One month in, and I finally took a picture with Mumma and Didi!
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Whirlwind Week, Pt 2
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| Snakes and ladders to teach good governance. Snakes include alcoholism and caste discrimination. |
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| A part of a banner the group uses to help identify what tasks women usually complete in the day. |
Having fully immersed ourselves in responsible agriculture, rural education, and gender equality, we went for some lighter fun at one of the most holy landmarks in India - the Ganges. Rishikesh is also considered the yoga capital of the world, so yes, it is a weird and fascinating place.
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| One of the monkeys hanging out on Laxman Jhula Bridge |
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| Me, Nadine and Kate with our feet in Mother Ganga |
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| When my host sister saw this photo, she laughed and said "Fat fat aunties!" |
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| Rishikesh! Colorful! |
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| A stylish Indian looks on at the Ganges |
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| Some women drink Ganges water poured off the foot of a priestess. |
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| Aarti at the Ganges |
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| Dinner at the Pyramid Cafe - reflections of our lanterns with the lights of Rishikesh in the distance |
I am trying to enjoy Jaipur this week and really sink my teeth into the city, as time seems to racing by incredibly fast. My first month sped by incredibly fast.
Although it feels like I am still so new here, I had a small accomplishment today, when I caught a rickshaw home to take a nap: I spoke only Hindi with my rickshaw driver! There were lots of repetitions, and I am sure that I did not answer all of his questions remotely correctly, but when I got out and asked for change, my driver went to 3 different men to ask for change without making a big deal of it, and normally asking for any sort of change back is a huge ordeal ... so yeah, it paid off big time.
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| Adventure is out there! |
Monday, February 27, 2012
All the Small Things
Last night, the Oscars took place in California while I slept in Jaipur. I think a fun way to demonstrate the difference between the US and India could be from comparing two reactions to a beacon of international peace and cooperation: Angelina Jolie.
Here is what the LA Times had to say:
"Best dressed! Angelina Jolie's black velvet Atelier Versace gown, slit thigh-high, was as smoldering, high-drama as fashion can get on the red carpet."
Meanwhile, my internet stick over here launches Yahoo! India every time I successfully connect, so I had to click through when I saw the headline "Oscars 2012: Girl, Humiliated"... Surely no major gaffes were being covered up by the American media?
Here is what the Yahoo! India commentator had to say:
"Not a hair was out of place, the famous pillow lips were painted a Satan concubine red and the limber, zero-percent-body-fat body was encased in an asymmetric velvety black number that had a slit so high on the right that it went all the way up to Calgary mountains in Canada. To give the devil its due, the black gown did give off a somewhat quasi well-developed derriere vibe, but mother-of-6 Angelina Jolie seemed to want to show the versatility of the slit so bad, she almost ended up flashing the divine doodah that has, among other things, birthed three messiahs for the betterment of this world in the last 5 years."
Somewhat different in tone. I highly recommend the Indian take on Angie, as it is very opinionated.
Here is what the LA Times had to say:
"Best dressed! Angelina Jolie's black velvet Atelier Versace gown, slit thigh-high, was as smoldering, high-drama as fashion can get on the red carpet."
Meanwhile, my internet stick over here launches Yahoo! India every time I successfully connect, so I had to click through when I saw the headline "Oscars 2012: Girl, Humiliated"... Surely no major gaffes were being covered up by the American media?
Here is what the Yahoo! India commentator had to say:
"Not a hair was out of place, the famous pillow lips were painted a Satan concubine red and the limber, zero-percent-body-fat body was encased in an asymmetric velvety black number that had a slit so high on the right that it went all the way up to Calgary mountains in Canada. To give the devil its due, the black gown did give off a somewhat quasi well-developed derriere vibe, but mother-of-6 Angelina Jolie seemed to want to show the versatility of the slit so bad, she almost ended up flashing the divine doodah that has, among other things, birthed three messiahs for the betterment of this world in the last 5 years."
Somewhat different in tone. I highly recommend the Indian take on Angie, as it is very opinionated.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Everybody's Got Something to Hide but Me and My Monkey
On Friday morning, Nadine and I set out for Maharishi Mahesh Ashram just outside of Rishikesh proper. In 2012, the ashram is abandoned and overrun, but in 1978 it was the home of the Beatles as they learned Transcendental Meditation. And wrote a number of songs from the White Album, such as "Back in the USSR," "Blackbird," "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?," "Julia," "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da," "Rocky Racoon" and "Revolution." We didn't expect to get into the ashram, so we tried to bargain our jeep driver, Gopal, from the costly 300 rupee fee, but he wouldn't budge so we decided to bite the bullet and split the roughly $6 charge to go make our own pilgrimage - as they say, ob-la-di, life goes on (even if your pockets are three dollars lighter)!
Once we got there, Gopal turned off his jeep and wandered away. Considering we hadn't paid him yet, we figured that we might have not successfully garnered return fare, but for free we weren't complaining.
More after the jump...
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| Note the monkey sitting on the right side of the entrance! |
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| Couldn't translate the Hindi that quickly, but there is a nice "No Entry" for English speakers. |
Once we got there, Gopal turned off his jeep and wandered away. Considering we hadn't paid him yet, we figured that we might have not successfully garnered return fare, but for free we weren't complaining.
More after the jump...
Whirlwind Week, Pt. 1
Our first stop for the week was an overnight stay at Navdanya, an organic farm and seed bank started by Dr. Vandana Shiva. It was just outside of Dehradun, so we headed there straight from the Haridwar train station. We learned a little bit about the seed bank, but mostly we just had ourselves a campfire that night and did some weeding.
Next stop, rural India! We went to a rural village of the Gujjar people, a Muslim community also near Dehradun. We learned the ABCs with the kids, tried to teach them duck, duck, goose (to no avail, because a very steep language barrier) and had lunch together. It was really beautiful out in the village, but I am happy to come home to my laptop and indoor plumbing.
Next stop, rural India! We went to a rural village of the Gujjar people, a Muslim community also near Dehradun. We learned the ABCs with the kids, tried to teach them duck, duck, goose (to no avail, because a very steep language barrier) and had lunch together. It was really beautiful out in the village, but I am happy to come home to my laptop and indoor plumbing.
Uttarkhand Limited
I have been a big Wes Anderson fan for a long time, but that fandom is limited specifically to three movies: Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and the Life Aquatic.
That list rather conspicuously lacks The Darjeeling Limited, an Anderson movie about a dysfunctional family (as are all of his films) this time set on a train in India. I saw Darjeeling Limited in theaters when it was released in 2007, and was instantly disappointed in that way that only a teenaged superfan can be of their favorite artist's new work. I haven't seen it since, having immediately disregarded it as undeserving of a repeat viewing when there are 3 very good Anderson movies I could be watching instead. Still, watching 91 minutes of my favorite director's perspective on train travel in India leaves me with a few subconscious expectations.
One of the characteristic aspects of Anderson's movies are the stylized, color specific depictions. In the Royal Tenenbaums, the seedier cabs of New York are transformed into an fictional "Gypsy Cab Co."
In the Life Aquatic, the whole world is seen in sky blue and pale yellow. In Darjeeling Limited, trains are the same dreamy blue and yellow color scheme, as the rest of India is saturated in color. Because all ships in the Mediterranean are not exclusively blue and yellow, I did not anticipate how actual Indian trains would match up.
More thoughts after the jump...
That list rather conspicuously lacks The Darjeeling Limited, an Anderson movie about a dysfunctional family (as are all of his films) this time set on a train in India. I saw Darjeeling Limited in theaters when it was released in 2007, and was instantly disappointed in that way that only a teenaged superfan can be of their favorite artist's new work. I haven't seen it since, having immediately disregarded it as undeserving of a repeat viewing when there are 3 very good Anderson movies I could be watching instead. Still, watching 91 minutes of my favorite director's perspective on train travel in India leaves me with a few subconscious expectations.
One of the characteristic aspects of Anderson's movies are the stylized, color specific depictions. In the Royal Tenenbaums, the seedier cabs of New York are transformed into an fictional "Gypsy Cab Co."
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| This is not a real cab. |
In the Life Aquatic, the whole world is seen in sky blue and pale yellow. In Darjeeling Limited, trains are the same dreamy blue and yellow color scheme, as the rest of India is saturated in color. Because all ships in the Mediterranean are not exclusively blue and yellow, I did not anticipate how actual Indian trains would match up.
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| A promotional drawing related to the film. Note the color scheme. |
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| Real-life, actual train. Note the yellow guard rails. |
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Weekend Update
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| Proof! |
I am very exhausted from the drives, coordinating the trip, and making sure we got from one place to another safely, but proud to have taken the initiative to make use of a spare weekend when we have one. I am also a little bit sick (uh-oh!). Tomorrow night, our whole program leaves for a week excursion to Dehradun and Rishikesh, so hold tight while I venture even further away from civilization. Wish me luck!
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Surprises!
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| Rooftop view of Jaipur |
- the amount of wild dogs on the street. There are lots and lots and lots. I think 6 live on one side of the block nearest my school.
- the amount of men peeing on the street. There are lots and lots and lots.
- chipmunks.
- bucket showers.
- drinking so much whole milk. And being able to lift the fat off the top with my fingers.
- marble. There is marble flooring in all of the rooms I spend time in.
- air pollution.
- kites stuck in the trees.
- key role of the roof top in Indian family life.
- switches oriented the opposite way. (Flick down to turn on.)
I did not anticipate having so much trouble getting clean. I have not fully mastered bucket showers, and I am not sure that I will because I keep relying on the tap of the shower-like area to serve as a makeshift shower head. This method is far from perfect - today I thought that I had finally really cleaned my hair well until about 2 hours into class when I realized the entire back portion of my hair was slick with unrinsed conditioner. Ick.
As I told my compatriots at lunch - tomorrow I will try again!
Monday, February 13, 2012
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Friday, February 10, 2012
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Aaj ka din lamba ta
Today at dinner, I told my host sister, my Didi, that today had been a long day, or in Hindi, that aaj (today) ka din ('s day) lamba ta (was long). I probably could have added a bahut (very) in there too.
It was only after I had said, and sat with the silence that happens a lot with a household that speaks another language, that I really considered how true it was.
Today started out, like they all do, with a 7:00 wake up from my Didi or my mumma here, as they are both teachers who get up at 5 AM to accomplish things before they head out. So my mumma woke me up, and asked how I was feeling, since at the end of the school day yesterday I had suddenly began to feel a little feverish and come home asking for help. Since I had been a little under the weather, she told me this morning that it was probably best if I didn't take a bath, like I normally do in the morning, but rather just washed.
This began the interpretative period of my morning, as I tried to figure out what "bath" versus "wash" entails. My host family is incredibly considerate and thoughtful, so they turn on my hot water heater in my own bathroom for me before they wake me up so that I can use hot water right away (these women are so incredibly nice). I usually don't shower every day at home, but I feel rude ignoring the hot water that has already been made by the time I get up in the morning - so while I have managed a full bucket shower on my first morning, yesterday I had opted to just wash my body off. ... which left me confused about what hygiene was expected of me. Does a wash mean just your body? Just brushing your teeth, face and hair? I didn't feel like reaching higher cognitive function, so I just shut the hot water hearter off and left my clothes on.
From there, I had some breakfast while drafting an email to an internship which meant that I had my internet up, so I set up a skype date with the rest of my family for my evening (their morning), before running off to pick up my closest neighbor SIT student and autorickshaw to school. This was the first time that we convinced an autorickshaw walla (driver) to charge us according to his meter - a new piece of tech around these parts - and we saved 20 rupees more than usual!
The morning class featured a guest lecture who focused on feminist movements in India. One of the more vocal members of the class interjected in early on to debate about whether lesbians in India were acknowledged as part of the feminine experience. Considering that sex is one part of Indian life that still seems to be completely taboo, our lecturer told us that lesbianism had not been an integral part of the women's suffrage movement under British rule. The student who asked the question was unsatisfied with that answer, because lesbians are everywhere, so we spent the remaining part of the lecture discussing lesbians, specifically, in India. This made me tired.
Then began our 3 part, 2 hour Hindi lessons. Part one was practicing talking to a vegetable vendor*, but then we got to learning how to conjugate the verb for "to be." Although we would seem to enough Hindi teachers - 3 - for a group of 22, this guest lecturer shows up to teach us grammar. This was difficult. Here's why:
1. Many many of my classmates do not know how to read Hindi characters. This is hard because many characters look the same, if not even are the same, besides connecting the top line to it or adding a dot at the bottom. For example, this symbol भ makes a bh noise, while म makes an m noise. Not so easy huh?
2. The Hindi lecturer was not writing the Hindi characters well. She was more scribbling Hindi-like shapes on the blackboard. This is challenging because the characters do not seem very distinct. (see point 1)
3. The Hindi lecturer is French, so speaks English with an accent. And maybe Hindi too? I am not advanced enough to tell.
4. Yesterday's lesson was how to make the right noise for which symbol. Today's lesson incorporated use of pronouns, conjugating verbs, switching tenses, masc/feminine, and distance all in one. It seemed like kind of a leap.
I have the benefit of one semester of Hindi at school under my belt, so although I have far from mastered the language, I have been exposed to the basics before. No one else in my class has, so I really feel for them when we whip around from subject to subject in Hindi class without much explanation. After we learned the new lesson, we break into drill groups - today my group was with the guest lecturer. She pretty much just yelled and pointed at us for the whole half hour, which sucked. She would improvise sentences at us, arbitrarily switching gender and number. She also swapped between present and past tense without any notice. Even with a firm grasp on the basic past tense, she had me questioning my whole knowledge of the Hindi language. One of the other girls in my group said afterwards she had felt like she was going to cry the whole time. It was just awful.
Finally got out of Hindi drilling to eat. Lunch was chicken - which made this the first time in a week that I have had to think about being a vegetarian. Definitely nice to be able to eat most everything around here.
After lunch, we headed into our trusty "TOURIST" bus to take a trip to Basti. I did not know what Basti was.
Turns out, Basti are some slums in downtown Jaipur, not more than a 5 minute car ride away. All of a sudden, we were in the middle of a 3-part field exercise about observation, so we were instructed to follow our teacher through the slum and not to talk to each other for the duration of the walk. So there we went, a group of 11 Americans walking through an Indian slum, holding notepads and paper, and not talking. There were a lot of kids yelling at us, trying to talk to us, touching our hands and clothes, and just generally around. I felt very invasive. This was weird.
So after going through the slums and then talking about our emotional reaction to walking through a slum, I did what any American would do - go shopping. The fact that I had only one pair of pants still fully functional was really starting to get to me, and I guess a lot of girls were beginning to feel similarly out-of-place in western wear and worn down, because we rounded up a majority of our classmates and headed to the nearby mall. 2 kurtas and 3 churidaar later, I felt much better to take tomorrow head on.
I caught an autorickshaw home, and chatted for a bit with my mumma and didi, and then got to my computer for a chat with my parents and sister.
Unfortunately, the electronics in my life had other ideas. My internet connection comes from an MTS usb stick that launches an internet server from my computer. Sometimes when I try to open the application to connect, it gives me an error message that the internet "isn't ready for use". Ummm what. So it did that a few times, then finally launched, and loaded up Yahoo India - its go-to page. Then still my Skype will not log in, nor will my Gmail load. Which begs the question, if my internet isn't working, how will I tell my whole family that I am having technical difficulties rather than totally blowing them off? I was getting more stressed about it, and finally things started loading, and I logged on to skype successfully. My dad was pushing for a video chat through Google, but when I tried to launch it, it gave me the prompt for downloading the appropriate technology. Given that my internet connection can only barely handle streaming a youtube video, I didn't want to push it. So Skype it was! But the internet was still not great - so video chatting prompted a red box on my screen that said "your internet connection does not support video, we suggest switching to audio only."
So I switched to audio. And still, a box would pop up not infrequently that suggested that my internet connection had completely been lost. So my call home was really a half hour of me talking to my computer, hoping my parents could hear me, and just taking long pauses when the red box would show up. And it showed up a lot. So after about 45 minutes of broken explanations of autorickshaw fees, good classmates and Indian family life, we called it quits, and I went to eat dinner with my buppa who was just finishing up his dessert.
Bathing + rickshaw negotiating + hindi crisis + slums + shopping + unusual rickshaw route home + bad internet = long day.
*Conveniently, learning vegetables is the only set of vocab that I really committed to memory from my Hindi class back in the States. Well, actually, I learned vegetables and fruit, which in Hindi is "sabzi aur pal". This got me into trouble when I was first getting to know my host family while they cooked dinner. They asked me what I normally eat at home, and I blanked, so I thought of pasta... then pasta and vegetables. So I said "Pasta! Pasta aur pal!" which, for those of you playing at home, means "Pasta and fruit!" This, technically speaking, still describes my eating patterns at home, so I just let it go, but pasta and vegetable sat the same time is a good combo and pasta and fruit sounds gross.
It was only after I had said, and sat with the silence that happens a lot with a household that speaks another language, that I really considered how true it was.
Today started out, like they all do, with a 7:00 wake up from my Didi or my mumma here, as they are both teachers who get up at 5 AM to accomplish things before they head out. So my mumma woke me up, and asked how I was feeling, since at the end of the school day yesterday I had suddenly began to feel a little feverish and come home asking for help. Since I had been a little under the weather, she told me this morning that it was probably best if I didn't take a bath, like I normally do in the morning, but rather just washed.
This began the interpretative period of my morning, as I tried to figure out what "bath" versus "wash" entails. My host family is incredibly considerate and thoughtful, so they turn on my hot water heater in my own bathroom for me before they wake me up so that I can use hot water right away (these women are so incredibly nice). I usually don't shower every day at home, but I feel rude ignoring the hot water that has already been made by the time I get up in the morning - so while I have managed a full bucket shower on my first morning, yesterday I had opted to just wash my body off. ... which left me confused about what hygiene was expected of me. Does a wash mean just your body? Just brushing your teeth, face and hair? I didn't feel like reaching higher cognitive function, so I just shut the hot water hearter off and left my clothes on.
From there, I had some breakfast while drafting an email to an internship which meant that I had my internet up, so I set up a skype date with the rest of my family for my evening (their morning), before running off to pick up my closest neighbor SIT student and autorickshaw to school. This was the first time that we convinced an autorickshaw walla (driver) to charge us according to his meter - a new piece of tech around these parts - and we saved 20 rupees more than usual!
The morning class featured a guest lecture who focused on feminist movements in India. One of the more vocal members of the class interjected in early on to debate about whether lesbians in India were acknowledged as part of the feminine experience. Considering that sex is one part of Indian life that still seems to be completely taboo, our lecturer told us that lesbianism had not been an integral part of the women's suffrage movement under British rule. The student who asked the question was unsatisfied with that answer, because lesbians are everywhere, so we spent the remaining part of the lecture discussing lesbians, specifically, in India. This made me tired.
Then began our 3 part, 2 hour Hindi lessons. Part one was practicing talking to a vegetable vendor*, but then we got to learning how to conjugate the verb for "to be." Although we would seem to enough Hindi teachers - 3 - for a group of 22, this guest lecturer shows up to teach us grammar. This was difficult. Here's why:
1. Many many of my classmates do not know how to read Hindi characters. This is hard because many characters look the same, if not even are the same, besides connecting the top line to it or adding a dot at the bottom. For example, this symbol भ makes a bh noise, while म makes an m noise. Not so easy huh?
2. The Hindi lecturer was not writing the Hindi characters well. She was more scribbling Hindi-like shapes on the blackboard. This is challenging because the characters do not seem very distinct. (see point 1)
3. The Hindi lecturer is French, so speaks English with an accent. And maybe Hindi too? I am not advanced enough to tell.
4. Yesterday's lesson was how to make the right noise for which symbol. Today's lesson incorporated use of pronouns, conjugating verbs, switching tenses, masc/feminine, and distance all in one. It seemed like kind of a leap.
I have the benefit of one semester of Hindi at school under my belt, so although I have far from mastered the language, I have been exposed to the basics before. No one else in my class has, so I really feel for them when we whip around from subject to subject in Hindi class without much explanation. After we learned the new lesson, we break into drill groups - today my group was with the guest lecturer. She pretty much just yelled and pointed at us for the whole half hour, which sucked. She would improvise sentences at us, arbitrarily switching gender and number. She also swapped between present and past tense without any notice. Even with a firm grasp on the basic past tense, she had me questioning my whole knowledge of the Hindi language. One of the other girls in my group said afterwards she had felt like she was going to cry the whole time. It was just awful.
Finally got out of Hindi drilling to eat. Lunch was chicken - which made this the first time in a week that I have had to think about being a vegetarian. Definitely nice to be able to eat most everything around here.
After lunch, we headed into our trusty "TOURIST" bus to take a trip to Basti. I did not know what Basti was.
Turns out, Basti are some slums in downtown Jaipur, not more than a 5 minute car ride away. All of a sudden, we were in the middle of a 3-part field exercise about observation, so we were instructed to follow our teacher through the slum and not to talk to each other for the duration of the walk. So there we went, a group of 11 Americans walking through an Indian slum, holding notepads and paper, and not talking. There were a lot of kids yelling at us, trying to talk to us, touching our hands and clothes, and just generally around. I felt very invasive. This was weird.
So after going through the slums and then talking about our emotional reaction to walking through a slum, I did what any American would do - go shopping. The fact that I had only one pair of pants still fully functional was really starting to get to me, and I guess a lot of girls were beginning to feel similarly out-of-place in western wear and worn down, because we rounded up a majority of our classmates and headed to the nearby mall. 2 kurtas and 3 churidaar later, I felt much better to take tomorrow head on.
I caught an autorickshaw home, and chatted for a bit with my mumma and didi, and then got to my computer for a chat with my parents and sister.
Unfortunately, the electronics in my life had other ideas. My internet connection comes from an MTS usb stick that launches an internet server from my computer. Sometimes when I try to open the application to connect, it gives me an error message that the internet "isn't ready for use". Ummm what. So it did that a few times, then finally launched, and loaded up Yahoo India - its go-to page. Then still my Skype will not log in, nor will my Gmail load. Which begs the question, if my internet isn't working, how will I tell my whole family that I am having technical difficulties rather than totally blowing them off? I was getting more stressed about it, and finally things started loading, and I logged on to skype successfully. My dad was pushing for a video chat through Google, but when I tried to launch it, it gave me the prompt for downloading the appropriate technology. Given that my internet connection can only barely handle streaming a youtube video, I didn't want to push it. So Skype it was! But the internet was still not great - so video chatting prompted a red box on my screen that said "your internet connection does not support video, we suggest switching to audio only."
So I switched to audio. And still, a box would pop up not infrequently that suggested that my internet connection had completely been lost. So my call home was really a half hour of me talking to my computer, hoping my parents could hear me, and just taking long pauses when the red box would show up. And it showed up a lot. So after about 45 minutes of broken explanations of autorickshaw fees, good classmates and Indian family life, we called it quits, and I went to eat dinner with my buppa who was just finishing up his dessert.
Bathing + rickshaw negotiating + hindi crisis + slums + shopping + unusual rickshaw route home + bad internet = long day.
*Conveniently, learning vegetables is the only set of vocab that I really committed to memory from my Hindi class back in the States. Well, actually, I learned vegetables and fruit, which in Hindi is "sabzi aur pal". This got me into trouble when I was first getting to know my host family while they cooked dinner. They asked me what I normally eat at home, and I blanked, so I thought of pasta... then pasta and vegetables. So I said "Pasta! Pasta aur pal!" which, for those of you playing at home, means "Pasta and fruit!" This, technically speaking, still describes my eating patterns at home, so I just let it go, but pasta and vegetable sat the same time is a good combo and pasta and fruit sounds gross.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
And for today's entertainment...
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Bad news - I tore a hole in my salwar today getting out of a car. To put it simply, I ripped my pants.
This was distressing because
a) today we got our formal education in appropriate dress, and lets just say that exposing your butt was not a recommended Indian style.
b) we had just arrived in the old city of Jaipur, to take a hike up to Nahargarh Fort, so I was in the middle of a busy Indian street and about to spend the next few hours walking around.
Thankfully, some quick thinking to move my scarf around my waist and my purse to the opposite side for some insurance kept me from being a common floozy. To quote the Bluth family, " ...and that's why you always leave a note!" Or rather, in India, that's why you always bring a scarf!
All turned out well! I managed the hike up to the fort, the palace inside, and a nice cup of chai.
This was distressing because
a) today we got our formal education in appropriate dress, and lets just say that exposing your butt was not a recommended Indian style.
b) we had just arrived in the old city of Jaipur, to take a hike up to Nahargarh Fort, so I was in the middle of a busy Indian street and about to spend the next few hours walking around.
Thankfully, some quick thinking to move my scarf around my waist and my purse to the opposite side for some insurance kept me from being a common floozy. To quote the Bluth family, " ...and that's why you always leave a note!" Or rather, in India, that's why you always bring a scarf!
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| Note my life-saving mint green scarf - a well spent 100 rupees! |
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| Center courtyard of the summer palace within Nahargarh Fort |
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| A guard watches our tour from above |
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| The view of Nahargarh Fort from where we started |
Friday, February 3, 2012
On the Road Again
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| Waiting to pay the toll into another state |
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| Open road |
We drive out of Delhi past a collection of large, big military buildings, and then enter into a very weird territory of new, Western-looking office buildings. These are the homes of some the call centers and other outsourced service industry work. I didn't take any pictures of them. Sorry.
The even more unusual sights came past the completed and functional office buildings, where for the next hour large unfinished apartment buildings were frequent on either side of the road, just beyond mustard fields, sheep pastures and very rough looking shacks. There were many unfinished, open air, cement looking towers, and almost no completed ones.
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| One of many empty apartment complexes springing up near the highway |
Arrived!
I have made it safely to India! After getting in to Delhi, we stayed at the YMCA in the heart of Delhi -
like staying at a YMCA two blocks away from the Washington Monument.
Jet lag be damned, we started the next day bright and early with a 7.30
breakfast and off to orientation by 9.15. Ouch.
Orientation was a doctor telling us to avoid tap water in Delhi, and giving us different scenarios of fever and other symptoms that require going to a doctor. Fever alone? Not enough. Fever + stomach cramps? Probably not. Fever + vomiting? Probably. It was not very reassuring.
After going through psychological orientation, we went to lunch and then back to the YMCA for some rest time to help cope with jet lag. My roommate and I, and our neighbors, deciding to trek through the break and cross the street, to what had looked like a playground. Turned out to be Jantar Mantar, a park with 6 building sized astrological tools built by Jai Singh II, also known as the founder of Jaipur. The park looks like something out of a surrealist painting, as a huge staircase climbs into the middle of the park and then stops suddenly. It is also painted pink, Jai's favorite color, just like the city of Jaipur.
Anyways, the rest of our time in Delhi was spent going to a bazaar which seemed very touristy, but I managed to score a new scarf for just 100 rupees - approximately 2 dollars. Nice. We finished up orientation with a talk from an American expat who told us that life in India would be different than America. Thanks for the tip!
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| A South Indian-style temple across the street from our orientation home in Delhi. |
After going through psychological orientation, we went to lunch and then back to the YMCA for some rest time to help cope with jet lag. My roommate and I, and our neighbors, deciding to trek through the break and cross the street, to what had looked like a playground. Turned out to be Jantar Mantar, a park with 6 building sized astrological tools built by Jai Singh II, also known as the founder of Jaipur. The park looks like something out of a surrealist painting, as a huge staircase climbs into the middle of the park and then stops suddenly. It is also painted pink, Jai's favorite color, just like the city of Jaipur.
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| New friends! Hanging out in the Jantar Mantar (notice the bottled water) |
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| One of the astrological tools - a sun calendar for determining horoscopes |
Anyways, the rest of our time in Delhi was spent going to a bazaar which seemed very touristy, but I managed to score a new scarf for just 100 rupees - approximately 2 dollars. Nice. We finished up orientation with a talk from an American expat who told us that life in India would be different than America. Thanks for the tip!
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