monday

Awoke feeling curiously slammed from the usually innocent Tylenol PM I took before bed. Limping to the mirror, I discovered I had developed a really impressive specimen of Evil Eye, tiny blood shot veins tracing morbidly across my pupil. I tried to convince myself this was not a manifestation of exotic tropical eye parasites, and headed out with Aneesa to visit the travel agent.

We had been talking about visiting Hampi, one of India's best preserved ancient cities for a long time now, and finally decided it was time to bite the bullet and buy the tickets. Thus, we took a rickshaw over to the travel agent and proceeded to immerse ourselves in Indian bueuracracy, bastard child of the English system. (I blame them for everything.) I wanted to help, but when the plump and eminently confident looking woman behind the counter said, “What is wrong with your eye?”, I sunk into a chair in discontent. I was pretty much certain I was going to have a bloodshot evil eye forever.

In any case, Aneesa was a trooper and booked our tickets – second class AC train on the way there, sleeper bus on the way back since everything else was booked up solid. We then proceeded over into town to attend the new volunteers orientation, since we had to Officially Meet the new people though of course we already had.

Aneesa and I had a bizarre interlude where the rickshaw driver kept on attempting to take us over to a “veddy veddy nice fruit seller” who would apparently provide with an “excellent pineapple, very excellent.” I am usually a sucker for pineapples but I passed as I did not want to carry one around all day. In any case, we managed to shake him off (still muttering in broken Hindi about pineapples) and found the hotel for the buffet lunch.

The lunch was actually quite good, and as appears to be traditional, the new volunteers barely touch the food, while the old volunteers eat as much as is humanly possible, especially the free (!) meat. I downed chicken, lots of spicy fish curry, mutton shanks, some sort of tasty spinach paneer dish, and lots of spicy tomato chutney. I felt sorry for the new volunteers who spent most of the lunch watching the old guard devour their food like hungry, miserable wolves, but they couldn’t understand. We finished off with fruit salad and delicious, icy strawberry ice cream, then waddled off to Commercial Street to show the volunteers around.

I popped into FabIndia to look for shirts for my dad, but after visiting by far the sketchiest bathroom I have ever encountered (up some dark gungy stairs, guarded by a toothless, chainsmoking woman in a yellow sari, people upstairs playing cards and glowering as you latch the door securely behind you), found the others had apparently abandoned me. I attempted not to melt in the heat and waited for them to return. Then, thankfully, we decided to return to the Villa where I could have a damn nap.

We had decided to go clubbing that evening, and along those lines decided to try Amnesia at the Cavery hotel. Unfortunately, we found ourselves in the rickshaw of a new driver, who manifested this by driving his rickshaw at exactly 2 miles an hour while inching, carefully, over every single bump and pothole and crack in the road- and in India, there are many. To add insult to injury, he had no idea where he was going, and stopped for directions constantly – including asking other rickshaw drivers. Now, it is a bad idea when other rickshaw drivers conspire because they usually attempt to jack up the price, which is exactly what happened. Chris noted, “Look, I understand what you’re saying,” but they rolled their eyes and kept on attempting to screw us, wherein I got a little pissy (surprise!), and managed to get into an argument with the rickshaw driver, who tried to act all put upon and offended because I was not interested in getting cheated. I was just about to eat him when Lorraine and Chris held me back , and we putted off to the hotel.

Unfortunately, the club ended up being pathetic – two couples sitting around and the promised “Retro” music being really really retro, as in “Johnny Mathis,” which meant we escaped to Taika, the techno club I think I have mentioned before. I have.

This was fun. Lorraine was a bad influence and induced me to dance on a table which I would NEVER do on my own, except we almost got kicked out. However, this made me an instant rockstar to all the men in the club, meaning I cleaned up on the free whisky and offered dinner dates (yes, no.) We also met a couple of Americans from Chicago – Tan and James (I think) – who might meet us at the Leela Palace on Wednesday. Perhaps.

We drove back snockered in the rickshaws. The rickshaw guy dangerously was a little bit snockered too (no problem! No problem!....problem!), but that also meant he let Lorraine and Adam drive the damn thing, which admittedly was all kinds of hilarious. Incriminating photos will make their way to a Facebook near you.