Bumbai

We made it to MumbaiBombay!! So far it is alright, we will be getting our Korean Visas at the end of the day so that's really good news.
It is a lot more expensive here but not that much cooler....yet.
No way to upload pics now so we'll have to try later, our hotel room is a little boxed off room in the back of a dungeon area and there was a gecko in the shower room this morning so it's a nice place!!!!
Mumbai is the coolest, we saw 127 hours and had the thrill of our life.
Okay matt is blabbering about going over our internet time BYE.

lame pics from goa

This is the one not lame pic from goa.  I like these cookies.

 

GRAEME habha ha

dog days of bummer

K here. Short update. Been traveling for 48 hrs give or take over that time we have -

Climbed up and down the steps at Jog falls.

Saw a woman have a heart attack and then die and then get resurrected and claim to be the minister of education of Bangalore (or just be crazy.)

Seen a good size cardboard box just on fire in the middle of a train station. The same one with the woman.

Saw babies playing in an alley full of trash with no apparent supervision.

And,

Had the best masala dosa so far at a hotel restaurant.

Pictures soon

Matt attack stuff

Here we are in India.  We have a couple weeks left and then S. Korea.  Ummm...not much is happening.  Just living the life so to speak.  It's nice and our difficulties have pitter pattered out into redundancies so nothing new to get us down.  I keep getting sun burnt on my hands and feet.  I have the idea that it's from the anti-malaria pills I'm taking (They ward off infections on the skin but also weaken the skin. I dont' get it.) but it makes the beach a bit tricky.  Also, I've been running around without shoes on and now my feet hurt a bunch!  So there you have it, a list of my complaints. We move to Mumbai in six or five days and that will be exciting so We'll post some pics that don't look like honey mooners in Hawaii.  In fact, how do you know we're not in Hawaii?  Ha ha, suckers.

Goa stuff

 Whitney's become an expert driver/  I've yet to master the art of being passenger

 Dolphin time!

 Can you imagine it was hard to find the post

office?

 Inception 2

Ahhh, finally made it to the Himalayas

Cute Whitney going to the beach. Well, coming actually.  This place was 

a bit on the lame side.

 I put on Whitney's red shorts to swim in but then realized they were not green! AHHH

 ha ha ha

 My gf with another hunk on the beach.

Don't worry I haven't gone emo.  This is from the scooter ride back

from north Goa.  The smog or whatever is gross.  I think I look like

the dude from Audioslave, or the good band he used to be in.

Mysore

 At the purple haze bar.  Indians can head bang and not hangout with girls just like

the real rockers

Me at a green house.  Very pretty.

 Time for a shave and head slap (massage)

 King Burger: The Reality of Fast Food

 The great Bombay Circus.  Cool circus, cooler danger.

 Outside the palace.  We never went in though.  I felt it was haunted.

 On top of Mysore's cool hill mountain where the youngens go to make out.

 Nandi, Shiva's steed.  Maybe not Shiva, one of the three super gods.

 Rhino, not a mobile for gods.  Perhaps one of its own.

 Me and Graeme.

 

Animals gobbling up garbage--and Indian Motif

matt attack

Our friends on the hill.  Apparently they will use this pic to tell everyone

that we hung out and became friends and stuff.  I feel like

brad pit.

On the train.  

 So this is in Goa.  Nope, jk.  This is outside of mangalore.  It was the first beach we got to and it was the coolest.  you couldn't swim because of a major undertow but when Luther booted his soccer ball (the concluding play in our game try to kick the ball past me into the ocean) way into the ocean I swam out and barely made it back alive.  Whit's got quite the artistic disposition eh?

 So this is in Goa.  Nope, jk.  This is outd\side of mangalore

At this point Whitney and I realized that the gentleman that told us some factoids about the shrine

and had his buddy bless us (for 100 rs a piece) was in fact an undercover tour guide.



Sup Ya'll Kyle here. I'll be writing in this font.

Trip Highlights so far

• Auto rickshaw rides
• Hearing that Luther got caned on the way to pick us up from the airport because he was smoking where he apparently wasn't supposed and wouldn't pay a bribe
• While an unnamed friend was getting an overly intimate Ayurvedic massage he opened his eyes to see the man who was massaging him slicking his hear back with his eyes closed with the oil he was using on the unnamed friend
• The Nu-Metal bar "Purple Haze"
• Making a shitty remake of C'était un rendez-vous on a scooter, where the Arabian Sea is the destination
• Seeing part of the film "Yellow Flowers" with Matt
• Being caught in the middle of a Festival for the birthday of the Cow in Mysore.

rickshaw ride

Bangalore

I don't know when my sleep schedule will become regular. The past two days I've fallen asleep between 3-5 in the afternoon and then woken up between 10-12 and stayed awake until 4-5 and then slept again until 7-8. The sleep itself is also irregular, it's really only "quiet" between 2-4.

Matt took this beautiful panoramic of our hotel room

The highlight of yesterday was our visit to the Kenko Fish Spa. I read about it online and just by chance on our way home Luther spotted it randomly. It features a service where you stick your feet in a tank of fish and they "eat" all the dead skin. Luther claims they also healed a cut on his foot but I'm not sure if that's true. To put it simply it was the strangest sensation I've ever felt and I had to clench my teeth for about 3 minutes and even after that I couldn't get entirely used to it. I really want to go back to the spa because you can get pretty cheap massages even though the place was really swanky.

We also found a store with a whole bunch of amazing "Engrish" shirts, this one in particular caught my eye. I'm such a fool for not spending $4 on it but I want to buy everything and I hardly have room in my suitcase as it is.

It also says PLAYBOY on the back. Everything here has PLAYBOY on it.

Andy, Kyle and Joe arrived safely after Luther mistook their arrival for yesterday morning and then again for yesterday afternoon (it was actually this morning). They seem pretty pumped to be here but we make quite a crowd of dirty, weird foreigners. Hopefully it will intimidate all the people that try to get us to come into their stores and rickshaws. 

Today I took a shower while sitting on the floor and it took me at least 10 minutes to figure out the hot water but I actually lucked out because apparently they only have hot water between 6-8am. Also the power has gone out 4 times.

Matt got sick this morning and had me worried but it seems to have passed--we've been being pretty tentative when it comes to food/drink and I'm hoping this will prevent us from getting too ill.

Tonight we are off to Goa. I'm not thrilled at the prospect of a long train ride, especially after Luther described the toilet system (aka everything from the train toilet falls right onto the tracks and just bakes in the sun), but Goa has beaches and new experiences awaiting us.

Awakening

So we're off. It's 8 AM and we venture out into the bustling streets of Bangalore. I can't quite describe the amount of sensory triggers I experienced but I can at least say I had begun to grow accustomed to the smell. Whether this is a good or bad thing I can't really say.

Fresh coconut milk, not my drink of choice. 

Especially after Matt reminded me of Castaway and Tom Hanks describing it as a "natural laxative".

The traffic system here is insane, concerning both cars and people. Firstly, most of the time there is something or someone moving in every inch of space. Secondly, the roads are just big lanes of criss-crossing vehicles and everyone uses their horn every few feet. Early in the morning the crowds weren't that bad but as the day progressed the congestion was increasingly astounding. 

Our first rickshaw ride was terrifying, and every one after it as well. The breeze and openness is really nice, you can see everything around you--including all the nearly fatal collisions you're about to experience.

I wore this scarf because of the sun and also so I wouldn't offend anyone by exposing the skin on my shoulders. How tantalizing. 

The price of everything is crazy. Our hotel room is $5 each, our meals were around $1, a rickshaw ride across town was like $3, the clothing that I saw on the streets was $4 or less.

Really all I have to talk about is the rickshaws. The last driver we had was the worst, but also maybe the best. His rickshaw could barely make it up hills and the whole time he had no idea where he was going and kept yelling at passing rickshaws to ask for directions. He would swerve back and forth for no reason and also I'm fairly sure he adjusted his rearview mirror so that he could stare at me. Everyone here stares at you, especially men and kids.

I thought "cancer" was a crab....

We went to a nice garden which, as Luther put it, is where guys take their girlfriends to almost kiss. Luther practiced his juggling and attracted a small crowd.

A whole family on a motorcycle, including the cutest lil baby.

We got home around 3 and now slept till 10pm. Whoops. I'm just thankful that I was able to eat food that didn't set my mouth on fire and have yet to get sick. Luther left to go meet Andy, Kyle and Joe at the airport so Matt and I are going to watch Jackie Chan movies on HBO until we're able to sleep again.

Arrival

39 hours later, after "sleeping" on floors in the airport and in economy seats on the plane, and watching Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps twice, and having our internal clock completely turned around, we step out into the Bangalore International Airport. It's around 2:30 AM and we spot Luther easily, towering over the crowd of small Indians holding up American and German names on bright white paper.

Somehow, because of a large overhang, walking out of the main doors we don't realize that we are actually outside until 5 minutes later. There's no snow? It's not 20º?

It's still dark out so our hour ride on the taxi is fairly (and thankfully) underwhelming, but we get our first taste of No Rules traffic. By this point it's nearly 4 AM but there are still small crowds of people walking around the bus depot where we are dropped off. It's only a few blocks to the hotel but on the way I experienced 1,000 different wafting scents (mostly unpleasant). There was a man peeing on the side of the road and 15 or so different rickshaw drivers insisted that we needed a ride.

The hotel is simple, but pleasant enough. Most importantly it has a western toilet and a television that provides mainly English television. We are happy to see Luther and he makes a wonderful host, providing water, bananas and my new favorite treat: Good Day Rich Butter cookies.

We settle down under small, thin blankets and close our eyes. Unfortunately instead of sleep we discover the one thing about India I will remember the most: Sound. It's 5 AM and there are people yelling, someone building wooden scaffolding, a radio, a television, constant traffic horns, coughing, spitting, general buzzing and moving. As if jet lag alone wasn't enough to keep me up.

Welcome to India.

Beginnings

Things are off to a moderately okay slightly not wonderful start. Pat and Danielle dropped us off at the bus stop in Minneapolis around 10:15 and our bus magically arrived on time. We were able to sit on the top level but on our way in we heard something about technical difficulties. While I'm trying to sleep and Matt is trying to try to sleep we arrive in Wisconsin only to find that the "difficulties" were in reference to there being no heat on the first floor and therefore the driver's windshield was icing over.

Great.

Luckily it didn't take too long to resolve, although when Matt asked the driver what was happening he simply said "I'm waiting for them to call me back, they are brainstorming some ideas of how to fix it."

Back on the road I fell asleep easily (albeit intermittently) but Matt continued to struggle with finding a comfortable position. We arrived in Chicago in complete darkness just before 6AM, which despite the previous delay, was earlier than expected.

After making our way into Union Station we had some trouble figuring out what train we needed to take because the ticket booths were closed, but we somehow ended up finding the subway station about 2 blocks away. Something to point out, we had left our coats at home and had to deal with the Chicago winter in sweatshirts--this is our own fault, but I continue to tell myself it will be beneficial to not have a whole suitcase of coats in India.

During our subway journey to O'Hare, which was drafty and jolty, some young African American man blew a kiss to Matt (which I will return to later). At one point there was a stop and the doors didn't open and then they got stuck open so we had to wait for the conductor to come and push a button that closed them. It has me worried that everything in our trip will continue to have "minor complications", but hopefully they will also continue to be resolved easily.

Back to that mysterious kiss, after we got off the subway the same man approached Matt and said "Damn, if you didn't have a girlfriend I would be all over you right now. We'd be eating breakfast together." I'm sure he was a very upstanding young gentleman and I think we both took it as a compliment.

We are all checked in and Matt is sprawled out on the floor trying to catch up on hours of lost sleep. I gave up after 5 minutes of shifting around on airport benches.

I must admit, I'm not looking forward to the entire day of travel that awaits us but we have signed away our normal, secure, warm, convenient lives for quite some time.