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.