Spring Break 2010!

So…Remember how I said I was going to be better about updating my blog? Better late than never, right! The month of March is behind us and I am literally sitting here, mouth a gape, while I look at the calendar. Where does the time go? I blame the time difference. Each day, 9.5 hours of time get lost between Mumbai and the U.S. (10.5+ for those of you who live in CST, MST and PST time zones). Therefore, if you count the number of days since my last post (48 days –oh my gosh, I am so sorry!) and then subtract the hours lost (carry the 2…) you’ll see that I’ve really only neglected to write you for 19 days. That roughly translates into less than 3 weeks – and I’m not even taking daylight savings time into consideration. See! We all feel better about this now, don’t we!

Okay – I won’t waste any more lost time groveling for your forgiveness. I accept it. After all, we just had Easter and Jesus has not only forgiven me, but graced me with his Holy Ghost and promise of eternal life, so, I’m ready to move on if you are! Speaking of Easter, that is where this post will begin! Technically, I will begin a few days prior to Easter starting with Maundy Thursday (or Holy Thursday for my Catholic constituents).

Since I’ve been in Mumbai for a little over two months, a group of interns (including myself) decided that it was high time we got out of the world’s most populated city for a little R&R. Vacay! There are just too many exciting and wonderful places we all wanted to see in India, so we decided to be a little crazy and pick TWO destinations (trying to cram in as much fun, sun, relaxation and sightseeing as possible). The results: Darjeeling and Kolkata (formerly, Calcutta)! Jai ho!

Very (very) early on Thursday morning, I’m talking 4am – my roommate and I, along with six other women woke up before our other 22 million neighbors and caught rickshaws to the domestic airport. Thank you Chhatrapati Shivaji Domestic Terminal for having the coffee ready for us – God bless you and all who travel through your pristine gates. Our first flight was supposed to follow a pattern from Mumbai to Delhi and then from Delhi to Bagdogra (aka the middle of nowhere). That just seemed a little too easy and organized for a trip across India. When our plane arrived over Delhi we were unable to land (I’m sure there was no official landing queue) so we circled around a few times and were then informed by our delightful captain, in three languages (Hindi, Bengali and finally, English) that we would be re-routing to Jaipur instead.

No use getting our panties in a bunch (like the rest of the impatient passengers on our flight) – so we just rolled with it – a useful technique in this country. After landing in Jaipur to re-fuel, we made it back to Delhi, landed successfully for a little game of musical airline seats and then we were back on track headed northeast to Bagdogra. Landing in the beautiful state of West Bengal was like heaven. I’m talking wide open spaces-you can see for miles-no tall buildings-only greenery and SKY heaven. I haven’t seen the sky in 2 months. We exited our plane onto the expansive tarmac and I just twirled around – taking in the dry heat of the sun, breathing in the FRESH air and spreading my arms; delighted that I was nowhere NEAR hitting anybody or anything! I love the countryside.

Though we had already been traveling for almost 8 hours, our journey had only just begun! From the itty bitty airport (which I later learned is actually a military airport that is occasionally used for civilian flights) our group of seven piled into a Tata Sumo (similar to a Range Rover) and headed off to Darjeeling. The ride up to the foothills of the Himalayas is supposed to be approximately three hours, but like I said…this is India; and there is no such thing as predictability.

The drive was absolutely beautiful. There were lush tea estates on all sides, rising hills in the distance and rural communities flying by faster than we were able to take our cameras out for pictures. When we started the climb up the mountains you would have thought we had never seen nature before – with every bend and curve sounds of our oohs and aahs were coming out of the hearty Sumo noting the rise of the earth, the trees and rivers and the little houses tucked under the eaves of earth jutting out from the crags. And then. Flat tire. Figures! Luckily our driver (whom I shall dub, MacGyver the Good Samaritan – MGGS for short) changed the tired in less than 5 minutes and after we stocked up on some biscuits and water at a little roadside stand, we were off – conquering the foothills of Gorkhaland all over again!

Winding through the little hill towns on our way up to Darjeeling was wonderful. Incredibly bumpy, but wonderful. As we climbed higher the air started getting cooler – the best feeling in the world after having been dominated by stale, polluted, muggy heat for the past few months. Our adorable little driver made a few more stops; one, to help a poor guy with some jeep trouble (his jeep literally almost rolled down the mountain) and two, to purchase another spare tire in the event that another blowout occurred. Smart guy. Finally, after a few minor stops and lots of traffic (there is crazy traffic everywhere in India; it’s a fact) we arrived in Darjeeling!

Though it was dark (after 9pm) and we couldn’t see much, I was tempted to get out of the Sumo and kiss the ground. That would have been gross though, so I settled for thanking MGGS and following the rest of our troupe up another hill, on foot, to our hotel! The Olde (Main) Bellevue Hotel in Darjeeling was built in 1872 and is one of the oldest heritage hotels in the Darjeeling area. Very quaint – sort of a rustic B&B feel. Dinner that night would have been amazing no matter what we ate – we were so hungry. I settled for some macaroni ‘n’ cheese (still my favorite, Dad!) and some famous Darjeeling tea at a popular eatery called the Glenary. We all fell fast asleep that night in our precious little bungalows – excited to rest up for the day ahead!

Once the sun was up and we all finished getting ready we started out to find Sonam’s kitchen (rated as an “our pick” in Lonely Planet). Darjeeling doesn’t look like India. It doesn’t feel like India. It sort of reminded me of a Swiss Chalet smattered with more Nepalese-looking people than Swiss; so it’s very confusing. But I’ll tell you what – just because you feel like you’re in another land all together, that doesn’t mean that asking for directions is going to be any easier. We asked approximately 5 different individuals (including a hotel clerk and a police officer) how to get to Sonam’s Kitchen. It is WORLD FAMOUS and no one seemed to really know how to get there. Admitting that they didn’t know what the heck we were talking about would have been too easy (and defeating) so people just kept pointing different directions (mostly up hill). After roaming the streets and various alleyways of Darjeeling for 30 minutes we FINALLY found it (you could literally hear an angel’s chorus announce our arrival from the heavens). You’ll never guess how close we were to our original starting point. Probably a 2 minute walk on level ground. No hills. No kidding.

At that point, we didn’t even care anymore. We had made it and it was WELL worth the trek. The little restaurant, which included 3 tables, one cook (Sonam, herself) and one host (her husband) served the best coffee I’ve had in a long time. And that’s not because I’ve been in India for two months (I’ve been drinking tons of Starbucks thanks to ALL OF YOU AMAZING PEOPLE WHO KEEP SENDING IT TO ME – I love you!). The coffee, the hash browns, the eggs, the TOAST – oh my gosh the toast, ALL OF IT! Amazing! We shared the restaurant space with about 8 other travelers, all from the UK or Australia – well, there was one other American there but she was loud and, well, very American – so naturally we found her annoying and somewhat embarrassing (especially in front of all those good looking European backpackers)!

After our hearty breakfast and sending our compliments to Sonam, we decided that the rest of our day would be best spent wandering around Darjeeling (intentionally). We started out by trying to find the Happy Valley Tea Estate. Again, we received some less than certain directions – but this time we weren’t starving and the cool mountain air and beautiful scenery literally made us skip with joy (I love skipping)! We found the tea estate just in time as huge droplets of rain started to fall from the sky as we slipped under the corrugated roof of the manufacturing facility. I decided that the reason why the rain felt so big was because we were just that much closer to their point of origin. It’s science.

We learned a lot of somewhat valuable information at the Happy Valley Tea Estate (I am almost ready for Jeopardy). We learned that the tea grown in the fields of Happy Valley are used solely for distribution at Harrod’s in London. We also learned that the drying process and number of times the tea is sifted determines the color of the tea once brewed and thus the quality. As we were going through the tour, men and women with huge baskets full of leaves were pouring into the drying room, emptying the bushels of picked leaves into huge beds specially designed for wicking the moisture away and beginning the process of tea-making. Very cool. After our tour, the rain had stopped and we were ushered to a tiny tea café where a crazy lady, who called herself “Five-Second Lady”, was illegally selling Happy Valley Tea. She again, for a small fee, showed us the different kinds of tea and the how you can tell the quality of a certain tea by its color and smell. She brewed us all a cup of her famous five second tea that is so strong that it actually doesn’t have to steep; you can just pour hot water through the tea strainer and out comes the perfect Tippy Golden Flowery Broken Orange Pekoe 1 tea!

After a long trek back up the steep mountainside (huffing and puffing) we made it back to Darjeeling town. Thank you God for Hooker Lane – it was a Godsend of a shortcut that literally cut down on over 45 minutes of uphill trekking! Considering our line of work – we all had a good laugh about it; which is probably inappropriate but we were light-headed so it was okay. After a full day of breathing the cool, thin air we were anxiously looking forward to dinner at Shangrila restaurant – supposedly really good Chinese food. We were so close to China, we figured it was probably going to be the best food we’d ever eaten. We were so incredibly wrong. It was awful! NEVER GO THERE! We were all heavily considering writing to Lonely Planet and asking them to remove it from their list of recommendations – it was that bad. Let’s just say opening a can of Dinty Moore beef stew and pouring it on rice would have tasted better. Actually, that sounds really good. Ha.

Despite the absence of the hearty meal we were hoping for, our plan for the next day included leaving Darjeeling at 4am to see the sun rise over the Himalayas at Tiger Hill. It was 8:30pm and we were exhausted from our day of jaunting around the hills – it was the perfect time to catch up on sleep! We had even stopped at a bakery before dinner so that we could purchase some muffins for our way-too-early-for-food breakfast the next day – we were all set for slumber!

I was sharing a super cute room with my roommate Alexis and Kim (who is awesome). We were sharing a king sized bed and none of us had any trouble falling asleep that night. It felt so good to sleep in a COLD room with TONS of blankets (gosh I love blankets). Sadly, that sleep did not last long. We woke with a start at around 1am to the sound of something in our room. When it awoke me I couldn’t quite figure out where the noise was coming from or what it was coming from. For a split second I thought it was a person in our room – terrifying! Alexis must have been thinking the same thing because she bolted up and whispered (a little too loudly for if there had been a real intruder in our room) “WHO IS THAT?”. I was still trying to wake up completely and so it took me a few seconds before my voice woke up with the rest of my body. I whispered back, “not me”. Soon after, Kim made a noise confirming that it was not her either.
The noise had sounded like a loud crinkling of paper. Loud like, a lumberjack with really big and strong hands rummaging around a pile of Christmas wrapping paper, or something. The noise was coming from the corner of the room where Kim’s luggage was so we volunteered her to go check it out (this was, of course, after we determined there was not a killer in the room). She turned on her cell phone flashlight and surveyed the scene. After minutes of looking through her things and around the general vicinity of those things she finally discovered that muffins she had purchased, which were wrapped in brown paper, had an itty bitty little tear in it. Some noise for a little tear! We made the executive decision to throw away the tainted muffin and then we went as far as to move the trash can out into the veranda behind a locked door. We made sure there was no more food out for our little midnight friend to find before trying our best to fall back asleep.

We did fall back asleep between intermittent wake-up calls from the crinkle monster. It was so frustrating! Every time we drifted back to sleep only to be awoken again to hear the noise, it would stop as soon as any one of us made a move or turned on the flashlight. It would simply stop. There was no sound of scampering feet, no darting back into a black hole in the wall. It would just stop and the creature would disappear. We never saw it.

We did however, feel it. (Ugh!) Around 2:30am after having falling back asleep for what ended up being the final time, both Alexis and I felt a weight hit our bed and something run across our bodies onto my suitcase which was sitting on top the bedside table next to me. OH MY GOSH. We both flipped out. GROSS! The THING had been in our BED! It was so heavy. I couldn’t feel Kim move on the other side of the bed but I felt this vermin jump down onto it and I felt it’s blithe body run over my shoulder blades onto my things. That was IT! We turned in the lights and admitted defeat. We were done trying to sleep. Besides, we had to get up in 30 minutes anyway to start getting ready for our sun rise adventure. I was grossed out, naturally – but really, I was more upset that I hadn’t finished sleeping! The nerve of that thing! To make our early morning even more eventful, I electrocuted myself while taking a very COLD shower just a few moments later. Apparently you aren’t supposed to play with the knobs on the water heater (that isn’t doing its job of heating the water properly) because there is an electric current that is running through it. That electric current wasn’t strong enough to heat my water, but it was strong enough to send a shock up my arm, thus making my hand feel weird all morning. Oy Vey!

When we met the other girls outside the hotel at 4am we started laughing (and probably woke up the whole town) when we discovered that we had all had very similar nights involving rat attacks and cold showers. Apparently, the first battalion of the rat brigade started its siege at 11pm, followed by another attack at 12am and then ours was the last and final battle at 1am. Go figure. At least we were all laughing about it – India teaches you do that  Had this happened anywhere in the United States I would have been crying, stomping my feet and demanding my money back!

We arrived at Tiger Hill (a touristy observation point) at around 4:30am. The sun rise was scheduled to occur at 5:30am so we had some time to wait. I didn’t waste any time booking it to the front row of the observation platform. I was excited to see nature’s show! Before we knew it the place was teaming with people from all over the world who had come to Darjeeling to see the day begin together. As the sun rose high and higher, breaching the horizon, we started to see the white tips of the Himalayas appear, out of, what looked like, thin air. Absolutely breathtaking. When the blood-orange sun completed its ascent over the mountains the crowd watching started clapping and cheering –as if the sun needed our encouragement to be so stunning (or, the turning of the Earth, rather)! After taking way too many pictures – that really don’t do the scenery justice, we piled back in our hired Sumo and headed back to town for a cup of coffee before packing up and shipping back out to the airport. It was time for round two of our Easter weekend excursion – we were Kolkata bound!

The bouncy ride back to the Bagdogra airport was almost an hour and a half shorter than the ride a few days before (that may have been because our driver this time was an absolute maniac!) After standing in absurdly long security lines in the very tiny airport we made our way back across that flat expanse of a tarmac and into our Spice Jet aircraft. Apparently, Spice Jet is the most affordable airline in India and I’ll tell you why – because they pack twice as many people in their planes. Here is my recommendation to you if you’re ever flying domestically in India. Avoid Spice Jet. Spend the extra Rs. 1000 and get yourself a nice flight on Indigo. Arriving in Kolkata felt like home. As the plane was landing you would have thought we were in Mumbai before the high-rise apartment buildings had made it on the scene.

We were all very impressed with how organized Kolkata seemed to be, compared with what we were used to dealing with in Mumbai – which apparently is an insane thing to say according to those who have visited both cities. Let me make myself clear. Mumbai is a wonderful city. The southern part of the city is very modern and metropolitan. It is clean and lovely. I do not live in south Mumbai. I live in the suburbs where it is filthy and chaotic – which, strangely, I really DO love. Ergo, my claim that Kolkata is cleaner and more organized is fact. So ha! Also, my newfound love for Kolkata may have something to do with the amazing Italian restaurant we found our first night there! Fire and Ice! Yum-o! I had the pesto pasta! Superb!

Luckily our lodging for the few nights in Kolkata was rat free – thank you, Hotel Aafreen! We had really nice rooms with A/C (it was so hot there). Easter Sunday we all woke up very early to head over to the Missionaries of Charity – founded by Mother Teresa – to try and sign up to volunteer at their hospital for the sick and dying. We weren’t 100% sure they had volunteer hours available on Sundays, but we figured it was worth a try (people still need care on Easter Sunday)! When we arrived at Mother House, the sisters there, clad in their white and blue trimmed saris, informed us that they would be unable to use us as volunteers that day --- crushing news. We swallowed the news and decided to make the best of it – if Jesus wanted to use us in a different way than we had planned, then He would show us!

After a delicious breakfast of honey and banana crepes, we went back to Mother House to spend some time paying our respects to Mother Teresa by visiting her tomb and walking through the exhibition that guides one through the timeline of her blessed life. When we walked through the threshold we were greeted by the sounds of children singing happy birthday to one of the sisters! There must have been about 30 children, under the age of 5, singing and dancing and clapping in the atrium of the convent! The sisters were leading them in song having the time of their life as the children banged on little plastic tambourines and danced around; bumping into each other with laughter and eyes filled with joy. In another post, I will write more about my experience at Mother Teresa’s – I had a wonderful time; God spoke to me through the story of her life and I felt a new peace in my heart about His plan for me in India. More on that later!

After having spent a considerable amount of time there, praying, reading about her life, looking into the room she lived in during her many years in Kolkata, our group was just about to head back out into the hustle and bustle of the city when a sister stopped us to ask where we were from. We told her that we were from the U.S. Her eyes softened into a nostalgic smile as she exclaimed that she was too! We ended up sitting with Sister Lumen for almost 30 minutes telling her about where each of us came from in the States (she seemed to have a connection to each of our respective hometowns!) and then about what had brought us to India to work with young girls rescued from forced prostitution. She was a delight. There is just something about those women in those white and blue saris. We felt like we were talking to Mother Teresa herself. We expressed to Sister Lumen that we had originally intended to volunteer with the Missionaries of Charity that day but since we weren’t able to that we were all hoping to make trips back to Kolkata for that very purpose. This is when Jesus showed us how he was planning on using us on His day. Sister Lumen took out a pen and a piece of paper and wrote a note on behalf of our group asking the administrator of the hospital and orphanage to allow us to visit with the children and patients. We were going to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord by holding his children and comforting those who were near the end of their life on Earth --- it was like having backstage passes to a U2 concert – MIRACULOUS!

Later that afternoon, we made our way over to Shishu Bhavan orphanage with a girl named Sophia. She was from Mexico and had just graduated from high school and was spending some time in Kolkata volunteering with the Missionaries of Charity before starting college in the fall. Amazing. Shishu Bhavan is an orphanage for street children – many of whom were born with disabilities. It is usually hard for me to understand how orphan children could be so unloved; so unwanted. This time, God reminded me to have compassion for the parents of these children. Think of how hard it is (financially, physically, mentally, emotionally) to care for a child with disabilities in the U.S. Now think of how hard that would be if you were penniless, with no access to healthy food and medicine. Think of how hard it would be if you were malnourished yourself, or suffering with HIV? God is taking special care of these children by sending them into the arms of caring sisters who are able, by His grace, to give them love, medical attention, good food and beds to sleep in. And I was blessed, on a beautiful Easter Sunday, to be a part of it!

As soon as I walked into one of the play rooms I spied a precious baby girl. She was sitting up by herself and looked very alert, but was too little to walk or crawl much. One of the volunteers picked her up and handed her to me- she melted into my arms. You know how sometimes, when you hold someone else’s baby – it feels like someone else’s? They know you’re not their mom and so they don’t hunker down and snuggle in as cozily as you know they could. That was not the case with my little girl. She was transferred into my arms and she just melted into me like she was home. I was home. For two and a half wonderful hours she was my baby and I was her mommy. I learned from one of the older children who spoke a little Hindi (I love how my Hindi language level can be compared with that of a four year old!) that my angel’s name was Neha (pronounced: nay-hah). She loved it when I would lift her up above my head – her toothless smile curling up to wrinkle her big brown eyes. There were balloons hanging from the ceiling that she kept fixing her eyes on. When I would reach my other arm up to touch the balloons she would reach her tiny arms up to try and touch them too. I love Neha. Jesus loves Neha. The Sisters of the Missionaries of Charity love Neha. I’m glad she being taken care of and excited for the family that will adopt her and love her like their own. It was hard to leave my little Indian princess, but when I thought about how one day I’d see her again in heaven – all grown up – it turned my goodbye tears into a smile on my heart. I love Neha.

It was the perfect Easter.

The next day we met up with some colleagues who work for the same organization as I do, but in the Kolkata office. We sat in on their morning worship and prayer session and got a tour of the office. It was nice to see some familiar faces from our training class! While they went back to work, we took cabs over to Nirmal Hriday, Mother Teresa’s hospital for the sick and dying. Again – a wonderful mission. Essentially, there were two large rooms that made up the hospital. The men’s ward and the women’s ward. Each ward was comprised of rows and rows of hospital beds. I was really expecting it to be awful. I was expecting to hear the cries of those in pain, horrific images of death and the terrified eyes of the damned. But, I saw and heard the exact opposite. It was so quiet, so peaceful. If you took a deep breath your nose and throat would burn with the smell of antiseptic – it was incredibly clean. There were many men and women occupying bed space, and there was no doubt that many of them were dying – but there were no agonizing screams, no moaning and groaning. In the women’s ward we walked up and down a row of hospital beds and a few of the patients (all with their names tacked above their beds) started reaching out to us with their eyes full of hope and gratitude. I held the hand of a women who reminded me a lot of one of the women I used to tend to at the nursing home I worked at in high school. She just held my hand, so tight for someone who looked so weak, and kissed it. Then she bowed her head down to my hand in a gesture of thanks. Thanks for coming and for sitting with me for a moment. Thanks for taking a trip to Kolkata and spending your time with someone like me. Thanks for loving me when I no one else would. Our time at Nirmal Hriday was too short --- I will go back to Kolkata and I will spend more time with those women.

After meeting back up with our colleagues for lunch we loaded ourselves back into cabs headed for the airport. We packed in so much activity in such a short period of time, I don’t know why I wasn’t surprised that by the last day I had started dragging a little. I had been getting overheated and was feeling very dehydrated by the time we reached the airport; even more so by the time we got on the plane back to Mumbai. Even though I call Mumbai home now, it was an interesting feeling when we landed to actually breathe that sigh of relief and think “Finally. I’m home”. Back at our apartment, I took my temperature and discovered that it was at 100°F! Two Advil PM’s and a sick day later I was feeling more like myself and was ready to get back to business.

Looking back, I cannot believe it has been a week since we were in Darjeeling – My first trip outside of Mumbai was one that I will never forget. I hope you enjoy some of these pictures and also I hope that you don’t hate me for writing an 8 page blog update ;-) Hope you all had a Happy Easter! Love and Miss.

Jamie didi