Happy Christmas, Merry Chanukah, and a summary of recent events!

So I haven't updated in ages and here is a few of the most important travels, peoples, places, thoughts, etc from the past couple weeks! As many of you know, I will be arriving back to the USA on January 8th and am looking forward to seeing some friendly faces in Hamden/Htown/New Haven before I head to Haverford Jan 19th...If you do the math, you will realize that I have only a little under 2 weeks left to go, which is feeling really short and sad at the moment! I miss lots of folks from home but this country, the people, the eye-opening experiences everyday, the gorgeous (mostly) weather and much more will be incredibly hard to tear myself away from!

Picking up from where I left off last [real] post, I went from Haridwar to Delhi on an overnight train where I stayed overnight with some friends I made at the Navdanya farm up north. In Delhi, there is a huge government push to essentially do away with small businesses so any shop that is run out of a residence has to become one or the other (if this doesnt make sense, its maybe because I dont have a full understanding of the policy) and this is basically forcing any mom-and-pop-shops to flounder while the huge supermarkets flourish! Anyhow, this policy pushed an Indian man out of his office (which was in a residential building) and so when I arrived in Delhi, i found that my two friends (Kasey and Liz) were staying literally in an old office with two women who live there (Sibilla Italian and Karly American) and Sibillas friend Dario was there too... long story short we hung out all 6 of us in a tiny cold office with no windows! Despite the conditions, we tried to cook [failing miserably at making latkes] and had a grand old time. In the morning I went to the Delhi train station to try to find the tourist booking office and book the rest of my train tickets for my entire trip. This proved to be quite an experience... which i will preface by saying that there are even signs up around the New Delhi train station saying things like "IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR THE TOURIST BOOKING OFFICE, DO NOT BELIEVE ANYONE WHO TRIES TO TELL YOU THAT IT HAS BURNED DOWN, IS CLOSED TODAY, IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION, HAS MOVED, OR NO LONGER EXISTS" [but in hilariously broken English]. So I went in, had a look around for the tourist office and then was pulled aside by a man who showed my his "train station license" proving that he worked there and took me by the arm (with ALL of my bags) to the tourist booking office. I GOT SCAMMED! he dragged me all the way down the road, me protesting the entire time that "i really think the booking office is INSIDE the train station" and him telling me "no no just a bit more"

Anyhow, we got to the booking office and I sat down at the desk [it looked quite legitimate] and the travel agent proceeds to receive a call on his mobile while smoking a cigarette and paying absolutely no attention to me! After finishing both mobile and cigarette, he turns to me, asks me rudely where I want to go and where from and when. I tell him my tentative plans (all based on whether i can get the trains or not) and he looks up on his computer and tells me time after time that there are no trains available for the dates or destinations that I want! Im beginning to get super frustrated, thinking that the remainder of my trip will be spent somewhere undesirable when he takes another phone call [and is on cigarette #5]... at this point, I kind of lost it and asked to speak with a different travel agent. I had then been there for about 1.5 hours! The next travel agent tells me to go next door to their "other office" where i talk to yet ANOTHER travel agent! This man quickly realizes that I know what i want to do and just want to book the tickets and tells me [honestly, for once!] that he only can book package tours and I should go to the tourist booking office in the train station!!!!! Im like "THATS WHERE I THOUGHT I WAS!" So a man standing next to me at this point is like "well Im going there and ill show you exactly where it is." finally ! We take a bicycle rickshaw (Rs. 15) back to the train station because he refuses to walk for 10 minutes and when we arrive at the train station gate, he tells me that the rickshaw is not allowed to enter the gate and the tourist booking office is "here only"... ANOTHER SCAM!!! I yelled at him that I was going into the train station and thank you very much goodbye and ran off. From there I went inside the train station, found the REAL tourist booking office, waited in the cue (now about 3 hours after I originally started out on this mission) and the people there were so unbelievably helpful that I was able to purchase almost ALL of the tickets i wanted for the entire rest of the trip and it all cost a little bit under 1000 Rupees (approx $25 USD)!!!

If you made it to the end of this incredibly long narrative of my train ticket-buying experience in Delhi, then I hope you have a better sense of what it can be like here. This is not to say that it is a scam around every corner everyday all the time, but it's always a learning experience, thats for sure! The other bit about this story that is a strong belief [and mostly true] all over India is that sometimes you just have to deal with a lot of crap in order to break through and find the gems, those people who are so helpful and sweet that it makes it all worth it! It is an exercise in patience that all of us can learn from.

So from Delhi, I left the train station and immediately got a bus to Agra, the city that's name is synonymous with the Taj Mahal! I arrived in Agra about 6 hours later and found a cheap hotel (the first hot shower from a tap i had had in almost a month!), woke up at the crack of dawn [or a bit before] and arrived at the Taj for sunrise! Seeing that world monument in real life was quite spectacular, but it is a mausoleum without any real spirit or soul. A gorgeous marble structure built for love and flanked by matching mosques, it is massive and impressive but not in the same way that a buddhist temple can really knock you over. I also did not get the most gorgeous day for viewing [not exactly clear blue sky] so I stuck around for a little while, took a bunch of photos (see the picasa web albums), met some awesome Norwegian tourists, and left!

After a quick lunch in Agra, I took a bus to Jaipur for about 7 hours and then an overnight train from Jaipur to Udaipur, where I was going to meet my friend Rebecca [whom I had met in Bombay at a Leprosy conference] and set up a home for a little while [a week]. I found Rebecca and some other AMAZING folks she had been hanging around with and Udaipur proved to be one of my favorite places in India thus far! There was just so much to do! Here's an overview of some of my activities:

-the amazing city palace is a massive structure built near the shore of the lake and set above with magnificent views of the lake and surrounding city ... it was really fun to explore and climb around
-I went horseback riding in the mountains/hills on the outskirts of the city for a few hours with a bunch of friends in Udaipur
-I took an AMAZING 5 hour cooking class with a bunch of folks in this amazing Indian woman's kitchen! She taught us everything! Chai, pakora, chutney (mango and coriander), veg curries, naan, garlic cheese and roast tomato nan, paratha, potato paratha, sweet paratha, and much more! Needless to say, we cooked for about 5 hours and then ate until we could hardly move... all the while listening to her speak about her life and story.
-I went pedal-boating on the lake with my Swiss-German friend. We were not allowed to go within 50 meters of the lake palace (also a hotel now) but we had a great time pedaling around and dipping our feet in, while hoping to avoid the crocs we heard sometimes surfaced in the lake!
-I hiked/walked up a mountain to the Monsoon Palace! This was a wonderful walk from my guest house all the way trhough the non-touristy part of the city and then into the gate of the park and all the way up this mountain. I rocked up there with my iPod plugged in (and flip-flops, feet forgive me) catching MANY stares because Indians don't walk places if they can avoid it and I was a crazy little bald white girl wearing Indian clothing and dancing down the street with headphones on, occasionally asking if I was going the right way! At the top i met these awesome French brothers and stayed with them to watch a magnificent sunset and then catch a ride in their rickshaw back down (apparently its not safe to walk at night as there are "big cats" that can attack)...
-I spent a day in Ranakpur (see picasa web albums) at this AMAZING Jain temple with Rebecca... wandering around, taking lots of photos, and soaking up the sun and enjoying the elaborate marble carvings everywhere!

Udaipur was fantastic, full of wonderful new folks, great walks and chats and palaces and temples and horses and cooking! what more could a girl ask for? On the 19th, I left my happy home that I had made in a dorm room in UDaipur and took an overnight bus to Jodhpur to meet up with Kasey (whom I had met at Navdanya farm and then stayed with in Delhi)! I was quite sick [yes, even I got the Delhi Belly or whatever you want to call it] so the overnight sleeper bus [think coffin shaped and sized box to try to sleep in while the bus driver tumbles over speed breakers, honks at everything, spits out the window, and swerves away from cows in the road] was miserable. But I arrived in Jodhpur at 4:30 am to the freezing cold and pitch dark and went straight to a hostal where I passed out/waited for Kasey to arrive!

When Kasey showed up, we spent the day resting [and shitting my brains out] in jodhpur, the blue city. It is named such because many MANY of the buildings are painted with an indigo paint as a marker of the brahmin caste... from above the city, it looks like its all blue! The next day we explored the amazing HUGE fort sitting above the city, ran into the fun french brothers I had met in Udaipur, and got ready to catch out overnight train to Jaisalmer and the Great Thar desert!

Arriving in Jaisalmer on the morning of the 22nd at 6 am, we were escorted to the Himilayan Guesthouse INSIDE of a magnificent but quite rundown fort! Unilke in Jodhpur, there are businesses, hotels, residential areas and all inside of the fort. This is posing a problem because the original water system in the fort was built for about one tenth of the amount of waste and water that it is currently handling... and the fort is slowly collapsing because of lack of upkeep. The new edition lonely planet guide book even recommends that people NOT stay in the fort (perhaps because of possible danger) but there are also signs up all around the fort entrance saying things like "Thanks to lonely planet we have lost our livelihood and our children are starving." Do we support the destruction of the people who depend on tourism in favor of the fort, or do we support the slow collapse of an important monument in favor of the residents? We stayed in the fort because we had a recommendation for the Himalayan guest house but ran into others who refused on ethical grounds to stay inside...

After one restful night, we awoke at 7 am to be joined by the french brothers and set out in a jeep to get 30 minutes away before we began our CAMEL TREK!!!! This deserves a blog post all to itself because it was a magical 3 days and 2 nights over xmas through the desert with spectacular company, the best guides around, delightful camel companions, and a LOT of christmas carols! Some of the highlights include:
-incredibly sore bum (obviously)
-running on camels through the desert (bumpy ride!)
-singing christmas carols around the campfire
-seeing the most amazing consecutive sunset, moonrise, stars, sunrise and moonset EVER!
-running and rolling in sand dunes
-sleeping on the sand
-smelling like a camel (foul!)
-wearing the same clothes for 3 days
-riding only 30 km from the PAKISTANI border!!!
...and much much more!

After we got back from the camel trek, we returned to find that our stinky selves could only manage to get hot water in a bucket so it was three days of camel stink that had to be scrubbed off with cold water from the tap and hot water from a bucket! Ahh India! [to be fair, me and Kasey were together paying 50 rupees for the night = $1.25 USD] The next day we spent wandering around the fort and Jaisalmer city with the french brothers, trying to mail a package [requires getting it sewn into a pillowcase, the seams sealed with wax, before taking it to the post office], having a delicious last dinner with the frenchies!

That brings me up to date. From leaving jaisalmer we begin a marathon of trains and buses to get down south for new year on the beach! A train overnight from Jaisalmer to Jodhpur (8 hours), next night from Jodhpur to Bombay (20 hours), next night bus from bombay to Goa (16 hours), and then hopefully a bus from Goa to Gokarna (8 hrs?), where we will make a full stop at a hut on the beach and park there for a beachy bonfire chilled out new year's eve!

If you made it all the way through this post, I congratulate you! Sorry for the inconsistent [and much too long] posting and hope to see you soon! Email me and hope you had a MERRY XMAS, HAPPY CHANUKAH, AND BEST WISHES FOR A SUPERB NEW YEAR!

all my love.

Photo Link

Some new photos are up now from the Taj Mahal, the amazing lake palace in Udaipur, and the elaborate Jain temple in Ranakpur!

I will blog more later about all the craziness of the past week.

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/erbergman/TajMahalLakePalaceRanakpur

Rockin' Rishikesh and Holy Haridwar...

On Thursday, the last day of lecture, I left the farm early and in good company [one Brazilian guy, one American guy, one British guy and one British girl] to head out to Rishikesh... a small city located on the Ganges river quite close to the source!

One of our party had already been there for quite a while about a month before so we had bookings to stay at the Swiss Cottage (very Indian) when we arrived. We got in at night and woke up to a gorgeous view looking down on the Ganga with a background of Himilayan foothills! I spent all of the next day getting lost with Anna, the British girl. We walked across the Ganges on the footbridge, went down to the water and put our feet in, washed our faces, and relaxed on the sacred river for a while. Then we walked for EVER, got REALLY lost, got stuck in the middle of a dog fight [really scary], and then returned finally to our hotel and went for our ayurvedic massages at Baba massage center! That night we found some Israelis and had a spiffy little Chanukah celebration! [menorah made out of candles stuck onto a metal plate]

The next morning we awoke at the crack of dawn to grab breakfast and head out to the bus stand to catch a bus to Haridwar = another city on the Ganga but a bit further down... every 12 years there is a MASSIVE pilgrimage to haridwar and it is considered one of the holiest cities in India! It was quite different than rishikesh because it was not touristy at all... in fact, we hardly saw any other white faces! We spent the whole day wandering around by the river, taking a cable car up a mountain to a temple, relaxing until sundown. Then we planned to go down to the river and participate in the Aarthi (sp?) ritual in which you buy these amazing little boats made of betel leaves and filled with flowers and camphor candles and light them and float them down the river! Imagine hundreds if not thousands of people praying and floating their candle boats every night! We were super excited to join in [and i even brought some of my hair to put into my little boat because i was told to put it in the ganga]... but this peaceful moment was not to be. We were harassed endlessly by people claiming to be Brahmin who wanted to say a prayer for us, women trying to attack us by splotching big red bhindis onto our faces, kids asking for money, little boys handing us cups of white liquid to put into the river, and many more! It was so stressful that we were practically beating people away from us and had to settle for a crazed little ceremony. Bummer... but still lovely.

Anna went back to Rishikesh and I waited in the train station for about 5 hours for my train to Delhi where I took the metro [AMAZING and like the london underground] to meet up with some friends I had met on the Navdanya farm and stay overnight with their friends who live in Delhi!

Navdanya Wrap-up

So the last time that I posted, I was smack in the middle of the two weeks spent on the Bija Vidyapeeth/Navdanya organic farm... and the second half was just as amazing as the first! When Satish Kumar left us, we were joined by Samdhong Rimpoche (some people who couldnt pronounce his name referred to him as Samsung Ricochet... ahh irony)! He arrived in his long flowing Buddhist robes and his lectures were wonderful but quite slow as his English is not perfect. He had a lot of wonderful thoughts and, unlike many people who are trying to speak a 'foreign' language, he was able to express them incredibly eloquently and was really a joy to listen to! It was a bit of a shock after Satish who spoke perfect English and lectured in a very different style!

We were also joined by Dr. Vandana Shiva herself, the founder of Navdanya and one of the most active and amazing figures of the environmental and seed-saving movement in India! She is a passionately aggressive, all-about-business kind of woman who really knows how to motivate and move the masses... which is great because she is constantly organizing Satyagrahas (Gandhian nonviolent resistance) all over the country against big agribusiness, the government, and really anyone who gets in her way of saving farmers, land, water, and seeds! Her lectures were fluid and information-packed and she really knows her facts. She made me want to stay on at Navdanya and join her cause (i havent given that idea up yet...) or at the very least to become more involved in the environmental politics at home. Some of the anecdotes that she used to illustrate her points were so relevant and astonishing, making me (and others) realize what was going on behind the scenes that we just weren't getting the full story on. She is a huge defender of biodiversity and has set up an amazing seed bank on the Navdanya farm where they now have collected over 400 indigenous varieties of rice, and many more of wheats, pulses, etc. They distribute these seeds to local farmers (and nonlocals through rural outreach programs) and teach them about not using pesticides and resisting the takeover by Monsanto and other genetically modified seed salesmen. This program was essentially begun after the mass farmer suicides in the 90s - Monsanto was coming to farms all over India and showing the farmers information about how their seeds had incredibly high yields [this data was mostly taken from a laboratory setup where the air temperature, water fall, etc. is all carefully controlled] and then offering to replace all of the farmers seeds for FREE with their own. For the first year, the new seeds were very fruitful and the farmers were thrilled! Little did they know that the crop would begin to deplete the soil, need fertilizer and chemical pesticides [unforeseen expenses], and the yield would drop dramatically after the first year. The worst part of this whole plot, however, is that the new seeds are hybrids = genetically modified seeds that Monsanto made so that they do not regenerate! Basically the natural life cycle of the seeds is completely messed up and they do not provide the farmer with anything to sow for the next crop! This is where Monsanto comes in a SELLS the new seeds again, year after year, to the impoverished farmers and this was the root of the farmer suicides. Needless to say, this is only part of the story but Vandana got to work immediately and organized against this massive agricultural plot.

A few other highlights of the second week of Navdanya were:
1. I learned how to crochet from a friend on the farm and made a hat for my recently bald head! Now im making hats [or tuks (sp?) in Canadian] on all my train and bus rides which makes for great conversations with interested Indians.

2. We took a half day trip to a Tibetan enclave near the farm outside of Dehradun. We walked around and saw a HUGE Buddha statue all in gold that was hundreds of feet tall! All around the garden were tons of prayer wheels and beautiful landscaping. It was super peaceful... and then we went into the temple. I have never felt such an energy in a spiritual structure! walking into this temple [complete silence required], it was almost overpowering how charged the atmosphere was in there. The massive Buddha statue sat in the middle and the walls were ornately decorated with painted murals [they seemed to be different stories from Buddhist teachings...]

The last few days, everyone was leaving in dribs and drabs and the lectures finished on thursday the 6th. We got to cook with Premji the cook and make dinner altogether and enjoy our last peaceful night sitting out by the fire!