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!