Moving on from Goa: Hampi

I accepted another offer to do a full music show last Sunday night, but that will be my last time. There's really not too much to tell about these shows. Basically I am in control for 4 hours, and I hope that as many musicians show up as possible, because if they don't, I am basically the owner's insurance policy that music will be played for the full 4 hours. Which is an incredibly long time to play. The first time I only had to play for about 45 minutes, then I let other people come up and I just get on periodically to play one or two songs. The last time I had to play for an hour and a half straight before my friends started to show up, which is quite a long time. But luckily, at the beginning, not many people are there and you can just repeat a lot of the songs that you've already done. For 3500 rupees, it's not much work.

Though I think the police that we bribe for going on later than 10:00pm actually make more by doing absolutely nothing. The police are pretty ridiculous in all of India. Now there is a new law in Goa saying you can't play music past ten o'clock at night. It used to be that you could play all night. Of course, some people do play music all night, but they must be very generous with their police bribes. Sometimes the police cancel shows for seemingly no reason at all. Sometimes they threaten the hotels. At Camp San Francisco, where I stay now, the police came up right before we were supposed to play and said "If you play music I will confiscate all this equipment and I will arrest the musicians." One or two thousand rupees later, he didn't seem to have a problem with it.


I've been talking about leaving Goa for a while, and now I'm finally going to do it. I'm leaving Wednesday night. An English couple I met here really wants to get drunk with me, since I've actually been abstaining from alcohol lately, so that'll probably be my big blowout tonight before I leave tomorrow.

I'm going to Hampi, most recognizable to me as the place where the famous climbing movie "Pilgrimage," starring Chris Sharma, was shot. Since the release of that movie, the place has gained some notoriety as a climbing area. I just ran into some German climbers, fortunately, who told me where to stay and that I could even rent shoes and crash pads there. Sounds awesome.


I am a little confused about what to do after India. I thought I was going to work on organic farms in Europe, but now I think I'd like to come back to the States, hike Springer to Damascus on the AT, do trail magic, then road trip across Canada or America with one or several of my good trail friends. I guess I'm just feeling like I've been away for a while, and might be wearying of traveling overseas, so that even a change of pace like WWOOFing in Europe might not pacify me...feel free to lend your thoughts, since I'm feeling sortof torn right now, especially since the desire to return to the States is so sudden.