After leaving Diu it felt like our trip was just about finished, and, in fact, it would have been a great place to end the trip, being so completely relaxing. However, we still had 3 weeks left. So, it was back to Ahmedabad. I always read about the booming Indian economy, all the high tech & call center jobs, a middle class of 300 million. The TV commercials here are always showing Indians wearing western clothes, driving fast cars, and living in modern apartments. But after two months, we often wondered, who are these people, and more importantly, where are these people, because we certainly haven't seen them. That is until now. Ahmedabad is the biggest city in one of the richest states. Across the river from our guest house in the "New City" we found the ultimate symbol that you have arrived as a true international city, a McDonalds. India's one billion plus potential customers is a market that McDonalds has probably been salivating over for some time now. Yet they've only recently started setting up shop here, probably because of the dietary restrictions of the major religions here. No pork for Muslims and no beef for Hindus, a bit of a problem for a burger joint. So instead, they're working the chicken angle. Yo had the Chicken Maharaja Mac and I had the McChicken Curry Roll. Interesting, but not something I feel a need to try again. Unlike at home, McDonalds here is the domain of the rich, the famous, and their kids. On my way to the cleanest bathroom I can ever remember in India I passed an Indian Ronald MacDonald entertaining a birthday party of screaming kids.

After lunch we stopped at a Borders-like bookstore with a Starbucks-like coffee shop. I sat reading the newspaper while I enjoyed my first ever latte in India. Then it was on to the movie theater. India's Bollywood is the world's biggest movie industry. Every year over a thousand films are made and exported to over 70 countries. Worldwide a billion more people a year buy tickets to Indian movies than to Hollywood ones. Bollywood movies show none of the harsh reality of everyday life and are intended to be pure escapist fun. There's lots of singing, dancing, and costume changes. The streets are clean and uncrowded. The movies are always three hours plus to give the maximum entertainment value for the rupee. Ten minutes into "Superstar" and the guy in front of us was already on his third cell phone call. I asked him to be quiet and he looked at me like I was crazy. And he was right. We soon realized that we were the only ones not yakking away into cellphones during the movie. The only time they stopped was during the intermission. And then about five minutes before the movie ended, just as you could feel the formulamatic story winding down, everyone got up, put away their cellphones, and left. Like those leaving the baseball game early when one team is up by too many runs. So we sat there and watched the end of the movie alone. I could spend the rest of my life here and I would still not even begin to understand India.

After this day of cosmopolitan city life it was another overnight bus south to Maharashtra state. The last two days we've spent visiting the famous 2000 year old rock cut cave temples at Ellora and the Buddhist cave frescoes at Ajanta. The highlight was the Kailasa Temple. This amazing architectural wonder was carved out the side of a mountain by 7000 laborers over 150 years removing over 200,000 tons of rock in its creation. On the crowded bus back from Ellora, Yoshimi snagged the last seat and was interrogated with the usual questions asked by Indians, which curiously were the same questions we were taught as children not to ask adults: How old are you? What is your religion? Why don't you have any children? How much do you make a year? I got called up front to share the engine block seat with the driver's nephew. They asked me basicaly the same questions, plus a couple of bonus ones: How much does a car cost in America...in rupees? Who is my favorite cricket player?

Tonight we catch an overnight train to Mumbai, our last stop in India.

-Shawn

Though it would be easy to spend another few weeks(or months)here in Diu, we must leave. We fly out of Mumbai in ten days and there are a few places we wanted to check out between now and then. But before we left our favorite ice cream shop gave us a personal tour of their ice cream and sodapop factory. And the four newborn puppies that we watched get bigger everyday have now all be adopted by families. It's time to move on.
It's been eight years since Yo and I have done a big trip together. In 1999/2000 we spent a year and a half traveling around Asia. Now that we are back in Asia its hard not to compare the two trips. Though India has hardly changed(except more cell phones), what has changed is the way that we, and people in general, travel. While we still travel on a budget and with backpacks, we are also now also equipped with an iPod, a digital camera, a blog, e tickets, and a ATM card.
Of the fifty or so places we have visited on this trip, I can think of only a few that did not have an internet cafe or some sort. Some were better than others. A few had keyboards that had been so used that there were no letters left on the keys. You just had to remember which key was which. It slowed things down quite a bit for an amateur typer such as myself. Eight years ago, there were no internets cafes at all along our route, instead we'd pick up our mail at the post restante section of designated post offices. We love getting emails and comments on the blog, but you can't imagine how exciting it was to pick up a packet of letters from family & friends every 4 to 6 weeks. It was our only news from home. We'd always have contests each time to see who would get the most letters. Each letter would be reread several times. Sometimes my Mom would send a care package with all of my favorite foods(of course pretzels). You can't beat email for convenience, but sometimes I miss the visceral feel of a letter. Tom Robbins, an author that refuses to use a computer to write, says that ink is the blood of language and paper is it's flesh.
It would be hard to go many months without any music. So we always travel with a little stereo and speakers. 8 years ago even though CD's were the medium of choice in the first world, cassettes were still the name of the game in the third world, so we traveled with a Walkman cassette player and a small set of speakers that were barely loud enough to be heard above the noise in the streets. We also had a case that held exactly twelve cassette tapes. As you can probably imagine it didn't take long to get pretty sick of those twelve tapes. Occasionally my friend, Tim, would send us a mix tape that was always most welcome or we'd pick up a tape of Indian Bollywood musical hits every so often. Now we have an IPod the size of a pack of gum that holds 200 CDs and a set of speakers that are more than capable of keeping up the neighbors. We can put this iPod on shuffle and not hear the same song for weeks-it's crazy.
In 1999 an ATM was a rare sight on our route. We traveled with thousands of dollars in travelers checks because most of the places we visited(Laos, Vietnam, Tibet, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Burma)had no ATMs at all. In fact the only places that did were India, China, and Thailand. I had a pamphlet that listed all the ATM's in India. Imagine a country the size of the continential US and with 3 times the population and the locations of ALL of the ATMs in this country could be found on a single pamphlet. We'd plan our trip around these ATM stops, stocking up with enough money to hold us over for a few weeks until we hit another one. Luckily this is no longer the case, now you can't walk 100 yards without running into an ATM. You could now very easily leave the country without a penny in your pocket and armed only with an ATM card, travel around the world without any trouble at all.
And then there is the digital camera. The benefits are almost too many to name. First there is the money saved from not having to buy film and then having it developed(last trip we had 70 rolls). It's easy to attach photos to emails and to blogs. Local people always get a kick out of seeing their picture after you take their photo. You can retake photos that do not turn well and delete the ones you do not like. You can entertain yourselves by looking through your photos. We've spent several evenings laughing as we went though all the pictures we've taken so far on this trip. You can take photos of bus/train schedules or of maps so you can use them later. There haven't been many photos of Yo on the blog because she takes most of the pictures and I'm not much of a photographer myself. But when I do take a picture of her now I take 4 or 5 slightly different photos and let her pick her favorite one later.
We're not real technology people, but I must admit that all of these things have made travel a lot more convenient. However, I do miss receiving those letters and packages at post restante.
-Shawn

We were planning on going to Goa. However, it just didn't make sense leaving this place we love so much, just to spend three days traveling to get somewhere that is really quite similar. So we canceled our train tickets south and in Diu we will remain. Having a great room makes all the difference when traveling and we now have probably the best room we've ever had in India. It is also the most expensive, but for $10 a night who can complain. The guest house is owned be a guy named Francisco(Yo calls him San Francisco). Every few days Francisco and his family cook up a huge meal: fish, calamari, shrimp, for the guests staying at his place(see photo in gallery). Yesterday of the 18 people in attendance we had people from 12 different countries digging into the family style meal. It felt like the United Nations.
In the nearly 3 weeks we've been here we've done just about everything there is to do. We've been to the fort, the seashell museum, the fishing village, the Alcatraz-like former prison on an island in the bay, all the beaches, the bird sanctuary, the caves, the waterfall. We even went to the tiny airport two days ago just to see the one and only flight arrive and then depart again. The only thing we haven't done is paid a visit to the infamous Footloose Disco. For some reason this seems really scary.
I've finished three books since we arrived and it makes me nervous to be down to my last two. One of them is Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz, not exactly a beach read. Yo arrived with only one book left. Instead of savoring it like I would have, she inhaled it in a single 36 hour session. She was hoping to trade with other Japanese travelers, but we haven't seen any in weeks. So she is now bookless and has started to try to learn to read and write Hindi.
Every morning after breakfast I walk into town to pick up an Indian English language newspaper. I remember the advice my father gave me right after college when I worked for a mutual fund company. He said read the newspaper cover to cover everyday and you will have something to talk about with everyone you meet. Still following this advice I've learned the names of all of India's big movie stars, the most popular cricket players(though I still struggle with the rules), all the prominent politicians, the names of all the states, and all kinds of pop culture trivia. It makes it easier and so much more enjoyable to chit chat with with all the locals we interact with everyday.
We fly out of Mumbai(Bombay)in less than three weeks, but it's going to be tough to pull ourselves away from Diu. Our favorite ice cream shop here, Ram Vijay, has begun soliciting Yo's opinion on the development of new flavors. She is now working on mint chocolate cookie crunch. She says its always been her dream to work in the ice cream industry. I'm worried that I may be returning home alone.
-Shawn

this is crazy and one of the reasons why i love traveling.
i met this guy at a night club in mexico city 9 months ago. we danced and had a lot of fun then.
a couple days ago, when shawn and i were leaving a restaurant after breakfast, somebody called my name, i looked at the person and i couldn't believe who he was! i met him in mexico which totally on the other side of the world from india. he said that he remembered the gold cassette tape belt buckle i had on that day. i remembered him because he's from malta. he's the first maltese i've ever met. malta island is in this book by haruki murakaki, my favorite writer, so i thought it was so cool to meet somebody from malta.
so we took a snap shot again like we did in mexico 9 months ago. he made my day for sure.

yoshimi