One post totally broke that mold – to today’s date it is the most viewed and commented post on this site. No, it isn’t an article we wrote for CNN Asia’s lifestyle page. Nope, not the ‘a day in London’ thing that spent 24 hours on the front page of BBC.com. It is a post about something that apparently has touched a lot of people, people who have then gone on to search out similar experiences on the net: an encounter with a fortune teller.

Apparently there exists world-wide, traveling band of fortune tellers, all of them Sikh (or claiming to be), all of them going by the nom-du-guerre of ‘Yogi Singh’ (Teacher Lion), each and all using the same mode of operations on a world-wide scale. I’ve met two of them – one in Mcleod Ganj and one in Delhi’s Connaught Place. They wore identical outfits and they approached me in the same manner. Other travelers have reported the same encounters, all over the world.

Typically, they will approach you by saying something like ‘You have a lucky face!’ or ‘This day is your lucky day!’ and give you a sunny smile and a compliment. They will then offer to tell your fortune for a very modest price.

Your incarnation of Yogi Singh will then sit down with you and write down a few notes on a paper that you can’t see. He will then go on to show his ‘powers’ by asking you a few questions: “what are your favorite flowers” and “name a number between one and five” appear to be the most popular ones.

The Oracle Himself (or one of him)

Did you pick roses as your flower? The number three? Apparently most people do. I know I did. The fortune teller will then show you a note that says ‘roses’ and the number three. Now, one could argue that he could have a ton of notes stashed in his pockets, each with flower names and numbers, but I’m not here to pass judgment on the efficacy of the Yogi Singh’s of the world. I’m just saying.

After this dazzling show, the fortune teller will ask you to write down a few other things, like the name of a woman that hurt you, an ex girlfriend, or any fact that he possibly can’t know about beforehand. You are told to roll the note up into a little ball and to hang on to it. The fortune teller will then do some mumbo jumbo, like have you count people on an old picture (“these are my masters at the special college. How many people do you see on the picture”). This is where I guess a deft stage magician could do something to switch out the notes and read them, but again – not passing judgment. Just sayin’.

To your amazement, Yogi Singh will then write down exactly what you had written in your crumpled up note, and you will very likely feel amazed beyond belief. He will also tell you a few other things, such as your life expectancy, about a curse that lies upon you and of some bad habits that have kept you from your ultimate success. This is when the pitch comes in: for a lot of money, this bona fide master of mysteries can pray for your fortune, 22 days in a row (sacrificing perfume, soap, incense and spices). His prayers would alter destiny, and success for life would presumably be mine. I think I remember him wanting 600 US dollars for this privilege. I politely declined, opting instead to donate a much more modest sum in exchange for a couple of talismans. I think I gave him three bucks for the trinkets and three for the show. It really was quite impressive. We parted as friends, and I spent days thinking about the interchange. How did he know my ex girlfriends name? Did he switch out the notes? Did he have a partner reading over my back somehow?

Whatever you think or feel about it – if you’re a victim of their exorbitant prices, or if you’re just casually stumbling upon this post – isn’t it pretty extraordinary that this brotherhood of fortune tellers exist? A secret society that follow their own rules and mysteries, traveling the globe while telling people about their supposed fates? I love it. It’s the stuff of legends, and would write a book about them if I had time. Should you be approached by one, don’t hesitate to sit down and have your fortunes told.

Just don’t give them six hundred bucks and the keys to your car.

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Normally it never rains in Ladakh. As the above picture shows, the architecture and layout of the towns are simply not made to deal with precipitation. The massive rainfalls devastated the mud-brick houses, washing many of them away.

We can’t help but think and worry about the people we met there, the friends we made and the places we visited. It’s such a remote and beautiful corner of the world, and its vanishing lifestyle is so fragile and precious that a disaster like this is very likely to send the whole place reeling.

Get well soon, Ladakh. We’re keeping our fingers crossed.

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Jaime: “Is it embarrassing that we’ve just checked into this hotel carrying our own toilet paper?”

Martin: “Not any less embarrassing than checking out with the two from our bathroom. Did you see that there’s two rolls in there?”

Jaime: “Score!”

When you’re on the road for as long as we’ve been, you learn that the one thing you cannot do without is your own roll of toilet paper. You never know when disaster will strike…

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No, actually its our hotel in Delhi. Travel has been rough and dirty for the last few months and we couldn’t get excited about staying in a backpacker guesthouse during our two days here – so we went five star.

Pool side at the Maidens Hotel in Delhi

Thanks to a wedding present promise by my friend Alessandra, we’re living in style and doing things we haven’t been able to do in months. Taking a bubble bath has never felt so good. Splashing around in a pool is like a little piece of heaven. Crisp white sheets wait for us on our huge king-size bed – and get this, they change the sheets daily! It’s madness.

Granted, we have to sneak out of the hotel at mealtime to eat street food (we can’t afford much else), but playing rich feels good, people. So good, in fact, that I broke out the special muumuu in celebration. It’s my fancy one – the one with mirrors sewn into the collar.

The five star muumuu

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The above beer is perhaps the most well-known Indian beer: Kingfisher Premium. It can be bought in dedicated beer stores around the world. I wish I could say that this is only the starting point for the greatness that is Indian beer, but no. Sorry. This is just about as good as it gets. This Kingfisher is a well made lager with a slight consistency problem from bottle to bottle – it is all right, and I have no problem drinking it. Sometimes, it tastes a bit off: no doubt this problem stems from impurities in the water used in the brewing process.

This is a Kingfisher Blue. This is where Indian beer begins to take a wrong turn: since people generally just buy one or two beers per night, they prefer STRONG beer. The Kingfisher Blue is a compromise between strong beer and good flavor: at six percent alcohol it is still drinkable, but with a malty edge that makes it more of a sipping brew than something you drink to quench your thirst.

Next on the Richter scale is the Kingfisher Red. Like its blue brother, it is malty and strong. Flavor wise it tastes a bit like an ale, but at the same time it is fizzy as a lager. At seven or eight percent alcohol, one will make me tipsy and two will make me regret it the morning after. I don’t like it.

Here’s another strong contender for the award ‘Fewest Beers to Make a Grown Man Drunk’: Godfather. Taste-wise it is another malty, semi-dark story. On a cold and dark night in Ladakh, I foolishly had four bottles of this brand. I woke up the day after with a monumental headache. I normally don’t get headaches. What the heck do they put in these beers, alcohol? Yes they do, Godfather checks in at 8-10%.

The only thing noteworthy with the Hayward’s 500 is its name. In flavor and alcohol, it ranks somewhere in the vicinity of Kingfisher Red and Godfather. The 500 is the lowest of the ‘number beers’ that I’ve found: there are a lot of mediocre but super strong beers that has a number in its name. Let’s skip most of them, they are equally horrible. An honorable mention goes to this beer:

The 10000. At a fuzzy 9-13% alcohol, it doesn’t make much sense. Nor do you, after drinking a few. Unfortunately, this is the only brew in some parts of the country, and to my further chagrin it was actually not too bad tasting. Like an alcohol free beer spiked with six shots of vodka.

OK, Let’s talk about some drinkables for a change. This one is called Sandpiper, and it was the only light beer we could score in the Karol Bagh district of New Delhi. It is watery and excessively hoppy, but we drank it with cherish. I mean, five percent, that’s like real beer!

Finally, here’s my winner: Royal Challenge. It is typical that the best beer I found in India is made by a whiskey maker, and sold under a whiskey brand. I can’t say that it is a great beer: its strength lies in the fact that I drank it after a long day, sitting at a rooftop restaurant overlooking the sunset at Taj Mahal. I only found it that one time. Where were you when we needed you, Royal Challenge?

I do feel a little bit bad for writing such a negative review on Indian beer, but seriously: the strong stuff badly fits the hot and sticky climate of this part of the world. I think Mexican or Central American beer would do great around these parts, but at this time in history, India is stuck with the Thunder 10000′s and the Super Strong Godfathers.

It’s enough to make a grown man sigh.

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The temple they referred to was in Balaji, just three hours drive from Jaipur. We had a half day to spare (we’d already shopped until our bags were stuffed), so off to Balaji we went.

Was it the quintessential Indian experience (the one that has alluded us, though we’ve gone to all the hot spots)? Well, no. It was rather more sterile than we expected. There was no rave. There were no “possessed” people; just a well formed (if somewhat uncomfortable looking) line of people waiting to enter the temple.

So, with our hopes of fitting in a last minute intense Indian experience dashed, all that was left to do was shop. So, shop we did. We’ll be seeing friends and family members in a week and our gift list is long.

Balaji shopping

Unless you don’t mind standing in a Disneyland-style line while 300 Indians push you from behind, we’d suggest giving this town a miss.

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His answer (without even thinking about it, I might add): a marble mortar and pestle.

What? No swords or beer logo shirts? No. A marble mortar and pestle would be all he wanted. (I guess it’s time to reveal that it is, in fact, Martin that does the cooking in this family). Well, it’s taken us almost eleven months to find one, but Jaipur provided us with exactly what he was looking for.

The real beauty of it was that we were able to custom design it as well. We gave the shop the dimensions we were looking for and were able to pick it up twenty four hours later. The boy pictured above most likely polished it for us (he’s a happy one, no?)

The cost for such a beauty? $10. I love India (sometimes).

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I tell you this story, which is just one of many encounters we’ve had in Jaipur, to show the unexpected attention we’re receiving here. True be told, it’s caught us off guard. We were under the impression that Rajasthan was one of the most heavily touristed states in India. If that’s so, then where the heck are all the other tourists?

It may be off season. It’s bloody hot here right now and people tend to avoid traveling in arid places in the wrong season. Jaipur also seems a bit like a transit city. It’s not the desert that people want when they come to Rajasthan – they find that in Udaipur and Jaisalmer and other cities to the west.

So what the heck are we doing here, you ask? Well, true to form, we made a last minute decision to take a trip into this state. We had three extra days before we needed to be in Delhi. The time was too short a time to get to the desert (Udaipur & such) and too long to stay in rotten ol’ Delhi. So, Jaipur it was.

We made the best of it, though. I can count six new souvenirs stacked around our room, and that’s just from today’s shopping. I think it’s time to start calculating how much we’re going to pay in overweight to fly all this back to Germany then Sweden.

Psst…don’t tell Martin…but the shopping is nowhere near done.

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Other than that, I have pretty much nothing bad to say about flying in India. The low-cost airlines behave like it’s 1985, serving meals and snacks on one-hour flights. The staff is professional, nice and plentiful. Take note, US and European airlines.

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Well, karma is a b-tch. I just spent our two hours of our bus ride from Miao in Arunachal Pradesh to Tinsukia in Assam with this grease-ball on my shoulder.

I believe that makes us even. Hear that, universe! Personal space is now officially reinstated.

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