I did a two day one night camel trek through the Thar desert. It was just me and my guide who was only 23 but looked a lot older...He had only been to Jaislamer outside of his village his entire life...I thought that was interesting...To live that isolated from the rest of the world...He works with camels and lives in the desert...owns a cell phone though...
The ride at first...was meh...buuuttt...then I put on my ipod and MRK1 through the Thar desert on camel back is just...out there man...It was cool, real cool...Music gets me high and I was transported to another place instantly...I like the desert--vast, empty, open, and rippling with musical vibrations...Timestrech, Bassnectar...Mt Eden Dubstep...Nine Inch Nails...Crazy, felt like I was on a moonscape planet or something...Red Planet...Interconnected...Indra's net...
This place was quiet. I mean, like dead silent. We stopped by these dunes for lunch and my guide walked away several times to get water or make love to the camels behind the bushes or something and I just sat there alone on these empty rolling sand dunes (aside from the occasional 2.5 inch black beetle) and it was so quiet that it was like (insert clever simile here)....
Utterly dead silent for hours. The occasional drift of wind made the only whisper to be heard....Just wild...Another place, another state of mind...
I watched a giant ball of red sun set over the desert plains from a sand dune while listening to the likes of heady electronic music...The sky had a bright nearly full moon and was dotted with stars. We made a fire and drank kingfisher...I talked to some local desert people who stopped by for the night but mostly just enjoyed the atmosphere by the fire...
The stars, I heard, are supposed to be amazing here. I look up, its nice...Nothing special...The moon was too bright...Lame...So I crawl into my cot with heavy blankets b.c. it gets mad cold here and pass out after listening to music with a slight alcohol buzz from the kingfisher...looking up at the sky...alone in the Thar desert....deep...
I wake up around four in the morning for whatever reason and I look up and I just let out a "WHOOAAAA" like really loudly haha, because the sky was just like BOOM! with stars exploding with shimmering...uhh....stariness?...I don't feel like being poetic...But it was fucking incredible...Just hundreds of clustered stars pulsating light from the sky down unto the earth...The moon had moved across and past the landscape by this point so it was no longer blocking out the light of the stars...I could only stay awake for 45 seconds or so b.c. I was so tired from riding a farting camel all day (they are quite repulsive creatures up close) and I passed out...content....mesmerized...
I realized after the camel ride that I wasn't so much thirsty as it was just my lips were chaped. By the end of the trek my lips were killing me and I left my chapstick back in delhi...damnit....I need chapstick...my call would soon be answered...
The next day some Indian guy from my hotel picks me up on motorcycle and we head back 45 km into Jaislamer....I catch a train at 4:30 p.m. for Jaipur...I arrive in Jaipur at 4:30 a.m.
I met a Indian Naval guy from Goa who told me that in his encounters with the British, Russians, and Americans...He respects the British, he can always learn from the Americans and he can always trust the Russians...
When he told me he could always trust the Russians I looked at him askew...Maybe thats the result of Western propaganda influencing my opinion or talking to those who work with Russians but I was like...I'm not sure I would say that personally...but whatever...
I arrive in Jaipur at 4:45 in the morning. Get on a bus to Ahmedabad at 6 in the morning where I can get a bus to Mumbai...
I sit all the way in the back. Nothing eventful happens for several hours. I talk to a few people and everyone is always fascinated by me...Little kids take my picture and there older brother tells me Angelina Jolie "is the very sexy"...haji....
"ya'll act like you've never seen a white person before...jaws all on the floor...like pam and tommy just burst through the door..."
Indian people always think I'm 25-28 due to my beard and when I tell them I'm 20 (bisse in hindi) they're all like oh my krishna! (they don't actually say that..but) and then they start laughing...I ask how old they are, thinking they are around 28-35 and it turns out they're always around 21-23 and then we both look at each other like...feelsweirdman....Keeps happening with every person i meet it seems...
Then this girl comes on...Well, hold on, earlier in the day I thought to myself, "I haven't seen that many hot Indian girls"...
This girl comes on and instantly I'm taken back, I'm like wow! this girl is hot, like really hot, like beautiful...She's probably around my age, probably a little older b.c. my age estimation, as previously stated, sucks...She reminded me a lot of the girl from slumdog millionaire she was just really really beautiful and like...hmm..yeah haha
She's around my height, t-shirt, jeans, scarf (dupata)...Okay, we're like in a village town and she's not dressed in village clothing...must be educated? She comes on the bus and she has a visible presence--she's really confident and is aware of it--tells people to move in a direct but not bossy way to make way for these other people and herself. I make eye contact with her--obviously checking her out and taken back--and she looks at me and...well...she's Indian and the cultural gap is like a billion miles apart so I don't know what the hell she thought but she noticed and I'm guessing because I'm western she was like hmmm, he's interesting...My presence briefly through her off guard.
So some Indian dude sits down next to me and she sits down next to him. She directs me to open and then close the window which I'm sitting next to...okay...The dude next to me is kind of crushing me and in order to preserve my sanity I blast some mudvayne through my ear canals as I can't move and this girl's authoritah is actually starting to piss me off now. However, the dude slides over and gives me some room and then the girl leans forward and introduces herself and to my suprise...shakes my hand...
Now, In Indian culture girls and guy DO NOT INTERACT. They do in the city like Delhi...But only if they are of the more western type of Indian people...As a whole, you don't look at men, you don't talk to men (in a friendly manner), and you don't really interact with them. The sexes are heavily divided and to be friendly is to be seen as "easy" as my professor would say. Little boys loved to shake hands with all the girls on my program because they see it as something "dirty" and getting away with something provocative...There would be times a kid would shake hands with one of the girls I was with something like 5 times in a row while laughing...naughty little bastards...
And...we're not in Delhi, we're in the middle of Rajahstan--which is like a big desert with small mountains...so this is odd....
However, she doesn't speak any english I quickly realize. She passes her phone to me several minutes later without saying anything and has me speak to some Indian guy on the other end--I'm sort of a celebrity in India because I'm western...They also love my hair...everyone keeps telling me I look like Michael Jackson...thanks?....They didn't say that on the bus ride but I've heard that multiple times in multiple cities...This one dude in Jaipur yelled it at me in a super high pitched voice and then did a disco swing with his arm shooting it upwards and jolting his leg out to the other side...He may have been wasted but it was probably just because he was from India...My friend Franchesca pointed out in an experience of hers that she couldn't tell if the guy was drunk or on drugs...or just retarded...This is a reoccurring experience here...With 1.2 billion people there are bound to be a few loonies....
So this dude next to me tells me the girl isn't feeling well so she wants to sit near the window where I am. So she crawls over me and sits down next to me. And like I said she can't speak english so I can't talk to her...She wants me to open the window again for her because she's having a hard time with it. I open it and then realize it doesn't go very far so I go to close it so I can open the other one in front of us and by doing so I slam it back into her finger which, judging by her reaction, hurt a lot....smooth....goddamnit....I apologize like a jackass and after 5 minutes of over dramatically gripping her finger and hissing through her teeth she says its okay...
However, she's still interested in me and she talks through her friend who she asks to ask me if I'm married or have a girlfriend. I say "no" and he says that "you two will be married" while smiling and pointing to her...I tell him I don't think she likes me very much after what I did to her finger and laugh...It was weird (well not weird) but everytime she went to talk to him I couldn't help but notice she made excessive and unnecessary contact with me, leaning on my leg with her elbow, hands, or when I responded to him she put her face like nearly leaning on my shoulder...I'm like alright, cool but...I can't talk to you and what the hell am I supposed to do? I'm all for breaking cultural norms and what not but only in the place where I'm from...I'm in like Indian village towns....Not the place....so this is cool but lame....
I close my eyes realizing I'm not getting anywhere with this and the dude's limited english is preventing further conversation...I sit back and she starts pulling at the hair ties on my wrist asking me to show her what I do with my hair using body language more or less...I tie my hair up for her and have to borrow her comb because my hair is ratty as hell from not showering and traveling for two days straight..everyone on the bus is watching our interaction right now more or less...
The ride continues..We weave in an out of spectacular Rajahstan moutains which remind me of the appalachians but with a desert feel to them....she asks if she can have one of my hair ties and I give her one....She buys me food, gives me some candy from her bag, and sprays me down with deodorant spray....I probably do smell like shit... She laughs with me and although we never really say anything to one another I feel close to her in some way...
She reaches into her purse sometime later and oh my god, my prayers have been answered...Hands me some chapstick! Alright! I was like, "YEAAAHH I was JUST LOOKING FOR THAT!" and take some while laughing...I motion with my hands towards my lips after applying it asking her if I have any I need to wipe off and she reaches out and smooths her finger over my lips clearing it away...I didn't really think anything of that at first because I was just so happy to have some goddamn chapstick but like...that kind of contact doesn't happen in India between girls and guys in public...
Aside from the two kids who were vomiting out on both sides of the bus in front of us it was quite a lovely ride...Some of the vomit sprayed back in my face...She laughed at least...It is India...
She leaves but before she does she gives me her number and asks for mine...I'd call her but what the hell am I supposed to say? My hindi tends to drop off after sentences such as, "the cat is on the mat.."
however, I got chapstick...So, you don't always get what you want but sometimes you get what you need is the lesson....
I supposed I'll try to find her via facebook or something...who knows...everything washes away in the end...
I keep riding. The bus from Jaipur to Ahmedabad is like 16 hours. It falls dark and I pass out after a few hours. I wake up and I'm like half-conscious...As most of you know I talk and do weird shit in my sleep and I remember waking up and sort of like loudly talking to this dude next to me who did not speak english about how our bus almost collided with another bus..From my perspective it did look like this but I was like half-awake and chances are I was probably just yelling incoherent shit at this guy as I noticed a lot of people were staring at me after the fact but I was way to fucking tired to give a shit and besides, people have been staring at me all day so whatever...There's weirder shit going on around us than me yelling half-awake...
Earlier in the day we passed two cars on the side of the road that had collided into one another. They were entirely obliterated and look like they had been smashed by those car crusher devices at junk yards...It didn't look like it would be possible to survive that one...
I pass out again after yelling to the Indian man and I randomly wake up and HOLY SHIT! I look at my window and there is a state bus identical to mine on the side of the road running parallel to ours in FUCKING FLAMES. It looks like a car bomb went off on the inside and the entire vehicle is covered in roaring flames from top to bottom. The people who had been riding it weren't able to get their luggage out either as bags and such were being burned to a crisp both inside the bus and on the roof...I didn't see anyone inside but we didn't stop so I couldn't tell but man...this whole fucking bus was on fire and it was being burned to the ground in a totally out of control style...One of the craziest things I've seen thus far...It felt like I woke up into a war zone for a minute or something...jesus...
I'm heading to Mumbai tonight...Since everyone left from my program to go back to America a week ago I've slept in a different bed every night...Tonight I will be sleeping on a bus...Mumbai, according to my guide book, was described by Aldous Huxley as, "the most appalling of either hemisphere...Its supposed to be insane, no space, totally overflowing with people, the largest slums in all of Asia...A massive commercial epicenter and the source of Bollywood films...We're also down South so it gets hot and humid...Muggy....There's a dude who has a 27 billion dollar apartment here that has like three heli-pads and a 120 car garage...this is while most of the population of the city lives in filthy shacks surviving off a dollar a day...
Civilization is bound to crash and burn eventually in my opinion. Over-population, environmental pollution, and the division of humanity is setting us up for failure. The rational mind has failed us...Time for something new...something trans-rational...
The misconception, I think, that most people have is that rationality is consciousness...No. Rationality is a part of consciousness and consciousness does not need it to survive...Its 2011 in a week or so, I think its time to wake up...
you aren't your mind. The sooner you figure this out the sooner this mess will be over with. How about we pick up the pace, comprende?
...what am I talking about...Well, the nomad in the desert who had never travelled more than 50 miles away from a tiny village of less than a hundred people had a cellphone and so did all of his friends...He only makes 50 bucks a month...He has access to the internet...Somethings happening here...Rapid acceleration of interconnectivity....There is no, "out there" Yogi Mike told me...When you really begin to understand the relationship between consciousness and matter all of this will make more sense...
You ever read Shantaram? Funny how that book would fall into my hands...The philosophy of the Mumbai crime lord who serves as a father figure to the main character is that the purpose of the universe is to evolve into greater and greater complexity until we reach a singularity upon which a realization occurs...That realization, he claims, is god if you want to use that word..I'd prefer not to due to everything thats attached to it...
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was Man.
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Yet once more I shall die as Man, to soar
With angels bless'd; but even from angelhood
I must pass on: all except God doth perish.
When I have sacrificed my angel-soul,
I shall become what no mind e'er conceived.
Oh, let me not exist! for Non-existence
Proclaims in organ tones,
To Him we shall return.
^ Thats from the sufi mystic Rumi...Its about the evolution of consciousness using medieval religious terminology...The end of the world isn't "the end of the world" its more like a understanding of what's been going on the whole time but you were too caught up in your ego to recognize...apocalypse literally means "revelation"...
The rational mind kind of stomped out mysticism but the nature of the universe is cyclical. So I'm just sort of here to speed up the process...the benefit of technology, is that it allows for exponential acceleration...
But all of that isn't important. Just be here now and feel this moment...patience is a virtue...Thats all you need to know. Everything else is just icing on the cake.
"Hey man, please don't make a sound
Take a look around, can't you see what's right in front of you
Have a little taste, no more time to waste
You don't wanna get left behind cause it's all coming down right now
How hard is it to see
Put your faith in me
I sure wouldn't want to be praying to
To the wrong piece of wood
You should get where you belong
Everything you know is wrong
Come on, sing along, everybody now"
Take a look around, can't you see what's right in front of you
Have a little taste, no more time to waste
You don't wanna get left behind cause it's all coming down right now
How hard is it to see
Put your faith in me
I sure wouldn't want to be praying to
To the wrong piece of wood
You should get where you belong
Everything you know is wrong
Come on, sing along, everybody now"
-god given, nine inch nails
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