i had a solid shit!

and that was a monumental moment for me, not even an hour ago, because i had been afflicted with the infamous and dreaded '3rd world runs' aka 'delhi belly' aka 'ooty booty' (meghan just coined this one, shes quite proud). and now i have survived, but barely. where shall i begin, for these last few days have been...how shall i put it...a shit storm? gross. i so gross myself out.

dont get me wrong, i still love ooty, and would rather get food poisoning nowhere else in india. but the agony began a few days ago when we decided to go horseback riding. i was the only one who'd never been on a horse and we were off on a 3 hour ride through the ooty countryside. or...mountainside rather. i was supposed to have this nice gentle horsey but mine was actually quite a bitch and tried to bite krista, hated meghan's horse and broke into a mad run (or what felt like a mad run to me) and bit her horse's head. that nite i solemnly announced to the group, "my inner thighs are seriously bruised and swollen". and so they were. and the next day my entire body ached like a bitch and life began to suck greatly.

aha and then things took a turn for the worse! oh 3rd world runs. i still have zero food in my stomach. i wont get into the deets cause everyone knows what its like so im assuming you feel my pain. cause i surely felt my pain!!! anyway for a full 24 hours or something like that i barely moved from my bed. satellite tv to the rescue, as usual! actually i think brad pitt saved my life for me and meghan stayed up watching 'snatch' and 'legends of the fall' and then magically the next day (as in yesterday) i no longer had runs. which is a damn good thing cause at 6 pm last nite we departed on a horrid journey on a 15 hour 'ultra deluxe' bus. and by the way, when they say 'ultra deluxe' they mean yucky hell hole that wouldnt even begin to qualify as public transport back home. they had bars on the windows for fuckssakes, how is that safe!? and our tire popped which apparently takes eons to fix. and then when we finally got going again, they apparently had to change the spare they put on so alas, we had to stop again. basically it was prolonged hell. and then when we arrived in chennai this morning, we hopped onboard a crowded local bus for a couple hours and now here we are, in mamallapuram. and it's hot. how i miss ooty already.

anyway, i hope the worst is behind me and now we've finally got internet that doesnt totally lick ass so im gonna post some pics!

so i took this picture last nite. remember from way back in january when i posted a picture of a squat toilet in china? ive come to terms with the fact that i have to occasionally use a squat toilet. i still hate them and i'll never like them but fine, theyre toilets. but what the fuck is this!?

apparently this is a toilet. krista's describing it as a female urinal. i'll have to describe it in words cause i could only take a shaky bad photo for i was clenching my nostrils and tried to take the photo as quickly as possible. basically it looks like a trough that a pig eats out of and i guess you just hike up your sari and piss on the floor that is on a slight angle so the pee just flows down into the...drainy thing. id rather save my 2 rupees and piss on the side of the road in front of traffic.

at the local market in goa, a man selling cabbage. wearing a cabbage leaf on his head to top it off.

religious men strolling through the hampi bazaar.



those giant boulders i was talking about in hampi. im in the picture somewhere...








me and krista in hampi, overlooking one of the ruins. my pants are so see through.

the scenery in hampi was really cool. like a journey back in time. woooooooo.

me and meghan on top of some...ruins...overlooking some....ruins.

apparently these are ancient elephant stables.

the maharajah's palace in mysore. unfortunately we couldnt bring cameras inside the palace which was much more impressive than the outside. i still really really wanna watch aladdin.

our one group shot! minus eug that is who took the picture. this is all the people that have at random times, been travelling together in india. from left to right, meghan, andrea, joanna, meghan (2), then in the front, krista, me and angelee. this is in pretty pretty ooty.

tea plantations in ooty. the view was so nice AND it was cool temperature! perfect.

on our little excursion out to coonor, we went to a botanical garden where they had a little man made pond or something plus a children's playground. here are some local tourists making use of the see-saws after we led the way and hopped on them way ahead of them. we are such pioneers.

this is...some view we had in coonor. maybe it was dolphin's nose? or something like that. (perhaps you'll wanna go look at meghan's blog afterwards. shes just so much better at things like...place names and...activities.)

alright that's all the pictures ive got patience for. im really hungry and hoping i can stomach more than half a cracker for dinner tonite so wish me luck!