ThisIsVlad

ding ding ding!!

2 more months! now i\’ve been on the road for 6 months. half a year!! it\’s weird, back when i went on my one and a half month trip to thailand, i saw people who were traveling on year long trips and thought to myself how crazy it would be to actually travel for that long. it seemed pretty much impossible that i would ever get to do such a thing… and yet here i am, already on the road for half a year. this *might* be the halfway mark for this trip… unless we keep adding countries!

the main difference in the last 2 months as opposed to the other 2 month chunks of this trip is that i actually spent the whole 2 months in just one country. every other place we\’ve gone has just been for a few weeks or so, but the last 2 months have all been in india. despite the fact that i havent been jumping around a bunch of different countries, i\’ve still managed to do quite a lot of stuff over the last 2 months:

i\’ve walked through streets filled with cows, goats, pigs, buffalo, and monkeys; i\’ve survived unbearably overstuffed rickety indian buses; i\’ve been stranded in small indian towns where no one spoke english; i\’ve had people stare at me, ask for my photo, and even had someone ask me to autograph his hand; i\’ve ridden a scooter around a small indian island; i\’ve taken a \”bucket shower\”; i\’ve seen hundreds of temples, both hindu and buddhist; i\’ve hiked up a hill made up of 3,300 steps along w/ many pilgrims; i\’ve seen some of the saddest poverty i can imagine; i\’ve eaten an unimaginable amount of curry; i\’ve learned how to eat without using my left hand; i\’ve seen several forts and several palaces; i\’ve seen a blue city, a golden city, and a lake city; i\’ve taken an indian cooking class; i went on a village safari where i drank opium water and wore a turban; i\’ve had some bizarre experiences from drinking special lassis; i\’ve watched the sun set over stretches of sand dunes while camels paced up and down; i\’ve been in a temple inhabited by thousands of rats; i saw Sting perfrom in Delhi!; i\’ve spent 3 weeks living in the himalayas among tibetan refugees; i created a database for a tibetan monk; i was attacked by a monkey; i\’ve lived in sub-zero hotel rooms w/ nothing to keep me warm except for hot water bottles; i\’ve learned how to meditate and i learned about buddhism; i got to see the snow for a few days and saw monkeys, cows, and monks all trying to deal w/ the storm; i saw a man who was possessed by the tibetan oracle; i saw the dalai lama; i\’ve bought clothing and games for homeless children; i wore a fake beard; i\’ve stayed in a hotel run by Hare Krishnas; i saw the amazing Taj Mahal; i saw a wild tiger; and i saw human corpses set on fire in the most holy city of india.

phew… it\’s been a busy two months!! anyways, as usual, once every two months i\’m checking who\’s reading this journal. if you\’re reading, please post a comment in this post and let me know that you\’re out there!

*v

This entry was posted on Monday, March 14th, 2005 at 9:09 am and is filed under India. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.