Hello World Traveller!
Okay, our 1st official entry. We leave for the airport in 40min. We are off to Ireland-the homeland! We had a great time in San Diego partying with the Wrights. NYC has been fabulous, thanks Grouch!
Journal Entry Friday 7/10/09
I know we haven’t written in our blog for awhile. And forgive my typing skills for I am writing this in my bottom hostel bunk bed, it’s late and I’m in Amsterdam and there is a party going on in the hallway, I would join in but we just flew in from Scotland today and it‘s not really a party it‘s just two French guy‘s yelling something back and forth at each other.. But lets go back to the start of our journey over the great Atlantic.
It all started in Shannon, where we flew into the emerald Isle about six-thirty in the morning’ and got the car. Driving was a bit of a task because I had to drive on the opposite side of the road on the right side of the car. And on top of that the roads were very tight with tight curves through many areas. I just took my time and when someone began to creep up on me (which happened a lot) I just moved to the side of the road and let them pass. I was white knuckling it for the first couple days than I got used to it.
We headed toward the cliffs of Moher, they were a sight to see and the first because we got to them about eight-thirty. Kelly asked if I wanted to go and see anything else but I just wanted to get to Galway and rest, the reason being is we left NY at six-thirty pm and arrived in IRL at six-thirty am so I was a little jet lagged. We arrived into Galway around eleven-thirty and got a room at the hostel called Heyden’s. We walked around a bit and I had my first Guinness at the Furty Rabbit, We walked some more and had lunch at Richards and had a couple more pints. We were going to try and stay up til’ the evening to get into the time switch but after lunch and beers we knew that would’ve been impossible. So we got a nap in and then went out to check out Galway’s nightlife. We got a nice spot outside on the front patio of a bar that was packed and just watched as people went by, intoxicated. There were a lot of hen parties walkin’ around and a lot of younger kids roaming the streets and boozing it up. We didn’t get too trashed and ended up in bed fairly early.
June 21st Sunday (Summer Solstice)
We were up by eight-thirty ate breakfast and checked out by ten. We got on the net and reserved our Haggis bus tour in Scotland and we were on the road by eleven-thirty. We stopped in Clifton for some lunch about one-thirty and I had some of the best seafood chowder of my life at a place called Off the Square, I still think about it and can taste the chunks of salmon, mussels and shrimp rollin’ around on my palette. We then hiked around in Connemara Nat’l park there were some beautiful views. I was tempted to go back to Clifton and by a soft wool cover to put over Kelly in the park and performed sexual acts off the side of the path for the passersby to see. It was and image I had in my head while on our hike because of the random sheep that grazed the park. It was a humorous thought that I shared with her and we both got a good laugh out of it. We just played it out in our heads, Seamus and his family going for a nice hike to find me sexing it up with what appears to be someone dressed in sheeps clothing.
July 24th Friday
That’s what day I’m writing in this journey journal, We are now in India. I know we are not that good at keeping up with blogging but when we are using the computer it is usually to download stuff, email, face book or research how we are moving to our next destination. So I will highlight the journey thus far. In Ireland we had to lock-ins, that is when the bar closes and you drink for free because the owner is there and you can smoke. We met a very nice couple in Westport and had some good Craic. Their names were Ken and Tarah Henry and they were away for the weekend for their 18th wedding anniversary, We explained to them that we were heading north and they told us that if we were going through Sligo to call them.
We did just that and ended up staying at their house for two nights. They have three children Richard 19, Dillon 15, Lauren 13. They were all very nice. Dillon and Lauren took me fly-fishing. It was awesome even though I didn’t catch anything. We fished old school in a row boat on a small lake but the lake was filled with Algae and it was really sunny outside. Before we stayed with the Henry’s but after we met them in Westport we found some of Kelly’s relations in Crossmolina. After we left Westport we drove into Crossmolina and began to do some investigating as to where we may find her family. Her grandfather was born in Ireland in 1902 but left the country in the twenties and there is very little record as to exactly where he was born and raised. So we went to the towns resource department but they said it would cost forty Euro to look up info online and even then there was no guarantee. So Kelly asked the woman to look up Granahan in the phonebook and we found out it was spelled Granaghan in Ireland and there a few in the area. She showed us a map of Crossmolina and Kelly circled where she thought the farm might have been that her grandfather was born and raised on.
We drove around for awhile, through Derryhillagh and started going through smaller roads. We ended taking an educated guess turn and drove for about twenty minutes until we came to a dead end and realized that we were diving through a farm owners road. So we turned around and dodged some sheep in the road. Before we came out of the road we came upon the farmers house and he was just getting out of his tractor so I suggested to kell to go and ask him. We got out and asked him if he knew any Granahan’s and he replied that his Grandmother was a Granahan. It was such a great coincidence, he got on the phone with his sister because she knew more of the family history and she suggested we go see Joseph. The farmers name who we stopped to talk to was Joseph as well and we followed him to the other Joseph’s house who happened to be home and Kelly’s Grandfathers Nephew. He was about 78 with two hearing aids and still farmed the land. He sat us down and showed us old pictures of the family.
He was very demanding as to where we stood or sat to look at the pictures. Kelly and I had to be on either side of him while looking at them. Even though I didn’t know anyone in the pictures it was still interesting to see old pictures taken as late as the fifty’s in Ireland. He would say to us, “I’ll tell you what to do, you sit here and you sit here and we’ll look at some photo’s.” I sat where he told me because even though he was old and I didn’t know him from Adam or Steve he had a demeanor that you paid attention to and followed his instructions. He also had a farmhand working there at the time and he would say. “Boyoh!! Get the Paddy’s from the cabinet and three glasses.” the boy put the Paddy’s out and when he went for the glasses Joseph would shout at him, “Not those glasses boyooh, the nice ones from the other cabinet.” He was a nice man. We stayed for a couple hours and had some tea and bread then let him go because he had to attend a wake. That was a good memory of Ireland meeting Kelly’s relations.
Journey log entry Sunday August 2, 2009
I am continuing this journal of our journey in India, we are relaxing in our home stay after a nice sweaty walk down the fisherman’s market. It’s about four in the afternoon and we leave in an hour and half for our orientation into the volunteer work we are starting tomorrow. But before that let us go back to where we left off in Ireland. After meeting Kelly’s relations we drove to a small little town called Easkey. We decided to treat ourselves to a nice little B&B for honeymoon sake. It was a very nice place but we probably could’ve passed out by the river for free after our craic at the Fisherman’s Wier later that evening. After we dropped our bags we took a walk through town which lasted a total of five minutes, that’s how small it was. We ended up going into a Pub/Restaurant called The Fisherman’s Wier, which later on found out it was also a B&B. We had some fish n chips and then I went out back for a fag only to meet Richard. We bellied up to the bar with him and talked about everything from traveling, music and movies to politics and family. The night went on and we were feeling good after a couple two, three…..four to six pints of Guinness. The man tending bar, Vince, was also the owner. After everyone had left he locked the doors and we sat for a few more pints on the house. We smoked and laughed listening to the stories of Nick living in Jamaica “Actin’ the Maggot.” We got back to the B&B around two in the morning and passed out.
The next day we walked down the river til’ it met the ocean and came back. I ended up sitting on the edge of the river and painted the beautiful cobblestone bridge that the river flowed under. My parents have that one. Kelly went back to the Weir to eat and write in her journal. In the meantime I was being watched by a couple gents, when Kelly came over to me a couple hours later we had the opportunity and pleasure to meet the two. They were pretty well on their way and it was about two in the afternoon. They were a complete mess, missin’ teeth, hair disheveled and stinking of whiskey and beer. One of the gents who smoked a pipe kept making the other one sing for us. He had a decent voice if you understood what he was singing. We said thank you after about four or five songs, shook their hands and tried to leave. The only problem was the one who sang with no teeth wouldn’t let go of Kelly’s hand and kept saying “Yer a beguiler.” I think he was trying to say You’re a beautiful girl, lucky for me I understood the language of drunk and interjected after a solid minute of repetitive handshaking and slurring. I could’ve done it sooner but what’s the fun in that.
That night we drove into Sligoh and stayed at Ken and Tarah’s farmhouse for a couple days. Our journey continued to Donegal where we stayed for a night and a few nice people at a pub and listened to an Irish rock band, drank and danced. Derry was next on our stops but before that we went to the Giant’s Causeway, it was a beautiful site and I managed to get a quick sketch off. The town of Derry was nice, it had a lot of history and there was a street that was lined with about ten humungous mural’s of different scenes from Easter Sunday, if you don’t know the history google it. There were a lot of innocent lives lost and the murals depicted that along with many other scenes, it was humbling. We then hit up Belfast and found a hostel right away, little did we know it was not in the greatest of neighborhood’s so we stayed in that night and just surfed the web, wrote and played cards. On the corner across from the hostel was a bar we could’ve gone into but the only problem was it had a cage encasing the front door, so we opted against that idea. The guys that came out of the bar to smoke we’re loud and hard to understand, except when they swore. When they smoked outside the bar they still remained in the cage, it was something to see. When I was outside having a smoke later in the evening some guy tried to bring a girl in the bar with him and caught a lot of shit for it. He finally told one of the chap’s to go get the owner and they were eventually let in.
We got outta Belfast as fast as we got into it. Before we hit up Belfast we went to Slieve League and then to the rope bridge which is about forty-feet long and four or five stories above the ocean. It connects to a very tall and small rock island that jets up from the ocean floor. The only bad thing about crossing it is you had to cross again to get back to the mainland, I felt like India Jones in Temple of Doom, if you haven’t seen that one your missing out.
Journal Entry Tuesday, August 3rd 2009
We began heading south and bypassed Dublin because after we dropped the car back off in Shannon we took a bus to Dublin and hung out there for a couple days before flying out. So we ended up in Kilarney and found a nice hostel to stay at. We went out for a couple drinks, as it always goes, and ended up staying out til’ about five in the morn’. We hit up a bar that was supposedly haunted and had a witch in it. The witch was chillin’ in the fireplace. She was a mannequin, but still scary. After listening to the live music Kel n I found our way downstairs into the smoking area. I noticed a couple from our hostel and invited them to join us. They were from Canada, what gave it away was the guys huge and bright hockey jersey he was wearing with pride. Later in the evening he made a remark about American’s being loud and throughout the evening he became loud. TOOL BOX. Anyway we ended up closing that place and found a late night bar, it was packed and people we’re trying to dance to Jai-Ho. That’s the song from Slum dog it was very popular. The only good thing the Can add did that night was finding a quieter bar upstairs so we sat up there and got one more before they closed. After an hour or so the owner showed up. His name was John Carrigan and he was a major character. Tall, long face with a gouge taken out of his ear and he didn’t stop telling stories of his travels to America and his trials and tribulations in Ireland. It was fine with me because we experienced our second lock in.
That’s right, he locked the bar, we began smoking and got our drinks for free the rest of the night. The Can Add finally asked him what happened to his ear and we got a forty-five minute story that ended up with him in a bar fight in NY and a guy bit it off…..I think. It was very vague and hard to understand but I would not want to be in a fight with this bloak because his mitt’s were the size of mallet’s. John also managed to get the Can Adds jersey off of him to hang in his bar. It was a good time until we started walking back to the hostel and the Can Add got real loud and annoying, he kept saying “I bet that guy was part of the IRA, holy shit we hung out with an IRA member.” Those aren’t letters used aloud in Ireland and when they are it’s during an intimate and quieter manner, DUESCHE PIPE. We offered them a ride South earlier in the night and after that display we ditched them the next morning and headed to Kinsale. It was a beautiful little harbor town that we walked in at night, very charming.
We then headed to Killarney for our last night with the car, I can’t remember what happened there or maybe nothing really exciting did. We dropped the car off the next day at the Shannon airport and caught a bus to Dublin. That was pretty cool, we hit up the Guinness brewery, Jameson distillery and Temple Bar. That is an area strictly for tourists but we went to a couple bars anyway because that’s exactly what we were. The second bar we went to was Kelly’s call, she was greeted by someone from Equador on the street who suggested we go upstairs to the bar she was representing. Because she sounded like my friend Karla we went up. It wasn’t fifteen minutes in the place before I noticed my cousin Craig walk in. I said to Kelly “Holy Shit it’s Craig.” When I said Craig she didn’t know who I was referring to because we met so many random people already. I made sure he didn’t see me and when he walked up to the bar to get a drink I made sure to make his path obstructed with my back to him, every time he tried to get around me I would move in front of him. I then turned around and he looked as surprised as I did when he walked in. We hugged and he introduced me to his friend from Australia. We went to the next level upstairs and had a couple drinks, it was kind of surreal because I kept reminding myself we were in Ireland and not some bar in Chicago.
We left Ireland the next day with great stories and wonderful memories, it is a welcoming country and everyone was always havin’’ some good craic. We flew into Scotland the next day which just happened to be the fourth of July and one of the workers at the hostel we stayed at just happened to be American from Philly. He had a BBQ that day and Kel n I enjoyed American beers and Scotland burger’s on the patio. The American’s name was Kyler and he was the only other American besides us in the joint. We sat around and talked about the states then he gave us the low down of Edinborough. IT is a really great city and the people from Scotland are just as welcoming as Ireland. The next day I went on a free three hour walking tour of the city. IT was very entertaining and informative. There are many stories to be told there and I would not be able to do the stories justice so you’ll have to check it out for yourselves. Later that night Kel n I went and got a 2 liter of cider and some pizza, then went back to the hostel to eat and drink. There was a lot of people in the common area and it was a huge hostel so it ended up being a nice little party.
I can’t remember if it was the next day or the day after but we started our three day Haggis tour early in the morning. It was two nights and three days. The first castle we went to had a couple hairy koos outside of it. Those things are the bomb diggity and that’s when I realized where my best friend Brian Hurley came from, it wasn’t from Tom and Barb and he will forever be known in my heart as a Hurley Koo. We went to Loch ness after that, it was a big lake with a big story behind it. Our guide Kyle was a young Scot with a flair for storytelling and a great sense of humor. At one point during the tour we we’re going through a town and Kyle said that it was known for the ugliest people in Scotland which he referred to as Munter’s. He instructed us to shout out Munter when we saw one from the bus, it was cruel but entertaining enough to keep us occupied. That night Kel n I hit up one of the two pubs open in town, it was a small town and the pub was a five minute walk from our hostel. The bartender busted out the bagpipes for a song and put them away quickly because he said the people sleeping upstairs might complain. It was about one in the morning so I could understand his reasoning.
The next day we went to the Isle of Sky, it was absolutely magnificent. We stopped at many places to take pictures and Kyle told us stories of the Jack-o-bites who defended their land from the British for many centuries. They we’re the hardest to fight because they knew the highlands so well. But the life of a Jack-o-bite was not a pleasant one, the living conditions were terrible and the weather was even worse during the winter month’s. If you were a male you were born and raised to fight and die, the life expectancy was not very high, from the stories told it was hard ass livin’. That night the tour guides hosted a pub quiz at the hostel and both bus tours we’re involved. Our team consisted of Kel n I, two Aussies and a Canadian. We won the quiz part, Kelly was a rock star. There was a part of the contest for who can tell the raunchiest joke, we won that as well. I told the one about the little girl walking into the bathroom while her dad was in the shower and asked when she was going to get one of those between her legs to his reply, in about fifteen minutes when your mother goes to work. Hey I’m not condoning that kind of behavior I just came up with the raunchiest joke. Then we had a dance off at the end of the game and yours truly was nominated from our team. The first part was to dance to the Napoleon Dynamite song and luckily I’ve seen that movie enough times to know some of his sweet moves. I made it to the next round in which I pulled off my Micheal Jackson move to win it (he had just pasted so it was a crowd pleaser. The third round I pulled out all the tricks, I even got up on a table and took my shirt off, waving around like a crazed Scotsman riding a Hairy Koo. Needless to say we one the overall contest and I was forever known as Dancin’ Dan Doyle on the trip……in my own mind.
We left the next day to go back to Edinborough and stopped at the William Wallace Museum, it was pretty huge and they set it up on top of the peak where her scouted the first castle he sacked, Sterling Castle that made the tide turn and people started believing in him and joining his cause to kick out the English. The Scotts and the Irish have no problem speaking aloud about their dislike of the English and what they have done to their countries. Even before the tour started Kyle asked and warned that if anyone was English he apologized in advance for the bashing. We got back to our hostel we stayed at before the tour for our last night in Scotland. The next day we got on a plane for Amsterdam, that’s when we took a little bump in the road. Kelly got a head and chest cold, it was Thursday and we were there til’ Mon, with the exception of visiting her friend Noe in Belgium. I went out that night and picked up some weed, rolled a joint and smoked it as I walked the street’s and took some photo’s. I didn’t stay out too late because Kelly was still in the hostel feeling like garbage. The hostel would’ve been great if she felt good because we we’re right in the middle of everything. Coffee shop’s, the red light district and a lot of bar’s. In fact our hostels common area was a bar and it was packed on Thursday night, trying to get through the crowd of about fifteen feet took me ten minutes, it was my fault though because I was following a couple guys from Georgia and their southern hospitality didn’t meld well with pushing through a crowd. They just kept waiting for an opening and there was none so I just ended up jumping in front of them and pushing through, the Chicago way, a hand on the person whom I was passing with a slight push and an excuse me to top it off, worked like a charm. I got into the room and Kelly was all hunkered into her bed coughing away, I felt bad but there was nothing I could do but ask her if she needed anything and get it for her.
The other good thing about that hostel was they had a better breakfast than any of the hostel’s we stayed at thus far. Three different types of cereal, fruit and bread, meat and cheese to make sandwiches with. We stocked up for lunch after we had our fill of breakfast. Kel was still feeling a bit under the weather and suggested I go to the Van Gogh Museum without her and so I did. It was kind of nice to be on my own for the first time since our trip. I don’t mean alone, because I’ve been alone many of times, I mean navigating and following the map, taking a route that didn’t entail stopping to decide which way to go, I just went. I would have liked Kelly to be there but I got a little taste of what it is like being on my own for a bit and finding my way. It was then that I realized how many decisions needed to be made when traveling with someone. At almost every corner, any time schedule, what means of transportation to take, where to eat. All of these things must be taken in to consideration when having a travel partner but that day was mine and the Van Gogh Museum was absolutely inspiring. They had almost everything he’s ever done with the exception of some of his more famous work, I’m sure that stuff goes on tour regularly. It took me about three hours to go through his gallery because I studied every piece carefully and than went back to my favorites. I even snuck a picture off inside the museum and was immediately approached by security with a strong wave of the finger.
I left there totally and completely full, not my stomach but my mind, it was as if my eyes had swallowed four hundred images and they were swimming around my head like a school of piranha’s during a feeding frenzy. It was exhilarating, so I just found the closest park and sat down to eat a piece of fruit that I had smuggled out of breakfast and just relaxed. After that I found my way to the Anne Frank Museum but the line was really long and it was getting close to dinner time so I went back to the hostel to see if Kel wanted to get something to eat, which she did so we went out for a short walk and some dinner. I dropped her off at the hostel after dinner and went for a walk only to stumble onto the Red Light District. It was an interesting scene, ladies in their undergarments opening the door to their rooms whispering things like “I need you, I want you, get in her and fuck my brains out.” That one I stopped and thought about…..just kidding, and I know what you must be thinking, yea right you “stumbled” upon it, but in all honesty I did. It wasn’t to hard, a couple left turns from our hostel and it was right there. I didn’t go further into the smaller street’s of the district because I felt a little awkward. Sure I’ve been to strip clubs and bachelor parties before but this was way different, women we’re out right offering sexual acts and there were many people walking around along side or passing you by. IT was kind of like trying to by a Playboy for the first time at a convenience store and there was an old lady behind you in line. You’re a little embarrassed but you get it anyway and rush out of the store. Except I didn’t get anything I just kind of rushed out of there, It was my first time through the area and I was by myself. If I we’re with someone to share the experience I probably would have been a little more relaxed.
Journal Entry Friday, August 7th 2009
The next day we got up and checked out of our hostel for the night. We we’re headed to Belgium to visit with Kelly’s friend Noë. I had now caught the head and chest flu that Kelly had for the past two days and it poured while we walked to the train station. It was a two and a half hour to Brussels and Noe met us at the train station. It wasn’t that far to their house so we walked there. Noe, her husband Sabastion and their two kids, one son Julian four years of age and their daughter Willow was two, lived in a nice sized and open loft in Brussels. Their son spoke three languages, Dutch because of the school, German because of Sabastion and English because of Noe, he was already smarter than I with a thirty-one year difference. We walked to a nice square and drank really good Belgium beer. I only had a couple because I was still under the weather, traveling is not fun sick so I sustained from having a lot to drink. I wish I could’ve said the same for Kelly because after a couple hours Sebastion and I went back to their place with the kids while Noe and Kelly stayed out for awhile longer. I can’t blame her for trying because she was feeling better and hasn’t seen Noe in about three years. Their neighbor let us stay at his place because he wasn’t using it for the weekend. Their neighbor was a fifty year old bachelor with a tight pad that he only used as a little get away.
It was a very modern loft with a clean look. Stainless steel kitchen, open spaces, cool Euro furniture and little clutter. His bathroom was the best he had a double sided mirror a jet stream bath and a steam shower. When Bastion and I got back to the joint I went right to the steam shower to try and get all the shit outta my system. It worked to an extent but didn’t clear me out completely, regardless it was great to sit in there and relax. I went back into Noe and Sebastion’s place just as he put the kids to bed. He rolled a Euro joint (with tobacco) and we sat out on their patio and talked about music, politics and movie’s, he is a very intellectual person but not overbearing or in a way to intimidate or control a conversation. We ordered some Thai and it arrived a little bit after the girls did. We left the next day back to Amsterdam and both of us still feeling like shit. We got into Amsterdam in the early evening, dropped our stuff off, got something to eat and headed back to the hostel. On our return after having a great bowl of chicken noodle soup we ran into the couple that we shared our room with before Brussels. I gave him the remaining weed that I had to hold onto because I didn’t want to travel with it. They were both from Northern Cali and in their early twenties. When we first arrived into our room with them the usual traveling questions ensued? Where are you from? Where have you been? Where are you going? After we told them of our travels thus far, with a full explanation of our So Cal party with Kelly’s family the girl mention that she hated people from So Cal. Kel n I both looked at her like, didn’t we just get done telling you that we were there visiting Kelly’s family. I think she then noticed what she had said and quickly stated that she didn’t like people her age from So Cal. Oh yea that made it much better, whatever, they were young and she was kind of flighty.
The night we got back and I mentioned my weed he said that he accidentally threw it out. Right, I would have been fine if he told me the truth, besides I told him to help himself anyway and there wasn’t much in there. Oh well, I could always get more and that’s what I did the next day after Kel n I walked around during the day. I just bought a joint and we decided to go see Bruno because we still didn’t feel well. We smoked and hit up the movies, Bruno was exactly what wee needed, laughter always makes you feel better. After Bruno we snuck into The Hangover, which was another good comedy then we went back to the hostel and tried to get a good night sleep before our flight to London. We woke up the next day, had breakfast, checked out and took a train to the airport. When we landed in London both of us began to feel better, with the exception of still coughing up some flem balls we we’re on the tail end of the flu.
London was pretty cool but we only spent two nights there. All their museums were free so we hit them up the next day. The British Museum which held an enormous amounts of sculptures and artifacts from the Egyptians to the Greeks and Romans and even from North America, it is a very extensive collections. Then we hit the National Gallery where they have another extensive collection of paintings and artwork. When you go into places this enormous you must have an idea of what you want to see and see it or else you could spend all day there. After that we walked past Big Ben and Parliament where I thought to myself Big Deal, it’s a tower with a clock on it. The only thing I enjoyed about it is that is the roundabout where Chevy Chase got caught up in and kept saying “look kids, Big Ben, Parliament” from National Lampoon’s European Vacation. We then headed to the London Eye, it’s a gigantic ferris wheel which was a descent engineering feat while standing under it but what we came upon when walking up to it completely overshadowed this thing that cast a huge shadow on us. There was an exhibit going on in the building across from the eye and it was Salvador Dali. There where three large statues outside of the building from his surreal influence, an elephant on stilts, a woman’s torso with drawers and the infamous clock.
I got chills because someone in Scotland had mentioned that his exhibit was in London but I completely forgot until we walked up on these three statues. Now I’m not a huge fan of his…until now, but I had to go in anyway. This one wasn’t free because it was an independent show that traveled but I got in for eight pounds because of my student discount, Kelly opted not to go which I wish she hadn’t. I told her that I don’t know how long I’ll be but I’d meet her out in front in at least two hours. The exhibit was awesome, they didn’t have any of his paintings, it was all sculptures, outfits and illustrations that he had created. The illustrations were from books by surrealists artists and his sculptures were absolutely beautiful. Even though photography was prohibited I still got off a couple shots with my moms 35mm with black and white film, I hope they turn out. At the end of the exhibit was a whole gallery dedicated to his illustrations of the bible, every piece was astounding and imaginative. It was such a great experience for me because I had never seen any of the pieces on display. I’m still trying to take it in, not to mention the Van Gogh Museum and catching an exhibit of Francis Bacon at the Met in NY. I consider myself very lucky and privilege to see these great artists on my journey.
After the Salvador Exhibit, Kel n I walked up the English Channel, popped into the TATE Modern before it closed to see more artwork. We got to see a lot of Abstract Expressionists, more Surrealist work and some more modern works, it was a great day. We made our way back to our hostel via Tower Bridge but couldn’t go to the top because it was closed, but before that we hit up a cheesy museum called The Clink. It is London’s oldest prison, filled with torture devices and stories of who was put in prison and for what. It also had mannequin’s throughout the Museum, it was total cheese but fun to go through. The next day we checked out, left our bags at the hostel and went to the Covent Garden, it’s a big market filled with street entertainer’s. Kel n I got into a bit of an argument on the way there which I cant even remember what it was about and agreed to split up for the day. We did agree on something, to meet back at the hostel at a specific time. We met later after the both us had some me time and left for the train. We got to the airport with enough time to check our bags and get something to eat. It was on to the true unknown, the start of our real journey and the test of ourselves and each other it was our flight to India and neither of us knew what our future would hold.
Journal Entry Tuesday August 11th 2009
O.K. I’m almost caught up with the present time of our travels. I’m only three weeks behind so that means we got into India on Friday the 17th of July, Monsoon season is open for business. After we landed we made sure to get a pre-paid taxi. The reason for this is that we have heard horror stories of taxi’s driving people around for longer than the time should be and charging extra. They have also dropped people off in bad neighborhoods and at their friends hotels so they can make more money when you ask them to take you somewhere else. When you get a pre-paid taxi the ticket is purchased within the airport and you bring the ticket to a specific cab waiting outside. When I stepped out of the airport I got a blast of heat to my body that I only experienced while at Las Vegas in June. We found the cab fairly easy but on the way we were asked a handful of times by different men if we needed a cab
We got into our cab with no A/C and before we got out of the airport ground the cabbie stopped at a little shack and handed a person the ticket we gave to him. Later I found out that the gentleman he showed our ticket was a police officer, this way the cop knows where the cab is going and when he is expected back. This way we cannot be taken for a ride. The ride took a total of two and a half hours, our driver didn’t speak any English and had a hard time finding our hotel. He got out of the cab to ask people where our hotel was. Let me backtrack for a second. Once we got out of the airports grounds I thought myself, “Holy Fucking Shit, were in India..” The first road we turned down was lined with shacks, garbage, people and dogs. The small coming into the cab was that of rotting garbage and human waste that sat in the sun and baked into the air. We could not roll the windows up because it was boiling in the cab already and it would do us no good if we could because the cab driver had his rolled down.
The scene changed as we got closer to the city, it still seemed a bit run down but being in India for three weeks now we became use to it. We we’re headed for an area called Church Gate and it was close to the Gaters of India and the Taj Hotel, but the cab driver still didn’t know where he was going. Mumbai was mobbed with cars, people, auto rickshaws, motorcycles, mopeds, bikes and an occasional cow standing between two cars. There was no real orderly fashion to how the traffic flowed, there were lines in the road but no one paid attention to them and every vehicle was inches away from the next. People crossed where they could and I can’t count how many times I clenched my fist hand closed my eyes for fear of hitting something or someone. At one point during our ride we handed the cab driver a piece of paper with the name of the hotel and the address, he looked at it upside down, it’s pretty amusing in hindsight but at the moment we were a bit nervous. You have to also keep in mind that people lived this way everyday and we were experiencing this for the first time.
We eventually found our hotel, Kelly and I checked right into it and did not feel the urge to go anywhere. One, it was a ten hour flight. Two, it was a pretty unnerving two and a half hour cab ride and three we were a long way from home in a completely alien part of the world. The next day we walked to the train station and reserved tickets for an overnight train to Goa. While we we’re looking for the tourist counter a man walked up to us and asked where we were going. We told him and he said that the train was already booked but we could buy a bus ticket from him. I had no intention of going along with his suggestion but talked to him about it anyway and the whole time Kelly was grabbing my arm and repeating to the man no thanks. He did direct us to the tourist counter though which was on the second floor of the station in an air conditioned room, it felt so nice to feel the cool air on my sweat ridden forehead.
We reserved our tickets and caught a taxi to the Gates of India, it wasn’t anything that great to observe but I’m sure there’s some real nice history behind why it was there. It did stand in front of the Arabian Sea and we saw our first white person since we landed in Mumbai. It is an eye-opening experience to be a minority, sure I’ve walked through neighborhoods or area’s of Chicago where I was a minority but never a whole city, not to mention a whole country. I’ve always thought of myself as an equal rights advocate and this experience justified my way of thinking. Almost everyone stared at us, some stared because they haven’t seen to many white people up close but they all seen Rupees (Indian Currency) when they fixed their eyes upon us. We walked around the Taj Hotel which was right across the street from the Gates. It was under heavy security and Kelly had mentioned that it was bombed about a year ago and there was another bombing in Jakarta that week.
We then walked around to the back of it and down a couple streets to find something to eat. We came upon a nice place Called Leapol’s and had lunch, our first Indian meal and it was very good, the Nan was our favorite and any time we see it on a menu it’s ordered. Most places won’t serve it until after seven pm though. It’s a type of bread that’s grilled with different toppings, butter, garlic, spinach, and different types of cheese. We got the butter and garlic with our meal. After lunch we walked down a street that ran along side the restaurant because it was a market street. I was immediately met by a man who began to wrap a colored yarn around my wrist and said it was for good luck, he then touched my forehead with a red powder that the Hindu sport for religious reasons then he handed me some candy. This all happened within seconds, then he did the same to Kelly he was quick, and even quicker to ask for a donation. I gave him an American dollar which is the equivalent to forty rupees, he then went to Kelly for a donation which she responded, “But I didn’t even want this,” and handed his yarn back. He followed us for a bit, unhappy with my donation and eventually gave up on us. We went back to the Taj, it was about four in the afternoon and our train didn’t leave until eleven, so needless to say we had some time to kill and still pretty intimidated by the hectic city.
Kelly wanted to go inside because she heard it was very pristine and they had a lot of high end shops inside, she was right. We had to go through metal detectors to get in and they sent our bags through an x-ray machine as well. While inside we found out that Hilary Clinton was staying there while visiting to build better relations with India. We walked around the hotel and checked out the shops, Kelly’s shopping intuition was dead-on, it was very high end and the hotel itself was beautiful. What a juxtaposition to come from the outside where it was hot, hectic and you were always on your guard to a place that was cool, quiet and soothing. We ended up sitting in the lounge trying to decide what to do next and neither of us wanted to go anywhere just yet, so we chilled, literally
After about twenty minutes Kelly said that she could fall asleep right there, I told her to go ahead and I would stay awake and read or sketch. That didn’t happen though because I dozed off about ten minutes after her. I tried to make it look like I was reading with a book in my lap but it didn’t work. It couldn’t have been to long before someone from the hotel came up to me and tapped me on the shoulder. I came to and he told me that they can’t have people sleeping in the lounge and then he suggested we go to our room. I told him that we had already checked out and we we’re waiting to go to the train station and it dint leave for another six or seven hours. He asked what room number we where in and I then came clean by saying “Oh, no we didn’t check out of this hotel, we checked out of another.” He looked a little confused and said “You mean you’re not staying here.” I nodded and said “Yes that’s correct.” He then told us that we could go into another room and rest but our gig was up and I felt bad for trying to give him the run around so we left.
We walked back to our hotel around six and asked if we could wait there until ten, they put us in a room with our bags. The room contained a bed, couch and a television. It was very nice of them and we stayed there until ten then jumped in a cab to the train station, we could’ve walked but it was late and we didn’t feel like carrying our bags for a fifteen minute walk through crazy Mumbai. We found our platform after many questions and many back and forth’s to different platforms, got on our train and found our car. We reserved a three A/C car which meant that it contained eight sleepers with air. Hat was key for our fist train ride. We still haven’t gotten used to the heat. The bags on our backs felt about five pounds heavier because of all the moisture in the air. I know five pounds doesn’t sound like much of a problem but we has two packs. Each big bags weighed in anywhere between twenty-five to thirty pounds and our small bags are probably around ten. The bags along with our soggy bones were relieved when we felt that first cool chill run through us as we opened the air-condition train car.
There was quite a ruckus happening as our train was pulling into the station, nothing dangerous, just a shit load of Indians practically trampling, fighting and pushing each other to get on the train. I thought to myself, ‘Oh no, we gotta fight for our seat. I then realized that none of them were trying to get into our specific car, the sweet Three A/C. How it works is that you have a two A/C car, which means only six beds, three A/C has eight, sleeper car which has eight beds to a car but no A/C. Then there’s the first come first serve basis in the sitting car. That is when the race to the finish begins. Later I was told by Kelly who read about it in a book she was reading called Shantaram. It’s about a an escaped prisoner from Australia who ends up in Mumbai and get himself into all kinds-o-shit there. In the book people are throwing elbows and tripping and pulling off the train just to get a seat first, so I guess you got to be quick. And the craziest thing about it it’s the one time when all bets are off. It doesn’t matter if your old or young these people want their seats and for good reason. The ones who don’t are crammed like sardines across every square inch of the floor. A couple of Aussie’s Amanda and Doug did it and barely got on the train let alone get a seat, but they did manage to squeeze into a seat on the floor where they became very familiar with the eight Indians squeezed in around them for eight hours.
Our train ride was interesting, only because of the two young French people that we’re in our cab and the fact that they’re pretty tight. There are about forty to fifty beds in the Three A/C car and the bed was about two inches too short for me. Which brought more amusement when I had to climb to the top berth, which also had a domed roof because it was one of the two parallel to the way the train was running. Kelly had a berth on the top as well but her bed was a group of six in our tiny apartment for the night. Since it was the first train ride.
Journal Entry Aug, 2009
I am in Jaipur India right now eleven-twenty an the A.M. and I am sitting in a nice patio off of our room in a very nice place that Kelly suggested. Its been a pretty crazy week since we left Kerala in old cochin where we helped the sisterhood of Cottallengo. I know I’ve jumped ahead of myself but don’t worry I’ll get back to the train with the French kid’s because they were like cartoon character’s. Also, I know that if you are still reading this you are Bored out of yer’ Gored right now so this is a little trick to keep you interested in the French couple. Anyway back to this morning. I woke up today and Kelly came out of the bathroom, probably on her third dump of the morning. She’ got a good thing going there with regularity I myself are on the three day plan, but every third day it’s like the great Ganesh was praised me with the urge to poop. She comes out of the bathroom, the lights are on because we were getting ready to get some breakfast.
I open my eyes as she is getting closer to the bed I was hit with her pure beauty. I think Kelly is beautiful all the time. When she’ all sweaty and smelly, which here in India, is just about thirteen hours a day….of sweating time she’s pretty much smelly all the time. When she’ sleeping or awake, even when she get’s terrified of a little white bunny and sticks her newly grown fingernail’s into her back. She hasn’t bitten them since we got her because now matter how hard you try there’s always dirt under them. For every reason she is a beautiful human being. But sometimes there are moments when I look at her and I can see her truest and beautiful soul, and this morning was one of those times. It lasted for a total of a few seconds but then she turned to get something in her bag and it was gone. The only thing I could do was call her name and think of something to ask her with hopes of seeing that a little bit longer. She turned to me and responded “What’s up?” she said faster than I could think of a question to ask her and said, “Want to get some breakfast?” Which is something we already decided on. Just like that it was over but it’s still fresh in my mind so I wanted to put it down. Normally I only write those types of things in my journal, that and my dreams and believe me Kelly is board and worried enough from me telling her about my dreams everyday I would not put anyone who is still reading this journal through that.
So let me just tell you about our crazy week then we’ll get back to the Frencheez. It is now …..what day is it? Oh yea it is Saturday, I only know that because yesterday The Taj Mahal is closed on Friday, and guess where went yesterday? That’s right Agra, to see the Taj Mahal! We didn’t know it was closed when we booked the tickets before leaving Kerala a week from tonight. We had met this guy Herman during our stay in Kochi, he was a very nice man who had helped us book the rest of our train tickets for the duration of our time India, which he did. I met him through the company we we’re volunteering for. He owned a home stay that other volunteers from the group stayed. He got us around and had Kelly and I for tea, we met his family, they were all very nice. But let me finish this last week before we talk about Herman, after the Fren-cheez.
So we leave Saturday night for Varanasi from Kerala, it’s a fifty-four hour train ride. We got on the train around ten-thirty in the P.M. and got our shit in order. We had already put in thirty hours of train time so we were kinda pros at it. You get in find your car space number than your berth number. After that you get a secure spot for your big bag underneath one of the bottom berths and take a seat. We were pretty lucky because the guys that we shared our apartment for three nights were very nice Indian travelers. It was a father and son who couldn’t be more opposite. The father had a long grey full beard and wore a dhoti (it’s a kind of bottom wrap for the male) and a button up shirt. The son was in Dockers and a polo, he was a doctor and the father looked like he traveled with the Grateful Dead. The father was always smiling and we shared snacks with him. The son was mostly straight faced and usually meditating or reading. Those two sat and slept across from us. Kel n I had the bottom and middle births on one side and they had the others. The top two berths births were occupied with a young man in his mid-twenties and didn’t talk much and the man above the father and son was an older gentleman who ran tours around India and Nepal. We had a conversation about the sights and what to do in Nepal, I don’t remember anything he said to me.
We lucked out because most guys don’t say anything and blatantly just stare at Kelly, they stare at me too but not for as long. It’s funny the amount of times we get stared at. I’m not talk about the type of staring that you feel out of the corner of your eye, then when you turn to look at the person they look away as soon as your eyes meet. Not the Indians, you can look right back into their eyes and they just keep staring. People riding their bikes or walking past us just lock you into their vision and do not let you out until a couple seconds after they pass you. At first I was thinking’ to myself ’Who the fuck does this bitch think he’s starin’ down?’ Cause back in the states if you stare down someone like that for long enough you better hit first. That sounds like something my buddy Hurley would say back in his day. After awhile I started smiling at them just as we passed, and they smiled back. Whether they we’re speeding by on a bike through the most hectic traffic or strolling past, most of them smiled and gave you the notorious Indian head wobble. This is something that I’ve been trying to master for the last four weeks here. It’s a side to side up and down motion. It’s kinda confusing when your talkin’ business with them cuz you don’t know if their agreeing or disagreeing on a price.
The ones that did smile had great big smiles and most of them as a whole had the biggest smiles I’ve ever seen. It was kind of a relief to know that most of them where just curious and don’t really see to many Westerners. It’s funny how cultures clash and mix your brain up, for instance the boys and young men in this country hold hands, walk with their hands over each others shoulders and show affection. If you treid to do that back home with your friend you’d get an ass beaten or constantly berated by your peers. The first time I saw it I thought ‘You fuckin’ homos why the hell don’t you do that in the privacy of your own home.’ I’m kidding, I joke cuz it’s funny. My first thought was how nice it was that India was so nonchalant about homosexuality. A couple days into the trip I found out that it was just a sign of affection and It took me about a week after that to grasp that concept when I witnessed it. But now all I do is question my culture.
I’m not disagreeing with it, I just have question’s about it. Shit I like showing affection toward my friends and family, it’s usually done with a really good and funny insult, the funnier the insult the more love is shown. I’m sure there are people who don’t agree with the tough love mentality but in my minute world of the world, on the South Side of Chicago it’s considered a good practice of faith. Sorry about that little rant and I’ll try to keep those train of thoughts to my journal. But after clocking in over hundred miles of accumulated train time in India as of yesterday, seventy-three of those being this past week. My thoughts can’t help but to get a little derailed and if I‘m on a roll I just gotta keep on typing or I‘ll lose that train. O.K. I’m dunz with the punz. We get into Varanasi on Tuesday at about five-forty in the morning and right when we get off the train there is a taxi driver asking us where we need to go. Kelly told him and we looked up the price of that area at the pre-paid taxi stand. It wasn’t open yet but they had the rates posted. HE said he knew where the place was that we had reservations at and we followed him to his car. On the way we had to step up on to a concrete platform in the middle of the parking lot.
It was about two or three feet up and it took a bit to step up with our bags after not moving your legs often for about two and a half days. Coming off the platform was a little trickier, I stepped down and turned around to help Kel down. I think she misjudged the height, plus it was still dusk and she came down on one foot hard and her bags set her in motion. I had only one of her hands and she almost took a knee but she stopped midway down and straightened herself back up, my powerful amazon women escaped from a major embarrassing scene and possible injury. So we drive for about fifteen minutes past the early morning hustle and bustle of the markets outside of the train station and then on through the maddening traffic. It was about a quarter to six in the morning and the place was jumpin’. He pulls the car over and tells us we have to walk about five minutes to the hotel. We grabbed our bags and the taxi driver leads the way. As Kelly said later that day, the walk from the cab to the hotel was surreal. We where still a little groggy, that and the deep purple glow of the sky where the day met the night added to the effect.
We walked down very narrow roads, trying to avoid piles of dung and squeezing past cows. Through many turns and about four minutes into the walk which seemed like twenty I hear Kelly give out one of her alert sounds. She’s got several and I’ve come to know them well. This wasn’t a frantic, high pitched, short noise, like when she realizes a butterfly is too close to her and jumps out of her seat. This was a longer and slower moan, like your anticipating something bad to happen. I turned around to look at her and noticed she was looking up, I turned around to look up and find a whole shit load of monkeys walking across the edges of the buildings maybe on or two stories above. They were walking in the same direction as we were and they were on both sides of us. It was like something out of a western, when the American Indians would walk above the cliffs of a narrow valley while the white man walked blind into their trap. We we’re the white man, literally and figuratively except we knew they were there and they didn’t have an array of arrows pointing at us.
I heard Kelly’s voice, closer to me this time in a now worried manner, “Where is this place?” Just then we took a left and about fifteen feet down we walked into the hotel. We greeted the older man at the counter who looked as if he had just woken up. Kelly mentioned our reservation and he said he didn’t have one but he had rooms to look at. We checked them out and took one with A/C and a T.V. for six-hundred Rupees a night which equals to about twelve American. He explained that the room would be ready in a bout twenty minutes and suggested that we could go upstairs on the rooftop, have some chai and wait. We took him up on the offer and left our big bags in a storage room because the roof was four stories up with no elevator. When we got up there I realized why the monkeys were walking in our direction. The tree that stood next to our hotel had some really nice berries growing on it. Part of the canopy of the tree hung over the rooftop so if you walked up top the edge of it you were practically in the tree itself. I was overcome with excitement and couldn’t wipe the big grin off my face. It was so cool for me but for Kelly, not so much.
As we sat at the furthest table from the monkey tree we enjoyed our delicious chai and very happy to be somewhere other than a train. I would have said somewhere relaxing but about half way through our chai something happened so terrifying that words cannot describe. Kelly noticed it first and jumped in her seat with fright, just as a turned around it was coming around the corner and at us. It was the cutest little bunny rabbit all white with a little cute nose and big pointy ears. Kelly pulled her feet up and clenched her hands on the arm chair, I couldn’t help but to be amused and start to laugh. “Baullz” I said calmly, “It’s a domesticated bunny, what’s the matter.” She only responded in short irritated moans while the bunny inspected under our tables and chairs. I convinced her to just put her feet down and that it would bother her. This lasted all but a minute until the bunny brushed up against her. She shot up out of her seat like there was a sale at H&M. She took two steps away from the table and asked if we could leave.
The bunny hopped over to her in all his cuteness and she let out a little shriek, the the little cuty started circling her. He just kept going around her in circles and became more frantic as she shuffled closer to me. “Can we go?” she asked in a very demanding manner and I could tell she was on the verge of tears. My insensitive and non-relating ass couldn’t help but to laugh, not at her so much but the absurdity of the situation. She then told her that I was suppose to protect her. She was right because I told her before we started this trip that I will do everything in my power to make sure nothing happens to her, I know it’s not a lot of power when you think of it but she bought it. I was helpless against the fierce and vicious beast so we escaped down the stairwell to our room. She eventually came to terms with the little guy and they became the best of friends.
After our nap I went out on our balcony to check out and try to photograph the monkeys. Our room was on the corner on the side of the building that faces the monkey tree and it was on the third floor. As I stepped out I noticed they were all still in the tree and walking across rooftops across from us, it seemed like they ran the joint. I noticed one monkey approaching our building from the other end. All of the buildings are either joined to the other or stand a foot apart so these guys have no problem getting around. It peaked it’s head around the corner looking at me some forty feet back. In one quick and easy leap it jumped across to the railing on the balcony of our building and began a slow walk toward me. It stopped as it scaled by an air conditioner and put his hand underneath it for water. It took a drink or two and then continued toward me, balancing himself with ease on the top of the balcony. I got some good pictures of it on its way over and when it got two feet from me it turned left and jumped onto the other buildings rooftop.
I ran into the room jumping around like a kid explaining the story to Kelly. It was awesome!!!!
Silk Shop Adventure
We got up the next morning around four-forty-five in the morn’ to take a boat trip on the Ganges. It was KelnI, let’s just make “KelnI” a new word because I feel that I type it so much the it’s faster and easier to skip the spacebar and a couple other letters, It means “Kel and I.” But I’m sure you’ve already figured that out. We had to meet in the reception area with other people from the hotel at five-fifteen so I got up a half hour earlier for the monkey show on the roof. Unfortunately it was too early and there was no show, so I went downstairs to the lobby to wake up Montoo, I think that’s how it is spelled. He was the cook of the place and he asked me to wake him so he could make chai for everyone. He was a nice man and someone whom I talked to a lot after lunches or dinners or while I watched him chase off monkeys from the roof with a bamboo stick and a slingshot. He lived in a village about two hours outside of Calcutta, A hundred and forty eight Kilometers, whatever that means. I felt like pulling out a little jerkey boys reference when he referred to Kilometers. “Kilometers? What the Fuck, Miles Montoo! Miles.
His wife and two daughters still live there and he is sending money home to them while working in Varanasi. It’s about a sixteen hour train ride there and he gets to see them two or three times a year. It’s seems to be the theme because I hear of families being separated to work in different city’s thousands of miles away, or some number of Kilometers. Or their all full of complete shit and are playing the sympathy card for sympathy money. Montoo didn’t do that the whole time we were there and we had some pretty good chats on the roof. He was sleeping on a thin mat in the middle of the floor of the reception area, so I didn’t have to look to hard to find out where he was. He told me the reception room but I thought he was talking about a room in the reception area, not literally the reception area.
Everyone met up in the reception at a quarter after and Montoo brought down the chai. There were nine Spaniards and us two lowly Americans. I noticed them in the lobby the day before when I smiled and said hi to them. There was really no responds, maybe a couple head nods. Whatevz. So Montoo leads us down through the narrow alleys. I call it the shit, moped, cow, water puddles that look as if Jabba-the-Hut wouldn’t drink, dodging game. Walking out of the tight street into the vast light blue sky that hung above the Ganges was a very dramatic switch in atmosphere and I had to take note of it. I did just that, I stopped and took in the Burning Ghats that ran up and down the river. The way the sun was just about to break through into the sky and revealed such a spectacular color to an already colorful city, the amount of people out, starting their bathing rituals in the river or getting ready for the cremation of body’s to begin at their Ghat. Then I said to myself under my breath, “Holy fuckin’ shit, Im in India!”.
We all jumped into a rowboat and went a little but up the river, the guy rowing the boat was probably in his late twenties but looked forty. He was small but he looked like a badass. It was a very spiritual place but I didn’t feel anything spiritual. I was still completely enthralled with everything that was going on during that two hour ride up and down the river. My thoughts were to occupied with what I was witnessing. They were burning the dead on the rivers edge and dumping their ashes in the river. We saw a dead body floating against one of the hundreds of boats docked all along the river. This was about half way through the trip just before we turned around and headed back up river. It was at the Manikarniea Ghat and we weren’t allowed to take pictures at this specific Ghat. When asked about the floating body in the water the little badass told us that if they, got bit by a cobra, where pregnant , had leprosy and rattled off acouple other diseases. It was pretty shocking but not as shocking as seeing people bath in the same river some twenty fifty feet away. The river was filthy, it had all kinds of garbage, bodily decay and waste but the people just jumped right in and started cleansing themselves.
One of the Spanish girls started to question the culture and how they can just dump a body into the river because of the reasons given. She did it in a criticizing tone and the captain just kept rowing. I wanted to punch her in hear neck. Then as the captain starts to turn around she asked him if he could go twenty feet down the river so she could get a better picture of a sunken temple. He did so but she doesn’t realize that twenty feet down the river is forty back up. I really wanted to punch her in the neck after that. After the boat ride one of the Spaniards and I started talking on the way back, he was traveling with everyone except for the girl who was annoying and her boyfriend. It was just coincidental they were Spanish. David, the Spaniard and his group were nice. I thought I used to be good at first impressions but this trip has proven me wrong, or I’m just not use to the different cultures we come across during our travels. We all had breakfast on the roof of our hotel and KenI took a nap before we went out on the next tour of the day which started at ten-thirty A.M. The Temple tour. The nine of us spilt up in rickshaw’s on a two hour tour of four temples around the city.
The guy at the hotel that sold us the tour packeage for four-hundred-rupees each told us that he would be going with us on both tours. He wasn’t on the boat and he didn’t get in the rickshaws with us. The temples where elaborate and beautiful in their own way but I hadn’t the first clue about the Hindi religion or their rituals so after the second Temple I was ready to go. That just happened to be the monkey temple, it has a Hindu name but I forgot it, but there are a shit ton of monkey’s runnin’ around it. Pretty cool shit! We got back to are place around one-thirty in the P.M. and had lunch, Speaking in broken English and Spanish to communicate with our new, short-term travel friends. After lunch KelnI went to our room to sleep. Kel got into he nappin’ clothes and jumped right into bed. I went out onto the balcony to see more of the monkey show hoping that a few of them were still jumpin’ and swingin’ on the tree. It was better than that. One of them was about twenty-feet away from me sitting underneath my neighbors A/C unit.
I had to bend down to see what the mischievous monkey was up too because the unit blocked my full vision of the monkey. She was already looking in my direction and the minute our eyes met she jumped on top of the A/C unit and chilled for a second. I had my mom’s trusty ol’ 35mm camera with me and started adjusting the settings before she started on move again. Unless their relaxing up in a tree they don’t seem to stay in one spot for long when people are around. I managed to get the focus but I don’t think the light meter was right. We’ll see when I go back home and develop them. I got a shot off and she jumped on the rail of the balcony and started coming toward me. It was a quick jump and set me back in may door frame with the door closed. It’s always closed or those sneaky bastards will come in the room, steal shit and hold it ransom for food. It was walking my way with a little more determination then the one from the day before so I kind of put my hand on the door behind me. When it got about a foot from me it hissed and opened its mouth revealing some pretty sharp encisers. I pushed open the door behind me and jumped backwards through it flailing my camera by the strap. Luckily it wasn’t a digital or that thing because their lighter and have much shorter straps, the thing would’ve laughed at me. I pulled the camera in and closed the door simultaneously while she swung her arms in my direction, still hissing.
I turned around with my adrenaline pumping to tell Kelly what just happened and she’s out in the hallway closing the room to our door, potentially locking me in if the monkey managed to get in from off the veranda. She didn’t close it all the way though because she was standing in the hallway in her underwear and a tank top. Im not talkin’ bout the big ol’ granny pantees during shark week, I’m talkin’ the smaller ones. I opened the door all the way laughing and letting her run back into the room before she got spotted giving a free lingerie show. Her heart didn’t stop beating hard for about forty-minutes, mine took about an hour, but that’s the life of a photojournalist, roughing it in the thick of India. O.K. sorry that was my alter ego who goes by the name of Dash Danzabaar, he immersed after I got my first shave about a week into India. I went into a shack of a barbershop with two chairs. Asked him for a shave and he took everything off but the mustache, it’s a hot fashion here and all the guy’s are doing it. Later that night with the help of Kelly we came up with Dash Riprock, the renegade photojournalist that’ll risk life and limp to get the shot he needs. The next week in Kerala my man Herman told me that there was a famous actor named Dan Danzabaar. Right then and there my alter ego, Dash Danzabaar was complete.
That day Kelly found out while reading through one of the many guide books that she studies and reads with intent and rigor tat the Taj-Mahal was close on Fridays. Are train ticket to Agra left the next day, Thursday night and got us into Agra and five in the morning on Friday. It was the first bump in our travels and I wouldn’t even call it that. I would call it a “speed cushion” it’s a term used in Seattle when referring what we call in Chicago a speed bump. In Chicago their not bumps at all, they are axle breakers but in Seattle they really are almost like cushions. Very low to the ground and very rounded and they actually make your car go faster. Anyway it sucked but it wasn’t that big of a deal. We spent an hour weighing our options and decided to just stick with our ticket. Even thought here is nothing to do in Agra except see the Taj. So we caught our train the next night and it was the same type of sleeper cars we’ve been on with eight berths but the only small difference with this one was it did not have A/C.
IT was an overnight train so we figured we could just sleep through it. As we walked into our car and made it to our stall of beds the was a young gentleman sitting on one of our beds. We had the two against the window that ran parrallel to the aisle. It was nice to have because we had the bottom berth to ourselves to sit on and play cards if we wanted. Or we could go up and lay down if we wanted without having to shift around four other people to do it. So this young guy is sitting on our bottom berth. The numbers in our train slot did not make sense so needless to say there was some confusion. We just left our bags on the the berths until we figured it out and he continued to sit in our bottom berth looking out the window. Kelly sat down next to him as to stake her claim in our spot and put her bags nest to here forcing him to make some room. It was a good strategy, one that I wouldn’t have thought of. HE was with a girl and her and I sat across from each other in the three tiered , six bed section while Kelly and the other deushe pipe sat to our left.
I figures the train conductor would come soon enough and sort it out so I just chilled. The mean there were two guys on my right, next to the other window. One was sitting next to me and the other sat facing him next to the girl. The guy next to me would not stop staring at Kelly, at first it was short stares then it turned into full on long stares. I would lean forward very slowly blocking his vision of her. The whole time I was staring dead into his eyes. They didn’t budge all he did was move his head to the right to keep her in is view. I thought to myself, ‘This fuckin guy’ and then he looked at me. He stared at me for a couple seconds, not evading his eyes and it was very uncomfortable for me to continue my stare. Again, customs are different but he was crossing the customs in my opinion. It happened a couple more times and then I think he got tired of having to look at me when I blocked his view. I got up and went in between the cars because there was a better breeze coming through. In the non A/C cars they leave one of the doors open between each car to circulate the air.
I stood close to the door and watched India’s landscape, villages, animals and people just fly by. II hung out there for about ten minutes hoping that Chochwad would get the message and move to the other berth. The reason I thought this, was because before I got up Kelly had gone through our tickets and tried show him that their tickets had “upper berth” typed on the ticket. The girl agreed and the guy didn’t move, I think he was still trying to deny the seating arrangements. When I came back and noticed he hadn’t moved I pulled my bag down from the top berth and said “Did we figure out the whole seating arrangement because I want to but my bag in it’s place. The guy didn’t say a word and the girl said “Yea, you two have those ones” pointing toward Kelly “And we have these two” pointing to the top two berths above her. SO I pushed his sandels to the side and slid my bag underneath where he was sitting, I stood up thinking he would move and he didn’t. Kelly then says “So, you guys gonna switch spots er?” The guy finally moved, and I sat next to Kelly and watched the sun go down over India, through our own private view.
Journal entry Tuesday, August 25th 2009
I think I got taken for a ride today but I hope I’m wrong, it is very hard to build any kind of trust in India but I have such a big expectation of good in people that it’s hard for me not to get taken advantage of, good thing Kelly is with me or I’d be hung out to dry by now. Let me get back to the train because I’m almost finished with our crazy week. We slept at twenty minute intervals due to sticking to the bed, new train passengers confused about the seating arrangement in our apt or shooing fly’s off of our face. Nothing prepared me for the heat inside that train car. I grew up in a house with no A/C, when I was about twelve my older sister Ronie, my younger sister Katie and I had a choice between cable or A/C, picked cable. Katie was only about six or seven at the time so her opinion didn’t count but her vote did. I continued to sweat it out on those hot Chicago summer nights because MTV just started to come up and I couldn’t miss the latest Micheal Jackson video. Mine and Ronie’s rooms were in the attic so it was a little more of a sacrifice. The train made my bedroom on eighty-fifth feel like a cooler. There are only bars over the windows so not only get the fly’s you also got the many distinct smells that make up par of what India represents. While we were stopped everyone turned their lights off, it was the only defense we had against the endless amounts of bugs and fly’s attracted to it We arrived in Agra at five in the morning, if the Tal was open we would’ve got to it just in time for the sunrise. That and sunset are supposed to be very good times to see the Taj because it reflects so many different colors from the sky. But instead we took a tuk-tuk to another train station and try to get a train right out of Agra to Jaipur.
We couldn’t do it because we booked the tickets online through my man Herman’s booking agent. We we’re stuck in the city for twelve hours and many people told us there’s nothing to do in Agra but see the Taj, they told us that the city was rough and poor. So there we were with our bags weighing down our body’s feeling a little lost. We ended up going with this fast talking stylish young Indian because he wouldn’t let us alone until we agreed to go with him. He took us to a place that we could’ve stayed at for the day, it would’ve cost us eight-hundred Rupee and the place wasn’t that nice. So we went to a cheaper one for three hundred and it was even shittier, but we took it any way. It had an internet café below it, that was the main sellin point. We went to our rooms and napped for a few hours. After that we hit up the internet café that consisted of three computers in the back of the owners shop. You had to walk through isles of miscellaneous crap and then a left turn through a very dark corrider into the small room of three computers. The power kept going out so after ten minutes we left. We told the owner wed be back and got something to eat. After our meal we hit it up one more time, Kelly’s computer didn’t work so she left and I stayed on for an hour until we had to leave. On our way out to the train station the owner said that I owed him money for the first visit. Fifteen Rupees was the cost, it wasn’t much but I told him no because it didn’t even work. He repeated himself a couple times and we just jumped in the tuk-tuk and off we went.
Our train was on time and it had air conditioning. It was a chair car, they were so comfortable and cold. We had a nice conversation with a young man returning to India for the summer. He was currently a student at Philedelphia and was visiting his homeland for the summer. It was a pleasant train ride through and through. We got into Jaipur about eleven at night and found a pretty honest tuk-tuk driver to take us the Jaipur Inn. He only tried to talk us into going somewhere else and not just take there. He also charged us twenty-five Rupees where other tuk-tuk drivers would’ve tried to charge us sixty. He took us to the Jaipur Inn, Kelly went inside and checked it out and I stayed with the tuk-tuk just in case she didn’t like it. She came out with a big smile and I slapped thirty Rupees in the drivers hand, got his number and checked in. We slept very well that night and it had been the nicest place we’ve stayed in the last four weeks. That’s when I woke up the next day, Saturday morning and caught a glimpse of Kelly’s peaceful and true beauty. I then went out to the back patio of our room and began to write about that moment and explain that our week might have added to the peace in her that morning..
Tags: Travel
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