I am now in Palolem in Southern Goa, recovering on this peaceful, gorgeous beach with Mary and Don, two of my Anjuna crew. Mary and I leave for Bombay tomorrow to meet up with Chris. He wasn't enjoying Anjuna as much as I was and decided to move ahead there while I stayed and enjoyed Anjuna and my new friends' company for a bit longer.

My warm feelings about Anjuna and my friends there only continued to grow during my week there. After the first party, Lucy, Dave and Matt fell ill and skipped the party on Saturday. Alex, Chris and I went together but ended up alone most of the night. I wandered around dancing and meeting new people, excited to be experiencing a party on my own. Soon into the night while taking a dance break, I met Mary, a beautiful and effervescent 29 year old from "near Birmingham." We hit it off immediately and chatted and danced the night away.

Mary later introduced me to her friend and travel buddy, Don, a former co-worker of hers from "near Cambridge." The two of them joined our crew and the seven of us, Lucy, Dave, Matt, Alex, Mary, Don and I spent nearly all our time together for the entire week. Hours of dancing and partying bonded us. Hours upon hours of talking, sitting, listening to music and gazing at the sea from the Sonic porch cemented us.

Our final party together was Wednesday night. It was at The Temple again and the organizers outdid themselves. The lighting, visuals and organization was the most impressive of any of the parties we went to, and the experience we all shared partying as a group made it a night I won't forget. Leaving Anjuna was very difficult. Trying to explain the closeness I felt with these people after such a short time is difficult, but the best I can do is to say that the connections I made over the last week could very well last a lifetime. A visit to England is an imperative.

Mary is off to meet her parents in Delhi and will be with me until we both leave Bombay on Thursday. She, Don, Chris and I may meet up in Nepal for trekking at the end of March.

Goa has turned out to be everything I hoped it would be. Arambol was sleepy; a sort of bedroom community to nearby Anjuna where trance parties thump from midnight to 8 am followed by afterparties from 1 pm - someungodlyhour. Much more my speed after 6 weeks of social starvation. My schedule is shaping up to be something like this:

7:00 pm - 8:00 pm Dinner (or breakfast, as it were)
8:00 pm - 2 am Talking with friends and listening to music at Sonic Guesthouse overlooking the sea
2 am - 8 am Dancing, talking, bouncing, listening, spinning, connecting
8 am - noon Talking with friends at Sonic and watching the tidepools fill up from underneath (the sound it makes as it fills the holes: bloob bloob bloob bloob!, had us in hysterics until about the fifth time we heard it)
noon - 6 pm Sleep

Chris and I have been spending our time with four people we've met; Dave and Lucy, a brilliantly funny veterinarian couple from Darby; Matt, a lone traveler and Doctor of Physics from Manchester; and Alex, a somewhat naive but eager to learn dreadlocked 18-year old Scot spending his gap year before university in India. Chris, Matt and Dave are all bald with goatees and have wicked senses of humor, so time together has been anything but dull.

Our first party was on Friday at "The Bamboo Forest," which was really just some guy's big backyard with a somewhat sparse shroud of bamboo trees and a large dirt clearing in the middle. The dark, black-lit neon dancefloor was pounding and I immediately dashed onto it, whooping and throwing myself about with abandon and a big smile on my face and my pink skirt glowing.

An Indian man with two jars of UV glow paint smiled at me and gestured that he wanted to paint on my shoulder. I held still while he glided on a yellow Om symbol, then a second on my other shoulder. I squeezed his shoulder and thanked him. He smiled back, then stuck his open palm in my face and said "Money!!" I stared at him blankly. "30 rupees! Hello, money!" he repeated. I was horrified and disgusted. I told him that when someone comes up to me in what appears to be a selfless gesture of kindess, well dammit, that's what gives these parties energy and a feeling of community. He said he understood and sauntered off, insufficiently shamed, to his next victim (who turned out to be Alex and a 50 rupee profit).

Straw mats scattered around dozens of vendors working by lantern-light lay around the perimeter of the dancefloor at the edge of the trees. We claimed some mats beside the dancefloor in front of a Chai-lady where we sat when we weren't dancing. A constant stream of roaming vendors (pastries, gum, water, lollypops) and begging mothers and children would draw around us, interrupting conversation and refusing to move. After several hours we started to notice less and exude the all important "I can see you but I am NOT going to acknowledge your request for my attention" vibe and they came 'round less, or at least lingered only briefly.

The atmosphere was palpable, especially at sunrise when the air had grown still and heavy from body heat and stirred-up dust. People continued dancing as the sun and the music rose, others stopped to inspect the sunlit, sweat, paint and dust-covered faces of their fellow partiers and friends from India, England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand, Peru, Brazil, Morocco, South Africa, Japan, Russia, America, Canadia, Israel, Iran, Turkey.

The second party was held at the ambitiously named "Temple" venue, which was lovely because of its proximity to the beach and our guesthouse, but unimpressive because the "Temple" was hidden under construction and was less a pious centerpiece and more an eyesore blocking the view to the sea.

Chris and I have finally met some people we really connect and have fun with. The parties themselves are fun, loud, strange, wonderful, better then I expected but not as good as I hoped. Can I help it? San Francisco and Burning Man have set the bar impossibly high. Still, I am having the time of my life and am not sure when I will be ready to move north. I, uh, hear it's still cold up there.

And now, a quick word on baksheesh.

There are several kinds of baksheesh (money paid to an individual for some service or even just as charity). In this case, the baksheesh I am talking about is a bribe paid to the police to allow certain illegal activities to occur. Police corruption is commonplace in India, but in Goa, it's an entire industry that keeps the Goan economy going. Restaurants and clubs pay baksheesh in order to be able to sell drugs to their customers and allow them to be consumed on the premises. Party organizers pay baksheesh to allow parties to go on despite the fact that outdoor music after 10 pm is illegal in Goa. Westerners transporting drugs into Goa pay baksheesh to be able to sell their wares for inflated prices inside the parties. Anyone randomly searched and found with drugs on them can pay baksheesh on the spot to get out of jail free. The Goan police force 'closes down' illegal parties, but not until 8 am when the party's about over anyway. This prevents Goa from losing its reputation as a party destination while still demonstrating a (somewhat atrophied) arm of the law. Everyone gets a share and has a good time, and the Goan police force is such a desired employer that one must pay a hefty sum to join the force.

Gotta love this country.

Greetings from Goa, India's smallest state and birthplace of an entire genre of electronic music: Goa trance. (Despite my love for trance, I have yet to discern the difference, if there is one, between Goa trance and its closely-related genre, psychedelic trance.)

The party town of Anjuna in North Goa has had a semi-permanent ex-pat population, including many DJs, partygoers, burnt out druggies and hippies, since the 60s. The parties here have helped give birth to an international trance party scene. The scene is as vibrant as ever and at the moment, the outdoor raves that make Goa famous are happening about 3-4 times per week. Rumors abound about increased police presence, parties shutting down early and so on, but I am optimistic that tomorrow's Black Moon Party will not disappoint. I haven't had a proper dancing session since the Full Moon Party in Thailand in November and have been looking forward to this so much. Dancing! In Goa! To trance! On the beach! Could life get any better?!

With tourist dollars (euros, pounds, shekels, what have you) flowing into the state's coffers in a steady stream, Goa now has a comparatively high standard of living. This translates to higher prices for us and a vibe that feels quite a bit different from "the real India." There are reminders that we're still in India (the roads are terrible, it's pretty dirty, people still constantly implore you to enter their shops, ride in their rickshaws, so on), but all in all it feels like a different world here.

At the moment we're in the town of Arambol, about half-hour north of Anjuna. After checking into our guesthouse, I met my next-door neighbor Fritz, a tweaky Scottish lad from Aberdeen. We chatted a bit in the guesthouse hallway and then he ushered me into his sty of a room for some freshly-made coffee. Clothing, books, CDs and other personal effects were strewn about with the same carelessness as broken bottles, discarded papers and cigarette butts. He swept aside a spot for me to sit and with a jittery hand, offered me a mug. We talked a bit about the American government (there are so few Americans traveling here that given the chance, most travelers are eager to discuss politics with me) and then he offered me some ketamine. I passed, and we decided to go for a lassi (a yummy drink made out of yogurt).

As we walked to the restaurant, I quickly deduced from his twitching eyes and inability to walk in a straight line that Fritz was ON something; probably the ketamine he'd offered me earlier. When we got to the restaurant, the dialog went something like this:

Fritz: "One sweet lassi."
Waiter: "Yes sir, and for you?" (turning to me)
Fritz: (interjecting) "No wait. Make that two sweet lassis."
Waiter: (nods, turns to me again)
Fritz: "Two sweet lassis. And an apple lassi."
Waiter: (turning back to Fritz with an acknowledging head wobble) "No problem."
Fritz: "Wait. Two sweet lassis. And an apple lassi. And a banana lassi. And uh, a grape lassi. Oh, and a vegatable thali and a tomato and cheese omelet."

I sat silently sipping my one sweet lassi (it was absolutely delicious) and watched him down three of his five lassis before excusing myself to go to the post office. Tomorrow we'll move to Anjuna.

Hope you all had a Valentines' Day full of lurve. Mine was terribly unromantic, spent on an overnight sleeper bus from Hampi to the holy town of Gokarna. (Thus far, no unholy towns have made it onto our itinerary.) We came here on a detour to see a festival we'd heard about that involves thousands of people chucking bananas at humongous wood chariots careening down the main bazaar in the center of town. We unfortunately learned today that the festival goes on for 8 days and the banana tossing doesn't occur until the 21st, so we're going to have to give it a miss and move on as quickly as we arrived.

In Hampi, I spent a good chunk of time at really shanti place called Goan Corner. [aside: "shanti" is, from what I can surmise, a Hindi word synonymous with peaceful or relaxed. The hordes of Israeli travelers I've met use it liberally when describing chill places that allow their patrons to smoke weed in the open. And then there's "shanti shanti," which means "relax" or "be patient"] The place is owned by a 36 year-old Indian "sublime mama" type (Chris's words) named Sharmila and her second husband Thakur. She dumbfounded us with stories of her success as a business woman in a man's world, and about her family disowning her when she decided to remarry. Women in India do not remarry, even if their first husbands were abusive pricks. She was warm and wonderful and made Hampi feel like home.

Tomorrow we leave for Goa, cheaper internet, and perhaps a clearing of my current writer's block. More then.

We moved to the other side of the river. This was a good idea. Set among acres of palm trees and vivid green rice paddies, the few guesthouses on this side are better situated for rest, relaxation and meeting new people. Travelers stay up late talking, playing cards over beer and having a good time. I haven't felt this vibe since Thailand and while some might argue that the small village of Hampi now derives most of its charm from the tourist scene at the cost of some its original local color, it feels really good to be someplace I don't want to leave.

At its peak, the Holy city here rivaled the size and vibrancy of ancient Rome and had a population of 500,000. The ruins of the ancient city and its 2000+ temples are scattered for miles in every direction. Mounds of absolutely massive boulders, teetering precariously and defying gravity, snake to the horizon like the remnants of mountains smashed by an angry god. My first 360 degree view of the landscape from up high left me breathless and emotional; one of those rare but truly precious moments that reminds me how lucky I am to be alive and *here.*

On Saturday morning I got up early and went to the Hanuman Temple, 4 km away from town and 627 steps up the side of a giant granite mound. The temple marks the birthplace of the Hindu monkey god Hanuman and, appropriately, the mound is inhabited by hundreds of extremely cheeky Langur monkeys. One tried to steal my sandwich right out of my backpack but his efforts were thwarted when I caught him red-handed gazing up at me innocently.

Along with the monkeys lives a group of Sadhus who are devotees to Hanuman. Sadhus are holy men who renounce their families and possessions and dedicate their lives to attaining a higher level of spiritual consciousness. They do this by smoking a crapload of hash from sunrise to sunset every single day of the year, using a big fat funnel-shaped device called a chillum.

They fill the chillum with a finely ground mixture of tobacco and hashish or marijuana. The tobacco is usually taken from dissected beedies, which are filterless Indian cigarettes wrapped in leaves that contain pure, unchemically treated tobacco. It's a real treat and makes for great photos to watch them puff away until a cloud of smoke so thick practically blocks out their entire face except their red bulging eyeballs.

I must admit (hey, it's legal to smoke with Sadhus in temples, I think), I tried it myself a couple times. The first time I committed an affront to chillum-etiquette and slobbered on the little cloth they use as a filter (you're not supposed to put your lips on it at all), but they were extremely forgiving and patient while I perfected my skill. I didn't get it quite right until the next day when with my first attempt, I ended up on the floor, giggling uncontrollably in a cold sweat with all the color drained right out of me. I determined it was not the hash but rather a HUGE intake of carbon monoxide from the tobacco that sucked the ogygen right out of my blood and laid me out. Don't worry, that was my last one.

The sadhus are quite affable and fun guys (go figure) and I've been there every single day to visit them. On my second day, Sanjay, one of the temple devotees (but not a sadhu; sadhus don't marry) invited me to his wedding at the temple on Monday morning. I awoke at 6 AM and biked to the temple for the 7 AM wedding puja, or blessing. This involves kneeling before the temple guru who pours a small amount of holy water and a sprinkling of salt on my head and then marks my forehead and hairline with an orange powder. I am still not quite sure what the significance is of all this, but it's fun to walk around with a dot on my head.

Sanjay and his bride were dressed in all white and covered with jasmine garlands. The ceremony was performed seated under a bamboo shade structure overlooking the edge of the hill into the valley below. There were all sorts of unfamiliar rituals and I didn't follow much of what was going on except for the part when one of the sadhus handed me a bunch of rice and indicated that I should throw it at Sanjay and his new wife.

Chris and I have been spending more time apart since we arrived in Hampi, taking some time to be alone and meet new people for the first time since we set out in India. It feels good to have some alone time and also be reminded of how lucky I am to have such a compatible travel companion.

After dislodging ourselves from Hampi, it's off to Goa.

We never planned to go to the Indian tech capital of Bangalore, but curiosity and the Lonely Planet led us there. According to the LP, it's one of the few places in India you'll see couples holding hands and young people in jeans. Bangalore was by far the most cosmopolitan place we've been, was great for amenity restocking (lots of Western brand names I haven't seen anywhere else) and had a laid-back atmosphere that Chris and I decided was the closest we were going to get to San Francisco in India. There are even two Starbucks-like coffee chains and a decent number of bars and clubs. Granted they close at 11:30, but it's a start.

There were two theaters showing American films and we saw both in one day. "Master and Commander," which I thought was beautifully shot but entirely too gray and wet, and "Intolerable Cruelty," which I thought George Clooney looked hot in and Chris thought was one of the funniest movies he'd ever seen. On the way home, the auto-rickshaw driver lit up a joint as he drove off.

On the rooftop of a 1960s Acid Rock themed bar called Peco's, we chatted with a group of 20-something locals, including three women. (I stand corrected on blatantly general comment #1 in my previous entry.) Most of them had lived abroad at some point and were clearly well-educated upper class, so their perspectives on Indian society were perhaps just as skewed as anyone else's, but talking to them was a refreshing change of pace.

Yesterday we got to take part in some more Indian bureaucratic fun, this time at the train station. We went to the station at 2 PM. Inexplicably, every single reservation counter closes from 2 - 2:30 for a lunch break. Forgiving the logistical misstep of not having staggered breaks, we sipped a cup of coffee (which took about five minutes to order since Chris wanted his coffee "black," which was seemingly outside the barista's limited range of English) and waited.

We filled out all the requisite BS paperwork to make a reservation, I waited about 1/2 hour under pressure from an old woman impatiently bearing down on me, as if pushing me into the counter would hurry things along. [An aside: Indians appear to have no real need for personal space. Yes, this is a country of one billion and yes, most places are pretty crowded all the time, but really. In a train station where there's *plenty* of space to give your fellow queue-waiters some breathing room, there will invariably be at least two or three other people jockeying for the same square foot of floor space I happen to already be occupying.] I hastily bought two tickets for the only time and class ticket they had available.

After consideration, we decided the seats I'd bought were too expensive and we'd rather take the bus. We waited in the "refund" line for another 20 minutes, only to be told that we'd lose 25% of the ticket price and that we needed to fill out another form and wait in the "foreign tourists" line. This was of course the longest line and moved at a snail's pace. With no tickets in hand, we emerged from the train station 2 hours after we'd arrived, extremely frazzled, harried and disgusted at the way things sometimes get done (or don't) around here.

After the train station, we went to the Botanical Gardens for a little R&R. This was another one of those times when being greatly outnumbered by locals made for a memorable time. There were lots of handshakes, lots of photos taken of us and lots of the usual line of questioning (what is your place? what is your good name? and my all-time fave, what is your purpose? i.e. why are you in India?). I must remind myself that if Chris and I are going to try to pass as husband and wife to minimize harassment, it's probably unwise for me to simultaneously flirt with Indian boys. I am sure it's not helping their already-skewed ideas about American women.

We're now in Hampi, a very quaint, chilled out little holy temple town that's a popular tourist stop on the way to or from Goa. A maze of small dirt roads and alleys winds through white adobe buildings that appear to have just one continuous, uneven roof-line. Families of monkeys swing from trees to powerlines to rooftops and according to the guesthouse owner, create quite a nuisance.

There's a Full Moon party going on in a nearby cave tonight, but the locals predict it will last less than an hour before getting busted by the police. This is a dry town. The town is split by a river. We'd heard from other travelers that one side of the river is alcohol and drug free, but on the other side, the alcohol and drugs are free. Who knows. We're staying on the dry side because oddly, that seems to be where all the action is. Not that I'd know sitting here in the internet cafe at 10 PM on a Friday night. Oh my god, I think India is turning me into a geek.

The southern state of Kerala is a very relaxed, stunningly beautiful and surprisingly clean place with a ridiculous number of palm trees. The state holds the distinction of a 100% literacy rate and a good percentage of the Indian professionals working abroad (lots in the US!) are from this state. It's famous for its backwaters (lagoons, canals and lakes just inland from the sea) and a highlight for me was an 8-hour boat cruise yesterday between the cute market towns of Kollam to Alappuzha. I just realized I've been on the west coast of India now for three days and I have yet to go stick my foot in the Arabian Sea.

In Alappuzha, Chris spent his day at the local swimming pool and I wandered around town. We met up for dinner and a movie. There were two choices: a crime drama or a comedy, both in Malayalam (the state language) with no subtitles. We chose the comedy; Vamanapuram Bus Route figuring it would be easier to follow. It wasn't, but at least during the 2 1/2 hour film my patience was rewarded with three over-produced song and dance numbers that did not fail to send me into fits of uproarious laughter.

I could go off about how bad the acting was, how jumpy the cuts, how poor the cinematography, how misguided the editing; but I'll be content just to point out this small fact. There was absolutely no eye candy for me to enjoy during this film. None. The film even had a big star in it, Mohan Lal, and let me tell you folks, he's ugly! How an overweight, middle-aged, grossly-mustachioed, eyeliner-wearing, lip-synching dude ends up with a nubile hottie like Lakshmi Gopalaswamy is just beyond me. I didn't understand the movie and so assumed he was this chick's father only to later bear witness to a song/dance number that proved otherwise. (Kissing is not allowed onscreen, but there were definitely some meaningful head-tilts away from the camera.)

Chris and I have a theory that in India, movies are made by men for men, and so the heroes in movies are depicted as every-man types to make fantasies seem all the more accessible to the audience. I further posit that, in cooperation with the Indian government, Bollywood is attempting to squash all sexual desire in women by convincing them that there really are no good looking men in the country.

Here are some other fun gross generalizations about Indian society based on 2 1/2 week's observations in a geographic area representative of roughly 10% of the nation's population.

1) The only women who drink in public are prostitutes and westerners.
Meanwhile, Indian men unabashedly line up outside the liquor stores to buy their goods, presumably to inbibe with each other in some back alley, which they will later use as a shared public urinal.
2) Women don't eat out.
The only ones who do are with their families and then they usually eat in a special designated family room.
3) Women don't swim.
I saw it in Mamallapuram and Chennai: women and girls wading up to their ankles while fully clothed. And Chris said that even though there was a women's locker room at the pool, there was not a female in sight.
4) I am an evil temptress.
While in America, Britney makes abs and smalls-of-backs scandalous, here in India, a glimpse of midsection is commonplace. Only hussies, however, let their ankles and shoulders emerge. I have yet to figure out how to prevent such exposure and not die of heat exhaustion.


Kochi came highly recommended but is proving to be not quite what either of us were looking for. It's hard to put my finger on what does it for me, but I do know that cute, quiet, touristy towns with good restaurants sound really nice at first, but the times when I feel the happiest, the most challenged and the most alive are when the locals outnumber me by about 10,000:1. Given what we've heard from other travelers plus our own experiences, Chris and I are beginning to think the North might offer a bit more of what we're after.

We will leave tomorrow for Bangalore, a city that might sound familiar to some of you. It's home to some staggering number of employees working off-shore for American companies, including my very own former employer, Siebel. It's also where a huge number of call centers are based, so next time you call tech support, there's a good chance you're calling Bangalore.

Happy February. My god, where is the time going.