On the Road

sorry i don't have pics yet. i'm working on that. but i've been moving a lot and out of good internet for a while.

since i last wrote i've moved around to such different places and environments. from gokarna i went to hampi. it was a bumpy 12 hour journey on the state long distance bus. hampi looks like it's straight out of the flintstones. in the middle of nowhere, all of sudden you come upon a place huge piles of boulders, with banana and sugarcane fields, and coconut trees. the boulders, precariously balanced on top of each other, are strewn about temple ruins. i stayed in a village and spent my days bicycling around to the ruins, climbing on rocks, and watching sunsets. hampi is such a chilled out place where there's a lot to do if you like to be outside. i met some british friends traveling together, and we biked several kilometers out of the ruins to a lake on top of a mountain. the water was so clean and refreshing. there was a sign that said there were crocodiles in the lake, but we figured it was just to scare people from swimming in it. we spent the whole afternoon swimming and chilling out lakeside and then later we found out there really were baby crocs in the water! another night there was word of a jam session inside a teepee. so a bunch of us walked out to the edge of the village. a young indian couple built a huge teepee and made a lounge cafe inside of it. some people brought different instruments and played some music, but mostly ended up as a laid back evening of conversation.

i wish i could have stayed in hampi longer, but it was time to go. i had to be in manipal for the fulbright conference.

being there was a complete 180 from how i'd been living before. they put us up in a classy hotel. it's the first time i've had a piping hot shower since i left the us. and the first time I've eaten hotel buffet food for every meal. Around 100 Fulbrighters and guests attended the conference. All of the other Fulbrighters are really talented, amazing people. Some are high school exchange teachers, other Doctoral dissertation researchers, and others like myself, recent college grads. We met in workshops and sessions all day, shared our experiences and met one another. After the conference ended, I transferred to Mangalore, a couple hours from Manipal and stayed there overnight to catch the morning bus to Bylakuppe the Tibetan settlement.

I might have had the worst night of my India trip in Mangalore. I have never felt so terrified in my whole life like the way I did that night. I had stomach issues throughout the conference. Despite the food being fancy and from a hotel, it was very rich, oily and spicy. I couldn't eat much while I was there. My stomach was so upset and on the last day of the conference it finally culminated into diarrhea and vomiting. I went to a nearby clinic where the doctor told me I had inflammation of the intestines and infectious diarrhea. He gave me a bunch of Cipro and said it would be fine in a few days. That's why I decided to stay in Mangalore for a night. I stayed in a Lonely Planet recommended hotel. Mangalore is a quiet city, and will a lot of college students around and banks. The hotel was an old hotel something out of the art deco period, very sixties. It was huge and had a lot of rooms and had a creepy dark vibe to it, but I didn't realize it when i first checked in. i came around 4pm and showered and rested in my room til 6:30p when i left to have dinner, but before i left, the phone rang. that was weird because who would be calling me at the hotel. i picked up and it was some guy that said he was staying on the second floor and saw that i just arrived and wanted to offer the internet to me if i wanted to check mail. i declined and hung out. after dinner, that guy called again. "i thought you were going to call me," he said. all this time he's being polite and normal sounding. then it turned creepy. he started asking me all these questions, and i of course dodged answering them, and was politely trying to get off the phone. he wasn't getting the message, at all. then i turned on to bitch mode (being in india really teaches you how to do this) and told him i wasn't interested and then i hung up. i went to bed early, but i could barely sleep all night. the guy started to call me in the middle of the night, letting it ring and then hanging up. the ring of the phone cut through the silence in my room so i woke up with my heart beating fast and hard. the ring was something out of a hitchcock movie. then he i could hear someone coming down the stairs and then a knock on my door. this happened at 11:30p, 1:15a and 2:30a. i eventually unplugged the phone. i was so scared. weird shit happens in india all the time. and there's no shortage at all of creepy, disgusting and weird men in this country. i encountered many on my travels. but i never felt so scared by one like that guy. the lock on my door was flimsy too. i was scared that he might try to break into my room while i was sleeping so i couldn't fall asleep. after he knocked on my door (who would knock on someone's door in the middle of night when obviously they are sleeping?) i could hear him standing there for some time. silently i crept over to the door and put a chair there as a block. then i could hear strange noises coming from the second floor. i kept looking at the clock, thinking that i just had to make it through the night. every time i fell asleep a little, i'd wake up panicked from whatever weird sound i heard, or his knocking. and during that sleep i had nightmares about the hotel. one dream i still remember was that of me being in the hotel and seeing the ghost of an old man. next to him was a little girl who looked unhappy and trapped by the old man. i went over to the girl to pull her away and the man took my hand and was trying to pull me with him into the ghost realm. i couldn't free my hand, so in my dream i started to invoke a demon spirit in order to overpower and scare the man. i started to hiss and turn into a scary deity like the ones i've seen painted on tibetan temples. he freed my hand, and simultaneously i woke up, threw my head forward and realized i was hissing out loud. theni heard the sound of something jump off the bed and run away. the morning didn't come fast enough. right when day broke, i got out of bed, packed the rest of my stuff, and left to the bus station.

after 7 hours I made it to the largest tibetan settlement in india. Around 10,000 Tibetans lived in Bylakuppe. It's sort of in the middle of nowhere. There are 20 camps in all spread out in between farmlands and hilly fields. Each camp is like a neighborhood or cluster of homes. Some camps are just shops and restaurants and some are monasteries. On the edge of the settlement is a forest where elephants and other wild animals roam. Before I left Manipal, another Fulbrighter studying Buddhism put me in touch with a colleague of his who lives here. Her name is Dolkar, and she's been a life saver. After coming from Mangalore and that whole incident, it's been pure joy to stay with Dolkar and her family. She went to one of best international schools in Asia so she speaks English fluently. I've been here for the past 3 or 4 days. I've already lost count. I've quickly fallen into with her family and everyday life. She and her whole family are really warm, generous and welcoming.

I visited some monasteries, but the real highlight of being here has been experiencing and learning about everyday life in the settlement. Although people here are very modern looking and wear the best and latest fashions, carrying the flashiest phones, they still are very down to earth people and live a very traditional lifestyle. Dolkar and her family are very close and they all help each other with all the chores. As the oldest child, Dolkar (who's my age) has to cook for her whole family (around 10 people including grandma, cousins, dad, brothers and sisters) 3 meals a day, and clean. she happily does it, and they all help her. there is so much work to do so everyone helps out. the others are younger and go to school still, but when they are around they help with laundry, food prep or other farm work. her dad and grandmother take care of the dairy farm and all the other crops there. their kitchen is very traditional. it has a traditional tibetan hearth on one side that takes up the entire wall. for someone like myself who grew up in an american city, this kind of this is completely surreal. during the day i help out with some on the housework, or dolkar and i go around town doing different things. today i churned butter, and then we went to hear her cousins sing in the local school singing competition. all the kids were dressed up in tibetan clothes singing songs in homage to HH the Dalai Lama. it was really cute. later on i helped them churn butter in this long cylindrical vat.

at night when all the kids come home from school everyone hangs out outside on the porch or in the yard. they all get along and never fight with each other. all the siblings and cousins love each other so much. it's refreshing to see such love within a family and between friends. strangely it feels like she and i are old friends or i've known her for a long time.

feeding a lot of people is not an easy thing to do. i've never eaten so much potatoes and bread in different variations. in the morning they typically have milk tea with pa le, thick flat round brown bread (she hand rolls each one and then cooks them one by one on a skillet). Lunch is usually pa le with stir fry potatoes or cabbage. And dinner is usually some kind of meat, either mutton or beef cooked in broth with turnips or tomates and either rice or pa le.

i love being here and being with their family. one thing that i realized from being here is how wealthy a lifestyle i feel i have in the US. from accomodation to food, i have so much variety and abundance. i love to eat green vegetables and i feel like it's a treat when we have a different vegetable for lunch or dinner other than potatoes. and it's a treat that we have a sink to brush our teeth in as opposed to brushing my teeth over a squat toilet. or that there is hot running water.

i always knew that i was fortunate and blessed, but i now i really get why.

Gokarna, India

Some pics taken with Liz's camera...enjoy!

It was like the Twilight Zone

i thought the drama would cease yesterday. even the end of yesterday things chilled out. the sea had been crazy since i arrived, and not until today, after claiming 3 lives, the sea was calm. i had come back from town, hot and sweaty and tired, i decided to go into the water. i wanted to get rid of the creepy feeling i had about the whole ordeal. so me and another friend, a guy from spain named Pau went in to the water. after wards we walked over to this other cafe, and as we're walking there, i see something on the shore. and i'm like, oh shit, is that another body? and yeah, it was. it was the body of the half english half indian man who drowned and wasn't found yesterday. he was beached on the shore. his best friend saw him in the water and pulled him out. he was more than 24 hours in the ocean so you can only imagine the state of his body. he was white and purple and bloated and his face (which i didn't have a good look at) had been smashed against the rocks. the police finally came 3 hours after we called for them. i'm not sure there's a such thing as emergency response here. they just covered it with a sheet and left it there all night until around 11pm when his family arrived from England. As it laid there all day in the setting sun, decomposing, hundreds of flies landed all over the body. it was terrible.

the strange thing is, but i guess more natural things is, life goes on, and on, in the most normal fashion. death happens, even when it's violent or morbid, and life stills goes on.

Today, we finally had a normal, pleasant day in Kudle Beach Gokarna. I ran with Liz, and Michal and Dov played frisbee. People were swimming, and hanging out in the sun. We all sat together during the sunset.

It's starting to feel okay here.

there's something wrong with the sea

my parents left two days ago. after they left i took four local buses for almost 5 hours and ended up in a small dusty middle of nowhere town called gokarna. it's a place that's been recommended to me to see. there was no one around. it's the type of place that closes down randomly in the middle of the afternoon. i spotted some rickshaw drivers and hopped in one. i was headed to kudle beach. he brought me to the edge of the mountain/foothill. i was confused. this didn't look like beach. then he pointed to a footpath down the mountain. i grabbed my stuff and hiked down the footpath. it opened up onto this beautiful beach nestled between two mountains. a cove of sorts. it was like a secret beach world. barely anyone there. just a handful of foreigners. this was kudle beach.

i walked a few hundred meters and saw liesbeth, a friend from dharamsala, sitting in a cafe, smoking a cigarette and drinking a coffee. it was good to see my friend again.

two days later, i woke up and went out to the beach. it was early for here so there weren't many people out except for a group of young indian student tourists playing together in the waves. i went for a walk with my friend dov along the beach. while we were walking back when we saw this israeli girl standing there crying and pointing toward the water and panicked. she said that they was an indian guy drowning in the water and her boyfriend went in to save the indian guy. then several girls from the group i saw earlier came running over to us screaming that their two friends were in the water and couldn't swim and were drowning. they were frantic, crying and screaming, help us, somebody call an ambulance, call the police, save them, please, please, help us, go save them, please somebody that knows swimming.

we were running back and forth along the beach trying to find someone that could help, but remember we're not near civilization at all. the closest town is a 20 minute trek along a rocky path, and even that place is like a ghost town.

more and more people came out to the beach to see what was going on. there were about 5 people who were trying to go in to the water, but the waves were too strong. they relentlessly came one after another. and i stood there holding the girls whose friend it was in the water. he was so far out in the sea. we could all see him struggling. it was clear that swimming out there would be impossible. there was a old wooden rowboat beached on the shore. dov ran to it and screamed to people standing near to help him. There must have been 40 indian men, standing around, and none of them helped him. it was tourists that were running quickly to come help dov, finally they got the boat to the water, and dov and a few others tried to get the boat past the breaking waves, but it was just too strong.

everyone was out on the beach watching what was going on. there are only about 30 foreigners staying on this beach. the rest of the people here are indian construction workers, and cafe/restaurant workers and other locals.

all this time, none of the internet cafe people or restaurants, who all have phones, called the police or an ambulance. i was running up and down the beach trying to get service on my cell phone to call the police. i finally got through and explained what was happening and that we needed an ambulance right away.

a tourist, i think he was american, was able to save one of the indian guys from the water. it had been at least half an hour by now that he'd been drowning. where were the fucken police?? we were at the closest beach to town and they should have been there right away. we called again and again, and they said help was on its way. but so much time passed and no one showed up.

we immediately started cpr on the first guy that came out. he was a young man, probably in his early twenties. between myself, the american guy that saved him, and this french guy, we took turns giving cpr. everyone crowded around us. there was no doctor, and no one who knew anything about emergency medical care. the indians just stood there, looking at us, not helping, just staring.

there was just so much water in his lungs. sea water was foaming from his mouth. we pumped his chest and turned him to his side to drain him of all the water. after most of the water was out we gave him mouth to mouth recessitation. i was doing the pumping and the other guys were breathing into him.

i kept wondering if there was still a chance for this young man to live. he'd been in the water for so long, and didn't have a pulse for so long and he wasn't breathing for so long. the brain can only live without oxygen for so long. but we kept on going until the police arrived. but the police did absolutely nothing. the victim's friends went screaming for the police to come help. but they just stood there. we screamed at them to get an ambulance. they just looked at each other, not knowing what to do, not knowing what number to call, doing nothing. i can't describe how unbelievable it was. then they said there was an ambulance waiting at the top of the foot path. we got a sheet, and put the young indian man on the sheet to carry him to the ambulance. we were on the opposite side of the footpath. it was about 600 meters away. several foreign men came to help, but among the 100 able-bodied indian men standing around, not one of them came to help us carry him, even though we were struggling. it was me and another girl, dov and two foreigner men. we were all barefoot and the footpath is entirely uphill made of jagged, sharp rocks. it was so hard to carry him. we had to put him down a couple of times and then the sheet we were carrying him on started to rip. people passed us, and no one helped. at one point the guy at the front and his girlfriend said that he was already dead. he was foaming at the mouth and nostrils. he was excreting greenish yellowish fluids. after the sheet ripped they said maybe we should just leave him there. i couldn't fucken believe it! leave him on the footpath!

we finally got him into the ambulance.

during the time that i was helping give cpr, dov and michal, along with some other saved the israeli guy that had gone in to save the drowning indian guy. he too, got swept away by the water. his girlfriend was hysterical and crying, but he would be okay. they pulled him out, and as we walked past them on the shore while carrying the first indian guy, i saw that he was coughing up water, breathing, and was able to respond to questions. another group of people carried the israeli guy to the ambulance soon after.

completely shocked and fazed i walked down the footpath back to the beach. went home and took a shower. i came out to the cafe in front of my guesthouse and was sitting there with liesbeth. then we see a crowd of people standing in front of our cafe pointing in the water. they were pointing at a floating body in the water. there were about 30 indian people standing there and none of them did a thing. when liz and i realized what they were pointing at we ran from the cafe and into the water to pull the body out. it was the second indian guy, the other friend in the group of indian students. she and i struggled to get the body out of the water. it was so heavy. all those people stood around and none of them helped us pull him from the water and onto the beach. we yelled for the guy at the cafe to call an ambulance. but he just stood there and said he's probably already dead. i couldn't believe these people. she and i didn't know what to do. an israeli guy came running over and tried to drain water from the young man's body. i ran into the cafe to tell them to call for help. finally he did. we got a sheet, and put the body on the sheet. i know that he must have already been dead when i pulled him out of the water. but we still needed to get him to a hospital. it's like if we didn't do anything, they would have just left him there. we eventually some other tourists came over to help us and they carried him to the ambulance waiting at the top of the footpath.

afterwards i went back to the cafe to sit down. then i heard news that actually there was another person still in the sea. he was a half english half indian man who lived in the area. i had no idea there was a fourth person who drowned. his body has not turned up yet, and we're not sure that it will. we found his backpack with his wallet and car keys in the sand.

the rest of the day dragged. i guess people saw me help give cpr, so when i took a walk in the afternoon everyone was asking me if i was okay. i guess my face couldn't hide that i felt twisted up inside. i can't describe it. i just feel it.

it's very ironic. a few days ago i finished reading Blindness by Jose Saramago. I had this book for years but never read it until now. Throughout this entire ordeal, I kept thinking about the story in Blindness.

A city is struck by a sudden blindness. Everyone is the city goes blind except for one woman. The government starts to quarantine the blind in a prisons until eventually even the government goes blind. The story tells about the terrible things that people begin to do to each other because they are only concerned with themselves and their own survival. It talks about greed, and fear, about violence, about apathy, and about the perverse and twisted lack of humanity that pervades the people struck with blindness. but despite this, there still is the glimmer of love and compassion that exists between the people who selflessly help each other.

today i lived that story.