Bangkok, Thailand

We flew from Kolkata to Bangkok the afternoon of Feb 18^th.  Its amazing how far a two hour flight can take you!  Bangkok seems so much cleaner than India.  There’s not trash or sewage in the streets, no horns are blaring in traffic, and the food is amazing.  Jeff and I got a really sick of Indian food after two months.  It can be really heavy and the lack of meat is just not what we are used too.  I really don’t know if I’ll ever get sick of thai food.  Its lighter, tastier, and there’s more variety.  And by variety I mean they eat beef!  Jeff had Pricelined a hotel, so for our first night we stayed in the 5 star Holiday Inn.  It was a little slice of heaven.  The bed was so soft it was like sleeping on a cloud and the pillows had real feathers in them.  We ate a wonderful meal at street side restaurant.  We then took the metro to Siam Square and wander around the street markets there.

The next day, we bought a huge duffle bag and put around 30 kilos of our stuff into it.  That bag then went into storage and we’ll pick it up when we come back through Bangkok in a couple of months.  Its shocking that we were carrying all the extra stuff with us!  We laid by the pool for awhile and then said goodbye to the 5 star hotel.  We took a water taxi to the back packer district of Khao San Road to find a place to stay for the night.  While we were searching, we stopped at a little bar that had wi-fi to have a beer.  Jeff made a posting on Facebook and received a reply from his friend from high school, Rachel.  Rachel was in Bangkok for the night and was catching a plane back to states the next day.  We meet up with Rachel and her friends Grace and Keene.  It was so fun to hear about their travels and adventures and share ours as well.  Once again the world has proven just how small it really is!

Oh Thai food!  So good!

Say goodbye to the weight we lost in India!

Jeff and his friend Rachel

Group photo (L to R: Grace, Keene, Jeff, me, and Rachel)

Kolkata, India Feb 9th-18th

We arrived into Kolkata the morning of Feb 9^th after a 14 hour overnight train ride from Varanasi.  From the train station, we caught a ferry across the Ganges and then walked over to the Sudder Road area.  After looking a couple of hotels that had nice lobbies but not so nice rooms, we finally found the Sunflower Guesthouse a couple of blocks away.  The building was extremely old, but the rooms had been remodeled and were spotless.  We took a little nap and then walked over to the Motherhouse were we had volunteer orientation for the Sisters of Charity.  Mother Teresa founded the Sisters of Charity and their mission is to help the poorest of the poor.  The sisters welcome anyone who wants to volunteer, even if it is just for a day.  The sisters run several facilities, some concentrate on children, some on adolescents, some on handicap adults, and some for people who need hospice care.  I was placed at Prem Dan on the women’s side.  Prem Dan is set up for people who need long term care because of disabilities or the women were elderly and their families no longer would support them.  Jeff was placed at Kalighat, which was Mother Teresa’s first home she established to help care for the dying.  The original facility was under renovations and the patients had been shuffled over to the same complex as Prem Dan. 

Volunteers met at Motherhouse at 7am where we would get a breakfast of bananas, chai, and bread.  Jeff usually decided to stay in bed an hour longer and make his way to Kalighat, skipping breakfast.  After breakfast was served, one of the sisters would lead us in a short prayer, followed by one Hail Mary, and a short song.  If it was your last day of volunteering, everyone would then sing a song thanking you for your time and wishing you well.  Breakfast time was also a time for chatting with volunteers you wouldn’t see for the rest of the  day because they were at different facilities.  Volunteers came from all over the world, America, China, Europe, Korea, India, and so many other places.  It was amazing to see how many people just wanted to give back.

We would take a 20 minute walk from Motherhouse to Prem Dan.  I met some wonderful girls Jessica, from Texas and Annie from Australia who were at the same facility I was at.  Both were nurses and it was always great chatting with them in the mornings on the way to volunteer.  One of the first duties of the day was laundry.  The laundry was placed into a large basin filled with soapy water and then someone would stomp on it.  It reminded of crushing grapes to make wine!  The laundry was then placed into a sink to be rinsed.  One volunteer would ring out the clothes, pass them along were they were scrubbed by hand, and placed into another rinse sink.  The laundry was rinsed and scrubbed through 4-5 sinks, rung out and then taken in buckets to the roof where it was hung to dry.  Then the beds would need to be changed and the floors scrubbed in the main room.  Prem Dan had about 150 women when I was there, so the laundry, the changing of beds, and scrubbing of floors could take some time. 

On my first day at Prem Dan, I informed the sister in charge that I was a nurse and would be willing to help with dressing changes if help was needed.  So for the rest of the week, my morning were filled with helping two other nurses and the sisters change the patients dressings.  Some were simple dressing changes and others were much more complex.  One patient, had her sari catch fire.  She had a huge burn from her waist to ankles on her backside.  It took about an hour for me, Janet the nurse from Italy, and Naomi, the nurse from Japan to change her dressing.  In the states, a patient with such a large burn would be receiving IV pain medications and probably would be put to sleep for some of the dressing changes.  It really made me appreciate the resources available in our healthcare system.  Over the course of the week of my week there though, her wound was much improved, although she still had a long road ahead of healing ahead of her. 

The patients would call most of the volunteers ‘Aunty’ as a form of respect.  Once they put together that I was helping with the dressing changes, most patients started to call me ‘Sister’.  A lot of the sisters have had no medical training and learn from the few that have received training or from volunteers.  I loved talking to the sisters about what I knew about wounds and dressing changes.  The other two nurse I worked with spoke broken English and it was harder for them to communicate with the sisters about why dressings were being changed they way they were. 

After dressings were done, it was volunteer chai break-time. The volunteers would sit around the patio chatting with each other.  During this time, Jeff and I meet another two really cool girls, Mary from Wisconsin and Megan from Portland.  These two girls where on a exchange program with their universities.  In the mornings they would volunteer and in the afternoons they would go to class.  Chai time was over when lunch arrived.  It was the volunteers jobs to deliver the plates the Sisters dished up to the patients.  Some patients needed to be fed as well.  Once everyone was done eating, dishes were collected, washed, and put away.  We were then free to enjoy our the rest of our day.

Jeff and I would sometimes share a tuck-tuck back to where our hotel was, sometimes we would take the streetcar, and sometimes we would walk.  We would spend our afternoons wandering some the markets, hanging out in the cafes along Sudder street where a lot the other volunteers hung out, or even take a nap.  It felt good to be able to give just a little bit back.

Morning laundry time

Mary (on left) & Annie (on right) making beds

Afternoon chai break Annie (sitting on floor on left), Jessica (sitting on bench on left), unknown volunteer (sitting on bench on right), and Megan (sitting on floor on right)

Mary (standing in center) playing soccer during chai break with the Prem Dan facility in the background

Varanasi Feb 7th-8th

Varanasi is said to be one of the world’s oldest continually inhabited cities, and is one of the holiest places in India.  Hindus come here to bathe in the Ganges to wash away their sins or to cremate their loved ones.  Varanasi was the most chaotic city we visited here.  The traffic and the crowds of people were crazy and the tuck-tuck drivers could only take you so far because the streets became too narrow.  We walked along the narrow streets to the hotel we were planned on staying.  We didn’t, however, have a reservation and when we arrived we found the hotel to be completely booked.  We were back on the streets looking for a place to stay, but fortunately we had run into some other travelers that had recommended a cheap clean guesthouse.

The next morning we woke up and made our way down to Manikarnika Ghat.  This is the main cremation ghat.  The dead bodies are handles by outcastes, known as doms and are carried through the streets on bamboo stretches swathed in colorful cloth and flowers.  The corpses are washed in the Ganges prior to cremation.  Around the ghats are huge stacks of firewood and each log is weighed so that the price of the cremation can be calculated.   The cremations happen several at a time and are going on 24 hours a day.  If the fire is built right, it takes between two-three hours for the body to incinerate.  It was a powerful scene to watch.  We also learned that only the rich and middle class could afford to be cremated.  The poor were wrapped in cloth, weighed down, and slipped into the Ganges. 

That evening Jeff took a boat ride on the Ganges and got some different views of the burning ghats during sunset.  I was struck with another case of Delhi belly, so decidedit was too risky to be out in a little rowboat with no head.  I’m quiet tired of the vegetarian and traveler’s diarrhea diet! 

After his boat ride was over and I had taken enough Imodium, we walked down to the Dasaswamedh Ghat to watch the ganga aarti ceremony.  At 7pm, every night the Hindu priests bless the River Ganges with incest, chanting, bell ringing, fire, and dancing.  It was beautiful. 

The next day we caught our last train in India to Kolkata.  We plan on spending a week there and volunteer  for the Sisters of Charity which Mother Teresa founded.

The wood stacked next to the burning ghats

View of the burning ghats from Jeff's boat ride

At the blessing of Ganges

Khajuraho Feb 4th-6th

In Bhopal, we boarded the train onto the first AC class, the highest class available for travel on the Indian Railways.  What a step up from sleeper class!  Jeff and I had our own berth that had a locking door.  They also had clean sheets, pillows, and blankets for us to use.  We had a good night sleep on the train and arrived into Satna around 0730.  We then took a tuck-tuck to the bus station where we boarded a bus for Khajuraho.  We got on the bus about an hour before it left the station, so we did have seats.  The bus bumped along for almost four hours to go 110 km.  We arrived into Khajuraho and found a nice, clean, neat hotel to call home for two nights.

The first night we were there was a dance festival going on. We purchased a couple of tickets and enjoyed some traditional dance.  The next day, we wandered around the world heritage site temples that Khajuraho is famous for.  The temples have some beautiful sandstone carvings.  Some carvings were war scenes, some to the Hindu gods, and some were more erotic kama sutra positions that could make anyone blush!  Overall, the temples were amazing and we enjoyed our afternoon. 

The next morning was a very early morning.  The first bus leaving Khajuraho back to Satna where the train station was didn’t leave until 8 am.  We had a train that left to Varanasi at 1145, so we had to figure out a different way to get to Satna.  We had talked to a couple of locals and we were told to take a tuck-tuck 4 km to the next town, where the buses were much more frequent.  So at 0630, the tuck-tuck dropped us off on the street corner and the driver told a bus would be by in a few minutes.  As with any other place in India, a couple of foreigners standing on the street corner especially that early in the morning, we drew a little bit of attention.  One guy came over and started asking where we were going.  We told him and he arranged for us to catch a ride in a Jeep that was heading that way anyway for about the same price as the bus.  We had a much quicker and more pleasant ride than the bus.  We arrived at the train station with plenty of time before our train left for Varanasi.

Jeff taking notes for later

There's no way that's happening!

Outside of the temples

Main temple complex in the background

A lady parting her hair in the mirror

Bhopal Feb 1&2

Stage at the music festival

Sourbhab and I on the paddle boat

Upper Lake during sunset

Picking out bangles to go with the sari Sonita gifted to me

We arrived back into Bhopal and checked back into the same hotel we left from.  After a quick shower, we walked to the Taj-ul-Masjid, the largest mosque in Bhopal, if not India.  It had three beautiful white onion domes, a large courtyard, and two very tall minarets.   In Bhopal, there are two big lakes, Upper Lake and Lower Lake.  From the mosque, we walked to the Upper Lake area that has a beautifully landscaped walkway. We enjoyed an ice cream treat at a little café with a wonderful view.  We then decided it was time to walk back to our hotel. On our way back, we came across an open air theater with a festival going on.  We wandered around the displays of traditional masks from around the country and the world.  There were also booths selling shoes, pottery, saris, textiles, bangles, and other things.  Around seven o’clock on the main stage there was a music group that played traditional music from the region.  We stayed until the mosquitoes and the cold got to us and then hailed a tuck-tuck back to the hotel. 

When we got back to the hotel, our friend Sourabh was waiting for us.  One of his friends had spotted us on the street and let him know we were back in town.  We arranged to meet at his room the next day after he is done studying.  So the next morning we met at Sourabh’s apartment and his wonderful mom made us a delicious lunch.   We then headed off to Upper Lake and rented a paddle boat.  We enjoyed cruising around the lake for a bit.

The next day, we had a night train from Bhopal to Khajuraho.  We spent the afternoon with Sourabh, Sonita, and many of their neighbors.  We walked around the zoo area and saw some of the animals.  On our way back to gather our things, we stopped in the market.  Sonita bought me a set of purple glass bangles to go with the sari she gave me earlier in the week.  She said that it was an Indian mother’s duty to buy bangles for their daughters. 

We said teary goodbyes to Sonita as we left their apartment for the last time.  Sourabh insisted on accompanying us to the train station.  As the train pulled into the station, we said more teary goodbyes to Sourabh.  We were truly blessed to have meet such a wonderful family who not only opened their home to us, but their hearts as well.   

Sanchi

Jan 30 & 31

We boarded the bus to Sanchi.  As the bus pulled away from the bus station, it was just too good to be true.  There were only about 15 people on the bus and Jeff and I both had seats.  We knew it couldn’t last and right we were.  A couple of kilometers later, the bus pulls over and we are transferred onto a an already packed full bus.  Jeff and I were both standing in the aisle for a couple of kilometers.  One gentleman ended up offering his seat to me on the back bench.  I ended up sitting on one cheek and was not able to lean back because there wasn’t enough room for my shoulders against the seat back.  As the bus bumped along and made its stops, people get on and off and Jeff was able to shuffle into a seat.  The bus arrived into Sanchi after two hours and dropped us off on the side of the road.  We gathered up our stuff and walked the couple of hundred meters to a guesthouse.  Sanchi is a very quiet little town and we spent the afternoon relaxing, reading, and drinking chai in the sun.  We walked up the street into the village and Jeff ended up playing a game of cricket with some local boys.  Indians love cricket and no matter how many times the game is explained to us, we just don’t understand it.  As Jeff was trying his luck, the littler boys of the group were sitting around chatting with me.  The only thing I really understood about the game from them is that Jeff is a bad bowler (the bowler is sort of like the pitcher in baseball).  When I told the little guy it was Jeff’s first time playing, he said it didn’t matter Jeff was still a bad bowler.

The next day, we went to the market and rented bikes for the day.  The roads that connect a lot of the towns and cities are two lane highways, that turn into four lanes sometimes.  On the roads, there are people riding pedal bikes (like us that day), some riding motor bikes, cows, goats, and dogs walking down the road,  people pushing hand carts heavy with vegetables, fruits, peanuts, and other goods and speeding cars, cargo trucks, and buses that go whizzing by.  The roads can be pretty chaotic.  The bikes we were riding had one gear, one brake, no shocks, and there were no helmets available for us to wear.   I wasn’t having a lot of fun pedaling with horns honking and feeling the wind of the speeding vehicles blow by.  But we pedaled 16 km, to the Udaigiri cave shrines.  In Lonely Planet, it says there is 20 cave shrines with statues and carvings in them.  In reality, there is only about five you can go into and another five or so that are locked up and you aren’t able to enter.  So we pedaled the bikes back to Sanchi without getting hit or hurt.

In Sanchi itself, are some hilltop stupas which are temples devoted to the Buddha.  There are several stupas, but the grandest was Stupa 1.  It is 16 meters high and 37 meters in diameter with a wall encircling it.  The wall has four entrances and each entrance has beautifully carved toranas (gateways) dedicated to the Buddha.  We spent the evening wandering around site.  The next morning we board a train back to Bhopal. The train was so much easier than the bus.  It took 40 minutes at half the cost and all four butt cheeks were sat comfortably on the seat!

Outside the cave shrines at Udiagiri



The main Stupa at Sanchi

 

Bhopal

Jan 29^th & 30^th

We arrived into Bhopal in the late afternoon and found a hotel located on a side street so it was relatively quiet for a bigger city.  After dropping our gear and grabbing a bite to eat, we were out to explore the town.  We found a little beer stall that had the first beers on tap we’d seen in India.  After enjoying one, we jumped on the crowded city bus to visit the New Market shopping area.  On the bus, there were several university students that struck up a conversation with Jeff.  When we arrived into the New Market area, one of the quieter university students paid for our bus fare and asked where we going.  We explained that we just wanted to walk around the market and he decided to join us.  We learned that his name Sourabh and he was studying computer science.  Over several cups of chai at one of the street stands, we learned that his exam week was approaching and his mom came from their village to stay with him and cook meals while he was studying.  He invited us to go back to his room, meet his mom, and have a meal with them.  His room was on our way back to our hotel, so we excepted the invitation.

I was a little apprehensive about just dropping in on his mom.  What would she think of her son bringing home two Americans that he promised a meal too?  We climbed the steps up to the second floor of a large building.  Sourabh’s apartment was a large single room with a smaller attached room that served as a kitchen and a shared bathroom down the hallway.  I didn’t need to worry about his mom accepting strangers for dinner.  The second she saw us her face lit up with a huge beautiful smile and she ran to embrace me into a warm hug saying “Welcome, welcome.”  Sonita, Sourabh’s mom, made a us an amazing meal of aloo gobhi parathas (bread, thicker than a chapatti, stuffed with potatoes and cauliflower).  Over the course of the evening Sonita asked if I had ever worn a sari.  When I said no, arrangements were made to meet the next evening at their apartment and for us to accompany them to the temple with me wearing a sari.

We arrived at their room the next evening and shared our some of our pictures on our laptop from our travels with Sourabh, Sonita, and a few of the neighbors.  Sourabh started to call Jeff ‘Uncle’ and me ‘Auntie.’  He explained that this was a form of respect. Everytime a friend or neighbor was spotted in the hallways or out on the street, Jeff and I were introduced as the auntie and uncle from America  invited.  When Sonita brought me aside and started to show me how to dress in a sari, several of the ladies came to watch, laugh, and giggle with us.  I felt a little bit like a dress up doll, and I loved every minute of it.  The women were full of smiles and were very generous in letting me borrow some of their jewelry (bangles, necklaces, and bindi dots) so I dressed a proper married Indian lady.  They also applied the red powder that went down the middle of my hair part to symbolize that was I married. 

Dressed to the nines (actually it was only three pieces) in the sari, we were off to temple.  Sourabh and his mom were so proud to show us the temple and share their religion (they are devote Hindus) with us.  They patiently explained the gods that the temple was dedicated too and how to perform each of the rituals.  At one point, we stood in line to be blessed by the Braham, the priest, and we held out a cupped hand as he poured water into it.  You are supposed to drink the water placed in your hand, but I took mine and dumped it on my head like a good Catholic.  As the red streak from my hair started to run down my forehead, Sonita helped me get another handful of water and perform the ritual properly.  After prayers and offerings were completed, we enjoyed another wonderful meal at their apartment and shared a cup of chai over that the neighbors room.  Sonita gave me a beautiful purple sari as a gift. 

The next morning, Sourabh meet us at our hotel with two of his friends.  They helped us carry our bags to the bus station where we were catching a bus to go 40 km to a little town called Sanchi.  We had to come back through Bhopal to catch our next train and we promised Sourabh and his mom we would contact them when we came back through town.

Bundi

Jan 24-28^th

Having survived the train ordeal we now faced a new obstacle, it was now about 12:30 am and we needed to find a place to sleep. We hired an autorickshaw driver to take us down the deserted streets of Bundi and drop us off at what we thought was a guesthouse we wanted to stay at.  It was like a ghost town.  Luckily Teresa endured and was able to locate us a very nice setup on the cheaps.  (Jeff’s plan was to set our tent up on a little grassy spot we found.  There was NO WAY I was sleeping in the tent after the sardine train.  I wanted a bed and a place to wash my hands and brush my teeth!) So, It was lights out for the night finally and we didn’t move until around noon the next day.  When we finally got up for fears of pressure ulcers we decided to take a small walking tour around town and scope out the activities we wanted to do in the next few days.  We did some light shopping and explored the step wells that Bundi was known for.  The wells were massive with stairs built into the sides of the walls so people could walk down to the water level that varied due to the monsoons.   Most have been converted to trash pits and long drop toilets but some were well preserved and remained very impressive especially the Raniji-ki-Baori which was about 150 ft deep laced with beautiful carvings.  We headed back to  the guesthouse for dinner and call it a night.  The next day we rented a 125 cc scooter to make the 36 km ride out to some impressive waterfalls at Bhimlat.  It took a bit to get used to the flow of traffic (or lack thereof) and it was discovered that the horn was just about as important as brakes or the throttle.  Good horn, good brakes, and good luck is what you need to navigate the roads of India. We safely made it to the falls and hiked down to the bottom to spend the afternoon soaking it all in and taking a splash in the cool pool.

 It was decided that Teresa would get some scooter lessons as we left and since we were in a pretty remote area with a straight flat road.  She climbed on and fired  her hog up, she immediately knew that she was dealing with 125ccs of sheer moped power. After receiving instruction on the brakes and throttle she was on her own.  Disaster almost struck when she made the most common mistake to new riders, instead of letting go of the throttle and applying brake she over compensated with the throttle and almost went shooting into the ditch. The second attempt went much smoother and pretty soon she was tearing off down the road leaving me in the dust.  After she finally took pity on me and turned around to retrieve me.  After some convincing I climbed on back of the scooter and she drove the 5 km to the main road where she adamantly demanded that we switch places. The rest of the ride home was luckily uneventful. 

For our final day in Bundi we climbed up to the old palace and fort overlooking the city.  From the elevated viewpoint you could really take in why Bundi was considered to be a blue city. The majority of building were painted Brahman blue making it look like a smurf village.  The palace was sort of ho-hum but did contain a few beautiful murals, decorated rooms, and a massive wasp hive in which its inhabitants took pleasure in stinging me.  The fort was full of monkeys that were reported to be aggressive so we took a bamboo staff with us to ward off the angry primates, Teresa had a good time perfecting her ninja skills.  The fort at the top of the hill had been abandoned many years ago and had not been restored in any way so it was interesting to be given free rein to explore the massive complex at will.  At one end there was an old temple where we were able to catch the setting sun in peace and quiet (two things that are almost impossible to find in India).  We made our way down to the city to grab dinner at a nice restaurant we had found the day before called Tom n’ Jerry (like the cat and mouse but I’m fairly confident the owner did not seek the rights to use the name), but the service was friendly, food was good, beer was cold, and free wi-fi to boot.  We made our way to Bhopal via an hour bus ride to Kota where we caught the train (AC chair car this time so the events of the last train ride were repeated) to Ujjain.  Spent the night in Ujjain then caught the morning train to Bhopal which is in the heart of India.

A step well / garbage pit

The local veg market

T at the Raniji-ki-Baori

Bhimlat falls

Bhimlat botton

T perfecting her anti-monkey ninja skills

Ahhhh, peace and quiet in India