Doony

"I didn't think anyone was going to stop!" He says as he piles his strange assortment of items into the car. The words hit me at roughly the same time as the pungent stench of stale campfires. He doesn't look anything like the quick blurry form I spotted as I drove past. Then I notice he has a massive buttefly on his shoulder, 3 to 4 inches of beautiful black and yellow wings. It seems incredibly calm, maybe even tame, maybe it's his pet. All of a sudden he starts putting a coat on over the top. I nearly point it out to him, then wonder if it's actually fake. Too late, the coat's on and he's in the car.
"Drrrrzts my name" he mumbles. Distracted, my attention moves to listening (never again to return to the buttefly. It's never seen again.)
"what was that sorry?"
"Eh?"
"Your name"
"I go by many names"
"I see"
"Doony"
He's evidently very happy that I picked him up. He'd been hiking for 7 or 8 days along the Umpqua trail. Geez, he only has one eye too. After 20 minutes of banter, he appears to be a mathematician who eventually found solving equations rather pointless and left the states to travel the world. He seems to be very well travelled, particularly around Asia, and has a keen interest in Eastern religions.



As we approach civilisation, he offers to buy me a cawfee, then is keen to show me Sherms "The greatest store in the world!" He offers to buy me anything i want.
"Think of yourself as an 8 year old kid with your grandpa" Mentions that it's ok because it's the government's money anyway, then says something about them not giving out food stamps anymore. While we buy a coffee, he asks the lady how to get to Sherms. I figure he's taken all the directions in as I'm not familiar with any of the street names, but not 500m down the road, he appears to be lost again. He winds the window down and beckons every car we go past to find out where Sherms is, getting quite frustrated and banging my car door when they won't wind their window down. We talk about how he has a tendancy to doubt himself too quickly, causing us to turn around when we were actually on the right track.

After the shopping extravaganza, I ask him where he's headed. He mumbles some more, then mentions a ranch down the road that perhaps I'd like to visit? I don't really have any plans for the rest of the day, so decide to drop him all the way back home. I start to wonder what on earth is wrong with his sense of direction when he continues to wind his window down to ask how to get back to his house too!

On the drive back to the ranch, he mentions he caught malaria years back. After a few more wrong turns, we finally make our way down a gravel path. "8 miles of this, take it easy" he says. Lucky I was driving slow as around a corner we meet a massive logging truck careering down the mountain. Can't see anything for all the dust flying behind it! We pass a few people on the way, he waves but there's little response from them. As we get closer I realise this isn't his house at all, it's just some ranch owned by his friend. He mentions he might be able to live down this driveway, except it's owned by BLM? Bureau of Land Management or something. Apparently we're so far away from anything, they never come and check, except that time that two neighbours had a fight over something, so the other rang them department up and told them about their friend that was staying on BLM land. Apparently a lot of the neighbours here don't talk to each other, I can't remember all the reasons, religion was one, the abortion issue another.

We finally pull up, greeted by about 30 big marijuana plants. He's already explained that they grow for the medical marijuana industry here in Oregon. Wander down past a little shack where someone's sawing wood. He doesn't even look up. Doony tells me that he was in the Veitnam war, used to be the guy in the helicopter that manned the machine gun.
"He's a bit strange"
We continue on to another little house, then sit, it turns out his friend isn't home. I pull out my salami and cheese and eat a bit. I'm stunned a bit as I turn around to see sure enough a full view of his rod and tackle. Looks like his pants don't actually go up much over his knees. thankfully he's wearing a long shirt, so I hadn't noticed before.



He sits down and pulls out a chillum. Talks about this golden chillum they used to smoke in India at a Lakshmi temple. Apparently a rich business man from bombay saw someone cry when their clay chillum broke, so he took it away and created a golden case for it. Unfortunately someone stole all the gold from the temple one day, and foreigners were no longer allowed to hang out at the temple. This chillum is one he's got from India (not gold unfortunately). He packs himself a pipe, pulls out a little mat, sits in the lotus position and pulls. Instantly his body starts to go limp, drool drips delicately from his lips. He sits like this for a few minutes. For a moment I think I can actually feel the whole world slow down. Even the machine-gunner has stopped whatever he's doing in his shed. Then it all starts to wind back up again, flies buzz around my head, machine-gunner fires up some machine.

Philosophy is our biggest topic of conversation. He talks a lot about dualism and Advaita, frequently quoting vedic scriptures. I explain that I've never been able to grasp the idea of reincarnation. He beckons me to sit on a festy outdoor couch as he scratches his naked ass. Later he pulls off a tick and shows it to me. As he starts describing the idea of reincarnation, I get a bit lost in my own thoughts and decide that reincarnation is all about ideas and abstract forms carrying on, and perhaps this is what is meant by a soul. I'm not sure how it deals with change though, as my ideas and forms are continually changing. I try to interject, but he insists on being able to finish. I've lost a bit of interest, and my mind turns to one of my favourite philosophical topics, nothing. If there can be nothing, and has been nothing before, there may be nothing again in the future. In which case, what has happened to all these ideas and forms. I guess they lost to the void. I try to interject again to talk about nothing, but he insists just a few more minutes. He then starts quoting vedas again, so I return to thinking about nothing. I wish I had my dictaphone, this would have been the most awesome conversation to record, but unfortunately I have no batteries for it.

Eventually I manage to get in and ask him about nothing. He doesn't seem to unerstand what I mean by nothing, then talks a bit about 'void', and we do have a pleasant discussion about nothing. My favourite is his recounting the tale of "In everything there is nothing, and in nothing there is everything". When you have a mighty vision in your mind and a friend asks you to describe it, you focus in on something, then all of a suddent, there is nothing. Therefore, in everything, there is nothing. I loved this explanation as have frequently had the experience of being unable to describe something, and lost everything when trying to focus on it. But unfortunately, I miss the explanation of why in nothing there is everything.
Another thing he talks a lot about is the 4 forces in nature: Earth, Wind, Fire and Water. (Side note, he says buddha takes these back to 2, then to 1. Earth = mass, wind = force, fire = energy, water = flow. You can't have force without mass. That's all I remember, although thinking about it, energy is mass too). He then says that all of these things are quantum. You can only have this amount of mass, or that. He goes through them all and I accept it all until he gets to flow. He says you can only be here or there, not somewhere in between. But I have the idea of a smooth transition of location from one place to the next. I then remember all my quantum physics and tell him that this is incorrect as in actual fact, all we have is a probability cloud of locations. He then says but we can find out exatly where it is, but I correct him with the whole theory that it is never possible to correctly know the location of an electron and its velocity due to the interference caused by measuring it. It seems to shut him up.

I begin to get a little paranoid. The weather's very uneasy, it's cloudy, still and muggy, about 30 degrees. I realise that we're sitting in the middle of nowhere, outside a stranger's house. The machine-gunner starts screaming obscenities at nobody .. or are they directed at me?
"He's always busy, always has to be doing something" says Doony. I try my best to remain upbeat, recounting some of my friends that share that quality. Extremely dark clouds begin to roll in and the mosquitoes start doubling in quantity every 10 minutes. Doony's a bit obsessed with mosquitoes, he says they only exist in decay. He thinks perhaps they're linked with technology somehow. We have a bonding moment laughing about the crazy swarms of mosquitoes up at the Umpqua. He thinks it's because of the big dam they built up there. Although I tell him there were ridiculous numbers near Crater Lake too, and even 20 miles from the lake at the waterfall I stopped.

I finally decide it's time to leave, if the clouds burst open, it's going to be a very scary drive down. And so with a few goodbyes and a quick walk past the crazy machine-gunner, I'm off down the mountain.

Egypt

On to Egypt, which was only .. 2 months ago?! Perhaps it's due to the lull of inspiration from Mr. Crisotunity, either that or there's just been nothing much happening over the past couple of months, hah! I think the problem is I'm not particularly enjoying my blogging experience, it's too much of a brick wall which I post all my thoughts to for everyone to see at their amusement. There's not enough give and take, I see no reactions, have little feedback. Then when I meet someone and the perfect opportunity for a story presents, I rub my hands together with glee and start ripping into it only to be shot down with "yeah, I read it on your blog". Great. It's not that bad really, and I do like being able to put photos to the tales, but for now I'm spending more time enjoying wherever I am or reporting in my little black diary (although even this is looking sorely neglected, languishing somewhere back in Germany. I blame this on my lack of pens though, I had 3 to start with, which have either ran out of ink or were stolen (you know who you are!), then I bought another 6 or so in India, of which 6 broke (they were made out of fancy glass with elephants or kangaroos on top) leaving just the inside bit which frustratingly still works but is a real pain to use, so I always feel like i don't really need to buy another pen as I still have a thing which spurts ink out the top and CAN function as one, then there was the blessed pen gifted by the overly touchy teacher on the bus which I cherished as one of the best gifts I ever received and promptly lost)). The other thing is, I'm developing an amazing skill at sleeping wherever I want, which means that places where I'd usually be bored witless and get to writing, I now just sleep and dream of beautiful things.

Anyway, I'll give you all a taste of Egypt, at least what I can remember.

I arrived in Egypt at 1am, went straight to the toilet (see end of India) then got straight back into the habit of telling locals to go away as they pestered me for places to stay. It's always a rather uneasy feeling arriving in a city in the middle of the night when you have nowhere organised to stay. Fortunately I'd found a couple of hostels from the internet, of which one came through, so I organsied a taxi there. The taxi man was nice, so I bought him a carton of cigarettes duty free on the way out, then even gave him a little tip, only to find out he wasn't even the driver, he was the man that took me to the driver. So when I got out of the taxi and he demanded a tip (tipping is big in Egypt) I was pretty peaved and gave him like a dollar or something which he flat out told me was not enough. I've had it with tips, it's totally backward if you're required to give a tip, and what's going on if someone tells you it's not enough?? Well that's what I thought of your service buddy, take it or leave it, pfft. I blame the bloody Americans, running around the world giving people huge sums of money for no reason so that they all begin to expect it after a while. As I walked up the stairs to the hostel a seedy fellow started asking if I needed a place to stay. I told him I was going to this hostel, to which he started trying to sell me a room cheaper just over the road. The hostel owner must have heard him as he stuck his head out the window and started screaming at him! It was a fairly nice place, a little more expensive than advertised, but I did have a big 3 bed room to myself. I ended up watching TV with a guy from India until pretty late at night, he couldn't understand why I liked India at all.

Next day I checked out and made my way over to the fancy hotel I was booked into as part of my organised tour. That's right, I signed up for a 10 day organised tour. Here's a picture of the tour group, including the tour leader (Tarek, with the clipboard of course), minus Kathleen who's taking the photo.



Here's a picture of Sara and Kat, although this was taken after the trip when they splurged on an even fancier hotel near the airport to relax before their flight:



As soon as I hit the hostel in Cairo I regretted it, as I could see all sorts of tours available if you organised things yourself and obviously much cheaper. But I have to say it didn't take more than a couple of days before I was totally enjoying the whole Explore trip (look free advertising!) The first and most important thing was that I was no longer responsible for the direction my travels were heading. This was re-inforced by the tour leader requiring I show evidence of having insurance. I had organised my insurance remotely, so had no documented proof of beign insured, and it was a weekend back in Australia so I had no way of contacting my travel agent. After a number of very expensive phone calls, eventually I managed to get the insurance company to fax the hotel a copy of my insurance coverage. Then things got rediculous. For some reason, the coverage I had required a major destination, even though it was worldwide. So I picked USA for whatever reason, was probably the cheapest. So on the fax that came through it says
"Major Destination: USA"
Tarek (the tour leader) couldn't accept this as we were in Egypt and it didn't say that I was covered for Egypt. I'd really had enough of this as it had been a whole day of back and forthign trying to get this fax alone. I don't understand why you can't just sign a piece of paper saying "I am completely responsible for anything that happens to me". It's even more rediculous when you've been travelling alone for the past 2 months. So he brings his boss in, who agrees it looks like I'm only covered for the USA. I tried to argue that the coverage was for 6 months but I'm only in the USA for 1 month, pointing at my ticket, and why on earth would I get coverage for only the USA for the whole 6 months if I were only there for 1?!

Eventually I had to make yet another call to Australia, paid for by me no less, to let the boss talk to my insurance agent and work it all out. I might argue this all out when I return, as Explore messed up my booking and never sent me my information booklet or any documents requiring me to bring any proof of insurance, which bugged me when Tarek kept saying "But you were told to bring proof of insurance".

Well, enough whinging, look, there is another use for this blog, venting! Before I go on though, I have to make a comment on this KFC I went to in Egypt, sad I know, but I was fascinated by the sign. It was a special KFC for deaf people, run completely by deaf people. You basically just go in and point to whatever you want, they have a special menu which is easily pointable. Perfect for the non-arabic speaker too!

Anyway, the next day involved the usual trip to the Pyramids, Sphynx and the Egyptian museum. They were all very interesting, particularly the museum. I wasn't really struck by the enormity of the Pyramids, more by the proximity to Cairo, there are houses just over the road! Apparently they were the tallest standing man made structure for thousands of years, which is amazing, and the blocks are huge they used to create them. Unforutnately I was more amazed by the crazy tourists. Check this girl out, Egypt is a mostly Muslim country and you are frequently told to dress appropriately:



Such a great stance, and I love the way she's sizing the pyramid up. The other thing I was thinking about was the way the suburbs had completely arrived at the doorstep to the pyramids. The Sphynx, which is right next to them, is now actually looking directly at a KFC / Pizza Hut. You can't actually see it very well in the low quality version of this photo:



So that night we had a big dinner, I finished with a sheesha for dessert as it seemed like the thing to do (the tobacco seemed much stronger there). Then we rushed off to the train station. This is when I realised how good it was to be in a tour. The train station was mad, as they usually are, trains were arriving and leaving all over the place with no indication of where they were heading. I'd never been so comfortable and relaxed sitting back on a platform waiting for my train! Tarek looked a little stessed too, which added to my glee. The train journey was pretty easy, I think it's a 10 hour journey which has never in the history of the train ever actually taken 10 hours, it's more like 14. The others in the group weren't quite as comfortable spending so long in a chair. We arrived in Aswan, deep South of Egypt. Egypt is mostly just a strip of development along the Nile with a few oases off in the surrounding deserts. Again we checked into a fancy hotel, this one even had a rooftop pool with a bar! Oh boy I was in heaven. Sitting in 40 degree heat with a waiter bringing you burgers, chips and drinks, jumping in the water every 5 minutes to cool off, looking out over a strange city surrounded by desert.

There were a few trips to temples and dams, all very interesting, I really liked learning about all the ancient Egyptian gods and found it particularly itneresting that the religion had completely died out. One of our tour leaders said that the Egyptian people loved following any type of religion and it didn't really matter which one, so when the Muslim empire came through, they were happy to just forget about poor old Ra and Isis and go with the flow. It was a marked difference between Egypt and India though, as Hindu temples are still in action throughout India. The only thing about Hindu temples is that once an idol is damaged it cannot be worshipped anymore, so there are still lots of old temples that have been damaged somehow along the line and are now more historic, ala the Egyptian temples. Another similarity between India and Egypt is the crazy salesmen and bargaining. Egyptians appeared to be much craftier, even the little kids, they'd baffle you with all sorts of arrangements "2 for 3, 4 for 5, 6 for 2" Then they'd flip between Egyptian pounds and English pounds to add even more confusion. The Egyptians were also a lot more physical, sometimes even grabbing you and pulling you into their store. Hospitality was very important, so you were always given a cup of tea, usually a hibiscus tea, served cold and extremely sweet. I managed to get one sunglass seller extremely pissed off when I was out shopping one night. I started bargaining off at 20 pounds, to which he looked really insulted and insisted these were high quality glasses. He wanted 400. What a joke I said, and pressed for 20. After a while he said come on, what's your highest price, I said I'm not paying more than 40, as i could get them in Australia for that much. He went down to 200 eventually, then I got sick of it all and walked off to rejoin Sara and Kat. He chased after me and went down to 100. I was getting really annoyed with him at this stage, I thought it was rude that he tried to sell them for so much and didn't like his style at all. Then he went to 40 and put them in my hand. I told him no deal, I didn't want them anymore, so he went down to 20, my original price. I said no, as I didn't like the guy. You should have seen the look on his face, he was mortified. I'm sure I performed some heinous sin there, but by that stage I didn't really care, the guy really pissed me off. The next day I went around the corner and bought a similar looking pair for 20 straight off the bat. It's stupid going through the formalities, I just said 20, that's it, take it or leave it, then had to wait 5 minutes while they whittled there way down until eventually they gave them to me.

One of the optional extras on our tour (there were about a hundred optional extras) was a camel ride. I was still extremely sore on camels from my Indian experience, so I was very hesitant, but had my arm twisted as everyone else in the group were going. I'm very glad I did now though because it was actually a lot of fun and has overwritten my negative thoughts on camels. It was much better having your own camel and we even got to race them a little bit! Here's Simon mid dismount, the most exciting bit.



And just for no other reason except that it's here, is a classic spice shot from one of the little markets in Aswan.



From Aswan the real tour began. The only reason I signed up for this tour was to sail down the Nile in a Felucca. I didn't realise we'd only be sailing for half of the trip, I thought the whole thing would just be floating down the river, but it's all good. The boat itself was really interesting, a huuuge sail on an angled mast. There was effectively one big deck for all 10 of us to eat, sit and sleep, bags were stored underneath. It was a magnificent experience. I think we had a great group, the dynamics seemed to work really well. We were reminded of how lucky we were when we pulled up on a beautiful sandy beach on the first night to find 3 other feluccas full of young drunken bozos. We were the only boat to dig a proper toilet, we even had a curtain and seat for it, but every other boat used our hole (which was only designed, ie deep enough, for 7). They totally trashed our toilet! Even threw bottles and things in it. Most of our group found it hard to sleep that night as the other boats were partying hard on the beach with huge bonfires and bongo drums. Thankfully I still have no problem sleeping.

More floating down the river, amazingly peaceful. I bought my own little sheesha pipe to enjoy that night, making a concoction of apple and mint flavoured tobacco much to the delight of the Egyptians, they'd never tried mixing flavours before. We decided to pull up to our own private beach that night, which was lots of fun, we played many games, had our own fire and were even joined by some random dudes and a donkey. I can't really offer any explanation for this photo, but I think it must be shown. As you can see, I was enjoying the proceedings.



The next day held much the same, a lot of intense relaxation, chatting, playing cards, drinking, laughing and swimming in the Nile (in the face of a warning from fellow travellers on another boat of parasites which enter your bloodstream and kill you in 7 years time. I figured that given the Egyptian crew that were sailing the boat were drinking the Nile it couldn't be that bad)

One last picture from Egypt I'll leave you with as I'm getting tired of writing. When we arrived in Luxor, we went on a donkey ride through to the Valley of the Kings. This was the place the Egyptians started burying their kings when they realised that building the tallest structure in the entire world was not the best place to hide untold worths of gold and jewels in a burial chamber for the king. The donkeys were hilarious! We woke before sunrise and rode for an hour or so up into the hills as the sun rose. It was the most incredible sight and there were more balloons in the sky than I have ever seen! The balloon ride was another optional extra as an alternative to the donkeys, but I'm pretty glad we took the donkeys.



The maze looking structure below are the tombs of the workers.

India - The end

So I was walking away from a lovely marble mosque, enjoying the rare solitude due to the fact that it appeared to be too far for anyone else to walk, when a motorbike cruised up next to me and started talking. My initial attempts to fob him off failed and I ended up jumping on the back of his bike to help him fix up some English material about his artist school. There wasn't really much to do, a few lines on a business card, but he was very thankful and keen to show me a lot of artwork. Unfortunately I quite liked a lot of the pictures, so I ended up spending over an hour looking through the intricate artwork from many generations of his family. Sure enough sale time came and I thought I played a very hard bargain. From all of my purchases in India, this one had me happy afterwards, but looking back on it, I'm not entirely sure why. I probably spent the most amount of money out of anywhere in India there. I did actually feel friendly with 'Mukesh', and he offered to take me around for the rest of the day on the back of his motorcycle to see the rest of Jodhpur. After a lovely afternoon, Mukesh was keen to have dinner together, we nearly ate at a nice looking outdoor place but it was completely empty, so I went back to the hostel to have a look for my German friends while Mukesh hung out at his sister's beauty parlour. I soon returned to his sister's which appeared to be doing quite good business. This could have been because the closest other beauty parlour had a sign out the front saying "Beauty only for Alien girl".

Mukesh's sister and husband lived on top of the parlour, with their two kids. As with most houses in Jodhpur we could get on the roof and sit watching the sun set, changing the blues to crazy purples.



It was then that I realised how easy it was to believe in the many Hindu gods of India, it just seemed like such a religious place. Everything was so intense it felt like it must have a purpose and with the multiple gods and festivals going on, there always seemed to be an explanation.

I sat for an hour or two drinking scotch with Mukesh's brother in law and eating lovely tidbits. When dinner time came around we were invited to eat there, Mukesh's brother had been cooking a delicious chicken curry. It was a great night and as I said my goodbyes Mukesh insisted I should stay one more day in Jodhpur, he really wanted to take me into the desert on his bike to give me an experience I'd 'never forget'. I succumbed, having such a pleasant feeling about the whole day, and cancelled my travel to Jaipur (the pink city). The next morning I woke as early as I could, with a terrible headache, that Indian scotch is terrible stuff. I made my way to Mukesh's house (he had invited me to sleep there the night before but I'd already paid for the hostel), then we scooted off on his bike. First stop was petrol, 1000 rupees, a bit of a sting to the pocket (~$30), but I figured I owed Mukesh a bit for escorting me everywhere on his bike. Next I had to organise my train ticket to Agra, which was looking impossible as all the sleepers were reserved, however Mukesh had an uncle that worked in the train station, so sure enough I put myself on a waitlist and by afternoon I had a sleeper reserved.

The ride out into the desert can only be described as trying. The roads were terrible, unavoidable bumps for miles on end. After two hours my behind was ready to be thrown onto a barbecue. There were a few interesting sights along the way, first was what appeared to be an aicraft blowing up in they sky. I never found out what it was exactly, but there was a huge explosion and something fell out of the sky over the desert. The other really interesting thing was the sight of people walking along a long straight road in the middle of nowhere. They must have walked for over 20 kilometres along this stretch to reach a huge market out in the middle of the desert. Unfortunately I was feeling incredibly hot and burnt, my sunscreen had exploded in my toiletries bag somewhere along the way, and I had just run out. We finally reached our destination, another temple which 'was unlike any other temple'. Mukesh told me people crawl on their hands and knees to come to this temple during some festival period, and they even set up special food and drink areas along the way for all the pilgrims. Frankly I thought it looked just like every other Jain temple around, intricate carvings around a few jewelled statues. While I explored the temple Mukesh went off on his bike to find a cheap camel for us to ride on. He insisted that this must be done and would bring us both great luck in love if we rode the camel. Unfortunately it appeared to be an extremely expensive pasttime, at over 1500 rupees ($50). I was completely shocked at this price, it's astronomical in Indian terms and was not keen at all on the idea. Even in Australia I wouldn't pay $50 to walk around on the back of a camel for half an hour, and by this stage I was well adjusted to Indian prices. Unfortunately Mukesh was rather insistant, so I gave him 1600 rupees, telling him if it were anything more (he was telling me 3000 was the standard price for tourists) to forget about it. I sat in the shade of the temple wishing he would return without finding anyone. Alas he returned with a grin on his face, it was 1800 he said, but I could give the camel guy the other 200 after the ride. I sighed, by this stage I'd become positively negative about the whole experience. Mukesh kept insisting that I was happy and enjoyed this or that, which began to piss me off. He wasn't asking if I enjoyed something, his questions implied an answer, giving me no choice but to droan 'yes, I'm having a great time' like Marvin the paranoid android.

"Wasn't that an amazing temple?"

"Actually, I think it was just like every other temple I've seen"

"But there's nothing quite like this anywhere else in India"

"Well not exactly.."

"You'll never find any of this in your guide books, I'll give you the real tour of India, you'll never forget your time with me Tom"

The continual insistance of this, and how I'll never forget any of it began to really jar with me. For the first time in my trip I had a genuinely unhappy face on and I wasn't about to cover it up for Mukesh as he was the primary cause of it. We came to the meeting place for the camel and mounted it. The mounting process was slightly amusing, but the next 30 minutes were incredibly uncomfortable. I had a backpack with me, and we were forced to squash both of us onto the one camel, so I had to hold the backpack in front of me. The camel was covered in flies and insects, every few minutes it would dip its head while it attempted to kick itself in the chest with its front legs to clear them all away.



"Look a sand dune!" Mukesh enthused.

"We have plenty of those in Australia" I moaned.

"Isn't this great?!"

"I really can't understand how this is considered in any way romantic, it's one of the most uncomfortable experiences I've ever had"

"But it's the great story of the two lovers, you saw the pictures! You will have great luck in love now"

Finally it was all over, I paid the extra 200 rupees and we jumped back on the bike. As we cruised home I started thinking 200 rupees seemed about the right price for the trip as a whole and perhaps Mukesh had just pocketed the 1600 I gave him earlier. By the time we'd reached home I was certain of it, I even checked in my guide book (the place we went, including the temple sure enough WAS in my guidebook) and it said that the price range for an overnight camel trip, including camping under the stars was 300-1500 rupees. All this time Mukesh is calling me his brother and saying we are family now. His mother even invited me to return to India for his sister's wedding next year.

On the way home we stopped at a little market for some chai and deep fried veges, sort of like tepenyaki. As soon as we got off the bike a torrential downpour of rain came down.

"See that, Ganesha is with us" Mukesh explained.

It was quite amusing watching the stores over the road slowly blow up in the wet. There were 3 places all selling CDs with huge sound systems pumping, and I mean full volume, blaring music, each place a different CD. It was the most unholy alliance of sounds I've ever heard, I have no idea how anyone put up with it. When the rain came down though, the place in the middle's rooftop tarp overflowed and water splashed all over the place. There was a huge explosion and the music stopped. The other stores laughed hysterically and pointed until sure enough there was another massive pop and another one lost power with a great spark bursting across their merchandise.

The water subsided and we jumped back on the bike for another 2 hours of joy. Finally we reached Jodhpur and I slumped into the couch at the artist studio, completely wasted from a huge day of sunshine, sand and annoyance. Mukesh had the cheek to continue to try to push more artwork onto me. I couldn't believe how hard he was trying to sell this painting, it was quite impressive, a very detailed picture of an Indian face on silk, which you could scrunch up into a ball and release without creasing or damaging the painting at all. He was asking 50,000 rupees, which is a crazy amount of money. I was flabbergasted and getting more and more apathetic towards any sort of conversation with him, in total disbelief that he was still trying to force this down my throat. He ended up getting down to 10,000, telling me I could send him the rest once I sold it - he trusted me as a brother and guaranteed I could sell it for thousands of dollars anywhere else in the world. Needless to say I wasn't handing over another cent, and was anxious to get to my train, we actually only ended up making it by a minute or two. I was very happy to see the back of Mukesh's head, I took a peak in his wallet when he was retrieving a card for me and could see a few 500 notes which could easily have been the ones I gave him earlier. In reality, now that I'm in Europe, it isn't a lot of money, but the whole farce really gets to you. He was continually telling me how this kind of tour would normally cost 2000 rupees but he was doing it for me for free because I was his brother. I really felt sick every time he said this after I was pretty much certain he'd fleeced me for about that much anyway - I'm sure in his mind he was justified in taking it as a 'guide' fee.

About 10 hours later I arrived in Agra. It was about 6am, a great time to see the Taj, but unfortunately the baggage room at the train station wasn't open until 8.30am. So I dragged my bags with me onto a rickshaw and rode away with a funny moustached man who (like most Indian's) started talking about cricket once he found out I was Australian. Unlike any others though, this guy's favourite cricketer was David Boon. He was a pretty funny guy, he told me how he has a huge crop of marijuana in his back yard and he loves making milkshakes with it. He offered to take me around to the other side of the river where you can see the Taj for free, then maybe head back to his place afterwards, but I was totally spent with following random Indian's I just couldn't bare the thought of being taken for a ride again.

The Taj was as impressive as I imagined, I was fortunate to see it so early in the morning, the light was gorgeous. I stuck around for a few hours to see how it changed too.



Another train journey up to Delhi where another couple of cheeky punks tried to take me with an old trick. The taxis outside the train station were all in cahoots and offering nothing less than 100 rupees for what was a 50 rupee journey (according to my book). The book also mentoined a 'prepaid booth' where I could get this journey for 50 rupees guaranteed. Finally one of the taxis offered to take me 'on the meter'. There was much messing around as they fiddled with the meter, obviously trying to make it go at 10 times the normal rate until eventually we took off only to stop 200 metres down the road. They pulled up next to a "Official Government Tourist Information Office" and told me to go in. I went in for a laugh, the guy in the office was on the phone and told me to sit down. I just said look, this is a bloody joke, let me guess, the place I just called 10 seconds ago and confirmed a bed has burnt down, or doesn't really have a place for me and you have a great alternative? Then I just walked out the door and started walking towards my destination. The cheeky punks laughed and drove off, no doubt to wait for another tourist to attempt to capture.

I only had a night in Delhi, it was interesting wandering around town, some guy pointed at my feet and kept saying "broken". I was baffled but it turns out he was pointing at my sandals and sure enough, although I'd barely noticed, the stitchings were all falling apart. He offered to fix them all up for next to nothing, which he did with remarkable skill while we sat in a park and 3 separate men tried to clean my ears and 2 separate guys tried to give me an aromatic massage. The ear cleaning was scary, they wouldn't take no for an answer and one guy even shoved his cotton bud thing in my ear even when I specifically told him to take a hike.

So that was India, the food was delicious all the way through, the people were amazingly friendly and talkative, the salesmen were cunning, the history and culture incredible. One of the most intense and enjoyable places I've ever travelled, but not really for the light hearted. The only thing I've neglected to make any mention of is my bowels, which I shall now rectify. The whole time I was in India I had the most incredibly well formed poos, if anything they were bordering on too hard. I also had some crazy gas effects in the morning, I've never been able to fart like this. Finally on the last day of my trip I was hit with incredible diarreah. I think it must have been Giardiasis, it lasted for a few weeks, but that's for the next entries.