Quick Update From Oblivion

So I’ve been a little MIA over the past week or so. Things here have been moving and tumbling around, and I’ve been caught up in the wash. I’ll post some news soon, probably in segments so that your attention won’t wane on me half way through .

Over the past two weeks a lot of distance has been covered, both on the Indian sub-continent and in my own head… I’ve been to Dehradun, Delhi, Bangalore, Varkala and finally Kochin. And as per usual, I’ve traveled the distance from elated to distressed, and back again. So if you’re interested, check in over the next few days to hear the latest!

With love,

Your frazzled and tanned Canadian friend

Tackling Waste Disposal In India

PYDS: Purkal Youth Development Society.

The Purkal Youth Development Society can be found at the end of a long and winding road, hidden in the folds of a deep valley in the foothills of the Himalaya mountains. The town of Purkal is a quiet and peaceful community that lends itself to wonderful hospitality and warmth, though if you mention to the bus driver that that’s where you’re headed you’re sure to get a few stares of disbelief. Purkal is a little off the grid, and it’s leaps and bounds away from the usual tourist path. It’s likely that you will be the first white person to be spotted in 10 years, if ever. However, if you happen upon this magical and unassuming place and make your way down that long and winding road, you will find yourself in a little hidden world of beauty and selfless giving. And you will find yourself swept up in the flow of generosity immediately.

We were introduced to PYDS through Cathy, Anita’s aunt, who generously hosted us for a week at her home in Rajpur. On our first morning with Cathy, we decided to go “to school” with her to see where she had been working for the last year. We arrived at PYDS and we were greeted by Swami, the founder of the school. He and his wife re-located to Purkal about 15 years ago, and began what would be the seeds of a great educational project. Most of the villages in the Purkal area are still made up of farming communities, and there is little accessible education for the kids in these families. Many of the kids come from abusive homes and many others deal with malnutrition. When they arrived in Purkal, Swami and his wife began a small “school” (if you could call it that) where they took in children from the surrounding villages and donated their time to teach them during the days. This “school” began with 4 kids sitting around a table – now there is a school building and a PYDS society that provides free food and education to over 140 children. They also started a group called the “Stree Shakti” society that buses in women from the surrounding villages and teaches them how to quilt. They are given a free workspace, free quilting lessons, and are given access to an income. They form self-help groups, learn about saving, and are given a sense of personal empowerment that will hopefully help to shift the power imbalances in Indian homes and reduce the amount of abuse and violence these women experience. Swami is the kind of guy who just kind of goes for it. If you need a school building, you build it. If you need teachers, you find them. If you need uniforms, you just go and have them made. Somehow, the donors appeared and the two projects snowballed forward. And there was a school. And there was a women’s quilting society.

It was to this school that the three of us arrived. We had only just been introduced to Swami when he sat us all down and said “I would like to know what the three of you young people might be able to contribute to our project.” [Pause. What does he mean? We don't know anything about this school or this community...] “We are looking to design an environmental studies program, and with your expertise you might be able to help us.” And with that, off we went. Swami has a way of convincing you that anything is possible, and for the next 5 days the three of us worked to put together whatever we could of this environmental studies curriculum (that we apparently had the “expertise” to write). What we came up with was likely some fusion of our own elementary school introduction to recycling and food chains, combined with some knowledge we picked up along our lives’ paths (read: we know that kids like active games and planting gardens is a probably good way to learn about plants). We did as much as we could manage in a week, and though it was far from a completed concept, Swami seemed happy with it in the end.

The biggest challenge we found ourselves confronted with was this: how can you possibly educate a society about waste management and recycling when they are part of a generation that has been trained to toss their left-over wrappers over their shoulder’s without a second thought? As we slowly learned, this behaviour stems from the fact that until about 10 years ago the “waste” that was being created from food consumption in India was mostly leaves that were used for plates. As India has introduced plastic, they haven’t adapted their disposal practices. Whereas they once would finish their meals and toss the leftover leaves on the streets to be eaten by the cows, now the leftovers are plastic. And they accumulate. A lot.

The challenge has become finding a way to bring this contradiction to light in the Indian consciousness. This is compounded by the chaotic and lawless reality of daily life, the corruption, and the lack of personal responsibility in towns and cities. It doesn’t seem to be enough to implement waste-collection services, because the guy you hire to collect the waste will just dispose of it on the other guy’s lawn. It doesn’t seem to be enough to create fines for littering because rather than learning not to litter children learn how much bribe money is necessary to avoid the fine. And even when you get through to the kids that throwing plastic out the train window is bad, their parents (on principle) will continue to pollute because this is what they’ve been doing their whole lives and they’re not interested in learning a new way of doing things. So it will take time for things to change. It seems clear to me that education on environmental principles will play some role in the change, but I believe it will also be essential to find ways of actively demonstrating new practices for these kids. This is the hardest part. In my head, I just keep thinking: there is probably some ingenious way to show these kids how to take responsibility, and this “way” is probably related to some cultural tradition that I have absolutely no understanding of. Maybe it means using Bollywood as a tool. Maybe it means dressing up as samosas and doing a dance. Who knows. It all makes me feel rather helpless to contribute anything, AND being confronted with such ignorance in myself really drives home the reality that the complexity in our world is way, way over my head.

BUT, I do have some awesome learn-about-the-environment activities. I can say that much. So I’ve passed them onto this little gem of a school in case there’s a chance that they can do something useful with them. And maybe, maybe as the project evolves someone will happen upon this mysterious method of teaching that can penetrate the Indian cultural consciousness and make environmental stewardship make sense. I hope.

Early this week we left Purkal for Delhi, and from Delhi we’re moved to Bangalore. Though our volunteering with PYDS has mostly finished, I’ll likely remain somewhat involved over the next few months by sending over some environmental education resources to supplement our work at the school. The society is always looking for volunteers and eager individuals who want to contribute in some way. If you’re interested, I’d encourage you to check out the society’s web site and see what you think (www.purkal.org). As a volunteer opportunity abroad, I’d say this would be top notch. You’ll find yourself immersed in a sea of small uniformed school children addressing you endlessly as ‘sir’ or ‘maam’, and supported by unbelievably dedicated volunteers and staff. And the scenery can’t be beat!

It’s 11:00pm here, and I’m off to sleep. Tomorrow Anita and I will take a dip in the swimming pool here – we’ll submerge ourselves in a full body of water for the first time in what seems like forever. Here in India, we take sponge baths and keep covered… even on the beaches. Tomorrow will be epic!

Sleep well, sweet world, and we shall speak soon!

The Rest Of The Trek

Back again – but in a different place. We’ve moved from Rishikesh to Rajpur, about an hour away… more on that later.

When Joel, Anita and I woke up at around 7:30am the next morning at our campsite, the thermometer on the back of my backpack declared that it was a crisp -5 degrees celsius. No matter – our sleeping bags had kept us toasty warm all night, and there was a knock on our tent door that declared hot cups of coffee to usher in a new day. We woke up and unwound our twisted muscles from sleeping on the hard ground, and got our things together for the day’s hike.

The 4×4 drove us about 15 minutes down the road from our site and dropped us at the base of a trail, which we promptly started down. There was snow – lots of it. And we were still on the shady side of the mountain, so it was cold. We slowly climbed and descended through a beautiful, if dark and mysterious forest. The bear tracks in the snow didn’t put us off, we all just broke into some aimless whistling and yelling led by our trusty guide, Dron. The trail basically led us down into a valley between two peaks, and then up again along the side of the peak in front of us. As the sun rose we all warmed up and began to peel off our layers, though we were careful not to take off too much clothing. We had begun the hike at around 3000 meters, and would be climbing higher in through the day, and the altitude meant that the temperature changed drastically when you moved from sun to shade. We wanted to stay warm!

By lunch time we reached a peak where we stopped to lunch. In the last few meters between us and our lunch site, I stopped to “oooh” and “ahhh” at what appeared to be some beautiful (and what appeared to be contained) flames that had caught in some patches of grass just over the side of the trail. I had never seen this before – fire burning up vegetation in what looked like a relatively wet and alive area, and on top of a mountain, no less. But my Aussie friends didn’t let me stop for the view. Their experience with bushfires in Australia, and their knowledge of how quickly a change in the wind can make a little flame catastrophic, meant that there was no way we were stopping to look. We hurriedly pushed on to our destination, not even stopping to take a second look. Where we finally stopped for lunch, the ground was completely charred. Black. And crispy. But there were no flames.

Over lunch, we asked Dron what the deal was. He explained that it’s fairly common practice in the area to set intentional fires at the base of the mountain in order to burn out all the vegetation in an area and make the soil more fit for farming. As it is, the sides of mountains are not the best place to grow a vegetable garden, so you’ll see in my pictures that many communities have actually created a tier system, carved into the rock. It’s really pretty innovative. But the fire I felt I could do without.

After lunch we began a trek down from the peak and toward a famous lake in the area – “Chopta”. The smoke and fire followed us for a while, and made me incredibly nervous… especially when I felt that there was little to no fresh air around me left to breathe. But we trekked on, noting that the fire wasn’t really moving anywhere, it was just creating a lot of smoke. We were leaving it behind us, and when we looked back we could see the pillar of smoke that we had just walked through. It was cool, but I’m glad it’s not a regular occurrence in my life.

We spent the afternoon at a beautiful (and again, slightly eerie and mysterious) lake. The water was completely green. Kind of a food colouring, nuclear power plant green, but apparently completely natural. After about 40 minutes there, we began the long trek down to town where we would be picked up by our driver. Incredibly, the weather warmed up a lot in those last few hours. We were hiking in the sun, and our layers had to go. But by the time we got back to our campsite, the sun had set yet again, and the temperature began to drop. Another delicious meal, and another frigid night in the Himalayan mountains.

The trek the next day was really the jewel of the trip. We left our site at 8:30am, and walked up the road to where a trail began. This trail would take us up to the peak of a mountain called “Chandrashila”, which boasts near its top the highest Hindu temple in India. We would hike up to an altitude of 4000 meters, and at the top we would have a 360 degree view of the Himalayan range, including the peak of Nanda Devi – the second highest mountain in the world, after Everest.

We began a non-stop uphill climb on a rock trail that wove back and forth up the hillside. There was thick, crisp snow on the ground, but only in the shade… in the sun all the snow had melted, and our grip was a bit better. The temperature in the sun was 1 degree, and we all broke out the sunglasses because the glare was more than a little intense. Right from the start, I began strategizing about when to keep the hat and shades on and when to take them off, keeping in mind that the likelihood of coming away from such a trek with an atrocious sunglasses-and-hat-tan was high. There was no way I would succumb to the elements.

The view on the way up was kind of indescribable. I would take eyes off my feet for a moment and look up to see glistening white snow, bright sun, and feel the most crisp, refreshing air all around me. Smiles just kept breaking across my face, because really, there was no other possible reaction. Despite the fact that Anita and I were panting, sweating and taking breaks every fifty steps, it was spectacular.

Now I don’t want you to think I’m out of shape. I am a little out of shape (sitting on trains and eating in restaurants will do that to you), but the altitude of the hike and the cold really took a toll on us. It was like this: we would take stock of the next little bit of the walk and think, “only a few meters to the next bend in the trail. No problem. Piece of cake.” And then we would just launch into it. Because really, a few meters on an incline is a piece of cake. But after no more than three or four steps, our lungs would be retaliating and our leg muscles would be screaming in protest. It was complete lack of communication between our brains and our bodies. One was saying “I’ve done this before” and the other was saying “I’m so tired and out of my element that there’s a good chance I’ll break down momentarily”. So we rested. A lot. And we took our time and focused on taking in the awesome sights all around us. And we laughed and stopped to pee on a snow-capped mountain, and we trudged on some more.

The walk up only took us 3 hours or so, but we rose almost 1000 meters in elevation. When we finally made it up the last stretch (a hillside completely covered in snow and with not much of a trail to speak of), we gasped for breath and I struck a victorious pose – which ended up looking kids of funny, as it usually does. But there it was, documented on film – we made it to 4000 meters.

We sat down to eat lunch, and out guide took a quick nap. We all split up to take some time to ourselves and think. That’s what you do at the top of a mountain – you think. I picked up my phone to see if I had cell phone service. I did. I scrolled through the list of people in my address book, thinking that it would be pretty awesome to call some friends and declare that I was at the top of a 4000 meter mountain, but something inside me told me to put the phone down. This was my moment, and I didn’t really have the urge to call anyone. The only people I wanted to be with at that moment were the people I had hiked up to this point with, and they were right there in front of me. So the phone went back in my bag, and we sat up there for a good while just being – at the top of a mountain.

The climb down was SO much harder than the climb up. And my knees are still paying for it, I think. Our guide went ahead with his protegé, Joel wandered off on his own, and Anita and I made the descent together. When we finally made it to the bottom, I was pretty much convinced that I might not walk for the next week. We were all feeling similarly, so we decided to veto the next day’s short trek and head out early the next morning instead. That night I sat around a fire and explained to Anita my wacky and bizarre past at summer camp. When explaining it to an outsider, it really seems unreal that parents ship their children off to the forest for 6 weeks each year to be taken care of by teenagers. Anita loved it

Our drive back was treacherous. It was foggy and rainy, and we had to tackle the same mountain roads that we had on the way in. We passed cars that had flipped over, speeding buses, and side rails that had been broken from cars going over the road’s edge. We kind of didn’t speak for most of the ride – we just concentrated on not flipping out, and tried to meditate on the idea that our lives were not ours to control. For most of the ride, I actually found myself incredibly calm. I thought about this, and I guess that it was all just so “ordinary” by Indian standards that part of me felt like there was no reason to panic. If hundreds of Indians drive these roads every day, in every condition, then what made me more likely than the next to drive off the side of a cliff and die? Nothing, was my answer. So I just sat back and enjoyed the heavenly scenes outside my window. Thank God, in the end, we lived to tell the tale. I don’t think any of us will be making a trip through those mountain roads again for a long time.

So that was the trek. Not quite 4 days of trekking in the end, but definitely enough to quench the thirst that the three of us had for mountain air and exercise.

Since I posted last, we’ve moved to Rajpur. This is a small, ordinary village town where Anita’s aunt lives. We arrived on Sunday, and right away were swept into a beautiful volunteer opportunity at a school in the area. The short story is that there is a wonderful man who has taken it upon himself to build a completely funded school for children in the area, and work on implementing holistic education for all these children. The organization is completely un-corrupt in its functioning, which is unique for any NGO, and especially in India – one of the most corrupt countries in the world. This is the short story.

The longer story is on its way.

Much love to all of you,
Hava

Trekkin’ It Up

So I’ve been sitting on the computer for 6 hours now trying to successfully log onto the University of British Columbia website to submit my application for their midwifery program. The site is down. I will be in touch with them tonight (9am BC time) to see what the glitch is about. Until then, an update:

We’ve returned from our trek.
This is our story.

Sunday morning we woke up before the kitchen in our guest house was open. We were all ready to head out on our trek into the Himalaya Mountains. Joel went up to the main office to deliver our room-service breakfast order, and a sleepy young cook opened the door – we had woken him up. Slowly he got to work preparing a breakfast that we scarfed down in our guest house room as quickly as possible. We loaded our sleeping bags and bundled selves into a 4×4 with our guide, our driver, and two guys who were being groomed for the trekking business, and we pulled out of Lakshman Jhula at about 9:30am.

Our destination was a campsite about 7 hours drive from Rishikesh, though the actual distance couldn’t have been more than 140km. The twisting mountain roads meant that we never really pushed past 40km/hr for fear of going over the edge or crashing into an oncoming truck that was trying to overtake someone in the other direction. I actually really enjoyed the drive once I was able to get past the imminent danger of the situation. There were definitely no seat belts, but even if there were they would scarcely have helped. As we crept up into the hills we passed towns and villages in beautiful colours, tucked into valleys and crevices left, right and center. The road followed the Ganges to its source, where we stopped to see two rivers merging in a torrent of water. We learned that there is a legend that says that the merging point is the meeting of mother-in-law and daughter-in-law (one river being the first, the other being the second), and the violent waters represent the clash in their relationship. From what I’ve seen on my travels and on Indian TV, this is kind of a typical family dynamic.

We arrived at our campsite at around 5:30pm, and the hillside we were on was already in the shade of the mountain sunset. The view was incredible. We spent the first little while just snapping shots of the white mountain peaks that poked up in the distance, trying to capture their evasive beauty. For some reason, be it magical or optic, the mountains just wouldn’t stay put for the camera. The shots you’ll see online are the results of our efforts, but they’re not the real thing. Just try and imagine something 20 times clearer, brighter and more beautiful, and you’ll be nearing reality.

While we thought we’d be spending our first hour or so setting up camp, we were quickly informed otherwise. Our Indian hosts insisted on doing everything for us, and we were invited to sit by a blazing fire and enjoy hot chai and various other delicious treats that made their way over from the kitchen tent. I think that Joel, Anita and I were a little uncomfortable with this set-up at first, but we quickly warmed up to our guide’s hospitality as the temperature dropped to below zero and we huddled in our make-shift winter costumes and tried to keep warm. My outfit consisted of a quick-dry thermal shirt, a fleece sweatshirt, and my raincoat (for added insulation and warmth). It worked, but just barely. As the light of the day faded, we ate an incredible Indian home-cooked dinner by the fire – the best we’ve had in our travels so far – and tried to come up with ways to keep ourselves awake. Our instinct was to go to sleep as soon as the sun went down, but we knew that if we did we’d wake up at 4am in a freezing tent… so we played a rousing game of geography! We made it until 8:30, and then we hit the sack.

[Interlude:]
Gah. Joel and Anita have just walked into the internet cafe where I have been glued all day (they say “hi!”). They are telling me thrilling stories of their day of shopping and exploring and are urging me to take a break from the screen and relax a bit. I believe I will oblige.

More stories of trekking and adventure in sub-zero temperatures to come soon!

Stay tuned!

Sweet Mountain Air

New Years has passed, and so has my 24th birthday (both were wonderful and filled with friends and spontaneity). But most notably, my poor health and chills and itch for sun are on their way out. Hoorah!

New location: Rishikesh.

Rishikesh is about a 22-hour train ride north-west from Varanasi. On Wednesday morning, bright and early, Joel, Anita and I loaded on our packs, said our last silent goodbyes to the winding streets of ancient Varanasi, and boarded a train to take us even further into the Indian north. We arrived in Rishikesh (famous for the renowned Beatles Ashram) at 5:30am on a freezing January morning, and quickly found ourselves a guest house that would receive travellers at the ungodly hour at which we arrived. And then we slept. For a while.

When we awoke the next morning and cautiously nudged the door of our room open to peek outside, we had to hold our breath. After our whirlwind day and night of traveling, I felt a little like Dorothy stepping out of her Kansas home only to find herself in Oz. We found ourselves in a beautiful garden paradise guest home situated in a deep valley of beautiful hills and rivers. All around us were mountains – the foothills of the Himalayas. Birds soared overhead, and the trickle of a stream could be heard just beyond the gate of the guest house. We woke up at about 9am, but the sun had just risen over the peaks of the mountains in front of us. After the polluted, smoggy air of Varanasi (and the seemingly endless cold days without sun) the crisp fresh mountain air and warm sun was like getting a giant chocolate sundae on your birthday… and after a few days here, I’m still feeling my health slowly but steadily improving.

Varanasi was quite an experience – you can check out some of the pictures from our New Years Eve adventures, my birthday dinner, and our last few days there – but at the end of it all we were all just feeling sick from being in the city. We learned that the water used in the homes and guest houses for bathing and even cooking was pumped straight out of the Ganga River and into the city’s pipes. We also learned an unsettling bit of information about the cleanliness of the water – in Varanasi, water samples indicated that the fecal matter count was something like 1.5 million times the safe amount for drinking water. These little tidbits of information, compounded with the bad weather and the air pollution, were just the needed ingredients for a change of scenery.

With Anita’s killer bargaining skills, we managed to bring the price of the rooms down from 500 rupees per night to 250, leaving us with a little extra cash to start sampling the delicious food in the surrounding towns and tourist areas. We spent our first day here walking around, taking in the beautiful (and clean!) Ganga River – we’re much further upstream in Rishikesh, so the pollution is much less, and we even took a little hike over to the Beatles Ashram. Beautiful.

Rishikesh is a postcard, and a utopia for anyone who is into walking, hiking, exploring, photography, sunshine, and roaring rivers and yoga. The ashrams in the area are numerous and well-reputed, as are the “babas” – some of which are not as authentic as you might like, but that’s just another charming part of the culture. As you walk down the winding mountain roads you’ll find them – men with long beards and painted white faces, walking sticks and draped clothing. I’m still not quite sure what the function of these babas is yet, but I’m looking into it. More on that later.

Yesterday, the three of us set out for a hike up to a waterfall in the area. After all the sitting, eating, and sleeping on trains that we’ve been doing over the past few weeks, it was not the easiest climb up the crumbling cement stairs and steep rocky slopes of the trail. But we took our time, and let our lungs adjust, and eventually we made it up. A little off the trail, we discovered some clear water pools where the falls had beaten away some of the rock over the centuries, and despite the Lonely Planet warnings to remain modestly dressed at all times, we couldn’t resist… we all stripped down to our undies and took a dip in the cool mountain water! It was the first bath we’d had in a month and a half, and the water was the purest I’ve ever seen on my travels in India yet. In order to jump in, you had to face the waterfall’s downpour, but once in the pool you could turn around and face the most breathtaking mountainscape imaginable. To be honest, while Joel and Anita took the plunge immediately, it characteristically took me several minutes of wading in the shallow water near the edges before I plucked up enough courage to actually submerge my body in the cold water. I talk the Canadian talk when I’m here in India, but I’m still a little bit of a baby when it comes to frigid temperatures, my Canadian blood notwithstanding.

The waterfall hike was good practice for us because tomorrow Joel, Anita and I will head out for a 4-day trek into the Himalaya mountains. We’ve arranged for a guide (who seems like a really great guy), and we leave early in the morning for a 6 hour drive north to our starting point. The hike should take us up into the mountains to a beautiful lake, and then up to a peak with an incredible 360 degree view of the area. We’re more than a little psyched, and we’ve all stocked up on wool hats, leg-warmers and gloves. After a quick stop to the store down the road for some rice cakes (oh joy, gluten allergy), we’ll be set to go. Today I’ll be spending the day on the computer finishing the rough draft of my midwifery application essay, which some of you will likely receive in your inboxes in the next 24 hours for a quick proof-read and edit . I’m anticipating added enjoyment on the trek once the stress of this school work is out of the way.

I’ll write more when we return from our trek. Pending any unforseen camera theft, I’ll have many more pictures to share too (I hope you’re all enjoying the shots – you’re getting a pretty good taste of what I’m surrounded by each day!).

I love you all, and wish you all the most meaningful week.
Sending you all a breath of fresh air and a little sunshine from the mountains!

Hava

Stunning, Unsettling Varanasi

This is a long one…

I arrived in Varanasi on Saturday, and the pendulum of my soul and my emotions hasn’t stopped swinging since I got here. There is so, so much to tell. I’ll focus on the parts that stand out to me right now, and the rest will no doubt trickle into future blog posts as important yet forgotten things have want to do.

On Thursday of last week, at 6am, myself and 5 travel companions left Sadhana Forest in search of the Indian North. Our journey took us first by taxi to Chennai, the closest major city to Sadhana Forest, and from the Chennai train station we caught a train straight up through the center of the country to Varanasi – a legendary city that I have just learned is often partnered with Jerusalem. For those of you who have been to Jerusalem, picture the narrow, winding alley ways of the old city, the beaten down stones that make the streets, and the spiritual energy that seems to permeate absolutely everything. This is Varanasi – just in India, and with a lot more cows and a lot less Jews. Built up on the river of the holy Ganga (Ganges) River, the city is a powerful mix of colour, spiritual exploration, poverty, creation, corruption, art, meditation, pollution, and spice, all mixed into one ever-moving, ever-flowing body. Being here has taken me on a whirlwind of emotional expeditions, and I’m still watching myself change.

Our train was meant to take 38 hours, but as trains tend to do, this train was 6 hours late. This brought us into Varanasi at a comfortable 10:30am, rather than the scheduled 4:30am. I can’t tell you how thankful I was for those few extra hours. The six of us shared a sleeper-class compartment, which really meant that we had a window in common, but were fully exposed to the rest of the train and all its passengers. As the hours passed by we talked and ate, ate and talked, and slept. I can’t count the packages of cookies, nuts, raisins, cups of steaming chai, and train station dosas we went through. At Indian train stations, they’ve figured out the most ingenious system of feeding the people – at each station, the pushcarts and vendors stand ready at attention, and as the train comes to stop they all rush up to the windows offering their mouthwatering, greasy goodness. For 10 rupees you can have 3 donuts, 3 samosas, or a handful of peanuts. 5 rupees will buy you a hot chai or a banana. If you follow the masses and hop off the train (always looking back to see if your car has started to move without you on the train), you can find steaming masala dosas, chappatis, and other delicious meals. And if you think you’ve missed your chance for food because you were asleep for the stop and the train has already started to move, you are so wrong. Be prepared for another 10 minutes of “Chai-ee, chai-ee, chai-ee!” and other such chants as vendors board the moving train with you and deliver snacks to your cabin, making a jump for the station before the train has picked up too much speed.

Sufficed to say, VIA rail and AmTrack have a lot to learn about food service and customer satisfaction. I have never been so satisfied with the snacks offered to me by my travel carrier.

As we moved further and further north on the train, the weather began to cool down significantly. On the first night, it was a bit nippy. By the middle of the second night, it was definitely no more than 5 degrees. Slowly, the Indians around us started pulling out their wonderful 1970′s sweaters, jackets, and – the new fad – ear muffs. We were slow to take the hint, and so at 4:30am we found ourselves shuffling out of our thin blankets and sleep sheets to sift through our backpacks for socks, thermal underwear, sweaters, shawls, and any layers we could possibly find. Our breezy, south–Indian clothing wasn’t up for the task of keeping us from freezing. We eventually managed to warm up, and by 10:30 am we arrived at the Varanasi train station. Such a welcome relief… after doing nothing but sitting and eating greasy, carbohydrate-filled food for 45 hours, carrying our heavy bags up the stairs from the platform was a great work-out.
We found a lovely guest house, got some lunch, and hit the sack for a few hours of motionless, warm, noise-less sleep.

We’ve been in Varanasi for 5 days now, and there’s still so, so, so much to see.

Our guest house is about 50 paces from the steps leading down to the Ganga. We wake up every morning and do some group yoga and meditation on the rooftop of our guest house (that looks right over the rooftops of Varanasi and onto the river), and then we take a short walk down and along the bank of the river, all the way over to our favourite find – a dear little restaurant called “Ashish”, where we have tried, collectively, almost everything on the menu. I prefer to start my day with a big bowl of oatmeal porridge made with milk and fresh bananas, with a little honey on the top. After breakfast, we go exploring – sometimes alone, sometimes all together – and by 12 noon we find that we have been walking for hours, and have stumbled upon some new gem of a place.

On our second night here, one guy in our group arranged for us to have a private concert with a couple of musicians who work in one of the music ashrams in the city. It was beautiful, and I’ve since taken up “jembe” (hand drum) lessons with one of the teachers. And today I went out with a friend and bought myself a jembe (!!). The lessons mean a commitment to stay in Varanasi for at least another two weeks, which gives me a nice feeling of calm. No rush necessary. There are so many things to learn in this place – so many travellers to meet and connect with, so much photography to take, so many cows to see .

So as I describe the wonder and beauty of this city, I should also add that it is a very unsettling place to be at the same time. Varanasi is every bit an Indian city, with all of its poverty and corruption, and commercialism and scams. I have found myself struggling to trust people and smile while a large part of me is prejudiced and cautious and calculating, always trying to avoid being taken advantage of. On my third day here, I cracked a little. I woke up with no patience for all the “hello maam”s and “rickshaw, maam?”s and whistles and “hello friend”s. I found myself hating everything around me – hating the hypocrisy and the fakeness of the warm hellos, and feeling completely exploited. Interesting, no? Here I was, the wealthy tourist in a third-world city, and I was feeling exploited. I felt like my face labelled me immediately as a giant, walking ATM machine, and I felt I could trust no-one to be genuinely interested in me or my background. Everyone just wanted my money. I wanted to learn peoples stories, and people were happy to share… provided I came with them to their uncle’s shop when we were done conversing. So I walked with my shades on, staring down the men who tried to pick me up and coldly brushing past anyone who smiled at me, and muttering under my breath “shut up” and “back off”. That night, I barricaded myself in an up-scale Japanese restaurant with air-conditioning and large, glass windows that created a clear separation between me and the noisy Indian reality outside. I paid too much for a not-so-great meal, finished it off with some mediocre cheesecake and a phone call to a good friend in Israel, and calmed myself down a bit.

I’m recognizing, slowly, that through all the extremes that I find myself travelling through on this journey, none of them are dangerous. They’re all in my own head. And watching them – looking, acknowledging, and not judging – is incredibly empowering… not to mention free entertainment every day . I’m trying to watch myself change, and the process is bestowing upon me a great deal of empathy, and a great deal of peace. I don’t think that India is the only place for this to take place. It’s surely possible anywhere and everywhere. The value of being here, and power of the place, is that it’s so new and uncomfortable that you are forced to look everything straight in the face. There is no routine or community or familiarity to cradle you and lull you into a peaceful rhythm. The rhythm is already established here, and just by entering this space you are forced to acknowledge it. You can either learn – REALLY learn – the rhythm, or you can fight it and find yourself chucked all over the place over and over again, hitting your frustrated head against a wall that’s not moving anywhere.

For any of you who are interested, I think this is what they mean when “they” say “culture shock”.

Today I woke up feeling fine, and with a lot more energy. This is great, because I have a lot of drumming practice to do tonight before I get to bed. And we may try and catch a movie in the city or grab a bite to eat with some fellow Sadhana Forest travellers that we ran into this afternoon by chance. This afternoon a few of us went in search of the Chabad House in Varanasi. We were inspired by the graffiti that dotted the bank of the Ganga, pointing us in scribbled Hebrew letters to the “Beit Chabad”. After wandering down some alley ways for more than a little while, we found our spot. The Rabbi seems nice and this Friday night myself, my Aussie non-Jewish friends, and anyone else who wants, will check out Shabbat chez Chabad of Varanasi. I assume we’ll meet a lot of Israelis. Anyone want to make bets on how many?

We’re still working on our New Years plans. Options include:
1. Attending a free community tabla, flute and sitar concert in the neighborhood.
2. Getting in a boat with some guy we met the other day and attempting to light 5000 candles in the Ganga in honour of the New Year.
3. Getting our groove on at a psychedelic dance party at a roof-top restaurant down the street.

I’ll keep you all posted.

So this is what has sprung forth from my mind for the day. There is so much more, and it will trickle out as the days continue. Thank you for keeping up with such a long post, and please be in touch to let me know how all of you are doing! I would love, love, love to call you all for New Years, but I fear this will not be a real possibility. I know that some of you will be together in Toronto, and some in Israel, and some in New York and Boston and San Diego and San Fransisco. Have a BEAUTIFUL time and please know that I’m thinking of you. HAPPY NEW YEAR!

With so much love and adoration,

Hava

The Wind Blows North

The monsoon has not yet ended here. We had a few brief days of sun before the rains hit yet again. I have finally bought myself an umbrella, mostly because I’m running out of dry clothes and the rain doesn’t allow for much washing to get done. The umbrella has red and pink flowers on it, and I think we shall become good travel companions – she keeping the rain at bay, and I resting her gently on the floor of internet cafes, restaurants, travel agencies, chai shops and the floor of my room to dry.

As the rain continues to dampen the mood and the mud at Sadhana Forest, I’ve got some exciting plans that keep me upbeat and in good spirits. I told myself early on in my planning of this trip that I would simply let myself move wherever the positive energy directed me – and I’m feeling myself pulled north. Sometime this week I’ll pack up my bag, chuck whatever has become superfluous into the communal clothing bin, and hop on a train heading north to Varanasi with some good friends from Sadhana. There will be six of us travelling together – a positive, fun-loving bunch who are all just as excited as I am at the prospect of finding a way to go snowboarding in the Himalayas (this has quickly become my #1 goal for the trip). We are still trying to get hold of some train tickets… 6 altogether… and are running into the same Indian line-ups and the same endless referrals, taking us in circles from one travel agency to another, to the Pondy train station, to the internet cafe, and back to the travel agency. There doesn’t seem to be one tried and true way to book a train ticket in the this country, but eventually, if we persevere, people say we should get our tickets. It just may mean we’re here in the rain for another week or so. This may not be so bad, because I’ve just discovered the most DELICIOUS gluten-free carrot cake in the village nearby, and I’m a little bit addicted…

[Ed. Note: Cashew flour has been added to the list of gluten-free flours to test out when I return home. If you are interested in sampling said experiment, please contact me directly.]

So this means that I’ll be postpoing my trip to Bangalore to see Eliot and fam for about a month or so. I’ll be back down south eventually, but I’m trying not to rush myself (which is easy, because I’m feeling so relaxed these days) or plan too much. The train will take 38 hours in total, which is both daunting and intriguing…. what does one do on a train for 38 hours? With the group I’ll be cooped up with, I have no doubt we’ll be able to entertain ourselves… please stay tuned for some wacky pictures.

So most likely we will speak again in Varanasi, pending any unexpected (read: probable) delays.

Clearly the Canadian in me is taking over… here I am in hot South India, and I’m retreating back to the snow-capped mountains.

With Love,
Hava