On the Home Front

warning: this entry has no logical order...
It's Friday, I got home on Wednesday night. It's nice, but I can't lie, I really miss India and it makes me sad to think I have no idea when I'll go back or how being there can play into my future (luckily I have no clue what's next for me after college, so there's always hope!) Last night my dad asked me to make dinner because we were having a guest over...so I jumped on the opportunity to make Indian food! I only made it one day...not even 24 hours in Nebraska before I was cooking and eating Indian food; I just don't want American food. I got a Cinnabon when I was waiting in O'Hare for my next flight because it's my traditional airport food...but I didn't even enjoy it very much or finish it, which is unprecedented in my airport-Cinnabon eating career!
Early Wednesday (to be more specific 12 am) morning Kritika and her parents drove me to the airport and said good bye...and I walked into my portal out of India. I was surprised to find the bathrooms in Indira Gandhi International Airport to be sparkling clean, smelling good (not just neutral!), and with toilet paper. That was a good thing, but it made me feel like I'd left India already. The last week in Delhi I finally adjusted to the India way of using the toilet, which is a spray thing on the back of the rim of the toilet instead of toilet paper, and I missed it as I entered the western world again (it's really so much cleaner!) The thing that struck me about the really nice bathroom was that Delhi is changing and so is India and I'm a little after that if I wait to long to go back it will not be Delhi anymore, and I'm a little afraid that sooner or later there will be no solid escape from the Western world. I wrote a paper on Delhi's plans for preparation for hosting the 2010 Commonwealth Games, which is like the Olympics for countries that used to be part of the British Empire. There are sooo many modernizing plans, which is good. I mean, it's good to have trashcans on the streets because those don't exist now (I carried around trash for many hours on a regular basis despite the encouragement of Indians to liter on their streets...because someone has a job by picking up this trash and what will happen to them if nobody liters?) It's good that the Metro is expanding across the city, but is this great expenditure to serve the upper class ok in the face of desperate poverty? Does modernization just mean further marginalization and mistreatment of the poorest people because if it does I don't want Delhi to get any more modern. There's no easy answer though and for some reason I'm sure Delhi will always be something complete contrary to what I'm used to in the US. I have hope that God is too good to let all diversity fade away into one bland world.
So getting home. Snow! yay! Cold...cold. Yeah. On the plane I winced at the idea of getting chicken casserole and asked for the veg dish because I've gotten so accustomed to eating veg and in India generally find it tastier, but I was now traveling London-Chicago and there veg food meant nasty white pasta in cheese. What a tragedy! I remembered why I eat meat here.
Seeing Mom and Dad was great, no doubt about that. And seeing my friends is just very =)
When I got home Wednesday night my mom flicked the light on by accident and I immediately said "ah! the electricity is out!" to which my mom responded by flipping another switch on and the lights that brightened highlighted for me that I was no longer in India. The amount of water in our toilets freaked me out at first. Taking a shower in my shower that has very, very high water pressure made me feel more gulity and hectic to get out of there and turn off the water than soothed by its warmth. The tea I attempted to make was no chai. The Christmas cookies are good though, some things don't change.

Himalayans, visas, and Millet Trucks

Nepal was amazing. Well, I guess most of the time I was there I slept, but the value of that should not be downplayed! My friend Julia and I flew out Sat, Dec. 1^st on a short 1 hour 15 minute flight into Kathmandu. The view from the plane was beautiful, there were rolling mountains with fog in the midst of them and others whose mossy looking blankets could be plainly seen and, of course, the back drop of the snow peaks of the Himalayans. I could see little tiny roads that looked like they had been drawn on the side of the mountains not like something that was physically flat…that one could drive on, but I’ll come back to those later. Getting a Nepalese visa at the airport was easy and we were greeted by a man holding a “Mr. Macken-zie” sign from our guest house, which made me laugh quite a bit. There was a peace rally in the neighborhood we stayed in, Thamel, Saturday night, but it looked more like a rave party with crazy people and crazy techo music, but anything that promotes peace is good on my list. Thamel is the tourist hub of Kathmandu to say the least. I think I saw more foreigners there than natives. They come mostly from Europe and Japan and Australia to go on treks in the Himalayans, so Thamel caters to them offering a weird range of restaurants, from traditional Nepalese food to Roadhouse Café (American pizza) to the random (amazing!) falafel stand (the guy who came and ate there when we were eating there said they tasted as good as the ones he had in Israel…), to a number of little “European” bakeries, let’s not forget the a Spanish place, and of course, the New Orleans Café. We ate mostly at this Organic Garden Café though since Julia was recovering from food poisoning and, well, the food was taaasty. The shops there are also quite aware of the tourists and consistently try to royally ripe you off, much more than even the worst ripper-offers in Delhi, so we had a good time haggling with them (it helped to use Hindi since they speak Nepalese and Hindi and it shows we’re not complete tourists). Despite the annoyance of bargaining so much, the Nepalese people were really nice and we often ended up talking to (and even having tea with) the people we had just spent 20 minutes arguing with about prices, so that was nice.

I did end up getting a visa without much of a hassle. I just had to wait in line for about 3 hours and, even the Embassies do the same, pay the special 1500 rupee “American fee,” not even a foreigners fee, an American fee!! The people there were really helpful though, so now I’m legally back in India as long as I leave by Dec. 20^th, which is the plan anyway =)

We decided we ought to go on a trek at least once while we were there, but there was only one place we could get to easily from Kathmandu, so we went. (Everywhere else required either “a 20 minute flight” or an “11 hour mountain drive,” clearly most people who go there are not college students…) With the help of a little man bundled in his scarf and mittens on the corner, Julia, Charles (a friend of a friend who was also in Kathmandu for a visa), and I found the right bus to the path that leads to Shivapuri National Park, our trekking destination. Well, let me clarify, by bus I mean mini van with one extra row of seats. We had to watch a few go by because they were bursting full of people, but finally one came that was only stuffed so we jumped in to upgrade it to bursting status (I counted, there were 27 people in that van…) Anywho, we made it to our stop, took a look at a sleeping Shiva temple place (there was a huge Shiva floating in a pool of water and flowers, looked pretty relaxed to me!) were Hindus were making offerings and then began our trek. When we reached the National Park gate there was a 250 rupee foreigners’ fee (opposed to the Rs. 10 Nepalese fee), which Charles argued about for a while, but then we eventually just paid it. Charles filled out the tickets, while Julia and I talked, but when we gave them to us after we were through security we were both a bit confused. Mine said, “Name: Madeup Name, Nationality: Swedish,” while Julia’s name was “Julia Blahblah,” also Swedish. We were like, “Charles!!” But, like he said it really didn’t matter. He said that the guard read my name over his shoulder as he wrote it, “Maad-up Naaa-may.” Enough said.

We walked about 1 ½ hours to a crazy-long staircase that led to a Buddhist monastery. The view from the top was awesome: little terraced farms with colorful crops and homes with hay roofs, mountains and trees and a river winding through it all to the outline of a city in the distance. *refreshing* Prayer flags were hanging from many trees and poles in the monastery, and it seemed a bit odd that this place was so peaceful and removed in a supposedly dangerous country. If I had not been warned about “how dangerous Nepal is” I don’t think I would’ve noticed anything odd, and even with such warning the only visible evidence was the number of army guys around and I think UN soldiers. After relaxing at the top of the mountain (and the mountain of stairs) we decided to move along. I wanted to go back the way we came because I wasn’t feeling at the top of my game as I had a sinus infection, but they were all for “going a new way,” so after consulting a man that didn’t exactly seem like he knew what he was talking about we decided to continue the way we were going to the next town and catch a bus from there. This man said it should take “1 or 2 hours…bus.” We said, “no, no, we’re walking, by foot, by foot.” Him, “Ohh k…1 or 2 hours.” My mind: we’ll be out here for a while. Either way we went and the views and farms we saw were charming to say the least. After about 1 ½ hours a truck (the only vehicle we’d seen all day) stopped going the other way and asked where we were heading. We told him “Sundarjal” and asked how long to walk…he said 2 hours from there…to which his friend started laughing. They offered us a ride, which we refused, then continued on. As evening turned into a pleasant pink haze of sunset outlining the trees on the edge of the mountain, the charm of the experience started to fade away into “it’s dark and I’m on a trail in the middle of nowhere!!!” It was only 5:15 or so, but the sun was set and there was almost no moon, so we stumbled along the rocky path in the darkness as we had no other choice and still had hope we weren’t too far off. After Charles had managed to stub his toe bad enough that it bled and I was starting to wonder if we’d be out there for the night, we heard an engine. Thank goodness!! In about 20 minutes the sound was very close, so we stopped walking and rejoiced at the sight of headlights. We flagged the truck down and asked it we could hitch a ride. The guys in the truck said, “sure, hop on the back!” So we climbed on top of all their goods, mostly bags of millet I think and off we went! I’ve always wanted to hitch hike, but I never thought I get the chance because I was lost in the dark on the Himalayans. It was awesome! Well, let’s be honest, my mind kept switching between “This is amazing!!!” and looking at the millions of stars and the deep blue sky falling in around the mountains and (excuse my French) “Oh SH*T!! I’m going fall off this millet truck and die in Nepal!!” Needless to say, we made it ok, but not to where we needed to go and as there weren’t many options (well, there were some guys who said they’d motorcycle us down if we paid them a lot) we stayed at a base camp for the night for only Rs. 100. We met a guy there named Jeff from New Hampshire who had been in Nepal for more or less 5 years working on water projects which sounded both necessary and neat. He also knew perfect Nepalese (which was amaaazing!) and helped us figure out our options for the night. He said some Maoists had been there the night before rallying (nonviolently)--that was…comforting. There was no electricity there between 5 and 7:30, which was perfect for star gazing. I’m sure I’ve never seen so many stars in my life, my mouth just dropped open in awe and I wanted to just gobble them up! (that’s kind of an Indian expression when you really love someone/thing, you gobble them up! Usually kids =) ) Basically our poor decision to “go a new way” ending up being an irreplaceable experience, I loved it.

The next day I got my visa and so Julia and I hopped on a bus because we thought flying would be too expensive. What’s a 36 hour bus ride anyway! Ok, so if you’ve actually read all I’ve written today, you’ll remember the little roads that didn’t look like roads from the airplane I mentioned?? Yes, those are the roads we drove on…for 48 not 36 hours! This perplexed me because it’s 1 hour 15 minutes on a Chicago-Omaha flight, the same as a Delhi-Kathmandu flight, but the drive from Omaha to Chicago is only 7 or 8 hours with Chicago traffic. After we got over the fact that it was taking us longer to go back to Delhi from Nepal than it would take us to go from Delhi to the US…well it didn’t get better, but it got over after 2 days. There were many ridiculous bus quirks that I won’t mention, but I must mention that the racial profiling at the India-Nepal boarder was alarming. They came on the bus to check bags and they were opening all of them, but when I picked my up to give the army dude, he was like “this is yours?” which I affirmed and then he said “it’s ok” and didn’t even give it a second glance. On the Indian side I didn’t even take the bag from under my seat, said it was mine, and he moved along. After which I thought I should just tell him all the bags were mine to quicken the process a bit…

I won’t drag this on any longer, suffice to say, Nepal was quite an experience! Now I’m back in Delhi enjoying friends, being confused by the cooler weather, and getting really excited to come home to snow and Christmas!