16. My descent into fire (... from air, water, and earth)

a. Mumbai (earth)
b. Goa (water)
c. Panjim / Old Goa (air)
d. Hampi (fire)

Definition of an expression I learnt from my Israeli friend, Ofir:

False friend = when one word is close in sound in two languages but have totally different meanings.

I faltered this week. Even though I am lucky enough to be experiencing so many amazing places and people and activities, you, Dear Reader, likely have something I can't find here. I was lost, alone, forgotten. More on that later.

Mumbai

Mumbai is huge with a bit of everything, but the south end of the "island" is grand and cosmopolitan, with wide avenues populated by street-light obeying traffic, neo-classical European style buildings, and newspaper stalls on clean walkways that actually had foreign journals (first I've seen). When I went uptown for the Mumbai Film Festival (great coincidence!), I found a neighbourhood that reminded me of North York (Toronto) with a 4-lane street rising through many brightly-lit shopping malls and office towers.

While in Mumbai, I was excited to find out the Mumbai Film Festival was just finishing. I managed to catch 2 films, including terrific performances by Juliette Binoche and - yes - Kristen Stewart in 'The Clouds of Sils Maria'. On the flip side, I watched 'Bang, Bang' an over-the-top (is there another kind?) Bollywood film. To put it in perspective, I knew what was going on 80%of the time even though the film was in Hindi :)

A great way to get around Mumbai is to use the 'Local Trains'. They are super cheap, and get you far across the city in a hurry. During the week, millions of Mumbai citizens get to work this way. As with all trains in India, the cabs are old-style, so one or two passengers routinely hang out the entry door, if not for the view than for the cooling breeze.  As someone I met from the UK later said, the safety regulations in India are a world away from what we are subjected to / benefit from in the West.

One excitement was that I was in Mumbai for Diwali - The Festival of Lights, "the victory of light over darkness, knowledge over ignorance, good over evil, and hope over despair". Diwali is usually celebrated at home, but there were several parades like this one with amazing music & dance. I didn't catch the best music segment here - every so often, the procession would stop for a minute, the drummers would take over in a bombastic solo, and a kid up front would light a huge and resounding firecracker before they continued on - but you get the idea.

Also, the city rang with smashing firework explosions for several days; I even saw one teenager leaning over to light a huge firework while carrying a baby brother in one arm. I asked a fireman if they had more fires on Diwali. He said yes "but the children are supervised by their parents, so it's quite safe you know". From what I saw over and over, 8-year-olds with a lighter and free reign while parents chatted oblivious far off, this statement is ridiculous.

I wanted to participate. I couldn't string up lights, and I wasn't going to blow up firecrackers, but I could do something creative: many houses draw symbols outside their front doorsteps as a welcome. Here I drew the ubiquitous Indian symbol of Life, my symbol of Spiral, and the Buddhist symbol of Harmony. Other backpackers in the guesthouse looked at me strangely, but the local staff were impressed and grateful that I recognized the national holiday and added to the expression at the guesthouse. Even after I checked out, I came back to get something in the afternoon and saw they still had not cleared away the design.

A great part of Mumbai is Chowpaddy and Marine Drive. There's a huge beach which Mumbai-ers (?) come out to in droves as the daytime sun cools off, although the water wasn't clean enough that I felt like jumping in. By sundown, there are some great food stalls to select from and many happy families playing and laughing. Here I made my trademark spiral in the beach sand. Some locals liked it and took a photo in the background.

Goa

Goa is (in)famous for being a fun place, with beaches, booze and bartying. I chose to go to South Goa which is supposed to be calmer and less touristy. I found a nice place in Agonda.

Inez and Raquel, two Portuguese companions I met in Goa. At night, the three of us would climb on my rented scooter and drive 20 minutes to Palolem which had a good selection of restaurants, and a lively main street.

Inez at the more peaceful Agonda Beach at sunset.

Seafood dinner at Palolem: Step 1. Everyone curious as fishermen bring in the day's catch on the beach. The net actually stretches 100 metres to the men at centre rear.

2. Separating the catch.

3. Fresh seafood at the entrance of Palolem restaurants. "Which would you like for dinner, sir?"

4. Crab dinner (sorry, crab!) that night :D

Another spiral at remote Canaguinam Beach.

Dress, and gender politics in India

All women travelers I talked to - certainly those traveling solo - experienced repeated advances from locals about marriage. And yet, much of the time women travelers are dressed in tank tops or sleeveless dresses. Now you may say they're entitled to dress for the sun and not be harassed. But is this fair and reasonable? Let me put it another way: if you drive a Mercedes through the slum, pushing market vendors and older citizens out of the way, would you also resent if the poor people outside of your car-cocoon began to shout at the car?

Remember that virtually zero local woman are wearing tank tops (in particular, local women are NOT trying to get a shoulder tan). What makes a westerner so special that she feels entitled to wear little more than a bikini top without enlisting a reaction from the people who's country we are visiting? (Same goes for the male tourist who waltzed into the 2nd century Buddhist cave in Ellora without his shirt on. C'mon, man.)

Speaking of clothes, I was feeling bad about wearing only the uni-coloured, quick-dry clothes I had brought from abroad. I thought, 'why don't I buy some of those funky, breezy, cotton shirts, or a set of loose, cotton pants in earthy colours, and get closer to Indian living?' But then I realized, NO Indian wears those clothes! The women wear a brilliantly-coloured sari wrapped around their whole body, and the men invariably wear dress pants and a long-sleeve, collared shirt, the younger ones matching blue jeans with a football jersey. I've not seen a single tourist wear either of these most common forms of dress, or a local wear a V-neck lounge top, any more than I've seen Frenchmen wear berets. OK, there are exceptions: the traditional male dress here in Kerala as I write this is a doubled-over cloth that, to our western eyes at least, looks like a wrapped bath towel (which the men always seem to be adjusting in loose fashion!). Then again, I don't see any westerners jumping at the chance to imitate this cool clothing...

So the idea that wearing hippie-style clothing to indicate "going native" is a myth a lot of tourists subscribe to. But always, always there is a division between traveler and local. Clothes only highlight how we are not the same, and do not share the same attitudes. I for one won't wear long-sleeve shirts and dress pants in 38°weather, which even the Tuk-tuk drivers routinely do!

Panjim (Old Goa)

Raquel and I were both curious about the area of Goa that's known for more lively nightlife. Goa was famous some years ago for originating "Goa Trance" - where can we hear this? we wondered. I thought, I've spent a lot of my journey in beautiful and natural corners of India, but just as the big cities are part of the whole, so is the Goa experience, and I'm here for the experience. So together we bused up the coast to the capital Panjim, Old Goa, and on to Vagator Beach in the north. Raquel in particular, being Portuguese, wanted to visit Old Goa, which has some of the most prominent religious monuments from when the Portuguese ruled this area. 

This is the largest cathedral in Asia, Se Cathedral, Old Goa. The right tower collapsed in the 17th century.

Our Lady of the Rosary, Old Goa.

Church of the Immaculate Conception, Panjim.

Vagator, North Goa

In North Goa we stayed at "Jungle Hostel", which is popular among backpackers. We stayed here for a couple of days, including Hallowe'en. We heard there was a party at a club in town, and collectively decided to go together. Beforehand, a couple of people made costumes, which led to others thinking "I really should do something too". I tried to think of something fun, creative and available. I came up with "The Boa from Goa" (jungle theme, eh?? :) I painted as close to what I imagined a boa constrictor looked like on my body, and one of the other guests offered to paint the back and connect the snake. People got excited and several us were called on to paint faces. We continued on, music blaring, a happy community, until 11:30 when we thought "hey, we'd better go to the party!".

Another traveler (can't remember his name, as usual for me, but he was German if I recall correctly) happy with the design I painted on his face.

Me with the Brit who painted the part of the snake on my back.

Two Aussies with freshly painted faces.

9 Club, Goa, Hallowe'en: The night was a lot of fun. The club was pretty packed, and we danced and danced until 3 in the morning. Some did not make it back to the hostel - "why,' I asked, 'after many drinks, are you all taking scooters to drive three minutes to the club?!?". I walked both ways, like the elderly parent I felt to these I'm-gonna-live-forever! young ones...

The party atmosphere in North Goa was something I appreciated for 24 hours, but I will say had had enough of after the one night. There were so many in Goa who lived for pleasure, and had zero ambition or weren't working towards anything. For many here, they start the day with a cigarette and / or a toke, then... wait, what were we talking about again? 

I met a girl in Hampi who said she had spent 3 weeks in the north. When I asked her what she did during the 3 weeks, she said " mushrooms ", like it was an accomplishment. It may be living in the moment, but it's still indulgent living in my opinion.

There was one confident 30-year-old guy at Jungle who had gotten rich in Internet security, then invested in bitcoins. According to him, he'd never have to work again. He had been travelling all over the world for over 2 years, and had no intention of stopping, or returning home. For him every day was a search for the next location, the next party to get high at (he wore a John Belushi-style toga as a costume - natch). When I asked him what I asked all long-time travelers what three things they missed the most, he uniquely did not say "Family and friends", but instead "I miss the strip clubs of Portland, man! There are half a billion females in this country - where the hell are they all??" Truly, you meet all kinds. I guess I asked for it staying at the Jungle Hostel in North Goa!

And all the time, there is a virtual wall separating travelers from locals, foreigner from native. If nothing else, we stand out for having a seemingly endless supply of time and money on our hands, yet we don't work. Despite social interaction, like staff joining travelers for a night at a bar, there is always, under the covers, this understanding, conscious or not, that sooner or later, I (traveler) am moving on, and you (host) are here to stay, and just trying to earn a living.

Leaving Goa

The next day, I spend time with Sol and Ofir, two others who had met at Jungle the day before I arrived. I liked them a lot and they asked me to join them as we were all going to Hampi the next day.

While at the Jungle Hostel in in Vagator, I met Sol from Argentina and Ofir from Israel. 

Ofir and Sol at Vagator Beach sunset. Ofir had brought his guitar and played a lot of nice acoustic songs, primarily beautiful Hebrew ballads. They asked me to take this shot at sunset.

Hampi

Hampi is two worlds. On the south side are many many temples and monuments surrounding a small, congested and - frankly - dirty town. There were cows shitting everywhere. In the morning, I'm pretty sure I saw the women washing the early morning cow paddies into a big, neat square outside their front door before drawing the daily chalk patterns outside their front door. I did not find out the history of this practice.

On the 3rd day, Sol had to go to Hospet again to confirm a train ticket. Separately, Ofir and I ventured on the little ferry across to the north side of the river. Ofir said it was called "Israel Island" for the community of Israeli travelers that stayed there. When I got there, I found a much more relaxed and easy-going place, with a long dirt road of guesthouses and restaurants, many tilted towards Israeli cuisine. Just to the north, a huge expanse of boulders stretched up and away. I hiked up and around and came upon Brendan and Kate, and they told me about a good guesthouse just outside of north Hampi, near the boulders. Turns out Hampi is world-renown for bouldering, and enthusiasts come here for weeks or months at a time for the great practice. They also mentioned something about a lake (you can rent scooters, but only on the north side where the lake is), and a nightly gathering at "The Hilltop".  All this sounded great, and I thought I would go back and tell Sol and Ofir about it so we could come and stay on this side. When we all got back together, Ofir (being Israeli) was even moremore excited than I.

Cool new street food: deep-friend chili peppers. Oh my. :)

JK, Ofir and Sol, at Anjana Matha temple, AKA the "Monkey Temple".

Sol and Ofir with their high-end SLRs getting shots at the Monkey Temple. 

Ofir was an interesting guy: as with other Israelis, he had recently completed his military service where he became a medical commanding officer. Besides playing beautiful guitar, he had recently started working as a wildlife illustrator, so shots of animals helped him develop new illustrations.

Before we went our separate ways, he told me about life in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). He specialized in combat mental health. Ofir told me that the IDF had one of the lowest rates of PTSD and suicide in the world, and some of the measures they took to address the stress and pressure of life in combat.

Since I mention it, no one traveling was unaware of the latest trouble in the Middle East, particularly the renewed fighting in Palestine. Jammu was an area of India Israelis knew to stay away from as it is closest to Pakistan and there were open signs we had seen saying "get out of Palestine". Apart from that, there didn't seem to be any special hostility towards the many Israelis I met, certainly by travelers. From Delhi through all the places I'd visited, we were interested in the different countries we each came from, but prejudices rarely seemed to come up. We all seemed to share a much stronger connection through world traveling than nationalistic camps might otherwise drive us apart. I've not once felt the urge to post the maple leaf flag I've carried all this way. That said, we rarely had political discussions. This was something I would have liked, but maybe it was intentional - traveler communication tended to be superficial, not emotional - see bottom.

Virupaksha temple, Hampi. The elephant has a stable just to the right.

At river-view café, with friends.

The first full day in Hampi we were exhausted from being out at the fire festival until 4 AM. I spent most of the day relaxing in a café, having a mango lassi, reading my book, The White Tiger, 2008 Booker prize winner about an entrepreneur from Bangalore writing to the PM of China, who's about to visit India, about the real India Indian officials will surely not tell him about. I also wandered around looking at some of the temples, but besides seeing where the local elephant is kept and well-fed when he's not down by the river having his bath, I was not very interested.  No wait, that reminds me, by this time I'd finished The White Tiger and was reading Murakami's short-story collection, The Elephant Vanishes. The other book I'd read while in the north, besides 'How not to be a Buddhist', was Hotel World by Ali Smith.

View of North Hampi from "The Hilltop" during the evening jam session.

This was so great, even if this isn't the best music clip. Here are Ofir (in white) and a guy from Sweden (who did an incredible Robert Plant 'Whole Lotta Love' - I kid you not) with others at the nightly Hilltop jam session. These frequent jam sessions, and bonding with the other sympathetic musicians, were heaven for Ofir, who often led the songs, and he decided to stay in Hampi for perhaps the rest of his time in India before he headed to Thailand.

Sol (Argentina) getting to talk Spanish to some guys from Spain at the lake jumping rock. Sol was so sad we only discovered the north side of Hampi the day she had to leave. Her travel arrangements got mixed up and she had to leave a day early. Have a good yoga retreat, Sol!!

After two days at Hampi I meet Erez again, my Israeli friend from Darjeeling and Cherrapunji! "What are you doing here?' I asked, 'aren't you supposed to be in China??". Turns out after leaving Shillong he had second thoughts about abandoning India for China, and continued on south through Kolkata (like me) and then down to Chennai and around. We arranged to go hiking in the boulders the next day. I awoke to find myself with the flu (sick for the very first time), but I'm determined not to let him down and we head off. 

We clamber half way up the biggest hill in the area, climb to a ledge which turns into a dead-end, but realize too late that it's actually harder to return the same way. All around the rock we're on are tree branches obscuring just how deep the crevices are down below us. This is good for my fear level (I can't see how high we are), but not so good for our safety level, especially me at 50% power. Erez lowers me down the edge of a rock and I touch the other side and haul myself up. I do what I can to grab Erez' hand and haul him over too. We live to tell the tale.

Rocks 20' high overlooking the pool behind the jumping rock lake. You ask yourself "how the heck did those rocks get piled like this?!?"

Me diving (feet apart, I know I know) from the rock at the lake outside Hampi. It was about 20 feet high and nobody else wanted to dive in the 3 days I went there.

Swimming lake - I remember a friend of K's giving me a hard time about lying about my age by 1 year on an online profile (not fb). But when the topic comes up, and I ask people I've spent several days with to guess my age, I got 42, 38 and 32. "Really?? You've aged well, John.' says one girl 'You must introduce me to your two sons!" The other day, one person even guessed 30, so I must be doing something right....

I got a terrific shot of 3 people jumping off the rock silhouetted at sunset, the closest one at full stride. Unfortunately, it was on someone else's old digital camera and Internet problems prevented me from getting a copy to show you. It was a really cool shot! :(

Michelle, a traveler nearer my age from Brazil. We spent just one day together scooting around Hampi and having a swim at the lake, and we had a very good and personal (but positive) discussion about traveling alone vs. with a partner, the pain of relationships, and attachment. As is often the case, it's as sad to part ways with new acquaintances as it is fun to meet fresh faces - see bottom.

The day we got to Hampi, Ofir heard about a festival playing 4 km south of town. It was the Muharram Fire Walk festival. We heard it might be very late in the night. We were all exhausted from the freezing overnight bus from Goa, but decided together to go for this one-time event. Albert from Barcelona joined us. We headed there by tuk-tuk with a guide after dinner. There were several places in the town where fire pits with huge tree trunks had been prepared and lit. The fires burned for hours and hours while Muslim men played music, danced, and built themselves into an increasing frenzy over the course of the night. Women were present but off to the side or on rooftops. At times, our guide Prince brought Sol up to the roof for extra safety. If she was on the ground, Ofir and I stood close by and offered protection. Many of the men had been drinking, which is a rare transgression by the Muslim men, and made them extra unpredictable. There was one extended fist-fight while we were there, Ofir and I quickly pulling Sol off to the side and out of the way while friends on both sides tried vainly to break the two up. As the night wore on, one of us would say "OK, it's never going to happen, let's go" but we each took turns convincing the others to stay, including the tuk-tuk driver! Finally, at 3:30 in the morning, we were rewarded for our patience.

View from the rooftop at revelers

Me (in blue shirt holding water bottle) in the crowd at the Fire Walk festival.

Muslim revelers building themselves into a frenzy before the fire walk. Note the burka-clad women trying to quickly and inconspicuously pass by.

Finally, at 3:30 in the morning, the fire has been spread out into blue-hot coals, and the selected men prepare to walk across the fire.  Policemen beat back onlookers just prior to the event. The first man to do it appears to be in a wicked trance, if not actually blind-folded. Note the man a bit later who kangaroo-hops across the burning coals. 

My descent

I'm not sure if it was because of, or despite, traveling for a few days with these different women (girls? and Ofir was with us Goa to Hampi) in quick succession, I realized how lonely I felt traveling solo. I have appreciated being able to go and stay anywhere on this trip, to follow my curiosity, and not worry about anyone else's limitations (e.g. sanitary, luxury, security, etc.) I doubt I would have seen everything I've witnessed if anyone had come with me. This is especially true because traveling as a woman in India presents an extra set of challenges, so I'm fortunate. Then again, I would have seen other things, so I don't suppose my trip would be worse, just different. And traveling with each of these women enabled me to express a bit more of me - that is, help someone to lift their heavy pack, get us un-lost with my GPS and Maps With Me, chauffeur us around on a scooter, etc. Being able to do these kinds of things helps me as much as anyone else, I know this. Conversely, not being able to share and help, in a way, starves me bit by bit.

I wrote a long note to K which probably hurt my cause as much as helped it. But traveling alone is hard for me. Traveling with a female partner even for a few days just made me reminisce about being close to someone, and how much this gives me purpose, how fulfilling it is for me, and how lacking this is in my life now. This goes as much for being a father as a partner, just as holding each of Hadrian and Finn physically and emotionally close for almost 20 years, fathering them to adulthood, gave me a purpose beyond all others.

I have begun asking travelers, singles and couples alike, how they feel about traveling with a partner, or not. All of the couples seemed quite happy with the arrangement. For three couples, this was not their first trip together, so they had gotten used to each other before and had already recognized the strengths each brought to travelling, for example "I like planning and organizing, and he likes engaging people and talking through transportation and rooming issues". Nino from Vienna told me "it also helps when you are out of energy or feeling down, the other person picks you up and gets you through, maybe to find the hotel or to get out and have a meal." Several of the singles admitted it was sometimes tough being on their own, partly because you had to depend on yourself for everything, and partly because they wished they could share with and talk about their experience as they happen.

It was very nice to have a female companion on the road, but I came to find it painful too. When you travel like this, as a backpacker, moving every few days, you rarely get to know anyone well.  For every bunch of people you meet and have a great time with, maybe a third of them are moving on the next day. Most of all, there's lots of fun and camaraderie, but virtually no affection - who can afford to really give of themselves when they meet a dozen new people every day? So you frequently give a quick history of where you've come from and what you're doing traveling, you become 'one of team', but you aren't likely to volunteer your deepest secrets, your hopes and fears, and yet that's what interests me most in people and enables me to be empathetic. As I've learnt time and time again, talking about your hopes and fears is not an attractive quality in a man, despite popular feminist doctrine which suggests otherwise IMHO. Because we meet people with whom we have no history and no commitment, travel conversations are often a mix of superficial and idealistic.

In my case, I couldn't talk to anyone long without mentioning Hadrian and Finn and Kris also, and this invariably put me into the role of 'kind uncle' to these mostly 20- and 30-somethings, not one of whom had kids or, while traveling and being free, appeared to want to talk about or get close to someone who had kids (if there are many travelers at my stage of life here in India, they sure aren't traveling where and how I travel (Sundarbans Udi comes to mind). Maybe my history made younger travelers face the lack of accountability and responsibility they were enjoying on their trip (many appeared to work for short periods solely so they could save up and travel again, without a care about 10 or even 5 years down the road.) I don't blame them for this, but it usually resulted in more distance between me and others in a group.

I miss intimacy, that caring touch, that I was lucky enough to have for so long through H & F and the people I've loved, that I now can't live without. Amazingly, intimacy is something available to virtually every person in the world, yet it's precious, and can't be bought. At the end of the day, after whatever foreign excitement we got to experience in the last 24 hours, we separate and each head off to our respective rooms, solitary and predictable, unattached, except those who are saving on the price of a double room and nothing more.

An amazing thing which I am not the only one to have noticed: in India, and even especially in Muslim places, men and boys often walk down the street hand in hand, or drape their arms around one another's shoulders in casual embraces. You can see it many times a day. This is obviously not gay love, but it's socially acceptable here. I wonder why, in a society that's supposedly so much more repressed than our sexualized Western culture, such PDAs are accepted. Maybe it's precisely because sexual affection may be so hard to come by in Muslim society that this is a more socially-acceptable outlet, a proxy intimacy. 

I realize these Muslim men walking arm-in-arm down the street are getting more touch and affection than I have my whole trip. That makes me laugh and it makes me sad. I recognize that as much as I appreciate everything about my trip, and that I should not get attached to things (like affection), and notwithstanding all my spiritual education in Leh and along the Ganges, this is still something I am still struggling with.

Thanks for listening.

15. [updated] Choral rock cave temples, Victoria & horseshoe crabs - relics of a bygone era

Kolkata

From the jungle paradise of Maghalaya, I headed back around Bangladesh and down to Kolkata, my 2nd major Indian city.

"Holy imperialism, Batman, The Victoria Memorial!!". Kolkata gained greatly during British rule, growing in size, prestige and wealth. But it may have also suffered the most when the Raj left, with 2,000,000 poor, Hindu immigrants flooding the city from Bangladesh. The museum in this building had a good background on the Bengal background, including the eventual elimination of the practice of Sati where a wife is burnt along with her husband upon his death.

More Victoria. Despite my shivers, these monuments make for majestic photographs.

Another side of Kolkata: while I didn't take photos in the slums (I got shouted at in the Mumbai dockyards for taking a photo without permission), this unattended baby asleep on a building step was too much for me.

I managed to find a great place to stay: the Kolkata Backpackers B&B Homestay. It's run by Rishii, a "super" friendly and knowledgeable local resource. There I met Stephanie and Sam who had volunteered at a school in Tamil Nadu. They liked being in India, but the teaching was a challenge: so much of how they had to reach was boring memorization, which didn't engage the kids at all of course, and if the kids stated writing with their left hand, they would get beaten. 

Another city, another fantastic food market. This one was tucked away near the B&B. The vendors all began to ask me to take photographs of them. Unfortunately, while they all have cell phones, from what I gathered through broken English and Bengali, not too many had email accounts I could send their photo to, but I tried.

One of the many street foods I enjoyed was cut coconut. Boys would rush up to halted buses and offer two thick slices of freshly-cut coconut for 20¢. I couldn't figure out how they cut the coconut so clean until this vendor did it for me: with the back edge of his mini-machete, he cracks the nut clean in two. Then, instead of carving slices, he carves a spiral inside and then divided the "peel" into clean portions. Delicious, and a good addition to my cross-country train ride picnic basket.

Sundarbans Wildlife Park

The most famous attraction around Kolkata is the Sunderbans park in the Bangladesh delta, a World Heritage Site. Because solo logistics for the multi-day trip are very difficult (access, homestay, license, police check, boat transportation, and mandatory guide), I booked with a service. 

This is me with our escort, Rakesh. :)

Our group was small - only 5 plus Rakesh. With me was Udi, a retired Israeli undercover cop. You figure he would be pretty no-nonsense, but he loved to travel, had an earring, and two leopard tattoos, his favorite animal. In his retirement, he was considering starting glass blowing or archeology. He taught us how to play Yaniv, a fast card game kinda like hearts and rummy together.

After a SUMO from Kolkata, then a boat across to an island, a tuk-tuk across the island, then another boat, we reached our homestay. One evening we took this skiff across to the other shore, climbed out onto the pure clay of the mangrove forest and I found a horseshoe crab burying itself from our approach. One for the history books as horseshoe crabs have stayed the same for hundreds of millennia!

This is what the mangrove forest looks like at almost high tide, so little chance of seeing tigers or crocs unfortunately. It was still interesting crossing the channels of the 20,000 sq. km. estuary on our houseboat. And the on-board meals by the local cook, like fish curry, were out-of-this-world.

One evening in our homestay, they arranged for an incredible local music group to play for us. Amazing singing, and a fascinating single-stringed instrument called a Khamak, kinda like a bluegrass tub-bass and talking drum where you pull the string taut through the drum and pluck it with a pick to change the note. The songs reminded me of Turkish village music.

In the evening, the villagers tossed nets into the river to catch fish. Keep in mind the ecology is unique. Although we are in mesh of rivers which wash out to the Indian Ocean, on the Indian side the current is weak enough that there is a significant tide - and therefore a high saline content - so there an interesting mix of marine life.

We never saw tigers or crocs, although a family we met at a lookout tower said they saw a tiger 10 minutes beforehand. We did see monkeys, monitors, spotted deer and countless kingfisher and other birds. And the interaction between the jungle and the tides was fascinating. Again, no expectation, no disappointment :)

While I was in the park, it was Thanksgiving at home and family and friends kept posting images of Canada in the autumn - the red & orange leaves and sweater-wearing weather! I gave thanks for all I had in my life, but I could not relate as the temperature was between 25° C and 30° C twenty-for hours a day.

The Caves of Maharashtra

I'd originally planned to go down the east coast of India and complete a clockwise loop back up the west coast towards Delhi and my return flight. But a cyclone and the tail end of monsoon season convinced me to change my plan and cut across to the southwest coast first.

I'd earmarked the Ajunta Caves as an interesting place to visit, and this served as good mid-way stopping off point on the 30-or-so hour journey across from Kolkata to Mumbai.

Stopping at the small village of Phardapur meant getting off the tourist track for a change. This is refreshing and wearing at the same time. Locals are surprised and happy to meet you, as this jubilant group of school-age kids show, but you are also regarded as something like a movie star. Everyone - OK, men only, this was a Muslim town - feel completely entitled to come up to you and interrupt whatever you're doing and ask you the same questions every traveler had heard a hundred times, almost always in this order: "Halo!! Whatt iz yourr neeme?", "What cuntrry?" ("Canada - kold cuntrry!"), and "How long een India?". They they will then walk along with you asking more genetic questions until you come to their shop or find some other reason to interrupt their accompaniment. I appreciate after these times being a 'famous movie star' gets tired pretty quickly.

Best is if you have something to do together. The boys told me of an old fort that is not on any travel guide. Here we walked around the top of it and felt the air, threw stones at the aggressive monkeys, and took in the gentle sounds of the village in the evening.

The Boys of Phardapur.

The next day I made my way to the Ajunta Caves. The Ajunta caves include a significant amount of paintings preserved on walls. Accordingly, the caves are controlled for humidity, lighting and number of visitors. There are informative plaques describing most of the caves. Inside, as there are no windows to speak of, dim lighting provided ust enough to see the paintings and the beautiful carved walls. There were many guards ensuring visitors removed their shoes inside the temples and did not using flash photography.

Ajunta Caves view.

Inside one of the better preserved caves, with dim lights revealing the ancient paintings. 

The "Carpenter's Cave" (no.12), so called because of the wood like beams across the top.

This was a guide chanting inside a cave similar to the "Carpenter's Cave" with large seating areas for a choir. Imagine a hundred or so Buddhist monks doing the same in this architectural marvel.

The ones below are from Ellora, about 50 km to the west of Ajunta. While these caves carved out of the bedrock  also do not have windows (presumably torches would have illuminated them during use), there was no lighting inside. Also, I couldn't but be a bit put off that most of them smelled of urine the farther you went in.

'Pharaoh' and 'Humpty' (companions since Ladakh Markha Valley trek) taking in the Kaileish Temple, the largest monolithic monument in the world. 

Detail from one of the Buddhist caves at Ellora.

Ellora has three sets of caves: Buddhist, Hindi and Jain, all executed over separate periods. All took a tremendous amount of planning and complex construction. I got a kick out of the Buddhist ones; I mean, think about it - Buddhism teaches us that nothing is permanent, to not get attached to material things, yet what could be more permanent and material than a temple built of solid rock??

The 3-story Buddhist Tin Tal cave carved out of solid rock.

Celebrations in the town of Ellora, Maharashtra, where Modi's BJP party has just won the State election. Groups of men in this Muslim town get mass-doused in pink powder, the colour of BJP party. The rat-a-tat-tat of firecrackers explode while a banner has been replaced on the roundabout flagpole. Everyone is proudly showing me their inked finger which shows they voted (and only once!)

Later, I watched evening firework celebrations in this non-tourist town (non-tourist give-aways: 1. unilingual local-language signs, 2. everyone looks at you like a movie star just strolled by, as if! and 3. you can't see any other tourists among thousands of other pedestrians).

I love walking the streets in every town I arrive in, perusing the markets. You never know what animal part you'll see on a vendor's table, what they'll try and stuff into a tuk-tuk, what fruit will be locally available, what local delicacy a street vendor will whip up for you with his drum-kit of legumes, veggies, oils & spice.

Like Phardapur, I am seemingly the only white person seen in town. Most people stop talking to others and stare at me walking past. Younguns have a look of fear. Teens a look of excitement, and always "how are you!" "wutz urr nime?" Unless all they can manage is an esperanto grunt "HUH!"

It's different and tiring at the same time. If you've ever wanted to know what its like to be a famous movie star, just come here (or any other small foreign town much different than your own). You'll be the centre of attention (bad for introverts) and asked for things over and over - to buy somethingsomething typically. You actually feel kind of generic since the questions are routine and I think you learn more about their characters than they yours. It's not so great after the second or third or fiftieth time. 

In the boot of a relatively large triple-seat tuk-tuk. For perspective, it has maybe a 200 cc engine, about 1/10 of a small North American car, but we're carrying 10 people. Think of this the next time you say 'I need a bigger car". 

Food insert: about half my lunches were a"veg thali", basically a mixed vegetarian plate for $1 to $2. All menus in India are separated between drinks, veg dishes, "non-veg" dishes, and international menu items (Italian, Thai and Israeli being the most popular) in the larger establishments. The veg thali is a safe bet and varies region to region. In addition to 3 or 4 veg staples like several small portions of dahl (lentil), a thali has maybe a small salad, a sweet like curd for dessert, along with rice and maybe a chapati, naan bread and or papad (chickpea / chana crisp biscuit).

In one minute of video: the little Muslim town of Ellora, friendly kite fighting among neighbours, a rooftop view on town life, evening meal preparation among the animals, and the evening call to prayer.