lots of writing, if you're lazy come back later for pictures.

yeah... i got nothing. i've been too damn lazy to post anything for the past litte while... my apols.

anyway a lot has happened since last i wrote so lets get down to business, shall we?

i guess i should start in mamallapuram, the city we travelled to after our week in Ooty. We spent a day or so there, checking out the temples and carvings and attempting to push Krishna's Butterball off its precarious ledge: we failed. we also attempted to go see this big crocodile farm outside of town, so rented mopeds and drovea good 45 mins to find out that it was closed every monday, ad our bribing skills were not good enough to get ourselves inside... damnit.

from there we moved on to Pondicherry (aka Puducherry) which was absolutely fabulous. a former french colony, the city was clean and the streets were open and great for wandering around. AND we discovered it was also a tiny little enclave that would serve us beef! i'm not usually the most ravenous of carnivores, but when the opportunity for steak arises after a month of veg veg veg, you can be damn sure i'll jump for it.

besides the food the city was cool, there's a huge ashram community so everywhere you go people are praying to the two founders: sri aurobindo and the mother (some french lady, mira alfassa) we even rented scooters and went out to auroville one day, this idyllic commune set up by the two in the late 60's and early 70s. it's nice to know that there's a place i can go to if i fail to make it in the normal capitalist system. as krista mused, even though the town feels a wee bit cultish, i'm sure we could find peace and happyness living out our days in some a/c straw hut making dolls out of sticks, or in my case, mounds of dirt, and praying to the big crystal in the matmandir. (oh yeah, that would be the massive golden orb in the centre of the town.)

in any case, no one invited us to join and the issue of what sort of citizenship one would need to live there seems a bit hazy (the mother insists that you belong to no one nation and the commune belongs to the entire world.... which i'm not sure complies with indian regulations) so for now i think we'll take our chances in the real world.

anyway after a few days of relaxation in Pondy we travelled back to Chennai (madras) and flew to Kolkata. our flight being massively delayed due to monsoons in Mumbai (on the other side of india... dunno how that affected our plane) we finally got into Dum Dum around 1 am and to our prebooked hostel around 2 after THE scariest taxi ride to date. our driver was all of 12, had anotehr friend in the front seat and drove as though he wanted to hit all the obstacles/potholes/stray dogs on or off the road at about 80 km/hour through the still fairly busy streets of the city.

anyway, kolkata was damn hot, and we may or may not have spend most of our time in the one mcdonalds, or air conditioned malls watching movies like ocean's 13 or fantastic four two, or attempting to replace the clothing krista and diana lost when the laundry guy in our hotel in Pondichery chucked out their clothes thinking it was garbage. we did manage to go see the kali temple, brave the metro and see where mother teresa used to work, but that's about it. to be fair we did attempt to do some sightseeing but the silly monsoon had other plans, we ran for cover/ a mall as soon as it was too painful to withstand the showers.

after a few days there, we travelled onwards to Varanasi and have managed to stay here every since. we'd only planned two or three days here originally but by some turn of events have managed to stay here nearly a week. on our second day we were taken in by one of the main priests, bablu, who performs the evening puja cermony on the ghats (steps to the river) each evening, and through him we've met some very interesting characters. he took us to see a movie in hindi yesterday (fantastically cheesy, i highly recommend goign out and renting one) and in turn we treated him, his niece and nephew to their first mcdonalds experience. it was magical. :P i don't even know where to begin talking about varanasi as we've done so much, and yet not that much at all.... the pictures will hopefully explain.

from here we're off to agra tomorrow morning. we originally had planned to go see the "saucy temples" of kajuraho (a kama sutra in stone) but delayed trains and cancelled buses have prevented us from doing so.

so come back later/tomorrow for pictures. i promise to have them up in the next 24 hours