My pleasure, Begumpur.  The four months I spent in Begumpur were some of most unforgettable of my life.  I won’t say living there was easy, but I think I’m a better person because of it.  I’m going to miss my Indian friends a lot especially Varun, Suhail, Meenu, Gopika, Alwin, Litul, Rajiv, Anjali, Deepak, Moumita, Hanna, and John (almost Indian ;)). 

Sights from one of my last runs in India

When I run, I go through a government-owned piece of unused land.  People dump trash there which attracts cows and pigs.  By the end of my trip, running through herds of cows and wild pigs didn’t even phase me.

Fruit and vegetable carts are the freshest way to get food in India.  In the winter, grapes, bananas, and papaya dominate the scene.  Summer gives way to pineapple, musk melon, and MANGOES.  Many vegetables are available year-round.

Credit for the first and second photos goes to Max Harwood.

Here is a list of the books I’ve read in India.  My favorites are first.

The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga

Because it is so new (published in 2008), and based in New Delhi, I found The White Tiger to be relevant to my experience in India.  Many Indians dislike the book, but I think it has a good deal of truth in it.

The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy

One of the saddest books I’ve ever read, but it is amazing.

Gandhi & Churchill - Arthur Herman

For such a detailed historical account, this book reads very well and is rarely boring.

An Imperfect Offering - James Orbinski

This is the only non-Indian book that managed to sneak on the list.  I borrowed it from Catherine when I was bored in the northeast, and it is a truly incredible account of the author’s experiences as a doctor volunteering with Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders).  He has seen some of the absolute worst things that humans are capable of in many distressed countries including Sudan, Somalia, Rwanda, and Afghanistan.

Five Point Someone - Chetan Bhagat

Chetan Bhagat is a super popular novelist in India.  Although not exactly literary masterpieces, his books gave me a good overview of what life is like for college educated people my age in India.

One Night at the Call Center - Chetan Bhagat

Two States - Chetan Bhagat

The 3 Mistakes of my Life - Chetan Bhagat

Being Indian - Pavan Varma

This book does share some insight into the Indian mind, but it’s written like a college essay with a minimum length of 200 pages.  Not an exciting read.  10 pages would suffice to fit its entire contents.

New Delhi is always under construction and buildings get crammed wherever there is space, often without any permit or enforcement of building codes.

My father and I at Humayun’s Tomb

I didn’t get too many pictures of my father and I when he came to New Delhi as part of a Congressional Delegation in April, but I do have a few from when we went to visit Humayun’s Tomb.  My father likes candid poses if you can’t tell…

Babu

Babu was the doorman at my apartment building.  Over the months, he taught me some Hindi and I think I taught him some English, too.  His cell phone number was on my speed dial list because I needed to call him to let me into the building whenever I stayed out past 11pm.

Credit for the photos goes to Max Harwood.  The aviators belong to Max, too.

I did a fair amount of cooking at home and I found that it helps to have a few Indian recipes on hand.  Here are three of my favorites.

Aditi’s Mom’s Eggplant:

Saute onions, garlic, hing (asafoetida), curry leaves.  Add some chopped tomato.  Simmer.

Boil eggplant and mash with salt, chili powder, turmeric, a pinch of sugar, and tamarind (most important ingredient).

Add onions & tomatoes to mashed eggplant with a little water and cook on low for 20 min.

Alwin’s Mom’s Chicken

Marinade chicken with plain yogurt and the following spices for at least 30 minutes: cumin, red chili, turmeric, ginger, garlic, black pepper, garam masala.

Heat oil in a pot with a pinch of sugar until the sugar turns dark brown.  Add onions and green chilies.  Add the chicken and marinade and cook!

Catherine’s Spinach Raita

Saute garlic, mustard seeds, and curry leaves.  Add chopped spinach.  When spinach has cooked down, remove from heat and let cool.

Add salt and some water to plain yogurt.  Add cooled spinach mixture to the yogurt and refrigerate or serve.

The Hindustan Ambassador

The Ambassador is a bit like the Indian version of the Crown Victoria.  It’s big, inefficient, and hasn’t changed much since production began in 1948.  White Ambassadors are a favorite of government employees and politicians, who prefer curtains in the rear windows.  Yellow and black Ambassador taxis can be found in cities all across India.

I’m back in the USA.  But I still have few more posts to write before I wrap up this blog.

Leaving Lobsang and the quaint town of Munna was tough.  Ahead of me, I had 14 hours in Sumos and busses before I got to Guwahati, where I planned on spending the night before my flight in the morning.  The Sumo (jeep) was modified to include an extra bench seat so that it could hold a mind-blowing 16 people.

When I arrived in Guwahati, I went to 10 hotels before I found one with a vacancy.  I had to pay 1400 rupees for the worst room I’ve ever stayed in in India.  For comparison, Catherine and I split a tidy and comfortable room in Tawang for 500 rupees a night.  The next day, on the way to the airport, someone told me that there was an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) entrance exam being held that day, hence the lack of vacant hotel rooms.

Impromptu Homestay

When my bucking bronco of a car stopped to drop me off in Dirang, I paid the driver the agreed 1000 rupees and took a minute to readjust to the wonderfully stationary ground beneath my feet.  While asking people where a cheap hotel was, I met Lobsang, who offered to let me stay with him and his family in small town 12km away.  I hesitated for a moment and then agreed.  How often do you get to stay with a local family in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains?  Before going to his house, we checked out a soccer game and a couple of taekwondo matches that were part of the Northeast Games being held in Dirang.

Lobsang explained to me that his hometown, Munna, has 265 voters and 48 houses, facts that he knows because a relative of his is the town’s mayor.  Most people in the town are related to each other some way or another.  It certainly seemed like everyone was a big family.  Teenagers wrestled for fun in the middle of the street, kids sat arm in arm outside the town’s two small general stores, and everyone we passed said hi to Lobsang.

That night, Lobsang and his brother cooked an amazing dinner.  We had wild boar soup, tea dumplings, potatoes with boar meat, dal, rice, and a home-brewed wheat wine called raksi.  Rak means friend in the regional language.  Lobsang’s father hunted the boar himself and they dried the meat in their kitchen.

Lobsang wanted me to stay longer to check out a local yak breeding center and some hot springs, but I told him that I had to go in the morning so that I would not miss my flight back to New Delhi the following day.

Tawang to Dirang

When the time came to finally leave Tawang, I decided to split the 15 hour Sumo ride from Tawang to Tezpur into two days and spend one night in Dirang, which is about the halfway point.  Because I wanted to see the monks do their morning prayers, I couldn’t catch a shared Sumo at 5:30am, so I had to arrange my own transportation.  I found a guy driving where I was going and we made a deal.  His little gold minivan was like a bucking bronco, way bouncier than the Tata Sumos.  Along the way, we encountered a mudslide that had trapped one of the Sumos the night before.  Glad I wasn’t in that one!

Prayer flags

One of my favorite things about Tawang was the prevalence of prayer flags almost everywhere.  The flags are brightly colored and woodblock printed with traditional mantras and prayers for the long life and good fortune of the person that mounts the flags.

Tawang Gompa

Tawang Gompa is said to be one of the biggest Buddhist monasteries in the world outside of Lhasa, Tibet.  It has 700 monks living and praying within its walls and operates like a small city.  The monks are very friendly and were eager to show us around.

Prayer wheels are inscribed with the mantra Om Mani Padme Hum which has a complicated meaning that I don’t entirely understand.  Spinning the wheel clockwise with the right hand is akin to saying the purifying mantra repeatedly.  There are even water powered prayer wheels that spin continuously, offering their mantra to every Buddhist in the world.

The monks in Tawang Gompa hold their morning prayer chanting at sunrise, which in northeast India is at about 4:30am.  One morning, I woke up at 3:45am to hike the 5km to the Gompa to watch the prayer session.  I was expecting something very solemn, but what I found was a prayer hall full of squirming children playing games with the kids around them, chatting, and struggling to stay awake while the prayer leader chanted away.  They served butter salt milk tea, which was ok, but definitely a bit strange to me.

One monk about my age dubbed himself the “21st century monk”.  He had a Nokia mobile phone with a full QWERTY keyboard, satellite TV in his room, and even his own car.  He gave Catherine and I a lift back to town after the morning prayers.