New Blog

I really like blogspot and the idea of blogspot, but right now I like the idea of having everything in one place even better...so I have a site up at http://andrewbones.weebly.com (maybe andrewbones.com someday in the future) that includes my music, my bio, any videos I make, and of course a blog about walking the Pacific Crest Trail and walking across India.

See you there!

-Andrew Bones Simpson

End of the Trip: Return to Mussoorie

The past 2 weeks have been pretty uneventful. Somewhere along the line, after over 4 months, traveling in India ceased to be exciting, so I bought a ticket back to the States. However, I'm not going home. I still want to keep adventuring, I just want to do it in my own country. Honestly, traveling in India has made me realize how little I know about the United States and Canada (both, in their own way, where I come from), and I got the urge to explore them as I am exploring this country. I also just read a book by Bill Bryson called The Lost Continent, about re-discovering small-town America. I can certainly relate to that after my trail experiences. However, there's so much I haven't seen. Much of California is unknown to me - even though I grew up there, I never explored it as an adult. And so many other places - New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, and pretty much all the midwest.

Some of you know that I was planning on working on organic farms in Europe after India. But I suddenly found myself wanting to hike the Appalachian Trail again, and go to the Trail Days, and do trail magic. When I finished my hike last year, I thought I was done with heavy-duty hiking for a while. For maybe a year. I still wanted to do the Pacific Crest in 2010. I put down the backpack, and picked up a different one for traveling.

A well-documented phenomenon that occurs among thru-hikers is "Springer Fever" - referring to Springer Mountain, the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail in Georgia. I didn't think it would happen to me, but as soon as the season starts to roll around (as it is now), you get the itch to throw on your pack and start walking north again. It's the weirdest thing. I don't plan on hiking the entire trail again, just a quarter of it, the famous 500 mile section of Springer to Damascus. I'm excited to hike that section again, especially because it includes the Smokies. I'm aiming to be in Damascus around the middle of May, when the Trail Days festival begins in that town.

After Trail Days, I'm planning on hopping in the car with a Trail friend of mine, Bound, and making our way across the country to Montana. Then another friend of mine, Low, wants to do the 500 mile Colorado Trail, and I would very much like to join him.

I also just finished the book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, and now I really want to go to Alaska. It's almost amazing to me that I'm 25 and have never been there - like a whole country inside another country. Also - British Columbia in Canada, any many other places besides in that country. It's going to take me years to do all the adventuring I need to do.

Mussoorie is nice as ever, but it's lost a bit of the feeling it had when I was here last. I'm in the Internet cafe owned by my friend (and former neighbor) Balai, and he was like "last year was fun, wasn't it?" I'm telling you it was - it really was. All the good friends we had, our awesome house in Sister's Bazaar, the parties we would throw...

Now Sister's looks pretty deserted and all the westerners I knew have moved on. I'm staying with my friend Vikas, but he lives on Woodstock school-owned property and I'm not allowed to be there, and apparently suspicions are being aroused, so I asked Balai if I could crash at his place for a while. Most likely I will be able to, but they have a family friend visiting so he just has to make sure. I'm also visiting my friend Ravine at his house tonight and will probably try to shamelessly elicit an invite to sleep over from him.

So here's what my schedule looks like, I think:

1. March - Stay with Trail friends in Florida and Georgia
2. April - Hike from Springer to Damascus
3. May - Trail Days and road trip
   
4. June - Colorado Trail?
   
5. July - Back home in San Diego?

If anyone wants to do a road trip that might include Canada and Alaska, let me know.

Sister's Bazaar

Hampi

Pulled into Hampi yesterday. I always heard you have to allow like 2 weeks to absorb this place, but after a day I pretty much feel like I've done what Hampi offers. If I was still in climbing shape and had some friends here, I could spend a while bouldering. There's so much climbing here you could never do it all if you climbed every day for 2 years. And I've been in India too long to get excited about temples.

I think I'm getting traveler's burnout. I have a pretty strong desire to get back to the states and do a bit of the trail, then hopefully do a Canada roadtrip with some trail friends. We'll see what happens.

I may only have a couple weeks more left here, since my friend Rachna's parents, in Delhi, have my greencard which I need to get back to the United States, and they are leaving at the beginning of March.

Things that never bothered me before are starting to get to me. Hampi is a real tourist trap. I don't really like the tourists here, and I was talking to an exceptionally (as in being an exception) down to earth guy about that. It's comforting to know it's not just me, that a lot of these people are so annoying, you don't need to interact with them to be annoyed. Take this one guy who was just sitting near me in the common area outside this hotel. Out of nowhere, he puts down his book (Nietzsche, of course), and says, with an aire of impressiveness, "I'm a Leo." Then he just waits and scans the faces of the hotel patrons, apparently expecting an awed and reverent reaction. I looked up, startled by the stupidity of this, and just stared him right in the eyes with extreme interest, as if I was studying an animal I've never encountered before. I just can't take some of these people anymore.

And Hampi, as any good tourist trap, has the extremely persistent and aggressive rickshaw drivers and shop keepers I've come to expect, but I'm starting to get infuriated by this. After a month in India, you just become oblivious to it, like it is just background noise. People stand in your way and you don't divert your course, as if they are a ghost, semi-transparent, soundless, and without solid form that will prevent you from walking straight through them. But now, after 4 months here, I can't stand it any more. It's like Chinese water torture...and little by little I'm breaking down. I feel like if one more person asks me if I want a rickshaw, I will simply collapse on the street, alive but comatose, psychologically broken and unable to do anything except breathe and blink.

So yes...I will try and hit some spots in Kerala and Tamil Nadu before I go, but I think I'm thankful that the India trip is drawing to a close...

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.

Titra Yatra: Part 2 (and Final Part) - WALKING, QUITTING, AND HITCHHIKING

Yeah...I can't do it.

Let me explain. I'll start from the beginning of the day.

I left my hotel at 6:00am and starting walking then, in the dark, to avoid the sun. Pretty standard stuff, I passed some industrial stuff, a beach, some people living in huts and tents and stuff, but there was very little places to step off the road today and get a cold drink and a meal. Actually, there weren't any. When I did find one, when the sun had come up, at 9:30am, it was the dingiest place I've ever eaten in, and I've eaten in some dingy places. They only served flat, circular bread that was all pockmarked, looking exactly like pancakes, but tasting nothing like it.

I was thinking: "OK, I will wait here for about 7 hours, until the sun goes down again."

And then I realized: "I am never going to Kerala."

It became clear that I was quitting. I hadn't formally formulated that thought in my head, but it was bubbling up from my subconscience to the surface of my mind. I looked around at the people around me. Noone here, out in the middle of NH-17, nowhere near a sizeable city, speaks any English. My Hindi is more useful here than English, even though people speak very little of that, too, since Karnataka has its own lanaguage. I was looking at the people in rags, tattered clothing, and feeling a little sad about the world around me. And what was the world around me, anyway? Where was I, how did I get here?

So it occured to me that there were three reasons I couldn't go on:
1. The heat - obviously, which meant I couldn't walk during the day and had to wait out the sun for 6 or 7 hours every day, which meant that...
2. I couldn't psychologically handle sitting out in the middle of NH-17 for most of my waking hours for the next 40 or 50 days, or however long this was going to take. To add to that, the places to eat seemed to be becoming sparser, and you never have a choice of what you are going to eat, so it's just a little sustenance to get you by.
3. I realized, with some degree of horror, last night, why I am so intolerant of this sun. Or at least partly why. I am taking the antibiotic doxycycline, a well-known side effect of which is "sun sensitivity."

Plus I'm nursing some pretty bad skin burns, and yes, I used tons of sunscreen. In light of all this, I just couldn't keep going. I knew I was able to quit when I realized that I wouldn't have any regrets about quitting. I simply had no interest in going on. Unlike the trail, when it's impossible to get off because you know you'll regret it later, here the decision was easy. In some ways, this was much harder than the trail. Well, obviously, or I wouldn't have quit so early.

So - how to get out of this? Well, I stood out on the road and flagged down a truck. You see these trucks all the time, carrying cargo here and there, extremely colorful, painted all over with graphics and slogans. These guys also spoke no English. They didn't understand "Where are you going?" So I said "Kahha jata hey?", and luckily they spoke some Hindi. "Hubli," they said. This is about 150 km away, but I didn't really care, anywhere was fine, so I jumped in. The ride was pretty quiet, we couldn't communicate with each other, but unbelievably (or maybe not, considering this is India), the truck broke down after about an hour or so. So they went to work under the truck, in the middle of the highway, trying to repair it. One hour passed. Two hours passed. Finally, I got out, said I was leaving, and flagged down a truck going the opposite direction. This guy's name was Muhammed and he was going to Karwar. I also had to find all that out via Hindi. Well, Karwar was just fine, considering I had started there in the morning, but somehow that felt like a long time ago. It was a good ride, we stopped at a place and ate some fish curry, everyone there was really interested in me. Actually that is a trademark of this entire walking trip - you don't really see westerners out here. You see them on motorbike from time to time, tearing down the highway on their way to Gokarn, Mangalore, or Kochi down south, or Goa up north. But I don't imagine you see many people on foot. Muhammed dropped me off right outside Karwar and it was just a 5 minute walk back in. I went directly to see my friend Ryees who owns this internet place, who had to admit he wasn't really surprised to see me back.

Well, maybe it was foolhardy, but I am proud of what I did accomplish, even if I didn't get very far. I had a fun time trying to do it, and I had fun today getting out of it.

What will I do now? I might stay in the south for a bit, check out Kerala and Tamil Nadu, but more and more I'm thinking I'd love to make it back to Mussoorie before I leave for wherever I'm going next. My visa expires at the end of March so I don't have a whole lot of time left here.

Thanks for everyone's encouragement...sorry if I dissapointed anyone. Especially you, Denzil, haha. An English friend, Denzil, who never says anything without injecting a lot of intensity, told me "You better make it to Kerala...I'll be fookin' dissapointed if you don't." Ah well, I gave it my best.

Looking a bit dejected. This is where I quit, and that's the truck that gave me a ride out. Yep, that's my outfit...kurta I picked up in Karwar to try and cover more skin, that kind of skirt thing, and the bandana...minus the bandana I usually had over my face.

I'd like to send a shoutout to Krishnamurti real quick as thanks for being my only traveling companion on this abbreviated quest:

Student: What do you mean by ordinary?

Krishnamurti: To be like the rest of men; with their worries, with their corruption, violence, brutality, indifference, callousness. To want a job, to want to hold on to a job, whether you are efficient or not, to die in the job. That is what is called ordinary - to have nothing new, nothing fresh, no joy in life, never to be curious, intense, passionate, never to find out, but merely to conform. That is what I mean by ordinary. It is called being bourgeois. It is a mechanical way of living, a routine, a boredom.

Student: How can we get rid of being ordinary?

Krishnamurti: How can you get rid of being ordinary? Do not be ordinary. You cannot get rid of it. Just do not be it.

Student: How, Sir?

Krishnamurti: There is no "how". You see that is one of the most destructive questions: "Tell me how"? Man has always been saying, throughout the world, "Tell me how". If you see a snake, a poisonous cobra, you do not say, "Please tell me how to run away from it". You run away from it. So in the same way, if you see that you are ordinary, run, leave it, not tomorrow, but instantly.

God, I need a drink after today. I'm gonna go get it. Cheers to all my friends and family - here's to never giving in to ordinary.

Tirat Yatra: A 1000km Walk Along India's West Coast - Part 1

There came a time in Goa when things simply became monotonous. It was the same thing every day - waking up late, eating breakfast, going for a swim, coming back, drinking early, playing music, going to bed, and waking up the next day, only to repeat the same schedule. Eventually it became clear to Mitja and I that our time in Goa was drawing to a close, as well as our time traveling together. Not that we weren't getting along fine like always, but it was just time to exchange contact info, wish each other a prosperous journey, and return to the spirit of traveling that we had brought with us to India: adventuring alone.

I don't know how this idea came into my head, to walk from Goa to the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent in Kerala. I remember saying something to my Indian friends about wanting to do a long walk in India, but that was before I left. I thought about it while I was here but I was too overwhelmed by India to consider it. Even when the feeling of being overwhelmed left and I became comfortable, I still considered a long walk in India to be a product of the imagination that existed before I ever came here.

When things became boring in Goa, I started to look longingly at the very end of the beach that I had never explored. I didn't want to wake up, eat, swim, drink, and play at the same hotel every day. I wanted to explore, adventure, dive foolhardily into the unknown. And so, in my last few days in Goa, I started telling people that I would walk south until I got to the bottom of India. I didn't even know then that I was serious about it. The words sounded strange and foreign coming out of my mouth, like someone else was saying them, and a voice in my head echoed "What did you say? You can't be serious..."

Thus, it was with a strange sense of surreality that all my friends I had met in Goa, some of the best from the entire trip, were hugging me, shaking my hand, wishing me good luck, and retreating to the safety of their hotels, their little spots on this piece of paradise. And equally strange was the feeling of thanking Joseph, the owner of my hotel, checking out, and taking a left turn. Keeping the ocean on my right and just walking.

This is the second day of my walk. I'll tell you about the first day. Neither has been particularly encouraging, but I am still committed.

The first day was funny. Eventually I got to the end of Patnem beach, not too far from where I had already explored. You get to a place where you simply cannot walk anymore. There are rocks and things, but no more beach. I knew I had to get to the highway, so I started asking around about that. I quickly got to a road, but not the highway. "Do you know where the highway is?" I kept asking people, and they would point me in the right direction. Eventually I did get to the highway, and starting walking along it. A word about this, before I go on. This isn't "highway" in the sense you know it, in the sense of those elevated concrete marvels of engineering we have in the United States - clean, orderly, buzzing with traffic. Here, "highway" means a fairly narrow black strip, just wide enough to permit, say, two buses. It's covered with dust, and on either side of it is usually a narrow, dusty corridor that allows one person on foot. This is generally what I walk on.

So I'm walking on the highway, the artery that will transport me all the way to my destination (there is no network of trails or anything, this wouldn't be like my walk in America). The first thing I notice is that it is quite hot. I compensate for this by wrapping the top of my head in a bandana. I notice my face is starting to burn. I compensate for this by wrapping my face in a bandana, as if I were a bandit or a cowboy. To add insult to injury, I'm wearing what is basically the dress of the saddhus, the babas, the wandering holy men. It's a kind of maroon skirt, impregnated with threads of orange, embroidered in gold. This isn't just fashion - it's remarkably functional. Loose, comfortable, protecting my skin from the sun, unable to trap heat but allowing cool air to flow through.

So I'm walking along, and I suddenly look up and think "Oh no...oh no...it can't be..."

...but it was. I had walked, circuitously, for maybe 2 hours, sweating and panting, only to get to the small market of Chaudi, a 20 minute walk from my hotel. But what was there to do? This was the official highway, and I was walking south...nothing for it but to accept this defeat and keep on keeping on. I got a vegetarian plate at a dhaba (glad to have these low-cost food options available again, they don't exist on the tourist beaches) for 30 rupees, gathered up my strength, and walked on.

I walked and walked...I'm not sure what to say about this part. This was the first moment I was really out of explored territory and into the unknown, but what can I say? I feel like there's something to say about this, but the experience isn't terribly memorable. It was very surreal, very strange. I walked along the road, cars and buses sped by. The road was at times lined with just trees, no people or civilization to be seen. Other times I would walk past a row of pretty impressive houses, by Indian standards, but there would usually just be a woman sitting out front, the wife of the household I guess, looking severe, and not terribly inviting of conversation. Or hospitality, for that matter - a thought which had begun to grow on my mind. I had no idea what was ahead. I knew that I had to stay on the highway, but I didn't know my position on it. Where was I going to sleep? I hadn't given much thought to this. Would I have to approach one of these houses and ask if I can stay there? I passed small, lonely outposts where they sold simple food and drinks. Occasionally I took refuge there from the heat. Is it possible to stay in a place like this? Could I ask the owner if I had absolutely no other option? I passed people living in thatched huts, in plastic tents. What about this? Would I consider this if it was getting dark? You cannot sleep on the road, I don't think. I was carrying a stick for the aggressive dogs you sometimes come upon. They are scared of you if you have a stick. Before I got the stick, they were quite difficult to intimidate. Apparently they gather at night and are quite ferocious. I wouldn't want to be out here at night.

Eventually I came to a place that seemed to have a bit more civilization. It was just a stretch of no more than maybe 200 meters, but there was a large, colorful Hindu temple, as well as a place to get simple food. I went into the place to get some food. The man didn't speak English, and it was clear that you wouldn't really get meals here, just simple street-style food. I got some spiced, breaded potatoes and thanked him. I saw that his sign said "Hotel." "Do you have rooms?" I asked him. He looked at me blankly. "Umm..." I said. I was searching my mind for something that might make sense in Hindi. "Kam-ra..." I began uneasily. "Tomb kamra pas hey?" I said fully, painfully self-conscious of how bad my Hindi was. "Nehi, nehi" he said, and pointed me out the door, to a woman talking on a telephone. I guess I was supposed to talk to her. Oh, before I forget - I now know that "Hotel" means nothing of the sort here, for some odd reason. If you can get food or drink someplace, it's a "Hotel." Don't ask me why.

So I speak to the woman, who points me towards the temple. To make a long story short, I end up getting a room at the temple. I'm not sure if these rooms are for priests or pilgrims or what, but it actually wasn't bad accommodation, considering it was free. A bed, and a bathroom that even had a western style toilet. I've decided to go veg for this trip, not to be puritanical or anything, just to try it, for fun. Besides, that's mostly what is available in these small places anyway. The priest came to the door, concerned, and asked me if I had any money, because if I didn't have any, he could give me some. It broke my heart to hear that...me with so much money, and the offer to give me more from someone who lives in a place with so little.

I was feeling so out of place, so uncomfortable. I had a sense of dread that I couldn't extinguish, no matter how I tried. I laid down on my bed and felt terribly lost and lonely, and slipped into a fitful sleep, as the tiny bugs living in the thin bed mat crawled out of it and over me...

Day Two

Today I woke up and felt a little nauseous. I ate a bit at the place across the street, where I had eaten before, but I didn't really want much. I set off walking, eager to make more headway into this journey.

I have been abstaining, up until this point in this journal, from telling you about the sun. Let me tell you about the sun. The sun, on this walk from Goa to Kerala, heading due south on the highway and straight into that searing light, is absolutely unrelenting. I have never experienced anything like it in my life. I thought, coming out, that less clothes were better in this heat. Not true. You have to cover your skin. Sunscreen does nothing. Ever see those pictures of people walking in the desert in National Geographic? There's a reason why they're all covered from head to toe in white clothing. Trying to escape the sun while walking all day down highway NH-17 is like trying to live in the desert without sand getting everywhere, or like trying to swim in the ocean without everything getting wet. The heat is almost tangible, almost like a liquid, I can imagine it getting everywhere, snaking around every fold of clothing, pouring into the sleeves of my shirt, wave after wave of it washing over my body. Yesterday I got sunburned...on my face (hence the need to wear two bandanas and leave only my eyes exposed), on my hands and arms, and on my neck. Yesterday my feet were spared, but today even they are being burned. Even when I go into the shade, they still burn. The skin tingles, it feels as though the sun is on it at all times, even when indoors. Again, sunscreen does nothing. Yes, on either side of the street is generally a kind of jungly forest, but with the sun almost always directly ahead, due south, it provides absolutely no shade. You walk straight into that oppressive heat, almost as if you can feel yourself getting closer to it, closer to that celestial body, and you think about it more, as if in a delirium. The sun - the source of life on the planet, hanging there in space, that giant rolling chemical reaction that does nothing but burn and burn and burn...ejecting an arc of fiery flares from time to time, protected by that angelic corona...like seraphim...how is it able to hurt me this much, so many millions of miles away? Such thoughts you will ponder as you walk, head swimming, down this highway, taking the odd misstep left or right, and another corrective step in the opposite direction, stumbling in this heat as if drunk.

I picked up a new state, crossing the border from Goa into Karnataka. The only thing I know about Karnataka is that it has many universities, including the one my friend Vivek attended in Mangalore, in south Karnataka. It felt a little like crossing into a new state on the Appalachian Trail. I was going somewhere! But still, that blistering, sweltering heat...

At 1:30pm, I couldn't take it anymore. I had tried to protect my hands and arms with my towel, which I retrieved from my bag, but it didn't fully work. I couldn't take the heat anymore. My feet were beginning to burn. I hurt all over. I had to stop in a dhaba, get shade, eat, drink, relax. I did this for 4 hours, until the sun was low enough to keep walking...into Karwar, the city I had been seeing signs for since I left Palolem. I had been ticking down the kilometers on the signs until I reached this mysterious city. It's nothing terribly exciting, really. Just an average Indian town I guess. It has a bus station, a few hotels. I'm sure I could employ the temple accommodation route again, but I'm not yet ready for that again after last night. I got a 150 rupee room which seems quite clean and nice. Surprisingly, this is the best Internet place I've ever been to in India, both in terms of the computer and the connection. Maybe it's not so surprising, seeing that Karnataka (the state I'm in now) contains Bangalore, the capital of India's burgeoning IT industry.

Tomorrow I am going to try and deal with this heat problem before I set off. I may stay here another day to let me skin heal. I may try to carry an umbrella so I can carry constant shade with me. I will try to get a long-sleeved shirt. I may consider only walking in the early morning and dusk. I do want to try and keep going. I know this trip might sound terribly dangerous to some of you, but honestly, it's not. India is simply safe. At least, I've never seen any evidence to the contrary. That might sound funny coming on the heels of the Mumbai attack, but things like that are simply too rare (and almost always occur in Mumbai and Delhi anyway) to be concerned about. And I'm not worried about running out of food or water or anything - there's always something along the road not too far away. It's like walking down a country road. Except I'm doing it for a long distance. The speeding buses are a little worrying, but I haven't had any close calls yet.

"Tirat yatra" means pilgrimage in Hindi. Stay tuned - I'll fill you in with more later.

Crossing the Karnatakan border - the sign behind me reads "Welcome to Karnataka"

Goan Crazy!

Joseph, the owner of our hotel here, approached us during breakfast and asked us if we could play a show on Sunday for 3 hours...we're still not totally sure that we can, but I committed to it instantly. I didn't even expect money to be involved, but he went on to say "I can pay you the same as the others...say, 3500 rupees?"

Alright - not a huge amount of money overseas, but pretty damn substantial here. And of course we would have done it for free...playing music at night, watching the ocean, gathering crowds...it's good fun. I'm going to try and not let the time pass by without practicing so I'm ready for Sunday. Should be good, and then maybe I could even have a repeat performance. For that amount I could live here for free if I played every week.

We're pretty settled into our little bungalo, kind of a thatched hut with a bed inside, covered by a mosquito net. A girl here gave us a CD player and speakers, plus we have a drum and guitar inside, and we are actually on the beach, so we get up, eat breakfast, swim, play music...very unproductive but pretty conducive of contentment.

Also - still loving the Hindi movie "Ghajini" and trying to learn some soundtrack songs...

http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=B2KN9HefMZc
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=hoKDChlT9XQ
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=7rpcEYB2g_I