Something Sustainable

Reverse Culture Shock!

2008-09-24T10:57:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-14T05:53:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-12T02:56:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-07T05:44:00.000-07:00

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!

Leh!

2008-08-27T07:12:00.000-07:00

Leh is maybe the most amazing place I have ever been. It is a very small town seated in a valley surrounded by the most spectacular mountains I have ever seen. Leh is in the eastern Ladakh region of Jammu & Kashmir, the most northern state of India, which borders Tibet and Pakistan. Though there is a lot of turmoil lately in other parts of Kashmir, Ladakh itself is very safe and peaceful.

The ride here was exhausting and uncomfortable but also spectacularly beautiful. It usually takes two days of driving to reach Leh from Manali, but I scored and found a mini bus (or large van) to take me in one day. It meant I was picked up from my hotel at 2am, and we arrived in Leh around 7pm. Somehow I thought I would be able to sleep the first few hours of driving, but ohhhh I was wrong. It was absolutely freezing cold, the driver had the windows down to defrost the windshield, and the road was so horrible that I was constantly being thrown around in my seat. It was quite miserable.

Then, around 5am, I looked out the window wondering why the sky was not beginning to lighten since the sun rises around 5:30am. Eventually I realized that in looking out the window, I was looking straight at the side of a dark mountain. I opened my window curtain fully, stuck my head down and looked up at the sky, where I saw the amazing jagged lines of the mountaintops against a light grey sky. And then I knew it was going to be a spectacular day.

At our first stop at a police checkpoint where we presented our passports, I threw on a second pair of pants and was immediately warmer. Also another traveler lent me her extra wool blanket, which worked wonders. Only then did I understand how the rest of the bus was surviving the cold ride with the windows down. As soon as I arrived in Leh I purchased a huge yak-wool blanket for future rides.

The mountains were beautiful beyond words. Manali, our starting point, is a small town in a pine forest about 2000 meters above sea level. There is nothing to do in Manali but smoke pot with Israeli travelers, so I only spent one day in transit there. As soon as the sun rose on our drive out of Manali, we were already above the tree line and into the dry, rocky terrain of northern India. The mountains were all different colors: black, red, and shades of brown and gray and sand. The trickling streams and small lakes that ran deep in the gorges were a soft sky-blue, a reflection of the deep periwinkle color of the clear sky above.

The highest point on the road was around 5300 meters, and boy could I feel it when we were there. I sat panting in my seat in the bus. When we stopped for a late lunch, we were all walking zig-zag from the bus to the food tents set up along the highway. Some people got very sick during the trip, and luckily I felt fine (thanks to my ginger tablets and ginger chews, I believe!).

As we drove into Leh, a magnificent sunset lit the sky and colored all the surrounding mountains. When I arrived in Leh itself, it was dark and I could not see the town. When I awoke the next morning and walked through town, it felt like I had entered another world, or certainly another continent. Everywhere I looked, mountains sprung up around me. Some were jagged and rocky and brown. Others, further away, looked smooth and gray like ripples of sand. Others were capped with snow or huge glaciers. Mountains aside, Leh itself is a wonder. Despite being a touristy town, it still retains its village feel. Many of the buildings are made of mud and bricks, and there are donkeys grazing in fields everywhere. Many Ladakhi women wear traditional dress and sell dried apricots and vegetables under the shade of trees. In the back streets of the old city, fresh Tibetan bread is baked fresh in traditional ovens. I'm in heaven. The only bad experience I've had here was being solicited by a male prostitute.

Every day when I wake up and walk outside my sweet little guest house and into the wildflower garden with spectacular Himalayan views, I remember my parents' arrival in Cusco, Peru, and how they were overwhelmed by the other-worldliness and beauty of the mountain culture where they suddenly found themselves. I feel this way every day.

In addition to numerous Buddhist temples and palaces and mountain views, Leh has many other wonderful things to offer. Since I am traveling alone, which I have come to love, I have complete freedom to pick and choose what I want to do each day. While I was waiting to acclimatize in my first few days, I visited the Ladakh Ecology Center and the Women's Alliance Center to learn about local issues and local efforts to preserve Ladakhi culture and way of life in the face of the many changes and challenges tourism has brought. I also visited a donkey sanctuary (!!) in a village just outside of Leh. Between all these activities, I take breaks at a local eco-friendly organization that sells glasses of fresh juice made from an orange desert berry called seabuck thorn. And, I have created a little routine for myself, wherein I attend a 90-minute yoga class each morning (we perform our sun salutations before a large Buddhist shrine) and a meditation course each afternoon. In short, I am very happy.

Toilet Tales

2008-08-21T22:40:00.000-07:00

On my last day in Dharamsala, I lost my Indian mobile phone down a squat toilet.

I was at a restaurant having a cup of chai with my friend Cheryl. Since I spend a large part of my days in the mountains drinking chai in little chai stalls and cafes, I have to pee quite often. So I ran upstairs to the squat toilet on the roof of the restaurant, and forgetting that I had stuffed my mobile into the back pocket, I pulled down my pants and the phone went flying out. It seemed to skid in slow motion through the damp floor of the bathroom, into the toilet bowl, and then plunked into the dirty water below before I could catch it. The water in the toilet bowl was dirty (as in, pieces of poop were floating in it), and I could see my phone flashing and vibrating right there on the bottom. I tried to fish it out with a toilet scrubber, but with no luck.

So I went ahead and peed (I had to go!) and ran downstairs to tell Cheryl about the phone. I tried to whisper it through my giggles, but the young man running the restaurant must have heard us and asked across the room, "Your mobile go down toilet?" I laughed yes, and then he translated this to the entire restaurant full of Tibetans. There was a collective murmur and surprised chatter among them as they wondered what to do, and eventually lots of laughter when they saw that even I thought it was pretty funny.

The restaurant owners asked if I could see the phone in the toilet. I told them about the flashing lights in the bowl, and one of the women who owned the restaurant ran upstairs to see what she could do. But even after reaching her bare hand down the messy toilet, she could not find it. My phone had gone down the pipes.

Luckily I don't have a huge need for a mobile phone anymore, since I am traveling alone now and don't need it to meet up with anyone again in the future. When I was having dinner later with my monk friend Jamyang at his apartment, I told him the story. After his initial worry and sympathy, he had a blast making jokes about my phone in the toilet.

First Jamyang jokingly suggested we call the police and have them conduct a city-wide police search in the Dharamsala plumbing for my phone. Then he decided to call my number to see if we could hear it ringing somewhere in the city pipes. When it did not ring, he said, "Phone sleepy." Then Jamyang's cousin Nima Dolma, who was excited to hear a word in English she recognized, repeated, "Phone! Sleepy time!" Then after much thought, she added, "Phone! Break-fust! Eat!" Jamyang laughed and corrected her, "Dinner! Dinner eat!" Later, as we were watching the Olympics long distance swimming marathon, Jamyang exclaimed, "Morel - your phone Olympics! Toilet!" and made swimming motions with his hands in imitation of my mobile somewhere in the Dharamsala plumbing. It was a sad, sad day for my phone, but it seemed to be a good source of entertainment for everyone else.

India in Your Face

2008-08-20T21:49:00.000-07:00

This is what I love about India: everything is always in your face. People have always been asking me why I wanted to come to India, and I have never really had a good answer. But now I realize that I love traveling to foreign countries where I am surrounded and immersed in everything different from what I am used to and what I know. I love being overwhelmed by the foreignness of the sounds and smells and being baffled by the way life chugs along so differently from the way it does in the United States. Before I left home, someone told me India was an absolute "invasion of the senses," and that is precisely why I wanted to come.

The intensity of India is also the biggest challenge for me. Sometimes I think it's odd that the same things that I love about India are also the things I will be glad to escape when I return home next month. Perhaps my favorite description of India in this way is by Diana Eck, Graham's favorite Hindu scholar. In her book Darshan, which explores the importance of seeing in Hinduism, she writes:

India presents to the visitor an overwhelmingly visual impression. It is beautiful, colorful, sensuous. It is captivating and intriguing, repugnant and puzzling. It combines the intimacy and familiarity of English four o'clock tea with the dazzling foreignness of carpisoned elephants or vast crowds bathing in the Ganga during an eclipse. India's display of multi-armed images, its processions and pilgrimages, its beggars and kings, its street life and markets, its diversity of peoples - all appear to the eye in a kaleidoscope of images. Much that is removed from public view in the modern West and taken into the privacy of rest homes, asylums, and institutions is open and visible in the life of an Indian city or village. The elderly, the infirm, the dead awaiting cremation - these sights, while they may have been expunged from the childhood palace of the Buddha, are not isolated from the public eye in India. Rather, they are present daily in the visible world in which Hindus, and those who visit India, move in the course of ordinary activities. In India, one sees everything. One sees people at work and at prayer; one sees plump, well-endowed merchants, simple renouncers, fraudulent "holy" men, frail widows, and emaciated lepers; one sees the festival procession, the marriage procession, and the funeral procession. Whatever Hindus affirm of the meaning of life, death, and suffering, they affirm with their eyes wide open.

Maybe it is for this reason that I have been craving mountains since my last week in Udaipur. It's an odd but very very strong craving. I've never craved any natural environment ever like this before, but now my whole body and soul is absolutely aching for cool mountain air and the desert, snowy, jagged landscape of the north. Granted it is still India, but in my mind it is completely removed from the intensity of Indian life in my face as it has been in Rajasthan. Yesterday my friend told me that my craving makes sense, because with the high Himalayan mountains come isolation, silence, and solitude, all of which have been lacking thus far in my life in India.

Nepal did not quite satisfy my craving for mountains, only because it was still hot (I was counting on sweater-weather) and because the monsoon clouds were covering a lot of the good mountain views. But it's not just views that I want. I want to be in the mountains. So that is why I am heading north tomorrow, where I will spend the last few weeks of my trip holed up in the Himalayas and soaking up its own, different kind of intensity. From Dharamsala, where I am now, I am going to Ladakh - the most northern part of India - to the charming mountain town called Leh, which sits at 3505 meters above sea level. It will take me the next three days to reach Leh, traveling by bus over the second highest motorable road in the world. (The highest runs north of Leh, where I won't be going.) From Leh, I will go down (as in south, not down in altitude) to Spitti Valley, which is full of amazing Buddhist gompas and stupas and farming villages and, of course, Himalayan wonderfulness.

From here on out I will have little access to internet and may not update this blog much. But if you do read this, say your prayers for me while I ride on the high mountain roads over the next two weeks. Even though I'm not Catholic or Buddhist, I may have to buy my own set of rosary beads to finger during the hair-raising bumps and turns.

I've spent a wonderful week in Dharamsala with my aunt Valle's Tibetan monk friend Jamyang. I've been dying to meet him, mostly because he took such good care of my little brother last summer when he was in India and is a very dear family friend to both Valle and Graham. Two of my other intern friends are in Dharamsala also this week, so I have been splitting my time between drinking chai and going on walks with them, and hanging out at Jamyang's apartment. It's become my habit to throw on some sweats and wander to his apartment early every morning for Tibetan breakfast, and then to visit again in the afternoons before or during dinner. Jamyang is such a sweetie and so hospitable. He speaks almost no English, so we get by using Hindi and pantomime. After I finish exploring the north of India, I will return to Dharamsala to spend my last few days in India chillin' with Jamyang and drinking chai in cafes with good views of the green mountains.

Part III: Back to India

2008-08-16T02:55:00.000-07:00

I have decided that my India trip has been divided into three phases. In the first phase, I settled into my life in Udaipur, made friends, got to know my host organization and my cute little city. In the second phase, which began around the end of May, most of my intern friends left, I dealt with a lot of frustrations at work, had a somewhat lonely and very hot summer, but finally completed a small but successful project at the end of my internship. Then I journeyed to Nepal, which was a sort of transition between phases two and three of my trip. Now I have returned to India for the last leg of my trip, which will be spent traveling in the north of the country and exploring the amazingness of the Himalayas.

I kind of hate Delhi. I dread coming here, and unfortunately I have to pass through Delhi to get to many of my destinations. Mostly it is the thick, humid heat that gets to me most, but even without the heat there is still the awful noise and smelly trash in the streets and smoggy polluted air.

I splurged on a flight from Kathmandu to Delhi to get me back to India. I mentally prepared myself for a depressing arrival and horrid night in a dirty hotel. So I was quite surprised when I arrived in the Delhi airport to find that all my memories were completely wrong! I had remembered the airport to be depressingly dark and filthy and unwelcoming; instead, it was bright and shiny clean and beautiful like any other airport anywhere in the world! I was convinced maybe I was in a different terminal (I wasn't), or that they had recently remodeled the airport interior (they haven't). Instead, I guess my eyes have become adjusted to India and what was once disgusting is now perfectly normal.

I also remember the ride from the airport to the Tibetan colony Manju ka Tilla (where I stayed my first night in India in February) was a scary ride. Since it was February, it was very cold, and since it was later at night, the streets were mostly empty save a few crowds of homeless people huddled around street fires or under blankets. This time, however, as I drove again to Manju ka Tilla, the streets were full of Indian wonderfulness. The shops were lit up and crowds were bustling through side streets doing last minute shopping. Since I arrived on India's Independence Day, there were fireworks in the sky and kids were flying kites all around. It was a wonderful welcome, and I was very glad to be back in India.

The hotel I stayed at was not the same as my hotel in February. It was dirtier, which is fine because it is also cheaper, but equipped with a television! I was excited to watch a Shah Rukh Khan movie before bedtime, and I was able to catch up on all the new skin-lightening face cream commercials and Bollywood music videos I have missed out on while in Nepal.

Today I have been wasting time until my bus leaves for Dharamsala at 6pm. I spent a whole 2 hours trying to find an ATM. A kind young man from my hotel came with me to direct me to the ATM, but traveling by cycle-rickshaw on the Indian expressways was not the speediest solution, and it ended up being quite a journey. After I refilled my wallet, the monk Geshe Petu who runs the hotel (and who is also a family friend via my aunt Valle) gave me the key to his bedroom upstairs where he let me watch TV, use the bathroom, and relax for as long as I wanted since I had already checked out of my room. So kind!

Now I am looking forward to a good night's sleep on a bus (fingers crossed!), awakening to wonderfully crisp mountain air, and meeting another one of Valle's monk friends, Jamyang, who also became my brother Graham's good friend last summer in India.

Living Goddesses and Animal Sacrifices and Everything Else I Love

2008-08-11T04:43:00.000-07:00

For anyone who comes to Nepal ever, Bandipur is a required stop along your tourist route. Lonely Planet describes it as, "draped like a silk scarf along the high ridge above Dumre, the town is a living museum of Newari cuture." Indeed, it was beautiful and picturesque and peaceful. I only spent one day and one night here along the way from Pokhara to Kathmandu, but I could have spent several more days drinking tea in the cobblestone town square, going on solo walks around the valley to moss-covered stone temples, and playing with kids in the hills. The town used to be on an old trade route between Tibet and India, and there are still abandoned shop houses in place along small alleys in town. Not many tourists stop here, so there was only one budget guest house to stay in, and miraculously, there was not a single store selling the usual tourist knick-knacks and pashmina scarves.

In the afternoon in Bandipur, the clouds parted and I was able to see the snowy peaks of numerous mountains beyond the valley over which the town is perched. In the evening I walked to Tin Dhara ("Three Spouts") where spring water pours out of five (not three) beautifully carved stone spouts from the surrounding forest. Two young girls were washing clothes and their long black hair in the running water.

Check out this picture, which I took in Bandipur. Among the traditional textiles and corn husks hanging out to dry is an American flag beach towel with a woman's thonged bare bottom. Lovely touch.

Kali, the Goddess of Destruction

I have recently concluded that Kali is my favorite Hindu goddess. Call me a silly, idealizing American, but I love the darkness. Kali is an incarnation of the goddess Parvati, and she is often referred to as the Black Goddess or the Goddess of Destruction. "Kali" in Hindi means "black one." In paintings and statues she is pictured as a black-skinned woman with a garland of bloody skulls around her neck and a bloody knife in her hand. She is always standing on a corpse, which represents ignorance.

My first day in Kathmandu I took a local bus an hour outside of the city to a Kali temple. Since it was Saturday, many Hindu families also made the journey to worship Kali and make offerings. There were long lines of Hindus winding down several staircases to the small temple by the stream in the low forest. As a tourist, and since I am not allowed to enter the temple as a non-Hindu, I was able to skip over the long lines and go straight to the temple grounds below. Perched from some balconies around the temple, I could watch the pilgrims go inside with offerings of flower petals and coconuts. Many people also brought chickens and goats to be sacrificed inside, as bloodthirsty Kali requires the blood of uncastrated male animals to be poured over her image every week.

The sacrificing itself was very matter-of-fact. There was no ceremonious delay or chanting; a young man with a sharf butcher's knife sliced off the head and tossed the pieces back to its owner. Sometimes the owner would then clang the goat's head against a brass bell in the temple, and then the carcass would be carried over to the butchering station where men boiled off the fur and handed back the chopped pieces in a plastic bag.

Mostly I like Kali because I am fascinated by Hindus' worship of her. For a good hour I stood and watched lines of families pour into her bloody temple, and I couldn't help but wonder what they were thinking as they approached her terrible image and clanged her bell to announce their presence. For me it's difficult to conceive of God as bloodthirsty and frightening, but it's useful for me to try, which is why I like to think about Kali.

Family Ties Across the World

My second day in Kathmandu, a Nepali family friend named Nima picked me up at my hotel and took me to some Buddhist stupas and gompas around the Kathmandu Valley. It was very kind and helpful, because I would not have been able to figure out the buses around the valley on my own!

Sometimes my family ties in places as far away as Nepal amaze me. This is how I (now) know Nima:
Geshe Gelek is my aunt Valle's Buddhist teacher at her Tibetan Buddhist center in North Carolina, and now he is a good family friend of the entire Jones extended family. Geshe Gelek's sister is Sonam, who lives in New York and is also the nanny for my little cousin Dora. Sonam's husband is Pasang, and Pasang's brother is Nima who lives in Kathmandu. Even though I have never met Sonam or Pasang, they arranged for Nima to meet me in Kathmandu yesterday, and now I am invited to dinner at their home on my last night in Nepal. Fabulous!

What does a living goddess look like?

She is dressed in a fancy red and gold Nepali dress and wears a lot of makeup, and she is very beautiful. Today I saw her. Nepalis call her the Kumari Devi, and she is eleven years old. She resides in the Kumari Bahal temple in the old city of Kathmandu, and as I was standing in her courtyard she poked her head out of her window upstairs to give the hungry tourists a glimpse.

Nepal actually has several living goddesses, but this Kumari is the most important. I learn these things from Lonely Planet Nepal. She is only the Kumari Devi until she reaches puberty; after her first period she becomes mortal again and a new Kumari Devi is identified as the deity's reincarnation. The Kumari must always come from a Newari caste of silver- and goldsmiths. She must pass a series of tests - one of which involves being trapped inside a dark room with scary noises and masked men and 108 buffalo heads on display. The true Kumari will not be scared. She also has to have certain physical characteristics, the appropriate horoscope, and she must select certain objects that belonged to her predecessor. Several times a year she comes out of her temple in a festival procession through the old city.

I'm ashamed to admit that I have become a full-blown tourist. It's embarrassing to be constantly snapping photos, and though I'd still like to pretend I'm "different" from them all, I'm not. To prove it, here is a horrible photo of me posing with a fake Hindu priest, for which I paid him 10 of his requested 200 rupees.

"Naturally Nepal"

2008-08-06T01:40:00.001-07:00

I spent the last four days trekking in the Himalayas. Even though it is monsoon season - not ideal for trekking - I couldn't avoid the obligatory mountain hike that beckons tourists from around the world. So I chose a short four-day hike to Poon Hill, mostly because the picture of Poon Hill in the Lonely Planet was so beautiful.

I did not realize that this would be luxury trekking. The trail was sprinkled with restaurants and lodges. My guide did not bring any food or tenting gear for us, since we ate in these village restaurants along the way and slept in lodges. Each night I had my own private room with a comfy bed, blankets, and access to a real bathroom and hot showers! If I had known I would have brought a towel and soap!

The only bad part about the trek was the leeches. Leeches everywhere. We were constantly picking them off our shoes and our clothes. I found three on my body - one on my ankle, one on my hip, and one on my arm. They bled a lot and were very gross.

The spectacular views were lacking a bit on this hike, since monsoon clouds often covered the snow-capped mountains surrounding us. We didn't even make it up to Poon Hill, since we were scheduled to climb it for sunrise on the third day, but it was pouring rain all morning. Still we caught occasional glimpses of the mountain range along the way, and the quaint villages hugging the mountainsides along the way were beautiful in and of themselves. We walked through a magical rhododendron forest on the third day, which literally felt like the Elf Forest in Lord of the Rings's Middle Earth. And every time I looked across at the mountain on the other side of a gorge, it was covered with sparkling waterfalls and bright green rice paddies. Spectacular.

Now, unfortunately, my legs are like lead from going downhill for two days. Even walking on a flat surface is quite painful, but I am trying to stretch it out.

Nepal vs. India

Here are some little things I have noticed in Nepal that are different from India.

The cows are furrier here.
Women carry heavy loads on their backs instead of on their heads as they do in India. Either they wrap them in cloth on their backs and around their chest, or they fill huge baskets on their backs and place the handle over their heads (Ecuador style!).
The women are all wearing green bangles, which I learned is for a monsoon season festival.
The food is not as spicy.
There is beer on restaurant menus! No more waiters hiding our beer bottles under the table as they do in India, where restaurants rarely have a liquor license.
There are chickens in the streets, in addition to the normal cows, water buffaloes, and goats.
THERE ARE SIDEWALKS. Amazing.

Bus Rides from Hell

2008-07-28T06:15:00.000-07:00

When my friend Tammy came to visit me in India, we took one 5 hour bus ride on a local bus - the cheap way. We started at 5 am, when the bus was almost empty - though not for long. The whole point of the local bus is to cram as many people in as possible and charge very low rates, so the ride only cost us a few dollars. Unfortunately, in India, the local bus can be a bit overwhelming. On one side of the aisle there are two seats, and on the other side three seats, though people commonly insist on squeezing four on one side and three on the other. They are also very old and dirty. Sometimes the windows don't close, or two seats have to be tied together to keep one sitting upright. Sometimes I am surprised they still run at all, because they look like they have been through a war.

A few hours into the trip, the people started piling in. Our giant backpacks were in the aisle, but it didn't seem to phase anyone. Even the very large Indian women just pulled up their sarees and climbed over the piles of luggage, passing bags of crops and small children over our heads into the nearest open space. For Tammy, it was very overwhelming. "Sensory overload," as she put it, and she couldn't understand how I actually enjoy riding the local bus. When I used to go to the village in Dhariawad for my first project at KVK, I rode the local bus for four hours there and back. For me, it's a fabulous way to immerse myself in India and everything I love and hate about it: I can feel the invasion of my senses from all around me and still be able to look out the window and enjoy the beautiful landscape.

This week, Megan, Michael, and I left Varanasi on a night bus to the India-Nepal border. It was a local bus, but very cheap and our only option for traveling at night. We sat on the right side in three seats next to each other. I volunteered for the middle, since I had a blow-up neck rest that I was sure would enable me to sleep. We were also told that since it was a night bus, it would probably not be full, so we could each claim several seats to ourselves and lie down.

Soon after the bus started, it began to rain. Of course, right above my head, there was a leak in the ceiling, and water came plopping down on me. We rode for several hours, it kept raining, and people kept coming on and off of the bus quite regularly - standing room only. I had to wear a raincoat to keep dry, which was quite comical but also very hot. As we got very tired and wanted to sleep, not only did the seats not recline, but also they were not wide enough for all of us to sit with our shoulders squarely forward. Someone had to shift sideways a bit for us to be comfortable.

At some point past midnight, the bus seemed a bit empty. I got up to check out the empty seats, and realized that everyone else had claimed a row of seats for themselves, and we were stuck still sitting three across and squished like never. Around 2:30am, there were rows available and we all spread out. The rain was still trickling down onto me, so I still had to sleep in my raincoat, but it was a bit better. Every 20 minutes or so I woke up when we went into a huge pothole, but it was better than sitting anyway.

We arrived at the border around 5:30am. There were two separate arches to walk under - first the one that said "Indian Border" and the second that said "Nepal Border." I'm not sure what was in between. We had our passports stamped at the Indian immigration office, and bought our visas at the Nepal immigration office. Somehow I expected the offices to be sterile, A/C ed, brightly lit cement buildings, but they were nothing of the sort. Instead it was like walking up to a hole-in-the-wall chai stall. The men yelled, "Going to Nepal?" from across the street and we walked over to their wooden tables and they gave us the stamp. Easy as pie.

We spent the day in Lumbini, Nepal, the birthplace of Lord Buddha. We visited some the monument marking his birthplace and some nearby temples. We planned to leave Lumbini the next day, but were stranded due to strikes and roadblocks all across the country. So we rested for a day, then caught an early bus the next morning to Pokhara. Actually, we were at the bus stand at 6:30am, but there were technical problems, so we waited until 8am for the bus to start. Then we switched to another bus at 9am to take us to Pokhara.

Our bus to Pokhara was nice. It was a minibus, with cushioned seats and curtains on the windows. It was supposed to be a 7-8 hour bus ride. At 11am, however, our bus stopped on a road lined with buses and cars. Up ahead we saw black smoke and an ambulance drove by. A few hours later, we learned it was a strike. It was very hot and sunny outside. We had a chowmein lunch out of someone's kitchen. Around 2:30 Michael and I walked up the road to see what was going on. There was a long iron pole laid out across the bridge over the river, and on either side of the pole were two black tires on set on fire. Everyone around was just kind of staring at it, talking, watching kids jump back and forth over the pole. Finally someone told us the student protesters would clear the way and let us through at 4 or 5pm.

So we sat around some more. I read in the shade of a tree, sweated a lot, drank a coke, played word games with some Swiss girls on our bus. It was a long day. At 4pm we finally got back on the road, only to be stopped again at another road block at 6pm. We waited there for another hour, then proceeded on to Pokhara.

The bus went through the mountains to Pokhara at lightning speed. I was a bit scared when we passed several overturned buses on the side of the road. Eventually I was so tired I nodded off to sleep, but every few minutes I was awoken as we flew over a bump and I literally bounced so high I got air and came completely off the seat. One time when we went around a sharp curve, Megan flew out of her seat into the aisle. Sleep was not possible.

We finally arrived in Pokhara at 11pm. It was a long day, and my booty was quite tired. We have a lovely hotel set back in a garden on the main road through town. Today we are going hiking to try to catch a glimpse of the Annapurna mountain range. Besides the hellish bus rides and stomach bug I'm currently nursing, I like Nepal very much so far.

Adventures in Varanasi and Beyond

2008-07-23T21:03:00.000-07:00

Train Disasters

I departed from Udaipur on Monday evening on the 6:30 train, and I arrived in Delhi early the next morning. There, I met up with my brother Graham's friend Megan (who he knew from study abroad in Cairo) and her fellow intern in Punjab Michael, who is from Germany. We spent the morning in Delhi together and booked a train to Varanasi that was to depart at 1:30 p.m.

We arrived at the train station promptly at 12:30, with time to collect our luggage from storage (which was crawling with giant rats) and find our platform. There were some major train delays because of an earlier accident on the railways, so our train did not appear on the information screen. When it was almost 1 p.m., we asked around for directions and moved towards platforms 7 and 9, based on different information given to us by different train station agents. 1:30 came and went, and still our train had not arrived at the station. Around 2 pm, over the loud speakers, we heard what we thought might, possibly, be an announcement about our train leaving from platform 12. I inquired in another inquiry office, and the woman told me that yes, our train was leaving from platform 12 - at any minute!

Unfortunately, I had everything I own with me in my giant backpack, so it was not easy to move. Michael graciously carried it for me and gave me his almost empty backpack and we went running to the train. At the door I shoved our ticket into someone's face, he looked and nodded, and we boarded. As soon as we were on the train started moving. I showed some train employees our seat numbers and they pointed us to the front of the train. We struggled through about 10 cars to the front of the train - everyone insisted our car was at the front. When we reached the front, we showed some more people our ticket. Then we knew there was a problem. They shook their heads and muttered in Hindi and finally told us we were on the wrong train and this one was not going to Varanasi. What followed went something like this:

Train man: This wrong train. Not go to Varanasi.
Me: Oh shit, oh shit.
Megan: What should we do? Sir, can you tell us what we should do?
Me: Oh shit, oh shit!
Train man: You get off train! Otherwise you have big problem!
Me: Just get off?
Train man: Yes!
Me: Right here?
Train man: Yes!

Luckily, as the train pulls out of the station, it moves very slowly and often pauses. So when the men told us to get off, the train happened to lurch to a stop, and we got off. It was a far jump down (poor Michael with my bag as heavy as me), but we just walked along the tracks back to the station, much to the amusement of all the Indians watching us from the train windows. When we arrived at platform 12 again, our train was there waiting for us! We boarded, showed our ticket to every person we saw and asked about 15 times if it was going to Varanasi, and soon thereafter it left!

We were so sweaty and exhausted from running and jumping and walking along the tracks that the clean, cool, A/C cabin was a welcome relief. We all took very luxurious naps in the sleepers and still slept well at night.

India's Holy City

Varanasi is an amazing city. We are lucky to be here for the Shiva festival. The city is full of Shivite pilgrims dressed in orange and carrying poles on their shoulders from which hang canisters of smoking incense and flowers and sparkly Hindu decorations. Last night we went to the ghats to watch the festival on the banks of the Ganges river. We lit candles in little banana leaf boats full of flower petals and placed them in the river. We also convinced a group of young Shivite men to hold a sign that said "Happy Birthday Graham" and pose for a picture to send to him. They loved it, and so did Graham I think, who loved Varanasi so much.

Since the river is so high and the current so strong, the police have forbidden boat rides. This morning we awoke at dawn and watched Hindus make puja on the ghats again. We tried to secure an illegal boat ride, but after our guides paddled for two minutes, a neighbor warned them of police trouble nearby and we had to get out without really going anywhere at all. So we walked along the ghats instead, which are not only sprinkled with shrines and temples and bathing pilgrims everywhere, but which are also on the edge of some beautiful, crumbling, ancient and majestic Indian buildings. They look like the palaces of Rajasthan, but darker and more weathered and abandoned.

Tonight we are taking a bus to the Nepalese border where we will process our visas in the morning and then make our way to Lumbini, the birthplace of the man who would become the Buddha. Then we will venture into the mountains of Nepal. I am so tired of being hot and sticky and constantly sweaty that I have decided to stay in the mountains for the rest of my trip in Asia. I will only venture down from the Himalayas for required travel through Delhi. The heat is just not fun anymore.

On Leaving Udaipur

2008-07-19T06:36:00.000-07:00

This month I took a two week vacation to travel with two friends from home. It was a welcome break. We went to Dharamsala, trekking in the Himalayas, Amritsar to see the Golden Temple, Jaipur, and finally the Taj Mahal. The Golden Temple and the Taj Mahal were especially spectacular – I won't attempt to describe them. Now I am back in Udaipur but soon to leave again. I have finished my project, completed my last day at work, and in two days I will leave for Varanasi and then Nepal.

Goodbye Rituals

Since I have been back, I have been facing goodbyes everywhere. At my office, the staff held a small farewell ceremony for me where they presented me with a coconut, a garland of marigolds, and put a dot of pink powder on my forehead. My host mom thought I had gone to the temple, as these are all Hindu rituals. Then all the staff members said some words about me, which all came out sounding like eulogies.

One staff member kindly invited me to his home for dinner a few nights ago. His wife cooked us my favorite meal – dal bati churma – though this time not cooked in a cow dung fire. As we were sitting on the cement floor watching Bollywood music videos and eating with our hands, I was quite content and in my element. And then my coworker let out the loudest, never-ending fart that was unfortunately amplified by the cement floor beneath him. No one even flinched. After that I lost my appetite.

Something Sustainable?

I recently watched J.K. Rowling's Harvard commencement address on youtube – a fabulous speech I highly recommend (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L445BmUEXH4). In the first part of her speech, she talks about failure and the role it played in her life and in developing her as a person.

It made me think a lot about failure in my own life. I think mostly I have been blessed with many successes, until now. Though my internship wasn't necessarily a complete failure, at times it did certainly feel that way, and it was certainly full of many small failures. Still, I think all of these frustrations have taught me more in the end than one big successful project would have.

I spent many, many hours sitting at my host desk in the hot office trying to pull a project (or myself) together. And in that time I learned a lot about myself – both strengths and weaknesses. For example, I learned I have a mammoth amount of patience (came in quite handy!). I learned I am resilient in the face of frustration, boredom, and defeat. I learned that if confronted with a task or project that I am in the least bit excited or passionate about, I have energy and self-initiative. When the task is not very exciting to me, I have to dig very deep to find the resolve to pull through. One of my main weaknesses that I had to eventually overcome was my repulsion of asking favors and being the slightest inconvenience to anyone. Since I could do nearly nothing on my own at KVK, this was at first a big problem. I'd like to think that now I am more or less over that hurdle.

In fact I have been able to overcome many of my personal flaws that at times set me back. Often crippled by over-politeness, I learned to openly speak my mind without feeling guilty for telling someone else his idea is not good. I quickly learned that Indians speak in a very blunt manner that often (unintentionally) comes across as rude to Americans. I learned that I must speak back in the same way if I wanted anyone to hear what I was saying.

I gained some good insight into the face of development in India. First and foremost, it is very privileged, and though many organizations boast a "bottom up" approach, I am not sure that is the reality of it.

In addition, the task of social change in a country like India is a daunting one. The population size is such that any efforts can barely make a dent, and it is marked by deeply-rooted traditions, beliefs, and social systems that will be in place for a long time to come. I also learned that as an outsider (by which I mean, not an Indian villager), development projects such as the ones done at KVK are incredibly difficult. There are incalculable, unforeseeable complications that arise from systems of caste, gender, religion, economic status, social hierarchy, and village customs.

I have been asked several times about the meaning of sustainability and how it can be achieved. The more I learn about sustainable development, the less answers I have. Sustainability is surely the biggest challenge in all this. I am nearly certain that my little project at KVK is not sustainable. I only hope that people who actually work in the development sector have more luck with it than I did.

Reflections on Life in Udaipur

2008-06-25T03:28:00.000-07:00

Amazingly, I have been very busy over the last few weeks! May was not the best month in Udaipur for many reasons. Most of my intern friends left, it was hot as Hades (which made it difficult for me to do anything during the day besides sit under a fan), and work was frustrating as always. In early June, the pre-monsoon weather started, which brought cloudy days, drizzles, occasional rainstorms, and cool breezes. It’s amazing how weather can change your mood – I feel so much more energetic!

The Pleasures of India

Since I have two friends coming to visit me in India for two weeks in July, and we are planning on doing some trekking in the Himalayas, I have been trying to exercise a bit more and gain back some of the muscle I have lost from being so lazy in this heat. Several mornings I have taken early morning hikes up a small mountain called Neemach Mata, which has a pleasant Hindu temple at the top and beautiful views of the lakes and the city. There are always people there in the morning, but it is never too crowded. Families, groups of teenagers, or a pair of girlfriends will come here in the mornings to offer prayers before the day begins. It’s very relaxing, and best of all - no one bothers or hassles me. I love to see the same man sitting there reading the newspaper every morning. It’s so refreshing – why not sit on a mountaintop and to read the morning paper?

Also, since a former intern recently found out he got scurvy in India, I have been making a conscious effort to eat more fruits, which are cheap and plentiful. So now, after my hikes to Neemach Mata, or on my way to work, I stop at the local juice stand in Fatehpura (my neighborhood), and buy a glass of fresh mango juice for ten rupees (25 cents). It’s a nice treat, and one of the simple pleasures that I love about India.

Auntie recently purchased a mosquito zapper that is shaped like a tennis racket. It is fabulous. Once it is charged, you hold down a button and swing the racket through the air until it zaps loudly at having killed a bug. It is Auntie’s favorite toy, and everyday after her evening prayers she whips it out and zaps all the little bugs who disturb her. Quite gratifying.

Successes at Work

Even at work I have been keeping myself busy! For the last month or so, I have been working on a vermicompost project that actually seems to be going somewhere. I did a brief needs assessment in a nearby village on vermicompost (or worm compost), and learned that many of the women who had previously prepared compost had had many problems with pests eating the worms. So I put together a workshop in the village on compost protection measures. With some money provided by FSD, I purchase new worms and new plastic sheets for the women to protect their compost beds. This week, I traveled to the village with a scientist from KVK to give a talk on ways to keep ants, crows, mongooses, and other pests from eating the worms. Then we helped the women refill the compost pit, add the right amount of water, and then add the worms. During the demonstration, I kept being showered with small purple berries, as our jeep driver was in the trees collecting as much fruit at he could to take back home.

Originally this project was supposed to take me a few weeks at most. I was racking my brain trying to come up with a second project to work on simultaneously or when I finished the vermicompost workshop. Instead, it took me about 6 weeks, and there is still more work to be done. During the last few weeks of my time at KVK I will return to the village to do some follow up work, such as delivering more worms and observing progress of the compost pits.

When I do not have much to do at KVK, I have been occupying myself at Animal Aid, which I still love and which helps pass the time. I have also been trying to organize a workshop for FSD interns and host families with one local NGO called Shikshantar that promotes zero-waste living and healthy cooking.

Women and Men and the Space in Between

Living in India has been a real challenge for me, much more so than I ever anticipated. Though I love Rajasthan and would not want to be anywhere else, it is one of the most conservative states in India. Historically, Rajasthan was very isolated from the rest of India in its traditionalism, and only very recently it has become integrated into the modernization of the country. Thus, a strict social structure still dictates how relationships between castes and between men and women should be.

When I first arrived, I thought there was something nice and romantic about such traditionalism and conservativism. Now my feelings about Rajasthani society are much more complicated and difficult to untangle. Obviously, as a liberal American woman, it is difficult to live here. It is one thing to travel in Rajasthan, another thing to live here for a month or two, but it is an entirely different experience for me to live in Udaipur with an Indian family for six months.

Though I feel very close to my host mother, our conversations are still very censored and often I feel that I can’t be honest with her about my experience in India. For example, friendships between men and women in India don’t really exist the way they do in the United States. And since there is virtually no dating in Udaipur, there is little opportunity for me to interact with males at all in India. Of course, I do have some Indian male friends who sometimes hang out with our cluster of foreigners in Udaipur, but I have to approach those relationships very cautiously and never spend time with them alone. I often find myself being overly cold-shouldered towards them to discourage their flirtations. If a male friend gives me a ride home on his motorcycle or in his car, I have to ask him to drop me a block from my house so that Auntie doesn’t see me alone with a male and get upset.

I don’t have any female Indian friends my age. Though some of my intern friends have host sisters our age, they would never go out with unmarried men with us, and usually stay at home studying or doing housework. I feel I have good friendships with my coworkers and my host mother, but they are all adults with families of their own, and so for lack of Indian friends my own age, my experience here has been much different than past experiences in Latin America.

Still, Udaipur is not as conservative as other parts of Rajasthan, I hear. One intern from FSD’s program in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, said she is not allowed to drink alcoholic beverages at all, or interact with unmarried men, and many of the houses in Jodhpur have separate entrances and separate common living areas for men and women. Goodness.

The other difficult thing about these gender restraints is that I feel constantly on-guard and suspicious of people’s intentions. On any day, I am constantly aware of my surroundings, lest I get run over by a motorcycle, butted by a cow, or fall into a pit on the side of the road. But in addition to that, I have to make extra efforts not to make eye contact with men and not get too close to anyone so that I am not groped by wandering hands. All this can be exhausting, and it can make me feel disgusting inside even if nothing bad has happened that day.

On Slooowing Down

I have had to adjust a lot to the slow pace of life in Udaipur. On the one hand, it is a welcome change from the frantic stresses of working in a law office in San Francisco, or my packed schedules in college. On the other hand, the boredom can be maddening at time. Still, I notice I have become accustomed to this slow pace compared to when I first arrived. There isn’t a whole lot to do in Udaipur, so on an exciting day I hang out with friends (or by myself) at hotel pools or rooftop restaurants, where we lounge and drink cold drinks and eat and talk for hours on end, and I am perfectly content and entertained.

I went with my friend Susanna to a small town called Pushkar this weekend. We spent a lot of time just chilling out drinking soda, or sitting on the ghats by the lake. Before we left, we met two British guys who had just finished a three-month stint in Darjeeling, where they had been teaching English in different monasteries outside of the city. We sat and talked for several hours, not thinking at all about the sights we should be touring in Pushkar. We swapped stories about our respective lives, shared the same frustrations and the same pleasures of India. I thought I was a little bored in Udaipur at time, but their stories brought boredom to a whole new level. At nighttime in a rural monastery in the hills of India, there is nothing to do but sit in your room and read a book, which I can imagine would be mind-bogglingly dull after a few weeks.

In the United States, when I come home after a day or work or classes, there is always something to do. I fool around on the Internet, call a friend, cook something, go grocery shopping, ride my bike, go to a dance class, maybe watch television, clean my room, or just reorganize something. Here, at my home in India, there really is nothing to do. Nothing interests me on television and there is nothing I can cook. Sometimes I just open my closet where all my things are crammed and stand staring at it, looking for something to do in there. I wonder what things I could reorganize, pack up, unpack, sift through or throw away. But there is nothing. So I stand and stare until I get tired and pick up my book again. Then I go sit on the front porch in the garden with Auntie while she reads her holy books and I read The Grapes of Wrath. Sometimes I come home and she is sitting on the kitchen floor sorting through grains of wheat or peeling garlic buds, so I help her. When I need some kind of stimulation, I just go walking through the Old City or go buy another glass of mango juice. This is life in India. Sometimes fabulous, and sometimes... not.

Animal Aid

2008-06-18T23:42:00.000-07:00

For the last few weeks I have been volunteering at an organization called Animal Aid, which is an animal hospital, shelter, and rehabilitation center in a village just outside of Udaipur.

Animal Aid was founded six years ago by an American couple who had been coming regularly to India for the last fifteen years. Before I visited the hospital, the founder Erica warned me that many of the animals are in much worse condition than I am used to or have ever seen before, but that it is also a place full of hope and happiness for animals who are given the treatment and affection that they would not be getting on the streets.

I am glad she warned me, because I was a bit shocked when I first arrived. Many of the dogs walking around are “draggers,” meaning their back legs no longer function (usually from being hit by cars) and so they drag themselves around on their front paws. Other dogs have huge gaping wounds that never seem to heal because they are constantly picking at them or scratching themselves. One dog called “Sexy” has a huge tumor on her bottom that was infested with maggots, and in the wound you can still see the bloody holes from where they were literally eating her alive.

The “hospital” was not what I had envisioned. It is mostly outdoors – the building itself has some cement kennels, one teeny kitchen, one medicine room, and one somewhat surgery room. Otherwise, the “indoor” section is built of bamboo, wood, and tin roofs.

As you can imagine, the hospital is mostly full of dogs. There are a few cats, two monkeys, a good handful of donkeys and cows, and some parrots and pigeons. Animal Aid’s policy is that they do not return animals to the streets if they know they cannot survive. So dogs with only two working legs, or a blind donkey, or even a dog who has been at the hospital so long that he has lost his pack and would be attacked by street dogs, have permanent homes at the hospital. Many of the dogs have free reign at the hospital; others stay on chains either inside or in the paddock outside to avoid fights. Dogs who come in to be spayed or neutered usually have an address to where the staff returns them where a local person may have been feeding them or even vaguely looking out for them on the street.

Once I got over the initial shock of so many wounded animals, I found it was a very, very happy place. One of the funniest dogs is Minnie, who had to have both back legs amputated at the torso. So really, her back end is just a round stump, just her butt. But, she is a very happy dog, so she is constantly running around playing. When she hops around on her two legs, her butt bounces on the ground. It seems like it must be uncomfortable since her amputations haven’t healed entirely, but nothing can stop her from bouncing along because she is just too happy. It makes me laugh every time I see it.

Animal Aid loves volunteers because there are so many animals that need extra attention that the staff doesn’t always have time to give. So when I go in, I take dogs for walks (every dog gets at least one walk a day), or I sit with a dog who isn’t eating and try to hand feed him treats. Other times I find a dog who is scared to death of people and sit with her in the kennel and slowly try to socialize her. (Yes, I have my rabies vaccine.)

My favorite dog is a yellow lab puppy who came in with two horribly mangled front legs. One leg they amputated; the other had a compound fracture that they put in a cast. Unfortunately the dog has had to stay in his kennel for several weeks because he is not supposed to walk on his front leg while it heals. If it doesn’t heal, the dog will not be able to survive and they will have to put him down. Fortunately, it seems to be healing well. Now every time I go in, I take the little guy out to roll around in the dirt and get some fresh air. He tries to walk, which the doctors now say is okay because it shows the fracture is healing since he can put weight on it. Mostly we just sit and belly rub in the sun.

Besides the dogs, my other favorite animals are the baby cows. There are two now – one teeny, super soft white cow just recently born, and another reddish cow named Apple who is very ill and not eating well. Both are the sweetest creatures ever, no bigger than a dog, and they are constantly wanting attention. Even the puppies love them. There is one puppy who just refuses to stay with the other puppies, and always curls up with the cows and sleeps in the hay.

Every time I leave Animal Aid I feel so inspired by the founders and so happy for the animals who are being treated there. Here is their website, it’s a fabulous organization. http://www.animalaidunlimited.com/

Favorite Pictures from Udaipur

2008-06-13T02:02:00.000-07:00

Sunset.

Chilled beer.

Marc and a local Danny DeVito!

My elephant friends in the Old City!

Susanna taking a phone call on the road to Bundi.

This is how we start the engine on KVK's bus.

Dave at a chai stall, and a good example of daily life as a foreigner in India.

Baby cows! I love them.

My friend Ram!

This is how we eat lunch in Udaipur.

Midday traffic.

A random foreigner we picked up: Alex from Israel who teaches "laughing yoga."

Autowallah, Autowallah

2008-06-03T00:13:00.000-07:00

An "autowallah" is a man who drives an autorickshaw - a three-wheeled, rickety vehicles that is also known as a "tuk-tuk" and which seems like it is always going to tip over. By now, I know many of Udaipur's autowallahs very well. And frankly, they make life here more interesting, even if they do try to rip me off all the time.

Mostly when I approach a parked auto, I find the autowallah asleep on the back bench (see photo below). Sometimes when he hears me he jumps awake and eagerly negotiates prices. Other times, he lazily opens one eye and asks where I want to go. When I say "Bedla Road," he thinks for a moment and shakes his head. Too far. He would rather nap.

Autowallahs' business logic seems very... illogical at times. One time my friend was bargaining an auto for me. I gave my final price of 80 rupees, but the driver insisted on 90. I knew it was too much. My friend told him, "She will only pay you 80 rupees - good price. So you can drive her for 80 rupees, good business, or she can find someone else and you can have no business. What do you want?" He thinks, slowly shakes his head, and mutters, "No, no business," and turns around. So I found someone else.

Sometimes I hire an auto and the driver jumps in the front seat and exclaims, "Yesssss! O.K.!", excitedly showing off his nicely decorated seats. Sometimes he blasts Bollywood music and may even have some flashing colored lights under the roof. Other times I hire an autowallah to take me somewhere, and I sit in the back and wait for quite a while while he talks to his friends until he finally agrees to start the engine. My friend Maddie once hired an auto and the driver said, "First I take my chai." So they sat while he drank his tea.

My favorite autowallah is a man who always hangs around my neighborhood, but I don't know his name. He has dry, matted gray hair that kind of sticks straight up in the back. His eyes are big and round and he always looks somewhat surprised and eager and mischievous in a very boyish way. His lips are plump and always pursed out. When I talk to him, he turns his head completely around and looks at me as he accelerates.

This week I hired him to take me to a nearby village. I hopped in the back, he took out a box of bidis (small, hand-rolled, unfiltered cigarettes that smell like marijuana) and offered me one. I kindly refused, and we went. In the village, he was kind enough to drive me across a field full of pits and rocks. It was bumpy, and I bounced completely off the seat several times. When we shouted from the back, he turned around and yelled, "I am driving across a field!" as if we didn't know. The three-wheeled auto was not meant for rough terrain, and we easily could have tipped over.

Though auto rickshaws can comfortably sit about three people, I have been in an auto with eight friends before, with our overnight luggage and all. I sat on the floor by the driver's seat with my feet on the pavement below, and when we drove, I hugged my knees to my chest. One time, I went with 4 other friends to a party in an auto. The party was on the side of a big hill, which the autowallah knew very well. It was also somewhat far. So the five of us got in, and after about half of a kilometer, it was clear that the auto was not going to make it. The engine failed and started smoking. He ordered us all out so he could lift up the seat and fan the burning engine. "Just five minutes," he told us. So then we got back in, rolled downhill for a while, then when the ground flattened he started the engine again. Another half kilometer later we stopped and all got out again. He fanned the engine again. "Just five minutes, no problem." Finally we convinced the autowallah he could not take us to the party, though he protested and angrily chased our new auto down the road - until his engine overheated again.

Updates from the Workplace

2008-05-29T00:18:00.000-07:00

Working in India has been a serious roller coaster of successes and failures. Mostly failures, actually. It took me a good three months to understand more or less how things work at KVK, and then developing my own project took obscene amounts of patience and energy and self-initiative on my part. Though I have taken on several small responsibilities at the office and have participated in some short-term projects, all of my attempts at bigger projects have failed miserably.

I remind myself of words of comfort from a former FSD intern - that I am seeing development at its worst. Working at an NGO in small-town India is bound to be frustrating as anything. But I do realize that I have learned much more here than I ever anticipated. And I have learned an entirely new concept of the idea of "work."

Organic Farming

I started planning one organic farming project that I was very excited about. The office staff also seemed excited about it as well. Then, several weeks into it, I asked a question about getting a "package of practices" on organic farming, which means data on organic farming methods, such as amounts of compost needed for different soil types in various villages. The scientist nodded and said, "Yes, yes. We don't have the package of practices yet. They have not finished the research at the university yet." Means? "Means, we cannot advise farmers on how to do organic farming until the research is finished." So KVK won't promote organic farming? "Right." So I can't do this project right now? "Right. We need package of practices before we can do anything. How can we tell the farmers how to do organic if we don't know how ourselves yet?"

So I sourly abandoned that project. In the meantime I have been writing case studies, or success stories of farmers who have benefited from KVK different programs.

Now, I have a new project. I am going to conduct a workshop with some women in a nearby village on vermicomposting. KVK did one training on vermicomposting in this village before, but now years later many of the farmers have abandoned their compost pits. So after I poke around the village and figure out what went wrong, I will attempt to revive vermicomposting and maybe find some way to make it a more sustainable practice. But who knows, any number of things could go wrong by that point.

Afternoon Naps

This is classic India. This week, I was preparing an office Powerpoint presentation and needed advice on which digital picture to paste into a slide. In the afternoon, I peeked into my coworker's office and saw Mr. Mattur asleep at his desk - as usual. He always takes afternoon naps and I never hesitate to wake him up when I need to.

So I yelled, "Mattur sab! Can you come help me with something?!" He swung his feet off the desk and put on his glasses and shuffled down to the computer room.

I asked him which picture. He told me which one.

Then he said, "That is all? Finish?"

"Yes, Mr. Mattur, that's all I need."

"I back to sleep now?"

"Yes, you can sleep."

"Haha, ok! Cause you disturb me! I asleep!"

And laughing, he goes back to his office. He was sort of kidding, but also serious. So he went back to sleep.

Digging for Water

One project I am working on now is the construction of a new model nursery at KVK for the horticultural department to use for trainings. The first step is to build a tube well. I'm not sure what that is, but we're making one.

So we hired a man to come find water on the land where the new nursery will be. The man took a forked stick and held the ends apart very tightly and slowly walked across the field. At one point, the stick started spinning under his tight grip. He repeated the exercise over and over to confirm that he had indeed felt the pull of water underneath him.

Then he tested the location of water with another method. He held a coconut in his hand and walked back and forth over the identified spot. When the coconut rolled and nearly fell off his hand, it meant he was standing over the water.

Then, he confirmed this with yet another method. The water man held the coconut in his hand, placed some rupee bills on top, and lit several sticks of incense. He said a prayer. Then he pocketed the money and gave the coconut to the gardener, who walked about 30 meters away. The gardener put his feet on the coconut and squatted on the ground, balancing himself carefully on the coconut. Then the water man slowly walked with the incense over the field where the water was. Supposedly, when the coconut rolled a little and the gardener fell off, it meant the man with the incense was standing over the water. I'm not sure it ever really worked.

But the man eventually identified the point where we should dig for water. Yesterday we dug down and down and down. No water. The angry horticulturalist called the water man and told him he was wrong. The man replied with some excuse about how the water must have moved to another spot. Anyway we all had a good laugh about it.

Goodbyes and Hellos

2008-05-21T06:01:00.000-07:00

When I first arrived in Udaipur in February, I was one of 11 FSD interns. By March, there were 14 of us. This week, I am one of only 3 interns left in Udaipur.

My friends have been steadily trickling out of the city for the last few weeks as they are finishing their internships and moving on to other cities or countries or heading home. Since FSD has so many different start dates throughout the year, and each person decides how long to stay, there is a steady tide of people coming and going.

It has been interesting to form friendships with the people who come through FSD. There is also a nice group of young foreigners in their 20s working for various NGOs or universities in Udaipur who I have gotten to know. They come from all over the world – U.S., Canada, Australia, U.K., Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Colombia, Sweden, Norway. Some are taking a semester abroad during college. Several others left fancy, high-paying jobs in the corporate world to try something different. And almost everyone I have met is, much like myself, trying to just figure something out.

We have all found that India challenges us in a way that pushes us to our limits – both physically and emotionally. And because life is so extremely different here than it is in the United States, or wherever we came from, whenever we meet up for dinner or breakfast or a beer, all the thoughts and emotions of the past few days just pour out. Also, with such a slow pace of life, there is plenty of time to have these never-ending conversations about career paths and lifestyles and happiness. Sometimes we meet for lunch and lie around on comfy couch-seats for the hottest hours of the day until its time to order the next meal.

For most of the foreigners I know here, living in India is a temporary ordeal. Most of us have a general idea of when we are leaving the country, or at least plan to at some point, and thus we all have to think a lot about what exactly we are going to leave to do. Or even, in my case, where I am going when I leave. So for me, it has been nice to be able to talk to people who are also as confused as I am and can help give me ideas or just listen while I think through my life and what I want for myself in the future.

Now that there are so few interns in Udaipur, I think my life will undergo a major shift this summer. Though more are coming, they are all short-term interns, and I anticipate being very busy with my work and with travel plans in the next few months. I will probably spend more time at home with my Auntie, maybe volunteer some with another NGO in Udaipur during my free time, and feel simultaneously more at home here and more lonely.

Granted, I have always felt somewhat lonely in India – it seems to be a common feeling for many people here. The days are emotional roller coasters. Every so often I have mental break-downs when I freak out about my future, frantically trying to decide what country I should move to when I leave India, or what kind of job I want to look for, or what subject area I should focus my career on, or what subject I should study in grad school. At home, I am often so busy that I have no time just to feel or to think. Career paths seem so much more logical and pre-planned that it is easy just to follow along down the path ahead and assume it is the best option. Still, I think this is all very healthy for me, and I am glad India has forced me to really examine my life in this way. So many people I have met in India have had life-changing realizations, finally figuring out what they really want. I think I am experiencing something similar.

These last few weeks have been full of exhausting goodbyes, which are especially difficult since I am not sure if I will see some of my friends again. In a week, ten new interns will come to Udaipur, and it will be hellos and goodbyes all over again. It makes me look forward to a time in the future when I won’t have to lose my entire base of friends and can have more time to develop my relationships with people. But in the meantime, as they say in Almost Famous, “the people you meet on the road are really amazing people.”

This Week in Udaipur

2008-05-16T03:19:00.000-07:00

Mangoes!

Mango season is in full force now – vendors are parking their carts full of yellow and green and red fruits all over the city, and I have been trying hard to learn all the different varieties. Auntie occasionally makes a chilled mango soup that we eat for dessert at lunch time, and it is amazing.

This weekend, I stopped by one phulwala’s cart and bought one of each kind of mango he had – a total of four, though there are literally hundreds of varieties in India. At home Auntie chopped them up for me and laid them out of a big platter. The cheapest and least tasty mango was the one I recognized as the mangoes we get in the States. Not impressive. The other three were amazing and so different. I couldn’t decide which I liked best, and there I so many others I have to try this summer.

Salsa Dancing in India?

I attended a dance recital of one of my Indian friends here who decided to take up salsa dancing. Apparently, salsa in India really means doing lots of twirls and spins to upbeat Bollywood songs. It was barely recognizable. There was also a waltz number, but for all I know it was the cha-cha to techno music. Still it was amusing. I was especially surprised at one dance number a group of little girls did to the song “Smack That.” I assume in uber-conservative Rajasthan no one knows what the lyrics really mean.

Circus

This weekend my friends and I went to the circus. We were drawn to it by the very old-school colorful circus posters around town, advertising bearded ladies and other sideshow characters you would think just don’t exist anymore. Only in India.

The circus was awful, but also amazing. It was under one circular tent, where plastic chairs were set up around a stage that was literally a pile of shoveled dirt. The “stage” was hard to see sometimes because of all the poles and ropes holding up the tent. When we arrived, there were ten white fluffy dogs prancing around the stage doing unimpressive tricks – like walking on their hind legs, or standing on a ball. Later came two elephants who played cricket, then a strong woman who lifted a large dumbbell, then little girls who twirled plates on long poles. There was also a tightrope walker. During the whole performance there were several characters always onstage, including a very fat little man dressed in a red polkadot jumpsuit and a clown. At one point between acts, the little man took off his shirt and the clown started spanking him with the cricket bat. Fabulous!

In short, the whole show seemed like a dress rehearsal for a bad magic show for kindergarteners. There was no lighting at all, no transitioning between acts, and the music was mostly dance remixes of bad 80s and 90s songs, including Backstreet Boys and Shania Twain. Though the whole show was three hours, we left after one.

Bombings in Jaipur

About an hour after the bomb blasts shook Jaipur, the capital city of Rajasthan, someone turned on the news where I was sitting and we saw the Pink City in shock. I had just been to Jaipur about two months ago and recognized many of the places where the bombs were planted. Everyone here was so surprised that this happened in Jaipur, and though everyone feels safe in Udaipur still, the city was put on red alert the next day. I didn’t go to work the next day because all government institutions were closed (and apparently my NGO is part GO). I did take an auto through the city to meet up with some friends for lunch, and everyone was eerily deserted. Today, two days later, things seem back to normal.

Some pictures of the circus...

Village Visits

2008-05-08T22:04:00.000-07:00

I have been very busy the last few weeks finalizing my project at work, taking weekend trips with friends, and making some preliminary village visits. I chose one village called Jawahar Nagar where I was going to conduct my project (which I may end up abandoning or cutting very short – it’s a sore subject). Last week I spent three days and two nights there, then returned this week for a two-day, one-night visit.

It is a four hour bus ride to Jawahar Nagar from Udaipur, which I don’t mind at all because I love bus rides in India. The road there is bumpy and dusty, and I take the very hot, crowded local bus full of turbaned farmers with bags of crops and people lunging through the windows to get a good seat every time we stop. The bus drives through miles of dry, arid farmland. We pass through many small, colorful towns with people lounging under the shade of huge banyan trees, and past fields of wheat with makeshift scarecrows wearing bright saris.

My supervisor at work arranged for me to stay with one family she knew in Jawahar Nagar. They were so kind to me and refused to take payment in compensation for my stay there. (I have started bringing them vegetables from the market as a form of payment.) The mother, Kanku Bai, is in her fifties, though she looks much older. She has a very narrow, manly face with thick black eyebrows, and her hair is colored bright orange from soaking it in henna. Her husband is Dhanraj – he is about seventy, and always wears a dhoti and a white undershirt with holes in the shoulder. He is very skinny and had deformed feet, so he mostly sits in the shade and speaks to me in very limited English. He seems to think that the louder he speaks, the more I will understand. So he shouts phrases in English, then repeats them – backwards. Like so:

Dhanraj: India is very poor country!
Me: Hmmm.
Dhanraj: Country, poor, India!
Me: Hmmm.
Dhanraj: Haha! Hindi is language of Hindustan!
Me: Yes, I --
Dhanraj: Hindustan! Language is Hindi!

Otherwise I mostly spoke Hindi during my first visit to Jawahar Nagar, since I went alone. On my second visit, I brought a translator so that I could start conducting interviews. Still, I spoke Hindi when I could and found I could generally get by.

On my first visit, I mostly just hung out with the family so that I could get to know the village and make friends with people there before I started my project. Kanku Bai’s daughter, Mohini, is 19 years old, and I quickly became friends with her. One day we went (with other female neighbors) to the river to wash clothes. As we were waiting for them to dry, we all jumped in the cool water and swam, which was so refreshing and wonderful in the midday heat. Otherwise in the middle of the day, there is nothing to do but nap. From 1pm to 3pm I was always ordered to “take rest,” and I would lie on one of the beds and doze, waking up every ten minutes dripping in sweat.

The nighttimes were cool and pleasant. After dinner (the spiciest vegetables I have ever hd) we all sat around on the patio outside and talked by candlelight. I was lucky enough to sleep on the roof of the house with Mohini and her little cousins. I fell asleep looking at the stars, and later in the night it got cool enough that I could sleep under the thick blankets – a welcome relief from my hot room in Udaipur.

I had a great picture to post but my camera has a virus at the moment. Maybe next time.

I can't think of a good title for this post

2008-04-21T03:31:00.000-07:00

I don't have anything interesting to write about, but these are some things that have happened in the last week:

-I wore a sari! I attended a coworker's wedding reception and Auntie Sabira lent me one of her most beautiful saris - a pretty silk, jungle green and soft yellow sari. Amazingly, it didn't fall off. I got so many stares and head turns that I might as well have been butt naked.

-I took a trip to a little Indian vacation town called Mount Abu with some friends, during which an amoeba attacked my stomach (for the third time this year), but conveniently went away when I got back to Udaipur and back to work.

-I rode on the back of a motorcycle with a friend who, frankly, didn't know at all how to drive a motorcycle. I only fell off once.

-One of my coworkers took his daily afternoon nap at his desk and was awoken when a chipmunk jumped on his chest.

-Overnight, my bathroom became infested with hundreds of ants. They covered the floor, the base of the toilet, the side of the tub, the walls. I sprayed poison and swept the ant corpses into a pile, which wouldn't even fit down the drain. So I left the corpses in the middle of the floor as a warning to ants who try to make their home in my bathroom in the future. (Sorry, Valle.)

-According to google weather, it hit 107 degrees in Udaipur this week.

Udaipur Favorites

2008-04-15T03:48:00.000-07:00

Hathipole

This is my favorite neighborhood in Udaipur. It is near the touristy Old City, so it has some of the characteristic narrow, winding streets and shops selling colorful handbags, but it is far enough that it is exclusively local. To me, it is an exciting market neighborhood, full of all the colors and sounds and smells that I love about India.

Hathipole centers around a traffic circle that hosts a white temple-looking building, though I'm not really sure what it is. Past the traffic circle are small, narrow streets that wind around each other dizzingly, and there are plenty of alleyways where I easily get lost. Near the center of Hathipole, where the tempos stop and drop me off, there is a huge, viney tree that casts plenty of shade. There are always men - some wearing all white, many going barefoot - squatting in the shadows watching the traffic pass. I am not sure what they are doing or how long they sit for each day.

I go to this neighborhood to buy cotton. Several streets are lined with cloth stores - some sell cotton, some sell silk, some sell saris, others have ready-made clothes with sequences and tiny mirrors sewn into the bright patterns. All the shops have fabric samples hanging in the windows or doorway, and it is a very colorful neighborhood. After I sift through piles of cotton, I buy a few meters, then take it to my favorite tailor (who by now knows exactly how I like my shirts to be cut) in a small alleyway. We speak a hybrid of Hindi and English.

There are endless fruit and vegetable carts being wheeled through Hathipole. I have been trying to learn all the different types of mango now that they are in season. Also I have a favorite store where I go for fresh juice. I can choose from sweet lime, pineapple, orange, pomegranate, and coconut - one glass is between $0.10 and $0.50! There are also many sugarcane juice vendors who churn the long stalks of cane through the hand grinder, but personally I don't care for sugarcane juice.

The streets of Hathipole are both mesmerizing and frustrating. Though there are many people walking everywhere, motorcycles and autorickshaws are constantly forcing me to back into a corner or press against a building so that they don't run me over. The streets are crowded with frail old men in white dhotis (what we think of as Ghandi pants) riding bicycles, autorickshaws, vegetable carts, pedestrians carrying bags of crops on their heads, and motorcycles carrying a full family of five, all compete to get around the same narrow corner first. There are also many animals - herds of goats sitting in the shade, a group of small donkeys carrying loads of sticks or cement, and sometimes elephants and camels. The donkeys here are especially cute - they are very small compared to the ones at home. Don't people sometimes ride donkeys? These little guys are only waist high next to me.

There are all sorts of stores and roadside shrines in Hathipole. At certain times of day a shrine will loudly clang its bells and burn lots of incense and people enter to see the divine image. Many stores sell Hindu paraphernalia - incense, candles, ribbons and cloths to decorate a shrine, pictures of various gods, and even Ganesha stickers.

This weekend, Auntie and I went to Hathipole to run errands together. She showed me the Muslim neighborhood in Hathipole, which I never would have found myself. It felt like a little secret world. The men were all wearing the traditional Muslim caps, and the women all dressed in Muslim prayer dresses. The tiny alleys seemed peaceful and calmer - there was hardly any traffic. She also took me to the Darga, which is a building that houses the tombs of three Muslim holy men. We went inside and she taught me to pay my respects.

Then - so exciting!- we went to the mosque. Afternoon prayer was just letting out, so we waited for the mosque to empty and then went inside. It was very cool and peaceful and quiet. The walls were lined with blue and green tiles spelling out script from the Quran. There were balconies for the women, and on the ground floor there were lofty ceilings but also quiet corners with columns and low ceilings that made me want to curl up and have a moment of peace. One very old man was just leaving, and he asked me a bunch of question about where I was from, and explained to me the importance of daily prayers in Islam. For some reason I was scared he would ask me to leave when he learned I was not Muslim, but he never did - he was so kind and excited to tell me a few things about the mosque.

Other favorites

After dusk. I love the evenings in Udaipur. Right around 7:30 or 8, after the sun has set and the shops light up and the streets are still bustling and busy. The city seems lively and exciting as people leave work, buy fresh vegetables, and head for home. With the sun gone it is (only slightly) cooler, and I can smell samosas frying and incense burning, and bells clang loudly from temples all around.

Baby animals. Some things never change - I am still a fanatic animal lover. My favorites are baby goats, and for that reason alone I love visiting the goattery at KVK. I melt whenever I see someone on the back of a motorcycle holding a baby goat in his arms, who is happily sitting in his pile of herbs munching away. Once in a village I cuddled with a 10-day-old water buffalo - adorable! I am generally scared of the adult buffalo, but this little guy was too cute. Also baby monkeys, puppies, and chicks provide endless entertainment for me.

Solo autorickshaw rides. I love riding in them by myself, especially at night. It is a peaceful way reflect on India as I pass through the city - I am sheltered under the low roof of the auto but still able to experience India with my eyes and ears and nose.

Om Shanti Om. This is a new Bollywood movie and everyone should go rent it now. If you love song-and-dance movies with cliche but beautiful characters, this is the movie for you. I'm in love with it - the soundtrack is great, it stars Shah Rukh Khan (the God of Bollywood), and the plot does slightly deviate from the normal Bollywood template.

Fennel seeds. Most restaurants here offer fennel seeds mixed with sugar as an ending to every meal. It is a natural breath freshener and digestive aid - perfect!

Bangles. They are everywhere! There are many bangle shops (especially in Hathipole) but also some vendors roam they city with carts full of colorful bangle bracelets. I already have about 10 sets.

Summertime in the Desert

2008-04-12T22:38:00.000-07:00

The temperature has been rising since I arrived in Udaipur in February, and I miss the chilly nights that once upon a time required a fleece and scarf. Now it is constantly in the high 90s, and will only get hotter.

This is what I have done so far to stay cool:

New clothes. I bought two new sets of cotton to make two new shalwaar kameez sets and some shirts. I obsessively searched the whole town for the finest, lightest cotton possible. It cost me a pretty penny, but it's been worth it. I am wearing one new shalwaar kameez now, and it feels like I am wearing pajamas and an undershirt. Fabulous.

Lime soda. Whenever I go out to eat, I drink lime soda - a genius invention in India. The waiter brings me fresh squeezed lime juice in a chilled glass, sugar, and a cold bottle of soda water to mix myself. So refreshing.

Rearranging my bedroom. Since I got a new bed in my room at home, Auntie helped me angle it so that it is closest to the ceiling fan as possible. Also I sleep with my head at the foot of the bed, in the middle of the room, so that I am getting airflow directly to my head. Sometimes I sleep naked too.

Midnight showers. I have resorted by to my old trick from summers in Mexico. When I wake up in the middle of the night in a full sweat, I jump in the shower! At least to get my head wet, and sometimes my pajamas too.

Wet towel. Some people in Udaipur insist that when I go outside, I wear a wet towel on my head. It seems a bit silly to me, and I haven't tried it yet, but as it gets hotter I might get desperate.

Cold coffee. Even in the hot summers, people still drink hot chai several times a day. I still drink it as well, but recently I had a great idea to buy some instant coffee to make for myself. In the afternoons now, I mix the coffee, sugar, purified water, and some chilled milk in a glass and keep it in the fridge for an hour for it to get it cold. It's a great afternoon drink to cool me down and give me an energy boost when the heat is exhausting.

Watermelons and mangos. They are now in season and I am very excited. Auntie says she makes watermelon sherbet in the summer, and I couldn't be happier. We even have our own mango tree in the garden! Yummy.

Auntie Sabira

2008-04-10T04:57:00.000-07:00

During my time in Udaipur, I have been living with a wonderful host family, which consists of one woman. Her name is Sabira, which in Arabic means "have patience." She is a widow, and her two sons live in Delhi and Mumbai where they are attending college.

Auntie and I are very close, and she is very easy to get along with. I feel very comfortable in her house, and I can fix myself chai or toast or watch television whenever I want, for which I am very thankful.

Auntie's house is very roomy and big, though it is sparsely furnished. For the first two months I was sleeping on a mat on the floor, which I didn't mind at all, and is very normal in Indian homes I think. (Now a bed has been moved in my room only because I was having trouble sleeping for a few nights and she thought it might help.) I have my own bathroom - complete with a Western-style toilet and shower, quite a luxury! However there is no mirror except at the sink in the dining room. It's odd. Auntie also has a very nice front yard and garden and patio. There is a big papaya tree that is constantly giving us ripe fruit, and it is in season all year long! It's a nice ending to every meal. There are other herb plants and fruit trees, and she keeps a small compost pit to fertilize the trees and flower beds.

Auntie is obsessed about maintaining a zero-waste household. All the extra food from our plates we put in a pile and throw outside to the cows each day. Plastic bags are a big no-no, and she always carries an extra shopping bag in her purse when she goes out. There are no trash cans in our house (or anywhere in India, for that matter), so I keep everything in a bag in my room until it fills up. Then Auntie helps me sort the trash. She keeps sheets of plastic wrap (neatly folded) and plastic bottles in boxes under the stairs, either to use for crafts or to give to poor people to recycle for a small sum of money.

In fact, Auntie is always remembering the poor people. I gather she comes from a relatively wealthy family, but she lives a very simple life with very few luxuries. She chooses to buy fruits and vegetables from the farmers markets rather than the fancy new grocery store in town, even if it means making an extra stop when she is running errands. She doesn't mind packing herself in a crowded tempo full of farmers and goats, as opposed to taking a more comfortable autorickshaw or taxi. And sometimes she buys papads from a poor woman she knows in Udaipur, rather than making them herself, because she realizes they need her business.

The food at Auntie's house has been amazing. Though I have been getting sick of eating heavy restaurant food, which is the same gravy dishes with naan you find in the United States, I never get tired of Auntie's cooking. Lunch and dinner usually consist of some vegetable dish full of Indian spices and eaten with roti, a light, fluffy wheat bread. Other times we have yogurt-based curry with rice; sometimes we have dal. We never eat with utensils, so even if its soup for dinner, we tear up pieces of roti and stuff them into the soup bowls until they soak up all the juices and we eat it with our hands. Auntie is very health conscious, so there is very little oil in our food. She often opts to use sunflower oil instead of ghee, because it has less cholesterol. Also she usually cuts up fresh cucumber and carrots to eat at lunch, and there is always papaya or some other fruit for dessert.

My favorite part about our home is the milk. Every evening around 7:30pm, a boy comes to our house on his motorcycle and delivers milk, which is maybe an hour fresh from his farm. We carry a bowl outside and he spoons out a half-liter of whole, unpasteurized milk. Then we heat the milk until it boils. In the morning, Auntie scrapes the cream off the top, and with that she either makes ghee (a yummy, soft butter) or yogurt or chach. The rest of the milk we use for chai or the occassional cornflakes.

Auntie speaks English because she lived in Dubai for 14 years when her husband was alive. Granted, her English isn't the best, and sometimes I don't know what she means when she says things like, "What this thing in our hand we are doing otherwise?" Sometimes she gives me a simple task in the kitchen while she is on the phone or otherwise occupied, and will come back to see that I have completely ruined the meal because she gave backwards instructions in English. In any case I love talking to Auntie about about all sorts of things. She is full of kindness and wisdom, and I never cease to be amazed and inspired by her.

We often talk about religion, and though she is Bohara (sp?) Muslim, she insists that she doesn't like to talk about the differences of the sects of Islam, because it is all the same religion and same God. She speaks in the same way about other religions, saying she does not concern herself over what religions her friends practice, and prefers to talk about the similarities they all have, such as showing kindness to all people. When I asked her if I could accompany her sometime to the mosque, she said it would be no problem, and when I pressed her to make sure it was okay, she said, "Mosque is God's house. It does not belong to anyone else. So how can someone say you cannot enter?"

Auntie can also be surprisingly open about her past and her private life. She has given me interesting insight into the lives of Indian women. She tells me stories about how her girlfriends used to follow her around and beg her to fix their hair just like hers, or how when they hit puberty they would meet in secret behind locked doors and talk about getting their periods. Auntie also whispered, "Then, when we are married, like this we talk about the first time, too!" and then burst into a fit of giggles. And then she added, "And, our friends who are already married, they give advice!" We have also talked a lot about arranged marriages, and she goes over all the details with me about how she was matched with her husband, how she felt, when they met, what the engagement was like, and so on.

My second week at Auntie's house, she gave me one of her own kurtas - a long traditional shirt. I had been admiring hers all week, and she knew I liked blue, so she gave me a nice, cotton, blue stripped kurta. I asked her why, and she giggled and said, "Because you are like my daughter." And it's true, she has treated me just like a daughter. I can barely sit and read for five minutes without her bringing me tea and plopping down and asking me about my day. If we are watching TV in Hindi at night and she senses I am bored, she'll pull out a board game or UNO cards. This week Auntie went to Delhi to visit her son, and when she left she gave me the sweetest hug and repeated kisses on the cheek, and I will be very very thankful to have her back tomorrow.

Elephant Love!

2008-04-03T07:15:00.000-07:00

This afternoon after I finished my work, I went to my favorite neighborhood in Udaipur with Maddie to look for a few things I needed to buy. Soon we got too hot and tired to browse any more stores. I bought fresh-squeezed sweet lime and orange juice to cool off. I was still hot and tired. So we walked to the Old City to find a rooftop restaurant with a good breeze and nice view of the lakes where we could order a (hopefully cold) beer.

As we were navigating the winding, narrow streets of the Old City, we suddenly came upon a giant elephant standing in the street! I see elephants quite a lot in Udaipur, but it was the first time I had seen one that seemed unoccupied, just standing around waiting for a tourist to ride him. (Otherwise I generally see elephants booking it through the busy city streets, sometimes carrying crops.)

I happened to have some snack-y food items in my bag, so I ran up in front of the elephant and asked the Indian man sitting on top if I could feed him. He said yes, and I almost died of happiness.

The elephant's name was Ram, and I instantly fell in love with him. His face and body were painted lightly with flowery designs, and - lest he forget his name - "Ram" was painted on his forehead in bright colors. I fed him handfuls of crunchy goodness, which he scooped out of my hand and shoveled into his mouth. He seemed very happy, but not as elated and giddy as I was.

Maddie snapped pictures, and even when the feeding was over, I couldn't stop petting his big face and hugging his trunk and telling Ram that I loved him. It was an amazing feeling to be so close to an animal that immense and powerful! His skin was so thick and covered in scratchy hairs. He seemed happier than the first elephant I met. Ram kept swinging his trunk around, playing with a small branch he had, and his eyes even seemed to wink at me.

I also talked to the owner (in Hindi, I might add) about Ram. I learned that he is forty years old and lives in Udaipur. His stomach is very big and robust because he is a good eater. He also loves to give tourists rides around the city, and he does not overcharge. I told Ram we would take him up on his generous offer another day.

Pictures soon to come!

Familiarity and Random Assocations

2008-04-01T02:23:00.000-07:00

India can be intense, because everything is so different from what I am used to at home. I think this is why I was drawn here in the first place, and what makes me love it so much. So it's surprising sometimes when something unexpectedly reminds me of home, or of other places that I miss.

The first time it happened was when I tried a local fruit called chiku. It looks like a kiwi fruit on the outside, but when you peel it, the flesh is pinkish brownish. And when I bit into it, it tasted like Mexico. During the summers I spent in Merida in high school, I became obsessed with the local fruits. One fruit called mamey was big like a papaya, but reddish-orangish on the inside. The mamey and chiku fruits have similar flavors, which have an odd sweetness similar to a date or brown sugar. In any case, it was odd to be overcome with reminders of Mexico when I am in India.

Then, a few weeks ago, I went with my friend Tim on a morning walk before work. We met at 7:15 on the street corner where we both live, and we walked to one of Udaipur's many lakes, then made our way up a small mountain (or big hill?) where there was a Hindu temple at the top and beautiful views of the city. It was damp and there was a light sprinkling of rain that morning, which kept us cool. Near the bottom of the hill and by the lake, where one main road crosses with another, there were some little shops and chai stalls where people were crowded under the thatched roofs to avoid the wetness. As the city was waking up, shop owners were starting their fires over which they would boil chai and fry samosas. And suddenly I was overcome with intense memories of Ecuador, and specifically, the Amazon. The smell of the wood burning fires, combined with the cool feeling of dampness and smell of rain, immediately brought me back to mornings in the rainforest when we would all huddle around a fire and drink steaming tea and eat baked bananas. It made me miss Ecuador so badly, and the rainforest was vividly alive in my mind all day long.

It wasn't until this past weekend that I had flashbacks to Kentucky, and for the first time since I have been here, I became homesick. My friend Andrew, who works for an MIT development project in Udaipur, rented a farmhouse outside of the city and threw a big party. Probably all of the foreigners living in Udaipur attended, plus some local friends. We hung out on the candle-lit rooftop all night long, where music from home made me feel slightly American again. Once during the night, I wandered a little by myself on the dirt road in front of the farmhouse. In the dark, it almost felt like I was on a farm in Kentucky. I could see the outlines of the farms all around me, which were separated by fences. There were some huge, old trees with good climbing branches along the road as well, and I could see bats flying from one to the other. Though there was not a drop of humidity in the air, it was warm with a nice breeze, just like a summer night in Kentucky, and I pretended like it would all be lush and green in the daytime.

I'm not usually one to get homesick, but I think the knowledge that I am here for so long makes me more susceptible to homesickness than I have been before. Send me emails! And pictures! It helps.

The Frustrations of India

2008-03-25T02:16:00.000-07:00

Having been here for six full weeks now, I feel like the "honeymoon" phase of my India trip is wearing off, and I am now really living here. Now that I am over my starry-eyed wonder at glittery bangles stores, incense-filled Hindu temples, and giant elephants walking the streets, I have started to see things in a different, more realistic light. In fact, up until this week, I haven't really had any bad days, and when people asked me what is difficult for me here, I had no good answer. But now I do.

"Working" at KVK

The first week or two at work I spent getting to know as much as I could about the organization. I read, I toured the premises, I talked to everyone I could, I went on field visits to villages, I attended training courses. Then my supervisor (the only woman, and the boss, at KVK) gave me a few small projects to work on while I started to think about my larger, long-term project.

At first it was all overwhelming, and I wondered if I would ever be able to work here. I kept thinking back to my first day of work at the law office in San Francisco, when my boss gave me a 1000-page file and told me to write a few pages about torture of military deserters in Eritrea to include in his federal brief which was due at the end of the day. Somehow I survived that day, and the next year and a half, and so I think I will be able to survive this job.

Around week two at KVK I came up with a project. Then it changed completely around week three. Now it is week seven and I am still designing and altering the exact objectives and methodology. The idea is to conduct a research project on gender roles and decision-making power in the areas of crop production and animal husbandry, and with this research then attempt to sensitize some of KVK's programs to the specific and separate needs of men and women farmers. It will also be a sort of impact assessment of KVK's project on women's empowerment. I thought this would be a good project because the office is full of male scientists, and I am a female coming from a social science background, so I am in a good position to talk to women farmers especially and conduct more qualitative research that is rare in this office. KVK essentially pays zero attention to gender issues in agriculture, which to me seems extremely important since most of the farming and livestock management is done by the women, as the men migrate for daily labor jobs.

Things seemed to go well at first, and I had a few productive meetings with FSD staff and KVK staff. As I started designing the methodology, things seemed to constantly change and fall apart, or they just progressed slow as molasses in January. There were problems with the village my supervisor had selected for me to work in, so I changed villages. Now that I have collected demographic information on the new village, I have been informed it may have to change yet again. Also since this is a different kind of qualitative research project, my supervisor is having trouble following my thought processes and envisioning what exactly I am trying to do. She often makes comments like, "I think your finished report should have graphs and bar charts, things like that," or "I think this will only take you 6 or 7 days," when I am thinking it will take me a few months.

Then Siddhartha told me to collect a list of all the KVK projects in the village and the names of all the beneficiaries. It took me one week to get the "list" of projects, which was a few notebooks full of scribbled Hindi that staff members wrote when they conducted a training program. I have no idea how long it will take me to get it all translated, or how it will get done at all.

Staff members are incredibly busy this time of year because March is the end of the financial year, and everyone is crunching to get their bills finalized. Then again, sometimes I will ask someone to help me with something, and he says "yes, yes, I will get it for you," and then insists that I sit for a few hours and discuss my preferences of beer or whiskey, explain why I have freckles on my arm, and answer questions about Monica Lewinsky. Often there is nothing I can get done for days because I am dependent on people having free time to help me out, so I will sit at my desk and practice my Hindi script or watch the giant wasp make his nest on my ceiling. It's fun.

A Holi Mess

This Saturday, March 22, was a big Hindu holiday in India called "Holi." I went with some of my fellow interns to Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan, to celebrate. On Friday there was the Elephant Festival for which Jaipur is famous. We watched fabulously decorated elephants play tug-of-war with people, and supposedly there was elephant polo, but we left before it started because the ceremonies were generally slow and not as exciting as expected.

On Saturday, we got dressed in cheap, throw-away clothes and went to the Old City to "play Holi," which means throwing bright colors (in powder or liquid form) at everyone you see. It was fun at first, but it got old quickly. The streets were only full of men and little kids, and the men were mostly driving around on motorcycles looking for tourists to throw colors at. When we got tired of being attacked with pink powder, it was difficult to say no, and the men only got more aggressive. When we escaped into an autorickshaw to go look for an open restaurant, men still drove alongside our auto and threw colors at our faces. Very annoying.

Maddie, Ben, Mariel, and I also had some drama with our very rude hostel owner and had to switch hotel rooms. After we were covered in colors, we found a new hostel, and Maddie and I got in an auto to retrieve all of our bags from the old hostel and transfer them to the new one. When we got in a different auto with all the luggage to go back to our new hostel, we realized that we had no idea what the hotel name was, the address, or what part of the city it was in. And we couldn't call Ben and Mariel who were waiting there because we had their phones with us in our bags. It was incredibly frustrating and stupid of us. Our kind auto driver drove us around forever, and we asked so many people on the street to help us, though they had no idea how to help. By some miracle we found it about 30 or 45 minutes later. To add to the frustrations, since we were covered in colors, everyone chased our auto and thought we still wanted to play Holi. Since Ben was no longer with us, the men were even more aggressive, and no matter how many foul curse words we screamed at them, they refused to leave us alone. Even our auto driver couldn't keep the motorcycles away from us. Now we understand why there were no Indian women to be seen on the streets that day.

The Little Things

Living in India seems to be an emotional roller-coaster at times, with high highs and very low lows. To get around town I ride in tempos, which are like oversized autorickshaws that work like buses. But they are very small - fitting about 7 people comfortably. Of course it's India, so everyone piles in until the 16th person is hanging out the doorway for dear life. It's dirt cheap, which is good, but often uncomfortable and too much to handle when I am overwhelmed by so many people in India. Sometimes it's hard to keep a sense of humor about it when my toes are being squashed or the person pressed against me forgot to put on deoderant.

Sometimes I can deal just fine with the constant staring, but other times I want to scream and slap somebody. Don't they know it's rude to stare? Have they never seen a white person? Is there something on my face or do they have nothing better to look at for the entire 20 minute tempo ride?

Or some days I may be in a fine mood, very happy, and then a shop owner refuses my rupee bill because it has the teeniest tear at the corner. Or a man rudely steps in front of my in line when I am in a rush. Or a rickshaw driver tries to charge me double. Or I go to a coffee shop to drink something cold that will remind me of home, but the power is out for "just fifteen minutes" which turns into one hour and then I have no time to wait for my iced latte anymore. Such is life in India - constantly a challenge and a reminder of how privileged I am to come from the United States where everything seems to work.

Camel Farts and Happy Hearts

2008-03-18T04:03:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I went with my friends Ben and Maddie to Jaisalmer, a desert town in Rajasthan that is close to the Pakistani border. It was about a 13-hour bus ride - we took the night bus and some serious sleeping pills. The city was very beautiful - all of the buildings were the same dusty color as the sand on which the city is built. There is a large fort at the center of the city, and we spent our first day wandering around the labyrinths and exploring the intricate Jain temples within the fort. It was very hot, sunny, dry, and dusty compared to Udaipur, which by contrast is nestled in a hilly terrain and surrounded by cool lakes.

We enjoyed spending our first night in Jaisalmer in a sweet little hostel with very helpful owners, and we shared a room for a whopping 120 rupees (the equivalent of $3). It even included free chai! I dined on yummy Western food (toast with eggs and pooridge) for the first time since I have been in India, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The main reason we went to Jaisalmer was to do an overnight camel safari to the Thar desert. We booked our safari through the hostel owners, and left in jeeps the second morning (Saturday) of our trip. The jeeps dropped us off in a village where our camel guides met us with all of our food and water. We rode for a few hours in the morning and stopped for chai and lunch under a shaded tree around 11:30. We took off again around 2 and rode until about 5pm. There were no sites to see along the way, only barren desert. As Lonely Planet warned us, most of the safari was not through beautiful rolling sand dunes like we might imagine. In most of Rajasthan, the desert is dry, rocky land with shrubby bushes and occasional trees. Still, the landscape was stunning in its own way, and it is amazing to think that people can live off of land like this at all.

One thing I learned on this trip is that I don't really like camels very much. In fact, they might be one of my least favorite animals, which surprises even me, because I am normally such an animal lover. But I quickly learned that camels are very smelly - they fart and burp a lot - and since I was at the back of the camel line during the first few hours of the trip, it was most unpleasant. Also, they are very ugly, ungraceful animals. Their bodies have weird calluses and knots everywhere, and their necks and faces are almost dinosaur-like. And worst of all, a camel is not a comfortable ride. Now, two days later, my booty is still bruised and my inner thighs still are still sore.

During much of the trip we rode silently, as the desert lends itself towards serious thinking and inner reflection. Of course the silence was often interrupted by loud farts, or a guide yelling at me, "Madame, control your camel!" as my steed plunged through the bushes to itch his belly. And sometimes the little boy who helped guide us would sing traditional Rajasthani songs as we bounced along.

Our final destination were sand dunes (the name I can't remember) where we ate dinner and slept. They were very beautiful and stunning, though there was only a small patch of them in the middle of the otherwise rocky terrain. As the sun set it became cooler and cooler, and the evening was very pleasant. Our guides cooked our dinner, which was the same as lunch - chapatis and vegetable curry cooked over a little fire. One local villager even brought us cold-ish beers. The moon rose very bright, and it lit up the desert like a streetlamp. We could see everything so clearly. When the moon disappeared around 10pm, the stars were brighter and more numerous than I have ever seen. Even the white smear of galaxies were bright and clear. It was very magical.

Ben brought his mandolin and played music as night settled in. With only ourselves to talk to for two whole days, we had many interesting conversation topics, such as - whether Brad Pitt is a down-to-earth good guy or whether his fame and sex appeal have gone to his head, restaurants in Montreal, the geography of modern nomadic cultures, "why are dinosaurs for kids?" (Maddie's question), long religious debates, if we could be a color what would we be, the mentality of pack animals, and how to make a spreadsheet out of your past relationship patterns. All very interesting.

Around 8 or 9, our guides laid out blankets on the sand and we cuddled up in our fleeces and socks and tucked ourselves under heavy blankets. There were no tents, though on some tours you can pay extra for this if you want. So we slept like this on pillows of sand under a blanket of stars - very romantic. The night was the best part of the trip by far, even if the air was colored with the wafting scent of incessant camel farts.

The next morning we were up by 630 eating plain toast with our chai. When the sun rose at 7 we were off on our camels again... unfortunately. It was a long, painful ride on the second day. We rode until lunch time - again chapati and vegetable curry - and were happy to see the jeeps come just after lunch. At the end of the trip my face was gritty with layers of dust and sand, but there was no time for a shower as we jumped right back on the overnight bus to Udaipur at 4pm on Sunday and arrived at 5am on Monday. Long weekend, great trip!

"The Strong-Willed Man Will Take the Bride"

2008-03-08T02:30:00.001-08:00

Believe it or not, this is the title of a very famous (and very good) Bollywood movie. Crazily, I'm slowly becoming an avid fan of Bollywood, especially since Auntie and I watch television every evening together, and I much prefer cheesey song-and-dance movies to even cheesier comedy shows I will never understand or think are funny. Granted, the movies never have English subtitles, but the plots are so simple and predictable that I hardly even need Auntie's explanation. Today, I even bought my first Bollywood movie, called "Om Shanti Om," which I watched a part of on television and fell in love with. Unfortunately I will have to watch it on Auntie's ancient computer since we don't have a DVD player.

When I talk to my parents on the phone, they often ask details about what I do every day. So here is a basic layout of a typical day...

I work Monday through Saturday, roughly from 10am to 5pm. Our office is closed every second Saturday of the month.

If I am going to the office (as opposed to a village), I wake up at 8:20, turn on the heater for my shower, and change into shorts and a tank top. Then I go behind the house where there is a small patio enclosed by a wall where no one can see me in my scantily-clad workout clothes. My exercise routine consists of jumping rope to 80s music, then some push-ups, crunches, and lunges. Then I shower.

To go to the office I either wear a shalwaar kameez (a typical Indian suit that consists of loose cotton pants, a knee-length shirt, and a scarf), or my own black or khaki pants with a loose fitting Indian-style shirt. I've decided my Western clothes are too snug fitting to wear to my office, where I am surrounded mostly by older men or farmers from even more conservative villages.

Auntie and I sit for breakfast around 9:20 and drink our mugs of chai and watch the morning horoscope programs on TV. Breakfast varies - sometimes I eat pappadam or paratha (kinds of breads), sometimes an egg omelet on roti, sometimes a spicy rice dish, sometimes Cornflakes.

Around 10am I walk to work. When I arrive, I figure out when the electricity is going off. Rajasthan has a power outage, so they cut all the power for three hours every day. It is usually from 10-1 or from 1-4, but it always varies by 30 minutes or so. So if I need to use a computer that day, I have to plan accordingly. Amazingly, my office does have internet (on some computers), which is a nice perk. I'm not quite sure what I do at work yet, so I'll just skip over that part.

There is a chai break at work around 11:30am. I walk home for lunch at 1, and return around 2. There is another chai break around 3:30, and I leave the office again at 5pm.

On Mondays and Wednesdays I walk to Hindi class after work, which is from 5:30-6:30. On Thursdays, we sometimes have FSD meetings after work. If there are no meetings, sometimes I go run errands after work, such as a trip to an internet cafe, or to buy a snack or something I need. Sometimes I just go home and pick up my room, or wash a few clothes if I need to wear something again before our cleaning lady returns. Other days I might go out with some friends to eat dinner in the old city, which has beautiful rooftop restaurants where you can watch the sun set over the lakes and the temples.

If I am home, Auntie usually makes chai around 7:30, and we sit and talk about our day. Then she begins cooking dinner around 8, and I stand in the kitchen and help her (I have become an expert at making rotis). We eat anytime between 8:30 and 9:30. Then we watch television (sometimes I opt to read) until 10:30 or 11 when we go to bed.

On my days off, I often meet up with other interns, or accompany Auntie wherever she goes. Running errands with Auntie is fun, because I can discover many wonderful secrets about Udaipur, like the back alleys where I can find a tailor, or where to have fresh-squeezed juice and which kinds are yummy. I have yet to do many touristy things, but I am planning on touring some temples very soon. And, occassionally, there are foreigners living in apartments in Udaipur who throw "parties." Tonight I am going to one, though it will be cut short so I can be home by my 10:30ish curfew.

Adventures at Mealtime

2008-03-01T04:08:00.000-08:00

Food stories are the best! And when traveling, there never seems to be a shortage of them. Here are some of my favorites from this week.

Auntie's Birthday

This Tuesday, Auntie celebrated her 50th birthday. Since she was going to host a large dinner the next evening, she was too busy to be concerned with celebrating her birthday this year, so I decided to cook her dinner. I made the easiest, most American thing I could think of - grilled cheese and tomato soup. Besides a boring pasta salad, it was the only kind of American food I could have made here anyway.

I made a special trip to a special new grocery to find sliced bread and cheddar cheese cubes, and I bought some tomatoes from a local farmer on my way home from work. Amazingly, everything went smoothly in the kitchen. I cooked the tomatoes in a pressure cooker with salt and pepper and some wheat flour to thicken it. I mixed in a dollop of fresh cream (homemade by Auntie, who boils the fresh, unpasteurized milk we have delivered to our house every night!). The grilled cheese was easy because Auntie has a little sandwich griller - antique, but it works. I greased up the bread and popped them in. As I was cooking, I warned her, "I'm not gonna lie, Auntie, I don't know how this is going to turn out." She responded, "You put in love?" I said "of course!" and she replied, "Then is okay. Cannot be bad if you put in love."

We sat down to eat and Auntie was very impressed, or at least she acted like it. I tried to talk up the meal by telling her this is "very typical American food," and "we eat this dish a lot in the wintertime." But I bit into the grilled cheese and tasted something different. I commented on the interesting flavor of Auntie's oil, and I asked her what kind it was. I had thought it was just sunflower oil, which she often uses instead of ghee because it has less cholesterol. She said, "Which one you use?" I told her it was from the bottle in the fridge. She shook her head and said, "Nooo... there is no oil in the fridge," very puzzled. I assured her there was, and we went back and forth arguing like this. I took another bite of the sandwich and said, "it tastes kind of sweet..." Auntie's head snapped up and she said, "Ohh! Morel! That is rose syrup!" So the grilled cheese was a little sugary, and we had a good laugh, but I had "put in love," so it was all okay.

Muslim prayer circles and communal dinners

On Wednesday, Auntie invited her Muslim women's prayer group over to our house for prayer and dinner. She had been preparing the meal for four or five days. About 16 women came, plus some of her extended family in Udaipur.

Auntie made nearly all of the dishes from scratch. Only the roti she ordered made and delivered to her, because it would be impossible to make enough individual pieces of bread for everyone and still have them be hot and fresh when everyone came. Together Auntie and I made the sweet dish - a kind of sugary milky paste with cardamom and coconut flakes. (She even shelled and crushed the cardamom herself, and bought whole coconuts to crack and grate the flesh from.) Then there were fried balls made of a potato and ground mutton dough, filled with cashew nuts, raisins, and pieces of boiled egg. Then there was a sweet and salty carrot salad. The main dish was a mutton and onion curry, which was amazing beyond words. We ate it with rice and roti.

The fun part of this dinner is that all the women ate out of communal large plates on the floor of the living room. We split into two groups around two different plates, and Auntie put the food on each plate and we devoured it with our hands. I'm proud to say I've just about mastered eating food with only my right hand. It all seems to taste better when eaten with your hands anyway.

Dal and Cow Dung

Yesterday, I went to the field again with my coworkers at KVK. Once a season, KVK holds a "Field Day" in one of the villages. They choose a farmer whose crop has grown well and will give good output at harvest time, and they gather all the other farmers in the area so they can discuss and learn from the one farmer what specific techniques he used to make his crop do so well.

So we were scheduled to head out at 9am. Of course, the "condemned jeep" had some issues so we didn't get going until 9:30/9:45ish. We arrived at the selected site for the Field Day in the village Kempur. There on the farm is a small Hindu temple dedicated to a diety in the form of a black cobra, but I can't remember the Hindi name. It is very pretty and simple, and we sat under the tall columns on the cool stone. There were about 7 or 8 farmers there already, and they were busily cooking our lunch. I asked my coworker Dr. Seni what time the farmers were supposed to come, and he answered, "Yes, they are coming now." So we wait, and wait. Farmers slowly trickle in. We drink chai, chai, and more chai.

Meanwhile I watched the farmers cook dal bati, which are balls of lentils and wheat flour. It is very traditional Rajasthani food, and sure enough, they cooked it the very traditional way - in cow dung ashes. First they gathered cow dung patties, lit the pile on fire, and then when all was burnt, they burried the dal bati balls in the ashes for them to bake. Then I watched the men take out the dal bati and beat them with rags until they are free of ashes, more or less. Then they soaked them in ghee.

The food was not finished until about 2:30, at which point we started the Field Day. Scientists from KVK spoke for about thirty minutes about farming techniques for mustard seeds. I sat in the back with all the women, who paid no attention to the talks, but instead played with my bangles and attempted to talk to me in Hindi. I loved it.

We finally ate at 3:30. Though I had brought my own lunch (my supervisor had told me to because I would not like the food), I knew there was no way I could pass up this meal. How many times in my life will I get an opportunity to eat traditional dal bati cooked in a cow dung fire in a Rajasthani village? I also knew that all the food was kneaded and cooked with the farmers' bare hands, and since there was no soap in these villages, I knew I would probably get sick. (And I know some certain Aunties of mine in the United States are shaking their heads at me right now, but I don't care.) My decision was made. I dove fingers first into the food, and it was delicious. There was also a very spicy soup to dip the dal bati in, which made it even better. And, there was another dish called churma, another traditional Rajasthani food, made from wheat flour. It was a very sweet, dessert-like crumble. Wheat flour was mixed with a lot of sugar and nuts and raisins and ghee. I couldn't get enough of it.

To finish off the meal, they served chach, a salty buttermilk with cumin seeds that happily cooled my mouth after the spicy soup. It's not my favorite, but they say it is good for digestion, so I drink it sometimes.

I'm pleased to say that it's been over twenty-four hours, and I'm still a healthy girl!

Churma

Dal bati

Lessons Learned

2008-02-22T04:36:00.000-08:00

Working at KVK

The office where I work is very beautiful (see above). It is a ten minute walk from my house, which means I can go home for lunch everyday, which is wonderful. I usually leave the house at 10am, arrive by 10:15, leave for lunch at 1, return at 2, and leave the office at 5 in the afternoon. It's a very laid-back atmosphere and things don't seem to get rolling until 10:30am.

The office is surrounded by beautiful farmland, which includes rows of various crops, orchards of various fruit trees, a dairy and goat unit, a tree nursery, and a plant garden. The office building itself is U-shaped around a small courtyard. All offices open into the courtyard, so it feels like I am working outside. Doors are never closed - curtains are pulled to block the sun, at most.

During my first week I have been doing an assortment of different activities. I have toured most of the farmland that belongs to KVK, I have read a lot of books and reports about the organization, and I have sat in on several training sessions. Yesterday my supervisor told me there was a film screening on corneal disease that she thought I should watch - Holy Random.

On Tuesday I went on my first KVK field visit (in a jeep the KVK annual report described as "condemned status"). We went to several villages to monitor the construction of bio-gas plants, which will save time and energy and trees when the women no longer have to cook over fires. Here is a picture of one bio-gas plant under construction:

Here is another picture of me chatting it up with a woman in one of the houses that was going to use the bio-gas plant. Our makeshift conversation in Hindi went something like this:

Me: What is your name?
Her: Karla (I think...)
Me: How old are you?
Her: Twenty-four
Me: Me, twenty-four.
Pause.
Me: Where do you sleep?
Her: There.
Me: Pretty sari.
Giggles.

Learning from Udaipur

After living in Udaipur for two weeks now, these are some things I have learned:

- Udaipur is a tranquil, sometimes sleepy city. Businesses open at 10am and there is nothing much to do after 10pm. Dinner and a beer are a nice way to relax, but they can only last so long into the night.

- There are animals everywhere! Rajasthan is a very rural state and agriculture is very important, but still it seems odd to me to see so many women herding their goats and donkeys all through the city. Cows, camels, pigs, and elephants frequently meander through even the busiest streets.

- People are so friendly and extremely helpful. If there is any city to get lost in, I've been told that Udaipur is one of the safest and friendliest.

- There is lots of English spoken here, but the little Hindi I know comes in handy, and I can't wait to become more conversational.

- Indian people don't use toilet paper. Riddle me that. Luckily I was accustomed to carrying TP with me from my travels in Latin America, but it took me about a week to figure out that I need to buy my own supplies to keep at home as well.

- Kinus are yummy fruits - a hybrid orange and lime!

- My feet will never be clean. There is just too much dust and it is too hot for sneakers.

Here are some pictures of the streets in Udaipur - the first one I took on my walk to work yesterday. Notice the camel just chillin. The second one is just outside this internet cafe as I was walking in. Notice the elephant in the background.

Settling in

2008-02-18T05:44:00.000-08:00

At the end of our orientation week, Siddhartha (the Program Director) and Lauren (Program Coordinator) went over FSD policies before we went to our host families. One "touchy" topic was that of motorcycles. The FSD official policy is that we should not ride on motorcycles. However, they understand that often when we are in the field traveling from village to village, there is no other option available. In that case, they require that we wear a helmet, which FSD can lend out from their office.

For my first day of work, Lauren picked me up at my house to walk me to my new office. However, there was a change of plans and Siddhartha was going to take me on his motorcycle instead. Siddhartha came out with his helmet, and I was waiting for them to bring me the extra one, but it never came. He hopped on the bike, and I cautiously climbed on and tightly grabbed his waist. He started the engine and yelled, "I hope this is not your first motorcycle ride!" I replied, "No. It's my second." And we sped off down the dusty roads.

For my parents' peace of mind I should mention that the office was very close - a 3 minute ride - and Siddhartha drove very slowly and safely. My only previous motorcycle ride was just down the block and back in an Atlanta suburb, which somehow seemed much scarier.

My workplace is beautiful, because it is surrounded by demonstration farms and orchards and gardens. I have a little desk in a shared office, and I have been spending my time reading and talking to staff members and touring the premises. Tomorrow I am accompanying one staff member to the field where they have several projects underway in various villages. I am incredibly excited. I had one field visit already during orientation and it was by far the best part of my trip so far. The countryside is stunningly beautiful and the people were so kind.

I have moved into my new home where I live with my host mother, whom I call "Auntie." She is fabulous, and later on I will dedicate an entire post to her. Yesterday she took me with her to a Muslim prayer service which she leads. She and an older woman read (but more like sang and chanted) Urdu texts that were remembering the death of Mohammed's grandson Hussein. It was very beautiful, and must have been incredibly sad because all the women were in tears the whole time. The group was entirely composed of women ranging from ages 40 to 100.

I am posting a link to another blog that Dan and Ali write together - they are also interns on my program. It may have more fun stories and pictures of Udaipur!
www.namasteofmind.wordpress.com

Wedding Season

2008-02-14T04:50:00.000-08:00

The official wedding season in Rajasthan ends on February 15. Every day we have seen colorful wedding parades making their way down the streets of Udaipur, and every night we have gone to sleep to endless Indian music blasting just near our hotel.

Yesterday, we (the group of new interns) came back to our hotel at 10pm, all exhausted after a long day of riding around the city and a concert of Indian traditional music. From our rooms, we heard the same loud Indian music coming from somewhere directly behind our hotel, so we decided to check it and see what an Indian wedding looked like.

We walked just a few yards down the street to the entrance to the big green lawn where a wedding reception was being held. We tried to peek in, but we couldn't see much, and felt very intrusive and awkward so we decided to turn back. As we were standing around talking about how weird this felt peeking in on someone's wedding, Mariel turned and just walked in. When she didn't come back, Dan walked in too to see what she was doing. Dan didn't return either. Then Tim wandered in. Ali, Maddie, and I stayed back still. Eventually Maddie decided to run in and get them. She didn't come back.

Ali and I stood on the street at the entrance to the party and watched groups of people dressed in extravagant saris and suits leaving. We edged further towards the entrance. We smiled awkwardly at the weddings guests and they smiled back. Some said, "Come, come! Come in! You are welcome!" We smiled and said thank you, but only edged a little closer, peeking in a bit further.

The invitations continued. One very small old man with no teeth and a big white turban came right up to my face and put his fingers to his mouth, making an eating motion. At first I thought he was asking me for food, but then he pointed to the party, and everyone around us ushered us in and said, "Come! Come!" So we went in.

The party was small, it seemed it was just ending, but we could tell it had been beautiful. It was a kind of reception or banquet on a big green lawn enclosed with hedge bushes and palm trees and colored tube lights. There was a glittery, brightly lit stage where the bride and groom were seated, and I must say they were looking very bored. At first we oohed and aahed over the dazzling saris, but soon we were pushed up to the stage where we took our places behind the bride and groom for a series of pictures. Standing there in my jeans, hiking boots, and filthy white fleece among such beautiful wedding guests was the equivalent of walking down the street naked. But then we ate the most delicious food ever and it was okay.

Elephant Land

I didn't believe it at first - but there are elephants in Udaipur! I was dying to see one all week, and finally I saw one yesterday for the first time.

Unfortunately my first elephant encounter was not as magical as I had expected it to be. I had imagined this beautiful creature would slowly turn the corner, gracefully approach me, reach out his trunk to touch my cheek, and smile back at me. Sadly, I met the elephant when he was tied to a rod iron fence next to a park, reaching as far as he could to a tree on the other side to eat some food. He looked hungry and sad. I didn't touch him.

People in Rajasthan have elephants as pets and take them walking around the city both for tourists and locals. Tourists pet them and ride them; locals give them treats and money as an offering to the very celebrated Lord Ganesha. To me, an avid animal lover, it makes the city extra exciting.

Hello, India

2008-02-11T06:23:00.000-08:00

India is wonderful! I am already enchanted and in love with this country.

That being said, I should clarify that I think Rajasthan is wonderful. Delhi was a godforsaken city and I was glad to get out quickly. In sum, it embodies every reason my mother has no interest in coming to India. It was dirty, too crowded, smelly, and made me feel sad in general. Luckily, my aunt Valle's friend Karma picked me up at the airport and that saved me: I was able to hide out in the Tibetan colony for a night and see all the decorations and fireworks celebrating the Tibetan New Year.

But when our plane landed in Rajasthan, it was sunny and the air was clean and refreshing, though I couldn't quite put my finger on what I was smelling. Maybe spices or fruit or desert dust or just the scent of India. Since I have been here, I have been at a cozy hotel in the middle of Udaipur, complete with a courtyard and occasional monkeys.

In general, India is very... Indian. As I expected, there are lots of people, lots of colors, trash in the streets, crazy drivers on rickshaws and autorickshaws and bikes and motorcycles. There are all sorts of music everywhere, and so many smells of spices and incense and sometimes sewage. People are very friendly and Udaipur is a welcoming, nonthreatening place to be.

Usually my day begins at 5am when I wake up from jetlag or screaming monkeys. During our orientation we have discussions about the FSD program, sustainable development and the Indian political system. All of the other interns are fascinating people from all walks of life, with many interesting experiences and stories to tell. I am also beginning to learn some Hindi! If I can manage to rememer the words, I am able to go shopping, catch a rickshaw ride, and count to one thousand. I'm quite impressed with myself, I must say.

This evening I went to the Jagdish Temple -- a beautiful, elaborate Hindu temple dedicated to the Lord Vishnu. We took off our shoes, covered our heads, and stood in the back of a small crowd around the shrine. There were bells and incense and singing and the moon was very bright. All-in-all it was a good first, albeit brief, experience of Hinduism.

Now I am off to indulge in more fabulous Indian cuisine, polish off a Bollywood movie, and get to bed early. Some of us are going to head to the ghats at the City Palace tomorrow morning when the sun rises (we're all awake anyway) to watch the women wash their clothes on the banks of the lake. Life is good.

Goodbye, USA

2008-02-06T20:18:00.000-08:00

I have decided to start a blog because I cannot imagine sending mass emails for the next year, and it is always awkward for me to come up with a list of email addresses when I am never sure who actually wants to read about me. So here it is! I hope I update this regularly, but no promises. Many of my blogger friends abroad have abandoned their readers – it’s hard to find the time, patience, and creativity. I have named it “Something Sustainable” because I couldn’t come up with anything better, and sustainability is supposed to be the theme of my internship in Udaipur.

The above photograph is of the lake in the city center of Udaipur. You can see the white Lake Palace in the center. Udaipur is supposed to be a beautiful, romantic, colorful city in the desert state of Rajasthan, which is located in the northwest of India near the Pakistani border. Udaipur’s population is around 400,000.

I leave tomorrow morning (Thursday, February 7), arrive in Delhi on Friday evening, and fly to Udaipur the next day on February 9. By Saturday afternoon I will be having afternoon tea in a hotel in Udaipur.

Send me your address and I can promise one postcard before Christmas!

Unknowns

I’m not sure why I get nervous just before I leave on a big trip abroad, but it happens every time. Right when I start packing and in the last few days before my scheduled flight, I get a knot in my stomach and a tightness in my chest, no matter how excited I may be for the upcoming trip. My friend Erin says it’s a sign I’m a normal human being. This is true.

Luckily I have traveled before, and I know I can deal with the two days of flying to get there, health issues, and figuring out the bus/train system between cities. I think mostly what makes my stomach flutter is the long list of unknowns I will face in my year in India.

These are some examples of the looming questions I have been contemplating over the last few weeks:

What will it be like to go to the bathroom in India? (Will there be a squat toilet at my home? At work? On the road?)
What will I wear everyday for the next six months?
Who will my friends be? (Locals? Coworkers? Other FSD interns?)
When will I come back?
What will it be like to shower in India?
After my internship, will I travel and come home, or will I find a job and stay in India for another year?
What language(s) will I be speaking?
What does Udaipur sound like?
What does Udaipur smell like?
Will I get along with my host family?

In the meantime, I’ve been trying to treasure my time with the following habits and luxuries that I know I will miss:

My cell phone. My friends and family are but a speed-dial away.
Drinking water from the tap. And clean water fountains everywhere! Fabulous.
Toilets.
Carpeting.
My favorite jeans and Duke hoodie, which will not be making the trip with me.
Being surrounded by photographs of friends and family and everyone I love.
Project Runway on Bravo TV.
Wine and cheese before dinner. California has spoiled me.
Singing out loud in the car.

A Note on Bravery

After telling so many people about my plans to move to India for 2008, I’ve become accustomed to the expected gasp of shock and worried words of caution (“Alone, as a woman?! Oh but that’s so dangerous, you’ll travel with someone else, won’t you?” or “There are so many diseases there! Have you been vaccinated?”). Some people even add, “Oh you’re so brave,” to which I am never sure how to respond. I usually just giggle and say “or I’m just confused.”

But in fact, I do have a lot of worries about going so far for so long. I worry that I will become homesick, that I will miss out on family gatherings and not be a part of my brothers’ lives as they are growing up, or that I will drift away from the friendships I value so much. I also worry that despite all precautions and safety lectures, I will simply be in the wrong place at the wrong time and find myself in an undesirable situation.

However, the more I travel and live in different places, the more I am convinced that it is my parents’ bravery, and not my own, which has led me to have so many enriching experiences. I think it takes as much (if not more) courage for them to stay at home and allow their daughter to go to such remote and bazaar places as it does for me to get on the plane. Often in the past, I have been out of contact for weeks at a time, far from the reach of telephone, internet, snail mail, or even roads. But not only do my parents allow me to go, they actively encourage it and support my endeavors, which no doubt contributes to my own confidence as I leave home. So many people ask me what my parents think of “all this,” and though I know they are worried and scared for me, but they would never let me know it, lest it discourage me from pursuing something I want so badly.

Coming from Kentucky, I see so many protective parents keeping their children suffocatingly close to home -- by encouraging them to attend in-state universities or discouraging them from taking jobs in big cities because the cost of living is more expensive. Sometimes other adults ask my Mom and Dad, “Aren’t you worried about your children being so far away?” as if to imply they should keep their children safe at home in Kentucky, or that they just don’t care enough about us. But thankfully, my parents are brave enough to care about my happiness more than anyone. That is why they sent me to a public middle school in the Louisville ghetto – because it was where I would get the best education, even if the playground was dangerous. That is why they let one of my brothers go to college in Portland, Oregon, and my other brother study abroad in Cairo, Egypt. And that is why they grit their teeth and smile when I announce I am buying a one-way ticket to India, and let me go on whatever self-indulgent adventures I come up with. I owe it to their bravery, not mine, that I am able to do it.