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Published: August 5th 2007
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this is how it goes: you make plans, the earth rotates, and you end up back in manali.
we went to mandi with the intention of seeing a lake, going to the valley of flowers, etc. etc.
we got there and after one night i was making a list of places to go, feeling doubts about the lake, missing the higher mountains, i got natalie to draw from my hand. it was manali, so we got on a bus and made a return trip.
these bus rides are beautiful, but always on the edge of a great possible fall.
we like to make a list of divine reasons we went to mandi, only to come back. i'm inclined to laugh at reason. we're in india.
on the bus to mandi, these two young indian boys, also traveling, got into a conversation primarily with natalie. during the onset of a meeting, i always think that maybe this time the talk won't take some strange turn, but i'm always wrong.
with these guys, it begins as a conversation about marriage and the different cultural perspectives, very different. the two boys had opposing beliefs as well. one was preferred marriage
for love, the other wants an arranged marriage, believing his parents will choose well for him. the one who wants a "love marriage" is very curious. he asks us all sorts of complicated questions that he seems to think will have easy answers. there's such an enormous gulf in the way our minds work, that if we answer one way, it implies things that we don't intend for it to imply, so every thought has to be explained in relation to the assumptions we expect will follow.
a long series of questions and answers eventually led to asking natalie if she was a virgin.
i'm looking at her out of the corner of my eye, waiting to see how she would handle this one. the guy was innocent but he didn't quite understand the interconnected nature of his questions.
natalie gave him a firm look and said "i'm going to help you out. when you go to austraila don't ask women that question. i'm not offended but other women probably will be" he apologized and his more reserved friend was telling him it was a stupid question in hindi.
it was easy to sense. we laughed.
water
falling we've been reading all day long. for a couple days now. we're plotting our next move. natalie says we're being lazy, i prefer to think we're being still. and stillness is required if you want to travel india happy and not panic every time you get on another bus.
i'd like to tell you how dirty we get. i took a shower the other day, and after i thought i was clean, i noticed my neck was black. it wouldn't just come off with soap and water. maybe it's from sitting on the bus with my face in front of the open window, it just accumulates on your skin.
if you come to india, bring a loofah or buy a hard dish sponge like we did.
natalie says there's a theme to her travels. love, community, and death. we watched -the sheltering sky- a beautiful film. i'd like to share the last lines of the movie with you:
"Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well, yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you
remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless."
this is the narrator speaking, who is also a figure in the movie. right before he says this the leading lady walks into a restaurant, he sees her coming and says:
"are you lost?"
and she replies
"yes"
and the movie ends with the above.
you have to see the movie to feel it as more than words on a screen.
natalie says i bring the love theme to her noticed themes and for that i smile. as the main character of my current book says:
"the only thing that interests me is love"
the bugs. i think we house hundreds. every night it's a matter of catching the wild ones and putting them out the window.
home sweet home.
i cut my bangs today.
i saw a yak!
yaks are like mythical creatures but i saw three
walking down the street. if you care for me you'll cross your fingers that i see more. natalie had seen one days before i told her i must see one, and she said to me "you will see a yak" with conviction, that very day the prophecy came true.
we have nicknames given to us by the guys that own dylan's coffee house. natalie is double diamond for her dimples and i'm angel. haha.
whenever i got on here and saw the comments from kellyh and brando, it brightened my day.
thanks for reading. i think a couple times today we both expressed our joy that kelly sent us a message. thank you! we miss amazing grace.
being away in india isn't easy. it's so many things. and your comments motivate.
i miss people.
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non-member comment
great
Great response to the "virgin" question. Rock on, travelers!