Travels

I suppose there is the need to have serenity is more urgent when suffering seems closest at hand. I'm not surprised that this is the origins of the philosophy of detachment, or karma, samsara, dharma and guans.

Today, a priest grabbed my hand and dragged me to a holy lake (where Ghandi's ashes was strewn).  He sat me down, crushed petals in my palm, chanted lines for my father, fictitious dead mother, non-existent sister and wife and son, and stained my forehead with red dye followed by rice grains.

A woman combed her thigh length tresses on the flat roof of her house, while baboons clambered over her walls.  Below, young men bicycled through the narrow warrens of streets and looked up just as she vanishes towards the shadows.

I'm with India. The cliches are visible and it's hella disorienting. Did I write 'hella'? I must be going crazy. No 'Delhi belly' yet, but viruses and nasty buggers are all around – infections galore.  It's been four days since I&

Frankly, I've been to lots of 'poor countries' and while each situation demands a level of complexity that I can't give, how Egypt is doesn't excuse it's crappiness from my book because of it's poverty (see Asia).

6 or 7 Nubian men were dancing around a crackling radio.  Another felucca moored next to ours, and a woman peeped her head out and darted back inside the cabin when she saw me and the other passengers on our boat. She was naked.  A couple of Nubian men walked on the boat and then strolled back off.