Epilogue

My flight touched down in Minneapolis and the man in the seat in front of me told someone very loudly on his cell phone, "Whew! I'm dyin' to go to Chili's for lunch!" And with that exclamation I realized I was certainly no longer in Europe.

I have not yet been in the USA in the year 2009, and since this time last year I was leaving for Ireland, I have now spent seven of the last twelve months in a different country. This fact, combined with the fact that I hadn't slept in a good 36 hours left me in quite a state of cultureclashtastic confusion for my first moments back in America. I passed through customs, re-checked my baggage, and exchanged my Euros for Dollars experiencing for the first time in five months customer service situations dealing with speakers of my own language. I spoke very slowly and clearly with lots of gestures out of habit and was shocked that everyone seemed to understand me--and I understood them! In my state of delirious fatigue and culture shock I wandered into a gift shop and paged through a copy of People Magazine only to discover that I have missed half a year of pop culture and celebrity gossip. Setting the magazine down, I glanced around the shelves and my eyes landed upon plastic wrapped "turkey-jerky." I gazed, entirely puzzled, for several moments. I think I have forgotten a lot of things about America.

My final hours of travel were appropriately adventurous, exhausting, and decadent. I left Prague for Paris where I met up with my friend Alex Bair who spent this last semester studying in London. We enjoyed a karma-cursed trip to the Eiffel tower--metro ticket trouble, angry security guards, rain, freezing wind--but at least we came away with a few funny stories. The next day we took a decadent trip out to decadent Versailles to see lots of 18th century decadence. After a full day of sightseeing somehow we had forgotten to eat for most of the day (in France?!) so we had a very tasty sidewalk cafe dinner followed by a decadent, decadent dessert.

After that I almost missed my overnight bus to Amsterdam due to more bad karma with the Paris metro. I arrived early in the morning in Amsterdam, bid farewell to Europe, and flew to Minnesota--the North star state, the land of lakes, the mall of America, and turkey jerky.

My flight to Oregon was, of course delayed just long enough for me to become extremely impatient and really hungry. That was all made up for by the fact that I had a window seat for the amazing views of the mountains flying in. Upon my arrival in Portland my mother was shocked to see my Indian nose ring, but she forgave me in time to take me to Baja Fresh. I am proud to say that after five months in India I was able to handle the hot salsa for the first time.

I has been an amazing year. I've learned so much and had so many adventures, but I really am looking forward to some time at home. This summer will have many more interesting experiences in store as I attempt to complete an American yoga teacher's certification course. This will be followed in the fall by my final semester at Occidental. And then comes the great mysterious adventure of graduation.

Thanks everyone for reading along! I hope it was entertaining. Namaste, and see you soon!

The End is Near

I'm in Paris!

Alex Bair is with me and we are having lots of Parisian fun!

Internet is UNGODLY EXPENSIVE and I have but a few minutes ticking away.

I am going home tomorrow morning, I'll be back to Portland the evening of the 20th at which point I will update the blog with photos, stories, and a conclusion to this five month travel extravaganza. Au revoir!

Puppets, Bones, Salt

I am just not the kind of person that can pass up the opportunity to see a marionette rendition of Mozart's Don Giovanni.

Prague is famous for its opera, Mozart even chose the city to premiere Don Giovanni here in 1787. The Czech Republic is also well known for its hand crafted marionettes. It only makes sense then that Prague would be home to Unima, the Czech National Marionette Theater, and that this company would offer nightly performances of Don Giovanni. The advertisements had been tempting me since my arrival in Prague and after two days I could no longer resist the curiosity. I followed the posters and flyers and soon enough found myself at the puppet opera waiting for the tiny curtain to rise. The opera was conducted by Mozart himself (he was much shorter and more wooden-looking than you would imagine.) The performers dropped to the stage and the the opera began. The marionettes sang in the original Italian, and since I was too cheap to purchase a program (90 crowns??!) I only had a vague idea of what was going on, the puppet antics were nonetheless entertaining. The opera was abridged from the original four hours and only lasted for two which was somewhat disappointing, but I suppose when it comes to puppet opera it is quality over quantity--and quality it was! All of the puppets gave stellar performances. The ad for the opera claims "Not to see our Don Giovanni is not to see Prague!" Marionette opera: indeed a Czech national treasure.

I initially wanted to visit Prague because everyone I've ever met who has been here seems to say, "Prague is the best city in the world." It is indeed a good city, there's a lot to see, good food to eat, beautiful architecture, but the sheer volume of tourists here was really starting to wear on me after a few days. Having already seen all of the major tourist attractions in the city I began thinking that for my fourth day in Prague it might be nice to get out of the city on some kind of day trip. A series of serendipitous events led me into a bookstore yesterday where I picked up a book about the area and saw a mention of the Kostnice Ossuary. I had heard of this site on the Travel Channel a while ago but had completely forgotten about it until that moment. I immediately dropped the book and ran hastily back to my hostel to get on the internet and look up maps and train times.

But what is the Kostnice Ossuary, you ask? What could make me so desperate to go there? It is a church made of human bones. Well, it's made of regular building materials, but the inside is completely decorated with human bones. Of course it is something that I had to see. I am just not the kind of person that can pass up the opportunity to see a church filled with skeletons. This morning I rose early and headed to the train station where, after a lot of Czech-English miscommunication and confusion, I procured a ticket to the town of Kutna Hora. Kutna Hora is a dingy, dilapidated silver mining town an hour away from Prague known for two things: a huge Gothic cathedral and a bone church. I got off the train and followed my internet-acquired walking directions to the Ossuary. The site has been a church and cemetery since the 10th century, but in the 14th century when the plague hit the burial grounds became so cramped with bodies that they had to start stacking corpses in the church basement. Then in the 1800s someone decided to get creative and they used the thousands of skeletons to decorate the church with bone chandeliers, bone candelabras, bone monuments, etc. All together, the church is decorated with the remains of over 40,000 bodies. It's just simply freaky and weird and wonderful.

After filling most of my camera's memory card with skeleton pictures I decided I may as well visit the Gothic cathedral in town as well, since it was supposed to be "spectacular," according to descriptions. I made the three kilometer hike to St. Barbara's from the Ossuary. It was pretty nice I guess--it had your flying buttresses, your stained glass, your Baroque organ, your 15th century frescoes, but it was seriously lacking in the kind of macabre that I was out looking for today. No human remains at all. There were some funny gargoyles though.

Also--yesterday, because I cannot read Czech, I put salt into my tea.

Auf Wiedersehen Berlin, Ahoj Prague

On my final day in Berlin I paid a visit to the Schloss Charlottenburg, an 18th century palace and one of the only monuments of Berlin's Prussian era to have survived World War II. I almost didn't go inside upon the discovery that they force an audioguide upon you with your ticket. As I discussed in my previous blog, audioguides are one of my biggest pet peeves. I reluctantly accepted the audioguide because doing things you hate supposedly shows strength of character and I thought there was a chance that I might learn something. I was interested in learning about Queen Sophie Charlotte, the lady of the house, because I could relate to her in that she was apparently a big fan of theater, music, and witty conversations. I began to grow annoyed with my digital tour guide by room two when he kept insisting that I should find the damask walls beautiful and fascinating. I really lost my patience with him in the portrait gallery when all he wanted to talk about was Sophie Charlotte's glowing complexion and completely failed to address the painting I was most curious about--one which depicted three stoic, wig-wearing old men holding hands with each other. I finally pressed mute in room four when, after ten minutes of excessive details about the painted ceiling audio man never once mentioned the plaster stag in the ceiling's corner that was sculpted to look as though it was falling out of the trompe'leoi sky. Schloss Charlottenburg: another reminder that audioguides are cruel and wrong.

I had one more thing to do in Berlin before I moved on. As a theater major and a lifelong devotee of all things unusual, I felt it was my duty to seek out some of Berlin's really strange theater. I was crossing my fingers that I would stumble into some smoke-filled basement cafe to find Liza Minelli, but three days proved not adequate time for figuring out Berlin's underground scene. Instead, I had to settle for something a little more mainstream. SOAP: The Show is advertised all over the city, so it can't really be that alternative or underground, but it did turn out to be delightfully strange. Strictly speaking, SOAP falls more into the category of variete than cabaret, but as I understand, the two are pretty similar. I suspected I would arrive at the show to find a standard auditorium filled with white-haired tourists, but was surprised to find more of the cabaret atmosphere that I had been hoping for. The audience seemed very hip and very Berlin, it was a small crowded space, we sat at tiny candle-lit tables rather than auditorium seating, and we were served alcohol by stylish young Berliners with existentialist attitude problems. The air lacked the smoky, unbreathable quality that I was looking for, but we can't have everything. The curtain came up to reveal six bathtubs, each one containing a scantily clad acrobat. For the next two hours the performers dazzled us with such feats as juggling in a bathtub, striptease while juggling in a bathtub, contortion in a bathtub, operatic singing in a bathtub, physical comedy in a bathtub, trapeze acts over a bathtub, and countless other bathtub-themed acts of music, dance, and strangeness. No "Mein Herr," no "Wilkommen, Bienvenue," but for my first theatrical experience in Berlin I'd say SOAP delivered.

My first experience with the Czech Republic occurred before I was even out of Germany. This morning I stepped aboard the giant orange bus that was meant to take me to Prague and immediately the Czech bus hostess passed out headphones so that the passengers could listen to the movie that was about to play. "A movie!" I thought, "how luxurious, what a good way to pass the time!" I plugged in the headphones and looked to the screen. There I saw Robert De Niro...speaking Czech. It was an American movie dubbed over in Czech then plastered over again with English subtitles. Irony and inefficiency are stongly at work here. I think I'm going to like Eastern Europe.

Prague is a really beautiful city based on first impressions. It looks, in my mind, quite like Disney's Sleeping Beauty (which happens to be my second favorite Disney movie). So far the only drawback is the very high density of tourists. I would estimate about five per square inch. Tomorrow I have a lot of exciting things to czech out. Ha ha, get it?

Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome

It appears that after too many months of inactivity while I had no wireless connection in India my little laptop has completely forgotten how to connect to the internet. I've been trying and trying, but something is amiss. This is sad for many reasons, but especially because it means I probably can't post any more pictures to this blog. I shall try to write very descriptively.

I began my day today intending to partake in the free walking tour of Berlin that my hostel offers. Then, as I was eating breakfast I recalled that if there is one thing I hate about tourism it is guided tours--audio tours, bus tours, walking tours, all of them awful. The tour was also supposed to be 3 hours long, and if I've learned anything from Gilligan's Island it is to always avoid the "three-hour tour."

Instead, I opted to explore the city on my own, visiting most of the same sights the tour would have taken me to without the drawback of all of that tedious historical information. I observed, while walking, that Germans tend to actually abide by crosswalk laws. This is baffling after Hyderabad, where crosswalks have yet to be introduced and if one wants to cross the street one must close one's eyes, say a prayer, and step into oncoming traffic. For the first stop on my solo walking tour, I took myself to the "East Side Gallery." This is the name given to the longest remaining stretch of the Berlin wall, now something of a community art project where several blocks worth of the old wall are covered with layers and layers of graffiti murals. It is a very interesting thing to see, but the best views of the wall are only had after jay-walking Hyderabad-style to the other side of the street through oncoming traffic. My improved perspective of the wall was just the first way in which my walking tour was definitely better than the hostel walking tour and my second stop was somewhere that I know that tour wouldn't have gone, so already I was winning as I moved onto location number two.

Berlin's coat-of-arms is a big scary bear, and as a result Berliners really love bears. I had read that in the center of the city there is a public park which contains two actual bears who act as mascots of the city. Naturally then, my first order of business after seeing the Berlin wall was to pay a visit to the Berlin bears. I found the pair of braunbären, Schnute and Maxi, relaxing in their bear-house in Märkisches Park being generally adorable. I spent a rather long time observing the bears before continuing my tour.

After a long walk in the rain I finally arrived at the Berlin National Gallery, which apparently is closed on Mondays. Pity.

Another ride on the U-Bahn led me to Brandenbuger Tor, a big historic gateway in the center of the city where the Berlin wall was ceremoniously torn down in 1989. It is also right next to Berlin's holocaust memorial. I thought the memorial looked kind of strange from the pictures that I saw of it, but it turned out to be very cool. It is a plaza filled with thousands of rectangualr granite pillars of varying heights. As you walk into the memorial the pillars get taller, the sounds of the traffic become muffled, your path gets darker, and it becomes harder to see the outside street. It's all very haunting. There is also a museum with the memorial which is supposed to be really interesting, informative, and well worth the visit. It too is closed on Mondays.

Berlin is generally less touristy than Amsterdam was. This lack of tourism, combined with Germany's strong sense of national pride means that the German language is predominant and English is rare. In Amsterdam, English seemed even more common than Dutch and I had no hesitations about speaking English to communicate, but here it is not as simple. This is just somewhat problematic for me since my knowledge of German is limited to the phrase "Ich esse keine fleisch," (I don't eat meat). So far there have been no major communication breakdowns, but I'm expecting one at any moment.

Oudezijds Auchterbergwal

I spent my first day or two wandering around Amsterdam in total confusion. India is hot, Amsterdam is cold. India is cheap, Amsterdam is expensive. Indian cities are crowded and chaotic, Amsterdam is clean and orderly. I was often the only Westerner around in Hyderabad and in Amsterdam I blend in so well that people speak to me only in Dutch and tourists keep asking me for directions. No one has offered me rickshaws, no shopkeepers have shouted at me to look in their stores, I have walked along the street on real, paved sidewalks, and not a single cow has crossed my path. In India a woman won't show her knees in public and in Amsterdam I am staying on a street where prostitutes and sex shops are abundant.

I chose my hostel because it advertised its central location in the city. As it turns out, it's actually the center of the Red Light district so I'm getting this culture shock in one huge dose. As I was walking out of my neighborhood to go meet some friends the other night I was caught behind a group of French kids who appeared to be no more than 15 years old and I wanted to shout "No! Cover your eyes! You shouldn't be seeing this!" As soon as I passed that group I ran into a group of very elderly tourists taking in the sights and again wanted to shout "No! Cover your eyes! You shouldn't be seeing this!" Tourism in Amsterdam, I have decided, is a very strange thing.

I know a bunch of kids from Oxy who are studying abroad in Amsterdam this semester and they were kind enough to hang out with me the last two nights. On Thursday, Justin, Sara, and Alex introduced me to "La Chouffe,"a Belgian beer (named after a gnome) which is very delicious, unlike Indian beers which taste like poison. On Friday I called Alex to see what they were up to and he informed me that they were all going to go see the new Star Trek movie. I have always dismissed Star Trek as something for nerds not to be watched under any circumstances, but I agreed to go with them because, really, what else is there for a 21 year old girl to do on a Friday night in Amsterdam? The movie was actually pretty decent.

While not monopolizing my friends' time, I have been exploring the city on my own. So far I haven't gone to many museums or anything, because it is hard to bring myself to pay more than 1 Rupee admission to anything. I guess I'll have to get over that. I went to the Van Gogh museum; it had a very nice collection, but more importantly it had a place to eat Belgian waffles right outside. This was a hugely exciting discovery for me and I am now increasingly interested in visiting Belgium.

Tonight I will leave Amsterdam on a bus to go to Berlin. I arrived at the bus station yesterday knowing that I had to get a ticket to go somewhere, but didn't officially decide where to go until the woman at the counter asked me, "Where do you want to go?" I spontaneously responded "Uh...Berlin?" so that's where I'm going. My knowledge of Berlin is limited its portrayal in the movie Cabaret, but if that's any indication it should be an interesting place.

Amsterdam. Culture Shock.

Amsterdam might be the most opposite place from India that I could have come.
I am going to freeze to death.
For some reason my computer worked fine with the wireless internet here on the first day and is now not working, so there is a lot to say, but I am using the hostel computer, someone is waiting for me to finish and it's getting awkward.
To be continued...

And Now for Something Completely Different

***DISCLAIMER: This entry was written on very little sleep and high culture shock***
How does one sum up four and a half months in India? It's probably not possible. The best example I can think of comes from the other night in Shimla when, by some Indian Karmic miracle I ran into my friends from the University. We were sitting in our hotel that night talking with some other travelers and we ended up completely dominating the conversation as we told them every crazy story we had from the past semester. We realized after several stories that every experience we had ended with some phrase like, "It was so intense! I was horrified! It was one of the most extreme things to ever happen to me! But...I loved it. I'd do it again in a minute!" That might just be the best way to describe the semester in India, terrifying, extreme, challenging, and for some reason wonderful--a five month adrenaline rush. I'd go back in a second, but for now I have to say goodbye.

My last hours in India were appropriately chaotic, disorganized and overwhelming as I attempted to go to the post office to mail some things home (I could write a whole blog about that experience), pack my bags at the last minute, say a few more goodbyes, and make it to the airport on time (I perhaps should have called the cab in advance...)

Culture shock is quickly taking it's toll. I began to realize how much of an issue this would be while I was traveling in the Himalayas. None of the mild Tibetan food tasted spicy enough for me and I had to salt and pepper everything to unreasonable levels. I kept trying to haggle with the peaceful, fair Tibetans and I kept "head bobbling" instead of nodding to indicate "yes." I was also freezing. I was very happy to return to Hyderabad where every bite of food cleared my sinuses, everyone was trying to rip me off, the "bobble" carried meaning, and it was a comfortable 113 degrees Fahrenheit. I was even beginning to enjoy the feeling of being one of the only Westerners around.

When I boarded the plane to Amsterdam I think I experienced a very small panic attack. White People. Everywhere. You can't imagine the shock that this put me into. My heart was racing and I felt suddenly very dizzy and overwhelmed. To add to the confusion, the KLM flight attendants, assuming I was one of their own, kept speaking to me only in Dutch. To add to their confusion, my natural reaction to every question they asked me was to bobble my head side to side and say "theek hai, accha."

This is going to be a very interesting few weeks.

I'm sure India has changed me in many ways, but the most obvious is my total lack of organizational skills. I remember a time when I was the kind of person who was punctual, well-prepared, and eager to plan things, but if my arrival in Amsterdam is any evidence, India has completely rid me of any of those qualities. I have never been less prepared for anything. I have two weeks in Europe with no plans whatsoever. I looked at my wallet full of Rupees this morning and realized I was not even sure what currency they use in the Netherlands (turns out it's the Euro.) My knowledge of this country is limited to a few two-syllable phrases like "Vermeer," "Anne Frank," "Windmills," "Drug use." Beyond that, I really know nothing. I don't know what to do here, I don't know where to go next, and I certainly don't know how I will survive this freezing 60 degree weather. But therein lies the adventure.

What Are the Odds?

The main demographic of travelers in India seems to be young Israelis. They are so prominent, especially in this part of the country, that signs are often in Hindi, English, and Hebrew, and travel agencies bare names like "Shalom Tours." Americans are a rare minority. So a few nights ago in Manali, when faced with the decsion of where to eat dinner I ended up in one very trendy, loud, Israeli restaurant. I always feel bad as a party of one when I have to monopolize an entire table in a busy restaurant, so I was more than happy to share my table when David and Daniel entered. These two middle-aged (they claim to have the combined age of 100) English blokes have found a way to maintain the lifestyle of the debaucherous 20-somethings that they once were by moving permanently to India's hottest party beach, Goa. They left behind their girlfriends for a while to escape the heat with a motorcycle trip up to the mountains. They were eager to share with me such aged wisdom as "Your 40th birthday will be far better than your 21st," "You really must visit Israel," and "Never stay up for three days on pills."

As chance would have it, these fellows were staying in the same hotel as me, and also chose the same restaurant (also Israeli) that I chose for lunch the next day at which point they took it upon themselves to give me a two-hour lesson in the complex rules of backgammon, "The world's greatest game." Though the instruction was no doubt valuable, I soon realized it might last all day and tactfully excused myself. I had a yak to ride, after all.

That morning I had made a very very long hike out to the neighboring town of Vashisht. This little town has views of the Himalayas even more spectacular than Manali's along with a cool old wooden temple. The temple houses some holy hot springs that I was eager to dip my feet in until I realized it was more customary to dip one's whole naked self in. Instead, I hiked back to Manali and played backgammon for two hours.

Though I was still tired from the morning hike, I made the climb up to the Hadimba Temple for a yak ride (the things I do to please Nicole...) I found the yak guy, haggled him down to 30 rupees then mounted the great beast. As I sat awkwardly atop the yak a crowd of teenage boys materialized to laugh and point and take pictures, so I was quick to dismount and return to Manali. When I passed the Israeli lunch restaurant on my way back I noticed that David and Daniel were still sitting playing backgammon almost two hours later.

Tired of overnight bus rides, I opted for an all-day bus ride to get to my next destination, Shimla. I had considered not even coming to Shimla since there's not really that much to do here, and Manali was so great. I was really beginning to regret my decision when the bus ride got progressively worse. It began at 8:30 in the morning and didn't end until about 5:30 in the evening, and in the mean time I never really got to eat and spent most of the time being sweat upon by the large man sitting next to me. The bus also broke down half way through the day, which was not particularly fun. I arrived in Shimla exhausted, starving, and in no mood to be reckoned with and then discovered that since Shimla is built on the side of a hill with tiny pedestrian-only streets I was going to have to walk uphill to my hotel with all of my luggage. As my scowl deepened I made my way up the hill into the town.

As I entered the main part of town I looked up and the first person that I saw coming my direction through the crowds was a young, white, male who looked strikingly like my dear friend Nick from the University. I knew Nick to be on a rafting trip in Rishikesh so I attributed the vision to delirious hallucination until I saw that behind the Nick-looking boy was an Abby-looking girl and a Dan-looking boy. A Shimla MIRACLE!!!! By the time I realized what was happening I was already being strangled in a bear-hug by Nick. There were shrieks, hugs, and shouts of "What are YOU doing here??!"

As it turns out, Nick, Abby, Dan, Hoken, Martha, Laurel, and Andi had all been in Rishikesh on a rafting adventure when they decided on a whim to visit Shimla. And they just happened to come on the same day that I happened to choose and they just happened to be walking down the street at the exact moment that I happened to arrive. But, I mean...India only has like 1.2 Billion people, so it's not that much of a coincidence. They kindly invited me to join them in their crammed hotel room which Nick accurately described as "the set of a 1970's ski-lodge porn movie." It was wonderful to see them and it felt so normal to be hanging out with them that we kept forgetting the incredible circumstances that had brought us together.

In the morning sadly, we had to say goodbye again. They moved on to their next destination and I spent the day wandering cute, colonial Shimla (it looks like Europe. It's totally weird.) Tonight I'm taking yet another overnight bus to Delhi so that tomorrow I can fly back to Hyderabad.

She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain

In answer to Nicole's demands, I can't put up any photos yet because I am not traveling with my laptop, but when I get back to Hyderabad on the 3rd, I plan on going back and adding photos to all of these unillustrated posts. So be patient.

In India it is next to impossible to use a credit card. As a result, I ran into a rather tight financial situation for my last few days in Dharamsala. This wasn't a huge problem. Actually, it's pretty easy to live on about 2 dollars a day in India, it just requires that you make some more adventurous choices in dining establishments. The Tibetan Yak Cafe, for example, is a tiny hole-in-the-wall lunch place in Dharamsala where one can enjoy a large lunch for about 60 cents. I entered the Yak cafe to find six old local men, three plastic picnic tables, and one mural of a yak. I sat down and space being limited, soon found myself sharing my table with a Tibetan man, who from appearances must have been well over 200 years old. He was served without ordering, and before my soup had even arrived he had put away three heaping plates of food.

The following morning I dined across the street at a similar establishment which advertised "Special Muesli." I did not really know what this meant, so of course I ordered it. What arrived was a giant bowl of every fruit, nut, and grain known to man covered in yak yogurt and honey. I plunged my spoon in and began eating, which apparently was the wrong thing to do. The elderly woman running the cafe ran over, removed my spoon from my hand and very delicately and meticulously stirred the bowl for several minutes much to the amusement of everyone else in the restaurant. To be fair, it did taste better her way.

Another dreadful overnight bus ride brought me to Manali early this morning. I haven't had cell phone reception for days so I had no way of booking a room and when I arrived at 4:30 AM none of the hotels appeared to be open and I was in no mood to make decisions, problem solve, or do anything sensible. Against all odds I was able to find a really decent hotel room with a spectacular view of the mountains.

If Dharamsala was beautiful then Manali is BEAUTIFUL. While Dharamsala is more of a town, Manali is more of a resort. It is mostly made up of little hotels and cafes hidden in the forest. Actually, Manali might just be the Portland of India. This occurred to me this morning as I sat shivering in a trendy Bob Dylan-themed cafe surrounded by latte-sipping outdoor enthusiasts. The area is very green (with real fir trees!!), there are plenty of nature trails, it is actually cool and overcast outside, and the two main activities of the area seem to be drinking coffee and exploring the outdoors.

I started my day today with a long hike out to visit Hadimba Temple. Seeing as the area is packed with tourists I was shocked when I arrived at the temple and found myself the only Westerner there (evidently all of the other Westerners are only here for the rafting, paragliding, etc). This of course, resulted in the usual excitement among the Indian tourists wanting to take their picture with me and the shouts of "Which country? Which country?" One family took a particular interest in me and the matriarch of the group kept asking "Indian Culture very high, is it?" I did not understand the question but I responded with "Uhh...Mujhko India bahut pasand hai" (I like India very much). This butchered Hindi had very positive results.

After surviving the uphill hike to the temple, one finds ones self immediately bombarded by aggressive souvenir peddlers, many of whom are tribal people with yaks or giant, long-haired Himalayan rabbits trying to get you to take photos with their animals for money. This is the first time in my life that the opportunity to ride a yak has ever presented itself to me and I was not about to pass it up, but the yak hustlers were demanding 50 rupees and the didn't seem to take my counter-offer of 10 rupees very seriously. No yak ride today, but I still have another day in Manali.

The Wheels on the Bus go bump bump bump

I spent my last hours in Delhi unsuccessfully searching for a new pair of designer knock-off sunglasses. I nearly bought one pair just out of curiosity because while the lenses bared the "Ray Ban" insignia, the sides read "Dolce and Gabbana." I didn't know it was possible.

My hotel in Delhi was in Pahar Ganj, a busy, dirty, touristy bazaar area where, as a single white female, I was subjected to the constant shouts of "Hello! Madam! My shop! Good Price! Rickshaw?! Hello? Yes Please? Madam, Madam!!" While this may have annoyed me once upon a time, I have now quite well perfected my "I can't see you, I can't hear you, Get out of my way, stone-cold bitch glare," which allows me to move through crowds undisturbed. I must remember to break myself of this habit before returning to the USA.

I left Delhi that afternoon on a bus to Dharamsala. One benefit of traveling alone is that I ended up with a row of seats all to myself so I was able to stretch out to sleep. This was really the only positive aspect of the journey. I was the only person on the bus sporting neither dreadlocks, nor tie-die, nor gauged earlobes, and though my hippy travel companions may well have been good, loving people, on their way to some grand Himalayan mystical adventure, they were at times annoyingly loud. Around one in the morning a group of them got into some kind of brawl in the front of the bus. Other passengers began demanding that one particular assailant be kicked off the bus, and though the bus drivers did not comply, they did decide to take a "shortcut" in order to end the troublesome journey sooner rather than later.

The "shortcut" was a windy, unpaved, bumpy bumpy road, which as it turns out, was actually closed to traffic. We then had to backtrack to the main road, so the "shortcut" of course, took longer than the original route.

For the most part, it was a bumpy, sleepless, nightmare of a bus ride, but the experience of driving into the Himalayas at sunrise made up for everything.

Dharamsala/ McLeod Ganj is one of the most beautiful places that I have ever seen and it is easy to understand why tourists, pilgrims, and Tibetan refugees alike happily flock here. Of course, the hotel that had promised me a room on the phone the previous evening acted like I was crazy when I showed up, so I walked 20 yards to the next hotel which is probably cheaper and cuter anyways.

I spent the day wandering the town, eating delicious food, and taking lots of amazing Himalaya photos. This is probably the most touristy place that I have visited in India so far, but it is touristy in the best sense of the word meaning there is a lot of see and do and there are tons of really amazing restaurants (although there was just a little too much cockroach in my Tibetan momo soup last night).

I have yet to spot the Dalai Lama or the Yeti, but I am keeping my eyes peeled for both.

Northern Exposure

My first order of business upon my arrival in Delhi was to photograph the toilet in my hotel room. It is the first such fixture I have ever used to have a faded pastoral scene painted on the tank. The small farmhouse among tiny green trees and wispy clouds so perfectly complements the room's neon lighting and broken tile floor. You can expect photos as soon as I am reunited with my computer. It takes something like this to make me want to take a photo anymore...while the bustling street scenes and historic buildings in the city go by unrecorded, I take pictures of toilets. I guess my perspective on what counts as a novelty has changed.

Luckily, where I'm going today should be a completely new and unusual setting. I may even take a picture or two. Dharamsala, mountainous home to the Dalai Lama is populated mostly by Tibetans in exile, and as I understand is a wholly different culture than anywhere else in India. I will be hopping on a bus today at 4:30pm and arriving there tomorrow morning, so naturally, the most important item on my agenda today is to purchase some dense reading material. When I called a hotel to book a room in Dharamsala I discovered the first hotel I've ever heard of that "doesn't take reservations." I guess I may have to ask the monks to put me up for a few days.

Jaana, to go.

I just finished my last final exam for the semester and tonight I'm hopping on a plane to go to the Himalayas via Delhi. I planned this excursion "Indian Style," meaning, I have no plans, nothing is organized, I have no clue what to expect, and after a lot of chaos somehow in the end everything will fall perfectly into place.

I'm thinking of going from Delhi to Dharamsala to Manali so I checked the weather reports for those places last night. Delhi is expected to be well over 100 degrees for the next week, Dharamsala will be somewhere in the 70s-80s range, and Manali is expecting snow...yes, snow. Leave it to me to find a way to visit three distinctly differnt climate zones in a 10 day period. I have no idea what to pack.

This week has been kind of emotionally tumultuous as I slowly come to the realization that I'm going to have to say goodbye (forever?) to this group of people that I have lived with, traveled with, shared three meals a day (and tea time) with, etc, etc, etc, for a whole semester. Add to that the stress of studying for finals, and the stress of packing, and the stress of impending culture shock, in addition to the looming reality of summer unemployment, and you can perhaps imagine the strange mood that I've been in lately.

Sounds like I need a vacation, eh?

Oh! What a coincidence.

Mumbai, or Humidity.

Being in Mumbai in April is a lot like being in a steam room, except hotter and more humid. A lot of people compare the city to New York, but it actually reminded me more of the posh parts of LA, or the affluent LA beach towns like Santa Monica...if Santa Monica had 14 million residents and expansive slum communities.

2 days is not enough time to see Mumbai and 5 minutes is not enough time to write a blog about 2 days in Mumbai. I have to study for finals. We'll catch up later.

Preview of Coming Attractions

Nicole keeps asking about my plans for the rest of my semester, so here's a little rundown.

17 April (today)--To Mumbai! I will be staying with a former business friend of my father's for the weekend in Mumbai.

19 April--Return to Hyderabad and study really hard for finals.

22-23 April--Take finals, turn in term paper, fail miserably.

23 April--To Delhi! I'm going to Delhi for a few days before heading up to the Himalayas!

23 April- 3 May--Adventures in the Himalayas, I hope to visit Dharamsala (home of the the Dalai Lama), Manali, and Shimla. Possible adventures include going on a mountain trek, taking Tibetan cooking classes, riding in a hot-air balloon, and/or achieving enlightenment.

3 May--Back to Hyderabad for laundry, packing, goodbyes.

5 May--To Amsterdam!

5-20 May--Getting into trouble in Europe. From Amsterdam I will be traveling around Europe for a few weeks, I don't have official plans yet, but I hope to make it to Prague and maybe Budapest among other places.

20 May--To Portland!! My summer plans are still up in the air. Any advice or input is welcome.

Tied Up

Recordings of my dance performances have now made their way youtube. HERE is the video for Kathak, I was shocked to see that the performance was nine minutes long…I knew it felt like a nightmarish eternity onstage, but I didn’t realize it was such an eternity for the viewers as well. As I said before, the Kathak teacher decided to make us go WAY faster than we had ever practiced the dance so we are all visibly making mistakes in the video…especially me…so don’t judge, Kathak is really hard. Also, keep an eye out for two of the girls’ hair pieces falling out. HERE is the video for Kuchipudi. Bet you can't tell which one is me...actually, you can barely see me at all since there is a man taking photos standing in front of the video camera for most of the time...

Last night was the CIEE Farewell Dinner and Re-Entry orientation. It’s so hard to believe that it is already time for events to have the word “farewell” in their titles. I leave Hyderabad in nine days! The Re-Entry orientation was similar to our welcome orientation at the beginning of the semester in that it was long and boring and caused us a lot of undue panic, only this time instead of telling us how hard life in India was going to be they told us about how depressed and lost we’re going to feel when we return to life in the USA. I suppose what they said was partially true; we have really changed and adapted to life in India over the past few months. For example, we all dressed up in our saris last night (the ones we wore to the OBAMA BALL in January) but the novelty that the situation had at the beginning of the semester had completely worn off. In January it seemed so funny to see everyone dressed up in traditional Indian formal wear, but last night it seemed like standard practice—what else do people even wear to fancy events? I also managed to tie my sari myself, having somehow telepathically absorbed that skill over the past few months. This, I felt, was quite a milestone.

Our program arranged for all of the girls to get Henna designs on our hands for the event, so my hands look very lovely right now. Since we were all henna-handed and sari-clad we assumed the dinner would be very formal and elegant, but as with everything that CIEE organizes, the dinner was almost successful...but not quite. The food was really delicious…but we had to eat it picnic style in our formal wear… For some reason they did not feel the need to provide tables for the dinner, they just made us eat the food in the chairs we had been sitting in while watching a sitar and tabla performance before eating…at least they provided plates. It was a little lackluster and anticlimactic—very CIEE.

We returned to our dorm and I was untying my sari and reflecting on how well I have adjusted to life in India when the two girls in the room next to me started shrieking. I ran over to see what was happening and then saw the largest spider I have ever seen in my life, easily the size of one of my hands with long fat, white legs, crawling out of my friend Laurel’s closet. I also shrieked. So I guess I haven’t really adjusted to everything in India.

An Impromptu Excursion

It’s important to be impulsive in life. A conversation last week went something like this:

Julia: My homestay sister and a few of her friends are going to some beach this weekend and we’re invited. It will be cheap and they will organize everything. Want to go?

Brenda and Katie: Uh… Sure, why not?

And so began our strange weekend. My friend Julia is staying the semester with the Ramanans, a family whose generous hospitality we have taken advantage of several times. Their daughter Sowmya recently received her MA from the University of Chicago and is now working in Hyderabad. She, along with her fiancé, and her two friends, Ajay and Prashanth, decided to visit Chirala, a tiny town on the coast of Andhra Pradesh this weekend. Julia, Brenda, and I joined them on Friday evening for an overnight bus ride. The bus was surprisingly comfortable and I actually arrived Saturday morning quite well rested.

After de-bussing, we took a rickshaw (with a weird picture of a baby in a Santa hat inside) to the beach-side hotel where we wanted to stay only to find that it was completely booked. The problem here was that this is the only actual hotel in the area. Chirala is really tiny and isolated. It is one of those rare places in the world yet untouched by McDonald’s, Starbucks, or tourism. Indians and Westerners alike prefer to visit beaches in Goa or Tamil Nadu, so the Andhra Coast is left purely at the hands of its locals and has no need to cater to tourists. All of the street signs are only in the Andhra language, Telugu (no English, no Hindi) and the only suggestion of Western influence is in the presence of the occasional Coca-Cola product...or the occasional pictures of naked white babies decorating rickshaws...

The driver took us back into the town where we were able to get rooms. It was not a hotel, per se, just a building with rooms that you could rent. And they weren’t rooms, per se, just cubicles with bunk beds. But the beds were clean and there were working showers and it cost us less than $2 per person so no one complained.

We went to breakfast in a very tiny, very local, very delicious establishment down the street before heading out to the beach. The restaurant patrons and other locals were more than a little surprised to see the three American girls in town. Our four Indian friends were highly amused by how much attention we were attracting, but it was just the typical celebrity treatement of staring, pointing, cameras flashing, and shouts of "Which country?" that we Americans have become used to in India. Luckily, the beach we went to was completely secluded so we had the day to ourselves without causing too much commotion. The beach itself was really ideal with perfect warm water and swaying palm trees and empty wooden fishing boats sitting on the sand. Of course, in spite of the heavenly conditions, I developed a hellish sunburn.

On the second day our little brunch consisted of traditional Easter favorites like Iddly and Bajji with coconut chutney. As we were eating breakfast, Julia stood up to go wash her hands and in the time she was gone, an old woman in a bright green sari approached our table and sat down in Julia’s chair with no explanation. She looked around at us all and smiled then spoke some slurred, colloquial Telugu that even our Indian friends couldn’t make sense of. Julia returned, had a confused, comical exchange with the woman, and eventually won her chair back.

For our second day of beaching, we decided to try out a different, more popular spot. The beach was very crowded and the demographic was an interesting mix of teenage boys swimming and a small village community sacrificing a goat (not kidding). It was actually much harder to ignore the teenage boys than the goat slaughter, because as soon as the boys spotted us they started swarming. We actually had to approach a security guard and ask if we could swim in the “restricted area” of the beach so that the crowd couldn’t bother us. Here are my soggy friends with the curious boys sneaking up in the background. Though we felt a little like animals in a zoo, the crowded beach was just as beautiful as the secluded one from the previous day and we even spotted dolphins splashing around in the water.

After enjoying a leisurely lunch we returned to our secluded beach from the first day to find it COVERED with little red crabs at low tide. As it turns out, crabs are very scared of people and they dive back into their crab holes when you approach instead of viciously attacking you with their pinchers as I imagined they would.

When time came for us to leave our lovely beach, the sun had begun to set and all forms of transportation had disappeared, as had everyone’s phone signals. This left us essentially stranded, but we began walking toward the road. The town we were staying in was still several kilometers away so the road led us into a tiny, beachside grass-hut village. No one was really around when we walked in, but word spread and soon enough the whole community was gathering to look at the sweaty, sunburned, foreign strangers. Ajay thought it would be a good idea to take a group photo, which seemed like a popular idea among the locals as well. In the end we discovered that one of the men from the village happened to own a rickshaw and he kindly agreed to return us to the town.

After showering and dining we made our way to the bus station for our return to Hyderabad. We hadn’t been able to get tickets with the same bus company that we took the first time, but procured tickets on something called the “Special Bus” which we assumed must be even more luxurious than the first one. What we got instead, was the same caliber of vehicle as the dilapidated Hyderabad city buses with three-person, not plush, not reclining, not arm-restable, bench seats. Sowmya, who had developed a bad flu by this point, looked around once and said “Oh my god. Can’t we take a taxi to Hyderabad??!” The answer, sadly, was no. The uncomfortable seats coupled with the sounds of the rumbling motor, incessant horn, and screaming babies, did not create a very relaxing environment for sleep. Instead, Julia, Brenda and I, crammed into one seat, remained awake for most of the night. We passed the time by eating unhealthy amounts of candy at 2 AM, gossiping about everyone we know, and deliriously discussing works of American literature.

We arrived, fatigued, sunburned, and badly in need of food and showers at 5 AM, but in my book, these circumstances are the signs of a weekend well-spent.