russians, rivers, and violence!

FACT: i have discovered the single most annoying song of all time. it's in hindi, and i have no idea what film it's from, but the chorus is, "just chill chill just chill, just chill chill just chill (repeat 8,000,000,000 times in a high-pitched voice). and i hear it about 25 times a day. it's awesome. and by awesome i mean it makes me want to puncture my eardrums.

in other news:
saturday i went to the ganga with my pal byarma. byarma is mongolian, and came here from russia to do a trial year at the institute before she takes her entrance exam. she's in my hindi class, which is really confusing for her because it's taught in english by an indian man with a really thick accent. so sometimes we do homework together, and it's really kind of ridiculous. an american who knows no russian and a mongolian who knows very little english, studying hindi together, explaining things we don't understand in tibetan. this is why i love CIHTS.
ANYWAY, she had never been to the ganga before, so we went and took a boat ride and did the whole touristy thing. we went with two tibetan girls, who were TERRIFIED of the boat. every time it rocked the slightest bit, they would scream, "ama!" and clutch their seats. but it was great. varanasi is really beautiful from the river.

and then, we spent an hour and a half in lahaurabir looking for an eyelash curler. (that is a sentence i never thought i would ever utter.)

also, i punched a guy who tried to grab my chest that evening. men trying to do sketchy things like that is commonplace here, and usually it's just something that you have to deal with. normally i don't condone violence, but i have to admit it was pretty satisfying to see him swerve and almost fall off of his bike when i hit him.

grad school

the final grad school list (sort of ranked by preference):

chicago divinity
harvard tibetan and himalayan studies
michigan philosophy
emory religion
columbia religion
texas philosophy
ucsb religion
cornell philosophy
unm philosophy
umass philosophy

looking at that list, i realize it's not really ranked by preference beyond the first two schools. seeing as how things like geography, money, etc. factor into it all, i really have no idea where i would like to end up, even if i got accepted into every school. i'll find out sometime in march, apparently. now comes the task of actually filling out applications.


that's all. i'm trying to teach the girls in the hostel to throw a frisbee, but it's not working out so well. the indian boys who do the landscaping around campus, however, are pretty awesome at it.

all of a sudden, three days ago, the weather decided to get cold. i woke up in the morning and immediately reached for my sweater. at breakfast, instead of drinking sweet tea (tea with milk and lots of sugar), everyone instead went for the tibetan tea (which is basically milk with salt and lots of butter), because it's more filling and keeps you warm. everyone was amazed at how cold it turned so suddenly, and that's all that anyone was talking about. then i went to jojo's room and looked at her thermometer. it was 79. i was amazed that (a) it had finally dipped below 80, and (b) that 79 degrees would make me reach for my sweater and want to drink hot butter.

it's really nice though. i don't have to use my fan, people are in better moods, and everything is just a lot more comfortable. it's just like somebody hit a switch and turned off the heat everywhere. i love it.

i started teaching my english class on friday. it's strange because the students treat me like i'm a real teacher or something. they all kind of bow when i walk into the room, and whenever they answer a question, they stand up. but i've learned that the way of learning here is basically this: the teacher lectures at length, and the students do nothing but sit and listen. they don't even take notes. i want my class to be discussion-oriented, which i'm afraid is going to be like pulling teeth.

it's good though, in a strange way. seeing the tibetans' self-consciousness about speaking english makes me feel a lot less self-conscious about speaking tibetan. and i've met a few more folks. friday after class, my friend lhamo and i went to the tibetan restaurant in town for momos. we were able to speak (mostly) in tibetan for the entire rickshaw ride there.

after we sat down, one of the boys from my class came in and addressed me as "miss connie," which i thought was hysterical. he told me that he's going to new york this summer, and he was asking me all about america. the tibetans here seem to have this fascination with hip hop (which they pronounce, "heep-op"). and they are convinced that everyone wears baggy clothes and says "yo yo yo" all the time. it's strange.

they also have really weird misconceptions about black people in america (that they're all poor, and that's because they're lazy) and about muslims (that they're all terrorists who sacrifice animals). i don't know where they get these ideas, but it's really strange and kind of upsetting.

in other news, applying to grad school from india is hard, and i think it was a dumb idea to wait until i got here to start filling out applications.

photos etc

there's no funny story behind me falling into a sewer. i was just searching for a chai stall a little too intently and didn't look at the ground under my feet. my left shoe smells lovely, though.

here are some photos (in no particular order):

my shoes. and below them, the himalayan foothills as seen from sanghachoeling monastery.
bhutia busty monastery. this is where the old man showed me the original copy of the tibetan book of the dead, and pechas from the year 1277. that's the kangchendzonga range in the background.
this is the hill i had to scale to get to sanghachoeling monastery. there wasn't really a road per se, or even a path. just steep, steep rock face.
but this is the view from the top.
my favorite photo. a chorten (tibetan stupa) and prayer flags from sanghachoeling.
this is an old photo... there was a beautiful sunset in sarnath one night, and jojo took this photo from the roof of the hostel.
jesus, the buddha, and shiva. (i have no idea who the guy on the far left with the afro is). this was taken at the mahakala mandir, which is perhaps the most bizarre thing i've ever seen. i got blessed by a buddhist monk and a hindu priest in the same temple, at the same time.
the sunrise from my hotel in darjeeling.
and, as per mom's request, me in a chupa. that's what i wear to class.

fun in gangtok

did you know that leeches live in the mountains? and that they can burrow through your shoes? well, they do, and they can. i learned that the hard way trying to find a shortcut to a gompa. jojo and i hiked about 8km UPHILL to find enchy monastery, and when we got to the top of the mountain, a woman told us that we could take a shortcut back down. said shortcut took us through spiderwebs that were about 4 feet across, and somewhere along the path we both found a handful of leeches INSIDE our shoes. i don't think i got bitten by anything though. then we somehow wound up inside of a military compound, and some soldiers laughed at us.

um, and yesterday i fell in a sewer.

but gangtok has been great. this whole trip has been great. i've met a bunch of interesting people (some brits who are teaching in kolkata, some israelis who are trekking around on school breaks, graduates from CIHTS, and some friendly nuns), seen more monasteries than i can remember, and have been able to see snow-capped mountains every single day. it'll be bittersweet to go back to sarnath; there's oppressive heat and constant harassing by men in the streets, but there's also routine, and people i know. i'm too much of a creature of habit for my own good. i'm kind of exhausted and ready for things to return to normal. (or at least as normal as they can be in sarnath.)

jojo and i head out at 6am tomorrow, to spend 5 hours in a jeep, 12 hours on a train, and another 5 or 6 hours in a car to get back to sarnath in time for class at 10am on monday.

sikkim

tuesday was my last morning in darjeeling. jojo and i woke up early and walked to a gompa that was down one of the steepest roads i've ever seen. we were greeted there by an old monk (wearing a yellow sweater and bright red cargo pants), who showed us around the main temple. the downstairs portion of the temple had beautiful murals painted with gold, and pechas from the year 1277 that were all printed on paper made from yak skin. the most amazing thing though, was that jojo and i got to see the original copy of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. the monk took it out off of the shelf, unwrapped it, and showed us some pages. he explained that the paper was made with yak skin, yak butter, and yak shit, and you could still smell it on the book. it was absolutely amazing.

after we left the monastery, we spent 2 hours walking all over darjeeling to get our permits to enter sikkim. then we hopped into another crowded jeep and headed north to jorethang. the trip was only 26km, but took us about 2.5 hours because we had to descend 2km down the side of a mountain. the road wound through tea plantations, and at times it was so narrow that i could have reached out and touched the tea bushes. (at times, we got so close that the tea bushes reached in and scratched my arm.)

from jorethang, we caught another jeep and headed up another 2 hours to pelling. this one was a lot less crowded and our driver was a young guy who played good hindi music. darjeeling was beautiful, but it's absolutely NOTHING compared to sikkim. the road up to pelling snaked along a river, then wound its way up the side of a mountain. the air here is so clean, and people are so friendly. it's amazing to walk down the street and not get stared at or shouted at.

this morning, jojo and i walked to sangachoeling and pemagyanste monasteries, which were absolutely gorgeous. (i'll post pictures as soon as i get back to sarnath.) to get to sanghachoeling, we practically had to scale the side of a mountain, but the views of kangchendzonga from the top were worth it.

this afternoon we took a cab into gangtok, the capital of sikkim. we haven't seen anything except for our hotel, but there are a ton of gompas and institutes around here that i'm really excited to check out. sikkim's state religion is mahayana buddhism, and it's incredibly environmentally and socially conscious. all along the road are signs reminding people that it's illegal to throw cigarettes out of car windows, solar panels for street lights, and hydro-electric plants. plastic bags are illegal here, too.

it's amazing to think that this place belongs to the same country as filthy, crowded varanasi. it's beautiful here.

magic

darjeeling = magic.
this morning, jojo and i took a taxi down to ghoom, the next town south of here. we walked back up 11km to darjeeling, stopping at gompas scattered along the road. in one of the monasteries, we met a graduate of CIHTS, and he invited us to have tea with him. we chatted about sarnath, and tibet, and the institute - he was incredibly friendly and happy to hear that we were enjoying ourselves in the girls' hostel.
on our way to another monastery (that was built in 1850 and is absolutely gorgeous), we wandered past a prayer hall and could hear monks chanting. an old tibetan man with prayer beads in his hand smiled and motioned for us to come in. apparently today was some auspicious day, and there were about two dozen monks sitting in the hall reading pechas. five or six old, OLD tibetans motioned for us to sit down, and they forced massive quantities of tea and cookies on us.
after wandering around to just south of darjeeling center, we stopped to take a photo of a gigantic shiva linga on the side of the road. some nepali boys were sitting down the hill at the base of the temple, and motioned for us to come down. we wandered down and they handed us chairws and offered us more tea. today was a hindu holiday as well, and one boy who spoke good english explained the images on the temple and the meaning behind the holiday. then an old lady came by and gave us tikkas (hindu blessings on our foreheads made with colored rice), and told us to call her "grandmama." after we thanked the family and headed back up the hill, the boy gave us his phone number and told us to call him if we ever had any problems while we were in darjeeling.

people here are so incredibly friendly, it's amazing.

darjeeling

i'm in darjeeling, and it's kind of the most amazing place i have ever been in my life. after a 2-hour autorickshaw ride to the train station and a 16-hour train journey (on which jojo got an uninvited massage from a hijra - the indian equivalent of a drag queen), i really wasn't looking forward to the 3+ hour jeep ride up into town. but as soon as we started to climb the main road, the view was absolutely gorgeous. i didn't care that we had 18 people crammed into a jeep that could comfortably seat 8, or that we got a flat tire on the road, or that one of the passengers was a screaming baby who only stopped crying if the driver played hindu devotional music at full volume... the views of the himalayan foothills made me smile like an idiot for the full 3 hours.

we got in last night, and from our hotel room, we can see mt. kangchendzonga - the third highest mountain in the world. this morning we woke up to the sound of tibetans chanting at 5am, and spent 6 hours wandering around the mountainside, taking shortcuts through tea plantations, stopping to chat and have chai with tibetans on the side of the road when we got tired. one of the boys who made us some tea asked us about george bush. when we told him that we didn't like him, he said, "good. that man thinks he is king. but he's really a snake. he's a king cobra!" it's really amazing how many people hate bush and the american government - i haven't met a single person since i've left the u.s. who thinks that bush is a good person (or even a halfway decent person).

anyway, tomorrow we're going to see the sun rise on tiger hill, then walk back and stop at some gompas (tibetan monasteries) along the way. rumor has it that one gompa around here has the original tibetan book of the dead, but they only show it to you if you get special permission. we have an official letter of introduction from CIHTS, explaining that we're students of tibetan philosophy, and jojo's teacher has friends all over darjeeling. i'm really excited to find out what we can see tomorrow.

monday, we go to sikkim.

more photos

yesterday i met a woman who is doing Ph.D. research in tamil nadu... she's at the university of chicago, so we chatted about grad school things. she's researching roman catholocism in south india, and the portrayal of mary as she is influenced by local hindu customs. it's really interesting stuff, and she has gotten all kinds of grant money for it, but the indian government won't let her use any of the money because she's researching roman catholocism. it's crazy.

this morning i hung out with marilu (a fellow smithie who is spending this year in delhi). she dropped into varanasi for a few days, and came out to sarnath this morning. we circumambulated the main temple in town, drank lots of chai, and ate chipatti and omlettes out across the street from the institute.

durga puja is starting, and even in sarnath, there are people out everywhere. there's even more hindu spiritual music playing in the streets than usual, and it's really kind of awesome.

jojo unloaded her memory card from her camera onto my laptop, so i've co-opted some of her photos:

sometimes it pays to be a tourist

jojo and i started making big plans to go to darjeeling, but when we contacted the travel agent, they told us that every train was booked until the end of the month. then we asked about dharamsala, but that was booked too. sarnath is a great place, but it's so tiny that i really wanted to get out of here for our break next week. i was kind of bummed about not being able to go anywhere, and mad at myself for not thinking about this ahead of time.

then we discovered the greatest thing ever: the foreign tourist quota. apparently all trains in india have a limited number of seats reserved for foreigners. all we had to do was go to the train station, fill out a form (in the separate, air-conditioned tourist section of the station), and BINGO. instant ticket.

so now, jojo and i are going to darjeeling. our train leaves thursday evening and gets in on friday. we're going to take an extra 2 days off of school to spend a full 8 days there. we're hopefully going to get permits to go to sikkim while we're up there, too. jojo is contacting our friend ashok, who is some high-ranking official in the indian army. he said that he can get us military escorts anywhere... maybe we'll be able to get into northern sikkim, closer to bhutan, nepal, or even tibet.

also, today i bought half a kilo of pomegranates for $0.45.