This past week has been crazy, which I will fill you in about later.
For now, I am finished with school at the University of Hyderabad. I took my last exam today.
And now I have some time before I have to get up at 4 am to catch a plane to Calcutta, a train to Darjeeling, and a bus to Sikkim to see the 3rd tallest mountain in the world. I am going to see the Himalayas. I am such such such a mountain person - I absolutely cannot wait.
Thinking about it, I will probably cry.
Even looking out my window at the mountains whenever I am home makes me a little teary - the beauty in this world can be so overwhelming, so intense, so powerful.
I believe that there has to be a lot of good in the world for something to be so beautiful and meaningful to so many people.
These mountains - these mountains are very special to the people of Sikkim. When people trek up to the top (which is hard to do), they follow the sacred tradition of stopping at the summit. I plan on finding out the all of the beliefs behind this while there.
I hope also to visit a monastery or two while I'm up that way. I really appreciate Buddhism, and want to spend some time exploring and learning about it.
I'm a little sad that my plan to volunteer in Nepal fell through - but I have new news on that front too! And it is exciting!
So. Mumbai, day 3
(in pictures, because I can't recall every detail)
Mumbai is a sleepy little city and doesn't wake up until after us - we wander around looking for breakfast (coffeeeee) and were found by two ascetics who tied red and yellow strings to our wrists and gave us bindis and gave us some candies, blessing us. And then they asked us for money, and when we refused they told us that even Indians donate at least rs. 500 ($10) so we slipped them rs. 50 and walked off.
Of all the people in India, these were not the men and people to give money to.
But, a week later and looking back on this incident, we recalled that we ate the candies and this was a stupid stupid stupid thing to do. If I were home in the US, there is absolutely no way I would let someone tie string on my wrist, put powder on my forehead, and then eat their candy.
But, in the US, where we grow paranoid of every single thing that could possibly happen to humanity from a young age, this is a big deal. So, now that I am in India and I could die at any moment due to unforeseen events (terrorist attack, a cortisone shot from a doctor, a rickshaw) my awareness level is a bit different. Here, men walking around with candy (which is actually sugar coated fennel) and string blessing you is seriously the norm. Here, people live what they preach, what they believe, so it feels natural to accept. We are fine, anyways. It happened to us twice that day, in the morning and the evening - the second man sang to us. And didn't offer us candy or ask us for money. And he told us that our light shined from the inside, and that we were whole, beautiful people. He was a very happy person and he made us happy.
We had breakfast (Riane's flower and coffee)
We headed off to some gardens and took pictures with an old man who had decided to act as our tourguide:
We left him to go to Banganga Tank, where Hindus believe the middle of the earth is and bath in this big concrete pool of water:
And we found some murals on the wall on the way to the Thieve's Market (Chor Bazaar):
a public telephone
a man in his antique store in the Thieves Market
30,000 people work here - if you sent your laundry to the cleaners, this is where it comes and men, women, and children will throw your clothes in this huge segments of cement and beat the dirt out of your clothes.
At this point a young boy tried to get me to give money to him for this baby kitten he was hauling around and it just wanted freedom and all I could do for it was tell the boy to put it down, and let it drink water from the palm of my hand. Then, while we were watching the people do laundry, somebody decided to give this boy a beating and he was wailing at the top of his lungs, lying beside a parked car. But then he got up and chased me all the way into the train station.
Soon after, a man grabbed my hand and asked if he could give me a kiss. I struggled to get my hand back, Riane told him loudly "No!" and he walked away laughing.
We then grabbed a train, ate some lunch at the same restaurant Bill Clinton ate at a few years ago, and then did some shopping, and we got some awesome buys.
We met up with our friends who had magically appeared in Mumbai:
and we visited a church and a park and then had dinner at the Intercontinental Hotel and spent the longest time searching for a club that would let us in for free, which they would not do. So we went home and the next day Riane and I had a photoshoot, we about died getting on a train that took off really fast and we were not all completely on, and we visited the largest slums in Asia, the same slums from Slumdog Millionare. No pictures, sorry. We all felt the same on that matter.
Then we really did hop a train home. Successfully.
I don't have anything to say about the slums just yet - my opinion on what we did and what I think about the whole section of society is very very very undecided and confused.
some pictures:
And home we went.
On to new horribly trying week.
