a bit late, but this is the kasol story...

dear blog, it's time to wake up...

so... we were leaving bagsu and going for kasol.
what we found out from refugees who visited and ran away after a period of hours to days back to the loving bosom of bhagsu is that "arsim" could be found there (arsim - a kind of low intelligence goblin with the ability to speak hebrew and use hair gel, bred in urban reserves around israel).
so without much to go on but driven by our desire to see at least one more place before my 5 months in india are over (to the point of leaving B' on his death bed, or so we though

t) we packed our bags and headed towards the un-known.
D was so stressed out by the possibility of arsim that once we arrived to kasol she immidiately began running in a frenzy screaming "we have to get out of here, let's find a taxi, no! let's start walking!! we have to ruuuun!! they'll catch us and make us go to habad house to pray to god!
needless to say we simply threw some encouraging words and a few mint tea glasses at her to calm her down. after D has been pacified and tied to a joint we decided to find a place to stay.
after a few days of looking for a place we finally found it:

nirvana, The Taji house, huge room, shower, lawns, serene river flowing under m

y window, mountains on the horizon, 3 friends with diarrhea (2nd most common cause of death in infants!)

it was a clever scheme probably designed in some dark basement in one of old kasol's buildings.
they know nobody wants to stay there because of the arsim. so once a group arrives they choose
one or several people to poison with food and that keeps the tourists inside the area.
ingenious isn't it? well, it worked on us. 3 of my friends got hit with the free flow disease...
and so we stayed at the taji day after day while i'm watching my friends waste away one liter
of shit after another (pardon my french...)
After a few un-eventful (outside the cabin's toilet) but beautiful days in kasol we finally decide to go up to the villages. but not before B decided to have a verbal conflict with a waiter in

one of the restaurants...

B: can i get orange juice?

waiter: papaya juice is very good.

B: ok, can i get orange juice

waiter: papaya mango even better than papaya.

B: ... (confused look) err... can i get orange juice?

waiter: no mango or papaya?

B: orange juice?
waiter: papaya orange?

B: orange juice!

waiter: ...waves hand in dismissal.

B: orange juice?

waiter: shows an angry face, and goes away.

so basically the customer is always right untill the waiter is right and then the customer is just

definitely wrong and has no idea what the fuck he's talking about

as long as we're on the subject of things that happen all the time in india... one more thing that tends to happen to a lot of people is that they tend to get obsessed with something indian and feel like it's something they have to do because that is what actually defines they're connection to the country.

For most people it's drugs. for some people, the privileged few it's something else.

"A" for example has turned into a kind of a mislead peanuts eating rodent. every place we arrived to he spent the first 30 minutes looking for "masala" peanuts. and on top of that he starts taking it personally. a place that doesn't have masala peanuts will have a taste of his jewish wrath.

"what do you mean you don't have any?!"

"don't have... only regular peanuts"

"you mean you don't have any now and you will later or you mean you never had any and your waisting my time?!?!"

"sir, you come my shop..."

"what has that got to do with anything?!?!, find me some MASALA PEANUTS!!!!"

at this point we usually have to grab a hold of him before he turns green and huge and sarts throwing tanks and other machinery at random indians...

anyway... we moved on to the villages. Tosh was first.

there were about 15 of us so we decided to order two jeeps. after about 10 minutes a jeep arrives. 2 minutes more and a car arrives (suzuki maruti). something about the size of a mini cooper with the prestige of an auto-riksha.

when inquering the guy in charge where are the 2 jeeps we were promised he points out at the jeep and says "here, jeep. and over there small jeep". first we tried to explain that the small jeep is actually a "car" and even if it was a small jeep it's still not big enough to carry everyone. after going outside and walking around the mini car for about 5 minutes we finally got him convinced that the only thing getting into the small jeep car is a dog, a handbag and if we try really hard we might squeeze in a midget as well...

another real jeep was ordered and got there after 20 minutes.

we started stuffing the insides of the jeep with people and the top with bags. i got the honors

(or so i thought) of sitting up front with our driver. 2 minutes after we started our journey i noticed that although there was about 30 cm between my leg and the shift for some strange reason his hand kept sliding over my leg for no reason. and all the while humming weird shit in

hindu. the rest of the passengers disregarded my pleas for help ("he's touching me!! why is he doing this?!") just kept cracking up and encouraging the driver (gotta love my friends eh?).

i tried to move as far as possible towards the door but it wasn't enough, he started using the

"can anyone give me a ciggarette" trick and the known follow up of "can you light this please" asking me to light it myself and pass it to him. probably a sick way of getting a taste of my young boyish sexy lips...

apart from that incident the whole jeep ride was accompanied by scared looks of the driver outside with remarks like "look, bags sit good?" and while he kept repeating that never once did he even consider slowing down or offering us to make sure it's tied... ah well... eventually we did get to tosh. i ran out of the car and did my best to prevent all eye contact with my assailant. (which was licking his lips suspiciously, i've been told)

Tosh is beautiful, surrounded by waterfalls and an abundance of river paths. playful children and happy (alas very bored) grown indians.

after "A" had his way with one of the kiosk operators, we met some indian guy travelling before

he goes studying electronic music production in the UK. (he belongs to the "industrial" cast that decided to move on to the "D.J having sex with models" cast).

A short while of taking showers with buckets and freezing to death from lack of blankets we have decided it's time for another village and together a group of 20 of us decided to carry on.

And so again a group of 20 people with bongs chilums and guitars are walking the wilderness. (not exactly what colombus had in mind when he decided to start exploring, but he got his continents mixed up so i guess he doesn't know shit anyway)

an hour or so of walking later we arrive at kallga. not as pretty as tosh. not as welcoming. not as anything really... but i did get a couple experiences nailed there.

first and foremost it was my first real stomach ache and diahreah lesson! hurray for me!

i'll let you in on the details because i know you like that...

i've had a few days in which i had no apetite and arriving in kallga for some reason we decided to stay in the cheapest place we could find. an example would be a toilet which lets out the shit water right next to you when you flush, getting the bottom part of your pants literally "shit wet".

so i go to sleep, wake up, go to the woods with a book. look at a tree, puke at a tree. go to the toilet, and that kinda finished my day.... i've read about 140 pages in that toilet session. (and i'm not a quick reader, i can preomise you that).

i have moved on or should i say moved back to eating plain rice and plain toast for the following 5 days. which would be great if i was in 16th century china but sucked ass in 21st century india surrounded by munched people stuffing their faces with all sorts of chickens and spices while i am forced to eat 2 Kg of rice and 1 Kg of bread a day. (sure, i could have anything i want but that would mean making a concious decision to stay in the toilet for the rest of my trip)

that was my confession. the other thing i've learned in kalga is that there is no god.

i can promise you that... a guy who travelled with us stepped on shit 6 times in about 40 minutes. while no one else did. which means there has to be some devine intervention for that to happen. and if there is devine intervention for that it means god really has nothing better to do.

which doesn't make any sense and thus creating a paradox. conclusion: no god.

i think that makes perfect sense.

who would have thought you'd get to learn something as important as that from reading all this crap i'm writing eh?

so that's basically it. we came back to kasol, i was told that my friends and family bought a 2 way ticket from india to israel and back so i can take a look at all the progress that has been made with the "ha bima" building in tel aviv (and also i had a birthday) and next post is about glamorous delhi and the quest for a suit get ready, get drunk!