Rest of Bangalore and Mumbai

The pictures on this post are of PSI's activities in Bangalore (or the scenes around our activities)- we do one-on-one communications about getting STIs treated with high risk groups like these guys in the vegetable market.

But that was a week ago. I had a wonderful weekend, got up early Saturday to go rollerblading. Although the only place we could think to go was the driveway of the local "country club". Still it was fun. Then I played squash with another friend. Went to lunch to two other friends. Bought some fabric so I could have my tailor duplicate my favorite GAP pants for $6 (including fabric), met up with two other friends for coffee. The one is recently pregnant so very excited! It was an exhausting day, particularly because it's getting so hot here but it was a really nice Saturday.

Then the beginning of this week I spent in Mumbai. I felt really good about the work but didn't get out to see much. After one day that I spent at a meeting a colleague and I walked down to the beach. There was a wonderfully green park. People here tend to walk only in parks and in circles as the streets are not at all pedestrian friendly but it's always nice to see ocean! It's what I miss most living in Delhi. Then that night the group of us went to see some of PSI's activities in the "red light district". Mumbai has a very large area where each street is just lined with brothels. We sat down for an evening of entertainment, the crowd probably had 300 people and our folks did various entertainment and educational activities around getting HIV tests, where, why, how much it would cost, how long it would take, etc. It was all in hindi so I only understood about half of it. But an older sex worker (as she was a women in the area I assume she was a sex worker) was sitting next to me and could tell I couldn't understand so kept explaining everything to me but IN HINDI. So that didn't help much!

The cat, Kali - goddess of destruction, lived up to her name while I was gone. Broke this wonderful vase I had recently bought. Guess she's feeling better! The last picture is of the water bottle they gave me in the Mumbai office. I love the idea that the selling point is more oxygen. My first reaction is wouldn't the amount of oxygen change the entire property of H2O? I.e., it wouldn't be water anymore? But someone tried to explain that they put more oxygen between the water molecules. Whatever, I still think it's funny!

Holi and Bangalore

The fact that I haven’t posted anything about Holi is reflective of how I celebrated. Holi is the festival where you throw color on each other. Two years ago I was in the desert in Jaisalmair and really played – link to that story. This year, the night before (called choti or “little” holi) I went to a friend’s family’s place for a party which included much singing and dancing (not by me) but very little color. It was nice to see how families celebrate. Religiously Holi is a holiday that represents the triumph of good over evil. The story goes that there was a bad woman Holica who was the aunt of a very good little boy. Bad means atheist and good means goes to temple. She grabbed the boy and jumped in the fire to kill him but the fire killed her and the gods saved him. Anyways, instead of “playing” holi on the actual day, I stayed in and thoroughly defeated a friend at scrabble. Wild, I know. :)

Now I’m in Bangalore, the Indian version of Silicon Valley. Although I must admit that I don’t see the visual parallel. I came a day early because I realized that I never see the cities I travel to for business. So I came in on Sunday, spent a day with a friend/colleague at her place, shopping, eating. It was good to get a sense of Bangalore. I’m staying at a beautiful renovated garden house that’s part of the Neemrana network here. Neemrana takes old decaying but beautiful properties and turns them into boutique hotels. This is the third one I’ve stayed at. The first one was Ramgarh Villas up in the lower Himalayas and the second was Neemrana Fort right outside Delhi. It’s quite basic in its amenities but it’s so nice to be in a nice places versus just another hotel! Plus they make these incredible jams that they serve for breakfast!

No Stress Passing

I was in Mumbai on Thursday for a quick one-day conference and under a flyover (over pass in the US) was a sign about how Mumbai owned the land and that "Stress passers will be persecuted"! HA!

I've been procrastinating about posting the rest of the pictures from Rachel's visit. Last Sunday we tried to quickly cross a few more outings off the list. First up was the Q'tub Minar. It's Delhi's first city and is home to the world's tallest minar. Here are Rachel and I in front of said minar. It's really a gorgeous set of ruins, but more ruined than most here so it's harder to imagine what the city would have been like. The Agra fort which we had seen the day before, on the otherhand, was very easy for me to imagine living in - in pure luxury of course. However, they didn't seem to be interested in selling.

Later that day we went to INA market, which is a general market, with a little bit of everything but particularly good for random food. It's the place you go when you can't find that ingredient. It's chaotic. Many asian cities I've been in have their equivalent to INA, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia it's the Russian market, in Vientiane, Laos it's the Morning Market. At INA it's crowded aisles of all sorts of things. In the back is the live animals (about to be dead) section with fish, chickens etc. It's smells not so nice - and I'm sure there's no bird flu here:) Actually I was sitting behind a colleague of mine on the flight back from Mumbai. She's a really good doctor and she ordered the chicken - so now I'm feeling much better about eating chicken. I still don't want Tenzing to prepare it though, cuz it's easier to catch in preparation then after it's cooked.

We then went to the Big Chill for lunch, and their famous Mud Pie and ran into a bunch of my friends, which is nice becuase the Mud Pie is just too big for 2.

Monkeys

Forgot to post a picture of the monkeys!

Rachel's Visit

Whirlwind visits are always hard to summarize. My friend Rachel from DC came for a conference and we spent the last few days crossing things off lists. Her first day, Friday, we did shopped - and that can be really exhausting. We then met up with a bunch of friends for dinner at a rooftop north indian restaurant overlooking ruins. I never go to this place unless visitors are in town - but it's just lovely. Saturday we left wicked early (5am) to go to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. The drive, driven by my driver, was actually quite interesting as we had to detour through some typical markets. What Rachel noted as organized chaos. We left early so as to avoid traffic, so got to the Taj by 8am. Which was great because it was essentially empty (that term is completely relative), no crazy lines and the heat wasn't horrible. The taj is the taj. It's really amazing. It changes in every light, depending on time of year. What I notice most though is the changing of the Yuma river beside it. When I came in 2001 it was almost completely dry after several years of poor monsoon. In 2003 it was much fuller. This time it was in between, clearly dry but not horrible. You'll notice the camels and water buffalo trudging across (if you click on it to see it bigger). They also now give little cloth covers for your shoes so you don't have to walk barefoot on the tomb. One of the pictures is of a guy putting on his booties. As we were leaving it was getting pretty crazy - I think the first train from delhi had arrived. We then went to breakfast (typical backpacker fare of banana pancakes, which make me oddly happy) at a little guest house overlooking the Taj. I had never seen the Taj from the city - it's really interesting to think about living there and what the significance of the building might be for locals. From there we went to Agra Fort, which is actually one of the more interesting places in Agra. There used to be monkeys as you entered and I was feeling pretty relieved that they were gone but we walked around etc etc until we got to the ladies Mosque and found the monkeys. At first they look so cute, mother de-flea-ing her baby, but then you notice the one that is over the entrance way just waiting to pounce on people. It got to the point that no one was willing to leave because he would attack. Finally someone remembered that pretending to have a slingshot scares them and got it to go away. I'm putting a picture of Rachel and I sitting on one of the thrones in front of the Taj because I think it's cute the whoever we asked to take the picture didn't notice that we were completely blocking the Taj!! Oh well.

It was getting pretty hot by then so went to a hotel pool for a little while. They were doing construction work on a nearby roof and the construction workers were staring so hard it's a shock that they either didn't fall or got any work done at all! But it was a nice way to cool off! We then hit a south indian restaurant for lunch - the traditional thali. Rachel, as a vegetarian is in paradise. And with bird flu almost everyone is a defacto vegetarian or veg and fish only. The drive home was long and even though we got home by 8pm we were utterly exhausted. I'll go into more detail on exploring Delhi with her in another post.