Poverty Conference at JNU

The JNU campus is a wooded oasis in the suburbs of New Dehli. Still the sky is extremely hazy, and the campus is in the flight path of the domestic airport. The various panelists have been presenting a lot of case studies of programs such as those that involve domestic violence, the affect of women working overseas in Sri Lanka, different sorts of court systems - official and informal - to solve local disputes. Good presentations. Meeting lots of people, some old friends. Stimulating conversation.

Joan is also busy with people from the conference.

Lots of wonderful food, hospitality. Great birds all around - peacocks wandering the campus. Even got to run yesterday morning. There's really little traffic and there is a large sports field that people walk and jog around in the early morning. India is feeling much more comfortable.

We got out to Qutab Minar (google it, don't have the pics off the camera yet). It's amazing the things we don't know exist here. This is on the world historical treasures list and we spent several hours wandering around the grounds.

There's a strike (Bandh) going on downtown. The police were shutting down illegal shops and the traders (shop keepers) are on strike. So all the shops are shut down and schools have been shut down. We know this from the tv. On campus here we are totally isolated.

A quick update

We've moved to the JNU campus. (Jawarhalal Nehru University) We're getting comfortable with Delhi. The first day to the tourist areas was misleading. The stereotype pictures of the crowded streets is not really typical of the rest of Delhi. I'll post a couple of pics here. First, view from an autorickshaw.



Then view of the Red Fort.


Next the Guest House we stayed at.




And finally lunch with Winnie Singh and her husband - a contact through CH in Anchorage. He just retired from the army. They are working on AIDS prevention projects through their organization MAITRI - www.maitri.org.in - don't have time to
do the link now.



As you can see, we found a place to download pics onto a disk. Have a bunch of new ones to download. Roly's cousin Nishan came over yesterday and took us to JNU where we planned out the rest of the trip. Amritsar to see the Golden Temple, Agra to see Taj Mahal. Then to Rajistan for 4 or 5 days. Then fly to Kerela and come up thru Cochin and Goa to Bombay (now Mumbai). Inland to see the Elora caves. Then back to Delhi in time to fly home. He travels around India all the time and is making arrangements for a car and driver for the first part and connections for the rest. So there will be lots to post. We Americans tend to be so ignorant about India - as we devour Lonely Planet India and an anthology of India travel writing, we are getting quite excited.

The conference starts tomorrow. Rashmi has arrived and we meet him here in about 15 minutes so I have to run.

First Day Getting our Footing

I didn't take many pictures and I'm afraid i can't write the hundreds of thousands of words to make up for them. Some quick notes. Breakfast cooked specially for us - the parantha brought to the table hot from cooking, the curry too. The autorickshaw zipping through the streets. We'd read about touts, but still were not prepared for everyone on the streets to to come up to us, offer us assistance, generally telling us not to go where we wanted to go (The shops aren't open yet, it's Muslim sabbath, no one is there, it's full of pickpockets, better come this way; there's a strike over there, it will be over in an hour, now you might want to go shop in the government emporiums, etc.) Slipping into McDonald's (something we never do at home) just to be able to look at the map and Lonely Planet India without a bunch of people all over us. But they were nice, charming even. We wandered around trying to find our way at Connaught Place - the center of Delhi according to the book, but really the center of tourist Dehli. We eventually slipped into the subway - opened recently - and for 18 Rupees (about 40c) for the two of us we were whisked to old Delhi and the Red Fort. We came up out of the subway and were suddenly in the India of movies. A narrow street, tiny shops on each side. people moving everywhere. Food stands, car repair, and we even saw our first cow. I felt taking pictures was intruding, besides I didn't think I could stop. I felt conspicuous as the foreigner, even though almost no one bothered us in this part. Eventually we got to the Fort. I was frisked along with all the other men (as I was getting on the subway). Women in a separate line, got frisked by a woman. Running out of time in the internet cafe. More tomorrow. Some pics of the Fort.

Night in Dehli

It was dark as we flew over Afganistand and Pakistan. The lights of towns were soft and barely visible. The light outside the airport in Delhi was also a soft yellow glow. This was in sharp contrast to Newark where we landed after dark from LA on the first leg. There the lights seemed to be an attempt to turn night into day. Now, in Dehli it seemed like the lights were just a slight imposition on the dark, just enough so people can find there way around.

As we came down the stairs toward the customs, we saw a man holding a sign with our names. He whisked us through to a special counter where we waved through. Then into a car. Besides the soft light, the first thing I noticed was the air. The temperature was comfortable, on the border between warm and cool, but not quite either. And the air was thick with the smell of coal and you could see it. Neither the driver nor Raghav
knew exactly where we were going. The picture at the top shows them asking for directions for the third time. The dark image gives a sense of how we felt. But this man was sent by Rashmi's uncle so we didn't worry. Eventually we got to the guest house. Got checked in and into our room. We slept well to the next morning.

the best show on earth

"...India is the best show on earth, the best bazaar of human experiencs that can be visited in a lifetime...India will disolve your ideas about what it is to be a human being, what it is to be compassionate, what it is to be spiritual or conscious. Its people give new meaning to perseverance, courage, ingenuity, and friendship. India 's is a bewilderingly old culture, with myth and history so intertwined and layered that one knows immediately it cannot be known nor understood, only experienced." From the introduction to Traveler's Tales: India, edited by James O'Reilly and Larry Habegger

We leave LA at 10:35am, stop in Newark, then arrive in Dehli, if all goes well, at 9:15pm Nov 2. Rashmi has arranged for us to be met at the airport and taken to a guesthouse. We've started our malaria pills. I think we're ready. Can you ever be ready for India?

Live from Amritsar

We're going to India next week - I'm assuming I will find ways to keep posting from there, but if there is a gap that will be the reason - and so today we met with a Sikh friend to talk about our trip. While talking about visiting the Golden Temple in Amritsar, he told us that every day "The Book" is ceremoniously carried into the Golden Temple at 4am and then returned in the evening. And - here's the interesting part - that ceremony is covered live every day by satellite! So we saw a tape of today's ceremony. Below is more about it from incredibleindians.com.

Amrit Vela
Amrit Vela means the pre-dawn moment. It is actually the time when the watch strikes four o'clock in the morning. The pilgrims wake up and start preparing for a serene early morning visit to the Darbar Saheb. After reaching the temple entrance, one must take off their shoes at the 'shoes counter'. The next step is to dip one's feet at a channel of running water. On the way to the temple, there are lined up flower stalls, for one to buy garlands or just fresh flowers for offering... (more on the Golden Temple here, it's the last article on the page. The picture above comes from this link.)