Hey all!
Well, the original plan for this weekend was that it was going to be spent in Pondicherry. Elaine and I left on Friday afternoon and, after an obscenely long drive, arrived there at about 9PM and paid way more than we wanted in order to stay the night in a hotel rather nicer than we were planning on. Dinner and the buffet were very nice, though food has not been sitting on Elaine's stomach very well :-(. Sleep was wonderful after that long drive!
The next morning we got a slow start and didn't really get out of the hotel until a little before noon, at which point we headed over near the water (Pondicherry is on the sea) and tried to find a room for the next night. We failed completely. After an hour of trying the only room we could find was for 5000Rs. a night :-P. We decided to cut our losses, wandered about near the water for a while (saw the Ghandi statue, went to a great little bookstore "Book Cafe", and a wonderful restaurant called "Rendezvous" [This was a French colony for many years]) then headed home for Bangalore :-(. After a *long* drive we made ourselves a makeshift dinner of toast and nutella, then went to sleep. All in all, a few nice bits in Pondicherry, but it has proved to be a lesson in the necessity of planning well ahead for things.
Today proved to be *much* better ^_^. We woke up fairly early and decided to tour around Bangalore. We had the yellow flavored rice that they serve us at the flat for breakfast, then after some further futzing headed downtown to Geruda Mall, which is right by MG road. I really wanted to show Elaine the spectacle of a Bangalore mall. We wandered up its 6 stories, stopping at a store to buy Elaine some *fantastic* Indian tops, which gave the mall time to get bustling and busy and a true show of how happening of a place it is.
After the mall we walked to Brigade road and had lunch at the Paradise club, where Dad and I had gone twice for beers while he was here. Elaine had some *truly amazing* Palak Paneer, "the best food she has ever had in her life", which is a high compliment from someone with such a developed and diverse palate! We even got the recipe from the waiter, then stopped by a supermarket to pick up the spices that we will need to cook it!!! Hopefully we will be able to recreate this taste sensation!
We continued our *fantastic* day by stopping by the cat/magazine store after lunch, and spending a while there watching the cute cats and reading through a few of the magazines. It was so much fun getting to bring Elaine to all of these places that I've wanted to show her for two months (holy moly, I've been in India for two months!).
After the cat store we stopped by Blossom for several hours, Elaine flipped upon seeing the collection ^_^, and we bought a whole bunch of fantastic books. I'm going to have reading material for a *long* time. After Blossom we decided we wanted a bit of exercise, so we walked the 6km from MG road to my flat! We only stopped to admire a nice park in my neighborhood (incidentally, the weather today was fantastic!).
The last major thing for the day was dinner. Tracy and her visiting friend Rebecca decided to make pasta and sauce for dinner, and Elaine and I went to the Food Mart to buy food for a fruit salad (our [Elaine's] contribution), and matches to start our stove. Dinner was *delicious* (bow-tie pasta, tomato sauce full of zuchini, squash, and other good veggies, and a delicious fruit salad of pineapple, apple, mango, and bananna [:-)], with mango juice to drink) and we had Gelatto from Daily Bread and a Chocolate with Almonds Cadburry Bar (reminds me of New Zealand!) for dessert.
All in all a fantastic day! I don't really want to go back and do work tomorrow :-P.
Cheers,
Jason
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Elaine is here!
Hey all!
Guess what! Elaine arrived Wednesday night (or really, Thursday morning)! I met her at the airport dressed in my full Indian suit, which I have been keeping pictures of offline for the last month to keep from spoiling the surprise! It is fantastic that she is here and, as much fun as I'm having in India, I'm going to be really really glad when this whole long distance thing is over for a while!
We didn't do too much on Thursday. Elaine has been sleeping a lot, catching up from a horrifically long 36 hour trip to India. We did go out to wander about the neighborhood around my house, down as far as "Orange", where I had dinner with Dad and Tracy last week, and wandering back through some residential areas on the way back. Last night we went to Opus and, while we didn't participate in quiz night we at least watched the spectacle and had some delicious food (blueberry 'cheesecake' that seemed to be made from whipped cream ^_^) in the process. On the way back we, completely by chance, ran into Revi and Udai on their way to dinner and while we were talking to them saw Rob walking by! Crazy meetings! The rest of the night passed largely by looking at pictures and reading.
Today we woke up late, and it looks like I'm going to be able to bring Elaine in to work with me today! Then, around 2PM, we're going to take a private car and head out to Pondicherry for the weekend! Pondicherry is part of the formerly French part of India, and we're really eager to see what happens when French and Indian cultures meet!
Lets see, quick notes on the rest of the week before Elaine got here... Lots of thinking about Elaine coming and preparing for the event (bought a massive flower wreath). At work the PRNG actually is working (probably turned out to be a dumb mistake with file output), Monday night we watched a Bollywood movie in our flat with lots of people, and Wednesday before I went to the airport we went to Zero-G for Bollywood night, and got dinner at an 'open late' place after that.
I should probably be off to work now!
Cheers,
Jason
Guess what! Elaine arrived Wednesday night (or really, Thursday morning)! I met her at the airport dressed in my full Indian suit, which I have been keeping pictures of offline for the last month to keep from spoiling the surprise! It is fantastic that she is here and, as much fun as I'm having in India, I'm going to be really really glad when this whole long distance thing is over for a while!
We didn't do too much on Thursday. Elaine has been sleeping a lot, catching up from a horrifically long 36 hour trip to India. We did go out to wander about the neighborhood around my house, down as far as "Orange", where I had dinner with Dad and Tracy last week, and wandering back through some residential areas on the way back. Last night we went to Opus and, while we didn't participate in quiz night we at least watched the spectacle and had some delicious food (blueberry 'cheesecake' that seemed to be made from whipped cream ^_^) in the process. On the way back we, completely by chance, ran into Revi and Udai on their way to dinner and while we were talking to them saw Rob walking by! Crazy meetings! The rest of the night passed largely by looking at pictures and reading.
Today we woke up late, and it looks like I'm going to be able to bring Elaine in to work with me today! Then, around 2PM, we're going to take a private car and head out to Pondicherry for the weekend! Pondicherry is part of the formerly French part of India, and we're really eager to see what happens when French and Indian cultures meet!
Lets see, quick notes on the rest of the week before Elaine got here... Lots of thinking about Elaine coming and preparing for the event (bought a massive flower wreath). At work the PRNG actually is working (probably turned out to be a dumb mistake with file output), Monday night we watched a Bollywood movie in our flat with lots of people, and Wednesday before I went to the airport we went to Zero-G for Bollywood night, and got dinner at an 'open late' place after that.
I should probably be off to work now!
Cheers,
Jason
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Dinner with Nate
Hey all,
Its been a fairly nice and relaxing Sunday today. I slept in a bit this morning after staying up late last night, and I finally gave up on the sketchy and thing facial hair and shaved away everything but my goatee.
At about 10:00 Tracy and I met Rob and Revi at the dosa place, and the group of us ventured over to commercial street. I found some very cool things there (not for myself ^_^), and I think that we all had a fun time. Revi had to leave a bit early to go do an interview for one of her projects, and Rob, Tracy, and I had lunch in that area before heading back to the office in Sadashivanagar. Mainly just checked email and such at the office, though I had several excellent games of ping-pong with Rob (and I actually won the second one!).
I went home, putzed about, and wrote email to a bunch of people through the afternoon, then started to upload my pictures from the last week and a half to facebook. Around this time Nate Pinkney emailed me, reminding me that he (and Prof. Harris) were also in Bangalore! We met at 7PM and the three of us (Tracy joined Nate and I) headed down to the Cohiba club on MG road for dinner. It was really cool chatting about what he is up to (helping Prof. Harris with stuff for the next edition of his book) and how he likes India. The number of random Mudders in India is becoming ridiculous, and will be even more so after Elaine and Greg get here (which is soon!!! ^_^_^).
Since dinner I've just been working to get all of my pictures uploaded, commented, and tagged on Facebook. That process is now complete, and here are the links to all the new albums! Enjoy!
Bylakuppe
A week with Dad
Nels Birthday
Random Weekend Pictures
Cheers,
Jason
Its been a fairly nice and relaxing Sunday today. I slept in a bit this morning after staying up late last night, and I finally gave up on the sketchy and thing facial hair and shaved away everything but my goatee.
At about 10:00 Tracy and I met Rob and Revi at the dosa place, and the group of us ventured over to commercial street. I found some very cool things there (not for myself ^_^), and I think that we all had a fun time. Revi had to leave a bit early to go do an interview for one of her projects, and Rob, Tracy, and I had lunch in that area before heading back to the office in Sadashivanagar. Mainly just checked email and such at the office, though I had several excellent games of ping-pong with Rob (and I actually won the second one!).
I went home, putzed about, and wrote email to a bunch of people through the afternoon, then started to upload my pictures from the last week and a half to facebook. Around this time Nate Pinkney emailed me, reminding me that he (and Prof. Harris) were also in Bangalore! We met at 7PM and the three of us (Tracy joined Nate and I) headed down to the Cohiba club on MG road for dinner. It was really cool chatting about what he is up to (helping Prof. Harris with stuff for the next edition of his book) and how he likes India. The number of random Mudders in India is becoming ridiculous, and will be even more so after Elaine and Greg get here (which is soon!!! ^_^_^).
Since dinner I've just been working to get all of my pictures uploaded, commented, and tagged on Facebook. That process is now complete, and here are the links to all the new albums! Enjoy!
Bylakuppe
A week with Dad
Nels Birthday
Random Weekend Pictures
Cheers,
Jason
Saturday, July 21, 2007
The week with Dad
Hey all,
I'm starting to fall behind on this blog, so I'm going to skim at a higher level than usual over the last week (especially since Dad has been keeping a very detailed journal too). I'll start off with this past Sunday. Dad and I headed over to Lal Bagh Gardens, which is a botanical garden on the far side of Bangalore. The garden has a few nice features: a great view of the skyline of the city, a couple of really nice lakes (with lotus flowers!), a silk tree, and some kooky topiary. Overall, however, it was not particularly taken care of. There was trash everywhere, their 'glass house' display area was completely empty, and the 'Japanese Garden" looked like an angry mob had taken axes and flame to it. I guess the lesson is that European-style tourist spots in India don't live up to their European counterparts (duh!). Dad and I were going to go to a tiffin place near the gardens for lunch, but there was a line spilling out on to the street so we caught a rickshaw and went to a place near MG road called "Pub World". It was supposed to have 4 different sections designed like pubs from different parts of the world, but they were so similar I could barely tell where one section started and the next began (for instance, the only distinguishing feature of the "wild west" style pub was the swinging, saloon style, doors).
I worked a bit that afternoon, and for Sunday evening we went with Nels, Tracy, Rob, and Pavol to the dosa place near home. It turns out they have a *huge* selection of delicious meals, and I think we ate there 3 or 4 more times this week!
On Monday Dad and I went down to the MG road area to get Dad tickets for a bus tour into Mysore for Wednesday. We were hungry, so we ended up walking along a part of the MG road area that I haven't been to before (actually along MG road) and grabbing a wonderful lunch at a slightly swanky place called 'Emgees' (say it out loud if you don't get it). Cubbon Park was between us and the bus ticket office, so we decided to wander through. We got slightly lost and ended up in a part that was *much* prettier and better maintained than the parts that I had been through before, and made the place look better than Lal Bagh. We eventually made it to the ticket office and got Dad a ticket for Wednesday!
There was a big sign at the end of Lal Bagh that had a listing of traffic violations and fines that I thought was amusing and took a picture of. I was just looking at the picture and reading through the fines such as "Racing/Trial of Speed - 300Rs.", "Jumping Traffic Signal - 100Rs.", "Using musical/Shrill Horn - 100Rs.", and "Cutting Yellow Line - 100Rs." (all of which I have observed frequently, especially the horn one) when I noticed "Ladies seat occupying by male person - 100Rs.". I don't know which seat is the "Ladies", but I thought that its an interesting thing to have a traffic fine for.
For dinner this Monday Tracy, Dad, and I tried to find "Daily Bread", which we had been told was a really good sandwich shop. We ended up going about 2km farther than the store (we found it on the way back) and having dinner at the *very* sketchy (but delicious!) "Orange".
On Tuesday, Dad and I stayed closer to home and explored the area. We wandered about a small park near the office that is the best maintained of the parks I have seen (no trash piles!), then headed down the road to a "Tuberculosis Hospital" (Dad is a lung doctor, with a sort-of sub-specialty in tuberculosis). We wandered inside and (after Dad gave his credentials) were able to chat with one of the doctors there for about 20 minutes. It turns out the place doesn't treat patients, but is the central place in India for training of doctors to care for tuberculosis and for research into processes to eliminate the disease from India. After we left Dad explained all the medical details I hadn't understood, and described the details of the disease to me. All very interesting.
We then tried to get into Palace Grounds, which is a really huge open area where concerts are held, to try to see the Bangalore Palace which occupies a small corner of the grounds and is supposed to be a copy of Windsor Palace! On the way I bought some "Jackfruit" from a street vendor. It is a *huge* [larger than watermelon] spikey fruit that has a bunch of smaller yellow pieces inside that you eat individually. I had one and it was delicious, but my mouth started itching so we decided to throw the rest of the pieces I had bought away :-(. I haven't been able to find any in a supermarket, but hopefully I will have more luck in the future.
Anyway, after walking several km we found an entrance to Palace Grounds and wandered in. It was, unfortunately, partitioned so that we couldn't get to the side that has the palace, but we did spot what looked like a large amusement park, and we found an abandoned go-kart course where we sat and enjoyed the breeze for a while. That was the lowest population density that I have experienced in a month and a half!
After we tired of Palace Grounds we took a rickshaw to Daily Bread (we knew where it was now!), had fairly good sandwiches and delicious gelatto for lunch, then I went to work. We had dinner again at the dosa place, and it was again delicious!
On Wednesday I woke up at 5:30AM and grabbed a quick shower before helping Dad get an auto-rickshaw down to the bus place for his tour, for which the bus left at 7AM and returned at 11PM! He had a great time, though the day was rather long!. As for me, I went in to work at 6AM and worked till 8PM, trying to catch on all the time I had been spending out of work. However, Wednesday was Nelses 25th birthday (and Thursday was Christian's 31st), so a *huge* contingent of people from the office went over to Opus for karaoke night. Some highlights of the evening: talking with a new intern, Camillo, from Columbia and getting the inside scoop from him on traveling to Columbia (sounds like it would be fantastic! And it is quite feasible to do without being kidnapped/killed!), along with Christan and Udai sang "Under the Bridge" (we had a stage act and everything. We sang badly, but had fun ^_^), and had tequila shots with Nels and Christian because it was their birthday (then found out that each shot cost 450Rs.!!!!! That is more than $10 for each shot!).
Thursday was Dad's last Day in Bangalore :-(. I worked in the morning (as had become routine), then we had lunch at the dosa place and headed over to commercial street to do some shopping. The shopping was really a lot of fun and Dad found a whole bunch of cool things, such as a *beautiful* figure of Krishna. We also bought a pair of kurtas (traditional Indian shirts) together, and I (finally) found a couple of cool earrings for myself.
After lots of shopping we headed over to MG road to sit down and relax for a while over a couple beers, after which we did a little more shopping on MG road for some positively *beautiful* scarves. I tried to get an auto-rickshaw in a slightly different spot than usual to get back home, and it ended up causing us to have to walk and extra km to find one (though we got meter!).
Back home it had gotten dark and the power was out, so Dad had to finish up his packing in the dark. We went to dinner (again) at the delicious dosa place, then I called a cab to pick us up for the airport. Just getting the cab to the house proved to be an adventure as it was hard for me to get ahold of the guy on my cellphone, and it took him *an hour* of roving around Sadashivanagar to actually find the place! Even once we were in the cab the adventure was not over, as the cab had a broken horn, the driver was constantly on his cellphone, and when he wasn't on the cellphone drove more recklessly than any other person I have yet seen here!
The airport was a zoo, but I think that it always is. I flashed my passport at the guards and managed to get into what turned out to be the passengers only area and helped Dad get all checked in and said goodbye. Then I tried to leave, and almost got arrested! I tried to just cooly walk out the door, but there were security guards on both sides and one of them stopped me. I tried some BS story about having to say goodbye to someone, but he just told me to go back inside (apparently once inside, you are only supposed to leave on a plane!). At this point I told him that I had just gone inside to help my Dad, and that I wasn't a passenger. He was *not* happy with this and asked, somewhat angrily, how I got in. I said that I just showed my passport, which he then took from me and stared *balefully* at. All through this exchange Dad was inside the airport and watching, getting ready to bail me out (though I don't know what he could have done). After a couple of minutes of staring at the passport, the guard handed it to me and just looked away, like I had disappeared. This was all the sign I needed, so I (quickly) waved goodbye to dad and *booked* it away from the guard and headed back home via the waiting taxi driver!
I would like to end the post on that high note, but I have just a couple of other things to mention. Once home I ended up staying up for several hours with Nels and Tracy, listening to music and generally putzing around. We also went outside and danced around on our roof in the *deluge* of rain that hit right after I got home (which marks the first, and probably only, time that I have had my shirt off while being outside in India :-0).
Not too much happened on Friday. Mostly just me working all day (after a year I understand why the CRF probability distribution is convex! I'm sorry to all my readers, but it was a triumphant moment and I had to put it in here). I was expecting to do something that evening, but neither Nels or Tracy came home, so I ended up just futzing on the computer (downloaded all the PhD comics ^_^) and reading my book [it turns out Tracy went to an office party that I forgot about, and Nels is off traveling]. I ended sitting in bed reading for a while, and all the sleep deprivation I've gone through in the last week (working and hanging out with Dad doesn't leave much free time, and I haven't really managed more than 5 or 6 hours in a while) caught up to me. I managed to turn out the light in my room, but I didn't even push the book I was reading out of bed (let alone change or close the door!) before sleep took me (apparently Tracy couldn't figure out what was up, because all the lights were on and my door was open when she got home at 2AM, but I didn't come out of my room or anything).
I woke up fairly early today, but have not done all that much. I finished "Pride and Pregidous" (reading in a nice little park near the flat), which was actually quite good, far better than I expected, and have talked with Elaine, Mike, and Dad (who got home safely, though his bags were soaked in the above mentioned deluge [and apparently my copy of Dummit & Foote that I shipped back with him looks like someone took a sledgehammer to it :'-( ). I'm really enjoying having a nice, relaxing day at home for the first time in weeks ^_^.
Thats all for now! I will post pictures from Dads visit sometime today.
Cheers,
Jason
I'm starting to fall behind on this blog, so I'm going to skim at a higher level than usual over the last week (especially since Dad has been keeping a very detailed journal too). I'll start off with this past Sunday. Dad and I headed over to Lal Bagh Gardens, which is a botanical garden on the far side of Bangalore. The garden has a few nice features: a great view of the skyline of the city, a couple of really nice lakes (with lotus flowers!), a silk tree, and some kooky topiary. Overall, however, it was not particularly taken care of. There was trash everywhere, their 'glass house' display area was completely empty, and the 'Japanese Garden" looked like an angry mob had taken axes and flame to it. I guess the lesson is that European-style tourist spots in India don't live up to their European counterparts (duh!). Dad and I were going to go to a tiffin place near the gardens for lunch, but there was a line spilling out on to the street so we caught a rickshaw and went to a place near MG road called "Pub World". It was supposed to have 4 different sections designed like pubs from different parts of the world, but they were so similar I could barely tell where one section started and the next began (for instance, the only distinguishing feature of the "wild west" style pub was the swinging, saloon style, doors).
I worked a bit that afternoon, and for Sunday evening we went with Nels, Tracy, Rob, and Pavol to the dosa place near home. It turns out they have a *huge* selection of delicious meals, and I think we ate there 3 or 4 more times this week!
On Monday Dad and I went down to the MG road area to get Dad tickets for a bus tour into Mysore for Wednesday. We were hungry, so we ended up walking along a part of the MG road area that I haven't been to before (actually along MG road) and grabbing a wonderful lunch at a slightly swanky place called 'Emgees' (say it out loud if you don't get it). Cubbon Park was between us and the bus ticket office, so we decided to wander through. We got slightly lost and ended up in a part that was *much* prettier and better maintained than the parts that I had been through before, and made the place look better than Lal Bagh. We eventually made it to the ticket office and got Dad a ticket for Wednesday!
There was a big sign at the end of Lal Bagh that had a listing of traffic violations and fines that I thought was amusing and took a picture of. I was just looking at the picture and reading through the fines such as "Racing/Trial of Speed - 300Rs.", "Jumping Traffic Signal - 100Rs.", "Using musical/Shrill Horn - 100Rs.", and "Cutting Yellow Line - 100Rs." (all of which I have observed frequently, especially the horn one) when I noticed "Ladies seat occupying by male person - 100Rs.". I don't know which seat is the "Ladies", but I thought that its an interesting thing to have a traffic fine for.
For dinner this Monday Tracy, Dad, and I tried to find "Daily Bread", which we had been told was a really good sandwich shop. We ended up going about 2km farther than the store (we found it on the way back) and having dinner at the *very* sketchy (but delicious!) "Orange".
On Tuesday, Dad and I stayed closer to home and explored the area. We wandered about a small park near the office that is the best maintained of the parks I have seen (no trash piles!), then headed down the road to a "Tuberculosis Hospital" (Dad is a lung doctor, with a sort-of sub-specialty in tuberculosis). We wandered inside and (after Dad gave his credentials) were able to chat with one of the doctors there for about 20 minutes. It turns out the place doesn't treat patients, but is the central place in India for training of doctors to care for tuberculosis and for research into processes to eliminate the disease from India. After we left Dad explained all the medical details I hadn't understood, and described the details of the disease to me. All very interesting.
We then tried to get into Palace Grounds, which is a really huge open area where concerts are held, to try to see the Bangalore Palace which occupies a small corner of the grounds and is supposed to be a copy of Windsor Palace! On the way I bought some "Jackfruit" from a street vendor. It is a *huge* [larger than watermelon] spikey fruit that has a bunch of smaller yellow pieces inside that you eat individually. I had one and it was delicious, but my mouth started itching so we decided to throw the rest of the pieces I had bought away :-(. I haven't been able to find any in a supermarket, but hopefully I will have more luck in the future.
Anyway, after walking several km we found an entrance to Palace Grounds and wandered in. It was, unfortunately, partitioned so that we couldn't get to the side that has the palace, but we did spot what looked like a large amusement park, and we found an abandoned go-kart course where we sat and enjoyed the breeze for a while. That was the lowest population density that I have experienced in a month and a half!
After we tired of Palace Grounds we took a rickshaw to Daily Bread (we knew where it was now!), had fairly good sandwiches and delicious gelatto for lunch, then I went to work. We had dinner again at the dosa place, and it was again delicious!
On Wednesday I woke up at 5:30AM and grabbed a quick shower before helping Dad get an auto-rickshaw down to the bus place for his tour, for which the bus left at 7AM and returned at 11PM! He had a great time, though the day was rather long!. As for me, I went in to work at 6AM and worked till 8PM, trying to catch on all the time I had been spending out of work. However, Wednesday was Nelses 25th birthday (and Thursday was Christian's 31st), so a *huge* contingent of people from the office went over to Opus for karaoke night. Some highlights of the evening: talking with a new intern, Camillo, from Columbia and getting the inside scoop from him on traveling to Columbia (sounds like it would be fantastic! And it is quite feasible to do without being kidnapped/killed!), along with Christan and Udai sang "Under the Bridge" (we had a stage act and everything. We sang badly, but had fun ^_^), and had tequila shots with Nels and Christian because it was their birthday (then found out that each shot cost 450Rs.!!!!! That is more than $10 for each shot!).
Thursday was Dad's last Day in Bangalore :-(. I worked in the morning (as had become routine), then we had lunch at the dosa place and headed over to commercial street to do some shopping. The shopping was really a lot of fun and Dad found a whole bunch of cool things, such as a *beautiful* figure of Krishna. We also bought a pair of kurtas (traditional Indian shirts) together, and I (finally) found a couple of cool earrings for myself.
After lots of shopping we headed over to MG road to sit down and relax for a while over a couple beers, after which we did a little more shopping on MG road for some positively *beautiful* scarves. I tried to get an auto-rickshaw in a slightly different spot than usual to get back home, and it ended up causing us to have to walk and extra km to find one (though we got meter!).
Back home it had gotten dark and the power was out, so Dad had to finish up his packing in the dark. We went to dinner (again) at the delicious dosa place, then I called a cab to pick us up for the airport. Just getting the cab to the house proved to be an adventure as it was hard for me to get ahold of the guy on my cellphone, and it took him *an hour* of roving around Sadashivanagar to actually find the place! Even once we were in the cab the adventure was not over, as the cab had a broken horn, the driver was constantly on his cellphone, and when he wasn't on the cellphone drove more recklessly than any other person I have yet seen here!
The airport was a zoo, but I think that it always is. I flashed my passport at the guards and managed to get into what turned out to be the passengers only area and helped Dad get all checked in and said goodbye. Then I tried to leave, and almost got arrested! I tried to just cooly walk out the door, but there were security guards on both sides and one of them stopped me. I tried some BS story about having to say goodbye to someone, but he just told me to go back inside (apparently once inside, you are only supposed to leave on a plane!). At this point I told him that I had just gone inside to help my Dad, and that I wasn't a passenger. He was *not* happy with this and asked, somewhat angrily, how I got in. I said that I just showed my passport, which he then took from me and stared *balefully* at. All through this exchange Dad was inside the airport and watching, getting ready to bail me out (though I don't know what he could have done). After a couple of minutes of staring at the passport, the guard handed it to me and just looked away, like I had disappeared. This was all the sign I needed, so I (quickly) waved goodbye to dad and *booked* it away from the guard and headed back home via the waiting taxi driver!
I would like to end the post on that high note, but I have just a couple of other things to mention. Once home I ended up staying up for several hours with Nels and Tracy, listening to music and generally putzing around. We also went outside and danced around on our roof in the *deluge* of rain that hit right after I got home (which marks the first, and probably only, time that I have had my shirt off while being outside in India :-0).
Not too much happened on Friday. Mostly just me working all day (after a year I understand why the CRF probability distribution is convex! I'm sorry to all my readers, but it was a triumphant moment and I had to put it in here). I was expecting to do something that evening, but neither Nels or Tracy came home, so I ended up just futzing on the computer (downloaded all the PhD comics ^_^) and reading my book [it turns out Tracy went to an office party that I forgot about, and Nels is off traveling]. I ended sitting in bed reading for a while, and all the sleep deprivation I've gone through in the last week (working and hanging out with Dad doesn't leave much free time, and I haven't really managed more than 5 or 6 hours in a while) caught up to me. I managed to turn out the light in my room, but I didn't even push the book I was reading out of bed (let alone change or close the door!) before sleep took me (apparently Tracy couldn't figure out what was up, because all the lights were on and my door was open when she got home at 2AM, but I didn't come out of my room or anything).
I woke up fairly early today, but have not done all that much. I finished "Pride and Pregidous" (reading in a nice little park near the flat), which was actually quite good, far better than I expected, and have talked with Elaine, Mike, and Dad (who got home safely, though his bags were soaked in the above mentioned deluge [and apparently my copy of Dummit & Foote that I shipped back with him looks like someone took a sledgehammer to it :'-( ). I'm really enjoying having a nice, relaxing day at home for the first time in weeks ^_^.
Thats all for now! I will post pictures from Dads visit sometime today.
Cheers,
Jason
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Bylakuppe!
Hey all,
So, this past Saturday Dad and I woke up at 7AM and wandered about Kushalnagar until we found a place to eat (our hotel doesn't do breakfast) and had delicious porri for breakfast. We checked out of the hotel at 9AM, right when Chosang and Rinzin showed up to take us around Bylakuppe (Chosang also went into the hotel and recovered some money because they had overcharged us by about 300Rs. for the room [so the room cost 450Rs ~ $10 for two people for a night ^_^]).
We then entered Bylakuppe and began touring around temple, starting with a stop down the hill from the "Golden Temple" which is the one mentioned in guidebooks that talk about Bylakuppe. It was a spectacular view over a field of corn and a road lined with trees that all had huge prayer flags on them. From here we proceeded on into the actual temple complex.
Just walking up to the Golden Temple was amazing. The place is ornately decorated and brimming with color. While Dad and I took pictures and chatted with Rinzin, Chosang wandered off to find a monk to open the temple for us. It consisted of 4 stories, of which I believe only the bottom is normally open to the public. A monk let us in and we started on the 2nd story of the temple, which contained a massive golden statue (which I don't understand the religious significance of) and the walls were totally covered with paintings that had intricate details down to the size of my thumbnail (this is a constant through all the temples. Massive, colorful rooms with mindblowingly detailed decorations covering every inch of the walls. Beautiful.). At every temple, when you enter there is a small ritual: putting your hands together, touching your forehead, lips, and chest, then getting on your knees and touching your forehead to the floor. This is repeated three times, then you only do the touching of the hands to forehead, lips, and head and you are finished. It is the most active sign of religious devotion I have ever engaged in, though I can't say that I ever felt particularly moved.
The 3rd and 4th story were designed similarly to the 2nd (and, it turns out later, the 1st) in that they contained a massive golden statue in the center (the statue on the 4th floor is of Buddha).
We always moved through the rooms clockwise (down for you physicists), which is something common to both Hindu and Tibetan Buddhist temples. (Later, when we were being really formal, we also stepped out of the temple walking backwards and being careful not to actually step on the threshold of the temple). To understate things completely, this temple and all of the ones we saw were *astoundingly* beautiful (like a certain person I know who's name starts with an E ^_^).
We saw a huge amount in Bylakuppe, so I will compress it down quite a bit. It was a really wonderful experience ^_^. After floors 2-4 of the golden temple we came down and saw some exhibits, around the 2nd floor, of the Tibetan Buddhist depictions of an equivalent to hell ("were sinners go")! I didn't know such a thing existed, and it was pretty incredible to see. We then continued on to the temple next door that was again huge and beautiful and contained 3 massive (at least 5 meters tall) golden statues of Buddhist sages and Buddha. We then continued on to the very pretty neighboring garden, and went to see Thubrig's son. Thubrig is the brother-in-law of Chosang and the friend of another Tibetan that is a good friend of my Dad's. Thubrig's son is about 10 years old and came to India a couple of years ago to become a monk at the Golden Temple. He was fairly shy, but Dad got some good pictures of him to take to Thubrig.
After visiting Thubrig's son we saw a *massive* (~2-3 meter tall) prayer wheel (massive barrel filled with the various mantra's and prayer's from the Darma, the Buddhist holy book. When the wheel is spun the prayers go up to heaven, or at least that is the general idea), then proceeded to the outside wall of the temple complex. The *entire* wall around this massive complex consists of smaller (~.5 meter tall) prayer wheels, occasionally interspersed with rooms that contain half a dozen more massive prayer wheels. We walked around a good portion of the outside wall spinning the wheels, which was a really cool experience. We then walked up and down a line of 16 monoliths just inside the wall that represent 16 great Buddhist teachers, followed by walking 3 times around another monolith that was somehow (I didn't understand how) special and had lots of other people walking around it (clockwise, of course).
Incidentally, when I seem to sound knowledgeable about things, then switch to saying that I don't understand, it is usually because I wasn't able to understand an explanation of things offered by Chosang or Rinzin or they couldn't understand my question. However, despite the language barrier we managed to have very nice conversations with them, either chatting about Rinzin's schooling or the family life, or being informed about the significance of the things we were seeing. Speaking of Chosang and Rinzin, I would like to underscore how incredibly generous and kind they were to us. They took a day that they had off of various work commitments to take two people that they had never met around their community. This next story illustrates this aptly. As we were leaving golden temple complex (after having seen the 1st floor of the main temple), Dad asked about the "Medicine Buddha", which he is interested in. This didn't translate all that well, but just after he asked Rinzin disappeared for a while. She came back as we were exiting the complex with a small plastic bag filled with what looked kind of like coffee beans. Apparently they are the Rempoche's (overseer of the temple) special medicine to help to recover from illness, and are not very easy to come by! This was something that we were offered just because Dad mentioned something about medicine!
The final cool thing that I will mention about the Golden Temple complex was that there was a moss-covered rock outside the Golden Temple that was carved into a miniature version of another temple complex: the one in Tibet that the Golden Temple was based on. The tragedy here is that the temple in Tibet no longer exists: it was destroyed by the Chinese, probably during the Cultural Revolution.
After the Golden Temple we had lunch (Tibetan putta [a soup] and cowmein [I wanted to try momo, but they didn't have any]), bought some prayer flags (if you write your name, or really the name of any person or group on them then that person/group will be helped at every step in their future), then visited Ngagyur Nyingma (yay for taking pictures of signs) Nunnery, which was much smaller, but still *spectacular*. Also, being a nunnery, there were nuns instead of monks here, which was something I did not know was endorsed by Buddhists (I think there are probably differences between different groups). After this we proceeded to the Sera Jey Monastic University which was again massive and spectacular. I am running out of words to describe these places, so I will simply say where we went, note some interesting facts, and post the pictures as soon as possible (though a lot of my pictures failed to come out :-(, I'll get some from Dad). The cool fact about Sera Jey was that about *four _thousand_* monks were there. And this is only one of 8 temples, and not the largest! This gives you some idea of the size of this community of exiled Tibetans (this is one of two areas given to them by India when the Dali Lama first fled Tibet).
The next temple on our route was Sermey Dratsang Cultural Society, which had *unbelievable* wall hangings and weavings hung everywhere. The common theme in the artwork here is *incredible* detail, lots of color and gold. This temple also had 16 paintings (8 on either side wall) depicting 16 great Buddhist sages, the same 16 that were represented by the monoliths at the Golden Temple. Finally, one of the main statues in this temple was of the Medicine Buddha, and there was also a mandala for the Medicine Buddha (a small scale house, completely made out of gold that depicts (as do all mandala when the word is used in this sense) the world according to the Darma of the Medicine Buddha.
The next monastery, Nalanda, was the newest that we saw. There were several beehives on the front of the temple, which apparently show that the temple will grow and prosper. The other cool thing in this temple was that Chosang had helped to install some of the stones in the goldwork around the central idol in the temple.
At the next monastery we actually saw a bunch of monks in the middle of prayer and meditation! They were chanting in the main temple and we still went in and looked around! (This was the place where we were a little more formal about what we did). I took a short video of them chanting and will see if I can post it. This monastery also had a really big school out back (all of the monasteries had an attached school), and there was also a guy who would pray for things you asked him to (with the length of the prayer proportional to the amount you paid him).
The next monastery only had a single monk that was praying (and would later lead others in prayer) in a back room and beating a drum. From the sound of it Dad and I though that there was a whole group of monks back there, and were really surprised when there was only one! He had quite the resonating voice!
The next temple was the final one. It had incredibly ornate weavings draped everywhere and was, as expected, spectacular. At this point it was 3:30PM and we had been touring around for 6 and a half hours! If we had stayed till 8 we could have had dinner with Chosang and Rinzin and the rest of the family, but given that it was a 5 hour drive back to Bangalore we decided that wouldn't be the best option. Chosang gave Dad and I white silk scarves that he got at this last temple and are apparently blessings ^_^. We had our driver take some group pictures of us in front of the temple, then there were some kids outside the temple that asked Dad to take pictures of them and got *really* excited by when they saw themselves on the LCD screen ^_^. He also got a couple of good pictures of 10 year old monks that were watching the proceedings and seemed to feel to formal to join in until Dad asked to take their picture.
We said goodbye to Chosang and Rinzin at the entrance of Bylakuppe, where we had originally met them. It was really sad saying goodbye to such incredible and kind people, and we made sure to get their mailing address so that Dad could send them pictures and some other thank yous for all they had done for us. I feel like I made two friends that day, especially with Rinzin who was very fun to chat with about plans for schooling and things like that. ^_^
There is one last observation I would like to make. At every temple that we vistited, there was a picture of the Rempoche (the head of the temple), and Chosang and Rinzin would say something about them being the 14th or 17th Rempoche (or some other title). There was generally also a picture of their predecessor. It was not until late in the day or maybe the drive back that I realized that they were not 14th in line in presiding over the temple, but the 14th *incarnation* of a Buddhist that had become enlightened and decided to return to our world to help others find the way to nirvana. It made much more sense when I realized this. Along the same lines, there were pictures of the Dali Lama in most every temple, and many pictures of a small boy who was named to be the next incarnation of the sage that China put in to rule Tibet when the Dali Lama fled. However, the kid in the pictures is the incarnation named by the Dali Lama when the previous died, whereas China named a different incarnation and put this child and his family in "protective custody." Conclude from this what you will, but the exiled Tibetans certainly aren't buying it. I saw several "Boycott Chinese goods" sings in Bylakuppe.
The drive back was, as before, beautiful. The main even on the way back (other than contending with *horrific* [worst I've seen] traffic in Bangalore [did I mention that our driver was awesome?]) was seeing a bunch of Indian men walking down the road, butt naked!!! Considering how not OK anything publicly sexual is here, I couldn't believe what I saw! There were about 6 guys, just walking along the side of the highway with no clothes on, perfectly unconcerned. There were also other men, clothed, walking with them (pushing a pair of them on a cart) and also not alarmed. The only theory I have so far is from Tracy, guessing that these men are Jains (a fairly small but influential religious group here) of a sect that does not wear clothes! Considering the uproar I would expect at seeing a naked woman out on the street, I was shocked to see all these naked men. I think two sayings are particularly appropriate for this:
India is a nation of contradictions.
-lots of people
Anything you can think of might be [is?] true in India.
-Prasad
When we got back, around 8:30PM, we went out with Nels, Rob, Tracy, and Pavol to the dosa place near my house, which turns out to be a *fantastic* restaurant for dinner ^_^. After getting back I decided (as I have for many nights in a row ^_^) that I didn't have the energy to write this blog post and collapsed gratefully into bed.
I think that is *more* than enough for now. Next is Sunday's turn... We shall see if that happens tonight.
Cheers,
Jason
So, this past Saturday Dad and I woke up at 7AM and wandered about Kushalnagar until we found a place to eat (our hotel doesn't do breakfast) and had delicious porri for breakfast. We checked out of the hotel at 9AM, right when Chosang and Rinzin showed up to take us around Bylakuppe (Chosang also went into the hotel and recovered some money because they had overcharged us by about 300Rs. for the room [so the room cost 450Rs ~ $10 for two people for a night ^_^]).
We then entered Bylakuppe and began touring around temple, starting with a stop down the hill from the "Golden Temple" which is the one mentioned in guidebooks that talk about Bylakuppe. It was a spectacular view over a field of corn and a road lined with trees that all had huge prayer flags on them. From here we proceeded on into the actual temple complex.
Just walking up to the Golden Temple was amazing. The place is ornately decorated and brimming with color. While Dad and I took pictures and chatted with Rinzin, Chosang wandered off to find a monk to open the temple for us. It consisted of 4 stories, of which I believe only the bottom is normally open to the public. A monk let us in and we started on the 2nd story of the temple, which contained a massive golden statue (which I don't understand the religious significance of) and the walls were totally covered with paintings that had intricate details down to the size of my thumbnail (this is a constant through all the temples. Massive, colorful rooms with mindblowingly detailed decorations covering every inch of the walls. Beautiful.). At every temple, when you enter there is a small ritual: putting your hands together, touching your forehead, lips, and chest, then getting on your knees and touching your forehead to the floor. This is repeated three times, then you only do the touching of the hands to forehead, lips, and head and you are finished. It is the most active sign of religious devotion I have ever engaged in, though I can't say that I ever felt particularly moved.
The 3rd and 4th story were designed similarly to the 2nd (and, it turns out later, the 1st) in that they contained a massive golden statue in the center (the statue on the 4th floor is of Buddha).
We always moved through the rooms clockwise (down for you physicists), which is something common to both Hindu and Tibetan Buddhist temples. (Later, when we were being really formal, we also stepped out of the temple walking backwards and being careful not to actually step on the threshold of the temple). To understate things completely, this temple and all of the ones we saw were *astoundingly* beautiful (like a certain person I know who's name starts with an E ^_^).
We saw a huge amount in Bylakuppe, so I will compress it down quite a bit. It was a really wonderful experience ^_^. After floors 2-4 of the golden temple we came down and saw some exhibits, around the 2nd floor, of the Tibetan Buddhist depictions of an equivalent to hell ("were sinners go")! I didn't know such a thing existed, and it was pretty incredible to see. We then continued on to the temple next door that was again huge and beautiful and contained 3 massive (at least 5 meters tall) golden statues of Buddhist sages and Buddha. We then continued on to the very pretty neighboring garden, and went to see Thubrig's son. Thubrig is the brother-in-law of Chosang and the friend of another Tibetan that is a good friend of my Dad's. Thubrig's son is about 10 years old and came to India a couple of years ago to become a monk at the Golden Temple. He was fairly shy, but Dad got some good pictures of him to take to Thubrig.
After visiting Thubrig's son we saw a *massive* (~2-3 meter tall) prayer wheel (massive barrel filled with the various mantra's and prayer's from the Darma, the Buddhist holy book. When the wheel is spun the prayers go up to heaven, or at least that is the general idea), then proceeded to the outside wall of the temple complex. The *entire* wall around this massive complex consists of smaller (~.5 meter tall) prayer wheels, occasionally interspersed with rooms that contain half a dozen more massive prayer wheels. We walked around a good portion of the outside wall spinning the wheels, which was a really cool experience. We then walked up and down a line of 16 monoliths just inside the wall that represent 16 great Buddhist teachers, followed by walking 3 times around another monolith that was somehow (I didn't understand how) special and had lots of other people walking around it (clockwise, of course).
Incidentally, when I seem to sound knowledgeable about things, then switch to saying that I don't understand, it is usually because I wasn't able to understand an explanation of things offered by Chosang or Rinzin or they couldn't understand my question. However, despite the language barrier we managed to have very nice conversations with them, either chatting about Rinzin's schooling or the family life, or being informed about the significance of the things we were seeing. Speaking of Chosang and Rinzin, I would like to underscore how incredibly generous and kind they were to us. They took a day that they had off of various work commitments to take two people that they had never met around their community. This next story illustrates this aptly. As we were leaving golden temple complex (after having seen the 1st floor of the main temple), Dad asked about the "Medicine Buddha", which he is interested in. This didn't translate all that well, but just after he asked Rinzin disappeared for a while. She came back as we were exiting the complex with a small plastic bag filled with what looked kind of like coffee beans. Apparently they are the Rempoche's (overseer of the temple) special medicine to help to recover from illness, and are not very easy to come by! This was something that we were offered just because Dad mentioned something about medicine!
The final cool thing that I will mention about the Golden Temple complex was that there was a moss-covered rock outside the Golden Temple that was carved into a miniature version of another temple complex: the one in Tibet that the Golden Temple was based on. The tragedy here is that the temple in Tibet no longer exists: it was destroyed by the Chinese, probably during the Cultural Revolution.
After the Golden Temple we had lunch (Tibetan putta [a soup] and cowmein [I wanted to try momo, but they didn't have any]), bought some prayer flags (if you write your name, or really the name of any person or group on them then that person/group will be helped at every step in their future), then visited Ngagyur Nyingma (yay for taking pictures of signs) Nunnery, which was much smaller, but still *spectacular*. Also, being a nunnery, there were nuns instead of monks here, which was something I did not know was endorsed by Buddhists (I think there are probably differences between different groups). After this we proceeded to the Sera Jey Monastic University which was again massive and spectacular. I am running out of words to describe these places, so I will simply say where we went, note some interesting facts, and post the pictures as soon as possible (though a lot of my pictures failed to come out :-(, I'll get some from Dad). The cool fact about Sera Jey was that about *four _thousand_* monks were there. And this is only one of 8 temples, and not the largest! This gives you some idea of the size of this community of exiled Tibetans (this is one of two areas given to them by India when the Dali Lama first fled Tibet).
The next temple on our route was Sermey Dratsang Cultural Society, which had *unbelievable* wall hangings and weavings hung everywhere. The common theme in the artwork here is *incredible* detail, lots of color and gold. This temple also had 16 paintings (8 on either side wall) depicting 16 great Buddhist sages, the same 16 that were represented by the monoliths at the Golden Temple. Finally, one of the main statues in this temple was of the Medicine Buddha, and there was also a mandala for the Medicine Buddha (a small scale house, completely made out of gold that depicts (as do all mandala when the word is used in this sense) the world according to the Darma of the Medicine Buddha.
The next monastery, Nalanda, was the newest that we saw. There were several beehives on the front of the temple, which apparently show that the temple will grow and prosper. The other cool thing in this temple was that Chosang had helped to install some of the stones in the goldwork around the central idol in the temple.
At the next monastery we actually saw a bunch of monks in the middle of prayer and meditation! They were chanting in the main temple and we still went in and looked around! (This was the place where we were a little more formal about what we did). I took a short video of them chanting and will see if I can post it. This monastery also had a really big school out back (all of the monasteries had an attached school), and there was also a guy who would pray for things you asked him to (with the length of the prayer proportional to the amount you paid him).
The next monastery only had a single monk that was praying (and would later lead others in prayer) in a back room and beating a drum. From the sound of it Dad and I though that there was a whole group of monks back there, and were really surprised when there was only one! He had quite the resonating voice!
The next temple was the final one. It had incredibly ornate weavings draped everywhere and was, as expected, spectacular. At this point it was 3:30PM and we had been touring around for 6 and a half hours! If we had stayed till 8 we could have had dinner with Chosang and Rinzin and the rest of the family, but given that it was a 5 hour drive back to Bangalore we decided that wouldn't be the best option. Chosang gave Dad and I white silk scarves that he got at this last temple and are apparently blessings ^_^. We had our driver take some group pictures of us in front of the temple, then there were some kids outside the temple that asked Dad to take pictures of them and got *really* excited by when they saw themselves on the LCD screen ^_^. He also got a couple of good pictures of 10 year old monks that were watching the proceedings and seemed to feel to formal to join in until Dad asked to take their picture.
We said goodbye to Chosang and Rinzin at the entrance of Bylakuppe, where we had originally met them. It was really sad saying goodbye to such incredible and kind people, and we made sure to get their mailing address so that Dad could send them pictures and some other thank yous for all they had done for us. I feel like I made two friends that day, especially with Rinzin who was very fun to chat with about plans for schooling and things like that. ^_^
There is one last observation I would like to make. At every temple that we vistited, there was a picture of the Rempoche (the head of the temple), and Chosang and Rinzin would say something about them being the 14th or 17th Rempoche (or some other title). There was generally also a picture of their predecessor. It was not until late in the day or maybe the drive back that I realized that they were not 14th in line in presiding over the temple, but the 14th *incarnation* of a Buddhist that had become enlightened and decided to return to our world to help others find the way to nirvana. It made much more sense when I realized this. Along the same lines, there were pictures of the Dali Lama in most every temple, and many pictures of a small boy who was named to be the next incarnation of the sage that China put in to rule Tibet when the Dali Lama fled. However, the kid in the pictures is the incarnation named by the Dali Lama when the previous died, whereas China named a different incarnation and put this child and his family in "protective custody." Conclude from this what you will, but the exiled Tibetans certainly aren't buying it. I saw several "Boycott Chinese goods" sings in Bylakuppe.
The drive back was, as before, beautiful. The main even on the way back (other than contending with *horrific* [worst I've seen] traffic in Bangalore [did I mention that our driver was awesome?]) was seeing a bunch of Indian men walking down the road, butt naked!!! Considering how not OK anything publicly sexual is here, I couldn't believe what I saw! There were about 6 guys, just walking along the side of the highway with no clothes on, perfectly unconcerned. There were also other men, clothed, walking with them (pushing a pair of them on a cart) and also not alarmed. The only theory I have so far is from Tracy, guessing that these men are Jains (a fairly small but influential religious group here) of a sect that does not wear clothes! Considering the uproar I would expect at seeing a naked woman out on the street, I was shocked to see all these naked men. I think two sayings are particularly appropriate for this:
India is a nation of contradictions.
-lots of people
Anything you can think of might be [is?] true in India.
-Prasad
When we got back, around 8:30PM, we went out with Nels, Rob, Tracy, and Pavol to the dosa place near my house, which turns out to be a *fantastic* restaurant for dinner ^_^. After getting back I decided (as I have for many nights in a row ^_^) that I didn't have the energy to write this blog post and collapsed gratefully into bed.
I think that is *more* than enough for now. Next is Sunday's turn... We shall see if that happens tonight.
Cheers,
Jason
Journey to Bylakuppe and random observations
Hey all,
I haven't posted for a while because 1) I've gotten busy and 2) there is *so* much to talk about. However, I'm just going to buckle down and write this all down! Dad and I went to a Tibetan refugee camp called Bylakuppe this past weekend (though it has been there since the Dali Lama fled Tebet, so its not what I would typically think of as a refugee camp). The trip was *fantastic*, and I'll try to capture some of the highlights here.
Dad and I left Bangalore on Friday at about noon, taking a private taxi (it was fantastic having a private driver for the weekend!) that I hired through work. It was about a 4 hour drive down past Mysore to a town called Hunsore where I was to call Chosang (our contact at Bylakuppe, who is the brother-in-law of a friend of a friend of Dad's! Seems like a tenuous relationship, but we were treated almost like family while we were there, as you will see) for directions to Bylakuppe. The drive itself was amazing. We both brought books but didn't read at all, just marveled at the spectacle when we went through towns and at the beautiful landscape when we left them again. What was especially interesting about the drive was watching the land become more lush and verdant and the houses change in architecture and begin to look to be in better repair as we approached Bylakuppe. Another favorite for me was all the gigantic advertisements for cellphone companies and "The Fun Fort" on small and somewhat broken down houses.
After a stop at Hunsore to call Chosang and handing the phone off to our driver we quickly make it to the entrance to Bylakuppe where Chosang and his daughter Rinzin (who is in 9th grade) were waiting for us. After greeting us Chosang led our driver through the camp on his motorcycle to a Indian town called Kushalnagar on the other side of the camp. The camp itself is very large and it took us 20 or 30 minutes to drive through. It is also beautiful and has an incredible sense of peace, very different from the hectic frenzy of the Indian areas bordering the camp. Everyone was wearing western clothes (even the women, who were also out on the street and wandering around). When our driver make normal (for Bangalore) use of the horn our car received looks of disgust and incredulity. And there were monks, wearing robes colored a deep red, all over the place (it was neat seeing that monks are not necessarily solemn and stuffy. I saw groups of monks running about, playfully roughhousing and the like. Also, I saw monks on motorcycles!! This was extremely exiting to me, but unfortunately I didn't ever manage to get a picture :-( ). I don't know if the feeling of peace is some sort of personal bias, or some sort of more western feeling, but my Dad was also conscious of a greater sense of peace as we drove through the camp.
In Kushalnagar Chosang and Rinzin had arranged a hotel for us (we couldn't stay in the camp without risking arrest by the Indian police and 5 years in jail, as it is officially a refugee camp). After chatting with them for a while (they both speak OK English, but Rinzin's is much better. It is also the easiest to understand of any English that I have heard while in India, as Rinzin has a very very clean American accent) Dad and I wandered about Kushalnagar. Though it was not as peaceful as Bylakuppe it is certainly more peaceful than Bangalore and I felt like I received fewer and more friendly stares than I ever have in Bangalore. We also weren't hassled at all by shopkeepers, then came back to the hotel and had a nice dinner there. In conclusion, I really enjoyed it there.
After dinner Dad and I sat out on our 2nd floor balcony, read, watched people, and played around doing nighttime photography with our cameras which was really a lot of fun (all the while listening to beautiful music lilting from the distance). While sitting on the balcony I had a number of observations. I noticed a teenage/early-20s Tibetan woman walking around with a "Fuck on the first date" T-shirt that I thought would be fairly risky in the US, let along a traditional Indian town! I've also noticed that balding seems to be a very common thing for older Indian men, and wonder if that is an accurate statement. I also marvel at how deeply western clothing has penetrated into India, at least for men (apparently there is a definite perception that women who wear western clothes are, shall we say, "looser"). You still see lots of men wearing the traditional pants/skirt thing, but western button up shirts are pretty much the only thing you see guys wearing (younger people will wear T-shirts). I don't know why the clothing seems to be so viral, but I would be interested in seeing a country like China to see if such things have happened there as well. One final note along this line is that all school uniforms are very western, even for girls (though their uniform has a skirt, not pants).
India also seems to have a very strong culture of being outside. I could look out from my balcony and see at least half a dozen small groups of men hanging out in front of shops and chatting or buying things from a shopkeeper. This is in direct contrast to the US where you have to go inside to do almost anything (or bring 'inside' with you, like going to the drive-through of a fast food place in your car). Its not like the weather encourages people to be outside, especially in this rainy monsoon season, so I wonder why this tradition seems to be so strong.
Just a few more things I've noticed. Mustaches are *very* popular in Bangalore (I've heard 'you aren't a real man' if you don't have a mustache in the next state over, and that has some influence here too). Also, peeing on the side of the road seems to be completely accepted here (usually just by guys, but I did see a father holding up his 1-year-old daughter's skirt so that she so relieve herself by the side of the road while we were sitting on our balcony). Finally, I've noticed that while there is a huge variation in the skin tone of Indians (from very dark to essentially Caucasian), there is almost zero variation in hair color (though there are a few people who look like they have gotten red highlights in their hair, but other than that the only variation I see is when old people get gray in their hair!).
One last amusing anecdote about the hotel room we were staying: The bathroom did not have any towels, soap, or toilet paper (normal here, which is why I carry TP on trips with me now) so we requested towels and soap from the hotel. A guy brought up a single towel and a bar of soap to me, so I asked for another towel, to which he replied "No sir, only one towel per room." Dad and I got a good chuckle out of that one!
Ok, thats enough about Friday! The next post will be on Saturday and touring around Bylakuppe!
Cheers,
Jason
I haven't posted for a while because 1) I've gotten busy and 2) there is *so* much to talk about. However, I'm just going to buckle down and write this all down! Dad and I went to a Tibetan refugee camp called Bylakuppe this past weekend (though it has been there since the Dali Lama fled Tebet, so its not what I would typically think of as a refugee camp). The trip was *fantastic*, and I'll try to capture some of the highlights here.
Dad and I left Bangalore on Friday at about noon, taking a private taxi (it was fantastic having a private driver for the weekend!) that I hired through work. It was about a 4 hour drive down past Mysore to a town called Hunsore where I was to call Chosang (our contact at Bylakuppe, who is the brother-in-law of a friend of a friend of Dad's! Seems like a tenuous relationship, but we were treated almost like family while we were there, as you will see) for directions to Bylakuppe. The drive itself was amazing. We both brought books but didn't read at all, just marveled at the spectacle when we went through towns and at the beautiful landscape when we left them again. What was especially interesting about the drive was watching the land become more lush and verdant and the houses change in architecture and begin to look to be in better repair as we approached Bylakuppe. Another favorite for me was all the gigantic advertisements for cellphone companies and "The Fun Fort" on small and somewhat broken down houses.
After a stop at Hunsore to call Chosang and handing the phone off to our driver we quickly make it to the entrance to Bylakuppe where Chosang and his daughter Rinzin (who is in 9th grade) were waiting for us. After greeting us Chosang led our driver through the camp on his motorcycle to a Indian town called Kushalnagar on the other side of the camp. The camp itself is very large and it took us 20 or 30 minutes to drive through. It is also beautiful and has an incredible sense of peace, very different from the hectic frenzy of the Indian areas bordering the camp. Everyone was wearing western clothes (even the women, who were also out on the street and wandering around). When our driver make normal (for Bangalore) use of the horn our car received looks of disgust and incredulity. And there were monks, wearing robes colored a deep red, all over the place (it was neat seeing that monks are not necessarily solemn and stuffy. I saw groups of monks running about, playfully roughhousing and the like. Also, I saw monks on motorcycles!! This was extremely exiting to me, but unfortunately I didn't ever manage to get a picture :-( ). I don't know if the feeling of peace is some sort of personal bias, or some sort of more western feeling, but my Dad was also conscious of a greater sense of peace as we drove through the camp.
In Kushalnagar Chosang and Rinzin had arranged a hotel for us (we couldn't stay in the camp without risking arrest by the Indian police and 5 years in jail, as it is officially a refugee camp). After chatting with them for a while (they both speak OK English, but Rinzin's is much better. It is also the easiest to understand of any English that I have heard while in India, as Rinzin has a very very clean American accent) Dad and I wandered about Kushalnagar. Though it was not as peaceful as Bylakuppe it is certainly more peaceful than Bangalore and I felt like I received fewer and more friendly stares than I ever have in Bangalore. We also weren't hassled at all by shopkeepers, then came back to the hotel and had a nice dinner there. In conclusion, I really enjoyed it there.
After dinner Dad and I sat out on our 2nd floor balcony, read, watched people, and played around doing nighttime photography with our cameras which was really a lot of fun (all the while listening to beautiful music lilting from the distance). While sitting on the balcony I had a number of observations. I noticed a teenage/early-20s Tibetan woman walking around with a "Fuck on the first date" T-shirt that I thought would be fairly risky in the US, let along a traditional Indian town! I've also noticed that balding seems to be a very common thing for older Indian men, and wonder if that is an accurate statement. I also marvel at how deeply western clothing has penetrated into India, at least for men (apparently there is a definite perception that women who wear western clothes are, shall we say, "looser"). You still see lots of men wearing the traditional pants/skirt thing, but western button up shirts are pretty much the only thing you see guys wearing (younger people will wear T-shirts). I don't know why the clothing seems to be so viral, but I would be interested in seeing a country like China to see if such things have happened there as well. One final note along this line is that all school uniforms are very western, even for girls (though their uniform has a skirt, not pants).
India also seems to have a very strong culture of being outside. I could look out from my balcony and see at least half a dozen small groups of men hanging out in front of shops and chatting or buying things from a shopkeeper. This is in direct contrast to the US where you have to go inside to do almost anything (or bring 'inside' with you, like going to the drive-through of a fast food place in your car). Its not like the weather encourages people to be outside, especially in this rainy monsoon season, so I wonder why this tradition seems to be so strong.
Just a few more things I've noticed. Mustaches are *very* popular in Bangalore (I've heard 'you aren't a real man' if you don't have a mustache in the next state over, and that has some influence here too). Also, peeing on the side of the road seems to be completely accepted here (usually just by guys, but I did see a father holding up his 1-year-old daughter's skirt so that she so relieve herself by the side of the road while we were sitting on our balcony). Finally, I've noticed that while there is a huge variation in the skin tone of Indians (from very dark to essentially Caucasian), there is almost zero variation in hair color (though there are a few people who look like they have gotten red highlights in their hair, but other than that the only variation I see is when old people get gray in their hair!).
One last amusing anecdote about the hotel room we were staying: The bathroom did not have any towels, soap, or toilet paper (normal here, which is why I carry TP on trips with me now) so we requested towels and soap from the hotel. A guy brought up a single towel and a bar of soap to me, so I asked for another towel, to which he replied "No sir, only one towel per room." Dad and I got a good chuckle out of that one!
Ok, thats enough about Friday! The next post will be on Saturday and touring around Bylakuppe!
Cheers,
Jason
Thursday, July 12, 2007
A trip to MG road with Dad
Hey all,
After that last, massive, post I'm going to try to make this one a bit shorter. Not too much happened this morning. I slept in a bit till 8:00. Revi came by in the morning because someone at work had decided it was sari (formal wear for the Indian female) day today and Revi and Tracy dressed up in their saries. I got to chat with the two of them, in the full formal wear, while wearing a towel, which was amusing.
I had a very productive morning at work, writing up some thoughts in a new area I'm working on a bit (adversarial learning on CRFs). I was going to meet Dad at noon, but at about 11:30 Venkie IMed me asking how things were going. This eventually resulted in me staying an extra hour trying to code in a change that he had suggested to the pseudo-random number generator. Probably the most irksome part of all of this was after I sent him the first copy of the writeup on the algorithms, to which he replied "I can't read this. Have you ever heard of pseudo-code? Its this thing called 'pseudo-code' " which was a bit of slap in the face and very hard to swallow. However, I had no choice but to rewrite the file to his satisfaction and then try to make the changes he suggested. Anyways, around 1:00 I finally got out and Dad and I went to pizza hut and tried again to set up his cell phone (in vain). After the *delicious* meal at pizza hut we came back to the office, arranged transportation down to the Tibetan camp Bylakuppe for tomorrow, grabbed Tracy, and headed down to MG road!
It was definitely a fun afternoon. This was Dad's first trip in an auto-rickshaw, which is certainly a new experience, and one really impossible to describe (especially in heavy Bangalore traffic). Once we got to MG road we toured around a few places, the cat (really magazine) store, my favorite bookshop, the Planet M music store, and a couple of stores selling neat Indian goods (I bought a few gifts ^_^). After all that shopping we took a break at a resturant on the 3rd story of a building overlooking the milling masses of Brigade Road, sat, and chatted. After that nice break we attempted to find Gerudo mall, which I had been to about 5 weeks ago, but were unable to find our way there and were fairly tired so we hopped in an rickshaw back to Sadashivanagar(where I live).
Funny story from the drive back: our rickshaw was stopped in traffic and there was a bus diagonally in front of it with some space behind (right next to our rickshaw). A guy on a motorcycle drove into that space, and while he was still slowly drifting forward started staring at us. This guy had his neck cranked around 90 degrees! However, while he was staring at us, he kept drifting forward on the motorcycle and smacked the front of the bike right into the back of the bus! He wasn't hurt at all, just startled, and all of us and the rickshaw driver had a good chuckle at him. He was too distracted by all the white people to notice where he was going!
Dad went home for a while and I worked for a bit (after we tried to get his phone worked out again and the people asked for an additional *two days* to get his phone unlocked :-P), then we walked down to Opus with Nels and Rob. Rob split off to go home once we got there, but Dad, Nels, and I had a really nice time at Opus (good music, good drinks, good food, good people ^_^). We did not participate in Booze & Brains (quiz night) this week, but the main waiter actually recognized us as Thursday night regulars! :-). I guess we've established quite the tradition.
After Opus we headed home, and Dad and I will meet tomorrow at about 11:30AM to get picked up by a cab and drive ~250km to Bylakuppe! Should be a cool trip! Since I've been home I've just been futzing on the blog (and talking to Elaine! Yay! She gets here in14 days, and I *cannot wait*!). Now I should *really* get to sleep, so thats all for now!
Cheers,
Jason
After that last, massive, post I'm going to try to make this one a bit shorter. Not too much happened this morning. I slept in a bit till 8:00. Revi came by in the morning because someone at work had decided it was sari (formal wear for the Indian female) day today and Revi and Tracy dressed up in their saries. I got to chat with the two of them, in the full formal wear, while wearing a towel, which was amusing.
I had a very productive morning at work, writing up some thoughts in a new area I'm working on a bit (adversarial learning on CRFs). I was going to meet Dad at noon, but at about 11:30 Venkie IMed me asking how things were going. This eventually resulted in me staying an extra hour trying to code in a change that he had suggested to the pseudo-random number generator. Probably the most irksome part of all of this was after I sent him the first copy of the writeup on the algorithms, to which he replied "I can't read this. Have you ever heard of pseudo-code? Its this thing called 'pseudo-code' " which was a bit of slap in the face and very hard to swallow. However, I had no choice but to rewrite the file to his satisfaction and then try to make the changes he suggested. Anyways, around 1:00 I finally got out and Dad and I went to pizza hut and tried again to set up his cell phone (in vain). After the *delicious* meal at pizza hut we came back to the office, arranged transportation down to the Tibetan camp Bylakuppe for tomorrow, grabbed Tracy, and headed down to MG road!
It was definitely a fun afternoon. This was Dad's first trip in an auto-rickshaw, which is certainly a new experience, and one really impossible to describe (especially in heavy Bangalore traffic). Once we got to MG road we toured around a few places, the cat (really magazine) store, my favorite bookshop, the Planet M music store, and a couple of stores selling neat Indian goods (I bought a few gifts ^_^). After all that shopping we took a break at a resturant on the 3rd story of a building overlooking the milling masses of Brigade Road, sat, and chatted. After that nice break we attempted to find Gerudo mall, which I had been to about 5 weeks ago, but were unable to find our way there and were fairly tired so we hopped in an rickshaw back to Sadashivanagar(where I live).
Funny story from the drive back: our rickshaw was stopped in traffic and there was a bus diagonally in front of it with some space behind (right next to our rickshaw). A guy on a motorcycle drove into that space, and while he was still slowly drifting forward started staring at us. This guy had his neck cranked around 90 degrees! However, while he was staring at us, he kept drifting forward on the motorcycle and smacked the front of the bike right into the back of the bus! He wasn't hurt at all, just startled, and all of us and the rickshaw driver had a good chuckle at him. He was too distracted by all the white people to notice where he was going!
Dad went home for a while and I worked for a bit (after we tried to get his phone worked out again and the people asked for an additional *two days* to get his phone unlocked :-P), then we walked down to Opus with Nels and Rob. Rob split off to go home once we got there, but Dad, Nels, and I had a really nice time at Opus (good music, good drinks, good food, good people ^_^). We did not participate in Booze & Brains (quiz night) this week, but the main waiter actually recognized us as Thursday night regulars! :-). I guess we've established quite the tradition.
After Opus we headed home, and Dad and I will meet tomorrow at about 11:30AM to get picked up by a cab and drive ~250km to Bylakuppe! Should be a cool trip! Since I've been home I've just been futzing on the blog (and talking to Elaine! Yay! She gets here in14 days, and I *cannot wait*!). Now I should *really* get to sleep, so thats all for now!
Cheers,
Jason
Dad is here!
Hey all,
The past two days have been pretty busy! Tuesday night I headed over to the airport at about 11:15PM and waited there for about an hour and a half to pick up dad. Fortunately the taxi ride back from the airport was significantly less eventful (and much cheaper) than the last one. We got to my place around 2AM and went to sleep soon afterwards.
The next morning I woke up before Dad (he slept in a bit). Once he woke up and while he was getting ready I made a slight breakthrough in part of my research (saw a new way of looking at a problem I was working on the previous day) ^_^. Once we were all ready we wondered around the neighborhood a bit, I showed him Basham circle (again, "circles" in Bangalore are more often just intersections), and we went to the dosa place that is near my flat. I'm not sure why, but the people at the dosa place treated me more like a tourist than usual: even after I told them what we wanted they tried to give me food advice, which was rather irksome (I totally related to Elaine getting upset when people thought she was a tourist in Martinique).
After breakfast we checked out a guest house just a block from my flat and checked Dad in there after looking at a few rooms (and I canceled the reservation I had already made for him in another place in Malleshwarm). Once we brought his bags over and got him settled in I went to work and put in a few hours of work and grabbed a light lunch before leaving work again at 1PM to take Dad around. We wandered a little south of Basham circle, had lunch and a nice chat a Chinese place I've been to before with Nels. After lunch we wandered back, attempted to get a cellphone set up for Dad (it is proving to be very difficult to unlock his phone to use other SIM cards, and I think we have given up now. We have the Hutch SIM card, but they already took his phone for a day and wanted two more! I think we're cutting our losses and giving up [note: this is from the perspective of 'now', which is Thursday, breaking from the rest of this post which is on 'Wednesday'], and stopped by the nice bookstore that I found in our neighborhood.
After that full afternoon Dad went back to his hotel and I worked for about an hour, then we were picked up by Ravi (a researcher in my group) to head over to the wedding reception (which comes before the wedding here, as an announcement of the impending [the next day] marrage to the world)of a Nikhil (another guy in my group, who sits next to me). The reception was all the way across town, and on the way there we picked up another guy in my group, Deba, who was buying some gifts fro Nikhil and his bride. It took about an hour to get across town and it was very nice chatting with Ravi and Deba on the way.
The reception itself was rather incredible. The entire building was covered in lights and there was a massive and colorful sign announcing it outside. There were literally several *hundred* people there with all sorts of colorful saris and nice clothing. We initially looked around the huge (and again, colorfully decorated) room, than sat down and relaxed in one of the many chairs facing a stage in the front of the room that had a pair of (I kid you not) *thrones*. I mostly listened to Ravi and Deba discuss the similarities and differences of Indian wedding traditions (though I did learn something about red dots on the forehead. A bindi is the dot that women wear on their forheads and it is really just a style and fashion thing, when a woman is married they start putting a certain coloring on the place they part their hair and do so till their husband dies, and finally a tika is the red powder I've had on my forehead in Hampi and it means "god's grace"). Nihil and his bride eventually came in, had a small ceremony for either the bride's or the bride's mother's birthday (complete with the really weird, slightly mutated Indian version of "Happy Birthday"), then they started greeting guests. Every single one of the people came up in small groups, greeted the bride and groom, and had their picture taken (another major feature of the wedding reception is that the bride and groom stage a bunch of pictures for the photographers... who seem to really be the ones that control weddings nowadays...), which makes me feel bad for the bride and groom who have to keep smiling for pictures! Fortunately we got through the line early and went to have some of the *delicious* food, of which their were copious amounts of!
After we had eaten we headed out (receiving an exit gift of a coconut ^_^) and took Ravi's car back across town. The chatting was even more interesting on the way back. Deba is from eastern India and his family is originally from Bangladesh but migrated during "The Partition" when India and Pakistan became separate countries. We got to hear some about the partition, about east & west Pakistan (which were one country until east Pakistan succeeded and became Bangladesh), and some interesting and relatively unknown bits of history (the eastern side of the partition is less well known and less well studied). The ethnic group of Deba's grandparents apparently has a language and a script all of their own, but it is now really dieing out (pretty much all of the people left Bangladesh, either for England or for India [there are many Indian stores in England run by people of this group whose name I can't remember]). Anyway, lots of other intersting things were discussed, research, the state of some institutions in India, transportiation (Deba had the priceless quote about autorickshaws, "They're the fastest way around because that guy [the driver] doesn't care about his safety or yours!"). In conclusion, the ride back was a lot of fun ^_^.
Once we got back Dad came over to my place for a little bit and met Tracy (Nels still wasn't back!). After he left I got to talk to Mom and Brandon for a while (Brandon just got back from a month-long, spectacular-sounding trip to Spain and France!), which was really nice. After I got off the phone with them I called Elaine, which was also *really* nice! ^_^
Wow, and that was only Wednesday! I think I'm going to do another post for Thurday!
Cheers,
Jason
The past two days have been pretty busy! Tuesday night I headed over to the airport at about 11:15PM and waited there for about an hour and a half to pick up dad. Fortunately the taxi ride back from the airport was significantly less eventful (and much cheaper) than the last one. We got to my place around 2AM and went to sleep soon afterwards.
The next morning I woke up before Dad (he slept in a bit). Once he woke up and while he was getting ready I made a slight breakthrough in part of my research (saw a new way of looking at a problem I was working on the previous day) ^_^. Once we were all ready we wondered around the neighborhood a bit, I showed him Basham circle (again, "circles" in Bangalore are more often just intersections), and we went to the dosa place that is near my flat. I'm not sure why, but the people at the dosa place treated me more like a tourist than usual: even after I told them what we wanted they tried to give me food advice, which was rather irksome (I totally related to Elaine getting upset when people thought she was a tourist in Martinique).
After breakfast we checked out a guest house just a block from my flat and checked Dad in there after looking at a few rooms (and I canceled the reservation I had already made for him in another place in Malleshwarm). Once we brought his bags over and got him settled in I went to work and put in a few hours of work and grabbed a light lunch before leaving work again at 1PM to take Dad around. We wandered a little south of Basham circle, had lunch and a nice chat a Chinese place I've been to before with Nels. After lunch we wandered back, attempted to get a cellphone set up for Dad (it is proving to be very difficult to unlock his phone to use other SIM cards, and I think we have given up now. We have the Hutch SIM card, but they already took his phone for a day and wanted two more! I think we're cutting our losses and giving up [note: this is from the perspective of 'now', which is Thursday, breaking from the rest of this post which is on 'Wednesday'], and stopped by the nice bookstore that I found in our neighborhood.
After that full afternoon Dad went back to his hotel and I worked for about an hour, then we were picked up by Ravi (a researcher in my group) to head over to the wedding reception (which comes before the wedding here, as an announcement of the impending [the next day] marrage to the world)of a Nikhil (another guy in my group, who sits next to me). The reception was all the way across town, and on the way there we picked up another guy in my group, Deba, who was buying some gifts fro Nikhil and his bride. It took about an hour to get across town and it was very nice chatting with Ravi and Deba on the way.
The reception itself was rather incredible. The entire building was covered in lights and there was a massive and colorful sign announcing it outside. There were literally several *hundred* people there with all sorts of colorful saris and nice clothing. We initially looked around the huge (and again, colorfully decorated) room, than sat down and relaxed in one of the many chairs facing a stage in the front of the room that had a pair of (I kid you not) *thrones*. I mostly listened to Ravi and Deba discuss the similarities and differences of Indian wedding traditions (though I did learn something about red dots on the forehead. A bindi is the dot that women wear on their forheads and it is really just a style and fashion thing, when a woman is married they start putting a certain coloring on the place they part their hair and do so till their husband dies, and finally a tika is the red powder I've had on my forehead in Hampi and it means "god's grace"). Nihil and his bride eventually came in, had a small ceremony for either the bride's or the bride's mother's birthday (complete with the really weird, slightly mutated Indian version of "Happy Birthday"), then they started greeting guests. Every single one of the people came up in small groups, greeted the bride and groom, and had their picture taken (another major feature of the wedding reception is that the bride and groom stage a bunch of pictures for the photographers... who seem to really be the ones that control weddings nowadays...), which makes me feel bad for the bride and groom who have to keep smiling for pictures! Fortunately we got through the line early and went to have some of the *delicious* food, of which their were copious amounts of!
After we had eaten we headed out (receiving an exit gift of a coconut ^_^) and took Ravi's car back across town. The chatting was even more interesting on the way back. Deba is from eastern India and his family is originally from Bangladesh but migrated during "The Partition" when India and Pakistan became separate countries. We got to hear some about the partition, about east & west Pakistan (which were one country until east Pakistan succeeded and became Bangladesh), and some interesting and relatively unknown bits of history (the eastern side of the partition is less well known and less well studied). The ethnic group of Deba's grandparents apparently has a language and a script all of their own, but it is now really dieing out (pretty much all of the people left Bangladesh, either for England or for India [there are many Indian stores in England run by people of this group whose name I can't remember]). Anyway, lots of other intersting things were discussed, research, the state of some institutions in India, transportiation (Deba had the priceless quote about autorickshaws, "They're the fastest way around because that guy [the driver] doesn't care about his safety or yours!"). In conclusion, the ride back was a lot of fun ^_^.
Once we got back Dad came over to my place for a little bit and met Tracy (Nels still wasn't back!). After he left I got to talk to Mom and Brandon for a while (Brandon just got back from a month-long, spectacular-sounding trip to Spain and France!), which was really nice. After I got off the phone with them I called Elaine, which was also *really* nice! ^_^
Wow, and that was only Wednesday! I think I'm going to do another post for Thurday!
Cheers,
Jason
Monday, July 9, 2007
Hey all,
For some reason Blogger isn't letting me edit my title, so I guess I will do without! This past weekend has really been a lot of fun. After having been to Hampi the weekend before, I stayed in town for this one. On Friday a whole bunch (me, Nels, Rob, Tracy, Christian, Prasad) of my friends from MSRI headed across town to party with the astrophysicists. We hung out in Sonnett & Natalie's appartment (which is *really* nice), chatted, drank, played some fun games and heard some interesting stories over "Nevery Have I Ever". Overall it was a really fun night that we will hopefully repeat again in a few weeks!
Saturday I went into work to get a few things done in anticipation of having less time once Dad gets here (which is in like 36 hours now!). While I was roaming around the office in search of a printer that wasn't malfunctioning in some sort of creative new way I ran into a couple of interns who had just started this past week. Their names are James and Dan and they are MBA students at Cambridge. We chatted a little bit and the dinner on MG road was proposed for the night!
After working the rest of the afternoon I headed down to MG road with Tracy & Shalin, and we met up with Dan & James at the McDonalds (yup, quite a landmark. We were just standing in front of good 'ol Ronald). It took a while to get the whole group together, and I got to chat with Dan a bit, which was really fun. He is Mormon and spent the two years of his mission in Thailand in '95 and '96. According to him Indian & Thailand are kind of like Switzerland & Germany, fairly similar but still really quite different. Apparently the food is spicier in Thailand, and putting your hands together (like one was praying) in front of your chest is the common greeting there (with the height of the hands denoting the level of respect).
Once we all got together we headed over to the Cariabe Club, which is the Trinidadian/Spanish/Cuban/I-don't-know resturant that I went to a few weeks ago with Christian and Nels. It has *fantastic* food and it was really fun talking to everyone there and hearing a little about the MBA program at Cambridge. That about wraps up Saturday.
After going out on both Friday & Saturday I didn't feel like doing much on Sunday. I slept in, went into work for a few hours, had lunch at a soup & salad (though my salad ended up being something that *I* would call a soup) with Nels & Rob, then came home, fuzted about, and read for the afternoon. Very relaxing ^_^.
However, Nels got back from work around 8:30 and suggested that we all go out to a club called "Zero-G" (its on the 10th story of a skyscraper downtown). Tracy, Christian, & Rob all came and we met up with Sonnett & Natalie there. The view from the club is *really* spectacular, and the place itself is very cool looking: cool colored lights, modern art type furniture, a (sketch) pool in the back... a very nice place. Getting to Zero-G, however, proved to be a bit of an ordeal. Christian & I shared an auto, which started off going *incredibly* slowly, basically just coasting (Christian asked if they needed us to get out and push). After a bit they pulled over, got out to look at the engine, and it turned out the accelerator handle (same thing as a motorcycle) was broken! To work around this they just pulled out the cable that ran to the engine, the driver wrapped it around his hand and pulled a various levels of tension to accelerate!! It took him a while to get the hang of changing gears with the new means of speed control.... That is probably the sketchiest and most dangerous experience I have yet had on the roads.
There were a couple of other amusing stories from the night too. Nels had a glass of wine when we got there and when he finished it he asked for "another glass", so they brought him an empty wine glass... ^_^ Apparently at many bars in the US there will be some 21 year old girl who brings around shots to various tables, at Zero-G the 21 year old girl was a 30 year old, slightly overweight, guy wearing a sombrero (though this is probably due to the fact that there were no females working at Zero-G. I know I've seen cashiers at the supermarket that are female, but other than that I don't know how many I've seen that have jobs in shops or that sort of thing [unless they are family run], something I need to start paying attention to). The final crazy thing about Zero-G was the Indian dancing. I also noticed this at the MSRI resort a few weeks ago, but the Indian style of dance at parties is markedly different than the American style. I can't really describe it, but I recommend that you watch a couple of Bollywood movies if you want to see.
That ended a quite full and fun weekend. Not too much has happened today, except that a chipmunk *fell into our office*! There is a small hole in one of the walls and somehow a chipmunk managed to go through it and fall down!!! It was freaking out, running around, and made it down the stairs and to the ground floor before anyone caught it. It was a little bit surreal, and highly amusing. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures :-(.
Well, thats all for now! G'night all!
Cheers,
Jason
For some reason Blogger isn't letting me edit my title, so I guess I will do without! This past weekend has really been a lot of fun. After having been to Hampi the weekend before, I stayed in town for this one. On Friday a whole bunch (me, Nels, Rob, Tracy, Christian, Prasad) of my friends from MSRI headed across town to party with the astrophysicists. We hung out in Sonnett & Natalie's appartment (which is *really* nice), chatted, drank, played some fun games and heard some interesting stories over "Nevery Have I Ever". Overall it was a really fun night that we will hopefully repeat again in a few weeks!
Saturday I went into work to get a few things done in anticipation of having less time once Dad gets here (which is in like 36 hours now!). While I was roaming around the office in search of a printer that wasn't malfunctioning in some sort of creative new way I ran into a couple of interns who had just started this past week. Their names are James and Dan and they are MBA students at Cambridge. We chatted a little bit and the dinner on MG road was proposed for the night!
After working the rest of the afternoon I headed down to MG road with Tracy & Shalin, and we met up with Dan & James at the McDonalds (yup, quite a landmark. We were just standing in front of good 'ol Ronald). It took a while to get the whole group together, and I got to chat with Dan a bit, which was really fun. He is Mormon and spent the two years of his mission in Thailand in '95 and '96. According to him Indian & Thailand are kind of like Switzerland & Germany, fairly similar but still really quite different. Apparently the food is spicier in Thailand, and putting your hands together (like one was praying) in front of your chest is the common greeting there (with the height of the hands denoting the level of respect).
Once we all got together we headed over to the Cariabe Club, which is the Trinidadian/Spanish/Cuban/I-don't-know resturant that I went to a few weeks ago with Christian and Nels. It has *fantastic* food and it was really fun talking to everyone there and hearing a little about the MBA program at Cambridge. That about wraps up Saturday.
After going out on both Friday & Saturday I didn't feel like doing much on Sunday. I slept in, went into work for a few hours, had lunch at a soup & salad (though my salad ended up being something that *I* would call a soup) with Nels & Rob, then came home, fuzted about, and read for the afternoon. Very relaxing ^_^.
However, Nels got back from work around 8:30 and suggested that we all go out to a club called "Zero-G" (its on the 10th story of a skyscraper downtown). Tracy, Christian, & Rob all came and we met up with Sonnett & Natalie there. The view from the club is *really* spectacular, and the place itself is very cool looking: cool colored lights, modern art type furniture, a (sketch) pool in the back... a very nice place. Getting to Zero-G, however, proved to be a bit of an ordeal. Christian & I shared an auto, which started off going *incredibly* slowly, basically just coasting (Christian asked if they needed us to get out and push). After a bit they pulled over, got out to look at the engine, and it turned out the accelerator handle (same thing as a motorcycle) was broken! To work around this they just pulled out the cable that ran to the engine, the driver wrapped it around his hand and pulled a various levels of tension to accelerate!! It took him a while to get the hang of changing gears with the new means of speed control.... That is probably the sketchiest and most dangerous experience I have yet had on the roads.
There were a couple of other amusing stories from the night too. Nels had a glass of wine when we got there and when he finished it he asked for "another glass", so they brought him an empty wine glass... ^_^ Apparently at many bars in the US there will be some 21 year old girl who brings around shots to various tables, at Zero-G the 21 year old girl was a 30 year old, slightly overweight, guy wearing a sombrero (though this is probably due to the fact that there were no females working at Zero-G. I know I've seen cashiers at the supermarket that are female, but other than that I don't know how many I've seen that have jobs in shops or that sort of thing [unless they are family run], something I need to start paying attention to). The final crazy thing about Zero-G was the Indian dancing. I also noticed this at the MSRI resort a few weeks ago, but the Indian style of dance at parties is markedly different than the American style. I can't really describe it, but I recommend that you watch a couple of Bollywood movies if you want to see.
That ended a quite full and fun weekend. Not too much has happened today, except that a chipmunk *fell into our office*! There is a small hole in one of the walls and somehow a chipmunk managed to go through it and fall down!!! It was freaking out, running around, and made it down the stairs and to the ground floor before anyone caught it. It was a little bit surreal, and highly amusing. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures :-(.
Well, thats all for now! G'night all!
Cheers,
Jason
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Fourth of July
Hey all,
Ironic that this post is going out not on the fourth of July, but oh well. After the fun of this past weekend in Hampi, not too much happened this week until the 4th. There are, of course, no official celebrations around here (though I found out today that last year some interns got together and set off fireworks... Oh well, things to keep in mind in case I spend future 4ths outside the US), so we celebrated by taking a trip to karaoke night at Opus. We met up with the astrophysicists we met at Hampi, and about 8 people from the office came, so we had a pretty massive group. Dinner was really good (I've discovered that I can actually get beef at Opus! I didn't think I was going to get any at all while I was here!). I think there is some sort of tradition starting when we have events with Prasad because Ashwani smuggled a bottle of brandy into Opus (in case they didn't have any and because it is *way* cheaper than house drinks). In addition to dinner I had a couple of beers, and after mentioning that enough alcohol might convince me to do karaoke, Nels had some (delicious) brandy shots show up in front of me.
We finished up chatting and dinner right about when the karaoke actually started. Unfortunately, the people who got up to sing were, by and large, *really* good, which meant that I wouldn't go up to sing by myself. Nels is the only person who went up by himself and sung "We're so happy together," which was the closest thing to a 4th of July celebrating America song that he could really find. However, the high point of the night was when Nels, Rob, Christian (who is incidentally not American), one of the astrophysicists whos name I forget (the one that wasn't in Hampi), and I went up and celebrated the 4th by singing the most american song we could find, which turned out to be the Beach Boy's "Surfin' USA". I think someone has posted a youtube video of that, but I'm not going to give any further hints as it was rather horrible and embarrassing. Fun though ^_^.
After Opus closed at 11:30 Nels and I came back home and hung out in Tracy's room, watched VH1 and chatted for a while. All in all a good night ^_^.
All right, time for me to go to bed. Its almost 1:00AM and I've spent the last several hours posting to the blog / uploading pictures on facebook. I think I am *finally* all caught up, and I hope that you all enjoy the pictures and the posts.
Cheers & g'night,
Jason
Ironic that this post is going out not on the fourth of July, but oh well. After the fun of this past weekend in Hampi, not too much happened this week until the 4th. There are, of course, no official celebrations around here (though I found out today that last year some interns got together and set off fireworks... Oh well, things to keep in mind in case I spend future 4ths outside the US), so we celebrated by taking a trip to karaoke night at Opus. We met up with the astrophysicists we met at Hampi, and about 8 people from the office came, so we had a pretty massive group. Dinner was really good (I've discovered that I can actually get beef at Opus! I didn't think I was going to get any at all while I was here!). I think there is some sort of tradition starting when we have events with Prasad because Ashwani smuggled a bottle of brandy into Opus (in case they didn't have any and because it is *way* cheaper than house drinks). In addition to dinner I had a couple of beers, and after mentioning that enough alcohol might convince me to do karaoke, Nels had some (delicious) brandy shots show up in front of me.
We finished up chatting and dinner right about when the karaoke actually started. Unfortunately, the people who got up to sing were, by and large, *really* good, which meant that I wouldn't go up to sing by myself. Nels is the only person who went up by himself and sung "We're so happy together," which was the closest thing to a 4th of July celebrating America song that he could really find. However, the high point of the night was when Nels, Rob, Christian (who is incidentally not American), one of the astrophysicists whos name I forget (the one that wasn't in Hampi), and I went up and celebrated the 4th by singing the most american song we could find, which turned out to be the Beach Boy's "Surfin' USA". I think someone has posted a youtube video of that, but I'm not going to give any further hints as it was rather horrible and embarrassing. Fun though ^_^.
After Opus closed at 11:30 Nels and I came back home and hung out in Tracy's room, watched VH1 and chatted for a while. All in all a good night ^_^.
All right, time for me to go to bed. Its almost 1:00AM and I've spent the last several hours posting to the blog / uploading pictures on facebook. I think I am *finally* all caught up, and I hope that you all enjoy the pictures and the posts.
Cheers & g'night,
Jason
Hampi day 2 and the rest of the week
Hey all,
Its taking far longer than I expected to get up all of this stuff about Hampi, so I'm going to try to keep this post short and actually get up to date! We woke up fairly late, having *really* enjoyed sleeping after our long day. After another cold, soapless shower (that nonetheless felt great) we went to breakfast. This place was actually pretty fast with our food, which means that we were only able to go to the main streed, buy some shirts, and come back before the food was ready!
Breakfast was delicious, and then set out for a temple/castle complex about 5km away from modern day Hampi. Everyone else rode bikes, but since my knee had been hurting and Sonnett was also having knee problems we instead hired a rickshaw for the day. It was the nicest rickshaw that I have yet been in, with plush seats, an analog clock mounted inside, and even a good stereo system! The driver first took us to the royal baths, which used to be a swimming pool for the king and queen and was really cool. He then took us over to this *massive* area that used to be a castle. It had several swimming pools, one of which looked about olympic sized, and one that looked like an Escher painting! Keep in mind that all of this stuff is ~1000 years old! There are also a few remaining tall buildings, which provided a breathtaking view of the surrounding area. The rest of the group caught up with us at this temple complex, we wandered through some "secret" (cloak & dagger) tunnels that Prasad knew about, then moved on to see elephant stables!
The stables were very neat (I posted some pictures) and there was also an ancient statues museum that was neat to tour around. We finished the touring for the day by visiting one final temple, that had the most well preserved and intricate carvings and sculpture that I have yet seen. The temple contains 1000 images of the prince Rama (hero of the Ramayana), and is decorated with a montage of scenes form the Ramayana! Very cool!
After the touring we headed back to Hampi, shopped a little, then had a *very* late and very long lunch/early dinner at the Mango Tree (excellent food to finish up the visit to Hamp ^_^). After dinner we grabbed all of our stuff from our hotel and headed out to the train station (where Nels and Prasad disappeared for a while to go buy booze to sneak onto the train!). We got onto the train without any major issues, but we found out that all of our beds were side births :-(. What this means is that instead of having a semi-compartment of four beds that are separated from the rest of the train by a curtain, we instead had beds that were smaller and built into the wall (and no place to gather and party :-( ). Despite this we found some space for the first hour or so and consumed most of our booze. Nels, Prasad (though he denied it at the time), and myself all got a bit soused. We managed to find some snacks, Prasad & I chatted with the astrophysicists (Natalie, Sonnett, and Nick) for a while, then came back to our own car and Prasad, Nels, and I just sort of sat around and chatted for a little while before we went to bed (I must say, I really enjoy chatting ^_^).
Sleeping was less of a challenge than I was expecting, though I will avoid side births when possible in the future. We woke up at 5:00am on Monday, as the train was supposed to get into Bangalore at 6. We didn't get there until 8! :-( It was, nonetheless, a fantastic weekend. And after not having more than a cold, no soap shower for several days, my shower back at the apartment was *awesome*!
Well thats about all for Hampi. Here are the links for the pictures that I posted to facebook:
Day 1: http://claremont.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2045131&l=15c16&id=13300735
Day 2: http://claremont.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2045349&l=3d68f&id=13300735
Cheers,
Jason
Its taking far longer than I expected to get up all of this stuff about Hampi, so I'm going to try to keep this post short and actually get up to date! We woke up fairly late, having *really* enjoyed sleeping after our long day. After another cold, soapless shower (that nonetheless felt great) we went to breakfast. This place was actually pretty fast with our food, which means that we were only able to go to the main streed, buy some shirts, and come back before the food was ready!
Breakfast was delicious, and then set out for a temple/castle complex about 5km away from modern day Hampi. Everyone else rode bikes, but since my knee had been hurting and Sonnett was also having knee problems we instead hired a rickshaw for the day. It was the nicest rickshaw that I have yet been in, with plush seats, an analog clock mounted inside, and even a good stereo system! The driver first took us to the royal baths, which used to be a swimming pool for the king and queen and was really cool. He then took us over to this *massive* area that used to be a castle. It had several swimming pools, one of which looked about olympic sized, and one that looked like an Escher painting! Keep in mind that all of this stuff is ~1000 years old! There are also a few remaining tall buildings, which provided a breathtaking view of the surrounding area. The rest of the group caught up with us at this temple complex, we wandered through some "secret" (cloak & dagger) tunnels that Prasad knew about, then moved on to see elephant stables!
The stables were very neat (I posted some pictures) and there was also an ancient statues museum that was neat to tour around. We finished the touring for the day by visiting one final temple, that had the most well preserved and intricate carvings and sculpture that I have yet seen. The temple contains 1000 images of the prince Rama (hero of the Ramayana), and is decorated with a montage of scenes form the Ramayana! Very cool!
After the touring we headed back to Hampi, shopped a little, then had a *very* late and very long lunch/early dinner at the Mango Tree (excellent food to finish up the visit to Hamp ^_^). After dinner we grabbed all of our stuff from our hotel and headed out to the train station (where Nels and Prasad disappeared for a while to go buy booze to sneak onto the train!). We got onto the train without any major issues, but we found out that all of our beds were side births :-(. What this means is that instead of having a semi-compartment of four beds that are separated from the rest of the train by a curtain, we instead had beds that were smaller and built into the wall (and no place to gather and party :-( ). Despite this we found some space for the first hour or so and consumed most of our booze. Nels, Prasad (though he denied it at the time), and myself all got a bit soused. We managed to find some snacks, Prasad & I chatted with the astrophysicists (Natalie, Sonnett, and Nick) for a while, then came back to our own car and Prasad, Nels, and I just sort of sat around and chatted for a little while before we went to bed (I must say, I really enjoy chatting ^_^).
Sleeping was less of a challenge than I was expecting, though I will avoid side births when possible in the future. We woke up at 5:00am on Monday, as the train was supposed to get into Bangalore at 6. We didn't get there until 8! :-( It was, nonetheless, a fantastic weekend. And after not having more than a cold, no soap shower for several days, my shower back at the apartment was *awesome*!
Well thats about all for Hampi. Here are the links for the pictures that I posted to facebook:
Day 1: http://claremont.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2045131&l=15c16&id=13300735
Day 2: http://claremont.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2045349&l=3d68f&id=13300735
Cheers,
Jason
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
A weekend in Hampi
Hey all,
This post is coming out a little bit late as I have lots to talk about from this weekend, which in case you couldn't tell by the title, I spent in Hampi. Hampi was the capital of the Vijayanagara empire many years ago and is filled with all sorts of fantastic ruins. It is also not a very well known place, which means that it is not as touristy and busy as Mysore was. A quick summary of the weekend is that it was a *fantastic* time. Now for the slightly longer summary.
Our train left at 10:30pm, so we met at the office at 9:00pm. This may seem like a lot of time to catch a train, but it turned out we needed it because I forgot to leave the one key the Tracy, Nels, and I share for Tracy! We had to have our auto-rickshaw (which was stuffed full with myself, Nels, Prasad, and Rob) turn around, drive by the place Tracy was eating, and hand her the key out of the side. Despite this rather long detour we managed to make it to the train station with plenty of time to spare and got situated in our train. Just like the trip to Mysore we were in 2nd class sleeper with air conditioning, which basically means we had four bunks in a compartment that we could close off with a curtain (oh, and it got *really* cold because of the A/C). The surprising part of the night was that as we were settling in we saw some other Americans in the space next to us, who asked us if we new Christian (who was originally going to come with us, as was Pavol, except they both became sick)! It turned out he had met them previously at an 'expatriates club' event and had told them about the trip. Their names were Sonnett, Natalie, and Nick and we all hung out together for the whole weekend. This began when the seven of us all packed into our part of the car, played a little uno, chatted, and had some beers that Prasad and Rob sneaked onto the train (which is not strictly legal, at least the drinking of the beers...). The phrase of the night, and really the theme of the weekend, was "Cloak and Dagger."
The train ride was 10 hours, and the beds are fairly small and uncomfortable. However it passed uneventfully, with Prasad vigilantly (but unnecessarily) guarding our valuables from thieves. Our train actually went to a town called Hospit, from which we took a 45 minute auto-rickshaw ride (it was pretty cool going through all the different small villages, having children run up to the rickshaw to wave and say "hello" to the white people, and going back at the end of the weekend we even saw a parade with a band and lots of cows horns pained and covered in jasmine [smelled awesome ^_^]). The most amusing part of the ride was when the driver suddenly stopped, seemingly at random, wandered off to take a leak, then hopped back into the car to keep going. It is definitely the case that people have no problem using the sides of the road as public toilets here.
Once we got to Hampi we were hit with a crowd of people offering us rooms (incidentally, it was incredibly nice to have Prasad mediating for us all weekend, as he can actually speak the Kannada [the language here] and he does not seem like an easy target for scamming). I forgot my backpack in the auto-rickshaw!!!, but nothing happened to it and I was able to get it back without any problems (^_^). Once we got settled into our accommodations (and took ice-cold showers without any soap) we had breakfast. While the food ended up being good, the actual breakfast process to something like 1.5 hours (once we ordered the lady there sent her son to go get food!). Once we got the food we began touring around Hampi. We started with the only remaining active temple (the only one that had not had its idol desecrated by invading armies hundreds of years ago). All the different temples seem to have the same style of architecture, but that architecture is different from anything I have ever seen elsewhere in the world. Anyway, the main temple was really neat, and I got blessed by an elephant! There was an elephant with its forehead painted, you give it a few rupees, it gives them to its handler, and then puts its trunk on your head for just a moment. It was definitely a cool feeling ^_^.
After the temple we started wandering around ruins of the old temples and bazaars outside of the working temple. It was all *beautiful*, even in its ruined state. It was even more incredible because some of the stuff was from like 1000AD! I will try to post pictures soon, but facebook has been being problematic lately.
At this point of the day we were getting hungry, so we went to a *fantastic* resturant called "The Mango Tree". You sit on grass mats outside and have a fantastic view over the river that goes by Hampi. Also, the food was amazing ^_^. While we were there we met a couple of Englishmen that had been in Hampi for a few days. They were spending a few weeks in India and just traveling around Asia in general, taking a break from graduate studies (the guy I talked to was in med school).
After lunch we began a long odessy to see Hanuman's (the monkey god) temple, which is a ways away from Hampi and across a river. We walked to the river, going through several other temples (and I aquired a bindi [the red mark on the forehead. No, it is not for unmarried women, it is a bleessing that you can get a most temples. I had the powder rubbed on my forehead and then was hit up for money. This is a rather frequent story]). We then took a boat a little ways down the river that goes by Hampi. This boat was certainly... unique. It was a bamboo framework with tarred animal skin on the outside. It basically looked like part of a coconut, which we stuffed 10 people into! We floated down the river and were dropped off for a little while to see another temple. The unique feature of this one was its musical columns. It has a whole bunch of small columns that, when knocked on with a fist, emit different musical notes! I have no idea how they were constructed, but apparently there used to be traditional dances at this temple with all the music provided by people tapping these columns!
Once we were done with the musical columns temple, we began the final part of our journey to Hanuman's temple. We first had to cross the river, which almost didn't happen because the people who ran the boats wanted all their money up front and we really didn't want to be abandoned on the other side of the river. We eventually made it across, though with feelings of distrust toward the people rowing us. At this point everything in the trip took on a general aura of sketchiness. Once across we had to hike over a few kilometers of random path through fields before we ended up at the bottom of the massive hill that the temple is on top of (right as it was getting dark). We made it to the top (in several groups as my knee had started bothering me and another person in the group also has bad knees) just before dark. The view from the temple is spectacular, and the sunset is supposed to be amazing (unfortunately it was too cloudy to see that day :-( ). The highlight of Hanuman's temple (other than visiting the birthplace of a god!) is that there are a whole bunch of monkeys up there that you can feed (that is one of the pictures that is going up ^_^). By the time we finished feeding the monkeys darkness had really fallen.
Thus began our trip to get back to Hampi. We hiked down the hill/mountain, then had to be guided back along those tiny paths in the dark to the river. If I had been doing this by myself it would have been *exactly* what you are not supposed to do when traveling abroad, and the whole thing felt pretty sketchy. However, once we made it back to the river the coconut boats were wating for us and (after sitting in a pool of water in the bottom of one) they took us back up the river (the poor guys had to work *alot* harder against the current). Once up the river we had "just a little ways" to the place outside Hampi we were going for dinner. This turned out to be about a half hour walk, for a whole group of tired people. It didn't really help when dinner (at this place recommended by the lonely planet) didn't have any light, took 2 hours to cook, and tasted terrible. After we got back to the hotel and slept like the dead!
I think I'm going to stop this post here for now. I'm getting tired and this is starting to get a bit rambling. I'll talk about Sunday in Hompi sometime later ^_^.
Cheers,
Jason
This post is coming out a little bit late as I have lots to talk about from this weekend, which in case you couldn't tell by the title, I spent in Hampi. Hampi was the capital of the Vijayanagara empire many years ago and is filled with all sorts of fantastic ruins. It is also not a very well known place, which means that it is not as touristy and busy as Mysore was. A quick summary of the weekend is that it was a *fantastic* time. Now for the slightly longer summary.
Our train left at 10:30pm, so we met at the office at 9:00pm. This may seem like a lot of time to catch a train, but it turned out we needed it because I forgot to leave the one key the Tracy, Nels, and I share for Tracy! We had to have our auto-rickshaw (which was stuffed full with myself, Nels, Prasad, and Rob) turn around, drive by the place Tracy was eating, and hand her the key out of the side. Despite this rather long detour we managed to make it to the train station with plenty of time to spare and got situated in our train. Just like the trip to Mysore we were in 2nd class sleeper with air conditioning, which basically means we had four bunks in a compartment that we could close off with a curtain (oh, and it got *really* cold because of the A/C). The surprising part of the night was that as we were settling in we saw some other Americans in the space next to us, who asked us if we new Christian (who was originally going to come with us, as was Pavol, except they both became sick)! It turned out he had met them previously at an 'expatriates club' event and had told them about the trip. Their names were Sonnett, Natalie, and Nick and we all hung out together for the whole weekend. This began when the seven of us all packed into our part of the car, played a little uno, chatted, and had some beers that Prasad and Rob sneaked onto the train (which is not strictly legal, at least the drinking of the beers...). The phrase of the night, and really the theme of the weekend, was "Cloak and Dagger."
The train ride was 10 hours, and the beds are fairly small and uncomfortable. However it passed uneventfully, with Prasad vigilantly (but unnecessarily) guarding our valuables from thieves. Our train actually went to a town called Hospit, from which we took a 45 minute auto-rickshaw ride (it was pretty cool going through all the different small villages, having children run up to the rickshaw to wave and say "hello" to the white people, and going back at the end of the weekend we even saw a parade with a band and lots of cows horns pained and covered in jasmine [smelled awesome ^_^]). The most amusing part of the ride was when the driver suddenly stopped, seemingly at random, wandered off to take a leak, then hopped back into the car to keep going. It is definitely the case that people have no problem using the sides of the road as public toilets here.
Once we got to Hampi we were hit with a crowd of people offering us rooms (incidentally, it was incredibly nice to have Prasad mediating for us all weekend, as he can actually speak the Kannada [the language here] and he does not seem like an easy target for scamming). I forgot my backpack in the auto-rickshaw!!!, but nothing happened to it and I was able to get it back without any problems (^_^). Once we got settled into our accommodations (and took ice-cold showers without any soap) we had breakfast. While the food ended up being good, the actual breakfast process to something like 1.5 hours (once we ordered the lady there sent her son to go get food!). Once we got the food we began touring around Hampi. We started with the only remaining active temple (the only one that had not had its idol desecrated by invading armies hundreds of years ago). All the different temples seem to have the same style of architecture, but that architecture is different from anything I have ever seen elsewhere in the world. Anyway, the main temple was really neat, and I got blessed by an elephant! There was an elephant with its forehead painted, you give it a few rupees, it gives them to its handler, and then puts its trunk on your head for just a moment. It was definitely a cool feeling ^_^.
After the temple we started wandering around ruins of the old temples and bazaars outside of the working temple. It was all *beautiful*, even in its ruined state. It was even more incredible because some of the stuff was from like 1000AD! I will try to post pictures soon, but facebook has been being problematic lately.
At this point of the day we were getting hungry, so we went to a *fantastic* resturant called "The Mango Tree". You sit on grass mats outside and have a fantastic view over the river that goes by Hampi. Also, the food was amazing ^_^. While we were there we met a couple of Englishmen that had been in Hampi for a few days. They were spending a few weeks in India and just traveling around Asia in general, taking a break from graduate studies (the guy I talked to was in med school).
After lunch we began a long odessy to see Hanuman's (the monkey god) temple, which is a ways away from Hampi and across a river. We walked to the river, going through several other temples (and I aquired a bindi [the red mark on the forehead. No, it is not for unmarried women, it is a bleessing that you can get a most temples. I had the powder rubbed on my forehead and then was hit up for money. This is a rather frequent story]). We then took a boat a little ways down the river that goes by Hampi. This boat was certainly... unique. It was a bamboo framework with tarred animal skin on the outside. It basically looked like part of a coconut, which we stuffed 10 people into! We floated down the river and were dropped off for a little while to see another temple. The unique feature of this one was its musical columns. It has a whole bunch of small columns that, when knocked on with a fist, emit different musical notes! I have no idea how they were constructed, but apparently there used to be traditional dances at this temple with all the music provided by people tapping these columns!
Once we were done with the musical columns temple, we began the final part of our journey to Hanuman's temple. We first had to cross the river, which almost didn't happen because the people who ran the boats wanted all their money up front and we really didn't want to be abandoned on the other side of the river. We eventually made it across, though with feelings of distrust toward the people rowing us. At this point everything in the trip took on a general aura of sketchiness. Once across we had to hike over a few kilometers of random path through fields before we ended up at the bottom of the massive hill that the temple is on top of (right as it was getting dark). We made it to the top (in several groups as my knee had started bothering me and another person in the group also has bad knees) just before dark. The view from the temple is spectacular, and the sunset is supposed to be amazing (unfortunately it was too cloudy to see that day :-( ). The highlight of Hanuman's temple (other than visiting the birthplace of a god!) is that there are a whole bunch of monkeys up there that you can feed (that is one of the pictures that is going up ^_^). By the time we finished feeding the monkeys darkness had really fallen.
Thus began our trip to get back to Hampi. We hiked down the hill/mountain, then had to be guided back along those tiny paths in the dark to the river. If I had been doing this by myself it would have been *exactly* what you are not supposed to do when traveling abroad, and the whole thing felt pretty sketchy. However, once we made it back to the river the coconut boats were wating for us and (after sitting in a pool of water in the bottom of one) they took us back up the river (the poor guys had to work *alot* harder against the current). Once up the river we had "just a little ways" to the place outside Hampi we were going for dinner. This turned out to be about a half hour walk, for a whole group of tired people. It didn't really help when dinner (at this place recommended by the lonely planet) didn't have any light, took 2 hours to cook, and tasted terrible. After we got back to the hotel and slept like the dead!
I think I'm going to stop this post here for now. I'm getting tired and this is starting to get a bit rambling. I'll talk about Sunday in Hompi sometime later ^_^.
Cheers,
Jason
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