Cow, Cow, Cow, Buffalo!

The Harwal Mail was no Japanese bullet but it chugged the 2130km from Chennai to Bhubaneswar. The two day journey started from Mamallapuram with a auto ride to the "bus station", eg: the side of the road, literally, where we jumped (again literally) onto the local bus heading North. I made it to the third step while Aaron hung on behind half in - half out while another Indian guy clung to him. It wasn't pretty. Actually the entire 2 hours on the bus wasn't pretty but Aaron made haste by playing a winking game with the local men and I just focused on not throwing up do to extreme air pollution going through the city. After a massive haggle struggle we then got another auto to the train station and settled in our berths for the long night ... and long day ahead. 21+ hours later I was sick of the train and we finally arrived for a night stop in Bhubaneswar. The following morning we caught yet another bus for an hour or so to the coastal town of Puri, hired another auto and were rewarded after some searching, to find a wonderful home stay family who rented a room to us for a great price. I cannot quite explain how cute they actually were. Cute doesn't do them justice.

Anyway, this brings you slightly closer to the world of travel I've been living for the past 5 months and for all those months I've been very lucky in avoiding the infamous "Delhi Belly" of India but because I only had one more week left to survive, India had another thing in mind and gave me one last kick in the pants with a single meal from the Pink Hotel Restaurant. Not good. Not good at all. I became increasingly ill through the night and we had to sacrifice the super-extreme 12 hour tour we were planning to do the next day. Aaron had to explain to them: "My wife, she is sick". So needless to say I spent a day moaning in bed and hitting up the antibiotics while Aaron played nurse and attended to my temperature spasms. The next afternoon I surfaced and we did some exploring to the local temple complex where we spied from the rooftop of the library across the street as in most temples, non-Hindus are not allowed in. It gave us a laugh to wonder where our 100rps donation to the library was going as they had about the same amount of books as a shelf in London Drugs and 99.9% of them looked to be over 50 years - most were over hundreds including the Sanskrit manuscripts that no one can read. The temple was interesting and was represented by the weirdest little saucer eyed, blinged out, bell shaking cartoon characters. I wish I had a photo but I don't... I did however buy a temple postcard for the collection. So weird. We checked out the local scene, where no whities go, and Aaron go a new shirt (too bad, the Mr. Bear Team didn't fit), I replaced my old bandanda with a sweet "I love my India" one, and we had some keychains made for our homestay family. Wandering down to the 'Indian' end of the beach we found a party and lots of really weird stuff with the Hello Kitty-Pokimon cross temple character on it. Weird.

Puri reminded me that we were back in the North. Much like any other Indian city it had it's "issues" with garbage, sewage, touts, a million stray dogs, people crashing bikes, used book stores that don't actually buy books (even though their big red sign says they do), stone aged - snail slow road construction, and cow patties everywhere. The worst part would have to be the oozing open shit hole that festers in the burning heat before slowing draining into the ocean. As you cross the bridge over it you can take a look at the people lined up to take a squat right in it. And people live right beside it! Ooze front property! Really, it made me throw-up in my mouth a little bit. The smell was bad bad bad. Coupled with the smell was the sight of dead turtles on the beach and dead humans being paraded in the streets. I know it's a cultural thing and I have no beef, I'm just saying it's hard to chock down your lassi when your looking at dead things all the time. Now it sounds like I'm really riding hard on Puri, and I am a little I guess but honestly it was a very quaint little spot. So quaint in fact the Austrian ski resort owner who also lived with our home stay family calls it home for 6 months of the year.

Because we missed our tour due to "the sickness" Aaron and I rented a scooter to see some of the select sights. But let me explain...Rickety Red wasn't just any scooter. Rickety Red was probably the most unsteady, shoddy, pinner little scooter you've ever seen. If Rickety Red and my bicycle were in the ring, I'd be betting on the bike for sure. I held on for dear life while Aaron tried to navigate minus a few clutch features such as a mirror, gas gauge, or breaks. We scooted the 40km up the coast to Kornark to see India's second most famous building after the Taj Mahal: The Sun Temple (another World Heritage - check!). It was originally built in the 13th century but destroyed once by the Portuguese and to finish her off even more, again by the Muslims. It has been somewhat reconstructed with the original pieces and it still an impressive sight. We wanted to get the full story on the temple so we hired a guide, otherwise known (to us) as Grandpa. Taking us around the site and forcing us to stand in flowers for very "Indian family" type photos Gramps gave us the history of the temple, the meanings behind the carvings and layout, and then proceeded to show us many of the very detailed Kama Sutra carvings that cover (and I mean COVER) the temple on every wall, step and nook. As he pointed out the "69! A very interesting position!" and the "face to face kissing with many women touching" Aaron and I wondered ... is this happening? Did we hire a 65 year old man to tour us through the temple of porn? I tried to get his voice on video but failed. It was SO SO SO funny. He explained to us the days of the week and times of the day for having relations - turned out to be 24/7 and because of this he also pointed out the better positions to "do it" in when the woman is pregnant. omg. I'll have to censor out the rest but I'm sure you get the picture. The temple was worthy stop and so was Gramps the guide until we had a little problem at the end agreeing on issues of money. Typical. We stopped at the beach on the way home to take in the surf and see more dead turtles then enjoyed a delicious meal, our last in Puri before another overnighter up to Kolkata.