I've been on two trips and celebrated two holidays since last I wrote. The pictures from the Mysore trip are already online and rather than reiterate what we did, I think I'll just copy-paste what I wrote for the album descriptions on Picasa:
"CIEE took us on a weekend trip through Bangalore to Mysore, the second largest city in the state of Karnataka. While there, we visited the Mysore Palace, which was constructed from 1897-1912 for the former royal family of Mysore. Nowadays, half of the palace belongs to the government and is maintained as a museum, while the other half still belongs to the heirs of the former royal family. Sadly, cameras were not allowed inside but you can see the palace exterior here. After seeing the palace, we journeyed into a local market where potent scents of fresh vegetables, bananas, incense and perfume joined forces to overpower our collective olfactory systems. Later that evening, we arrived at the lavish Sandesh hotel where I was lucky enough to share a suite with two friends and feast on their breakfast and dinner buffets.
For our second day in Mysore, we traveled to Shravanabelagola, a major Jain pilgrimage center and home to the massive Gomatheswara statue, built approximately a thousand years ago. The album cover captures my first sighting of the statue. Having walked off to the side after the long many-staired ascent, I turned around and nearly jumped out of my skin to discover a giant stone head, looming over the main temple. Numerous other sculptures immortalize Jain saints who dedicated their lives to Jainism's teachings of nonviolence. Afterwards, a local hacked open fresh coconuts and I drank the first coconut milk I've ever actually enjoyed (outside of a Pina Colada, that is).
After Shravanabelagola, we shuttled over to Melkote, a small, local village for a traditional Iyengar (Hindu Brahmin caste) lunch at the local Dharamashala (a place where pilgrims, wanderers and vagabonds can stay while on their journeys), possibly the best meal I've had in India yet. Afterwards, we had the opportunity to wander around the lanes of Melkote, an 'actual' Indian village. You'll notice pictures of signs posted on some houses of a red flame set between the trunks of a white U. These signs denoted that the family within was of the Iyengar caste and worshipers of Vishnu. Finally, we visited the local ancient temple, dedicated to Shiva. In Hindu temples, the main statue of the deity is believed to house the actual God, and is never moved once set into place. I was stunned to realize that the statue of Shiva within had resided in that single place for over eight hundred years. Or, to put it into perspective, approximately four times as long as my own country has existed."
I found out that the head cook at the Dharamashala in Melkote often takes on students after final exams for a weeklong crashcourse through Indian cooking. Following my mental flowchart for life decisions from 'Would this be, in hindsight, awesome?' to 'Will you likely ever get this opportunity again?' I find little reason not to, particularly since I'll have around five to six weeks between my last exam and my flight home. Also I'm not sure life would be worth living without learning and occasionally preparing that man's Safron Rice recipe.
Food-related tangent: my Hindi teacher recently had us over to her house again, where we prepared Chicken Biriyani, a Hyderabadian specialty. Slightly overcooked, it was nonetheless delicious and I look forward to dazzling the tastebuds of unsuspecting hungry friends upon my return to Madison. You've been warned.
A couple days after we got back, it was time for Holi (also on Picasa):
"Holi, the Festival of Colors, is ostensibly celebrated throughout India for such lofty reasons as the triumph of good over evil and spring over winter. But as any Indian will tell you, people really just want an excuse to cover each other with colored powder, water and the occasional egg. While playing with the other students on campus, I was lucky enough to accumulate all three in staggering quantities."
I celebrated Holi with the student population at Gop's, UoH's quadrangle/place to hang out and eat snacks. Looking like lost sheep and blank canvases, we Americans were swiftly powdered, doused and egged without exception until no patch of white skin could betray our foreign origin and we, for a time, blended in with the technicolor crowd. This lasted until the singing, dancing, makeshift-drum slamming crowd was worked into such a frenzy that they began tearing each others' shirts, hungry for blank slates. My peers, following the 'when in Rome' mentality, made sure to include me in this ritual, prompting a pink, green and orange-bearing mob to descend upon me once again, so that moments later, my bare chest was as color-covered as the ripped, ragged tshirt I clutched in my neon green hand. Blinking, I watched the mob's attention turn to some other exposed impostor, whose pristine white skin disappeared just as quickly as mine. Christmas might have just lost its favorite-holiday throne.
Last weekend, I traveled with some friends to Aurangabad in Maharashtra, home of the Ellora and Ajanta caves. We first visited Ajanta's Buddhist caves which date back to the second century, B.C.E. The big, open caves were carved into square or rectangular pillared rooms, featuring huge stone carvings of the Buddha, Boddhisatvas and other traditional symbols like the twelve-pointed wheel.
That Saturday, we visited the less-famous but in my opinion, even more impressive Ellora caves, which showcase incredible temples and monasteries from the Buddhist, Hindu and Jain faiths. Interestingly, they were all carved around the same general time (550-750, 600-875, and 800-1,000 C.E, respectively), suggesting a time and place of interreligious harmony. The Kailasanatha Temple was the most impressive of the caves, carved with incredible detail out of a single rock, covering an area "double the size of the Parthenon in Athens." Further details can be found here but yet again, it's a sight of such incredible scale and detail that words simply cannot hope to capture the thing itself, so I'll refer you to the forthcoming bundle of pictures I took instead. I will point out that the carving alone took ten generations of God only knows how many people. Thinking about that while craning my neck in a stupefied attempt to take it all in gave me some appreciation for the immense devotion those artisans must have had.
While in Aurangabad, we also visited the Bibi Ka Maqbara or "Poor man's Taj," a mausoleum strongly resembling the famous Taj Mahal, as well as the Daulatabad fort, reminiscent of Hyderabad's own Golconda Fort. Pictures of all of these will be up soon, time permitting.
As for that second holiday, I got to celebrate Ugadi yesterday, the Telugu new year. A holiday in Andhra Pradesh, it also celebrates the beginning of spring and life itself. My friends and I went down to Shilparamam to celebrate, as we did for the Sankrati festival. While munching on a variety of mango-themed dishes, we enjoyed some traditional Kuchipudi dance, featuring ornately costumed women and smiling, adorably bumbling children dressed as flowers and bees. I also got some new kurtas and, finally, some lungis. The latter are essential for the rapidly heating climate (it's averaged over 100 at midday lately) and infinitely more comfortable than pants when lounging indoors. And hell, when it's socially acceptable to wear a glorified bedsheet wrapped around your waist, why not?
I think that covers most of March's main events. Classes are winding down, which is doubly strange as I still feel like I just got here and classes never really heated up in the first place. That's not to say they aren't engaging, but aside from attending lectures, academic demands have been few and far between. And really, that's fine by me, so long as I'm still learning and feeling intellectually engaged. Indeed, I've learned a great deal about the eastern religions and philosophies that originally piqued my interest in India, in addition to making leaps and bounds in my Hindi.
(Brief aside: Speaking Hindi with people while traveling on weekends or just going downtown has been one of the coolest, most rewarding aspects of this trip. It's fantastic and bizarre to find myself on the other side of the world, speaking with people in their mothertongue, meeting their children, wives and brothers while sharing a bit of my own story. All the hours of drilling vocab and learning the difference between a "d" and a "dh" were worth being able to speak with a three-year-old girl and her mother, even though neither speak a word of English.)
After three months of waking up at 5:30 in the morning to bike over to the yoga center, I'm about to take my certification exam. I've been studying all the relevant philosophy, psychology and physiology this weekend, as well as getting all the Sanskrit names straight and making last corrections to the asanas in practice. I originally started yoga for the sake of my capoeira game, hoping to become more flexible. In addition to learning that it was really my balance that needed improvement, moreso than my flexibility, I learned that I actually love yoga itself. So, finding the 6am certification course more challenging, I signed up with a group of friends, of whom two others remain and will be joining me for the exam. If all goes well, I'll pass and receive teaching certification, which could, I hope (*knock on wood*), yield some sweet part-time employment. Whether teaching students at the UW SERF or hippies in Madison, it'd be great if someone paid me to do something I'd be doing every morning anyways.
Everyone around me has been marvelling "My God, I can't believe it's almost over already." In one sense, I see where they're coming from and it is rather weird to be already registering for my fall UW classes. But it seems far from the end for me, as I'm really only around 60% through my time in India and the best is yet to come. I've felt the most here when traveling, and while I have made some good progress in seeing the south, I have a few more stops here and the entirety of the north to see. So I guess I'm marking time with those experiences and the majority of them are yet to come. I'm getting really excited for my five-ish week trek through the north, which I'll begin by cutting out west to Goa before working my way clockwise around the subcontinent. I plan to see the desert, hike in the Himalayan foothills, and visit some wildlife preservation sites to name a few, and will be starting to arrange a more concrete itinerary with my accompanying friends soon.
I've been thinking about those five weeks and how, money permitting, they just might be the most free five weeks of my life. I'll really have no obligations other than making my eventual flight home, leaving me free to go wherever I please, taking time along the way to enjoy what sights may come my way. I know it's going to be wonderful and that unbridled freedom to explore, experience and grow is a big part of what called me here. So the journey's far from over for me. And I think, after it all, I'll be ready to come home.
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