Uff-da. I am exhausted. We arrived at the Taj Deccan hotel in Hyderabad this morning at 5:30 am. We had been in transit from Ithaca for over thirty hours, and I had only slept for three of those hours. Breakfast by 8 am. Disoriented and groggy, I rolled over to turn off my alarm after a mere ninety minutes of shut-eye, which miraculously powered me throughout the day.
The morning and early afternoon consisted of an orientation to our program at the hotel. Some of my classmates surprised Indian roommates on our 5:30 arrival, but I have a fellow Cornell student for a roommate, so the orientation provided an opportunity for me to meet with them and get to know a little bit about their respective M.S. research projects. I changed $80 over to rupees, my budget for the 2+ weeks.
The highlights of the day were excursions to Hyderabad’s Birla Mandir and the Shilparamam “arts and crafts village.” First stop: the Birla Mandir. The students loaded excitedly onto the bus, as it was our first time outside in India in the daylight. For me, it felt like yesterday could have been in July or August, that I hadn’t even gone to Cornell yet, that I was still in India from before. Sure there’s some things I had forgotten about (ie. the clown car-like truck horns), but smells, sounds, and stickiness of Hyderabad were all too reminiscent of Jaipur. I took but one photo on the grounds of the white marble Birla Mandir, a Hindu temple, because photos once inside were prohibited. The temple was very similar to the white Birla Mandir I visited multiple times in Jaipur (albeit slightly larger), but for that reason, experiencing it myself was not the most interesting part. When we arrived at the temple grounds, we were to remove our shoes and place them inside cubbies before entering. I hardly gave a thought to slipping off my sandals and stepping onto the sticky, dirty pavement. It felt natural, almost second nature to me by now. But I perked up when the girls all around my cringed and squealed, walking on their heels to avoid contact with the soiled ground. I realized I was about to watch everyone else experience India for the very first time, much like I not long ago had myself.
At the Birla Mandir.
Unfortunately today included a lot of things I dislike about India:
Bargaining for Indian “kitsch”: The “arts and crafts village” was nothing to write home about. The winding rows of shops repeated over and over the exact same poor-quality products with insane markups for tourists. Pushy salesmen lie and occasionally cheat because unfortunately their livelihoods depend upon it. “Hello miss, please come in, please look at that, please look at this.” I am all too familiar with this scene by this point: the Silk Street market in Beijing, the main drag of Bapu Bazaar in Jaipur, basically all of the Old Town in Lijiang.
Pictures with strangers: “Excuse me miss, just one photo with you.” Complete strangers. No “hi, what’s your name?” Not even a “where are you from?” Simply “just one photo,” which turns into something cool and trendy they can laugh about and show their friends a week later.
Almost getting hit by moving vehicles.
For my classmates, first-timers, buying cheap Indian crap was so much fun. Taking photos with strangers was a good time. Almost getting hit by moving vehicles was almost laughable. And I’m over here like:
Sure, of course there was once a time where I was jumping at the chance to get my hands on some kitsch, didn’t mind taking photos with strangers, and thought the way people drive was amusing too. But not long into my first time here, I too got scammed out of money. I paid for things that would fall apart a few days later. “Just one photo” turned into throngs of different pushy groups wanting their own “just one photo.” (It didn’t matter that I was learning Hindi or trying to understand India. It didn’t matter what my name was or where I was from. I wasn’t a whole person. Just blond thing, a stereotype.) I saw my life flash before my eyes in Delhi while crossing the street to try to flag down an autorickshaw. A girl on my program had her elbow smashed into by a moving vehicle.
But, just as I had to do initially too, I saw the group learn today that not everything here is lighthearted, innocent, safe, or a laughing matter. A couple of my classmates wanted to get henna at the arts and crafts village. (I passed.) “Miss sit down, miss please come here, miss here look at these.” The henna ladies battled for business. Finally my classmates agreed to pay 50 rupees for small henna designs on one hand. After the ladies had begun their handiwork, some of the Indian students who are traveling with us showed up. Appalled at the “exorbitant prices” (50 rupees is less than $1) my classmates had agreed to, the Indian students demanded my classmates get up and leave. As one of my classmates did so, the lady doing her henna purposefully smeared the design all over her arm, as my classmate was not going to pay for it. After it happened, one of the American faculty with us informed us the henna ladies have to pay 6,000 rupees bi-weekly to stake out a spot on a stool in the arts and crafts village. The whole ordeal was an awkward, messy, clash-of-cultures situation. Everyone agreed they had learned from it, vowing to not only bargain less carelessly but also to pay what they believed to be a fair price, even if it was higher than the “Indian price.”
When a relentless salesman wouldn’t leave me alone while trying to sell me fake “kashmir” pashminas today, I offered a soft “नहीं चाहिए” (“I don’t need”) his direction, letting him know through Hindi that I wasn’t of the hop-off-take-photo-hop-on-the-tour-bus kind. And then he mocked me. For speaking Hindi.
Uhh… I regret the dejectedness of this post. It was a frustrating, exhausted day. I only took three photos. I’m still thrilled to be back here, and I can’t wait to finally start doing agriculture tomorrow! Turn in for exciting insights on dryland agricultural research. I’m eager to get into the meat of this trip. Cheers!
This morning I woke up to find a snowy Ithacan winter wonderland outside my window, after having touched down on the tarmac last night back from a very brown Christmas in Minnesota. It seems hard to believe that in just three days I leave again for India. South India this time. दक्षिण भारत।
I had a whirlwind of a first semester in graduate school at Cornell University. Just five days after returning to Minnesota from India in August, I packed up the red Mazda 6 with (almost) everything I own and my mom, and the two of us made the two-day drive across Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania to the idyllic Finger Lakes Region of Upstate New York, check engine light dramatically flickering on and off along the way. We arrived at the apartment I had rented sight unseen, a spacious one-bedroom above a dentist’s office in a very blue house.
Before my mom’s three days in Ithaca were up, we made the quick jaunt up to Niagara Falls. It was a memorable trip for both of us. We marveled equally at the natural beauty and physical force of the falls as well as the mass of international humanity from all corners of the globe who had made the trek to the upper reaches of New York to experience this American icon.
Less than a week after arriving I would begin the first semester of my PhD program in Plant Breeding and Genetics at Cornell University. I took coursework in foundational plant genetics and breeding, statistical and quantitative genetics and genomics, international agriculture, and Hindi, all the while spending eight weeks at a time in both the small grains breeding and nutritional quality breeding laboratories. Without a clear goal or avenue for my research pursuits, a permanent lab and advisor, or guaranteed funding for the next year, my first semester teetered and wobbled by as I also attempted to get settled in a new town with new colleagues. I struggled with this:
Wading through my statistics coursework with an insufficient foundation was a major challenge for me this semester.
I took solace in this:
I took a plant breeding field methods course this semester: we helped harvest pumpkins for the vegetable breeder!
I took a plant breeding field methods course this semester: tons of natural variation exists in most crops, but consumer demands limit what makes it to the grocery store, even when the alternatives are so delicious!
I took a plant breeding field methods course this semester: shrub willow, a bioenergy crop.
I took a plant breeding field methods course this semester: we visited the National Clonal Germplasm Repository in Geneva, NY and tasted apples from all over the world right off the trees!
I took a plant breeding field methods course this semester: this is the best watermelon I have ever tasted.
Finally things are beginning to fall into place. Although I still have one more new laboratory, the maize genetics and genomics group, to spend time in this spring, I now have a small project that’s starting to shape up. Drones seem to be all over the news these days, and the agricultural community is grappling with FAA regulations that limit their use in precision agriculture and the improvement of plant breeding. To avoid the FAA, I will be traveling to Ciudad Obregon, Mexico, in March to the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) to fly drones and other aerial vehicles over 30,000 small plots of wheat breeding lines. Early season images from attached cameras and sensors have been shown to be predictive of harvested grain yields in large plots, but the technology has yet to be applied and optimized for small plots. Harvesting experimental plots to evaluate grain yield is an expensive process compared to generating yield predictions from aerial images. Even if grain yield predictions aren’t perfectly accurate (let’s say aerial image-derived predictions have a 0.7 correlation with final grain yields), CIMMYT can still save thousands of dollars each year by not evaluating the bottom 20 to 30 percent, which likely does not include the best lines. Ultimately these kinds of innovations allow us to do plant breeding faster, better, and cheaper. I traveled to Ciudad Obregon this past March for the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative 2014 Technical Workshop, where I even got to see CIMMYT’s drone in action!
My first semester was not without ample fun in my new town however. I thoroughly enjoyed my morning commute to work up Cascadilla Gorge, which is right across the street from my apartment. And the Section of Plant Breeding and Genetics is thankfully full of more than a few rambunctious graduate students who are some of the smartest and most hardworking people I have ever met but never fail to have a good time come the weekend. This past semester I enjoyed attending the Porchfest musical festival in my neighborhood, a huge Friendsgiving complete with three full-sized turkeys, a Halloween party at the graduate student co-op that made the floor shake, and too many departmental holiday parties to count. I also made the four hour drive down to New York City during my fall break to visit Andrew and David, who took me to the opera.
Andrew and I before seeing “The Magic Flute” at Lincoln Center.
My morning commute up Cascadilla Gorge. Can’t complain.
The boys and their turkeys at the Synapsis Friendsgiving.
The Student Association of the Geneva Experimentation Station holiday party in Geneva, NY.
Miraculously pulled together a Princess Peach costume in about two hours before the graduate student Halloween party at the Stewart Little co-op house.
2014 Porchfest in the Fall Creek neighborhood.
We had a Krause family first this fall as well. All five of us gathered together in New York City for Thanksgiving. After taking in a serendipitous Gopher basketball game at Madison Square Garden the night before, we got up early on Thanksgiving morning to attend the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Later, we traded in our turkey tradition for David’s succulent Momofuku Bo Ssam pork. Finally, all six of us took in “La Boheme” at Lincoln Center before rushing to our respective homes Saturday morning in time to watch the Gophers take on the Badgers in the final football game of the season.
The Smurfs making an appearance at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Momofuku bo ssam pork in lettuce wraps. A thousand times better than dry Thanksgiving turkey.
David, chef extraordinaire, putting together a truly amazing and delicious Thanksgiving dinner in his and Andrew’s small Manhattan kitchen.
The Krauses at Madison Square Garden to watch Gopher basketball.
Finally last week I boarded a tiny propellor plane at the Ithaca airport for my first visit back home to Minnesota from graduate school. It was surreal to be back, to reconnect with all my colleagues at the U, and to spend Christmas in an unfamiliar house. I squeezed in a few beers at the new Surly, Insight, and Lyn Lake Breweries and at the soon-to-be-no-more Nye’s Polonaise; lots of Christmas songs on the baby grand; Christmas cookie baking with two new cookie cutters; ample cuddling with Bentley, the geriatric dog; and even a Punch pizza.
And now I’m back in Ithaca for New Year’s with a few days to prepare for India. Uff-da. So what’s the deal!? Why am I headed back to India so soon? Wasn’t I just there a few months ago? Cornell’s Graduate School organizes their graduate programs a little differently than most other schools. In addition to their major field of study, PhD students are required to select two “minors,” similar to taking minor subjects as an undergraduate. For one of mine, I have selected international agriculture and rural development. This past semester I was enrolled in IARD 4020 “International Agriculture in Developing Nations I.” The course was focused on agricultural, food, infrastructure, environmental, and economic issues in South Asia with an emphasis on India. The spring semester component of the class, IARD 6020, takes an annual three-week trip to South India to visit various agricultural research and development institutions in the area and interact with Indian students. I will be joining 20-25 Cornell students on this trip, armed with infinitely many questions about plant breeding, technology adoption, and how researchers are responding to recent climatic variations.
Seeing double?
So where are we going!? All of us will travel together to three base sites in South India: Hyderabad, Coimbatore, and Ooty. However, once settled in each new city, we will break into three groups based on students’ interest: agricultural systems, rural infrastructure, and value addition. I will naturally be taking part in the agricultural systems group. Each group will for the most part embark on separate activities, but occasionally we will share field trips and speakers. We will be traveling with a number of Indian agricultural students as well and sharing rooms with them in the hotels.
For me, some personal highlights I am looking forward to include:
The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics outside of Hyderabad, which breeds chickpea, pigeonpea, groundnut, pearl millet, sorghum, and small millets
A Monsanto cotton breeding station, also outside of Hyderabad, which was instrumental in the introduction of cotton genetically modified for pest resistance to India in 2002
The Centre for Plant Molecular Biology at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University in Coimbatore, which is working to improve plant breeding and genetics in eggplant, corn, rice, tamarind, pomegranate, and banana
The Sugarcane Breeding Institute in Coimbatore that was established in 1912 and has one of the largest germplasm collections of sugarcane in the world with 4,500 accessions
A horticultural research station in Ooty focused on the improvement of potato, cabbage, carrots, beans, medicinal plants, cut flowers, and mushrooms
And then there are items in our itinerary that are going to be just plain fun:
The Charminar monument/mosque built in Hyderabad in 1591, which I expect to be reminiscent of much of the Islamic architecture I saw in northern India over the summer
The Isha Yoga Center in Coimbatore, which attracts visitors from all over the world who wish to deepen their practice on the center’s expansive campus
Pongal celebrations in Coimbatore; Pongal is a four-day harvest festival in Tamil Nadu that will be taking place while we are there
Ganache for the Chocoholics: this is perhaps the most curious item on our itinerary. It is a chocolate shop run by an Indian-born Cornell food science and technology graduate who, upon graduation, took a traineeship with chocolatiers in Belgium before opening his own store in Coimbatore. He will be speaking with us in particular about the challenges of entrepreneurship in India. Suffice to say his chocolates look AMAZING, and I will be buying as many as I can feasibly prevent from melting during the rest of the trip.
Gosh, just writing up this trip has gotten me so excited for what is to come! I leave on a bus to New York City on Friday afternoon, departing from JFK at 11 pm for Dubai where we will then transfer for a final flight to Hyderabad. For those of you who are eager to follow along, you’re in luck. My class, IARD 6020, requires each of us to write a blog post everyday while we are in India. Our class blog is private and requires a sign-in which I am happy to provide to anyone who is interested, but for simplicity’s sake I will be replicating each of my daily blog posts here. They will be decidedly shorter than my usual ramblings and will also likely be sporadic as internet quality fluctuates (as much as my instructors have assured us internet access for completing the blog post assignments won’t be an issue, I knowbetter after two months of struggling this past summer).
And what about my Hindi skill set? Unfortunately on this trip it won’t be much use. In Hyderabad, the official languages are Telugu and Urdu, the latter of which can be readily understood by a Hindi speaker, but the remained of the locations we will visit are home to speakers of Tamil, which is a Dravidian language and is not related to Indo-European Hindi. However, a small subset of the Indian students who will be traveling with us are from Banaras in northern India and are therefore likely to speak Hindi. I’m crossing my fingers to have one of them as my roommate!
My Hindi class at Cornell decided to take a selfie during the middle of our final exam! My Hindi teacher Sujata turned out to be a great friend and mentor to me this semester.
It feels good to be going back. 2014 was a whirlwind of a year, and I am hopeful that getting out into these areas and learning from people doing the work I hope to be a part of someday will help me recommit to my purpose at Cornell with newfound energy. After a semester of graduate school, I am finally starting to feel like I have a strong foundation in plant breeding and can ask productive questions. I can’t wait to have to opportunity to ask the folks we’ll be visiting in India about their breeding objectives and strategies. And last but not least, I can’t wait for unlimited idli:
Idli: a South Indian spongey cake made from fermented rice flour and served with sambar, a lentil- and vegetable-based stew.
I know, I know, I just wrote a new post the other day, but I had the best day ever yesterday that I am absolutely dying to share! I hope my excitement is palpable.
So with just a few days left in India, everyone is scrambling to check the last Jaipur-based activities off of their to-do lists. For me, the final item was a trip to Sanganer. Sanganer is a suburb southwest of Jaipur and actually not too far from my house. Most notably it is known for being home to the traditional block printing industry as well as an export-based handmade paper industry. Dana, Rebecca, Liz, and myself took a visit to Sakshi, a block printed fabric and blue pottery factory, and Salim Paper, a handmade paper factory, to see the processes in action for ourselves.
First stop was Sakshi’s block printing factory. So what is block printing exactly? It’s a technique for printing images, patterns, or even text onto paper or textiles. The method originated in China in the 3rd or 2nd century BC. In India, the textile industry had adopted it by the 10th century. The process makes use of woodcut blocks, pictured below, to “stamp” a pattern onto fabric.
One of Sakshi’s employees loaded us all into his car and drove us about a kilometer away from their main office to the block-printing factory. We were amazed to find a relatively small space arranged with very long tables. On each table was stretched a long piece of white fabric.
The first step in the process involves filling the tray pictured below with ink. The tray contains a special type of cloth that ensures only the correct amount of ink is transferred onto the block to avoid smudging.
Then the artisans get to work:
These guys were extremely talented. As you can see, one block doesn’t cover a lot of ground, so the artisans dip and print, which involves setting the block down in exactly the perfect place and giving the handle of little pound of pressure, over and over and over.
Once the first pattern is laid down, a second patterned block loaded with a second color will come back over the first layer, adding more detail.
The complexity of the patter will dictate how many blocks and colors are needed.
The finished products are taken outside, where they are steamed here. After steaming, they’re washed and hung out to dry before being exported. Although Sakshi does have a showroom for locals and visitors to shop at, most of their business is actually through export to the West.
Steaming the printed fabric.
By far the coolest part of the factory tour was when one of the artisans was experimenting with color. He filled up this bucket with a hot, clear liquid that was creating orange steam. We were told it contained some kind of nitrate. (The orange you see below is in fact not the color of the bucket, but of the steam.)
He used this fabric:
And dunked it into the solution:
The solution bubbled, frothed, and turned green. Then all of a sudden it turned clear again. When he pulled out the cloth again, it was blue! All the colors had change like magic! It was incredible!
The next stop on Sakshi’s tour was a visit to its blue pottery facility. Jaipuri blue pottery is arguably the most famous style in all of Rajasthan. The blue-glaze style first appeared on Mughal palace tiles. It was later applied to pottery. Over the centuries, the tradition declined but was later revived in the 19th century in Jaipur.
First, our guide showed us the materials used to make the pottery. He told us the pottery is made out of more of a stone material than a clay. The larger two materials pictured here are granite and green glass.
The finished product, which has a dough-like consistency, is then draped over molds. Those pictured below typically take two days to harden. However, due to the monsoon’s arrival, it now takes ten days due to the lesser amount of sun and water in the atmosphere.
Freehand designs are drawn on the pottery before painting. The paint appears green, brown, and black before firing, as seen below.
After firing, however, the greens, browns, and blacks turn into beautiful blues!
It was finally time to make our way back to Sakshi’s main office and truly amazing showroom. The place was chalk full of every piece of blue pottery or fabric your heart could desire. The pottery pieces ranged from vases to plates and cups to little elephant figurines to drawer pulls to tiles to incense burns and the like, adorned with flowers, fish, camels, and other elaborate designs. I was so tempted to break the bank in there, but I made myself clear my head, walk around the whole room first before picking anything out, and then think critically about what I could realistically fit in my bag without breaking. I settled on three adorable little blue plates, big enough to serve an appropriately sized desert, for about $3.25 a piece. One even pictures a little camel on it. A much younger Bill and Hill watched me shop.
Across the hall was the textile showroom. Wow! This is where I really had to reign in my excitement. The block prints were so elaborate and stunning. Luckily, by that point I had seen a lot of textiles in the markets around Jaipur and knew what I was looking for: a couple of placements (less than $2 a piece!), a tablecloth for my new apartment in Ithaca (around $9), and some scrap fabric for my own sewing (less than $3).
So many tourists come to India and load their suitcases with meaningless tidbits, trinkets, and things purchased at markets for extremely inflated prices from clever shopkeepers who capitalize on foreigners’ inability to bargain for the Indian price. Most of what they buy is typical “India kitsch,” cheap stuff adorned with camels, elephants, and villagers in turbans that no Indian person would ever actually buy. It is cheap, mass-produced, and typically a far-flung spinoff of a traditional style of production of a given handicraft. Tourist kitsch is easy to spot, and so I’ve tried my hardest not to buy any of it in India, even though some of it is pretty cute.
I’m really pleased that almost all the things I’ve purchased in India are things that I have really learned the culture and tradition behind. My visit to Sakshi today was incredible. It’s one thing to see a block-printed cloth item in a store in Jaipur and marvel at its beauty. It’s another to see, smell, and understand the process and the labor that goes into it. Now when I see block-printed Sanganeri textiles, I not only think they’re beautiful, but I can really appreciate them from all angles and the hard work and detail that go into producing them.
The final stop on our Sanganer handicraft tour was Salim’s Paper factory. We entered the giant building into an open hallway, connected to which was a very corporate-looking conference room. This was a decidedly different kind of place than Sakshi.
Our guide first took us into a dark, cavernous factory hall filled with various contractions. First he picked up a handful of cotton t-shirt scraps, much like what you would get it you took scissors to any old t-shirt. The paper at Salim’s is actually made from fabric scraps rather than trees.
The t-shirt scraps are soaked and ground up into a very fine pulp, which is then added to the basins below. The basins are filled with many more parts water than they are pulp, so when the two men pictured below dipped a rectangular fine screen into the water, a thin layer of pulp accumulated on top of it.
The layer of pulp was transferred onto a white cloth sheet. Stacks of the paper and white sheet go through a heavy pressing step as they’re drying. They final product is shown below:
The process just detailed is the “handmade” version of papermaking at Salim’s, but they also employ more industrial machines to churn out product much faster and more efficiently. The machine-pressed paper is visibly more uniform, lacking the unevenness visible in the handmade product.
The rest of the factory was filled with papers being printed with elaborate designs and folded into bags and boxes by many, many employees (most were old ladies). We were surprised to find not Indian designs, but chevrons, hearts, polka dots, and loads and loads of Christmas trees and reindeer– designs that would be popular in the West.
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Salim’s product is almost entirely exported to the West. Our guide mentioned TJ Maxx, Homegoods, and Macy’s as stores that buy their product. It was weird and surreal to be in the very factory in India where the goods we buy at home are produced. I kept just looking around taking it all in. The old ladies focused faces as the folded the Christmas boxes. The quick hands of the gentleman below as he rapidly formed blue and gold paper into beautiful bags.
What happened next was even more amazing. Our guide took us into a showroom, but said showroom was decidedly less well stocked and displayed than that of Sakshi. I found a few things I liked (a small journal, a couple of wine bags, and a couple of sets of handmade cards and envelopes that were actually packaged with the little sticker of the store in New Jersey where they were meant to be sent), but we learned the true value for asking for what you wish for when Liz expressed interest in a particular piece of paper we had been shown on the warehouse tour. The guide smiled and asked, “How many do you want?” before ushering us back into the factory.
We actually shopped from the factory stocks themselves! It was crazy. Anything we saw in there we could buy. What we were most attracted to were large pieces of thick, handmade paper that had had flower petals and grass mixed in at the pulp stage.
Not only were they extremely beautiful, but the pieces also gave off exquisite aromas of earth, flowers, and even chai tea. I bought four large pieces (white, cream, purple, and green) for 68 cents apiece just to hang up on my walls at my new place for 68 cents!
Today was unforgettable. Called me a dork, but I love processes. I was like a kid in a candy store while visiting the bottling factory at the Tsingtao beer factory in Qingdao three years ago, and today was no different. There is something about seeing raw materials go through each and every step, slowly evolving into a finished product, that I find so oddly satisfying. An added element of cool to the whole experience was that the finished products are the same that we buy back at home. It was just neat!
Any traveler-to-be who may be reading this blog for ideas for their time to Jaipur, don’t skip visits to Sakshi and Salim’s Paper! Honestly, today I saw some of the most interesting things I have seen in Jaipur. The trip out to Sanganer was well worth it, and I left with high quality, beautiful purchases that support centuries old local handicraft tradition.
Thanks for joining me. It’s back to the books for now! Exams begin tomorrow.
With only one week remaining in India, it’s about time I catch up on sharing some the experiences I’ve had locally in Jaipur. Despite having visited so many amazing places around India over the past few weeks, I still feel that Jaipur holds its own, as it is home to several historical buildings, religious temples, and forts. Throughout the summer, the program has taken all of us on two local excursions to places of interest. Additionally, I have Wednesday afternoons free of other activities. Even though I feel about ready to crash and call it a week by Wednesday afternoon, I’ve challenged myself to get out and about to see the city, interact with people, and speak Hindi. Here is a collection of class excursions and Wednesday afternoon adventures from this past summer:
Spotted in the Old City.
Not far from the institute where I go to school lies the Birla Lakshmi Narayan Temple, or known more colloquially as the Birla Mandir.
Birla Mandir.
The Birla family is an interesting clan. They’re a business tycoon family whose prominence grew out of Shiv Narain Birla’s establishment of a successful trading company in Bombay back in 1857. They have constructed at least eighteen “Birla Mandirs” across India for the worship of various Hindu deities. Construction of the temples is continuous because the Birlas believe that to stop constructing temples is back luck. Some of the temples are purposefully incomplete.
The Birla Mandir in Jaipur was completed in 1988, so it’s quite modern. I believe I went to see it during the second week of my program, so it was actually the very first Hindi temple I visited in India! Temple protocol is such that shoes are to be removed before entering. Outside the Birla Mandir, I slipped off my sandals, stepping onto pavement that promptly sizzled my feet! The white marble floors of the temple were slightly cooler, but the color reflected so much sun that I had to keep an eye closed at all times just to be there.
A very white mandir.
Around the outside, white marble carvings of Hindu deities adorn the pillars and walls.
The most interesting aspect of the Birla Mandir was its nods to important figures from other religions, which I was incredibly surprised to see! Look closely to notice depictions of Jesus, St. Peter, and even Confucius:
Rising above the Birla Mandir is a romantic little fort called Moti Dungri. It once served as a prison, but today it is in the possession of the royal family. I was disappointed to discover that, as a result, entry is prohibited. It looked like a fun little hike!
Moti Dungri.
On another Wednesday afternoon excursion, my friend Dana, the pilot from North Dakota, and I made our way by rickshaw to the outskirts of Jaipur to visit the Galta and Suyra Mandirs. Galta Mandir is known lovingly known in Jaipur as the “Monkey Temple,” and for good reason!
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Monkeys were crawling in that place! The temple itself is built into the nook of two mountains and is made up of several pools in which locals bathe.
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A short buy steep climb up the hill deposited us at the Surya Mandir, or the Sun Temple, which provided spectacular views of Jaipur as well as the Monkey Temple below.
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It was nice to get out of the city, and the wind atop the mountain was a refreshing break from the heat of the city, but sadly, the Monkey Temple seemed to be sexual harassment central while we were there, to the point of preventing us from enjoying the environs. Young men and even little boys had words, looks, and gestures for us that were frankly perverted and inappropriate. Aspects of misogyny are very prevalent in many places of India. Women can avoid some of the harassment by wearing loose-fitting or traditional India clothing, but unfortunately, no strategy is 100% effective.
One Friday after school, our program bused all 30+ of us into the Old City to visit the Hawa Mahal, the City Palace, and the Jantar Mantar. You may remember the gorgeous, honeycomb Hawa Mahal, or the Wind Temple, from a previous post, but at that time, I didn’t pay to go upside of it.
The school trip on the other hand payed for us to go inside, which I would highly recommend! The long and narrow palace was constructed to allow the royal ladies to watch the city’s happenings down below from one of the hundreds of little green-shuttered windows.
We had a blast running up and down impossibly tiny staircases, wandering through winding rooms, and peering out the little windows to the street down below. The palace also provided stunning views of the nearby Jantar Mantar observatory.
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Next stop, the nearby Jantar Mantar. The Jantar Mantar is by far one of the coolest and most interesting sites to see in Jaipur. Jai Singh, the founder and city planner of Jaipur, had a strong affinity for astronomy and constructed the Jantar Mantar in 1728. Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Jantar Mantar in Jaipur is one of a total of five around India. Jai Singh sent scholars abroad to study the construction of astronomical instruments, and the elaborate, geometric structures remain, as accurate as when they were first constructed.
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The Jantar Mantar is naturally best experienced alongside an accompanying guide who can explain the purpose of each instrument and even how to use them. This guy gave us quite the show, half in Hindi, half in English.
Several of the instruments at the Jantar Mantar were used to tell time. This structure below does just that:
If you look closely right at where the sun creates a shade upon the structure’s curve white marble, you will see that it will tell you the exact time!
This bowl-like structure was related to horoscopes:
And finally, the crowing jewel of the Jantar Mantar is the Brihat Sumrat Yantra:
The 27 meter high structure is set at an angle of 27 degrees. The cast shadows visibly move 1 mm per second (that’s 6 cm in one minute!), allowing the observer to tell them time exactly! Unfortunately, the steps are off limits to visitors.
Our final stop was the City Palace. Unfortunately by that point, most of us were hot, exhausted, and burnt out from Hindi. Nevertheless we soldiered on through the rest of the tour.
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The outer wall of the City Palace was first constructed by Jai Singh, but the inner buildings of the palace were built and adapted over a few centuries. Some of the newer buildings date back to the 20th century. The Mubarak Mahal was constructed in the late 19th century to entertain visiting dignitaries. Today it houses a collection of royal costumes, including some of the polo apparel used more recently by the royal lineage.
Mubarak Mahal.
The City Palace, like many of the other forts and palaces I’ve written about on this blog, is home to a Diwan-i-Am, or Hall of Public Audience, in which the royal family would listen to concerns of the public and hand out orders.
Diwan-i-Am, the Hall of Public Audience.
That just about wraps up the sites and scenes of Jaipur. A city full of history, color, and incredible views, Jaipur is definitely a wonderful place to visit in India, but I should add that it hasn’t always been easy to live here. The city is sprawling. 3.1 million people live in this metropolis, and the city spreads out, not up, as it has very few tall buildings. Driving across the city in a rickshaw can take quite a bit of time, just like it did when I was living in Beijing. When I was finally leaving Beijing after 10 months, I was feeling very much ready to be in a smaller place where things are walkable, people are friendly, and there is green space. Here, at the end of my program, I can’t help but feel the same way. Big cities are fun to visit, but I’ve never felt more ready in my life to move to a smaller town. Ithaca, New York, population 30,014 (in the city proper; the metro has 101,564), should hopefully fit that bill.
The final week of the program is upon us, and it’s packed full until the very end. This week, we will be taking our final exams for our individual classes, a final Hindi proficiency exam (the same that we took at the beginning so the American Institute of Indian Studies can evaluate their effectiveness), a final oral presentation to our classes, and a cultural show on Thursday night. All of our host families and language partners are invited, and many of us girls will don newly tailor saris. I still have a few things I want to pick up at the bazaar, and we’re still trying to squeeze in a trip out to Sanganer, a suburb of Jaipur that’s home to several traditional “block printing” fabric factories.
Scenes of the city.
Amidst the madness I hope to make it back on here at least once more before I leave India a week from today. I have experienced so much that I have been unable to share due to faulty or even a complete lack of internet. I better get back to studying for now, but thanks for checking in and learning about Jaipur.
Namaste. This past weekend marked my final excursion outside of Jaipur before the end of my program and also the first and only whole group excursion with all 30+ students along for the ride. We piled into a bus Friday morning and took a bumpy ride a few hours away to the village of Pushkar, a prominent pilgrimage town that is very important within the Hindu religion. What should have been a fun trip filled with friends and laughter quickly devolved into a bit of a rough time as I came down with a myriad of ailments. My feeling under the weather, however, failed to detract from Pushkar’s allure, which I would love to share through pictures and words.
Pushkar
Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Pushkar, a village of just under 15,000 people, is in its creation.
Before we get started, here’s a brief overview of Hinduism for those with little previous exposure: the (loose) parallel of the “Holy Trinity” in Hinduism is called the “Trimurti,” which is made up of the Hindu gods Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Brahma is the creator, and all of reality is his dream. Brahma’s lifetimes span 311,040,000,000,000 years. Shiva, the destroyer, then destroys the universe, at which point Brahma is reborn to dream it all again.
The sacred lake in Pushkar, according to Hindu legend, is said to have sprung up where Brahma dropped a lotus flower from the sky. After creating the lake, Brahma planned to perform a yajna, or self-mortification, to protect it from demons. The yajna required the presence of his consort, Saraswati, but she was late. Brahma quickly married a convenient milkmaid, Gayatri, in order to perform the yajna. When Saraswati finally arrived to find Gayatri beside Brahma, she was furious, cursing Brahma to be forgotten by those on earth. The gods pleaded with her, and she acquiesced in part, demanding that Brahma only be worshipped in Pushkar. As a result, the Brahma temple in Pushkar remains one of the only temples dedicated to the worship of Brahma in the world and allegedly the only one in India.
Our bus arrived in Pushkar around lunch time. Our first stop as a group was a lake-side demonstration of the “camel decoration” tradition. It was hot as blazes by the lake, and I would be lying if I said I listened attentively like a good Hindi student to the quick-fire Hindi the camel decorator was throwing at us for two hours, but here is an overview of camel decoration in photos:
Start with this very large, slightly jolly-looking undecorated camel:
And one “professional camel decorator”:
Over an hour later you have this:
Maybe it was because it was so hot that afternoon, and we had to stand out in the sun watching for over an hour, but many of my classmates were not impressed with this “cultural activity” the program had organized for us. Many felt that decorating the camel in such a fashion constituted as animal abuse. The camel did indeed appear uncomfortable, and at one point he attempted to stand back up, defecating in the process.
The whole event was weird, but I’ve tried to keep an open mind here, realizing there are two sides to any coin. While I wish I could tell you more about it, I do know that camel decoration is a Rajasthani tradition that is very old, and I think it’s important to also see it as such.
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The ordeal ended with a very publicity-hungry camel decorator donning his finest camel gear proudly.
यह क्या है?
Without further adieu, the next stop on our exploration of Pushkar was the Brahma temple. Photography was prohibited, so unfortunately I don’t have any pictures to share. The temple was a bustling place with many Indians performing pujas to Brahma while inappropriately dressed foreigners bumbled about. In truth, it wasn’t unlike many of the other temples I have visited thus far in India; it just had a different deity front and center.
Finally we were set loose for the night in Pushkar. The town of Pushkar itself caters very heavily to foreign tourists. The streets were lined with shops displaying elephant printed pants, leather-bound journals stamped with om’s, and Rajathani jootis (shoes) one rainfall away from falling apart. We settled into a café for the evening and enjoyed watching the darkness of night encroach on Pushkar and the lights of the town come twinkling to life. Back at the hotel, a Rajasthani music and dance troop performed for us. They were outstanding, one performer even breathing fire, but by that point in the night I was feeling too sick to capture the festivities on film.
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Nevertheless, I forced myself to roll out of bed at 4:45 am the following morning. After spending a few moments on the bathroom floor crippled with nausea, I made the perhaps poor decision to tackle this non-trivial hike just outside Pushkar:
It was a steep hike, but whenever I stopped to rest, I always turned around to be greeted by this view:
After encountering some friendly animals along the way, we finally reached the temple at the top. Perched in a misty, rainy cloud, the temple forced us to use our imaginations to conjure up what would have been stunning views of Pushkar below.
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While I had been hoping a little exercise would purge the nausea I was experiencing, the hike only seemed to make me feel worse. Fatigue set in on the bus to Tilonia, a small village off the road on the way back to Jaipur.
Tilonia is home to an NGO run for villagers by villagers to address developmental issues surrounding water and energy resources, health and sanitation, and women’s opportunities. We took quite the extensive tour of the campus. Here they showed us a “solar power” system that harnesses the sun’s energy to cook food in the silver box pictured:
My Hindi wasn’t good enough to understand what advantages said system had over simply building a fire, especially since each contraption was priced at 15,000 rupees. We also toured areas where women were making reusable sanitary pads, clothes and fabrics, as well as a puppet theater.
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Perhaps the most intriguing was a giant room filled with women from various other Asian and Africa countries being taught rudimentary electrician skills through a color-coded demonstration system as none of the women could speak or understand Hindi. On the surface, I thought this was a really inspiring idea. However, after digging a little deeper I discovered that the Indian government was funding all of the travel and expenses of these women to attend the workshop. I couldn’t help but see that as a contradiction, what with India’s own poverty and environmental destruction off the charts. In the end I really appreciated the overarching goals the NGO had, but the visit also provided me with an inside look into really the trenches of rural development and some of the real challenges at hand.
While the class trip to Pushkar and Tilonia was very informative and fun at certain moments, I can’t deny that I was eager to get back to Jaipur and collapse in bed. By mid-day Sunday, whatever was plaguing my system seemed to have almost worked its way out. This was just in time for our host mother to take us out for lunch.
Now, I’ve heard from a few students here or there whose host families have taken them out to McDonald’s or Pizza Hut, both of which are within close proximity to my house. However, instead Ben, Michael, Kayla, and myself piled into the back of the car for a thirty-minute drive to the outskirts of Jaipur and up a giant mesa. Perched at the top was a beautiful white Jain temple with the best views I have seen in India yet!
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After admiring the post-monsoon greenery, we were informed we would be eating a free meal at the Jain temple after the prayer finished. Our host mother led us down a flight of stairs to a makeshift outdoor dining area. How to describe this cringe-worthy experience?
The entire place was literally crawling. The millipedes are apparently in season in Jaipur, and when I sat down on a plastic lawn chair in the overcrowded dining area, I made sure to keep my feet of the floor to avoid the creepy crawlies and squashed food (and squashed creepy crawlies!). Flies, however, far outnumbered their earth-bound friends, relentlessly landing on my feet and food. Ah yes, the food. Ugh. The tables are set up in a huge U-shape, with diners sitting along the outside of the U. When we sat down, we were giving a paper plate and paper bowls. Cue the food wallahs. First someone came by with a bucket of what felt like two-pound balls of wheat the size of mere golf balls, in other words some of the heaviest food I’ve ever eaten. Lumps of sugary substance in three colors (orange, white, and green for the Indian flag) were then piled onto our plates, but first they were scooped out of giant bowls with the servers’ hands. Everything was served with the servers’ hands, even the rice. They kept coming one after another after another and then repeat! It was so difficult to make them understand I didn’t want more. I was poured a glass of water, and I tried my hardest not to drink it, but soon enough I discovered I had drank some without realizing it! The moment we finally got up from the table and squeezed our way through bodies, chairs, and bugs, I knew I would be sick. I just knew it, like I know my name is Margaret. Sure enough, when I got home, cue the worst travelers’ diarrhea I have ever had.
I was frustrated with my host mother for taking us there. It was the first and only time she or anyone in the house had taken us to do something in Jaipur, so, while I appreciated the gesture, I didn’t understand why she chose to take us to a place where the food was obviously not clean. Neither she nor anyone else in the family is a Jain, so I am also not sure why she would take us to the free meal at a Jain temple. The whole ordeal was strange, but I’m relieved to say as of Monday afternoon I was completely free of the TD.
This past weekend felt a little like a bust, but I am happy I’m healthy and powering through these last few days of class before our exams, presentations, and cultural performance next week. The Jaipur “to-do” list I made a few weeks back has been mostly ticked off, and I only have a few more things I’d like to accomplish before packing up and leaving on the 10th. Now that I’m done traveling, I’m eager to spend a little time before the end writing up some of my excursions within Jaipur. I’m also looking forward to divulging some final reflections of my time here in India, perhaps one of the most eye-opening places in the world, so check back again soon.
Another weekend, another trip. Another sensory overload of experiences that words fail to describe and photographs fail to capture. Each weekend has been a rollercoaster of emotions that leave my body feeling like it was hit by a train and my head spinning so fast that it doesn’t even have time to slow down before the next trip. Mussoorie was this to the extreme.
This past weekend was the one and only three-day weekend the program is allowing us this summer. Exhausted from day-to-day life in India, I set off into this past weekend with the hope that I would feel rejuvenated, refreshed, and ready to tackle the last three weeks of the Hindi program once I returned. Yet, Mussoorie left me feeling the exact opposite.
How do you find it in your heart to leave the most beautiful place you’ve ever been?
Happy Valley.
Since we were given a three-day weekend, naturally most students planned slightly more elaborate travels than the one-night overnights we’ve been doing. My friend Beverly was looking for a travel companion to accompany her to the hill station of Mussoorie in Uttarakhand amidst the foothills of the Himalayas, where she had attended an international boarding school during high school. I was eager from the very start to get out of big cities and see some green (Rajasthan happens to have one of the only more desert-like climates in all of India), so I naturally I jumped at the chance to join her but had little idea of what to expect.
An overnight train (in the AC sleeper car, thank God!) deposited us in Haridwar along the River Ganges (or “Ganga” in Hindi), where we would load into a car that would splash along highways for two hours before treacherously climbing up the lush mountains to the hilltop Mussoorie, careening around sharp corners all the way to the top.
Mussoorie rises 6,500 feet above sea level, making the snow-covered ranges the peaks as high as 21,500 feet along India’s northern board with Tibet visible on a clear day. The hill station was intended to be the terminus of the Great Survey of Indian that began at the southern tip of the subcontinent in 1832. Since then it has played host to various groups of Christian missionaries, one of which established the boarding school Beverly attended in 1854.
The Jain Regency Hotel.
The monsoon had well and truly arrived in Mussoorie when our car dropped us at the budget Jain Regency Hotel. It was pouring in the cliff-hanging city so hard that gushing streams took over the sewage system-less roads. The first stop in town was to stock up on umbrellas and raingear, but by the time we arrived at the shop we were already soaked and chilly (ah, what a luxury it was to be chilly). Although we were itching for a hike, the rains restricted us to strictly wandering about the town and even forced me to leave my camera at the hotel! Alas, words will have to suffice.
There is one main road that runs through Mussoorie, the Mall Road. The shops and houses were jumbled so closely to one another, as if to hold onto each other to avoid falling off the edge of the mountain. The buildings clung to their rotting facades, perpetually wet from monsoon and mountain mist. Antique stores were interspersed with small restaurants specializing in Tibetan favorites served by handsome waiters. Kalsang had the most delectable momos, a type of Tibetan dumpling. The only tourists in sight were Indian. Even the chocolate shop, peddling Kit-Kat and Oreo shakes and at least twenty different kinds of homemade truffles within a glass case, was scattered only with Indian youth. There were no shopkeepers yelling “hello miss” or “madam, come to my shop” or even rickshaw drivers overcharge you. The town is too small to require rickshaws after all. Only two colors, green and brown, painted the environs. Fresh, thick, green moss gave the trees bright green coats, while wet, pungent, brown earth smudged everything else in site. Clouds came and went as they pleased, shrouding the city in an ethereal mist at a moment’s notice. Some brought rain, while other did not. A double rainbow streaked across the sky just before night fell, at which point Mall Road sprung to life with evening activity and energy under the glow of the many shop lights.
As if my first day in Mussoorie hadn’t been magical enough, we arose to find a clear morning greeting us through the window, the purple and blue rolling hills visible as far as the eye could see. We counted our blessings too soon, however, and were met with a downpour as soon as we set foot out the door. This time though the rain couldn’t stop me, so I set out camera in hand with Beverly and Tamara as we took to the trails.
Let me take a moment to describe the most amazing and exceedingly gorgeous Woodstock School, where Beverly attended 10th grade. Woodstock is a Christian, international K-12 institution just outside of Mussoorie in adjacent Landour. Established in 1854, it is the oldest boarding school in Asia and considered to be one of the best boarding schools in India, if not the best. Boarders can begin living on campus as soon as 2nd grade, and the curriculum is based on the American system, preparing students for and providing the opportunity to sit Advanced Placement exams on campus, as well as SAT tests. Beverly was one of several from Western countries from her year, but most of her class was made up of students from other Asian countries – such as Bhutan, Sri Lanka, South Korea, and Nepal – who were aiming to attend a top-tier university in India or a university in the U.S. Annual tuition is akin to attending a state university as in in-state student. The school offers tons of opportunities to students, having well-developed music and theater programs as well as a competitive basketball team. During her year at Woodstock, Beverly filled her time with community service, volunteering at and raising funds and supplies for local orphanages, one of which we even visited while in Mussoorie.
The red-roofed buildings are the Woodstock School facilities.
Prior to our visit to the Woodstock campus, Beverly led us up the wet, winding path in between the teachers’ and administrators’ cute apartments and cottages to the tiptop of Landour, where the views of the rolling, misty Himalayan foothills took our breath away. The mists blanketed everything in sight, including what would have been a view of the snow-capped Himalayan peaks on a clear day.
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Most places in India by now are just about swimming in piles of trash, but in Landour this was decidedly not the case. The paths were lined with friendly trash receptacles, labeled prominently with “USE ME” followed by a nature-inspired quote from some of the world’s most beloved environmentalists.
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Among the quaint mountain top apartments and chapels lays a stretch of four shops right in a row that go by the name of “Char Dukan,” which conveniently translates from Hindi to “Four Shops.” While we dug into banana pancakes and sipped on chai, Beverly recounted happy memories of her Friday afternoons eating Wai Wai noodles are Char Dukan after volunteering at the nearby boys’ orphanage.
Anil’s Cafe in Char Dukan.
An easier hike down the mountain deposited us at the gate of Woodstock School. Beverly was overjoyed to be back. She toured us around the quite substantial campus and even showed us her old 10th grade girls’ dormitory, where we met her former “dorm parent,” Mrs. Jerusha.
A happy Beverly at the Woodstock School gate.
One of the many dormitories at the Woodstock School.
The entire weekend Beverly had regaled me with stories of Woodstock, all the afternoons she had spent laughing with friends and eating snacks at Cozy Corner, all the silly antics of the girls in her dormitory, and even of the demerit she earned after being caught making out with her first love by the pool. Amazingly, Beverly made me nostalgic for an experience I never had nor will ever have and excited for her sister, whom I have never met, to arrive on campus next weekend. Mussoorie and Woodstock exuded an incredible sense of peace and simplicity while simultaneously radiating the energy of that awkward yet wonderful place between childhood and adulthood. Although I will never be nostalgic for Eden Prairie High School (good riddance), chatting with Beverly about her time at Woodstock and paging through the yearbook she bought there brought back all the good memories of a simpler time. Life has become so complicated since then.
This was my 10th grade.
In all honesty, I loved Mussoorie and Woodstock so much that I spent the entire weekend trying to figure out how I could reshuffle my life to come back there as a staff or teacher. Only problem is the teaching bug hasn’t bit me yet, nor do I have a strong affinity for being around children… Crunchy hippies come to India all the time to “find themselves” and the purpose of their lives, but this experience has actually made me less sure of the direction I am going in life. Uhh… One thing I do know: I will most definitely be pulling a John and Mitch and sending all of my nieces and nephews to Woodstock for at least a year, or perhaps all of high school if I am ever so successful. Will be looking into savings plans once my graduate school stipend kicks in. Who needs retirement savings anyway?
While Beverly was busy meeting up with old friends and teachers, Tamara and I cabbed it to Happy Valley, which is none other than a quiet Tibetan hamlet set back in the rolling hills surrounding Mussoorie. At the multicolored Buddhist temple, I slipped off my waterlogged hiking boots, stepped onto the cool floors of the temple, and listened to the memorizing chanting of a monk seated before an elaborate altar before depositing a few rupees into the donation box.
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The monk’s recitations transported me back to my visit to Tibetan Buddhist temple three years ago with Brian: the Ganden Sumtseling Monastery in Shangri La, China. Ganden Sumtseling is the largest Tibetan Buddhist Monastery outside of Tibet.
Ganden Sumtseling Monastery in Shangri La, China. January, 2012.
For that trip, Brian and I scoured the Zoo Market just outside the Beijing Zoo Subway Stop for an affordable pair of hiking boots before leaving for our flight to Yunnan. $30 or so dollars put a pair of Chinese brand hiking boots on my feet. Thinking they were counterfeit (like most things at Chinese markets), I was hoping they would wait to fall apart until after my trip to Yunnan. Well, they waited a lot longer than that. Those boots have hiked Tiger Leaping Gorge in South China; climbed the Great Wall too many times to count; dug into the sandy beaches of Vietnam; tiptoed over the “no-photography line” within the DMZ to capture a better picture of North Korea; traversed Borlaug’s beloved wheat fields in Obregon, Mexico; and held me up when I felt like collapsing from back pain after putting in ten straight hours in the greenhouse. Since their first every journey was to a Tibetan Monestary not too far from the Tibetan border in Yunnan province, it felt appropriate when their last trek be to a Tibetan Buddhist temple within the Himalayan foothills along the Indian-Tibetan border. When I slipped my favorite boots on after visiting the temple, I noticed the sole of one of them is coming off. A tribute to the most beloved pair of shoes I’ve ever owned:
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The environs in Happy Valley were absolutely breathtaking. One of the trashcans quoting Thoreau on Landour said it best: “Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.” Holey moley. This place was just awe-inspiring. Goats trotted and bleated by our sides as we hiked along a path into the green wonderland.
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Tamara is an ethno-botany PhD student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and her research concerns the natural resource management of what are considered “sacred groves,” or patches of land in which gods are thought to live. When we came across a group of three female Tibetan goat herders, naturally Tamara (whose Hindi is very advanced) asked if there were any sacred groves in the area.
Our friendly goat-herding guides.
One of the ladies, in her flip flops, led us at vigorous pace up one of the rolling hills and down the other side to this sign:
I’d be lying if I said I could read this, but Tamara informed me after quickly conversing with the goat herder that we were indeed about to enter a sacred area, and our shoes would need to be removed. Desperate to not miss out any experiences, I removed my boots and plodded along slowly behind a quick Tamara and an even quicker goat herder, grimacing as the jagged Himalayan rocks dug into my bare feet. Finally we arrived at a tiny opening in the side of a rock face. We crawled into the tiny wet space to find a small shrine devoted to the Hindu god Shiva. The rock formations inside the cave formed a phallic shape, which in Hinduism is often associated with Shiva. The cave wasn’t technically a sacred grove (Tamara’s research is difficult to explain in English, so it was no surprise we got lost in translation somewhere), but nevertheless Tamara was really excited to see how this sacred geography was playing into the local religious practices. The experience was most definitely worth the stinging feet that came along with it.
Along our way in Happy Valley, we came across this sign:
In Tibetan Buddhism, the Panchen Lama is the highest-ranking Lama after the Dlai Lama. The Panchen Lama is identified by the Dalai Lama, and there is only one Panchen Lama at any one given time because the Panchen Lama holds the responsibility of recognizing the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama after his death. After the death of the 10th Panchen Lama, the Dalai Lama identified the 11th Panchen Lama as Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, a six-year-old boy, as the reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama in February of 1995. Soon after, the Chinese government kidnapped the boy and his family, proceeding to select a different boy for the role instead. The Dalai Lama rejected this, and ever since, many human rights initiatives have attempted to locate the whereabouts of Gedhun Choekyi Nyima. It is likely that he is either dead or has been brainwashed by the Chinese government, as by now he would be twenty-five years of age. This is a huge issue and horrible situation for the Tibetan Buddhist community because only the Panchen Lama has the ability to recognize the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama.
With one day remaining in three-day vacation, we hopped on a bumpy bus to meet up with a few others in our program at the nearby city of Rishikesh, made famous when the Beatles dropped in for a visit with Maharishi Mahesh at his ashram. Rishikesh is now filled with ashrams of every size, shape, and color that draw hoards of European backpackers eager to “find themselves” each year. At the stylish German bakery in town, I had the pleasure of sitting next to this latte-drinking barefoot guy, who was on page two of The Story of Philosophy.
Good luck buddy.
Still it was kind of cool to see what that scene was all about, even if I may never be able to understand it.
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Apparently we had picked the wrong time to visit Rishikesh; the annual Kanvar Yatra religious pilgrimage was taking place across the region. While most guidebooks and travel references always highlight and recommend travel during religious festivals, this was one we definitely could have gone without. Kanvar Yatra is a religious pilgrimage in which devotees walk to fetch holy water from the Ganges River. After collecting the water in small jugs, the orange-clad pilgrims are mandated to walk barefoot (although most that we saw were in flip flops) for 105 km in groups of family, friends, and neighbors to return to their local Shiva temples and pour the Ganges water on Lord Shiva. The pilgrims chanted and sung “bol bam” over and over and over, giving praise to Shiva.
Notice the mass of orange piling into the river beyond the bridge.
While you might think that those participating in a rigorous religious pilgrimage might be cut from a more pious cloth, these pilgrims were anything but virtuous. They stared at us relentlessly, pointing and crude making gestures. One even flashed Beverly as we were trying to enjoy pizza in a Beatles Café. We figured that since most are coming from villages, it was probably their first time seeing a foreign woman in person. Despite this, their actions were completely inappropriate and unforgiveable.
The vulgar pilgrims drove us out of Rishikesh and up the banks of the mighty Ganges River, where we spent the rest of the day peaceful dipping our toes into the sacred (but also putrid) waters. In the end it was a pleasant day.
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Leaving lush, verdant greens and mountain mists of Mussoorie and Rishikesh to return to the desert-like climate of Jaipur was impossible. What made it impossibly more impossible was the AC cutting out in the overnight train we took on the way home, arriving an hour and a half late in Jaipur with no time to return home before class, attending class without having showered for two days, being ripped off by a rickshaw, having said rickshaw break down mid-trip, finding a cockroach in my shower (again), and, to top it all off, losing power just in time for dinner. Monday was tough. My goal of feeling refreshed after this trip was far from realized. And yet, just when I was starting to feel ready to head home and start my next big adventure (grad school!), I had a great day today. I taught a teeny tiny adorable seven-year-old girl English at a battered women’s shelter after school. When I came down for breakfast this morning, I was thrilled to find these:
Idli and sambar at my host family’s house!
South Indian breakfast is my new favorite food of all time! The fluffy white disks are called “idli,” which are made from fermented rice flour and taste a bit sour. They’re dipped into sambar, which is a lentil based stew. I must have eaten eight of them this morning!
Yesterday afternoon I had the pleasure of snacking on my other favorite South Indian breakfast food: dosas!
Enjoying a mid-afternoon snack of dosas at the Jawahar Kala Kendra.
This thin pancake-like treat is made from the same fermented rice flour as idli. They can be stuffed with a variety of things; this one had onion and egg. Dosas are traditionally dipped into various chutneys. The white one here is a coconut chutney, and I believe the reddish one is tomato-based.
And tonight I can expect to once again show down on butter rotis until my heart’s content. Can’t beat that! I am loving the food here, so much so that I have put on a few pounds. Oops! 😉
Thanks for following my best adventure yet. I have one more weekend of travel coming up, and then I hope to squeeze in a couple of posts on my daily life as well as other Jaipur sites before I head home in less than three weeks (eek!) on August 10th. Stay tuned!
So powerful in fact that now my body feels like it got hit by a train.
Since the bus that we had rented to take us to Agra picked us up at 4 in the morning yesterday, all nine of us packed into Beverly and Rebekah’s houses (on the same street) to avoid having to pick everyone up in the morning. At Beverly’s house, the six of us, all girls, naturally gabbed the night away in full-on sleepover fashion and only ended up getting about two hours of sleep before crawling into the bus with the moon still full and promptly passing out.
Off the Agra-Jaipur highway lives a little gem called the Chand Baori stepwell. I’d read about it in a guidebook and had been itching to go, but I simply figured the driver would never be able to find it or it would be too far out of the way to make a stop at en-route to Agra. Most of us had slept the entire first part of the bus ride until Shin roused us in the morning light and whispered, “Guys, wake up, we’re at the stepwell.” I couldn’t believe we’d actually made the stop!
Chand Baori Stepwell.
Umm, wow. The Chand Baori stepwell was constructed in 8th century and is one of Rajasthan’s oldest remaining pieces of history. The climate in Rajasthan is very dry and arid, and even today water scarcity is a constant concern. The well was designed to conserve as much water as possible, and the temperature near the bottom is 5-6 degrees cooler than at the surface level. In times of great heat, the bottom of the well was used as a community-gathering place.
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At the break of day, the steps looked beautiful and ethereal in the morning light. Although the well was entirely fenced off to prohibit entrance, I could still imagine ladies in colorful clothing making their way down the steep steps to the well below. Located in the small village of Abhaneri, the place was devoid of much activity in the early morning, making for a very peaceful stop on our way to Agra. I would highly recommend renting transportation for the trip between Agra and Jaipur as the Chand Baori is well-worth the stop but harder to access via public transportation.
Having all once again passed out on the bus, we arrived in Agra before we knew it. First stop: The Taj Mahal. In 2002, the Taj Mahal began to show signs of discoloration from pollution. After using multani mitti – an ancient blend of soil, cereal, milk, and lime once used by Indian women as a beauty product – to spruce up the color, the city prohibited the operation of polluting vehicles within a zone surrounding the Taj. Only electric vehicles are allowed, so our bus driver had to drop us at the edge of the zone.
Entry into the Taj is expensive, almost $13. You wouldn’t typically find an entrance fee that high elsewhere in India. Admission includes a free bottle of water and thin cloth booties to be worn over your shoes. My guidebook recommended skipping the booties to help the environment and simply walking barefoot on the Taj like the locals do. In July, this was a huge mistake, which I’ll get into later.
After being bombarded by relentlessly pushy guides looking for work, we boarded an electric vehicle (it reminded me of the Trumpet Creeper at the MN Arboretum) that dropped us at the gate. I’d heard horror stories of three hours lines under the hot sun outside the Taj but was surprised to find no line. Again, it became obvious why this was the case later on.
From the south, the Taj grounds are accessed by a massive red sandstone gateway inscribed with verse from the Quran. The top of the Taj peeks into the southern entry courtyard from afar.
The red sandstone entry gate to the Taj grounds.
The Taj peeking in.
The gateway spits you out into a tangle of tourists in a small space all trying to get the same picture at the same time. But you also see the Taj in all of its glory for the first time. It was very much an inspiring moment that definitely gave all of us the chills. It’s just one of those things that you think you’ll never see in your life. Even just a year ago, before my internship at the seed company, India wasn’t even really a country I was thinking about.
First look!
I’ve questioned myself a lot since I arrived in India: Shouldn’t I be doing science right now? What am I getting out of this experience? What am I doing with my life? I have such a huge life change coming up in a few weeks. The added day-to-day stress that comes along with simply living and functioning in India definitely exacerbates all of that questioning, but in moments like seeing the Taj for the first time, I am reminded that I must be doing something right.
A large Persian garden fills the space in between the Taj and the red sandstone gateway, quartered by long narrow fountains. I had seen so many beautiful photographs of the Taj reflecting in these fountains, but apparently they had had a bad case of India in July yesterday and were empty. Midway through the gardens, the picture-takers had thinned out, so we stopped to capture some quintessential “me at the Taj” photos and attempt some derpy selfies before moving on.
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When I arrived at the foot of the Taj, I got a true sense of the sheer size of the structure for the first time. The variety in color and pattern of the marble blocks also became visible.
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Time to go up inside. I climbed the steps onto the marble platform and removed my shoes. Ow. Let’s see, how to describe the feeling of the flesh on the bottom of your feet burning? I momentarily felt as though my life depended on getting to piece of the floor that was in the shade. Although I had rejected the booties earlier at the advice of my guidebook, thankfully there was a stand nearby dispersing the cloth booties. I got myself a pair and made my way back up the steps.
It was 107 degrees yesterday. I really don’t even want to know how hot the white stone marble was, but it noticeably hotter on top of the platform than below in the courtyard. The Taj itself sizzles your corneas, which felt almost symbolic to me. The white stone reflects so much light that you must have one eye closed at all times to simply be up there. I had debated bringing along a very touristy-looking bucket hat, but I was extremely grateful to have had it. Some of the students in my group had brought neither a hat nor sunglasses and really struggled. It made sense why there weren’t the busloads of tourists piling into the Taj yesterday, which was nice, but I can’t deny that the heat really made it a challenge for us.
Photography inside the tomb was prohibited, so I don’t have any photos to share from it, but it was relatively simplistic. The false tomb of Shah Jahan’s wife, Mumtaz Mahal, was in the center. Shah Jahan’s cenotaph was off to the left, both surrounded by a beautiful marble screen inlaid with semiprecious stones. The real tombs are locked away in the basement.
Entrance to the tomb.
The inside of the tomb was a madhouse of people pushing and shoving to get a view of the cenotaphs. One incredibly annoying boy behind me decided it would be a good idea to test the acoustics of the tomb, screaming and shouting the entire time. Ugh.
Once out the other side, we spent some time marveling at the great detailing in the marble walls of the Taj, the nearby mosque and symmetrical jawab, and the sadly dried up-looking Yamuna River. Being around there made me think a lot about human emotion and what would have driven Shah Jahan to construct such a place.
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I now have a great answer for that annoying dinner party question of what time period in history you would choose to be alive during: the Islamic Mughal empire in India. The Mughals were in power in India from 1526 to 1857, and the 17th century in particular marked a time of peace and prosperity for India. That time became a sort of golden age for architecture in India as Shah Jahan erected many large monuments, several of which are now some of the most famous sites in India. For example, last weekend I saw the Jama Masjid and the Red Fort in Delhi, both of which were built by Shah Jahan. In Agra, the Taj Mahal is perhaps Shah Jahan’s masterpiece, but he also contributed to the Agra Fort, itself a UNESCO World Heritage Site that we didn’t have time to make it to. His grandfather Akbar had built the Fatehpur Sikri two generations before.
Supposedly court records detail Shah Jahan’s grief and subsequent demise in response to the loss of his third wife Mumtaz Mahal during the birth of their 14th child. While I would like to believe the driving force behind the construction of the Taj – which employed over 20,000 people, brought in artisans from as far away as Europe, and required the refinement of thousands of semiprecious stones – was love, I can’t help but wonder if there might have been a little bit (or big bit) of an ego involved. We enjoyed speculating about the personality of the great Shah Jahan and what it was that drove him to build one of the most iconic structures in the world.
With last look back at the Taj one final time (although I’m sure I will be back someday!), we hit the road and made our way for Fatehpur Sikri. An hour in the direction of Jaipur outside of Agra, the Fatehpur Sikri was the short-lived capital of the Mughal Empire from 1571 to 1585. Built by Emperor Akbar on a piece of land prone to water scarcity, the series of palaces and other structures were abandoned after the emperor’s death. The structures remain today as one of the best preserved examples of Mughal architecture.
Group moral was low when we arrived at the Fatehpur Sikri. Despite having had a lunch break at an overpriced restaurant that our driver dropped us off at so that he could make commission, we hadn’t recovered from the severe heat. We wandered mindlessly from building to building in the oppressive heat but still appreciated the beautiful architecture.
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My favorite part was the huge Diwan-i-Am, the Hall of Public Audiences. The huge courtyard is said to have hosted public executions in which elephants would trample the convicted. A pavilion headed the courtyard, and I was able to imagine Akbar himself dispensing justice from the center section of it.
The Diwan-i-Am, the Hall of Public Audience.
Where Akbar would have stood to dispense justice.
Just outside the Fatehpur Sikri is a Jama Masjid mosque also constructed by Akbar. After my last experience at the Jama Masjid in Delhi, I was so excited to check this place out! Even before we can get through the entryway, it’s all, “Hello, miss where you are from?” Ugh… People would NOT leave us alone at this place. Many of my counterparts in the program are much more engaging with Indian people than I am, and a lot of the time I get down on myself about that fact, but at the Jama Masjid, I was happy I had enough gumption to give all the chatty fellows the cold shoulder. Many of my friends in the group got pulled away to pay money to make an offering. Poor Shin got so wrapped into one chap’s scheme that she spent 1500 rupees on cheap stone carvings! That’s a whopping $25! This little boy wouldn’t get off my toes for about twenty minutes inside the mosque, asking for my used ticket to the Fatehpur Sikri, which we assumed he would turn around and try to sell to unsuspecting tourists. He followed me out of the mosque, road our rickshaw back to the entrance with us, and followed us all the way to our bus, banging on the sides as we pulled away. Being there was just so acutely annoying. I couldn’t really appreciate the mosque as a result, but I still managed to snap a few decent photos of it (most of which were taken when I was trying to make myself look like I was occupied to avoid the “Hello Miss” chaps):
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I even recorded a video of the 5 o’clock call to prayer:
I’m starting to feel like I’ve recovered a bit since I started working on this post this morning. Right now I’m down in Refill Cafe below the Domino’s near Gaurav Towers. My housemate Ben showed me this place today. The WiFi is a huge improvement over the institute’s and the USB internet stick I own, and we even got to share some masala French fries and a couple of chocolate covered waffles. Can’t beat that!
What a trip! This trip, just like Delhi, chewed me up and spit me out. We had some of the best and some of the worst experiences together, which I’m starting to believe properly sums up travel in India. The Taj Mahal is now thoroughly seared into my corneas. Kidding! Despite the heat, I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to take in the Taj, Fatehpur Sikri, and the stunning Baori Stepwell all on this one single trip. My travel will be winding down from here on out. This week we have Friday off, so Beverly and I are headed to the foothills of the Himalayas via sleeper train for three days of adventures and hopefully some relaxation. After a quick group trip to Pushkar, the camel town, I’ll be back in Jaipur for good until I come home to Minnesota on August 10th. Can’t believe the program is wrapping up so fast, but I really feel as though I’m making the most of it. Thanks for joining me for the Taj!
Delhi. Oh Delhi, how can you even describe such a place? I’ve before never felt so feeble in my ability to harness the English language to relay an experience. Nevertheless, I’ll give it a go, and with the aid of photography and some impromptu video, perhaps I can capture one-tenth of the humanity, the life, the chaos that I experienced this past weekend. Never before have I experienced so much experience, so hold on tight!
Kids at the Jama Masjid.
If I were to summarize Delhi, the capital of the Indian subcontinent, into one sentence, I would say it has a bad case of schizophrenia. The city is bursting at the seams with contradiction. One can exit the metro at Chowri Bazaar and enter a thrumming, thick vein of the city, wet and crowded with sinewy bodies peddling cycle rickshaws wheel to wheel, wiry mutts with curly tails and ribs poking out in all directions, and wires strung every which way between the suffocating passageways.
Chowri Bazaar.
A twenty minute ride on the sleek underground metro can deliver you to Jor Bargh, where you may not find a single car, motorcycle, or rickshaw buzzing down streets lined with pristine properties more expensive those of Manhattan. Ride the yellow line a little farther, and it will deposit you at the Qutb Minar, once the Muslim center of India, where the construction of the towering red sandstone structures began in 1193.
Qutb Minar.
Welcome to Delhi, truly the most fascinating, yet evocative place I have ever been.
Looking back on our whirlwind trip, it seems impossible that Rebekah and I spent less than 48 hours in Delhi. Our journey began at 5 am on Saturday morning as we made our way to the train station in Jaipur. Four and a half hours later, the double-decker express train dropped off our naïve souls in Delhi, where we proceeded to get swallowed up by the city.
After eating at this ridiculous pizza place in Hauz Khaz called New York Slice (I think I had a slice of the Stock Exchange and Grand Central?) and checking into our hotel, we made our way to the Old City of Delhi, to the Chandni Chowk Bazaar. Chandni Chowk is the backbone of Old Delhi, stuffed with throngs of hawkers, autos, cycle rickshaws, and of course bodies.
Spices in Chandni Chowk Bazaar.
Ugh, how can I explain being in such a place? Well, it takes all of one’s energy plus a little extra to not get run over or trapped by the thick sweaty crowd that always surrounds you. The air in tinged with a combination of excrement, incense, and something plastic burning somewhere. It feels like about 100 degrees, and the water in the water bottle you bought five minutes ago is already lukewarm. Don’t stop to try to pull out your camera, that beggar will try to snatch your lukewarm water bottle.
Rickshaw ride out of the Chandni Bazaar.
The rickshaw dropped us off outside the towering red sandstone walls of the Red Fort. A must-see in Delhi, the Red Fort is a remnant of the short-lived Mughal reign. Though magnificent, the fort never really got a fair go at it. Shah Jahan never completely moved the Mughal capital from Agra to the Red Fort, constructed between 1638 and 1648, because he was imprisoned in the Agra Fort by his son Aurangzeb. Auranzeb was the first and last Mughal emperor to rule from the fort, and when subsequent leaders floundered, slums moved in and the grounds fell into disrepair during the 19th century.
The very loooong Red Fort.
I was surprised to find that much of said disrepair still remained in disrepair. The grounds of the Red Fort seemed to be littered with construction and renovation equipment and materials (and bony dogs). However, the Delhi icon likely receives so many visitors each day that I envisioned each day that repairs and updates are never truly finished. The dilapidated quality of some of the abandoned buildings evoked an almost ghostly characteristic.
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Not far from the Red Fort, the largest mosque on the subcontinent of India ascends imposingly above the disorderly streets and piles of ramshackle yet colorful houses of Old Delhi. Rebekah and I arrived without any idea of what to expect.
The imposing Jama Masjid.
When Rebekah and I climbed to the top of the stairs outside the Jama Masjid, we milled around a bit catching our breath and taking in the view of Old Delhi. We were out of it and exhausted to the point where we were somewhat oblivious to where we were, and we had to decide whether or not to fork over 300 rupees to enter the mosque.
Outside the Jama Masjid.
Views of Old Delhi from the Jama Masjid.
Before we had a chance to decide whether or not to go in, the 5 o’clock hour struck. Call to prayer. Tones echoed throughout all of surrounding Old Delhi from the speakers that hung on the walls of the mosque. We weren’t allowed into the mosque until the prayer was over, but we witnessed probably over a thousand devotees gather inside the gates of the mosque and on surrounding rooftops to engage in their daily prayer.
Peeking in the Jama Masjid.
By that point we were very much compelled to enter, so we paid the 300 rupee fee and were wrapped in long sleeved cloaks (my kurta had short sleeves) prior to entry. My cloak was bright fuchsia, so I prepared to stick out like a sore thumb.
Sticking out like a sore thumb.
I am exceedingly fortunate to have experienced some awe-inspiring and also intense places in my young life. Yes, I’ve climbed the Great Wall of China (six times) and ventured into the Demilitarized Zone. But if I had to create a list of my top five, those wouldn’t make the cut. The crystalline, otherworldly Heaven Lake within the Changbaishan volcanic mountain would, as would the centuries old ethereal rice terraces that rise above the clouds in Yuanyang county. Even Norman Borlaug’s golden wheat fields outside Ciudad Obregon would make the list.
These are places that gave me the absolute chills, right down to the bone. Now, getting the chills in India is truly one of the best things because they provide a momentary reprieve from the 100-degree heat. I have the Jama Masjid to thank for a fleeting respite from the Delhi heat. It made my list without a doubt!
The Jama Masjid, just after the 5 o’clock call to prayer.
Rebekah and I were in complete and utter awe of our surroundings. We had just witnessed thousands of people in unison praying to God in this central, towering, powerful place. Despite the various activities buzzing within its walls after the prayer, the Jama Masjid retained an uncanny stillness and silence, almost as if it was letting us know it was in charge. Without a doubt, the Jama Masjid is the most incredible thing I have seen in India.
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Naturally, in our fuchsia and red cloaks, Rebekah and I couldn’t remain anonymous for long. Rebekah is a sucker for taking portraits, so when we were bombarded by a crowd of unruly children, she herself was like a kid in a candy store. I captured a few myself.
Rebekah taught the kids the concept of the action shot, ie. counting to three and jumping up while she took the photo. It was fun because we got to count in Hindi with all of them.
After Rebekah would snap the shot, the kids would all run over to her to check out the results on her iPhone, and then beg and beg and beg for another go at it.
However, the action shots quickly grew into a large sideshow. A large crowd had gathered around us and the kids, so I separated myself a bit from the action and wandered over to the side of the mosque. Once I met back up with Rebekah, she was troubled and distraught. A tangle of grubby beggar children had encircled her after I wandered off. This is somewhat typical in India, but what wasn’t as typical about it was that these children were clearly part of a child begging ring, controlled by a nearby elderly leader. It was extremely disturbing, and we didn’t have any non-money items like crackers or fruits to give them, so we just decided to leave. It was horrible to see that, and it gave us a foul taste in our mouths after what had been such an incredible visit. In that way, the Jama Masjid held for us some of the highest of highs and lowest of lows of our trip.
Once we left the mosque, we had planned to hop into an auto rickshaw to the nearest metro station. I have kind of a go-go-go attitude about traveling, so thus far I’d never bothered to take a cycle rickshaw, the much slower of the two rickshaw types. However, outside the mosque, the rickshaw-wallahs informed us that auto rickshaws weren’t able to take us to the metro station. I thought they were full of it, but I didn’t feel like arguing, so Rebekah and I climbed up onto the seat for my very first cycle rickshaw ride.
A sinewy older Indian man with thick white hair and yellow polo wheeled us into the single craziest place I have ever been: Chowri Bazaar. We didn’t have any reason to go there. It wasn’t listed in the Lonely Planet Rajasthan, Delhi, and Agra. It was just a necessary avenue we had to take to get to a yellow line station. As I described it before, Chowri Bazaar is like a thick vein in the city, always about a second away from bursting forth with bodies, rickshaws, wires, and water. There is so much overstimulation on your brain at all times that you almost have to close your eyes momentarily to relieve the pressure. When we got out of the rickshaw, the kind wallah got out with us and parted the stream of rickshaws and vehicles so there would be enough room for us to cross the street over to the metro stop. It was the most chaotic place I have ever experienced in my life, and photographs just couldn’t do it justice, so please check out a video of what it was like to be in the cycle rickshaw in Chowri Bazaar:
And then within thirty minutes, we were here:
Man, talk about the worst culture shock of my life. Rebekah and I had just had those overstimulating, wild experiences at the Jama Masjid and in Chowri Bazaar, and our brains were still scrambling to process all that had just happened when we entered this perfectly manicured, red-white-and-blue baseball field in the middle of the deserted diplomatic enclave of Delhi. The first person who checked us into the 4th of July Celebration at the U.S. Embassy was the most American dad I have ever seen: button down short-sleeved shirt, dad shorts, tennis shoes, and a shark tooth necklace. Oh dear, we knew we were in for a big slice of American pie, whether we were ready for it or not.
The compound’s baseball field.
Going to the Embassy 4th of July Celebration was probably one of the weirdest things I have ever done. For the past three weeks, we have lived in Indian homes, eaten Indian food, worn Indian food, played Indian classical music, and studied an Indian language at least four hours a day, so naturally it was a total shock to our systems and just kind of unnerving to be around so many Americans who seemed so disengaged with India. While I realize it was an American celebration, I felt that many of the attendees were dressed inappropriately for being in India, ie. spandex American flag tights. We showed up in our kurtas with a day’s worth of Delhi dirt between our toes. Other attendees of the celebration blatantly exuded wealth and had clearly been driven to the event in a nice, air-conditioned car, having had no hint of sweat from the heat on their faces.
Delhi dirt + an awesome sandal tan.
The buffet was over-the-top; you craved it, they had it. I enjoyed a BBQ pork sandwich, some corn on the cob, free popcorn, and even a brownie, which were special treats, but I thought it was somewhat distasteful to have beef on the menu. The compound itself seemed kind of too fancy to me. Next to the baseball field was a posh swimming pool, gym facility, food court, etc. I guess it’s easy to see why so many of the Americans there had disengaged with India.
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The night included fireworks, which we nice, as well as American dad tug of war and like a pie eating contest or something that I didn’t see. “Jeremiah 29:11” (huh?) entertained us with some “Piano Man” and Chumbawamba. Rebekah and I had fun but also didn’t. We noticed we’d started to subconsciously worry about things like our appearance and our first impressions to other people while we were in the compound, but once we left, those dissolved again. In all, it was an experience, and honestly I’m glad I had it.
Seemingly before we were ready to digest yet another massive Delhi experience, we showed up at the Qutb Minar in South Delhi the following morning. Construction of the red sandstone monument began in 1193. That’s eleven and ninety-three people. Honestly I can’t even think that far back into history. The minar is five stories tall and was commissioned by the first Sultan of Delhi. It was struck by lighting and damaged by earthquakes several times, but each time it was repaired by the current ruler. Now it towers above India’s first mosque, several tombs, gorgeous red and white sandstone structures.
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The intricate carvings within the red sandstone were truly a marvel to behold, reminiscent of a time once magnificent but now long gone on planet Earth. Although I didn’t get a picture of it, on the grounds of the Qutb Minar is a 7 meter high iron pillar, upon which a Sanskrit inscription honors a ruler who reigned from 375 to 413 AD. Scientists are not sure now the iron, which hasn’t rusted for 2000 years, was cast given the technologies available at the time.
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While we were milling around the grounds, Rebecca and I were approached by a security guard. He wanted to chat, so we obliged, in Hindi of course. He was shocked and stated that in the four years he had worked there, he had never encountered a Hindi-speaking foreigner. We were flattered, but we should have caught onto his game earlier.
Our security guard friend at the Qutb Minar.
After we walked off, he found us again, this time with his security guard friend in tow. Their questions for us included, “Are you married?”, “How long will you be in India?”, and “Do you prefer dark skin or light skin?” At one point one of them said to Rebecca, “Me for you, him for her.” The whole ordeal was pretty light-hearted, and we all laughed the entire time, but nevertheless Rebecca and I had to eventually weasel our way out of the situation.
Our wonderful Delhi trip started to unravel shortly after leaving the Qutb Minar. We’d aimed to go to a market and popular South India restaurant near Connaught Place (CP), a major, modern commercial area in New Delhi.
Connaught Place
After walking around for a bit in CP, we headed off for the market. With Lonely Planet and the GPS on my phone in hand, I knew exactly where I was going. This used car salesman-esque man decided he needed to follow us and “help” us. I was annoyed immediately when he stopped us, but we’ve been trying diligently to engage with Indians to practice Hindi, so we heard him out. He proceeded to tell us that the market was closed on Sundays and that there would be a tour hour wait at the restaurant. He tried to wave us over to a nearby tourists office, but by that point we had had enough and climbed a small hill nearby to get away from him. This other grandfatherly man in a turban who had been milling around while we were talking to the used car salesman followed us. He told us we weren’t safe in CP, and that guys like the used car salesman do things like that to provide a distraction to steal are stuff, but that he had been watching and “making sure nothing would happen.” Translation: fear mongering followed by building up trust. Just when we started to think this guy was actually looking out for us, he tried to tell us to go to a nearby government emporium to shop. Hello tout #2.
Once we’d put two and two together, we yelled a nasty जाअो at them and headed back to the subway. It was starting to rain anyway. We stopped for lunch before heading back to the train station to return to Jaipur, and while at the restaurant I read the Lonely Planet section on scams. Believe it or not, there was a tip that specifically about “helpful chaps who try to direct you to a tourist office near CP.” Just glad we got out of there.
Another double-decker chair car express train took us back to Jaipur, where we were prominently scammed by rickshaw-wallahs outside the train station. Being two American women arriving at a train station at night, this was almost unavoidable.
Delhi. Oh my goodness. It’s Friday now, and I returned from Delhi on Sunday, but I feel like I’ve been hit by a train from that weekend. It was the easily the craziest place I have ever been in my life, proving the highest of highs and the lowest of lows of my entire summer so far. I imagine it will still take even more time to process.
I have spent hours trying to get this post off the ground and onto the web. The video of the Chowri Chowk rickshaw ride took about 5 hours to upload today, so suffice to say this post has taken a lot of effort. And as if I needed more adventures to report on at this point, I leave for a day-trip by to the Taj Mahal tomorrow at 4 am. Ugh, I hope adrenaline gets me through and allows me to enjoy India’s most famous attraction. I’m hanging in there. Thanks for joining me on my biggest adventure yet!
Alas, I have stayed at the institute late tonight to capitalize on the freed up broadband! It’s almost impossible to access the internet during the day when the network is clogged with students’ laptops, tablets, and smartphones. As a result, a lot of time has gone into getting this post up and running, but I’m nevertheless excited to share with you my weekend of adventures in Udaipur, India’s most romantic city.
Magic Udaipur.
Udaipur was founded in 1568 on the shores of Lake Pichola, its glistening lakeshores giving the city it an almost Venice-like feel. Udaipur was given the label of “most romantic spot in India” by an East India Company agent back in 1829. Nowadays it’s definitively carved out on the map as a popular tourist destination, especially for foreign tourists to Rajasthan. Unfortunately the influx of luxury hotels, crunchy banana pancake guesthouses in which foreign twenty-somethings can “discover themselves,” and Indian kitsch trinkets have encroached on the city’s original wonder. Nevertheless, the city’s magnificent temples and palaces, as well as its gorgeous natural beauty, trump all, making for one unforgettable trip.
Nine other classmates and I rented a “party bus” to drive us the 8-9 hours to Udaipur in southern Rajasthan on Friday afternoon. When we arrived late Friday night, we were surprised to find how fun and fancy the Lalghat Guesthouse was, and we enjoyed a round of Kingfishers before turning in for the night.
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A funny thing happened to me some months ago. After twenty-two years of considering myself a night owl, I miraculously and quite randomly started waking up at 5:30 in the morning feeling completely refreshed! On the first morning, I got up bright and early before the rest of the crew to go out about explore Lalghat and the Daiji Footbridge. The morning was peaceful yet punctuated with morning activities, with locals bathing in the ghat and coming to feed the pigeons nearby. I sat alone at the ghat for about twenty minutes or so, basking in the peaceful morning atmosphere.
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Once everyone was up and at ’em, we returned as a group, but the ghat had already vacated of morning activities. It pays to be the early bird on vacations!
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From Lalghat we headed on foot to the majestic city palace. Constructed by the city’s founder, Maharana Udai Singh II, Udaipur’s city palace is the largest in Rajasthan. The grounds were absolutely sprawling with castle after courtyard after castle. The rooms and hallways wound all around, and a large part of the palace is now sectioned off to serve as an art and historical museum. We didn’t want to pay the five extra dollars to bring our cameras, so instead I snuck a few photos with my smartphone. The city palace also offered panoramic views of greater Udaipur.
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From the city palace’s lavish gardens, we hopped on a boat to head out on the water. The smell of the lake and sway of the boat immediately made me feel right at home. 😉 The boat trip provided awesome views of the city palace, Lalghat, and our guesthouse. Most notably however, the boat ride swung past the famed Lake Palace, now owned by the Taj group luxury Indian hotels. The James Bond Octopussy was shot in this hotel, giving Udaipur a much advertised claim to fame. Visitors are not allowed without reservations (which are thousands of dollars of course!), so the boat ride was as close as I’ll ever get to the Lake Palace.
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The boat dropped us at Jagmandir Island, which houses a 17th century palace that was of course also converted to a hotel. With only seven hotel rooms, the grounds cater to only the richest of the rich, nevertheless making for an amazing stop on our boat ride. We galavanted about the grounds for awhile, taking in the beautiful gardens and views of the lake shores, but as time ticked by we grew thirstier and thirstier in the 90 or 100 degree heat. A Kingfisher exceeded 400 or so rupees, and even a bottle of water was over $3 USD, which in India is outrageous! We baked for awhile, eventually piling back onto the boat hoping to compel the other boat riders to do the same. It worked!
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Back on the mainland we headed to Jagdish Temple, a Hindu temple built in 1651. While in Udaipur, we passed Jagdish many times going from place to place, and there always seemed to be some kind of commotion going on around it, particularly centered on an elaborate chariot sculpture that various men tinkered with. When I went back in the evening to access an ATM nearby, the whole intersection had been blocked off, and there was a special music program taking place. I’m not sure what was being celebrated, but I do know that it was focused on that horse chariot, and I hope to ask my language partner about it this week.
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Finally in the evening we took in a spectacular sunset over Lake Pichola!
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After the sun set, the Bagore Ki Haveli, a haveli comprised of 138 rooms, played host to an evening show featuring traditional Rajasthani music and dancing. I was excited to see a harmonium among the small band that accompanied the dancers! I don’t know much about traditional Rajasthani dance at the moment, although I’d love to learn more, but it seemed the particular dances in the show may have been selected for their shock value. The first featured ladies spinning and spinning while balancing fire-fill pots on their heads. In the next, the dancers held a small symbol in each hand, flinging it around to strike other symbols that were attached all over their outfits. At one point they put swords in their mouths, continuing to swing the cymbols around, only one small mistake away from slicing an arm open. The grand finale was performed by an older woman who proceeded to stack more and more and more pots on her head, finishing it off by marching up and down on a pile of broken glass. It was…. uncomfortable? The performers seemed to enjoy the putting on the show and a few even stayed after to chat with interested guests.
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On day two we really only had enough time for one last stop before making the 8-9 hour drive back to Jaipur. On top of a mountain just outside Udaipur sits perched the Monsoon Palace. The original Maharana planned to build a 9-story structure on the mountaintop as an astronomical center to monitor monsoons and also act as a resort. When he died prematurely, the plans were shelved, and the structure was eventually made into a hunting lodge. Today, it is entirely abandoned! Our poor driver got a workout wiping around harrowingly steep switchbacks until we had to stop where a car had broken down. Our driver got out to help them, eventually inviting the “auntie and uncle” in the car to ride in our bus. They were of Indian descent, but we discovered they were actually just visiting from Toronto. They were such a cute couple and a joy to chat with!
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Overall it was a fantastic trip! I know I say this every time, but I’m so grateful for these experiences to learn about the history and culture in Rajasthan, and also to have opportunities to speak Hindi. I’m not sure when I’ll have the chance to come back here or continue my Hindi studies, so I’m taking every chance I have to immerse myself here. The next four weekends I’ll be traveling again: first to Delhi for the U.S. Embassy’s 4th of July celebration, then to the Taj Mahal, then to the foothills of the Himalayas to visit my friend’s former host family from when she was a high school exchange student, and then on a Critical Language Scholarship-sponsored trip to the holy village of Pushkar. Traveling excites me rather than exhausts me, and riding around on trains in foreign countries is probably my favorite pastime, so I feel a perfect July coming on.
week three at the institute is going well, and my language skills and fluency are coming along quickly. I feel I’m at the top of my class and am beginning to wonder if I’m not being challenged enough or if I’m just catching on very quickly. It’s likely a combination of both. My language partner Aarti and I meet twice a week, and she is my window into Indian culture! We’ve had the opportunity to dive into several conversation topics: Indian family structure, the role of servants in the household, the idea of holding part-time jobs in high school and college, etc. I’m definitely enjoying the food here more and more and more and more! My family is non-veg, but they only eat meat once a week so I’ve only eaten non-veg three times since I’ve arrived. Every dinner is accompanied by buttery roti that’s to die for. Another week of having the time of my life in India! Thanks for tuning in again.
Well, I’ve come a long way in twelve days. I have a functioning AC on the wall, four kurtas in my closet, rupees in my wallet, and a nice new $4 backpack with a couple of books written by Indian authors inside that my classmates recommended to me. I can haggle my way home for 50 rupees, and if an unsuspecting rickshaw driver tries to charge me 200, I have a whole slew of Hindi in my arsenal to negotiate a more appropriate price. I’ve only had six days of classes at the institute so far, but I’ve never learned this much this quickly in my entire life! I have been amazed by what I can accomplish having only a single focus. And I couldn’t be in a better environment for that focus than Jaipur.
Last week I found Jaipur to be a little rough around the edges, but I have since had time to explore a bit, and the charm of the Pink City has indeed begun to captivate me. This past weekend my friend Dana, the pilot, and I headed north of the city to the Amer Fort. The beauty of Amer’s honey hues, white marble, and pink sandstone was unlike anything I have ever seen before. More of a palace than a fort, Amer was built by Maharaja Man Singh in 1592 in the city of Amber, which was once the capital of Jaipur state. Wandering about inside, Dana and I felt as though we were exploring a castle, taking narrow passageways and winding up and down stairs that led to lush geometric gardens, mirror-inlaid quarters, and towering halls. Dana and I had a blast and were completely in awe of the beauty of the place, but we also fought the 90+ degree heat as well as unwanted attention from Indian men.
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From Amer, we struggled in the sun to climb up to the never before conquered Jaigarh fortress which dates back to the reign of Jai Singh II. Akin to Amer, Jaigarh houses an elaborate water storage and drainage system to assure not a single drop was waste. The fortress also offered breathtaking views of Amer Fort and the city of Amber below.
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Having an afternoon free today (I typically have meetings with a language partner or music lessons on the harmonium in the afternoon), I made my way out into the city once again to explore. This time, however, I went out alone. Going out and about solo as a Western female in India is typically discouraged for safety reasons. But today I was feeling a little bit antsy to get out on my own, having been with the group the entire time since we left D.C. Well, suffice to say I learned why doing such a thing is inadvisable, but I’ll get to that later.
First I headed to Jaipur’s magnificent Albert Hall. Having opened in 1887, the building combines elements of English and North Indian architecture, in a style called Indo-Saracenic. Nowadays, this commanding structure houses the city’s central museum, displaying an eclectic collection of sculpture, carpets, clay pottery, musical instruments, and beyond from as close as Jaipur to as far away as Egypt (an Egyptian mummy!). The museum was for the most part too hot and hectic to enjoy, but I was drawn in by the Indian pottery exhibit and identified my favorite style: “Wonderland art pottery,” a style that flourished in Bombay between the 1870’s and 1890’s.
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The ethereal architecture of Albert Hall is further amplified by the kit of pigeons that inhabit the ground. At any given time, hundreds and hundreds circle the structure’s spiky turrets, giving the structure an otherworldly appearance.
From Albert Hall I walked (harassed by rickshawallas all the way there of course) to the flamboyant and bustling Old City, better known at the Pink City. The New Gate spits you out into the hustle and bustle of Bapu Bazaar, which quick unfortunately caters to tourists. I couldn’t pass a single shop without “hello, ma’am, miss, welcome, please come inside, beautiful bag, kurtas, saris, very cheap…” You get the picture.
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Soon enough I arrived at Jaipur’s iconic Hawa Mahal, or Palace of the Winds. The pink sandstone, honey comb-like structure was constructed literally to allow for the ladies of the royal household to watch the social proceedings of the city. I didn’t go inside today, but my program will be taking us up in the coming weeks! Stay turned.
Hawa Mahal, or Palace of the Winds, from the street.
While admiring the Hawa Mahal, I was greeted by a friendly Indian man who asked me all about my Hindi learning and why I’m here in Jaipur. He told me to likes learning languages with the tourists he meets and shared some of the Japanese he’s learned. Eventually he offered to show me a spot up upon a temple across the street from which I could snap some photos of the Hawa Mahal. Very cautiously, I took him up on his offer. The views were spectacular, and he actually took a great picture of me (that never happens!).
Hawa Mahal from the secret photo spot!
The two of us kept talking, and he invited me into his shop, which I naturally declined. Thankfully, instead he took me to a beautiful yellow “women’s temple,” which in all honesty I would have never found on my own.
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My new friend bought me a lassi, a popular yoghurt-based Indian drink, and helped me find a bookshop selling English books so I could stock up for my upcoming weekend trip to the romantic getaway of Udaipur in southern Rajasthan. (I’m reading The White Tigerby Aravind Adiga – would highly recommend!) As if all of this niceness wasn’t enough, he showed me away from the touristy Bapu Bazaar into a more local bazaar and haggled for a fare price on a new backpack. $4 later, I left with a backpack.
I’m not sure what to think of this interaction. Today we never left public places, so I never felt unsafe per say. Yet, in the context of Indian culture, everything about him and me hanging out in the Old City together is absolutely wrong. This became evident from the attention I began receiving from other Indian men in the local bazaar. Additionally, India is chalk full of scam artists who put on elaborate, drawn out acts that can last several days to become your “friend,” all before drawing you into a get-rich-quick scheme or something of the like. In summary, this guy may have been completely innocent, but I’ll never know. Even though he was very nice to me and a pleasant person overall, the entire encounter left me uneasy simply because of the cultural context. Suffice to say I’ve learned my lesson about going out alone.
At this point I couldn’t be happier with how my Hindi learning is going at the institute. Each day I have four one-hour classes that range from conversation to grammar to pronunciation drills to short story reading comprehension. I even have two private one-hour meetings with a teacher each week to work on topics of my choosing as well as two hour-and-a-half meetings with a language partner who is around my age to speak and practice Hindi more casually. Having such a singular focus is a refreshing concept for me. Being used to a much more rigorous academic schedule, I find myself hungry for more and more and more Hindi even at the end of four hours of instruction, as if I still have the mental stamina to repeat another for hours.
With the kinks from last week mostly worked out, I’m having the time of my life here. Truthfully, I never directly intended to pursue polyglotism (such a fun word!). I feel as though I arrived at foreign language learning quite randomly, compared to my typical method of decision making, which includes at least a five-year plan. I don’t even believe I’m that good at language learning. My brain isn’t wired for it in the way others’ brains are. And let’s be honest, a lot of times it’s not even that enjoyable. Learning a foreign language takes so much out of you. So much time, so much concentration, so much effort, so much frustration, so much stepping out of your comfort zone. It takes years. BUT, language learning has brought an incomparable richness to my life.
The only thing I can compare it to in my life is piano. For years and years and years my brothers and I went to the studio each and every week. At home we’d practice scales and chords and annoyingly simple little tunes, which we would then perform at annoyingly simple little concerts in the Presbyterian church. (Mom and dad, I’m sorry you had to go to so many of those.) We’d complain and complain, and by middle school we were begging to drop out. And when it almost seemed like piano had taken too much from me, that I was finally done, something amazing happened. I played a Chopin. And then a Tchaikovsky. And then Bach’s preludes and fugues. And finally Debussy’s Arabesque, a piece that will continue to move me until I am an old lady.
Paying $1200 to jump on and off the tour bus with Groupon at the Taj Mahal, the Amer Fort, and the Hawa Mahal to snap a few photos (make sure you get one of you on an elephant to use as your new Facebook profile picture) and throw out a few namaste’s here and there is one way to see India. To me, to truly understand India, or anywhere in the world for that matter, you need to have put in the enormous amount of effort that it takes to play the Debussy.
White marble in the women’s temple in the Pink City.
I am grateful for the opportunities I have had to understand, through language learning, the peoples and places of Asia. I’m having the time of my life here. Please stay tuned for more!
kexiaomei 