Now. The flight to Taipei was 13.5 hours crammed in the middle seat of
an overbooked plane next to a very large white dude in a Hawaiian shirt who was off to Thailand for what I'm fairly certain was a sex
tour. He was a little creepy but not terrible. I watched 5 or 6
movies, two of which I had already seen. The Life Aquatic suddenly
became amazing and truly moving. I barely slept and felt very
pukey at the end of the flight.

In Taipei, a weird Indian guy tried to talk to me at the terminal and
tell me about how my mom's travel plans weren't going to work, but I
luckily escaped. Even more luckily, the plane was almost empty and I
got to sleep for a couple hours. That flight was 6.5 hours.

My mom met me in Delhi and my first "welcome to India" experience was
going into the women's bathroom and having to pay 10 rupees (about 25
cents) to a woman lying on a piece of cardboard on the bathroom floor
before I could use the toilet. The only good news was that the toilet
wasn't a squat toilet and there was toilet paper -- not your typical
India bathroom. Maybe that's why I had to pay.

It was about 3AM at that point. My mom and I took a taxi to the YMCA
hostel so I could shower and we could sleep for a few hours. At 6AM we
drove through Delhi to the train station. It was already about 90
degrees outside and the streets near the station were crammed with
people and coolies and rickshaws and crazy taxi drivers. We hired a
coolie to carry our bags to the train (on his head!) partly because it is the easiest way to find the right place in the station. It was huge, no signs anywhere, lots of stray dogs and people sprawled out all over the cement floor. We made it onto the train and from there it was a 5-hour train ride to Dehra Dun, the capital of Uttaranchal, the region where my family lives. From the train window, I saw the Ganges River, sugar cane fields, wild pigs and lots of people living in crazy huts and abandoned-looking buildings.

In Dehra Dun, we ate lunch at a "Western" style restaurant where the
chicken sandwiches were strange breaded chicken patties topped with
coleslaw on a bun. The fries were pretty normal, but the ketchup was
thin and sweet. Anyway, after lunch, we started our
ascent up the mountain. The drive was honestly one of the scariest of
my life. Passing buses on hairpin turns in the Himalayan mountains --
anything else pales in comparison. After awhile, I had to force myself
to not watch the road because it was too nervewracking. (The buses we
passed were often streaked with vomit. Which didn't help.) The drive
took an hour and a half. We picked up a coolie in the town closest to
my mom's house and he was the one who carried our bags from the road
down the mountain to the house. With a rope strapping them to his
back. He looked to be about 60. (My mom gave him 100 rupees for the
job, which is about $2.50. He was really happy and later she told me
he probably makes that much in a day most of the time. It's weird here, the feeling of being served. My mom and stepdad have a cook, Vimla, and my mom told me that if she offers to get me something I should say yes more often than no because her whole sense of purpose and self-esteem comes from serving other people. It's hard to get used to.)

My mom and stepdad live in an old colonial summer house on the side of a mountain. There are trees all around and MONKEYS. Last night we sat on the porch and watched at least 15 monkeys playing in the empty lot below the house. It was entertaining, but now I see why my sister is scared of them. They're creepy and fearless and ugly. And they've been known to bite.

I'm currently scared of monkeys and amoebic dysentery. We'll see what the future holds.