It’s been a long time in coming, but at last my India report is here. I’m sorry for the long delay; I think twitter has started to distract me a bit from my poor site. It has been a treat to use though, and hopefully you’ve had a chance to check it out. At some point soon I hope to figure out how to integrate into the site directly, which would be quite an accomplishment for me. We’ll see what I can pull off though…

Anyways, on to the story at hand. Though it’s already been a month since I departed for lands unknown, it honestly doesn’t feel like it’s over yet. I actually just took in my last roll of film to be developed from India yesterday, and will get it back sometime next week. If you’ve had a chance, I’ve been trying to keep my photo page updated at least and hopefully you have already seen some of the above images. If not, please head over that way as well to see even more pictures from the oldest civilization (still in existence) in the world.

So I think I’ve mentioned the context for this adventure in posts past. A few months ago I received an invitation from my dear friend Vinay for his upcoming marriage. This was of course a little bit of a surprise, as the whole thing was decided this past Christmas when he went back home to India in order to procure himself a wife. Having accomplished this first bit of business rather smashingly, all he had left to do was fix the date, and send out the invitations. Thus he did, and thus I received, and after some negotiations at work my friend Justin and I were merrily off on our way to the birthplace of Buddha and Bollywood. (As well as Hinduism, but that doesn’t start with a “B”).

We arrived after a pleasant flight aboard a Singapore Airlines plane (home of the Airbus), and immediately stepped off into relative insanity. The first thing we received upon arriving at the airport in Bangalore was nothing. That is to say our baggage, which inexplicably took almost two hours to show at the baggage claim, despite the fact that ours was the only plane to actually land while we were there. Our very next experience was just as telling as the first. Upon getting out, we were met by my friend Vinay (slightly concerned as we had no way of communicating to him while we were waiting for our luggage to arrive) who took us around front so we could commission a taxi to take us back to his place. As we neared the main road to the airport, a horrific din began to grow in intensity and assail our senses. This cacophony of horns, engines, yelling voices, and screeching tires continued to reach fever pitch until we burst out into the plaza with our baggage and came face to face with the road system that is India. My friend Justin does an amazing job of describing what it was like to travel on motorbike through the streets of Bangalore, but suffice to say it was the real life manifestation of organized chaos. It was literally like watching an excited ant colony on the march. Everyone careens towards the same opening in the road, yet astoundingly no one gets hurt (though many people, myself included, get uncomfortably close).

As I mentioned earlier, these two points, which greeted us mere moments after arriving, would come to define our experience in India. 1: things can take a long time to happen, so just go with it and 2: the roads in India are freakin’ insane!!!

There was one more lesson we were to learn while in India, but for that we had to wait a whole nother day before partaking of its wisdom.

The first day was spent tooling around on the back of a motorbike and seeing the sights of Bangalore. The second day began the preparations for Vinay’s wedding. It began early with a host of his close relatives (which alone measures something in the hundreds of thousands I believe) coming over and engaging in a purification ceremony for the groom to be. Of course with all these relatives a huge dinner was just waiting to happen, and everyone who came anticipated this with a large bowl of homemade foods. Now already Justin and I were experiencing firsthand the fine difference between the Western definition of spicy food, and the Indian one. We were doing well for the most part, Justin perhaps more so being raised in Texas and a big fan of Tex Mex. But still it was a challenge to finish all the different kinds of food served to us. I found it hard to also distinguish between the different subtle flavors as the spice tended to overpower my other taste buds, and everything invariably started tasting the same. I enjoyed the experience though, and tried to eat as much as I could without sacrificing crucial nerve endings.

One of the more interesting foods we were given that afternoon was an Indian style banana. Now how can you have an Indian style banana, I’m sure you’re asking. A banana is a banana right? Well, rest assured that that is not the case at all. The first thing the cousin who passed out the bananas did was check each one for firmness. Great, you’re thinking, everyone likes to eat a firm banana! Ohh, how very wrong you are. In fact it wasn’t the firmness of the banana that she was checking for, but the squishiness. Any shmoe can get himself a ripe banana, but an over-ripe banana is something to be savored. Upon peeling this mush of a fruit, I realized that half of it had actually congealed into some sort of translucent gelatin—not too unlike snot after a bad cold. Justin figured when in Rome, and downed the whole thing. I was a little more skeptical of mine, and tried to stay within the parts that seemed most bananaish to my discerning eye. The rest I cleverly hid in my leftover peel, and covertly disposed of at a more discrete time.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, but at last in the evening Vinay’s brother took us back out into the city for a little shopping and money exchange. Finishing with that we went to meet up with one his friends for dinner, but opting that they decided to take us to an overly loud bar instead; apparently operating under the pretense that before any good meal must come large amounts of alcohol and the chance to partake in conversation by means of shouting across the table to someone sitting two feet in front of you. This was all well and good; Vinay’s brother and his friend seemed to be taking full advantage of the facilities while Justin and I contented ourselves with a coke, pina colada, and small assortment of roasted nuts. As the night’s activities wore on however, the mood of the place began to change for the worse. Well, for me and Justin at any rate. Justin began complaining of his stomach feeling a bit “tight”, and after a visit to the restroom came back to inform us that he had just thrown up. He was feeling a bit better at this point, and gamely sipped his coke while waiting for our hosts to finish up their revelry and escort us back home. It wasn’t long before he was back in the bathroom however, dealing not just with the throwing up aspect, but now diarrhea as well. At this point he was starting to look really terrible, and entreated our caretakers to take us back to our lodgings forthwith. They acknowledged Justin’s plight with grave head noddings and much concern, and promised to do just that….as soon as they finished one more round of drinks. Crestfallen, Justin could only watch—choking back both tears and, well, vomit—as the pair carefully perused the drink menu only to end up ordering two more beers. Finally after said beers, and a couple more trips to the bathroom on Justin’s part, we were ready to head back to our base camp. Unfortunately for us we still had the streets of insanity to deal with, in addition to a driver who felt the need to take the extra long way home; stopping occasionally for food and other shopping as the need arose (though one of the stops did end up being for medicine, so that was good). This is also a good time to mention that all the streets in India are absolutely teaming with the logic defying feature referred to as headachius creatius among the scholarly, or better known to us as the common speed bump. It was a test to get home, to say the least.

Get home we did though, at long last, and upon exiting the car Justin promptly stood in front of the landing and puked his guts out. I mean really puked his guts out. Like heaves that scrape the bottom of the stomach puked his guts out. His face was pale and haggard, and his eyes seemed unfocused and uncomprehending. We eventually were able to get him back inside the house, where he quickly dashed off to the bathroom and the white ceramic refuge waiting inside. While he was locked in there, I sat down to ponder his fate. What a cruel thing to so suddenly spring up and attack him. To go from perfectly normal to quivering mess in so short a span of time, with the only warning being that of a “tight” stomach, seemed most disturbing. A fate you wouldn’t want wished on anyone. Having missed out on dinner, I was offered a light meal they had picked up along the way, but I politely declined on the basis of my stomach feeling just a little “tight”.

……

….

…..a little “tight”?

OH CRAP!!!!!!

In an instant the dreadful realization of my horrible fate sank in, and before a could bemoan this life that I had loved coming to such a severe end, the touch of death was upon me and I was rushing headlong out the door—unleashing a torrent of puke and guts and assorted organs not two feet away from the spot where Justin had just moments ago decorated.

And with that our feverish night of food poisoning began. We spent alternating turns in the bathroom, both throwing up and diarrhea, usually at the exact same time (luckily the toilet also doubled as a shower room, so I could just puke on the side of the toilet bowl, and rinse it down afterwards. Weeee!). We did eventually come over it, and were feeling great and 100% back to normal…..the day before we left India. Well, you can’t win ‘em all I suppose.

The wedding of course went beautifully, lasting a total of three days(!!!), and we had a great time participating in and documenting the event. We also made it to the city of Mysore, which is the capital (both in the government sense and the cultural sense) of the state we were in, and brimming with temples, palaces, and people trying to rip you off with their wares. It was indeed a great time, and I hope that these small snippets will give you a taste of what it was like to be over there (though hopefully not scare you off. I’m actually really really glad I went there, honest!).

Thanks again for baring with me, and hopefully more new content soon!

(Also sorry for all the archaic vocabulary, I’ve been reading a lot of H.G. Wells lately. The deuce!)