Kerala for Christmas

Kerala is in the far south-west of India. Resource-rich and more socially-minded, it is a more wealthy place - and tourist-friendly, mainly because it has better roads - by Indian standards. One of the highlights of Kerala are the backwaters, quiet canals that serpentine from the ocean inland. After a quiet night in Alleppy, we hopped aboard a house boat on Christmas Eve day to explore the backwaters in style. We spent the day and night lounging, reading, chatting, and eating, served by our staff of 3 including a wonderful and very sweet cook who made enough food for 10. Since Kerala has a good-sized Christian population, there was music all night, and Sarah and I slept under the stars. In the morning, we were graced by a lovely sunrise.

Men wear dhotis here, which are pretty much a bedsheet wrapped around the waist. It appears to be appropriate attire for just about anybody - laborer, businessman, hotel manager, though I have yet to see anybody riding a motorcycle in one. They are ankle-length, but are often folded up to the knees, and so look quite like wrap-around skirts. I have yet to be able to take anybody in one very seriously. Which seems ok around here because people are pretty happy and friendly, laughing and smiling a lot.

We are now in the mountains in eastern Kerala, where the vast majority of the country's spices are grown. The whole town smells like a mixture of cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger. The mountains are small but beautiful - they're all pressed together with deep folds in between, and mist gathers in the valleys. We're hoping to explore some if we can figure out how.

In a whirl

Early this week, my frenetic days in Delhi gave way to more time to see the country. I flew to Pune and met back up with Sarah, who had gone ahead to greet her brother and his fiance at the airport - they're here for two weeks and are now traveling with us.

In a whirlwind day-and-a-half, we bussed out to central Maharashtra to Ajanta and Ellora, two sites where Hindu, Jain and Buddhist monks carved temples and monasteries out of mountains. They are truly stunning, beautiful, stark and eerie places - it is easy to imagine being there 1000 years ago. They were built between 200 BC and 800 AD, with chisels and hammers.

We are now in Kerala, in the south of India, where there are Christmas lights and palm trees and good roads. Our flights here were delayed by 4 or 5 hours yesterday in true Indian fashion - thick morning fog in Delhi tied up flights all over the country. I've decided that it's my new favorite excuse to use when anything goes wrong: just exclaim, 'well, there's fog in Delhi!' It's sure to work. Also in true Indian fashion, I received phone calls notifying me of the delays all throughout the day - which was great in the early morning, but was of very limited use once I arrived at the airport.

a few photos

The Internet gods only want me to upload these two photos for the moment, though I have hundreds more I'd love to put up. The first is the Taj Mahal at sunrise, the second is the western temple complex at Khajuraho at sunset. Lovely.

power of people and place

Five days in Dharamsala was a bit like stepping into a parallel universe. Like India, but not, in so many ways. And I felt the difference palpably. It was cold, which made me breathe more deeply. It was mountainous, which made me stretch my legs further. And its spirit made me open my heart.

Tibetan refugees arrive here by bus, after harrowing, often violent, always terrifying journeys over the mountains from their homeland. They must take high passes to avoid Chinese forces, who shoot freely at Tibetans trying to escape (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nangpa_La_killings for a recent example). The community takes them in - feeds, houses, nurses their frostbite, and tries to help them settle in. Each refugee, when ready, receives a personal audience with the His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The government and the community have tried to create a home here, and a center for the preservation of the traditional culture - the arts: music, painting, sculpture, metalwork, dance; the language; the religion.

Dharamsala is thus a place of sadness, and of hope. It is like a history lesson walking down the main roads or strolling through paths between temples. Wise eyes on wrinkled, shining faces turn prayer wheels for good blessings and sell hand-knit socks and scarves. I wonder at their stories - what they have seen with those eyes.

Now and again, especially when traveling, I meet someone who really challenges me to think and feel, who encourages me to follow my dreams without fear. In Dharamsala, I met three. On our second night, Sarah and I went to a cafe to drink tea and watch an open mike night, but found that just a few musicians had shown up, and we were the only customers. One of them invited a small gang of us to his apartment to have tea and play music there, and so we went - it was bliss to sit with warm tea, listen to guitars, and sing badly without remorse - so there were the first two people. A day or so later we wanted to hike up from town into the mountains and after a few false starts, we all ventured out for what ended up being a very fun, very special hike to the middle of nowhere. The trail was recommended to us by the third wonderful person, who has been living in Dharamsala and studying Tibetan history for over 20 years - he has been to Tibet countless times, cataloging ancient sites and studying ancient writings. He says that you cannot describe the landscape of Tibet without being a poet, the light is so brilliant and the place so starkly tactile. The sun was setting as we reached the main road from our hike, and as it cast continually changing light on the snow fields above town, I think I caught a glimpse of what he meant.

something in the air

Though it looks like a remote mountain village on the map, Dharamsala and its surrounding communities are teeming with life. The population is predominantly Tibetan, though there are a number of Indians living here, many from Kashmir. It's a place that's good for the soul, I've decided. From almost anywhere in town, you can glimpse high peaks, and gaze down into the valley. Mist comes and goes, and the views change with the light of day. In the afternoons, the weather has turned stormy, bringing downpours, wind, fog, those snappy mountain thunderstorms, and hail. We were sitting in a cafe having lunch yesterday when the power went out, the wind picked up, and the hail began. It didn't actually look that bad - really small hail and it wasn't too cold - so we decided to venture out and run a few errands before going back to the hotel. Outside, we heard some excited yelling and looked up to see a man up a telephone pole monkeying around with the cables. Three men on the ground were trying to unroll a giant spool of electrical wiring to get the power back on, dragging it across other lines in the process. They had a small audience, everybody laughing and shouting suggestions and warnings to the men.

The people here are wonderful. We noticed it the first day, and it hasn't changed or dampened. This morning, I simply ordered tea and cereal for breakfast, and when the food came, the waiter served it with such joy - there is a real sense of true joy, and honest giving to those around you. It's a part of Tibetan culture that I had known about but never experienced, and something I hope to carry into my own life.

I have also learned some about Tibetan Buddhism, as some young men befriended us yesterday and took us through the main temple here. There were several parts to the temple, dedicated to different gods, and as we went through they explained the gods - it's a much more colorful religion than the Buddhist philosophy I've studied at home. We're learning how to make Tibetan bread later today, and possibly taking a yoga class. Tomorrow we'll try to pack a lunch and head for a hike - there are some amazing places to walk to around here. The air has been cold, and clean, and good for my lungs - though hiking these steep streets certainly reminds me that we're at 6- or 7000 feet.

mountain country

Continuing our mostly unintentional tour of religions in India, we made a brief stop in Amritsar, home of the Sikh Golden Temple. It is said to hold 750kg of gold, and is built in the middle of a large pool, accessible by a narrow causeway. We went at dawn, which was an interesting time to be there - beautiful light and a lot of people doing their morning prayers.

We also made a trip to the border between India and Pakistan, which is about an hour by car from Amritsar. At sunset, there is a big flag ceremony that draws spectators on both sides and involves a lot of patriotic chants, songs, and guards marching around high-stepping and saluting, each side trying to outdo the other. It was actually quite disturbing to see, especially when it was all over and a bus traveling from Delhi to Lahore passed through the crowd, reminding me that these people all used to live in the same country - not without conflict, but still the same country.

After a six- turned seven hour bus ride into the mountains, we are now happily in Dharamsala, home of the Tibetan govt in exile, stunning mountains and cleaner air. It rained and thundered yesterday and spit a bit of snow last night, but today we have deep blue skies and lots of things to explore. It's cold here - people don't really heat things - so even though it's in the 30s outside, everybody just layers up. Sarah and I have been wearing roughly the same max-layered look for awhile now.

reflections

A few things I've been thinking about but haven't yet written:

India is a place to see with a companion. Traveling alone was fun, and it certainly gave me a sense of agency - that I can do it, and can get around just fine - but there is so much about this country that is absolutely exhausting if you don't have someone to laugh about it with.

The food isn't as scary as it seems. Sure, I'm being extremely careful, but there are far more safe things than unsafe things. Most things are very fresh - the yogurt (dahi), bread (chapati or nan), fruit (safe if peeled).

Other foreign tourists are almost as fun to watch as Indians. Everybody 'goes native' a different way, and you see a lot of really crunchy tourists with the lonely planet and funny Indian clothes, often worn the wrong way, or by the wrong sex. But they're so comfortable most people don't care. I've taken to wearing whatever is clean, without regard for things like matching outfits - nobody seems to notice, and since the style appears to be full acid-washed denim, no matter what I wear I'm toned down from the native population.

Most tourist and transportation hot spots are full of people who think you wear a dollar-sign on your forehead. It's funny to turn down 10 rickshaw-wallahs and still get asked, 'want a rickshaw?' by the 11th, as if he were THE ONE, preferable to all the others. Some of them really get in your face and are exasperating, asking lots of probing questions, like 'where are you going,' 'where are you staying,' 'where are you from,' 'are you married.' Sarah and I decided we're from Estonia, which seems to help end conversations quicker. It's funny - it doesn't feel as threatening as it could, I've decided there's only so much that your average 90lb Indian man can do to me.

Most shopkeepers are not honest, even when you want to think so. Though they're all very friendly. We had a hilarious experience today trying to buy yak cheese at Varanasai's only western bakery, where they first gave us a block of 140 grams of cheese and then tried to prove that it was actually 200 grams. They brought out an old-school scale, with the two sides: one for the food, the other for metal hexagons of a marked weight. He proceeded to place 200 g on the weight side, then chuck the cheese into the food side, making the scale temporarily sink in its direction, before settling back on the weight side. We then realized it was not the inexpensive cheese we requested but a rare one, and we had do go through a whole negotiation to get what we'd originally asked for. By the end Sarah and I were just laughing, and so was the guy. It was all just quite ridiculous, and quite funy.

There are some sayings that we've taken to using: here, many workers learn english from listening to their customers, so if a rickshaw-wallah is going to wait for you somewhere and then take you somewhere else, they might say 'you wait for me here.' hmm. Everything is 'no problems! you will be happy.' I love that they plan to ensure my happiness at all times. The word 'wallah' refers to someone who does something, and is usually used in reference to the rickshaw driver. We've taken to using it everywhere, as in the fruit-wallah, the internet-wallah, the bead-wallah, etc.

I'm now in Delhi, awaiting a train to Amritsar, which is 2 hours late. This morning we took a boat ride down the Ganges in Varanasai, which was a magical way to see the life of the city. The city flooded in 1978 and from the river you can see the high-water mark, about 3 stories up on buildings that are already set above the river about 30 feet. It's pretty unreal. I also found a fantastic tailor who made some Varanasai silk into a pair of pants and a skirt for me overnight. And mom, I got some great scraps.

We will be in Amritsar just long enough to take in the famous Sikh Golden Temple and go to the border with Pakistan, where they do a nightly border 'parade' - a lot of marching and grunting on each side, which is quite a spectacle. I'm excited to peek into Pakistan - not something I ever thought I'd do. But it's not a dangerous thing to do. Then it's on to Dharamsala for a bit of Tibetan goodness and mountains.

holy cow

Varanasai is indescribable. I'll do my best--

Mourning families bring their dead here to cremate on the banks of the Ganges River, which is, we gather, something like a highway to heaven. It's the holiest place for Hindus, and pilgrims flock in greater droves than foreign tourists. It is also one of the oldest-continuously inhabited cities, and looks as much. You can't drive anywhere near our hotel, which is down on the banks of the river. Instead, from the airport our cab left us on a bustling, carnival-like street, choked with shoppers, shopkeepers, smoke, and animals. We were given directions to 'go up there to that church and take a left,' which led us into a maze of alleyways, all chock full of shops selling saris, sweets, bangles, music, beads, and pan (which everybody chews incessantly - it's like tobacco on steroids). The buildings rise up three or four stories each - sometimes coming so close that the alleys have room for only two people to pass shoulder-to-shoulder. At every corner, we ask for directions, and finally find our way to the hotel.

I should say something about the animals. They're everywhere - the cows climb steps as well as humans and they bellow from great heights, much to our surprise. Monkeys climb on everything and we learned the first day (not without amusement) that it's mating season. Goats forage in the gullies where everybody throws their garbage, and dogs beg at many shops. It's also, apparently, puppy season. The city is horribly dirty, and the cows wander aimlessly, eating also from the garbage, which doesn't seem to do them much justice, as there is more nasty cow crap here than I've ever seen.

It's been wonderful to have two fantastic traveling companions, Sarah and Colin (Sarah's friend, who conveniently speaks Hindi). Yesterday we took a short trip to Sarnath, the place where Buddha gave his first sermon after receiving enlightenment. It's a neat place because there are a lot of monastery ruins, and a number of active monasteries. Many buddhists have built temples in the style of their home country here - so we went to a Chinese temple and a Japanese temple, at which we roped ourselves into an hour-long ceremony that involved a lot of drumming (us included). This seems to be a theme - we found ourselves in the middle of another religious event today at the Golden Temple, or Kashi Vishwanath temple, built to honor the god Shiva. It's heavily guarded - we had to leave most of our things at a police checkpoint before we were even allowed near. Hindus fear a Muslim attack because of attacks on both sides - Hindus razed a mosque that they believe was built on a holy site by the Mughal invaders, and there is a sort of detente between both sides now. Hundreds, maybe thousands of police maintain a presence in the city to encourage peace. Anyway, once inside security, we were informed that we were not allowed inside as it was 'not a tourist site, only for worshippers,' by some of the guards. After sitting with the police/guards for a few minutes, Colin convinced them that we simply wanted to do a puja (like a blessing), and since Hindus believe that their god is everyone's god, and our god is their god, we were allowed in, with the typical, 'ok, you go, and when you come back, you sit with us (the six guards) and have chai.' A man who said he was the head priest ushered us through four or five places at which we were to kneel, repeat after the priest, touch something (a horn, a Shiva lingam (look it up), the base of an altar). At each point we were instructed by our 'guide' to pay some large sum of rupees, and then he took us to the next. The temple was crowded - people praying everywhere, lots of things happening at many locations, and there was a total swirl of action happening around us. By the end, he had fleeced us out of maybe 1500 Rs - a huge sum of money for them, but maybe $35.

On our way out, someone asked us what we thought. Colin replied that it was wonderful, but very expensive, at which point the man got very angry, and said something in Hindi to the police who had agreed to let us in. Sarah and I sat to the side while Colin negotiated for our money back. Police officers/guards descended, and the police chief got very angry at the guide/priest who had taken us through. One by one, the people to whom we had given money came out and talked to the police chief, and it slowly came out that the guide was the culprit. He went back in and came out with pretty much all of our money, to all of our amazement. When foreigners are treated unfairly and a good cop finds out, real action can happen, we have learned. But really only for foreigners, unfortunately.

It was unbelievable to see the whole thing unfold. So much of what happens around me goes over my head, either because I only understand a small part of the culture, or because I don't understand what is being said. Tomorrow we are to meet the police chief, who will take us to his wife's school, and then he and Colin will have lunch - Sarah and I have to catch a plane, he was sorry to hear. There are so many layers of interaction, of belief in fairness, of ethos for treating a guest, of really every part of life that are new, and I feel as though I am scratching the surface.

friends, temples and tigers

We had a wonderful few days in Delhi, getting to know the city, working a bit, and connecting with a classmate from Brown. Highlights include seeing Bill Clinton and Sonia Gandhi speak at the launch of a new pediatric AIDS treatment initiative, wandering the markets in the old city (especially the large machinery one and the food market, where the air itself burns your throat with spices), and escaping somewhat from 'real India.' We ate Thai food, saw the new Bond movie, and relaxed.

Khajuraho has been fun and funny - it's draw is a set of ancient (1000 years old) temples, intricately carved with deities, including some erotic carvings - think kama sutra drawings in 3D. The city depends on tourism, and thus is rife with touts - we've been offered everything from tissues and keychains to helicopter rides. Culturally, it feels like a huge invasion of privacy to have ten people following you, talking, yelling, sometimes laughing at you - but to them, it's not really seen that way. So it's been a challenge to balance keeping our sanity while feeling free enough to talk to the people we want to talk to. Our second day was a bit better, either because people knew we were bad consumers or because it was a Sunday and there appeared to be fewer people around.

There is a huge sense of service providers wanting to get your business no matter what, which means they'll offer a taxi ride even when they need fuel on the way, which is a minor burp compared to some of the things we've seen. I've had a cycle-rickshaw driver offer to take me 10 km up and over a mountain to see a fort, and this morning, we took a tour to (hopefully) see tigers, but no cooperation from them. We drove around the bush for a few hours, stopping often, but no avail.

On to Varanasai tomorrow!

A Few of Many Photos from Udaipur

1. View of Udaipur rooftops, Monsoon Palace in the distance
2. Jagdish Temple in town center
3. View from Hanuman Ghat
4. Lal Ghat
5. Sunset at Monsoon Palace
6. Courtyard in City Palace

More later!

delhi

If India is a land of contradictions, Delhi is that, magnified. New Delhi reminds me of Canberra - spread out, leafy, parks, roundabouts. Old Delhi is crowded, with huge markets and tons of people. We wandered through the fabric market, the paper goods market, and the heavy machinery market, where you can buy a drill press off the street. Today we also visited the Qutb Minar, one of the historical sites I studied in school. It's a minaret that towers over the whole area, signalling the presence of the mosque in the complex. The Minar and the mosque were built between 1100 and 1330 by various rulers, who took parts of Hindu and Jain temples to make them. Because of this, as you walk through, all three religions are represented.

Sarah and I are learning our way around our corner of Delhi - which is nice - it's good to be able to walk to the market and get to know a few places that we like.

love and money

Agra is famous for the Taj Mahal, and infamous for its vendors, touting every knick-knack known to man. They also do beautiful inlay marble work, in designs native to here or imported from Italy.

I'm in the middle of the city and a camel just walked down the street - yesterday they were a novelty to me, today they are old news. I've become fascinated by the creative forms of transportation here: today I counted walking, two-wheeled cart pulled by ox, buffalo, camel, horse or person, bicycle rickshaw, auto rickshaw, bicycle - with or without three other people on it with you and all their luggage, motorcycle - with or without family of four including mother riding sidesaddle in sari, bus, car, three-wheeled truck, elephant. I tried to take a picture of what was happening on the road today and realized there's really no way to capture the speed and craziness of getting around. The eye just catches so much more than the camera.

Driving on the bus from Jaipur to Agra was an experience. Whole families work together on the side of the road, making bricks, farming. In the villages, it is clear that people don't have enough work - sitting around, passing time, playing cricket.

frenetic and famous

I had a relaxing last day in Udaipur yesterday - since I had seen most of the sights and done my shopping, I took to wandering around some of the less-touristy areas. I met some very kind local artists who showed me how they do their work, creating miniature paintings in the studio next to their shop. They start with raw pigment and grind it into powder to make the paint, which they layer onto silk to make intricate scenes - animals, couples, castles. I met a couple from Ireland and Australia, with whom I had dinner and watched the obligatory Octopussy, which every hotelier will remind visitors, was partly filmed in Udaipur.

After another overnight train, this time in 2nd class - with many people around but my own curtained-off area, I arrived in Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan. It is a frenetic and unhappy city, with dilapidated palaces that smell of urine, where the corners are brown where the men spit tobacco. I am now also famous. Teenagers ask me to pose while they take pictures - but no requests for autographs yet. They do have cycle-rickshaws, which are pretty cool, and I hired one for Rs 200 to take me around the city. One day was enough, though, and I'm happy to be moving on to Agra tomorrow.

lake and palace country

Udaipur is a beautiful city. It is located on several manmade lakes in the middle of the desert, and tall guesthouses boast their rooftop restaurants with views of the water and surrounding hills. I am staying in a guesthouse in the old city's Lal Ghat area, which has a lot of tourists but is convenient to everything. At the street level, shops sell everything from antique jewelry to kitchen ware and a lot of folk art. Fabrics and miniature paintings are the main thing. Yesterday I went out of the city to a village where artists come to work and sell their wares, and for the chance to try to sell something, they'll explain how they do their art. One Gujarati sari weaver spins silk and tie-dyes the thread according to a complex pattern laid out on graph paper so the pattern emerges as he weaves. Another fabric artist creates elaborate bedspread-sized pieces using dye and wood-block stamps which he carves by hand. They come in all patterns and colors - most too busy for my taste but lovely nonetheless.

Rajasthan was a tribal and warlike state, but much of the art and architecture was created at the same time - and about 500 years before western Europe's renaissance. The forts and walls of the city are carved. On the top of one hill outside the city perches the Monsoon Palace - beautiful white marble with a small terraced garden. It is a bit dilapidated, but has great views of the city and it is easy to tell why they built it there - it has a constant breeze.

Life is not easy here - my driver for the afternoon yesterday said he is paid a monthly salary of 2000 Rs by the hotel, which turns out ok in tourist season when tips are good, but he resorts to working the land in the summer when it is too hot for tourists to visit. His is originally from a village about 35 Km from town. Buses that go there pack 150 people in, on and around them for the trip. A 10-seater jeep making the same trip will carry 47 people. Work is scarce and largely craft and tourist dependent - so far I have not seen other sources of income. The power goes out from around midnight till 11AM too, so a new type of business would be hard to start if it was too reliant on electricity. Internet is paid for by bandwidth usage. Rightly, education in this area focuses on training healthcare workers, as public health is a huge issue - but I'm beginning to see that if other parts of the infrastructure are not improved as well, and these highly intelligent people do not have access to other types of education, there will be little improvement. Though the living is relatively easy for the western tourist, it is hard to watch every person struggle to survive and provide a decent, hopefully better, life for their children. And it is certainly hard to attempt to come up with viable solutions. On one hand, we say that India is the world's largest democracy and a huge, growing market - but I have yet to see a lot of people who really benefit from these things.

And finally - on request from my grandmother, an explanation as to why the cows are so funny. Since they're the holiest animal in the Hindu religion, they do whatever they want, and they wander free through the streets. People feed them, but mostly they eat garbage. They lie in the middle of the road, basking in the sun, and people wanting to drive past just wait - they won't prod them out of the way. So maybe it's the people who are hilarious. At any rate, it's quite amusing.

saying yes, driving, and other observations

Yes means no and no means yes on opposite day. In India, yes looks like maybe and no means maybe until you say it three times. To say yes, instead of nodding, bring ear to shoulder and say in a disappointed-sounding voice 'okaay.' It's taken me some time to figure out that people aren't actually disappointed with whatever I've said.

To drive in India, you must have a good horn. Awoogah horns are the best, but any will do. Honk anytime you're turning, passing, parking, backing, changing lanes, speeding up or slowing down. Weave as much as possible, especially if it's on the wrong side of the road. Don't use headlights at night except if you want to accent the message you're conveying with the horn. If you want to hire a driver, choose one that describes himself with at least two of these words: in uniform, courteous, kind, friendly. Don't worry about getting a description of his driving capability. And if you rent a motorcycle, the best place for your helmet to ride appears to be resting on the handlebars.

I've found that while India is a very cheap place to travel, absolutely nothing is free or complementary. Every garden and museum costs at least a few rupees, and if you want to bring a camera, it's a few more.

Traveling alone started yesterday, and so far it's been fine. I've been pre-arranging as much as possible so I don't have to be mobbed by rickshaw drivers at every train station. People say that unmarried women traveling alone have problems keeping men away from them, but I've found that when asked 'are you married,' if I simply say NO and scowl, that seems to work well. Or a quick explanation that "american customs are very different from indian ones" staves off further advances. Traveling on the train alone presents a different problem. First class is the best, but then you're in a lockable compartment with a stranger. If that's the case, do you choose upper or lower bunk - easy escape or more privacy? It almost makes me inclined to travel a lower class simply for more people being around and less opportunity for anything unsavory to happen.

Eating safely isn't as hard as I thought it might be. Sure, I can't get a good spinach salad, but it's easy to peel most anything - and there are lots of baked, grilled, boiled and fried things that no bacteria could live on.

The cows are hilarious.

From Pune

I arrived in Mumbai two days ago and came straight to Pune, and it's been a funny transition. I'm struck more by how many things are similar and how many things actually do make sense - rather than how many things are different. It's noisy - and dusty - and hot - but Pune is also a very cosmopolitan city, more western and liberal than I'm told other areas are.

It helps that I haven't had to get around by myself yet, I'm sure. I was picked up at the airport by Sarah and one of her Indian friends, who negotiated us from a rickshaw to a bus station that tried to charge too much, to the Mumbai local train that brought us to another bus stop and onto the bus that dropped us off three hours later around the corner from Sarah's host family. From her apartment, you can walk to all the necessities of life here - the market, restaurants, the tailor, the internet cafe.

Yesterday we ventured further, and I got to see a bit of the areas where Sarah spends her time. Her university is a peaceful complex of buildings separated from the chaos of the city by greenspace - forest really - and the public health building is a cool, almost European style place. By western standards, the classrooms are primitive and research equipment alarms beep incessantly without being attended to, but the people (at least the ones I met) are friendly and wonderful, and dedicated to improving public health.

Everybody shows an amazing generosity and hospitality. Sarah's friend met us yesterday evening to help me buy some traditional Indian clothing that will hopefully help me not stick out so much. He took us to a shop he knew, and three floors up we removed our shoes and sat on cushions while two shop attendants pulled item after item off their shelves and spread them in front of us. After much discussion over colors, patterns, length, stripes and sequins, I have a few things I can wear - for about $12. Life is good.

I'm trying to get used to some new things - like trusting a rickshaw wallah to take me safely where I want to go when there are no real traffic rules. In general, people drive on the left - but that's really more of a suggestion than gospel, and cars, auto-ricks, people and bicycles all share the same space.

In a few hours I'll get back on the bus and head back to Mumbai, to catch a domestic flight to Ahmedabad and then an overnight train to Udaipur. This will be the first of five days I'm traveling on my own this trip. I'll post again from there, and may even attempt to put up some pictures.

Itinerary

I leave for India on Saturday - my tentative itinerary is as follows:

11/19 - arrive in Mumbai, go straight to Pune (home of the infamous Ms. Kimball)

11/21 - back to Mumbai to fly to Ahmedabad and catch a bus to Udaipur, arriving early on 11/22

11/22-11/27 - Quick trip through the desert state of Rajasthan, starting in Udaipur, with stops in Jaipur and Agra

11/27-11/29 - in Delhi - and with Sarah for most of the rest of the trip

11/30 & 12/1 - conference on technology & privacy in Delhi

12/2-12/7 - Khajuraho and Varanasai, fly back to Delhi

12/8 - After a long train ride from Delhi, a day in Amritsar

12/9 or 12/10-12/14 - Dharmsala / McLeod Ganj, home of the Tibetan Gov’t in Exile. Apparently there’s a Himalayan festival there.

12/15-12/18 - back to Delhi for a bit of work

12/19 fly to Mumbai, return to Pune for a few days seeing Maharashtra with Sarah and Vivian

12/23 fly to Cochin with Sarah, Jeff & Vivian for our week-long tour of Kerala

12/31 fly back to Mumbai to catch my flight home on 1/1/07.