October 30th 2:12pm - Bollywood

I'm as much an actress as Lindsay Lohan is a rocket scientist.

Thus, when a man approached me in Mumbai who looked more like an Indian squirrel than a talent agent and asked if I wanted to be an extra in a Bollywood film, I laughed so much I snorted. When he said the three guys I was with could also be extras, I considered it as much as I would pregnancy. When he said it paid and included free food, I said yes please.

A white molester van picked us up at one in the afternoon. We had been drinking since eleven. The Kiwi entered the car cradling a bottle of Bagpiper whiskey. He and one of the Brits boozed in the back. The van echoed with our screeches of Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall and You're Drunk You're Drunk You Silly Old Fool. The driver and six other passengers looked at us with the disdain I feel for pigeon poop in my hair.

Twenty minutes into the thirty-minute ride, the Kiwi decided he didn't want to be a Bollywood extra. He wanted to drink on Mumbai's streets. He opened the back door and he and one of the Brits tumbled out like drunken Santa Clauses, Bagpiper whiskey in hand.

The other Brit and I continued to Bollywood and our impending white-person fame in the Indian film industry.

The Brit, myself, and six other Westerners sat at an outdoor restaurant for an hour and a half while women resembling fashion models served us chai.

When the administration recognized that some of the extras were smoking a joint, they encouraged us to go inside the building. While waiting another half hour, I talked with the Germans and French comprising the whiteys. Their English was as fluent as my Spanish. And my Spanish manifests as a Spanish/French fusion. Our roles constituted speaking English into microphones while video clips danced across the screen. Our voices would fashion background noise in a movie entitled Fired.

The Indians on the sound boards didn't seem to recognize that many of those speaking English sounded like it was their sixth language.

Synopsis of movie provided to us: the executives of a company called HWLS - largely Joy - are firing employees, thus the employees are agitated. Go!

One of my favorite conversations:

Thomas: "It's all fair in HWLS under Joy Mittal. He is cursed, the son bitch he will suffer and he will die the worst ever death. Maybe by stoning."

Cheryl: "Let us get that bastard... this office needs some security... not a Joy asshole."

Milind: "He will suffer... I know... we know don't we... we know."

Mark: "Sure deal mate... that wanker needs to be buggered up."

Thomas: "You can't fire us Joy. You can't get us easily out of your life. DIE... DIE... DIE... DIE A SLOW DEATH."

October 29th 7:25pm - October 2009 Quote of the Month

Brit Physicist: "I was surrounded and attacked by dogs. I had to kick one to escape. I was on acid. It might have been in my mind."

October 27th 11:18am - Ahmedabad Cesspool

When traveling, I plan as much as a walrus balances his checkbook.

I decided to go to Mumbai, but somehow ended up in Ahmedabad for two nights. Ahmedabad was once the capital of Gujarat and is two hundred and eighty-one miles from Mumbai. I contemplated walking but realized that was as plausible as a future career as a rocket scientist.

I arrived at eleven o'clock at night. Rickshaw drivers circled me like tigers stalking prey. White girl, or gora, equates dollar sign. I located the one who spoke pigeon English and instructed him to take me to cheap accommodation.

First, he took me to a whore house.

Then he dropped me off at his "friend's" guesthouse. It was midnight and I would have been grateful for a cave infested with rabid flies.

The hallway I trudged down looked like an Indian prison, and my room resembled that of a hooker.

The blue sheets boasted burn marks, the mattress was as soft as bones, the pillows resembled Goodwill rejections, and the walls and ceiling were stained with what suspiciously looked like ejaculation.

A dead rat stench issued from the bathroom.

This was worse than finding blood-streaked sheets in a Peruvian guesthouse.

After raking through my bag, I located a water bottle of rum and one cigarette belonging to the German girl. I had never smoked before, but felt the circumstances required self-medication of rum and a cigarette.

After coughing like a horse with whooping cough, i threw it in the trash. It landed on pubic hair and the trash can erupted in fire. I dying-hamster-screamed, snatched the can, and doused it with water.

The next morning, while showering under a water stream as powerful as a man's urine, I noticed a box of used condoms called "Man Love" in an alcove above the door.

In the two days I was there, I didn't see any other tourists. I felt as comfortable as the time I flashed a roomful of strangers while playing Drunk Jenga.

October 24th 10:12am - October 2009 Photo of the Month

Location: Jaisalmer, India

Sand dune on a camel safari

October 22nd 2:47pm - Cankles

My first middle school crush didn't know my name. He called me Cankles.
After a pre-pubescent heart-to-heart with God, by seventh grade He had upgraded my life from Fat Kid to Soccer Player. However, He forgot to thin out my ankles. I have the ankle definition of a four-hundred-pound woman. In my youth people called me Klump Foot.

The German girl and I lay on our bed, talking with our legs in the air. She glanced at my ankles and wailed like a flying rhinoceros had shit on her head.

"Your ankles! So swollen! You must be bit or bruised or kicked or hurt."
"Oh no no, that's just my ankles. They're always like that," I replied, giggling like I had just skimmed a classified ad that read, "Illiterate? Write today for free help."
"No, ankles aren't like that. Too big!" German said.
Twelve minutes later I finally convinced her that I had monkey breasts and elephantitis ankles. As an apology for potentially offending me, she bought me a silver anklet. It didn't fit around my ankle.
She said she was as embarrassed as the time she was in the U.S., walked into a hair salon, and asked for a shampoo and a blow job.

October 20th 2:19pm - Diwali: The Festival of Lights

Diwali is the celebration of inner light awareness. It celebrates the pure and eternal beyond the mental and physical.
Translation: Diwali is the festival of lights, or, fireworks set off by babies aged three to five.
We returned from the camel safari by noon, met at one, and, after a meal and alcohol purchases, were drinking our coherence and consciousness away by four on our rooftop restaurant.
By five-thirty we were so bladder blasted that one Brit lit the book The Power of Now on fire and tossed it over the four-story ledge. His concern for what was below paralleled the interest blue whales have for Watergate.

By nine the other Brit disappeared like Harry Potter. He said he had to go to the bathroom. Three minutes later the Kiwi identified him Forrest Gump-running to his guesthouse. We didn't see him again until the next morning.

After five bottles of Old Monk rum, we were so futhermucked that I repeated, "I'm on the rum!" as often as I urinated.
As sly as a bald guy, the German girl asked us if the Irishman had a speech impediment. We Pillsbury-Dough-Boy giggled and questioned why she thought that.
"Because he says 'tink' instead of 'think.'"
"That's just an Irish accent," we informed her.
My success at keeping a straight face aligned with my nonexistent mathematical triumphs. We forayed the firework-strewn streets. In a Hindu-dominated country where cows are as sacred as the Pope, the Kiwi picked up a calf and rode a cow. He also held a lit firework that more closely resembled a rocket.

The next morning, I woke up fully clothed face-down and backwards on the bed in the room next to mine. I was so hungover I felt as bad as if I had dropped a baby on it's head.

October 18th 1:31pm - Leonard: My Camel

Aside from the German, Scot, Kiwi, and myself, two Brits and an Irishman were on our camel safari. My camel, Leonard, had the IQ of a fruit fly. While boomeranging around on the saddle, I would consume a bhang cookie, close my eyes, and fabricate flying. I envisaged spiraling sand dunes and a blushing apricot sunset. Leonard would tear into a thorn bush.
The other camels halted to eat. Leonard Iron-Man-propelled through them, knocked two back, who stumbled to keep their footing, and then stopped to eat three feet away.
When Mr. LaLoo veered to the right around a bush, Ivan and Julian circumvented to the left. Leonard thudded through it.

The camel drivers, sensing our aching legs and backs with a sixth sense fueled by our moans and groans, made the camels run. It aggravated the agony but abbreviated the time. We joggled in our saddles, faces pleated in pain. To combat the misery, the Kiwi and Scot passed a Bagpiper Whiskey bottle between them as if it was an alcohol ball. What they had purchased for three days, they consumed in one. They voiced their concern to a camel driver. Desert orbited in every direction as far as we could see. Within an hour he procured another bottle. It was cheaper than the one bought in the city.

Camels sit down two feet at a time. They lurch forward, fold their feet beneath them, and then jerk backwards, folding limbs and settling on their legs. When our camels sat for the first time, we egg-rolled off and crumpled on the sand.
"My internal organs are damaged," the Kiwi announced.
"My balls died," one of the Brits countered.

The first day, the camels smelled like burning cat poop. The second day, we couldn't smell them. The third day, even the flies couldn't distinguish between the camels and us.
By the third and final morning, the Scot had a shirt of flies and the Kiwi a halo. Flies mated on me.

October 14th 12:38pm - Camel Safari Organization

I've been wanting to ride a camel as long as one of my male friends has desired to be a Virgin Surgeon.

The German girl and I ordered breakfast on Fort View's rooftop restaurant, but it took longer to arrive than the first sentence of a President Bush speech. I temporarily left to meet up with the Scot at Jaisalmer fort 's second gate, as previously planned. The Scot has short chocolate hair and is six feet tall.

I returned with a six-foot-four-inch Kiwi law student with dark dreadlocks down his back who referred to himself as Rob Awesome from the asshole of the world. He loves New Zealand.

The Scot had told me and the Kiwi to meet him at the second gate at noon. Three hours later, while walking to organize a camel safari, we found the Scot. His train had been two hours late.

I entered Ganesh Travels with the Scot, German, and Kiwi. At the prospect of booking a camel safari, I experienced exhilaration previously only felt after I drunkenly announced, "Group Hug!" in a Vegas elevator years ago. Aside from myself, in the elevator were five people I didn't know. I enforced the group hug.

After booking a two-night safari, the organizer peeled through a suggested list. Sunscreen, a water bottle, pants, and sunglasses was followed by, "Bring soda, like Limca, Coke, Sprite, or beer," and, "You bring bhang cookies, but don't give to camel."

"Bhang cookies?" I asked with four-year-old innocence.

"Weed cookies," Organizer replied.
"Oh. Where can we possibly buy bhang cookies?" I questioned.
"At the government authorized bhang shop."

October 13th 4:02pm - Bus Ride Rantings

Indian bus rides can be as eventful as the fourth of July.
Last fourth of July, there were dry ice bombs, police, a three-some, swimming naked to a buoy at five in the afternoon watched by families with small children, and running/walking six miles to a store for a beer run when someone had offered to drive. The store was closed.
I entered the sleeper bus from Udaipur to Jaisalmer with the apprehension I feel towards owning a motorcycle. I have crashed both of the motorbikes I've rented.

The aisle was Lindsay Lohan-thin with two seats on either side. Coffins with tinted thick plastic sliding doors suspended above the seats. I clambered into my coffin-bed and, after upsetting Indian men with our Energizer Bunny-chatter, a German girl and I slid our compartment doors shut.

Every time the bus missiled over a rock or a bump, my head clouted the ceiling and my feet struck the wall. I felt like I was a five-year-old repeatedly being bopped on the head with a Bible by my great-grandmother.

I convinced myself that head cracking while sleeping was normal, just like Mormons established that Joseph Smith, Jr. digging up golden plates, translating them, and returning them to an angel was standard.
I had just submerged into the surface sleep of one whose head is box-buffeted every four minutes when shrieks volleyed into my ears with the force of a gay man's sex drive.

"Fucking thief! Fuck you! One thousand rupees!" punctuated through the Hindi jabber.
My partition pulsed with bellows and bruises from a fist pulverizing the sliding walls for emphasis.
"Fuck-ing-thief! Fuck-you!" repeated, each syllable rapping its anger on my plastic. His voice was pregnant with unshed tears.
"I didn't fuck-ing steal an-y-thing, sister-fucker!" answered towards the front of the bus.
I heard wails, whines, and roars. I fell asleep again.
The next morning, the German girl and I talked to an English midget on our bus. He looked like a brown-haired leprechaun and at his full height ascended to my belly button.
He told us that the bus had halted and a man had exited. The bus drove off with the man running after it wearing no shoes, struggling to hold up his pants - which were more around his ankles then his waist - and with a roll of toilet paper in his hand. When he entered the bus, he returned to his seat, looked among his belongings, and started screaming. His pants never were properly placed.

October 10th 2:21pm - Massage & Indian Suitor

Over the following days I wavered between regarding Ammu as an angel with a pure heart and an Indian with a hard-on.

Most people are attracted to the foreign and the exotic. Not me. I like white men. Preferably not albino.

After Ammu bought thali dinners for me and the Scot and drove the Scot to the train station on his motorbike, I agreed to get a massage the following day for "Indian price."

"White people" (gora) price for an hour-long massage is between seven hundred and twelve hundred rupees.

"Indian price" spans between two hundred and three hundred and fifty rupees. Ammu charged me three hundred rupees (about six dollars) for an hour-long massage in his Ayurvedic healing center. On our first encounter, Ammu accused me of possessing a too-short leg and crooked back. He prescribed coconut oil drops in my belly button and eating two almonds a day. A disabled sheep would have had the intelligence to refuse his massage offer.

However, the previous massage I received in India cost nine hundred rupees. I was craving a three hundred rupee massage as much as monkeys covet bananas.

When Ammu entered the room, I was appropriately stripped for the occasion and lying on my stomach feeling like a dead fish.

He clapped his hands in delight."You have fifteen-year-old-body!" he pig-squealed.

The Ayurvedic healing massage commenced conventionally with my back, arms, and legs. When I turned to lay on my back, Ammu belly-button-raped me with the aggression of a Chinese foot lover.

After five minutes, his pointer finger prodding into my belly button felt like a fire poker thrusting into flames.

After ten minutes, I determined he was envisioning his pointer finger into my belly button as paralleling sexual intercourse. I assured him it had probably been an hour, and thank you, but I had things to do.
"Cushy happy?" Ammu liquid chocolate eyes asked.
"Ya, Cushy happy. But Cushy needs to leave."
"Massage good, Cushy?"
"Ummm, sure, massage was fine."
My remainding few days in Udaipur, Ammu paid for my meals and arranged for me to watch an Indian mutton dish being made in Rainbow Restaurant's kitchen. He passed me a joint while I stirred the concoction. He paid for henna tattoos to be drawn into my hands, and brought me a bottle of wine after I mentioned I missed wine. The wine tasted like fermented fart, and I was as interested in a relationship with Ammu as I was with one of the homeless cows hopscotching down the streets.

One night, Ammu sang love songs to me on a night paddleboat ride. Udaipur's hotel and restaurant lights radiated over the lake and fireworks discharged into the sky. I celebrated the romantic ambience by ceremoniously throwing up over the side of the paddleboat into the lake.

October 8th 4:49pm - Indian Wedding

Drinking chai is as essential to Indians as sex is to nymphomaniac rabbits.
After our boat ride, Ammu monster-truck-towed me and the Scot to the rooftop Rainbow Restaurant for chai.
Ammu steamed through his camera-phone and showed us photos with mother-pride for baby pictures. Every photo was of him. There were photos of him with his arms crossed in front of his motorbike, in front of a boat, a lake, a house, his ayurvedic shop. He wore identical Mexican thug expressions in all. His elephant-sized gold chain clung to his neck in every picture.
After viewing the thirty-fourth photo with the feigned interest I demonstrate towards hairy backs, we asked him where a good thali restaurant was.

"I take you there! Come on!" he said with Oprah enthusiasm.

The three of us boarded his motorbike. Indian motorbikes are intended to carry three to four Indians, not two giraffe foreigners and an Indian with a Texas-sized gut.

Ammu spiraled through streetlight-less streets writhing with rickshaws, bicyclists, motorbikes, cars, trucks, and cows. The Scot and I elevated our legs and held on to each other with the terror I feel whenever I hear rumors Sarah Palin is running in the 2012 presidential election. Ammu chatted on his cell phone and then to another motorbiker as I sat with a smile as frozen on my face as my breast size has been since I was eight years old.
The Scot yelled into my ear how much he had been craving thali.
Ammu took us to a wedding.
It was day two of a three-day celebration. White Christmas lights enveloped every surface.

The women's saris and salwar kameezes shone in a kaleidoscopic range more colorful than a transvestite's wardrobe. Hair was as immaculate as in a shampoo commercial, faces were make-up painted, and clothes were Mother Teresa-flawless. The Scot wore Jesus sandals, khaki pants dirtied from a hot day in India, and a sweat-blemished shirt. I wore floppy black pants, sandals, and a stretched-out shirt that I had been perspiring in for eleven hours. We looked like ragged whiteys in a lake of impeccable Indians that might as well have been going to the Oscars.

Ammu introduced us to his ninety-eight relatives, referring to them as brother and sister. His mom must have been annually pregnant with twins throughout her fifty years of life. I later discovered the term applied to sister-cousins and brother-cousins.
Ammu's two-year-old niece showered into tears every time she glanced at us strange white beasts. The six-year-olds trailed us like we were Mr. and Mrs. Clause.
After eating a luscious cocktail of fiery dal, rice, aloo gobi, vegetable masala, chapatis, and Indian desserts, Ammu transported us out of the expansive lawn swimming with Indians. We shook hands with the bride's parents as we exited, said, "Namaste," clasped our hands together, and were ushered into the parking lot.

Ammu's brother-cousin sat inside his car rolling a joint. He looked as inconspicuous as a deer wandering through a tiger's cage at the zoo.
Ammu's brother-cousin explained that he is a bus driver and needs at least two joints to get through any drive.
"That explains Indian driving," the Scot said.

October 7th 5:55pm - Crooked Back and Too-Short Leg

"I'm telling you, crazy shit happens to me," I informed a Scot as we sat overlooking a glossing sapphire lake in Lal Ghat Guesthouse in Udaipur, India.

Later that day the Scot and I bought tickets for a sunset boat ride. As we waltzed away, a small Indian man who looked like a cross between Jesse James and Chris Brown materialized like Merlin and hooked my hand. He wore all black, his ebony hair slicked back, and an obese gold chain hovered around his neck.

"My name is Ammu. It means love. Come inside my shop! I give you free exam."

I shrugged at the Scot, he smiled, and we followed Ammu into his Ayurvedic shop as submissive as prostitutes.

Ammu monkey-latched onto the area between my thumb and forefinger with his thumb and forefinger.

His eyes wavered like a bisexual's carnal preference. I couldn't decide if he looked like he was having a seizure or being possessed by Casper the ghost. The Scot's face creased into mirth. He looked like a child had just asked him if his wife had two breasts because one produced hot milk and the other cold.

"I know what wrong with you!" Ammu exclaimed five minutes later, eyes shining like a bald man's head and lips slowly spreading back over beetlejuice tobacco stained teeth. He released my hands, leaned back, and clasped his own like a sixty-year-old professor.

"You have crooked back, and one leg too short. One leg longer than other."

I choked on the water I was sipping.

"Oh no no no, I'm actually very healthy, no problems."

"You have pain here?" he asked, pointing to the right leg on a body chart hanging on the wall.

"No, no pain."

"Here?" this time to the lower back.

"No, I told you, no pain."

"Here?" to an arm.

"No."

"Here?" to the neck.

"No no, I told you, no pain."

"You have crooked back and too-short leg. I know how to fix. You eat two almonds in morning and two in water glass. Cover glass. Next morning, take off outside of almonds. Then you crush and put in glass of milk. Drink milk with almonds inside. And every day, two drops of coconut oil in... what's this?" he asked.

"Belly button."

"Yes. Belly button. Two drops coconut oil in... what's this?"

"Belly button."

"Yes. Almonds and coconut oil fix back and make leg grow," he said, chocolate eyes brimming and his face as serious as the plague.

We levitated to leave and he kidnapped my hand again.

"Your Indian name is Cushy!" he announced.

"Cushy? But I'm not fat anymore!" I five-year-old whined.

"Yes, Ksushi. It means happy."

"Oh great. Cushy. That's just fantastic."

For the next three days he would banshee-shriek "Cushy" and rush over to me like I was Ghandi.

As we paced towards the door he rocketed into song. If Dr. Seuss sang and was a robust Indian man, he would be Ammu.

No thank you no sorry

No hurry no worry

No chicken no curry

No clock tower full power twenty-four hour

No toilet no shower

No woman no cry

No sugar no chai

Only tiger.

This melody was as cryptic as the Bible.

"Where's the tiger?" I asked.

"Ammu tiger."

October 5th 3:35pm - Chicken Fight in a Waterfall

When I was eight years old and had bigger breasts and a Homer Simpson belly, my friends and I would divert ourselves with chicken fights whenever we went to the beach or pool. We weren't eight-year-old psychofants and masochists conducting cock fights. Two people settled on the shoulders of two others and each team tried to topple the other. With my Godzilla thighs and sumo wrestler stomach, I was the base with a friend on my shoulders.

From McLeod Ganj a Brit, German, Dane, Aussie and I walked twenty minutes along the coiling road to the Bagsu waterfall. Variegated posters and jewelry and clothes stands swayed to jade forested ridges. We mounted steps with sloth speed and arrived at the waterfall as elated as Wile E. Coyote would have been if he'd ever ensnared the Road Runner.

The Brit poked his pointer finger in the water, rocket-launched his appendage back, screeching, "Fucking hell! It's glacial water!"

The water felt like it had one ice cube in it.

After twice scrambling up rocks with the grace of a cow walking up five stairs, I suggested chicken fights. The Dane agreed but the others refused. Too much physical activity on vacation. We persuaded two Indian men to combat us. The Dane was the infrastructure, I was the grappler. Within thirty seconds I had catapulted the Indians into the water. They were both a head shorter than me and weighed as much as my little sister.

The five of us were the only whites. In a male-dominated country with twenty-five Indian spectators, Naruna and Navaj were not baby-happy that a gori had wafted them into the water. They requisitioned a rematch.

Navaj's hands locked on my arms. My hands clamped onto his arms. I bucked him to the right. He pitched me to the left. I boosted him to the left. He wrapped his arm around the back of my neck for leverage. I ducked under his limb and strong-armed him with dwarf strength into the peacock-colored water.

The bystanders grunted. To display their displeasure, two Indian men resembling Cheech and Chong fired a gun into the sky.

I maintain it was a cap gun. The Brit persists that it was a real gun.

October 2nd 12:20pm - Indian Post Office: Is It Ready Yet?

I had bucked a bag around India for two and a half months. The bag was more a weighted weapon than traveler's luggage. Days ago I boarded a bus and a man elevated my pack for me. He fell on his back from the weight of it. I needed to send a package home.
Indian post offices make as much sense as the Kardashian sisters' fame. The offices are not equipped with boxes, tape, or pens. They accept packages only at certain times and often don't have electricity. Weeks ago I had overheard an exchange between two travelers, I was a latecomer to the conversation, and asked if they were talking about jail conditions.
"What are you on about? No, not jail, Indian post offices," a Brit had replied, smile lines creasing the corners of his eyes.
The presents I had accumulated for people added rhinoceros weight to my luggage. Shawls, jewelry, journals, elephants, scarves, white marble, silver tea strainers, sequined clothes, Tibetan music, yak wool socks, and a gluttony of Indian marvels combined in a formidable force of florid weight. I had more present weight than Santa Clause.
I located a box and walked to the post office. I was told that though I did have a box, a tailor would have to prepare it for me. The Indian government is apparently under the impression that packages can only be sent in beige, sewn coverings with child marker writing. Boxes, tape, and paper sender's forms do not exist. A Looney Tune cartoon package is wrapped more efficiently than one through the Indian post.
I went to a tailor. Two tailors taped the box shut and covered it in plastic wrap and tape. They sewed a beige pillowcase and shoved it around the box. A seamstress stitched two of the sides with string large enough to accommodate blind people.
Instead of tying knots at the ends of the string like someone with six-year-old sewing abilities, Seamstress burnt a tampon-sized slab of red wax, dripped the wax onto the untied ends of the stitching, and compressed it with a handheld metal presser. This was as logical as the swine flu.
What had started as a box now paralleled a boxed pillow.
"Is it ready to send now?" I inquired, as I surmised the only further possible alteration would be to sprinkle fairy dust on top.
"No, you need to write the addresses."
When I requested a pen, the tailors said no. When I asked if the post office down the street had a pen, they said no. I purchased a pen and wrote my mom’s address on the plastic-covered and taped box bordered in beige cloth and red wax.
"Now is it ready to send?" I asked with the patience of New York.
"Ready? No. you need your address on the box."
"I'm homeless and traveling around India. I definitely don't have an address."
"You need Indian return address."
"I don't have an Indian address! I'm just traveling," I informed them with the whine of a spoiled seven-year-old.
I used the tailor's address.
"Is it ready yet?"
"The post office only accepts packages from nine in the morning until one. Today is three o'clock."
"The post office doesn't just accept packages and hold them until they're picked up?" I asked with the confusion of a frog towards it's sexuality.
"No. Only nine to one."
Clearly arguing would have been as effective as an ostrich's wings.
"Okay. So I'll drop this off at the post office tomorrow morning at nine."
"Tomorrow the post office is closed. Go the next day."

October 1st 6pm - Pillow Fight

In certain facets of life, I'm Rocky Balboa-competitive. Pillow fighting is one of them.
In Dharamsala, a German, Dane, and I shared a room that was more a house with five-year-old triplets than a haven for transients in their twenties. It had more rooms than I have brain cells. The primary chamber boasted three couches, a coffee table, and single and double beds. Adjoining it, a kitchen with two tables, counters, a sink, wooden shelves and cupboards. The kitchen was as effective as Bill Clinton's Monica Lewinsky denial. It had no stove or oven.

In addition to an over-sized bathroom, we also had an extra room that, aside from a pile of cat shit, was vacant.

One night we watched a movie and afterwards lay down. The Dane and I shared the massive king-sized bed. It was large enough to comfortably sleep three Goliaths. I was more tired than a narcoleptic and my eyes shut as gently as a one-year-old on opiates. As I yawned the yawn of the weak and weary, my skull cracked into my pillow. The pillow was as plump as an anorexic flea and my head shot back into the mattress with the speed of a cracked-out Kiwi. "What the hell?" I banshee-shrieked. My eyes gaped to see the Dane laying back with the calm of Jesus, a Judas smile frolicking across his face. His right hand gripped his pillow like it was the meaning of life. His aquamarine eyes oscillated in the moonlight, emanating mirth like a zoo monkey who had just catapulted primate excrement at spectators. I rabid-dog-attacked him. Within seventy-four seconds I had succeeded in swiping at him twice and my skull had been cudgeled so many times I felt like King Kong had headbutted me. At seventy-six seconds the Dane's eight-pack and Viking body straddled me, pinning me against the mattress. I was as helpless as if I had been handcuffed and blindfolded by drunk bandits.

I maneuvered my legs for leverage and my Shrek foot connected with his ass skin.
"Are you naked?!" I screeched.His laughing confirmation sent the German into hyena hysterics.
"Why are you naked?" I howled in the same eighty-year-old woman panic shriek.
The Dane launched a blanket over his lap and withdrew laughing.
"I just always sleep naked. Sorry, I didn't think you'd respond to a pillow hit like a deranged bull."

September 29th 3:33pm - A Circus of Brits

Email to a friend: So listen to the characters I've met here. I left the Aussies about two weeks ago in Leh and went with the Brit and a few others back to Manali (the Amsterdam of India where I lost my life with the five twenty-year-old Brits). The Brit is a twenty-two-year-old physicist getting his PhD in liquid crystal technology at Oxford. He severely broke his hand when he was masturbating at the age of fourteen. He is a juggler and card trick master as well as an expert crystal ball maneuverer. He and two friends (also physicists from Manchester) went through twenty-five grams of opium in two days. He likes role-playing as foreplay, particularly in cat apparel (the man is obsessed with cats). He dabbles in guitar and slept with a prostitute in Thailand. One of the other Brits is indescribable at Devil's Sticks, hoola hoop, and the harmonica. The other is on my level with especially crazy skills- in that we have none - but he is generally under the influence of alcohol or drugs. They are all basically hilarious pharmacies.

We were with another Brit traveling alone who can't spell for the life of him, has a heavy heavy accent to the point that he sounds Scottish, and plays guitar and sings. I'm trying to get a guitar at the moment to travel with so I can learn some skill! I just want one skill. In Manali we climbed down waterfalls and tried to fish in the rivers. Well, by trying to fish in the rivers I mean one of the Brits bought some hooks and short stretches of fishing line. We watched him and smoked spliffs while he tried to catch fish with a dead worm on one of the hooks. The river had as many fish in it as Paris Hilton has morals. I left the afore-mentioned Brit circus to go to Dharamsala with a Danish guy we were all hanging out with. He has such a hot body one of the Brits started referring to him as "Viking."

He's on some crazy spiritual journey enriching his life. He plays guitar, practices yoga, and is learning Hindi. We share a flat with a German who is a very skinny six-foot-six and typically sings and dances around. He always has a smile on his face and though he hasn't spoken English in ten years, somehow is essentially fluent. We're in McLeod Ganj near Dharamsala, the Dalai Lama's residence, and I love it here. India attracts hilarious people like my life attracts klutziness and disaster!
Friend's Response:
Epic.

September 26th 6:18pm - Dale Earnhardt

The ride from Manali to Leh was as pleasant as receiving sticky stretchable body parts for an eighteenth birthday instead of the precisely requested digital camera.
For a month and a half before her eighteenth birthday one of my friends had explicitly entreated her parents for a digital camera. At soccer practice the day before her birthday she proclaimed to the twenty-two players and three coaches her delight at receiving a camera. The following day, we inquired after the camera model. She reported that her parents had given her colorful, stretchable body parts instead. A sticky orange hand, a blue foot, a yellow ear.

Conversely, the return drive from Leh to Manali was as effortless as passing my high school French final: the entire exam was in English. This is why, after three years of high school French, I know as much of the language as an English toad.

The bus to Manali was warm with triple-capacity bodies. Three passengers had been assigned the same seat. The driver seated foreigners in chairs and Indians in the aisle. The bus farted a lethal diesel cloud and jostled and jolted through the mountain roads as crooked as Quasimodo's back. Body heat radiated from the aisle as effectively as a radiator. My jacket, yak wool socks, knit beanie and fur-lined mittens were as beneficial as genital warts.
The bus arrived in Manali past one o'clock in the morning. This was as inconvenient as camel sex. Much of northern India ceases activity at ten at night.
Three Brits, a Dane, a Sweed and I located the sole taxi willing to drive us two kilometers up a hill as curveceous as Jennifer Lopez. Taxi Man demanded three hundred rupees. Three hundred rupees, about six US dollars, can purchase half a bicycle. It can also buy a bottle of rum and two hundred cigarettes. Naturally we refused and offered one hundred and fifty. He slurred, "Three hundred only."
Laden with backpacker's packs, backpacks and guitars, we shuffled away with the speed of a bear in two sets of handcuffs. This usually results in the driver/shop salesperson/hotel receptionist ambling after and dropping the price. Taxi Man rotated his bloodshot eyes and continued conversation with a circus of Indian men.
We looked back as hopeful as Bambi, realized three hundred was his price, and conceded.
We bulldozed bags onto the roof, and the two guitars and six foreigners jostled into the jeep. I had harnessed the waist strap around the roof rack but knew my pack was as secure as a closet homosexual.
We corraled in the car for seven minutes before Taxi Man finished holding his male friend's hand and climbed in with the pace of a drunk snail. Before he reversed, a policeman stopped Taxi Man and questioned him. They shrieked at each other. I felt like I witnessed a bar fight.
When we questioned the officer if there was a problem, our driver turned around and said, "Friend, friend." They seemed as close to friendship as Paris Hilton and the Pope. Taxi Man's initial reluctance at driving had evidently altered to die-hard determination.
As Policeman probed him, Dale Earnhardt accelerated away towards anything that could kill us. We narrowly circumvented collisions with a metal pole, fifteen hundred trees, a house, three stores, and a metal fence. As we hurled around a hook in the road, my pack kangaroo-bounced from the roof and whacked the window. Five accented voices roared for the driver to stop, that a bag had fallen from the roof. I laughed. Dale Earnhardt hastened forward. Upon my assurances that the bag was bound, the foreign screams ceased echoing. Dale spittingly screeched that we were bad foreigners and shouldn't yell. He removed his hands from the wheel to masturbate his forehead.
We should have known that he was drunk.

September 20th 4:30pm - Code Red

A six-year-old with Down Syndrome would have deigned day two of our Ladakhi trek from Likir to Lamayuru leisurely.
We tramped through thirsty earth and across sweeping rock-strewn terrain with chinchilla-sized sacks. I was as prepared for our patrol as a Neanderthal would be for his first cell phone combat. I mobilized for our four-day trek with money, one shirt, one fake North Face jacket, and a water bottle.

When my monkey got a nosebleed on day two, I had no pads, tampons, or any material modifiable for evading the panty painting. My ovaries obviously ignored my overtures to arrest my leaky basement for a few days until we returned to Leh and our luggage. I'm persistently afflicted with a weeping womb at the most inopportune times: on twenty-hour flights and buses, the second day of treks, Valentine's Day. My fallopian tubes are as rebellious as a sixteen-year-old pregnant pastor's daughter.

Once, the flourishing emerald and jade flora of a town materialized from the monotonous tawny terrain. Hope flavored my thoughts like a chocolate village mirage. Maybe someone would have tampons, pads, toilet paper, or an extra shirt for sale. The closest item the town had to feminine products was a bag of Lays potato chips.

I decorously folded the plastic bag five times and situated it in my underwear. Every step screamed scrunched plastic bag. I felt like a miniature grocer resided in my underwear constantly crackling grocery bags while positioning items.The Aussies and Brit were as supportive as a pretend parachute. The Brit broadcast that a beloved alcoholic drink is called "Time of the Month." The Aussie variant: "Bitch on Rags."

When we arrived at a Lamayuru guesthouse, I assailed the female owner like a football defensive lineman pass rushing.

"Can I possibly get pads or tampons somewhere? I'm on my period," I pleaded with the rapidity of a desperate woman.
The plastic panty lining was as absorptive as my brain after mention of the words "V8 cylinder."The question mark fronting her face reflected a frog's comprehension of Arabic.
"Um, period. Bleeding women," I stated, repeatedly pointing at my vagina.
Her expression was as blank as my travel journal.
"Once a month, women bleed. Blood. Do you have anything for bleeding women?" At the word "blood" my hands exhibited a cascade from my baby-maker that would be more appropriate for the biblical Red Sea surge.

I contemplated displaying my shark bait underwear.
"Oh," she exclaimed, "Woman blood."

"Yes! Woman blood," I replied with the jubilance of a boy whose balls just dropped.
My bliss was as brief as Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston's engagement.
"Nothing here."
"No shop with something for woman blood?" I whimpered like an injured dog.
"No, nothing."
After a frenzied foray against every individual and shop I located, I determined that she was right, there was nothing for woman blood.

I clawed a pillowcase like a rabid bear, rolled the fabric into provisional tampons more befitting a sumo wrestler's diaper, and elbowed them up with Batman backbone to hinder the crimson wave.

It occured to me days later that I could have folded the fabric into pad-like pieces instead of struggling for seventeen minutes to expel the stopper from my vajayjay.
I vowed from that moment that my bag would boast tampons instead of snacks and they would transform to companions as constant as God is to the pope.

Days after we terminated the trek an Indian Robin Williams informed us that we had completed the Sham Trek. Seventy-five-year-old women and blind men tour the Sham Trek.

September 19th 6:09pm - Lethal Rectum Roar

Three Aussies, the Brit, and I determined to do something productive with our days: trekking. I was as titillated as if someone had given me a baby for a day's diversion. I'm beset with babies like I'm obsessed with chocolate-covered strawberries and couldn't recall clutching a kid since I blacked-out in Laos and regained consciousness carrying a Laotian child. I was apparently under the impression that I was babysitting. Day 1 of the trek: mini-bus from Leh to Likir. No trekking.
The five of us departed the bus in Likir, I with the grace of a tranquilized flamingo. I wobbled with my waterbottles and backpack and bucked into dirt dregs. My astoundingly bad balance constantly confuses me, as I have American football defensive lineman legs. In seventh grade, my thirteen-year-old acne-afflicted male infatuation referred to me as "Kankles," and "Thunder Thighs."
Ladakh's arid desert orbited like the obstinate ocean. Reverberating sand dunes stretched, and in the horizon, a snow-spiked mountain range amiably reared. Our guesthouse overlooked the golden Buddha of Likir's Gompa. The bathroom window viewed the Buddha as superbly as if Siddhartha himself had stipulated where to shit. Common to many Ladakhi guesthouses, our communal eating area constituted floor cushions and low wooden tables ringing the room. A Goliath-sized gold-gilded stove dominated the center of one wall, and the shelves behind paraded with piles of pots and pans as impressive as Cleopatra.
It was in this seated ecstasy, the hostess' happiness and her family dominion, that Wrist Breaker Wanker let loose a lethal fart. The rancid and repulsive smell penetrated nostrils and affixed itself in nose hairs. The stench resembled a consumed rotting cadaver that had festered for months in his anal cavity before exploding from his anus like a torture device. The Brit's butt bomb saturated souls seconds before our hostess entered with chai tea refills.
Her nose crumpled at the rectum roar's stench. Tears gathered as she struggled not to catapult the tray and careen from the room roaring like a wounded lion. The Brit's poop fumes were so repellant that he did the only thing he could do.

"I am so sorry. The smell... I'm just sorry. I'm... uh... having stomach problems," he said, as serious as global warming.

Her response: "Wear a sweater. Stay warm."

September 16th 3:14pm - Leh's ATM

Twenty-five minutes after my toilet tumble, the Aussie and I still reposed in the State Bank of India's ATM line. The only other ATM in Leh was broken, and the inside of the solitary bank resembled Tienanmen Square. She stood while I sat, slouched on the concrete sidewalk at her feet like a disparaged dog. Every five minutes, when she advanced a step and I rolly-pollied forward, my body rebelled against me. I had already dry heaved into my lap three times. Women clad in red and gold plastic bracelets and bright orange and pink saris behind me mother-hen clucked. Western-dressed Indian men stared at me like I was a prostitute because my shoulders weren't covered. I was well aware my utterances echoed those of a dying bovine.

After slumping and shuffling on the searing sidewalk for an hour and a half feeling like a leper, the Aussie and I reached the bottom step as rapturous as if we had met a mermaid. I envisioned a plate of fillet mignon, garlic mashed potatoes, and grilled butter-smeared asparagus beckoning to me from the ATM kiosk. We progressed to the front of the line. I drooled. The Indian Army man at the machine exited as we entered and looked at us with liquid laughing eyes.

"The ATM machine is broken," he informed us.

"Noooooo," I replied and rushed inside to discover the screen's static state with the words, "ATM temporarily out of order. We apologize for the inconvenience," mocking me. There was no fillet mignon.

Indian Army Man announced on the steps to the thirty-four Indians and Westerners in line that the machine was broken. Everyone lifted and leaped forward, eyes hungry and hands open. Impatient thrusts from the crowd behind impelled me and Aussie forward. A lime-armed salwar kameez compressed my dwarf breasts, a sequined jootie trod on my heel, and I inhaled a sweet-scented black braid of hair. My gag of a ruminating retch was the only thing that triggered retreat.

Aussie and I jammed our bodies in and through the crowd. If someone stepped too close, I disconcertingly dry heaved towards the offending person. We had waited almost two hours in the sweltering, humid heat. The sun had settled on our bodies and baked into my head. My body's loath towards me paralleled the time I fell in a prodigious pile of elephant excrement at the circus.

September 15th 6:02 pm - Indian Toilet Round Two

Indian toilets vary as much as eccentrics at San Francisco's annual Love Parade.
Last year's parade possessed drag queens, seventy-year-old hippies, detonated druggies, babies, crocked college kids, flustered foreigners, toddlers, spouses on stilts, masochists with needles through nipples and string connecting nipples to penis clamps, families, and Halloween-clad teenagers.
Indian toilets engross "Open," aka wilderness as inviting as the Grinch, swarming sidewalk urinals, concrete-floored rooms, holes in the ground, and Buckingham Palace-like marble-floored Western bathrooms.
Ladakhi toilets constitute dirt-floored rooms with a hole in the soil, midget-sized dirt mounds, and a shovel in the corner. The discharges amass many feet below. After relieving oneself without toilet paper or access to water, a shovelful of dirt dispenses down the hole. This harvests human waste compost.
After a night of Paris Hilton indulgence with The Godfather beer (as stated on the bottle: Alcohol Content: between 4.25 and 8.25%) and Old Monk Rum (the rum bottle's label subsumes a smiling aged monk), I felt as composed as when I drunkenly stumbled through Bangkok with one sandal last year.
My head spiraled like butterfly sex and my ability to stand was inhibited like my 20/400 vision. Basic human functions, such as speech, proved as difficult as refusing to sing karaoke when drunk.
I stood in the ATM line feeling like a suffocating three-hundred-pound cat. We had shuffled forward four steps in twenty minutes. An eternal line of military men, Westerners, and Indian males loomed in front of me. The line was as intimidating as Aladdin's Jafar.
"Water. Toilet," I murmured to the female Aussie I waited with and crawled across the street towards the refuge of a restaurant.
The waiter handed me a bottle of water and motioned around the corner for the toilet. I shuffled down the stairs and drifted to a decrepit stairwell that looked like something out of I Am Legend. I stepped over cables and tread through wires. Every third step had crumbled away like my dignity.
Stammering over the staircase reminded me of modern art I saw at the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain in 2007. Sections of a collapsed concrete flight of stairs had been erected on the wall. It was entitled "Stairway to Heaven." If I had access to a crane and The Hulk's muscles, I too could be a renowned artist exhibiting in a world-famous museum.
Four wooden stilts supported the bathroom several feet above the ground. I pitched inside and projected the door shut with the strength of my cousin's three-month-old son. Sweat sprinkled into my eyes and my vision wobbled like an oversized baby's head. I crouched, contemplating if a picture of my bare ass next to a sculpture's exposed derriere would qualify as modern art in the Guggenheim. I have such a photograph from my most recent Las Vegas extravaganza.
Urine ushered from my vagina with the urgency of America's current economic state and my brain swooned like an inebriated fly's flight. My right foot slipped from the side of the opening. My leg plunged into the hole and my torso fish-flopped into the dirt. The sudden movement coupled with my hungover state induced me to gag and memories of an interview three years ago accosted my brain.
Similarly hung over, I interviewed for a position with the Admissions Office as a University Ambassador. Fifteen minutes into the interview I flowed from the office and to the toilet, where I experienced a charming counterpart combustion of torpedo vomiting and Montezuma's Revenge. Somehow I got the job.
Recollections of my calamitous but career-oriented self a few years ago contrasted to my current state made me question my life like Mother Teresa. With fresh urine stains on my shirt, my arms in dirt, and one leg down a toilet hole, my life was looking as auspicious as that of the homeless man I regularly pass in San Francisco holding the sign: "Ninjas kidnapped my family. Need money for karate lessons."
After dry heaving for forty seconds, I consolidated my strength, and, feeling like a wounded hippopotamus, hefted my body from the hole. I collapsed in the dirt and rested for three minutes in the fetal position as pungent odors of excrement and urine attacked my nostrils.
When I subsequently straggled out the door, through the battered stairs, and across the street, my Aussie companion looked at me like I had just asked her to partake in a crack-accompanied four-some.

September 10th 5:17pm - Story Time: Wrist Breaker Wanker

During the journey from Manali to Leh, we bonded like concentration camp survivors. Over dinner the Brit, Aussies and I recounted the drive, otherwise known as Satan's amusement.
"I cried," the Brit admitted with Ghandi's honesty.

"I thought we were going to slide off the cliff. I began writing my will," an Aussie added.
The conversation progressed to sex.
Two topics are always available in India: sex and bowel movements.The Brit recounted that when he was fourteen, he severely broke his wrist while wanking. This seemed as feasible as a future career as a leprechaun lord. He showed us the surgery scars.
Stories of sex on trains and planes ensued, including a cut penis and a sex attempt.
"I don't know how I cut my penis, but when I got an erection, the blood pumped into my penis and volcano-erupted. There was blood everywhere. I was so drunk I kept accusing this girl I didn't know of being on her period. I told her to stop bleeding so much... it was a one-night stand," another detailed.
Somehow we sped to significant others and dating.
"If I was to speed-date, first I'd ask if she could lay an egg, what size it would be, what color, and what it would hatch into. Then I'd ask her favorite animal, then, her second favorite animal," Wrist Breaker Wanker declared.
Yoshi is his favorite animal. Over the successive weeks we discovered that Wrist Breaker Wanker is a twenty-two-year-old physicist getting his PhD in liquid crystal technology at Oxford. Role-playing as foreplay is ideal, particularly in cat apparel. His cat obsession straggles behind his Yoshi infatuation. He's a master juggler and crystal ball maneuverer who is incredible at card tricks and dabbles in guitar.
"When I retire, I want to breed cats," he informed us, as serious as the atomic bomb.

September 7th 9am - Part 2 Manali to Leh = Snowstorm

Our caravan continued with the persistence of telemarketers.
The two-wheel-drive Traveler Jeeps persevered through the three-foot snow until they slid from the road like vehicles on ice skates. Once the glide generated, the automobile reversed until the wheels wedded with the snow-covered concrete cleared minutes before. The three vehicles trailing reversed in a four-car retreat that resembled ducks doddering backwards.
One man materialized like Harry Potter and with a Neanderthal shovel, spaded the snow from the path until the jeep found a foothold. The jeep drove for six feet before spilling from the street again. Harry Potter would reappear, shovel and disappear, only to manifest five minutes later. His shovel doubled the prized possession of a caveman and looked like the metal had been fastened to the wooden shaft with string. In two hours we progressed two hundred meters. The Indians were apparently under the impression that a bulldozer and chains were unnecessary. Our passage over the 16,020 foot Baralacha Pass made as much sense as Slyvester Stallone naming his son Sage Moonblood.
Although my sheer pants provided as much warmth as an icicle, I adjudicated that as I wasn't afflicted with explosive diarrhea or barking bloody feces, I was as happy as an orphan adopted by Oprah Winfrey. The other passengers didn't share my enthusiasm.
The French remained immersed in their blanket, the Brit was reduced to an infantile state, and the Aussies were so assured of our impending death that one of them deemed it logical to smoke a joint in the snow to tranquilize himself into a soothed state. Instead, as we skidded over the snow towards the edge of the cliff, he assumed the cracked character of one with Paranoid Personality Disorder.
When our driver desisted driving at eight o'clock at night, I asked what was happening. Earlier, while we had sat like perplexed dung beetles, he had exited the vehicle for twenty minutes to have a conversation and for ten minutes to relieve himself. He replied that we were staying the night at this tent community.
"Excuse me, but can we please get our bags down from the roof? A few of us have sleeping bags," the French female requested.
"Ya, I actually have a shirt with sleeves in my bag," I said.
"No, bags stay on roof," he said and then stalked off like Hitler.
The Brit cried.
We crept into what looked like a circus tent to discover a stove and sleeping areas.
"Blanket," the Brit said and thrust money at the owner. He burrito-wrapped himself and then pronounced, "Chai," between shivering lips. The rest of us relapsed in conversation while he curled into the fetal position.
The next day the snow shifted to desert and our progression was impeded by road blockades and detours instead of arctic conditions more suitable for polar bears than Westerners. Our journey, originally supposed to last seventeen hours, endured for thirty-two.
We later learned that the pass closed as we were on it.
Weeks later, on the return ride from Leh to Manali, the Brit self-medicated himself into a semi-comatose state with a deluge of drugs, including Valium and Ketamin, a horse tranquilizer.

* Published on Bootsnall.com in October 2009

September 6th 3:20pm - Part 1. Manali to Leh = Snowstorm. I Expected Desert

I was as prepared for the journey from Manali to Leh as my parents were for my birth. When I was born, they hadn't had a baby shower, my mom hadn't had Lamaze classes, and my dad was intoxicated from a Christmas party.
As I entered the jeep at two o'clock in the morning in sandals, see-through Aladdin pants, and a tank-top, the man who took my luggage said the seventeen-hour drive to Leh would probably be cold. I told him not to worry, I had the skin of the Hulk, and I'd manage.
If the man had just said the word "Snow," I might have prepared myself as if I were climbing Mount Everest. However, I slipped off my sandals and fell asleep in the front seat of the jeep as content as if I were Barbie.
I awoke three hours later to snowflakes ambushing my feet like the Japanese bombarded Pearl Harbor. I thought Leh was surrounded by desert. My uncovered toes resembled eggplants. Replacing my sandals was as productive as sleeping in a one-on-one meeting. Which I have done.
I reconnaissanced the range and resolved that the driver's window was open because he was using it to see the road. Solidified snow and withered windshield wipers obstructed his vision as effectively as a lion laying across the hood of the car.
In the seats behind me, two Aussies adorned in five layers of clothing were shivering like three-year-old baboons bathing in glacier water. The Brit's lips were grapes and his body was as immovable as London. All I could detect of the two French was the blanket they had over their heads. The Israelis were incapable of speech but repeatedly paraded their fingers from a Nutella jar to their tongues.
The Traveler Jeep had no four-wheel-drive and our driver had no chains.
By leering through my window, the driver's open window, and the frostbitten windshield, I gleaned that three feet of snow screened the road, we were one jeep in a caravan of four, and sheer cliffs surrounded us. To my left was an extreme incline and three feet from the right side of the road was the edge. I couldn't conceive the ground. Apparently the driver was under the impression that proceeding through the Abominable Snowman's land without any blizzard apparatus for vehicles was a good idea.
When he halted between two wooden shacks our driver departed without instruction. Anchored to our seats, we regarded each other with bewilderment paralleling my first experience with a banana.
When we emerged from our igloo, my feet submerged in snow like Britney Spears' self-esteem after she shaved her head and attacked a paparazzo with an umbrella.
I scuttled with my fellow frozen sufferers to the nearest doorway and catapulted myself onto the nearest bench with the lithe of one who accidentally triggered a tyrannosaurus tranquilizer into their trachea. We were in a home that ostensibly converted into a restaurant during the day. Beds at night became seats in the day.
"Hypothermia," the Brit moaned with tears in his eyes as he sat down, sounding more like a woman in labor than a trim twenty-two-year-old.
"Frostbite," I replied as I felt feces festering.
When I requested a toilet location, I was told "Open."
"Open" indicates that there is none. "Open" embodies wilderness. "Open" means you're shit out of luck.
As I contemplated whether I could prolong the inevitable excrement another four hours when I surmised our next stop might be, one of the Israelis entered with a smile and a pair of yak wool socks in his hand.
Without words, the Aussies and I dashed out the door, through the snow, and across the street to the only other shelter in eyesight. The Brit hobbled in and railed rupees at the proprietor as we completed our purchases. He didn't speak. I put on the socks with Michael Phelps speed and we clumped back to our chai.
Forty-five minutes later we still hadn't seen our driver. He had been spurring through snow and reeling roads for ten hours. We concluded he must be sleeping. After four rounds of chai and an hour and a half he reappeared like the grim reaper. He nodded towards the jeep and trudged off.
As the Aussies, French, Israelis, and Brit filed past me the excrement congregated in my body, threatening to blaze like the Big Bang. I bound behind the building to find sheets of snow and no barriers to bend behind. Panicking like a schitzo as my anus leaked liquid waste, I lowered my loose, transparent Aladdin pants and perched near a concrete step.
Poop projected from my ass with the force of a sperm whale's ejaculation. I couldn't cease the deluge any more than I could speak Mandarin, interpret Arabic, and dream in Japanese simultaneously. I sighed with the contentment I would convey should I scrutinize a hot air balloon in the shape of a penis. I looked around for toilet paper. I distinguished with dismay that I was on the back deck of the house. There was snow and a leaf stack. And my hippopotamus-sized stool sat three steps from the backdoor. The jeep's honk honed in my ears. I launched some leaves over my discharge, stoned some snow into my posterior, and duck-waddled to the jeep, my socked feet shoved into my sandals and cold creeping through my bottom.
Ten minutes later I observed discoloration on my right pant leg.
I had excreta on my pants and sandals, melted snow in my underwear, and wore a tank-top in a snowstorm.

* Published on Bootsnall.com in October 2009

August 30th 1:40pm - Baba G and Maya Cafe

Corpse, Oxford and I split from the other three Londoners and cruised to Kasol in Parvati Valley, a three hour ride away. Kasol was like Manali, but more hippie and cracked-out. Like Oregon is to California.
One afternoon we marched for half an hour overlooking a river and through marijuana fields to natural hot springs. We elected the isolated luxury of a guesthouse's hot spring instead of the communal hot spring that was as crowded as the gay pride parade down Market Street in San Francisco.
Aside from my deteriorating eyesight and hearing, I have some sort of chemical imbalance where I sweat steadily and am habitually hot. Hot springs are as conducive to my overheated body as running a marathon is to Homer Simpson. When I immersed my big toe in the broiling water, it felt like a fire-breathing dragon was using my appendage as target practice.
I sat on the side as Corpse materialized a joint from his backpack like Merlin and reposed in the hot spring. His head bent back and eyes closed as he exhaled a volcano of smoke.
Gliding back to our guesthouse with spiraling heads and smiles, Oxford beheld a lone sign across a derelict bridge over the river.
"Maya Cafe! It's like Jesus calling to me. He must be there. Is there a halo around the sign?" He asked, his squinting eyes glazed over doughnut-style.
The arrow beneath the sign pointed towards trees. No sign of life or civilization was visible. We had originally planned on visiting the Israeli crack-den/restaurant and the cafe with the waiter who smoked bong rips the size of a factory's exhaust. Instead, we crossed the bridge and turned left into the trees.
Fifteen minutes later we faltered onto a wooden plank and identified a house through the trees. We climbed up the stairs and entered the open seating of a cafe looking like high half-drowned hobos. Tables sparsely subsidized the area with the main seating being an L-shaped Goliath-sized flat rock covered in woven blankets. Another flat rock functioned as a table. Two Indian men sniffed lines off the table as we shambled up.
Another man sat inhaling charris from a chillam. He had verbose tangled grey hair, a beard longer than my own hair, a body swathed in squalid blue cloth and shoeless feet. He had more wrinkles than a walrus' neck. He looked like Methusalah. He was introduced to us as Baba G.
We joined the circle of seven Indian men as if they were Christ's disciples and passed around bongs and spliffs like the gospel.
"Baba G he has no money. But he come here to smoke. We give him a little food and a little weed, and then he goes back to his cave. Baba G loves the charris," one of the men told us.
At this explanation Oxford's eyes ignited with light. He looked like he had just been presented with Pamela Anderson as a submissive sex slave.
"He lives in a cave?" he asked.
I didn't learn until one month later that Indians add "ji" to the end of a name as a sign of respect. "Ghandiji," for example. They weren't saying Baba G, they referred to the pot-smoking-cave-living-ninety-year-old as Babaji, respectively.