Vibrant Varanasi

There are many places in India that people describe by telling you that you'll either "love it or hate it." No place typifies this statement more than the maelstrom that is Varanasi. The city is located in the northeastern state of Uttar Pradesh, which stretches from Delhi to the eastern state of Bihar, and borders Nepal along its northern boundary. Considered a very holy city by Hindus, Varanasi sits on the Ganges, at a place so far downriver from its headwaters that the pollution in the river has accumulated to a disturbing degree. It is the oldest continuously inhabited city in India, and one of the oldest in the world. Yet, the city has been pillaged so many times that few of its buildings are over 100 years old. When I pictured India from the US, what I saw in my mind's eye was Varanasi, with its colors, people, markets, pushcarts, pollution and cows. We had been warned by many about the difficult of traveling there; the book describes Varanasi as being worse than Agra, home to the Taj Mahal, in terms of being touristy and having touts harassing you for money or to take you to their shops. But off we went, Hannah, Sean and I, having lost Patricia in the Kashmir debacle and Tangi preferring to fly straight to Kolkata. 

Dinner!

On Thursday afternoon, the three of us boarded a train in Delhi, traveling for the first time in the AC compartments, rather than in Sleeper. Having traveled only in Sleeper thus far, AC was almost unrecognizable. Each berth contained two bunk beds, sleeping four to a berth, no one was standing or waiting to sit in your seat, and the tinted windows to the outside prevented the usual stares from passersby on the platform. We settled in and bought thalis for dinner from a vendor on the train, selling them from a cloth bag. We sat and chatted for a bit, me changing my seat to avoid the creepy staring of the stranger inhabiting the fourth bed of our berth, and easily went to sleep on the beds in the train. We woke up on the other side of India, emerging into the daylight like hatchlings with our backpacks on and out faces steeled to avoid the inevitable tour guides and auto wallahs. Indeed, we were followed from the minute we stepped onto the platform by a guy who later turned out to be an auto wallah but who was not wearing the standard grey uniform and looked like he just wanted our money. After some haggling, we settled on a price with the main auto organizer guy, as they have a number system at the station to ensure equitable distribution of business among the auto wallahs. Unfortunately for us, this meant we were going with our clingy new "friend," who, from the second we sat in his auto, began to berate us, and especially Hannah, for "judging" him and shooing him away before.  Hannah tried to explain that we have to protect ourselves, but he kept insisting what a great guy he was and how wrong we had been, producing emails from a person in New York, thanking him for showing him around Varanasi. After our long train ride, the last thing we wanted was to be lectured about jumping to conclusions. In any case, he parked the auto and showed us the way to the guest house, through the dark, narrow streets of the Old City, dodging the cow dung lying in wait like smelly mines in a field. We checked in, ate some breakfast, and rested for a few hours.

Around noon, we set off in search of lunch, finding a recommended bakery that serves a huge variety of cheeses. Hannah and I watched as Sean ordered fondue and then proceeded to just eat his bowl of cheese when the bread ran out. So that was fun. After lunch, we walked through the winding alleys and  descended the stairs to the ghats, small piers from which people depart in boats, enter the river to bathe, or just sit and watch the world go by. The river in Varanasi is the city's beating heart. While polluted and filthy, it is host to every possible life process that could include water. Children play in the river, jumping off boats and splashing in the water before scrambling up the stairs of the ghat to repeat the performance. Women bring clothes to wash in the river, hanging them to dry on every available post or standing object. Families bathe their children and each other, shampooing their hair and then bending to rinse the soap in the grimy, green water. Herders bring buffaloes and goats to wash and cool off by the shore. Sadhus, Hindu holy men, and people from all walks of life come to the Ganges to perform pujas, washing their sins away, filling containers with contents of the holy Ganges to take home with them.  Pilgrims stand waist deep in the water, sometimes in lungis, sometimes in full saris or salwar kameez, sometimes naked, filling small clay and metal dishes with water and touching it to their foreheads and lips. Rowers sit idly on the ghat, waiting for tourists to ask for a trip down the river, making repairs on the boats and waiting for pitch on the bottom to dry. Women sweep the stairs and open plazas of the ghats with knee-high brush brooms, removing dust and trash that will be replaced moments after they finish. The buildings, largely crumbling and in disrepair, loom over the river, built high on the hill to avoid flooding when the river swells during the monsoon. Barbers, often cutting the hair of men in mourning, but also doing routine shaves and trims, set up shop by placing a mirror on a wall and a chair to face it. Locals sit in stands along the ghat, selling marigolds, incense, candles, prayer cloths, beads, crystals and vessels for prayer in the water. Other vendors display water bottles and snacks for tourists, and all the while, goats, cows, dogs, buffaloes, and a rare chicken or two are passing by, enjoying and benefitting from the gifts of the Ganges as much as anyone else, eating garbage and shitting where they please. Brilliant colors infuse the saris of the women, as well as the boats, and the orange robes of sadhus stick out against the neutrals of the ghat. The scene is beautiful in a fascinating way, a way that prevents you from turning your head for fear of missing a second of action.

We walked for about an hour, the shadows becoming longer, until we reached the smaller of the "burning ghats." Being a holy city, Varanasi is an auspicious place to be cremated, as it is believed that doing so will allow a person to be released from the cycle of reincarnation if their soul is deemed worthy. Bodies are brought and shipped from all over India and the world to be cremated on the Ganges--literally: we saw a box with a mailing label from Saudi Arabia. There are two main burning ghats in the old city, and on the first day we walked to the smaller one. Locals stand at these ghats offering to give explanations about the cremations in exchange for either money or the chance to take you to a shop, from which they receive commission. We started talking to a very nice man from Varanasi, who explained the rituals and practices of the cremation. First, he said that the whole body is not sent out into the river; rather, for men, only the chest/shoulder is left in the river, and for women, only the hip. This is because these body parts are considered the centers of strength for each gender. If the soul is to be released from the cycle of reincarnation, the fish and animals in the water will eat and decompose the flesh. If they person's soul was not pure enough to escape reincarnation, the fish will leave the body alone and it will not decompose. 

Pile of wood and the temple containing the eternal flame

The funeral pyres must burn for twenty-four hours and are tended to by a specific group from the Dalit (Untouchable) caste. These people, the poorest and most shunned of the poor and shunned, are not paid for their grueling labor. It is traditional for families to leave earrings and nose rings and other precious objects on their loved ones during cremation, so people are cremated with all kinds of jewelry on them. The men who tend the fires may keep any gold or valuables they find in the river following cremations. You can see them in waist and chest deep water, with large shallow pans, sifting carefully through the polluted silt for their livelihood.  It is extremely taboo for anyone other than these people to keep valuables they find in the Ganges that may have belonged to someone who was cremated there. Thought the families of those cremated do not pay those who do the literal dirty work, they do pay for the wood used in the pyre, which ranges in price from expensive sandalwood to cheap mango wood and several steps in between. It takes over 300 kilos of wood to cremate one person--logical, considering how long the fire has to blaze, but intense when you consider how much wood that takes. Each burning ghat contains a temple-like structure, housing an "eternal flame" that Hindus believe was lit by the destroyer god Shiva over 4,000 years ago and has never been extinguished. When the fire is to be lit, the man in mourning--either the oldest or youngest son, usually--takes a handful of brush and lights the end with the sacred fire. He brings it to the pyre, and walks around the body five full times, touching the flame to the wood on each rotation. We watched this happen, the mourner dressed in white, with his head shaven, but for a small patch in the back. It is inappropriate for funeral attendees to cry or show emotion, as this inhibits the soul from resting peacefully and avoiding reincarnation. It is for this reason that women are never allowed to attend these funerals. You know those women--you can never trust them with that moodiness! Though it was outlawed by the British over 100 years ago, women continued to perform sati, the practice of a widow throwing herself on her husband's funeral pyre and self-immolating. Following several high profile incidences of this, the Indian government passed stricter laws to prevent sati in 1987. When we asked our guide why there were no women at the funerals, he gave the explanation of women interfering with peaceful closure by showing emotions, and followed up by saying, "Women used to throw themselves on their husband's burning bodies. This is better, nah?"

Shopping for silk

When our lungs started to choke on ash, we followed the explainer man to his family's silk shop, where we ooohed and aaahed at the truly brilliant silk handwork of tablecloths, scarves and saris that were way out of our price range. After the merchant had opened what seemed like every package he owned, we headed out, much to his disappointed, but not before poor Sean was guilted into buying something. The three of us got in an auto and headed to Assi Ghat, one of the larger ghats, that is the furthest south of the major ghats in Varanasi. Children that looked about nine or ten approached us, selling candles to send down the river for puja. We were shocked at how good their English was, considering how poorly our students speak the language, and they told us that they go to school during the day and only do this in the evening. The kids were so sweet and adorable, asking us questions, playing in the sand, laughing those genuine laughs that only kids are capable of. One sidled up to me after we had been with them for a while and asked me to buy a candle, which I refused. He then asked for a mango juice, to which I happily obliged. He led me to the nearest cafe, alternating between running forward and waiting for me to catch up. I asked him where his shoes were and he said he didn't have any; I wanted to buy him a pair but everything was already closed for the evening. I bought him his drink and he bounded away, meeting up with his friends and sipping his soda through a long straw. I thought about how dangerous this occupation was for these kids, how vulnerable it made them to walk up to strangers and solicit money. But what can I do?

After a long night of, ahem, indigestion following the felafel I ate for dinner, I woke up early and took a walk on my own along the ghat. The place was bustling, with tons of people walking around, schmoozing, washing, watering, fixing, selling, buying, fortune telling, sweeping, begging, shaving, boarding boats, rowing boats and unloading boats. A man had me sit down so he could but the red tikka on my forehead and lead me in saying a blessing, but I hightailed out of there when he asked me for 1,000 rupees. I took tons of pictures and made my way back to the guest house, where Sean had left his room without telling us and Hannah and I had breakfast. We headed down the ghat in the opposite direction to where we had been, reaching the larger burning ghat and viewing the ceremonies from the balcony of a nearby building. We wound through the labyrinth of wood piles, needing to escape the smoke and ash that burned our lungs and stung our eyes, and then twisted and turned our way through the alleys of the old city to reach a place that serves only the most delicious lassis in the world. The yogurt drinks were served in unglazed earthenware cups that were discarded after one use--but weren't plastic! Thanks, ridiculously low cost of labor in India! Making our way to a famous temple, we were denied access because they wanted to see our passports (seriously), which we didn't have on us (obviously), and we exited the old city. A rickshaw ride later, we found ourselves at a recommended fixed price textiles shop, where we spent the next two hours poring over incredible, affordable silks and pashminas. The shop owner was a rare gem, going our of his way to make sure we knew his goods were authentic, asking us to guess which scarves were better quality (got it wrong every time but one), and showing us how to tell the difference by burning strands of fiber and having us smell and feel the difference. After some happy purchases, we returned to the guest house to find Sean and I took a much needed nap.

Evening puja

In the evening we headed down to the ghat to observe the nightly puja, observed by literally hundreds if not thousands of people including locals, tourists, and pilgrims. The long, narrow boats clustered near the ghat, forming what looked like a flotilla of spectators. We stayed a few minutes and listened to the singing, before heading away from the crowd and getting dinner at the bakery again. The next day we packed our bags, hung out in the hostel and read for a bit, before strong-arming our way through the swarming Sunday foot traffic in the Old City to get to a waiting taxi. All in all, we had an incredible experience in Varanasi and felt privileged to have been there. To Kolkata we flew!

To see my photos from Varanasi, click here.

Varanasi Teaser

Hurrah! I have returned from my most recent journeys in one piece and with stories to tell! I am in the process of writing about my experiences, but in the meantime, click this link to enjoy these photographs from the first leg of our trip, Varanasi. Be sure to read the captions in which I explain some of the scenes! For all you East Coasters, stay safe in the storm, cozy up and enjoy the photos.

Sending love from Mother India,
Yael

Milk Migration

In India, the ways that people have been doing things for hundreds, if not thousands, of years are performed alongside some of the most ubiquitous modern technology. Many of the things I see every day are so basic and obvious, I wonder why we don't do it this way in the US. So many aspects of daily life involve community; it's no wonder people feel so comfortable giving unsolicited advice and being in "your' personal space all the time. 

On Friday afternoons, my roommates and I, tired from the week's work, usually take it easy and stay at home. Saturdays are the days we explore this crazy megacity, see movies and go out to dinner before we go out at night. Sunday is our day for recovery, and we usually spend it at home, catching up on emails, cooking for the week, doing laundry. This past Sunday afternoon, I headed down the street to the Mother Dairy down the block, and the corner store next to it to get bread and milk and other stuff for the week. Mother Dairy is a national distributor of milk and dairy products, serving as the middleman between farmer-owned dairy cooperatives and individual consumers. Every day from 10AM to 1:30PM, and again from 4PM to 10 PM, the shutter of the little stall is lifted and the disgruntled but generous man who operates the store awaits the customers from across the black granite counter. He always seems grumpy but acts glad to see me, patient with my flailing Hindi and with the children who can't decide which ice cream to get. Next to the counter are two machines that look like those automatic coffee vending machines, but instead of a small niche for a flimsy plastic cup to drop down from, there is a huge space between the spout and the drain. 

"Three Cows" by Subodh Gupta,  National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi

On Sunday afternoons, people come from all over the neighborhood, mostly children with a few aunties thrown in the mix, bearing tall, empty, aluminum canisters. The children come holding the weightless cylinders by the long, wire handles, banging them lightly against their legs as they walk. They wait in line, pay the Mother Dairy, and fill their containers to the top at the milk dispensers before heading back home, weighed down by their loads. Like bees leaving the hive to get pollen for the queen, the kids head out when the shadows are long, pockets full of change for the milk and sometimes a cold treat, fetching milk for their mothers and grandmothers who await them at home. It's such a simple act: buying milk. There's nothing fancy or exciting about going to the Mother Dairy with an empty can, filling it at the machine and going home. It's not that you can't buy milk without your own container--milk also comes in boxes and plastic bags. Yet the way that it happens in this way is so communal. Plastic and cardboard aren't wasted on packaging. Kids see their friends and neighbors before the hectic week begins. The grumpy man who works at Mother Dairy spares some milk for the families that live in makeshift slums by the side of the road and the unbathed children who hold out their empty hands to him. The fruit wallah and vegetable wallah play cards in the park next to the dairy,  jumping up and making their way to their carts when they see a potential customer approach their carts.

The Mother Dairy is literally around the corner from our house, but I get to see all this meeting and interaction the second I step out my door. The building on the corner is under construction, and that in itself is a sight to behold. The construction crew consists of both men and women, with men doing most of the hand work and women doing most of the carrying and transporting of materials. They are always wearing saris, usually chiffon and always very colorful, with the pallu made long so as to cover their heads with it. They place a small terry cloth ring on their heads, on top of which they balance up to eight red bricks without anything to help them hold it or balance. Sometimes they have big baskets that they fill with dirt or concrete powder to bring it wherever it's needed. On Krishna's birthday they decorated the inside of the unfinished building with colorful banners and marigolds. I wonder where these workers live, how it can be socially acceptable here for women to do such physical labor, when there are so many other restrictions on what they may and may not do. I think about how difficult it is for me to walk in a sari, tripping every few feet, and often holding it up to allow me to move, and how gracefully these women schlep bricks on their heads and lay mortar for the walls. 

The stray dogs in the neighborhood are familiar to me now; like the seniors who congregate daily in the park across the street, the dogs often congregate to laze in the shade under cars, bark at birds and sniff the trash. At night they sleep on top of cars, roused rudely from their slumber in the morning by commuters and cleaners. Men pass by on bicycles at all hours of the day, a bag hanging from their handlebars, soliciting recyclable cardboard and newspapers which they sell by the kilo to collection centers. 

Sunday afternoons are relaxed here, but so much happens all the time in this neighborhood, in this megacity, that I feel like I'm the only one for whom these afternoons are lazy.

On Thursday we leave for three days in Varanasi and then a week in Kolkata to celebrate the major festival of Durga Puja. In other words, it may be a few weeks until I write again. Until then, enjoy the rest of what the internet has to offer! 

Sending much love from Mother India, xoxox

When To Let Go

So sorry for the delay in posting, but if it makes you feel any better, this post is twice as long! A major change happened in my life here, in the my roommate, Patricia, was forced to resign her grant and leave the country. Incidentally, this news came to me during my trip to Ladakh, a place in North India on the border with Tibet. Because these events happened at the same time, I couldn't separate them in my mind, and it made the most sense for me to write about it as one long post instead of two separate ones. To see the rest of my photos, click the link here or at the bottom of the post.

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Two weeks of vacation! For those of you that might not be aware, I finished working as an assistant teacher at Clear View on a Friday and flew to India for the Fulbright the following Sunday. While we'd had a few long weekends since we arrived at the end of june, the last time I had more than three or four days off work was my spring break in April. After much deliberation over where to go with the two weeks I had been gifted thanks to exams the kids had to take, I decided to go north. I booked a flight to Leh, the largest city in Ladakh,  region in the northeast corner of India, right on the border with Tibet in the Himalayas. I thought I might want to see Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir, and the flight back to Delhi was so much cheaper from there that I booked it and figured I would spend a few days there before heading back. Hannah and Tangi wanted to stay in Delhi to save money and work on their applications, and Patricia's break started the week before mine, since her school runs on a different schedule. Patricia is super outdoorsy, and really wanted to go on a trek in Kashmir, a troubled region of the country that many argue is the most beautiful place in India. Kashmir is on the border with Pakistan and has a serious political history, but Indian people have profusely encouraged me to go there, shrugging off warnings. Srinagar is one of the few places my students have visited outside of Delhi, and my friend Sári, whom I lived and volunteered with in Northern Ireland, had an incredible experience there. During our orientation, Vinita, one of the program administrators, had told us not to go to Kashmir, in the context of many things we were and were not supposed to do in India. We were not to go to Kashmir. We were not to go to Palika Bazaar. We had to wear salwar kameez to school. It was unsafe to eat fruit and vegetables on the street without washing and peeling it. They were warnings we took seriously, but also with the understanding that they are going to give us lots of extra precautions, if only to protect their own reputations lest something should God forbid happen to us. And so we took some of these warnings with a grain of salt, and when Patricia and I  thought about going to Kashmir, we considered that we had been told not to go, and decided that what USIEF didn't know wouldn't kill them.

Patricia is a tough cookie, having traveled in India by herself several times. When Hannah and I went to Shimla, Patricia had gone to Ladakh by herself and had an incredible experience.  And so Patricia hopped on a plane to Srinagar at 5AM on a Friday morning and we wished her well and were not particularly concerned about her. What we didn't expect was to receive a travel advisory that afternoon from the American Embassy in Delhi, warning US citizens that people in Srinagar had begun protesting the Innocence of Muslims video, that Americans posted in Kashmir were being evacuated, and that it would be risky for Americans to travel there at this time. Hannah and I were headed that afternoon for Jaipur, so I didn't get the email until later, but Hannah and Tangi called me from home to let me know and to ask if I thought we should contact USIEF to let them know that Patricia was in Kashmir. My opinion at the time was that it Patricia is smart and savvy and was anyway headed on a trek and would unlikely still be in Srinagar anyway. We had no way of reaching her, though we tried emailing her on the off-chance that she would check it. My thought was that USIEF would make a big deal out of her going, that there was nothing they could do and would therefore panic upon not being able to reach Patricia, and that if the situation was bad, Patricia would see it and come home. I was not in favor of telling USIEF but I of course understood why the other girls wanted to and was not going to tell them not to. For what it's worth, I also thought about the travel advisory having lived in Israel and Northern Ireland two places that outsiders would consider "high risk" and "dangerous" because of political conflict, but that really are safe places on an everyday basis. Of course if anything happens in Kashmir, the US is going to take every precaution ever, but that doesn't mean the sky is falling and it doesn't necessarily reflect what is actually happening on the ground.

By Saturday, the protests had continued and I read an article online reporting that tear gas had been fired.  At this point I got nervous and really wanted to hear from Patricia, but, again, I knew she was probably camping and out in nature somewhere. Meanwhile, after Tangi contacted USIEF  on Friday to notify them of Patricia's whereabouts, the staff were completely panicked, and called some of us several times over the weekend to see if we had heard from her. Finally, on Monday night as we walked from the metro to the groom's house in our Indian finery, my phone rang and Patricia was on the other end of the line. I was so relieved to hear her voice I could have cried. I yelled to the others that it was Patricia and immediately asked if she was alright and told her how worried we'd been.  I found out later that she had indeed been in the mountains, had returned and decided Kashmir was not where she wanted to be, and had decided to go to Ladakh early the next morning, where she would meet me. She'd had no idea that the unrest in Srinagar was considered so serious until she heard how relieved I was on the phone that night. Patricia gave me the phone numbers of the guy who was driving her to Leh and her friend in Leh whom she'd met there on her previous trip. I asked if I could forward the numbers to USIEF and then promptly called them to report that she was fine and give them her contact information.

The next day I flew to Ladakh, arriving at the airport early to get a window seat, passing out on the flight and opening my eyes to a spectacular view of the Himalayas sprawled out before me. Emerging from the tiny airport into the crisp, dry air of the mountains, I shared a cab with two Hungarians and two Israelis that I saw were waiting for cabs and headed into Leh. Patricia had told me on the phone to stay in the guest house she had recommended to me and that she would find me there or at the office of her tour guide friend whose number she had given me. I trudged, exhausted having not slept the night before between the wedding and my early flight, into the guest house, and promptly fell asleep.

Six hours later I emerged from my happy cocooon, got dressed and walked into the town center to meet Stanzin, Patricia's friend.  Stanzin runs a tour and travel agency called Ecological Footprint. I easily found his office and he greeted me warmly before telling me that Patricia had called to say she would not be coming, that she had decided to return to Delhi from Srinagar. Disappointed but not crushed, Stanzin took me to dinner at a pizza place down  the street, where a lot of the tour guides, young guys mostly from all over northern India, hang out at the end of the day.  We sat outside in the chilly air, shivering a little but enjoying the warmth from the bonfire the guys sat around nearby. You could see so many stars, and when I walked back to the guest house after dinner the sky was a beautiful navy blue, the mountains lit up by the moon. Ladakh has an unusual climate, semi-desert at a very high altitude so it gets very cold and snowy in the winter. Water is scarce and precious and the city of Leh is very conscious of its lean ecological resources. There is a very clean and effective system of irrigation in which water is carefully guided from mountain streams through canals that run alongside the streets throughout the towns.  People respect that this water is intended for use, and in general the baby canals that course downhill are pristine. Drinking water is bought or filtered, but residents can frequently be seen kneeling by the water outside their homes, doing laundry, washing dishes or filling jugs to water their gardens and vegetable patches. When you walk there at night, you can hear the water quietly running beside you, like a guide to accompany you along the way.

I awoke the next morning, having decided to leave the guest house in search of somewhere more central, packed my stuff and headed out. I walked through the town center, crowded with shops filled with cheesy embroidered shirts, Pashmina shawls, Tibetan silver, trekking gear and prayer flags galore. Walking down Changspa road, a touristy area with lots of lodging, I found one that had been recommended by my guide book but didn't get a good feeling about it. I kept walking, following signs to a row of guest houses that looked fine, and lingered for a minute, not knowing which to approach. Looking up, I saw a man filling several gallons of water from the concrete stream beside the house, wearing a straw hat and big green rubber rain boots. When he saw me standing there, he asked if I needed a place to stay and ushered me through the wooden gate leading to the guest house he runs with his wife. I watched him water the plants in the garden as I went inside. Standing in front of me was a gorgeous, hugely pregnant Ladakhi woman wearing a long grey sweater, round face glowing with her smile and her black hair tied back. She showed me the room I could stay in, consented when I asked for a lower price than she offered, and went to tend to her mother-in-law. This second woman had maybe the most wrinkled face I've ever seen, with about three teeth in her mouth, hanging for dear life and two long, black braids down her back, tied together at the bottom to form a v. She smiled at me, her hands full of flowers she had just cut from the garden out back, full of marigolds, daisies and dahlias.

The ascent...

Feeling settled, I headed out and walked down the road towards Shanti Stupa, a Zen Buddhist shrine built on the mountain by some Japanese monk(ey)s. Following Changspa road down as far as it would go, I came upon the stairs leading upward and braced myself before beginning the journey towards the white dome above. The climb took me a while, as I ascended slowly and frequently lost my breath. The sky was so brilliantly blue and cloudless that it almost hurt to look at it. On the way up I met two middle-aged dentists from Colorado who had come to Ladakh on a "dental mission" (their words, not mine), offering free dental services to children.  They said that there is one dentist for every 20,000 people or so in this part of the country, which made sense to me as I recalled the dreadful state of some of the teeth I'd seen in the past 24 hours. After that I started noticing peoples' teeth more, thinking about how painful and difficult would be to have a dental emergency anywhere near here.

Shanti Stupa

In any case, I reached the top and just stood in awe of the view for a while before walking clockwise around the stupa a few times. I soaked in the sun and the incredible vista, drinking my water and taking photos, conversing with a Canadian guy on vacation and removing my shoes before climbing the stairs. I watched visitors below me hike the stairs I had just finished climbing, felt the wind on my face, and turned around to head down.  Descending took me no time at all, and I walked to a restaurant I had seen on the way up. Starving by this point, I ordered the first thing I saw on the menu--eggs--and sat enjoying the ability to breathe again. Seated at the table next to me were two students from England, and we soon were chatting about our experiences in India and plans for Ladakh.

Where the Zanskar merges with the Indus

On the way back into town from lunch, I bumped into the Hungarian guys I had met the day before, who told me they had been very ill since arriving. We set a time and place to have dinner together and then I continued on my way to meet up with Stanzin. We set up a trip for the next day to drive in a jeep to Khardung La, the highest motorable pass in the world, and mountain bike down back to Leh. By pure coincidence, on my way to use the bathroom at a restaurant I bumped into both the Hungarians and the British guys and told them there was space available in the jeep, and that they should join. I returned to Ecological Footprint and Stanzin took me for a drive, winding between the mountains, to the place where the Zanskar River merges with the Indus. It was cool to see the Indus River, something I remembered from learning about the river valley civilizations in school.  The light in Ladakh is amazing--the sky is so unbelievably blue and the sun so bright that it makes colors stand out and shadows define the rocky curves in a beautiful way. You can see an actual line where the rivers merge--there is a line where the currents run into each other, and when I saw the same spot later on, I realized that the rivers were also two different colors. The Indus headwaters are in Tibet, so the river is still pristine in Ladakh. We sat at a cafe overlooking the scene and had chai, Stanzin chugging his and moving on to black tea before I had finished half of mine. We turned around and drove back, listening to John Mayer and watching the colors fade in the dusk around us.

Back in town, I decided to check my email, not only to make sure Patricia had made it safely to Delhi but also because I had so wished Patricia had checked her email before she went trekking. This was the email waiting in my inbox from Hannah:

Hey girl. If you get this message, please please call one of us or message us back. They are revoking Tricia's grant and she has to leave by this weekend. We are in shock and just got the news. I hope this message reaches you.

Love,
Hannah

My first thought was that it must be a mistake. How could they revoke her grant when she was violating a rule that was mentioned in passing? It honestly did not occur to me at that time that this would actually happen. It seemed so absurd that I really did not take it seriously deep down. I left the internet cafe and met up with the Hungarians, feeling completely shocked and taken aback but really not as concerned as I might have been had I really understood the situation. I had a nice time at dinner, the Hungarian guys, Tamas and Balasz were good company and I chose not even to bring up the issue that I was completely preoccupied with. I tried to call the girls on Skype for more information but couldn't get through. That night I slept very poorly, waking up several times and worrying about Patricia, wondering what had happened, what she would do, what our room would look like without her. In the morning I went straight to Stanzin's office, told him what I had found out and borrowed his phone to call Patricia. Fortunately, she answered, on the metro on the way to another meeting at USIEF. She explained everything that had happened--Vinita had called her the night she got in touch with me, told her to take the next plane back to Delhi, and had her come to USIEF for a meeting first thing the next morning. Patricia went in for the meeting with Vinita and Maansi, the program administrators and Adam Grotsky, the executive director of USIEF. Adam asked whether she knew she wasn't supposed to go to Kashmir, to which she replied honestly that she remembered Vinita mentioning it but had understood it as a warning and not as a rule set in stone. In so many words, he proceeded to tell her that the ambassador was moving to revoke her grant and that she could either resign her Fulbright and retain alumna status or wait and challenge the decision, which he described as "postponing the inevitable." Patricia asked for some time to think about it and consult with people outside of USIEF before making a decision and they told her she had until the morning. An hour later, Maansi called Patricia to tell her she had to return to USIEF to resign immediately or she would definitely have her grant revoked. Feeling completely backed into a corner, Patricia sent in her resignation. Nowhere in the Fulbright ETA handbook does it mention travel to Kashmir being prohibited, nor is it written in our contract that we signed. In fact, this "rule" was not found written anywhere that we could find--not on the website or any USIEF materials we have seen. Of course Patricia could have waited and challenged the decision. But all of a sudden she was in a position in which the people whose job had been presented to us as being for support were kicking her out, and I can't say I would have done anything differently if I had been in her place (which I very well could have been). And the truth is that if the Ambassador of the United States to India wants to take away your Fulbright, I think there is very little that you can do to stop it. Patricia was made an example of, punished for the terrible timing of her trip and for the failure of USIEF to make their rules and grant conditions clear. On the phone with her in Leh, I became so angry and upset, and yet still did not understand how final this decision was. Patricia told me that I didn't have to come home, that she wanted me to enjoy my stay in Ladakh, that we would speak again before she left. I took her words at face value, went inside, wrote a clearly articulated email to Adam practically begging him to let her keep her Fulbright, and rode up the mountain with two Hungarians and a Brit.

We drove up, up and upwards, the bikes in the bed of the truck, taking pictures around every curve of the vast and beautiful expanse below us, marvelling at the snow becoming more abundant as we climbed, bracing ourselves when the paved road ended and we jerked and bounced up along the gravelly last stretch, pocked with potholes and unfinished repairs. We emerged from the jeep at the top and I really felt the effects of ascending 1,835 meters (6,020 feet) in an hour.

View from the top of Khardung La

I want to be friends with whoever decided to put up this sign.

I felt very dizzy and light-headed and my felt a sharp pain in my head. The Hungarian guys were worried about me and were very sweet, offering to accompany me in the jeep to start at a lower altitude. We went into the little cafe there, had some chai and schmoozed for a bit, and I felt completely better within a few minutes.   It was freezing at the top; there was snow and ice everywhere and I was so glad I had layered well when I got dressed. I took out the gloves and hat that I had brought (a godsend!) and, of course, took 263487467 pictures before we headed on our way.

Fellow adventurers! From left, Robin, Tamas and Balasz

We all started slowly, taking turns being in front, turning carefully around curves and stopping every 100 feet to take pictures of the incredible landscape. But it soon became clear that I was the not going to speed up from my grandmotherly pace, and the boys went ahead, stopping to wait for me every kilometer or so.  The jeep driver stayed with us the whole time, following us slowly in the car and helping us (read: me) when our gears shifted randomly on their own and we had to pull over to let truckers pass. The road was extremely uneven, very rough and completely  covered with what looked like they would be great moguls for skiing but were less than ideal for a Jew with a penchant for sloth. I went ridiculously slowly (seriously, it might have been faster to walk), and focused all my energy on keeping the bike upright.  I braked more than I didn't brake and was very careful to stay as far on the inside as possible while keeping on the left side of the road (India, remember?). I concentrated so hard on going downhill without falling that any muscles not already tense from being on a mountain bike were tighter than ever. My hands hurt from gripping the handlebars over the rocky terrain and my knees were sore from being bent for so long. The unpaved part composed about the first third of the journey in distance but took over two hours to complete. I counted the kilometers on the signs to the small army rest stop where the paved road began again, and was able to open my eyes enough when I stopped for photos to take in the astounding view around me. The boys continued to wait patiently for me every so often, giving me a bench mark of my progress, and when we got the the rest area, Robin decided to go on ahead back to Leh. At this point it was between four and five o'clock and we had less than two hours before dark. We carried on, knowing we could jump in the jeep if it got too dark. But suddenly, the road was smooth and paved, and there were very few cars around us. Riding the bike became like flying, the crisp, sweet mountain air rushing in my face, rounding the mountain and circling down, enjoying a completely different view at every turn and altitude. It was so beautiful it almost hurt my eyes and brain to look at it, the late afternoon light outlining the textures of the mountains, highlighting the colors and drawing long shadows across the earth. Sometimes the few clouds in the sky would move and cast different dark shapes on the ground, sometimes we would round a bend and see the whole side of the mountain covered in green grass and trees, sometimes the other side revealed arid hills in ochres and umbers without a spot of green. My whole body ached like one giant bruise, but I didn't want the ride to end.  Tamas and Balasz kept waiting for me, even after they had said they would go ahead. No longer as consumed by the fear of falling, I coasted downhill, letting myself go faster and lifting my head to look at the scenery instead of the road beneath me. I took off my sunglasses, squinting but happy to see the full colors of the countryside. I let go of the fear once the bigger risk was gone, and felt so present in that moment, in joy from my surroundings, in companionship from new friends, in soreness throughout my limbs, in gratitude for the experience. We got back to Leh before dark, following behind the jeep to get to return our bicycles at the office and relishing our last moments on these grounded wings. We agreed to meet for dinner, and I went back to my room to rest a bit. I lay on the bed for twenty minutes, not moving or sleeping but just enjoying being still and allowing my muscles to relax for the first time in hours. (Can you tell how bad I am at physical anything?) I wanted to check my email before dinner to see if I got a response from Adam. Deep down, I was sure--sure--that Adam would read my email, see how ludicrous it was to make Patricia leave and revoke the revocation. The circumstances were so illogical, I couldn't believe how any educated, smart person could read my email and not agree with me or at least doubt the decision enough to reverse it. But the message in my inbox was terse. He acknowledged my "emotional reaction" and defended his actions by saying that Patricia's safety and welfare was always the "first priority." I got a second email from Hannah, to whom I had sent the email as well, who really laid it out for me. "I don't know if there's anything we can say or do to affect Adam in the slightest," she said. "Based on everything that has happened, everything Tricia has been going through, there's nothing we can do but comfort her and show our support for her to USIEF." At that point I realized that there was no reversing this decision, that it was set in stone, that she would be leaving the country by Monday and our room would be half empty for the rest of the year. I started crying then, and my immediate thought was that I had to ignore what Patricia had said and just come back to Delhi. I knew Hannah and Tangi would really be having a hard time too, and I just wanted to be together so we could have time with each other before Patricia had to go. I showed up in tears at Stanzin's office and he patted my back and said "don't cry" in the most genuine, least comforting manner in the history of consolation.

The next day there was a strike throughout India in protest of a big hike in gas and diesel prices.  Every store and restaurant was closed, making it impossible to get Patricia a gift or get a breakfast more hearty than the granola bars I had brought from Delhi. The other issue was that I couldn't use the internet to get a ticket home because all the internet cafes were closed! I met up with Stanzin, who drove me to the airport where he "knows a guy" and though his friend wasn't there, the woman at the ticket office was a schoolmate of his from way back. She booked me a ticket for the following morning, for a price lower than any I had seen on the internet, and I felt an immediate sense of relief, knowing when I would be seeing my roommates again. Stanzin took me to his house, where I sat on the porch with his 97-year-old grandfather, a wizened man with beautiful, weathered hands and eyes that shone with life. He wore a long, heavy, brown, woolen tunic and sat in an easy chair next to an untouched glass of yak butter tea. The well-tended garden had the biggest marigolds I've ever seen, and  view of the mountains. A photo of the Dalai Lama hung from pole holding up the roof in the center of the porch. Stanzin brought me some (delicious Indian) food, for which my starving stomach was so grateful! We relaxed for a bit and then he dropped me in town while he had stuff to do. 

On the set...

I walked past the town's main mosque and climbed up the stairs to Leh Palace, where Ladakhi kings were based for hundreds of years. In the courtyard of the adjacent Buddhist temple, a film was being shot, requiring twenty or so people to stand around dressed in full, traditional Ladakhi/Tibetan attire (fur hats included) in the midday sun. Walking quietly past the security guard to avoid the lame entry fee (teehee), I headed into the palace. You can tell it was once a hopping place, with beautiful windows and doorways and room after room.  But the lack of maintenance shows in the building--most of the rooms are empty, dank and dark, and even the small prayer room which was the only room that seemed to have any upkeep was dusty and a little creepy. But the views were lovely and when I left I began climbing stairs to get to Tsemo Fort, another landmark from which you can see for miles around. The sun was hot and the path was dusty and I had not eaten a lot or had much to drink, because everything had been closed all day. I got about two-thirds up the mountain and went to a rocky ledge to see the other side of the mountain. It was still quite a climb to the fort and I was tired, but I didn't want to give up on going. I didn't want to have the feeling of coming so close and not reaching my destination, my goal. I sat for a while and rested, taking in the blue of the sky and the dry breeze and the sun's gentle heat. I was tired, emotionally and physically. Why did I feel obligated to finish doing something I was not compelled to do? And then I let go. I let go of wanting to finish the hike just for the sake of finishing it, I let go of needing to prove to myself that I can do it on my own, and I let go, for that moment, of needing to control my experience. I thought about Patricia, how soon she would be out of the country, away from our community, leaving behind what she had built here over the past few months--relationships with her kids, plans to see new places. I had already let go of the idea that there was anything I could do to keep her here, and now I was letting go of the old truth that I was still hanging on to, that she would be in India for the rest of the grant. It sounds melodramatic, like she was dying or something (which thank God she wasn't!), but it really felt and continues to feel like such a huge loss. When you've become part of a family that supports each other and spends time together the way we have, it really feels like you're losing them when they are removed from that situation.

Feeling more relaxed and affirmed, I headed back down the mountain. At the bottom of the trail a couple from Canada and Australia asked me for directions.  We began chatting and ended up conversing for more than half an hour, asking each other about travels in India and the rest of the world, listening to each others' stories. It occurred to me that I would not have met them had I finished my intended route to the top. I'm sure had I finished the walk I would have met some other really cool couple, seen some other great views. I'm not trying to say "things happen for a reason," a cliche that I really hate and don't agree with. But I do think that decisions we make, however arbitrary, and coincidences that happen often have meaningful unintended consequences. I didn't turn around for the purpose of meeting those nice people, but it was a lovely result that I was glad to have happen.

I made my way through the winding streets of Leh back to Ecological Footprint to meet Stanzin and his friend, Pina. They came out and as they were about to move a giant boulder out of the way of the car, which had been blocked in. We heard some yelling and chanting and two minutes later, hundreds of Muslim schoolchildren were passing with signs saying things like "Down with Israel," "Boycott the US,"and "My Prophet, My Honor." It was bizarre to see so many children shouting such political slogans, nothing violent or threatening, but I was glad I was not on my own then. After the groups of kids, still in their green and white school uniforms, marched past, there was a group of adult men taking part in the protest as well.  I wondered how Israel got dragged into this video catastrophe, and what these children understand about the Middle East.

Monastery with a view

Stanzin, Pina and I got in the car and headed outside the city. We passed the meeting place of the Indus and the Zanskar, sailing by mountains, desert, and not a small number of goats and cows. After our obligatory chai stop (Stanzin is a chai-drinking machine!), we drove to a small village with a monastery. The sun was low in the sky, making the shadows long and the air hazy. We were the only people there, taking in the scenery, climbing on the roof to admire the view, removing our shoes to enter the prayer room painted with murals depicting reincarnation and lotus flowers, stacked floor to ceiling with cabinets containing written scrolls of mantras. The colors everywhere were the colors of Tibetan Buddhism--yellow, blue, green, red and white, symbolizing different buddhas or states of mind. We walked around to the side and saw the giant blue seated Buddha, adorned with lotus roots and gold symbols I didn't recognize.  We crossed the street and entered the courtyard of the monastery's small school for boys, with kids that looked about eight to eleven years old, running around and playing in their monk-like vermilion robes. Stanzin played with them and I shook their hands and admired their smiles. On the way out, Stanzin ran into a monk he knew through his uncle, also a monk. He invited us into his room, a small space with a packed dirt floor outside and a concrete floor in the small area where his bed and stove were. 

In the monk's house

He made us chai on the stove, pouring condensed milk from the can into the pot, stirring while Stanzin looked at the photos on his computer of his recent trip to Chile to meet with Buddhists there and create a sand mandala for a charity auction. The shelves around his bed were piled with books and manuscripts, scrolls written in Tibetan, and the view through the tiny window showed the mountains, half in afternoon shadow, contrasted against the brilliant sky. What an experience--to sit in the hut of a Buddhist monk in Ladakh, drinking chai and looking at photographs on a laptop of his journey halfway around the world.

We headed back towards Leh, watching the sun set over the desert and listening to Coldplay and Tom Petty. We headed towards dinner, bumping into Robin and Rory on the way and asking them along. I was STARVING, having eaten only a granola bar and the small meal at Stanzin's in the morning, and ate my noodles with delight. The power was out so we ate by candlelight in the full restaurant. After dinner, I said goodbye to Stanzin and thanked him profusely for his kind hospitality and help during my stay. Back at the guest house, I approached the family to settle my bill, as I would be leaving early the next morning and didn't want to wake them. They sat around eating their dinner, asking me about my stay in Leh. Suddenly, the grandmother got up and went outside, coming back a minute later bearing apples from the tree outside, and putting them in my hands to take.

I slept well but briefly, and watched the sun rise over the mountains in the small airport. The security was insane there! I had to pass through three metal detectors at three separate stages before getting on the plane! I was so relieved to be returning to Delhi, so excited to see my roommates and have time together before Patricia left. I watched the landscape shrink beneath me as we ascended, falling asleep and waking up upon landing. 

I had called Hannah to tell her I was returning, but had told her to keep it a secret from Patricia, so when I walked in, Patricia's face lit up and she jumped up to give me a hug. Hannah was relieved to see me too--the past few days had clearly taken a toll on her and Tangi, and they looked exhausted. I put my stuff down, showered, and cleaned the kitchen, wanting to be useful and do something nice for the girls, all of whom had been through so much during the week. Patricia spent some time organizing and packing, and, after a failed attempt at mailing two boxes back to Seattle, Patricia, Hannah and I went to a cafe in the market. We spent two hours there, just hanging out and chatting, taking photos and enjoying each other's company. In the evening, the four of us and Sean  went to a delicious South Indian restaurant in Hauz Khas, near our house, and feasted on vegetable korma, chicken curry and spicy lamb. We went to two different cafes afterwards looking for cheesecake, settling on one but ending up disappointed by the product. The five of us crammed in an auto on the way home, squeezing and sitting on laps to make it work. Patricia finished making cards for every class she taught, Sean worked on his card for Patricia and Hannah and I hid notes in her luggage for her to find later. We just sat together, Hannah eventually falling asleep and Sean leaving around 1AM. Patricia and I watched some Friday Night Lights together, and then it was 2:00 and her taxi was waiting outside the gate. She hugged Tangi and Hannah and they walked her out the door while I helped take her luggage to the end of the street where the taxi waited. We loaded her bags and hugged for a while and then she got in the taxi and was gone. 

I was tearful for much of the next day, spending my time rearranging the furniture in my now single occupancy room, as the empty bed was too depressing, and cleaning the living room floor. Cleaning makes me feel useful and took my mind off of what I couldn't stop thinking about. I moped pretty much all day, and then woke up Monday morning with a determination to do something. 

Not having Patricia here really sucks. We miss her a lot, and I know it's painful for her to not be here. She's spending a month in Tanzania, visiting her boyfriend from college, relaxing and presumably processing the crazy whirlwind that culminated in her leaving the country. It's funny to think about how this event meshed with my trip to Ladakh, my thoughts about letting go that arose both from saying goodbye to Patricia and from going somewhere by myself, having adventures that I shared with people I may never see again and yielding my need to have things under control. This chapter of my time here was unexpected and painful, and I am still waiting for some joyful unintended consequences. But I was so lucky to have had Patricia as my roommate these past few months, and I treasure the friendship that remains.

To view the rest of my photos of Ladakh, click here and enjoy!

Sending much love from Mother India,

xox