Photo Gallery Update

The Ghostface Buddha Photo Gallery is now COMPLETE, proudly boasting some 7700 photographs of all the places in India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka where Ghostface Buddha manifested his presence this past year, 1 G.F.B.E (2009-1010 C.E.) I have finally finished captioning and sorting all of them. As you will see, they are now organized by Indian state (or other country), and suborganized by town, and arranged alphabetically so you don't have to squint and scroll around the page cursing "WHY THE HELL IS PUNJAB NEXT TO GUJARAT?!". I would say it's the least I could do, but you don't want to test my capacity for idleness.

-GFB

Let's Call It A Year?

Well, dear readers, once again we come to an important moment in this blog. I am writing now to announce something that may have been gnawing at your suspicions for some time as events have been unfolding, like when you're watching a cheap film late at night, but you missed the opening credits, and while you watch you slowly become more and more attuned to certain idiomatic expressions and turns of phrase, certain well-worn elements of plot, and you begin to realize that the film is almost certainly going to be a softcore porn, and the amply-endowed heroines are going to offer each other their breasts at any moment, and you wearily reach for the remote because, goddammit, you were actually hoping for an moving but accessible drama about sisterly bonding.

This is one of those moments; albeit a non-erotic one with nary an ounce of silicone in sight, where I announce what many of you have probably concluded: this blog, and the tale of Ghostface Buddha's journey in the kaleidoscopic mindscapes of southern Asia are soon coming to an end. No, this is not the last post. In fact, I have another one almost finished sitting in my 'drafts' box, and one or two little things down the line, but this is my last cable from the front. Aye, in but hours' time I shall be taking off from Colombo's international airport, and soaring brainlessly over the Arabian Sea, putting the patience of Royal Jordanian Airways' flight attendants to a mighty test. Since I have to, y'know, pack and shit, I have to leave this computer and sign off from the crappy realms of Indo/Ceylonese cyberspace one last time.

Keep reading in the next few days, when I'll be delivering a number of posts from American soil about my last adventures in Sri Lanka, at least one of which directly compares Sinhalese pilgrims to a woman's menstrual flow.

-GFB

Quickie 10/17

Once again, dear readers, it is time for you not to hear from me for a week at least, but this time I actually have a good reason. Early tomorrow morning, owing to my dogged perseverance in dealing with the security/military Establishment, I will be flying on some sort of Sri Lankan Air Force craft to the city of Jaffna, in the northern extreme of Sri Lanka beyond the totally-off-limits Vanni region, where the recently-ended war ground to its brutal conclusion.

I have absolutely no idea what I am going to find in Jaffna and the surrounding areas, but I do know this: I'm not stupid enough to write about it while I'm still there. If there is anything the Sri Lankan military hates, it is terrorists, followed shortly by "journalists". And, seeing that the phrase "journalist" can be used rather expansively, and the fact that Sri Lanka ranks 162nd out of 175 nations in Press Freedom (just ahead of, let's see.... scroll down until you get to the bright red bit... YES! They just beat SAUDI ARABIA!), I think I'll just handle these things later.

So to recap: Submitting myself to the custody of the Sri Lankan military, exploring war-ruined towns and villages, back in a week. Don't worry about it being dangerous. I've done my research. The most explosive ordnance I'll be handling is the pickled chillies. They've killed better men than me. No, that's untrue. There is no man better than me.

-GFB

Ghostface Buddha Hath Eaten Of The Cow

Greetings, revered Readers, for I do have News to tell.

As I recounted in these very pages not long ago, in the lands of Ceylon, aye, the wondrous isle of Taprobane indeed, it is permitted to eat Beef, the cooked flesh of the Cow.

And so, dear Readers, one fyne afternoon in Kandy, I did Consume of this Beef. Coalesced from the ravages of   Strange and Uncouthe Oriental maladies, I walked, as is Salubrious, to a refined establishement by the name of Devon's in pursuit of Beef Steak with Fried Onions.

 I waited and my Beef Steak with Fried Onions was served to me on a clean, white plate, along with Beans, and Potatoes crispened in the French manner. The steak was rather more Chinee of type than I had imagined, yet before no God shall I swear that it was not Goode. I ate of it fully, and reached such a Plateau of Satisfaction as can only be bestowed by the Goodliest of Meats.

In the days since, oft have I Partaken of the Cowflesh, and on all occasions it has been much to my Delyte. For truly, this Best of Beasts granted to us for the Relishing by the Almighty doth make a fyne fixing for many a dish and snackke. Place thee a strip of Beef in a Bun, with such Vegetables as Providence hath granted the lands in your surrounds, and indeed, ye shall find that it doth Savor of the very Ideal of Deliciousness. Else, place thee a portion of Beef in a saucerlet of fynely seasoned Sauces, and it shall make a most Wondrous Morsel of its own.

Let it be known that I harbor no ill will towards the Cows of the Island of Serendip, for Truth be told, they do not possess the Malice of their kin in the Hindoo domaines. Indeed, merely to be a Cow ought be fitting Karmic punishment for past Sinnes,  the final Absolution of which is to be found Roasted upon a Plate, with Toppings and Sides, and by God's Grace.

Yours in Victory and Health,
Ghostface Buddha

The End?

Well, so ends my account of the Andaman Islands, and yes, so too ends my account of India. I've been thinking about what to say in this post for a long time. Do I try and sum up some inner wisdom I've gained? Do I try to encapsulate the Indian spirit in a few paragraphs of cheeky prose? Do I just say "Fuck all y'all! I'm GFB! Peace!" ? Do I concoct some elaborate bookending narrative. I started and stopped on a few different conceits for Ghostface Buddha's Last Post From India over the past few weeks, only to find that they were all too limited... I wanted to write everything. "Everything" wasn't happening. Some of it felt redundant. I already wrote my summary of the Indian experience. I've already expounded all the critical observations I have to share. On the other hand, I had about twenty closing lines of various types, some of them good, some of them massively inadequate, and all of them jostling in my mind to clinch that single moment at the bottom of this post. Then, just last night as I pondered my fading Indian moments in a shabby Chennai hotel block, it hit me: I don't have to settle on just one. So, my friends, here are not one, but several endings to GFB's Indian odyssey. It's like a DVD! Alternate endings.... that is, if the "endings" are really endings...

....................................................

My neck cracked as I hunched over the map, its wrinkled and watersplotched surface straining to reveal a sign. I needed one desperately. "God damn.... I've been everywhere in this dump" I muttered to myself. I scanned the printed Asian names with the eye of a batty old woman looking over a middle-school yearbook with a magnifying glass, trying to determine which snotty-nosed little shit she had seen in the back of the Hendersons' yard taunting the cats. Rajkot: seen it. Uttarkashi: been there. Tambaram: the name rings a bell. I despaired of finding a new place to roam, when suddenly the low afternoon sun glinting off the mirror of a rickshaw blasted through my window like the very laser engraver God himself used to score the tragically lost fine print on the Ten Commandments. A wisp of smoke began rising from the corner of the page, and there in the massive expanses beyond the Himalayas I caught sight of a single word, a mere five characters of striking bold text in length.

C......H.......I.......N........A

I froze. A sudden sense of certainty held me. I did not feel seized or taken. Rather, this pure, uninhibited knowledge swelled from within. Regaining my senses, I glanced back down at the map, where China lay beckoning, curling a long, opium-stained fingernail towards me, sensually reciting the many industrial virtues of the People's Republic, and all was clear.

"Well, fuck that shit. PEACE"

...................................................

India does not want me to leave. I've decided half the people just desperately want me to stay, and the other half want to detain me here as a form of punishment. I imagine the divide runs straight down the gender line. In any case, it was a man who tried to fuck me over at the Chennai airport. Now, I am willing to admit I was cutting things a bit close with a lateish arrival to the international departures lobby, but what followed was inexcusable.

Up walks some fancy-looking idiot from Kingfisher Airlines, informing me that he can not allow me to claim my boarding pass. "Oh, and why not?" I rightly wondered. He told me that I was late. I felt that in India of all places, where people sometimes won't even get onto an empty bus until three times its capacity try to board it in motion as it roars out of the station, getting to the airport an hour before the flight out to be fine. But no. Nooooooooooo. I was there only fifty minutes early, and ticketing closes an hour before departure.

"Sir, it is 12:00. Ticketing closed at 11:50"

I realized this was no time to express my immediate reaction, which was "So fucking what?" and instead tried to feign surprise and outrage, and while the outrage was genuine, the feigned surprise I fear was overshadowed by the boiling hot tones of contempt I felt dribbling out of my speech. This man believed I was trying to be special. I thought he was being a tool. I attempted reasoning. "Yes, sir, I understand, you cannot keep a plane waiting for one man, but there is almost an hour left. The plane is there. I simply find it unreasonable you do not allow me to try and reach my flight, even if I must be rushed." That, of course, is how airports work in sensible places, but this is India, and India has Indian beaurocracy, and The Rules Are The Rules. I even tried philosophizing, getting him to appreciate the reason the rules are in place (to discourage tardiness and delays), and how they applied to the situation, but found it was impossible to do so without making blistering remarks about the Indian timekeeping psyche and bit my lip.("Well in some countries we have the sense to time our own arrival at airports, for ur own sake, and staff try to help when we face the disaster of missing a flight rather than beating us over the head with a stopwatch and a clown noses, making us sit on our hands while the jungle slowly reclaims the terminal until vines clog the customs desk and monkeys are to be found fornicating in the luggage scanners, all because 'ticketing closes at 11:50' ")

Somehow I prevailed upon him to just take my damn luggage after having him lecture me like a schoolboy turning in a late essay. "Do you think it's fair, sir? Do you think all these people who were here before should have come now instead?" My silence was burning me, but the visions of having to deal with some other dunce at the Immigration ministry in a few days to explain why I'd overstayed my visa kept the rage barely contained inside.

Now, unbeknownst to me, but certainly known to Chickenshit over here, the flight I was aiming for was delayed. The plane was not even in India yet when he was trying to send me away for tardiness. That hypocritical, lying, half-wit weasel shagger....

But I was to have my revenge. Oh yes, sir.

He led me to where my boarding pass was to be printed and started discussing something with his assistant, looking much concerned about seating arrangements. The assistant seemed to find a solution immediately, but he looked deeply pained. Finally, because The Rules Are The Rules, he was forced to surrender.

"Sir, because you are late there is a seating assignment problem, and we must accommodate you in... First Class."

Oh, you mean the First Class where the delectable stewardesses assume I'm a First Class paying customer and treat me to all the enormous seats, silly perks and gourmet cuisine received by the legitimate bigwigs? That First Class? BWAAAAHAHAHHAHAHHA

Nice try, India. You almost got me good there.

Hey, India......

SUCK
MY
DICK

PEACE
......................................

"Hey, cows" I said.

"Moooooooooooooooo?" 280 million cretinous mounds of ambling fertilizer factories asked in unison.

"Guess what?"

The pitiable cheesebeasts hazarded a guess. "Muuuoo?"

 "Nope.....what I was going to say was...... I WIN. FUCK ALL Y'ALL. PEACE."

......................................

The time had come at last. Girlface Buddha and I faced off in the Chennai airport. My flight was finally being called for boarding. Her flight back to the northwest left in another three hours. After many travails, shared joys, and shared miseries, it might now be our final parting. No more hobbling down Himalayan slopes in the snow together. No more coordinating pincer-strike blitzkriegs against sari-nibbling insects in jungle huts together. No more clambering down muddy mountainsides to retrieve luggage launched from bouncing jeep roofs together. I was leaving more behind than a beautiful country and its miscreant cattle.

I almost didn't mention this because it's a wee bit personal, but y'all might have got confused if Girlface suddenly diappeared from the pages of this blog. But like I said....endings might not be endings, and all I can say is there is a chance we shall all be hearing from her again. And since endings might not be endings, it bears repeating what many have said before: that an ending is just the bit before a new beginning.

And it is with that thought that I would like to announce a certain "new beginning".

Ladies and gentlemen, you are now reading the very first lines of....

Ghostface Buddha: Sri Lanka

SUCK
MY
DICK

PEACE 

Oh Let The Sun Beat Down On Some Other Bastard's Face

When wandering the world for extended periods, one occasionally runs into conflicting motives, such as "Should I spend the better part of the week travelling on foot between remote Dard villages, or should I bum around Leh doing nothing so that I can watch the final stages of the World Cup?" I found this quandary simple to resolve. I have been a lifelong fan of the Netherlands football team, while I can't say that I like yak milk and barley porridge all that much. In this time, I managed to accomplish extraordinary amounts of fuck-all. One day I was encouraged to go to the nearby Tibetan refugee town for a celebration of the Dalai Lama's birthday, but decided to sleep in when I heard there was no shade and no snacks. This decision became irrevocable when it was announced that His Holiness was flying in to attend in person. Ghostface Buddha and the Dalai Lama should simply not be in the same place at the same time, for the same reason that Bruce Willis and Vladimir Putin should never be left in a crowded room: a brutal clash of raw charisma, numerous civilian casualties, and at least one person staked through the heart by a billowing, bullet-ridden flag.

My stay in Leh, however, had reached that point where I had been there so long that every huckster on the street knew my face and was beginning to take it as a personal insult that I ignored their thinly veiled entreaties to have a cup of tea and discuss the retail price of hashish day after day. It was time to leave, so I set my sights down the mountains to the west, to the (in)famous Vale of Kashmir. Despite the inconvenience of travelling around a virtual police state covered in barbed wire, where you don't walk the streets at night because the darkness makes it too hard to see which way the hand grenades are bouncing, I was prepared to go. I even reconciled myself to the guaranteed ubiquity of Kashmiri hustlers, the most obnoxious and gratingly loquacious class of people this side of the Moroccan silver bazaars. Then, the very morning I was to leave for the waystation town of Kargil (a place best known for being the fulcrum of 1999's inane but potentially calamitous Indo-Pak mountain war), the police in the Kashmiri capital of Srinagar shot and killed a number of young street protesters, and half the state was immediately placed under 24-hour lockdown. This was an unnaceptable problem for me, not because I was concerned with confronting the police (indeed, the Amsterdam Police Department, the Romanian Immigration Police, the municipal police of Sofia [Bulgaria], the US Department of Homeland Security, the Grand Ducal Police of Luxembourg, and the Guatemalan and Turkish armies have all tried to lock me up without success), but because I needed unrestricted access to a pub where I could watch the World Cup Final.

Speaking of which, the solution to another of my problems would have been to send that nimble goal-scoring bastard Andres Iniesta to Kashmir in my stead. But let us speak no more of that match.

Anyways, that I why Ghostface Buddha did not go to the fabled Kashmir valley. The sun will not, as Led Zeppelin rather vaguely suggest, beat down upon my face, and there won't be any stars to fill my dream. That's what hallucinogens are for. "But Ghostface? You said Jammu & Kashmir was the last state you were going to visit, and if you aren't seeing any more of it, does that mean this journey is...over?"

No. J&K may be the last Indian state I visit, but I never said anything about Union Territories!

4:20 Abuse Semantics Every Day. PEACE

More Excuses

Greetings, readers. May the beneficence of a thousand gold-eyed tortoises shine upon you.

I am writing today to tell you why I am not writing tomorrow. This is after all a blog about traveling in South Asia, and I am not in South Asia.

OK, that might be stretching it a bit. I am in the town of Leh, which is here. The locals proudly claim that they are part of Central Asia, which based on the surroundings I won't dispute, and they even have a Central Asian museum.

In fact, I plan on writing about this plenty (and catching up with my previous exploits, as usual), but since this entails paying for satellite internet at 90 RUPEES PER HOUR, my dazzling wit and penetrating insights into the universal foibles of humanity so tellingly illuminated on the Indian street will have to sit in my notebooks until I find an economical way of going about this. Time is money, and let's face it, you weasels aren't worth $2.05 of my time for every half-post about stepping in yak shit. Might I suggest you find something else worthwhile to read for a spell? I hear the Twilight series is also very good, in that it is also like reading about stepping in yak shit.

As always, your faithful narrator-demigod,
-GFB

I Still Love You

Attention, readers: do not fear. Ghostface Buddha has not forgotten you. I am merely suffering from Himalayan internet connectivity. I am currently undergoing an ambitious and wide-ranging program of activities deep into the Indian Himalayas, in places so ridiculously remote and precipitous that even the internet experiences Acute Mountain Sickness. I have however, been dutifully taking notes on this adventure, which is shaping up to be delightfully both epic and petty. I will be posting them up when and how it becomes possible. And in case there was any doubt about whether this blog has 'jumped the shark', let me tell you: yes. I am about to introduce a lovable sidekick. You should probably just forget I'm still writing and load the 1st season of GFB onto a DVD and put it in an excessively elaborate cardboard box, perhpas with holograms on it.

Until next time
-GFB

Sad News

Bad news, dear readers: This electricity problem is getting to be too much. Turns out that as large areas of India and Nepal rely on hydropower collected by unsophiticated barriers, this time of year (when the rivers have almost dried up long after the previous year's monsoon) there are scheduled power cuts lasting up to twelve hours a day. And the hours when the power is on are craftily chosen to be such times as when I'm usually sensibly asleep. Clearly, as this post is evidence, I do have internet access, but the limited time I spend on computers for the next month or so will be prioritized to loading up my pictures and actual important business. Thus, I am sad to say, there will be an increase in the proportion of "quickie" updates in the short term. By the time I can actually sit down to type I either have too much to do or I've lost the rythmn of my writing process, unable to seam together the uniquely awful notes I take beforehand and can hardly guess the meaning of after a few days. On the bright side, I guess this means I will be focusing closer on some of the more adventurous interludes. Just assume that the time I would have spent amusing you is now being more productively utilized tossing broken coconut shells at buffaloes. I'm sure you'll understand.
-GFB

edit:to lessen the trauma of this announcement on your delicate constitutions, I have just put the finishing touches on a big ol' photo update I've been loading up for-god-damn-ever. -GFB

DEFCON G

The Oval Office
"Mr. President! Mr. President! We have a-"

"The president isn't here, General."

"Where is he? He has to see this intel immediately!"

"He's behind the house shooting hoops with the girls."

"Damn, he's cool- I'll go get him. Assemble the cabinet in the briefing room!"

The White House Lawn
"Mr. President! Mr. Presi...nice layup, Malia...Mr. President, we have a situation."

"Yes?"

"Sir, I've already placed all our strategic forces on DEFCON 1."

"TELL ME WHY, GENERAL."

"Sir, we've lost track of-"

"My God, not the Jupiter-II...how could they have known?"

"No sir, not the Jupiter-II...worse."

"No......"

"Sir, we've lost our trace on Ghostface Buddha."

"Assemble the Joint Chiefs, summon the cabinet, now tell me-"

"Already done, sir."

"Tell me everything we know."

"Sir, at 0450 our tracking units in the Indian Ocean reported signal intelligence that Ghostface Buddha has abandoned his travel-writing job and-"

"What does this mean, General?"

"Sir, that's the last the tracking units heard. We believe he's still in India, and he's gone rogue."

"Dear....God. Forget the cabinet. You have Green Light."

"At once sir!"

**All commands, phase readiness from DEFCON 1 to DEFCON G. The Turkey is out of the Oven. I repeat, we have Rampant Poultry. The Turkey is out of the Oven. Over**.

**All commands...God save us all. Over and out.**

FYI

You may have been wondering "What does it feel like to get hit by a bus?"

Well, let me tell you.

(I'm fine, by the way)

Actually getting hit by the bus doesn't really hurt that much. You have time for a lot of thought, or rather, time seems to slow to accomodate all the thoughts you have in a flash. Somewhere between the side of the bus and the pavement I had quite the conversation with myself. It went something like this:

"OWWWW FUCK"
"What the fuck?"
"Wow, I really didn't think that bus was going to hit me."
"Who does this asshole think he is? All these other buses driving like maniacs haven't been hitting me."
"Ohhhhhhhhh fuck PREPARE FOR IMPACT"

Getting hit by the bus doesn't hurt that much. What does hurt is hitting the road.

"FFFFUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKKK"
"OW MY FUCKING HAND"
"FUCK MY KNEE"
"This could have been worse"
"My face? OK, didn't hit my face..."
"Oooooooh fuck I'm still moving..."
"Oh fuck oh fuck I'm gonna roll"
"OK, no I'm not"
"Oh shit, is my camera broken?"
"OWWWWW FUCCCCCKKKK SKIN SLIDING ON ASPHALT"
"FFFUUUUUUUUUCCCCCKKKK"
"JESUS FUCK FUCK THAT HURTS LIKE A BITCH MOTHERFUCK"
"aaahhhhhhhhhhh"

Then you finish hitting the road and it still hurts.

"Ok, it's over"
"Fuck, my hands hurt"
"Where the fuck am I?"
"OK, right here, OK...got it"
"Fuck, I ripped a fucking hole right in my awesome new teal pants"
"Oh shit, my camera"
"Camera's fine"
"Do I have wounds? Let's see..."
"Ayyaaahhhaaaa shhiiittt gonna need to wash that hand pronto"
"Oooooo hoo hoo fuck, look at that shit coming out of my leg"
"OK, water, soap, go."
"Where the fuck has that bus gone to?"
"Jesus fuck that fucking stings like a fuck."

I think I horrified every single patron of the restaurant I stumbled into to wash my wounds in, looking like, well, like I got hit by a bus. I think I was also in shock because I was pure mission, pure focus until I got back to my hotel half an hour later I was a bit limpy and very volatile. Everyone who rubbed me the wrong way got an unusually emotive earful from me. Anyways, I got washed up, bandaged up and all those good things. I'm out one pair of pants, got some blood everywhere, lost more skin than I do on a usual day, got a little asphalt ground into my hand, but all told it really could have been worse. Even though I was still physically shaking from the shock of it, I thoroughly enjoyed watching the Jackie Chan film "The Myth", which to my surprise was partially set at a bunch of ruins I visited in Hampi, and also features a scene in which Jackie Chan is forced to rip a hot Indian woman's skirt off to save her life. A note to aspiring filmmakers: when you are faced with the question, "Should my film have a hot Indian woman or a hot Chinese woman?", 'The Myth' shows us that the answer can be "Why not both?"

So that, my friends, is what it is like to get hit by a bus. I am a fountain of information. And hemoglobin.

Quickie (Feb. 9)

I recently received via email a batch of photographs from the Mumbai slums. I wasn't allowed to take any photos of my own (nor would I have) because making a camera safari out of how crappy people's neighborhood is is a pretty dick thing to do. I decided to share these pictures though, since this site still has a pretty small, semi-exclusive audience, and because you can order the same photographs as postcards or whatever if you call the right people. I know some of you have written to me about this, so I posted them for the purpose of illustration, even though they are not my own but were sent to me by the organization that led me through the slums. Should you ever happen to be in Mumbai, I wholeheartedly recommend you go experience these places for yourself.

Also, I just posted a bunch of other recent photos too. Enjoy.

And I promise not to go around posting and immediately deleting drunken indiscretions any more.

*fingers crossed like a motherfucker*

Resolutions

During the many hours I spent lingering at the Golden Temple on New Year's Eve, I used some of the time to finalize my list of New Year's resolutions. These are all completely serious, feasible, and I consider all of these to be binding.

To leave India having learned something...but like, really learned something, you know?

To strive to speak the truth. I will keep it real no matter how real it gets.

To consume at least 10 liters of chai per month. (Perhaps this one is a bit too easy).

To achieve minimal competence in at least one Indian language. "Hinglish"(Indian English) doesn't count.

To civilize the pagan masses promote understanding between mutually misunderstood cultures.

To commit at least one act that is somehow subversive to the interests of the state of Pakistan.

To spread the spiritual teachings of hip-hop lyrics to as many places and mystical traditions as possible.

To uphold the same standards of friendship, respect, and so on as I would at home.

To shake my fist at the heavens with such fury that any god who crosses me shall tremble in his/her/its amorphous boots.

To set foot inside no marble shop nor purchase a miniature painting.

To commit at least one act sufficiently bizarre as to make a complete, street-clogging spectacle of myself (but on purpose).

To act out of a spirit of equality and fairness to all men. A cow, however, is nothing but a walking milkshake factory with an over-active butthole, and shall be treated as such.

To see this trip through to the finish. No. Matter. What.

The Ghostface Buddha Theme Song

I was listening to music on yet another lousy bus ride, when I stumbled across this gem I had forgotten about. I immediately decided it would have to be Ghostface Buddha's theme song.

Click Here

Woe to you, oh Earth and sea...

In Memoriam

Ghostbeard Buddha
September 28, 2009 - December 8, 2009

After a valiant battle against shaving, our friend and companion Ghostbeard's life was suddenly...cut short this past Tuesday in Dwarka.

Ghostbeard will be remembered not only for his prodigious length at such young age, but also for his warm soul, Hindu-baiting antics, and numerous contributions to charity.

He fought nobly to the end, forcing the beard-trimmer attachment to an impotent halt on many occasions and even causing his assailant to snap shut more than once. Hotel sink and shower drains were no match for him. With his last breath he slew a mighty hybrid toilet.

He is survived by his face of 9 weeks, Ghostfaceface.

Rest in peace.

PHOTOS and other news

Big news, people. Ghostface Buddha now has a photo gallery!

The gallery is a Flickr account, linked at the very top right-hand side of this page, where you can also quickly check if there have been any updates, and admire a single image that will sit there for an arbitrary period of time, hinting at what wonders lie beyond the hyperlink.

Alas, due to many misfortunes large and small, the majority of the photographs from the month of October have been irretrievably lost, most tragically those of the Pushkar Camel Fair, but also from most of Uttar Pradesh except those salvaged from Facebook. I have however been stepping up on the photography of late and hopefully this trend will continue. The gallery now contains rescued images from the Varanasi area as well as increasing numbers of photographs from the last few weeks in Rajasthan. [edit: many of the places of which photos were lost have been revisited, and photos are now in the gallery, with the exceptions of Mathura, Vrindavan, Faizabad (oh no), and Ayodhya. -GFB]

I have captioned some but not all of the images. I have tried to be basically informative and occasionally witty, but there is only so much you can say about pictures of sunsets or whatever so I haven't been too fastidious about explaining everything...."this is a picture of the same throne room....viewed from the other side!"

For those of you not familiar with Flickr, it is a fairly versatile and elegant photo storage mechanism that allows much higher quality and better organizaton than hosting directly on this blog would permit. The main "snag" you might encounter when browsing the gallery is that unlike other photo sharing sites you are likely familiar with *cough*Facebook, clicking on an image will not skip directly ahead to the next in the batch. Instead you will see in a box to the right two thumbnails of the images before and after the one you are currently viewing. Should you so desire, it is possible to view higher-quality versions of the image than the default one displayed by clicking on the teeny upper button that says "All Sizes", which is also where you need to go if for whatever reason you wish to save a photo to your computer.


In other blog-related news, as the audience of this site has grown somewhat broader than I anticipated and as the right-hand side of the site was becoming increasingly clustered with the proliferation of archive links, etc., I have been working on a basic site navigator bar you will see above, that will allow you to jump around the page more easily. This may or may not be working completely correctly yet (because I haven't written my own HTML in about seven years). I've also tweaked some of the colors and content to make things slightly more readable.

OK that's about it. Enjoy the photos. I'll be coming back with a post about Jodhpur as soon as I finish up the last three articles I'm supposed to have done for work. I have to find something valuable and informative to say about riding camels that isn't just bitching about how they smell. It's going to be a long night.

Big News, Small News, BREAKING NEWS

BREAKING NEWS first. Indian goats are quite possibly the stupidest of the domesticated mammals. All I'm saying is, if you're a goat in a goat market and you see other goats being slauhgtered in the street and goat heads being tossed around with relative abandon, perhaps you, an untethered goat, should at least try to make an escape. Seriously, man, even the chickens know when to panic.

The small news is that because I'm writing on this blog a lot more than I expected (I'm usually at a loss for anything better to do late at night), I've been gradually upgrading the site for a couple days. So now we have.....

~~~!!NeW fEaTuReS!!~~~

1)Labels/tags on posts. Each post is now indexed to the relevant cities, states, or major landmarks. These labels can be accessed from the list below the blog archive, or if you like as keywords in the little google bar. I am considering adding thematic tags too, in case for any reason somebody would want to read all my posts about, say, cows. But right now I'm too lazy for that.

2)"Where Am I?" feature with embedded interactive google map showing my location in India as of my latest blog or gmail logon, located to the right of the posts. I'd like to make this capable of tracking my travels but getting this to work while shifting between many computers may be beyond my meager technical skills. Also the map centering is being a little awkward, but it's interactive so you can just zoom out or whatever.

3)Comments are now open to anyone with a gmail account. Also I now receive notices when comments are left, so that I actually read them.

And now for the big news! I'm chilling in Varanasi (Benares to you old-timers), which is pretty much the coolest place ever. I've been making a bunch of contacts here and am setting this city up as my part-time base of operations when I'm not on the road. So now I'm only 80% homeless! Edit: so, Varanasi didn't actually become my pad. Rajasthan was where it's at. More about Varanasi later. A full report on its awesomeness will be issued, as well as a beginner's guide to buffalo herding. Word is bond.

Enter The Blog (36 Chambers)

Behold a blog. A blog like no other. A blog wherein I write about my adventures in India without somehow infringing upon my job, writing about adventures in India. They call me Ghostface Buddha.

For those who don't know, I am now employed by a pair of businessmen with questionable judgment who have seen fit to pay me money to go to India, do whatever I want, and write articles for a new online travel guide for young people that will be launched (hopefully) in April. There are other writers crawling all over the various countries in Europe accumulating content for the site. Long story short, I contacted these people, said I wanted to do India for their company, and sent in an application consisting of -I shit you not- a mediocre journal entry about Paris, a list of countries I've traveled to, a "Weekly Wednesdays" email about Asia, and a vague indication that I would be willing to sell my soul for a trifling fee that may or may not cover the price of living in a poverty-stricken third-world country.

Alas, it is with a heavy heart that I tell you that I may not prematurely release material I write for work. I am, however, incredibly unprofessional and will bend the rules as much as I can manage.

In short, owing to my obligations and my character, you can not expect from this blog:

-Travel tips, reviews, or any form of generally useful information covered in my articles.
-Propper spelling; Grammar; puntuation.
-Modesty

You may expect:

-Ribald tales
-Incoherent and/or inane musings
-Occasional flights of literary grandeur
-Graphic descriptions of exotic gastrointestinal ailments
-Gratuitous hip-hop references
-Periodic evidence that I am not, in fact, dead.

Well I'm still in America so I may as well finish off with a little teaser. Here is a bonus travel article about Falls Church, Virginia.

"It sucks."

Next time I post here I'll presumably be in Delhi and actually have something worth saying. Til' then...LATERZ