

Well yesterday was my birthday.  I have been here for two decades.  It's surreal.  I am still young, but time is going by so quickly. 

17/1/2010:
Today was a good day.  Better than most days.
After breakfast, which was fried (?) nuggets of white flour (with the consistency close to that of pie crust), spicy cabbage, and oiled chillies, we were confronted by a pan chewing gentleman.  We were on our way to Uperkot Fort in Junagadh, Gujarat, when we heard a man yelling at us from behind.  Instincively, we did not turn to look.  What was once a voice far behind us in a different world, materialized into a man on his motorcycle stopped to our right.  He spit the red juice of the pan, and motioned for us to get on.  Confused, thinking possibly he was offering us a ride, we pointed towards the fort, and tried to figure out where he was going.  So in answer to our question, he motioned for us to get on once again.  I looked at Chance, unsure, but when our eyes met there were no need for words.  We understood eachother.  They said, adventure.
So we got on.  Since he came in the same direction we were walking, I figured he might continue that direction.  But don't kid yourselves.  We are in India after all.  So he turned around, and continued in the direction from which we came.
Where we were going?  I didn't know.  All I knew was I wanted a motorcycle.  After a few minutes, we parted from the road, and joined with a quaint alleyway.  He pulled off to the side and stopped the engine.  Suddenly four guys came around the corner with chains and bats and knives and killin things, so we turned to run.  But of course, another four had come from behind.  We were stuck.  We had no weapons, only our bare fists.  So we turned back to back ready to do... something, what exactly we didn't know.  And right when they began to move in on us, our driver said, "this my house," and he invited us in.  So here we were.  In his house a couple km away from where we wanted to be.. hmmm.. is he going to take us back?  Eh.. probably not.  So we sat and spoke about things in broken english (if you can even call it that) until the topic of breakfast was raised.  We told them we had already eaten before, so they nodded and brought us breakfast 10 minutes later.  It was the same breakfast as before, except we had roti along with it.
More broken english until the topic of lunch came up.  We accepted their offer for lunch (in four hours) expecting Kishan (our driver) to drive us back.  But of course, as you all probably could have guessed, that was not the case.  Instead we sat and spoke as more family began to arrive.  First Suni (the eldest son), then grandma, then Samir, and last Kishan's sister.  But eventually, conversation petered out (much later than I expected due to the total lack of understanding between eachother) and the television was turned on.  Conversation would come and go, until it was lunch.  We had Mutton Biryani, a rice dish.  This was the first time we've had meat in India, by the way.  It was good, and it didn't stop coming, even though we begged it to because we were so full.  Our pleading for mercy was met with another serving of food.  Oh India..
Eventually, Kishan offered to take us to his farm house.  6km later, we entered a huge lot of sand and dirt,  About 1/3 of it was being used to grow peanuts!  I miss peanut butter.  Then the rest was dirt.  Then we were put inside to sit through some ear defening music until it happened. Yes.  It.  The best moment ever.
SHOWER TIME.  When he first offered,  I wasn't to interested.  After all, I only showered 5 days ago.  I'm squeaky clean!  But then the water began to flow, pumped from a well through a large hose, burning hot.  I gladly rinsed my nasty black crusted feet, still not interested.  And then the water cooled.  Hoo man.  I was sold.  It felt amazing under the desert sun.  Kishan sat on the ground wrapped in a towel, throwing the perfect water over his head.  I envied this man.  More than I thought one could possibly envy.  So I stood rinsing my feet, salivating over the rushing water.  I watched as Chance found himself a towel and joined him.  I cringed. The envy grew ten fold.  How could this be?  I could hardly contain it!  It took every ounce of self restraint no to rip off my clothing and usurp the holder of the hose to have it all to myself.  But I waited.  So long.  Years. Decades.  Centuries.  And then it happened.  I grabbed the soaked towel in a heap on the floor, used and soon to be abused.  I ran inside, tore my clothes off and introduced the towel to my private parts.  I ran outside, a bucket of perfection, lying wait for me to desecrate.  I poured it atop my head.  Yes.  Ecstasy.
Sadly, I soon finished washing myself and began to dry in the sun.  The whole process was so refreshing.  I sat with an overwhelming calm, feeling as if I floated out of my body, and envied its relaxed state as I hovered from above.  Perfection.

Love,
Josh

Day 1: Revelations

Well. More like revelation.


I partook on this adventure for many reasons, but foremost was self discovery. From childhood on, my life, according societies ideals, was planned. Be birthed, have fun for a couple years, attend school, get a degree, work, die. How much better could it get? Yes, with this plan I am basically guaranteed a "good" life, full of money, and... and... well, that's about it. Gotta love the American Dream.
It all started at age 9. The month was december, the year, 1999. For extra credit, my 4th grade teacher offered 50 points to whomever brought in a project consisting of 2000 pieces, celebrating the new year. Inspired by this grade booster (for I hadn't been doing too well on my reading reports), I undertook the challenge. My idea, a windmill made of 2000 K'NEX pieces, the symobology of the windmill structure... nonexistant. Others brought poster boards plastered with beans reading "2000," or the numbers 1-2000 drawn out on paper in the shape of "2000." One even brought 2000 computers hell bent on destroying the world. This last one I didn't understand, so I ignored, thinking my idea was far superior. But that is beside the point. Mid-build of this awesome (not modern slang awesome, but awe inspiring fearful awesome) structure, my mother saw the opportunity that arose and pounced. She so lovingly turned to me and said, "You know honey, that's like what engineers do."

Stop. Nobody move. Did I hear this correctly? If I were to be an engineer, I would build K'NEX all day? Rewind. Replay. Soak it in.

Yes. This is what she said. This is my destiny. I will be the greatest builder of K'NEX known to man. I will dominate the world of engineering. I will rise, and shatter all previous understanding of physics with my excellency. Alexander the Great, your achievements will never match those of Joshua the Greatest. I am legend.

And that is what I thought up until college. I wanted to be an engineer. Maybe mechanical. Maybe work with alternative energy. A promising field in the near future. Yes. I will lead a good life. Work a lot. But make good money and provide for my family. What more could a man ask for? Maybe he would be working so much he wouldn't see his kids before they were put to bed, but that would be alright, because they are living well in a nice big house with nice big beds, and nice big meals. Right? Wrong.
So there I was. College. Finally. But what was it that I wanted to do? Oh that's right.. no idea. So I entered classes that kind of interested me, but nothing felt concrete. What was I doing paying all this money when I had NO clue what I wanted to do? What right did I have to accept the money my family was providing to spend it on something that seemed so frivolous? The answers never came. Instead, more questions arose. Why do I have to follow this system of school, work, die? Why couldn't I leave school for a year? Why couldn't I take a break before starting to work? I mean, a real job means no summer. That sucks. I don't like that. I want explore. I can't explore if I have 2 weeks off per year and work saturdays.
So, sitting at my desk in my dorm room, it hit me. Hey.. wait a minute. I don't have to finish school just yet. I don't have to go straight into work. I have time. Why rush? I don't know what I want to do, so hold off for a year and think it out. Do something fun. Something adventurous... Argentina? Yes, this sounded good. I liked this idea. But how would I get there? Flying is expensive and no fun.. I don't have a car.. ahh yes. And then it came. By bicycle. I would ride down to Argentina by bike. Pure genius. World, prepare yourself. Joshua the Greatest is coming through. But I could not do this alone. I must have a trusty companion. Maybe two? Someone to talk to and enjoy. So up I went, running out my door, through the bathroom, and across the hall.

"Hey Chance, you wanna take next year off and ride bikes to Argentina?" I asked in jest, unsure of his response.
"Yes," he said.

Woah. It worked. No questions. He said yes. That's it. It's done. I'm outta here.

We wrangled a third partner. Drew. A good friend. Sturdy fellow. But plans changed. Argentina was too dangerous for our parents, so the US of A was the new plan. A bit sad that the cultural aspect of the trip was vetoed, I was still excited to bike and visit areas of the country I had not seen. So we set off. One morning about 3 weeks in, Chance and Drew were off doing brother talk about something or other, so Nickel and I cooked breakfast. When they returned Drew announced he was turning back. He figured it out early on. He knew what he wanted to do, and he had to do it then. So we let him go.
You know the rest. We traveled with Nickel to San Fran, and then decided to go to India. Big deal.
Anyways, enough background story. It was the first night out in the desert when it really dawned on me. The structure of it was slowly growing, piece by piece, until that quiet desert night, full of thoughts, it clicked. It all connected. Why hadn't I seen this before? It's so simple. I've heard it said a million times. The idea's run through my mind. Why hadn't I understood it?

Well here it is:
(In India) Everything is Possible.

Anti-climatic? Maybe for you. But for me, it was a major "holy shit!" moment. I really can do what I want. People have told me this, my mom has told me this, but that seed that had been planted since birth growing thick and thorny restricted my thoughts. I used to think, "Yes, I can do anything! Just look at all the majors at UW! So many choices! Anything!" But now I see more. Yes, I still do want to complete college, and get a degree, but afterwards the world is open. I don't have to do college and then commit myself to a serious ladder climbing job. I can actually go out there and enjoy the world. I could do AmeriCore like Emily and Carrie. I could bike around the country on a bitchin' 1980's mountain bike like Nickel. I could work as a waiter in San Francisco and travel the world like Gianrigo, Nico, Karen, and Satya. I could try and get Spanish Citizenship, and teach English in Madrid like Catherine. I could plant trees in Canada like all the Canadians I've met on this trip so far. So much to do! So little time!
So that's it. That's what I've figured out. Maybe some of you figured this out years ago. Maybe some of you say, "Duh, isn't that obvious?" Well, yes, it is. It's quite obvious. But for some reason, my brain couldn't handle it all.

For all those who are interested, these are my new plans:
Return to school in fall, major in something I am interested in, minor in business. Have my degree (which is all it really is, it doesn't need to pertain to your line of work) and run around the world. And when I feel the time is right, open my bakery (this is where that minor comes in handy). Bake some yummy sweets and some healthy breads, and live a modest and contented life. And if the bakery doesn't work out, then I can use my degree to do something else. Whatever. Plans change. Who cares? All I know is that I want to enjoy my life. So that's the real plan. And wherever that takes me, whether it's remotely close to what I wrote above or not, doesn't matter. Life's short. And who knows about the afterlife. I might just decompose in the ground. Why risk it? So there it is. My revelation. Now, if someday I have a midlife crisis and don't know what to do, I can read this and remember. Everything is possible.

Love,
Josh

Back in Bikaner. (it is long, but it's worth it)

So—back from the desert. Ah. Oops. Already misrepresenting things. It’s not a desert, I have decided. It is a plain. And an ocean. And generally just a confused patch of land. You know—just going through one of those awkward geographical phases. This post is going to consist of excerpts from my journal. It will be a bit random and disjointed, and at parts, a bit lewd and perhaps disgusting, but it just may, collectively, impart a reader with a general feeling of what my life is like, as an American traveler in India, living the camel caravan life in the middle of an almost-desert.

First day:
Life in the desert is good. It is not a deserted desert. There are towns, houses, people, paved roads, farms, trees, bushes—lots of sand, but lots of other things too. Power lines. Cell service. We aren’t exactly dragging weary camels up mountainous dunes, walking the ridge between gold and shadow-black, peak after sandy peak. There are children asking for bottles and pens and money, adults guardedly eying, motorcycles, cars, trucks, sometimes. But the desert is good. Largely because the food is good, and plentiful. And the tea. Chai. And the evenings are simple, and the bed is comfortable enough, and warm enough.

Second day:
It is not a mountain range of gold and sharply shaded peaks, nor is it an endless, flat expanse of barren, cracked earth. No… it is more… lumpy. It is here and there. Occasionally it offers a mildly convincing attempt at a dune… And now and then it gives a go at the parched flat, but seldom does it fail to have enough trees, shrubs, and full-fledged, sprinkler irrigated farmland as to arouse doubt for the classification of the Thar as a ‘desert’ at all. More of a dusty prairie, really. Ah, but it is beautiful in its own ways. We love it because it tries. It is reasonably hot, in the sun (although the temperature in the shade is prime, totally prime, for reading, or napping, or lazing about, or doing some journaling). And the people who live in it—all over it—are reasonably nice. Especially the children. The antelope and the foxes are a fun sight. The sheep and the cows aren’t bad either.

3rd day:
The stars. Finally. They are all there. There are so many, it seems like the universe falls down around you in 3D, and you are one, tiny, infinitely small spec of darkness among a great, vast, black emptiness, sparkling intermittently with pinpricks of infinite light, infinitely small, but so, so large… And while you are so infinitely small and dark and insignificant, you lone creature, you tiny pillar with your neck cricked upward in awe from your lonely dark little earth, you are in that moment and in every moment infinitely important—you are the black hole, the one and only black hole in the universe, because you represent, in your amazingly, mind-bogglingly compact little body and mind, all that matters and has ever mattered and ever will matter, to you, in the entire universe, which is everything… And as you look out there, at the great Everything Else which, in terms of ratios, and depending upon how long you want to run out those decimal points before you get tired of drawing zeros, is Everything Ever, Basically (since we rounded, we have to throw in the capitalized qualifier), you feel that enchanting glimpse, that instantaneous contact with the unknowable, that flash, when all at once you dip in and out of a greater understanding of who and what you are in this universe, your place in it, as it were, laid out before you, to scale, in your particular district of infinity, and it warps your mind a little bit toward ecstasy and a little bit toward enlightenment, which may be the same thing, and you come back an instant later in that reeling wonder, and all you know is that there is love in the universe… Not Love love, but, you know… Whatever love might be. It’s a handy subject to throw around when you are referring to something indefinably cool, something wonderfully, escapably… ineffable.
It is easy to live on a world that is flat like a piece of paper in a universe that is flat like a piece of paper and is the size of the world, with nothing beyond it, just that pretty picture painted on the flat piece of paper that is the sky and those pretty pictures in the books which say there is more out there, which of course is so true it isn’t even worth thinking about, you say as you sit comfortably on that flat piece of paper… To live on a world that is round like a globe, or like the earth, is hard enough, because it seems so much more like it is just a flat piece of paper, and is so much simpler to visualize that way… But to live on a globe that is blitzing around through three dimensional blackness, dodging dark matter in a void of infinitude, and is infinitely small (what does that make you?!), and is kept company (although not very close company, like in Canada) y a gazillion other little bits and pieces of things that probably exist hurtling through their respective portions of that infinitude which we all share… It is hard to live in that reality without a good it of neck cricked, dark night, sandy-footed sky lookin’, and a piece of imagination.

I am so small, so small, so small, in this great big universe…

Day 6 or 7?

The little antelopes are funny. They strut around in their little brown and white bodices like apron clad housewives, neat black tails perpetually at work, swishing back and forth across their little white backsides, fastidiously and publicly tending to that little matter of uncleanliness that obstinately resides in that unmentionable spot on the rear of every dutiful young antelope. They do not know what I know. They do not know that the application of one object to another does not change the net makeup of those items as a unified whole. And since they do not know this, since they lack my superior knowledge and wisdom and cynicism that allows me to grasp this most essential fact, they continue to swat away at their little white behinds with their little black brushes, as I am sure they will continue to do, in the ever important maintenance of prim antelope decorum, right into the glowing, rapturous sunset of each of their individual, tiny, eternities.

Our diabolic camel driver (this title will have to serve him, I forgot his name as soon as he gave it to me—he deserved less, as I realize now, but it was the best I could do at the time) appears to have taken this morning’s sunrise (in the east, for a change) as a clear omen and indicator that he should busily spend his allotted time under its ample light busily at work, abusing his camel. Earlier, he repeatedly whipped its hind legs with harsh, glancing blows until he drew blood—a whole new meaning for redlining your means of transportation. This was a first, for us. Usually he just goes for the ribs. He is definitely a fan of repetition. Perhaps he listens to trance. His theory is, apparently, why do something once (whipping camels comes to mind) that could be done over and over again, regardless of the poor camel’s deathbed groans, regardless of the fact that our blunt chariot is already doing max speed, regardless of the camel’s obvious age, only to stop, what, when the whipping arm gets too tired, or the other camel driver mercifully says something to him in quiet, urgent Hindi, before turning around to cast the “Yay camels! Everything just fine, right guys!?!” smile back toward our reproachful eyes, the hopeful fisherman casting into the polluted pond full of limp, dead fish. …continues…

Day 10
Last night I walked out into that sand and lay down on my back to gaze up into the everything. There may have been more stars out than I have ever seen before in my life. I lay there, and tried to imagine myself as a part of it all—as another star among stars, looking out upon my twinkling brethren as I do every day, every night, every year, every eternity. I enjoyed it. It was amazing. It was easy to see the three dimensional nature of things, because there were so many secondary and lesser stars visible to make up the further back areas of space And still it was mind warping, because even as I lay there and imagined it, I knew I couldn’t possibly imagine it. I couldn’t possibly fathom the distances my mind laid out for me between foreground twinkle A and background twinkle B—everything, all the scales those entities are constructed upon are so far beyond my ability to visualize, all I could do was lie there, and gaze, and think about how small the world is, and how everybody here, myself included, is so caught up in the infinitesimal tediums of life, ignorant of this looming reality that crouches, vast, black and sparsely spangled out into distances unimaginable, so much more than anything here, as solid proof as I have ever experienced that we (humans) are an unimportant spec, invisible in the universal perspective, and it crowds around us forever, and it would not change the cosmos in the slightest if it finished what it has been doing for the last 4.5 billion years, if it just moved that millimeter, that last nanometer, and deleted earth from existence and all history and filled it with a black emptiness and the sparse, transitory rays of distant stars, and the universe would be unchanged, and nothing would matter, and everything would be the same… And that is not a sad, or bleak, outlook, from my perspective. I love it. I think it is empowering.

[later
--this one I wrote with the intent to share]

     I just ate the most disgustingly monstrous lunch. Grandma learned food-pushing from this guy, and was probably expelled from school for lack of zeal. Josh told them he wasn’t feeling very well, told them he didn’t need much. Did they listen? Did they?! No. Pile upon pile of piping hot chapattis, scoop upon scoop of a scalding, spicy potato dish, oh, unending bombardment of my entrails… Josh held strong for a while—I’ll give him that—but eventually dropped out, claiming his supposed sickness. I was left alone—Just me, my dish, and an endlessly refilling supply of thick chapattis, abused vegetables, and salty, spicy broth. A moment in the action:
     I was doing quite well, considering. I had dealt with almost all of the vegetables, and was doggedly bearing down on the remaining 3-4 chapattis and a small sea swimming with red oil, when, with a sympathetic chuckle, Josh pointed to our chapatti-roiling guide. I looked. I saw. The man was rolling a monstrosity, half an inch thick, maybe nine inches in diameter, pure flour, water, salt, and menace, right there before our very eyes. He was forging the one chapatti to rule them all. I returned to my plate, meekly hoping I would be able to resist its whispering curse if its diabolic maker ever attempted to set it upon me. I continued eating.
     Presently, I forgot about that looming disk of nutrient density quietly browning over the fire beside me. I succeeded in putting away the majority of my plate’s remaining contents, with only the slightest gurgles of protest from my straining stomach. I was nearly there—nearly completed, perhaps one melancholy chapatti left—when, with one phrase of unintelligible Hindi, one phrase of nearly as unintelligible English, and one, thick-fingered, brown hand, the guide proffered to me the aforementioned creation, in all its malevolent beauty.
     And I was like, hell no! I didn’t want that chapatti! He pressed it at me, juggling it in his hand like a hot potato, whining that it was burning him and I must take it—and I, in my weakness, and my greed… REFUSED, for the Shire, to take that chapatti! I employed common, universally understood four-letter words to help drive home my point (glowing blue, for those stalwart LOTR fans who wish to carry this dead horse further), and I said NO, I will not have that chapatti. I will not, Sam I am. Send it back to the fires from whence it came.
     And—he conceded. He kept it. He ate it. I was saved, sort of. End anecdote.
     I finished my plate, with the help of half a liter of water and a growing, desperate belief in the afterlife, rose, and hobbled over into the relative shade of this bush to share my bloated feelings. I was stuffed. Uncommonly stuffed. There are levels of stuffed, I have decided, and until now, Thanksgiving Stuffed has topped my list for the most stuffed a human can possibly be. This, ladies and gentlemen, was beyond Thanksgiving Stuffed. I believe it may even have been beyond Thanksgiving Stuffed, from the hypothetical, apostrophic perspective of the turkey itself.
     So, I came to pick up this journal and unload the irate, self-righteous contents of my mind, and I started to, but it quickly became apparent to me that I had other contents in far more urgent need of unloading.
     Precariously achieving a standing position once more with my newly misbalanced body, I checked to make sure I had some toilet paper in my pocket before venturing off through the sand and shrubbery to desecrate the far side of some innocent hillock.
     My imagination was running. The state of my body, the logic of its operations, was clear. Too much input. Must output. And it doesn’t matter what. Anything available goes.
     My imagination trembled with trepidation as I foresaw in my mind’s eye the contents of this premature discharge, result of my all too recently conceived, over-salted pregnancy. Half of me expected something like an anal-mounted automatic weapon, typical shells replaced by half-chewed organics; hastily swallowed chapatti chunks, mis-munched potato pieces, perhaps a spray of tomato-onion-garlic mulch. The other half of me expected something even less appetizing, roughly along the lines of a Frankensteinian reproduction of my recently deceased lunch. I could see how it would play out: Mary Shelly’s ghost would marvel beside me as, after the ordeal, I turned to look upon my creation. And there we would see it; mangled chapattis haphazardly stitched with my own sinew back into recognizable wholes, 8, 9, more of the damp, limp basturds, and beside them, arranged with artistic, culinary expertise, the semi-masticated remains of those poor, underappreciated vegetables—all of this, laid out as if upon a plate of sand before me, reanimated, as it were, by the hasty, mysterious toil within that dark laboratory of my bowels. And both of these options—the steady, automatic fire of undigested remnants, and the Frankenstein lunch— I imagined occurring in tandem with a urinary operation powerful enough to make Noah think twice about waiting for all the bleeding animals, ending with me standing at least ankle deep in rich, hot curry. These, with perhaps a modest degree of literary hyperbole, were the contents of my mind.
     I found my hillock. I dug a slight trench with my heel. I dropped trou. I squatted. And I gave birth.
     Let the record show: I had already shat that day, no more than two hours before, and had shat well, thoroughly emptying myself of a respectable quantity (and consistency) of healthily brown nastiness. I did not plan on any more bowel movements that day, much less within the next two hours. I had gone several 48 hour stretches of poopless safariing in this desert already—I would not have described myself (as if anyone would…) as a bowel-happy man. Therefore, to unload twice within two hours seemed impossible—and yet, clearly the deed was about to be done. Considering where I was in my bowel cycle, a reasonable reader who was not fooled by my earlier hyperbolic waxing (creative forecasting, if you will) might predict my relieving myself of, at most, a very small quantity of very apologetic shit. But this was not the case.
    Ladies—I am going to refrain, out of something that at least aspires to be decency, from making any more metaphorical comparisons between taking a dump and giving birth to a child. It is, perhaps, an element of my slowly receding childish immaturity that I still enjoy pointing out this tasteless relationship, but I beg you to understand—I am not trying to degrade a beautiful and sacred ritual. I am merely floundering in search of imagery that conveys with sufficient exaggeration (wherein lies my cheap humor) my experience. If I have offended, I am sorry. We proceed.
     I disgorged myself upon the sand. The product failed to eject itself like machine-gun fire, failed to be some mysterious reconstruction of my lunch, and failed to apologize. But it was quite large. Or, I should say, they. And it was all rather normal looking. There were some bits that were identifiable as vegetables, but I have decided to believe that those were the slow-boats from yesterday’s dinner, not the track stars of today’s lunch.
     That’s all I am willing to report on the topic of feces. It may sound grotesque, but as a traveler in India, talking about your bowel movements is about as normal as eating rice. Josh and I at least mention the topic daily. As May (pseudonym), of Great Britain (though currently residing in Spain), put it, roughly, “You can’t travel India without talking about shit.” She then proceeded to elaborate on the consistency and spacing of her recent episodes, and her suspicions for Guardia as the culprit.
     It was a big lunch, but it was manageable. A good hour or two later, camel safari over, on the bus back to Bikaner, I hiccupped, and a sampling of that fateful repast decided to pop on up for a bit of fresh air and a quick tour of the mouth that had so grudgingly processed it miles back along the sand. With a swallow, I hastened to send it, like the sex slave in the basement, back down where it belonged. But this goes to show—hours later, all it took was a hiccup, and the pressure in my gut was enough to invite a small-scale regurgitation. I think I have pounded the point in hard enough, but I will say it once more—it was a tremendous meal. That is all.

--End journal entries—

To those of you who emailed me, this is the best I can do for replies at this time. I miss you people. I will probably respond later, sometime when I have not just spent hours transcribing sloppily written entries using an annoyingly plastic-wrapped keyboard. We are going to Jaisalmer tonight. Perhaps it will happen there.

Stay well.
Chance