Phir melenge, India!

How bittersweet.

There are so many things that I will miss about my summer here in India.

New friends. Auto rickshaws, which proud drivers wipe clean of all dust and embellish with photos of Hindu gods and Bollywood stars. Cycle rickshaws too. Mangoes. Kurtas, salwars, dupattas, and sarees. The ubiquitous bidet sprayer by the toilet (took me a while to figure out that it was not for cleaning your feet… I don’t really use it, but I still think it’s funny). Masala chai tea. How much a dollar can get me. Better yet, free lunch every day. The ruling cow. Cheap, beautifully fresh vegetables from pushcarts. The lovely smell of jasmine and frangipani flowers. Bangles. Amazingly delicious food. Using the dozen or so Hindi words that I’ve learned. Infinite opportunities to explore the most unique and beautiful places.

Going to Jhabua was the best way to spend my last weekend in India – peaceful, green, relaxing. I think even the round trip overnight trains are fun! On Friday night, as we did the first time I went in June, Fabian and I grabbed a big dinner of pizzas in Delhi before catching the 10:30 pm train to Jhabua (though I wish it actually left at 12:00 – it would be more fitting for when I sing my rendition of Midnight Train to Jhabua). As another example of how I fail to command respect here, I should note that the rickshaw driver that picked me up near my house for the 3-kilometer journey to the pizza place in Delhi stopped midway through to eat samosas for five minutes. Not very professional. Once in Jhabua, I hung out with Fabian and Felix, his new volunteer for the school, cooked a Malaysian feast for us on Saturday night as my contribution to ‘international Saturday dinner’ at the house, and got to spend a lot of time with all the kids (the girls graced me by painting my arms and hands with henna) and learn about the details of how to keep the school running. The kids are so awesome! The school has been in constant evolution as the students grow in age and in numbers, and I hope I get a chance to come back and visit again soon.

Now that I’ve reached the end, when I think back on my summer here, I just start to smile to myself. It has been three months filled with new sights, new experiences, and new challenges. It’s been so great to be part of a nutrition program in progress and really apply my studies in a field experience (which requires relearning things that I learned not too long ago, plus learning a lot more). India is definitely a country that has unbelievable need and a lot to teach me about what can be done. I look forward to seeing how different and hopefully more focused I feel heading back to Tufts for my second year after this summer experience. Looking for the right ways to tackle malnutrition in the poorest places of the world is a difficult thing to do, but it is simple to realize the need to commit oneself to the task of at least trying.

Yes, I have had to turn into a ‘mean girl’ this summer (walking around with what Anita calls my ‘gangster face’) to try to fit in more with the assertiveness that is needed to get even the simplest of things done here and maybe get taken seriously. And there are some issues about the way things work (or don’t work) here that frustrate me and others – Indians or non-Indians – to no end. But it is such an incredible place – so amazingly rich and diverse in culture, history, and landscape – that I cannot help but be in total awe of this country. And I have only seen a tiny fraction of it that I have to constantly console myself and remember that I will come back - hopefully soon - and see much more.

Until then, phir melenge – see you later – India!

:)

I'm moving to Thailand

Beautiful, delicious, cheap – what’s not to love?

It was quite a refreshing change from India – symbolized by all the trouble I had on the India side before leaving and then how shockingly smoothly everything went once I reached Thailand. So first of all, my taxi to the Delhi airport ended up somehow being more expensive than normal, even on the meter, and I didn’t have enough cash. Thankfully, the driver was OK with me being 50 rupees short. Or maybe he was saying OK to the idea of me going inside and getting more money from the ATM. We couldn’t really communicate. In any case, once I went in the airport, I wasn’t coming back out. Air Asia specifically instructed me (via multiple emails and text messages) that it was not possible to check in at the airport – that I had to check in online first and print out my boarding pass. But India apparently has different rules, they would later explain to me, after I had spent forever waiting in line at security only to be told that I had to go back and get a different boarding pass and have all the Air Asia staff act like it was the end of the world that I was so late to check in, but I got to the gate just before they started boarding. I landed in Bangkok at 5 am, and my colleague buddy Anita arrived at the same time from Hyderabad. Thank goodness we were on time because we had created our own connecting flight (NEVER bodes well for me) from Bangkok down south to Suratthani. The whole connecting process was a breeze – you don’t need visas for Thailand and my previously printed web boarding passes worked fine once in Thailand. Once we landed in Suratthani after a 1-hr flight, we just missed our bus to the pier after getting distracted by steamed buns in the airport, but luckily got a shuttle to the bus station where we could also catch a bus to the pier. The bus took 1 hour, then the ferry took 1.5 hours to get to the lovely island of Koh Samui.

There were supposed to be four of us on the trip down to the islands, but Monica (Anita’s friend) and Sree (Monica’s friend) arrived in Bangkok a few days earlier and ran into lots of challenges trying to book transport down south, so they stayed in a beach resort town closer to Bangkok. They had heard that there were terrible storms down in Koh Samui, and Anita and I had been beginning to reconsider looking at the weather reports ourselves, but in the end we were not able to refund our flights from Bangkok to the islands so we just went with it.

We were so grateful that we had! It was beautiful and calm on the beaches we visited over our three days in the islands, with short periods of rain (that actually made the beach look really pretty as well) but bright overcast or sun in between. On Koh Samui that Thursday, we arrived at the pier and took a song-thaew (common mode of public transpo – pickup truck with two benches set up in the back) to our bungalow resort on lovely Thong Ta Kien beach. We ate some yummy fresh shellfish and pad thai on the beach, then hung out in the warm, amazingly clear water until it was time to wash up and make our way to the busy Chaweng Beach for a feast of grilled seafood and ribs!

The next morning, after a breakfast of Thai rice soup with seafood, we got back on the beach for a little while before catching a boat over to the neighboring island of Koh Phangan. We hopped on a shuttle to our hillside resort on another peaceful, secluded beach called Haad Salad. As the sun went down, we walked along the beach and picked a restaurant where we could order delicious steamed fish and actually lie down at our tables on triangle mats! The perfect after-dinner treat was a stop at one of the many beach-side massage stations – this one open until midnight – where you can get Thai massages (where they bend and pull your limbs around, but it feels great) and coconut oil massages (amazing – they make you smell like a macaroon hot out of the oven) at $10/hour!

Saturday, we spent some time on the lovely beach, bathing in the sun and the clear, shallow water (so clear that you don’t need to snorkel to see all the tropical fish swimming around you – making sure not to step on the sea cucumbers or urchins!), and of course catching another awesome massage. In the afternoon, we caught a ride over to Thong Sala by the ferry pier, where Anita could get in a little shopping and I could get a private Muay Thai (Thai boxing) lesson! It’s probably the most exercise I’ve gotten all summer, but it was so much fun! I wish I had time to get back in the water after that workout, but it was time to catch a 2-hour ferry followed by a 1.5-hour bus and songthaew back to Suratthani train station. After dining on some street food, we realized we’d have to hang out at the train station for a few hours as our midnight train heading to Bangkok was delayed 2.5 hours. Once we finally boarded, we were happy to find that the sleeper trains were super comfortable – with spacious beds for each of us, fluffy pillows, clean sheets, and a curtain for privacy. Monica and Sree had arrived back in Bangkok the day before, but sadly our train took 12 hours to get to Bangkok instead of the scheduled 10, so we just missed Sree before she had to get on her Sunday afternoon flight back to India. Anita and I met Monica at the lovely Radisson (arranged for us by Anita’s friend that works for them) and soon headed out for the exciting and overwhelming maze of funky designer boutiques, craft and art shops, and food vendors of Chatuchuk Weekend Market. Once night fell, we went back to the hotel to get glammed up and head out for the Vertigo Skybar on the roof of the Banyan Tree Hotel for dinner and drinks to celebrate Anita’s birthday!

Monica left Bangkok early Monday morning to return to India. Anita and I set out to see a bit of Bangkok sights, catching a ferry to Wat Arun and Wat Pho along the chocolate milk-colored and surprisingly squally Chao Phraya River. Wat Arun is the Buddhist ‘temple of the dawn,’ covered in colorful sculptures and (very) steep staircases to the top. On the other side of the river, the Wat Pho temple houses a giant, golden, reclining Buddha! The more popular Wat Phra Kaew of the ‘Emerald Buddha’ next door was sadly closed that day for prayers, so Anita and I jumped in a tuk-tuk just as the monsoon thunderstorm hit and – at the instruction of the ‘tourist police’ - ventured over to a small temple housing the white stone Buddha. After our tuk-tuk took us to a gemstone export store, we decided to ditch the tuk-tuk and hop in a cab to massive MBK center for a trip to the Thai food court and a very quick runaround through the bustling indoor market before we had to run to the airport to catch our flights back to Delhi.

Leaving Thailand, I knew that I could have easily spent a few more days… or better yet weeks… exploring the country. People visit and leave Thailand with mixed reviews, but I absolutely loved it. Clean, tropical, inviting, inexpensive, tourist-friendly (which is sometimes synonymous with the blatant sex tourism business in Bangkok – that Indian man giving me the ‘come hither’ wave as I passed in a cab may or may not have been asking for directions – though still didn’t ruin the charm of Thailand for me), with the most delicious food and countless gorgeous places to visit on land and at sea. Anita and I were so blessed to have made it safely and smoothly down to the islands and gotten such unexpectedly lovely weather. And we didn’t take it for granted – we constantly reminded each other of how lucky we were. Even when we weren’t so lucky (5-hour train delays, monsoon storms), we were still just so happy to be in Thailand.

I can’t wait to go back to Thailand (and really Southeast Asia in general) someday and do more exploring!

Now I just have 1 fleeting week left in India before it is time to end my summer here. It’s time to check off the little to-do list and wrap up my work, sighhh. I will spend my last weekend in Jhabua, in the field, visiting Fabian’s school, and being close to some of the villages in which our nutrition project – which has sadly not come to initially scheduled fruition due to government delays (but we are still optimistic that we are on the right track and will roll it out very soon!) – will take place.

Final post coming soon!

:)

"It's no Taj."

That was my comment at another monument in India, but I lacked some credibility at the time when I was reminded that I hadn’t even seen it myself. Well, this past weekend I finally made my way to Agra. And it’s true. There is nothing like the Taj Mahal.

Starting with Friday night, my colleague, Sana, invited a few of us over to the (beautiful) house of someone in his Baha’i community for an evening of multi-faith prayer and singing. It was such a lovely night – I met wonderfully nice people and had one of the most delicious meals I’ve had in Delhi this summer! After that, we attempted to take a little nap (in vain) because a car was coming to pick us up at 2 am to head to Agra for sunrise – “us” being me and my colleagues, Sana and Micah (incidentally both Canadian – I would have it no other way). After a four hour drive – mostly consisting of us telling our most beloved dinosaur, elephant, and other jokes – we arrived in Agra, picked up our arranged guide, and went straight to the Taj Mahal. We (mainly Micah) made a stink for a while at the ticket office about our rights as registered Indian residents to pay the Indian citizen entry fee (20 rupees/$0.50) instead of the foreigner fee (750 rupees/$16). Ah yes, the Taj Mahal business is highly lucrative. Persistence wins! They finally got sick of us (Micah) arguing with them, and this ended up also saving us money at the other monuments we would visit that day.

It was cloudy so we didn’t get any “sunrise” but the Taj Mahal is still spectacularly jaw-dropping. It just looks so unreal – soft white and perfectly symmetrical, massive, surrounded by a lovely garden. We spent two hours exploring and taking a hundred pictures (and just in my case, watching the tadpoles dart around in the pool). The Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan, had the Taj built in the 17^th century to house the tomb of his favorite wife, and made sure that his every extravagant demand was met in its construction. Aside from the Taj’s commanding exterior, the interior reveals intricately carved marble walls with detailed flowers sculpted from various gemstones.

It was so nice to be at the Taj Mahal so early and beat the mid-day crowds (though there were still a good amount of people there even at dawn), but I think I could just sit there all day and just stare at it. Once we finally left the Taj, we grabbed breakfast and then drove a little around Agra, passing by Agra Fort – a red stone fortress similar to the one in Delhi. I convinced the others of the attractiveness of taking a detour to Fatehpur Sikri, 40 km west of Agra, a “ghost city” of stone palaces and mosques, only inhabited by Mughal Empire for 15 years until they mysteriously all abandoned it. We arrived just as it started pouring but had a great time sloshing around in the rain, exploring the grounds and taking a hundred more pictures. Micah and I had found a strategy earlier on in the day where we would speak in French if we didn’t want our driver, guide, or marble vendor to understand what we were talking about (e.g. how much to tip, what price to bargain for). However, when we were debating how much to offer to a vendor in Fatehpur Sikri selling carvings from his village, we were surprised when he chimed in with pretty fluent French!

After leaving Fatehpur Sikri, we grabbed some meaty Mughlai lunch and then headed north to Sikandra, which is another striking mausoleum and mosque commemorating the Mughal emperor, Akbar. This brought us all the way to 6:30 pm when we finally hit the road to return to Delhi (and finally got in a good nap). We made it home to Delhi a little after 11 pm – I haven’t felt that exhausted in a long time!

Sunday, I slept in and then – for my last weekend day in Delhi before I leave – went to visit another striking monument - the Baha’i Lotus Temple. Surrounded by pools and a big garden, it is a giant lotus housing one large prayer room. I expected this to be a quiet temple and thought I might be disturbing a bit as a tourist, but quickly found the huge line of hundreds of locals waiting to drop off their shoes and enter the temple. It is really quite an attraction for Delhiites as well. After the visit, I went to Khan Market – a shopping area I was advised to go to – for some window shopping and pastries!

I have just two weeks left now in Asia. Tonight I leave for a 5-day trip to THAILAND!

:)

Amritsar Adventure

I’m back from a whirlwind trip up to Amritsar!

So a gang of us – my roommate, a colleague, her friends, and friends of friends - decided last week on a weekend trip to Amritsar, a city on the India-Pakistan border, famous for its Golden Temple, a pilgrimage destination for Sikhs around the world. By the time we decided on Amritsar, train tickets had sold out. Some decided to grab a cheap flight getting there Saturday morning and leaving Sunday morning, but my new roommate, Clement, and I decided to go the cheapest way possible and – despite all kinds of warnings of how painfully uncomfortable it could be – decided to take round trip overnight coach buses to and from Amritsar.

Friday night, Clement and I journeyed over to Old Delhi to catch our bus. You can choose between an AC coach bus with slightly reclining seats, or a non-AC sleeper bus with bunk beds similar to train berths. We went for the AC bus, and it actually wasn’t so bad! We had heard that the roads would be terrible and bumpy (reminiscent of some of the tough bus rides I’ve had in West Africa), but the roads were fine. The only trouble was that you can’t lie down so your legs start to ache after a while, and I always start swinging around when I sleep in a moving vehicle, so I must have slammed my head into the window at least 5 times. And rest stop area toilets are always kind of frightening, and we were a couple hours late. But we finally made it to Amritsar, 10 hours later, and got in a cycle rickshaw over to the Golden Temple to meet the rest of the group that had flown over in the early morning. At the temple, you must cover your head with a scarf and check in your shoes at a kiosk, then wash your feet in a shallow pool before entering. Once inside, you see the Golden Temple in the center of a large pool of “immortality-giving nectar,” surrounded by white marble walkways and shrine halls all around. It is really a stunning and serene space. There are some foreign tourists, but there are thousands of Sikh pilgrims who have come to pay their respects. We walked all around, sometimes getting stopped or followed for a bit by Sikh visitors who wanted to explain their religious principles to us, or just wanted to curiously stare at us foreigners. In fact, several times during the day, Indian people came to us to take their picture with Clement, who is French. At one point, despite my attempts to politely refuse, a middle-aged Indian woman got her picture taken with me. I had thought that people in Amritsar would be used to seeing a lot of tourists come through, but someone in our gang explained to me that some Indian visitors may have come to see the temple from areas where they never see foreigners like us. So indeed we are part of the tourist attractions.

Amritsar was HOT. As hot as Delhi, about 95-100 degrees. Especially when you need to be dressed conservatively and keep your head covered in the temple. We were all just drenched in sweat non-stop for the entire day. After we left the temple, we cooled down in a café while we waited for a driver (the boss of someone in our party is from Amritsar and insisted on arranging a driver to take us around for a bit) to take us to a difficult-to-find dhaba (outdoor Indian fast food joint), famous for its stuffed kulchas (fried flatbreads). After lunch, we headed back towards the temple to go to the Jalianwalla Bagh memorial park, which commemorates a terrible massacre by the British army against thousands of nonviolent protesters in 1919. A beautiful park, though a little odd to see children smiling and posing with highlighted bullet holes in brick walls.

Later that afternoon, we got in a car to head to the Wagha border crossing, for a ‘changing of the guards’ ceremony. When we got to the border, about an hour from Amritsar, we had to enter into a pretty vicious stampede of hundreds of people – some foreigners but mostly Indian visitors – and a gauntlet of security to get to this spectacle, so popular that they have built a small stadium of bleachers for the audience, facing the road that leads to the border gate that separated us and another set of stands on the other side for Pakistani spectators. We sat in a special section set aside for foreigners – otherwise, the rest of the bleachers are separated for men and women. For over a half hour, pairs of people line up on the road to take a run back and forth with giant Indian flags. They blast Hindi hit music on speakers, and ladies come down to the road and have a little dance party. A hype man dressed in all white leads the audience in several bouts of “long live India” chants. Finally, a gang of border officials in full uniform appear and go through a series of ferocious stomping and kicking back and forth down the road, and the border gates are opened while soldiers on both sides take the flags down. It is really a bizarre and unique spectacle that they do every evening, and the crowd loves it!

Once we got back to Amritsar, we got a delicious north Indian dinner, then Clement and I left the group to try to catch a glimpse of the temple lit up at night. We were really cutting it tight, getting to the Temple a couple minutes before 10 pm, when our overnight bus to head back to Delhi was leaving at 10:30. We quickly checked our shoes, covered up, and ran inside to grab a few photographs. Then we hopped into a cycle rickshaw to try to find our bus loading zone, which proved to be super difficult to find in the dark – our cycle rickshaw was going all around until we decided to hop off and run around to try to find it. Poor Clement, the voice of reason and calm, had to listen to me freak out and shout all kinds of panicked obscenities, thinking we wouldn’t find our bus and had missed it. He suggested we call the number on our receipt – very good idea – and a couple minutes later a guy from the bus company showed up on a motorcycle. We squeezed on and he took us to the bus. So on the way home, Clement and I had decided to experiment and try a non-AC sleeper bus. My word of advice – if you take buses in India, they’re really not so bad – but DO NOT take non-AC buses in the middle of summer. Turns out after all my panic, the bus left 45 minutes late anyway, leaving us sweating in a hot bus. Once we got moving, we could open the windows and that kept things relatively cool, but in exchange for getting all kinds of road dust, pollution, and maybe some bugs all over you. So exhausted from a hot day in Amritsar, I passed out pretty easily, not even realizing that we had stopped for at least a half hour in the night when the bus broke down and had to replace a tire. We finally made it back to Delhi 11 hours later. Increasing relief was felt at every step when we got off the bus, walked to the metro, got on the metro southbound, hopped in a rickshaw home, and finally made it back to the apartment. After a 38-hour journey, round trip overnight buses, profuse sweating, and minimal teeth-brushing, it seemed like the best shower of my life.

No time to nap though – I headed out to meet my friend, Jade, for an afternoon bus tour of Delhi. We first stopped at Red Fort, a large area of regal buildings from the 17^th century Mughal Empire, fenced in by a tall, red brick fortress. It was painfully hot out in the sun though, and I was really starting to feel the dehydration left over from my day in Amritsar. I took full advantage of those ubiquitous popsicle/ice cream carts, and got through another super sweaty afternoon. After Red Fort, the bus took us to Rajghat, which I had already seen while Andrews was in town, and then finally to Humayoun’s Tomb, which I had most wanted to see in Delhi before leaving India. Built for the Mughal emperor, Humayoun, the tomb is a striking 16^th century garden mausoleum and precursor to the Taj Mahal.

It’s been a scorching whirlwind of a weekend, but a great opportunity to see some fascinating and uniquely Indian places.

Three weekends left in India! Next stop this coming weekend – the Taj Mahal!

:)