We're Running out of Road...

Today was a wee bit ridiculous.

On the one hand, the list of animals one can find on the street is ever expanding. Add chickens, horses, ponies, camels in either couples or herds, never any other combination. Also pigs and goats, who wear coats. Dr. Seuss would have a field day.

We've also taken the public restroom revelation to a whole new level, let's just say it's not a story for polite company.

Also I talked about the ridiculous cacophony of car horns that is constantly blasting in the background. This was not correct. I'm convinced that each vehicle has a tiny little trumpet player tied to their grill blasting away till Miles comes home. The bigger your auto the more skilled your musician, motorcycles and rickshaws get your traditional squeal but the buses get little melodies and the trucks blast out arpeggios.

Horns are for everything. If you're passing someone honk your horn. If you're turning honk your horn. If you're approaching a group of school children doing cartwheels on the freeway, honk your horn. If driving on the wrong side of the road, honk your horn. If you're eating a banana, don't honk your horn that will just confuse people.

Most of the temples have marble floors. They're VERY slippery.

I am now in deep in the heart of the Madhubani region, after another solid 10 hours of bus time, which is now officially the biggest shenanigan I have ever experienced in a bus. Besides the breakneck speeds and weaving through opposing traffic, every turn we make leads to a smaller road. Eventually the bus is wider than the entire strip of pavement. That's when they start stopping to ask for directions.

There's a whole team of drivers on our bus, and they have a very nicely furnished cockpit at the front of our bus with a bed and an extra chair and a shrine.

On the way we wandered through a couple mud sculpture workshops, two excavations of sacred Buddhist sites as well as a Sri Lankan guest house for pilgrims (not the thanksgiving kind) for a rest stop and bathroom break. Think hole in the ground.

Don't take pictures of people with guns.

In the cities, we were generally ignored by everyone either because of our language or our skin or our ridiculously tacky fashion sense. Not so out here in the country. This is as close to being a celebrity as I will get. Every time we stop we immediately collect a tail of anywhere from 4-30 people following us and staring at us.

Probably wondering why we would try and squeeze a bus through a herd of camels.

Well the life of a celebrity is exhausting so until next time!

Cheers,
The Wayward Hoover

What's that smell?

Why it smells like India! and Naan.

It took about 31 hours to get here (a new personal record) and I'm exhausted so I'll just start rambling now.

So. I don't have Malaria. Yet. I'm workin' on it.

There are dogs everywhere on the streets. Also Cows. Also Monkeys. Also Snakes. I charmed one.

First stop was New Delhi, which is also old Delhi... I don't quite understand either.

The term "public restroom" has a whole new meaning for me. Think a wall with a drain.

The soundtrack of life in India is car horns, constantly blasting in the background of everything.

Schoolchildren love to be in your photos. All of them. I feel like I need a spray for the kids instead of the mosquitoes.

I got to wear a snake. Two snakes actually. The first was your garden variety "give this to a tourist" kind of snake, which I would like to think I handled quite well while it explored my arm. The second one was the kind of snakes they make movies about and staffs for disney villains. It lunged at me. I jumped. Snake #1 was not a fan of the jumping. It was a vicious circle to say the least.

They're not police cars here, they're "Mobile Police Posts" and they have curtains in the windows.

I definitely did NOT oversleep this morning almost getting left behind.

I'm going to fall asleep on my keyboard now so I will talk to you all soon, hopefully with select arts-y photographs.

Cheers,
The Wayward Hoover

VROOM!

Well it looks like being a travel intern isn't such a pipe dream after all, so I've decided to dust off the old blog-o-rooni here and fire her up for new visitors and new adventures!!

To start things off I think I'll talk about my latest adventure, which actually turns out to be applying for the STA World Traveler Internship (that's a lot to type so from now on it's just going to be STA. Or intern. Or whatever I feel like calling it at the time)! I'm going to take you back.... baaack.... to a time loooooong agooooooo.... like last Tuesday.

Specifically, the Tuesday 3 days before the STA submission deadline.

I was deeply engrossed in my studies (read: goofing off on the internet) when my sister sent me a link to the STA intern homepage and informed me that if I didn't apply she would hate me.

Now me and dear ol' sis have had our differences ever since the Great Noogie Incident of '92 but I'm not down for hate, so I hit the link and was immediately hooked.

What followed was a marathon even in video production. I spent the rest of the day brainstorming ideas, studying the competition and writing. by 10 in the PM I had a working script and was scrambling to find a femme fatale for my opening sequence.

After a delightfully hilarious/awkward conversation I had an actress and a location and started filming 11 PM. 4 hours of giggling and hip wiggling later I had my footage and started the editing.

Editing (in all of its riveting detail) went on from 3am until 9pm with a short break to go to work at the trusty library (also riveting). and by 10 Wednesday night I had a video and an application up and ready to be voted on.

Ah voting. It took me all of 20 minutes to get banned from Facebook Chat for spamming my friends.

I think that deserves an award.

By the numbers I directly contacted over 600 friends, over 2,500 guests of the "Help Andrew Hoover" event, over 6,700 fans of a recently cancelled radio show and unknown thousands of hapless MCJ students via the campus listserve (thank you prof. Hayes!). After about 24 hours I had broken into the top 50 with a meager 2400 votes.

Then I did a stupid thing.

I went and told all of those people that if I could break 15,000 votes by the submission deadline, I would shave my head.

I picked 15,000 because it was obviously unattainable.

I am a fool.

Over the course of 9 hours, my vote count skyrocketed to hit over 18,000 votes before finally slowing down, by midnight I was squarely in the 20,000s. So fast that it prompted some to even to pose as STA administration and accuse me of cheating.

Which was hurtful.

But no matter.

I made it to the top 50! Which is awesome in at least 7 different ways.

and on that happy note I'm off to check out the Fresno Rogue Festival

In the mean time, go vote for me on my intern page!!

http://worldtravelerinternship.com/member/andrew-hoover/

Cheers,

The Wayward Hoover