suggest yourself relax

things are starting to get interesting here. 2 weekends ago a bunch of us set out on our first trip within india. it randomly turned out to be a holiday and thus a long weekend here. even though i feel like they probably have the same holidays every year, they still can't manage to schedule them in advance. thus, the friday before the weekend even the professors didn't know which days they were going to have and not have classes. they said we would have monday off so we traveled from sat - mon, but when we got back it turned out that there were classes on monday and tuesday was the day off for the festival.

as my yoga teacher always says in his excellent accent and pretty good english, "suggest yourself relax". this is the motto that we have all realized is the only way to really deal with india - there's no way of knowing exactly what's going on, and it's best to just take a seat and figure it all out later.

so anyway, the trip. all the trains and buses were full of people going to their villages for the holdiays, so we had to show up to the train station to get on a more local train that they just sell tickets to until it leaves. thus, the train was pretty full.

got to warangal, found our hotel, and went to the thousand-pillared temple. very beautiful and very old - 1163 ad to be exact. it was hard to focus on the temple though because we were immediately swarmed by around a hundred school kids who all wanted to meet us and take pictures with us. (pictures in my album) there was a small group of girls who kept following us and we didn't know why until we realized they were daring each other to touch us. it's strange being white here.

early the next morning we went to vijayawada. a relatively uneventful train ride - the highlight was probably the guy sitting across from me who played music on his phone every time we slowed down - the only 2 songs he had were 'we will rock you' by queen and some early backstreet boys song. it was a strange soundtrack to have in india.

after getting rejected at a restaurant where we sat down and they refused to serve us, we found a restaurant and took out our aggression as we feasted in the 'fancy dinning room'. we had heard the undavalli cave temple was beautiful, so we got in rickshaws and asked them to go. they didn't seem too confident about it, but off we went.

imagine our surprise when they pulled up to the police station, got out to talk to the officers, who then came towards us looking very serious and asking us for our "papers".

i don't really understand why because i thought it was a big tourist site and it's just outside the city, but the rickshaw drivers had no idea where this place was. the "papers" the cops were asking for was our guide book with the name of the place. so after doubling the fare our drivers took off again, got lost again, and took us down a bumpy road (it's amazing what you can do with three little wheels, makes you wonder why anyone in the states would ever need an suv) past an onion farm and a big banana plantation.

we made it though, and it was certainly amazing. don't know how to put it in words so check my pictures. i met a guy there named sandeep who really wanted to show me around a bit. i followed him for a bit but then went to join my crew while he and his two friends stood awkwardly around. in the end, as they were about to leave, he asked me for my phone number. as i was giving it to him i realized how bad of an idea it probably was. it's probably good that i didn't fake number him because he texted me right away with a very strange poem about friendship and came back to make sure i got it. then he left for real and i waved to him and his friends as three big guys crammed onto a scooter and scooted off.

as we were on our way out of the grounds, surprise, a class of school kids! you'll never guess what they wanted to do. so we took a few pictures, told them where we're from, etc. during all this chaos, guess who showed up! sandeep came back, having picked flowers for us all! so we said bye to sandeep and were saying bye to the school kids when they offered us a ride into town. with no plans in mind we piled on to their school bus and the serenaded us all the way back to town. well actually we were driving in the absolute wrong direction but we figured something would work out eventually and so we had fun with the school kids and then got dropped in a suburb that evidently never sees white people on its streets. we found the right bus though to get back, transferred to another bus. everyone was very helpful - the whole front of the bus was trying to help us figure out where to get off, the bus driver even stopped the bus for us so we could figure out what was going on.

that night, kai and i left the girls watching tv to go out and explore. (it's amazing how few looks just two white guys got compared to when we had 6 girls with us.) we found a little wine shop and bought some beers and went back into a very dimly lit little bar where they brought us snacks (mostly chicken bones with a bit of grisly meat and tons of spice paste). we met a couple of the local friendlies who provided us with plenty of tips and entertainment.

the next day we took a 2 hour bus ride though beautiful countryside to go find "the definition of awkward" (- davita). we didn't know exactly what we'd find but we wanted to get out of the city and found this side-trip in our guide book. turned out there wasn't a whole lot goin on there but we spent a bit of time at the museum about the 27 m buddhist stupa that was once there - apparently this place (amaravathi) was very important in the development of buddhism in india, but you wouldn't know it. but it was a very nice day, great to get out of cities, and fun to be off the beaten track.

early the next day we came back on a surprisingly empty train! 6 uneventful, spacious, and beautiful hours later we rolled up to hyderabad, happy to be home. on the way back we talked with an ayurvedic doctor who told us all about the many uses of cow dung and cow urine. she also told us how the exact place that we had just come from was the best place to be that night for the festival - apparently they make sweets with freshly harvested rice and ghee, and light the fields all around the town on fire after having harvested them! wild.

but we were back in hyderabad, so the next day we went to the crafts village to check out some kite flying, sand decorations, and other fun cultural stuff. it was all great, but the kite aspect of the festival was truly amazing - the skies were all dotted with kites being flown from roofs in every direction we looked, it was really amazing. they use a special kind of thread that is covered in powdered glass so that kids can cut down each others kites (estimates are that around 300 pigeons were killed by said threads - they don't mess around here).

last week was relatively uneventful compared to the weekends so i won't waste space. saturday was absolutely one of the craziest days of my life though in terms of contrasts. we all got on a bus at 9:30 am to go to the MV foundation girl's camp - a camp where they take young girls who are child labourers in their villages or who need shelter from abusive homes - and give them 6 mos - 1 yr of education, enough to catch them up so that they can keep going to school somewhere. the foundation tries to get all kids in schools and to end child labour, and considers any kid who's not in school as a labourer.

two of the girls told us their stories about how they got there, and they were incredibly powerful. these poor girls talked about losing parents, abusive homes, getting married at age 12, running away from home, and committing suicide. we spent the rest of our time there playing with all the girls though, which was a ton of fun and it was great to see even the girls who had told us their stories still having a good time and not having totally lost their innocence and ability to feel young. we taught them 'head and shoulders knees and toes', duck duck goose, and the boogie woogie and they taught us dances about rain and village life and such.

a few hours later, we were on our way to this guy's penthouse to party. his family owns the building so he has the top floor to himself to throw parties - it's furnished with a bathroom, a bar, 2 sofas, speakers and a sound system, and a lamp - streamlined for the weekends (which last all week for these people). so we hung out there for a bit and then went to the nicest club in the city at an absolutely beautiful hotel. since we were with a local movie star we all walked right in, past everyone, to our reserved vip area - couches right on the dance floor with plenty of free bottles of vodka. as usual we were the life of the party and took control of the dance floor for the night. once it closed we went back to the penthouse for a bit before going home.

the best part of the night was actually back on campus, where a couple of us who still had some energy went to the field at 4 am to go heckle with the students at the cricket tournament that had been going on all night (and proceeded to go on for the next few days).

so while the day was of course a ton of fun from start to finish, i've never gone between such extremes in a society in so little time. it was one of those 'holy shit india' moments for sure.

i think that's enough for now, more to come soon!

a booming good time

I haven’t really been able to sleep through the night this past week, which is very annoying. Maybe the jet lag is making me a light sleeper, but I’ve been woken up in the wee hours by the most random things. Monday and Tuesday, there were mosquitos buzzing around my head. Wednesday, in an effort to keep them away, I had my fan on, and I woke up cold (yes, cold in India). Yesterday the heavyweight championships of dogs was taking place outside of my window, and all of these stray dogs were brawling over the heaps of trash outside my building. This morning takes the cake though – I woke up to a series of explosions. There’s a lot of rocks around Hyderabad so when they do construction they have to blast the rock to clear it and I’m pretty much used to the sound of explosions around the city by now, but it was just strange to wake up to rattling windows.

I think there’s also something living in my air conditioner, as I can hear it burrowing, even though I’m on the third floor. I have to give it a couple of raps every now and then to make it go somewhere else. It could be anything, which is very exciting.

This past week has been crazy stressful – there are tons of classes here that seem interesting but there’s no logical system in place for organizing them. Classes change times without notice, professors may or may not show up but you still have to wait around at least 40 minutes, and they might meet m/t, m/w, t/th, fr/sat, or any other random combination, making it excessively hard to fit them together.

A lot of the classes do actually seem pretty good, so that’s a plus, it will be fun learning about India through them. One that I definitely won’t be taking though am kind of curious about is Gay Indian Literature. I went to the first class to check it out, and the professor might be the gayest and most perverted man I’ve ever met. I think the best way to describe him is that he’s incredibly cheeky. Anyway, at the next class, I didn’t go because I had a conflict, but apparently he asked “where is that little Canadian boy?” and went on to explain to the class of about 15 people how he thought I looked very cute in my pants but wished that they hadn’t told me it’s not appropriate to wear shorts here so that he could check out my legs. According to some people who know more about him, if I took his class, there’s a more than 100% chance that he would invite me to come over and sleep at his house. Gay culture is pretty marginalized in India, hence why straight guys will cruise around holding hands and putting their arms around each other (they do it all the time here), and apparently the university just sort of turns a blind eye to this guy and his big bag of personality.

Having a great time though – last weekend was a winner. On Saturday a couple of us went out to Lingampally to find a Hindu temple we’d seen earlier. It was closed, but around the corner there was an elementary school that was just getting out. First we were waving at them in their courtyard, then suddenly there were 10 of them on our right, then 20 on our left, then 30 on our right, then we were just getting straight up swarmed by these little munchkins who wanted to shake our hands and pose for pictures (they get a huge kick out of seeing their pictures on digital cameras).

That was definitely really exciting, and it’s funny how big of a kick they get out of foreigners here. Random strangers will always ask us to pose for pictures for us and people always want to shake my hand. I’m a freakin VIP over here.

Next day we took a bus tour of the city and saw a couple of cool things briefly – the Qutb Shahi tombs, HEH the Nezam’s palace (quite a construction), some more tombs, and the light and sound show at Golconda Fort – a super sweet place with a super tacky show.

Last night we went out to the F Bar – I think it stands for “Fashion”. Everything there was really cool – three years ago. The music was extra-dated, which was really entertaining. It was actually pretty expensive by Indian standards, so we were cruising with the high rollers last night. We also had our own car and driver for the night, cause we’re classy like that. Chetan talked to him in Telegu and apparently for 1000 rupees ($25) he’d let us drive the car around, and if we got pulled over we’d just have to pay the copper another 1000 rupees. This place is crazy corrupt.

So Tuesday is a big kite flying holiday, which is awesome, but somehow they forgot to mention this to us. I feel like this is probably something that happens every year, yet NOBODY knows if class is canceled for it or not, not even the teachers. The holiday is on Tuesday, but I think classes are canceled on Monday and not Tuesday – we’re all learning very rapidly to just stop worrying and let things work themselves out here.

In honour of this holiday, we’re taking our first trip! We were going to go to these crazy caves but alllllll the trains and buses filled up so we’re going to do a more local circuit and go to see some temples and a wildlife sanctuary and stuff.

it's a dog eat dog world, literally.

Two nights ago, a group of us went out to go see what we could find in terms of nightlife. We went to Banjara Hills – the ritzy area of Hyderabad – and went to a hookah bar for dinner and kickin’ it. Definitely interesting to see, but what made the trip unique was our experience with the auto-rickshaws. Right off the bat, going through a kind of slummy area near campus, we’re pretty sure we saw two dogs eating another dog.

As we kept going, we got stuck in some traffic, which was a prime opportunity for the local children to come swarm our rickshaw and beg for money. Being the only white people in a million mile radius, swarm they did. On both sides, they were touching their hands to their mouths and then to our feet, which is the most degrading thing they can do to themselves in this society. These kids were probably about 6 years old, and they were fighting over the little bit of food that they got from someone on a scooter, right in the middle of a very busy road.

The mornings have been much more uplifting though – I had my first yoga class at the centre on campus yesterday, and it was great. Classes are 6 days a week, and apparently after a week I should be able to actually do some of the poses! There was a girl there who was in lotus position upside down, so we’ll see if I make it that far. I kicked it up a notch today and am going to try and get myself to the 6 am class 6 days a week - they have a three month yoga certification course, and I figure what better place to become a certified yoga instructor than in India? It seems a little ridiculous that someone like me could make that kind of progress in just a few months, but you gotta go big or go home.

Gotta pick classes soon, this is our shopping week, and I have about 15 classes that I want to shop. There are some that look really interesting, like Sociology of Illness and an English class called ‘Reading Dalit, Reading Black’. It will be nice to start up classes and have some kind of purpose in my days here though for sure.

Last night some of us went out for dinner on a rooftop - it came to the equivalent of $25 for 8 of us, and we were in the shadow of an enormous Indian Santa Claus - I get a huge kick out of all the Christmas stuff here.

...and we're off!

It’s New Year’s Day in India, and it was one hell of a year. I made it to 2008 a good 12 hours or so before you all did which is a fun thing to be able to say. If you had asked me a year ago today what I would be getting up to over the next 12 months, ending up in Hyderabad would have not even been a germ in my mind. But here I am, and I couldn’t be happier.

Well maybe that’s a bit of a generalization – I don’t actually know how I feel. Mostly overwhelmed, also terrified, excited, hungry for all the delicious food they feed me, sweaty, jet lagged, who even knows – I haven’t felt this many emotions at once in a long time. My body and mind are just confused, and I have a feeling the posts on this blog are going to get very interesting very quickly. I’m down to do anything here; I’ll sacrifice sleep for adventures in a heartbeat. I’ve got my malaria pills and a ton of Imodium, and am off to see what I can find.

Just took a nice hot shower which is a great way to deal with the chilly Indian winter nights. The days are warm though which is nice – it’s been up around 30 degrees Celsius here during the day. It’s a bit warm for winter apparently (even the Indians are sweating!), but nothing like summer, where I’ll be trekking around in 45 degree heat. A little bit different from the -30 whiteout I was in while skiing a week ago at Sunshine.

I’ve always been a strong believer in food being one of the most important parts of any traveling, and that is certainly proving to be true here. Feeding time is the best time, as we’re getting delicious Indian food every day and it’s an adventure at every meal. As a lefty I have an interesting challenge in front of me, as the left hand is traditionally only used to wipe certain lower parts, and it’s rude (sinister?) to use it for anything else. Including eating. I’m officially off cutlery though, and am tearing bread, mixing dal, and scooping rice entirely with my right hand!

Well there’s lots to come but here’s a quick recap. Flew through Dubai, which I’ve been dreaming about for months. It was just as weird as I expected it to be, and then some. Crazy welcome to this part of the world – huge palm trees, different kinds of people all over, people sleeping on their own personal carpets lined up along the moving sidewalk, etc etc. Got to India and am still trying to figure out where I am – I keep pointing towards the ground trying to point at my house to try and place myself on the globe, but am having a damn good time over here. Have been walking around the campus a lot passing things like water buffalo on the streets and monkeys in the trees. Getting out into the city too, where it turns out people love me – on the bus the other day a guy gave me his business card, another guy took a picture of me with his cell phone, and a third was waving at me and wanted to shake my hand. Our crew here makes up pretty much the only white people I’ve seen which is refreshing but also leads to us getting a lot of surprised looks. Went to a crafts fair where everything was beautiful and still dirt cheap, and am looking forward to going shopping for fabric and getting some rad Indian clothes made up for me by my new tailor.

Look at my pictures! They’ll be posted on my Picasa site – the link is somewhere on this page. Check back here early and often for more news from India!