Red Ls and the begining of the end.

Got pulled over again by the cops on Monday. For god knows whatever reason, they’ve decided that Koregon Park, the tourist central of Pune, home of the famous Osho Ashram, needs constant police security going in to it from North Main Road. They’ve erected barriers to slow down traffic so the police cops can jump in front of the vehicles and force them to stop, or so that they can reach over to grab the keys if the person is on a bike.

I had just finished dropping off our new temporary roommate Sandip at the IT Tower, and was not looking forward to starting the work week. They flag me over, and ask for all the paper work, license, and everything. They stopped me for having a rusty license plate. Clearly, Mondays are my lucky day. It only got better from there; two hundred rupee fine for driving without the mandatory red learner license Ls on my bike.

“Got any paper work for this?” I asked him, wanting a souvenir for my early morning adventure.

“Well, see… You have to go to the… Ahh… Police office and-“ he replied.

“Oh, well, can I at least get something on paper written down?” I wondered.

“Look, let’s just call it one hundred.”

Bargaining with cops in India is one of those experiences that never get written in to the travel guides.

When I got to work, I talked to the HR woman about getting my full license, because while expensive, it would allow me to drive legally on any bike, and I could legally give my friends ride to places. Instead of solving this problem, they decided putting the red Ls on to my bike would solve all my problems. Unfortunately, the office handyman got carried away with the task given to him. My bike is now rocking red Ls on every surface of the bike, including perhaps the largest damn L I’ve ever seen on the back spare wheel on my bike. If I didn’t stand out before, I certainly do now.

I asked him why he wanted to put so many marks on my bike. He shrugged, and grinned at me.

“More Ls, less problems” he laughed.

I've been going to the gym every morning. Normally I run at the treadmill. But first, let me say that we're not supposed to wear non-gym-only shoes while at the gym. Since I only have one pair of shoes, this is a problem for me. I solved this problem by running barefoot at the gym.

A friend of mine back home wears weird shoes. They're shoes that are designed to be more like plastic toe socks than actual shoes.

"It's more natural for your feet to run barefoot. It's good for you." He would tell me. One of the giant blisters on my feet broke open, and one became infected. My friend is a god damn liar (sorry, Hunter).

We’ve also started making plans for our grand trip in December. It’s hard to believe that I’m finally getting to the end of my time here in India. One more month, and I’m done with coop. Then I’m taking a couple weeks to travel the deserts of Rajistan, see the capital, Delhi, and like any good foreigner, spend a day seeing the Taj Mahal, explore the erotic temples of Khajuraho, and finish up my experience of India at the holy city of Varanasi.

Then it’s a train ride back to Mumbai. Then I have to say goodbye to all the amazing people I’ve met on this adventure and to my home for the last six months as I return to the west.

I’m going to need more Ls.

Four months later, I finally get to see Pune

Nearly four months after getting out of that first taxi ride to Pune, I have finally explored my new city. This weekend, I went to see the many sights around where I live. This includes several old temples and an old fort. That’s what India is all about, temples and forts.

On Saturday I got up early, skipped the gym, and prepared to go out to Parvati Hill with Josef. I hadn’t ever traveled so far south of the city. I checked the map. It looked like an easy drive. Then I got us lost.

Josef and I ended up driving in circles through downtown Pune. Downtown is pretty much what people think of when they think of big Indian cities. Winding narrow roads crowded with people, cows, and rickshaws crawling aimlessly all over the street. If there were dividing traffic lines on the road, no one seemed to notice. I swerved in every direction down streets to avoid on coming traffic. After about twenty minutes of large loops, I finally found a road I recognized, and continued down in what I thought to be a proper direction.

Fortunately, the Parvati Hill was large enough to spot from some distance, and we started driving towards it. When we finally found the temple, got off our bikes, and started to climb, we became celebrities once again. As soon as my camera comes out, people start asking for pictures. Children crowd around and start asking simple question in English.

The temple is about a one hundred step climb to the top. The temple complex is comprised of the main temple, an open air walled temple, a museum, and several smaller temples and offices. Once at the temple, you can pay two rupees and a guard will let you up to the top of the walls of the temple. From up there, the view looks out over all of northern Pune and downtown.

In some kind of architectural cruelty, the temple floors are made of a stone that gets hot in the bright Indian sun, and since it was a temple, after all, the signs posted asked us to take off our shoes. As Josef and I made dashes across the temple walls trying to find places to sit and relieve our feet, the locals looked on with amusement. The views were worth it, it was the most incredible view of the city.

On the way down we sat down in some of the grass to look at the city. We only stayed for a couple minutes as soon smoke started to fill the air. I went to investigate. It was trash burning day in the slums by the temple.

We made our way north to go to the Shaniwar Wada fort, built hundreds of ears ago by the Marathi Empire. What stands today are the walls of the fort, which people can walk around on and look at the gardens that now lay inside. Local residents pay 5 rupee entrance, and foreigners pay 100. I tried telling the ticket sales person that I live in Pune. I showed him my learners permit and everything.

“So you have a voter registration card?” he asked, showing me his.

“Well, no, I don’t but…”

“Then you have to pay 100,” he interrupted. Fair enough, but a lot of actual Indians don’t have voter cards either. Pune had abysmal voter turn out in the last elections. My next task: get a voter registration card.

It’s not that I mind paying 100 rupees, I understand that these monuments take a lot of money to take care of, and 5 rupees a person is not nearly enough. A lot of the other foreigners I’ve talked to have complained that it’s discrimination. I don’t feel this way. This is what it takes to maintain a historic building in a country where a vast number of people live on less than a dollar a day. It is, still, worth it to see the persons reaction to my claims of being Indian. They smile and laugh when I show them my learners permit.

There really isn’t much to see at Shaniwar Wada. You can climb up the walls and look over on to the crowded streets bellow. Over the front gate is the main guard post, and it now guards the fort against the crowd of children and college students playing cricket on the front lawn.

The garden was nice, but there was a large group of children who all wanted me to take their pictures. I still haven’t had this explained to me, why people get so worked up when my camera comes out. After about a dozen photos, and just as many broken promises of just-one-last-picture, I had to break free if I was going to explore the fort at all.

Josef and I did a quick once around, and decided it was time to go home. I’m starting to learn the streets of Pune, a task I figured I would never achieve by the time I left. This left me feeling very proud of myself.

That evening, Bobby, Utkarsh, and I went to a concert. It was a metal band, and Utkarsh knew all the members, called Pitch Black Symphony. They were, I was surprised to admit, pretty good.

The next day I met up with Bobby and Parisa at German Bakery, a local hang out for tourist and expats. Bobby was helping Parisa with the book that she was writing. I had no idea she was writing a book. Who knew?

Parisa joined me at the next stop on my trip, the Pateleshwar cave temples. It’s a temple that’s still in use today, and was first built in the 8th, and was carved out of basalt rock. This is now my new favorite place in Pune. It was a very quiet place, something rare in India.

Sunday night I went to the movies to see Inglorious Bastards (again) with Shiva and Anna. I have already seen it, but it was a slow evening, and the movie was pretty good the first time. I think I liked it even more the second time around. After the movies we met up with a guy from Mumbai that Anna met in Russia. He’s the only Indian I’ve met that speaks fluent Russian. Once again, I was the only person there unable to speak fluently in a second language. I thought it would only be Hindi that I would need to learn while I’m in India.

I'm Predicting Clear Skies in 2036

Last night I looked out the window and as fireworks once again went off all over the city. Diwali is over and finished, but the celebrations last night were political. India has had it’s major state elections and the INC (Indian National Congress) pulled out a huge lead in Maharashtra and two other states (Haryana and A.P.). This gives the INC a huge advantage over the other political parties in India, particularly the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), who are the previous majority party in Maharashtra. Considering the low voting turn out, people are pretty excited in the streets.

Last night I grabbed dinner with some friends from the university. While dinner alone was fantastic, I truly enjoyed finding out that one of them was actually reading my blog. Even more incredibly, I received a compliment on it. I was starting to believe that my blog was being read regularly by ex girlfriends and the occasional worried friend back home, but no, it’s far bigger than that. Great success! On the way home from dinner, Jan’s horn stopped beeping loudly, so I started shouting compliments at other drivers to compensate (Is that a new haircut? It looks fantastic!).

The criticism of my friend was that my blog complains too much about technology and how it always breaks while I’m in India. Today I will reverse this trend. Today, my bike is fixed. The USS Constitution rides again!

The next morning, in Goa, we ate breakfast at the place across the street from where we stayed. On the front of the Times of India we read about some explosions where we got off the bus in Magao. Two men on scooters carrying the explosives caused the explosions. It’s unclear what they were planning on blowing up, but apparently they got stuck in afternoon traffic with ticking time bombs.

We took a long taxi ride to the next beach up to the north, Palolem. We said farewell to our Canadian guest, Aisha. We found a reasonably nice hotel owned by the shortest and angriest hotel owner in Goa. We decided to spend as much time out of this hotel as possible. On the plus side, it did have a place for me to hang up laundry.

The beaches were gorgeous, and in the modern style of having lots of bars and clubs all along the beach. This early in the season, crowds weren’t a problem. The water was nice, and in the early afternoon, we decided to check out a near by island.

The island was connected by a small land bridge, and we only had to wade through a little bit of water to get there. The island was home to hundreds of crabs crawling over all the rocks. Even the sand had small crabs pushing around even small balls of sand around their home. I had read an article about these crabs, by chance, once. They push the small balls of sand around in geometric shapes, but no one really knows why they do it. When the tide comes in, it always washes away their hard work. Weird ass crabs.

Josef, Andreas and I swam out to a small rock island in the middle of the ocean. The swim wasn’t that bad, but at first I thought it was just a very rough rock in the middle of the ocean. Turns out, it was completely alive. Every inch of the rock was covered in barnacles, coral, or weird sponges that squirt water when you touch them.

In the middle of one of our mud fights on the beach, two guys walked up to us and said hi. I realized that it was the French guys that we haven’t spoken to in months, and here they were, in Goa. We ended up just hanging out for most of the afternoon. Then we split up, with me going off alone to photograph the sunset on the other side of the island that we went to earlier.

The land bridge was covered in water, but I could see children playing in the shallow water. Half way across, the water came up to my knee. I was nearly across. Then one last step, and whoosh, the water rises to my chest.

“Damn it! My camera!” I thought to myself, quickly lifting my camera above my head. “Damn it! My cell phone!” I thought, pulling my cell phone from my now entirely submerged pocket. While my camera lives on for another day of capturing anticlimactic sunsets, my cell phone has gone to it’s water grave.

By the time I got to the shore, the sun had almost set. I had to dash over rocks that were covered by angry crabs bent on preventing me from getting some kind of benefit from making it all the way out to the end of the island. I did manage to get a couple more photos, but I noticed that the water was still rising. In a couple minutes, I would have no way back to the beach.

I dashed to the shore, stripped down to my boxers, hoisted everything over my head, and waded across, and dressed in the darkness. I needed a drink. At the bar where my friends where I ended up talking to a British cop. This is where we celebrated Bobby’s birthday. We now think that this may have actually been a gay bar.

We didn’t realize it at the time. When the guy insisted on dancing with Bobby because it was his birthday, we thought he was just being friendly. When those Australian girls left together, I thought they were just going to get a good night sleep. Then I saw the sign for the bar, hidden behind a palm tree. “Cocktails and dreams” it was called. The picture was of three dudes in hot pants. Sorry Bobby. My bad.

The next morning we went up to the north to meet up with Anna and the rest of the friends from Pune. They spent the whole weekend at this one amazing beach that they found. It was secluded, and there were amazing waves. The sand under the water formed deep valleys and shallow islands, so as the waves rolled in, they would reflect off this sand, creating places where the waves would come from both directions, to and from shore. For a physics major, this was pretty noteworthy. It got a solid “huh, look at that” out of me.

That night, we took Bobby out for dinner. We went to some restaurant where we met the owner. We hung around with him, and he was pretty cool. He took us to some bars that were open all night. The last bar was an Indian sports bar, but there were no TVs, no radios, and just some instruments set up for the patrons to play.

It was the kind of bar I expected in Goa. Old and young Americans (mostly) dancing (kind of) to 80’s music. It was shirtless old white guys dancing to Bohemian Rhapsody, while others were smoking charras, watching stoned from the mattresses laid out in the corner. This was single most typical tourist place in India I have been to.

We had rented bike scooters for the day earlier. We took two bikes, holding four people, and one taxi, holding four more, to go out to the bar. One of the bike drivers fell ill while we were out, so I got a chance to drive the bike back. It was my first time driving a scooter through Indian countryside, up and down hills, and through jungles.

Right before we got back to the hotel, we entered a police check point. They stopped us and asked to see our “international drivers license, not the license from your country.”

“Here’s my Indian learner’s perm-“ I started.

“This is not good! Not from your own country, I need your international drivers license!”

I assured him that it was areal Indian learners permit. It took a while. He was very confused. After talking to the driver of the taxi, they let us go with out anymore trouble.

Goa is the only place in India with no alcohol tax. This makes drinks about half th price here in Pune. Jan took advantage of this and bought two bottles of Old Monk. While three of the eight stayed up to drink and talk until sunrise, I chose to go to bed. When I woke up the next morning, the bottle was almost gone. I felt hung over just thinking about it.

We spent the last day on the beach, checking out, and catching the bus back to Pune. On the bus, I found out why Anna didn’t want to take the sleeper down to Goa. Had she taken the sleeper, she would have had to spoon with some strange Indian dude all the way down. Their sleeper bus was the same style as what we took back to Pune. She also joined us back to Pune, and slept with Parisa. I, on the other hand, spooned the whole way back with Bobby.

Happy birthday, Bobby.

Diwali and a trip to Goa

Note: I wrote this yesterday, but wasn't able to upload it until this morning. It will be concluded later today, hopefully.

Diwali ends this week. Last night I stood on my balcony looking over Pune, watching as people in the streets set off fire crackers and fireworks. I watched as families set off their rockets all over the city, and watching the fireworks from above was one of the most incredible sights I have seen so far.

I spent the Diwali weekend in Goa, a place that a friend of mine told me before I left was “the place white people go to get tanned”. Goa is famous in India for its gorgeous beaches and clear blue water. We had Friday and Monday off due to the holiday weekend, so our plan was to leave on Thursday and come back on Monday night. Both would be over night trips. The way down was in a non AC seater bus, and the return was in a non AC sleeper bus. The Extentia interns plus a couple of friends of ours caught the bus on the way down. One the others, a Russian girl named Anna, hopped on with our group to meet up with some friends of hers that were spending time in northern Goa. I didn’t understand why she didn’t ride with her friends, since they had a nice sleeper bus to go in. The reason would be clear to me later. Our plan was to start in the south, and travel north.

Trouble started Thursday afternoon. We got a call from the bus company. They told us the bus would be leaving an hour earlier than we expected on our already tight schedule. It would also be leaving in deep southern Pune, a place that none of us interns know. Better yet, none of the rickshaw drivers knew how to get there either. We left our bikes at the office for safe keeping while we were gone.

Our rickshaw driver got lost, drove around for a while, and eventually found his way with the help of some other rickshaw drivers to the new bus location. The bus arrived at the same time we did. We thought we were lucky to get there on time. Turns out we still had an hour wait while they strapped dozens of boxes, bags, and all other sorts of packages to the roof of the bus. We cheered with every hoist of a large box to the top of the bus, and as the men half climb and half jumped off the roof of the bus.

The ride down was in the pretty uncomfortable back of the bus. Sleep was punctuated by constant rest stops and no less than two flat tires on the ride to Goa. I think that tires and I just don’t get along very well. When we got in, we said farewell to Anna and went to the first beach: Benaulim.

Benaulim is one of the more laid back beaches in Goa. The south beaches tend to be less crowded then the beaches up north, and so this beach was more like an empty beach on the Cape back home. The water was beautiful and warm. We were all excited to relax. We ate lunch at a shack by the beach, ordered some beers, and went to take our spot on the beach. Then the swarm descended.

This is off season still, in Goa. We were also at a pretty empty beach. The wallahs and vendors homed in on us like a beacon.

“You’re very white” they would tell us. “Want to buy anything?” and they would show us their collection of necklaces, bracelets, CD’s, and bootleg movies. There were dozens of them talking to us. As soon as we stepped out of the restaurant (which was protected a short, angry manager who would hurl out any vendor who stepped inside his restaurant) we were consumed by these women and their goods. They weren’t sure of what to make of us foreigners, but they were desperate for business. One of them wore a Yankee’s hat.

“Are you a Yankees fan?” I asked her.

“Yes of course!” she replied, clearly unsure of what I was talking about.

“Oh, I come from Boston. We’re not allowed to buy stuff from Yankees fans.” Her friends laughed for a while and decided to sit and sell us stuff on the beach. It was fun for a while, and I spoke to an older woman named Rose who sold identical knick knacks to her friends.

“Don’t lay down, take a look at my stuff. Don’t close your eyes!” she would yell at me when I went to lie down on my towel. I was starting to get tired of all the people trying to sell stuff. Sitting up, and before I could tell her off, I had a pile of necklaces, anklets, bracelets and every thing I could never use. “Be friend! Make me small business! Are you married? My friend here is unmarried. Make me small business and maybe you can marry my friend.”

I wasn’t interested in getting married in Goa, so I instead decided to buy a small cheap piece of jewelry to get some time alone, and I went swimming for a while. I ended up falling asleep on the beach. The bus ride had left me exhausted. I ended up with a minor sun burn on half of my face.

We ended up eating dinner on the beach, and having drinks while watching some Diwali fireworks. I tried feni, a coconut based hard alcohol. It tasted as weird as I thought it would. I stuck around on the beach after everyone left. Bobby told me that there was a guy pushing a boat on to the beach that had asked him to push the boat on to the shore. I figured it would be a great chance to get some interestingpictures. By the time I got there, they were still pushing the boat, and had it almost to the top.

“Friend! Friend! Help us push our boat!” they shouted to me. I took my position under the boat and heaved while they chanted something in Hindi. It took a while, even though we didn’t have that far to go. Afterwards, the captain scowled at me that five able sailors would have been enough normally. We were pushing with about a dozen people, and I was the only foreigner. We got along pretty well, so he ended up showing me his catch. It was a giant net that he had inside his boat, and some of his crew were going through it slowly, taking out the fish that they caught. It was mostly small fish and baby sharks that they caught.

On the walk back to the hotel I heard some people behind me speaking German. They turned out to be students from Pune who were down for the holiday as well. It was a short walk back to the hotel, and we talked and laughed. I forgot all their names after about a minute.

A Quick Post Before Diwali and Goa

So, now my resume can include not just web developer, iphone developer, and stock photo model, but director and actor as well. Yes, work has put me in the lead role of my own iPhone app reviews on Youtube. When they’re finished, I will be sure to include a link.

Happy Diwali everyone. Yes, it’s that time of the year again, so break out your diyas, put on your new kurta or sari, and celebrate the ‘other’ festival of lights. I will be spending my first Diwali in India in Goa. I’m looking forward to this. I need a vacation at this point. It’s been a long week, and it’s not even Friday yet. I actually head out tonight at 7PM, so I have to get out of work early in order to make it to the bus.

For those wondering, or perhaps for those keeping track, my luck hasn’t turned around yet. Last night I went out to dinner with my friend Emma from England. My bike is broken, as I mentioned in my earlier post, so I had to borrow Bobby’s bike.

“Don’t break it this time!” he joked as he handed over the keys. Half an hour later, I was pushing yet another bike down the road with yet another flat tire. I can now stop going to the gym; bike pushing is all the exercise I need.

Besides the bike breaking down, dinner turned out alright. I finally got someone to explain Cricket to me (to the best of her ability, I’m pretty dense when it comes to most sports more complicated than swimming back and forth a bunch of times). It was also a farewell dinner, as she was leaving for Delhi for a while. That’s how India works; the most common way to meet people here is through farewell dinners.

I also now am approved to wander around India aimlessly for the last month of my coop, which is great, and I plan on making as much use of this as I can. My roommates and I are planning on going through the deserts of Rajasthan (the next thing for me to ride will have to be a camel), up to Delhi, see Agra, train to Varanasi, and then I have a couple more days that I’m not sure about. Total travel time: two weeks. Unfortunately, I’m not sure/very doubtful that I’ll be able to see the Himalayas and Nepal this trip. This just means I’ll have to make a return some day.

I’ll be back on Tuesday morning.

Birthday, Election Days, and Oktoberfests

I’m at work right now. The garage bellow me is empty, the bikes are being hidden behind the office. The front gate is locked and barred. The front guard is at his post keeping watch. I’m in one of the only offices working today in the State of Maharashtra. It’s Election Day, a state holiday here in India. To make employees work today is technically illegal, and there is a huge fine for any non essential business kept open today. We got an email in our inbox today saying that while yes, we are not supposed to be working today; we are serving our democracy better by coming in today. By going against the laws of the state, we’re being patriotic. It seems almost American.

This weekend was Oktoberfest here in Pune. This was my first Oktoberfest that I’ve been to, and I was able to have it here in India with most of my German roommates. While Pune is no Munich, it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of expats who have been living in Pune while working for the Indian branch of companies like Volkswagen, Mercedes, and others. I got a chance to try to speak German. I got some sympathetic stares and shrugs. Great success. The music was pretty good, it was some band that travels around the world playing international Oktoberfests. This seems like a very niche market, if you ask me. The food was pretty good, but expensive, and the beer was German. Over all, I probably spent more than I should have, but it we all had a good time singing and dancing. When the band played Seven Nation Army, that was probably the highlight of the night. We also made new friends from England. We were some of the few native English speakers at the party.

But Oktoberfest was not our only party this week. Jan had his birthday on Monday night. I didn’t realize this until Monday morning, when I could check Facebook at work (yes, my laptop is broken again, I’ll explain later). Theressa and I quickly threw together a solid plan to have a surprise party at our apartment. When we let Bobby in on our plan, he replied “so why did you guys put a plan together? Don’t you know Parisa has already planned a party, bought drinks, and got cake?”

No Bobby. We didn’t. Turns out she made the plans but didn’t tell anyone until earlier that Monday. Unfortunately, no one had any idea where Parisa lived, besides “far away and in the middle of nowhere”. So we convinced Jan to go to Parisa’s place under the guise of a small get together, and that I would be the fearless navigator, in charge of guiding us all safely to Parisa’s. Big mistake. Don’t let me lead anyone anywhere. Ever. In my defense, I did get us kind of close to the right place, but kind of means an extra hour of getting lost and driving aimlessly in this case.

On the drive to over, the first thing I lost was the horn on my bike. In India, this is big trouble. The horn is the first line of defense against aggressive bus drivers and crazy rickshaws. The next thing to go were my blinkers. Instead of signaling what I was doing, both lights would blink together in a mad panic. Then went my back tire. Finally, with only one uphill kilometer left, my engine died on me. Then I had to push. Thankfully, Parisa’s brother had come out to find where the hell we were, and was able to give me a hand in pushing the bike. It was a long push in the rain. Déjà vu, right?

Not that my bike is the only thing to kick the bucket this week. My laptop is also now out of commission again. Yes, only a week after getting the power supply fixed, I was sitting in bed waiting for my friends back home to sign on to Skype after a night of enjoying Oktoberfest perhaps a little too much, when my desire for sleep became perhaps just a little too strong, and I fell fast asleep with my laptop on my lap. But this only lasted for a little while. Then it took a quick plunge to the hard floor bellow. So long laptop screen, you served me well. You will be missed.

The surprise birthday party ended up going very well in the end. And my bike breaking down was probably for the best, as I was able to drive Jan a ride home later that night. Soaked and exhausted, I arrived at home. Happy birthday, Jan. Happy Election Day, Maharashtra.

A Return Home, And A Computer Rises From The Dead

Sometimes I can't figure India out. My laptop has been, as many of you know, busted for the past month. That's why I wasn't able to update anything. Any updates I had been writing were written after staying late at work, which is one of the least enjoyable/most creepy ways to spend a night here in India. After months of trying to get the laptop fixed, my problem is now all gone, all because I tried my damn best to prevent it from getting fixed. Let me explain.

When my laptop died, I tried all the usual fixes. Fiddling with the power button. Unplugging the battery and leaving it over night. Trying to shake it back to life. Making offerings to Lord Ganesha. And when all of that failed, I tried my last resort: my company's IT department. With great reluctance, I handed my laptop over to them. I sat with them as they retried the techniques I mentioned. Nothing seemed to work. With a heavy heart, they said I was out of luck, and that it was likely a motherboard issue. Well damn, right?

As I go to take the laptop back, trying hard to think of some other arcane ritual to perform to bring my laptop back from the dead, the head of the IT department gives me an offer. It's hard to ship things back to the States from India. It's damn hard. He offered to take care of it, and that he would ship my laptop back to Asus, even thought it was out of warranty, just to see what they said. Well great, right?

Fast forward two weeks. I'm back from Kerala. I ask if they've heard anything from Asus. Turns out, they didn't send it to Asus, exactly, but instead gave it to a friend of a guy in HR who has a soldering iron and a screw driver set. I panic. I'm furious. They're letting some half educated guy on the street rip open the guts of my sweet innocent laptop, poke around, put in whatever garbage knock off parts they can salvage, and call it fixed. No way, I tell them. Just give me back my laptop. There is no way I'm paying the fifty American that the guys wants. That's practically what my laptop is worth, anyway.

I tear in to the IT department for cheating me. I tear in to the guy in HR for not letting me know what was happening. I tear in to anyone who would listen to me. Unfortunately, this is, I guess, standard procedure for how stuff gets fixed in India. Go figure. Anyway, the next morning, I get the laptop back. I figure I'll just leave it in some corner and gather some dust. Maybe dust will fix it. Then the HR guy tells me it's all fixed.

What? The laptop I told him I didn't want fixed? Yup. Looks like I now have a working laptop. I feel half insulted and half like a jackass (because the guy did actually fix the laptop, after all). Oh well. This is India. Onward, with part two of my Kerala story.

So our next stop on our trip was Allepey. Allepey is the boat house capital of India. There are some four hundred rice barge captains willing to rent out their boats for a night to tourists who want to explore the backwaters of Kerala. When you get down to Allepey, everyone will seem to have a boat. Guys on the street, restaurant owners, and post card vendors all seem to have a cheap ride available. Unfortunately, yet again, we arrive too late to really do anything that day. We check into a hotel and accept the offer to take the owner's boat out the next day.

At the hotel, I talk to some guys from Holland who were also traveling Kerala, and some Brits who had studied textiles back home, and one of them had just finished up working in a textile factory in Delhi. I guess this is glamorous to some people. The guys from Holland wanted to know how the boat tour was. I said it was alright. That was when I was informed by the hotel owner about the boating accident. Yikes.

The rooms were fairly comfortable and had mosquito nets, thank god. The cockroaches weren't that large, but the ceiling did start spewing some weird dust down on me while I slept. Before I went to bed, I went to get some water with some of the other British girls. Bobby, half asleep, asked me what I got. I explained “I got some bottled water”.

What he heard: “I got some hot water”.

Lord knows how he didn't notice that the bottle wasn't by any means 'hot', and it was clearly marked as drinking water, and that the bottle was still sealed after I took my own shower, but I guess he decided this water was just my little gift to him. Bobby is now one of the few people I have ever met that has used bottled water to shower. That bastard still owes me one two liter bottle of water.

After breakfast, we got on to the house boat, and started the tour of the backwaters. It almost immediately started raining. Rain on a rice barge is fun for maybe the first ten minutes, top. Then the boat starts to floor. Then you're just stuck in your cabin until the rain stops.

It was still beautiful, even if we didn't get the sun that we hoped for. We hired a captain and a cook. The food that the cook made was delicious. We also had two stow away kittens who jumped on board when we stopped for lunch. I'm not sure what happened to them. Last I heard, they were hiding in the kitchen... Oh god.

After the house boat, it was time to head back to Kochi to catch a train the next morning. Our return to Kochi was fairly uneventful. We saw one of the few Jewish temples of India, and walked around the island that we stayed on.

The next morning, we caught the train at 8AM Saturday, and were supposed to get in at 4PM Sunday. 32 Hours. Long, but not bad. What we didn't know was that it was raining for three days straight in Maharashtra, and that the tracks were now flooded. We ended back to the apartment at 4AM Monday.

The only saving grace about the ride home was that we had far more enjoyable neighbors. I became the cool one. Bobby became the Angry one. Jan is still the German one.

When we finally reached Pune, I don't think I was ever more glad to be coasting through the streets in a rickshaw. I felt like I had finally reached home. I think I'm starting to really love this city.

Three Dudes Make a Trip Down to Kerala

Communication skills are not my strong point. This is especially true here in India. I can handle small talk. In fact, I'm a god damn pro at making small talk; I could small talk a man to death. But there isn't any small talk here in India. Once you meet someone, they'll let you know immediately what they're thinking.

“Which one of you is the coolest and which one of you is the angriest?” asked a girl on the train ride back to Pune from Kerala. Bobby, Jan and I laughed.

“I think you're the cool one” one of the girls told us, pointing to me.

“yeah, I'm the cool one, and he's the angry one” I laughed, pointing at Bobby.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Last week, I went to Kerala.

This was a trip that we had planned for a long time. For weeks, we told our selves “when we get some holidays, we're going down to Kerala, and exploring the Jungle, laying on the beaches, and living the life of kings”. Unfortunately, all we managed was to buy some bus tickets, and had no place to stay. I normally preach the benefits of planning ahead. Indeed, we did likely have to pay more because we didn't find our about prices ahead of time. It's pretty hard to negotiate a hotel room at six in the morning after a thirty hour train ride.

That's how long it takes to get from Pune, Maharashtra to Kochi, Kerala. Thirty god damn long hours on a sleeper train. I'm not sure what comes to your mind when you think of trains. For me, I like to imagine long train rides as fun trips in wooden cabins with AC and cakes. This is pretty close to what we had in India. Except it was rusting metal bunks instead of wooden cabins, and there was no AC, and you can replace 'cakes' with 'cockroaches and mice'. We also got the cabin with the screaming child. And to warn those that plan to someday take a sleeper class train in India: never, ever use the latrine (I found out why the train stations smell like shit, though, as the trains don't hold their waste, it's just a drop down on to the tracks, so stations are literally the stagnant septic tank of the trains).

It was three of us taking this trip. Bobby, Jan, and I. The others went up north for the week that we took off, and saw Delhi, Agra, and Rajistan. But we were The Three Musketeers. Two Americans, and one German. On the way down to Kerala, I read Midnight's Children, Jan read All Quiet on the Western Front, and bobby read Schindler's List. I feel like those are the three books that a group has to be reading when traveling in India with two Americans and a German.

We got down to Kochi no problem, surviving off of the chai, water, and biryanni that the hawkers would sell up and down the aisle. Infact, I almost started to appreciate the shrill call of “chaaaiii, chaaaiii” every five minutes or so. By the way, that chai is pretty damn good. When we got in, it was pouring. This rain would continue for most of our trip. We took a rickshaw to the place we wanted to stay, the Vasco guest house (and rickshaws, for the record, can also act as fairly reliable boats up to about 8 inches of water, as was the average depth of the roads when we arrived to Kochi). This is said to be the place where Vasco de Gama died when he was exploring India. Too bad for us, the guy wanted three times the regular price for us to stay there. Instead, we stayed at Oy's guest house. To the best of my knowledge, no famous people died there.

Oy's is a pleasant enough place. The lady who runs the joint is friendly, and didn't mind when we forgot to give back the keys when we left (but we did give them back before we left Kerala, but again, I'm getting ahead of myself). The rooms were clean, slightly small, but had a nice balcony. When we checked in, we were able to get three mattresses, but she only provided two blankets. I still can't figure that one out.

Fort Kochin is the part of the city that we stayed in. Unlike what you would guess from the name, Fort Kochin is by no means a fort. In fact, the main attraction to Fort Kochin is the beautiful sea side view and the old Chinese fishing nets. The nets are huge bamboo structures that stand out in the water, and a team of fishermen are in charge of lowering and raising the nets daily. If you're feeling brave enough, you can buy the fresh catch of the day and have it cooked by one of the street vendors. We weren't feeling so brave. We had heard stories about the fish in Kerala.

We also got to see traditional Kerala dance, Kathakali. It's not really a dance, as it is a play, with music, and costumes. It takes six to eight years to learn how to perform a Kathakali production, which is usually several acts of a 101 chapter hindu epic, and takes about eight hours. Our production lasted only two. The actors use a set of hand gestures, facial contortions, and eye rolls to express words and ideas. My favorite was 'bee getting heavy from sucking the nectar from a flower'. They have an expression for that. Seriously. That shit goes on for eight hours.

Our next stop after Kochin was to go to Kumily. Kumily is home to the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary, and of course, the Periyar Tiger Preserve. The bus from Kochin to Kumily we were told was only two hours. This is not true. While the distance is only 100km as the crow flies, it's actually a six hour roller coaster ride from hell, with constant stops and bumps that would launch passengers out of their seats. We also had to stand for part of it, after we had to change buses. That was fun. I also had my first experience with motion sickness.

Once we got to Kumily, we stayed at the Coffee Inn, also known as the most rediculously adorable place to stay in all of Kumily. The room was fairly cheap, and it borders the wild life reserve, so you can sit outside while watching the jungle. They also have rooms in tree houses and huts. Unfortunately, our room was hardly glamorous, but it was cheap and clean. After a quick rest and a bite to eat, we decided it was time to take the boat tour of the jungle.

Because we didn't realize that the bus ride would include a free roller coaster ride, we ended up getting in to Kumily very late. We caught the last boat of the day, around 5 o'clock. The boat was nice but fairly crowded. The boat provides the best way to cover the most distance, and is the best way to spot any wildlife. Too bad for us, there were no tigers on this trip, but we did get to see elephants, boars, and several other wild animals. It was pretty good. The next day, on the very same tour at the very same time, we later found out, the boat capsized, killing nearly everyone on board. Comparatively, our tour went very smoothly.

We spent the rest of the evening in town, and had dinner and tea. The next morning we went on an elephant walk through the jungle. We got there early in the morning, and they were still washing the elephants for the day. I decided to watch the spectacle of an elephant shower. After a quick walk through the jungle, I found a clearing where two men were scrubbing down a male elephant, and washing it with a hose. As we watched, I noticed that the elephant was getting a raging boner. I was awe struck. It was like the elephant grew a fifth leg. The elephant keepers were very proud of this, and kept spraying the penis with the hose and giving it a good slap. Like any good tourist, I of course took a picture.

When it was time for us to ride an elephant, it turned out not to be our friend from the jungle, but was instead a female elephant. Riding and elephant is weird, and elephants aren't as nearly as soft as I always thought they were. We made slow progress through the forest, and saw some of the biggest spiders I have ever seen in the trees. Jan and I were impressed, Bobby was terrified. Of course, the spiders knew this. That's why they chose to land on his back, and not ours. Poor Bobby. After the elephant ride, we had to pack up our things one again, and prepare for our trip to Allepey.