Land of One Thousand Waterfalls – 9/14/14

                I don’t think that this area in the Himalayas is actually referred to as the “Land of One Thousand Waterfalls,” but it totally should be. I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere with more rivers and waterfalls in my entire life. Just to get from our hotel to the town of Munsiyari we have to cross 2 rivers and that’s only a 15 minute walk. Another thing, when I say cross a river I don’t mean use a bridge to pass over the river without getting wet. I mean we take off our shoes and walk through a river than spills out over the road. These river crossings aren’t uncommon, either. On the drive from Jageshwar to Munsiyari we crossed tons of them in our jeep (going a tad too fast if you ask me). I really do admire the skill of the drivers around here. They take mountain paths very quickly, turning a one-way street into a two-way street by simply driving off the road to let the cars driving the other way pass. I’m not doing these gut-wrenching rides justice in their descriptions. Although I’ve never actually feared for my life during them, there have been times when my heart has skipped a beat as we swerved to avoid oncoming traffic or teetered near the edge of a cliff while forging a river.

On the drive from Jageshwar to Munsiyari we passed through an area that had just had a landslide the day before and at the bottom of the valley there was this beautiful braided river of clear mountain spring water and dirty erosion water. There were beautiful views of emerald canyons and jagged mountain peaks, all streaked with white waterfalls. My camera was unfortunately in my bag that was stuck under a pile of other luggage, but I’m sure some of the other BYP people got amazing pictures of the drive.

There was one particular fall that we could see from kilometers and kilometers away. It was stark white against an otherwise deep green mountain face and none of the pictures we took did it justice. We ended up hiking up to it (much to our surprise) and it was one of my favorite experiences in India thus far. After a 5 hour car ride all of us were itching to stretch our legs and lungs and many of us speed walked/jogged/sprinted to the top (we had to slow down as we got nearer and everything was covered in moss). The path led right up under the waterfall and we were all jumping and screaming in the downpour. We tried to take pictures with Alex’s waterproof camera, but there were always droplets on the lens that would obscure our faces in the pictures L. After about a minute we were all totally soaked and it was only then that we realized we still had an hour more to go until we reached Munsiyari. Trekking back down to the car we frantically attempted to wring out our clothes, but mostly we were all really wet and really cold (it was probably around 65 F out). To add insult to injury, I was wearing a white kurta and had to strategically position my green dupatta in order to remain fairly covered. We all piled into the cars and sat on what towels we could dig out of our luggage. I found 2 more leeches on me on the drive and that distracted me a little from how insanely cold I was, but I think all of us had our teeth chattering at some point or another.

Soon enough we arrived at Milam Inn and we all raced to change into warmer clothes. It’s not actually all that cold in Munsiyari, but we all were wearing multiple layers, hats, gloves, and basically whatever cold weather gear we could get our hands on. I even semi-enjoyed my chai that night because it was warm and I was so cold. (I’ll write more about my feelings on chai later).

Leeches and Perceptions of Time– 9/13/14

                 I finally got my first leech, well, my first leeches. I was particularly unlucky on this hike we took where I got 6 all in one day. I probably would have been able to avoid getting some of them, but our group was told that the hike was short – 45 min there and 30 back and only a total of 5 km – and so I didn’t take as many precautions as I would for a longer hike. I decided to wear my keens (sandals/hiking shoes mix) because I heard that we’d be stopping by a waterfall on the way up and didn’t want to deal with getting my hiking boots soaking wet (and, besides, it was only going to be just over an hour, right?).

Turns out the hike was much longer than expected. It took us 5 hours to complete the entire thing and none of us were prepared. Some people had only brought a little bit of water and no one had any snacks. We did have some steripens to use at the waterfall, but even then the waterfall was relatively early in the hike and we didn’t fill up our water bottles like we should have. This is where I got 4 of the 6 leeches, probably because my feet weren’t adequately bug sprayed/covered with hiking boots. I must say that as disgusting as leeches are, I would take them over ticks or mosquitoes any time. For one thing, they are very easy to spot because of their relatively large size. Secondly, they are totally painless and don’t leave me scratching for weeks after they bite me. Finally, they are super easy to remove and they don’t carry nasty diseases like ticks do. I think everyone in our group has gotten a leech at this point and we’re all pros at dealing with them.

When we finally did reach the temple to which we were hiking (four hours later), we bought tons of junk food at a vendor nearby and had chai (also, I discovered I had 2 more leeches, but that’s beside the point). I don’t even want to think about how many chips and cookies I had up there, but I must admit I did discover which of them I liked and which ones I didn’t like so much (Funday puffs are superb, but Tasty Nuts aren’t actually all that tasty). We initially bought a couple of bags of chips and a sleeve or two of cookies, but we quickly devoured those and kept going back to buy more. I like to think that we were motivated to keep buying more to stimulate the local economy, but really it was just 7 exceptionally hungry teenagers and 1 really hungry Caleb-ji that kept the shopkeepers busy.

The craziest thing is that our guide had taken us on this super circuitous route up the mountain and then it only took us about an hour to get back down to Jageshwar. Now, we’ve had a couple of run-ins with this “India Time.” While here we quickly learned that “meet at 7:00 AM” really meant “be ready by 7:15 AM” and “dinner at 7:30” really meant “dinner sometime between 8:00 and 8:30.” In some ways it’s nice because I’m not so concerned with hyper-punctuality, but sometimes I feel like we are wasting huge amounts of time. As a whole, our group has taken very well to being consistently unpunctual and the last person to be ready constantly changes.

What are your goals in India? – 9/12/14

                This afternoon my group had a nice chat with Rajeev-ji, the manager of the hotel in which we’re staying during our time in Jageshwar. He wanted to know about our goals for India (and life in general) and conducted the encounter hot seat style (asking us to explain ourselves one by one in front of everyone). Of course, he chose to interrogate me first and, boy, was that an intercultural exchange. The conversation went something like this:

Rajeev-ji: What are your goals during your tour of India?

Me: I want to learn Hindi, experience Indian culture firsthand, and do meaningful/effective service work while I’m here.

Rajeev-ji: But what are your goals?

Me: Ummmm *confusedly* Learn about Hindi and Indian culture and do service work

Rajeev-ji: So you want to marry an Indian man?

Me: I haven’t really thought about it, but not at the moment, no.

Rajeev-ji: So why are you learning about Indian culture and language?

Me: I’m just interested in it, I guess.

Rajeev-ji: Oh, so you want to be a teacher?

Me: Maybe at my service site here, but not for a long term career.

Rajeev-ji: Well then what do you want to do?

Me: I’m not really sure yet.

Rajeev-ji: Oh no, that is very bad. A girl your age should know what she’s doing with her life.

Me: I guess I’ll figure it out while I’m here then.

Rajeev-ji: It’s very worrying that America is such a powerful country and its young people have no direction!

Me: I’ll figure it out soon enough, don’t worry.

Rajeev-ji: My daughter is eleven and I already helped her decide what she will be when she’s older. She told me she wanted to be an accountant and I told her no. Then she said she wanted to be a designer and I said that was okay.

Me: *smiles encouragingly*                  

Rajeev-ji: Okay next person!

                Of course, this is a boiled down version of what occurred and there was a great deal of laughing interspersed with this conversation as well as a lot of confused looks as we each tried to understand the point of view of the other person. The directness of the questions was a little startling for me and I was somewhat taken aback by Rajeev-ji’s lack of filter. In the USA it would be pretty weird for a virtual stranger to tell you that it’s strongly disconcerting that you haven’t gotten your life plan figured out yet or ask if you are interested in marrying Indian men. In some ways it’s refreshing to have someone be so sincere and forthright, telling you what they honestly think. I will definitely need some time to get used to this style of interaction, but I know that there will be many interesting conversations to come over the next year. 

Hikes on Hikes on Hikes – 9/10/14

                I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the amount of hiking that our group has been doing since we’ve been in India. We do at least a 3 hour hike every day up and down incredibly steep paths – sometimes it feels more like we’re climbing ladders than following trails. We’ve done three especially long treks thus far – one from Sona Pani to Mukteshwar Temple, one from Sona Pani to a temple by the river, and one from Binsar to Jageshwar.

                It’s hard to judge the comparative length of all these hikes because we’ve all been getting stronger and more accustomed to the thin air, but I felt that the hardest one we’ve done was the hike from Sona Pani to Mukteshwar Temple. Sona Pani rests on the north side of a ridge (hence the stunning views of the Himalayas), but on this particular journey we hiked (skidded?) down the south side of the ridge, crossed the small river at the bottom, and then hiked to the top of the next ridge. The entire hike was really steep and really slippery because of the on-and-off rain/cloud mist. The worst thing about this hike was the abundance of leeches. Almost everyone got them at some point during the climb (I was spared, but I’m sure at some point I’ll get one) and we had forgotten to bring Band-Aids so there was an insane amount of blood on people’s clothing (leeches inject an anti-coagulant into the puncture site so that the blood doesn’t clot).  Thankfully the blood came out of the clothes when we washed them. Unfortunately, we all had random articles of clothing stained by our kurtas, kameez, and dupattas from sweating so much.

                A couple of days later we hiked down the north side of the ridge down to the river, following that until we arrived at a Shiva temple (almost all the temples are Shiva Temples). We hiked through an adorable village on the way down and got wonderful sweeping views of the valley and forest near Sona Pani. At the river a lot of the guys stopped to swim and cool off and the rest of us skipped stones. The stones were perfectly flat and round and amazing for skipping. Even though the trek back up the mountain was a long one, I didn’t feel like I was straining that much and could definitely tell that I’ve been getting stronger as we’ve hiked more the past week.

                We completed the longest trek to-date today, an 18 kilometer traverse from Binsar to Jageshwar. Even though it was long, the hike was not as steep as the other ones we have done and actually felt relatively easy. On the way we picked up and petted baby goats (kids?), Ben P. fell into a bush of nettles, and Alex got a gnarly leech on his arm. We told lots of jokes and riddles on the way and had some great group bonding. Sorry the quality of this blog post is slowly diminishing, but it’s getting late and I’m pretty tired. Can’t wait to have internet to post these!

Off the Grid – 9/9/14

                Today we moved from Sona Pani to the Binsar Ecological Reserve and are staying the night in a “Tourist Rest House” that has no electricity. And when I say no electricity I mean that there are candles and matches in the room to use when it gets dark outside. Living in India for the past two weeks or so I have experienced the random power outages that occur. Heck, we were in the National Museum in Delhi and the power went out so we had to pull out our phone flashlights to look at the exhibits for 5-10 minutes. At Sona Pani the power would go out almost every single night (we wouldn’t use electricity during the day), but at least there were solar water heaters so that we had warm water (most times – apparently Chase and my cabin was more in the shade than the other ones and we had considerably less hot water than everyone else). Here in Binsar we have to ask for a bucket of hot water to bathe in the morning. In Delhi it was easy to get away with cold showers because it was disgustingly hot and humid, but here it’s pretty cold and the last thing I want to do is dump a bucket of icy water over my head. In Sona Pani our “hot” water wasn’t always functioning and there were a couple bucket baths that felt more like the ALS ice bucket challenge than a way to clean myself. In any event, it’s been kind of fun “living off the grid” with no internet access or really any news from the outside world. I guess the last thing I heard as news from the US was that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie got married (Brangelina was all over the papers in Delhi the day we arrived). After I get back in June I expect it’ll be both exciting and overwhelming to catch up on all the United States pop culture that I’ve missed, even if in Banaras I have greater access to internet and stuff like that.

PS: HAPPY 17^TH BIRTHDAY JT!!!

Monkey Attack – 9/8/14

                I feel fairly at home in the woods up here in the Himalayan foothills because the pine forests remind me a lot of Flagstaff and the oak forests remind me of Minnesota or the Northeast. The weird thing is that the wildlife here differs so much from back home. For example, Hemant-ji was telling us about how people don’t let their dogs roam too far because spotted leopards might attack/kill them. It’s crazy to think that such an exotic animal that I’ve only ever seen in a zoo is an everyday nuisance over here. Additionally, there is an abundance of pesky monkeys here.

                Before today I had only seen monkeys from the car window as we made the 3 hour drive from the train station in Katkudam to Sona Pani. This morning, however, while we were eating breakfast we heard a commotion down by our cabins and went down to see what was up. Around 20 monkeys were having a ball climbing our cabins and eating nashpati (pears) that had fallen from nearby trees onto the roofs. We had just done laundry the other day, so a bunch of us ran to take our clothes off the drying line outside and bring them inside so that the monkeys wouldn’t take them and run. We thought we had successfully scared them off with lots of yelling and pear-throwing and so returned to the dining hall to clean up and resume orientation activities. We were very wrong about them being gone.

                All throughout the day we would hear them on the roofs of our cabins and we’d send down Jumaru (the Tibetan mastiff that lives here) to chase them off, not really paying attention to what they were doing. After an afternoon goal-setting powwow I walked down to my cabin only to find that the monkeys had 1) turned on the water full blast outside the cabin 2) ripped up one of the pipes on the roof and 3) totally knocked over all of the chairs on our porch. We ran to get help to stop the deluge of water which was luckily isolated to outside the cabin. Fortunately, the monkeys had only turned a spigot to get the water pouring and the broken pipe was an easy fix.

                Even though the monkeys are annoying it’s hard to deny that they are super cute and really funny. Just now, a momma monkey with a baby hanging onto her belly climbed into the tree across from me and chilled eating a piece of fruit (I didn’t have my camera with me L). They do these funny bounds to get from the ground to the roofs and their butts wiggle as they run away. I don’t know what kind of monkey they are, but they are sort of a white-silver color and are fairly large. We haven’t seen them around here before today and I have mixed feelings about whether or not I want to see them come back. 

The Bathroom Situation – 9/7/14

                As many of you know, I was a little apprehensive about the bathroom situation in India. Squat toilets? No toilet paper? Turns out it’s not so bad. First of all, squat toilets just aren’t that hard to use. In fact, I’ve decided that I would take a disgusting squat toilet over a disgusting western toilet any day of the week. The whole non-usage of toilet paper is still a little weird. For those of you who don’t know, you use water and your left hand to get the job done. That part doesn’t really freak me out, especially because so much of Indian culture takes this practice into account (i.e. using your right hand to eat, washing your hands a lot, etc.). The worst part is you don’t have anything to dry yourself with after you use the bathroom. Even if everything is clean, I hate pulling my pants up over a wet bottom. Anyway, it’s really not as bad as you’d think and I’m sure I’ll be used to it soon enough.