Dharmsala
Dharmsala was really nice. It was indeed cold but not nearly as cold as everyone claimed it would be. We actually stayed in McCloud Ganj which is a little above Dharmsala. There were so many things to do and it was all so nicely posted on up to date fliers! One evening we listened to a Tibetan refugee's story of his torture and eventual escape to India. Another day I was a "teacher" and volunteered tutoring some refugees in English. Overall Dharmsala was beautiful, calm, sweet, so different from the rest of India and full of tasty food.
Rajasthan
Rajasthan was my favorite place last time, so I was excited to go back. We first went to mom's old roomate's wedding in Jodphur. It was simply a gorgeous wedding set in a palace overlooking a lake. There were often seven full tables of food, meaning waaay more than I could ever try even if I literally only had a bite of each thing. Everyone was very friendly as well. After meeting a shmoozing with a lot of people, I came across someone who actually knew Wesleyan. It just so happened that his younger brother was my favorite choreographer at Wes! Small world indeed! We ended up meeting up with Randy and his friend Ian in Udaipur the next day.
Throughout Delhi and Agra I invoked my inner tour guide. I was answering any and every question that occurred to my companions regarding anything we came across or anything about India in general. This was often joked about when I looked back with a shrug or a quizzical face, and reminded them that I didn't in fact know EVERYTHING about India, just a lot. Ian started to encourage me to just make up things and he would buy it, and my nickname of "the oracle" was born and stuck for the rest of Rajasthan.
Udaipur was just as beautiful as I remembered.
We saw a very impressive Rajasthani cultural dance show which included a dancer moving hot coals with their mouth, using cymbals placed all over the body, a woman dancing with 10 pots on her head, an impressive puppet dance and so many colors!
We took our time with the City Palace and I got hunted down to pay a camera fee I was trying to avoid. We ended up making a last minute decision to go to Pushkar with our new friends instead of heading back to Delhi. Our friends had hired a car to drive them around Rajasthan and offered us to ride with them to Pushkar. However their driver was a grumpy and slightly terrifying character, and five of us were squeezed into the car while being forced to listen to shakira and other pop artists remixed for clubs. On top of it all, I have become accustomed to the crazy driving here, it honestly doesn't phase me at all anymore, however this driver's weaving through traffic, cows and people in the dark at 170 km/hr and not stopping once really tested me. I found I had to enter a meditative state in the car to not let the variety of unpleasantries overwhelm me, and it worked. This became a general metaphor in my mind for my experience of India as a whole. There is no doubt that India is a really difficult place to travel, but I find myself often calmer here than I am even in the US. I think part of it is that I there is so much here to overwhelm the senses constantly, that I am just pushed to a state of letting it all wash over me instead of letting anything get to me. I still am totally functional and fully appreciate the wonders and beautiful things around me, but the abundance of difficult things makes the individual difficult moments lose value. I hope I can maintain this lesson back in the states.
When we finally arrived, Pushkar was lovely. Pushkar houses one of the only temples dedicated to Brahma in all of India even though he is considered one of the three major gods of India (the other two being Shiva and Vishnu). The four of us spent Christmas wandering around the streets of Pushkar and chilling at the ghats. My highlights of the day was we came across a Deaf man who showed us around a bit and then taught me some Indian Sign Language! And then
Randy let me use one of his $10,000 Leica cameras! The camera took 18.6 megapixil pictures and had beautiful prime lenses. I realized how lazy I have become having a digital camera with a zoom lens. I haven't had that much fun taking pictures in a long time, playing with exposures, f stops and depth of field in ways that I haven't done since I took pictures on film. It was great!Mom and I were lucky enough to get on the only train that was no effected by a huge strike going on into Delhi. However we weren't lucky enough to get 2nd class seats so we were stuck in the lower class without blankets and I think the chill made the sniffle mom and I had into full blown colds.
Weddings
Kriti's wedding was extravagant, but Katherines wedding simply a lot of a fun, mostly because I knew a lot of people and I was genuinely excited to see them. There was a lot of dancing, singing and smiles. It also felt a lot more intimate. I was able to see a lot more of the ceremonies up close, and because Katherine was my roommate and the groom is part of my homestay "family" I was able to see aspects of both sides of the wedding. I think my favorite quote from the wedding happened when the priest was late, and it was raining, people kept mentioning that these were auspicious signs and then someone said "Indians think everything that is bad on a wedding day is auspicious." I really liked how the Indian side very much didn't freak out about any of the many things that went wrong, but instead turned it around into something positive and somehow the wedding all worked out. It was wonderful to see so many people from SIT and have a 2 year reunion with them, and it was amazing to see my whole homestay family again, and it was also really nice to meet so many other nice people as well.
So my journey to the east is coming to an end and I head back to the states in a few days. The past few weeks have been more than full. I realized I very much missed the holidays in the United States this year, but luckily there are many more to come!
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