Wanted to share an update on our status here: Dolly's work on SRI at JSS will be finished in 3 months, and past that we're not sure what's going to happen. She may stay with JSS in another capacity, or we may move on somewhere else, either another job (for her... my visa doesn't allow me to work) or travel for 6 months or so and then come back.

This change is due to difficulties in working with the resident Agricultural expert, and though funding was secured for a year, Dolly is going to finish up what she is working on by the end of February. Hopefully we'll be able to figure out the next steps sooner than later. All this uncertainty (housing, funding, etc) has been stressful!

The reason we went to Mumbai in the first place was for our friend Aradhna's wedding to her husband-to-be Tanmay. We stayed in her family's guest house, a few km from where her parents now live, and they treated us with amazing hospitality.

We were not the only guests, of course, and the guest house was also used as a meeting/eating place. They had hired a cook for the occasion, so every meal was cooked fresh. He was much better than our cook, and he even made me corn rotis after he found out I couldn't eat wheat ones. I think it also helped that after one of the first meals I liked his cooking... I think I got extra attention after that.

Two days preceeding the wedding was a ceremony known as the engagement, which involves the exchanging of rings. It was a smaller ceremony than the actual wedding, and women got henna on their arms, and there was music and dancing. One guy, who was a distant cousin on the bride's side was dancing like he was auditioning for a Bollywood movie, with a never-ending sequence of over the top moves, complete with goofy faces.

The next day was on off-day, so we went to Bandra, a posh neighborhood of Bombay, to see it and do some shopping. We went to a bazar and Dolly and Pampi bought some shirts, and Jen got into haggling for scarves. We then went down the road where I bought some shirts, and then headed to a very late lunch. Unfortunately all the places recommended by locals were closed until 7, but fortunately we found a very nice place named Basilico.

Basilico was an middle-eastern/italian/american-ish restaurant, with a large and varied menu. It was the first place I'd been in India that wasn't strictly Indian or Indian/Chinese. They had steaks on the menu, but they were only serving pasta and sandwiches, but they had a beef burger, which I ordered. Jen got gnocci, which she said tasted fresh, as in "made after she ordered it", and the other dishes were very good as well. My burger was about cafeteria grade, dry and probably from the freezer, but it was very satisying and the best burger I've had in months.

The next day was the actual wedding, and started in the traditional fashion, with the groom being slowly led in, preceeded by a band and his dancing family. The ceremony was very long, as is common in India, and instead of sitting at attention, people milled around and socialized, crowding around the platform for the good parts.

The ceremony was followed the reception, for which the bridal parties (and many other people) changed outfits. By the end of the night over 800 people filled the reception hall, and Aradhna and Tanmay left a newly wedded couple!

(We don't have pictures past the morning of the wedding... our camera filled up, and we are waiting for the rest of the pictured to be sent to us)

My first impression of Mumbai was not a good one. Getting off at the station, we jumped into a taxi (a real car not just an autorickshaw!) and started our journey to New Bombay, which involved a lot of traffic. Even though it was 9 at night, we were sweating, so the windows were down, and hot fumes from standing trucks and buses poured into our vehicle. This, plus the 20 hour train ride, made me sick to my stomach, and I vomited, which made me feel a little better.

When we arrived at the house, we were greeted by our friends who had come from America, Jen, Pampi, and Sandeep (we were meeting Sandeep for the first time). We were all there for Aradhna's wedding, and were staying in Aradna's childhood home, now her parent's guest house. We had planned to relax for a few days in Bombay, but we were talked into leaving early the next morning for a side trip to the caves of Ellora and Ajanta.

They had booked a car for the two-day excursion, and we left as early as we could to try to get as much time at Ellora as possible before sunset. We arrived in the nearby city of Aurangabad around 2, and booked a couple of hotel rooms. Dolly did a great job of haggling down the rate, and we grabbed some snacks and headed out.

We first stopped at the wrong parking lot, at a fort a few kilometers from the caves. We didn't intend to - we were misled by the UNESCO World Heritage banner, and soon realized our mistake and jumped into the car to head down the raod. That is, all of us but Sandeep jumped into the car. He had been distracted by a vendor selling old coins, and all of our yelling didn't cause him to budge an inch until he selected the specimens which pleased him the most.

We finally made it to the caves of Ellora with about an hour before the sun went down. We took a guide and he brought us first to the most impressive "cave". To call these structures caves is misleading. This was a giant complex, carved out of the solid rock. In the middle was a two story temple, with intricate carved decoration. There was then a 20 meter wide pathway, and the sides had hallways hollowed out, with statues carved into alcoves. We were told that it is the largest monolithic structure in the world.

We then saw a few more caves, including one that had a great resonance for "Om"-like sounds. At the last cave, the guard was about to lock up, but since our guide is an offical employee, he was able to take the keys, and we stayed until the light ran out.

The next morning we left early again, and stopped at the Bibi Ka Maqbara, a tomb that looks a lot like the Taj Mahal, only quite a bit smaller. It was still a beautiful structure with nice grounds, but we didn't stay long as our day's agenda had us going 100km out to Ajanta and then all the way back home.


Ajanta was a lot more slickly run. We paid for parking (by the head!) and then ran a gauntlet of gift shops to the bus, for which there was also a fee, before entering the caves, where there was the expected entry fee.
The caves range from 2000 to 1300 years old, and are situated around the outside edge of a horseshoe shaped gorge. These were rediscovered in the early 19th century by some hunters. The fact that they were rediscovered means that at some point people forgot about them! Ellora grew in popularity and significance, and became the center of activity, but it blows my mind that as a result of that these caves were forgotten.

The caves are not as large, but are in a far more beautiful setting, and they contain surviving paintings on the walls and ceilings and columns, as well as numerous statues. We were not able to stay as long as we liked because we were on the clock, but as the others stopped for a rest, I quickly walked down the far end. Some of the these were less impressive caves, and I was rewarded at the end by a cave with a reclining Bhudda and a number of other carvings.

We endured a long and hungry ride back (the only available food for a long stretch was at Dhaba's of questionable hygene), and arrived back at around midnight. For two days and 1200km, we owed the driver around 9000 rupees - under $200! In the end we were glad we went on the trip, both to see the sights and spend time with our friends.

We've been in Mumbai for a week for our friend's wedding, so there have been no posts. It was a lot of fun, we hung out with our friends from America, saw the ancient caves at Ellora and Ajanta, attended a wedding, were pampered by the bride's family, and I ate a hamburger for the first time in 6 months.

More details will come in the next few days!

I know that it is snowing in many parts of the US, and the first snowfall came over a month ago, but here it was 88 degrees 2 days ago. Today was our first chilly day.

Yesterday when I woke up, it was raining, but by mid-morning the skies had cleared and it was pleasant 70 degree day. This morning started the same way, so I left the house in a short sleeved shirt, anticipating another sunny day. However, it didn't get much past 60, so I was chilly most of the day.

I spend most of the day indoors, but the buildings here are made to allow air to circulate in the monsoon season, and not to keep in warm air on the colder days. Some windows are holes in the wall with no way of closing them, and other windows are permanently open due to the positioning of coolers, etc. There are no heating in the buildings, so that is out of the question.

But I warmed up when I got home with a sweater and a cup of tea, and tomorrow night we leave for Bombay, where the weather report said it was 88 degrees today.

Our food situation has been getting better as we find our way around the local offerings. We have learned how to make proper chutney, and explored some of the unfamiliar spices and vegetables. This information does not always come easy... we have to ask the cook what is needed and we don't always know the words for foods that aren't in America, so we have to go to the store and hope we get the right things. Also, new foods come in and out of season, including the sita phil (pictured) also known as a "custard apple", which has sweet, gooey insides.

We also got a blender (called a mixee here), which means that we have been having much better masalas. Instead of tomato and onion chunks floating around with the vegetables, we can have a thick, flavorful gravy. I also found out how to make a pancake/flatbread out of rice and lentils soaked overnight... basically use the mixee to grind them into flour, add water, and cook like pancakes. We also learned about roasted eggplant (cook it directly on the burner first), and how to make good tomato chutney (use a mortar and pestle, not the mixee).

Jackfruit has also shown up in the local market, and it makes an excellent curry. It looks a lot like pulled pork, and though not as good as slow cooked swine, is a nice dish. Between having a cook make us fresh food every night, and the amount of oil used to cook/fry things, I have put back most of the weight I lost. I still miss the variety of meats, but I will be going to Bombay later this week, and I have been told where to find bacon!

There are two main types of meat available here, chicken and mutton. We usually eat chicken when we eat meat (which we eat every week or two) because it is more consistent in its taste and preparation. Good mutton is very good, and bad mutton is stringy and gamey, whereas good chicken is pretty good, and bad chicken is just tasteless. We have had mutton a few times, both in curries and briyanis (a rice dish), and the best so far has been one prepared by Dolly's cousin for Diwale.

What we found out recently is that the mutton we've been eating isn't sheep! I didn't even know that "mutton" could mean anything else, but what we've been served as mutton has been goat. In retrospect, this makes a lot of sense. There are goats everywhere, and its too hot for sheep. Dolly will now not eat anymore mutton, but I don't see too much different between the two... and in this area its the only red meat around!

There's a donkey that lives by the side of the road in the first town past Bilaspur. There's a main commercial strip, and the donkey stays on the edge of it. Its there almost everyday, and it sticks out because while cows are common, donkeys are not. It is usually standing there, not moving just kind of looking at the ground like a sad animal.

Last week, the doctors noticed it sitting in the same place on the side of the road for a few days in a row. One of the doctors is an animal lover, and the thought of the donkey slowly dying of thirst worried her. She suspected a spinal injury. After seeing it there repeatedly, her husband stopped and talked to the people around to try to find out who owned the donkey and what was happening. It turns out the donkey had some kind of infection but was being treated with bandages and medecine. It wasn't moving much, but was getting up to take water and what not.

It is kind of surprising to see such a fuss over an animal, when there is so much human suffering going on in the same stretch of land. The doctors are very sensitive to that suffering, devoting the majority of their time to addressing it. The surprising part is that after all of that they still have time and energy to check out the condition of a helpless animal.

Dolly is in Dhamtari for a few days interviewing farmers as part of a project to collect stories of SRI farmers across Chattisgargh. That area has some level of Naxal activity, and it seems that lately there has been more focus on the Naxals, Maoist rebels who are active in the remote forest areas.

Yesterday as we approached the JSS campus, there were soldiers sitting every few yards with their rifles. There is an army training compound in the area, and it was part of the training. In the evening a few soldiers waved down our vehicle. I thought at first it may have been a checkpoint, but it turned out they were just tired and asking for a ride.

I started my tabla lessons today. We learned "na", "ghe", and "da", although I spent the better part of an hour just trying to get the basic hit. Learning an instrument is never as fun as actually playing it. Dolly had her singing lesson at the same time, so I got to listen to her first attempts to sing on key in front of an audience.

On Sunday we went to lunch with some visitors. They are from the Tata Trust and part of their management program, and they are here for 6 weeks. They spend a year visiting different parts of the Tata empire as training, and after that they are placed into permanent jobs. They have the phone numbers of two different auto drivers who they can call up for rides. Dolly and I usually just walk to the main road and grab who happens to be there.

On the ride over we saw preparations for yet another festival. We asked the driver what the occasion was, and he didn't know. He said something about how different castes have different celebrations. The festivals are really starting to border on ridiculous - they've been going on for two months, and now they're so many that people don't even know what they all are.