Mörquendi

I've been thinking about this for some time and here I am. Back. I think I'm going to get rid of Nittewa because I don't have any politics to talk anymore.

While Israel bombs the shit out of Lebanon and riverbend asks why?, morquendi is back. And because I've been gone for quite some time, no one's actually going to read this.

But heck, this is world wide web. So some freak might actually misspell something on Google and end up here and read this. Just in case that's you. Well, morquendi's back.

Not like it matters, but I'd like you to know I'm back.

To do what?
I don't know. I'm just back.

For how long?
I don't know. But it's good to be back.

Do I have any photographs?
No.

Am I nuts?
Probably.

Well, I'm back in Colombo. Had to skip Bombay and Bangalore becuase of a small problem. Wrote an email to most of the people I could not meet.

I see Kunal's got timecode up and running again. Will contribute to that again sometime soon.

Also CSF is gone. Where to? Why? I don't think anyone really knows...at least none of the people I've asked. This too shal come to pass.

Breathing shit again. Staying in DefCol in aa sorta quaint little neighbourhood but a little too colony like for my liking. Well, what can I expect, it is called defence COLONY after all!!! I like things a little more disorganised and the roads a little more curvy and winding and here and there sorta...

It's been almost 2 days since I got into the Kashmir valley.

Staying on a houseboat on the Dal lake where I knida swindled the guy into letting me stay cheap. According to the Houseboat Owners Assn. rates the place I'm staying in costs 1500 Rs per night (with meals). Here's the conversation roughly (with a little bit of broken Hindi on my part). The guy's name is Latif

Latif: 1200 a night
Me: pagal? (crazy?)...600
L: Tu pagal? (you crazy?) 1200...
M: (shakes head)
L: 1000
M: (sad face) bohoth paisa nahee bhaiya (don't have much money)...poor tourist...
L: 1000 achcha (good) price
M: 600 bhaiya...please...
L: (gives in) 800 final...
M: ok...one night...
L: how many night in srinagar?
M: doh (two) night.
L: 2nd night where stay?
M: find cheaper hotel...but first night stay in your hotel for 800..achcha houseboat...very very nice...bohoth sundar (very pretty)...want to stay but paisa nahee (no money)
L: stay 2 night here...
M: paisa nahee bhaiya (don't have money)...600 doh night ok...600 i stay doh night you get 1200...800 i stay one night you get 800...so give me for 600?
L: (nods his head in defeat)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Logical thinking always works!!! The best rip off is when you've ripped someone off and they feel happy about it, kinda like I got Latif there :) What about being modest? Hey!! I'll be modest about a lot of things, but not my swindling skills!!!

So I'm staying in this really fancy houseboat for 600 rs a night when ideally it should have been costing me one and a half grand at least...not a bad bargainer eh?

Anyways, seriously...

Coming from anywhere else in India Srinagar would look like the perfect holiday home, clean air, no pollution, friendly people and all that shit, but coming here from Leh has kinda messed up my perspective. Srinagar's as polluted as I've seen a city. And objectvely, it is fairly polluted. This I guess is because of the valley. The polluted air doesn't really have anywhere to go. Kinda like in Kandy (in Sri Lanka) it just sticks around in the valley and gathers.

But really, when I go back to Delhi in a few days someone better get me a stretcher to the bus because I am so going to collapse when I have to breathe that shit again...

But the people are perhaps the friendliest I have ever seen anywhere in India. Even that cop who wanted to kick my ass for standing in front of the post office and asking him where it was. Well, I guess I'd have deserved that. Generally, the rule I've developed here is if you want help just ask, the cops are the most helpful, but the people are damn nice too.

I've completed a trip that I've been wanting to do for 5 years. Ever since I first set off for India in 2000, I've know that one day I would end up here.

Yesterday I was higher that I have ever been, literally.

Standing at the Tanglangla pass I was 17582 feet above sea level. The second highest pass in the world. A little excessive for an Islandboy? I guess so, because the altitute sickness almost killed me. I had no idea what it was going to be like so I was completely unprepared. Now I know what it feels like to want to rip your head off your shouders because it feels like it's going to pop. The highest I have ever been before this is a few thousand feet above sea level. And to think that these are just the foothills to the Himalays.

Now we've settled down to a mild 12000 or so feet a.s.l. in Leh and my head's almost back to normal. Leh, the source of the Indus river. Feels awesome to finally be here. You don't need mineral water here because the water in the river is cleaner that what's bottled.

A high altitute desert in the Himalays. Surreal.

The trip here from Manali took two days in a Tata Sumo that's supposed to be game for any terrain. But this was terrain unlike anything I have ever seen before. Most of the time there was no road, and we were just going over a beaten one-lane jeep track. Sometimes there was less than a centimeter between our wheels and a drop of a few hundred meters into a river or a ravine. Crossing rivers were fun. Go into them hard and hope the momentum carries you through. Along the Kangla river we were travelling along a small notch cut into a sheer rock mountainside. It was kind of unnerving to have a few thousand tons of rock hanging over you. On your left there's nothing but more rock and on your right there's just a direct drop into the river a few hundred meters below you.

At some points there was ice around us. Stuff that had not melted through the summer. The termpratures were subzero but the sun was harsh. A situation that I had not imagined possible. It was really freaky when the clouds were below us. This was something I had only experienced in a plane and seen in Nat Geo photographs. Freaky freaky!

The driver had nerves of steel and balls of brass I guess. His name was Ramlal, a Nepali living in Darjeeling but working here in Leh.

To anyone who's ever thought of doing the Manali - Leh road (if you can call it a road) during the six months of the year that it's open, just do it. It'll be one of the most terrifying and rewarding experiences of your life.

Now the journey gets interesting. From Leh to Khargil. From there to Srinagar and then onto Jammu.

In Manali. Get a bloody map and find out where that is why don't you?

I see snow on distant peaks. WHOA! :)

Leaving for Leh tomorrow morning. Find out where that is also...and go oooooh... :) 2 day journey. 4 people. Me, Brit guy and 2 Israelis.

Oh, and today I met Aishwarya, Annie Z, Jabberwock, Chandrahas and Janaki. Was fun.

Kinda strange because this is the second time I met a person/people known to me only online. The first time wasn't so nice. I didn't like them in 'real life' at all and ended up wishing I had never agreed to meet them. I spent a significant amount of time after that wondering if someone I knew as an online entity could actually appeal to me as a person in 'real life'.

Twice I refused to meet people who I got to know through their blogs because I was afraid that reality would kill the magic. Sometimes illusions help us deal with the world at large.

But fuck it, today was great. I like you guys. You're still magic :)

Well, just discovered that two of my mates back from the ol' ACJ have suddenly become bloggers.

Bitches! The least you could do is tell me :)

First: Was hanging out in Delhi today with the 'family' from Chennai, well, most of them, and someone asks Aangana about her blog. Huh? Since when have you been a bloggin' Aangana/Mazala Dosah/Chinna Fanta! ??? Weren't you the one who made faces at me when I was bloggin' away sitting in that dungeon-like computer lab? And asked questions like 'What's the point anyway?'

Anyways, here's a link to Aangana's blog. And if she doesn't pay up soon, I'm going to publish those photographs of her on Mahabalipuram beach. Yes Angy, you know the ones I'm talking about, you doing those Playboy poses in that wet white t-shirt :D And now that you're a TV star maybe they're worth something... (Evil laugh)

Second: Am checking mail like 5 minutes ago find that some wannabe-witty-ass person has left a comment on the blog. Calls themselves Chamique. Huh? This ain't the Moulin Rouge baby!

So me decides to go see who this Chamique person is. And what do I discover? It's none other than Lara frikkin Croft, a.k.a. Psycho Magneto!!!!

So why did we call her these funny nicknames? Lara Croft because she had the best figure in the whole batch and generally scared people in the gym. Psycho Magneto because for some strange reason, all the stalkers and psychos in Chennai seemed to be drawn to her in a strange and inexplicable way.

K and I figured out a way to make money from her superpowers. We'd do what the Pied Piper did. Like all the psychos in town would follow her like the rats followed the Pied Piper. And then a city would be rid of all the crazies. And then we could charge the city a small fee for our services. Not a bad idea actually. But she didn't think it was very funny.

Right now she's in the middle of nowhere in Orissa having crazy wild sex with all the tribals. Actually, she isn't. She's got a job that I envy. Go girl. You know I'm very proud of you :)

I don't have any blackmailable photographs of her, though she has one of me :)

But I do have one I photoshopped back in College where I gave her a cape and a face mask and a black suit with a big toxic green 'PM' across her chest (for Psycho Magneto you asses!), but I'm not really going to share that online.

It's been a month and a day since I left Colombo. I was just about to say 'since I left home', but that would have been a lie. The moment I left it, it stopped being home. So where's home? I have no fucking clue. I like that Simon and Garfunkle song 'Homeward Bound' but just can't relate to it. I keep humming it in my head each time I hit the road. When I say 'Homeward Bound' that generally means I'm dying to hop onto the next bus leaving whereverI am, heading somewhere I've never been before.

It might be another month before I go back. If I want to.



This is why I might not want to go back (cheeky grin)...

I know you're going to read this and throw a tantrum about me putting your photograph on my blog :) I'll be looking forward to it. But you must admit I did a nice crop.

Certain people we know are going to read this and go 'ooooooh' and make all kinds of faces. So what?

In Islamabad. They must really think I'm something. My own 'room' with it's own sitting and dining space and pantry and a massive loo that I could have a party in and a TV with some hundered odd channels. And a fancy car to pick me up from the airport with a uniformed driver and all that. They must really think I'm something :) First time in my life I'm being treated like this.

It's bloody hot here. But it's ok. But it's still a dead and boring city. Looking forward to my short scheduled time in Lahore.

So this thing allows you all the internet access you want, in 20 min bursts. After 20 min it kinda logs off by itself. And then you lose everything you haven't saved as a draft. Thank god for drafts.

On the way here from Colombo the bloody flight (UL 143) was stopped in Mumbai for like a whole hour and half. Aaaaargh. And I was stuck inside the bloody craft with all the loonies. Yes, more than half the crowd was officially mad.

There was a couple sitting next to me. They were from Mumbai and were returning home from Malaysia through Colombo. They were in Malaysia for their honeymoon. How fucking sweet. I just wish they didn't have to make out like teenage kids in front of me.

THERE MUST BE RULES ABOUT DECENT BEHAVIOUR IN AIRCRAFT!!!! For chrissake there were kids around and these two were making out and he was running his hand up her skirt and down the front of her blouse and all kinds of gross shit like that. Now picture me sitting and trying to read Eco's 'The Name of The Rose' while all this is going on less than a foot away from me.

If they'd been on honeymoon for a month why were they behaving like this? Were their parents with them on the honeymoon? Or was the chemistry so much they just couldn't stop?

Sitting in the Jinnah International Airport in Karachi waiting to catch my connection to Islamabad. Got 3 hours to go...

This airport has changed a lot in the past. I remember I first came here (flying through to Lahore back then) when I was 14, and it was a hellhole. Even back then the flight in from Colombo would arrive here close to midnight, and you would have to hang around till early morning to catch your connection to anywhere. Spending a night in this airport back then was a terrible terrible thing. I can remember the whole place was bloody hot, and I suffered all through the night. No amount of coke would make things better :)

I've been here twice in the past year and things have really changed. Come on, now I'm sitting at a computer terminal in the departure lounge (domestic) and there's free internet access. Yes, the browser is a shell and there are annoying ads floating around over much of the screen space, but it's still quite cool, and there are a dozen or so terminals like this spread out all over the lounge.

The people too have become a lot nicer. Someone's been giving them serious classes on how to be nice to people. Way back when I was 14 I can remember how some of the people were complete insensitive assholes. But now they smile at you and do all that 'sir' and 'ma'am' shit. Not bad.

But the security's very lax. I'm walking all over the place, including that I know I'm not supposed to be in, and no one gives a damn. The guards are mostly sleeping. Ok it's 3 in the morning, but this is supposed to be a hub of sorts, and they're supposed to learn to deal with the fact that there will be people all over the place all day and all night, and that their job of keeping people out of the places they shouldn't be in doesn't stop with the night.

Anyways, was just informed by a pop-up that there's a 20 min limit on the time available on this PC. So hitting publish and running now. Will write from the city of the zombies, Islamabad. Hellhole I'm stuck in for a whole day!!!

And the keyboard really sucks. So don't mind the typos and all that. Some of the keys just stop working compltely sometimes.