Wifi means pictures!

We are currently in McLeod Ganj, a place famous for serving as the residence of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and also, as we have come to realize, headquarters for many Tibetans including Tibet government buildings like the supreme court.  Tibetan culture is still very much alive here where you hear the Tibetan language spoken everywhere and many people here still wear traditional Tibetan dress.  This city is important because it houses many Tibetan refugees and continues to accept them as they arrive.  This means that there's a continued need for volunteer effort to help care for people by offering them medical care including therapy for any trauma they may have suffered.  It also includes services meant to teach refugees (and anyone else in need) skills that will help them to succeed in India.

Today we were able to volunteer by teaching English for a few hours.  There were four students who showed up but no other volunteer teachers.  One of my students was a Tibetan monk who only came to India three months ago and we had a very interesting conversation about what it was like to leave his home and his family.

(Other volunteer projects include the care of McLeod Ganj itself which, I guess, has become increasingly more dirty -- read: littered -- with the increasing number of tourists that come here.)

Shira's two students

There's a relatively large complex here that includes a monastery, the residence of the Dalai Lama, residences of other monks and nuns, temples and shrines and beautiful natural space.  There's a traditional clockwise rotation that brings you past the most important buildings and give you pretty incredible views.  Here are some pictures of what we saw there:

Jordan and Buddhist prayer wheels

Notice the Tibetan prayer flags

Hebrew signs!

We have been hearing Hebrew and seeing Israelis everywhere!  Although we have not found Israeli food here like in the past few places we've been, we have seen an abundance of Israeli signs.  Here is one advertising a Tibetan cooking class that we would have liked to take but couldn't.  Tibetan cooking is surprisingly wonderful!  It's everything I love about real Chinese food: fresh vegetables, flavorful broths and protein-bearing tofu.  We've gone for a few months without really understanding what we're eating, so to see in-tact vegetables is most welcome.

Views from our hike

This morning we started the day right by taking a relatively short walk/hike to the Bhagsu waterfalls.  It was a little rainy and pretty early in the morning which meant that there were no other people.  The views were again, splendid!  We've really been enjoying being in the mountains.

More views from our waterfall hike

Our Japanese meal

Food that needs a picture!  We found a vegetarian Japanese place that was not-for-profit (all their profit benefits Tibetan aid organizations).  Everything pictured here cost about four US dollars total and was completely delicious and different.

"I'm wet"

It's very rainy here and we got wet.

We took a cooking class where we learned how to make three different Indian dishes (unfortunately not Tibetan) and bread!  Here's Jordan looking very professional.

Internet cafe is closing up and I must go!

Back updates

7 August 2011

Today is our last day in Rishikesh.  We’re leaving tonight for McLeod Ganj, location of the big Tibetan community.  In Rishikesh we took yoga classes that were very good.  There were some familiar poses but mostly unfamiliar ones and it combined a little cardiovascular exercise (something like jumping jacks) with things like sun salutation and then pretty intense abdominal workouts that were very pilates-like (boat pose).  However, the best part of the class was definitely at the end when we practiced laughing yoga which we learned was good for the heart, diaphragm, and for rejuvenating the spirit and the body.  Jordan and I both walked out feeling great.

Yesterday we made our way to Maharash (something something) Ashram, which is a huge complex that includes living places, praying places and even a post office!  Although it is huge and has, in the past, held importance for Hindu monks and pilgrims who come to Rishikesh for its religious and spiritual draw, it is best known to us as the prior residence of the Beatles!  Apparently they wrote the majority of the White Album here and it was fun to walk there and think “Oh boy!  The Beatles once walked exactly where I’m walking right now!”  For some reason, the place has been completely abandoned since then.  The paths were so overgrown that sometimes they were hard to find.  The little domed stone huts were covered in bright green moss and the bigger buildings are littered with broken glass, general rubble, and insect carcasses.  It was interesting to wander around, and we were surprised to see that so few other tourists made their way over.  It made us think how, even in a town that’s relatively very friendly and open to foreigners / tourists, even Rishikesh is not meeting its “tourist potential.”

(Here is a post we wrote a long time ago but didn't get a chance to put up on the internet until now)

26 July 2011

We’ve been going through increasingly small villages and towns and have experienced, more or less, an inverse relationship between the size of a place and how friendly it is to us.  We’re writing this blog post from Orchha where sales people listen when you tell them you’re not interested and the auto-rickshaw we took actually gave us a fair price (and an interesting experience).  It’s very quiet and green here right now.  Orchha is kind of like an island because on all sides it is bordered by major rivers.  We spoke with one of the shop owners who told us that it was good we were coming at the beginning of the monsoon season because in another month or so the major roads in and out of Orchha will be covered with water and impassible!  We also learned that instead of having four seasons (summer, autumn, winter, spring), here there are three seasons that each last about 4 months: summer, monsoon, and winter. 

We spent our morning in the Orchha nature preserve which was quite beautiful, very quiet.  We were hoping to see peacocks but such was not our luck. 

Orchha is famous for its palaces and temples.  We wandered the palace grounds for a bit and, among other things, came across a family that was living inside one of the lesser visited buildings of the palace.  I think it may have once been a temple.  In general, Orchha is an important religious site for Hindus and there are certain things you notice as a result.  We didn’t see one restaurant here serving meat and only some places serve eggs (the use of eggs is at the very least very well marked) or alcohol.  Since coming to India we have learned that being vegetarian here can – but doesn’t necessarily – mean more than simply not eating meat.  Vegetarian cooking and cuisine here often excludes eggs and alcohol but also garlic and onion.  As I’ve mentioned before, it’s really nice to live and eat in a place where I can absolutely trust that I’m not eating meat -- although that’s where my trust in the food might stop.  

Orchha, because it is such a great tourist hub advertises multi-national cuisines including continental, American, Mexican, Israeli, Italian, and, of course, Indian.  We were looking forward to sampling Indianised nachos or Shakshuka but sadly, it is off season for the tourist industry and restaurants do not offer all that their menus indicate.  Today I ordered a palaak parantha (bread stuffed with spinach) and the restaurant manager? waiter? said that he would check in the nearby market to see if there was any spinach to be had.  (There wasn’t).  Similarly, after dinner we ordered ras gulla (sweet balls of ?? soaked in a syrup) and our waiter got on his motorbike to drive to the nearby market and came back five minutes later with our dessert. 

Also, here in Orchha as well as in Khajuraho (the last place we stayed) something very strange happens at sundown.  We first noticed it at dinner in Khajuraho when a small beetle-like bug fell on our rooftop table.  One bug quickly became many bugs and when we walked back to our hotel, we had to walk on a thin and crunchy carpet of bug!  In this part of the country in this part of the year it literally rains bugs. 

JORDAN: Bug raining is not as bad it sounds, because they’re basically like indigo blue ladybugs – very innocuous. Nevertheless, when you’re walking outside and they’re raining, some folks cover their mouths, and you’ll be picking them out of your hair and your clothes for a long while after you get indoors. They literally cover the ground so that you almost can’t see the pavement. They got in both hotel rooms we’ve been in when they hit – I think by getting under the door. But after we swept them off the bed and turned the light on in the bathroom to attract them, they didn’t bother us. And what’s truly incredible is that they were basically gone by morning. They’re migrating in the clouds and landing at night.

As we get into smaller villages, we get less English to work with, but folks get friendlier and friendlier. As mentioned, people share food with us on trains (one man on a crowded bus even cut up his coconut into tiny pieces and walked the aisles giving little bites of coconut to a bus full of strangers – that’s the kind of sharing culture we’re talking about), people stop us when they see us going the wrong way to a landmark, they say hello and ask us where we’re from so much that it’s actually burdensome. And then there’s the legions of people who stop and ask for pictures with us. I feel like I’m in a Donald Duck suit and would actually like for some of that to stop.

We met up with a studying astrologer in Orchha who is taking two weeks off from touring and studying with something like 50 gurus throughout the countryside, who explained that one of the reasons India is a more colorful place than America is because the plants in India create twice as many colors of natural dyes and such as do the plants in America. We met a guy on the train who explained that the poverty of India’s countryside is deceptive, because India has such a strong culture of savings that they don’t show their wealth in their standard of living; that many poor farmers you see sleeping with their whole family in a house made of sticks actually have permanent houses in the nearby villages that they stay in during winter; that England ruined India’s wealth when they left just before independence by looting the country of its gold (don’t know if this is true). We’ve experienced a very broad antipathy towards Pakistan, though Hindus always say they love their peaceful brother Muslims. We’ve exchanged e-mails with a few folks who always (extremely earnestly!) say they’re proud to have foreign friends. One guy invited us home to his village, but we didn’t have time.

Fun facts: Bright orange is the color men dye their greying hair. I want to say most of them.

Pink is the favorite color for houses.

During festivals (we hit Orchha during a minor one) folks sell all these brightly colored powders for smearing on just about anything (including the local monuments). Also, during these festivals, there have been loudspeakers throughout town where some man reads prayers ALL DAY, non-stop, so that you can hear it everywhere. This is especially amusing when his voice starts getting strained and he’s hacking phlegm and spitting it audibly by the microphone and 800,000 people are listening to it.

Everybody spits everywhere in this country. Many signs ask people not to spit near special things, because the presumption is they will if you don’t ask.

Getting in line for anything is an extremely aggressive experience. People push and cut and throw their money at the teller as you’re trying to conduct your transaction. I don’t think lines actually have meaning here, much like traffic rules. Getting on the bus was like an image of people getting onto lifeboats on the Titanic, complete with children screaming in fear.

Everything is amusingly misspelled in English. Everything.

Most of these small towns have garbage and sewage systems that are basically an open ditch dug along the road in front of all the houses. These are usually covered at least part of the length with concrete slabs. Over the open parts, people just walk out and dump garbage, or squat right in the road and do their business. There’s enough private parts I didn’t know I would see in the road to fill a documentary.

Yes, cows stop traffic regularly. Also, goats. Also, people driving on the wrong side of the road. We got beeped at today by a guy driving on the sidewalk, who demanded we move.

Children all talk to us and follow us places, like ducklings, even if they don’t know where we’re going or who we are.

Seeing monuments costs, literally, 25x as much for foreigners as for Indians.

People play music in public without headphones. On the bus. In the train. In restaurants.

People beep their horns whenever they’re within proximity of another car. Also, when they’re not in proximity of another car. We were walking along a peaceful road today, and I remarked that this could even be in America, until a motorcyclist came and went down the road with his horn blaring the entire way, and no other cars in sight. Then we knew we weren’t. Otherwise, major roads are so full of beeping that it ceases to have communicative value – the message has devolved strictly into “this is a road! There are cars!”

Two weeks? in

Hello all!  Jordan and I have written some very long (and impressive) blog posts that unfortunately refuse to load on these computers so you'll have to make do with something rather less impressive for now.

We've been to so many places in India right now -- we've made our way through Gwalior, Agra, Delhi, Haridwar (albeit briefly) and we're currently in Rishikesh.

Rishikesh has been an oasis of calm and relaxation.  We're about to head to a yoga class and might look into ayurvedic massage for later.  The food choices include Indian (duh) but also Mexican! and Israeli!  So that's pretty exciting.  We took a beautiful hike the other day up the mountain and we've been enjoying walking across the Ganga river (via very cool pedestrian bridge) each morning. 

Next we're headed to McLeod Ganj, residence of the Dalai Lama and after that we plan to settle down on a beach somewhere and try to process these last few months.

One week in

A quick update and more to come soon!

One week into traveling and we've seen so much.  We started our travels by visiting Aurangabad and ended up staying there a little longer than we originally anticipated.  No matter!  We saw Ellora caves, which are a set of caves where whole buildings and temples from the 6th-7th century were carved from the ceiling down.  Then we saw Daulatabad -- a medieval fort located at the top of a hill that we climbed to by ascending through pitch-black bat infested winding staircases.  Very fun!  Along our climb we met a woman who was guarding one of the temples in the complex who gave us each red marks on our foreheads.  Among some of the other things we saw was the "poor man's Taj," which is essentially a smaller, cheaper version of the Taj Mahal.  It was still quite impressive and we're looking forward to seeing the real thing in another week or so.

After Aurangabad we took a 27 hour train ride (!!) where we experienced some of the sharing culture that is so prevalent in India.  We made some friends with our compartment-mates despite the language barrier.  They shared their fruits (apples and pomegranates) and we shared our snacks and it was nice.

We eventually ended up in Khajuraho, a very touristy town famous for housing a series of temples with erotic carvings.  There we met a man named Ricky Martin, ate in a tree house, practiced yoga, and bought Jordan much needed Aladdin pants.

Now we are in Orchha, a super small town and one of our favorites so far.  It's a (medieval?) place that is, again, famous for interesting architecture and carvings.  We arrived here in the middle of a celebration of Shiva.  The train ride to here was crowded with men and boys (no women) wearing orange and carrying sticks.  In fact, we shared an auto-rickshaw ride with about twenty of them.  (About half of us had to hang onto the outside of the cab and we were worried that some of us wouldn't make it!).

There is more to come later!  We are leaving Orchha tonight and going to Gwalior, and after that, Agra and Delhi.  So far things have been going well and we hope that they continue that way...

Annnd, we're off?

 This is our last day in the office and soon we begin our travels around India.  We have dropped our suitcases off (a relief!) and are tying up all loose ends here at HRLN.  It is strange that our time here is already over. 

Tomorrow we see Jordan's friend from Buffalo (/Pune), Esther.
Tonight we're hoping to see Harry Potter!  Woo hoo!

After we leave Mumbai I'm not certain how often we'll be able to update this blog but we'll do our best! 

More factoids about India:

It is illegal to perform (or have performed) a gender identifying test, like a sonogram, for a fetus in utero.  This is to avoid selective feticide of females which is apparently a growing issue in India.

As we previously mentioned about freedom of speech, there seems to be an unwillingness to question or challenge the government.  One of our fellow interns explained this because they view the constitution as being The important document and above questioning.  [This doesn't exactly satisfy our curiosity as questioning the government does not equal questioning the constitution, but I think it is because the government is in charge of upholding the constitution that they somehow get a "pass"?]

The majority of energy used by civilian people (as opposed to corporations) in Mumbai goes into air-conditioning!  This is unconfirmed by the internet, but one of the scientists we spoke to claims that 70% of the energy that people use goes into air conditioning.

Some fruits are hot and some are cold and it has nothing to do with their temperature.  For instance, mangoes are a hot fruit but raw (or not quite ripe) mangoes are cold.  Papayas, bananas, pineapples, and spicy foods like chillies are all hot whereas apples are cold.

Have we already mentioned how the vast majority of women wear traditional clothes like saris or the Salwar kameez (an outfit consisting of a tunic, drawstring pants, and a scarf).  While we have seen some men wear tunics (kurtas) as well, almost all wear "western style" clothing.

Mumbai news

Hey everyone!  I don't know if you have been following the news, but last night three bombs went off in Mumbai.  Luckily Jordan and I (and everyone we know) is safe and well but we read that around 150 people have been injured and more than 20 people were killed.  Last night we were supposed to drop our big suitcases off at a friends house but we only made it halfway before our friend called us and told us to turn around.  At the train station Jordan saw a man whose head was covered in bandages and was being hounded by the press.

So this is to let you know that we're safe.

Nice little article

"Data from the 2011 census shows there are 3.1 crore [million] people in the island city and 9.3 crore [million] in the suburbs, while nearly 78% of the city’s population lives in slums. Population density in the suburbs is the highest in the state, at 20,925 persons per sq km, whereas it is 20,038 person per sq km in the island city."

http://content.magicbricks.com/dharavi-no-longer-asias-biggest-slum

Funny enough, this article was forwarded to me by the real estate search site that I signed up for back when we were looking for apartments.

Final stretch! and all about food

SHIRA: 

Jordan and I spent our last weekend (ok, Sunday) in Mumbai and now it's down to the nitty gritty business of readying ourselves to travel for a month.  This includes killing all proximate bugs (inside and out).  And calling hotels and seeing if prices in all of India have increased by about 500% as they have in Mumbai.  And last minute shopping.  And, of course, saying goodbye to the friends we've made here.  We're also hoping to squeeze in a showing of Harry Potter 7pt2 in 3D -- but (I Guess) it's not a huge priority.

Yesterday we splurged on a fancy shmancy brunch because, hey, we deserve it.  It was an almost 5 hour affair that was all you can eat delicious delicious food that was ordered off of a menu rather than buffet-ed.  There was live music and games.  I rocked Uno but Jordan had me beat at Jenga.  All in all a good time.  After that, shopping!  We saw our very first mall in India and it was pandemonium!  While Jordan nursed a hot tea I walked around a bit and was disappointed to find that, even in India, the mall looked pretty much like all other malls I've seen everywhere (maybe especially in NYC).  It even included a California Pizza Kitchen!

A couple notes about the food in India:
One of the things that I think we both miss the most is having a kitchen and the ability to cook for ourselves.  We've eaten out every single meal (except three Chabad meals) for two months.   During this time we have made a couple of discoveries:

DO NOT ORDER THE VEG AMERICAN CHOW MEIN.  I really hate to over use capital letters, but seriously.  Don't do it.  We made that mistake exactly once and received a plate of perfectly good noodles covered in an Indian ketchup-like sauce.  Terrible.

Similarly, milkshakes here are no good.  Even from nice places the consistency and thickness maybe approaches chocolate milk.
On the other hand, mango lassis have become a staple.  More common are plain lassis (a yogurt drink that comes either sweetened or salted at your request) but mango ones are the best and are always made with fresh squeezed juice.
And on that note, salted (or salty) drinks are not uncommon whereas bitter ones (like unsweetened tea or coffee) are very difficult to find.

Mumbai has a strange mix of cuisines -- on almost every menu you'll find southern Indian specialties like dosas, thalis (meals that come with rice or bread and several small vegetable dishes), and idlis (fermented rice flour balls).  But they'll also have north Indian food, which is what's mostly served in Indian restaurants in the US.  Nearly all also have Chinese options.  Who knows why.

Most people eat all meals with their fingers and hands, and we're still feeling out food etiquette.  For example, I only recently learned that it's bad form to lick your fingers.  (But what else are you supposed to do when there are no napkins?)

Thankfully being vegetarian is super easy here as restaurants will visibly advertise themselves as being "veg" or "pure veg."  I would say that about half of the restaurants we see are vegetarian. 

In general we've been solidly warned against fresh fruits and vegetables (this will probably be the one time in our life when this is true) and so the majority of what we eat is carb-centric and heavily (and sometimes overly) spiced.  Almost everything is swimming in grease.

Even so, I am (and I think we both are) looking forward to sampling the cuisine of the rest of the country (including taking better advantage of street food).

A short note about service:
We have yet to see a waitress.  We have not had a woman taxi driver.  No women work in our hotel.  In fact, we have yet to see any women working except for the secretary, lawyers, and social activists we work with at HRLN, one woman at the State Human Rights Commission, and a few shop owners. 
In restaurants waiters hover over you until you order, bring your food, and then disappear so that you have to put on a show and dance to get the bill.  When they bring the food, they often dole it out to you on your plate which is strange for us.  We can serve ourselves the food, thankyouverymuch.

JORDAN: I'm just batting clean-up here, so I'll stick to pictures:

This is more common than book-stores here: piles and piles of books on street corners under tarps or wrapped in plastic.

Across from the train station: there are some damn pretty building here; I think this might be the police station. Police stations tend to be among the most beautifully maintained buildings.

These guys under the tarps are a big family that lives around the corner from our hotel. The cars in the shot are because I really loathe to take pictures of people's poverty unless I can do it without them seeing me. Their house happens to be on the sidewalk. Imagine somebody walked into your house and began making a scene over how squalorous your living condition was.

The coast of Mumbai at night.

These cows JUST GOT OFF THE MOTORCYCLE! It was so cool! I wish you had scene them riding down the road, like, Moo Beep Moo! and such

This was the big Buddhist pagoda we went to see. We're on a ferry at this point. The only other things on this island are two theme parks, which you can't even see over the tree line, so I think they must've been pretty shabby theme parks (we did not go, as I was pretty sick).

Well, this is at least a sideways version of the Buddha statue. Subtitle: Buddha - the Super Scientist of Spirituality!

All hail the Super Scientist of Spirituality!

Some pagoda prettiness.

Apparently there was actual little bits of Buddha tucked up in the top of the spire. Unfortunately, we couldn't take pictures inside the pagoda, but there was tons of pictures depicting the Buddha's life in one hall, and the main hall was just a giant stone dome in which people meditated and said "Ohm" alot, while we watched them behind glass so they would not be disrupted by our breathing.

This is one of the theme park mascots that they put on the path to the pagoda, trying to lure you away from an ascetic, spiritual experience in favor of plastic cartoon deer.

This is a purple rhino.

So, we did happen to find the one skating rink in Mumbai, and maybe India, which was advertised with this poster showcasing Indian folks skating on double bladed skates (for balance). So naturally, we felt smugly superior and took pictures.

A few pictures of the strings of shanties that line the way to the theme parks.

Some family lives in each of these little separate units.

I got these by perfecting the art of holding the camera casually in my hand at waist height and keeping my thumb on the shutter button. Notice the satellite dish. Oddly, you'll notice a ton of slums and shanties with satellite dishes hanging off them.

Here we go

07/08/11

JORDAN: We finally went to a doctor last night, who might have been the sweetest man we've met in India, refused to charge us a penny for a half hour appointment and some prescriptions - although it's true we did not get to see him until after being swindled by an X-ray tech next door who claimed to work for the man and had to give me a mandatory screening (payment requested at moment of service). No relation to the doctor we kept asking to see. Now I have some souvenir head X-rays (my head looks cool). But after we finally saw the doctor, I think we feel much better about our health prognosis, and generally more optimistic about the status of Indian hospitality. He was a very sweet man who seemed to know all of our symptoms as soon as we sat down and was very encouraging and reassuring about how to treat ourselves.

Uploaded are some pics from Tarapur, where I went a couple weeks back for a comparative study relating to the planned Jaitapur nuclear power park. Jaitapur, if you recall, is where they're trying to build the world's largest nuclear power park, in a high earthquake risk zone, beside agricultural and fishing villages, in an ecological hotspot, without any legitimate studies for their environmental impact assessment. Tarapur is the site of India's first atomic plant, a few hours away, where radiation has leaked semi-regularly, there are cancer clusters surrounding the plant, and the fishing industry has died with all the local fish. The pics don't do the work of the interviews we took, but they give you a sense of the atmosphere.

The beach at Tarapur.

Crows on sticks.

The village

Another shot of the beach, but you can clearly see the nuclear plant on the opposite curve of the shore. It's real close.

I didn't conduct most of the interviews we took there that day, because they had to be in Marathi, but I got chunks of them translated and helped guide the questions based off what research we had gathered before coming. Here, I'm checking audio as we get a backup feed on my mic. I only include this picture because you can see the posse of villagers that just gathered around us as soon as we showed up. They came and waited in line to give testimonies about the impact of the nuclear plant. Apparently, there's a lot of cancer and radiation related health effects. We didn't even get to all of them.

This is the radiation level detector/siren the plant installed for the villagers. It hasn't worked in years.

Fun facts:

- Indian models are really, really fair-skinned compared to the man on the street - I want to say fairer skinned than 99% of the folks you actually see. They alternate between white European models and really fair Indian models. This observation was compounded when we went to the Buddhist pagoda and saw that all the paintings of the Buddha and his followers (there was a hall of paintings depicting Buddha's life) were also incredibly pale-skinned. Much paler than anyone who actually came to look at them. Not sure why this is.

- It is a sign of affection to take food in your hand and insert it into someone's mouth - not like romantically, but seemingly in the context of any affectionate relationship. This is weird for us, obviously, so we're thankful nobody has taken to us quite that fondly.

4 July 2011

JORDAN:

Male crossdressers in India are traditionally considered witches who would curse you if you did not give them money. Somebody explained this to me after I met one on the train (and they presumably cursed me). Most people actually seemed to be giving this guy money, which is very unusual for beggars, so I take it this belief is relatively thriving. What's even funnier is that the local friend who explained this to me lamented that now folks who weren't even real witches were taking advantage of this and doing it just for the money.

On the subject of trains, you should know two things: on average, 3500 people die every year (or ~10/day) riding the Mumbai train system (which is even more ridiculous because there's basically 2 lines). This is probably because of gross overcrowding and the fact that the doors on the train don't shut. During peak hours, you'll see as many as 7 people hanging out of a typical train door with one foot in the train and one hand grasping the door frame. The culture is to run and jump on and off trains as they're still moving.

Second thing: trains are split up by gender, so there are special cars just for women. Despite that these are a minority of the cars, they're still much less crowded, forcing the overcrowding on the rest of the trains to be even more severe. I understand that women risk more assault on a train car here than in the States, but for what it's worth, I think somebody ought to consider how the policy of gender-separated cars is helping contribute to the body count.

Chabad has been a lovely refuge to eat and just hang out with friendly people each Friday. One of the kids we met there has been doing an internship with an NGO for a year focusing on rehabilitating drug addicts. We'd been told by folks in the office that drug addiction wasn't really a problem, but this guy argued that most folks don't even recognize it who don't work with it. He described addictions to certain substances that make you lose your limbs or fingers in certain, distinguishable ways. When he described this, it clicked for me, because we've seen a ton of folks like this, mostly beggars, and never really known what to attribute it to. The  number of folks here with some sort of strange physical deformity is much higher here than in the States. 

This is a shot of a woman I'm guessing had the kind of drug addiction our Chabad friend told us about. Notice the fingers. Sorry for that really depressing picture. We'll have pictures of temples and amusement park animals up soon.

SHIRA: 

Happy 4^th of July!  We’re missing our favorite fireworks displays and (vegetarian) barbeques right now and instead celebrating by getting sick again.  We’re going to have to work on this.

Yesterday we went to Gorai Island which is a small island about an hour north of city center.  It contains two things.  One: a Buddhist temple which includes the largest unsupported dome in the world.  Two: a combination amusement park and water park.  This to us seemed like a strange combination, but we were originally going to go for it!  In order to get to the island you have to take a ferry off of a tiny dock surrounded by what is probably the stinkiest water in the world.  From there you take a small ferry that blasts Indian music at you until you reach the island 20 minutes or so later.  We went to the temple first, and I’m glad we did because this is when Jordan first told me he wasn’t feeling so hot.  We saw a little paintings gallery that showed the life and times of Buddha and skipped over the movie that wasn’t in English.  We got to go inside the dome briefly and see the meditation that was happening there.  All together a pretty fun excursion. 

We only have one more weekend in Mumbai!  This is pretty crazy to me.  I can hardly believe that we’ve already lived here as long as we have and there’s still quite a bit we’d like to see! 

1 July 2011

Happy Canada Day everyone! 

Life in India has come to a bit of a plateau.  We have a schedule that we pretty much follow every day and we have settled into a pattern of living here.  There haven’t been too many developments here in India.  We have a project due on Friday that both Jordan and I have put a lot of working into, and I think we’ll both feel relief once it is presented and approved. 

On the bed bugs front we have arrived at a sort of a fake success.  Having visited several chemists (pharmacies) who look at us like we’re speaking a Martian language or as if we’re raging alcoholics when all we want is rubbing alcohol to kill bed bugs, we have abandoned this strategy.  [We even looked rubbing alcohol up by several different names, but one chemist who spoke especially good English told us that it is not a product that we’ll find here.]  We spoke to our hotel staff who immediately transferred us to a new room and are supposedly cleaning our old room in case we want to return.  Tonight we’re sending off all of our clothes to be laundered.  Again.  Perhaps I shall buy some cheap spirits and spray the room (and especially our luggage), but if we can avoid having everything smell like vodka this would be preferable!

With two weeks left until our out-of-Mumbai travels commence, I think we’re just trying to make the best of what is now a short stay.  We’re finishing up our internship projects and hopefully cementing some new friendships.  Of course, during this time we’re also going to have to finalize our travel plans as well as cram in all the Bombay experiences that we haven’t yet had.  Tomorrow we’re going shopping with Nida and exploring Bandra, a northern suburb of Mumbai.  Sunday we’ll probably visit an Island in Mumbai with temples and other fun things.

We are constantly amused and interested by romancing in India.  We were talking to one of our new co-interns who was pulled over after kissing her boyfriend in the car!  (Neither she nor the boyfriend was driving).  What’s more is that we learned that male Indian police are not allowed to speak to women.

Tonight is Friday which means Chabad.  I think both Jordan and I are looking forward to a home-cooked meal and some good company.

Mangoes and Monsoons

JORDAN:
Just a couple quick observations as we wrap up Sick Week (we officially went out for the nice dinner we wanted to celebrate its end last night):

Many folks gave us interesting health advice: eat fruit, but not mangoes. Apparently, mangoes are a "hot" fruit. They generate heat in your digestive system, which is bad for tender 'testines. The practice here is to submerge the mango is water for half an hour to take away the "heat." When we tried to ask about how this works scientifically, we couldn't quite get an answer, because nobody seems to know how to describe it that way. Anyways, apples are supposed to be "cold" fruit, and when we ate them, we noticed they sat much better with us, so I think this might have truth to it.

Also, we've been missing the monsoon for most of the last week - only scattered little showers every couple days. Folks tell us that the heat and the air quality in monsoon season when the rains don't come tend to make a ton of folks sick. Finally, the rains came about the same time our symptoms began to alleviate. Everything is much more comfortable here when the rains are coming. They clear the air and drop the temperature drastically.

Finally, a somewhat sad note about our prison questionnaire work: the students from the State Human Rights Commission (again, a government office, not the one we work for directly) refused to go out and administer it at the lockups (in case you haven't read, we prepared a survey for Maharashtra's lockups to find out what the conditions are there, since they are under no legal authority, and routine human rights violations are suspected). Apparently, this has nothing to do with us, being Shira and I, or the work we did, but has to do with an argument that broke out between our supervisors and their students during training last weekend. The argument centered around whether our supervisors could criticize the judiciary en masse for failing to enforce certain human rights laws. The students felt that this put our organization in "contempt of court" - which in the States only applies if you're literally violating a judge's order. The cultural need to be good soldiers here is apparently much higher. Criticizing the judiciary, especially when you're in any sort of official position, is too far out of line for some folks to stomach. So the students literally refused to work with our organization. I, personally, blame the students, who didn't seem to be gems themselves on a number of other issues (see "Women and Romance Ain't the Same" below) for being oversensitive and quick to persecute what would be routine free speech in the US. Nevertheless, the study has now been pushed back until after we leave and the SHRC gets a new batch of interns who can administer it. Hopefully, we'll keep in touch after we leave and find out what happens, because we put a lot of work into preparing that questionnaire against the relevant law.

SICK!

has been the word of the week. Shira came down with it on Wednesday. Jordan came down with in on Thursday. Everybody (being Jordan and Shira) spent a day or two lying in bed and moaning loud enough to alert the hotel staff. Everybody is almost better, although the stomach cramps haven't quite left.

So there's not much to write about this week other than the finer qualities of Indian toilets and how fast one can lose water by as many different, exciting channels as possible (we'll spare you the details).

But for coming by, we'd like to share some more pictures from throughout our time!

For starters, this is one I've wanted to post since we took it. Nobody's life is complete until they see this MonkeyBaby. (See post below: "Life is just one long downhill after MonkeyBaby")

This is a sample of some of the ruins we went to Elephanta Island to see. Very cool, especially for a guy who's never been to a country old enough to have "ruins" before.

This is still us at the ruins. You'll notice our friend is one of the many, MANY people who will stop us and ask to have their picture taken with white people. I am not joking. We finally got a sense of humor about it and asked them to also take pictures for us as well. You'll notice this guy doesn't seem to find this joke enormously funny. We might not ask this again. You'll also notice that he's a bit smaller than us - we're generally big people here. I hit my head on door frames a TON.

The view of THE NICEST PART of Mumbai. I want to be clear in stressing that. We are in Beverly Hills Mumbai right now. But still, the coast is lovely, and it's a nice place to take walks in the evening, if you have the time to get there. We went to a sweet blue concert here.
 
This is what most of Mumbai looks like. Helpful hint: if you see a structure, even if its just a tarp suspended on sticks, there are probably 7-10 people living under it.

More standard housing.

A view from the tracks.

 You get the idea.

The fruit market where we bought more mangoes than we could eat in our whole lives.

Crow city is full of crows (they're like pigeons here, but more). Forgive my artsy self-indulgence.

This guy was hawking us for sandwiches. Monkeys are kind of like squirrels to these folks here, so we have to apologize every time we see a monkey and fall all over ourselves spitting with excitement. When we tell folks monkeys don't live anywhere wild in North America, we get a blank stare like, what?--

Matheran is lovely. They don't allow cars up there, which is exactly why it's still lovely. (See: "DRIVING" from previous post). While there, I got to do a little thing where they sling you across a huge gorge on something like a zip line.

Lots of clay in the hills.

More fun facts: in certain areas, religious law exists parallel to, or even trumps, secular law. So, for example, if the Muslim religious board passes laws about the conditions of marriage and divorce, the state legislature basically has to rubber stamp it. Thereupon, if a challenge comes up in court, the religious board can overturn even the national supreme court's ruling on questions of that religious law. This has happened. So there will be myriad different sets of marriage law for different religious subcultures.

Also, on the subject of subcultures, there is no "Indian" accent. There are a litany of minor languages spoken around the country, and even among folks who all speak Hindi, Hindi will most likely not be all of their mother tongues. Hence, the accent they bring to English will be completely different. In Maharashtra, where we are, for example, the mother tongue is mostly Marathi. People raised in a different state have very pronouncedly different accents.