Eurgh!

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Monday 30th April 2007 - Friday 4th May 2007

Mysore was a hell hole full of letching men, internet cafes, power cuts, no water, stonach bugs, ticks, rooms straight out of Prisoner Cell Block H with no window and as we arrived so did the Monsoons!! Starting on the 1st May at about 2am the thunder was so loud it was if there were explosion all around us and lying in our bomb shelter it felt as though we had been there a long time...
we did find a roof top restaurant the next day and Michal and I were sat ordering when the sky around us darkened like the night and the heavens opened, within seconds i was drenched, looking over at the now deserted streets. The wind picked up so badly bits of roof were being ripped off and the electricity cables sparked as the rain drops hit them. We took refuge inside and called Gem and Tsipi to come to us for dinner. Sat freezing in the dark restaurant (power cut), eating by candlelight when in walks Frank and Lara.... Now Frank and Lara we met in Hampi, we had all been due to go off in different directions but here we are all together again, I mean in the same restaurant as us?! the odds of these things happening when there are over a billion people in India and god only knows how many towns/cities/villages and in those places how many restaurants there are, but here we all were, having bumped into the same fellow travelers yet again!
One night we were walking back from dinner, particularly frustrated with the amount of men who think that it's acceptable to grab your boob or put their hands between your legs when Gem comments that the group of men we just walked by had grabbed her breast, I snapped, so annoyed, I ran back and pushed the guy so hard he actually came out of his shoes and landed in a crumpled mess on the floor. Shocked that a woman had responded in this way he was a babling mess and it again hit me just how primative some of the views towards women here are. Here women are nearly always fully covered, showing just your armpit is sensual and teasing as it has pubic hair, so when all that they see of western women is us in short skirts/vest tops/bikinis/etc they think all we are interested in is sex... I try to tell them theres more to life, you know things like football, alcohol, shopping etc but they think we're all shallow! Seriously though to a degree i can understand their attitues, when a lot of the people over here actually see television it's nearly always MTV or cras comedy programs, it paints us in a very bad light in comparison to the deeply religious, steeped in custom, Indian culture.
I also had my scariest experience so far in Mysore....we had all been ill with a stomach bug but just getting on with it, when one night, after dinner, we were checking our mail when i looked up to see Tsipi holding Gem, it took a moment to register that Gem had actually passed out, on coming to she was very ill, throwing up, very weak, disorientated and scared. I ran and got us a rickshaw and we helped Gem down the stairs and into it. We started driving back to the hotel when we realised we had no water, unfortunately the driver didn't understand me that i wanted to find somewhere for water (it was about 11pm and most places are closed) and promptly took me to a bar. Stopping outside i was already nervous and it wasn't practical for the others to move which meant that i was going in alone, thankfully the driver came in with me. Stepping through the doors i was surrounded by about 20 drunk Indian men, staring and leering, really conscious as i was in a vest top (I had left my shawl in the Rickshaw accidently) I looked at the driver and the look in his eyes did nothing to allay my fears, we stood back to back for 10 minutes whilst the landlord sent his son for water and each and every secoind felt like a minute, thankfully we left without any real incident and Gem felt better after having "cleared her system"!

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