I got to India on friday morning at about butt o'clock. I have no idea what the actual time was, maybe 5 am?, but butts were definetly involved. In fact, at one point, I attempted to get some beggars off of me by "pressing some ham" on them. Sadly, this had no effect. And they seemed only to want to steal my bags even more.

Spent the morning at the hotel wandering around, reading the economist and feeling real good about all the people smiling at me and saying hi. That feeling lasted about a day. After about a day, that got super annoying. To the point where I was hoping to see someone who gave me that, "fuck you, you asshole. I bust my hump for you all day and yet I still have to smile. God I hate you." You know, typical customer service in the states. I did finally meet that guy. And I was happy.

I almost did die on saturday. Although not from your usual Indian causes like the Plauge. It was the children. If only I could stop thinking about these dagged children. My group and I went to a temple. We were gonna hang out, see the temple, maybe do a little shopping at the bazaar. We weren't, however, expecting to have a small child latch on to each of us and not fscking let go. Seriously, 20 minutes of a small child holding onto your forearm and calling you "mama" gets to you. The whole ride back to hotel I was in a kind of stupor. Becuase, well, that was unneeded.

Back at the hotel, I had an Aldous Huxely, "Brave New World" kind of feeling. I wanted my goddamned Soma. It was almost exactly like when the main guy takes that girl into the native land and every night she gets back to her little room and goes nuts on soma. Lacking anything called soma, I got absolutely trashed. And then didn't leave my room on sunday. Partially because of the hangover, and partially because as long as I stayed in there, I was in Chicago and wishing I could go downstairs, grab some chips, get into a fight with my mom then go back up to my room and hop online. I have never had that kind of jarring experience before. I've been to very poor areas of the world, but this was just plain awful.

And now I'm at work, sitting in the back of the room, wondering when I get to go home. Or the Himalayas. One of the two.

And Patrick, if all goes well, I'll be dead in an avalanche by next sunday. Bet on it.

EDIT: just checked the posting time and I'm 12 hours ahead of you jokers. Yeup, I'm finally ahead of the game.
- posted by Pat @ 1:06 AM