Welcome 2008!!

9 days relaxing on the eastern coast of India, state of Orissa, city called Puri.
FRESH fish and crab
pasta! toast and jam...some home delights
fires on the beach
dancing in the streets
being dragged into the water by Appana, a hilarious young guy from the fishers village
cows meandering past our hotel door
puppies eating a dead cat (mmmm)
the Sun Temple in Konark and a scooter ride to get there
a monkey that pinched my bum!

some initial memories from Puri

Dylan and I got to Puri on the 31st with just enough time to lie in the sun, eat some muesli with fresh curd honey and fruit, nap and get ready to bring in the New Year.
It was quite a memorable night...mostly spent wandering the streets looking for other people who all seemed to have found the party to be at but were keeping it a secret from us! so we ended up making fun wherever we ended up...which is always the best way!
the night was basically spent between the beach having a few beer around a fire, eating delicious thali in the middle of the night, and dancing in the street at the stroke of 12 with about 20 young guys!
Wow can Indian men dance! their hips move like no woman's hips i've ever seen! and there is nothing funnier than when Dylan tries to imitate this! It was a hilarious, wonderful time because no one was paying extra attention to me or Katie (the only females), everyone was just dancing with everyone. and it was awesome

Puri is an interesting place of mixed people. There are a few foreign tourists who all stick to one area of town. Here there are many 'western catered' restaurants and shops of beach clothes. There are many Indian tourists who mostly stick to a different part of ton with more fancy hotels. then there are the Hindu pilgrims that stay together, coming here to worship Lord Jagarnath and an elaborate temple that I wasn't allowed in. Then there are the locals of Puri and the fishermen from the fishers village...which is in Puri but quite separate.

Our part of town was a place to be comfortable and recharge. where everything is easy...internet, food, english, transportation, meeting people. compared to where I am now it was a breeze (more on now in a minute).
It was a fun place to be because we had friends to meet up with everyday. Local Puri guys and local fishermen. The fishermen (Santos, Appana, Sam) were quite remarkable. SO much energy, joking with us all the time, buying us chai and coconuts, making fires on the beach for us with burning material that seemed to appear out of nowhere (Sam would disappear into the darkness towards town and return dragging half a tree, someones roof [i'm pretty sure] and a bamboo pole), taking us through their village to the 'empty beach' where we could swim without dozens of watching eyes, and inviting us to their home to have a real dinner....with the freshest fish possible in Puri. Endless hospitality. and they never asked for money, they just called us friends.
good memories.

Now Dylan and I have split up for a bit. He's gone north and I've ended up south west of Puri in a town called Jagdalpur, in the state of Chattisgarh. I came here with Hayden of Switzerland who is on his way to Mumbai. A smiling, cheery, delightful guy who is easy to talk to and much appreciated company for this next leg of the journey. Helps with the Dylan withdrawal!!
Things are much different here than 'easy to live in' Puri. It took 24 hours to get here on 2 trains where our train car was either not where it should be in the train order and thus difficult to find or it just didn't exist and we chose a seat a random.
in the town there are dozens of hotels but all of them are instantly full when they see us glowing white and foreign. apparently some places aren't allowed to have foreign guests. after about an hour of walking in circles through town we found a place way out of our budget...but the only option!
today we set out to check emails and got sent down nearly every street, backtracking, turning left right left -back again- round the round about- into a computer shop- out with a map- in circles...for 40 minutes! everyone seems to have a different idea of directions. but we found it and soon will start the food finding adventure...then hopefully to a market and an anthropological museum. This area has many 'tribal people' or adivasi who (we're told) are at the markets and are written about in the museum.
It's funny to have such an interest in these 'minority people'. Many places offer 'Tribal Tours' where you go for 5 days or so and visit different groups. I have an instant, strong aversion to this. I can't bear the image of sitting in a rich 'pod' (tour bus) and pulling into a little village, filing off the bus and looking at people. For what purpose? and to whose benefit?
I am curious, absolutely, for whatever reason...but i'd rather be invited to join a family by the family and learn that way. Still i wonder why i'd want to, but do..
or apparently i don't mind learning from a museum..which hopefully uses present tense at least and doesn't freeze people into a lifestyle of what we expect from 'tribal people'. we'll see.

Otherwise people seem very friendly (A guy Hayden met on the train walked everywhere with us last night helping on the hotel hunt, just to be nice!) and, as usual, eager to talk to us. There is less english here which makes our tasks that much more fun to achieve! but all in all is a good place to stop over as i head south towards Pondicherry slowly but surely.

Seems like I had a whole bunch of thoughts and learnings to write about a few days ago but they've already been absorbed and feel normal now, so I can't remember!

2 months of 6 down, a birthday, a new year done, many more languages to learn and people to meet...the trek continues

Lauren