Map: Across the Subcontinent

August 27th, 2005 | By Joshua | 2 Comments »

Here’s an overdue shot of our route. The writing is small, I know, so I’ll spell it out: after landing in Islamabad two months ago, we lingered a month in Pakistan (Hunza, Rawalpindi, and Lahore) before heading east (through Amritsar, Dharamsala, Mussoorie, Rishikesh, Delhi, and Calcutta), ending up here in Birpara, sandwiched between so many borders.

Date Night in Calcutta

August 14th, 2005 | By Joshua | No Comments »

Although still gazing northward toward our new and unknown home in the village of Birpara, Jaipalguri District, we remain wallowing in a character-less strip, 20 kilometers from Calcutta center. We’ve been taking the public bus to the JSK office each day, where we are writing up the questionnaire for our study and also getting to know our new workmates. Otherwise, we are enjoying the air-conditioning and room service of the over-priced V.I.P. Hotel on the desolate Koikhali More.
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Reporting for Duty

August 11th, 2005 | By Joshua | No Comments »

No longer tourists nor family historians, my wife and I are now members of the worldwide AJWS Volunteer Corps. As such, we have begun a two-and-a-half month commitment with the West Bengal-based non-profit organization, Jana Sanghati Kendra (JSK, in Sanskrit, “People’s Integration Center).
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Indulgence in Delhi

August 9th, 2005 | By Joshua | 2 Comments »

A brief, business-oriented stopover in the capital brings us long-denied pleasures like beer, meat (chicken, anyway), sheesha smoking, movies, henna, and all manner of expensive (and foreign) restaurants and shopping to browse. Best of all, for me, is finally getting my iBook repaired and developing six weeks’ worth of photos, some of which I’m hoping will help sell me a few articles.
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Yoga City Yatra: The Rishikesh Runaround

August 6th, 2005 | By Joshua | 4 Comments »

“You picked the absolute worst time to come to Rishikesh,” said Shoshana, the Angrezi (Anglo) proprietress of Kripalu Yoga Ashram.

She was referring not to the sticky monsoon weather but to the thousands of orange-shirted Kanwaria pilgrims who have filled the town — to overflowing — to pay homage to Lord Shiva.

It was our first day here, and Tay and I had begun our search for a private yoga instructor and/or an idyllic ashram. Not for this week, as we’ve only got five days before we have to start making our way to our work site in West Bengal, but for November, when we are thinking of coming back — to get down in yoga town in the cool autumn Himalayan air.
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Monsoon Honeymoon: Mussoorie

August 3rd, 2005 | By Joshua | 5 Comments »

We arrived in Mussoorie on Sunday morning, exhausted, sheets of rain coming down, after an all-night bus ride from Dharamsala. Mussoorie was a place where, as we settled into our fancy hotel, black-faced monkeys with dewy white coats appeared out of the mist on our room’s balcony, wild eyes and babies clinging to their bellies. It was a dripping wet, green-mossy place that sprawled unattractively across a steep hillside, 7,000 feet above sea level. Mussoorie seethed and honked with Indian tourists, too many people, even in the low season, too many aging hotels way past their glory days, too many identical trinket shops sellign so much crap from China (a far cry from Dharamsala whose Tibetan crafts shops all declared the “made in China” label as anathema). The rains barely dampened the vague and tired carnival feeling of “the mall,” an endless main street of activity, a strange Indian cross between Coney Island and a cheap flea market.
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Sign of the times:

August 1st, 2005 | By Joshua | 1 Comment »

Dharamsala Dreamin’

July 30th, 2005 | By Joshua | 5 Comments »

Far north of the disastrous flooding in Mumbai, we are, nevetheless, soaking up our share of the monsoon deluge that has caused so much destruction further downstream. It has rained every day since our arrival last Monday in Dharamsala.
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Our home for the week

July 29th, 2005 | By Joshua | No Comments »

The Noblest Delight! Beyond the Golden Temple

July 27th, 2005 | By Joshua | No Comments »

Ah, the Golden Temple. A worthy site indeed. We were the only westerners among thousands of Sikhs, for whom a visit to this place, its 64 shrines, and a bath in the “pool of nectar,” is necessary at least once during their lifetime. My understanding of Sikhism is that it is a relatively open religion, somewhere between Islam and Hinduism, and we were at its holy of holies; quite an honor.
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