Final Entry

I’ve told my story a hundred times to a hundred different people. India was crazy, beautiful and life altering. I appreciated every second of it and I would never do it again. It wasn’t India’s fault. Sure the heat, noise, and pollution were pressing but the intensity came from within. I felt trapped in a huge country. The million faces with foreign tongues surrounded me but were wrapped up in their own 9 to 5. I was stuck processing this whole new world with my own thoughts. Oi my thoughts. Were never soothing. But felt like a cracked out energizer bunny on Jerry Springer. It was a manifestation of loneliness. No gaggle of girlfriends to talk me down. Juuuust me. And sometimes some wisdom from old Tom Hanks’ movies. Honestly, India was crazy and beautiful. Crazy and beautiful. Every single aspect and every single day resonated with me. I don’t think I could say that about any other 3 months of my life. There was no vortex of routine. I was living and working things out and growing. I never learned how to cook Mattar Paneer. But I did finally learn how to tie a Saree. And I never found my god. But I’ve started to look more actively now. I’m applying to graduate school. To Public Health programs where I’ll be focusing in International Epidemiology. I absolutely haven’t given up my passion for global health. Working in the slums of Kolkata reinforced it. I just know next time I travel internationally to bring a few friends, or buy a really good internet connection. Below I posted my graduate school personal statement. It’s relevant to my entire stay in India and what I drew from it. Thanks again for everyone who read my blog. And to everyone I didn’t know who read my blog! Reading your emails while I was there was validating and kept me going. I’ll be sure to create a new blog of my adventures in graduate school. Maybe they’ll be called At Africa… Upon my arrival in Kolkata, India in June, I was told if you want to understand India you must first understand the Ganges. It is India’s life force as cyclical and devastating as the monsoon season — feared and worshipped. Life is centered around the great river. People pray along its banks, fill their buckets with the sacred water and carry them back to their families for bathing and drinking. The Ganges’ beauty was lost on me when I first arrived. Armed with my antiseptic-Brita-Filter-mentality, I saw only a contaminated water supply that was transferred to buckets and barrels that created, in turn, vast breeding grounds for disease-carrying mosquitoes. The irony was powerful. The Ganges, the heartbeat of Indian life, is a major contributor to the transmission of cholera, an epidemic that has plagued the nation for decades. Thanks to a research grant I was awarded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, I had the opportunity to work for three months at the National Institute of Cholera in Kolkata, India. The award gave me the opportunity to strengthen my research skills and abilities but, more substantially, to grapple with translating research into action and implementation. The entire institute of doctors, researchers, and public health officials worked to answer the question “why is cholera epidemic?” Through my intensive research work in the lab and field work in the “slums” and in the medical outposts, I was introduced to the complexities of the cholera epidemic and the immensity of the challenge to end it. I appreciate the diverse stages involved in the implementation of public health programs. I don’t want to simply treat the symptoms of a disease, but to see it through—from the root of the problem to the realization of the solution, from the lab bench to the vaccine trial, to lobbying for health care reform. My work with cholera was a perfect model of the kind of global health I hope to pursue in my graduate studies. At the Institute, my lab work involved the chitin-binding protein associated with cholera transmission. I studied the promotion of the protein under different environmental conditions such as nutrition, salinity, pH, bile, and temperature. If certain environmental variables are targeted as triggers then perhaps future epidemics can be predicted and prevented. The Institute’s strategies for preventing and treating the disease extended to medical field work and large scale vaccine trials. I had the unique opportunity to shadow doctors in a double-blind randomized phase III trial of the reformulated oral killed bivalent cholera vaccine in an urban slum site in Kolkata. It is manifest that cholera can and should be treated by addressing the issue of the provision of clean water and education related to community hygiene. But until effective prevention strategies can be realistically implemented, the development of a safe, effective, and affordable vaccine is a necessary component in cholera prevention. Just how out of reach prevention strategies like clean water and proper food storage and preparation was brought home to me through my field work. Inexorable poverty, more than the chitin-binding protein, is the host for diseases like cholera. A typical “slums” household consisted of a dozen or more family members sharing a living space of a single room. The household siphons water twice a day from a rusty pipe that comes up through the floor into open barrels. Food is prepared on the floor just a few feet away from the home’s bathroom, which consists largely of a squat toilet. So it is not surprising when conducting a medical history, I found most household members in a typical home have had cholera, and in fact, have had it multiple times. Unfortunately, many children exhibit the long term effects of the disease, including the impairment of physical and cognitive development. Improvements to global public health issues require an understanding of the political, economic, and cultural contexts of diseases such as cholera, in addition to research. The lack of education and economic resources, as well as cultural obstacles, fear, and superstition create awesome barriers to implementation of effective prevention programs. Public health officials who hope to have a positive impact should be competent researchers but they also must have the capacity to interpret, mediate, appreciate, and translate profound cultural obstacles. At the medical outposts, I witnessed firsthand the fear and suspicion people felt for vaccines and most refused to participate. The doctors utilized several strategies for overcoming this, sometimes by paying for the pavement of roads or giving prizes to those who received the vaccine, or even hanging pictures of the Indian goddess Kali on the walls of the outpost. But there were limits to the patience and tolerance of the doctors. When Muslim women with cholera would not have a rectal swab taken by a male doctor, the doctors would give up on her and turn to the long line of other patients. The lack of economic resources was also reflected in conditions and limitations of the Institute’s laboratory facilities. Contrasting sharply with my lab experience at UF, in which aseptic technique is the single overarching rule, I was now working with cholera and carcinogens with no gloves, using toilet paper as Kimwipes and re-using instead of disposing of pipette tips and other lab materials. Water is rationed, even for the labs there are no paper towels or soap. The lack of material resources was also a notable and meaningful new experience. Nothing is ordered from online catalog. If we needed antibodies, we had to raise the mice ourselves. And, when the infant mice we ordered lost their mother (and feeding source), I had to stay up all night to hand feed 19 infant mice with a syringe. I collected pond water leaning over the sides of bamboo suspension bridges, in the rain. When there was a transport strike, I had to walk the 4 hours to work so that I would not lose the work and results of a weeklong experiment. The difficulties I encountered are just the tip of the iceberg for public health researchers and providers. For me, studying Cholera was a compelling experience. Not only is it a research challenge, but its transmission is exemplary of so many of the public health issues facing vulnerable populations in developing nations around the world: limited access to prevention services, inadequate financing of health and prevention programs, and, sadly, a lack of commitment to a basic human right to clean water and sanitation. Studying cholera has allowed me to wed my considerable research skills and experience to my interest in and commitment to furthering social justice issues. My involvement with activism in the university and community has taught me the rewarding complexity of social and political justice which I hope to translate to a career in public health. The work in India was challenging just as I imagine my future work will be. Questioning people’s medical history in the “slums” felt intrusive. The medical outpost barely had enough medicine for colds yet was constantly confronted with every scary disease from drug resistant tuberculosis to leprosy. On the clinical days, it was hard to understand and work with a person who would neither take a vaccine nor give one to their child. An entire day of lab work could be lost from a single power outage. The challenges facing global health are endless and multifaceted. I want my graduate studies to teach me to strengthen the understanding of the major health issues of vulnerable populations. The questions that jump off my lab bench are the questions that confront public health. They are the global questions of culture, class, religion, complicated with history, stories, and a juxtaposition of worlds. But they are relevant and urgent and the questions that I want to be answering for the rest of my life.

Children in the slums

Last week in Kolkata

My final week in Kolkata. My final week in Kolkata. I fit in so much that here is a brief recap:

Got back from Rajasthan and was suffering from post-vacation blues. Waking up and going to work just wasn’t going to cut it anymore after nights under the stars and days exploring new worlds. I started another round of experimental hell week, which made work just barely bearable. The mice screwed up the results again and I ended up with only 9 data points (after 21) so it’s not even worth reporting.

On Wednesday night, Sebastian and James from Mt. Abu came down to Kolkata and met Michael and I at a pub for some beers. We sat down at a big wood table for hours and people kept sitting next to us. We met Dan, an Australian, who was in Kolkata for a week and a slurring couple from Ireland.

Friday night we all (Sebastian, James, Dan, Michael, 2 guys who met Sebastian in Kolkata, and me) went to the pub for drinks, and then out to a club. In America, I have only been to one club, where some guy licked my face, so I didn’t have very high hopes. Before the club Dan, Michael and I sat at a street stand and were served 2 plates full of steaming Chinese momos. I love Kolkata.

All 7 of us (excluding the driver) packed into a tiny taxi and drove around to several clubs to check them out. Clubs treat women like royalty. I was always allowed in for free immediately, and the men had to pay huge fees and then sometimes were looked over at the door to see if they were desirable enough to be allowed in. We settled on the club Venom, which was on the 11^th floor, chic as hell, and had an incredible view of the city. The guys didn’t have to pay because we met the DJ on the way up and he let us in for free. We got it like that. The club was great. They had a rule that no man could be on the dance partner without a female partner. I was in heaven. With 7 dance partners, I never left the dance floor. Until I had to, because I had to go into work the next day (Saturday.)

Saturday was spent at the New Market in a blur of haggling, loud hand gestures, sweat, cha, and tears. And I finished all my present shopping for my family.

Sunday night Moumita invited Michael and I over to her parent’s house for dinner. Her parents have a very simple house with a rooftop garden that overlooks a lake. The house is under construction so all the women (Moumita, the mother, and 2 younger sisters) all sleep in the same bed. They sisters were beautiful and excited to show me their new (and first) computer the family just installed. Moumita’s mother didn’t know English but was elegant and understated and all smiles. When Moumita explained I want to learn how to cook Bengali food, she had me pull up a chair and watch as she squatted, kneading bread onto a wood piece on the floor. Moumita showed me how to make Cha masala.

The dinner was a feast beyond my wildest dreams. We had vegetable fried rice, delicious marinated chicken, puffy buttery bread, subjee, chutney… After dinner the father showed us some of his expert photos he had taken of the family and their vacation. They were so beautiful. It was obviously a passion. We showed interest so he brought out…every photo he’d ever taken. Meanwhile, the mother ushered me into the backroom with the sisters and took out one of her Sarees. Moumita explained to her mother my saree wrapping nightmares and wanted to make sure I could properly fold one so I could wrap Fiona (my sister) up in the one I bought her. We practiced after dinner over and over until I finally got the hang of it. I felt like such an Indian girl, practicing with her mom in the back room. The mother kept insisting we stay the night, but I think the King size bed was full enough. So reluctantly, we left the warm family and made our way back to the apartment.

The next night I took Moumita and Michael out to a very fancy restaurant and we all ordered drinks, appetizers and big meals. It was fun. I gave moumita her early birthday/going away present: a silver ring and earring set inlaid with peridot (her birthstone).

The next day my lab threw me a party. All of the sirs sat on chairs with Michael and I while the our lab co-workers stood and served everyone food and drink. Each person took a turn saying a very personal goodbye to me. I’m such a sucker for nostalgia, it took all I had to keep from crying. They gave me a mug with a pictures of me in a saree and with my hands hennaed. After each gift was presented, everyone clapped, and the gift was passed around and admired.

On my final day in lab I took my coworkers and sirs out to a delicious fancy lunch. It seemed the courses never stopped coming. In India, people order many courses of food, but the concept of your own meal is not understood. Instead, the waiter serves a little bit of each dish onto each plate. The meal turns into more of a tasting event.

My last night, Michael brought us home my favorite Chicken Tikka Masala from Shiraz. I got my hands hennaed and my eyebrows tweezed one more time. In the morning he picked me up with chicken rolls for the plane and took me to the airport. The long taxi ride was surreal and heartbreaking. I was leaving. Probably forever. Michael and I hugged for a long time at the airport. We had such an accelerated relationship and had grown so close over the last 3 months. I will really miss him. He promised to tell me about lab, Kolkata, and our apartment via email as he will be staying for another 4 months. I boarded the plane for another 30 hour adventure back to the states and said goodbye to the city from the sky.

I’ll be updating one more time so stay tuned…

My labmates

Mt Abu --> Jaipur

On the train ride to Mt. Abu, I got very sick. Thankfully, Michael and I had two rows of bunk beds to ourselves. All of a sudden at one train stop, 300 Indian men poured into our car pressing against us. They hung from the tops of bunk beds as the men on the bottom spread out a blanket on their laps and started to play cards. I was squashed against the metal grate of a window with a ripped bag over my head throwing up again and again. They never blinked an eye. I should have puked on them. Michael finally helped me push some of them off (my!) bed so I could lie down.

The train stopped at Mt. Abu road, the base of the mountain. We had to take a bus up to the top. The temperature was cool and damp. The bus sped around sharp tiny curves with plummeting cliffs on either side. The mountains were lush and veiled with mist. I could hear the Jurassic Park theme song in my head. We decided to save Mt. Abu for the end of the trip so we could slow down and bask in the mountain’s relaxing shadow.

I was really looking forward to the hotel, a promising budget retreat with yoga in the mornings and cooking classes! We get there, into this moldy little crapper of a room, where the toilet “flushed” when you poured big buckets of water down the bowl, where the staff were really obnoxious and assertive (a complete first in my experience with Indian hospitality), there was no yoga, and the food sucked so I had no interest in learning how to cook it. Sweet!

We met two other American travelers staying in the hotel, Sebastian and James, and decided to visit the famous Delwara temples. The temple gates were almost hidden in the mountain and warned any women during her monthly cycle to not enter or she would be punished. I ducked into one of the temples. If you squinted it looked like well lit cave, with stalactites and stalagmites covering floor and ceiling. But really, each pillar, inch of wall and ceiling, each crevice was carefully carved marble depicting dancing women and gods. So quiet and hidden, it was easy to pretend the temple was lost and I was the first to find it years later. Photos were prohibited but…maybe my photobucket has a few of them.

After our excursion we walked around the cleanest marketplace I have seen in India thus far. I became addicted to boiled corn rubbed with salt and lime. You hold it piping hot in its own husk. We picked up some beers (it was easy to find—that how you know this was a tourist town) and rented a paddle boat at Mt. Abu’s famous valley of a lake called Nikki Lake. Sebastian brought his Iphone and played some music. “Buffalo soldier, dreadlock rasta, stolen from Africa…” But in the night, in the paddleboat with a beer, we could have easily been in Jamaica. Wherever. That’s the beauty of traveling your mind, heart, body, conversations are in a million places at once. It almost doesn’t matter where you actually are, it’s all part of it.

The next morning we went to the deliciously cult-like Brahama Kumaris meditation center. We were given a tour by an Indian dressed in white, around the white meditation hall (that fills with thousands every morning), into the white garden, and into a white van. We went to the white “hospital” where I could see neither doctors nor patients and were led into a white room. We were greeted by a brainwashed (I mean calm and serene) Swedish woman who played music and led our hour-long meditation session. I fell asleep. That’s good, right?

We took the advice from the Planet Guide and called up trekker extraordinaire: Charles. He promised us a no-bullshit fast paced informative tour up the 5,000 ft of Mt. Abu. He was quite handsome, young, and had a very interesting Indian Australian accent. He would frequently put down his walking stick and emphatically act out a personal experience, acting the roles of all people involved—accents included. We crept to the edge of a river, hanging onto vines for support to look at a baby crocodile. We crawled on our hands and knees to avoid thorns and jumped over rivers. I scaled a rock that was proooobably at a 75-degree angle. I ate wild berries. Every time we reached a plateau, I looked around and exclaimed, “This must be the most beautiful place in the world.” But we kept going higher. When we reached the mountain summit, I lay on a rock and could see the whole world. We were sitting in the clouds of Mt. Olympus. Eating bananas.

Our train back to Jaipur was fully booked so Charles booked Michael and I sleeper seats (I’m sorry—seat…singular) on a bus. It was so crazy. The beds were on top of the seats with a rail on one side and open windows on the other. The double bed was cramped and I kept pushing Michael over telling him to shrink a little and not take up so much room. (I’m so mean.) The bus was incredibly bouncy and you felt like you were going to fall over the cliff every time it hit a bump. “I will never fall asleep,” I thought. But I did. The bus stopped around every 3 hours (the entire trip took around 5 hours longer than the train) at really noisy bus stops with loud music and braying donkeys.

At around 3am I felt the bus stop. I had needed to go to the bathroom for the last 3 hours. I raced down the ladder, hit my head, and tried to find my shoes (hands groping around the filthy floor) contact-less and in the dark. I was frantic. I kept hitting Michael “wake up! help me find my shoes! Where is the toilet paper!?” (I really owe him.) Then the bus started to move and I started to cry. “I WILL pee myself.” I went back to the bed, put on my contacts with my filthy hands, which felt greeeat, and stumbled over people sleeping in the aisle to the front of the bus. The bus immediately stopped short and beckoned to a bush only 10 feet away. I was embarrassed to squat in front of bus with floodlights, but more scared of being in a bush, in the dark on a highway, with the possibility of the bus forgetting about me and driving away. So I wasted no time. And that is my India bathroom story.

We got to Jaipur sweaty and dirty and checked our bags into the bus cloakroom. We found a clean restaurant and I took an hour in their bathroom, washing up, brushing my teeth, and changing. After breakfast, we went to go see Jaipur’s famous City Palace, which was too boring to describe. Michael was sick the first time we visited Jaipur so he went to see the sights and I was hired by an auto driver to do some shopping. Textile (beautiful fabrics) shopping to be exact, which is Rajasthan’s specialty.

Shopping is so great, I have an auto driver take me right to the warehouse, (he gets commission), I get served cha and sit on an expensive cushy chair. Then men whisk around me showing me all sorts of pieces “at wholesale prices!” they promise. But I won’t have any of that. “I work in Kolkata trying to find a vaccine for Cholera. I have Indian wages.” I’ll say pressing them with guilt. Anyway, I did my homework and know what the prices should be. So I picked up many wall pieces and bed covers for my family and had them hand sew the borders and tie it up all nice and tight for easy transport.

The plane ride home was frightening. We flew through a lightening storm and I could see bolts through my window. My knuckles are still white.

Traveling has to be one of the best ways to spend a life and money. It was the most carefree and adventurous I have been in my whole life. When you’re traveling, it’s all about you. What you want to do next, all about meeting people, about exploring famous sites, eating food and traveling like a vagabond. Who wouldn’t want to do that? My trip to Rajasthan, was easily my best experience I have had in India, maybe even in my life.

I posted pictures of Mt. Abu on my photobucket!

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v635/celticsunflower/

Jodhpur --> Jaiselmer

I woke up from my nights “sleep” on the train cross-eyed, dirty, smelly, tired hot and so grumpy. Our original plan was to hang around Jodhpur for the day, leaving our bags in the train cloakroom, and then get back on another overnight train at midnight. I wouldn’t have any of that. I put my foot down and rented a hotel room for the day so we could take showers and rest. This midrange not budget very nice hotel was only $9…just to put things in perspective.

After a nap and shower, I went upstairs to the rooftop café that had a gorgeous view of Jodhpur’s famous fort. I had coffee (chilled by ice cream a delicious alternative to ice) and leaned back to savor my cleanliness. Next to me was a table with 2 women and a man from England. I introduced myself and joined their table. They were working with orphaned children in Udaipur. Lorna, had already been in Udaipur for around a year. I connected with them right away, they were compassionate, quick to laugh, talked a lot, and flexible. Perfect travel partners. When comparing schedules we found our travel plans were identical for the next 4 days!

We walked up dirt roads of Jodhpur and visited the Fort using these hilarious audio guides. The Fort was rich and complicated. We passed women’s handprints before they committed sati (throwing themselves onto their husband’s burning funeral pyre, or in the case of the fort, all of the Royal women throwing themselves in the fire rather than be killed by the opposing army), glittering Raja bedrooms, and large cannon ball holes. At the top of the fort, we sat on cannons and saw the whole city. Jodhpur is known as the blue city and all of the houses are painted blue. It’s a gorgeous sight.

On the way down the fort, a man beckoned for us to eat his “world famous Thalis” made fresh by his mother in their house. We sat on the rooftop and drank Lassi and fresh squeezed orange juice and watched little boys balancing in precarious positions (where are there mothers?!) over the rooftops flying kites. Our Thalis took hours to make but the conversation was good and the wind was warm so it didn’t matter. Full and happy we all piled into our one little hotel room and all took turns taking showers. This time I would be prepared for our midnight train, packed a separate “train bag,” and changed into more comfortable clothes.

I fell asleep straight away on the train exhausted from the long day. Except for stumbling out of my upper bunk bed in the middle of the night without my glasses, putting on some random guys shoes, and then almost falling into the squat toilet (hard enough to do on a moving train when fully awake and sighted), the train ride was great and easy.

We arrived in Jaiselmer at 5:00am and were picked up straight away by our camel safari leaders, thrown into the back of a jeep, and shipped off deep into the desert. Our group consisted of Michael and I, the three English people (Lorna, Kate, and Tim), an opera singer from San Fransisco (Emma), and a brother and sister German pair (whose names I forgot unfortunately.)

We left the jeep and sat on thick blankets while our three Indian guides made us chai, boiled eggs and toast with jam for breakfast. We were assigned camels (based on height I presume—mine was the smallest) and loaded up onto them. Mine was named Moley—as in Holy Moley! When the camel first stands, you feel like you are going to fall off in a bad way.

The desert wasn’t as much riding through sand dunes (although there were bits like that) but rather a very arid flatland with a sparse scattering of plants and dotted with sheep herders, sheepboys if you will. It was as romantic as it sounds. I rode my camel high and closed my eyes pretending I was on an epic voyage, just me and ol’ Moley. We hit a small sandstorm and I had to wrap my dupata around my face to avoid sand burn. We stopped in a village deep in the desert. The houses were very simple mud and straw top buildings with pathetic holes next to them for water. I can’t believe people live like that, what do they do? How must they think about the world?

We took a rest under a tree for lunch, our guides laid down thick blankets for us and started a fire to make us delicious cha and a lunch of rice, chapati, and fresh vegetables. We were royalty. After a luxurious 2 hour rest of talking and napping we got back on the camels (I WAS SO SORE) and head out to the sand dunes where we would be setting up camp. Our camels became silhouettes against the setting sun and rolling sand hills. I cannot believe how lucky I am.

At the dunes, we met 2 other Americans and played a game of hackey sack on the dune top. Some took turns running and jumping off the steep sides and landing in a flurry of sand. Desert children would come and introduce themselves and ask for oranges or sometimes just stand in the windy distance looking at us. More blankets were set up and we ate with our hands by firelight as the camels ran loose all around us. Tim brought out his harmonica and played silvery songs that drifted off into the desert and up into the starlit sky. “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound…”

We slept in blankets under the stars, no tents or coverings. This was the real deal. Snakes, scorpions, all sorts of crazy ass bugs be damned. I again wrapped my dupata around my head to go to sleep but still woke up caked in sand. At this point of the trip I’m so beyond needing to be clean that I welcomed the sand as an alternative to the usual dirt. After a breakfast of cha, eggs and toast, we head back on our camels, stopped for lunch, and then took a jeep back into the city of Jaiselmer.

We checked into the “Artist Hotel” and rearranged the traveling groups so the girls and boys stayed in separate rooms. I’m such a sucker for woman camaraderie. The rooms were shockingly beautiful with private balconies, fabrics all of the walls, and a beautiful open sky rooftop restaurant. I ate the most delicious dinner of my Indian life: “Desert Tandoori Chicken” with cilantro and crisp tomatoes and onions with fresh squeezed mango juice.

I had met the musician of the night earlier and he sang in that haunting Hindi way while playing sitar, looking at me and reaching his arms out to me singing songs about “Jesse.” (All Indians think that’s my name for some reason…must be the way I say it.) He was a real schmoozer. Needless to say he got my tip. He came over after and taught us all how to play the castanets and drums.

Earlier I had also talked to an Indian traveler, while waiting for the internet to free up, who was applying to public health schools. I now sat with him and he told me about how he worked for NGO’s for years but was ready to do something he felt was more concrete. Indians, he felt, are a lot like Americans in that they all just want the next big TV and spend every last cent on gaining higher material goods rather than doing good. His family thinks he’s crazy for wasting an international degree by coming back to India and still be poor.

My friends went to bed early but I lingered on the rooftop, had another cup of chai, listened to the waiters now off work tell funny Rajasthan stories (translated by my new Indian friend) and watched the Golden Fort’s lights shut down one by one. We weren’t the only ones on top Jaiselmer’s rooftop at night. Many families took advantage of the monsoon breeze and slept in sleeping bags on top of buildings. Jaiselmer must be one of the most comforting cities in the world.

The next day we split up into small groups and explored the city. Unfortunately, the camel ride took up 2 of our 3 days in Jaiselmer—a day was not nearly enough to see all of it. Known as the golden city, the houses look like ornate sandcastles and the Golden Fort sits on top with a view of the stretching desert that surrounds the city. A city in the middle of a desert. Doesn’t that sound like a fairytale? The local women’s colorful dresses pop even more brightly against the sun and gold. Tim, Emma and I sat on a rooftop ledge, legs dangling, looking at the cows squeezing into little alleyways that looked like moats in this sandcastle city. For the 50 millionth time this trip I thought “my god, where am I?”

We said goodbye to Emma and boarded another overnight train back to Jodhpur and back to the hotel we had stayed in 3 nights before. It was appropriate to say goodbye to Lorna, Kate and Tim in the same place we met. I really missed them.

But Michael and I were on another adventure: a train to Mt. Abu.

Jaipur → Agra (Part I)

I've decided to break my trip down into 3 parts. My whirlwind tour of Rajasthan started when the plane touched down in Jaipur: the hottest, dirtiest, cleverest city I’ve seen in my life. We checked into my (first!) budget hotel and set out into the garbage heat (literally piles of garbage were being burned everywhere) to find some food. There are no taximeters or set auto fares, everything is set up for maximum hassle and extortion. “Miss miss take my taxi, I give you good price, you enjoy now and pay later. Want to hire me for the day? Here are pictures of other white people having fun with me.” I learned to start shaking my head when I set out and not stop until we reached our destination. Overwhelmed, we didn’t go far to find a restaurant and sat down at the first clean place we could find. Rajasthan has northern Indian food! The food I’ve been craving! I had a delicious muttar paneer (tomato dish with peas and cheese), naan, and Rajasthan’s special Lassi (a yogurt drink.) Michael felt feverish so he spent the rest of the day/night in the hotel and I went to explore the city. I’d like to think I’m very savvy when it comes to bargaining. I’ve learned some key phrases “chi chi”- (shame on you), “bad karma” (which I use when they REALLY try to rip me off), “Eh Baba”- OH my god (in an exasperated way). I took 2 autos and realized everyone thought I was Indian! In the north, I blend right in! Jaipur is a bizarre city. People on elephants and camels pass BMWs and motorcycles. That sight, even after 8 days, still made me squeal. My first stop was the Hawa Mahal a very old palace built by the Raja for the women and courtesans of the court so they can look out on the city without the city ever seeing them. I got hired by a tour guide (that’s really what it feels like) and he took me around the amazing spiraling palace. There were 367 lattice windows the women could look out of but no one could see into. I could just imagine the archways and courtyards filled with swaying colored sarees and loud with bangles and anklets. I next wanted to visit Jantar Matal the famous outdoor observatory but it was kind of far away and would close in an hour! “That’s ok, we’ll make it if you hop on my scooter,” my handsome tour guide said. “Ok!” Stupid? Maybe. But thrilling. We sped through the city through an obstacle course of cow dung and toured the observatory. Built by another Raja, the bizarre observatory with huge structures and odd angles was set up so the sun told different information about the month, star alignment and time through the shadows made on the structures. The structures included the world’s largest sundial! I said goodbye to my tour man and not only 2 minutes later found myself in a middle of a parade! I found a very cushy seat on the roof of the tourist bureau (they were seating tourists for free and serving them tasty sweets) and watched twirling dancers and elephants pour out of the City Palace. The parade was beautiful, and like most of Rajasthan was at the same time bursting with color and shrouded by some kind of desert mystery. I grew bored because it moved very slow and walked instead down the deserted marketplace. I watched families on rooftops watching the parade. Even the poorest house looks a bit like a palace in Rajasthan because of the ornate architecture. I sat on a rail and this man came up to me and talked with me for about a half an hour. Next thing you know, I bought 2 puppets from him that I didn’t want for a price I didn’t want to pay. I don’t know how it happened. Feeling stupid I went back to the hotel and Michael and I went to dinner (at the same place :-p) and I ate a delicious stuffed tomato. We woke up at 4:30 (for the second day in a row. ooooooof.) and dragged our bags over to the train station. The only ticket we could book was the top class, known as 2AC, which stands for only a two-tier bunk bed and it’s an air-conditioned compartment. The bunk beds in this compartment (unlike the others) have a curtain that can be pulled to give each bed some privacy. This was luxury. We found two other white people sharing our compartment! (I have a theory the train conductors pair non-Indian sounding last names together on the train because the odds are too slim for it to have happened as much as it did). My first thought was “crap, now we have to be all social and I won’t be able to sleep.” But I’m so glad we were. They were a married couple, Leo from Brooklyn (!) and Paula from Colombia on their third anniversary. We talked for the entirety of the 4-hour ride and decided to stick together in Agra. We went straight to the Taj Mahal. 

 Of course. It was big, gorgeous, packed with tourists taking funny photos of them “holding” the Taj, and it looked exactly like all the photos I’ve seen. But I wasn’t awed. Countless things in India take my breath away but the Taj Mahal just wasn’t one of them. Anyway it was really hot and the white marble just reflected it all back in our faces. We lay in the shade under one of the pillars for a while and then decided we had enough and went to a hotel for drinks. No I’m sorry, we didn’t go to “A” hotel we went to “THE” hotel. The Oberoi hotel is the top rated hotel in India with a minimum of $650 a night. We sat in the bar, were served delicious drinks with ice (! all the water was filtered in their own private underground filtration system…duh) by bowing waiters, with a straight view of the Taj Mahal. But the marble halls and white walls didn’t last and we were back into the dirty heat. We said goodbye to our new friends and went to a restaurant where we ordered lots of food buuut Michael and I both read the time wrong and realized we only had 10 minutes to get our bags out of the cloak room and get on the train! We ran out of the restaurant screaming “sorry!” ran to the cloak room, but we forgot the receipt so I started fake crying and the guy FINALLY let us have the bags (which is scary by the way) we ran to the train and were on the waiting list! “Sorry there is no way you can get on this train.” I start fake crying again. Although it may have been more real than fake at that point. FINALLY we get onto the train. Our reward? A nice crowded, hot, smelly, dirty, loud, 3-tier, claustrophobic box of a train. All night.

Experiment Hell Week

My experiment was so disastrous it needed it's own soundtrack of prat falls and canned laughter.

My experiment: Grow lab cultured vibrio in a dialysis tube w/ filtered pond water, incubate the tube in a bucket of pond water and test infectivity of mice using 5 different incubation periods and 4 different lakes.

Moumita, Michael and I set out early Tuesday morning to collect lake water. We wanted to collect water from 5 ft below surface so the surface rainwater doesn't affect pH, salinity etc. I made a contraption to connect the centrifuge tubes to a 5 ft stick and carried jugs "sterilized" by my constant scrubbing with ethanol.

Besides the crowd that formed to watch a little white girl reach into their pond going "Eew Eew Eew Eew" the first collection was completed without a hitch. The second we found the bank to be too shallow to collect from 5 ft so I asked some kids playing in the water to dive down and fill up my tubes for me. I don't know how I am going to write this up in my experimental procedure. "...and then I made these little Indian children collect my water samples." I gave them 10 ruppees, which I found later could have gotten me in trouble with the communist government.

The next lake we collected on this Indiana Jones style, rickety, babmoo suspension bridge. I'm on my stomach, leaning over when it starts to pour rain. I was waiting for Angelina Jolie to sweep down from the heavens. The 4th lake we had to finagle in the pouring rain for this guy to collect water for us. I may have lied and said we were testing the lake for Cholera. I never knew science could be so full of deciet and adventure.

To filter the pond water I had to use these 5 ml syringes. It took 3 hours and a self diagnosis of carpal tunnel to filter all the water. It's funny that I thought I could pick time points--as if I have that much control over anything. The time points adjusted to when the stars aligned and I could culture the vibrio fast enough to put it in the dialysis tubes. We ran out of dialysis tube clips, so we had to painstakingly seal them with thread.

The mice arrived a day earlier than expected. These 20 little pink wrigling squeaky things with no eyes or ears. AND no mother. We forgot to order the mother. "Just put another mother in there and as long as she's lactating she'll feed them." I turned around for 2 seconds and the mother was in the corner eating one of my time points err... mice. Fuck. Fuuuuck. "You're going to have to take them home and feed them milk through the night every 4 hours through a syringe."

I did behavioral work in my previous lab for a year. Hours spent alone in an animal room running the mice through drills. I would come out every day smelling like them. I was the crazy mouse woman. They're baaaack.

The mice shook the whole way home. I tried pressing an earphone playing Fiona Apple to the box--it always makes me feel calmer. But who knows--they're mice. I was a real happy camper at 4 am blearily and patiently waiting until 19 mice had their fill of milk. Only one died over the night! I should consider switching species.

By the next late night (still in lab at 10pm) I was ready to innoculate them 2 more had died. Then the news came that their would be a transportation strike the next day. THe most important day of my experiment. I went through my options: Staying at a hotel near the institute would be too expensive, the guest houses were being renovated, I couldn't hire a driver because there would be no way for the driver to reach the car without a bus, so I could walk the 15 km to the institute. And I'm not even getting paid. Exhausted in the taxi ride home late at night I forgot my bag in the car losing: my cell phone, books, GRE flash cards, my glasses, deoderant etc etc etc.

All night I worried about my mice and the experiment and grieved my lost things. When I woke, it only took an hour of walking before a private bus took me the rest of the way. When I saw the mice I almost started crying. 2 more mice had died and 6 mice had rubbed off their markings (I had marked each mouse with PERMANENT marker to represent an individual time point and lake.) SO I could only use 8, out of 20.

The results were decent, they showed an obvious trend correlating longer incubation periods with less infectivity. Similar to literature results. But with only 8 samples it all means zilch. Remember that joke about the mathematician, physicist, and the statistician trying to put out a fire and the statistician created more fires so she could have more data points to analyze the situation? I have to repeat the experiment with many more fires. Then maybe I'll jump into one.

Last Weekend

Saturday I was still recovering from being sickish but completely anxious about staying in bed another day. And the thought of more Tom Hanks. When we got a call in the morning formally inviting us to a dinner with Dr. Nair at the Calcutta Club I made it my daily goal to pull it together and go out to dinner looking gorgeous in a Sari. 45 minutes of multiple internet videos on how to put on a Sari later and I looked like a mummy. I’m blaming it on the fact my Sari still has it’s blouse piece in it, which I have yet to cut out and give to a seamstress to make, so the Sari is an awkward length. I was going to give up but my mom e-yelled at me that it was a formal dinner and I better go looking nice. So I wrapped the Sari around my head and went downstairs to the Ladies Beauty Parlor. They all laughed and took immediate action, a few tucks, pleats, safety pins, and 30 ruppees later (approx 75 cents) and I was an Indian again. Michael and I met Dr. Ganguly and his wife and went to the club. The Calcutta Club is a British Colonial era country club. Huge leather sofas and big mahogany antique tables and basically composed of numerous sitting rooms. The membership is no longer British but almost 100% old fancified Bengali people. We met Dr. Nair and his wife, their friend Maya, and an old student of Dr. Nair's. For 2 hours before dinner we sat in lounge chairs and drank wine (and in my case fresh lime soda.) Maya talked about the work she does with widowed women and prostitutes (both are equally outcast in society). Now her work is entirely devoted to helping the destitute from Hurricane Isla. Hurricane Isla affected over 300,000 people in South Bengal, wiping out mud homes and killing all crops and livestock with the saltwater. Almost two months later people are still dying from starvation every day. And if that isn’t fire and brimstone enough, the waters have brought mountains of scorpions and snakes and the tigers are leaving the forest out of starvation and are literally eating people every day. None of this is on the news in this communist propaganda country. The government says it’s getting cleaned up and people are living normally again. Maya, whose small NGO is just drowning in the wake of the waters, went to the government to ask for money. She is an NGO, they said, and gets money from foreigners. She doesn’t need their money. Maya was brilliant telling this story. She was emphatic and funny and cried at the right moments. She reminded me of my grandmother, who won’t give in to wrinkles and Velcro shoes, but instead still puts on her makeup and gold and does her hair and outfit every day. She explained to me the excitement behind an arranged marriage. How you peek at him around the curtain. You dream about him and shake the first time you’re introduced. You know you’ll have a lot in common because he is from the same social background and culture as you. And then your wedding day, and you peek behind your veil and finally get to know him. And you fall in love. Good story, but I’ll still like to know how my Romeo takes his coffee before till death do us part. Dinner was a huge buffet of Indian goodness. I like buffets here because you can take exactly as much as you want and don't get the evil eye for not finishing everything on your plate. After dinner Dr. Nair took Michael and I to the club bakery to pick out delicious morsels for breakfast. He bought us ample muffins and also a beautiful chocolate arrangement. Sunday Feeling a lot better, I woke up and started one of my Sunday adventures, just me and Kolkata and the subway. 

I went to park street and sat in this nice little air-conditioned café, had a sandwich, a huge delicious coffee and a mango smoothie. I made my way to see the Kali temple at Kalighat. As soon as I approached the temple I was hounded with priests asking to take me around. I knew the drill, they show you around, you pay. But I was willing and I’m glad I did. He showed me the fertility tree which was barren of fruit itself but young woman tied stones onto its branches in the hopes of becoming pregnant. He showed me the disgustingly smelly stone slab used for goat sacrifice where he promised once Kali had her fill, the meat was given to the poor. He took me to the very holy spring Kalighat, where the temple got its name. People bathe in the pool (along with randomly floating plastic bags and I’m sure lots of cholera) every morning as a ritual. The priest whipped out a “guest book” where the same handwriting had different people’s names and their very generous donations of $2000 ruppees (appx $40 ha ha yeah right). I gave my donation of $100 ruppees and when I told him I work at the ID Hospital working to find a cure for cholera and he gave me some of my money back. Then a bunch of crows shit on me. All over me. Karma? I braved through the poop and made my way to the famous and still active Mother Theresa house for the dying. Just cots and cots of gnarled bodies and blank hollow faces staring at the ceiling waiting for death. The volunteers sat by them and tried to assuage their pain and moans with kindness. I asked how I can volunteer and will try to as soon as I get back from Rajasthan. 

 I leave for Rajasthan in 8 hours (4am)!! I haven’t updated much this week because I have been completely swamped with an intense experiment all week. The experiment was like a Monty Python skit of difficulties. I’ll update about it while I’m in Rajasthan. Wish me luck!!!