Ko goes to India and...

Monday, August 24, 2009

How I spent my 4th of July

I realize that this is kind of late, but I wanted to share about how I celebrated Independence Day by visiting Amritsar and the border of Pakistan. We all wanted to go see the Golden Temple (the most holy place for Sikhs - the guys that wear turbans and don't cut their hair).

We took an overnight train and arrived early in the morning. This is a typical street in Amritsar. It's pretty similar to the rest of India, noises, stray dogs, dirtiness, but, since it's the Sikh capital, there were less roaming cows, and I think the people there are generally larger (Sikhs are known to be strong fighters because of the struggles they've faced).

Here's a view of the Golden Temple complex, millions come on their yatra (pilgrimage)

Here's a close up of the temple. The temple has been attacked by the British and the Indian army, but they've done a really good job of restoring everything and keeping everything clean, unlike the Hindu holy places I've visited.

After seeing the temple, we went to a museum, and afterward, headed to the movie theater to watch a Bollywood film. It was all in Hindi, but I think we understood what was going on, and it was nice to get away from the heat. Indians really love their Bollywood. Personally, I think a lot of their stuff is over the top (random dancing and singing every 10 minutes), but the movie we watched was alright.

Here we are, posing with random people. Foreingers are mini celebraties (kind of awkward....). And as always, the Indians don't smile or show their teeth in pictures.

What we were forward to the most was visiting the Pakistan-India border. Everyday before sunset, the border potrolmen on each side put on a little "border closing show". Since hardly anyone uses the border post, might as well make some use of it, right?

On the Indian side, there was a huge crowd. Luckily, we foreigners got to sit in the VIP section, which was not nearly as crowded as the Indian section.

Here's a look at the Pakistani side. Less people, more tame, but from what I could tell, thier appeance and clothing was pretty much the same as the Indian side...

...but, I'm guessing they don't know how to have fun like the Indians do. And of course there has to be some music and dancing.

They were also taking turns running the flag to and back from the border gate.

Here's a border patrol/ policeman in his funny looking costume. They put on a pretty good show, though.

And afterwards, thousands of people tried to leave at once, the Indian way. India's definitely lessened my homophobia (two guys holding hands or locking pinkies are normal...), but I still don't like having several men press their sweaty bodies against me in an attempt to get out 10 seconds faster.

Since we were away on July 4th, we decided to celebrated on the 5th. We grilled some MEAT and fired off some fireworks (more like mini bombs). Altogether, it was a fun weekend, but I did miss the nice American fireworks, red meat, family, and friends...

Saturday, August 8, 2009

Finally updating

It's been a while since I've updated, I've been away for 6 of the last 8 weeks, and after spending over 250 hours in cars, trains, airplanes, buses, luxury buses, minibuses, microbuses, autorickshaws, taxis, motorcycles, and bicycles, it's good to be back in my familiar home away from home. The first half of my travel was for EMI, and the second half was a summer vacation. Since there's so much stuff I want to share, I'll start off posting about my EMI stuff.

First, I went to Nepal to get a new Indian visa. Although Americans can get up to 10 year tourist visas, I can only get 6 months, so it was a good excuse to go to Nepal and see Kathmandu and Pokhara while waiting for my visa to get approved. (unfortunately, I only got a 4 month visa, which means I'll have to go somewhere else (Sri Lanka?) in October...).

I went with my buddy Edwin. We first went to Delhi to catch a flight to Kathmandu.

Landing in Kathmandu. It's in a big fertile valley, with lots of people, construction, pollution, noise, etc.

After going to the Indian Embassy at the whee hours of the morning, I had one week until I was supposed to return to pick up my passport, so we did a lot of sightseeing.

The people in Nepal look like a hybrid of Indian, Chinese, and South-East Asian, the food was a mixture of them all, people's dress was equally diverse, and the religion was a sort of mix, too. Here's the "Monkey" temple. It's a big Buddhist stupa flanked by statues of some popular Hindu gods.

One thing I really liked about Nepal was its cleanliness (relatively speaking). Here's another stupa, but the buildings and street around it wouldn't look out of place in Holland.

There were lots of these old open water collection ponds. I wouldn't let my kids swim in there... but this does seem cleaner than the brown water that was coming out of our tap at our hostel (I guess you get what you paid for. Our place was about $4-5 a night for both of us, so I can't complain)

But overall, water's scarce. People were always lining up to get water from these strange pits that had dragon fountain/taps.

Here's a bunch of people pushing, shoving, and fighting to get water from the water truck.

One thing I've learned is how precious water is. It's not just Nepal, but almost the entire Indian subcontinent. I'm pretty sure one of my typical long morning showers in the US would equal to about all the water I use here in two weeks.

Kathmandu used to be a bunch of little kingdoms, so there are lots of little palace complexes, many of which have been turned into little markets.

This one's a vegetable market by day and filled with street food vendors at night. Mmmm I loved the street food in Kathmandu (dumplings, skewers of MEAT).

We were told that we have to go to Pokhara, which is at the foot of the Annapurna range, and a starting point for the most popular trekking routes of Nepal. On the way there, we decided to take the local night bus. It wasn't too bad, but it was strange: the front half of the bus had people, the rooftop had lots of plants, and the back half was filled with chickens (thankfully in nice little boxes).

When we got off the bus, I was shocked to see this. It was so strange because it was really hot in the town, but the snow capped mountains seemed so big and close, you could almost touch them. Pokhara's at about 2,500 feet, the highest peak we could see was over 25,000! (the 10th highest in the world).

One day, we got up really early (4 am) to see the sun rise over the range. It was kinda hazy, but it was well worth it. On a side note, all of India and Nepal are on one time zone, so the sun rose very early where we were. We kinda freaked out on our first night in Kathmandu.

Here we are taking the bus back to Kathmandu. There was some kind of strike/demonstration the day before we left (still common in Nepal, I saw protesters burning tires on my way to the embassy), and so our bus was packed, and we got to sit in the driver's cabin. If anyone offers you a seat in the driver's cabin, just say no, unless your butt fits comfortably on the lightly padded 6" deep bench.

On our last full day in Nepal, we decided to go to Bhaktipur, which is supposed to be the best kept medieval Nepali town. It was a really nice place. Clean, no honking horns, and speeding motorcycles (it's a pedestrian town), and the architecture of the entire town was well preserved, unlike most other areas. Some German firm donated millions to restore and maintain the town.

On to some random pics:

NPOs and NGOs have a strong presence in Nepal (they're the ones with the nice cars). This UN Land Cruiser's looked cool with its huge antennas and snorkel.

We also went to the Mountaineering Museum. I don't think we were allowed to take pics but had to get a pic of the Yeti (their version of the Abdominal Snowman).

One of my favorite things about traveling is getting to fellowship and worship at other churches. Through the church the Edwin goes to, we were introduced this small house church. The whole service was done in the pastor's living room and was in Nepali, but it was awesome to spend time with them. (I think people in Nepal speak better English than the parts of India I've been to)

Here we are eating a nice Nepali thali (assortment of little dishes) with a Nepali couple that's hoping to join an EMI project in the future.

After my visa run/vacation in Nepal, we flew back to Delhi, met with some people we knew there, and then headed to Haridwar to meet up with another EMIer to head off to our projects. Edwin was supposed to join us, but he got sick, so he went back to Mussoorie (he looked like a skeleton, stupid stomach), so it was just two of us heading down to Orissa on a 36 hour train ride right after a 10 hour ride to Haridwar... and then it happened. The worst migraine headache I've ever had on a 36 hour train ride filled with crying babies, annoying kids, bright lights, lots of noises, and lots of bouncing around... It's strange, that was the first time in my life really got homesick (I just wanted my quite soft bed, my momma's cooking, and the familiarity of my family, friends, and house), and it was the first time I really started to hate some things about India. I think it's an unavoidable part of adjusting to a new culture, but it hit me so suddenly. I loved (almost) everything about India up until that point, but suddenly, I started thinking "Make that baby shut up. Why don't Indians discipline their rowdy children? Why do Indians smell different? Why are they so loud and obnoxious? Why are they so inconsiderate? Why..." What really sucked was that we were down in Orissa to meet with this new ministry we'll be working with, but I was drugged up and lying in pain the whole time we were there.

I slowly began to recover, and by the time we went to our next destination, I was kind of functional. It was a hospital sight where God's doing some amazing work. I can't go too much into details, but people are being treated, educated,
trained, and discipled all at the same place. Lives are being given hope mentally, physically, and spiritually! After staying there a little bit, I hopped on a 24 hour train to head back to Mussoorie. It's not exactly the US, but it was so nice to be somewhere familiar after all the traveling and stuff.

So, this is part 1 of my travels, I'll be updating soon about my other adventures soon (including my time in Leh, my new favorite place in India).

Saturday, June 6, 2009

Lists

I'm approaching my half way mark for my time in India. So, I decided to reflect on my time here by making some lists. Some are silly, some are more serious, but I hope they’ll let you all get a better idea my experiences thus far in India:

Top 3 things...

... I miss about the US (excluding family + friends):
1. BEEEEF (and a meaty diet in general, Chipotle beef burrito, I miss you)
2. warm showers when you whenever you want (bucket baths are no fun)
3. laundry machines (doing laundry by hand takes too much energy and time, and my clothes are still dirty)

... I thought I'd miss, but I don't
1. my car (it's nice to walk, although I'd love a scooter or a motorcycle)
2. TV (but too bad I'll miss the football season)
3. cell phone

... I love about India
1. friendly people who always make time to have a cup of chai
2. the mountains of Mussoorie
3. simplicity of life

... about India that I could do without
1. garbage everywhere
2. bad smells
3. people honking their horns all the time

... that smell bad
1. smell of raw sewage at certain places
2. B.O., including myself (even after I shower, I can't escape the smell of masalas - spices)
3. farts (our lentils and rice diet doesn't help)

... that I'll never get used to
1. seeing so many people bow down and worship idols (and when they ask me to join them)
2. poverty, especially seeing so many kids begging
3. being stared at (my blond friends are practically celebrities in some places)

... that I'm surprisingly used to
1. not showering every day (although I still wish I could)
2. the idea of "arranged" marriage vs. "love" marriages
3. avoiding girls (long story, but relationships between guys and girls are quite different)

... that I surprisingly enjoy
1. spending time with kids and the youth (it's like having little brothers and sisters that I never had)
2. DANCE PARTIEEESSSS, garwhali style
3. singing in Hindi

... that have made me feel old
1. my friend asked me how old I was, and when I told him my age, he said "wow, I though you were 30 or something, so I was being extra respectful to you..."
2. my knees always hurt, and my body takes longer to recover from things
3. wrinkly hands (I noticed this when I was trekking, apparently it's the altitude, but I was about to freak out cause my hands looked like an old woman's)

... that have changed since being here
1. I don't mind spiders and bugs so much
2. I'm not sure if I can go back to working at a conventional architecture firm
3. the idea of getting married and having some kiddies is increasingly appealing (scary...)

Some pictures to go along with the lists:

Our church's Easter picnic, and of course, we danced.

People bathing at the Ganga (Ganges River). They come to worship the river, cleanse their sins, do laundry, dump garbage, and some even come to die there in hope of escaping karna.

One of our momo (dumplings) and dance parties, I don't have any pictures of the dancing cause I was busy making a fool of myself.

Me playing with my pastor's kids.

Friday, May 1, 2009

Trip to Dodi-tal

So 2 weeks ago, we had our first opportunity take some time off and go on a vacation. We decided to take trek into the mountains. It was exciting to finally get to go out into the mountains that we look at almost every day. It was a little different from backpacking in the US because we went through little villages where we were able get nice warm dal-chaval (lentils and rice), and the place we went to (Dodi-tal), like so many other places, is worshiped as a god. Here's a bunch of pictures (most of the pics are from my friend harry, check out his flickr, he's got some awesome pics):

This is the view from our office on a nice day. Even though you can see where we went to, it takes about 5-6 hours to get there. We got a taxi to take us out there, but there were it was a regular Indian (ie small) sedan. Our solution was to put a sweater on the e-brake to make a bench in the front. It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought, but whenever he reached for second gear...

Us getting a nice meal before we start hiking.

The first night we stayed at Agora.

At Agora, there was a mela (festival) for the local idol. People from the surrounding villages all came to dance to the sound of the beating drums, but then...

...a fight broke out. We met this interesting guy when we first got to the village (he kept telling us he's a guide and we can stay for cheap at his father's house, which seemed to be every building). Well, he's a pretty crazy guy, and he broke off from the line of men dancing, tried to sneak into the ladies' line, got kicked out, then he proceeded to do a leap frog kinda dance around the idol, but he accidentally hit it. Some guy runs to slap him, then some other guy (maybe the crazy guy's father?) came out to slap the slapper, then the mob mentality broke out. People start yelling, shoving, little fights break out everywhere. It was strange, but after a while, most of the people happily and peacefully resumed the mela.

Speaking of idols, here's another one, a tree. People come and jam coins in it. Trees can be holy or evil.

After lots of hiking, we finally got to Dodi-tal, "Uttarakhand's most beautiful high altitude lake." Some interesting things we saw there: urbanites coming to worship the lake and offer the lake's temple's idol food, kulis (Nepalese men, pretty much human trucks) and donkeys that carry supplies for trekkers. The day after got to the lake, we did a day hike up to the ridge that's on the top right corner of the picture.

Hiking up to the ridge was one of the hardest hikes I've dones, especially cause we started at about 10,000 ft and went up 3,500 - 4,000 ft. But...

... it was so worth it!

But, we were all so exhausted, so we had some lunch. What's for lunch...?

...B**F!

It started to snow, so we started to head back down. The altitude makes such a huge temperature and weather difference. The next day, my friend Harry and I decided that if we left really early in the morning, we'd have a good chance of getting clear weather on the ridge, so we left around 6.

And when we got there, there was only one dinky cloud in the sky! We could clearly see Banderpoonch's peak, over 20,000 ft!

By then, we were quite tired, and our bodies were tight, so we did some stretching.

Then we decided we should keep hiking along the ridge. This was probably not the best or the safest idea because the south face is almost a ragged cliff face, and the north face was covered in snow. But it was worth it because it gave us a clear view of Gangotri.

This is Gangotri, one of the holiest places of Hinduism. It's the source of the holy Ganges river. We were originally planning on treking there, but too much snow.

On the way back, we stopped by this small villages with really cool vernacular buildings. The whole village was abandoned. We were thinking maybe it's a summer village for people living in the valley during the winter, or a tourist village that comes back to life during peak tourist season.

On our last night, we stopped here to get some dinner. The food was great (everyone basically force feeds you) and the women there was really sweet.

Later that night, we were playing cards, but our game got interrupted by a herd of goats. (on a side note, we saw the remains of a goat that got eaten by a mountain leopard, cool)

And here are some random pics from the trip: