Hello everyone! All the bandh's and such seem to be done and it's calm around here again. So this past weekend I took a trip to Aurangabad, Ajanta and Ellora Caves with four other girls Melissa, Tiffani, Rachel, and Ming. They were beautiful! Buddha got a little boring toward the end though not gonna lie, pretty much saw Buddha in 3 positions in about 27 different caves. But the carvings and paintings (where they were still intact) were beautiful. The Hindu temples in Ellora took my breath away, literally. I walked into the first cave number 16 (where we started since it was right at the entrance) and had to stop because I needed a min to take it all in. Sorry it took so long for me to blog I’ve had a bit of lack of motivation this week to do much at all.
Not only were the caves beautiful but the landscape was fabulous! There were GREEN TREES! In Hyderabad the trees don’t seem to be as green and beautiful actually they appear to be almost dead. It was a nice break from India when I looked at it, kinda like going to the Shawnee forest and hiking, beautiful and calming.
We ended up leaving early for train ticket reasons and left around 930pm on Thursday night. When we got on the train we found out that we had no idea how to read the tickets when someone asked us why we were in their seats. Well the ticket master came and let us all stay in the seats we were in and the other people took our seats...no big deal...happened on the way back too even though we thought we were in the right place ah! So there were two guys who sat and talked with us... and a bunch of people who stared at us, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that. the one guy was in the air force and never said where he was going, but left his number for Maaya (Rachel’s fake Indian name and back story, Indian mom American dad) and told her he would wait on her call... she has a boyfriend who's from Calcutta but studies in the states, I’m not a fan of people lying unless we are in a situation where we feel uncomfortable, this was not one of those times. The other guy was studying to be a medical tech somewhere in England. He was on his way home for his brother’s wedding. It was nice because the guy who studies’s in England had a different perspective and was talking to us like we were people and not "amazing white skinned people". We eventually went to bed and well needless to say we froze! It was so cold with the wind coming in the windows...even with them closed it didn’t do too much. Not only the wind but because of the lack of humidity during the day the temperature drops drastically at night here, it’s kind of nice not gonna lie (unless you’re on a train).
So we got to Aurangabad around 1:30pm. Ming Tiffani and I went to see the Aurangabad caves and the other two went to see the mini taj mahal (seems to be a lot of mini taj's around this place). We checked into our hotel the Shree Maya. It was pretty nice had some bugs that came out at night but it was pretty clean and can't complain too much. We went walking to look for something to eat for dinner after that and ended up eating Chinese food and getting snacks at this sidewalk food court place. It was fun and the food was, well it was Indian Chinese so it was as good as we could expect.
The next day we went to Ajanta and took a cab, we bargained with him the night before for 2 days one to Ajanta and the other to Ellora... I’m actually good at bargaining with people but it gets exhausting. So Ajanta had some caves with paintings still intact but I really only got pictures of the landscape because my camera doesn't like to take pictures without flash. We stopped at the last cave to rest and eat some snacks and all of the sudden we heard "HURRY!" and saw a bunch of school children running in our direction. At first we thought they were excited about the cave but when they surrounded us and sat real close saying "photo? Photo?" we realized that they were excited about the white girls not the cave. So the teacher took their picture with us and then suddenly yelled "My turn everyone move" and sat right between us. It was really funny. Men take pictures on their phones a lot too, usually from far away and it's really creepy. Women on the other hand will come up and ask to take pictures with us and hold our hands or put their arms around us. I'm not much of a fan of being watched or having pictures being taken of me, especially without my permission. But oh well guess I just deal, and I don't mind when they ask me for a picture but if they just take them I get annoyed. Tiffani made a great analogy, "we're like zoo animals always being watched." my responds was "oh hey look they're moving again everyone look!" she's right and now it’s our running joke.
We also climbed up on the cliff (there was a path we didn't free climb or anything) and just walked around for a while. We eventually ran into a little village. There were some women cleaning cloths in the river and Ming asked if she could take pictures and the ladies said no, come to find out they didn't understand her at all. So we weren't going to go into the village but Rachel decided it was a once in a lifetime opportunity and we must go (I agreed with her but at the same time I felt it was selfish of me to barge in on people’s lives because of what I would get out of it.) We went into the town and the women were a blast! One girl brought us bhindi's and there was a boy (looked about 12 but was 16) who spoke Hindi and English as well as marati (local language). The boy talked with Rachel, because she gave a fake Indian name and had a whole back story (not a fan of her doing this I feel like lying is gonna get her and the people with her in trouble) and she speaks Hindi, which he was more versed in. There were children watching the rest of us and the girls had brought us all some of the best tea I had ever had. There was a little boy with a kazoo type instrument who brought over a puppy and set it between Tiffani and I and pointed at it until we pet the puppy who immediately went back to its nap. One of the women cut Rachel off to tell the boy something and he turns to me and said" she says you have a beautiful face" that made me feel really wonderful and the woman standing behind me kept playing with my hair, they were very sweet and beautiful!
There was one of the cutest little boys I’ve ever seen there too, he would hid behind his mothers leg and look at us and see that we saw him and run away. Then he would come and get a little closer and see us looking and run away, biggest smile on his face so very cute. The three girls in Katack (type of dance) did a little dance for the women and children who love it! Then the boy showed us the local temple and had us pay respects to the ancestors and put ashes bhindi's on us (like Ash Wednesday). Apparently he showed Tiffani where his grandparents were buried too. It was a very cool experience and then he brought us down to where the cars were parked through the woods on the local path and not back through the caves...really cool.
That night we went out for dinner and stopped at a local place and had some pretty good Indian food surrounded by locals. We also went to the Food mart next to our hotel to get snacks for the next day and yet again Rachel used her fake name Maaya with the owner who became a "friend" as did his kids and the neighbor boy.
The next day we went to Ellora. We walked in and the first cave in front of us was cave 16 so we walked in and I stopped dead in my tracks it took my breath away! I felt like I shouldn’t be in kakies and a tshirt, it was like when you walk in you should be looking ur best and should run into many other beautiful people… ran into a beautiful woman and flipped the tables and asked to talk a picture with her and her daughter. The woman was very excited I wanted to take a picture with her as if she couldn’t believe I was even remotely interested in her. It was cute and I was happy she said yes. After we spent like an hour in cave 16 we walked up to cave one and started from there. At cave 5 we ran into this group from Alabama’s rotary club. They were a blast we ran into them periodically throughout the day. The teacher that was with them blew my mind and I really just wanted to sit and talk with him the rest of the day. He reminded me of papa you could just see and hear the passion in him. He was a geography professor at the University of Alabama. He asked where we went to school and our majors and I said Anthropology and he said that was his undergraduate degree and that he fell in love with Geography is junior year in college and went to grad school for it. He had taken a trip to Guatemala one year in college with his buddy and they went from the University of Texas (his almamator) to Guatemala city and hit every archeological site in between. It sounded great and he told us about how he took his wife to cancoon because when he had been in college it was beautiful and now it’s taken over by teens and college tourists. This man made my day and I decided that I’m not going to have a job unless I love it as much as this man did; it made having just a job look so unappealing. He was such a cool professor he was probably in his early 70’s and just had such amazing stories. I was dragged away needless to say for lunch.
So eventually we got back home went to dinner at like 5pm which is really early here but we had to be up at 3am for our train so early dinner was a good idea. So we ended up at a restaurant and had some really odd pizza like deal. It was good but certainly not what I would call good pizza. We stopped and got ice cream at this guys shop who told us the girls who had gone to the caves the weekend before had been at his shop for dinner all 3 nights they were there. He was excited that more of the American students had shown up at his place. He also made some black current lasi for Ming who made us all have some and it was sooo good. He was really happy we liked it. After that we stopped at the food mart one last time for snacks to eat on the train. The owner asked us to stay and have tea with him and so we did. Then he got really creepy and asked Maaya (Rachel) and Melisa (who’s dad owns a food mart type place in the states) for their addresses and emails. So they both gave fake addresses and Melissa gave her email so that he could contact her and she could put her dad in contact with the guy if he wanted. He then wanted pictures of us which was fine since they were on his phone and blurry as could be. Then he took pictures of Maaya and made it his phones background… really creepy. So of all the things Rachel lied about she told the guy what time our train was leaving and he showed up at the train station and she acted like she didn’t know him. So he walked over to the three of us on the other bench and started talkin in Hindi which we couldn’t understand and looked pretty mad. He eventually went to the other side of the train station and watched us until a train came between us and when it left he was gone. It was really freakin us out and really frustrating because Rachel had put us all in this situation with all her lies and trying to make people interested in her. I would much rather be the American that people see but know very little about. I have no reason to lie to them and I really don’t want to bring any more attention to myself then necessary. Not sure I want to travel with her again, not really sure what else she could be lying about and that bothers me a lot.
But the trip was really fun and the last night we watched Flubber and fell asleep pretty early before we went to the train station at 3am. While we were on the train we slept as much as we could and it wasn’t nearly as cold… I think part of it was that we put on a lot more cloths this time. When we woke up and were just sittin around talking we kept hearing a little kid. I look around and there is a mom and her daughter sitting right behind us. They were super adorable. The baby kept waving and cooing at us when she could catch our eyes. So the mom eventually walked over and asked to sit with us for a while. She was very sweet I believe her name was Sandja and the daughters name was Jenavie. They were really fun Sandja turned music on her phone and Jenavie danced around for us, she wasn’t more than 14 months or so. Yes kids are growing on me people and it’s no longer and if I have kids a when and with who now. India’s kind of made me miss having kids around, and not just around but kids I can play with and the like. Not sure how my patience level is with them at this point but I have a feeling after this trip I’m gonna be a much more patient person.
In the last week I haven’t done a few things. I went out on Wednesday for Riane’s 20th birthday to a Mexican restaurant, not really Mexican food like I would like but it had Mexican flavors which was great. I also had a kiwi daiquiri; made with real kiwi’s it was delicious! I shared it with everyone at the table because I didn’t think something so delicious should be kept to myself… they all really liked it too. We also told the waiter it was her birthday and they were super sneaky and asked us all our names and how to spell them and then asked where we were from and such. So none of us thought anything of it until we were getting ready to pay the bill and they came out with a cake with her name on it. it was really great and the waiters sang with us…there were only 3 other people in the restaurant then us. I was missing my cloths that night though because I didn’t have anything that was worthy of wearing for a birthday so I ended up getting creative and put on jeans and a tank top and then used my new scarf to cover my shoulders and it looked really cute. I really wished someone had been on skype that night because I was a bit upset no one saw how cute I was back home.
Yesterday (Friday) Sumana took us to her friend’s house to learn how to make an Indian mean. It was pretty good lots of fresh ingredients and my fingers are still yellow from the turmeric I put on the chicken. We made Chicken and rice and this yogurt stuff I didn’t like and roties… really easy delicious bread I will have to make for you all. Sumana also said that later in the semester she is gonna teach us some things and she was gonna drag her mother over to teach us how to make some golab juman (delicious desert…super rich). Something I finally realized that’s been driving me nuts about this country is that nothing is ever CLEAN! When we were at this woman’s house all I kept thinking was man if I just had a rag and some cleaner this place could look beautiful. Oh well just makes me appreciate recycling bins, trash cans and people who keep their things clean… oh and people who wear deodorant make my day… much less some smell good (that’s what jim calls cologne and it makes me smile so I now use it)
Then last night a bunch of people went to the chocolate room! I had a brownie sundae and after I ate it I was in heaven it was so good and I realized I had only once chocolate since I got here. Then I slept in this morning (which means I got up for breakfast and went back to bed because even if I don’t like anything else the rest of the day I know I will enjoy breakfast). We had banana oatmeal yesterday (my absolute favorite and I wish we had it more often) and this morning we had banana cinnamon pancakes! If we added nuts to them they would be the perfect pancakes!
So this week I’m hoping we will actually get to start my women’s studies class, with the bandh’s and my teacher having family emergencies we haven’t had class yet. I can’t wait though it should be a great class. Although the first reading, that the three of us taking the class decided we should read so we can just jump in when we start class is taking me a bit of time to read. It’s about Sati, which is when a widow either throws herself on her husband’s pyre or burns herself after her in-laws have harassed her horribly. It’s a horrible practice and has been outlawed for years but still happens occasionally. Back before the british got involved it was seen as a heroic and honorable thing to do. It meant that you were devoted to your husband and were loyal to him while you were married. If you didn’t commit sati you had to shave your head, which we found out from our cooking teacher was because hair makes the head beautiful and since you are widowed you should be undesirable and therefore shave your head to make yourself not look beautiful. You also were accused of causing your husband’s death and being unfaithful to him. It’s really messed up and I had to stop reading it for a few days because it was making me nauseas to read. I understand its importance to the class but it’s hard to digest the fact that women actually did/do this. If you want to read the article here is the link, it’s a good read but be prepared for it to be difficult emotionally to grasp. If you hit PDF up in the right hand corner the article will open Adobe Reader as if you were reading it in word. It’s easier than reading it by clicking the next page thing on the Jstor website. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2760461?cookieSet=1
Ok all have a great week and I’m gonna try and be better at keeping u with this so they aren’t so long.
