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I'm baaaaaaaack! - updated with trip details. LONG.
Hi everyone!! I got back from India last night at 9 pm and am so jet-lagged and tired from the 23 hour journey. I had the most incredible time and met so many amazing people - as a culture Indians are so welcoming, they made every attempt to speak English with us and I learned some Tamil, enough to have basic conversations at least. I will post a much longer recap later, but I just wanted to say hi!
And congratulations to Shazzie!!! YAY mommy-to-be, h&h 9 months!
ETA:
Here are the photos! They aren't in chronological order unfortunately and my camera died half way through so I have to wait until my friends get their photos edited to share those. https://plus.google.com/photos/114241851093634107596/albums/5698713807356610833?authkey=CMvZzdyH1-uKrgE
This is going to be a super condensed version of everything that happened. There were so many incredible moments that I hopefully will relay all of those, as well as some of the gross stuff that we saw while we were there.
We flew into Delhi on the 27th of December and spent the night at a hotel before we left the next morning for Bagdogra (our plane was delayed for 4 hours) to take a 4 hour jeep ride up a mountain into the foothills of the Himalayas to Darjeeling. The ride was so scary! It was up a really windy path and they had to honk the horn to make sure no one was coming down around a turn that they were going up. At one point we had to back up a little so another car could pass and then they couldn't get moving forward again. I was so afraid we were going to slide off of the edge of the mountain. We got to Darjeeling and they told us that they couldn't take us to our hotel, so we had to walk 20 minutes straight uphill to get there. The air was so thin that we had to keep stopping to take breaks. The room was really gross and there was no hot water, so for the two days that we were there we refused to shower. It was freezing and I couldn't bring myself to stand under cold water. The sunrise in Darjeeling was incredible and pictures don't capture it. Otherwise we did a lot of tea tasting and walking around to monasteries and sight-seeing.
We left after a few days and drove back down the mountain to the train station in New Jalagaipuri. The entire train station was organized on a white-board and no announcements were made in English so we were petrified we would miss our train. Turns out it was delayed 3 hours because of fog and when we finally got on board we realized how old of a train it was and how crappy the sleeping accommodations were. It was like laying on a slightly padded board! Thankfully the sound and rocking of the train lulled me to sleep and I got some great shut-eye, some of the best so far on the trip. We also shared our bunk with a wealthy gentleman from Delhi who informed us about a lot of the scams and stuff that we would encounter on the trip and taught us how to calculate how much a taxi or tuk tuk really should cost because they would all try to rip us off. We arrived to Varanasi 4.5 hours later than anticipated and took a tuk tuk into the city. Again, they couldn't drive us to our hotel so we had to walk around in circles until someone finally led us there. We were so thrilled to get hot water and free WiFi that we didn't care that the bed was really hard. Varanasi is everything that they make it out to be. It's so wonderful yet dirty at the same time. The street life was amazing and we had some incredible conversations with people but there was also trash and cow poop everywhere! The entire city is really tiny back alleys and if a cow was coming down one you had to back out until it passed! Cyclone Thane hit the day before in Tamil Nadu (where we were going) so the rain was really intense in Varanasi. It liquified all of the poop in the street though and it was really gross to walk around. We had celebrated NYE the evening before with fireworks on the roof of our hotel, so the rain and poo was a huge bummer. We went to the golden temple (where there were tons of monkeys!) and did a lot of shopping.
We left on the 2nd, flew back through Delhi and then went to Chennai the next day. We flew from Chennai to Trichy and then took a 4 hour public bus to Nagapattinam. We went across the street to the neighborhood and introduced ourselves since we'd be there for 2 weeks. They insisted we come in, sit down, eat tons of food and the ladies started doing our hair with flowers and did amazing henna on all of our arms, they're so talented! We spent the next 2 days in a conference room learning PRA tools for our community visits. The next 2 days were spent in Gramathemedu, an agricultural village doing PRA stuff. Then we had a day off and we spent it around Nagapattinam catching up with family in an internet cafe, shopping, and exploring. The next day was a visit to a gypsy village and then a widow's community. It is so sad, because of the caste system in India widow's are shunned from their families after their husbands die because they are considered bad luck, everyone disowns them! The next 2 days were spent in a fishing community doing PRA work. I know it all sounds pretty boring but the community visits were amazing. The villagers were so open and welcoming and the strength and resilience that they showed when rebounding from the tsunami and then from the cyclone that hit a week previous really made me feel so inadequate. I realized how whiny I am about problems that these people would be so lucky to have! We spent the last 2 days writing a report and finalizing everything.
We had amazing translators from Chennai (3 students) the entire time we were working with the villagers and they were really entertaining in the evenings teaching us Tamil and a lot about Indian culture. We went to Chennai for a day before we came home and met back up with our translators. They took us all to a bollywood movie in the most posh theatre I've ever been in. We did some shopping in Chennai I got a few Kurthas (tunics) to finish spending my rupees. Everything there was so cheap that it was a shame not to buy a lot of stuff!
The food was so amazing in India! I am really going to miss it. And everyone there gives you cookies and chai every 2 hours. I have no idea how but I lost 4 pounds while I was there because I felt like I was eating constantly. I am torn about absolutely loving the trip because I don't know if I actually would ever want to go back. It was amazing because of the villagers and the people that we met. The time in the beginning when we were just being tourists really kind of sucked. Everyone was trying to take advantage of us all the time. Also, being light-haired white women we attracted a ton of unwanted attention, even though we were dressed very conservatively. People would come out and just watch us eat. I now know what it feels like to be a celebrity and I don't like it! It was also an extremely crowded and dirty country and make me realize how easy our life is here. I know I have left out so much stuff and this barely scratches the surface. Hopefully you all love the pictures and feel free to ask me any other questions!
Re: I'm baaaaaaaack! - updated with trip details. LONG.
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAY! Tell us more, show us pictures!! After you get some rest, of course
And thank you
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this!
BFP 02/2010 m/c 03/17/2010 dx PCOS 04/2010
BFP 08/13/2011 CP 08/15/2011
BFP 09/16/2011 EDD 05/20/2012
Claire Elizabeth, born 5/30 via a med free birth
YAY! WELCOME BACK!!!
I can't wait to read about your trip and see pictures!!
January 2, 2010
EDD October 10, 2013
You're pictures are awesome! So many colorful things.
Also I just added you on Google+, since apparently it's the Facebook of the future or some such thing.
Follow my book blog: Panda Reads
Follow me on Goodreads: my read shelf:
Your pictures are crazy amazing!
Some very random questions:
What kind of stuff did you eat?
What was the most shocking cultural difference?
Did you encounter anything that was amazingly "American"?
Is there anything you did/learned that was specific to India that you wish was more common here?
How often did you communicate with your H while you were gone and was it harder or easier than you expected?
More questions to come from me, I'm sure!
January 2, 2010
EDD October 10, 2013
Oh wow, it sounds so interesting!
great questions Noron!
BFP 02/2010 m/c 03/17/2010 dx PCOS 04/2010
BFP 08/13/2011 CP 08/15/2011
BFP 09/16/2011 EDD 05/20/2012
Claire Elizabeth, born 5/30 via a med free birth