Brother From Another Planet

Most rececent PHOTOS HERE.

Well, well, well...

Flirt with the gravity of Planet Burning Man and who knows what might come shooting out of the cosmos? Just after the festivities finished back in Nevada, I got an e-mail from Mark, a person who joined our camp, Garage Mahal, for the first time this year. He was on his way to India to meet a friend and wanted to see if we could cross paths. This isn't so easy, as India is just over a third the size of the US. Comparitively, he could have been flying into Missoula, Montana and we could have been in San Diego. Lucky for us, we were still camped in Varanasi which gave us a fighting chance because he and his friend both wanted to visit this city anyway.

After several e-mails trying to nail down meeting places and times, we finally hooked up. They checked into the same guest house as us....but, OOOPS, what's this? Their rickshaw (motorcycle-taxi) driver took them to a different Vishnu Rest House. (Funny side note: In India, to try to cash in on an existing business's success, competitors have NO reservations about naming a business after an established, successful hotel or restaurant. Upstart business make it known to all rickshaw drivers that the 'imposter' hotel will pay a 'finders fee' to any driver who delivers customers to their door. We have subsequently heard that there are as many as seven guesthouses in Varanasi with some variation of Vishnu in their names i.e. "New Vishnu", "The Real Vishnu", "The Original Vishnu", "Ganga Vishnu", etc.) Once we figured out that we were at different "Vishnus", Mark and Alexandra moved to ours. We had an excellent 30 or so hours hanging out until they hopped a train to Agra.

What a quick and surprising dose of "home"! Major kudos to Mark for such a well-timed and appreciated precision strike.