Hi Janis

sorry did not see your message earlier, (or I would have rushed in with help at ), but I guess one should look at the brighter side - I am told that with bhaag it would have been far more challanging, apparently it has a very different effect than alcohol - it "opens" your mind - whatever that means - so if you begin to laugh you can't stop laughing and if you begin to cry.you can't stop crying and as Remy had begun to sing....
so I guess it's better with whatever mix of noff

regards

KKK


So Remy, have I got you all curious now about bhaang

Hi There KKK,

You got me that curious i had to 'Google' it.
Heres one very interesting little link that i came across.

http://www.holifestival.org/tradition-of-bhang.html

Now i know why everbodys the way they are during Holi.

Regards,
Remy

Hi Remy,
These Indians have an excuse for everything.
Must try it with 'noffy.

Noni

Hi Remy

good to know I was successful.

Nice article by the way, though it does seem to exaggerate the "cultural" importance of bhang

KKK

Hi, KKK

That is a good word for it "cultural"
Noni

Hi Noni
thanks. I try.

regards

KKK

Hi Noni,

I think mixing this bhang with noffy would probably not be a very good idea.........although you would probably get a real good birds eye view of Goa as you would be 'flying' high.


Remy

Yes, im surprised the article didnt have a link attached to it saying.........'Buy your bhang here.'

Regards,
Remy

PS. maybe it did and i missed it........i'll have to go back and look now.

Hi Remy/All,

Thanks for the link, and an interesting article. I liked the bit about ''walking underfoot a holy bhang leaf spells doom for a person.'' I guess a conspiracy theorist might say that they lay em out under the red carpet at Dabolim airport for FNs to walk over! I'm not too sure about the bit where it says, ''it freshens the intellect & gives alertness to the body'' (although they're right about the ''gaity to the mind'')

I think apart from the Kumbha Mela festivals, Shiva Ratri in Varanasi must be one of the trippiest experiences you could get in India, since every man, woman, child and cow is on Bhang! As i find Benares mad enough on an average day, i decided to pass on spending Shiva Ratri there myself, but i'm sure it'd be one hell of an experience!!

Om my 1st 6 month trip to India at the tender age of 19 i had just a few days to kill near the end so i went to Pushkar (i got muddled up with Udaipur before). Anyway, being another town associated with Shiva (the Bhangite), there was a bhang wala guy there who had a stall selling weak, medium or strong bhang lassis etc (apparently ok'd by the local 'ministry of bhang' on the grounds of being a sacred shive site) Anyway every day he'd pester me & other tourists to buy bhang or some other more dubious substances off him, which started to grate after a while.

But i was never so glad to see him when one night, being young and foolish, i walked home alone in the dark at around 1.30am (not a good idea for women in India)! Anyway there wasn't a soul about except for me and suddenly a pack of snarling fang baring street dogs frothing at the mouth. I'm afraid of dogs at the best of times but as i stood there surrounded by those potentially rabid animals, knowing that they can sense fear a mile off, i thought what a bugger to have made it that far then end on such a sour note!

Anyway as luck would have it, as if by magic, Mr.Bhang wala emerged from the shadows and using some foreign gesture/noises he miraculously somehow got rid of the dogs (then asked me to buy some drugs off him) Stupidly i didn't keep him talking but turned him down flat (after thanking him for getting rid of the dogs), so he quickely disappeared back into the shadows, afterwhich the dogs returned, but by that time i was nearly back at the GH and luckily lived to tell the tale unscathed!

Anyway end of trip down memory lane.

Regards TDK

Hk, TDK

Well I should imagine Bhang, must be better than inadvertantly drinking
holy water in the Hindu Temple.

"Cows wee"

Hi Tdk,

What a horrifying experience that must have been and someone somewhere must of been looking out for you..........i mean spirtually and not just the bhang wallah.

In Goa in february there were certain individuals selling cookies that were suppose to give you a 'trip'........have you heard of these and if so whats in them?........i think its good to be aware of these things and since you and KKK seem to be part of our Drug Awareness Team i thought i might ask.

Regards,
Remy

Hi Remy/All, and thanks for the promotion to the narcotics squad
I don't want to tempt fate now but during my many hair raising trips to India, it has often felt like (or atleast i like to think) that someone is looking out for me, but i've always been a bit of a scaredy cat so i don't take excesive risks like bungy jumping etc but as you know danger always finds you in India even just crossing the road I would also advise people to think twice before doing extreme sports and activities in India such as parasending/gliding ( i get confused between the 2), due to almost non-existant health and safety standards that we're used to.

A few years back i was in Bir in H.P. (a Tibetan Buddhist settlement & also a hotspot for parasenders/gliders(?) Anyway it just so happened that when i arrived the place was crawling with high ranking police officals and the poor parents of a young British guy had made the unfortunate mistake of going against the advice of the guy running the parasending outfit and he decide to fly (despite the unfavourable weather conditions).

His body was never found to my knowledge, but i later chatted with the guy who helped run the outfit & who'd been involved in the search, and he told me that the most likely thing was that (due to the particular weather conditions at that time) the missing young man would have most likely been 'sucked up' several kms into the sky and turned into a human hale stone then spat out of the sky to crash land probably in some remote area!

As for the 'space cookies' i'm guessing it was probably hash or bhang in them which is used quite alot also in home made chocolate etc for an extra 'kick'.
I'm alot less adventurous than i used to be now when it comes to these things & maybe i've become abit of a boring control freak in my old age but i personally value my abilty to think clearly and rationally and to keep my wits about me over a temporary 'high'/'kick'or 'trip', especially if i don't know exactly what i'm taking and if there could be long term effects (since i think the brain is a very fragile and delicate instrument not to be tampered with too much if possible - the odd drink aside)!

I also once had the highly surreal experience of stumbling accross a young western woman sitting on some steps in one of Varanasi's narrow streets, surrounded by a crowd of bemused locals. The poor woman had totally
lost the plot and was away with the fairies! Not only that her face was covered in red bindi dots for some reason and her hair was in 2 pig tails which were wired to stand horizontally like a St.Trillians school girl! Looking back i should have really wheeled her to the nearest British consulate or mental hospital but it was my 1st trip to India and i wasn't quite sure how to handle it & she seemed strangely contented so i just left her to it

Finally i think one of my best survival tips is to always 100% follow your intuition when travelling (especially for lone female travellers), and if you feel uneasy say by anyone stiking up an inane conversation with you offering you food/drink or a dodgy/ looking taxi/rickshaw wala or whatever, just politely decline & calmly walk away and don't worry about offending people etc if your safety may be at risk. Also maybe not so much in Goa but in most of the rest of India, women travelling alone and (worse) if they go out unaccompanied after dark or talk to strange men is culturally frowned upon, and could compromise their safety, so i try to avoid these sort of situations where possible. I also usually wear a salwar khameez/punjabi suit/well covered western clothing when travelling or outside of beaches/westernised areas as an extra deterrant and out of respect the Indian culture.

Strange as it may sound, also try and gage from looking into the eyes of a driver before i jump in (after 1st checking the price) as many rickshaw drivers in the big cities etc are gouged out on brown sugar etc apparently (probably alot safer in Goa though), but i am wary about using the Goan motorbike taxis after i had a really crazy driver last time who drove like a bat out of hell over the pot holes and i barely managed to hold on with my sweaty palms!

Anyway ramble over for now & kind regards to all,
TDK

Hi TDK,

I have done that paragliding thing on Candolim Beach....the parachute on the back of a speed boat....i think paragliding is what you call it....and i must say i really enjoyed it. Im trying to get Janis to do it.
Also did parachuting (static line not free fall) a few of times in the Army........first time was bloody scarry.......it just dosnt feel natural jumping out of a plane. Feels great once your chute deploys but the 6 seconds until then feels like a lifetime. As you get older you also get more reluctant to try these things but sometimes an auto rickshaw taxi journey in Goa can be much more dangerous.

Regards,
Remy

Hi Remy,

You're certainly alot braver than me jumping out of a plane! (i had trouble jumping off the top diving board at school) I don't even like sitting in a plane, let alone jumping out of one (why can't they just put everyone in a giant 'black box' so if it crashed we'd all survive)

I saw a programme 'How to survive a plane crash' & apparently your best chance is to sit within 6 (or might've been 8?) rows from an emergency exit cos if it goes up in smoke the toxic fumes can get to work quite fast!

As for the thing where you go up in the air with a parachute thingy attached to a speed boat, i also tried that once in Bali (& my brain got scrambled in mid air so i nearly crashed into some palm trees while the poor guy below waived frantically)! Still i think thats realtively safe really.

The thing i meant where the poor British guy disappeared was another sort of parachute glider thing (sorry i've forgotton the technical name) anyway its not attached to anything other than the poor sod who undoubtably just signed 'the mother of all disclaimers' who jumps off a cliff and glides for miles on the thermals before landing somewhere. Actually it sounds great fun, but i got put off by the case i mentioned and a similar case in India.

I agree about the humble rickshaw possibly being the worst of the lot though!
Regards
TDK