girl drifter reports

"[A] stint in India will beat the restlessness out of any living creature..."
--Yann Martel, Life of Pi

Hello, hello. A meander about the web made me realize that some of you may have been laboring under the misconception that I have been, all this while, in Delhi, Canada. Or, closer to home: Delhi, Iowa; Delhi, Louisiana; or Delhi, New York. All such places exist. Or, practically at home, Delhi, California--where it is 60F and partly sunny. No, no, no. I am in Delhi, INDIA, where the mercury glimmers at around 100F and the forecast for today is "Smoke."

But I digress, before I even start...wait, would that be progress ?

Okay, April, focus. A review of the final stretches.

April 1. Fooled by Drifter via e-mail regarding emergency situation at his NGO job. As in, how do I feel about winging off to Kyrgyzstan for the last few weeks of the trip? Research Kyrgystan, decide to go, make call, hang up in shame and fury. Realize sadly that I have completely lost my sense of humor since being in India (apologies in advance). Realize too late that I could have had his boss draft an e-mail actually sending him to Kyrgyzstan to deal with some emergency situation. Timing. Damn.


The Drifter and drag queens, Deer Park, Delhi.

The rest of April: Two weeks in Delhi characterized by daily yoga at the Art of Living Center and standing in line for train tickets. Daily yoga at home would leave me centered and transcendent; daily yoga in Delhi just barely makes it possible to take the bus across town without losing my mind or spinal alignment. Buying train tickets, forget about it.


Porters waiting for their train to come in.

Sightseeing has become listless at best. Things happen, like our bus nearly plunges over a 5,000-foot switchback on a weekend getaway in the Himalayan foothills, but it doesn't really seem to matter so much...


Reluctant kids posed in period dress on a family vacation in Mussorie.

The real April news: I run away again to Rishikesh for an intensive (or should I say INTENSIVE) Thai massage workshop: 60 hours massage training in a class of 5 then 4 then 3 (including me), with daily yoga, meditation, and karma yoga (you can't fool me with the pretty name...that's just housework).


Aspiring masseuse working her "body" at the Phool Chattri Ashram.

A typical day:
5:45 Chanting, meditation
6:30 Yoga
8:30 Breakfast and break (napping, studying, bathing in the river)
9:45 Massage workshop
12:30 Lunch and break (napping, studying, swimming, etc.)


River interlude.

3:00 Massage workshop
6:00 Class group activities: Bathing, breathing, sharing and the like
8:00 Dinner
8:45 Listening to or joining in bhajans (evening music-making)
9:00 or 10:00 Bedtime



Bridge painter tempting the goddess Ganga.

I am fortunate to be situated along the Ganges at the time of the Ardh Mela, a festival that takes place at the time the Hindu calendar deems most auspicious to take a dip in this holy river. April 13 and 14 are the holiest-of-holy days, although all of April is pretty good for a good Ganga cleansing. About 5 million bathers turn up, which is nothing compared to the real thing, the Kumbh Mela, 12 million strong, which takes place every 12 years and doesn't return until 2012. Anyway, I just so happen to be bathing my sins, sweat, and ayurvedic oils away on those very holy days, happily upriver from the masses of sadhus.

Sadhus, a note: Supposed holy men who have renounced their worldly belongings to wander the world on the charity of others, the station of sadhu has not infrequently been sadly abused in India. As in, any number of murderers and lesser miscreants have donned the mendicants' tell-tale saffron garb to lay low from the law or get close to their victims. I myself suffered a groping at the hands of one of these questionable characters (got in a decent shot with my water bottle). NB: The sadhu pictured below, to my knowledge, is guilty only of trying to extract 100 rupees from me for the privilege of taking his picture.


"I forgive them their sin of rascality, they are so picturesque."
--Fanny Parkes on sadhus, from Begums, Thugs and Englishmen: The Journals of Fanny Parkes.
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Sorry, I can't help myself...Public Conveniences, a rant: I have never seen as many public bathrooms, known here as Public Conveniences, as I have in Delhi. The city is overrun with them: There are your standard public conveniences and then there are the Sulabh Toilet Complexes, brought to you by the same people who run the International Museum of Toilets. Now, for all the public conveniences, I have never seen as many men peeing in public--on walls--as I have in Delhi. Never in my whole life cumulatively. Everyone pees on walls here. Even when the wall bears a sign saying "Do not urinate here." A sign. Everyone...not the homeless, not the drunkards, not the occasional incontinent. Men in suits, men, old and young, of seemingly every walk of life. PEEING on WALLS in DELHI. You see them from buses, from taxis, from rickshaws, from restaurants, while you're walking. You see them. I SEE YOU. I was going to let it slide until I saw a man peeing on the OUTSIDE wall of a Public Convenience. One of the worst fates, I think, would be to be reincarnated as a wall in Delhi, something we should all keep in mind as we make all our choices and go through our days.
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Indian tour group taking a break in the shade, Rishikesh.

And since this is bouncing all over the place anyway, a few words on a few words: English is prevalent here (fluent English less so) and so my Hindi has been limited to phrases of courtesy and/or necessity picked up along the way:

Hello
Thank you
One
Two
No
Go away
Stop it
In, out, slowly (from yoga )
Good camel!

A pathetic yield for four months. I'll do better next time.

Yes, "next time." The first time the Drifter caught me saying "Next time..." and "When we come back..." he almost fell off his chair. I must admit that--though it is unambiguously time to go home--India is getting under my skin (not, I hope, in a parasitic way). In the final moments I find myself waxing sentimental about streetside food stalls and launderers who beat holes in my clothes on river rocks, then burn holes in them with 20-lb coal-heated irons on street corners. I'm disappointed that no one in America carries anything on their head, or moves matresses on bicycles. It's the little things. I've railed and railed and railed, but I've been true to India in my fashion...I've been true to India in my way.

Well, there are no goodbyes in India: The Hindi phrase, which escapes me just now, translates as "Go and come again."

So, go...we're just about at the foot of the last leg of this here journey (Delhi to Istanbul, Istanbul to NYC, NYC to LA...and then a slow Volvo up the coast to San Francisco)...

We can do the rest of this in person. Till then, be well.

Delhi is the capital of the losing streak. It is the metropolis of the crossed wire, the missed appointment, the puncture, the wrong number. --Jan Morris

March in review. Good thing this blog update is late--it would have STRESSED YOU OUT, like it was STRESSING ME OUT. Like I was STRESSING the DRIFTER OUT. Delhi was winning. Anything anything I tried to do, Delhi foiled, coolly and casually. Patience tested, failed. Now patience has returned, held in a loose grip. But, don't worry, read on--it gets better.


Our old neighborhood, Paharganj main bazaar.

Opted out of Delhi for a few days, leaving the Drifter behind--geographically, not romantically--and decamped to Rishikesh. Rishikesh, where the Ganges leaves the mountains, where the Beatles met the Maharishi, where the hippies salute the sun, where--as one Indian friend here put it, laughing laughing laughing at me--Indians go when they have finally given up.


Cross the Ganges on the Laxman Jhula Bridge...


...where Shiva awaits you. He caught the goddess Ganga in his hair when she was booted out of heaven, and there she resides.

A yoga class, a fire-lit riverside aarti (devotional ceremony), a foot-dangle in the purifying waters of the Ganges (oops, a minor infection on a cut toe). A few days here almost unkinked the kinks. Slowly, slowly, Delhi and I reached an agreement. It will provide a job, a house, a neighborhood, a class; in return, I will do everything its way.

Om sweet om. After three weeks of fruitless searching, Drifter's work coughs up an apartment within 24 hours of the asking. It's who you know, you know. You can't know something--you must know Someone. So Someone procured us a 40's-era ramshackle studio with a fridge for a kitchen on a street that India would not consider busy. The Drifter can walk to the office, and it's also close to Deer Park, a huge green space with ruins (of course), a lake (I think), and a rose garden. I don't know what else it's near, except this cybercafe, as we just moved in.The best part so far is that I need never return to Connaught Place.

Connaught Place, a rant. The giant circular outdoor mall known as CP is perhaps the perfect symbol of urban India. It is smack in the middle of Delhi and the place any rickshaw driver will automatically take any Westerner unless you're quick enough to divert them to your intended destination. The outside of the circle is corroded and decaying, the inside totally excavated for the new Delhi Metro--both complicate the simplest of errands. There is no escaping the crash-bang of construction in India--things are perpetually going up or falling down around you. At CP everything is overpriced, including the traditional handicrafts sold by squatting women outside the fancy stores, but you can have a rock thrown at you by a monkey while you shop for cellphones. Perhaps this is just a particularly tough moment in Connaught Place's life, but it's the one I got.

The Drifter is working for a few weeks at a human-rights NGO here (security is high, no names are named, work permits are shirked--officially he's in the office to "hang out with Steve"). More on that, maybe, at www.homelanddrifter.com/highways.html.

Back to the sights: Delhi is the site of seven previous cities of Delhi, each built up around and on top of the others' remains. Sacked and founded, founded and sacked. The British Raj version, much modified by more than 50 years of Indian independence, is the one we're dealing with today. So, ruin upon ruin etc.

Delhi...was full of riches and horrors: it was a labyrinth, a city of palaces, an open gutter, filtered light through a filigree lattice, a landscape of domes, an anarchy, a press of people, a choke of fumes, a whiff of spices.
--William Dalrymple, City of Djinns


Humayan's Tomb: The one emperor who managed to avoid being poisoned, imprisoned, dethroned, decapitated, or blinded with a hot needle and instead bit it when he turned too quickly toward Mecca and fell down the stairs.


The Jama Masjid, or Friday Mosque: The largest mosque in India, with painted lines to keep up to 25,000 worshipers orderly in prayer.


The Lal Quila, or Red Fort: Built by Shah Jehan (of Taj Mahal fame) in 1638 and originally encrusted with gold and precious gems, the city enclosed in its walls was known as Shahjehanabad, literally "Ruler-of-the-Universe-ville."

Okay, say something nice about Delhi. The Mughal gardens at the President's house (open only in March--now!) are quite beautiful. Lodhi Gardens, a vast and shady park full of young Indian couples sneakily holding hands in the shadows, is a bountiful and peaceful retreat. The India Habitat Center hosts free film festivals plus arty things like the queer puppet show we stumbled upon one evening. Also, I've stumbled upon the city's (only?) progressive bookstore, People Tree, which is also an artist-run shop featuring T-shirts with social-action slogans in Hindi. I am considering having them make me one that says--in Hindi--"Stop staring at my tits" on the front and "Stop reading my e-mail" on the back to address two infuriating aspects of Indian disregard (okay..."different" regard) for personal space. Wait, is this gradually failing to be nice?


U.S. out of North America!

Modern-day Delhi. March 20, we joined about 1,500 Delhi-ites (a guess), mostly Communists (judging from their banners), in the worldwide demonstration against the occupation of Iraq. As two of maybe eight Westerners there, we were both interviewed by an Islamic news wire service.


One for Ma, who hates the war, likes pictures of me, and is just glad we didn't get arrested.

And a week later, in the midst of it all, Drifter managed to engineer a delightful and secret birthday adventure for me that remained unrevealed until halfway through the train ride there (trust him, the man can keep a secret). First, a chance to meet and spend time with DrifterBrother, who is in town on business. Second, a fantastic en-route picnic of treats DrifterBrother smuggled in from Geneva--hard cheese, hard salami, crusty bread, good chocolate! All the craved foods that fight back--India's cuisine is brilliant, but you don't even need teeth to eat any of it. Then, arrival in Agra, which as all cruciverbalists know is the 4-letter home of the Taj Mahal. But first, check in to a fancy hotel with room service and a pool. But next, a tour of Fatehpur Sikri, the ancient city of Emperor Akbar.


Built in 1570 and abandoned just 16 years later (not enough water for the 125,000 residents--including 3,000 concubines), Fatehpur Sikri stands in near-perfect preservation.

Then, birthday morning, dawn at the Taj Mahal. Just lovely. We had been warned and were braced for the onslaught of touts, tourists, trinketers, and the like. But...nothing. A handful of tourists quietly lining up to take "The Picture", a peaceful sunrise, a taxi home, a swim, a nap, a hot-fudge sundae, a return train ride, a new apartment. What more could you ask? We were so not-hassled at the Taj that we were somehow unable to purchase Taj Mahal postcards there, and will have to pick some up in Delhi. (Anything--anything Indian--that you saw at any point along your travels is for sale, for less, on one street in Delhi. If your strength up, you can spend one long day on Janpath and skip the rest of the country--shopping-wise, that is.)


The Taj at dawn...


...and two hours later.


One for Randal, who asked, "What's behind the Taj?"
A lone boatman mucking through the low waters of the river Yamuna.

Four weeks left in the India part of the India trip (oh, and is it ever getting hotter by the minute). I'lll spend two of them in Delhi and two back up in Rishikesh at a crash-course in Thai massage with some yoga, crystal-gazing, palm-reading, and Ganges-rafting thrown in (okay, no crystals). Then one week in New York, one week in Los Angeles, home.


Local color: The main market in our new neighborhood, Haus Khas.

Now, I'm a little cranky to have just been April-Fooled by aforementioned Drifter this morning, but other than that all's well. Who knows it's April on the road? Who knows it's April Fool's in India. I do now, I guess. That's the news from March, stay tuned for April. New Yorkers, clear your couches and/or schedules April 25-30.

Everyone, take care and write back.

Okay, where were we? Losing track...sometime in February...Kerala backwaters. In a grown-up-feeling moment, we hire a houseboat with a crew to take us through palm-lined backwaters for a day and night. The food is delicious and bountiful (turned out of the tiniest, barely-equipped kitchen...er, galley), the riverbanks scenic, the heat oppressive when we stall but lovely when we breeze along. Beautiful, soothing, and remote--yet not out of the reach of India's acquisitive children, one of whom rowed a boat from shore out to our float to ask for a school pen. School pen? School pen?


Our craft forges onward, under the watchful eye of Durga, warrior goddess.

Then, still southerly, it's back to the beach. Varkala, a smooth, wide expanse of sand and sea at the base of a precarious cliff and reached only through a narrow gauntlet of shops and tourist restaurants boasting "Italian" and "Maxican" specialties. We lose Stoph for good here--alas, he just couldn't wait to get back to Cambridge--and Floss for now. Drifter and I stay behind for a few days, enjoying our fancy bamboo hut and getting back into our books. We've nearly made it to the tip of India, where the Arabian Sea meets the Bay of Bengal. Instead, in a subcontinental leap, we fly north to Rajasthan to reconnect with Floss in his final India moments...


...which he spends SHOPPING...


...in Jodphur, the Blue City, known for its blue houses and looming fort...


...as well as the Oamlate Man, in the main market, who cooks up 1,000 eggs every day.

In Jodphur we are also momentarily stunned by what will later become a common sight, our first glimpse of a Hindu wedding procession (a mere fraction of the many-day celebration), which entails the groom on horseback (both heavily adorned) attended by masses of sari-wrapped women bearing inverted chandeliers on their heads tethered together in a lit-up train that is powered by generator being driven alongside on an autorickshaw (or in a later case, a camel cart). For some reason, Indian celebrations tend to be illuminated by indoor lamps outdoors, regardless of incovenience. Also by marching bands characterized more for their enthusiasm than skill. You can't say their festivities lack festivity.

Udaipur. According to the guidebooks, "arguably the most romantic city in India." Note the language...this does not necessarily convey a high level of romance. Still, the city--home to the romantically named Monsoon Palace--is in the throes of the biggest Bollywood wedding of the year, which has doubled traffic, sealed off many a palace for private parties, and thrown all the rickshaw drivers into a tizzy. Otherwise, Udaipur's fame-claim is as the setting for the James Bond film Octopussy, which plays every night on innumerable guest-house rooftops citywide. (N.B.: If you are so inclined to supplement this blog with your own screening, I recommend you supplement your viewing with a "special" lassi too--otherwise it's quite intolerable.


Sunset over Udaipur's Lake Palace.

Here we browse-browse-shopped and ate very well. One favorite, a locals+us place with no sign, no menu, just "Rs 40" (40 rupees, less than $1) painted on the wall, at which you take a seat at a communal table & let them heap scrumptious food(s) on your plate until you've had your fill. Yes, more chapati, yes more sabzi, yes, yes, yes...the only place in India you don't say no, no, no chai, no rickshaw, no map of India, no, no school pen, no, no chocolate, no no no shoeshine, no drum nonononononono (but always, or usually, well, sometimes, with a smile). Yessica in the Land of No.

Here we parted ways with Floss. Happy Journey, Floss! It was great to have you & you will be missed (not right away...but soon!). In honor of Floss, an excerpt from the Flosselogue (quoted with apologies and without permission):

...india is where chaos stepped out of the temple & into the street...india is where chaos in its multi-colored frenzy of this way that decided to go into the sari business (it's done well for itself)...india is where chaos lives for the near miss...india is where textile got its name...india is where chaos shows me myself inside out...& later i even smile...

Ah, poetry. Now back to the bog of the blog...

After a week of stillness, restlessness, so we are off to Pushkar, a peculiar little lakeside town that has cast itself as a sacred city (Brahma dropped a lotus to earth to kill a demon, and where its petals landed, voila, lakes in the desert! Pushkar boasts the largest of these). As such, the highly Hindu town bans all alcohol, drugs, meat, eggs, immodest dress and public displays of affection. Also, no shoes or photos within 10 yards of the lake, please. Somehow the hippie-ravers have claimed Pushkar as their full-moon-own despite all this, and by voting with their consumer rupees, have created a hippieravertrinketmart out of this blessed spot. So, if you need, cleansing, salvation, practice poi (with lessons) or mirrored pants, this is the place for you. There's even arising a black market (black-light market?) for drugs, beer & psst, buddy...eggs.


Itinerant snake-charmer passing through Pushkar.

Bikaner. All the usual. Fort. Old City. Camel Breeding Farm. Rat Temple. Bikaner teeters on the edge of the Thar desert, into which we plunge on camel-back. Our 3-day camel safari can be fairly summed up in 2 words: WOW and OW. We had a good group--a crew of about a dozen for us 5 riders (we are joined by SteveandDebbie and Lucy, Brits and an Aussie--fine travelling companions whom we hope will be recurring characters). Riders bond over camels and rum, as well as the assertive hospitality of our host Vijay "Camel Man" Singh. Relax, Vijay, we will call in our favors at Lonely Planet and have "scruffy" excised from your hotel listing.

An aside (not, please note, a rant): India just fills you up. Fills you up to eye-popping, heart-bursting full. The intake of each individual sense is enough to overload you, much less all five (six?) at once. I can show pictures, tell stories, proffer scents, but there's no way to capture it...maybe just look, see, listen, hear, feel, touch, taste, breathe. Breathe in, breathe out. Don't record, don't reflect. Just take it in. How to convey how India SOUNDS? I guess you've got to come here and have it push against your ears.


The camel is the symbol of love because, they say, if you can love a camel, you can love anyone. I am not convinced that I can love anyone, but I can be really, um, interested in anyone.

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Got kind of tired of packing and unpacking,
town to town, up and down the dial.
Baby, you and me were never meant to be,
but maybe think of me once in awhile...

For those keeping track, almost exactly 4 months to the day I began living out of luggage I tired of living out of luggage. Traveling is still fine, so long as it's stationary. Time to settle down for a bit before I lose the part of my mind not already corroded by Mefloquine. The road stretches on for one more week, though, before we can make it to Delhi March 7. Tickets are purchased; minutes are being counted...
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In the meantime, Chandigahr, up in Punjab. My Chandigahr highlight is an India highlight. Bless the Nek Chand Rock Garden and bless Nek Chand, patron saint of dump artists everywhere. This fantastic and fantastical rock garden is unlike anything else in India--charming and almost-peaceful. In 1965, inspired by a recurring childhood dream, Mr. Chand, a now-retired Public Works Department road inspector, began building a small, personal art-garden out of cast-off urban-industrial roadside clutter. By the time he was discovered, in 1971, the sculptures covered 12 acres. Instead of shutting him down, the government gave Nek Chand a salary & staff of 50 to expand and maintain his park, which has been open to the public for 30 years now and which to this day will cost you a mere 10 rupees to see. Yay, India!


Friendly rock-garden creature--one of thousands.

Still in the meantime, Amritsar. One of the first places I was inspired to visit in India during the planning (such as it was) of this trip. As in, I saw the picture of the Golden Temple in the Rough Guide and thought it looked pretty. In the 2 days we spend in Amritsar we do 3 1/2 of the things we intend to. (I will explain.)

1. Jallianwallah Bahg. Fun to say out loud (try it). But, a sober memorial honoring the victims of the 1919 British-on-Indian massacre that basically launched Mahatma Gandhi's career as we know it. Rent the movie or look it up.

2. The Golden Temple. The Mecca, the very Graceland, of the Sikh faith (as well as #11 Thing Not to Miss). This is a large and organized complex geared to field pilgrims from every walk of life (so long as you cover your head and bare your feet). A giant tank for sacred ablutions in the center of colonnaded white marble buildings; a giant golden temple in the center of the tank, bejeweled to the hilt, broadcasting music-accompanied, unexpurgated readings from the Sikh holy book (one full reading, done in 3-hour shifts, takes 48 hours--repeated ad infinitum). Also home to the 450-year-old Jubi Tree (tie a scrap of fabric to its boughs for fertility) and an awesomely gruesome museum of Sikh history. We have lunch at the langar (free kitchen), staffed by volunteers, which feeds a perpetual stream of visitors hunkered down in endless rows on the floor out of bottomless buckets of rice, dal and chapati. Everyone is welcome to eat, everyone is welcome to stay the night, everyone is welcome to pose for photo after photo with Indian tourists. Wait, that's just us.


That's 100kg of real gold there, people.

3. The Indo-Pakistan border-closing ceremony. Really. This might be one of the more ridiculous things I have witnessed. Grab a taxi or rickshaw out to the border (they're all idling outside your hotel waiting to take you there) and join the few Western tourists in town as well as Indian tourists from everywhere ("Oh, you're American? We're from Modesto!") for this exercise in national pride (as they see it) or military and civil buffoonery (my opinion). 4 years ago both sides erected permanent bandstands to hold the crowds that almost-converge at closing time. The benches are set at right angles, so that each side can barely glimpse of the other and instead must focus on the elaborate antics of their own country. Which consist mainly of individual Indians loping awkwardly up and down the tarmac waving the same Indian flag in turn (each reveling in their own personal cheer from the enthusiastic, chanting crowd). At some point in this peculiar pep rally, Indian troops (oddly, only 5 of them, to match the 5 Pakistanis) bellow and stamp, then one-by-one charge the gate with a high-kicking gait (intimidating?). The last two reprentatives meet with a cursory salute and handshake and incrementally lower their respective flag in a tedious display of, if not superiority, at least of not-inferiority. Gates are closed, crowds file out (saris on one side, burkhas on the other) through a rabble of child vendors intent on selling you your own copy on DVD. Yay, India?


Indian guards charging Pakistan, as seen over a Sikh's turban at the border closing.

3 1/2. Holi. On March 6 &7 they celebrate this mostly-Hindu-but-indiscriminately-Indian Festival of Colour. Holi is characterised by the closing of all businesses and the throwing/pelting/rubbing-on-each-other of colored water and powders. We expect to be in Delhi March 7. We are not thinking about Holi in Amritsar, and certainly not on March 5, when we are soundly and repeatedly doused by premature revellers attacking with water from high windows. Shocked, drenched, we return home & engineer our revenge--our own stash of water balloons, which we gleefully lob at busses from our balcony. We have participated in a major Indian festival. We think it is over. We are not prepared for Delhi.

Delhi is deceptively quiet the early-morning we arrive, and I mistakenly believe we have finally acclimated or that the guidebooks are just being melodramatic when they warn of the clogged and cacophonous madness of Delhi. It only turns out that Delhi-ites, in a sense of self-preservation. are taking refuge and guarding their wares from the onslaught, which begins in earnest at about 9 am and burns itself out about 1 pm, helped by the police, who instruct all foreigners to return to their hotels at about 11 ("Go home. People here with bad Holi. Go hotel now. "). At first, armed with 3 bags of colored powder, 1 colored-spray can, and 1 mini-super-soaker water gun, we joined in creditably. But our defenses ultimately prove weak. Tensions mount, dazed looking co-tourists report a wallet stolen, a girlfriend groped, etc. I am hit square in the back of the head by a water balloon & then an egg. I am done playing Holi. We go hotel now. Try to wash off the Holi that stains us, and the rest of the city (including dogs, cows, and cars), for the next few days.


Holi Hai! This is only 5 minutes into the fun.

So...so far, so good. Cheers to all in your own travels, whether stationary or mobile (& please send news...the more mundane, the better). More from Delhi!

"Wel Come" to the World Social Forum: a design on the ground in colored rice flour.

January 16-21, Mumbai. 100,000 converge on the clogged and rickety infrastructure of Mumbai for the WSF. Judging, perhaps cynically, from our previous experience, we had doubts the city could pull something like this off, and approached the first day with a cringing skepticism. But for the most part--despite glitches with translation (so many languages...) and sound systems, the occasional program that just never materialized, and an inability to produce a printed schedule until the third day--the "movement of movements" made its way through one riotous, colorful, empire-smashing week of passion, anger, clamor and harmony. Plight upon plight was represented, and it was overwhelming to find that so many things were going wrong with the world, but hopeful to see so many people there to make them right. It was the first time I truly felt like a global citizen with global responsibility. I've always "known" that, but this time it was palpable, undeniable.


Uncle Floss and the Drifter.
Been there, smashed that, bought the T-shirt...

To orient: The night before the WSF, the Drifter and I joined up with Stoph (a dear friend from high school) and Floss (Floss, how do we know you again?). Housed most generously at Stoph's friend's grandparents' house for the entire week (with a group of about 6 other guests), we lined the floor of the flat with mattresses and crashed each night after long days both exhausting and exhilarating. The Forum--in it's 4th year, relocated to India from Brazil, and themed "Another World Is Possible"--featured a dizzying agenda of speakers, panels, workshops, demonstrations, performances, marches (marches, marches), movies and art installations, as well as stall after stall of organizations there to make contact and get their words out. Too much happened at any one time, and I split time between events with an American angle (the most practically relevant...such as "Defeat Bush in 2004", put on, surprisingly and effectively, by the South Koreans) and events addressing lands or concepts more distant from American shores and minds (the current state of Afghanistan; indigenous peoples struggles--"Cast out Caste!"). As some of the few Americans we enjoyed, for want of a better word, a strange movie-star-like status, posing for pictures, signing autographs, and having lurching conversations in limited English (theirs, not ours) mainly about America good and Bush bad.


Victoria Terminus train station. After 2 hours at the foreign tourist window, our ticket out of town.

January 21, Goa. In a shocking but much-needed contrast to the WSF, we leave town and head straight to the tranced-out beach town of Goa, where the tide of hedonism has ebbed somewhat, but not completely. Goa is a break from India in that it is a decidedly tropical yet completely unidentifiable low-end resort town. It could be one of dozens of places you've seen in calendars or commercials. But nice. And with cows. In Goa, we do absolutely nothing.

January 24 (?), Hampi.
An 8-hour train ride east deposits us at Hampi, a small village nestled in the curve of the Tungabadhra River and on the edge of the massive ruins of a 14th century Hindu empire known in its time as the City of Victory.


Saucer-like coracles, the only way across the Tungabadhra.

The ruins, surprisingly detailed and well-preserved considering the Muslims smashed it all to hell in the mid 1500s (empire-smashing!), are strewn with giant boulders said to have been thrown down by Hanuman, the monkey god, as a show of strength of the monkey god, monkey kings and their monkey armies. So Hampi has enormous rocks everywhere, and monkeys everywhere.


No touch monkey!
Me and Hanuman.

Our guesthouse is practically in the shadow of the Krishna temple, a living temple where we are blessed at the shrines of various gods, leave our offerings and, perhaps unwisely, drink some of the temple's holy water (well, what can you do?). The Drifter even managed to get blessed by the temple elephant (for a mere 10 rupees).


Krishna temple, presiding over Hampi at sunset.

January 28 (??), Mysore. No one's exactly sure why we went to Mysore, except that it's 10 hours south on the way to something another 10 hours south. And it's market is listed in the Rough Guide's 42 things you can't miss about India (we have to date not missed 8). I can not be relied on to speak about Mysore because it--poor Mysore!--was the site of my first India meltdown, which, too my credit, consisted of exactly one fit at breakfast followed by a couple hours of semi-valiant-but-seriously-failed attempts to be pleasant, followed by a self-imposed confinement to my hotel room. In Mysore, India beat Floss and me, but treated Kent and Stoph well, so I refer you to homelanddrifter.com and say no more. Except this--I commend Mysore for its palace, a dingy and lunatic hodgepodge of styles constructed in 1912 out of anything shiny that caught the magpie Maharaja's eye, which they illuminate on Sunday nights with more than 97,000 light bulbs. Mmm, sparkly.

February 1-ish, Karnataka. After a harrowing 11-hour overnight bus ride plus a little bit of bussing and ferrying, we alight in Fort Cochin, a charming seaside town lined by ancient Chinese fishing nets and large airy 17th Century Dutch buildings. (The trick to Indian bus riding: Don't sit too far back, because of the bone-rattling bumps and crashes; don't sit too far forward because you can see out the windshield. Just cross your fingers and close your eyes.) Spirits are completely restored in Fort Cochin. I am personally saved by the Kashi Art Cafe, a spare and lovely Western coffeehouse with good, quiet music, excellent food (chocolate cake!), art on the walls, community notices on the bulletin board and actually cold cold coffee. At Kashi I even calm down enough to begin learning chess, and am tragically affected whenever they close and when, finally, we leave town. But first, a few days of wandering. This is the first town where we've seen (or noticed, perhaps) a contemporary art scene--there are several very nice galleries and art collectives, with cafes and/or performance spaces attached, and we talk with some very interesting people there--artists and curators and a Spanish film-editor staying at one collective to learn photography and Malayalam, the local language. We get a chance to see some Kathikali here, an Indian theatrical tradition meaning "story play", with an elaborate alphabet of gestures and ornate costumes and makeup performedto a lovely soundtrack of Sanskrit singing. After a brilliant 45-minute introductory demonstration, the cultural center presents us the story of the prideful warrior Arjuna, humbled an taught a lesson by Shiva (disguised as a boar) and his consort Parvati--in an abbreviated form (1 1/2 hours for us novices, as opposed to the more typical 6 to 9). Okay, then, a couple more quiet days in Cochi, with the sun setting behind the fishing nets. The four of us are coordinating and travelling well together, and for one brief moment, no one is sick, there is no interminable train to catch, and the Kashi Cafe is open for business.... I am a magical girl who can do anything.

Now a secret: You are not caught up. We are in the future celebrating Valentine's Day. But that is India, almost, so far. They say that you either love India or hate it, but I am finding that I love and hate it, at times in a dizzying flicker between the two, at times simultaneously. You can never let down your guard completely--or you'd get creamed by an autorickshaw or something--and you never should think that you have it all figured out and know what to expect now (and you should never order a cheese sandwich). The sooner you accept that you really just don't know, the better off you are. Not you, me. The better of I am. Anyway that's the view from here. So, a few more random photos to tide you over, and more coming once we track down another CD burner. If you go to bed now like a good kid, I'll tell you another story tomorrow...about a backwater boatride, a bamboo-hutted beach town, the Pink City and the Blue City. Sweet dreams!


Our first bus, photographed with a dubious eye.


Set out in the sea, the path to the Haji Ali tomb in Mumbai disappears under water at high tide.


The mania of Ahmedabad traffic, caught at a quiet moment.

INDIA (finally!)

"...the one land all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the globe combined."
--Mark Twain, 1897

Three weeks have passed since we've been in India, and as I've said to some already, sometimes it feels like a blink, sometimes an eternity. We are slowly figuring out how to interact with India, but it seems that as soon as we figure out one thing (how to post a package) we are beaten by something else (how to get the right seat on the right train). We are learning, but India is hard, harder than math class even. India, described variously in my reading as "wild profusion", "functioning anarchy" and "barely contained chaos", is proving to be all those things and, of course, more. The main thing to picture is that there are about 3 people where every person should be...2 in each train seat, 3 on a bike, 4 on a scooter, 5 in a rickshaw, 12 on top of a bus. Well, you have to put a billion people somewhere...

To (start to) catch you up (I am a very bad blogger, sorry):

December 29, arrive Mumbai. I've picked up some germs on the plane, some Bahrainese bug, perhaps, and am ailing by the time we hit the airport. Flu blossoms, followed by bronchitis. Better to check the Drifter's notes on this time period as I'm down for the count. Abandoning the drifter budget (already!) we check into a quiet & comfortable hotel in downtown Mumbai (Colaba, for those of you in the know). Sadly, we are right on the most touristed strip of the most touristed street, so just stepping out of the hotel we are besieged by vendors of all stripes. Most curiously, there is a glut of giant-balloon sellers. Brightly colored spotted balloons that blow up to pear-shapes 6 feet in length. Everywhere. Memo to India: Sell things people want. Anyway, mini-ventures out, but mostly hotel-bound, and the new year is rung in with Indian takeout food, Indian MTV countdown to midnight, Valium and sleep. 2004!

January 3, I think. When Mumbai becomes worse than bronchitis, we hit the road. One ferry and two spine-compressing bus rides later we are in Murud, a rarely touristed beach town 130 km south of Mumbai. Wide lonely beaches lapped by the Arabian sea. Murud is strangely abandoned and utterly unprepared for visitors. No English & there's more Marathi than Hindi spoken here. No one can show us where our (or any) hotel is, even though the town is tiny. Everyone is staring. Everyone is staring. (This will not improve when we get to bigger cities, surprisingly.) We set out for what Lonely Planet terms "an excellent excursion" to Janjira fort, a 16th century fort built entirely covering an island out in the water, so it seems to loom straight out of the sea. The boat will not leave until there are 20 passengers, and on the ride over we joke that we will be the popular final 2 that will allow the boat to sail after days of waiting. Not only does that prove to be (almost) true, but all the other passengers are a field-trip group of 20-year-old Indian pharmacy students that are so excited to meet us they can barely contain themselves. They crowd to one side to be in a photograph with us, causing the boat to list dangerously and the boatman to throw a fit. Balance restored, we spend the short ride over to the island signing autographs, discussing the role of the pharmacist in America and displaying U.S. currency. We spend the next 45 minutes running--running-- around the fort with them from point to point so as not to miss anything ("Ken! Ken! Come fast! Come fast!"). Landing back in town, we come across a tiny travelling circus family--with a tiny tightrope walker and everything. Show, snack, home, excellent excursion.

January 6, journey to Matheran. Our first Indian train is initially horrifying & completely incomprehensible. Everyone says and has always said not to travel unreserved, but today it cannot be avoided. I consider abandoning Kent for the ladies' car, but finally a kind local businessman takes pity, barks some orders and arranges seats for us. We are lucky and priveleged. We are used to feeling competent. We are learning humility. We are trying. The rest of the connections are elaborate and exhausting, but we finally make it. Matheran calls itself "the world's tiniest eco-friendly hill station." It's a little retreat high up on top of a narrow ridge in the mountains south of Mumbai, also less for tourists than for Indian families looking for a bread from India. Matheran is accessed by a "toy train" that takes 2 hours to traverse 281 switchbacks up the hill, or (if you miss the last train up, as we did) by a 20-minute taxi ride that deposits you at the entry gate 3km from the town. No motor vehicles are allowed in Matheran (it's all horseback and hand-drawn rickshaw). In we hike. In an attempt to restore drifter budget, we set our hotel sights too low. The bedbugs bite, the mosquitos swarm, and once I figure out that that racket is monkeys trying to pull the roof tiles off, we check out & upgrade. Matheran by day: cows, monkeys, horses, goats, dogs. It seems like what you are supposed to do here is ride horses to scenic outlooks, get your hair cut, and buy candy and shoes. Nothing else. We find one of the ritzier places at the end of the road will let us sit by the pool and have snacks and beer while we play Scrabble and admire the view. Matheran is a good antidote to Mumbai, but to Mumbai we must return. Toy train down the mountain at sunrise; real train through Mumbai to Ahmedabad.

January 10: Ah, Ahmedabad, one of the top 10 most polluted cities in the world. The noise is constant, the air is toxic, the road is clogged with scooters and camels, mostly. Ahmedabad is in Gujarat, one state north, which is having a difficult time recovering from a semi-recent earthquake that killed 20,000 and a not too distant month of Hindu-on-Muslim rioting that killed about 800 (I need to check that number--details to come). It's the Drifter's turn to fall ill--weak and cracked out on India, he needs & gets a break from India. Ahmedabad will wait a few days. Ahmedabad stories (kite festival including battles with glass-encrusted kite string! fainting spell at Textile Museum!) will wait a few days too because...

(wild jump into the future...)

I am in Goa right now. Other things must be addressed in Goa (beach, beer, dancing, raver-gear shopping, the hippie swerve). Don't despair for our hedonism, however. Goa is a break from the World Social Forum, a major mixer for empire-smashers across the globe. WSF (which can be followed in an official capacity at wsfindia.org) was huge, serious, and exhausting. Goa is balmy, frivolous, and exhausting. WSF was Jan 15-21; Goa Jan 22-25. Stay tuned & I'll fill it all in as I can. Cheers, dears...

Well, well, well. I never thought I'd be saying this, but welcome to my, er, blog. As bloggees to my blogger, I have your best interests in mind and as such, blah-blah-blogging will be kept to a minimum (after this intro). Any personal notes directed to spinsterisland2003@yahoo.com will be answered as circumstances on the subcontinent permit. But let's not get ahead of ourselves...

First, please indulge me in some acknowledgements:

Special thanks to all San Francisco hosts that helped this fledgling drifter get off to a gentle start: The Floss Entity, Brett Bowman, Michelle Polzine and Franz (Franz, is your last name Polzine?), Lauren Kiino, The Sassy Vinyl, Scott Kildall, Kelleigh Trowbridge, and Tarin Towers. Extra thanks to Kelleigh for the party, Tarin for the plush ride to the airport, and Brett and Therese Davis for kitty-sitting.

As for our outlying hosts, thanks to Heather and Bill Gilman and the Cunninghams in LA for a lovely early Christmas, as well as Christine and Chhime'd Kunzang for a snowy Montana Thanksgiving (in that order). Finally, New Yorkers: Allen Salkin, Blaine Peterson & Randal Hunting, Jennifers DeMeritt and Dowling (seperately). Good to see all the old friends and meet all the new. Plus, excellent entertainment provided by Allen, Jenn DeMeritt and the inadvertently poetical Paul LaFarge.

That's it. As of December 11, 2003, the Drifter and I left American soil for points unknown (Turkey, India, & etc.) and if you don't know about the Drifter, it might be too late for you to catch up at this point. Just see if you can follow along...

But first...This one's for the Drifter, for making this--and so much more--possible, both literally and figuratively. (That's his link on the upper right, if you feel the need to get the other side of the story.) Okay, I think that's enough, Ethel, our plane is leaving...

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Istanbul, take 1: Flight from JFK to Frankfurt uneventful--good. Six a.m. beer, cigarette and Scrabble game during layover. Now we're travelling.

Arrival in Istanbul also uneventful. Tram into town and having my first unsolicited Turkish shoeshine in front of a nearly 1500-year-old mosque within minutes. Now we're travelling. Little to report for the next few days as jet lag knocks us flat. Luckily there are a few crossword puzzle assignments plus other hobbies to fill the wide-awake wee hours. Up for every sunrise so far--too bad the gray sky just lightens and darkens here. Highlight tour of local sights: Blue Mosque, Haghia Sophia, Topkapi Palace & Harem, Grand Bazaar...

Istanbul is full of carpets, tea, lunatic drivers and tiny cats. No surprises there except how small the cats are. The city--especially our neighborhood of Sultanahmet--exhausts with its constant barrage of sales pitches from every shop, stand and restaurant. While we're clearly tourists, no one thinks we're American (they don't expect any Americans to be here), usually guessing Dutch. Though once you start talking with them about America, it seems every Turk has a good friend in Florida or Texas, used to have a girlfriend from Baltimore, likes Clinton and hates Bush--these points covered in every conversation.

On the Road: As it's winter here, we head south for warmer weather (wearing all our clothes for India in layer after layer). Ferry across the Sea of Marmara to Yalova, bus to Bursa (last stop on the silk road from China). Actually snowing in Bursa. Bus to Selcuk, a lovely little town on the edges of the ruins of Ephesus, at which we take many pictures, enjoy a brief flash of blue sky and sunlight, and are menacingly swarmed by the sites roving band of feral kittens--yikes! Bus to Antalya, a seaside resort on the Mediterranean. Clearly December is the off season here, though apparently the patio cafes fill with mostly Russian tourists in the summertime. The Drifter finds Antalya peaceful after the bustle of the other cities & has better luck here talking with Turkish people about more than sales transactions, but it just feels bleak and deserted to me. Rain, rain, rain. I am briefly and distractingly excited by the notion of taking a quick ferry to Venice for Christmas until it is revealed that ferry crossing is summer only and takes 3 days. Redirect Christmas enthusiasm to a return to Istanbul. Night bus to Istanbul: 12 hours; 30,000,000 Turkish lire ($22)--including tea or coffee, cake and cologne.

Istanbul, take 2: Back to our old hotel--home!--just in time for Christmas. Pretty much a non-event in a Muslim country, but our hotel took a stab at it with some festive streamers and a Charlie Brown-style tree. We're able to stay up late enough to go out this time around, and head out to Babylon for Christmas Eve's Depeche Mode night (the current hot-spot--Michael Franti & Spearhead were here last week). Sadly our Time Out Istanbul magazine is one night off, so instead we wander around and into what turns out to be an extremely friendly, if unlabled, gay bar around the corner. Spend the evening there drinking and talking with the manager and bartender about Istanbul etc. and it feels suitably festive. Taxi home to sleep it off. Return to Babylon the next night for Depeche Mode expecting to dance, and are surprised by both the devotion and reserve of the crowd. Everyone sings along and sways, but little more, as the dj slightly mixes D-Mode songs to visuals from the new Depeche Mode DVD. The greatest enthusiasm comes during the band-related trivia contest. Still, another fun & interesting night out in Istanbul (despite the fact that they never played "Personal Jesus"--and on Jesus's birthday even...).

Next stop, a traditional Turkish bath, or hamam. We try one built in 1584 and recommended personally, if unenthusiastically, by a Lonely Planet guidebook writer who's staying in our hotel. The hamam proves to be a slightly mystifying, mostly satisfying experience, during which we (seperately) sweat it out on a hot marble slab under a steamy dome and then are lathered, scrubbed, and lead around by the hand to be thoroughly rubbed and rinsed until we gleam. The Drifter endures a rather vigorous massage (most guidebooks refer to the hamam massage as a "pummeling"), which I am braced for but which never transpires. Apparently the women's massage here is often half-hearted. However, I am dragged off for a thorough waxing from the Turkish women there who have no patience whatsover with my hippie-traveller aesthetic. Rest assured, great lengths were taken to make sure everything was "nice for my boyfriend."

Next night, a lovely dinner with friends of a friend. Yigal and Rachel (he, freelance journalist; she, semiretired lawyer & expectant mom) have been living in Istanbul (from NYC) for the past year and have decided to stay for one more. They had us up to their fantastic apartment with picture-postcard views and then out for a night of fluent conversation and a much more competently ordered meal than we had as yet managed on our own. Yay, friends!

December 27: Left to my own devices for the day, I figure out how to take the funicular, a one-stop shuttle opened in 1876 (3rd oldest metro in the world after New York and London), and utterly fail to figure out how to mail a parcel home--can't even manage to get a box or the paper to wrap it in, or come close to successfully to conveying this need. Its a day of ups and downs. Up: I find a warm and comfortable cafe that serves excellent lattes--almost unheard of in Nescafe-saturated Turkey (yes, I know, Turkish coffee, blahblahblah). Down: A slight miscommunication at the beauty salon and now I have a short haircut--um, better for travel, right?

One day left in Istanbul to smoke a waterpipe, ride a boat up the Bosphorus, and see the Dervishes whirl. [Ed. note: We did none of these, instead returning to the Western-style coffee shop, getting our laundry done, and packing. It just struck me that we're going to India.]

December 29 approaches and we're off to Mumbai.... Happy New Year to everyone! See you on the other side...

**Drifter testimonial: After 3 weeks on the road, I highly recommend the Drifter as a travelling companion. After a couple of bumps we are making our way happily and harmoniously. Drifter benefits: Excellent navigation skills due to obsession with maps and guidebooks; strong bargaining skills (vestigial lawyering?); enthusiastic Turkish and conversational German ease communication; "handsomeness" of Drifter inspires people to help us and give us free things (really). Drifter drawbacks: Occasionally demoralized by inept tourist offices or inaccurate guidebooks ("It's hopeless! The map is NO GOOD!"); occasional poor loser at Scrabble.**