It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

Yow! It's been a crazy week, once again...I have a distinct feeling that that's not going to stop. To calm your worries (I know Mom and Dad are the primary readers here) I am having a BLAST. I feel so ALIVE and young and intrepid exploring this totally foreign land far from home. I still have difficult moments, but I am firmly bitten by the travel bug.

Last weekend Aaron, Maggie and I hopped an overnight train to Bodhgaya, the site of Buddha's enlightenment that is in the Bihar province of India. The city of Kolkata was totally shut down due to a massive strike and we managed to get to the train station only after the strike ended at 6 pm. After a long wait in a line in which I gave many sweaty Indian men the stink eye as they tried to cut in line and yelling "queue!" very forcefully, we got last-minute tickets (something about charts not being changed after leaving the destination city).

We arrived in Bodhgaya at 6 am the next morning...talk about a world away. The Bihar province is India's poorest, and very rural. I enjoyed escaping the fast pace of the city, but the poverty in Bodhgaya was just shocking, maybe because it was such a small place and we really had a chance to interact with the locals. The people of Bodhgaya - indeed, of India - are very helpful and hospitable, but it is difficult to not put up a wall because, as a very white tourist, I am a walking attention target, for better and for worse. In fact, I had to reluctantly agree with my friend Yousef, who said that I might be the palest person some people had ever seen! I'm starting to get used to the absurd amount of stares I attract, but the first few days were really unnerving. I've never turned heads like this before!

We had a nice opportunity to stroll about Bodhgaya, visiting all the temples at our leisure, enjoying a long lunch and shopping for all kinds of goodies (Maggie bought a sari and is insisting that I get one before we leave the country, little does she know this will never happen :) ). My purchases were a brass "ohm" bowl and Carolina Blue prayer beads - something tells me I'm going to need them this football season! The Bodhi Pallanka (the Place of Enlightenment) was gorgeous and serene, and the Great Buddha Statue was a sight to behold. I wish that I felt some spiritual connection to these eastern religions - I certainly respect their historical and cultural eminence - but I do not feel God in the temples of India. Where I do feel and see God is in the faces of the people and the (frequent) moments of personal reflection when I realize how nothing separates me from the young mother, begging and breastfeeding in the train station, other than some vast cosmic lottery that I won through no effort or personal virtue...The constant question that faces me is: what will I do with that ticket to alleviate the suffering of others? Every day it weighs more in my pocket.

We returned to the train station in a packed autorickshaw. For some inexplicable reason, but this detail really stands out in my mind, the Bodhgaya train station was absolutely FILLED with enormous CRICKETS. Yikes. While Maggie and I tried not to doze off on a bench and swatted away the insects/beasts, Aaron argued with various train station officials in broken Hindi and English about getting on the train - yes! The old problem of booking seats on a train that already left its destination city returned to haunt us...this is difficult because most trains go all the way across India, a 40-hour trek. The place is mind-bogglingly large. Basically, we had to beg a ticket-taker to let us on as a train stopped for just a few minutes in Bodhgaya. It was crazy, and it took 2 tries, but we finally met a sympathetic man with extra seats and just made it. Otherwise we would have ended up in the sleeper cars and my health-related worries were confirmed looking at the feverish-looking children trying to sleep on the platform. We stumbled into Kolkata the next morning, very smelly and utterly exhausted but still flying high from a great adventure!

The week went by in an utter blur...Monday the entire group went shopping in Kolkata for mobile phones and train tickets, Tuesday we went in to work at BRWS and meet with our mentor Dr. Santanu (I'll post more about work later). Wednesday, Maggie, Anjali and I worked from home - I researched website redesign for BRWS and nonprofit consulting. We also went to dinner that night at Mainland China, a delicious Chinese restaurant, with Anjali's friend Harsh, a Kolkata native and Duke senior! He took us to the best chai tea stand in Kolkata - I'm still dreaming about that tea - and emanates good-person vibes. Really, I'm surrounded by the most wonderful people this summer and I'm thankful every day. Thursday the whole group dined with Walia and Irani, who are the most gracious hosts imaginable and solicitous of our every need even though we do not even work for their organization. I want to be like them when I grow up; they are constantly filled with joy. And Friday we departed for Varanasi, which proved to be the source of my most insane travel stories to date. But I'm feeling carpal tunnel coming on from typing so much, so you'll have to tune in soon to hear all about the madness of Hinduism's holiest city on the Ganges! Love to you all...Daron