I've written before about the various pick-up strategies that Kyrgyz men employ to try and get me to marry them (or -- more likely -- to become their mistress). Last night, though, I met one who used a truly unique method...
While my friends and I were dancing at a club in the city, this awkward English-speaking Kyrgyz tour guide named Samat took a liking to me. I humor him and dance a slow song middle-school-style with him and then scurry away. An hour later or so, "My Heart Will Go On" starts playing and he reappears and asks me to dance again. I try and say no, but he's kind of pathetic in that mangy-big-eyed-puppy way, so I give in. Turns out he'd shelled out 100 som to dedicate the song to me. After we dance, I extract myself from the situation once again. Maybe 30 minutes later, I'm dancing with the other Volunteers when he comes up and eagerly presses something in my hand. This something turned out to be a Halls cough drop. A HALLS COUGH DROP. This would have been kind of strange in America and, like most other things about life in this place, was even stranger here because Halls cough drops do not exist in Kyrgyzstan.
For the next hour or so, he kept dancing in my periphery, no doubt hoping to lure me away from my American friends. Unfortunately for him, I didn't really find his nerdy, eager-beaver gyrations particularly appealing. I eventually got a friend to pretend to be my boyfriend to my Kyrgyz admirer to back off. Samat understood and, to show that there were no hard feelings, randomly started speaking Spanish (a language nobody here knows), yelling, 'Teresa - muy bueno!' and the like into my fake boyfriend's ear, thus cementing his place in my head as one of the oddest people I've met in a country full of odd people.
20 April 2008
31 March 2008
The Taylor Family: Greatest Hits (+ the Kyrgyz Remix)
How does a musical act achieve longevity? You know, get past album slumps, appease adoring fans and not-so-adoring critics, and find their sound – that musical style which sometimes can't seem to be different enough to remain original-yet-familiar and other times seems to be so different that it seems affected or just plain idiotic. Perhaps after a few forays into the experimental, many intelligent acts look to score a sure-fire winner. And how do they do so? By releasing a Greatest Hits album. Many add a few new tracks to the original cut so as to appear to have not lost their game. Michael Jackson's re-release of Thriller with tracks featuring Will.i.am and Kanye West is one recent example; he's probably hoping that people will stop thinking about tabloid photos of his increasingly interesting clothing choices and ever-morphing facial structures and remember that, hey, Jacko really is one hell of a performer.
Forgive my poor imitation of Rolling Stone writing…but this Greatest Hits thing is about the closest approximation I can find to describe my experience last week having my family visit Kyrgyzstan. To be honest, the good ole KR had been acting kind of like Radiohead on Hail To The Thief: still recognizable and theoretically interesting, but hard to grasp and generally lacking in those qualities which originally sparked my affection – a lack of mojo, if you will. I needed to be reminded that this place is actually pretty cool - and that I haven't been wasting my time for the past year and a half.
And a family visit proved to be just the thing. Despite my initial premonitions about the trip (especially re: giardia), it ended up being nothing short of lovely. Mom, Dad, and Ben all proved to be excellent sports, willing to consume one more pile of rice or cup of tea; to look a little ridiculous in traditional Kyrgyz clothing; to shun bathing for days on end; to play with children with whom they shared nary a common word save "hello;" to dance with persons 5, 10, 20, even 30 years their junior or senior; really just to roll with the punches dealt out by this most unusual of vacations.
This was perhaps best illustrated – at least to me – by our attempt at driving from Bishkek to my village in Osh. The weather had been perfect up til our day of departure…and, initially, the cloudy skies and steady rain didn't faze me. It wasn't really until we could barely see 5 feet outside our SUV due to the snow, fog, and wind that I realized that I had potentially led my family to their deaths. When news of a baby avalanche came, we turned around and took the plane to Osh instead. Throughout the ordeal, though, my parents and brother were champs.
The highlight of their trip for me, though, was getting to watch my real family interact with my adopted one. I kind of had this actively-passive role -- I was talking all the time because I was translating all of their questions and comments, but not really saying many of my own thoughts. This translation process can be exhausting and annoying...but can also be pretty empowering. If someone says something that I think is inappropriate or uninteresting, I can tone it down or jazz it up a little without the involved parties being any the wiser. I stupidly told my brother, however, about the liberties I occasionally took with translating... During Nooryz (the Central Asian new year which my family celebrated with my entire freaking village), we were dragged in front of several thousand people from my village and forced to give little speeches on the platform. After Dad gives an appropriate speech thanking the village for welcoming us with open arms, my darling baby brother uses his turn to muse about the waving flags, green trees, etc etc. Basically, he got up there and, knowing that I'd just translate it as whatever I wanted, started describing what was in his immediate line of vision. Not so appropriate...so I told everyone that he said, "Allah has truly blessed us today as we can see by the beautiful weather," thereby giving Ben major points with the pious old ladies and village elders (and giving myself a private laugh). Anyway, my host family and real family got along amazingly well. I mean, one afternoon, I passed out from exhaustion and awoke to my host siblings' delighted shrieks as my parents and Ben were running around the yard, playing 'horsey' with them. My host mom told me that she had been really worried about my family coming because she was concerned that they might be haughty or condescending...but then she met them and realized that they were actually a lot like her own family. Hallmark, eat your heart out.
So now I'm back on my own in my village...only, after my family's grand appearance last week, I have now lost all traces of anonymity while walking around. I get stopped twice as much by guys in donkey carts asking about my parents' health, giddy schoolgirls asking if my brother is available, and -- once -- a photographer asking if I wanted to buy the photos he'd taken of my family in their Kyrgyz garb.
Also -- my school has FINALLY started remodelling the club. I've been spending part of each day for the past week doing errands with various maintence men and builders...them doing the actual dirty work while I trail along paying for everything (kind of like a mob accountant). I'll send pictures once it's finished so that our very generous donors can see what they did with their money.
That's it for now. Take care, now.
Terri
Forgive my poor imitation of Rolling Stone writing…but this Greatest Hits thing is about the closest approximation I can find to describe my experience last week having my family visit Kyrgyzstan. To be honest, the good ole KR had been acting kind of like Radiohead on Hail To The Thief: still recognizable and theoretically interesting, but hard to grasp and generally lacking in those qualities which originally sparked my affection – a lack of mojo, if you will. I needed to be reminded that this place is actually pretty cool - and that I haven't been wasting my time for the past year and a half.
And a family visit proved to be just the thing. Despite my initial premonitions about the trip (especially re: giardia), it ended up being nothing short of lovely. Mom, Dad, and Ben all proved to be excellent sports, willing to consume one more pile of rice or cup of tea; to look a little ridiculous in traditional Kyrgyz clothing; to shun bathing for days on end; to play with children with whom they shared nary a common word save "hello;" to dance with persons 5, 10, 20, even 30 years their junior or senior; really just to roll with the punches dealt out by this most unusual of vacations.
This was perhaps best illustrated – at least to me – by our attempt at driving from Bishkek to my village in Osh. The weather had been perfect up til our day of departure…and, initially, the cloudy skies and steady rain didn't faze me. It wasn't really until we could barely see 5 feet outside our SUV due to the snow, fog, and wind that I realized that I had potentially led my family to their deaths. When news of a baby avalanche came, we turned around and took the plane to Osh instead. Throughout the ordeal, though, my parents and brother were champs.
The highlight of their trip for me, though, was getting to watch my real family interact with my adopted one. I kind of had this actively-passive role -- I was talking all the time because I was translating all of their questions and comments, but not really saying many of my own thoughts. This translation process can be exhausting and annoying...but can also be pretty empowering. If someone says something that I think is inappropriate or uninteresting, I can tone it down or jazz it up a little without the involved parties being any the wiser. I stupidly told my brother, however, about the liberties I occasionally took with translating... During Nooryz (the Central Asian new year which my family celebrated with my entire freaking village), we were dragged in front of several thousand people from my village and forced to give little speeches on the platform. After Dad gives an appropriate speech thanking the village for welcoming us with open arms, my darling baby brother uses his turn to muse about the waving flags, green trees, etc etc. Basically, he got up there and, knowing that I'd just translate it as whatever I wanted, started describing what was in his immediate line of vision. Not so appropriate...so I told everyone that he said, "Allah has truly blessed us today as we can see by the beautiful weather," thereby giving Ben major points with the pious old ladies and village elders (and giving myself a private laugh). Anyway, my host family and real family got along amazingly well. I mean, one afternoon, I passed out from exhaustion and awoke to my host siblings' delighted shrieks as my parents and Ben were running around the yard, playing 'horsey' with them. My host mom told me that she had been really worried about my family coming because she was concerned that they might be haughty or condescending...but then she met them and realized that they were actually a lot like her own family. Hallmark, eat your heart out.
So now I'm back on my own in my village...only, after my family's grand appearance last week, I have now lost all traces of anonymity while walking around. I get stopped twice as much by guys in donkey carts asking about my parents' health, giddy schoolgirls asking if my brother is available, and -- once -- a photographer asking if I wanted to buy the photos he'd taken of my family in their Kyrgyz garb.
Also -- my school has FINALLY started remodelling the club. I've been spending part of each day for the past week doing errands with various maintence men and builders...them doing the actual dirty work while I trail along paying for everything (kind of like a mob accountant). I'll send pictures once it's finished so that our very generous donors can see what they did with their money.
That's it for now. Take care, now.
Terri
12 March 2008
Feathers and Black Eyes
The brain is a funny thing. It hangs onto random, seemingly pointless things like Rihanna lyrics but can’t seem to harbor a 10-digit phone number for more than 20 seconds. One of my recent mental acquisitions came from Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, which I read for the first time a couple of months ago. Now, instead of making lists of “pros” and “cons,” I opt for “Feathers In My Cap” and “Black Eyes!!!!” like one of the hapless officers in the book (of course I don’t actually remember the character’s name or why he was making such lists…but I do distinctly remember how splendidly odd his headers were). I realize that this is a kind of odd habit to have adopted, but don’t blame me. Blame my brain. Here’s my list concerning the current state of my life in Kyrgyzstan:
Feathers In My Cap
- My family is coming on Saturday! My family is coming on Saturday! I can’t wait to show them around the weirdly charming place that is Kyrgyzstan…but am also a little concerned about what’s going to happen to them once my local friends and host family get their hands on a bunch of blond Americans. Stay tuned.
- Several of my projects beyond giving English lessons have finally started to take off. Things like teacher training seminars, the completion of the club renovation project, and skills/character-building sessions for my kids look to make my last few months here busy but productive (holiday celebrations and end-of-the-year malaise notwithstanding).
- Soft serve will soon make a triumphant return to my village bazaar. Last summer, soft serve was virtually a food group for me, I ate so much of it.
Black Eyes!!!!!
- I think I wrote a letter a while ago about some of my more amusing lingual mishaps, like my unfortunate tendency early on in my teaching career to confuse the Kyrgyz words for “pig” and “penis” (that made for some very confusing “Life on the Farm” lessons). Yesterday, I was having tea with my 5 year-old host brother, who kept using a word I hadn’t heard before in reference to his cousins – “chichkak.” That this is just one letter away from the word for “mouse” and was used with a group of other animal words (e.g. “I am a lion. My cousin is ‘chichkak.’”), I assumed that this word referred to some sort of rodent. To my confusion, he was completely unable to answer questions like, “What color is it?” and “Where does it live?” and “How big is it?” Finally, when I started miming different kinds of body parts, he responded enthusiastically to my pantomime of a long tail. We dropped the matter until dinner, when the word came up again, this time with the whole family around the table. After we adults giggled at the kids’ antics (which included calling each other various names, including “chichkak”), I asked my host mom what kind of animal a “chichkak” was. Everyone then began laughing hysterically at me, because “chichkak” is not a rodent. It is diarrhea.
- Although one of my classes has heretofore been unable to master things like the use of the “to be” verb and present frigging tense, they have learned to forge my handwriting.
- Another class argued today that they “had to cheat” on the test because they “don’t know English well.” Bollocks.
- Seriously, men and women of Kyrgyzstan, I know that you mean well and I’m sure that your sons and neighbors are very nice boys, but I really don’t want to get married anytime soon. I understand that this is not considered to be normal behavior from a 24 year-old woman, but I ask that you bear with me the way that I try and bear with you. I mean, we just met 2 minutes ago and I’m not really comfortable having this conversation with a total stranger. And, by the way, Kyrgyz guys, lines like “I’ll give your parents 100 horses and 200 cows” or “I’m dark, you’re light…our kids will be normal!” really don’t do it for me.
- Need. Variation. In. Diet. I'm pretty much adhering to the complete opposite of Atkins Diet -- noodles, potatoes, and white bread for every meal, nearly every day of the week.
Feathers In My Cap
- My family is coming on Saturday! My family is coming on Saturday! I can’t wait to show them around the weirdly charming place that is Kyrgyzstan…but am also a little concerned about what’s going to happen to them once my local friends and host family get their hands on a bunch of blond Americans. Stay tuned.
- Several of my projects beyond giving English lessons have finally started to take off. Things like teacher training seminars, the completion of the club renovation project, and skills/character-building sessions for my kids look to make my last few months here busy but productive (holiday celebrations and end-of-the-year malaise notwithstanding).
- Soft serve will soon make a triumphant return to my village bazaar. Last summer, soft serve was virtually a food group for me, I ate so much of it.
Black Eyes!!!!!
- I think I wrote a letter a while ago about some of my more amusing lingual mishaps, like my unfortunate tendency early on in my teaching career to confuse the Kyrgyz words for “pig” and “penis” (that made for some very confusing “Life on the Farm” lessons). Yesterday, I was having tea with my 5 year-old host brother, who kept using a word I hadn’t heard before in reference to his cousins – “chichkak.” That this is just one letter away from the word for “mouse” and was used with a group of other animal words (e.g. “I am a lion. My cousin is ‘chichkak.’”), I assumed that this word referred to some sort of rodent. To my confusion, he was completely unable to answer questions like, “What color is it?” and “Where does it live?” and “How big is it?” Finally, when I started miming different kinds of body parts, he responded enthusiastically to my pantomime of a long tail. We dropped the matter until dinner, when the word came up again, this time with the whole family around the table. After we adults giggled at the kids’ antics (which included calling each other various names, including “chichkak”), I asked my host mom what kind of animal a “chichkak” was. Everyone then began laughing hysterically at me, because “chichkak” is not a rodent. It is diarrhea.
- Although one of my classes has heretofore been unable to master things like the use of the “to be” verb and present frigging tense, they have learned to forge my handwriting.
- Another class argued today that they “had to cheat” on the test because they “don’t know English well.” Bollocks.
- Seriously, men and women of Kyrgyzstan, I know that you mean well and I’m sure that your sons and neighbors are very nice boys, but I really don’t want to get married anytime soon. I understand that this is not considered to be normal behavior from a 24 year-old woman, but I ask that you bear with me the way that I try and bear with you. I mean, we just met 2 minutes ago and I’m not really comfortable having this conversation with a total stranger. And, by the way, Kyrgyz guys, lines like “I’ll give your parents 100 horses and 200 cows” or “I’m dark, you’re light…our kids will be normal!” really don’t do it for me.
- Need. Variation. In. Diet. I'm pretty much adhering to the complete opposite of Atkins Diet -- noodles, potatoes, and white bread for every meal, nearly every day of the week.
India, Part IV
It’s Sunday morning – maybe my favorite time of week since I can usually drink as much coffee, do as many crossword puzzles, read as many books and magazines, and sleep as many hours as I want. This particular a.m., I’ve been reading Smithsonian and National Geographic magazines from the past few months (thanks, Aunt Susie and Uncle Jack) and drinking delicious Columbian coffee (thanks, Mom and Dad). I’ve learned that Western lowland gorillas (which inhabit valleys and swamps in Congo and Rwanda) often have red hair sprouting from their scalps (and I thought my ancestors were from Scotland), that Polish mountaineers are the very epitome of bad-ass-ness (it’s not enough for them to conquer the world’s highest peaks – they do it in wintertime), and that Andrew Lloyd Webber may do a musical version of The Master and Margarita (I enjoyed Cats and Phantom as much as the next girl, but I’m not sure how I feel about one of the best books I’ve read in Kyrgyzstan being turned into a song-and-dance spectacle. Also, how crazy are Lloyd Webber’s eyebrows? Like giant sinewy caterpillars, they are.). I also read about ancient cave art in India, which reminded me that I have neglected to finish my India Chronicles. I believe I left off at the close of our time in Mumbai, which brings us to the Goa/Hampi section of the trip:
When you think about religion in India, you probably think about bindis and Buddha and flowers and temples and a veritable pantheon of Gods. This is, on the whole, a correct assumption…unless you’re in Goa, the tiny former Portuguese colony on the coast of the Indian ocean. Visiting here after Mumbai felt almost like taking a trip to Latin or South America – the Spanish colonial architecture in the steamy, jungle-like environment makes Panaji and Old Goa seem more like towns in Costa Rica or Brazil. Goa actually didn’t become part of the modern Indian state until 1961, fourteen years after independence from the British, and retains a character very distinct from that of other Indian states. Here, for example, you’ll find a significant population of Catholics and discover the area’s culinary knack for seafood dishes. In Old Goa, the now mostly uninhabited former capital, stands a cluster of striking basilicas, monasteries, and churches. What’s believed to be the largest church in Asia is here. And like their European counterparts, these holy buildings are just as impressive inside as out, teeming with intricate carvings and paintings meant to inspire piety and humility. Inside one sanctuary, though, I was sharply reminded that I was in what was considered a “heathen” land: at the feet of one of the life-sized statues of famed Catholic proselytizers lay a severed, turbaned head, a not-so-subtle reminder of the uglier aspects of the colonizers’ work.
After a couple of easy days in the Goan cities, we boarded what I would come to think as the demon bus to Hampi. In order to reach the other-worldly capital of the Vijayanagar Hindu empire, we had to endure an overnight, 12-hour journey perched atop narrow, bunk-bed-like berths. Remember the night bus from Harry Potter? It was pretty much like that. As the double-decker bus bulleted down the bumpy roads of the Indian Interior, swaying this way and that, its crew shouted and upbraided one another like a pack of swarthy sailors. This, coupled with the increasingly nippy temperature, made sleep the fountain of youth to my Fernando de Soto.
Haggard and bleary-eyed, we finally made it to Hampi and were promptly wrangled by an enterprising young guide named Patrick to stay at his guesthouse. As we enjoyed yet another delicious Indian meal in the open-air rooftop restaurant, Patrick also managed to convince us to take him on as a guide for our 2 ½ days there. His brother owned a rickshaw and would drive us everywhere we needed to go. Taking Patrick up on his offer ended up being an excellent decision – the ruins of the bazaar, temples, and royal center cover some 20 square kilometers of boulder-strewn, monkey-populated terrain. As a bonus, our rickshaw appeared to be the only one in the area equipped with an impressive sound system…thus all of my memories of the awe-inspiring place are backed by a soundtrack of Indian techno-hip-hop (yet another example of the fantastic Indian mish-mashedness).
The city of Vijayanagar was founded in 1336 and, until it was sacked by a confederacy of sultanates from the surrounding Deccan plateau in 1565, served as a center of international commerce and culture. As you’ll see in the pictures, the place is full of incredible temples and buildings, all made of stone carved to represent various deities and myths from the Hindu canon. The Vittala temple was particularly impressive with its “musical” columns (they make tonal murmurs when tapped) and large stone chariot at its entrance. In the Royal Center stand the Lotus Mahal (a really nice fusion of Hindu and Islamic architectural styles with its curved, lotus-shaped domed roof) and the great elephant stables (at these, I couldn’t help but muse that Thomas Jefferson would’ve adored the symmetric diversity of the domes).
One of the best parts about Hampi was that, despite its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage site, it allowed visitors to climb all over the place – into temples, up stairways that now lead to nowhere, down into underground passages, and around the countless buildings that never got tiresome. Patrick led us up several craggy hills (one proved to be more of a monkey-scamper than a climb; I did it barefoot, as Rainbows – though beloved by Wahoos and Californians – aren’t known for their traction). One climb he reserved for the very early morning. As we watched the sun rise over the landscape of precariously balanced rocks (the work of an odd kind of erosion), we fed bananas to the monkeys who poured out of one of the temple towers and marveled at our good fortune of being able to take such a trip.
After another bus trip of doom, we headed to Palolem, one of the Edens dotting the Goan coast, to spend our last few days in India lolling about on the beach alongside fishermen, tourists, and – this was India, after all – holy cows. After five glorious days laying on the sand, swimming in the Arabian sea, drinking mojitos, and eating fish caught mere hours before consumption, we sadly made our way to the airport. I can’t say that the 97 degree temperature drop from the tarmac in Mumbai to the airfield in Almaty was particularly welcome.
But India wasn’t quite finished with us just yet…some kind of parasite seemed to have feasted upon our feet in Palolem and so I spent the next month literally itching to go back.
And so concludes this account of a trek to India. Hope you’ve enjoyed the ride.
Terri
When you think about religion in India, you probably think about bindis and Buddha and flowers and temples and a veritable pantheon of Gods. This is, on the whole, a correct assumption…unless you’re in Goa, the tiny former Portuguese colony on the coast of the Indian ocean. Visiting here after Mumbai felt almost like taking a trip to Latin or South America – the Spanish colonial architecture in the steamy, jungle-like environment makes Panaji and Old Goa seem more like towns in Costa Rica or Brazil. Goa actually didn’t become part of the modern Indian state until 1961, fourteen years after independence from the British, and retains a character very distinct from that of other Indian states. Here, for example, you’ll find a significant population of Catholics and discover the area’s culinary knack for seafood dishes. In Old Goa, the now mostly uninhabited former capital, stands a cluster of striking basilicas, monasteries, and churches. What’s believed to be the largest church in Asia is here. And like their European counterparts, these holy buildings are just as impressive inside as out, teeming with intricate carvings and paintings meant to inspire piety and humility. Inside one sanctuary, though, I was sharply reminded that I was in what was considered a “heathen” land: at the feet of one of the life-sized statues of famed Catholic proselytizers lay a severed, turbaned head, a not-so-subtle reminder of the uglier aspects of the colonizers’ work.
After a couple of easy days in the Goan cities, we boarded what I would come to think as the demon bus to Hampi. In order to reach the other-worldly capital of the Vijayanagar Hindu empire, we had to endure an overnight, 12-hour journey perched atop narrow, bunk-bed-like berths. Remember the night bus from Harry Potter? It was pretty much like that. As the double-decker bus bulleted down the bumpy roads of the Indian Interior, swaying this way and that, its crew shouted and upbraided one another like a pack of swarthy sailors. This, coupled with the increasingly nippy temperature, made sleep the fountain of youth to my Fernando de Soto.
Haggard and bleary-eyed, we finally made it to Hampi and were promptly wrangled by an enterprising young guide named Patrick to stay at his guesthouse. As we enjoyed yet another delicious Indian meal in the open-air rooftop restaurant, Patrick also managed to convince us to take him on as a guide for our 2 ½ days there. His brother owned a rickshaw and would drive us everywhere we needed to go. Taking Patrick up on his offer ended up being an excellent decision – the ruins of the bazaar, temples, and royal center cover some 20 square kilometers of boulder-strewn, monkey-populated terrain. As a bonus, our rickshaw appeared to be the only one in the area equipped with an impressive sound system…thus all of my memories of the awe-inspiring place are backed by a soundtrack of Indian techno-hip-hop (yet another example of the fantastic Indian mish-mashedness).
The city of Vijayanagar was founded in 1336 and, until it was sacked by a confederacy of sultanates from the surrounding Deccan plateau in 1565, served as a center of international commerce and culture. As you’ll see in the pictures, the place is full of incredible temples and buildings, all made of stone carved to represent various deities and myths from the Hindu canon. The Vittala temple was particularly impressive with its “musical” columns (they make tonal murmurs when tapped) and large stone chariot at its entrance. In the Royal Center stand the Lotus Mahal (a really nice fusion of Hindu and Islamic architectural styles with its curved, lotus-shaped domed roof) and the great elephant stables (at these, I couldn’t help but muse that Thomas Jefferson would’ve adored the symmetric diversity of the domes).
One of the best parts about Hampi was that, despite its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage site, it allowed visitors to climb all over the place – into temples, up stairways that now lead to nowhere, down into underground passages, and around the countless buildings that never got tiresome. Patrick led us up several craggy hills (one proved to be more of a monkey-scamper than a climb; I did it barefoot, as Rainbows – though beloved by Wahoos and Californians – aren’t known for their traction). One climb he reserved for the very early morning. As we watched the sun rise over the landscape of precariously balanced rocks (the work of an odd kind of erosion), we fed bananas to the monkeys who poured out of one of the temple towers and marveled at our good fortune of being able to take such a trip.
After another bus trip of doom, we headed to Palolem, one of the Edens dotting the Goan coast, to spend our last few days in India lolling about on the beach alongside fishermen, tourists, and – this was India, after all – holy cows. After five glorious days laying on the sand, swimming in the Arabian sea, drinking mojitos, and eating fish caught mere hours before consumption, we sadly made our way to the airport. I can’t say that the 97 degree temperature drop from the tarmac in Mumbai to the airfield in Almaty was particularly welcome.
But India wasn’t quite finished with us just yet…some kind of parasite seemed to have feasted upon our feet in Palolem and so I spent the next month literally itching to go back.
And so concludes this account of a trek to India. Hope you’ve enjoyed the ride.
Terri
16 February 2008
India, Part III
So, wow, I’m very far behind in my India Chronicles. Last time I wrote, I believe I had just ended Day 1. Leaping back in…
Other highlights from Mumbai (I’ll be more than happy to write more about any of these, if you ask, but right now am just trying to churn it all out):
- Welcome: Marry or Die, Mafia Style. This would be the title of the Bollywood movie we saw in a theater in Mumbai. Most Americans think that Hollywood is the center of the global movie-making industry; they are wrong – it’s Mumbai. Hundreds of films are churned out of Bollywood every year, most of them raucous romps featuring lots of singing and dancing and some sort of wildly twisting plotline. And the film we saw was no exception – 3 glorious hours of boy-meets-girl, boy-tries-to-win-girl, boy-succeeds-but-soon-discovers-that-girl-is-not-what-she-appeared-to-be-because-her-brother-is-a-mafia-don-with-whom-the-boy’s-uncle/caretaker-becomes-accidentally-but-dangerously-involved. It was something of a mix between My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Rush Hour, Goodfellas, Analyze This, and West Side Story. I’m so not kidding. The film was in Hindi, so we didn’t really understand everything that was going on…but enjoyed what might best be termed an exercise in the outrageous nonetheless.
- The Walking Tour. Since our guidebooks were bulky and heavy, we decided not to take them with us when we set out on a walking tour of the city. This was a mistake. After a successful hour or so, we accidentally took a wrong turn and found ourselves in a small slum. This ended up not being that big a deal since, as Volunteers, we’re pretty used to being surrounded by small children shouting out various random English phrases and wanting us to play with them. We got nervous, though, when we could no longer read anything that was posted and so started following the only English signs, which pointed toward something called “Baranga.” After walking through twisting, cobbled streets and down a large flight of stairs, we found ourselves at a large glistening pool. Not until we made it back to our hotel did we learn that we’d “discovered” one of the holiest (but hardest to find) sites in the city – the place where Rama (one of the incarnations of Vishnu, the Preserver) shot an arrow and water welled up, thus creating the world. Tolkien was right when he wrote that “all who wander are not lost.”
- In a dive bar we went into one afternoon, we noticed an interesting sign: “All castes welcome.”
- The Walking Tour, Take 2. The next day, we decided to bite the bullet and take a taxi to the Haji Ali Mosque (the destination of our first attempt at the walking tour), the major place of worship for Muslims in the city. It is constructed on an island off the city’s coastline; during high tide, the causeway disappears and it looks like a mysterious, floating building. Pretty cool. What makes the site even more interesting (and decidedly Indian), though, is that it is within site of the major Hindu temple in Mumbai. The day that we arrived at the site, there appeared to be some sort of Hindu holiday underway, as literally thousands and thousands of people were lined up along the road, waiting for admittance into the temple. Add to this the people trying to get to the mosque, and you have one hell of a crowd. There were maybe ten or fifteen thousand people milling about the narrow sidewalks in the hot sun. For the first time, I began to get a sense of how big India’s population really is; “a billion people” began to become less of an abstraction. (Here’s some food for thought: we all know about India’s booming economy…but did you know that it has only affected about 200 million people? That’s a lot, certainly…but only a fifth of the country’s total population.)
Other highlights from Mumbai (I’ll be more than happy to write more about any of these, if you ask, but right now am just trying to churn it all out):
- Welcome: Marry or Die, Mafia Style. This would be the title of the Bollywood movie we saw in a theater in Mumbai. Most Americans think that Hollywood is the center of the global movie-making industry; they are wrong – it’s Mumbai. Hundreds of films are churned out of Bollywood every year, most of them raucous romps featuring lots of singing and dancing and some sort of wildly twisting plotline. And the film we saw was no exception – 3 glorious hours of boy-meets-girl, boy-tries-to-win-girl, boy-succeeds-but-soon-discovers-that-girl-is-not-what-she-appeared-to-be-because-her-brother-is-a-mafia-don-with-whom-the-boy’s-uncle/caretaker-becomes-accidentally-but-dangerously-involved. It was something of a mix between My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Rush Hour, Goodfellas, Analyze This, and West Side Story. I’m so not kidding. The film was in Hindi, so we didn’t really understand everything that was going on…but enjoyed what might best be termed an exercise in the outrageous nonetheless.
- The Walking Tour. Since our guidebooks were bulky and heavy, we decided not to take them with us when we set out on a walking tour of the city. This was a mistake. After a successful hour or so, we accidentally took a wrong turn and found ourselves in a small slum. This ended up not being that big a deal since, as Volunteers, we’re pretty used to being surrounded by small children shouting out various random English phrases and wanting us to play with them. We got nervous, though, when we could no longer read anything that was posted and so started following the only English signs, which pointed toward something called “Baranga.” After walking through twisting, cobbled streets and down a large flight of stairs, we found ourselves at a large glistening pool. Not until we made it back to our hotel did we learn that we’d “discovered” one of the holiest (but hardest to find) sites in the city – the place where Rama (one of the incarnations of Vishnu, the Preserver) shot an arrow and water welled up, thus creating the world. Tolkien was right when he wrote that “all who wander are not lost.”
- In a dive bar we went into one afternoon, we noticed an interesting sign: “All castes welcome.”
- The Walking Tour, Take 2. The next day, we decided to bite the bullet and take a taxi to the Haji Ali Mosque (the destination of our first attempt at the walking tour), the major place of worship for Muslims in the city. It is constructed on an island off the city’s coastline; during high tide, the causeway disappears and it looks like a mysterious, floating building. Pretty cool. What makes the site even more interesting (and decidedly Indian), though, is that it is within site of the major Hindu temple in Mumbai. The day that we arrived at the site, there appeared to be some sort of Hindu holiday underway, as literally thousands and thousands of people were lined up along the road, waiting for admittance into the temple. Add to this the people trying to get to the mosque, and you have one hell of a crowd. There were maybe ten or fifteen thousand people milling about the narrow sidewalks in the hot sun. For the first time, I began to get a sense of how big India’s population really is; “a billion people” began to become less of an abstraction. (Here’s some food for thought: we all know about India’s booming economy…but did you know that it has only affected about 200 million people? That’s a lot, certainly…but only a fifth of the country’s total population.)
06 February 2008
India, Part II
Our stomachs sated, we set out for Chharrapati Shivaji Terminus, nee-Victoria Station, the busiest train station in Asia. I’ll post photos as soon as I can – the building is impressive, to say the least. Historian Christopher London puts it well: “the Victoria Terminus is to the British Raj, what the Taj Mahal is to the Mughal empire.” It’s kind of strange, actually, to see this great beacon of neo-Gothic architecture in the middle of India…but the great Subcontinent nation seems to absorb everything into its churning, glorious diversity, even the remnants of its former colonizers. Anyway, our less-than-rested brains didn’t pick up on the fact that we couldn’t circumnavigate the station since it had several busy railways thrusting from one side. But we did begin to get a sense of the jostling, crowded, infinitely interesting nature of the city. People everywhere. Think of throngs a la college football games or the last night of FunFest …except that crowds are omnipresent in Mumbai. And the people are doing things that I thought existed only in the pages of National Geographic: women deftly balancing huge bundles on their head as they weave their ways through the masses, men frying samosas and other savories almost too good to be termed ‘street food,’ other men asking if they can clean out your ears, Indian yuppies yapping away on their shiny cell phones (in a way not unlike their American counterparts), and – hardest to take – beggars, scores of them, whole families living on the street with not much else but a blanket between them. I had never seen poverty like this – and I live in a poor country. Poverty so obvious it’s almost not to be believed, like a smack in the face from a stranger. But this isn’t a silent poverty. You are forced – especially as a foreigner – to interact with it on a daily basis. There are different strategies…the friendly approach (favored by children and teenagers) “Hello! What is your name? Give me some money, please!”, the plaintive stare (used mostly by mothers with a child at their shoulder), the aggressive hounding (which can turn into a pick-pocketing), and, hardest for me to take, the telling of one’s personal history, usually accompanied by a “gift” of some sort – a flower, little sugar beads, or the like. Our first evening in Mumbai, I was overtaken by a little girl who thrust a small garland of jasmine in my hands. She soon began to tell me how she couldn’t go to school because her family was too poor, how she was hungry, how the flowers were only a gift. After a couple of minutes, I relented and tried to hand her a couple of rupee coins, a gesture which she refused, saying that she could only accept food, which was to be found just around the corner. She wouldn’t leave me alone, until I finally had to refuse more firmly than I would have liked and rush away. The thing that really broke my heart was that this little guy, at maybe 7 or 8 years of age, had already learned how to dupe people. The “food stand” that she kept trying to drag me to may well have been a set up for a robbery. After that incident, I did (or tried to, at least) the that most tourists – and Indians, for that matter – do: pretended that the beggars didn’t exist, that I had some sort of shield around me that prevented me from hearing, seeing, or feeling anything toward them. And this, this is perhaps the saddest thing of all.
But I’ve gotten ahead of myself here. Back to dinner on the first night. Our lack of sleep, by evening, had begun to catch up with us, so we decided to hit the restaurant next door to our hotel, which just happened to be one of the ex-pat and tourist meccas of Mumbai: The Leopold Café. Unused to Hindi terminology for various dishes, we decided to order the things that we had absolutely no idea what they were, which ended up being a pretty good call. On this night, I began what will likely be a lifelong love affair with Indian food. I plan on writing an entire email/blog entry on the cuisine, but, for now, I’ll suffice to say that Indians make becoming a vegetarian a totally painless proposition. Vegetables and spice and flatbread (naan – oddly enough, this is also the Kyrgyz word for bread…oh the linguistic escapades I’ve uncovered), oh my! Anyway, what we really wanted that night were a few cold beers, and the Leopold Café was more than happy to fulfill this wish. The only hitch was that their “pitchers” were 3-meter-high cylinders that looked a lot more like bongs than beverage receptacles. I should probably mention at this point that we were sitting in the first table, so everyone passing by could see us easily (there being no door, just big open windows and a threshold). Oh, and Gregory David Roberts, the author of the wildly popular (in India, anyway) Shantaram, was sitting at the next table. Needless to say, there was a pretty constant stream of his fans snaking up to his – and by proxy, our – table. We Peace Corps Volunteers, who are usually out of the loop of nearly everything, had no idea who the guy that insisted on keeping his blond braid despite his receding hairline was. Our focus at the time was that our waiter was having trouble reaching our table to bring us our food and drink. We had the last laugh, though, when the very archetype of a Japanese tourist, camera round his neck and floppy fisherman’s hat atop his head, came up to our table and asked not to take a photo with the famous author, but with the table of Americans and their giant beer tower.
Ok, I’ve made it past Day 1 now. More later. I’m starting to realize that my account of my trip to India is going to be considerably longer than I’d anticipated. No matter…things are pretty slow here in snowy Kyrgyzstan. Stay tuned.
Happy (belated) Super/Fat Tuesday!
But I’ve gotten ahead of myself here. Back to dinner on the first night. Our lack of sleep, by evening, had begun to catch up with us, so we decided to hit the restaurant next door to our hotel, which just happened to be one of the ex-pat and tourist meccas of Mumbai: The Leopold Café. Unused to Hindi terminology for various dishes, we decided to order the things that we had absolutely no idea what they were, which ended up being a pretty good call. On this night, I began what will likely be a lifelong love affair with Indian food. I plan on writing an entire email/blog entry on the cuisine, but, for now, I’ll suffice to say that Indians make becoming a vegetarian a totally painless proposition. Vegetables and spice and flatbread (naan – oddly enough, this is also the Kyrgyz word for bread…oh the linguistic escapades I’ve uncovered), oh my! Anyway, what we really wanted that night were a few cold beers, and the Leopold Café was more than happy to fulfill this wish. The only hitch was that their “pitchers” were 3-meter-high cylinders that looked a lot more like bongs than beverage receptacles. I should probably mention at this point that we were sitting in the first table, so everyone passing by could see us easily (there being no door, just big open windows and a threshold). Oh, and Gregory David Roberts, the author of the wildly popular (in India, anyway) Shantaram, was sitting at the next table. Needless to say, there was a pretty constant stream of his fans snaking up to his – and by proxy, our – table. We Peace Corps Volunteers, who are usually out of the loop of nearly everything, had no idea who the guy that insisted on keeping his blond braid despite his receding hairline was. Our focus at the time was that our waiter was having trouble reaching our table to bring us our food and drink. We had the last laugh, though, when the very archetype of a Japanese tourist, camera round his neck and floppy fisherman’s hat atop his head, came up to our table and asked not to take a photo with the famous author, but with the table of Americans and their giant beer tower.
Ok, I’ve made it past Day 1 now. More later. I’m starting to realize that my account of my trip to India is going to be considerably longer than I’d anticipated. No matter…things are pretty slow here in snowy Kyrgyzstan. Stay tuned.
Happy (belated) Super/Fat Tuesday!
01 February 2008
India, Part I
As promised, here is my account of my two weeks in India, well chapter one of it anyway. I've struggled with how to organize the thing…do it in a logical, chronological, journal-like fashion? In a wacked-out-write-whatever-comes-to-mind way? In a set of themes, a la third grade textbook "History" "Culture" "Traditions" headings? In relation to my senses (for the place truly affected each and every one)?
After spending several days pondering this, I decided just to stop thinking and dive in. The cold – of which I wrote in my last email – has forced most of the schools in Kyrgyzstan to close their doors til February 5. So I've been curled up in my room, drinking hot beverages and reading books. Delicious hibernation. But I'm starting to go a little stir-crazy, so need to produce something of my own. Thus, the following…
As we were driving over the steppe of Kazakhstan to the airport in Almaty, one of my traveling companions mentioned that he wouldn't mind at all if we didn't see a single Russian in the coming weeks. This hope, unfortunately, turned out to be a silly one, as the entire population of Russia seems to have decided to travel southward for an Indian holiday. Forced by awkward flight schedules to spend our first night in India in the Delhi airport, we found sleeping to be next to impossible due to the presence of a boisterous (and intoxicated) group of Russians who not only were speaking their native tongue in levels inappropriate even for a fairly crowded airport…but had brought a book of Russian folk songs with them to pass the time. I felt like I was having some sort of very bad dream as I attempted sleep in the chilly, grey, halogen-lit room, balancing atop two cushion-less chairs, arms stuffed in my sweatshirt, and ears assaulted by the strains of Russian merry-making. Luckily, this gloomy state soon lifted with my plane to Mumbai, where our adventure begins.
The airport is approximately 20 kilometers from the tourist center of Mumbai. Thus, you might imagine that a mid-morning taxi might take you an hour or so. This would be a faulty assumption in this particular place, however. No stranger to aggressive taxi drivers, we groggily found our way into a fairly-enough-priced cab, our noses assaulted by the smells of diesel, flowers, and smog. Joyfully, we shrugged off our sweatshirts and jackets – the weather was miraculously warm. As our taxi driver pulled into the highway – a thoroughfare clogged with motorbikes, shiny new BMWS, old rusty cabs, three-wheeled rickshaws, and buses – one of my traveling partners leaned over and said, "Guys! We're about to enter some of the most dangerous traffic in the world!" Happy to be freed from our Peace Corps Kyrgyzstan chains, though, we all grinned mischievously and leaned back, ready to get our vacation started.
We checked into a cheap, clean hotel and decided to grab some lunch and take a walk round before the exhaustion from 30 sleepless hours set in. As we strolled down the street, all of our gazes were quickly averted. But not to the beautifully be-sari-ed women nor to the piles of fresh fruit nor to the architectural relics of the British imperialists. No, these Americans only had eyes for the Golden Arches. Kyrgyzstan, you see, lacks any sort of Western chain restaurant and, for the most part, all of its attempts at burgers and the like are woefully inadequate. So into McDonalds we strolled. But this was not your ordinary Mickey D's. Not a single beef product on the menu (Hindus, after all, regard our bovine friends as sacred and, thus, do not eat them). They did, to my delight, have Diet Coke and veggie burgers (a staple of mine from my days as a Wahoo) and, for the boys, many varieties of chicken burgers (including something called a Maharaja Mac). Not to mention the soft serve French fries and ketchup (which was in a self-serve pump with little cups). We all had seconds.
Ok, my writing energy has been expended for the time being. And, holy crap, I've only made it to lunchtime on Day 1. Promise more stories later...which will include, among others, our run-in with an eager Japanese tourist, riding in the krunkest rickshaw in Hampi and the bumpiest bus on the planet, and descriptions of food so delicious that it may be painful to write about it (seeing as I'll likely be going back to another potato-based meal right after).
Love, Terri
PS Temperatures are going up and the sun is shining. Woohoo! Oh, and the weather got so bad there for a while that most of the schools in Kstan CLOSED for 10 days! Getting lots of reading and hot-chocolate-drinking in.
PPS Another awkward Kstan moment: Went to the public banya (you rent it out for an hour) the other day...and somehow the wily proprietor circumvented the doorlock, came into the banya, and told my friend and me (in all our naked glory) not to use all the water. Water, I might add, that we were frigging PAYING FOR. Arghhh...but at least I'm clean!
After spending several days pondering this, I decided just to stop thinking and dive in. The cold – of which I wrote in my last email – has forced most of the schools in Kyrgyzstan to close their doors til February 5. So I've been curled up in my room, drinking hot beverages and reading books. Delicious hibernation. But I'm starting to go a little stir-crazy, so need to produce something of my own. Thus, the following…
As we were driving over the steppe of Kazakhstan to the airport in Almaty, one of my traveling companions mentioned that he wouldn't mind at all if we didn't see a single Russian in the coming weeks. This hope, unfortunately, turned out to be a silly one, as the entire population of Russia seems to have decided to travel southward for an Indian holiday. Forced by awkward flight schedules to spend our first night in India in the Delhi airport, we found sleeping to be next to impossible due to the presence of a boisterous (and intoxicated) group of Russians who not only were speaking their native tongue in levels inappropriate even for a fairly crowded airport…but had brought a book of Russian folk songs with them to pass the time. I felt like I was having some sort of very bad dream as I attempted sleep in the chilly, grey, halogen-lit room, balancing atop two cushion-less chairs, arms stuffed in my sweatshirt, and ears assaulted by the strains of Russian merry-making. Luckily, this gloomy state soon lifted with my plane to Mumbai, where our adventure begins.
The airport is approximately 20 kilometers from the tourist center of Mumbai. Thus, you might imagine that a mid-morning taxi might take you an hour or so. This would be a faulty assumption in this particular place, however. No stranger to aggressive taxi drivers, we groggily found our way into a fairly-enough-priced cab, our noses assaulted by the smells of diesel, flowers, and smog. Joyfully, we shrugged off our sweatshirts and jackets – the weather was miraculously warm. As our taxi driver pulled into the highway – a thoroughfare clogged with motorbikes, shiny new BMWS, old rusty cabs, three-wheeled rickshaws, and buses – one of my traveling partners leaned over and said, "Guys! We're about to enter some of the most dangerous traffic in the world!" Happy to be freed from our Peace Corps Kyrgyzstan chains, though, we all grinned mischievously and leaned back, ready to get our vacation started.
We checked into a cheap, clean hotel and decided to grab some lunch and take a walk round before the exhaustion from 30 sleepless hours set in. As we strolled down the street, all of our gazes were quickly averted. But not to the beautifully be-sari-ed women nor to the piles of fresh fruit nor to the architectural relics of the British imperialists. No, these Americans only had eyes for the Golden Arches. Kyrgyzstan, you see, lacks any sort of Western chain restaurant and, for the most part, all of its attempts at burgers and the like are woefully inadequate. So into McDonalds we strolled. But this was not your ordinary Mickey D's. Not a single beef product on the menu (Hindus, after all, regard our bovine friends as sacred and, thus, do not eat them). They did, to my delight, have Diet Coke and veggie burgers (a staple of mine from my days as a Wahoo) and, for the boys, many varieties of chicken burgers (including something called a Maharaja Mac). Not to mention the soft serve French fries and ketchup (which was in a self-serve pump with little cups). We all had seconds.
Ok, my writing energy has been expended for the time being. And, holy crap, I've only made it to lunchtime on Day 1. Promise more stories later...which will include, among others, our run-in with an eager Japanese tourist, riding in the krunkest rickshaw in Hampi and the bumpiest bus on the planet, and descriptions of food so delicious that it may be painful to write about it (seeing as I'll likely be going back to another potato-based meal right after).
Love, Terri
PS Temperatures are going up and the sun is shining. Woohoo! Oh, and the weather got so bad there for a while that most of the schools in Kstan CLOSED for 10 days! Getting lots of reading and hot-chocolate-drinking in.
PPS Another awkward Kstan moment: Went to the public banya (you rent it out for an hour) the other day...and somehow the wily proprietor circumvented the doorlock, came into the banya, and told my friend and me (in all our naked glory) not to use all the water. Water, I might add, that we were frigging PAYING FOR. Arghhh...but at least I'm clean!
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