Beach Cow

Fourteen years ago I stumbled into Goa after two months of racing around big tracts of north India with my friend Sherry. She returned to the US to go to school and I headed south to a place where I'd heard that a traveler might be able to decompress from the craziness of the Subcontinent. I figured I'd stay for a few days or a week then head back into the fray. I stayed for a month....and still had to reluctantly drag myself away.

Me on Asvem Beach - Goa

This time around, Tami and I almost didn't bother stopping in Goa. The sad reality of the evolution of almost all travel destinations is that they almost never get better over time (see the country of Thailand or the city of Kathmandu as exhibits "a" & "b").

Tami with Vagator Beach behind - Goa

A good beach is just as much of a lifesaver as ever here, so we followed the advice we'd gotten from a handful of seasoned travelers and headed to a town called Gokarna on the coast of Karnataka State. The beaches were nothing short of epic and supremely relaxing. Almost all the development was low-impact bamboo and thatch but you could always get a cold beer or some decent dal and rice or a fruit salad.

Morjim Beach from Vagator Fort - Goa

We ended up staying for about ten days - a few days of which we spent checking out big festival in honor of the God Shiva. I was ready to head to Mumbai but Tami had heard me talk so glowingly of Goa over the years that she had to at least see it. We agreed to visit Chapora, the small village I'd stayed in in 1994.

Holiday makers on Asvem Beach - Goa

We ended up staying more than two full weeks and...."still had to reluctantly drag ourselves away." :)

Putting in on Kudle Beach - Gokarna

Goans and travelers have had a decade and a half of development to ruin things and, admittedly, some things are not perfect. On the whole, though, Goa is still one of the best beach scenes I've ever spent time in. Development has been kept low impact i.e. no high rises. The coast is breathtaking. The dance scene has plenty of energy. The people, especially Goans and the long-time visitors are laid-back and seem to be open to all kinds of lifestyles yet tourist culture hasn't overwhelmed the flavor of the place. The live-and-let-live attitude that Goa became famous for still flourishes.

Dog days on Kudle Beach - Gokarna

For the first time in more than two years we were able to dance - I mean boogie down for hours at a time. The vibe on the dance floor reminded us of the best scenes at home - everyone friendly and connecting.

Low impact development on Paradise Beach - Gokarna

Goa is one of the Grande Dames of budget travel. Backpackers have been coming here for more than forty years. The package tourists are here, too, but they stay to their own areas in central and south Goa. Backpackers still have some places (the best ones really) all to themselves. If you're willing to stay in a hut, get around on a little scooter or hump your pack down a ravine to the beach, you can get some quality solitude.

Backpackers trundle off Kudle beach to the road - Gokarna

And....one interesting thing about Indian beaches is that it's still India. You can never be sure what you're going to see.
Beach cow with a growth - Gokarna

Those Eyes....

A few days ago Tami and I bused it for ten hours from Patan in Gujarat to Jodhpur in Rajasthan. Sometimes, especially when you venture off routes not frequented by western travelers, you become a spectacle. You see it most at extremes. In Mumbai, we hardly drew a second glance. Mumbaikers (as the city's denizens are called) have seen it all, like people in any other world capital. It didn't take long after we left to feel the change, though. It's a safe equation that you can ratchet up your chance of drawing attention with every few kilometers you go into the folksy hinterland.

I think I've mentioned before that privacy is tough to find in India. Now, after three trips and more than a cumulative year in the country I see one of the things about traveling here that is most exhausting. If you've never been subjected to it for a prolonged period of time (and prior to traveling here, I hadn't), you don't understand that constantly being stared at is a form of psychological torture. It can make you CRAZY.

There's no doubt I'm more aware of it more because I'm traveling with Tami. She, draws far more stares than I do...but I see most of those and try to run interference when I can. Even on my own, though, I guess I look different enough to be the news of the day when nothing else is doing.

The guy at the photo above sat across the aisle from us on the bus ride I spoke of. He got on in some small town and COULD NOT STOP LOOKING. He gazed with such an absence of reserve that I am convinced he did not believe I was another human. For a long time I hid behind my sunglasses and tried to ignore him. I have no idea what he found so interesting but he sat with his head craned around for a solid two hours. Once in a while I'd look directly back at him and he would not flinch - not a thing in his expression changed. It was unnerving.

If I made a note in my journal, his eyes followed my hands like they were going to burst into a shower of gold flakes. If I reached into my bag for gum, he watched every move - from pack to mouth. I took the photo above by taking my camera out of my bag while it was down between my legs. I never looked at him - just pointed the camera at him because I knew he was staring and fired.

Finally, I started writing about it in my journal. This....I can only guess...what too much for him. He actually offered his seat to a man standing next to me and stood in his place looking directly down on what I was doing. I lasted about two sentences and folded up shop. No one else on the bus (except Tami, who'd gone completely incommunicado behind her shades and I-Pod) showed any sign that they thought it was weird. And why should they, many folks here stare. They don't care that some stranger stares at a foreigner.

Thank heavens he got off at some other small town. He left without a word but kept glancing back right until he stepped off the bus.

Bye, bye...

Hooray for Bollywood

Been off-line for awhile. This being our home stretch (in a quite literal sense) we've been moving and seeing things at a brisk pace. We were in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) recently. Mumbai is the main home of the Indian movie industry usually refered to as "Bollywood". They make a lot of films in Bollywood - upwards of 800 a year, I believe. For reasons I don't fully understand, the makers of films in India like to have non-Indians appear as extras. This is so common that the Lonely Planet guidebook even has some pointers on places you might get "discovered".

One recent day, Tami and I were walking into our guesthouse and a man asked us if we wanted to be extras. Tami hesitated b/c she had to replace her camera that had just died. I thought, "Why not?" and arranged to be picked up the next morning at 6:00 a.m. From the very first, it was clear that this was not going to be a...glamorous endeavor. You see, three or four blocks up the street is the Taj Palace, the nicest hotel in Mumbai. We saw Westerners of all stripes coming and going through the Taj's noble portal every time we passed. No, to find his Euro/North American faces, the casting agent came instead to the small cluster of guesthouses (some might call it a ghetto) frequented by backpackers. I guess when you're in the background it's not so important that you have long straggly hair or haven't shaved in weeks (as did the Argentine who was with us). They just want folks with round eyes and light skin.....that, and they only want to pay 500 Rupees a day (about $15). Whatever, it wasn’t about cash. The 500 roops didn’t even cover our room. I figured it might be worth some laughs…and it was….for about two or maybe three of the nineteen hours.

I and a couple other sleepy looking scruffs piled into a small bus with about a dozen people of various national origins but all uniformly European. No one talked except for one, probably over caffeinated young woman from Buffalo, NY who announced to her friends that it was “croissant time”. Where she got one in Mumbai I do not know. Our shuttle driver sped off through pre-rush hour Mumbai with speed being the operative word. We bumped and turned and jostled on roads I’d have driven at half the speed and that in a sports car. He clearly had a deadline and in this case the operative word, I hoped, wasn’t going to be dead. We only got stopped by one cop. I watched the driver not so slyly slip him a handful of bills and we were rolling again in less than two minutes. It took us a full hour to cross Mumbai, 100% of the way by surface streets. It’s a BIG city. At last we wound our way through a very stinky little slum then a line of trees and finally out to the edge of a broad beach.

All the accoutrements I would have expected were there – generator truck, props, cameras, lighting equipment, tents, etc. It was a real production. The “white folks” first stop was at our canteen setup. Breakfast on the beach was a decent way to decompress from the terror of the breakneck Rally of Mumbai.

Most of the people just nibbled but I dug right in and piled my plate high. Something instinctive told me that there were no guarantees when I’d get a chance to eat again and thank heavens I did. With about 150 people trying to coordinate shooting on a beach, take after take pushed lunch from noon to one to two and so on. Almost all the extras were moaning with hunger (and boredom) by mid-day. The “stars” had their own little table with snacks and tea and coffee but it was made clear to a couple of the riff-raff that we weren’t supposed to touch it.

They hustled us through breakfast to "wardrobe" where we were fitted in whatever passed for the Indian idea of beachwear for westerners. The girls got a lot of floral print things that hid skin and the guys got shorts and singlets that made us look like strongmen from the early 1900's.

Work commenced. It turned out we were shooting a "two-fer" that day: one commercial for Sony Handycams and one for an Indian bank - both themed with families at the beach.

It was also fun to see the production assistants run and jump...and splash...to get the shots. I'm glad I don't do this for a living.

The best part was undoubtedly hearing the director shriek at his assistants on the loudspeakers in his mix of Hindi and English. As the tide receded from the prepared set, "WE'RE LOSING THE F*CKING PANNI (water) MAHESH! IF WE DON'T GET IT THIS TAKE YOU CAN KISS YOUR OPENING SHOT F*CKING GOODBYE! CELLO!! CELLO!! (go!, go!)"

My role was supremely easy. I got placed next to the lovely Genvieve from Montreal. Our background roll was to make conversation and look like we were having fun at the beach. Not the easiest fifteen bucks I've ever made but certainly not the hardest.

Che's the one

It's not official but, after months of casual observation, we have a winner in the most common person to appear on T-shirts and posters in India. I've walked past many Gandhis and several Kurt Cobains. Every now and then you see a vestigial Britney. A close runner-up would have to be a WWE wrestler named John Cena. Yet, taken as a whole, even the whole WWE stable including The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin and some guy with an "H" in his name, their numbers still aren't enough to outpace the ubiquitous Che Guevara. From what I've seen around south Asia, for whatever reason, Che's the icon you have to have.

Quiet Game

A couple weeks ago we were walking down a street and we came to a sports stadium. The gates were open and I saw players running around on the field so I went in to take a look.


A soccer game was going on and the stands had a good crowd.


The play on the field was fast but...oddly quiet. I watched. I looked back at the stands. No one was talking - they were signing.

Only in.....

So...there are reasons for and against visiting any country. With India, there are strong reasons for and against. On the plus side, India holds a seemingly endless handfull of trump cards to cancel out any negatives. Most of those cards fall in the suit of "Only In India". Tami and I can see the difference most tangibly in how much we write and how many photos we take here compared to other countries. If you've spent time here, you have some idea of what I'm talking about. True to form, the past month has coughed up an unbroken string of such "OII" moments. Just yesterday I was walking down an alley here in Mysore and I saw this booth out of the corner of my eye:

I continued walking for fifteen or twenty paces wondering if I really saw what I thought I saw...so I went back, looked at the sign and asked the man sitting on the floor if "setting bones" was his actual business. "Yes! Bone setting...and massage!" Okay . . . .

It happens all the time here. This morning I went out to buy yogurt for breakfast. It was early and the streets were quiet but just down from our corner I saw a tight cluster of maybe 30 men gathered around someone along the side of the street. As I approached I could hear the call and response between a man's voice and a high-pitched, muffled boy's. Occasionally a drum played by another boy and a high-pitched whistle punctuated the exchange. I looked over the shoulders of the crowd and the ringleader was evangelizing about something as he exchanged folded pieces of paper for money with the onlookers. Par for scenes like this, the men and boys stared motionless with wide eyes. From what I could gather, the man would get Rupee notes of a given denomination and a young boy hidden at his feet, under a wicker basket, covered by a rug would call out the amount that someone had handed the man...all without seeing the bills. At the end, the spectators who handed over cash would read the papers which may have been something like fortunes...but I don't know.

I already mentioned the pilgrammage Tami and I joined in Tiruvanamallai. (Tami wrote a full blog about it.) There, every month on the full moon, hundreds of thousands of Hindus come to join in a 14 kilometer walk around a holy mountain. They start late in the evening just after the moon rises and the crowd flows all night and into the next day. Indians are pretty serious walkers and, in a collective setting like this, they hustle. We were both exausted and sore by the time we finished sometime before dawn. That all the pilgrims walk barefoot on rough, pebble strewn asphalt made the circumambulation sincerely humbling.


The masses start by gathering and performing different rituals at the temple in the center of town. Thousands gather at the main gate (tallest one at the far side in above photo) and the atmosphere feels for all the world like something straight out of the Middle Ages. After the appropriate amount of fire oriented devotion, they troop off through the neighborhoods to the edge of the city. All along the way the route is lined with ancillary temples big and small and old and new. Almost every pilgrim veers off the road to perform prayers at these.


As you might expect, there are also all manner of wacky participants of different natures. There is a legion of beggars, food and chai sellers, a few free food stations provided by larger temples, performers (among them a handful of blind musical groups), booths selling religious paraphenalia and videos and dvd's of various gurus preaching the gospel, palm readers....and on, and on. The guy with this van was one of a few we saw who had a computer mounted in a console that apparently told your fortune.

The whole walk took maybe five or six hours but those were some of the most interesting hours I've enjoyed. Scenes like this are not common (or expected) for a guy raised in a small, Midwest farm town. On the future "to-do" list is a repeat of this walk on the full moon of the final month of the lunar year (usually November or December). At that time, on the main pilgrimage of the year, the local holy men erect a huge, ten-meter tall "wick" on top of the mountain, saturate it with three thousand liters of oil and set it on fire.

Death Defying Circus

A couple weeks ago, in a small hill town called Kumily, we saw a traveling daredevil show where motorcycles and small cars raced around inside a big, wood and steel frame cylinder. Spectators stand a few rows deep on a ledge along the top and look down into a 25 foot deep x 40 foot wide cup. The motos and cars ride up the walls using centrifugal force.

I'd seen one of these shows with just motos back in 1994 and was duly impressed but I would never have believed you'd get a car - even a small car - up the walls of one of these narrow bowls. They start off the show with one guy driving a moto round and round at high speed....and HIGH SOUND - (They run a straight pipe right out of the cylinder for added thrill effect. This gets the crowd's attention.) What really got my attention was the way the entire structure swayed and shook as the moto raced below us. I was also more than slightly terrified by the fact that a rickety rail was all that separated us from the flying racer in the event anything went wrong. At first I wouldn't get within a full pace of the rail.
(You can see the blurred image of the moto in the center of the photo right on the top seam of the wall.)
As the show progresses, they run two, then three motorcycles up in the cylinder at the same time. Each rider tests his skill and the crowd's ability to keep calm by performing stunts - riding no-handed, crossing legs over the bike, standing one-legged on the seat, riding hand-in-hand with two bikes alongside each other...all the while the racket and shaking feeling like we were standing inside a dreadful machine shop.

Periodically, they stopped before their next number. Near the end, when they brought out the "big guns", I saw one of those things that ellicted a, "you have got to be kidding me" from my own mouth. A young boy of maybe 4 or 5 years had been standing with the drivers. Nonchalantly, he opened the passenger door of the car below on the right and climbed in. Moments later, everyone else mounted a bike or got in a car.....and off they went.

For the next several minutes, two cars and three motorcycles raced around the cramped bowl. One trick had a moto race along parallel on the downside of a car. Don't ask me how they did it but he stood on the upper peg of his bike, lay across the hood of the car and joined both outstretched hands with those of the car driver reaching from above. As if negotiating all that wasn't enough, one of the car drivers (the one with the child inside!), crawled up and drove around standing upright outside of his window using his feet on the wheel. This show cost us 20 Rupees each . . . about 50 cents, American. I'd gotten my money's worth and then some.

For those who wanted a final thrill, the other car driver, also standing outside his window and driving with feet, raced along right at the rail at the top of the bowl. Indians with 10 Rupee notes in their hands leaned over the rail and this guy . . . this James Bond of India . . . reached over at high speed and snatched them. I handed over two.

What's in store for you?

Every day in India offers the potential to see something you've never seen before. A while back in Tamil Nadu, we visited a huge temple dedicated to the god Shiva in Chidambarum. Inside, we came across this fortune telling duo - a man and a parakeet. People desiring a look into their future sat for a card reading.

On command from his human partner, the parrot would come out of his cage. He'd then follow more directions pulling cards from a shuffled stack.

After enough cards had been 'drawn', the bird returned to the cage and the man proceeded with the reading. Nice show.

A National Institution

If you've spent any time in India, you know chai (what we Americans call tea) plays a role in Indian culture unlike any drink we have at home. Yeah, we drink coffee or Coke to get our caffeine but, like most things in the US, the process is more about convenience and speed. In India, getting and drinking a tea is a time-honored process that takes a skilled preparer and a patient...but entertained...customer.

We went to this guy every morning in the Tamil Nadu city of Pondicherry. He worked at a corner stall on the street and you COULD NOT walk past without stopping to watch his act. All the chai guys put on a show and this guy's was as good as any. His chai was excellent, too.

Get the milk boiling and swirl in the tea leaves...

Run the brew through a sock strainer...

Add a little sugar...

Give it a vigorous mixing....

And pour without looking.....

Edible artistry.

Relax, buddy...

A couple weeks ago I ranted about some of the headaches of traveling in India. Those events and my reaction were true but...India's a big place. Time and cumulative experiences, especially good ones, can modulate the lows so your overall impression is a lot more positive. I am back here for a third time, after all, so India must have plenty going for it, its innumerable pains in the ass notwithstanding. I also needed a reality check about how soft we got in Southeast Asia. Traveling's comparatively quite easy there and returning to India, I suppose, will always hold the potential to be a shocker.

As of today, I think we've been here for a month..and en total, it's been pretty amazing. In that time we've seen two Unesco World Heritage listed monuments...

joined in an all-night, full-moon, fire-filled pilgrammage around a holy mountain with a couple hundred thousand barefoot devotees of the god Shiva...

seen two, rural, all-night performances of traditional Hindu dance and music ceremonies...

toured spice and tea plantations...

spent a week exploring one of the largest intentional communities (i.e. communes) on Earth...

been "blessed" by an elephant....

looked out on the Bay of Bengal one day and on the Arabian Sea ten days later...

I'm sure there's more.

The big lesson at this point has been, "Don't fight it, man." That should have been obvious and it's a prime metaphor for life in general. If you don't try to roll with what life (in this case, life in India) gives you, you're going to expend a lot of energy trying to change a reality that is infinitely larger than yourself. You're also going to miss out on a lot of amazing things along the way.