India: February 2005 Archives
Thank you all for the birthday wishes! I had a great day-- on the 24th we took the train to Agra, toured the old fort and then watched the sunset at the Taj Mahal. We weren't sure if being there could actually live up to our expectations, but it did--it was beautiful (and also fun to watch all the other tourists taking photos and the touts trying to get money for showing them good photo ops). We were planning on doing the full moon tour but tickets were sold out, and besides that we found out that they only let people in for half an hour at a time. So instead we got to see it for 3 hours and then went to a nearby restaurant with rooftop seating to enjoy the full moon and the best banana lassis we've tasted. After dinner we took a bicycle rickshaw back to our hotel. The driver offered to let Michael try pedaling for a while, but Michael promptly steered us off the road and into a wall so the driver quickly took over again.
Friday morning we returned to the area to have breakfast on another rooftop, this time with a full view of the Taj--a nice way to start my birthday! We took the train back to Delhi yesterday and after a bit of shopping, we went to dinner at Rodeo, an Indian tex-mex restauarant where all the waiters wear cowboy hats and boots. Definitely a different kind of dining experience than we've been used to here, and it sounds pretty hokey but it was lots of fun and the food was delicious. They even sang me happy birthday (though they couldn't quite get the clapping thing down) and I got to blow out a candle!
Unfortunately the internet is being weird here. Hopefully I'll be able to post this, but I don't know if Michael will be able to put up all the photos that he wanted to.
Monday morning is our flight to Beijing, we'll try to post one more time before then. Thanks again for the comments and emails!
BCT spoiled us. There we were treated as guests, visitors, and by the end we felt like a part of their community. No one ever asked us for a single thing (well, except for the calls of "photo, photo, sister, photo please!" by the students). In fact, everyone kept giving to us.
So it was quite a shock arriving in Bhubaneswar, then in Varanasi, and now in Delhi and being seen as just another tourist again, hounded by rickshaw drivers, 'guides', and shop owners. It made us realize once again that even though it's nice to be tourists for a bit, we're so happy that our trip has been about more than just that.
We only had a few hours transit time in Bhubaneswar so we stored our luggage and hopped on a cycle rickshaw to see a few of the temples we'd read about. At Raja Rani Mandir we took off our shoes to enter the temple, but one of the older men who was part of the exercise circle just outside told us there was no reason to remove our shoes since the temple contained no deity. I took a peek inside but decided not to go any further because of the rather unpleasant smell. Michael forged ahead and discovered the source of the smell along with another reason why it was good to keep his shoes on--the floor of the temple was covered in droppings from the hundreds of bats who made their home in the temple (definitely not a place for you David!). We decided to stick to the outside which was decorated with beautiful carvings of lions, elephants and dancers. We enjoyed a tasty Dosa for lunch before boarding our next overnight train to Varanasi.
In Varanasi we were fortunate to be under the care of Professor Krishna Murty, a relative of Sreenivasa. He picked us up at the train station and arranged for an auto rickshaw to take us to Sarnath, 10 km away, where the Buddha preached his first sermon of the middle way to Nirvana. We also got to see an offspring of the tree under which Buddha achieved enlightenment, as well as a beautiful new Buddhist temple. In the evening Krishna took us down to the Ghats where we experienced the daily ceremony honoring the Ganges. Krishna then even took us to his home for dinner, where we met his wife and sister.
After a good night's sleep we went out for a boat ride on the Ganges the next morning. From the boat we had a good view of all the activity on the Ghats--men, women and children washing away their sins in the Ganges, cows and bulls grazing in the trash, fishermen at work, smoldering funeral pyres, and scraggly hippie westeners searching for their own Nirvana. A few Dosas, a couple of rickshaw rides, and a frustrating attempt at communication at an internet cafe- later and we were off on our fourth and final overnight train ride in India. We've become experts at sleeping comfortably on top of all of our stuff and last night we felt lucky to have our sleeping bags (though we got plenty of stares) since it turned unexpectedly cold.
We're now still at the Delhi train station, we figured we'd wait until it was light out to find our hotel. Michael's busy uploading photos right now and we plan to get all caught up during our days here in Delhi.
We also just noticed that the new BCT website is now live. It still needs quite a few corrections and adjustments and is far from complete (we still have about 8 more interviews to put up), but we're pretty proud of ourselves for the amount we did in such a short amount of time! Michael spent most of his time creating the village across the top from photos of actual BCT and village buidings and people. We'd love to hear any feedback and suggestions you have as we continue to work on it.
We're currently at the home of Sreenivasa Rao, our guardian, advisor and BCT's Joint Secretary, in Visakhapatnam. In a little over 2 hours we're boarding another overnight train for Bhubaneswar. Our last days at BCT were very emotional and filled to the brim with late-night web designing (website forthcoming), more village tours, visitors from the UK and student farwell performances.
Thank you again to Sreenivasa, the BCT staff, teachers and students for providing us with such a great experience and being a source of inspiration.
We'd like to share a little song with everyone today. It was sent to us by our friend James from Uganda. James explains:
"Here is something that can soothe you up. It’s a song about the loved bottles.
These bottles were part of the travelogue, feared the journey and stayed behind.
You are to participate fully forging your voices to a harmonious, melodious music from the following words, but before you begin, Megan is to practice soprano and tenor while Michael does the bass and alto."
Grahamstown loss times 3.....dared not to part with us.
What a big fear, What a big fear, What a big fear.
Maybe to swallow long words and unvowelled.
Bottle, talk talk talk....talk talk talk.....oh....
I cannot talk, imagine, Visakhapatnam, Mani Bhavan, Mineswar, Rambah’s, Bhagavatula, Dharamsala, and Agra.
Pliz…save save me, save save me, I won't go.
End
Thank you James.
The power just came back on here in the BCT office. A moment ago Michael was giving a lesson on the internet in the dark, but his audience of junior college students and instructors remains just as interested and engaged with or without light. We’ve been here since Sunday and continue to be amazed and inspired by the things going on here and the dedication of both staff and students. But first let me get caught up…
Our train left Mumbai right on time last Friday afternoon, and we settled in for the long haul. The ride wasn’t too bad (except for the guy trying to grope me in the middle of the night). We read our books about India and drank lots of Chai. BCT staff members were there to meet us when we arrived in Visakhapatnam on Saturday evening and took us to the city office where we spent the night. The next morning Krishna, the driver, took us on a little tour of the city before driving us to the main BCT site called Haripuram, about 60 kilometers away. Right from the beginning we could sense a positive and peaceful feeling of well-being and hope here. We unpacked our stuff in our cozy little room, ate lunch and then began to learn what BCT is all about.
Later that afternoon we drove to a nearby BCT school that was celebrating its seventh year anniversary. The children sang devotional songs and performed dances and skits. Speeches were given by school committee members, village leaders and BCT’s director of education. Then it was our turn up on stage. We never knew that this trip would give us so much practice in public speaking—our first time was in Uganda when we stumbled upon a village meeting with their member of parliament and were immediately called up to the front and asked to say a few words. We’re still working on our speed and annunciation, but at the school anniversary Michael was able to throw in a Gandhi quote about education—I was very impressed!
This past week we’ve been getting to know the wonderful people who live and work here—the students, teachers, scientists, training facilitators and other staff—and have been absorbing and learning all about BCT’s history, philosophy and day-to-day operations. Without going into lots of detail this time, BCT is basically an organization that works with local villagers to find ways of alleviating all kinds of poverty (not just economic but intellectual, physical, social, spiritual, etc.) by providing quality education and vocational training, conducting research to improve farming methods, facilitating savings and loan programs, and other community outreach and empowerment programs. Their main goal is self-reliance and sustainability for the villagers. BCT currently operates about 40 primary schools in surrounding villages, as well as a residential high school here where we’re staying and a training center for disabled youth nearby. There’s a lot more to say about BCT and our main project while we’re here is to compile everything into a website. Tomorrow I’m going out into the villages to begin doing interviews with people who have participated in BCT programs—I’m really excited for that.
Everyone here has been so welcoming and genuinely kind, we were even invited to a wedding last night. Like most marriages in India, this one was an arranged marriage. The priest is consulted in advance to reveal the most auspicious date and time (down to the minute) for the marriage to take place. This one happened to be set for 1:01 AM and we stayed until then, when the bride and groom placed a special paste on each other’s head. Before this we enjoyed a delicious meal and a live band singing Tollywood movie songs (Hollywood movies are in English, Bollywood movies are in Hindi and Tollywood movies are in Telugu, the local language). The little kids loved dancing to these songs and knew all the moves.
We’ve extended our stay here until next Saturday, and then we’ll make our way to Delhi. We have to cut out Dharamsala, but we’ll still get to Varanasi and Agra. We felt a little disappointed initially, but quickly realized that our desire to stay here greatly outweighs any feeling of disappointment. As Sreenivasa, secretary of BCT and our ‘guardian’ while we’re here says, it is in the villages that one can experience the real India.
We're realizing that we gave ourselves way to short a time in India. Our stay here in Mumbai has also been to short. Right now we're in a rush to get everything done before our train leaves at 3:00 PM. We'll have a 29 hour ride (which beats our South Africa ride!) to Visakhapatnam on the east coast. There we'll be volunteering with Bhagavatula Charitable Trust, an organization that runs schools and other community development projects. We'll probably spend between 10 days and 2 weeks there and then try to make it to Agra and Dharamsala before our flight out of Delhi on the 28th.
We just came from Mani Bhavan, Gandhi''s house and office in Bombay from 1917-1934. They've made it into a wonderful little museum and library/research center. We probably could have spent the whole day there, browsing through books and talking to the two local older gentleman that come to read the newspaper there.
Last night, after catching up on sleep in our hotel, getting our train tickets and hanging out for a while at a cool cafe, we met up with Mineswar and Rambah's eldest daughter who is studying here in Mumbai. She and her roommate joined us for dinner and then took us out to see a Bollywood movie--Kisna-- lots of fun!
