blog fail

So I want to apologize for completely failing at keeping up my blog this past month. There are so many things I didn't have a chance to post about--my internship, traveling to Hampi, the end of the program, trekking in the foothills of the Himalayas, visiting the Taj Mahal, seeing my Indian friends for the last time (for now). On top of everything getting crazily busy, my camera broke completely once and for all so I didn't have that many photos to update with. So for this last post I think I'm going to just upload a bunch of photos of things that have happened since Holi (in no particular order) and hope that suffices. Sorry for being such a bad blogger!

Travel week in Kerala: a canal in Fort Cochin

Travel week: on a ferry to the beach

Travel week: the view from the spice plantation we stayed at in Munnar

Travel week: the backwater-side hotel we stayed at in Alleppey

Travel week: Zach tonsilitis-ing out on the houseboat that took us through the backwaters

Sachin Shinde, one of the fifty farmers I interviewed for my internship with Nav Nirman Nyas, a rural development organization. If you want to know more about my internship, e-mail me and I can send you the paper I wrote on it. Or just tell you about it when I see you soon.

The coconut man scaling the trunk of the palm tree to remove the coconuts outside our flat.  My baba was out picking up some patis for breakfast when he arrived and I had quite an adventure trying to figure out what he was telling me in Marathi. For a while I thought something had happened to my baba, like he had hurt himself on his bike or something, but it turned out the man was just there to remove the coconuts and wanted to talk to Baba because he's the secretary of the housing society. 

Hampi (stolen from Melissa)

The river we crossed in Hampi to get to the side with waterfalls and the lake. We rented motorbikes for the day and drove around to the waterfalls, went swimming in the lake, and hiked to the Hanuman temple. It was a great day, except for the whole losing my wallet thing. Stolen from Melissa.

VICTORY. At the top of Dondital. Stolen from Melissa.

Yeah, that's the Himalayas behind us. NBD.

Saying goodbye (and not crying).

Hindi word of the day: रंग (rang - color)

Another very very delayed post. So a month ago (yikes) Christie, Julia, and I went to Jaipur for Holi. It was kind of a random decision to fly that far up north for one weekend. We'd been talking with our Indian friends here and they explained that Holi isn't really that big of a deal in Maharashtra--it's mostly a northern tradition. Since the primary reason I chose to come to India spring semester was to be here for Holi, this was pretty disappointing news for me. So when Christie suggested we head to Jaipur that weekend, which also happens to be the weekend of the Elephant Festival, I hopped on board. It also meant I got to visit Aviva, a friend from Wes who is studying abroad in Jaipur this semester.

We flew into Jaipur on Friday, checked into our hotel, and met up with Aviva and some of her friends from her program (she's doing the SIT sustainable development and social change program). It was so interesting comparing our programs, especially since their focus is almost exactly the same as ours. Their program center is in a residential area (ours is on the Fergusson College campus) and because Jaipur is a much less safe community than Pune it's tough for them to meet new people, so they don't really have Indian friends or hang out with Indian students the way we do. On the other hand, their language component is INCREDIBLE. They spend almost half their day studying Hindi and have gotten so good--Aviva's Hindi is almost as good as mine even though I took it for a year and a half at Wesleyan. They also spend the last month of their program doing an independent research project anywhere in India they want to, which they organize themselves. While it sounded like an amazing opportunity, it made me grateful that the Alliance sets up our internships for us (not that that part of our program is in any way perfect, but that's another story that I'd be happy to talk about via e-mail) and that we get to spend our last month in our homestays.

After hanging out for a bit, the four of us went to dinner--where we had the most delicious north indian thali ever--and then to see Patiala House, a recent Bollywood film, in an amazing, beautiful old theater. I finally got to check "see a Bollywood movie in a theater" off my list and it was pretty fantastic. Although I understood basically nothing despite studying Hindi, I was able to follow the plot enough to enjoy myself--and to clap and whistle along with the crowd during climactic scenes.

Aviva, Julia, and Christie in the theater where we watched Patiala House.

The next day we headed out to the Old City to meet Aviva and go shopping. Jaipur is really hectic and we got harassed way more walking down the street than I ever do in Pune, but shopping was fun. The Old City is completely pink (Jaipur is called the "pink city" because many of its buildings are painted in pink, a color traditionally considered to represent hospitality) and it really does feel old--so much older than any part of Pune.

Inside the Old City

Shopping in the old city was a blast; everything is way cheaper than in Pune and there was lots of stuff you can't find in other parts of the country. I bought three pairs of shoes (not ashamed), some bangles from a boy we saw making the bangles in an alley off the main road, and an amazing leather satchel, which is something I've been looking for for the past several years.

Since the next day was Holi, many shopkeepers were also selling colors (the powder that everyone throws on each other or mixes with water and shoots from squirt guns). I had kind of a freakout seeing the fulfillment of all my India dreams about to come true and bought some bright green powder. Walking down an alley later, a few guys in a shop stopped us and asked us to color them. We opened our bags and threw some color onto their faces and they threw it back on us. After having been shouted at by rickshaw wallas and had motorcyclists stop and ask me my name all day, it was really refreshing to have a genuine, non-harassing interaction with men.

A vendor in the Old City selling colors

Shopping in the Old City. Sorry the image is flipped--I don't know how to rotate it on Blogger.

The boy who made my bangles

The bangle shop

Elephants walking through the Old City on their way to the Elephant Festival

Fabric shopping

After shopping and stopping for some delicious sweet lassis, we headed to the Elephant Festival, a giant touristy festival that Jaipur throws every year around Holi. We watched a parade of painted elephants, some costumed dancers, ridiculous tourist activities like tug-of-war and balance-the-pot-of-water-on-your head-while-walking, mingled with some creepy Indian men who wanted to color us, and then headed out.

A random Italian (I think?) man who asked to play with Christie's colors and then ended up spending the next half hour painting her face in an elaborate pattern. Again, sorry for the rotated image.

This elephant had a tiger painted on its face--the tiger's eye was the elephant's eye. It was pretty cool.

Hanuman and some demons dance it up.

Afterward, we went back to Aviva's program center with all her program mates to make the critical decision: where to spend Holi. The SIT staff had warned their whole program that Holi was dangerous in Jaipur and that it was not safe to go out on the street, which had originally been our plan. As a result, their staff had booked a hotel for their whole program where they were planning on playing in the courtyard and invited us to come. We texted all our Indian friends to ask their advice and went back to the hotel to see what tourists had said online. It turns out it really is unsafe--forums on the topic were full of horror stories about girls getting groped just trying to cross a street from one building to another and drunk men attacking people. So we changed our plans and decided to join Aviva's program. Needless to say,  I was pretty disappointed by this. I felt grateful that the SIT staff were so welcoming and that we had a place to go, but since I had been looking forward to celebrating Holi in India for the past four years, I was upset that I would be spending it with a group of American kids rather than out on the streets with Indians.

But, surprise surprise, the next day turned out to be one of the best days of my life (Zach is judging my cheesiness as he reads this over my shoulder right now which is a rude and annoying thing to be doing in the first place) and completely lived up to all my expectations. 

We started by getting into our Holi clothes (cheap white clothes that we never intended to wear again) and heading up to the roof of the hotel to get a look at the "crazy" streets. Turns out they were completely empty. . . but we did see a group of kids playing in a construction site down the street and off we went to join them. After scaling a wall and jumping through a few bushes to get to the construction site, we played an epic round of Holi with their entire fma

Christie and I play Holi with the family 

Eventually, we headed back to the hotel (got groped on the way by some men who stopped their bikes to play Holi with us), welcomed the SIT staff as they showed up, and had a massive celebration that lasted the entire day and included an open bar (!), a massive dance party, lots of squirt guns and powder, and awe tasty snacks. Aviva's program mates and staff were the most fantastically nice people ever and the entire day was amazing.

 Christie, me, and Julia after playing

Aviva's program's staff actually hired a band to start the day off

 The festivities

 More of the festivities

Exhausted and tie-dyed, we went back to the hotel, showered off, and I headed to Aviva's to spend the night. Her house was spectacularly, lavishly beautiful. It was three stories tall, had marble surfaces everywhere, and even had a yard with grass in it (which Aviva and I, as past Earth Housers, both had strong opinions about--she said they water it constantly). Her host mom, a wedding planner, was really sweet and served us a delicious dinner. North Indian food is definitely heavier than what I'm used to eating in Maharashtra but it's really tasty. Aviva and I planned our post-trip travel plans (which unfortunately have now been called off since she won a Davenport grant to study farming in Kerala--I'll talk about my updated travel plans later) and had a long catch-up chat as we fell asleep that night.

Aviva's room on the roof--so purty! 

The yard. Cray cray.

The effects of Holi

The next morning we had a tasty egg paratha for breakfast and I headed out to meet Julia and Christie to hike to Nahargar, a fort on a hill above the Old City. The hike was hot but the fort was amazing--it had views of the entire city and infinite rooms with beautifully painted details.

Nahargar

The view from Nahargar--sorry for the rotation.

One of the rooms inside the fort

Pigeons chillin'

Afterward we ricked through the Old City to Hawamahal, the wind palace. We stopped to haggle for our leather satchels and then headed in. Hawamahal was built to be a place where women (i.e. brothel women) could look out at the city and feel the breeze since they weren't allowed into public. It is more of a really tall wall with stairs going up to the top than a palace--it doesn't have bedrooms or sitting areas, but is mostly full of small nooks with windows.

The roof of the Hawa Mahal--you can see Nahargar behind it.

The facade of Hawamahal

Afterward we downed some lassis at Lassiwalla (a famous lassi bar), stopped by Aviva's program center to say goodbye to everyone, and caught our plane home.

In Jaipur they sell lassis in adorable little clay cups.

Hindi word of the day: किनारा (kinara - beach)

So I meant to catch up on the blog completely by today but unfortunately it was not destined to be. On the plane ride back from Jaipur, I started getting some nasty stomach pains that continued throughout the next day and then on Tuesday I woke up with a 103 degree fever, chills, feeling like I was going to pass out, and all the enjoyable effects that come with the flu. I'm better now but then last night was the AMAZING India-Australia quarterfinal cricket match and I had my final IPED paper due today so I ended up getting 2.5 hours of sleep last night and am now deliriously exhausted. Perfect time to post.

Anyway, I don't have all that many photos to post from Goa because I <cough>brokeanothercamera<cough> so I'd like to spend a bit of space talking about things I do other than travel. I realize that what I tend to post about on this blog is traveling on weekends, but I actually do things other than be a tourist sometimes. These past few weeks have been crazy busy with homework, which is (shockingly) much harder to do in India than at home. Not that I do homework at home either but anyway. My classes here are fantastic--despite the warnings I heard from every friend who'd been abroad and told me that classes are a joke on study abroad programs--but sometimes it can be hard to motivate myself to want to do work when there are so many other amazing things to do. Like last night, when I had the option of A) finishing my ten to fifteen page research paper on India as a superpower or B) watching India play Australia in the cricket world cup quarterfinal with my host fam. If this was a choose-your-own-adventure novel and you chose option A, you would be a total loser who doesn't deserve to read choose-your-own-adventure novels. Just sayin'. Watching the game was incredible. If India won, it would go on to play Pakistan in the semifinal, which would be kind of equivalent to Israel playing Palestine in terms of how violent/big of a deal/emotional it can be, especially since the winner of the semifinal is only one step away from winning the world cup. It was a nail-biting finish and when India finally got the four-run hit it needed to win, fireworks started going off all over and everyone was running around outside shouting. Abhishek texted me, "We are running wildly with a 10 ft. Indian flag! Fuck..! I love my country so much. =)  ." My host fam (Baba, his sister, and her two daughters--one of whom you saw in the sari post) and I went out for a celebration coffee. It was splendid. Unfortunately then I had to come back and finish writing my paper. So I downed two Diet Pepsis (Christie showed me a shop where they sell them here and I kind of freaked out. Finding diet sodas here in general is really tough, so seeing a Diet Pepsi was basically a miracle.) and got to work. When it hit 1:30 a.m. (A fairly early bed time when I'm back at Wes, but completely unheard of for me here. Usually 10:30 is pushing it.), I decided to go to bed. But the caffeine in my body decided otherwise. I fell asleep listening to the closest thing I had on my iPod to a lullaby: Elliott Smith. Advice: unless you want a night filled with the most terrifyingly bizarre dreams ever, don't listen to a suicidal songwriter to fall asleep.

ANYHOW. That was my explanation for why this post is the way it is. I had two hours of sleep last night and then today met Pooja for lunch and ate wayyyyy too much at this amazing Italian place so I am now nauseously overstuffed in addition to being deliriously exhausted. Okay, here's the Goa post.

Two weekends ago, Zach, Stefan, and I went to Goa. It was supposed to be a group of like nine people but everyone else dropped out at the last minute because they had tons of essays due the next week. So the three of us headed to the beach state on an overnight sleeper bus, which was an experience. It was AC'd up the yinyang so it was freezing cold and it fit two people to a bed which got a littttle awkward since there were three of us (yes, Stefan did end up sleeping next to a random stranger). But once we got to our hotel, checked in, and headed to the beach, all wazz well. For the next three days, we lounged on beaches, ate delicious food, and watched crazy tourists do crazy things. That's pretty much all there is to say about Goa because that's literally all we did. It was the most relaxing thing ever. Here are some photos:

The inconvenient dog. This dog (who I assume belonged to the hotel since he was always there) was adorable but also always managed to be in a location directly in our footpath, such as on these stairs which led to our rooms.

Loungin'. 

Hilarious Russian tourists who brought a bouquet of roses, used them to spell out 'Goa' in the sand, and then proceeded to do a photo shoot in front of them. This was the money shot.

View from Anjuna Beach.

A restaurant we ate at that felt like it was literally on the ocean.

I'll really try to get to the Holi/Jaipur post as soon as I get back from Kerala but for now I really need to go home and nap. Laterrrr.

Hindi word of the day: देर से (der se - late)

So I want to apologize for being extremely lazy about posting. It's been about three weeks since my last post and I have never felt more popular; all the harassing "you sure haven't updated your blog in a while" e-mails were actually really heartwarming. Thanks, team (phrase courtesy of Uncle Christie). I also realize that I chose a not-so-uplifting post to leave off on, so I want to correct that. While Dharavi was a challenging experience, I had some fantastic adventures in Mumbai. So, three weeks late, here's my Mumbai post. 

We arrived in Mumbai via a very luxurious train and disembarked at CST, the beautiful colonial train station.

A not particularly awesome photo of Chatrapathi Shivaji Terminus.

We dropped our stuff off at the YWCA, a fantastically nice place to stay right in the middle of Colaba, which is kind of the center of all the tourist sights in Mumbai, and headed to the Gandhi museum, which was really interesting but less in an I-feel-so-inspired way and more in a Gandhi-was-way-more-of-a-sexist-than-I-realized way and a These-diorama-puppet-recreations-of-the-key-moments-in-Gandhi's-life-are-pretty-hilarious way.

A puppet recreation of Gandhi meeting someone important. Stolen from Kelsie.

Gandhi and Indira Gandhi when she was a kid. Crazy.

Stefan: squatter extraordinaire

Eating kulfi, an incredibly delicious ice cream/pudding/hockey puck.

The view to the left from Christie's and my room at the YWCA.

The view to the right

That night we went to Leopold's, a super popular touristy bar in Colaba, and had some awesome group bonding time. We've been doing a lot of small group travelling on weekends, so it was nice to get to hang out with everyone.

Future Prestina and Preston

Mumbai is a spectacularly beautiful city and it felt absolutely amazing to be on an ocean. It also made me desperate to be on an ocean in which I could actually swim (stay tuned for Goa post coming up next), but it was still so nice to taste salt in the wind and hear the sound of waves. I forget sometimes how much I miss being surrounded by the ocean in every direction.

Sittin' on the bay along Marine Drive. 

The next morning Christie, who lived in Mumbai last summer, took me to an amazing cafe called Kala Ghoda (Black Horse) cafe. Mumbai is really cosmopolitan and the southern part, which is where we stayed, really didn't feel all that much like India. Almost none of the restaurants Lonely Planet recommends in Mumbai are Indian--most are European. This cafe definitely fit that description--they had black coffee which is basically unheard of here and I felt for a bit like I was on a different subcontinent. I had the most amazing cappuccino ever, officially breaking my promise to not buy coffee while in India. It was worth it.

Christie at the Kala Ghoda Cafe.

A headline from the morning's newspaper

That afternoon we headed to St. Xavier's, a gorgeous college in Mumbai, to hear about disability rights and the college's program for the blind. It was fascinating and probably the most accessible disability rights talk I've ever heard. The students also showed us the crazy technology they use in order to use the computer and internet.

An awesome sign in the St. Xavier's canteen.

The St. Xavier's campus.

After the program's official Mumbai trip ended, those of us who were staying the weekend headed to our hotels. After checking in, Zach, Josh, and I headed to Theobroma's, a famous bakery in Colaba, where we had probably the most fantastic brownies I have ever eaten.

The power went out while we were at Theobroma's and the waiters brought each table a candle. It was very romantic. For Josh especially.

That night Christie took several of us to Chowpatty, probably the most famous beach in Mumbai. We ate tasty street food and sat on the sand watching the moon over the ocean.

Chowpatty Beach has carnival rides on it. Interestingly, they are all hand-operated, including the ferris wheel above and a pirate's ship. Watching them is probably as entertaining as actually riding them.

Dosa walla. Nom.

Christie, Zach, Melissa, and Stefan on Chowpatty Beach. Stefan was too busy protecting his Chinese bhel to notice that I was taking a photo.

Chowpatty

 The next day, we saw the sights.

The Gateway of India--built to welcome the British king and queen in 1911.

The Taj Hotel Palace and Tower. The story goes that the Taj was originally built by one of the Tatas (an incredibly wealthy family in India that owns pretty much every business) after he was refused entry to a British hotel on the basis of his race. The terrorist attacks of 2008 occurred here but you wouldn't be able to tell at all today.

Boats on the water next to the Taj.

I'm not sure if you're technically allowed to just walk through the Taj, but we decided to do it because we wanted to see what it looks like inside and since we're white no one questioned us.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono during their stay at the Taj.

The Gateway of India

 Next we headed to the tip of Mumbai to see Kamala Nehru garden, a beautiful park with an amazing view of the bay.

Stefan standing in "the boot."

The view of the bay from Kamala Nehru Garden.

Teeter totter.

Kamala Nehru Garden.

Zach was set on getting to the southernmost tip of Mumbai, so we grabbed a cab (rickshaws aren't allowed in south Mumbai) and tried to get there. Unfortunately the taxi driver got really confused, started going the wrong direction, and stopped to ask a policeman to whom we were forced to show our Lonely Planet map and try to explain that we just wanted to go as far south as possible. Eventually he just let us out at some in the middle of a neighborhood and we decided to walk the rest. Turns out that the actual southernmost tip of Mumbai is a fancy shmancy super private gated community to which we were not allowed in despite being white. So instead we wandered around the streets . . . and magically happened to stumble upon Banganga Tank, an ancient historical sight.

One of the streets we wandered on the southern tip of the city.

A rooster chillin' at Banganga Tank.

According to legend, Ram stopped here while searching for Sita and his brother Laksham created the tank by shooting an arrow into the ground in order to quench their thirst.

Ducks and humans alike enjoy swimming in the only slightly gross-looking water.

We noticed that we were fairly close to the shore, so after hanging out at Banganga Tank for a while, we made our way through some alleys, down some stairs, and onto an amazing beach.

The beach. 

The rocks were slippery so it took us a while to make it out as far as they went, but we did.

The kids who lived in the slum that lined the beach were playing on it as we walked along. They had an entire cricket game going along this one strip of slightly even rock. It never ceases to amaze me how resourceful Indian kids are when it comes to playing cricket.

We sat on the beach to watch the sunset and slowly accumulated a mass of kids who came over to talk to us. I got to practice my Hindi and they got to use my camera so it was a win-win situation. They were so adorable.

This is Aat. I'm not sure why she is named "eight," but she was the most adorable, sassy, intelligent, sweet kid ever. We chatted for a while, sang some Bollywood songs together, took lots of photos, and she introduced me to her four younger sisters.

Aat took this photo. After we left the beach, we stopped to get some street samosas and actually saw her again. She introduced us to her mom, who was selling fruit on the street, so we bought some oranges and grapes from her.

The next morning, we headed out. Getting tickets at the train station was a bit of a struggle (vendor at Ticket Booth A tells you to go to Ticket Booth B, where the vendor tells you to go to Ticket Booth C, where the vendor tells you to go back to Ticket Booth A), but it didn't take as long as we had expected it to. Coming home to class and homework was tough after such a pleasant vacation, but I had Goa to look forward to.

Josh follows the rules.