Love Marriage Or Arranged Marriage?

As many people have pointed out to us, spending your honeymoon in South Asia is, depending on how you look at it, odd, interesting, adventurous, or just plain weird. It certainly led to some atypical honeymoon behavior. For the first three weeks of our honeymoon as we hiked the Annapurna trail, we slept in separate twin beds across the room from one another. When we were feeling romantic, Zach would hop across the room in his sleeping bag and we'd lie next to each other and hug. Plus, there's nothing sexier than not showering for days.

Throughout the trip, we loved the range of reactions we heard from locals when we told them we were on our honeymoon. In Nepal, everyone asked, "Is it a love marriage or an arranged marriage?" We'd proudly announce that we were a love marriage, feeling very, well, loving. 80% of the time, they would reply: "Mmm... love marriages never work." Awkward.

In India, everyone from rickshaw drivers to fruit merchants wanted to suss out our marital status. The conversation, directed exclusively at Zach, would go something like this:

    "This is your... friend?"
    "My wife!"
    "Ah..." (looking me over like a nice handbag and then turning back to Zach) "...very good!"
    "We are on our honeymoon."
    "Honeymoon!" This was followed by big smiles and grasping of hands and general merriment.Then, "I wish you a very happy life and many children. So... enjoy!"

In Rajasthan's villages, there was almost palpable relief that we conformed to their social norm. Avi, our guide on a tour of villages outside Jodphur, explained to us, "At first, when the villagers met tourists who are traveling together but they are not married, the villagers are shocked, I mean really shocked. This is good that you are married, really good. This they can understand."

All over India, Indians expressed surprise that we chose their country for our honeymoon. One lady was truly baffled. She exclaimed, "You came to India for your honeymoon? But Indians go to America for their honeymoon!" In some of India's more romantic destinations, we ran into Indian couples on their honeymoons. In Munnar, Kerala's stunning tea country, we swapped photos with a giddy couple from Tamil Nadu as we paddle-boated around a beautiful lake. They had met the day of their marriage, and their honeymoon was their chance to get to know each other.

Perhaps our most memorable honeymoon response came in Sri Lanka. One day we came home from biking around the ancient ruins of Anurhadaphura and were greeted by the daughter of the guesthouse owners. She explained that they were going to throw a party tonight. There was another couple staying at the four room guesthouse who was celebrating their tenth wedding anniversary. She asked me to come across the yard to their living room at 6pm to get dressed: "You can wear my mother's sari!"

They threw an amazing bash. We were wrapped in bejewelled fabric and the men instructed in the art of wearing a Sri Lankan sarong. During dinner, were were serenaded by a musician and for dessert... cake! As we fed each other bits of cake (a ritual we had skipped during our actual wedding), we felt as though we were getting married all over again. This time we danced in the muggy tropical air, to the sound of Sri Lankan baile and buzzing cicadas, with the gentle heat of curry in our mouths and cool painted concrete beneath our bare feet.



On this, the last day of our trip, we are savoring great memories. Thank you, South Asia! 

Muchisimo photos!

We were a bit behind, but have now mostly caught up on our photos editing/publishing, and there's lots more photogs for your viewing pleasure. Check out the four albums below whenever you have time! Each album is linked, with a preview photos to whet your appetite...


India: Udaipur (view album)
The Royal Palace, cooking classes with Meenu, traditional Rajasthani folk dance

India: Mumbai (view album)
Trains, taxis, and dabawallas

India: Kerala (view album)
Wild elephants (!), tea country, and the backwaters. Note: we just added 60 photos to the original Kochin album.

Sri Lanka: The Train to Ella (view album)
Black and white shots of an amazing (and very bumpy) train ride. The rest of our Sri Lanka photos coming soon...

Good Eats Part II: Kerala Edition

This is the second edition of a post devoted entirely to the joy of eating (almost). We included links to websites and address information whenever possible so that any of you heading to the Subcontinent soon can use this as a guide to culinary rapture. This post is dedicated to Anantica and Ryan and to all the guests of their upcoming nuptials in Cochin. Mazel tov!

Best Thali on a Banana Leaf:

His: Ariya Nawas, in Trivandrum

Hers: Saravana Bavan in Munnar

Best Dosa:

Massive Paper Dosa at Saravana Bavan in Munnar. With six different dips!

Best Breakfast:

Homemade dosa with veggie-full sambar at Royal Mist Homestay in Munnar. (Note:This was our favorite homestay in all of India. A little pricey but worth every penny for the amazing food, thoughtful conversation, and incredible personal attention. Anil and Jeeva will make you feel totally at home.)            

Best Seafood:

Hers: The banana leaf-wrapped kingfish at Oceanus in Fort Cochi

His: Buying seafood by the Chinese nets in Fort Cochi and having it cooked up at The Marina Restaurant (2^nd floor, above the official tourist office, next door to the gas station)

Shockingly Cheap and Delicious Lunch:

Pure Veg Thali at Sri Krishna Café. Unlimited rice and veg for 30 rupees (that’s 60 cents)!

Best Snack with Tea:

Fried Kerala banana fritters on a houseboat outside of Alleppey

Best Fresh Fruit Juice:

Fresh pineapple juice with a dash of cinnamon at Bella Homestay in Alleppy

Best Non-Indian Food:

His: Pasta Puttasnesca at Café del Mar in Varkala

Hers: Spinach Momos (Tibetan dumplings) at Little Tibet in Varkala

Plus some bonus, non-food related categories (turns out we sometimes do other things than just eat...)

Most Legit Aryuvedic Health Experience:

A consultation at the pharmacy about 100 yards to the right of Shri Krishna Café (if you have just come out the door) on Cheralai Rd in Fort Cochi.  You can’t miss it; it has a ton of bottled medicines in glass-front cabinets. A half hour consultation and four meds ran Zach about seven bucks.

Best Way to See Kerala’s Backwaters:

A 4- or 7-hour trip with Kerala Kayaking, the brainchild of a quirky entrepreneur named Binnu.  If you’ve already done a houseboat tour or taken a local ferry, just tell him and he’ll personalize a route. If you can handle at longer trip, he’ll take you out to parts of the backwaters that are usually unvisited by tourists.

Best Way to Get Behind the Scenes in Tea Country:

Most tourists hire a car or tuk-tuk to take them out to Top Station. Go on a hike instead. You’ll need a local guide; your guesthouse should be able to recommend one.  You’ll run into groups of tea workers harvesting along the way. If your timing is good, you’ll get invited to have tea with them!

Best Way To Avoid Varkala’s Hippy Backpacker Scene:

Varkala has some lovely scenery, but the tourist scene is pretty insular. Escape by walking from the helipad through Varkala’s tourist district (it’s one street) and just keep going. Soon you are in fishing villages. 4km on, you’ll arrive at Kappil Beach-- just a sliver of land between the ocean and the backwaters. Heaven!

What Lies Beneath: A Book Review

While we love sharing the wondrous and joyful experiences that have filled our trip, we’re keenly aware of what we haven’t talked about: poverty, environmental destruction, the ugly evidence of corruption, residues of violent conflict. Partly that's because, as tourists, our meaningful exposure to these things is limited. We are directed away from the dirtiest corners. Partly it's because we choose not to look too closely: it's just too hard. We are used to our own evils. These are new and so more liable to shock.

Even in our protected tourist corridor, sometimes the world beneath and around brushes up against ours in startling ways. Here in Sri Lanka, echoes of the recently ended war between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers are everywhere. Many of the beggars here are missing legs. A sign for a local preschool showed a woman with two children holding an umbrella to fend off the rain: "Harmony Preschool: Providing safety and protection." In India, on the way to the station in Jodphur to catch an 11pm train, we drove by blocks of men sleeping in cots on the sidewalk: migrant workers from the villages, they rent a bed for 20 cents, sleeping under a roof only when they return to their villages for a visit. Had we not happened to be going to the train at that unusually late hour, we’d never have known that the city’s streets sleep hundreds every evening, in orderly rows. 

It was in India's glittering city, Mumbai, where worlds collided most forcefully. The privileged A/C corridors of the international airport open into air clogged with the stench of the massive slums that hug the runways. At a back table in a small Parsi restaurant where lunch costs 60 rupees (about $1), we watched as a man pulled a huge wad of 500 rupee bills out of his pocket and handed half of them to the man across from him: a bribe? Possibly. Certainly one transaction among the millions that constitute India's parallel economy.

We wanted to gain some understanding of the worlds we'd gotten glimpses into, so we turned to books. One in particular has stuck with us. If you are interested in learning more about Mumbai and India's underworld, read Maximum City: Bombay Lost & Found, Suketu Mehta's account of moving back to his hometown after living in America for fifteen years. Combination exposé and memoir, it delves into the Hindu/Muslim antagonisms that exploded in riots and bombings, the infrastructure challenges in a city that absorbs thousands of destitute migrants every day, and the alternate economic and justice systems that have sprung up in the void left by institutional dysfunction. If that sounds terrifying, it is. But Mehta balances horror and love. He writes about raising his children, about working on a Bollywood screenplay, about everyone's search for meaning, from the wealthiest diamond merchant to the street-sleeping poet. The writing is brilliant and the research it took to write this book? Let's just say that one of the scenes involves him interviewing a hit man in a hotel room with a bunch of the hit man's killer-for-hire buddies. They are armed. He is not.

Mehta's book changed the way we saw the city, for better and for worse. We learned about the young migrant who slept around the block from our hotel and the public toilet in a nearby alley at which he waited in line every morning for his chance to relieve himself. We know more about Bombay’s (and India’s) ugliness now. But we can also conjure some of the individual lives being lived in the sea of tin-roofed homes by the runway, their dignity and dreams. This book did what the best ones do: it awakened us to the humanity of all those whose stories he told and to the ways in which their longings aren’t so different from our own. 

Jew Town, Cochin, India

We've arrived in Sri Lanka where, ironically, we're catching the tail end of a hurricane. After days of devouring the news from New York, it is almost as though we've caught some strange echo of the storm over here, on the far side of the world.

We don't mind the rain. It's a good excuse to take a break from feeling we have to do things, which turns out to be as much an occupational hazard of traveling as it is of normal life for two hyperactive people. Our trip has reached its turn: we're talking in weeks, rather than months now, and beginning to talk about emails we should send, to jobs, or people with apartments to rent. Still, we've got two weeks in Sri Lanka and then we head home via a week in Greece and few days in Rome. In you are nearby, get in touch!

Photos are on their way: Kerala's tea estates and backwaters and our first few days in Sri Lanka. In the meantime, here's a brief story of our encounter with one of the last living Jews of Kerala.

*** 

 Our first afternoon in Cochin was scorching. By the time we reached Mattanchery, we were in an advanced state of cranky. We were searching for Jew Town and the Paradesi Synagogue, the only synagogue that remains in use by what used to be a sizable population of Keralan Jews. The history of this particular Jewish community is a long and fascinating one, beginning with Jews who came as traders in the time of King Solomon. Further migrations marked nadirs in Jewish history: the destruction of the Second Temple, the Inquisition. Ironically, it was the Jew's historical triumph, the founding of the State of Israel, that sounded the death knell for the Jews of Kerala. The vast majority chose to emigrate, looking for better fortunes and a wider marriage pool.

That mass migration changed the face of the old Jewish quarter. Now, it is choc-a-bloc with antique shops (some started when the departing Jewish families sold off their furniture) and Kashmiri souvenir stands peddling the same trinkets sold in every tourist ghetto from Srinagar to Trivandrum. We were dismayed. We'd walked a long, hot way and there seemed to be very little left to even look at, much less connect to.

At the end of the street, the synagogue was bustling with domestic tourists. Two massive school groups from Tamil Nadu had arrived at the same time as we had and were dutifully filing in and out of the narrow doorway that led to the synagogue.  As we entered the sanctuary, we experienced a dizzying reversal. We'd spent months visiting Hindu shrines and Buddhist gompas, trying to discern the meaning of ritual objects and how the space was meant to be used. For the first time, we watched Indian tourists look bemusedly at the Ark and whisper to each other about various aspects of architecture, afraid to disturb the room's holy air. The sanctuary was charmingly eccentric, with blue Chinese tiles on the floor and gorgeous glass  lamps hanging from the ceiling. But it felt like a dying place. Wanting to make it alive, we went up to the Ark to say a shecheyanu, a prayer of thanks for having arrived in this place. We could feel the eyes of other tourists on our backs, just as we had watched innumerable sari-clad women make their offerings: "Look! She's praying! She's doing something!" Still, it felt right, to hear the sound of a Jewish prayer in that room, for it to be used in the way it was intended.

We headed back out into the wet heat and wandered down the street, fending off the shopkeepers' inquiries: "My shop!? Just have a look? Bon Jour! Ca va? Postcard?" Zach noticed a sign on one small shop, the only one with a Jewish name: Sarah's Handmade Embroidery. There was no one outside trolling for business, so we decided to go in. We were greeted by a small-boned man with a shy smile who introduced himself as Taha. As I examined a photograph on the wall, he explained that this store is part of Sarah Cohen's house. He proudly showed us pictures of her wedding in Bombay, a portrait of her brother Shalom, who had passed several years ago, images of the synagogue decorated for festivals. "There are only nine left," he explained, "no children." He pulled out a small book and told us that it explained the history and traditions of the community. He pointed to the publishing page: India (1929), three editions in Israel "by someone's relative," and then the last edition: India (2011). "I published this book," he said with pride, "and I added the pictures." He turned the small book over in his hands, showing off color photographs of the inside of the synagogue.

Is that Sarah, sleeping in the next room? Yes, he affirmed. I had noticed the old women napping on a cot when we walked in. She looked ancient, unmoving. Only after Taha had carefully sussed us out did he go and wake Sarah. From the minute she started talking, we were in the land of the familiar: the Jewish grandma guilt-trip. "Where were you for the festival, for Simchat Torah?" she wailed. "Oh, it was so beautiful. You should have come. We couldn't say the prayers because we didn't have a minyan." Taha looked on, commiserating. Her face was hugely expressive, alternately lighting up with surprise or dropping into a deep, sad frown.

She alternated between chatting with us in British accented English and giving commands in Malayalam.Though she repeatedly circled back to berating us for not having come to Simchat Torah, Sarah was very sociable and was clearly enjoying the company of young Jews. She asked us about our travels and told us how hard it is to get kosher meat now that her brother, the community's last shochet, is gone. Another Jewish family arrived:  the mother, a white American, the father, an Indian from Bangalore, and their teenage son, with his father's skin and curly Jewish hair, raised in Charleston, South Carolina and now living in Bangalore.  The shop took on the air of a party as we played Jewish geography and chatted about Jewish communities in India.

Taha worked steadily around us, getting tea, shooing away curious onlookers, and quoting prices for the kippat and challah covers. Sometimes he would dart in and deny or verify something Sarah had said or gently correct her history: "Ah, that was six years ago, six." Eventually, he told us that he'd been working for Sarah since he was small. "I'm not educated," he said, gesturing to his waist to indicate that he'd been about so tall when we started working for Sarah's family. "They took me in." He'd been with them ever since.

Eventually, Sarah tired and Taha took her into the back to rest, holding her with gentle devotion. As we said our goodbyes, he handed us each one of the small books he'd printed and a business card: "Please visit our blog!" He told us of his frustrations with the Tourism Board, how he wished they did more to preserve the Jewish history of the neighborhood. It was Taha who rung up our challah covers and saw us out the door, pointing us to attractions down the street and reminding us to come by for the next festival.  He is the unlikely keeper of Cochin's Jewish history: a Muslim man tied by years and circumstances to a dying Jewish family. The story of the Jews of Cochin has become his own.

(View the full album from Kochin here.)

A Dabawallah Day

It was 10:30am and already the air was a thick urban stew of sweat, exhaust, and the smell of stuff being fried in Mumbai’s ubiquitous food stalls. Zach and I were huddled in a foot-wide slice of shade, sipping tiny cups of 5 rupee chai. We had strategically positioned ourselves at a corner, where two exits from Churchgate Station opened out onto the sidewalk. Though it was well past rush hour, a steady stream of commuters hurried in and out of the station and trains pulled in and unloaded every few minutes.

“There’s one!” shouted Zach, pointing over the heads of the crowd. Following his finger, I saw a man carrying a huge tray on his head. It was filled with homemade lunches: his and his colleagues’ lifebread.

Every day, thousands of Mumbai office workers make the long commute from the suburbs to downtown. Over the course of the morning, thousands of dabawallahs (literally, “box carriers”)  follow in their footsteps. Each dabawallah has a pick-up route in the suburbs, where they go from house to house collecting lunches made by wives or mothers. They ride into the city with the lunches from their neighborhood, stopping at various points along the way to sort and exchange with other dabawallahs. Each tiffin (as the multi-leveled tin containers are called) changes hands four or five times.  By 12:30pm, office workers all over Mumbai are eating lovingly-prepared dal and chapati at their desk and at the end of the day, the empty containers are delivered back to their respective homes. Collectively, about 5,000 dabawallahs deliver 200,000 lunches per day. Here’s the crazy thing: there is no technology involved. No computers, no cell phones, no cars, not even paper. The dabawallahs are mostly illiterate and make their deliveries using bicycles, wooden carts and huge trays carried on their heads. Each lunchbox has a code that explains what train stop it needs to get off at and its final destination. In 2002, Forbes magazine declared the dabbawallas a “six sigma” business, which means they operate at 99.9% efficiency. They make less than one mistake in six million deliveries (Wikipedia).

Zach had heard about dabawallahs at a presentation given at Google and was eager to see them in action, which is how we ended up skulking around the train station, asking security guards when they thought the dabawallahs might show up. The guards seems puzzled by our interest, but politely told us to wait by platform one. And they came. Watching them sort in the middle of the Mumbai’s mad sidewalks, it seemed impossible that this system could work, and as efficiently as it does. But, as we’ve been told so many times, “In India, everything is possible.”

(all photos by Heather!)

Good Eats Part I: North India Round-up

Some of you have expressed surprise that, given the number of meals lovingly photographed by Zach and given the amount of time Heather spends talking about, reading about, and cooking Asian food, we haven't devoted any blog space to it. Well, let the feast begin! We've been travelling in one of the world's best places to eat and it has been glorious. Below, a round up of some of our foodie highlights so far. We included links to websites and address information whenever possible so that any of you heading to the Subcontinent soon can chew the same path across the nation. (Note: Sometimes we didn't agree. What? Married people don't agree?!)

Best Breakfast:
Chole Batura at Hotel Kabli, Delhi. The hotel serves food from a local restaurant to your room, allowing you to eat your Chole the way it was meant to be eaten... in your underwear!

Best Bread:
Hers: Afghani Naan straight from the oven in the Jangpura Bazaar, Delhi
His: Aloo paratha we made during cooking lesson with Meenu at Queen's Cafe, Udaipur. (Side note: Queen's Cafe other food is also insanely delicious. Don't miss the pumpkin curry with coconut/mint spice mix.)

Making chapati with Meenu's daughter 

Best Bang For Your $1.80:
All-you-can-eat thali at Natraj, Udaipur. It included eleven seperate and permanently refillable items: dal, potato, two curries, curd, chutney, sliced onions, papad, chapati, rice, mango pickle and chili sauce. Galub jamun for desert.

Thali at Natraj

Best chai:
The pot Himat cooked up for us under a tree in the desert outside of Jaislamer. And made with fresh sheep's milk, so Zach could drink it!

A nice spot for chai

Best Dosa:
Special Dosa, filled with dried fruit, nuts and coconut flakes at Ayyar's, Varanasi. This hole in the wall place was opened by the current owner's grandfather.

One of the owners of Ayyar's with a portrait of his grandfather

Best Snack: 
Hers: Mango ice pop (available pretty much everywhere)
His: Samosa (or three) at Madhur Milan, Varanasi

Best Extremely Local Food:
Hers: Ker Sangri, a desert bean served up at Desert Boy's Dhani in Jaisalmer

His: Mirchi bada, a hot pepper stuffed with potatoes and onions and then fried like a samosa, at Shahi's Somasas in Jodphur (Nai Sarak, left side just before main gate to Sardar Market).

Best dessert:
Hers: Khir, a milk and rice pudding at Crystal, a wonderful Punjabi spot across the street from Chowpatty Beach, Mumbai.
His: Grandma's homemade milk candy at Vijay and Sonam's house in Agra

Heather's Overall Favorite: 
Bhaghain Barta, a wickedly delicious egglant dish that has the deep smoky flavor of roasted eggplant with the brightness of tomato and heat of curry spices. Also at Crystal, Mumbai.

Zach's Overall Favorite: 
Vegetable pulao, eaten with dinner our first night in Delhi at Hotel Kabli. Objectively speaking, it may not be the best best thing we've eaten, but at the time it was the best Indian dish I'd ever had. We've tried many pulaos since then, and none compare.

If any of you have great India eats -- from favorite dishes to hole-in-the-wall restaurants (especially in Kerala where we're headed next) -- please comment!

Desert Portraits

"She wants to invite you for chai," Prim, our camel driver, told us.

"Jip jip jip," we said, signalling to the camels that they should sit down so we could dismount. We've been invited into people's homes for chai all over India. Our record number of cups in a day so far is seven, consumed in five different places. The refrain-- "You must come to my home for tea!"-- is a testament to a tradition of hospitality that seems to transcend the class, caste, and religious boundaries which can prove so formidable in other contexts.

But this invitation was different. Prim's grandmother (actually his great aunt, but it's not a distinction they make here) had gestured us into her hut, grass-roofed and constructed from a mixture of sand, rock and cow dung. She gathered wood, started a fire, milked a sheep (!) and cooked up an incredibly tasty cup. We lingered for the rest of the afternoon as people came and went. A woman from a nearby village came by with her young son seeking a glass of water. She took one look at Prim making chapatis and told him to scram, taking full charge of the process. Prim's grandfather wandered in from tending the flocks, ate, and went out again into the fierce mid-afternoon sun. Two gypsy kids came by to gawk at the foreigners. We ate lunch in waves -- foreigners first, then men, then women. And we suddenly understood why we'd been sent into the desert with enormous quantities of vegetables, fruit and flour: every meal fed not only us, but whoever else happened to be near by.

It's a hard life, living in the desert. We were amazed by the creativity and resourcefulness we witnessed; that people with such limited resources transformed the harsh environment into a livable, even beautiful, place. There were farms everywhere -- talk about making the desert bloom. Himat, the driver who took us back and forth from Jaisalmer, offered the most eloquent testimony to his love of his home. Though he has all the advantages of city life and income now, he comes out to the desert whenever he can to enjoy the open air, the shade of a tree, the desert quiet.

We hope the portraits below honor the people we met, their spirit and resilience.

And for your continued viewing pleasure, here's the full set of photos from the desert. Thanks for all the great comments and feedback so far!

India Photos: Our first 2 weeks

A highlights reel from our first few weeks in India:
https://plus.google.com/photos/102311875004581334954/albums/5798479016465443361?authkey=CPCcjPv8xovSzgE

And I have to admit: we are having a great time taking photos here. So many interesting people and beautiful things to work with. It's like a crazy playground for making still images. Hopefully some of these capture the essence of our adventures and the spirit of the people we've met. To my photographer friends: I am learning (slowly) how to use my camera, but any tips/advice/pointers is greatly appreciated.

And many of the photos have captions again -- click any photo to start a slideshow and then click the "expand <- ->" button in the bottom right corner to see large photos with captions.

This is India

Hello from the edge of the Thar Desert!

We're writing from the turret of a fort in Jaisalmer, on the western edge of Rajasthan about 200km from Pakistan. While we were catching you all up on our Nepalese adventures, we've been traipsing around India. Our itinerary thus far? Delhi>Varanasi>Agra>Jodphur>Jaisalmer. We just returned from a wonderful two-night, three-day camel safari in the desert. We're hoping that after this post and one about our safari, we'll be all caught up and will be able to report in something closer to real time. We'll upload our photos from these fascinating cities (including the Taj Mahal!) as soon as we have better internet access.

On our first night in Delhi, we took a walk in the local bazaar, just a couple of blocks from our hotel in a small, non-touristy neighborhood called Jangpura. After the simplicty of our life on the Annapurna trail and the limited scope of Nepal's depressed economy, we were stunned by the liveliness of the neighborhood. At 8:30pm it was buzzing. People were out buying all manner of goods, street-side snack stalls were doing a swift business in samosas and laddos, and pedestrians, cycle rickshaws, and motorbikes all vied for space on the roadway. We watched Afghani naan being made in a clay oven, admired a tiny cooking-pot repair stand and marvelled at the number of fruit and veggie hawkers. In those first few hours, we were in love. India felt so alive and dynamic. We reveled in luxuries that we would normally take for granted: consistent electricity! Refrigeration! A/C! Western toilets! We heart India!

Within a few days, we'd also experienced some of the things that make India's cities tough places to travel: chaotic traffic, persistent touts, and everywhere evidence of the brutality of poverty. Within a couple of blocks of a Sufi shrine where devout Muslims are likely to fulfill their religious obligation to give alms, Zach and I saw more people with crippling deformities and diseases than we'd probably seen in the rest of our lives. We walked passed ten-year olds doing hard drugs on the sidewalk of Delhi at midday. We learned that anyone who approaches you on the street and says, "I don't want money, I just want to share my city's history" definitely wants your money.

But every moment of frustration or exhaustion has been richly rewarded. Our first two weeks in India were full of surprises, the kind of surprises that remind you to remain open to the kindness of strangers and to lean into the unfamiliar.

Here are a few of those strange and wonderful moments:

Street in Old Delhi at sunset

The Traffic Jam: 
Our second evening in Delhi, we caught a cycle rickshaw just as the sun was setting. We were on our way to the New Delhi train station to reserve some tickets. On the way, we soon got caught in a massive -- and I mean massive -- cycle rickshaw traffic jam.  For blocks and blocks, at a complete standstill, all we could see were cycle rickshaws, hand-pulled carts piled high with bags of cement or sugar, even a few horse-pulled wagons. After sitting at a standstill for about fifteen minutes, we realized that we weren't going to go anywhere anytime soon.  Unfortunately, we had no idea where we were or how far we were from the train station. We abandoned our rickshaw and, in the dark, with a growing stream of pedestrians, began to pick our way across the traffic jam, literally climbing over bike wheels and loads of cement. We saw a blind man being passed hand-to-hand, from rickshaw driver to rickshaw driver. Being the only tourists as far as the eye could see in a neighborhood we didn't know and in the dark, we were trying hard to be inconspicuous. When we got to an intersection a few blocks up, we discovered that the jam was caused by two massive trucks parked in the middle of a four-way intersection, blaring music and campaign messages. They were both full of children- probably thirty in a truck bed-- in elaborate bejewelled traditional costume. As we walked around the trucks, heads down,  the kids spotted us. The trucks erupted in a chorus of English and sixty little hands reached for ours.  "Hello! Hello! Where are you from? Pen? Picture? Hello!" It was a touching moment of celebrity, even though it totally blew our cover.



The Holy Man: 
One evening in Varanasi, we decided to wander the streets of the old town, since it had finally cooled off a bit. We found ourselves at a quiet ghat (set of stairs) and sat down to watch the Ganges roll by. A few feet away was a sadhu, a holy man, wrapped in orange with a massive beard and long, dreadlocked hair. He and Zach got to talking about how he, Baba Somanth, ended up becoming a holy man and exactly what a holy man does each day. (Prays, walks, writes.) About fifteen minutes in, he pulled out a pipe and offered it to Zach. "Ganga"? Since Ganga is also the name of Ganges in Hindu, it took Zach a minute to figure out what was going on. We sat together for awhile, then eventually wandered away, leaving him to puff and pray in the fading light. (The picture was taken the next morning when we ran into him coming out of a temple in another part of the city.)











Vijay and Sonam: 
We were on the train to Agra, probably about half an hour into the journey, when a woman entered our compartment and started clapping. The couple sitting across from us gave her a few rupees. I was looking at her and trying to figure out just what was different when the guy across from us leaned across the aisle and offered an explanation. "She is... I don't know the word in English."
"Transgender?" I offered.
"Yes," he replied. He told us all about the community of hijras in India, and how they are marginalized, and so form their own "families" amongst themselves. We ended up chatting with Vijay and his wife, Sonam, for the next two hours. They were on their way back from Delhi, where Sonam, who has Lupus, had a doctor's appointment. Just before we arrived in Agra, they consulted privately for a minute and then Vijay turned to us and said, "My wife and I would like you to come and stay with us at home." We already had reserved a room at a guesthouse and had a driver picking us up at the train station, but were able to convince the driver to detour with us to visit their home on the way. They served us chai and homemade sweets and introduced us to their two vivacious daughers, Angel, 6 and Annie, 14 months. Their home was modest, three rooms in total, and they already had Sonam's sister and brother visiting. But they were absolutely sincere in their offer and in the pleasure they took spending time with us. We were amazed by their hospitality and generosity.

G-O-D: One night in Jodphur,we decided to go to a Bollywood movie (English Vinglish, which was excellent and fully understandable even without speaking Hindi, check it out!) and we caught an auto-rickshaw home. As the driver wound his way through the narrow streets of the old city, he casually leaned back and started this conversation:
Driver: "Do you know God?"
Zach: "What?"
Driver: "God. Do you know God?"
Zach: "God?"
Driver: "No, not gad, God. G-O-D."
Zach: "No, I don't. What is God's name?"
Driver: "Aryana."
Zach: "Who? Do you mean Shiva?" (It was hard to hear over the noise of the engine.)
Driver: "No, Aryana. I go to see God. On the eleven."
Zach: "Wow. Where? Where does God live?"
Driver: "Delhi. If you see this god, you will believe, 100%!"
Zach: "..."
Driver: "I go on the eleven. Will you come with me?"
Zach: "....". Followed by polite but firm "No."
Driver: "................"
Zach: "But... thank you. Does this god have a website?"
Driver: "Yes. www.jagatgururampaljimaharaj.com"
Zach: (In disbelief) "What? Can you repeat that?"
Driver: (slowly)  "w w w dot ja gat guru rampaljimaharaj dot com"
Zach: "Oh. Okay, I will look him up."
Driver: "Yes. You will see. You will believe. 100%."

If there's a festival...

'You should stay! There will be a festival tonight. The lamas will dance. I think it will be very interesting for you," Sirush said. Zach and I eyed each other. We were eating at the small Dakar Lodge in the village of Lupra, a two hour hike from anywhere. We had only planned to  stop for lunch. Also, we were definitely the only tourists coming through today; there hadn't been a soul in either direction on the hike in. Our cynicism kicked in: was this a ploy?

"We'll think about it," we replied. We put on our packs and started to head out of the village, passing the bright red gompa on the way. There were lots of people around: lamas in their red skirts, women making tea. The place was bustling. As we peeked through the doorway, we were gestured inside. From the ceiling hung one big mask and several others wrapped in rough brown cloth. "For the festival?" we asked. Yes, they explained. The lamas would wear different masks and dance.

We headed right back to the lodge: "We'll stay!"

Lupra

We learned that the festival is called Dogbay, is part of the Bon religion, and is the biggest event in the town all year. Bon is the indigenous religion of Tibet, which pre-dates Buddhism. Bon's rituals, at least to our eyes, are strongly blended with those of Mahayana Buddhism but have retained lots of animist and folkloric elements. There are only two villages in Mustang with Bon gompas; some Bon practitioners from nearby towns had walked hours just to be at the festival. Interestingly, Lupra has no monks; the rituals are lead by married "householder lamas." Sirush's father is one of them and was busy at the gompa all afternoon, making preparations.

With hours to spare before the festival started, Sirush, in his shy, eager way, offered to take us on a village tour. He walked us up, up, up on narrow winding paths through patches of buckwheat and small orchards. Lupra is tiny; it has 16 families and is built into the side of canyon. Across the canyon, natural caves dot the cliff. Before the town was founded, wandering ascetics would sit in the caves and meditate. On the way up, Sirush kept telling us he was taking us to the "hostel." We couldn't figure out what he was talking about-- his was clearly the only lodge in town. As we came over the hill, we saw a yard full of kids. It was a school!

We spent a wonderful afternoon at the school, watching classes, drinking tea with the kids, teaching songs and counting to the youngest ones and talking with Norbu, the circumspect and motivated Tibetan monk who runs the school. The students range from ages 3-14 and all live at the hostel; for some, their home villages are 2-3 days' walk away. Norbu told us that sometimes he gets children whose parents are nomadic herders in Upper Mustang, a very remote region on the border with Tibet. The school provides  them with clothes, because they usually have nothing but some animal skin wrappings.

Counting practice

Norbu runs a tight and effective insitution. 83 kids live together, learn together, and speak, read and write in Nepali, English, and Tibetan (their home language). Norbu's goal is to provide education that grounds the kids in their culture and language while also providing them with the tools they need to advance in the modern world. The young students are eager and the older students are amazing: they speak fluent English, teach the younger kids, and showed us science textbooks that would intimidate an American high schooler. Soon enough the sun had begun to set, and we headed down the hill, promising the students we'd see them at the festival. (Interested in supporting the kids' reading habits? See the end of the post!)

The entire village crowded into the gompa that night. Old women, young women with their babies in arms, nearly all of the children from the school. We were ushered into a corner and served Tibetan tea (tea with butter and salt). Since Zach can't digest lactose, he discreetely emptied his tea into my own glass, and I was greatly relieved when everyone switched from tea to rakshi, a local grain wine with a pinch of flour mixed into it. The monks began chanting; the melodies, horns, and cymbals were familiar from other Buddhist pujas (prayer ceremonies) we had seen. But then the gods emerged. The lamas were clad in red robes with giant sleeves and skirts and they came in and out of the gompa in a stately dance, swinging their arms and timing their steps to the crash of the cymbals. Sometimes, they would take off into a skip, nearly knocking over smaller children who stood at periphery or blowing out candles with a sweep of their skirts. Except for some gentle explanations, the villagers acted like we were part of the family, allowing us to blend into the background and watch the events unfold.

At intervals, the lamas would take a break from dancing. (At one point, they were served dinner while everyone sat around and quietly watched them eat.) During one of these breaks, some of the kids from the school dressed as old Tibetan beggars and came out to provide comic relief. If you asked them where they were from, they would shriek, "We are from Lhasa! Give us money!" and everyone cracked up as they whacked each other with their walking sticks. At 10pm-- after three hours of chanting and dancing and two hours past our normal bedtime -- Zach and I decided to sneak out and head back to the lodge. We found out the next morning that festivities continued until 1am. Apparently much rakshi was consumed.

Sirush had told us that the festival continued the next day: "Starts maybe at 11, over around 4pm. I think it will be very interesting for you." Of course we would stay; we figured we could leave at 4pm and arrive in the large town of Jomsom by 6, safely before dark. But the celebrations ran on NST (Nepali Standard Time, lovingly referred to nationwise as Nepali Stretching Time) and didn't really get going until mid- afternoon; it was soon clear we'd be spending another night. Again, the village gathered in the gompa. Today's rituals were much more elaborate: all the masks came out -- deer, monkeys, demons, and faces that we didn't know how to identify. The children nearest us were terrified by some of the masks and many hid behind Zach's legs.

One of many amazing masks

There were breaks for tea and more comic relief from the kids-- sometimes as beggars and sometimes as little mice, scurrying about pretending to eat rice that was thrown at them. Everyone was involved. Younger men came and went from an inner area all day, running errands; women ran a big kitchen just outside the gompa under the stairs, making food to sustain the lamas in their dancing. The dancing was more varied as well, as the lamas became the various gods and creatures that their masks represented. The day before, Norbu had explained to us that the whole festival was one of renewal, getting rid of the old and purifying to make ready for the new, culminating in throwing things in the river. "No way!" I had cried, a little too loudly.  I explained that it was only two days before our holiday of renewal-- Rosh Hashanah-- and that we throw bread crumbs into the water to symbolize letting go of the past. We laughed and decided that it was fate that had brought us there.

"Beggars" asking for money

The culmination of the dancing was a dance of the ghosts. Two men in all white with bells beneath their shirts danced in and placed a small clay figure on the floor. The lamas returned, back in their red robs, holding bows and arrows. The clay man was shot through and then chopped up with knives. Talk about a graphic representation of getting rid of the old!

Killing the clay man

The whole celebration moved outside to where a fire had been set up and a prayer drawn all around it. After more chanting and praying the fire was started in earnest. At intervals, the head lama poured alcohol into the fire and it burst into a gigantic fireball. Murmurs of satisfaction passed through the crowd. As the sun began to sink on the horizon, everyone was ushered back into the gompa for the final stages of the festival. Each person was given a piece of clay from the chopped-up figure and a handful of grain. A grandpa leaned over and explained to us in a combination of English and gesture that we should rub ourselves wherever we had something we needed to get rid of. We looked around: vigorous rubbing was occuring all around us. Heads, necks, underneath shirts, knees, feet. We rubbed and rubbed. Then, the lamas unrolled a long string and everyone in the village had to find a spot to hold onto. It was cut up so that each person got a piece and more rubbing ensued. Finally, all of it-- clay, grain and string-- were thrown into a big basket or over small structure decorated with delicate white paper flags. It was all destined for the river. But first we had one more cleansing ritual to complete. The entire village washed their faces in water ladled out by the head lama. I kept thinking that this was a much more thorough approach than tossing some bread crumbs.

The head lama plays with fire

Young men were drafted to carry the elaborate basket and swords (swords!) were handed out to some of the men. Everyone processed down to the river to the sounds of cymbals. We followed them out of the village and stood in awe: they were silhouetted in the fading light in the middle of a desert canyon. The lamas repeated the dance there, by the river, where the sounds of the cymbals echoed off the canyon walls. I couldn't help thinking that this ritual could have been performed 2,000 years ago, in the mountain canyons of Tibet. There was such a sense of sacred time, of being linked in a bright line to this moment as it was performed over centuries and to the people who placed their hope and trust in these rituals.

The last dance

In the final moments, all the lay people were sent back up to the village, so the lamas could finish the sacred rites. Minutes later, we heard a giant explosion. The structure was reduced to ashes and the lamas threw the ashes in the river. It was complete. Dusk had fallen and all over the village, you could see people returning to their normal lives; pulling vegetables for dinner, bringing in wood for the fire. The children headed back up to to the hostel, scampering across those narrow paths in the near dark.  We were thrilled and exhausted; astonished by our good luck, by the generosity of the town's inhabitants, and by the beauty and complexity of the ancient rituals we'd experienced. L'shana tovah, indeed. May the new year be for a blessing, from Lupra to New York and beyond.

PS: We were so impressed with the school and the students, we've decided we want to help support their students. After consulting with Norbu, we'll be running a book drive to help develop a library of children's and young adult books at the hostel for pleasure reading. (Right now, they only have textbooks, and they just read those on repeat.) Stay tuned! We'll be asking for help in early December -- anything from picture books to your old copies of Harry Potter.

PSS: For more masks, more dancing, and more awesome kids, check out the full album of Lupra photos and videos (~90 photos/videos).