Disneyland India

Back-blogging as I just recently regained internet access, but I hope to be current in a few days:

A panicked "last shot" of sunshine on
the way to the airport in Delhi

Onward and upward... or eastward, at least - that's right, I officially moved onto my new home base, Kolkata! The fifteen of us dispersed after our initial three days in Delhi - five moved south to Chennai, five (including me) went to Kolkata, and the remaining five stayed on for their assignment in Delhi. Splitting up was a strange situation - between the initial orientation in D.C. earlier this summer and the Delhi orientation, it's safe to say we felt like a unit, and breaking up that unit was not a particularly fun experience. Also, the thought of resettlement (or settlement, rather) was still a stressful one, not in the least because a few of us Kolkatans remembered during the ride over to the airport that the Delhi sunset may have been the last one we'd see in months (or so we feared) due to MONSOON. Monsoon season strikes much of India to varying degrees, but it seems to leave Delhi relatively dry. And as a particularly big fan of Vitamin D, I was a bit concerned about the rain situation in Kolkata before arrival... but more on monsoon in a future post.

What doesn't Wikipedia have these days?
[For reference, New Delhi is in the middle of North
India, northwest of me/the red dot on the map.]

The trip to Kolkata went smoothly. Notable, though, were my expectations, particularly those I voiced to my Fulbright friends in preparation for our trip to our new hometown. Of the five of us Kolkata ETAs (English Teaching Assistants), I was the only one that had been to Kolkata before. And in my infinite(ly limited) wisdom, I felt the need to share these two tidbits of information about Kolkata to my friends: 1] that the airport leaves A LOT to be desired (in that it's old, run-down, and a little sketchy), and 2] that the city is EXTREMELY crowded, and the traffic situation is insane here.

With images of my last trip in mind, I was poised at the window upon landing, ready to point out the teeny airport of my memory as soon as it came into view. So, shocked was I when our puddle-jumper finally turned on the tarmac, revealing a nice, large, glass-encased terminal! Seriously. I'm certain whoever coined the phrase "I couldn't believe my eyes" must have gone through a similar experience. My friends joked that I must have very high standards if I considered this airport run-down. My response? I'm pretty sure I further insisted they just wait until they saw the intensity of Kolkata traffic... which only ended up being another false claim! Our plane got in late so by the time we cabbed it to our hotel, it was just about midnight and Kolkata looked like nothing but a ghost town. There was nearly no one on the streets (but for the people that sleep there, a permanent fixture on a lot of Kolkata streets). I'm pretty sure I even saw some papers blow across the road as if they were tumbleweed. It was so insanely quiet, it was eerie.

View from my hotel window: night...

... and day.

I don't know why I was expecting otherwise, as I know Indian cities quiet down at night like nowhere else. The vivacity of an urban street in the evening versus that of one at midnight is literally as different as night and day. But as I was travelling alone the last time I was in Kolkata, I didn't make it a habit to go out at night so I think I never really realized how radically different a place it is then. Nothing hits you quite as hard as rare moments of silence after hours (or weeks) of the constant humdrum of a city that contains some 5 million people (and what seems like a million cars with functional horns); the silence hit me hard on that initial ride through the city that would soon become home.

Street view of the scene outside my
hotel room window [see above]

But those moments, as all, were fleeting. Just as quickly as I lost my credibility for "lying" to my friends about Kolkata's streets and airport, I regained it back (or most, at least) when the city's people woke up and emerged from its nooks and crannies, repopulating and re-bustling the streets. And also when one of the city's people told us that Kolkata just completed the construction of a shiny new airport terminal. So phew, I wasn't going crazy after all.

Oberoi Grand's grand chandelier 

It's impossible really to describe how crazy/lively/ busy/crowded Kolkata streets are. I've retroactively gathered that I didn't know the meaning of crowded until I got to India (and later, China). But an even stranger feeling than experiencing the crazy streets is experiencing them through a window - particularly through the window of the nicest hotel in Kolkata. That's right, Fulbright put us up at a 5-star business hotel that makes it on the list of places to see in many travel guides about this city. It's called the Oberoi Grand Hotel (one of many Oberois around this part of the world), but I began calling it Disneyland India because of the weird, sheltered impression it began to give us of India as we got comfortable there. (All in all, we spent about 10 days in Oberois in Delhi and Kolkata.) Don't get me wrong, it was a beautiful place; I could easily have stayed there for much longer (on someone else's dime, preferably). But it was so intensely odd to be in my cushy hotel room, looking out at the street below at a guy sleeping on a mat on his bicycle trailer right outside my window [see photo above of the view from my hotel room at night for some idea of that scene]. I must say, though, that people-watching in the hotel's lobby was a fun experience - the clientele was an odd mix of businessmen, pilots, wealthy Indian couples, American teachers (us and another group), and the occasional young woman in a crazy party outfit (an infrequent sight around town).

That's all for now, folks. Tune in next time for a post about apartment-hunting, our first outings in Kolkata, and settling-in stories.
Bhalo thakben ("be well" in Bangla),
Rach

Déjà Vu in Delhi

Back-blogging as I recently regained internet access, hope to be current soon: 

Well, Delhi was a whirlwind of an experience; the threeish days (give or take some jetlag recovery time) went by super quickly. With no more initial orientation events to go, we were allowed a morning of scheduled sightseeing at some of Delhi's biggest tourist locations, both of which I got to see at the beginning of my study abroad stint last time I was here in early 2012. Regardless, here's a gloss on the two sites we went to see, as they are both a part of India's interesting history (and both UNESCO World Heritage sites - love collecting those!):

Look vaguely like Taj Mahal?
Taj was also built by the Mughals.

The first, Humayun's Tomb, is just that - the tomb of Humayun, the second Mughal emperor. Humayn reigned over what eventually amounted to over 1 million square kilometers under his rule, which spanned about 20 years in the mid-1500s. The Mughals were a group of Central Asian Turks, direct descendants of Genghis Khan, who presided over much of North India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan between the 1520s and mid-1800s. Their influence was immense; I learned that much while I was in Rajasthan (my "home state" during my last stay in India), which was never really unified until under Mughal rule. 

The great lattices that cover the "windows" of the mausoleum.

Anyway, Humayun's tomb is the first garden-tomb to be built in India, which makes it a good example of the Persian influence on the Mughals. It also has several Persian Islamic architectural details, including the Qur'anic script chiseled into several archways in the mausoleum itself and inner chambers arranged symmetrically around the large central double-dome. And apparently, it housed many Muslim refugees during the tumultuous Partition of India in the 1940s (by which Pakistan and Bangladesh was formed), for which much restoration was later required when it became an Indian heritage site.

At least the Minar is taller than me.

The second location of our Delhi sightseeing adventure? Qutb Minar, a 238-foot tall minaret also located in modern Delhi. Minars (minarets) are a typical part of Islamic mosques; they're often used for the call to prayer and to serve as a visual reminder of the mosque's location for the community. This one is cool because it's the tallest in India, and also because it contains in its grounds both Islamic and Hindu elements. The Minar itself, although certainly an impressive structure, is almost too unwieldy to truly be appreciated. This is particularly true if it's even a slightly sunny day and you're not wearing sunglasses - I spent much of my time there crying; unfortunately they weren't tears of exultation. Whatever time I didn't spend crying, however, was spent talking a group of cousins that had come out to the Minar on a family trip. Of varying ages between 13-20, they were a fun bunch, and generally were pretty willing to try out a little English on us bideshi (foreigners). And I was a fan of the fact that I didn't tower over these kids in the photo we got with them as I've found I tend to do in pictures with native Asians.

A quick funny story from the Minar: I asked my fellow Fulbright friend Christine to take a quick photo of me near a set of columns I like, knowing that I had gotten one somewhere in the area during my last visit. I particularly like these columns because each one in unique; they each depict different Hindu gods and figures. When it came time to snap the photo, I was dissatisfied with the original column I had chosen, and also the next two (there were people lurking in the backgrounds of each of the proposed positions!) So finally, we settled on one and Christine took a photo. Lo and behold, 18 months after my original trip (and probably nearly a year since I had seen photos from said trip), and it turns out that I ended up choosing the exact same location for my columnar photo opp as last time! At least I'm consistent (if consistently forgetful)?

I promise it's not a "spot the differences" game.

All in all, it was really odd to walk through these sites again. It was a strange experience revisiting a place I didn't necessarily expect to have the opportunity to see again, never mind doing so a mere 18 months after my original trip. But at the time of that first Delhi visit (a week into my first trip to India), I apparently still wasn't fully aware of the strength this country's allure and its effect on my plans. So I find myself here again, in so far what has felt like an eerily familiar situation, but I know I'm about to be hit with a whole lot of newness - what a frightening and exciting thought!

Bhalo thakben ("be well" in Bangla),

Rachel

GUESS WHO'S BACK??

It's official; I'M BACK! After a fourteen hour red eye from JFK (not to mention the eight months of wait time since I submitted the Fulbright application), I landed in Delhi on Tuesday evening. Certainly, the sleeplessness and restlessness associated with a long overnight flight makes for a surreal post-flight day, but my whole time in Delhi has felt very surreal - that is, until a few hours ago when we took OUR FIRST AUTO(RICKSHAW) RIDE this trip. Finally, we left the comforts and confines of our oddly Disneyland-esque, grand, and sheltered hotel and got to experience a little tiny bit of Delhi as we made our way out for our first unsupervised dinner trip. Albeit short, that auto ride was great: A) because I got to experience it through newbies' eyes, as it was the first auto ride for the friends that I rode with, and B) because it got me really and truly excited to be back. I feel it now in a way that I didn't before, for whatever reason.

By and large, the flight went well. Two movies and a long conversation with a Fulbright friend and her new local seat buddy later, we landed in Delhi up one Indian tentative wedding invitation already!! (Fingers crossed that it works out for us!) We're here in Delhi for Fulbright orientation, which is not a particularly noteworthy experience - it's been a lot of preparatory lectures on teaching, culture, and safety. What I perhaps should do, however, is take a step back and say a few words about Fulbright:

US Senator William J. Fulbright founded the Fulbright program in 1946 as part of a diplomacy project to promote mutual understanding between Americans and people of other countries after World War II. To my knowledge, the U.S. has been sending Fulbrighters  of some capacity to India for quite a few decades now, since Fulbright's early years. As a recipient of a Fulbright scholarship, I'll be an English Teaching Assistant (read: English teacher... not assistant) at a school here in Kolkata for the next nine months.

But first of all, when I get to Kolkata I'll spend the first month getting oriented (believe me, it may in fact take that long) and learning Bangla, the regional language of my state of residence, West Bengal. (It's the same language that's spoken in Bangladesh, which was once a part of India, and a few other small Indian states in the area like Tripura [although regional accents/dialects may be cause for some variation here and there].) Hopefully it goes well!

More on Delhi sight-seeing to come!

Bhalo thakben (or "be well" in Bangla),

Rach

Calcutta Capers - One Post Down, Many to Come!

In five days, I leave for Calcutta (also/more recently called Kolkata, a name which I will also use), where I will be teaching English as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant for nine months. I will be updating this blog as regularly as possible (I promise!), so you can stay current on my travels and daily life in Kolkata.

Any blog entry posted under (or prior to) this one refers to my time in India in early 2012, including my brief stint in Kolkata itself; so any post above this one will be a current one.

Happy reading!
Peace,
Rachel

Bristol Press article (thanks, Steve Collins!): http://www.bristolpress.com/articles/2013/06/19/news/doc51c12047e60aa153635631.txt
Villanova press release: http://www1.villanova.edu/villanova/media/pressreleases/2013/0506-1.html