How to quit your job and travel around the world

En route to train station for the Night Train - I love saying that - to Hampi .... when you go to sleep tonight imagine that you are on a night train in India, speeding through the dark heart of the south and when you wake up you'll be a dusty, boulder-strewn ancient holy town with wild looking sadus (holy men) and temples galore. Now give me some baksheesh for that lovely thought. See you there!

And she's back! Just as I started watching another C-rate movie (Phantaom Force starring Richard Greico) on HBO last night, the burning knives that were poknig and shredding my guts began to retreat. And this morning I felt mostly fine, though I've only had a dosa and some rice to eat today to be sure. So much for my theory that my stomach had been travel hardened by three months in Asia. Sigh.

Oh! And I finally got to see Mysore today and the former Maharajah palace that's the star of the city. It was fairly interesting and had some good early 20th century photos that pretty much summed up colonization (British Men of Purpose looking afar into the distance at a 45-degree to everyone else - 'The Empire has no limits!' - while surrounded by the jewel dedecked and rather chubby Indian court staring into the camera.) After that we went to reserve out train tickets for the next leg of the trip (tomorrow night on a sleeper car to Hampi, via Bangalore) and then to a Sandalwood Oil Factory, established in 1917. Amazingly, they still used the original boilers that had about 6 men working on them. We purchased some sandalwood soaps and drove back through a monsoon rain.

Sorry about the lack of photos - the Internet cafes are cramped, smelly rooms running Windows 98 and no USB connex.

It is because of you my dear readers and my love of potty talk that I have crawled on my hands and knees to the internet cafe 10 meters from my hotel to tell you that I have "Dehli belly." I'm sick. Way sick. Sick like I make the Trevi Fountain look like a dribble. I blame it squarely on the sub-par (rancid) Lamb Rogan Josh last night. And I now believe that you haven't been to India until you've shat your brains out over a squat pot - oh, and the spices? Spicy on the way out too! Luckily we have HBO in the room and I am catching up on B-list flicks and lucky me, they had a double feature of Lost Boys into Lost Boys!! Jason Patric pulled me through the afternoon. And the two Coreys.

I think Mysore is nice, but I've only seen it through the window. Ugh. It's ok if I hate India today right?

A quiet day in Ooty... we went to a tea factory this morning to watch how they make tea, although it seemed it was more for demonstration than actually doing anything. The Nigilri teas are famous (we are in the Nigilri Hills) and we bought some cardammon tea, which is more of a powder that you can add with milk and sugar. This is one of the best things I've tasted so far in my trip. They have lovely honeys here too but I am unsure about lugging around jars of honey for the next three weeks in my backpack. Also oils - tea oil, sandalwood, orange, eucalyptos - are incredible but again think I will wait to get closer to the finish of the trip to buy. Ooty is a provincial city and as such walking down the street transports you far more than the bigger towns - a group of blind beggars sing and drum, cows and goats freely walk around rooting in the garbage (and the cows have amazing painted horns), dust is stirred up from pony carts and exhaust spewing auto rickshaws, painted bus tear through narrow streets and amazingly don't hit more things, Muslims, Hindus and Christians mix easily in the street. It's a little funny at first to see a huge tacky picture of Jesus and just two feet away a huge flourescent Ganesh also. The men oogle, the women smile hugely when smiled at (and wear amazing Jasmine strands in their hair, which almost covers up the smell of raw sewage that is so present) and the children laugh and cry. We've barely seen any other foreigners as its the low season but Indians are big travelers so there are tons of Indian tourists here. On to Mysore tomorrow by bus.

South Indians are not skinny people. I think the reason saris and dotis are so popular is because it;s sort of a one size fit all outfit - wrap that thing right over your immense belly and you are good to go. I was really surprised by this - especially coming from Asia, where the women are 5'0" and around 90 pounds (all of them!), but the ladies here are quite large (and in charge as it were.) And you know why? They love to eat! They pack it in! It's really quite impressive. For lunch we have been getting the set menu - around 25-35 rupees (less than a buck) - for an all you can eat serving of rice, dal, some other veg curry items and some things I have no idea what they are. As you eat they keep refilling and refilling your plate. Yesterday Jules and I couldn't finish our neverending servings of rice and another man chastized us and told us "Food is GOD." Well, personally I tend to agree, although presumabably with a different idea of food and God, but seriously there was so much food there was no way we could finish everything. Apart from restaurants, they seem to take food with them everywhere they go - no fewer than four people on my bus/train journey today sat down next to me and offered me things to eat: peanuts, fresh chips, Miranda soda, some fried item, fried bananas, etc.... I had a lump of broken choco chip cookies that I offered in return.

We arrived in a hill station called Ooty this afternoon where it's actually chilly (and the reason why it's packed for summer holiday vacation by Indians). There is a water amusement park which kind of cracks me up and race track. But don't get the wrong idea - it's a stunning town with lush tea plantations all around and lots of flower farms. We went to some western-style cafe for snack (not by choice - everything else was closed at 4) and I read the cafe newsletter which interviewed young people working in call centers or BPO (business processing outsource). To be honest, I can't imagine a worse job and quite a few of the interviewees said monotony was the worst aspect (and big paycheck the best). One guy said the most surprising thing he found was how trusting Americans were - that we just freely give out our cc# and ss# on the phone even when we have no idea who is taking it. And FYI, it's a hipster in Bangalore.