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JPM and I are now in Pune (pronounced Poona) after spending yesterday in Mumbai (formerly Bombay). A four hour train ride brought us here. We had the best meal so far earlier today and we got a bit of a view of the mystery that is the Osho International Meditation Center. Do some quick research on that if you’re interested. It’s the most foreigners we’ve seen in one place by far, and they all wear the same maroon robes while wandering around near the place. Strange mix of east and west, third world and first.

We plan to spend a few days here, but may leave sooner if we run out of things we want to do. India’s major cities are severely polluted with difficult to breathe air and undrinkable water. Beggars are everywhere and extreme poverty is never very far from view. There is also a growing middle class of Indians that dress and act much like someone from Europe might. It’s a clash of worlds unlike anything I’ve seen before.

From here we will be moving on to a village called Hampi near some supposedly very impressive ruins of a city that was destroyed after being a major capital for several hundred years. I’ve never been good with specifics but you can look it up on Google or ask me when I get back. Until next time…

In a few days I’m headed to India for a couple weeks of fun and adventure. I’ve been wanting to visit India for a long time now and I’m really excited about it. I’ve had my arsenal of vaccinations and am taking along a small medicine cabinet’s worth of first aid supplies and medicine. I also have bug spray that will kill mosquitoes anywhere in the world at any time. The wearer merely has to think about the bug for the effect to happen. It’s amazing stuff.

I’ll be taking gobs of photos and jotting down my travel thoughts in my new moleskin journal. I still haven’t uploaded pictures from my Europe trip a year ago so only time will tell how long it takes me to tell this story in a public fashion. Keep North America warm for me!

Some stupid spammers hit our servers hard today and some of our defenses pretty much crumbled. We spent a good portion of the day shoring up the walls and trying to keep as much spam off the Internet as possible.

This evening made up for it, though. We went to a performance of the touring Cirque du Soleil show, Corteo and our tickets included pre-show and intermission access to a VIP area called Tapis Rouge with yummy treats and an open bar. It was a great time!

Coldplay’s latest CD has some anti-copying technology on it to try to prevent purchases from turning it into MP3 files and sharing it with the world but it also renders the disc unplayable in many devices. On top of that the album is freely available from file sharing networks so the annoyance isn’t doing anything to prevent piracy. More almost hilarious details at ARSTechnica.