How Do You Say Thiruvanathapuram?

It's four months now since our return from our adventure in India. That's how long it has taken me to finally sit down and compose this final blog entry. For I while, I was frequently asked about what it was like to be back and the answer to this question has really been quite easy - for me, it's very much like it was before we left. My life has resumed much as I left it despite my best intentions of resetting some things. My life in India was so completely different than my experience here that it seems now almost surreal. The whole experience went by so quickly and now occupies my mind in a kind of sleepy haze like a once vivid dream. Did we really go there? I guess this blog and many hundreds of photos confirm the experience but it does feel odd at times to think back on our lives in Kerela and at TRINS.

I'm posting a few photos from our final weeks and days in India.

Mariana with her sixth grade classmates in front of the middle school. It can be tough being a sixth grader even in your home school where everyone is familiar and the culture is your own. Mari had a good school experience at TRINS but is was not without the difficulties and dramas that often play out at this age. She experienced at times how some of these difficulties can be amplified when they take place in the context of a cultural and social context in which the rules are unfamiliar. I really respect how well she stuck it out during some difficult times. She'll know better in the coming years what she gained from her experience as a student and a resident at TRINS.

Jenn and I attended Elena's final school assembly during which she was a participant in a program about space and planets.

The assembly also included a small farewell ceremony for Elena, a very touching moment for her. Having just experienced a third grade year that she still talks about, fourth grade at TRINS was going to be a tough act to follow. As she does everywhere she goes, she seemed to fit in well but longed for the connection to her teachers that she enjoys in her schools at home. She's seeing now that she learned a lot more than she realized as she finds herself well ahead of her classmates in math and some other areas due to the different pacing in her class at TRINS.

During the month of January, a group of about 30 students from South Korea were on campus as part of an English language program. They led the assembly through a short yoga/ meditation program.

Ohhhmmmmmmmmmm....

Listening to kind words being shared on our behalf

A short farewell speech at our good-bye assembly

Many things to laugh at.

With my 9th grade class

With my 12th graders

With the 11th graders

My colleagues in the biology department

Our mother hen, Sangeetha, who set the gold standard for mentors.

Cutting a good-bye cake.

Dealing with handicap accessibility always involves a little help from your friends

Checking out the Andover high yearbook.

Lena's getting reacquainted with greenbacks...

Home, sweet, home, for a little while...

An enjoyable farewell lunch with some of my colleagues at a local hotel restaurant.

Our TRINS family portrait - wonderful people who showed us tremendous hospitality throughout our stay in India.

Time to go home.

Our trip home was as enjoyable as 24 hour journey could be. The temperature was near 80 F as we departed from Mumbai, in the mid-40s during our layover in Amsterdam, and just about 0 upon landing at Logan airport in Boston. Tropical India to New England mid-winter was a harsh transition. With seven hours in Amsterdam and an amazing Dutch transport system, we were able to both visit the Anne Frank House and take a canal tour with time to spare though the girls won't remember much from the boat ride - they were fast asleep for most of it. We enjoyed a few days at our home with Sreeja Rajan, my exchange partner, while she repeated the closure process in Amesbury that we had just completed in Kerala.

The impact of my experience still lingers in subtle ways. Though India itself was a fascinating and memorable travel experience, the more profound experience for me was the opportunity to step outside of my "normal" life and look at it from a different perspective. I made some promises to myself about how I wanted to change when I returned to my life in the US and ironically, little has changed except for my deepened awareness of how out of balance my life often is. That awareness has at times haunted me and at other times motivated me to work harder to keep my personal promises. Deciding to pursue a Fulbright Teacher Exchange was a decision inspired by a desire step outside my comfort zone in an effort to grow as a person. I'll have to wait to see what personal transformation I'm capable of achieving along my life's path ahead, but I am grateful to have had the experience in India as fascinating side trip that had compelled me to pay much more attention to the familiar yet unbalanced path I've been following.

No teaching experience in India would have been complete without the opportunity to participate in a field trip. So when we heard that the 11th graders were heading off on their class trip to parts of Kerala we had been interested in seeing ourselves and doing so during the week before we were to depart for our own three week travel adventure, we expressed interest in joining the 11th graders and were invited to come along on their week-long class bus trip. Up to this point, Jenn had spent many, many hours on all of our travel arrangements to ensure that we didn't end up in places we didn't want to be, something that is easy to do in India. This time however, the itinerary and accommodations were set and we were going along for the ride. And oh what a ride it was. It was a memorable week for a diversity of reasons.

Loading the bus - some "intelligence' came in that some of the 17 year old students had plans for some extracurricular activities during the trip so our first official act to start our excursion was a luggage search of the bags as they were loaded into the bus. The kids were extremely tolerant of the intrusion into their privacy - I don't think this sort of thing was unusual.
To save on accommodation costs, the trip set out around 5:00pm and the plan was to drive through the night and save a night's room cost. Our first stop was at a small restaurant serving local specialties in an eating establishment where the focus was more on the food than the aesthetics, a recurring theme for this trip we soon discovered .

Home cooking.

Said fish specialty, up close.
As the clock rattled well past midnight, I thought for a while the kids were going to listen to their very loud music and watch movies throughout the night. However, most had faded into dreamland before we began our pre-dawn ascent up a serpentine road of switchbacks and sharp corners that aggressively climbed the mountainside to Wayanad, a hill station town with a reputation for scenic beauty high in the Ghat Mountains. Sensing a change in the inclination of our vehicle, I awoke in time to watch our very skillful bus driver negotiate numerous 180 degree switchbacks in the face of numerous trucks and buses barreling down the mountain as well as random boulders here and there that had rolled onto the edge of the road at one time or another and were too much of a bother to move. Peering though the murky darkness and seeing only what the headlights were illuminating, there was the feeling of being on a Disney ride though much more thrilling given the lack of certainly that we would get off the ride intact. The Wayanad plateau was reached as the sun climbed into the sky and we arrived at our accommodations for that evening, the Holiday Home Cabins, for a chance to take a rest before the day's program began.

Travel weary already after a night on the bus, we arrive at Holiday Home

Adolescent boys share common characteristics across the globe

A common scene near our cottages

Some of the girlz

Our room was already occupied when we arrived - the guest was ushered out of our room by the boys with great commotion and bravery. No camera tricks here - it's as big, if not bigger, than it looks.

So after a brief nap, we gathered for the day's excursion - it said "Kuruva Island" on the itinerary. When I asked what was in store, i was told that it involved a boat trip out to some very nice islands where we could walk around and enjoy the scenery. I was told that we should bring a dry change of clothes in case we got wet along the way. I asked what the chances were that I would get wet and was told 99%. I thought Bala was kidding -she wasn't.

The ferry boats I imagined whisking us off to some exotic tropical island (in the mountains, no less) never materialized. I later learned that the boats were there only because the water depth of the river here was over our heads

Once shuttled across the river, we enjoyed a walk through some massive bamboo stands and paused for a group picture.


With our guide leading us, we quickly discovered where the 99% probability of getting wet came from. The "islands" we were visiting were visiting were actually swaths of forest fractured by a wide and rushing river. The main activity for our visit was to get everyone across the river, multiple times, alive. True adventure requires a real risk of danger or injury - this was a true adventure - we came close several times to losing some of our lighter kids.

Some of the other student groups visiting the islands preferred a less organized approach to the crossing.

The expression of Lena's face says it all. The big guy to the left is the tour guide - he seemed to have his doubts about this excursion


One of seven river crossings, each a little deeper and with a quicker current than the last.

Returning from the islands with all students accounted for, a minor miricle.

On the way to the island adventure, the bus had paused fro a few moments in response to a pair of women waving on the side of the road. The tour guy jumped off to chat with them for a minute or two and returned to announce that our lunch arrangements had been made. The house they stood before didn't look like a restaurant but they claimed they offered the only place for food between that point and the island adventure parking lot, a statement that proved to be, to no surprise, blatantly false. Regardless, a few picnic table, a make shift lean-to, and a backyard kitchen were all you needed to your own tropical diner so we took our places at the tables and enjoyed a lunch of assorted Keralite specialties served on banana leaves just as we had during Onam back in August.

Our tropical lunch spot

Mari hung with students most the week

Lunch ladies bring the buffet to us

Clean up is quick - no utencils and the banana leaf plates get rolled up and tossed

Part of the outdoor kitchen.

After lunch, we set off for our afternoon adventure, a jeep "safari" in the Muthanga Wildlife Sanctuary in search of elephants and other assorted creatures included the resident but elusive tiger. The excursion also offered us another taste of Indian ecotourism, a quite new concept in India and one that is usually executed with an obvious tension between the eco-friendly theme of the park and the non eco-friendly nature of the Indian culture where trash and garbage are strewn across the inhabited landscape as if it belonged there.

Our skilled and incredibly durable bus driver. This guy was good though I was amazed at how many hours in a row he was able to drive. Each morning before setting off, he burned a stick of incense over the steering wheel as an offering and prayed for his safe driving, a practice that alternately comforted and unsettled me.

One of many views of tea plantations on the way to the wildlife park.

Millions of people in India make scratch out a living at these ubiquitous roadside stalls offering a few items to eat or use, often offering an a menu or slate of items for sale that is identical to the half dozen other stalls usually found within a stone's throw.

The entrance to the park - I wish I had videotaped the process of loading up the jeeps for our ride in. What a fiasco. When it comes to running logistics and crowd management, I am confident in my generalization that the Indians are among the worst. Again and again during our travels, we witnessed and experienced long lines, illogical crowd control schemes, traffic managers seemingly charged with the mission of complicating things to the greatest extent possible, and a general resistance to cuing but no hesitation for crowding.

We loaded into these small safari jeeps in search of wildlife

Though seemingly free of animal life save a few deer, the part was quite beautiful even from the back of a crammed in jeep on muddy, bumpy roads that seemed to go nowhere.

This was as close as we got to a tiger.

After the safari, we returned to our holiday home for a dinner, cooked in the owner's kitchen and delivered to us in pots with paper plates. Enough dried palm frond and coconut husks were rounded up for a campfire and some teenage hooting and hollering before bedtime.

We set out early for our day's journey to another well known hill station, Coorg, a place that when mentioned always evokes accolades for its beauty and fresh air demonstrating once again how relative perceptions of beauty. The drive to Coorg was in fact quite beatiful as the narrow pot-holed road wound through tea planations and numerous estates built by British authorities and merchants long ago. Much of this was lost to the kids on the bus whose attention was focused either on their electronic devices, the poor quality Indian movies being shown on the TV screen, or simply chatting and scheming among themselves. Our first stop of the day was another ecotourism experience at Pookot Lake which involved walking around the small lake on a path that had very little litter but was was otherwise nondescript. Some of the kids braved the masses of other school groups to rent little paddle boats but all in all, the experience was the equivalent of walking around a park pond except for the experience of being stopped repeatedly by groups of curious Indian students and adults to be interviewed and photographed.

More of Lena's new friends

We never got tired of seeing monkeys in the wild (as long as they kept their distance).

The highlight of the travel on this day was a stop at the Golden Buddist Temple on the way to Madikeri, an are that is home to over 15,000 Tibetan refugees and nearly 6000 monks and nuns. A truly remarkable complex, walking through the gates transports you to another place. The scale of the temple with it's rich artistry and golden shine was powerful and somewhat humbling.

We arrived at the hotel in Coorg with hope that our accommodations would feel less like a camping experience, and they were... camping would have been far more enjoyable. The Fortview hotel was the kind of place Jenn spent hours on the computer trying to avoid. A rundown, dirty, deplorable place. The travel guide had never been there - he bit the false advertising hook line and sinker. I was able to kill two roaches without Jenn and the girls seeing them. Even in the tropics, being at higher elevations in December is cool but there was no heat at the Fortview, which did have a view across the cluttered roof of the neighboring building of a plot of land on a nearby hill where a fort once stood but no longer exists.

It might have read Bates Hotel...

Lena trying to warm up. When I slid between the sheets of my bed, I discovered the need to pick the hairs out from the sheets from the previous occupant (or occupants?).

The bucket on the right was came out when we opened the hot water tap.

After checking in, we walked around the corner and ate in one of the ubiquitous hole in the wall little restaurants, called hotels, that care nothing whatsoever about aesthetics or perhaps slightly more about cleanliness. Our got to choose between chicken curry and chicken birianyi (chciken and rice), a choice that became quite familiar during the trip. We discovered later that the tour guide allotted 600 rupees per day for food per person and this is what it came to.



Jenn and Lena look for something other than chicken curry next store.

It was a long night at the Fort View - the kids were up late and the teachers seemed to have trouble persuading them to settle down and turn down their music. At this point in the trip, some underlying tension was starting to build between Jenn and I as well as the students and the lead chaperone. For the kids, they were very upset with both the quality of accommodations and food - remember that students at Trivandrum International School mostly come from the wealthiest of families in the area and are accustomed to such conditions. For Jenn and I, we were starting to grow frustrated with the manner in which the trip was managed. Students were given very little information about what was going on and meeting times were never enforced meaning we were always behind schedule. Nothing unusual about this in India - time is a very fluid thing here, but the students were allowed to consistently late and then were criticized for it. Arcane rule such as boys adn girls no being able to sit or walk together, something they due back at school all the time, were enforced. At one point, the kids were playing the music so loud on the bus that it was physically hurting our ears - when I asked the kids to turn it down a little, I was told by the head teacher that we were guests on the student's trip and if they wanted to play their music loudly they should be able to. Interestingly, once I spoke to the kids about it, they were very responsive and apologized.

The next day started with a short trip from Coorg to a nearby waterfall. The road to it was too narrow and steep for the bus, so we had to hike down (and back up) about a mile in the early morning mist. For fun, we counted the number of busted single sandals lining the sides of the road - the number was well over 150.




Once again, mobbed like rock stars by an Indian school group wanting to be in a picture with Jenn and the girls.

Our next destination was Mysore, seat of former king and home to one of the best preserved palaces in the country. Fortunately, the hotel was better than the last night's but the appearance of a roach the size of a stick of gum walking on the wall right over one of the kid's beds soured the experience. Lunch that afternoon took us to the nadir of dining - we were herded into the equivalent of a giant sheltered feed lot where we were crammed into lightly packed tables, given the curry/biriyani chose, and had it delivered while another group awaited our seats outside the door to our section of the feeding grounds. The next group of students moved in on our table before we had even finished eating. It was a new low for the tour guide - the kids were getting fed up.

The sightseeing for the day included a trip to the Mysore palace (no photos allowed) and an evening at the Mysore gardens. .

The Mysore palace

The Mysore palace at night - it is illuminated for 30 minutes on Saturday nights - fortunately, our timing was right.

The gardens were attractive but hardly lived up to their hype, or maybe we were just spoiled. The most interesting event of the evening was a meeting of one of the students representing the whole group with the lead teacher to express the group's unhappiness about both the accommodations and the food. The meeting took place on the lawn in the garden for half an hour and when it was done, a deal was struck. The tour guide would turn over to the students all of the money allotted for meals and let the students organize the meals for the group for the rest of the trip.
Some people watching at the Mysore gardens.




Notice how someone thought it a good idea to erect an ugly metal lighting structure in the middle of the optimum view of the gardens from the hillside viewing area.

Once the meal deal was struck, we had one more tour guide arranged meal to get through and this one involved sitting around in a circle on plastic lawn chairs at some local community center eating either chiken curry or chicken birianyi.

The next morning, we boarded the bus to a local multistar hotel and enjoyed a full buffet of outstanding food for a few about a dollar more than we would have spent at one of the tour director's hotels. The kids were completely impressive in their ability to locate and organize all of the meals for the remainder of the trip. They found western style buffet restaurants, hotel buffets, pizza parlors, and, of course, one McDonald's stop. They (and I should note that it was only the boys - the girls in this group were a fairly passive bunch but I wouldn't say that's the rule) handled everything from reservations to collecting the extra money. Just like the adults they were on their way to becoming, they were hard bargainers - I watched them negotiate with hotel managers for better deals like pros. I wondered how my American students would have handled this situation.

We visited a large temple on top of a hill outside Mysore as well as the Mysore Zoo during th remainder of the day

Offerings for sale

A Dravidian style temple

One of the cows free to go where it like finds a tasty snack on the grill of a pilgrimage bus.

The Mysore Zoo was surprisingly clean and well kept with a great variety of animals

The body of this hairless chimp was startling in its humaness

Even if you are attacked and mauled by a tiger, you will be arrested...

The day ended not with chicken curry or birianyi but instead with the best pizza we'd tasted since leaving the US.

After our second night in Mysore, we were off to the two spots most anticipated by the kids - a day at the Wonder-la amusement and water park and shopping in Bangalore. The drive to Wonder-la took a coupe of hours but when we arrived, it was as if by some kind of Star Trek like transporter we were suddenly no longer in India but instead in Orlando. This theme park was ultra-modern, clean, well maintained, and offered some rides and attractions I hadn't seen anywhere in the US. Clearly, some company has invested a lot of rupees to create an experience found previously only in the West. The kids had a great day that finished, of course, at McDonalds.

One last night on the road found us in Bangalore and one last chance to experience budget accommodations. While the hotel wasn't the worst of the lot that we had stayed in, the neighborhood in which it was located surely took the prize. We seemed to be settled in a part of Bangalore where used parts and assorted junk related to transportation could be had, in case it was not apparent from the photos

Lena takes in the view from our hotel room.

After checking out for the last time, the bus pulled as close to the shopping area as it was allowed and the kids got the chance to do what kids with money everywhere like to do - go shopping!

The mall we visited had an international theme

Count it as progress - Jenn saw this sign attempting to educate patrons how to properly use and not use the facilities - finding a tolerable functional bathroom in India can often be an ordeal.


Security was tight.

After the shopping trip, it was time for us to say farewell as the bus departed for the overnight drive back to Trivandrum and we headed to a hotel near the airport to catch a flight the next morning to Udaipur. Since we were in the center of Bangalore, we asked the driver to drop us off in front of a big hotel so that we could catch a cab. That got translated into "drop us off at a hotel" so the bus drove fro about 20 minutes in the opposite direction from the airport before pulling up in front of a small hotel in the edge of the city with no cabs in sight. Once that was sorted out, we had to wait 20 minutes while a radioed cab arrived to pick us up off the side of the road and bring us back across the city to our booked hotel. When we finally arrived at the hotel Jenn had booked, we wanted to cry we were so happy - it was nearly new and sparkling clean, great service, comfortable beds, excellent restaurant, and quiet. Completely travel-weary from our week on the road in the bus, we were ready to venture out on our own again. Despite the very trying logistics of the trip and the tension created by a chaperoning style we didn't connect with, it was a nice opportunity to interact with the Indian students off campus and out of the school environment. Once the trip was over, I could say I'm glad that we did it.

The grand finale of our December wanderings in India landed us for a couple of days in Mumbai, a.k.a. Bombay, the financial heart of India but also holder of numerous other less auspicious titles as well. The grand majority of people we met who had been to Mumbai were happy to leave it behind - crowded, chaotic, polluted, crowded - these are the adjectives most commonly associated with India's Gotham. Curiosity drew me the place, Jenn would have just have soon skipped it altogether were it not for the opportunity to visit some distant friends of ours who we met on our honeymoon while travelling in Indonesia. They live in Mumbai with their two daughters who are about the same age as our girls. If we were going to be on the road for New Year's Eve, spending it in Mumbai with friends promised an interesting experience.
Our mode of transport this time was an overnight train from Aurangabad where we had our cave adventures into Victoria station in Mumbai. We boarded the train after midnight (it was running an hour late at this point) and managed to push and nudge our way into our compartment. The reservations computer gave us bunks in different compartments but Jenn managed to negotiate some rearranging so that we had a room to ourselves. Once settled, sleep fell over us quickly and we all rested quite comfortably during the overnight hours of darkness.

Elena waits for the train.

Like the rest of Mumbai, the train traffic exceeds the capacity of the infrastructure to support it and we soon found ourselves intermittently stalled on the tracks awaiting an open bay at Victoria. By the time we finally reached the station, the train was five hours late. The plan was to meet our friends Gilles and Ferzin along with their family at the Gate to India to join them for an excursion out to Elephanta Island (for more caves). Our first taste of Mumbai confirmed the place's reputation - the taut from whom we hired a cab stuck us with a 25 year old Ambassador beater - the fact that it continued to move was a testament to the Indian ability to keep nearly anything going with a few pieces of wire and some gum. Or so I thought. As we pulled out of the exit from the station and into the Mumbai traffic, the clunker stalled halfway across the road. The driver motioned me to quickly get out and push the thing back into the station driveway while frantically attempted a roll back start up. It finally fired up and we were off but for how long? Every time the wreck stopped in traffic, I was sure it was going to die once more, but it made it all the way to YMCA International House where we were staying in the heart of the very touristy Colaba district just a few minutes from the Gate of India, the Taj Hotel, and infamous Mumbai made infamous by 2008 terrorist attacks.

The Gateway to India, built in honor of the 1911 visit of King George V and Queen Mary and now a serves as a major meeting point for tourists and locals.

The Gateway again with the very ritzy Taj Hotel behind it.

After dumping our bags, we rushed across the square just in time to meet our friends and board the ferry for the hour long sailing to Elephanta Island. It was great to see Ferzin and Gilles Moutounet - the last time we were together was during their visit to the US about 10 years ago. Not unexpectedly, the kids hit it off quite nicely and the outing gave us a chance to get reacquainted after such a long time apart. Ferzin is a native of Mumbai and Gilles hails originally from Paris. Jenn and I got to know them on the lip of a volcano cauldron in Java where we were trying to watch the sunrise with hundreds of Indonesian telecom employees on crushed together with us on their company outing. We discovered we were all on our way to the same town in Bali and forged a friendship in the days that followed.

Both Indian and non-Indian tourists are drawn to Elephanta Island for it's collection of cave temples - having just arrived from Ajanta and Elora, we were hard to impress. Still, it is always fascinating to see how similar and different tourists from different cultures can be. The trip up to the caves involved a long gauntlet of a stairway packed on each side with hawkers pushing every sort of souvenir junk imaginable.

Not an uncommon site in India - there is little collective appreciation for natural resources. The little train in the back tows tourists down the length of the jetty where the ferry boats are docked.

Corn fresh off the grill.

Sedan chairs were available - 600 rupees (about $12.00) for the ride up, 200 rupees on the way down.

The temple caves of Elephanta.

We landed back at the Gateway after dark and said good-bye to our friends until the following day, New Year's Eve. After a comfortable, quiet night at the hotel, we set out to explore the Colaba area for a little shopping and people watching. I experienced what must be a common sensation for the first-time visitor to this area - the nagging imagination of the horror that took place in this very area in November of 2008 when over a hundred people died and many more were injured. We ate lunch at the locally famous Cafe Leopold, one of the first palces to be attacked as gunmen fired from the street into the open restaurant killing 10 people and injuring many more. It's a hopping place, filled with tourists and locals alike. The food was great and the beer flowed abundantly.

Inside Leopold's

Serve-yourself beer dispensers are a specialty of Leopold's

I took this photo from my seat inside Leopold's - a rather startling but direct message to would be terrorists.

A military armored personnel carrier with heavily armed police just outside the door to Leopold's.

While in Colaba, I sought out the office for Reality Tours, a group that offers guided tours through Dharavi, the largest slum in Asia which sits right in the middle of Mumbai. They offered tours even on New Year's Day so I signed on for the next morning once I found their very tiny office.

The office for Reality Tours.

After a little more shopping, we headed back to the room to prepare for the evening's events. The girls were sleeping over Ferzin and Gilles with Gilles' parents, visiting from France, looking after them while we attended a massive New year's Eve party at the Bombay Gymkhana, a locally famous health and social club where Ferzin is a member. We hired a cab to take us across town enabling us the opportunity to experience first hand the infamous Mumbai traffic. Our friend live on the fifth floor of a 23 story high rise with a beautiful view of the city.

The view from the top of their apartment

The girls check out photos of their four honeymooning parents

The girls had their own New Year's Eve celebration.

The Moutounets live right next door to the Mumbai Four Season's Hotel, so we went next door to check out the New Year's Eve scene in one of the most luxurious hotels in the city.

Many goodies were being made ready for the evening's events.

Ferzin drove us to the club on a rather cool and windy evening for an outside event. The guest list included over 2000 people sitting at tables set out on the cricket pitch with a dance floor the size of a baseball infield. Most people were dressed to the hilt in their New Year's Eve best I couldn't help but feel like I had crashed a party for a crowd I didn't really belong to, which was, in fact, the case. It was slow to get going but picked up as the clock ticked toward midnight. The buffet dinner just went on and on with every kind of Indian dish available along with numerous other Asian dishes. There were ice sculptures gracing the dessert tables and a very "hip" and very loud band enjoining the crowd to dance.

The guest begin to arrive.

An amazing spread of food and treats.

The first ice we'd seen in months

The scene on the dance floor

Ferzin, Gilles, and Jenn

Our table included Gilles' sister and Ferzin's friend and her husband who were visiting from England.

The energy level grew with the approach of midnight which was greeted with colorful fireworks display put on by the club.

Like the fireworks, the party seemed to pop brilliantly for a short time before fizzling and fading quickly in the 30 minutes past midnight. Due to sound level restrictions (something I did not think existed in India), the party moved inside but never really recovered as people, including us slowly dispersed and headed somewhere - we went to the Y.

A few hours later, I found myself at the train station joining up with the others taking the tour of the Dharavi slum. The organization that conducts the tours, Reality Tours, has a good relationship with the people with whom they interact and offer job training and assistance centers with the profits they make from the tours. As part of their ethical tourism policy, they also forbid the taking of photos during their tours, so any photos seen here have been taken from the internet.

I wasn't sure what to expect by taking this tour. I wasn't completely comfortable on account of the voyeuristic element of going out of my way to see people worse off than me. Anticipation of emotional and maybe even physical discomfort hung over me we approached the edge of the slum. I expected to feel alien and out of place. I envisioned extreme poverty and miserable people. It's because of these fears and preconceptions that I am so grateful to myself for making the trip - I was afforded the chance to displace ignorance and fear with truth and understanding. It's one of the major reasons I came to India.

First some stats - the Dharavi slum is one of numerous slums in Mumbai but holds the title of largest slum in Asia, a claim that is disputed but nonetheless believable when visiting. What makes Dharavi unique is it's location in the heart of the Mumbai financial district. The slum area encompasses only 3/4 of a square mile but is home to close 1,000,000 people. In such an expensive city as Mumbai, the slums are the only affordable destinations for rural and urban poor to settle.

Surprisingly (to me anyway), it is a very bustling industrial area with thousands of businesses both small and large employing scores of workers involved in production of clothing, consumer products of every kind, and food as well as the recycling of everything and anything that can be reused. Walking through the narrow alleyways, the place was a crowded beehive of activity - cluttered and filthy with air filled with various fumes and stenches in places, but is people were working hard no matter what door or window I peered through. Children ran through about in streets peppered with every kind of trash and filth but they did so with great energy and joy - wherever we went, the children came out to greet us and want to be in our pictures.

Laborers wore the soot and grime of their dirty work, but everyone else somehow managed to stay amazingly clean while moving about is squalor of some of the streets and passageways.

And they were very gracious people - the entire time we snaked our way through gaps between buildings wide enough for one way traffic, touring various industries and shops, and walking down streets jammed with trucks and carts and animals and every sort of refuse, not once was I asked by anyone for anything. As was the case during all of my time in India, I occasionally felt the stare of curious eyes but never did those eyes seem suspicious or hostile. There was a palpable sense of pride in this tight knit community of people living more closely than I can ever imagine and who possess so very little. Their water comes from scarce and sparsely situated taps that deliver once a day, at an unannounced time, for perhaps an hour - miss it and go thirsty. A few multistory buildings dot the slum street plan, but most buildings are constructed from the debris of the more affluent in arrangements and patterns of metal, plastic, cloth, and wood that both construct an architectural landscape seen perhaps in a post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie.

The longer our two hour tour progressed, the more relaxed I felt. The slum dwellers are quite accustomed to the tours coming through and are aware of the job training programs offered by Reality Tours using the income of the tours. Coming here alone would likely be a different experience - finding one's way out might take days - but I feel fortunate for having had the opportunity to visit as part of group with an organization having the best interests of the slum dwellers at heart.

Jenn met the Moutounets in town to gather the girls, have some lunch, and share farewells. I met them back in the hotel after a crowded train ride back from Dharavi and some time spent watching the Saturday cricket matches played by serious middle-aged men decked out in full whites on a massive expanse of green open space lined by elegant stone buildings and the aura of a different era - it was certainly a different world from the one I left an hour earlier. After a long night for all of us and a general feeling of travel fatigue, we laid low at the hotel for the afternoon in preparation for an early trip to the airport and a return "home" to Kerala.

One of the important themes that runs through the TRINS school culture is the importance of community service work. An earlier blog posting on the Food Fest showed one of the ways in which the students can help out. Another program that offers students a more direct service experience involved all of the members of the 11th grade class who board a bus each Wednesday morning and visit three near-by local government run elementary schools. The purpose of the visits is to teach students from grades 1 to 5 a little bit of English language during the weekly hour long visit. From what I observed, there was a whole lot more going on than language instruction.

Government elementary schools normally start the school day at 10:00 am but on Wednesdays, the children voluntarily come to school an hour earlier to participate in the program.

The design of most government schools I've saw reminded me very much of a long row of stables - one door into a room that often had no lights at all, a concrete floor, grimy and cluttered walls, and a minimum of classroom furniture. At the end of the day, the doors are secure from the outside with large padlocks. Aside from texts, a chalkboard was frequently the only tool the teacher had to work with.

I asked the boys to show me their muscles...

Government schools in India are typically poorly resourced, overcrowded, often bleak environments for children. The school we visited not atypical in this regard though bleak would be too strong an adjective for the school we viewed during our visit - the students were quite lively upon the arrival of the TRINS students and it was clear that a close repore has developed between the TRINS kids, who worked as a pair in each classroom, and their energetic students.

The only light in the room came from the windows and small opening in the ceiling.



Acquiring a tolerance for a lack of space is learned early.

A number of the TRINS students are not from Kerala and do not speak Malayalam, so communication can be a rather challenging task sometimes.

What I witnessed was quite impressive - the TRINS kids worked alone in the classrooms without the teacher present and had control of the class. Like benevolent big brothers and sisters, the students practiced introducing themselves then recited nursery rhymes such as "1,2, buckle my shoe" to practice numbers and vocabulary. Everyone involved was having a great time. With only one 50 minute English lesson per week, none of the children seemed to be making dramatic progress toward English fluency, but they were enjoying themselves and being exposed to older students who were serving as positive role models. For the TRINS students who mostly come from quite comfortable economic conditions, the chance to give of themselves to others less fortunate can be a powerful experience for building compassion and developing a sense of commitment to assist the disadvantaged, an attitude that quite frankly is lacking in many Indian people.

Learning numbers with rhymes

What's a buckle?

Twinkle, Twinkle...

Education has become big business in India as more and more people seek alternatives to ineffective government schools. Kerala leads the country with regard to the education level of its citizens so these schools are producing results despite their worn and primitive appearance. Still, one can't help but wonder how these kids might learn if provided with adequate learning resources. Parents ask the same question and don't wait to find out - numerous private schools available at a mostly manageable cost are filling with students leaving local government schools. We were told that in an effort to persuade parents to not remove their children in favor of a private school, the school we were visiting recently began to serve a free breakfast to the students upon their arrival. The photos below offer a glimpse of what this breakfast experience is like.

Kitchen ladies

Serving idlis

Breakfast is served

I came away from the visit completely impressed with the way in which the TRINS students conducted themselves - these weekly school visits offer as much education as their lessons back in the classrooms. I also tried to imagine the conditions of government schools in parts of India that were much more poor and less educated. Half of India's population is under 25 - providing an adequate education for all young people will continue to remain one of the countries most difficult challenges.

When we first learned that we would be coming to India I spent a lot of time researching many of the ancient architectural wonders of the country. India is so vast, and travel is so difficult here that we knew we couldn't visit them all, but from the beginning I told Steve that at the top of my list was a chance to see the UNESCO World Heritage sites of the Ajanta and Ellora Caves. They are located in Maharashtra on the Deccan plateau, somewhat removed from the tourist trail, so we had booked flights from Goa to Aurangabad, the closest big city, with a connection in Mumbai.

Our exit from Goa did not go well. I had booked our flights thru an online travel site back in October, and as I have now learned, made the mistake of selecting an option using two different airlines. It is a long, long story that is still not fully settled, but because of the way things don't work here, after arriving on time with confirmed seats we found ourselves facing cancellation fees for a missed connection, hotel costs and full last minute fares totaling close to $700. As the four of us were travelling for most of December our budget had been carefully set, and an extra $700 was not in it. As I stood in the Goa airport beginning to face the reality that I might not get to see the caves, Steve mentioned something about looking into taking an overnight bus from Mumbai and I burst into tears. At that moment I had reached my breaking point of India travel. It was a female Jet Airways manager, who saw this probably ridiculous looking sobbing foreign woman standing with her two children and husband, who ultimately took pity on us and rearranged things to get us to our destination the next day. God bless Venant.

The first day we drove for a few hours north to the site of the Ajanta Caves. We viewed some typical scenes along the way:


As this was peak season there were long lines of people waiting to take buses into the ravine where the caves are located. At least we had some entertainment as we stood in the lines.

When we reached the parking lot it was a bit of a hike up to the caves. Some Indians opted for a ride up on a sedan chair.

A bit of history here from The Rough Guide:

"Hewn from the near-vertical side of a horshoe-shaped ravine, the caves at Ajanta occupy a site worthy of the spectacular ancient art they contain. Less than two centuries ago, this remote spot was known only to the local Bhil tribes-people; the shadowy entrances to its abandoned stone chambers lay buried deep under a thick blanket of creepers and jungle. The chance arrival in 1819 of a small detachment of East India Company troops, however, brought the caves' obscurity to an abrupt end. Led to the top of the precipitous bluff that overlooks the gorge by a young "half-wild" scout, the tiger-hunters spied what has now been identified as the facade of Cave 10 protruding thru the foliage. The British soldiers had made one of the most sensational archeological finds of all time."

This was the site of a Buddhist monastery and inscriptions indicate that the earliest cave excavations took place in the second century BC. Ajanta had it's heyday from around 500 to 600 AD when it sheltered more than two hundred monks as well as a large community of painters, sculptors and laborers employed in excavating and decorating the cells and sanctuaries. There are a total of 28 colonnaded caves chiseled out of the chocolate brown and grey basalt cliffs lining the river.

In addition to the rows of stone Buddhas and other sculptures, it is the murals and painted artwork that line the interiors that are so remarkable. As I walked thru the caves I was particularly struck by the panelized decorative ceilings. So many of the motifs and designs created by these monks can still be found in the most beautiful buildings in the western world. The light levels are kept low to protect the art but you can still make out why they are regarded as the finest surviving gallery of art from any of the world's ancient civilizations.

This was our only available time to visit Ajanta, but I can't say that we weren't warned about the tortuous crowds before we came:

"In spite of its comparative remoteness, Ajanta receives an extraordinary number of visitors. If you want to enjoy this site in anything close to its original serenity, avoid coming on a weekend or public holiday- it takes a fertile imagination indeed to picture Buddhist monks filing softly around the rough stone steps when riotous school kids and holiday-makers are clambering over them."
It was very difficult to remain focused on the sights after yet another piercing whistle from a guard yelling at the Indian tourists not to take flash photos of the artwork. Deep breaths, deep breaths Jenn, you are viewing a world treasure...

Pushing and shoving is the way they queue.

The girls found a lovely spot to sit on our way out to join the line for the 45 minute wait for the buses.

The next day we stopped at the dramatic fort of Daulatabad on our way to the Ellora caves. I won't bore you with the history, suffice it to say it involves some fighting between a bunch of Hindus, Jains, and Muslims.

As usual we found ourselves part of the attraction for the Indian tourists. I wonder sometimes just how many thousands of phones and cameras in India include a picture of us.

When we reached Ellora in the afternoon we were glad to find that there were no buses involved, and the crowds were lighter. We had some relative peace and quiet exploring for a while. There are 34 caves here, and they were started in the middle of the sixth century, about the time that Ajanta was abandoned. This was the twilight of the Buddhist era in central India, and by the seventh century Hinduism was on the rise, so the majority of the caves here are Hindu, culminating in the building of the colossal Kailash Temple in the eighth century. Where Ajanta is prized for its paintings and location, here architecture and sculpture reign supreme.

Some residents of the caves:


We rested for a few minutes, as we had saved the best for last and wanted to view the Kailash Temple in the afternoon light. This monolithic structure is Ellora's masterpiece. It took one hundred years and four generations of kings, architects and craftsmen before the project was completed. The temple was hewn from solid rock and the sheer scale is staggering. All in all, a quarter of a million tons of chippings and debris are estimated to have been cut from the hillside, with no room for improvisation or error. The temple was conceived as a giant replica of Shiva and Parvarti's Himalayan abode, the pyramidal Mount Kailash- a Tibetan peak said to be the "divine axis" between heaven and earth. The Sanborns said, not too shabby...