Everything is Everything

Recent Kaleidoscopes

2011-12-30T20:41:00.000-08:00

Sparks from the temple burn at burning man

Tree on Mekong River in Luang Prabang, Laos

Khmer path stonework at Wat Phou near Champasak, Laos

Ta Prohm at Angkor Wat, Cambodia

Radhe Baba's Mother's Hands and Rose Petals, Uttar Pradesh, India

And some not so recent images...but never posted online - from the 2010 Penta show at Vessel Gallery in Oakland....

Birds & God at Waddell Beach, California

Altitude Sickness, near Wheeler Peak, New Mexico

Coir Kaleidoscopes

2011-12-30T20:17:00.000-08:00

Coir is the fiber from coconut husk. These images are arranged from just two different photographs taken in the Southern Indian state of Kerala.

Burning Man 2011, Monday

2011-12-23T08:46:00.000-08:00

Biking on the playa after much of the art has been taken down or burned...

Robbie

Remaining wood and trash from camps and art pieces are burned in big containers on the playa.

Burning Man is officially a "leave no trace" event and so after the structures are burned, the playa earth is raked to pick up all MOOP (matter out of place).

Packing up the playa bikes

To spread out the impact of dumping water onto the dry playa surface, Glen pours out extra water through a watering can while biking in circles.

After waiting out for the huge exodus of vehicles leaving the site all Sunday night and Monday, we left early Tuesday morning with no traffic for a drive in Glen's VW bus back to San Francisco.

Burning Man, 2011, Sunday Evening

2011-12-22T23:24:00.000-08:00

Atop geodesic dome

Giant bicycle-powered pachyderm

View of the playa at dusk

The Temple before its burn...

The Temple of Transition ablaze

Illuminated by the hot fire of the burning temple: Robbie, Trevor, Cheer

Burning Man 2011, Sunday Morning

2011-12-22T22:28:00.000-08:00

Temple of Transition at dawn

LOVE

Wet Dream

Truth and Beauty

Sunrise!

Burning Man 2011, Saturday Night

2011-12-13T20:12:00.000-08:00

Viewing Black Rock City at dusk from a scaffolding tower in VW Bus camp

Trevor

The Peaces

One thing you must do at Burning Man, (unless you have an RV and an indoor toilet), is make frequent use of the public porta potties scattered throughout this temporary desert city. Staying hydrated is important in the desert environment and quantifying the trips to the porta potties helps determine whether you should drink more water.

Walking out to the playa at dusk to watch the Man burn...

The Man burns...

And the crowds were illuminated with the giant fire...

Robbie

The Peaces...

Temple of Shame burns

Burning Man 2011, Saturday Morning

2011-12-10T21:06:00.000-08:00

Deep playa cinema

Sunrise with Tayyab

The amazing Temple of Transition was briefly the largest temporary wooden building in the world...

The Temple...

Every year the temple gets covered in writing by Burning Man participants - often messages to a loved one or friend who died in the previous year. The burning of the temple on Sunday night is solemn as everyone's writing and the wood goes up in flames as a crowd numbering in the tens of thousands watches in silence.

Looking towards the Earth Harp

Inside the temple, gamelan instruments hung from the walls and were set up with electronically programmed mallets...intermittently playing 24 hours a day...

2nd story inside of temple

Charon

Every morning after sunrise, I pulled up a stool and had some cereal or granola at Cereal Thriller in the 3:00 keyhole.

Burning Man 2011, Friday

2011-12-05T20:28:00.000-08:00

At sunrise we ventured on bikes to a structure to the east near the walk-in (no cars) camp. The structure was at least 4 stories and fitted together with no glue, nails or screws.

Robbie, Cheer and Trevor

Others also climbed up into the elevated pods for perfect sunrise viewing...

Tayyab spinning poi

Rites of Passage: Burning Man 2011, Thursday

2011-12-05T20:08:00.000-08:00

thursday sunrise...

Around Bangkok

2011-11-26T21:17:00.000-08:00

The huge reclining Buddha at Wat Pho

Central World Plaza shopping mall

Benjasiri Park near Sukhumvit Road

View from Lebua Tower, hotel featured in Hangover 2

At the Grand Palace...

coming into Bangkok via train

Bangkok's Democracy Monument

People often complain about Bangkok's traffic...and for good reason...

Example of typical Bangkok gridlock traffic - a problem nicely rectified by taking the city's above ground monorail as seen above and below or by hopping on the back of one of the many motorcycle taxis, which will weave in and out of traffic and even zoom onto sidewalks.

Air tram stop near Chatuchak Market, Bangkok's huge weekend market

A South Indian temple

One of many bars lining Soi Cowboy

Off of Khaosan Road - an street crammed with t-shirt stalls, gift shops, street food and pubs for tourists and backpackers was Soi Rambutri, a really relaxing, shady area consisting of a horseshoe brick road circling around a monastery and lined with the cheapest guest houses in Bangkok, restaurants, internet cafes, bars, more t-shirt stalls, VW bus bars, travel agents, etc. I found a particularly off-the-beaten track, dirty and cheap guest house through an alley past some clothing vendors. This was the staircase leading down to the bathrooms from my room. (I stayed at this place during one of my four stopevers in Bangkok, after I had been to Japan and was thus trying to save what little money I had left.) The bathrooms did not smell good. You can actually see a urinal in the photo.

Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport

Layover in Seoul at Incheon Airport

Around Phnom Penh

2011-11-15T15:19:00.000-08:00

Central Market

Daily aerobics on the river esplanade

I rented a bike from my guest house and cruising around the city was a great way to get around and explore.

Democracy Monument

Outside Wat Ounalom Monastery

On a bus outside Phnom Penh

Sooooo....this is the after effects from getting cupped. If you don't know what cupping is, you can read about it here on Wikipedia or Acupuncture Today. Around Southeast Asia, when I was in a city and not in the countryside working on farms or teaching English I often opted for a daily massage as they were usually about $3-$5 for an excellent traditional therapeutic treatment. Sometimes these massages came with complimentary aromatic steam baths, which were also awesome and really just a great deal. In Phnom Penh, I saw a sign near my guest house, offering up cupping sessions for just $2. I had tried cupping once during an acupuncture treatment, and thought I would give it a shot. I'm open to trying natural therapeutic treatments - especially for $2. (The lady quickly informed me in broken English that it would be $3 instead of $2.) Well, the "treatment" was not what I expected. For one, it was pretty painful. When I asked the therapist how long the glass cups would stay sucking onto my back skin, she replied, "Yes yes ok!" There was a big box of cups, but I never would have imagined that she was going to use all of them plus more...I counted more than 60 cups popping off of my back afterward. And then she did a second round as I winced and tried to take it like a man. Cupping supposedly helps cleanse your body of toxins. And, in case you aren't sure, the purple spots are yes, bruises. Nearly three months later (I'm very late in updating this blog) I still have some faint circles on my back! The photo above was taken by the therapist immediately after the session. The two below were taken later that evening in my Phnom Penh guesthouse.

Tragic Legacy of the Khmer Rough in Phnom Penh

2011-11-14T20:43:00.000-08:00

In Phnom Penh, the most famous tourist attractions all relate to horrific tragedy - killing fields, prison camps, rampant torture and violence, piles of human skulls and a painting of a baby getting its skull smashed against a tree. In the 1970's the "simple" and "farmer" Communists known as the Khmer Rouge (Red Cambodians), took over the country and killed roughly two million people, nearly a quarter of Cambodia's population. Above is a room (former elementary school classroom) that housed prisoners who were shackled to the bed with the steel device on top of the bed. The box is an ammunition case used by the prisoners as toilets. New York Times just posted an article on the current UN trials against some former Khmer Rouge leaders.

In Phnom Penh, there are tuk tuk drivers waiting to drive foreign visitors to the sites of the city just like in other Southeast Asian locales, but the tourist sites are quite grim and different for tourists coming from Angkor Wat or sandy beaches. Beggars with missing limbs outside the Genocide Museum do nothing to dispel the forlorn and tragic energy surrounding the school turned prison camp turned museum, also known as S-21, the school's original name.

These classrooms were divided up into many tiny cells made of wood and doorways were made through the walls to create a line of cells. Visitors can still see blood stains on the tile floors.

Of the thousands of Cambodians who were checked into this school turned prison camp in Phnom Penh, only 12 survived. After extensive torture, starving, suffering and interrogations, they were summarily executed - usually taken to outside of the city to "killing fields" where the bodies could more easily be buried.

Blocks away from the school, the modern city pushes up high rise condos and office buildings.

Skulls line the shelves at S-21.

A few kilometers outside the city, many of the prisoners were brought to an area known as Choeung Ek or the Killing Fields. 17,000 humans were murdered here between 1975 and 1979. Some of the many mass graves were excavated and later on a stupa was built to house these remains.

Looking into the Buddhist stupa on site that contains 5,000 human skulls.

Rady's Cambodia English School of Higher Education

2011-10-31T21:50:00.000-07:00

Pedro leads an activity in one of three classrooms at Rady's free English school outside Siem Reap, Cambodia. I came here to volunteer as an English teacher. I found the organization through the website Help Exchange. Rady receives foreign volunteers who stay at his home and teach at his school throughout the year. Since the nearby Angkor Wat complex receives millions of foreign visitors a year, local Cambodians who learn to speak English confidently will have job opportunities in the huge tourism industry as they grow up.

Children gather around Pedro's laptop to view a fun English music video from the internet. The students' ages in the classroom ranged from 2 years old to 28. Most were probably in the 5-13 age range. During the class, chickens wandered through the open doors of the bamboo and thatch classrooms and pecked at the dirt floor.

The school is free for everyone and classes in the mornings and evenings were divided by age and skill level. The orphans that Rady takes care of all attend the school every day and were some of the best students in class as they have constant contact with foreigners sharing their home.

Practicing the alphabet...

Here's Rady, director of the school, feeding the fish in his pond, which he is farming.

A future student of the school...

A view of the simple but effective classrooms with dry erase boards...

Wood arrives for the new library in a trailer pulled by a motor scooter. Rady and some others built the library in something like five days. They will have a collection of books in English for the village's children and maybe even some computers in the future.

Inside the new library...

With a gift of a few hundred dollars, Pedro financed the new library and a local official even came to inaugurate the building and give a certificate of appreciation to Pedro for his generosity.

Two of my students

Another one of my students who lived just a short walk down this road

This was the path to the school, where there was always standing water. The school was surrounded by wet rice paddies and several homes.

Pedro walking in the water

Singing songs

Younger siblings looking on...

Rady had a couple rickshaws that attach to the back of scooters. He and his driver would take us to town and sometimes to school.

After a couple more volunteers showed up from Germany, I started teaching a more advanced evening English class to some novice monks at the Educational Center for Human Potential Development in a monastery in Siem Reap.

Planting Rice at Rady's Home in Cambodia

2011-10-30T18:14:00.000-07:00

Za Pepa, one of seven orphans living at Rady's home. Rady started bringing kids from his village into his home because no one else was taking care of them. Some of these young children were fending for themselves in the countryside, scavenging for food and even feeding younger siblings. Some were so small for their ages that they probably experienced malnutrition at some stage of their early development. All attend Rady's free English school down the road.

All of the kids at Rady's home were expected to help with the rice planting. Here's Za Pepa with bunches of rice to be transplanted.

Lida gathers up rice seedlings into bunches. Although scrawny, Lida could easily climb up into the coconut trees to toss down large fruits, a task that was too difficult for me.

Bunches of rice ready for transplanting...

The kids at work...

Rady's nephew knocks the mud off of the rice seedlings by swinging the bunch against his foot.

Before planting the rice paddy was plowed.

Over the week a crew of workers (and extended family) came to lend a hand with the rice planting.

Even some of the local students at Rady's school (like this girl in my class) came to help plant the rice. The workers and kids in the paddy seemed pleased that I was helping out and some thought it was hilarious. None of the other English teachers helped plant rice, but it was fun and pleasant work albeit a bit back-breaking. At first, I was embarrassingly slow compared to the girls, but after a day, I was able to learn the method better and plant more quickly.

Don't know why pajamas are so popular in Cambodia...

And despite having to work, these kids still found time to play...

Wrestling in the rice paddy and mud fights were pretty regular, especially among these two...

Though the girls also enjoyed throwing down in the muddy water...

And the kids swam in the murky water of the drainage ditch next to the road.

Rady's son

The front of Rady's home where he hosts volunteer English teachers for his school as well as periodic couchsurfers.

At Angkor Wat: Banteay Kdei & Ta Prohm

2011-10-17T00:55:00.000-07:00

Banteay Kdei...

Ta Prohm...

With Pedro, another English teacher at Rady's Cambodia English School of Higher Education

Ta Keo

Angkor Wat, Bayon, Preah Kahn et al.

2011-10-17T00:17:00.000-07:00

Pedro climbs the steep steps at Angkor Wat...

Workers sweep out the day's rainwater from Angkor Wat

Pre Rup

Enigmatic faces of Bayon

One of Angkor Thom's main gates

Near the Terrace of the Elephant King

Preah Khan, once a significant temple complex for 100,000 officials and servants

Southern Laos

2011-10-13T20:48:00.000-07:00

Along a road near Champasak

Crossing the Mekong River

Outside of Champasak, I rented a bike and cruised a few kilomters to Wat Phou, ancient temple of the Khmer empire from the 10th and 11th centuries though it has been a temple site since at least the 5th century...

"Buddha's footprint" + elephant

At Wat Phou

Kid cutting up an ox head along the road in Champasak

Pakse

Calf in front of my bungalow on Don Det, part of the 4,000 Islands area of Southern Laos

Crazy dude on island of Don Khong

Buddhism in Luang Prabang

2011-10-09T08:18:00.000-07:00

Luang Prabang is filled with old historical Buddhist temples and monasteries. Young boys come from all over the countryside to live at the monasteries and receive a free education. Every morning at dawn, the novice monks walk quickly through the streets in single file pausing to collect food from kneeling locals who put sticky rice and other food into their alms bowls.

The monks walk in line in order from oldest to youngest.

Evening chanting

Shortly after taking this photo, Vai, the novice monk on the far left asked me to help him teach his daily English class. After helping once, I returned several consecutive evenings to help Vai in his classroom teach English to younger novice monks. While in Luang Prabang, I also taught Italian in the afternoons to a local man who was trying to learn the language.

Two of the novice monks and English students. Most, like this one, carried cell phones in their little pocks on the front of their orange robes.

Although novice monks can smoke cigarettes, they are not permitted to play soccer. Perhaps this one is wishing that he was free to join in the game.

At Wat Xieng Thong, an elaborate and impressive temple from the 1500's...

Another temple

Wat Mahathat...

Food in Luang Prabang

2011-10-09T08:17:00.000-07:00

Green Papaya Salad. See this article for the difference between the Thai Som Tam and the Lao version...

Strange-textured veggie condiments for the above salad

Pork thingy steamed in banana leaf

Bananas and bamboo shoots

River eels

Hot peppers in the market

Rice in the market

Lao-style BBQ with some friendly Europeans. Over hot coals in the middle of the table, you cook the meat on top of this pan and mix with broth, veggies, noodles, spices and eggs that are cooked in the side of the pan.

In Luang Prabang, Laos

2011-10-08T21:18:00.000-07:00

Kaleidoscope of tree along the Mekong River

David playing in the mud

Before 1975, Luang Prabang was the capital of the Kingdom of Laos. The town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is packed with beautiful Buddhist temples and monasteries. Discovering the $1 aromatic steam bath popular with locals next to my guest house was a highlight. And the $4 Lao traditional massages were fantastic too.

On bikes...

Tree along the Mekong

Popular Kuang Si Waterfall destination outside town

Vang Vieng: the Organic Farm and Idyllic Countryside

2011-10-05T07:50:00.000-07:00

David milks a goat at the Organic Farm outside Vang Vieng.

These were the best behaved goats I've ever milked. Goats are intelligent creatures of habit and these animals were in the habit of being patient and standing still as they were milked.

One of the young workers...he also attended English classes at a nearby school started by the farm. The Organic Farm (as it is called) solicits international volunteers to help teach English and to help with goat chores. Unlike WWOOF farms, this place charges volunteers a bit of money for accommodation and food.

Amazingly, this farm is just upriver of where the tubing starts. (See post below.) And during the afternoons, the loud music from the riverside bars blasts onto the farm and was supposedly responsible for the death of their sensitive silkworms.

Part of the drying process to make tea from mulberry leaves. The Organic Farm also makes juices and wine from their mulberries.

David gathers up the goats' breakfast.

All of the goats live on the second story of two barns, so the goat manure falls through or is swept through the slats of wood to the level below. Here there are bins of goat manure with red worms, resulting in black gold compost.

On a road outside town...

Corin and David take photos on a bike ride to the Blue Lagoon.

Rice

Reclining Buddha in Phoukham Cave near the Blue Lagoon...

Vang Vieng: In the Tubing

2011-10-05T07:47:00.000-07:00

Nestled in the mountains of Laos, Vang Vieng is synonymous with two things: tubing down a river...and getting wasted. Long before I traveled in Southeast Asia the fame of this place reached my ears many times as one of the best destinations on the region's backpacker trail. The location is beautiful; there's verdant fields, karst cliffs rising from the west side of the Nam Song River and nearby limestone caves with emerald green swim holes. Tourists rent tubes and frequent about a dozen or so bars along the river, which serve up free whiskey and pump really loud music. Yet the town of Vang Vieng and the accompanying tourist scene are pretty disgusting; it's like an example of tourism gone wrong. Where drunk Aussies and Brits probably outnumber the locals 6 to 1, some people hate it vehemently and some kids love it and stay for months. In a nice article, The New Zealand Herald wrote, "If teenagers ruled the world, it might resemble Vang Vieng." The bars in town, (there's plenty of them), are mostly playing episodes of Friends and Family Guy, where white kids nursing hangovers can lay down and sip inexpensive tropical fruit shakes.

Wasted tourists actually cover their bodies with these spray paint stencils...

From the bars, beats of Outkast, Jay-Z and trashy Euro house music blast into the adjacent rice fields where locals continue to grow rice and probably wonder what the hell happened to the quiet village that they used to know. As Corin also points out on his blog post with great portraits, the bars play a remix of Vuò Fà L'Americano over and over and over again, which is really ironic for the song title means, "you wanna do the American?" And aspects of American culture have been exported here as the scene along the river resembles a college frat scene, complete with beer pong tournaments, except that there's young Lao children chasing down the bouncing ping pong balls and whiskey is served in plastic buckets.

A rattanball...I played an awesome match of rattanball with some local guys in a construction site downtown, and it was so surreal for even though the guys on the makeshift "court" couldn't speak English, we could hear the voices of Peter Griffin and Stewie (characters of Family Guy cartoon) bellowing from the TVs in a bar across the street.

Due to quite a few deaths from drowning, some of the more dangerous rope swings and zip lines have been closed down. Sure, tourist dollars are pumping into the area. And the "tubing mafia" is making money - (they've monopolized the industry to the extent that there is a local ordinance prohibiting foreigners from using any other kind of inner tube from any other company) - but the town made me feel bad about being a tourist. But, hey, when in Rome...I went tubing. And I had fun.

Vientiane, Laos

2011-09-30T08:05:00.000-07:00

There are over 6,000 Buddha images at Wat Si Saket, the oldest surviving temple in Vientiane, Laos's pleasantly relaxed capital along the Mekong River.

These novice monks came from different areas of Laos to live and study at Wat Si Saket monastery.

View from atop Patuxai or Victory Gate

Pha That Luang is the national symbol of Laos. This stupa is believed to house relics (body parts) of the Buddha.

Wat Ong Teu

Soccer game along the Mekong River, the natural border between Laos and Thailand...

Okinawa

2011-09-26T21:19:00.000-07:00

View in a restaurant in Naha. The islands of Okinawa in southern Japan are known for their tropical beaches and beautiful blue sea. Okinawa is also famous for the longevity of its residents. There are more centenarians (people over 100) here per capita than anywhere else in the world.

Naha monorail

Tropical fish at market

On Kokusai dori in Naha

There are over a dozen American military bases on the main island of Okinawa, which take up 18% of the land on the island. Most of the island's residents are opposed to the American military presence. This fence on Henoko Beach was built recently to demarcate the boundary of a base. This sign found near the fence reads, "This is Okinawan land. We don't need American bases."

Marië and I visited a local organic farmer who chatted with us for a bit. Shown are rows of his peppers.

Okinawa soba

At the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium...

Leaving Japan

Kyoto and Nara

2011-09-26T21:13:00.000-07:00

Raindrops on the shinkansen (bullet train)

Giant Buddha at Todai-ji in Nara

Marië and deer

After a hike in the mountains outside the city, we descended down to a river with restaurants built up on the water. Some even sent soba noodles down a slide of cold river water to patrons of the restaurant.

At the entrance of every shinto shrine, there is water to wash your hands and mouth.

Wishes written on paper are hung on bamboo once a year for Tanabata, a Japanese star festival.

Two women ring bells in front of a shinto shrine.

At shrines, folks can make a small donation to receive omikuji, fortunes on small strips of paper. If the fortune is bad, one ties the paper up on a row of metal wires in hopes of leaving the bad luck behind.

Visiting Marië in Tokyo

2011-09-25T22:01:00.000-07:00

The evening I arrived in Tokyo, Marië and her parents prepared a sumptuous feast of fresh fish. This was the first of many meals to sweep me off my feet.

At a train station...Toyko has the most extensive subway network in the world. There are a mind-boggling number of subway and train lines crisscrossing through the city and they travel very fast. Some of the lines are owned by the state, some are owned by the city and some are private. And, of course, stylish haircuts are everywhere.

In the shopping district of Ginza

Shinjuku

Old barrels of sake

In Asakusa...I was very impressed with Toyko. Despite being one of the larger cities of the world, the streets are relatively quiet and there seems to be very little air pollution. Since everyone rides the trains, there's not an immense amount of traffic in most areas of the city. Coming up from the subway, you might feel like you're in a small town except that when you look up there are skyscrapers towering overhead. There are, of course, some exceptionally busy areas of the city, but in general, Tokyo feels neither noisy nor congested with cars. In Tokyo, I often felt like I had taken a trip through time into the Future. The way folks dressed, the immaculate condition of the streets and the efficiency of the trains all contributed to this feeling... (as well as having spent five months in India). And on top of this, I was amazed at how respectful and considerate the Japanese are. You don't hear their cell phone ringers and if speaking on their phones in public they put their hands over their mouth so as to minimize the disturbance to others. Once in a shoulder to shoulder crowd to enter a station, everyone politely waited their turn in line and I didn't even get bumped in the slightest way. I don't think I met a rude person in Japan. Sometimes, being in Japan made me feel like I come from a country of barbarians.

Many Japanese dress in extreme ways, taking fashion fads to the next level. From goth maids to 1950's greaser outfits, there's a bit of everything. Here an adult seems to be dressed as a child.

24-hour private karaoke room seen from the outside. Marië, Gabe and I rented a room here for a few hours and sang some classics while waited for morning so that we could catch the fish market at sunrise.

Fresh tuna at the Tsukiji Fish Market, the world's biggest seafood market...

Discarded boxes at market

Gabe, who happened to be on vacation with his family in Japan at the same time that I was there, enjoys hot miso soup before 7am. Adjacent to the fish market are several sushi restaurants that serve up some of the freshest fish in the world. We arrived as early as possible to avoid lines.

Sea urchin/uni

Marië took me to her uncle's beautiful vegetable garden outside Yokohama not far from the Tokyo metropolis. Above her father weeds the sweet potatoes. After helping in the garden, we soaked in a hot spring spa perched above a shopping mall that pipes its hot water from 1500 meters below the ground.

Marië and I took the train down the coast to the sleepy town of Yuguwara, where we stayed at a lovely hotel with hot springs on site. Pictured here is the amazing meal that was served in our room.

Nakhon Si Thammarat & Koh Phangan: Buddhas & Beaches

2011-08-02T08:36:00.000-07:00

Omar put me up and showed me around his city of Nakhon Si Thammarat. And he lent me his sweet motor bike to cruise around "the Khon." Omar is currently the computer teacher at a private Christian school where we spent some evenings playing excellent games of soccer and ultimate frisbee with other Westerner teachers. At the gate of Omar's school is the large inscription, "The Fear of the Lord is the First Step to Wisdom."

We ventured outside the city to explore a sweet giant limestone cave with a river running through it that we swam and walked through.

Wat Phra Mahathat is the most important temple in the Khon and the biggest in southern Thailand.

Island Ferry

Long tail boat for transport to beaches

Haad Yuan, the beach where Omar brought me for an fun weekend with some of his friends.

Chiang Mai: Wheatgrass and Buddhas

2011-08-02T07:51:00.000-07:00

From the wheatgrass alone, you should be able to tell that I really liked Chiang Mai. With only about 160,000 residents, it contains as many temples as Bangkok (9 million humans strong). And although it is Thailand's second biggest city, many of its small side streets exude a very laid back, chill atmosphere. Some areas with small streets feel like the countryside or small villages, with funky restaurants and bars with large yards and patios tucked away throughout the city.

Awesome Tuesday night jam at the North Gate Jazz Co-op

funky iberry business

bicycle was the perfect mode of transportation

Many temples...

And lotsa Buddhas...

Amee Doyer's Farm in Northwest Thailand

2011-06-26T03:04:00.000-07:00

At this farm producing rice, rubber and fruit a few hours northwest of Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand, I worked alongside Ashi, a refugee from Burma. Together we helped prepare the paddy for planting rice and although he doesn't speak English and I don't speak Lisu, his hill tribe language, we communicated with gestures and smiles.

The paddies were first plowed and then flooded to kill off the grass and weeds.

Main house where I stayed. It was a bit strange showing up to this farm and realizing that no one there had expected my arrival. I had been in communication with a Canadian guy who runs the farm with his Thai/Burmese brother-in-law, but he had left for other hemispheres and failed to mention my arrival to others on the farm. However, even though it took the main boss about week to get around to asking my name, the farm was used to receiving WWOOF volunteers and they were well-prepared to feed me and put me to work.

Jackfruit was consumed almost daily.

Lunch...we usually had pork and rice three times a day but pictured here are noodles.

An unidentifiable inedible fruit. There were several fruits on the farm whose names I was never able to figure out.

Some of the cuter swine...there were over 100 pigs living on the farm, so it was no wonder that we ate pork for most of the meals.

One day this pig was killed by one of its own and so the workers slaughtered it and cooked it up...

Intestines!

Alea posed with a snake killed by one of his workers in the fields. He cooked it up with a red curry, which was spicy and delicious. Despite all the bones, it was some of the nicest and leanest meat I have eaten.

A view of some of the rice paddies.

A patch of rice to be transplanted around to all the other areas.

Here you can see corn in the foreground (grown to feed the pigs), rice and several coconut trees.

Even on an organic farm, the chemicals are often not far away. Here an adjacent field gets sprayed.

Final Days in India...

2011-06-12T00:42:00.000-07:00

Baba Ji, aka Om Giri, a friend of my tabla teacher, I saw him everyday in Dharamkot.

Here's my tabla teacher, Ashoka, performing with a sitarist.

I stayed with Arun in Delhi before leaving the country. Here was a delicious lunch served by his home staff.

Rishikesh, Ram Jula

2011-06-12T00:35:00.000-07:00

Large statue of Hanuman, the monkey god, with some other gods inside his chest...

I returned to Rishikesh, this time to the more Indian area of Ram Jula, to take yoga and tabla classes. An inexpensive rafting trip down the Ganges River was refreshing, but I didn't stay long as the temperatures were too hot.

Daily evening aarti along the River Ganga...

Courtyard at Sri Ved Niketan Ashram. Private room with bathroom and two daily yoga classes and meditation class for 3$ a day.

Minnie's Farm

2011-06-11T06:00:00.000-07:00

Minnie's beautiful cottage. Minnie's farm is in some hills outside of Dehra Dun.

A view down the terraced fields

Minnie and Peter, a volunteer from Germany, spreading compost.

Minnie's jeep, which transported us back and forth to her family home in the city where we often stayed. Dehra Dun might possibly have the most boarding schools per capita of any city in the world.

Ripening grapes

I was able to practice tabla while staying there.

Ripening bananas

Monkey skull! Peter and I went for a walk in the hills above the farm and came upon a monkey carcass. (We smelled it before we saw it. And then the dog started to chew on its hand.) Pretty gross.

One kind of many types of bamboo that Minnie had planted

Glacier Trek in the Himalayas

2011-06-07T07:34:00.000-07:00

Heeding the instructions of the gianormous Lonely Planet India guide, I struck out north of Bageshwar to the tiny villages of and Loharket, where I found my trailhead for the Pindari Glacier. This trip lasted about six days, walking maybe 12 miles a day with lots of elevation change. At the beginning of the hike, the stone path wove through farms and villages through the forests and valleys, and I shared the path with locals. These guys living along the trail were all stripping bamboo to make baskets and to repair roofs.

Village of Khati with snow-capped mountains in the background. This hike was very easy. There were some signs only in Hindi (that I'm happy to say I could read), but one could have just followed the largest trail. As I was slightly ahead of the "hiking season," I only saw maybe four groups of other hikers or rather "tourists" on the trail. They all seemed to be impressed that I was walking without a guide and without a porter. Don't know why you would need a guide when there were villagers for a lot of the way to ask directions to and don't know why you would need a porter when you could sleep at and get provisions (hard-boiled eggs, cookies, crackers, chips, sometimes produce) along the way at chai huts and guest houses that also served dal, rice, potatoes and chapatis. I slept outside but enjoyed chais at the huts and meals at trailside kitchens.

Some boys were playing cricket.

Nearing Khati...I like that in this image one can see three aspects of India: religion, modernity and agricultural tradition. The Aum mural represents Hinduism, the TV satellite symbolizes modernity and the women carrying baskets of cut grass for their cattle shows their ancient relationship with the land and their livestock.

Guys taking in the view on the trail.

At lower elevations, the rhodendrons were in bloom.

Pindari River with Nanda Devi in the background. Over 25,600 feet high, Nanda Devi is India's second highest mountain...That is freakin' high! The Himalayas are, after all, the highest mountain range in the world.

On my way to Kafni Glacier, I started looking for a place to crash as it started to get dark and the temperature started to drop.

Working on a farm of the plains of Uttar Pradesh, I really really wanted to escape the heat. I wanted to venture to the mountains to find some cool air. Well, I overdid it. Here's my sleeping bag at 12,000 feet where I spent a very chilly night. I used the dry grass for extra insulation and warmth. Incredibly, with mountains this high, even at 12,000 feet, the tallest peaks are still another 12,000 feet higher up.

Close to where I slept, the fields of snow began...

You can see that much of the trail is obscured by snow.

For joy I jumped.

That's Kafni Glacier back there. At some point, I decided to check out Kafni Glacier instead of the more famous Pindari. Then, after descending a few thousand feet to a trail intersection, I took a different trail to try and reach Pindari Glacier too.

See the footsteps in the snow? I wanted to make it to the "Zero Point" near Pindari Glacier to visit the Baba (Indian holy man) living there. So far this year, he was the only person to travel to the glacier (if he arrived). And I wanted to be the second. I realize it sounds cliche, but I wanted to climb the Himalayan mountains to visit the holy man at the end of the trail! Alas, with so many very steep traverses across ice at unfriendly angles of steepness, I finally decided to play it safe and turn back. Maybe with an ice axe or even crampons I would have felt more comfortable, but I was just wearing sneakers.

Here I strung up my hammock with a lovely view of a giant waterfall. All along the valley towards Pindari, there were huge waterfalls. Compared to what I'm used to, the sheer size of these massive mountains and their valleys was impressive.

Periodically, I came across herds of sheep and goats with their shepherds roaming the rolling valleys.

On the way back, I took a side trip up to this temple atop a mountain...

Almora

2011-06-05T01:17:00.000-07:00

Vegetable vendor at dusk on the streets of Almora

Interesting wooden architecture on this mostly pedestrian street. In the mountains, Almora was much cooler than the plains. I stopped here on the way to the Himalayas.

"Om" tattooed on the back of man's hand on bus. This is a very common tattoo in India. The bus rides in Uttarakhand were gorgeous, but scary, exciting, bumpy, sometimes bone-slamming and dizzying. Often they were so crowded that I couldn't open and spread my sweaty legs for hours at a time. But that's one of India's many sides: jam-packed, squeezed together, no room for privacy or private space. Indians don't get frustrated on public transportation when bumped, jostled or even smacked in the head by someone's bag; it's all inevitable. You just roll with it and let the sweat drip down your back and forehead. That's part of sharing your country with over a billion other humans. Others' elbows and thighs will definitely touch you, and that's the least of it. It's best if you just relax, breathe and maybe chant Om silently to yourself.

Shop owner selling paan

Hanuman Festival in Rajpur

2011-06-04T22:25:00.000-07:00

In Rajpur they held a celebration called Hanuman Jayanti in honor of Hanuman, the monkey god. In the early evening, I started hearing four songs playing in rotation. Later, I walked over to the village to check it out. One man was dressed as Hanuman atop a wagon pulled by a tractor. Below him sat five girls each dressed up as a different Hindu deity. In front of this wagon was another topped with large speakers. Behind the speakers, men danced to the same four songs and occasionally tossed red powder into the air (perhaps left over from the Holi Festival). The two tractors slowly drove around and around Rajpur. These four songs were blasted at full volume for no less than twelve straight hours...seriously! The music continued until sunrise. Even on the farm over 200 yards from the village, the loud music abrasively pounded through the mud walls into my eardrums. Following the tractors and dancing with the men in the evening was fun, but later that night, several hours into the same four songs, I was fed up with the obnoxiously loud music and the same obnoxious Punjabi dance music.

Dancing...

After this experience, the next day I left the painfully hot plains of Uttar Pradesh and headed for the cooler temperatures and higher elevations of the mountains of the Kumao region of Uttarakhand.

Kids of Rajpur

2011-06-01T13:58:00.000-07:00

Rahdebaba's ashram/farm is located on the outer part of this village called Rajpur. Walking through the small streets, children ran out of the houses yelling "Angrez!" (English, basically white person). And they aggressively vied for my attention, stared at me wide-eyed and demanded to have their pictures taken.

Local temple...

YatharthYogAshram Farm

2011-05-31T14:31:00.000-07:00

Rahdebaba seen here. "Radhe Radhe," some locals would say to us..."Jai Sri Radhe," we were to say in return. Rahdebaba runs the YatharthYogAshram in Northwest Uttar Pradesh, a true taste of Indian village life. The website states that the place is based on Spontaneous Interaction and healthy Self-Interest. That seems fairly accurate. The community itself is a small area enclosed within a brick wall composed of several huts, a house, several cows, fruit trees and some small vegetable beds. There were also a couple large fields of field crops: mint, rose, wheat and a grain or grass for the cows that I can't remember now.

Radhebaba's Mother. Rahde's three nieces also worked at the ashram, cooking and taking care of the cows.

roses

the meeting room

field of roses

Neighboring field of wheat ready to harvest...my first day at the farm I helped a bit with helping to harvest wheat by hand. Wheat was being harvested all around us. We had a huge pile that monkeys would try to eat every day. We kept the monkeys away by yelling and throwing stones, a daily activity.

This was the first WWOOF farm in India where I met other WWOOFers. Here Marine from France and a Belgian woman construct a drying rack from an old bed.

cow patties left to dry for fuel

Marine shaping cow dung

A Canadian (having trouble remembering names) moving cattle

cooking in the meeting room

fields seen from atop the house

Maya's Wedding

2011-05-30T21:27:00.000-07:00

Arun invited me in early April to his sister Maya's wedding in Delhi. Here the couple is seen leaving the ceremony and showered in rose petals. Maya's husband's family is Sikh and so the ceremony was a traditional Sikh wedding. The weekend's food and festivities were delicious.

Inside a Sikh temple or gurdwara, we all had to cover our heads. During the ceremony, the couple circled around the man and the holy book in the middle several times.

These bearded men sang or chanted and played tabla.

Arun and friend

Outside the wedding a transvestite/eunuch knocked on the car window for money.

Rishikesh

2011-05-30T05:10:00.000-07:00

Rishikesh is known as the world capital of yoga and is filled with temples, ashrams and yoga courses along the green Ganges River. Almost every westerner I met doing yoga in Kerala had plans to come to Rishikesh for yoga at some point. Rishikesh is about 25 kms upstream from Haridwar. The sacred waters of the Ganges are quite rejuvenating here. While here, I attended yoga classes and studied some tabla. I stayed in Lakshman Jula, the part of Rishikesh furthest upstream and the area most filled with white tourists.

Yoga and meditation teachers

temples...

Haridwar

2011-05-26T05:18:00.000-07:00

Haridwar is like Varanasi Light. It too is a major Hindu pilgrimage destination along the Ganges River with lots of pilgrims praying and holy men smoking hash along the sacred river, yet Haridwar is much smaller and there are no corpses being burned next to the water. Plus it's upstream where the river enters the plains from the mountains so it is freezing and relatively clean.

Receiving blessing

There were plenty of officials in Haridwar soliciting donations from pilgrims and tourists. They were especially active before the daily evening aarti as seen here...They way they spoke and then went around the crown reminded me of the guys collecting money in the mega-churches of the Bible Belt. Yet here in Haridwar some of these money collectors were quite aggressive. After encouraging one to come over for a blessing and prasad, the priests also demanded money. One guy grabbed ahold of my arm and demanded money in a crowded temple and so I gave him a rupee coin (like two cents) before I managed to squirm away.

These guys would provide a receipt so that you had proof of your donation's legitimacy and to have evidence of your devotion I guess?

The riverside was busy with activity. Hindus come from all over the country to get in the water and purify themselves.

Following the evening aarti, Indians gathered around to touch the sacred fire and to spread its energy into themselves.

So many humans begging...old ladies, holy men, boys and girls missing limbs...supposedly it is common for beggar children to be maimed at a young age so that they will earn more begging. And there are a wide variety of amputees with their hands stretched out in Haridwar...

Staircases to the ghats were lined with beggars.

I love the ORANGE that is everywhere in India...on these temples, the clothes of holy men, etc.

Fresh orange and pineapple juice

red tikka powder

Shaving on the street

Though it often seems that trash pick-up does not exist in India, here it is in action...

On the train

Annadana Soil & Seed Savers at Ishana, Gopathi Farm

2011-05-16T01:38:00.000-07:00

Upon a recommendation, I gave Sangita Sharma a call about helping out at Ishana Gopathi Annadana Farm in Bangalore. Sangita is a passionate eco-activist and is a trustee of Annadana, experts in soil regeneration and seed saving, which has farms in Auroville, Kodaikanal and Bangalore. Annadana provides educational workshops and materials on low cost integrated sustainable farming techniques. Sangita also writes a blog called My Right to Safe Food. Her farm on the outskirts of Bangalore had only in the last nine months been converted into a seed-saving farm and their progress was impressive. Before arriving here I spent several sweltering days at Sai Baba's ashram in Puttaparthi. Since taking photos was not permitted in the huge high-security ashram, I don't have any good visuals to post from my visit there.

A display of some of Annadana's recently harvested open-pollinated seeds

Geetha and Sangita posing with seeds...

Above is a graphic that I designed for Annadana's education program. (Not my photos)

Nagaraj weeding rice paddy

Gopala watering

Sagar, Nagaraj's son

At Annadana, they regularly plant cover crops. These beds were sown with sun hemp, chick pea, cow pea and sorghum.

A few days later seedlings had emerged...

chard

Venkatanna a handicapped farmer with his fresh harvest of beets and radish

To maintain the varietal purity of seeds at Annadana, some plants are covered with nets so their flowers will not cross-pollinate with those of other rows.

Here's Sangita throwing some truth bombs at a cooperative of farmers who came to visit from Andhra Pradesh.

Here's Sangita distributing seed to women farmers.

Rice...

Lettuce going to seed

A view of some of the fields at dusk

Holi in Hampi

2011-05-15T06:58:00.000-07:00

Holy
Holi! This is India's Festival of Colors, a celebration of the arrival
of Spring, although in Hampi it felt very much like summer already. I
rushed to make it to Hampi for the Holi celebration for most areas of
South India don't recognize this day of colored powder throwing
exuberance.

Holi
may be celebrated in Hampi just for the sake of all the western
tourists...Indian children continuously pleaded to get on our
shoulders.

Stalls along the main bazar road sold the colored powder...

Ran into Allison who I met at the Sivanadanda Ashram...

Lots of drumming and dancing...

The
ferry across the river to the westerners' guest house area was closed
and so we swam both ways across the current, simultaneously sort of
cleaning off the colors. I swam with one arm, keeping my camera in a
plastic bag above my head.

And cooling off...

Hampi

2011-05-15T06:37:00.000-07:00

Early morning washing and bathing by the river...

Here's a sign showing the local police department's attempt to encourage western women to cover their skin. Meanwhile, Julie shows off her shoulders. Her travel blog details a journey much more extensive than mine.

Hampi is famous for its dreamy boulder-spotted landscape and is a destination for climbers. However, it is better known for its 14th-century ruins. The town of Hampi is set amongst tons of ancient ruins of the monkey kingdom. Over 500 years ago, it was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire before it was captured by Muslim invaders.

Adam (from Denmark) and I climbed some boulders to take in the sunset.

As I was inquiring about renting some climbing shoes, I hear someone call out "Fire Belly" in a Spanish accent. It was Pedro, seen above in lotus position, a Spanish climber that I befriended last fall in Yosemite on my PCT hike. I had camped with him and his friends in the Yosemite Valley for a few days. Pedro spends most of the year scaling rocks in climbing meccas around the planet...Small World!

Hampi is where I first really started to feel India's HEAT. When Adam and I left to go bouldering at 9 in the morning, some people asked us if we were crazy to try and go climbing so late in the day, because by 9 am it was already too hot. (This was in March.) By midday, it was so hot that it was too exhausting to be in the sun and one had to lie down and take a nap until the evening.

Hampi is the abode of Hanuman, the monkey god...

Hanuman

Hampi's main temple

One evening Adam and I rented a scooter. It broke down several times and we tried to get some money back as we had to pay a mechanic to fix it in another town...but that's another story.

Ruins...

Karnatic Coast

2011-05-11T02:34:00.000-07:00

Krishna Temple complex in Udupi...You know how most South Indian restaurants in the States have Udupi in their name? Like Udupi Palace, Udupi Bhavan, etc? Well, the cuisine comes from this city, just north of the previous farm where I volunteered. I stopped here on the way up to Gokarna.

Circumambulating one of the temples

In the train

Paradise Beach near Gokarna. Almost every white person I met in South India told me to go to Gokarna - the new Goa.

Punarvasu Farm

2011-05-07T11:38:00.000-07:00

In mid-March, I came to this farm full of banana trees, areca nut trees, black pepper vines and tall coconut trees near Udupi on the coast of Karnataka. I spent a lot of time watering all of the the coconut trees, some of which are 40 years old and towering over 100 ft high. Here as in Kerala I saw bats with a wingspan of like 4 to 5 feet - some kind of prehistoric pterodactyl roaming South India. I also watched a large snake slither up a banana tree and huge exotic-looking spiders were everywhere.

Patriarch of the farm mixing water in with cow manure for biogas system. A pipe connected the biogas chamber to the kitchen and they used this as fuel for cooking. But I don't think it got quite hot enough as they burned wood daily in the kitchen too. Unfortunately, I never saw the biogas in action for I never entered the kitchen as this was a very traditional Brahmin family with strict rules and I as a foreigner/non-Hindu/non-Brahmin/occasional meat-eater could not go into the kitchen or the puja (worship) room. I ate on on a lower step on the floor than the others and could not serve myself food. My plates and dishes were kept separate at all times. The father spoke neither English nor Hindi so our verbal communication was limited to "full water." Although he was 70, he engaged in intense physical labor in the humid heat - spending a few days carrying 20 lb baskets of ash atop his head. Several times a day, he would don the white mundu and perform puja - in the worship room and around the tulsi/holy basil plants. He wore the Brahmin string around his torso. On the backs of his legs, long worms were visible through the skin.

Amma, mother of the farm, was the only one who could speak a bit of English. She fed me and put me to work. She has lived here on the farm since she was 18. At that age, she was brought here from Chennai by her father and married her husband (aged 30) without ever having met him before. She said it was difficult at first as she didn't speak the local language and that her mother-in-law was hard on her. Now, she takes care of her aging mother-in-law and they watch TV together (mostly in Telugu language I think). I never saw the grandmother/mother-in-law leave the house and her chamber pot was next to her bed in the same room where we ate...At first, I thought the grandmother was crazy as she occasionally muttered incessantly, but then I heard "Ram Ram" and realized she was chanting "Krishna Krishna Ram Ram." All of the family members performed puja several times a day.

Coconuts and Bananas...My first evening when I arrived, there was a huge cockfighting tournament across the road. I thought I would grab my camera after visiting the temple, but a police raid ended the event prematurely. The nearby Brahmin Krishna temple was pretty amazing. Next to the temple tank, (which looked temptingly like a swimming pool), I chatted with some young guys who were training to become Brahmin priests. And then, after taking off my shirt, I accompanied them through several entryways into the inner courtyard of the temple for evening puja that felt more intimate, authentic, interesting and special than the daily ones at the Sivananda Ashram. Amidst bell ringing, gong clanging, three priests, three boys and four women, I watched and listened politely. We then circumambulated the inner temple and I ate some sandalwood? paste, drank some rose water and got a tilaka on my forehead.

House in background, areca nut trees in foreground. Amma told me that her farm's typical annual income is about 10 to 15 thousand rupees a year (about $225 to $335).

Sweet potato

Areca nut - used to make paan

The ash from brush pile fires is used as fertilizer on the fruit trees. In the background is a newly built road for laying pipe for bringing in ocean water to a nearby power plant.

The well...more on the quality of the water below

Idli! Idli is a steamed rice cake shown here with chutney. South Indian food with its emphasis on coconuts and rice is delicious.

Trip to nearby beach with some neighbors...

An Ambassador

in bedroom

There was an enormous coal plant looming on the horizon. The plant had taken a strip on the backside of the ancestral land for their new salt water pipe that connected to the beach. Almost everywhere I've been in India, the electricity shuts off for a good part of the afternoon. There is a growing demand for more and more of the electric juice. And there is a huge scramble by large corporations to quickly build and expand power plants for India's huge and increasingly power-hungry population. In speaking to some of the power plant workers in the nearby town of Pudubidri, one mentioned that there had been some problems with local groundwater contamination. And, in fact, this is unfortunately a big problem at Punarvasu Farm. Amma told me that the well water used to be sweet, but now it's nasty. She said that the once sweet coconut water is now not as sweet as the contamination of their groundwater is affecting everything on the farm. I am seeing a recurring theme here in India of new power plant projects negatively affecting villagers/locals/farmers on their land. It's reminiscent ofthe issues I was seeing with the new hydroelectric plant across from the farm in Himachal Pradesh.

Varkala

2011-05-06T09:44:00.001-07:00

In Varkala I met up with Josh and PJ. From Tulsa, Josh plays percussion with my brother Brian. Josh and PJ were traveling around giving free music and dance workshops to Indian schoolchildren. Check out his organization World through Music here. Or see this article about his work in Varnasi here. Or just scroll down to see more photos of yoga on the beach...

Varkala's main beach. Atop the cliffs above, restaurants and shops overlook the sea.

homie hanging outside the temple

temple tank (for bathing before entering the temple)

PJ with giant coconut frond

Josh and PJ digging on digital photos in the evening

Easter-colored mosque

Can't advertise beer so...call it "Power Soda" instead!

perfect Kerala sunset

Ahhh goodbye Sea

Sivananda Yoga Ashram, Neyyar Dam

2011-04-30T11:57:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of March, I said goodbye to my parents and went to the Sivananda Yoga Ashram outside Trivandrum for a week. The asana classes were great and I met many nice people. However, the strict rules and the chanting for several hours a day was a bit too much.

the main hall

lunch time

We celebrated the festival of Shivaratri and chanted Om Nama Shivaya all night long.

Pouring ghee into the fire

Cochin

2011-04-21T04:10:00.001-07:00

These are traditional Chinese fishing nets throughout Cochin's harbor.

Kathakali is a traditional and colorful dance/drama/art form of Kerala and the required makeup involved is painstaking.

There's an old 13th-Century synagogue in old Cochin on, you guessed it, Jew Street.

Inside one of Cochin's cathedrals, (a setting for some scenes in Salman Rushdie's A Moor's Last Sigh), this hanging apparatus is actually a fan - useful for the freaking hot and humid weather here.

Mecca is that way...in case you needed to know. This was on the ceiling of my room at Le Meridien in Cochin - the first time I've seen such a sign.

Backwaters of Kerala

2011-04-20T07:02:00.000-07:00

After a couple weeks with my parents and their travel group in the North, we flew from Delhi to Cochin to the South Indian state of Kerala. Kerala seemed like a different country after the North: no honking horns on the roads, hardly any wandering cows and much less garbage on the streets. We immediately went further south to spend three nights on a small armada of houseboats. These boats were previously rice barges and have been converted for tourists to explore the Keralan backwaters - a complex of rivers connecting villages and rice fields. Compared to the fast-paced sight-seeing and the chaotic cities of the North, the backwaters were very relaxing. At Ramesh's farm outside Dharamsala, I had read Arundhati Roy's novel The God of Small Things and a book of short stories and essays edited by Anita Nair. These books gave me some insight into the state of Kerala, or God's Own Country, as it is called. In Kerala my small bit of Hindi proved useless as their language is Malayalam, but English was fairly widespread. Many of India's states, especially in the south, have their own languages and even their own film industries. Indian rupees have 14 official Indian languages on the notes. And these aren't like some small local languages. Since India is so huge, its states have large populations, so there are something like 65 million Malayalam-speaking Keralans - a larger population than many other countries. Kerala also has the highest literacy rate in India. A woman from Cochin told us that many Keralans become doctors and engineers and so they have to import laborers from other states of India because there aren't enough in Kerala .

We would dock our houseboats and go through strolls through river-side villages while our guide Cleetus explained stuff along the way. This is coir, or coconut fiber. It is produced in villages and used to make ropes, rugs, handicrafts and so on. Coconuts are everywhere in South India.

Kerala has had a democratically-elected Communist government since 1957. There are government shops selling inexpensive groceries to all and other shops that sell four items (sugar, rice, gram, propane?) at very cheap prices to those who are below poverty line. The roads and homes in Kerala seemed nicer and the prices also higher than North India. Sometime in the last 50? years, the government enacted land reforms in which rich land owners had to give some of their land to the poor (lower-caste) workers who had farmed for them for generations.

Keralan men traditionally wear man-skirts, called lunghis or mundus. All day, they re-tie them and hike them up or take them down. I think they're cool in the heat.

Interesting kid's t-shirt

Cleetus would point these rocks out as local washing machines...below some in action...

The only Malayalam I was able to recognize is here, the word for toddi or fermented coconut sap?, which gets stronger (more alcoholic) throughout the afternoon. Reminded me of coconut kefir.

Greg relaxing while some of the crew took care of us and the boat.

My parents with Cleetus

Rice grains

Rice field

Rice being cooked

Rice served on houseboat...

A catholic church. Kerala has a long history in the spice trade and has been receiving traders from the Middle East and Europe for um ever. Christians, Jews, Hindus and Muslims all co-exist here. Supposedly, Doubting Thomas, one of Jesus' disciples came to Kerala in AD 25 and converted lots of locals. They are called Orthodox Syrian Christians. Some of the more ancient Christian texts were found in Kerala, and they even had their Sabbath on Saturdays like the Jews (Jesus was Jewish, remember?) But when the Portugese Catholics came, they believed the brand of Keralan Christianity was heretical and so they tried to destroy its books and churches. Christianity was particularly attractive to Indians of lower-castes for converting was a way out of the caste system.

Village temple

Arabian Sea

Varanasi: Burning and Learning

2011-04-20T03:09:00.000-07:00

Varanasi is called the city of burning and learning. Burning because corpses are cremated along the Ganges River. It is believed that if one is burned alongside the Ganges one can attain moksha or liberation from the cycle of rebirth. Learning because Varanasi has always been a city of academic and spiritual education. Some say Varanasi is the world's oldest city. And it's a pretty intense place: corpses, hawkers, saddhus, beggars, beggar-saddhus, beggars missing various limbs, baby beggars, children beggars, tourists, pilgrims, locals, cows, urine, feces, lots of garbage and myriad stenches, all crammed next to the holy Ganges River. The smells in India are often so very overwhelming. The powerful stench of urine, feces and garbage can sometimes be amazing...amazing that smells can be so awful and so strong. Sometimes my nostrils feel like I'm being assaulted, but I'm definitely becoming more habituated. Sometimes on the roadways or train, there is an industrial type smell in the air, like burning plastic or burning rubber that hurts your head to breathe. You just know that it's toxic, but it's the norm for so many Indians. In the photo above, this saddhu posed for me in exchange for ten rupees. He insisted that I give him more money. I used to sort of romanticize saddhus as mystical spiritual men, but most (not all) that I see remind me more of washed up junkies and beggars of America - laying on the sidewalk beseeching passersby for money and smoking hash. (I'm waaay behind in keeping my blog updated; these photos are from February - still with my parents and their tour group.)

Sunrise on the Ganges

This guy was selling DVDs from this boat and running a TV from a generator.

The Ghats are steps leading down to the water's edge.

Dhobis (laundry-persons) doing laundry.

Three on a bike, including one with no pants

Burning corpses

Receiving candles to drop into the river to make a wish...(or something like that).

Mom and Dad wearing the orange scarves. Orange is the color of those who choose to renounce worldly things.

The evening aarti (devotional ceremony) seen from the river

Khajuraho

2011-04-02T09:48:00.000-07:00

I was afraid that it might be awkward to look at erotic temple sculptures with my parents, but it wasn't an issue. (Watching 40-Year-Old Virgin with my mother and aunt was much more uncomfortable.) And these temples are much more than dozens of carved (sometimes gravity-defying) sexual positions from hundreds of years ago. There are so many well-preserved detailed carvings besides the erotic ones. Evidently the temple complex was hidden in an overgrown jungle when the Muslim Moghuls were in power, and so the thick vegetation protected these ancient Hindu treasures from being defaced by the Muslim invaders. But these carvings are certainly a stark contrast to uber-sexually conservative India today, where couples don't hold hands and films don't even show kissing. It's amazing that India was once much more sexually open, but the Muslim influence changed the society in the last few hundred years.

Check out the woman in the background who is hiding her eyes, yet still watching...

Indians waiting on the side of the road to see a guru to get healed.

Blind musicians

The Taj Mahal

2011-03-30T00:09:00.000-07:00

Truly a Wonder...

Agra

2011-03-29T23:54:00.000-07:00

The "Baby Taj," a smaller and lesser known mausoleum in Agra...

With my parents

My mom with tombs

Check out the intricate inlaid marble work on the exterior...

Onsite, young men polished and rennovated the tiny pieces of marble using the same techniques that were used to originally decorate the mausoleums hundreds of years ago.

Streets of Agra...

A wedding procession

Last Sights in Rajasthan

2011-03-29T03:46:00.000-07:00

Camel yaaaaawning near Abhaneri

Tour group stopped at a um "camp" for the night. The tent I stayed in...(with toilet, sink, shower, bed, lights and hot water bottle)...wouldn't fit in my backpack so I left it behind. We played dress-up and then hopped on camels for a ride through mustard fields.

Our guide Anurag looks on during cooking demonstration...Tell me this: why are so many cooks at Indian guest houses from Nepal??

Traditional Rajasthani dancing...

Chand Boari step well in Abhaneri. This well is amazing and was historically used as a water source for the arid desert area. Rajasthani kings demonstrated their power and wealth by the size and intricacy of their step wells. This is one of India's biggest and deepest - (like 13 stories high). Just found more photos of it and more info at this link here if you want.

Staring at the side of this well made me think of M.C. Escher drawings.

More of the mobile party machines as seen from the bus

Cars share the national highway with camels.