Goa Con't

Sister Sister



Dinner Cruise!














Train station











Live Music



This is the view outside our hut. You could hear the waves while sleeping! So amazing

Glorioua Goa

We took a train down to southern India, it was sooo different than the rest of India. I easily felt like I was in another country. We went from ultra conservative to nude beaches, haha.










How fun are these huts! It reminds me of Miami (100 years ago, lol)








This is the main dirt road in the neighborhood we stayed in.









Cows on the beach. Thats right.










Tina and I. How do we look the same height?? (shes 5'10 im 5'1)








Cheers! Beachside martinis for $2

Mumbai

Chowpatty- A Boardwalk along the Mumbai cost with the cheapest and most delicious street food!

Elephanta Island Caves.... they have stone carvings there dated back too 600AD. Huge and amazingly preserved

Night clubs in Mumbai are a big deal... and NICER than most of the ones in San Francisco... we were like "where are we!!" And we were def under-dressed in our flipflops.

We took a boatride at Sunset

Some of our new friends from the club... VIP what what

Bollywood Beezees

SO we arrived in Mumbai after an overnight train and found the cheapest hotel we could find.
While out shopping the next morning we got scouted by a Bollywood recruiter.
What is Bollywood you ask?
I had never heard of it before either.
Its basically what it sounds like... Hollywood in India. Its as big here as ours in the states.
So this recruiter asked us to play "extras" and meet him @ 8am at mcdonalds.
Hmmm sounds sketchy.
We werent sure but then thought "why not?"
They offered us 500 roupees each!! A whopping $10 us dollars each!!!
Thats actually way more than the average persons days worth of wage here =(
The film is a remake of Hollywoods "Step Mom" the one with Julia Roberts and Susan Surranden. Atleast it didnt sound like it was gonna be scandalous with having us hopping around in bikinis... lol
Our "extra" role was being audience members in a school play.
They loaded us all up on this big bus and we drove about a half hour away to the set.

These pics are a little blurry because I had to sneak them. No cameras were allowed, but come on I had to.

The Director and his team were pretty rude and agrivated and screaming "SSIIIIIILLEEENNNCCE!!!!" at us a lot. There were about 60 of us extras, ALL foreigners. They like to have a lot of white people in their films??

They sent us to wardrobe and put us in some interesting outfits. Pretty basic (darnit, I wanted to Catwoman or something!) except they had me wear these epic neon checkered Austin Powers pants!!! haha and they fit perfectly.

They told us we were beatiful and didnt need our hair and make up done. We were actually kind of bumed by this because we thought that would have been fun. Sooo we watched everyone else instead.

Its hard to see because of the lighting but this is the courtyard we spent most of our day in, waiting in between takes. They fed us breakfast and a late lunch. We got to drink alllll the Chai we wanted =)
We spent most of the day on this playground outside of the school... doing our own photo shoot. Playing with Humpty Dumpty (thats right!) and see saw, swings, slides. Everyone else was smoking ciggarettes and talking politics, being sophisticated, after all- they were big movie stars now. haha. Not us, we were those wierd American girls acting as goofy as possible. We def were having the most fun =)
It was a 12 hour day!
There are some scened that they strategically picked me out of the other extras to sit right in front of the main actors... we had to do things like laugh and look suprised... and looking over in certain directions.
I felt like a pupet all day but it was such an awesome experience and we met all different awesome people including some guys from San Francisco and some girls from Australia and we all met up latter for some drinks and dancing.
I talked to a girl from California who plays as an extra in films there and makes $400 a day! Sign me up, Im seriously gonna look into it when I get back to San Fran.
They did end up giving us our 500 roupees at the end of the day on the bus ride home!
Some things in India arent a lie after all! =)
There is no name for this film yet.
It should be out this summer.

Video @ the Taj

The Magnificent Bulbous Dome

Taj Mahal! This tomb was so pretty... I felt like a queen just walking through it! All the marble and inlay work has been so well preserved... who would have thought it was from the 1600's?
It looks brand new.
The romantic love story behind it turns out to be ....not sooo pure? This was for his 3rd wife that died durring child labor and asked him to build it for her... a bigger and better one than the other 2 huge tombs he built for his previous 2 wives (which are actually on the same courtyard!).
So he did, but it was more to outdue his family who was also building these glorious tombs... and he even tried to build an identical one to the Taj Mahal that is black marble, as his own tomb for himself... but his son who wanted to succeed him put him in prison so he was never able to build it. Drama! haha
They made us wear these booties over our shoes... team namaste!

Fun Fact: no matter what face of the taj you are looking at (front, back, side,) it always looks the exact same.

Waterfall Hiking

haha I love Julias face in this photo. The sun was in our eyes...
















This is a tree whos roots grew down and around this giant rock and into the ground at the bottom













































This is a woman carrying a giant bush on her head

okay, this is the coolest thing Ive ever seen in a forest. They had this epic picnic area made of concrete but painted to look like wood

There was a pool at the top that was safe to go swimming in. Yeaaaa definately too cold for that!

Beatles Ashram

The Beatles stayed at this ashram in the late 60's. They wrote over 48 songs here... some of which appear on their White album.
They also recorded a song here called "The Happy Rishikesh Song"
It is shut down and deserted and on a hard to find road past some random families living in huts along the Ganges River.
This place is huge! And beautiful. You can tell that at one point it must have been a pretty happenin place.
This is a stone igloo type place they slept in... it even has western toilets and electricity! Pretty freakin amazing in India for the 60's!



Some of the lodging, I love how its in the middle of the forest.


The Ganges River



Long stone paths, very peaceful









Haha I found this epic tree swing that was breaking as I was on it and we were all laughing waiting for me to crash to the ground