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.