Time in India

Here’s a quick rundown of what we did in India, and some pictures:

Ogled Mt. Everest from the plane between Kathmandu and Kolkata.

Landed and kickboxed our way out of the airport and into a prepaid taxi, which took us to the MCC Guest House in the Entally area of Kolkata. The streets of the city are packed and bustling, even at night (unlike Kathmandu, which is a ghost town after 9 pm), and there are tons of these old school yellow muscle cabs everywhere.

We ate at the guest house mornings and evenings, and spent the middles of the days touring around town. We visited the Victoria Memorial, and met up with Emily Shantz Huffman, who I knew from GC because we worked on Record layout together. We ate lots of street food, including barfi, which, aside from having a hilarious name, tends to be covered in silver foil. India seriously consumes metric tons of silver, pounded into foil and wrapped around candy, annually.

 One theory is that the silver is on there for the same reason this iphone app exists. To wit, reminding people that they have enough money to eat precious metals. They weren't actually that expensive though. 5 rupees...about 10 cents.

We also got some Pani Purri, which are these little crispy fried balls that are hollow, and the server dumps a bunch of stuff into the cup and covers it with tamarind water, and you have to eat it really fast or all the goo seeps out.

The food at the guest house was great, and there were thousands of books to peruse, we watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest one night, and had devotions with the MCC India staff in the morning. Good times.

Wrestled our way back into the station and onto a train that took us from Kolkata to Pune, where we spent 4 hours wandering the area just around the train station, before getting back on and spending another day or so on the train. The whole ride was 36 hours or something…I lost count quickly.

In Goa (which used to house a Portuguese colony) we had sessions about Christ in the Eastern Context, and worker care, and I led a session where we talked about meditation, then meditated silently together. We visited the corpse of St. Xavier, the patron saint of Goa, and learned that at one point a rabid fan bit two toes off the corpse. These “relics” are now entombed in Italian marble, and the toes are framed in a little silver container that is on display in the church.

The Toes, ensconced.

I did karaoke for the first time on my birthday at a really tacky tourist bar across the inlet from the Jesuit retreat house where we stayed. Good times.

We also visited a spice farm and ate some really good food, and I attempted to scale a betel nut tree, which mostly hurt my feet, though I did get a good 10 feet up it.

MCC Bangladesh staff were at the retreat as well, and it was great to meet and fellowship with them. They’re a fun crowd, who I hope to encounter again.

Eventually, we had to say our goodbyes, and Claire, Kelsey, Annielle, Phil and I hopped back on a train, sleeper class this time, e.g. adventure class, and spent another 30+ hours making our way up to Delhi, where we found our hotel, dropped off our baggage, and explored. Delhi has a different “feel,” from Kolkata. Maybe it is something about the way they treat time there, but it was still quite hectic and busy. We did a lot of wandering around and shopping, and tried sweet pan, which is a bizarre combination of betel nut, tobacco paste, and all manner of other sweet stuff all wrapped up in a leaf that you chew.It is similar to Pinang, which Rae wrote about in her awesome Indonesia blog.

They put everything in that leaf before rolling it up. Tobacco paste, coconut shreds, Nerds-esque little crunchy sprinkles,and various other unidentifiable sweets. Then you chew on it for a while and spit it out.

We took a day trip to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. I was in a pissy mood that day because my tummy was acting up and the security guard at the Taj wouldn’t let my Rubik’s Cube or Stuffed Cat into the monument, and I had to walk like three blocks away and put that stuff in a locker I had to pay for. I asked why I couldn’t bring those things in.

Of the cube he said “you can’t play it in there.”

“OK,” I said.

“You promise?” he asked.

“I promise,” I lied.

Then he saw the stuffed cat toy.

“This cannot go in.”

“Why?” I said.

“Because you will take picture with it,” he replied.

“Well DUH I’ll take pictures with it, why would any human come see the Taj Mahal and not take pictures with a stuffed animal? What else do you DO at wonders of the world?” is what I thought to myself.

What I said was:

“No I won’t.”

“It can’t go in,” he said.

So, fuming and cursing the pettiness of it all, I went and put the cat and cube in a locker and proceeded to not be nearly as impressed with the Taj Mahal as I might once have been.

Oh, and I spitefully Photoshopped this image of my stuffed cat with the Taj Mahal. Take that India’s Security Fetish!

Claire and I flew back a few days earlier than Annielle, Phil and Kelsey. We got up at 5 on our day of departure and hopped in our cab to the airport. Our flight had been delayed, so we sat and drank coffee for a couple of hours, and chatted up this nice Indian guy who we were sitting by, who happened to be the chief engineer on an oil tanker, and spent four months at a time sailing from port to port, moving oil around. It sounded like it might have been exciting once, with diminishing returns after that, but he seemed happy and affluent.

We got on the plane and flew back to Kathmandu, which felt much more home like than it did before we left.

We ogled the Himalayas on the way back in too. Those mountains rock.