Photos from the End of India

I have some more photos on my camera still, but these are pretty great. They are from Dehradun and some great trekking that I did around Joshimath. Enjoy!


https://picasaweb.google.com/101737615291512796999/FromDehradunToTheMountains?authuser=0&feat=directlink

Thinking in Amsterdam

I am currently in Amsterdam, and just thinking over the past sixteen hours. I realized another reason why I was so distressed in the Dehradun airport. I was going through culture shock just leaving the village. In the village, being a young, alone woman means that people try to take care of you. I was completely shocked when the costumer service people were completely uninterested in how upset I was. I was also surprised that when I was crying on a plane, none of the fellow passengers said anything. If I had been in the villages and cried, about 1,000 crone-like women would have descended upon me with chai. I guess it is a very good thing that I'll first be in Michigan and then Jersey City when I get back. I don't know if I could handle Jersey City right away.

I'll be back in the USA in about nine hours more-or-less. I'm excited to put this traveling behind me and just get readjusted as soon as possible!

Thanks for reading!

Erica

There's No Easy Way Out

I am currently in the Delhi airport. I start off this way, because I wasn't sure if I was going to end up in Delhi earlier this evening. I knew that I was leaving from Dehradun today and originally, my flight was scheduled for 5:00 PM. But my flight was preponed, which really is difficult for an American to understand. I completely forget/didn't register that my flight was scheduled for two hours before the original time. I showed up to the airport as my flight was taking off.

I literally began crying when I realized this. The Jet Airways rep who I was speaking with can only be described as a quintessential dickhead. I hate to use this language on this blog, but I really don't think there's any other way that I could describe the lack of compassion and useless information with which he soaked the Dehradun airport. I won't give you a play-by-play, but finally during us yelling at each other (me demanding that he provide me information so that I could know whether to take a cab to Delhi or stay in the airport and he saying that it wasn't his problem) he mentioned that there was another flight that still had seats. Unfortunately, this was with an airline that has reputation for cancelling flights or at least delaying them a lot. I did buy a ticket for this flight, but soon afterwards I was told that a seat was available on a better airline that was definitely departing. So, I bought a second ticket. I really did not want to miss my international flight. I really, really did not want to spend a night in Delhi and put Peter through an extra day of waiting for me.

I bought the ticket, we took off, and I began to sob immediately. Usually, I'm pretty good at dealing with my feelings. Most of the time, I can be self-realized enough to go through stressful situations with a relatively clear head. I might freak out in the privacy of my own home, but I don't miss flights and I don't cry on planes. The reason for my uncharacteristic behavior is that I'm very conflicted about leaving India. I love Uttarakhand. I had one of the best experiences of my life during these nine months. I have friends here to whom I feel very deeply connected, even though some of them don't even speak English. I've been so lucky to build so many cross-cultural and cross-language relationships this year. I also just love the culture and the geography of Uttarakhand. On the other hand, I'm completely exhausted. I miss my family, my boyfriend, my friends, my dogs, and my culture. As much as I tried to identify with living in India this year, I am not Indian. I feel as if I am leaving home in order to go home. I know that the United States is my homeland. I will always be American. The people who mean the most to me in the entire world are Americans. I behave like an American woman and not an Indian woman. Regardless, I felt like a part of me was being torn out as we took off from Dehradun. I had not addressed this conflict prior to today.

Denying my ambivalence led me to not actually focus on leaving. I packed and I said goodbye to people, but I didn't actually give my ticket a good look. That's never happened to me before in my entire life. I feel very foolish and wasteful. But it's also shown me just how much of my mind was engaged without me even realizing it. I should have given myself more time to process what it meant to me to leave India.I hope that the next time that I go through a transition such as this one, I am able to better take care of myself.

India is both very aggressive and very conservative. My legs are paler than they've ever been in my life, because I can't show them in public. But then as you walk down the street, you're assaulted with sounds, smells, and sights. There's feces, food cooking and burning garbage. There's a million scooters that seem to always be about to collide. There's large groups of people everywhere. Even in the village, people group together. There's no privacy here. I needed to request that Jannat and Didi leave my room when I was trying to tweeze my eyebrows before leaving for the airport. Although there are no boundaries here, I spent a lot of time alone. I spent a lot of time unable to communicate in my native tongue. It's no surprise that all of these contradictions have led me to feel very confused with regards to India. I am both relieved to leave and extremely sad. But I felt very guilty about being upset about my departure. My parents, boyfriend and friends miss me. I felt like shit for being sad when they were so happy that I'm coming home soon. So, I denied that I was even leaving. I put off packing and I didn't pay attention to my flight information.

I'm embarrassed, but I'm also relieved. I'm glad that my emotions about India are not as simple as I told myself that they were. I'm happy these months meant enough to me that I cried as we left Dehradun. Of course, I'm also very, very excited that I am in Delhi and that I will not miss my international flight. And really, the cost of those two tickets is equivalent to shopping for a few hours or a weekend trip in the United States. I'll just be missing out on one of those things, which I don't really care about too much anyways. The important thing to remember is that I'm fragile now, because I was strong when it counted. I fought for a lot during these nine months and I didn't give up even when I was faced with circumstances that I could have never imagined. Even so, I'm happy that I had those obstacles. The future doesn't seem so scary now that I've made a great experience out if a potentially negative one. I hope that I can maintain this attitude in the United States.

Goodbye, India.

Dharma in Dharamsala

           I know that it has taken me awhile to write about Dharamsala. It’s not that I’m completely exhausted from the trip, but I am feeling very strange about coming home soon. I am both excited and anxious. I do also feel a little sad, but I do believe that nine months is maybe as much as I can handle of my life being in flux. It has been very hard to ever feel settled in India. My work is especially unsustainable, because it requires me to push myself hard physically and spend a lot of time alone--not really a great combination. Also, I’ve been in Joshimath and the internet has been extremely crappy here.

            Dharamsala was a welcomed relief from the tedium of doing data entry in Dehradun. I love my fieldwork, but the Wildlife Institute is a pretty bad place to have to do data entry and analysis. There aren’t a lot of comfortable places to sit and the lighting is not great. Even more difficult is the recent heat, which makes it challenging to concentrate. Therefore, we were feeling pretty excited when Alison and I set off on a 12-hour bus journey that took us from 5:00 PM in Dehradun to 5:00 AM in Dharamsala.

            We got into Dharamsala and had to get into a taxicab to take us to where our friend and fellow Fulbrighter, Sara, lives. Alison speaks Tibetan and Chinese but not Hindi. I had to handle the interactions with the taxi driver, which were largely negative. I hate coming to a very touristy place. It’s very difficult to get a good price for anything and most people in the tourist industry are pretty unwilling to please you. This driver went up the hill to MacLeod Ganj—where the Tibetan community lives—so fast that we passed Sara’s house. We told him to go back and he told us to walk! I explained that it was far and he said that it was a one-way street. There are no one way streets in the whole of India! Sure, a sign might be there, but no one listens. I’m speaking in Hindi to you, buddy! Don’t try using rules of the road as an excuse! Also, this was 5:30 AM and I have yet to see a police officer in India do anything before 11:00 AM.

            So we got to Sara’s and then passed out. Around 7:30 AM we went to a lovely coffee shop that makes real espresso, very good omelets, and granola with yogurt. Dharamsala has very good food, both in quality and variety. I’m told that the Tibetans don’t like most of the exotic foods, but tourists do. This is one good part of going to a place that has a large expat community. The rest of that day we pushed ourselves through “bus lag,” which is the fatigue from spending your night on a bus. We ate some more amazing food. Lunch was at a Japanese restaurant and dinner was at a Korean restaurant.

            That same day we also wandered around MacLeod Ganj. The town completely changes between 7:30 AM and 11:00 AM. In the late morning, all the hippie tourists come out. It’s not very appealing. Sara told me that she sees people walking around barefoot. Let me again remind you that we are still in India. I believe that is a great way to get lockjaw. But MacLeod Ganj is also interesting, because it has the largest Tibetan community in India and is where the Dalai Lama lives. It has a very different feel from the rest of India as a result. For example, Sara took us to the Dalai Lama’s residence. During the day, many Tibetans walk around his residence to gain merit. Alison explained that in Tibet, people also take animals on this walk so that they animals can gain merit as well. About five minutes after she said that, a man walked by with his dog. But the dog was a disabled dog. It had casts on both its back legs, which were held up by a small cart. The dog was walking along using its front legs and looking very happy. I have never seen such compassion for a dog elsewhere in India. I’m sure some Indians would do that for their dog, but it’s not really part of the way that people interact with animals here. Walking around the Dalai Lama’s residence, there are great views of the Himalayas. The mountains around Dharamsala are not as large as the one’s in Joshimath, but they are very green. Also, you can see the trans-Himalayas behind them. It is a very different view from what I usually see during my fieldwork. I can understand why the Dalai Lama moved to Dharamsala rather than staying in Mussoorie/Dehradun, where he originally lived in India.

            Sara strongly encouraged Ali and I to contact some teachers while in Dharamsala. She said that the Karmapa was especially easy to meet, which is surprising given that he is the leader of the Kagyu branch of Tibetan Buddhism. The Dalai Lama is also a leader of a branch, which gives you and idea of how important the Karmapa is. Ali called his secretary and we were told to show up at 9:30 AM the next day. His residence is at the bottom of the hill and we took a taxi early in the morning and got there early. After walking around the grounds, we waiting in the reception room along with several Tibetans, some East Asian tourists, and two Indian government officials. The Indians were the only people who were late.

            After waiting for a while, we were taken through security and waited in line for our private audiences. The Karmapa is not big into ceremony and walked past us all without any warning, which seemed to alarm the Tibetans. There was one especially eager looking mother, who had her very small baby with her. Alison and I were the last people to meet him, which made us feel comfortable asking him questions. The whole event was very laid back. We were told not to prostrate in front of him and he seemed very relaxed just talking. His presence is difficult to describe. I can only say that is it obvious that he has spent a lot of his life meditating and thinking about the spiritual world. He is my age. Meeting him was one of the main highlights of my trip.

            Ali and I then had to prepare to leave for Bir, which is were our Buddhist teachings were to be held. Bir is about two hours from Dharamsala, and we shared the car with Sara and some of her friends from Dharamsala. Bir is also very beautiful. It is much more peaceful than Dharamsala and the Deer Park Institute, where the teachings were, is a beautiful facility. The landscape reminds be of Mandal, because they are both large, flat valleys in the Himalayas. Many foreigners also pass through Bir and it also has good food as a result.

            I really enjoyed the first day of the teachings that we had. It was a great treat to just take a break from research and thing about spiritual concepts rather than data. The second day, Ali, Sara and I started to experience “burn out.” Although the teachings were a great experience for Ali and I, we had been pushing ourselves a lot during our research and we were struggling to concentrate. Sara felt tired because she has been going to a lot of teachings recently. We skipped the last teaching and went back to Dharamsala early.

That evening, we went thangka shopping. Thangkas are paintings of Buddhas, which are used during meditation. Sara’s friend owns a wonderful Thangka shop, which supports artists who are traditionally trained. Ali got several Green Taras. Green Tara is a female goddess of compassion. I got a medicine Buddha for myself, and a Guru Rinpoche for my mother. Medicine Buddha’s purpose is fairly easy to understand. Guru Rinpoche is the person who brought Buddhism to Tibet. After thangkas, we had amazing Chinese food in a restaurant with a great view of the mountains. Then we went to a Tibetan-run bar. Ali explained that the bar looked very similar to those in Tibet. It had lots of lights and disco balls hanging front the ceiling and it was playing a lot of Tibetan and American pop music.

The next day was our last day in Dharamsala. Although, Ali and I loved our break from Dehradun and its heat, we were ready to go back. I was especially ready, because I knew that I would be going back to Joshimath soon. Ali wanted to go to the Tibetan Library to check and see if they had any texts that she could use. They had one that she did not have for her research yet. While we were in the library, a group of American students came into the main reception area. They were so noisy and didn’t listen to the librarians telling them to be quiet. Most of the girls were dressed inappropriately and one was even wearing shorts. I was listening to them talking and I was relieved to find out that they were High School students. I feel that at age eighteen you can be pretty dumb without it being that big of a deal; but if you’re twenty-one and still too self-absorbed to notice culture, then you need a wake-up call.

Ali and I took a bus from MacLeod Ganj to Dehradun. The first one that we took was from Dehradun to Dharamsala. It was a government bus and filled with Tibetans and Indians. The bus from MacLeod Ganj to Dehradun was almost entirely tourists and some Tibetans. That made me feel safe, but it also made me feel uncomfortable. Some of the women on the bus were dressed as if they were still in Europe or America. One Isreali tourist was smoking cigarettes in the street. I get very embarrassed and also angry when I see tourists behaving this way. I feel embarrassed as a foreigner and angry as a researcher. I have to overcome a lot of the stereotypes about Caucasians when I’m doing my research. I get extremely frustrated when I see the cause of my difficulties. Also, I hate the way that tourists treat India as their playground. I feel that if you’re in someone else’s country, you need to try to follow their cultural rules.

We got back to Dehradun and parted ways. Most of the tourists went onto Rishikesh, which is filled with ashrams. I was very glad to get back home, as I had not slept very much on the bus. I had been thinking about everything that had happened over the past several days. Being tired and hot in Dehradun also made me feel extremely grumpy. I tried to nap, but when the electricity went out in my house, I had to go to the Wildlife Institute to sit near a working fan. I wish that I felt more of a connection with Dehradun, but I almost always feel sad when I come back there after being in the mountains.

New photos from my trip to Dharamsala! I have been bad about posting about this. But once I got back from Dharamsala, the heat in Dehradun knocked me on my ass. I'm feeling a bit better now and should feel ready to start writing this evening. 

https://picasaweb.google.com/101737615291512796999/Dharamsala?authuser=0&feat=directlink

Things Are Different in India

            This may seem like an obvious statement, and it is; but things are different in India in ways that you might never expect. After living in India during college and returning, I have forgotten how shocking some differences initially were. Now that I am leaving, it’s easy to remember as I think about what I will miss and not miss when I am in the United States. The following list is a random collection of differences. They are in no particular order. I think it will be fairly easy to guess my feelings about the following topics:

1. Getting your phone service. You can’t just buy a cell phone in India. You need to submit a photocopy of your visa, passport, foreigner registration paperwork, and two passport photos. If you’re Indian then it’s the passport photos and your national ID. Everyone also needs to give your address and your father’s name (of course!) You then pay for the SIM card before you get cleared for owning it. About a quarter to a half of the time, the paperwork never gets sent into the main phone carrier headquarters and your service gets cut off. You can’t get a refund after this happens. If you want more minutes on your phone, you have to go to a random little shop and see if they recharge minutes for your carrier. If they do, then you tell them how many rupees you want to spend and they usually oblige. Sometimes they don’t feel like doing it.

2. Truck artwork. Concepts of feminine and masculine are radically different here. Therefore, there is no shame in truckers painting their trucks with images of birds, flowers, mermaids, trees, mountains, gods and goddesses. Often there will also be English or Hindi words pertaining to the driver’s religion. A popular one in Uttarakhand in Jai Mata Di, which is a way of saying Victory to the Mother Goddess. Muslim-owned trucks are generally a bit less colorful than Hindu, Sikh or Christian ones.

3.  Sending mail. If you want to send a package, god help you if you try to box it like a sane person who doesn’t want their shit to get broken or stolen. India has it all figured out. For optimal shipping you need a random assortment of boxes that may or may not fit the item that you want to ship. If it doesn’t fit, no worries! You can just try to tape boxes together around it. These aren’t normal boxes. They’re the boxes that your pressure cooker or TV came in. Then you have to take this package to the tailor. A tailor will stitch fabric around the box. Finally, you need to go to the hardware store and get lac. Seal the box with lac and you’re done! I think this is a procedure to discourage postal workers from breaking into boxes and stealing things. But don’t worry about the postal workers going without, often the whole thing is stolen! I try to avoid sending anything through the Indian postal system. But paying for FedEx doesn’t necessarily get your far. Two people on the Fulbright have had things stolen outright from their FedEx packages.

4. Strangers with candy. This is not in reference to the TV show. You can actually just take candy from strangers here.  The old, creaky man with toffees in his pocket is not yet associated with pedophiles or murderers. Also, candy is an acceptable alternative for small change if a shopkeeper is out of coins.

5.  Gift giving. Giving small presents to friends is much more common here than it is in the United States. If you receive a small gift, you shouldn’t say thank you. Saying thank you too much is regarded as a bad habit. My friends actually get frustrated with me for saying thank you so often.

6.  Fitness. I’m basically Jillian Michaels here. It has given me a very inflated perception of my physical fitness. Of course, middle-aged people in Dehradun see me that way. The old ladies in the mountains can still kick my ass.

7.  Sugar is a food group. Americans have issues with sugar, and I’m not arguing that. But sugar is built up to be an important food group here. I have made chai (with a ton of sugar) and my Indian friends still are shocked when they drink it. There is usually a sip, a disgusted face, and a panicked expression. I always wonder if they have a moment when they wonder if their taste buds have lost the ability to detect sweet. Also, I was being fed on gulab jamun (dough ball soaked in honey) before I left Joshimath. Now all future attempts to show me love through food have been ruined. Fresh gulab jamun tastes like a more decadent donut that as been warmed up and is saturated in honey.

8.  Crossing the road. It is always dangerous. The cows have it figured out, though.

9. Animals everywhere. On the way from my house to the office in Dehradun I see: cows, goats, chickens, dogs, cats, monkeys, crows, and the occasional pig. This is a city of 1 million people.

10. Pan mouths. Pan is a chewing tobacco-like substance from the betel leaf. It is mixed with something red; therefore when men pack a lip of it, they also drip and spit red drool. PS It smells like roses mixed with brimstone.  

11. If it sparkles, you should wear it and buy 50 more of it. You can dress like a five-year-old girl playing dress up and that’s high fashion. This is also true for men.

Reflections from the Field

This post is a bit stream-of-thought, but it just some ideas from my last experience in the field:

I am now in Dehradun and the heat is sweltering in comparison to the mountains. The high in the field would sometimes be 65 degrees, now I’m living in 90 degrees heat throughout the day. My friends in the Gangetic plains have it worse. It is around 103 degrees in Varanasi and Calcutta. But I don’t care, I lived through the -14 degree weather of the mountains and I feel like I deserve tolerable weather when I’m doing data entry.

My fieldwork ended much faster than I thought it would. I performed 50 surveys in Mandal Valley and then I needed about 60 in the high altitudes areas above Joshimath to make it to my goal. I went to some amazing villages with my new interpreter, Anju. Anju is Sarita’s cousin and she is a bit younger than Sarita, although not by much. Sarita was unable to work with me, because she is recovering from surgery. Anju was very excited to work with me, but she lacked the emotional maturity that Sarita and Vandana had. They were very good at asking women more information about their health history. Anju preferred to just be polite and ignore it. But Anju is much more of a natural athlete than my other interpreters, so we trekked to some great villages above the main road. They were usually 2-3 kilometers up hill. That might not sound like much, but the paths are just rocks and dirt, and it makes life very difficult for the people living there.

Villages above the road are completely different than the villages at the roadside. They have much less access to stores and sources of income. Probably my favorite village that I visited is called Ringi. Ringi is partly my favorite because it is not on the tourist trail. Some remote villages are either close to treks or have village home stays for tourists interested in their culture. Ringi is not anywhere particularly special, except that from it you can see amazing views of Nanda Devi. It is a poor village, and most of the houses are the old Garhwali style. These houses are made from clay bricks and timber. They are usually two levels with elaborate woodwork on the outside. I have pictures of these houses in my Picasa album. The interesting thing is that the patterns in these carvings look very Tibetan, similar to Bhotia weaving. This is just another example of how proximity to Tibet has influenced both groups. When Anju and I reach Ringi, we met two primary school teachers and the young students who were going to school. In the mountains, small villages just have a 1-5 class schools. The teachers spoke to me in Hindi and thanked me for coming to their village. I really felt like I was the first white person who had come to this village since 1962, when a Swiss guy did a survey of the area. Maybe people have been in and out since then, but I didn’t feel like that was the case. It was assuring to see how well I am treated even in villages that aren’t used to outsiders. A lot of women sat around and talked with us. They were very helpful and their husbands were very respectful and helpful as well.

            The sad thing about my fieldwork is that there are few women who I can really remember. Doing 200 surveys makes it impossible to remember everyone. I do remember certain women who were especially interesting. There was one woman in Ringi with broken shoes that kept interrupting everyone’s surveys with her own information. During her survey, she lifted her shirt to show me her scars from a recent gallbladder surgery. Gallstones are very common in this area, and many women have had them. It must be a genetic problem, because people here definitely do not eat a high-cholesterol, low-fiber diet. Other than this woman, I can’t really remember many of the faces or personalities from Ringi. I just remember that people were very kind.

            Ringi is 2,139 meters about sea level. (Thank you, Swiss guy for making so many topographic maps!) That’s about 7,000 feet. The other villages that we visited were up to 2,600 meters above sea level, which is about 8,500 feet. The higher elevation villages differ considerably from villages that are around 1,500-1,800 meters above sea level. Mandal Valley and Joshimath are in the “lower-altitude” range. The higher the elevation, the worse the facilities and the harder it is to make a living.

            During my recent field visits, I visited many villages that had no decent road near to them. Even the government roads are very bad, and transport is not made available. These villages do not have stores near them that sell basic necessities such as fresh vegetables and fruits. There are the occasional small stores that sell cigarettes, soap, and potato chips. It’s not that people wouldn’t buy fresh vegetables, it’s that most food will spoil by the time that it reaches these stores. One can buy produce in the larger towns of Joshimath and Tapovan, but it is much more expensive than it is in the plains. There is also a gas crisis in most of the hills. People cannot rely on timber for fuel, because they live in a national park. Therefore, they use gas; but gas is very difficult to get in many rural parts of India. On the days that gas is available, everyone from the village lines up on the road closest to them with their gas cylinders. I saw 60+ year-old-women with huge gas cylinders strapped to their backs.

            There is no doubt that living here has gotten easier in the past several generations. My interviews with women across age groups have demonstrated that there used to be many more health problems than there are today. The government is trying to bring schools and medicine to these areas. But I often wonder if the government is doing enough. Many of these people are limited because they live in a national park. Many are expected to make their living off of government jobs or tourism. These options have led to an increase in income. Nevertheless, the government controls how people interact with the forests around them, and prevents them from accessing materials and sources of food that they have traditionally used. Just as significantly, the national park system determines where roads can and cannot be created.

            Arguing with the government over natural resources is part of life here. One of my field sites is home to the world famous Chipko movement. The Chipko movement began when a local woman in the village of Rini ran out to the forests and began hugging trees to prevent trees from being felled. This movement has been romanticized over the years. It did not begin out of a modern sense of environmentalism, but as a way for a local community to stake a claim to their natural resources. As a result of the Chipko movement, the Nanda Devi area has gained international attention and it is now a UNESCO world heritage site. So now, the descendents of the Chipko movement still can’t use their own forests. Regardless of the current difficulties with the forest department, Rini’s inhabitants are very proud of the Chipko movement, but I was surprised at how little most young people can tell me about it.

            Despite the economic and social difficulties here, people seem much happier and healthier than the communities that I interacted with in Rajasthan four years ago. Women and children are generally treated very well, and it is very unusual for a child to not to be sent to school. Even though people live in a national park, they can still collect some natural resources; and the area is incredibly natural resource rich. Many men work as guides and drivers for tourists, which brings in money to the entire community. Therefore, the standard of living is slowly improving over time.

            Uttarakhand is a poor state, but it lacks many of the social ills that plague other poor states. Female infanticide is not generally tolerated in the mountains. Child marriage is taboo. Alcoholism exists, but the government heavily taxes alcohol. These are huge departures from Rajasthan, where the government overlooks child marriage and female infanticide, and it promotes government wine shops. I am about 100 times happier living in Uttarakhand than I ever was in Rajasthan. The environment is beautiful, the people are generally open and caring, and the culture is fascinating. The history here hasn’t been drenched in war and fighting over land, so the entire attitude towards life is so much more peaceful than in the plains states. Ending my fieldwork was extremely difficult. I wished that I could have worked for longer, but at a point my data just kept on repeating itself and I needed to stop. I hope that I’ll be able to go back to Joshimath with a group of students later this month. I will definitely go back before I leave India.

            Now I am in Dehradun and I’m working hard to get through some basic data analysis and writing. After my Fulbright is over, I will probably go to the trans-Himalayas in Himachal Pradesh. This area is a cold desert, entirely different from life in Garhwal. I’m excited to see a new place, but I don’t think that it will come nearly as close to affecting me as Uttarakhand has.

Photos from my field work!

So you all could have probably guessed that I've been working hard in the field. This is the reason for my absence from the blog. But I have lots of pictures to show you what I've been up to! Here the are...

https://plus.google.com/photos/101737615291512796999/albums/5732249196528945761

Goddesses Are for Worshipping. Men Are for Making Chai.

Today is one of the last days of Navratra. There is a Navratra in the Fall and in the Spring. It is a nine-day-long festival celebrating the nine forms of the mother goddess in Hinduism. Durga (the mother goddess) is a huge deal up in the mountains. I was in Dehradun for the Fall Navratra, but you wouldn’t have known that anything special was happening there. Up here in the hills, women go all out.

Firstly, almost everyone goes to the Durga Temple at least once during Navratra. They also hold kirtans, which are large, ladies-only singing and praying sessions. I passed one on the way to Sarita’s house outside of the Kali Temple by my house. Kali is one of the incarnations of Durga. There were about six women in a circle. One of them was playing a drum and the others were clapping along. They invited me to sit down with them and play the drum, although they didn’t care for my rock-inspired technique. It is a hand drum that is played in a very monotonous, hypnotic way. After that we talked about many things, including when I’ll get married and that I should marry an Indian man. I usually tell people that I’m married, but recently I’ve stopped because I’m tired of people asking me about babies and implicitly the actions that lead to babies.

I went to the Durga Temple myself earlier this week. There was a fair turn out there. The thing to do is to stop at every shrine in the temple and leave an offering. People leave money, incense, fruits, and other foods. I saw some people leaving oil, although that seems a bit impractical to me. When I was there I met two young girls who were very excited to meet me. They were very fluent in English, because they had attended the Christian school in Joshimath until they were about twelve. Christian schools are often the best English medium schools in rural India. They asked me a lot of questions about America, which was cute, except that they clearly were disappointed when I told them that I just studied all the time when I was their age.

Today is Abishek aka Lucky’s birthday. I started off in a bad mood, because yesterday I did some of the most intense hiking that I’ve done yet for my survey. So I was tired and frustrated today. Then at 7:30 AM, Monika started knocking on my door and bringing most of her family’s living room into my room in order to make space for the celebrations today. She said that it was because it was both Lucky’s birthday and also Navratra. Me being the feisty little spitfire that I am got upset that Monika didn’t have such special attention on her birthday. But I still made a cake for Lucky with Monika, because I am a good person.

Turns out, Monika was just being nice. The celebrations had nothing to do with Lucky’s birthday. In fact, they had nothing to do with men. Women sat inside in a large group on the floor and sang Gahrwali songs about the goddess, clapping and playing a drum. Aunty, by the way, has very good rhythm. Abishek had to stand outside awkwardly with his male cousin and occasionally do something to be useful. I think they ended up making and pouring out all the chai for the ladies.

One of the girls who I previously met at the Durga Temple was also there. She wanted to seem very cool and kept saying how horrible and boring the Durga kirtan must be for me. I said that I was enjoying it and then she pretended to also enjoy it. She said something about how she doesn’t like when women cry during these things. I guess it is very much like how kids don’t like to go to church. I wonder if these girls might actually like church because it is so different from a Durga puja.

I didn’t understand the songs that were being sung, because they were all in Garhwali. But I did understand much of one because it was singing about all the important rivers and mountains in Garhwal. Garhwali culture is vaguely animist in this way. While it is certainly Hindu, important geographical features are associated with goddesses. Other Hindus might acknowledge that the Ganges is a goddess, but in Garhwal they really go with this theme. Nanda Devi is the second highest mountain in India and also a very important local goddess. The rivers here aren’t just the beginning of the Ganges, they’re also alive to a certain extent. I cannot impress upon you how much people love their rivers and mountains. Monika proudly showed me a water bottle filled with the water from seven rivers in Garhwal that is used for puja. When Sarita and I go hiking and go high enough to see Nanda Devi, she usually does a quick bow and pray to the mountain.

Today I largely lay in bed and waited to get called into different religious celebrations or to help with some preparations. India is tiring. I can’t explain it. I have run much harder than I hiked yesterday, but I felt like I would never move again when I got back home. Maybe it’s that the sun is so bright at this high an elevation. Maybe it’s because I never feel completely relaxed here at all, so exercise isn’t as much of a release as it normally is for me. I’m not complaining. I love going for hikes to complete my research. Nevertheless, I feel worn out. I’m going to try to pace myself these next few weeks. I think my new interpreter wants to push through these high altitude villages, but I’m more than happy to drag things out.

Baking a Cake without an Oven (IN INDIA!)

          So, this is my first adventure into food blogging. I write this mostly because I figured out how to make baked goods without an oven and I need to tell all my Indian and Fulbrighter friends about it. This is also a great trick if you’re poor and live in an apartment without an oven OR if we experience another heat wave on the East Coast like last summer and you need to bake without using an oven. I took lots of pictures to explain what I did, but my Internet is too slow to upload them now. I’ll try again later.

            I spent much of last night and this morning surfing my crappy Internet for non-oven baked goods recipes. Even though this took hours, it was still a fun distraction. The inspiration was boredom, but then I realized that Monika and Lucky (my landlords’ kids) had their last day of finals today, creating a perfect excuse for baking. I came across several options for non-oven baking:

·      Dutch oven—this in India translates to putting a pot inside another pot on a stove.

·      Water bath—this in India is an Indian Dutch oven with water in the first pot.

·      Pressure cooker—I actually found this on a bunch of Indian cooking web sites. It seems like a cool idea, but my pressure cooker here isn’t big enough. I have a larger one in Dehradun and might try it there.

I selected the water bath, because it does not require the lid of the vessel to be kept warm, unlike a Dutch oven. The idea is that the boiling water heats the bottom, while the steam heats the top. Therefore, you get an evenly cooked and moist product. This is a good option for cakes or custards, but not for cookies or other things that you want crispy.

I could not find the type of cake that I wanted to make specifically mentioned in a water bath recipe, so I combined a couple different recipes. I decided that an apple cinnamon cake would be best for Joshimath, because cinnamon and apples are easily available here. Your ingredients might change based on where you are in India. IF you are in the South, I recommend trying a pineapple upside down cake. That can be made in a thick skillet on a stovetop.

Here is the recipe that I came up with. I did not have measuring cups, so I used chai cups instead.

·      Two apples, peeled and diced

·      Cinnamon (to taste)

·      Nutmeg (less than cinnamon)

·      1.5 chai cups of granulated sugar and then some to mix with apples

·      2 chai cups of regular flour

·      1 tablespoon baking powder

·      1 pinch salt

·      ¼ of a block of Amul butter, melted

·      Milk (added until desired consistency was reached)

·      Eggs (optional-I did not use eggs, but you can use one egg and add less milk)

·      2 pots, one small enough to fit inside the other.

1.  Mix diced apples with cinnamon and nutmeg to taste. Then sprinkle liberally with sugar, mix, and put aside.

2.  Mix all dry ingredients (including more cinnamon and nutmeg) together. Go easy on the nutmeg, too much can taste bitter.

3.  Take melted butter and mix it with about 1 chai cup milk. Add into dry ingredients and lightly stir, then decide how much more milk you need. If this seems vague, it’s because I cobbled this recipe together. You want a consistency that slowly pours out of a spoon. It should be thick like molasses, but not as thick as cookie dough.

4.  Take one big pot and a smaller pot that can easily fit inside it. Put about 2-3 inches of water inside the big pot.

5. Now coat the inside of the smaller pot with butter and then sprinkle with flour. Put half of the apples on the bottom and then pour in a little less than half the batter. Put the rest of the apples on top of this layer and then follow with the rest of the batter. OR you can mix the apples into the batter and pour it all in together.

6. Bring the water in the larger pot to a boil; then reduce heat to a medium-low flame. Place the smaller pot inside the larger one and cover with a large plate or lid (if you’re fancy and have lids.)

7.  It took about an hour to cook my cake. It might have taken less time if I didn’t check on it every ten minutes and let steam out. I’d suggest being cautious and checking a lot. The cake was very moist even with lifting the “lid” and Indian stoves are notoriously hard to control. As usual, I just tested the consistency with a knife or toothpick.

8.  Let cool for about 30 minutes and then use a knife to separate the edges from the bowl. After that it should come out easily when turned upside down.

            My cake turned out very well. If you have cake flour, it will probably be even better. You can get granulated sugar at most stores even if they don’t have it displayed. If I could change one thing about my recipe, it would be the amount of nutmeg that I put in the batter. I got very excited about having nutmeg and went a little overboard. This resulted in a stronger taste than I would’ve liked. I also think that raisins would’ve been a nice addition.

            I hope that this helps my friends without an oven do some baking. The weather in the mountains is very fall-like now and it was wonderful to have a cake that reminded me of autumn back home.

On the Lighter Side of Things

Here is a conversation (translated into English) that transpired between my home stay family in Mandal Valley and myself.

Mother: You should stay in India.

Father: You should marry in India. There are many Christians in India.

Me: I know, but I'm not Christian. I am a Buddhist.

Father: Oh, they are very much the same thing.

Me: No, Buddhism is closer to Hinduism. We do puja and meditate.

Father: But your father is a Christian priest. (This is the best way to describe Unitarian Minister in India.)

Me: Yes, but my mother and I are Buddhist.

Father: Are there Buddhists in India?

Me: Yes.

Father: Good.

I Always Knew There'd Be Interviews Like This

The title of this post might lead you to believe that I’ve been having no luck with interviews. The opposite is true. I’ve moved field sites due to the poor conditions in the higher elevations. I’m currently in Mandal Valley—a beautiful, bucolic valley near the district capital of Gopeshwar. When I was at my conference in Kerala, there was another researcher from Nepal who was performing research very similar to mine. She said that there’s a Nepali phrase stating: “Under a candle is a shadow.” She found this to be true of the district that she was working in, which is close to Kathmandu but overshadowed by the needs of the city. Rather than gaining from being close to Kathmandu, this district suffered. The same can be said of Mandal Valley.

There’s no way of getting around the fact that Mandal is poor. So much so that my assistant, who is also my roommate, doesn’t even know who is scheduled caste and who is general caste. She knows that her family are not scheduled caste i.e. dalits or “untouchables.” But we were interviewing people and she had no idea that they were. Everyone is poor; there isn’t much distinction. It’s strange to me that such a beautiful, natural resource-rich area is so poor. Joshimath and Gopeshwar and worse off in terms of location, but they are undeniably wealthier. I think religious and adventure tourism has a lot to do with Joshimath’s relative success. It is home to one of the great “Maths” (pronounced with a hard t.) This is of considerable religious significance and gets tourists from Delhites and Mumbaites to Europeans and Americans looking for enlightenment and dressing very silly in the meantime. Joshimath is also a starting point for many amazing treks.

Mandal, however, does not have my to recommend it other than the fact that it is a nice place to sit and look at mountains. But even these mountains pale in comparison to what you can see about two hours away in Joshimath. The family that I’m staying with is clearly poorer than the family that I’m staying with in Joshimath. The schools here are clearly worse. People have trouble using the hospital, because a doctor is never there. If they go to the hospital, then the doctors and nurses often verbally abuse them. The closest real town is Gopeshwar and its hospital hasn’t gotten rave reviews from my interviewees. In spite of coming from a different background than my Joshimath friends, my field assistant is very charming and intelligent. I do get frustrated that she hasn’t had more education opportunities, but she does seem to be getting along very well with what she’s been given. Although she speaks in English, she can understand my broken Hindi very well.  Therefore, we’ve been going through interviews at an astonishingly fast pace.

The interviews, although plentiful, are disturbing. I met a woman who gave birth to her child prematurely and he was born on the road to the hospital. The child is six years old and cannot talk or walk. They parents have never been able to bring him to the hospital. Today I spoke with a few fifty and forty-something women. Three of them had lost children, sometimes multiple children. I don’t know how to process this. On the one hand, they’re stories do not demonstrate how the health system is working right now. But the point is that they suffered multiple, great losses. It’s terrifying and saddening. I wanted to connect with them, but how can I do that when I don’t speak or understand Garhwali? What am I even doing trying to talk to someone about these issues?

I did like the women who I talked to today. One was very sassy. She joked around with her old mother and smokes beedis (village cigarettes) to relieve tension. I wish that I could’ve talked to her more, but she has no formal education. Her Hindi was pretty muddled and my Hindi is too bad for her to understand. She is also a dai i.e. traditional midwife. Dais are interesting, because they only use massage for delivery. It’s so different from the hospitalized medicine that I’m used to seeing in the United States.

Pity is also an interesting emotion. I can feel pity for the women who I meet; but they also feel pity for me. They clearly look sad when I say that I’m in India and my parents are in America. They look sad when I say that I have no brothers and sisters—especially the brothers part. Pity is useless, because it doesn’t actually change anything. I am sad when a woman tells me about her child dying. I am deeply upset when I meet a child that is six years old and acts like he is six months old. He had a grown up upper-half, and very small, underdeveloped legs. How do I confront that pain without feeling pity? What do I do with the feelings of anger, frustration, and dismay that I undergo during these interviews?

Maybe it helps me to know that I’m the only one who is out here and talking to these women. I haven’t heard anyone say that they’ve been asked about these health problems before. How are some places over saturated with NGO’s and Garhwal has no one working on public health? I know that it’s a new state, but it’s more like a forgotten state. I’ve been told that people here are too poor to start NGO’s. I don’t believe that. There are NGO’s here, but they work in environment. I’m all for ecology, but human need help as well.

My Foray into the South

            So I’m sorry for not writing for a while. It’s been a lot of wonderful traveling. I’d love to write about Goa and Mumbai, but a lot of that was just Peter and I lying around on the beach. Suffice to say that we had an amazing time; but there wasn’t much site seeing. We did walk around the southern side of Mumbai for a bit. That was the part that the British largely inhabited and there are a lot of colonial era buildings. I always have very mixed feelings about being in areas where the British had a strong presence. On the one hand, the buildings remind me of my home. On the other hand, it is a reminder of colonization. I really enjoyed Goa and Mumbai. They were much easier than the areas in which I’m currently living and working.

            Goa is a perfect beach area, with the exception of the huge amount of aging European tourists there. The sands are completely white and fine. The Arabian Sea is probably the warmest ocean in which I’ve ever swum. Peter really enjoyed it and I think it was a good vacation for both of us. Similarly, Mumbai was busy but much easier than Delhi or other large cities. I saw women walking around at night, way past the time that I see women walking around Delhi. There was a lot of traffic in Mumbai as well, but people were generally less aggressive than in Northern Indian cities.

            I spent only four days in Dehradun before going to Kerala for the Fulbright Conference. Kerala is completely different from any other part of India that I’ve been in. It is green and humid, but very well organized and people move much more slowly than in anywhere else. Kerala is also a communist state and does very well in literacy and other human development markers. I was surprised at how many people spoke English.

            The conference was amazing. It was so wonderful to hear about everyone’s research and commiserate over difficulties that we’re all have with our studies. My research was well received and I feel ready to go back and collect some more data for my project. Mostly, it was such a relief to be able to communicate with other native English speakers. More and more I feel that there is a distance between myself and the fluent English speakers that I meet in India. It’s amazing how much culture affects one’s ability to communicate. I also feel like I have to keep back a lot of the emotions that I feel, because I don’t want to come off like I don’t like or respect India. Therefore, it was great to get the chance to express myself openly among so many other young people living and working in India.

            The conference was held in a five star hotel. It was pretty nice, although it was very shocking for me to go from my work in Uttarakhand to this amazing hotel in Kochi, Kerala. After the conference a large group of the student researchers used a houseboat to travel around the Kerala backwaters. The backwaters were bigger than I expected. I know that there are smaller canals, but houseboats can’t get through them. The larger backwaters were very green and although they were hot, it felt much less hot than the plains area that I’ve experience in north India.

            The houseboat was nicer than most hotels that I’ve stayed in on my own in India. But we saw other houseboats that were decorated as if all the furniture and interior decorations came from Pottery Barn. It was a relief to be able to interact with people outside of the conference and just talk about our experiences and perceptions of our work and the world around us. We were also joined by two girls who are doing their Fulbrights in Tajikistan (the conference was for all of South and Central Asia.) Hearing about Tajikistan emphasized just how similar India is to America in many ways. Tajikistan is not a democracy, 50% of its GDP comes from the drug trade, and if you’re a white woman people either assume that you’re a missionary or a Russian prostitute. I immensely respected their work and perseverance, but it also made me very happy to be working in India.

            A smaller group of us branched off after the houseboat and decided to go to Munnar, which is a hilly region of Kerala. We took a ferry to the town that we thought had the closest direct bus to Munnar. Turns out we could have gotten one from where our houseboat was. Regardless, I really enjoyed the ferry. In terms of comfort, it was not as nice as the houseboat. But I saw much more of Keralan life and wildlife. There were a large number of egrets, ducks, cormorants and some other birds that I had never seen before. The ferry went by a huge number of bright green rice fields and people’s houses, which were nestled right at the edge of the canal.

            After a day of traveling, we got to Munnar. I can’t say much for the town of Munnar itself, but the tea plantations around it were beautiful as were the hills. We were unable to go to a wildlife sanctuary nearby, because it is the dry season and most animals have left that area. I loved seeing a different culture in South India. There are a lot of Christians in South India and many of the churches and shrines look very similar to Hindu temples and shrines. I saw many figures of Jesus that were positioned like Krishna.

            Hiking around Munnar was a nice rest from the intense heat of the backwaters and it was interesting to see a different type of hilly terrain. Instead of pine trees and devdars, these hills were covered with palm trees and other verdant, big leaved plants. There are a huge number of palm trees in Kerala. It is no wonder that “toddy”—the local moonshine is made from palm tree sap. I tried toddy and I have to say that fermented sap is about as delicious as it sounds.

            We spent about a day-and-half in Munnar and then traveled back to Kochi. Our hotel was in the Fort Kochi area, which is right by the water and a lot of old things, so of course it was also very touristy. I don’t think I’ve ever been around so many white people who are not affiliated with Fulbright since I came to India. I have to say, that I really did like Kochi. It is very laid back and people are generally very nice. The only problem is that it is nearly impossible to get a drink. Everything closes by 10 or 10:30. One night we ended up taking our Tuborg bottles of beer to the beach, which was much nicer than sitting in a bar anyway.

            Holi is the festival of colors in India, when people throw colored powders on each other as well as water. It was March 8^th and we thought that we had missed it. But it turned out that people celebrated a second Holi on Sunday, because it was the weekend. Our Munnar group met up with a group who had stayed around Kochi and we headed over to a temple where we had been told that Holi would take place. The “Holi play” mostly consisted of children and their parents, so it was a very safe environment. Us being white, where a natural target for little children to throw colors on. So we ended up considerably more saturated in color than most of the other participants. It was a much better experience than I anticipated it to be. Some of my friends had warned me that Holi can be an excuse for drunken men to try to rub color on you. But it was only families as this small celebration. This was probably due to the fact that Holi is not really celebrated in Kerala.

            The nice thing about being in Kochi was that it exposed me to South India. South India is generally better developed and slower paced than North India. Now I can understand why all of my South Indian friends at the Wildlife Institute talk about missing their homes so much. Many things that I would not have done in North India, I did in Kerala without any problem. This included going to the beach at night, playing Holi, and walking around at night with three other women. Some of my friends even wore tank tops and shorts and they were not harassed once. Of course, people do stare. But that is largely to be expected. It seemed to be heaven for my friend Hillary who is based in Tajikistan.

            Well, now I’m back in Dehradun and I had about two days to adjust before going back to the field. I’m very excited to start my fieldwork again. Seeing Peter and going to the conference really rejuvenated me. I feel more confident about my work, although my Hindi has vastly deteriorated after spending so much time around other Americans. I will be going to a lower altitude area about two hours away from Joshimath. I’ve been told that the wildflowers will be blooming now, so I’m excited for that. Dr. Uniyal also earnestly warned me that I need to be in the house by dusk, because the area that I’m going has a “leopard problem.” For the first time since coming to India, I don’t want to argue, “American women stay out after dark.”

Pictures from Kerala

https://plus.google.com/photos/101737615291512796999/albums/5719650422527241777

I'm currently writing the accompanying post for this.

Photos from Goa and Mumbai!

https://plus.google.com/photos/101737615291512796999/albums/5713703862698343809

I'll post about it later!

The most inaccurate comparison ever

I was looking through recipes online, because I'm making egg curry tonight. One of the "similar" recipes was coconut barfi. Barfi is an indian sweet that I don't particularly like. It's mostly sugar and dried milk. They called it "Indian Fudge" on this site. So. Insultingly. Wrong.

You know how I feel about this topic already.

Embracing Dehradun When the Mountains Are Snowed Out

(The link for pictures is at the end of this post.)

Dehradun has it rough, I know. It’s trying to get me to have a good time here, but I’ve already been up to the mountains, so Dehradun has less appeal in comparison. It is a very livable city. But it is in an awkward adolescent phase. Uttarakhand only became a state about 10 years ago; before then Dehradun was a relatively small city. Now that it is the capital, it is consistently growing. But it lacks many of the cultural and social opportunities that a long term city can offer. So in some ways, it’s a lot of the bad without a ton of the good. It gets crowded, there’s a lot of traffic, and there’s not a lot to actually go to or to see.

I will say that Dehradun is a very nice North Indian city. This cannot be said for most North Indian cities. Many are very intense and in-your-face. Dehradun is not like that. It is clearly still very much a mountain city, even though it is being transformed. An example is Chakrata Road. Chakrata Road branches off from the main bazaar. It had some of my favorite shops. Like a chemist shop that had been in the family for three generation, and which was run by the most intelligent and elderly chemist that I’ve ever met. I say this all in the past tense, because all of these shops have been demolished to make room for a bigger and better Chakrata Road. I get it; the city needs to grow. But I can relate to locals who hate the fact that Dehradun has become a capital city and therefore must terminate so much of what made the city charming.

While I originally planned on spending as much time in Joshimath as possible, the bad snows have cut off even low-elevation field sites. I might go out next week; but it will be a short trip, because Peter is coming to India on February 19^th! In lieu of the mountains; I’m trying to embrace Dehradun and enjoy the city while I’m here.

My quest to like Dehradun began with me throwing a birthday party for myself. This might sound pretty lame; but it was a good opportunity to spend more time with the PhD students here. Being around a lot of Indians who are my age is one of the perks of living in Dehradun these days. I ended up making ravioli from scratch. I made the dough, the ricotta, and everything. It was a lot of work, but my friends seemed to enjoy it. I also made Italian-style chickpeas, which they appreciated as a divergence from the very spicy food that they get every day on campus. I’m going to post some pictures of the party. It was a lot of fun. My parents sent me a cake and my friend Ridhima bought me one. Apparently, in India you cut the cake before you eat dinner. Also, you’re supposed to put frosting on the birthday person’s face. I explained that we really only do that for weddings.

The next day, I went to a dinner for “Lady Scientists.” All the female researchers at the institute were invited. It was at a hotel and we got a ton of free food, so that was already worth it. There were also “cultural events,” which is essentially a talent show. The Indian perception of dance is strange to me. It is overall a very sexually repressed culture. But my friends performed some extremely sexual dances and all these old lady scientists came up to them afterwards and hugged them, telling them what amazing dancers they are. There was a lot of “first class, first class!” being yelled. After the talent show, there was time for everyone to dance. All of my friends were impressed that I could dance “Hindi Dancing” so well. I tried explaining that shaking your ass is pretty much universal, but they didn’t seem to get the point. I think I also waved my hands around in a generally Bollywood manner. Now that I think of it, all the white women in Bollywood videos are there to fill the role of the Western whore who is sexually open enough to allow the male actors to grind on her. Maya and I watched a lot of Bollywood when we were travelling, and literally every time an actor got hot-and-heavy with a woman, she was white. I don’t mean that they don’t portray Indian women as sexual. It’s that white women are perceived as sexually loose. So maybe my friends were just impressed that I didn’t dry hump anyone. It was a challenge. Us American women are extremely promiscuous.

The photos of all of this are included in this post. I think that you’ll enjoy seeing me with my friends here. You’re probably going to be surprised that so many people in the photos look very distinct from one another. India is perhaps the most ethnically and linguistically diverse country in the world. My friend Malem is from Manipur and looks Burmese or Chinese. She speaks Hindi pretty well, but not fluently and she much prefers using English for important conversations. It’s almost as hard for her to go home as it is for me, because Manipur is constantly undergoing riots due to the ethnic clashes between the different tribes there. It is easier for her brother in Thailand to get home than it is for Malem. I don’t have photos of all of my other friends, but there are also students here from Nagaland (near Manipur,) Ladhak (higher up and west than Uttarakhand,) Kerala, and Tamil Nadu. Ladhakis are Buddhist, a lot of people from Nagaland and Manipur are Christian, Kerala also as many Christians, as does Tamil Nadu. Nevertheless, Malem is Buddhist and all of my friends from Kerala are Hindu. My Ladhaki friend doesn’t eat meat because of Buddhism. Malem will eat anything with a pulse. Sam, a friend from Nagaland, told me that she also is a meat eater. I didn’t mention that Nagaland is home to the formerly “head hunting” tribes of India. But I’m sure if head hunting is not unheard of, then it’s a bit dramatic to be a vegetarian. Many of my North Indian Hindu friends are vegetarian. The South Indians could seem to care less. But then there are exceptions to those generalizations as well. It gets very complicated.

The great thing about all of this diversity is that it shows me that I am not alone here. While I am not Indian, I am not the only one who looks different or struggles with Hindi. Of course, my Hindi is the worst of the bunch; but it’s still a relief to know that conversations aren’t in English just for my benefit. English is very much a common ground language here.

Also, Dehradun has a very large Tibetan population. Therefore, I’m an outsider in a city that is used to outsiders settling here. Today I went to the bazaar to buy some camera batteries, get some photos printed out, and to buy something delicious (I chose butter cake.) When I got to the bazaar, there was a huge procession of Tibetans. They were protesting India’s lack of political pressure on China. This I completely understand. On the one hand, India has given refuge to any Tibetan that can get across the border. On the other hand, the Indian government doesn’t have a strong political stance on Tibet. As the Tibetan New Year gets closer, I’ve been reading about more and more Tibetans being killed in Tibet. They’re trying to celebrate their own New Year rather than the Chinese New Year. It’s disgusting what China is doing in Tibet. If I were Tibetan, I’d be angry at India too. It’s hypocritical to absorb an entire nation, but not to do anything with regards to that nation’s status. Of course, I understand why India is hesitant to do so. China and India have an uncertain future, but it will certainly be a rivalry. The question is, how serious will that rivalry get?

China has never attacked India through the northwest Himalayas. Regardless, every other town near my field site is home to an army base. The only reason that anyone can move around at all during the winter is that the army clears the roads in case they need to bring tanks up to the Tibetan plateau. There is an uneasiness that cannot be ignored. While I sympathize with Tibet, seeing Indian troops ready at the Chinese border makes me hypersensitive to the severity of what an Indo-Chinese war would mean for the world. But even with these serious thoughts, I want you all to know that butter cake is as delicious as it sounds. 

Here are pictures:

https://plus.google.com/photos/101737615291512796999/albums/5707397646360437601

Pictures from my trip!

Here are the photos to accompany the previous blog post!

https://plus.google.com/photos/101737615291512796999/albums/5706331470133053601

Enjoy!
Erica

My Trip through Punjab and Himachal Pradesh!

Here is the summary of my recent trip through Punjab and Himachal Pradesh. I'll upload pictures tomorrow!

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As some of you have already heard, I just travelled around Punjab and Himachal Pradesh with another Fulbrighter and friend—Maya. Maya and I are both studying women’s health and she is currently a medical student at Northwestern, so we both had a lot to talk about and rant about.

During my trip, I think most things that can go wrong with transit did go wrong, but I was always able to get to where I wanted to go. That’s the nice thing about India: enough people don’t have cars that there’s always another form of public transit available. It started with me getting onto my night train to Delhi and finding out that my seat was also assigned to a very annoyed woman. She kept insisting that I check my ticket; but we eventually found out that she had been automatically upgraded to a better class. Of course, by that time she had already kicked me out of the booth and set up her blankets. She did however; give the conductor as much trouble as she gave me when he told her about the seat change.

When Maya and I met in the Old Delhi Railway Station, we couldn’t find our train on the board and no one in the Enquiry Department could tell us if our train even existed. Finally, we found out that our train had been delayed 2 hours. The train didn’t get any timelier after that, and we didn’t get into Amritsar until after midnight. The most annoying part was that the train stopped right outside of Amritsar for over an hour. I can only imagine that the track it was coming in on was already occupied due to its lateness.

After that things did get a lot easier. We ended up staying in a nice hotel right across from the Golden Temple. The Golden Temple was beautiful and actually very peaceful for such a huge tourist attraction. The Golden Temple, for those who do not know, is the primary holy site for Sikhs. As with all Sikh religious sites, everything is free, but a donation is appreciated. The Temple is situated in the middle of a manmade lake. Some Sikhs bathe in the lake, and I felt really embarrassed when I saw some tourists filming men trying to take their religious baths in the water. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that tourists can be as obnoxious with their cameras as young Indian men can be.

Outside Amritsar is completely chaotic, as it is a huge tourist destination. Taxi drivers and rickshaw wallas were constantly trying to get us to go to the border with Pakistan, at which there are elaborate guard marches on the Indian and Pakistani side. Maya and I don’t care much for military displays and a friend of hers told her that it looks like a Monty Python bit, so we decided to skip it. Instead, we walked a short distance to the memorial for the Indians killed in the 1919 massacre in Amritsar. If you’ve seen Gandhi then you know what I’m talking about. In case you haven’t: In 1919 the British Government created laws that would make it legal to arrest and detain Indians without a trial. (Sounds like the United States now.) In Amritsar, there were several riots over this. But during the day of the Punjabi Harvest Festival, a peaceful meeting was organized in a park to discuss the issues at hand. A British troop came in and the commanding officer ordered his men to fire on the peaceful crowd, including women and children. The park is walled in on all but one side, so the people who attended the meeting were trapped. I learned that the officer—O’Dwyer—never slept soundly again after the massacre and eventually killed himself. That seems to be about the right amount of guilt for such an unprovoked and bloody attack.

The next day we went to Chandighar, but our train stopped for about an hour to unload some packages that had been stored on the train. Therefore, we missed our connecting train and had to take a taxi to Chandighar. Chandighar is the capital of Punjab and Haryana. It is a surprisingly ritzy city for being a place about which no one ever talks. It is the only city in India that I’ve been to which was completely preplanned. It was built after Partition to become the new capital of Punjab. Lahore, the old capital, is now in Pakistan. There wasn’t a whole lot to do in Chandighar except go to gardens and eat, which was a nice change of pace after Amritsar.

The second most visited place in India after the Taj Mahal is the Rock Garden in Chandighar. A refugee from Partition began creating art out of all the scraps and garbage created when Chandighar was being built. The government found out about his work and gave him acres on which to build his own garden. I will upload pictures of this tomorrow. It is a very interesting and geometrically amazing place. I appreciated being around some modern art after living in the mountains for so long. We also visited a rose garden, which was also pleasant, but less visually stunning and intriguing.

Probably the best part of Chandighar was the food. We had Mangalorean fish curry and Italian food as well as complimentary breakfasts at our hotel. It was pretty amazing. But it was also expensive, so we left earlier than we planned and took the bus up to Shimla.

Shimla is a hill station in Himachal Pradesh. It was the summer retreat of the British Raj. Shimla is very similar to Mussoorie, but it is far bigger and the entire state is more developed than Uttarakhand. Sometimes I forget that Uttarakhand is a new state. But seeing what Himachal has in comparison to Uttarakhand really drove home just how poor Uttarakhand is. Himachal has the same terrain, but much better roads, governmental organization, electricity and water. Although Shimla has a water crisis, I think this is largely because it is a city with the capacity of a hill station.

We stayed in a very nice hotel, which had a very friendly and helpful owner. It was the coziest place that I have stayed in so far, and it overlooked the mountains. Most of what we did in Shimla was walking around. On our second day there we did two treks. The first one was up to a Hanuman (monkey god) temple at the top of a hill. As we went up, someone told Maya that the monkeys would steal her glasses. But it was also icy around the temple, so Maya had to wear them just to walk around safely. As she was sitting down in the Temple complex, a monkey ran up to her and grabbed the glasses off of her face. Monkeys do this type of thing we they think they can get food in exchange. Everyone was telling her to give the monkey food, but we didn’t have any. I followed the monkey until it was on a rooftop, where it sat down and started eating the nose guards off of Maya’s glasses. Fortunately, some workers bought some prasad (food for the gods) and offered it to the monkey in exchange for the glasses. The monkey dropped the glasses and ran away with the food. This must be a normal occurrence, but the workers had a ladder ready to climb up and get the glasses off of the roof.

We decided to go to a less exciting place afterwards and took a taxi to a rural village close to Shimla.   It was nice to see rural Himachal Pradesh, which is also much more developed than rural Uttarakhand. It was also very nice to go to a place where there were no tourists and a lot of clean air.

The British built a railway that goes from Shimla to Kalka, which is in Haryana. We had been told that the train was a highlight of Shimla, so we decided to take it. We ended up getting a private compartment, which was a nice surprise. The trip down was beautiful. The best part is that the train goes so slowly that you can open the train door and look out at the mountains passing you by. The train also goes through a much more rugged and rural landscape than what the roads go through.

The train was also late, but we still made our connecting train in Kalka. Unfortunately, the original schedule that we saw said that we would get into Delhi around 5:10; but in reality we got in around 6:30. That meant that I missed my train to go to Dehradun. We took a taxi to the Interstate Bus Terminal, only to be told that it was the other ISBT that has buses going to Dehradun. The next bus station actually did have Uttarakhand state buses leaving from it. I got a deluxe (meaning it has AC) bus to Dehradun that left at 8:00 AM. All the conductors were very confused as to why I was going to Dehradun instead of Rishikesh. Rishikesh is where The Beatles went to learn about eastern religions, and it is where white people flock to this day for the same reason. It is an hour from me and I’ve never been, because I’m a snobby academic that way.

I was exhausted when I got back to Dehradun; but I was also excited to get back to work. Traveling in India is trying and I feel that I at least have a good grip on my work now. I am glad that I was able to see other parts of India and get to talk about my work and emotions with another American researcher. Right now, I am adjusting to being immersed in another culture again. I feel awkward talking to my Indian friends after being with an American for so long. But I’m sure that I’ll get over it soon enough. I’m making dinner for some of my friends here in Dehradun on my birthday. I’m looking forward to breaking the ice a little bit more. Let me know if you have any dinner suggestions!