mumbai to mysore

i escaped my sort of prison that was shunde, china to hong kong a few weeks ago. i spent a week in hong kong waiting for my visa to india to be processed and then made my way to the airport to jump on a flight to mumbai. my experience in china was so unfair, even by the standards of my employers, that they offered to purchase a plane ticket for me to wherever i wanted to go. of course, when i said i wanted to go to india, they retracted the offer and only after me really screaming at them did they stand by their word. it is amazing how many times on a daily basis people in asia, and from what i have heard from other friends, people in the developing world as a whole, will try to do whatever sort of dishonest thing that they can to get out of spending money.

no matter where i have gone, there have always been people trying to run some sort of scam. i arrived in india in the early hours of the morning and had made a reservation at a hotel near the airport. when i showed the address to a cab driver, he, of course, told me that the address doesn't exist and that he would take me to a cheap hotel, the entire time showing me some sort of identification card that should have been a dead giveaway that i was in for it. it was 3 am and i just wanted a bed to sleep in, i didn't really care at that point.

so the cab driver takes me to a hotel, which looks decent enough and i am immediately escorted into a room where the quick talking boss sits me down and asks for six thousand rupees for the bed for the night, two beers, breakfast and a bus ticket to goa. i was planning on going to goa anyway, so i figured this was pretty sweet and handed him the money, drank my beer and went to bed. i got up around noon the next day, had my breakfast and went to the "bus stop" which consisted of two plastic stools with a tarp over the top of them. the operator of this bus stop told me my bus would be there in a half an hour. a half an hour later, it would be there in another hour. i wound up sitting at the bus stop for over five hours waiting, during which time i did the math on my room for the previous night. i had spent about 150USD on something that i could have gotten for around 30. i also realized that the hotel was in the dead center of a slum so if i had been smart and left the place, i would have had nowhere to go.

a 17-hour busride dropped me in mapusa, goa, where i went to anjuna. anjuna is a really nice little beach town perched on top of a cliff that drops into the water. i was very pleased about this and even more pleased about the accomidation that i found. a hotel run by an elderly couple for 250 rupees a night. perfect! it was a ten minute walk on the beach to the ever popular "shore bar" and i spent a week there before traveling south to margao to catch a train to mangalore.

margao is pretty basic, not much to report on it. i got my train ticket and spent a night in a place that had a tv in it - i realized i hadn't seen sportscenter since feburary and it was excellent. the train ride the next day however, was not. 10 hours to mangalore in 3AC class, which means there are six cots hung from the ceiling of the train, three on each side of the berth. these trains and horrifyingly filthy, cockroaches everywhere, people spitting and throwing food, screaming babies and there was even a domestic dispute in the adjacent berth. needless to say i didn't get any rest, but it certainly was an experience.

mangalore is just as non-descript as margao, even though i did find an electrical outlet converter so i could finally recharge my ipod. i had to spent a few extra days in mangalore because i was too sick to travel anywhere else - enough said about that.

i then got on another ten-hour busride southeast over the western ghats and up onto the deccan plateau to mysore, which is a very crazy place. the maharaja's palace is in mysore along with the devashara market and a few other fun things to see. the con artists here are also first rate because marijuana is legal in this province. one guy started chatting me up about some music festival and next thing i knew i was sitting in a house operated by a man who claimed to be a national bodybuilding champion from the 1970s where they make incense and essential oils. i was pretty much forced to purchase something so i got this oil that keeps mosquitoes away - it actually works!

the guy that originally started the scam then took me to a bar where he and his two friends ordered drinks, which were obviously on me, and started smoking weed. one of them claimed to be some sort of palm reader and said that he would read my palm if i bought him a small bottle of whiskey. i bought it because it cost nothing. the guy started chugging the whiskey and smoking weed simultaneously - he had taken notes from bill murray and chevy chase in caddyshack. he then was far too messed up to read my palm so i left, highly entertained.

by this time i am pretty fed up with this guy following me around and spending my money for me, so i tell him i am going to get something to eat and then go back to my hotel. he takes me to a restaurant and orders something for me, then holds out his hand and asks for money for showing me around. it is more of an insult to give these people a small amount of money than no money at all so i gave him 10 rupees and told him to go away.

as soon as he left, i realized everyone in the place was looking at me with a very disappointed countenance. one of the waiters came to my table and said, "your friend is a very very bad man." obviously he hadn't seen the seinfeld where babu baht says this to jerry, but it sounded exactly the same. i had to laugh because of all this.

at least the con artist is not a respected member of society in india.