On the lam with Tibetian Buddhist monks

We decided to spend a few days at a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery a couple hours from Mysore because it sounded cool in our travel book.

The place is called Bylekuppe and it is currently home to over 5000 monks.

We came to see the Golden Temple (an incredibly beautiful building with three enormous golden Buddhas). Here's a shot of one:


When we got here late last night, though, we learned that foreigners need a special permit to come here (hmmmmm interesting...) and that any foreigner found without a permit faces five years in jail and a large fine (never been to an Indian jail before...). The locals told us that the cops purposely hang out around the temple to bust foreigners.

Dan and I actually had a conversation that went something like this:

So, if a cop finds us, how much do you think is an appropriate bribe? Five dollars? Ten? Do you think they would let us make a stop at an ATM?

If we did get sent to jail who could we call with connections? (you'll have to guess if you made the list)

I convinced Dan to stay since I think the likelihood of jail time for Americans visiting a monastery is slim....it would just be bad PR. I mean, it's not like we're smuggling crack...we're hanging with holy men.

Last night we watched monks "debate." I know several of you reading are Tibetan Buddhists, so perhaps you can explain what was going on to the rest of us. There were about a thousand robed monks in the courtyard of the temple in pairs. In each pair the "debater" yelled, stamped his feet and clapped his hands at the other guy. The whole thing was fascinatingly bizarre. And then all at once, they all stopped and lined up to eat.

Here's a monk in an awesome hat!

We're leaving tomorrow, and we're keeping a low profile until then. The people here have been very nice at advising us when it's safe to go out and when we should just hang out at the Monastery.

So while we are avoiding the "po-po", here are some more pictures from Mysore:

Flowers for sale at the market


The colored dyes

Dirty Clothes and Palaces

We've hightailed it out of the big city of Mumbai and are now spending a few days in Mysore.

One of the cool things we did in Mumbai was check out the "Dhobi Wallahs" which are the dudes who wash ridiculous amounts of clothing for pennies (ok rupees). There are hundreds of men washing clothes at these concrete vats.

They beat the sh*t out of the clothes on concrete slabs, pour bleach on things and dip the whites in lovely blue chemicals. We are still amazed, that both here and in Africa, there are hundreds of jobs that have been eliminated in the West by the use of machines like, oh a traffic light, washing machine, lawn mower (in Africa, a common job is hacking grass with a machete).

Mysore is a pretty cool town. Today we went to Mysore Palace which was spectacular. Plus...note my cool new Indian outfit in the picture (I'm trying to blend....hahahahahahahah)

The food here is great, we've been gorging on thalis, dosas and chai. Dan has discovered "barfi" a milk and sugar sweet that he's eating by the pound. We are staying at a hotel that costs a grand total of $6 a night -- I think it's a step above the now infamous "19 bars of soap" hotel that my brother Mike and his girlfriend Jackie stayed at a few weeks ago in Central America (If you haven't checked out their blog about the bike trip there is a link on the right).

The other big news is that my parents have decided that since 2 out of 3 kids are out of the country, that they should join the fun. They just booked a flight to India to join us for a while at the end of October.

Finally, I know that many of you have been to India before. Please post comments with your favorite places, hotels etc. We love travel advice.

P.S. Dan and I have both now finished reading Harry Potter... so let the on-line discussion begin. Will there be another book? Are all the people who are dead, really dead? Who would name a child Hugo?

Keep on Scrollin'

I started a post in Africa and finished posting pictures from a much quicker internet connection here in India. My blogging skills are limited, so I can't figure out how to move it to the top.

Scroll down if you want to read it. The title is "Round and Round the Merry-Go Round."

Mumbai (Bombay)

Mumbai is not at all like we expected. We thought we would be crushed by people, that it would be unbearably hot and humid, and that it would be dirty and hectic. It's actually pretty relaxed, the heat/humidity isn't that bad, and no one's hassling us at all. Maybe we're just jaded after being in Tanzania, where touts were very aggressive and we couldn't walk more than 5 feet without someone trying to sell us a safari or a painting of giraffes. There's beautiful architecture here (lots of European/gothic style buildings with grand facades), good shopping, and nice people. Plus the food is great: today we had thalis (an all you can eat lunch for two -- all vegetarian -- with several different dishes, breads, rice, etc.) in a nice, air conditioned restaurant for about $11. I was so stuffed we had to wait a few hours before getting our gelatto next door. In the meantime, I got my hair cut -- for $1.50 ($2.25 with a nice tip). Oh yeah -- we also went to court today. (Stop laughing -- it's a beautiful building. Though this does mean I've been to court in Kenya, Tanzania, and India (oh, and Ireland, too, just not on this trip).)

It's pretty expensive here by India standards, though -- about $26 for our air conditioned hotel room -- and we still have not been "discovered" by Bollywood scouts (even though we're trying to look as pretty as possible -- hence, the haircut), so we will probably be moving on at the end of the week.

Kwaheri and Namaste

Just a quick note to let y'all know that we've made it safely to India. We flew from Kenya to Addis Ababa and then on to Mumbai on Ethiopian Airlines. The airline was fantastic -- our first flight was only an hour and forty minutes long, but we got a full meal (and they remembered our vegetarian requests); plus, we got to watch Everybody Hates Chris. We got a second dinner on the flight to India. The plane could've crashed and it still would've been better than Continental.

We arrived in Mumbai a little after 5 a.m. local time. Our taxi ride to the city center, which normally takes an hour and a half, took about 30 minutes because today happens to be a minor holiday (yea for no traffic!). We've just eaten a huge meal, and we're heading out to shop for designer clothes and to try to find a way to get ourselves into a Bollywood movie.

And in case you're wondering, we're now 9.5 hours ahead of east coast time. That's right, nine and a half.

Who says the romance is gone?

Y'all might think that, after Deb and I have been together for more than 11 years, the romance
is gone.

Not true, my friends.

On Monday, August 13, Deb and I celebrated our 1-year GetDown-iversary.

We forgot. (Thanks, Mike L. -- aka Shaggy -- for sending a congratulatory e-mail reminding us.)

Instead, here's how we spent our anniversary:

We woke up and ate breakfast (included in the $13 we paid for our hotel room).

So far, so good.

We then attended court proceedings for an hour and a half.

Romantic, right?

We were in Arusha, Tanzania, where the International Criminal Tribunal Rwanda (prosecutions of those responsible for the 1994 genocide) is located. We attended the trial of the former Minister of External Affairs (accused of conspiring with other government officials and media outlets to perpetuate the genocide). We saw the defendant's attorney give opening remarks (in French, with a translation in English via headsets) for about 90 minutes, at which point there was a recess and we left. Here's a brief summary of what happened, though: the former Minister did nothing wrong. In fact, the defendant is a saint: he worked tirelessly to ensure democracy and human rights; every time something bad happened or some decision was made to execute people, the defendant was making speeches before the UN Security Council for food aid. But the most convincing arguments were those about the prosecution's lack of evidence. According to the defense attorney, the prosecution's witnesses were, by and large, illiterate. Therefore, not credible. Case dismissed.

We ate lunch, then got in a "shared taxi" (a beat-up old station wagon carrying 8 people, with about a dozen live chickens in a basket strapped to the roof) and hurled towards the Kenyan border. For some strange reason, the strong smell of gasoline did not dissipate the entire time, so we arrived at the border a little lightheaded.

We made it through immigration and arrived back in Kenya.

On the other side of the border, we took a matatu (shared minibus) to Kajiado -- about 65 miles away (which, naturally, took us close to 3 hours). When we got just to the edge of town, there was a loud "clang" and the brakes no longer worked. Everyone else got out, but the driver told us he'd take us to a hotel. We drove slowly. Luckily, the town was pretty flat.

We arrived at the recommended hotel. It was full. Walked to a nearby hotel. Also full. Walked a little over a mile, with our bags, to another hotel on the outskirts of town (escorted by an employee of hotel #2, who wanted to make sure we found a place).

I'll pause for a moment to describe this hotel. We walked in, and there were a few people at the bar. We found some guy with keys, and he told us that the price was 1700 shillings (about $26) -- very expensive. Then he said the price for Kenya residents was 1100 shillings. Here's how the conversation went:

Him: "Are you Kenya residents?"
Me: "No, not yet."
Him: "Because I can give you the residents' price if you are."
Me: "Okay."
Him: "So are you a resident?"
Me: "No, not yet."
Him: "Okay, I'll give you the residents' price."

We paid, and he showed us to the room. Then he said there's no water in the room (he then brought a 5-gallon bucket for us). When we got there, it seemed like no one had stayed in this room in quite some time: there were cobwebs in the sink, ceiling panels were missing, paint was peeling, etc. Whatever. We've stayed in worse.

We went out to find dinner, but since it was dark and we were more than a mile from the center of town, we tried to find something close. We made it to a little restaurant a few hundred yards away and ordered ourselves some beans, cabbage, sukumo wiki (kale cooked with salt and onion), lentils, and chapatti (a kind of bread, like Indian naan but greasier). The meal cost about $2.50. And that included entertainment: a DVD involving a Kenyan man, on a quest in the wilderness, who's attacked by snakes and nagged by his wife.

We went to sleep.

But wait, there's more.

The next morning, I wasn't feeling so well. Not well at all. I spent the next three days sleeping, communing with various squat toilets, and doing my best to force one or two bites of food into my mouth. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

When we left our room at the hotel, we went to find breakfast (which, according to signs in the hotel, was included with the room rate). Unfortunately, there was not a soul in sight. No one at the restaurant. No one at the bar. No one at reception. No one anywhere. Remember "The Shining?" Kind of like that. We started wondering whether the hotel existed at all and whether the people we thought we saw were, in fact, ghosts.

So in case you're wondering how we keep the romance alive: an anniversary with court, a five hour fume-filled drive, a cholera-filled meal, and a ghost hotel.

Round and Round the Merry-Go-Round

As you are well aware, we are now in India. However, I wanted to let you know what I was up to last week in Africa while Dan was lying, sick with a stomach bug, moaning in pain. I went to a party! I know that you are all shocked that I didn't sit around and nurse him back to health. (LOL)

We decided to spend our last few days in Africa in a remote part of southern Kenya at a community environmental project called Kudu Hills. We learned about Kudu hills bout from another traveler.

Kudu Hills is about an hour in the back of a pickup from the nearest town. It's in Masai land and the kind of place where you schlep out all your food and water. And yes....be shocked people.....since Dan was sick, I cooked for 3 days....over firewood and a little propane stove.

While out in Kudu Hills, we got invited to attend a community ceremony for a 17 year old Masai boy who had "graduated" to his next level. The Masai boys go through a series of stages where you have to prove yourself in various ways. This boy had recently been circumcised etc.

Here's the young warrior.

Since the men were going to get together and shoot the shit and hold this ceremony, the "mamas" (everyone over the age of 15 is "mama" 'cause presumably you have at least one baby on your back) decided to hold a "Merry-Go-Round."

A Merry-Go-Round is when all the women get together, cook a big lunch and raise some money to help with the school expenses. Each time it is at a different woman's home and she gets the money.

I spent the day cooking with all the women, while the men sat in the shade and drank tea. Hardly any of the women spoke English, but they had no problem bossing me around in Masai telling me to peel potatoes with a machete, (I should note I got pretty good and I think even my grandma Bella would be proud of my peeling abilities with a knife), chop onions, hold babies and stir huge pots cooking on the wood fires.

The men's job was to kill 3 goats. Then the old women hacked the goats to pieces with a machete...nothing like being splattered with goat in the middle of the bush.

Here is the goat (yum)


A few photos of some of the women.

I drank a lot of chai, ate a whole bunch of goat and had my hair played with by about 40 little girls.

Here's one more picture of me and Choo the dog at Kudu Hills (Dan tried to steal the dog and take it with us)