whimsy gone too far...

there's about 2500 km between me and my last blog entry. i took a train straight from chennai, tamil nadu up to dehra dun, uttaranchal. spent a few hours wandering dehra dun looking for a cheap place to stay, starting at about 6 am, decided that it was a stupid city filled with indian-only hotels and capped my 47 hour train ride with a 1.5 hour busride to..... RISHIKESH!!!! yahoo- back in the town i already spent too much time in when eben had crawlies in his gut (and the rest of our bowels were responding in sympathy). and yet, in this tourist laden hell hole, you will never guess what has arrived on the scene:

(seriously, prepare yourselves)

INDIAN PEOPLE! no way! yes, it's true. all the whiteys are gone and the town is run amok with indian pilgrims and more crazy saddhus than you can shake a stick at, although they will all certainly shake their sticks at you, OM HARI MADAME!!!!!

anyway, i'm here to go on a trek that is only accessible for 3 months of the year... yep. 2500 km to see some flowers in a valley... i am so sleepy and sore.... i won't talk about that now and will instead answer some of your questions.

first, to the anonymous blogposter:

can i turn myself into a pretzel and do i have a new spiritual name? i assume that the pretzel question was about yoga, but at the moment (still haven't slept since getting woken at 3 on the train!!!) i feel that my spine may in fact be getting deformed from indian transportation. really. i was on a bus today that reminded me waaaaay to much of those horrible haunted houses they have at carnivals where you ride in a little car and bump your knees, wrench your back and then a smelly "witch" pops out... but the yoga is beautiful and so are you! i may have a spiritual name but i do not feel i can disclose that right now.... mainly cuz it makes me feel way too new-agey to even discuss this matter.

my hair? about an inch long, but it's quite uneven because i did it myself. i don't have any idea what the back looks like. picture a cross between delightful pixy and filthy calcutta street urchin.

when am i returning home? october 25th.

and dave asked:

1. would you rather see dylan or donovan in concert? this is tough. i've already seen bob twice... devil you know or devil you don't? i guess i'd still have to say dylan, but mainly on default cuz eben would probably be there and i'm missing my curly haired friend a bit right now...

2.If, when you come back to Canada, I were to give you a hug and as a welcome home gift hand you an envelope containing a key to a locker at the airport, would you actually go see what was in the locker? i think that this is pretty obvious....of course! i hope that it would be the start of a scavenger hunt.... those are so great! and if it was something crappy then i could hold it over dave's head and say all sorts of wicked things to him and then send embarassing things to his parent's address under his name (the fool gave me his address! again! knowing what i've already done with that knowledge in the past...)

and now my questions for you all:

i wanna know, have you ever seen the rain? o wait... that was ccr's question...

ok- seriously. india is a land of smells. i've never noticed my nose so much as i do here. i know that for the rest of my life the smell of human urine baking on hot concrete will be able to transport me heart and soul back to india. so, what is a smell that you can never forget?

second question: why does music have such a tremendous capacity to make things more beautiful?