Sunday, November 19 Fairs, Crafts Museum, Big Chill

I spent the morning wandering around Delhi. The biggest trade fair in the world is going on in Delhi, the Indian International Trade Fair, and so I bought a ticket and rode the bus down to Pragati Maidan to check it out. It was hell on earth. The site is a huge exhibition ground, with like 10 gates. I had to walk about two blocks, and every street was jam-packed with cars, people, and policemen. As I neared the gate, I had to follow some people, walk past a bunch of people going the other way. I felt like a rag doll. Without fail, every person’s shoulder hit mine. In the US, that is not acceptable, and people would get extremely irritated and take it as a sign of aggression. Here, no one even notices, except for me. In front of the gate, it was a loud busy mess. There were probably about 50,000 people lined up in a mob outside, waiting to get in. That settled that, and I decided it’s not worth fighting people to get in, so I walked around to the Crafts Museum instead. The entire way was shoulder-to-shoulder people; I’d say there were probably 200,000 people…only outside the grounds! It was a spectacle I’ve never seen before; it’s like half of Delhi was here. I guess I walked the wrong way, and a policeman smacked me in the arm, with his stick. I hate this place. After getting pissed off and yelling at him, I proceeded to the Crafts Museum, which was an oasis of peace and quiet. It had a bunch of really intricate handlooms on display, as well as a bunch of carvings. These guys were lifting up the glass on some brassware exhibit, and all of a sudden I heard a loud ‘crash’. I looked over, and they had dropped the glass on the brassware, breaking the pieces. So much for the priceless art. The museum was horribly labeled, so you kind of had to guess at which pieces were from where. Being here since June, I actually know my fabrics quite well, for India is known for them. I did some shopping at the little stalls of the Crafts Museum. I took a rickshaw, because the buses weren’t allowed to stop at Pragmati Maidan, to the US Embassy school, for the American Women’s Association Mela Fair, on the invitation of Holly Shrikhande. When I got into the place, it was just like a fair in the states, such as Summer Celebration, Folklife Festival, or a company picnic. They had really expensive American food, some Indian man singing the Eagles, and a lot of white people shopping at really overpriced stalls along the perimeter of the grassy area. It was like I was in America. I got some gifts, and asked where Holly was, but she apparently wasn’t there, so I bounced. It was really weird seeing so many big, white Americans again, which is going to make going home even more shocking. The people in that place were so rich they all had private cars and chauffers. They looked baffled when I asked the way, so I could walk my ass to the public bus stop. I had lunch at Saravana Bhavan, which, again, was outstanding. Then I came home and started writing my outsourced paper on Kashmir. It was horrendous. It took a really long time. I went with Ro, Alix, and Snehal, to upscale Khan Market for the first time. We ate at Big Chill, an Italian-American diner, which felt like Pagliacchi’s or Red Robin. It was really good, and had great desserts (hence my eating a main course and three desserts). I came back and worked endlessly on my paper again.

Saturday, November 18 Shekhawati Region in Rajasthan

I woke up and took a long walk, in order to explore the Shekhawati region’s heartland, by foot. This region is stereotypical Rajasthan, where camels outnumber cars, and women in colorful saris contrast to the earth-toned lifeless desert. This area was once a trade route between the Arabian Sea and the Gangetic plains. The Marwari merchants amassed a lot of wealth during the British Raj, and moved to the coasts and Jodhpur. They built large estates and havelis (mansions) for their families back home. The havelis were really huge and the facades intricate. Dirt paths led to each house, and the mansions themselves were surrounded by well-maintained large plantation fields, mostly just plowed red dry dirt at this time of the year. I wanted to see a lot of colors against the barren landscape, and I felt like I was on an Indian-person safari, on the lookout for beautiful Rajasthani women carrying buckets on their heads, and men talking or tending their herds. The walk was pleasant, with nice weather. But it was too early, and cold, to see many people or stunning scenery. The only people out were dressed in huge brown wool shawls carrying pails of water, on their way to and from going to the bathroom. Walking through all these little towns, I could tell these people rarely see tourists or foreigners. All stopped what they were doing, to look and whisper about me. I felt kind of awkward. I spent some time in a tiny town at the confluence of four sand and dirt paths winding through the dry rolling hills. I had tea with a group of village men, and I had to use my Hindi to communicate about myself. It was probably about 65 degrees, and I was perfect in my t-shirt, while these men were all huddled around a fire and bundled in heavy woolen shawls to keep warm. I kept walking, past a few schools, past some rickshaws and shared Jeeps, and a factory where people were excavating clay, forming them into bricks, and leaving them out to dry to use for building. I finally reached the main road at noon, and realized I had been walking for six hours in my sandals, without eating any food or water. I took a Jeep back to Nawalgarh and then took a bus to Dunlod, where I caught another Jeep. I demanded to sit on the top of the Jeep, which is fun and something I’m not going to be able to do again for a long time. A group of Indian boys all laughed at me, and talked to me while I struggled just to open my eyes in the vortex of sandy wind. I took a bus all the way back to Delhi from Jhunjhunu, Shekhawati’s largest city. This trip to Shekhawati wasn’t full of bad luck. It just wasn’t filled with any good luck. The pictures weren’t all that great, and it was pretty much boring and a bust. However, I was glad to have only seen two tourists (inside AC cabs) the whole time. Getting back to Delhi took a good seven hours, and a lot of waiting around in traffic in southern Haryana. I really like Haryana because it’s close to Delhi, 90% rural, 75% Hindu, and has good transportation systems. It’s a richer area, despite the squatter settlements near road construction sites. Driving through south Delhi is like transporting yourself to London or Paris; designer boutiques abound, their glitzy clean lights and English signs dot the night cityscape. I was delirious I was so hungry, and I had a ton of food at Khana Unlimited, which was glorious.

Friday, November 17 Shekhawati Region in Rajasthan

I caught the first Metro of the morning to Central Secretariat, where I walked on Rajpath mall, past white tourists, homeless people sleeping on the grass, and joggers in Spandex wheezing from the horrible pollution. I took a 270 Rs charter bus from India Gate to Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan. It took forever (aka 8 hours), since there was a lot of traffic and construction on the highway, which, when completed will be an enormous 10-lane superhighway. I got to Jaipur, which was surrounded by desert, scraggly dry hills, and slums. I quickly transferred buses to a rickety overcrowded public bus to the Shekhawati region. It’s funny because I really don’t care where I go, I just want to see that region as a whole because the guidebooks say it has some of the finest undiscovered scenery in the subcontinent. The ride there was boring because it was dark. It took three hours to get to a main town, Nawalgarh. I missed the stop because I don’t know what the stop’s supposed to look like. Everyone was looking at me and laughing. The only English-speakers were three girls, who were on their way to an Engineering college. I got off the bus and walked with them, but when we got close to the college I wasn’t allowed to be seen talking to them because it’s so conservative. I ended up talking to a group of guys, who I told I had no place in particular to go. People in India just don’t understand the concept of wanderlust, and they kept saying, “So you want to go to Nawalgarh, right?”. It was useless, so they finally got tired and left me in the dark, at the junction of a railway line and two main roads, with some small tea stalls on either side. There were maybe 20 people around, none of whom spoke English, and barely spoke Hindi. And all 20 were looking at me, puzzled. It was pretty awkward. I walked around aimlessly in the dust, until some guys started talking to me in Hindi. They took me to the private boarding school, where I was surrounded by a group of uniformed boys from age 12-18. They all wanted to speak to me in their limited English, and I entertained their questions, as they giggled and whispered to each other. Then a guy took me to dinner at a roadside dhaba, but it was just me eating, some oily dal fry and cold sabzi. Then he took me on his motorcycle to the bus stop, where I caught a bus to Nawalgarh (even though I had no compulsion to stay there in the first place). I got out of the bus and stayed in Mitu Dharamsala, a guest house in a Hindu temple, where pilgrims and other visitors (supposed to be only for Indians) can stay. The room was simply a room with a bed, but I was tired.

Thursday, November 16 Republicans Lose Congress

Last week was a glorious time in American politics. The 2006 elections were held, and I didn’t get to vote because I’m overseas. But Thank God I didn’t even need to because, as it turns out, the Democrats have won control of the House and Senate for the first time in 12 years. In effect, this leaves President George W Bush virtually powerless for his last two years as president. Now he’s nothing but a useless lame duck. It’s funny reading the papers in India about the elections; they have such a negative bias towards Bush, as does every country on earth minus Israel. I’m overjoyed and relieved that America finally has regained some sense, and now I’m not as embarassed to tell people I’m an American (because people overseas all somehow know about this pivotal election, compared to Americans who still think ‘Iraq’ is a tasty lamb dish).

Wednesday, November 15 Hungry, Karim's Hotel

I woke up and did some errands. Then I went to lunch at Khana Unlimited after fasting for 48 hours. Why I do these fasts? I have an eating disorder. No, but seriously, it’s because people here have so little that I should be compassionate to what they’re feeling. No, but seriously, it’s because I’m really sick, and by not eating all the stuff in my system will get flushed out a lot faster this way. (By the way, only the last reason is true). So at Khana Unlimited I pretty much put them out of business I ate so much. After that, I attended Hindi, which was mind-numbing. Then I went online, etc, and went with Alix to dinner at Karim’s Hotel near Jami Masjid. Karim’s has been a Delhi Institution since 1913, and it is rated as having the best North Indian food [in the world]. This is because the chef is descended from the cook of the Mughal court. It didn’t disappoint. All it has is basically meat, rice, and roti. I got chicken tikka and chicken rumali rolls, both of which were superb. They melted in my mouth, and were greasy, buttery, and spicy. It’s easily the best tandoori food I’ve ever had. The naan was also outstanding; it was virtually weightless, tasted like a biscuit, and was soft, chewy, and buttery. After the meal, we got khir for dessert, which was chilled and tasted amazing after all that heavy meaty food. It was a mouth orgasm, but a stomach beating.

Tuesday, November 14 Kolkata, Museum, Victoria Memorial, Shopping

I woke up and had a fun time on the toilet. I walked down busy Chowringhee Street, teeming with a pack of Christian students, European tourists, streetdwellers, annoying street hawkers, taxis, and even a herd of goats. I descended into the Pride of Kolkata, the underground Metro. It is the first Metro in India, built in 1984 and covers the major areas of the city even though it’s only one line. It’s not as immaculate or modernized as the Delhi Metro, but it has TVs on the platform, and it’s not as dirty or old as the New York City subway. The trains don’t have AC, and are really crowded so I had to stand amongst the rest of the young student and businessperson commuters. The train runs from Tollygunj to Dumdum, I thought that was kind of funny. I stopped off at Shyam Bazaar, on the outskirts north of the city. I was expecting it to be really impoverished and slummy considering all the negative things I’ve heard about the city. However, it wasn’t unpleasant at all. It was a bunch of four-story colonial buildings flanking narrow but clean streets. I walked a little further, where a bunch of small homes were located, but they weren’t really slummy. Shops, churches, and schools could be found at every corner. Everything was in English and Bengali. Whole families were outside, the men were out working, women were cooking and washing laundry, and naked children were playing. Men in plaid skirts were bathing in the well pumps, which were installed right in the middle of sidewalks. This city is a perfect example of how every aspect of life India occurs right on the streets. I could see how people not used to poverty would think this city is particularly bad, only because everything is public and visible, compared to Delhi, where the impoverished are spread out and harder to find. It’s more like Mumbai, without the massive squatter towns and vast dichotomy of wealth. I feel Kolkata is unfairly portrayed in the Western media. I took a human rickshaw back to the Metro Station, basically just to say I did. A poor 50-year old tiny man with a limp ran with the rickshaw, clanging a little hand bell with his finger. I was scared it was going to tip over, since it was on only two wheels. I can’t believe people actually patronize these; you can walk faster than these skinny malnourished guys, and it’s reducing humans to the level of animals. I visited the Indian Museum, which was fabulous. It had thousands of rocks and fossils, stuffed animals with real skins, paintings, sculptures, coins, cool exhibits on all the different ethnic groups making up diverse India, and a nice green courtyard. I walked through the sprawling Maidan, essentially a huge park in downtown Kolkata, containing enormous grass fields, the Birla Planetarium, old British Raj buildings, a race course, and the largest cricket stadium in India (capacity 95,000 and selling-out every match). It’s really pretty, and a nice oasis from the congested yellow and blue of cabs and buses of the concrete streets and buildings. I made my way over to the Victoria Memorial, and saved 240 Rs by getting the Indian fare. The main building is surrounded by sprawling beautiful gardens with grass, stone pathways, fountains, courting couples, picnicking families, and friends. It looks like someone took a French palace and put it in the middle of the second-largest city in India. The Memorial is a neoclassical white domed building built by the British to commemorate the crown choosing Calcutta as the capital of India. Besides being a symbol of domination and subordination, it was nevertheless full of foreign as well as Indian tourists. It housed a lot of amazing paintings by British artists, mostly with scenes of Indian landscapes and portraits of people. It would have been amazing to see India as the British did, before any Westernization or colonization. I had my palm read by a phony on the street, who predicted I would have good travels in December, and good luck in money in December/January. He said I should worship Durga and his prophecy would be realized. After that I did some shopping, and Kolkata, just in Chowringhee’s New Market and Streethawker’s Market, was some of the best shopping I’ve seen in India. Kolkata isn’t as expensive as Delhi or Mumbai, and has everything that these centres have. Believe it or not, I love West Bengal and Kolkata. Yes, it’s dirty and has extreme poverty. However, the weather (at least right now) is near perfect, it has every type of climate from the Himalayas to the Gangetic Plains to the brackish mangroves to teeming Kolkata, Bengal has some of the best food in the world, and it’s exactly what you’d picture India as, but most importantly, the Bengali people are the friendliest and most cultured I’ve met in India. And all of this made this trip one of the best I’ve taken in India. I got picked up in a cab for the airport, which took an hour and a half since the city was in gridlock. The city at night is fully awake, and within the narrow dark streets, life pulses on. It looks like New York City during the 1920’s, driving through at night, with small dilapidated buildings, small streets, and a sea of yellow taxis. The airport was alright, but freezing with AC. My flight was for Indigo Airlines, the cheapest airline in India. It was really comfortable. They had a brand-new plane, pretty flight attendants, new décor, but no food or beverage service, perks, or first-class. I got to Delhi at 1, and took a cab home. Everyone in Delhi looks like they’re preparing for a blizzard (it’s about 70 degrees), with their wool shawls, thick jackets, and cows in the street even wore blankets. I’m glad to get back to Delhi because I’m feeling pretty sick.

Monday, November 13 Sunderbans Tiger Reserve

I woke up on the enchanting misty river, which was indistinguishable from the gentle morning sky. After tea and a simple breakfast of fruit and egg bread, we cast off the anchor and put-putted our way through the watery mangroves of the Sunderbans. We stopped at the museum again and picked up a guide, which is required for entry into the tourist zone of the reserve. The guide was friendly and could spot the tiniest animals. We cruised the snaking waterways, void of any human life or interference. It was incredibly tranquil and stunning at the same time. We floated deeper and deeper into the mangrove forests, the streams getting smaller and smaller. I saw a bunch of tiny mudskippers, which looked like half-fish, half-reptile, like it was in an evolutionary stage. A few water monitor lizards awkwardly crawled on the gray mud. Beautiful bright blue birds and striking white cranes flew from tree to tree as we passed. We saw some spotted deer and monkeys, too. After that we stopped at another watch tower at Sonakhali and saw some deer, but no tigers. It’s a rare occurrence to see tigers, and the guide said this whole year he’s seen a tiger only six times. We stopped on a muddy bank for Bengali fish curry and salad lunch. Then I relaxed as we motored three hours back to Basanti Village to catch the bus back to Kolkata. I peed on the roadside, and a bunch of Muslim boys were watching me, giggling, because I was standing up rather than squatting, as the Muslims do, so that supposedly Allah won’t see them. The ride was three hours long, and stopped every 15 minutes. I got really nauseas and my stomach began to feel the consequences of drinking a cup of local water. On the way, the bus stopped because there was another bus on the road with a bunch of water in front, which had just hit and killed someone. Besides that, the views of the sunset over the watery shrimp farms was spectacular. We got into Kolkata and had to take a city bus to Esplanade, the main center of town. We walked through the bustling lit markets, and I checked into a hotel and spent the night in pain. Luckily the hotel was really nice and cost only 300 Rs (cheap for central Kolkata), and they gave me soap, a towel, and they had HBO. I watched the Goonies and Ray, which were utterly satisfying.

Sunday, November 12 Sunderbans Tiger Reserve Safari

I got up early to meet up with my safari to the Sunderbans Tiger Reserve. I took a cab to meet up with the travel agent, who I have been talking to a lot. She saw me off, and because I was the only one who booked a trip for these next two days, they had one of their employees ride with me on the bus and boats, so that I wouldn’t get lost or confused. Turns out they assigned me one of their new rookies, a Bengali 20-year old college student from Kolkata named Bunty. I ended up becoming really good friends with him, because we’re the same age and he’s a pretty funny guy, and he spoke good English. We first took a cab to the busy crowded Babu Ghat Bus station, and then caught a yellow-and-blue private bus to Basanti, a little town on the edge of the Sunderbans Reserve. It took an hour to get out of congested Kolkata, and we wound our way through tiny alleys, almost nicking old multi-story delapidated buildings on our way. We passed a few slums and the Chinatown. One of the signs said “Wang Chung Bar Cum Restaurant”. I don’t think the owner has been to America. The drive was really picturesque, and painted me a portrait of the real heart of Bengal. Small strips of land sat atop large canals. The land was under cultivation for growing rice, coconut trees, and cauliflour. The canals were fresh water ponds used for washing, cooking, drinking, and harvesting fish and shrimp. Skinny dark men in white shirts and plaid skirts carried produce on their heads, tilled soil, and cast their nets into the murky brown water. Houses with straw roofs and mud siding dotted the otherwise flat and endless fields and canals. Little grass shacks on bamboo stilts stood out from the water, used for fishing. Small towns with rickshaws, bicycles, and teeming amounts of small dark Bengalis and their small bamboo shops sprang up every now and then. We reached the small Muslim village of Basanti three hours later. We crept past the bustling vegetable market to the dock, which was basically a concrete stairway descending into the river. He talked in Bengali to a few people before we stepped aboard the glorious Shah Jahan Houseboat. It was a wooden boat painted blue and white, with a bowed bottom, an outhouse on the back, and an interior cabin. It was cozy; good, because I’m spending the next 24 hours here. It was really comfortable; not too hot and not too cold, it had a nice area to sit and eat, and the bow was great for lazing in the sun and watching life in the Sunderbans. The owner was a Muslim Bengali named Salah Auddin, with big round glasses and smile. There are still Muslims in Indian Bengal, and Hindus in Muslim Bangladesh, but not as many as before partition. West Bengal, the easternmost of the major states in India, contains the largest diversity of landscapes and peoples anywhere in India. The state, population 80 million, is comprised of the watery Gangetic plains and delta, the megalopolis of Kolkata, and the Himalayas including the hill station of Darjeeling. Bengal, on the other hand, is the land that forms the Mouths of the Ganges, and has a unique language, customs, and culture. The Mouths of the Ganges refers to the immense river delta made up of the mighty Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers that flow from the Himalayas and eventually empty into the Bay of Bengal. Most of the delta is located in present-day Bangladesh, but Indian West Bengal also has a considerable portion. The Sunderbans refers to the specific national reserve set up to protect the unique environment. The Sunderbans is, in essence, a large conglomeration of low-lying islands forming the Ganges River delta. The brackish waterways have given rise to a huge mangrove forest, and if you count the adjacent Bangladesh side, forms the largest mangrove forest in the world. It supports a huge amount of biodiversity, and within the reserve, over 60 types of mangrove trees have been classified. It is home to wildlife such as mudskippers, wild boar, lizards, snakes, deer, and of course the infamous man-eating Royal Bengal Tiger. The mangroves are specially-adapted to the brackish canals, and are vital to the ecosystem, holding the loose mud together that forms the islands of this watery world. Because it is such a fragile ecosystem, it has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage site, and the Indian government has split it up into three sections; one where the tourists can go, one where locals can forage and hunt, and the other where no humans are allowed. As we set off from the docks, we passed a lot of ferries carrying local Bengalis to and from work and other places. Boats made for 20 fit hundreds. We passed other long wooden bowed boats, on which were fishermen tying their nets, boys pouring buckets of water on the decks to clean their boats, and people taking the Sunday afternoon to just relax. Ten-foot tall dikes were all that separated these brackish waterways from homes and villages. At high tide, the water level reaches three feet from the top of the dikes, which is dangerously close. Many years, the Ganges will flood, reeking havoc on the people of these small fishing villages. Their lives bend to the will of nature, and many times, they are hurt. The thousands of canals that make up this land isolate and threaten them. Since these canals are brackish and have dangerous sharks and crocodiles, the local people can’t even use them, and must use boats to cross. They live hard, but also very simple lives, with few material possessions and a lack of infrastructure. Nevertheless, they are all friendly and smile and wave when we passed. We had some fresh fruit, followed by a home-cooked Bengali lunch on board. It included cucumbers, spicy runny potato, prawn, and fish curries, all served over long-grain rice. There were no utensils, so I had to eat with my hands, mixing the rice with the sauce with my fingers in circular motions, and then shoveling it into my mouth, devouring my hands. Bengalis don’t like bread, so every dish is exclusively complemented with rice. They do love fish, though, and West Bengal is the largest producer and consumer of fish in India. Brahmins, who are usually pure vegetarians, even eat fish. The food was great, and different from any other food I’ve had thus far in India. We stopped for an hour in the tiny fishing village of Gosaba. It had a main road with a little market and some little shops, including some guest houses for tourists traveling onwards to the Sunderbans. A man selling bright green coconuts sliced open the top with a machete and poked holes in the top, so I could drink the delicious coconut water. Further into the village, many freshwater ponds were constructed around little paths and mud huts. The fresh ponds are used for bathing, cooking, cleaning, and drinking, because the water in the canals is salty and useless. Walking through the town was like a time-warp, it was so rural and unmodernized, it’s exactly what I pictured India and Bangladesh to be. This is exactly what the entire country of Bangladesh is like, except Muslim, more rural, and more impoverished. But it’s the closest I’ll probably ever be to Bangladesh. I was taking some pictures, and a small Bengali man took me into his mud home to show me his sculptures of Jesus and Mother Mary. He showed me his small house, which had a small kitchen with some pots and built-in mud stove. The beds were little bamboo platforms with sheets and mosquito nets. The walls were made of wicker, the walls of brick and mud, and the roof of dried palm leaves. He showed me his chickens and church, and we took a bicycle rickshaw with a wood platform on the back to the boat. We pushed off, and headed out towards the Sunderbans as the sun set over the wide rivers that once flowed as the Ganges. The tide started to rise, bringing the water level right up to the vast root networks of the mangrove trees. The mangrove forests seemed to float atop the blue rivers that flowed in and out of them; it was beautiful, and unlike anything I’ve seen before. We got to Sajnekhali to the park entrance, with a big sign saying Welcome to Sunderban Tiger Reserve. We paid a bunch of fees, and had a look at the pens with alligators, sea turtles, and monkeys. The museum was really interesting. It featured lots of maps of the watery world of the Sunderbans Reserve. It had pictures of all the birds, monkeys, lizards, snakes, and of course, tiger. In the park, the tigers number about 250, and are being relentlessly protected despite the fact that they often attack humans and livestock. They had a whole exhibit about “living with tigers”, and showed pictures of Bengali honey-collectors and fishermen, wearing masks on the backs of their heads to protect against the predatory cat. They pray to a certain goddess for protection against tigers, and there was a shrine outside the museum, with an idol to this goddess. There was also a watch tower, with little pathways so you could sit atop and spot wildlife. After a while Salah Auddin anchored the boat at a spot in the center of the river. They set up lights on the deck, fueled by thermal power, and had swarms of bugs around them. Bunty and I talked for a long time about everything, and then we were served a really good egg and fish curry. Bunty made the mistake of giving me drinking water, which turned out to be unboiled local water. Great. Our beds were set up inside the cabin downstairs, on some boards. It was actually mildly comfortable and really cozy. There was absolutely no light pollution, and I could see the cloudy Milky Way and thousands of stars brilliantly. I can now say I slept on the Ganges River.

Saturday, November 11 Kolkata City Tour, Crazy Movie Theatres

11/11 today. My train reached Kolkata at 4:50, only 5 minutes late! Surprising! What was also surprising was that while I was sitting in a long row of seats at the train station for the sun to come out, an old hunch-backed woman came around begging. Not one and not a few, but EVERY person gave her at least a Rupee. I don’t get it, so when I asked them, they said it was good karma to help people out, and most times they want to help people who can’t make money and instead rely on begging as a means of survival, such as the sick, blind, handicapped, and lepers. Still, begging is frowned upon and illegal, but it has a long history in India and is legitimized by Hinduism. I had breakfast and was going to use the restroom at the station, but the line was 20 people long. So I just decided to walk to central Kolkata to find a hotel. I walked out of the enormous Howrah Station, past the muddy, disgusting bus station, weaving my way through dozens of light blue and yellow buses. You would think they’re municipal buses, but actually they’re part of a network of thousands of buses owned by a single private company. I walked to the west bank of the Hugli River, which is a branch off the mighty River Ganges, before it empties into the Bay of Bengal in a bout a million different places on an enormous delta that, along with the terminus of the mighty Brahmaputra River, composes the coastal region of Bengal, as well as the entire nation of Bangladesh. The banks of the Hugli were filled with Hindus and destitute Bengalis bathing in the polluted, green-gray, smelly, but nonetheless, holy, rivers o the Ganges. The exit of the train station puts you on the doorstep of the imposing Howrah Bridge, the trademark symbol and gateway to Kolkata from the industrial suburb of Howrah. It was originally built in 1943, has eight lanes of traffic, is 97 meters high, and 705 meters long, making it the third largest cantilever bridge in the world. It carries 57,000 vehicles and two million commuters per day, making it the busiest bridge in the world. Cars whizzed by skinny men in skirts carrying produce and bamboo on their heads. I heard a loud splat beside me, and assumed it was just birdpoop, so I was glad it missed me. Then I stepped closer and realized it was the mangled carcass of a rat. It's going to be a lovely day (and for about an hour after that I kept singing 'Lovely Day' in my head). Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) is the “City of Joy”. It originally consisted of three Bengali fishing villages (the name ‘Kolkata’ derives from ‘Kalikata’, one of these villages), purchased in 1698 by the British East India Company. The British made it their capital, and it grew to be the greatest colonial city in Asia, a major port city and center of commerce, industry, and culture. Like Mumbai, waves of migrants settled there hoping to make their fortunes. It remained the capital until 1912, when it was thought that the Bengalis were becoming too powerful (ironically) through British education, and eventually it became the centre for the Independence struggle. It remains the intellectual capital of India. While Mumbai is the financial centre, Delhi the administrative centre, and Bangalore the IT centre, Kokata is the cultural centre of India. It produces many plays, poems, dances, and films. It is also the capital of a very leftist progressive state, where the Communist party is in power. It exemplifies progressivity, creativity, and vibrance, and is the cradle of the Indian Renaissance. It can also boast that all the Nobel Laureates of India worked at Kolkata: Ronald Ross, Rabinath Tagore (the famous poet who wrote India’s national anthem), CV Raman, Mother Theresa, and Amartya Sen (famous economist, who actually teaches at Delhi University). Today Kolkata is the second-largest city in India, at 10.3 million people, and within the top 10 worldwide, and the hub of Eastern India. It is just like any other Indian city; a city of contrasts and juxtapositions. The intellectuals and politicians live stone’s throw away from massive slums, and some of the worst poverty in India. The media, of course, has portrayed Kolkata unfairly as the latter, a place synonymous with Mother Theresa’s missionary work helping to uplift millions of dispossessed people of the city. I stepped onto Kolkata proper soil at Armenian Ghat, with a huge colorful market with vendors upon vendors, and buyers upon buyers, and porters upon porters yelling and running around India’s largest flower market. I walked down the small streets through Bada Bazaar, a labyrinth of winding alleys enclosed with old colonial buildings at every turn. The streets were teeming with Kolkatans waking up, about to start their days. Many were sleeping on the sidewalks; whole families, old men and women, and dogs. Men were bathing with buckets on the sidewalk, while others carried fish on their heads and pushed carts with boxes and buckets. And I have seen so many rickshaws in my days in India; auto rickshaws, bicycle rickshaws, and now, for the first time, human rickshaws. These skinny guys in tanktops and skirts ran on foot, holding up bars connected to two-wheeler carriages with people sitting inside. Unreal. Bengalis in Kolkata seemed short and really skinny, because of the humid climate. They all have really bulgy dark eyes. In other words, they all look very Indian, or what I picture the quintessential Indian to look like. Actually, the whole scene was what I pictured India as a whole to look like; bamboo shacks with people carrying carts and drawing rickshaws, bathing and sleeping on the streets, and shoulder-to-shoulder crowds. My previous conception of India was West Bengal, I guess. I walked down some larger boulevards through Kolkata’s downtown area, lined with banks and insurance companies. I walked around the town center, BBD Bagh, a square in the Central Business District with a man-made water tank/malarial breeding grounds. I caught the city tour from the adjacent West Bengal tourism office. The tour was actually really fun. We first drove through the narrow crowded streets of industrial Howrah across the river. We got to Belur Math, the international headquarters of the Ramkrishna Mission, which is a temple on the banks of the Hugli River, dedicated to religious untiy. It features Muslim domes, Hindu-style windows, and a crucifixial plan. It has a lot of little rooms with the old, skinny, bearded man’s picture, which a bunch of people were praying to. The site had a good view across the river. After that, we couldn’t get enough of Ramkrishna, so we went to the place where the old skinny bearded man Sri Ramkrishna, lived. It’s now a temple, called Dakshineswar Kali Temple, and is one of the most important Hindu pilgrimage sites in Kolkata. This is because Sri Ramkrishna attained enlightenment here. Because it’s Saturday, it was swarmed with devotees. Prasad-shops lined the entrance, hawkers and beggars on full prowl. The temple grounds consisted of a huge spired temple dedicated to the goddess Kali, and it features a black idol standing atop a blue Shiva and silver lotus. The lines were worse than at Disneyland. Thousands of Hindus in their finest Indian dress and holding offerings stood in massive snaking lines. Us tourists went in the non-devotee line, which still took a while and shoved me around like a beach ball. After that we headed over to the Sitambara Jain Temple in North Kolkata. It is built in a nice garden with fountains, ponds, and trees. The temple is beautifully-decorated and completely covered with ornate inlaid mirrors, stones, and glass. Jain temples are often the most intricate and visually appealing. Considering all the Jains I know are tremendously loaded, their temples should be the nicest. The bus drove us through the old colonial city of North Kolkata, with haphazard city planning and congested streets filled with rickshaws, buses, and taxis. The further south you go, the more modern it becomes, just like Delhi. The south featured brand-new boutiques, new apartment complexes, and wide avenues. We visited the Netaji Bhawan, which is the ancestral home of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, which has been converted into a museum, and has photographs, Netaji’s personal items, and other documents on the Independence struggle. Bose was a freedom fighter who started the Indian National Army, and fled India to do so. He traveled to Asia and Europe and met leaders like Hitler, Tojo, and Gandhi. The British reported he died in a plane crash in Taiwan, but no one believes that. I thought it was funny when we passed a market with new boutiques, and there was a “Bose” showroom in Kolkata. While in South Kolkata, we stopped at Kalighat, where during Kali Puja, idols of the goddess are bathed in the waters of the Hugli River. It’s a huge pilgrimage site, and it was a huge congregation of thousands of devotees, beggars, and pickpockets. I took off my sandals and stood in mob (not ‘line’) to get a view (darshan) of the Kali idol. It was so crowded, loud, and claustrophobic, so I was glad to get out of the stifling mob. Myth holds that what a specific demon was killed ages ago, he spilled all his blood, which would kill all humans when it hit the ground. Kali, the crazed bloodthirsty deity, swallowed all the demons’ blood to save humanity. So, people worship Kali for her destructive and protective qualities. How Hindus show this love is by giving offerings to the gods. The procession moved to the next area, which is where the offerings were given to the goddess. Basically, a man with a 2.5 foot-long machete stood in a big open stage area, swinging his sword, while a small squealing black goat was carried over by two men by the horns and hind legs. The two men stretched out the kicking goat’s body, and after a few backswings, the man with the machete swung the sword and in one blow, effortlessly chopped off the squealing goat’s head. The two holding the goat flew back in opposite directions, as the head was now severed from its body, blood spurting everywhere. The goat was convulsing, its body now twitching eerily in-synch with its detached head, whose yellow eyes were still open and blinking. The cut exposed its white bones and esophagus, as bright-red blood pumped out in regular rhythms and flowed down into the gutter. Devotees immediately rushed over to the scene, chanted, and kissed the bloody ground in respect to Kali, who has now hopefully been sacrificed. A priest quickly filleted the body and threw the goat’s intestines, but left the entire corpse to drain in the gutter. I couldn’t even speak after witnessing that spectacle. It was unreal; so vivid, so gruesome, so primal, and so fast. It was straight out of a movie, like what you’d see in some Orientalist depiction about India, like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I didn’t know Hindus actually still do live sacrifice, being so against killing and being vegetarian. Apparently Kali is a destroyer, so it’s different. Also, in Bengal, Brahmins are allowed to be non-veg, and sacrifices like this happen in West Bengal. I grabbed my shoes and ran out of the temple as fast as possible. Now I know why the two little boys on the tour stayed in the bus during this stop. My feet, I’m sure, are covered in goat blood and some awful disease (which is pretty impure for a place of worship of a religon that is obsessed with purity). Naturally, the next stop was lunch. I sat with the guide, a BK Ghosh, who was basically a well-read genius, really funny, and friendly. He gave me his number and address so that next time I’m in Kolkata (I can’t even count the number of times I’m in Kolkata) we can hang out. The lunch was good, but not Bengali. We next saw St. Paul’s Cathedral (by the way, what cathedral is not named “St. Paul’s”?). It was built in 1847 and was the first Episcopal church in Asia. It had a lot of pews facing a modern altar with statues, in front of beautiful stained-glass windows reaching up to the whitewashed ceiling above. It had a marble slab inscribed onto it how these three Englishmen were heroes who gave their lives by suppressing one of the Independence Struggle insurgencies, something I, and most Indians would say was a villainous act, but that the British Crown and people that write American 5th-grade American history books would commend. We drove through downtown’s towering buildings and huge green area known as the Maidan, housing many museums and monuments, mostly honoring the British Raj Era. We cruised down the “Poor Man’s Marine Drive”, the nice drive along the Hugli River. The modern Vidhyasagar suspension bridge, towered over the also mighty Ganges below. The last stop on the circuit was the Calcutta Gallery, a museum dedicated to the city and to West Bengal. It was really interactive, and had light-up dioramas, talking mannequins, and a 3-D movie. It featured the history of Kolkata, the recounting of battles, points of pride (namely, the Nobel Laureate connection, poets, singers, athletes, politicians, revolutionaries, artists, and intellectuals). After that I walked in Esplanade, the center of town. It was bustling, with tons of street vendors and other pedestrians. It was loud and chaotic as I walked down side roads in search of a hotel. Since Kolkata is expensive, I had to settle for a 450 Rs room, which was basically a really nice dorm room but half the size, and in the most delapidated building ever. Since Bengal is a huge film city, I decided to see a Bengali film, and the hotel clerk recommended the nearby cinema. Little did I know it was an Indian porno. But for a porno, it was horrible. The American previews from the 1970s were better than the feature presentation, a Tamil movie dubbed in Hindi. It had ugly girls and absolutely no nudity. The raunchiest it got was a possessed mullet man squeezing a girl’s stomach fat. The acting was, not surprisingly, horrible, and it culminated in a gross girl stabbing a crazy man who tried raping her. It was worse than spending the morning in class at DU. I want my two hours back. So I went over to the real cinema down the lit, crowded, and busy road. I saw Apna Sapna Money Money, which was really bad but had some good songs. But that experience was even worse than the previous movie, because I saw huge rats scurrying around the floor of the theatre. The rest of the night I had to watch everywhere I stepped, because there were so many little holes in the streets, and I am absolutely paranoid of seeing rats.

Friday, November 10 Pipli, Konark, Puri in Orissa

I woke up and it was raining. Great. But the weather here besides that is superb-75 in the morning, afternoon, and at night. Actually the weather said it was a high of 18 and a low of 17. I checked out and then walked around Bhubaneswar looking for breakfast, but the only thing open were little bamboo shacks with watery rice, a popular Odissi breakfast. For the second day in a row, I went to the Orissa Tourism Department Lodge and hopped on the 9:00 bus for more sightseeing. A man and his son my age were on both tours with me. I know they are Muslim because they didn’t go inside any Hindu temples, they speak Urdu, and their last name is Khan. The son said he’s majoring in English, but the Dad had to translate. The first stop was Pipli, a crafts centre famous for those useless hanging colorful mirror lanterns. I walked down a little side-street, and it was as if I had regressed 500 years. Coconut palms towered over small one-room mud, brick, and bamboo huts. Villagers were washing their clothes and bodies in a pond surrounded by rice paddies. Men wore cloth sarongs, and women wore saris. Everyone smiled as I passed by. The climate is wet, humid, and coastal, with tons of rural paddies, rivers, and lakes everywhere. It’s what I imagine Kerala looking like, on the southern tip of India. That there is no industry or major cities here does not change the fact that there are people everywhere; in every nook and cranny of Orissa. It’s really interesting and pretty driving through all these unspoilt (besides powerlines, paved roads, and Pepsi signs) little villages, paddies, and estuaries. Our next stop was Konark, home of the famous Sun Temple, a UNESCO World Heritage site. I managed to sneak in for the Indian price by being absolutely mute. The temple was amazing. Built in the 13th century, it was a victory monument signaling the defeat of the Muslims. Since then it has been destroyed by the Mughals and Portuguese. It was built as a chariot for the sun god Surya. The distinctive feature is the 24 stone cartwheels, representing hours of the day. They are all intricately-embellished with swirl patterns, wood-like designs, checkers, and mini-kama sutras. The temple has seven horses, representing the days of the week. It was just like Khajuraho, but bigger. On the lower levels, it was mostly men and women being wrapped up by snakes, musicians with drums, and gods. The upper levels around the spire were mostly erotic scenes, and really graphic, too, with all sorts of different kama sutra positions, multiple female partners, touching and holding things. The temple was guarded by stone lions (a Hindu symbol of power) atop elephants (a Buddhist symbol of wealth). Because Orissa is situated west of Bengal, east of the Deccan Plateau, south of the Gangetic North Indian heartland, and north of the Dravidian south, it reflects the influences and converging of all of these artistic, religious, linguistic, and social aspects. We stopped for a couple of minutes at a sparse but vast beach in Konark. Vendors selling souvenirs, film, snacks, and coconuts lined the sand. Small blue-gray waves crashed into the off-white sand. I dipped my feet into the water, the first time I have touched the waters of the Bay of Bengal (surrounded by India to the West, Bangladesh to the north, Myanmar to the east, and connects to the vast Indian Ocean in the south. The sand was fine-grained and the water was even warmer than the humid tropical air. We set off for the last (but definitely not least) stop on Orissa’s Golden Triangle circuit, Puri. The holy Hindu city of Puri attracts Indian tourists, foreigners for the beach, and Hindu pilgrims for its temples. The bus let us off at Rath Yatra Road, a huge boulevard that leads to the famous Jagganath Temple. This road is huge for one purpose and one purpose only; the Rath Yatra festival in June. The street is completely packed, and people carry huge floats of Lord Jagganath, his brother, and his sister, through the street from the Jagganath Temple to the Gundicha Mandir. Only Hindus are allowed into the temples (just recently open to women) because it was kept a secret and strictly controlled when the Muslims ruled the area and outlawed idol worship. So basically the rule is in place to keep out Muslims. You could easily change the previous sentence to be about airline security or Israel. Actually, though, the Jagganath Temple is open to Jains, Buddhists, and Sikhs. So I claimed I am a Buddhist. I have been saying this ever since I got to India because 1) I agree with many of the Buddha’s teachings, 2) I look like an Asian Buddhist, 3) I don’t like associating myself with the Christian world because of problems with Muslims and their missionary practices like the Australian missionaries burned in Orissa, 4) It’s an Indian religion closely related to Jainism, and derived in whole from Hinduism, 5) No one hates Buddhists. However, the security guards all said “Indian Buddhists only”. This makes absolutely no sense. Basically this temple is sexist, prejudice against other beliefs, and racist. Reason # 300 I’m not a Hindu. I wasn’t about to argue with the security guard with an assault rifle, so instead I paced around and watched the scene at the front gate. It was crazy and hectic. Hindus were everywhere. Women lined the street, selling prasad (rice, coconuts, milk, and incense), souvenirs (figurines of Lord Jagganath, who is a bug-eyed black or white short stubby figure, who would make a really good stereotypical Indian character in South Park), vegetarian food, and clothes. Men jostled for rickshaw passengers, tourists wanting souvenirs, and for people to give them money for begging. I had amassed a nice little crowd of hawkers around me as I was photographing beggars, lepers, street scenes, and devotees washing their mouths before worship. I walked back to the bus and talked to the driver, who was from Cuttack, Orissa’s previous capital 100 km up the road. I felt like we were both guys in prison, or black Americans during segregation, because he wasn’t allowed in the temple, either, since he’s a Muslim. Te told me a secret; he, along with a lot of other people in India (including Hindus) eat beef, they just buy it from Muslims and eat it in secret. Not hard to believe, because of how many cows there are here, or considering how good a nice, tender, juicy steak tastes. The last stop on the tour was the Puri Beach (aka the Orissa Tourism resort). I put my luggage at the desk and took a walk down the beach. The water was really warm and felt nice, as did the cushy gray sand. Puri Beach stretched for as far as the eye could see, as did the people. The beach in Puri is sacred, and the Jagganath Temple is a mere 500 meters away. In every Hindu holy city there is always a body of water. In Varanasi and Allahabad there is a river, in Bhubaneswar there is a tank, in Gangotri there is a glacial waterfall, in Pushkar there is a lake, and in Puri and Kanniyakumari there is an ocean. So far, Puri is my favorite Hindu holy place. I only saw three non-Indians. One was a white guy in a cotton lungi, head shaved, and had his forehead painted with a ‘V’, indicating he’s a Vaishnavite. Poser. The others were weird German people in dreadlocks and Punjabi suits. The beach went on for miles, and got more and more crowded near the Jagganath Temple. Vendors sold balloons, pearl necklaces, cotton candy, and horse/camel rides. It was mostly Indian families and boys playing in the water. I kept trying to take pictures, but naked guys kept obscuring the otherwise awesome view of the Bay of Bengal. Fishermen were hammering away fixing their boats and re-stringing their nets after the day at sea. Processions of holy people banging drums and carrying long sticks made their way up and down the beach. I walked up to the Jagganath Temple. The road was teeming with pilgrims and holiday-goers, eating and shopping. In order for foreigners to see the temple, you have to go across the street to the library and give a “donation” of 100 Rs. I climbed to the top, where the view was decent, but made extraordinary as a result of the beautiful pink-blue-orange sunset behind the huge towering temple. Like every other Hindu temple, it had a series of towers, each devoted to a certain Hindu deity, the central and largest being Lord Jagganath. After that I walked back to the hotel along the dark beach, and caught the overnight sleeper train to Howrah Station in Kolkata.

Thursday, November 9 Bhubaneswar in Orissa

The train was an hour late reaching Bhubaneswar, the capital of the East Indian state of Orissa. Riding through the countryside in the morning was awesome. It was humid and overcast, but pleasant comfortable weather. Coconut trees towered over the completely green rice fields making up this tropical coastal area. It was completely rural, and Orissa is one of the most backward areas in the country. ‘Backward’ meaning old-fashioned and with the least development. This came to international attention when two Australian missionaries were burned alive for trying to convert the kept-down Dalits. The history of Orissa is somewhat of a mystery, but the area has become a center for the arts, especially carving and embroidery work. It also has one of the holiest festivals of the year in Puri. It has retained its autonomy, especially in the tribal areas, and was one area that took Ashoka and the Muslims a long time to capture. It’s a laid-back destination where few tourists venture to. Men in towel skirts were burhsing their teeth with sugar cane sticks, villagers were squatting in the fields with pails of water, kids were playing, and women carried buckets of water on their heads. The area is lush and fertile, and enjoys a wet tropical climate. As a result, rice is the main staple, and houses are constructed of mud, bricks, woven palm leaves, and universal scrap metal. It’s more like what I expected India to look like, actually. Plus, since it’s one of the poorest and most rural areas in India, all the buildings were simple and small, if not slums. The east is very backward in comparison to Western India. Delhi and Bangalore form the boundary; as a general rule of thumb, everything west of that line is more developed and wealthy, wheras everything east of that line tends to be more rural, backward, and poor. There are exceptions, of course, but when discussing economic development, many times this is the classification used. I got to Bhubaneswar around 7am. Bhubaneswar is a newly-planned city with wide avenues, however, it a very holy place for Hindus, and there are over 50 very fine temples. I booked two tours from Orissa Tourism (the state-run tours aren’t very good, but they’re cheap, take you to all the major sights in a short time, and give you some idea of what you’re looking at, plus they’re the only ones who do regular day tours instead of package tours). I got on th bus, and was the only tourist who was non-Indian and below the age of 60. We first went to Nandakanan Zoo, which sounds lame, but was awesome. I had to pay the standard Non-Indian price for everything because I couldn’t use the excuse that I’ve been using all along. Since it’s so close to Assam, the languages are similar, so they can understand the Assamese. Odissi, the local language of Orissa (although everyone speaks Hindi and many know English) is Dravidian (not related to Sanskrit) and has a cool script, which looks like a bubbly version of English, with tons of 3’s, @’s, and skull-looking letters. The zoo had tons of Royal Bengal Tigers (only one per cage since they’re solitary animals), which are awesome animals, so powerful and majestic. The zoo featured a family of white tigers, which is actually a genetic mutation, but who cares, it’s beautiful. If I don’t see any tigers this trip at the Sunderbans, then I’ll have to sette for this. The zoo also housed lions, leopards, deer, peacock, emu, alligators, snakes, rhinos, hippos, and monkeys. They had an orangutan, which pursed its lips when I stuck my tongue out, and walked back inside after I left. This is because I’m a foreigner, and it’s trained for movies in Australia, so when it sees white skin, it follows commands. It was like a was Dr. Doolittle. Some of the deers were called Blue Bull because of their bluish color (or because of the sexual problems) of the males. We drove through more hut-lined streets and coconut groves to the Udayagiri and Khandagiri Caves, meaning sunrise and sunset caves, because this is where the Jain rulers established the city at sunrise. The caves had some nice Jain carvings, and were chiseled out of a stone hill. After seeing World-Heritage Ellora and Ajanta caves, I wasn’t really impressed. The highlight of the tour and of Bhubaneswar for Hindus is the huge Lingaraj Temple, dedicated to Lord Jagganath in particular, an incarnation of Vishnu who has developed almost a cult following. The most famous festival in Orissa is the Rath Yatra in Puri, where huge floats are carried through the streets of the town, and the crowd of devotees covers the entire street. Only Hindus are allowed in the temple grounds, but apparently they don’t check (and how can they?), so I snuck past the five (useless) security guards and went into the complex. It contained huge embellished Hindu temple towers, each one devoted to a different god of the Hindu pantheon. Face-painted Brahmin priests in loincloths stood beside each altar, taking and offering the prasad to the deity. There were tons of Shiva lingas and statues of gods inside each tower. In the center of the complex was the dominating spire of the Jagganath Temple. I was ushered inside by some priests, and gave 11 Rs to the linga. But the priests demanded 201 (the extra one rupee is thought to be auspicious). I refused because all the other Indian people only have 11, and I asked why Jagganath needs money in order for me to worship him. It’s actually a really good question and one of the reasons over which I disagree with Hinduism. He replied, “You’re paying for the priest to give him flowers for Jagganath to smell.” I refused, and they made a scene in the actual inner sanctum of the temple. Very unholy. Four of them crowded around me and harassed me, asking me for more money. One asked my country and I said “Korea”. As soon as those words came out of my mouth, I was pushed by all of them and they yelled in Hindi, “Get out of here, you dirty untouchable”. I was escorted out of the temple by a security guard and was stared and scoffed at by everyone around. I was pretty embarassed. This is a Hindu temple, the religion that teaches that there are many paths to god, and that there is a deity within everything. And what makes it annoying is that by just glancing at me, they encouraged me to worship. But then, because I wasn’t specifically an Indian Hindu, I was automatically ostracized and booted out. What makes it even more frustrating is that Jains, Sikhs, and Buddhists are all allowed to enter the temple, because they are all religions derived from Hinduism. But most Koreans are Buddhist; I didn’t get a chance to tell them that. So instead, I was forcibly removed, excluded, and humiliated. After that we rode up to Dhauli Hill and ate lunch thalis. On the way, there was some graffiti; boyfriends had written they loved their girlfriends: “Anand loves Sita, Vijay loves Geetanjali, Ashish loves Pusi”. Hahahaha. We walked up the hill to the Shanti Stupa, a large white dome with alien-antennae-looking umbrellas on top. It was built in 1972 by the Nipponji Society of Japan, who advocate peace after seeing the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The stupa marks the spot where, 2000 years ago, the warrior-king Ashoka won a bloody battle. It was a battle so bloody that the rivers ran red. He was so mortified that he turned the political conquest into spiritual self-conquest and converted to Buddhism, fostering religious tolerance and advocating peaceful coexistence and nonviolence in his vast empire. He is the model for future Indian ideals and leaders like the Mughals and Gandhi. This is why the lion-headed “Ashoka Pillars” are the official symbol of the Republic of India. Next of the sightseeing circuit were Mukteswar and Sidheswar Temples, also Vaisnavite temples with spires, intricate carvings, priests, and adorned idols. These are the first temples I’ve seen that don’t allow rubber products (I’m guessing because you’re hurting the rubber tree to extract its sap…but who uses rubber post-WWII?) The last stop was the state museum, which was actually pretty interesting. It had old Sanskrit, Persian, and Oriya scripts, old coins, amazing brass, ivory, soapstone, and wood carvings, prehistoric fossils, stuffed wild animals, and exhibits about Orissa handicrafts and tribal peoples. Orissa has a wealth of tribal Dravidian peoples, still living as they have for millenia. However, as globalization is slowly creeping into all corners of the world, their traditional way of life is under assault. It sprinkled a little, and after the tour I walked down the street in search of a hotel. After a few unenthusiastic “No Vacancy”, “400 Rs”, and “No Single Rooms”, I finally found a random one in the center of town with a clean bathroom and towels for 150 Rs. Stuff here in Orissa is much cheaper than in other places in India. Dinner, for example, was only 30 Rs. I had a full south Indian thali at a restauarant which is to Sarawana Bhavan as Fiesta is to Haldiram’s. It even had the same logo. I slept comfortably tonight. I have to take advantage of the nights in hotels, as compared to in sleeper trains. My hotel, actually, was kind of weird. I saw a cockroach, and the owner was like “There’s only one, no more in the room”. And it had an open-air vent to the outside, perfect for mosquitoes. And it’s so humid here that I was eating some crackers, and an hour later the crumbs had turn to mush.

Wednesday, November 8 I'm Broke, Frantic Run to Airport and Train in Kolkata

I have absolutely no money because I’m booking all my travel arrangements for my two-week trip to South India in December. I also had to pay rent to the Jains. And I also had to pay my “tutors” for writing my papers. And I also still have to spend more money on my upcoming vacation to West Bengal and Orissa. And not to mention all the things I still need to buy in Delhi for presents and for my use at home (since everything is drastically cheaper to buy here). I got out of Hindi after telling Geeta-Ji that I would be gone next Monday. She was pissed, saying “Catch up because you’ve missed a lot of class, or you won’t pass”. When I got home I rushed to take a shower and pack for my 6:30 flight to Calcutta (now called 'Kolkata', and in the future, I will refer to it as the latter). I ran to the taxi stand, and had the driver take me to the ATM first. Remember when I said ‘I’m broke’? I called Mom earlier today, and she said she transferred in money, but the only problem is, since I’ve been spending so much money lately, the bank froze my account. I got to the airport after stitting through gridlocked traffic, stressed about being on-time. I should have known in India that worrying is pointless, as my flight was delayed 30 mintues. This continues my streak of no flights in India being on-time thus far. I called Mom at 4 am her time to tell her to call the bank to unfreeze my account. Meanwhile, I couldn’t even afford dinner, so I had to sit in the waiting room for the flight, which was delayed another half-hour. This is bad because I have a train to catch at 10:30. The SpiceJet flight finally departed at 7:45, it took 2 hours to reach Kolkata, I had to wait for my bags to at the baggage claim because toiletries have to be checked, and the train station is on the opposite side of town from the airport. I was stressed the entire time. I’m convinced SpiceJet is the Southwest Airlines of India…xthey’re cheap, have only one type of plane, fly only domestic, and don’t feed you. You know how in the US cab drivers are stereotypically Punjabi Sikhs wearing turbans? In Delhi, it’s no different; they monopolize transportation. The security guard at the Metro was a Sikh, my cab driver was a Sikh, and the airplane pilot was a Sikh. This could be because they have always been drivers, since Hindus are often superstitious and refuse to begin journeys on certain days. After getting my bag and running out of the Kolkata Airport, I caught an expensive 370 Rs prepaid yellow taxi to Howrah Train Station. After the taxi, I had a grand total of 50 Rs ($1) on me. We drove through dark back alleys of the metropolis. I was nervous because there was only 40 minutes to reach the train before departure, and it’s an Express Train, which are rarely late. We crossed the famous and huge Howrah Bridge over the Hugli River, where you could see the enormous lit-up trainstation. It looked like Buckingham Palace or a huge Las Vegas Casino, the biggest train station I’ve seen so far. This is because Delhi has three large train stations and Mumbai’s are all in a line where people get on and off up and down the length of the Island. Kolkata, on the other hand, is India’s second-largest city, it’s compact, and serves as a gateway to the entire Northeast and East India. Specifically Howrah Train Station serves all traffic going West and South, which is 90% of traffic. It’s basically like saying one airport in NYC services all domestic traffic going south or west. This was exemplified by the fact that my train was on Platform #21. 21 platforms. I got out of the taxi and ran to my platform, through a sea of people sleeping on the ground, yelling, running, walking, and standing. It was pure pandemonium. I had to barge through mobs waiting for the floodgates [unreserved section of the train] to open. I got to the platform and the train arrived five minutes after I stood there, sweating because of the 80-degree sticky humid weather and the frantic run. I was relieved to sleep in my reserved seat, and although surprising, I wasn’t mugged this time.

Tuesday, November 7 Metro Red Line, Indian Circus

Today was a weird day. I spent the morning at the study center uploading photos, Facebooking, calling travel agents, and faxing documents so that I can obtain a foreigners’ license to go to Sunderbans National Park in West Bengal. Then I took the Metro to Kashmere Gate, and for the first time ever, changed to the Red Line, and rode it to Netaji Subhash Place, in NW Old Delhi. The Red Line runs on a completely elevated track, and the views of Delhi are superb. It runs through a bunch of dense residential areas, where streets are only meters wide at points, and are enclosed by five-story peach, beige, or light blue concrete cubic buildings. Black water tanks sit on rooftops, and laundry hangs from every balcony. We passed a series of polluted black rivers, their banks lined with garbage, pigs, men peeing, and squatter slums built of mud and scrap metal. Netaji Subhash was an outpost of affluence in this otherwise destitute area. I waited for a lunch thali for over 40 minutes, so I got mad and demanded a refund at some restaurant called the Red Tomato. I walked over to the big open dirt space to watch the Amar Circus. It cost 150 Rs for the 3-hour program, and was well worth the money, not eating because of, and taking the Red Line to get to. I love circuses; always have and always will. I really like watching people do amazing things that I can’t do, watching crazy animals do tricks, and of course, circus freaks. Basically it was the Indian version of a really fun American circus. All the performers were Indian (and many looked like they were from the Northeast States) except for the really good ones, who were Russian. A large team of 20 young guys were the rigging crew, who basically did all the stage setup for the whole time. First they had a parade with camels, horses, and all the performers dressed up in skimpy costumes while cheesy music live music played. A bunch of trapeze artists (40 year-old men and women in tights) swung from four flying trapezes and caught each other, etc. Between each act they have entertainment, mostly midgets and clowns. The clown was supposed to be a freak with a high-pitched voice; instead, he was just an Asian man whose voice sounded like a mix between a Vietnamese woman and Chris Tucker. The midgets kept hitting each other and meeting kids. There was one skit where the midget was getting a haircut, and they were making fun of his size by have a huge pair of scissors and razor. And then he asked where he was from, and the midget replied “Chandni Chowk”, known in Delhi for being just pure pandemonium. It was really un-PC, but kind of funny. Then they had a bunch of female gymnasts twirling plates on sticks, walking on tightropes, riding unicycles, balancing on balls, and doing crazy stretches, that looked like erotic poses. I was mesmerized by one gymnast in particular, who was incredibly small and flexible, and extremely attractive. Then I realized she looks exactly like Ronoch, and then it was kind of awkward. This one guy drank at least 30 glasses of water, and then spit it all out in one long stream. I was thoroughly impressed. Dogs were riding bicycles, horses were kissing, and parrots were going down slides. Gymnasts did all sorts of flips, and a woman caught cups and saucers on her head. Daredevils went off jumps on motorcycles and Jeeps, and a pair rode around in a sphere on motorcycles, barely missing each other with each pass. But these were chump change compared to the Russians. The hula-hoop lady must have been twirling 30 hoops at a time. A man was holding up a lady and little girl, and twirling them around like figure skaters. A guy juggled and breathed torches of fire, then juggled a huge water pipe with his feet. An acrobat woman was doing flips and crazy poses on the high trapeze. The male gymnast was doing all sorts of gymnastics on 2 strings hanging from the ceiling. How are the Russians always so good in gymnastics? Do they just teach everyone how to do this stuff? I was a happy camper after that. I went back home for a little while before getting a bite to eat at Khana Unlimited because I was starving, and ate my 121 Rs worth.

Monday, November 6 Saddam Sentenced to Death, Kathakali Performance

Apparently Saddam Hussein and some of his henchmen are sentenced to the death penalty, which is likely to cause terrorist attacks in Iraq and who knows where else. I was in the study center today and six out of six of the newspapers had the headline: “Saddam gets death penalty, Saddam to be executed, Death to Saddam”, etc. I spent the afternoon eating and making travel arrangements for my trip to West Bengal and Orissa. I then took a series of buses to South Delhi for a Kathakali performance. Kathakali is a type of dance performace from Kerala, the southwestern tip of India. The plays are usually based on the Hindu epics, used to tell a story. Through heavy makeup and extravagant costumes, the actors dance to show every human emotion. A fun part of any show is the preparation. I got to the venue in a really posh area of South Delhi, through a bunch of deserted forests. Downstairs there was a whole room filled with actors and makeup artists. The process is both lengthy and careful. First, the colorful makeup is applied to the face, which is different depending on the character. usually a yellow base coat, with black, red, and gold around the eyes. The cheeks are covered in white paste, onto which foam gill-looking wings are affixed. Then the actors are dressed in blue or white velvet shirts and white tights. Armbands, and bracelets are placed on the actor’s arms. Flowery and gold and mirrored necklaces are worn around the neck. Then Bells, and a sash and large girdle are placed on the legs. Then a huge puffy white or gold skirt is wrapped around the waist. After that, the actor’s head is wrapped in a bandana, before securing the large gold or white headdress. The final touches to get into character include putting seeds in the eyes to make them red, which evokes evil for demon characters, or beauty for females. It takes hours to prepare one costume, so it started before 5:00, and the show started at 6:30. Music was provided by shirtless bearded Keralan men in white skirts with gold trim. They beat drums and bells, while women, also in white skirts sang. There was first a dance with mostly kids, because it is a center for Kathakali training. Girls, boys, and people of low caste all performed, which until recently was not the case. The dancers made hand gestured, gyrated their huge hips, pounded their bare feet thus sounding bells, and sometimes screamed. Their faces were easily visible with the makeup and white gills, plus gestures are exaggerated. The coolest part is their black makeup surrounding the striking white eyes, which they bulge, and move from side to side while mischievously grinning. The second performance was a nice courting between Ram and Sita, and the final was a scene from the Ramayana. Hanuman, who looks more like double-chinned Baloo from Jungle Book than a monkey, tricks Ram into believing he’s just a normal annoying monkey, but then he reveals himself and blesses Ram’s journey. It was actually really entertaining, I was satisfied.

Sunday, November 5 EAP Group Update, Confidential

I spent the day doing nothing, going online, eating with the house at the All-American Diner and Fiesta, and watching American Pie. So let me tell you about this past week back in EAP Delhi. First of all, let me just say Thank God I wasn’t here. Our EAP group should have a Real World made for it; it is anything but a normal group of students. We have complained about Dev Dar, screwed over and burned bridges with three landlords, and had parties where people get molested. Something bad always happens when the EAP Group gets together. And something very bad, and extremely tragic happened this time. Let's just say, four people are going home immediately and one is already home. I'm not going to say it in my blog because, well, I don't think it's appropriate to do so.

Friday, November 4 Tourists in India, Diversity, Pushkar, Train to Delhi

India probably gets such a bad impression of tourists. There are like 5 kinds of people who come to India: Businessmen and politicians, who only stay in five star hotels and are chauffeured from meeting to meeting; Old European tourists with huge cameras and bucket hats, who only stay in five star hotels and are chauffeured from the Taj Mahal, Agra, and Jaipur; Rich Non-Resident Indians living in the Diaspora, who only stay with their relatives and are chauffeured to and from their houses; Young Western hippies who read the Lonely Planet coming to gain some sense of enlightenment, either through meditation, seeing poverty, or drugs; and refugees or immigrants fleeing from awful countries like Tibet or Bangladesh. So, the Indians only see a small and misleading sampling of foreigners. I’m sure they have some crazy stereotypes about people like me. It must not be all bad, though, because they’re very curious, friendly, hospitable, and generous to non-Indians. What’s weird is that there are virtually no American tourists. They are all too scared, I imagine. They think India is 1) Like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, 2) Too far away to spend money to get to, 3) Not a Hawaii, NY, LV, or Disneyland so why leave the country?, 4) Essentially a shithole where black and brown people wearing turbans and saris live in slums, trash, and poverty. I will attempt to defend them by saying these conceptions of India are true to a degree. All of the above instances are true. However, if you travel to India, the scope is not so narrow at all. It’s like saying that all US Americans are white, Protestant, rich, materialistic, of loose moral character, and beautiful. If you live in Beverly Hills, then yes, this is true. But I bet that if you ask any American they will say that they are normal, middle-class Americans, and that America is a diverse melting pot (ok fine salad bowl if you want to be PC). But I challenge you to think about India in the same way. I know you don’t honestly think that there isn’t some diversity within the population. Well then let me give you these facts: In terms of area, India is a subcontinent. It is 3,287,263 square km, making up 2.4% of the earth’s landmass, which puts it as the seventh largest country. It stretches from China to Pakistan to Afghanistan, and shares borders with all other South Indian nations. It has every type of landscape; vast fertile plains in the north (Indo-Gangetic Plains), the highest mountain ranges in the world (Himalayas), 7,516 km of coastline ranging from mangroves to rocky to sandy to coral reefs, arid sandy desert and scrubland (Thar and Ladakh Deserts), cool wet temperatures (Himalayan foothills), huge rivers (Ganges and Brahmaputra), and verdant jungles (Deccan Plateau). India has 1.1 billion people living within its borders, or 1/6 of the world’s human population. This means it has almost twice as many people than the whole continent of Africa. It is the world’s largest democracy. India is also a nuclear power. It has a rich history, and one of the oldest civilizations in recorded history. India has been invaded by Central Asians, Persians, Turkish Muslims, the Chinese, and the British. Four major world religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism) started here, and every major religion is now practiced here, including among the former four, Islam (it has the world’s second-largest Muslim population to Indonesia), Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Judaism, and tribal religions. In terms of linguistics, 1/3 of the world’s languages are from India. There are 11 official languages, of which English is the administrative and is second wordwide in terms of number of speakers, Hindi/Urdu (which is actually a hodgepodge of Sanskrit, Indo-European languages, Arabic, and Persian) ranking 3rd, with Bengali and Punjabi also in the top 10. India has three cities with populations (only the official numbers) exceeding 10 billion (Mumbai, Kolkata, and Delhi), and over 25 cities with populations over 1 million. And 75% of the population lives in rural areas. Style of clothing ranges from the latest imported fashions to saris and loincloths. India is home to extremely wealthy people like the Tatas and the Birlas, it is home to a growing 300 million-person middle-class population, and it is home to hopelessly destitute individuals. In fact, 1/3 of the world’s poor live in India, and it is also one of the largest centers of high-tech, IT, and telecommunications in the world. Its infrastructure is also diverse; it has the world’s second-largest train network, some of the world’s finest medical facilities, one of the largest and most developed phone (landline and mobile) networks, and roads with bus service anywhere in the country. Genotypes range from Mongoloid Tibetans and Burmese, to central Asian Kashmiris with brown hair and green eyes, to tiny Bengalis, to dark Tamil southerners, to distinctive tribal Dravidian peoples, to large Punjabis, to pale Indo-Europeans. Every color of skin, every color of hair, and every facial feature can be found within India’s population. With all of these facts, clearly India is a diverse salad bowl, like America, but even more exaggerated and extreme. You can go from walking through garbage, urine, feces, dirty water, and squatter slums to the world’s most expensive shopping malls, restaurants, and luxury hotels. You can be riding in a bus beside the latest Mercedes, a huge semi truck, a tiny Suzuki, a bicycle, a tractor, a cart being pulled by a water buffalo, a bicycle rickshaw, an auto rickshaw, cows, dogs, pigs, and pedestrians. Well I think I’ve beaten the dead horse to death again. I wasn’t feeling well (my stomach hurt), so I took food and sightseeing off for the day and lounged around the hotel and went shopping and bought myself some poofy Afghani Aladdin pants, they’re great! Then we had to check out and find a taxi to take us to the train station in Ajmer, a city over. That was a hassle; the guys didn’t show up to pick us up, so we had to try and negotiate with the taxi drivers themselves, who were all fiercely yelling at each other when they would make the price lower. We finally got a stylish Ambassador and drove through the winding hills and down again, to Ajmer, a little Rajasthani city on a like, like Pushkar. The train was waiting for us at the station. For the first time, I took a Chair Car. It was pretty nice; it cost about $20, which is about $15 too much, and why there were only really rich Indians and foreign tourists. Hence the reason it announced in English at every stop some little brief intro straight from a guidebook like, “Delhi is the capital of India, the world’s largest democracy. It has endless shopping and dining opportunities, as well as being the gateway to Northern India. We will be stopping here for two minutes only”. The ride, even though it was a Super Fast Shatabdi, took seven hours. It was like riding on the plane; you get your own reclining seat and tray table, they keep feeding you every hour, and storage is up above. It was pretty comfortable, with ample legroom. We de-boarded at New Delhi Station, and took the Metro home. It was a good trip, but we later were to learn that back home, things were anything but good.

Thursday, November 3 Pushkar Camel Fair

We got into Jodhpur Station in the early morning, and Nikhil had to speak Hindi to negotiate the fare, which was massively overpriced at 600 Rs for 2 hours. Oh well. It’s nice to be traveling in a group because, for once, I don’t have to find out everything myself. Actually I’m taking the opposite approach and instead not doing any planning. The drive was boring and we listened to some random Arab mix, which featured some hit song called, “Excuse me, to please”. We got into Pushkar around 10 am, and had a cab pick us up. And by cab, I mean a guy with a cart for our luggage that he takes to the hotel while we walk. Pushkar is a holy Hindu city on a calm lake at the edge of the desert. There are over 400 temples, and it is said to be the site where Brahma (the creator) dropped a lotus flower, and it is now home to one of the few Brahma temples in India. Because it’s a holy town, public displays of affection, non-veg, and alcohol are not allowed. This month is Karthik Purnima, the auspicious time for Hindus to bathe in Pushkar Lake. This is actually the main reason for the Pushkar Fair (Pushkar Mela), and now has become synonymous with the camel festival, which coincides with this date. What this means is that it’s a crazy time to be in Pushkar. The morning was gearing up for a lot of excitement. The fair started yesterday, and goes for two more days. The Pushkar Mela is the largest and most famous festival in Rajasthan, and is a massive congregation of camels, horses, cows, livestock traders, Hindu pilgrims, and tourists. Huge open spaces were converted into campgrounds, with luxury tents for foreigners. We walked through the entire town to our hotel. It was hard to walk through the bazaar in the huge crowds. We reached the hotel, and they lied to us because they wrote down our reservation a month ago saying it would cost $3 for a room, but now they tried to charge $15. So we left, and as we were going, the lady was grabbing hold of Snehal. Luke basically pushed her away, and she started cursing us and our trip, so Nikhil for some reason paid her 500 Rs. We walked to the Hotel Om down the street, and checked in and had an unimpressive buffet. Then we walked through Pushkar to see the goings-on. The bazaar was lined with temples, stairs to ghats on the lake. Lepers and elderly scantily-clad sadhu men with dreadlocks and walking sticks begged. Street vendors sold marigolds, dried bhang, jewelry, keychains, and prasad. The actual shops catered more to tourists, selling sweets, swords, fabrics and readymade Indian garments, CDs, postcards, and handicrafts. Spiritual Hindu music, chanting, voices in numerous languages, and the smell of incense, fried foods, sweat, urine, and shit filled the air. It was the most eclectic mix of people I have seen in India. Not surprisingly, there were a lot of foreign tourists, all speaking French or England English, with their dreadlocks, Neoprene pants, bucket hats, backpacks in the front, and huge SLR cameras. The rich Indians also had a presence, speaking English, wearing bug-eyed sunglasses, and talking on their mobiles. Rajasthani villagers in bright turbans, white kurta, colorful saris, and gaudy jewelry were also everywhere, many of them livestock traders, local residents, or tourists. And Hindu pilgrims milled around the ghats, many of them with faces painted, and saffron robe-clad Sadhus with dreadlocks and walking sticks. They have come to bathe in the sacred lake to wash away their sins. It was fun looking around at the shops and just people-watching. After the main street bazaar (which, like Mervyn’s, probably generates 50% of its yearly revenue this weekend), we got to the fair part of the town. On a big plot of dirt stood dozens of carnival rides from little spinning airplane rides to ferris wheels. It was loud with music and people yelling on microphones. We saw a magic show, and I was stunned and still don’t understand how they jab 20 swords into a box with a woman inside, pull a rabbit out of a hat, and how the water jug keeps refilling on its own. There was a sports arena with events like a dog show, but with well-groomed camels. There was also a game called kabaddi, essentially a homoerotic game of tag where a bunch of men in tighty-whiteys wrestle in a sandpit. We walked around and finally saw the main livestock trading grounds, an enormous collection of all kinds of Rajasthani livestock including cows, horses, and of course, camels. Since our pelvis’s killed from the camel safari, we decided not to ride camels when accosted by about 20 hawkers. Instead, we took a leisurely ride on a camel cart through the livestock grounds. We saw a milking competition, which was actually kind of sad, considering the cows had udders hanging down to the ground, about to explode. It hurt watching it. They ultimately filled 5 buckets of milk. Then we walked around, and saw a group of people around two horses fighting. But looking more closely, we realized the horses were tied up and people were trying to get them to mate, which they eventually did, but after a lot of kicking. Actually, most of the camel-trading took place last week, so today is only the day to show off. And show off they did, as Yoda would say. The camels were painted, had their fur shaved into designs (like with an Afro), and were adorned with gold jewelry, colorful necklaces, mirrors, and pom-poms. They were all on display, along with their caretakers and owners, rural Rajasthani men smoking bidis in their huge turbans, moustaches, and earrings. I had contemplated buying one and riding it to Delhi, but then they said for one camel the cost is $200. This is because they are extremely hard-working and strong, have great endurance and require little water or food, can traverse the harsh desert, and their gestation period is so long that they hardly ever reproduce. We watched the sunset behind the scraggy desert hills, and some guy came up to us and told us that he shouldn’t even try to sell us anything because we’re Indian-Americans, so we’re cheap. Indians, I feel, are very generous and not cheap; they give money to beggars when rich foreigners do not, and they offer hospitality and food to anyone. He also said he could speak any language, and we tested him in Spanish and then we gave him a hard one, Sanskrit, which he even spoke. Some tourist spent 30 minutes positioning this musician’s hand for a photograph, it was embarrassing. We went back to the hotel and ate dinner at one of the 30,000 rooftop restaurants. I got sick afterwards, I figure from the bhang lassi yesterday.

Thursday, November 2 Camel Safari, Jaisalmer Shopping, Bhang Lassi

Today my pelvis was excruciatingly sore from camel riding. I still wanted to ride on, but the rest of the group wanted to just ride back in the Jeep. After playing in the dunes and rolling down a huge hill, getting sand everywhere, we had breakfast and rode the camels back to the small town. Then we were picked up in the much more comfortable Jeep and rode back to the hotel. We spent the rest of the day lounging and shopping. We demanded our turbans because they weren’t given to us for the safari (because “the Jeep with the turbans got pulled over by the police and had to go back”). Please. I went shopping, and got a bunch of bindi (probably completely useless because who’s seriously going to wear those?), camel t-shirts (how touristy), and postcards. Some of the fabric shops had signs hanging on the blankets and clothes saying “No need for Viagra with this blanket”, “Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinski blanket”, and “Make your boyfriend less ugly with these clothes”. I ate lunch with Tara and Snehal at a rooftop restaurant and got two thalis, because apparently one was just not enough. Then after a while we went to the same restaurant for dinner, and I felt like I was in a time warp; it took two hours to get our food. After eating, I went to the government-run Bhang Shop. The menu is hilarious. It reads: “Bhang is marijuana/cannabis/dope/grass. Hydro cannabis 2 old KNW case pure or prepared with fresh food stuff prepared at this store. We do not sale hash, oil, opium, heroin, crack cocaine, etc. Just bhang is Delta 9 THC. Sale and use is legal. Bhang is non addictive it is a soft drug even regular user do not usually graduate to hard drugs. Bhang has verity of effects. Elevation of moods (mild euphoria), increased perception of color and sounds, ETC., promoter of relaxation and feeling of well-being, increased apetite and mild aphrodisiac, increase in heart rate and blood pressure mild and transient anti illness (nausea) like any drug, about 10% passes out in breast milk. Bhang to be taken by eat drunk or smoked. The effect depends on the dose taken, the effects of Bhang are quit unlike alcohol is simply a depressant drug its initial euphoric effects simply due to definition Bhang is mild stimulant, compression between alcohol is not valid. Do not anticipate or analyze just enjoy, you will not see pink elephant, jump of tall building, or turning into an orange, you will remember what you experience next morning.” Microsoft Word had a fun time spell-checking that passage. And I was generous on the punctuation. It sounds like someone with no knowledge of English typed this passage into Freetranslation.com, and they just printed it up. That, or they just had way too much Bhang. They sold cookies, lassies, juices, chocolates, and full cakes on order. I decided to get a Bhang lassi, because I’ve heard it’s pretty fun and when else am I going to get the chance to get one? So I had them make me a bhang lassi for $1 and I drank it. It tasted like a lassi, but with grass clippings in it. The other people in the shop were crazy. All had dreads, and all were French and Israeli, and talking about how much their feet stink. They had a few chairs and a poster of Shiva, like you see everywhere else, but his eyes were half-shut like he was high. We caught our 11pm train to Jodhpur, and I was again in sleeper class while the rest of the group was in 3AC. The only effects of the bhang were that it made me tired, made me stare at things for a while, and made me nauseas and have diarrhea the whole next day. It wasn’t lying when it said “nausea” they weren’t lying, apparently. I’ve actually been warned that these Bhang lassis will incapacitate tourists, for days at a time because they’re so strong. I thought it would be legit considering it was a GOVERNMENT-RUN establishment, but I wasn’t impressed besides the menu and the price.

Wednesday, November 1 Jaisalmer Camel Safari

A taxi picked us up for our camel safari, one of the things I have been looking forward to since I came to India. It’s touristy, but I love camels and I want to see endless sand dunes and little villages. We stopped first at a very ornate and embellished sandstone Jain temple overlooking a man-made lake, where priests covered their mouths to pray. A snake lives in the walls and will greet visitors, but it, like me, was tired. We were driven through the dusty dirt roads through the scrubland to a small outpost (meaning a single-standing one-room building), housing our Ships of the Desert. They are awesome animals, and are completely adapted to life in the desert. They can go for miles without water in the baking sun, and their feet are tough and wide enough for the sand dunes. They are huge animals. Their round feet are huge, and unlike horses they have bendy knees. These kind have a small bony hump, used for storing water and fat. They make a funny noise that reminds me of a Jurassic park animal. They look horrendously stupid moving their heads around on their long necks, with sleepy bug-eyes. The camels sat calmly chewing their cuds with their dirty ratty teeth, their bottom lip hanging down and flopping around with every bite. They sit really awkwardly, with their legs bent under their body, supporting their weight. The camels’ tails are like brooms, and swat at flies, seeming to painfully hit their little balls. They kept farting. The reins were connected to a piercing in their flat noses. They’re still one of my favorite animals. We hopped on the camels, which was scary at first because they get up on their knees first, and then fully stand up. We had to ride on huge saddles with lots of pads because they have a really bony hump, and we’re not used to all the jostling. Our two Muslim Rajasthani guides in turbans led us on a long walk through the barren scrubland, with nothing for miles except flat open plains, yellow dry dust, and thorny bushes. My camel kept running its head into Tara and sneezing on her, Tara’s camel kept farting, Luke’s camel refused to sit down, and Snehal and Nikhil’s camels had a peeing competition that lasted 15 minutes straight. The camels walked fine through the thorny dust, and they trotted, which hurt everyone’s butts. After 3 hours of trodding through the scrubby desert, we stopped for rest beneath the shade of a tree, and played cards while our guides cooked chapati and vegetables, using nearby sticks to start a fire (in the middle of a huge plain of dry grasses). The camels had their front legs tied together, so it looked like they were doing the moonwalk, as they hopped around . After a few hours and avoiding the heat of the day, we saddled back up. Each time we got back on the camels my ass hurt progressively more. Trotting was the worst, but we wanted to make the sand dunes before sunset. After stopping at a tiny town, we reached the place to camp on the edge of the vast Thar Desert. Two kids had to run to the next town just to get us soft drinks. The whole time, the only people I saw were three farmers, some stray kids that kept following us, a family on a camel cart, and a goat shepherd. Life would be hard out here in the desert, where goats outnumber people and water is so scarce that nothing seems to grow. It’s a far cry from the bustling metropolis of Mumbai or the fertile plains of Haryana. We set up camp on the first sand dunes we saw. The guides let the camels roam free, started dinner, and smoked bidis. We went exploring over the sand dunes. This is the first time I’ve ever seen anything like it. Big hills of nothing but sand stretched for miles. Nothing interrupted their rippling flow except the wind. It was so beautiful it looked like it should be a desktop pattern in Windows. A few thorny trees and grassy weeds sprang up here and there, and big black beetles and their little holes could be seen. Other than that, the dunes were completely barren and void of any life. It was completely silent and peaceful as the mild red sun was setting over the desert. We walked through the fine-grained sand, which felt good between our dirty toes. The dunes were like hills, and it was fun falling down the soft hills, that seemed to run like water. We had some rice, vegetables, and chapati for dinner in the dark. We set up the blankets on the soft (but somehow hard while trying to sleep) sand. We realized that prickly little thorns were stuck all in the blankets, so we had to blindly feel around screening for them. We were paranoid all night about beetles and scorpions, so we positioned all the blankets and saddles in a ring around us as we slept. It was so peaceful, and I slept like a baby under the stars. The bright moon came out, and as we were sleeping it gradually moved over, so we could see the beautiful bright stars. That’s the brightest I’ve seen the stars in a long time. There were thousands, small and big, and Orion’s belt and the big dipper were glaring. The brown, hazy Milky Way galaxy was visible, too.

Tuesday, October 31 Halloween...not in Santa Barbara, Jaisalmer in Rajasthan

A Jaisalmer hotel owner woke me up on the train to Jaisalmer, and I went to talk to Luke, Tara, Snehal, and Nikhil in 3AC, along with all the other Westerners. It’s weird I’m not in Santa Barbara getting drunk and dressing up for Halloween; the biggest and craziest party of the year. Instead, I’m in the middle of the Thar Desert in India. The terrain all the way to Jaisalmer was deserted (multiple meanings) dry scrubland, with no water or towns anywhere for miles. Then, all of a sudden, a yellow sandstone cubist mass of buildings emerged from the desert. As we got off the train in Jaisalmer, there were touts lined up at the exit, all holding up signs for hotels, and accosting every white person, asking them for hotel, camel safari, etc. During my whole time in India, I have never seen it this bad for touts. Competition was cutthroat, and we were able to get a hotel for 200Rs for two days, plus free taxis. We drove out of the station and had to pay a “station exit tax” of 50 Rs, probably just for the touts to pocket. We drove through the tiny town to our hotel, which had a rooftop view of the city. Jaisalmer itself is a single fort, which looks like a fairy-tale sandcastle above the yellow brick sandstone city, and the desert that surrounds it. It epitomizes desert splendor and ancient trade routes. Founded in the 12th century, Jaisalmer lies at the east-west axis of the Central Asian camel and train trade routes. This brought the town exquisite wealth, and can be seen in the nearby havelis, or mansions, with quintessentially Rajasthani ornate wooden windows and balconies. The fort itself was besieged many times, including one time for eight years. The development of ocean shipping, and the partition cutting off Pakistan, led to Jaisalmer’s decline, except now for the military and tourism. We spent the afternoon negotiating for a camel safari. The man quoted us at 10,000 Rs (2,000 Rs a person), which is a ridiculously huge profit margin. We went to another hotel, where they told us the exact same safari (all-inclusive) would cost 5,000 Rs (1,000 Rs per person), which was more reasonable. We finally got our hotel owner to bring down the price to 5,000. Then he asked who told us he would give us the safari for 5,000 at the other hotel [so he could go beat him up?]. We spent the rest of the day wandering through the touristy market in Jaisalmer. This town is so small that you can walk virtually anywhere. The buildings are all yellow brick sandstone. Shops with trinkets and Rajasthani fabrics, travel agencies, and restaurants lined the small streets, as well as cows and women selling anklets and vegetables. It was really touristy, with just about as many foreigners as Jaisalmeris. The town itself is dominated by the rising fort, which is a city within itself. 60,000 people (mostly running guesthouses, restaurants, and shops) live within the walls. You have to walk up curving pathways, designed for fortification. It has a square, and ornate carved balconies embellish the sandstone walls. There was a maze of tiny cobblestone paths leading from shop to shop. It was pretty cool, actually. The views of the yellow city and desert below were really good, too. We took a taxi to Gadi Sagar lake, where we rented a paddleboat to watch the sunset over the fort. We paddled around a while, and Tara and I paddled us under the archway of a sunken pavillion. We didn’t make it the first time. After that, we went to a puppet show, which was only Indians and really informal. There was a drummer and a kid wailing, for music, and only one puppeteer. It was hilarious, but not very good. We then went to a restaurant in the fort for dessert.