A little blue booklet sits tucked behind my passport. Cover reads: Certificate of Registration, Overseas Citizen of India. I look up. Matt and Madi: two familiar faces, one seasoned, one infantile. We are currently on the way to Jaipur, our fourth stop in this sub-continental journey. Goats patrol the concrete. Cows meander the fields. The occasional monkey claws its way across the dusty terrain. This is my homeland. How many times I’ve thought this since stepping foot to the soil….
A little blue booklet sits tucked behind my passport. Cover reads: Certificate of Registration, Overseas Citizen of India. I look up. Matt and Madi: two familiar faces, one seasoned, one infantile. We are currently on the way to Jaipur, our fourth stop in this sub-continental journey. Goats patrol the concrete. Cows meander the fields. The occasional monkey claws its way across the dusty terrain. This is my homeland. How many times I’ve thought this since stepping foot to the soil….
I left for a week of travel on May 28th. I am still uncertain if the party that ensued upon this announcement was due to a lack of understanding that I would only be gone a short time, or a desire to enjoy the ice cream I brought. Either way, I was privy to a flood of dancing and singing and a steady stream of gifts. The evening began with my being grabbed by several girls and told to sit…
Namaste! My name is Tsukumo, and I’d like to welcome you to my first post on the Summer in South Asia 2016 blog. It still hasn’t really hit me that I’m about to leave my home next Monday to Varanasi, India, where I will be working with an NGO called NIRMAN. Partially, it’s because I had just come back from a three-week trip to Brazil. (I was part of the PCAP/GCC Brazil program with Professor Ashley Lucas, where I was…
Namaste! My name is Tsukumo, and I’d like to welcome you to my first post on the Summer in South Asia 2016 blog. It still hasn’t really hit me that I’m about to leave my home next Monday to Varanasi, India, where I will be working with an NGO called NIRMAN. Partially, it’s because I had just come back from a three-week trip to Brazil. (I was part of the PCAP/GCC Brazil program with Professor Ashley Lucas, where I was…
After arriving in Delhi airport at 12am I finally made it out of the airport some 11 hours later. I confidently walked the course I had plotted in my head to the taxi stand and ordered the no A/C cab because in that moment I needed to feel like a tough guy. After 10 minutes I was soaked, and after 20 I was surrounded by yelling men and my cab driver was being forcibly evicted from our little island of…
After arriving in Delhi airport at 12am I finally made it out of the airport some 11 hours later. I confidently walked the course I had plotted in my head to the taxi stand and ordered the no A/C cab because in that moment I needed to feel like a tough guy. After 10 minutes I was soaked, and after 20 I was surrounded by yelling men and my cab driver was being forcibly evicted from our little island of…
***Originally from May 31, 2016*** So this is exactly my third time in Padum trying to access the internet. The first, second and third time, the internet was down at both internet centers in town. But a friend in need is a friend indeed, or so they say. One of Lobzang’s friends, Soodan, made it his mission to help me get in touch with home. His father, a pharmacist at the local hospital, is good friends with the president of…
***Originally from May 31, 2016*** So this is exactly my third time in Padum trying to access the internet. The first, second and third time, the internet was down at both internet centers in town. But a friend in need is a friend indeed, or so they say. One of Lobzang’s friends, Soodan, made it his mission to help me get in touch with home. His father, a pharmacist at the local hospital, is good friends with the president of…
My time in Leh was difficult. Going from the Gupta family’s extremely warm welcome to complete isolation from even a single familiar face was jarring and harder than I ever could have imagined. I was overwhelmed by the fact that I was so utterly alone, overwhelmed by the choking dust that swirls through the unpaved streets, by the intense and unwanted stares from the local men, and I hate to say it, by the painfully slow hotel WiFi tipped me…
