June 2010
76 posts
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The trek
Today and the next two days, I’ll be posting day-by-day accounts of my four day trek of the Hampta Circuit in the Himalayas, as written from my sleeping bag at the end of each night. The experience was phenomenal, to say the least. Every day, there will be a new post.
Enjoy.
P.S. Photos will be posted as soon as I get a chance. Hopefully within the next 24 horus.
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Day 1 (start 2000m, peak and camp at 3400m), 26...
There is a herd of >100 sheep outside the tent. They haven’t stopped bah-ing for the last 30 minutes. I’m about to throw a rock at them to get them to shoo. I haven’t been so absolutely exhausted (and consequently grumpy) in long than I can remember. We left Manali at 11:00am and hiked with periodical 5-10 minute breaks til 3:30pm. I was initially under the impression that we’d do 6-7 hours on...
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Plan for Remedy
First, I’m making sure I get really cool stuff to remember/bring home. I didn’t really get anything interesting from Varanasi because I was just…preoccupied with other things.
Second, I’m making sure I explore all the things tourists are supposed to see here (which doesn’t actually take a week, so I have extra time here – leaving on the 30th for Delhi and then Rajasthan) – natural reserves,...
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Manali Disappointments
A lot of my journey here was unintelligently planned. I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into in the villages. I didn’t really do much reading on Manali beyond simply knowing it was a big city in Himachal Pradesh so it’d be a sweet spot to check out if I wanted to explore the Himalayas. Little did I know is that it’s a HUGE HUGE HUGE tourist spot. Tons of tourists come here, and...
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A Different Side of India
I left Varanasi on the 21st and got to Delhi on the 22nd morning. I only had 6-7 hours there, but in that little bit of time, I saw stores with infrastructure, traffic lights that were followed, an Apple store (where I got a new charger for $93 because my original one shortcircuited. Bad electricity. Bad inflation of prices in the one of the only places you’ll find a MacBook charger in India),...
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Why I'm a little bit scared
[as a continuation of the post on success]
This program I’m working on here (which might be undergoing a few logistical changes – will keep you posted) is probably the scariest thing I’ve done in a while (read: almost 19 years). The responsibility of it is actually bigger than anything I’ve done. Normally, I’m in charge of one aspect of a project (that rarely holds much significance in the grand...
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Making a difference
When I came up with the idea for a program for the Mushahar kids, I had kind of absurd dreams. With little rationale, I imagined these kids eventually coming to American universities and becoming bankers and presidents of their own NGOs to change other kids’ lives and…things that probably won’t happen (not to be anything but optimistic, but hear me out). I failed to take into account their...
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Success
Anytime in my life, if I’ve needed to succeed, I would pull it off in some way or another. It wasn’t ever an issue. It was just a matter of how late I’d be willing to stay awake and how long it took me to get off facebook and how many smoothies and salads I would need to make before I actually…got to work.
The thing about success in the past, however, is that it was always had an expiration date....
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Things I take for granted
List is always expanding, but here’s a small selection inspired by thoughts in the last few hours:
Clean air
Not having dirt everywhere
Electricity
Fans
Air conditioning
Internet
Limitlessness
Good parents
Good family
Good friends
Good other important people in my life
Having a clean place to lay down when I get tired (and by this I mean…any patch of grass in Long Island...
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Adapting to Luxury
is too easy. It scares me a little bit. I’m in Kaithi right now, the village I started my journey in. I came here to meet with the North India coordinator of Asha and discuss my work a bit and just recap/relax from the four weeks of work. When I first got here and spent 4 days here, I was scared out of my mind that this is what village life was like. Compared to my life in Mirjamurad, the village...
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Pity Points
I recently noticed that in the few IM chats I have with friends when I get internet, the first thing I talk about when they ask me about my experience is the conditions I’m living in. I’m not as quick to talk about the work I’m doing as I am to talk about the heat, the rashes, the mosquitos, the incessant fly annoyance, the lack of shade, the electricity shortages, the inability to digest heavy...
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Sunrise
I spent the morning of my last full day in Varanasi the same way I spent the morning of my first full day. Woke up at 3am (first time it was because I was jetlagged, saw a beetle on the wall next to me and couldn’t go back to sleep because the beetle was too close. This time it was because I was sleeping on the roof, was getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, heard what I thought was a monkey making...
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I just flooded this blog with photos
I included stories behind a fraction of them, but there are stories about all of them. I’ll try to post some of them soon and I’ll link them to the photo posts so you know which kids I’m talking about.
Hope you enjoy :)
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Changes
I just calculated my expenses for the next/last month of my trip. Hotel stays, food, water bottles, and other purchases are looking at somewhere between 25 - 35,000 Rupees. That could get one Mushahar kid dinner for between 5 and 10 years (being that it costs about 10 Rs-/.
I’ve been thinking about ways these experiences are going to affect my own lifestyle beyond the program I’m...
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Unintentional Satyagraha
Satyagraha, a practice made well-known to the public by Gandhi, is defined (by Gandhi):
Truth (satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force. I thus began to call the Indian movement Satyagraha, that is to say, the Force which is born of Truth and Love or non-violence, and gave up the use of the phrase “passive resistance”, in connection with...
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See ya tomorrow!
Poorvi (sister): So I'm meeting up with Tinu (brother) tomorrow. Wanna come?
Me: Where are you guys gonna be?
Poorvi: He's in the city for a conference til Wednesday. Got in last night.
Me: I think Delhi would be a good meeting spot.
Poorvi: haha okay
Me: A good midpoint for the three of us.
Poorvi: We'll be there.
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“The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: “If I stop...”
– MLK Jr.
Well said.
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Something about seeing the whites of an animals...
A thought I had. Every time you see a photo of a cow or a buffalo or any animal that’s not a human, you often just see the blackness and maybe a little bit of the color surrounding it. You never see the whites of their eyes.
I thought killer whales eyes were those big white patches near their mouths when I was a kid. When I saw a killer whale at SeaWorld and actually saw the whites of its...
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Bittersweet
A large part of me knows that the work here isn’t done. I want to stay here for much longer. That part of me even thought of submitting a letter of deferral to Penn so I could stay here for an extended period of time next year to help administer the program. That part of me wants to continue building the relationships I have with the people of the village. That part of me wants to adopt a...
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The Dream
Today, I yelled at the kids. Not like, “Sit down!” It was…serious yelling. Yelling like I haven’t done since I was…I don’t know. A long time ago. I don’t like getting angry, and I don’t like yelling.
First, let me clarify that “kids,” means the summer camp kids (relatively privileged compared to Mushahar kids), not kids who go around...
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Dog Culture and a Lesson Learned about Nature
In America, they call a dog “a man’s best friend.” They are treated with the utmost respect, as if they are members of the family. In the village, dogs walk around all day, cut up, sometimes with an eye gouged out, and emaciated. They get kicked around by the village people as if they were vermin. They tread the perimeter of eating areas just WAITING to grab the leftover scraps...
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Frustration
I’ve been working in the villages for about 4-5 weeks now, and I spend most of my time around village people that are a little bit disadvantaged, but I would call them fortunate in comparison to the Mushahar community. I sit here every day with the kids of the summer camp to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We use plates made of leaves that were collected and sewn together using bamboo...
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The Program
So I’ve been updating my facebook statuses with tons of glee about all the success we’ve had rallying support for the program I’m designing here, but I only touched upon it briefly here. It’s is way more exciting than I have imagined anything during this trip would be, and the fact that it’s taking off as strongly as it has been in the first 4-5 days is even more...
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Summer Camp Day 1
Yesterday was the first day of the summer camp we organized here for children from different villages all over Uttar Pradesh. This is a separate program from the one I’m designing, but a very worthwhile project nonetheless. I’ve been helping organize it for the last two weeks, and it’s brought about 80-100 kids from different villages throughout U.P. to get them to activate their...
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Nourishment
I can’t imagine how people who…can’t afford food on a daily basis live their lives and have any notion of moving forward. I wake up every morning and my first thought is food and water (because…I am always hungry and thirsty here). I often work from 5am - 10am without a sip of water because I need to go about 3-5km to get bottled water, so I have to wait it out every...
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Brotherly Love
It’s weird. I once saw a Russell Peters skit about Indian guys holding hands and how that’s part of the culture here. I laughed about it because I’m American and that wouldn’t fly without homosexual justification here, but then I came here and realized the truth of it.
Guys here hold hands. They wrap arms around each other’s hips. They don’t have romantic...
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My Expectations and the People
I didn’t realize that when I was planning out my trip to the rural villages of Varanasi, my trip would entail more than the work. I almost forgot about the pleasures of experiences like this — meeting people, creating relationships, the potential of having loving students, the potential of actually creating something that goes beyond my 5 weeks in the villages. Maybe I’m ignorant...
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SUCCCCESSSS
Already secured about $3,500 in support for the project I’m working on here! Need another $9,500. Let me know if you want to help support! Email me at a.shah811@gmail.com to get the details of the program and the budget and let me know if you want to fundraise or support yourself!
Things are really looking up from here maaan. :)