TJW Report 3

I am so accustomed to bizarre things happening around me that I sometimes forget to appreciate their significance. The first time I visited a goshala was a shock, but at the time it just seemed normal to be abnormal. There I was trudging around a homeless cow shelter in my poorly selected footwear, sandals, in a foot of cow manure when a Jain Guru appears with her sponsor to check on the goshala. The sponsor, a very talkative Indian woman from Delhi, gives me the grand tour of the 'emergency room', 'labor room', "sick bay', 'operating room', and the manager's suite fully equipped with five cows recovering from surgery requiring extra special supervision (I was offered the job but regretfully had to decline). The sponsor would lie in the foot deep manure to hug and kiss the cows saying over and over again, "You see, they are just like us. They just can't talk." I didn't know what to think. I grew up on a commercial cattle farm that was business and here is this woman playing in the cow shit like she has found her long lost friend. This is an extreme case and not all Indians do this but it still makes me think about other beliefs. This woman may sound bizarre and a little off her rocker but she was a successful business woman in Delhi and her son is a manager for a hotel in Singapore. She bragged about this fact for hours just as a mother would in the States. It is easy to think of people worshiping cows and letting them roam the city streets as crazy but is that any crazier than waiting to see if a groundhog sees his shadow which will determine the upcoming weather patterns. Are the average onlookers on Delhi streets that fight government paid cow catchers in an attempt to help the cows escape capture and remain free cows for just one more day crazy or cultural sound? This is all seems like abnormal behavior but then again what is normal. As I tell myself everyday, just because a culture or belief system is different does not make it wrong.

Different cultures also have different expectations that can seem bizarre when put in contrast with your own belief system. The main contrast I have found is the definition of success within each culture. What is success? I was asked this question in my Watson interview over a year ago. I stumbled through the question, soon forgetting about it and its significance. I was a graduating senior from a prestigious liberal arts school; I knew everything and had my life planned out for at least the next decade. At first, the question even sounded silly because success was clearly defined for me at the time; wealthy with a nice big house with a couple little ones running around inside the white picket fence, the American Dream. I never actually sat down and thought about the question because that is what I was supposed to want. That is a great life and I still want some variation of that but there is so much more to dream and think about now. Being successful is so arbitrarily labeled depending what the local culture dictates that I have constantly asked myself which label of success is correct? Are any correct? What is my definition of success?

A successful profession or life varies greatly depending on your geography. With the Masai, the man with the most cows, wives and children is idolized reaching almost god like status in the village. In Texas, a similar man will have his wives and children taken from him by the government with criminal charges being filed. I am not condoning such behavior but it shows how differently similar lifestyles are viewed within different cultures. In India, a man can be fired from every job he has ever held, be a failing father, husband and citizen of the community but still find salvation by simply giving up and becoming a wandering Baba. He can simply start walking, basically becoming a nomad, and living of the generosity and charity of others as a holy man. This is respectable in India. Even though he has left his family to fend for themselves and has failed in every other aspect of his life, he will still be respected. Is the French stock broker that decided after six years on Wall Street to give everything up and start an extreme sports company in the Himalayas successful? He sure seems happy. Is one man's success any less significant depending on his culture or geographic location? Each destination I reach brings with it a new set of rules, expectations and commitments that defines the culture. Every two to three months, I have to redefine so many different aspects of my life to adapt to my new surrounding that is creating one big melting pot of contracting philosophies. Again, what is the right recipe?

Most people simply accept their cultural expectations to be the truth and strive to attain their culture's version of success. The past nine months have opened my eyes to different worlds that I never knew existed, some mesmerizing and others terrifying. With the new exposure comes excitement but also anxiety to see what I will think upon my return home. Will I fall right back into my previous life without missing a beat or will I chose a different path? I don’t know the answer to these questions right now. I keep telling myself that I don't have to worry about it but that does not stop my mind from constantly churning over the possibilities.

Learning about the world is a funny concept coming from the States where traveling abroad usually means going to Europe. It had been an amazing year to be traveling as an American citizen. Obama or Hillary? If I had a nickel for every time I have been asked that question, I could fund a second Watson year for myself. I have also been embarrassed to find that many people know and follow the American political system closer than most Americans. I try to keep up to date with the political news just to be able to answer the inevitable third or fourth question in every introductory meeting with a stranger: Obama or Hillary? The question often comes in the most random and unexpected places.

About seven months ago when the presidential race was just gaining momentum, I was in the meat eating ceremony with the Masai. As we were sitting around the fire watching my prize goat roast over the flames, the Masai elder, Noonjuma, was asking me questions about my life through a translator, his son. Halfway into the conversation he asked me, "Who will win...Obama or Hillary?" I was shocked to hear this coming from a man that could only speak Maa, the Masai language, and not Swahilii, the language of the local newspaper and radio. Noonjuma's next question, "How long will it take me to walk to America?" Noonjuma knew the leading presidential candidates of America but he didn't know there was an ocean impeding him from walking from Africa and America. How can this be? Why should he care about Obama or Hillary? I have thought about that conversation often but as bizarre as it may sound, the election will affect him even if he is tucked away in a cow dung boma in the Rift Valley of Africa.

America’s influence on the world has no bounds: good and bad. It is shocking once you discover the extent. Every newspaper I have read from Zimbabwe to India and everywhere in between has at least one major article on US politics or pop culture. The front page of the Victoria Falls newspaper in Zimbabwe did not talk about the dire humanitarian or economic crisis in the country. Instead, it fully documented Britney Spears’ little sister getting knocked up with the subsequent article about the US election. As I put down the paper in disbelief, I peered across the street at the endless line of people camping on the street corner waiting for the bank to open not knowing if it would be in an hour or a week. Still yet, little Spears was more important that starving Zimbabweans. How can our priorities become so skewed?

Not all of my discussions about my home, America, have been pleasant. In fact, most have been very anti-American. There have been many instances when people automatically dislike me for being an American. It has affected me whether I like it or not. I have learned how to hate America during this trip, even believing it at times. Now that I know how to hate my country, I can appreciate it for what it represents: an improbable experiment in democracy as Obama put it. It wears on me having to constantly defend my country around every corner when it has been instilled in my brain since elementary school that America is the beacon of hope in the world, the leader of the free world. Being raised in such a way often blinds people of the countless possibilities the rest of the world has to offer. This mentality also creates a bizarre contradiction: the country with the most influence and power in the world knows the least about it.

Not all things in life are bad though. Riding through the Himalayas on my pink Enfield lets my imagination run wild. I find myself in a fantasy world of towering snow-capped peaks, numerous waterfalls sending freshly thawed water cascading down the mountainside, tiny villages dotting the lush green landscapes with blossoming apple orchards sprinkled along the terraced mountain slopes, monkeys darting in and out of traffic, cows laying dead or alive on the street, colorful Hindu shrines and temples around every corner and random festivals that fill the air with joyful music, alluring spices, and mesmerizing colors that overwhelm the senses. It is a world that I thought could only exist in my imagination. It feels like a dream but I know it is real; more real than anything I have ever experienced. I tell myself everyday that I am on of the fifty luckiest people alive because I have been given a gift: a chance to experience the world, learn about myself, and open my mind.

Finally...My Bike!

Bike Trip 1 014, originally uploaded by Benjamin Long.

Things have changed greatly since I last posted any news. I am now the proud owner of a reconditioned 1994 model pink Royal Enfield Motorcycle. It took me a month to finally muster up the courage to follow through with my original plan of buying a bike due to the treacherous driving conditions. To the casual onlooker on the street or even the passenger in the back of a bus, driving in India is the most chaotic, dangerous, and frustrating debacle ever witnessed and rightfully so. Might is right on the roads. Buses stop for no one; not even passengers for they must run alongside and somehow manage to climb aboard with their luggage and sometimes children. India has the fastest growing middle class in the world and that means people are starting to buy more cars. Getting a license can’t be that difficult because most people really can’t drive worth a damn. More cars on the mostly the same infrastructure build by the British Raj with lots of bad drivers spells congestion and accidents. Throw into the mix the mopeds carrying three to five people, numerous other motorcycles with delusions of ESPN XGames grandeur, donkeys, camels, cows all pulling carts of some sort, nomadic cows wandering the streets as if it is their right (it is in India), monkeys waiting eagerly on the side of the roads awaiting the right moment to dart across the road, goat herders guiding their flocks on the curb, landslides, more cows and who know what else…maybe an Elephant!

You are probably thinking who in their right mind would even attempt to drive a motorcycle, much a less a pink one under such conditions. I talked myself out of it until I took my first trip to the north with friends I met from Delhi. It was the weekend of Holi, the festival of color that was meant to welcome the spring and win the blessings of Gods for good harvests and fertility of the land but has turned into an excuse to drink Bhang (a drink that has opium in it), cover unsuspecting tourists with colored ink, and dance the night away very intoxicated. During this weekend, I decided to leave Delhi and head north into the mountains. We took two different hikes at the base of the Greater Himalayan range; one to Tungnath Temple ( a holy Hindu temple) and the other to a lake above a small village called Sari. It was a crazy experience to be surrounded with Bhang silly Indians dancing around fires, dogs with steel collars to at least give them a chance if and when they attacked by leopards, six and seven thousand meter peaks dotting the horizon and small villages scattered across the Himalayan foothills with intricate terrace farming networks carved out of the hillsides. After the hike, I stayed behind in Rishikesh (the Yoga capital of the world and also the place where the Beatles visited to study meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi). After a couple days of watching old men take heaps of cow manure and turn them into dried out disks of manure, people sharing the food and bottled water with random cows on the street and people even giving cows massages on the street, I decided it was time to go back to Delhi to get a bike so I can visit more small towns in the mountains. A bike would offer me the freedom to see all of the small towns and not just the tourist hot spots. I did take a swim in the Ganga (Ganges) while I was in Rishikesh. It was cold and refreshing.

Once back in Delhi, I contacted a bike shop called Bullet Wallas (wallas means ‘guy’. So a bricklayer will be a brick walla for instance). After wandering the streets of Pahar Ganj, a very crowded and dirty neighborhood of Delhi, I finally found the bike shop. To my surprise it was run by a American guy from New Mexico named Balu. That isn’t his real name but since he was a big bear of a guy in India and someone made the Kipling connection and called him Balu. This is where the story gets really bizarre. I tell him I am from WV and he is taken aback and says he has been deer hunting in White Sulphur Springs, basically right next to my home in Lewisburg. Who would have thought that in the middle of India I would meet an American biker that has been hunting in my home county in WV. It is a small world!

I tell Balu I want a bike to head to the mountains. He was also shocked by the amazing coincidence and is more than willing to help me out. We go to the shop to find a newly built Enfield bike that just so happened to be Petal Rose Pink with a tan leather seat. “I’ll take it” were the first words to come out of my mouth. I ordered stickers to be put on the bike that say, “Bullet Wallas West Virginia” with two orange dueling banjos in the center (that was Balu’s idea). While my bike was being finished, I met four English guys that had the same idea as me, to buy a bike and head north. We decided it would be safer and more fun if we all hit the road together.

Buying a bike and driving around India sounds like a great idea but here is the catch, I have never actually driven a motorcycle. I left that part of the story out when I was purchasing my bike from Balu. I simply said that I had limited experience on a bike. That was the understatement of the trip! About the third day when I was hanging around the shop waiting for all of the bikes to be ready, Balu threw me the keys to my bike and told me to go fill her up with petrol. It was about 4PM, right in the middle of rush hour in Delhi, and I had never ridden a motorcycle. I figured I had to learn somehow and I took off. I made it about 100 meters before I stalled out and couldn’t get it restarted. A crowd soon gathered to laugh at the foreigner that couldn’t get his pink Enfield to start. One man out of about a hundred finally offered to start the bike for me. I was off again and this time only made it 20 meters. The crowd followed laughing and jeering at my inability to drive. I finally made it out of the alleys and side streets and onto the main street where I again stalled out in the middle of bumper to bumper traffic five rows deep. After another crowd formed to heckle the foreigner, I realized I was out of gas. After pushing the bike for thirty minutes, filling up with petrol, stalling out about nine more times, I finally managed to get it back to the shop in one piece. Luckily!

My second ride wasn’t any better but much more comical. Balu took all five of us to a deserted park to practice before he sent us out on the open rode. I finally got the hang of the gears and was doing quite well. We were all excited, trying tricks, and weaving in and out of trees with ease but then it came, a thunderstorm. Out of nowhere, a torrential rain moved in over us. Balu, the only man that knew the way home, took off and yelled, “every man for himself.’ We ended up stuck hiding underneath an archway for at least an hour with dozens of homeless people staring at us. A hell of a day!

I am now in Manali, a hill station about 500km north of Delhi. (Hill stations are towns in the mountains that offer modern amenities such as internet, restaurants, and better hotels). The ride to Manali was an eventful one with many breakdowns, wrecks, monkeys, cows, goats, snow-capped mountains, and much more. It was a great ride and we all made it here in one piece. It was definitely a group effort. The four English lads I am traveling with are good company and we hit it off immediately. I plan to visit some more goshalas (homeless cow shelters) around Manali. It is more for comic value than anything else. I have been in email contact with one Goshala that signs off every email with ‘yours in service of Lord Krishna and His cows.’ I am not joking. I can talk forever about my visits with the goshalas but that warrants another post.

I have decided to name my pink stallion ‘Chibuku Gopa’ which means ‘Chibuku the Cow herder.’ Chibuku is the name of a local African alcoholic brew that I ran across in Malawi. The drink is kind of like mixing sour milk, bread dough and alcohol together and drinking it. Wretched! But, the Malawians had a very catchy song and dance to go along with the drink that I loved and that is where Chibuku gets her name.

A Rickshaw Ride Through Old Delhi

Jama Masjid, India's largest mosque embedded within the streets of Old Delhi.
india 137, originally uploaded by Benjamin Long.

My grandpa developed a fascination with peacocks and instead of just dreaming about the exotic birds, he decided to populate the farm with blue-shoulder roosters and hens. Nature took its course and soon there were dozens of peacocks roaming and nesting in the barns, sorting pens and even the front porch. For me, the crowing peacocks did not tell of another world or an enchanted forest in the jungles of India as a Rudyard Kipling book may suggest. The often annoying shrills bellowed out by the beautiful birds meant I was home on the farm getting ready to go fishing, hunting or running through the barn from hay bail to hay bail trying not to fall into a crevice. In India, peacocks are anywhere with just enough green space to let the birds spread their wings. Their early morning singing, annoying I might add, wakes me up every morning from the adjacent nursery to my current home. It brings a smile to my face, if only for a brief moment because it is 6AM. I role back over and think of the farm. That is one of the few things that remind me of home in India. To tell you just how different life can be here I will try to recreate a thirty minute auto-rickshaw ride through Old Delhi I took the other day. It was an adventure in itself.

But first, you need a brief history lesson of Delhi to fully appreciate Old Delhi. Delhi has evolved over the ruins of seven cities, built by rulers from the Hindu Rajputs to the Mughals and finally the British. Old Delhi is the city of the Moghuls, created by Shah Jahan and dating back to the seventeenth century. It’s the capitol’s most frenetic quarter, and it’s most Islamic, a reminder that for more than seven hundred years Delhi was a Muslim city. Its greatest monuments are the magnificent remnants of Moghul empires, the Red Fort and the Jama Masjid, India’s largest mosque. Due to the tremendous economic boom of late, modern suburbs and developments encompass the tombs, temples and ruins that date back centuries; in some cases, the remains of whole cities from the distant past sit happily amid homes and highways built in the last decade or two. With its jam-packed streets, bazaars, tower blocks and temples, forts, mosques and colonial mansions there is a surprise around every corner. It is a place where suit and tie businessmen rub shoulders with traditionally dressed orthodox Hindus and Muslims, and the smell of spices, feces, burning trash, and cow dung fills the air with a rather strange aroma. This is Old Delhi.

“Mujhe Red Fort Chahiye” I try tell to the auto-rickshaw driver in my worst Hindi accent. He looks at me and just smiles. I fear I may have botched the only Hindi words I have been able to learn in a week so I ask him again in English; I want Red Fort! “ Oh, yes…100 rupee,” he tells me holding back a sly grin. No, No, I will give you 20 rupee. 90, 30, 70, 30, 50, 30, 40, ok 40 it’s a deal then. Lets go!

And we’re off in the green and yellow auto-rickshaw that smells of exhaust fumes from the harsh life on the Delhi streets. The streets are soon filled with every beast of burden pulling some sort of cargo; donkeys carrying sandbags for construction projects, mules carrying wagons full of cow dung, camels carrying larger trolleys filled with sacks of potatoes, horses pulling carriages, cows pulling or carrying an assortment of goods, and people pushing carts filled with vegetables. The four marked driving lanes don’t really mean anything since the buses, cars, rickshaws, animals, people, trolleys, mopeds and motorcycles are crammed six or seven across.

Ahh, finally a stop light; everyone will stop after the oncoming traffic honk their horns to signal it is their turn. Silence, if only for a moment because there is a beggar between three and five years old holding a naked infant while rubbing her belly signifying she is hungry and needs food. Children beggars are everywhere. I give in and give her a rupee. My driver then yells at me for perpetuating the problem. The next thing I know she has told her friends and I then have six children beggars swarming my rickshaw. The light turns green. Finally, I can get out of here. The children then must dodge the oncoming traffic that doesn’t slow down because pedestrians are on the bottom of the pecking order on the streets.

The streets get narrower and more congested as we near the heart of Old Delhi. My driver directs my attention to the right where a huge baboon is swinging from electrical lines above the street shops. This was not like the baboons I saw in Africa. This was the city kind that was black from sleeping in back alleys and scavenging through trash. Dreadful looking… but normal here. Make sure you close your hotel windows because they can be good thieves!

Damn! We hit a traffic jam. Everyone laid on their horns even more than they usually do which is a lot. I can’t see what the problem is ahead but the traffic begins to slowly creep along. My driver makes a quick maneuver around the bus in front of us blocking our view. Now way! Three mounted elephants are making their way through the middle of the street causing the traffic jam. We speed by the elephants along with a Land Cruiser, Mercedes and multiple other rickshaws. I was stunned and my driver looked at me and laughed.

Watch out! A cow was in the middle of the road and my driver was laughing, looking at me instead of looking at the road. Cows are the king of the road wandering with, against or across traffic as they please where they always have the right-away. My driver swerves out of the way just in time. The cow remains oblivious to the traffic and elephants going past as it continues to chew its curd in the middle of the road.

I can see the Red Fort, almost there. The traffic becomes even more congested; cow, Lexus, horse and buggy, camel pulling a trolley, Land Rover, three bicycle- rickshaws, five auto-rickshaws, Mercedes E-class, more cows, beggars, touts, donkeys loaded down with sacks, two buffalo… “Red Fort!” my driver yells. I give a hundred rupee note. “No change, no change…I wait you here after tour.” I took my tour and my driver was awaiting my return just as he said. Then, I got to take the second strangest ride of my life back home; second due to the fact I was becoming slightly more accustomed to my surroundings.

First Week In India

india 160, originally uploaded by Benjamin Long.

My first week in India had been eventful to say the least. Two days before I arrived in India, a friend from college hooked me up with her friend, Vik, in Delhi. Vik’s family offered to take me for a couple of days until I get oriented in another new country. It couldn’t have been a better situation because Delhi is quite a hectic place where everyone needs a quiet place to catch their breathe. I got lucky yet again. Thanks Mary.

I didn’t really know what direction I wanted to take with my project in India. There are so many different aspects to investigate with cattle. India has thirty per cent of the world's cattle with twenty six different breeds mixed together. Cows are everywhere! Because the cow is respected as a sacred animal, it's allowed to roam unharmed, and they have grown accustomed to the traffic and the rhythm of the city. So, you can see them roaming the streets in towns and cities, grazing unmindfully on the roadside grass verges and munching away vegetables thrown out by street sellers. As opposed to the West, where the cow is widely considered as nothing more than walking hamburgers, in India, the cow is believed to be a symbol of the earth - because it gives so much yet asks nothing in
return.

For animals powerful enough to stop traffic and holy enough that they’ll never become steak, cows are treated dreadfully. Scrawny and sickly, they survive by grazing on garbage on the street. Due to this maltreatment, different religious organizations in cooperation with the government have set up gosadans (homeless cow shelters). No joke! I plan to visit some of these shelters soon to see them for myself. I have also heard that the city of Delhi has cow catchers to round up the homeless cows and take them to the gosadans. I could see myself wrestling down cows in the streets of Delhi. We’ll see?

Another aspect that has fascinated me is an organization called RSS, composed of members from the extreme right of the Hindu faith. I have heard stories of people following around cows awaiting fresh pee to come pouring out so they can fill up their cups. They believe that a cow’s pee replenishes the body. This is similar to the Maasai’s belief of drinking blood. Both are thought to rejuvenate the body and spirit. I am trying to get in touch with the RSS to see if the rumors are true.

In the time it has taken me to figure out which direction to take, I have been the ultimate tourist visiting numerous temples, mosques, shrines and forts that are scattered across Delhi and the surrounding areas. My favorites have been the ghost city of Fatehpur Sikri, Humayun’s Tomb, Taj Mahal, Jama Masjid, and Nizamuddin Sufi Shrine. Fatephur Sikri was built by the Mogul emperor Akbar to be the imperial capital. After building the city from scratch and living in it for over ten years, they finally figured out there wasn’t enough water to survive. So, they abandoned the capital city and it remains a ghost palace even today. The Taj Mahal is simply incredible due to its size and detailed art work in the white marble. Jama Masjid is the largest mosque in India and I think the largest in Asia as well. On Fridays, it is flooded with people trying to pray inside. Nizamuddin Sufi Shrine is one of the seven required shrines that every Sufi has to visit during pilgrimage. It is hidden within a bustling Islamic neighborhood that the average traveler would never stumble across (I was lucky and had a friend to show me around).

It is also wedding season in Delhi. Hindu weddings are quite the affair with it being more of like the coronation of a new king and queen rather than a matrimonial union. Every night since I have been in India, I have fallen asleep to the thunder of fireworks, blaring Bollywood favorites, and a little Justin Timberlake thrown into the mix as well. I asked my hostess, Praveen, how I could attend one. She smiled and showed me an invitation to a wedding the following night. I was excited. I went out the next day to buy a traditional Indian kurta-pajama and was ready an hour before our scheduled departure. We arrived to the wedding that was in a huge tent with wall to wall carpeting, a neon green, pink and orange dance floor, pink fabric forming small huts and an endless buffet serving India’s favorite dishes. It also turned out that I was one of only four or five men wearing the traditional kurta-pajama with the rest of the men wearing a suit or khakis with a button-down shirt. A great lost in translation/culture moment. After Praveen made me sample every type of food on the endless buffet and I could no longer move, the groom arrived on his noble steed preceded by his dancing family members. His family dances up the entrance with the bride’s family standing flat footed ready to receive the dancing mob. It took the family about an hour to dance up the ten meter long entrance. They were in no hurry and were pulling out some impressive dance moves. I was nodding my head with the music when someone spotted me and pulled me into the mix. I cut a rug for a brief moment and then retreated back to the masses. The bride and groom made their way into the tent and took their places on the red velvet covered chairs on center stage. There were about four hundred people there and that is considered very small. A large wedding reaches well over a thousand in attendance. It was still a great time even if it was “small”.

It has been a busy week getting adjusted. I will be the first to admit that India is not for everyone. It is a land of extremes that are endlessly confronting: rich and poor, pristine and dirty, terrible but incredible, material and spiritual. India can’t be generalized or even be put into a few categories because it has everything and its opposite living side by side. In most countries this incites violence stemming from jealousy or resentment but everyone seems to co-exist here in their own way.

Not an Ordinary Week

Not an Ordinary Week, originally uploaded by Benjamin Long.

My journey from Argentina to India wasn't your typical week in transit experience. To start, I arrived in Sydney the day before the 30th Gay Mardi Gras kicked off. I didn't realize this until I tried to check into multiple hostels upon my arrival into Sydney. All of which flat out rejected me and one receptionist even laughed at my ignorance. Not very nice... Anyway, after a 13 hour flight with no TV to pass the time, I was too tired to get freaked out about my situation. I found myself in an Internet cafe in Chinatown searching for a hostel gracious enough to take me in on such a momentous weekend. In the process I struck up a conversation with an Irishman named Dave. It was only ten in the morning but we headed to the local Irish pub to blow off some steam. What can I say, he’s Irish and drinking is national pastime in Ireland. After a couple of beers, he offered me a place to sleep on his hotel room floor. The thought did cross my mind about his intentions seeing how it was the weekend of Gay Mardi Gras but I had never met or even heard of an alcoholic Irishman that was also gay. I decided to go with it, the story of my life right now. It turned out to be a very nice hotel located on George Street, the main street in downtown Sydney.

Sydney was just voted the most desirable city in the world to live in. I can believe it after visiting. The city is immaculately clean with numerous pristine parks scattered around the city, and then there is Sydney harbor. The harbor is a little piece of heaven where the sun always shines, a breeze always blows in from the harbor and with the Sydney Harbor Bridge and Sydney Opera house providing picturesque portraits that even the most amateur photographer can't screw up. It’s close to paradise in my book. It truly is a great city but also very expensive.

I have never been to Mardi Gras back in the States or to Carnival in Brazil, but I can now say I have been to Gay Mardi Gras in Oz (Oz is the shortened hip saying for Australia). With over 10,000 people participating in the parade, I have never seen so many jock straps, speedos, ass-less chaps, the color pink and black leather in a variety of forms in all my life with the constant background music of Kylie Minogue's greatest hits. That being said, it was an amazing sight to see. Many of the floats had political and religious overtones to go along with the liberating outfits. "Gay Is The New Black" and "Would Jesus Discriminate" are the two saying that I remember the most. The streets were jam packed with eager onlookers to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the event. The parade lasted for hours. We decided to leave a little early and as we were making our way through the maze of people, we somehow managed to find ourselves on a side street where the floats were preparing to depart. There is where we got a up close and personal look at all of the floats; very different but clever to say the least. It was a great event all together with a very international crowd of participants enjoying the freedom to express themselves openly. It was a great event.

Over the next three days I was able to catch some sun on famous Bondi beach, explore the Blue Mountains which just make me homesick, and managed to catch a nasty stomach bug, a precursor to Delhi Belly that awaits me in India. I caught a 15 hour flight to Abu Dhabi, the richest city in the world, only to get stuck in the airport for 13 hours awaiting my flight to India. I cleared customs and tried to find a hotel room in the city but after five hotels were booked solid and the cheapest of them was asking $125US a night, I informed my taxi driver to drive 45 minutes back to the airport where we began our fruitless journey. Along the way I was able to gaze out the window at the second largest mosque in the world lit up at night, a magical sight, and the city itself. I now know whose coffers are filled with all of the money I spent filling up my Toyota Tacoma with gas for so long. Abu Dhabi is quite a sight, even at night.

In one week I traveled from the Paris of South America, Buenos Aires, to the most desirable city to call home, Sydney, via the richest city in the world, Abu Dhabi, and have finally made it to one of the most polluted hectic and bizarre places on Earth, Delhi. I think I am going in the wrong direction when I put it like that?

There was a poster in my freshman English classroom in college that depicted the globe turned upside down that said something to the effect, “The New World.” I always loved the poster but I am just now learning to appreciate its meaning. I can now understand what is means after being crammed into a rickety old rickshaw zigzagging through Delhi traffic sweating at the numerous close encounters to my drivers amusement as he looks me through the rear view mirror while still holding his hand firmly on the horn for no apparent reason while dodging weary pedestrians, begging children, nomad cattle and countless motorcycles weaving in out of the madness. It is organized chaos in the truest sense of the word. The world has been turned on its head for me once again. Now it is time to try to make sense of it all.