Taj-ma-freakin'-Hal

Just got some downtime and decent Internet, so check out the latest photos from this very morning! Taj-a-Ru!

Hard to encapsualte in a photo.

As always, crowds.

Indians know how to relax

The latticework was really impressive.

Smile

Drew hanging out with some cool guys, plus an ultra cool Sikh. Snazzy!

The big mother

Holi Diver

after breakfast and coffe with kunal, we made tracks to marud. kunal gave us well wishes and two cocnuts each for 'today's ration" as he said. we were excited that holi celebrations would be going on. not 5km from kunal's a motorcycle pulle over and two guys jumped off.  with screams of "HAPPY HOLI" they smeared colored powder all over our faces. for the next several hours, our trip was an excrutiating climb of steep hills, wet lowlands, and about five more colorings.  after a while the stuff really stared to sting. and yesterday i read an article that said some of the colors can be toxic .hmmm. ....

we biked all day covered in the stuff. it was awful. every time we stop, crowds gather but this day a whole restuarant gather around us and took pictures and asked questions and forced us to participate in magic tricks. there was one guy who really liked card tricks. it was wierd.

then the really hard part started. up and down the western ghats the road was in poor shape with lots of hills. plenty of water on hand, but the coconuts and the food tins made extra weight. we were tired and struggling. and covered in toxic chemicals. i mentioned that, right?

we limped into marud at 1730. we were beaten, severyly tired, wet from sweat and sore throughout from an intense 50km ride we took a room at the Sea Beach resort (read - a room above this dude fizel's house). our third floor room overlooked the ocean. there were tons of palm trees, birds, bats and of course, janjira fort. we washed clothes, showered, rested and thentook a walk on the beach.  headed back to the room after chatting with some locals about where the ferry to the fort was.

very tired. sore and sleeping but fed, comfortable and safe. still, as the final prayer of the day wafts into the room from the nearby mosque over the sound of the hastily rotating fan, i wish we had another night at kunal's. alas, the road goes ever on and on ...

Dubai and the magical waterslides and malls and sheesha and stuff

Eliot here: been scarce on my entries lately as my means of entry ain't been cooperatin', so here's a whole truckload of thoughts and such:

Dubai is amazing and huge and crazy and wild, etc. This you know.

What you don't know:

We're staying with my parents, who currently live in Dubai. Living with the folks has been really great (thanks again, M&D) - Drew and I get up pretty early here, like around 5:30-6am (when you listen out the window to hear the mosques pouring out the first call to prayer of the day), make tea and figure out what the day is going to be like. Been truly nice to have a peaceful, quiet, homey place to get over jet lag and adjust to opposite-world time zone. I hit the bed every night and immediately sack-the-funk-out. I'll often wake up a few times during the night to hear the screeching of tires on a Range Rover or Prado, or sometimes I'll wake from a "vivid" dream to look out at the city sleeping and hear just the buzzing of electric lamps and insects. Then when the mist dissipates and the cars start moving and the Indian guys bicycle by and the city comes alive, so then do you. It's pretty great, actually: I look forward to sleeping and waking up as a means of finding peace amid the fracas that the day supplies.

The Fracas: we've been visiting the various amazing sights that the city has to offer, from the tallest building in the world to simpler historical bits like the Dubai museum. Amid the forceful slap-in-the-face of amazement and wonder the city has to offer, I've been finding that simple things tend to stick with me just as much, if not more so, than the greater things. EXAMPLE: We popped over to the neighborhood sheesha (hookah) joint the other night and sat out on the sidewalk, had mint tea and puffed like a caterpillar. We people-watched as many Emirati youths piled in via their Range Rovers and grouped around us at tables to smoke sheesha and hang out. One large group of kids looked about 19 or so, and though they were all speaking Arabic, I could tell I had had that same conversation with my friends when I was 19, too. It was funny and true: despite the tall buildings, enormous malls, sprawling civilization and 190 different nationalities, I still felt an immediate sense of similarity and camaraderie with the offspring of this ancient culture. Pretty cool - thanks, travel!

Jet lag sucks. I sleep at weird times of the day, feel like a total sloth and then get bursts of energy out of nowhere. But you know what helps jet lag? WATER SLIDES!!! Wild Wadi, i.e. Arabian Schlitterbahn, was a total kick today. Good for the body and the soul. We're getting this overdose of luxury and endless personal service right as we're about to hop 3 hours over and find ourselves sleeping in a tent on the side of the road in India. Whiplash, but it has been a pleasure, and will no doubt crank the juice on our perspective-o-meter for this trip. For now, we're enjoying it. It's an interesting time to be alive, and Dubai is an interesting place to be alive.

We got tomorrow left here, then Thursday we ship out to Mumbai for the start to India. I'm truly excited to get started and get acclimated - I remarked to Drew today that I am already dreading the return at the end of the trip, as my travel "drug" will be no more. Interesting.

Tomorrow, we'll pop inland to the glorious desert and visit Al Ain and the highest peak in the Emirates, Jebel Hafeet. The view is supposed to be gorgeous and the drive dramatic. And if all else fails, we can hang out with some camels. They're known to wander around near the highways out in the open sections of the emirates. My dad's office used to have a heard that hung around, but the recent construction activity has booted them off to more remote pastures. Bummer.

I could like here, I think - for a year, maybe. It's like Las Vegas, and in such can be truly tiring and exhaustive. But, not to be descounted, the place is doing it's darndest to set a name for itself, and for cultural overload and exposure, one can't really find a better value. But what do I know? It could all be a mirage, sprouted up a few years ago and gone as quickly. Whatever the case, it's pretty cool to be here now. Yep.

Burj Khalifi

Today I stood at the foot of the tallest building in the world. Moreover, I stood at the the foot of the tallest man made structure ever built - the burj khalifi. It has 160 stories, 57 elevators, 2700+ ft tall and weighs 500,000 tons - empty.

Next door is the burj mall which, like the tower itself is sort of difficult to quantify. Aquariums, four levels, a waterfall installation, a star dome, it's own gold souk ...

... I'll let the pictures speak fir themselves. Frankly, my head is swimming and I'm far too overwhelmed to try and sum this place up. I'll post a word-only blog about my impressions once I get over the neon-advert-bombardment-nausea.












































Found burritos in the food court!!!

























Sums up the burj mall in a single image, all of Dubai perhaps: the very oldest next to the most contemporary. Is it good? Healthy? Progressive? Destructive? Food for thought ...

Location:Dubai,United Arab Emirates

countdown : 6

another big day at ghost runners HQ - e-man was coming back up from pleasanton, tx so i once again had the house to myself. me and the cat spent the morning sleeping and packing.  while ricochet the cat lived up to species' particular brand of napping, i made buckwheat pancakes, boxed up some more of my life,  and headed over to the storage facility.

it's my life ... in a box

goodbye money - i never loved you anyway. ugh ... so much stress and joy in these final days, all piled on top of each other like some kind of anxious caprese. man, i'm hungry. regardless, storage facility is a go and, like the phone and (soon) my water and power bills everything is being auto-debited. you know, i may hate money, but paradoxically i wish i had more of it. then i could do this trip in truly, truly, truly outrageous style instead of poor-dumb-schloob-style. man, even my sentences make less sense these days. 

bought some bells and string to make a late-night bike thief deterrent / low-tech snake / tiger / bear repellent. the idea is to have a string of bells we put over or around the bikes at night so if someone tried to gank 'em, the bells would ring and the dude will be all "Oh No! Bells!" and jet. also tigers and snakes hate humans (i assume) and everything we stand for, especially joy, ergo christmas. hence, silver bells = evil animal repellent. to a grouch, christmas is a bummer.  LOGIC'D!

all in all, me and eliot have reach a high level of excitement. there is still some stress - a few little gaps in the plan that need filling in before we take off. and i'm going to miss the people here TONS. last night me and the gents went to the bar and had a jolly old time. if i die in india, it'll be okay. but i think i'd miss being able to hang out with those guys. unless after you die you get to go to some tavern-in-the-sky with a bunch of famous old dudes and kathy ireland from 1984. Hands off of the jukebox, Mark Twain -  Rythym is a Daaaaaancer! wooooOOOOOOOoooooo KEEP IT GOING, former president William Howard Taft! Man that 'stache can groove. 

Making Lists, Checking Them Twice, Going Crazy

Now with 9 days to go (!!!!), Drew and I are fervently checking boxes on checklists and making more checklists to check in the interest of being as prepared as possible, and having a checklist to check constantly, check-it-y check check check. The other morning, whilst waiting for our breakfast at the Startz Cafe in Canyon Lake (test ride pictures to be uploaded soon!), I asked Drew, "wanna make a list?" Like, wanna play cards, or, wanna build a fort? Amazing.

This has become almost a pastime, making lists and coming up with stuff to take care of, and the closer to the deadline, the more lists there are and the more stuff to make lists about. I'm feeling more or less prepared, both mentally and check-list-ally, but most nights for the last week I have been waking up in the wee hours and writing down something crucial I forgot to do. Lists have come to be the overlapping memory I am trying to keep straight. I wish my mind could keep all this junk in order, and maybe after a few generations of evolution, it will. But for now, I gotta keep writing stuff down in my little to-do book, and on the back of bar napkins and HEB receipts and my hand and the cat.

As I lay awake in bed at night, I think of the lack of lists I'll have to keep on my mind when I'm floating free down the little Indian byways, waving at farmers and high-fiving holy cows. Then I lift off the ground and fly high above the country-side, zigging around the Taj and bouncing off the tops of trains and rickshaws. Then I fall off the bike into a giant inland sea made entirely of curry, eating and swimming at the same time. I climb out and wash my sins off in the Ganges, floating down in an innertube, Comal-style, until I fly off a waterfall and land on top of a big temple. Grabbing a zipline, I whizz above the crowds of pilgrims and holymen, dopping down onto my bike, which has magically scooted under me. I toss some rupees to a guy who chucks me a cup of Chai. Man, ain't life great.

Then I woke up and realized I was writing a blog entry. Snorrr-wha?

All in all, the list-making organizational process gives me peace, and the closer we get to the jet-day motivates me more and more to prepare. If today I'm this crazy on the crazy scale, in 4 or 5 days I'm gonna be THIS crazy. Like Gary Busey crazy.

OK, off to Pleasanton to see my Grandparents - they will be performing the admirable task of looking after my superb cat friend, Merlin - whom without, I would just be a man.

When in doubt or under pressure, just meditate, Om-style. Or try laughter.

spicy safari, episode 3

EPISODE 3 - Flying Foxes

OR

Night of the Guavampire! 

The greater short-nosed fruit bat goes by many names - Indian Fruit Bat, Old World Fruit Bat, Megabat and (my favorite) the Flying Fox.  It's the bane of the sky, raining down terror and mayhem and all those that would stand in it's path, ruthless in it's quest to sink it's sharp, slobbering fangs into their ... guava. Or bananas, they like those, too. There is a lesser (or minor) short-nosed fruit bat but who wants to hear about that?

o hai.

So who is this flying rodent-thing and what's his deal? Well, to begin with, the Indian Fruit Bat is just one of some 123 species of bat living in Asia, with most of those in India.  These bats make up one-fourth of the mammalian population of India and account for one tenth of the total bat population in the world. That's alot of guano, people! 

As with many other species, the indigenous people of india (especially farmers) are none too keen on the fruit bat since they (duh) eat alot of fruit. they are also carriers of japanese encephalitis, they make a lot of noise and they remind people of THE WAMPYR!  but environmentalist say their natural habitat is being encroached upon by the (cough) 1 BILLION PEOPLE living in India. In case you haven't noticed, this is kind of the story of animal life on earth.   okay, a warning: 

THE NEXT PART OF THIS POST IS RATED "M" FOR MATURE - THERE IS SEXUALLY EXPLICIT CONTENT UP AHEAD. IF YOU ARE A TOTAL PRUDE, DON'T READ PAST THIS SWEET BAT PICTURE:

you kept reading? oooooooooooo! 

An interesting note on Fruit Bat mating behavior: they are the only non-primate species known on earth to perform fallatio during intercourse. the female bat goes down on the male bat to "prolong copulation" and "insure insemination" - which is funny because it pretty much works the opposite way in humans (ZING!). what's more, the she performs this favor to the dude-bat WHILE he's got his um ... you know, batarang?  in her ... uh ... oh boy, this is akward. watch this video, it explains everything. 

sorry, mom. 

Checklist: √

Tickets to India - √

Visas - √

Travel Insurance - √ (mostly)

Bikes and Gear - √

Fear - √√√√√√√√√√!!!

Yep, a little shaky and nervous, but readyreadyready to rummmmmmmmbleeeee!

AHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Mumbai my honey

So just after we dash through Dubai on the way over to India, our first official Indian stop will be the Megatropolis of MUMBAI (formerly Bombay). A gigantic city on the mid-west coast of India, this town is known for being a huge tourist destination, being the home of Bollywood and home to the Gate of India. The Gate is the port at which British ships used to dock on their long voyages overseas to visit (and eventually rule) India. Past the Gate is the enormous Taj Mahal hotel, the Fort district and Colaba districts, both excellent areas for touring.

The Fort area used to house Fort St. George, which is long gone, and now the area features many government buildings and administrative offices. This is one of the oldest parts of the city, and is juxtaposed with one of the newest parts of Mumbai, Nariman Point, which features those massive skyscrapers and apartment buildings that you saw in Slumdog Millionaire.

Colaba is a popular tourist area mixed in with the Fort, featuring the Colaba causeway, a row of shopping and dining reminiscent of old colonial Bombay. The National Gallery of Modern Art, a Paris colony and the Prince of Wales museum, no wonder it's known as the Culture Square of Mumbai.

We'll be spending a couple days on the front end and the back end of the trip in this gi-normous city, and will certainly be reporting our findings here - so stay tuned, dear readers - for more, of !ncredible !ndiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalalalallaalalalallaallaalalaaa....

Hindus ... In ... Spaaaaaaaace!

proponents of the ancient astronaut theory (AAT) believe extra-terrestrials (or xeno-terrestrials if you prefer) visited earth a long time ago and basically got our civilization going.  they range from dudes who think it's "possible" to guys like David Icke, who thinks the queen of england is a reptilian space monster from beyond the stars sent to control us (YES REALLY). these guys point to some particular passages in the Vedas (Hindu holy scriptures) that describe Vimanas - flying contraptions that carry the gods (and sometimes humans) around.

pretty cool stuff. apparently, according to the Vedas anyway, Hindu gods made these contraptions and flew around in them "shooting lightning" at each other. not only does this make for laser-shooting crazy-lookin' space gods, (which is the coolest religion *I've* ever heard of), it also sounds a whole lot like, um,  this. 

truly, Truly, TRULY outrageous. *

* it occurs to me that we slip alot of these little jokes in the blog and don't always explain them. you might have noticed a number of blogs are marked with the tag "truly, truly, truly outrageous." to get this, you will want to watch this.   DREW IS MY NAME / NO ONE ELSE IS THE SAAAAAAAAAME!

Buffalo Racing in Karnataka

In the southern state of Karnataka, a totally amazing sport is quite popular: Buffalo Racing. A quality buffalo can run you up to $6,500 US, and you can see why here: speed.

outrageous india

as proof by yesterday's train video, india is craaaaaaazy.

in a good way.

more proof of the apparent fearlessness of indian bystanders and the brazen attitude of it's motor-vehicle-operators can be seen here. the world's greatest dirt bike-while-texting-also-relaxing-all-cool dude can be found here.


in a much more serious but no less cool video, the basics of the holy scriptures called the upanishads can be found here. WARNING: crazy alien baby @ :40. according to who you ask, the upanishads were the basis for modern hinduism, buddhism, and taoism - everyone at least gives them a nod for influencing these religions. in the case of hinduism, and certainly Brahmanism, saying these texts are central is a gross understatement.  people: this is an old and incredibly influential set of scriptures that, whether or not you know it, have probably come to you in some form of another.

Traveling by Train

So one of the plans is to see much of the country via train, resulting in a mix of train travel over long distances and expansive bike travel over specific regions. We think this will give us a pretty good insight into Indian travel culture, as so much of the country is crisscrossed with railways. Apparently one can get almost anywhere via rails. The Indian railway stations are a thing of legend, with people being trampled every year during major rush hours and other folks hanging on to the side of trains as they scream along the tracks. As exciting and awesome as that all sounds, we're hoping we don't encounter anything as drastic as this video shows. I didn't even know trains could go that fast....

film review, salaam namaste

the other night eliot and i thought we'd watch SALAAM NAMASTE as part of our ongoing education in all things india. this theatrical one-sheet should tell you everything you need to know about the movie:

the male lead was of ... questionable sexual orientation and spent the whole movie prancing around wearing pastel clothing and jumping off steps in a mentos-esque explosion of euphoria. the female lead was exactly as annoying as you'd imagine someone who wears a skirt with "Von Dutch" written across the back would be.

while the movie started out light hearted, about halfway through it takes a really serious turn. the happy music stops as the characters debate whether or not they should abort their love-baby (spolier: it's twins!). the supporting cast seems to be made of cut-out of western stereotypes viewed through an Urdu lens. really disconcerting. especially the crocodile dundee guy.

on the plus side: australian babes dancing like indian babes. i forgot to mention - the movie takes place in australia.

anyway, if you can figure out what's going on in this movie, more power to you. i couldn't make heads or tails of what i felt for these characters short of contempt. oh and NOT ENOUGH DANCING. there was only one decent bollywood dance-a-thon. some interesting trivia: the male lead is apparently royalty and part of a film group called the Illuminati?

boooOOOOOOOOoooooorrring

Seriously, India, what the heck is going on with Cricket?

In a valiant attempt at trying to understand what goes on in the game of cricket, I consulted the YouTube. Someone in Pakistan thought this was a good explanation, but it still seems like Space Baseball to me. You decide:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sORPjRxUpdU

see? we're not crazy.

well, maybe we are. but we aren't the first ones to be this particular brand of crazy. some old dude and some young whipper-snapper were doing this stuff back in the way-back. click the thumbs for full-res pics:*

* i just realized i might have freaked-out some of our older readers. that last sentence should read: click on the little blurry squares and a big, bright picture will appear. DON'T WORRY GREAT-PA, IT'S JUST THE INTERNET - THE MEN ON THE PICTURE-RADIO AREN'T GETTING BIGGER. 

two rides, cinema-style

i totally forgot to post some of our more recent riding adventures -

three nights ago eliot and i went on a stupid, stupid bike ride. now, as you probably already know, eliot and i are the kinds of dudes who laugh - nay, taunt - danger. we stare straight into the beady black eyes of danger, take a sip of straight rye bourbon and whisper in a firm gruff voice: "yer momma." but on monday, eliot had to get to a credit union so we took off down the access road of loop 410. now, details get a little blurry, but i remember it going something like this:




we still managed to ride 8.36 miles. so that's something, i suppose. the lesson here is: buy a light for your bike, because seriously: trucks will kill you, you guys. thankfully, we made it home safe (never did find a credit union). then last night, as +/- 40 degree weather made for a pleasant brisk evening we went on another ride (7.55 miles though i think it was further) that went something like this:

Drive in Totals: 

$: 1624.71

Logged: 23.89m / 38.45km