I’ve spent the last 21 days traveling through south India and it has been a surreal experience. Our travels took us to Mumbai, Mahabelashwar, Goa, Kerala, and all the airspace in between. It’s been filled with some of the greatest memories I’ve ever had on a vacation coupled with some of the worst.

I’ve always been a fan on Indian food, so this trip was perfect for satisfying the foodie in me. I got to taste a multitude of dishes and it really helped that I was traveling with friends that have been to India before and are of Indian descent, since they were able to steer me towards the tastiest dishes. As good as the food was, it definitely gave me a lot of stomach troubles early on in the trip. I guess I was a little too adventurous in my eating since I was cumulatively sick for nearly 1/3 the time I’ve been here!

Along our travels, we discovered a love for King Fisher beer, Uno and negotiating everything we bought, including taxi rides. Near the end of the trip, we managed to fit in the hilarious game of “How much woud someone have to pay you to stay another 3 weeks in India?”. It seems that none of us would even accept $30k. Yikes.

This trip marks the longest time I’ve spent with a group of friends — imagine spending 24 hours a day with the same 5 people for 21 days. Surprisingly it went better than we all would have expected. We got to share a ton of laughs coupled with deep, meaningful conversations. I couldn’t have picked a better group of friends to travel with. Craig, Fil, Chaitanya, Shaheen and Suraj — thanks for a great trip and all the memories that came along with it. You guys rock.

Photos from both India and China will be posted shortly after I get back to Seattle and I have a chance to go through them all. I’ll post up a link to the photos once I’ve completed them and uploaded them to Flickr.

My upcoming travel back to Seattle isn’t going to be short. I’m flying from Mumbai to Seattle, laying over in Amsterdam on Northwest Airlines. My total transit time is just over 26 hours! Wish me luck!

Here are some fun facts about our trip:

Total number of days in India	21
Number of those days I was sick	9
#of immodium tablets used by the group	at least 15
# of flights/connections	11
# of times I was offered a camel ride	7
Ratio of men to women in Goa	at least 20:1
Longest bus ride	8.5 hours, overnight
Cheapest Internet access	67 cents/hour
# of Uno games played	at least 50
Most number of bottles of beer drank in a single night by the group	19 x 650ml
Longest cab ride where our cab driver was lost	1 hour 20 mins
How long that cab ride should have taken	20 mins
# of times we were asked to show photo ID at the airports while flying domestically in India	None!

I can’t wait to get back to “normal” civilization in Seattle, my own bed and the ability to do laundry at will. Hallelujah!

Just got back from some fun in the sun at Didi’s annual party at her parent’s casa in Olympia. The event, the “Flappin’ of the Floon” (don’t ask about the name), was my first and I had a complete blast. Combine food, drinking, laughs and sleeping outside in a tent and you have all the makings of some great memories.

Here are a few shots I took from the day that I particularly like:

After a long day of drinking and eating, the night degenerated into some jowlers fun. Here are 2 shots of your truly: <

Last Sunday, Chaitanya and I woke up at an ungodly hour to cheer Craig on as he participated in his first ever half-ironman distance triathalon. It’s an incredible thing to watch these athletes compete is such a difficult event. I even got tired from the sidelines watching them

Here are some pictures I took of Craig as he zipped by:

Congrats Craig!

After watching the race, I really miss being on the bike. I still haven’t ridden the bike in nearly 5 weeks due to the pain I’m still having in my right hand from the micro-fracture. The good news is that the pain is subsiding, so I’ll hopefully be able to jump back in the saddle before the month ends. (Un)fortunately there are no triathalons in my future

I was in San Diego most of this week on a business trip with Jascha and Herman.  Due to the timing of the trip, I missed this week’s episode of Beauty and the Geek.  I purposely avoided any of the websites that might cover the outcome of the show, and even avoided signing into Facebook since I’m part of a group dedicated to my pal Niels (who’s on the show).  Don’t get too creeped out at my participation in the group :)  it was started by my best friend, Craig, who was Niels’ college roomate.

Luckily, since I have I have FolderShare installed on my Media Center PC back home in Seattle, I was able to snag a copy of the show remotely and watched in on the plane ride home tonight.

Much to my disappointment, Niels was givent he big ole boot tonight. He was in the elimination room but got his second trivia question wrong.  How could this have happened to the guy who scored perfect on his SATs? Damn.

Needless to say, I was hugely disappointed.  Is there any other reason to follow the show, other than to watch beautiful Megan?

The best quote ever comes from tonight’s episode of Beauty & The Geek where my buddy Niels is starring.  Niels, I cannot believe you said:

“If number one were a booger, I’d pick it first.”

Niels, why, oh, why, would you say that on National television? But if you didn’t, I guess I wouldn’t be able to quote you.  Then again, who am I to be giving advice on what to say on television, remember my application to Survivor was denied