My Pretentious Study Abroad Blog: Hindi word of the day: तेज (tej

I cannot believe I've now been here for over a month. According to the Kübler-Ross model, I am currently experiencing step one of the grieving process: denial. Why bother confronting a situation when it's so much less trouble to just keep going along as usual? (I'm sure this mentality will sound familiar to anyone who experienced my life last semester).

Anyhow, in celebration of having all the time in the world left in India, I went to a beautiful hill station called Lonavala this weekend. I've started using all my weekends to travel (my calendar is now booked up until April, excluding the weekend of Holi of course) because there is so much to see, even nearby. And Pune has started to feel like home, for realz, in a way that makes traveling even more fun. I feel like I've really started settling into life here. I wake up at around six every morning, go to yoga Monday Wednesday Friday, run Tuesday Thursday, walk/rickshaw to school, eat delicious breakfast at the program center, go to class, hang out/wander around/update my blog in the afternoon, walk home, and do my homework. I love having such a regular routine but it does make adventuring on the weekends even more appealing.

So this weekend Pooja invited us along to her friend Ashna's guest house in Lonavala. We took an hour and a half long train to the hill station which was one of the coolest experiences ever. The views from the train are beautiful. It travels through farmland and between hills and over rivers--and you can lean out the doors and watch it all as long as you're careful not to get decapitated by passing branches and light poles (obviously I did not participate in this dangerous activity, parents).

On the train: Stefan, Pooja, Nick

Zach and Stefan taking turns leaning out of the train.

A view from the train.

Another amazing part of riding the train is all the people you can watch and meet. We talked to students who take the train to school every day because there aren't any good colleges close by. We bought chikkus (delicious fruit that is kind of like a mix between a fig and a kiwi) from fruit vendors who would get on at one stop and get off at the next. A group of hijras, the community of Indian transvestites (please feel free to correct me if this term is incorrect, Wesfolk), came onto the train to ask for money and ended up sitting down and talking to us. They were incredibly nice and really hilarious.

The hijras who talked to us.

A drummer on the train kinda the way people play guitar on the ferry. He was awesome.

When we arrived in Lonavala, we stopped and had a delicious lunch at a place our driver knew and then hiked to the Karla caves, amazing caves carved out of the hillside two millennia ago.

The hike up--the path is lined with vendors blasting Bollywood music.

The view from the top of the hike.

The caves. The part with the windows is the part we could climb into.

The temple--those dark blobs on the roof of its entrance are some kind of hornet nest. There were hornets all up in the caves.

Poojface in front of the elephants at the entrance to the temple.

The temple.

Gollum.

After the caves, we stopped by Ryewood Park, a pleasant little garden-y place outside of town on the way to Lion's Point. Stefan and I climbed a water tower which had an awesome view and then we all swung on this giant vine that was hanging from two trees.

The water tower.

The view from the water tower.

Josh and Stefan are swingers.

The best part of the day, though, was without a doubt Lion's Point. We drove up a mountain--or as close to a mountain as you can get around Pune-- and watched the sunset from a beautiful lookout.

The view from Lion's Point.

Zach wishes he were an eagle like that time he meditated.

It legit felt like being at the end of the earth. The haze in the distance made it seem like there was nothing past the mountains we could see.

Monkeys! Poojster says they're evil but we all thought they were the coolest thing ever.

The sunset.

After Lion's Point we finally went to Ashna's amaaaazzzzzzing vacation house (it had a loft, four bedrooms, a kitchen stocked with biryani, and what at one point in time was an indoor garden but is currently dried out).

DANCE PARTY. (Left to right: Nick, Josh, Zeeshan, Pooja, Aprajita, Stefan, Anaradha, and Rajika)

On Sunday, we got breakfast at an amazing resort that had a pool. We all wanted to go swimming but instead just ate cheesy eggs. Oh how I miss brunch.