Learning to glide.

The courtyard in front of the temple shuffled with movement in the late morning light. Top heavy tourists fresh from elsewhere but weary from travel lumbered around as they looked for new homes, whilst local touts lugged sacks up awkward concrete steps, set at odd angles with arbitrary heights. A white skinned woman with red hair under a silk scarf - a clear convert to Indian spirituality - sat silently on the temple steps with postcards for sale whilst local boys attempted to sell their services to anyone they could make eye contact with. I was not one of those people. I walked through all of them with a helmet in one hand, some keys in the other, a peppering of apprehension in my chest and a daggered focus on a poker face.

My bike stood like a domino of chrome in a line of the same all glistening on the stage of gravel and dust. Still obscenely unfamiliar with my machine I briefly imagined the effect of an unfortunate bump on the line of local vehicles and then scalded myself for my own frightful and unproductive imagination. I removed my bike from the coral with enough care to make sure I didn't get in trouble but with not so much that it would appear that I should be taking even more.

Recalling the required parts of yesterday's not-quite-crash course I threw my leg over it and with a sharp kick and a flick of the wrist her voice rumbled into the slowly heating air. All I wanted was to get out of this courtyard and beyond the staring eyes that that cast their gaze from shadows of shops and from the layers of steps that grew from the ground in every direction like an awkward auditorium designed for people watching. My mind's voice echoed the memory of the Englishman.

Clutch in, up to first, little throttle, clutch out.

With the promise of promise itself I rolled towards the courtyard's only exit and snaked down the hill with the shining pairs of inquisitive eyes fading behind me and as they did so every sense devoted itself to me, the machine and the meters ahead. Free of a waiting teacher and stagnant eyes that never hide their own blatant interest, we wound down the hill in jerks and gushes as a skipping memory, a light grasp of logic and a complete lack of experience loosely controlled this rumbling chariot.

Despite being without any advice, help or support I relaxed just a little. Out on the road, all errors are ephemeral, well, at least those that don't involve grievous bodily harm. If you miss a gear, stall, run through an intersection or almost hit someone, the witnesses are soon gone and so is the memory of your foolishness. Learning in a fish tank is laced with pressure and a witness that both serve to stifle but wish to aid.

The road cracked and bristled before me in its various textures, occasionally smooth and consistent in colour and shape, but more often than not an old patchwork quilt of potholes, gravel and rocks. There was no defined edge to the road, just a fringe of grit and a ditch well worth avoiding. I looked at it, but not too hard. My engine screamed.

Throttle out, clutch in, foot down in second gear, clutch out, increase throttle.

The road was an obstacle course in and of itself but its static pitfalls - although requiring their degree of care, caution and respect - were mere pebbles compared to the rumbling boulders with which we shared the road. Indian road rules echo a tumultuous stream; a confronting tangle of chaos, ebbing and flowing in its slides and vortices but somehow all bound together by a transcending order that is understood by no individual but is recognized and responded to by every particle within it. If there were any definable attributes to this liquid flow they are these:

* Big things have the right of way (unless small things risk their existence by darting and weaving through the miniature tears in traffic flow)

* All particles must make all other particles aware of their position, desires, directions and intentions through the intrinsically limited language of the monosyllabic horn; beep for "hurry up", beep for "slow down", beep for "hello", beep for "Fuck you", beep for "Get out of the way" and beep for "Hey mate your stand is still down and you are likely to kill yourself.

Throttle out, clutch in, back to first, clutch out, apply brake, clutch in, stop.

I looked down to see that I did in fact have my stand still down. I had wondered what that grating metal on gravel sound was.

Kick stand back, increase throttle, clutch out, engine growl, clutch in, second, throttle, repeat, third.

Everything moved at an increasingly brisk rate as the traffic thinned from the trucks, buses, jeeps and rickshaws that spilt over the bridge from the town and the road bent as it swayed and rolled as it rose through the smaller pockets of villages. As the speed increased my mind still clambered to process and calculate my position and relationships with the bike, the road, and the picture into which I plunged. My mind struggled to swallow and interpret the cascade of input fed to it through all its major senses that seemed both alive yet dulled due to the rate of movement. Images lasted seconds, if not split seconds, whilst I tried to extrapolate the important from the pointless; was that a bump in the road or a slip of the transmission? A beep of caution or a horn of scorn? A sign of danger or just visible noise?

Blind corner. Brake, clutch, gear down, clutch out, straight, clutch in, gear up, throttle, repeat, repeat again.

The smaller villages were peppered with activity and oddities. One stretch of road was deliberately covered with a carpet of straw inches thick so that passing vehicles would thresh it with their rolling rubber. Further on a construction site of grey gravel and mud bricks required a little looped convoy of teenage men to walk up and down and across the street to collect basketfuls of grey stones from a large mound and then take them back to the site balanced with dexterous and oblivious confidence on their sweating craniums.

Tight bend. Gear down, brake, bank left, straighten, hold, gear up.

I approached a metal bridge where large vehicles sorted out a direction of flow with an absence of words whilst a man minus a mask welded a loose sheet of checker plate steel back to a girder, seemingly oblivious to the vehicular conversation. We nipped through the discussion.

Bank right, clutch in, gear up. Calculation error. Wrong gear. Recalculate. Clutch in, gear down, back on the right page, out on the open road.

I felt the air ripple up my arms that sat baking in the dancing sunlight. I thought I was flying but a quick glance at the dial showed a steady 50. I'd ridden faster on a pushbike. I thought about how it would feel to do 100 but the thought was cut short by something in the middle of the road. Black red and underfed a dog lay fast asleep, unconscious to the world but surely conscious of its position. Not yet dead, it basked with languid, careless abandon, baking on both sides from the bite of the mountain sun and the roasting conduction of the black strip. Neither the growing piston fires, nor a sharp brassy blast troubled the kipping canine as I altered my trajectory.

Corner right. Brake, clutch, down, throttle, clutch, up throttle, clutch. New frame.

With a straight road came a dash more speed and my eyes glimmered and shook like an erratic housefly as they tried to be everywhere at once. They soaked random slivers of the picture and tried to assemble the whole, like the beam of a torch shaking furiously through the darkness. My mind almost touched on the consequence of a fall but the thought was caught before it landed by a distraction of the mind's light. In front of an orchard, al least two miles from the nearest house stood a grey old man with lines carved on his face from many years of breathing. His thousand yard stare, pierced the air, pierced the mountain, pierced the light. He wore a black robe that ran to his ankles and was bound with a crimson scarf. His stare and his stance stood as still as the sun but in his hands a ball of twine he spun.

'Strange' I thought before dodging a cow, and with an end to the straight rolling towards me like a wave of earth the calculations appeared again and the body obeyed.

Brake, clutch, down, clutch, wait, clutch, down, clutch, wait, bank right, throttle, clutch, up, throttle, clutch, throttle, clutch, up, throttle.

The primary feelings felt were physical, the purpose; input. I felt the weight of the bike, the velocity of the wind, the groove and click of the undulating gears. I felt the surface of the road creep with sharp arachnid fingers through the chassis and various mechanisms up into my skin that relayed them with an army of electrical charges. Besides the Physical, far from parallel and lagging behind like tin cans and boots strung up to a honeymooner's car clambered some shadow of a fear and a suggestion of an intense enjoyment as yet disallowed to breath unrestrained. Beneath me and between me was a machine of a thousand parts I died not understand, but temporarily controlled on pure faith. I sat on the shoulders of physicists, chemists and engineers, bulleting into a frame of chaotic, biological beauty.

I avoided a pothole and overtook a scooter laden with three Indian men, one of which held a computer on his shoulder. A hill rose sharply ahead and the engine shrank in relation to it.

Clutch, gear down, throttle, clutch out.

The engine stubbornly grunted as though it had lowered its head and dug in its feet as it charged upward and onward. At the top of the rise there was a bend and beyond the bend was space… kilometers of space...a valley of space. On the other side of the space was a mountain and on the near side of the space was a fast approaching absence of anything except a few tall pines that marked the edge of the road and a cliff as steep as their trunks.

I proceeded with caution. The space grew bigger as the road grew shorter.

Brake, clutch, down, clutch, hold, bank left.

Out of the bend, but close enough to feel pine needles.

Throttle, clutch, up, throttle, clutch.

The engine roared with my mind in time; the engine with so much to do and the brain with so much to consider. The world was a frenzy from my seat. So much to see, digest, judge and react to. Life was thick and tangled like a carpet of snakes. It slithered in herds of cattle alongside the road and rested in my path with dogs playing chicken. My head hummed at the brink, sat in the red, roared at R.P.M unknown. The smile on my lips masked the brain choking on the input, split into the dichotomy of manic sensory filtering and underlying logical recall. A web of cognitive function held my perception with its swollen rungs that forked on endlessly the further I delved into the rolling point of the road.

Brake, clutch, down, clutch, wait, clutch, down, clutch, wait, bank right, throttle, clutch, up, throttle, clutch, throttle, clutch, up, throttle.

The sun bore down with its electric weight upon the glowing earth. Shadows waltzed under the boughs of trees whilst my arms turned the colour of roses in front of my eyes. Although I felt no burn due to the cascading air, I saw and felt the shade lick them into a cool remission when everything changed.

What happened then is not fit for description in the paste tense. To recall it is to re-live it. To think about it is to be possessed by it, removed from this guesthouse bedroom and reborn astride the vinyl seat and single piston that cut through the scenery. To consider such a place and time is to allow these walls to melt into a flickering, evolving peripheral, to allow this pen to become a throttle, the floor a swift blur of translucent cement and this page - indeed every stroke of this pen - to become the meandering point of focus lifting the curtain on a mysterious world of light and wonder.

I look up to see that everything has either stopped or slowed. Everything moves like clouds on the horizon; gradual, harmonious, almost as if they were being guided of towed through the sky. The chaos of the world had gone from sight, removed from my ears and almost from memory itself. Even I seem to stop where I am as I glide inwards. The background noise is gone and the sound of the engine seems to have been stolen with it. Intensity is up, but saturation is down. The fluxing stream of light and mayhem shared by a million witnesses lies somewhere else now and I am alone in the shadows that envelop me as they steal my memory breath and being.

The mountains on the horizon are gone. The villages, the villagers, the fences, the cars, cows and dogs are gone too. The rambling tangle of difference, of noise, of inconsistency, of fluctuation are all absent in this place. I am in a forest removed, a forest still, a forest peaceful.

The ground is a carpet that rolls form the high ground on my left towards an unseen valley on my right. It is completely devoid of undergrowth, comprised of dull shades of brown pine needles and dark green puddles of textured moss, whilst being occasionally punctuated with the grey crests of boulders that remain almost entirely hidden under the soft, cool soil. I can see further on an immediate scale here but less on a long one, like a child inside a secret garden, fenced off from the world. In the forest's arms there is a consistency rarely found beyond it. Its elements are random in their placing but their density remains constant throughout. There is an organic harmony in the spaces between the trees and as I move between them I find their frequency possesses me.

The trees themselves are tall, strong spears that look more like the tails of arrows fired from heaven than the product of the world existing beyond their borders. I slip past them in fascination and they barely move except for a shy shimmer they inherit from the wind's altruistic caress.

The air is cool; neither wet nor dry, neither heavy nor light. Its invisible curls and pockets stroll with leisurely abandon as they mingle and dance amongst themselves and the forest's inhabitants alike. Up above, upon the tendrils of the air, a stream of white blossoms born from a gap in the ceiling flows and forks like water on round rocks, down into my private garden. One schism of white finds an ebb just in front of me and I roll through it in a humming silence, sending particles surging and swirling back to life in fluctuations behind me.

I am taken. I am swallowed. I am gone.

All is at peace here, All is connected, all things are one thing and as I move deeper into this shadowed utopia my mind and feelings merge into and beyond each other like blood and wine.

My divisions have melted into everything. My mind, my body, the bike, the road and this beautiful garden now all seem like extensions of one thing that operates freely. My hands and feet control the bike without the sharp orders of a calculating mind. They move with precision and intuition. They move with dexterity and poise. They move, I move, it moves, we move, together, like a stream of water, like the kiss of wind, like white blossoms cascading down a staircase of sunlight.

Learning to fly.

"Righteo then" says the Englishman with an elongated accent on the 'o' as he settles himself.

"Your throttle is on the right hand along with the front brake. Your clutch is on the left hand, now the gearing on these Enfield's are all backwards but that shouldn't matter too much to you because you don't really know what you're doing anyway". The man speaks the truth with a subtle smile and continues at his brisk pace with his accent bouncing all the way.

"What I mean by that is that the brake is actually under your left foot, while the gears are under your right foot and are upside down compared to most bikes meaning that you have to click up from neutral to go to first and then down to second, third and forth." I think most of the information is going in but it is all just words symbolizing ideas that are completely foreign but happen govern the 165 kilograms of motorbike sitting beneath me.

"As this is a single cylinder 350cc machine. There is the main neutral which you start the bike in and then a series of neutrals between each gear that you may accidentally find yourself in if you don't click it all the way into the right gear." I keep nodding through my helmet that masks most of my face but he would have to have been blind not to see the lost expression in my eyes. The Englishman stands on the bridge in front of me and speaks with a sympathetic authority. He is very familiar with this machine and speaks with the tone of someone who knows something intimately; with a friendly passion that masks their failure to comprehend how someone else could actually be intimidated by this thing. He seems almost unaware that his words are just words and that no matter how well he explains this bike that until I actually have something to associate them with they were a meaningless tornado trying to find order inside my helmet. But maybe he is aware and is just trying to instill some kind of confidence in me.

"Okay" he says again with that elongated 'o'. "Now get it into neutral by holding in the clutch, and clicking the gear pedal up as far as it will go. Now to get neutral kick it down one, but not all the way. Use your heel". I do as he says "Like that?" I ask. "I don't know." says the thick accent "You cannae see it, you kind of have to feel it". Feeling it is kind of hard when you have nothing to compare it to, I think to myself. Doubts crawl all over my mind. I haven't even started the bloody bike yet and I'm nervous. "Kick it over" instructs the Englishman and as I do it lurches under me. He smiles, not condescendingly, but kind of amused by my ignorance in the field. "Not in neutral" he says. I click around trying to 'feel' what I am looking for. I try again. Lurch. Shit. "Here, let me 'ave a go". He leans over and puts his foot on the shifter. He clicks it a couple of times and seems satisfied.

"Kick it again" he instructs "and give it a little throttle". My foot kicks down hard on the lever and the engine comes to life underneath me with a deep throaty roar. I'm one step closer but it almost makes me more unsure of what I'm doing. 'What the hell am I doing?' I think to myself as I start to sweat. I look up for more instruction but everyone seems distracted as their heads follow something going the other way on the bridge. It is a tractor. It has no front wheels at all and is kept upright by the weight of a trailer attached to the rear. 'What the hell am I doing?' I repeat to myself. I am on motorbike in the Himalayas. I have no experience, no idea, and the road is full of cows, dogs, speeding freaks and army trucks.

"Okay" starts the Englishman again with that prolonged 'o'. "Pull in the clutch, kick your gear up to first". I do as I'm told. "Now," he starts again as the smile fades and his voice becomes clear and little heavier as though they are the last words he will say to me. "Give it a bit of throttle and slowly release the clutch and you'll be off". I'm not too keen on his choice of words. 'Being off' is the last thing I want to think about as I ride a motorbike for the first time, but as I'm keen on the idea of my own survival the thought is rather present amongst the cacophony of instruction and lack of understanding.

My wrist rolls back, the noise and vibration grows underneath me. My other hand slowly releases the clutch and the sound changes. Expectant faces look at me. The bridge begins to move underneath me. I pull my other leg from the earth and it finds its place on the peg. The bridge starts to move faster, the noise grows louder and sharper from a throaty groan towards an almost pained, mechanical whine. 'Righteo', I think to myself. 'Release throttle, pull clutch, click down with right foot, disengage clutch, up the throttle'. The body manages to follow the thoughts but even though it lacks the fluidity of them, the machine does what it is told. The sound drops back to the throaty groan as the bridge ends and I embark up a hill of sketchy asphalt towards a family of cows and a shepherd.

The sound is nearing the whine again. 'Release throttle, pull clutch, click down into third, disengage clutch, up the throttle'. Yes. It responds. Blind corner approaches. As I enter the bend facing up another tractor laden with heavy looking dusty sacks and three teenage pilots with kerchiefs over their faces enters it from above. They sound their horn. I fumble for mine and turn on my indicator. The Englishman's words are still a chaotic jumble above my neck but some are settling like sediment in a bottle of red wine. Must remember the horn.

Pulling out of corner, power dieing. More throttle. It tries but the surge still backs off to a slow and threatening groan. 'Down a gear' I think. 'Release throttle, pull clutch, click up into second, disengage clutch, up the throttle'. The machine pitches right up and lurches as the sound kicks into a high surge and my speed increases further around the bend. I dodge children walking. I sweat. I blow the horn after they are behind me. I am in a village. Time to turn around I think. I pull to the side and the machine starts sputtering. I try to kick down a gear but my mind cannot grasp the sequence and as I apply the brakes the engine stalls sharply on a shelf of gravel and light brown clay.

'Righteo' I think to myself. I have ridden a motorbike for 30 seconds. I dodged some cows, a pack of laughing children and a tractor driven by adolescent bandits. Time to go back. I roll the bike back to see if I'm in neutral. Nope. Clutch in, click gear lever, roll. Still nope. Damn. Clutch in, click up and down. Feel with the heel. Roll. Yes! Kick starting lever. Bang! She comes back to life, into first. Damn this bike is heavy, good thing it has a motor. I slowly wheel her around, give her some gas and plunge back down the hill, with my finger on the horn. Whine, next gear, throttle, whine, next gear. Damn this is fast. The speedo reveals 30km per hour. Okay, it feels

Slow down, gear down, go past them and think about turning around. Brake, turn. Stall. Damn. I've completed the 180 degree turn and am now facing my audience who stand about 30 meters away all looking intently at me. 'Righteo' I think to myself, 'Find neutral'. I flick and I click and I clamber around. Failure. I flick and I click and I roll and I feel. I think I have it. A truck is heading towards me on the other side of the road as I hear something else lumber up behind me. 'I'll just wait for this to pass me' I think. But then the truck stops and the sound behind me grows louder. I turn around but I know I'm not going to like what I see. The truck cannot move around the bend because of the bus sitting behind me. The bus cannot move around me because of the truck. Sweat. Kick the starter. Bang! She starts. Click it into gear, give it plenty, - not long now until I'm out of this, I think - release clutch.

Stall. Damn.

Horns are beeping. Try again. Gotta find neutral. Click, roll, no roll. Damn. try again, click fumble. Roll. Yes. Kick starter. Bang! Up into gear. Give it heaps. Release clutch. fast. Peel around the blind corner, riding on a half faith that is aware of its own doubt. The bridge appears and so do the Englishman, his wife, my brother and my dad. I think I can see the relief in their shoulders from here.

Stall. Shit.

I look up to my audience. They stand there. I consider that my teacher is thinking that this pressure will help me learn. Horns. Bus Horns are really loud. I don't want to look around. I am sweating but try to calm myself with the idea that this is payback for all the times that I've been hassled in this country. The bus horn breaks my thought like a head of glass in a vice. Try to find neutral. Click, click, roll. Got it. Kick the starter. Bang. She's alive. Click it into gear. Third time lucky. I shut my eyes. Give it all the throttle I can. All I need is to lurch forward a meter and a half and this traffic jam is gone.

Release clutch. Stall. Fuck. I want answers. My 40 seconds of experience is strained to work out what the fuck is going on. The horns continue with greater frequency and urgency. Now everyone's angry. A hand appears in my vision and grabs the clutch so we are free to roll and with a sharp pull the Englishman yanks the dead bike out of the way.

The horns cease and the rumbling lumbers louder. I look up at the bus and its passengers look down at me from their chariot with dark judging eyes. Pair after pair of naked, black holes open up and stare down at me letting slip their scornful confusion and trying to soak up an understanding that doesn't come. Part of me moves to fade into the gravel below my feet but I just stare back kind of blankly. My mouth is hidden from them by my helmet but now the horn is removed from behind my ear the more perceptive pick up the slight, thin lipped smile in my eyes.

I take off my helmet. I exhale. I wipe the sweat from my brow and my eyes.

“Righteo?” asks the Englishman

“Righteo I reply with a relieved grin.

I think I need to let some more sediment settle.

My dad and the garden.

My Dad's a really good guy. And I don't mean that in the way that most people say it. Most people call someone a 'good guy' when they have nothing better to say about them. When someone is kinda boring or kinda forgettable but in no way harmful they tend to attract that kind of label. But my dad is different. He really is good, quite seriously; all good. He is good in a really sincere kind of way, all honesty and all integrity. He's a really good business man, but an honest business man. He'd never fuck anyone over for anything as he has this kind of humble honor under his straight up exterior. He enjoys lots of things and he enjoys them with everything he's got. He enjoys complex things like wines and foods, things with subtlety, things that require a degree of knowledge or refinement. But he also really likes simple things and can get quite exited by them, mostly natural things. He grew up in the country you see and he maintains that honest, earthly aesthetic. He can get excited about a sky, or a tree, or the colour of a dog. He can get excited by a rock if it's half way different.


When my dad finds something he likes, he likes it with his whole face, he likes it with his voice, he likes it right to his bones and he is never afraid to show just how much he likes it. I think my brother and I used to get a little embarrassed about it sometimes, I mean when we were a bit younger, when we were teenagers. Teenagers get embarrassed by anything their parents do. It's the way of teenagers really. Anyway, I'm drifting. If we were with our dad when he saw something he'd like he'd call us over in a crowded street with these beaming eyes and broad, white smile of perfect teeth and he'd exclaim something like "Look at that boys! What a ripper of a building that is!". We'd groan and roll our eyes like we'd been done some disservice because that's what teenagers do. Either that or we might complain with rolling eyes, "Jeeesus dad, it's just a bloody building. God you're a dag."


But dad didn't care. He'd just go on liking it. I admire him for that. He never let the world make him cynical and he just kept on going on finding things really good, and he'd always comment on them like he was the first person to see them. He'd comment 0n the most obvious of things. Seriously, you could be in the middle of a parade and he'd exclaim "Wow, look at that elephant!", despite the fact that all you could see was a field of grey, sagging skin because there was this giant African elephant right in front of you. It's kind of cute really, and I don't mean that in a patronising manner at all. Perhaps I should say that it's part of his charm. He really is such a good guy. But he is always stating the obvious. I guess he just wants to make sure that you don't miss things he thinks are good. That's a good quality really; he just wants you to enjoy the goodness of the world like he does, even if you'd have to be blind to miss it.


A bit like the other day. You see my dad decided to come to India to join my brother and I go motorbike riding through the Himalayas. India is a place that can really blow your mind as there's so much crazy stuff going on everywhere and you've really gotta keep your wits about you. You have to see everything but react to nothing. Absorb it all without absorbing it too deeply. I think it was weird for dad at first as his enthusiasm, indeed most of his current thought, is written all over him. Like I told you, he just beams sincerity. Everywhere we'd walk he'd be commenting on things when we were trying to keep as low a profile as possible so as not to get any extra attention from rickshaw drivers or street salesmen. This is pretty bloody difficult anyway as we are white guys in India with shaved heads and no moustaches but with dad being dad any shred of slipping under the radar is quickly abandoned. "Look at all that rubbish". "Wow, these streets are crazy". "Gee this place smells". "Look at those power cables will you?". "Bloody hell it's hot here". Now don't get me wrong, he never whinges. He's a tough character and he never complains, like never-ever complains. He just comments. He just wants to make sure we never miss anything, and we never normally do. I mean Steve and I are reasonably sharp and aware kind of guys, which is probably why we always found it funny the way he would point out the obvious; because we saw it already. We saw it, absorbed it and moved on. Maybe we didn't see it in quite the way that dad saw it, but most of the time we had already seen it.

Most of the time that is.

But the other day was a little different. It was only dad's second or third day in India and we thought he'd had it pretty easy really. He flew into Delhi, which I admit is a bit of crazy little shithole, but not too far out there compared to some of the places we had been. I mean it is a city and a pretty Western city in parts. The streets are paved, there is lighting, some degree of waste removal (although pulled by a donkey) and all things considered it was not too confronting. So that was his introduction. He had prearranged a pretty swanky little hotel for his first night and we were bloody grateful as we hadn't had a warm shower in a month. But after a night and a day there it was time to get out and start heading north and onto our adventures.

We caught an overnight train to some little town that had no more than a train station where you have to catch this other train that is capable of climbing the mountains up to Shimla. I was shagged, really shagged. Usually I can sleep on trains, but this particular night I was plagued with dark dreams and I had barely slept at all as I was still riding the tail of a four day sickness. We arrived at an hour so early that even a sparrow would have hit the snooze button and told you to get fucked. But dad was up and at them like a kid a Christmas. That's another thing about dad - he's a morning person. As soon as the sun gets its morning glory dad is up to meet it with a smile and a bad joke, just bouncing around under the spell of new day. Now Steven and I are not morning people, like seriously not morning people. I think I'd be practically nocturnal if you left me to my natural body clock. Steve and I are patient people, quite patient people, but I tell you what, nothing shits me more than having to deal with enthusiastic people before I have an hour or two to get settled, get a coffee or two under my belt, open my eyes and accept that I am actually awake.

I searched for coffee and only found Chai... bloody hippies. I sat on a bench with Steve as Dad bounced around the station with this excited look plastered across his face like a newborn puppy. Steve and I looked at each other. We didn't to say anything but we did anyway; "Bloody morning people" said one. "Damn straight," said the other. Dad kept pointing things out until one of us got a little snappy. I don't remember who it was but it was probably me. I drank chai and tried to pretend it was coffee. My imagination ain’t what it used to be. Eventually the next train shuffled off and chugged us up into the great, green mountains.

Dad was a little quieter but you could see it was taking a little bit for him to restrain himself from commenting on the scenery. I reminded myself that he was only 36 hours into his trip and that I was a month. I know a month isn't very long but it's a bloody steep learning curve. It doesn't move like the train that wandered and cut through the mountains, it was straight up and fast, like riding a missile with a cowboy hat in your hand and your skin peeling back off your face. I was really quite impressed with the scenery and as I started to wake up I became a little bit more 'conversational'. I was no orator, but I was half willing to communicate. I would have killed the other family in the carriage for a pot of coffee. Stephen was out cold in the corner, his head bobbing with the slow and slack clickety clack of the train, lucky bastard.

The train came to occasional grind at a station. A whistle blew. Dad jumped up and told us all how he was going to stretch his legs. My little crest of energy had come and gone and I lifted my eyebrows with a blatantly half-assed acknowledgment as I slouched into the space where he sat a moment ago. Steve remained unconscious. I sat there with my head in the corner looking out onto the quaint little platform where people were unloading themselves and yawning and stretching in the clear glow of morning light and a strangely unpolluted air. I watched dad from underneath by invisible eyes. He stuck out like a bride at a funeral as he walked to and fro, his eyes scouring the world like a million invisible tongues in order to taste all that he saw. He inhaled the mountain air deep into his lungs. I sat without so much as twitching. Then he walked up to the window with his big direct strides.

"Hey." I said with my pathetically tired and lazy voice.
"Hey!" He replied, with his kind of lit up as it always is, fostering his innate enthusiasm, before he continued in a still excited yet strangely contemplative tone, "There's something in the air here." He stated and then paused as though he could not put his nostrils to it.
"Cleanliness?" I suggested in my lightest of cynical tones.
"Nah" he replied as he feigned looking around and lifting his face up a bit allowing some more air to roll over his face. He paused again.
"Eucalyptus?" I suggested, putting a little bit more effort in this time as we had both recently remarked on how odd it was to see the odd gum tree in the middle of India.
"Nah" He replied again, although this time with a little more haste and almost a shrouded grin.
"It kind of smells like," he hesitated for effect as he turned his head a little towards mine and craned it in through the window. "It kind of smell like," He began again "a heap of ganga."

I almost scoffed. What the hell would my dad know about weed? I have been pretty forthcoming about elements of my life with my dad and I knew damn straight that my dad had no experience with weed at all, and even if he was telling fibs, he wouldn't have been near it since the 60's. I would have dismissed the whole idea off hand if it wasn't so extremely in how surreal it was. I shook my head and clenched my eyes and opened them again and looked at him. There was that silly kind of grin on his face that was both proud yet kind of loaded with anticipation of my response. "Why would he say something like that?" I thought to myself as my focus drifted to some place behind him, further out the window and as they did I sat up in hurry.

The six foot high mud brick wall that was painted a harsh, bleached white held back a mountain of dirt that sat under a small field of lush green foliage made entirely from that famously jagged, five pointed leaf. My eyes opened and my jaw dropped a little. Dad's expression, having noticed my expression, grew a little spark of cheeky satisfaction. I simply couldn't believe it. I mean I've heard about places where it grows wild, but that was just a bunch of words of lands far away. Now it was here. I was actually looking at it. I was in a land far away and I was looking at it, and it was fucking everywhere. Everywhere. My eyes followed it up and down the train platform and those little leaves all sat there like a stadium of green hands presenting themselves for a manicure. I breathed in the air as I simply needed more evidence than that from my eyes that must have been lying to me for some reason known only to them. With the opening of my ribcage, the air passed into my nose and rolled around in my mouth as I scanned it with the concentration of a passionate chef or a concert pianist. The air was loaded with the notoriously sweet scent of infamous grass.

I looked back at my dad and laughed. "Well I'll be." I manage to stammer with a foolish grin and a nodding head. "Lucky he's a morning person", I thought to myself quietly.

Pointless cantankerous rant #1

I cannot bloody wait to eat a steak.

When I get to Delhi, or if not, when I get home... or even halfway if I have a stop over at an airport. I am going to eat a steak.

I have pretty much become a vegetarian during my stay so far, and have been forced to in this particular town that is ultra religious. This place is so strict that you cannot buy booze, drugs, any form of meat or even eggs. Strangely enough we found a place that sells beer in tea pots and after dark we get offered everything from hash to opium, but I can not find a fucking omlette to save my life.

Now I must say that I am quite content with this new vegetarian thing. I feel fit and healthy, I eat a mountain of fruit every day and do not in any considerable way miss the taste or texture of animal flesh. In fact this eating the steak of which I talk has very little to do with the sensation of actually eating the steak.

This is the steak of vengeance.

This town, as many before, is full of cows, but here they are revered more highly and thier population in proportion to people here is far higher. If i didn't know better (and perhaps I don't) I'd almost think that these cows were running the show. They walk down the middle of every street, while people, bikes and cars move to the side. They saunter and sway right into your path, knowing full well you are there. Now these things I can deal with, they cause me little to no concern as I am absent for a reason to hurry and am happy to avoid these cud chewing demi-gods, but, I ask you;

What kind of sacred animal shits in the fucking street?

I am losing count of the amount of times I have been distracted by a foreign noise, go to look at an intriguing stall or casually stroll home, staring at the sky after a dinner of exotic wonders only to feel the ground under one foot fall with that unique softness and subtle drift from the course you suspected. Then that sting of realisation is sharp in my mind as I turn around to see the cow next to me look back with that blank stare that masks its patronising mind, laughing wholeheartedly at me, the fool.

Well I'll show you cow! You might be safe here, in this town, but I will eat your family and grow fat on the flesh of your sisters!! I will order you rare, I will order you medium, I will order you well done. I will order that you are burned beyond anything I could eat just so you can taste hell and hear me laughing for eternity. I will smother you in seeded mustard and I will chew on you slowly. I will feel your fibres between my teeth and your fibres, your blood and your body will feel the shape of my smile as you roll around my jagged mouth before being burned in the acid of my stomach.

I may have stepped in your shit, but this I can handle because one day soon... you will BE mine.

Primate games.

The other morning I was sitting on the hotel rooftop, after an early rise from a satisfying slumber. I sat there drinking coffee with freedom and possibly absense of thought, enjoying the dry hot air and slow melting breeze. I casually watched our waiter walk to the edge of the rooftop and look out over the valley of the city that thrusts from the earth like a jagged mosaic. The waiter, a polite but very reserved man, with six fingers on each hand began to grin. At first there was a slight hesitation, and a patient anticipation as watched something unfold. The grin split and became a smile as his face lightened and then shook with a genuine laugh. I looked up from my coffee and he looked at me. With one hand he points at what he's looking at, and with the other he beckons me over.

'This ought to be interesting', I thought to myself as the man had kept every glance and communciation with me 'strictly business', although we had been staying there for days. With a curious grin I got out of my chair and sauntered over to him as only a man on vacation can; loose and lazy with a constant languid expression.

My eyes adjusted to the brightness of the light and I followed the direction of his outstretched arm and extra finger to the rooftop of a few houses away where I saw the theatre which amused him so. A family of monkeys, with warm white hair and charcoal faces jumped and swang and screamed with shrieks of amusement and pure delight as they pulled all the clothes off some lady's clothes line and proceeded to swing them around, throw them onto the street, and have a few rounds of 'tug-of-war'. They galloped and bounced over the rooftop, hanging from the line with socks in their mouths and skirts in their hands destroying the family's efforts.

But together, Fingers and I just stared and laughed. We laughed from the belly. We laughed round, and we laughed wholesomely... and as for the monkeys... well they laughed with us.

Temple Town

The rain was beginning to soak into our spirits, so with a new resolve we swallowed the advice of our French friends and decided to head inland and slightly north, to a dry place that actually had things to see, as opposed to communities that survived by attracting tourists to beaches. The destination was a little town called Hampi, and our method of travel a rickety bus of hard vinyl seats and scratched windows that would refuse to open, or refuse to close, depending on what was least preferable for the time. The bus made a sound I will never forget, like enormous mechanical vultures of rusted steel, bickering in a wire nest.

The Journey was to take just over ten hours, but within just half of one, Steven was passed out in the corner his lower lip shaking with the vibration of the bus and his headphones still bouncing music into his unconscious ears.

The air was hot and moist, as it had been since we arrived but shortly after takeoff the intensity increased with our altitude as we wound up mountains not dissimilar to the Black Spur, except due to the nature of Indian traffic this was a road on which people felt compelled to overtake you no matter how steep the curve, or how blind the corner. I saw at least two trucks and bus that had lost their footing and were perched in ditches, their sides resting against a wall of mud and rock. I tried not to think about the vehicles that had fallen off the low side.

Hours swallowed hours and Steve's state of consciousness flinched only occasionally, but the world behind my eyes surged as I attempted to soak up the intricacies of the sounds and smells and images of the changing landscape.

Once over the mountain range the dense nature of exploding jungles dissipated into drier scatterings of shrapnel as the land settled and stretched to a near horizontal horizon. Despite the vibrations I read 'The Alchemist', a simple but delightful book, made difficult to read as the words shook with my hands and the letters jumbled themselves up often removing themselves from the page altogether and scattering themselves on the floor of the bus or the back of the seat in front of me.

Eventually we arrived in Hospet, a few kilometres from Hampi, and as the bus entered the station there was a knock from outside on the back window. A young Indian boy was already offering us his services as a rickshaw driver. We were the last to get off the bus as were enveloped by at least a dozen young boys "Where you Going?" , "Hampi?", "100 rupees", "90 rupees", "Which country?", "Don't trust him, I give you good deal". Their arms and hand and eyes like tendrils crawled over me. Steve just picked one and off we went through the light evening drizzle an hour beyond dusk. The boy asked us where we had been, we replied that we had been in the rain and were seeking relief. He informed us of the hopeful notion that the current drizzle was the first rain in ten days for Hampi. We exhaled as our hope was fed through words of a rickshaw driver (a rare thing).

It is a strange thing arriving at a new place under curtains of darkness. You have such limited information to gauge your environment, your direction or your position. You see flashes of lights and shadows but like scattered pieces of puzzle you cannot put them together in your mind. The upside of such things is that the new day allows the excitement of slotting together certain elements and slowly the missing pieces reveal themselves and make the picture that much more satisfying for the original denial.

And the new day was indeed satisfying. We followed a steep, white steel staircase to the rooftop restaurant where right in front of us, about 150 metres away stood an 11 story Hindu temple of about 600 years old carved and constructed from sandstone. In front of it and around it were various other structures, temples and courtyards. The sky was grey but the air was dry. We ate with a renewed enthusiasm. Finally, we were to actually see something, finally we could walk with dry shirts and light, languid footsteps... then we did.

We sauntered through though a massive doorway of a 9 story structure shaped like a steep pyramid, but with intricate carvings of humans and gods. Beyond it a large courtyard of stone pavers stretched out to its borders where pillars and pylons stood in front of sandstone walls and masked, dark doorways to halls and chambers. The courtyard was alive things beautiful and ugly; brightly dressed children who played, stared and gushed towards us, monkeys that swung and jumped across the eves of temples, dirty fly bitten dogs, the occasional deformed and emaciated beggar and many men who offered to be our 'guide'. We tried to evade them all, an impossible task, but after declining everything for five minutes or so and letting our western manners slip just slightly, most of them got the point and we wandered around these ancient ruins. At the time I had naught to compare it with. It was quite amazing, the age, the workmanship, even the technology. 'Technology' you ask? There was one small chamber through a slightly larger chamber which has a small crack in the wall that acted like a pinhole camera, and at that time of the day the silhouette of the front was cast upside down onto one of the walls. Simple indeed, but one had to admire the thought and care of the people who built this 400 years before our country was even colonised.

Hours passed and photos were taken before a familiar feeling crossed my mind and then my skin. The pressure dropped, the wind picked up heaven started to melt above us. 10 days of dryness and we arrived as the rains arrived. I'm travelling with a man whose nickname is Sunshine, yet the actual experience of his namesake has eluded us every step. We spent the day drinking coffee and eating curry with our books and then retired to our rooms to continue the reading, when the power in the whole town went out. Steve slept and I darted through the rain to a cafe where a car battery or hidden generator powered a fluorescent light and there I sat, being eaten by the local insect wildlife and read about the economics of humanity.

The following day was the same but the rains started ever earlier and so we sat and read and wrote and smiled occasionally frustrated smiles at our fortune. Locals told us we were surrounded by 20 kilometers of storm on all sides, and although we desired to see the plethora of other temples ion the immediate region our desire for sunshine was too strong and we booked a bus further north. If there is one thing that India has in spades (beyond, people, poverty, cows, and curries) it is temples, and so we arranged some links in the transport chain that would take us to a place that would make everything we had seen in Hampi look like Legoland.

Shakespeare in India

The want of a market led us to a wiry thread of clinking buses that wove themselves through a tapestry of bending backstreets. Colva to Margao, Margao to Panjib, Panjib to Mapusa, and Marpusa to Ajuna, a town hailed for its beauty, rich with vibrant Goan flavours and a flea market of untold treasures. Several hours of bumps and screeching metal left us famished and with the restaurant at the guesthouse deserted we scoured the path to the beach and came to a 'T' in the road. "When in doubt, turn left" came the memory of an old quip and we obeyed with a cheeky footstep.

They sky was grey as it had been since we arrived and it mirrored the sand underneath our feet, dark and textured, stained with decay. The wind jolted and shook, and then hung for a spontaneous moment before shifting back to its awkward, blustering dance.

The light, which was on the cusp of beginning its daily withdrawals presented shack after shack adorned in the hand painted murals of beer and soft drink logos, but as each was reached and investigated, they yielded no more than huts wrapped up in tarps and the dead leaves of palms. On we walked with the turbulent, sandy waves of a beach disturbed, invading our shrinking walkway. With a unique blend of ignorance, hope and stubborn hunger we worked our way through several bays littered with refuse until the only path left was an impossible cement staircase away from the churning yellow sea. Further we walked under our deranged logic, finding barely a soul lingering in this ghostly grey paradise reminiscent of Luhrman's Verona in its own state of impending doom.

As the sun grew exhausted and surrendered to gravity behind our earthly shroud, the remaining tones of colour drained from all matter. Tree and rock, fence and building were all robbed of their essence and was replaced by a surreal arrangement of props fit for use in a black and white horror film.

Then it began to rain.

Our hunger had temporarily blinded us from the now obvious inevitability of such a thing and within seconds the most intimate of body curves were subject to the monsoon as we did an about face and squelched our way back. There is a point of saturation where you stop caring and accept that there is no dry spot to savor and nothing to hide from the penetrating deluge. But I discovered there is another point even beyond this where acceptance and resolve is dissolved into consuming irritation and with a glance of mutual but undirected annoyance we lifted our feet and ran blind down foreign and distorted paths to the place that we would tonight call home.

The rains

The clouds are of a grey so neutral they could define the term. They are the colour of a poker face, void of both warmth, cruelty, indeed any expression. They are free of complexity and nigh on free of texture and definition as they hide both sun and moon from our drenched skins and questioning eyes. They mask the face of heaven and invade the world like a soupy mist, so close you could almost inhale their contents, but one need not inhale as the contents find their way into your skin, your eyes and your moth soon enough. It is so wet that the skin on your fingers wrinkles and whitens from under shelter in mere anticipation of the fall. In this place rain is as reliable as change and as certain as death.

Uncompromising, engulfing and nigh on constant, Heaven's drainpipe rests above us shrouded in glowing white soup that cannot threaten as their threat is almost always being realised. There is no warning in the sky, no suggestion in the wind and no hint in the ever moist air. It starts, and finishes, and starts again like the whim of a spoiled but powerful child that seeks to flush away the world that has done it some unquenchable harm.

An almost infinite amount of single, invisible points manifest and follow their path towards our rock shielded by their size until they are almost upon us, finally taking form just feet above our heads or in the presence of headlights or a lonely streetlamp. When lit form the side and combined with its windy companion, it forms sheets as the minute beads roll into and off of each other in a frantic and chaotic dash to join their comrades that cut away at the earth. United in our world their laziness shifts and forms lumbering streams and searching tendrils that reshape our place. An endless escalator of glistening rungs rolls down a palm tree before melting into a river that flows where the path to my front door used to be. The rain is the landlord of this country and we are no more that a string of expendable renters who live in its house.

Arrival in Goa

Fifteen hours after that first textured hiss comes the grinding squeal that signifies our destination. Through the ravaging rains that invade the platform, a taxi finds us a place to sleep. Upon first light we examine our surroundings and seek out suggested accommodation. The 'Garden Cottages' is comprised of five self contained units. Fortunately two are vacant. Each room begs the rent of 200 rupees per night (AU$6) and are simple, private, off the street and come with their own porch and a pair of cockroaches (I named ours Basil and Henry). Our viewing platforms look out onto a shared garden of pots and ferns, with draping flowers of dusty sunsets and misty sunrises, and is a delicate refrain from the saturation of all other visible colours.Beyond our fence is a hut where chickens poke at ground and a little of small black pigs suckle at their mother's belly. Further beyond that are buildings several stories high in a state of being either half built or half destroyed. But despite their rise or fall people are living inside them, a fact apparent from the clothes lines draped in fabrics, simple and complex that swirl in the hot, wet breeze.

Our things secure, we brave the rain and head for a bar. We drink well and we drink cheaply as we open ourselves to each other and share thoughts and tales of both meaning and frivolity. For the first time so far I exhale. I smile. My fear melts and I just exist. I go to hunt down a conversation with a computer while the other move onto a bar down a dark and unknown street. When the drunken conversation with the keyboard is over I walk barefoot through the rain, rocks poking at my feet, water rolling down my spine, and sand wedging itself into my nails. My heart and mind are open as they shine and I smile a smile I have not smiled before. Up to my ankles in black puddles, my faith in my path serves me well and a distant fluorescent light presents the washed out image of my friends playing pool and laughing honest laughter whilst wandering jazz emanates from behind them. Another drink is followed by more of the same and soon we find ourselves on our porch playing music and talking nonsense aided by a bottle of $4 vodka called 'White Mischief'.

White mischief indeed.

moving north

Another early rise but this time rather than moving off for a light cruise through the jungle we head towards a trains station to get some kilometers behind us. The monsoon season has only really begun but I have never seen rains like this; drenching and heavy, wide and white. It falls soft and warm and feels like a kind of velvety syrup on the skin.

We hoped to beat the rains by moving north to Goa, around a 12 hour train trip (or so we were told). But we would soon find that trying to been the monsoon is like running away from the dark an hour after sunset.

The station was all a commotion. Lines and 'Q's (as the signage indicated) wound through crowds that shuffled and shook in pursuit of their many directions. There was that sound in the air that is unique to hubs of travel; the crackle of loudspeakers before various announcements of numbers and locations repeated in dialects unknown and languages indistinguishable. The rattle and ramble of locomotion drawing in and out of this single link of chain webbing with a hiss and a grunt as they surge and creak like lumbering metal snakes that just dined on a crowd full of humans.

A tap on the shoulder and a French 'Allo' made us turn to see a couple we had met the day prior on our floating voyage. Our destinations the same we made our formal introductions as we had failed to mention our names on the chariot of cane. Sandra and Michael had been in India for the last month and as they entered their final week they, like us, desired the taste of warm sunlight and a brief reprieve from the sticky saturation of the monsoon.

With a textured hiss that envelopes outwards the station rolls away from us and within minutes the picture in the window morphs into a rich garden of exploding foliage and mirrored puddles. The air is so moist, the land so low and heaven's barrage so constant that nothing dries and soon every depression becomes a pool that fills and then rolls over itself aching to spread, divide and conquer the space next to it.

Just like the jungles of yesterday the frame presents an untamed land peppered with basic human development. Mud bricks, demented tin, recycled signage and royal blue plastic tarps are reflected through my eyes as they dance in their window near and far. The clothing of the local people is laid out on piles of rocks in an attempt to bake them into dry submission.

Flashes of people move through the brisk scenery like characters under a strobe light. What they are doing, where they are going and what is moving them inside their own hearts is a mystery to me, but I ponder it anyway with no need for answers, just the vibrating pleasure of curiosity itself.

As I delve deeper into such curious thoughts I see a dark hand waving to my left. I shift my attention and look towards the hand which is now outstretched and begging for a contribution. I follow the hand to its source where a crippled man sits on the floor. He lo0oks into me. He looks at me like I am naked before him. His eyes are black holes in which resides echoes of a painful life, the likes of which I should never know. I want to help the man but I shake my head. I don't think I can help the man beyond a meal but maybe that idea is just a facade to hide my own selfishness from me. I look away but hear his aching tongue follow me with words I cannot grasp. After a moment I hear him move on and my eyes return to see him shuffle off on his hands. It is only that that I see that he does not exist below the waist and that he drags himself by his hands, his deformed torso separated from the ground by a piece of newspaper that scrapes and scrunches across the sandy train floor. I shut my eyes. No tear appears and no tear falls, but my heart weeps silently in its cage.

backwaters

A tranquil boat cruise through the backwaters of Kerala provided yesterday's backdrop of calm, murky waters and lush greenery, the likes of which I have never seen. It was as though palm fought fern to clamber towards any gap not yet occupied. Everything is saturated with life.

I left a country deep in drought and arrived in a water world. Lakes stretch into long fingers of slow moving rivers that change direction with the tide, and they in turn branch into small channels only marginally wider than our boat. We mover from river to channel and are silently propelled by a bamboo pole deep into the labyrinth. Grasses and flowered undergrowth poised on the edge of the bank reach and stretch into our watercraft fashioned from cane and bound together with ropes made from the husks of coconuts.

We maneouvre around an impossible corner, briefly drowning waterlillies that pepper our path like ice in a bath. I close my eyes and inhale the forest, rich in subtle scents of green with pink flashes and a hint of human. Even out here in a maze of mnarshes and naturally cut lines of liquid people are living. People live everywhere here. I wonder if people own land all the way out here, sell land or just aquire land and build. The shelters are varied but consistently simple, form huts fashioned from discarded wood, recycled tin and tarpaulins, to concrete houses jutting awkwardly out of a landscape void of straight lines.

I cannot help but ponder the thoughts of the people that live here. They live such simple lives compared to that of my homeland, that now seems so intricate by comparison.

Are they happy? They certainly greet us with warm smiles and sharp beaming eyes but perhaps happiness means different things here, if it means anything at all. Does a simple life dictate a simple philosophy, or at least influence its development? Is there a place for philosophy here at all where survival is the game rather than our modern pursuits of expression, decadence and a fruitless search for mneaning and purpose, whatever they are. It seems almost ludicrous to ponder 'meaning' in this explosion of humnanit, where 'ifs' and 'buts' become no more than humid air, something of which there is already no shortage. This is a owrld of 'is' and 'is not'. The question of 'why' that usually keeps me awake at night, if it is not waking me from my shady dreams is completely lost here and I am glad to let go of it if it can allow me to taste another perspective on the human menu of perception.

Day Zero

As soon as I stepped off the plane the world grew before me, stretching out in all directrions like the possibilities of a chess board.

A layer of mirror slipped from my eyes and I presented myself with things I could not fathom. I sit in a taxi with my long lost brother. I search in vain for a seatbelt while he lights a cigarette. I have a lot to learn.

This rattling, speeding, erratic coffin of squeaks and creak peers through a humid and dark night, showing me flashes of this wild world. Urban decay just trook on new meaning and it would take on more still when the sun goes through its next motion and reveal the depth of this old but new land of wonder, humanity and degradation.

The cold shower of the next morning woke me from my jetlagged sleep but the haze would continue for days as I try to comprehend life here. But digesting India is not as simple as swallowing a malaria tablet, it takes time. It deserves, nay demands, consideration.

We ate breakfast by a window. Stephen started to word me up on indian ways as I allowed myself to become transfixed by simple things on the other side of the pane. Power cables no thicker than stereo wire drip, drape and bunch lifke fibres in the nest of a mechanical raven. Cats and kittens, slender and slight peek and peer form nooks and crannies. A soupy smell of delight and hideousness eminates from everywhere as my ears return to my brother's words.

We stroll down a street towards Jew town.I'm amazed there is actually a place called 'Jew Town'(images of John Safran's Music Jamboree flood to my mind), but in a place of such widespread an intense spirituality I suppose it makes sense. Apparently everyone has a god here; muslim, hindu, catholic or jew. Atheism is not popular here. I decide to hide my beliefes from here on out, there is no point or purpose in exposing myself any further.

The street ahead stretches and bends, void of straight lines or 90 degree angles. The streets have eyes. I thought being the only westerner on a plane of 200 people was odd, but two white boys walking down a path of pure commotion sticking out like red keys on a piano put the prior to shame. The eyes of the women avoid us after a glimpse but the eyes of the men follow us, free of expression from dark recesses and shops like wardrobes trading in things simple and strange.