Banaras

We took the overnight train from Jaipur to Varanasi/Banaras/Kashi on Monday, arriving here on tuesday after 20 hours. saying goodbye to my host family was sad- I miss them now. The director of our program in Banaras is a hilarious older man named Ranaji who is taking us to tons of religious sites because that's basically all there is to see here. he is obsessed with numerology, geography/geology, and cultural astronomy. he therefore knows exactly how far away and in what direction things are from each other and how many of everything there is and what that means. if the number of something isn't obviously significant, you add all the digits or divide them by 3 or 9 until you reach an auspicious number. For instance, there are three realms (heaven, earth, the underworld); five gross elements; seven days of the week, levels of the atmosphere, chakras, etc.

A few days ago we went on a morning boat ride down the Ganga, stopping at various ghats to check different things out- one of them being the main cremation ghat. It was interesting in some ways, but I also just felt like we shouldn't have been there. It has become somewhat of a tourist destination. This made me very uncomfortable. Also, people were bathing and washing clothes not more than 20 feet downstream.

Banaras is very dirty.

Ranaji also loves pilgrimages. Today we went on the Panchakroshi pilgrimage for eight hours, which was fortunate because it's supposed to take five days walking, but we had jeeps. We saw a lot of temples. Relatively uneventful.

Cynthia, our assistant director, got back today. For the past few days she has been in Nepal for the installation of a new reincarnate of a lama in the village she used to live in.

Jaipur

So for the past six weeks I have been living with an Indian family in Jaipur and taking Hindi classes and conducting research. This afternoon we're leaving on an overnight train to Varanasi and I am sad to go, but ready to leave. I'll miss my homestay family even though they were kind of crazy at times. They are an extremely traditional joint family so there are always lots of people around which I really enjoyed, but they are also very nosy and would only speak to us in Hindi most of the time.

Jaipur is a bit ridiculous. Women don't really ever go out in public if they don't have to because they get harassed on the street by Indian men. I have become an expert at walking quickly with my head down and am in the habit of wearing a shawl all the time which can be used sort of like an invisibility cloak.

Last weekend we went to the Pushkar Camel Fair which was one of the best experiences I've had so far. Villagers come from all over Rajasthan with their camels. I rode a camel, it's pretty much like riding a horse except way better. I tried to make it go as fast as it could which is not very fast.

I'll try to write more later but this is a start! Need to go finish packing...

Love, Sarah

Past two weeks

So the past two weeks have been extremely busy so I haven't had time to update. Last weekend I went with a few friends and our incredible assistant director Cynthia to Haridwar and Rishikesh. Cynthia is amazing, I don't know what we would do without her. She's almost 50 and is definitely the coolest person I'll ever meet, but I don't think I could keep up with her lifestyle. For the past twenty years she's split her time between Nepal, India, and the states. Cynthia knows basically everyone who lives in Haridwar and took us to see her sadhu friends. Sadhus are Hindu ascetics, they wear saffron and have dreadlocks. We watched them perform their evening ceremony to Shiva and their guru which involved a lot of bell ringing and chanting and singing in Sanskrit. We had lunch at their house the following day as well. On the way to their house we ran into a parade to celebrate Ganesh's birthday with a live elephant leading the parade. Haridwar was the first place we've been that felt like we were in real India with beggars and congestion and staring and chaos- I love it.

Rishikesh was full of Israeli backpackers. We went to the Beatle's ashram which is now abandoned and overgrown and took pictures in meditation cave number 9, which is where the majority of the White Album was written. That weekend we travelled on public buses which was an extremely crowded experience.

Last Friday we had our Hindi class final and a farewell dinner, and went back to Delhi on Saturday morning. Yesterday we took a train to Amritsar to visit the Golden Temple, which is where I am right now. It's incredibly beautiful.

I'll write more soon, we're about to go visit the India-Pakistan border at Wagah to see the ceremonial closing of the gate between the two countries.

Yamunotri

This weekend we went to Yamunotri, which is a Hindu pilgrimage site. It's the head of the Yamuna river, one of the four rivers to feed into the Ganges. On Saturday we took taxis for the six hour drive, including two chai stops and a stop for lunch. The amount of chai we are forced to drink is slightly ridiculous. We have chai at least three times a day. We switched to jeeps at the end of the paved road nine kilometers before the town we stayed in and drove up this road that is in the process of being built. We then walked a kilometer to the dharamsala (like a very basic guest house) we stayed in. The guest house was extremely damp and cold and only had electricity and running water a few hours a day. the sink drained directly onto the floor and the first night we didn't want to get under the covers because they were so damp and moldy so it was probably the worst night I've ever had. A hotel worker pounded on the door at 6am with the same urgency and intensity that one would expect if there was a fire....bringing chai.

Sunday we walked five kilometers up an extremely steep hill to the temple. There were a few different options for getting up- walk, ride a horse, be carried by four men on a sedan chair, and be carried in a basket on a man's back. The latter was popular amongst the very elderly women who make up the majority of pilgrims. I walked. The temple is built around hot springs that are extremely holy and if you take a dip all of your sins are allegedly washed away. There are separate ones for men and women with the women's being below the mens in an area that sort of feels like a dungeon. Many of us went in and it was a wonderful experience. The Indian women were so joyful and were splashing around in their underwear and laughing and pulled us in.

In the afternoon we visited a nearby traditional village with slate roofs and very ornate woodwork. This village has a temple that is at least 1400 years old. I asked the keeper of the temple if I could go in and the whole group followed. He led me up four ladders made from entire tree trunks to the attic where there was a small shrine. It was pitch dark climbing up until we reached the top where daylight came through holes in the ceiling. above the shrine are two metal water jars that apparently switch places every full moon- they lock the temple that evening and the next morning they're in different places, and this has been happening for centuries.

Sunday we walked nine kilometers down to the paved road to get the taxis back to Mussoorie. For the first few kilometers we walked on the old pilgrim trail that used to be the only road to Yamunotri. The car road was built fifty years ago and many villages along the pilgrim trail were abandoned due to people moving to the road.


Now we're back in Mussoorie and it feels great to be back in "civilization". I forgot to bring my camera this weekend so I'll put other people's pictures up eventually.

Pictures!!

So I've finally started to upload pictures.

You can see them at www.flickr.com/photos/sgomer

More to come soon, it just takes a really long time to upload.

Hindi school and Navdanya

Last week was our first week of Hindi school. It is incredibly civilized: three hours every morning, including a half hour chai break. The teachers are hilarious; one is completely obsessed with owls and told us about an owl puja that he's seen performed many times in the surrounding villages in which one captures an owl, slits its throat, and makes one's enemies step on the owl blood, bringing them misfortune. I need to attend one.

This weekend we went to Navdanya, which is an organic farm and seed bank in Dehra Dun started by Vandana Shiva, an environmental activist we met in Delhi. Each morning we did shramdan, which Gandhi invented and wanted everyone to do for an hour every day. It means doing physical labor for the benefit of the community. We weeded and picked rocks out of a field for our shramdan.

We got back to Mussoorie just in time for the parade in honor of Krishna's one-week birthday. Super awesome. The streets were packed, with the men standing on the sides of the parade and the women and children on balconies overlooking the parade route. After we had dinner and drinks in town which is always an interesting experience. We went to a restaurant that we heard had cheap beer, but the restaurant did not have beer on the menu. Whe ordered it anyway and a waiter ran out and bought warm beer from somewhere else and brought it to the table in a bag really shaken up.

I'm planning on actually putting up pictures soon. Right now it's time for lunch and laundry.

xoxo Sarah

First days in Mussoorie

We arrived in Mussoorie Friday night after a harrowing 10 hour bus ride. The guest house we are staying in is very cute- sparse and kind of musty, but nice. We're the only ones staying there. There's a nice grassy sort of patio area that the rooms open up on with tables and chairs and an amazing view of the North Indian Plane (I think that's what it's called). We're staying at about 7000 feet. Saturday we had orientation at the Landour Language School where we have Hindi classes every morning. It's at 7500 ft at the top of the mountain, about a mile uphill from the guest house. There is only one steep narrow road that connects everything and at some points its no joke a 45 degree incline. My calves are burning. A student who was on the program two years ago and now lives in Mussoorie showed us around town Saturday afternoon. The main town is downhill from where we're staying about twenty minutes. I bought fabric and took it to a tailor- I'm getting a full salwar suit and a kameez made, it will be ready tomorrow. They don't have ready-made clothes here.

Sunday morning some friends and I explored the top of the mountain. It is indescribably beautiful here. Around the other side of the mountain you can see the rest of the Himalayas and when it is very clear apparently you can see Mt Everest. The weather changes quickly from sunny and clear to so foggy you can't see 15 feet in front of you in like ten minutes. I love watching the fog roll in. I'll post pictures when I figure out how to do that. We met a local Hindu woman who told us it was Krishna's birthday and that there would be big celebrations in the temples that night. Almost everyone in the group ended up going- so much fun. We went to two temples. I did puja at the first one and got the mark on my forehead and sugar water to drink. At the second temple I received a handful of butter and sugar to eat which was incredibly disgusting. There was live music in both temples and little kids running around. One of the favored forms of Krishna is him as a baby so all the babies were dressed up like him. I cannot get enough of Hindu festivals.

This morning we started Hindi classes. Incredibly difficult. I actually feel like I'm in school now.

Namaste!

-Sarah