We stayed in a 5 star hotel, which served nothing but cauliflower curries. Must have been a cheap day at the markets. One nice thing is that there was a pool – i went for a swim while the acid air burned my lungs, and it was actually quite nice. The son of the puppet show man started racing me back and forth in the pool, and then decided to teach me a hindi song, which i immediately forgot. Dad was not impressed, and when i was finished in the pool, he tried to sit me down to watch his show while completely soaking wet, cold, and coughing.

Next Day: Seeing the Taj is definitely a once in a lifetime thing. The building is beautiful, and even mass tourism hasn’t managed to detract from it (too much). It is an oft photographed monument, and there is a constant sense of deja vu as you walk around, because you have seen it, from this angle, but there are things around the building which you don’t see much in the photos – there is a mosque and a waiting area, which are mirror images of each other, just as large as the main edifice on either side, and the details and way that the building reacts and is affected by its surroundings is difficult to gather from photographs or drawings.

photos when i can…

After the Taj, there was a brief detour through delhi, and then onwards to the oldest inhabited city in the world, VARANASI.  The city is special, because the whole thing is designed around the hindu religion.

In their religion, East represents birth/ re-birth, south life, west death, and north enlightenment. There are 3 gods, schiva = destruction, vishnu = preservation, Brahma = creation. There are no temples to Brahma (for a reason saved for another post) but schiva and vishnu are reveared. Varanasi is the city of schiva, or the city of death.

The Ganges, which flows from Brahma, onto Vishnu’s foot (to stop it’s power from destroying creation) and flows south through india, bends northward at the city, making it the only place where the water of life flow northwards towards enlightenment. The entire city is built on the west (death) bank of the river, facing life. Anything built on the east would be facing death, and not liveable.

The city is a desirable place to be cremated, because your ashes are placed in the river from the city of death and taken by the ganges north into enlightenment. It is so important, that the bottom caste, the Untouchables, who are the only caste that can handle dead bodies and cremations, have formed a mafia, and are the most wealthy inhabitants of the city (the head of the caste, the DOM, lives in a castle on the banks of the river, the price of the cremation of the wife of a king)

We have been taking bicycle rickshaws around here, which has been interesting. It’s not fast, but it’s nice to get out of the crowds and mess on the street for a while, and it’s very cheap.

we are here for 3 more days, and are going to Saranath tomorrow, the point where Sidhartha Buddah gave his first sermon here (Buddah was an incarnation of Vishnu, as was Jesus according to the Hindus)

Okay, gotta get out of this internet cafe, back onto the mean streets of the dead city.

Arriving in Jaipur was depressing: an harsh reminder that we are here to experience architecture, not necessarily charming towns.

A day spent drawings in the hotel was followed by a day running around a fort called the amber fort, which you have to take an elephant to get to (photos of elephants coming when i can get a computer that can take photos) the fort was amazing, but the hasseling from people there was quite bad - stares and looks like you are an alien or something. It happens quite often that indian tourists will take a photo of me while i am drawing or walking around, without asking or anything, like something in a zoo.

 The girls have it rougher than the guys, however, and it has happened a few times that myself and the other guys in the groud have had to intervene to stop some excited indian from snapping photos or worse. 

This entire country seems to run on comission. On the way back from the amber fort to the hotel the bus driver decided to take a 2 hour detour (on what is only a 20 min trip) to a jewler whom we should all see. it took a few min. to convince him that we didn’t want to, and after gettings stuck in some kind of political protest, managed to find our way back to the hotel.

It’s not like the rickshaw drivers are any better. In Agra, before going to the Taj Mahjal, i asked to get a trip to the nearest ATM, and was asked 20 times or more if i wanted to go to the markets.

 more on juntar muntar and the Taj tomorrow, from Varanassi.

 We came from the hot south to the not quite so hot norther parts of India about 2 days ago, and arrived in the capital of Rajistan, the city of lakes, Udaipur. At night the city is breathtaking, and after a few beers on the rooftop terrace, watched the fireworks for a millionaires wedding (i secretly suspect it was for us)went to my room, and woke up to this:

 The floating castle in the background is the one that featured in octopussy, the james bond film, we went there later that day, after doing a boat tour of the place, and it’s pretty nice.

 Much of the rest of the time here has been spend shopping. the city is full of craftsmen, who do books, jewelery, pottery, clothes, food (although we are banned from street food) musical instruments (i’m Haggling on a clarinet), Damascus steel knives and all kinds of things i can’t really even recognize. And it’s cheap. I can’t say too much, as christmas presents have been purchased, but I have got for myself 4 tailored shirts for 100$, a tailored black suit for 160, and a zipper jacked for about the same. They have 10 people working on it, and the other orders from our group, and we get them fitted tomorrow. So excited. Also getting some leather bound notebooks with custom etching on the cover for 5 bucks, and there is all manner of marble, stone, leather everything you can get.

aside from haggling and shopping, We have been in the royal palace drawing details and stuff for school. It’s a very interesting building to work on, as it has many different elements and time periods to be inspired by.

The exterior shows the 300 years between the bottom and the top floorts

The Sultan considered himself the sun god, and so built a room full of mirrors which he used to command the light from the sun. Totally disco.

The window is based on a solar eclipse – light comes in from the outside, and the corona is represented by the light spilling out onto the wall. the other side is a polished bronze sun.

I’ve been feeling a bit sick, too much curry (i’d say i’m at about 7.5 on the constipation scale, where 5 is normal, and 10 is roadblock) and tomorrow is the last day in this incredible city which I have to come back to because 3 days is just a taste, so it’s off to bed for me, hopefully i’ll do another post tomorrow before the plane flight to Delhi, but this is India, anything can happen.

Arriving at Bombay airport at 8pm, There wasn’t muuch we could do but go to the hotel, and get some much needed sleep. Unfortunately, there where a few classic indian obsticals holding us up. Cues. the cue for the immigration, the cue for the customs, the cue to get your bags. The cue to get out of the place where you get your bags.

An hour or so of cuing and shoving later, and we got onto the bus for the first taste of indian traffic, which really wasn’t so bad, the expected rules of bigger car has right of way, use the horn a lot, yell at people, and the lights and lines on the road are meaningless. 45 min later, the hotel.

In India, most of the workers in most places are paid nothing. They are given food, a floor to sleep on, and any tips they get they send to their families. This means that anything you ask for is delivered by an expectant attendant, and there are dozens of expectant attendants drifting around the hotel looking for bags to carry, people to help.

A few of us decided to change some money, and decided to go for a walk down the road to find a Forex. It ended with me running into a hotel with 2 homeless children hanging off each arm asking for money. that was intense.

the next day, proceeding a romantic walk on the beach with some more untouchable children in tow, we flew on Kingfisher Airlines, the airline of the beer, into the thriving metropolis of hubli, and onto a bus for a white knuckle 5 hour ride to Hampi.

Everybody knows that drivingi in indian cities is special, there was not really a shock there except for a realization that everything i had heard was not an exaguration. Highway driving in india, however, scared the crap out of me. it’s a 2 lane ‘highway’ reduced to a meandering one and a bit lanes by potholes and parked trucks in their thousands. The goal: overtake everybody, regardless of incomming traffic. Always avoid potholes by going into the other lane, so that the drivers in the oncomming direction have to slam on their breakes to avoid running into you, or veer off the road (on either side) and go 3, 4, or 4 and a motorcycle abreast). There are many moments when the whole bus is terrified, and the bus drivers wondering what the big deal is. (There are 2 bus drivers, one to drive, the other to yell and people to get out of the way.)

It seems to be a thing in india, that for every job there is, you have 2 people watching them do it. This goes for everything, from the airport where a ground staff of 15 watch 5 people acctually get the plane ready, and there are four flight attendants for a plane with 17 rows, driving buses, trucks (which sometimes take an entire extended family wedged into the cab). The whole country is a giant make-work project.

Maybe that is needed though. Every time the bus stops, even if only for a pee break next to some chilli fields, begger children come out of the woodwork selling things, or just asking for money. Walking in some places gets you an entourage of children, one or two each, who, generally after a few min. of asking, will be content to walk with you. The tragic thing is, that if you give them some money, as we did to one such follower in the ruins of Hampi, as soon as we part their minder comes and takes the money that the gained.

Sometimes it is better to give them things, instead of money, which cannot be taken away. Again in the ruins of Hampi, the children didn’t asks for money, but for pens. We did give some of the bus followers a pen, and they seemed to have never seen one before, taking it apart, and putting it back together, but not really knowing what to do with it.

Wellington: 430am

Meeting the class for the first time since Friday. Everybody was very tired, as one should be at that time of the morning. The ticket comfirmed the following ininerary:

2 hours to sydney.

a whopping 17 hours in sydney

9 hours to HK.

a day, a night, and anohter half day in HK.

9 hours to Mumbai.

Thats a solid 65 hours in Transit. We may as well have gone by steamship, or camel or something.

So, after a sleepy flight to Sydney, with a Continental brekfast, it we landed at 9am in sydney, and daniel led us out of the airport, into the subway, and finally at the city centre. It was decided that we would do the tourist thing, and do a tour of the sydney opera house, a bit of an unexpected detour on the way to see ancient temples, but i’ll take what i can get.

After the tour there was still hours and hours to kill, but that was taken care of by getting sucked into a street performers act, involving 2 people laying on their backs while the performer juggled machetes while riding around us standing on the handlebars of a bike (why me?), going to the beach, getting lost, and drinking a few beers. Better than the transit lounge.

A Vomit inducing 9 hours of turbulence-caused-by-thunderstorms sleepless flight later, we landed in Hong Kong at four in the morning. at least now we had a hotel, but couldn’t check in for ten hours. Eventually The Holel allowed us to plop our luggage there, and it was decided that we would get hopelessly lost in the city, which we did. We even managed to get lose outselves in the central train station, on the way back from Mount Victoria peak, the craziest tram in the world. I don’t have photos of that, of course, but i have got photos of buildings.

That evening, after an exam in the Hotel bar, I took a quick taxi ride over to Tim and Binas office and we where off to dinner with some of their friends. As usual with them, the food was amazing, (oysters, clams, roast salmon, and duck) and company was great. not a bad way to start the trip!

WHAT IS IT?

It basically works like a newspaper column, except that I can write as much as I want, put in images and video, and write as often as I want.

additionally, you can post comments as the bottom of every article. Do it. I get them, as they are there forever.

Commenting is really great. Don’t be shy.

SUBSCRIPTION

You can subscribe to the blog. that way, you can see when I’ve written something new. How this works depends on your set up; If you’re on a mac you can use your mail program, firefox, safari, a seperate reader, etc, on a pc you can use firefox or a separate reader. It’s not just my blog that has this, every one will, as will any newspapers, online magazines, Facebook, myspace all have subscriptions that work on the same system. (even the BBC has one)

To subscribe, you go to my blog, and click on the bit that is circled.

from here you are kinda on your own, but it should not be to hard. You can set your preferences in your browser preferences, and send the feed to whatever program you feel like.

Hope that helps, see you in India!

Gotta move on saturday. Anybody who wants to help is totally welcome.

Upcoming events include:

watching ghandi. The film. gotta see it, all three and a half hours of it.

buying 15 kilos of toiletries, including everything to finely tune every aspect of your digestive tract, a few anti-everythings, coughdrops, Deet, film and some other stuff. There is a list.

moving out of my flat. Good timing.

some work stuff.

drawing and painting stuff, notebooks.

So, it’s going to be a short post, cheers.

this time next wednesday or so we’ll be mobbed for the first time as we get off the plane in the Mumbai Airport, it will likely be hot, and it will be the start of a tiring exhausting, inspiring, motivational…(adjective chain continues)… experience.

Why am I not sounding excited? Because I only have a week. Just 7 days to get my websites sorted out, to get packed, move all my stuff, as I’m moving out of this place and must find a place to live again in the new year, and learn my maharajas from my namastes.

“I’m not going to get it all done.”, I say, optimistically.

This is going to be the place where you can see photos, and read about what’s happening on the lead up to, and while I’m in india traveling around; assuming I can get to internet, and that there is power, and that I don’t lose My luggage, and I don’t get forgotten is some remote indian village, or get cholera.

We started drawing class today, lets hope it gets better:

To be fair, it was a 5 min. drawing exercise from a photo, but yeah, it can really only uphill from here I hope.

The blog is called WayFare because it is, like all good books and TV shows about travels. Started for the upcoming trip to india, it will likely continue on after the trip, although the focus will be different. (Because i won’t be in india anymore)

  The point of the blog is 3-fold:

1) Classic weblog.  
Just say what’s going on around me.

 2) Show some work.
Show some work, get feedback, maybe make some contacts, 

3) Rant.
 Just like my sometimes shockingly amateurish (not helped by my co-host) radio show, this will be a place where i can talk about what should be around Wellington, NZ, and the world.

 Okay, lets get this thing going, gotta customize the profile now, kubrick’s gotta go.