Rishikesh, India

(Photo 1 is a self-portrait on bicycle, with a farmer trudging along in the background. The next is while on the bike trip with Dhane (who had adopted all the Burmese kids), Puck (who was also staying there for a few days) and the Burmese boys. Photos 3 and 4 are of myself with two Thai friends, Ae and Tig, who picked me up hitchhiking near Sukhothai, Thailand. Photo 5 is at Red Fort, Delhi. Photo 6 is a man dressed as Hanuman, the monkey God, in Haridwar on the way up to the Mansa Devi temple)...

I'm now in Rishikesh, in northern India right at the base of the Himalaya and on the Ganges River. But it's only at about 1,000 feet, so I'm not buried in snow or anything. It's just chilly at night and pleasant during the day, although it'll get colder if I stick around here for a little while, which I plan to. But I was last here 8 years ago during my first trip to India, and it's really an oasis from the craziness of most of India. Coming into Delhi was still a bit of culture shock, despite the fact that this is my third time here and I was coming from Thailand. But India is just a completely different world. I guess the difference between here and Thailand is pretty much the difference between second world and third world. So it's good that there are places such as Rishikesh that are a little easier to handle, but where you still get the flavor of India. But I'll talk a little more about where I'm at at the end, since first I should try to catch up with things.

Just so you're forewarned this will probably turn into a pretty long email, although I'll try to skim over things a bit. I think the last time I wrote a detailed message was from Pai, the touristy little village in a valley in northern Thailand, which I guess was just early last week, but feels more like about a month ago. From there I went west almost to the Burmese border to another small town in the hills, Mae Hong Son, the "Switzerland of Thailand" which was also a tourist destination, but for Thai tourists instead of Westerners. At that point I realized that I was running out of time and needed to pick up the pace a little. So I stayed there just two nights, and then took a bus down to Mae Sariang, which didn't have much in particular to see but was on the way and sounded interesting just to check out. So I stayed there two nights as well, spending a day just biking around the town and the valley. Then I hopped on a "songthaew" for the next segment of the journey, because it wasn't frequented enough to have a bus covering the route. A songthaew is just a pickup truck that has been converted into public transportation, with two benches running along the sides front to back, and then sides and an overhead covering. So it's relatively secure, and actually takes the curves better than a bus, but not quite as comfy to sit on, especially for 5 hours as was the case this time. So we headed down a road that skirted the Burmese border through some pretty remote areas, with just a few little villages along the way, to my destination of Mae Sot, which is a Burmese border town. There are tons of factories employing cheap Burmese labor there, and apparrently Calvin Klein has a factory there as well as other big name companies.

So the reason I was heading there was I'd happened upon this guy online who lived there and took care of Burmese refugee children. He was just a single guy living with a Burmese couple, who had one daughter of their own, and then he had 14 Burmese children he'd adopted, all boys except one girl. I came across him on the Intentional Communities website, which I'd checked just out of curiosity to see what sort of communal arrangements were going on in Thailand. There were only three entries and the other two I also emailed, but they weren't really communities, and although this guy wasn't exactly either it sounded pretty interesting to stop by. He said I could just come by whenever and stay for as long as I felt like it, hang out with the kids and go bike riding or whatever. During the day he worked as an English teacher at a local school.

I'll skip over most of the details, but basically I managed to get a hold of him over the phone once I got into town and then took a taxi out to his house which was just outside of the town of Mae Sot. As it turned out he had another American guy staying with him, who had been there about a week, who lived on a commune himself on the east coast, I think in Virginia. And the guy who was taking care of the kids was American as well, so it was cool to catch up with some fellow countrymen, especially in terms of not having to speak slowly and carefully so people could understand me. I just stayed there one night, on a mattress on the floor of their big wooden house, with half a dozen of the kids sleeping nearby. The next day was Saturday so the guy (Dhane) wasn't teaching at the school, so he, the other American, and 4 of the Burmese kids and I went on this big bike ride, that involved stopping by a market alongside the river separating Thailand and Burma, near the Burma-Thailand friendship bridge (it's a rather rocky friendship to say the least).

That afternoon I then said thanks and goodbye to those guys, hopped on a bus and headed back east to Sukhothai, which is another former Thailand capital with some excellent temple ruins. The thing is that the temple ruins are about 8 miles from the modern city of Sukhothai. According to my guidebook there were hotels and guesthouses near the temple ruins, which was on the way to the new city, so I decided to get off there (at about 8 pm) and get a guesthouse there so that in the morning I could just get up, see the ruins quick and then head for Bangkok, and avoid going there and back from the nearby modern town. Problem was, although there were guesthouses there, there weren't very many and they were all full. It wasn't a huge problem, since I could take a tuk-tuk (three-wheeled little taxi like a rickshaw) from there into town. During the day you could catch one of the shared songthaews for super cheap, but they didn't run at night and the tuk-tuk ride was going to cost about $4.50. That doesn't sound like much of course, except that you can get a hotel room for that, and I'd paid only about $3 for the past 3 hours of bus rides getting there, so didn't want to shell out that much just to cover 8 miles. So, I decided, what the heck, I'll try hitchhiking for the first time in Asia. It was worth a try, and there was a good spot under some street lamps right in front of the last hotel I'd checked that was full. I figured I'd just try it out for 10 minutes or so and if it didn't work then I'd break down and get the tuk-tuk.

To make a longish story shorter, it took about two minutes, and I got a ride in this new pickup truck with an extended cab, driven by a woman about my age and a guy a little younger, both Thai. The woman spoke just enough English to get across the basics, whereas the guy didn't speak any. But we managed to have something of a conversation along the way, and once we got into the new town of Sukhothai they drove me to a guesthouse I'd found in my book, then they invited me to go have a beer with them. I checked into a room quick, then went with them to this restaurant with live Thai music, where I was the only foreigner. We had a great time, the band was super hip, pretty much looking like a rock band back in the States, other than the fact they were Asian. So, that was great to actually get to hang out with some Thai folks one-on-one other than just doing assorted business transactions.

The next day I managed to get up early, take a cheap songthaew to the ruins, bike around there fairly quick, then get back to my room to pack up and catch a bus 6 hours south to Bangkok, arriving late in the evening. But Bangkok is pretty much open 24 hours so I had no problem finding a room there, on the legendary backpacker's haven of Khao San Road (Leonardo DiCaprio stays there, I think, in the beginning of the movie The Beach). To give an idea of what it's like there, you can buy a bucket of beer and then drink it on the sidewalk. Neon lights, clubs and pounding Western music are everywhere. Not exactly my scene, but I wanted to check it out anyway, and I managed to find a hotel room that was just down a little alley and so was fairly quiet. It was definitely a happening place, and I'd actually stay there again, since if you want a change of scene you just take off and walk or catch a bus elsewhere. Otherwise you have all the amenities you might need there, plus plenty of interesting people-watching while eating your breakfast.

Well I should wrap this up as the internet cafe I'm in here is about to close up. But basically I just cruised around Bangkok for two days, which is a really cool city, very modern and fairly clean and orderly (definitely compared to India), then hopped on a plane to Delhi, northern India, on Wednesday. Delhi was really crazy as usual, I just saw one fort yesterday and then was ready to get the heck out of there. So then I hopped a train yesterday up here. Rishikesh is just a little village on the Ganges, with an area across from the main part of town that's only accessible by two walking bridges, so there are no cars, and it's very quiet, mellow and relaxing. I'm planning to hang out here for a while, until whenever I get bored basically, then I'm thinking of heading a little farther north, just to get a little more sense of the Himalaya, without getting too far up into the snow. Well I should leave it there, so take care all and stay warm; oh yeah and Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. Not sure what I'll be doing exactly but it will probably involve several cups of hot chocolate at least, and who knows maybe I'll happen upon something genuinely Christmassy around here.