To The Roof Of The World

My long awaited return to the Himalayas finally arrived last week when our plane touched down in Leh. This part of the Himalayas however, was extremely different compared to Nepal, where I spent some time hiking a few years back. The landscape was extremely arid and the conditions much more harsh. Anjali, Julie, and myself flew in to Leh last Friday from Delhi, and because of the extreme change in altitude (going from 560m in Pune to 3500m above sea level), we spent the day sleeping and walking around the bazaar and exploring the town trying not to exert ourselves too much. Leh itself is quite touristy, but we ended up arriving at the end of the tourist season as the winter was starting to arrive. This meant that the town wasn't overcrowded with tourists, and it often felt like we had the entire place to ourselves in the mountains.

After our first day, we all felt acclimatized, and we took a local bus to a nearby town called Thikse. After walking around asking locals where to find the bus (none of the buses have signs) we found the right bus and waited until it was as full as possible to finally leave to Thikse. Once we arrived we ended hiking up to the main attraction, the Thikse Gompa. It was an amazing view from the top, with Buddhist monks meditating throughout the monastery. This was one of the first times I could feel the effects of the altitude. Climbing even two steps left me out of breath most of the way up, it was a great feeling to push my body in this way for the first time, and the reward at the top was an amazing view. Afterwards, we decided to walk 5km to a nearby village called Shey, which had an amazing ruined palace. We hiked to the top and had another amazing view of the valley, and could even see the Thikse Gompa in the distance.

Thikse Gompa

More views from Thikse

View on the way up to Thikse Gompa

The highlight of the trip, was our third day when we went up the highest motorable road in the world to Khardung-La. After asking around Leh how to get up this road, I found out it was possible to bike down from the top on the road, I couldn't turn that opportunity! It ended up being one of the coolest things I have ever done. The combination of the extreme altitude, rough roads, incredible views, and that I was bombing down these roads on a bicycle was unreal. Many times when we reached a flat part on the road I was stand up as high as I could on the bike and it literally felt like I was flying through the mountains. It was an unreal feeling that I will never forget.  Before the bike ride down, when we were at the top, I tried to climb a little bit higher, just to say I tried to climb at such a high altitude, but it was extremely difficult. Every step upwards was a challenge, trying to step on moving rocks, in snow up to my knees, and also the fact that I was having trouble breathing and things were getting a little blurry. Probably for the best, a military officer told me and another foreigner that we weren't allowed and we had to stop and head back down. Regardless it felt pretty amazing to be standing at the top of the highest road in the world.

Near The Top of Khardung-La

The final day in Leh we woke up at 4:30am to hike up the the Shanti Stupa, 500 steps to the top, to watch the sunrise. We had the entire stupa to ourselves while watching the mountains light up from the sun. After a nap, I spent the rest of the day hiking up through the narrow winding streets of Leg to the hills surrounding Leh, and ended up finding a quiet area on a rock at the top of the highest point in Leh, away from any other tourist. I spent most of the afternoon there, reading and then watched the sunset.

Leh Palace & Gompa

Hiking Up to the Palace

Mapping It Up

A few people have been asking where exactly the places I have been posting about are located in comparison to Pune. I thought it would be fun to try and map out on Google the places I have been exploring.

View Places Visited in a larger map
As I was writing up this post I can across my first post from the week before leaving Canada. I made a list of a few things I wanted to experience during my semester in Pune. I remember typing the list up in our flat back in Ottawa, it is amazing that only 7 weeks later I have accomplished most things on that list. Hampi, Leh, Matheran and other nearby hill stations have all been visited, FRO registration is behind me finally with no late fees paid, and I have eaten almost every veg Punjabi dish available I am sure of it, along with a bunch of South India dishes as well. Still have to do a 20 hour train ride, although after the 20 hour journey to Hampi it seems much less appealing!

Hope all is well with everyone back home!

Eid Mubarak!

Last week I was lucky enough to be invited to celebrate Eid with a family. My first week here I mentioned that we had a maid, Parvin, come in during the week at our flat, and I was a little uneasy about it at first. However, both Julie and I have gotten to know Parvin and her family quite well, and she invited us over to eat for Eid. Parvin has two children, Aman who is 11, and Nilo who is 16. They are the most adorable kids, extremely kind and generous.

Myself, Anjali, and Julie got a little dressed up and walked down the street to Parvin's place to eat. Lilo is quite the artist, and did Henna on both the girls which ended up looking amazing. Communication is sometimes difficult, Parvin speaking very little English, but her kids and nieces speak quite well. We have tried to learn a few Hindi and Marathi words but in all honesty it is so different than English, French or Spanish that is usually results in a fail! But knowing a few words does help and I think we all had a great time.

Parvin cooked us all a great meal, which ended up being one of the spiciest dishes I have had so far in Pune, an egg curry with chapati and rice. It was delicious! We chatted with her family while eating, and Lilo and Parvin's niece performed some traditional Marathi, and Rajasthani dancing which was amazing to watch. Everyone was dressed in beautiful saris, the colourful dress of the women here in India, with their matching bangles and earrings are some of the most beautiful I have ever seen.

It was extremely touching the generosity and love that was given to us. Julie at one point called Parvin our Indian mother, and after that she started calling me Baya (spelling likely wrong!) meaning brother. Overall, being at their place felt extremely warm and comfortable, it felt like being home in a way. 

Afterwards, we brought Lilo out for ice cream down the street which was a great way to hang out and calm out burning mouths from the delicious food! Being invited in to Parvin's home and being treated with such kindness and generosity during such an important celebration was extremely touching and is something that I will always remember.

Main area of the compound 

Parvin and I

Eating delicious Indian food (After 20 minutes of eating rice with my right hand I failed and grabbed a spoon)

Parvin and Nilo

Aman on the left and his cousin

Hampi

The last week has been full of wonderful experiences. Last Wednesday was Eid, a muslim celebration marking the end of Ramadan, and later that evening after the celebrations we boarded an overnight bus to Hampi in the State of Karnataka to spend 4 days exploring. I will leave my Eid experience for a separate post, as the wonderfulness of Hampi will require a long post.

I remember reading about Hampi back in the Winter as I researched places in Southern India that would be worth a visit. After reading about it online, it was definitely on the top of my list of things to do during my time here. 

Before getting to the bearing my love for Hampi, it is worth mentioning the hell we went through getting to there. Our "12 hour" bus ride ended up consisting of 3 bus changes, 26 hours in transit, and one car accident. Our bus ended up rear-ending a car a few hours outside Pune causing some substantial damage to the vehicle, and of course the driver of our bus had no insurance, so we waited at least 2 hours for the police to come. After they never showed we went to some kind of hotel and restaurant, where we drank chai and ate Pohe while we waited about 3 hours for a new bus to come pick us up. When all was said and done, we arrive around 10:30pm on Thursday, instead of our original arrival time of around 9am.

The ruins of Vijayanagra located in and around Hampi date back to the Hindu Vijayanagra Dynasty which lasted from the early 1300's until 1565, when it was overtaken by the Muslim Confederacy. At it's peak, due to its excellent location it was one of the most fortified areas of the entire empire, that covered much of the south. It was easy to see why, because there were literally thousands of gigantic boulders everywhere on each hill and valley throughout the surrounding area of Hampi. I'm still not quite sure if they were naturally there and weather worn, placed there, or a combinations of the two.

The sheer size of the ruins in terms of distance was one of the highlights of the trip for me. We decided to rent motorbikes to cruise around the area as most of the ruins were spread out over 30-40 kilometers. Driving the bikes on some of the dirt paths next to the giant rocks, banana trees and various ruins was one of the most amazing experiences so far. The pictures taken don't even come close to portraying how impressive the vastness of the landscape is. It was mind blowing that I could drive for 20 minutes on a dirt road away from the main temples and ruins, get off the bike an walk up a bunch of boulders and then stumble upon more small temples hundreds of years old in the middle of nowhere. If this site were in Europe, it would be flooded with tourists and would definitely not be such a unique place. Honestly, it amazes me that more people do not come to Hampi, I know when most people think India this area is not what comes to mind. However, it was one of the most unique and fascinating places I have seen. 

One morning we decided to get up early to see the sunrise at the top of Matanga Hill, but unfortunately when we reached the top it was extremely cloudy and did not get to see it. The view from the top in itself was worth the trek up though, especially scaling some of the rocks up the path to the top with nothing but a headlight guiding the way.

Another amazing moment was on our last night in Hampi, on the way back from exploring we ran into a procession for the Ganesh Festival (sidenote: Ganesh is the Hindu God of wisdom and prosperity and the festival is biggest in Maharashtra, especially Pune and Mumbai. The festival is 10 days, so I look forward to catching it in Pune over the next few days) The traditions involves bringing the Ganesh across town and at the end spraying water on Ganesh and then floating it down the river. It was amazing to hear the drums and people dancing all the way through the bazaar until finally sending Ganesh down the river. On the way down the bazaar a little girl came up to me with a big smile and both arms out straight. I thought she wanted to dance with me, but she started to grab my hands and run in a circle, so I started to twirl her around in the air as we marched down the road with the group. She was extremely happy and we did this two or three times before she ran back to her mom at the side. It was incredibly cute!

The bus ride back was only 14 hours, but was not without excitement. In the middle of the night, an argument started between a passenger boarding in Bijapur and a man claiming to have the right to a window seat. After some insults back and forth the one man ran to the back near where we were and started fighting, yelling and punching the man near the window. This woke the entire bus up and delayed the bus by 30 min or so, but it could have been worse if the police had gotten involved. 

Once we arrived in Pune, we heard the bus driver shout Swargate which is an area near our flat. Half asleep we hurried and grabbed our bags and hopped out of the bus. As soon as the bus pulled away we realized we have made a huge mistake, and were in Swargate District, which is over an hour outside Pune, rather than Swargate station in the City Centre. This whole situation was almost identical to another travel failure when Erin and I were travelling in Ghana, and realized there were 4 Tema stations in Accra. After a hard negotiations we finally made it home after a long rickshaw ride.

Overall it was a fantastic weekend, and I highly recommend anyone traveling to India to check out Hampi, it is truly an amazing place and the pictures below barely capture it's incredible landscape. I hope to upload some more pictures that the other OMG'ers have been taking in the next few days as well.

Krishna Temple

Overlooking the site from Matanga Hill after Sunrise

Post-sunrise on Matanga Hill

Virupraksha Temple in Hampi

Panoramic view from some rocks we climbed

Monkey's hanging out on the side of the rocks

View of the dirt path we biked on for many hours, we would take breaks along the road when there were interesting things to see or climb

Procrastination

School is officially underway, all my classes have been chosen and my schedule finalized after one month of dabbling into several of the social science programs here at the University. Because each department creates their own timetable, it was difficult to find a schedule without conflicts. I tried courses in Sociology, Women's Studies, Politics, and Economics, finally settling on two politics and one economics course. I really wanted to take the women's studies course on Gender & Development, but it wasn't meant to be. Now that I actually have some work to do, I feel like procrastinating by writing about a bunch of random thoughts rather than doing some readings, so here are a few random highlights from the last few weeks:

1) Because of school finally starting, I am choosing to write this post instead of doing reading for my Agricultural economics class, which has the first test in a few short weeks. This course was the one I was most excited about, especially from the perspective here in India as there is so much happening on the food justice and food production front here. The whole biotechnology debate and its effect on farmers is also an issue I am extremely interested in, and some of my favourite academic articles on the topic have come from India. Classes however so far have been disappointing. Interaction is low, and structure is lacking. However, the friends I have met in class, especially in economics, have been extremely friendly and tons of fun chat and hang out with, and has been one of the highlights for me so far at school.

2) Last night was Janmashtami in India, which is a Hindu festival here in India celebrating Krishna's birthday. India is an amazing country, there is always so much happening, the streets are always bustling with activity, festivals happening almost every week. The festival last night was really neat. The main event of the festival is a team of local participants called Govinda's that form a human period to reach a clay pot filled with buttermilk about 30 feet in the air and to break it. I am going to try and post a video of this on facebook, the energy in the crown was amazing and the excitement before the clay pot was broken was electrifying. These pots are placed all over the city in Pune, and also in cities all over the country, however we chose to visit the event in Deccan, an area near our flat.  On the first attempt one of the member reached the top, but as he was going to wind up to hit the target, he lost his balance and came crashing down 20 or 30 feet. Luckily he was okay, and within two minutes was back up and breaking the clay releasing the milk on the Govinda's and the entire pyramid. The pictures don't give the actual event enough justice, so I uploaded a video below.

3) I am loving the food here. I already fear the day of returning back home and being without the flavour explosions that are part of almost every meal here. It is amazing having at minimum 20-30 choices of veg food here at each meal, compared to the often one or two token items on the menu for vegetarians in Canada. I plan at somepoint to write down every one of my favourite dishes and hopefully try to make them before I leave.

4) I really am enjoying living near the University. Not only is there amazing food on the street corner, but there is so much green space around, something I wasn't expecting to be living near here in Pune. Within twenty minutes from the flat you can have a view of the entire city from the nearby hill behind our building. I took my first hike up the surrounding hills which was great. The highlight was finding at the top of the hill some sort of iron scaffolding with stairs to the top of it. After cautiously making our way up and realizing it was not going to fall over and we wouldn't fall to our death, we had an amazing view of the city.

A view of the main area of the festival in Deccan

Attempt #1

View from the hill behind our flat

Child Poverty

This weekend is my first in Pune, I decided to take a few days to relax and explore the city and also to start some reading for school. So far I am really enjoying India, as each day goes by, I start to feel more at home here. I've posted many times about the beauty and charm of India so far, but like many other places in the world, the country faces some major challenges. I've written this post several times now, finding it difficult to find the right words. The truth is it is difficult to find the words to discuss the extreme inequalities that exist here, and many other countries for that matter.  I find myself struggling to find the best way to respond to the daily encounters with children on the street. 

A few weeks back in Aurangabad, we met a group of guys on the street, and after chatting for a few minutes they asked us why we came to India to study, and the international affairs students mentioned we really wanted to see the country but also hear a non-western view on development and international relations, especially from such a diverse and complex developing country like India. One guy quickly snapped back that India is no longer a developing country, poverty is relative, we do not have poverty anymore. I didn't know how to respond at the time. However, not more than 5 minutes later I passed two blind men on the street asking for money, and a mother with a baby that were at stopped traffic asking for money, food, or something to help them get through the day. I'm not sure how these educated young men could be so blind. While India has had an amazing transformation and managed to bring millions out of poverty of the last decade, the striking contract between rich and poor is a daily struggle to come to terms with. 

Here in Pune, which is a fairly wealthy city in terms of India, with the presence of IT companies and many universities, there is still much poverty. A walk across the city is never without a young girl or boy tugging at your leg or hand asking for money or pointing to their mouth asking for food. It literally breaks my heart every time. While we have our problems in Canada, the contrasts are stark. I've been waking up with the image of a young girl that was following me for around 1km with her mother on the side of the road with a baby asking for money in my first week here. 

Even if I did have money, I'm not convinced giving it every time is the best way to act. There is pretty strong evidence that giving money to every child on the street is not only impossible, but it perpetuates a cycle of families sending children out on the street to earn money rather than being in school. Long-term this has devastating effects and perpetuates the cycle.  At the same time, there are children that are in need of immediate help. I've noticed some Indians bringing children over to food stands and buying them a meal, which I think is a great idea rather than giving out money. While this does nothing to solve the long term poverty problem, it is something. 

India does not have much of a social safety net for the disabled, and so most are left out of society with no ways of earning enough to survive. I am not sure if it is more worthwhile to give to someone who is unable to work, it feels like a terrible thing to have to choose.

 I think this has been on my mind often because of the immense disparities in India, the mercedes cars driving by slums on the side of the road with children sleeping on the road. In many other countries I remember there being much poverty, but the contrasts were not as large as they are here.

Sometime in November I am planning on spending a week in Nagpur, volunteering with an organizing helping children with diabetes, focussing on girls, live better lives and have better access to insulin. I feel like helping out in this way is more effective than handing out a few rupees on the street. 

The reason for writing this post is that I welcome any comments, tips, or what others think on the subject. There is no right answer, but I always find discussion with others is the best way to sort of thoughts and explore different ideas. 

Hanging on for Dear Life

Before leaving Canada, one activity on my list of things I absolutely had to do was to take a 20 hour train ride, either from Mumbai to Delhi, or perhaps Delhi to Jaisalmer. This is still something I would like to do, however after my first train experience this weekend, I am definitely adding an asterix next to it. I will be making sure to get a sleeper for traveling long distances.

To get out of the craziness of the city and the sound of the honking horns we all decided to take a trip out to Matheran, a tiny hill station in between Mumbai and Pune which has banned vehicles from entering, creating a very unique and rare setting. To reach Matheran, the quickest way is to take the train to Neral which is a small town just below Matheran.

Everything started out quite nicely, we boarded the train after buying our tickets at 7am, and although we bought general boarding tickets and there was nowhere to sit, I was quite happy being able to stand at the door and watch the world go by. It was so quiet I even gave Erin a quick call just as we were leaving Shivajinagar station in Pune. I was pretty naive to think the whole ride would be this peaceful. Not even 20 minutes later we reached the next stop and the pandemonium commenced.

I was standing at the door with my backpack when the mob of people started fighting in front of the door to try and get on the train, Babies were getting hit and elderly people were mauled by the group of aggressive people fighting to get on the train. I held on to me small corner near the door with my bag raised above my head and held on for dear life while everyone fought to get on the train. I had seen this happen before on various videos of people riding the train in Mumbai, but witnessing it first hand was something else. For the next 3 hours I stood hugging the wall with my bag, with two small children sitting on my feet and sleeping on my leg not being able to move. If I was claustrophobic I might have jumped out through the open doors!

Once we arrived in Neral however, the train ride was quickly forgotten as we hiked up to Matheran following the toy train tracks. We were hoping to take the toy train up however it is closed during the monsoon. We spent the weekend relaxing, reading, and we spent one day hiking on many of the trails. The rain was relentless all weekend, a real first taste of the force of the monsoons, as Pune is quite sheltered from them because of the location of the city being in a valley. Despite the heavy rain, the scenery was amazing, with some of the nicest views I have every seen, it was a shame the clouds blocked many of the views, but when they were visible it was amazing. I will definitely be returning in November or December once the monsoons have left.

One nice surprise was that the town was overflowing with monkeys, they were everywhere. One even came into our room out of nowhere one morning and stole a bag of candy, I may have screamed a little and ran for the bathroom. It was huge!

One of the highlights of the weekend was coming home on the train, it was much quieter and I was able to hang out the door for most of the trip taking in the amazing views in the distance as the train chugged down the side of the mountain. Because of the monsoon, there were waterfalls everywhere, it was a wonderful few hours, something I will never forget!

Hiking down a part of the cliff at Alexander's Point

The calm before the storm