in shimla

last night i said goodbye to jojo in delhi and got on a "bus" for shimla. apparently i'm officially missing tourist season in shimla by 5 days - instead of a bus, the only thing that was available was essentially an oversized van that held 12 passengers. it was a really pleasant journey for a bus ride: i got on board at 9pm, slept, then woke up as the sun was rising over the himalayan foothills. i made it into shimla at 6:30am, checked into the YMCA here, and have spent most of the day wandering. it's a cute little town, but not too different from darjeeling. i have a feeling that all hill stations in india are essentially the same - crumbling colonial architecture, streets lined with overpriced shops, and and a population consisting of about 75% tourists. it's nice though, and the cool weather is a welcome change from the varanasi/delhi heat.

today has been a frustrating day, as it seems like every other man i come across on the street tries to either leer at me or touch me. i slapped one boy who grabbed my leg, though, and that made me feel a little bit better. dealing with sketchy guys has been one of the hardest things to get used to this year, and even though it's pretty commonplace (especially in varanasi), some days it's just more annoying than others. right now, i'm looking forward to hanging out in a nunnery for a while.

tomorrow morning i'm taking a taxi up to tapri in kinnaur, where i'll hopefully be met by some of the nuns i'm teaching. i called to let them know when i'd be arriving, but due to my rudimentary hindi and their rudimentary english, i'm not entirely sure that we were able to understand each other. that's the best thing about traveling in india, though - you don't have to plan things too far in advance, and really, you can't plan things too far in advance. somehow, though, everything always works out. i can't explain how or why, but it always does. it's one of my favorite things about this country.

delhi day #2

yesterday was amazing. the best way i could have spent my first full day away from sarnath.

jojo and i spent most of the day wandering around connaught place, the fancy shopping area in the middle of delhi, then we took a rickshaw outside of the main part of the city to see a new film called "banaras: the eternal love story." the film itself wasn't that great, and the songs were mediocre at best, but the entire thing was shot in varanasi and sarnath. throughout the entire film, jojo and i kept smacking each other, whispering, "hey! i know where that is! hey! i was inside that building last week!" it's not a great movie, but i really, really recommend it to anybody who has spent some time in varanasi. it's pretty exciting to see aarti on dhasasvamedh ghat, or the stupa at sarnath, or the steps down from assi ghat, portrayed on the big screen in a big bollywood film. the greatest part of the whole film, however, was right after the intermission. there's a scene in sarnath, at the archaeological ruins next to the stupa, where a tour guide is leading a group of people around. for about two seconds, a tibetan girl's face popped up on screen. it was my friend pamo from the institute! she lived 3 doors down from me all year. when she came on screen, jojo and i simultaneously jumped out of our seats and screamed, 'oh my god! pamo!' i'm sure that everyone else in the theater thought we were idiots.

after the movie, we stopped in a swanky lounge next to our hotel for a drink. the evening's entertainment was a skinny indian boy who played covers of guns 'n roses and the eagles on his electric guitar. the scary part was, he was actually really good.

today i'm leaving for shimla at 8:00, and hopefully before that i'll get to meet up with my smith friends, marilu, tatjana, and aditi, before i take off for the cold white north.

hello from delhi

yesterday was a long morning of saying goodbyes to everyone at the institute. between 9am and noon, i think that i must have been given over 15 kata (traditional tibetan scarves) by friends and staff there. jojo and i went to see the director one last time and he gave us really long, fancy kata (it has a special name, but i can't remember what it's called right now). he sent for a car for jojo and me, our luggage, and 5 students who insisted on escorting us to the train station. i just kept thinking that the whole situation would be good material for some kind of funny joke: "how many tibetans does it take to drop off some inji at the train station?" anyway, after a long, drawn out goodbye to our friends at the train station, jojo and i said goodbye to sarnath and goodbye to varanasi (and goodbye to the best chai i've had anywhere in india) for a while. i think the best thing about leaving varanasi is that it's a place in which i know i'll end up again at some point in the not-too-distant future. 'you can take the tibetan studies student out of varanasi, but you can't take varanasi out of the tibetan studies student.'

this morning jojo and i arrived in delhi. i'm in the process of booking my bus ticket to shimla for tomorrow night, and then we're going to take the metro to a movie theater that's showing a new film called 'banaras.' tonight will involve lots of lounging and eating. delhi is a weird place - coming here from sarnath almost feels like going back to america. everything around here is so westernized, it's like going through mini-culture-shock every time i come here. it is nice that everywhere is air-conditioned, though.

it's so hot in banaras...

how hot is it? it's so hot that when i went to the post office today, i saw a man wet a stamp with the sweat on his forehead.

it'll be good to head north. a few days ago it reached 40C (not sure what that means in farenheit, but 20c = 70f, and 30c = 90f, just to give you a general idea). they say that sometimes it reaches 50 in the middle of the summer. no thanks.

anyway, i'm leaving sarnath tomorrow afternoon (wednesday night america time). after that, i won't be able to check email all that often, and i will no longer have my phone. i'll try to update the blog whenever i get a chance, but if you don't hear from me for a while, i promise i'll put up lots of pictures when i get back to the u.s. of a. at the end of may.

a bunch of people have sent me email lately, and i apologize for not responding. i probably won't have time to write back until the end of may, but i promise i'll write all of you back as soon as i can.

last day in banaras

saying hello to people is a long, arduous process. just popping your head into somebody's shop/home/etc. usually turns into a few cups of chai and an hour-long chat.

it's nothing, however, compared to saying goodbye.

saying goodbye takes at least twice as long, and involves not only chai, but entire meals. over the last couple of days, i've had people buy or cook for me breakfast, lunch, and dinner. and it's only going to continue right up until i leave sarnath. it's not necessarily a bad thing, though.

last night tsetop and namgyal, two friends of mine and jojo's, took us out for dinner at rangoli garden - the fancy restaurant in sarnath. the evening started out pleasant, but eventually turned into a long, involved discussion about feminism, in which tsetop gave biological explanations for the reason why women can never be as good as men. (he's a medical student... it involved arguments about blood flow to the brain and menstruation... i'm still not entirely sure about his arguments.)

over the next two days, jojo and i have multiple meals scheduled with all of our sarnath friends. today we made one last trip into varanasi to say goodbye to all of our city friends and buy some last-minute banaras souvenirs.

it hasn't hit me yet that i'm not going to be back here again for a while...

good weekend

This is my last weekend in Sarnath, and I can honestly say that it's been one of the best weekends I've had since I've gotten here.

Saturday morning: John Dunne from Emory called to let me know that I had been accepted into their Ph.D. program in religion. Their offer: full tuition + 1/2 health insurance + $15,500 (+ lots of opportunities for summer funding and jobs) for 5 years. He said that the admissions committee wasn't too sure about letting me in, since they generally require applicants to have an MA beforehand, but once they read my writing sample, they changed their minds. I accepted the offer right then and there. So starting this fall, I'll be in Atlanta.
And my pal Jo got into Emory's anthropology program, so we're going to try to get an apartment together. I'm beginning to realize that Smith and Smithies will haunt me for the rest of my life. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though.

Saturday afternoon was basically spent lounging around inside watching movies, being out of the sun. I had a meeting with the director of the Institute, just to officially wrap things up here before I leave on Thursday. I told him about Emory, but since he's been pushing for me to go into a philosophy program all along, he didn't sound quite as thrilled as I was. All he said was, "Emory? So you're going to get a degree in religion?"

Saturday night: I went into Varanasi to spend the night with Jo. The program that she's here leading (Where There Be Dragons) was having a big dinner/classical Indian mucic concert at their program house. Ramu and Goswami, two excellent musicians in Banaras, gave a great concert on the roof that lasted for 2 or 3 hours, then we all had wonderful food. Jo and I had our picture taken (she was wearing a sari and i was wearing a chupa), and we're going to send it to the Smith Alumnae magazine to show everyone how awesome we are.

Sunday: I took a rickshaw back from Varanasi and realized that in spite of all of the obnoxious, disgusting, and just plain irritating things that a person can experience here, there are really a lot of amazing things in this city. I'm going to miss it when I leave.
I came back to Sarnath and went with my friends Yangri, Tsechu, and Ugyen to Tsechu's brother's house. (He's a teacher here and has an apartment right on campus.) Tsechu cooked an amazing farewell lunch for me. I don't think I'm going to have to eat another meal for a couple of days. The rest of the afternoon was spent lounging/sleeping/drinking tea, while watching some of the best Bollywood films I've seen in a long time.


life is pretty good right now.