The Overnight Express Delhi-Varanasi Limited

On Monday I traveled from Chennai to Delhi to meet up with everyone from my program. The flight was fine, despite a bit of confusion over which airline I was actually flying.

I arrived at 9:30 in the morning and got a pre paid taxi. I told him to go to the Blue Triangle Hotel on Ashok Road. I knew it was near the YMCA, and perhaps across the street from the YWCA (a fact I vaguely remembered reading in an e-mail a few days earlier). After a long, traffic-y journey to the YMCA, he told me we had reached our destination, though the Blue Triangle was not in sight. I asked a man at the YMCA where the Blue Triangle was. The cab driver gets out of the car, has a tiff with the guard, and then the cab driver, in a huff, got back in the driver's seat. I hesitantly got back in the car we drove off. By chance, we passed the Blue Triangle, I yelled in what I'm sure was completely fluent Hindi, "The Blue Triangle is there! The Blue Triangle is there!" We parked on the sidewalk, he tried to get 50 rupees out of me for the tip (I know, right? Ridiculous. That's practically a dollar.) and I entered the hotel.

After signing in, I went up one flight of stairs to my room. I had already known everyone on the program from this past summer, but wasn't sure whom I was living with during the interum preiod in Delhi before we got apartments. As I entered the room, I saw two huge black bags full of clothes. On top of a bag, I saw one half of a pair of snakeskin pumps. Catherine was definitely my roommate. I asked the hotel manager and he said that she had gone out with some other people from the Wisconsin trip.

I decided to spend the next few hours not looking for my friends, but spending some quality time on the first bed I had been on in about a week. It was definitely the right decision. I napped and read for about 3 hours, at which point I heard someone fumbling with some keys outside. Catherine's first encounter with skeleton keys wasn't going well, so after a waffling minute or so, I opened the door. We hugged, and I went to the other girls' room.

The next few days was spent going to a mosque, some historical sights, the National Museum in Delhi, and eating incredibly good food. We also visited the AIIS (American Institute for Indian Studies, I think) headquarters outside Delhi. We spent a total of about 5 hours there, and while i would love to detail everything that happened it can be summed up in a few key details.

1) The entire group was jet-lagged out of their minds and exhausted.
2) Total, I think we spent 3 hours in libraries talking to ecstatic archivists.
3) We spent about an hour in a small AV room talking to a music media archivist. One of the program directors fell asleep.
4) We spent the 30 minutes following in another small room with a map archivist who said the word "actually" 68 times. I counted.

So...I don't really need to give you guys a play-by-play of that afternoon.

On Thursday night we took an overnight train to Varanasi. The train station was very cramped, ridiculously crowded, and had an ever-present (not so) faint waft of urine. After waiting half an hour for the train a drunken man starting yelling at us about how we are foreigners and we will never be from India. Squeezing his water bottle in anger, he shouted "This is a country of angels!" He then lost interest and wandered away. He came back several times, but never said anything. His scowl was the only communication he shared.

After another half an hour, the train arrived. The train stood without opening its doors for 20 minutes, and we boarded. Here are some pictures of the train journey.

The floor was disgusting, the food was sub-par, and the men around us loved staring at the white kids. The squat toilets smelled terrible, were (to my dismay)ridiculously slippery, and every five minutes a man would walk by barking out, "Chai, Chai, Chai!" It was most people's personification of complete discomfort.

Despite this, if you know nothing about me, know this: I love train travel. I love everything about it. I spent an hour sitting on the stairs with the door flapping next to me watching the country go by. And though I was sitting in a viscous pool of something, it was brilliant. I can't really describe how it made me feel, but it lifted a lot of anxiety I had about my decision to go to India. I guess that's that only way I can describe it. If anyone ever wants to take a journey on a train, count me in. I will be so down.

We arrived in Varanasi at 8:30 AM, and moved all of our bags into the program house. After moving in, we ate breakfast and spent some down time around the house. During said down time I found our mailboxes, and while everyone elses' names were spelled right, mine had a mispelling I had never seen before. If anyone wants to write me a letter, make sure you spell my name "ALLLSON," otherwise, they might not know who you're writing to.
That evening we had a musical performance that was incredibly impressive, and I stayed up late on the roof of our house with Catherine, Chris, and Sam takling about tattoos, politics, and global warming. Here are a few photos of Mary Beth on the roof to give you an idea of what it looks like.

Today I went for a walk to Assi Ghat with Mary Beth, Catherine, and a flimsy, handwritten map Shashank made for me. The famous steps to the Ghats are mostly underwater (three cheers for monsoon season) so we just sat at the top of the stairs for a while before we each had a 7up and made our way back.

So far I like Varanasi, save one thing. It is so hot here. It is hotter than Chennai or Delhi. The second your shower is done, you feel exactly the same as you did before you starting showering. Which is usually equal amounts of sticky, sweaty, and uncomfortable.

In short, so far so good. I have a cell phone now, which is pretty great. You can e-mail me if you would like to call (All incoming calls are free for me, but expensive for you. Pretty much everything is inexpensive for me.) me at any time.

I hope all of your respective countries are doing well.

-allison

ps. McCain's running mate? Anyone? Aaanyone? Everyone on the program found out in the computer lab and could not stop talking about it. Did you know Sarah Palin's husband is a champion snowmobiler?