Leeches and Festivals!

Today is a good day. I woke up in a great mood. In the past two days, I spoke to my father and sister for the first time since I’ve been here. I didn’t realize how much I’ve actually missed them until I heard their voices. I’m eager to see my family and friends again, however I’m trying to enjoy the moments I have here because I know in time I will long for them.

Again, so much has happened since I last wrote…probably because it’s been a while…oops :). Where should I begin? Last time I wrote I had just had the wonderful experience of building mud bricks. So many wonderful and difficult situations have passed since.

After surveying Didi’s mud house, we surveyed two old mud houses (over 100 years old!) in remote villages. They were both relatively near each other and far from our place so we decided to take a two-day trip to the area. We met with the owner of the first house, Charanjit who is a good friend of Didi’s, and visited his old family house that is now uninhabited. We enjoyed lunch and tea at his new place and afterwards he took us around his village. It was amazing! The people around the village were so welcoming and hospitable. We met a fascinating 102-year-old woman who described life in the village when she first moved there at the age of 14 when she had just gotten married. She was amazingly strong and healthy and walked around without any difficulty. I, of course, fell in love with her…I have a thing for cute little old women…I find them inspiring and beautiful.

That night we spent the night at a hotel nearby. It was surprisingly decent and incredibly cheap! We got two nice rooms (nice, of course in a relative sense) for only about $13! Unbelievable, no? The following morning we set out for the village of Asha Puri Devi where Didi had suggested visiting. Our drive up the mountain was beautiful, yet it felt quite unsafe. At many points along the way, the road was extremely muddy and rocky…to the point that we had to get off the car and hope that it could make it through. All along the way, there were remnants of large landslides on the sides of the mountain. The soil above and below us was so moist and looked quite loose…but I have to say besides this feeling of insecurity, the landscape was absolutely captivating. We hiked to the top of the village because the road was no longer drivable. There we visited the temple, but were a bit hesitant about surveying it. We were hoping to find an old house instead of doing a temple that was so similar to ones we’ve done in the past. After walking around for a while and asking village people about old houses, we finally hit gold (or as JoAnna would say, platinum)! :) A man told us his house was over 100 years old and that it was located nearby! His young son led the way to the house, which was again absolutely beautiful! On the way, we saw so many incredible sights…a gorgeous landscape, beautiful young village kids, village women at work, hatch and mud houses. We finally arrived and were warmly received by the large family living in the small mud house. There were only women and children at the house at the time we were surveying. The children were so beautiful and the moms were incredibly young! They must have been around 16 at most. After surveying, we enjoyed some nice chai with the family and took a nice family portrait. The women and children walked us along some of the way back and we said our thanks and goodbyes.

The experience with people from these two villages was one of the nicest times I’ve had since I arrived in India. It was so nice to meet such humble, welcoming, hospitable and generous people. These two days were definitely unforgettable.

After this trip, we began documenting again and spent much of our time working at home and in McLeod Ganj. Throughout the two weeks, we’ve enjoyed a nice dinner for Engin’s birthday, a nice visit to our driver’s home (Happy is his name…hehe), a nice goodbye dinner with Andrea (an Uruguayan-American girl who we met during yoga), a nice boat ride in the lake nearby (which is actually more like a large pond)…this was actually quite silly and fun…Jackie and I pedaled our driver around Dal Lake in a cute duck boat!

Most exciting of all, was our day off last Saturday. That evening was the celebration at Vinod’s temple so Jackie, Andrea and I went shopping for Indian traditional clothes to wear to the event. Happy, our driver, brought his sister to help us. It was so exciting to try on all the clothes. I finally decided on a traditional Punjabi suit (although, I originally wanted a nice saree), some shoes to match and a nice clip-on nose ring! After shopping we went back home, got ready and drove up to the temple. We enjoyed a nice Indian meal, which we ate outside on the floor with banana leaves as our plates! It was a lovely evening…local people gathered, sat around the temple and enjoyed tea, snacks and music. The people there were so interesting! Engin, in particular, met an interesting man who claimed to be close friends with him in a past life…he also claimed to be the father of Nostradamus, as well as “the father of dangerous”…who knows?

The next day were back to work and a few days later we went to survey an old school of dajji dewari construction, which consists of timber frame and bracing with masonry infill. It’s an interesting type of construction, one that is very common in the state of Kashmir especially in Srinagar. I read about this type of construction when I first arrived in Delhi and was fascinated by it. This type of construction worked well under previous earthquakes while many concrete buildings nearby completely collapsed killing many people. After surveying, it was back to documenting and hours by the computer.

Three days ago, after hours of working, we all decided to take a nice hike up to the Bhagsu waterfall. We were unsure of the way, but we decided it would be a nice adventure…and boy did it turn to be an adventure! After walking about half an hour or so, we found a local man who led us along some of the way. He helped us cross the river and tried explaining how to reach the waterfall. After crossing the river several times (we had to do this to avoid some of the difficult terrain), it began to get quite dark and we were unsure how long we had before arriving to the main road. My legs began to itch and I pulled up my pants to scratch my leg. To my terrible surprise, I found leeches sucking blood from my leg! I completely freaked! I started screaming and Engin ran to me and pulled them out. We all decided to check ourselves and found ourselves covered in leeches! Well, it was mostly just our legs and feet except for Abhishek (the photographer from SEEDS) who found them on his stomach, as well. We walked the rest of the way barefoot and thankfully reached the main road just before it got pitch black. Jackie and I bought new clothes and shoes to change into and then we headed for the hospital. The doctor said they weren’t dangerous, but that we should wash our wounds to prevent infections. We were taken individually to the examination room to wash the areas were we were bitten. I could not believe the conditions of the hospital room. The examination bed was covered in dried blood and everything around the room was filthy. It was interesting to see how they labeled the different rooms in the hospital…one was called the “casualty” room and the another the “resuscitation” room. The hospital overall was quite dirty and depressing…too many disturbing sights. We finally headed home and were received with another surprise. We had forgotten to close the gate that leads to the stairs to our place when we left. During our evening adventure, a cow decided to go into our hall and take a dump! We had to jump over cow manure to get into our place! It was quite disgusting! The rest of the night consisted of warming up kettles of water to wash ourselves and our clothes in warm salt water….what a day.

Oh yes, I can’t believe I almost forgot to mention a nice adventure we had about two weeks ago while trying to find a waterfall that nobody seemed to know much about. Engin had read about it in some tourist book and thought it would be nice to visit…problem is we never actually arrived since nobody really knew the way…unless we were willing to cross a river that didn’t look so safe. Extremely hot and disappointed that we wasted 2 hours driving to find nothing, we started heading back home…about 5 minutes into our drive we got a flat! And of course, our lovely driver Happy did not have a useable spare…so we found ourselves drenched in sweat walking back to a little store we had seen near the river…we enjoyed some cold drinks and walked down to the river. There, many young Indian boys were swimming in the water. Overwhelmed with the heat and frustration of being stranded, we all jumped in the water with clothes and all! It actually turned out to be a very fun experience :).

The last couple of days have been filled lots of work and with less exciting activities …we’ve mostly been documenting and are in the process of surveying our last building, a nearby heritage hotel. We only have one week left before we head back to Delhi to give our final presentation. I can’t believe time has flown by so quickly! Although the project is almost at an end, I still have a good amount of time left in India. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing with the rest of my time here, but I’m in the process of figuring that out :).