Couch Surfing in Karnataka

After Puttaparthi I decided to try that website couchsurfing.com. Initially, I was a bit wary of this site since you go and stay with strangers. Then I was thinking about all of the safe things I've done on this trip like flying to Srinagar to stay with the family of a man I met in a coffee shop in Delhi, and like getting off the plane in Bombay and getting into a car with some people I didn't know... you know, highly recommended behaviour if you want to get yourself killed. All this I did just based on my gut instincts about people, and luckily it seems that so far my instincts are pretty on. All this is to say, that I realized that couch surfing is actually significantly safer than just going to any old stranger's home and so I decided to give it a shot. For one thing, it had been awhile since I had met any locals and I was a little tired of hanging out with foreigners all the time.

My first experience couch surfing was with a family in Bangalore. They are a 3 person family; Vijay, Niya and Arjun, kind of like an Indian Nate, Katy and Naomi (they are all the same age, respectively). They were amazingly welcoming and helpful. Unfortunately, I was there during the week so Vijay had to work, but lucky for me, Niya was up for going and doing some sightseeing with me! On the first day Niya, Arjun and I went to the Lalbagh Botanical Gardens. It was so lovely, and I was super stoked that Niya let me carry Arjun around in the sling (I think she didn't mind too much as it gave her back a rest). That night I prepared cauliflower cheese pie for dinner, and it turned out pretty gross, which was embarrassing. Not to make excuses, but it seems the pie really suffers when the oven can't keep consistent heat. They were polite and ate it anyway, haha.

The next day Niya, Arjun and I went to the Bangalore palace (which is more like a mansion than a palace) and then the art gallery, which was beautiful. Of course, having a 6 month old baby means that they couldn't really go out at night, so I arranged to meet another person, Reza, from couchsurfing for dinner that night.

The traffic was crazy when I left Vijay and Niya's house so it took me over an hour to get downtown on the bus. I met Reza and then he told me that a few of his friends were making dinner at their flat and would I be interested in going there for dinner. I trusted my gut and thought he seemed fine, so I agreed and we took a rickshaw even farther from my hosts' home. By the time we got there I estimated that I was close to a 2 hour drive from my hosts' home and it was already 9:30pm. Reza's friends were super sweet (with an awesome awesome dog!) and offered for me to crash there, which I accepted. Dinner, as it turned out, was a bunch of meat with basil garnish. After not eating meat since Kashmir, it was a little hard on my stomach to have so much carne but it was good nevertheless.

Reza lives in and is from Iran but he went to university in Bangalore so he knows a lot of people there still. Most of his friends were also students at Bangalore University, so it was nice to tap into a different social network. Originally, I had planned on heading to Mysore the next day, but Reza convinced me to stay another night. He took me to the Iskon temple (Hare Krishna temple) and a group of us went out to a movie. It was a terrible movie, "Gulliver's Travels" with Jack Black, but it was fun anyway, besides, it was my first 3D movie ever! The following day, Friday, I finally caught the bus to Mysore where I had arranged to stay with a young man, Rohit.

Now, I figured life couldn't really get any better. I had already met the nicest people in Bangalore, but Rohit is really really really cool. The first night we stayed up drinking this cashew booze from Goa and just shooting the shit. He is super busy at work, so the next day he went to work and I went to the Mysore Palace (now that's a palace!) and then the art gallery on my own. Yesterday he managed to get the day off so he came with me to the railway museum, which was fun for both of us. He had never been there before, and since it was mostly just a bunch of trains you could climb on, it was significantly more fun with company than it would have been had I gone alone.

Rohit has invited me to a wedding in Calcutta and I've looked into flights and I've decided to go. The wedding is from January 25-30, and my applications to Naturopathic schools are due Feb 1, so this means I must get my applications in before I go. I was thinking I would go find a hotel somewhere and just hole myself away to work on them, but then Rohit said I could do it here if I wanted. So now I've spent 3 nights in his living room, and I hope he doesn't get sick of me, but it's nice to have some time to work on my applications in peace (which is what I should be doing, rather than updating my blog!). Okay, well, I should go work on my applications now. I just wanted to let you all know how I'm doing. I'm afraid that I've glossed over much of the interesting bits, but that's what happens when I try to recount everything without going into detail... oh well. Maybe I'll tell you something more later, like about the dog I seem to have adopted who follows me everywhere and is sitting outside the internet cafe as I type!

Much love to everyone! Ciao now.