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