Farewell India...

As we have learned on this trip, all things are impermanent, including this trip itself. The end is here, or if you like, a new beginning. The traveling twosome have gone their separate ways; Max to continue his travels in Thailand, and Eli is headed back to the good ol' USA.  We have had the time of our lives on this trip and learned an enormous amount about the world, and ourselves. We also want to thank you for reading our somewhat inane and ridiculous updates. There will be some more posts coming (including an extensive photo gallery) but this is the last update from the subcontinent.  Good bye India, we hardly knew ye...

Looking sharp...

Getting cleaned up for Thailand

Shooting stuff on the streets of Kolkata

V.I.P.-assana

The Bangalore Vipassana Meditation Retreat Center: our home for 12 days

Ok, so this is one of the most difficult posts we've created this whole trip. Besides the necessary dullness of ten and a half hours of daily sitting, to describe the minute shifts and intensely personal revelations experienced during such an experience would be both excruciatingly boring for the reader and far too revealing for us. What we will say is that we recommend that all of our friends and family consider taking this course (it's available worldwide and it's donation-based AKA nearly free) as the time at the center will certainly change your perspective and probably change your life. Be Happy: nuff' said.

Ok, so the first thing we did after Vipassana was eat KFC: sue us.

Since Vipassana we've been on the move hardcore. One night in Bangalore, four nights in Thiruvannamalai, four nights in Pondicherry... It's really nice to be on the road again considering how cooped up we were for the course and how our time in India is running very very short (at the time of this writing, our visas have about one week remaining). Tomorrow we will hop a bus to Chennai and grab dinner with an old friend from the Annapurna Circuit before catching the 30-hour train to Kolkata (commonly referred to as "Calcutta" by Westerners), where our respective flights will depart next week. During this last week+ we've become gurus by circumnavigating the Arunachala (a mountain that is a physical manifestation of Shiva), woke up at 4:45 to fight through a ornery line to buy Takkal (Hindi for, too-shortsighted to buy tickets early enough) train tickets, and accidentally led ourselves all the way through an underground, bat-filled sewer while looking for a Utopian village. Fun-filled crazy days to be sure, but we gotta soak it all up while we're still on the subcontinent. 

Gettin' Sadhu wit it in Thiruvannamalai

Our Thiruvanna Mama

Casper the Friendly Condom

Big Ol' Shiva Temple

Hampi Hampi, Joy Joy

Yes, Hampi is surprisingly awesome

Wow, just wow. Hampi is possibly the coolest place we’ve visited in our nearly 5 months on the subcontinent. Once home to the richest civilization in the history of India, Hampi is now the site of countless temples and century-old ruins and, even better, countless-er boulders that stretch out in every direction as far as the eye can see. The whole place vibrates with the incredible energy of long-lost empires and wave after wave of crunchy climbers flocking to the allure of the stone.

The little babu at our favorite restaurant with his favorite instruments

Very strange looking statues everywhere

We were on rocks like white on rice on paddies

Having received numerous tips from fellow travelers, the Masala Ballas were ahead of the game and headed straight for the other side of the river for accommodation upon arrival. Staying technically on a forest preserve (one day the police showed up for their recurring baksheesh [bribe] from the dozen+ guesthouses and restaurants that shouldn’t be), it was less than a thirty second walk from our door to a stretch of boulder field that we couldn’t begin to cover after almost two weeks of exploration. However, it was a great place to climb, and climb we did, waking up [relatively] early, hitting the rocks for yoga, tai ch’i and climbing, retreating during the heat of the afternoon only to return in the early evening. We’ll let the photos speak to the experience but it was incredible to have the world’s greatest climbing gym in our backyard.

With refreshed bodies and minds we now prepare to leave our beloved Hampi for Bangalore, site of our Vipassana course [dhamma.org if you’re interested] starting on the 19^th. The course will be a greater challenge than the experience at Kopan monastery in Kathmandu, but we feel prepared by the meditation of travel and our time in Hampi. We exit the Dhamma center on the 30^th; until then peace and love.

Waiting for the "ferry" with our dear dear dear Belgian friend, Leen

Swarms of monkeys galore

A peaceful place

A typical night...

ChicaGoans Goan Crazy in Goa

Nothing out of the ordinary...

Ahhh... Take a Deep Breath and be Jealous

Despite the fact that their celebrity was rising quicker than a striking Cobra in the big city of Bombay, the Masala Ballas decided it was time to take a break from the spotlight and head down to Goa; a stretch of seventy unbroken kilometers of beaches world-famous for its soft sands, Goan trance music and a relaxed atmosphere.

Holy Beach Cows

While it’s true that we fully indulged in the hedonistic lifestyle ubiquitous throughout Goa, we also managed to maintain our wanderlust, hitting up five Goan beaches in less than two weeks and spending time with dozens of new beach bum friends: we chilled with our Israeli friends in Anjuna, met up with the oh-so lovely Mindy and Anne of Chicago with Mindy’s sister Monica and her daughter Ruby for a couple days including Christmas breakfast, then jetted over to Candolim to meet up with the South African and German party girls from Bombay for Christmas night.

Max and some Punjabs

After perhaps too much debauchery in Candolim, including being welcomed into Club Fresh, the beach’s hottest club and for free nonetheless, we chose to mosey further south to Gokarna where there is a far less corporate/Hollywood vibe (rumor has it that Angelina Jolie was in Goa with us) and a far greater backpacker-friendly energy. We arrived in Om beach on the 30^th (the beach is shaped like an Om, the Sanskrit word that expressed the cosmic energy and the vibrations that it creates) and then spent New Year’s Eve with people from Sweden, Italy, Israel, Belgium, Austria, and so many Indians (it’s a big Hindi hang out around here). Since no one owns a reliable clock, we took it upon ourselves to decide when New Years was occurring and started a beach-wide countdown with our voluminous lungs culminating in large fireworks bursting all around us and cheers for miles around.

Ommmmmmmm......... beach

Beach Babas

Now things around here have calmed down quite a bit, it’s time for us to head inland and start preparing our bodies and minds for a Vipassana course due to start in the middle of January. We’ve chosen Hampi as our destination, a holy city that is considered the richest city in the history of India. Filled with ancient temples and boulder fields, Hampi should be the perfect place to spend a couple weeks and tune up a bit. And of course, we were thinking of all our friends and family during the holidays, so please accept a belated happy Chanukah, a merry Christmas and happy new years from us. It’s already turning out to be a fantastic 2011.

Woman with Fruit

Max Enjoys the View

 

We've got Bollywood

Ok, first of all, India is no Nepal, it's a totally different beast altogether. Not only have we lost our ability to share shards of conversation with locals (there's like 20,000 different languages here and apparently you have to be able to read a person's dialect from their face to avoid insulting them) but we've lost our hold on what's culturally acceptable and expected. Nonetheless, we're having a great time our here and enjoying some pretty crazy adventures. After ten hours of travel from Pokhara to Gorakhpur, we hopped on a 30+ hour train to Bombay (only losers call it Mumbai) in a sleeper car. We had heard volumes of terrifying stories about the sleepers, from druggings and theft to crippled beggars crawling into bed with foreigners, but the whole thing was actually really easy and comfortable except for the duration. 

Max Getting The Old Ear Cleaning Scam

One problem we faced was being shaken awake by an adjacent passenger at 4:30 in the morning. "Bombay, Bombay, ten minutes!" he told us. Now, we thought we'd be arriving at 9AM or so and would be able to easily find a hotel room in the bright Indian sun, but alas, it was not to be. After a scamtastic taxi ride to the tourist district, Kolaba, we wandered through the wide, Parisian-esque streets (it's been very strange to find ourselves in a city that is so modern and distinctly European, we even have enjoyed Indian McDonalds a few times). Fortunately we found some Westerners huddled together on the street in front of the Taj Hotel (where Obama stayed last month and the site of the terrorist attacks of 2008) next to the Gateway of India who allowed us to rest our weary bodies near them. As we have learned during our months of travel, friends are plentiful even in unfamiliar places and so after starting the day alone, we ended our evening on a rooftop restaurant with 14 other people from Israel, Germany, South Africa, England, Singapore, France and the US. Just an awesome first day in Bombay.

And the fun only continued the next day. Joined by some of our friends from the hostel we hopped in a van at 8 in the morning to travel to a Bollywood set and work as extras for the forthcoming film "Ready" (there's actually a wikipedia article about this movie). Dressed in fashionable wardrobe, the Masala Ballas mulled around a giant set (apparently a wedding in Iran??) until they were needed. The scene was a big showdown between the good guys and the bad dudes which involved a lot of stage punches for the actors and repeated directions to looked "shocked" for the extras. We were involved in so many scenes and so prominently displayed (we took our job much more seriously than the other scrubs they pulled off the street) that one of the directors told us to "hide" ourselves in the background because we had been "established" in several locations within a few seconds. Eli even received kudos from multiple directors and there are whispers of a multi-movie deal in the works with Indian star Salaam Khan. 

The Big Fight Scene in "Ready" the Next Big Hit (Don't Worry, We Were Much Better Than These Sour Faced Extras)
[Not shown: the fork that becomes lodged in one of the actor's rears in this scene's culmination]

Overall, it was just an awesome experience: we received free breakfast, lunch, snacks, chai, and 500 rupees (just shy of 12 US dollars) all for only 15 hours of work and transportation. Such suckers....

Our Bollywood Debut!

Tomorrow we leave for Goa, the region renowned for its miles of unbroken beaches. It's very strange to think that we were in the Himalayas less than two weeks ago and tomorrow we will be enjoying the hot hot sun in Goa. Yes, we have seen the weather reports from Chicago: we'll drink something tropical out of a coconut for all of you.

Mumbai-Curious

After exactly 100 days in Nepal we are taking a train down south;  45+ hours of transportation ahead.
We are going to have to change the blog title now that we are going to be in India. Any suggestions?

Hindu Thin Air: The HimaPlayas Go Trekin'

Yeah, we were on top of the world.  It's hard to describe 2+ weeks in the Himalayas in a blog post, we'll do our best, but forgive us if we rely on pictures instead of literally describing the daily grind of trekking.

Joined by honorary Acclimate, Chris Garren, professional mountain climber and ranking much higher in Alpine IQ than either of us (he also had a critical piece of equipment: a watch, so that we could wake up on time to make it to the next town...), our enlarged crew was prepared to start the 100+ mile journey.

 

Last photo before hitting the trail

Once on the Circuit, we settled into a very nice routine: wake up with the sun (around 6:30), eat a energizing breakfast generally consisting of porridge, and Tibetan bread (super-delicious fried bread for that good-morning burst), and start hiking, most of the time up up up. An average day of hiking was about 6-7 hours not including our midday break of Snickers and Daal Baht, and regularly changing our layers (the mornings were bitter cold, then after 20 minutes of walking we were unbearably hot, and then right around 12:30-1 it would start getting extremely cold again, so yeah, we had to constantly switch up our threads). 

FantasTrek!

One of countless Trexellent suspension bridges

Mid-Trekking-Action Shot

What a Cute Little Furball!.. and the Puppy is Cute Too

We walked through terrain of all kinds: from jungle and rice paddies, to lush pine forests, and eventually to the stark alpine desert well above the tree line. We rounded out the trek by spending a few days in Tatopani relaxing in a natural hot spring to soothe our weary muscles. We were lucky with the weather and had clear views of the most intimidatingly beautiful mountains in the world just about everyday. At night we would crawl into our sleeping bags, trying to fight the cold  in the ever-freezing guesthouses. Our hike from Besi Sahar to the top of Thorong La pass took us from 2,000 feet of elevation to almost 18,000 (not to mention several days of climbing and climbing only to descend to our starting elevation), and we did it while making lots of new traveling friends from across the globe.

We Spun a Lot of Prayer Wheels

Chris and the Annapurnas

Enjoying Into Thin Air on Thanksgiving in  Manang's most exclusive movie theater

Two hungry trekkers await their daal baht lunches

Partying with Russians at 17,800 feet

Thorong La Pass

On the way down we cleansed our bad karma in the 108 holy taps at Muktinath: That's right... we have clean slates

Then we had the pleasure of hanging out with a Sadhu named Baba at his cave