Osho, for shau!

We are here in Pune. Four hours from Mumbai, it is a suprisingly pretty and hopping town. Well four hours on train, three on bus or six on a bus full of people and goods. Our bus yesterday filled the rack on top so mush with goods that on the slightest of incline we wee going 10km/h. Not to mention the Walt like scare I had about the brakes failing. But at the end we arrived then got hussled by rickshaws but at the end we met Manish. He is our friend who is attending FTII, Film and Television Institude of India, and is letting us stay in his hostel room. Very nice guy. He doesn't have it very bad either though since he is letting us stay in his room he gets to stay with his pretty girl friend. The school is out, everyone is in Goa for the International Film Festival so we have the campus almost to ourselves. These kids are funny, they live and breathe cinematography it seems like. We will certainly be smarter when we leave Pune, so watch out! There are lots of pretty banyan trees and I feel this is only the beginning. The south is going to be great and we will write about it. Gorusmek uzere,
Alp

Parting From The Weary Dehli Land

So at last the day has come, we are leaving Delhi this afternoon. After almost not being able to find a ticket to Mumbai, we had to dish out $60 for 2 express aircon 3A tickets and a 17 hour ride. We still consider ourselves lucky though because if we hadn't used the tourist quota we could be in Delhi for another week waiting for a place in a train. We are not sure if we will stay in Mumbai at all or head directly to Pune, where there is a good friend named Manish. Other than all of this, there are grimmer news. I have not been able to penetrate through the buraoucrscy for the turkish military so I am in bad standing, or an escapee as they call it, so back on track with business plans. Perhaps all the better, it seems the best kind of business to be had in India is exporting so I am looking into creating a connection in Istanbul, hopefully with my unlce Yavuz. At the same time Ingrid is looking into ESL courses. We are still predominantly having fun, or faving (new word for having fun). There is another word that I commisioned Ingrid to make which is thwilling, thwurling hair. So is the status quo. If any of you all have made new and useful words lately please let us, and everyone, know.
Alp!

The most beautiful war; Diwali

Just a quick post about Diwali. Indians know how to have fun and as a result there are a lot of burn victims. It was Diwali here a few days ago and staying at the American Embassy while it was going on gave us the sense that we were in the middle of a war. There were sounds of exploxion everywhere, it wasn't like watching the fireworks in US. It was happening all the time and all around. The air was full of smoke even a km away from the nearest fireworks. I also got a minor throat infection from the air. And I of course suplurged $8 on a butt0load of fireworks meself: rockets, flower pots and most fun and crazy of all the hitler ground wheels, which is four rockets mounted on a swastika that spun on the ground. Well it was fun, made me want to learn how to make fireworks, which I will and include on our upcoming novel.
Things are slow here, we hope Esin leaves soon and waiting for documents from US for my stuff, but dont lose faith in us or in our blog as the adventure will take of on two wheels in December. Pir Melinge

Alp!

Answe ring self que stions

We r in Delhi and trying to fix my problematic situation in the world. We posted new pictures, so you can look at them by clicking on the pictures link a few posts back. We have also recieved some critism for not answering our own questions, so we would like to do so. Alp's prefered method of execution is being drowned in freezing water while Ingrid just doesn't want to be executed (and is going to make it part of her life's work to make sure Alp doesn't ever have to actually brave his preferrence). About the answer to one question, y did bush get re-elected? As for what color of poop is prefered that one had a correct answer which noone got ( well only walt answered ), white. poop, as it stands now, is everything that we eat swirled together and thus, can only be the amorphous colour of brown. what if instead of being all the colours, it simply lost all its colour and became pristine white. we would all have a very different relationship to feces then (seeing them as a symbol of purity rather than filth). Also I would like to add that in Ayurvedic science food has three parts, lowest part becomes excrement, middle part becomes body, and higher part the mind.

Alping

kabhi khushie kabie gham (sometimes happy sometimes sad)

So our friends, we are sorry about the outcome of the election, as all of you I am sure are. If you are not, you are reading the wrong blog, this is not Hickbillmcgee's weblog. Well I leave it all to those who can do something about it figure it out. But a leaving thought on political issues; if you consider Osama to be evil because he has commanded the death of at most 5,000 people so far, where is Bush's tally at?
Some good news though, there seems to be an offer from the Turkish government for my paid military service so it is very likely that I will not have to go to military service. Again, if you think this is bad news, you are looking at the wrong blog! So to celebrate we decided to move into a nice room. After leaving our room in Rishikesh at 10 we started for Haridwar. It was Bengali season in Haridwar so all the hotels where full. We had hoped to get a room in this art deco style hotel that used to belong to the king of Nepal, ooohh. Well the ganga in Haridwar was also not as roaring as in Rishikesh, so we decided to head back. After six hours we moved into the Suite at Green Hotel, 50 yards from our previous. There we enjoyed ourselves much. I took a bathe in the ganga so all my sins were washed off but today it is me again.
alp

let me add an admission of guilt. it is my own judgmental attitude that caused me to make my puerile remark regarding the "hippies." for the record, i apologise to all those folks out there and those who identify themselves with this group.
ingrid

ganga ganj

brothers and sisters~ hail from rishikesh, the yoga capital of india. after waking up at dawn on saturday morning for our obligatory ganges boat ride in varanasi, we spent a solid 24 hours on the train heading west to haridwar, then another hour on the public bus to rishikesh, and finally another hour searching for a room in a guesthouse. we were stared at on the train by villagers in the morning, chatted with a college student painfully excited by being able to talk about our foreign culture with him in the early afternoon, and finally proceeded to our correct compartment and met a south indian family on a pilgrimage tour of north india in the evening. alp witnessed one of their compatriots doing early morning yoga in his berth and shrieking like a monkey... and felt great admiration for him.

as for rishikesh itself, it is quite clean and well-planned out for an indian town. it has two large pedestrian suspension bridges over the ganges and countless ashrams with large colourful religious sculptures on the banks. we plan on doing some watercolours in our new colouring book, perhaps by the river, and probably will not avail of the limitless yoga, acupuncture, reiki, massage, etc,etc, oppurtunities available here. by doing so, we would run the risk of meeting too many hippies. eww!!!

i have been a little ill lately, feeling tired and the like. we have availed of all the ayurvedic pharmacies in town however and last night i got some nose drops for my sinusitis that smell/taste like mango chutney! and by the way... that blog entry entitled "the runs" was metaphoric rather than literal. we have fortunately escaped a major case of the runs...