Varanasi to Hampi

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Stayed in Varanasi for a little while. Long enough to "celebrate" my birthday and Halloween plus a week or two.. The inner city is similar to many Indian cities in that it is god damn noisy and crowded. The parts of the city next to the river are way more bad ass in that there are little alleys everywhere and there is always somebody doing some crazy nonsense at any given point in the day. Or night. We stayed at a guest house which Gael had stayed in in recent years. The room I stayed in was pretty sweet. It came with a window. and a small bed side table. and a little court yard where I could hang my laundry or cut my hair. Which I failed at. I attempted to cut my hair without a mirror, nuff said.
Got some sweet books here, from the three local bookstores. I also dropped some cash for a bunch of awesome stickers and a swat cats/tom & jerry dvd.
Dead people get burned all the time down by the river. Its totally rad and you can see it, almost guilt free, from a boat that you rent way early in the morning. And sometimes at night, you can lurk in the shadows and creep up on a burning. The latter is way more fun, its like playing spies or ninjas.

Sam had told me that she was going to Nepal and I toyed with the idea of joining her. I had heard a lot about the difficulties involved with getting back into India and I was highly speculative about going. I decided at the last possible moment that I would forge a plane ticket that would state that I had a flight out of India a few days after my Nepal visa expired, thus giving me a valid reason to re-enter India.
So we set off for Nepal. The first bus left Varanasi and went to the border of Nepal. The ride was ten hours long and it started at 9pm. We boarded the bus a tad late so all the good seats were taken so we sat second to the rear. Much bouncing ensued and sleep was a distant reality. Arriving at the border around seven we went straight through the visa process and the men working told us that there would be no problems for us leaving Nepal. This was a relief, as I no longer had to participate in the forging of a plane ticket. We were still quite far from Kathmandu, so we boarded another bus which took about 9 hours. It was totally lame.
We arrived in kathmandu in the pm and went to a guest house Sam had looked up. There happened to be a room so we stayed for a few days. In those days we explored Kathmandu and god damn there are a lot of pharmacies. There must be a lot of sick people in Nepal. I was pumped because they had decent beer. Decent beer is key at any stage of the game.
The next two weeks involved seeing some stupas, obtaining items, and generally having a good time. The last guest house we stayed in had an amazing garden with massive snails with conical shells. Nepal is a little bit more expensive than India, but it is worth it because of how frackin sweet it is. On our last day we travelled to the border to return to India. We were stopped and informed that we could not get back across. Only after I noticed some money being passed around did I realize what was going on. We had to pay 700 for the privilege of crossing back into India. Once on the other side we travelled to Agra.
We arrived in Agra on a Thursday night and therefore were not allowed in to see the Taj Mahal on the next day (It is only open to Muslims on Fridays). Since we were in a hurry to get to the Camel Fair, we left on the Friday and made it to Ajmer that night. The next day we spent in Ajmer but left at night for Pushgar. We met a guy on the bus who offered us a room for rs 500. Everywhere else wanted 800 up so we took it for two nights. The last two days of the Camel Fair.. Sadly Sam fell ill these two days so we did not go see any of the events. I was actually quite relieved by this because I did not want to be among such a large group of people. Oh and damn, the amount of people who come to do offerings and bathe in the Holy lake, jeesus, Ive never seen so many people in one place. Whats more is, the water is not clean. Far from it. There is trash, flowers, burning leaves and other debris floating about and they keep putting more in! I mean, eventually it just sinks, I think, because I did not see anyone picking up the trash. Only on the last day of the fair did they sweep the streets. They became twice as wide as before. After the fair was over Pushgar turned into Tourist town. All of the shops were still open and all of the prices had dropped, well, some. After Sam left for Mexico I stayed for another ten days in a room which cost me rs 100 a night. The guest house had a sweet setup, it was all built around an inner courtyard with a big tree. The ground was bare earth and the owner had 7 pet turtles that crawled around from time to time. Mostly when they were fed. There was double roof access and tons of places to hang wet clothes. I also set up a small shooting range for myself out of cans and playing cards. Practice was twice a day.
From Pushgar I travelled to Udaipur, another tourist haven but still pretty cool. There was also a lake here in which people bathed and it was also filthy. Ah ha, there were armories in this town! They only made certain types of firearms and replica antique muskets and rifles but still, pretty neat. I was able to restock on ammo here. To save a bit of dough I took to eating samosas for lunch. In the coming weeks this got out of hand as I was eating up to eight a day. After exploring Udaipur I set off for five days in mt. Abu. Mt. Abu is so small it can be done as a day trip. I was there for five whole days. After the first two days I began to drink booze to make things interesting. Days three and four were spent walking around the nearby lake or going the other direction down the main road and the nights were spent watching 70s Bollywood movies. Which are usually three hours long. After Mt Abu I decided to go to Baroda, a university city in Gujarat.
Baroda was a piece of crap. None of the hotels or guest houses wanted to rent a room to a foreigner. I didnt see any tourists in this place at all. I found a room for 875 after scouring dozens of locations. The room was awful. Full of mosquitos, I mean FULL. I killed over twenty before going to bed. The next day I took a bus to Ahmedabad which was kinda crappy too. But less crappy so I stayed for a few days before going to Rajkot. Rajkot is nice. It is small, relatively quiet, and there are a lot of little streets to walk down. I circled the entire city in a matter of hours. With the help of my sweet ass compass of course. From Rajkot I made my way down to Bombay, stopping in Surat. In Surat I had the same situation as in Baroda, nobody wants to deal with the paperwork involved with having a foreigner stay at their place. Being refused yet another time, I put my stuff down outside of a guest house and stood stretching on the side walk. Two guys from the guest house walked out and asked me if I had a problem, just after refusing to let me stay at their guest house. WTF. Of course I had a problem. Long story short, these guys helped book me into a fancy hotel for only rs 500. They talked to the hotel staff and told them my budget was 500 and voila, presto, room for the night. The next day I took a crappy seater bus to Mumbai.The trip was reminiscent of the trip to the border of Nepal. I arrived at 7 am and found a double room in a one Hotel Volga for rs 500. Mumbai is too expensive. I blew a lot of dough just eating and getting around. Weak. Later the same day I met Catherine at the airport and the next day we set off for Pune.
Our first night in Pune we ate out and ordered a bottle of wine. I hadn't had wine in ages. We met the new year in Pune, and it was quite uneventful. Having explored a bit of Pune and seeing too many people wearing maroon gowns (All attending Osho meditation resort) we decided to head south to Goa. At first I wasn't even going to go to Goa. I thought that it would suck. After reading about the awesome old cathedrals I wanted to go. When we got there I made an amazing discovery, beer was very cheap compared to other states. Pretty much half the price. We stayed on the beach in southern Goa. Well, not exactly on the beach.. But close to it. We stayed for around three days, climbing rocks, eating seafood, guzzling cheap beer, and then we left for Hampi.
For this trip we reserved and payed for sleeper berths on the bus but when we got there the conductor told us that the sleepers were full and we would be in seats. It was total bullshit and made the ride really crappy. We arrived at four am and followed a group of other tourist down to the edge of a river were we waited until 7am for a ferry to take us across. Once on the other side it became a huge scramble to find a guest house. Somehow Catherine and I got separated so I just kept walking down the one road on "Hampi Island". After strolling for about 15 minutes down the dirt road a man approached me and asked if I needed a room. I said hell yes brother. He showed me the room and said it was 150 a night. I gave him rs 200, dumped my stuff and went to go look for Catherine. We spent the next few days relaxing and walking around checking out the local ruins. On day four or five Catherine became bored and left to go travel on her own. I am currently in Hampi and have been here for a little over two weeks. I think I will head back to Goa, seeing as how I never got a chance to go to the cathedrals..

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