postponing adulthood

"The streets are filled with idiots: CEAT tires." As this commercial brought the 2011 World Cup Cricket final to a close, the rooftop bar was rocked by a firework that hit our building. In the square below were hundreds of men, some in turbans, some without shirts, some with epic beards, all grinding provocatively on one another. A ball of fire rocked the street as a box of firecrackers exploded. A firework, supported only by a small pile of gravel, tipped over and shot off, exploding along the window of the coffee shop across the square. A car parked along the side of the road had two half naked men grinding on one another as the car thumped Eminem. Another vehicle pulled through the crowd with the driver hanging out the window while laying on the ... read more

I decided to stay in Jaipur for the Holi festival, a party which I didn‘t know about until it was practically upon me. On Saturday the manager of my hotel recommended going to the Elephant festival. This was a super touristy event held at the Polo grounds. They had elephants, horses, and camels all extravagantly decorated. There was a huge crowd and though these things are usually distasteful it was a pleasant way to spend an afternoon. My favorite part was the announcers who kept saying things like “Look at what a wonderful time you are having. You are all enjoying yourselves so much. You are smiling and will remember this day forever.” I felt like I was being hypnotized into having a good time. On my way back to the hotel things began to get ... read more

Jaipur is an enormous city. I don't know why I had been expecting something smaller and peaceful but I was sorely mistaken. My first day I set out in the morning to find some food and decided to walk toward the mountain fort and old city in the hope of finding some grub. I don't know where I ended up going through but it was probably the roughest, most raw place I have been. Extremely dirty, crowded with filthy naked kids squatting in piles of trash, the gutters were overflowing, it took all my mental energy not to fall into an open sewer or get hit by a car. I walked most of the morning and finally got to the old city and passed through the large fort walls. Not much better inside, I had expected ... read more

Kerala has been a vacation, I can’t even call this traveling, it has been too easy and too enjoyable. I spent several days at a homestay 20 miles outside of Alleppey. A family had set up living arrangements for a handful of tourists on their family farm. They were wonderful and the food was among the best I’ve ever eaten. The other guests were a German couple and a blind English couple accompanied by an English guide who had been to India many times. Each evening we would drink heavily and debate the hypothetical question if aliens had observed the last three years of WW2 would they have been able to differentiate who the “moral” or “immoral” nations were between the Germans/Russians/Japanese/Americans, as well as some less heavy things. It was interesting observing blind people, a ... read more

Am suffering from writers block so this will be short with mostly pictures. The first are set from the Rock Fort in Trichy. In order to get to the top you have to walk up hundreds of stairs. The sign said that the mountain was "3500 billion years old," and that "it is a proven fact that women who worship here have an easy child birth." The second group are the Brihadishwara Temple in Tanjore. This is by far my favorite temple complex I have visited. The massive Shiva Temple included many paintings, hundreds of words written in old Tamil scrawled on the walls, a large statue of an elephant (and a real elephant) among others. I stayed with a friend in Trichy for a week and used the time to try and discover more about ... read more