I Told ya the Harry Potter material was coming out soon. Someone please think of something appropriate for the next 6 title please, I'm stumped!

Riiiiight, where were we? Ah, yes.

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First things first - does anyone want to see a funny video of a man cutting off his hair; dreadlocks no less; with a knife? Well, here you go:

Graarrgh! That bloody video was nearly a minute long, damn it!! I've erased the memory cards now of course, that was back in Arambol in November. Yes, that is me. I had dreadlocks, but then the knife happened.

It was vaguely eloquent and maybe even funny and I'd dare to say possibly even a little charming, that bleeding video, but of course Photobucket has cheated me. How could I be so naive.

Right.

All videos are now going to be bloody MAILED back to bloody ENGLAND to make sure they don't get chopped up.

Upload them manually from here I hear you cry, why, of cousre you can't, that would be too easy!!
The connection is as slow as it was back in 1997, it's dial-up speed all the way - a one minute video would take literally an entire day, and cost me about 200 rupees in internet usage.
I hope
I just can't wait to get to Australia and, more specifically, New Zealand

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Anyhoo, some stuff.
Something I overlooked before; the nicer residential streets in the capital of Goa, Panerji, actually had pavements for once but the tree planting and integration of said organisms lacked a certain subtlety:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/tdm072.jpg

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Right, that bird snctaury near Mysore gets its first airing, here is, I believe, an Egret on some lillies. I have to warn you that the pictures start off pretty tame, and then disappear for another 5 posts because another batch got uploaded in front of them, again.
Bear with me...

That Egret:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture085-1.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture088-1.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture086-1.jpg

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Those waterlillies were arranged rather nicely:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture089-1.jpg

And so was the centre of this massive flower, would you believe, because that powdery stuff in the middle, from a cone a good few inches across and a few inches high, is all pollen!
Enough to germinate several million female plants, I would say.
Then again, when the likely transmitter of the stuff is a bird boasting a 7-foot wingspan, I guess this plant could afford to slightly over-evolve the stuff:

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Ah, we seem to be in Mysore city now. Right, well they certainly were fond of their ornate roundabouts, complete with miniature temples:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture076-1.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture074-1.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture052-1.jpg

Same structure as last time but closer - you gottaa rotate this one:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture075-1.jpg

And the craft trade in that city is world famous as are their sandalwood incense factories which supply a good proportion of the worldwide supply of that particular product
And of course, to the beleagured and most hapless of tourists, Mysore is also (in)famous for the fake sandalwood oils and staged incense factories set up in various places

There is a large hall in the city somewhere called the Cauvery (which is the name of the great river in this region of India) that houses a lot of genuine hand-carved ornaments, shrine things, carvings, wooden toys, furniture etc. including these few things I managed to get pictures of - no photos inside of course - because they guarded the lobby.

A rather fine carving/idol of Ganesh the elephant god dude, needs rotating:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture073-1.jpg

A large swing seat, all hand carved:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture072-1.jpg

And a 1/32nd size elephant (something like that anyway) that was still quite big enough to cause problems if left in the hallway:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture071-1.jpg

They had this little thing called the Maharaja's Palace:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture078-1.jpg

(Rotate this one) ;
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture077-1.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture079-1.jpg

And a little cathedral tucked around the corner, looks like it's not just Kerala that can do this trick, then:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture080-1.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture081-1.jpg

I was leanig out of a just-about-stopped rickshaw for those by the way, hence the dodgy angle

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Our hotel had a rooftop restaurant, that apperently never opened, but still. I took a photo of another restaurant from there when we went up to inspect it, for reasons I can no longer rememebr. Perhaps you might be good enough to tell me yourselves... :

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture064-1.jpg

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Bird sanctuary just briefly again - I wish I could rotate stuff for you because this should really be displayed in full. Those trees are just brilliant, and that sign sums up a lot about this country:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture084-1.jpg

Where else is a restaurant going to give you lessons in ethical philosophy by proxy?!

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Somewhere in the markets we stopped for this - you see it all over the place, I have no idea exactly what the powder is made from, but it is body paint and temple/house decoration and will adorn just about anything you can think of.
Those colours!

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Cows. They get everywhere, including your local roundabout as I turned around from taking the photo below and saw this relaxed chappy. Adaptation is a wondeful thing, on the part of both cows and humans - only a neophyte adventurer would stop to take a picture of this, of course:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture068-1.jpg

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Arcane and amusing: traffic offences in Mysore.
This was on public display on one of the roundabouts, too small for any drivers to safely read, but perfect for sarcastic tourists to take photos of and pick apart later :

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A purple minaret from a purple mosque just next to the hotel - choral warfare not noted at this time (needs rotating):

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture063-1.jpg

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Back up on the roof, you can see some lovely parkland and turrets of the Palce poking out from the sea of treetops; some of these are fully zoomed-in so you can guess how far away they were - it looked awfully pretty and fairytalesque, and it was all I could do not to slip on a frilly ballgown and go waltzing out the hotel entrance every day... actually no. I was thinking of one of those poor souls so tragically and comprehensively poisoned by the Disney corporation, wasn't I? :

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture061-1.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture060-1.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture059-1.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture062-1.jpg

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I saw this story in every paper for a week and on all the TV news stations for 3 or 4 days; a nasty man from Indialand jumped over the Pakistani (or Nepalese, I forget) border to try and run away form Mister Policemen and his friends. The nasty man had been taking people's kidneys - their kidneys! - away from them in exchange for either a) a lot of money or b) a painful death, depending on circumstance.
He also appeared to be telling all his friends to do the same thing as well.
Now, isn't that the face of a man you'd trust your children with? :

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture056-1.jpg

What was equally photo-worthy in my book was the other part of the subtitle, giving the flight number and place of departure. I'm amazed they don't give the gate number and scheduled time of departure: what is it with details in the Indian media? Is this just an anglo-american thing, keeping a safe level of anonymity to everyone, or is it practised outside our sphere of media?
It seems a little bizarre - classified ads in newspapers always give the full address, stories in papers give names and address' of victims and criminals, news stories give the flight details and location where a hated criminal will be, exactly - all this extraneous detail. It doesn't take much imagination to see the glaring potential for recriminations, revenge attacks, thefts and general do-baddery.

Perhaps I just have a criminal mind

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Occasionally, gods painted blue infest trees. True. :

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture055-1.jpg

And Bollywood stars can attain heights of up to 14 feet, in some places:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture054.jpg

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I have a thing to mention about this fondness for pink; I really don't understand it. But, then, I simply come from a culture where it is a colour largely stereotyped as being overtly feminine and is in turn implicated to convey some kind of softness or lack of strength. Hey don't shoot me, I'm just the messenger.
As a result of this rather unfair assumption (towards the colour and the entire female gender) it isn't used much in architecture.
But in India there is a strange fondness for it, one I can only call unfortunate due to my own cultural bias.
See what you think. See if a pink train station is your cup of masala chai:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture051-1.jpg

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On the way to the bird sanctuary (no! You can't see the crocodiles yet!!) there was a massive concrete viaduct aquaduct locoduct railway bridge, which I thought would make a wonderful example of the use of perspective.
I took it from a moving taxi thoguh, so no idea if it has worked... :

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture050-1.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture049-1.jpg

I think the first one kinda did - pretty long bridge, huh? That's only half of it as well of course, the road went through the middle.

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Here's hoping it works: I saw this from the train between Bangalore and Mysore (yes this jumping around in time is confusing isn't it?) and the contrast of the startlingly bright greens of the remaining rice paddies amid the fields of harvested brown was worth a snap:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture048-1.jpg

As was this small but impressively remote temple:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture047-1.jpg

And as we went across a river, I saw it in its full glory, which was rather nice:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture045-1.jpg

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And of course I couldn't resist leaning out to get a shot of the train while we were moving - yes, parents, I checked there were not potential wounding posts or anything else sticking out onto the track in the other direction! Very cool that you can stand there with the door open as you go along - a lot of the shabbily-dressed manual workers sit out of the door dangling their legs, in fact:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture024-1.jpg

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And in some parts of the country, it's still the Jurassic era. Which was nice:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture041-1.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture040-1.jpg

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Here is a shot I really wanted to get: one of the busy road crossings where rickshaws from an entire town pile up against the barrier.
I wanted to share this to get across the level of lane discipline you see over here; this is not a one-way street:

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Those amazing aerial roots and vines, again, impressed me (needs rotating):

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture037-1.jpg

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Some cozy little station we briefly stopped at. Nothing remarkable, but it's nice to see that we didn't just leave a general fondness for the British and a few transport networks behind i India; we also gave them old fashioned British Rail-style platform signs:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture036-1.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture021-1.jpg

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Padyy fields, where hopefully you get a better idea of how they are seperated out and stepped:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture035-1.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture034-1.jpg

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And a far-off hill wreathed in mist (ooh, we are getting all posh aren't we) that needs rotating I'm afraid:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture029-1.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture030-1.jpg

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture028.jpg

Another one a bit further on:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture025-1.jpg

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And a little architecture (to finish, apparently). Some of the buildings here are amazing and brilliant and totally original:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture023-1.jpg

Some are rather more familiar:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture022-1.jpg

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The varied features of the landscape are often strangely comparable though:

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture020-1.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b312/evilhippy/Worldwide%20things/Picture019-1.jpg

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I should never have insulted photbucket, it's stopped talking to me completely
So that's enough photo silliness for today methinks - next stop our very brief foray into Bangalore and, more than likely, Hampi yet again

There now follows a short letter from my own fair hand to the peoples of Blog.co.uk
Someone is using our lovely site for a commercial ripoff - and they're crazy tarot card, moon goddess types, too! Natrurally I could not let this tomfoolery stand

I hate to be the snitch and everything, but...

I went looking for stuff tagged with `travel` to compare with my work, and found the following sites.
Quite apart from the pointless catch-all tagging when it has nothing to do with travel; each one is just the same business advertisment; is this kind of use within the terms of service?

At least 4 different users/blogs and 5 posts all trying to redirect users to a commercial site:

http://myastrosagar.blog.co.uk/2008/03/21/teen-age-child-guidance-article-3916747

http://angel-love-us.blog.co.uk/2008/03/21/article-counsel-to-teen-age-child-3917034

http://sonyentertainment.blog.co.uk/2008/03/20/teen-age-child-guidance-3911669

http://warnerbrothers.blog.co.uk/2008/03/20/teen-age-child-guidance-3911605

http://myastrosagar.blog.co.uk/2008/03/20/20-discount-on-counseling-services-based-3908188

You might have noticed by now that two of them could threaten intellectual property rights from a couple of rather large players... even if not, that's misleading and some kind of misrepresentation doohickey is going on - using Sony's and Warner Brothers' names to advertise for something unrelated must be against the rules somewhere down the line.

I only report this because astrology gets on my nerves - people are entitled to whatever opinions they like of course, but advocating, promoting, directly making money from, in fact, something as baseless as astrology is ridiculous, and they are abusing blog.co.uk in doing so, in my view.

Moreover it is immoral and exploitative to try and do so as a solution to serious psychological problems - it all seems very underhanded.

I mean, come on. Tarot cards and star signs to solve failing marriages and `talking to angels` to make your pubescent angry teen daughter stop rebelling - please.
Anyway, I hope not to see these clown around again - I'll be complaining in my usual fashion on my blog soon, so if you can't remove them, I am at least going to point out their wicked ways to anyone who reads my stuff.

Cheers all!
Best regards,

_______

Now. I was going to add a short note about the sheer bloody ridiculousness of astrology and the truly terrible way that people in serious trouble can be exploited like this, but, in case anyone is actually into that, I shan't. My opinion is but one way of looking at the world, so fair enough, love to know why, but fair enough.

I am just going to remind everyone of this little event undertaken by the reknowned magician, skeptic, and soon-to-be personal hero of mine, Mr. James Randi.
You see, there is an easier way to get money, Mr/Mrs scamperson - all you have to do is be able to prove that anything you pretend to do actually works, and you've got a million dollars - that's £500,000 - for just one day's work!

And it's hardly new, although they are stopping it. I mean, they are giving any would-be paranormal types another 2 years to claim the prize so someone should step up if it's not a load of exploitation and wishful thinking. Mind you, they've only offered it for only ten years straight already

Amazing.
If I was an astrologist or tarot reader I'd certainly have a try