8 months, 3 continents, and hopefully a little self-discovery

Well- lets see how well I can summarize, because there is certainly a lot to say about the last few days! (If you don't want the long version, scroll to the bottom for the photo-summary :)

Last Thursday we had all day CSIM session where we drove to Navadarshanam in the state of Tamil Nadu, which borders Karnataka. Navadarshanam is an experiment in alternative living which has now been going for many years. A few people live in the compound, but quite a few villagers from nearby also just come to work for the day. They focus on using the land as it should be used- limiting grazing and therefore allowing the native species to re-inhabit the land. They have eco-friendly homes there, and it is just a very peaceful area- especially compared to Bangalore! We talked with an older man who lives there and then we had lunch and had to head off to our next stop.

We went to the Narayana Hospital in Bangalore, which was founded by Dr. Devi Shetty. This hospital is unique because it doesn’t refuse treatment to anyone who can’t pay and they provide exceptional treatment for many critical ailments, particularly heart problems. We had a tour of the hospital, (including the pediatric heart care unit—wow--) and then a discussion with one of the doctors there. At that point, we had already been out and about for quite a long time and we were all getting pretty tired, so it was time to head out and we had our last large-group dinner at a nice restaurant, where we also celebrated Laura’s birthday! We all got home that night and crashed- it had been a pretty long day.

Friday was another interesting day. We were all supposed to meet Lily at her house in the morning, but then because of scheduling and communication issues, we ended up working from home the apartments here in the morning, meeting with Professor Moledina around noon, and then going to Lily’s house in the afternoon to quickly touch base and make sure we knew what was expected of us during our last week.

When we left Lily’s, we came back to the apartments and did a little more work, and then Kat and I had to get ready to catch our overnight bus to Hampi! We cooked a little pasta for dinner and then left about 9:45, took an auto to the bus station, and then spent the better part of half-an-hour trying to figure out which bus was ours (you wouldn’t think that would be as challenging as it actually is…). But we did find it, and after I popped a sleeping pill, we drove (and I slept) for seven hours from Bangalore to Hampi.

We got in to Hampi at about 7:15am and after being practically attacked by auto drivers wanting to take us wherever we wanted to go, we decided to first go find our hostel and see if we could drop off our backpacks. We found a less-pushy auto guy, and thought we arranged to go straight to our hostel, but we were wrong. Turns out we had to cross the river to get to our place! Whoops! Oh well, there is a ferry that runs pretty regularly for 15 rupees, or about 25 cents. We took the ferry across a beautiful river, and then got another auto on the other side of the river to our hostel, called Gowri Guesthouse. It was 4 or 5 kms to the hostel, and we couldn’t quite tell on the way there, but it is absolutely stunningly beautiful the whole way.

When we got to Gowri at about 8am, we met the family who runs the place, who were all very nice and accommodating and didn’t give us a hard time at all for wanting to check in so early. We had coffee and breakfast there, and then after emptying out our backpacks of the non-essentials, went back out to check out the town. We decided to walk into town, which was an excellent choice- like I said, it was beautiful. Hampi has some really neat rock formations- absolutely huge boulders everywhere- rice paddies, palm trees, banana trees, and lots of fun animals like water buffalo, cows, lizards that I’m pretty sure were poisonous, monkeys, and lots of dogs. When we got in to town, we decided to cross the river again since that’s where all the ruins are, so we got back in the ferry, paid another 15 rupees, and then climbed the stairs up the river bank to the street. We didn’t have a map or anything, so the first way in to the ruins that we saw we took, and we just started wandering around. We walked through a couple of temples, saw a temple elephant named Lakshmi, who if you give her a coin (or a 10 rupee note if you are white!) will bless you by putting her trunk on your head. Kat tried to give her a coin, but when we found out it was more for foreigners we laughed and walked off. We walked through the ruins for several hours, stopped in the shade for some water a couple of times, and just reveled in the beauty of it all. The ruins are on top of a hill so you see all the beautiful boulders, trees, and the river while looking at the temples and other ruins- pretty spectacular. We found one spot called Sunset point that we decided to come back to on Sunday with a picnic lunch to watch the sunset. At about 3, we headed back to the river to go back home, bought some water and mangoes along the way, but ended up sitting for a while on the stairs that lead down to the river bank enjoying the view and waiting for the boat. I had a coconut, and then we decided to go right down on the riverbank to wait for the boat, since we didn’t think they realized we were waiting. When we went down there, there were a bunch of locals who were bathing in the river and we definitely felt like we were intruding and in the way, so we went back up the hill a little bit. Finally the ferry came, and we crossed the river again. We stopped at a street-side shop to buy some more crackers and water since we didn’t really have lunch, and while we were there, a charming guy came up to us with the opening line of “your face looks awful!” Good opener, guy. We knew we were pretty sunburned, but mind you, this guy had one eye swollen shut, so we didn’t think he had much room to tell us we looked bad. He kept trying to get us to tell him where we were from, but finally the shopkeeper yelled at him, and he left us alone and we started walking back to our hostel.

Pretty quickly we realized our sunburn was going to be 10X worse if we walked the whole way back, so we got an auto to avoid blistering (which I actually did not completely avoid…). Our hostel had these really fun things- the best way I can describe them is like wooden hammocks- they were wooden beds essentially that were hanging outside all of the rooms and swung from ropes, so Kat and I each grabbed our books and sat out there for a while, just relaxing and enjoying the quiet. We both dozed off for a little bit, had the mangoes we’d bought earlier, and then decided to walk around the hostel a little bit as the sun was going down.

There is a lake, called Sanapur Lake, near where we were staying, but we couldn’t go down on the banks or anything because there were tall walls around it warning of the crocodiles that lived in it. We walked around for just a few minutes, saw a ton of HUGE monkeys (they changed Kat’s mind- she’d been thinking about sleeping outside on the swing things- but those monkeys were a little scary) and then decided we didn’t want to be out too much after dark, so we headed back to our room. At about 8, the dad of the family who runs the place came and asked us if we wanted dinner, and we said we did, so about 15 minutes later we went had a nice home-cooked meal of rice, dal, and chapati. After dinner, we decided we were pretty tired, so we started getting ready for bed. I’d noticed a bunch of spiders throughout the room earlier (and for those of you who know me, you know it is quite a feat that I didn’t run out of there twitching and screaming a little bit), but as we were getting ready for bed we also found a frog and two lizards in our room! We got the frog outside, but the lizards were too quick, so who knows where they went. When I was taking out my contacts and Kat was brushing her teeth, I heard this big thump on the window, and when I looked, I could see that there was a HUGE lizard that had just walked onto the outside of our window- I’m not kidding, I bet it was a foot long- and after Kat and I freaked out and laughed over that for a minute, we went to bed, and amazingly, slept really well on the extremely hard beds.

We got a really lazy start on Sunday morning. We got up and dressed, had another good breakfast of dosas and coffee, and then went back to our beloved porch swing-bed things for a couple of hours. I finished my book and just laid there enjoying the view and quiet. Finally a little before 1, we decided it was time to pack up, check out of our room, and head out. Checking out was fabulous- for three meals each, a decent room for a night where they let us check in and out whenever we wanted, we only paid about $10 each. A pretty good deal, I think! It was a little cloudier and we had sunscreen on, so we decided to walk into town again, but we stopped along the way and had lunch since we knew we weren’t really going to have much of a dinner (there weren’t any restaurants or grocery stores across the river, so we just had crackers and a granola bar). We sat there for a while and then went back and crossed the river again. We were just killing time and relaxing, so we sat on the river bank again for a while just enjoying the view, and then we decided to go grab some more water and mangoes and head back up to sunset point to take some pictures and have our little make-shift picnic. As we were walking up a hill to get to the ruins, we noticed that a cow was walking fairly quickly in a field below us- but was catching up to where we were. And then it was running. And we were getting pretty nervous because that cow could have easily made us into pulp if it wanted to. We stopped walking, but it didn’t stop running, so we quickly decided to walk back down the path- maybe we were just getting to close to its territory or something. That seemed to placate it a little, but then it started BOLTING the opposite direction, and we were nervous that it was going back to where the path that we were on started, so we hustled up the hill, and luckly didn’t see the cow again! We got up there only to discover that they close off the ruins and sunset point at 6pm, which is before sunset. We went up there anyway and sat for a little, took some good pictures, and had our mangoes. We threw the mango seeds and peels into the field in front of some of the ruins and then watched as a monkey came up and ate them, which was pretty funny (and reinforced that I don’t want to cross a monkey’s path on a bad day- they have huge fangs). We headed out at about 5:45 and decided to spend our last little bit of time and the sunset we’d been waiting for back by the river before we had to catch our bus.

At the river we took some great pictures of the sunset, I had another coconut, and we had our granola bars and crackers, and then we eventually went up to the parking lot where all the buses came. Our bus was scheduled to leave at 8, but the whole town shuts down around sunset (it’s an alcohol and substance free town, so nothing much stays open very late), so we just decided to get there while it was still light out and hang out for an hour. We sat at a chai stand, had a thimble full of chai, watched some cows play-fight a little, and then we got on the bus and said goodbye to a lovely and relaxing weekend in Hampi.

Based on the length of the bus ride to Hampi- about 7 hours, we were expecting to get back into Bangalore at about 3am and then have a couple more hours to sleep before we had to get up and go to work… no such luck. For whatever reason, the bus ride back was actually 10.5 hours, so we got back to Bangalore at 7am, took an auto back to the apartments, immediately jumped in the shower, had breakfast and headed back out to work!

Today began our last week in Bangalore, so it is definitely crunch time. Our final report is due Friday, our final presentation is Wednesday morning, and we also have a couple of smaller papers and a promotional video due before we leave on Friday. So it is definitely a busy week! When the internet went out at work again at about 12:30, I decided to come back to the apartments and work since I don’t really have much time to waste. I had the auto drop me off at the grocery store, I grabbed something for lunch, came back ate quickly, and worked until about 10:30 tonight. It was a full day, and now after having slept on a bus last night, I am most definitely ready for bed! Below are some pictures from GSE and a bunch from Hampi- hope you enjoy!

A street in Bangalore

A typical sidewalk in the city... you can see why this is not ideal for some who lacks as much grace as I do...

Amanda and Yoshi after what we now call "an ice cream day"- a day that stresses us out to the point where we have to stop for ice cream on the way home...