Reverse Culture Shock!

I have always had major problems readjusting back to life in the United States. It seems to get a bit easier the more I travel, but still the shock to my senses and the order and cleanliness of everything, combined with intense jetlag, can make me very emotional upon returning.

I spent my last few weeks in India preparing myself to return home. I had long talks with my friends still in India over chai about our fears and vague plans for eventually diving back into the working world. In my head, I went over and over past episodes of reintegration to try and remember what the United States feels like after being away in a developing country for so long.

When I was sixteen, I spent two months in Merida, Mexico, during which time I lived with a Mexican family and slept in a hammock like a local! When I returned home, the first thing I said to my parents upon entering the house was, "Oh wow, you all painted the cabinets!" Our kitchen has always had white cabinets, and they suddenly looked so bright and new to me that I was absolutely convinced that my parents had repainted them bright white.  They hadn't.  I also remember being fixated on the thick, painted lines down every street and wondering how they could be so perfect and why Americans weren't constantly swerving across them.

I had assumed that the same things that shock me every time upon return would be my struggle this time as well. But instead, different things have been difficult. I haven't been disgusted by high prices. Even in India, I remembered that a cafe latte over here costs nearly $4. And yes things are neat and clean and shiny new. But here is what has really thrown me off:

Shoes. Everywhere I go inside I want to slip off my shoes at the entrance and pad around barefoot.

Waste. How do our trash bags fill up so fast? Everything we buy is plastic wrapped and grocers only fill our bags half way before putting them in the cart.

Car time. I forgot about how much time we spend in our cars. It's exhausting and disgusting and unfortunately, in Louisville, unavoidable.  And in general everyone is just so busy all the time!  What happened to just sitting and talking?  Afternoon tea?  A good book?

Grocery stores. Even the local food mart is a palace of wonders. I could marvel forever at the chocolate-covered banana chips and wasabi peas and bottled ginger-infused antioxidant-powered Chinese herbal chilled green tea. The produce section is like a dizzying kaleidoscope, and the search for avocados nearly put me in tears.

Bare legs and tank tops. Today for the first time I am wearing a short jean skirt with no leggings underneath, but just around the house. I feel naked.

Power outage and utter chaos. When the power was out last week, everyone was complaining (among other things) of hot nights. But I say unless you have slept butt-naked upside down on the bed with your head directly under a fan going at turbo speed - and were still sweating, you have not been hot.

Customer service!  It's really an amazing concept.  At a restaurant I ordered sauce on the side and it came that way - no problem!  Everyone behind the counter is so friendly and accommodating.  If I want lemons in my water when I eat out, the waiter smiles and actually brings them, instead of casually pointing to the produce shelves so I can get them myself and not disturb his nap on the floor.

I miss India.  But I'm glad to be home.

Parting Thoughts

Today I am leaving India.

It's a weird feeling - I can't quite get my head around it. Looking back, it seems like the months passed in the blink of an eye, even though at times I felt like I would never get through the week.

I know I will go home and people will casually ask me, "So how was it?" But how do I sum up eight months of living and traveling and working and laughing and crying on the Indian subcontinent? It's not possible in a sentence, and not even possible in this one blog post.

The problem with describing India to someone who has never been is that it seems to be everything at once. It is simultaneously beautiful and nauseatingly ugly. It is colorful and mesmerizing, but also at times cold and depressing. The endless crowds can bring on a deep sense of loneliness, and the vast, open, empty spaces can inspire a sense of inner peace and pleasure. There is an abundance of glitter and gold and opulent wealth with sewage-smelling slums at its doorstep. The streets are at once full of joyful dancing and pain and sorrow. Markets smell of mouthwatering spices and fried delicacies, but everywhere people are going hungry. Life and death are constantly battling it out right in your face. Even the wealthiest tourists cannot completely seal themselves from the confounding, overwhelming, and fantastic complexities that define India.

I think when I am asked, over and over, "How was India? Did you just love it?", I will smile and respond, "India is really amazing." What else can be said? It is such a unique place and I have had such a multidimensional experience that I am left with too few words to describe it.

Chai & Chatter in Little Tibet

I returned to Dharamsala for my last week in India. I was worried I would be a bit bored - but not at all! I have been busy busy busy, which is a nice relief from the slow pace and occassional boredom I have been feeling while traveling alone. I like to have a base when I am spending a lot of time hopping from place to place on the road, so I left a small bag at Jamyang-la's apartment, and I wanted to end up back here in my last days to spend some quality time in a familiar place with this good family friend.

On my second day back in Dharamsala, Jamyang's cousin Nima Dolma put aside her entire day for me. She is a nun, though since she is living with and taking care of Jamyang she does not wear robes. She is also a recent refugee from Tibet, only having come here about seven months ago primarily to take care of Jamyang, who has tuberculosis. Nima Dolma is a bit of a crack-up, constantly making faces and blurting out random new words she has learned in English or Hindi. Every one of her facial expressions is a form of a smile - sometimes a worried smile, sometimes an "I'm sorry, food no good" smile, but often a very proud and happy smile, showing the white rows of her teeny teeth.

So after breakfast on Wednesday, when she finished cleaning up the apartment, we went on a walk up the mountain to a waterfall. As we were hiking up the trail, we came upon an Indian woman herding her goats. Out of nowhere, Nima Dolma breaks the silence with an obnoxiously loud "Baaaaaaaah! Baaa-haaa-haaa!!!!" imitating the goats. The woman turned and gave an amused smirk, and Nima Dolma kept baa-ing her way up the mountain. Then the woman said something to her in Hindi (Nima Dolma doesn't speak Hindi), to which she replied in Tibetan, and the woman turned around, passed Nima her herding stick, and walked away back down the mountain. So there we were, suddenly herding someone else's goats up the hill. Nima Dolma told me in Tibet she used to herd yaks, so apparently we were good to go. Later, we left the goats to graze in the grass near the path, and after that I don't know what happened to them, but Nima Dolma didn't seem too worried about it.

After a visit to the waterfall, we headed to some natural pools that have a constant flow of Himalayan glacier water coming through them. Nima Dolma wanted to swim, so I swam too. It was full of Indian tourists - mostly men in their underwear (women have to swim fully covered in their clothes). So I took off my shoes and jumped in to discover the water was painfully ice cold. I jumped in three times total, but swimming around in there was impossible.

In the afternoon, Nima Dolma took me to visit her Tibetan friends who she met in Nepal when she was on her way to India. We walked through the market and found the two women sitting on the side of the road watching shoppers go by. We drank some chai together, then went off to walk around the Dalai Lama's residence.

The women live in one tiny room in a dorm near the temples around the Dalai Lama's house. They have one gas stove on a table, with food cluttered around it on the floor. There are two twin beds, and a shelf built into one wall. There is not space for anything else in the room. The bathroom and the sinks for washing dishes are outside in the hallway. The women made us chai and cooked up four bowls of ramen noodles for a snack. One of them spoke a little English, so I asked her some questions about Tibet.

She said they left because "no freedom." They came to Dharamsala to be near the Dalai Lama, whereas in Tibet, even his photograph is banned. To get here, she and a small group of people hired a man to guide them through the mountains, traveling by night and sleeping undercover by day. They walked for 28 days before arriving clandestinely in Nepal, though they did not even possess passports to enter the country legally. From Nepal they traveled by bus to Dharamsala, India. The woman who spoke English has a husband living in New York, who periodically sends her money. There is no work for her in Dharamsala, so she and her friend attend a free English class for one hour every day, and literally spend the rest of their time bumming around town, which is why we found them just sitting on the roadside people-watching. Now that she is here in India, she cannot talk to her family in Lhasa because the Chinese have banned incoming telephone calls from Dharamsala. So she does not know anything more about her family.

Today, I accompanied Jamyang-la to the local hospital for a check-up. While we were waiting our turn to see the doctor, we walked around the government-in-exile offices and toured the library. All over Dharamsala and McLeod Ganj are giant wall-sized posters with pictures of Tibetans who have recently gone missing in protests of 2008. Jamyang pointed to one small photograph on one poster who he identified as his sister. She is only 17, and just this summer she participated in a Free Tibet protest during which she was arrested and subsequently disappeared. The family has no idea where she is or what happened to her.

Stories like these are commonplace. And it breaks my heart to see how much Jamyang and Nima Dolma miss their homeland. Jamyang-la repeatedly asks me if I will go to Tibet one day. He says (in bad Hindi), "If you go Tibet, you are veeeery happy." And every free moment she gets, Nima Dolma plops herself in front of the television to watch home videos on DVD from her family's Tibetan New Year's celebration. I don't know if she brought it with her from Tibet, or if her family mailed it to her, but she watches it over and over, pointing out her parents and siblings and cousins performing traditional dances in circles outside of their home. Other videos will simply film the family standing in a line in a meadow surrounded by spectacular mountains, or film a monk friend giving a tour of the family home or local temple. Another favorite video she calls "Black Yak," which literally just has scenes of mountains and grazing yaks accompanied by traditional Tibetan music.

On a more positive note - I saw the Dalai Lama! Finally! I was walking by myself down the street from McLeod Ganj to Dharamsala. Suddenly I heard sirens coming from the road below, and the man walking in front of me shouted something in Tibetan. Everyone around me hurried to the side of the road, dropped their bags, and crouched down. I asked what was going on, and he said "Dalai Lama-ji. Second car." I realized everyone around me was already crouched into a bow, so I pressed my palms together as well as the entourage of cars approached. And there, in the front passenger seat of the second car, was Dalai Lama-ji, sitting and smiling and looking exactly as he does in all the pictures. I was elated. Just seeing him for a split second was such a rush!

Mountains Beyond Mountains

After I left Leh, I spent an entire day on a local bus on my way to Spitti Valley, an amazing part of northern India not too far from Tibet, with small towns cradled closely between high, snow-capped mountains far above the tree line. Mostly I was drawn here by Graham's photos from his travels here last summer.


My first destination was Ki Gompa - a Buddhist monastery perched on a high peak overlooking the valley and the snaking Spitti River below. I was planning on spending one night and one day at Ki Gompa, but I ended up staying for three days and three nights.

To get to Ki Gompa, I chose to save money on a taxi and take the single, daily local bus to Ki, which was supposed to leave Kaza around 5:30 pm. Instead, the bus left around 7pm. I was incredibly nervous waiting for the bus, because it was dark by the time we left, and I worried I wouldn't find my way to the guest quarters at the Gompa, or that it would be full and I wouldn't have any other sleeping options for the night, or that it was past dinnertime at the monastery and I would go to bed hungry (I was already starving at 6pm). Luckily, two Ki Gompa nuns were also on the same bus and they were fascinated by me and pelting me with questions on the ride there, so I knew they would take care of me. When the bus pulled up to Ki Gompa, it was pitch-black. The nuns pointed up a winding road to the flickering lights in the windows above, while they headed a different direction to their personal quarters. With my huge backpack, I slowly made my way up the curves of the road in the dark, breathing hard in the thin air (4116 meters high!). When I arrived at the front door, a monk sort of pointed me inside and down a dark hall way, where another monk met me and whisked me into the dark kitchen, lit by a few skinny candles. I dropped my bags, and the monk in the kitchen (who I later learned is named Thandup) pointed to a chair and immediately passed me a hot cup of chai. Then, without asking any questions, he poured me a bowl of vegetable stew and reheated some chapatis. I was so relieved and happy. There is nothing more comforting when travelling than kind monks and a good, hot meal. When I finished, Thandup showed me to my room. The monastery has five dorm rooms that can sleep about four people each. Luckily I had a room to myself, and it was clean and cozy. The bathrooms, though, were sincerely lacking both cleanliness and comfort. I refrained from bathing during my stay in Ki, mostly due to lack of hot water.


In the morning at 7am, Thandup blew the monastery horn (a conch shell) to awaken all the monks for breakfast and morning puja. I was already awake and dressed. Thandup gave me a bowl and a spoon, and wrapped in my amazingly warm yak-wool blanket, I made my way to the prayer room for puja. I sat with the monks on the long carpeted benches and drank hot chai from my bowl, which a very small monk was constantly refilling. It was so wonderful and I was so happy. About an hour into the puja, the little monk served us butter tea with barley flour, which we mixed with our fingers to make tsampa, a barley pooridge that Tibetans love and routinely eat for breakfast. Personally, I could never see tsampa again and be happy, but it's good to try traditional foods at least once. So the monks paused the puja to eat their pooridge, then continued the chanting and bell-ringing and drum-beating for another three hours. And I'm very proud to say that I sat through the whole thing - from 7am to 11am!

After puja I went on a solitary stroll down the path and around the mountain to see some of the valley. It was spectacularly beautiful. The mountains are such amazing colors - a swirling blend of red, purple, black, green, yellow, brown, gold. From the mountain where the monastery sits, there are euphoric views of valley. (See attached pictures.) In the afternoon I helped Thandup cook dinner - a significant feat for a monastery of 150 monks! Monastery food isn't the best - mostly variations on bread and a vegetable dish. So we peeled and chopped many, many kilos of veggies, threw them in a pot with some water, some spices, a little dirt, maybe a few pebbles, and soon after dinner was served.

After preparing dinner on my first day at Ki Gompa, Thandup told me, in his bad mix of English and Hindi, "Abi we go, gayi. You come, thora thora." And before I knew it we were trekking down the mountain to Ki village to retrieve the monastery's cows. So I became the monastery cow herder during my stay at Ki, guiding them up the mountain and into their shed. It was quite exciting, actually. And on my second morning at Ki Gompa, I took a break from the four-hour puja to help milk the cows too! Sadly, I sucked at it, but at least I got some milk out.

I made some good friends with the monks at Ki Gompa. Only one really spoke decent English, and the other spoke to me in a mix of Hindi and bad English. A lot of our communication was me teaching them new words in English. Then I would walk around the monastery and monks would randomly shout out words I had taught them earlier, so that I was constantly greeted with random words like "Summertime!" or "Eh-snake!" or "Dirty!" or "Goodmorninggoodeveninggoodnight! Food!" It was quite endearing.

After my stay at Ki Gompa, in which I sat through four-hour morning pujas, slept in a monastery dorm but did not bathe, and milked and herded the cows (I'm repeating all this so everyone knows how hard core I am), I went to a another small town in Spitti called Tabo. Most people come to Tabo to visit the Tabo Gompa, which has been declared a World Heritage site, and preserves "some of the finest Indo-Tibetan art in the world." It was founded in AD 996, and has amazing murals in its various prayer halls. I also attended morning pujas in Tabo, which began at 6:30am but only lasted about an hour. Not so hard core.

On my way back to Manali from Spitti Valley, our bus went through a serious snow storm. In the morning in Kaza, where I woke up to catch the 7am bus, some of the mountain tops were already covered with snow. Then, while we were stopped at a local dhaba (food stand) in a tent in the middle of nowhere for lunch, some very wet snow began to fall with the high speed winds. Then, as we kept driving, it turned into thicker snow. Eventually huge heavy white flakes were falling all around us, and the ground was quickly turning white. I could no longer see across the gorge or any of the mountain tops around us. We were litterally driving through a white cloud of snow. Also, the bus only had one windshield wiper, which kept about one-fourth of the windshield clear during the storm. The driver and his assistant kept stopping to dump water over the windshield to clear it of ice, though it only made more ice. It was very reassuring to be riding along mile-high cliff edges like this.

Now I am back in Manali for two days before returning to Dharamsala. I'm staying in a lovely guest house a bit removed from the tourist traps of Old Manali. Its balconies face green mountains and the house is surrounded by apple orchards where the tree branches are heavy with ripe fruits. There is also a garden of sunflowers and marigolds. And - I have my own bathroom with a hot shower! Such luxury.

During the last few days I have been feeling very ready to go home. Though I'm a bit intimidated to be returning to the States - and especially to Kentucky of all places - I am looking forward to the comforts of home. I miss coffee shops and clean streets and the way people actually stand in line at stores instead of pushing their way to the sales counter. This morning in Manali I treated myself to a cup of filter coffee at a very touristy, very hippie coffee shop. And while I was ordering, a local woman with a large basket tied to her back edged up to the counter next to me and handed over two large metal canisters of fresh milk to the man behind the counter. And as I was walking back to my hotel room, there were small boys and old men walking up the hilly streets selling incense to the shop owners who were just opening their doors for the morning. I could smell the incense burning already all over the town. These are the little touches of India that I will miss when I am home in sterile suburbia. Even in the most touristy of the tourist nests, India is still India.

This last picture I took on the drive through the snowy mountains to Manali. Even baby cows need blankets against the cold!