I am still around Asia

well i know its been a while since I posted my last message but I have to confess that India left me speechless -for those who know me the best this will be difficult to believe...- and I found very difficult while I was there to describe my feelings and my impressions.
Now I am back in Bangkok and after a few days of digestion I can finally say about my Indian adventure
I landed in Bombay the 21 of January and in total I have stayed for 3 months which were a very short time compared to the dimension (both phisical AND metaphisical) of the country.
First reaction in Bombay was a huge laugh, I could not believe the taxi that was taking me to the train station, it was a old timer with a very very loud and cracking radio and the diriver kept changing channels, athough all sounded the same-with the ignition key, he took it off -while driving- and used it for the music purpose and then he put it back in the ignition all this while driving in a chaotic messy hellish highway where all laws of phisics where constantly challenged, and eventually defeated...
Appart from this hillarious beginning the impact with the Bombay railway station had been seriously shocking, just hords of people sitting on the floor and beggers and dirt and stinking stuff and NO SIGNS whatsoever, but the most funny thing was that I landed in India with no voice! I lost it the last night in BKK fot the goodbye celebrations and it was quite hard to ask for informations, not everybody in india had the patience to read labial...so in the most comic way and with the help of the only white man in the sourroundings I found the tourist quota booking office where I was informed that there was no way of leaving Bombay by train that day.
Well I was just too intimidated by the town to stay a day more, freshly arrived I would have been, I thought, easy prey of anybody who wanted to sell me the Gate of India or the Tajimahal, so I managed miraculously to find a bus station where I booked a place on the first bus to GOA!
Goa as everybody told me was supposed to be the easiest place of India, actually was the only state of India which did not match with anything else in the country, first of all they are christians and there are churches, after there is a very european architecture and its full packed with tourist who make it feel like Ibiza holiday for moneyless partygoers.
It was bad, but not so bad. First of all I arrived in the morning and managed to get to Arambol, where I took a room in a guest house where the owner reveald himself as a dirty voyer, he was sneaking in the room while I was sleeping and unfortunately for him I was not sleeping at all.
I left the place and got into another GH where the owner was a woman, I explained her what happened and she said the only man in the house was her son and I should let her know if he would do something like that , she would take care of it. Well, indian women seemed to me full power (full power-experssion very used in India) and very determined.
In Arambol, Goa I stayed for 2 weeks and there I met a guy who I knew from thailand about 2 and half year before, Tony, who just bought himself a motorbike, obviously a Royal Enfield, the one and only engine tiger that owns indian roads. Tony took me for a Horror Tour on his bike, he showed me all the places where never to go in Goa and I have to say I had a terrific time I will never forget.
For the rest it was alright, I had the time to get used to the invironment, to the smell, to the LOOK of the men that make u feel naked and so on. But well I departed with a great couriosity towards India (and Indian food, as in Arambol I could taste the best italian food I ever tasted outside Italy and absolutely no indian food) and I headed to Hampy with the most entertaining company>two musicians,Barth the diji and tabla player, France, and Cort the saxophone player, Germany. We jumped on a train and got to Hampy of which u can see some picture, the sadu on the top of the hill, the cobra and so on.
Well Hampy was nothing less then an amazing place. It was in a immense valley just made of rocks, humangus round and smooth rocks everywhere for kilometers and kilometers, an old ruins valley which once was a rich empire that traded in precious stones. What I did in Hampy the all day was

1)cooking-the heat was unbareble
2)getting on a bike and going to look around
3) meeting all kind of tourists
4)hanging around the lake.

The lake was a very incredible place as it is situated in a valley sorrounded by hills full of rocks (of course) and at first glance these hills seem deserted, but as u walk u start seeing chai sellers, cookies wallas, dealers and all kind of confort business u can have around there, goats and goats men and so on. these people just live among the rocks, they just turn around the rock they have chosen as the day passes so they can enjoy the shade.
The walk around there is not a mere walk, it is rather a climbing up and down and that makes everything pretty much unreal. I got well on with Ramana, the first Indian man that looked in my eyes while talking, a real good man I trusted at first sight, since I sat next to him we shared a number of fat laughs, it was like we knew each other forever. He lived under the most huge rock of the lake and he took me there in his basket boat, round weed boat with one pedal, the local way of getting around the rivers and the lake.
Infact in the middle of the lake, when u think ,ok this is it I am going to die here its too hot I am too thirsty to survive, hop- a little basket boat pops up out of nowhere and a guy in it provides you with fresh drinks and fresh hope. Thats it, I told Ramana, this is really the most unreal place I have ever been.
Well with Ramana I spent only three days as he had to leave to Goa but I keep an immense gratitude to his clean and not interested friendship, and to the notions of yoga he tried unsuccesfully to teach me. ;o)


After I went to Gokarna.