Because there's no good alliteration for football.
Anh woke up all the guys a little before 8 for tea. Tea was actually at 9. We thought it was at 9. Ah, well. Ended up sitting with Harish and Anh before everyone else got there, people gradually filtering in. We heard a great story about a project Harish did on the marketing of Gandhi, wherein he talked to the producer himself for about four hours. After that it was over to the rolling beans, omelet, fruit salad and pineapple juice, internet internet internet, battery die, chill, little more internet. I tried to work on my essay but I've hit something of a roadblock.
Sat around for some of the afternoon, went to dinner around four. There was mass confusion when it come to the money and Michelle trying to pay with a card and all this shenanigans, but finally Swaffy, Michelle and I went to the winery, I had cheesy garlic bread, chicken burger with cheese, and a sweet lime soda. It was all very good. Michelle paid with the money she owed Denny, I came back and chilled with Nate and read for a little bit.
The other night while we were at meditation, Nate had played soccer with some guys down on the beach. He was going to meet them again today at 5:30 to play again, and I tagged along. We sat for a while, didn't see Nate's guys for a long time, or only saw one of them at a time. There was this little black dog that thought it was a big dog (reminded me of the Hestons' Ebony), which was hilarious to watch. Also people playing soccer, different crowd, some people in all white playing a game similar to catch with a small red ball that they tossed waaaaaay up into the air, horses, pony-drawn carts, people walking, parents, children, couples, people sitting, you get the idea. Busy place. Finally two of the guys Nate met showed up and the four of us started doing some passing, nothing serious.
They were both pretty good, juggling and that sort of thing, I mostly just passed. I wasn't as good as the other three, of course, but my passes were usually on target, my trapping was... eh, okay, I didn't do too bad. Playing on sand is different. The ball bounces at weird angles, your feet slide into it, the ball goes into the surf. This was high, dry, soft sand too, not even the packed wet stuff. After a while another two guys showed up, Nate was feeling tired and headed out (not like we ever sleep on this trip), so there were five of us. Couldn't play real football, so we played “foot volleyball.” It's like volleyball with soccer rules. 3 v 2, I was on the 2 with a guy whose name I later learned was Rippol. Or something like that. He was REALLY good with headers me... not so much. I got a few good ones, but just a few. Still, we were winning for a while somehow, and even when it tied up they never got very far ahead of us. After the first few points they drew a second line in the middle to settle arguments about whether or not the ball had gone high enough before it landed. I don't even know how that game ended, eventually a guy named Ajay joined my side.
Eventually Jake and another of their guys came down and we played 4 v 4, two sandals formed each goal, Jake joined Rippol, Ajay and I. At first I was up front, then I played back a bit, then they told me to go up front because I wasn't doing so hot, then they forgot about that immediately and I had to go back again. It's a very... different game. This was closer to the surf, so more on the hard-packed wet sand, though the tide was going out so that changed over the course. People here don't even TRY to avoid the game, so you have to watch out for people going through (Nate accidentally hit a kid when we were passing it around, the guy's father was really nice about it though. We let the kid kick the ball a couple of times and all was well.) Well, watch out for, and often continue to play around them even as they go. Not just people, though, but all the other games around you: had to kick back the other soccer ball's game many a time, and I never handed the guys back their red ball but we had to as a group fairly often. The horses weren't usually a problem, but the pony-drawn carts got in the way a fair bit. Our ball got stuck under the wheel of one once. We lost 3-2 or 4-2, though whether or not the goal counted if it went over a sandal seemed to change situation to situation. Ah, well. I spent a lot of time running after balls, too, but yeah, it was a lot of fun. Informal, though they were as serious on handballs as any game I've ever seen. Finished, headed back up, pretty tired, got a cold shower (more on that later) and here I am back at the Rolling Beans.
Sunday, February 21st, roughly 7:30-8:05 PM local time
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Two extra thoughts.
The swami, at the second talk, talked about when people disagree with you. Relevant to me, yeah? He said agree with them first. It puts their defenses down, defuses the conflict, and they're more likely to hear what you have to say.
Maybe I can follow that advice. Maybe
The other thing that didn't really strike me until this morning was what an opportunity last night was. This whole trip has been observe observe observe, but we've never really had a chance to observe people who weren't reacting to US. I mean, okay, when we're just driving through the street we can see what's going on around us, but whenever we talk to anyone or interact with them in anyway, their behavior is different because of who we are, automatically. No way to really see how they'd be within the culture. But the workshop last night was not like the first talk, not arranged for our benefit, this was a series (really, a lot like church) that had been going on and would continue to go on. The speech was for those people, and we just happened to be there, able to watch it. He used America and Americans as examples a couple times, nothing real negative, and it was the first time I was able to hear someone's opinion of such not filtered through the fact that they were talking TO Americans. Really unique, cool opportunity.
Sunday, February 21st, roughly 10:15-10:20 AM local time
The swami, at the second talk, talked about when people disagree with you. Relevant to me, yeah? He said agree with them first. It puts their defenses down, defuses the conflict, and they're more likely to hear what you have to say.
Maybe I can follow that advice. Maybe
The other thing that didn't really strike me until this morning was what an opportunity last night was. This whole trip has been observe observe observe, but we've never really had a chance to observe people who weren't reacting to US. I mean, okay, when we're just driving through the street we can see what's going on around us, but whenever we talk to anyone or interact with them in anyway, their behavior is different because of who we are, automatically. No way to really see how they'd be within the culture. But the workshop last night was not like the first talk, not arranged for our benefit, this was a series (really, a lot like church) that had been going on and would continue to go on. The speech was for those people, and we just happened to be there, able to watch it. He used America and Americans as examples a couple times, nothing real negative, and it was the first time I was able to hear someone's opinion of such not filtered through the fact that they were talking TO Americans. Really unique, cool opportunity.
Sunday, February 21st, roughly 10:15-10:20 AM local time
Alright so, today, big day. Trying to remember it all.
Got up just before 9, went to tea with Harish and Max. Heard a great family story from Harish (he also told us a great story the other day about meeting Paul Newman), had more delicious tea, biscuits, went down, laundry guy finally appeared! And gouged us on the price. Harish negotiated him down to 80% of what he was charging, but still far above what we expected. I mean, cheap by American standards, but meh. Went over to Rolling Beans, had an omelet and a lime soda, Liz paid for me accidentally, spent a lot of time online, wrote a little bit of my essay. Back across the street, chilled, laid in bed for a long time, got up and ready about 4 for a group photo and the Chinai's swami visiting.
Took a bit for everyone to get there and get going, but the swami was actually really interesting. Swami G, the biggest points I enjoyed included the idea that India got modern technologies, but not modern etiquette: there's so much trash because until 30-50 years ago, EVERYTHING was biodegradable, so when plastics showed up they didn't know how to deal with them properly. It's a good explanation. He also talked about the idea that God is in everything, in nature, in every person, when you consider nature mother, you can't pollute or destroy it. He also related God (religion), Truth (philosophy), and Reality (science). Unfortunately, it being many hours later, I don't necessarily remember all of his other points. Talked about India as a nonviolent culture, the historical stuff of India's science and medicinal plants, thousands of years before anyone else really wrote things down, lots of other things. We had tea, watched the sunset, and were invited to see him speak at 7 at a meditation workshop.
Becky, Swaffy, Allen, John, Brenna and I went, Harish provided taxis. Nice of him. He told us to go straight to the front regardless of what was going on, I told John to take lead, that style is more up his alley than mine. We got up front, thankfully there were seats available, the swami showed up not long after. They started with a chant or song in Hindi or maybe Sanskrit, but most of the preaching was in English, interjected by Sanskrit as he read directly from the book or used a specific word that had a specific meaning. The passage was about meditation and controlling one's mind. The term “monkey mind” was used, I heard it 5 years ago at a meditation workshop at my first PeaceJam, which was cool. Obviously the Krishna and Vishnu religious aspects aren't something I can take away from it, but the points about detachment, not being able to detach from desire until one attaches one's self to something higher, something more peaceful, making meditation a daily habit, not giving up after initial failure, general meditation technique, a lot of it I might be able to use. I probably won't try until I get home, too hectic here, but hopefully I'll remember. They also occasionally sang in between, and there was a song at the end, John said it was remarkably like a Catholic mass in format. We headed out, back in the taxis, John and I swapped stories a bit, and back to Daria Mahal.
From there Becky, John and I went to the winery for dinner. Allen joined us not long after we ordered. I had penne al pesto, it had a pesto/garlic sauce, we split DELICIOUS cheesy garlic bread, as well as a bottle of white wine, South Bay something. They were out of a lot of options, so, that was that. We had dinner, talked about the day, cleared the air on a few issues I think which is good. I had a similar clearing the air talk with Nate the other day, I really appreciate the chance to talk with people about shit on the trip because it hasn't happened often until now and I've been really afraid of offending or starting something big. It was nice. Wine wasn't bad either. Covered that on my card, headed back, waited a bit, now we're at the hookah bar. Last time we had silver fox, a minty thing, today raspberry, it's delicious. Nate, Allen and John are playing cutthroat, Becky and I are just chilling with the hookah on the couches.
Saturday, February 20th, roughly 10:55-11:15 PM local time
Got up just before 9, went to tea with Harish and Max. Heard a great family story from Harish (he also told us a great story the other day about meeting Paul Newman), had more delicious tea, biscuits, went down, laundry guy finally appeared! And gouged us on the price. Harish negotiated him down to 80% of what he was charging, but still far above what we expected. I mean, cheap by American standards, but meh. Went over to Rolling Beans, had an omelet and a lime soda, Liz paid for me accidentally, spent a lot of time online, wrote a little bit of my essay. Back across the street, chilled, laid in bed for a long time, got up and ready about 4 for a group photo and the Chinai's swami visiting.
Took a bit for everyone to get there and get going, but the swami was actually really interesting. Swami G, the biggest points I enjoyed included the idea that India got modern technologies, but not modern etiquette: there's so much trash because until 30-50 years ago, EVERYTHING was biodegradable, so when plastics showed up they didn't know how to deal with them properly. It's a good explanation. He also talked about the idea that God is in everything, in nature, in every person, when you consider nature mother, you can't pollute or destroy it. He also related God (religion), Truth (philosophy), and Reality (science). Unfortunately, it being many hours later, I don't necessarily remember all of his other points. Talked about India as a nonviolent culture, the historical stuff of India's science and medicinal plants, thousands of years before anyone else really wrote things down, lots of other things. We had tea, watched the sunset, and were invited to see him speak at 7 at a meditation workshop.
Becky, Swaffy, Allen, John, Brenna and I went, Harish provided taxis. Nice of him. He told us to go straight to the front regardless of what was going on, I told John to take lead, that style is more up his alley than mine. We got up front, thankfully there were seats available, the swami showed up not long after. They started with a chant or song in Hindi or maybe Sanskrit, but most of the preaching was in English, interjected by Sanskrit as he read directly from the book or used a specific word that had a specific meaning. The passage was about meditation and controlling one's mind. The term “monkey mind” was used, I heard it 5 years ago at a meditation workshop at my first PeaceJam, which was cool. Obviously the Krishna and Vishnu religious aspects aren't something I can take away from it, but the points about detachment, not being able to detach from desire until one attaches one's self to something higher, something more peaceful, making meditation a daily habit, not giving up after initial failure, general meditation technique, a lot of it I might be able to use. I probably won't try until I get home, too hectic here, but hopefully I'll remember. They also occasionally sang in between, and there was a song at the end, John said it was remarkably like a Catholic mass in format. We headed out, back in the taxis, John and I swapped stories a bit, and back to Daria Mahal.
From there Becky, John and I went to the winery for dinner. Allen joined us not long after we ordered. I had penne al pesto, it had a pesto/garlic sauce, we split DELICIOUS cheesy garlic bread, as well as a bottle of white wine, South Bay something. They were out of a lot of options, so, that was that. We had dinner, talked about the day, cleared the air on a few issues I think which is good. I had a similar clearing the air talk with Nate the other day, I really appreciate the chance to talk with people about shit on the trip because it hasn't happened often until now and I've been really afraid of offending or starting something big. It was nice. Wine wasn't bad either. Covered that on my card, headed back, waited a bit, now we're at the hookah bar. Last time we had silver fox, a minty thing, today raspberry, it's delicious. Nate, Allen and John are playing cutthroat, Becky and I are just chilling with the hookah on the couches.
Saturday, February 20th, roughly 10:55-11:15 PM local time
At Max's house, in our guestroom.
We woke up this morning early, had tea with Max and Harish, and it was out to the city. We saw this massive clothes washing place, 5000 some workers there, all outside beating clothes against stone and washing them. Sounds odd, I know, but it was actually kind of cool. So we watched that for a bit, then moved on. I frankly don't remember if there was another stop before downtown or not, but we got to an India Gate here, squatter than the other one, but no less beautiful.
Now, see, one of the best things about yesterday was the lack of hawkers and beggars. Seriously, the whole time yesterday, not a one. No such luck today, you go into the more main area of the city... it was nowhere NEAR as bad as Delhi, Agra, or even Jaipur, but still a fair bit. The beggars especially on the road in, when we stopped at a red light or something (a surprising find in India). From there we went to the Taj Mahal Palace, an absolutely beautiful hotel, though somewhat darkened by the terrorist attacks a couple years ago. Unfortunately there was no photography inside, but the whole place is just gorgeous.
We went outside and got a meal at Leopold's, I had a mango lassi and a cheese omelet. Our waiter was... grumpy. Let's say. He wasn't happy about splitting the checks, and when he brought Kanako the wrong order, he forced her to take it, pointing repeatedly at what he had written incorrectly. We didn't tip him.
From there John and I started to head back to the Taj to look at some ties we had seen earlier, though we got distracted by a stand selling fake-old navigation tools. Becky had picked up two sundial-compass-time zone-probably one or two other functions thing there that were actually pretty cool. The guy there was sort of irritating, overused the word “friend” and would clearly direct people away from what they asked for in favor of things that were more expensive, but then again, John picked up a sextant. I mean, that's pretty awesome. The guy kept trying to sell to me, but I just kept telling him no and ignoring him. John also got offered weed, we decided how you find weed in India is to be a white guy smoking a cigarette. Got back to the Taj, back through the (very friendly and efficient) security, and to the tie store. I gotta thank John, I kept looking at different ones, but he kept me firm to the first one I liked, which really was a nice pick. 100% silk nice green striped tie, $22 American. John picked up two, one for himself and one for his dad. The one for himself is this nice blue and yellow, his dad's was a somewhat more traditional white and black, but also beautiful.
We chilled in the AC for a bit, went out, I got offered weed and eventually the guy left me alone after he put his hand on my shoulder and I shrugged it off and glared at him, we watched members of our group get conned by fake holy men (who would bind a cord around their wrists and 'bless' them), and we got back into the taxis. From there we saw Marine Drive, a beautiful view along the ocean, though I guess most of our group was targeted by pickpockets just before my taxi of Zypy, Nate and I got there. Nate and I had great conversations all day, by the way, about multiparty systems, states' rights, gender relations and sex, alcohol, pretty much anything and everything imaginable. It tended towards the political theory side, though.
After the brief ocean view we went up to the hanging gardens, gorgeous gardens where I'm only sad we couldn't see the Towers of Silence where the Zoroastrians leave their dead. I mean, I want to respect the religion, but it would be so cool to see. The gardens were nice though, lots of color, lots of flowers, lots of topiaries. I also had fun messing with Zypy's fundamentalist view of the bible. Because I'm That Guy. We lost our taxi somehow, so I had to cram in with Swaffy and Becky (I forget who was up front) until we somehow found our taxi again. From there it was a pleasant ride back to Max's house, seeing lots of billboards and posters about youth suicide, bindass (we think HIV-positive), and Bollywood films, none of those being related. When we got back I went to the Rolling Beans across the street and used the wireless for a good while, then came back, napped and chilled.
There's a Muslim wedding reception at Max's house tonight, at first we thought we might get food there but that didn't pan out. A whole group of us went to the same winery Nate and I ate at the other night. I had margherita (cheese and tomato) pizza and Raging Bull red wine, a bottle I split with Nate. Pretty good, even if I don't prefer wine. We sat, talked, whatever, dealt with the bill, came back, awkwardly figured out our way around the wedding (no bride and groom yet) and went up to the balcony to watch. By the way, in all this, I'm wearing a long-sleeved button down shirt and shorts, because the laundry guy hasn't brought our clothes back yet. At least two guys were in their bathing suits and shirts. Yeah.
So we watch from the balcony, I regret not having my camera, it was really a beautiful set-up. They have an arch with water cascading down it, this beautiful little covered stage up front where the bride and groom sat when they arrived, lights hanging from the trees, really great. We watched for a while, I was about to head back to the room when Clay stopped me JUST short of mucking the whole thing up, thank you Clay, the bride was here. I went back to the balcony and we watched the bride approach. Now, apparently, marriage in Islam is a legal ceremony, not a religious ceremony, because there was definitely very little ceremony to this at all. The bride and groom entered covered by a canopy carried by four people (one who was on his cell phone for a little bit, classy, sir), but no music, the people sitting there went and got food pretty much as soon as they saw the couple. They went up front and sat on their little stage, people formed a line and went up to wish them well, “salaam” is what Harish told us to say. See, once the line had gone for a while, he took US down to meet the couple. Yeah, some of us, especially the girls, had dressed nice, and some of the guys were alright (Swaffy looked swank), but then there were some of us.... not so much. Harish assured us it would be fine and we got in line, I was right behind Nate. After Nate the bride said “are they all going to say salaam?” amused, and I said “hey, he told us to” pointing to Harish. The couple laughed at that, they seemed pretty relaxed. Beautiful outfits though, the groom in this shiny gold and white affair, the bride in red just dripping with jewelry. Think closer to your generic Bollywood Indian than your generic Middle East Muslim, though there was a blending of styles. We milled about for a bit after that, some people grabbed food but I was pretty set. Nate and Zypy tried to mingle, I followed them briefly but gave up pretty quickly, dunno how they did. I'd be more confident if I had better clothes, but as it was I just felt extremely out of place. So here I am, retreated to the room. We've driven through one wedding and more-or-less attended another. Nooot exactly what I expected of the trip, but hey, expect the unexpected, right?
Friday, February 19th, roughly 10:45-11 PM local time
We woke up this morning early, had tea with Max and Harish, and it was out to the city. We saw this massive clothes washing place, 5000 some workers there, all outside beating clothes against stone and washing them. Sounds odd, I know, but it was actually kind of cool. So we watched that for a bit, then moved on. I frankly don't remember if there was another stop before downtown or not, but we got to an India Gate here, squatter than the other one, but no less beautiful.
Now, see, one of the best things about yesterday was the lack of hawkers and beggars. Seriously, the whole time yesterday, not a one. No such luck today, you go into the more main area of the city... it was nowhere NEAR as bad as Delhi, Agra, or even Jaipur, but still a fair bit. The beggars especially on the road in, when we stopped at a red light or something (a surprising find in India). From there we went to the Taj Mahal Palace, an absolutely beautiful hotel, though somewhat darkened by the terrorist attacks a couple years ago. Unfortunately there was no photography inside, but the whole place is just gorgeous.
We went outside and got a meal at Leopold's, I had a mango lassi and a cheese omelet. Our waiter was... grumpy. Let's say. He wasn't happy about splitting the checks, and when he brought Kanako the wrong order, he forced her to take it, pointing repeatedly at what he had written incorrectly. We didn't tip him.
From there John and I started to head back to the Taj to look at some ties we had seen earlier, though we got distracted by a stand selling fake-old navigation tools. Becky had picked up two sundial-compass-time zone-probably one or two other functions thing there that were actually pretty cool. The guy there was sort of irritating, overused the word “friend” and would clearly direct people away from what they asked for in favor of things that were more expensive, but then again, John picked up a sextant. I mean, that's pretty awesome. The guy kept trying to sell to me, but I just kept telling him no and ignoring him. John also got offered weed, we decided how you find weed in India is to be a white guy smoking a cigarette. Got back to the Taj, back through the (very friendly and efficient) security, and to the tie store. I gotta thank John, I kept looking at different ones, but he kept me firm to the first one I liked, which really was a nice pick. 100% silk nice green striped tie, $22 American. John picked up two, one for himself and one for his dad. The one for himself is this nice blue and yellow, his dad's was a somewhat more traditional white and black, but also beautiful.
We chilled in the AC for a bit, went out, I got offered weed and eventually the guy left me alone after he put his hand on my shoulder and I shrugged it off and glared at him, we watched members of our group get conned by fake holy men (who would bind a cord around their wrists and 'bless' them), and we got back into the taxis. From there we saw Marine Drive, a beautiful view along the ocean, though I guess most of our group was targeted by pickpockets just before my taxi of Zypy, Nate and I got there. Nate and I had great conversations all day, by the way, about multiparty systems, states' rights, gender relations and sex, alcohol, pretty much anything and everything imaginable. It tended towards the political theory side, though.
After the brief ocean view we went up to the hanging gardens, gorgeous gardens where I'm only sad we couldn't see the Towers of Silence where the Zoroastrians leave their dead. I mean, I want to respect the religion, but it would be so cool to see. The gardens were nice though, lots of color, lots of flowers, lots of topiaries. I also had fun messing with Zypy's fundamentalist view of the bible. Because I'm That Guy. We lost our taxi somehow, so I had to cram in with Swaffy and Becky (I forget who was up front) until we somehow found our taxi again. From there it was a pleasant ride back to Max's house, seeing lots of billboards and posters about youth suicide, bindass (we think HIV-positive), and Bollywood films, none of those being related. When we got back I went to the Rolling Beans across the street and used the wireless for a good while, then came back, napped and chilled.
There's a Muslim wedding reception at Max's house tonight, at first we thought we might get food there but that didn't pan out. A whole group of us went to the same winery Nate and I ate at the other night. I had margherita (cheese and tomato) pizza and Raging Bull red wine, a bottle I split with Nate. Pretty good, even if I don't prefer wine. We sat, talked, whatever, dealt with the bill, came back, awkwardly figured out our way around the wedding (no bride and groom yet) and went up to the balcony to watch. By the way, in all this, I'm wearing a long-sleeved button down shirt and shorts, because the laundry guy hasn't brought our clothes back yet. At least two guys were in their bathing suits and shirts. Yeah.
So we watch from the balcony, I regret not having my camera, it was really a beautiful set-up. They have an arch with water cascading down it, this beautiful little covered stage up front where the bride and groom sat when they arrived, lights hanging from the trees, really great. We watched for a while, I was about to head back to the room when Clay stopped me JUST short of mucking the whole thing up, thank you Clay, the bride was here. I went back to the balcony and we watched the bride approach. Now, apparently, marriage in Islam is a legal ceremony, not a religious ceremony, because there was definitely very little ceremony to this at all. The bride and groom entered covered by a canopy carried by four people (one who was on his cell phone for a little bit, classy, sir), but no music, the people sitting there went and got food pretty much as soon as they saw the couple. They went up front and sat on their little stage, people formed a line and went up to wish them well, “salaam” is what Harish told us to say. See, once the line had gone for a while, he took US down to meet the couple. Yeah, some of us, especially the girls, had dressed nice, and some of the guys were alright (Swaffy looked swank), but then there were some of us.... not so much. Harish assured us it would be fine and we got in line, I was right behind Nate. After Nate the bride said “are they all going to say salaam?” amused, and I said “hey, he told us to” pointing to Harish. The couple laughed at that, they seemed pretty relaxed. Beautiful outfits though, the groom in this shiny gold and white affair, the bride in red just dripping with jewelry. Think closer to your generic Bollywood Indian than your generic Middle East Muslim, though there was a blending of styles. We milled about for a bit after that, some people grabbed food but I was pretty set. Nate and Zypy tried to mingle, I followed them briefly but gave up pretty quickly, dunno how they did. I'd be more confident if I had better clothes, but as it was I just felt extremely out of place. So here I am, retreated to the room. We've driven through one wedding and more-or-less attended another. Nooot exactly what I expected of the trip, but hey, expect the unexpected, right?
Friday, February 19th, roughly 10:45-11 PM local time
Got to Mumbai, got taxis, got to the house, talked briefly, slept not nearly long enough, tea with Max and Harish. That was all well and good, finished that, got breakfast, a delicious omelet and bread, shopped a bit, got shampoo and a towel, really the essentials, Nate thought he got pickpocketed but he really just left his wallet at the one bank, which was exciting. Came back, slept most of the afternoon, talked to Max a little bit (he asked if they allowed beer on campus now, which I thought was funny), watched the sunset, chilled behind the house, it's a beautiful house. Failed a shot of jack, what with the stuffy nose and the no food since breakfast. Went to a winery with Nate, had a delicious chicken sandwich and bruschetta, went to a hookah bar, “silver fox” is this delicious minty thing, chilled there for a bit, came back to the house, had a Kingfisher strong beer, listened to a lot of music, John got bitten by a dog and thinks he's doing to die of rabies, and now chilling in the room.
Thursday, February 18th, roughly 10:15 PM local time
Thursday, February 18th, roughly 10:15 PM local time
Alright, so I got a little behind on writing this. And I'm really behind on updating it. That's life.
On the plane to Mumbai from Colombo now.
Slept in the morning after my last entry, waking up at some random hour but not getting out of bed until 9. Well, that's not true, at some truly ridiculously early hour, Matt banged on the door and said “Tim, hurry, hurry,” I put on some clothes and stumbled, bleary-eyed to the top deck, to him saying “look at this view, you won't get another chance to see it.” The sunrise was already over. Needless to say I went back to sleep, disgruntled.
We continued back towards Male, I don't remember much of the morning. Breakfast was standard, I think I've described breakfast on the boat often enough by now. We got to the airport island, thanked the crew, took some pictures, and headed out. Dhoni to Male, check into hotel, sit around for an hour, lunch time. A group of us went to a place nearby that Denny pointed out as having authentic Maldivian food. I had some sort of fish, fish manjura sounds right, had some sort of garlic sauce, and water. It was tasty, and reasonably priced.
After that Mike and I went back to the room and sat on our computers a lot. We had class at 6, talked mostly about other peoples' perceptions of us and our interactions... well. Moving on, dinner, big buffet thing. Delicious. I had giant prawn, squid, some sort of fish kebob that was awesome, pasta with napolithan or something like that sauce, papaya, something called “snake gourd fry” that was delicious, chocolate ice cream, and I think another fruit as well. Hard to remember it all. I took a wrong turn walking back, realized it quickly but decided I didn't care and enjoyed seeing the area. Walking past a playground was pretty cool, two or three groups of guys playing soccer, parents with their kids, that sort of thing. Headed back, got to the hotel, internet internet internet, sleep.
Woke up the next morning, breakfast was hot dogs, fruit, and pineapple juice. Class at 10, that ran 'til 11:30, got packed out, out of the room at noon. Mike and I went to the Maldivian place again, I had some fish and chips (good french fries) and a tasty chocolate milkshake. Stopped by a general store for some deoderant, and sat around the hotel some more. Denny wanted to go to the marine research center to thank the guy who set us up with Bluepeace, so John, Allen and I tagged along. Unfortunately, he wasn't there, so Denny left a note, but a nice woman showed us their museum. Small, she seemed unhappy with how old the specimens were, but it was cool to see. They had a whale skeleton of a whale that's actually never been seen alive, which was neat, a sperm whale skull, and lots of fish, coral and shells. Also a few posters explaining reefs that were nice.
We headed back from that, I goofed around a bit more, exchanged contact info with Saffah, airport time. Got to the airport, had to wait a while to go in, went in, had to wait a while to go through the last security check, watched Sky News, aka Murder News (seriously, I kid you not, that was a good 75% of it, all in a row too), went through security, sat around talking to Nate about video games, stood up, didn't go anywhere, sat around talking to Nate about video games, people from our group kept looking at us and laughing and I'm not sure why, got onto one of the buses, took us to the plane (about 10 minutes after our supposed departure time), on the plane, watched Tom & Jerry, land in Colombo, go to next gate, have trouble finding a proper adapter (thank you Caitlin for lending me yours), get on next plane, here I am. Mumbai in a couple hours, should be a good time.
Wednesday, February 17th, roughly 11:50 PM-12 AM local time
On the plane to Mumbai from Colombo now.
Slept in the morning after my last entry, waking up at some random hour but not getting out of bed until 9. Well, that's not true, at some truly ridiculously early hour, Matt banged on the door and said “Tim, hurry, hurry,” I put on some clothes and stumbled, bleary-eyed to the top deck, to him saying “look at this view, you won't get another chance to see it.” The sunrise was already over. Needless to say I went back to sleep, disgruntled.
We continued back towards Male, I don't remember much of the morning. Breakfast was standard, I think I've described breakfast on the boat often enough by now. We got to the airport island, thanked the crew, took some pictures, and headed out. Dhoni to Male, check into hotel, sit around for an hour, lunch time. A group of us went to a place nearby that Denny pointed out as having authentic Maldivian food. I had some sort of fish, fish manjura sounds right, had some sort of garlic sauce, and water. It was tasty, and reasonably priced.
After that Mike and I went back to the room and sat on our computers a lot. We had class at 6, talked mostly about other peoples' perceptions of us and our interactions... well. Moving on, dinner, big buffet thing. Delicious. I had giant prawn, squid, some sort of fish kebob that was awesome, pasta with napolithan or something like that sauce, papaya, something called “snake gourd fry” that was delicious, chocolate ice cream, and I think another fruit as well. Hard to remember it all. I took a wrong turn walking back, realized it quickly but decided I didn't care and enjoyed seeing the area. Walking past a playground was pretty cool, two or three groups of guys playing soccer, parents with their kids, that sort of thing. Headed back, got to the hotel, internet internet internet, sleep.
Woke up the next morning, breakfast was hot dogs, fruit, and pineapple juice. Class at 10, that ran 'til 11:30, got packed out, out of the room at noon. Mike and I went to the Maldivian place again, I had some fish and chips (good french fries) and a tasty chocolate milkshake. Stopped by a general store for some deoderant, and sat around the hotel some more. Denny wanted to go to the marine research center to thank the guy who set us up with Bluepeace, so John, Allen and I tagged along. Unfortunately, he wasn't there, so Denny left a note, but a nice woman showed us their museum. Small, she seemed unhappy with how old the specimens were, but it was cool to see. They had a whale skeleton of a whale that's actually never been seen alive, which was neat, a sperm whale skull, and lots of fish, coral and shells. Also a few posters explaining reefs that were nice.
We headed back from that, I goofed around a bit more, exchanged contact info with Saffah, airport time. Got to the airport, had to wait a while to go in, went in, had to wait a while to go through the last security check, watched Sky News, aka Murder News (seriously, I kid you not, that was a good 75% of it, all in a row too), went through security, sat around talking to Nate about video games, stood up, didn't go anywhere, sat around talking to Nate about video games, people from our group kept looking at us and laughing and I'm not sure why, got onto one of the buses, took us to the plane (about 10 minutes after our supposed departure time), on the plane, watched Tom & Jerry, land in Colombo, go to next gate, have trouble finding a proper adapter (thank you Caitlin for lending me yours), get on next plane, here I am. Mumbai in a couple hours, should be a good time.
Wednesday, February 17th, roughly 11:50 PM-12 AM local time
We actually went to the island about a quarter to four. We walked around for a bit, saw some of the island, saw a small boat construction which was pretty cool. No blueprints, all from memory, and apparently the traditional boats had no nails either.
Monday, February 15th, roughly 8:20 PM local time
Resumed at 9:20 PM
I got called to dinner. Anyway.
So we saw that, there was also a construction vehicle covered in vines which almost looked like a planned piece of art, it was that good. We walked a bit more, got offered more coconuts, Nasseef showed me how the locals drink straight from the hole, no straw, and I ended up downing two. They're delicious, but wow they hold a lot of milk. We lazily headed towards the school, sat and waited, kicked a gourd of some sort around, the professors showed up, lots of shaking hands on the way into the school, and then into this big classroom.
We sat up front, adults sat on one side of the audience, students on the other side (girls up front, most with headscarves but not all, boys in the back, all with these sort of light teal-blue shirts with green trim on the boys), Denny did a short introduction and then split us into four groups. There was a bit of chaos figuring that all out, but it was fine. Anh, John, Vince, Liz and I were with 6 female students first, along with a couple of the adults, Denny was in there too. We had some trouble figuring out how to get ourselves set up, but finally we were talking to the students one-on-one or one-on-two, I was talking to two girls whose names I'll misspell, Ishaba and Satu. All of the girls were quiet, shy, kind of giggly, I'm not sure they knew how to talk above a whisper. They did have some good questions, though they asked through the teacher – that might have been a language thing though. It was better when we went back to more-or-less whole group again, I didn't have much headway with my two. Not sure if I was doing it wrong, or the language barrier, or if they were just shy. But it did work out well towards the end, some interesting questions about human evolution and other things.
After about a half hour of that we went to another room with a larger group of students, mixed, who were a lot more ready to ask us questions. Man, did they ever want to know about plants. If plants had brains, if any plants caught people, how plants caught insects, how those plants disposed of waste (we didn't think they had any waste), how plants responded to touch if they didn't have brains (Vince did a good job explaining it in terms of our reaction to a burn), but the best one was when they asked how global warming was going to affect coral reefs. We had covered that just this morning, so three of us (John, Vince and Liz, I think?) each took one of the three and answered it.
After that it was about time to head outside, where Denny took us on a “field trip” to the garbage dump. I mostly talked to teachers en route, all of the ones I talked to were from India. They come here on 10-month contracts, apparently. Another teacher was Japanese, and one told me some teachers are Sri Lankan as well, but very few Maldivian teachers. Apparently, students here study commerce or science, those are their two choices. These kids were 13-15, already basically had a “major.” They can also study art, but only two specific places in the country. So we saw where the garbage is dumped, Denny explained how it's swept out and then back in by the tides, and the effects of erosion and how they relate to global warming, we talked to the kids (mostly, Nate and John talked to them about football, real football, while I pretended to know a little bit. The kids tended to like Chelsea or Man U), Nate got a bunch of their facebooks, and we started heading back.
I talked to another teacher from India, he was a history guy, that was cool. When we got back there were MORE coconuts, I downed one and however much Becky had left that she shoved on me, talked to the teacher a bit more, he wanted my e-mail but Nate had lost my pencil to the students, so he ushered me into his office. This seemed a little shady at first, the guy grabbing me and walking away from the group, but I thought about what I knew about Indians and personal space and figured it was probably not malicious. He actually wanted to give me his e-mail, but I got mixed up, anyway, he should be sending me one soon. Looking forward to that.
After that we went back to the store, I grabbed my stuff out of the homestay Matt and I had shared, went back to the store, picked up another gift and a small, nice journal for myself. I debated getting chopsticks, but finally decided on the journal, which is made from banana leaves and some other trees, all local, very cool. Headed back to the pier, nearly capsized the boat getting in (sorry guys), had a precarious ride back, and dinner. Shells pasta with the best damn sauce ever (that we had had a few nights ago, but still, so good), papaya, some delicious broccoli-cauliflower thing, and chicken.
After that I played a game with Swaffy, one round each, neither of us quite made it but we both came close. Sat around, fiddled on the guitar, which is difficult as always to play as a bass, talked with Allen, Jacob, John, Caitlin and Nate (Brenna was mostly quiet) about various things, including invasive fish in Lake Erie, and here I am writing this on the deck now. I'm probably going to go to the upper deck and stargaze soon, after all, it's the last night I'll have a chance to stargaze on a boat for a long, long time. (I'm hoping the view will be as good when we're out in the wilderness in Tanzania and/or Egypt.)
Again, the ship is rocking, but in a nice way, the breeze is fantastic, whatever powers the thing shooting water out of the boat is a pleasant hum in the background.
Finished about 9:40 PM
Monday, February 15th, roughly 8:20 PM local time
Resumed at 9:20 PM
I got called to dinner. Anyway.
So we saw that, there was also a construction vehicle covered in vines which almost looked like a planned piece of art, it was that good. We walked a bit more, got offered more coconuts, Nasseef showed me how the locals drink straight from the hole, no straw, and I ended up downing two. They're delicious, but wow they hold a lot of milk. We lazily headed towards the school, sat and waited, kicked a gourd of some sort around, the professors showed up, lots of shaking hands on the way into the school, and then into this big classroom.
We sat up front, adults sat on one side of the audience, students on the other side (girls up front, most with headscarves but not all, boys in the back, all with these sort of light teal-blue shirts with green trim on the boys), Denny did a short introduction and then split us into four groups. There was a bit of chaos figuring that all out, but it was fine. Anh, John, Vince, Liz and I were with 6 female students first, along with a couple of the adults, Denny was in there too. We had some trouble figuring out how to get ourselves set up, but finally we were talking to the students one-on-one or one-on-two, I was talking to two girls whose names I'll misspell, Ishaba and Satu. All of the girls were quiet, shy, kind of giggly, I'm not sure they knew how to talk above a whisper. They did have some good questions, though they asked through the teacher – that might have been a language thing though. It was better when we went back to more-or-less whole group again, I didn't have much headway with my two. Not sure if I was doing it wrong, or the language barrier, or if they were just shy. But it did work out well towards the end, some interesting questions about human evolution and other things.
After about a half hour of that we went to another room with a larger group of students, mixed, who were a lot more ready to ask us questions. Man, did they ever want to know about plants. If plants had brains, if any plants caught people, how plants caught insects, how those plants disposed of waste (we didn't think they had any waste), how plants responded to touch if they didn't have brains (Vince did a good job explaining it in terms of our reaction to a burn), but the best one was when they asked how global warming was going to affect coral reefs. We had covered that just this morning, so three of us (John, Vince and Liz, I think?) each took one of the three and answered it.
After that it was about time to head outside, where Denny took us on a “field trip” to the garbage dump. I mostly talked to teachers en route, all of the ones I talked to were from India. They come here on 10-month contracts, apparently. Another teacher was Japanese, and one told me some teachers are Sri Lankan as well, but very few Maldivian teachers. Apparently, students here study commerce or science, those are their two choices. These kids were 13-15, already basically had a “major.” They can also study art, but only two specific places in the country. So we saw where the garbage is dumped, Denny explained how it's swept out and then back in by the tides, and the effects of erosion and how they relate to global warming, we talked to the kids (mostly, Nate and John talked to them about football, real football, while I pretended to know a little bit. The kids tended to like Chelsea or Man U), Nate got a bunch of their facebooks, and we started heading back.
I talked to another teacher from India, he was a history guy, that was cool. When we got back there were MORE coconuts, I downed one and however much Becky had left that she shoved on me, talked to the teacher a bit more, he wanted my e-mail but Nate had lost my pencil to the students, so he ushered me into his office. This seemed a little shady at first, the guy grabbing me and walking away from the group, but I thought about what I knew about Indians and personal space and figured it was probably not malicious. He actually wanted to give me his e-mail, but I got mixed up, anyway, he should be sending me one soon. Looking forward to that.
After that we went back to the store, I grabbed my stuff out of the homestay Matt and I had shared, went back to the store, picked up another gift and a small, nice journal for myself. I debated getting chopsticks, but finally decided on the journal, which is made from banana leaves and some other trees, all local, very cool. Headed back to the pier, nearly capsized the boat getting in (sorry guys), had a precarious ride back, and dinner. Shells pasta with the best damn sauce ever (that we had had a few nights ago, but still, so good), papaya, some delicious broccoli-cauliflower thing, and chicken.
After that I played a game with Swaffy, one round each, neither of us quite made it but we both came close. Sat around, fiddled on the guitar, which is difficult as always to play as a bass, talked with Allen, Jacob, John, Caitlin and Nate (Brenna was mostly quiet) about various things, including invasive fish in Lake Erie, and here I am writing this on the deck now. I'm probably going to go to the upper deck and stargaze soon, after all, it's the last night I'll have a chance to stargaze on a boat for a long, long time. (I'm hoping the view will be as good when we're out in the wilderness in Tanzania and/or Egypt.)
Again, the ship is rocking, but in a nice way, the breeze is fantastic, whatever powers the thing shooting water out of the boat is a pleasant hum in the background.
Finished about 9:40 PM
I can't tell if that was the 5th worst dive of my life (the first four being Nelson's Ledges, naturally), or the best.
We had class this morning, Biomes, then it was dive time. Jumped in, no problems at all equalizing, I was sinking like a stone, which seemed good. (I did lose my snorkel and have to throw it back on the boat, but whatever). However, my buoyancy was definitely negative, and I was having trouble getting it to neutral. I was content to just struggle and kick through it, but our leader kept trying to get me to inflate my BCD. Eventually he had me grab onto a coral ledge and tried to inflate it himself. Well, it wasn't until after the dive that he told me my BCD wasn't holding air at all, and I should have checked it before we jumped in. Ah, woops. So we spent most of the dive (29 m max depth, 40 mins total) hanging onto this one area of coral, just watching the area around us. I probably destroyed a fair bit of coral trying to stay in place, what with the buoyancy issues and all, but I tried to minimize my impact. Hopefully it wasn't too bad, but I felt awful about it. We didn't move until much later in the dive.
But then, it was also the best. See, we a gray reef shark. And then another one behind it. And more, and more, and more. I'm not sure if some were repeats or not, but there were at least 8 individual sightings, maybe more. The fish around us were incredible, and we even saw a school of spotted eagle rays swim by, probably about a dozen. Oh, and there was a Napoleon fish too, those things are absolutely enormous. So in that way, it was the best dive.
We eventually started moving, going out into the blue so fewer fish, I still had 50 bar but he had me breathe off his secondary for a while anyway, then I switched back to mine, switched back to his for the safety stop. The safety stop went smoothly, which was nice. Came up, got to the boat, he explained the problem to me, I felt mildly like an idiot, and back we went. But yeah, gorgeous stuff, despite the issues.
When we got back, I went up front to ask where that snorkel was... and got thrown into the water. So another extended round of throwing each other into the water occurred, though with many more students involved. The culmination of this was Mikey, John, Nate and I performing a quadruple cannonball, in which we all put our arms around each others' shoulders and tucked our legs. It was a fairly epic idea, not sure how well it panned out. Perhaps a thing to practice. I tried do a couple of Nate's backflips and... did poorly. First two just failed, next one resulted in a painful back flop, didn't try it for a while, another back flop, gave up. Ah, well.
We came in, sat a bit, I got a shower in, and then lunch. An absolutely amazing rice pilaf, chicken, papaya, those chip things, and a coke. A lot of us left our fins on the dive boat, not needing them again for the rest of the trip. I'm glad to not have to worry about them in my bag anymore. And yeah, that's about it. I'm in the room again, trying to avoid the sun, don't want to increase my chance of skin cancer anymore than I already have. We go to the island tonight at five.
Monday, February 15th, roughly 2:20-2:30 PM local time
We had class this morning, Biomes, then it was dive time. Jumped in, no problems at all equalizing, I was sinking like a stone, which seemed good. (I did lose my snorkel and have to throw it back on the boat, but whatever). However, my buoyancy was definitely negative, and I was having trouble getting it to neutral. I was content to just struggle and kick through it, but our leader kept trying to get me to inflate my BCD. Eventually he had me grab onto a coral ledge and tried to inflate it himself. Well, it wasn't until after the dive that he told me my BCD wasn't holding air at all, and I should have checked it before we jumped in. Ah, woops. So we spent most of the dive (29 m max depth, 40 mins total) hanging onto this one area of coral, just watching the area around us. I probably destroyed a fair bit of coral trying to stay in place, what with the buoyancy issues and all, but I tried to minimize my impact. Hopefully it wasn't too bad, but I felt awful about it. We didn't move until much later in the dive.
But then, it was also the best. See, we a gray reef shark. And then another one behind it. And more, and more, and more. I'm not sure if some were repeats or not, but there were at least 8 individual sightings, maybe more. The fish around us were incredible, and we even saw a school of spotted eagle rays swim by, probably about a dozen. Oh, and there was a Napoleon fish too, those things are absolutely enormous. So in that way, it was the best dive.
We eventually started moving, going out into the blue so fewer fish, I still had 50 bar but he had me breathe off his secondary for a while anyway, then I switched back to mine, switched back to his for the safety stop. The safety stop went smoothly, which was nice. Came up, got to the boat, he explained the problem to me, I felt mildly like an idiot, and back we went. But yeah, gorgeous stuff, despite the issues.
When we got back, I went up front to ask where that snorkel was... and got thrown into the water. So another extended round of throwing each other into the water occurred, though with many more students involved. The culmination of this was Mikey, John, Nate and I performing a quadruple cannonball, in which we all put our arms around each others' shoulders and tucked our legs. It was a fairly epic idea, not sure how well it panned out. Perhaps a thing to practice. I tried do a couple of Nate's backflips and... did poorly. First two just failed, next one resulted in a painful back flop, didn't try it for a while, another back flop, gave up. Ah, well.
We came in, sat a bit, I got a shower in, and then lunch. An absolutely amazing rice pilaf, chicken, papaya, those chip things, and a coke. A lot of us left our fins on the dive boat, not needing them again for the rest of the trip. I'm glad to not have to worry about them in my bag anymore. And yeah, that's about it. I'm in the room again, trying to avoid the sun, don't want to increase my chance of skin cancer anymore than I already have. We go to the island tonight at five.
Monday, February 15th, roughly 2:20-2:30 PM local time
Sitting here on my bed on the upper deck of the boat. Kanako and I crashed in this room last night, most people slept out on the deck. No sleeping bag, and it was too damp for me to really want to lie on my back. Ah, well. I woke up a few times in the night thinking I heard rain, but it must have been something else. Mikey woke us up around 7:20, another breakfast of bangers, watermelon, some other form of egg (I wasn't feeling adventurous) and bread. We also had “blue drank” and “orange drank,” which were very sugary, and when mixed, yielded “green drank.” All three delicious.
I was feeling a little weird when I woke up, not nausea, something in my throat, but it's diminishing as the day goes on. After breakfast I moved my bag up to my room, glad to have it back from the island, and spent the rest of the morning so far just sitting on the deck below, talking and relaxing and all that sort of thing. David's never seen The Simpsons, which seems a minor tragedy to me, though we did have a great talk (also with John) about The Onion, Jon Stewart, and The Far Side. Diving this morning, visiting a school and checking out that store again this afternoon, leaving for Male tomorrow morning, at least that's the plan as I last heard it.
Monday, February 15th, roughly 9-905 AM local time
I was feeling a little weird when I woke up, not nausea, something in my throat, but it's diminishing as the day goes on. After breakfast I moved my bag up to my room, glad to have it back from the island, and spent the rest of the morning so far just sitting on the deck below, talking and relaxing and all that sort of thing. David's never seen The Simpsons, which seems a minor tragedy to me, though we did have a great talk (also with John) about The Onion, Jon Stewart, and The Far Side. Diving this morning, visiting a school and checking out that store again this afternoon, leaving for Male tomorrow morning, at least that's the plan as I last heard it.
Monday, February 15th, roughly 9-905 AM local time
So it might seem like I'm rambling, even ranting (because you all aren't used to that from me by now) about the beauty of this place. But here I am again, sitting on the top deck (not quite the place we jump from), under the best sky I've probably ever seen, Orion's right overhead and a little to my left (I'm seeing stars I didn't even know he had), Mars is straight ahead of me, maybe 30-45 degrees up, and nothing else I recognize, but it's beautiful. The boat is rocking slightly, there's guitar down below me I can faintly hear, the waves are lapping quietly all around, there's a pleasant breeze – right at room temperature – blowing from my right.
It's worth the ranting.
It took the boat a while to get anchored in and settled down, but they finally found a good spot. We jumped a bit, not as much as the other day. John had some troubles with his cannonball, but got it eventually, my jackknife didn't hurt as much as I expected, and while Nate couldn't get a good cannonball, the crazy kid did pull off a backflip. When Nate and I came up once, the dive leaders were waiting to push us back into the water, which was fun. I saw them and immediately said “I don't like the looks of this,” they got me once but the second time I grabbed the stair. They weren't trying too hard, of course. Besides that there was more sitting around and talking, last I checked John and Nate were playing chess (Swaffy was playing one of the crew earlier today), when I came upstairs earlier I thought one of the dive leaders had a really feminine voice, until I realized he was playing guitar while Becky sang. I'm sleeping on the boat tonight, maybe in the room up above, maybe on the deck, we'll see how the weather treats us.
Dinner was some excellent form of ramen, french fries, chicken and papaya. I failed at observation yet again, mixing up chili sauce for ketchup, but it tastes about the same, just spicier. The fries were unexpected, I haven't had any since before I left. They weren't the same as home, obviously, but that's not to say they weren't good. There was a salad too, mostly cucumber and onion, I didn't have much but it was also good. The dressing had enough of a kick to it, and I was running low on water, so that sort of limited me there. Also had a bite of Nikki's melted-re-solidified cadbury chocolate, which was wonderful. The breeze is coming from my left now, I think I'm going to go back to reading and stargazing. I'm tempted to go below and sit with the guitar, but man, it's nice up here.
Hope everyone had a good V-Day, even if I tend to sneer at it. Every human should the experience of this sky, if nothing else, everyone should be able to see the stars I see tonight. Sadly that can't occur, but I hope everyone is at least healthy and happy in the meantime.
Sunday, February 14th, roughly 9-9:10 PM local time
It's worth the ranting.
It took the boat a while to get anchored in and settled down, but they finally found a good spot. We jumped a bit, not as much as the other day. John had some troubles with his cannonball, but got it eventually, my jackknife didn't hurt as much as I expected, and while Nate couldn't get a good cannonball, the crazy kid did pull off a backflip. When Nate and I came up once, the dive leaders were waiting to push us back into the water, which was fun. I saw them and immediately said “I don't like the looks of this,” they got me once but the second time I grabbed the stair. They weren't trying too hard, of course. Besides that there was more sitting around and talking, last I checked John and Nate were playing chess (Swaffy was playing one of the crew earlier today), when I came upstairs earlier I thought one of the dive leaders had a really feminine voice, until I realized he was playing guitar while Becky sang. I'm sleeping on the boat tonight, maybe in the room up above, maybe on the deck, we'll see how the weather treats us.
Dinner was some excellent form of ramen, french fries, chicken and papaya. I failed at observation yet again, mixing up chili sauce for ketchup, but it tastes about the same, just spicier. The fries were unexpected, I haven't had any since before I left. They weren't the same as home, obviously, but that's not to say they weren't good. There was a salad too, mostly cucumber and onion, I didn't have much but it was also good. The dressing had enough of a kick to it, and I was running low on water, so that sort of limited me there. Also had a bite of Nikki's melted-re-solidified cadbury chocolate, which was wonderful. The breeze is coming from my left now, I think I'm going to go back to reading and stargazing. I'm tempted to go below and sit with the guitar, but man, it's nice up here.
Hope everyone had a good V-Day, even if I tend to sneer at it. Every human should the experience of this sky, if nothing else, everyone should be able to see the stars I see tonight. Sadly that can't occur, but I hope everyone is at least healthy and happy in the meantime.
Sunday, February 14th, roughly 9-9:10 PM local time
Happy Valentine's Day, I guess? I don't think it's really celebrated here in the Maldives, but there are signs on the store about it, so they clearly at least are willing to play it up for tourists.
Another great busy day. We got up early, well, actually I got up at 6:24 and needed to be at the dock at 6:30. But I moved quickly and had showered last night, and when I got there we still hadn't left yet, so it was okay. We headed out to the main boat, had a breakfast pretty similar to yesterday's (bangers, bread, I tried ketchup this time, and watermelon), though with hard-boiled eggs that I didn't partake of. We were heading out to a dive site 2 hours away, so I sat and relaxed, talked a bit, read a bit, napped a bit. I learned a lot from Saffah and Nasseef about the local weather patterns, when it rains, that sort of thing. We got there and suited up for our first dive on a thila (tee-la), the local word for precipice. Went down to 31.6 this time, and though my buoyancy control wasn't quite as good as the last dive, it was still a great dive. Certainly, I'm still doing better better personally than I was at Koh Tao. We saw a white-tipped reef shark, more fish than I'll ever remember, and what was especially cool was our ability to see fish and coral life change with the current and height. We started out fighting a strong current and saw lots of fish, then the current let up and it was almost empty. Mostly horn coral grew down below, but when you got to the flat top of the precipice, there were absolutely enormous plate corals everywhere. It was fantastic. I came close to running out of air near the end, still need to work out that, so I breathed off of our guide's secondary while we did our safety stop.
After that, we found out the area was also good for snorkeling. I jumped off the top of the boat, around back, and Nasseef handed me my gear. Well, I messed up my mask putting it on, so I had to get onto the back of the main boat and fix that. By the time I was done with that Nasseef was jumping into the water from the dive boat, so we had to grab someone's attention and get my fins, but finally I was all geared up and ready to go. And wow, it was a gorgeous. More huge plate coral, all kinds of fish, little silver ones near the blue, great colorful parrotfish closer to the coral, Nate and I saw a turtle (and I nearly dove down to touch it, but stopped just short not wanting to disturb it), lots of small asconoid sponges, sea anemones opening and closing, a sea cucumber, cleaner wrasse (and yes, they were cleaning), it was fantastic. The only unfortunate bit was when I found the ship's anchor: another reminder of the damage we're doing even as we learn about global warming and human impact on this trip, seeing the anchor of our boat lodged in the coral.
I talked with Saffah about it earlier, how hopefully we can do enough to make it worth it (specifically the planes), he said seeing all this should make us better environmental advocates. That's certainly the idea, I hope he's right. Actually, that was later in the day, before that we went on our second dive.
This one was another thila, though unfortunately we dove into a very strong current. We probably spent the first fifteen minutes or so fighting it, and visibility wasn't as good as it had been. Lots of fish and coral, nothing too exciting to report other than the general “holy crap, I'm SCUBA diving in the Maldives instead of freezing in the snow back in Ohio.” There was a large cave, which was cool to see. Brenna and I both had air issues, I ended up breathing off of Caitlin's and we had trouble staying below for our safety stop, but it was okay overall. I figured out that I burn about 100 bar in the first 10 minutes, then last another 20 minutes on the other 100 bar, give or take. Whatever I'm doing wrong, it's at the beginning of the dive, so I can fix that up I think I'll be okay.
Talked to Saffah for a bit, like I mentioned, and here I am. I tried to look at a fish guide for a bit but got frustrated, my memory isn't good enough and there's just too many fish there to check against. We're heading back in, when the boat's done moving we might do some more jumping, there'll be a class tonight. I'm still loving sitting on the deck, the wind blowing past me, the gentle rock of the boat. I'm even starting to get used to the background hum of the engine, though it's not quite “enjoy.” Another dive and maybe visiting a school tomorrow, from there it all depends on the weather.
Sunday, February 14th, roughly 4:45-5 PM local time
Another great busy day. We got up early, well, actually I got up at 6:24 and needed to be at the dock at 6:30. But I moved quickly and had showered last night, and when I got there we still hadn't left yet, so it was okay. We headed out to the main boat, had a breakfast pretty similar to yesterday's (bangers, bread, I tried ketchup this time, and watermelon), though with hard-boiled eggs that I didn't partake of. We were heading out to a dive site 2 hours away, so I sat and relaxed, talked a bit, read a bit, napped a bit. I learned a lot from Saffah and Nasseef about the local weather patterns, when it rains, that sort of thing. We got there and suited up for our first dive on a thila (tee-la), the local word for precipice. Went down to 31.6 this time, and though my buoyancy control wasn't quite as good as the last dive, it was still a great dive. Certainly, I'm still doing better better personally than I was at Koh Tao. We saw a white-tipped reef shark, more fish than I'll ever remember, and what was especially cool was our ability to see fish and coral life change with the current and height. We started out fighting a strong current and saw lots of fish, then the current let up and it was almost empty. Mostly horn coral grew down below, but when you got to the flat top of the precipice, there were absolutely enormous plate corals everywhere. It was fantastic. I came close to running out of air near the end, still need to work out that, so I breathed off of our guide's secondary while we did our safety stop.
After that, we found out the area was also good for snorkeling. I jumped off the top of the boat, around back, and Nasseef handed me my gear. Well, I messed up my mask putting it on, so I had to get onto the back of the main boat and fix that. By the time I was done with that Nasseef was jumping into the water from the dive boat, so we had to grab someone's attention and get my fins, but finally I was all geared up and ready to go. And wow, it was a gorgeous. More huge plate coral, all kinds of fish, little silver ones near the blue, great colorful parrotfish closer to the coral, Nate and I saw a turtle (and I nearly dove down to touch it, but stopped just short not wanting to disturb it), lots of small asconoid sponges, sea anemones opening and closing, a sea cucumber, cleaner wrasse (and yes, they were cleaning), it was fantastic. The only unfortunate bit was when I found the ship's anchor: another reminder of the damage we're doing even as we learn about global warming and human impact on this trip, seeing the anchor of our boat lodged in the coral.
I talked with Saffah about it earlier, how hopefully we can do enough to make it worth it (specifically the planes), he said seeing all this should make us better environmental advocates. That's certainly the idea, I hope he's right. Actually, that was later in the day, before that we went on our second dive.
This one was another thila, though unfortunately we dove into a very strong current. We probably spent the first fifteen minutes or so fighting it, and visibility wasn't as good as it had been. Lots of fish and coral, nothing too exciting to report other than the general “holy crap, I'm SCUBA diving in the Maldives instead of freezing in the snow back in Ohio.” There was a large cave, which was cool to see. Brenna and I both had air issues, I ended up breathing off of Caitlin's and we had trouble staying below for our safety stop, but it was okay overall. I figured out that I burn about 100 bar in the first 10 minutes, then last another 20 minutes on the other 100 bar, give or take. Whatever I'm doing wrong, it's at the beginning of the dive, so I can fix that up I think I'll be okay.
Talked to Saffah for a bit, like I mentioned, and here I am. I tried to look at a fish guide for a bit but got frustrated, my memory isn't good enough and there's just too many fish there to check against. We're heading back in, when the boat's done moving we might do some more jumping, there'll be a class tonight. I'm still loving sitting on the deck, the wind blowing past me, the gentle rock of the boat. I'm even starting to get used to the background hum of the engine, though it's not quite “enjoy.” Another dive and maybe visiting a school tomorrow, from there it all depends on the weather.
Sunday, February 14th, roughly 4:45-5 PM local time
Our hosts even left an adapter in the room. That's a courtesy I was never expecting. So kind of them.
Today at dinner I said that the problem with all this was that for the rest of my life, I would never again have as much fun as the Maldives. Now, David said “you've still got a long way ahead of you” and Jacob said “you must lead a dull life,” and they're probably right. That said, it was less of an exaggeration here than it might have been other places.
Right as I finished that entry above, someone said that the dive instructors threw Becky off the boat. Now, of course, I hear people are throwing each other into the water and start stripping my shirt. I joined the dive instructors, Nasseef and Becky at the back of the boat, everyone tossing each other in and dragging each other back down, it was great fun. One guy had a corner spot and was holding onto the rope holding the smaller boat in back, he was hard to dislodge. Nasseef too was impressive, it usually took three or so of us to get him down. Michelle joined too, and later another, younger guy, I think he was from the dive boat too but not one of the leaders. Not sure. I jumped in a few times myself, if it was taking too long for someone else to get me in. So yeah, I think I've had more fun in the water today alone than any other day in my life, at least by sheer quantity (two great dives, jumping off the boat, and tossing people/being tossed on the back of the boat), but quality also, even with Hawaii and Koh Tao.
After that I had to borrow a towel from the boat (thank you, again) to dry off and we ate dinner. Noodles with some tasty sauce, great chicken, a salad that was mostly onions, with some peppers and lettuce and an excellent dressing that I'm not sure of, more of this wonderful papaya, and another vegetable thing with green beans, corn, and a few other things that was also delicious. We all agreed, this has been the best food of the trip, not counting the buffet in India (which I still say the fish last night ties, at minimum.) Though we also agreed the food in Alaska was great.
A pretty heavy rainstorm had started up during all this, (thank you to the people who brought my stuff inside), so we hung out below in some of the rooms, talking and being shenanigans-y. A tickle fight started in which I somehow ended up being John's attack dog that he sic'ed on people. We sat and talked a bit more and headed back to the island. The ride back was still pretty windy, lots of rain coming in, though the leaders were playing guitar and bongos and singing, which was fun to listen to. We got in, walked back to our room (our hosts brought our shoes in from the rain, thank you, again), and here I am.
Or, to replace all those thank yous, sukuria. Not sure how it's transliterated, but that's more or less how it's pronounced.
Saturday, February 13th, roughly 9:10-9:20 PM local time
Today at dinner I said that the problem with all this was that for the rest of my life, I would never again have as much fun as the Maldives. Now, David said “you've still got a long way ahead of you” and Jacob said “you must lead a dull life,” and they're probably right. That said, it was less of an exaggeration here than it might have been other places.
Right as I finished that entry above, someone said that the dive instructors threw Becky off the boat. Now, of course, I hear people are throwing each other into the water and start stripping my shirt. I joined the dive instructors, Nasseef and Becky at the back of the boat, everyone tossing each other in and dragging each other back down, it was great fun. One guy had a corner spot and was holding onto the rope holding the smaller boat in back, he was hard to dislodge. Nasseef too was impressive, it usually took three or so of us to get him down. Michelle joined too, and later another, younger guy, I think he was from the dive boat too but not one of the leaders. Not sure. I jumped in a few times myself, if it was taking too long for someone else to get me in. So yeah, I think I've had more fun in the water today alone than any other day in my life, at least by sheer quantity (two great dives, jumping off the boat, and tossing people/being tossed on the back of the boat), but quality also, even with Hawaii and Koh Tao.
After that I had to borrow a towel from the boat (thank you, again) to dry off and we ate dinner. Noodles with some tasty sauce, great chicken, a salad that was mostly onions, with some peppers and lettuce and an excellent dressing that I'm not sure of, more of this wonderful papaya, and another vegetable thing with green beans, corn, and a few other things that was also delicious. We all agreed, this has been the best food of the trip, not counting the buffet in India (which I still say the fish last night ties, at minimum.) Though we also agreed the food in Alaska was great.
A pretty heavy rainstorm had started up during all this, (thank you to the people who brought my stuff inside), so we hung out below in some of the rooms, talking and being shenanigans-y. A tickle fight started in which I somehow ended up being John's attack dog that he sic'ed on people. We sat and talked a bit more and headed back to the island. The ride back was still pretty windy, lots of rain coming in, though the leaders were playing guitar and bongos and singing, which was fun to listen to. We got in, walked back to our room (our hosts brought our shoes in from the rain, thank you, again), and here I am.
Or, to replace all those thank yous, sukuria. Not sure how it's transliterated, but that's more or less how it's pronounced.
Saturday, February 13th, roughly 9:10-9:20 PM local time
Almost 12 hours between entries. Fun.
Even more fun? TODAY.
Headed to the docks, went out to the main boat, had a delicious breakfast with bangers (hot dogs), bread, some delicious egg thing, watermelon, and mango juice. After that was class, which as usual ranged from discussion of censorship to different ways of learning to whether or not the Maldives have any mountains (they don't, at least not above water). After class we did our checkout dive, I had some buoyancy trouble, but my ears were better by far than they've been. It's absolutely beautiful here, so many different kinds of coral, so many different fish, a turtle and a moray eel were the two most exciting parts.
We got back from that, had lunch which had the only papaya I've ever liked, chicken, green beans, rice, and a potato thing, oh and those tasty cracker things that are almost like popcorn. Then we sat around for a while, I talked to David about this that and the other thing, a lot about the Plain Dealer and how lots of the US is ridiculous (apparently, he only gets the PD for Arts & Life and hates what the paper is doing to it), from which I learned that David and my father would get along wonderfully.
Then someone got the bright idea to jump off the top of the boat, and everything went uphill from there. I did a cannonball, I did some pencil jumps, I did a front flip (apparently my head nearly hit the railing, or so they say), I did another cannonball which was deemed by many to be “the perfect cannonball,” I jumped with Nasseef, one of the Bluepeace guys, we even got a group picture in the water of all the students and Denny together. It was absolutely fantastic, we could even see some fish eating the extra rice that the cook was dumping into the water behind the boat. Swaffy and I helped Zypy out with buoyancy a bit, the whole thing was just SO much fun. We came back in, sat a bit longer, found out Saffah was at Copenhagen this last December, which is extremely cool, and then it was out for our second dive.
[EDIT at 9:20: Oh, also, John decided I was a seal because of the way I climbed up to the highest part of the boat. “Look for polar bears, it's okay, and slide up.” I'll admit, the way I used my arms to propel myself onto my stomach, and stand from there, was remarkably seal-like.]
Admittedly, I've only had 4 dives out of the US so far, but this was easily my best dive of my life so far. Not only in terms of what we saw, but also in terms of my diving, my buoyancy control and ear clearing were both better than they had EVER been. We saw the most gorgeous coral, Allen described it as a mountain, far as you could see in any direction was coral. So many fish I don't have the foggiest idea what they were or how to describe them, and some reef sharks, both black- and white-tipped. The only time I had buoyancy issues, I'm pretty sure we hit an upwelling in the current which was moving us along, and then I just dropped water and kept going. Man, that current nearly shot me to the surface though. We had to go up a little bit early, I ran through my air very quickly (maybe due to the current, which just blew us along on both dives, but was stronger on the second, maybe due to my breathing), but we still saw a lot of fantastic stuff. Went down deeper than I ever have before too, 25.8 m at my lowest. I still need to work a little on awareness: bumping into other divers, and I got tangled in one of Denny's tubes at one point, but still. Absolutely amazing, and man, is diving great when you finally are getting buoyancy down (added a weight the second time, certainly helped.)
So, yeah. The Maldives is kind of an ocean paradise. It's ridiculous how beautiful it is here. I think it was last night I was talking to one of the dive instructors about how great it must be to live here, any time you want to see a coral reef you just go out and do it, and he said “yeah. This is cold to me” kind of smirkingly, and just jumped right back in. And here I am, sitting in a lawnchair on a boat in the middle of the Indian Ocean, having SCUBA'd twice today, having eaten some of the best food of my life over the last two days (and about to again), a storm is whipping up, but slowly, with only rare rain drops and a pleasant wind, typing up my day on my netbook. If the trip can get any better than this, I'm not sure how.
Saturday, February 13th, roughly 6:30-6:45 PM local time
Even more fun? TODAY.
Headed to the docks, went out to the main boat, had a delicious breakfast with bangers (hot dogs), bread, some delicious egg thing, watermelon, and mango juice. After that was class, which as usual ranged from discussion of censorship to different ways of learning to whether or not the Maldives have any mountains (they don't, at least not above water). After class we did our checkout dive, I had some buoyancy trouble, but my ears were better by far than they've been. It's absolutely beautiful here, so many different kinds of coral, so many different fish, a turtle and a moray eel were the two most exciting parts.
We got back from that, had lunch which had the only papaya I've ever liked, chicken, green beans, rice, and a potato thing, oh and those tasty cracker things that are almost like popcorn. Then we sat around for a while, I talked to David about this that and the other thing, a lot about the Plain Dealer and how lots of the US is ridiculous (apparently, he only gets the PD for Arts & Life and hates what the paper is doing to it), from which I learned that David and my father would get along wonderfully.
Then someone got the bright idea to jump off the top of the boat, and everything went uphill from there. I did a cannonball, I did some pencil jumps, I did a front flip (apparently my head nearly hit the railing, or so they say), I did another cannonball which was deemed by many to be “the perfect cannonball,” I jumped with Nasseef, one of the Bluepeace guys, we even got a group picture in the water of all the students and Denny together. It was absolutely fantastic, we could even see some fish eating the extra rice that the cook was dumping into the water behind the boat. Swaffy and I helped Zypy out with buoyancy a bit, the whole thing was just SO much fun. We came back in, sat a bit longer, found out Saffah was at Copenhagen this last December, which is extremely cool, and then it was out for our second dive.
[EDIT at 9:20: Oh, also, John decided I was a seal because of the way I climbed up to the highest part of the boat. “Look for polar bears, it's okay, and slide up.” I'll admit, the way I used my arms to propel myself onto my stomach, and stand from there, was remarkably seal-like.]
Admittedly, I've only had 4 dives out of the US so far, but this was easily my best dive of my life so far. Not only in terms of what we saw, but also in terms of my diving, my buoyancy control and ear clearing were both better than they had EVER been. We saw the most gorgeous coral, Allen described it as a mountain, far as you could see in any direction was coral. So many fish I don't have the foggiest idea what they were or how to describe them, and some reef sharks, both black- and white-tipped. The only time I had buoyancy issues, I'm pretty sure we hit an upwelling in the current which was moving us along, and then I just dropped water and kept going. Man, that current nearly shot me to the surface though. We had to go up a little bit early, I ran through my air very quickly (maybe due to the current, which just blew us along on both dives, but was stronger on the second, maybe due to my breathing), but we still saw a lot of fantastic stuff. Went down deeper than I ever have before too, 25.8 m at my lowest. I still need to work a little on awareness: bumping into other divers, and I got tangled in one of Denny's tubes at one point, but still. Absolutely amazing, and man, is diving great when you finally are getting buoyancy down (added a weight the second time, certainly helped.)
So, yeah. The Maldives is kind of an ocean paradise. It's ridiculous how beautiful it is here. I think it was last night I was talking to one of the dive instructors about how great it must be to live here, any time you want to see a coral reef you just go out and do it, and he said “yeah. This is cold to me” kind of smirkingly, and just jumped right back in. And here I am, sitting in a lawnchair on a boat in the middle of the Indian Ocean, having SCUBA'd twice today, having eaten some of the best food of my life over the last two days (and about to again), a storm is whipping up, but slowly, with only rare rain drops and a pleasant wind, typing up my day on my netbook. If the trip can get any better than this, I'm not sure how.
Saturday, February 13th, roughly 6:30-6:45 PM local time
One neat thing I forgot to mention. With the exception of the big boat people are sleeping on, all the boats here: the ferries, the dive boat, whatever, are steered by a guy in the back using his foot. The rudder has this long pole coming out of it horizontally, and the guy puts his foot on the pole and moves it back and forth to steer. Not something I've ever seen before.
Slept well last night. Woke up at some random hour, unsurprising considering how early we crashed, I almost thought I'd be stuck awake, but I eventually fell back asleep until Matt woke me up at 6:30, I got a shower in, that whole deal. Today we have class, a checkout dive and a real dive. Should be busy but fun.
Saturday, February 13th, roughly 6:45 AM local time
Slept well last night. Woke up at some random hour, unsurprising considering how early we crashed, I almost thought I'd be stuck awake, but I eventually fell back asleep until Matt woke me up at 6:30, I got a shower in, that whole deal. Today we have class, a checkout dive and a real dive. Should be busy but fun.
Saturday, February 13th, roughly 6:45 AM local time
I told Denny I had to write a lot tonight, he asked “why? This is just another day, we didn't do anything today, another day on the Biomes trip.” I said exactly, that's why my journal doc is over 40 pages now. (48, in fact.) We do so much every day, that EVERY day is that fantastic.
I napped a bit more on the boat, we got close to the atoll, climbed onto the dive boat and approach the atoll. It's cool, there's a bridge of boats, the newest boat to show up tethers at the end and you walk across them to get to the dock. We got there and met our host, who apparently has been reading our blogs. (I'm saying now, this entry is not made up in anyway for his benefit, today was really that great.) I got excited to see lots of crabs on the beach, eight or more. He led us through the village, small place, about 800 people all told, but very nice. Interestingly, I saw signs that said to remove batteries from waste all over the place, and there were water bottles in a tree, surrounding the fruit I think. Not sure what that was for, protection from insects maybe? (PS added days later: giant fruits bats. It's for giant fruit bats.)
So we're walking, it's hot, it's sunny, we turn the corner and there's a circle of chairs arranged in the shade with about two dozen coconuts sitting on a table in the middle. We sit and they prepare the coconuts for us, straws and all. I swear, it was like a dream, even more surreal than arriving at the Big House in Thailand and just having food shoved at us. Here we are, on an island paradise with the bluest water I've ever seen, the best white sand beaches, sitting under the shade of trees, drinking coconut milk. It's something from TV or a movie, not the life of some college kid from Ohio. So we sat and relaxed, after we finished drinking the coconut they cut it open for us and we learned to use a piece of the outer shell to scoop out the meat. Mine was mostly milk, thin meat, but good, and I had a little bit of Zypy's which had thicker meat on it. I don't like coconut in candy or on ice cream back home, but the real thing? Tasty.
From there we went to a little shop, which had some very cool things. I haggled more on accident than anything else. I found a PERFECT gift (and I promise you'll never guess what it is), the guy said 25, 27 with international fee on my card. I was hemming and hawing, not trying to haggle, just honestly not sure, I said “it's nice, I just don't know if it's $25 nice.” He had to take a phone call, and while he was doing that I decided yeah, it was worth it. Well, I say “oh, why not” and am about to hand him the card when he goes and tells the other guy it's too expensive, and the other guy reduces is to $20, or 22. Hey, sounds great for me. Allen was also buying some nice chopsticks and a journal, and our orders got mixed up, and then the group was trying to leave, but it all worked out. Well worth it, I might stop in that store again before we leave.
We went to our homestay, a very nice place with a western-style shower, no AC but a powerful fan, nice closets and drawers and a firm queen bed. I'm rooming with Matt right now. Very nice house, very nice room. In the main room there's a bathtub that's been converted into an aquarium, mostly koi, I thought that was neat too. We got changed and all that and headed out to snorkel, though I did take a while with the sunscreen and we were the last ones out. We caught up with them at the dock, though, walked across the boat bridge to the dive boat, and from there out to our snorkel site.
Wow.
Definitely the healthiest coral we've seen all trip, and there was LOTS of it. Some stuff growing right near the surface in shallow water, and then a beautiful drop-off and coral ledge going way way down. So many different kinds of fish, I don't remember half of them, though one of the dive instructors carrying a pufferfish and poking at it was fun to watch. We also had a lionfish pointed out to us (and the guy almost ran into me, I was right on top of him, woops), some people saw a starfish though I missed it, there were clams, so many different kinds of coral, it was absolutely fantastic. And this was all just snorkeling, too. Allen and I got a bit of a ways off from the group, but we made it back, he's far better at going under while snorkeling than I am. Something to work on. There was this one fish, three different shades of green, kind of neon, big, it was gorgeous. My only regret is that I don't have a waterproof camera. The sun was setting, too, so you'd look up from the water and see one of the best, reddest sunsets out on the horizon of the ocean.
Yeah, talk about a view.
We got out, back onto the dive boat, to the main boat, to one of the best meals of the whole trip. This rivaled the buffet in India. There were pasta shells (I haven't had pasta since Hawaii), some delicious red sauce, chicken, red snapper (one of the best fish of my entire life), pineapple, probably the best banana of my entire life, and a salad that I actually wish I had eaten a little bit more of, it was so good. So, so good. That took us a while to eat because we ate so much, island-sleepers ate first (10 on the island, 12 on the boat while we're here). While I was waiting to head out, some of the dive instructors were sitting on the deck of the boat, one with bongos and one with a guitar, it was a cool scene to see. We got back on the dive boat, headed back in, and I got the best view of stars of my entire life. Kris, this would make your cornfields look like they had streetlights every 5 feet. The whole “Milky Way” thing doesn't really make sense until you get a good view of the night sky in a really dark place, and this was that and more. The best view of Orion of my life, and I'm sure there were dozens of other constellations in there I missed. A great view of Mars as well. Absolutely stunning seeing all the stars, and even better, I even saw a satellite pass over. Not a plane, not a planet, no, a satellite. I gaped at that most of the boat ride back, then we got in, almost got lost, got led to our homestay thankfully, I rinsed off in the shower and that's that.
One of the best days of the trip for me personally, I think. Some of the best food, some of the best views, absolutely stunning.
Friday, February 12th, roughly 8:10-8:30 PM local time
I napped a bit more on the boat, we got close to the atoll, climbed onto the dive boat and approach the atoll. It's cool, there's a bridge of boats, the newest boat to show up tethers at the end and you walk across them to get to the dock. We got there and met our host, who apparently has been reading our blogs. (I'm saying now, this entry is not made up in anyway for his benefit, today was really that great.) I got excited to see lots of crabs on the beach, eight or more. He led us through the village, small place, about 800 people all told, but very nice. Interestingly, I saw signs that said to remove batteries from waste all over the place, and there were water bottles in a tree, surrounding the fruit I think. Not sure what that was for, protection from insects maybe? (PS added days later: giant fruits bats. It's for giant fruit bats.)
So we're walking, it's hot, it's sunny, we turn the corner and there's a circle of chairs arranged in the shade with about two dozen coconuts sitting on a table in the middle. We sit and they prepare the coconuts for us, straws and all. I swear, it was like a dream, even more surreal than arriving at the Big House in Thailand and just having food shoved at us. Here we are, on an island paradise with the bluest water I've ever seen, the best white sand beaches, sitting under the shade of trees, drinking coconut milk. It's something from TV or a movie, not the life of some college kid from Ohio. So we sat and relaxed, after we finished drinking the coconut they cut it open for us and we learned to use a piece of the outer shell to scoop out the meat. Mine was mostly milk, thin meat, but good, and I had a little bit of Zypy's which had thicker meat on it. I don't like coconut in candy or on ice cream back home, but the real thing? Tasty.
From there we went to a little shop, which had some very cool things. I haggled more on accident than anything else. I found a PERFECT gift (and I promise you'll never guess what it is), the guy said 25, 27 with international fee on my card. I was hemming and hawing, not trying to haggle, just honestly not sure, I said “it's nice, I just don't know if it's $25 nice.” He had to take a phone call, and while he was doing that I decided yeah, it was worth it. Well, I say “oh, why not” and am about to hand him the card when he goes and tells the other guy it's too expensive, and the other guy reduces is to $20, or 22. Hey, sounds great for me. Allen was also buying some nice chopsticks and a journal, and our orders got mixed up, and then the group was trying to leave, but it all worked out. Well worth it, I might stop in that store again before we leave.
We went to our homestay, a very nice place with a western-style shower, no AC but a powerful fan, nice closets and drawers and a firm queen bed. I'm rooming with Matt right now. Very nice house, very nice room. In the main room there's a bathtub that's been converted into an aquarium, mostly koi, I thought that was neat too. We got changed and all that and headed out to snorkel, though I did take a while with the sunscreen and we were the last ones out. We caught up with them at the dock, though, walked across the boat bridge to the dive boat, and from there out to our snorkel site.
Wow.
Definitely the healthiest coral we've seen all trip, and there was LOTS of it. Some stuff growing right near the surface in shallow water, and then a beautiful drop-off and coral ledge going way way down. So many different kinds of fish, I don't remember half of them, though one of the dive instructors carrying a pufferfish and poking at it was fun to watch. We also had a lionfish pointed out to us (and the guy almost ran into me, I was right on top of him, woops), some people saw a starfish though I missed it, there were clams, so many different kinds of coral, it was absolutely fantastic. And this was all just snorkeling, too. Allen and I got a bit of a ways off from the group, but we made it back, he's far better at going under while snorkeling than I am. Something to work on. There was this one fish, three different shades of green, kind of neon, big, it was gorgeous. My only regret is that I don't have a waterproof camera. The sun was setting, too, so you'd look up from the water and see one of the best, reddest sunsets out on the horizon of the ocean.
Yeah, talk about a view.
We got out, back onto the dive boat, to the main boat, to one of the best meals of the whole trip. This rivaled the buffet in India. There were pasta shells (I haven't had pasta since Hawaii), some delicious red sauce, chicken, red snapper (one of the best fish of my entire life), pineapple, probably the best banana of my entire life, and a salad that I actually wish I had eaten a little bit more of, it was so good. So, so good. That took us a while to eat because we ate so much, island-sleepers ate first (10 on the island, 12 on the boat while we're here). While I was waiting to head out, some of the dive instructors were sitting on the deck of the boat, one with bongos and one with a guitar, it was a cool scene to see. We got back on the dive boat, headed back in, and I got the best view of stars of my entire life. Kris, this would make your cornfields look like they had streetlights every 5 feet. The whole “Milky Way” thing doesn't really make sense until you get a good view of the night sky in a really dark place, and this was that and more. The best view of Orion of my life, and I'm sure there were dozens of other constellations in there I missed. A great view of Mars as well. Absolutely stunning seeing all the stars, and even better, I even saw a satellite pass over. Not a plane, not a planet, no, a satellite. I gaped at that most of the boat ride back, then we got in, almost got lost, got led to our homestay thankfully, I rinsed off in the shower and that's that.
One of the best days of the trip for me personally, I think. Some of the best food, some of the best views, absolutely stunning.
Friday, February 12th, roughly 8:10-8:30 PM local time
And, it's going fast and, I got a nautical theme...
I'm on a boat.
Yeah, it had to be said. Moving right along...
Vince bought some gummy bear-like candy he didn't like, so I now have two bags of them in my backpack (about a bag and a half left). Mikey and I also got some ice cream in the airport, which was a good decision. We went over to our gate, the plane didn't start boarding until probably 10 minutes after it was supposed to, but we got on, and I conked out for most of the flight. Landed in Colombo, that gate also took forever to get boarding, though at least I got to briefly check my e-mail first. From there we flew to Male, I sat between Matt and Mike which was... amusing, though they spent most of the flight with their headphones on, and I spent most of the time reading and writing stuff for Jake, Alex and Tay. Because I'm a geek. And oh, hey, there's food now, finish this in a little bit.
Friday, February 12th, roughly 1 PM local time
Restarting at 1:20...
OH WOW THAT WAS TASTY.
But, in sequence. So our plane to Male left late, it was waiting on a plane from Hong Kong, but we finally got into Male around 1 AM local time. (We went back half an hour to a reasonable time zone, now we're 10 hours ahead of home instead of 10.5.) We had to fill out arrival and departure cards, as per every other country, but this one had some extra warnings, like the prohibition of importing alcohol, “idols for worship,” and “items contrary to Islam.” That was uh, interesting. Went through passport control, which took a while, got our bags, customs didn't take long at all, and oh hey, THAT'S what 28 degrees Celsius and 90% humidity feels like. You learn something new every day.
We didn't know this was going to happen, but Saffah, our guide from Bluepeace Maldives, was there to meet us, which was great. We waited for everyone to get through customs and got onto a boat to head over to our hotel. Got off the boat, walked about a block, filled out some forms for the room, went upstairs, Mike showered, I showered, and let me just say. A western-style showerhead, with hot water and high pressure? It was beautiful. My last shower at Mussoorie was cold water out of a bucket.
I forgot to detail that. It's pretty common in Thailand and India, actually, you fill a bucket with water and there's a smaller bucket you use to pour it over yourself. Well at Mussoorie it was going to take ages to get hot water, and there was still some water left the last person hadn't used, so yeah. Cold water out of a bucket.
So I had an absolutely glorious hot shower and finally got to sleep probably between 3:30 and 4 AM. And woke up at 8:30 AM. Ugh. We went across the street, had a good breakfast of eggs, watermelon, pineapple, some little hot dog-like things, a small bowl of cereal and a meat and cheese sandwich, headed back to the hotel, found out there was actually free wireless, did that for maybe 30-40 minutes and it was time to go. We got downstairs, Saffah met Denny and told him to go over to the airport island and meet him there because it was less crowded. Well, we got over there and sat for a long time waiting, not sure what was up. The water here is absolutely BEAUTIFUL, by the way. Even when we got in last night, in the dark, you could see the bottom. Today you could see this stark divide, near the island it was sort of a light green-blue, and then there was a really stark divide, just a straight line, no gradient, and it went straight to a beautiful dark blue. In the artificial harbor on the airport island you could see little patches of various colors mixed in, it's really gorgeous.
Eventually Saffah met us, we got onto our boat that will be home, more or less, for the next four days, and away we went. The crew seems friendly. David and I talked about maps and things for a bit, I was filling out my little atlas with where all we've been. Nasseef, another guy from Bluepeace Maldives, is here with us. He taught me that that native language is Dihveli, Dihbeli, something like that, and how to say thank you. Apparently the language is a mix of Arabic and old Sanskrit. Then I started writing this and they had lunch.
Lunch was absolutely wonderful.
Some sort of fish sandwich in a roll, it had onions, something similar to caesar dressing, it was amazing. I had three, so good. Also watermelon and mango juice. I hope we eat this well every day. Now I'm just sitting in one of the lawn chairs typing on the coffee table. The boat's pretty great, the main deck has a couch, two coffee table-type things, three lawn chairs, and places to sit along the side, and then up top it's completely open and people are lounging out. I'm resisting the urge, mostly because my sunscreen is in my packed bag, not the backpack. I'm sure I'll have opportunity over the next few days.
Remember when I said the water en route to Koh Tao had a sort of gold-on-blue to it? There's something similar here, not all the time, but when the angle and the lighting is right. It's not gold though, almost a grey-blue, really like a metallic silver on top of the blue of the ocean. Again, it's absolutely beautiful, and again, I'm not sure the English language really has a good word for it.
Sea legs are gonna take a while.
Finished about 1:35 PM local time
Yeah, it had to be said. Moving right along...
Vince bought some gummy bear-like candy he didn't like, so I now have two bags of them in my backpack (about a bag and a half left). Mikey and I also got some ice cream in the airport, which was a good decision. We went over to our gate, the plane didn't start boarding until probably 10 minutes after it was supposed to, but we got on, and I conked out for most of the flight. Landed in Colombo, that gate also took forever to get boarding, though at least I got to briefly check my e-mail first. From there we flew to Male, I sat between Matt and Mike which was... amusing, though they spent most of the flight with their headphones on, and I spent most of the time reading and writing stuff for Jake, Alex and Tay. Because I'm a geek. And oh, hey, there's food now, finish this in a little bit.
Friday, February 12th, roughly 1 PM local time
Restarting at 1:20...
OH WOW THAT WAS TASTY.
But, in sequence. So our plane to Male left late, it was waiting on a plane from Hong Kong, but we finally got into Male around 1 AM local time. (We went back half an hour to a reasonable time zone, now we're 10 hours ahead of home instead of 10.5.) We had to fill out arrival and departure cards, as per every other country, but this one had some extra warnings, like the prohibition of importing alcohol, “idols for worship,” and “items contrary to Islam.” That was uh, interesting. Went through passport control, which took a while, got our bags, customs didn't take long at all, and oh hey, THAT'S what 28 degrees Celsius and 90% humidity feels like. You learn something new every day.
We didn't know this was going to happen, but Saffah, our guide from Bluepeace Maldives, was there to meet us, which was great. We waited for everyone to get through customs and got onto a boat to head over to our hotel. Got off the boat, walked about a block, filled out some forms for the room, went upstairs, Mike showered, I showered, and let me just say. A western-style showerhead, with hot water and high pressure? It was beautiful. My last shower at Mussoorie was cold water out of a bucket.
I forgot to detail that. It's pretty common in Thailand and India, actually, you fill a bucket with water and there's a smaller bucket you use to pour it over yourself. Well at Mussoorie it was going to take ages to get hot water, and there was still some water left the last person hadn't used, so yeah. Cold water out of a bucket.
So I had an absolutely glorious hot shower and finally got to sleep probably between 3:30 and 4 AM. And woke up at 8:30 AM. Ugh. We went across the street, had a good breakfast of eggs, watermelon, pineapple, some little hot dog-like things, a small bowl of cereal and a meat and cheese sandwich, headed back to the hotel, found out there was actually free wireless, did that for maybe 30-40 minutes and it was time to go. We got downstairs, Saffah met Denny and told him to go over to the airport island and meet him there because it was less crowded. Well, we got over there and sat for a long time waiting, not sure what was up. The water here is absolutely BEAUTIFUL, by the way. Even when we got in last night, in the dark, you could see the bottom. Today you could see this stark divide, near the island it was sort of a light green-blue, and then there was a really stark divide, just a straight line, no gradient, and it went straight to a beautiful dark blue. In the artificial harbor on the airport island you could see little patches of various colors mixed in, it's really gorgeous.
Eventually Saffah met us, we got onto our boat that will be home, more or less, for the next four days, and away we went. The crew seems friendly. David and I talked about maps and things for a bit, I was filling out my little atlas with where all we've been. Nasseef, another guy from Bluepeace Maldives, is here with us. He taught me that that native language is Dihveli, Dihbeli, something like that, and how to say thank you. Apparently the language is a mix of Arabic and old Sanskrit. Then I started writing this and they had lunch.
Lunch was absolutely wonderful.
Some sort of fish sandwich in a roll, it had onions, something similar to caesar dressing, it was amazing. I had three, so good. Also watermelon and mango juice. I hope we eat this well every day. Now I'm just sitting in one of the lawn chairs typing on the coffee table. The boat's pretty great, the main deck has a couch, two coffee table-type things, three lawn chairs, and places to sit along the side, and then up top it's completely open and people are lounging out. I'm resisting the urge, mostly because my sunscreen is in my packed bag, not the backpack. I'm sure I'll have opportunity over the next few days.
Remember when I said the water en route to Koh Tao had a sort of gold-on-blue to it? There's something similar here, not all the time, but when the angle and the lighting is right. It's not gold though, almost a grey-blue, really like a metallic silver on top of the blue of the ocean. Again, it's absolutely beautiful, and again, I'm not sure the English language really has a good word for it.
Sea legs are gonna take a while.
Finished about 1:35 PM local time
In the airport now, trying to get some wi-fi. It's free, but they text it to your cell phone, so it's kind of odd.
I didn't get much sleep last night. Turned in about 9:30, got woken up by a cell phone or a watch or something, couldn't fall back asleep. So I spent most of the night farting around on the computers, frustratingly unable to reach my e-mail. We left right around three, into a CAREENING drive down the mountain. I think literally all 22 people felt sick by the end. The fact that the whole ride smelled like car exhaust, combined with the speed and turns... yeah. It was bad. Got to the train station, waited for everyone to arrive, got to the platform, waited a bit in the cold, got on the train, sat next to Nate and promptly slept for 5 hours.
It was glorious.
Woke up, argued with Nate over the blog entry some more, but it's FINALLY BLOODY DONE. We got off the train and met our guide, who looks suspiciously like my paternal grandfather. The bus driver had a Domino's Pizza hat, which was amusing. We got a little tour, saw the India Gate which was pretty, but gods am I tired of hawkers (I told David if he put the population of China into the state of Rhode Island and stuck me in the middle of it, as long as no one tried to sell me anything, I would be happy.) From there we drove past Parliament and the President's house, very pretty but we didn't get out.
The last stop was the Indira Gandhi memorial. Very understated, but very good. Learned a fair bit, though who knows how much I'll remember. We ate at a restaurant that was also a sweets store, pretty good food, pretty standard for what we've been eating so far. Lots of people bought little things, and I tried a few but didn't eat any myself. From there to the airport, waiting a bit, checking in was pretty easy, security and customs weren't bad. Very slow day here. And now wrestling with this stupid Airtel thing, which is supposed to send me a text with a password but hasn't yet. Bah, humbug.
Oh, hey. It only works with India numbers. Idiotic.
Thursday, February 11th, roughly 4:40 PM local time
I didn't get much sleep last night. Turned in about 9:30, got woken up by a cell phone or a watch or something, couldn't fall back asleep. So I spent most of the night farting around on the computers, frustratingly unable to reach my e-mail. We left right around three, into a CAREENING drive down the mountain. I think literally all 22 people felt sick by the end. The fact that the whole ride smelled like car exhaust, combined with the speed and turns... yeah. It was bad. Got to the train station, waited for everyone to arrive, got to the platform, waited a bit in the cold, got on the train, sat next to Nate and promptly slept for 5 hours.
It was glorious.
Woke up, argued with Nate over the blog entry some more, but it's FINALLY BLOODY DONE. We got off the train and met our guide, who looks suspiciously like my paternal grandfather. The bus driver had a Domino's Pizza hat, which was amusing. We got a little tour, saw the India Gate which was pretty, but gods am I tired of hawkers (I told David if he put the population of China into the state of Rhode Island and stuck me in the middle of it, as long as no one tried to sell me anything, I would be happy.) From there we drove past Parliament and the President's house, very pretty but we didn't get out.
The last stop was the Indira Gandhi memorial. Very understated, but very good. Learned a fair bit, though who knows how much I'll remember. We ate at a restaurant that was also a sweets store, pretty good food, pretty standard for what we've been eating so far. Lots of people bought little things, and I tried a few but didn't eat any myself. From there to the airport, waiting a bit, checking in was pretty easy, security and customs weren't bad. Very slow day here. And now wrestling with this stupid Airtel thing, which is supposed to send me a text with a password but hasn't yet. Bah, humbug.
Oh, hey. It only works with India numbers. Idiotic.
Thursday, February 11th, roughly 4:40 PM local time
Sitting in our dorm style room on my top bunk with some extra thoughts.
I forgot to mention my sleep last night. See, I came in fairly late and didn't look around for blankets, so I was just under a sheet and one thin blanket, not knowing there were HUGE ones. Didn't want to wake anyone up. I also took my socks off, a mistake, and woke up several times due to cold. All my own fault, and I felt well-rested in the morning, which is really the important part. But agh.
Indian public schools sound miserable. I'm not entirely surprised, but the guy from Delhi I talked to especially just sounded like he had had a horrible experience. He said it would be twice as many kids as we saw, in the same size room (it was... not cramped, but to comfortable capacity), with one guy up front writing on the board. Completely exam-focused, beatings, the whole stereotypical shebang. He didn't like Woodstock all that well either, actually. I mean, it was kind of hard to tell, this is the same guy who introduced himself with his name and “I'm awkward as hell,” and repeated the phrase about ten minutes later. He just didn't seem too happy with life in general, but he definitely was bored. Even here at Woodstock, which seems liberal compared to what I imagine the Indian public school system is like, we asked them about their free time and it was “study.” A lot of study, study, study. Sad to hear. Cindy was more upbeat, but didn't seem to have all that many hobbies either, though she did mention going to the Bazaar, which perked both of them up. Apparently the food is good.
Tonight I'm the first one to the room and have acquired a superior blanket, plus I'm keeping my socks and my long-sleeved shirt on. So, should be a superior night. Even though I am waking up at 2 or 2:30 to catch a taxi to catch a train to Delhi to catch a bus to catch a plane to Male.
Wednesday, February 10th, roughly 7-7:05 PM local time
I forgot to mention my sleep last night. See, I came in fairly late and didn't look around for blankets, so I was just under a sheet and one thin blanket, not knowing there were HUGE ones. Didn't want to wake anyone up. I also took my socks off, a mistake, and woke up several times due to cold. All my own fault, and I felt well-rested in the morning, which is really the important part. But agh.
Indian public schools sound miserable. I'm not entirely surprised, but the guy from Delhi I talked to especially just sounded like he had had a horrible experience. He said it would be twice as many kids as we saw, in the same size room (it was... not cramped, but to comfortable capacity), with one guy up front writing on the board. Completely exam-focused, beatings, the whole stereotypical shebang. He didn't like Woodstock all that well either, actually. I mean, it was kind of hard to tell, this is the same guy who introduced himself with his name and “I'm awkward as hell,” and repeated the phrase about ten minutes later. He just didn't seem too happy with life in general, but he definitely was bored. Even here at Woodstock, which seems liberal compared to what I imagine the Indian public school system is like, we asked them about their free time and it was “study.” A lot of study, study, study. Sad to hear. Cindy was more upbeat, but didn't seem to have all that many hobbies either, though she did mention going to the Bazaar, which perked both of them up. Apparently the food is good.
Tonight I'm the first one to the room and have acquired a superior blanket, plus I'm keeping my socks and my long-sleeved shirt on. So, should be a superior night. Even though I am waking up at 2 or 2:30 to catch a taxi to catch a train to Delhi to catch a bus to catch a plane to Male.
Wednesday, February 10th, roughly 7-7:05 PM local time
Friday, February 19, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Woodstock School
Got up around 7:15 this morning, ate a tasty breakfast, and it was off to talk to high schoolers. The visibility was a lot better today, thankfully, and the area here is beautiful. I mean, the view of the mountains, heavily forested, the terraced agriculture off in the distance. It's great. I talked to two juniors in a biology course, one from Delhi and one from Korea, along with Nate and Matt. As per usual, afraid of butchering their names, though I do know them. We discussed climate change, biomes, where they were from, a little bit of general stuff. From there we went to present to 5th graders. I was nervous about this part, but it actually worked really well. The coral reef group did a cool thing to demonstrate destabilization of food webs (which led to me having to answer a question about what happened when all the dinosaurs disappeared at once, with support), the desert group got a little bogged down in questions (Allen taught them what “endemic” meant) but did well, and their make-a-monster thing was fun, and we “took them on a hike” through a tropical wet forest and a tropical dry forest, teaching them to observe like we observe with Becky's pictures. It worked really well, the kids were super-engaged, a few asked a few too many questions but some of them were GOOD, one kid asked me the percentage of sunlight that made it past the wet forest canopy. I talked to the teacher a bit, a guy from Pittsburgh who had also spent a lot of time in Colorado, in Boulder. He encouraged me to spend some time in the Rockies... well, we'll see. It's one more vote on the table, though, he apparently just loved it out there. We went to another bio course and talked to some more students, but since we were the last group we got there late and didn't really get in to talking. I talked to Darhab, our host for a while. From there we went on a little hike around the area, got to see the “Granddaddy Oak” which is this beautiful HUGE oak tree, as well as lots of other vegetation around the area, very fun. Gorgeous mountainside, like I said before, it's just so very green. Deciduous broadleaf trees, which is weird considering we're 7000 feet up a mountain. We came down, had a tasty lunch (Chinese food, the chicken in oyster sauce was WONDERFUL), and then off to talk to AP Bio students. These two were a little harder to get talking, but we had some fun, the one guy (also Delhi and Korea, by the way) had seen Three Idiots so we talked about that. Both of them were aiming medical, the guy (again, afraid to misspell his name) in India, the Korean girl (Cindy was her nickname) in Hungary. I also got to hear a bit of David spieling/rambling about liberal arts education, I didn't realize it didn't exist outside of the US. I mean, I didn't expect it in India, but I didn't know even Europe gets super-specialized after high school. We went to the gym, which was nice, hung out there, I really wish I was able to climb on their rock walls (3 walls of a room, all walls), talked to Darhab some more. Went down for tea, wrote some in my orange journal for Denny, and came back up to Hanifl Center to fart around the internet and post all these.
Wednesday, February 10th, roughly 5:05-5:15 PM local time
Wednesday, February 10th, roughly 5:05-5:15 PM local time
Lots of Transportation.
I ended up moving on the first train to let another guy sit near his father, which worked out well. There was a guy two seats over from me, no one in between us (I had the aisle, he had the window). We were both quiet on our computers before dinner, but over dinner we started talking, his English was very good. I talked about the trip some, apparently he's a business consultant, we talked about travel, different countries, outsourcing, it was interesting. He got off before we did, so then I had some time alone to sit, we got out, our train was mostly on time, DASHED out towards the taxis into heavy rain (very sudden), Denny and Jacob got us some taxis, DASHED to the taxis in heavy rain, drove over to the other station, and actually did alright getting there on time. Our cab driver had his window open and was using a rag to wipe off the rain, which was different. We loaded up, found our seats with some effort, and got settled in. I had an upper bunk, though I sat below for much of the trip, reading. Eventually got some sleep, interestingly, our train got in over two hours late, which meant lots of extra sleep. We got out, and not two minutes after we got out of the train a heavy rain started. Apparently we bring it. Interesting too, considering the dry season and all. We met the guy from Woodstock school, got into cars, and headed up the mountain. The ride was probably a little over an hour, and our driver was a wee bit insane. I mean, these were MOUNTAINS, very winding, very steep, Vince said he was in 3rd gear almost the whole time, and he passed everything he could. One car wouldn't let us pass for the longest time and he just kept trying for it, it was crazy. I think driving at a reasonable pace, it might have taken twice as long to get here. We finally did get up to where there were some stairs and a LOT of hail on the ground, not to mention rain still pouring down. Getting up the stairs wasn't too bad, but then there was a ramp. That was more... interesting. We eventually got up that though, I'll admit a guy here helped me, got into the building, and oh thank god they have clean bathrooms and served us breakfast. I just had cereal, toast with butter and some tasty bread thing, but there was other stuff too. After that we got the schedule for the next couple days, our 6 hour hike was canceled due to weather, we got shown our dorms which are nicer than I expected, actually, albeit not heated, and then to the computer lab for the internet we've all been craving. Right now it's absolutely storming out, thunder and lightning and all. Insane.
Tuesday, February 9th, roughly 11:30-35 AM local time
Tuesday, February 9th, roughly 11:30-35 AM local time
Tiger Reserve, Another Train Station
Sitting in the VIP room in the Alwar train station, watching my friends ignore a young beggar girl. But more on that later.
Woke up this morning a little before 6:30, though it wasn't until 6:40 or so that I got out of bed. We went down to wait for the jeeps... and look who it was, our guide from yesterday. Oh goodie. However, there were 5 jeeps, so we managed to avoid him. Denny was... not so lucky. Nate, Swaffy, Mike and I had a pretty good guide, quiet, but knowledgeable. A few language difficulties on occasion, but mostly good English. The tiger reserve itself was impressive, though dry as all hell. We saw a ridiculous number of deer, antelope, and peafowl, as well as many other birds, a jackal or two, a wild cat (probably jungle cat?), some wild boar, and some monkeys, though not as many as yesterday. The three or so watering holes were especially spectacular, with an absurd number of animals all in the same place. The ride was bumpy, of course, but not too bad, we had a point where we got out, stretched our legs, and fed some birds bread and seed. I didn't personally, but there are some great pictures of Sigrid, Swaffy and Mike at it. Of course, we later saw a sign asking us not to feed animals, but our guides were encouraging it. Not surprising. Drove back, lazed for a bit, read a bit, napped a bit, finished packing, and headed down. We briefly talked about the travel schedule, and then had lunch, which was again delicious. After that we had a short break, then class, which was a bunch of the biology stuff. A bit of a break, nice weather, cooler than we've had, and into a minibus. Which had almost exactly as many seats as there were of us, and with luggage the extra two seats weren't much help. It was uh, cramped
There is a beautiful incongruity in listening to The Holmes Brothers, The Notorious B.I.G., Gnarls Barkley, Warren Zevon, Loney Deer, Gorillaz, Streetlight Manifesto, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Bravery, Fall Out Boy, Say Anything, Steve Miller Band and Marvin Gaye while sitting on a cramped minibus and watching the Indian landscape go by outside the window.
That ride was about an hour, give or take. We got to the train station, got in, piled up our stuff, I paid 10 rupee for 6 of us to use the bathroom (didn't have any 1 rupee pieces, so I couldn't pay the exact 6), got some change from Nate, had a bag of “American Style Cream and Onion” chips and a coke, and sat around talking a bit. We gathered a crowd, unsurprisingly: in addition to the effect of 20some Americans in an Indian train station, we had Michelle and Becky braiding hair and exchanging backrubs, some of the guys doing ridiculous kung fu shenanigans, Allen petting a dog, Jacob, Nikki and I forget who else doing the macarena... as David pointed out, we were a three-ring circus. I tried to talk to a couple guys, but we ran into the same old problem: I don't speak any Hindi, they don't know much English. Eventually a station official came by and tried to shoo them all off, most of them left, a few stayed, not too long after the station guys opened up the VIP room and offered it to us. Whether it was a gracious “here, we are offering this to you” or a firm “you should go here now,” whether they were being kind to a group of American tourists or trying to eliminate a commotion that was causing a block in their train station, depends on whether Denny and David or I have the right interpretation. Maybe it was a bit of both, and in fairness, Denny has far more experience in India than I do. Another station guy eventually took that beggar girl out, by the way, not long after I started this entry.
I need to write a full entry on the poverty in this country. My normal posts just aren't doing it justice.
But yeah, Tiger Reserve was cool, no tigers (not a shock, only 3 of them in the whole park), but lots of wildlife, maybe the most we've seen the whole trip, land-wise. Train to taxis to a train to Mussorie and the Woodstock School tonight, then we're there for two days teaching, apparently (I'm horrified at the idea of handling 5th graders, high school kids might not be so bad), then a sleeper to Delhi, and off to Male and the Maldives. Hopefully we'll have interwubs at Woodstock so I can upload, since I didn't when I had the chance in Jaipur.
Monday, February 8th, roughly 6:50-7:05 PM local time
Woke up this morning a little before 6:30, though it wasn't until 6:40 or so that I got out of bed. We went down to wait for the jeeps... and look who it was, our guide from yesterday. Oh goodie. However, there were 5 jeeps, so we managed to avoid him. Denny was... not so lucky. Nate, Swaffy, Mike and I had a pretty good guide, quiet, but knowledgeable. A few language difficulties on occasion, but mostly good English. The tiger reserve itself was impressive, though dry as all hell. We saw a ridiculous number of deer, antelope, and peafowl, as well as many other birds, a jackal or two, a wild cat (probably jungle cat?), some wild boar, and some monkeys, though not as many as yesterday. The three or so watering holes were especially spectacular, with an absurd number of animals all in the same place. The ride was bumpy, of course, but not too bad, we had a point where we got out, stretched our legs, and fed some birds bread and seed. I didn't personally, but there are some great pictures of Sigrid, Swaffy and Mike at it. Of course, we later saw a sign asking us not to feed animals, but our guides were encouraging it. Not surprising. Drove back, lazed for a bit, read a bit, napped a bit, finished packing, and headed down. We briefly talked about the travel schedule, and then had lunch, which was again delicious. After that we had a short break, then class, which was a bunch of the biology stuff. A bit of a break, nice weather, cooler than we've had, and into a minibus. Which had almost exactly as many seats as there were of us, and with luggage the extra two seats weren't much help. It was uh, cramped
There is a beautiful incongruity in listening to The Holmes Brothers, The Notorious B.I.G., Gnarls Barkley, Warren Zevon, Loney Deer, Gorillaz, Streetlight Manifesto, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Bravery, Fall Out Boy, Say Anything, Steve Miller Band and Marvin Gaye while sitting on a cramped minibus and watching the Indian landscape go by outside the window.
That ride was about an hour, give or take. We got to the train station, got in, piled up our stuff, I paid 10 rupee for 6 of us to use the bathroom (didn't have any 1 rupee pieces, so I couldn't pay the exact 6), got some change from Nate, had a bag of “American Style Cream and Onion” chips and a coke, and sat around talking a bit. We gathered a crowd, unsurprisingly: in addition to the effect of 20some Americans in an Indian train station, we had Michelle and Becky braiding hair and exchanging backrubs, some of the guys doing ridiculous kung fu shenanigans, Allen petting a dog, Jacob, Nikki and I forget who else doing the macarena... as David pointed out, we were a three-ring circus. I tried to talk to a couple guys, but we ran into the same old problem: I don't speak any Hindi, they don't know much English. Eventually a station official came by and tried to shoo them all off, most of them left, a few stayed, not too long after the station guys opened up the VIP room and offered it to us. Whether it was a gracious “here, we are offering this to you” or a firm “you should go here now,” whether they were being kind to a group of American tourists or trying to eliminate a commotion that was causing a block in their train station, depends on whether Denny and David or I have the right interpretation. Maybe it was a bit of both, and in fairness, Denny has far more experience in India than I do. Another station guy eventually took that beggar girl out, by the way, not long after I started this entry.
I need to write a full entry on the poverty in this country. My normal posts just aren't doing it justice.
But yeah, Tiger Reserve was cool, no tigers (not a shock, only 3 of them in the whole park), but lots of wildlife, maybe the most we've seen the whole trip, land-wise. Train to taxis to a train to Mussorie and the Woodstock School tonight, then we're there for two days teaching, apparently (I'm horrified at the idea of handling 5th graders, high school kids might not be so bad), then a sleeper to Delhi, and off to Male and the Maldives. Hopefully we'll have interwubs at Woodstock so I can upload, since I didn't when I had the chance in Jaipur.
Monday, February 8th, roughly 6:50-7:05 PM local time
Woke up, ate, spent a lot of time relaxing, reading, doing a bit of journaling and blog work. At 3 we went out for an optional hike that everyone actually decided to go on.
Our guide was... not the best we've had. He was, shall we say, energetic. Also less than fully informative, and definitely worried about his work. He made sure we all took a picture with him and asked us to send it over to him. He also badgered Denny a bit to get Denny to take him as a guide tomorrow. The walk itself was about 50% along the side of a highway, though we did see a lot of rhesus macaques, black-faced monkeys, and a few deer. Then we headed down a little bit into a somewhat more natural area. Sadly, even in the parks there's a lot of trash. Nate tried to pick it up and was IMMEDIATELY told to put it down again, later we talked about how that related to the caste system here. So we finished up the hike, came back, had class which was sort of all three classes together, talking about writing, Measuring the World, conveying our experiences to others, the richness gained from traveling vs. staying at home, the dryness here, climate change, the politics of developing nations vs. developed nations, and so on and so forth. Dinner was delicious again, great chicken, and then... they built us a bonfire? Hey, they built us a bonfire. Johnny B. and I split 60 mL of Piper 100 whiskey, which was the smoothest scotch I have EVER had. Then we sat by the fire, John, Nate and I talked gun control, Sigrid asked if I was going to lead the group in kum-bay-yah and I asked when the last time I said ANYTHING harmonious was, I finished off a corona light of Nate's I had been carrying since Delhi, not wanting to still have it when we got to the airport, and I left when the gun control debate started again, with Allen joining. All in all, a good night.
Sunday, February 7th, roughly 9:30-9:35 PM local time
Our guide was... not the best we've had. He was, shall we say, energetic. Also less than fully informative, and definitely worried about his work. He made sure we all took a picture with him and asked us to send it over to him. He also badgered Denny a bit to get Denny to take him as a guide tomorrow. The walk itself was about 50% along the side of a highway, though we did see a lot of rhesus macaques, black-faced monkeys, and a few deer. Then we headed down a little bit into a somewhat more natural area. Sadly, even in the parks there's a lot of trash. Nate tried to pick it up and was IMMEDIATELY told to put it down again, later we talked about how that related to the caste system here. So we finished up the hike, came back, had class which was sort of all three classes together, talking about writing, Measuring the World, conveying our experiences to others, the richness gained from traveling vs. staying at home, the dryness here, climate change, the politics of developing nations vs. developed nations, and so on and so forth. Dinner was delicious again, great chicken, and then... they built us a bonfire? Hey, they built us a bonfire. Johnny B. and I split 60 mL of Piper 100 whiskey, which was the smoothest scotch I have EVER had. Then we sat by the fire, John, Nate and I talked gun control, Sigrid asked if I was going to lead the group in kum-bay-yah and I asked when the last time I said ANYTHING harmonious was, I finished off a corona light of Nate's I had been carrying since Delhi, not wanting to still have it when we got to the airport, and I left when the gun control debate started again, with Allen joining. All in all, a good night.
Sunday, February 7th, roughly 9:30-9:35 PM local time
At the Tiger's Den hotel now. Apparently our door doesn't lock. Classy.
We had an... interesting night. Denny and Mike went off to find transportation for us. It took a long time, in the meantime, Nate started talking to a few people, like Nate does. And then he was talking to more people... and more people... the crowd at its maximum was about 50. It was, uh, somewhat intimidating. They were just talking and all, but Nate was somewhat surrounded, a few guys around the edges looked unsavory, David was definitely edgy, the women in our group weren't loving it. I tried to talk to a few guys near me, but they didn't know much English. They'd said two words in English, talk to each other in Hindi, and laugh hysterically, so at least we were all enjoying ourselves? I think the one guy was calling me brother, since he kept saying it and pointing to himself and pointing to me. Unfortunately, the same guy later tried to get my hat off of me, so my trust and happiness over the situation went kind of downhill. But that was after Denny came back, we had a van, we got luggage piled up, the second van showed up and... there was NO way we were going to fit 7 people and luggage into the second van. Denny started talking to the guys, who of course raised the price, argued for a while, called some guy Clay had been talking to, talked amongst ourselves, generally feeling very edgy, and finally got a third van negotiated for what was an... okay price, I suppose. John, Vince, Jacob and I rode with David in the second van, through a wedding procession which was cool, except I couldn't see anything between the luggage and my positioning. There were apparently fireworks, a generator in a truck powering lights, and the groom on a horse. Also lots of music. So we drove through that, not long after that most of the drive was silent, kind of crammed in with our luggage, got here, got our room, and I forgot there was going to be food. So we ate some, I had two glasses of water (well, almost two) when we found out that we proooobably should not drink that water. So I may or may not be in store for an interesting night. Other than that, the food was tasty, and it's time for bed.
Saturday, February 6th, roughly 11:45-11:55 PM local time
PS, days later: I had no gastrointestinal problems that night. Thankfully.
We had an... interesting night. Denny and Mike went off to find transportation for us. It took a long time, in the meantime, Nate started talking to a few people, like Nate does. And then he was talking to more people... and more people... the crowd at its maximum was about 50. It was, uh, somewhat intimidating. They were just talking and all, but Nate was somewhat surrounded, a few guys around the edges looked unsavory, David was definitely edgy, the women in our group weren't loving it. I tried to talk to a few guys near me, but they didn't know much English. They'd said two words in English, talk to each other in Hindi, and laugh hysterically, so at least we were all enjoying ourselves? I think the one guy was calling me brother, since he kept saying it and pointing to himself and pointing to me. Unfortunately, the same guy later tried to get my hat off of me, so my trust and happiness over the situation went kind of downhill. But that was after Denny came back, we had a van, we got luggage piled up, the second van showed up and... there was NO way we were going to fit 7 people and luggage into the second van. Denny started talking to the guys, who of course raised the price, argued for a while, called some guy Clay had been talking to, talked amongst ourselves, generally feeling very edgy, and finally got a third van negotiated for what was an... okay price, I suppose. John, Vince, Jacob and I rode with David in the second van, through a wedding procession which was cool, except I couldn't see anything between the luggage and my positioning. There were apparently fireworks, a generator in a truck powering lights, and the groom on a horse. Also lots of music. So we drove through that, not long after that most of the drive was silent, kind of crammed in with our luggage, got here, got our room, and I forgot there was going to be food. So we ate some, I had two glasses of water (well, almost two) when we found out that we proooobably should not drink that water. So I may or may not be in store for an interesting night. Other than that, the food was tasty, and it's time for bed.
Saturday, February 6th, roughly 11:45-11:55 PM local time
PS, days later: I had no gastrointestinal problems that night. Thankfully.
On the train now.
So I realize now my entry above didn't truly convey what last night was like. I mean,
I wasn't nervous, until David and Sigrid were telling everyone to get off the bus, “we think we may be in a bad situation.” And then we're in a shady part of Jaipur, though that's relative... yeah. But anyway.
So today was busy, but fun. Woke up, waited forever to get a breakfast of a lemon banana crepe, spent some time online (ultimately probably worth the 80 rupees, although I apologize for not posting to the blog, I got caught up in other things.) We wrapped up packing, left our bags at the hotel, and headed off to the Palace of the Wind by rickshaw. One rickshaw was blasting music, especially Barbie Doll, and I was jealous.
And we got there... and one rickshaw is missing. Now, after last night, this is REALLY setting off everyone's alarms. Denny and Allen went to get a SIM card for our phone for India, we all sat around and got badgered by merchants. A few people actually got good deals, in retrospect, I probably could have picked up a nice gift there. Ah, well. About ten minutes later the last rickshaw showed up, then we waited 45 minutes or so for Denny and Allen to return. We were starting to get a little worried, but they finally showed up. One of the shopkeepers led us to the entrance, telling us the whole time that we should visit his shop when we're done, of course. Denny did his best to get the guy off our back, but y'know, that's life. We got there, thanked him for his help (same guy had helped Denny find the SIM card, and actually had us go in his shop for 5 minutes as a thank you), and into the Palace we went. It was beautiful, great architecture, I really enjoyed the little peepholes into the city... which shows in how many pictures I took that way. Under restoration, which led to some interesting effects, but well worth it. After that we went to the City Palace, which had a museum-style layout. Some cool stuff, more beautiful architecture, a great weapons hall that I'm sad I couldn't take pictures in. I finished, saw that the cafe there was overpriced (60 rupees for a coke), and sat quietly, half-dozing with Mike until it was time to go. Grabbed a bag of chips and a sprite from a vendor, and we walked over to the observatory. En route we saw a crazy guy covered in grey (ashes?) stick out his tongue and, according to John, vomit intentionally, and Denny bought us ice cream which was well needed. The observatory itself was very cool, great big sundials (one the largest in the world and accurate down to 2 seconds), astrolabe, and all sorts of cool stuff. A lot of zodiac-related things, too, I need to do some research. One man told us the Romans got the zodiac from India, which is why they're the same, but I'd like to verify that myself. After that Denny bought us some food and drinks, om nom pickle samosa, and we started the trek back to the hotel. A cow hip-bumped Nate, but nothing else really worth mentioning happened, it was just more walking through the city. Got back, took a break, rickshaws (we ordered 8, they sent 5), train station, DASHING because the platform changed, on the train, and eating train food now.
Saturday, February 6th, roughly 6-6:15 PM local time
So I realize now my entry above didn't truly convey what last night was like. I mean,
I wasn't nervous, until David and Sigrid were telling everyone to get off the bus, “we think we may be in a bad situation.” And then we're in a shady part of Jaipur, though that's relative... yeah. But anyway.
So today was busy, but fun. Woke up, waited forever to get a breakfast of a lemon banana crepe, spent some time online (ultimately probably worth the 80 rupees, although I apologize for not posting to the blog, I got caught up in other things.) We wrapped up packing, left our bags at the hotel, and headed off to the Palace of the Wind by rickshaw. One rickshaw was blasting music, especially Barbie Doll, and I was jealous.
And we got there... and one rickshaw is missing. Now, after last night, this is REALLY setting off everyone's alarms. Denny and Allen went to get a SIM card for our phone for India, we all sat around and got badgered by merchants. A few people actually got good deals, in retrospect, I probably could have picked up a nice gift there. Ah, well. About ten minutes later the last rickshaw showed up, then we waited 45 minutes or so for Denny and Allen to return. We were starting to get a little worried, but they finally showed up. One of the shopkeepers led us to the entrance, telling us the whole time that we should visit his shop when we're done, of course. Denny did his best to get the guy off our back, but y'know, that's life. We got there, thanked him for his help (same guy had helped Denny find the SIM card, and actually had us go in his shop for 5 minutes as a thank you), and into the Palace we went. It was beautiful, great architecture, I really enjoyed the little peepholes into the city... which shows in how many pictures I took that way. Under restoration, which led to some interesting effects, but well worth it. After that we went to the City Palace, which had a museum-style layout. Some cool stuff, more beautiful architecture, a great weapons hall that I'm sad I couldn't take pictures in. I finished, saw that the cafe there was overpriced (60 rupees for a coke), and sat quietly, half-dozing with Mike until it was time to go. Grabbed a bag of chips and a sprite from a vendor, and we walked over to the observatory. En route we saw a crazy guy covered in grey (ashes?) stick out his tongue and, according to John, vomit intentionally, and Denny bought us ice cream which was well needed. The observatory itself was very cool, great big sundials (one the largest in the world and accurate down to 2 seconds), astrolabe, and all sorts of cool stuff. A lot of zodiac-related things, too, I need to do some research. One man told us the Romans got the zodiac from India, which is why they're the same, but I'd like to verify that myself. After that Denny bought us some food and drinks, om nom pickle samosa, and we started the trek back to the hotel. A cow hip-bumped Nate, but nothing else really worth mentioning happened, it was just more walking through the city. Got back, took a break, rickshaws (we ordered 8, they sent 5), train station, DASHING because the platform changed, on the train, and eating train food now.
Saturday, February 6th, roughly 6-6:15 PM local time
Creepy Bus, Delicious Buffet
Gotta write fast, leaving in 5.
So last night we were supposed to go to this delicious amazing buffet thing. Well, we left late because people got back late, walked for a while, Denny decided to get us a bus. It was supposed to be a ten minute ride.
Note the ten minutes.
Most of us sat up top, enjoying the open front, dodging wires and tree branches occasionally, talking a bit. I actually started to go hoarse from talking so much and was quiet for a while after that, surprising most people that I was capable of it. After about two hours of this, and Denny going off on his own once or twice which was... worrying... David and Sigrid decided this needed to end. Now. It all seemed very shady. So the guy was supposed to lead Denny to the hotel, bullshit no, we were all walking together. So we did, all of us fairly on edge, not trusting these guys anymore... but there it was, the hotel we were eating at. Somehow, amazingly. Maybe they were just incompetent and didn't know where they were going, maybe they were malicious, I'll never really know. But the buffet was still waiting, they immediately gave us Kingfishers which we REJOICED for, and the food, while 100% unidentifiable, was all absolutely delicious. One of the best meals of my life. The dessert, a fruit-filled musli or something (it had grapes, orange slices, pomegranate seeds, bananas, all kinds of stuff), especially stood out. Just fantastic. The place itself was gorgeous too, I think it belonged to a maharaja or something at one point, beautiful walls and ceilings and cases full of weapons and cultural artifacts and absolutely fantastic. We got rickshaws back, my driver asked me if I had had sex in Thailand, which was interesting, and we pretty much crashed right away. I'll need to write up today later, don't want to hold up the rickshaws.
Saturday, February 6th, 4:55-5 PM local time
So last night we were supposed to go to this delicious amazing buffet thing. Well, we left late because people got back late, walked for a while, Denny decided to get us a bus. It was supposed to be a ten minute ride.
Note the ten minutes.
Most of us sat up top, enjoying the open front, dodging wires and tree branches occasionally, talking a bit. I actually started to go hoarse from talking so much and was quiet for a while after that, surprising most people that I was capable of it. After about two hours of this, and Denny going off on his own once or twice which was... worrying... David and Sigrid decided this needed to end. Now. It all seemed very shady. So the guy was supposed to lead Denny to the hotel, bullshit no, we were all walking together. So we did, all of us fairly on edge, not trusting these guys anymore... but there it was, the hotel we were eating at. Somehow, amazingly. Maybe they were just incompetent and didn't know where they were going, maybe they were malicious, I'll never really know. But the buffet was still waiting, they immediately gave us Kingfishers which we REJOICED for, and the food, while 100% unidentifiable, was all absolutely delicious. One of the best meals of my life. The dessert, a fruit-filled musli or something (it had grapes, orange slices, pomegranate seeds, bananas, all kinds of stuff), especially stood out. Just fantastic. The place itself was gorgeous too, I think it belonged to a maharaja or something at one point, beautiful walls and ceilings and cases full of weapons and cultural artifacts and absolutely fantastic. We got rickshaws back, my driver asked me if I had had sex in Thailand, which was interesting, and we pretty much crashed right away. I'll need to write up today later, don't want to hold up the rickshaws.
Saturday, February 6th, 4:55-5 PM local time
Jaipur and Bollywood
Two entries at the same time, roughly, in a row. Odd.
Woke up early, 5:45, packed, got ready, into rickshaws between 6:30 and 6:45. These were a little bigger, a little cushier, even had a baggage area – but we had to hold onto them with our hands. Train station, found the platform, found out the train left half an hour after we thought it did, sat around, Denny and I tried our damndest to find something for Swaffy to drink (sick), and the train showed up. We're getting on, we're getting on, it starts to move, I was the last of the mini-group I was in to get on, and I was literally jumping onto a (slowly) moving train. Thankfully the guy in front of me was helpful with my bag and all. My seat was an upper, so I sat on the lower like we did in Thailand. Tried to prop it up into a seat, but some briefcase or whatever was chained so I couldn't. I sat there for a while, had an omelette sandwich with ketchup, then eventually laid down, which turned out to be a mistake. See, that WAS someone's unattended bag and seat, actually some sort of train official I think, and me laying there and propping my feet on his bag was not so good. In retrospect I realize it really was my fault, but at the time I just couldn't figure out why he left his stuff there so long with no indication it was his, at all. Apparently in India, if you're in the upper, you sit in the upper too, you don't sit down below like Thailand. So he moved me from seat 6 to seat 37, another upper, on the same car, where I quietly sat and read on my computer and tried not to be trouble for anyone. Napped a bit on my backpack, and then there we were in Jaipur. Got off, which was a bit hectic as Denny told us to follow Abdul without any of us knowing who Abdul was, “guy in the green shirt” was much more helpful. We followed him out, he had cars ready for us, we ignored beggars (I really, really don't like that that's becoming a routine part of my entries), and off we went. Jaipur, the Pink City, is a bit more affluent than the other places we've been, less rundown, in better shape, less beggars and street hawkers. It's nice, actually. So we got to our hotel, had lunch while we waited for rooms to be ready, lunch took forever but my egg fried rice was delicious, and we got into our rooms. After that we decided to go out to a Bollywood movie. Well, either the directions David gave us were wrong or I mixed them up, because we ended up way way off track, at a different movie theater altogether. We got directions to the right theater there and kept walking, though we must have asked directions over a dozen times, mostly Clay confirming we were on the right path – which was a good thing, because sometimes we found out new information, though we were on the right path after that first big mistake. Got there, paid 100 rupee for an 80 rupee ticket because I didn't get change, and got into the movie 10 or 15 minutes late. I found out that a medium coke in an Indian movie theater is the opposite of a medium coke in an American movie theater – absurdly small, not absurdly large.
Watching a Bollywood film in India is... interesting. You're not watching a movie in a foreign language, just a movie in a mostly foreign language. Maybe 10-20% of the dialogue is in English, the rest not, no subtitles. So some parts made a lot more sense than others. The dance sequences were fun, though I was hoping for more of them, there were only really two. The movie was clearly funny, and some humor really is universal (slapstick, peeing humor, drunk humor – yes, related), while a lot of it, well, the theater around us was rolling in their seats. Got out of that, walked home in a much shorter period of time, and typed this up.
Friday, February 5th, roughly 6:40-50 PM local time
Woke up early, 5:45, packed, got ready, into rickshaws between 6:30 and 6:45. These were a little bigger, a little cushier, even had a baggage area – but we had to hold onto them with our hands. Train station, found the platform, found out the train left half an hour after we thought it did, sat around, Denny and I tried our damndest to find something for Swaffy to drink (sick), and the train showed up. We're getting on, we're getting on, it starts to move, I was the last of the mini-group I was in to get on, and I was literally jumping onto a (slowly) moving train. Thankfully the guy in front of me was helpful with my bag and all. My seat was an upper, so I sat on the lower like we did in Thailand. Tried to prop it up into a seat, but some briefcase or whatever was chained so I couldn't. I sat there for a while, had an omelette sandwich with ketchup, then eventually laid down, which turned out to be a mistake. See, that WAS someone's unattended bag and seat, actually some sort of train official I think, and me laying there and propping my feet on his bag was not so good. In retrospect I realize it really was my fault, but at the time I just couldn't figure out why he left his stuff there so long with no indication it was his, at all. Apparently in India, if you're in the upper, you sit in the upper too, you don't sit down below like Thailand. So he moved me from seat 6 to seat 37, another upper, on the same car, where I quietly sat and read on my computer and tried not to be trouble for anyone. Napped a bit on my backpack, and then there we were in Jaipur. Got off, which was a bit hectic as Denny told us to follow Abdul without any of us knowing who Abdul was, “guy in the green shirt” was much more helpful. We followed him out, he had cars ready for us, we ignored beggars (I really, really don't like that that's becoming a routine part of my entries), and off we went. Jaipur, the Pink City, is a bit more affluent than the other places we've been, less rundown, in better shape, less beggars and street hawkers. It's nice, actually. So we got to our hotel, had lunch while we waited for rooms to be ready, lunch took forever but my egg fried rice was delicious, and we got into our rooms. After that we decided to go out to a Bollywood movie. Well, either the directions David gave us were wrong or I mixed them up, because we ended up way way off track, at a different movie theater altogether. We got directions to the right theater there and kept walking, though we must have asked directions over a dozen times, mostly Clay confirming we were on the right path – which was a good thing, because sometimes we found out new information, though we were on the right path after that first big mistake. Got there, paid 100 rupee for an 80 rupee ticket because I didn't get change, and got into the movie 10 or 15 minutes late. I found out that a medium coke in an Indian movie theater is the opposite of a medium coke in an American movie theater – absurdly small, not absurdly large.
Watching a Bollywood film in India is... interesting. You're not watching a movie in a foreign language, just a movie in a mostly foreign language. Maybe 10-20% of the dialogue is in English, the rest not, no subtitles. So some parts made a lot more sense than others. The dance sequences were fun, though I was hoping for more of them, there were only really two. The movie was clearly funny, and some humor really is universal (slapstick, peeing humor, drunk humor – yes, related), while a lot of it, well, the theater around us was rolling in their seats. Got out of that, walked home in a much shorter period of time, and typed this up.
Friday, February 5th, roughly 6:40-50 PM local time
The Taj Mahal and Keoladeo National Park. I think that's what we call a busy day.
Allen and I crashed early last night, woke up around 6:30 AM and got ready for sunrise at the Taj Mahal. We walked over easily enough – that early in the morning, far fewer people were on the streets, so less rickshaws, motorcycles and bikes to dodge, less beggars to feel guilty for avoiding, less hawkers to have to ignore. The line for entrance was split into men and women, Brenna and Matt got our tickets, we waited a bit, and in we went. There's an initial area inside the gates before the Taj itself, go through another gate (oh, by the way, we all got frisked too. Two people had to give up their cigarettes, and Kanako had to temporarily give up her translator), and there it was. Gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. English lawns again, but with some variety, some trees, some other plants. Beautiful basins of water with reflections to catch – and that's where I got caught, too. A man pointed out the reflection to me, I nearly missed it. I thanked him, and immediately realized I was hosed. Another guy came over and offered to take a picture of me with it. I asked how much before I gave in, he said “whatever you like, you pay,” I gave in, got 7 or so pictures taken. A couple are pretty good, most are just okay, but that's more because of the subject than the photographer. (Me, not the Taj. The Taj is gorgeous.) I paid 100, not having many small bills and not wanting to get into an argument over price, and hey, just over $2 American anyway. Anh apparently paid one 10 to take lots more pictures and told me I shouldn't have done that, “you can't do that Tim,” I said I wasn't going to figure out the sense of scale, I was just going to get better at avoiding it altogether. But hey, I only paid 110 (10 for shoe storage) to see the Taj freakin' Mahal? Well worth it. There are two buildings flanking it, which make some fantastic views for photographs, I also took a picture of the area we stood at last night to see the backside and some of the river, a lot of the Taj itself, some of the surrounding grounds. The stone inlaid in stone is gorgeous, the detail, of course, outstanding, I don't think me blathering on makes much difference to any of you. Photography is, sadly, not allowed inside the mausoleum (though John snuck a few), though the work there is again fantastic. A man pointed out the different gemstones used before I got away from him, not wanting to have to potentially pay, and they are beautiful. Went out of the mausoleum and did take some pictures from the inside out there. Walked the grounds some more, took some more pictures (the basin in front of the building to the left of the Taj was full, allowing more reflection shots), and we headed back to the hotel. Waited an absurdly long time for breakfast (poor Mike and Allen waited over an hour), had a fresh lemon soda (actually lemon juice in a glass, and giving me seltzer water, unexpected but alright) and pretty good french toast, packed, waited a bit for the vans, headed out. Aslam coordinated, but sadly did not drive. And then we're waiting in the back and all of a sudden... Denny! He was back, just minutes before we were going to leave. Great timing. Brenna, Allen and I sat in the back, Allen and I disturbed Brenna a bit, we all slept, Falcon Guest House, Bharatpur.
We got in, got rooms set up, I'm with Zypy for tonight, Nate and I worked a bit on the blog (Brenna wrote a lot last night), lunch. Lots of unidentifiable but mostly tasty things. And a lime soda. Not lemon-lime – lime. Good. Get ready, walk to Keoladeo National Park, a massive bird sanctuary, and bicycling time. There were only 14 bikes, so 7 rode in a horse-cart and Denny walked. I got bike #1. No gears (not that I expected any), tall and hard for me to get on, and the left brake was less than helpful, but not bad once you got going. We saw lots of birds: some waterbirds like ducks, herons and sand pipers, some birds of prey like kites and eagles, some songbirds including a shrike, the only predatory songbird, spotted owlets, mynas of course (Clay called them the European Starling of Asia), and others. A few jackals (mostly hard to see in the grass, but great nonetheless), millions of cows, millions of rhesus macaques (which would get extremely close, walk across the road, it was great), a few antelope and deer. Lots of starting and stopping, which led to me walking my bike when I didn't think it was worth getting on, but very cool stuff. Michelle banged up her toe at one point, I had to go ahead and get the guide, who came back and got her (Anh and Caitlin stayed with her), and she ended up riding on his bike while he walked until she felt better. She was biking by the end though, so not bad, it was mostly rough because she had bruised that same toe on Haleakala. We met back up with the rest of the group, now on bikes (first time biking for Sigrid since her knee surgery, too) went up to this watchtower where you had a great view of the surrounding area, it was just flooded with birds. Then it was the bike ride back to the entrance, which was a more solo pace. I sang rugger songs with John for a bit, which will not be printed here for decency's sake, until his tire blew out. At one point I saw a peacock run across the road, tried to stop and get a picture of him, but no luck. Later, Clay saw a BUNCH up in trees, and I got some silhouette pictures, but it was too dark for color sadly. Also heard a lot there – not only birds and monkeys, but hyenas too, though we never saw one. Got all the way out and walked back here to the Falcon Guest House, where I immediately typed this up. Good day. It was good to be on a bike again, I missed it, even if it wasn't really a proper bike ride. I really do need to do it more this summer.
Thursday, February 4th, roughly 6:40-6:55 PM local time
We got in, got rooms set up, I'm with Zypy for tonight, Nate and I worked a bit on the blog (Brenna wrote a lot last night), lunch. Lots of unidentifiable but mostly tasty things. And a lime soda. Not lemon-lime – lime. Good. Get ready, walk to Keoladeo National Park, a massive bird sanctuary, and bicycling time. There were only 14 bikes, so 7 rode in a horse-cart and Denny walked. I got bike #1. No gears (not that I expected any), tall and hard for me to get on, and the left brake was less than helpful, but not bad once you got going. We saw lots of birds: some waterbirds like ducks, herons and sand pipers, some birds of prey like kites and eagles, some songbirds including a shrike, the only predatory songbird, spotted owlets, mynas of course (Clay called them the European Starling of Asia), and others. A few jackals (mostly hard to see in the grass, but great nonetheless), millions of cows, millions of rhesus macaques (which would get extremely close, walk across the road, it was great), a few antelope and deer. Lots of starting and stopping, which led to me walking my bike when I didn't think it was worth getting on, but very cool stuff. Michelle banged up her toe at one point, I had to go ahead and get the guide, who came back and got her (Anh and Caitlin stayed with her), and she ended up riding on his bike while he walked until she felt better. She was biking by the end though, so not bad, it was mostly rough because she had bruised that same toe on Haleakala. We met back up with the rest of the group, now on bikes (first time biking for Sigrid since her knee surgery, too) went up to this watchtower where you had a great view of the surrounding area, it was just flooded with birds. Then it was the bike ride back to the entrance, which was a more solo pace. I sang rugger songs with John for a bit, which will not be printed here for decency's sake, until his tire blew out. At one point I saw a peacock run across the road, tried to stop and get a picture of him, but no luck. Later, Clay saw a BUNCH up in trees, and I got some silhouette pictures, but it was too dark for color sadly. Also heard a lot there – not only birds and monkeys, but hyenas too, though we never saw one. Got all the way out and walked back here to the Falcon Guest House, where I immediately typed this up. Good day. It was good to be on a bike again, I missed it, even if it wasn't really a proper bike ride. I really do need to do it more this summer.
Thursday, February 4th, roughly 6:40-6:55 PM local time
Agra
Lunch and pre- started 8:50 PM
So, Agra. We get out of the train station and are, of course, immediately set upon by beggars, mostly children. This was where I learned what a bad, bad idea it was to have food with me, I still had some of the cracker things Mike had bought, and all I heard was “biscuit? Biscuit?” I was almost afraid to give it to them, in case a struggle erupted or something, so I just kept practicing my no eye contact thing. We got in the rickshaws, which are the motorized 3-wheeled things, had a ride over – lots of weaving in and out of traffic, lots of being crushed under Kanako's bag, it's a ridiculous way to travel, but fun if you enjoy being close to death. I can't believe we never hit any of the bicycles or other rickshaws we kept getting within an inch or two of. I'm not exaggerating. Then we had a moment where I realized it's funny what becomes a luxury – the hotel manager gave us a toilet paper roll, and Allen and I got extremely excited. I ended down in the courtyard area for a bit talking with David, another guy whose name I haven't caught yet who is sort of the leader of the rickshaw drivers, and Aslam, this guy who looks very good for 59 and has dyed red hair over the silver and is... kind of ridiculous. At one point he patted David's belly and started singing. It was a cool conversation though, we talked about poverty, politics, various countries, various experiences, really interesting. The big thing I think all four of us said in one form or another, probably multiple times, was “little steps” or “slowly, slowly” as Aslam put it. Things will improve, it just takes a long time, unfortunately. The view upstairs on the rooftop was great, saw a tree squirrel, monkeys on the roof, dogs, a parrot or two, and of course a beautiful, clear view of the Taj Mahal. From the roof of our hotel. It's outstanding. Spectacular, even. So I took a fair number of pictures of that, clearly, sat and talked with Nate and Brenna about Halloween and Religion (not related, actually), got my laundry done! Exciting. And then lunch, which was this big buffet thing David set up. I had tasty chips that were sort of like popcorn, flatbread, rice, and chicken gravy to go on top. Very, very good. Also water, and they gave us a cake thing at the end. Tasty dinner, especially for not coming out of our own food money. Hooray! Less spicy, too, apparently Northern India is less severe on that sort of thing. Didn't hurt me to have less spicy food, trust me. And then it was a quick break, and off to crazy busy afternoon.
Done roughly 9:05 PM local time
What a bloody crazy day. I'll start after the midpoint and then fix it up later.
So after lunch we got ready to head out to Agra Fort, the Baby Taj, and to this area where you can see the backside of the Taj Mahal at sunset, which is supposed to be gorgeous. We start driving, more absolutely insane rickshaw driving, in and out of traffic – but the most extreme stuff comes later in the day. You'll see. Stopped at a bank, while there there were these two kids with snakes. They clearly weren't happy, but we paid them some and took some pictures, it was cool in its way. I feel better paying street performers than beggars, at least. So we get the money taken care of and head off to Agra Fort. Get past the hawkers and the guides that want to charge you an arm and a leg, pay for our tickets, see SO MANY MONKEYS climbing the walls, and get in. The place was absolutely stunning, beautiful, amazing. I'm not so upset that I missed the Red Fort anymore. There were SIXTEEN palaces inside, not that I saw them all by any means, and some parts of it were still under military use. Some beautiful red stone, some white marble, also some parrots, lots of people (a fair number of Germans, some Asian tourists I took a picture for, lots of locals), lots of English lawns which, while ugly in their own right, do work nicely with the larger structures as David pointed out. Beautiful views of the surrounding city and the Taj Mahal. We even saw a parrot nest, this parrot was hanging on a ledge and crawled entirely into a small space between the bricks until s/he was completely gone. I wouldn't have expected a parrot to fit there, but fit it did. My camera was low on pictures, but wow, just wow. The place was enormous, and so detailed – interestingly, Spain, Morocco, and Turkey were all brought up as comparisons. It was designed by a Persian, if I remember correctly. So after that we were planning to go to the Baby Taj, but the guy leading the rickshaw drivers finally hassled David into agreeing to go to a “market,” David just gave up arguing. I liked our drivers in general, but they were uh, hard sells let's say. I fail to mention, of course, because it seems normal to me now, that we're fending off hawkers and beggars this whole time, often following our rickshaws as we move even. One guy reduced his price for 7 brass bangles from 600 rupees to 100, which, if I wanted any brass bangles, would be a great price. So we went to this “market” that, as Becky pointed out later, was really just a few shops. There was a silk and cloth place with beautiful ties, saris, table covers, all kinds of stuff. [I bought my mom some silk for her to make bags with, 4 meters for 1450 rupees. A really beautiful vibrant blue and a light green, 2 of each. The guy really wanted me to buy more, more colors, longer lengths, but I had to limit myself.) I wasn't sure, but ended up going to a marble place next door to check it out. Gorgeous stuff, of course most out of my price range or not within my interest or capacity to carry. (I finally caved and got a jade wolf for 500 rupee, no haggling worked. The 1450 above, by the by, was reduced from 1600 originally. Well, I got him to 1400, handed him 1500 knowing full well I was about to be hosed, and was pleased to get 50 back at all.) Unfortunately, from there Aslam dragged me over to a carpet shop, where Swaffy was an absolute fucking genius in getting us out the door by, after we were in the showroom for the carpets, asking to see the process – which was closer to the exit. And by asking lots and lots of questions about the process and the quality, we learned some honestly interesting things and avoided discussions of price. Point: Swaffy. So we finally finally get out of the bloody place, probably more than the half hour David was trying to stick us to, but people really did get things they liked. From there to the Baby Taj... where we find out we miscalculated and don't have enough. Took some pictures from afar, looks gorgeous, that's life. We moved on from there to the viewing site for the Taj Mahal at sunset, and THIS is where the drive got... interesting.
Well, first off, I've been with a few different drivers today, and for this section I'm with Aslam. That should help, but then, you have to see this guy in action to really understand the energy and crazy. We get into this massive traffic jam, trucks, rickshaws, tuktuks, motorcycles, bicycles, ox-drawn carts, horses, the whole shebang. The smaller vehicles are trying to use the shoulder to get around and through, and of course Aslam is one of the most aggressive of the whole group. (He also clapped his arm around my shoulders and told me what a nice man I was on the way out of the 'market' area. Not sure where it came from, but hey.) So he's getting us through it, at one point he says “I'm the lucky driver” and my response was “I hope so, if you're not lucky, none of us are.” He really is skilled, though I swear, how these rickshaws don't collide with SOMETHING every 5 minutes is beyond me. We get through that and on an almost equally crowded bridge which is... doing okay, I guess, when we hear a TRAIN going above us. On this not-in-perfect-shape bridge. Wut. But we survive that too, despite David's doubts, and get across. It opened up not too long after the bridge, finally we got to a very open stretch of road, where Aslam TOLD ME TO DRIVE. I mean, to the point of placing my hands on the steering. It took me a little bit to figure out to pull down to accelerate, and he had his hand on the edge of it to make little corrections, but there was so little around us it hardly mattered. I didn't drive long, but still, absolutely ridiculous. The man's insane. He has such bits of wisdom as “no money, no honey,” “life without a wife is not a life,” and other sayings, and when I asked him if he knew who Superman was (he wanted us to teach him jokes, I was making sure he'd get one), he said “A man who flies and gets women” or a “a man who can find a woman,” not sure which, found his own answer hilarious, and cracked up so hard he nearly crashed. Which I guess is a better joke than mine anyway. So we drive up a bit further, they tell us where to walk to get to the viewing, we get there, it's under military guard – another thing I'm having to adapt to out of the US, seeing a lot more military everywhere. But it's mostly open, it is a great view of the Taj Mahal and the river under it, some storks, other birds, some goats went past us, a few dogs, great. Now, unfortunately, at one point when trying to change my camera card I dropped both my batteries in the sand. Found one, but the other I stepped on and buried. A guy and some kids leaped to my aid, I was digging through the sand, they were looking, the guy was trying to instruct me, this battery was ridiculously hard to find. Very strange, no idea how it happened. Finally, I'm about to give up and leave, the group was well and done (it was a beautiful view, by the way, though I think David appreciated it the most of all. We were there longer than expected, what with skipping the Baby Taj), and one of the kids finds it. Well, I have to pay of course, I'm thinking a small amount but the guy tells me to give the two kids who found it together 50 each. I don't have two 50s, so, not feeling like debating, I just give them 100 and try to get out of it from there. They sort of leaped on each other to get on it – I didn't feel great about the situation. I'm walking away, and they started following me. Very insistently. This was where I started getting frustrated, I mean, these kids must not be learning any other way of making money at all. And of course, how could they? There's no opportunity, who would teach them, what would you teach them, there's no jobs they'll be able to get in this country in this global economy. It was pretty depressing. They followed me all the way back to the rickshaw, still asking me for money for finding the battery. I mean, I was more than happy to give them some for the help, I was glad to get the battery back (it being rechargeable and all) and it wasn't a problem. But the continuing to follow me, and most of all what that made me start realizing about the overall situation... ugh. It's truly sad. But we finally got out of there, I was with a more calm driver, though still crazy traffic and weaving in and out and... sitting in the front, on the edge, half-hanging out of the vehicle is interesting, let's go with that. I also had a moment where we were next to a horse in the traffic jam and I realized, 30 seconds later, it didn't even surprise me to see a horse anymore. “This should not be normal to me,” was kind of my reaction. Hilarious. We get back to the hotel, dump my stuff, dinner on the roof with Anh, Becky, Jacob, Allen and Nikki, cheese sammich (some sort of bland, white cheese, but tasty) toasted, so the cheese had some smoky flavor, and a pepsi. Finished that, talked to David and Sigrid for a while, headed downstairs, paid, and headed out with Brenna to do an ATM run. Walked around the corner, asked a tuktuk driver for directions when we started to get worried that we hadn't seen it in a while (which of course led to him pestering us, but that's life), got the money, came back, and that's that. Tiring day, but amazing, the fort alone was more than worth it. Taj Mahal in the morning for sunrise... wow.
Wednesday, February 3rd, roughly 8:15 PM local time, restarted 8:35-8:50 after ATM break
So, Agra. We get out of the train station and are, of course, immediately set upon by beggars, mostly children. This was where I learned what a bad, bad idea it was to have food with me, I still had some of the cracker things Mike had bought, and all I heard was “biscuit? Biscuit?” I was almost afraid to give it to them, in case a struggle erupted or something, so I just kept practicing my no eye contact thing. We got in the rickshaws, which are the motorized 3-wheeled things, had a ride over – lots of weaving in and out of traffic, lots of being crushed under Kanako's bag, it's a ridiculous way to travel, but fun if you enjoy being close to death. I can't believe we never hit any of the bicycles or other rickshaws we kept getting within an inch or two of. I'm not exaggerating. Then we had a moment where I realized it's funny what becomes a luxury – the hotel manager gave us a toilet paper roll, and Allen and I got extremely excited. I ended down in the courtyard area for a bit talking with David, another guy whose name I haven't caught yet who is sort of the leader of the rickshaw drivers, and Aslam, this guy who looks very good for 59 and has dyed red hair over the silver and is... kind of ridiculous. At one point he patted David's belly and started singing. It was a cool conversation though, we talked about poverty, politics, various countries, various experiences, really interesting. The big thing I think all four of us said in one form or another, probably multiple times, was “little steps” or “slowly, slowly” as Aslam put it. Things will improve, it just takes a long time, unfortunately. The view upstairs on the rooftop was great, saw a tree squirrel, monkeys on the roof, dogs, a parrot or two, and of course a beautiful, clear view of the Taj Mahal. From the roof of our hotel. It's outstanding. Spectacular, even. So I took a fair number of pictures of that, clearly, sat and talked with Nate and Brenna about Halloween and Religion (not related, actually), got my laundry done! Exciting. And then lunch, which was this big buffet thing David set up. I had tasty chips that were sort of like popcorn, flatbread, rice, and chicken gravy to go on top. Very, very good. Also water, and they gave us a cake thing at the end. Tasty dinner, especially for not coming out of our own food money. Hooray! Less spicy, too, apparently Northern India is less severe on that sort of thing. Didn't hurt me to have less spicy food, trust me. And then it was a quick break, and off to crazy busy afternoon.
Done roughly 9:05 PM local time
What a bloody crazy day. I'll start after the midpoint and then fix it up later.
So after lunch we got ready to head out to Agra Fort, the Baby Taj, and to this area where you can see the backside of the Taj Mahal at sunset, which is supposed to be gorgeous. We start driving, more absolutely insane rickshaw driving, in and out of traffic – but the most extreme stuff comes later in the day. You'll see. Stopped at a bank, while there there were these two kids with snakes. They clearly weren't happy, but we paid them some and took some pictures, it was cool in its way. I feel better paying street performers than beggars, at least. So we get the money taken care of and head off to Agra Fort. Get past the hawkers and the guides that want to charge you an arm and a leg, pay for our tickets, see SO MANY MONKEYS climbing the walls, and get in. The place was absolutely stunning, beautiful, amazing. I'm not so upset that I missed the Red Fort anymore. There were SIXTEEN palaces inside, not that I saw them all by any means, and some parts of it were still under military use. Some beautiful red stone, some white marble, also some parrots, lots of people (a fair number of Germans, some Asian tourists I took a picture for, lots of locals), lots of English lawns which, while ugly in their own right, do work nicely with the larger structures as David pointed out. Beautiful views of the surrounding city and the Taj Mahal. We even saw a parrot nest, this parrot was hanging on a ledge and crawled entirely into a small space between the bricks until s/he was completely gone. I wouldn't have expected a parrot to fit there, but fit it did. My camera was low on pictures, but wow, just wow. The place was enormous, and so detailed – interestingly, Spain, Morocco, and Turkey were all brought up as comparisons. It was designed by a Persian, if I remember correctly. So after that we were planning to go to the Baby Taj, but the guy leading the rickshaw drivers finally hassled David into agreeing to go to a “market,” David just gave up arguing. I liked our drivers in general, but they were uh, hard sells let's say. I fail to mention, of course, because it seems normal to me now, that we're fending off hawkers and beggars this whole time, often following our rickshaws as we move even. One guy reduced his price for 7 brass bangles from 600 rupees to 100, which, if I wanted any brass bangles, would be a great price. So we went to this “market” that, as Becky pointed out later, was really just a few shops. There was a silk and cloth place with beautiful ties, saris, table covers, all kinds of stuff. [I bought my mom some silk for her to make bags with, 4 meters for 1450 rupees. A really beautiful vibrant blue and a light green, 2 of each. The guy really wanted me to buy more, more colors, longer lengths, but I had to limit myself.) I wasn't sure, but ended up going to a marble place next door to check it out. Gorgeous stuff, of course most out of my price range or not within my interest or capacity to carry. (I finally caved and got a jade wolf for 500 rupee, no haggling worked. The 1450 above, by the by, was reduced from 1600 originally. Well, I got him to 1400, handed him 1500 knowing full well I was about to be hosed, and was pleased to get 50 back at all.) Unfortunately, from there Aslam dragged me over to a carpet shop, where Swaffy was an absolute fucking genius in getting us out the door by, after we were in the showroom for the carpets, asking to see the process – which was closer to the exit. And by asking lots and lots of questions about the process and the quality, we learned some honestly interesting things and avoided discussions of price. Point: Swaffy. So we finally finally get out of the bloody place, probably more than the half hour David was trying to stick us to, but people really did get things they liked. From there to the Baby Taj... where we find out we miscalculated and don't have enough. Took some pictures from afar, looks gorgeous, that's life. We moved on from there to the viewing site for the Taj Mahal at sunset, and THIS is where the drive got... interesting.
Well, first off, I've been with a few different drivers today, and for this section I'm with Aslam. That should help, but then, you have to see this guy in action to really understand the energy and crazy. We get into this massive traffic jam, trucks, rickshaws, tuktuks, motorcycles, bicycles, ox-drawn carts, horses, the whole shebang. The smaller vehicles are trying to use the shoulder to get around and through, and of course Aslam is one of the most aggressive of the whole group. (He also clapped his arm around my shoulders and told me what a nice man I was on the way out of the 'market' area. Not sure where it came from, but hey.) So he's getting us through it, at one point he says “I'm the lucky driver” and my response was “I hope so, if you're not lucky, none of us are.” He really is skilled, though I swear, how these rickshaws don't collide with SOMETHING every 5 minutes is beyond me. We get through that and on an almost equally crowded bridge which is... doing okay, I guess, when we hear a TRAIN going above us. On this not-in-perfect-shape bridge. Wut. But we survive that too, despite David's doubts, and get across. It opened up not too long after the bridge, finally we got to a very open stretch of road, where Aslam TOLD ME TO DRIVE. I mean, to the point of placing my hands on the steering. It took me a little bit to figure out to pull down to accelerate, and he had his hand on the edge of it to make little corrections, but there was so little around us it hardly mattered. I didn't drive long, but still, absolutely ridiculous. The man's insane. He has such bits of wisdom as “no money, no honey,” “life without a wife is not a life,” and other sayings, and when I asked him if he knew who Superman was (he wanted us to teach him jokes, I was making sure he'd get one), he said “A man who flies and gets women” or a “a man who can find a woman,” not sure which, found his own answer hilarious, and cracked up so hard he nearly crashed. Which I guess is a better joke than mine anyway. So we drive up a bit further, they tell us where to walk to get to the viewing, we get there, it's under military guard – another thing I'm having to adapt to out of the US, seeing a lot more military everywhere. But it's mostly open, it is a great view of the Taj Mahal and the river under it, some storks, other birds, some goats went past us, a few dogs, great. Now, unfortunately, at one point when trying to change my camera card I dropped both my batteries in the sand. Found one, but the other I stepped on and buried. A guy and some kids leaped to my aid, I was digging through the sand, they were looking, the guy was trying to instruct me, this battery was ridiculously hard to find. Very strange, no idea how it happened. Finally, I'm about to give up and leave, the group was well and done (it was a beautiful view, by the way, though I think David appreciated it the most of all. We were there longer than expected, what with skipping the Baby Taj), and one of the kids finds it. Well, I have to pay of course, I'm thinking a small amount but the guy tells me to give the two kids who found it together 50 each. I don't have two 50s, so, not feeling like debating, I just give them 100 and try to get out of it from there. They sort of leaped on each other to get on it – I didn't feel great about the situation. I'm walking away, and they started following me. Very insistently. This was where I started getting frustrated, I mean, these kids must not be learning any other way of making money at all. And of course, how could they? There's no opportunity, who would teach them, what would you teach them, there's no jobs they'll be able to get in this country in this global economy. It was pretty depressing. They followed me all the way back to the rickshaw, still asking me for money for finding the battery. I mean, I was more than happy to give them some for the help, I was glad to get the battery back (it being rechargeable and all) and it wasn't a problem. But the continuing to follow me, and most of all what that made me start realizing about the overall situation... ugh. It's truly sad. But we finally got out of there, I was with a more calm driver, though still crazy traffic and weaving in and out and... sitting in the front, on the edge, half-hanging out of the vehicle is interesting, let's go with that. I also had a moment where we were next to a horse in the traffic jam and I realized, 30 seconds later, it didn't even surprise me to see a horse anymore. “This should not be normal to me,” was kind of my reaction. Hilarious. We get back to the hotel, dump my stuff, dinner on the roof with Anh, Becky, Jacob, Allen and Nikki, cheese sammich (some sort of bland, white cheese, but tasty) toasted, so the cheese had some smoky flavor, and a pepsi. Finished that, talked to David and Sigrid for a while, headed downstairs, paid, and headed out with Brenna to do an ATM run. Walked around the corner, asked a tuktuk driver for directions when we started to get worried that we hadn't seen it in a while (which of course led to him pestering us, but that's life), got the money, came back, and that's that. Tiring day, but amazing, the fort alone was more than worth it. Taj Mahal in the morning for sunrise... wow.
Wednesday, February 3rd, roughly 8:15 PM local time, restarted 8:35-8:50 after ATM break
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