Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Squishing down the streets with damp toes all soggy from sludge n' slush with my jeans threatening ever treacherously to suddenly fall down around my ankles in a sudden surrender to gravity, I grin.
Snow.
Every time I'm gone, everyone tells me how lucky I am to have missed the cold and tragic icy frozen wasteland of the Canadian winter prairies. And I think to myself,
"Ah, yes."
And I giggle at the poor chill-trembling bastards bumbling about bundled up back home.
And then I come home.
And then it snows.
And instantly I am swept up in the magic and fervor of the first snowfall.
Snow.
Every time I'm gone, everyone tells me how lucky I am to have missed the cold and tragic icy frozen wasteland of the Canadian winter prairies. And I think to myself,
"Ah, yes."
And I giggle at the poor chill-trembling bastards bumbling about bundled up back home.
And then I come home.
And then it snows.
And instantly I am swept up in the magic and fervor of the first snowfall.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
...as read by Vincent Price...
After staying in a posh house in Chandigarh, we decided to take a bus to Shimla.
Shimla is in the foothills of the Himalayas and, if you're lucky, you can catch glimpses of the Himalayas themselves through the mist and the fog. The entire town is stunningly beautiful. And cold! We weren't quite prepared for the cooler temperatures of the mountains, having only brought with us a small jacket each. So, sadly, after staying only one night, we decided to make our way back down the mountain.
We decided to go to Haridwar next...a mere 10 hour cruise down the switchbacks of the foothills.
Tynessa and I, just to be on the safe side, each popped a gravol before beginning the treacherous descent.
...and thank god for that...
About fifteen minutes into the drive a woman behind me was sick into our provided "hill sickness bags".
Nothing to worry about, we thought, everyone can get a little queasy on a road like this one.
But in the subsequent hours, a second person got sick, and then a third, a fourth and a fifth - each new person getting ill creating a small circle of illness around us. Us at the center.
We began to worry. Was there some strange and virulent air borne sickness rolling through our bus? Were we going to go down in history as the beginning of some new and horrible plague? Just then, the small Nepali boy to our left threw up in his sleep.
It was like being written into an episode of the Twilight Zone.
We almost jumped off the bus when it stopped in Chandigarh but eventually decided that, if there were some horrible disease floating about, we probably already had it. Tynessa provided us with some under the nose tiger-balming (as an obvious unpleasant odour now pervaded the bus) and we drifted into worried and fitful bouts of sleep for the remaining 5 hours.
Luckily, we didn't suffer the same effects as the others.
Vom+Yuck+Terror= Most terrifying bus trip to date...
Shimla is in the foothills of the Himalayas and, if you're lucky, you can catch glimpses of the Himalayas themselves through the mist and the fog. The entire town is stunningly beautiful. And cold! We weren't quite prepared for the cooler temperatures of the mountains, having only brought with us a small jacket each. So, sadly, after staying only one night, we decided to make our way back down the mountain.
We decided to go to Haridwar next...a mere 10 hour cruise down the switchbacks of the foothills.
Tynessa and I, just to be on the safe side, each popped a gravol before beginning the treacherous descent.
...and thank god for that...
About fifteen minutes into the drive a woman behind me was sick into our provided "hill sickness bags".
Nothing to worry about, we thought, everyone can get a little queasy on a road like this one.
But in the subsequent hours, a second person got sick, and then a third, a fourth and a fifth - each new person getting ill creating a small circle of illness around us. Us at the center.
We began to worry. Was there some strange and virulent air borne sickness rolling through our bus? Were we going to go down in history as the beginning of some new and horrible plague? Just then, the small Nepali boy to our left threw up in his sleep.
It was like being written into an episode of the Twilight Zone.
We almost jumped off the bus when it stopped in Chandigarh but eventually decided that, if there were some horrible disease floating about, we probably already had it. Tynessa provided us with some under the nose tiger-balming (as an obvious unpleasant odour now pervaded the bus) and we drifted into worried and fitful bouts of sleep for the remaining 5 hours.
Luckily, we didn't suffer the same effects as the others.
Vom+Yuck+Terror= Most terrifying bus trip to date...
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Holi Festival - Day One
Holi Festival started on the 10th of March and finished on the 11th. The first night everyone celebrates by burning a giant pyre to symbolize the burning of some old evil dude who forced people into worshipping him by terrorizing the masses. It's a pretty cool story but I'll probably butcher it so I'll just leave it alone. : ) On the 11th everyone continues the celebration by throwing coloured powders at everyone else. On this day everyone is supposed to forget past feuds or enemies and make friends anew. It's a really neat day and everyone is covered with colour. We were in Udaipur for the festival.
~ excerpts from my journal~
March 9th
...After leaving the city palace we found more greatness. We were lazily on the hunt for some white, cheap clothes for the Holi Festival when we stumbled upon a shop owned by a man named Ash. We could immediately tell that this man was different from the masses of shopkeepers we'd stumbled passed on our travels. He had on a white mesh Fedora that read more Cuban than Indian and from his first, "welcome inside, ladies" we could feel the eccentricity like electricity in the air. His accent jumped all over the place and generally told the story of his travels. Italy, France, and various other European countries (with a strange mix of something that sounded like he was perhaps stealing lines from Good Will Hunting). When we asked him if he had anything cheap for us for the festival he chuckled a little, rocking back and forth ever so slightly, and replied, "why ladies, would you pay for something to be thrown away when you could simply have it for free?"
Well, of course. How silly of us.
Ash swaggered to his feet and began, in his grandiose way, to toss various articles of clothing at us. Before we really had any idea what was going on, the man had bullied us with his strange charm into having a cup of black tea and lime with him while he performed card tricks for us and amused us with silly stories.
The 10th
We arrived back at Ash's shop the next morning to introduce to him to our friend, Kate. When we sat down and asked him what he'd been up to that morning he waved his hand nonchalantly through the air and replied, " Oh, not too much. I had to settle some business. I bought a hotel on the lakefront. Paid in cash....."
.......We met Ash in his shop to have some drinks before going down to watch the burning of the pyre. We all began to get the feeling that, although he had taken it upon himself to show us a good time, we were also his entertainment for the evening. Any time one of us commented that we might like to eat or drink domething, he would immediately order one of his minions to bring it to us while waving around large fistfulls of cash. It was all very over the top.
As the festivities began and fireworks began exploding dandilion-esque in the sky, we took off and left Ash to polish off the rum. We watched the fire throw up firecrackers and fireworks into the fray with mixed feelings of excitement and something nearing terror. We didn't want to get too close but Ash soon appeared, super tall in the crowd and clad all in white, to drag us to the fire. He walked us around the flames once (for good luck) and then decided that the colour throwing for us should start early.
There were a few people playing with colours and we tried to steer clear (to save it all for the next day) but once Ash had marked our cheeks with powder we were sure targets!
We all turned into rainbows in a matter of minutes and the silliness seemed to escalate in relation to how frenzied the paint looked on our crayon-box faces.
The police soon started sending everyone home so Ash snapped us up and hurried us off to the rooftop restaurant of his newly bought hotel. He walked in and everyone in the building jumped up to prepare us a feast. When we'd all eaten until we could eat no more, Ash bid us adieu and from out of nowhere, as though he'd conjured it from thin air, a man with a motorbike appeared. Ash hopped gracefully on the back as though it were some great white steed. He turned a lazy, drunken face at us and mumbled a slow smiling farewell from under his mustache before riding off into the night - his white clothes a ridiculous mess of rainbowed ruin.
~ excerpts from my journal~
March 9th
...After leaving the city palace we found more greatness. We were lazily on the hunt for some white, cheap clothes for the Holi Festival when we stumbled upon a shop owned by a man named Ash. We could immediately tell that this man was different from the masses of shopkeepers we'd stumbled passed on our travels. He had on a white mesh Fedora that read more Cuban than Indian and from his first, "welcome inside, ladies" we could feel the eccentricity like electricity in the air. His accent jumped all over the place and generally told the story of his travels. Italy, France, and various other European countries (with a strange mix of something that sounded like he was perhaps stealing lines from Good Will Hunting). When we asked him if he had anything cheap for us for the festival he chuckled a little, rocking back and forth ever so slightly, and replied, "why ladies, would you pay for something to be thrown away when you could simply have it for free?"
Well, of course. How silly of us.
Ash swaggered to his feet and began, in his grandiose way, to toss various articles of clothing at us. Before we really had any idea what was going on, the man had bullied us with his strange charm into having a cup of black tea and lime with him while he performed card tricks for us and amused us with silly stories.
The 10th
We arrived back at Ash's shop the next morning to introduce to him to our friend, Kate. When we sat down and asked him what he'd been up to that morning he waved his hand nonchalantly through the air and replied, " Oh, not too much. I had to settle some business. I bought a hotel on the lakefront. Paid in cash....."
.......We met Ash in his shop to have some drinks before going down to watch the burning of the pyre. We all began to get the feeling that, although he had taken it upon himself to show us a good time, we were also his entertainment for the evening. Any time one of us commented that we might like to eat or drink domething, he would immediately order one of his minions to bring it to us while waving around large fistfulls of cash. It was all very over the top.
As the festivities began and fireworks began exploding dandilion-esque in the sky, we took off and left Ash to polish off the rum. We watched the fire throw up firecrackers and fireworks into the fray with mixed feelings of excitement and something nearing terror. We didn't want to get too close but Ash soon appeared, super tall in the crowd and clad all in white, to drag us to the fire. He walked us around the flames once (for good luck) and then decided that the colour throwing for us should start early.
There were a few people playing with colours and we tried to steer clear (to save it all for the next day) but once Ash had marked our cheeks with powder we were sure targets!
We all turned into rainbows in a matter of minutes and the silliness seemed to escalate in relation to how frenzied the paint looked on our crayon-box faces.
The police soon started sending everyone home so Ash snapped us up and hurried us off to the rooftop restaurant of his newly bought hotel. He walked in and everyone in the building jumped up to prepare us a feast. When we'd all eaten until we could eat no more, Ash bid us adieu and from out of nowhere, as though he'd conjured it from thin air, a man with a motorbike appeared. Ash hopped gracefully on the back as though it were some great white steed. He turned a lazy, drunken face at us and mumbled a slow smiling farewell from under his mustache before riding off into the night - his white clothes a ridiculous mess of rainbowed ruin.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Overnight train ride to Margao
Feb 20th
Haikus
hearts all aflutter
the aroma of old spice
everything is good
snoring breaks the peace
"Hey, Stewart! Sleep on your side!"
valium slumbers
ever serpentine
beast of screaming steely bones
insatiable
the beaches of sand
golden shifting heart of love
fish swim aglitter
....and my favourite - in two parts...
the sideways rocking
tossing and rolling machine
destroying balance
impatient bladder
sway and misdirected stream
oh woe is her shoe
In Alleppey
Feb 13th
The houseboating was amazing!
.....and so was this conversation.....
Tynessa: Connor!! There's a bee in here!! I can't deal with bees!
Connor: No worries. You deal with the spiders and I'll take care of all the bees.
Tynessa: (goes into the bathroom)
Connor: TYNESSA!!! WORST POSSIBLE SCENARIO!!! IT'S A BEE LOCKED INTO A FIGHT TO THE DEATH WITH A GIANT SPIDER!!!
Fort Cochin
India - Feb 11th
As Tynessa and I wandered down the tourist-laden streets of Fort Cochin, we encountered a group of boys heading back to school. They became all smiles and hellos as they approached, giggling. They seemed to be around 11 or 12 years old and so as one boy walked towards us with his hand stretched out I immediately thought "Korea" and High Five". I geared up to return said high five and was therefor completely shocked when he swooped in for a chest grab instead. I turned to shake an angry finger at him as he and his friends took off at full speed.
Ah well, I hope the kid at least earned himself a full months worth of bragging rights.
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