Where ARE we??? No, I mean REALLY. Where the f@#& ARE We??????? - THE MADNESS BEGINS

Alice: But I don't want to go among mad people.
The Cat: Oh, you can't help that. We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.
Alice: How do you know I'm mad?
The Cat: You must be. Or you wouldn't have come here.
- Alice in Wonderland or Dragoman on the Darjeeling & Eastern Horizons' leg

The last week or so has truly seemed like an extended episode of The Twilight Zone. One that began with feverish dreams and horrible, throbbing pains in a dreary Chennai hotel room and ended with blood-red devil eye in a marble-tiled Panthanivas Tapatapani guest house and wild sobs in the back of a eco-friendly Puri restaurant called Wildgrass. Come, take my hand. Let's go on a little trip together while I revisit the wormhole . . .

• Day 1 - Chennai. Sick. SICK sick. Hot. Cold. Sweating buckets. Hurting. Whining. Imagining I have Mad Cow Disease from steak eaten prior night. Yuck.
• Day 2 - Tirupati. Still sick. Take up all five back seats of Raz. Forced to drink disgusting hydrating solution by caretakers. Arrive at Hotel Bhimas Deluxe, where our room features panoramic views of a creepy carnival. Go through massive amounts of security checkpoints and up winding, narrow-laned road in non-AC minivan. We're going to the holy hill of Tirumala to join "thousands of pilgrims who flock here every day to visit the Temple of Lord Venkateshwara"!!! Arrive drenched in sweat with clothes unattractively & wetly stuck to body. Which is pointed out by two of my fellow travelers. Sign form swearing allegiance to said Lord. Join said thousands of pilgrims in heaving, shoving, chanting, thrusting, groping queue for more than two but less than three hours. Are the only gringos in sight, save for one random couple viewed from an elevated bridge. Finally reach inner sanctum. Temple workers roughly grasp me & Darren and rush us around Lord V and out the door, shouting "Fast! Go Faster!!!" Barely have time to see his scary face or make my wish. No longer feel sick. Spiritual awakening? Everything that could possibly be bad has been sweated and/or prodded out of me during the queuing process? I'm still delirious and am just imagining it? Make of it what you will.
• Days 3/4 - Andhra Pradesh State. Long drives. Incredible landscapes. Awesome bush camps where we just drive into the brush and unload. Feel like a different person. Not good different. Not bad different. Just different. Weird different. Time on the truck is taking its toll on everyone. Metaphorical walls are being hit right, left & center. Actual roads are missed. Tears are shed. Jaws are clenched. Campsite chores are not equally shared by one and all. Overall bitchery & cattiness are reaching epic proportions. Rum is drunk in larger than necessary quantities. Shithead (or Bob, as we Americans know it) is played. Showers are not had. Then they are. Steve rigs up a genius washing contraption and is loved by all. Canned cheese makes an appearance. Life is good. OR IS IT????
• Day 5 - Orissa State. Have apparently entered some crazy time/space/dimensional vortex in which we make literal circles in the truck, ending up at the same police checkpoint again and again. And again. Start up a monkey-filled mountain to Jeypore, then turn back to take flatter and optimistically shorter route. Start down road to anticipated reservoir lunch spot as sun is setting. It sets. A passenger is now navigating, which can't be good. Indeed it isn't. Are now on a dark, scary, barely paved mountain path with little fuel left. Where we are beset by a belligerent and drunk/drugged/who knows what crowd in a small village. We escape. Onto a dark, scary, barely paved mountain path with little fuel left. We are lost. The passenger is no longer navigating. Finally arrive at Hotel Madhumati in Jeypore. It is late. Town seems deserted save for small bands of men burning unknown things in the middle of the streets. Beer purchases must be negotiated. Food must be eaten. Sleep must be had, but it is slim pickins' as it is 1AM and we have an early start. Trip notes say that hotel has mice, but don't see/hear them. Trip notes don't say that cold, cold showers have geckos running around the walls, but they do. Still feel weird. It's Larium night, so I also dream in old-fashioned cartoons. Life is no longer good.
• Day 6 - Orissa State. Have entered "the hinterlands of Orissa" and we've brought a guide (Bubbly) and a cook (Mister Auntie) along with us. We buy local alcoholic beverages . . . TODDY from TODDY TAPPERS. YES! FINALLY! and something else made from flowers. 50 cents each for big plastic bottles full. Trek 5K in searing mid-day sun to tribal villages where we pay to take pictures of locals. It is disturbing. Feel like biggest, whitest, assholiest, touristiest intruder in known world. Trek another 5K back to truck in even more searing sun to a most delicious lunch by Auntie. We love Auntie. Discover that empty plastic bottles are like gold to the locals and envision coming to town with thousands of them, tossing them wildly from Raz's roof and having temples erected to us as a result. Still feel weird. Bush camping. Have become a master at tent erection/dismantalization. Drink previously-mentioned local alcoholic beverages around campfire. Question whether or not the toddy has hallucinogenic properties as Annie, Darren, Allison & I see things with burning eyes swooping down from the large tree looming high above campsite. Much discussion about what they are, what is lurking just outside the edges of the firelight or in our tents, whether or not everyone else is dead, etc. Determine that they are devil bats with evil monkey gods on their backs. Find out next morning that bears have been roaming around our tents while we've been sleeping.
• Days 7 - 10 (today) . . . will fill you in later. Need to buy some toilet paper, a new memory stick and meet Darren for lunch at 1PM.