shiva music group

so, the latest, to sum up, is that i'm living in the hill station of musoorie, in the state of uttaranchal, for about a month with 3 roommates - anchal from india, marcos from brazil, and zoe from america - in alphabetical order.

to occupy myself i play guitar, sing, and take hindi lessons for 2 hours every weekday.

however, there have been some pretty exciting developments. for example, yesterday i went for a walk just to get out of the house and move around. after eating at my favorite restaurant, kalsang's, i realized there was an indian guy keeping pace with me, right beside me, who i didn't know. as soon as we made eye contact he introduced himself and said he had seen me carrying around my guitar. it turns out he's a musician who heads up a band called the "shiva music group." he wants me to be in the band. actually, one of the reasons i'm even writing this entry is that i need to kill some time before i meet with him here in the sister's bazaar (my specific neighborhood) meeting place of chartakkan for the first time. so now i'm in an indian band and we're playing a show, apparently, on the 24th of november.

after we exchanged information and said goodbye, i took off for the direction of him, but soon ran into vikas, who had attended a party we had at our house a few days ago. he was on his motorcycle and asked me if i was doing anything - i said no, he said to hop on. riding a motorcycle on the narrow, rolling, winding streets of musoorie is totally exhilirating...i love just feeling the cool air whip past me, rounding a bend to discover an illuminated panorama of the lights of the dehradun valley, from a position far above in the hills, deftly navigating obstacles...it's a real ride. i've pretty much decided to buy a cheap motorcycle while i'm here because it's just too much fun. anyway, vikas and i went back to his house, downed a bottle of whiskey with his roommates, and i ambled home at around 1:00am, not drunk but wary of waking my roommates at that hour to open the door...luckily they were fine with it. actually, anchal and zoe are younger than me and not yet at the age where behavior like this is considered juvenile, so i'm able to comfortably act irresponsibly.