In China right now — Guanzhong to be specific.

This place is crazy. So, after traveling out of Hong Kong (which was
really a gaint chinatown slapped on top of a New York + San Fran +
London aesthetics), we reached mainland china today, to this city. It is apparently one of China’s fastest growing cities —
so we expected the experience to be similar to Hong Kong.

This place is completely bonkers — not a single person speaks
english… not a single real sign in english (apart from some road signs). On top of tht, I gots
fever right after eating at McD (found nothing veggie anywhere else) today
morning. So navigating through the city with a massive backpack, body
ache and trying to get somewhere with gestures and maps. You can
imagine.

We go to the train station —- it was a madness of people that only
Kolkata or Mumbai comes close to…. we dared not enter. On top of that, it was raining, so all the crowd from the street had also come into the station for shelter. So much so
that it was difficult to STEP somewhere lest you crush a human.

Took us bloody 5 hours — but finally found a hotel and managed to
book bus tickets… and finally got some fever medicine (which is all
in chinese… so I don’t know what the fuck it contains). And I call myself a honed traveler.

Now here’s the icing on the cake —–  after eating dinner at a
veggie monastery cum restaurant, we are walking back — and I see a
giant hall full of computers through a window, with game visuals running on every single monitor (this is at 10 pm)  —– we are like, what
the hell. I come in, it happens to be a NETBAR (internet cum bar) —
nearly 100 young early-twenties are sitting here, some drunk and/or smoking… either
playing a MMORPG, or watching films on some chinese website. I am
going to try and sneak a pic of this place before leaving.

This place is mad. No one smiles or laughs (which my grandfather
already warned me about) except the teens —- I barely managed to get
through immigration… they stopped me right before entering
mainland…. I think they thought ‘wht the fuck is an Indian doing
here… GOTTA be something weird. They let me go when they saw Poorva
was an american (hahahaha).

More tomorrow —- actually feeling better after (whatever) medicine
and food. I need to make sense of this place….! Tomorrow we head
further interior….

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