Have you ever heard yourself!?

Ok, so I will probably keep this post shorter as well since I'm getting pretty hungry after all the hiking we did today. It was a pretty good hike all in all, we got to see another waterfall and then we kept going up this mountain and found the Shiva Cafe about fifteen minutes from the waterfall. The cafe was really nice, it oddly enough had a small pool outside for swimming and a whole bunch of seating in a garden. Unfortunately however as soon as we got up to this cafe, the rain started to come in a pretty nice downpour. So Saul and I were forced to wait out the rain inside the cafe drinking Chai and playing some card games. The cafe itself was really old and made out of stones that they find all around the hillside there, we ended up waiting about two hours or so playing cards untill the rain slowed to a stop so we could walk back to the town.

Well back to when we first arrived in Mcleod Ganj, we got off the bus at about 430 in the morning, as were sitting in the street exhausted and hungry we see Ruby come down the hill to collect us and bring us back to where she stays. I was so thankful that she came down to meet us so early in the morning and let us hang around here guest house untill we finally could go and eat and then check into a guest house of our own. We at on the roof of this really nice bakery and then grabbed a guest house just up the hill from her, a double room with bathroom, shower, and hot water is only 200 rupees a night for the both of us. Plus its probably the best room that we have had so far on this trip, clean and huge!

The first night that I was there we went out to eat and met up with some of the people Ruby knew, I can hardly remember it though because I was so exhausted, I almost feel asleep during dinner. After we ate that night I went to bed and slept for almost 12 hours, and I needed that sleep so badly and I felt so much better the next day. The second day wasn't too eventful either, we mainly wandered around the main town of Mcleod and did a little shopping, we then trekked it up to the neighboring village called Bhagsu where all of the "travellers" stay and we ate a really nice cafe there. After that we pretty much just hung out on our balcony the rest of the evening and then met up with Ruby to cook some dinner and hang out. That night Sam, whom we met through Ruby, didn't feel very well after dinner so he went and laid down and we didn't really think much of it and just left him to sleep it off. Saul and I went back to our guest house and sat with our neighbor Flavio from France. We sat there drinking beers and talking till pretty late, and he had some very good stories and was pretty entertaining, even more so since he has been traveling for around 12 years or something like that but he wasn't super fake and stuck up like some other people that you meet that have been traveling for a really long time. Well we go to bed and wake up the next morn to hear Ruby knocking at our door, Saul went to let her in and it turns out that Sam is not doing so well at all, he ended up going to the bathroom around thirty times the night before he had a fever and pretty bad pains in his stomach. We got him some hydration tablets hoping he could keep those down and maybe fight through it but things got worse in the next three hours. He ended up going to the hospital with ruby at around 1 pm and he is actually still there right now. They think its just a bacterial thing and it should go away fairly soon, we went to visit him yesterday and he wasn't looking awesome, so tonight Saul and I will drink a beer for his health while we watch the soccer Finals.

Well maybe a slight change of tone in this scatterbrained post, the night that before Sam got sick we all went down into town to a cafe kind of restaurant to see an open mic. This was one of the most sickening things that I have ever seen, I'm very glad I went and saw what some of these people are like but it would take a whole lot of money to get me to go back there and live through the torture again. Saul, Ruby, a couple other randoms and I walked in about 15 minutes after it started and the place was just packed to the brim with a bunch of overly stoned hippies, I'll call them hippies but I'm not exactly sure if that is the correct term. Saul and I just refer to them as the Individuals but I'd rather not type that out a whole bunch of times. So packed to the brim with hippies and it took us a very awkward 10 minutes of climbing around very lazy people to find a spot to sit/stand. We settled in for the entertainment really not knowing what to expect, I mean we knew it would be bad but we did not think that it would be unbearable.

I may sound hypercritcal in this post but the atmosphere of this place is very hard to discribe, low lights, everyone is silent looking up at a random traveler that has decided the song that he or she wrote when it was raining yesterday is ready to be shared with the world. At the end of any performance, or at the hint of a joke, or even just the emcee cuing up the next act brought ridiculous amounts of applause or laughter from the crowd. I really do understand the notion of being supportive and what not to these people that are bearing their souls, but I mean there has to be a line that is drawn in my opinion. If these people never are ever criticized will they ever get better or work hard to become better at what they apparently love to do? Maybe they would all just prefer to go on being clueless.

The best, well I guess I mean the one that was the most mind wrenching was a freaking clown/mime. The guy is announced and he walks up through the back of the crowd making sure to stop and put his arm around my shoulder. I didn't see him comming up behind me so I'm looking next to me and I see this clown staring at me, I didn't crack a smile or laugh or anything I was far too uncomfortable with this extremely creepy clown staring back at me. He pretended to be startled and continued on to the center of the room to start his act. The whole time he was attempting to magic tricks and other gags but every single one that he did was poorly performed and not very entertaining. I think what made this act really unbearable was the fact that the crowd that really loves anything that moves or is moderately sparkly couldn't even muster the energy to fake laugh at this joker. Thankfully he stopped his act after 20 minutes of torture and the emcee came up to announce the next performers, two hippies from Canada who were going to sing and play the guitar. This was another awful act with two very annoying people taking center stage and sharing things with these people that should probably stay in one's own mind. This woman rambled on for nearly five minutes about the lovely rainbow vibes in the room, and how everyones aura was making the evening especially pleasant, I nearly yakked. Then she tells us she is going to perform her new song she wrote during the thunderstorm the day before, surprise the song is called thunderstorm. Her boyfriend I'm assuming was awful at the guitar and couldn't keep a rythem to save his life, I'm assuming he just bought the guitar when he got to Mcleod Ganj and thought that he could play because he took those five lessons ten years ago. Guitarist asside the woman really killed me, not only did her song lyrics make no sense at all, but she thought she had the voice of an angel. She would belt out every word as loud as she could without yelling, and then she would warble her voice up and down in some sort of weak attempt at a vabrado I'm thinking. They sang four songs and were planning on doing three more before the emcee thankfully jumped up and told them they were out of time.

There were several other terrible acts at that open mic night, more guitarists, a flamboyantly gay tibetan booty dancer that sexually harrased the men in the front by the stage, and then a spaniard I believe that wrote a three act opera about a celestial yak that turned his penis into a rope to ensnare his true love. However the Yak opera was pretty funny but we were laughing at the fellow instead of with him. Oh yeah and the thing that really topped the cake about the Canadian Thunder Singer was when I was kind of eavesdropping on her conversation. She was talking about her what she does at home when she isn't travelling India and finding herself, drum roll please......................



At home in Toronto I think, she is a vocal therapist. She has patients that come to have her sing to them to heal their ailments! I couldn't believe it, her voice made my head feel like it was going to impload and she is claiming to heal people with it. Ahh what it is to truely find yourself in India.



Well I do apologise for this post, thinking back to writing it I feel like I jumped around a bunch and didn't even get down all of the things that I wanted to. Only if I had more than an hour and a half to post I would write down some of the other adventures we have gone on as well. Alas I will save them for when I see you all in person, or maybe if I have time tomorrow Ill write down one more. I promise one of these posts will be grammatically correct and not be completely mental. Look forward to a composite list at the end of my trip, Top 100 ways to find your inner-self in India.


Peace,

J a k e