Sirrisirrisirrisirri sirrisirrisirrisirri SIRRI! SIRRI!

We left Goa after a few days of doing not much. We went to the Wednessday-market in Anjuna, and switched hotels and moved a beach down, but nothing helped to lift the initial impression. I think we've just found the wrong beaches, after reading about a bit, in retrospective.

We got on a train to Hampi, hoping to find the Childrens Trust that we were reccommended to volunteer at. We met an english bloke at the train that we kept bumping in to later too, a young-looking dashing character with children our age who had taken as much time off work as possible to travel and relax after the children were out of the house.

Hampi was first of all NOT cheap compared to the standard we recieved, as so many books and people had promised. We got a much better standard for the same price in Jaïpur. It was also crowded since it was the peak of the season, and we weren't needed at the Trust until it was almost time for us to leave. Since they wanted people to stay for at least two weeks, we had to let that one go to make it home on time. When the initial dissapointment setteled though, we found Hampi to be an amazing place, and we ended up spending more time there too, than planned. It generally consists of a holy, enormous set of ruins, and the people who live in the area, making a living mostly off tourism. Full of mosquitoes, and yet another place with a squat-toilet, but definately the most charming place in spite of that. I ended up getting chased by wild monekys after feeding the lazy temple-monkeyts bananas they were too full to eat. That makes it two foreign species who chased me since arrival, after the midget-parrot that got mad at me on our way to Jaïpur for trying to take it's picture.

I bought a flute I had huge trouble playing from a nice Nepali man who helped running a restaurant we frequented there, fell in love with a smiling little card-selling kid that I didn't buy anything from, but had the most charming smile that will certainly break many hearts one day, took pictures of more lizards, found something stuck in my man's eye and had to search about for a doctor, started a Holy-Cow-picture-project and got the dirtiest most unapetizing pedicure of my life in Hampi. I also got the mandatory blessing from the local temple-elephant while there and almost OD'ed us with mosquito-reppellent. Hampi was a nice memory, and I'd love to go back there one day and volunteer at the Trust.

Then one night we booked a bus to Mumbai, thinking we'd go to alot of places around it, having heard nothing good of the city itself. And here I am 5 days later, after hitting rock bottom hotel-standard-wise and yet freshly and refreshingly in love with a new city I am not ready to leave. But that will have to wait for another time.

Pink, it's my new obsession

So we ended up staying in Jaïpur a little longer than anticipated. Man came down with a bad case of something we hope isn't malaria, and we had to cancel (or rather, not show up and lose all our money due to indianrail's SHITTY customer-service) our tickets to Udaipur. We also had to move out of the hostel we loved since we hadn't pre-booked and the owners were decent enough people to honour the bookings they allready had in. So after a few days of moping around alone I noticed that the middle east and India had more in common than great food and weather, as more and more young men from all castes and classes decided to show me that men will be pervs whereever you go. One was even gracious enough to speed-cycle after my cycle-rickshaw while offering to 'pit his taunge' 'in mi vigine'. Which resulted in my short fuse to blow off in a marketplace where it's probably not concidered very ladylike to flip someone off while screaming like a maniac.

So, after 2-3 nights in a dirty little place with a squat-toilet and annoying neighbours, we took in to a nicer hotel for a night before getting on a plane to Goa yesterday. So far this place is highly overrated, concidering we're not druggies. Man is still not feeling too great, and we're being offered drugs whereever we go, aswell as the general hassle to buy stuff. My pale-ness is also a subject often inviting to questions, since we haven't really seen the sun 'till now. Too much techno/trance/hippies/drugs makes mee feel like an old hag, when I would really just like a nice and more 'family-friendly' place. We have to get on the road again tomorrow, since our hostel doesn't have any openings, but we haven't decided if we're leaving for Hampi or trying to find another lpace around goa we like better. We're catching the wednessday flea-market before we go anywhere though, that's all we know.

Oh, and we've also accidently stopped smoking and drinking, even the man. Don't know what happened, but it's probably good for us. Let's see how long it lasts.

Everywhere I go I want to travel by rickshaw.

For the first time in my life I've been furious at beggers. I usually leave them a coin or two or a little something to eat, but here, I've decided to let go of that practice. I've ended up on more than one occation, after giving something to a child or their parent, being chased by hords of their friends/family/other children, who will not take no for and answer and swear at you or tug at you if they don't feel you gave them enough. Apart from that, I think I've found paradise.

We're in Jaïpur, the so called pink city, which in my opinion isn't very pink, but still well worth a visit. There is a kite-festival going on, and children as well as adults, poor as well as the rich are out in the streets or on their roof-tops flying kites. We've found an oasis of a hostel, with the most amazing hosts which have turned around some of the ails we've encountered travelling in India. (If you're reading this and looking for accomondation in Jaïpur, check out the Travellers Nest!) they have't tried to sell us any thing, they give honest and good advice when we ask for help, they are both very interresting and interrested(!) people with whome we've allready had a few really nice conversations. Our room is beautiful, simple and clean, and we have hot water whenever we want it. They well deserve their top-rating in hostel-world.

We've also seen the mandatory Taj Mahal and baby-Taj in Agra, and that's about all the good things i can say about that city. I thought I was well over being tricked by people who are just trying to sell you things and benefit from you somehow, but they really are everywhere here (apart from this hostel, yay!). The driver who took us to the not-so-great-but-still-ok hotel in Agra from the train-station showed up at our hotel the next day after a firm "we'll call you if we need you" to show us around. Buying services from people who are constntly trying to make plans for you can be really exhausting, and we'd had it up to here when we went on to Jaïpur. We got a taxi/driver all the way, which was quite expensive, but still well worth the money for us, since the road between Agra and Jaïpur turned out to be magnificent in itself and we had te oportunity to stop and take pictures. it also helped that he didn't speak much english and thus couldn't talk us in to weird shopping-deals or the sort. He did make one stop we didn't request though, at a place that wouldn't let us invite him as our guest at our table since "the drivers had to eat in another room", something we also encountered in Agra. Just an example showing that the cast-system is alive and well.

But back in Jaïpur the only problems we've encountered to speak of is tummyache due to gluttony. We originally booked in for one night, but decided to stay for 3. We've been hiking in the mountainside up to this fort where the king used to live while hunting tigers (there extinct in the region now), seing wild monkeys up close aswell as many other pretty wild animals.

We've decided on not going north at all, and perhaps leave Rajasthan all together after this and head south. If all goies as losely planned, we'll be catching a train to Mumbai, with a stopover in Udaipur for one day, then go onwards from Mumbai to the south Goa-area and Hampi, and if we can miraculously find the time, look around further south for animal reserves and tea-plantations. We just don't have enough time to see half of what we wanted, espessially if we're going to continue spending 3 days on each place. But hey, it's vacation after all, innit?

Got to love the sweet taste of India

I'm writing to you from Delhi, India for the very first time. I haven't been travelling since my trip to Turkey this summer, to a beautiful small resort just outside of Olympus called Cirali. Endless beaches, fantastic fauna with hedgehogs and sea-turtles, and a magnificent bungalow on my mans bosses bill. Couldn't have asked for more.

So India. This will be interresting. As it turns out, the hostel we pre-booked seems to be someones permanent home with two-ish spare rooms, and the water here is only sporadic, which is probably an indian thing, but we still haven't had the chanse for a proper shower 24 hrs after arrival, and since we spent a day in Copenhagen on our way here, it's staring to get icky. Not to mention the fact that they didn't clean out our bathroom after the previous detendents. Really, they left soap-bars and toothpaste aswell as general dirt. This will be fun when our travel-stomachs kick in and we can't flush.

This place is really weird, I can't tell who lives here and not. The owner (?) was 40 minutes late for our pick-up, and when we finally arrived in what surprisingly turned out to be a living-room, he didn't intorduce the PJ-wearing woman as his wife, we were just left to assume she was. they offered us coffee from some cracked cups served by a scared-looking young girl who may have been their daughter or maid, then left the room. There is an old man roaming around and we're not sure he lives here. My man thinks he might be a german warlord who escaped after the holacaust and is now here in hiding. To me, he loks rather native, but we canhear him cough in the livingroom as if he was right here in the bedroom with us.

We're only planning on staying one more night. I'm running to have a shower now, because the toilet just flushed, which means I have to work fast.

There is a light that never goes out.

I have re-read this whole blog and I miss myself the way I was. I noticed that I like squishing several words together into one without a -, like we do in norwegian.

I might be on my way to Tunisia on a scholarship for some summer-school in a month or I may not. I may be working, or I may not. I may be single for the first time in 3 years and I may not. I may be planning more gigs for our idealistic united Bergen artists. I'm 26 now. Extreme anti-climax.

Pretty dresses and too much beer still keeps me entertained. Atleast it gets me trough the days. I may have passed my exam and I may not, I haven't been working in weeks, at my own choise. I suck so badly right now.

We're criminals that never broke no law

So I could tell you about the downfalls and peaks of The great wall. I could tell you about humiliation and honesty of the Chinese. I could tell you about a drunk aussie actor and his desire to murder his girlfriends' exes. Or the amateur photographer who told us a Beijing history trough his pictures that he could never had explained better had we shared a common language.

I could tell you about my job, but I won't, nor what it's like to meet someone you have a professional authority over in a setting where you don't. I'll just say that sometimes it matters. Sometimes, it's terrifying. Sometimes, it makes me happy.

I could tell you about systems, how they are made for some, accepted by many, and excluding to few. And about how I am one of the few in many cases.

I could tell you about how one of the best friends I made in Egypt is now in.shaa.allah a new-born mother and how I know it will change her life and how I am thinking more about her than I have done in months. I could tell you about how i am petrified something has gone wrong for her, and how I thing about how much motherhood must change a person.

I could tell you about how my boyfriend finally has a colleague who'se company I enjoy, despite the fact that she is prettier and easier to like.

I guess I don't have a lot to say. I have boring classes, days where I am only working for the man, drunken nights that makes no difference in my life whatsoever, and yet, that's my life. I'm alive even when I don't travel. Dixi

Shanghai nights

I am one of those people who takes a sick pleasure in visiting a loo marked "Please put no paper in toilet, it will brake the toilet!! Please put toiletpaper in bin!!" and then see a big ball of toiletpaper getting flushed dow the drain. This has caused me all kinds of problems here in China.

We've moved on down to Shanghai. We met alot of cool people during our time in Beijing and we decided to join some of them on their way south. Shanghai, -at first glance seems alot cleaner than Beijing. Both the streets and air is nicer and people seem to spit less. This makes me happy. We've found a sweet small veggie-place that serves fake meet accompanied with amusing translations. Some of my favs are "Keeping the baby" and "Delicious roasted husband". Today we had Tiger-skin rolls, hopefully the veggie-version. Vegetarian eating can be hard here, but we've learned to look for the buddhist places, since they normally follow a vegetarian diet. Drinking, which seemed so easy concidering a pint is about 3 NOK a piece, is turning out to be harder than expected. The local beer is thinner than water and ten times more lactating. It's a stuggle not breaking the seal during the first bottle.

Shanghai is located by the coast, so they have alot of fish-restaurants. Everytime i pass one, my heart breaks a little whe i discover that it's not in fact, a petshop selling turtles, but a delicacy waiting to happend. We even saw some seatortoises trough one of the windows. Now who fancies endangered species on their plate? (and yes, I'm still norwegian, and no, I don't eat whale-meat)

We just moved to our second Shanghai-location, still in a room witout a window, and with a bed covering the whole bedroom. Super-sweet, and pink too. But i actually quite like it. The hostel's worse though, no smoking in the bar, and awful music. It'll grow on us, I hope, and if not, hey, we could always do a few nights in Xi-an on our way back north.