Last weekend was a trip to Chennai (a city on the eastern coast in the state Tamil Nadu) and surrounding areas, organized by CIEE. I was very excited to spend time with the CIEE students; although many of the other SIP students are nice and interesting people, the CIEE students share a special connection with each other like students from the same elementary school or middle school share in a high school setting. It was going to be like a reunion from the Walden, the resort that all of us had stayed at upon initially arriving in the country. That was already two whole months ago.

Of course we had a motorcoach take us to the train station. I realized then that we'd have one wherever we go. I don't know whether or not that's the only transportation available for a group of 22+ people, or whether CIEE was just keen on providing a comfortable environment for us, but whatever the case I was always uncomfortable boarding and disembarking from such an obnoxious vehicle. Compared to the low-lying rickshaws, motorcycles, and rusty buses, a motorcoach ("a/c equipped" appropriately advertised on the side) was a message that those inside were pretty special people...or at least highly privileged. Now take the fact that it was full of white people in a sea of Indians. In a very noticeable way it separated us from the society, us peering down at passers-by either looking back at you to see who was inside or just going about everyday business.

Melissa and I talked a great deal on the train about traveling; she is disappointed in the structure that CIEE provides...or rather requires. I knew what she was talking about, I mean we're provided with food every meal even if we're not hungry, provided with train tickets and hotel rooms that are much nicer than what you'd get for "budget" prices, shuttled around without much say in where we were going or what we'd do when we'd get there, and much of the time prompted to participate in stereotypically "tourist" activities. At the same time the purpose of CIEE is to provide some kind of structured environment in which students can participate in other cultures, that's what makes participating in it different from traveling on your own. Additionally, because of the number of students involved, some generally comfortable baseline has to be established or else you're likely to get complaints. Not everyone in the world shares Melissa's and my "budget," anti-tourist attitudes. Lastly, think about how much of a pickle they would be in if a student were injured or worse; no one would want to participate in an organization with significant risks involved. For the sake of the continuity of the program, our protection needed to be surely ascertained, hence why they schedule enough to do so that we don't have much time to go on our own. This is also probably why the SIP guest house is so well protected with fences, watchmen, and curfew rules prohibiting non-SIP students from entering the grounds after 10 pm. Although I knew where Melissa was coming from, I also knew where CIEE was coming from and wanted to appreciate the trip for just what it was, not getting hung up on what I wanted it to be. You learn quite a bit about someone when you travel with them, and just knowing exactly how people like to travel and what they hope to glean from traveling is enough to expose much of any person's values and personal story.

So we were put in the a/c three tier train class. On these trains, there are many ways to travel. General seating is just benches (highly uncomfortable for rides that are dozens of hours long and overnight); sleeper class is what I've ridden in before and open to the environment unless you purposefully pull down the window; a/c three tier is of course air conditioned which also means that there is always glass between you and the outside, the beds are also slightly thicker (although arranged in the same way) and sheets, blankets, and pillows are provided; a/c two tier is basically just a nicer version with curtains that pull around the beds; first class is very comfortable (there are only maybe a dozen first class seats) and arranged differently, having separate compartments for each group of four people.

I must say I think I like sleeper class the best. First of all, it's a quarter of the price of the a/c three tier. Plus it's arranged in the same way and I can bring my own sheets anyway. I also like hearing what's going on outside including the clank of the train on the rails. It's soothing. As is the wind on your face. Also if you've had the privilege to talk to me about how I feel about air conditioning in general (that's another story), you could have guessed I'd prefer sleeper class.

There was a motorcoach in Chennai when we arrived the next morning to take us to a nearby hotel where we'd eat. Although we were provided with idli (fermented lentil and rice cakes) with chutney for breakfast on the train, CIEE is a fan of scheduling all-you-can-eat buffets (fortunately so am I). Also they reserved hotel rooms for us to "freshen up." Such an idea looks nice on paper, but when you've just arrived having already expected to spend the weekend wearing more-or-less the same clothes and maybe or maybe not showering, you're more excited to get out and see where you are. Of course I could tell Melissa was feeling the same way.

Whatever...it was what it was, and at the least it was time to socialize with the other students. We weren't in Chennai very long; right after breakfast we were shipped to Kanchipuram, a town a few hours a way famous for both the nearby temples and its high quality saris. There we visited the Kailasanathar temple, built in the 8th century and dedicated to Shiva. The temple's importance dwindled out after the king that built it fell out of power. The separation of church and state isn't really a honored concept here as it is in the States, the temple being an example as it had as much political significance as religious. There also I saw some of the oldest paintings known to India as well as many carvings of Shiva in many poses. We had a guide on our tours and on the bus who was a wealth of information and as interested in answering my questions as I was exited to ask them, a favorable combination. For lunch we ate at a local household that also functioned as a museum, displaying the way of life of a native Tamil Nadu household. That evening we also visited some sari weaving shops.

Sari weaving is completely fascinating. It's extremely difficult to describe and requires a loom the size of a room. Thousands of threads are lined up in the loom and alternated in their up/down positions with foot pedals every time the weaver threads back and forth, creating a weaved scarf. There are also eye-level strings that the weaver anchors every few threadings; these strings are connected intricately to other strings that raise or lower the threads of the sari on the edges of the scarf to generate specific and unique designs. It seemed analogous to playing a pipe organ: The act of threading back and forth generates the product, as does playing a keyboard generate sound; foot pedals are used to alter the position of the whole sari, as the feet are used with an organ to open and close the swell box which alters the volume of the whole keyboard; lastly the combination strings, located at the same position where stops would be, alter the quality of the sari by prompting a specific and unique design, just as stops on an organ create unique and specific qualities of sound. The end products of music and cloth in each activity is the sum of many precise actions that involve the whole body, making each very complicated but fun to watch/listen to.

That evening we stayed at a hotel in Mamallapuram, a coastal town also located in the Kanchipuram district, famous for its monolithic rock carvings which illustrate Dravidian Hindu architecture as it was influenced/prompted by similar Buddhist temple carvings. The hotel we stayed at was really nice and there were actually (but also understandably) other white foreigners there. The next day was Spencer's 21st birthday, and we all celebrated by sneaking into the outdoor pool at midnight; we didn't swim for long before someone came and told us we weren't allowed to be there, but that was fine because I was tired anyway.

The next day we saw many of the carvings of Mamallapuram including my favorite, the famous shore temple dedicated to Vishnu. The temple was carved right at the ocean (Bay of Bengal) coast and had to be reinforced during British rule with a surrounding wall to protect it from the encroaching waves, already having eroded much of the temple. The salty air also has done a number on the sharpness of the temple carvings over the years. The area was directly hit by the tsunami a few years ago and completely submerged, but the temple was strong enough to remain unscathed. Just before a tsunami hits, the water level lowers many feet for a few minutes as the wave approaches; right before the recent tsunami, remnants of other previous rock structures were exposed which currently are underwater. It is unknown how many coastal temples originally existed.

The temple was just like one of the sandcastles I make while vacationing at the beach, with an intricately carved central structure being protected from waves by walls. This temple was made of stone though with rock walls and was much bigger; also, while my castles last a few days, this has lasted for centuries. Not only were we at the beach, but I actually felt like I was at the beach, photographing another one of my sandcastles and wondering how long it would last against the ocean. Maybe I should try rock walls next time instead of feeble sand...

That afternoon we went to Dakshinachitra, a nearby center where traditional South Indian customs of folk culture, art, craft making, and architecture are displayed. I was able to observe a "traditional" folk dance (although the audience members aren't "traditionally" sitting and watching but standing and surrounding the performance, moving with the dancers) as well as more sari weaving (a good thing too, it took many times of observation to understand). Before long we were shipped back to Chennai to catch our evening train back to Hyderabad.

Although we didn't really see much of Chennai, the most noticeable difference to me from Hyderabad were murals of politicians on every wall you saw. Many politicians have participated in cinematic productions as well to become well-known, and maybe some of these paintings functioned as advertisements as well as political support. Some of the paintings could be huge and repetitive on a long wall; sometimes the people had beady-looking eyes and intense toothy grins also.

On the way back there were more discussions of India and traveling. Evidently many people didn't like the structure that CIEE provided; I knew it was going to be like that though, bracing myself earlier for tourist activities. I ended up really enjoying the things we got to see and was thankful in some ways that I didn't have to plan out anything, just enjoy.

Some people like to go into traveling with no plan and just see what comes their way, some love to plan a ton, some want to see all the famous sites, some want to see places no foreigner sees, some crave authenticity, others like to be catered to, some like to spend most of their time relaxing and enjoying themselves, others prefer to interact as much as they can with locals, some also like just socializing with friends or travel partners, some like to learn everything they can, some just like to observe, some are really excited about shopping, drinking, eating, saving/spending money, or packing light/heavy and everything in between. Some travel to see, some to taste, some to close the eyes and relax, some to learn what another has to say, some to learn about themselves, some to do exciting and unique activities, and multiple combinations. Travel is so many things and what it ends up meaning is influenced on what you want to get from it. Although this trip was a world apart from what I experienced last weekend at Ellora, mainly because of the obvious lack of interaction with Indians, I still feel like I learned some and at least had a good time. I do have specific opinions about how I like to travel, but each trip offers a unique experience in its own way...that's how I felt about the weekend. Interesting how I consider traveling as a tourist "unique."

I slept mostly well except for the wailing toddler beneath me. I think he was sick, and he woke up when the train would jerk to a stop. I don't blame him; the train was unreasonably jerky. Also it probably would have sucked to be confined to a train car for so long at that age. In any case, it was a sorry situation for the kid, a lot to handle for the parents, and disturbing for everyone else. No one was at fault, just a poor situation and that's sometimes the way things play out. Otherwise the train was SO comfortable (not being sarcastic), the swaying motions lulling me back to sleep each time I woke up.

I remember in the morning waiting for the train to stop at Hyderabad and wanted a danish so badly. Maybe cherry or cream cheese...so delicious. At that moment a vendor selling chai and samosas with salted chilies squeezed by me in the aisle, and I realized that THAT is what I'd be missing when I'm back in the States.

We got back to campus during my first class on Monday, but I was fine not going in favor of unpacking/organizing all my things. Living out of a backpack is exciting but also it's nice to have a place to unwind and not have to worry about possessing all your stuff. It will be good to remain on campus this weekend, especially because the workload for some classes is really piling up for the first time this semester...

Oh, Ellora.

Melissa had bought train tickets online for Aurangabad in the Maharashtra state. That city is a good stepping stone too Ellora and Ajanta, nearby sites of old temples from all sorts of faiths, including Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism. Melissa and three others originally going had been traveling every week for a while, and were too tired to go, so Miriam, Madeline, Ana, and I offered to take them. I didn’t know the three other girls that well, but I was eager to get to know them better, and you sure do get to know someone well when you travel with them. We left late Thursday night for the train station, and eventually located our train car and seats. Such a process is still a mystery to me, despite trying to figure the process out time and again. You never quite know at which platform a train is going to be, and understanding announcements that most people rely on for information is quite difficult.

The sleeper class is very fun to ride in. There are three levels of beds that fold out from the walls; you put them up and sit on the bottom bed during the day. We went to sleep early because of how late it already was, good thing I had brought a bed sheet which I folded both underneath me and over me. I used my backpack as a pillow, careful to keep it close to me not because I was worried about it getting stolen, but because the window at my head only had a few bars and no glass. What a sorry situation it would be if I accidentally knocked it out. I can’t remember exactly if I slept much, I was maybe in a daze most of the time, slightly waking up each time we stopped because of the automated jingles and announcements at each stop. The same lady’s voice was at each station. I must have actually gotten up at about 9 am and folded my bed up, excited to gaze out onto the farmlands we were riding through. We were travelling in the opposite direction we were the last night, and I was kindof confused as to how efficient a route we were taking. At one of the stops we got some samosas with salted green chilies and chai from a vender. We ate them while many people came to talk to us; I can’t remember any of their names though. I was most interested at the landscape though, we’d pass through villages and towns and all sorts of wide farmlands and pastures.

The scenery is different from what I’m used to in a very specific way: It has taken much more time to produce. I’m used to continually constructed and new areas by my school and home; even if there’s a wide open park, it’s new and somehow more artificial in some way, take newly planted grass for example. The grass I saw through has been there for ages. Unique cow routes have carved out delicate paths through the areas; homes, even if meager, are so intricate and arranged in such a way that could only be produced from years and years of being inhabited. I think any picture you take would have a unique and lengthy story to tell. That’s what it looked like.

We arrived at Aurangabad at 1:30; the trip had taken 15 ½ hours, much more than the 10 I was expecting; evidently the route indeed was less efficient than a straight line from city to city. The four of us decided to head to Ellora first, it was closer by and if we were to head to Ajanta and then be back to Aurangabad by Sunday, we needed to start in some direction soon. We took a rickshaw to the bus station; it was as busy as the train station and we weren’t sure what we were doing. Walking up to the ticket counter, the man at the desk through bars shouted at us *HI! WHERE ARE YOU GOING?!* “…Ellora?” *AH! ELLORA! PLATFORM 8* …He was very helpful.

The bus ride was about 50 minutes and very bumpy, but I managed to sleep some anyway. Stepping off the bus, many venders approached us to sell guides and crystals from the nearby caves. It was a little overwhelming figuring out what to do, but we ended up going with a vender named Vijay to a nearby hotel; he claimed he could get us a good price on a room. The hotel was more a very meager motel, with only a few rooms. The price was right though, and we decided to take it.

That afternoon we ended up going with Vijay to a small temple that was adjacent to, but not a part of, the Ellora tours. The hike there was one of my favorite parts of the whole weekend. We made our way up and up, and eventually could see forever. Farmlands, dotted forests, and small tucked-away towns were spread out over a huge basin that was surrounded by a huge cupped mountain range, on which we were hiking. The temple we visited was right next to a stream/small river which Vijay claimed to be a tributary of the Ganga. After swimming and talking some, we headed back for dinner in town. Vijay recommended the special for the area: banana lassi.

Lassi is a yogurt drink, it is usually plain but also comes in flavors, like mango and evidently banana. It had pieces of banana in it as well as chunks of solid sugar that made it really sweet and was an interesting combination with the sour yogurt. Tart and stingingly sweet and…banana. A unique and delicious specialty it was. The hunks of sugar reminded me of the waffles I had last summer in Belgium which also had pieces of sugar in the batter; I guess chunks of sugar makes anything delicious. We also had paneer, palak, cashew, and malai kufta curries with roti. The food was pretty oily and VERY filling, and delicious all the same. It’s a great feeling to know how satisfied four people can be for only $12 dollars.

That night we went to the roof of our motel with Vijay and looked at the stars and surrounding town area. I was very glad we had met Vijay. Although we were cautious and didn’t quite know from the start what exactly his intensions were, it was evident that Vijay just likes having a good time by meeting people and showing them around. Money he claimed wasn’t as important to him as it was to the rest of his vender friends. Whether or not this was True, we all were having a nice time, and I greatly appreciated his seemingly genuine hospitality and many interesting stories of past tourists he had met.

The next day we were actually tourists and went around the Ellora caves. There are 30? or so, and it is the largest collection of inter-faith temples in the world, with temples affiliated with Jainism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. The temples are carved right into the mountainside which is why they’re called “caves.” They reminded me of the sand castles I make at the beach, starting with a packed mound of sand (mountain), and carving out designs (intricate temples) with a shovel (hammer and chisel). Ellora also boasts the largest carved monolithic structure in the world, the Kailas Hindu temple (having taken 7000 workers 150 years to complete). It’s carved right out of the mountain and takes at least an hour or two to see.

My favorite temple was one with a ceiling carved out like a cathedral. The interior was as big as one too, except there were no pews and there was a huge Buddha statue in the front. The acoustics of the temple were designed to be impeccable, allowing sound to resonate for ages before dying out. There was a loft in the back that was used specifically for chanters during Buddhist prayer long ago. During a moment when the temple was empty of people, I was all too excited to belt out my favorite choral songs, including select Christmas music favorites. It felt like Candlelight Carols at Muhlenberg almost, except I was facing a 50 foot Buddha.

Vijay took us in his car around to all the temples so we didn’t have to walk the whole day. Something I hadn’t expected were the photographs that people would insist on taking of us. Without having even met, Indians would approach you and giddily ask to have a photo taken with you, beside themselves with excitement and clamoring to see the digital image on the camera after the shot was taken. Yes we were celebrities. And I had no problem posing for anyone who would ask. To see how happy it made everyone made me giggle, plus I felt very important to boot. I guess people were just extra excited to see a foreigner? Whatever the reason, if it made everyone happy, I was glad to take a few seconds out of my day for a photo shoot.

That evening was an annual cow festival in the town of Ellora. Everyone there gets very excited about it; it consists of basically decorating a ton of cows with colors and dressing their horns with cloth and parading around the town. Unfortunately right when the festival began, it started to monsoon and people scurried their cows under roofs in a frenzy to prevent the colors from washing off. Mainly their attempts were futile, and I was glad we were in Vijay’s car, dry and not in agitated commotion like the town people on whose parade it was literally raining. Vijay was very disappointed, he had been looking forward to it for some time; it’s one of the highlights of Ellora and it was so coincidental that we ended up there during the festival not even knowing the day before what it was. That’s just the way the world (and in this case the whether) works though, you just can never tell exactly what’s going to happen.

That night we watched some movies in Vijay’s store and after a tasty dinner at the motel turned in early. The train back to Hyderabad left at 3:30 the next day, and we were planning on heading to a fort on the way back to Aurangabad. That morning I made it a point to get more banana lassi before we headed out, not knowing if I’d have the chance to taste it again. After chai and fried breakfast snacks, I thanked Vijay by browsing his store and purchasing some crystals and geodes that he had found in the mountains at prices that he was more than happy to discount. I also bought some ancient Moghul, Hindu, and Arab coins from Vijay’s friend who had found them by searching the surrounding area (without a metal detector) for years. After more goodbyes, we were off on the bus again.

The Daulatabad fort was huge and I liked it even better than the famous Golconda Fort of Hyderabad. It was also the most impregnable structure I’ve ever seen, not only having massive walls with many defenses that spanned a huge area, but a massive inner moat dug around a central mountain on which the safest area of the fort rested. The moat was dug right into the mountain which resulted in sheer cut vertical walls that were hundreds of feet high. The bridge over the moat lead right into the mountain face to a dark, carved passageway through the interior of the mountain right up to the top. The bridge angled down in the middle of the moat, necessitating steps across the whole thing. It angled down purposefully so that when an enemy approached, massive dams were opened and water was released to fill the moat up to a level to cover the bridge, rendering it impassable. An antiquated drawbridge. The hike up to the very top was very steep, and I was glad we had packed extra water bottles; I was sweating like crazy. The view at the top was phenomenal, like the one at Ellora but entirely panoramic, and you could see the entire area of the fort at the base of the mountain. We could hear the blare of music instruments and the beat of drums in the distance, originating from a far street of the town on which some festival was taking place.

It was about one o’clock when we started to head back down, savoring the view as much as we could. There were many more people who wanted to take pictures of us on the way back down, sometimes we’d stop and have a brief conversation, other times it would literally be a photo and then a goodbye, nice to “meet” you. At the bottom we also encountered a vender, Feroz, we had met earlier who was eager to take us to tea. I was out of money by that point, and kindof hungry anyway, so the pineapple juice and guava he bought us was a nice treat. After showing him pictures on my camera of family vacations at North Carolina, cathedrals in Europe, and my dorm room (fancy sights for someone who had lived in the same small town for his whole life), we realized it was already 2:45 and swiftly caught the bus heading back to Aurangabad. By the time we were at the station, it was already 3:15 and our train was leaving in 15 minutes. Crazily begging for an auto ride to the train station with the small amount of money we had left in our pockets, a driver reluctantly agreed and, despite our shouts of encouragement to go faster, proceeded to stop frequently to see if anyone else in the street was heading to the train station. More passengers would have made his trip more worthwhile. Anyway, we threw the money at him and bolted into the train station, at about 3:26, our stomachs tied in knots that we wouldn’t be able to locate the correct train. Asking energetically around, we were able to get help from some people who pointed us in the right direction (people can be so helpful, even helping you locate the car you’re supposed to be in according to the roster posted on the outside). We located our seats out of breath and relieved.

The train didn’t leave for another 15 minutes or so, I guess it was running on Indian time. The number of hands I shook on that trip back to Hyderabad was astronomical. Not only were all the surrounding people eager to meet us, but people would spot us from outside at stations and either have conversations with us through the barred windows or board the train to meet us, hopping off rapidly as the train would start to pull away or the conductor shooed them off. It’s a good thing I’m not claustrophobic, people would pack themselves at times around us so tightly, I mean there’s not that much space on the train and it wasn’t like we were going to leave the train every time it stopped just to meet the people there. Fortunately (as I was still out of money) some of the friends I made were also eager to buy us chai, flavored milk, samosas, and other fried snacks.

I remember spending a lot of time with someone about my age who was getting an education in organic chemistry, hoping to work in a lab in the future. He was attending a school out of his native state being educated in a language medium that he was unfamiliar with, but I guess this is a common thing, every 100 km there’s another spoken language to cope with in India. This amounts to thousands of spoken languages and dialects in the country, although only twenty or so are recognized by the country as state languages. Talk about not being able to understand your professors, the accent isn’t only different but it’s in an entirely different language. Anyway, we found a piece of paper and a pen and quizzed each other on structure names and reactions including substitution, and my favorite, Diels-Alder. It was probably one of my funniest moments in India so far, I don’t know, just completely unbelievable that we were having conversations about organic chemistry on a train to Hyderabad. If you were one of my classmates at Muhlenberg with Dr. Russell last semester, you have to admit, it’s pretty hilarious.

Our trip had already been 8 hours or so by the time I decided to get to bed, but it of course felt like maybe only 2. After the busy day, I slept soundly until Miriam woke me up at 6 am at Lingampally train station, Hyderabad. Again the trip was almost 16 hours, but as painless as anything. Dreary eyed and stenchy, we made our way back to campus, just in time for 7 o’clock yoga and the start of Monday morning classes.