I am on the sleepy island of Dui on the Arabian Sea. Peacocks sit in palm trees and the wedding band has been playing for 8 straight days around the clock. At the small hours of the night the drum ensemble leads with frenetic tempo and the keyboardist reaches a psychedelic fever pitch. At 6 am firecrackers startle me awake and the sleepy musicians persist with hollow dragging of their more canned instrumentals. But by 10 am the sun is beginning to scorch the concrete streets and the entire wedding party is colorful again as they pass the restaurant where I [View Full Entry]

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Kyle and Jake went Bungee Jumping today, the happy fools. They rode a bus for Six Hours for the privilege. I stayed behind in Kathmandu. I took a taxi to the Bagmati river and was lucky enough to find a Hindu festival. Small pyramids of bamboo were anchored in the mud of the river, several sheltering small idols of Shiva and Shivaratri. The banks were covered by tents supported by bamboo poles, covered in a mess of "Christmas" lights. The tents were crowded with discarded shoes, crowds preparing offerings (garlands of flowers, fruit, clay candles, jars of milk) and, strangely, televisions. [View Full Entry]

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I made it to Kathmandu yesterday (barely). After the paragliding I got my first taste of 'traveler's sick'; in a nutshell betrayal by all my normal body fluids and temperatures & so I braved the 8 hour bus ride to Kathmandu (thank you, thank you, my sensitive travel companions). Today I am feeling back to my normal self and I'm trying to be good but I couldn't help slowing down at all the scrumptious cake shops (rum raisin chocolate, apple donuts...) Kyle read up on temples, stupas and chowks of the city and took me on magic tour of the city's [View Full Entry]

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Winter came early to Spiti and Keneur, we got snow on three of the four days we spent trekking. At the pass we got about a foot of the stuff, high winds and snow falling so fast you couldn't see more than 15 yards ahead. Until the wind picked up the temperature was perfect: just above freezing with flurries, not cold enough to stop you sweating. Kyle's eyelashes and beard were frozen. Until the nausea began in earnest I was feeling disoriented and giddy by turns from the altitude. We crossed at a stomach-turning 16,080 feet. We couldn't see the peaks [View Full Entry]

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I'm now in Kaza, a remote location in the N.W. Indian Himalaya. It's so remote that it takes 12 hours by bus to travel only 200 kilometers from Manali. The views were terrifying, we crossed one mountain pass from the rain shadow side to the arid region I'm in now. The dirt roads were rained out in places on the switch-backs, and accommodate two-way traffic. We passed two wrecked cargo trucks, from the looks of them they fell down the mountain. No guard rails. I'm leaving today at 4:30 for Mud (pronounced "Mood") but mud is all I really expect to [View Full Entry]

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too tired to leave our hotel room, 15 hours after landing in Delhi, everyone is asleep in the middle of the day. I'm fighting it off, but when I try to guess the time here I'm wrong, and guessing New York time is even worse. So I'm confused, and I'm hiding in the hotel because going outside is even more disorienting. We're staying in the Anoop Hotel in Paharganj, a "budget travellers' area" according to Jake's Lonely Planet Guide to Northern India. It is located between Old and New Delhi, on Main Bazar, which is a market. Our hotel room has [View Full Entry]

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Brian's loft feels like a house with too many cats, except there are actually too many people. There's a lot of stuff to trip on, mostly people (cats? as in cool). I think we're outnumbered by guitars. I count seven people and 10 guitars. Morale is high in the Rock'N'Roll Barracks. The Barracks is their name not mine, in reference to the side by side beds in the loft. [View Full Entry]

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Riding the Chinatown Bus to stay with Brian and Robert and Mike today, plane leaves on Wednesday. [View Full Entry]

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