Hello from the (steps of) the Himalayas

Greetings from the verdant green and fresh air of Mussoorie! It's cool and clean here, and there are trees and green cliffs and hillsides all around us. Mussoorie is a former hill station of the British Raj which now has multiple convent schools and a major Hindi language school, and the landscape is absolutely beautiful. I feel almost like I'm home in Washington!

Yesterday afternoon I caught the train with two other students from Lucknow, and we took an overnight train to Dehradun, leaving Lucknow around 5 pm and arriving in Dehradrun around 7 am. On the train we were in "Third AC class," which was quite comfortable and clean. Managed to find one's bunk and make sure that no one else is occupying it can be a bit of an adventure, but we managed it and then took up residence with the three of us sitting on a bunk, looking out the window, and chatting into the night. Come time for sleeping, the benches fold down into narrow bunks, and we were each given two linen sheets, a flat little pillow, and a heavy red woolen blanket. I wasn't expecting to get much of a night's sleep, but I actually got around six to seven hours, though I woke up and was disoriented a time or two. We were pretty much surrounded by families traveling together, so the environment was comfortable enough. Using the train bathroom was a bit of an adventure that I hope not to have to repeat too many times (standing toilets + wildly swinging bathroom car=excitement!) but I survived unscathed. :p

Having arrived in the hustling and bustling transit city of Dehradun, we were very glad to be with our experienced Mussoorie traveler friend, who knew how to navigate the crowds and catch a shared taxi up the mountain to Mussoorie. The drive takes about an hour, winding all the way through the hills until we truly arrived up in the clouds.

We are currently at our other classmate's wife's place, though they are about to leave on a hike, and then we will venture off to explore town. Tomorrow or later this afternoon we should be meeting up with two other students from the Urdu program who will be heading up here with a personal car and driver.

A few pictures from the ride up:

From Mussoorie

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From Mussoorie

From Mussoorie

The absent blogger returns, for a moment

I realized this past weekend that I have now been in India over a month (as of Friday!), and in the last few weeks I've fallen off the blogging bandwagon. Aside from the program, a great deal of my time and energy has been absorbed dealing with the, shall we say, less than pleasant aspects of traveling and life abroad - a series of problems with our host family situation, some subsequent life-together tensions, all of us being at least moderately sick at some points (though nothing serious, thankfully), coping with heat that got up to 115-117 humid degrees at some points. On top of that, our computer at home is currently chewing the dust, so to speak, though we are hoping there is a possiblity of a resurrection. Possibly the power has just gone out on it one too many times...

Certain aspects like the food and water situation and general mood at the host family's house have improved immensely, though it took some effort. And I have ventured out into the world around me step by step to have certain positive little adventures - going down to the local temples along the river by our house, walking by the river and admiring the famous play of the moonlight on the water of the Gomti, trying the famous (and spicy!) kebabs at Tunday Kebab in the hectic and narrow allies of the old city, experiencing Indian Catholicism at the cathedral in Lucknow (famous for the school it's associated with, though I had not heard of it before), accumulating Indian clothing, using my Hindi in various ordinary situations....buying things at the drug store, attempting to get rickshaw wallahs to take me to the right place, asking questions of a dressing room attendent.
It really is the little adventures that make a difference - and of course, all the little adventures together make one big adventure!

In traveling and living in a foreign country, it's the small details and differences of life that particularly interest me - trying different shampoo, seeing where people buy groceries, how they eat breakfast or tea, decorate their houses and doorsteps, act when they pass a temple. In some ways it's easier to imagine certain big differences - architecture, landscape, broad cultural divides - than little ones. I would never dreamt up the fact that our host family's car plays psychedelic ice cream truck-esque jingles every time it backs up, or that their doorbell plays about 4 different Sanskrit chants, one to every major Hindu deity. Or the way that people will die their hair in all kinds of interesting patterns with henna - only the grey hairs, so you get striped tigery hair, or men dying only the top of their hair and leaving the sideburns naturally colored...

Certain impressions may be cliched, but they still strike me - the sheer colorfulness of it all, with women wearing saris and shalwar kameezes in every color of the rainbow and a few more that the rainbow couldn't hope to invent! Jewelry is taken to a different level as well - diamond toe rings, great dangling earrings and diamond encrusted nose rings hanging precariously from ear lobes and nostrils, sindoor in women's parts and feet painted with bright red-pink dye... And yes, there are cows wandering in the street outside our house, and we often hear loud moos at all hours of the day! People do walk by singing songs from Hindi films, or with devotional chants blaring on radios balanced on their bicycles.

Tomorrow I am leaving the Lucknow vicinity for the first time since arriving here, and will be heading off to the foothills of the Himalayas for my midterm break trip. Specifics of the plans are still rather hazy, so wish me luck....

Folk Art in Delhi

I have been able to upload some of the pictures I've taken onto picasa using a friend's computer, but it's a very slow process....so there will be some picture time lag. This time, I shall take you on a little outing to the Arts and Crafts Museum in Delhi. A group of us went after our orientation that day, on a very hot and humid day. Midway through our visit, the sky suddenly grew dark, and in a few minutes the inside became equally dark when the power went out. Without even the fans to move the hot air around, it was pretty sweltering, so we hurried out into the inner courtyard, hoping that the dark sky might bring some rain to cool us off. Instead, we went outside only to see that a dust storm was blowing in, and the air began to feel with whirling grit that settled on everything, so we back into the hot museum and shut the doors. A little while later though, we heard thunder and went hurrying back outside into a separate, much larger courtyard, where we saw that rain was beginning to fall, though some of it was mixed with dust.

In the courtyard, a group formed under a little stone pavilion and some musicians affiliated with the museum got out their instruments. They began to play a strange combination of popular Bollywood songs crossed with traditional Rajasthani folk music. It was rather an odd dynamic, as those of who were visiting American students were quickly ushered inside, while local people were gathering outside to watch. (Of course, we were getting more attention, as they were hoping to get some "traditional donations" from us afterward...)

The museum does have a nice collection of folk art, only some of which we were allowed to photograph...and possibly a few illicit photographs of my own occurred as well.















A Rajasthani bridal chamber



The inner courtyard





Outside the gift shop

Shopping and Sweating in the Sahara

Saharaganj and Hazratganj, that is. Hazratganj is Lucknow's biggest market area, with bazaars and restaurants and all kinds of touristy shops. Saharaganj, despite its desert-worthy title, is actually a shopping center with four or five floors - it has McDonald's, Big Bazaar, which is the Indian equivalent of Wal Mart, more or less - multiple floors with all kinds of different goods. In the US, I'm really not a fan of shopping at all, but here I was quite enjoying myself, though shopping, like most things, is quite an intensive sensory experience. It gives a whole new meaning to 'shop til you drop!'

All of had been feeling sickly to some degree on Friday, but luckily by Saturday we were feeling better. Toward the later afternoon we were trying to find a swimming pool to use, but did not have any luck. We tried at one hotel, but their pool was only for guests, so we walked to Hazratgang to explore. First there was a trip to the excitingly titled FabIndia to get some ready made clothing - I in particularly wanted to finally get some Indian clothes to wear! I got two kurtas (tunics) and shalwars (pants) there that I can mix and match (both in shades of blue and purple, surprise surprise!) After some respite from the heat in a coffee shop, we made the hot and sweaty trek to Saharaganj, where I made my way through "Big Bazaar" to collect some miscellaneous foodstuffs, an extra towel, flip-flops for the shower, etc.

I also tried on some clothes there, though it can be hard to find shirts that fit me in the shoulders and arms. I would up getting one shirt there....as well as a stylish "burqa" that was a steal at only 99 rupees (originally 650!) I always wanted a burqa of my very own! ;) (I think it's not actually a burqa really, but an abaya?) Anyway, you can also wear just the dress, and it's quite pretty. :)

I also got a memory card reader, but I still haven't been able to look at my pictures, so I think it may be something with the computer....

I've now been here a little over a week, though with so much going on it seems like it's been longer. My comfort level is expanding progressively as I go, I suppose. The other day I walked to the general store and medical store right across the street from our house and got some snacks and toiletries, and I also negotiated my way through the bustle and chaos of "Indian wal-mart." It definitely forces me to speak more Hindi! Some people of course will speak English, but overall I was actually surprised how many people automatically speak to me in Hindi. Yesterday at the mall I realized that I was surrounded by probably a couple thousand people, and I was the only white person around. The only other westerners I see during the week are other people from the program.

It's also fairly surreal to have only studied Hindu-Urdu academically before, and then come somewhere where I'm surrounded by it all the time -it's suddenly a real language, with everyone around talking away in it, and signs and loudspeaker announcements and flyers all in Hindi (not so much in Urdu, though a lot of the signs here are in both).

With all of this going on, I should really remember that I also have to do homework! ;)

"Two persons speaking chaste Urdu is beautiful thing"

"Two persons speaking chaste Urdu is beautiful thing" - or at least that was the tagline of our program introduction. Unfortunately, chaste Urdu is a less than beautiful thing if, like me, you cannot speak chaste Urdu to save your life! "Chaste" or pure Urdu is a quite ironic moniker since, as you can learn from this exciting wikipedia article, Urdu is really a hybrid language that emerged out of Hindi/Sanskrit, Persian, Turkic, Arabic, and Pashto registers. This means that its vocab and spelling and certain grammar rules are all over the place, with certain Arabic plural formations squished up against Sanskritic words and so on....and of courses, it is generally written without any short vowel markings and only a couple signs for a variety of long vowels. In other words, learning to read and write it well is a real challenge, even for native speakers.

The first days I felt barraged by scads of Perso-Arabic words I'm totally unfamiliar with - all my Sanskrit toilings don't come in as handily as they would with Hindi! However, after the first couple of days I started to feel a bit more comfortable with my classes, and was moved up to the next class level.

We have lots of individual attention here, as our classes mostly have about three or four people in them, and at least twice a week we have "personal tutorials" one on one with different teachers where we can study whatever we want to work on. At this point, I'm just working on the script, and another girl and I have extra script practice after class to try to improve, as we haven't studied the script formally as much as many other people here. It can be intimidating at times, but then I remember that a lot of other people here have much more language background, and by those standards I'm doing pretty well comparatively! The teachers here are very willing to help and give extra time as well, and to work with us as best they can whatever level we are at.

Classes, moving into the host family, and then running errands like getting cell phones, filling out various Indian bureaucratic necessities have been taking up most of our time. Whatever energy is left seems to be mostly sucked up by the heat and other various physical discomforts that abound in the tropics. I did pretty well most of the first week, but the last day or two I've fallen prey to the classic Indian stomach problems in all their charm. I'm swigging plenty of water and electrolyes, and trying not to be directly in the heat too much....though when the power goes out, as it is wont to do during the night and morning in particularly, it's not very conducive. I'm definitely to appreciate that western plumbing and clean water when I go back!

Landed in Lucknow

The last few days were a blur of orientation in Delhi - we were staying at the Taj Hotel, which is by far the poshest abode of lodging most of us had ever frequented! We didn't have much time to get out and sight see in Delhi, though I did go on an arranged trip to the Arts and Crafts Museum, which had an interesting selection of Indian folk art and artifacts. We also had a whiff of authenticity in our experience, including a dust storm, power outage, and burst of rain and thunder.

Today (Monday) we have been coming into Lucknow in various groups - I flew in early this morning, leaving Delhi at 8 am and getting here about 9. We are at a hotel in Lucknow for this night, and we went out to visit host families/apartment situations. It looks like ours is settled, and I will be living with three other girls in the second storey of an older couple's home. We'll share two bedrooms and have a living room/kitchen space that we can use, and a computer with internet (yay!)

Today was also my birthday, though in all the strangeness and limbo of moving around, it was largely swallowed up by the general chaos. Definitely the most surreal birthday I have had....hopefully there will be more time for a celebration later! Right now, there are so many intense details and experiences to sort through as it is.

Look Ma, I'm in India!

A trial run of taking pictures and uploading them to the blog....

From India First day

From India First day

My bedroom at the hotel

From India First day

The view from my window

From India First day

Look Ma, I'm in India!

Greetings from Delhi!

It's been a wild ride so far, and the trip has barely even begun...

First there was the wild visa escapade, in my which my dear mother had to rescue my visa from the mail clearinghouse one minute before it closed at 5 pm - the day before I was leaving!

Yesterday morning I flew Seattle to Chicago, had a fairly short layover in Chicago, and then a 14-15 hour long flight to India. At the airport in Chicago, they announced my name and called me up to the front desk, and I started thinking, "Oh no, after everything that has gone wrong before this strip even started, what now?? Are they going to say my flight is canceled? I've been bumped to another? I'm on the No Fly List?" Instead, the woman ran my passport through and then said they were bumping me to business class so I could have a better seat! Thank you, universe!

So the 14 hour flight wasn't so bad with a seat that folded down into a bed, a real pillow, a proper dinner that I got to order from a menu, and constant flight attendant attention while being peppered with free food!

I started to get nervous when I got to the airport and kept not seeing my suitcase....but after an hour, it had showed up, and I met someone who knows several people I go to school with, so - small world! :)

Once I finally got the bag, it was shockingly easy to sail through customs (they didn't even look at my bags, but just waved me through) and find the AIIS people picking me up. I wound up waiting with two other students for almost two hours, I believe, though, for two other students who never showed up....then we had a nighttime drive through Delhi to the Defense Colony, where AIIS is putting me up in a hotel. I arrived alone and sans laptopl, but I tracked down two other students who are also doing the Urdu program, and am writing one one girl's laptop.

Everything is pretty for me here, literally and figuratively! It is hot (around 98 degrees when I arrive at 8:20, I think). The airport really wasn't as bad I expected though - it's quite clean, air conditioned, bags reasonably organized.... So far from what I've seen, great swathes of Delhi are under construction, with some parts looking like a bomb hit them! There is rubble and road crews everywhere. On the road you can indeed see posh SUVs next to rickety rickshaws next to the ubiquitous motorcycles with several people on them and the carrier trucks that look like they have been hammered back together and are only held together by stickers of various deities!

Now, we need to figure out when AIIS is picking us up tomorrow, and how they will get ahold of us....

Until then, namaste, Khuda hafez, phir milenge!