The Blue City of Jodhpur!

I have just spent the past few days in Jodpur which is a very old city located in the western region of the country kinda near the Pakistan border. The city is a maze of tiny streets and alleys filled with small temples, bizarre bazaars, chanting sadhus, painted elephants, pungent aromas, swirling winds, open sewers, and sweltering heat!

The city was quite enjoyable, but the people here have pretty bad manners and the businessmen in this region lack any kind of ethics. Just about everyone is looking to squeeze as much as possible out of every single transaction whether a 15 rupee water that should only be 10, a 60 rupee taxi that should only be 25, or a "handmade, pure silk" scarf that is really a blend of cotton and silk and made by a machine. If you ask for a little, they give you a lot. Like if you say you want a chai (which is normally about the size of a shot), these unscrupulous guys will bring out a chai bigger than everyone else around you is drinking- the biggest you have ever seen in India- and then give you grief when you tell them you want the regular size. It is like dealing with that guy, James, at Four Winds International food in Pensacola! Even if you give a beggar something, they don't say thank you, they immediately ask you for more. The entrepreneurs all call out and even chase down tourists and dealing with their constant pestering can be quite a chore.

However, I did a lot of shopping over the past 2 days and was able to ship the 16 pound package out today for around $75. I guess that is a good deal (well, only if it makes it back home), This part of the country is world renowned for its textiles and some of you women out there would have gone crazy for this stuff and would have easily spent hundreds of dollars. You can actually end up getting a great value if you bargain hard and the quality of this stuff is unrivaled. It usually takes about 15 minutes of bickering to get the price to come down about 25%. Who really ever knows what the true "Indian" price would be for this stuff. The worst is when you walk into a shop that says fixed price and then there are no prices on anything. What a load of crap!!! Indians all over have warned me that the businessmen in this part of the country are real assholes, so I was already expecting it and they haven't let me down.

They only really good guy I met in this city was the proprietor of the guest house I am staying in. He helped me take care of some business and gave me good advice, but even here I think he was skimming a little bit off the top for things he was providing. I am sure that he got a cut of some of that $75 shipping fee, because he called up the company and had them send a boy out for the package. Either way, Yogi's Guesthouse was a nice place to stay, in a quiet part of the city, and was a great value. I would stay here again.

Oh Nooooooo!

Damn rats!!! Look what they did to my truck (which has been parked at my mother's house in Milton, Florida).

My mother emailed me the other day that they tried to crank up the ol' chuck truck and it wouldn't start. So they opened the hood, and.... well... you see what happened. The rats have chewed through a few wires and things and just I hope they haven't done too much damage ($$$).

Check out the Veggie Market!

About every few kilometers there is a market like this. Some are huge, some are small, but in every city and every village there is some kind of open air market selling just about everything imaginable. Sometimes it feels like there is a flea market on every other block. Check out the video below which just shows a quick little clip of the veggie market.

Also, I have started seeing a few urban camels and elephants now. I think in the next few days I might see the dancing sloth bears too. In the tourist areas the animal tamers come around and make these animals do tricks for cash. I am not sure how I feel about the use of an endangered species to make a profit. Kinda gives me a bad feeling you know, like collecting or buying ivory. It just contributes to the species' decline.

Short Video Showing the Local Stick Dancers...

Almost every Hindu Temple in the entire region has been hosting dances like this each night for the past few nights for this festival. Check out the video below.

Climbing Girnar Hill

I stayed in the city of Junagadh and woke up early to tackle climbing Girnar Hill (which I accidentally misspelled in the video title-oops). It was a tough climb for me and even early in the morning it was dreadfully hot. I was soaking in sweat and to make things worse, it seems Indians have an amazing ability to avoid sweating even under the hottest conditions. I don't understand it, but I can be pouring sweat while the Indians next to me will be barely showing the slightest bit of moisture on their brow. There must be some ancient technique they haven't shown me yet.

Check out the video below.

This is a truly religious experience for many Indians and many Hindus and Jains try to make the pilgrimage at least once in their lifetime. The trail was crowded with barefoot pilgrims as the Hindu lore states that climbing the hill barefoot earns one a place in heaven.

It was a good day and a nice hike, but now my calves are killing me. I think I got a little dehydrated that day and later on that night I took a tortuously hot, bumpy, and long 13 hour bus ride to get to the next city. I think sitting all bunched up on the bus made things a little worse as I wasn't able to stretch out and move the lactic acid around.

Videos from Diu!

I finally got to a place that had a strong internet connection and I was able to load up my videos from Diu. I have split them into three separate 2-minute-long clips and they are hosted at YouTube. Enjoy!

I really enjoyed this place because it was small, quiet, and relaxing. The town was really cheap and the hotel ample, but the food was not so good. The fish here are very small, so lots of tiny bones to pick out which is a real chore if they throw the fish into a veggie broth or mix it with rice and vegetables and I think the prawns (shrimp) may have been frozen and not local.

Just in case you were wondering....

Damn... I miss this so much. I would do a lot for a good ol' cheeseburger right now, especially something like this cheeseburger, from Five Guys in Chicago, which has been on my mind a lot lately! It looks so D E L I C I O U S!!! It is in my dreams even. I am getting tired of spicy vegetables with flat bread...

Festival of Nine Nights- Navratri

Last night was the start of Navratri, or the Festival of Nine Nights. This festival is very popular in the region I am traveling through. During these nine nights and ten days, nine forms of Shakti/Devi, a female Deity, are worshipped. On the first night of the festival young children and young adults performed traditional dance routines for the villagers. The young dancers wear traditional outfits, and in the case of the women very flashy, colorful, dresses with many sequins and mirrored "buttons." In most of the dances, the young men and women held sticks (almost like drumsticks) which they rhythmically cracked against one another to keep the beat while a small band played and a Hindu prayer song was blasted over the speakers. In all of the dances, the dancers moved in a circle around a Hindu shrine for Shakti and do many twirling, jumping, and stomping moves alone and even sometimes they turn to one another and knock sticks with a partner.

Even here the society is divided along sex lines. Only boys, or only girls dance on stage at one time. The crowd is equally divided- the men sit in chairs in one area, while the women sit on blankets and tarps in a separate area. The sexes rarely co-mingle in public. The dancing was fun and festive and goes on late into the night. As soon as one "temple" finishes its dances, everyone packs up, grabs their chairs and walks a few blocks away to the next "temple" where things are just getting under way. Some of the dances go on until 3-4 am and some of the dancers are as young as 3-4 years old. Dancing like this will continue for the remainder of the festival.

Today is also a Muslim Holiday. Eid is today which marks the end of Ramadan, a month long holy time when truly devout Muslims fast all day.

A Video of More Religious Caves

In this video you can see the two most famous cave sites in India- Ellora and Ajanta. These two areas are separated by about 70 km in distance but both located in Maharasthra State. The two sites are quite large and represent a range of religions in very close proximity (which is a testament to the religious tolerance that has prevailed for thousands of years in India). At each location there are many separate caves in various states of completion and decay. Check out the video, which unfortunately, does the real thing no justice.

Click Image Above For Video

Some carving are a thousand years old. The anthropologists still debate exactly how long the excavations and carvings took to complete and their estimates range from centuries to just a few decades. The thing I kept thinking about was the way in which these carvings emerged top down from the stone (they are all cut right into the cliffs and hillside). At some point, early into the cutting and high up on the hill, the stone-cutters must have been directed to start the top of the temple, then several meters lower make a dome, then below that design and carve sculptures of elephants, and pillars, etc, etc... It is fascinating because we always envision a building being constructed ground up, but for these ancient builders the plan was reversed and came to life from the top down. I wonder if there was ever a master plan, or if the temple just emerged piece by piece.

An Old Man and his Old Loom

This is a short video showing an old man using some very old techniques to produce a hand-made silk sari. The process is very slow and can take many months to complete. One of the reasons it take so long to complete just one sari is the fact that they are usually about 8-9 meters long. The women wrap and wrap and wrap the sari around themselves in some intricate pattern that I will never understand.

These types of saris were very high quality and were usually reserved for special occasions like weddings or holiday celebrations and cost upwards of $100 (which is a lot to an Indian). Some of you folks at home need to let me know what kind of Indian gifts I should bring back. I am sure some of you women would have loved this fabric store because the saris, shoals, and other shimmering, detailed items were very beautiful, flawlessly crafted, and amazingly soft.

Supposedly this is a 2000 year old technique he is using (but again, they will tell you anything if they think it will help them make a sale). They said that this style of production will die with the current generation as all of the weaving processes are becoming automated and mechanized as now silk products are churned out by loud, congested human-less mills.

One hallmark of Gandhi's movement was his belief that wearing hand made, Indian produced cloth would promote a national industry that could help to pull millions of India's poor out of poverty. He held many drives to rid the country of machine spun and especially foreign produced clothes. This, coupled with his strict asceticism, led him to wear the white loin cloths that he is so often remember for and he usually made the cloth (and sandals) himself.

Indian Popcorn!

Here is a very short little clip showing one of the street vendors cooking "popcorn." There occasionally are street vendors who sell American style popcorn, but a taxi driver called this style of cooking popcorn. It is quite delicious, very inexpensive, and found wherever there are big groups of people. After your corn is sufficiently charred, the woman removes it from the fire, takes a slice of lime or lemon and dips the citrus wedge into a spicy masala mix of salt and various peppers. She then rubs the delicious spice mix onto your corn and it is served to you with a few husks to insulate your little fingers from the heat. Pretty delicious- I have had several!

Relaxing in Diu...

Hello All!
I have now made it to the small island town of Diu located in Southern Gujarat on the Gulf of Cambay. This small, sleepy community was a Portuguese colony for about 500 years and has only been under Indian governance since 1961. Some of the locals speak Portuguese, which is kinda weird. It really reminds me of the small, beach towns that I visited in Brazil, especially because the language, but also because the buildings and the forests look really similar too. There are tons of cows running around this town as well. I walked around for about 2 hours today and I must've seen 200 cows. Its kinda hilarious- but you definitely have to watch your step. There is a huge fort here, built by the Portuguese, but financed by Indian Mughal rulers or kings. These two groups formed and alliance to protect lucrative trade routes and ports along the coast hundreds of years ago. The town has a population of about 20,000 which is a nice change of pace from the huge, overpopulated, and hyper-polluted cities I have been visiting. I plan to stay here for several nights and get some good rest and relaxation along the coast. I may sit for several hours tomorrow in the shade of a coconut tree and read my books. I hope all is well back home and I am excited that football season has kicked off (even if I can only see the highlights on the internet). Go Gators!

A little observation...

While at times it seems that there are Indians everywhere and the masses of people and constant hustle and bustle of everyday life can be kinda stressful, the cultural attractions of India are devoid of crowds. For instance, in a city of 4 million people I saw more people working at the City Museum of Ahmadabad than patrons. They had to turn the lights on for me and it was well after noon, so I knew nobody else was in the museum at the time I entered. This museum held a great deal of information about the city's history and also contained some paintings, textiles, sculpture, and also interesting anecdotes about Gandhi (who spent much time at an ashram , or holy residence, just outside of the city. Gandhi made many important speeches during his "Quit India!" campaign for Independence here and also started his famous salt march just outside of town. The art museums of Mumbai were lacking of onlookers and similarly deserted are many of the religious caves that have been cut into rocky hillsides. For instance, Elephanta Island and Sanjay Gandhi National Park, both situated virtually right in Mumbai, were scantly populated by tourists- maybe even more westerners than Indian families on vacation, too. This trend isn't universally true, as the religious pilgrimage sites can be quite full of people (and livestock) and the active temple areas are swarming with locals. So if I am feeling a little burned out by all the crowds, I am just gonna take a visit to a local cultural attraction and breathe a little sigh of relief.

Urban Livestock!

The amount of urban livestock is really impressive. There are literally cows, water buffaloes, and goats all over the place. Even in cities of 2-3 million people there are "farm" animals everywhere. To a lesser extent there are also dogs, cats, horses, donkeys, and sheep living amongst the city populous. Even on busy roads you will find cows laying in the street, in the middle of intersections just non-nonchalantly chewing the cud. Usually the cows, which are holy, have attendants to steer the steers out of harms way, but I guess sometimes those attendants take the day off. Or maybe some animals are too divine to have humans telling them where they can and cannot go. I am not sure, but there are a lot of these city dwelling cows and they find a lot of food in the rubbish and refuse that piles up in certain areas. It is not uncommon to see these animals chewing on cardboard or paper. Sometimes the cows' horns are painted in bright orange, red, or blue and occasionally you see an animal with rainbow painted horns that reminds me of a pack of Lifesavers. I don't know what it means, but I think it is a way to distinguish who owns them and to keep track of them based on the color patterns. As far as the goats, I think they are always owned by someone. I believe that they are not holy and at many restaurants you can have goat meat, commonly called mutton since British times. I think they provide a lot of milk for cheese and things too. At some point I will capture some footage and post it online to show you the zoo of animals let loose on the metropolitan streets. When you combine all the people, honking cars, noisy buses, street vendors, bicycles, motorcycles, auto-rickshaws, and animals it creates a rather surreal show!

Whew... things are getting a little tough.

Well, since leaving Mumbai things have gotten a little tougher. I am still having trouble getting a mobile phone and have given up on this. However, I have already spent about $75 to get a wireless card for my laptop so that I can surf the internet anytime anywhere. I have been trying now for over 2 weeks to get this thing working, and every damn time I talk to the bastard manager at the mobile company he says it will be activated in the morning. It is getting ridiculous and I would rather have him just tell me the truth then feed me some more crap about this and that.

I have now experienced some real train travel on India's rail system and you get what you pay for when you purchase a ticket. It seems that you pay one way or another, if you get a super cheap ticket you are gonna pay for it in inconvenience. I purchased a general class ticket and this was a total mistake. It was about a 6 hour ride to go maybe 150 miles or so (not so fast, lots of stops). But in general class you are not guaranteed a seat and it is utter mayhem at the train station when the train stops. There is a crush of humanity going both ways, off and on, all converging with luggage and babies and elbows at the small 2.5 ft wide doors into the rail car. Men are literally jumping on and off while the train is moving pretty fast, some people are waiting down on the ground on the opposite side of the platform so they can get at the doors where there will be less of a fight to get in. When the train stops, the poor women folk have to beat men about their heads to get off the train. And once you get on, don't expect any kind of a seat, just be hopeful you can have a tiny little spot to stand where you aren't getting in the way of the boys and girls selling chai tea, peanuts, and snacks or near some babies with stinky pants. When you do this for a few hours, inevitably someone near you will get up and you will have a nice warm seat. Several hours later, you arrive almost on time at your scheduled destination, but the whole event can be rather stressful. No longer will I purchase a general ticket to travel. The ticket cost about $3.75, but in hindsight, I paid a lot more for it.

I have been fighting off a cold for the last few days and now have the leaky bowels just a tad AND I have some kind of bugs from the cheap ass hotel rooms. I saw a few bed bugs at the place in Mumbai and I guess they got me worse than I initially expected. I am hopefull that it isn't scabies, although this ancient scourge is a fairly common problem in India.

I got some concrete dumped on me by some construction workers today as well. The idiots up on the roof of a 2 or 3 story building were pouring concrete and some got splashed over the edge and nailed me. I was upset, but it wasn't such a big deal as I walked about two more blocks, found a clothing store and got a polyester polo fashion-shirt for about $6.50.

I have over-estimated the infrastructure of India-this was a near-sighted miscalculation of mine. I thought that internet connectivity would be much more ubiquitous than it really is. I have had a tough time getting on the net, and when I do find some internet cafes, they quality of the computers is universally shitty. It is like surfing the net at 1996 speeds and on more than one occasion the internet connectivity has totally failed and everyone has had to go home for a while until the connection may or may not re-appear several hours later. I sure hope that this bureaucratic bastard gets my damn wireless card activated like he keeps promising so that I needn't worry about internet cafes anymore.

All in all things are OK. These are just some normal trials and tribulations of traveling abroad in a strange land. I have seen some amazing things in the past week and am enjoying the people watching too. I am going by bus tomorrow night to the large city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat state. I plan to spend a maybe 2 nights there before taking another overnight bus to the island town of Diu on the southern coast of Gujarat. The beaches are supposed to be nice, clean, and relaxing, but as I am quickly learning in Indian, I must lower my expectations to avoid disappointment.

More Buddhist Caves in Mumbai's Sanjay Gandhi National Park

In this 3 minute video I take you to some large and intricate caves found about 25 km north of Mumbai's city center. To be sure, the entire National Park is encircled by slums, apartments, factories, and bustling urban sprawl. Click the Image below to go to YouTube to watch the video.

(Click Image Above for Video)

There were reports that leopards within the park killed 20 people a few years ago. Finally, the wildlife management team did something by trapping and relocating several large cats. There are small little groupings of squatters all through the park, which is strange to see. You will be walking along and then all of a sudden there will be a grouping of 5-20 hut like houses together in an area with tons and tons of kids running around and lots of wild chickens. It is very interesting, but I presume that some of those little kids did look pretty tasty to some of those wild leopards. Its tough being a kid in India from what I can tell.

However, these caves were really pretty cool and were very well maintained. I think in the video that I said they may be 2000 years old, but in truth I think they are a lot closer to 600-1000 years old. People probably lived in them until the 40's though. Take care and enjoy the video!