Hahaha look at the silly Americans sleeping on the train platform

    I'm still alive, despite my new mode of transportation. We are now well established as "The Americans". We went to the Beach Hut common area to meet one friend who was going to take us to rent surfboards and walked away with 12. On this night we had cooked our own dinner and our reputations as "the American climbers who cook for themselves" preceded us. The Beach Hut has a wonderful atmosphere and everyone is welcomed into the family with open arms as long as you are easy-going. The usual gang consists of Andrew and myself, Sarah and Lauren from England, Oskar from Sweden, Ante from Finland, Bruce from Australia, and whatever combination of Spaniards, Israelis, Austrians, or Kiwis may want to grab a bite or surf. Beach Hut has superb food (all on a tab system so you don't even have to carry cash) and after 7 nights and many meals/beers/coffees/milkshakes/lassies the damage was only about $80 each.
    There are 3 main places to surf in and around Arugam Bay. "The Point" is in the bay and has steep waves breaking over a reef (I spent 20 min digging a piece of coral out of my toe last night.) With two breaks, it is the most popular and very convenient since it is within walking distance.
    Whiskey Point is several miles away. You can take a Took-Took there and back for 700Rs. Andrw and I, with our new-found motorcycle driven freedom, were not about to pay 700Rs. Tom Moore would be proud of the rope job I did lashing my surfboard to the side of my Bajaj 350cc motorbike. Unfortunately, after going there and back once, Hakeem (the man we rented the bikes from,) saw me in the process of tying 3 boards and loading 2 British girls (Lauren and Sarah) onto the bike. He was not happy.....since we did not file any paperwork for the bike (do you have a license? yes, ok.....no, no, you don't have to show it to me) if something had happened he could be held liable. This was the end of our taxi service.
    Peanut Farm I drove to with Lauren today, but have yet to surf. Maybe one day we will, maybe we won't. Maybe we'll go to Yala National Park to see the elephants, pythons, and crocodiles. Maybe we won't. Bonfire at sunset? Ok....laid-back is an understatement to the mellow that envelops the residents of Beach Hut and Arugam Bay.
    Despite the seeming lack of direction, this rest stop in paradise has been productive. I am nearly finished with my research paper detailing the consistencies of crawfish in a small bog in south Alabama, my journal is closer to being caught up to the current date, and I rode the best wave I ever have yesterday. Being a beginner, I tend to let crowded waves pass and do my best not to drop in on anyone (a common courtesy of surfing.) A large wave rolled in and was breaking beautifully. None of the more advanced surfers were in position to catch it and I got to have a long solo ride down the beach. I have enjoyed surfing the few times that I have been. The sun, beach, waves, ocean, and fraternity of chill boarders make for a wonderful sport. This wave and the ride it gave me are the first time I have loved surfing.
    Philip and his father left this morning. Goodbyes were said over a farewell breakfast of banana/coconut pancakes topped with honey and vanilla ice cream from Hakeem's beach spot (yes the same Hakeem from whom we rented bikes. He also runs a hotel, restaurant, board shop, and taxi service.) Philip is on his way to Nepal to do a two week trek that will take him to Everest base camp and back down.
    Our current plan is to fly back to Chennai on the 24th and meet up with Dilip, our NOLS instructor from south India. I no longer plan to go to Uganda to volunteer, though I hope in the future I will again have that opportunity. I have been advised by the US Embassy to limit my travel between countries with my emergency passport. It may be valid, but it looks fake and draws suspicion from customs officials (coming into Sri Lanka the customs official kept scratching my face with his thumb nail thinking it was fake and would rub off. Getting back into India will be an adventure.) Also, with the destruction caused by the monsoon, there is more than enough work to do in India. Dilip has offered to put me in contact with a few of his friends who work for relief organizations and have been helping first to rescue and now rebuild the lives of those displaced by the seasonal storm. From Chennai we will go shortly to southeastern India, and then meet up with Dilip in central southern India, hopefully finding ourselves in a position to be helpful. An overnight train will then link us to Kolkata, where I plan to stay for 5 weeks.
    I would like to mention, primarily for the benefit of the generous donors for my volunteer efforts, that during my recreational travel I am spending money that I have saved for the past few years for such an occasion. The money donated to me is set aside and will be used only for an expense that is directly related to volunteering. One possibility mentioned was helping triage for the first aid center of a displaced persons refugee camp. If this works out, I plan to donate a few hundred for food expenses to the camp. Lodging and food in Kolkata, as well as a flight back to the states I will pay for with donated funds and the rest I will give to Missions of Charity.
    In the letter I sent to friends and family describing vision for this trip, I wrote that they would be able to see the direct results of their donation. I plan to deliver on that statement. Philip's father, a Harvard graduate and CEO of a bio-tech company, spent 14 months traveling in India, Nepal, Taiwan, China, and other Asian countries before going to graduate school. When I talked to him about Kolkata he told me "All of this you are doing is cool. You're in Sri Lanka surfing. You've been climbing in the Himalaya and you're traveling around India. Kolkata is the coolest thing you are going to do. It's going to blow your mind and it's going to change your life. Of all the things you're doing, that's the best one." That is the best summary I have of the simultaneous excitement and trepidation with which I view the last portion of my stay in India. Though I already see how this trip has changed my world view, helped me to evaluate my priorities, and expanded my previous notions of flexibility; it sits heavily in the front of my mind that this worldly traveler and successful businessman is telling me that the adventures of the last few months will pale in comparison to the experiences I will have in what was once India's capital city.

I have more to post but I am EXHAUSTED!!!! once in India i'll get a non dial-up connection and put up the high altitude pictures and Sri Lanka pictures, as well as the rest of the post. I slept on the platform of the train station (yeah, i really am that cheap) with a 101 degree fever so I didn't sleep well. 10:30 here now with a REAL BED, thanks for reading!!!

Cole....please call me....I haven't heard from you since you got to Sri Lanka and neither of your phones work

    "Oh yes....this part of Sri Lanka is very famous for its gangs," Tamir said as my heart skipped 7 or 8 beats. "There are gangs everywhere. Beautiful gangs in the river and in the mountains. People from all over the world come to see."
    "Oh, gems," I say.
    "Yes, gangs, this is what I say."
    Andrew and I are on a bus in the heart of Sri Lanka en transit between Colombo and Ampara. We boarded the bus at 5 p.m. and payed for our tickets (640 Sri Lanka Rupees, $6 U.S.) At 8 o'clock we looked at our receipts that told us we were traveling 370 Km and realized that 370 Km, with 370 people packed on a bus, averaging 30 Km/hr with all of the stops we were making....we would get to Ampara around 2 in the morning. The large monk looked at us as we laughed and kept his vow of silence at our lack of preparation.
    To anyone who has looked at a map of Sri Lanka, this is perfectly clear. Unfortunately, Andrew and I are not in that category. We altered our travel plans in India for a spur of the moment side trip to Sri Lanka at the urging of our friend Philip. Philip and his dad were coming to Sri Lanka to relax and surf at the Hawaii-esque Arugam Bay near Potuvil on the eastern coast of the Island. We booked the earliest flight available so we could meet them before they left Colombo and ride with them in the car they had booked for a week. Andrew and I slept in the Delhi airport, caught a 6 a.m. flight, and were in Colombo by 2 p.m. Unfortunately Philip's driver refused to have more passengers so we arrived to a text telling us to take a bus and that they had already left Colombo.
    "Hey Baba, be flexible," I said, imitating out mountaineering instructor Dilip from the NOLS course.
    So.....this is how we came to be on a Sri Lanka Sardine-mobile hurtling around corners, breezing past the cows and water buffalo loitering in the road, wondering what language is even spoken here, and generally trying to scare the living hell out of every man, woman, child, and goat within reach of our sycophantic bus driver's proximity of terror.
    "This bus driver is crazy, no?" said Temir, who makes this ride often to receive management training. "You are brave. Most Europeans won't take the bus, especially at night.
    "For Temir, a native Sri Lankan, to tell me this bus driver was crazy by his standards validated the conclusion I had already reached. The following morning I would recount to Philip's father, "72.....that's the number of times I thought I was going to die."
    "Have you found it easy to get around so far?" asked Temir.
     "Yes it's been very easy. Everyone assumes we have no idea what we are doing or where we are going, which is true, so they have been coming up to us and helping us find where to go."
    We did make it though, arriving in Ampara at 2 a.m. We got our packs and the bus left. So did everyone else who had been on it. Gone, disappeared into the night and our friendly and helpful Temir had gotten off at a previous stop so there was no familiar face of which to ask which way to the hotel. We were able to find a few people sleeping in the streets and asked "Hotel?" along with the action of putting our heads on our hands as if it were a pillow. We were directed first to the police department and then to the hospital. Ampara is tiny and none of the locals spoke English so we did what we had been doing for the past month and a half in the Himalaya....we pitched a tent in a nice grassy spot behind the Town Hall.
    We woke up to my booger being baked by the 100 degree sun (that's what I call my small 2 man tent that is a lovely booger green.) While we were packing, a woman and her young son watched in fascination as the crazy, bearded, white boys emerged sweating from the booger-sauna and walked to the bus station. Following the direction of Lonely Planet (which we looked up online in the Sri Lanka airport,) the best way to find your bus is to walk around and yell where you want to go. It worked well in Colombo, with only a few redirections to other buses, and it continued to work well in Ampara, and then in a town between Ampara and Potuvil.
    "Potuvil?" we ask. "Yes, Potuvil" "When does it leave?" "10:00." It was 9:40 and we had no breakfast. I stayed with the packs and Andrew went to grab some roti (triangles of flat bread stuffed with various combinations of potatoes, curry, and greens.) Not 1 minute after Andrew got off the bus the driver turns the key and starts to pull out.
    "Wait wait! I thought you said leave at 10:00?"
    "Oh.....it's ok, we leave early."
    I ran into the station not knowing where Andrew had gone, but a panicked white boy draws attention in these parts and people began pointing towards a shop across the station. I couldn't see Andrew so I yelled his name. Inside he threw the money down, grabbed the food (It's ok if we leave Andrew, but I wanted that food) and came sprinting back. We got on the bus and the driver laughed at his joke and we were on our way.
    It was nice to see the countryside in the daylight as the whole ride the night before had been in a darkness, sleep deprived, knee-jammed blur. Today was much more leisurely and we soon arrived in Potuvil and the Arugam Bay.
    We dropped our packs at the Stardust hotel where Philip and his dad had told us to meet them (txt from Philip: We only made it halfway. Meet you tomorrow) and walked along the collection of stores on the main road. A man stopped and asked us if we wanted to rent motorbikes. My mother's voice and worst fear was in the back of my head as I asked "how much?"
    Though I am not normally an advocate of motorcycle travel due to safety, there is very little traffic in this part of the country and the roads are in excellent condition. $10 a day secured Andrew's and my rides for the next week. We had a crash course (haha....crash course) in driving as Andrew had never ridden a motorcycle before and I had only driven a dirtbike. Now we are enjoying the beach and the countryside, more to come later...

And in the Beginning...

   At 5 o'clock in the afternoon we met in the basement of Hotel Maan in the Karol Baugh district of New Delhi with Manu, the NOLS instructor charged with transporting us from Delhi to the NOLS base in Raniket (no easy task.) Although a few of us had gone on a tour the city previously during the day, many had not met so we sat in a circle around the table and introduced ourselves over chai.
   Andrew Backus: 22yo engineering grad of Santa Clara U in CA, originally from Vashon Island, WA. We are now travelling together after the course
   Jen Roberts:27yo who works in a PT office in Orange County, CA
   Avery-24yo from Boulder, CO
   Phillip Fleishman-18 yo taking a year off before beginning Harvard next fall. I leave tomorrow afternoon to go to Sri Lanka with him, Andrew B, and Phillip's father
   Ricky Simpson-27yo attorney from Seattle who works as a house parent in a home for girls
   Giselle-23yo mess of career confusion from Chicago
   Gavin GLider-24yo children's camp outdoor program director from Philadelphia
   Josh-28yo from NYC
   Andrew Oakley-20yo drummer/skier from Boulder
   Chris Stone-35yo from South Carolina
   Kyle Klein-22yo rugby player who attends FSU
   Erin-21yo from Orcas Island, WA

    Manu goes over the next few days of travel and we get our massive amount of luggage aboard a bus that will take us to the train station. We immediately hit traffic and become stuck in a festival progresion. The 30 min drive becomes one of our first lessons in the general attitude of travel in India which is along the lines of "You'll get there eventually.....probably" as it stretched into a crawl of over an hour. In Africa, ex-pats have a phrase said to explain the frustration, pain, poverty, occasional grandeur, beauty, filth, vibrant population, and lack of a "western" timeframe. T.I.A......"This is Africa." We tried "T-Double-I" but it didn't fit so we have adopted T.I.N.A. or Tina....."This is not America." The US Embassy official who helped me apply for my emergency passport though that was funny as I explained to him the past two weeks of travel without a passport or visa. Luckily I now have a crisp, blue, US seal passport valid for 1 year with a not-so-crisp, faded blue ink, India seal visa stamped inside. The man at the Indian consulate assures me it will allow me to travel freely as a normal visa, but T.I.N.A.....this country is an adventure.
  Upon arriving at the train station, the first think I noticed was the continuation of chaos, just amplified. The smell of Delhi train station is not best described, but experienced. The intricate blend of feces, Diesel, urine, food vendors, and stagnant water fill the nose and stifle your breathing more than the shirt you hold to your face in a vain attempt to filter the fumes of machine and human exhaust. We jostle, push, and pull our way through the masses along the platform feeling much like.....well, toothpaste being squeezed from a tube. Someone must have been rolling the tube from the end because we pushed along whether we moved out feet or not. The group piled its gear together in a pile near our gate (actually not our gate, it was a good walk away, TINA) and fomed a circle around it. Apparently we were quite the spectacle in the station as the large pile of duffels became a focal point for the interest of others in the station. While we circled the wagons our back pockets were "cased" by small children looking for an easy grab. Erin, who was dressed in traditional Hindi garb, was the delight of 4 men who wanted to take pictures with him and began to lead him away. Manu intervened and we stayed in the circle until our train pulled in. We find our appropriate gate and board the train. Manu gives us a snack of "Glucose Crackers" and we find our berths, stow our gear, and are soon asleep....chugging across the Indian nightscape toward Raniket and the Himalaya.

   

I tried to post this last night but the computer shocked me....then it died

    How do you end up sitting in lawn chairs in the front yard of a government complex sipping chai out of fancy china tea cups with the first Indian woman to ski to the south pole and the district manager of the Bidhoragh District at 8:00 at night with the lights of Munciari spread out before you making a stark contrast against the black backdrop of the Milan valley? Follow the simple analogy "passport is to crevasse as hockey-puck is to net." Yep.....like a full-court slapshot made be gravity skipping across the Kaffne Glacier ice rink. As previously stated by my little brother "let's hope what he loses isn't that important."

                             (The "where is my passport?" pose.....also known as the "WTF!?" pose)
    This social visit with the District Manager was second-to-last in a line of others to the police department and various offices in Munciari with Reena, the afforementioned celebrity. Reena and her husband, a famous Indian mountaineer from Munciari, are well knon in the valley and the police officers filing the report of my ice-bound identity posed with the two of us for pictured. When i protested "Why would you want a photo of me? I haven't set any records!" they returned enthusiastically "Oh, but you are famous. You are the the first person to ever lose a passport in a crevasse!"

    Honestly this scene was not abnormal. Though I may have considered it strange 2 months ago, I was coming off of a uniquely eventful mountaineering course in the Himalaya with NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School) that saw me soaked by the worst monsoon India has seen in 40 years, frozen by a two and a half day blizzard, plagued by the destructive force of frequent landslide, nearly pushed into a ravine by a stampede of sheep, educated in the ways of Sadhu by a Yogi (holy man) in a cave at the base of the Pindari Glacier, nearly crushed by a dynamite blast in the trans-Himalaya, and one of only two members in a 7 person independent student expedition who was not debilitated by diarrhea, vomiting, and dehydration while exiting the Milan valley. Sounds like fun right?
    Unfortunately, since the detailed journal I so meticulously kept during the majority of the trip is in a passport ice fort, I do not have the fresh and detailed stories that I had planned to regale you with. I will do my best to recall the events of the expedition starting with the first of many meetings the 13 students of GAR-9/1/10.

The crazier you drive, the less likely you are to get hit

"Follow the masses" is the reply from my friend when i asked her if she knew where the baggage claim happened to be. Luckily a 68 lb black canvas bag with a bright orange strap around it is easy to find on the line of luggage. My TSA lock had been disabled and my bag searched, but i believe everything was still inside. Navigating my way through the unfamiliar airport, i began to look for a "NOLS" placard that would denote the particular taxi driver that was to pick me and another student, Kyle Klein, up from the airport. You would think that this driver would be waiting with ALL of the other taxi drivers with placards, but no. T.I.N.A. (read next post for explanation)

After an hour of searching I do locate the driver chilling with Kyle OUTSIDE of the airport and we leave for the hotel. Hot Wheels......we are little Hot Wheels cars let go on a steep, smooth hill. Supposedely there are traffic laws in India....but of course "technically" there is a street in the city where I live that it is illegal to wear jeans while walking on (I've never seen anyone arrested though.) There are 3 lanes with 9 cars abreast those lanes jockeying for position, honking, cutting each other off, and drafting inches from their bumpers. Honking in the states is close to an insult, but it India it is as necessary to safe travel as headlights at night (many cars don't cut them on or they don't work...not sure.) Surprisingly we make it to Hotel Maan and once kyle differentiates the man at the front desk's accent between "hotel voucher" and "water bottle" we are set up in our hotel. Not jet lagged but also a bit restless, we wake up at 5 A.M. for a few mile run around Delhi. Despite the heat we are considerate of the culture and wear shirts. It is perfectly acceptable for me to find a nice patch of earth, pull down my pants, and defecate....but if I were to go shirtless in public we would have received more startes than we already were. I believe the incredulity was best translated as "what are those silly white boys running from?" as they looked behind us as we passed for the mad cow that must surely be chasing us.

P.S.- The computer I am using shocks me every time my fingers touch parts of the keyboard not including the keys....good typing practice T.I.N.A.

But I have to pee sooooo bad

This is an entry from my journal i wrote while on the plane from Chicago to Delhi

   7:41 A.M......or is it 6:11 P.M? I am in limbo. My stomach is starting to growl telling me it is time for breakfast, which will soon be served on the plane, although where we are it is currently dinner time. This makes me wonder about my Malaria meds which are supposed to be taken every morning. The doctor didn't say "start taking these in the morning before you leave in the timezone you will be travelling to." I realize that I have now seen the sun set, rise, then set again all in a period of 13 hours.
   As our homely 737 passes over the mountains of Dushambe, the plane shakes slightly and I ponder the wonders of international travel. Like how I left Chicago right after the sun set, but was able to see it rise less than six hours later. Like how my feet, already large a size 13 4E width, barely fit in my shoes. I was lucky enough to be in a seat away from the token crying baby and in its place my discomfort mate is a wonderful woman from New Delhi who's name i can not begin to spell correctly (give me a few months.) Her only downfall is that she plans on sleeping for most of the flight and i don't want to wake her up so that i can get out!

Things learned: Toilets on airplanes will always startle me when flushed, even if I am prepared for it.
Things marveled at: Even being on a turbulent people rocket streaking across the sky at nearly 600mph will not stop morning prayer. Prayer rugs do fit in the aisle.