My Puzzle and The Awards

I don't know when it started. Four and a half months is an easy way to label the time that has passed, but the experience, from the day I decided to take a year off, to the day I called Sam who was on his way to a lacrosse state semi final game and asked him out of the blue if he wanted to travel the world with me to which he replied yes, to the day we arrived in Hanoi and realized that that day had finally come, to the day that I end my trip in my Casablanca hotel room listening to the songs of Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and others who provided us with the background music to our trip. What I can't listen to in this hotel room, but I hear, is all the other sounds from the last four and a half months, the motobikes honking at rush hour in Vietnam, the rivers flowing through Annapurna at 3500m in Nepal, the music blaring at 7am at a club in Barcelona. And that's just what I hear. I still have the tastes of hot Belgian waffels, or the smell of flesh burning through thick smog on a sticky Varanasi morning.
But back to where it started. I often think back to that afternoon in Hanoi, when we got out the airport van and entered the world. An overpacked and clumsy bag on my back, Lonely Planet guide book with Hanoi city map marked in one hand, hostel world reservation sheet in the other, still clean and recently washed clothes on my body, and a nervous anticipation of what's next wringing tightly in my stomach. Well, what was next was me slamming my head on a near by store's overhang engineered for Vietnamese people, rather than 6'3 Westerners. And what was next agter that was the first time of hundreds in which I was asked to buy pirated books, marijuana, or opium. And what was next was the last four and a half months of my life, in which I have travelled thousands of miles and seen thousands of new things, and I'm trying to figure out what all this has done to me.
I know I've changed a lot since that day in October. My bag is much lighter, and filled with mostly things I've picked up along the way. Lonely Planet is long gone and now considered sort of cheating the way. Hostel World reservations, only on New Year's Day in Brussels. My clothes, completely different, yet probably smell like a conglomerate of third world countries, alcohol, and ass. And that wringing thing in my stomach, gone (albeit ghiardia is now here!), and replaced by a pure and open state of excitement, tolerance, and an eagerness to absorb. In the first couple weeks, I noticed a lot of little changes. I would go an entire day without yesterday, tonight, or tomorrow even crossing my mind. I would get lost, or spend hours wandering around, and not care at all. I wasn't sleeping long hours at night, but never once worried about it, or felt tired the day after. And in these first couple weeks, I was thinking about how I was changing, cognitvely recognizing these little things, and appreciating them. I was very introspective in my thoughts, and I was writing a lot. And, I was still comparing aspects of traveling to my life back home. But as time passed, I stopped noticing the changes, the differences, and started to just be the change and the difference. Long train rides filled with reflection were replaced by the weekly Economist or books that I started to fly through. I stopped looking at the world through the eyes of 18 year old Ari Rubin, and started to see it through the eyes of Santiago from the Alchemist, through the eyes of an 18 year old Nepalese Sherpa who will do the same thing and eat the same thing every day for the rest of his life, or through the eyes of a homeless man on the streets of Prague, who stares at an empy hat curled up in a cat's pose on the freezing cold cobblestone, praying that a coin will enter his world, and hoping that later he'll have something to eat or warming to drink. Even seeing the world in this way, I don't know what this whole experience has done to me. I sat down last week and made a long list of lessons that I've learned traveling, complete with concrete examples, but still, I'm not quite sure how these lessons will fit into my life. I now have all those experiences, and memories, and mind things, and ideas, that will somehow change me. It's like I've gone around the world collecting these puzzle pieces, and I have the rest of my life to put them together. And hopefully, this puzzle is just one more piece of the bigger puzzle. I have my Highland Park puzzle, my soccer puzzle, my camp puzzle, my Israel puzzle, my NOLS puzzle, and many others. And putting these puzzles together, that's life.
I want to thank everyone who has helped me find a puzzle piece in the last four and a half months. I've travelled with and met so many great and funny and cool and brilliant people, and formed what I know will be lifelong friendships (thanks facebook!). And that's just the people I stay in touch with. There have been so many others, like Baba the chai drinking, jaras smoking, legless legend of Pushkar who postulated to me his philosophy on life, while sipping chai of course. Or like Dong, the Vietnamese waitress who would never even think about participating in any act of capitalism for fear of greed and breaking tradition. Or like the Cambodian tuk tuk driver, who after schooling me on the soccer pitch, explained to me how bad he wanted some form of government, even though only 30 years ago it was the government that killed his brothers, sisters and grandparents. It is these people, those whom I have left but not forgotten, who provided me with so many subtle acts of kindness and showed me so many beautiful things about life. So thanks to all my new friends. And then there's Sam, my heterosexual lifemate, who over the last four months I learned so much from, especially how to live siesta style. And my brother, the real bro, with whom I got to spend so much time with, and learned so much from, just like it was back in the day when we were the little ones running around, playing and fighting, but more so loving.
The day is finally here, and while I used to think it would feel like a marathon breaking through the ribbon at the finish line, it sort of just feels like every other mile. It's probably because I've realized this isn't the end, just another piece in the puzzle of life.










And also, here's my personal award ceremony:
Keep in mind that I visited 11 countries, and disqualified Thailand because I only saw Khao San Road, and Poland because I only saw Auschwitz.

Best Food
1. India (has variety over...)
2. Morocco
3. Cambodia

Worst Food
1. Spain (tapas is cool when it's cheap or free)
2. Czech Republic

Nicest People
1. Nepal
2. Cambodia
3. India

Not Nicest People
1. Czech Republic
2. Most Europeans
3. India


Laziest People
1. Spain (14%), India (Shops open at 10), Cambodia, Morocco (in the mountain regions where all they do is smoke)

Most Beautiful Sights
1. Taj Mahal
2. Annapurna
3. Canary Island beaches

Most Chilled Out Cities
1. Chefchouen (tourists and local inhabitants just smoke all day)
2. Pushkar (tourists just smoke all day)
3. Pokhara (the best of the 3)

Worst Cities(not reflecting my experience there, just the city itself)
1. Phnom Penh
2. Granada (would be number 1, but Al Hambra is pretty sweet)
3. Gorakhpur (it's not really a tourist city so doesn't take the 1 spot, but really, I would rather go almost anywhere than Gorakhpur)

Craziest Countries
1. India
2. Vietnam (crossing the street)
3. Nepal (a toned down India)

Easiest Travelling
1. Vietnam
2. Cambodia
3. Czech Republic (staying at the Intercon with my parents and having everything paid for was pretty easy)

Dirtiest
1. India
2. Nepal
3. Belgium (really just Brussels, which happens to be the capital of the EU. hmmmm)

Hostels
1. Hanoi Backpacker's Hostel
2. Sant Jordi Arago, Barcelona
3. The Milkman, Pushkar

Bars
1. Delirium Cafe, Brussels (2004 types of beer! come on!)
2. Same Same But Different Treats Cafe, Hoi An
3. Go 2, Ho Chi Minh City

Best Israeli Food
1. Chabad House, Kathmandu
2. Shanti Hotel, Varanasi
3. 1st Laffa Stand, Pushkar

Best Sweet Thing
1. Belgian waffles
2. Gulab Jamun
3. Hello to the Queen "Shalom le Malkah"

Most Marijuana Smoking
1. Morocco
2. India
3. Nepal

And now, for the acceptance speech...

The Two Devils and the Beach

I decided to break my recent trend of posting one blog every 3 weeks and write! I guess I was feeling a little introspective, and felt the urge for some articulation stimulation. That´s the result of laying on the most beautiful beach ever while reading Robinson Crusoe and The ...I´m not exactly sure of the cause and effect relationship here, but don´t worry about it. We arrived to Fuerteventura, which evidently means ¨strong winds (remember this as it will come into play later),¨ one of the more non-touristy islands of the Canaries, with zero idea of what we were doing. We found only one hostel online, and planned on staying there for the first couple of days. The hostel was described as a comfortable and fun place to meet surfers and other travelers. The description sounded good, however, in one of the reviews it described the lady who ran the hostel, Rachel, as being a "little unsympathetic." I have a little different take on the place. As soon as I check out of this hostel, I plan on writing on the website that in fact, Rachel is a total fucking bitch. Seriously, she is one the meanest people I have met in the last 4 months. I wouldn´t be staying at the hostel if there were any other ones on the island, as I hate encouraging this type of customer service. Which is another thing I hate about Europe: employees treat customers like crap. In America, the customer is always right. In India, the customer is always right, and the employee should compliment the customer´s physique (if they are both males) and ask him whether or not he is married. In Europe, the customer is never right, and often times, it is the employee´s obligation to shit on the customer. But back to Rachel. There´s a Chinese guy staying in the hostel called Jan, and Rachel feels it necessary to yell at him any time she sees him. He tried asking the cleaning lady, who only speaks Spanish, for a towel in English, and during Rachel´s rant at Jan, I thought she was going to headbutt him or throw hot coffee in his face. Rachel always has a scolding look on her face, and shouts one word snappy replies at people when they ask questions such as "Can I stay another night?". Rachel does not deserve to run a hostel. The only thing she deserves is a bitch slap. I make it sound like the hostel is a dreadful place to stay, but Rachel is only around 30 minutes a day, and she provides the rest of us with something to laugh at. Other than that, and the fact that we didn´t have electricity in our room for 2 days and we regularly get deprived of hot water, the hostel is great. The only other notable thing writing about is a guy called Gaston. Gaston is an older fellow, and has a jolly demeanor which he flaunts gayly by constantly singing and talking to himself. He is usually smiling, and is very easy to get along with. His singing crap sort of gets annoying when you´re trying to read, but that´s just a part of traveling. However, when the sun goes down, and the lights go off, and Gaston goes to sleep, everything changes. Those of us sharing a dorm with him have diagnosed him with sleep apnea, which is hard to sleep next to as he snores louder than both my father and a large train combined. However, this is another thing that is just part of traveling. What is abnormal, and almost intolerable about Gaston at night, is the fact that he literally becomes possessed by the devil. His snoring and apnea is interuptted by shrieks and indiscernible noises and cries that could only be made by some strange creature of the underworld who has been trapped in a fiery inferno for thousands of years. I lay in bed at night, with my camera in one hand trying to catch the devil in action, waiting for him to sit up and turn his head 360 degrees, exorcist style. I´m sure it´s happened before. I don´t know what to make of his sleeping habits, and if I wasn´t so scared the devil would come out, I might ask him about his sleep habits in the morning.
So enough about the hostel, and on to the most beautiful beaches in the world. Wide stretches of white sand, transparent water with hints of green and teal, perfect blue skies, my pictures will look like paradise. Which it is. But, something the pictures don´t reveal, but the name of the island does, is those strong winds. Strong being an understatement. Sometimes standing at a 45 degree angle winds would be more accurate (can someone translate that?). But those winds only pick up once every few days, so we´ve been laying out in paradise. And when those winds do pick up, we embrace them. One day, we tried building a sand shelter, which was fun, but ended up backfiring because the winds would pick up the loose sand and fire them at us like small razor blades. One caught Matt in the eye and had his eye swelling for hours. I guess it was our punishment for trying to alter Mother Nature´s plans. Once we learned that we can´t protect ourselves against the wind, we decided to play with the wind, and go windsurfing. So right now we´re in the middle of a 3 day winfsurfering course, and I think I will need no less than 4 more days in the water to be considered a beginner. Fuerteventura is one of the windsurfing capitals of the world, but for people who are first learning, and can´t yet harness and cooperate with the , it is brutal. But I guess if I can learn here, Boston and Lake Michigan will be a breeze.
So that´s about it for me. Quick stomach update...I thought I had been suffering from post Moroccan Tajin syndrome, when really, I was just drinking contaminated water for the past week. Silly me for thinking a country in the EU doesn´t yet have drinkable tap water. I guess drinkable water in the Canaries is a little lower on Spain´s things to do list than say, fixing their 14 percent unemployment rate, relieving their large deficit, stopping the ETA from blowing up Madrid, and finding food to serve other than shitty boccadillos and tapas.
Well folks, I´ll be back in Chicago in a little more than a week. Interesting how fast time flies. See you soon!

Back to the Right Kind of Traveling

I´ll admit it. Being in Europe the last couple of weeks I´ve gone soft. I´ve been used to hot showers, drinkable tap water, expensive and non-bargainable prices, and acceptable sanitary conditions. So we went to Morocco, and all of that changed. Arriving in Morocco these differences are quite noticeable, however, the main way I knew I was back to a ¨developing¨country was that I was using squatters instead of toilets, and squatting I was doing a lot. Now, this reappearance of my old bad bathroom habits could be attributed to the fact that I ate tajin, a thick, delicious and heavily spiced Moroccan stew, every single dinner for 9 nights straight, but I´m not sure. All I know, and this is perhaps a result of the lasting amoebics and ghiardias in my stomach, is that developing countries and my stomach don´t go well together.

But I learned that a while ago, and I´m still traveling and having the time of my life! So we spent a couple days after hanging out by the beach in Malaga in Granada. Granada sucks. I had a lot of fun there, hanging out with one of my best friend´s sister, Dana, and a bunch of study abroad kids from the big ten schools. But to me, Granada is the epitomy of the thing I hate most about Europe- graffiti. And not just the usual anarchist and soccer team graffiti that you see in other places, but Granada is completely polluted with anti-semitic images. Literally, all over the city, there are stars of david drawn equaling swastikas. We walked 15 minutes uphill from the bus station to the hostel we thought we were staying at, and after winding around turn after turn, and seeing over 10 of these not inviting images, we decided to turn around (we ended up staying in the same hostel Dana and all her friends were at, which probably housed more Jews than have ever been in Granada since the Spanish inquisition). The grafitti´s presence was disturbing, yet was nothing compared to what we were about to experience. On the 2nd night we were there, a protest of 5000 people against Israel walked through the streets, protesting the same way that you´ve seen all over the world; holding signs for peace yet chanting death to Israel, accusing Bush and Olmert of being communists, and showing off their ignorance while preaching hatred. I don´t really feel like writing about my reactions to the protest (this is my travel blog), but as you can imagine, it was disturbing.

So that part of Granada sucked, but going out and partying was a lot of fun. Al Hambra was also really cool, an old muslim palace which I didn´t even know existed until my friend Molli IMed me and said "you haven´t been to Al Hambra yet?!" (to which I replied "What´s Al Hambra?" silly me. (this is the problem with not traveling with Lonely Planet)). Really though, Al Hambra was up there with Taj Mahal and Angkor Wat. Back to Granada...Sam blacked out one night, we caught some funny pictures of Matthew at the club, I was on fire, and we blew through or money quick. So, it was time to head South to catch the ferry to Morocco.

Because of what was going on in Gaza, and the warm reception we recieved in Granada, we decided to keep our nationality, and especially our religion, to ourselves. My dad asked me a couple days ago how it was being American right now, and I responded ¨I wouldn´t know, I´m Canadian.¨ We held that line for a couple days, but honestly, it sucks hiding who you are, so we decided to ditch our Vancouver story and just say we were Americans. And no one cared, probably because we had arrived to what is THE most chill city (more so than Pushkar, India) ever. This is a city where really, no one does anything all day. In Pushkar, most of the tourists sit around and smoke all day and hang out. In Chefchouen, all the tourists sit around all day and smoke, and all the locals sit around all day and smoke. I watched some guy selling bread in the main square pull out his pipe, smoke some kief, and pass out with his bread just sitting there. I was hungry, so I decided to try to wake him up and buy some bread. It sort of half worked, so I just left him his dhiram and took my bread. We spent 5 days in Chouen, drinking lots of tea, reading and playing chess, meeting lots of funny hippis, and hanging out. We then headed down a couple hours to Fez, which has a similar Moroccan hospitality feel to it, except it´s the second largest city in the country. The entire city is lined with massive and ancient castle walls, which in the summer (and sunlight, something we hardly saw because it was raining non stop) makes for a golden aura around the city. The walls are lined with Moroccan flags (the king is staying in Fez for the month) in a display of nationalism which I haven´t experienced since Vietnam. The streets are wide and clean, and it seems like a regular city. However, on the inside of the walls lie madness. Fez claims one of the largest Medinas in Morocco, and I would not be surprised if it was one of the largest in the world. It is several kilometers of windy, crowded, unnavigable market with tight streets and lots of stimulii. So in our two days in Fez, we walked through the medina, absorbing the smells of various types of spiced olives, rose waters, dates and nougats, eating our way through and stopping for mint gunpowder tea at several small, non-revealing shops. Sam bought a lot, half falling victim to the world renowned Berber bargaining skills, and half just really enjoying the items we passed; carpets, leather (we watched the leather making process from a rooftop, pretty sweet), teapots, hookahs, and jewelry. Fez used to be home to a large Jewish population, so we saw many beautiful pieces of Judaica, pieces that were probably stolen or left behind in the little time Jews had to leave.
We left Morocco yesterday for Madrid, and are heading today to the Canary Islands for the last 10 days of our trip today. I have no idea what the Canary Islands are like, but we plan on staying in Fuerteventura for the duration of our stay there. As long it has beach and cool places to explore, we´ll have fun. Talk to you from the island! Here´s a Helen Keller quote I enjoy. Surprisingly, it´s not maghbahlalaaaaah.

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."
-Helen Keller

The Rain in Spain Falls Mainly on...

Hey folks! Last time we communicated I was in Barcelona and sober, and although I stayed in Barcelona, I didn't stay sober. What ensued in the three following days of my last blog post were three consecutive nights of going out until 7 am. 7 AM is insane, but what's really insane is that's what people in Spain do EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. Well, probably not every single night, but I've heard in the summer that's how it is. People grab dinner around 10 or 11, go out for drinks around 12 or 1, and then start heading to clubs around 2. They then wake up the next morning, probably pretty late, head to work for a little, take a LONG siesta in the afternoon, and then maybe go back to work in the afternoon. And still, people wonder why Spain's unemployment rate is one of the highest in Europe-people are so damn lazy! (compared to Vietnam at least). But back to our nights out. The first night we went on a pub crawl with some American girls whom we met at our ritual meusli breakfast joint who had just arrived on a study abroad program. For 15 euros at a pubcrawl, you get lead around by young expats living in Barcelona from pub to pub, and eventually to club, and get handed free shots at various times. I realized the monetary benefits were clearly not in our favor, as we only received several watered down half shots of jungle juice. I also didn't like feeling like a stupid tourist being lead around the streets of Barcelona while someone yelled constantly reminding us of pickpocketers and excessive noise. However, it was so much fun being with American college kids for a change, so the night was awesome. The next night, our Brussels friend Pierre took us to some nice bars and clubs, and we enjoyed the less touristy side of Barcelona (there were actually a lot of Italians and Germans, it was just that there weren't any Americans there). During this three day stint, we hardly slept at all and were pretty much non-functional the entire day. We did make it out and about in Barcelona though, and we spent a day at the Olympic stadium and the area around it. They had one of the coolest museums I've ever been to, a high tech and highly interactive display of the history of the Olympics and sport. One of the main things I took away from the day was that it is absolutely essential, and we all must do everything in our power, to make sure that the Olympics come to Chicago in 2016. Seriously. The most worldly event, a collaboration of sport and competition and culture, an event that represents everything humanity strives for in a global community, in our hometown! Chicago 2016. Come on!
We took a flight down to Malaga the day after, a smaller city located on the southern coast of Spain. We were expecting a little warmer weather than the excessively cold and non stop rain we had received in Barcelona, but our expectations weren't exactly met. It's a little warmer here, and when it's sunny it's beautiful, but it's not Malaga in the summer- which I can only imagine would be paradise. I recently found out that a guy called Effy whom I used to play soccer with lives in Malaga, and had a game the night we were arriving. So as soon as we landed, Matt and I scrambled to find a bus that would take us to his game (Sam opted out and chose to find us a place to sleep for the night). It was a little difficult finding a way to his game, especially since it was a Saturday evening and so few people speak English here. In favor of catching at least part of the game, we decided to splurge on a taxi, and made it with 35 minutes left in the 2nd half. I missed both of Effy's goals, but it was still cool to see two higher level Spanish teams with players of my age. My reactions- their individual skills were exceptional, much better than anything you see in the US. The speed of play was also much quicker than games in the US, and I think if one of the best teams in Illinois came to play this team, us Yanks would get smoked. However, their play is much less physical. They go hard to the ball, but not like Americans do. If you were to take the majority of the players on the field, and place them in a college level game with only Americans, I don't think they'd be able to fit in with the American style and they probably wouldn't be that successful. So there's my soccer analysis, sorry if you think soccer's lame.
Effy's parents invited us over to their house for dinner, and we enjoyed some nice home cooked Spanish food. It was Saturday night, so Effy took us out to the city where I saw something that every American high schooler dreams about. Every Saturday night in Malaga, they close down a main street by the beach, and people of all ages head to the street to listen to music, talk with friends, drink Sangria, pound shots, and get inhebriated. At around 32 degrees, it was one of the coldest nights of the year, and still, there were over 1000 people there. This being the 4th consecutive night of what I described earlier, we opted into taking it a little easier than we had been. But just being around such a festive and laid back environment made it an incredible night, and it was one of the coolest places I've been so far.
We've been hanging out in Malaga the last couple days. Yesterday, we were graced by great weather, and we headed to a small village to the East and checked out some caves that hold the Guiness World Record for the largest chamber in the world, pretty neat. We then went and hung out by the beach for several hours, overlooking the beautiful sea and coastline.
Our plans have changed for the next couple of weeks. We plan to go to Morocco tomorrow, for somewhere between a week or two, and then head back to Spain to catch a flight from Madrid to the Canary Islands. We have no idea what the Canary Islands are like- they're supposed to be one of the most amazing places on earth, but they're supposed to be very touristy and filled with only 5 star resorts, something that won't fit into our budget. So we'll have to figure some other accomadations out, but we're going for it anyways.
Talk soon, be well, and of course...

Chicago 2016!

It´s been so long! Ahh!

I guess my lack of blogging recently is just a manifestation of a bigger trend in my lifestyle of the last couple weeks- me being really lazy. I am in no way intending to imply that traveling through India is such "hard work," but honestly, when I arrived in Prague, and had the luxuries of my brother´s apartment and Western fast food such as McDonalds and KFC, I just became really, really lazy. We stayed a couple days in Prague before my parents and sister arrived, sleeping late (something we had never done before being with Matt), drinking A LOT, and sitting in front of the tv watching MTV dance. So that was laziness level 1, but then when my parents arrived, laziness level 2 hit. There´s something about having two people who really love you and care about you that just makes you want to let them do everything for you- and that´s what we did. We woke up when we were told to, went touring when we were told to, ate when we were told to, even showered when we were told to (which was quite frequently due to our recent month long stay in India); the lack of decision-making we needed to do was awesome. But now mom and dad are gone, and it´s Matt, Sam and I in Barcelona. So since I´ve got a lot to catch up on, here´s a brief summary of where we´ve been and what we did.
We spent a couple days with the parents in Prague, doing Jewish touring and eating really amazing food. Prague in late December is freezing, but also beautiful- the several christmas markets spread throughout town are a center for Czech and tourist life, they sell fresh and delicious sugary doughy things and crepes, hot wine and mead, and grill massive pork legs and sausages. And there´s lights, and music, and jollyness...and if I wasn´t Jewish this would be enough to turn me Christian. So Prague was great.
We moved on to Budapest where we had 2 days of non stop touring. One day was spent doing the Jewish tour, and the other day spent doing the Budapest tour. We did manage to squeeze in a few hours to go to what is a Budapest institution, the hot baths. There, we bathed in a massive complex of various types of mineral baths and hot pools. We had a great time at the baths, however, I was a little turned off by the amount of fat and old Hungarians I was swimming with. I remembered that less than a week before I stood on a hot train in Mumbai, with no room to put my arms or left foot, being constantly groped and fondled by a wide variety of individuals, and decided that I´d take the Budapest baths any day.
After a day and a half in Budapest we moved on to Krakow. Krakow is really depressing, especially in the winter, especially when you spend your only day there visiting Auschwitz and Birkenau. I don´t really think that this rushed and not very thoughtful blog post is the appropriate place for my reflections on that, so I´ll leave it there. The one thing I will say is that if you don´t remember much about the Holocaust, or if you´re not very compassionate to what went on, then fuck you.
After our day at Auschwitz, our mute and useless tourguide drove us to what is today the Czech-Polish border, to the town where my grandmother grew up. Using pictures and small bits of information that have somehow survived the last 70 years, we managed to locate the exact apartment where my grandmother grew up, and the electronics store that my great-grandfather had owned before he left Czechslovakia. I felt very proud standing outside of these two locations and taking photographs of two generations of family that have survived since the Holocaust, not as much proud of me or my parents, but of my grandmother and other ancestors who survived the Holocaust. And, I felt a big (pardon my french again) fuck you to anyone in the world let everything that happend happen. I promise I have more sophisticated and reflective thoughts than these brief and explitive filled sentences on this subject, but as I said, not the place.
So we returned to Prague for the last several days of our time with the whole family (and Sam). We continued to eat really amazing food, and then brought in the new year with great spirits and lots of drunkeness. It was great to spend some time with the family in an environment where alcohol consumption for young people is not only permitted but encouraged, and thanks to the new digital video camera my parents bought, there are some new Rubin family home videos to hit the archives (if you ever want to watch, don´t forget to ask about the chugging contest!). So Prague was great, and we left Jan 1 for Brussels.
Brussels is a cool place. The waffles are nothing like what you may have heard. They are 100 times better. These things, wow, they just melt in your mouth, and leave you saying (or at least left me saying, much to the annoyance of Matt and Sam) wow for several minutes, until you get another one. Belgian chocolate is also obviously tasty, but very expensive. And then...there´s Belgian fries eaten with mayonaise. When 9/11 happened and we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and temporarily hated the French and changed the name of "french" fries to "freedom" fries, we as a society made a huge mistake. We should have taken that golden opportunity to pay tribute to the real creators of these fried goodness, the Belgians. There are no fries in France, it´s just that France is so much more famous then Belgium. But the fries in Belgium...also a wow inducer. Even with the mayonaise. There´s a great scene in Pulp fiction, and if you´ve seen it, that´s how I felt about eating french fries with mayo until I ate it in Brussels. Its great! (but I still won´t do it back home). After a few days in Brussels, it was time to catch a flight to Barcelona to see an FC Barcelona match at the Camp Nou, something I´ve been looking forward to doing for the last year. Seriously, I think the only reason I was going to Barcelona was to see this game. But we bought tickets on the worst airlines in the world, Ryan Air (really the worst airlines in the world), and the weather was bad, so our flight was cancelled.
This was sub-seriously depressing for about 10 minutes. I really was upset. And the scene at the airport was absolute pandomonium, which didn´t help, but then again, shit happens when you travel.
And I guess it worked out for the best, because if that flight hadn´t been cancelled, we wouldn´t have met this dude named Pierre, who let us stay at his house for the next three days while we waited for a flight. And during those three days, Pierre´s family, the Silverbergs, introduced me to a new type of kindness and hospitableness which was truly inspirational. The Silverbergs have four boys and a girl, all between the ages of 19 and 27. Their four oldest have all moved out of the house, and so they took us in and treated us like their children. They cooked amazing meals for us, took us around wherever we needed to go, turned their living room into a makeshift movie theatre to watch the Big Lebowski; it was a way different experience from the waffles and fries, but something that will leave me with an even better taste of Brussels. Meeting people like that is one of the most special things about traveling, and it was a few short days I will never forget.
And now we´re in Barcelona, in the nicest hostel I have ever stayed in, right in the heart of Las Ramblas. It´s a bit chilly here, and rainy, but Spain is great and the next and last 6 weeks of my travels are going to be amazing. Cheers everyone, I promise it won´t be as long as it was for a new post! Happy new years

Wedding Crashers

Before I go into an elaborate description of my wedding crashing escapadeS, I want to give one quick image of India for you to try to wrap your mind around, something I've seen everyday at the exact same time since I've arrived in Jaisalmer: a little boy walks outside, wearing a wool turtle neck sweater and no pants, and takes a shit in the gutter, which is constantly running milky grey water. Across from the boy is a small calf, tied up in a cage with about 3 feet of rope, with two shrines inside for people to pray to. India man, India.
OK, now onto wedding crashing. It all started about a week ago, in the capital of Rajistan, Jaipur. I met a guy who told me it was wedding season in Rajistan, and that he had attended a wedding in some small village. Wedding season! I was excited. So the next day, I walked down to the lobby of our hostel which was attached to a massive hotel, and sure enough, in the large garden, were about 100 Indian men, women and children, sitting around, celebrating a wedding. I was curious and intrigued, and decided to walk into the garden and see what was going on. We had to catch a bus for Pushkar in an hour, so I knew I had to be quick. Basically, I wanted to see if it was possible to penetrate the cultural, language, and racial barriers, and get accepted into the ceremony
So I walked in with a camera in hand, a big smile on my face, and a total get-after-it mentality in my head. Within seconds, no exaggeration, seconds, of setting myself up for a good camera shot, several men grabbed me and jolted me into the middle of the white blanket that the immediate family was sitting on. People starting yelling, and all eyes were on me. Another grabbed the woman who was applying some red dye and seeds to the BRIDE's forehead, and put her in front of me to perform the ceremonial ritual. Wedding crashing was a definite possibility, I decided.
Fast forward a couple days later (by me only focusing on wedding crashing in this blog post, I am completely ignoring the entire week we spent in what has been one of my favorite cities so far, Pushkar. Basically all we did there was hang out, so I guess there's not much to write about). Anyways, we're walking from our favorite laffa stand (an Israeli food), where we had just eaten dinner, to our friends' hotel. On the way, I see a large, large, building, which from the outside (and I later found out the inside) could pass as a prison or insane asylum in the US. I hear loud music, and see lots of people gathered outside, and decide it's probably a wedding, and I should probably go inside. So inside I went, alone, because none of the 4 friends I was with were adventurous enough to venture into these unchartered waters.
I was greeted with a mixed reception. Several people sitting by the entrance explicitly told me to leave, but I figured since they were sitting by the entrance rather than actively participating in the ceremony, they weren't that important, and thus, it didn't really matter what they thought. And besides, this is wedding crashing. If it was easy, then they'd call it wedding attending. I wasn't going to give up that easily.
I walked upstairs and spotted a large room, about the size of a basketball court, with a DJ, a dance floor, and lots of people. In one corner was the bride and groom, seated on a bench, and in front of them were about 150 women and children, the men standing outside the room on a balcony which overlooked the large outdoor center of the building. Several young people approached me, asking about where I was from, what I did, etc.. The conversation was flowing; several minutes later I found myself surrounded by 10 college aged guys who were all studying to be accountants, none of whose names I could remember. Soon, a man approached me and grabbed me out of the crowd. His name was Arun, and he was the groom's older brother. Mission accomplished. He befriended me, and explained to me that this was just the first of three nights of wedding celebrations for the bride and groom. He told me that the groom, his brother, was a multi millionaire (in dollars? rupees?) manufacturing window panes, and that he was a lawyer, a judge, and a politician. He also said his family owned a hotel, gave me a card, and told me I should meet him for lunch tomorrow. And most importantly, he insisted that I come back tomorrow night, for the wedding, and that I should bring my friends.
I left soon after my work was complete, as I was uninterested in the speeches in Hindi, especially since there was no food in sight. I explained to Sam and my other friends what had happened, and informed them of the wedding we had to attend the next night.
The next day passed quickly. We realized it was only the second time in the last two months that we had an actual commitment to a certain time (not including buses, trains, or planes to catch). And still, we were late. We arrived at the wedding hall around 615. While Sam and the two Brits we were with appeared a bit trepidatious, their disposition quickly disappeared after I was greeted by name within thirty seconds of walking in, by four different groups of people. We learned that a parade was about to begin, which went through town and to the bride's house to escort her back to the wedding. So we left with some of our friends, and set out with the parade. The parade was a procession of about 300 people, not including the 45 piece band. Running along each side of the procession were young teenagers spaced about 10 feet apart from each other, each holding a 3 foot tall lamp with several fluorescent bulbs exuding a bright blue light. In the back were two carts holding generators for the lamps, each being pushed by several men. And just in front of the generators was the groom, dressed head to toe in a white suit covered with jewels, riding a white horse which also was covered in jewels. The parade lasted nearly an hour and a half, and on several occasions we were brought to the front to dance with my old friends the accountants.
We got tired after a while, and decided to leave the parade and grab some chai. We sipped our chai for a while, talking again to the crazy cake baker from last post, and decided by now the procession would probably be back at the wedding. So we returned to the wedding, this time walking to the other entrance. This side of the building had an outdoor terrace which was about 300 by 300 feet. The entire area was lined with crazy light displays. Surrounding each wall was no less than 30 stands, which were all now serving food. In the center were several large beautiful sculpture type things, made out of something that resembled plastic. And in front was a massive stage, with a beautiful jeweled bench resting in the middle in front of large red curtains. The food had started to be served, and knowing how aggressive Indian people can be, and fearing a short supply, I jumped in. I started eating, and realized that I was not receiving the same type of positive attention I had received earlier. I looked around, and saw that all eyes within a 30 foot radius were now on me, shoving vegetable noodles in my face. I wasn't worried- by this time I knew I was more than welcome at the wedding, so I simply looked around for one of the 50 people I had already met and exchanged names with (none of which I could remember). However, I couldn't seem to recognize anyone. So I looked at my friends, and their expressions of perplexity seemed to convey to me the exact same thing as I was thinking- is this the same wedding? People started approaching me, and asking various questions in Hindi and broken English. I kept replying "Arun, I am friends with Arun," but it didn't seem to hold any credibility with the new audience. So, I decided I wasn't yet welcome with this crowd, and that I would have to begin the same schmoozing and bullshitting skills I had done so successfully the night before. So schmooz and bullshit we did, and soon enough, we had a crowd of fifty people surrounding us, taking pictures, asking questions, and shoving food in our faces. As the crowd grew, so did the status of those surrounding us. The bride's father began shooting a fifteen minute movie of us simply standing in one place. He walked us around, introducing us to his relatives and friends. Turns out, the entire groom's family and friends had left on the parade, and the bride's family arrived soon after their departure to begin the party, which explains why we thought we were in a completely different wedding when we first arrived. Mission double accomplished, we were now guests of both sides of the wedding.
The procession was about to arrive back at the wedding. The bride's father and several other men grabbed us and brought us to the entrance. They placed baskets of flowers into our hands, and instructed us to hand them out as people entered. Before the procession arrived, the three photographers and two videographers took several minutes of pictures of us with the entire bride's family. "You are now part of the family" we were told. Holy shit.
The procession entered, and like everything else in India, it became madness. The band's noise was ear drum-shattering. People trampled through each other like a wild stampede. Tables and chairs were crushed, and it was a mad rush to enter through the gates. The videographers, as if their pay was contingent on having a continuous video feed of the groom, jumped from place to person to chair, violently knocking anyone who stood, or who had been pushed on the ground, in his path. Everyone remained completely peaceful and celebratory however, and both the bride and groom's immediate family appeared unharmed in the entire skirmish.
People managed to file in and take their places on the grass. The attention level around us (on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the highest) had increased from a 13 to a 20. It was near overwhelming, yet really, really funny. We were now being grabbed and brought in front of the stage to dance with a group of very overly excited young men. Having rocked many Camp Horseshoe socials, I had no difficulty dancing with the dudes. For an hour and a half, we (were forced) to dance to the upbeat Bollywood trance techno music. Like in Vietnam, I brought out the going fishing, the shopping cart, the C walk, the harlem shake, and some other crazy dance moves I've picked up over the years. The Indians could not get enough of all this. They especially loved the lawn mower, the disco walk, and by far the best, the flamingo (I'm not sure what it's called, but it's a Shoe trademark and a signal with my friends back home). By this time, I had worked up a full sweat, and was feeling exhausted. It didn't help that every 30 seconds another small Indian kid would grab me and forcefeed me one of the many Indian sweets or dishes. I snuck out of the dancing circle, and settled around the wedding ceremony in the other corner for some rest.
I was immediately spotted, however, by a young man with a blue scarf, who wrapped it around me and dragged me back to dance. "No!" I jokingly pleaded, but I had no choice. So I danced for several more minutes until my physical demeanor conveyed to those around me that I would have no more dancing. The wedding ceremony took place in a corner, and then the bride and groom were brought on stage to put flower necklaces around each other. They then were seated on the bench, and we were the first ones brought up for pictures. We thanked the bride and groom, and gave them our gift of 200 rupees (4 dollars) as well as some American flag pins. They enjoyed it, but were nowhere near excited of our presence as the rest of the wedding was, possibly because it was their wedding. We said our farewells around 11, as we heard that the wedding would go on until 1, and were at this point very tired. Walking out, we hardly spoke. We just laughed and smiled, and giddily returned to the hotel, knowing that we had just crashed a wedding!
We're taking an 18 hour train tomorrow to Mumbai, and fly to Prague the 17th. The train will probably be our last experience of real hardcore India of this trip, something that I will surely miss. So next time we speak; I'll be in cold weather, hanging out with my brother, eating food that doesn't make sick, showering in showers that don't make me dirtier, shitting on toilets rather than squatting, and back to the Western world and out of the madness of India. I'm excited for some things, but I'll definitely miss the zoo!

The Zoo or the Circus?

Since I arrived here, I've been trying to think of a metaphor which captures my experience in India. I thought I had it, but after last night, I think I've changed my mind. Originally, I liked to think of India as a very large zoo, with no cages and no zookeepers. I mean, literally, there are animals everywhere. Dogs roam the street, sometimes chasing tourists, and sometimes laying down with total disregard of everything else that's happening. Yesterday, Sam stepped on a dog which incited a loud squeal. Two days ago, we saw a dog laying in a hole in the middle of a motorcycle's path. The motorcycle slowed down, assuming the dog would move, and then proceeded to just run the dog over (it was a mess trying to dislodge the dog's leg from under the bike). There are chickens and goats who run around, usually sticking to their own business. There are monkeys who sit on top of buildings, in their own established societies, and descend to the streets for the occasional stolen snack from a vegetable merchant. And then there are cows; who can walk wherever they want, shit wherever they want, and eat whatever they want. However, none of these literal animals are the reason I think India is like a zoo. It's more the chaos and noise, the pollution and garbage, and the interactions that make me feel this way. I see things in the culture that are so polar opposite to everything that I am used to in the western world, and simply fall into a state of jaw-dropping utter disbelief. This should not be taken at all as an insult to Indian or Hindu culture. I do not actually think Indians are like animals, it's just the way the entire culture fuses together, in a crazy way, that makes me feel like I'm in a zoo.
And then, after last night, I decided that India might be a circus, because sometimes the most bizaar, most hilarious, most improbable events happen that no matter what, will always put a smile on your face, or in our case last night, will incite a case of hysterical laughter.
Rather than spending the whole post telling you about what I've done for the entire last week; how I nearly cried when I saw the Taj Mahal, how it was harder to get alcohol in Jaipur (the capital of the state of Rajastan) than it was in high school, how we went on a camel safari, or how we found a small pink log cabin restaurant with one stove called Joney's that makes the best grilled cheese sandwiches in the world, I'm just going to tell you about a 2 hour segment of my night last night, because it reminded me of a circus.
It started when we left one of the all-too-similar Israeli restaurants and headed back to one of our friend's guest houses. Walking down the street, we saw the stand that sells brownies and cakes, and special brownies and special cakes. Several of our friends had a terrible experience several nights ago with the special brownies (special everythings are sold everywhere in Pushkar), and so we decided to inquire to the cake baker into what these cakes were all about.
"Have you ever had one of these cakes?"
"Ahh, yes, I had one at 4 o'clock."
"Is it really only jarras (form of marijuana) that is in these cakes?"
"Yes, only jarras. Full power jarras." Bullshit. This guy was walking proof that there had to be more than jarras in these cakes. I've seen really, really high people before, but this guy was on another planet. His eyes were focused on completely different sides of me, his colorful brimmed hat was halfway off his head, his hands were moving in uncontrollable directions, his tongue was hanging out of his mouth like a dog, and his shoulder was twitching in ways it shouldn't.
"Umm, OK."
So we've seen this cake baker every night, and he always seems to have the same amount of cake, but never has any customers. So, we decided to inquire about his business model.
"How often do you bake a new cake?"
"Whenever it runs out."
"How old are these cakes."
"15 days, 1 month, 2 months, hahahaha."
Hahaha. We'll get back to him later.
So we walked some more, and several hundred meters before the guest house, I spotted a Hindu wedding. Knowing how welcoming and hospitable Hindu people are, and having seen the movie "Wedding Crashers" over 30 times, I decided to go inside and check it out. It turns out it was just the pre-wedding night party, but after an hour of a combination of smiling, bowing my head, and bullshiting, I made friends with the groom's brother, and got an invitation to the wedding tonight. Wedding crashing will be the topic of my next blog post.
I arrived at the guest house after about an hour, and chilled with our friends there for a while. We watched some Israeli do some crazy fire numb-chuck show with trance music. It was all fun, until the owner of the hotel came down to the garden, half naked with a blanket wrapped around his neck (why it wasn't around his entire body is beyond me), and told us it was time to leave. So Sam and I, as well as the 2 Australian girls we were with starting walking back to our guest house. It was around 11, so most of the shops were closed. However, one small food/drink/general store was open, and there were two Indians sitting outside with the owner, so we decided to join them for a chat. The owner sat relatively quiet at his desk, perched over the others like a bird guarding his nest. One Indian sat on his motorbike, slurping an ice cream cone, with a face full of chocolate and laughs. And the other Indian sat on a step, his head buried in between his legs, unable to bear his surroundings while keeping a straight face. This is going to be fun, we thought. We sat down, and started listening to their conversation, which happened to be entirely in Hindi. However, we understood every bit of the conversation because nothing was actually said; they just laughed the entire time. It was an amazing sight, two full grown Indian men laughing like little school children, nearly in tears, eating ice cream. Then, the more coherent one, the one on the bike eating ice cream, started to explain to us what was going on.
"My friend is a Bollywood movie star."
"Haha, cool."
"Yes. My friend has many man friends who will pull down their pants for him."
"Haha, not so cool."
Laughter ensued for another 3 minutes. Then, the one sitting on the step pulled out an air vaporizer or something that was still in its box, and the laughter between the two rapidly increased. It would have been hopeless to figure out why this air vaporizer sparked so much laughter had another man, who appeared completely sober, not decided to join in on our get-together.
"The man says that he purchased the air vaporizer from the shop owner for 150 rupees (3 dollars), but he has absolutely no idea what it is or what it is used for. His friend just told him to buy it because it looked cool."
OK, it's funny for several high school freshmen, stoned out of their minds, to buy something completely useless for 3 dollars. But when 3 dollars could be half your day's salary, and your over the age of 50, it's frickin' hilarious. The laughter continued for another 5 minutes. All the while, the men were attempting to build up the strength and focus to tell us something in English. Finally, the man eating the ice cream was ready to speak.
"My friend says that if he could pull down the pants of anyone here, full power, it would be him (pointing to me)."
The place erupted in laughter. I jumped up and ran. The man sitting on the steps starting yelling "joke, joke!" and began slapping the man on the bike. This put the man on the bike over the top- he was now on the floor, rolling around, saying "full power, full power," laughing at his friend's inability to explain himself. They were probably joking, but it was also probably our cue to leave. So we left, and thanked our friends for some good laughs.
We approached the main street of Pushkar, which several hours ago was bustling with tourists eating laffas, and merchants trying to sell whatever kitschy items they possessed. It was now relatively empty and easy to walk through, the vegetable and fruit merchants had gathered their goods off the street, the chai shops along the street had pulled their chairs and benches in and locked up. The dogs, goats, and cows had settled into their respective corners and ledges for the night. However, there was a group of people gathered around several awake cows, as well as our friend from earlier, the cake baker. We scrambled to an angle from which we could see what was going on, and watched as the cake baker fed cakes to the cows. Uh oh, I thought.
"What kind of cake did you give the cow?"
There was no response, as the cake baker was fully involved in a conversation with the two cows.
"I give cow apple cake and special cake because he pays me 100 rupees, the other cow pays me nothing so I give him nothing, you pay 100 rupees I give full power cake to cow."
No thanks, I thought. I'm not going to encourage anymore of this, I decided, especially after the cow which was being fed special cakes began coughing and sneezing, and sliding his front hooves in a rapidly aggressive manner. Another cue to leave, we decided.
It was now midnight, and the streets were empty. The streets were nearly quiet, as the wedding music had died down. However, as we turned into our guest house's alley, we began to hear a very loud, yet indiscernible noise which faintly sounded like a type of music. We walked through the alley, and approached a small cul de sak, with two massive amps stacked on top of one another, under a tree, blaring this obnoxiously loud music, with a crowd one no one sitting around listening. We searched the area nearby, and ceased to find any sign of the music. We finally came across a group of about 5 people playing instruments, singing, and clapping. Why the elaborate sound system with no audience, and why the ear-splitting volume at such an hour? It's possible there is an answer to this question, but most likely, there isn't. Because like most other things in India, some of the most bizaar things occur, with absolutely no plausible explanation behind them. But I've learned that it's just the way things are here, and there's no real point in questioning them or trying to change them. It's better to just enjoy the show, or the circus, or the zoo, or whatever it is that India is.
I'm having a hard time finishing this blog post because outside there is a 30 piece marching band which has created a huge traffic jam. In the middle of the whole jam is a woman sitting on a cart with two pieces of luggage being pushed by a rickshaw driver. Around her are a group of 30 women dressed in traditional and colorful saris, as well as several small children, all stuck in a bottleneck trying to squeeze into the entrance of a small temple. Several motorbikes are laying on their horns, and obviously, there are several cows in the pack, and one dog. No one is moving, and no one seems to be doing anything to fix the jam. But like everything else in India, something will happen, possibly on accident, and the situation will be solved.

Enter India

I last left off as we were preparing to go on the 10 day Annapurna base camp trek in Nepal. The trek was absolutely incredible, but there isn't much to write about it in a summarizing blog post. Words really can't describe what it is like to reach Annapurna Base Camp at 4100 m, standing in a bowl, surrounded 360 degrees by the tallest mountains in the world, mountains that looked as if they were so close and so attainable, but really have only been reached by few people in history. It was amazing, and it got really, really cold at night.
So that's about it for the trek. We did fire our guide 4 days in because he was a mean drunk who we figured out one hour into the trek we really didn't need. After the 9 day trek, we returned with 2 Israelis, whom we met after firing our guide, to Pokhara, which is simply, the greatest city in the world.
Pokhara is small and very touristy. Because of the Maoist government, all the bars close at 11 (except for some that consider themselves "underground" which close at 1130). Most of the restaurants are pretty much the same, and the guesthouses are nothing special. However, after returning from a long and pretty grueling trek, with my metabolism racing faster than lighting, there is nothing better than relaxing and eating in such a chill town. And that is what we did. I can't say that we did nothing all day; we woke up early every morning and went to the German bakery, then went for massive bowls of Meusli loaded with luscious fruit and yogurt, went and played several games of pool, then went to one of the many Israeli eateries to get schnitzel, went and walked around, then went to Cafe Shenkin (named after a street in Tel Aviv) for sandwiches, went and read, then went for dinner at the Pokhara Steakhouse (massive beef tenderloins in a Hindu country, pretty impressive), and finally, after a long day, went to sleep. Ahhh, Pokhara. After several days of that, and as our metabolism started to slow down to our adjustment from walking 9 miles of stairs a day to the Pokhara lifestyle, we decided to head for India. We took an 8 hour bus ride through the beautiful Nepali landscape, saying goodbye to the mountains which had been our home for the last 2 weeks, and arrived to the smell and dirt and noise and shit of the Indian border. After being slapped with a 40 dollar visa penalty because we overstayed our time in Nepal (which was all worth it), we crossed into the madness. Compared to all the countries we have traveled through, this border was virtually non existent. There was a sign above us that read "Welcome To India" which could have easily been missed, and absolutely no security. However, it would be impossible to not be able to distinguish exactly where the border was. The moment I stepped out of Nepal, it was like entering a different world. The ground was covered with unidentifiable plastic items, cow shit, and beggars rolling in shit. The sun was no longer visible, and the air was heavy with smog. The chaotic noise ripped through my unadjusted ears. Shopkeepers and street salesmen repeated "What do you want?" over and over again. Everywhere, it smelled like urine. We scrambled to find a bus to take us the additional 2 hours to Gorakhpur, where we would catch our train in the morning. We found the bus, and climbed on top to strap our backpacks on before loading. We entered a relatively small bus, with less leg room than even the Cambodian buses. It was ok, we thought, as the bus sat 32 and there were only about 30 people on the bus. We found our seats next to a Dutch couple, the only other white people on the bus. We settled in and got quasi-comfortable, hot and sticky, yet relieved and excited for the evening breeze to fly through the moving bus, expecting that we would probably be leaving in the next few minutes because the bus was almost full. However, in India, expectations rarely meet reality. We waited another half an hour, until we fitted, no exaggeration, 70 people on the bus. For the entire duration of the bus, I had either a fat old woman straddling my leg, her dress stuck on a different chair, a man's groin impressed on my ear, or another man kneeling on the ground, fighting my sized 13 feet for a place to rest. My arms didn't fit at my sides, so I had no choice but to stretch them around the shoulders of the 2 Indians on either side of me, which they probably thought was normal. I was severely uncomfortable, yet, the entire ride (except for the 6 elbows to the face I received from the ticket collector), Sam and I laughed and smiled. The only element of the bus ride which failed to surpass my expectations of madness was the smell. For a bus full of people who wipe their asses with their hands, rarely shower, eat a curry filled diet, and are just naturally smelly, it wasn't so bad.
We arrived to Gorakhpur later in the evening, which was, if possible, more mad. We went to the train station to try to buy tickets for the next morning, and could not walk through without stepping on a body or the mat or bag of a body. People were pissing on the walls outside. The lines were unorganized, signs were non descriptive, English speaking attendants were non existent, and we were the only tourists there. After much work, we got our tickets for the next morning, and retreated back to the grossest hotel we have stayed in so far during the trip. The hotel, which had an eerie resemblance to the hostel in Eli Roth's horror film and to the mental institution in The Shining, did have TV's in the room. So before going to sleep, we watched a little bit of the news, which is when we began to learn about the events occurring in Mumbai. We didn't learn much, there was no volume and all we saw were "Shootings at Hotel," so we went to sleep unalarmed. However, 3 hours later, we were wakened by aggressive , violent, and non-persisting knocks down the hall. I was tired after a full day of traveling, and fell right back to sleep. Several seconds later though, I woke again; the knocking was approaching closer and closer to our door. Finally, it arrived. Sam and I both shot up, and looked at each other. Surprisingly, I wasn't at all scared, more just wondering what I was supposed to do. We stared at the closed latch at the top of the door, when suddenly the door burst open, and a middle aged Indian man in slacks and a button down peered in at us. I waved, and he charmingly said "OK, goodnight," and moved on to the next door. What the fuck, I thought. Wondering what was up, I walked out to the hallway and saw a policeman and several other men, and I decided that whatever was going on, the guy who was just knocking on my door was probably on my side. Unable to fall back to sleep immediately (for obvious reasons) we turned on the TV, and learned about everything happening in Mumbai. Turns out, the men were just searching the hotel to make sure there were not terrorists, which makes zero sense at all because there are absolutely no tourists in Gorakhpur, and absolutely nothing worth of attacking.
So the next morning we woke up early, and took a 6 hour train ride to Varanasi. We rode sleeper class (the 2nd lowest), and met many, interesting people. Someone could probably write an entire book on "People You Meet on an Indian Train," so for the sake of time and my meusli which should be arriving soon, I'm not going to describe all the interesting characters I met.
And then there's Varanasi, which like the rest of the places we've been in India for the last 3 days, is also madness. We arrived at our Lonely Planet recommended hostel after searching through labrynthed alleys for ten minutes. We spent the day and night chilling out and playing pool, running into some different Israelis we met in Nepal who happen to have gone to high school with one of my Israeli cousins.
The next day, we descended down from the lovely rooftop bar to the burning ghats, the element which makes Varanasi one of the holiest Hindu city in the world. Sitting right on the Ghanges river, we watched as body after body was ceremoniously carried to the fire, unwrapped from the gold and colorful plastic and cloth, and placed into the raging flames. The heat was unbearable, and the smoke smelled like oil. Beggars and touts were ubiquitous, bullshitting about scams and other nonsense. At one point, a dog jumped in a dying fire and pulled out a big piece of meat, tearing it apart several feet from us. A cow walked down some stairs, causing everyone to jump out of the way in a frenzy, with one man losing his shoe in the process. The cow then let loose several gallons of urine onto the shoe, without reaction by the crowd, and several seconds later the shoe was gone. Men with only rags wrapped around their waists shoveled the ashes in the river, as other men waded in the river pulling boats. Other people bathed and drank several meters down the motionless stream. I was speechless as I watched what I perceived was a scene bursting with life. We sat there for an hour without speaking, absorbing and learning, listening and watching.
We walked around for a while, and then ascended back to the rooftop bar for good food, music, pool, and company. Later on, we went back out for sunset and a religious ceremony at one of the main ghats, and then returned back to the hotel.
We're off to Agra tonight, and tomorrow we'll be sitting in front of the Taj Mahal sipping Chai.
One quick side note: If you've at all noticed at any times a fixation on functions relating to the bathroom in previous blog posts, it's with good reason. After a month of dealing with that shit (literally), I finally went to the doctor in Pokhara and was diagnosed with ghiardia and dysentry, which I probably got from drinking bad water. I'm not sure if I'm better now, but it really hasn't impacted my life that much.
And also, I'm not sure by reading this what you may think my feelings thus far about India are, so I want to make it absolutely clear: it's really crazy, but I really like it :)

The Nepali Way

My Grandma always says that in her next life, she wants to come back as one of my cats. Well, if you remember from one of my early blog posts, I decided that in my next life I want to come back as a Mongolian warrior. But after that life, which will probably not be too long because Mongolian warriors probably don't live to old ages because they fight a lot, I want to come back a Nepali sherpa or shopkeeper.
Nepal has to be one of the greatest places on earth. The tourists are trekkers, and rather than stores selling t-shirts, they sell good North Face and Arcteryx knockoffs. But before I talk about my first few days in Nepal, I'll give you a quick recap of what i was doing in Bangkok: shitting and feeling feverish.
That's right; I thought I had traveler's diarrhea several weeks ago, and it turns out, I probably did. But I never really got rid of it, and the 2 days I spent in Bangkok before flying to Kathmandu were miserable. We wandered aimlessly around Bangkok, going to one of the largest malls in Southeast Asia, and walking up and down the infamous Khao San Road, where fake IDs are sold on the street and drivers offer to take you to "ping pong show" (not table tennis) every step of the way, the whole time feeling more and more like I wanted to die. So I decided to throw in the towel; managing to make it back to my hotel before pulling a Sam. I slept a lot and starting taking my antibiotics, and although I was dreading my 4 hour flight the next day, everything turned out to be OK.
We arrived in Kathmandu the evening of the 11th. Sam and I decided against buying a Lonely Planet just for Nepal, so we had no idea of places to go except for what we heard was the backpacker's area, Thamel. As we exited airport security, we could hear the mobs of taxi drivers outside. More hassles just like Vietnam, I thought, as Sam and I prepared to fight off the swarms and find a non threatening yet non retarded looking driver. It was then that we were spotted by an airport taxi driver, a driver who is allowed into the airport to pull clients. We usually never go with these types of drivers out of principle, as they usually mark up their prices double because they are "official." But this driver was different- he was a comedic and sales genius. He lured us in with the most incredible persuasion skills, using excellent timing and rhetoric, knowing when to ease off, and appealing to our every emotion throughout the conversation. It was truly remarkable. We asked our new friend to take us to his company's hotel, something we would never do wilingly or unwillingly, also out of principle. But we wanted our new friend to recieve the commision, as he had accompanied us in our taxi with someone else driving. The whole time he told us funny stories about his life in Nepal, his claimed visits to Bangkok, his multiple girlfriends, his former job as a sherpa, his survival of yellow fever, and his part time job as a moderately succesful actor in Kathmandu (his day was spent shooting a sitcom, playing a playboy on a motorcycle). All these things may or may not be true, however, I have no doubts about his acting skills.
And this is the story of mostly everyone we came across in Kathmandu. Energetic, enthusiastic, outgoing, and very friendly. We stumbled across a shop selling yak wool coats, bought one each, and then struck up a conversation with the owner talking about yoga. The next morning, he picked us up at our hostel at 430 AM and took us to a 3 hour yoga class. The class was nothing like the Yoga I do at home; it was with mainly older people, and was a mix of light aerobics, stretching, breathing, and meditation exercises. It was excellent none the less, and at the end, we thanked our host and said farewell to a stranger, who for no reasons other than his good heart took us in and treated us like old friends.
Which brings me to the next reason behind my extreme admiration for the Nepalese, their hosting ability. Sam has a close family friend in Seattle who has an uncle or a cousin or something who lives with his family in Kathmandu. We decided to call up the friend, who we had been told would take us around. On the phone, Dixit sounded very friendly, and told us he would pick us up at 5 PM.
We didn't really know what to expect; who he was, his age, what to wear, so we did what we have been doing every night for the last several weeks; Sam wore jeans and a button down he bought in Vietnam, and I wore one of the t-shirts I bought (it happened to be Goodmorning Vietnam night) and a pair of cooler (in temperature) pants. 5 o'clock came and Dixit entered the lobby and spotted us, greeting us with a huge Nepali smile on his face. He wore jeans and a nicer shirt, and was in his 40's. We followed him out of the hotel, and walked several blocks away from the busy traffic of Thamel to where his car was. Dixit introduced us to his wife, his driver, and two daughters, ages 14 and 12. He then proceeded to take us to the nicest hotel in all of Kathmandu for a buffet dinner. All of this would have been amazing, except for the fact that I was still suffering from the stomach ailments I described above, and have been describing for the last several blog posts. What I have learned about Nepali hosts is that while they are very generous, they virtually insist that you take them up on their offers. This was a bit troubling to me, as we arrived at an incredible buffett with over 50 dishes. This probably meant that the meal had no definite ending, which was even more troubling to me. And even more troubling than that was the fact that we were eating Indian food; not light French or Italian food, but rich, heavy, spicy, Indian food. I was screwed. I sat down, and was ordered a beer. I drank my beer, and then followed suit and approached the buffet. How do I do this without getting sick, I thought. I began the meal with light vegetables, crackers, and a light pasta dish, already consuming more than I had eaten in the last 3 days combined. I finished my food, but detected disappointment in the amount of food I had eaten relative to my size. "My daughter eats more than you!" Dixit said. I looked down at my stomach, looked at my hosts who seemed to be nodding their heads in encouragement yes, looked back down at my stomach and frowned, and then embarked on my oddysey of excessive glutony. I stuffed my plate with the thickest stews, oiliest meats, milkiest cheeses, and 18 pieces of naan, an Indian flat bread. If I was going to shit my pants, I might as well do it with a good meal, I thought. So I ate, and ate, and ate, helping after helping of undescribably delicous food. And then I ate some more. And I sat in my chair, seeming to be a ticking time bomb of shit waiting to explode. I thought about how terrible it would be if I spent 45 minutes in the bathroom while my hosts waited, or worse, if I couldn't even make it to the bathroom. The meal went on, and we talked and laughed... and the urge to go never came. And so dessert time arrived, and I ate 4 creme puffs, several pieces of flan, and lots of fruit...and it never came. And after dessert, I felt great! I was liberated from my submission to shitting that had held me captive for days! I was so relieved. I told my hosts about my past stomach problems and laughed as we walked around the beautiful hotel garden and former palace of the Nepali kingdom, now an annex to the hotel. The whole dinner, the food, meeting Dixit and his family, the hotel, was the best dining experience I have had in Asia. It was an unforgetable night.
We arrived back at the hotel just after 8, right in time for the planned skype conference call I had with my parents and brother to talk about my sister's bat mitzvah. When I arrived, however, I realized that there would be no skype call, because there was no power in Thamel. See, everyday, for a total of 6 hours a day, the Nepali government shuts down the electricity throughout the country beacuse they simply don't have enough. Which is the first of two weird things about Nepal, the second being that their clocks are 15 minutes behind the time zone where the country is located (it took me so long to figure this one out).
So, now I am in Pokhara, getting ready to go on a 10 day trek tomorrow to the Annapurna Base Camp. It should be an amazing trek, and I am really looking forward to it. So next time we speak, I'll probably be in India!

Here are some pictures of Sam and I with the actor, at dinner with Dixit and his family, with some Japanese friends we met throwing up a hi-hi, and me playing soccer with a few little Nepalese kids at a lunch bus stop today. We started out playing with the ball in our hands, but then the enormous globs of snot on their upper lips started leaking onto the ball, and it was just a huge mess, so I decided soccer would be best. At one point, the bamboo ball we were playing with (I bought it in Thailand) rolled under the van pictured, and a small boy, eager to touch the ball, chased the ball with his head down, and not seeing the parked van, slammed right into its' side. It made such a loud thump! In the US there probably would have been a lawsuit, but in Nepal, everyone just laughed, including the boy, and we kept playing. That's the Nepali way!















Looks like I can't upload the pictures (I think I'm on a dial up connection). Will try again later

''Oh Baby, Baby Blue''

I wrote this blog a couple days ago, but the internet in Cambodia is so sketchy that I couldn't publish. So right now I'm in Bangkok, we arrived late last night and are leaving for Kathmandu, Nepal tomorrow afternoon. Bangkok is one of the craziest cities I've ever been in. It's completely westernized, but more than westernized, it's completely israelized. There are massive billboards in only Hebrew, restaurants, travel agencies, stores, and hotels with only hebrew on their signs. I had heard there were a lot of Israelis in Thailand; I never imagined it would be like this. So this caps off the first 5 weeks of our trip, we're leaving SE Asia, leaving the familiar sights and culture that we've been with, and leaving the same backpackers that we've seeing at every city we stay in. I'm not sure what to expect from Nepal and India, but I am very excited for whatever the change will bring.




Those are the lyrics to the song that some drunken Cambodians were singing while chugging bowls of beer and ice in the pouring rain in the backpacker's alley in Phnom Penh last week. They stormed into the restaurant/bar/''chill zone'' which we were at and demanded that we drink. I think I've mentioned this in the last several blogs, but in case I didn't, my stomach has been moderately upset the last 2 weeks. It has caused severe discomfort at times, but also created some epicly histerical stories which will be told at home. I seem to be better now; I have targeted the several cups of coffee that I had been drinking a day to the reason I was near shitting my pants at all minutes of the day, and have since eliminated this toxin from my body. So back to the guys singing and drinking; I was faced with a decision: plea injury stomach pain and decline, or accept their offer of beer lao and friendship. To the surprise of everyone I was sitting with who had seen me doubled over in agonizing pain with intermittent trips to the bathroom all day, I chose the latter. I took the bowl to the face, and yelled and sung along in liberation. The group of 8 people I was with all began to sing along in jubilee, and we all got trashed that night. And thus, I have decided that the best cure for traveler's diarrhea is...4 vodka red bulls, several bowls of beer lao, and singing and dancing in the pouring rain with Cambodians.

Phnom Penh overall kind of sucked. We spent a day and a half there, a day of which was spent at the killing fields and the S-21 prison, or killing fields museum. If you don't know anything about the killing fields, you are similar to the overwhelming majority of the Cambodian population who knows nothing about the Khmer Rouge, a government which waged genocide killing 2 million of its own people only 30 years ago. For tourists coming to Cambodia, the genocide is a main attraction. Every tourist goes to the killing fields, and every 9 year old book seller on every corner in every big city in the country sells countless copied books on the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot. However, for Cambodians, it is a huge taboo. After the Khmer Rouge fell, soldiers who had brutally carried out the killings were integrated back into normal society, and became the next door neighbors of victims of torture and those who had lost family members under the oppresion. It's quite sad, but also understandable that this integration occured. Cambodians were living in a totally wrecked economy, and in the years after hundreds of thousands died of disease or starvation. So rather than continue living in such dire conditions, they had no choice but to forget the past, unite as one country, and try to improve their own standard of living. And it has worked, with the help of foreign aid and countless NGO operations, the country was put back on its feet. However, leaders of the Khmer Rouge, those individuals who brainwashed young soldiers and orchestrated this terrible genocide, remain uncharged for their crimes against humanity, and every year that passes is a year that justice is not delivered. In addition to this, because of all the external help that Cambodia has recieved, the government has become completely complacent and corrupt. NGO's run health care, school systems, and pretty much everything else. Someone who worked for the World Bank in Cambodia captured the government's daily productivity best; "they get to work at 9, break for lunch at 11, get back to work at 3, and leave for the day at 5." The government has even outsourced the management of the killing fields, the museums, even Angkor Wat, one of the most magical and unbelievably cool places in the world.

Which brings me to where I am now, Siem Reap, a small laid back town which is the hub for tourists traveling to Angkor Wat. Siem Reap is awesome. We have spent the last 5 days here, playing pool, watching pirated tv shows that we bought (we're currently on season 1 of the wire), walking around, and playing lots of soccer and volleyball. Every day at 430, some tuk-tuk drivers take a break from hassling tourists and doing nothing to meet at our hostel to play volleyball. For short people, they're pretty good. However, and this is something that makes me mad but would make my good friend J Keesh absolutely livid; every time they set the ball, they hit a blatantly illegal shot. Illegal shot would actually be an understatement, they actually nearly catch the ball, hold it for 3 seconds, and throw it down. It's like watching 9 year olds play "Nukem" at camp. This wouldn't be so bad except that they have so much respect for one player, a player they label as "the best in Siem Reap," and all he does is catch and throw the ball every time. I've stayed away from their volleyball games, and arrive at the court around 515, right before sun-down, for soccer. We play 5 v 5 on a hard mud/dirt court which is about the size of my basement. The game is competitively fast moving yet it has many stops; the ball goes out of bounds nearly every 5 passes. However, it is very fun, and is expanded on my repetoire of different styles of soccer I've experienced since being in SE Asia.

So everything here is great. A couple mornings ago, we watched as the world watched Barack Obama become the next President. We bought Obama Biden shirts written in Cambodian, passed out American flag pins, and sat in a bar with a bunch of Americans, and others. Some people were crying. Some Cambodians were running down the street yelling "Obamaaaaaaaa", others were simply observing the commotion. It was a really cool day, and since then, every time I say I'm American, I get a warm reception and some comment about how it's a good time to be an American. Well f that, it's always a good time to be an American!