The process began on August 22nd in Lausanne, Switzerland and ends September 22nd in Wakkanai, Japan.
But between, it’s full of rich depth of experience! And I’d like to share as much with you as I can.

Keep an eye here for the constantly updating playlist that will take you along with me on the voyage all the way until Japan!
Once I’m there I’ll move to a new video project, but for now, here’s S2J: My Voyage from Switzerland to Japan:

Watch on YouTube.

Another cool thing that happened was I was able to connect with a guy named Krishnan, who lives in a town not too far from Bangalore called Madurai. His story is really amazing, but I’ll let you check it out in video form:

I commented on his organization’s Facebook page, which connected me to a volunteer in the US. That volunteer then gave me contact information here in India, and I sent then an email first. After not getting a reply by email, I sent an SMS to the number I had been given for a head volunteer, and got a very quick reply: “Hello sir. This is Krishnan. You’re more than welcome to come anytime!” Sweet! Also, he shared with me in the message that he’d just gotten married the day before, and will now be off traveling until Feb. 14th, but I’m welcome to go visit their work anytime. I’ve decided that since things are rolling so well here in Bangalore, that I’ll stay here for now and follow all the leads I can for the time being. Then I’ll head out to Madurai sometime around the middle of February, and meet with Krishnan and his team there. I also have another lead on a microfinance project in Madurai, so that should turn out to be an awesome trip.

In the meantime, I’m gonna be as active as I can here in Bangalore, so expect to see some new videos put out soon!

Oh – and I imagine you understand this, but I just write from feelings at any given moment… especially for this blog I don’t rewrite or edit when the feelings have changed. I like to put out the stuff with a bit of doubt in it, just to express the many facets of what it’s like on the road. It’s just one of many facets.
Now here’s the beginning of the blog post:

Here’s a mental backtrack over the past 5 months…what was appropriate to CDG?

1. Gawad Kalinga (Bulacan, Philippines)
2. Habitat for Humanity (Dumaguete, Philippines)
3. Gawad Kalinga (Cebu, Philippines)
4. ANTHILL Gallery (Cebu, Philippines)
5. Bahandi Gifts (Cebu, Philippines)
6. RagsIIRiches (Manila, Philippines)
7. Matangtubig (Manila, Philippines)
8. Naomi (Jakarta, Indonesia)
9. Nikom Putta (around Thailand)
10. Baan Doi (Mae Sai, Thailand)

My first reaction is to be shocked that there are only 10 to list in almost 6 months. And most of those were brief encounters without much depth to them. What the heck have I been doing with all my time???
My second reaction is to think about how valuable even one of these experiences has been, and thinking I’m an idiot to count.
It really does go both ways, but in the end, the only thing to do is to move forward. I deal with such a rollercoaster of emotions with this project.
This morning I once again woke up thinking, “what am I gonna do today?”…with no good answer in sight.
I should try to edit some of the video I’ve amassed from Thailand. I need some exercise and I’m in India – maybe I’ll try to find a yoga class in Bangalore somewhere. I feel a little spiritually distant…maybe I should spend some time getting back in touch with myself/God.

I’m meeting some Indian guy from TravBuddy for lunch. It has nothing to do with CDG. It’s just a random guy ’cause I figure one good step in at least experiencing India is to hang out with people who live here.

Last night I hung out with a German girl who lives here and works at an NGO helping disabled people. On paper, that sounds like a great lead in the right direction, but in the end the night was spent hearing her complain constantly about how much she hates India and Indian people and how her NGO sucks because the assisstants are mean to her and how bad the food is and how it destroys your stomach. For that, I spent a total of 70rupee for the ride there, 300rupee for the meal, and 150 for the ride home…I’m hoping to keep my daily budget around 500/day (including accomodation, which is 275/day), so that ruined the bank for yesterday.

After that I was a bit bummed last night. I had actually connected with the Ashoka India office yesterday, which was a good step in the right direction. I went in the morning and met a girl who’s relatively new there and seemed hesitant to discuss anything with me possibly for fear of stepping out of line. She wanted me to speak with another girl who I’d spoken with once before by email because she was more in charge of this kind of thing and she’d spoken to me before. This was 10am. She asked that I come back at 2pm to meet the other girl, but call her at 1:30 first. I called at 1:30…no answer. Then at 1:40. Then at 1:45. Then I just decided to try my luck at walking back in. The girl I’m meant to talk with wasn’t in and wouldn’t be in again until Monday…leaving me with a weekend to figure out something to do. Also they want me to shoot video for a presentation on Monday evening. It’s one of the Ashoka fellows giving a talk about being a changemaker or something like that – should be good.

But then I came home and found the oddest email in my inbox. I had tweeted something along the lines of having visited the Ashoka India offices, and the leader of social networking there noticed it and apparently traced it back to my websites. He contacted me through the contact form on my website and requested to have an interview with me about CDG – he’s a writer for a couple of online publications including Dowser.org, which is one of my favorite blogs. This should be interesting. I wish I could list off a huge list of accomplishments I’ve made over the past 5 months, but the reality and idealism in my voice will have to do, I guess.

I woke up today and decided to finally get around to finalizing the Nikom Putta video. I had had a tough time with it for a few reasons. One was that it didn’t really rock my world. I really liked Nikom, and walking for 5 days with Buddhist monks across Thailand is one of those stories that will last with me a lifetime, and I’m sure will gradually sound more and more extravagant the more I tell it, and grandkids will probably get a kick out of it. But to be honest, I just felt like the whole thing was a struggling attempt. The hope is to protect the rivers, but people that joined with us, even sometimes the monks themselves, were divided and didn’t have any clear goal beyond waking up in the morning and walking until it was time to stop. That united us, but walking doesn’t protect a river…and I’m sure the countless plastic bottles our group threw on the side of the road don’t protect the river.

But I decided I’m gonna get to it – I’m gonna make the video that I promised over a month ago.
So I sifted through my hard-disk to find the massive amount of footage that I shot of all that….only to find that it’s not there anymore. I must have cleaned it off in South Carolina when I cleared off my hard disk. >.<

So that video can’t be made. I have some clips from Indonesia that I’ve been meaning to edit…might get around to those before long, but I think I’m a lot like a lot of people on the internet. If it’s more than a couple days old, it’s just not interesting to me anymore – unless it’s really earth shattering, but that doesn’t come often.  Nothing to do but move forward.

There is a video that really impressed me a while back – about an Indian cook named Krishnan who decided to quit his job at a 5-star hotel and cook for poor people. And bathe them, and give them haircuts, and whatever else he could do to help them. It’s simple. It’s real action. It’s beautiful.
He’s working in a town called Madurai, which I found out is not so far from Bangalore after a quick Google Maps search (that took about 30 minutes on the Windows 98 computer at the net cafe). I tracked down his organization’s Facebook fanpage and asked if I can stop by and shoot some video. I hope they say yes!

This is the whole rollercoaster thing I was talking about. Finding that lead psyches me to not end – I get giddy! Then I contact them…and wait. In the meantime, I hang out with a German girl who hates her NGO and I feel like it’s pointless to track down these people. And I spend too much money and am reminded that every day my bank account gets smaller.
Then I see a sign for the 1098 child helpline on the road – I get giddy again! I’ve read about the story behind that helpline! It’s a beautiful story about a woman who saw a need in front of her and spent the time to meet it, eventually becoming a lifeline for street kids all across India.
Then I have to deal with an auto-rickshaw driver who fights me tooth and nail for 5 minutes over a fare, I work him down to only about double what the real fare should be (rather than the 4 times that he wanted to charge me at first). All of this was because I wanted to meet someone who lives here and works in an NGO…I remember that whole experience, which brings me down.
Then I come home to find an email of someone wanting to interview me about my project – publicity means connections. Connections means an out from this endless cycle of broken leads and wasted time and money. I get a tad bit giddy, but think to myself, “what the heck am I gonna tell this guy?”

Oh – and I just got a message from the guy I’m supposed to meet for lunch.
“Let’s try to meet around 1 or 2 for lunch. There is a strike today.”
“What kinda strike?”
“Bangalore, it seems, is closed today.”
“The whole city!??”
“It seems that way…”

What on earth could that even mean?? I’d better go outside and have a look around. Anyway, I’m out of drinking water.
Somebody’s yelling really loud, but that’s nothing unusual here. Hmmmm……

I found the airport to be simple, straightforward, and full of polite workers who seemed to be doing their work quite efficiently. We breezed through customs and were out in no time. After being used to waiting in quite long lines at customs, I felt almost rushed as I tried to check my email on my Kindle 3G – didn’t complete it before getting out the airport. I thought it funny that the one ATM in the airport sported a long line of almost everyone with a backpack on their back – taking money from an ATM when you arrive in a new country seems to be the modus opperandi for most backpackers these days.
Each of use lined up for a bit of cash from the ATM and then quickly gave a chunk of it to the next counter over that was offering prepaid taxi coupons. It’s possible I could have gotten a cheaper ticket by trying to go in together with some other customers, but I really wasn’t feeling up to making the small talk necessary to bring about such transactions, so I just quietly lined up and paid my 480 rupee cab fare (about $10.50). Despite its apparent orderliness, the cab system broke apart a little for me when I got out the gate with my coupon. To my great relief I wasn’t swarmed by any annoying touts or pushy cab drivers trying to force me into their cab first, but I was greeted with many smiling faces of drivers standing about seemingly just looking to help in any way they could. I avoided their help as much as I could, and found a number of them trying to take my coupon to check the cab number written on it. I was concerned each time it slipped out of my fingers, but kept a hawk’s watch on it and in the end I found the right taxi (although a different number than what had been written by one digit).

At first I had begrudged the $10 cab fare from the airport, but the almost 45 minute cruise across Mumbai in private, enclosed transportation was quite nice, and I’m glad I had a chance to look at her a bit from the safety of the cab seat before being thrown right in. My general impression was that Mumbai is very similar to Indonesian cities like Jakarta or a huge version of Pontianak. The traffic worked about the same way, with the exception that I don’t think I’ve ever seen pedestrians as genuinely fearful of being hit as they crossed the road as they seem here – not because of an accident, but simply because my driver would speed up at them as they started to cross in front of him and generally succeeded at forcing them back to the side of the road they started on.

As soon as I exited the Red Shield guesthouse in search of Delight, I was approached by two men more than anxious to guide me there. The one who finally succeeded at being my guide (despite my direct declaration that I was happy to search for it on my own) ended up not even hinting at a tip, but made it clear that he was a source of hashish, if I needed it then or any time in the future. I found the “good church boy” approach to his insinuations very effective at warding him off, and soon he accepted that I wasn’t going to be his latest customer. As we got on the elevator together a middle-aged drunk Aussie stepped out, seeming as though he’d probably spent many drunken nights in this part of Mumbai over the years greeting us in the way that drunken men looking for new compatriots do. He was followed by a less-drunk-but-equally-rowdy friend and then a shy looking girl who smiled a smile that seemed to say, “I’m not with them.” I was a bit worried the whole place was gonna be like the first guy until she walked by, so her smile was very useful for putting me at ease. Entering the guesthouse, I saw a wall of African blacks loitering in the hallway and then a few typical backpacker types in the back chatting away – even one girl who seemed to be Japanese chatting with a nerdy looking white guy in the corner.

This’ll do for tonight; although, I’m not too excited about the price and will be happy to move on soon – hopefully beyond Mumbai before too long. I’d like to hit a Ghandi historical site or two maybe, but aside from that and a couple of contacts here, there’s not much for me at the moment. I think I’d rather go somewhere cheaper first to get my India toes wet before exploring this town in much depth. I’ll sleep early and then in the morning look into moving to the Salvation Army, try to find an Indian SIM card, and maybe try to visit a museum I vaguely remember hearing about built in the spot Ghandi stayed while in Bombay.

I’m in India~!!!!

“Bako National Park is an amazing jungle reserve by the sea near Kuching, on the western tip of Malaysian Borneo. It’s one of the best places in the world to see Proboscis Monkeys (the long-nosed ones). Proboscis are a dying species, so I felt lucky to see them so close. ^^”

From Bako National Park, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo, posted by Philip Cotsford on 9/05/2010 (53 items)

Generated by Facebook Photo Fetcher

From The beautiful children of Matangtubig Community, Manila, posted by Philip Cotsford on 8/22/2010 (46 items)

Generated by Facebook Photo Fetcher

As a video-maker, that seems to take control away from featuring my videos, rather than putting them front and center…can’t say I’m too happy about that.  I’ll continue to work on them as the time counts down to my departure in August, so keep checking back if you’re interested.

I’m using themes by WooThemes.  You have to pay a little to get them, but the support and potential for easily developing a much nicer site is worth it for me.  I noticed some people like 2 Backpackers using very well-adapted themes by Woo, and I’d been recommended to Woo from others too, so I decided it was worth the extra cost.

Is there any information that you’d like to see featured on my website?  Don’t hesitate to let me know!

I threw together this video with it

What touches me the most though is to have a chance to experience and see the giving spirit of those around me and remind myself how much good there is in the world.  I can’t even begin to imagine all the greatness I’m going to encounter on my upcoming travels!

Here’s a video I made at the event, featuring awesome music by Hiroumi:

Join us live at 3pm (Tokyo time) this Sunday on BlogTV!

This Sunday, I will have a house party for Charity: Water.
It’ll be an informal gathering of hopefully about 25 people gathering to have some food, drinks, fun, and to enjoy summer in Tokyo while focusing on a bigger cause at the same time. So far Charity: Water has provided clean, safe drinking water for 1,130,968 people across the globe! I’d like to become part of that, so I’ve decided to host a house party and broadcast it online this Sunday.
If you’re in Tokyo and interested to come, please check out the party details here.
It’s open to anyone, although my house can only hold so many people. >.<

If you are inspired by what you hear about Charity: Water, please check out my campaign on the Charity: Water homepage: http://mycharitywater.org/curryparty

Do you have any experiences with clean or unsafe drinking water around the world? I’d love to hear your experiences in the comments. Or join us on BlogTV on Sunday and share along with us live!