An Expedition North

I’ll start off by saying that North tour was amazing.  It truly was a fantastic trip full of experiences I will remember for the rest of my life.  Though I feel like I say this quite frequently, that just means I’m having a valuable exchange.  Nevertheless, this trip was above and beyond my everyday life-changing ordeal.  Now that I think about it, I don’t believe I mentioned this trip beforehand so, for anyone wondering, that’s what I was up to for two and a half weeks of late February and early March.

As is the norm, we started off the trip with a long train ride and arrived in Delhi the next day.  Delhi is a lot like Washington D.C. in that it is the nation’s capital and resides in its own state.  We started the trip off with a bang and headed straight to the famous Lotus Temple.  It is the most well-known modern temple in India and is renowned for its beauty and unique shape (you guessed it, lotus flower).  For a building with such a stunning exterior, the inside was remarkably simple – a mostly empty area with chairs and space for quiet reflection and prayer, encompassed by plain, white walls.  This is probably an effort to reflect the minimalist nature of the Baha'i faith, for whom the temple was built.  What I understood of their beliefs is that they focus on the spiritual unity of mankind, claiming that all religions are based on the same God who created the universe and all humans.  I believe they also are pushing for world peace by uniting all countries.  Some interesting ideas at least.

After the Lotus Temple we visited some of the other major attractions of Delhi including the Gate of India and Qutub Minar.  The latter was an interesting site which claims a famous tower as well as the oldest solid pillar in the world.  It is made of a mixture of metals and was created using technology not developed elsewhere until centuries later.  Though it is not too much to look at, you cannot argue that it is not impressive.

The next morning we rose early and took another train to Rishikesh (Roo-she-kesh), a city located on the sacred Ganges River.  Many people come to Rishikesh to wash themselves in the water and line the river to participate in the religious ceremonies each day.   We walked along the shore and could not resist dipping our feet in the holy water (followed by a thorough scrubbing in the shower).  

The rest of our stay in Rishikesh contained slightly less traditional Indian culture and slightly more adrenaline.  We started the next morning off by going river rafting in the Ganges.  In two large, inflatable boats we braved our way down the river daring powerful rapids and waves that covered our entire vessel.  Several exhilarating hours later we finished our adventure sore, soaked, and ready to relax.  Naturally, we took the next day easy with only a little light bungee jumping.  I personally did not jump, but I thoroughly enjoyed the looks of pure terror on my friends’ faces at the moment they began their 83 meter (272 feet) plummet. 

The next day we went over to Agra to see India’s most famous edifice, the Taj Mahal.  Naturally there was a lot of anticipation and hype leading up to this moment, but it completely realized my expectations.  Despite paying 37.5 times more than an Indian citizen to see this amazing tomb, it was incredible.  You enter a tunnel leading through the enormous gate and the Taj hits you – framed by the dark end of the passageway the white marble is illuminated as you gaze on one of the most beautiful structures in the world.  Though everyone knows the Taj is magnificent from afar, only those who actually visit can fully appreciate its intricacies.  The Taj Mahal is built from marble and covered in colorful floral designs and Arabic texts, but the workers did not use any paint.  All ornamentation is composed of semi-precious stones inlaid into the marble.  To wholly give the workers due praise, this means that each small stone was carved by hand to perfectly match the piece of marble cut out and held there with only a small amount of natural adhesive.  However, the most impressive testament to the level of workmanship is that when you rub your hand over the engravings you cannot feel the border between the different stones.  Only where the British carved away stones before fleeing a newly independent India are there any signs of imperfection.  The Taj truly deserves its status as one of the Seven Wonders. 

We stopped afterward at a marble-working store that uses the same techniques employed in the ornamentation of the Taj Mahal.  This increased my admiration of the process considerably.  Here they gave us a small sample of the work that went into constructing such a masterpiece.  Two workers sat on the ground one carving out the marble, the other sanding down the stones.  The store owner told us that even small works take two workers months of dedication to complete and showed us examples of finished products from pebble-sized elephants to entire dining tables.  I still consider this one of the most impressive pieces of culture I have witnessed, along with several other sites we visited during the remainder of this trip.

Catching Up and Slowing Down

I think I’ll skip the obligatory apology for not blogging lately.  I have kept myself busy with a plethora of new experiences and trips, and that is essentially the goal of being on exchange.  However, this does leave me with the arduous task of recording the past month and a half which is daunting.  Nonetheless, I set this task for myself at the beginning of my journey and I am dead-set on seeing it through.

That said I am going to work backwards and start with my recent trip to Hyderabad.  Perhaps one of the greatest benefits of Rotary’s exchange program is the amazing connections made, and it is on one of these connections that I relied for this chance to experience a different piece of India.  As you may know, my family in Northfield hosted Rachael for the first three months of her exchange.  Though I have never met Rachael in person, we have grown quite close through our shared experiences and this has extended to her family as well.  I mentioned in an earlier post that I spent a weekend with her parents when they visited Pune, and they offered to host me for a week if I ever wanted to visit Hyderabad.  New experiences are kind of the entire objective as an exchange student, so I found a free week and booked the tickets.  I had visited Hyderabad before on South tour and I have visited the majority of India, but the way you truly get to understand a place is to spend time there, not just to see the sights.  Obviously a week is not long enough, but I did get a look into a very different India than what I have experienced in Pune.  Unlike both of my Hindu host families here, the Dawsons are Christian and in India your religion has a much more significant influence on company you keep.  Staying with a Christian family also helped distinguish for me some of the differences between being Hindu and being Indian-which things are universal to all people living in this subcontinent and which apply to Hindus in India and around the world.  You might think these are easy distinctions to make, but my exposure to people of other religions has been limited to say the least due to the religious segregation that seems to permeate all aspects of people’s lives.

Back to my point.  Apart from the religious differences, Hyderabad is in the state of Andhra Pradesh whose history and culture are quite different from those of Maharashtra, primarily a much larger Muslim population.  My week was both interesting and extremely enjoyable.  Apart from plate after plate of mouth-watering meaty dishes, I met so many friendly and outgoing people.  Ok, I cannot in good conscious go on without giving further praise of the food.  I ate dozens of preparations of pork, chicken, sausages and, most importantly, BEEF!  Seriously, I never considered how great beef tastes until I was weeks into my exchange but it is magnificent.  I had fried bacon and eggs for breakfast, barbequed sausages into the wee hours of the morning, and had beef so spicy it could make a jalapeno cry.  Also, I had the famous Hydrabadi biryani (Indian chicken/mutton and rice mix) which was fantastic.  Simply writing about the heavenly smorgasbord I experienced recalls all the glorious tastes and makes me really happy.  It made up for all the meat I have been missing for the past eight months and I do believe it will hold me until my first Chipotle burrito/hamburger and milkshake in the Newark airport in a short two months.

The Dawsons are an extremely welcoming family and it took a matter of minutes for me to feel comfortable in my new home and claim Rachael’s room as my own (a little revenge for the three months she spent in mine).  In the first day I met David, Rachael’s older brother, and his Iranian wife as well as the neighbor in the apartment facing the kitchen who shares a great-grandmother with Rachael.  David took on most of the responsibility of driving me around, and took me to the Qutub Shai tombs and this enormous tree outside of Golconda Fort.  Though I have seen taller, I am fairly certain this is the largest tree I have ever encountered.  It came from Madagascar somehow, and its circumference is 25 meters!  I am a little unclear on how it got there, but there is also a seven by seven foot room inside the tree.  Yep, a tree with a room in it.  There is a gate around the tree but a nice guard allowed us to climb up and go inside the hollow space.  It was definitely one of the cooler natural things I have experienced in India.  I’ll try to upload a picture later, but my internet is pretty slow right now.

In between seeing parts of the city and eating I talked a lot with Jasper, Rachael’s dad.  He told me about the history of his family, talked about his kids and what they are doing, and explained some important life lessons to keep in mind.  We also watched the end of the Mumbai v. Bangalore cricket match which was the most exciting that I have ever seen.  I enjoy watching the occasional bit of cricket on TV but it does tend to get a little boring after a while so I generally take a peek every 20 minutes to check the progress.  Most matches have a clear winner about halfway through the second team’s batting time, but this one was anyone’s game.  It literally came down to the last ball and Mumbai lost by one run.  For perspective, that’s one run out of about 200.  Bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, and the fly ball gets caught at the fence.  It was really fun.

I enjoyed my stay so much I was a little sad to come back.  However, I have a lot of blogging to catch up on and friends to see and festivals in which to participate, not to mention other trips on which to go.  The time seems to be running out so quickly that I have to just slow it down sometimes and take a walk to simply collect my thoughts on where I am and where I want to be by the time I return.  A lot to think about.

A Goan Vacation

Back from Goa, and it was everything I was promised it would be.  As you may know, Goa is the state directly South of Maharashtra famous for its beaches and tourism.  It is the vacationing spot of India, and attracts more foreigners than anywhere else in the country, spare possibly the Taj Mahal.  While the majority of India was under the control of the British, Portugal claimed Goa as its chief port leading to a strong Christian presence in the state.  This Portuguese/Christian background along with the tourism-centered economy differentiates Goan culture from the rest of the country, and made for quite an interesting and enjoying week.

We stayed at a quality resort only a few minutes from the beach, and spent hours swimming and relaxing each day.  Though I have missed a good Minnesota winter, I took solace in the thought that I was enjoying weather nearly 100 degrees warmer than back home.  Oh, and we saw dolphins.  I do not think that anyone would deny that’s pretty cool.  On the cultural experience front, we took several short trips around the state to visit several of the tourist hot spots.  The coolest place we saw was the Basilica Bom Jesus (which to our Brazilian and Portuguese friends means “Good Jesus”).  This beautiful cathedral is best known for housing the body of Saint Francis Xavier.  His remains are extremely well-preserved (holy influence, according to the church) and are only put on display once a decade which, unfortunately for us, is set to occur next year.

Apart from beach-going and sight-seeing, I experienced one aspect of Goan culture vastly different from that of any other place I have visited in the past six months: nearly half of the people around me were white.  Now, I do my best not to notice race, but in India, Caucasian means foreign and it is always interesting to be around people who view India through a lens similar to mine.  Another interesting difference was the abundance of small, side-of-the-road businesses selling traditionally Indian goods to all the tourists.

After three days of enjoying beach paradise with great food (and my first time whipping out the Frisbee since Northfield!), we took the train to a Pune Rotarian’s beach-front property in Maharashtra where we stayed for two days.  Unfortunately, we missed our stop and had to take a three hour bus and an hour car ride to get back to the house.  The property was nice enough and we were all drifting off to sleep when our bed gained another occupant.  I felt the little nails climbing on my shoulder and neck and woke all the guys with a yell as I hit the rat back onto the floor and tried to suppress my disgust.  Needless to say, the four of us all braved it out and decided to pack into one bed for safety.  Our final day was notably better, and involved running around on the beach, tossing the disc, and exploring some small villages and a fish market.  I could not have asked for a better week.

As for Pune, the biggest news came in the hours before departing for Goa.  I walked out of my room in the morning and immediately given a six hour warning that I was moving back to my first host family.  Packing up all my belongings and putting the finishing touches on the last blog post filled essentially filled my day until I left for Goa.  Now I am back in my first house in the same room with the same bed and the same family, and I like the familiarity.  Also, I now live about one-third as far from everything as I used to and I can walk some places.  Life is pretty good.  Another update soon, have no fear.  

South Tour: The Final Saga

Here it is, the final adventures of South Tour.  I left you at the southernmost tip of India in Kanyakumari with cheap soccer jerseys, an obscene number of flag pics, and the sketchiest tattoo parlor on the planet.  From there we entered Kerala and took our first of many backwater rides for which the state is famous.  The surroundings were so perfect I could envision the plot of God of Small Things unraveling before me.  It was so calm, and the atmosphere was so natural I found myself also thinking about Heart of Darkness.  I loved how isolated we seemed to be from the rest of the world.  Eventually our boat came out of the backwaters and hit a sandbar separating the freshwater rivers of Kerala from the Arabian Sea.  Needless to say, we all abandoned decorum and ran into the waves, soaking all our clothes.  Luckily, this was only a small taste of our time in Kerala.

By the time we reached Kovalam it was dark, but that hardly stopped us from running into the sea again.  You can imagine our excitement when we realized our hotel was only a 30 second walk from the beach!  The next morning we all rose early in order to fully enjoy our day at the beach.  We discovered that not only was the city beautiful and calm, but full of foreigners and restaurants with international foods.  This was like exchange student paradise!  We swam in the Arabian sea all day, ate great food, and enjoyed some down time in a gorgeous place.  The one and a half days we spent in Kovalam were the most relaxing of the trip.

After we left our little utopia, we headed on another backwater boat ride before arriving at our final location: Cochin.  It was a nice little city, and we saw some pretty interesting things.  However, the main attraction of Cochin, our elephant ride, was canceled.  This was the biggest disappointment of our trip, because riding an elephant is one of the things we had all looked forward to most.  We have since had the opportunity to touch and take pictures with an elephant, but riding one is certainly on our India bucket list.  Our last night we saw a classic Kathakali dance, which was truly interesting.  Kathakali is an extremely old and intricate dance style that has its roots in Kerala.  It takes many years of attending a special school to be ready to perform.  The dance is a silent method of story-telling, and combines acting with actions similar to sign language.  The play follows a script, and each word has its unique step and hand movement.  The only sound is that of the accompanying drums and singer.  It is truly captivating, and is quite an elaborate production, something that I would highly recommend to anyone with an opportunity to see it.  

Complete map of cities we visited on South Tour (click to enlarge)

The next morning, we got on another AC sleeper coach train that would take us all the way back to Pune.  I’ve already talked about that experience, so I’ll save the details.  This train ride took an entire 24 hours, passing my flight from Minneapolis to Mumbai as the longest journey of my life.  One day later, we arrived back in Pune (at 5 in the morning).  It felt so strange to come back home after over two weeks of traveling and experiencing new parts of India, but it was also a welcome relief.  And so ends the epic tales of South India.  I’m all caught up on blogging, and it only took me two months to do it.  To save myself from repeating this mistake, I’m going to try to procrastinate a little less and blog religiously after trips, starting with Goa tomorrow!  I’ll do my best to have fun at the beach while you watch some football and good commercials in below freezing weather.  Bon voyage (again)!

Camels, Kites, and Chloride (NaCl)

Back again, and I hope your week was as good as mine!  I apologize for the title, it is really corny.  For those of you wondering where the salt comes in (NaCl), just hold on.  As you likely know, I recently returned from yet another Rotary trip (they never seem to end, and we’re just getting started!), this one to the state North of Maharashtra, Gujarat.  A bit of background: Gujarat is pretty traditional it seems, reflected by the nearly twice as many people adhering to a pure-veg diet as well as the state-wide prohibition of alcohol.  The people speak Gujarati, a language that looks like Hindi without the line at the top of the letters, and the state has quite a diversity of ecosystems including a large section of desert. 

On the night of the 10th we departed for Ahmedabad, the largest city of Gujarat, in our 16-person mini bus which became our home for the week.  It was rather cramped and we all got little sleep on our several overnight bus journeys.  With relief we arrived in Ahmedabad and were greeted by some Rotarians, our host families for two days.  The hospitality shown to us while in their care would blow your mind.  Not only were we given free stay, but they paid for all of the great food we ate and places we visited.  We experienced a traditional Gujarati meal, a temple, an ashram, a boat ride powered by an Indian guy with a long stick, and the opening of the kite festival which turned out to be a weird rock concert (including an…interesting interpretation of Bon Jovi’s “It’s My Life”).  It was generally very fun and we enjoyed our time in Ahmedabad.

Another overnight bus ride took us to Bhuj and our hotel for the next three days and two nights.  From this base we visited the Kutch desert festival, which was essentially a small touristy place in the middle of a very dry place.  There was a fair amount of information on the desert and people who have lived there, but this was not the most popular event among our group.  After this, however, we drove to the vast expanse of flat land that we simply called the “Salt Desert”.  The area immediately surrounding the parking area was some interesting kind of sand (presumably mixed with salt) which had the properties and consistency of a wet beach, but somehow accomplished this without the water.  As we began walking (skipping, running, and all other manners of frolicking), the ground became gradually covered by an increasing layer of salt until it appeared that we were in the middle of rural Minnesota after a snowfall.  Since I have been missing my Minnesota weather, it was fun to pretend.

The next day we experienced the true kite day festivities from the roof of a local Rotarian’s house.  My only basis for what to expect coming from The Kite Runner, I was surprised to find that the festival involves essentially the entire city flying kite after kite endlessly from the tops of buildings, stopping only to reel in a wire cut from a neighboring kite in order to tie it to the next kite on the pile.  From my rooftop I could see hundreds of kites filling the sky, and witnessed many humorous attempts by our group to send a kite up into the fray.  The rest of the trip found us riding camels on a beach (not quite a desert safari, but enjoyable nonetheless), running into the Arabian Sea (in the middle of “Winter” to the amazement of all the Indians near us), lifting floating lanterns into the sky, and watching fireworks.  It was a full and exciting two days, and though I did not get a satisfactory picture of the kites in the sky, a photo I took on our final morning gives a good sense of the extent of the festivities.  I genuinely enjoyed this trip for both experiencing an alternate side of Indian culture and for the pure fun we had.  Now that I have finished this post, I need to get working on the next to wrap up the tales of South India since I leave again in just over a week on another trip.  Tough life, huh?  

The Further Adventures of South India

The tales of South Tour beg telling, so here we go again!  When I left off, we had just experienced a water and light garden place near Mysore to finish out November 23^rd.  Wow, I am further behind than I realized.  On the 24^th we explored more of Mysore including a bird sanctuary which featured a boat ride near some lazy-yet-scary looking crocodiles (see Trent cowering in fear at right).  We also got our first taste of tall Indian towers and visited the famous Mysore Palace, both of which were quite impressive.  After sightseeing, we headed over to the Mysore bus station where we boarded our luxurious overnight traveling hotel.  It was bad.  This bus was pretty cramped and we shared it with many Indians who were not overly friendly.

After some futile attempts at a good night’s sleep, we arrived in Kodaikanal early the next morning.  The hotel looked a little shabby from the outside, but we were greeted with a hearty breakfast of French toast and Indian-style omelets before collapsing in our beds to make up for sleep.  The rooms were surprisingly large and nicely-furnished which was great.  We found, to our surprise, that Kodai (that’s what we experienced Indian travelers call it) was about 20 degrees cooler than Mysore so we all rushed to grab our jeans and long-sleeved shirts.  Kodaikanal was probably my favorite city on South tour simply because it felt most comfortable to me.  Here I am in India, population well over a billion, and I find myself in this quiet city in the mountains with beautiful surroundings and an abundance of foreigners.  I discovered that in some way it reminded me of Grand Marais, which only made me feel more at home there.  Our stay in Kodai was marked mainly by observing the great views and walking around the town meeting an array of interesting people like a German priest and some French guy with really long dreadlocks who told us the way to the pizza restaurant.

Unfortunately, Kodaikanal also marked the beginning of our group’s declining health and several people got pretty sick.  As we left our home in the hills, it only got worse and spread to more of the group.  Luckily, this illness would make you feel bad for approximately 24 hours before vanishing, and a day later you would feel fine.  Through Madurai and Kanyakumari, 16 of us got sick at some point which certainly put a damper on our enthusiasm. 

However, that did not stop us from seeing amazing sights like the towers in Madurai.  These huge buildings are really beyond words, and were utterly spectacular.  There are four major towers (North, South, East, and West) and a number of smaller ones, each detailing hundreds of gods.  They are one of the most famous buildings in India next to the Taj, and were definitely the most amazing things we saw.  Really magnificent.

After Madurai we headed to the Southern tip of India at Kanyakumari.  We took a ferry ride out to a nearby island where we mostly meandered aimlessly and took a bunch of flag photos.  Kanyakumari is where the Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea, and Bay of Bengal meet and I have never seen so much water.  It’s much cooler to think about than to see, because all you see is miles of water everywhere.  On shore there were a bunch of guys selling really cheap soccer jerseys.  The quality wasn’t that great, but they were only 100 rupees!  That’s like $1.83.  I really regret not getting a few, even if they weren’t that great.  The most interesting part of Kanyakumari was the street tattoo guy, as in sit down and for a few hundred rupees this guy will give you a tattoo.  One of the sketchiest things we saw on the trip.

Here ends part two of South trip.  To catch you up on Pune, things are going great.  On Saturday we had the Rotary district conference, where all of us Pune exchangers performed two traditional Indian dances for the Rotarians.  I do not yet have the video, but I’ll do my best to get a hold of it.  The rest of the conference was long and boring, but the food was great and dinner was accompanied by a bunch of dancing.  Now, as anyone who knows me is aware, I am not a good dancer.  Dancing really isn’t my thing.  I’d much rather be making the music.  However, Indian dancing is a whole different story.  It’s just a ton of people doing random moves and having a great time.  All of us went a little crazy and danced for a long time.  As we found out, the four D’s do not apply to Rotarians and some of them went a little overboard with the alcohol.  It was nothing bad, but they got a little too close and yelled a little too loud in my ear when welcoming me to various events hosted by their clubs.  It was actually pretty amusing.

 

After returning from the conference I got a call from my Hyderabad family the Dawsons (Rachael, their daughter, stayed with my family in Northfield for three months) telling me they would be in Pune for two days and inviting me to come to a wedding reception.  I was thrilled, and of course I wanted to join them.  I was picked up by Jasper Dawson and his friend Raju, the father of the bride.  As seems to be the case in India, I was welcomed wholeheartedly and the hospitality was nearing on excessive.  Because I knew the Dawsons, I was not only invited to the wedding reception but also offered a room in their apartment.  India!  The next day I said goodbye to the Dawsons after nearly 24 hours together, and I can’t wait to see them again.  Sometime between trips, I have been invited to come down to Hyderabad and stay with them for a week and I am eager to take them up on it. 

It is truly astounding how many connections Rotary continues to bring me and I am so grateful.  My exchange seems to keep getting better, and I am beginning to dread the inevitable time when I leave India (in addition to my excitement at being back in Northfield, of course).  I guess I will just have to come back!  Speaking of more travel, I leave tonight for a week-long trip to Gujarat, the state to the North of Maharashtra where Ted Meyer stayed in Surat two years ago.  We are going to see the kite festival featured in “The Kite Runner” as well as experience some intriguing desert festival.  I’m sure it will be fantastic, but I am anxious about all the blogging I have ahead of me.  I guess that’s the price of having so many experiences!  Until next time.

The Hindu Holiday Season

Happy New Year!  It has been quite an interesting two weeks since I last posted, and I thought I would take a break from South Trip to talk about the holiday season.  Long before setting foot in India that exchange students go through many ups and downs, especially during the holidays.  Of course I have experienced my fair share of the "emotional roller coaster", and expected Christmas in a non-Christian country to be a bummer.  However, I was determined to bring India some holiday cheer.  With some materials from my family, I decorated my own makeshift Christmas tree and set out some presents.  I also had my own Christmas service of sorts by listening to the St. Olaf Christmas festival from 2011.  The cherry on top was my Christmas skype-a-thon with my family back home.  I got to sit in on the Christmas dinner as well as the opening of the presents.  Technology!  All of the contact with home made it so I hardly missed a thing.  Plus, I got lefse, Christmas food of Minnesotan champions!  All in all, it was probably the best Christmas one can have in a country that doesn't celebrate it, and certainly one that I will remember forever.

New Years in India is traditionally celebrated amongst family, which is different from my traditional several parties in one night plan.  However, this turned out to be a terrific chance to meet all of my extended family on my dad's side.  The most fun were my cousins, of which there were six or seven.  They were outgoing and engaging, and helped me to have a great time.  We played games, danced, and talked a lot about my experience so far in India.  I also acted as Minnesota ambassador and salesperson, and got all of them interested in coming to visit at some point.  One difference in India is that many people I have met have declared they will come stay with me in Minnesota sometime in the future.  I doubt that it will happen for nearly all if any of them, but it says something about the great hospitality here.  The night was not at all what I expected for the end of 2012, but it was a lot of fun.  

Now, fireworks and resolutions are all good, but I was looking forward to New Years not only as a holiday, but as a rough half-way point to my exchange.  That's right, I'm HALF-WAY DONE.  It is so hard to believe, but my year in India has passed so much faster than I could have imagined.  I look back on what I could do here five months ago and am amazed at all that I have learned.  I have met so many amazing people who have taught me so much about their culture as well as my own.  This year truly is an extraordinary experience and I wouldn't give it up for anything.  Realizing that my time here will pass much quicker than I anticipated has renewed my excitement at being here, and pushed me to make some goals.  Essentially, they come to making the most of every day and enjoying the limited time I have to experience India.  Hopefully, you all have made some resolutions of your own and enjoyed your holiday season as much as I did.  Happy New Year, and may it come with as many surprises and opportunities as the last!