There and Back Again: the World Travels of a Watson Fellow: Arrival in New Delhi

August 23, 2013

Dear readers,

I write with great joy and confusion. Since we last spoke, I arrived safely in Delhi, India. It was a bit of a long trip – about 14 hours in total – but not unbearable from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and finally to Delhi. I have decided that meeting people in the airport is a wonderful way to pass time, exchange stories, and generally fight off the travel blues/loneliness, which is exactly what happened in Tanzania. I met a really nice girl from the States who was on holiday with her friends in Zanzibar. A law student at Georgetown with roots in India, she was able to share comforting stories about Delhi, transforming my anxiety to excitement and anticipation. Since arriving here, I am overwhelmed with a mix of emotions. For all intents and purposes, I should hate it here. The city is crowded, pungent with a mix of aromas (trash, spices, urine, wet dog, and perfume to name a few), hot and humid, and the honking of vehicles is pervasive. The climate really feels unbearable – during my brief two days here, I don’t think I stopped sweating once except in the haven of air conditioning, which was a rarity. As soon as I “stepped out” of the shower this morning (read: you don’t really step out of bucket showers), I think I started perspiring immediately. But for some reason, I am happy. I can’t explain my premature draw to this country. The strange internal pull I feel for it, deep in the fibers of my body and corners of my heart. It sounds completely irrational, but I can’t ignore the magic that previous friends have conveyed to me after having traveled to India themselves. Perhaps I am seriously romanticizing this place while in fact it is far too soon to judge how I really feel about it, but right now, my gut and intuition are telling me that I was meant to come here. Maybe it is because it reminds me a little bit of home. For instance, driving to the airport this morning involved passing through a tunnel reminiscent of the one before Logan International Airport in Boston. I went to see a Bollywood film with my host (Chennai Express) yesterday, which although it was in Hindi (she graciously translated parts of the movie for me in real time), it felt like I could have been at the movies with my family. Or maybe my proclivity for India is explained by the fact that it is not my first country on the Watson. I have much to thank Tanzania for. I think the beautiful East African country sensitized me to a lot of things: both vacant and vaguely threatening stares, modestly dressed women, litter and trash scattered everywhere, long drop toilets/latrines, language barriers, and poverty. In fact, there are many things I thought I left behind when I departed from Tanzania, including stray, miserable looking dogs, little cell phone shops on every corner and that annoying Airtel ringtone, motorbikes/tuk tuks/dalla dalla buses. However, tuk tuks (also known as “autos” or auto rickshaws; they resemble little buggies and come strictly in green and yellow) are of Indian origin and I rode them around Delhi. And dalla dalla mini buses take on a new form here – they look similar but are slightly smaller and have a more appropriate number of passengers (read: six instead of 30). Here, I also took the metro once, and I got my computer “fixed” (HURRAH! Though I don’t want to speak too soon, it’s been less than 12 hours). It is only a temporary solution to the cracked monitor, broken touch screen, and epileptic cursor, but at least it is functioning more than it has been in the last six weeks. Oh, did I not tell you? My laptop broke while I was on a bus from Moshi to Arusha in Tanzania. It was that time that the bus began smoking from the front and the rear and 40 passengers piled out in a frenzy. In the chaos, luggage was tossed onto bus roofs and down to the ground. Even though my laptop was wrapped in soft belongings, it did not survive the turmoil. This has unfortunately made life a bit more difficult over the last month plus, but I finally feel like I can do something productive without wanting to gouge my eyes out. A bit of a lesson in not getting too attached to material objects I suppose, while simultaneously teaching me that I should never, ever pack anything “breakable” in my luggage but instead keep in on my body. Anyways, fast forward to real time – India. Things feel easier here. For instance, more people speak English (at least in the city). It was also a piece of cake to purchase an external hard drive to store my photos and to fix my computer (it was almost effortless – in fact, the tech guy didn’t even want to charge me). And speaking of time, I think I was transported back in time during my early trip to Indira Gandhi International Airport this morning. Aside from the fact that I rose at 2:45 AM (I’m not sure if I actually slept…) and took a taxi at 3:15 for my 5:45 flight, time played tricks on me. The taxi I took looked like it was straight out of the 1950s and the driver was a quiet old man with a white beard and Sikh-style turban. I swear, I could have been riding around in 1940s pre-independence Delhi during the reign of the British; never mind the fact that more modern vehicles whizzed by us on the free way and that the taxi driver could have theoretically kidnapped me and taken me anywhere. But I made it to the airport scot-free. My two days in Delhi were really nice.

But for now, I am about to live out an almost two-year dream: I am heading to Ladakh. Ladakh, also known as “Little Tibet” and translating into “the Land of Mountain Passes” is a trans-Himalayan region of high altitude desert in northern-most India, bordering China. As one of the highest and driest inhabited places on Earth, the environment is fierce and rather unforgiving: 8 months out of the year it is winter with temperatures dropping to -40 degrees F and they have a short 3-4 month growing season from roughly May/June-August/September, with agriculture (mostly barley and wheat) depending on irrigation from glacial streams (elaborate canals and terracing have been developed over many years). Farmers are small-scale, with about 5 acres each, and depend on animals for farm labor/transport, meat, dairy products, wool, and dung as fuel (sheep, goats, donkeys, horses, cows, yaks, and the dzo, a hybrid of cow and yak). Ladakh is predominantly Buddhist (Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism) with monasteries dotting the mountainside and the capital city of Leh residing at an altitude of 11,500 feet above sea level. I received an email from someone who has already been in Ladakh and she wrote that she is “at the top of the world.” I hope I feel the same, though without the nasty side effects of acute mountain sickness (aka altitude sickness). I have been dreaming about coming to Ladakh since I saw it in the documentary film The Economics of Happiness, which critiques the current model of economic growth, Western-style development, and globalization, juxtaposing it with the benefits of localization. The filmmaker, Helena Norberg-Hodge, came to lecture to my program while I was studying sustainability in Australia. She was in Ladakh at the beginning of the month giving a series of lectures/workshops called “A New Model for Development” (along with other prolific speakers such as Vandana Shiva – super sad I missed this, but hopefully I will meet Vandana when I go to her biodiversity conservation farm/center Navdanya in Dehradun in October). Ladakh seems like it will be close to ideal for carrying out my research. Because of its remote location and relatively hostile environment, it remained closed off from the West until fairly recently (1974 is when tourism arrived) and the culture really sits at the nexus of tradition and innovation. Helena writes, “Our Farm Project has also worked to provide Westerners with a greater understanding of the value of indigenous cultures. Despite the negative trends [of globalization], much of traditional Ladakhi culture is in fact still intact, and despite recent changes, the region still provides an opportunity to learn about decentralized ways of economic organization. In past years, participants in the Farm Project have come away from Ladakh with a deeper respect for a culture in which knowledge, wisdom and methods of livelihood are finely tuned to the local ecosystem. Equally important, Farm Project participants are able to witness first-hand the tension between traditional and modern that is characteristic of so many places on Earth. By combining practical involvement in daily life with reading about the destructive impact of globalization on traditional cultures around the world, participants are able to gain a more balanced and rounded view of the issues and problems faced than is generally available at home in the West.” I’m about overflowing with excitement to get on with farming, and as I sit in this comfortingly modern airport, my flight to Leh, Ladakh was just called. Will write more later.

Hugs,

Lauren