hours to go

America-bound in a few hours. 'nice to meet you,' in hindi, is 'aap se mil kar khushi hui'... which literally translates as 'after meeting you, happiness happened.' so true, India. I'll be back :)


Love,

लौरा

Jaipur/Varanasi pictures

I'm in a mad state of packing and running around to do last minute stuff, so I can't post full out, but last night I went through and edited and pulled out the good stuff from all of my Jaipur and Varanasi pictures. and let's be honest- that's the more interesting part of my blog anyway.... ;)

Stories to follow!

Love from Delhi,

Laura


Jaipur:



Varanasi:

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is my last day in India. I'm working on my Jaipur/Varanasi post atm! I'd like to say I'll write it before I get on the plane, but the reality is that I'd rather spend my last day experiencing than digesting, as much as I have enjoyed getting everything down on paper (or... so to speak). Unfortunately I think I have to spend a good chunk of tomorrow trying to avoid overweight baggage fees. BUT! I think I may be going to a mango festival tomorrow - totally makes up for it.

But... what would you do with one last day...?!

Exoticism versus... normalism?

I have posted this video several times, but re-watching it last night made me realize how I either now have done these things or know where I could do these things/know what he is doing. When I first watched this, I think I just didn't have a concept of India or of what it would be like to explore and see some of these places. It's bizarre to watch it now and see how I felt like all of the activities he is doing were so exotic.. but they're just life in Incredible !ndia! (well, maybe not the mud wrestling for me...). I also just noticed that he's writing the postcard on a copy of the book that I keep talking about, City of Djinns.

I've gotta come back and do all of these things!

HINDUSTAN, ZINDABAD! - identity crisis at the pakistani border, and my one night of delhi ridiculousness

Namaste! I've been travelling on my own for twelve days now, which means I've four days out from flying home! This post covers the week after the program ended on May 16 through the night before my Jaipur trip, the 21st.

The last day of the program was a sad one - on May 16 people left in groups for the airport, and the feeling was pretty surreal. In less than 24 hours, the people I had come to know so well over the course of 4 months would be thrown back into Western culture. A lot of conversations that day had to do with our fears of reverse culture shock - I don;t think I ever really felt culture shock here other than a few off days early on - I think I was so enamored with India that it just didn't really happen... it's the reverse shock that will be strange. I saw a tourist at a palace a few days ago wearing shorts and freaked out a little bit at the total different standards of modesty here - it's been a while since I've seen legs - even my own haha.

That day I stayed at the program center, having lunch and uploading pictures from the entire semester that one of my teachers took to a web album so that we all can see them. I also made all of my travel plans with Abid-ji, and he booked tickets for me for everywhere that I wanted to go (because he's awesome). Later, I went out to dinner with all of our teachers and Nisha and her Mom for chicken shwarma, a kebab chicken roll thing with spicy sauce in New Friends Colony.

That night, I returned to my homestay, and had pretty much normal homestay life for two days. Tuesday I finally made it to the tomb of Safdarjung, which was really cool because I had read about it in the memoir City of Djinns, a must-read if you're headed to Delhi. It's the tomb of the last Mughal emperor who was responsible for leading India in one of its wealthiest, most opulent ages. Ironically, when it was being completed, the age had come to an end, the workers got lazy, and completed it with all different kinds of stone instead of the pure white marble. Also, the inlay on the inside is missing, stolen after years of neglect. The tomb itself is also kind of neglected... the lawns are filled mostly with Indian couples sneaking smooches when they think no one is looking and government workers throwing shoes into trees to knock down the mangoes instead of guarding the tomb or whatever they're supposed to be doing.

You can see all the different kinds of marble at the top, and the grass growing in the cracks:

Safdarjung himself, and some sleepy policemen chillin in the tomb:

Safdarjung would be pretty upset about his stolen inlay, methinks: 

Wednesday night the last few girls left in Delhi and I made tacos for the staff at the program center. Goutam-ji was particularly fond of these, and exclaimed "now when I go to America one day, they will say 'what do you want to eat?' and I will say 'Tacos!' and they will be impressed and say 'oh, you know it?!?!'" Delicious. First time I've had avocado in a looooong time.

Thursday morning I met Nisha at the train station to leave for Amritsar. The autorickshaws were on strike, protesting a bill that mandates GPS to cut down on rickshaws ripping people off, so we cabbed our way there for three times the price (but still only about $5). The train was fast and we were in Amritsar in six hours. We had enough time to check in at "Hotel Le Golden," directly across the street from the Golden Temple, grab lunch across the street, and immediately take a cab to the Wagah border.

The view from our hotel room in Amritsar in the state of Punjab (that's a view of the fort around the Golden Temple!):

The border show didn't start until 6:30pm, but it was about an hour away and when we got there realized why they say to leave so early: the lines go on and on and on down a path described as a "ten minute walk," so I would guess it was a little less than a mile. Women stood in a line on one side of the street, and men on the other, as far as the eye could see. In the distance we could make out the stands where we would eventually see the show, but when standing in line pressed between two village Aunties who were a little less than half my height, and looking at the incredibly long lines, it seemed impossible that everyone would fit! And of course, the queue was Indian-style, so we were pressed up against one another trying to get in, with people knowingly running ahead of the line to squeeze in further up. It was a total madhouse. When Nisha grabbed my arm to run ahead and cut a few hundred people in line, I hesitated for a second and then decided that when in Rome... and also ran ahead. The thing is though, when you're a four foot tall woman from a Punjabi village, you squeeze in with the rest of the crowd just fine and can at least be a little more subtle about it. When you're a 6ft tall white girl, it makes things a little more complicated... I definitely felt some sharp elbows, but with the height difference they pretty much only came up to my hips, so no big deal.

Once we got through the security check, we somehow jumped a line for the VIP section, and then talked our way through the ticket check. We almost had VIP seats when one of the Rajput guards, who were definitely the tallest Indians I've ever seen in my life (each one was about 6'5") ushered us elsewhere. Damn. I really don't know how any of that finagling happened (and when I say that I mean I literally don't know - they were speaking in Hindi), but it reminded me of when my parents and I somehow got backstage to meet Michelle Kwan when I was 11 at the Champions on Ice show in Baltimore. Except these circumstances could not have been more wildly different.. In the end, however, we were found out and put with the foreigner quota, in a stand all to ourselves that later filled up with British tourists wearing Ohm tee shirts. I think I may have ruined our chances as the only person of non-Indian descent of the three of us.

The border show was absolutely wild. More wild than the show itself was just watching the crowd. People were dancing in the streets, both Pakistan and India were BLASTING music, and I saw the kind of nationalism that would rival the 4th of July, and they do this everyday! AND this was the off-season! Usually it is even more packed! There was a guy whose single job was to pump up the crowd, and he did basically everything but start the "wave." A chant started up, with people cying "HINDUSTAND, ZINDABAD!" Which literally translates to "LONG LIVE INDIA!" We also took pictures with some Indian 20somethings whose sole job it was to wave flags over our heads.

 Pakistan on the left, India on the right:

When it came time for the actual border ceremony, the Indian guards marched forward and did these ridiculously high kicks that looked like they were going to concuss themselves, officers from each side shook hands really quickly, and then they lowered the flags slowly, making sure one was never higher than the other. The Indian side was definitely crazier than the Pakistani side... and Pakistan was blasting music in a way that made when look like they were trying to compensate. They separated the women and then men into two viewing galleries which were not nearly as full as the Indian side, and there was no crazy Bollywood dance party like there was on the Indian side!

The two gates pressing up against one another:

Sunset in Pakistan: 

I had some identity crisis at the border, though... after months of living and breathing Indian culture, being put in the foreigner gallery with the Aussie and British tourists in capri pants and Ohm tee shirts with enormous DSLR cameras was kind of a shock to the system. I felt way more Indian than they did.. like I was definitely sitting in the wrong section. I felt too much Indian pride in the course of those few hours too feel like I deserved sitting with the tourists, even though, since the program is over, that is now what I officially am. I know it hasn't been that long, and I know that I am in no way "Indian," or trying to say I'm better than they were or something.. but I do feel like I have a better cultural understanding no that was hard won, and makes it frustrating when the guard saw no difference between me and one of the Ohm-tee wearers.

"Ohhhhhhhhmmmmmm:"

After the show, we got back in the taxi and drove back to Amritsar. It was already late.. around 8:30, so we quickly ran over to the temple to check out the view at night. It doesn't matter how many pictures you see of this place... nothing will prepare you for how breathtakingly beautiful it is. The temple is surrounded by water, and then tall walls. You enter through one corner, wading through a small pool to wash off your feet, and then cover your head out of respect. Like Mecca for Islam, the Golden Temple is the ultimate holy place and place of pilgrimage for Sikhs. The entire grounds are filled with people bathing in the temple waters, or bent over, head pressing the marble in prayer. It feels incredibly intimate to witness people making the sometimes one trip of their lives to their holy place. People were sleeping on the cool marble, tucked away from the crowds of visitors still flowing in even though it's the off-season and still hot after nightfall (over 100 degrees F) at 9pm. This is extremely sad.. but my camera battery died while we were there so I only got a few snaps!

We actually never made it inside, either, because at both 9pm and the next time we visited at 5am, it was completely packed with pilgrims. I hope to make it back someday and see inside, and get to show this beautiful place to someone else. That night we had dinner in the rooftop restaurant, and got up early at 4:30am to see the temple one last time and catch our train at 6:30. Nine hours later we were back in Delhi, and I had probably the most different experience I could have had following visiting the Golden Temple: a night out in Delhi nightlife.

I had gotten back to my homestay for only a few hours that Friday night when my friend Michaela called me and asked if I wanted to have dinner with her parents. They picked me up in an Ambassador cab (!!!), and we went out to Hauz Khaz village right past Deer Park, that place that I visited with the neighbor's family all those months ago back in February. We walked around there and checked out a few antique shops before getting back in the cab to try another place. On our way to Defense Colony, the cab ran out of gas, and we pushed the luxury vehicle to a gas station amid the cabbie's apologies as they had rented him out for the night so there wasn't much room for excuse... it was such a hilarious situation to be pushing an Ambassador down a main drag in Delhi, rickshaws and bikes and cars and trucks whizzing and honking past. We finally got to the restaurant for one of the best meals I've had in India, and the nicest restaurant by far that I've been to since coming here. It was called Swa Garth, and had lots of delicious seafood dishes (something that I'm craving about home! Maybe without all of the Indian spices, though...).

After dinner, they dropped Michaela and I off at a nightclub called Shalom, with plans to send the driver to pick us up later than night. It was my first time legitimately out at a bar in Delhi, and it was really weird.. Shalom was filled with 25-35 year old rich Indians dressed to the nines, where my cotton skirt and sandals just did not fit in. Michaela and I ordered two drinks, and when the bill came I realized it was one of the single most expensive things I've paid for in India - Rs 600 for a tequila shot - about $12. Whoops. Definitely the most expensive food item I have bought here by fair - that could pay for about nine or ten meals, more if you eat just snacky stuff.

After about 20 minutes we ditched Shalom because we felt so out of place and went across the street to Urban Pind, the iconic Delhi hotspot. Inside was bizarre.. it was a mix of western expats, people on business trips, Delhi students, hippie backpackers, and rich Indians. One of the hippie backpackers was outside and not allowed in because he was wearing flip flops... the hippie look gets you nowhere in India, a place where being clean and neat is important everywhere from temples to slums to nightclubs, apparently! There were also tall, thin 16 year old girls everywhere.. and we later found out that it was "models' night," which apparently is a weekly occurrence?  Though Michaela and I are both over 5'10", I don't think we were fooling anyone. There were also Indian male models everywhere, with slicked back hair and sunglasses and shirts with the top unbuttoned - so ridiculous haha. We ended up talked to some guys from Sweden who were on a business trip, but later just made our way to the dance floor to rock out to some Indian remixes and the same five American club songs that they had on repeat. The coolest moment was when the song Chaiyya Chaiyya came on, which is a song from the Indian movie Dil Se. My medical anthropology teacher from Tufts played this video for us in class last Spring, the week I decided to come to India as per her guidance. The remix was awesome, and I even danced with an Indian guy who like most of the men in the club had no problem spinning around and shaking his hips like a Bollywood star. When he introduced himself, he handed me his business card with en enormous IBM logo on it, which is I guess what he was trying to show off. When our driver wouldn't pick up his phone, he offered to have his driver take us home (whoah) which probably would have been a good option, but we kept trying for Michaela's parents to send the driver who ended up never coming. In all of the confusion, the guy, Rohit, asked for my number when we were still trying to figure out if we would take his driver home, and throwing the caution our teachers had given us to the wind about not giving our numbers out like you would in America because there are different rules between girls/guys.. I gave it to him, not realizing what I was getting myself into. Over the course of the next few days, I received about seven calls. Whoops.

For a while we waited outside the club for our driver, and a wedding organizer came up to us and asked if we would be waitresses for an Indian wedding two nights later. They needed 24 western girls, and were paying Rs 6000 each for the night (that's $130, folks). I got his number and thought about it - why not?? I had wanted to see a ridiculous Indian wedding... but then I talked to Azim-ji about it and realized the implications of why they wanted western girls... apparently it's a trend to have foreign girls serve rich Indians at event to show off wealth, and I realized it was probably not a good situation to put myself in, especially since Michaela was leaving and wouldn't be able to do it with me.

Eventually Michaela's mom took another cab from their hotel to the club to pick us up (only slightly bruising to our egos). To make matters easier, I just went back to the hotel with them, since M had an extra bed. It was easily the most luxury hotel I have ever stayed in. It was redonkulous. The staff was dressed in traditional clothing and would bow into a low and slow "na-mas-te" any time you asked for a water bottle or extra towel or walked by. It resulted in this bizarre exoticized Indian culture, and it was tempting to ask "doesn't this make you feel ridiculous???" everytime I was bowed to. I have been so many places in India and NOBODY DOES THAT. Maybe a head nod, sometimes clasped hands, but a full out bow, hands to forehead? And it wasn't just that... it was the whole experience. At breakfast, they had six different kinds of cheese, and all kids of pastries. Pastries?! Are you kidding?! COFFEE?? I wanted to stand up in the room full of western tourists and say THIS IS NOT INDIA, YOU ARE ACTUALLY NOT IN INDIA IN HERE. It's a bizarre, slightly selfish feeling, like they don't deserve to come back to the west and tell people they went to India, because it was so incredibly pampered... but that's not how it works. It was India, but just another facet of the many extremes. While I definitely having trouble reconciling the fact that I had just been in Jamkhed villages two weeks before and was now in luxuryville, it's wrong to deny any definition of India as more true than another. They somehow all exist next to one another.

Aside from that internal battle haha, the hotel was great. I woke up in the morning thinking "wow, fresh coffee, water pressure, central a/c, comfy mattresses..." and then realized those aren't exactly luxury things at home. Again, fearing that reverse culture shock..

That day I hung out with M and her parents. We went to Gandhi Smirti again, where I went with Mollyji right before ISP, and then to a cafe across the street from Urban Pind, so I snapped a picture of the club. The rooftop was the coolest!

An ambassador cab:

Bananagrams/speed scrabble. Fierce competitors. We even kept score.

Urban Pind as seen from across the street:

We played some Bananagrams and relaxed, and hit up FabIndia for the last time. M's dad is one of the producers for the show 30 Rock, so it was pretty hilarious to have to pause a game of Bananagrams while he talked to someone on his international cell phone about what they were going to do about "Tina (Tina Fey!!) showing so much since she's so many months along." Too cool.

I said goodbye and headed back to my homestay, and about an hour later we left for their cousins' house in Noida to pick up Arko, who had been staying with their relatives over the week. We stayed late and had dinner, and Avijit told the relatives about my identity crisis at the Wagah border. "Well yes, you are soooo much more Indian now!" Hahaha, I'm definitely more Indian than when I got off of the plane in February, but I don't know if I quite deserved that :) It was still nice to hear. I played "the Game of Life" with the cousins and Aura, and hung out with Andy.

We left around eleven and I had a train at 6am, and was still not packed. The drive home was really fun... we all sang along to Avijit's car mix, including Maa Rewaa, by Indian Ocean, which I posted on this blog a million years ago when we saw their concert at Dilli Haat. The kids particularly like the song because a big chunk of it is just saying "MAAAA REWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!" I packed and barely slept, bound for my first solo trip to Jaipur the next morning.

At time of writing, I'm actually in Varanasi, back from my trip to Jaipur and winding up my time in India (ack!!). I had to say goodbye to Aura this morning because she is flying to Calcutta and won't be there when I return to get my things from Delhi, have my last night at my homestay, and fly home (AHH!). Next post will be on the Jaipur adventures I just came back from!

Lovelovelove to everyone at home and even those reading from India. Hopefully I've said this enough to people from home and from my program, but I can't thank people enough for the love and support over these few months. Thanks for calling, skyping, messaging, reading, and commenting when you can. Staying connected has made this whole experience so much more enriching, because I have enjoyed sharing it so much! Thank you for caring, friends, family, teachers, etc.

Love,

लौरा

mussoorie's upsidedown sky, and what would have been the end?

I promise that I have tried to blog before now. An embarrassingly long time has gone by, and I've been slacking. Every time I have tried to write the following entry, I get a few days journaled and then I pass out because I've been so busy - which in terms of everything except for blogging, is a good thing. The annoying part is going back through and having to change everything to the past tense since it has been so long since I've written the beginning of this post.

A few months ago, I thought I would have been writing you my goodbye/reflection post or something that would feel obligatory at the end of a journey - I would have been home for eight days now had I left when my program was officially over! Jury is out on whether you will get something so formal when the time comes.. we shall see. The program is over, and I'm flyin solo :)

I know everyone says this, but I can hardly believe this time has flown by so fast... maybe it is because I've documented most of it week by week (well, mostly) that I can look back and realize how fast so much time has passed.. I also think it is because this program has crammed as much as was physically possible to cram into an extremely small amount of time. In four months, I have seen so many different snapshots of different parts of India. This blog should have been called laurainindia.blogspot.com, but 1) unfortunately that name was taken by a girl who wrote a starter entry and then never updated (lame) and 2) I think I made the name at a time when I was still pretty intimidated by heavy international travel and so was attempting to comfort myself in a small way by pretending I'd be in just one city as a home base. Maybe I'm psychoanalyzing too much, but the point is that I acknowledge that travelling definitely intimidated me a little bit before I shipped myself over to the other side of the planet for a while.

My last week in Delhi after ISP, as I've described, was pretty lame. I spent five and a half days just lying in the a/c at Sarvodaya Enclave and writing my paper. Well, "writing." I worked on it a little bit at a time... and not enough. On the overnight train to Mussoorie I was still rushing to work on it. At 5pm the day it was due, I was adding finishing touches. Predictable. ;) Probably the only exciting things that week were making Mother's Day mexican food which I blogged about last time, and seeing Aura's music performance at school. I really loved hearing her play the tubla, a classical Indian drum, and recorded it. I think I'm going to use the audio from it for a short video of my time here to show people (the full 800 pics would be a little excessive.. and probably boring).

So last week I met up with the other girls who had returned to Delhi (about half of us) on the evening of our overnight train. We went out to dinner at Khan Market (the really really upscale part of Delhi) and had these chicken roll things for Rs 120 each (that's about $3, folks), and then treated ourselves to chocolate crepes and frozen coffees. After all that time at Jamkhed, this was even more of a treat than usual. It was great to meet back up with people and hear about how different our ISP time had been.

That night we traveled by train to Dehradun, in the foothills of the Himalayas, where we picked up the rest of the girls who had done their ISPs there and then made the slow, early morning climb up by bus the side of some mountains to Mussoorie! Dazed and travel-weary but pumped to be back together as a group once again, we had a quick breakfast, reunited with our homestay roommates, and passed out for a few hours. In the afternoon, Molly-ji (sweet reunion!) and I had manicure/pedicures in the hotel spa (I know... I'm feelin the extremes of India right about now) and went out to explore Mussorrie and find some lunch! We ate in a restaurant that reminded me so much of a scene from a Bollywood movie called Jab We Met..and then eerily, one of the songs from the movie came on the radio! Bizzarro.

Street food in Mussoorie - 

this is julebi - basically a mini funnel cake, but crunchy and soaked in sugar syrup (and bright orange):

Mussorrie is in the foothills of the Himalayas, at an altitude around 8000 ft. The sun was warm, the breeze was cool... absolutely perfect weather. Molly and I also checked out the "Aquarium," which was actually about ten tanks with some pet varieties of fish. It was kind of a let down until we saw the piranhas which were... well, toothy.. and interesting. And obviously not native to India.

That afternoon we all relaxed back at the hotel, walked through Mussoorie some more. We ate Gol Gappa from who would become my favorite Gol Gappa guy. Rs 10 buys you four of them, made to order of course. My teacher Goutam ji saw me buy them and stood behind me and said in a dead pan voice "I have Dr.Chowla's number" (the lady from our clinic in Delhi). Mikey and Elizabeth, if you're reading this, don't tell Jonathan that I broke his rule of not eating the street food... it was just this one booth I swear! ;) Fortunately the mountain temps made for food that hadn't spoiled in the heat as is the common cause of street food sickness, and we had a great snack, and went back to him more than once.

Molly and I got dinner at a South Indian restaurant (pretty ironic considering we were as north as you can go before you're travelling into mostly snow covered areas). After dinner, we could hear an Indian band in the distance, so followed it to its source. A street band was warming up for a wedding and some of our classmates we already there listening. A crowd had gathered, and one guy who was with the band danced in the middle of the musicians. After a few minutes of watching, two of the girls jumped in to dance with him much to the delight of about 70 Indian men who whipped out their cell phones to take pictures of us making fools of ourselves. I recorded it but something malfunctioned with the video, so unfortunately the memory will have to just live on in my mind.. and naturally, unable to resist a budding Indian street dance party, I joined as well and we did a lot of the "lightbulbs" move, where you twist your wrists as if you're screwing in a lightbulb. It's a big hit in India. We were all completely out of breath and on kind of a high from the excitement (and the altitude), and headed back to the hotel.

The next morning we were all frantically attempting to finish our ISP papers. At 5pm, the deadline, a lot of us (including yours truly) were still putting the finishing touches on them (or in my case doing the entire bibliography) and then went out to explore Mussorrie a little bit more. We walked around Mussorrie some more, and took a cable car ride to the top of the mountain. The top was this bizarre market for magic tricks and toy but there were some awesome views.

We ate Momo's (dumplings on the roadside) and had dinner in a place that made us feel like we were in America - live music, cocktails... that's kind of a metaphor for the whole place which was having a serious identity crisis. i took this picture that night of a United Colors of Benetton next to a Saree Shop:

That night was also my friend Hannah's birthday!

The next morning was presentation day. We were asked to do 20 minute presentations on our ISP research. Since I didn't have anything to wear but cotton skirts or a saree, I went with the saree. It took me about 30 minutes to put it on, and when Molly told me I looked like I was walking like a Geisha, I realized I had wrapped it around my legs one two many times. Bhavna-ji whisked me away upstairs, and in a manner I can only liken to a cotton candy twirler at a state fair, whipped me out of it, pleated it, and twirled me back in it in under a minute. I think I got an A for effort but it will definitely take some practice.

We gave presentations on our research in the hotel conference hall. It was great to see how pumped everyone was about their projects. A lotta passion.. the best by far was my friend Katie who went to Calcutta for the month by herself, and did a project on health care access for female sex workers. Her interviews were incredibly intense and I don't think there was a dry eye in the house. Her research was incredible if only for its result of gathered narratives of an often overlooked or misunderstood population.

That night we walked around Mussoorie some more and then headed back for a party for the end of our program. We had dinner outside on the patio of the hotel, ate fresh chicken tikka, had mocktails and later cocktails, and had a dance party back inside the hotel conference room. It was a blast and we played both American and Bollywood hits - the best was at the end... it was only about 9:30pm but the hotel staff wanted to wind down the party, so they tried to just cut off the music in the middle of "Party in the USA" by Miley Cyrus... so all 18 of us screamed the rest of the lyrics, a capella style. Never underestimate the power of Miley Cyrus..

roadside tattoo? the real deal...

The next morning we had a few final presenters, and then had the afternoon off. I got henna in the afternoon, and then took a walk with my friend Hannah to take pictures of the mountains and get some soft serve. Funny how people pay $20 for some henna stars in Ocean City and it's only Rs 100 ($2) to have both arms covered in flowers in India... and they even use the same brand of henna cones. We also took advantage of the cheap eyebrow threading and shopping for Kashmiri textiles (beautiful hand stitching).

this is on the list of things my mom would like slash things i should have bargained for and gotten...

this looks like a girl who just wrote a paper (sleeeeeeepy):

Also available in Mussoorie: porters who carry heavy shit straight up the mountain for next to nothing (we saw a guy with a REFRIGERATOR strapped to his back and FOREHEAD), and other porters who push strollers around, and for Rs 20/hour (read: 50 cents) will push around your baby while you shop. Yeah.

Later we had dinner and packed up for Delhi. As we walked down to the bus stop in the dark, you could see Dehradun in the distance, about 2500ft below us in altitude. As there were so many outdoor fires, it twinkled, but it was bright enough that there were no stars. Goutam-ji pointed and said "look! Mussoorie! The town of the upside-down sky," hence the name of this post. The view of Mussoorie as we wound back down the mountain was breathtaking. It looked like Santorini at night, with all of the lights glittering on the mountainside. Another overnight train later and we were back in Delhi at the guesthouse in New Friends Colony.

Around 10am we headed to the program center for the last time as a full group. We went around in a circle and talked about the challenges that we had anticipated when coming on this trip, and how we felt about them now in what Azim-ji called a "fears appraisal." Most people talked about learning Hindi, living with a homestay, the incredible poverty+pollution (all big challenges, definitely). When it got around to me, I talked about how last summer I started to think that I wouldn't go at all. So many of the other girls are already thrice over world travellers.. so I tried to explain that it wasn't really just the leaving home part. When I had been at Tufts last spring and had applied on gut instinct and not applied to any other abroad programs, it didn't feel real. When I told people I planned to go to India in less than a year, they were for the most part extremely excited, particularly my best friends from school like Chelsea and Erika and my favorite professors like Kevin Irwin. In that kind of environment, were it was so far off and people were so supportive, it felt like a good decision. When I got home for the summer, and my parents expressed how worried they would be about me, and a lot of other people from high school (not my best friends, obvs, but others) or other adults would say "INDIA?! Why would you go there??" it became harder to remember why I wanted the adventure in the first place. In the words of someone my Dad knows, "what the s* would she do in India?" While it was said in jest, it added to the long list of people who weren't able to see it for the reasons I did: that it would be different, a learning experience, and an adventure. I'm not placing blame on anyone or saying that anyone tried to make me feel bad about going, but more that the added stress of so many people doubting my decision made me begin to doubt it myself.

Well... long story short, after reading the blogs of friends who went away in the Fall, I felt better about it. I got my shots. I talked to professors who had been there. I was back at school where study abroad is a common phenomenon and where people are pumped for you about trying something new. This was about the same time when my Mom and Dad (heyyyyy guys) started getting at least a liiiiiiittle less worried and a little more excited about it, too. Ok, maybe still just as worried. But definitely more excited ;) And then... I left! I was reading my post that I wrote at the beginning of all of this business about standing in the airport and having something inside of me metaphorically put both hands on the threshold of the door to the 747 and scream IF YOU WANT TO RUN BACK NOW IS THE TIME but boarding the plane anyway. I had reasons to be anxious. This is a crazy crazy place. But it's fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. And in that moment, I had to push that voice down and do it.


I'm not trying to be self congratulatory here.. but it was something pretty emotional to share with the group. Obviously I didn't say all of that in such detail.. it was more like I told them I had been anxious about coming, and other people were anxious for me, to the point where I started filling out applications for an internship in DC or something domestic, but in the end I got on the plane and the 17 other girls and the amazing staff are a huge reason for why it worked.

The next part was going around and saying two nice things about the person on your right. I got to gush over Molly ji who was the best person to explore Delhi with and experience our first set backs as travellers. She's a witty one. My friend Jordan had me, and said something that I didn't fully realize until she said it.. she said that she admired how much I love India. That I was constantly filled with wonder over simple Indian stuff. And.... I didn't fully realize it until then, but.. she's right... I think that's how I've gotten through the rougher parts of this trip. I really, really do love this country. A lot. Almost everything about it. And I have never been too sad to leave a place because I have this overwhelming feeling that this is far from my last trip to India. I think there will be many more where this came from. 4 months at a time again...? Well, baby steps. ;) Don't worry Mom and Dad. I love everything about Monkton, too.

We had a final lunch together at the program center, and that night was the final banquet. Getting ready for the banquet felt like Prom... except everyone was in sarees... and it wasn't like Prom at all... just go with it.

I think the photos speak for themselves!

Molly and I attempted to sum up our gratitude to the Guhas with a card and some flowers:

prom rainbow:

Tufts jumbos!:

Molly-ji had to leave at 9pm to make her flight, one of the first two people to leave the group of 18. I miss you, ji.

And so now I'm on my own!  Had I gone home at the end of the program I would have missed out on all of this adventure ;) This would have been the end... but instead you'll heard from me probably two more times in the next week to do all of the crazy memories I've made in the past 7 days justice. This post itself is coming at you from my second of three cities I wanted to visit before I left: Jaipur. Soon I'll finish my post about the few days after the program that I had in Delhi with my homestay, visiting Amritsar with Nisha and her Mom, and my one and only night out to experience Delhi nightlife with Michaela. That's coming at you soon... I need to get to sleep because I'm going to see some ELEPHANTS tomorrow!!! ahhh!!! I'll keep a tally. And yes, Dad, I'll find out where they keep the elephants at night.

Love love love, and 9 days,

Laura