ephemera hunting

picture this.

2006-05-31T16:03:00.000-07:00

Pictures of china and the last 2 weeks of india are finally on the photo website. (see the link on the sidebar)
Thanks for sticking around to see them.
I'm preparing for the big lennard family trip to New Hampshire. I heard a rumor about sea kayaking, but i'm trying to not get too excited until i see the sea. Blayne and i went fossil collecting here in cincinnati the other day. Blayne had never been fossil hunting and i haven't been to french park creek in a very long time, despite the fact that approximately 1/4 of my child/teenhood was spent running through the surrounding woods. It was pretty great to realize that the numberous field trips to find fossils were not in vain. I was able to call up names of Brachyopods and Trilobytes and other ancient creatures i haven't talked about in years. Sitting on a rock looking up the creek produced a strong case of deja vu. I saw the tiny waterfalls made by flat tables of slate, the glacial silt and the jackpot loads of grey clay. I've made facemasks, warpaint, pots and animal figurines out of this clay. Finding a store of this clay is a bit like running into an old friend. The leaves on the trees around here are a pretty incredible green, this fresh new may green. A color entirely unreplicatable in pantone booklets or with a whole store of paints. It has too much depth. It's a green that doesn't seem to be just a green. I dont know how to describe it any better. If think i'm full of crap, head on over to French park, off section road in cincinnati. Walk down the creek aways and you'll have to agree.

I should be back in chicago on june 19th or 20th. I can't wait to see all of you folks up there.

overdue blog

2006-05-29T10:27:00.000-07:00

Some might say that i've been neglectful of my blog in recent weeks,
some could be right. i would probably use the phrase blatantly
ignoring, rather than neglectful, but what is a word choice between
friends. Let's just say that if this blog were a soon to be born baby,
it would be at least 3 weeks late. I am awake this memorial day
morning at about 11am in cincinnati. i just got word from lindsay that
Africa is big and amazing and that she is on her way home. Since i
have written last, my brother michael (the second to youngest) has
graduated from highschool. That was pretty big and amazing. We had a
party for him yesterday that started at 1pm and ended at midnight. His
friends have figured out the most important part of graduation party
attendance, arrive early when the food is still good. Luckily for them
i think we put out quite a spread. Strawberry Rhubarb pies and goat
cheese and aunt fran's fab. texas caviar. (beans as caviar. duh) i'll
admit that i have the stomach this morning of someone who spent 12
hours grazing on overly rich but amazing food. perhaps someday i'll
get used to this food in america thing. perhaps i should have changed
the title of this blog. i think in the end 2/3 of my entries have
spent at least a couple sentances on food. Perhaps it should have been
something erudite like "culinary adventures with katie" or maybe the
more accurate "sneaking into people's kitchens and eating a lot, with
katie." Nonetheless, thanks for sticking with me.
Coming home, it's kind of amazing to realize how many people have been
reading this. It seems like everyone i talk to has at least read
something of my blog, which is pretty incredible. This is primarily
thanks to mom and dad's outstanding campaign to let everyone they've
ever met know what i am doing and telling them to read my blog. It
seems to be working suprisingly well. as i've told, probably all of
you, having people read this makes coming home so much easier. it has
almost completely negated the "so, how was india" question, the
question that is well meaning but entirely impossible to answer
without about 10 kgs of hyperbole. If people ask THAT question, my
recent answer has been "great.' india was great. I dont know if i've
ever made such an understatement in my life.

I'm paging through the september 1993 national geographic about
Rabaris. It's making me nostalgaic. I do miss india. Apparently i seem
to be adjusting well to life in america. Life is certainly easier
here, but. but but.....At michael's party last night i got to pull out
my bits of embroidery and all sorts of fabric bits to show off to my
aunts. It was great to really look at everything again. Opening the
boxes of things we had sent home was a pretty great experience, I'm
looking forward to diving into the boxes that we had sent ahead to
blayne's house in chicago. India seems very close and yet very far
away all at the same time. Here in cincinnati i am mostly in a sort of
hibernation. I have a rediculous stack of books sitting next to the
futon in the basement where i am sleeping, they include chinese
cookbooks, fat indian novels, pulitzer prize winning nonfiction about
genocide and the cia, depressing books about africa, some dave eggers,
a lonely planet book of south america and the fantastic new sarah
vowell book about presidential assasinations. I keep drifting onto the
library website to order more books, but i have to remember that i am
not actually here forever and that these should keep me busy for some
time.
Next week the lennards go hiking in new hampshire and maine. Two new
states for me, a pretty exciting prospect, seeing as i only have a few
left. I'm also looking forward to some qualiity time with trees.
Unfortuately, Mount Washington has some of the worst weather in the
country. Dad sent me a cheerful email two days ago showing the 6
inches of snow waiting for us when we get there..ugh. i thought i
left all that in the Himalayas.
i still have photos of china to post. i promise i'll get around to
that this week.
if you get bored, check out victoria's blog. She just got to syria for
a summer of Arabic intensive. It's pretty fascinating to say the
least.
big love

in america

2006-05-13T14:02:00.000-07:00

it's true.
i'm in la.

over and out.

2006-05-11T20:02:00.000-07:00

lindsay and i have safely reached beijing. it's cold and raining outside which is not terribly inviting. It definately makes me a little excited about sunny southern california. I'll be there saturday morning, which is pretty comedic, considering that i am leaving china tomorow morning, which is also saturday morning. woohoo international date line!!! i have a short layover in Tokyo and then jessica will meet me in LA. i can't even tell how long my flights actually are because i will be crossing so many time zones.

I know i haven't posted in a while. The irony of the fact that we have been staying in an apartment with wireless internet, and we still have not posted on our blogs, is not lost on us. Nonetheless, we have been tremendously busy, doing important things like eating far far too much, watching movies in english(!) and getting down to the very serious buisness of relaxing. Since my last posting we have done the following:

-Stayed in a tiny, pretty traditional village

-Taken a drive to a "small village" "80" km away, that turned out to be a drive over unpaved roads to a pretty big town 160km away. Never trust the distances listed in the rough guide. We had just enough time to eat dinner and turn around.

-eaten endless plates of fried goat cheese

-walked through an amazing market where they sold huge live toads by the basket and eels by the bucket, all for eating

- bought a million chopsticks

-ate hot-pot 3 times, including bamboo and lots of baby sheep

-taken a 35 hour train to wuhan

- kate lindsay and i have all made almost 1 sock. a crazy lady on the train ripped out kate's knitting and made her start a scarf and then left a chinese girl to "watch" kate and make sure she was doing it right.

- been bowling, on my first game i bowled a 28. i think that takes serious skill. not 28 for the frame. 28 for the whole game

-listened to screachy chinese classical music under a bridge near the yangtzee.

-lindsay and i taught english, twice, to two of kate and duff's oral english classes- we taught them the "i love the mountains, i love the rolling hills song" they sang it excellently in a round. and then we discussed india.

-found 2000 rupees we had hidden in a tampon box for safe keeping

-stolen tremendous amounts of candy corn from kate and duff's easter candy stash

- had our hair washed in an all-boy teenasian beauty salon

- locked kate and duff out of their apartment

- freaked out aprox. 374.9 times

last night, kate and duff made us amazing spaghetti and meatballs and we drank wine from macau and ate great great food before running like mad to catch the train we almost missed. luckily we made it, all was well. i just have to get myself to the airport tomorow morning and we'll be fine.

lindsay has a bit more to do. she has a train and then a bus on monday to get to macau, then a lot of airplanes before she arrives in africa. unbelievable.

i'll be back in cincinnati in about a week. we'll both be back in chicago mid june.

i can't wait to see all of you.

i cant believe we are leaving asia. how rediculous.

big big love

katie

freezing in china.

2006-05-02T06:25:00.000-07:00

so we've been in mainland china for a couple of days now. Our last night in macau we had a rediculous/amazing portugese/chinese dinner. i had steak. it was almost too much to handle for a girl who has been in a country with sacred cows for a couple months.

From macau we took a very long, but really beautiful trainride to Yunan province. We cut through some amazing countryside, lots of rice paddy fields, dotted with tiny villages and farmers wearing wide brimmed straw hats working their fields. We also managed to see a lot of the overgrown skyscraper collectives that the chinese like to call cities. I don't think i appreciated macau nearly as much until i had spent time in a "real" chinese city. i think the cities in china are pretty much everything i hate about a city, with none of the benefits of beautiful old architecture or any sense of an "old" city. macau is ancient compared to the other cities we passed through.

luckily the countryside is beautiful, lacking a lot of the pollution haze that is omnipresent in the cities. As duff pointed out, in india, cities can spread into villages which continue on for ages, in china there is sprawl, but at some point the city just stops, and that is that. no nonsense.

This provides for a lot of really great views from the immaculate sleeper trains here. we saw mountains, gorges, rivers, fields, rock formations, and all sorts of lovely things. It was far better than flying ever could have been.

We are traveling in the northwest of Yunan. Our train went to a city called kunming, which is a pretty gorgeous city by chinese standards. For some reason, which we have been unable to determine, but is nonetheless the reason we are in Yunan, culture has been allowed to flourish here. There are buildings here that date before the cultural revolution which is unheard of. Kunming boasts a shiny new downtown with a bustling shopping district featuring high fashion shops and state of the art outdoors goods. (arcteryx jackets?) But, luckily enough for us, there is an older district featuring old houses and a wild market. I've never been in a pet market before. We all picked out puppies.

i have pictures of mine, dont worry.

This morning we landed in Lijang, a high profile tourist destination, due to the amazing collection of old buildings contained here. It is the ancestral home of the Naxi people, an ethnic group who's older members are still easily identifyable by their distinctive capes. It's pretty fantastic. Unfortunately, like most "cultural" sites in china, this one is highly government sanctioned. The chinese government has decided that this is a good site to develop, which is good for us, because if they had not decided this, we wouldnt be able to see it at all. What it does mean is that the few cultural sites are highly crowded and overdeveloped. There is a touch of Rajasthan in all of this, shop clerks dressed in bad sateen facsimilies of traditional dress. It makes my soul ache a little, but i guess i would rather see it to some degree than not at all.

Tomorow we go off into the wilds of the northwest, getting closer to the tibetan border. not too close i hope, because my clothes are not all that warm...i guess i can always wear my sleeping bag as a dress. our plan is to get on a bus and hop off when it looks good. it should be exciting to say the least.

--
Katie Lennard
somewhere on the subcontinent
http://whereiskatie.blogspot.com

namaste china

2006-04-28T02:24:00.000-07:00

after a very very long day of sitting all night in the bombay airport, flying through thunderstorms and running through customs in bangkok, we are safely in china. Kate and Duff's lovely faces were waiting at macau's tiny airport to greet us. Whie we have not yet been in china for 24 hours, and kate and duff assure us that macau isn't really like china anyway, seeing as they were a portugese colony up until 1999, but we have already noticed several important differences between india and china.

like the fact that it is raining outside. (curses for sending home my rain jacket)

like everything being written in cantonese, for example. There are incredible neon signs with huge cantonese letters everywhere. The streets in macau are winding and show definate portugese influence, yet little shrines with pots of inscense are lodged in the foundations of all the buidings. It's pretty fascinating.

People here are also dressed in western, dare i say "hip"styles. I feel a bit uncool in my traveler garb next to all these people with angular haircuts and snazzy glasses.

Another immediate difference is the scents. the streets smell incredible, the cuisine here is a blend of portugese and chinese food, so there is a riot of food scent very very different from the masalas that we are used to. It's pretty exciting to be in a completely new place, and really super great because kate and duff are such great tourguides. Their mandarin is apparently decent enough that we should be able to hop on and off buses when we see something cool, rather than being stuck in the main tourist areas like most western tourists in china.

Unfortunately, some things are not different, like the fact that kate, lindsay and i all were eaten alive by mosquitos last night, and my guts are still a little rumbly but that's probably just residual india.

itching and rumbling aside, i think that this will be a pretty interesting forray into central asia. And the food will be very very very good. (really what matters much more than that. ) Kate and duff said the magic words of "sweet potato noodles"and peanut sauce, and of course there is hot pot. But besides all that, they've promised to take us bowling. clearly we are in the right place.

love in cantonese.

: countdown

2006-04-25T22:14:00.000-07:00

We're back in bombay. There's about a dozen things we want/need to do before blayne leaves tomorow night(!) and lindsay and i leave on wednesday night (!!). Things like go to the post office and mail yet another package of things we've managed to aquire, buy something else for my good for nothing little brothers, eat lots of indian food, hang out with blayne, pack decently. you know, all that stuff you have to do before you leave a country that you've been living in, even in a transitory manner, for the last 8 months. Somehow, as you can probably guess, a lot of that stuff is really hard to do. We're finding it remarkably difficult to wrap our minds around the fact that we are indeed leaving india.

Everyone asked in kutch " you will return yes? 2008?"

i'll take the kutchis at their word that i will indeed return in 2008, but still we've already done all sorts of last things untill 2008. like last rickshaw ride until 2008 (they arent allowed in bombay city center) last divine gujarati curd or millet rotla (until 2008 of course). All the things that are really amazing about india, the stuff that makes us sigh with big grins on our faces. Like entire families on a scooter, or better yet, those families doing a u-turn in traffic just to drive back to say hello and wish us a good day.i'm going to feel a lot less popular when i get home. granted, there will be some really great things about being able to walk down the street in annonymity. But i'll miss people saying hello, and the amazing comradship that exists here. People on a bus or a train sitting together can appear to the random observer to be lifelong friends, even though they've just met. Perfect strangers iin neighboring cars can have extensive conversations at traffic lights. As a whole, people here are interested in other people, which is perhaps why india agrees with me so much.
i really can't believe that we're leaving, i cant believe that i'm not going straight home, i can't believe i'll be home so soon, or that blayne will be eating a burrito in chicago on thursday, or that lindsay and i will be in china on thurdsay. That's a little rediculous.
We picked up our passports, complete with shiny new chinese visas from the consulate today. Kate and duff, through some miracle of chinese red tape cutting, managed to get train tickets that seemed impossible, so we will be off to Yunan province to hang out with some ethnic minorities. yippie. i hear chinese trains are even nicer than indian trains and i am excited to sample the wares. i can't wait to be in america where i can ride my bike instead of a bus. my neck is still crooked from the sleeper bus we took last night.
okay i know i'm saying very little. probably because i am thinking too much.
big big love
k

general addendum. this blog didn't go through when i wrote it two days ago. so i'll just post it now. we put blayne on an airplane last night, lindsay and i left our ackpacks in storage at the airport. once we mail a couple of large(!) packages today we'll be footloose and fancy free until we go to the airport around midnight. we fly to delhi, then bangkok, then macau where we met kate. aii. my bank account balance just scared the crap out of me because the atm displayed the amount in dollars rather than in rupees. tomorow. whew.

the lennard family recieved 3 packages from all over india yesterday. one that i posted 5 months ago, one from 3 months ago and another from 2 weeks ago. the greiners recieved some bookpost that we sent two weeks ago and hopefully another package will be on their doorstep any minute. ahh the indian postal service. fitting that these things are arriving just as we are leaving.

just as we are leaving.

entirely unbelievable.

next you hear from me will be in china.

countdown

2006-04-24T04:10:00.000-07:00

Everyone asked in kutch " you will return yes? 2008?"

to bhuj and back

2006-04-21T03:23:00.000-07:00

and just when you thought we couldn't zig zag any more....

we just arrived back in ahmedabad (for the 4th time) after our third visit to bhuj.

slighly absurd? of course. worth it? absolutely.

within 10 minutes of the arrival of our overnight bus in bhuj, we ran into the rickshaw driver who had lindsay and i to his house for tea, the last time we were in bhuj. 10 minutes in a town and we had a dinner invitation. We ended up spending a considerable amount of our 4 days there with him, his amazing, very tall wife, and his 3 gorgeous daughters. Their hospitality was pretty fantastic.

we also got to spend some great time with my friend jillian who lives in bhuj (host of my christmas dinner) and some time in ahmedabad with my friend dhanya.

We had a lovely afternoon having lunch at Paba Rabari's and a short visit to some rabari villages, as well as the village where they make patola ikat (a type of weaving where they dye the pattern into the threads before they are woven using resist techniques. There is only one family in kutch who does this technique. perhaps because it is maddeningly exacting and completely insane). Our trip out with paba could have been longer but we were all so hot and tired that we decided a short trip out was okay. still, i think blayne has a decent sense of kutch, hot desert and rabid hospitality. One night, on our wa home from jillian's, a woman and her daughter invited us over for tea, at 11pm. ha. we didn't end up going, it was a bit tired, but we were happy to boast that in just 4 days we recieved invitations for tea at both 5 am and 11pm.

i'm trying to write this blog but the heat is melting the cohesive nature of my thoughts. it is very very hot. if you walk around in kutch with your mouth open, the saliva dries in about 1 minute. You end up feeling dehydrated even when your poor organs are swimming in water.

you'll just have to settle for some photos from kerala on the photo page.

lindsay and i will be in china in one week, blayne will be in chicago.

and time keeps flying.

cheater blog or how many kilos of narcotics fit in an elephant.

2006-04-14T23:52:00.000-07:00

so we're back in ahmedabad. it is apallingly hot.

i'm going to cheat and just tell you to read lindsay's last blog about katakali and a midsummer night's dream because they were both amazing and she did a great job of evoking that. the third section of her blog, however, does not apply to me.

i think we're going to kutch on monday. yes. again.

bombay was fun, i got sick, yes again. we did see a drug bust at the post office which was really exciting. in the bombay post office you can walk your package through customs and then they seal it and it doesnt get opened again. They also open the packages that were sent from other parts of india and go through them for customs before sending them home. we happened to be there at the end of their day (about 4 pm) and we saw that the trunk was broken off of a wooden elephant figurine. At first it looked like they had dropped it and were trying to figure out what to do next, but a couple minutes later they came into the room we were in, with a drill and most of the office staff and proceeded to drill into the elephant to look for the drugs they were pretty sure were there. They even let us pick the figurine up, and it was 16 kilos, exceptionally heavy. Only in india would a fairly large drug seizure take place with a couple of tourists standing around asking questions. They kept picking up handfulls of shavings from the drill for us to sniff. Eventually they did indeed find something, apparently they intercepted a similar elephant with 3 kilos of "narcotics" in it's belly a couple of months ago. In light you could see the join lines where the elephant had been sawed apart and puttyed back together. it was pretty thrilling. everyone in the office was having a ball, and so were we.

okay.

i'm going to go find a tailor.

Krishna's school of Dance and Charm.

2006-04-07T02:54:00.000-07:00

We are getting ready to leave Kerala, which is a little scary because it means getting ready to leave India. I've probably said before that i'm excited to go home but not excited to leave India. Those feelings both grow stronger every day. I've started having these moments where i'm in the middle of doing something, cooking curry or trying to sing an impossible scale, and for just one split second i think i'm in chicago. I see myself on my bike or walking down the street or on the train. Yesterday i was at the corner of ashland an elston which is prepostorous because that is one of the most borring corners in chicago, but i was there nonetheless. Maybe i'm starting to loose it. I'll blame it on the heat.

It's also time to start thinking about all the things that i've been putting off, like buying spices or a couple of presents. stuff that i said i would "do at the end" i have to do now, which is pretty bizzare. On sunday we take a two day train to Bombay where lindsay and i scramble to find chinese visas and blayne will probably buy more books. Then back to Gujarat. yes again. Perhaps it's silly to return, but i dont care. I can think of few places that i would rather be.

I've grown pretty fond of the south. I wasn't quite sold on it for a long time, i think because it's so modern in many ways. There are modern amenities everywhere which is nice, but....i know, it's quite exoticist of me, but it's hard to help. My favorite places here are remote and tribal. I spend a day in cochin paging through a book of photography about various tribal groups here. There is so much left to see. I can't believe my almost complete neglect of the east coast. As lindsay and i constantly say, the next trip is Nepal and Tibet and Dharamsala and the far north and probably Kutch. OR Orissa and the northeast states and...probably kutch. Who ever thought i'd be so drawn to the desert. Part of the amazing thing about being in the south is the overwhelming greeness. In every direction there are brilliant paddy fields criss crossed with tiny dirt roads. Huge bananna trees and coconut palms are everywhere, as are tall jackfruit trees with their enormous funny looking fruit. I went walking yesterday and saw the most beautiful tree, huge arching branches with dark glossy leaves and brilliant red-orange flowers. I saw so many plants with exotic multicolored leaves and delicate flowers. Everytime you step in a bus you are assaulted by the thick scent of the orange blossoms that women wear pinned into their long glossy hair. women here wear their hair very very long, and they often leave it loose, an idea i find difficult to imagine in such heat, but it is really lovely. It makes me a little conscious of my awkward length shortish blondish (yes, it's true) mop. i would love some long glossy locks right about now.

i compensated by buying myself a gorgeous sari. ;)

The spring in Kerala is full of festivals. The last thing i hear at night and the first thing i hear in the morning is the not so far off din of music coming through the tinny speakers of nearby temples. Passing these temples on the road could require the use of earplugs. The streets are constantly full with small processions of men carrying an idol, with a couple of drummers. Drums are everywhere. Lindsay and Blayne are always practicing their drums and scarcely an hour seems to go by when i don't hear far off drums somewhere. Being here is a full senses workout.

Two days ago, we went to a huge procession at a temple. we walked a couple of kilometers with a giant horse made of paper mache supported by at least 30 very drunk men, giant cones of fluttering tinsel placed in flowerpots and balanced on men's heads. Boys dressed as peacocks and deer, giant papermache heads (it was everything redmoon aspires to), a drum orchestra, a second drum orchestra, rows of women with flaming coconuts and several hundred people. It was amazing. Rediculously loud and a little crazy. They had a second procession at 4 am, but we skipped it. Instead, at night we went to see a classical dance performance at a different temple. It consisted of tiny girls wearing 2" of makeup, traditionally dressed to the nines, with slightly terrifying smiles on their faces. They looked like anamatronic dolls, except they were all off rythm with eachother and kept messing up. It was hilarious. absolutely perfect. The exception was the one boy, about 12 years old, who was amazingly graceful and pretty magnetic to watch, but no less funny looking. his makeup and twelve yearold pudgy belly doing indian classical dance were quite memorable. The final pose was something that looked like he was about to eat his toe. It was great. Tonight we travel to a temple two hours away for a late night Kathakali performance. I hope it's good.

did i ever mention that in sri lanka we saw a sign for a school of dressmaking and cake decorating?

Sa Ri Ga Ma Pa Da Ni Sa

2006-03-28T02:02:00.000-08:00

so i've been told that i haven't posted a blog in some time.

This could be due to the "staying in one place for some time" syndrome, a disease that i think some of my friends know quite well. The fact that art school is keeping all of us pretty busy doesn't help either. I'm currently taking classes in South Indian Cooking and Karnatic Singing. (Karnatic music is south indian classical music) I was taking wood carving up until yesterday, but I needed something that required me to do more work out of class. The woodcarving class was, nonetheless pretty great. I made a lotus using nothing but a block of wood and a bunch of chisels. It felt pretty rewarding to actually make something, especially since working slowly towards meticulous detail isn't exactly my forte.

(ha. you can all stop laughing. i know that on occasion i have all the subtlety and minute detailing ability of an atom bomb)

The singing is hard on a couple of levels. First of all, i don't think i've sat through two hours of singing instruction since i was about 17. My voice is more than a little out of shape. Secondly, the exercises are difficult. The scale that i am learning to sing is like a major scale, but with a couple notes that are bent. I can't describe it very well, but at this point i can't sing it very well either, so i guess it's okay. It definately gives me something to work on.

I'm also working on not eating everything put in front of me. The food here is pretty incredible, which puts my cooking class in an excellent position. My teacher is a lovely man who smiles a lot and cooks wearing a Lungi (sarong) hiked up to above knee length (like everyone else around here), no shirt and no shoes. It's funny to think of the extreme health regulations in the states when some of the best food i've ever had has been cooked in huts with dirt floors. Makes me wonder what all this sterilization is heading towards. I read today that tyson chicken plants can be totally mechanized because they've bred chickens that are exactly the same size. I find this tremendously creepy, i hope you do as well. Makes it sort of ironic that i don't eat much meat here, seeing as the meat here is probably a lot closer to meat than most of what we are provided in the states.

I've been thinking a lot about returning, as the date moves sooner. This may be funny to those of you in the know about my travel plans, seeing as my return to home date keeps sliding further back. Here is the re-cap, in brief, for those of you who may care. We have 2 more weeks of art school in Kerala, after this we'll swing up to Bombay and then spend our last two weeks in India (!) somewhere around Gujarat. (i know you're shocked) Blayne flies out of Bombay on the 26th of April, just in time to play banjo in his band's cd release show in Milwaukee on the 28th. If you want more info on that, see their website, in my links section. Lindsay and i have a 4am flight on the 27th from Bombay to Bangkok and then we fly to Macau to meet kate riker and duff. Once we meet them we spend 2 lovely weeks in China, in Yunan province with tribal ethnic minorities (yippie) and back in Wuhan where Kate and Duff live. Then lindsay is off to africa to meet her mom and i fly to america. My entrance point in america is under debate at the moment, but a visit to Jessica who is now working in LA is being discussed. Then to cincinnati. and you thought i was jet set before.

Whew.

i'm exhausted just thinking about it. i dont know if that even made any sense at all.

Logistics aside, as the stateside return looms, i'm getting excited, and more than a little terrified by the thought of having to pay $2 for a bus ride. The flurry of excitement towards the end of this trip means i get to focus on how excited i am to go other places, home included. I'm less excited by the prospect of leaving India. I really do love this country. The south has even won me over, probably thanks to the food here, although i think Gujarat and the Himalayas may still hold my heart. One of the wierdest parts about being down here is how modern everything is. The "village" we are living in is small, but all modern conveniences are quite nearby and all the houses are shockingly nice in a rather dull conventional marble sort of way. Where does a girl have to go to find a nice mud hut?

okay, i'm gonna go cook some curry.

oh and if you're looking for some good light reading "tell me no lies" by John Pilger is pretty fantastic. It's a collection of some of the most pivotal investigative journalism from the past 50 years. Everything from the first man in Hiroshima after the bomb to the mai lai massacre, aparthaeid, israel/palestine, iraq and more. It's pretty fascinating and inscendiary stuff, of course you know that's just why i like it.

Phototastic

2006-03-19T05:20:00.000-08:00

There are new pictures on the photopage.

Pictures of Jacqui and Blayne and Lindsay and me, in India and Sri Lanka. Pictures of Jungles and mountains and temples and elephants and beaches and coconuts orphanages and ever so much more.

there are new photos in the Gujarat album, as well as 2 whole new albums.

i know you can't wait.

we are back in India after 3 lovely weeks in Sri Lanka. Our visas are refreshed and our stomachs are full of baked goods. I don't know how Sri Lanka, tiny island that it is, manages to completely kick India's butt in the bakery department. Maybe it's because there are ovens in Sri Lanka. Why? i have no idea, but i felt quite secure in benefiting from the spoils. When i say baked goods, i'm talking about delicious lofty white bread (still nothing whole grain, alas) croissants, chocolate cake that actually tastes like chocolate and so much more. Even more interesting is the Sri Lankan obsession with ginger. Their ginger beer is amazing, and they make gingersnaps that burn your tounge in all the right ways. Bakeries aside, our time in Sri Lanka was great. Lindsay talked all about our mural painting experience at the orphanage, so i'll let you read her blog for that one. All i have to say on the subject is that it was a pretty amazing experience. It was immediately apparent upon entering this orphanage that it was full of happy children who considered themselves to be part of a family. Doing a bit of work to help them out was not even a question.

The rest of our stay in Katagarama made it feel even more like home. Blayne climbed a sacred mountain and could see miles down the coast. All three of us spent time on arts and crafts projects.

We went to evening Puja on Poya (full moon) night, at the Katagarama temple. It was fascinating to be able to wander between the HIndu, Buddhist and Muslim areas. The religions there really do get along. It makes you wonder why they have troubles everywhere else.

The next night we finally went to a wedding. Neelu is a Hindu guru of sorts. He lives in Katagarama and is building an ashram, a series of mud houses (gorgeous, two story mud houses!) and a small temple, where people are welcome to come and meditate and stay as long as they like. Liz came to stay forever. She's a british woman who has raised four children on her own and came to Katagarama for a little peace and contemplation. We went to visit them at the ashram, and two days later we were invited to their wedding. Apparently it was a spur of the moment thing, but no less lovely. We missed the ceremony itself, but ended up at the party, a riotous affair, since their liz and neelu's wedding date was decided upon the day before, because another couple from the community was getting married. We ate amazing spicy food, and danced to the band that consisted of local teenagers on electronic instruments, and a rotating list of guest singers. It took us a while to realize that we were rocking to Sri Lankan Kareokee. It's been ages since we've been to an actual party, it was delightful. We boogied with a huge abundance of small boys and got in trouble for hanging from trees with them. Liz and Neelu seemed blissfully happy and excited to talk about the outreach programs they are planning with the street children of Katagarama. It was a really special experience and I feel pretty lucky to have been there.

yesterday we went to the beach at Mirrisa. The beach has gorgeous teal water, white sands and some rediculously large waves. All three of us got completely slammed a couple of times. I don't think iv'e had so much saltwater to drink in ages. Perhaps we should have known when we saw the large collection of surfers in the morning. The busride from Katagarama to Mirissa was pretty fascinating. The road winds along the coast, just a few meters from the sea at some points. It is quite picturesque, but still covered with debris. Tent villages are still quite prevailant, and anything that is new and standing has a sign proclaiming who donated the money to build it. "this is donated by the italian peoples" On one hand it's interesting to see all the people who came together to help, but on the other hand it feels like an unnecessary pat on the back. I saw a fishing boat with a huge sign painted onto the side saying

"this boat was donated by the_____ family"

I would think that it could embitter the people of Sri Lanka to be constantly reminded of who they are beholden to. Or perhaps not. Perhaps people are just greatful for the help, any strings attatched. It is a bizzare experience to look at the beach on Mirissa and realize how many of the guest houses were completely destroyed, or to drive along the road and see debris where there was once a village. There are many people who are still displaced.

To answer your question, victoria, I heard a decent amount about the Tsunami while in Sri Lanka, but not once was the word "civil war" mentioned. Someone made a joke about "tigers" being in the jungle, refering to the Tamil Tigers revolutionary group, but that was it. The only reminder we had was the size of the machine guns in bunkers around the airport. I saw bigger guns today than i've ever seen in my life. But in the end, i had to remind myself that i was in a country that has suffered so much recently. The people of Sri Lanka were kind and hospitible. There was poverty, but nothing to even approach a day in India. It's a beautiful and entirely un-scary place to visit.

Tomorow we're going to an art school in Kerala. We'll spend the next three weeks studying a variety of things, including woodcarving and drumming and yoga and keralan martial arts. We're pretty excited.

If you want to check it out, go to- www.vijnanakalavedi.org

look at the pictures. tell us what you think of the adventures.

big fat tropical smooches to all of you

trunks and tsunamis

2006-03-14T00:56:00.000-08:00

I'm having a hard time collecting my thoughts about Sri Lanka. Perhaps it's because I haven't written a good blog in ages and i'm a bit out of practice, or maybe it's because my experiences here have been a bit understated. It's more of a series of small lovely events, rather than any one mindblowing experience. (Other than our day of leg torture on Adam's Peak, which i can still feel quite acutely.) Sri Lanka assaults the senses much less than India does. The tourists here tend to be older and european. There is much more of a "vacation" vibe, even after the tsunami. We haven't stayed in an area that was directly hit by the tsunami yet, but riding in a bus along the coast shows a pretty good map of devastation. Like in Kutch, people here are pretty forthcoming about their tsunami experiences ( i mean the Kutchis were forthcoming about the earthquake. a Tsunami in a salt desert would be interesting.) People are more than willing to tell you about where they were and what happened to them. I guess that's true in any disaster, even a disaster for which you weren't immediately present. If americans remember where they were when Kennedy was shot or on 9-11, people around here will certainly remember a wall of water swallowing most of the coastline. Trying to go to the beach here is interesting, seeing as all the guide books are out of date. The Rough guide and lonely planet both published new edditions of their Sri Lanka guide books in the fall of 2004, 3 months or so before the Tsunami. It's wierd to read about pristine beaches that have been pretty much washed away.

As far as beaches go, however, the closest we've come is skimming by them on a bus. We're staying in Kataragama right now, a pilgrimage town where the three major religions (Hindu, Muslim, Sri Lankan Buddhist) all work together.

We're staying in a guest house that feels like my apartment last year, or rather, what we wanted our apartment last year to really be. It's a co-operative homey sort of place with lots of arts and crafts and an excess of kung-fu movies. It's run by a Sri Lankan man and a guy from cincinnati of all places, and they've managed to create a really fantastic atmosphere. They provide lodging and meals for a donation, and an understanding that the guests will help out with the dishes once in a while. It feels like we're staying at someone's house, or my house even. It's slightly disconcerting, as far as homesickness goes, to be tricked into thinking you're at home. Yesterday i made bangles out of a coconut, ate bruschetta, and read a copy of vogue and i was positive i was in the west. It only got more confusing when we all got to take turns sitting in the hot bath they've built in the back. That's the best part about this place, they get an idea and they do it. So far these ideas involve a tree house that is terrifyingly high above the ground (there is a threat to chop down a tree to make a ladder), a stone "hot bath", heated by a series of pipes and a fire, and best of all, a village of mud houses on the back of the property. Mud houses have rapidly become my favorite sort of houses. They are beautiful, well insulated, and shockingly easy to build. i just have to work on figuring out the right mixture of cow dung and sticky mud and i'll be set. Yesterday we went to see a hindu guru who is building a series of mud houses (Kuti) on his property. One in particular is amazing, a two story mud house, the room on the second floor has the traditional woven palm roof, with a 2 foot gap between the bottom of the roof and the top of the wall. This provides the most incredible views of the jungle and the mountains all around. I was more than a bit jealous.

i'd like to pause to comment that i am eating an incredibly unripe guava.

This afternoon, we're going to an orphanage a couple of km down the road. Apparently it's a really nice place, but the rooms that the kids live in are rather bare. We're going to offer to do some painting in the kids' rooms, anything to brighten things up. A huge lesson learned this year has been the importance of colored walls, there is nothing quite so insanity inducing as a hotel room with white walls. Even a really terribly hotel room isn't nearly as impersonal if it has a bit of color on the walls.

Have i mentioned that i keep seeing lizards at least 3 ft long? Yesterday i spent some time oggling a giant tree squirrel. Sri lanka is famous for snakes, particularly poisonus ones. I keep being regaled withs stories of giant pythons in rice sacks and king cobras, but i've been lucky or unlucky enough to miss them altogether. i think i've seen far more wildlife here in sri lanka than in most of my time in india, one of the highlights here was a visit to the elephant orphanage at Pinewalla. We got to see 40 some elephants gamboling in a river. It was as close to seeing elephants in the wild as i've ever gotten. There were elephants of all sizes, including some enormous tuskers and a few really tiny babies. They are fantastically adorable, and look a bit like overgrown anteaters. It's funny to see how awkward they are with their tangle of trunk and legs.

We go back to india in 5 days. To which part of india i'm not quite sure. Tamil Nadu is a favorite state right now....

sri lankan love

2006-03-09T21:34:00.000-08:00

sri lanka is beautiful

internet is stupidly expensive.

we're staying for another week.

we climbed 16,000 stairs and walked 22km yesterday. it's amazing that we can still move.

Today we go south to Kathagarama, and then to a beach...yippiee.

big love all around.

rain!

2006-03-02T05:15:00.000-08:00

it rained yesterday.
That was enough to convince me that Sri Lanka is a pretty super place. After an extensive tap dance with Sri Lankan airlines, we ended up in Sri Lanka a day later than expected. It it gloriously beautiful here. Our flight took a rediculous 45 minutes. Hardly long enough for us to look at the guidebook and recognize that we would indeed be in another country very shortly. I guess we've been so busy traveling to parts of india that seem so drastically different from other bits of india that it seems a bit like traveling to different countries anyway. This time it just involved passport stamps. We were in noisy Columbo for about 2 hours, waiting for a train. Columbo felt like an Indian city, except for the clothes. Saris are few and far between, women wear blouses and skirts and look surprisingly western, Lindsay saw someone in a short jean skirt yesterday. After months of a lot of covering up, this feels pretty bizzare.
The train from Columbo to Kandy was gorgeous, we rode through brilliantly green fields and palm jungles complete with golden coconuts. The best part was seeing dense clouds loom onto the horrizon and feel rain, big fat wet drops, lfying in through my window. I don't think I've ever gone 5 months without rain, I guess i had gotten to me more than i realized. We passed pretty impressive mountains as we rode along, but they were shrouded in mist, and decidedly second to the absolute bliss of rain. Apparently the monsoon here ends in February, so we've managed to grab the tail end. The food here is pretty fabulous. I must admit to a slight preference for the food of northern india, as opposed to that of the south, I have to come to terms with my adoration of bread, and my exhaustion with rice. Even a month of South Indian food was begining to grate on my nerves, so a diet change has been dreamy. So far we've had super curries, amazing ginger beer and superior baked goods. That's pretty much enough to make me happy for a while.
As if decent chocolate cake and egg roti were not enough, we are staying in an incredible guest house. It's a monestary of Burmese monks who run a small guest house, probably to pay the bills. We're staying in a lovely old wing with high ceilings and incredible light. It is, by far, one of the nicest and most peaceful places we've stayed in our whole trip. There is even a rumor that we can cook, but i've not got my hopes up too high.
We downsized massively for this trip. All three of us brought only daypacks, our big backpacks are in storage at the Trivandrum railway station. Blayne bought a mandolin, so even his instrument has been downsized. It feels awfully nice to be so light. We're making crazy plans that involve perhaps going north again for Holi and heading back south to end our trip at an art school. Travel exhaustion has hit us, just a little bit, and we're all itching to DO something, to stay in one place and learn. i'm sure it will involve some rediculous zig zagging. maybe we'll go back to Bhuj. HA! (the ha was for those of you who think i'm joking....)
I'm going to go buy one of the big terracotta pots of buffalo milk curd (yogurt) that i saw in the grocery store today. (grocery stores!!) It was a simple mom and pop grocery store, but there was definately breakfast cereal and a freezer case. That was bizzare enough for me.

hiking with buddha

2006-02-22T08:46:00.000-08:00

happy birthday dear lindsay!
we started today with a tiffin full of froot loops and a vaguely off rendition of happy birthday on Blayne's sitar. Lindsay was bleary eyed but clearly much older and wiser than the rest of us. i think she even ate her fruit loops with more dignity than she would have the day before. A birthday can do that to a girl.

We spent most of the day with lindsay's favorite people. Tibetan Buddhists. Read that sentance and try to tell me that tibetan buddhists aren't your favorite people, even if you've never met one, they still ought to number in your top 5, and then once you meet them, favorite status is immediately obtained. I don't want to overgeneralize here, but honestly, I can't think of a group of people more lovely to be around. After the chinese "agression" in the '50s, the first waves of Tibetan refugees began to arrive into India. The state of Karnataka (rapidly rising in the ranks of my favorite states) was one of the first places to offer refuge. There are thousands of tibetan refugees in the hills of Kogadu (the region of Karnataka we happen to be in). Today we visited Namdroling Monestary, the home of 5000 some monks, in the midst of gorgeous rolling hills that look shockingly like tuscany. The monestary is in the midst of the "tibetan settlements" which are, by this point, well established towns with names like First Camp. The whole area is filled with flapping burgundy lengths of fabric that the monks wrap themselves in with a tremendous amount of pannache. I know no one who can casually throw a shawl over their shoulder like a tibetan monk. I ought to take lessons.

Namdroling is the site of one of an astonishingly beautiful temple, two beautiful temples in fact, complete with three golden buddha statues 60 feet tall. The temples are filled with gorgeous paintings depicting scenes that seem incongrously ferocious for peacelovers- demons with 3 heads and 10 arms ripping bodies to shreads. Apparently, part of truly understanding Buddhism is understanding the balance. It was interesting to experience a Buddhism that was purely Tibetan, not tempered by the Nepali influences of Sikkim, it should be interesting to contrast with Sri Lankan Buddhism when we go next week (!) The best part of the monestary experience was hearing the devotion of the monks. We sat on a grassy lawn and looked into the open door of a small building filled with seated monks. Their chants seem scattered at first, clearly they are moving through the motions as a group, but it is not the polished chant of gregorian monks, voices do not necessarily move in unison, volumes do not seem to be universally regulated. As you sit and try to find some pattern, you are startled by the sudden punctuation of an enormous drum, the crash of cymbals and the deep wail of a conch shell. The conch and an almost bagpipe like reed instrument particularly resonates through your body until you feel, even for just a moment, like the noise is a part of you. Then the chanting resumes. It's a pretty incredible experience. We sat for what must have been ages, waiting for the jarring addition of the instruments to crash over us like a wave. The monestary complex was filled with monks of all ages, buddhist nuns, tibetan hipsters, amazing old people who clearly walked over the Himalayas themselves, indian tourists and us. I felt in good company.

The past couple of days were spent in the woods. We got ourselves a guide and destroyed our feet launching ourselves up the highest mountains in Kogadu. These mountains, though large enough when they stare you in the face, were not the biggest mountains i've ever walked up, but pretty satisfying nonetheless. I think the tallest was 1700m, and plenty of work, as far as my calves were concerned. The top of these mountains gave us gorgeous views of the Western Ghats and an understanding of hiking in the heat. Jacqui was telling us about "peak bagging" the phenomenon of trying to summit as many mountains as possible. I will never be one of these folks, i like strolling far too much. Luckily, Lindsay likes to stroll too, Jacqui likes to wander solo and Blayne liked to walk with our guide and learn about plants and mountains. We spent a lot of time hiking through coffee, tea and cardomom plantations, the smells were pretty fantastic, though nothing like the familiar scents of tea and coffee. We ate fresh cardomom and black pepper and i think blayne even ate a coffee bean. Our guide was a farmer himself, so he had a pretty great knowledge of local flora. Walking through the woods again felt extrordinarily good. Maybe that's got something to do with the fresh air...

We also saw an 80 foot tall jain statue, but i'll let lindsay tell you all about that. All i'll say is that i got to pat the head of a giant statue dripping with holy water. That was pretty super.

Tomorow we spend in transit. We have to get to the Keralan backwaters before we rush to Thrivandum so Jacqui can get home and lindsay blayne and i can get to sri lanka...wooo. speed travel!! bahh! i miss you all like mad.

dont tell lindsay-we're going to go eat her surprise, birthday cheddar cheese (dont ask where i found it) and party like mad.

oh and happy birthday as well to miss alana greiner as well. we wanted to send you a tibetan monk of your very own but we thought he might get homesick. i guess you'll just have to come to tibet yourself, let me know when you're going. i actually happen to like tibetans quite a bit.

frustration boogie

2006-02-16T07:56:00.000-08:00

This week has been a bit rough. I've been sick, i've been loosing things and something has been just a little bit off. Spending our second and third day in Hampi the sickest i've been all trip was not what i wanted to do. Outside are boulders and ruins and gorgeousness, and i was just gross. Luckily, i'm on the mend, but in the meantime i know i've lost some tangible things and a couple of days- a comodity that is shrinking much more rapidly than i want or expect it to. Two days ago, instead of exploring Mysore, i was lying around reading about Scarlett O'Hara being mean to everyone, in a dark hotel room trying to make my stomach settle down. I'm not sure if that didn't do more harm than good, that Scarlett is a nasty piece of work.

We spent a wretched day in Bangalore trying to accomplish lots of things, actually accomplishing nothing and contributing to a building feeling of stress and exhaustion. Luckily, since then, things have been looking up. We've been in Mysore for three days now, and it's generally a pretty lovely place. Blayne got his sitar and Jacqui got her kurtas, so now we are all fully clothed and instrumented. Blayne also bought a drum made from the skin of an Iguana, which is both exotic and gorgeous sounding. The worst part is how rediculously good he sounds on two instruments that he has never played and bought only yesterday. gross.

Lindsay, Jacqui and I went to see the Mysore palace today, which is gorgeous. (Ora, you would love it) It's essentially indian art noveau, since the palace is only 100 years old. It has amazing carved doors and tiled walls and spectacular stained glass domed ceilings patterned with enormous peacocks.

Tomorow we are going to see an enormous Jain statue, where they are in the midst of celebrating a festival held once every 12 years. After that, we';re off to the mountains near Madikeri where we should be able to hike for a couple days and get some clean air into our lungs. Although Jacqui and Blayne have been adjusting quite well, I think Indian cities are stressing Jacqui out. rightfully so, the cities here are stressful places, so many cars and rickshaws and people. I think a little time in the mountains will do her good. What stinks about such a short visit is that by the time she gets fully adjusted, it's time to go. We realized last night that jacqui has only 12 more days, so we have to make them good.

What's funny, in the big picture of the week, is that all this wasted time has given me lots of opportunities to think about how much i really do love India, what an amazing place it is, how much it's taught me so far and all the things i will miss when i do leave. I've realized how quickly my departure is approaching and how much i want to do in that short amount of time. I've realized that the only way to solve this discrepancy of things to do and little time to do them is to resign myself to a lifetime of traveling in India. shucks.

big big love all around.

Hampi Birthday dear mom

2006-02-10T04:53:00.000-08:00

First of all i would like to send out the word for a chorus of happy birthday to my mama.

February 10th all around the world is being celebrated as mary lennard day.

send her some birthday greetings.

Hampi is incredible.

Boulder strewn hills with green valleys of palm trees and rice paddies. we all keep remarking on just how gorgeous it is. To top it all off, this gorgeous landscape is dotted with a plethora of thousand year old ruins. we all know how i feel about ruins by now, right? it's breathtaking.
We had to take a pretty dreadful bus to get here, 10 hours on a regular Indian Government bus, Blayne's poor knees didn't have a lot of breathing room. Hell, my knees kept hitting the seat in front of me and he's got a good 8 inches or so on me. We felt a little rattled around, and landed in Hampi in the middle of the night, providing a guest house with the lovely opportunity to totally hose us on a room. ugh.

nonetheless, after sleeping on a mud floor, and rattling around in a bus, a bed was pretty luxurious, no matter what the cost.

we woke up this morning, moved guest houses and began to take in the scenery.

Have i mentioned that it's amazing?

i'll be able to talk about it better when i've seen more of it. for now i just get stuck in shock of the rediculous beauty of it all. Karnataka is moving up rapidly in my list of favorite indian states. Not that sikkim or Gujarat have anything to worry about, but Karnataka is definately on the move.

oh, and for anyone who sent a letter or card or pictures with Blayne and Jacqui, worry not. Food was the only thing that was in the box that got lost and is now en-route to america. all the correspondance is safe, and highly appreciated in our hands. thank you. it means a lot.

oh and what's with this not commenting on the blogs thing? I just looked at lindsay's blog and no one had commented, which is funny because i know some of you are reading it. or maybe you're not. is anyone out there?? ------dramatic pause--------

make yourselves known.

it's so much more fun for us that way.

we've got two more lovely days here, then we are off to mysore to get contact lenses for jacqui, pants made for lindsay and a mandolin for blayne.

Simple life

2006-02-07T23:02:00.000-08:00

we're now in paradise.
i'm fairly convinced. i can't help but think that spence and blayne
are cheating a little bit. When lindsay and i showed up in Delhi i
remember being terrified to leave the hotel room, the streets were so
full of shouting people and cows and monkeys. Here, once you leave the
mud hut we're sleeping in, you can stumble, sleepy eyed onto the
beach, some 50m away.
Right now we're in Gokarna, on Kuddlee beach, 20 minutes of
surprisingly difficult walking away from the town of Gokarna. This
beach is wildly different than Palolem, or rather, it's what we
expected Palolem to be. There are still plenty of guest houses here,
but they are hidden in the dense canopy of Palm trees (how often do i
get to say that??) so the beach seems to be a white crescent of sand,
with a few people lounging on it. There are a lot of people here, by
abandoned beach standards, but never enough to make you feel like you
are surrounded, unlike just about everywhere else in india. The water
is still bathwater warm, and the bay is surrounded by gorgeous red and
black volcanic looking hills, dotted with brilliant green shrubbery.
I wish we had more time to spend. Accomodations are rustic, we are
definately sleeping on hard floor of mud huts with palm thatched
roofs. Roofs that happen to be filled with nesting birds, especially
in the early morning. Nonetheless, we're paying 80r a night, for all
four of us to sleep, by far the cheapest accomodations we've
encountered anywhere. . The long "veranda" in front of our hut, is
filled with other people's hamocks and looks out onto a green garden
where women in blouseless saris (!) turn the red earth.
picturesque doesn't even come close.

maybe lindsay, blayne and i will come back here after jacqui has to go home.

jacqui's bag was found, thanks to her rockstar best friend who works
for google and seems to be able to find anything. Apparently, not only
did trouble lie in the fact that the baggage office we kept calling
never answered their phone, but that the baggage claim tag numbers had
been switched and incorrectly written down after the switching. Both
airlines that handled the bag were denying any involvement. ugh.
Nonetheless, the bag has been found, but jacqui decided to have it
sent home to her parents house, as to not keep us waiting for it
anywhere. india with no stuff is pretty appropriate, and rather easy
seeing as she is about the same size as both me and lindsay (minus a
couple of vertical inches)

send kate riker some love, she picked up a wicked stomach bug our last
day in palolem and had to endure a couple of taxis, a train and now
she is onto a couple airplanes before she can get back to china. i can
think of nothing that sounds like more fun.

We're here for today and tomorow, and then we go to see the ruins in
Hampi. The village of Gokarna and the surrounding hills are
rediculously beautiful. It's like nothing i've ever seen, definately a
tropical jungle paradise. The village of Gokarna is filled with carved
wood buildings and temples and these huge wooden carts that will be
used in Shiva's birthday celebration on the 20th. This is a completely
different india than i have seen before, a phrase i know i have writen
so often, i'm starting to feel like a broken record. The most amazing
thing about being here, as opposed to Goa, is that it doesn't feel
like "vacation," goa was the first time on theis trip so far that it's
felt like were "on vacation" something that neither lindsay and i were
very comfortable with. This is much more honestly relaxed. Lots of
families with kids, lots of old hippies. Lindsay, blayne and i went
swimming last night under the brightest half moon i've ever seen. It's
pretty incredible to see the whole sky all the time.

jacqui and blayne are out looking at temples. suckers. lindsay and i
are pretty templed out and we're going to go for a swim. They've
adjusted rediculously well. They are both sporting short fisherman
pants and scarves and look like they've been in India as long as we
have. ugh. clearly we've made things too easy....

new pictures

2006-02-05T02:53:00.000-08:00

oh, i forgot to say that there are new pictures on the website.

a little sunburn never hurt anybody...

2006-02-05T02:49:00.000-08:00

my beach party has come to fruition...yippie!!!

it's pretty amazing to have all these people i like in one spot. Jacqui and Blayne made it to meet us, safe and sound. The only wrinkle is that jacqui's backpack and the box containing cheese, cookies and burritos, were lost in transit!!! (sound familiar?) we're in the process of getting jacqui's bag, slowly but surely. Luckily the airline promised to mail it anywhere we went, so we hightailed it out of Bombay and met up with kate riker in goa. She's doing fan-tastic. Her boyfriend duff is pretty super too. They got us some bamboo huts on palolem beach and we've spent the last two days lounging and swiming in an ocean with sparkling blue bathwater temp. water. it's the opposite of india. but amazing, to be sure.

we even found a restraunt that served up incredible burritos and guacamole, which helps quite a bit.

Palolem is a pretty incredible beach, light sand that curves for ages, and more palmtrees than i've ever seen. There are also a lot more people here than we were expecting, the perils of paradise i guess, so i think tomorow we're off to find a more secluded locale. nonetheless, it's pretty amazing here.

lindsay and i are adjusting to having friends beyond eachother, while Jacqui and blayne are adjusting to being 11 1/2 hours time difference around the world. it's interesting for everybody. ;)

oh and my shoulders are pink.

but blayne's are pinker.

my trip to india, phase..um... 5?

2006-02-02T01:18:00.000-08:00

So we are yet again about to start another completely different phase of this crazy adventure.

Jacqui and Blayne arrive at the Mumbai airport at 11:55pm this evening. upon arrival, they get to eat some indian food and stay up all night in preparation for our 6am train to goa.

we're so nice to our friends.

Their arrival will mark the first time we've traveled as a group of more than 3, the first time we've traveled south, and the first time we've traveled with anyone under 5'5", or over 6'1" for that matter.

For those who are unaware, jacqui is a tad short and blayne is a bit tall, the image of the two of them bounding through the customs checkpoint is pretty hilarious.

and we're moving south, which is exciting and totally bizzare, a completely new region of the country! it's not like we haven't explored new parts of india before, but we are definately breaking new ground.

and i have the sneaking suspicion that it's going to be terribly hot.

bombay is already hot, by our opinion and it's february...crap.

bombay is shockingly familiar. we went into an airconditioned bank today that was playing opera, i even had a fat newspaper stuffed under my arm. It was just like being at home, except that the guy at the inquiry desk was wearing a turban...I like this city a lot, it's really western in a lot of ways, but is still strongly rooted in India. Since we are staying on the peninsula of South Bombay, there is the ocean on both sides, which pretty gorgeous. My friend Dhanya (the filmaker who i met in Kutch) goes sailing from a jetty that is less than 1km from our hostel. Her friend Shahid took us out for a sail yesterday morning, just a little jaunt around the bay before work (!) it was pretty amazing, decidedly an excellent first sailboat experience. Lindsay was in charge of one of the sails and i got to steer. I only steered us into 3 holes and one buoy, practically a pro ;)

Being here has been like a little oasis of familiarity, which in some ways seems totally bizzare and unfamiliar. We went into a bookstore the other day and the smell of new books made me more homesick than i've been in a long time. It's funny to see what really reminds me of home. Bombay is great, but in a lot of ways, i'm itching for the india that i've met so far. I smelled something like cow manure today and i got a little nostalgaic (there are no cows in mumbai, okay we've seen one) that's a little rediculous as far as i am concerned. What's even funnier is that the india we are about to head towards is completely unknown and nothing like anything we've experienced so far. I guess i'm getting pretty good at moving on to something completely different.

I don't think i've really absorbed that spence and blayne are on their way to india. literally, their plane should be in the air by now...yippiee!!

now to enjoy our last couple hours in bombay.

.Shh...don't tell lindsay but she's getting sushi for lunch.

Salaam Bombay.

2006-01-30T04:22:00.000-08:00

Bombay is completely bizzare.

Arriving by bus, in the wee hours of the morning, we encountered the entireity of the enormous sprawl that is Bombay. I don't know how I managed to forget that this is one of the most densely populated cities in the world. The slums lining the railroad tracks are incredible, houses that seem to be made of strings and dreams, tarp roofs flapping, filled with layers of people.

The area in which we are staying, Colaba, is completely the opposite. Wide streets lined with shops that have glass display windows(!) and trees. Trees! i haven't really seen trees in ages. It's nice to get out of the desert. Colaba feels more like New York or London. The people who populate this area are either superwealthy indians, driving mercedes and speaking english, or tourists like me. We've seen a lot of tourists whose clothes have not spent the last four months scrunched up in a bag. Tourists who seem to be wearing makeup and hair products.

Lindsay and i are experiencing a little bit of culture shock.

there is a dominos pizza across the street and there aren't cows, monkeys or rickshaws. I don't believe That this is india at all. Luckily a trip to the post office this morning reminded me that we are indeed in this sweet, insanely beurocratic country that i love.
That's all for now, read about Ahmedabad and Gujarat in the last entry. I do miss gujarat.

ahmedabadness!

2006-01-28T22:22:00.000-08:00

Okay, so i'm really excited about a lot of things in the next week, namely the arrival of a burrito with my name on it, oh and jacqui and blayne strolling through customs to meet us. That's going to be pretty amazing. we have big plans to immediately whisk them away, i could tell you all about it here, but that could ruin the surprise.

Unfortunately, prior to the excitement of seeing them we have a couple of things to accomplish. like bombay. in 4 days.

if i've learned anything in the last 4 1/2 (!) months, its that i hate going somewhere for a couple of days, especially if that somewhere is one of the biggest cities in the world. The first 2 days anywhere are almost always dreadful, lots of disorientation and travel exhaustion. The next two days are always better. The two days after that are usually brilliant. Clearly, after a total of five weeks in Kutch, every day was like a little slice of heaven.... okay i exadurate a bit, but still, i refuse to underestimate the sublimity of knowing where to go to get a good bowl of curd. Speed travel is definately not my cup of tea.

Take this month for example. Lindsay and i were supposed to go to 6 cities, and an entire new state, after doing dwarka, diu and kutch. Instead, we stayed in kutch for 4 extra days and have returned to Ahmedabad before shlepping to Bombay. It's not that i don't want to go to the places we've skipped, but i dont want to see them for one day. If the travel time exceeds the time spent in a place, i probably don't want to go.

and people say i'm not very good at math....

The worst part about all of this is that we are leaving Gujarat.

This state definately holds my heart, even Ahmedadabad, which is overcrowded and horribly polluted, is a thousand times better than any of the other big cities we've visited, I think you know, by now, my feelings about the grand region of Kutch, and the lower peninsula of Saurasthra was pretty fab too.

Our last days in Kutch were pretty amazing. We spent a day and a night in Anjar, with the neighborhood that i had met last time (re- "miss do you want to see a cow).After spending time with paba, we were wandering the maze of streets in Anjar, trying to find the house of the people i knew. A kid rolled up on a bike, "katie?" "yes" "you are looking for Kishor's house" and he proceeded to take us there. Everywhere we walked, little kids would be saying my name, and as soon as they learned lindsay's name, they were saying it constantly as well. It was hilarious and sureal. They stuffed us with incredible food, showed us a cow about to give birth, took us on scooters, dressed us in saris, fought over who's house we would stay at and tricked us into eating breakfast, twice. It was amazing and incredibly exhausting. When it was all over, i had to take a deep breath and remind myself that i was so tired from overwhelming hospitality.

The day before we left Bhuj, we walked down the street from the railway station, it's a huge dustbowl, lined with tents and "temporary housing" from the earthquake 5 years ago. We wandered into a muslim graveyard, inside of which was located a pretty incredible mausoleum. A typical crowd of children swarmed around and then an older man came up and let us into the mausoleum. I can't quite describe the singular joy of walking barefoot on bat guano, i'll just let you try it yourself some time. The best part was lindsay getting a bat stuck on the front of her dupatta.The look on her face was outstanding.

i have so much more to tell, but i've got to keep a little something for myself, right?

tonight is the sleeper bus to bombay, haha. that still sounds totally surreal. sometimes i can't believe i'm actually in india.

don't worry, most of the time, it's pretty hard to forget.

i love kutch

2006-01-23T08:10:00.000-08:00

i don't know if this has managed to come across in the past 2 months or so, but i love Kutch. It's one of the most amazing places i've ever been. Luckily for me, circumstances keep making it possible for me to stay here even longer.

We spent the weekend with Paba Rabari, the guide who we ran into at the Ahmedabad train station. On saturday he took us to a boarding school for Rabari kids with nomadic families. This school provides them with an education that would be difficult to get while chasing after a camel. The school recieves some government funding, but is mostly funded through donations and a rabari foundation. There happened to be a big event the morning that we were there, and Paba encouraged us to take photographs. We got to see a hundred some men in traditional Rabari dress (my favorite) as well as see a couple of Hindu saints, the president of Kutch, the head of Rabaris and the gorgeous vocal performances of a couple of kids. I'm not going to pretend that i was totally transfixed by 4 hours of speeches in Gujarati, but the surroundings certainly were interesting.

In the afternoon we went to see the school where Paba actually teaches. It's a government school, which seems to be synonomous in India with an utter lack of education. The students at this school are mostly the children of the dockworkers at the Kandla Port (i think it's the biggest port in India). We met a group of teachers who seem to be really nice people but terrible educators. A lot of the problems lindsay encountered in Tekra, like the teachers not bothering to teach, seem to be pretty aparrent here. The kids attend school for a mere 3 hours a day, in which little seems to happen. We sat in on one class where the teacher, after arriving late, wrote some addition problems on the board and then went into the hallway to chat. A little later he came back into the room to check the answers for a couple of students and the rest self regulated. Most of the kids spent the afternoon running in and out of the room. one girl just kept writing the number 9 over and over again in her notebook. Nobody cares. It's pretty sad and discouraging. Remember that these are the kids that are actually getting to go to school.

On sunday, paba and a rabari friend of his, Sanabhi, drove us around, to meet their friends and relatives. This was technically a trip with Paba as our guide, but really it felt like hanging out. Overall this was a pretty incredible experience. We got amazing photographs (exactly what was missing from my last Kutch experience) and were able to spend time with some of the most amazing people. Everyone we met was hospitable, interesting and shockingly funny, considering the language barriers. It was one of the nicest days i've had in India, mostly because it was spent entirely around neat people. The Rabari culture is fascinating to say the least.

At one point, we were driving (or rather Paba was trying his hardest to make us greatful for being alive this long, at least thats what his driving felt like) down a country road and Paba swerved to the side of the road.

"do you want to meet some people with sheeps and goats?"

"okay"

so into a field we tromped, not realizing until we arrived that what paba meant by "people with sheeps and goats" was actually nomadic rabaris who travel with their herds. We found ourselves in a couple small encampments of rabari families, each with a camel and a large wooden bed/tent, upon which all their posessions were piled. Every morning the man takes the herd, and the women load up the camels and follow. They walk up to 15 km a day, with small children and baby livestock on the camel with all the posessions. The women walk ahead and lead the camel. Apparently we were incredibly lucky to stumble upon these Rabaris in the field. We were even more lucky when we found, en route to the car, a group of such women still on the move. Seeing both parts of nomadic life was pretty breathtaking.

Also incredible was seeing the parts of Kutch that were severely damaged by the earthquake. Instead of the more traditional Rabari villages i saw the first time i was here, we saw villages that contained both the old, destroyed buildings and the new houses that people live in post earthquake. In Anjar, where Paba lives, 400 children and 25 teachers were killed in the market, because they were having a procession and celebration the morning of the earthquake. We saw many people still living in tents, waiting for government assistance. This is 5 years after the earthquake. Insurance is not something that is known here.

Paba even took us to meet his father and mother, two pretty incredible people. Descriptions will not do them justice, luckily the pictures are coming...

I drank tea with the old man who runs the junk shop today. In 20 minutes he managed to give me 6 Kutchi coins, some of which are 200 years old and a rhinestoned frame with a little picture of Sai Baba....amazing. The generosity of people here is tremendous.

Lindsay has been going crazy at the used sari market. Ask her about her face...

ooh. i forgot to say. We're staying in Kutch until friday (we were supposed to take a train out tomorow) because Paba invited us to a celebration for a new temple, tomorow night. He said there will be people from lots of tribes, all dressed in their best, and gujarati stick dancing....yippiee!! i'm getting good at getting myself invited to things here. the guy who runs the internet cafe invited me to his brother's wedding tomorow, but its a couple hundred kilometers away, and i have a prior engagement. have i mentioned that i love kutch?

back to bhuj

2006-01-19T04:18:00.000-08:00

and so i return.
It's funny to return to the only place i have spent an decent amount of time in the last four months.
I've become accustomed to being anonymous- yet another funny looking tourist, but upon my return to Bhuj, i'm discovering that the time i spent here was not as unnoticed as i expected. My favorite people of Bhuj, my omlette guys, the people at my hotel, at the internet cafe, at the phonebooths and the junk stand and the used sari shops, so many kind folks have welcomed me back. Some asked where i have been for the last couple of weeks, others have invited me for tea or given me sweets or told me how nice it is to have me here again.. I guess i never really considered that i had made anywhere near the impression that these people have made on me. People here are kind, especially in Gujarat, but to be actually remembered is such a treat. I would never expect that having a man who runs a phonebooth recognize me to be such a treat, but it's been really wonderful.
I haven't been gone so long, i guess, but this is the closest to a familiar place i've been to in the last 4 months. Our circuitous travel plans keep us returning to places we've already visited, but my familiarityand affection with and for those places has nothing on Kutch.
We ran into the Rabari guide who helped me out at Than monestary in the Ahmedabad train station. On the way to the train station, his name came up, and we decided to call him and talk him into giving us a tour of villages on the cheap. 15 minutes later, I almost ran smack into him. He even remembered my name.
needless to say, the return has been serendipitous.
Today we saw two women setting up some poles with a rope strung across the top. Next thing i knew, the women were pounding on drums, one with a baby slung over her shoulder, and two tiny kids rushed out. They were probably 5 and 7, a boy and girl. The boy was wearing this little amazing cape with feathers all over it. They proceeded to do a little hip shaking dance, a coreographed stretching and then acrobatics. It was great. guerilla street circus. The higlight was the 7 yearold girl tightrope walkinging. It was by far the most creative exploitation of children that we've seen all trip. The kids even seemed to be actually having fun.

Gujarat is quite hot

2006-01-15T01:07:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since i was watching sea turtles pop out of the ocean.

From Dwarka we spent a day on a couple different unreliable buses which eventually tossed us on Diu. Diu is an island on the southern end of Gujarat. It was a former portugese territory, like goa, and it feels more like a visit to the florida keys (according to lindsay, the florida expert) than anywhere we've traveled in india.

We ate fish, drank beer and went swimming on deserted beaches. it was, essentially, the antithesis of our entire trip so far. It also managed to make us very very excited about south india. Diu is a big vacation spot for Gujaratis who come there to do pretty much what we came there to do. Gujarat is a dry state, so apparently the island is packed on the weekends with drunk middle aged men. mmm. we, having heard this ahead of time, planned our trip accordingly. Amazing how empty the beaches are on a tuesday in January. The weather was amazing, the air was perfect, a couple degrees cool for swimming, but that didnt stop us. One of the neatest things was seeing how the low tide revealed a coastline of honeycombed rock, covered by a brilliant green algae, filled with tide pools of various shapes and sizes. Families would set up a net across a shallow tidepool at low tide and collect all sorts of tiny fish. We spent some time with one such family, attempting to communicate, while lindsay held fish of all sorts.

Diu was relaxing and lovely. oh and i forgot the best part. The last day we rented motorbikes and rode all over the island, finding our deserted beach where we could swim without an audience, seeing tiny towns and cliffs into the sea. It was a perfect place to learn to ride a motor bike (other than my excellent introduction around the block in chicago, thank you kyle) because the roads were essentially empty and in pretty decent condition. i might be hooked. it was a pretty genius method of getting around.

After Diu we returned to Ahmedabad. Have i mentioned that i am in love with Gujarat? other than sikkim i think it's my favorite state so far. the people, the geography and the environment are all incredibly nice and fascinating. what more do i need? We came here for the Kite festival, a holiday devoted soely to the flying of kites. What a genius idea. Yesterday, all the shops were closed, the streets were empty but the sky was full of kites. We went down to one of the bridges over the river to see the clouds of multicolored dots littering the skies. The best kite flying was happening in the slums along the river. Perhaps because the population is so densely packed there, or just because people there know how to have a good time. There were people fighing their kites against other kites. kids and older folks running around with long poles, getting kites unstuck and capturing kites for their own. There were small children with kites bigger than they were, kites floating in the river, trees full of kites. Well dressed families whizzing across town on motorbikes, to attend kite festivities at a relative's, would stop on the bridge and stare at the sea of kites, just as we did. Even today, all over town you see unlikely folks with their fingers taped, as a protection against the tear of the kite string. The whole town has gone kite mad. Even at the temples we visited today, at the Swami Narayan temple, the idol of Ganesh was surrounded by tiny multicolored kites. Hanuman, the monkey god, seemed to have a tiny Kite army in his chamber. Kites are everywhere. Michelle you would adore it.

The night we arrived, we attended an event along the riverfront. A cultural celebration as part of the kite festival, celebrating the beauty and greatness of Gujarat. As we entered the pavillion, we were somehow whisked up to the very front. We sat in the foreign "kite fliers" section. Apparently someone thought we were more important than we are. Or perhaps we are just more important than we realize... right? Somehow we ended up with VIP seats for a cultural celebration of Gujarat. It was very similar to my experience of watching movies in Hindi: the music and dancing are amazing, the visual spectacle is fascinating, the serious parts that involve a lot of talking are borring and the whole thing is slightly too long. Sometimes i forget that i am in a culture who makes movies so long that every movie has an intermission. even comedies clock in around 3 hours. The 4 hour long pagent about the history of Gujarat was, in the end, really neat. It was fun trying to follow what was going on. The spectacle was amazing, the opening was a prayer/ dance with incredible live music and 20 some dancers with tiers of candles on their heads in gorgeous metallic silk brocades...mmmhm.

This morning we took an architectural walk. The city is built on a series of 2000 "pols" or closed neighborhoods. Each contained their own square, water supply,temple or mosque, birdfeeder, gate and guard. The houses are stunning. Carved wooden facades that seem to be peeling off the front of a building still in use. The craftsmanship is evident. Ahmedabad is a pretty fascinating city. It has many modern trappings, but a vibrant old city, including the street where we wandered through to find butchers selling goat heads. mmm. we ventured down that street again, braving heads and intestines of all sorts, just to find the Halwa shop. Victoria, are you eating good Halwa in Israel? Its a sweet that is indescribable but quite good. Incidentally, vic, there is some pretty amazing muslim architecture here in ahmedabad, we went to the Jama majid, the main mosque, today, it has beautiful collonades with huge arabic calligraphy painted on the walls. Kids were running through the courtyard of the Mosque flying Kites, it felt a bit like a movie.

oh and the weather here is warm. i said hot in the title for the sake of the rhyme, but by midafternoon in Ahmedabad i've definately worked up a sweat. It's january! i find this unnatural. it's making me slightly nervous about late spring in the south....

Tomorow we are going (back!) to Kutch. I'm a bit excited, i must admit. after that we've got about a week(!) and then we rush to bombay to meet jacqui and blayne...then to the beach to see kate and duff and relax. Hurahh!!!!

old as the sea

2006-01-07T06:15:00.000-08:00

we just saw the sun set over the arabian sea.
there were strange heads popping out of the water, looking like hindu
sea monster gods. we finally realized they were sea turtles. Real live
sea turtles. i've never seen a sea turtle in life.
i like dwarka.

how do you say "i don't love rajasthan," in gujarati?

2006-01-06T06:03:00.000-08:00

this week has been totally bizzare.

we've been, prepare yourselves here, hanging out with people.

wierd, i know.

The last couple days in Jaipur were spent hanging out with lindsay's friends from TLFI, all of whom i enjoy immensely. I have now spent a total of 9 or so days in Jaipur, and i have managed to see almost none of the "important sites" i hear there is a city palace.. ehh. this was way more fun. We went to see our first movie with a group of Hindi speakers, which improved our comprehension drastically. They took us for food and endless lassis (yoghurt drinks) and a great deal of general merriment.

I think the best part was when a group of about 8 people hopped into rickshaws and took us to the train station. We had our very first proper train station goodbye, with us waving from the door as the train starts to move and people running down the platform along the train to say goodbye. That felt pretty amazing.

Udaipur was nice.

It's still in Rajasthan, which, in my book at least, puts it a bit lower than a lot of other places. The scenery is certainly fantastic. The lakes, for which Udaipur is famous, are surrounded by beautiful tiny winding streets and old buildings. We all know how much i hate old buildings.

The whole area is surrounded by incredible hills. We took a trip up to the monsoon palace which is high on a hill, a couple of kilometers away from and above udaipur. We arranged to be there at sunset, and were blessed with the red sun sinking past little mountains and luscious green farm filled valleys. It was quite spectacular. Unfortunately, throughout the entire time i've been in rajasthan, or gujarat for that matter, there has been a foggy hazy mist. probably a combination of pollution, dust and weather conditions. The view would have been even lovelier if the air was clear...but.. i'm not complaining. The coolest thing about the monsoon palace is that it is built for water retention. All the levels of roofs and gutters lead to pipes which lead to giant tanks in the foundation. It was possible, with a decent monsoon, to capture all the water used for the palace in one year. This was developed in the 17th century. Clearly we ought to be looking to the past for some ingenuiously simple solutions. Lindsay did say that the best water she tasted in the desert was rain water.

Our trip to the monsoon palace was initiated by running into some nice aussies who i had met in jaipur, before going to bharatpur. We ran into them in the street, and had a lovely trip to the palace with them. Even stranger was yesterday's run in with a guy we had met in Gangotri, some 3 months ago. In the time that we've been in sikkim and rajasthan and kutch and all over, he's been in nepal and sikkim. There is no logical explanation as to how we all managed to converge in the same restaurant on the roof of a hotel in a city in Rajasthan. It makes no sense. But, we threw away any attempts to make sense of each of our zig zag paths to that point, and just hung out. It was really great. The other guy he is traveling with is a theatre director in israel, so we talked about theater, for the first time in ages. It was nice to have an intellectual discussion, especially after discussing everything with myself last month. i make myself mad with circuitous logic, or perhaps i'm just playing devil's advocate with myself. oh dear.

Anyway, the point of that whole ramble is that this country, as big as it may be, is rather small as far as the traveler is concerned. We are, for the most part, all using the advice of a pool of about 5 travel guides, 1 being particularly prevailant. The guy we knew from gangotri had, in sikkim, stayed in the same amazing place at kechopari lake, the australian girl had been on the same trek, a week before us. It's funny to be at a point of meeting people 3 months later and seeing what everyone has been up to between the two meetings. It makes things fun, and completely unnexpected. I guess in the end, my rajasthan experience has been colored mostly by interactions with people, rather than so much of the places themselves.

i think i;m alright with that. i can always come back to float on lake pichola...

I think my general feelings about rajasthan are summed up by the fact that 40% of tourists to india end up in 3 or 4 cities in Rajasthan, creating a tourist infrastructure that is maddening. It's been interesting figuring out the "line" that people use in different places to start up conversation and get you to buy something, eventually. We never stick around long enough to figure out what the something to buy is. In Jaisalmer, everyone said " you said yesterday you would come into my shop" in Udaipur, everyone speaks a couple phrases in korean or hebrew or german or whatever, just so you feel connected. Jaipur was home of the worst line. A guy would approach you on the street and ask if he could ask you one question, "why do westerners hate to talk to indians" was always the question. I hated this. It's preying on tourists with consciouses that hate ignoring people. ughh! the first time you stop and have a bit of a conversation before you realize you are being played, but after that you are asked the same question over and over again. It's enough to make you want to start ignoring people... I almost punched a couple of rickshaw drivers today because they wouldn't get out of my face. The line between frustration and physical violence has never seemed so possible. All this in the land of Ghandi..

Now, we're in Ahmedabad, capital of Gujarat. We've got a train at 5:30 am, so we're staying by the train station, in the dreadful, train station part of town. We managed to get out and wander just a little bit, to discover that ahmedabad is a bit strange. Perhaps it's the Lucknow syndrome, no cows, i think it can't be india. But the architecture and the streets are a bit different too. Almost eastern european in a way, some of this architecture is definately cold war soviet. Oh, and people actually use traffic lights here, for the most part..strange. I'm pretty interested to explore Ahmedabad for real when we come back next week. Our arrival this afternoon, by bus, was dreadful. A terrible riot of rickshaw drivers trying to make us take their rickshaw, a difficult time finding decent lodging, and way too much pollution.

Since then, things have improved. A clean, efficient and uncrowded post office and internet for 10r. an hour manage to lift some of the grime off my image of the city.

Tomorow we take an all day train across the peninsula of Saurashtra, the lower half of Gujarat. We will go to Dwarka, a Hindu holy town at the very edge of the subcontinent, and then south to Diu where we can eat fish. and maybe even go for a swim. if it's not too cold at least. I have to admit to freezing for the last couple of days (oh i know, i'm being a wuss, but i dont have a jacket, give me some credit.) it doesn't quite make me feel like swimming.

Lindsay has been excellent at making people think she speaks hindi. suckers. It really throws the rickshaw drivers off when she can throw around even a couple of phrases.

Namaste 2006

2006-01-01T00:39:00.000-08:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!

And a very happy birthday to Mr. Bill Lennard, my own personal father/new years baby.

Lindsay has had a victorious return from the desert, she's bursting with amazing stories and pictures and new friends, i'm sure you'll get all sorts of incredible stories from her blog, with time.

Its hard to distill a month of living into typed words.

I met most of the people she worked with at a new years party last night. Most of them are students at a technical university in Jaipur. They are all really amazing. fantastic and fascinating people to be sure. I'm glad to see that lindsay was in such good hands for the month. Not that i'm trying to say that she couldn't handle herself, but its always nicer to be around good people, and these people were super. It was interesting to actually spend time with indian people our age. That really doesn't happen too much. These are clearly some of the best and the brightest. A couple of them have jobs lined up already with companies like IBM. I met more future engineers last night than i could handle it was like a gathering with the lennard family..haha.haah.sorry. i couldnt resist.

the only wierd thing was that all the girls had to be back in their dorm at 8:30pm. on new years eve. The boys don't have a curfew, but if the girls stay out past 8:30 they cant come back in till 6am.

That's archaic. i was more than a little horrified.

other than that, it was great.

Bharatpur was really beautiful. I dont know if i can even begin to describe the birds i saw. It felt like i was looking at environments in a zoo, or fake birds. It was almost too perfect. This bird sanctuary is one of the main migratory and nesting areas for lots of birds from mongolia, central asia, europe and more. I saw cranes, enormous painted storks (they have bright pink feathers at their butts), cormorants, owls, ducks, eagles, kingfishers and more. there were a couple of pythons, cobras and kraits around, but i didnt see them because i didnt get a guide. That was the line anyway. I had a pretty amazing time just riding through the park on a rented bicycle. When i arrived at the park at 7am there was a dense fog, the sort that you cant see 5 feet in front of your face. Crossing the street seemed to be a deathwish. It was dreadful for birdwatching, but incredible for atmosphere. i spent the first two hours riding through mists, seeing some indistinct shapes in the wetlands around me, and hearing exotic bird calls ringing through the various shades of grey. It was a unique sort of solitude. It didnt make me feel lonely, but acutely solitary, a pretty incredible finish to a month of solo travel. spending the day watching birds swirl above my head was pretty perfect. nick, you would have loved it. This sanctuary also contains a huge amount of grasslands. I kept feeling like i was on safari. There were the bones of cattle gnawed clean by the hyenas and jackyls of the park (!) there is even a tiger somewhere, but i think she has a couple of acres to wander in all to herself. At one point i rode the bike through a misty forrest that contained an abandoned house, brick, two stories tall, walls and roof caving in, surrounded by a 15 foot moat. clearly i was intrigued, but the bridges across the moat had all been destroyed. It was a fairy tale castle to be sure. Probably a raj era hunting lodge, but that is certainly enough to incite my imagination...

Linday's return was incredible. i don't think i realized quite how much i missed her until she walked into the garden of the hotel. It feels good to have a partner in crime again.

Jaipur is making me a little nuts, again. funny how that works. i keep forgetting that this is the 3rd largest tourist city in india and that everyone acts accordingly. rickshaw drivers here are the worst.

i think we're going to visit a place or two in rajasthan before moving south to gujarat. we may even go to kutch (again) yes, i did like it that much... but we'll see

the kite festival in ahmedabad is january 12th. hurahh.

lindsay and i called chicago tonight and talked to a party full of people we love.

it was pretty amazing to hear all of your voices.

i really do miss all of you like mad.

two thousand and six. wow. it's going to be a beautiful beautiful year. i feel it in my toes.

happy birthday papa.

stranger than fiction

2005-12-28T02:31:00.000-08:00

I'm back in Jaipur. Tomorow i go to Bharatpur to see birds and saturday lindsay gets back from the desert.

Hurahh!

my train here was shockingly peaceful.

i spent a good 15 hours of it devouring East of Eden, by steinbeck, which was spectacular.

i know i said moby dick was amazing too, which it was, but in a more accademic learning about whaling in the mid 19th century sort of way. this one was just good story.

If anyone wants to join the katie book club, that one is next.

now...kundera? dh lawrence? the selection here is rather thin. the hilary clinton novel, however, is everywhere. does anyone else find this strange?

it's begining to look a lot like...something that does not even vaguely resemble christmas

2005-12-25T00:48:00.000-08:00

not by any stretch of the imagination.

not in Bhuj at least.

That's true everywhere except room 104 in the Hotel Annapuna.

If i've learned anything from years of living with Lindsay, it's that decorations are crucial to the success of any event. Christmas is clearly included. Yesterday, i managed to find a branch which would do nicely as a wee christmas tree. As i was walking back to my hotel, a man called me over to his junk stall (i've managed to situate myself in the midst of the junk/thrift store district of bhuj. shocker. more on that later.)

he saw that i was carrying a branch and gave me a branch he had, it was already painted silver. Perfect. I found some thread and mand ornaments from the seashells i collected in Mandvi, as well as the spoon that Rafi carved, the origami ornament that Cara and Nate made me, the three photos i have with me, and i topped it all off with a star i cut out of paper.

Yes, it is indeed a lovely christmas tree.

Lindsay, being the stellar friend that she is, gave me three little packages before we left jaipur. These went under my tree, as did anything I have bought for myself while here in Bhuj. Yesterday i went on a wee shopping spree at the used sari market. One of the streets by my hotel is lined with folks selling stacks of used clothes on wooden carts. i had a pretty grand time yesterday, people from other carts would bring merchandise to show me, like really ugly sweaters or tiny t-shirts for children. For a while they brought me the most hilarious western clothes: clearly, i'm a westerner and i want to buy only western clothes, right? After a while, everybody caught on that i was buying indian clothes, and they then shifted to shoving the most hilarious indian clothes ive ever seen, in my face. Ugly, ugly, ugly synthetic saris. It was the end of the day, so clearly i was getting sort of the bottom of the barrel.

But friends, let's not doubt my skills in a thrift store, even if it is a thrift store on open carts in the street. Granted, i'm a bit rusty, but i think i ended up doing not too shabily. I found a neat cotton sari with some embroidery, a lovely salwar kameez, a printed silk chiffon sari and a green silk taffeta sari with nice gold thread work throughout. The chiffon sari and the taffeta sari have some rips in them, but they are pretty formal and don't have matching sari blouses, so my interest in them is based in their use as fabric. All of these sweet little numbers were somewhere around 40 R, which is less than a dollar. If i was indian i could have gotten them for about 20 R, but $1 for 5 really useable yards of silk taffeta (the sari is a 6 yard length of fabric, but i'm accounting for the rips.) is a pretty sweet deal.

I also found a beautiful synthetic georgette sari, in a really great shade of blue. Normally i'm a bit of a snot, and synthetics aren't so much my game, but this sari is completely hand embroidered. Its gorgeous. It even has a matching sari blouse which fits me decently, well, with a little doctoring. hurahh!! i wrapped all these presents in other clothes i have, as well as the yellow cotton blockprinted with blue umbrellas that i bought to make a sundress. The real present that i got myself is an incredible vintage embroidered skirt. I think it's meghwal, maybe rabari. i love it. it fits. happy christmas to me.

This morning i woke up, and opened my christmas presents.

I was shocked to find all of this fabric under my christmas tree. Where did these saris come from? ;)

The real surprise was how lindsay managed to get me perfect christmas presents, right under my nose. She's pretty sneaky. i still have no idea when she bought these things. She found the kind of glass bangles i've been admiring but unable to find, in addition to some really cool camel bone earrings and a pendant containing a miniature painting. I was oggling these pendants the entire time we were in jaipur, and she managed to get me one that is perfect. nice work theo, as usual.

Little does she know, that her christmas present is coming out of the desert and it is pretty fab.

wait and see....

After writing yesterday about being a vegetarian for a month, i went and ruined it all with dinner at a non-veg restaraunt. again, bless the muslims. I ate dinner with an american girl working in bhuj and an indian girl who is making a film about the kala raksha design school. It was a fun relaxing christmas eve dinner. Boneless chicken masala (i dont eat meat here because i'm a sissy and i dont really like my meat to be anywhere close to it's animal form. that means i dont eat much meat) and mountains of yogurt. We just kept ordering more yogurt, mostly because it was so so good. Then we went out for icecream. lovely.

i got to speak to the lennard family this morning, as well as the delightful miss kate riker, who is also spending a solo christmas in asia. who would have thought that two of my best friends and i would all be in asia, spending christmas alone? i think its hilarious. My family had just come back from midnight mass, and were about to open presents when i called. Poor lennards, having to wait half an hour to open presents while they talked to me. Know that your deep sacrifice was much appreciated. Like talking to me isn't a present enough?..ha!

Talking to folks from home was fantastic, if a bit sad, since it reminds me of just how much i miss all of you.

I'm going to enjoy my last two days here in Bhuj. I like it here quite a bit, it's one of the nicest places i have stayed, definately one of the places I would like to return to at some point.

Tomorow i'm going to the house of a guy who sells antique embroidery. He's been recomended to me by 3 unconnected people, so i think it's going to be good.

I took pictures of my christmas tree, amoung other things, but i can't find anyone who has a memory card reader for my digital camera, so it may just have to wait until jaipur.

Charlie Brown's got some serious competition. That's all i've got to say.

Merry Christmas!!

i love you all big and miss you tremendously.

The Rann of Kutch...oogly booglie or eggcellent, a protein kinda day.

2005-12-24T02:04:00.000-08:00

Taking local government buses around Kutch has been a fascinating and
educational experience.
Did you realize that the scarecrows here wear turbans?
it seems rather obvious when you think about it, but i guess i'd never
really given it that much of a ponder. I love how basic things, like
the dress of a scarecrow changes so drastically depending on the
cultural standards. i haven't seen a scarecrow in a sari yet, but i
will keep looking.
yesterday i hopped on a bus for the 3 hour ride to Than Monestary. I'd
heard quite a bit about how lovely and quiet and peaceful it was.
Figuring that i hadn't gotten nearly enough solitude of late (ha!), i
decided to go.
There are two monestaries at Than, a fact i did not learn until this
morning. One is at the top of a mountain, one is at the bottom. The
one at the bottom of the mountain is architecturally fascinating. it
contains part of the old monestary that is at least a thousand years
old. Its a jumble of Linga and tiny temples contained within a huge
stone wall. The monestary at the top of the mountain is much smaller,
with just one temple and an incredible view.
I spent last night at the creepier monestary down the hill. Each
monestary has one saint (or guru) and a host of strange characters
that serve him. The guys at the bottom of the hill were definately
stranger. Really wierd eyes. probably had something to do with the
opium tea they were slurping. As a welcome reprieve from the strange
folk, i had the company of a lovely british couple and their friend,
as well as their Rabari guide and driver. The creepy folk fed us well
and gave us nice matresses and pillows and a room whos' door we
proceeded to lock. i'm probably exadurating.
we all know what my imagination is like.
Still, none of the 5 of us slept much at all.
You could hear any number of us tossing and turning, unable to sleep
all night. Coincidence? i think not. That place was bizzare.
Luckily it made up for the creepieness with spectacular surroundings.
We hiked up a huge rockslide this morning to see the sunrise from the
second temple on top of the mountain. There was an incredible, if
slightly hazy view of Kutch all around us. The Rabari driver said he
was getting cellphone reception from towers in Pakistan. Living on the
edge, my friends!
Kutch really is mindblowingly beautiful. Rather like the American
southwest in someways, but somehow completely different as well.
indescribable. i tried to take photos but the haze didn't help much.
The hike up the mountain was particularly spectacular, seeing as it
was pre-dawn. The moon was tremendously bright and led the way, even
giving us moonshadows, an unnexpected delight. It was really really
beautiful.
All sorts of crazy geological formations all around. You really get
the sense that this whole area was just shoved up from the depths of
the earth not too long ago. Remember what i said about living on the
edge? i'm talking about a faultline, as well as the line of control.
The monestary at the bottom of the hill was filled with great birds.
Brilliant green parrots, tiny brilliantly iridescent birds, wild
peacocks. Lots of cows and dogs (of course) and a sort of Kutchi wild
deer/gazzelle that the guys who live there had taken on as a pet. It
had the most enormous black eyes.

My bus ride back to Bhuj today was also eventful. The bus broke down
(noticing a theme here?) necessitating a change to my third bus of the
day. I was attempting a new route back so i didnt have to hang out in
Than until 4.
On the bus i sat next to a woman who looked like mother theresa with
no teeth. I saw a man who looked exactly like a woodcut of a pirate.
Gold hoops in his ears, partial turban, debonair moustache, the whole
bit. A nice old man bought my bus ticket and tried to teach me Hindi.
And, on top of all that i got to see some amazing countryside.
My arrival in bhuj necessitated an immediate visit to the omlet center
near the bus stand. I would like to take a moment to thank the
adorable muslim boys of Bhuj who supply me with omlettes and boiled
eggs at all times of the day. Without their support, i would not be
the protein healthy individual that i am.
<pause for applause for the omlette men of Bhuj>
i haven't eaten meat in at least a month.
So, accomplished- bus rides, creepy monestary, difficult hiking, 2nd-
less creepy but still wierd monestary AND omlet.
Yes folks, indeed it sounds like yet another successful day.
I'm still trying to figure out what i want to eat for christmas dinner.
chickpeas anyone?
i know what i'm having for breakfast, cholesterol be damned!

so i see the sea

2005-12-22T01:01:00.000-08:00

i got to see something quite incredible yesterday.

unlike every other day here, right? ha.

Yesterday i saw the building of wooden ships by hand. I'm talking huge moby dick hunting sized ships. About 8 or so, in all stages of construction. The shape of the underside of a boat is one of the most lovely in existance. I got up close and personal with these mamoth vessels, with enormous wooden pegs being used instead of nails. it was a mindblowing experience. Imagine setting forth on the sea in something that was made by human hands. I think it gives depth to the tenuous relationship between sea and human. Humans setting forth in something made by their own kind, rather than having the unatural advantages of robots.

of course, given my safety terrors, sometimes i appreciate an unnatural advantage.

nonetheless. These ships were truly things of beauty.

since they are not human, i actually got photographs. be proud. i'll get them up here one of these days.

i also got to dip my toes into the arabian sea. it was colder than i was expecting. I keep forgetting it's winter here.

On the beach i met 3 nice canadian guys, the only travelers under 45 i've talked to in a week. They happen to be WOOFing their way across india for 8 months. (woof is the Worldwide organization of organic farmers, they volunteer at farms for food and lodging). You would have loved them michelle. Coincidences! The only young people i talk to in ages are organic farming in an environmentally unfriendly nation. hilarious.

i think we'll run into them again, they are working their way south and may even be in sri lanka for visa extensions, the same time we are... sometimes this traveling thing is quite fun

my bus coming back from mandvi broke down twice and an old man in an enormous turban read my palm in gujarati. i have no idea what he said. i hope it was good.

I think i'll stick around here until monday or tuesday then i'll go up to jaipur and to bharatpur to see some birds.

oh yeah, and that christmas thing is sunday. right?

technologically innept.

2005-12-19T07:16:00.000-08:00

ugh.

scroll down. my blog doesn't like the length of one of the links in my last post.

if anyone wants to fix that for me....sister?

miss, do you want to see a cow?

2005-12-19T06:41:00.000-08:00

This morning i woke up, hopped on the local govt. bus and took a 1.5 hour trip down to Anjar for the monday market. I heard that lots of folks from nearby villages show up on mondays to buy supplies for the week, and they happen to be dressed in fantastic traditional dress. What i heard was right. The market was filled with Rabaris, mostly, some Jats too. The Rabari men were all wearing their fantastic traditional dress

the women were pretty snazzily dressed as well and yet again, took no pictures

i went searching and found some of the photos i've been too chicken to take:

inside a rabari mud bhunga(of the sort i described last entry)-
inside a rabari mud bhunga

Outside of the bhungas at Vaundh- Outside of the bhungas at Vaundh

Rabari men- Rabari Men

The village of Anjar was one of the areas that was most affected by the 2001 earthquake. Its pretty incredible, even 5 years later, people are still living in tents. Parts of town look like they have not been changed since the earthquake, rubble remains in enormous piles. Other areas seem creepily post apoclyptic: huge empty areas with only the traces of foundations on the ground, bordered by newly poured concrete townhouses. Not a tree to be seen. Using my 6th sense, old-crumbling-building-finding, I managed to find my way into the old city, which is filled with absolutely gorgeous old buildings, in various states of repair and disrepair. I was just wandering around, staring at architecture when a group of women sitting on a stoop started making noises at me. I kept walking, until a school girl ran up to me and informed me that the ladies were calling for me.

"miss, do you want to see a cow?"

Within 30 seconds i was in the house of one of these women, looking at the aforementioned cow, sitting on a bed (the bed/couch/only place to sit in the house), chatting, with the schoolgirl and her older sister as translators. It was pretty amazing. I managed to meet the entire neighborhood. We were about to take a photo when the woman who's house i was in, said that we should wait for her husband who was coming back from school. Her husband showed up and before i knew it, i was sitting on the floor of their kitchen with them, eating an enormous lunch. It was delicious. Millet chappati, paneer tikka masala, potatoes, salad, rice, roti, sweet jelly, curd, kechoris and samosas and a sweet that the schoolgirls' father (a chef) made for us. amazing food. what felt like the entire neighborhood peeked through various windows and doors. It apparently was not the entire neighborhood, becuase more people kept showing up. The older of the two schoolgirls, Dolly, would explain who everyone was, that woman is the mother of the little boy with the big ears and the girl who's hair is sticking up funny. She is my mother's uncle's sister. Of course. I held baby after baby, all really cute. Looked at numerous wedding pictures of terrified looking girls and boys in gorgeous wedding clothes. My hosts, Kishor and Shilpa (the teacher and his wife) were 26 and 22 respectively. They got married 6 years ago.Do that math! no wonder they look so terrified. They are completely adorable now. Shilpa is gorgeous, really really beautiful, and quite funny and fond of laughing. They have a 3 yearold daughter and Shilpa is pregnant (Kishor- "right now we are just 3, with 5 cows, but in March we will be 4, with 5 cows." big big grin) Kishor has a huge smile, especially when i said anything about how much i like india, or kutch, or the people of kutch or the food, or his family, or pretty much anything. Dolly insisted i go to her house across the street, which turned into a visit to their new house down the street, then meeting her best friends and her sister cousins and then back to Shilpa's to see the house of the lady who lives next door. At dolly's i ate apples, at the new house some sweet, at the sister cousin's tea- and baby holding, and at shilpa's next door neighbor's more tea. The the neighbor's house this tiny pack of women decided to dress me in a sari.

i figured that i was pretty much along for the ride at this point. Besides, have you ever known me to turn down an opportunity to play dress up?

So they stuffed me into one of the neighbor's choli's (sari blouses) and draped the sari on me.

I think this is an important point to mention that everywhere we went we were followed by a crowd of about 15, mostly kids, but some of their moms and the occasional dad. At the point i was being put into the sari, there were about 6 people in the room, a ton of kids being held in the front room by the neighbor's daughter who was keeping the door shut, and a very tiny girl sitting in the windowsill keeping the shutters closed. The window looked into the room where Kishor's cows were kept, and was also full of people.

It was pretty hilarious. When i finally go the sari on, all these people streamed into the room to tell me i look very very beautiful. If you are ever feeling un-pretty, visit Anjar. Someone would ask me a question about chicago, everyone would appear to be listening intently, regardless of whether they know english or not and i would be in the middle of talking about snow or skyscrapers or something and a woman would start talking very quickly in Katchi and gesturing towards me. Dolly would turn to me and translate "miss she says that your cheeks are so beautiful and also your lips are so nice." i'm still laughing about that one. At lunch they were asking about my family so i pulled out the family photo i have with me, everyone was so impressed. Lennard family, in case you didn't know, we are wildly attractive in the eyes of Anjar. All the boys were asking about you Jess, is she married? Is she in india? Would she like to come to india? And the school girls wanted to know if michael and andrew were really as tall as they looked. "your mother is so beautiful" and everyone was impressed with your moustache dad. One boy thought it should be longer, but Kishor said it was an excellent moustache. Very indian. Then they asked for more photos and i pulled out a photobooth strip of lindsay and i and a holga photo of blayne and they went absolutely nuts. "in america everyone is looking like a film star" suddenly rumor got around that i made saris for film stars in america. At least they got the general idea right....They heard lindsay was in india and the boys started offering to ride to bhuj on their scooters and pick her up. (of course, they all were under the impression that lindsay is lying down in a hotel in bhuj with a headache. If only that were the case...) Others started bragging about government jobs and the number of cows they plan to own. Linds, you were hot stuff.

After the sari, we went to visit another woman across the street, more baby holding, more tea and a cup of milk with pistachio syrup in it that was totally disgusting. Then another visit to dolly's new house and a visit to her grandmother's house next door to meet more sister cousins, see Reena's engagement photos, get invited to Reena's wedding in May, put on another type of Gujrati Traditional dress, take more pictures and meet more of dolly's friends, and their mothers. All the while dolly would point out houses and explain that another relative lived there, or that there was once a house there, but an old lady expired in it durring the earthquake. So bizzare. The way this earthquake has completely changed the fabric of this town, and yet, not...

I was invited to dinner by 6 different families (mind you i ate the world's biggest lunch about 3 hours beforehand). i gracefully declined, and managed to bow out of town with a kind ride to the bus station on Kishor's scooter.

Whew..

I have pictures of all of this, including me in a sari and traditional gujarati dress. I of course dont have pictures of the brilliantly dressed rabaris, anywhere but my head. But this was all way more fun than pretending not to stare at people all day. Besides, i'm not the first who has come to this area with a camera. Not even remotely the most technically skilled.

Al in all, I declined the repeated offers of lodging, a necklace, 6 bangles, a sari and a cow.

i'm not even joking.

declining the sari was clearly necessary but, admittedly difficult.

The bus ride back to bhuj was full of men with big sunglasses, huge moustaches and even bigger turbans.

I'm still full.

I call this a successful day.

Tomorow or the day after i will go to Mandvi to see giant wooden ships being built by the sea. I'm pretty excited for my first Indian glance at the ocean, or the Gulf of Kutch at the very least, not to mention shipbuilding....

"America, where you can drink as much water as you want"

2005-12-18T01:57:00.000-08:00

That is what the little boys at the Rabari mela (jamboree) said to Judy when she told them i was from America. Yep folks, you are in a land filled with a precious liquid. It really shook me to hear them say that. Most people, when they hear i'm from america, want to hear about california or movies or pop stars. These Rabari boys were jealous of our drinking water. Makes you think, huh.

These boys live in villages where the water is delivered once or twice a day by a man with a tractor. At dusk, desert villages are full of women racing to the water tank, carrying metal water jugs, stacked on top of their heads, and another one, or a baby in their arms. Its a pretty amazing sight. I can say honestly that up until this point in my life, i've taken drinking water for granted. I've visited places before where bathing water is conserved but you can always drink. Thirst is a pretty terrible feeling. How lucky we are to have real thirst so rarely.

I got to visit some really neat villages in the past couple of days. Two inhabited by Jats, a subcaste of muslims and another, Vaundh, which is Rabari. The Kala Raksha design school is right outside of Vaundh, I spent two days there, after the Mela, waiting until the jeep was returning to Bhuj where all of my stuff was. In the meantime, I got to observe some design classes with rabari embroiderers and to visit Vaundh village with Judy(the american woman who runs kala raksha, the textile co-op) as my guide and translator. Vaundh is a really nice village, but if you arrive unknown and unacompanied, kids will throw stones at you and old women will sweep you out with their brooms. Apparently they've had a lot of gawking camera toating tourists and they dont like it. Luckily judy has been friends with families from the village for 15 years now, so we were able to walk around and see lots of people. We even had a chance to enter a couple of Bungahs, traditional circular mud huts that some Rabaris still live in. The insides are decorated with amazing mud-mork, cabinets made of mud and donkey dung (it has more straw and more durability for delicate work) while the walls are sticky mud and cow dung. the cabinets are decorated with mirrors, painted behind and small mirror mosaic work. they are some of the cleanest living spaces i've ever entered. One room, and everything has its place, all the cooking is done in the bungha, the roof is made of thatch and is a pointed cone, probably about 15 feet tall. The bungha feels remarkably
spacious. Its a really lovely sort of house. Some Katchi rabaris, especially after the earthquake, are living in concrete, earthquake safe houses. The area we visited was inhabited mostly by 5 brothers and all of their extended families. Everyone is related, with excellent genetics. this is one gorgeous family. At the mela many of them weredressed in traditional dress, which was really beautiful. Due to the general dislike for the tourist toating a camera i have almost no pictures. i do have some clothing sketches. maybe i'll photograph those. It's a really beautiful culture. I can see why judy has been interested in Rabaris since the mid '70s.

For the Mela we drove 4 hours out into the middle of the desert, where the family has built a temple. They are essentially Hindu, with a strong componant of ancestor worship, so this temple was built in honor of an ancestor who went out into the desert to meditate and die, essentially. Apparently he simply disapeared and now helps those who are lost in the desert and leads them back to this temple. There was an idol in the temple dressed in Rabari clothing. Pretty cool stuff. There was a ceremony and dinner and then singing and music all night. I spent the coldest night of my life under a tiny quilt sleeping on the steps of a freezing concrete amphitheatre, out in the desert, hours from nowhere. I honestly thought my toes were going to fall off, they were so cold. But, freezing aside, it was pretty amazing. I was definately the only non Gujarati speaker for miles. Sometimes i have these moments where i fully realize that i am in india. This party was definately one such instance. The music was amazing.

The design school is pretty interesting. They are teaching 15 embroiderers the basics of design. Its fascinating to watch them grappling with the same topics of color and composition and presentation that i delt with not long ago in school. Its also fascinating to see the cultural issues that must be overcome. Simply getting the women to stand up and present their ideas without hiding behind their veil is difficult. The women are all from Vaundh village, of mixed age, and they must make the young ones go first, or they will be constrained by whatever the elders did. That said, these women are pretty incredible. They are getting their minds around some big ideas quite quickly. Its a huge task. the teachers are clearly exhausted, but i think the work they are doing is really neat. The women are halfway through their first 2 week sessions. There is a group of men, block printers and weavers, who are alternating sessions with the women, i think there will be 5 sessions total over the year. They are bringin in new teachers for each session, some indian some american. Its a really amazing project overall. The intent is to really give these students the power to be entrepenures. To continue their craft traditions while still innovating. It's amazing to see these women who have never drawn, have to work in a new way. Their drawings look so childlike, but at the same time are really evocative. Then, you see the embroidery that the women do, based on a paper sample and it's so advanced and nuanced and beautiful. It's interesting to see the work of people who express themselves so much better with a needle than with a pencil.

I'm back in Bhuj and plan to travel around Kutch a bit longer before i go up to meet lindsay in Jaipur for the New Year. This week i'm going to Mandvi where they still build wooden ships by hand...

I spoke with lindsay this morning. She is teaching 150+ kids in a village school with another indian girl who is a volunteer for the same NGO. It sounds exhausting, but really amazing. She's living with a host family in a mud hut with color TV. India is a pretty incredible place. I think she's even managed to learn some Hindi, and it's not as cold as they had told her it would be, so she is not freezing, as she feared. She wanted me to send love to everyone, particularly those who send her a christmas card..

i'm looking forward to making a christmas tree with the origami ornament that Cara and Nate made for me. Nice work Halstead family.

Blayne and Jacqui bought plane tickets. February 2nd. we pick them up in Mumbai!!! hurahh for international parties! i didnt think anyone would actually take lindsay up on her offer for people to come to her birthday party.... They even have their visas already. They are way more organized than lindsay and i ever were. We're going to have a fantastic time. Now i just have to get veena up here from bangalore and make sure that kate and duff can meet up with us before they go back to china and the world will be at my fingertips...

send me mail!!!! address in the last post.

i love you all.

christmas bells are ringing, somewhere else...

2005-12-17T07:59:00.000-08:00

hello loved ones.

i know you've all been saving up huge stacks of letters to send me, waiting for me to finally give a mailing address.

well,

get out your pens.

the time has come
In the true fashion of this trip, i'm going to be

KATIE LENNARD (Underline)

Poste Restante, GPO
Udaipur, 313001

India

If you can't get those letters you've been saving into the mail in the next two days, you could try for Ahmedabadaround the 12th of January.

i'll post that postal code as soon as i get it.

that said, do you really want that holiday card sitting in a post office getting dusty untilt he 12th of january? Just think how much it will warm the heart of a nice girl who is all alone for christmas in the desert, in india..

Work fast.

And remember to mark anything you are sending AIRMAIL, otherwise it will never get to me.

If you still havent put that card for lindsay into the mail, you could send it here too.

Oh, and miss kate riker has a brand new blog, all about life in china. its the second link in the sidebar, or you could just go to katedelighted.blogspot.com

love!!

the tropic of cancer and a talk about cancer. coincidence???

2005-12-13T05:28:00.000-08:00

kuch/kachchh is beautiful. I had my first real look at the countryside today (outside of what i was able to see from the train), and it was fascinating. The desert is immense and flat, with a crust of dried sand and mud that looks a bit like the surface of the moon. You can see a bit of salt crystalization, more in some areas, since durring the monsoons, the whole area becomes a salt marsh. It's more extreeme in the great Rann and the little rann, but in the desert around bhuj it's still pretty visible. There are signs of the 2001 earthquake everywhere. In bhuj and the countryside, broken buildings are everywhere. there seem to be two shells of broken buildings for every standing one. There is a great deal of new concrete construction going on. Boxy, indian style, houses are being poured out of concrete, and temples are being carefully sculpted. Wet concrete is everywhere, almost as ubiquitous as dust. Out in the desert there are huge chunks of earth that were clearly shoved up recently. In one dry riverbed you can see the layers of earth all akimbo at funny angles. There are these beautiful mountains all along the horrizon in every direction. They are big black mountains, desert mountains. The foliage where we were driving today was sporadic, some places abundant and in others, absolutely nothing. not even desert scrub. Camels, tiny donkeys and cows were roaming everywhere.

at one point on our drive we passed the most genius sign ive seen in all of india

"einstein's theory of the road- death=speed(squared)+rum

amazing

we also crossed the tropic of cancer, decidedly a first for me.

I was driving through the desert today with a group from Kala Raksha, an NGO here in Bhuj that works with local artisans (embroiderers, weavers and block printers) to create items for sale such as clothing, pillows, shawls etc. The artisans themselves set a fair wage and then the remainder of the profits are put into community services (medical facilities etc.) and the running of the ngo itself. They also maintain a research librairy of traditional embroidery pieces and patterns. It's a pretty neat organization. I went to a tiny village named Kvada, with a community teacher and a local caseworker. We went to see a group of about 30 women embroiderers in this village (kala raksha has 600 artisans in 40 villages), pick up finished pieces, drop off new work and give a health lesson. Well, they went to do this, i was just along for the ride. It was pretty amazing to see. This village is beautiful, round mud houses with thatched roofs, really clean and beautifully painted inside. The women of the village were some of the most incredibly dressed people ive ever seen. Birds of paradise to be sure. They wore full skirt, usually of a bright fabric printed in the region's traditional tye dye methoda (white or colored dots in a geometric pattern all over a solid dyed field) and a mid thigh length tunic, embroidered in hundreds of colors with mirror work as well. Everyone over the age of 10 or so had veils of yet another fabric, often with metallic trim, which they wear over the top of their head (but not over their face) and tucked in one corner into their skirt, and HUGE jewelry. The women wear ivory or white plastic bangles along their entire upper arm, some wear them along the lower arm as well, but many wore two forearms full of different colored plastic and metal bangles. they all wear nose pins, some gold discs ranging from the size of a dime on a tiny girl, to a quarter on an old lady. There were a couple of women wearing enormous gold rings, with a diameter of about 2.5 inches, that had to be supported by a ribbon over the top of their head. The earrings were interesting and varried, many people seeming to have individual placement and number of earrings. Some women had interesting tattoos on their necks and wrists. only the older women had shoes, and those were flip flops, classically india. It was so beautiful. the babies wear a dark eyemakeup which makes their eyes seem huge. everyone was stunningly beautiful. It was a pretty fantastic sight. I describe it so fully because i did not take a single picture. It's funny, given that i am such an image addict. i think perhaps i am striving so hard for real human interactions that putting a camera in the middle of it seems to ruin it. I dont want to screw up a moment where people arent seeing me as a tourist dollar sign by turning them into my "vacation snaps". but i do want pictures.

its a conundrum.

The health lecture was funny., it was in Gujarati, but there were a couple of hindi words i know, and a couple of english ones so i got the general gist. Sort of. i understood that he was talking about AIDS, TB, and Cancer. I dont know quite where cancer fits in there, but he definately mentioned it a lot. He was talking about the sterilization of needles in hot water and safety when blood is concerned. Pretty important stuff. Not a lot of people were paying close attention, which was pretty sad. It makes me think a lot about the general ideas behind going into a place and trying to tell people how to change their lives. No matter how beneficial it would be for their life expectancies etc, is it really possible to change some of these old ways. i hope so. but then again, who am i to say that. Clearly i am in need of a good discussion about this. I have no one here to have it with, so if anyone wants to have it by 0s and 1s, please, be my guest. I think best in discussion and this traveling alone thing is a little rough for that. my journal is just full of loops.

The embroidery work these women are doing is astounding. It's all geometric, based on counting threads in the warp and weft. By the time they reach middle age, their eyesight isn't good enough for it, so they move into patchwork. Their quilts are pretty lovely. The pieces at kala raksha are gorgeous, and the prices are fair, but still perhaps too rich for my blood. Champagne taste, water budget, right mom?

still, the work is incredible. i can't wait to see more of it. There are a couple of other co-ops in town who's work i will go see as well. A lot of the economy here, particularly after the earthquake, is based in handicrafts. It's understandable because the work here is so exquisite. Tomorow i go to the design school kala raksha is creating for local artisans. Pretty incredible stuff. they are doing a group of 15 men and 15 women in alternating sessions. They just finished the first men's session, which was about color and referencing from nature. They did things like take this group who had never used cameras to the beach with digital cameras. Apparently the pictures were stunning. They later said things like "i've been to theocean but ive never seen the ocean" and one guy who had never been to the ocean at all. They gave them paints and really encouraged this group of people who are already skilled craftspeople to use their artistic minds as designers. I'm really excited to see this. Again, the classes are in gujarati, but i think i'll be able to get the idea. Unfortunately they are tight for space, so i will only be able to be there a couple of days.

I think the general plan is to be here for the next week or so and then travel a bit and perhaps go meet lindsay in jaipur for the new year. I wasn't going to go all the way up there again, but there is a bird sanctuary nearby that i would really like to see. Apparently in winter it is full of cranes and pelicans and other huge waterbirds as well as smaller birds too. I can't belive that i may go 20 some hours out of the way to bike through a sanctuary and look at some birds.....

my how i've changed.

me myself and my backpack

2005-12-09T05:07:00.000-08:00

My first 24 hours of solo travel in india are a success. my train ride was really easy. Incredible how a 22 hour train doesn't even phase me anymore. I slept and read about whales and stared out the window a lot. I was sitting with nice old ladies whos' only english seemed to be to ask me if i was alone in india and if i was married. home sweet india. they did give me some chappati which was good because i forgot to eat and spent most of the train ride nibbling on a chocolate bar. i can't figure out why some indian trains have an endless supply of food and others, practically nothing. The wierd part of my train ride was when we stopped and the entire train pretty much emptied out, then i rode on for another hour. i had to move up 3 cars to find people to sit by.
Jaipur was, as a whole, incredibly busy. The streets were constantly full, i felt like i was going to be run over any second. The markets were really neat, i would have spent more time there if i could. We found the marble carving district and the iron work district and all sorts of amazing things. On our night train to jaipur we met a great guy from tennessee who ended up wandering around the city a bit. He restores houses so we all had good chats about gentrification and world saving and other important stuff like that. I haven't met anyone else in india who has quoted the utne reader to me, so i figure he's good people.
Lindsay and i went on a fabric buying adventure and bought ourselves fabric to have a tailor make into salwar kameez with coordinating dupattas (long tunic, pants, scarf) . This was our second attempt at punjab dress. This effort turned out so well that we ran out and bought more fabric right after he finished the first set. Lindsay picked them up today before going for teaching training, so i won't get mine till after the new year. merry christmas to me, i guess. We both wanted some nice indian clothing before we go into semirural villages. we'll see if it helps. we also wandered through the fabric markets with huge eyes, and managed to find all the things we needed, flashlights, washcloths, colored pencils, etc. i even bought glass bangles which were shoved onto my arm by the saleslady and will remain there until they break off. my hands are indeed huge.
So lindsay is in rajasthan, embarking on a 3 week teaching english stint in a tiny village. my plans are much less concrete. I'm meeting with Judy from Kala Raksha on sunday, hopefully i can be of some sort of help for the next month. we'll see. i'll let you all know what there is to know when i know it.
clearly i'm avoiding a mailing address like the plague.
too bad i cant avoid getting a cold quite as well.
i may do some sightseeing here in Bhuj tomorow. Funny, since lindsay and i pretty much boycotted sightseeing in Rajasthan. No more forts or palaces for us. I'd rather watch people make things. Still, this is a completely different sort of place. The Gujarat i saw flying by my window today involved lots of flat bright green fields, desert plains and salty marshes. i saw some amazing birds, varieties of crane i think. Bhuj is in the shadow of a beautiful mountain, a volcano, as i learned today, with the remainder of the old city wall and a temple on top of it. it's pretty lovely. A huge earthquake destroyed quite a bit in 2001, so we'll see what is actually open, in terms of museums etc.
it's weird not having to consult anyone about my agenda for tomorow. This afterneoon i checked into the second solo hotel room of my life. The man who runs my hotel is incredibly nice. i told him i was hungry after the long train ride, and though the resturant was closed he offered me rice and curd. I, of course, accepted, and he brought me rice, curd, 3 vegetable preparations, 6 chappati AND mineral water. kindness is all around.
English is not spoken here much. That will be an adventure. I haven't seen many women on the street, but everyone has been quite courteous.
i finished moby dick on the train... it was fantastic.Its just amazing to read melville's 1850 thoughts about why the whale will never be fished to extinction. POne particularly poigniant example he gives is that the elephants have been hunted for thousands of years and their population is still going strong. Oh hindsight.. it's a pretty amazing meditation on natural resources, if you ask me. i picked up Ulysses in a bookstore in Jaipur. i cant decide if this is a terrible idea or not, but i'm going to give it a go.

an ocean of sand, or WWDQD? a literary adventure by camelight.....

2005-12-05T05:52:00.000-08:00

I've been reading moby dick in the desert.

comedic, i know.

But i must admit, i've never given melville enough credit. Moby is almost postmodern in a wierd 1850s dreadfully incorrect, making species endangered by use of huge metal harpoons sort of way.

he uses footnotes in a way that i think d.foster wallace and a couple of other choice footnoters have perked their little ears up to.

it's quite a book. i would recomend it all around, and i'll probably continue to until you all just hunker down and read it. The infamous chapter that talks only about the color white and the whiteness of the whale, gorgeous. I wasn't really intending on reading 1850s new england lit, but everything else in the bookstore, particularly books pertaining to this sweet subcontinent were 400 or 500 rupees. moby dick, colosal whale of a book that it is, was only 75. yeehaw! america!

plus, the allure of reading about the sea while nowhere near any sort of water was pretty alluring.

Did i mention that when i said "in the desert" i really ment "in the desert, kilometers from anywhere inhabited, riding a camel and sleeping on a sand dune"? perhaps i should have.

we just went on a 3 day camel "safari" which in turns was the most touristic thing we have done and utterly great and peaceful.

everyone who comes to jaisalmer goes on a camel safari. it's possible to trip on a rock on the street and find yourself on a camel safari. We managed to find an agency that is owned by camel drivers themselves (sort of the camel safari equivilent to buying local). We were gone for 3 days and two nights, the first day of which was spent with 5 other tourists and 4 camel guides. the second two days were just me, lindsay, raju our guide and michael and simon, our kickin camels.

let me introduce a couple of important points here.

a) camels are enormous. far bigger than i remember/expected/hoped. simon (my camel) was about 7ft tall to the top of the hump on his back, when standing. that is a hell of a fall, should it occur.

b) camels are funny looking.

c) december is the begining of camel mating season.

All of these factors made for an exciting camel trek. The first day was more exciting, seeing as there were quite a few more camels, including monkey, the girl crazy camel and his girlfriend sonia (gandhi)

sonia had 3 cute babies in tow, and monkey felt that there should be a couple more little monkeys running around. apparently the night before our trek, monkey ran off after a female and the guides had to chase him 3km. hilarity ensues.

<Pause, i will admit to looking forward to the day when i can type an email without a rodent scrambling across the floor. perhaps rajasthan should be ratjastan. so this was a mouse, but the point is clear>

the first day of the trek was a little worrisome. We were unaware that we would be continuing without the remainder of our group, and the "local villages" we visited consisted of the residents trying to make us take their photograph and then pay them. boo.

luckily, after a pretty incredible night of sleep under the stars on a sand dune, our tiny band set off on a quiet expedition. We saw hardly any people, no tourists, except at the dune where we slept. It's funny to remember how oversaturated the camel safari market is here, because our paths were clear. I think our tour group does good things.

We did see lots of sheep, goats, camels, gazelles, wild peacocks, eagles and other huge birds. The dunes were covered with these huge black beetles, with bodies the size of the top half of my thumb. This area had no rain for 3 years, so after this last year's sucessful monsoon many plants sprung up with a vengance. By plants i mean, whatever produces the most dreadful burr i have ever experienced. It looses little legs and gets stuck in your skin like a splinter. i'm still covered in them.

It was quite nice, loaping along on a camel, staring out into a barren expanse of dusty scrub and low bushes. It was so quiet that you could hear the rush of wings when a big bird would fly overhead.

What was slightly incongruous to all this were the enormous wind power generators dotting the desert, in packs of a dozen or more. They provide the power for the electric pumps that pull water out of the ground for this incredibly dry region. Seeing them over a barren dune felt a little post appocolyptic. It also made me ask the question WWDQD? Yes, my genius family and friends, what would Don Quixote do? Having just finished that book on the train to jodhpur, i knew exactly what he would do. Sadly i couldnt get simon to run fast enough to charge it. he is definately a shanti shanti camel.

The whole experience was a bit colonial, especially when i had a scarf wrapped around my wide sun hat, or when i was riding my camel side saddle this afternoon.I felt exactly like a victorian lady out on a stroll across the desert. It was a little creepy. Between Darjeeling and this i think i have had more than enough of a taste of the raj to last me some time, thank you very much.

At times it seemed like a glorified pony ride.

Still, nothing beats sleeping under the stars in complete silence.

it was way too cold for that in sikkim.

tonight we are on the night train to jodhpur then an early morning train to jaipur....

i hate it when city planners read my mind.

2005-12-01T01:35:00.000-08:00

i want to live in jodphur.
only if i never have to leave the old city.
it's as if someone crawled into my dreams of the perfect aesthetic, and made them happen, 500 years before my birth. Everything is gorgeous. Crazy cubist buildings at funny angles on streetsthat make a complete maze. Getting anywhere specific is impossible, which makes wandering just right. perfect for lindsay and i. We saw people making bangles, shoes, metalworkers, jewelers. all in these tiny holes in the wall. literally. and the walls..mmm... all the walls are various shades of a similar hue of blue, ranging from screaming cornflower to light periwinkle, to one daring family who's home is a deep royal. All of the doors are made of wood that is worn and coming apart, fortified by metal hardware that i could only dream of finding any time in the last 200 years. It is breathtaking. Every so often a bit of yellow or pink or sandstone punctuates the blue, but generally its all blue, with doors in a rich aquamarine. lindsay can attest to how many times i sighed yesterday, as we just rambled around the old city, looking at crumbling courtyards of stone and ancient sandstone mansions covered in 500 years of thick paint. it felt a bit like roaming through cinqueterra in italy, or what i want greece to be like. All of this in the shadow of an enormous sandstone fort that seems to be growing out of a huge hunk of rock.
Funny because the rest of the city is unremarkable. it's huge actually, 850,000 people. Most of the city is not this tiny section that i am in love with. but....
we saw fireworks from dozens of weddings all over the city on our first night there. Incredible wedding parties with grooms riding white horses, dressed in white, with garlands of marigolds and roses and saffron turbans. around him is a group of young men dancing like mad and behind them are the women in the most vibrant colorful saris imaginable. clothes here are incredible. Men wear bright tie dyed turbans and women wear jeweled and tie dyed saris on a daily basis, and the jewelry...Back to the wedding party. They are all lead by a band, a big bass drum, various brass instruments and a high pitched metal drum like a cooking pot. The coolest part is the lighting. A group of 6 or so people walk along one side of the procession, carrying upside down chandeliers, sometimes on their heads, all connected by cord to eachother and to the rickshaw driving behind them carrying a generator. AMAZING! This entire city is like something redmoon theatre has been trying to do for years and not quite hit it on the head. maybe they should hire me as their aesthetic consultant.
We are now in Jalsaimer, which is right on the edge of the Thar desert. The sandstone fort is pretty lovely and all the buildings seem to blend into the desert, all in different golden sanstone hues. It is, however, a tiny town, that manages to be one of the biggest tourist sites in india. its hard to feel that we are in a real place, everyone is trying to sell us things at every turn. Lindsay and i prefer to be in places where we can walk through bazzars unmolested because people are trying to sell to local housewives. Still it is beautiful, and we wont be here long. The plan is to join a group for a 3 day camel safari(!), then run to jaipur where lindsay will meet her group. After that i run to udipur, look at how pretty it is and then hightail it to kutch...whew. good thing i probably wont be moving too much for a while after that. after all the shanti traveling we have done of late, this is more than a little jarring.
oh, and we saw the new harry potter movie.
in hindi.
i'm ashamed to say that i understood only a little more than i do while seeing a normal hindi movie. Nonetheless, it was a little kernel of normalcy in the midst of some high speed travel.
did anyone see it in english? it seemed to make some pretty quick plot jumps, but i would imagine that the useful element of dialogue would probably help.
hopefully the next time i write, i will be a veteran camel jockey...

my heart got stolen in bihar. (almost, at least)

2005-11-28T05:32:00.000-08:00

That sweet little slogan is lindsay and my new genius T-shirt idea. Bihar is an indian state we passed through on our 47 hour train ride. It was only supposed to be 39, but the train was a mere 8 hours late. More on the train later. Bihar is notoriously poor and underdeveloped and over-run with bandits. It's also geographically gorgeous, and you can't quite believe everything lonely planet says. I guess rafi will be able to tell us more about it after he goes to the livestock festival there, he ought to be en-route as i write this. We had the good fortune to be on a night train through bihar. At some point the train was stopped for 30 min or so at an intersection and the people waiting to cross the street got tired of it and crossed through our train car. At another point, much later in the night, we were awakened by people throwing rocks and attempting to enter our train car. ye-haw. india's wild wild east. We were'nt actually in peril of anything being stolen, not any more than usual, but wouldn't that make a swell t-shirt?

We spent a good part of our 47 train hours thinking of T-shirts we could print and sell. We could make a fortune. In rupees of course.

Shockingly enough, this was one of our most relaxing train rides. Our jeep from Darjeeling to New Jalpaiguri (home of the train station) was far worse. Our driver was terrible, we had way too many people in our jeep (although not s many as when we were in kechopari and there were 18 people in and on the luggage rack on top of our jeep) to top all that off, the jeep broke down about 15 km from where we needed to be AND when we were getting the luggage off the top we discovered that the tire was flat as well. fan-tastic. It was, however, our last view of the lush green of tea plantation covered hills. The foothills of the Himalayas really are something to marvel at.

Luckily, our train ride was quite okay. We were seated in a compartment with an older couple and a young woman and her daughter. We were able to sit on the seat by the window the whole time (not squished up on the top bunk), which made a huge difference. The majority of our car was filled with a really well organized group with matching pillows. They were all in a great mood, singing and talking. They got off the train at Jaipur at what i thought was 2 am (we were supposed to get there at about 1am) for about an hour before they got off they were all singing and making loud noises. I've never been so close to kicking someone in the head in my life. Then lindsay started to talk to one of the men and he said they were a group of 60, coming to jaipur with their brother for his wedding. And it was actually 7:15 am, not 2. I have to admit to being a little annoyed that i couldnt hate them for being happy so early in the morning, especially since it wasn't as early as i thought. lindsay also was a bit tired and was not on top of her game enough to get us invited to this wedding. The upside of this enormous group leaving our train car was that the car was almost empty the rest of the trip. We could relax and stare out the windows at Rajasthan flying by, or, also frequently enough, staring straight back at us, since the train was going nowhere. The only disconcerting moment for me was when a snake charmer tried to shove a basket with a cobra a bit closer to my head than i would prefer. That i could have done without. Rather like the mouse that had a party in my backpack in darjeeling, twice!! Poisonous creatures near my face aside, it was a pretty alright trip. We got to see a pretty incredible cross section of india. We got on Saturday night, and sunday morning we were treated to incredible views of green fields and swampy marshlands in Bihar and Uttar Pradhesh. This morning we woke up to the dust of the desert. I've already seen more camels than i've seen in my entire life. We rode past some pretty incredible salt lakes, watching the harvesting of salt without machinery. There have been a couple of tractors here, which was a bit unnexpected. I keep forgetting that most of the farmland we've seen here has been terraced on the side of steep mountains. Today was Lindsay's first desert. A lot of the Rajasthan that we saw today was incredibly flat, no hills to the horrizon either direction, and then, popping up out of nowhere were these amazing dramatic hills. It is like the earth was a piece of cloth that was pulled up like a tent at just one point, and then flat again all around. It actually looks like what i imagine when i think of africa, except there are these brilliantly colored saris and turbans framed against the dust. The clothing here is fascinating. Much more traditional, especially as compared to the fairly western dressing tibetans and nepalis of sikkim and darjeeling.

Speaking of deserts, Lindsay is going to teach english for three weeks in the Thar desert, starting on Dec. 3. (thanks victoria!) And i will be venturing off to Kala Raksha, the textile co-op in Kutch. I am tremendously excited and i have absolutely no idea what i will do....adventures, anyone?

We are now in Jodphur, which is unbelieveably beautiful. It is full of buildings painted a really vibrant blue, originally Brahmins did this, but now it's just fashion. There is a huge sandstone fort that overlooks the city, i think we will go explore that tomorow. We are staying in the old city, which is full of crazy falling down buildings covered in stone carvings. Ruins galore. There are huge water tank/ walled in lakes that we keep coming across. They are clearly quite old and filled with murkey water and some trash. The sunset creeping around the sandstone and blue of the buildings here was lovely. It was also nice to see light after 6pm.

It's funny to return to INDIA (capital I, i would use italics if i could) I read today that 45% of foreign tourists to india come to Rajasthan. It is quite easy to see why. It definately brings back all of those feelings about this country where i love it and hate it all at the same time. It smells like india again. Darjeeling was a funny european enclave filled with indian tourists. This is certainly india, i have been almost run over by a motorbike about 50 times in 4 hours. There are drums coming from the street. We have been around 3 wedding parties today and we've been in Rajasthan for about 16 hours. This is a good sign.

Our thanksgiving dinner was really lovely. All the food turned out delicious, and our flying sparkler airplane was pretty fantastic. Rafi's presence is missed.
i'm excited about feeling my toes when i wake up tomorow morning, sleeping in the cold is over rated.

Sikkim the epic part 2- If only you could hear the theme song

2005-11-25T04:57:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving! I'd like to send a special shout out to the Chicago Expatriate community. I heard thanksgiving dinner was not happening this year. I guess it's harder to miss something that isn't there. I'm glad we did thanksgiving in august. But still.. Missing thanksgiving is making me miss all of my different families (friends and blood) quite a bit. If anyone feels like sending a little note my direction i would be much obliged. Amazing how words transmitted through computers can help a bit.

oh, and i just heard michael lennard got into college. wonders never cease

I have promised to finish sikkim the epic. i was informed by my now 21 yearold sister that my entry about trekking was 6 pages long in word. perhaps i will make this account slightly abreviated.

Sikkim the epic- part 2- If only you could hear the theme song

The rest of sikkim was, shockingly enough, quite beautiful. After trekking, we stayed in Yuksom for a day to have our clothes clean and use the internet ( a good idea, seeing as there was no other internet in western sikkim). We decided to do a bit of village visiting in western sikkim. The next day we hiked from yuksom to Tashiding, a small town about 20 km away, mostly by road. The bits of trail we were able to hike through jungle and farm fields were nicer than going by road, but on the road we saw all of 3 cars, all share jeeps, the whole time we were walking. Western sikkim is full of clementine trees, something i was not expecting. People here eat them when they are mostly green, and a little boy offered us some that he had just picked. I've never walked by growing oranges before. the scent is really incredible. We met some kids on the road, about 6km out, who walked with us, showed us short cuts and were generally fun to have around. They made the last bit of the walk much more bearable. As a note, next time you are hiking in sikkim, if you are given directions that use the word flat, it is a straight out lie. just for the record.

Tashiding is a small town anchored by a monestary 45 minutes straight up a hill ( i think everything in sikkim is straight up a hill. We stayed in a guest house where we ate our first meal in a parlor in which every surface was covered with knit doilys. wierd. the daughters of the hotelier sang us songs in english like mary had a little lamb etc. The youngest insisted on singing her favorite "we shall overcome" repeatedly. it was a bit surreal. in tashiding we first tried chang, a sikkimese beer made from fermented millet. You get a cup made from a foot of bamboo, with a bottom, filled with millet seeds that have been fermenting for a week, you then pour hot water into the cup and drink through a straw made of bamboo with a filter made of string. It's really tasty, and quite strong. The chang we had in Kechopari lake was better.

After a day in Tashiding, we moved on to pelling, the "big town" in the area. Big town sans internet. The only interesting thing about pelling was that we got a hotel room with a hot shower coming out of the wall (everything else has been bathing out of hot water buckets) and a tv with american movies. I never quite expected to watch "something about mary" in the himalayas. we'd all been itching to see a movie that wasn't in hindi for some time now, so just about anything was nice.

We spent a day in pelling and then moved on to kechopari lake. Kechopari is a sacred lake, primarily to buddhists, but to hindis as well as we discovered when our visit to the lake itself was accompanied by a bus load of hindi pilgrims. Kechopari is a tiny tiny town. We were lucky enough to be met by an 11 yearold boy who took us to his guest house. Also straight up a mountain. Halfway up he pointed out kechopari lake, down at the bottom of the hill where we came from. We didnt understand quite where he was leading us, and we thought for a moment that he had brought us up here for a good view. I think lindsay almost threw her bag off the mountain. Luckily, we perservered and were brought to Kechopari Lake Gompa, a tiny village surrounding a buddhist monestary (Gompa) Being in this village was like being on an island. For the entirity of our trek the weather was quite nice, growing cloudy in the afternoon, but clear during the mornings. The remainder of our visit in sikkim was shrouded in mist. Sometimes you could see that there were hills and mountains surrounding, but most of the time all that was visible were the 19 houses of the village. Our guest house was part of a tiny network of 3 or 4 houses run by a large family. It was difficult to figure out how everyone was related. There was a huge gang of children who were tons of fun to play with. All of the boys were monks, which ment that they went to school at the monestary in monks robes in various states of dissaray. On the photopage there is a picture of Barkash (our favorite) laughing as lindsay fails to put on his monk robe properly. Barkash also had pants that fell down at every possdible opportunity AND were completely shreaded through the entire crotch. He was the adopted son of a woman in the village, apparently she went to Gayzing(a nearby town) one day and "found him" and brought him home. We were awfully tempted to bring him home with us. But then, all three of us would have fought over him. he is about 4 years old and utterly charming. We ended up spending 3 days and 4 nights in Kechopari. The family made us the same thing for lunch and dinner every day, but it was always delicious, fresh vegetables! Most of our time was spent wandering or sitting around the fire they built in the afternoon, playing cards, drinking chang, painting and playing with the kids. It was really fantastic. A totally relaxing place. There was also a neat govt. subsidized organic herb garden near by where they had beehives on the side of the house that were just chunks of log. really lovely.

From kechopari we took a jeep to Legship where there were "hot springs" After a long hike we discovered that these hot springs were a tiny dribble of water by a monestary along the rangit river. Our dreams of swiming in warm water were dashed. Plus, i had been feeling a bit under the weather already and the smell of sulfer did me in. I spent most of legship asleep in bed. Sweet sweet hotsprings.

From legship we returned to Darjeeling. Most of our time here has been spent doing utilitarian things, like catching up on a month of email and blog, trying to buy train tickets (3 days in a row!! the second day they shut the window in our faces after an hour of waiting), wrestling with the indian post office (the beurocracy here is stifling) and other such exciting chores. It is tremendously cold here, and the unheated buildings are still eating away at our souls a bit. There is a cold grey mist that is permanently in residence. It is time to go. Tomorow we part ways with Rafi, which is kind of huge. We've been traveling with him for over half our trip. He is going to a livestock festival in Bihar, i think, and Lindsay and i are hopping on a 48(ish) hour train to Rajasthan. wooee!!
i can't wait for warm weather. i know i'll want to delete that when it gets too hot.
We tried to make thanksgiving dinner at our guest house last night, but the market was closed becuase it's thursday (clearly..) so we ate tibetan food and postponed our thanksgiving feast until tonight. Mashed potatoes, Pumpkin honey ginger mash, steamed vegetables, shukshuka (an israeli dish with eggs cooked in tomato sauce) and pommegranate salad. we are going to eat well tonight! Rafi made an airplane out of bamboo and paper with our remaining sparkler from diwali. I think we are going to attempt to fly it down the street in flames. Our day today was spent at the zoo looking at all the animals we did not see in sikkim: snow lepoards, red pandas, gorgeous iridescent pheasants. Shopping in the market for thanksgiving and playing pool (terribly)
Here comes the desert!!!

New Pictures!

2005-11-22T07:44:00.000-08:00

In lieu of my second section of sikkim, the epic, i have chosen to present a month of photographs. Check the link for our photo website on the left side of this page.
There are captions and everything.
yippie.
happy almost thanksgiving.

sikkim, the epic, part 1- the rest of the trip is flat- lies i have told myself

2005-11-20T05:15:00.000-08:00

i want to start out by giving a belated , but absolutely necessary, 21st birthday shout out to my not so little sister. Hurahh!!! i shouted from the middle of the Himalayas but i thought this might be a little easier to understand. Please feel free to send her the appropriate congratulations, her website is in the links section. She is busy slaving away at a graphic design firm and could probably use a little festivity.

And three cheers for the 50th wedding Aniversary of my Grandma and Grandpa Schlueter. I'm sad I wasn't at the party. please send me some pictures. I want to hear all about it. 50 years is an awfully long time. I feel a bit like i've been in india forever and it's only been 2 months.

Thirdly, happy november 19th to all of you who celebrate those sort of things.

Fourth, Lindsay and i have been here 2 whole months as of Nov 17. We have been here such a long and short time. how rediculous.

lindsay and i had a terrible moment where we thought we missed thanksgiving, we thought it was the 3rd thursday of the month. what a dreadful thing that would have been..

So i didn't want to write my blog about the trek the day after we finished because i didn't know where to start. what a dreadful idea. We ended up with no internet from the last little post i did until now. So much has happened since then, now i really don't know where to start. So i'm going to attempt a 2 part blog to cover the last 3 weeks(!) yes sikkim kept us a little longer than we expected. That's okay. it's sort of paradise.

our trek was quite possibly the most demanding physical thing i have ever done. Quite possibly, HA!, most decidedly. We hiked 87km with 2800m of altitude change, just for fun. I'm not quite sure what sort of uppers they put in the tibetan food, but they worked. Almost every day was dreadfully difficult. Even our rest day was hard because camping at 4000m means that it is rediculously cold (-5 degrees C in our tent at night for starters) All three of us had a difficult time adjusting to the fact that it got dark, and cold, by about 3pm. This means you hike for much of the day and then hobble into camp to crawl into your sleeping bag and wish it wasnt so stinking cold. I know i ought to make us sound tougher, but you spend a week sleeping outside with the snot freezing to your face and then get back to me. Not to mention that the hiking was really difficult. we knew it would be hard, and we lnew it would be high altitude, but every day was a challenge.
The first day was rough and it wasn't even high altitude. We hiked through these amazing forests, filled with ferns, huge bamboo, wild orchids and primevil pines (brandyn you would have been in heaven) as we climbed a bit in altitude, everything began to be covered with the most amazing dense green mosses. The trail wound along the river, which was a rich aquamarine color capped with white, it was tremendously fastmoving and freezing. Every once in a while we would come across a really beautiful waterfall pooling down the hillside. There were several amazonian bridges, suspension bridges of the sort that you walk across really fast so as not to linger too long on any of the weak patches. There were already holes in the deck of the bridge, probably made by a couple hundred pounds of dzo, but still...
A brief detour for the explanation of our entourage. The trekkers were lindsay, rafi, myself, jean claude- the french- berlinner pianist and generally fun person( who, strangely enough, met blayne in berlin this summer. wierd? i think so. it's a small world after all bum bum bum..) patrick- a social worker from manchester with a lovely sense of humor, our guide jusman, our cook, 4 sherpas and 3 dzo. Dzo are these amazing yak cow hybrid animals. They are bred to withstand higher altitudes than purebread yaks can. Take a moment and examine that sentance. We were hiking to an altitude above where a yak can survive. Clearly this is completely stupid. Anyway, the sherpas are amazing human beings who scramble up the mountain wearing unbelievable shoes, like flip flops or no shoes at all, carrying bamboo baskets filled with food and cooking supplies from straps that rest on the crown of their head. They also did rediculous things like bring us tea on the side of the mountain, making us feel like we were on cruise ship himalaya. Granted, a tremendously painful and freezing cold cruise ship, but when someone meets you halfway up a mountain at 5am with tea and popcorn, you feel a bit fancy. Let me also point out that we were on the budget trek. The most budget trek we could find. Rafi and i went trek shopping when lindsay had strep in gangtok and we found companies that wouldnt take us for less than $65 a day. Another guy told us he could maybe take us for less, but then we couldnt have ham! this didnt seem like such a problem for us, seeing as lindsay is a vegetarian. Luckily we managed to find the $23 a day trek. An amount, granted, that is wildly exorbitant, considering that we have been living on approximately $4 a day. We almost didn't go because it was so expensive. But lindsay pointed out that it costs about the same to live for a day in chicago, and there are certainly no himalayas in chicago...so.... That said, we spent much of our trek trying to figure out what the $65 people got that we didn't get. It couldn't have been all that much. Their sherpas carried plastic chairs and folding tables so they could sit at a table for meals, we sat on yoga mats on the ground, we all thought making someone carry tables up a mountain for you was more than a little creepy. One french group had a crazy guide who made them crepes, again, a bit uneccessary. They probably had butter on their popcorn.

The great thing about our trekking group is that none of us were exactly outdoor champions, to begin with at least. Jean Claude could scramble up a mountain faster than anyone else, but he said that's because he only weighs 50 kilos. Rafi moved along steadily, patrick steadily with rests, lindsay and i steadily with more rests, but generally, none of us were exactly mountaineering nuts. We lost patrick about halfway through because he was having some serious problems with altitude sickness. That was disapointing. He was a good sport about it, he knew he needed to descend in altitude. The altitude sickness thing is really scary, many of the symptoms are also the symptoms of dehydration, or being in the cold for too long, or exhaustion. headache, nausea, that sort of thing. I didn't read up on it before we left so all i could remember were the two tremendously helpful symptoms of feeling a bit drunk and "a frothy pink spittum that eventually contains blood" obviously i was constantly spitting on things to make sure i wasn't dying. This was easy since all of us had pretty nasty colds. There was a lot of spitting all around.

Okay, so back to that first day. We hiked for most of the day through these incredible forests, moving up and down through the hills in a way that was slightly tiring, but generally okay. Then, like a present for hiking the first 11km, the last 5 km were straight up a mountain. Not straight up a mountain like bouldering on a rock wall, but walking up steep paths, zigzaging up the mountain, for 5 km. I don't think i realized until hiking down the last day just how long uphill it was. That was sort of a tough blow for our egos considering that our bodies were pretty wrecked and it wasn't even high altitude yet.
The second day was also tough hiking 10km with a 1000m altitude increase (the first day was 1200m) Luckily, as a reward for our hard work, we were hiking through some of the most incredible forest i've ever seen. Huge rhotodendron trees with peeling mauve bark presented a thicket of gnarled branches all around us. It was truly a tolkien forest. We passed through sections with impossibly tall trees, moss covering every available surface and huge tarzan vines dangling all about. It was pretty magical. Apparently in spring all of the rhotodendron are in bloom, 31 different varieties. The best flowers are supposedly during the monsoon in the summer, but then there are also leeches which fall off the trees down the neck of your shirt and into your boots. mmm.
The third day was our aclimitization day at Dzongri- meeting place of man and mountain gods (i swear that is what the sign said) 3900m. We were awakened at 4am to climb another 300m up to the very top of the mountain where we were able to see a truly incredible range of mountains. Mt Kachenjonga, something like 8000m tall, and friends. It was pretty rediculous. snowcapped mountains to the north, endless misty hills to the south and spiky granite peaks to the east and west. The viewpoint was, as all sikimese viewpoints are, swathed in buddhist prayer flags, a fact which makes every view just a little bit lovelier. We were there in time to see the sun rise over the eastern mountains. It was magnificent.

The next day was unnexpected. I was so amazed by the forests that we had traveled through and the Dzongri viewpoint that i was not expecting to be much more impressed. I felt pretty impressed at that point, and the thought of spending 5 more nights above the tree line wasn't exactly thrilling. I felt like the high altitude thing was a little over rated and that i had seen the mountains and they were gorgeous etc etc. but i was done. ha. That day's walk took us through the most beautiful alpine medows. I felt like i was in the sound of music. Mom, you would have been blissful. These huge grassy rolling hills, surrounded by tremendous mountains. These mountains are so unbelieveably large, i can't even begin to express it. The end of the walk that day led us to a little trekker's hut (no tent, bliss!!) by a beautiful rushing river. The trekker's huts were vaguely warmer than the tents, providing us with walls, but walls that you could definately see between the boards and huge cracks in the floor. We woke up the next morning to jean claude's exclamation over breakfast that we had a mouse running over our sleeping bags as we slept. ha.
Night 5 was spent at Tansing, an incredible windswept valley that contained the meddow where we stayed, the river racing by, and an enormous boulder field- part of the huge glacial morraine that continued all the way to the glacier, 6km or so away. The mountains were almost on top of us. Tansing was our starting point for our hike to Gochla, or rather, not the gochla pass itself, but viewpoints of the gocha mountain and Kachenjunga and Pandim and all the other heavy hitters of the region. Our hike to Gochla started at 3am on day six. At 3am it is still dark, and the moon had been out all day so we weren't exactly party to a little moonlight. We had 2 flashlights for six people (i had managed to break lindsay's flashlight the night before) and both flashlights died along the walk. Despite an incredible display of stars, we were decidedly in the dark for a hike that was rocky and managed to cross some rather terrifying frozen streams. icy rocks, rushing water, darkness. ack. Somehow, despite the fact that we were tremendously close to falling on our faces for this portion of the hike, it may end up being my favorite part of the whole trek. We got to watch the pre- dawn glow that traced the mountains in the faintest glimmer of light grow to a full fledged sunrise. The snow covered mountains in front of us glowed first icy blue, then pink then a brilliant white. The remainder of the day's hike was to move straight up the mountain (yet again!), first to Samiti Lake, a holy lake and then to the first viewpoint of Gochla. The first viewppoint was at 4800m, and was my personal goal. It is possible to go further, to the second viewpoint and even to the pass itself, but i really just wanted to get to that viewpoint. The climb there was really difficult for me. The lake was really beautiful but i hardly registered it on the way up. The combination of difficult hiking and altitude made life rough. I stopped for a few minutes every few minutes, trying to breathe properly, after which i would drag my protesting body a bit higher and then stop a bit more. Reaching the viewpoint was an incredible moment of success which was tempered by the fact that it was tremendously rediculously cold. i checked the thermometer and read -5 degrees, which seemed odd, since our tent had been that cold. I later realized that the thermometer had been switched to farenheit, so it was -5 degrees F. Standing at this viewpoint for a couple of minutes felt like standing at the Chicago and Halstead Bus stop in february for 2 hours in a T shirt with no hat or gloves. The viewpoint was between two mountains, Pandim, it's peak and face towards us, covered in snow, and something else, this massive chunk of snow and granite. It was pretty incredible. After just a couple of minutes and a very quick picture, lindsay and rafi decided to continue to the second viewpoint. Jean claude and i began to methodically make our way down the mountain. The most incredible thing about the way back to camp was that i got to walk for most of the day by myself. It's a pretty well troden path, as himalayan paths at 4200m go, so sherpas and dzos would amble by every once in a while. But generally, i got to walk, by myself, through the himalayas.
i think i will keep that one with me for a long time. Samiti lake was really beautiful, but i think i'll let lindsay tell you all about it.
We felt like such rockstars after the Gochla thing that we thought the way back would be easy.
it wasn't.
<shocker>
nonethless, it felt pretty amazing. We took our time. We took a couple more pictures on the way down than up. Of course a rhotodendron forest can't be quite captured by a camera. figures.
We all smelled dreadful and had incredible hair but, damnit, i ate a boiled potato at 4800m. That is something for a girl to be proud of.
Sikkim, the epic part two will roll your way sometime tomorow.
get excited.
i'm excited about going to the post office to pick up some mail tomorow. and wearing something other than the pants i have been wearing for 3 weeks. Amazing how the selection between 2 pairs of pants seems suddenly luxurious.
oh and we all had crazy dreams in the mountains, maybe it was the runny noses, one particularly amazing one involved (great) aunt virginia deciding to teach yoga in india. That one kept me laughing all week. grandaddy, do you think aunt virginia even knew what yoga was?

i heart sikkim

2005-11-11T22:35:00.000-08:00

hi everybody.

sikkim is absolutely stunning and gorgeous and grand. forget all that stuff i said about gangtok.

it is beautiful here.

trekking rocked us (haha) and we will post for real about it soon.

just know that we are safe and happy, if a bit sniffly from sleeping in the cold.

we miss you all like crazy

big love

k

--
Katie Lennard
somewhere on the subcontinent
http://whereiskatie.blogspot.com

airmail

2005-11-02T04:24:00.000-08:00

loved ones,

mail may be sent to darjeeling if it happens in the next 2 days.

i know ive said this before, i wont be able to say it again. we are staying in sikkim longer than expected, so.... more mail for us, hurahhh!

i know my own postcard production hasnt actually been up to speed. adjustment has taken a little while. worry not. homemade and storebought postcards are all in the works.

and em, i need your address, for some reason i dont have it.

smooches all around

happy diwaloween! or why is gangtok a little like bangkok?

2005-11-01T22:41:00.000-08:00

we've been celebrating both diwali, the hindi festival of lights, and halloween for a couple of days now. Diwali started last night, with the most terrifying fireworks being set off by small children in the middle of the street. we're talking serious chinese fireworks here, fourth of july big fireworks. it sounded a bit like we were in a war zone. just about everyone here celebrates diwali, regardless of whether they are hindi or not. most buisnesses and homes have lines of little terracotta oil lamps along balconies, entranceways or just about anywhere else that needs a little light. Just about every buisness downtown was open last night, filled with the owners' families dressed up in their nicest saris and fabulous gold jewelry. (odge, you would have died) The buisnesses owned by hindi families are clearly the best decorated, with ropes of bright orange marigolds and 8 foot tall cuttings from bananna trees framing the entranceway. It's pretty fantastic. coming down through the mountains last night, we saw little mountain houses with their roofs covered in candles, you could see fireworks all across the valley, and candles and christmas lights. last night we decided that diwali is a little like christmas, the fourth of july and halloween all rolled up into one. little kids, when they arent trying to blow up their houses, un down the street, jumping up and down, shouting "happy diwali!" you can see hindi families performing puja inside their buisnesses, there was a traveling band of drummers who would walk down the street, playing and receiving donations.

Across from the market is a grand diwali mela (carnival) it was a good combination of a cincinnati church festival (lots of gambling) and an american carnival. We did possibly the stupidest thing we have done the entire time we have been in india, which is ride an indian carnival ride. what a terrible idea. i dont ride carnival rides in america for the ovbious reason that they could fall apart and leave you as a pile of mush on the ground. The carnival ride in question was a feris wheel, which was run at the fastest speed i have ever seen a feris wheel run. i was terrified. it was lots of fun. i think the highlight of the carnival, other than the cotton candy and fresh masala puffed rice snack mix (what a combo), was the sideshow style tent, featuring dancers performing hit bollywood dance numbers. this was made even better by the fact that 2 days before, as lindsay was getting over strep throat (awesome), we went to see a dreadfully low budget bollywood movie at the theatre here. the opening shot of the movie was the chicago skyline, after which they went to an office to show a heated discussion between indian mobsters. it was fantastic. lots of singing and dancing, everything that was lacking in the movie we saw in lucknow. i have a sneaking suspicion that the lucknow movie was a really good movie, what i understood it was quite nice. heart warming even....anyway, these sideshow bollywood dancers were mostly terrible, lipsynching to their songs and halfheartedly performing dance moves. definately one of the most entertaining things i have seen in a while. the girls had so much makeup on that they looked a bit like drag queens. dont worry, lindsay got a video clip on her camera.

as lindsay mentioned in her last blog, gangtok is a bit wierd. it feels like "asia" not like india at all. Tourism is really developed here, mostly in the form of eco tourism. it is becoming a huge center for trekking, since the political situation in nepal is a little sketchy. there are huge signs everywhere that say "sikkim, small but beautiful" and other such profound statements. it's pretty funny. i can say that gangtok is not my favorite city, we've been here a little longer than expected, between strep throat and trying to figure out what to do with trekking...ughh. our room here doesnt have any windows and it has a little bit of a mildew funk. how on earth could i sleep anywhere without windows?ha.. farm folks? there is a great sticker on a door in our room that says "do not distrub" ahhh..english.

luckily, as soon as you wander out of the main part of town, gangtok isn't so bad. we took a great walk to a buddhist monestary and stuppa on the edge of town. it is high on a hill surrounded by forests of prayer flags. lindsay was salivating the whole time. the stuppa itself was very lovely, and the 108 prayer wheels around it were fascinating. we got to take a cable car back to town, which afforded beautiful, if rather cloudy views of the sunset.

yesterday, we went to rumtek monestary, a beautiful buddhist monestary about 24 km from gangtok. It is the seat of a 20 year old tibetan lama who the indian govt. will not grant a permit for entry into sikkim. he waits in dharamsala while the monks here burn butter lamps and polish his chair in honor of his arrival some day. the monestary is covered with amazing carvings painted in vibrant oil colors. paint here seems to be richer than anywhere else in the world. Wandering around this monestary are monks of all sizes, little tiny boy monks playing with cap guns(!), teenage monks sweeping grain and older monks playing some sort of board game. after looking around the monestary, we started to wander in the surrounding woods and found a spot where you can shimmy under the barbed wire fence protecting the monestary. clearly, we did this, and found a huge concentration of prayer flags flying over the secret soccer field of rumtek monestary. teenage monks in robes and soccer kleets playing a pretty rockin game. they had to make sure to grabbed the ball as soon as it went out of bounds, or else it would fly down the mountain. lindsay sat and journaled and rafi and i took a little hike up. for the record, when rafi says 'take a little hike up' he means go to the very top of the mountain. the forest we hiked through was one of the most incredible i have ever been in, completely primeival, filled with giant and small ferns, firs of all sorts and wild orchids. there was a tiny pine grove that stole my heart. near the top was a huge tree with prayer flags streaming from it, and at the very top were incredible views of the valleys and hills all around us. i cant wait to get out of gangtok.

luckily, i wont have to wait too long. tomorow, the three of us, and a very nice british man and a rather comedic frenchman who has been living in berlin (he is exactly what you would picture) and some guides, porters and YAKS! are venturing forth on a 9 day trek into the himalayas. oh dear friends, if you could only see us now. this trek is pretty popular, a couple of rafi's friends have done it and said it is gorgeous. it starts in yukosam and travels through dzongri to gochala. so...off we go. we just extended our sikim permits through the 26th of november, so after we mountain hike i think we will do a bit of traveling from village to village in west sikim before we return to darjeeling to pick up mail, half of our stuff and hang out for a few days before we book it all the way across the country to rajasthan. wheww.. you'll hear from me in about 10 days or so...

until then.

big love!

oh and thankyou for all the commenting. i know it seems a bit silly some times, but its usually the first thing lindsay and i read whenever we get on the internet. little electronic high fives really make us happy.

mostly food and tea

2005-10-26T06:05:00.000-07:00

katie, if you were on an indian train for 24 hours, what would you
eat? well, friends, i'm glad you asked this question. Here is the
catalogue of food consumed by myself, miss theo and senor habib:
4 small bowls made of dried leaves filled with spicy potato veg mixture
20+ poori (fried bread)
4 hunks of coconut
3 chunks of pineapple (slightly salted)
6 hardboiled eggs (lindsay and katie only.rafi was concerned about cholesterol)
35 cups of chai (aprox. half of which were consumed by rafi)
1 buffalo milk lassi (yoghurt drink. very very chunky)
3 klitres of water
12 banannas
1 package of biscuts- cardomom flavor
2 servings of raw sprouting chickpeas with lemon, salt, masala, onion
3 or 4 samosas
1 glass of fresh apple juice
probably some chocolate

Indian trains are nothing if not an opportunity for eating. Our train
took us through Bihar, the poorest and least developed state in India.
The general populace on this train was a little less afluent than our
past train rides. Bihar is flat and near sea level. We passed
countless marshy plains and fields of a lucious technicolor green.
Most of the train stations we passed through provided us with people
wearing a spectrum of brilliant colors, holding giant bundles of
produce wrapped in saris on top of their heads. At one station a
family got on the train with 10 or so giant bundles of corriander,
they filled the corridor near the bathrooms, and the bathrooms
themselves. Usually the indian train toilet is a nose holding
experience, but not so when there are a couple kilos of corriander
sitting on top of the sink. Our train was full of people heading to
Assam and the Northeastern states that are mostly separated from india
by Bangladesh. The ethnic makeup of people was fascinating. South
Indian, north indian, tibetan, bengali, nepalese, bangladeshi and much
more. Such gorgeous people. We had a bit of excitement when at 5;30
am, a group of 10 or so Hijras (eunuchs that dress as women) burst
into the train car, demanding money. I slept through it. of course.
Don't worry about me missing the excitement. Another group of 3 came
through when i was awake. People here are scared of them, apparently
they have some nasty curses, and they pinch. One of them was picking
on Rafi and he turned very pink.
From the train we spent a night in Siliguri which was unnexpectedly a
bit like chinatown in new york. i dont know quite how to describe it.
Totally wierd. Our hotel was a combination of the little princess
(mosquito net over each of the 4 canopied single beds in our room),
the bates motel and granny and grandaddy wood's house in georgia.
odd?? yes.
The next morning we took a 3 hour share jeep up to darjeeling. It was
really bizzare to go from hot, flat wetlands to this mountain region
in such a short period of time. Tea plantations cover the
hillsides.The people here are mostly tibetan and nepalese and so
incredibly kind. Many of them dress in traditional styles, but i have
seen here the most modern western dress that i have seen in all of
india. To get to darjeeling, you drive past a series of increasingly
more picturesque villages. The mountain architecture is oddly a little
familiar and completely beautiful. Lindsay claimed houses to live in
the entire way up here.
Did i mention that to get to Darjeeling you have to drive through the clouds?
A movie company would kill to make mist like that. There were times
that i wondered if our driver could see the road. Absolutely
mystical. Darjeeling itself is a rather sprawling town that sits along
a large expanse of mountain. To go anywhere you climb up an endless
number of steep stairs. directions always involve the words up or
down.The architecture here is a mix of that gorgeous mountain look and
a funny british colonial look. Our guest house is the nicest we've
stayed in, a couple of rooms rented out by a really nice family.
Lindsay and i have the girl room that is painted bright pink. Rafi's
room is green. The hillsides are covered with tea trees, huge cedars,
and delicous mosses. The air here is misty so everything looks so
luscious all the time. There are all sorts of evergreen trees in
unfamiliar varieties.

Today we went on a hunt for chai, which was suprisingly difficult in a
town known for tea, and found ourselves at a buddhist temple in the
company of a nice monk we met on the street. We were able to join in
on the drumming of the volunteers for a little bit. There was a "peace
pavilion" with huge golden buddhas and really nice sandstone carvings.
The monk then took us to his house for lemon tea. By his house i mean
the abandoned british raj era mansion that he is living in. I have
pictures. Don't worry. Lets just remember thatmodern ruins are one of
my favorite things in the world. I was a pretty happy lady. There were
crumbling walkways and collapsing balconies and bright green mosses
growing on everything. It was one of the best ruins i have ever been
in, perhaps surpassing the bombed thermal spa, but dont quote me on
that. It was just further proof that we have the best adventures when
we meet nice people and let them give us tea.
Last night i had my first tibetan food. If someone ever offers you
tibetan food, take it. We ate momo, vegetable or meat filled dumplings
which are rather like pirogi, beef soup with homemade pasta, and a
pastry filled with cabbage and other veggies, then fried.mmmm. today
the monk gave us bread that he cooks over the fire in the corner of a
room in his ABANDONED MANSION. He uses pieces of the house for
firewood. It was sort of wild west meets colonial india and tibetan
buddhism. perfect.
Tonight, we are using the kitchen of our hotel to cook dinner. Rafi is
making fish and he is immoderately excited, not that we aren't. I
think lindsay and i are in charge of figuring what all of the odd
veggies in the market are, and cooking them. There is one that looks
like audrey 2 from little shop of horrors.
Overall, Darjeeling is nice but a bit touristic, as rafi would say.
It makes me very very excited for sikim. I think we will leave about
half our stuff here and come back for a couple of days. yippie.
tomorow we go to find a permit for sikim, i hope they stamp my
passport.

Postal Corrections

2005-10-21T18:57:00.000-07:00

Alright loved ones,
If you haven't already rushed off to the post office to send me buckets of mail, Lindsay and I have decided that it would be easier for us to pick up mail in Darjeeling.
SO,
Katie LENNARD (underline)
Poste Restante, GPO
Darjeeling, 734101
INDIA

all the same stuff with return addresses and finger crossing still applies.
If something is already enroute to gangtok, worry not, just let me know. Give me a little heads up as well if you send something to darjeeling, just so we know what to look for.

Lindsay, Rafi and i are in Lucknow. Our overnight train went marvelously last night. We met a middleaged couple who were kind of a mixture of the srinivasas and mom and dad. He was an engineer, she has studied textiles and told us places to go in the south. She taught lindsay and i an embroidery stitch while the dad told rafi places he could study sculpture. Lucknow is wierd. really modern, except the bazzar which is old school muslim india. So full of people. We had beef kebaabs for lunch which were completely different from what i expected. little patties of meat that was so finely ground that it was a little like eating meat with the texture of peanut butter..mmmm. i liked the bread a lot better, big chewy flatbreads that are bright orange. Rafi said it was like Yemanese bread. Vic, have you encountered this? Its funny how my concept of a salad has shifted from leafy greens to slices of cucumber, onion and tomato with a little lime juice.
we've got 2 more days in lucknow and then a 24 hour train to siliguri. There are mosques everywhere here and lots of crumbling raj architecture from the '30s. This is the first time I've been in a primarily muslim city. Our hotel is surrounded by little shops selling car parts. When we got in at about 9am, all the shops were closed and the streets were pretty empty. Apparently nothing opens here until 10 or 11 and then they stay open until 9 or 10 at night. There are kind of creepy modern coffee shops and lots of electronics stores. and a dominoes pizza. and a lot of liquor stores which is odd considering what a muslim town this is. Erez, any thoughts?
We walked down the embroidery street in the bazzar today and the stationary street and the street where you send faxes and.... its really funny. So specialized. Its a wonder that any of the individual stores can survive. The wierdest thing is the lack of cows on the street, which, makes sense, given that i ate one for lunch, but still, it doesnt quite feel like india.

Postal Corrections

2005-10-21T05:56:00.000-07:00

Intercontinental Postal Expression

2005-10-20T14:47:00.000-07:00

I know that each one of you has a stack of unsent postal communications that are threatening to take over your livingrooms. Never fear.
Postcards, love letters and Chipotle Burritos (oh i wish i was joking,corn salsa.) can be sent to the post office in Gangtok,Sikim
here's what to do.

katie LENNARD (Underline the last name too)
POSTE RESTANTE
GPO
GANGTOK, SIKIM
734301
INDIA

Please include a return address, make sure it gets sent airmail and cross your fingers.
If you want it to get to us it ought to be sent in the next 2 or 3 days.
If your postcard doesnt make this mailing, worry not,we'll have another address somewhere along the line, i'm just not quite sure when.
good luck.

And you thought we were actually in Schaumberg...

2005-10-20T14:31:00.000-07:00

thanks to my amazingly patient traveling partner, and the help of a very kind german, our adventures are now available in technicolor, on the internet.

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/lindsaytheoindia/my_photos

I've put a link on the sidebar of the blog to the yahoo photo page for futrue reference. We are hoping my tech guru little sister may be able to sass it up a bit, but for now... tada.
(lindsay has informed me that this is a somewhat random selection of our pictures, but it looks good to me.)
Our bags are packed. tonight lindsay, rafi and i take a bus to haridwar at about 5:30 and then we catch a train from haridwar to lucknow at 7:30. That should put us in Lucknow at about 7:30am. People keep telling us that lucknow is not an especially inspiring place, but we have an entire slate of things to do, such as find black watercolor paint and buy a new battery charger (mine melted...oops.)see a bollywood movie in a theatre and eat omlettes and kebaabs. Our train to Sikim is the night of the 23rd.
Rafi accused us of having all sorts of "american gadgets" like our Uv. water purifier (fair enough) and lindsay's booklight. american gadgets. ha. i dont think the ipod helped our case much.
We had a torrential thunderstorm with hail last night. that was pretty fantastic.

Looking at our pictures makes me realize just how few pictures of rishikesh we have. We've just been living here, not really "visiting" so we weren't really in tourist picture taking mode. Maybe we'll snap a few on the way out. We've been wandering around this morning, eating apple cake under the mango tree, siping chai at the chai stand, playing with manager (the puppy who i will not be surprised if i hear his little yips coming out of lindsay's backpack on the train tonight.), hoping our laundry that was left out in the rainstorm will dry before we leave. It's been a nice place to be for a bit, and now...

water water everywhere.

2005-10-17T21:58:00.000-07:00

There is finally a travel plan!! It's about time to leave Rishikesh. After some initial misgivings, it has turned out to be a really good place for us. We've met a bunch of really lovely people here, and we've managed to carve out some sort of a schedule. This is really comforting on some level. We know that upon waking up we can wander downstairs to sit under the mango street or on the little wooden platform of the chai shop in the alley and meet our friends. Someone has often bought a wheat flour bananna cake and we sit around and read the newspaper and drink chai and relax. It's funny to have something approximating "normal" life here. It feels really familiar, which is entirely unnexpected. That said, i am begining to feel like i know what is going to happen every day. Clearly this is entirely un-indian and must be stopped. ha. We are venturing forth once again with our friend rafi to Sikim, a little state nestled between nepal, tibet and bhutan(!), just north of Darjeeling. It is a buddhist state with big mountains and apparently really really nice people. You need a permit to get in, which lasts for 15 days, so tourism is limited. (worry not family, this is not because it is unsafe, just because they dont want too many tourists.) As you may remember, our original plan was to travel north west to Dharamsala. Now we are traveling absolutely the opposite direction, backtracking and overshooting varanasi. Genius. We hadn't initially considered sikim, but all of our sources, including the israeli pipeline which is more comprehensive than any travel guide, have told us that it is an amazing place to go. Plus, it is the most environmentally conscious state in india, hurahh.

We spent the weekend trying to get train tickets. All of the direct tickets from here are booked until the 7th of november, which is not so desirable, what with winter just around the corner. Finally after numerous attempts (sweet indian beurocracy) we've found some tickets to Lucknow on the 21st, and then tickets from Lucknow to Siliguri (where we get our permits for sikim) on the 23rd. This breaks what was to be a 35 hour train ride into more manageable 12 hour and 24 hour stints. This also gives us 2 days in a primarily muslim city famous for kebabs and all sorts of meat. Rafi and i are a bit excited, we keep telling lindsay that there will be eggs to eat, so she is pretty happy as well. We're not quite sure what we want to do in Sikim. Something involving hiking is the primary objective. They have tent rentals and lots of hikers huts all over the state, many basic treks involve simply hiking from village to village, something we will probably indulge in. Our friend Erez may come to meet us as well, or he may meet us in Rathjastan. I must admit to being excited about the the idea of having a boy to travel with. It makes life so so much easier. When someone asks "where is your husband," we can just point. As long as they dont ask both of us at the same time, it could be confusing to try to explain "mormon". ha. It's really frustrating because wanting a boy to travel with us for these reasons goes against all my notions of empowerment. Nonetheless, it makes life just so much easier. Whenever we go somewhere with erez or rafi we get bothered so much less. we also met a really great pair of israeli sisters, oriana and alexi. Alexi returned home to go back to sculpture school (she took a semester at RISD) But oriana may travel with us in rathjastan. Lindsay shaved Oriana's head the other night. it was a good friendship-making gesture.

Lindsay, rafi and i took a sikim test run yesterday on a little walk to a waterfall. This turned out to be far more of an adventure than we had expected. The waterfall was a good way up a mountain on paths that were covered in tiny rocks (dreamy for coming down..blech) The waterfall was really nice, and deep enough for swimming, not too cold. Then some people passed and said that the path continued to an even better waterfall that was even deeper. So we scampered up an even steeper path for another good distance and found another even more beautiful waterfall. It was surrounded by amazing trees with normal trunks but branches that were clearly cactus and the leaves of a succulent. Very odd. It was a little like hiking in an american forrest, but then out of nowhere would spring a bananna tree or a palm of some sort. We had the most amazing views along the path. Somehow, we convinced ourselves that this was not the waterfall in question and that we should keep going. Soon we found ourselves overlooking a valley filled with terraced rice paddies, and women in gorgeous jewel tones waving and shouting at us from the other side of the mountain. We made friends with a little boy who was carrying a sack of flour and we walked along the concrete "sidewalk"- a foot wide concrete wall that made one side of the irrigation channels. The irrigation network was really impressive. Apparently they grow rice twice a year in the wet season, and wheat in the dry. This is the end of the second rice harvest. As we wandered along these irrigation ditches we found yet another magnificent waterfall, but no way to get close to it. We moved along the ditches in the hopes of finding a way to get close to the waterfall. We found something much much better than any old waterfall. A pair of boys with huge bundles of straw on their heads, and our flour sack carrying friend let us on a fast paced trek. "follow me" the oldest one kept calling over his shoulder. We were clearly in a farming village, but a really spread out village along the side of these mountains. They dropped off their bundles at one farm and we picked up even more children who led us to the house of the boy who spoke english. It was gorgeous. It turns out that the father of the english speaking boy is a teacher, and he told us all about farming. He showed us the scythes that the women use to cut the grain, all the while an older woman, his mother probably was drying and sifting the rice on the roof. We sat on the roof drinking chai made with buffalo milk hanging out with the 7 or so children that were gathered. The younger son of the teacher was about six and he had just lost his front teeth. He was pretty fantastic. While we were there, a pair of men stopped by carrying huge bundles of saris for sale. They crouched on the ground with the women and examined all of the possibilities. I can't express how nice it was. So natural. no one looked at us like we were overly strange. We had carried a papaya with us all day, with the intent of eating it at this shangri la of a waterfall. We ate it on the roof with this family instead. The three of us agreed that this was the sort of adventure that we want to have in Sikim. We didnt get to stay as long as we wanted, because dark was coming on rather fast. The boy led us out of the village and we scrambled down the mountain to hit the road exactly at nightfall. We discovered there were no buses and hitched a ride for the 6 km back to Rishikesh, something lindsay and i would have NEVER done on our own, but made suprisingly easier knowing that we were with an exisraeli soldier. It was a pretty incredible day.

I forgot to mention that over the weekend we went whitewater rafting on the ganga. I got to float down the ganges with the help of a lifejacket. That was pretty amazing. The current was indeed just as strong as i thought it was.

This morning i did laundry with some powdered tide in a bucket. The instructions on the packet are pretty great. I think i'll probably go eat some bananna cake.

ps. i now know how to say the name of gargamel's cat from the smurfs in hebrew. That, my friends, is cultural exchange.

Party Fowl.

2005-10-14T13:01:00.000-07:00

Today Lindsay and i will attempt to cook a mexican feast in the indian kitchen of our hotel. this should be entertaining. The largest problem is finding the right chappati (flat bread) to serve as our tortillas) the other problem is the real mexican guy who checked into our hotel a couple of days ago who knows that burritos are not real mexican food. Ehh. we're making a chicagomex meal. I think we'll just buy cooked rice and beans from dhabas and we will make refried beans and lime rice. I'm quite excited. we're going to downtown rishikesh in a few minutes, to the market, to find all of our ingredients. the other problem is cheese. i dont know if we are going to find a suitable cheese here. Blayne told me about his dream for a tv show which forces people to make tacos all over the world using the available supplies. Clearly if this were a real tv show, lindsay and i would kick ass.
Yesterday i fasted with some people who were fasting for Yom Kippur, as an intellectual exercise. No eating or drinking anything, even water, for 24 hours. It was actually easier than i thought it would be. To break the fast, lindsay and our friends erez and rafi and i went to this strip of eateries about 20 min by rickshaw away. Rishikesh is a pilgrimage town which means no meat no eggs no alcohol. This area is just outside of rishikesh and all of the places have big signs saying "chicken!" and big cardboard bottles of booze. it was pretty funny. It felt a bit like we were going to the seedy part of town for something as shady and controversial as...shhhh....CHICKEN! it was really really good. The first meat i've had since i got here. Lindsay had fish that looked really scary, big chunks of fish, full of bones, but was actually really good. Both of us are really excited about traveling to the south and west, both of which are full of fresh fish. I miss having eggs too. Gangotri was a pilgrimage town too, so no eggs there either. Phoey. Our hotel manager sells cans of beer under the table for 90r, which is about $2, a lot of money when we are paying 150r total for our room.
It is nice to be back in Rishikesh, knowing where things are. The mango tree outside our hotel is really nice, with a big table underneath for us to lounge around. A puppy has adopted lindsay, He went to breakfast with us this morning, a couple of blocks away. He has been around for a while, but he truly became lindsay and erez's dog when they fed him eggs last night (shhh. dont tell, we brought them with us from the chicken shop)
Two days ago was the last night of a 9 day festival. It cumulated in a parade with kids dressed up with facepaint marching down the street accompanied by men in costume and lots of drums. There were fireworks in downtown Rishikesh (about 15 min down the river) and all sorts of fancy tents and canopies, with a fringe of tinsel hanging down from wires stretched just above your head. Its really fantastic.
We taught people important american phrases yesterday, such as my personal favorite, Intense, like camping.hahahahah. i do love hearing that puns can translate around the world.

himalayan hideaway

2005-10-11T10:02:00.000-07:00

So apparently there was this earthquake that happened to coincide with a week long absence in communication. Sorry about that.
We were freezing our butts off in a tiny town with no internet and had no idea that this earthquake even occured until last night.
Why were we in the himalayas, you might ask yourself.
To hike 40km (thats 24.8 miles for all you non metric folks)in the HIMALAYAS.
yes, that would be one of the most enormous and stunning mountain ranges in the world. They live up to their reputation. We were in the Gharwal Himalayas (the southern Himalayas) just a hop skip and a jump from the tibetan border.
Last thursday we woke up at about 5 am and hopped on a bus for the 13 hour bus ride from hell. Lindsay and i were discussing our habit of spontaneous travel, but i think this trip takes the cake. We decided that we were actually going at about 11;30 pm the night before. The next morning we woke up an israeli friend, put our bags in his room for the week and stumbled to our bus. After 2 auto rickshaws and 2 bus stations we finally found the right bus and began the arduous journey.
It seems a bit snotty to say that the bus ride was so rotten, given that we were driving through some of the most beautiful mountains i can imagine. Perhaps it was due to the potential of careening off any of these lovely mountains at any moment. I think the trip was about 250 km, and it took about 13 hours. Do that math. Somehow it still felt like we were going really fast, clearly we were not. For some reason, indian mountain roads seem to be one lane wide. This is really exciting around hairpin turns, of which there were too many to count.Luckily the horn is used liberally here, so there was rarely a question of who was zipping around a turn. Uphill traffic has the right of way, which is really nice, except when you are going down hill and have to back down a dirt road to let the uphill traffic pass. our bus driver was, however, fantastic. Indian buses are crazy because they pick up anyone who flags them down. there is a conductor who makes sure the driver sees these people and that they pay etc. His job also consists of making sure that we are not about to fly off the mountain, which i can say, was done quite well.
there were a couple of points where we were literally driving across the tops of mountains. You could sit in a chai shop along the road and see both sides of the Valley. That was pretty amazing, as were the houses perched with terraced fields up the sides of these incredibly steep inclines. It's wheat and rice harvest time, we saw field after field of families harvesting with scythes, stomping the grain off the hay with their feet. The rice paddies are a really rich green, and each field is irregularly shaped, crazy quilt style, and stuffed together with some dark green plant as a separation. The people in the mountains wear the most amazing clothes. Truly a case of addaptive re-use. A great deal of it is western clothing that is cobbled together with indian styles. Lots of sweater vests, some of the women wear tiny cropped sweaters as blouses under their saris. The ubiquitous indian flip flop is worn with socks on occasion, although most people were wearing slip on sandals alone in freezing cold. Because we were so close to the tibetan border, a lot of the mountain folks had some chinese facial characteristics. The most beautiful indian-tibetan family was on the bus with us, three of the most striking children i've ever seen. Many of the mountain women look like eastern european gypsies. It's easy to see where the romani roots lie. They wear the most fantastic jewelry, enormous nose rings, and colorful headscarves. They carry enormous bundles of grass or hay on their heads. It was really sureal.
Our destination was Gangotri, the "source" of the Ganges. The actual source is at a glacier about 20 km from gangotri, hence our little hike. Here in rishikesh we are at 500m above sea level. Gangotri is 3500m. Gamok, the glacier, is 4200m. Our lungs got more than a little workout. Did i mention that it was cold? At night it got to about 40 degrees, and by night i mean, when the sun went down at 5pm. Our first night in gangotri involved stumbling into a guest house at about 9pm, freezing, crawling into sleeping bags and waking up early the next morning. Note that our arrival time means that we were driving through the mountains at night. awesome. at least the road was paved at that point.
The hike to gamok is really well established. It is a holy pilgrimage site, so a fairly large number of indian tourists make the trek each year. We made it a 3 part trip, since there are places to stay about 14 km into the mountains. The first day was the hardest. We were doing a huge climb in elevation, and though the path was not terribly difficult, it was still quite an endevor. There are tea shops along the way, and a huge number of guides offering their services, or donkeys for those who don't want to walk. Since it's getting a little (!) cold up there, the tourist season is winding down. We saw about 20 tourists each day. The hike is a mostly dirt path with rocky sections and sketchy little wood plank bridges across the streams that come rushing down the mountains. Like much of our bus ride, we were pretty much following the path of the ganga, watching it narrow and twist. Huge snow capped peaks grew closer and closer as we moved along the path. It was breathtaking. Both literally and figuratively. The scenery was breathtaking, there was also half as much oxygen in the air. It got even more exciting past the tree line. We spent our first night in a tent, on a ridge in the himalayas, above the tree line. It was pretty stunning. And cold. There was a little valley shaped a bit like a bowl that held the ashram where we spent our second night. The sides of the bowl were really large mountains and directly opposite our tent was an enormous peak completely covered in snow. We reached the ridge at about 3pm, and i think we went to bed at 5. Lindsay woke up at 3am and made me come outside to see more stars than i knew existed. There were no clouds, so the snow mountain glowed white. The moon was a tiny crescent that was invisible by that point in the evening, allowing more and more stars to show themselves. The milky way was apparent, as was a yellow orange planet that we think was mars. I can't express how gorgeous it was.
The next day we woke up and hiked on the increasingly more difficult path to gamok.
Much of the "path" seemed to have dressed up in it's rockslide outfit, lindsay and her bionic knee rocked (ha) the hell out of it. The glacier that forms the mouth of the ganges is shaped like a horseshoe. There is a dark icecave out of which the ganga begins its journey. It was pretty outstanding to see. We were in this ice horseshoe, about 20 ft from the glacier itself, if that. Lindsay dunked her feet in, being more hardy than me, i splashed a bit on my face. We both ate icicles. After we had been there a little while, the sun started to come over the top of the glacier, causing some serious calving. Rocks the size of large dogs tumbling down a mountain is enough to convince me to be far far away. We were really lucky to get there before the ice started to melt, so we had a bit of time to safely view it.
Its funny because neither of us really considered "treking" when we were planning this trip (planning, ha, don't laugh too much dad) This whole experience was pretty lovely, so we may look into more of this wilderness stuff. I know i'm missing a million different details, i'm sure lindsay will help to round out the picture.
In this experience we met a crazy man from malta, a funny german, a south african medium format photographer and 8 million israelis. I now speak more words in hebrew than i do in hindi. Its a little rediculous. Oh, we also met our first american who actually lives in america on the hike. It's really shocking the lack of americans here.
In summation, the key points of this posting are as follows:
lindsay and i are pretty awesome outdoorswomen.
The himalayas are incredible
Hiking at high altitudes is exciting
Holy Icecaves are a category all to themselves
we were nowhere near the earthquake
and I love hyperbole- but i think india lends itself to hyperbole quite well.

mountain time.

2005-10-03T16:45:00.000-07:00

Today we intended to wake up at 5am, and hike 4 hours to a waterfall and temple. Instead we woke at about 11.30, did some laundry and went to the post office to mail michael's birthday present (finally! i think it will take about 2 weeks), which, in the end, was about as exhausting as a 4 hour hike. Sending the package required all sorts of steps, not the least of which was going to a shop and having it sewn into a piece of muslin. this is my kind of country. It definately looks cooler than just about any other package i've sent. I hope it gets to you mikey.
Yesterday was really nice. We ended up walking to the Laxman Jhula suspension bridge, the other pedestrian suspension bridge, about 3 km down the river. There is a road that is filled with speeding jeeps, but we took the path that winds along the river. It was gorgeous. Probably one of the nicest places i have been in India so far. Lining the path are lots of homes, either sadhu camps, or simple houses, with fences made of tangled things all growing together. One ingenious place had a fence of cacti(!) Along this path is a really incredible beach with nice sand and huge rocks to sit on. It looks a bit Lunar. I put my feet in the holy river which is rather cold, but not as cold as i was expecting. I think it will be quite a bit cooler when we go up to Gangotri, more on that later. While we were there, the beach also housed 3 buddhist monks, their young boy monk and their little fluffy white dog. All bathing in the river. It was so cool to see all of their red and orange garments laid out on the rocks, and to see the different layers of what they were wearing. One of the monks wrapped himself up in a huge piece of red fabric, like a coccoon and took a nap. Another one kept fending off an overly friendly cow. The boy monk was wearing jams, calvin and hobbes style, and racing around with the dog. It was quite a sight. I like buddhist monks quite a lot. I can't wait to go to Dharamsala.
The Laxman Jhula area of Rishikesh is home to 2, 12 story temples. They are huge. It also houses a tremendous number of tourists, more than i was expecting. We sat for a long time watching indian tourists on pilgrimages and various other foreign tourists. We were talking to the israelis who are staying at our hotel last night. They said that of a nation of 6 million people, 20,000 are estimated to be traveling in india at any one time. Thats quite a chunk of people. The israelis were sort of a stumbling block for us, until a couple of days ago. There were always so many of them, and they were perpetually speaking hebrew to one another and seemed entirely uninterested in us. But, we've managed to crack the code, seeing as they all think lindsay is israeli at first.
Lindsay and i have decided that while Rishikesh is nice, it isnt quite the resting stop we need. Too many people talking about "ENERGY". phoey. On Wednesday or thursday we are going to Gangotri, the origin of the Ganges. Apparently you can take a pretty straight forward 2 day hike to the glacier itself. Yippie. There are even guest houses to stay in along the way. Hooray for mountains. Lindsay has to use her fancy Arcteryx jacket somewhere. We have to kind of hop to it, because the road will close in a couple of weeks. We are trying to figure out where else we want to go in the north, which is much easier now that we are talking to people. The Gangotri thing was entirely on the recomendation of a couple of travelers, all of whom have said its pretty super.

2005-10-02T10:07:00.000-07:00

i am rather frustrated that despite numerous attempts we have been almost entirely unable to post pictures on the internet. No matter how fast of a connection we have at any given place, the fact remains that we are trying to post pictures over dialup, and since we cannot just let the pictures upload over hours we're sort of stymied. I know lindsay posted a picture, which was a small victory, but given all the pictures we want to show all of you, it is a very very very small victory. argh.
Technological frustrations aside, rishikesh stil remains very lovely. There is a mountain/hill behind us that contains wild elephants. this is quite intriguing. apparently sometimes they walk all the way through town to the river to drink. Given that this section of town is only a couple of blocks wide, its not so difficult to believe. Nonetheless, i've never been anywhere that an elephant could just pop up, meander out of the forrest and take a nice big drink.
Yesterday, another traveler took us to see his guruji at the guru's river camp just down the road. we ate chappati cooked over a campfire which was pretty neat and the guru talked about living in israel. He was really old with craggy skin and ratty dreadlocks and had an entourage of about 8 other people who live in a tent next to his tent/temple and keep him happy. It was really neat, but also quite bizzare. I have a hard time identifying with the mentality of looking to one person as your "guru"
We still haven't found the right yoga instruction. Lindsay took a class yesterday and said it was more talking than moving which is pretty interesting. It was also a one on one class, not a big ashram class, so who knows. We are talking about taking a transcendental meditation course, but we cant decide if it is too much money or not.
i'm going to go eat breakfast and maybe we will wander up to Laxman juhla, the other suspension bridge across the river.

2005-09-30T16:47:00.000-07:00

After a somewhat extensive journey, we have arrived in Rishikesh. Our journey here was arduous, involving mistaken train tickets, an excessive fine, being stuck in top berths which are generally safer as far as keeping track of your stuff but more cramped in that you cannot sit up straight, innability to feed ourselves, a bus ride which was actually gorgeous, a mile or so walk, a terrible hotel, dreadful pizza and a lot of sleep.
wheww.
now we are at a good hotel, just 2 blocks away. Hotel Briswaji Palace. the price is still excellent ( a whopping 150r a night= $3.50)but the atmosphere is much better and the bathroom is much much cleaner. lindsay and i went shopping today, both ashram shopping, trying to find a place to take yoga where we won't explode from being out of shape, as well as a general shopping binge. This binge took the form of a trip to the market at rishikesh in which we both bought fabric and then took a trip to the "lady tailor" in her living room to have punjab dress/ salwar kamez made. that is the long shirt loose pants combo popular up here in the north. The lady tailor is charging us 90r a piece to create the garments by tomorow. This is a stellar deal for us. we also bought thai fishermen's pants(Yippie!) and lindsay bought a book on basic hinduism. I also bought an ayuervedic remedy (with honey to take it with) for my cough/ congestion which is the last vestige of my cold.
The mountains are gorgeous. rishikesh is situated in several settlements along the ganga surrounded by gorgeous tree covered mountains. No himylayan views yet, i bet we'll get a few on our way of mcleod ganj. the air is much cleaner here, aided by the fact that most motor vehicles cannot cross the pedestrian suspension bridges that cross the river. The river is gorgeous. It is much easier to understand its place as a holy river when in this setting. It is tremendously fast moving, so much so that all of the tourist sites here are offering whitewater rafting trips down the ganges.
Rishikesh is filled with sadhus, holy men who live by begging, wearing the most amazing arrays of clothes in saffron, vermillion, marigold and a rich peach. though they live by begging, most live on kindnesses and therefore are not so pushy about asking for change. They are a beautiful sight each day.
mom, all the ashrams have their own homeopathic hospitals. you would be very impressed. We'll see how this stuff i am taking for my cough treats me.
Rishikesh is also the cleanest place we have visited so far. The streets are perpetually being swept (perhaps because most of them run in front of an ashram or shrine of some sort) the cows seem to be generally well fed. We have come across an exceptional amount of gorgeous baby cows here. The ones with red- brown fur seem look a bit like deer. A nice little black one headbutted me today, which is incidentally the first cow initiated contact that i have had here.We also got to hold a puppy that couldnt have been more than 3 days old. you would have died. A sadhu was feeding it from a dish of milk.
hurray. today is our 2 week mark here. we've made it so far.
i think we'll celebrate with a nice dinner involving bread and lentils (big shock) and the pineapple that i made lindsay buy and am convinced that i can nicely carve with a leatherman. We'll see how that goes.
deep breaths. big love

2005-09-27T13:37:00.000-07:00

we've been wandering around varanasi for a couple of days now. I like this city quite a bit. We were trepidatious because it has a shady sort of reputation, but it is generally quite lovely if you stay off the big streets, which are, big shock here, quite crowded. A great part of our enjoyment comes from wandering around the city with a very nice brit and a lovely girl and boy from holland. It's amazing how much more bold we are in going places when we are more than just lindsay and i. Unfortunately i've picked up lindsay's cold, so i think i will spend the rest of the day in bed. gross. We did just find some sealed waterbottles that were so cold they were somewhat frozen, which is the first ice i've had since i got here. Tomorow we have a 20 hour train ride to Hardiwar and then a bus to rishikesh. i had better feel better. i have no patience for a cold when it is 95 degrees outside!

buses and trains and heavy rains

2005-09-24T03:30:00.000-07:00

we have arrived in Varanasi. At lunch we realized that we have been to 6 towns (stayed in 4) in the week we have been here. This pace is rediculous. We're sort of rushing to get rid of all the stuff that we have to see in the North (taj mahal etc.) before we can run to the mountains, gujarat and the south. We keep getting really excellent reports about all of those places. The towns we have visited this week have been interesting, but tremendously busy and full of people trying to make money on us. this is not my favorite thing. People keep telling us to go to the mountains and go south, because it will be much better there.
Currently our plan is to spend 4 days in Varnasi, and then take a 20 hour (!) train to Hardiwar and from there a bus to Rishikesh- in Uttranchal. We have read about a 3 week begining Iyengar yoga class there that sounds interesting. We want to spend a couple of weeks there, and then we will take trains up to Dharamsala/McLeod Ganj in Himachal Pradesh. That holds the seat of the Tibbetan Govt. in exile. Apparently something about a huge contingent of Buddhist monks in a town makes the cutthroat tourism market substantially less dreadful. We would like to stay there a while as well.
As for the 6 towns:
Delhi
Mathura
Vrindivan
Agra
Fatepur Sikri
Vernasi

Fatepur Sikri was the abandoned town i spoke about at the end of my last post. There was a really beautiful fort and mosque, as well as some super ruins of the town hammam (public bath). unfortunately, it was nearly all spoiled by the really agressive wanna be tourguides, and people trying to sell us stupid trinkets. We had a man follow us for 1/3 of a mile or so trying to sell us some silver chain bracelets. We didn't feel endangered, but we were so frustrated and annoyed that it was hard to enjoy the surroundings. It's dreadful to feel that any time someone is being nice or asking questions, it is because they are trying to sell you things. Ugh. we need to get to the mountains. To get to Fatepur Sikri, we had our first experience on an Indian bus, which was both uncomfortable and vaguely terrifying. Our first ride was simply crowded, with only 10" or so between the seats, and the seats are very narrow. i couldnt make my knees fit. i had to stick them in the aisle. Tall boys of my life, take note! The ride home was the same but the driver wove in and out of his lane on this 2 lane road like it was his job. i thought delhi traffic was bad, but this was far worse. really fast and involving trucks. i think we will stick to trains when we can.
Agra left a bit of a bad taste in our mouths. We are covered in bug bites which itch like mad. Our hotel was nice, really nice staff, and they didnt jerk us around, but the town in general was full of people trying to take advantage of us. We hired a rickshaw driver to show us agra, which he did. We saw the Taj, the "baby" taj and agra fort, all of which were really beautiful. We went to the taj at sunrise, but it was a grey rainy day, so in our pictures the sky is approximately the color of the taj itself. awesome. jessica, can you fix this? maybe insert a sunrise so we can approximate it. all grumpiness aside, it was realy beautiful, although i think i prefer it from a distance. it is somehow more majestic. Our driver showed us a really neat view of the taj, from the backside across the river. We viewed it with an 11 yearold boy, his camel and a 13 yearold who is learning to be a tourguide. it was pretty funny. To get to this view, we drove along a rode lined with farms, in the middle of agra(!), with houses made of mud and straw. I am seeing houses on a daily basis that i have seen only in the Usborne "homes of the world book"- remember lennard family? blayne? The agra fort is beautiful and huge and full of crumbling buildings and scaffolding made of logs and rope. amazing. monkeys climbing all over it. also neat distance views of the taj. After this our driver took us to a place where they do amazing pietra dura stone inlay into white marble. Completely gorgeous. the same work is all over the taj, and we were wondering how they did it. They take you to a workroom, and then 3 rooms of stuff you can buy, each room successively cheaper and smaller. It was pretty funny. the guy was clearly mad we weren't going to buy anything. Then we saw a demo of hand rug tieing. Ojm you should see these people knot. Perhaps you should get them to make you some wigs. they would be fast as hell. Beautiful work. Again, shockingly (!), we bought no rugs. These two places were neat because we actually saw how they were doing it. Then he took us to place to see some embroidery which we did not buy. Then we sat on the side of the road talking with men about how we were definately not going to buy anything for 45 minutes. drinking chai. no reason whatsoever. then our driver took us to their jewelry shop. On the ride home he was clearly upset that we hadnt bought anything, which was aggravating because we had said from the begining we would buy nothing. We had a good scam of asking for their card and saying we would be back to agra by the end ouf our trip. They didnt really buy it, but they couldnt say much back to that. Its just frustrating because we were told that was going to happen, we took precausions so it would not happen, and yet it still did. Our driver was nice and then really jerky after we didnt give him commission. ARGHH. Yesterday we saw fatepur sikri and took the night train to Vernasi. It was a 3 tier air con sleeper. I think next time we wont go in air con it is both expensive and freezingly cold.
Luckily we had the sweet jams provided to us by gabe levinson and mike floyd to get us through. Thank you boys...
Tomorow we are going to explore varnasi's famous ghats. i'm very excited. i think lindsay is over her cold, which is good. if only my bug bites would stop itching. I used my first squat toilet, and finally we have started speaking with travelers. It took a while. we still havent met any americans. There are actually a suprisingly small number of travelers that we see on a daily basis. Our hotel here is the Yogi Lodge and it is really nice and comfortable. They were playing some sweet janet jackson jams earlier....
oh and michael. i read something about your birthday. really? are you sure? i thought it wasnt until december.... ;) i have your present but havent figured out how to mail it yet. i think that will happen today or tomorow.

holy trains and such

2005-09-21T15:42:00.000-07:00

yesterday i took my first indian train ride, it was supposed to be to agra, but lindsay wanted to stop at this little town named mathura, which is next to another town named Vrindiban which is the home of krishna. our first indian train ride was 2 tier air conditioned, which i think is the nicest class. it means that there are 2 tiers of sleeper/seats, like bunk beds. the next class is 3 tier air con, then regular sleeper in which there is no glass over the windows, just bars, and 2nd class unreserved. our second indian train ride was in 2nd class unreserved. we sat with our luggage on a luggage/seating rack, above the heads of people, also like a bunk bed, but more crowded. the trains only stop at the stations for about 3 min, so you have toshove your way on and off the train. it is a little scary. that said, our first train ticket (from delhi to agra, but we hopped off at mathura which is about 60 km from agra the whole trip was supposed to take about 3 hours. ) cost 990r. which is about $23 total (for both of us), our second ticket cost 73r. which is a little less than a dollar. it was an adventure, but everything turned out okay. We will travel next from Agra to Varanasi on an overnight train on the 23rd i think. we got stuck in second class unreserved because you must buy a reserved ticket a couple of hours in advance of the train leaving the station. ahhh. the more you know.
we went to mathura to see vrindiban which we saw yesterday afternoon. it was so incredible. 5500 temples in one little village. we had a brahmin man appoint himself our tourguide and he gave us a really excellent walking tour of some of the best temples. There was one with the most beautiful red sandstone carved architecture. we also saw a temple that was like a hindi temple in vegas (or if drury lane theatre had a hindi temple), the walls entirely mosaiced with tiny mirrors and pieces of colored glass, and the most funny/ gaudy chandeliers.
our guide took us through an ashram for widdows, where there were 2000 some women chanting, sitting on the floor and wearing white saris. they are taken care of by the krishna temple. we then went into the krishna temple and gave offerings of garlands of roses to krishna and were anointed with dots of sandalwood paste on our foreheads. that was pretty amazing.
we also saw people chanting and praying on the gorgeous river ghats at sunset, and floating candlles down the river. that was incredible.
To get home we had to take an auto rickshaw 18 km back to our hotel.
the roads were unpaved and rocky. and it was dark. it was exciting to say the least
OOOOHHH!! and there was a gekko in our hotel room last night. i think it was a gekkoi definately a lizard about 5 in long and a huge grasshopper about 3 " long with only one leg, who kept hopping onto our bed and an ant colony.... are there gekkos in india, can anyone tell me. it looked a little like leo's gekko delilah.
today we are in a really nice hotel in agra with a courtyard and trees, mathura was a little dusty. tomorow we see the taj (!!) and then friday we will go for the day to a deserted town that is apparently beautiful. you know how i love those deserted towns...

the sun shines real nice through pollution

2005-09-18T20:54:00.000-07:00

i have been unable to properly adjust my body to this clock. granted, this is my second day on the continent. i keep forgetting that. the amount we have accomplished in such a tiny amount of time is phenomenal. So that said, i was unable to sleep until about 4 this morning. My sleep was interrupted sharply at 6:45 by the telephone in our room ringing. i didnt even know that our room had a telephone. Lindsay answered and apparently it was the sweet sweet sound of the man from the airport informing us that my bag arrived on last night's flight and could i please come pick it up. i was so excited that i was completely unable to sleep after that. I was really begining to think it was gone forever. Perhaps my several unanswered calls to the lost baggage dept. had something to do with that, or perhaps it was the call that was answered last night in which the man on the phone informed me that "madam there is no flight from new york" "yes there is! i was on it yesterday""
"oh madam, you mean the flight from london" "arghhh" ánd etcetera. i assumed that my sweet stash of dr bronners soap and sunscreen was done for....actually everything in my bag was completely replacable, though finding a sleeping bag, pack or rain jacket as nice as mine would have not been very easy here. it just would have been a dreadful pain in the butt. When i arrived at the airport today, i had miles of red tape to wander though, i had to be admitted back into the baggage claims hall, which is in a customs restricted area. This required approximately 8 passes, all of which required my home address and my father's name (oh sweet patriarchy, not that there is anything wrong with your name, dad) I have gone completely out of order because being reunited with my bag occured only with the help of the man who lindsay and i hired to drive us around delhi for the day so that we could see the sights and get out of here as quickly as possible. this man and a desire to get the hell out of delhi occured only after our walk down the street yesterday afternoon which was astonishing to say the least. I cannot describe what an incredible shift in perception has occured over the last two days. I was told that in delhi i would be hassled and that i may feel unsafe, yet the only lack of safety i have felt has involved the enormous volume of the following careeing down the streets: cars, motorbikes, motor rickshaws, bicycle rikshaws,bicycles, pedestrians, cows, ferral dogs, huge carts all of whom obey their own traffic rules, except that they more often than not remain on the left side of the road. it is utter madness. i knew this was true, but to walk down the street hopping at the sound of horns bells etc is quite another. the area around our hotel (pahar ganj)has very narrow streets and an endless stream of people. This is vaguely trecherous, however the vehicals or animals cant go nearly as fast as they do on normal streets. after an afternoon and evening out yesterday, lindsay and i had to sit on the roof garden of our hotel just to get some perspective on what had jsut occured. it was pretty amazing. lots of people sleeping on the roofs.I have seen such amazing things in 2 days that i can hardly begin to believe that it has been only that long. a day and a half really, because we didnt leave the hotel until 4 yesterday. so we are talking about 36 hours here. yesterday was overwhelming, but at the same time, a slightly saner version of what we saw today. because of the lingering rains,the night of our arrival, the smog situation was highly decreased. today we got a full breath of that. today we began at 9;30 or so, so we saw the whole range of the day. We have also been all over town. We keep trying to see delhi on foot,and we only partially succed. Hiring someone to drive us around today was amazing. seeing as this is a little different from my usual sort of travel, it was always a bit shocking to me when we would return from one of the sites and he would jump up and open the car door. at first it was wierd, but after seeing the madness of the streets combined with how far apart the places we needed to go were, it ended up being brilliant. His services cost lindsay and i a total of about $10 which is part of what gives delhi it's expensive reputation. our double hotel room with private bath and hot water, clocks in at about $4 a piece. Of the places we visited today, 2 were UNESCO world heritage sites (the remains of the oldest mosque in india and a tomb of a mughal ruler) these are the only 2 unesco sites in delhi. They were astoundingly beautiful. the combination of breathtaking stone work and their sheer age was enough to knock my socks off. Visiting these sites causes a sort of paradigm issue for me. They charge indian nationals 10 ruppes(about a quarter) and foreigners are charged 250 ruppes or $5- the dollars are a bit better of a deal. it is frustrating to be gouged as a foreigner, but at the same time i need to keep kicking myself in the ass remembering that i am paying $5 to see someof the most incredible ruins in the world. my $5 is subsidizing the visits of indian tourists. i think that might be okay. That was the other amazing thing. at these sites, we were some of the only foreigners, which has happened quite a lot, but here all of the indians were tourists as well. people were quite a bit friendlier. probably because they dont have to breathe so much crap in their lungs. its amazing how much i dont mind having tourists in my pictures when the tourists are wearing jewel colored saris. Men use straight pins to keep their turbans on! can you imagine? We have been featured in 3 photographs of sightseeing indians wanting a photograph of themselves with the funny looking girls. lots of pointing little kids. (indian babies are so gorgeous its amazing) i would immagine quite a bit of both is to follow. Overall it is gorgeous and overwhelming here. we are going to go see the Taj in agra before we slide off to somewhere a little less touristy. Tomorow, however consists of finding an atm, a birthday present or two, and maybe even a phone. baby steps.oh god i've left out so much. i'll try to amend this tomorow.

hello asia

2005-09-17T16:16:00.000-07:00

i am safe and sound and a bit damp in the midst of delhi. We arrived to a huge rainstorm, apparently we have hit the very tail end of monsoon here. yippie. i dont think its raining outside right now, but it probably will soon. Unfortunately my pack is somewhere between cincinnati, new york, london and delhi. the most likely thing is that it didnt make my new york connection from my delta flight from cinci and my air india flight to delhi. it is also possible that it was accidentally taken off in london, or that it was accidentally not taken off in delhi and continued onto bombay. ive never lost luggage in my life. yesterday was not really when i wanted to start. nonetheless, i felt a bit like a badass walking out of the delhi airport with only a little backpack. i felt about as free as i ever have. granted, given that our supply of both soap and toilet paper are in that bag, i would like to find it, pronto. we ment to wake up at 10 this morning and jump start this whole jet lag thing, but we didnt get here until 3:30 or so, and then i couldnt sleep till about 6. apparently lindsay and i had some excellent conversations in which i talked in my sleep for about an hour or so, while she was awake between 6 and 9. After that we both slept till 2. they played wierd french accordian music as we got off the plane. Air india decidedly did play bollywood movies. A really sad movie named WQAT, which was about a father that was dying and he was fighting with his son who's wife was pregnant but the son didnt know the dad was dying. it was all very tear jerky and lots of dancing and singing. i of course thought this was glorious. They also played some stellar indian music videos and dreadful episodes of everybody loves raymond and king of queens. why do they do that? i also saw a really cute danny boyle movie named "millions" about some kids who find a bag of money that turns out to be stolen. you'd like it mom. The food was suprisingly good. pistachio pudding on an airplane(!) lindsay and i are going to venture out into the streets to find a) toilet paper b) water c) soap d) a phone so i can call the airport to see if my bag has turned up yet. hurahh! simple life for me. lindsay saw a big monkey outside our window this morning. more yippie.
big fat smooches.
k

so it begins.....

2005-09-15T11:16:00.000-07:00

Ready or not....
I think i'm quite ready actually. the flip flopping in my stomach would say otherwise. This could have something to do with staying up till 4.30 then having breakfast with Grandmama and Grandaddy at 8am. Last night I got loads of things accomplished, like cutting kate riker's hair in my dark backyard at 2am. That wasn't even on my to-do list and I got to write it in and then cross it off. I love tasks like that. Generally I am set to go, it's 11am now, i dont have to be at the airport until 1, and my backpack is packed. are you impressed? you ought to be! This might be a new record for me. Granted, I know for a fact that in the midst of lunch I will leap from my seat and run around the house trying to find the 12 things i have forgotten.
I keep getting excited but i stop myself with the realization that I have a full day and a half of travel ahead of me.
Nothing to burst a girl's balloon like 22 hours on an airplane.
Luckily at the end of that contrail is a pretty fantastic adventure, so I guess it all evens out. How long until teleporting is developed for general consumption? Flying is not one of my favorite things. Hopefully this flight will involve Bollywood movies which would make it several notches more excellent than all the other flights i've bit my nails through.
i'm meeting Lindsay at JFK at 5pm. From there we are on a direct flight from New York to Delhi. The only other time i've flown with lindsay has involved her on a lot of painkillers and me holding an envelope full of cat scans of her knee. Compared to that this should be cake, or should i say, a samosa perhaps...(if you are going to read my travel account you'll have to get used to the pun factor. It will be high. i cant help it, the universe just drops them in my lap.)
My travel book is Don Quixote. I think it will be quite perfect. Kudos to blayne for that one.
I'm going to go eat some spinich, i would like to roll around in a garden of spinich right now, maybe take a spinich bath . Michelle, can you help me out with this? I have a feeling that I'm going to be a little lacking in the fresh leafy greens department for a while.
I love you all madly
HUGE SMOOCHES all around
next posting comes from the other side of the world, via the oceannet.
!!!!

2005-09-10T21:14:00.000-07:00

i just saw "the constant gardener"
it was fantastic.
i recomend it wholeheartedly.

Marching to sanity

2005-09-10T10:55:00.000-07:00

My lost chicago boxes have been recovered. Apparently they were in Kyle's room where there is no light yet, by that i mean no electrical outlets or installed lighting. Brad smith, i doff my cap to you. Along with this recovery is a great deal of my sanity. My plane ticket, ipod and boxes have all been found. I am closing in on completing my packing list. (not a small feat, even though i am taking almost nothing. how does that work?) I am returning to my non- freak out self.
I watched my 14 yearold brother andrew march in a halftime show for a football game last night. He plays the clarinet. His uniform is actually rather snazzy, as such things go, and involves a gold seaquinned sash which i teased him about, clearly. Nonetheless, the sashes looked exciting from the stands. I can't decide if my favorite part was the sash, the hat with the plume or the white shoes. His band did a really great job. I dont really agree with this "Art" movement that is apparently sweeping marching bands across the nation. His band was doing selections from cirque du soeil( sp) which were nice, but not exactly the rousing excite the crowd music that the event would suggest. The other band, however, performed a program entitled "get on your feet, the music of eric clapton." i'm not joking, i almost died. it included the sweet sounds of white rum, wonderful tonight and Layla. what is the world coming to? Having never payed attention to a marching band in my life, this was an interesting experience. Particularly when watching with my parents, both of whom were in marching band in highschool. My dad went on to march in Purdue's big marching band as well. Overall the experience of being at a Highschool football game (something I have experienced only one other time) was funny enough. I'm really proud of andrew. He was pretty fantastic.
my sister jessica is being amazing and building me a website. I think this is super.
I promise that injust a few days, 5 to be exact, this blog will be filled with all sort of exotic sentiments. For the time being, however, all I have to offer is the exoticism of a marching band in Cincinnati Ohio.
And honestly, isn't that enough?

2005-09-08T10:37:00.000-07:00

So i thought I might give this whole travel blog thing a whirl. Currently I have treked all the way from Chicago to Cincinnati, by way of the Indiana Dunes. It was difficult. I thought the oxen might kleel over from pure exhaustion, the terrain is rough you know. Regardless of past turmoil, Here i am in Cincinnati Ohio, waiting for an adventure that has been a long time coming. I think i'm loosing it. Yesterday I freaked out and bought a digital camera. Who knows what i'll do today.... I think i told my parents I'll paint the upstairs hallway. Perhaps a little manual labor will help to clear out my mind a bit. I left two crucial boxes in chicago, you know, the things you dont want to leave in storage because they are too important. Like all my photographs, for example. Somehow in the shuffle of car packing and goodbyes at midnight, after 4 solid days of moving hell, they got a little missplaced. I'm hoping they are at the boys' new house. Nonetheless, I dont think i will be able to sleep quite right until they turn up. I hate loosing things. It incapacitates me, I get obsessive about it. Yesterday we realized that we should dig my plane ticket out of the depths of my parents pile of papers. I was a little stressed until that was taken care of. I just ended a sentance with a preposition, obvious proof of how addled my brain is right now. My to-do, people to see list is a bit longer than i thought it was. Mostly full of the things I've been putting off, like calling a dentist. This is clearly something I need to take care of stat. Sadly, it seems that all I am fit for is watching Horatio Hornblower Dvds and knitting socks. Neither of these help accomplish my pre- travel checklist, which seems to be growing longer by the hour. I go to India in one week. exactly one week from today. I find this fact utterly unbelievable. I can't wrap my mind around this at all. A week will be over before I know it. Blayne is coming back to visit on Sunday night, which is super. Unfortunately looking forward to that is making time go even faster, which I clearly need. aiiii...
Perhaps studying yoga in the mountains is what I need afterall.