October 5, 2000

Our entry into India started off quite smooth as we left the terminal into the throngs and muggy dank heat of the morning rush hour. But, then the taxi sped through the mass of people, children crapping in the street, cows wandering, men brushing their teeth, and the multitudes of motorcycles, scooters, bicycles, auto ricksaws, goods carriers (trucks) and just general mayhem...you never knew what you would see any next second, your senses choking on the overdose of visual insaneity, faint whiffs of open sewers, miles of smoking food stalls reeking of curry and cumin admist the most extreme and desparte of slums that you can imagine... Staying down in the Colaba district of modern Bombay makes one feel that they are in a great city despite all that you see getting there. As there are numerous lovely old Britsh raj-era buildings all in various states of decrepted moss and vine acumulated decay amounst the familes living on the sidewalks in front of them cooking their evening meals, cleaning each others ears with foot long "q-tips" and selling anything from fresh | mango juice to counterfiet reeboks. Our introduction to Indian food has been like a blessing as we are both big fans of the curry, masala, thali and of course the excellent Indian Kingfisher beer. Food is cheap and quite filling, we will have no problems being vegetarians here. We needed to get our bearings here as to which direction we would head and decided on going South away for the moment from the deserts and into the jungles of southern India of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Goa, Kerala and possibly Tamil Nadu (Madras) from there we plan to head north. Surprisingly we have also found very good, fast and cheap internet cafes, think alot of them have been springing up over the last year.

AURANGABAD

October 9, 2000

Took the overnight train out of Bombay's Victoria Terminus to Aurangabad, the base for our side trips to the Ellora and Ajanta caves. These caves were carved out of solid rock over various centuries from 1000BC to 800AD by Hindu, Buddist and Jains for use as monastarys. These cave temples that are inhabited by bats and monkeys, were quite amazing and we got stuck in one of the Buddist temples during a thunderstorm and (walked amoungst the stone buddas staring at us as the darkening sky and rumbling thunder passed overhead in the unending downpour, felt like I was in a "Raiders of the lost ark meets Apocylapse Now" movie, but without the soundtrak! Aurangabad is also near a holy site for Hindus and we traveled to the Grishneshwar temple where surprisingly I was allowed in the inner shrine, which felt like an incense and saffron flower filled womb, filled with Hindus sweating and praying, offering their puris (orange and yellow flowers and coconuts) which after smashing on the rocks they placed on a growing mound of previous offerings.

BIJAPUR

We decided to head due south to see the temples of Hampi via Bijapur, which is for the most part a fairly unimpressive pit of a town except that it had a couple of very nice 16th century mausoleums. We stayed at the lovely and moldy KTSDC government hotel, that must go down in our travels as the mooost soggiest place we every stayed in!! We did enjoy the market where we met some other travellers and as we were chatting we were bombarded with chilli powder and small seeds by probaly some kids and such as the conversation was cut short, we got out of there.

HAMPI

After taking a neck-breaking bus ride through the Maharasta-Karnataka backroads on a bus that nearly went off the road every half-hour, we made it into Hampi at 5 am, haggled for a room and found a nice place for the next 4 nights at this family run guest house. Hampi is a small rural town that was once the capital of the Vittangna Hindu empire (c.1500's). It's blessed with loads of funky hindu temples crawling with monkeys and sleeping cows In one we went into you would give this elephant a rupee and after it would "rub" its trunk on your head I guess it was kind of a blessing. We spent a couple of days on bikes Just rambling around the other sites paying baksheesh for photos and then wandering over to the "Mango Tree" restuarant, which is hidden in this bannana plantation by the side of the touba river, sipping "bhang lassis" and chatting up with the other travellers.

PANAOLEM BEACH, GOA

October 18, 2000

The train trip through the Karnataka to Goa countryside was quite beautiful, with lots of lush greenery and several huge waterfalls, as the train climbed through the mountains toward the western ghats. We spent the first night in Panaji, which was the old capital of Portugues Goa and had a very cool decayed,humid colonial air We stayed in some kind of old portugues home (wooded beams and dark furniture). Taking a couple of local bumpy buses (in one i could almost feel my fillings comming out!!) we arrived at Panaolem beach, where we stayed in a beach hut for a week, just chilling out listening to Indian 60's underground and goa trance. The beach had a good easy-going traveller feel to it and we met a friend that we had met in Hampi. I caught up on my fictional reading and we spent a day touring around on a Indian Royal Enfield motorcycle, (it is still made to the same spec as the British ones of the 1940's!) Quite fun dodging all the cows, pigs, goats and a family of ferrets! as we got lost in the backroads meeting kids who gave us coconuts and invited us over for dinner. One night we watched a family of cows having a "fight" outside of our hut and they turned around and ran through our camp, scaring the pigs who lived there. It rained almost everyday while we were there and swimming while it was raining was a treat...mostly though one tried to get our reading in before the next constant power outage would hit.

FT. COCHIN/THANKEY JUNCTION

October 28, 2000

During the 14 hour train ride from Margoa (just south of Palolam beach) to Ft. Cochin/Ernakulam, we met two girls during the journey. With their broken english and our non-existent Malayalam language, we managed to have a conversation of a giggly girly sort. They invited us to stay with them in their village half-way between Cochin and Alleppy. Being a bit exhausted from the train ride, we decided to quickely check out cochin first and take a bus the following day to meet up with them.

Fort Cochin is a small penninsula that is quite mellow compared to the usual busy noisy city of Ernakulam just across the water. There is an old Jewish spice section (of course now run by Indians) where spices are galore, sold wholesale and the aroma is wonderful walking around. We did a very fast visit here hoping to see the palace and mosque nearby, but found out too late that they were closed for holy day! The hilite of our stroll around Cochin were the cows basking and cooling off in a pool of water just outside of the palace. Only their noses stuck out of the water - classic Indian site. The following day we just went to the bus station and asked about 5 people until we got a clearer understanding of which bus went to Thankey Junction, to meet Bigi and Baby, the two girls from the train. This was a place not on our map, nor in the LP book, but it seemed like a chance to meet an Indian family firsthand and get AWAY off the beaten track. On the bus we asked again many people, when do we get off? Few people spoke English so it took a bit of work to understand it all. We waited on the edge of our seats in the crowded, bumpy local bus with our backpacks ready to throw on cause the buses don't stop long at these little junctions.

We got off ok and found the St. Mary's church and then the priest, according to Bigi's instructions and happily saw their faces in relief that we actually got here. We all squeezed into a rickshaw and drove quite a distance to the coastline to their house. They lived in a simple, common styled concrete home with a red tiled roof, separate small hut in the back as the kitchen and outdoor asian toilet. Simple, basic and clean. Their home was surrounded by coconut palms and sandy grounds with plants all around. It was very lush here and serene. It was so nice to get away from the city and go where no other tourists would be.

Immediately upon entering, they were very accommodating and gave us their only bed, told us to sit and relax and drink a glass of warm yellowish water, (with the language problem, it was hard to understand if the water was tap, or boiled, but in the end we stuck to hot chai, just in case). It was actually not easy to relax. Every second we were directed to "come eat, some drink, try this, come wash hands for dinner, come sit here davi, jon, do you want more food, come here..." Bigi's family lived about 1km away and we later understand that we were at Baby's home which consisted of her sister, husband, 2 kids, other sister, aunt, husband, their 2 kids (one baby) and several other relatives that I don't remember who was who after being introduced to so many people in just one night. It seemed the whole family lived here and them some. And we were their guests of honor and on display. At first it was confusing what to do, when and we didn't want to do anything insulting, but each minute was a learning experience. When we sat down for dinner, which Baby had cooked up a feast of delicious vegetarian dishes, we were surrounded by the family watching us. It was very awkward. We felt like king and queen, but for no real reason (to us), except that we were foreigners visiting their small village and we were special to them. We said "come eat at the same time." But they said no, and loosly gestured they will eat later (after us). Finally by the next day, we asked them to eat at the same time, but only parts of the family ate in the same room as us (we on chairs, them on the floor, their usual method) and Baby, the cook ate with other in the kitchen area. We were trying to get them to not treat us like "rock stars" ,but they had a mission and there was no changing their minds.

At night, they closed and locked all the doors and windows and didn't want us to go outside and stroll on our own. The beach was just behind their house and we wanted to "get a breather" and relax for a few moments alone, but not possible. They said tomorrow we go to beach. They planned out a days activities for us for the following day of visiting other relatives nearby and maybe the catholic churches they were very much a part of nearby too. We agreed (had no choice, actually) .but realized we needed to plan our bus trip out and make sure we were on that bus tomorrow. This was an incredible visit so far, but very exhausting having all their friends visiting us on their porch and neighbors staring in wonderment since we arrived. The Indian lifestyle is also about having people around you all the time. There are so many people in this country that their concept of personal space is very different from western spacious individual space. A relative's husband who also lived there wasn't working as a fisherman recently (didn't understand the reason) so he just hung out all day and knapped here and there. Very laidback and mellow style - very indian elsewhere, too. We didn't sleep much because it was very warm and humid with all the doors closed and the family coughing all night. At 7am, Baby flicked on the lights and woke us up with "coffee ready. Drink now? Ok, drink later." Then the lights went back off. We had some watery coffee with lots of sugar to perk us up.

The day basically was about us being "paraded" down the road to visit their relatives and close friends. The quality of houses was varied - from cement huts to small simple home with ceiling fans all surrounded by lush vegetation and the ocean. Bigi and Baby and the other woman helped me put on a saree. It was beautiful and they wanted to show their friends, too. But after visiting around in it, I felt too on display and paraded to enjoy it for a long time. The beach was not swimable to our dismay! It had millions of tiny shrimp and crabs floating all over it. (Now we realized why they we not eager for us to take a dip in it.). We later met a girl, maybe 12 years old, who spoke very good english and was kind of the village political spoksperson. She was very persistent in making us think that we, Americans, had lots of money to be able to come over to India and help with their familie's dowerys and repairs of some homes. The girl followed us around trying to convince us that was what we were to do as foreigners and especially as Americans. We explained we are not rich and are not here to rescue India. She was so set in her opinion, nothing we could say would change her mind and make her see our point of view. After awhile, it became very awkward and started to turn our visit into an unpleasant tone. Bigi and Baby saw how uncomfortable her subtle and persuasive insistant persistance was for us, but this was also part of the whole experience of traveling we were realizing. And especially into a small village like this one. By this time, we needed some personal space. The rest of the day was spent waiting for the bus on their porch and taking tons of snapshots of us with their other relatives that visited and many more family shots that they wanted to send to them later. We had had a very local experience staying with them. But the persistance and rudeness of the young girl left a harsh tone on the whole visit. I realized I had to just emotionally push it aside to get through this whole experience. I'm seeing traveling around India, that it is a place of contrasts in every aspect of life and everywhere: rich/poor, cows/rickshaws, babies with elderly woman... .the list goes on and more later... We got on the bus with fond memories, too, but were ready to move on. Our bus broke down, waited with a huge group of people hoping to get on the next one and finally got to Alleppy into a noisy bustling small city along the backwaters of Southern Kerala. In all, an experience I won't forget and, even though emotionally heartwrenching and diffucult, something I don't regret having experienced.

KUMILY/NEYAR DAM, MAMALLAPURUM, MYSORE

November 20, 2000

India just has this way of pulling you in more and more, to the point that you just start losing time. We left the Fort Cochin/Alleppy area via a backwater boat trip. This trip was a lazy slow all-day boat That glided through the backwater canels and freshwater inlets south of Cochin in Kerala. We passed family after family fishing, bathing and washing down at the ghats and numerous houseboats And local ferries shuttling people to and fro The waters had a nile-like slithrey quality to it, with Plenty of slow moving african moss sweeping by the bow of the boat We stopped to eat thalis (south-indian lunch meals) on bannana leaves and chai. We met a englishman traveller that we had met in Bijapur and Cochin, whose name was Henry, who was a botanist, and we talked about the days of the Raj. It was defiently like a step back in time. We spent the night in Kollom (Quilon) and headed up to Kumily in the western ghats of kerala state via a very bumpy all-day local bus ride Sitting up front behind the bus driver, we saw our lives pass several times before us as we crossed the high mountain roads at brakeless speeds. We stayed at a family run guest house and since they were full we stayed in their children's room for the first night. We took a trip out to explore the Penyar National Park, where they supposedly have tigers (we didn't see them) and took a jungle trek around and through leech infested mud (we put some eyculiptus oil on to keep them off us.) later on we took a boat trip out and around the lake to see other wildlife such as a family of elephants and plenty of deer and wild boars. We met up with a Dutch couple who we spent the next day treking up to a local mountain. We walked through tea and cardimon plantations before reaching the deserted peak, minus a few cows. On the way down we ran into the local tribal people coming back from their work and had fun getting lost through their village. That night we went to a local dance school to watch a performace in "Byhart Nagam" a southern Indian dance style while outside it was pouring rain, It was great to see this up close and in someones own home.

The next several days we spent in Kumily we hooked up with a local family that gave tabla lessons at the " Shiny Tabla Works".. They were very supportive and spritual in our desire to learn tablas, but unfortunatly we had only planned to stay a few more days. Before we started our lesson we did a puja (Hindu food/flower offering to the gods) and to their father who just recently passed away. We spent a whole day going through the basic 24 lessons and the hand positions, while their mother made us lunch and dinner. It was great to be a part of this family's world even for a short time as we really saw how dedicated they were to playing music.

Davi and I decided that we wanted to check out the Sivananda Yoga Ashram out at Neyar dam (about 25 miles outside of Trivandrum) this was way up in the western ghats over looking a victorian-era dam. We ended up staying a week there as it was quite peaceful and a quite respite from modern India. Our day started at 5 am with meditation and mantra chanting (I am not really into chanting!) and we got in on the crash course in hatha yoga , which felt really good after all the long bus and rickshaw rides we took. In the middle of the day everyone sat around and listened to Swami G's lectures on spritual and philosophical subjects. We took a day trip with the Swami to the temples down at the southern tip of India (Kanyakumuri) where we met a shadhu who hadn't left the same spot in this one temple for over 20 years. He had completely given up on the outside world for his own spritual quest. We left the Ashram feeling rejuvenated and quite peaceful, but this will only last so long once one is back in 'India'.

I had this idea that we would head to Kolvallam Beach for a few days before heading over to Madras (chennai) I should have looked more closer at the LP book cause KB was very touristy and full of touts who were very aggressive. We found a quiet place away from the beach and ate most of our meals at the German Bakery on the beach where we could watch from an un-toutable distance the trashed out beach (yeah they bury the trash just under the sand along with all the dead fish) and watch all the other hapless souls trudging through the sand with their backpacks and swarms of touts circling them. We did get some clothes made down there from this fine tailor, you can just pick out the material and design (davi drew her own) and they will make it up in a day or so. Not really having any plan on our travels down south we ended up choosing to go to the temple town of Mamallapurum, about 40 miles south of Madras on the Bay of Bengal side of India (Tamil Nadu). This was a fairly quiet, except for all the stone masons working all day, and ran into a German friend we had met in Hampi and Goa, who was also heading to Burma. We hung out, saw some crowded temples and not so crowded ones where they wanted to charge 10 rupees for Indians (about 22 cents) and 10 US $ for all Foriegners! This is beyond greedy and we refused to pay for any of those sites, kind of a drag since that was our main reason for coming up there. Seems the Indian government just raised all the entrance fees especially for foriegners throughout the country. We will have to see how this plays out at the Taj Mahal! Later we got our first package sending experience, Indian-style where you have to get it stiched and sown by a tailor before you take it to the post office. It went very smooth as they seem to be very effiecent with shipping goods overseas. We took a day trip up to see the local crocodile and snake farm and it was a nice getaway. After spending a day in Madras, choking on rickshaw fumes and dodging killer traffic in the late monsoon rains we took a overnight train to Mysore, which everyone we met said to check out for it's temples and Maharaja palace. Mysore is a small town up a little in elevation with a cooler climate that was quite welcome after the humidity of Madras. We spent most of our time exploring the back ally markets and shops looking at sarees for Davi. At one shop after several cups of tea we bought a saree and some other textile clothing . We went to the Belur and Halabid temples on a trip outside of Mysore, which were two of the best we had seen so far, for they had unbelievable amounts of carvings on the stone walls, depicting all the various hindu gods in the patheon. That night we sat at our hotel restaurant sipping cold beer and listening to live Indian surf music by a tabla and guitar player... sounded very cool as the music wafted up into our room late into the night, lulling us to sleep under our flimsy mosquito net.

UDAIPUR. JAISALMER AND PUSHKAR

December 007, 2000

We got up early to get in the Mysore Royal palace and to pick up Davi's sarees that we were having tailored. chasing rickshaws and dodging the student protest that seemingly had closed all the streets that we wanted to take, we just made it to the train station to catch the first part of our trip, the train up to Bangalore. So begins our maddening 2 and a half day train journey north from Mysore to Udaipur in southern Rajasthan. We got out of Bangalore by pleading with the DCM (district control manager) in the Southern Railways office (it was something out of the movie "Brazil") for a couple sleeper seats. We were on a waitlist but we needed to get on our next train connection (Bangalore was a pit!). Only because we were foriegn tourists were we able to make it after a a few frantic phone calls thanks to the "DCM". This was a 24 hour train that brought us up to Dadar, a station in Bombay that was real confusing, since they had numbered the platforms with the same numbers and had only direction signs saying "East" or "West", finally found our next train and easily made the waitlisted seats that brought us up to Amedabad, where we arrived just in time to jump on a local unreserved train to Udaipur. This was a real local train with the hard bench seats, muslim musicians, and a sikh who made salads.

Udaipur is a city that is centered around a lake and has the famous Lake Palace Hotel in the middle (they shot a James Bond film there) and has all these bathing and washing ghats around it. It had a very timeless feel to it as we watched the sunsets with the monkeys scurring around our guest house room. Every morning we woke to the sounds of women beating the local laundry and the various hindi mantras competing over the surreal soundscape (thanks to the Bhang lassis), this felt like classic India to us as we thought it would be. The north immediatly had a different feel to us, much more touristy and a bit cooler reception but still quite fascinating as the scenery was more desert-like and the weather was refreshingly cooler.

We decided to take an overnight bus up to Jaisalmer (I swore to Davi that this would be the last overnight bus ride as she was getting sick in a plastic bag.) yeah plenty of over-cranked Hindi music, that all the woman sang along to on the bus! It became maddening as the woman behind us vomited out the window and the bus felt like it was about to crash out at any minute. We had a 5 am chai/bus change at Jodpur where a rickshaw driver came on the bus to grab us and force us to pay for what is essentially a free ride over to the other bus, and then we continued on to Jaisalmer, where we faced some of the fierciest touts ever. We had to run into a local telephone exchange to get away from them.

We stayed in the old Jaislmer fort in a cozy cell-like room that was at least quiet, but they had amazing views over the the city and it felt like you were in a Arabian nights movie with auto rickshaws, watching the early morning camel carts pulling in, the family of pigs running in the gutters and the numerous cows being chased away by the local shopkeepers. This place had a real magical and I might even say romantic feel to it as we huddled together on the now very cold nights on the rooftop looking up at the stars and crescent moon as the distant call to prays drifted in over the garlic spiced food being cooked by the Nepali family downstairs. We met up with a couple of American women and English and Welsh travellers that we went out on a camel safari with. This safari was great fun as we spent 3 days and 2 nights out in the Thar desert on camels, trudging through local villages (one schoolpen...rupee?), sipping Indian gin and indulging in the Bangh cookies we picked up in town. On the second night we slept out on the sand dunes and awoke to hot chai and chapatis in the morning...it was bliss from the chaos.

After 5 nights in Jaislmer we took the overnight train to Pushkar via Jodhpur and Ajmer, from where we caught a local jammed packed bus up to Pushkar. Pushkar is one of the holiest hindu sites in India and is also situated around a lake with numerous ghats for all the colorful pilgrams and sadhus and Isreali hippies that come here. We met a Swedish friend that we had met in Jaislmer who brought us to a good place to stay near the ghats and the lake. There isn't really alot to do here except dodge the henna gypsies and cow pat, nurse our colds that we picked up and sip lots of ginger tea and watch all the monkeys jumping from roof to roof. I am hoping to pick up a cheap Digereedoo here and rest up before heading up to Dehli (gulp!).

NEW DELHI, AGRA, FETHEPUR SIKRI, VARANASSI

December 19, 2000

It was funny but we arrived in New Delhi expecting the worse and in actuallity it wasn't really that bad (i'll admit the train station was a little bit out there as in from "escape from new york") but we were pretty much india-savy by then and were able to move about alot easier since the city is quite spacious. In Delhi we were able to get our big city stuff taken care of like film.video tape, changing our flight tickets and seeing a bollywood flick "Mission to Kasmir"(A father-kills-terrorist-adopts his son-kills his mother-love story musical). We also met up with Lalit, a good friend and traveller "guru", who we met on the ferry from Barcelona to Geneva back in May. We spent a couple of nights at his bachelor pad above his parents house, eating home-cooked dinners, sipping Indian whiskey, listening to the Beatles and talking late into the night about indian politics and various traveller philosophies. It was good to get off the travel-hotel scene for a few days and meet someone local and who could show us around a bit. Another one of the reasons we timed our stay in Delhi was to get down to Agra to see the Taj Mahal and Agra fort on a friday, since it would be free (it is now 10$ for foriegners but only 10 rupees (22 cents) for indians) We really were not going pay as this is something the government has just instituted throughout the country's major sites. In any case we made it in and it was finally great to see how beautiful it really was in person. We spent about 3 hours there before walking over to the Agra Fort which had classic views of the Taj and the surrounding city. We got out of Agra and headed over to Fetehpur Sikri (40km west of Agra), which is known as the "deserted city" since it was once the capital of the Indian Mughal empire in the 1570's. We spent a day exploring the ruins which were in incredible shape and exploring the markets which were very dense and crowded with people and animals, that night the brothers who owned the guest house where we were staying at played tablas and sang Parisi, Sufi and Hindi-Pop songs for us. We ended our stay there watching the sunset over the ancient city walls and then took a bumpy bus ride through the dark and smokey haze countryside back to Agra in order to catch the night train over to Varanassi.

We were waitlisted No.1&2 for a berth and spoke to the TTE man to get confirmed berths cause there was no way we were staying a night in Agra. He was so non-chalant and casual about the whole thing, while we were sweating bullets hoping to get out of Agra. So I made up a story that we had a flight to Varanasi the next day... This of course had no effect on the man. Other men spoke with him (all in hindi) seemingly trying to get seats too. We gave him our ticket again and waited and after his mumble, he gave us 2 berths, thank god! we didn't have to stay overnight. Got into Varanasi in the morning and as soon as we exited the train we had 2 touts on us for rickshaw rides. Didn't want them, tried to find the tourist office first, then phone to call some hotels in mind all the while trying to shrug them off (if we go with them to their hotel, they get commisssion and we pay more for a room - not what we wanted.). They followed us like CIA agents. Later, one of the guys, once ourtside, insisted we go with him so we negotiated a location and price. Seemed Ok, then he said come see his hotel, but we did not want to. then he got very abrupt and called us "fuckin" tourists. Why do you come to India. Don't come to India!" Needless to say, we got out of his rickshaw very quickly. He was not happy that we were not playing his game and decided to insult us on the spot. Didn't start the day off very well, but got another driver to take us as close as possible to the hotel without letting on which one we were heading for (or else he would try for a commision too). Exhausted by this point, we got settled in our homey, kinda hostel like hotel and bumped into Kerry, who we had met on the Jaisalmer desert camel trip which helped in trying to forget the rudeness of the driver (in this very touristy location).

We got up early the day after to get a sunrise boat ride on the ganges river holy ghats to hopefully see some pooja offerings and other hindu ceremonies. We ended up doing a 3hr trip running almost the whole length of the ghats from the last one, Assi Ghats, to nearly the bridge (towards Calcutta).

some stream-of-consciouness thoughts....

candles, pooja religous offerings floating in the water as we entered, men everywhere bathing, dipping and splashing to wash. using the ghats steps as pumice stone to scrub their feet and hands, others standing in the water praying, washing all parts and brushing teeth with finger and using ghat water to rinse, women doing laundry with the sound of beating clothes on the stones, hard work. all day? men do it too. real physical labor, get off further up near the burning ghats to see a cremation ceremony about to start, two bodies on lower steps wrapped head-to-toe - 1 in bright orange with gold extra wraps around, and with lots of bright orange flowers strung together as religious offerings, other wrapped in white, man tells us women in orange, men in white, they dip the wrapped man in the ghats and then lean him to dry. they lay them on bambo"stretchers" colorfully decorated, to the side, a fire is almost out. the men workers are moving about as usual daily business to them. fascinating to us. hard to tell who is family, if any, and who works here. they prep wood and lay out a base on the other side. most wood goes underneath, we are told, a family has to buy the sacred Banyan tree wood. the more wealthy they are, the more sufficient wood they can buy for the complete ceremony (about 5,000 rupees), many cannot and, like daughters' doweries, they ask for help. the wood is staked up further up the ghats. small stalls sell the gold wrappings, cloth and other colorful ceremonial pieces, several men, first one, carries a tied bundle of straw with fire on one end. they all walk around the body several times while lighting small parts of the timber, we walked away at this point, if a woman dies, we are told, her husband lights the fire. if a man dies, the older brother lights the fire. it didn't seem as ceremonial as I thought it would look like. but alot I don't know or seems it's like watching what goes on behind the funeral doors, behind the crematory, i guess, but this is all public........................all of India seems public - bathing (men's private parts covered, woman wear loose sarees while washing), even pooping, spitting, washing teeth, blowing nose, etc... all except public affection between male and female (except in major cities), men are buddies and woman are bonded in their own way, too. All this seems to make some more sense the longer we stay in india. but it would take even longer to find any logic in any of it. but that is the beauty, spirit, karma, if you will, of what this country is like - just on the surface that we have seen traveling around... the less I try to find logic in it all, the more it makes sense and am finding myself saying "thats india."