THAT'S NOT COLOGNE!!!

Well for now it looks like we can get you one pic at a time more or less. We'll keep trying on the slideshows. We're in Varanasi at the moment, and it is hot enough to melt people. Jessica is melting right next to me. For the curious out there, 47 degrees Celsius is 116.3 Farenheit... aka I'm dying.

Speaking of dying... yesterday I watched three people get cremated on the shores of the Ganges river. The owner of the "burning" ghat as it's called sat next to me and walked me through the whole ceremony for about an hour. I think for this guy it was business as usual (he hit me up for a "donation" shortly thereafter) but for me, it was a pretty somber experience.

Aside: When I got back to the hotel, a napping Jessica woke up, took a deep breath, and exclaimed (in all seriousness), "ahhh... you smell good!" I quickly informed her that was the smell of burning flesh. I'm dating a monster.

Varanasi is this intersting mix of mystical, hot, and the usual India chaos, but our hotel owner is one sketchy dude, and I think we're gonna peace outta here tomorrow on a train back to Delhi and then head up north to Himachal Pradesh and the Himalayas to escape the heat.

We've been trying to figure out the stone cold stares Jessica got from the Taj the other day and realized that many of the Indians traveling to these sites have little to no interaction with Westerners. Something about being a woman is particularly intriuging to them (my guess is it's the breasts). But it all reached a crescendo in a little town called Tundla.

On our way to Varanasi, we had to take a train from a neighboring town (small, small town). Suffice it to say, Indians don't perceive staring as rude. While I was trying to figure out our train, I left a cheerful Jessica on a bench only to return to one spooked woman. I guess having five guys stare you down and one guy touch your leg will do that. So that has been taking some getting used to. Being a woman in India is an interesting juggle between not being rude but not being overly friendly (I should relate with my very feminine ways, says Jessica).

One last thing, one of the joys of traveling is seeing all the things that are different from where you live, but it's also dawned on me lately that one of lesser talked about pleasures is seeing all the things that are the same. We we're in Agra a few days back seeing a big Muhgal (the Muslim dynasty that used to rule Northern India) fort, and the father of this famuly asked to take a picture of us. I should mention that being a Westerner in India is the closest one will ever come to experiencing celbrity paparazzi. But what the parents really want is to get their kids in the picture with the westerners. Except the two teenage girls couldn't have been more embarassed. You could just see how much they wanted to die or become invisible. Meanwhile, dopey old dad is pushing them into this picture with these confused Americans. I loved it! All I could think, was that I guess teenagers everywhere are embarassed to high hell by the parents. Too funny. Poor girls. They'll look back on that one in ten years and laugh though.

OK, that's all for now. We'll try to post again in a couple days back in Delhi or up in the mountains. Ciao!