Traveling is So Many New Kinds of Uncomfortable! And Some Old Kinds.

Someone missed the memo that the ride up to Mt. Abu was incredibly uncomfortable so they decided to book the exact same transportation for our trip to Udaipur. We ran into the usual Indian-travel setbacks--we left late, the chef at the restaurant where we had reservations had decided to head home early, the hotel where we had reservations had double booked our rooms, etc. No big deal. This time we had our International Coordinator with us. She's from Bombay and knows how to Get Things Done. So we had dinner someplace and had rooms somewhere and I'm pretty sure multiple someones had quite a hindi thrashing.

On our way up our drivers stopped at a flashy little shrine and when we got closer we saw that at the center of the roadside temple stood a battered looking motorcycle draped in flowers, wound with tinsel, with sweets on the seat and Hindu holy symbols painted on it. Turns out that many years ago a young man had an accident at that spot on the motorcycle. You might think then that the shrine was in the man's memory, but no--after the funeral, every night the motorcycle would somehow find its way back to the scene of the accident. No matter how many times it was dragged away, it would show up again. So the community concluded that the motorcycle itself was holy, and built the shrine. And now everyone stops and prays there along the way to anywhere.

We took the weekend pretty easy since we were retreating. I thought the activities might have included at least a few serious discussions about work and development and things, but mostly we wandered about, did a little sightseeing and a lot of shopping. The monsoon has actually come to Udaipur, so we got to enjoy drizzle, mist and mosquito bites. Other subtle differences--the cows were feistier (we almost got charged a couple times) and there were way more tourists. We met a slightly crazy old man in a temple who could beat box pretty well. I splurged on an audio guide for the city palace and learned a ton about Rajasthani history, warfare (the warriors in Udaipur put fake elephant trunks on their horses so that the enemy elephants would think their horses were baby elephants and not attack), and how terrible being a beautiful princess was (one princess accidentally got promised to two different princes, and to avoid a civil war her father asked her to commit suicide. Which she did while singing his praises, apparently). During the Rajasthani culture show an incredibly plump and graceful old woman danced with ten water pots on her head. Ten. One way to make a daily chore infinitely more difficult.

FSD has a second site in Udaipur, so we had dinner with the other interns working there. Most of them were from Northwestern, so we got to talk about the midwest. Unfortunately our restaurant was so slow that they all had to go home before the food arrived. Twenty of us did our best to finish off food for thirty-five, but we were stuffed and it started monsooning before we were done. My host family would be so mad! Plus we got eaten alive all through dinner, making all the Jodhpur interns who had discontinued their malaria medicine (including me) a little nervous.

We enjoyed a little taste of Austria for breakfast at Cafe Edelweiss (Muesli and drip coffee! and Date and Walnut Pie!) before trying to get out of town. Our departure was mass chaos for a couple hours as people tried to sneak away for last minute purchases and our drivers decided to take an unannounced lunch break. Towards the end I just took a seat with a few other interns along what would have been the lake shore if Udaipur lake was more than just a soggy field this year. Some naked boys had found a mud slip n' slide in the middle of the field, and we watched them for awhile. It looked pretty sweet.

On the way back we visited Ranakpur, which has some incredible Jain temples. We entered the temple only a few minutes before it closed. It was enormous--my boss told me today that it has 1440 pillars, each intricately and uniquely carved. I think I liked these even better than the ones at Mt. Abu last weekend. We had to cram an extra person into the cars on the way back, so that felt really Indian. We found a top 40 radio station, though, so we got to enjoy some hot bollywood tunes for a few hours.

I have just started week eight, and I've been feeling kind of homesick and frustrated, so I've been trying to come up with my favorite things about India to cheer myself up. I love the public transportation system (one day on my way home from work I got onto a party bus that was thumping "Jai Ho!"), I love the livestock even when the streets get messy. I love that the giant trucks are all decorated like the circus and that trucks full of gasoline have "Highly Inflammable" painted on them. I love the resourcefulness. There isn't a lot of official recycling, but things are reused until there is nothing left to be salvaged. Except maybe scrap metal, and then that is sold. The garbage everywhere is unsettling, but as another British intern pointed out, at least this way people are aware of how much garbage they are producing. In the US it is just carted away and stuffed underground. If it had to sit on your front porch for six months you might be a little more choosy about what you throw away and make a bigger effort to reduce packaging. I love the Hindu shrines everywhere and the way Hindus incorporate a little prayer or little ritual into every part of life. It's made me think a lot more about my own religion this summer, even though I haven't been able to find an English mass anywhere. Even though I complain about being force fed and not knowing what's up with my food situation, I love the care and effort my host mother puts into preparing meals for her family. Every meal is creatively and skillfully crafted, based on weather, time of year, and availability of produce. And then chai. If I can't have coffee, at least the chai is incredible.

Now I'm back at work for the week, and I think I will be off to some villages Wed-Fri, and in the office Mon-Tues. But who knows! I finally got some questions answered today about the proposal I'm writing, so I have a serviceable rough draft. One of the people from Notre Dame who helped decide to send me here is visiting next week, so I want to be mostly finished with everything so that I can spend time with her if she wants me to.