Don't think twice

Darjeeling is an early town, so poker night it was. I lost. And had to dress like the most ridiculous backpacker in town as my punishment. Which is hard in Darjeeling. There were lots a funny dressed foreigners--my favorite being the guy in swim suit bottoms.
Mystical fog surrounding the peace pagoda. So calm.

The peace pagoda.


Tasting tea.
Tea house tasting round two.
Mist over town.
More tea.
Absurd backpackers, counteracting the caffeine with a beer.
Sonia getting henna.
Women picking tea on the Happy Valley Estate.
More tea leaves.
Yes, Harrods.
The five second tea lady's home.
Trecking back up to town from the tea estate.
Mmmmm.
Golden orange tea.
Sonia blowing on the leaves to catch the aroma.
The five second tea lady showing us the 8 varieties and how to know what is the best.
Tea leaves!!
The town.
The road winding below us.
One of the wider parts of the road...definitely would not have been riding on the roof with all the sharp turns and washed out potholes.
Watching the women (all the tea pickers seemed to be women) pick tea as we drove up the mountains.

It's allright.

The past four nights were spent in Darjeeling, a hill station in northern India, almost in Bhutan and Nepal. Although the foggy weather kept us from enjoying the famous views of the surrounding Himalayas and the supposedly-spectacular hiking, the three hour white-knuckle drive up the mountains was so absolutely worth it.

Darjeeling is famous for its delicate flavor and color. It only comes out just right at these high altitudes and, yeah, its pretty incredible. Think of the "Darjeeling" tea you get in bags at the grocery store. Now go and throw it away. Because it is not good. This is seriously the best tea I've ever had. Right now black is in season, so we had the opportunity to sample some fresh leaves. The tea leaves are put in the boiling water, and then strained through a strainer that goes over the tea mug. The liquid comes out a brilliant orange color, smells amazing and doesn't need any sugar or milk (even though some hot milk and sugar doesn't hurt).

The best sampling was at Happy Valley Tea Estate, where Harrods gets their specialty teas (colonialism?!). But seriously, we were able to sit in the self proclaimed "five second tea lady's" living room for about an hour and hear her explanation for how the tea comes to be so perfect. She showed us the seven or so main types and had us smell them. In sum, the secret to all these wonderful aromas is that the leaves here are happy! We sampled the black tea, which brews in just five seconds given its freshness and strength. Best tea of my life.

The rest of the trip was spent sampling other teas at several tea houses and exploring the town. It was a bummer that we couldn't go hiking given the weather, but I still really enjoyed the city. Darjeeling is pretty interesting--it's so far north and is heavily influenced by Tibetan, Bhutanese, and Nepalese culture. It was really fascinating to see all these different Asian influences kind or interact and even fuse together. Like, women wearing sarees who definitely don't look like the women wearing sarees in southern India. And then parts of town where I didn't even feel like I was in India because nobody looked, dressed, or cooked like Indians. So many awesome momos.

The town itself is sort of like a shabby chalet town--winding narrow roads, sort of ski lodge type architecture, even if a bit run down. I really appreciated the character, although I can't quite put my finger on what it was. Perhaps the mist gave the whole place a surreal, calm feeling. Or that we spent most of our time away from the honking busy roads. Or all of the Tibetan prayer flags hanging about made me feel more peaceful. Darjeeling is also impeccably clean. It seems that folks here are very committed to preserving the environment, even though at the same time, promoting the tourism so heavily straining the infrastructure and natural resources available here.

The last stop on the way down the mountains was a visit at the Japanese Peace Pagoda, a Buddhist monument build to advocate for non-violence and peace. Just seeing the pagoda rising out of the mountain mist was sort of surreal, peaceful and mystical in and of itself. I wish we had more time to meditate there--so inviting of reflection over the past four days and past nine weeks.

For a change of scenery, Sonia and I head off to Rajasthan via a 18 hour train ride in the morning to ride a camel into the desert and sleep under the stars.

Kolkata

Interesting approach. Still horns galore. I sort have come to love them though. Waterman Blvd is going to be sadly quiet.
Enjoying some dinner and drinks last night. Carlsburg, falafal, hummus oh my!
The couch seat was pretty nice. And so was this orange gin concoction, complete with chlorinated water ice cubes.
Hotel Astor--reminds me of the castle my family and I stayed in in the UK.
coffee shop number three of the day. mango iced tea and lattes.
coffee shop number two. this one looked really cool on the inside--like a huge study spot (its near the university). but alas, it was closed.
Book vendors on College Road.
Street car-makes sense in the third largest city in India. And most cities everywhere in the world for that matter.

Himalayan tea
At coffee shop number one, reading some Indian fiction

Kolkata has so many bookstores and coffee shops. And I am in love.

We visited four different places and had some medicinal tea from the mountains, some mango iced tea, some banana bread...mmm

We also had Bengali food for lunch--lots of fish. I had white fish in a sweet pineapple curry sauce...the sauce was just right.

While Kolkata has much to offer, we are only here for one day. Focusing on exploring the book/coffee shop scene definitely didn't give me any sort of overall picture for the city, but I definitely can't complain. What I did notice is that I felt more European here than elsewhere. Perhaps a function of spending all day in coffee shops. But Kolkata was a hub for the Brits--it served as the capital for the British Raj until 1911. We even get the London paper at our hotel, which is interesting because it still uses the name "Calcutta," which is the British name for the city that has since been changed to "Kolkata." Many of the streets still have British sounding names, and are laid out in similar fashion to those in the UK (i.e. confusingly and with big sidewalks, granted sidewalks dotted with vendors selling street-side samosas). I'll be interested to compare this to Delhi and see if the feel is anything similar...

Up to Darjeeling in the Himalayas tomorrow!

Thanjavur leaving, Chennai going

Sonia and me in our sarees at dinner

All the pretty ladies in their sarees

The appropriately worn saree

Frozen Fantasy has fro-yo!!

Mom, you would like this wacky shopping mall.

Visiting the biggest shopping mall in India...yes, Subway and Pizza Hut were enjoyed by all. Globalization!

The sunrise over the Egmore Train Station in Chennai...so pretty.

Playing UNO on the train.

I am an absurd backpacker, complete with the hiking sandals, headband, and of course the backpack bigger than me. At least it's not a suitcase.

Only half of our ridiculous amount of luggage. So glad my mother taught me how to fit everything into a backpack.

All of us with Thenrall and her husband.

Thendral and me.Favorite Thendrall quote (calling her when we had trouble with a driver): "This is Thendrall. Everything will be ok."

Fruit party on our last night in T-jore...mmmm

Thendrall wrapping Leslie in her Saree

I owe some of you some updates...so get ready for a long post!

Last Monday we gave our presentations on how we are proposing to implement and evaluate our interventions. Whew. As I mentioned, this section has really shown me some of the logic and methodology of public health. And, alas, as I always thought I would be, I am in love with public health. Our plan proposes that 1) water filters will be attached to each water tap in the community and 2) community health workers will make home visits to mothers with young children to teach them about how to properly treat diarrhea with oral rehydration solution. The goal is to reduce incidence (through preventing disease as a result of clean drinking water) and to reduce morbidity (through enabling mothers to properly treat their children when they do fall ill). To be very very brief, actually implementing this requires 8 main activities that include things like training water filter maintenance workers, developing a curriculum for the oral rehydration solution education session and ensuring the community is on board and gaining something. We then need to evaluate whether or not each activity was properly completed. In order to do that, surveys, focus groups, self reported data and quantitative data are used. We also need to evaluate whether our overall goal, reducing incidence and mortality was achieved. Again survey data and self reported data are used.

Now this is not even the tip of the iceberg, but in the interest of not boring you all, I'll move on to talking about what I really like about this proposal. It seems that this approach of partnering with the village president and the locally-based community health workers has the potential to really build community and individual capacity. At the community level, structures are being established to deliver needed services. At the individual level, knowledge and awareness is being developed to enable mothers to keep their children healthy. And everybody wants good services and healthy kids.

Back on the train

So we headed back to Chennai on the overnight train Monday night so we could prepare for our final presentations at the ICTPH main offices. And we prepared in style. Our hotel is very comfy and has hot water! And a ten minute walk to the beach, which is a beautiful place for a morning run and meditation session. It's so invigorating to see all the people out early walking, running and doing yoga on the sand. And I can wear shorts here! Hooray!

The other thing I'm loving is the bustle of the city. I can hear the horns and the cars from our room and it reminds me of being on Michigan Avenue. I just love the urban hustle, diversity and feeling of lots of life in the city. Now it's also fair to mention that bustle and hustle might be understatements. Like really big understatements. Sometimes I wait for 5 minutes to cross the street. And it can be super frustrating when you're just trying to walk down the side of the road and scooters keep bumping into you. But something about all that is just so vibrant. Or so I keep telling myself when all the horn honking gets to my head...

So with the help of the availability of Diet Coke, whole wheat bread and avocado, we prepared for our final presentations.

And the last presentation...

Went well! All of the teams were so impressive with the amount of knowledge that they have gained over the past two months. It was really obvious in the way in which the presenters smoothly and clearly articulated their plans as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

Most of the class wore sarees, which are appropriate formal wear. They looked so incredible beautiful with all their colors!! I, however, was not brave enough, as I assumed that it would fall off as I was giving my presentation. I felt a little bland in my pink dress shirt and borrowed dress pants, but at least I prevented a major wardrobe malfunction.

We ended the day by visiting a beach resort a bit outside Chennai for swimming and dinner with ICTPH. The beach was AMAZING. I spent most of my time playing in the waves, which were huge! The undertow was very strong, so a few of us partnered with some of the new beach-goers to give body surfing lessons. Reminded me of my old swim lesson days, but in a good way.

We then enjoyed a great buffet dinner and I borrowed one of Leslie's sarees. While I could not get it on properly for the life of me, it was fun to wear. It's so interesting how all of the Indian women here can tell in one second your saree is on wrong. When I was leaving the hotel, the lady working at the desk refused to let me walk out in public until it was properly done. I wonder if this is how men feel when women ask them if things go together? I mean, I really could not tell the difference from a properly worn saree and our makeshift saree wearing. Fascinating how we can just overlook some of the blaringly obvious points without even knowing we did it.

So today brings us to our last day in Chennai and our last day of the course. And leaves me with so many reflections and thoughts...some more beach meditation time is in order to finally start to process this stuff...