Indian Summer

Guten Tag out there to anyone reading this!

As always it has taken me awhile to update this bad boy, part is due to the lack of internet in the places I've been but mostly it has just been laziness. So sorry to everyone who just can't sleep at night cause they want an update so bad. Hopefully this will tide you over till I work myself up again to do another one.

I'm writing this in Chang Mai, Thailand as me and Brit are waiting to go to dinner and Muay Thai kickboxing match. However, I won't be writing about Thailand in this update cause I still got alot of ground to cover before I get to that. Side note: I am not liking Thailand so far due to the enourmous amounts of douchebag college bro type backpackers here. The country (so far) seems to be filled with the type of chongos I hate and try to avoid in my everyday life. Hopefully in the next few weeks I can escape them and the place will become more enjoyable. We'll see if my feelings have shifted when I get to the Thailand update. So today you readers get to hear about my India adventures with Brit with a special guest appearance by the two greatest people who have every lived...dun dun dun... Sid and Karen Hutchinson aka my parents.

I'll start off by saying at the end of Africa I was a whiney baby poopy diaper about travelling. It was hot, the buses were shitty and my body seemed to enjoy turning on me at the worst times causing me to have some horrible (but now hilarious) diarrhea. So even though overall I liked Africa and had lots of fun, I was a bit turned off at the idea of having another 8 months or so of travelling, especially in India. Probably the country I had the least amount of interest in going to. Also, everyone in Africa laughed as they told me "if you think Africa's bad wait till you get to India." So pretty much I didn't wanna set foot in the country and was threatening Brit that I was gonna go somewhere else and she could meet up with me after she finished India, but she ended up dragging me there despite my bitchyness.

As we got to India, I was filled with some hope that it wasn't going to be as bad as I thought because the airport was really nice. Once we left though my hopes were soon dashed as we drove through Mumbai and I saw how much of a shitty dump the place was. We got to our hotel and I slept for awhile trying to avoid having to go outside until Brit dragged me out. We spent a few days in Mumbai checking out the sights which included some huge, crazy designed buildings, Elephanta island where there were tons of caves filled with carved statues, and of course my all-time favorite sight of the whole trip so far Bone-tail cat. That is something I will never forget. The place was super hectic and busy. Cars and bikes were everywhere and crossing the street was an adventure everytime but I was happy to find the place wasn't as bad as I expected. No one hassled me as much as in Africa and I didn't feel as threatened. After Mumbia we caught a sleeper bus to Goa. This was out first "sleeper" bus, we had taken overnight buses before but they were always in regular seats. This one was an actual lay down bed type situation. Which at first seemed awesome but quickly we realized that it was going to be the shittiest ride ever...well not quite, the Malawi bus still takes that crown. Nonetheless it was a shit ride and neither of us slept at all. We both vowed to never take a sleeper bus again. We got to Goa (met Stu and Lindsay on the bus...more on them later) and it was actually really nice. We checked into a place near the beach which was way more than we thought it would be due to Christmas coming up. The beach was filled with Indian tourists who loved taking Brit's photo while she was in her bikini. Which at first was funny and she felt like a celebrity but then we realized that these dudes were probably taking that pic straight to their rooms for some alone time with Brit. The beach was crazy with techno music pounding all day and night and tons of hippies dancing like they were zombies. I assume they were all frigged up on acid, which was readily available from the locals who tried to sell it to you everytime you came near. I could have tried every type of drug imaginable if I wanted too. Also on the beach were tons of cows, it was funny at first cause you would be walking along the beach next to 4 big ass cows which were blatantly out of their element but then it just got annoying cause you'd be sleeping on your lounge chair and wake up to a giant cow head beside you licking the last bit of your drink up. Freaky shit waking up to a giant horned cow head right next to your face.

...Ok so as usual this is gettin really long and I've probably lost most of you already since I know my friends attention spans don't last that long so to save you the trouble of reading and me the trouble of typing for hours I'm gonna switch to my old standby...point form! I'll still elaborate on things I deem to be funny though so don't you worry.

- Hung out for christmas on Anjuna beach in Goa. Rented scooters, got a tiger towel for a present from Brit, I got her a dress. Swam in the ocean, Brit got lurked on by locals, we ate and drank way to much junk food (including of my new favorite desserts "hello to the queen and bebinca) and partied at weird techno hippy clubs.
- Bailed on Goa for a few days and went to Hampi which I'm pretty sure is what the creators of the Flintstones were looking at when they designed Bedrock. The place looked prehistoric, it had huge boulders on top of mountains but then it would have bigger boulders on top of the smaller ones which was super confusing as to how they all got like that. There were tons of temples and ruins to check out, we rented scooters again and burned around for a few days meeting Joey and his girlfriend Vanitha who were super cool Aussies. I feel I should also say, the pics of us on the scooter do not do the driving justice. It was very fucking wild at times and I thought I was gonna crash constantly, Brit refused to drive with me on the back so I had to take our lives in my hands several times and dodged people, cars, goats, cows and whatever other types of things wanted to jump out in front of me.
- Headed back to Goa on an interesting train ride with a bunch of locals who wouldn't leave us alone. They all crowded on our seat the whole way and made us wear their hats. Went to Palolem this time which was much quieter than Anjuna. We again met up with Stu and Lindsay randomly which was cool. We hung out with them alot while swimming and hanging in the ocean. These days were super lazy I pretty much just swam, slept and drank soda's all day. We partied on new years and everyone thougt it was funny I didn't drink so they said I had to have a soda everytime they had a beer. I ended up downing like 15-20 sodas that night with the last one being a shit mix of every type of pop Stu could find. I ended up being the only one feeling like shit the next day.
- Headed back to Mumbai to catch a flight to Delhi. In Delhi we met up with my parents. We threw them straight into the fire taking them to the old part of the city on their first day which was crazy busy and packed with people. It was a bit of sensory overload for them but got them used to India in a hurry! Saw the sights in Delhi the next few days while trying no to let Sid get ripped off by the locals. Almost got scammed for like 200 bucks!
- Caught a "12" hour train to Varanassi which actually took about 20 hours. Sid and Karen had enough of the trains after their first time on one and wanted to fly after that haha. We got to the city and again it was a fucking dive (I have been neglecting to mention all these places we've been have been super butt dirty, smelly and chaotic) the place smelled poopy and along the ghats (steps running along the river) there actually was tons of human shit, which Sid had the honor of playing Indian cricket in! Luckily he didn't step in any human dumps. The Ganges river is filth but people still like to swim and drink out of it not even seeming to care than a few feet further up the river they are burning dead bodies in the same water. The people are hella committed to their religion. I wouldn't even wanna stick my hand in that mess. Sid also made a bud here who tricked him into buying oil of of him for a high price, he got a beer out of him and a bunch of money that was refunded from our train tickets!
- We flew to the city where the Kama Sutra temple is (I couldn't spell it if you had a gun to my head) and checked that out. It was pretty graphic, Brit's favorite was the horse porn.
- We hired a driver named Raj who took us to Bandhavgargh where we wanted to see some wild tigers. On the way he stopped numerous times to take a dip (chew) and I'm pretty sure he always had a lipper in. He also got Brit and Sid to drink some roadside/homemade moonshine that I'm surprised didn't make them both blind. They both took one sip then called it, Raj being the good guy he is pounded back both cups of the stuff and then proceeded to drive us all the rest of the way, blowing through stop signs, road checks and toll booths as he went. Oh yea, he also tried to run over some rabbits. That night he hung out in our hotel room and drank two mickey's of rum which he claimed was wine. Guy parties hard.
- Got up the next day and went on safari. Got lucky and saw a tiger pretty quick. There was 3 munching on some animal they killed in the bushes, we got to ride an elephant over to check it out. I also got to poop in the bushes.
- Raj drove us to Agra where we got to check out the Taj Mahal. It was good. We had a scavenger hunt where we had a few hours to complete a list of things including: picture with a street dog, picture of a camel, buying a tacky tourist shirt, eating a hot pepper, getting a local to lay with you in the street, finding a blue eyed indian and drive a rickshaw. It had some other stuff too but I can't remember it all. I think it ended up being a tie.
- After Agra we headed into Rajasthan. First stop there was Jaipur which was a so-so city with some cool forts and temples but I was all templed out by then so it wasn't as exciting as they probably should have been. We did get to charm a cobra though, Sid sat right with the guy and grabbed one of his snakes and was kissing it while it wrapped around his neck. For me and Brit the guy put one cobra right in front of me and then started talking to Brit. It was sketchy cause the snake wasn't paying attention to him it was just staring at me the whole time, it then tried to bite me twice and the guy didn't even give a fuck! No one seemed to care everyone just laughed at me while this cobra tried to bite my face off. It felt like I was gettin the Mansel stomp. There was a kite festival in town and everyone was flying kites, there was literally thousands of them. Sid got to fly some guys kites and ended up losing a couple, nice of the tourist to come lose your shit eh? We also got a naked massage...I got mine from a guy who came super close several times to touching my bare dick, which wasn't at it's most impressive due to Brit getting the only heater in the room. Not like I was trying to impress the Indian guy massaging me but still...whenever that shit's flappin around you want it to look at its best. Brit and my parents also got a naked rub down and we tricked Sid into thinking he was the only one who got naked and got some weird gay massage guy.
- Next we were off to Pushkar. Small little place where we lurked the village and did some shoppin at the markets. We went on a camel safari that destroyed my nuts, originally I wanted to go on a long overnight one but everyone was against it and I'm glad cause after a few hours I think I am sterile forever now. Sid also got scammed by some dudes for some more dollars here and spent lots of his time in a bar overlooking the town so he could watch a group of grubby bikers and make fun of them to us. We played a bunch of dice games and my mom smoked us all pretty often. I also almost got caught in a late night cow stampede while en route to get treats. We also went to a cooking class here so I'll be happy to make you guys all some Indian food when I get home.
- Last stop of the journey was in Johdpur where we parted ways with my parents. We had about 3-4 days before we had to seperate and in that time we had some lassi's that were fantastic, got ripped off buying spice, Sid flaunted his wealth by showing all the locals his new Blackberry iPad thing, I got the entire family mad at me for wandering the streets alone while leaving them at a dinner and we saw probably my second favorite sight which was a cow peeing into another cow's mouth I wish I had a camera for that.
- Parted ways with the parents and then headed back to Delhi to catch a flight to our next stop which was Kathmandu in Nepal.

Despite being apprehensive at first about the country I actually really enjoyed India. We saw some wild stuff like people with eyes, limbs and open wounds on the streets begging for money (no pics cause I just didn't feel right bustin the camera on them...although the guys with no eyes probably wouldn't have noticed), cows everywhere, pervy Indian guys, sleazy dudes rippin us off, insane traffic and grime and extreme poverty but that was all part of the (I don't think "fun" is the right word but its all I can think of so I'm using it) fun. The food was rad, the beaches were gorgeous and there was way to many sights to see in one trip. Still, I don't think I'll be heading back there anytime soon. Quick list of India highlights before I go:

- Beaches in Goa
- Hampi aka Bedrock
- Tiger sighting
- Raj our crazy driver
- Sid getting ripped off
- Cow peeing in other cow's mouth
- Brit stepping in cow poo a couple times
- Grubby biker guys and Sid spending half his days lurking on them
- Kama Sutra temples
- Scooter rides
- Food
- Street animals
- Goats in coats
- And my #1 favorite of all time...Bone-tail cat

Whoa that was a long one, I think maybe the longest yet? Thanks to anyone with enough attention to get through that. It means a lot that you care to read about what Brit and I are doing. I hope the spelling and grammar mistakes were kept to a minimum, by the end of writing these things I am always too shattered to go back through em and fix it up. So I hope if there are tons of mistakes that at least they are funny. As always I'll throw my shout-out to my best-reader/friend Ryan "Weedbeard" Rumsey (2 nicknames in one...guy has too many nicknames) and the rest of the Rats. I miss everyone back home from all my family and closest friends, my buds in Van, Brits crew and last but definetly not least all my buds in the Valley HC scene I miss going to shows with all of ya. I'll hopefully update this again soon so I can keep them shorter. Love ya all.

- Dan