Peekaboo.

I often hear people complain that they can't see the view through the clouds - the mountains, the other side of the valley, the sunset, or the moon. But moonlight through the haze has something going for it. Something I don't think we give it nearly enough credit for. Rising over a city like a distant spotlight, blurred and unobtrusive, it waits for attention gently instead of commanding; it asks for nothing but offers what it has - light despite the obscurity. It lets me take it as it is.

Traveling demands attention - constant vigilance, stimulus fighting each other to be the most noticeable. Learning to put that aside, it's amazing what comes into view.

Already my memories are becoming hazy - what did I do in Hampi? Where was it that had that really incredible temple with Ganesh that was being covered in quarts of milk? Who was it that told us that story of... When did I...

And through all of it, if I stop being anxious about forgetting, I remember a feeling, or a sound, or the look of a child from the seat in front of me on the bus going to wherever. Maybe these memories are a little out of context, detached from their origin. But does that really matter?

If my stories, when I get back, are missing pieces or divorced from space and time, forgive me. But know that they are perhaps even more important for that very reason.

Borderlands.

Pulling into the border town of Sunauli, rickshaw-wallahs yell through the windows and block the exit of the bus. Some only offer a ride to immigration, others are willing to change our money, do our paperwork for us. Only a few hundred meters away, I need one last chai in India before I go. Tucking into a dhaba, the scene seems fitting. Dirty tables, greasy food, the owner's young daughter serving us and getting twice the amount of pakora we asked for, the street in front if us lined with trucks and teeming with all kinds of traffic. Leaving feels much easier than just a few days before.

If we weren't paying attention, we would have walked right into Nepal. Because India and Nepal have an open border with each other, the immigration "office" is just a wooden shack easily obscured behind the vehicles and people walking through. Our paperwork is ridiculously convoluted, the border "guard" looking at our Indian visa saying that they expire today - as if we didn't know already. Sending us on our way, Nepal's immigration office seems pleasantly professional, organized, and straightforward. "Welcome to Nepal."

A four kilometer bus ride takes almost an hour, the bus packed by the bus driver literally picking people up and squeezing them into spaces I didn't think were possible. The roof of the bus is full. We should have walked.

The ATMs don't want to work. I've been in transit for well over 24 hours now. It's hot and dusty. The street food looks slightly different. Signs are almost all in Nepali. We had planned on getting on another bus to Lumbini. I don't want to.

So we don't. And, after finding a room and eating, I embrace the reality that I don't have to.

Maybe it was the exhaustion from a long day of travel. Maybe it was some sort of reaction to crossing into a new country. Maybe it's the acknowledgement of our time on the other side of the globe almost being at an end. But I feel like I'm in a liminal space, between worlds. Like I've taken in my fill and need some time to process while I'm still here.

One last eight hour bus ride, we've arrived in the Kathmandu Valley. The rain is refreshing, and walking laps around the Boudha stupa with hundreds in the evening, that feeling of liminality - of being still yet moving forward, of being here in a foreign country but preparing to go there where things are supposedly familiar, where things are the same as in India, but different - isn't so hard and scary as those first few hours.

It's a lot like that feeling of being on the verge of something, but without knowing where the edge is and what's coming next.

It's like being in no-man's land.

It's good.

Little things.

So much has happened, and there is so little I've mentioned.

Like walking to the source of one of the world's most important and holy water sources, the Mother Ganga, getting burned by the sun and chilled by the glacier at the same time.

Like eating momos and tingmo until I thought I would burst.

Like almost loosing our fruit to stealing monkeys on a bridge in Rishikesh minutes after having a conversation about whether or not it was in fact the bridge famous for fruit-stealing monkeys.

Like wandering through the previously secret garden of salvage scrap and rock art, a labyrinth of fantastic proportions in the most elaborately planned city in India.

Like knowing we would be here during mango season, enjoying kilos of them, and then being pleasantly surprised that it was also lichee season, and eating even more.

Like attending a candle-light vigil down the streets of Dharamshala twelve hours after the self-immolation of a Tibetan nomad in Eastern Tibet.

Like having round after round of cards and drinking chai with bus and taxi drivers while stranded in the Pin Valley - and winning my fair share of the hands.

Like drinking a beer in a restaurant next to a table with a Hindu, a Muslim, and a Sikh - all businessmen - two enjoying beer and one orange juice, all laughing and sharing a meal.

Like playing catch with kids and learning all the games that can be played with a ball without exchanging a single word, but plenty of smiles and laughs.

Like learning how two people with one shovel (and a piece of rope) is indeed more effective.

Like watching monks slip away from monasteries to smoke cigarettes, drink Coke, and eat chicken wings.

Like having a man who just pulled me out of ten foot deep mud kindly brush the hair out of my face for me.

Like sharing a simple meal with a sadhu in his cave in the mountains.

Like discovering how effective a piece of slate and a good rock is better than any mortar and pestle.

Like becoming suddenly aware we were in the Himalayas walking along a still-closed road because of snow and ice in sandals.

Like coming back to Delhi and, finding it much less overwhelming, realizing how long we've been in India.

The road is totally gone.

From Dhankar, you can see where the Pin and Spiti rivers meet, where the Pin Valley begins. If you follow the road all the way down, you reach Mudh at the end of the road, and from there, just start walking towards the Pin-Parvati Pass. At least that's what the plan was, but sitting with chai and looking on with awe was good enough most of time. With Kungri on the way back towards Spiti and word that the murals really are worth it, we stayed in the monastery guest house that wasn't technically open, but the monks let us stay anyway. The morning of the 5th, the bus was supposed to come at 7:45 or so. Standing waiting for the bus, watching boys brush their teeth at the water pump, a bull go a little mad and run in the opposite direction of the herd, the kids run towards the school when someone yelled from the rooftop. At 8am we got word that the bus was not coming, so we hitched a tractor ride down to Gulling, 2km away. Spiti is incredibly isolated, so that was the only bus of the day. We settled down at the dhaba for chai and waited for any vehicle going to Kaza, about 35km away, not even. We considered walking, but thought, nah, something will come. By 2pm we were starting to get impatient. Not a single vehicle going to Kaza. Finally, around 3pm, three boys crammed us in with them in their hatchback and we started making our way to Kaza. About 6 1/2km down the road, we slow down, saying "What is that?" The road was blocked by a huge chunk of earth. Okay. We think, no worries, we'll walk around it and try and catch another ride. Until we walked up to it and looked behind it - glacier slide.

The road is totally gone.

About 40-50m wide of liquid earth, boulders and ice flowing across what used to be a bridge. We turn around and head to Gulling, yelling at cars and motorcycles headed in that direction that they're going to have to turn around. We ask locals how long they think it will be - one day, five days, a month...

After we get a room at the only guest house in town, we settle in the dhaba and watch as the rooms fill up. Most people have nothing with them, having planned on only taking a day trip from Kaza. Luckily, aarak (barley wine) was in good supply in town, and us and four Indian tourists settle in for a night of talking. Like I expected and what no one wanted to admit was that there were going to be many nights like this.

It got worse every day. The slide didn't stop, and the sludge caused the Pin River to flood over the road. An entire village nearby had to be evacuated. It got wider, and deeper. Slides like this are incredibly dangerous. Every day we waited to see if it was crossable and, when a few days after the slide a tractor full of people covered in mud driving through town yelled at us, laughing, "Don't go! Don't go!", we agreed.

Some other people who were stuck managed to cross relatively easily on the 8th early in the morning, but by the time we got there, it was flowing again and too deep to cross. Again, being so isolated, there was very little equipment available to use (and no petrol on that side, so the bulldozer ran out of diesel by the 7th), and it just kept coming so there's nothing they could really do. On the 8th we got word that the road wouldn't be crossable with vehicles for weeks, probably more than a month, so they were going to build a cable car. On the 9th, we got there first thing in the morning to cross on foot while the sludge was more solid and before the sun warmed up for more slides. Well, it had gotten worse over night, and a section of the road before was completely underwater, so that we had to climb way above it. We waited for hours watching (and helping) the locals try to build a cable car. By noon, it looked hopeless. The crossbar for the cable was being held by a man holding a rope crouched on the side of the mountain. The cable wouldn't get sturdy. The water and sludge was starting to flow heavier. The road flooding more. Some locals started crossing on foot, using what of the cable they could to hold onto and walk on. From our side, there was about 20m of deep sludge, then 20m of rock and muddy water that was sturdy, then about another 20m of really deep, really thick sludge. A British tourist standing next to me, watching the locals, asked "Would you do that?"

Apparently I would.

When the friends we had made in Gulling started crossing, we realized that if we didn't go now, we may not be going for a very, very long time. So, before we had time to overthink it, we went.

The first 20m, Jon had his sandals ripped off by the thickness of the mud, and we were waist deep in mud. The cable helped immensely crossing that part. The rocky stuff gave us a breather. Then, the last part. The mud was so thick we couldn't lift our legs and started sinking. Locals were yelling at us to try to walk on the cable that was now under the mud, but it had gone too deep (about 6 people crossed before us). Jon yelled at me to start crawling, and that helped. It wasn't just thick mud - being a glacier slide, it was full of jagged rocks. Near the end, I was so exhausted I could hardly move. A local on the other side threw in a piece of wood that stuck on top enough for me to get my leg on it, and they pulled us out the rest of the way.

My pants got pulled off in the mud, Jon's got completely destroyed with rips from the rocks, his sandals broke, we were completely covered in mud from head to toe, we got scrapes all over our hands, feet, and knees, but we are safe, alive, and not still in Pin Valley.

Two people who crossed after us got lifted out of the sludge by a bulldozer. They looked so clean, I had to laugh. Having caught my breath, being able to think a little more clearly, the situation was suddenly painfully funny. Here, in Spiti, I had been thinking intensely on how little I was in comparison to my landscape. How easily it can overtake me. How wonderful it is to be so small.

The local police and army officials gave us a ride in the back of the truck to the junction toward Kaza. We hobbled out and down to where the river still ran clean. Another police truck drove us the rest of the way to Kaza where the seven of us, covered in mud, got some strange looks indeed.

That night, we got word that someone died, and that around 5pm, the glacier dropped a huge piece and made it completely uncrossable, destroying any hope of a useful ropeway. Today, the rest of the tourists who didn't cross with us on Saturday are supposedly being airlifted out.

I think crossing was a better choice.
 

It's a good place to remember that.

Sunday, May 27th:

We've spent a lot of time watching things change out of bus and train windows - from the plains to the hills to the mountains. Landscape changes, and with it, the way lives are lived. Time changes, too, especially where the warmth and light of the sun is imperative. Where what you do is directly for material sustenance rather than symbolic paper and metal to purchase things for survival. Where the earth is still understood as more powerful than the concrete buildings and tar roads and wells we impress on it - where these things are hardly even possible. Where no cars go. Where, 4000m above sea level your face turns pink in minutes and there are no trees to shade you from the sun. Where the sheep, goats, and yaks are louder than human beings. Where people always stop to say hello as they pass by. Time is different in the Trans-Himalayas.

Don't get me wrong - cities, packed with colour and spicy smells from dhabas and music and millions of beautiful faces are incredible, too. But here, now, in the isolated Spiti Valley where time is not still but dynamic, I feel that it is somehow impossible not to notice how powerful landscapes are and their effects on how we understand ourselves in our worlds. How, if constantly surrounded by structures we have made, by land carefully controlled and formed by our hands, we are bound to forget where and when we are. That we cannot possibly control everything. That we are remarkably and wonderfully only human.

It's a good place to remember that.

Wednesday, May 30th:

These roads shouldn't even exist. Hugging the sides of mountains with landslides possible anywhere, leading to trails where no cars go that point the ways to villages that seem even more impossibly remote. The horizon changes constantly, rapidly, valleys open before you, beckoning.

Taking the only way to Chicham, hanging in a metal basket 105m high above a gorge, smack in the middle with 55m more to pull ourselves across, I'm both intimately aware of my fear or heights and amazed at what a gorge looks like from here.

Remember when I said that even water tastes better boiled over a wood stove? Try yak dung.

It is so much.

Written in retrospect of May 1st:

I imagine she is saying something like, "What?! Do you have eyes like buttonholes?!" On a crowded road in Haridwar, I have just accidentally elbowed an elderly woman in the face. I apologize profusely, her family standing around, her yelling and hitting me in the arm, a crowd forming, all eyes on me. A sadhu is gesturing at his eyes and talking to me, I imagine he is saying something like, "What?! Do you have eyes like buttonholes?!"

Getting shoved, elbowed, body-checked, bumped, bruised, and bashed is practically an everyday experience for me in India - population density has its disadvantages. In fact, my knee is still sore and bruised from getting whacked a good one with a hard-top suitcase on the train to Haridwar. If I get an apology at all, I am impressed.

And now, surrounded by staring Indians, my apology not only useless, this woman seems offended by it. There is so much I am saying sorry for here, for so many reasons, for more than I'm even aware of, and it is no good.

Ducking into a restaurant to escape the scene, as soon as I sit down, I realize I am about to lose it. I'm not hungry anymore. I don't want to be here anymore. We barely make it back to the guesthouse before I'm sobbing into a pillow, asking myself why I'm crying. It's not that big of a deal. Since we arrived in Haridwar, standing Har-ki-Pairi Ghat, I have been overwhelmed. But, still.

After half an hour, my pillow soaked, I realize I haven't had a breakdown since my first week in India in Delhi when we missed a train. Of course it wasn't just about elbowing a very short, cranky, old woman in the face (lighter, might I add, than she hit me back). There are no words for all those tears and the array of emotions they fell with.

After hiding for a few more hours, we emerge from the room for sunset aatri at the ghat, hundreds of floating candles released by thousands of pilgrims at the place where the Ganga emerges from the Himalayas. We stand, admiring, listening to the music of man who can play a mustard oil jug better than I've heard some professional tabla players. With passion.

It is so much.

One day can hold so much, can cause so much to come to the surface. I'm not even sure what all just happened. But it is good.
 

It isn't just about the food.

With five days in Kolkata and no real desire to go "sight-seeing", we "planned" long walks in search of the city's est dhabas (street-side eateries) and restaurants. I would go back - for no other reason - just for the food. If only I could have been hungry all the time. Kati rolls, fried naan with vegetables, paneer and egg, probably best at Nizam's (founded in 1932); puri, deep fried chapatis with either a chola (chickpeas) or subjee (vegetables) from carts along the road; momos at 'Momo Corner' made by Tibetean refugees; bhel puri, a crazy snack of puffed rice, chili, lemon, coconut, nuts, fresh onion, and countless other things, mixed and shaken and poured into a a rolled piece of newspaper to snack on while you walk; rosgulla, rose-water cheese balls apparently invented at KS Das Sweets; fresh coconut and fruits I'll never remember the names of; simple but impossibly incredible Bengali food in hole-in -the-wall restaurants down back alleys; and, of course, endless chai served in tiny terracotta cups smashed on the street when finished.

Our walks took us through Sunday markets in colonies around the university, packed with everything and anything you could possibly need or want. They went through streets lined with welders, mechanics, and bicycle repair shops. They, of course, took us to where many people live on the sidewalks, where women smiled proudly as they held up their naked babies being washed near a pipe gushing with water. Where kids often asked for money or chocolate or pens, but would sometimes start dancing with me in the streets in the end.They took us on wrong turns that lead to mosques down back lanes, where men ran just after the call to prayer, yelling at Jon to hurry up, he's late (it's the beard).

So, really, it isn't just about the food.

A winding path.

Walking on village footpaths from the town of Yuksom on our way to Tashiding, we think we must have taken a wrong turn. The moss covered stone path ends abruptly before a gate made of branches - in front if it, there is no path. Backtracking, a goat trail leads through cardamon fields, winding through the plants and, in places, washed away by the creek. Suddenly, we realize we are treading through someone's garden. Looking around, a man near his livestock helps us with directions. We've found our way to Khibukley village, a collection of perhaps a dozen households scattered on the side of a hill overlooking a vast valley. The homestay is just down, so walking along footpaths through the terraced farms, we are welcomed into the home of a Gurka Sikkimese family given warning of our arrival by the man up the hill yelling down. All are shy - the sister/daughter proficient in English is away on business - and frantic phone calls are made not because we are unwelcome, but because her brother is nervous, unsure of his own English.

Chai is made on the mud wood stove, and I quickly realize we are somewhere very special. A cousin arrives from the valley to chat, and we sit outside talking about the difference between Sikkim and the rest of India. Repeatedly, Sikkim has been described to us as it's own country. "Anyone here will do anything I help you", he says. "They are all money hungry," meaning most of the rest of India. He tells us the names of the plants in the garden, being picked in preparation for dinner.

While dinner is being made, talking with the family, reflecting on my days walking along the village trails of Sikkim, I find myself overwhelmed with the extravagance of simplicity.

It is so much.

Sitting on the floor, we are served dinner first. Rice, fiddleheads and onion shoots, potatoes, chili, dal, hand-churned butter and fresh curd from the cow next to the house. Everyone watches as we eat - and I am almost crying. I have never tasted food this good. All eat in turn - guests, patriarch, sons, daughter. We drink warm water as we look at the moon and the flickers of light across the valley.

There are no words.

As we head up to our room, father is straightening our sheets. He sits at the foot of Jon's bed and talks a little, watches as we get ready for bed. We have everything we need and he leaves us for the night.

Today, I have not been nearly hit by a car, discovered that water boiled on a wood stove tastes better, had four different kinds of dairy from the same cow, been offered help at every turn, heard silence on the tops of hills...

We took a right turn.

Like a warm blanket.

Arriving in Darjeeling, the fog is so thick that holding your hand out a moving jeep or train window feels the sensation of raindrops. Despite the 27 degree drop in temperature from Bodh Gaya, I feel like I'm wrapped in a warm blanket.

The day we left Varanasi, the sky was grey and the air cool. It smelled damp - unexpectedly, since it's months until the monsoon season. Catching a morning train to the neighboring town of Sarnath, where Buddah gave his first sermon, I realize how eager I am for quieter places. Varanasi (as described by others) really is the best and worst of India mixed into one. Undoubtedly, it is the most intense place I have ever been. Nowhere does life and death visibly thrive next to each other in this way. Nowhere else can touts be so notoriously pushy. (Well, that's not true - they've been just as pushy elsewhere. But, after sitting quietly in one of Hinduism's holiest places, they seem to be all the more obnoxious.) From Varanasi's tourist and Hindu pilgrim crowd to Sarnath's streets and monasteries, there is a definite change of pace. With Buddhist pilgrims from all over Asia, monks take the place of sadhus, the sound of evening pujas replaced with the chanting of Buddha's first sermon - hundreds of pilgrims joining. The grey skies waited just long enough for most people to be out of the streets before they let out enough rain to flood them within minutes. Standing on the covered balcony of the restaurant I am in, I didn't realize how much I'd missed the rain.

Waiting is.

It feels incredibly good to be sitting still inside a guest house today, the sounds of the city pouring in through the open windows but not encroaching completely in this space. Tucked in the alleys of Varanasi's Old City, I've been listening to the everyday haggling of the market, preparations for Holi, motorbikes precariously slipping between humans and cows, cell phones with Bollywood hits at ridiculous volumes, and mothers screaming after their kids, glad to be here but also glad to be set apart for a moment.

Traveling can be exhausting, and it's good to remember that there is no hurry. As Michael, the Man from Mars in Heinlien's Stranger in a Strange Land would say, "waiting grokks fullness". I've been sitting here, shifting between reading, writing, and thinking, considering with all seriousness the word "grok".

"Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed - to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science - and it means as little to us (because of our Earthling assumptions) as colour means to a blind man."

Being in India has been a constant assault on all my senses and sensibilities, and it's not a matter of understanding, coming to terms with, learning, or making sense of everything. So instead, I'm trying to figure out if I grok it. It feels like I don't - like I said a few days ago, I am constantly finding myself dizzy. But then I have moments where I'm so immersed in my surroundings that I must grok it - it's just that the English language (or maybe language in general) is insufficient. Like Jon and I keep finding ourselves saying to each other, there are no words. And since we think it language, it comes as no surprise to me that I find myself thinking that I am at a complete loss.

We rely to much on language, I think. Not just in communicating with one another, but in communicating with ourselves. If we give ourselves a chance, I'll bet we will realize that we grok each other a lot more than we think we do. After all, we're all human.

It feels good to know that, somehow.

Aliveness.

We've been moving at an extraordinary rate. After exploring Hampi, we traveled by train to Kanyakumari, the southern tip of India where three seas meet. Four days in Tamil Nadu hardly gives southern India any justice, and I can't even pretend to think that I saw anything at all.

The temples we visited were cities in their own rights - Sri Ranganathaswamy in Trichy, Sri Meenakshi in Madurai - were alive. Perhaps that's what makes India's architectural wonders and temples so beautiful - not necessarily their esthetics (although they were incredibly beautiful), but their liveliness. As keeps happening to us (inevitably because so much is happening everywhere) we were in the right place at the right time. At Sri Ranganathaswamy, a festival brought thousands of pilgrims to the temple at sunset to join in a procession around the city, each day a different deity being carried (and not an easy feat, requiring 12-16 men laboring hard) with music, prayers, and the temple elephant. As we joined the crowds, all trying to catch a glimpse of Hanuman outside of the temple, I was reminded again of how integrated religion is in everyday life. Temple festivals don't just recognize important days on a calendar. Everyone I ask has a different answer as to what all the noise and colour and parading is good for - from community and spirituality to politics and brainwashing - and without a doubt, every answer is true in some regard. But they all point fingers at the same thing - this (to me) insane aliveness.

One day I'll think of a better word.

Dizzy.

Sitting still with the expectation of movement makes me dizzy. I seem to be getting dizzy a lot these days. Sometimes, it happens when I look out the train window before we've started moving, the anticipaion of the repetitious sound and momentum sparked from sights and smells. Other times, someone will stop walking or, worse, driving directly in front of me, my body having thought it would keep going without obstructions, me unsure if I should move around to the right, risking the person or autorickshaw or bike's movement again, or to the left in front of another person or vehicle that has no intention of stopping. That awkward dance where both you and he other mirror each other wishing you were doing the opposite And then occasionally, it is the expectations themselves that just have physics wrong. Leaving me, for a moment, stupefied. It's easy to say I have/had no expectations about India, but I know that, in reality, that's simply not true.

Things that we remember: Part one.

One the dirty road across from the train station, last night's rain has left Amritsar a giant mud puddle. Literally a hole in the wall with holes in the walls, the greasy restaurant serves up one dish cooked on the side of the road. There is too much butter on my naan, a brick for each piece. Shivering in my damp clothes that couldn't dry overnight after getting caught in the flooded dark street the night before, I watch Jon watch a guy try to plug a lightbulb, hanging from the verandah, with the bare wires directly into the poorly constructed power outlet standing on the chair the whole time. So, after moistening these bare wires, he sort of, almost confidently, sticks then in, one wire into each hole. After a spark, power flicker and a yelp, a lot of laughter follows. And the lightbulb does not light up. Dazed but not defeated, he rests for a minute and then fiddles with the wires again, maybe getting rid of burnt rubber, getting ready to try again. A small crowd of men has gathered and cheers him on. He tries again with the same results, except now the laughter is louder to go along with the growing crowd. This time he has to sit down. We thought he had given up, but e goes back to the wobbly chair. He is scared but determined. This time he's got it figured out. But again it doesn't work. With three minor electric shocks, the lightbulb remains unlit.

Mumbai.

Excerpts written February 12th through 21st.

It is probably because I've become more comfortable in India, but in any case, Mumbai is much less overwhelming than I was expecting. Meaning, instead of feeling crippled by the population density, traffic, slums, confusing trains and buses, terrible drivers (etc., etc.), I am enjoying each moment walking through a city that, with its history and popularity in novels and movies, seems lie it isn't even supposed to be a real place. For example, Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance (if you have not read it, you must) is apt, real. Even the scene where Dina goes to the courthouse, sits in the courtyard, sees men sitting on the ground along the street outside at typewriters atop crates unfolds before my eyes.

Jon was the first to remark that it's one of those places that exists only in stories, that being there physically feels somewhat magical. The city itself, the suburbs and slums, seem to go on forever. And, really, one can ride the suburban trains for more than 100 miles before it seems you've left.

It helps that I'm no longer sleep deprived after overnight buses that arrive in strange areas of strange cities at strange hours before catching a 17 hour train 10 hours later. I will admit that at 4:40am yesterday, Mumbai didn't seem so great.

I suddenly realize I haven't seen a cow in almost two days - where have my friends gone?

The city is an atrocious mix of poverty and prosperity, of modern conveniences and luxuries and petrified ideals. Standing from the sixth floor balcony of our couchsurf hosts' balcony of a middle-class high-rise complex, the moon rises over the slums below. The noise everywhere is deafening, between traffic and temples, the smog crushing. The smell of fish along the docks mixes uncomfortably with Gothic architecture, the sounds of men hawking their wares between bizarre statues of lions with human heads. Five star hotels line one street, with paan shops and tailors right behind them in cubby holes of buildings that look like they've either been recently destroyed due to an earthquake or are in the middle of being constructed. Kittens sit eagerly awaiting spilled milk at the chai stand in front of the bustling street. If you don't walk fast enough someone pushes you from behind, but at the same time, there is art everywhere begging to be looked at.

The Kada Ghoda Art Festival is near it's end. Two weeks of art - street art, dance, music, sculpture, film, literature - is all over the district and it is with great difficulty that we walk through the crowds. Galleries full of works by hopeful art students, the streets packed with many who wished they could have their work inside, folk dancing in the streets, a man who can play two flutes at the same time with his nose, and the type-written zines of "Bombay Underground" make wandering the streets infinitely more interesting than the National Gallery of Modern Art.

One piece of art was titled "Backbone of the City" - a sketch of a skeletal spine with handles dangling every few inches. The suburban trains are an experience - what kind of one is up to you. But I assure you, being in Asia's busiest train station during rush hour, getting on and off the train, involves being okay with jumping off moving trains, fitting 12 people into a space comfortable for 5, and getting body checked if you happen to be in the way of someone.

I am constantly in the way.

Perfect.

Written February 15th at Miraj Junction Railway Station.

What better time to reflect on train stations and night travel than at six am in Miraj? Arriving at four-thirty this morning walking on the footbridge over the tracks, I think to myself "perfect". And I don't think I'm being sarcastic.

We got on the bus in Mt. Abu at eight pm - the night bus to Ahmdevad. In our narrow seats, we ask enough questions and receive enough help from the passengers behind us - the bus will let us off near the train station. With a noon train to Mumbai, there will be enough time for chai, breakfast, and a walk to a few mosques.

How right we were - at two am we arrive. Needless to say, we are early. Luckily, a chai stall is open. With so much time, it seems worth finding a guest house. But, we don't really know where we are, so we do what we never ever do - trust a rickshaw driver to take us to a cheap guesthouse. Of course, where he takes us is full, no rooms. Going to the train station (blocks form where we originally were) and lacking the energy to argue with the overpriced and useless ride, we wander around the busy platforms. People are sleeping everywhere, or sitting huddled under shawls sipping chai. After a while, we sit down too. For hours we watch the world watch us, watch everyone pass the time. Finally, the sky brightens and we take to the streets to idle away what time is left.

The mosques were indeed beautiful.

By eleven-thirty we make it back to the station, exhausted. At least we have a reservation, we can lay down and sleep on the train all day.

Turns out we're on the local train (never trust the word "express"). One hundred stops between Ahmdevad and Mumbai means a very busy train. I'm in an upper side berth, which means I can lay down. But Jon, below, gets no rest. A lot of guys his age really want to talk to him; people sit on his feet, cram for an inch on the side, until he gets up. The flow of passengers slows down in the evening. We sleep.

Turns out local trains are never late. We pull into Mumbai dutifully at four am. At Dadar Station, we are told it is the last stop, even though our ticket says we go all the way to Mumbai Central. Working on the tracks, apparently. It doesn't take too long before a helpful soul tells us which suburban train to take from which platform. But we still need to kill time, get our couchsurf host's information. A taxi driver tells us which station to go to for internet cafes open at this terrible hour. Easy, the man says when we go to buy tickets - go back to Dadar Station and then transfer trains to CST. Platform One and then Three. We ride the train. For fourty-five minutes. Something is wrong. We are in the suburbs. We ride back. We are hungry. We walk around and - of course - discover another Platform Three. The other train line. After almost four hours, we make the fifteen minute journey.

Lesson - when arriving in a big city, have a metro map on hand.

So now, at Miraj at six am, we wait for our nine am connecting train. "Perfect".

The trains are only on time when you've scheduled time for them to be late.

(And, my thought this morning when we got into Begaluru before four thirty am, early when you'd prefer them to be just a little behind schedule.)

Puzzle pieces.

Quick thoughts jotted down between Udaipur and Mt. Abu, February 4-9.

Small town, big city. I move in and out of daily life like falling back into a dream after my alarm clock goes off. Surrounded now by sites to see, I am more interested in sitting along Pichola Lake with it's mix of visitors. The sound of women slapping laundry, children laughing, running around in their underwear waiting for their clothes to dry in the sun, a mother in the shade carving stone, my own private laughs thinking if yesterday's sneezing cow, autorickshaws honking in the distance... In Bundi, I spent hours in Krishna's chai shop, quietly sipping masala chai, forgetting time. Now, I forget time by being surrounded by busy lives bumping into eachother so gracefully; everything occurs in slow motion.

The contrast of the age and aging of the architecture and the youth of children running beneath the arches, swinging on pillars, jumping over cracks in the once carefully laid stone road.

Getting lost down narrow back market roads, finding little treasures. I am getting used to the hectic traffic and people everywhere. Sometimes I forget to haggle my way through almonds, oranges, fresh peas. Sometimes I look like a fool. I am always getting in the way. But then I remember that it's nice to make others smile.

In the same day I can go well off the tourist trail and then watch Occtopussy at an overpriced rooftop restaurant, looking for the scenes filmed on the same streets I walked down earlier that day, the same palace I admired at sunset.

"India is a lot of things. Clean is not one of them." - Ira.

Drinking chai in a parking lot, a puppy wandered up, hungrily searching around our feet to see if we had anything to offer. Timid, he moves away each time out legs move, afraid of being kicked. A young man sitting next to us looks down, walks to the tea stall and purchases a packet of biscuits. Crouching down to the dog, he feed them to him one by one, the whole packet. I didn't know dogs liked biscuits. I'm glad I know that now. It was my favorite moment of the day.

Though the men smashing coconuts against concrete walls, throwing the shards to a group of monkeys was also pretty grand.

Our hotel is like a 3D puzzle gone wrong - every addition colliding not-so-gracefully with the room, floor, walkway, staircase, next to it and definitely not looking right. Yet, everything remains standing because, turns out, if you force the pieces together enough, they'll stay put. At least for a while.

The traveler's delusion remains strong. Really, though, I've been writing so little because my experiences just aren't translating. All the little things would slip through if I tried to describe Ranakpur and Delwara and walking down the street and eating lunch and the sunset on Mt. Abu and missing the bus and laughing with strangers and...

The intricacy and intensity is impossible to explain or capture in any way.

Moments.

I am constantly having moments where I forget where I am. Where I am somewhere between feeling lost and completely at home. Overwhelmed and surrounded by familiarity. Shocked at how strange things seem and seeing similarities between states of being, ways of doing. Amazed. Terrified. Uncomfortable with my being rather than everyone else's.

That's probably just due to the stares and being surrounded by fifty men, attracting what feels like equal attention as the parade of camels and play-fighting masses behind us. Wandering around, it was impossible to not stumble on the mass procession through town - the Gujjar caste celebrating the birthday of their god, people from over thirty villages in the district in town today to celebrate through the market streets.

Bundi's markets burst with scent and colours. Women haggle over bangles, cloth - a street lined with dozens of sacks of dried chilis soak the air to the point where, just breathing, you can taste them. But it is Krishna's chai shop I am constantly drawn back to. Sitting in front if a slate, rock, propane burner and a few pots, he makes the best chai I have has yet, and what he shamelessly believes to be the best in India. "Shanti shanti" he says, and you at and wait. And then, in your hands, is something that must be magical.

I have the recipe now, but I'm thinking buffalo milk might be hard to find back in Canada.

(written in Bundi February 1st. Please bare with the infrequent posts and backlog. I'll try to catch up while here in Mumbai!)

Pushkar

"You'll get used to Hinduism," she said. Our first day in Pushkar I had some shopping to get done - a notebook, fabric for a salwar kameez, finding a tailor - and I mentioned that I don't like to mix my temple visiting with consumerism. But the divide here cannot be made so simply. Religion and everyday life go hand in hand, visibly, seamlessly, and to me, confusingly. Yet, giving money when one goes to the holy lake to do their puja with a priest, or purchasing offerings of sweets and flowers to leave at a temple, is little different than placing one's tithe in an offering plate. It's just that it's visible, vocal, and far from secret.

Even as a holy city, Puhkar is not so subtle and sublime. It is a mashup, a clustering of pilgrims, chic hippies, aging Deadheads and tourists. Sitting at the Jaipur Ghat at sunset, the sounds of bells from the hundreds of temples in town are drowned out by dreadheads playin their guitars obnoxiously loudly whole singing terrible covers of The Doors. Bob Marley blasting from shops is as frequent as the local brass band leading a wedding procession down the narrow backstreets. Don't get me wrong - I'm not complaining. There's something incredibly fascinating about the whole situation. And I find myself trying to dissect each moment. And then I forget what I was thinking about entirely because as we've been walking down the street, I've simultaneously been cut off by a cow, almost hit by a motorbike, been greeted by a shopkeeper in Hindi, smiled and hollered at by children in English, and Jon next to me is having a completely different experience he is explaining to me, trying to point out the monkey eating offering from an altar while also talking to someone he's struck a conversion with. And so our days go - walking aimlessly for hours discovering small, seemingly insignificant moments, gaining small successes each time we purposely set out to do something simple and succeed, find the perfect cup of chai or learn the name of another delicious street snack.

It all must be taken as a whole.

Fair has nothing to do with it.

There are many things one learns looking and listening out their fourth story, Pahar Ganj, New Delhi window.

Nowhere makes sense if you try to do everything your way and avoid, even ignore, the silently taught lessons that surround you every second. You might be the one who has things backwards.

What seems at first chaotic is in fact a delicately practiced dance.

And I am not the only one who has not mastered the steps.

Even though many things seem "unfair" to so many, "fair" has nothing to do with it.

Funeral processions and wedding receptions are not opposites. They are each, in their own unique way, celebrations of life lived well.

In loving memory of Mona Gryba - our thoughts are with all back in Canada today.

The kindness of strangers.

Every moment deserves its own re-telling, but is of course impossible. When I think back over the last five days, I see mostly the incredibly kind faces of strangers. Walking down the street and having babies thrust into my arms for photos from their parents, groups if school kids surrounding us in a park posing for photos, the kind smiles of the old Sikh guards at Sri Guru Ram Das Niwas in Amritsar, being invited to a wedding next month after a long, broken conversation in the middle of the street...

There's still a lot of shock, though.

Here we go again...

In the final throws of preparation, I find myself going over the lists I also went over again and again, trying to make sure I have everything. Inevitably, I remember things I forgot, hidden in drawers, pockets and secret places, safely stored until they would be needed again. And even though I left them, I feel better knowing that they are there, waiting for me, giving me a reason to go back.

I can't help but feel as though I chose the perfect book to read on the first leg of he journey. Pulling out of the Vancouver train station, I re-read the introduction to Lewis Hyde's Trickster Makes This World:

"So much seems possible at the beginning of a trip, so many things seem brimmed with meaning. The small towns slipping by, the unspent time ahead, herons meditating in marsh grass, a pigeon mummified beneath a bridge, the backseats of cars waiting at the clanging gate ("crossing / crossing"), the little decoration some nineteenth-century mason worked into the high peak of a factory wall, now abandoned, now disappearing over the horizon. Each thing seems all the more declarative for its swift arrival and swift departure. From a moving train I don't see the opaque weave of the real, I see the more expansive view the shuttle gets as again and again the warp threads briefly rise. I always take out my pen and begin to write, as if the landscape itself were in a manic and voluble mood and I its lucky and appointed scribe. I become convinced that just before me is the perfect statement of how things are.

That it the traveler's delusion."

I think, maybe, I'm okay with the delusion right now.