Goa, I will begin by saying, is an absolute paradise.
This past weekend is definitely in the running for "best weekend ever." I will start by admitting that we had very, very few plans when we boarded our bus to Goa on Friday evening. We knew that the five of us had an appetite for Indian adventure and an urge to meet people and see everything we could. But we didn't have a plan. I'll admit--I'm a planner. I love to plan things, I love to know when we're going, where we're going, what we're doing when we're there. But I came to India to learn things, so last week I made a conscious effort to not worry at all about what or where we were going exactly. I am still in shock at how well things have turned out and simultaneously, how wonderful things worked out when we simply chose to trust Indians.
We left Pune around 8 pm on an air-conditioned bus that we almost couldn't find. After much running and rushing to make sure we made it on time, we were off on the coldest bus ride of my entire life. I only slept a few hours and was comforted only by the fact that I saw my friend Logan wasn't sleeping next to me either. She and I bonded over this fact the next morning when we got into a thoroughly deserted 6 am Goa. I looked around when we arrived and was absolutely sure that we would never figure out where we were going. All we had was the name of a beach town where some other Americans we met had already booked a hotel. Two minutes of looking around found us in a taxi, negotiating a price to take us to look at a few guest houses. Twenty minutes later and we had two rooms at an inexpensive guest house a minute's walk from the beach and... five motorized scooters.
This was perhaps one of the best decisions I've ever made. I was incredibly nervous about driving the scooter, but ten minutes on the back roads and we were all experts. We just reminded each other every time we got on one--"Remember to drive on the left." (As a side note, there was very little traffic in Goa. I would not have felt comfortable driving with a lot of other cars around, but almost no one was on the roads because we are still technically in the rainy off-season.) That first morning we put in several hours before noon of scootering around the small beach town we stayed in, making it up to a fort that was resting right on the ocean as we waved hello to Africa and the Middle East across the Arabian Sea. We saw a huge, old lighthouse as part of our tour and then we were off to the beach.
The first few hours on the beach were awkward, all 11 of us Americans (5 of us from ACM, 6 from another group studying here in Pune) acting thoroughly American by wearing bikinis and sunbathing. We were getting a lot of stares and even more people harassing us about buying things, so we decided to walk down the beach about 10 minutes away from the crowd. There, we found a deserted beach and the friendliest beach shack selling fresh seafood and pina coladas. We sat around all day in the shade of that shack, getting to know the proprietors and just basking in the glorious-ness that was our experience there. In the evenings we would scooter around to a bunch of different restaurants to find food. The next day? Repeat.
The weekend was wonderfully refreshing and made me fall in love with India all over again. We met some of the nicest people, all were so willing to help us out. It was great, too, because there were so few tourists since it is still the very tail end of the rainy season.
I'll write again once more this week with an updated itinerary of where we'll be in the next few weeks!
9.29.2009
9.23.2009
Time to explore India!
Just wanted to write a quick blog to let you all know that I will be out of town pretty soon. This weekend, I'm headed to Goa. It's a former Portuguese colony a little South of Mumbai on the coast. It's supposed to be gorgeous-white sand beaches and palm trees all over. I'm excited for a little R&R. We'll be back on Tuesday, and I'll probably write a blog sometime next week talking about Goa.
After that, starting next Friday, I'll be traveling around South India for 2 1/2 weeks. I probably won't have much time to write, because we'll be very busy going place to place, but I'm looking forward to writing when I'm home in Pune again!
It's crazy how quickly this semester is going since I started the regular semester. After I'm back from traveling, we only have 5 more weeks in Pune! Then I'm off to travel AGAIN, next time in the North for 2 weeks or so. It's funny to think that everyone at home will spend the next three months in school... and I'll essentially only spend another month actually in school. I love that ACM is keeping us engaged when we're in Pune, but making sure that we have enough time to travel and really be IN India. I know it is undoubtedly a tough balance for them to strike, but I'm loving it here. I feel like I've definitely gotten into my stride.
Ok, I've got to go, it's almost time for a planning meeting to discuss my travel details for the month of October.
9.16.2009
Honk ok please!
I had a request a few weeks ago for a bit of a Marathi lesson, so here goes a (relatively) short blog on what I've learned so far in Marathi.
Since I can't figure out a way to use Marathi/Hindi script (they're the same, it's called devanagari script and it looks like this: http://www.cedar.buffalo.edu/script/images/hindi_trans.gif), I won't even bother. Instead, just trust me when I say you don't want to learn how to say retroflex letters. But phonetic alphabets are surprisingly easy to learn. Instead of memorizing tons of characters like in Chinese or something, I'm just memorize what are essentially letters. Only, in Marathi, J could be J or it might be Z (yes, I'm fully planning on calling my brother Zohn when I return). X is always K and W doesn't exist at all. And there are four letters for D. So anyway, I'm not going to bother with trying to teach you all that. Instead, here's some basic stuff:
The first sentence we learned in Marathi is "I want water." Only, if you were to translate it directly into English, you would be saying I water want. Yes, the grammar goes subject object verb, and yes it can be very difficult putting verbs at the ends of sentences. To say I want water in Marathi, you would say "Mala panee pahijay." Yeah. A few verbs worth knowing if you're ever going to speak Marathi are: nako (don't want-this doesn't conjugate--yes!!), kha (to eat), ja (to go) and as (to be). If you want me to translate any basic sentences, I can probably do it. I know a solid 40 verbs now! My favorite verbs are ones like to call (phone kar) which literally translates to "to make a phone," and study (abhyas kar), which literally translates to "to make a study." The subjects in Marathi are:
Mi - I / Amhi - We
Tu - You / Tumhi - Plural you/respectful you
To - He / Tay - They (group of boys)
Tee - She / Tya - They (group of girls)
Tay - It / Tee - They (mixed gruop)
In terms of vocab, I'm actually surprised by how much I've learned so far!
Namaskaar, of course, is hello. Suprabhat is good morning. Mitra means friend and paus means rain (but dho dho is the sound that rain makes). Tea is chaha but coffee is just coffee. Mango is amba, sugar is sakhar, and vegetables is bahji. Bahji is also what dishes are called in cooking when you're making something with a veggie base. Today I learned how to make a bahji dish that had eggplant, tomatoes, and onion in it (yummm).
Practical things are harder to learn, becuase they're usually phrases, but they often turn out to be the most fun to say. To say, "I can speak a little Marathi," you would say, "Mi thoda thoda Marathi bolto (m)/ bolte (f)." To ask how someone is, you would say "Kai kartes?" which literally translates to "what do you think?" (To reply, a good answer is "chaan!" which means good, and can be used in pretty much any situation--to compliment the cooking, to compliment someone's house, etc. It's what Sucheta says to us when we're doing well in Marathi class, also. If whatever it is is absolutely amazing, you could add "khoop", which means very. My sisters say "soooo nice," in English when they would say "khoop chaan" in Marathi. This is very amusing to me.) To ask what time it is, you would say "kiti vasileh?", and people will generally look at you and just point at their watch. A good word to know in India is "tiketh" (pronounced with an emphasis on the last th), which means spicy. My absolute favorite phrases in Marathi thus far are "bap re!" and "oye ghrr!" which are exclamations. "Bap re," translates to "oh father!" which you use when you're surprised or angry. "Oye ghrr" means, "Oh mother!" which you use when you're very sad or very happy. Sucheta explained that your father isn't supposed to be interested in your feelings, only when you're upset or need protection--unlike your mother who wants to hear about your feelings.
(Rant) This is actually something really interesting about Marathi and about language in general. I think there is definitely feminist theory to be found about the construction of language. In Marathi, you only use the respectful tumhi pronoun when you're speaking to your father, not your mother. You would use it for any teacher, but only for older males, not older females. In my linguistics classes, we talked quite a bit about how language constructs the way you think about the world. What does it say about your culture when you're brought up to automatically respect every older male but not every older female? I think this might be one reason India is still a largely male-dominated society. I could go on and on about this topic for hours, but you get the picture. Just food for thought! (End Rant)
I think I said this in another blog, but I'll reiterate for those of you who missed what a strange adjustment this is. In Marathi, there isn't a word for "please," or even "thank you." Instead you sort of soften the phrase by saying "huhh" after it, which really just makes me feel awkward. I'm still working on how to handle this. I will let you know if and when I make any progress.
I could go into a lot of complicated grammatical structures that have been puzzling me for weeks, but I'll just tell you that things like possessive pronouns are conjugated based on the sex of the noun. For those of you who haven't taken linguistics, that means that there are SIX words for "my," in Marathi. Plurals are also entirely dependent on the sex of the noun, so there are three ways to add an "s" to a word. A final puzzle for you English speakers: there are no prepositions, only POSTpositions.... so all those words that I learned a song about in English class in the 9th grade (around, on, above, to, before, during, under, etc etc) are words that you add to the END of another word, further complicating possessive pronouns. To say, for example, "for my grandmother," you would say "majhee adjeesuti."
Ok, well, I think that's enough for now and it's time for me to get to bed, so I'll leave you with a simple "Yete!" (Yehtay) which literally means, "I'll come back," and is used instead of a word for goodbye.
Yete!
P.S. If you're wondering about the title to this post, "Honk ok please," or "Horn ok please" is on the back of almost every big truck that I've seen thus far, and I think that it basically means, "it's fine to honk at me to let me know you exist because I can't really see behind me." Indian ENGLISH might be just as interesting, if not more interesting to me, than Marathi is. As my sisters would say, "this blog post was soooo nice," so you should leave me a comment to let me know you're all still reading. Much love. =)
Since I can't figure out a way to use Marathi/Hindi script (they're the same, it's called devanagari script and it looks like this: http://www.cedar.buffalo.edu/script/images/hindi_trans.gif), I won't even bother. Instead, just trust me when I say you don't want to learn how to say retroflex letters. But phonetic alphabets are surprisingly easy to learn. Instead of memorizing tons of characters like in Chinese or something, I'm just memorize what are essentially letters. Only, in Marathi, J could be J or it might be Z (yes, I'm fully planning on calling my brother Zohn when I return). X is always K and W doesn't exist at all. And there are four letters for D. So anyway, I'm not going to bother with trying to teach you all that. Instead, here's some basic stuff:
The first sentence we learned in Marathi is "I want water." Only, if you were to translate it directly into English, you would be saying I water want. Yes, the grammar goes subject object verb, and yes it can be very difficult putting verbs at the ends of sentences. To say I want water in Marathi, you would say "Mala panee pahijay." Yeah. A few verbs worth knowing if you're ever going to speak Marathi are: nako (don't want-this doesn't conjugate--yes!!), kha (to eat), ja (to go) and as (to be). If you want me to translate any basic sentences, I can probably do it. I know a solid 40 verbs now! My favorite verbs are ones like to call (phone kar) which literally translates to "to make a phone," and study (abhyas kar), which literally translates to "to make a study." The subjects in Marathi are:
Mi - I / Amhi - We
Tu - You / Tumhi - Plural you/respectful you
To - He / Tay - They (group of boys)
Tee - She / Tya - They (group of girls)
Tay - It / Tee - They (mixed gruop)
In terms of vocab, I'm actually surprised by how much I've learned so far!
Namaskaar, of course, is hello. Suprabhat is good morning. Mitra means friend and paus means rain (but dho dho is the sound that rain makes). Tea is chaha but coffee is just coffee. Mango is amba, sugar is sakhar, and vegetables is bahji. Bahji is also what dishes are called in cooking when you're making something with a veggie base. Today I learned how to make a bahji dish that had eggplant, tomatoes, and onion in it (yummm).
Practical things are harder to learn, becuase they're usually phrases, but they often turn out to be the most fun to say. To say, "I can speak a little Marathi," you would say, "Mi thoda thoda Marathi bolto (m)/ bolte (f)." To ask how someone is, you would say "Kai kartes?" which literally translates to "what do you think?" (To reply, a good answer is "chaan!" which means good, and can be used in pretty much any situation--to compliment the cooking, to compliment someone's house, etc. It's what Sucheta says to us when we're doing well in Marathi class, also. If whatever it is is absolutely amazing, you could add "khoop", which means very. My sisters say "soooo nice," in English when they would say "khoop chaan" in Marathi. This is very amusing to me.) To ask what time it is, you would say "kiti vasileh?", and people will generally look at you and just point at their watch. A good word to know in India is "tiketh" (pronounced with an emphasis on the last th), which means spicy. My absolute favorite phrases in Marathi thus far are "bap re!" and "oye ghrr!" which are exclamations. "Bap re," translates to "oh father!" which you use when you're surprised or angry. "Oye ghrr" means, "Oh mother!" which you use when you're very sad or very happy. Sucheta explained that your father isn't supposed to be interested in your feelings, only when you're upset or need protection--unlike your mother who wants to hear about your feelings.
(Rant) This is actually something really interesting about Marathi and about language in general. I think there is definitely feminist theory to be found about the construction of language. In Marathi, you only use the respectful tumhi pronoun when you're speaking to your father, not your mother. You would use it for any teacher, but only for older males, not older females. In my linguistics classes, we talked quite a bit about how language constructs the way you think about the world. What does it say about your culture when you're brought up to automatically respect every older male but not every older female? I think this might be one reason India is still a largely male-dominated society. I could go on and on about this topic for hours, but you get the picture. Just food for thought! (End Rant)
I think I said this in another blog, but I'll reiterate for those of you who missed what a strange adjustment this is. In Marathi, there isn't a word for "please," or even "thank you." Instead you sort of soften the phrase by saying "huhh" after it, which really just makes me feel awkward. I'm still working on how to handle this. I will let you know if and when I make any progress.
I could go into a lot of complicated grammatical structures that have been puzzling me for weeks, but I'll just tell you that things like possessive pronouns are conjugated based on the sex of the noun. For those of you who haven't taken linguistics, that means that there are SIX words for "my," in Marathi. Plurals are also entirely dependent on the sex of the noun, so there are three ways to add an "s" to a word. A final puzzle for you English speakers: there are no prepositions, only POSTpositions.... so all those words that I learned a song about in English class in the 9th grade (around, on, above, to, before, during, under, etc etc) are words that you add to the END of another word, further complicating possessive pronouns. To say, for example, "for my grandmother," you would say "majhee adjeesuti."
Ok, well, I think that's enough for now and it's time for me to get to bed, so I'll leave you with a simple "Yete!" (Yehtay) which literally means, "I'll come back," and is used instead of a word for goodbye.
Yete!
P.S. If you're wondering about the title to this post, "Honk ok please," or "Horn ok please" is on the back of almost every big truck that I've seen thus far, and I think that it basically means, "it's fine to honk at me to let me know you exist because I can't really see behind me." Indian ENGLISH might be just as interesting, if not more interesting to me, than Marathi is. As my sisters would say, "this blog post was soooo nice," so you should leave me a comment to let me know you're all still reading. Much love. =)
9.14.2009
Ajanta, Ellora, and a little bit of reflection
So the past week or so has been mostly unexciting. I feel like I'm finally starting to settle into a definite routine here in Pune. I feel much better when my life has a pattern that is easy to follow, and to be honest, India is a lot easier to digest when I don't have to constantly think about the little things. The first few weeks are difficult because everything you do is difficult. Now that I know when to get up in the morning, what I'll be eating for breakfast (more or less), how to take the rickshaw to ACM, etc etc, I'm finally starting to open up my eyes to the things that I think I was kind of blocking out my first few weeks here. I think I'm finally starting to see India, to really be here. I had a very interesting conversation with my friend Ben on the bus ride to Ajanta and Ellora this weekend about how India is making us reflect on the things that we're going through. I'm realizing how American I am, even in the simplest of ways. I get anxious, for example, when a rickshaw I'm in is going really slowly up the hill to ACM, even though I'm constantly 15 minutes early to class. Why? I walk very quickly everywhere I go, even when where I'm going is NOWHERE. These things seem so pointless. People in India are constantly late, but at least they seem to enjoy the ride there. Instead of getting anxious or upset when there's a ton of traffic, they placidly deal with it and move on. I think I'm beginning to adopt this attitude, though it's certainly taking some effort to turn off the switch that makes me anxious or upset at the slightest bit of inconvenience. I think I'm going to come home a very patient person.
All that self-reflection aside, I originally wanted to blog about my weekend at Ajanta and Ellora caves in Northeastern Maharasthra! The caves are truly a fascinating place, but I'll go in order. We departed from Pune last Thursday short one ACM-er, because Liz was feeling sick. So the 8 of us, plus Gene (our American program director) and Anju, ACM's Indian travel guru, we were off in one of the mini buses featuring the goddess' watchful eyes on the rear view mirror. Most of us slept a lot of the long bus ride, but Ben and I had a very interesting conversation like I already mentioned. We stopped for several hours in the afternoon at a place called Daulatabad Fort. It was similar in a lot of ways to Sinhagad that I wrote about several weeks ago, but a lot cooler in some ways. Our tour guide told us all about how when the fort was built way back in the 14th century, the guy who built it built it to be the strongest fort in the world. It was never conquered, despite the rush of invaders featured in Maharasthra during the past few centuries. The fort had 5 outer walls that one had to conquer, a moat filled with poisonous water snakes and crocodiles, and probably the most intense, a series of pitch-black caves that encouraged you to kill your own men in an effort to conquer the place. Delhi was forcibly removed under Muslim leadership to this fort for several years because of it's excellent protection. The whole area, of course, was stunningly beautiful, surrounded by miles of lush green forest accented with the dark brick of the forest. We had an amazing time hiking around the fort and exploring the ruins for several hours. This was also perhaps the sweatiest I've ever been in my entire life!! After that, Anju took us to an amazing factory where we saw the most beautiful silk saris and scarves being hand woven by Indian women. Of course, everyone had an absolute field day buying gifts for mothers and grandmothers.
That night we arrived at our hotel, a picturesque series of bungalows in the middle of the jungle, facing the Ellora caves and a magnificent waterfall. The beds were the comfiest I've experienced in India and the whole place was filled with quite an aura of mystique.We enjoyed a late evening of each other's company and hit the sack for another early morning.
From the hotel we left early (after a breakfast with, get it, EGGS!!) for our drive to Ajanta caves. After more than six hours on the bus Thursday, we were not looking forward to another two and a half on the bus today, but it went quick enough and we were rewarded with stunning views of the caves from above. The caves themselves were carved, from the cliff, by Buddhists from the 2nd century BC to the 6th century AD. Each features some sort of tribute to the Buddha and there are more than twenty of them!! They were all really amazing, some of them had really great paintings of the Buddha's lives on the inside and we had a wonderful guide who explained everything to us. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take flash photography inside the caves, so most of my pictures from inside them didn't turn out at all. We found out that the caves were abandoned for centuries until this English explorer was hunting tigers in the 1800s (awesome) and saw a tiger disappear. He followed it and happened upon this whole series of caves that were completely overgrown. Pretty soon there were all sorts of English archaeologists crawling all over it. The day was hot and humid so there were very few other tourists around. We had the whole day to explore the place and eat the most complicated packed lunch I've ever seen (two sandwiches, an apple, a muffin, two tins of curry and a few chapati, chips, a hard boiled egg, apple juice, and spiced buttermilk. I'm not even kidding), given to us by the hotel management who knew Anju very well.
Outside of Ajanta, there's a tiny area where everyone who wants to sell souvenirs has to sit and wait for tourists to pass through on their way back to the parking lot. Because it's been hot and dry, not to mention the whole swine flu debacle, we were absolutely SURROUNDED the second we entered the compound. Men trying to get us to come to their shops, all of which sold essentially the same thing, for ridiculously inflated prices. Case in point: I bought some pretty cool stone elephants that a man originally offered me for 2000 rps a piece at a whopping 400 rps for the pair. I'd say 10% of the originally offered price is a not-too-shabby bargain, though I'm sure even THIS price was inflated. The experience was seriously overwhelming though, and I couldn't take more than a few minutes of the men basically pulling us back and forth between their shops and following us around before I had to escape to the bus.
The next day was a trip to the Ellora caves, which are similar mainly in location. Both the caves are carved out of basalt cliffs, a type of rock formed by ancient volcanic activity. The Ellora caves aren't just Buddhist, though, they're also Jain and Hindu. Jainism is a really interesting religion that developed mainly to escape the caste system associated with Hinduism. It's followers don't believe in killing anything, so very devout Jains are supposed to sweep in front of them as they walk so they don't kill any insects. Interestingly enough, they are also the wealthiest per capita religion in India, though they believe in giving up one's possessions and living only through begging. Many Jains apparently do give up their wealthy lifestyles near the end of their lives. Anyway, the Jain caves feature some pretty amazing , as do their Hindu counterparts. The Hindu caves feature amazing depictions of the two Indian epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabaratha, as well as pretty fantastic carvings of a variety of Indian gods and goddesses (oh, and the Kama Sutra, which was used as a sort of sex education in India back in the day).
After one more night at the hotel and a fantastic long morning drinking tea in the garden, we were off back to Pune on perhaps the longest, dustiest, sweatiest, hottest bus ride of my entire life. I considered it something of an omen when as we drove into Pune it began to rain, washing away the heat of the long weekend in central India. On the way home we stopped at the "Poor Man's Taj Mahal," which was constructed by the same guy who built the REAL Taj up North in Agra. It's actually a cool building in and of itself, but it's hard to love a plaster imitation of the real thing I'll be seeing in December. It was a fun excursion none-the-less, and got us out of the stuffy bus and out into open, albeit incredibly hot, air. The whole experience this weekend was an absolutely fantastic one. I feel refreshed with India, and like I mentioned at the beginning of this epically long blog, so ready to start the next few weeks. I only have TWO weeks until my travel in the South! I can't believe how fast the semester is going, even though it feels like a year since I've arrived. I think that these next few weeks will certainly be a test... it's time to open my eyes wide to India and see what I find.
Love to you all, wishing you could be here on this crazy adventure! If you can, be sure to check out my most recent pictures on Facebook, which feature all my adventures thus far--some pics of my home life in Pune, my trip to Phaltan, and this most recent trip to Ajanta, Ellora, Dautalabad and the Fake Taj Mahal.
All that self-reflection aside, I originally wanted to blog about my weekend at Ajanta and Ellora caves in Northeastern Maharasthra! The caves are truly a fascinating place, but I'll go in order. We departed from Pune last Thursday short one ACM-er, because Liz was feeling sick. So the 8 of us, plus Gene (our American program director) and Anju, ACM's Indian travel guru, we were off in one of the mini buses featuring the goddess' watchful eyes on the rear view mirror. Most of us slept a lot of the long bus ride, but Ben and I had a very interesting conversation like I already mentioned. We stopped for several hours in the afternoon at a place called Daulatabad Fort. It was similar in a lot of ways to Sinhagad that I wrote about several weeks ago, but a lot cooler in some ways. Our tour guide told us all about how when the fort was built way back in the 14th century, the guy who built it built it to be the strongest fort in the world. It was never conquered, despite the rush of invaders featured in Maharasthra during the past few centuries. The fort had 5 outer walls that one had to conquer, a moat filled with poisonous water snakes and crocodiles, and probably the most intense, a series of pitch-black caves that encouraged you to kill your own men in an effort to conquer the place. Delhi was forcibly removed under Muslim leadership to this fort for several years because of it's excellent protection. The whole area, of course, was stunningly beautiful, surrounded by miles of lush green forest accented with the dark brick of the forest. We had an amazing time hiking around the fort and exploring the ruins for several hours. This was also perhaps the sweatiest I've ever been in my entire life!! After that, Anju took us to an amazing factory where we saw the most beautiful silk saris and scarves being hand woven by Indian women. Of course, everyone had an absolute field day buying gifts for mothers and grandmothers.
That night we arrived at our hotel, a picturesque series of bungalows in the middle of the jungle, facing the Ellora caves and a magnificent waterfall. The beds were the comfiest I've experienced in India and the whole place was filled with quite an aura of mystique.We enjoyed a late evening of each other's company and hit the sack for another early morning.
From the hotel we left early (after a breakfast with, get it, EGGS!!) for our drive to Ajanta caves. After more than six hours on the bus Thursday, we were not looking forward to another two and a half on the bus today, but it went quick enough and we were rewarded with stunning views of the caves from above. The caves themselves were carved, from the cliff, by Buddhists from the 2nd century BC to the 6th century AD. Each features some sort of tribute to the Buddha and there are more than twenty of them!! They were all really amazing, some of them had really great paintings of the Buddha's lives on the inside and we had a wonderful guide who explained everything to us. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take flash photography inside the caves, so most of my pictures from inside them didn't turn out at all. We found out that the caves were abandoned for centuries until this English explorer was hunting tigers in the 1800s (awesome) and saw a tiger disappear. He followed it and happened upon this whole series of caves that were completely overgrown. Pretty soon there were all sorts of English archaeologists crawling all over it. The day was hot and humid so there were very few other tourists around. We had the whole day to explore the place and eat the most complicated packed lunch I've ever seen (two sandwiches, an apple, a muffin, two tins of curry and a few chapati, chips, a hard boiled egg, apple juice, and spiced buttermilk. I'm not even kidding), given to us by the hotel management who knew Anju very well.
Outside of Ajanta, there's a tiny area where everyone who wants to sell souvenirs has to sit and wait for tourists to pass through on their way back to the parking lot. Because it's been hot and dry, not to mention the whole swine flu debacle, we were absolutely SURROUNDED the second we entered the compound. Men trying to get us to come to their shops, all of which sold essentially the same thing, for ridiculously inflated prices. Case in point: I bought some pretty cool stone elephants that a man originally offered me for 2000 rps a piece at a whopping 400 rps for the pair. I'd say 10% of the originally offered price is a not-too-shabby bargain, though I'm sure even THIS price was inflated. The experience was seriously overwhelming though, and I couldn't take more than a few minutes of the men basically pulling us back and forth between their shops and following us around before I had to escape to the bus.
The next day was a trip to the Ellora caves, which are similar mainly in location. Both the caves are carved out of basalt cliffs, a type of rock formed by ancient volcanic activity. The Ellora caves aren't just Buddhist, though, they're also Jain and Hindu. Jainism is a really interesting religion that developed mainly to escape the caste system associated with Hinduism. It's followers don't believe in killing anything, so very devout Jains are supposed to sweep in front of them as they walk so they don't kill any insects. Interestingly enough, they are also the wealthiest per capita religion in India, though they believe in giving up one's possessions and living only through begging. Many Jains apparently do give up their wealthy lifestyles near the end of their lives. Anyway, the Jain caves feature some pretty amazing , as do their Hindu counterparts. The Hindu caves feature amazing depictions of the two Indian epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabaratha, as well as pretty fantastic carvings of a variety of Indian gods and goddesses (oh, and the Kama Sutra, which was used as a sort of sex education in India back in the day).
After one more night at the hotel and a fantastic long morning drinking tea in the garden, we were off back to Pune on perhaps the longest, dustiest, sweatiest, hottest bus ride of my entire life. I considered it something of an omen when as we drove into Pune it began to rain, washing away the heat of the long weekend in central India. On the way home we stopped at the "Poor Man's Taj Mahal," which was constructed by the same guy who built the REAL Taj up North in Agra. It's actually a cool building in and of itself, but it's hard to love a plaster imitation of the real thing I'll be seeing in December. It was a fun excursion none-the-less, and got us out of the stuffy bus and out into open, albeit incredibly hot, air. The whole experience this weekend was an absolutely fantastic one. I feel refreshed with India, and like I mentioned at the beginning of this epically long blog, so ready to start the next few weeks. I only have TWO weeks until my travel in the South! I can't believe how fast the semester is going, even though it feels like a year since I've arrived. I think that these next few weeks will certainly be a test... it's time to open my eyes wide to India and see what I find.
Love to you all, wishing you could be here on this crazy adventure! If you can, be sure to check out my most recent pictures on Facebook, which feature all my adventures thus far--some pics of my home life in Pune, my trip to Phaltan, and this most recent trip to Ajanta, Ellora, Dautalabad and the Fake Taj Mahal.
9.04.2009
Just... wow.
Last night was perhaps the craziest and most surreal night of my life. But I'll get back to that.
As I've mentioned in this blog before, these past ten days or so have been Ganpati (I found out I've been spelling it wrong... who knew), Ganesh's festival that is celebrated here in Maharasthra. Almost every home keeps a statue of Ganesha in their homes that is given offerings every night of the festival. Until now, this festival for me has focused mainly on my homestay family and their family around the area. But last night was the crux, the absolute climax, of the whole festival.
We've heard people talking about a "procession," the past few days, but as per India, no one ever really explained what that meant. They also said that because of Swine Flu, the "procession" would be much smaller than in previous years, about 50% of the normal crowd. We had absolutely no idea what, exactly, we were getting ourselves into. Yesterday started out normal enough, with Marathi class, but after that we were all heading out to my friend Allison's house, which is located about a block off of Laxmi (Lockshmee) Rd., a major drag through town. We kept trying to catch a rickshaw to take us, but every time they refused and told us that Laxmi Rd was closed and they wouldn't go near it. So, we decided to walk. As we walked we came across a decent sized crowd, walking around a huge Ganpati statue, pulling it along with a truck like a float in a parade and everyone playing drums as they pulled it along. Well, okay.
By the time we made it to Allison's and ate lunch, it was clear that this was going to be quite the party. For reference, as it turns out, "procession" in India refers to 1 million people +, dancing and partying in the streets while pulling giant Ganpati statues along behind them. And this was smaller than previous years. I was already overwhelmed in mid-Afternoon on our first trek out. We got pulled into the crowd to dance in the middle of a huge group of Indians, jumping and pushing and having the time of their life to the beat of the most amazing drums I've ever heard. The girls were mostly pulled into a group of kids and women dancing nearer to the front of the parade, where we ended up surrounded by trumpeteers and drummers pounding out a beat like nothing I've ever heard before. The beat dropped like a hip-hop song, but after a few seconds picked up and was suddenly Indian again, and everyone would start dancing. It started to rain and everyone was dripping wet and splashing in puddles in the middle of the street. We stopped to dance in the middle of one of the biggest bridges in Pune, closed to traffic for the festival. Soon we had a huge audience watching us dance with the Indian girls, mostly guys, completely circling the entire area. The dancing was incredibly exhilarating and I had an amazing time. The girls were so happy and excited to have us there celebrating with them, I think everyone felt a flash of what it must feel like to be a celebrity.
After a while though, we realized that we had lost half our group. Most of the guys and one girl, Liz, had gotten pulled back further in the procession to dance with more of the men. Our friend Aaron had missed the first part of the procession to go to the doctor and was trying to find us again, but he kept getting pulled into the middle of similar dance parties... because there were probably several hundred of these giant Ganpati statues all over the city, and every single one of them was making its way down to the river, where traditionally all the Ganpati statues are released into the river to float away (or sink and cause a lot of pollution, as it were). For years, this practice caused a lot of pollution in the drinking water of thousands in Maharasthra, and now some environmental groups are "fishing" for Ganesh the weekend after the festival ends so that they can keep the drinking water cleaner.
Anyway. After we had re-assembled our group, we decided to head back to Allison's for a few hours of much-needed rest after about two hours of solid dancing with strangers. We decided to head out a few more times just to see what the party was like as it progressed. I never expected anything like it. The streets were crowded with dancers and specatators, and as it got dark, the Ganesh statues got bigger and bigger and soon they were lit up in all sorts of colors and each had a theme: I imagine this as an Indian sort of Mardi Gras, each Ganesh more and more fantastic than the last. And each with a bigger and bigger group of people dancing and celebrating and moving with the Ganesh, down to the river. Each of the parties had it's own flavor, based largely on the type of Ganesh. There were more traditional ones with long strings of Christmas lights and flowers, and there were ones with all sorts of decorations--one that was decorated just like a Mardi Gras float with green and purple and gold decorations; one that was in the middle of an Egyptian scene, complete with Sphynx; strangely, the one with the biggest crowd had the smallest Ganpati, in the middle of a huge decorative platform for it. It turned out that this "procession," was a bit like a parade, where the spectators are the ones who make the parade worth coming to--though the Ganpati statues themselves were gorgeous, it was more interesting to watch the huge groups of people dancing and jumping with the music.
Everywhere we went, we were celebrities. We were in the English paper yesterday, an article about American students getting ready for the festival. Our picture was featured and we were recognized several times. But the rest of the time, I think it was just because we were Americans, ready and willing to dance with everyone we met. Only every time we would enter a crowd, a huuuge circle would fill out around us, hundreds of people stopping their own party to watch US. Sometimes a few men would jump in the circle and get close to us girls, and they would instantly get pulled away by cops or other spectators. The problem was not that most of them got too close, it was simply the staring! I have had a hard time adjusting to getting stared at, but last night was too much for me.
The later it got, the more the crowd was concentrated and difficult to move in, and the more intense it became when we would go somewhere. As the minutes ticked by, bigger and bigger crowds would form around us whenever we did anything--including our stop for water at a stall, we were almost instantly surrounded by about 50 guys just watching us, apparently fascinated. I had enough. I felt awkward being stared at all the time, so my friends Garrett, Sydney and I went back to Allison's place around midnight. The rest of the group returned about an hour later. The party, however, lasted all night and into this morning, loud techno music and drumbeats drifting through the windows long after I wanted to be asleep.
I cannot possibly imagine this party 50% bigger. I also think I might be able to imagine a million people now.
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