Part III: India - Same same, but different

Wow, I just bought a pro-competition hammock, that, if I don't die suffocated tangled up between the dozens of strips it has, it is going to be really cool!!! It even comes with instructions about how to use it, high technology. First stack you bum between the two reinforcement strips, then the feet keeping the balance, then the head and then just relaxe yourself. I'm a bit disappointed because there is no place to leave the mojito, but I think I will get through.

Many of you seem to be interested about the state of my stomach. I have to say that although last week it gave me a warning, it is ok now. If anyone is interested in further details, please let me know so for colours and textures...

I'm now in Bangkok, Thailand, and this place is wicked!! Back to civilization!! There are bins in the streets, people don't spit everywhere, there are no animals in the buses, food is eatable... amazing!! It is very touristy as well!! I will go tomorrow to the north in the search of more traditional places. Today I had shark fin soup, so that one is ticked over already, interesting flavour, but quite funny texture. We tried (with some people I met here) to have Chinese snake fire soup, but unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) they didn't have it today, will try to get some tomorrow.

Ok, let's get back to stories. Last mail I forgot to write about the Shadu in Pushkar that lifted 50 kg with his penis The shadus are holy people (appointed holy by themselves) that give up all their material possessions for a life of meditation and heavy weed smoking, so they spend their lives meditating, begging for food, sleeping anywhere and puffing away all day, cool no? The fact is that I was in the hotel at Pushkar and decided to go for a walk around. On my walk, I bumped into a guy I knew from the hotel. He was sitting with 7 or 8 of these Shadus and their Guru, they invited me to sit with them and so I did. The Guru had a silence vow, so he couldn't talk, psss and finger pointing was his only way of communicating. After five long minutes of looking and smiling between each other (they didn't speak English), they invited us to some sort of doggy but tasty soup with chapati (bread). Although one of the first rules of survival in India is not to eat from dubious sources, we decided to be polite and rely on them, and as I said before it was quite good.

After eating the soup, the guru showed us pictures of him, with his fairly elongated penis, lifting this 50 kg stone or pulling buses with it. He insisted on showing us his performance for 200 rupees, but our courtesy didn't reach that far... Sorry girls, have no picture to show about this story...

After Pushkar I went to Udaipur, Bombay and then to Goa, where I met Marion, my Brixton ex-flatmate. I could make a story about the sixteen hours of bus, where the suspension was soo bad that sometimes you would literally wake up floating in the air before hitting back the quite hard and cramped bed ( we were 5 sleeping in 2.5 meters wide bed or so), but I have told you already too many stories about buses so will skip this one.

Goa is been like holidays within my holidays, I mean, Nepal was really great fun, but waking up at six or seven in the morning to hike up some killing mountain is not my idea of holidays. Goa was really good, because, it was the very beginning of high season so everything was almost ready for it, but there was not that many tourists around.

Sorry for those winter sufferers, but the daily routine was to wake up in some hut by the beach, breakfast in front of the sea, get the scooter to go to some half idyllic beach for a swim in the warm sea (half idyllic because although the beaches where really beautiful, the water was not quite crystal as you can imagine) the full idyllic beaches are here now in Thailand, yeaa!!! So after a relaxing day we used to finish with a swim in the orange coloured sea at sunset before going to a restaurant to have some fresh fish ending up the day with some beer on the beach.

After a few relaxing days we went to Gokarna, another beautiful beachy place, really nice if it wasn't because the local fisherman had the habit of shitting in the beach every morning. Not ideal, when you have to look for your guest house between the bushes at night. From here we went to Jog Falls, the highest waterfalls in India. It was supposed to be a day trip, but it took us around 5 hours to get there, so we had to stay for the night. After walking down and up the 1600 steps to get to the bottom of the waterfalls, we looked for a place to stay. The guest houses around were quite expensive and not too nice. One of the places to sleep listed in the guide book was the British bungalows, a complex owned by the British embassy, quite isolated from the town and right on the top of the waterfalls. Although a few people told us that it was not possible to stay there anymore, we bet to go there and try our luck.

The plot was to get there by walk (3-4 km) at night so they couldn't let us down, and it worked!! As far as we understood, this resort was used around 50 years ago for British VIP people. It was really nice set with great views of the valley and the falls, and all just for us. They even cooked dinner for us. Although the building was a bit old, the room was composed of a quite big sitting room, the bedroom and a huge toilet, no water though. Quite magical place. Since we wanted to get a bus at two from Gokarna to Hampi, we woke up at 6. We started walking for a few kilometres, before getting a tractor into the town with some locals, before a jeep and two buses. At the end we made it on time!!

Hampi is such a beautiful place. The landscape is made out by huge stones mixed with banana plantations and loads of palm trees (see pictures). Around 500 years ago or so there was the second biggest ancient city, after Rome, that was destroyed by Muslims, so in a quite Pompey style there was ruins of temples every where. We were quite lucky of bumping into the supervisor of the excavations who had been working there for 50 years. Very generously he guided us around for an hour or so. Really interesting!!

The funny thing is that before we met this guy, we where walking around and we started climbing one of this mountains made up of huge rounded rocks. Between stone and stone there was big caves, so while climbing down my sunglasses fell down into one of these 5-6 six meters deep cave. The sunglasses are new and also it is really bright here, so I decided to go down to get them back. At some point I got stacked in the middle, so I couldn't go neither down nor up. After trying a few different routes, I found a way to get down. Although there was a few hundreds of very dangerous snakes coiled up around my sunglasses with the help of my whip and a torch that I made up with a wooden stick and my t-shirt I got back my sunglasses and seized the opportunity to save and kiss the pretty girl trapped in the cave...

Oooookkkkk, there was no snakes nor pretty girl, but I promise there was a really long fat worm that at first looked like a very dangerous snake. It was quite a Indiana Jones set. At the end, from the bottom I found my way up well sweated and with a good adrenaline high.
So after a few relaxing days in Hampi, I left Marion in Hampi to go to Chennay where I took the flight to Thailand...

Ok guys, this is it by now, hope you are all well...

I have changed the list of distribution to add and remove new/old addresses, so if you wish to receive the mails to a different mail address, please let me know, answers to qrmucho@hotmail.com

And also, if for any reason you haven't received the previous two mails and you would like to, let me know as well.

Byeeeeeee,

Qr,...