Top of the World

After spending 10 days in Pokhara not doing anything and nursing my knee, I took a bus to the town of Tansen. The town was supposedly beautiful with lots of nice walks to do around the countryside. When I got there, I found it to be quite dirty and expensive, and I couldn't do the walks I wanted to because of my knee. I only stayed a couple of days, where I mainly spent my time reading 'Shantaram', which is an amazing book, before heading to the (formerly Royal) Chitwan National Park. I settled in a little guesthouse (aptly named Chilax House) about half a kilometer from the town center, right at the edge of the park, which had a really rural feel. One thing it did lack were roofs that kept the bats out. After a walk through the park on the back of an elephant, I woke up on the second morning with bat shit on my bed. Knowing that bats carry rabies, I quickly googled pictures of bat droppings, bat bites, and everything else I could think of about bats and rabies. Turns out a bat could bite you in your sleep and you wouldn't even know it, since the bites are so small. They also mentioned that if a bat was found in a room with a small child, an intoxicated person, or someone with mental difficulties, they should get rabies shots because they may not have realized a bat bit them. I counted myself among such people. The clinic in the town laughed when I told them I didn't think I had been bitten but wanted to get the vaccine, so I thought I'd change my plans and head to Kathmandu to be sure. I had originally planned to stop by the town of Janakpur, on the Indian border, where the women are known for the murals they paint on their houses – these murals are repainted every year during Tihar, which is when I would have been there.

Instead, I headed to the small town of Daman, in the mountains at 2300 meters, and on the way to Kathmandu. The buses were packed because of the holiday, so on the roof I went, along with a couple of tourists from Belarus and New Zealand. The ride was incredibly beautiful. I remember thinking that while many people think of Mount Everest as the top of the world, I think of bus rides on the roof of Nepali buses as such. As we swerved on the windy road up the mountain to Daman, listening to some of the guys on the roof play the drum and sing songs, the view of the Nepali countryside was breathtaking – terraced fields as far as the eye could see, smiling kids at the villages we passed, banana trees littering the side of the road. Things only got better when one of the guys on the bus started singing 'Wavin' Flag' by K'Naan. The last few hours of the journey were harsh, though, as the temperature dropped and the wind chill on the roof only made things worse. We got to Daman as the sun was setting, and we were thrilled at the prospect of getting warm, only to realize than Daman is a village on the side of the road with only a few guesthouses and shops, most of which were closed because of Tihar. We finally settled in a hotel – well, it was called a Resort but felt more like a second class hostel.

The next day, a few more tourists arrived – two guys from Belgium, a woman from Austria, and a Dutch biker who had just cycled 70km in one day from Kathmandu! If it hadn't been for them, my time in Daman would have been pretty crap, but I ended up having one of the best nights of the whole trip there. We took over the only restaurant that was open on Tihar, and cleaned them out of vodka and whisky, played games to determine who would get the chocolate that the Belgian guys had with them straight from Belgium, talked, laughed, complained about the Christmas music playing in the background, and were all grateful we had not found ourselves alone in a place like Daman.
The main attraction of the town is its view of the Himalayan mountain range, from which you can supposedly see Mt Everest, on a 'very clear day.' We woke up for sunrise, and by comparing what we were looking at to a map the Dutch guy had, we willed ourselves to believe that we could see Mt Everest – not entirely sure if we actually did, since all the peaks look pretty much the same size from that distance, but we convinced ourselves that our eyes had befallen the mighty Mt Everest, even if we couldn't distinguish exactly which one it was.

Later that day, the Belgian guys and I took the first bus to Kathmandu that had passed the town in two days. We hopped on the roof, and after an hour or so there were about 40 people on the roof and the rest crammed inside. Just when we thought we wouldn't be able to breath if one more person got on the roof, a group of about 10 people, including six toddlers, climbed up the latter to our pile of bodies, luggage and sacks of vegetables. Despite heads and elbows constantly shoving my spine, the ride went quite quickly since we had to constantly be on the lookout for leaves and small branches that might smack us in the face – one of which succeeded in wiping my cheek, much to the amusement of all the Nepalis around me.

I've been in Kathmandu for a few days now - got my first rabies shot the day after I got back, so I should be fine, and have worked on getting my Indian transit visa for next week when I come home, via Delhi. The bureaucracy here is insane. They needed a photocopy of pretty much everything I own, a passport photo, and two forms filled out. I went this morning at 9:30, when they open, and my number wasn't even called until two hours later! After waiting in line for one hour, since the person in front of me was conveniently a tour group leader getting visas for 25 people, I finally got to the front of the line, where they took my passport and money. Yay.

I would also like to take this opportunity to congratulation Kyle, one of the most amazing people I know, for winning the Mr. Hyphen contest – a charity pageant aimed at countering stereotypes about Asian-American men, if I understand correctly. I'm so excited to know a Pageant Queen! :) So so proud of you Kyle! You can read his great interview on NPR here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=131217366

I can't believe I only have a few more days left of my trip. I'm excited to go home where everything will be familiar again, and to see all of you, but it will be bittersweet. This trip has really been amazing and I'm so glad I decided to spend the six months since graduation discovering the world and myself in the process. But the prospect of clean feet, warm showers, real pizza, and raw salad is oh so enticing.

“I will learn from me, from myself, I will be my own pupil; I will get to know myself, the secret that is Siddhartha.” - from Siddhartha”, by Herman Hesse

Doing Nothing is Different From Not Doing Anything

Deshain is the biggest festival in Nepal, and for the two weeks of the festival, almost everything in the country is closed. Lucky for me, my first week in Nepal coincided with the last week of Deshain. Although it has been interesting to learn a little bit about the festival and to enjoy a Kathmandu emptied of its residents who have returned to their ancestral villages, it also meant that we couldn't get the necessary permit for the trek. Our initial plans thwarted, we took a bus to Pokhara, during which we sat on the roof for most of the journey. I definitely understand why dogs love having their heads out the window - it's such a great feeling to have the wind blowing in your face, smelling the smells of the Nepali countryside, and seeing the sun set over some of the highest mountains in the world. What's great about Nepal is that on almost all the public buses, about half of the passengers sit on the luggage rack on the roof - it's safe because of the bars, and such a fun way to travel. We felt oh so very Nepali sitting up there, but were reminded of how silly/incredible cool we must have looked when a van full of Japanese tourists drove past us and everyone inside began waving and taking photos.

We've been in Pokhara for almost a week, just chilling and enjoying the town. We've been doing pretty much nothing - not to be confused with not doing anything, though. It's really beautiful here - we can see the Annapurna chain of mountains from the roof of our hotel, and go for a swim in the warm lake. I wanted to go on a little trek - maybe Annapurna Base Camp - to really see Nepal the way Nepalis see it, as they say - on foot. Unfortunately, I'm a dumbass and fell on the stairs of the hotel and busted my knee. It's alright now but it's probably not a good idea to climb up a mountain with it. I did go on a day hike to a village a few hours away from here, where we watched the sunset and sunrise over the mountains, which was wonderful.

We've mostly been hanging out with some kids on Fulbrights here, a German girl who studied at SOAS for a year and is now spending the year in Kathmandu learning Nepali and Tibetan, as well as another girl from SOAS. It's been nice being social, but I will be starting my solitary Nepali adventure again in a few days, when I head to Palpa, a town about half way between Pokhara and Chitwan National Park. Eventually I will try to make my way to Bandipur, a newar village which is supposed to have great architecture, before heading to Chitwan to ride an elephant through the jungle and spot Bengal tigers :)

Also, I found Craisins in Pokhara. I may never leave.

I love you, Kathmandu

“I must find peace in the only place possible in India. Within.”

This quote from the amazing book called 'Holy Cow' essentially sums up my trip to India. That, and “The north Indian men on the streets stare so hard and are so sleazy that I often feel like I've somehow starred in a porn film without knowing it.”

The last 10 days in India, since my last post, were really nice. Udaipur is definitely one of my favorite places that I visited in the country. I also met up with some other travelers and we had a great few days of eating thalis in the best restaurant I've ever been to – think Fogo de Chao meets spicy Indian food and my inability to eat rice with my hands. The people in Udaipur were much less aggressive than in northern Rajasthan, so it was nice to only have to say 'namaste' to half the shopkeepers instead of every single one of them. I finished my trip to India with a camel safari in Jaisalmer, two night trains to get back to Delhi, and a Bollywood film where all the white girls were strippers in a seedy theater. I see where the men here get their ideas about Western women.

I feel like I must also add a little commentary on Delhi and the Commonwealth Games, and how absurd the whole thing is. I took a bus through Delhi a few days before the games were scheduled to start – the city still looked like a construction site – I can't believe they had enough buildings for the events! When I drove through Delhi again, this time to the airport on the last day of games, the city was like the Twilight Zone - police barricades everywhere, street cleaners with uniforms. Uniforms! What happened to the women in brightly colored saris?! There was almost no traffic, and special lanes for Commonwealth Games cars. Wherever there were slums along the roadside, they just put big billboards advertising the games in front, to hide them. Shame these billboards occasionally fell down and showed the world their tricks. The preparations of the Games were so marred with corruption and missed deadlines, but during the Games they managed to make Delhi into a somewhat livable, European-style city. The organized chaos was gone, and was replaced by soldiers, police barricades, and express lanes. Although it was nice that my lungs didn't hurt after an hour-long auto-rickshaw ride, I think I like the real India better.

On Thursday, I got to Kathmandu. My first taste of Nepal: I gave the lady at the visa desk five $20 bills for my visa. She drops one on her desk and tells me I only gave her four. She insisted the other bill was not on her desk, which was hidden from me, so I had to fork out another $20. Welcome to Nepal?
Other than that, I really like this place. I've spent the past few days discovering Kathmandu and hanging out with Ross, which has been fun. if we get the required permit, we're hopefully going to go trekking for two weeks in a really remote area near the border with Tibet, which should be really fun.
I love the vibe Kathmandu gives off – you can just tell why hippies were so attracted to this place back in the day. Old temples are scattered throughout the city, it's beautiful, and without all the cars and tourism infrastructure it must have been the best place in the world! I wish I knew what this place was like before it became so touristy – it's now full of middle-aged Europeans and Americans with massive calf muscles and camera lenses.

I'm excited to immerse myself in a new culture, to be out of my comfort zone again, and to learn new things about myself. This trip really has been teaching me more about myself than anything else. I think it takes a great amount of confidence to travel alone, to eat in restaurants alone, to deal with problems that arise on a daily basis, alone. The fact that I was able to do all of that in India without any trouble has just increased my confidence in myself. It has made me reassess what I'm capable of (everything?) and what I want to do for the next few years (discover the world and myself in the process). It's so true that the only place you can find peace in India is within, and I really think I have. I also think that the Peace Corps is a natural progression to my travels, life goals, and inner path. As I wait for my invite and contemplate where I will be in two months, six months, 2 years, I know that I can and will learn from every experience, good and bad, easy and difficult, close to home and far from everything familiar. I was talking to a friend recently, and he was saying that until he's 30, he just wants to fill his head with memories, rather than his wallet with money. No one can take those experiences away from you. They are more 'yours' than anything you could ever buy. As I listen to older people talk about their crazy life stories, travels, amazing people they've met, challenges they've faced, the more I hope to have stories like that to tell my grandkids one day. At this point in my life, I want to take every opportunity for an adventure that presents itself to me, and every opportunity to learn more about myself and the world I live in. Right now I can't imagine going home, getting a job and settling into a regular routine. I definitely need a few more years of traveling and adventures.

I will end with some words of wisdom from India.Arie (in honor of my girl Amber):

I was always too concerned with what everybody would think
But I can't live for everybody, I gotta live my life for me
I've reached a fork in the road of my life
And nothing's gonna happen unless I decide
I choose to be the best that I can be
And I choose to be authentic in everything I do

Rajasthan

What to say about Rajasthan...

I arrived in Jaipur last week. It basically felt like a smaller, but more touristy version of Delhi. Since the tourist season is over, vendors are a little overeager to sell everything in their shops – this overeagerness translates into literally blocking my way on the sidewalk with merchandise that I will never buy. One funny thing that happened, though, occurred as I was walking down one of the main streets. An older man in a long white Muslim-style robe with a henna-ed beard asked me where I was from. After I said 'Switzerland,' he yelled after me 'Switzerduch?” Random. Gruetzi sir.
After spending a few days there avoiding street vendors and insisting that no, I will not transport your “precious stones” to Europe and make a quick profit from avoiding customs for your jewelry company, I got a bus to Pushkar. Some people I met in Jari had told me about a great guesthouse they stayed at, which was a converted palace right on the lake. My room's two windows had great views of the lake, which was really nice to wake up to in the mornings. I really liked Pushkar, although again, the shopkeepers are way too pushy, and saying 'namaste' to every single one of them gets a little tiring after like the 50th shop. I got a traditional salwar kameez made though so I'm all set to fool everyone into thinking I'm Indian...
One thing that has surprised me a little bit since being in Rajasthan is that people will try every trick in the book in order to get your money, including inviting you into their house or having you sit down for tea, only to ask you for money as you leave. This is something I've never experienced in Africa, the other parts of India I've been to, or anywhere else in the world. It's pretty sad to have to doubt people's hospitality, but that's what I have now learned to do. Another thing I found very surprising in Pushkar, a holy city, is how many tourists were in short shorts and tank tops! Do these girls not realize that prostitutes in this country cover up more than they do? It even surprised me to see knees and thighs in the street for the first time in almost 5 months. No wonder the men here have no respect for foreign women.
From Pushkar I took a bus to a town a little bit off the tourist trail called Bundi, which is incredibly beautiful. Most of the buildings in the old town are painted blue, and perched on a nearby hill overlooking the town and a lake is an old castle that seems right out of a fairytale. It's been nice to meander through the small streets, where kids run up to me to take their pictures. I met an older woman yesterday who basically turned our encounter into a photoshoot – she even changed into her best sari mid-way through! It's crazy how much nicer and more relaxed people are in places where there are fewer tourists.
Anyway, I'm off to get ma hurr done.
Next stop: Udaipur – supposedly the most romantic city in India – how depressing for the single traveller!
I can't believe in one week I will be in Kathmandu!

Only 2 weeks left!!!

The past couple of weeks have been great.

After recovering from my little mudslide ordeal, I went to Naggar, a small town about an hour-long bus ride from Manali. Weird place. It's famous because some Russian painter that I don't think anyone has ever heard of lived there and painted the surrounding mountains. It's also the place that the most offbeat old Europeans you will ever meet go to smoke and die. I originally went there because it's the start of a supposedly wonderful trek to Parvati Valley. I couldn't find anyone to go with, and to go alone would have been a) lame and b) really expensive, so I just decided to take a bus to Parvati Valley. The evening before I was going to leave, I met an older German couple in a bakery who were planning on starting that very trek the next day, so I joined them.

The trek, hereby referred to as “ScheisseTrek,” was pretty much as the name indicates – crap. The first day was nice, about 7 hours of steep uphill, but enjoyable. We got to 3400m, to a little room made of mud where we were to spend the night. It was freezing and pretty gross, and the next morning the guy tried to charge us $70 for it! We fought him for a couple of hours and eventually got it down to $40, which was still absurd, but at least we could leave. Oh and the guy working in the hut stole my hiking sticks in the night! Luckily, I found them hidden in some bushes a few minutes walk away the next morning.
As we were about to leave, one of the porters decided he would go no further, so the German lady ended up carrying her big backpack for the rest of the trek. The porter knew what we didn't – snow was coming. By the time we got to the top of Chandrakani Pass – 3600m – it was snowing and freezing, but at least it was beautiful – Kullu Valley on one side, Parvati Valley on the other. We then had to go down an incredible steep “path” for 4 or 5 hours, on which I fell multiple times, courtesy of rain and crappy Indian hiking boots with no grip. We finally got to Malana, the most unpleasant village in India, and could relax. The residents of Malana claim to be descendants of the soldiers of Alexander the Great, and have a special caste system that forbids them from touching or being touched by foreigners. The result is that any visitor will be find 1000 Rs if you touch a person or a building. This makes for a very awkward and unpleasant experience while walking through the village. We wanted to buy a bottle of water, and got shooed away from the first store. When we finally found a store that would sell to us, we had to throw the money on the floor and they in turn placed the bottles of water on the ground. Weird.
The last day of the trek was about an hour's walk to the road to Jari, and then potentially 17km of walking on the road, which would have been pretty crap so we decided to take a taxi instead. And so ScheisseTrek finished in wonderful Jari.

I spent pretty much all of last week in Jari, a small village at the beginning of Parvati Valley. It's wonderful, with very few tourists and incredible scenery. Parvati Valley itself is incredible – it's really narrow, and the jagged mountains shoot up right from the banks of the river. From Jari I was able to go on a couple of day trips to Manikaran, which is beautiful and spiritual, and Kasol, which is actually Israel - everything was written in Hebrew.

Once the rain stopped (the monsoon is finally over, yay!) I dared take a bus to Shimla, about 8 hours away by bus, which is where I am now. It's a very strange place. At this time of the year it's almost exclusively frequented by Indian tourists and honeymooners, and has kept a very British/colonial identity. The town, which is massive, is dominated by Christ Church, and all around is British architecture and old British-looking cars. The place makes me a little uncomfortable, because I feel like this is exactly what it must have looked like under colonialism, but with a few more brown faces in the mix. It was fun meeting up with a some girls from the internship who came up for the weekend, but now that they've gone back to Punjab, I'm eager to leave and go to Rajasthan. I decided to forgo on Rishikesh and the rest of Uttarakhand, because it's essentially underwater due to heavy rains.

Tonight I'm taking an overnight bus to Delhi, from where I will directly take a bus to Jaipur. I only have 2 weeks left in India (!!!), so I won't be able to discover Rajasthan the proper way, really taking my time, but I'm really excited to end my time here with a taste of “real” India.

I would also like to briefly describe my attempt to get the debit card that was sent to me via Poste Restante to the poste office:
- Hello, someone sent me a letter, could I check if it's arrived?
- No check. No cash.
- No. Do you have a box where I could look to see if my letter has arrived?
- Letter box is outside.
- No. A letter was sent to me 'Poste Restante', could I see if it's here?
- You want stamps?

Today, when i finally got the letter and sent off a parcel, which took all of about 3 hours, I gave my passport to the lady, and when she saw my birth year, she started cracking up and calling me baby. She then walked off and I heard her speaking hinidi, pointing at me, and saying "baby" to all the other employees. Oh India, I will miss you.

Also, I am currently eating dried dates that are so dry they actually taste like wood. Delish.

I'm still alive... Take 3

Yesterday was the most terrifying day of my life. Scarier than a possible LRA intrusion into Uganda. Scarier than the Kampala bombings. Scarier than the Leh mudslide. I actually think I had a pretty good chance of not making it to 22.

I thought the bus ride from Manali to Kaza was scary. But boy, was I in for a shock.

I got on the 4:30am bus to Manali and off we went. When we stopped for breakfast a few hours in, the driver informed us that they were expecting snow. As we resumed our journey, it started to rain a little bit. Rain turned into snow. Snow turned into a snowstorm. As our elevation lowered, snow turned to slush, and we all know that slush is heavy, and these mountains are not very stable. The drive is already scary in itself, with hairpin turns and drops down to the valley floor right next to the road, but when you know that the stones that compose the road on which you're driving, as well as the mountain above, could give way at any moment, it adds a whole new dimension to the drive. Especially when you hear thunder and you're not entirely sure if it's just thunder or if it's a mountain coming down somewhere.
The really scary part started around noon, when we had to periodically stop to move rocks and boulders that had fallen onto the road, and the bus had to carefully maneuver around them if they were too big to be moved. I had a window seat on the side of the bus that was most crowded, meaning the side on which the bus tilted more into the abyss on the unstable road. I pretty much stuck to the man sitting beside me so that I wouldn't have to look out the window. As we bounced about hoping a boulder wouldn't crush the bus or that a wheel wouldn't slip off the road, I turned my phone on – I thought that in case I died, at least my body would have a chance of being traced by the radio waves. It may seem silly now, but that's honestly how scared I was. Maybe I was so scared simply because my nerves are shot from several terrifying experiences in the past 4 months, or maybe because my life was literally in the hands of the bus driver and the whims of over-saturated soil.

At about 3pm, we arrived at Rohtang Pass (which literally means 'pile of corpses' in Tibetan). There we found out that the road to Manali was blocked by a mudslide, and it could take hours or days to clear it up. We all got off the bus and started walking down the mountain, heavy backpacks in tow. I'm so glad there were other tourists on the bus – a Polish guy and his dad, a Spanish girl and an English girl – it was nice to have some mental support :). We walked for a few kilometers down the mountain, which at least was absolutely beautiful so we could take our minds off the actual reason why we had to walk down the mountain, until we found some taxis. Unfortunately, most of them were full of Indian tourists in hideous but hysterical rented fur coats who wanted to go up to the Pass to see snow. We left them in their fake-fur glory and continued on our way. Suddenly, the Polish guy yelled that rocks were falling. I looked up and indeed, boulders were falling down the mountain, straight for us. We ran for cover behind a parked truck, which is not so easy with 15 kg of luggage on your back, and hoped the boulders wouldn't obliterate us. Luckily, they stopped on the road above, about half way between us and the place from where they had started falling. About 45 minutes later, we got to a rest stop, where we could have some tea and food, and waited for a taxi. Two hours later the taxi arrived, informing us that we would have to pay 2000 rupees for the one and a half hour ride down, which is almost as much it costs to go to Spiti Valley itself by taxi! At that point we had no choice, we couldn't walk down the 36km to Manali, and the two girls had to get back to Delhi to catch flights, so off we went. I think we all expected a nice drive down in a warm taxi, bringing us to definite safety after our long day, but the taxi driver was insane and drove like a maniac, sometimes with one hand holding a phone and the other on the gear shift, never mind about the steering wheel! We made it to Manali safely, and I think I will wait around here for a few days for the storm to clear before I go trekking in Parvati Valley.

Ironically, the reason I decided to take the bus back from Kaza to Manali, rather than the other way through the Kinnaur Valley and onto Shimla, was because the latter road is supposedly one of the most dangerous in the country, and I was trying to play it safe. Failure.

Anyway, the trend of this trip is sort of starting to scare me a little bit – 4 months of traveling, 4 scariest moments of my life:
11 June: Rumor on the radio that the LRA has returned to Uganda
11 July: Kampala bombings
6 August: Leh mudslide
13 September: Snowstorm and mudslide at Rohtang Pass

Anyway, if this trip kills me know that I die happy because I'm traveling, discovering the world, and living the dream :)

"Write your sad times in sand, write your good times in stone"

Greetings from Spiti Valley, one of the most remote places on Earth!

I've been in Spiti for the past week or so. On Tuesday, I took a bus to Kaza, the biggest town in the valley, from Manali, on a road that can only be described as insane – hairpin turns all over these Himalayas! Not to mention the road is usually no wider than the bus itself, which makes looking out of the window on the side of the drop quite terrifying. But I made it in the end, safe and sound, and it was worth it. Spiti Valley is beautiful. It looks a little like Ladakh – barren and sparsely populated – but it's even more spectacular because the mountains and cliffs are literally ripped apart (“d馗hiquet” was the word used by my guide book, which I find quite appropriate). It looks a little bit like the Grand Canyon or Monument Valley at times, and the villages are like oases on small patches of fertile land. From Kaza, I shared a taxi with a few older German guys to some of the sites in the surrounding areas. First stop was Kibber, a small Tibetan village that is one of the highest in India, and claims to be the highest in the world with a road and electricity. It was a beautiful place – greenery among the surrounding barren mountains. We walked into the village accompanied by a little girl who could not have been more than 4 years old, struggling to carry a rice cooker in one hand and the peas she had just collected in the other. She gave us some peas to munch on during our journey. Why is it that in the West we always say, 'kids are cruel'? But in places like Ladakh, Spiti, or even Gulu, kids are the kindest, gentlest, most caring of them all. It's like the West forces this idea of competition into our young brains, and forces us to put others down in order to get ahead. By turning everything into a commodity, something to be fought over, capitalism (or Westernization? Or modernization? Or “development”?) makes kids into monsters. Luckily there are still parts of the world where kids can still be generous without it being unusual, be caring without it being embarrassing, and be kind without it somehow being detrimental to themselves.

Next stop was Tabo, the only other town in Spiti Valley, which is really more of a village – a dozen or so houses surrounding the main attraction, the 1014-year-old monastery. Perched on the surrounding hills are caves carved into the mountain and surrounded by prayer flags, where the monks go to meditate. I can't imagine a more peaceful place to go and contemplate life or try to reach Nirvana. The monastery was incredible. I don't know much about Buddhism or gompas or art, but even to my untrained eye this one was special. It is made of clay and wood and almost looks like an adobe structure that could easily be found in the American Southwest. Inside are several rooms, all covered in centuries old paintings and sculptures of different divinities and Buddhas. It is completely dark inside, so the only way to see anything is with a flashlight, which makes the whole experience even more intimate.

This morning I took a bus back to Kaza, and tomorrow morning will be heading back to Manali, before going to Parvati Valley for a trek. I will most likely spend my birthday in whatever village I find around there. Maybe I'll get myself a jar of Nutella as a substitute for cake.

I also quickly wanted to describe my paragliding experience from last weekend. Yes, paragliding. No, I will not do it again.
After a 45 minute walk up a 45 degree “trail” that was not a trail, we got to the patch of mud from which we were to take off. I was the last one to go, and had to wait a while until the winds picked up again. After a few minutes of flying and me wanting to die because all that was suspending me in the air and keeping me alive was wind, which I could neither see nor control, we tried to land. Fail. Updraft. So we keep flying and tried again. Partial fail. Because of another updraft/downdraft/whatever-you-call-it we landed too quickly and skidded/crash-landed-gracefully into cow poop, almost hitting a group of Indian tourists who ran for their lives. Anyway it's all on video for to admire when I next see you. All that really matters is that I'm alive, have all my limbs, am $30 poorer, realized I am a little afraid of heights, and got it out of my system so will never do it again. :)

To end, here is a quote that was scribbled on the bathroom wall of the monastery where I stayed in Tabo:
"Write your sad times in sand, write your good times in stone."

This is not what I was expecting, but that's ok :)

My plans have changed quite drastically in the past week.

On Sunday I arrived in Punjab to begin my internship, and soon found out that the organization was a crapshoot. I'm not entirely sure if it's a scam, or just incredibly badly conceptualized and run. Basically, I had decided to intern with a local NGO because I wanted to learn from local staff – I wanted to learn about Punjabi culture, about traditional ways of interacting with the environment, traditional ways of water conservation. Instead, I found myself in an organization whose boss, although Punjabi, hadn't lived in a rural setting since childhood, and one local staff member whose job was essentially to pick up interns from various train stations and airports. The real work was done by interns – there were about 30 when I was there. This NGO represents everything that angers me and frustrates me about development – Westerners with no local knowledge going to an area for a short period of time, seeing the situation as an outsider, and trying to be make culturally inappropriate changes to the way of life. That is not the kind of development work I believe in. I truly believe that any project needs to start from the bottom-up, needs to be conceptualized by members of the community who have a real understanding about the needs and possibilities of “improvement.”
Instead of doing something that I truly believe is not only ineffective but counter-productive and wrong, I decided to leave the internship. I argued with the head of the NGO on my last day, telling him that I was not comfortable doing the kind of work that he was asking of me, and that I fundamentally disagreed with his idea that “anyone can do anything without knowing anything” (his word!) He told me that “those were just words” and that maybe he could explain things to me in a way that I could “understand” (please read with the most condescending tone of voice imaginable). I don't know if he was so condescending because I'm a woman, but it was really infuriating. My favorite (least favorite?) line that he told me was when he said that I was closed-minded. “If you're blinded I can't explain to you the color blue.” As if his idea of Westerners trying to change rural Punjab was some sort of absolute truth. That signaled the definite end to my internship. I'm still in “talks” with him to try to get my intern fee back, which I doubt he will have the courtesy to return, but either way, I'm out of there, and am I ever glad about it.

I took a bus to Dharamsala/McLeod Ganj on Friday with one of the interns, where we spent the weekend listening to a public teaching by the Dalai Lama. He talked a lot about the science behind calmness, and the scientific benefits of following Buddhist philosophy, which I found really interesting. I love how Buddhist philosophy encourages self-discovery, reasoning, rationality, and logic, rather than blind faith in a God or dogma. He told a story of being invited to speak at a government function in the state of Bihar. The head of the state gave a speech saying how, “with the grace of God,” Bihar would become successful and achieve its goals. When the Dalai Lama got up to speak, he said that if all Bihar needed was the grace of God, it would have gotten everything by now. Instead, the fate of the state was in the hands of the governor and of the people.

The guy I'd travelled with went back to Punjab on Sunday, so I switched into a cheap hostel with stinky sheets but a nice atmosphere, and began this solitary adventure. And I'm loving it :). I love being able to have diner with other travelers when I feel like it, but being able to sit alone and self-reflect when I don't. I love walking to neighboring villages on my own, whenever I want, stopping to take pictures or have tea at a time that suits only me. I love looking through my guide book, knowing that I have 6 weeks in front of me to do absolutely whatever I want in this vastness of Northern India – being able to choose between the mountains of Sikkim and northern West Bengal, the bustle of Kolkota, the desert of Rajasthan, and more. This country is at my fingertips, and I'm so excited.

I think I will stay in Dharamsala for another day or two, then get a bus to Manali. From there, I will make my way around Himachal Pradesh, Uttarkhand, and Punjab. And then? Who knows...

Who knew?

Who knew you could fit one white girl and 9 Punjabis in the back of one auto-rickshaw?

Who knew that it was actually possible to get soaked with rain while sitting INSIDE a public bus during monsoon season - leaky roofs :)

Yes, I'm Still Alive, Take Two

On August 6th, at about 12:30am, a cloud burst over Ladakh and caused massive flash floods and mudslides throughout the region. The devastated area includes Ladakh, China, and about one fifth of Pakistan. The death toll will likely never be known for sure, but hundreds were killed in Ladakh, and hundreds more are missing, presumed dead.

Before this happened, we had spent a couple of beautiful days in Nubra Valley, in northern Ladakh. We were in a small village called Hunder, our guesthouse was next to a stream and shadowed by gorgeous mountains. On the night of the 5th, we watched the intense lightning from the safety of our valley, not imagining the devastation that was about to occur. The next morning, as we drove into Leh, on what turned out to be the only road not destroyed by the mudslides, there was an eery feeling, as everything was closed and no locals were around. Turns out, about a quarter of the town of Leh had been destroyed or damaged, including the main bus station and the hospital, and many of the surrounding villages were also devastated.

The next morning, I went to the place where volunteers had been working the previous day, and did what little I could to clear some rubble, in an attempt to find the last body that had yet to be found from a group of destroyed homes. We didn't find a body, but we did find personal belongings. As we pass buckets of mud and bricks down the human chain of volunteers and Tibetan soldiers, we would occasionally see a spoon, a child's toy, a sock... We essentially deconstructed homes, brick by brick, minute possession by minute possession. We would occasionally come across children's school books or family photos, which were put aside by the monks. Every now and then, our human chain of hands would have to stop to let through authorized cars. “Authorized cars” basically meant a funeral procession – a car carrying a dead body up to the mountain to be burned, the following car carrying some monks, and the last car piled high with firewood. That's really when it hits home – these are not just bricks, these are people.
At one point in the afternoon, while I was standing in a mud hole that used to be someone's home, I suddenly looked up and saw everyone running down the road, away from the place where the mudslide had come. A rumor had started that another mudslide was on its way. Within a matter of seconds, I found myself on the top of a steep hill next to the destruction. I had run so fast that I don't even remember how I got there. We waited at the top of the hill, waited for something to come crashing down, women crying in fear. In the end, it turned out just to be a rumor, and it took me a while to figure out how to get down because it was so steep. At the end of the day, we started finding clothes, so assumed we had stumbled upon what could have been a bedroom, where we were likely to find a body. Soldiers took over and uncovered CDs, notebooks, a pair of jeans with a wallet still in the back pocket, but no body. Although I hope for the person's family (and for public health) that the body is found, I'm glad I did not find it. What sort of psychological effect would that have on someone...

By the next day the Ladakh Buddhist Association (LBA) had taken over the coordination of the relief efforts. In the morning, they sent a group of us out on a flatbed truck to a surrounding village to gather firewood to burn the bodies. The truck stopped at every house, and everyone gave some wood. Although they most likely would need it to keep warm over the winter, the sense of community was unmistakable. Something had happened that was bigger than an individual, bigger than one family's immediate comfort. The community was mourning, and everyone did their part to alleviate the pain. That afternoon we were sent to the hospital to start clearing the first floor of the 40 cm of mud that covered it. Back breaking work. I felt like a rice picker. While there, I overheard Western tourist doctor who had been volunteering at the Army's mess hall, by then converted to a makeshift hospital, that they had no more anesthesia. All they could do was hold the children down as they performed surgery...

For the next few days, we were sent to various villages around Leh. We first went to Phiyang, or what used to be Phiyang. On the drive there, we witnessed what seemed like a mass exile of Bahari seasonal migrants – hundreds of men walking on the side of the road with all their possessions strapped to their backs, seemingly getting ready to walk across India, back home to Bihar. I was in a group with 3 Frenchies and a few Ladakhis, and we were the first relief team to make it to Phiyang, since the army had only finished rebuilding the bridge to the village that morning. We walked up to the monastery, one of the only visible structures still intact. As we walked, we passed a gate with a sign saying “Welcome to the Monastery School of Phiyang,” but there was nothing behind the gate. Just mud. In front of the monastery, about 20 shell-shocked locals welcomed us to their tent camp, offered us tea and biscuits that the army had just brought them. “First, we have tea.” It reminded me so much of the book “Three Cups of Tea,” which I had just read. Despite tragedy, these people remained so hospitable and grateful that we were there.
A monk led us down to an area still covered with wet mud that sometimes reached our knees. As we stood on a mound, he poked his walking stick in the earth and said “one body missing from here.” We walked over to the second mound, in front of some trees, and with the same motion and stoic voice said “two bodies missing from here. Dig.” So we dug. It was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. The bodies could have been there, or they could have been in Pakistan, brought down the Indus by the force of the raging waters. In the end, we found nothing but a single, crushed, plastic bottle - the only sign of life that came out of that mud all day.

The following day we went to a beautiful village called Saboo, which is where the cloudburst is rumoured to have occurred. Because roads and bridges had been destroyed, we walked up the mountain for two hours until we found the house we had been looking for. We were to dig out the three remaining rooms of a house, and look for the body of the old man who had been living there. His body would either be in the room to which I was assigned, or else it would have been carried down the valley along with the other two rooms of his house. We found nothing but boulders and mud. At one point while I was digging, the Ladakhi guy that was with us told me “Don't shovel too hard, there might be a body under there...” He had pulled several bodies out of the mud in the previous few days, so he knew what he was talking about...

The next day, a candle-lit march was arranged. Thousands of people, presumably the entire town - survivors, victims, tourists - gathered at the petrol station, and began the assent up the main road that had paved the way for the mud to flow smoothly through civilization. As we walked up through the devastation, surrounded by pentatonic Buddhist chants, candles, and prayer beads being fingered by faithfuls, it really hit home that this could have happened to anyone. We were in the path of destruction at that moment, just like we could have been at 12:30am on August 6th.

After a day of rest to nurse a pulled hamstring, I returned to my digging expeditions, but this time in the devastated Tibetan refugee settlement of Choglamsar. Most of the army brought up from Delhi had been sent there, as the village was in ruins - there were rivers where there once had been roads and homes. Unfortunately, the soldiers seemed quite disinterested with the local population. Their combat clothes were perfectly clean, while us volunteers were covered in mud, cuts, and bruises. More than once I witnessed scores of soldiers standing by as exhausted locals attempted to move heavy furniture or tree stumps from their homes. After lunch, I was walking back to a house in need of digging out with a girl from St Gallen I had met that morning, when a soldier came up to us and asked for our help in digging out a home. We followed, thinking his request was sincere. However, when we got there, shovels were put in our hands while the soldiers sat around and smoked cigarettes, still perfectly clean despite a morning of supposed 'hard work.' The soldier who had asked us to come over told us that when we were tired we could take a rest. I told him that when I got tired I would give him the shovel and it was his turn. “No, I don't shovel. I command.” Well, commander, it's time to stop giving shovels to women, children, and tourists, and have your men do some real work. After berating him for a while, in an attempt to kick some good old Swiss efficiency into these men, he left to go on his lunch break, from which he never returned. With the commander gone, the new and improved Swiss commandos were able to take charge, and get the few remaining soldiers to do some real work (although they were sure to avoid picking up any stones with their bare hands, as it may have dirtied their previous jewels). After about a half hour, though, they were too tired so decided to take a break. We left.

On the final day of work, I returned to Phiyang with a big group of German volunteers. We dug out a family's home alongside the family members, who had all survived but were forced to live in a tent in what used to be their back yard – 3 generations, eating, sleeping, living in one tent. The family was so grateful we were there – one of the women said thank you under her breath every time she filled her shovel with mud – that it almost made me uncomfortable. Why were they so grateful? Why was the fact that human beings were helping other human beings after a disaster like this so unusual? They showered us with biscuits and chai and butter tea, and fed us a wonderful lunch, just like all the other affected communities had. They sacrificed what little they had for us foreigners who have everything, who will soon go back to our cooshy lives where we know that mountains won't come down on our poorly constructed homes, where we know our water will be safe to drink, where we will have enough food for the winter because our only source of food, our crops, has not been destroyed.

Reflecting on the experience, I suppose that what makes me uncomfortable is that I feel like the Ladakhis were so grateful that someone, somewhere was finally caring about them, that they were finally important. It took a disaster to make these people important to the West, to reverse the roles and have the rich foreigners do manual labor for the benefit of the poor brown people. And does the world really care? Pakistan, which was even more severely hit by this same disaster, is not receiving the kind of help from the international community that it so desperately needs. Twenty million people have been affected by the disaster in that country. 3.5 million children are at high risk of water-borne diseases.

I don't really care if this seems tacky, but here's a link to donate to Medecins Sans Frontiers/Doctors Without Borders' efforts in Pakistan:
http://www.msf.org.uk/pakistan_floods_update_11aug2010_20100811.news

And to end, a short list of things I've learned from this experience:
- I really do have a talent for shoveling mud out of houses. Maybe I should think about a career in construction?
- After smashing my finger between a rock and a hard place in Phiyang, I realized that I can live quite well with only 9 fully functioning fingers, at least for a few days.
- Thank Novartis for Tetanus shots.

Leh, Ladakh

The beauty of these Himalayas is only equaled by the warmth of the Tibetan people that inhabit the region.

Leh is fantastic. It's a little Buddhist town nestled among mountains in a high altitude desert, relatively near the borders with China and Pakistan, in the Ladakh region. It's technically part of Jammu & Kashmir, but other than the J & K Government cars and banks throughout the town, you would never know that this is anywhere but Tibet. The area is surrounded by monasteries, and throughout the city's streets are many Tibetan refugee markets, and more prayer flags than I've ever seen in my life. The sun is fierce, at 3500m, and the air is incredibly dry, so my lips are chapped beyond recognition. The area reminds me in some ways of northern Vietnam, which I loved and cannot wait to return to. Sapa, like Leh, is a town where Europeans flock to in order to avoid the heat that blankets much of the rest of the country (ie. Vietnam and India), and where mountaineers gather before going on treks. Although Sapa at times feels a little artificial, in the way that it caters almost exclusively to tourists, this place has kept the very spiritual essence of itself, with the monasteries and Buddhist monks dotting the landscape. Zach, the offer still stands for a future trip here. If you're down, I'm down.

Yesterday I got a shared Jeep with 3 other people to go to Pangong Lake for a couple of days, a waterbody that is well into Tibet, and the majority of which actually lies over the Chinese border. The drive there was spectacular driving through the Himalayas for hours, in a scenery that is mostly high-altitude desert, but with several populated valleys of green, as well as some sand dunes on the final stretch, before the magnificent turquoise lake appeared. On the way, we even stopped drove past one of the highest roads in the world, at 5360 m! We were dropped off in our home for the night, a Tibetan homestay right on the banks of the lake. The family, an elderly Tibetan couple and their 16-year-old niece, lived in one house, with their livestock in a stone penn out front. Another house with three rooms had been constructed, where I and the other 3 members of my Jeeping crew slept. Tents were also set up, and were eventually inhabited by a group of French and Spanish backpackers.

As I sat in my single room, I thought about what to do. For the first time since I can remember, I felt a real sense of freedom. I was away from everyone I knew, without a phone, in one of the most peaceful and remote places on the planet. I had no deadlines, no meetings, no essay or application due, no time at which to be back. Especially after the East African trip, where every hour was accounted for by a lecture or NGO visit, it was an incredible feeling to be able to do exactly what I wanted, when I wanted.

After settling in and leafing through the photo album that my new "homestay dad" brought out to show us, I decided to go for a walk along the water. I started walking toward China. Although I knew it was over 100 km away, and that tourists weren't allowed further than about 10 km from where I was standing, it was a nice little goal to set myself. I walked for a few hours, stopping to take pictures and just contemplate the power of nature - these mountains, that have been here for millennia, that move ever so slowly, only allowing water to pass through them to create valleys.

I wish I knew more about nature, about the history of the Earth, about science, about geology, about evolution, about the interconnectedness and interdependence of people and the Earth. I wish that when I looked at a mountain range or a river or a lake I could do more than just admire. I wish I could fundamentally understand the processes at work. I wish Dr. Engstrom and Dr. Shiklomanov could teach me everything they know about hydrology, Arctic climatology, and all their other snipets of scientific knowledge.

Geography is the study of humans' interactions with the environment, and how they both influence one another. Through university, I can learn the science behind the environment, this knowledge that I've craved ever since Dr. Shiklomanov made science interesting something no one had ever been able to do before. (It's crazy to think that this time last year I was sitting in an internet cafe in Vietnam complaining that I had to take a 'Weather and Climate' class with 'some new Russian professor'). Through travel, I can hope to understand people a little bit better, and the many ways in which these interactions with the environment can vary, and more specifically, the level of respect that more traditional societies accord to nature, which we in the West often forget.

“I used to assume that the direction of 'progress' was somehow inevitable, not to be questioned. I do not anymore. In Ladakh, I have learned that there is more than one path into the future and I have had the privilege to witness another, saner, way of life a pattern of existence based on the coevolution between human beings and the earth. Industrialized countries have lessons to learn from people like Ladakhis about building sustainable societies. It may seem absurd to believe that a 'primitive' culture in the Himalaya has anything to teach our industrialized society. But our search for a future that works keeps spiraling back to an ancient connection between ourselves and the earth, an interconnectedness that ancient cultures have never abandoned.”
-Helena Norberg-Hodge, "Ancient Futures”

And the journey continues...

So we got back from Varanasi yesterday. The rough landing in Delhi caused me to freak out a little, to the great amusement to the guy sitting next to me who had snored and stolen my armrest the whole way through... There was also some Buddhist monk sitting in first class... So much for giving up material possessions...

My ipod got wiped as I was backing the songs up onto my computer, so I will be spending 4 lonely months in South Asia without Travis and all his glory to keep me company. I was able to salvage about a third of the songs though, so it shouldn't be too bad.

We were planning on going to Agra for a few days to see the Taj Mahal and the surrounding areas, so we got our train ticket online and overpaid for a tuk-tuk to take us to the train station. After waiting for a few hours, I found a nice little hand-written sign in Hindi at the Enquiry counter where all I could understand was our train number, and the 16:10 departure time crossed out and replaced with 23:10... 7 hours was a little much to wait at the train station. If we would have taken that train and arrived in Agra at 2am, we probably would have been so exhausted that we wouldn't have enjoyed the sunrise at the Taj. Instead, we over-paid a tuk-tuk to take us to a hotel in the center of Delhi (free wi-fi! Skype date with anyone who wants tomorrow!). We got a taxi to pick us up from here at 2am (yeah... 4 hours from now... why aren't I sleeping?), so we should make it to the Taj Mahal for sunrise, and before all the hordes of day tourists arrive, which should be really nice. My nice camera's making a weird sound, though - I think something is loose in the lens... I really hope it'll survive tomorrow, and the next four months...

Originally we were going to go to Tawang, on the border with China and Bhutan, but we only got confirmation that we had received our permits TODAY, so weren't able to book our flights or anything. Since it's such an ordeal getting there (1 plane ride and 2 days in the car each way) we figured it wasn't worth it, especially if we were going to lose a day or two getting our travel arrangements sorted out. So no work in the orphanage up there, sadly. Maybe on the next trip to India I'll go to that region - anyone care to join? (Amber, I'm talking to you...).

We booked our flights to Leh, departing on Thursday. We'll fly there and sort of play it by ear for the next couple of weeks. It's supposed to be really nice, high up in the mountains of Kashmir. We'll probably spend some days in Leh, then start driving back down to Delhi, making stops in Himachal Pradesh along the way. The road between Leh and Delhi goes up to 5000m, so it promises to be beautiful.

One fun thing that happened while in Varanasi was my visit to a really cool NGO called the Sankat Mochan Foundation. It was started by a Professor of Hydraulic Engineering in the 70s, and is an effort to clean up the Ganges in Varanasi, and eventually beyond the city, too. The professor, Dr. Veer Bhadra Mishra, is basically a guru in the area, very respected. I wanted to get some information about the organization, so I walked over there with some Indian kid who had come with me. The office was closed so we went to this little house a few feet away (walking past a dead body covered by a sheet, may I add...) and in the room was the Guru, dressed all in white, having a meeting with a half dozen men. He waved me in, I sat down, and he talked to me for a few minutes about who I was, what I was doing, what I wanted to know about the organization, etc. While I was talking to him someone came in and laid on the floor in front of him and kissed his feet! It was crazy to be talking to the Water Guru of Varanasi! It was really fun to meet this guy who's such an icon in the area, although it was a little awkward to crash his meeting.

All in all, India continues to amaze me. I am definitely on sensory overload, partly because of the proximity of this trip to my African odyssey, but also because I know so little about Indian culture itself. Africa is so much easier for me to understand, because I've studied its history and culture for years. India, on the other hand, is just surprise after surprise. I'm really glad I'll be spending so much time here, so that I can really get to know it on a deeper, more intimate level.

I'll end with a quote from Salman Rushdie in his book 'Midnight Children.' He describes the streets of Amritsar, and the same description of sensory overload could be made of Varanasi:

"The holy city of Amritsar smelled of excrement. Amristar dung was fresh and redundant. Nor was it all bovine. It issued from the rumps of the horses between the shafts of the city's many tongas, ikkas, and gharries; and mules and men and dogs attended nature's calls, mingling in a brotherhood of shit. But there were cows, too: sacred kine roaming the dusty streets, each patrolling its own territory, staking its claims in excrement. And flies! Public Enemy Number One, buzzing gaily from turd to steaming turd. Spicy sweet fumes rose from a street-snack barrow."

Varanasi

Here we are in Varanasi, on the (sometimes septic) Ganges River. The city is a mixtures of highs and lows.
The highs:
Beautiful and spiritual.
The Lows:
Dirtiest place I've ever seen - never really thought that where there are thousands of animals roaming the street there will also be crap everywhere. And I mean everywhere.
It's also pretty damn hot, but ah it's manageable.

We've basically spent the past few days getting lost here. Saw the burning ghat where the bodies are burned before the ashes are thrown into the river - pretty amazing sight. Tonight we'll be going to an Indian music concert, which should be fun. We also took a couple of boat rides on the Ganges - one at sunrise and one at sunset, which were both lovely. The city is only really alive in the morning and evening, since it's so hot during the day, so it's really nice to see people out, bathing, washing clothes, etc. The constant harassing is pretty annoying, but such is life.

We'll be here for another 2 days or so, and we get back to Delhi on Monday to get my second rabies shot. We may try to go to Agra to see the Taj Mahal on Tuesday if we have time before we go off to either Tibet or Kashmir, but we shall see.

All in all, I'm really liking it here - not sick yet (knock on wood) and the heat is totally bearable.

Also, found out my internship is near Hoshiarpur, in Punjab, for those who may want to Google map my every move (I know, I know, you guys just miss me that much...). Planning on finding someone to teach me Bhangra so I can impress JB and join a Swiss Banghra team someday.

Incredible India!

I've been in India for 24 hours, and it's already living up to expectations.

We got on standby from Geneva to Amsterdam, which was nice since the flight was overbooked. We got the seats next to the emergency exits - extra leg room :) for free :) :) We also got some special seats on the way to Delhi - extra leg room and no one else in our row. Great start to the trip.

This morning we had to get to the hospital to get my rabies shot. I got the prescription from the doctor, went to the little pharmacy in the hospital to buy it and brought it back to be administered. Good thing they read the box before giving it to me - the pharmacy had given me the wrong vaccine! Hmmm... Eventually got the right thing, and it only cost 8 dollars (beats the 300 that it would cost in the States!)

This afternoon we went to a bazaar in Old Delhi and it was incredible - the smells, the people, the clothes, everything - so intense. We spent a couple of hours getting lost in no-mzungu land side streets, trying to avoid getting hit by every kind of vehicle you could imagine. 'Trying' is the key word. I ended up getting sandwiched between two rickshaws going in opposing directions! I escaped with just a few scratches and bicycle grease all over my pants, which thankfully came off with a little African-style scrubbing in the sink at the hotel.

Ended the day with some food in the bazaar. It was a sit-down restaurant but with all the amenities of street food - ie bug in my rice. But hey, protein, right?

All in all, it has been a wonderful first day in India. I'm SO excited for all that the next 4 months have in store for me. Tomorrow we fly to Varanasi, on the Ganges, where we will spend a little under a week before coming back to Delhi to get my second rabies shot. India is a lot how I imagined it to be, but just that much more intense with the smells and the sounds all around. The poverty is shocking, but I think spending a month and a half in Africa before this has softened the blow a little. Africa has also taught me that poverty does not equal misery, and the life all around in Delhi has confirmed that. Although both poverty and misery definitely do exist, they do not automatically go together, and the beauty of this place has really confirmed that.

Dear Africa

Dear Africa, you helped me write this by showing me to give is priceless - K'Naan

I got back to Geneva yesterday morning, but not without the power going off about 5 times in the Kampala airport as I waited to check in. TIA. As soon as I got back I DEVOURED an entire jar of pickles. I really missed vinegar. Then was a nice tomato, mozzarella, and fresh basil salad with balsamic vinegar. Raw and cold foods will never again be under-appreciated.

Now that I'm back in the safety of my room with a fast internet connection, I should take advantage of it and write a little about my last couple of weeks in Africa. Let me start with my final bus ride home in Kigali. As a few of us waited for the bus to Kimironko, some school kids started walking behind us. Two kids, independently of each other and about a minute apart, just bent down and pet the back of my legs. Yeah. Pet them.

After leaving Kigali we drove down to Kibuye for a nice relaxing few days on the shores of Lake Kivu. TIAC - This Is Almost Congo. We're so clever.
Our hotel was pretty awesome with amazing views. We went swimming in Lake Kivu and hung out with some German honeymooners for a little while (read: crashed their honeymoon). Then we pretty much sat by the water with beers, K'Naan and Bob Marley playing, and loving Africa for the rest of the evening. Perfect.
That night we decided to be BALLER and throw a party. It had everything a good party should have - dirty dancing, drama, hookups, random people showing up, alcohol-induced illness into Lake Kivu, everyone sleeping in different rooms, and more unspeakables. It was very freshman year, but hey, we had a blast.

After driving back to Southern Uganda we went to Queen Elizabeth National Park. Within 5 minutes of entering we saw a lion! Then we went on a boat ride and saw some hippos and an elephant family - really made me want to re-watch the Secret Life of Elephants. Best. Show. Ever. That night was probably one of the funniest nights of the trip. We got to our hostel and got assigned the room right behind a big light. Well bugs like light, right? We didn't notice until later that the entire wall, floor, and ceiling in front of our door was MOVING! We ran through a cloud of bugs to our room and fumigated it with some 98% DEET, only to be told a few minutes of suffocation later that we could change rooms. So we did, and it was still pretty dirty and bed-bug infested, but hey, such is life. Probably the best part of the night though was when, at around 11pm, a lion ROARED! Schaelee thought we were going to die, naturally, and jumped on the top bunk faster than I've ever seen anyone do anything. Fortunately, we survived our little ordeal. The next day we saw a leopard, an elephant family, and like 8 lions just chillin' in the grasslands.

That day we drove back to Mbarara and watched the worst refereeing I've ever seen in a World Cup final. Poor Oranje. :( But at least we were entertained by seeing a boda driver drive past us while chugging a bottle of beer.

We finally got back to Kampala two days after the bombings, and that is how the program ended. Well it really ended with everyone leaving and Shaelee and I spending one last night in our lonely little hotel. It's nice to finally be back (I couldn't bring myself to take a fully warm shower, though. Cold showers are not too bad after all). Yesterday I ran some errands, ran into a few people in town, and started getting ready for India. I'm going to get a new computer since my internship wants me to have one and I was planning on getting one once I got back anyway. Built-in webcam here I come, for all of your viewing pleasure.

Kampala Bombings

Just a little note to say that I'm fine. I was in Southern Uganda, not in Kampala. I'm back in Kampala now though, flying home tomorrow night. Everything seems fine here. I'll write more about my final few days on the trip later.

"God said to Abraham, 'kill me a son,'
Abe said 'Man, you must be putting me on.'
God said 'No,' Abe said 'What?'
God said 'You can do what you want, but the next time you see me coming you better run.'" - Highway 61 - Bob Dylan


I miss Gulu. I loved the small town, rural feel of northern Uganda. I hope I'll be able to go back at some point.

We've talked a lot during our classes about what we would do if we were in a situation like in 1994. Would we evacuate with all the other white people, just because we have a blue or red passport? Or would we stay, risk our lives, and potentially save some in the process? What makes people stay, while so many leave?
I had a dream the night after that conversation (which was started because of a documentary we watched called 'Ghosts of Rwanda') where I was put in that situation. I was on the border between Uganda and Rwanda with my 1-month-old Gulu brother on my back and one Gulu 4-year-old in each arm. The UN was blocking my way and kept saying that I could cross the border but they couldn't, they weren't American/Swiss/White. I was screaming at the 'casque bleu' to let me through, that these were my kids. Then I woke up. I'd like to think I would do that in real life, but who knows...

I went to the Hotel des Milles Collines the other day to watch the Ghana-Uruguay game. It was so eery. It's just a luxury hotel with rich people everywhere, people laughing. How could anyone be there and act as if it was just another place? The pool is the same. The same as in the movie Hotel Rwanda. The same as in 1994. People drank the water out of that pool to survive. I wish I could upload the picture of the pool, with the name of the hotel at the bottom of it. It's freaky.

Yesterday morning was church. An attempt was made to convert me to born-again Christianity. For 4 and a half hours. I won't go into detail but I was offended by a lot of what was said (ex: The Holocaust was the consequence of the Jews killing Jesus...) and not too happy about being put in that situation.

2 more days in Kigali before we go to Kibuyem, and then back to Uganda.

Starting to think more about this whole South Asia trip. I'm so excited but 4 months?! Damn.
If anyone who is going to be in the area wants to meet up (Sujath, I'm looking at you), here are my tentative dates:

• July 19th-August 18th: Delhi, Varanasi, Tawang

• August 18th ish-August 22nd: Delhi (KOMAL - will you be there then? Can we love each other, Indian street food-style?)

• August 23rd-October 15th: Internship in Punjab

• October 16th-November 17th: Nepal (EVALINE - see you there?)
  

The most T.I.A. moment of the trip so far happened last night when a few of us got on our taxibus to go to our respective homestays. We settle in and suddenly one of the girls in our group yells "Oh my God there's a chicken under me!" Yeah... So someone had stored their (live) dinner under her seat, and the poor chicken, with its feet tied, had fallen over right under her feet and was clucking like crazy. T.I.A.

Anyway, the past few days in Kigali have been draining. Yesterday we went to some genocide memorials, which were incredibly moving. First we visited a church in which 5000 people were killed. You walk in and there's a wall full of bones and skulls, some with clearly visible machete marks in them and another with a big nails still stuck in the top of the skull. As you turn around to see the whole church, you realize that it is COVERED in clothes. It's sort of a similar feeling as the place in Auschwitz where all the personal items are stored. Each dress, each piece of fabric, each blood-soaked shirt belonged to someone. I stood in front of this green dress with little white designs on it, and big blood stains, for several minutes. I was trying to imagine this dress on a woman that I could see walking down the street. I also tried to link that dress with a skull. It's so unfathomable to be in a place where 5000 people were killed that all I could do was put one face, one dress, to the whole tragedy in that church.
Apparently, the display as we saw it was quite recent. Before, it had just been left how it was in April 1994 - bodies and items all over the floor. I think that would have just been too much.

Next, we went to another church where 10,000 people had been killed. It wasn't a big place so it was hard to imagine 10,000 people packed into it, but the mounds of clothes all over the seats and floor helped with the realization. It was almost nauseating. At both churches there were still blood stains on the walls, and at the second church the original fabric was still draped over the box-table thing at the front, but it was drenched in blood. It's so unimaginable, but being there was as close as I could get to imagining it.
In the back of the church are some mass graves. You walk underground, as if you're walking into your own grave, and are surrounded by coffins, about 10 feet high, each containing about 20 people's remains. The next mass graves is just bones, from floor to ceiling, far too close for comfort. It was incredibly creepy, but I guess that's the point of having the artifacts displayed like that.

As we drove back to Kigali from the churches, I saw a few people walking along the street with hoes, going to their gardens. Then I saw two men with machetes. I literally gasped. It was such a terrifying feeling.

After lunch we went to the memorial center in the city, which is more of a museum. There are also some mass graves outside that house, wait for it, 258 THOUSAND people who were killed within the city alone. The guide paused after 258, so I started imagining 258 people, which is a number that I can imagine, even though it's big. When she added the thousand to it I almost fell over. It's unimaginable.
The museum is really well done and very moving, although I wasn't able to see all the exhibits because the power went out near the end.

These memorials, although they're difficult, are the reason why I came to Rwanda. I want to get a feel for what happened, but at a more visceral level than I could get through a book or even a documentary.

Bienvenue au Rwanda!

Tonight, we got to Kigali, Rwanda.

The past few days have been crazy. Yesterday we visited a refugee camp in southern Uganda where we spoke to some Rwandese (Rwandan?) refugees. They were eager to tell us their stories. It was particularly interesting because they are the people whose stories are not told, who have been labeled as perpetrators even though many of them have suffered and continue to suffer. The visit were incredible in that they challenged so many of my previously held assumptions - it not only challenged my notion of what a refugee settlement is like (it was pretty much like a small town, with markets and stores - even though half the things around us either had the USA or UNHCR logos on it). The visit also challenged my whole perception of Rwandan society and the genocide. It sort of goes to show that the little we understand of any conflict around the world is so insignificant. All that really matters are the personal stories of those on the ground. Whether or not their facts are right is irrelevant. Whether or not the international community interacts is irrelevant. All that matters is that these people have real scars, real stories, and real family members that they have lost. The fact that the world has labeled "them" as perpetrators borders on the absurd. Even something like a genocide, that we outsiders see as so black and white, is far from being so.

After members of the community shared their stories with us, we had the opportunity to walk around the camp a little with one member of the community and just talk to them. It was pretty interesting. The guy we were with had been in the camp since 2006 and had fled because he was a member of the opposition. He kept saying "this is war." He implied that the regime here would not change peacefully, and that "war" was the only way to change anything. "I'm not going to stay here for ever. It's only a matter of time before things change." It's a scary thought, but what else could he do? I'm not condoning war or violence or anything, but what are his options?
I guess what this visit made me realize is that the broader picture doesn't matter. All that really matters, and all that will really have an impact on world events are stories like this man's - he doesn't want to spend the rest of his life in a refugee settlement in Uganda - it's as simple as that. Broader implications don't matter to him. His story matters to him.
We also briefly met a man who told us that he had gone back to Rwanda, and along with 12 members of his family was arrested by the gacaca courts because his parents had been accused of genocide. He was the only one to have survived.

Today we start our Rwandan (Rwandese?) adventure. We drove past the Hotel des Milles Collines (Hotel Rwanda) on our way back from dinner. This is real. I think this place is so scary because I know I've seen every one of these streets on TV, in documentaries, in movies. And I know in what context I've seen these streets.
Tomorrow we start our lectures. I'm excited to delve into this whole thing more, although it remains a very sensitive topic here so it will be interesting to see to what extent we have to tiptoe around the subject with our homestay families. We go to our new homes in a couples of days, where we will stay for two weeks.

I'm excited and nervous. But I can't wait. I've wanted to come to Rwanda for so long and I'm finally here. It's crazy. I fell in love with Uganda so much, I just hope I do the same with Rwanda.

The drive down here was incredible. They call it the Switzerland of Africa, and it really is. It basically looks like Switzerland, but more lush and with banana trees. It's amazing. As we drove through south Uganda, the scenery just got more and more incredible. We had to walk across the border, which was really fricken fun, and our hour and a half drive to Kigali was breathtaking. Google image this place. It's so beautiful.

T.I.A. - This Is Africa

So I'm back in Kampala for a few days before we drive to Rwanda this weekend. I think it's funny how the first time we got to this hotel on the second night here, we were all bummed about how hard and crap the beds were. Turns out, they're pretty spectacular compared to those in Gulu. I was loving a pillow that didn't feel like a rock, last night. But whatever. T.I.A.

There have been so many TIA moments on this trip, I can't even begin to describe it. I will definately post any funny TIA occurences throughout my journey.

Last week we had the homestay party with all the families. There was a lot of dancing, and apparently I'm not too shabby. Some guy even told me "You belong here." Gotta get some birthing hips if you wanna dance like an Acholi.

I also carried 10 liters of water on my head again. I was really getting the hang of it. I still need both hands and get water all over me, but meh, I was trying to prove that I was no weak mzungu! I have some pictures (as well as some of me cooking posho - maize flour stuff) in my kitchen hut. I'll post them when I get home. It's pretty sexy.

So I was sad to leave Gulu, but at the same time there's a little bit of relief that goes with it too. The LRA isn't in Northern Uganda anymore, and hasn't been for the past year or so, but last week there was a rumor they had re-entered the country. The rumour concerned a place 400 km away, and turned out to be false, but it was still pretty scary to think that we could be in a situation like that. What was even scarier is to think how scared we all were, but these people have been living with actual rebel soldiers everywhere for the past 20 years!
I don't know how my homestay dad can still live in that compound, considering that's where he was abducted from when he was a kid. They also showed me where a rebel soldier had been shot - next to my latrine. Not creepy at all. And the bullet hole in my dad's arm and the scars on my brothers legs were a constant reminder that maybe I am a weak mzungu. We in the West are so fricken priviledged to never have had to deal with anythin even remotely on that scale. It's almost sad to think how scared we were about a false rumour.
Also, the cement house I lived on on my compound was built in 2005 because the family used to just live in the huts but the LRA came and threatened to kill them because my homestay dad wouldn't open the door. So they built a cement house with locks. Most of the people still live in the huts in the compound, but the direct family lives behind metal bars.

The main thing that this homestay and my time in Gulu has taught me is to truly put a human face to every forgotten tragedy around the world. My brother Robert and his story are now the face and story of every child soldier around the world. Every heart-wrenching detail. Every scar. He said he used to conduct raids for food over the border with Uganda when he was in South Sudan. He said it was hard to get food in Sudan because everybody had guns, even the kids. When I asked how he got food, then, he replied "With a gun." No need to elaborate. He also said "They love me in Sudan. Whenever a commander told me to do something, I did it right away, and I did it really well." Again. No need to elaborate.

Anyway, one of our final days we got to interview people on the topic of our choice, so I chose to focus on traditional means of reconciliation. So interesting. We went to the office of the paramount chief of Acholiland, and even met one of the 54 chiefs! It was awesome!

I will now end with a revised list of things I will miss and things I will not miss about Gulu.

Things I will miss about Gulu:
- The kids in my compound
- Their contagious laughter and happiness
- Seeing the sun rise over thatched roofs every morning
- People's expressions when I speak Acholi and understand what they say
- Having my name being yelled and finding out it's someone on my compound just wanting to say hi
- Having my own room
- Being called Anita by my 4 year old sister, Lake
- Hearing Lake sing her ABCs over and over again
- Hearing her squeal with delight when she sees her picture on the screen of my camera
- Learning new things everyday
- Having Rebecca teach me how to carry water on my head
- Having random kids walk with me while holding my hand
- Having a family in Uganda
- The positivity of the Acholi people

Thingsa I will not miss about Gulu:
- Katrines
- Flies in the latrines
- Waking up to landime detonations every morning
- Seeing the nasty garbage all over the town
- Not being able to go pee after dark
- Power cuts
- Being scared of the LRA potentially coming back
- Seeing disabled people everywhere and knowing what caused their missing limbs

My computer time is now over.
Peace out.

Gulu, The End

Tomorrow we leave Gulu.
It's been real.
I'll post more extensively about my last week here once we get to Kampala and I have more internet time.
I'm going to make a list of things I will miss about Gulu and things I will not miss about Gulu.

Things I will miss about Gulu:
- Walking to and from my compound and having people shout "Alissa" at me and waving
- The kids. Everywhere.
- How the kids have such an amazing time without any toys or outside entertainment.
- How excited people get when they hear me trying to speak Acholi

Things I will not miss about Gulu:
- Pit latrines
- Flies in the pit latrines
- Waking up to landmines being detonated every morning
- Riding on a boda-boda side-saddle on a dirt road

To be continued...

Reality

Shit's getting real.

I talked to my homestay brother a little about his experiences in the war the other day on the way to school and wow. It was scary. He didn't say things in too much detail, and I won't say too much on this blog, but it was insane. I was walking on a dirt path with this kid who did unspeakable things. It's scary and heartbreaking all at the same time. Some of the things he said that really hit me were "If you are quiet, they say that you are thinking of your parents, so they kill you. If you smile too much, you are happy, so they kill you."

What world do we live in where a 17 year old kid has lived through that?

He said his mother and all of his siblings had died, and that his father didn't want totake care of him. "God has plans for me." I don't know what he would have to live for if he didn't have that. Even though a lot of this born again stuff over here is creepy to me, I'm happy that he has that.

Most of the last few days have just been really emotional with the whole child soldier realization. It's not something you read in a book anymore. It's not a sad story you see on CNN and forget about an hour later. It's a real person and it's really his life.

On a happier note, last night was the party for all of the homestay families. We were at this hotel called Acholi Inn and had dinner and dancing. I'm apparently not too bad! One person even told me that this is where I belong cause I can move my hips like an African. SCORE! T.I.A. This Is Africa.

And on the fail of the day: The whole "fat is a compliment" thing going on around here... Yeah... I'm over it...
I was sitting at my neighbors and they all start touching their calves and laughing. My homestay mom turns to me and says "your legs are so big and beautiful." Yeah... thanks... The neighbor girl then said that "my legs look like mosquito legs next to you." I'ma a cut you! Nah it's alright but seriously. I need to go back to the land where people don't say what they think!
I also walked to the market the other day with my neighbor and my sister. They said I didn't need tobring anything. So I didn't. Not even water. Little did I know that this market was an hour and a half walk away on a dusty street! Argh! Weak mzungu! We got some tomatos and okra and dried fish for dinner and man was I tired when I got back! They thought this weak mzungu wasreal funny. But meh at least I didn't have togotochurch this morning. "You need your rest." Beats the born again churches some of the kids on the program went to with their families - exorcism!

Will be here until Thursday when we go back to Kampala. Can't wait for a sit down toilet. Having flies crawling on my when I'm going pee in the latrine is getting real old real quick.

Adios!

"Under brutality, the best never return"

Gulu is amazing. It's much smaller than Kampala, with a lot of dirt roads, but I love where I live and I like that life is calmer up here. It also blows my mind that every single person here has experienced war first hand. The guns have only been silent in Gulu for one and a half years, but people are pretty optimistic that this time it will last. Most of the town is comprised of NGOs (UNHCR, WHO, World Food Program, Caritas, etc.) but they'll be leaving soon, so I wonder how the town will cope with the decrease in jobs and customers.

My homestay family is perfect - I couldn't have asked for a better experience so far.
My homestay father, Patrick, picked me up at the hotel. We were all pretty scared to meet our families after the first family came with drummers and flowers and ululating all down the street (It was apparently a party at that house until the wee hours haha <3). So Patrick picked me up, and we started talking about the war right away. I was really surprised because we were all a little anxious as to how much our families would want to talk about the war. Well it turns out my dad is a former LRA child soldier, and now works at a rehabilitation center with formerly-abducted child soldiers, and even adopted a few. In fact, two of my host brothers are former child soldiers!
The house is beautiful. It's about 5 km from the center of Gulu, so I take a bota-bota (motorcycle) in the morning and evening to get to my homestead. It's the place my homestay dad has lived forever, where his father and grand-father lived too. We live in a cement house, with a latrine and bath structure in the garden next to the corn fields. There are huts that comprise the rest of the homestead, where some cousins/uncles/random family/clan members live. It's amazing to try to understand the family structure and the dynamics.
In my family there is Patrick, who is the deputy speaker in the government and is currently running for mayor! His wife Grace is a primary school teacher but stays at home now because they have a 1 month old baby, Kristoff. They also have a 4-year old daughter (named either Patience or Jane...). There are two other girls that are probably about 10 and 13. I think the older one may be Patrick's daughter from another woman, and the other girl they adopted (or as my home mother said, she is "training" her). There is also Robert, who has become my Acholi teacher, and Fred, who I never see. There is another boy who looks just like Fred, they must be about the same age, who also lives somewhere on the homestead. I discovered this morning that they are not the same person...

The first night Patrick picked me up at about 5pm and we went to the house. We sat down and he talked to me about Acholi culture until 9pm. It was amazing! He told me all these amazing things (like if you-re born with your first feet first then you're considered a demi-god and should be pampered throughout your life. You're also considered too good to be burried in the ground, so when you die your body is "broken" and put in a pot where it stays in the forest until it decomposes. When only the bones remain, the family puts the pot of bones in the house and leave it there - just like we do with people who are cremated). He talked a little bit about the war. One of his brothers was abducted by the LRA and died in captivity, and one of his sisters was abducted by the government troops during the war and eventually died of AIDS. I hope to talk to him more about the conflict, especially since we have a short paper due on the causes of conflict next week. To research the paper, we need to talk to at least 3 adult members of the community. I think I will try to talk to Patrick, his wife, and his brother who lives in the homestead (and told me he would build me a hut so I can live on the homestead when I marry an Acholi man).
He kept saying how the 20 years of war had decimated Acholi culture. He explained that since over 90% of the Acholi were forced into camps by the government ("for their own protection" hum hum) they lost a lot of their culture. People lost respect for their elders because they saw that they could not protect them. They also lost respect for many witch doctors and old traditions that they saw being ineffective against the guns of the LRA. A lot of traditions were also simply impossible to continue in the camps, due to the horrible conditions. He gave the example of twins, and how they are also considered demi-gods, and whose ambilical cords are supposed to be put in a pot and a shrine is to be made with the pot under a tree. Of course, in the camps, there simply wasn't room. Apparently the huts were so close together even the thatched roofs touched.
Another such tradition that has been abandoned is among the Langi people, who live next to the Acholi but are also classed as "Northerners" and have suffered a lot during the conflict, concerns marriage. Apparently, once you marry a woman, you are never to see her mother face to face. It is a sign of respect/fear of the power she now holds over you. He said if you see your mother-in-law walking you must turn away, even if it means you turn into the bush.

Anyway, so many interesting tid-bits. I'm learning so much.

I made my uncle, Frances, promise to teach me how to kill a chicken, so apparently I'm making dinner this weekend! Aaaah! It will be a good skill to have for the Peace Corps. I'm just hoping I don't react like I did at lunch a couple of days ago in a restaurant. I ordered goat meat. Um yeah. By meat I wasn't really expecting a peace of tied up intestine and tongue/stomach lining (not entirely sure what it was). I've never been so nauseated at something on my plate in my entire life. I felt awful not eating it but I just couldn't. We'll see if taking the intestines out of a chicken I just killed will be any less grosse.
I also ate a fried grasshopper in Kampala. SO GOOD! It sort of just tastes like a chip.
Apparently they eat "white ants" up here, which I'm pretty sure are termites. Termite paste, fried termites. Bring it on! And bush rat! Yay can't wait!

Anyway, I have to go. I told my homestay dad I would be taking the boda-boda back about 40 minutes ago, but instead I'm sitting under a fan with a cold beer. Mmmm. I was supposed to help with dinner today but our classes ended later than planned. Maybe tomorrow.

I'll try to come online again before the end of my stay in Gulu, but the internet is pretty sporatic. Today is the first day it has worked since we got here.

If anyone wants a more personal email, email me first and my gmail account and I'll tru to respond asap.

Love you all!

Week 1

"When two elephants fight, it's the grass that gets injured." - African proverb

Yesterday we had our first real day of "school." We were in the forestry room at Makerere University (yeah trees!) in a room next to the office of the head of the forestry exports, Prof. Banana (yes). We first had a lecture from a professor at the university in the history of Uganda, which was interesting. The highlight though had to be his SHORT-SLEEVED suit. Best thing I ever saw!

Then we had a lecture about constitutionalism from the deputy spokesperson of the Buganda Kingdom who just had a presence about him. It's like you couldn't not listen and just respect what he was saying. He was a big critic of the government and apparently had been imprisoned and tortured last year. Crazy. But it was really interesting to hear what he had to say. Finally, we watched a documentary about the war in the North called "Uganda Rising" - watch it if you can. It was incredibly moving. It sort of hit home that this is what we're studying. These are the people we're going to meet in Gulu.
One of the hardest seens in the movie is when they interview a woman whos ears and lips were cut off by the LRA. Although I've read about that in some books, actually seeing her was heartbreaking... How do you even make people commit acts like that... It's terrifying, heartbreaking, disgusting, and so many other emotions, all at the same time...

Other than that, the first few days in Kampala have been really good. We had a cool assignment the other day where we were put in pairs and were given a topic and just had to go into the city and find out as much about it was we could. Matt and I were given "The Media" so we went around talking to newspaper sellers, we went to a radio station, and talked to a TV store business owner. It was really fun just being on our own to explore and get lost.

The food has been pretty good. My favorite is matoke, which is mashed plantains. You basically get a starch - rice, matoke, sweet potatos, etc, and then add a sauce, which could also include a meat or fish. I really like it so far.

Still have a sinus infection and my tonsils hurt like a mofo, but hopefully it'll go away soon. Pink eye is slowly leaving my body too. Victory!

Anyway, we're about to get on a bus to Gulu. I'm so excited to meet my homestay family and to spend time in the North. It'll be interesting to see the contrast between te South and the North since it's supposed be crazy. Also, Gulu is a town of about 200,000, whereas Kampala has 2.5 million. I'm really excited!

I can't believe it's the end of the first week.
I love Africa.

First day in Uganda!

Got to Entebbe last night. Uneventful flight. Met up with a couple of other girls from the program and we went to a hotel. Nice hotel until I woke up in the middle of the night with PINK EYE. Yes. I have to be the unluckiest person in the world. Conjunctivitis! Luckily I had some prescription eye drops that I bought before leaving, so it's going away. But ew.

Got picked up at our hotel this morning and met up with other people from the group at our hotel in Kampala that will be our home for the next few days. Exciting! Not everyone is here yet but it seems like a pretty chill group. Still waiting on a few more people that should be arriving later on today, but so far so good!

We'll be staying in Kampala for the next few days, and on Sunday going up to Gulu for our homestays for 10 days-ish. I can't wait to meet my Ugandan family! We'll also find out our detailed itinerary tonight. I can't wait1 I'm so excited for this to truly begin!

I can't wait to discover Uganda, learn some of the language, meet some of the people, and truly experience this.
The traffic in Kampala is crazy. I love it.

Rumor has it we may get to slaughter some chickens in the north. Get excited. Knowing my luck it'll probably attack me. Or give me pink eye. Meh. Gotta toughen me up a little.

Hope everyone else's adventures are going well!

J -1

"You leave your home secure in your knowledge and identity. But as you travel, the world in all its richness intervenes." - Kent Nerburn

Tomorrow is my big departure. By tomorrow I mean it's already 3am and I'm still putting the finishing touches on my backpack, while getting my last minute fill of tomatoes, and asking myself why I am incapable of a) packing light and b) getting my crap done before the absolute last minute.

I know I haven't been able to see many people while I've been back. It's been crazy trying to get everything organized in such a short period of time, and trying to coordinate everyone's schedules. Sorry to anyone I may have missed, but I'll be back soon enough. You won't even realize I was away :)

I can't believe that this time tomorrow I'll be in Uganda!

What is my life. This is crazy. Uganda. Rwanda. India. Nepal.

Pinch me.

Today is the first day of the rest of your life

I love this saying. My dad used to always say it to me whenever I would finish something important, and I still think it holds true for every day of my life. It's so important never to forget that we constantly have the power to change our future, make our own decisions, and not be the victims of our circumstances. We must strive for what we want, and remember that we have the power to achieve anything.

In a few days, I will begin my trip that will actually last until November. It's all happening so fast. I didn't really see this whole "backpacking through the world" thing as it snuck up on me. In the two weeks since graduation, I haven't really had time to relax and contemplate what it has all meant for me. I've said bye to my dad and to all of the friends I've made in the past 3 years in the States, I've been to Pennsylvania and New York City, and flown over the Atlantic (with a sinus infection - bad idea f.y.i.). Between doctor's appointments and shopping trips, I've been trying to take care of anything I may need until November, although it really doesn't feel like I'll be gone that long. I've now started thinking of "months" like "weeks," and I don't think it'll really hit me until I get to some unknown part of the world in a few months, looking over some mountain top village and start wondering - when did this become my life.

Wow. My life. Not my college career. Not my summer vacation. Not my study abroad experience. MY LIFE!

This is what I've always wanted to do, or at least for the past few years, and it's happening. Today is really the first day of the rest of my life, so I'm trying to take the bull by its horns.

Just for a recap of my plans for the next few months (MONTHS!) so I can be tentatively tracked on a map:

• July 1st: Flying from Geneva to Entebbe, Uganda, via Amsterdam

I will spend approximately 3 weeks in Uganda (mainly in Gulu I think) and 3 weeks in Rwanda (mainly in Kigali).

• July 15th: Flying from Entebbe, Uganda to Geneva, via Amsterdam (arriving home July 16th)
• July 19th: Geneva to New Delhi

Tentatively, I will be spending a little under a week in Varanasi, then 3 weeks in Tawang, on the border with Bhutan and China in an orphanage. After my mom leaves on August 20th, I will be on my own until November. Well, meeting up with some of my lovely friends along the way, and hopefully making a few new ones too.

Although this journey is a little scary, I'm really excited that it's finally happening. I know I will be away from my friends and family, but I'm hoping that, for most of you at least, out of sight does NOT mean out of mind. I know I think about you guys all the time, so don't forget your little Swiss Miss :)