“Keep smiling you in Pushkar”

We’re in Pushkar, a small town in the middle of the desert of Rajasthan. Despite the desert-like nature of the place, it manages to have a very holy lake in the middle of it which draws thousands upon thousands of visitors a year. There are many ghats, stairs down into the holy water, where priests will do puja (worship) with you (for a donation, usually). Yesterday we walked through the main bazaar to the Brahma temple, where our teachers took us inside and we did something. (I don’t know what to call it. Puja?) We took off our shoes outside, left our bags with a teacher, the women covered their heads, and then we walked up the many many white marble steps. Apparently you’re not supposed to step on the last step before entering the temple–it’s inauspicious and everything here is about auspiciousness–but unfortunately I didn’t learn this until afterwords. Inside there is a small gazebo-type platform thingie, at the back of which is an icon of Lord Brahma (forgive me if I’m chosing the wrong words here). We offered orange flowers into one square-shaped bowl, and the man standing there gave us purple flowers that we took to the man standing in front of the image of Brahma. We gave him the purple flowers (presumably as an offering to Lord Brahma) and stood there for a minute. We then left the gazebo thingie and walked around it clockwise. I don’t know why we go clockwise. I asked a teacher and she said it’s just part of puja. Unfortunately you can’t take pictures of the temple, so I have no photos to paste, but it’s quite beautiful and it was really interesting to watch the different kinds of people in there. Pushkar is a big tourist town (so big with Israelis, in fact, that many signs are written in Hindi and in Hebrew) so there were a fair number of videshiis (foreigners) in the temple.

Our hotel is a government-run hotel which is okay. The outside is quite charming and beautiful, and the inside is sufficient. (My standards for Indian hotel rooms are still high when compared to my peers, I think.)

This morning I got up quite early and took a hike with some friends to the top of a small mountain where there is a temple to Savitri, one of the wives of Brahma. From down below it looks like quite a walk (which it was):

When we starting climbing up the hill I felt like I was heading off into an Indiana Jones movie:

And the best part: there were monkeys!! Langurs, the long-tailed monkeys. There was a family of them hanging out up there.

Of course we can’t take pictures of the temple itself, but we did get a nice photo of the view of Pushkar. You can see the holy lake in the background.

And, because I’m short on time, here are some random other pictures of Pushkar. Although the town is a bit touristy, it’s main bazaar is small and relatively free of traffic (particularly rickshaws) so it’s a rather pleasant walk through old twisty streets. One of my friends said that Pushkar looks the way a foreigner would expect India to look, and that’s probably true.

Cows: the untold story

Someone told me that the cows here are all owned by people. And that at night, everyone finds their own cows and herds them off. To where exactly, I do not know, as this is a city with not a lot of pastureland. I assumed that was why the cows were eating garbage in the first place, because there was nowhere to put the cows. Where do the cows go at night? Into people’s apartments? It is a mystery to me. So if the cows are not wandering cows, if they truly belong to people, then are these cows used for producing milk? (Why else would one own a cow that one considered holy and un-eat-able?) So these cows that people own, they eat the trash off the street, and so I have to wonder: Are they producing the milk that goes into my morning lassi (yogurt drink)? Or the paneer in my lunch? Is that street trash being recycled into my evening meal? I try not to think about this, but I am definitely curious.

Although it’s becoming more normal to walk by cows on the street (and pigs and goats and dogs and camels and horses), I don’t know if I will ever stop being startled by the sight of such LARGE agricultural animals nosing through the large piles of trash. There are some really fat pigs and cows here. I think it’s a permanently startling sight.

Also, we had a monkey on the roof last night! (And yes, I can say that in Hindi. I can’t say “leave me alone,” but I can tell a story about monkeys!) I didn’t see it on our own roof, but I saw it hopping around the neighbor’s roofs. Except for their funny-looking red bottoms, they are so human-like it’s startling. Every time I see a monkey I’m startled by this, especially by their eyes.

As for the other wildlife in the street, the Jaipuri men have been leaving me along a little bit more. I’ve cultivated my scowl, and I’ve been draping myself in excessive layers of clothing (so much that I’m starting to think a burqa would simply have to be more comfortable). I’ve also been trying to go with people when I walk somewhere, but I’ve had less success with that. The harassment is a big downer. There’s nothing like constantly getting the message that you’re a second-class citizen who’s not entitled to decide what happens to her own body to make a girl feel blue. It’s really made me dislike this city, which is a shame, because I hear lots of other people rave about how wonderful it is. Why, just today, we had a (male) professor from the US talk about how easy it is to talk to shopkeepers in Jaipur. Yep, easy. Until they start following you down the street, and send their brother to look for you after you’ve finally ditched them, and generally keep harassing you (happened to me and Clare). I’m betting that this has never happened to that particular professor. I’m still pretty cynical about this, clearly.

Today is Friday. On Sunday we leave for a short “Hindi camp” trip to Ajmer and Pushkar. After Hindi camp we have a five-day break. Some friends and I will be leaving on a massively-unplanned trip straight from Hindi camp to go north to Amritsar and Dharamshala, so I won’t be back in school until July 21. I’ll try to update from the road, but as the trip itself is unplanned, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to find the internet. But: HIMALAYAS! How awesome is that?

Overall, I’m feeling better but still pretty down. This trip has been really really hard, and some snarky comments from classmates (“If you feel like you can’t wait to get back to America something is WRONG”) have left me feeling sort of…lame. I know it really is hard, and I shouldn’t feel bad, but I do. The exciting news is that when I get back from my trip to the Himalayas, two good things will happen: this whole adventure will be halfway DONE, and the following week I’ll get to meet Kathleen O’Reilly, a prof. who studies water and society and gender in Rajasthan. How perfect is that?

Back-post #1: A funny monkey story

Hi. I’m back from Jodhpur. I have a lot to say but it will take a while, so I’m going to make a series of posts.

First, a funny monkey story.

Thursday, like so many days here, was a Bad Day. I was in a funk (still am, though it was interrupted by a nice trip to Jodhpur). Megin and I went to the Ramada to have something ridiculously expensive, like an ice cream sundae. The ice cream was okay, but didn’t erase my funkified mood.

As we were walking back from the Ramada, we went along one of the bigger streets to see if the stores were open yet (there was a statewide bund, or closing, that day, declared by one of the political parties for reasons I don’t fully understand). Our Aunti-ji had told us that the stores would be opening later in the afternoon. As we approached one of the cross-streets, we noticed a group of men shouting and throwing stones at the roof of a building. WTF?

As we got closer we could see why: there were several monkeys on the roof, with (surprise!) MANGOES in their hands. And oh, the monkeys looked happy! And they were doing little comic dances! And the people down below did NOT. They looked VERY ANGRY. They would throw rocks and the monkeys would duck as the rocks went sailing by. Then they’d pop their heads back up again, triumphantly holding the mangoes. The whole thing looked like a scene out of a cartoon, it was so perfect, and despite all my ill-humor I burst out laughing on the spot. So there I am, grumpy American girl on the street corner laughing uncontrollably at the mango-stealing monkeys, and suddenly life felt a little bit lighter.

Everyone turned to look at us, of course, but for the first time I didn’t care.

picture post: hawa mahel, snake charmer, city palace, jantar mantar

I’m trying to cobble together a picture post here; let me know if you can’t see them. It’s been a bit of a tricky process.

Yesterday we went to the Hawa Mahel (literally, “Place of winds.”) It’s a one-room deep giant wall that was built so the “ladies of the royal household” (read: harem) could watch street events without being seen (I believe they were under purdah). It’s tall but only one room deep, so it looks rather a bit funny, but the architecture is really detailed and beautiful:

I was a bit surprised at how small the rooms and hallways were, though:

This is the view of the back of the Hawa Mahel. We were on top of a little turret-thinger (I don’t know what it was used for) when I took this one.

This is a picture of some of the scaffolding used in construction on the Hawa Mahel. All the scaffolding here is like this. It looks like trees tied together.

Here’s a picture of the front of the Hawa Mahel. Beautiful, no? You can see all the little rooms with their screens and windows that the ladies would hide behind.

From there we went to the City Palace. On the way into the city palace we passed through several bazaars, one of which was a bazaar of lots of different types of grain. We stopped to talk to one of the grain sellers (he was impressed that we all were learning Hindi, of course) and there were hundreds and hundreds of pigeons on the ground behind him. I got out my camera to take a picture of them, and before I knew it, he clapped really loudly and they all took off at once:

Outside the City Palace we met a snake charmer. Yes, that’s a real snake. And yes, it would try to bite him when he wasn’t playing. But the snake had (in theory) all of its poison removed, so it was not too much of a danger. He asked if I wanted to get closer to it, I could touch it if I wanted, he said, but I politely declined.

The entrance to the City Palace is a road with a series of gates with beautiful detailed architecture and paint. This is just one example of the side of one gate:

Inside the palace, there are many beautifully decorated doors and gates. There are beautiful rooms, too, but they were closed to the public when we were there. This is a photo of the top of a pretty famous door there, the peacock door (yes, the peacocks really are 3-D!):

Also, we found some lovely elephant statues next to another gateway.

And finally, after lunch (we had tasty Indian food and giant bowls of ice cream), we saw a band of monkeys hanging out on someone’s roof!

Also, since I haven’t posted a cow picture yet, here you go. We saw these cows just outside City Palace. They really do wander all over, and cars really do have to veer around them.

And finally, here is a picture of our school. Yes, our school is in an apartment building, but it works really well that way. There are a lot of bathrooms, a lot of rooms, and we have our own kitchen which means we can have the staff make lunch right on the premises.

After City Palace, Clare and I did some shopping in the bazaars. That was an adventure, and after I make sure these photos post successfully I’ll write about that too.

The return of the monkeys

I’m typing this  one of those tiny one-laptop-per-child computers my friend Kirsten has kindly loaned me, so I apologize in advance if the typing is terrible. They keyboard is designed for seven-year-olds and is hard for my big hands to use.

Las night at dinner our host mother apologized for the lack of mangoes. Turns out the monkeys came into the house yesterday, opened the fridge (smart monkeys) and stole some of our mangoes. There was mango carnage strewn across the patio and stairs up to our rooms, and we had been wondering why. Now we know. No wonder Aditi was so afraid of them!

I’m going to try to psot some photos, but I have no idea how this computer works, so we’ll see. Tomorrow we’re  off to the old city in Jaipur to see the HawaMahal and other sights.  I’m sure there’ll be more photos.

Also, filed under “This country constantly surprises me”: the ice craem/coffee/wireless cafe where I am sitting just started playing “I’m too sexy” on the music system. So strange.

A pack of monkeys, sparks shooting from the wall, and four Americans found encased in ice

Yesterday was very exciting. My host “sister” came home with a brand new car (!) which had already been taken to the temple to be blessed (!). She was bringing around ladoo to celebrate (a really tasty sweet) and stopped by my room to show me the car down in the driveway. I saw it, congratulated her, and she left. Not two minutes later I hear her run back down the hall screaming, “OPEN THE DOOR! QUICK, JUST OPEN THE DOOR! MONKEYS!!”

She barged into my room and slammed the door and put her back up against it. She said there was a pack of 7 or 8 monkeys sitting on the veranda just down the hallway from my room! Apparently Adithi is quite terrified of them, especially because she had the ladoo in her hands and monkeys love to steal food. We snuck down the hallway to have a peek, and there they were! They looked cute enough to me but Adithi insisted they were going to attack so we went back into my room. Just a second later the host mother came up the stairs with a giant stick and started whacking the ground. The monkeys took off at the sound of it before I could get a picture. “Don’t worry, they will come back tomorrow, you will see,” she said. I sure hope so.

A few hours later (after dinner) my light started flickering like a strobe light. I played with the button and  got it to stay on. The Megin shouted down the hallway that her light was flickering, and could she come study in my room? I said sure, and as soon as I said it, my light started flickering again. Damn. And just after that, the lights went out. But they didn’t just go out quietly, oh no. They went out, and then the place in the hallway where all the wires poke through the wall (presumably the site of a future circuit-breaker box), which is about 15 feet from my room, started to shoot sparks in a big stream across the hall. (I can hear my dad’s blood pressure rising from here.) I screamed a little (yes I am a wimp sometimes) and the sparks stopped. And then they started again! And I screamed again! And there was the faint smell of burning and we all got very afraid and then it stopped. Fortunately, the whole building is concrete.

So, no power, and it was 11 at night so no one was available to fix it, and the temperature felt like it was still in the 90s. So all the Hindi student girls (not the family) piled into one downstairs room (the downstairs had power) which was air conditioned. We didn’t think to ask for the remote before we went to sleep. And so we froze, all night. I had brought my fleece blanket so I had that and a sheet and I still woke up frozen. The other girls only had sheets and hardly slept a wink for being so cold. You’d think we would have figured out how to turn off the AC but we didn’t. Tomorrow’s headline: four American girls found frozen in Rajasthan. In the middle of a boiling hot desert.

Also in exciting news, I went for a run this morning. It was predictably awkward. The only people who smile at me are old women. They seem happy to see me. The younger women GLARE at me, shooting daggers with their eyes. I’m thinking next time I’m going to wear one of those special thingers to fight the Evil Eye. I see now why everyone has them. The men (predictably) stare at me in really uncomfortable ways, but at least none of them said a word to me. I was just running laps in the park RIGHT next to my house, so it was relatively known and relatively safe. PLUS I was wearing loose-fitting pants (in this heat!) and a loose-fitting tee-shirt. It was good that no one outright harassed me. That’s an improvement over walking down the street. Next time I might try running in a larger park. This one was pretty small–just the size of one block. The other downside to this one is that there’s a community pee-place at the corner of it (on the street, but still.) and one corner of the lap really, really smells bad. Which isn’t fun when I’m out of breath from running.

Just yesterday I was thinking that nothing terribly exciting had happened, and then the monkeys and hallway fireworks show happened. So now I’m thinking that nothing really boring, calm, relaxing, or refreshing has happened. Perhaps I can will those things into my life as well.

First update from India: camels, monkeys, and car horns

I’ve arrived in Jaipur (the pink city) and just an hour ago met my host family. They’re very nice. The husband is a doctor and the wife is a professor. I have an adorable little room at the front of the house with its own separate entryway. They also have internet access, so hopefully my updates will become more frequent! Anyway, it’s on a cute and thankfully quiet street. Most streets here are not quiet. Indians don’t seem to use turn signals, traffic lights, or traffic laws. Instead they honk their horns with vigor, just to let other cars know they are there, which makes for a mightly loud city! As you might imagine the streets are extremely chaotic, with cars, buses, motorcycles, cycle rickshaws, autorickshaws, people, camels, pigs, goats, sheep, cows, and dogs all vying for a place. I have never seen such chaos. I have also never seen chaos function so well. Somehow they all know how to avoid hitting each other (thus far) and traffic generally keeps flowing. The only law that is generally followed is “drive on the left” but even that is frequently disobeyed. It’s also not unusual to have traffic stopped by a truck that is sitting in the middle of the road, jacked up so that it can be repaired.

The people here are very nice, and most are shocked that we Americans speak Hindi. Speaking Hindi makes people much more excited to help us, it seems, though everyone is generally nice to begin with. of course there will always be tricksters and people out to get your money, but in general, people seem good-spirited. It is, however, a bit exhausting being a woman. The calls of “Hey madam!” or “Allo! Allo!” are constant, and any acknowledgment of them only increases their intensity. So when walking down the street the women just ignore them, which is kind of…tiring.

So, it may not be “home sweet home,” but it’s tolerable so far. The chaos is endearing at times and maddening at times. People routinely park all over the sidewalk, as there is no parking on the street. In fact the street kind of blends into the sidewalks. The smells are, of course, intense, and range from delectable (Indian food! Spices! Incense!) to nauseating (open sewers! Rotten garbage! Cow poop!). And cows really do roam freely, which is startling at first but you kind of get used to it.

Also, I saw monkeys! And camels! And an elephant! And a camel train! And this was all on the “highway” from Delhi to Jaipur. There are a lot of camels here, as we’re in the desert (sort of). The monsoon came early this year, so it rains almost every day, which makes for a bit of a mess in the streets. Despite the rain, it’s hot here. I’m sure, because my alarm clock tells the temperature and 75 or 80 degrees feels like a relief.