Back to the land of Christmas and Carhartts...

After 2 extraordinarily long flights and 3 relatively short ones, I FINALLY made it back to Alaska, with loads of fluffy white snow and obnoxious Christmas songs to welcome me. I started feeling weird the second I landed in America, mostly because I flew directly into Las Vegas, where I waded through slot machines, stores pleading for you to give into your consumptive American habits, and crowds of people gaping at my sitar case wondering what sort of foreign bomb it might contain. But I made it. All the way back to Alaska.
The most bizarre thing about being back is that everything is so normal. I mean, my sense of normalcy had adapted fairly well to India, which means that by the end of the 6 months I spent there, I wouldn't even bat an eye at herds of water buffalo outside my room, seeing entire families clinging to each other on a motorcycle, or driving past entire villages consisting of blue-tarped shanty homes and naked brown children. But underneath all that lies the fact that I spent my entire life before India in this wonderful, cold land called Alaska, although I admit I was starting to think maybe I had invented this place after describing it to person after person and seeing them walk away, shaking their heads in disbelief. So basically now I have two competing theories of normalcy, and I feel like it's up to me to pick one to subscribe to. I'll keep you updated on how that goes.

I spent my last month in India traveling all over the North. Since I much preferred exploring the colorful, chaotic cities I was in to sitting in internet cafes and writing about them, I haven't written anything since our first stop in Calcutta. But everything I saw and experienced was so incredible that I feel it would be an injustice to not attempt to describe it. So, here's a few thoughts from my grand adventure (these are mostly taken from my journal, hence the present tense):

DARJEELING:

Morning on the Darjeeling Mail train. For the first time on an Indian train, I woke up cold! In fact, I think this is the first time I've been cold in the past 5 months, so it's an interesting feeling. The guards who sat up all night in our car drinking chai are wrapped in thick brown scarves. The man below me has a blue shawl wrapped around his head and torso like an immigrant woman. He also looks very cold, and is downing cup after cup of chai, like I'm about to do, to bring some warmth inside.
My wake up call this morning was the piercing ringing of a Shivite holy man's symbols, his eerie chants, and the obnoxious clanging of his pail as he shook it in people's bleary-eyed faces, asking for money. He was followed by 2 giggling hijiras, or transvestites, walking down the aisle in their saris and clapping in people's faces, also asking for money. I asked them how they were in Hindi and they smiled and gave me a wink. We're almost in Darjeeling!

Jeep ride from the dirty transit town of New Jalpaiguri to Darjeeling. The jeep consists of us 6 girls, two old Nepalese couples, and our driver. The women are very beautiful but silent, and they men are jolly and talkative (although they do not speak English), and they point out villages and tea plantations along the way. They all bring their hands to the prayer position when we pass temples. I keep thinking we're in Darjeeling at last as we jolt through little hillside villages, but the Nepalese man keeps shaking his head no, we're not there yet, just wait, you'll see. Although I'm squished in the back of the jeep with Cecilia, Emily and Sara, I can see the driver's hand all the way in the front, resting on the wheel. I realize he has an appendage growing off his right thumb...a finger that never was, a genetic mistake, a bulbous lump jiggling along off his thumb, complete with a fingernail. I find myself unable to keep my eyes off this amazing extra finger, even when I have all of the heavenly Himalayas to look at instead.
We stop for a snack break at a small tea shop. I go to find the bathroom, and end up in the courtyard of a tiny family home. There are chickens everywhere, and a few brightly painted but crumbling buildings. A few family members milled around, all smiles and "namaste!"s . Estathea and I sit on a bench and drink molten cups of chai and just smile at the family, because that's really all there is to do in order to communicate. We climb back into the jeep, and I use all my concentration not to stare at the driver's growth. We spend another hour or so rambling along on the narrowest, most chewed up roads I've ever seen, slamming our ribs into the seat and our skulls into the roof every time the driver breaks.

Thanksgiving, November 26, 2009:
This morning we woke up at 3:30am. Andreas and Tomas, the two European boys we met at a tea plantation yesterday were miraculously waiting for us outside our hotel in the chilly, pitch black street (Darjeeling apparently doesn't believe it street lights). Our cab showed up, and we all clambered in, wrapped up in our yak wool shawls and all the rest of our measly warm-weather layers. We rattled up a ridiculously winding road for about half an hour and finally made it to Tiger Hill. It was still pitch black when we got there, and tiny bundled up women leaped out of the darkness shouting "coffee, madam?" in our ears.
We found a place amongst the flood of tourists, a nice medley of extremely excited Asian tourists and faitful Lonely Planet devotees. When the sun, a brilliant saffron disk, first slipped out of the mist and low-lying clouds surrounding the Himalyan mountain range, all the tourists gasped collectively and started clicking away happily with their cameras and phones. The colors in the sky morphed from a faint blue through an entire palette of pastel colors, getting deeper and more vibrant until the sun appeared fully on the horizon, bringing with it light and a teensy bit more warmth. A wonderful Thanksgiving morning.

Next up: Varanasi. Stay tuned!

Of flowers and goats

Calcutta. Or Kolkata, depending on whether you feel like supporting the colonial British Raj or not. When we stumbled off of the train we had spent the last 30 hours on, the sun was already setting, and the smog created an eerie dusky glow ambience. We left the train station and tried to remember what physical movements were required for walking, while observing the commuter chaos around us. Two young men came up and tried to sell us an enormous world atlas. I tried to show them where I lived on the map, but he was not interested. We finally convinced them that it would be entirely impractical for us to lug around the atlas in our backpacks, and they finally walked off. A communist rally marched by in the gathering dusk (West Bengal is the only communist state in India). Not really shouting any slogans, just sort of marching solemnly by with their hammer and sickle banners.

We began walking in any old direction, and we were immediately submerged into a sea of grimy chaos. Men and women came from every side, balancing enormous baskets on their heads filled with every imaginable item, and they all seemed to be headed directly for us. Street vendors were selling delicious looking vegetables nestled in blankets sitting right on the filthy pavement. After having several thinking-I'm-dead moments (as we so lovingly call them in India), we dodged the menacing buses, rickshaws, cows, and men, and ducked into the quiet sanctuary of the Howrah Hotel.

Next day. After eating delicious paneer and aloo parathas in a small local shop where all the men stopped what they were doing just to watch us, flabbergasted, we drank chai in mini one-use terracotta cups from a street vendor. We strolled across the Howrah bridge, in search of the flower market. We wove our way through more men with enormous wicker baskets balanced on their heads, and random businesspeople wearing adorable sweater vests, staring at us curiously. We followed a man carrying a bundle of flowers down some stone steps, and all of a sudden an orgy of flourescent flowers appeared out of all the dust and grime. We joined the stream of men and women (but mostly men) swimming down the lane between shanty villages. Men leered at us from behind gigantic heaps of marigolds and jasmine, baby sunflowers and rows of gawdy pastel fake flower arrangements. I bought some sweet smelling purple buds on a string, and asked the lady how I should wear them. She just stared at me, so I put them on as a headdress, much to the delight of the crowd standing around watching me.

Taxi to the Kalighat temple. Down a long winding alley way lined with stands selling religious paraphenalia like tikka powder, sweets, flowers and gruesome Kali drawings (Kali is the ferocious demon-slayer black goddess in Hindu faith), to the craziest temple I've experienced yet. Kali is one vicious lady, and apparently ridiculously demanding. We once again joined the stream of people seeping into the temple, slipped off our shoes, and bought some flowers to perform puja.

Somehow, we made it inside the actual temple. There were people EVERYWHERE, moaning and sighing and waving sticks of intoxicating incense in circular motions around the Kali shrines. Someone shoved me forward, and a man instructed me to throw my flowers toward the diety. I did. He asked me my name and I told him and he blessed me by pressing orange tikka powder to the goddesses' forhead and then my own. All of the incense and the hordes of people was starting to make me feel dizzy.

After leaving the inner part of the temple, we came across two dreadlocked dudes from America, the first tourists we had encountered in Kolkata so far. They had just watched a goat being sacrificed, and proceeded to describe it to us in gory detail. Cecilia, Matilda and Emily walked away in horror, but Sara and I stayed rooted to the spot, fascinated in a sort of sick way by the ritual. We watched the whole process--devotees walked into the enclosed area with their children, performing puja and showing their children how to do the same. Eventually a man and his family came in towing their goat--just a little baby. The priests washed him in holy water from the Ganges, and blessed him with a red tikka bindi. Then they put his head in the chopping block and....a horrifying sound. The goat screamed just like a human. It was gruesome. I couldn't stop watching. Sara and I just clung to each other and bore witness to the procedure. For some reason I'm really glad I saw it, although the image is definitely etched into my memory for eternity. The amount of devotion that those devotees demonstrated was just incredible--that goat may have been an essential food source for the poor family, but it was so important to them that they sacrificed it in an outstanding display of devotion to Kali.

Humans....we're such odd creatures. And we have found such different way to demonstrate our passion for the supernatural. I grew up in a faith that sits placidly humming organ songs and plunking quarters into a shiny tray that gets passed around. But I could have just as easily been born into this world, one that believes making this ultimate sacrifice is the only way to appease the angry goddess Kali and restore some order into this chaotic world.

The Old Woman and the Sea.

We are slowly moving into the "Winter" season here in South India. This means that our security guards have started wearing adorable sweater vests and wool caps at nighttime, and I'm not soaked in a sheen of sweat until at least 20 minutes after leaving an air-conditioned room, rather than the usual 5 minutes. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm actually fantasizing about wearing polar fleece and long underwear.

My friends Kate, Cecilia and I traveled to the small fishing village of Mamallapuram, Tamil Nadu this weekend, for one of our last weekend trips. The town had an awkward vibe...partially devastated by the 2004 tsunami, it seemed to be stuck between becoming a complete tourist resort town, a sculptor's colony, or a tiny fishing village. The result was a confusing but pleasant mix of all three. The beach was a perfect example of this confusion: groups of fisherman cleaning out their nets and shoving brightly painted fishing boats into the ocean, poor women clutching emaciated babies to their hips while attempting to sell cheap necklaces and blankets to whoever will look their way, and Western tourists stripped down to bikinis, sunbathing happily on beach towels, ambivalent to the chaos around them.

Kate, Cecilia and I spent out time on our rented bicycles, exploring the phenomenal stone carvings and ancient temples left over from the Pallava Empire. We did some bouldering too, scrambling up and down precariously balanced rocks admist herds of goats, Indian tourists, and the occasional monkey.

On Saturday night, we had henna done on our hands by a sweet young woman. Her mother looked on, trying every few minutes to sell us some random trinket from her tiny shop. They were particularly fascinated by Cecilia's foot tattoo, and kept asking all kinds of questions about it, like whether it was done by a machine or hand. Then she got all excited and called the grandmother in, an elderly, toothless, wrinkled, but entirely gorgeous woman who had been sitting outside. The old woman was all smiles when she saw us, and showed us her arms, which were completely covered in the weaving dark lines of tattoos that looked about as old as she was. Using her daughter and granddaughter as translators, she described to us how she got the tattoos when she was 16, how they were done by hand (which I don't even want to imagine), and how she had a fever for a week afterward. The old woman's daughter pointed at her tattoos and the enormous gold rings dangling from both nostrils, and said, "these are the things the older generations did," chuckling to herself. They all seemed pretty fascinated by the thought of machine-made tattoos. It seems that their are infinite ways to express ourselves through cultural practices, and those ways will always seem strange to people separated by a whole world of languages, societies, environment and history.

Ethan comes to town.

My friend Ethan came to visit me last week to begin his Grand Asian Adventure. Having him here made me realize exactly how bizarre this wonderful country is all over again. On the day that he flew in to Hyderabad, I took him on a bike ride around campus. We biked down the long, winding road to the main campus, passing water buffalo with their young, chai canteens, monsoon lakes and about 30 dogs doing an excellent job at playing dead. By this point, all of these things seem very normal to me, but Ethan was in a somewhat state of shock after his first 15 minute bike ride in India.

The next day, after letting him sleep for about 12 hours, we set off to explore Hyderabad. Although I've been living here for 3.5 months, I've been so busy traveling and taking cooking/sitar/yoga classes that I haven't actually had much time to just wander around the city. We took a shared auto rickshaw from the small gate to the Lingampally train station. Once again, Ethan thought it was hilarious that the rickshaw driver insisted that we join his already overflowing vehicle, and proceeded to blast bollywood music the entire way to the station. A man joined us about halfway there and grabbed Ethan's hand, exclaiming, "Hello! I am Johnson!" Ethan smiled and said, "I'm Ethan!" "No, no!" The man kept smiling and shaking his hand, "I am JOHNSON!" There was nothing to do but smile, as so often is the case here.

At the train station, the fascination with Ethan continued. One man came over to us as we waited for our train, placed himself between Ethan's legs (we were sitting down) and started a delightful broken English conversation with us....something about how he was going to Delhi that very same day, and would we like to come? It's a very long distance....and that was his train right over there! We just smiled.

We got off the train after a few stops and took a rickshaw to the Hussain Sagar lake. There's a gigantic Buddha statue in the center of the lake, which we got to by taking a rickety ferry along with a handful of other Indian families. On the ferry, a group of teenagers sat right next to us. After several giggle episodes, one of the girls finally spoke, in perfect English. She wanted to know all about us, where we were from, what we were doing, etc. Then she asked for our signature, on the notepad that one of her friends had just magically produced. It may have been the first time anyone has asked me for my signature, so it was a big moment for me. After we signed, they gathered around and examined our names, and demanded to know why Ethan had written his name in Urdu (Urdu is a language similar to Hindi, but written in the Arabic script). They wanted his name in English, they kept saying. So he printed his name in parenthesis next to the signature. As we were getting off the ferry, one of the girls shoved a gaudy, rhinestoney ring into my hand. Meri dost! (my friend) she said.

At that point we were quite famished, so we took a rickshaw to my favorite Indian restaurant, Chutney's. Our rickshaw driver thought the fact that we were going to Chutney's so hilarious, that he told anybody who was willing to listen...other rickshaw drivers, people walking by on the street, security guards, etc...I decided to show off a little by busting out some Hindi. This too he found hilarious. We pulled up at a gas station to get gas and he demanded that I repeat the few feeble sentences I had attempted to the gas station attendent, who also laughed excessively. Being the butt of every joke definitely gives one a sense of humility.

For the sunset, we made our way up to the Birla Temple, a gorgeous white marble temple perched on top of a hill overlooking the whole city. We watched the sky turn to delicious shades of orange and pink while waiting in line to see the Shiva idol, and listening to a elderly women chant "hare krishna, hare shiva..." over a loudspeaker. We met an interesting man in line at the temple, who also thought everything we said pretty dang funny. After we got through the procession and saw the Shiva idol, the funny little man latched on to us and decided to show us around the museum and connecting dinosaurium right next door to the temple. He had already bought us tickets, and was pretty friendly, so it was hard to refuse. We awkwardly walked around the museum, which was completely empty, and the topic of conversation kept getting more and more bizarre, so we began to think of heading back. Note to self: always tell random men that the man you are with IS in fact your husband.

On our way back to the train station, the gods decided that that moment was the perfect time to dispense the last of the monsoon rains over Hyderabad. We found ourselves wading through 2 feet of filthy water in the streets, drenched to the bone, attempting to navigate back alleys in our mad search for the train station.

We eventually found it, and had a completely crazy yet typically Indian train journey back to Gachibowli, where we gave in to our cravings and enjoyed the best Domino's pizza I've ever tasted. All in all, it was just another day in India. A crazy, chaotic, wet, tasty, beautiful day in India.

Nepali Odyssey

By the time we had reached the Nepalese border town of Sunauli, riding 9 hours to Pokhara on the roof of a bus actually sounded like a sane idea. So my brave and exhausted travel companions and I climbed up the shaky ladder onto the roof of the bus where we made our selves comfortable and "safe" by burying ourselves with luggage. We were eventually joined by around 10 Nepalese guys who would leap on and off the roof at random villages and police stops. We stayed buried beneath the luggage for the majority of the trip.

Perhaps our rash decision would make more sense if I explained a bit more about our journey thus far:

Estathea, Cecilia and I left Hyderabad on Wednesday, Sept 23rd, on luxurious plane ride to Delhi. We spent the night and next morning in Delhi, and in the afternoon we boarded a train to Gorakpur. When we first hopped up onto the train, I thought it was a joke. There were probably more people in our car than there were in my graduating class. We managed to find our seats without too much trouble, but we were met by around 12 Indian men in our compartment (that seats 6) who looked like they had neither tickets nor any intention of moving. After an animated discussion in Hindi, around 5 of them left. The aisles were still so pregnant with bodies that a trip to the bathroom was a futile effort.

When we decided to fold the beds out and get some sleep, we had to kick 4 boys off of the very top bunk, where they had been awkwardly perched for the last 5 hours or so. Every time I woke up during the night (about every half hour or so), the scene enfolding in the surrounding bunks and aisles became more and more absurd. There were literally people everywhere! Grown men and women and little children were sleeping on every surface the train had to offer, and then some. There were women in the aisles with newborn babies next to them, and every bunk had at least 3 people on it, who I'm guessing didn't know each other. When I woke up to get ready to get off the train, there was some random guy perched on the very end of my bunk. And the craziest thing was, nobody was getting stressed out or frustrated by the insanity of our train car! I kept thinking that if that train was in America, it would be a train full of stressed out, pissed off, disgruntled people about to suffer from an anxiety attack from having to touch so many strangers.

But this is India, and that scene was not so strange. People here have no sense of personal space, partly because there's just so many damn people that it would be impractical, but partly because the individual is not important here. Here, unlike America, the sense of human unity (physical as well as spiritual!) is so great that people will happily suffer through a sleepless night on a train so that their neighbor has a place to lie down. Bizarre, but incredible.

As soon as we arrived in Gorakpur, 3 hours late at 7 am, we jumped into a jeep that would take us to the Nepalese border. Our jeep was full of 2 Nepalese families, and 3 Nepalese guys we had met on the train. I thought they must be joking when 3 more army guys knocked on the window, but no, of course there was enough space for them. One of the army guys was literally hugging the driver the whole 3 hours to the border.

So by the time we got to Sunauli, and bought our Nepalese visas, we were feeling pretty crazy. And the roof of the bus seemed like an incredibly good idea, considering the amount of people crowded into the inside of the bus. It turns out we got on the bus that makes a stop at every house from Sunauli to Pokhara, because it ended up taking us 11 hours instead of the anticipated 5....

......but we were finally in NEPAL!!!!!

Nepal was like a dreamland. We played all week long, going kayaking and rowing, visiting an island temple in the middle of the lake in Pokhara, climbing a mountain to a peace stupa, watching paragliders soaring above us like lazy insects, eating delicious food and strolling the streets filled with craft stores, cafes and hotels.

We went on a mini "trek," hiking up a mountain on an old trail to the tiny mountain-top village of Sarangkot. We took a guide with us from this women-run trekking company called "3 Sisters"--dedicated to "empowering the women of Nepal." We felt empowered. It was our guide, Saraswathi, who suggested we go paragliding, after noticing us staring longingly at all the tiny parachutes in the sky. We said: "Yes, why the bleep not?!?"

And so the next day, instead of trekking to another mountain top village like we had planned, I found myself being strapped into an enormous backpack by a strapping young Nepalese man in flowerly board shorts. And then, without more than a couple sentences of instruction, I was attached to the Nepalese guy and running as hard as I could towards the edge of the cliff! And then I was flying! Actually flying! It was the most incredible feeling ever and quite honestly no words will ever be able to describe it. So I will leave you to try to imagine soaring over village huts, rice paddies, and the lake surrounding by the most magnificent mountains in the world at your leisure.

Our week in Nepal completely jumpstarted me both mentally and physically. It felt so amazing to use my muscles again, hiking and rowing every day, and the clean, cool air was incredibly refreshing after 2.5 months in smoggy India. Surprisingly, I think being away from India actually made me understand it more. I've decided that this country is so wonderful and insane that you only realize what it's about until you've removed yourself from it.

Voyage to Pondicherry!

Okay, I'll admit it. I was perhaps, just the tiniest bit, expecting a dirtier, more "sultry" version of Paris. It's not all my fault either. That expectation was conceived from the pages of guidebooks that promised romantic, Parisian streets with old men reading the paper and sipping espresso outside of adorable French bakeries. The bakeries were very present, and French baguettes were a welcome change from our constant supply of roti and chapati bread at Tagore. But I saw no French-Indian men sipping espresso, thinking they were sitting on a shaded street in Paris. Instead, the streets were filled with slightly confused, and entirely exhausted French tourists stumbling from cafe to bakery to beach and back again.

On our first day of exploring Pondicherry, my friend Kate and I found ourselves being lured to the Promenade by the curious melodies of Indian instruments. We followed a trio of Indian men, clad in white robes, ambling down the Promenade playing a drum, a clarinet-type wind instrument, and a horn. Their destination ended up being a congregation of Hindu devotees, surrounding an enormous, live elephant as if it were just another follower. The elephant was magnificent, wearing a silk blanket and elephant sized anklets! The elephant and the rest of the congregation were performing puja, as a part of the Ganpati festival, which apparently was still going on in the state of Tamil Nadu. An elderly devotee came up to me and offered to smear my forehead with white powder. I accepted. One thing I've noticed about Hindus: they always welcome us into their ceremonies, and are happy to show us the various rituals involved in going to temple and performing puja. It feels so good to be welcomed into the festivities, but not expected to convert.

Kate and I stayed at the Park Guest House, right on the ocean. It was part of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, also located in Pondicherry. This meant that we had a curfew (10:30), an extremely zened out staff (we had to wait several minutes before getting a reply to a question from the gentleman at the front desk), a lovely meditation garden (no talking, no shoes), and spooky pictures of "the Mother" and Sri Aurobindo in every room...if you're interested in them or Auroville, their futuristic, "utopian" society near Pondy that we also visited, you should look them up online. It's a little too crazy for me to describe here.

Being in a city famous for its ashram, Kate and I decided to attend a yoga class on Friday night. In a dimly lit attic room overlooking the sun setting over the Bay of Bengal, we took our seats on the mats, next to several Indians (dressed in full salwar-kameez sets) and one fiesty, middle-aged French woman. We started the class by sitting in lotus position, hands on our bellies, breathing in, then leaning forward and pushing all the air out by saying "AHHH!!" really loudly and as much like a dying cat as possible. It was very hard to not giggle. I thought we would do that maybe just once or twice to get things going. I was very wrong. We proceeded to make dying cat sounds for the first 25 minutes of class, after which I thought I would pass out from breathing so hard. Then we did a series of moves that could be distant cousins of moves I've done in yoga classes in the U.S....after which we did several sessions of "extreme breathing" and jumping up and down a few times, which the french lady took very seriously and ended up halfway across the room. We left the yoga studio in a state of shock.

Alas, Pondicherry was not Paris. But, then again, I chose to come to India, not Paris. The french baguettes were well worth the 14 hour train ride through the beautiful Indian countryside. And at the end of our last day in Pondicherry, lying in my mosquito-net canopied bet, swimming in a pool of my own sweat, I asked myself again why I didn't just go to Europe. But thinking about that enormous elephant swaying slightly to the beats of the drum, and the kind old man who smeared powder on my forehead during puja, and the strangest yoga session I had ever attended....well, let's just say that I entered the 'love' phase of my love-hate relationship with India all over again.


Photographic Evidence:

After such a sensory-overloaded weekend in Mumbai, I thought for a moment that maybe I had had enough...of the Ganpati festival at least, maybe even festivals in general. Silly me! That thought has proven to be naive, as the festival is still going full force in Hyderabad. I've completely recovered emotionally and physically and am ready to leap back into the dizzying array of colors, smells, sounds and tastes.
I hung around campus the last few days, partly because the monsoon finally decided to arrive and to go outside would be to take a shower with your clothes on, only more successful considering the low-pressure shower heads at Tagore. I was also catching up on sleep lost during our two 16 hour train rides 2 days apart. Last night, during sitar practice, we heard drums and explosions coming from right outside the hostel, so naturally we leapt up to see what the commotion was. Outside the front door was an enormous Ganesh statue on wheels, and around 30 dancing Indians throwing orange powder into the air and shouting, "ganpati bappa moriya!" Alas, we couldn't join in the celebration because we were learning a tricky song, but honestly how many times can one say they missed one ganpati festival procession because they were at sitar practice?? I got over it pretty quick. Later, in the cab on the way to the karaoke bar, we couldn't drive half a mile without seeing another ganesh idol accompanied by adoring devotees dancing around it and celebrating.
As some of you might know, Ramazan (Ramadan) also began last Sunday. It's no secret that the Muslims and Hindus of India don't always see eye to eye, so I was curious if the two overlapping holidays were the source of conflict. I asked my Islamic Culture in India teacher, and she just rolled her eyes and said, "of course, it's all very political..." She went on to describe the different ways in which the Muslims and Hindus tried to irritate each other...like playing their shrine music very loud at the exact time of the Muslim call to end the fast for the day, and conducting chaotic processions down the road during prayer time. Both sides are guilty, of course. I haven't seen or heard of any violence happening this year, and let's hope that it doesn't. Honestly.....why can't we all just get along?

Ganpati Bappa Moriya!

How can I even begin to describe the crazy weekend adventure that was Mumbai? As usual, I'm going to try to relate the colors, sounds, smells and feelings that collectively made one small weekend trip into the memory of a lifetime.

The adventure started with a 16 hour train ride from Hyderabad to Mumbai. The ride was fairly comfortable, considering the amenities: a squat toilet (just a hole straight down to the tracks), and 6 bunk beds stacked right on top of each other, with no padding, pillows, or blankets. We were woken up at around 6 am with the ceaseless cries of the chai-wallas: "chaiiii, coffeeeee, chaiiii" and "paanniiii" (water).

We got to Mumbai around 1 pm on Friday. The rest of the day was fairly uneventful--the 6 of us broke into two groups, and Cecilia and I headed for Chowpatty Beach, desperate to see the ocean. We found our way there on the suburban train, riding in the ladies only car where everyone gawked at us but were still somehow very friendly and helpful. Chowpatty beach was shocking...everyone we talked to said it was much cleaner than it had ever been, but all we saw was a blanket of plastic bags and styrofoam covering the sand, as shown below...come ON
India!! Get it together! We talked about how frustrated we were by the pollution for a while, but finally managed to relax and watch a beautiful sunset over the Indian Ocean while sipping on a bottle of Indian rose wine.

We spent Saturday morning exploring the cave carvings on Elephanta Island. They were amazing, but the experience was negatively affected by an attack staged by a local gang of monkeys, who came leaping out of the jungle, yanked a diet coke out of Cecilia's hand, and proceeded to drink it right in front of her while the rest of the monkey gang hissed in a circle around us. Terrifying!

In the afternoon, we took the suburban train to see Dobi Ghat, an enormous human-powered washing machine. It was incredible--thousands of men and women manage to wash and dry thousands and thousands of garments every day using minimal electricity. Although we felt awkward, we took a tour from a young man and actually got to get up close and personal with the dobis (washer-people):
After our "tour," we decided to wander around and see if we could find the famous "floating" mosque. We didn't get very far until we heard the sound of drums...and of course we were drawn like moths to light. What we discovered was a procession of about 20 young Indian men and little children banging on drums, dancing, throwing pink powder in the air, and carrying a veiled statue of Ganesh down the side of the road. As soon as the procession noticed us watching by the side of the road, they all eagerly motioned for us to join in. I leaped over the fence first, got smeared in the face with pink powder, and was initiated. All my friends eventually climbed over too, and we followed them about half a mile down the road, dancing and shouting and throwing powder everywhere. After we left the procession, covered in pink powder from head to toe and wearing neon orange headbands, we made instant friends with everyone in the street. They seemed to be ecstatic at our participation in their festival, and everyone shouted "ganpati bappa moriya!" (something like "long life ganesh!") and cheered as we walked by. We made the decision not to go to the mosque, because as soon as we got closer to the Muslim quarter of the city, the smiling and cheering stopped and we just felt ridiculous covered in pink...

The next day we participated in more Ganesh festival activities, thanks to Chaya, one of the CIEE students who has a lot of family in Mumbai. She took us to her family's celebration, which was held at an enormous event hall that held over a thousand people as well as a 30 foot tall Ganesh statue decked out with real gold and silver. We were invited to eat, which meant we all lined up, sitting cross-legged on the floor, and were given a banana leaf as a plate. We were served rice, daal, mango pickle, lentils, and delicious rice pudding, all without utensils. I haven't quite mastered eating with my hands yet, but all the little kids around me thought I looked pretty hilarious making an attempt. After we ate, we all stood up, and all the half-naked men who had been sacrificing coconuts all morning (I think they might have been holy men of some sort...) layed down and proceeded to roll over all the banana leaves still covered in the remnants of our meal! It was insane! I kept asking people why they were doing that, and the least confusing answer I received was something like "they were making an offering to god." We also saw people sitting on one side of a gigantic scale, while priests put their weight in rice or sugar or coconuts on the other side, so they could offer their weight to god. It was all very ritualistic...and void of pink powder, which I was happy about because my skin is still dyed pink.

If you're interested in the Ganesh festival, which just started this weekend, you should definitely look it up online. I would write more but this post is enormous already. There's so much more to say, but it will have to remain in my memory for now...there at least is a little glimpse of what a chaotic and beautiful place this is. Namaste!

Independence Day!

On Saturday, India turned 62 years old. The fun really started Thursday night, when we were all out at the club "Venom" celebrating my 21rst birthday. All of a sudden the DJ stopped the music, and men wearing "traditional" Indian garb complete with turbans came out beating on drums, parting the crowd. The shortest and strangest fashion show I've ever seen followed, with gorgeous Indians parading through the crowd of confused clubbers wearing tunics the colors of the Indian flag (saffron, white and green). The whole commotion ended before we really knew what was going on, but that's India for you. On Friday night we were also in a club, celebrating Amelia's birthday, when the DJ stopped the music at midnight to "wish India a very happy birthday!" Strangely, the Americans in the club seemed to be the only ones really excited about it---we cheered and jumped up and down and shouted, "GO INDIA!!"
The next morning, a few girls and I attended the festivities on campus. It was hard to tell what was going on, but I caught a few snippets of the chancellor's speech--something about how India is rising onto the national scene now, and they need to clean up environmentally (like Michael Jackson?), and now it's survival of the luckiest, not survival of the fittest. It was confusing. Some men in military uniforms came around and handed out ghee desserts and a spicy snack, and some school children did an adorable coordinated dance to that song from Slumdog Millionaire.
The environmental club on campus did a very entertaining skit encouraging people to use the trash cans on campus...rather depressing, if you ask me. Using a trash can is the most simple concept in environmentalism in my point of view, and that's the point that India is stuck on right now, rather than pursuing recycling and alternative energy. After the speeches were over, everyone left their snack baggies on the grass beneath their chairs. I guess they didn't get the point.
After the event, we were so inspired that we joined in on a march across campus, carrying signs in hindi and English calling for a cleaner campus. When we got to the shopping complex, we put on plastic gloves and joined the Indian students in picking up trash. It was a seemingly futile effort, because I'm fairly certain they just dump the trash cans out in the growing trash mountains I see behind buildings (which cows, goats and dogs are constantly munching on), but it felt good anyway.
Happy Birthday, India. But take my advice: USE THE BIN!!! It's a step in the right direction.

An Attempt at Cohabitation

Last Wednesday, CIEE herded us into a bus at a very early hour in the morning. We drove about 45 minutes until we reached the Henry Martyn Institute, an Indian NGO located on the outskirts of the city.
At the institute we were greeted by a very pacific young man from Indiana, and a cheery young Muslim man with an impressive beard. They spent the morning giving us several lectures on the purpose, history and current projects of the NGO. I only heard about half of the information, as I was busy becoming well acquainted with the lovely Indian-style bathroom, dealing with my latest bout of involuntary purging...but what I did hear was very inspirational:

Apparently the Henry Martyn Institute was founded in the 1930s, by Christians, for the purpose of studying and thus learning to tolerate other religions, specifically Islam. The institute now houses scholars of all ages working on various projects and degrees. They also have started a variety of new endeavors, such as schools that integrate Muslim and Hindu students, vocational skills training programs like sewing, tailoring, etc., inexpensive health clinics and free testing for a variety of ailments.















We visited one of the integrated schools, a building deep in the heart of a Muslim/Hindu mixed neighborhood. The school was almost like a dollhouse, with rooms a fraction of the size of American classrooms, and staircases so skinny most Americans would not fit through. When all 21 of us CIEE students crammed into the classroom to hear the first graders sing us a song, we were literally standing on top of each other.



















We climbed up to the terrace of the building (all Indian buildings/homes have roof access, it's very cool), where we had an impressive view of the neighborhood. The Muslim man who was showing us around pointed to the right and said "this is where the Hindus live," then he gestured to the left and said, "this is where the Muslims live..." Sure enough, in the directions he pointed there was a temple and a mosque, respectively. He went on to say that you could tell the religion of the people who lived in each home, because they put out flags to identify themselves: orange for Hindu, green for Muslim.
It's a fact that tension and violence occur frequently as a result of the intolerance between religions in India, but the people we met working and researching at the Henry Martyn Institute were fiercely optimistic and ambitious in their efforts. In a country of such fundamental contrasts, it was inspiring to see at least one success in peaceful cohabitation.

Bonalu

We went to our first festival today. How can words even describe what can truly only be experienced with all physical and mental senses? But of course I'm going to try:
We left at 8:30 am on a Sunday. I was in a sort of mute reverie the entire time, partly because I literally lost my voice due to sickness and the previous evening's late night festivities, but mostly because the whole scene was so awesome and unlike anything I have ever experienced, that talking would ruin it.
The festival is called 'Bonalu,' and apparently only takes place at this time, in this form in Hyderabad and Secunderabad. Side note: the thing I love about festivals here is that none of them are ever scheduled, they just happen "around July and August." Meaning there is just some kind of communal consensus as to when the party starts, and then it happens. There's no calendar. The main point of this particular festival, as I gathered it, is to worship the 'Holy Mother' goddess, who manifests herself in many different forms, Durga and Saraswathi being two of them. Durga is known for her ferocious anger (she's the goddess with all the arms), which is often thought to be the cause of human plights such as epidemics, drought, famine, etc.
Offerings are made to the goddess in the form of a yogurt & onion mixture (foods thought to cool anger), and Pongali, a dish made from milk, rice and molasses. The Pongali is carried in brass pots on top of women's heads in procession lines, led by a man beating a drum and singing. The pots were smeared with vermilion and tumeric, making an extraordinarly bright display. Apparently animal sacrifices are made as well. They used to make sacrifices of water buffalo, but now for whatever reason they just do roosters and goats. We saw an awful lot of brightly colored goats being led around by their masters, but we didn't see any being sacrificed (thank god).
We left our bus in front of the temple entrance, with our shoes inside, as instructed. I was fully sketched out by the prospect of walking around barefoot on top of every tropical disease, bacteria and parasite known to man, but of course I went along with everyone else and left my shoes. We entered the temple after waiting in a line of anxious Hindus eager to see their goddess. Inside the temple, there were several hot, humid rooms, the greatest and most crowded one containing the life-size figure of Durga, the ferocious, many-armed goddess. We were told to look at her from the feet first, then move your eyes all the way up to her head. There was a man waving around some sort of ceremonial fire, which people were "gathering" with their hands and then wiping their faces. It was so crowded and sweaty that I could hardly tell what was going on, but somehow in the serene chaos somebody marked my forehead with bright red vermilion and tied a strand of jasmine flowers in my hair and put red and green glass bangles on my wrist...
We then moved out of that room and into another room with mirrors on all the walls and some kind of holy chair in the center. Then we went into another room with more figures and images of the goddess, where people tied coconuts and bangles wrapped in red cloth if they had a prayer they wanted to come true. There was a lot more going on, but it's very difficult to explain. I'll try to put a few pictures up to speak a thousand words for me.
To say the least, it was an awesome experience. I wish I could explain more of the symbolism, but honestly I was so overwhelmed and overstimulated that I'm still sifting through all the images in my head, trying to make sense of them. And of course, everyone gawked at us like we had as many arms as Durga....

Over the past few days we've been working on picking out our classes and organizing our schedules...let me just say that I think the academic process here is an excellent indicator of the general Indian culture and attitude I've encountered so far.
For starters, the SIP (Study in India Program) organizers have been emphasizing the fact that NOTHING is set in stone on the class schedule, and until the 2nd or 3rd week of classes, certain classes are liable to change times or disappear completely, so we are not to get our heart set on anything. To complicate things even more, Indians seem to love the time period of 11am-1pm on Mondays and Wednesdays, so every single class in my department is scheduled at that time...a fact that makes it rather difficult to take more than one class from a single department. Also there is this thing called the "shopping period" at Hyderabad U, when students are encouraged to go to any classes they are interested in for the first week or two, until they decide which classes to attend always. All these factors combined sort of stressed all us Americans who are apparently way more obsessed with organizing and setting things in stone than we realized. After freaking out in a pool of my own sweat for a few minutes, I forced myself to take a few breaths and accept that things will all work themselves out on their own.
For the past week or so, our group of 21 students has been shuffled around in an air-conditioned bus to do touristy things in the city. As much as I hate being herded around from place to place, it's been really nice to "get a feel" for the city (as my mom would say), and to get some background info on Hyderabad. A couple days ago we went to a mosque in the Old City, which is apparently one of the biggest in the world. Women weren't allowed to go inside, and especially not non-muslim ones, but we did get to cover our heads and walk around barefoot in the pigeon poop-soaked courtyard. We also went to this enormous palace where the nizams and sultans lived with their families. When we came to the end of the tour, we were all expecting to get back on our bus and head back to the hostel for lunch, but instead they led us into one of the rooms in the palace, with an enormous table piled high with food!! None of us could believe that we were actually eating a meal inside the palace. It was the first real meal I could stomach after a few days too, so I was especially happy.
After dining in the palace, we were shuffled over to the Golconda Fort, which was the seat of power for the nizams before it was taken over in the 1500s...there was some kind of Hindu festival going on inside the fort, which I thought was semi-ironic since it was historically a muslim fort, but it was really cool to see. I made a small offering at a Hindu temple, and received my first red dot on my forehead! The man poured this strange water into my hands, which I promptly rubbed all over my hands because I had no idea what else to do. This woman just stared at me, then rolled her eyes and said, "no, you're supposed to drink it!" Apparently I'm not well on my way to becoming a Hindu.
Alright, enough for now. The mission of the day is to find an Italian restaurant--don't get me wrong, I LOVE Indian food, but nothing could prepare me for the intensity in my gut from eating it every single day. Namaste!

The Beginning

First of all, a word about the title of this blog. On our second day here, one of the program directors informed us that Indians use the word "sultry" to describe the humidity here--the constant, oppressive force that drenches us in sweat before 10 in the morning. I thought the word described what I've seen of India thus far, so it became the name of my first blog.
I've been here in Hyderabad for less than a week--about 5 days--and I'm already recovering from my first bout of food sickness. I'll spare you the details but let's just say that riding on buses through the streets of Hyderabad does not a calm stomach make. Everyone seemed very concerned about me though, and our bus driver even drove to get me some rehydration powder. I'm feeling much better now, but let's just say that Indian food, as wonderful as it is, was not what I wanted to see first thing in the morning after puking all night.
That said, India has been wonderful so far. My first impressions are that it is extremely hot, flat and crowded, yet delicious and titillating all at the same time. We've only gone out of the campus a few times, but every time I've been completely blown away. Everything that everyone told me thus far is true, but there is nothing compared to experiencing it myself.
The most striking thing about India is the contrasts. There are literally fancy apartment complexes and shopping malls with security guards right next to mini slums made of tarp tents with entire families living inside. Even though the poverty immense and even suffocating, the most dejected people find ways to make their lives beautiful, tying jasmine flowers into their hair, marking their foreheads with bindis, and wearing the most brightly colored, silky saris you can imagine.
I've been here for less than a week, but I'm already impressed, disgusted and entirely overwhelmed by that which is INDIA. Now we're going to attempt to find a craft market in the city, and then off to buying saris and salwar-kameezes, so I will have to write more later. Namaste!