Saturday, June 16, 2007

the trip to mount abu

16 June – 11:30AM

So I’m sitting right now in the Mumbai airport. We are layed over here for another 3 hours before we finally head to Bangalore. Unfortunately, there is no (free) internet, but I will write about the past few days and post it when I have a chance. Hopefully, people have looked at the pictures I’ve uploaded, since that’s what I’ll be talking about and you’ll get a sense of where we are going/seeing.

On Wednesday we took a road trip from Udaipur to Mount Abu observatory. The trip was originally supposed to be 5 hours, but because of crazy road construction, it actually took us 8. Which was a bit painful. Anyway, because we had to drive up through the mountains and country side, we ended up seeing a lot of small villages along the way. These were tiny places, set right up against the road. People were always around and outside talking to each other in front of the shops and stands. They were almost completely untouched by western culture. People either live in abandoned buildings, houses they built out of stones with thatched roofs, or just outside – sometimes sleeping on cots. Running water, obviously, was not common – but there were always public places with water where people would go to wash themselves and their clothes. I was surprised that, even though many houses aren’t completely enclosed (in other words, whole wall faces open or holes in them ), the people were relatively clean. People here, especially the women, wear extraordinarily bright clothes (which is amazing and makes all westerners appear dull in comparison) and even in these very poor places, the clothes always looked amazing. And while most locals are very skinny, it is not from malnourishment – it is just the way that they are - or maybe that they just aren’t fat Americans.

While it was hard to see that so many lived so poorly – as we drive by in a pseudo-minivan, all with laptops close at hand – it wasn’t as if these people were poor and others were rich. It was just the “third-world” part of being in a developing third-world country. The people seemed happy enough. There was very little begging as we drove by, often having to slow down because of traffic or animals in the road (usually cows, goats, or dogs). We did get stared at quite a bit, though. Part of it was because one of my compatriots, Russell, is a white Texas boy with dark brown, shoulder length dreadlocks tipped with blonde – which is crazy enough in the states, although it works on him. But also because many people in these villages have never seen white people. Some of them would smile and wave at us, and we’d smile back, of course. That was rather cute and endearing. Little children were particularly taken with us. Those driving by us or around us opposite from us would also stare.

At first I was a bit apprehensive about the staring, but in the country, it was obvious that it was just a curiosity thing. Staring happened in larger towns that were more touristy, which was much sketchier since we knew that they had seen white people before, so I just kept my head down and ignore whatever was said to me.

Which reminds me – the driving. Holy crap. Thank god (Shiva, Ganash, etc.) we aren’t. It’s nothing like driving in the states. The system is like the British (left-hand side), but with lots (tons) of cars passing other cars/rickshaws/scooters/people walking. Honking the horn is used like a warning that someone is close or that you are being passed, not for aggressive reasons like in the states. Also, the roads can get excruciatingly narrow so you have to allow other people to go first or drive on the side of the road. Many trucks, which are colorfully painted and have shrines on the dashboard, often have painted on the back “Please Use Horn” when passing. In fact, when you are going around a blind corner, especially in the mountains, it’s a law that you have to honk to warn people that you are coming – since the traffic flow directionality is often just a suggestion – sort of liked dashed lines in the states. So while this seems okay, it can also be a ridiculous cluster-fuck when people are all trying to go around each other and merge and the opposite direction traffic is coming. You end up swerving a lot in cities and getting very close to the other cars. At one point, we were almost hit by a renegade bus in the mountain whose driver, I’m sure, was legally insane.

The road work kind of showed an interesting side to life, too. There is a huge number of people here, and because of that, they always need jobs. So, you see random employments, like a man paid to hold an umbrella over a surveyor or vendors on the side of the highway selling fruit. Also, there are some big construction machines, but not many. Much is done by hand. Especially higher up the mountain – you could tell that people had constructed their houses by hand. Those houses weren’t near anything – no other people or a village. Makes you realize how important convenience is to us.

On the way to the observatory we went to the Ranakbur Jain Temple. The pictures I’ve posted can explain better than I, but this temple was ~15th century and had 1044 marble columns, each of them unique. The carvings were exquisite and painstakingly detailed.

We were at Mount Abu, the city, for two nights. We stayed at the Hotel Hilltone, which was right in the middle of the city – so we took a walk to the nearby Nakki Lake the first night, which was so busy with stands and vendors (selling things that glowed or spiral-graphs-Spirographs) that it was almost like a festival. The next day we went to the Universal Peace Palace – which was non-denominational but promoted knowledge of your self and achieving peace (yeah, I bought a book) and also the Jain Delwara Temple. We couldn’t take pictures in this temple but the carvings were even more spectacular than the first temple. Our guide said that it should be the 8th wonder of the world, that the carvings were more refined than those in the Taj, but that it would never achieve that status. At every point in this temple, you could always see four gods and the ceiling had amazing sculptures that told a story. Delwara was actually taken over by the Moguls at one point and, because it is a huge insult here, all of the noses from all of the carvings were cut off. Half of the temple was also destroyed – so they have been going back and repairing the damage with newer marble and plaster.

That night, Thursday, we went to the observatory and had a look around. For the astro people, it was a 1.2m Cassegrain telescope with a Coude room, which wasn’t in room, all manufactured in India (which they were very proud of). Mostly operated in the IR, but could also go to visible – 1k CCD. It wasn’t too bad, not the biggest I’ve seen, not the smallest. The facilities were built in 1993 – which was surprising because, I guess, they had never bothered to paint the walls or install permanent flooring (they were veneer panels). I was sort of taken aback by the condition of the building because it seemed like they put in the bare essentials and never got around to the finishing touches. Everyone was very nice, though. We had the laser atmospheric system explained to us (just like Arecibo!) and got to, sort of, observe an observation. I saw “sort of” because we were only in the monitoring room for ~45 minutes. The observer was looking at BLAK AGNS, which I would have liked to learn more about, but all we discussed was the data reduction and photometry – which was just like the instrumentation project (Thanks Paul!). We didn’t stay too long, though, because all of us were really getting tired. I think the traveling was a bit much.

Also, while we were at the observatory, all four of us suffered a wicked low blood sugar. We had lunch at ~12:30pm and didn’t eat dinner until ~9pm. This long delay in food time has happened a lot in this first week, which is a bit frustrating. It occurred during our day at the USO, during the 8 hour road trip (but I tried to learn some Hindi during that time, so I was a bit productive – thanks Ian!) , and our day at Mount Abu. It’s really hard for us to eat here: no raw veggies, no fruits we can’t peel first, only cooked foods – I’ve even been avoiding dairy just because it could be watered down or not pasteurized. So, unless we really plan on a time and place for food (since location is also an issue because of the standard of the food and cooking) disaster easily strikes. Plus, with all of the traveling we’ve done before even getting to Bangalore – it gets a little rough and makes it harder to get over jet lag (which I think I’m good with now).

We drove back to Udaipur yesterday, which was a bit of a shock because Mount Abu was really nice temperature-wise (about 80 during the day down to ~65 when it got dark). We then went to the City Palace and looked at where the princes lived. A lot of the art in the palace was very two dimensional, which I found strange. The styles between the paintings didn’t really change at all either. And the further you went in the palace, the newer it got – which was funny since at the beginning you see these old paintings and historical depictions and at the end you are staring at photos of old British guys. But even throughout the progression of paintings, the style was constant – minus the photographs. Odd. Speaking of pictures, some India guy at the palace – also a tourist – thought it was a great idea to take pictures of us with his cell phone – not asking or trying to hide himself or anything. I took to walking backwards. That was rather annoying. Had some downtime last night, which was much needed, and now traveling again.

I’m really glad to be finally going to Bangalore. While the mosquitoes seem atrocious, the temperature, in general, is much cooler and the area is very westernized. For example, Kiran told us that if we don’t feel like cooking at night, we can order delivery…..from places like Domino’s. Ha! And I’m hoping that we will all settle down there and feel more comfortable. On the other hand, I’m also expecting the juxtaposition of the very rich and the very poor to be disturbing. This, I think, is much worse than just seeing small, undeveloped villages – because they are so close yet so far. We’ll see.

I should have more stable internet there, so feel free to contact me. =) I’m still homesick, but not as bad.