फिर से नमस्कार

I was back in the States from late May to mid-July, visiting family and as many friends as I could fit into business trips.  Then on July 15th I took a plane back to Mumbai.  I was supposed to take a plane from Philadelphia to Newark, and then to Mumbai, but the connecting flight was inexplicably canceled.  So, the trip had a hectic start as United Airlines gave me an Amtrak voucher instead to get to Newark.  But I made it.  The flight was 15 hours, but it passed pretty quickly as I worked on last season's DAI finale, watched a movie, and read some comics.  There were very few obvious westerners on the plane.

I called Anupam, a colleague at IISER Pune, as I waited for my luggage in Mumbai, around 11pm.  He gave the taxi driver my phone number, and so we made contact very quickly.  I brought my luggage to his car, and we made the long drive to Pune.   The highway from Mumbai to Pune becomes very crowded with trucks at night, and I was encouraged to sleep during the long stalls.  But eventually I arrived at the Guest House, where I had been before.

My room is very nice; here is a video I made later on.

I live in a room in a suite on the 3rd floor of the building, and meals are served in a suite on the 6th floor.  Aside from the two suites, the rest of the building is not affiliated with IISER.  The IISER part is staffed by a Nepalese gentleman named Ramji, his two sons Mohan and Krishna, and a nephew.  They serve vegetarian meals for breakfast and dinner, scheduled at 8am and 8pm.   Lunch and tea are also available if I want.

The path to the IISER Guest House

Monday morning July 16th, I met Kevin over breakfast.  Kevin is an undergraduate math/physics major in British Columbia.  He was in India to write up some notes on the Rubik's Cube under Sujatha.  She had taught him Abstract Algebra, and was visiting India for the summer.  More about Kevin's story later.  All you need to know for now was that he was very enthusiastic and very much in over his head.  I had timed my arrival so that I could attend an international math conference, the theme being ``Riemann's Zeta Function", and somewhat related to the famous proof of ``Fermat's Last Theorem" which was in the news a while back.  Sujatha was helping to organize it.

The first talk was a welcome address by Shashi, the biologist who used to run the math department, and moreover handles a lot of business here.  In this speech he introduced IISER Pune, and at one point mentioned me by name to the crowd as IISER's first international faculty.  I'm getting used to that sort of thing.

As is usual with conferences outside my subject area, I didn't get much out it.  But it was good to have a schedule and hang out with other travelers and eat catered food, so I was there for most of it.
I felt sorry for Kevin so I gave him some math problems to keep him busy.  That week I was also handed a stack of paperwork to get me going.  Some of it was amusing, so I copied it down for you.

Aside from forms to register my visa, and bank account forms and such, there was:

Oath of Secrecy:

 I, ....................., having been appointed as ............. at IISER Pune, do swear in the name of God/ solemnly affirm that I will bear true faith and allegiance and that I will discharge and perform the duties of my office to the best of my ability, knowledge and judgment, without fear or favor, affection or ill will, and that I will not directly or indirectly communicate or reveal to any person any matter which shall be brought under my consideration.

So...I guess this means I can't give away...secrets.  Is "matter brought under my consideration" legalese for "secret"?  Is "any person" legalese for "any person not in on the secret"?  Is DAI illegal now?  Would you have signed this?  Anyway as far as I know, no matters have been brought under my consideration...

Another one:

Subject: Declaration regarding bigamous marriage:

I hereby declare that I have not entered into or contracted a marriage with a person having a spouse living, or who, having a spouse living, have not entered into or contracted a marriage with me.

Okay let me hurry up and post this; I have a lot of catching up to do!

Season One Finale

Well Diary,

After visiting Chennai my tenure at TIFR rapidly came to an end.  My research visa was to expire May 25th, and so I needed to go back to the states and work on my next visa.  I had been starting to go to cafes with Arnab in Mumbai, such as Kala Ghore and one at Naraman Point.  The two of us have a little math project going.

But soon I had to figure out how to move my stuff.  The idea was to store most of it in boxes in IISER.  So, I would need to pack up my stuff and move it.  It's an interesting question, what is that best way to do that.  There were some online "packing and moving" services, which I understood were by the same companies, but I could order them separately.  My idea was to have them come and pack things, and then I would put the boxes in a taxi and move them myself to Pune.

Evidently an efficient way to arrange for such services is to fill out a form on the internet, including your phone number. Well I did that and ten minutes later I was flooded with a deluge of calls.  Most of the calls went as follows:  they would ask for both addresses, and give me an estimate.  I tried to communicate that I only wanted the packing part, and they didn't understand what I meant and thought I was trying to bargain.  Another service asked me to text them my address, multiple times as I hadn't done it quite right.  As previously noted, texting was a pain on my phone.  So, I eventually just started telling them that I had "made other arrangements".

And, in fact, I scrounged around TIFR and got some boxes (I'll spare you the tedious details), and packed things up myself.  I took the taxi to Pune and dropped off my stuff.  While I was there I talked to the Registrar about my visa.  Now prudence dictates that I refrain from dictating official conversations regarding my employment, but I left the conversation quite concerned about one of the particulars for getting a visa.  We'll talk about this shortly.

After that I said my goodbyes, dropped off my keys and such.   I had to pay 15000 rupees for my 10 months of (subsidized) accommodations.  That's really cheap, and in the spring included housecleaning and breakfasts.

I sat next to a woman and her young daughter on the plane ride back to the states.  Neither of them spoke English or Hindi, but by listing names of states I gleaned that she was from Kerala.  I flew United, and the American staff was plainly flustered by having so many customers they couldn't talk to.  When we finally arrived in Philly, the captain said, "Welcome back to paradise."  Which is odd.

Okay let's talk about visas.  When I was at TIFR I had a Research Visa.  While the application for this last took a couple days to prepare, in the end the application went through with no problems and I had it in about ten days.
To work (and teach) at IISER Pune, I need an Employment Visa.  The exact qualifications for this are not well known.  The best way to find out what they are, it turns out, is to apply for the Employment Visa.  There are a couple scary-sounding qualifications involved.  One is that a company cannot hire more than 1% foreigners.  Another is that to get the employment visa, you need to make $30,000 USD a year.  Yes, the rule is in terms of US Dollars.  There are exceptions which don't apply to me, like for chefs, Bollywood extras, foreign language teachers (not English), and people working for NGOs.  This rule was particularly scary, because the rupee was going down compared to the USD as my visa application was being processed.

I was pretty worried about this my last day in India, but Gerald told me that I shouldn't be intimidated by harshly-worded rules on the internet.  Alright, so because of prudence on a public blog, let me simply report that I followed Gerald's advice, sent in my application, and in about ten days had my employment visa with no problems.

So that's my year.  For old time's sake, let me finish the season with one final look at my original intentions.

1.) I will never get sick of Indian food.

So, I need to get around to cooking for myself at some point.  Yes, I'm sick of too much spice.  But otherwise it's great.

2.) I will never get (seriously) sick, period.

Success!  None of my ailments were particularly serious.

3.) I will learn the Hindi alphabet, and some Hindi.  In this regard, I will limit the time that I hang out with expatriates.

Yep, can more or less read the alphabet.  At least if an English word is written in Devanagari, I can usually figure it out.  Pronunciation is something that is never quite perfect.  Yep, I know some basic phrases.  Oh, and I did indeed make non-Western friends.

4.) I will find a local juggling group, if there is one, and try to get something going if there isn't.

Yep, the latter.  I'll have to start over in Pune (sigh...)

5.) I will see about being an extra in a Bollywood movie.

Nope!  I guess it's hit or miss.

6.) I will be delighted if a monkey steals my groceries.

Well, this hasn't happened, but I suspect I wouldn't be so delighted.  I'm told monkeys will steal your groceries by slapping you in the face first, and I'd rather not get scratched by a wild animal out here.

7.) I will take some yoga classes.

Yes, but not consistently.  I'll try again in Pune.

8.) I will get a lot of math done.

Yep, that's the main reason I'm here actually.

9.) Things to do: camel ride on Chowpathy beach; eat Indian ice cream (the good stuff not Haagen Daz); check out Elephanta and Ellora (massive caves with beautiful hand carved rock); visit Bombay University the main building, an architectural dazzle etc etc.

 Oops.  Well, I saw Elephanta, at least, and maybe some etc's.  Always more to do!

 See you next season!

 END PART ONE

Phone

I wanted to report on my experience getting cellphone service in Mumbai.  If you don't like rants, this may not be the post for you...

Before I left for India, several people had assured me that it would be very easy to get cellphone service in India, that it would be a simple matter that would take only a couple minutes.
This turned out not to be the case.  When I asked around at TIFR, I learned that the rules had changed, and that foreigners would need to bring a passport, and a photocopy of their passport.  Evidently some terrorists had used multiple cellphones for one of their plots, and so all foreigners had to supply extra documentation to get service.

Now if I wanted to get a cellphone in the States, I would use the Internet to find out where a suitable store was, and what documentation I would need.  That doesn't work here; instead you have to "ask around".  Back in monsoon season I was told that I should use AirTel service, and that I could find an AirTel-wallah somewhere along Colaba Causeway, the main street in the tourist area.  I took this literally, and walked from the Regal at the northern end, all the way through the gauntlet of pushy vendors until quite far to the south where things were getting sketchy.  Finally I found a small stand run by a small boy and presumably his mother.  The mother didn't speak any English, and the boy was maybe ten and spoke just a little.  It was a struggle for us to communicate.  Unfortunately, it being monsoon season, my passport photocopy had gotten wet and unusable.  So, I wound up giving my passport to the boy (!), for him to run over to a xerox place and make a suitable copy.  He came back in a few minutes.  Then it turned out I needed a passport photo.  Everything formal in India seems to require giving someone a passport-style photo.  So he took nimbly across the street to get a quick set of photos.  Then I bought my phone and my AirTel plan.  He went through some motions of trying to explain some formalities, a lecture which it would have been useful to understand.  I returned to TIFR with my cellphone.

As you can imagine, cellphones are almost essential to have in India.  People often make impromptu plans, or impromptu changes of plans and use cellphones to tell you about it.  The first week when I was filling out forms at the Establishment, they were baffled that I did not already have a cellphone, and asked that I give them my phone number as soon as I obtained one.  If you want to buy a train ticket for an intercity trip, you need to get an account with them, which involves having a code texted to your cellphone.  If you want to book a taxi, they need a cellphone number.

The cellphone was confusing to use.  I constantly got spam texts, or automated calls in Hindi.  When I got a call I would usually push the wrong button and hang up, and so wound up calling everyone back until I figured it out.  If I wanted to call someone I had to guess what the proper prefix numbers were, which gets confusing with office phones.  Of course if I typed something in wrong, the automated operator would speak Hindi.  Text messaging was tedious, using the ten numbers instead of 26 letters, and the phone was set to guess which word I was trying to type, given the numerical input.  (Later I found I could disable that.)

After a week or so of phone use, I started getting regular text messages saying that I needed to go back to the phone-wallah and give my proof of address.  A friend suggested that this was not quite right, or obsolete information.  I made two attempts anyway to revisit the small boy, but the store was closed on both counts, probably for holidays or weekends.  This was a nuisance because it took me a long time to find it again, and I'm a busy guy.  So yes, after a month of phone use, AirTel turned off the service.
I found the boy again, and he impressed on me that I had to give him a proof of address.  He also had me fill out some forms, with confusing language (am I the "referrant"?).  I wound up paying for registration again.  For some reason I got AirCel service instead of AirTel service.  I had assumed he had a good reason for this, but discovered later that AirCel doesn't cover the TIFR campus.  Actually I tried using the AirCel phone during a trip to Pune, but couldn't make it work then either.

This was frustrating.

I asked around and heard other horror stories from the other expatriates.  I thought that the best thing to do would be to go to the company store with one of the grad students, with a specially ordered proof of address from the Establishment.  So Shiv and I made a lengthy trip to try to find it.  By the time we found it (it had moved), business hours were over.  Unfortunately the business hours coincided with many math conferences that were going on, in our area, at TIFR.  So, I waited until they were over.  Well, then came my vacation with my Okie friends, so I waited until after that.

Finally towards the end of my stay, Arnab, who had been going to cafes with me, took me to a store right off of Colaba Causeway.  I let him do the talking, although the vendor's English was fine.  Finally I got a working plan.  (Although I did get an obsolete text message saying I needed to submit proof of address again.)

So:  the short of it is, if you're a foreigner and want a phone in India, you need to:

•  bring your passport, a photocopy of your passport, extra passport photos, and an official proof of residence.
•  bring an Indian friend to help find a professional place, and do the talking. 

Phew!

A Better Look at चेन्नई

Dear Diary,

Avid DAI readers recall that I had a little project going with Amri, one of the faculty at the IMSc Chennai, a mathematical research institute there.  From another point of view, I was horning in on a research project that Amri's former student Pooja had begun.  (Similarity of matrices mod p^2.)  Amri invited us both to Chennai in late April to put our heads together and try to squeeze out a joint paper.  So I flew back the 22nd for the third time.  This time I brought my camera, and was determined to take lots of videos for this very post.  Here is the first video:  a tour of the campus, taken on my final day.

You can see that the campus is remarkably integrated into its surroundings.  Visiting IMSc is like taking a mathematical safari, where lizards and monkeys and other wildlife abound.  Every so often the power goes off, and one waits a minute or two for the institute's generator to kick in.  One morning, as I was enjoying my breakfast, I looked down to find a lizard on my lap.  One might contrast the relaxed rusticity of IMSc with the sterile but sophisticated atmosphere of TIFR.  (Remember, TIFR is in a navy area that I'm forbidden from videotaping and posting on a public site.)

We did our math and it was fun.  Later we did some touring, the three of us and Amri's son Kailash (affectionately called Keshu) went to the Chennai Snake Park and later to the Chennai Children's Park.  Here is a video of us doting on Keshu at the Park; I hope you like that sort of thing.

Afterwards we met up with Amri's wife Anita and went to Dakshina Chitra.  This was something like a medieval fair, in the sense that it was a historical preservation of ancient houses and ways of life.  (But without so much suspension of disbelief, as in med fairs...)  Pooja kindly let me film her explaining some of the exhibits, and later we watched a Ramayana shadow puppet show.  Enjoy!

By the way, "Pooja" means "worship".  We also met Orissan artisan painting bamboo scrolls.  I bought a scroll depicting Ganesha's origin story (and later presented it to DAI's biggest fan).

In the end we figured out the 4 dimensional case of our math problem, and soon we will submit it for publication.

What fun!

Next: End of DAI season one.

होली with Adrian

Adrian is a friend of mine from Purdue.  We were postdocs together there years ago, and shared an office.  Adrian and I are in quite different ends of pure mathematics: his area being dynamics, the study of function composition, and mine is more number theory/representation theory.  Nonetheless, we've found some fun projects which mix up the two ends, and even have a couple of papers!
Having ongoing projects means that math departments will often fund our visits, and so Adrian was able to visit me for two weeks.

As I waited for him at the airport, I enjoyed watching westerners arrive into India, bracing themselves for the culture shock, wide-eyed and very present.  TIFR had sent a car for him, and I tagged along for the ride home.

The next morning was Holi, the "festival of colors".  We had a vague idea that folks celebrated Holi by tossing brightly colored powder at each other.   Adrian's wife had teased him that he was too craven to venture out and see much of India.  He therefore insisted that we leave the protected naval area, and walk straight into the nearby slum carrying two packages of Holi powder.  The nearby slum being the biggest slum in Asia.

We walked down the long roads of the naval area.  We could see groups of people who had obviously been playing with the powder.  Several people cheered, "Happy Holi!" at us as they went by.  But noone threw any at us, at first.

The Horror!  The Horror!

We reached the outskirts of the poorer neighborhood, and found a wild group of young men roughhousing in a play area.  We stopped, and several of them beckoned for us to come over.  Adrian and I looked at each other, took a deep breath, and let them grab us.  They surrounded us and rubbed their purpled hands all over our faces and hair.  One little guy tried to get my Holi package, but I didn't let him.  I later came to realize that you're supposed to let folks color you with your own bag of powder.  I think.  Anyway we did retaliate as well as we could and with our neon green version. "Happy Holi!" we all shouted.

Battle not with monsters, lest ye become one.

After that we walked downtown to the tourist area, hoping for more of the same.  We saw plenty of non-Hindus, including women, walking around in white clothing completely unscathed.  So I think that if you don't want to participate in Holi, they leave you alone.  Since we were splattered with purple, more people engaged with us.  I was in "snowball fighting" mode and a little mischievous, and surprised various pedestrians with powder.  I'm not sure if that was okay, but I got away with it.  One kid whom I had ambushed immediately went to a powder-wallah and purchased a bit of powder to reciprocate.

Later we returned to the TIFR housing complex.  Here men and women approached us slowly, took out a bit of powder from our bags and applied it softly like makeup to our faces, again wishing us Happy Holi.  Others were wrestling in the mud.   There was a little program with women invited to dance in a circle.  It was fun!

Otherwise during his visit, Adrian and I mostly did math and hung out.  DAI regulars will be unsurprised to know that I made a third trip to Elephanta, because like most Americans, he wanted to see the monkeys.  Well I delivered.

The simple life.

Devil Horns at the holy site.

Alright, that's my Holi post.  Next, I want to show you some videos of Chennai.

After the Storm

[Hey Diary, as I'm writing this I'm in the U.S. visiting DAI fans, but I really need to catch up on last year before the new year begins.]

I was suddenly alone in Mumbai after my month of touring India.  The trip was fantastic but had worn me out; breathing all the city air was taking its toll.  But there was no time to rest, because in the coming weeks I was involved in three important functions!

Interview:  
The ladies left February 20th, and my interview in Pune was February 22nd.  DAI readers will recall that I had previously visited Pune for the purpose of giving a "job talk", and speaking with the director.  I later learned that this wasn't quite enough formality, and that I would need to visit IISER Pune once more for a formal interview.  Actually, it's a bit like the British system in that everyone is to be interviewed on the same day.  A day when several prominent Indian mathematics professors arrive for the proceedings.  For example the previously mentioned Dipendra and Sujatha.  Unfortunately, the extra trip to Pune pushed me a bit over the edge and I was quite hoarse the morning of the interview.
I serendipitously discovered a natural, if unpleasant, temporary cure for a hoarse throat.  I won't say exactly what it is, but it's a miniature version of the cure for my digestive troubles in a previous post.

Anyways let me briefly say the interview went well, and so DAI has been renewed for a second season!  I'll be an Associate Mathematics Professor at IISER Pune, the only foreign employee of any of the IISERs, and (I believe) the only mathematics faculty in the country without Indian family.

Wedding:
March 1st I went to Sagar's wedding.  Sagar is a canteen friend of mine, one of the TIFR grad students.  (Actually an alumnus now: congrats!)  He had kindly invited me, and I excitedly bought myself a kurta for the event.  A kurta is a traditional Indian men's dress.  Now DAI readers may recall how jealous I was of my female friends getting more attention than me during my trip.  The solution to this problem for Western men is simply to wear a kurta, because then everyone, women and men and children, will stop and check you out.

For the wedding, folks took their seats in a large room, and watched the ceremony.  Traditional music played, Sagar wore some cool headwear, the couple walked several times around the fire, smoke filled the room.  There was a reception afterwards with traditional Marathi food.  See this video:  The first half is Sagar's math cohort in attendance, and the second half is Gerald's indulgently long coverage of my kurta modeling.

So, although India is renowned for pricey weddings that last many days, not everyone is into that, and this only took a couple hours.  Nice and simple.

Jugglology Lecture:
Okay so readers have probably figured out that I'm really into both math and juggling.  It turns out there is a little overlap between the two, which I like to call "jugglology".  Let me just briefly say that one can describe a typical juggling pattern with a sequence of numbers like 534534534... .  The numbers tell you how high the tosses are, or really how long the ball takes to reach the other hand.  To describe what sequences are possible is a pleasant exercise in mathematical modeling.  For more specifics see this site.  Over the years I've given several "recreational math" talks on the subject.  It's a fun talk to give because at any time I can fall back on my juggling experience or my math professor experience.  Yes, most of the time I'm juggling during the talk.

Word had gotten out about my juggling availability, and I gave one of these talks for "Science Day" March 4th at Mumbai's CBS school.  I think it went pretty well.  If I had been totally over my travel sickness, I would have made a video for you.  Maybe next time!  On that matter, I have a fantasy of being invited all over India to give Jugglology talks.  If you're at an Indian school, why don't you hire me to come?  I can give more serious talks for the grownups too!

After the talk I met up again with Acushla, who works in the same campus.  Acushla escorted me to the airport where I met an arriving Adrian (next post).  We discussed putting the Hindi (natural) numbers in alphabetical order (using Devanagari).  Do you know which odd number comes first?  If so, post in the comments.  This has been a matter of some debate.

गोआ and Goodbye

After an easy day of hanging around the 'hood in Mumbai, we got on another plane and flew to Goa.  Here's a detail of the Goa airport; it fits with my general experience that "everything is interesting in India".

Anyone know what this mural depicts?  Post a comment!

We took a taxi to Arambol, which was recommended to us by international yoga friends, as a beach area separate from the main party scene.  Our last week in India was spent at a place called "ResidenSea", which was recommended to us from Lonely Planet.  ResidenSea was run by a local family; there were a few dozen huts where folks slept, a restaurant feature and several "hang out" areas.  Actually, here's a video of the whole thing, filmed as usual on my last day:

The other main patrons at ResidenSea were three Russian couples who hung around the restaurant area  in their bathing suits, drank, and smoked hashish all day.  At one point the manager went by fanning around a pan of baked hash.  (Don't ask me how that works...)  Anyway we never talked to them.

There were basically two kinds of people in Arambol:  europeans getting a low-expense "exotic" vacation, and native indians selling them stuff.   Which reminds me, we ran into Sebastian again.  On Wednesday we took a bus to go to a huge marketplace, but it turned out to be more of the same: you could tell from the skin color who was buying and who was selling.  There was an exception:  one day while swimming we met a group of engineering students who were skipping class to have some fun.  I did in fact reprimand them.  Later, when my cohort was making an acroyoga photoshoot, they mimicked the poses in the background.

Sharing Americanized yoga with India

So...we had a great relaxing time.  We did a lot of swimming, I burned through a novelization of the Ramayana, we did yoga with a cool guy named Vijay, we partially celebrated Courtney's half birthday, and we got really silly with British accents, chatting away at the local restaurants.

Why am I dressed up?... I don't have that many outfits.

Jennifer got exuberant handshakes from this dog.

Look at his expression.

Also, more cows.

If you declare that you handled cows, you may be detained and miss your next flight.

We saw some disoriented (Russian?) guy alongside a road with some weird injury.  He couldn't talk to us, but we informed some cops we saw much further down the road.  I tried some Hindi with the taxi drivers and they were amused.

But that's about it, kids.  We flew back to Mumbai, packed up, and reflected on the trip.  We were delighted to run into Kavitha again at a TIFR canteen, and told her our stories.

I bought that shirt in Goa.

A taxi came and they left.  I managed some hugs out of the situation.  Good times; I plan to visit them back in Norman this summer.

Spatillomans Forever!

...

Phew!  Well that adventure sure took a long time to write up.  I will try to catch you up quickly with the next few posts.  (Actually I'm going back to the States in a couple days.)

Cold Train

The Spatillomans were pretty lackadaisical about planning ahead.   We had to get back to Delhi for our plane flight, but it wasn't until a couple days before leaving Rishikesh that we bothered to book a train for that.  We booked it through  a travel agent who had earlier forbidden Courtney from snacking on raw garlic while surfing in his internet cafe.  (I gave up on numbering her antics, but I assure you they are guaranteed.)

We were too late to get the A/C car, so we got second class sleeper car.  Who would want air conditioning in the winter anyway?, we thought.  The only clue we had about the upcoming horror was how the agent emphasized the word "freezing" when warning us.   I bought a small blanket.

We got to the train station around 10pm, starting to get cold.  We probably looked a little silly, being foreigners and not immediately knowing our way around.  Creepy guys gathered around where we were sitting and openly stared at us, without saying a word.  We took pictures of this weirdness:

When our train arrived, we carried our heavy luggage up and down the long line of cars, searching for S8, the one with our seats.  It wasn't there.  An absurdly formal British female voice instructed us over the loudspeaker to board the train, but there was noone to help us find S8.  A couple "know-it-alls" were wandering around, watching everyone board; they didn't work for the train station but tried to be helpful.  They were not.  A couple assured us that S8 was in this direction or that direction, giving us the head wag.  It was in neither direction.  One guy opined that we should simply get onto any car before the train left, pointing out that technically, since we had tickets we would eventually get seats.  Do I need to explain how horrible that would be, squeezing all our stuff down dozens of crowded cars in the dark, confused and unable to speak to anyone, and heaven forbid another party doing the same from the opposite direction??  Anyway eventually S8 and S9 showed up and were connected to the rest of the train.

After we settled, I took this video:

The train ride was eight hours of freezing cold and listening to snoring.  There was no heat on the train.  Just imagine being in a metal box outside through the night in the winter.  Eight hours of wishing we had more blankets.  Evidently plenty of blankets are provided in the A/C car.  My companions were grimly composing blog entries to articulate their suffering:  see here and here for their chilling stories.

When dawn came, and we arrived at Delhi, I took this video:

We got off at a metro stop, and took the metro to the airport. A guy wonders if he's been the best host when his party starts talking about the worst trips they've ever been on, and about the Holocaust.  As we approached the airport, though, we somehow transitioned from the third world to the first.  The new airport in Delhi is really clean, warm, and classy.  It was good to back.  Here are pictures of some asana and mudra statues in the airport:

We really appreciated the sun that morning.

Can you spot your favorite mudra?

We got back to Mumbai and took a couple days to recover.  Stacy and Courtney caught a Kareena Kapoor flick.  Then we flew to Goa for the final leg of our vacation. 

Happy Mother's Day!

गंगा

Our next stop was Rishikesh.  This is a holy area at the Himalayas where the Ganga starts.   It's sometimes called the yoga capital of the world, and since we were a yoga-centered team, we were really excited to go.  To be more precise, we would be in the Laxman Jhula area, a tourist area famous for its bridge.  Here's a video of the bridge.

It was a long drive there, so my friends finally cracked open the Hindi alphabet books we got in Delhi.  We had a nice academic time looking at some vowels and copying them down many times.  They picked my brain on some of the basics, which got me interested in Hindi again.

Entering Rishikesh was taking one step away from India and back towards the west.  I'd say at least half the people there were western travelers, with their wide eyes and backpacks.  Residents were...chilled out.

Hari dropped us off at our hotel in the evening and bowed out of our adventure.  We said goodbye in the way that three enthusiastic yoginis with a mild crush on a quiet Indian man and a modest mathematician who appreciates a good driver would say goodbye.

The hotel that Wahoe arranged for us was a great price, to be sure, but there was pretty much nothing there except for beds and plumbing.  For example, we had to buy TP from outside.

We had dinner at a vegetarian restaurant.  Actually all the restaurants in the area are vegetarian, and have roughly the same menu:  Indian, Italian, Israeli.
The following night was the worst night of my year.  Let me not go into details, but I think that when you feel nauseous, there is an obvious thing you should try doing.  If you don't do it, and instead assuage the symptoms with medicines, very unpleasant things may  happen.  Now as soon as I did the "obvious thing" I was on the road to recovery, although the next day I stayed in bed mostly.  I was also really chilly, and should have procured a heater the previous evening.  Oh well.  We had been warned about the cold, and this would not be the end of our troubles with heat.

Okay, so as I said, Rishikesh is really more of an "international" place than an Indian place, so begins to fall outside the purview of this blog.  We took some yoga classes, went to restaurants, thought about going to a cult but it was too early, visited internet cafes... I guess we did a couple "Indian" things, though:

We took a rickshaw to Rishikesh proper and visited the Ganga.  Here's my video coverage of the event.

It was nice and peaceful.  Some kids asked for money and I juggled pebbles for them instead to their bemusement.

Some sharply dressed young men started a photoshoot.  Courtney was in several.  Since I had shaved that morning, they let me pose for a couple shots.

Make some noise for the Desi Boys!

Back by the bridge, Hari came by for another delivery, and we realized that we needed more photos of him:

Mehar's cool too.

We were milling around another part of the Ganga in Laxman Jhula when some sadhus invited us in for hot milk.  So we went into a little hovel with a cooking area and spiritual posters around, and sat with three "chilled out" men.  Their names were Swapnamhoomi, Omkar Puri, and Bhola Baba.  Swapnamhoomi was retired from a job in law, and was our host, being the most gregarious and fluent in English.  They had blogs and e-mail addresses.  Yes, everyone and their baba has a blog nowadays.  Stacy asked about the Ganga.  Omkar Puri told Swapnamhoomi the long story in another language, and then he repeated it to us.  Bhola Baba sat with eyes glazed over, presumably enjoying being chilled out.  There was smoke in the air...Stacy said it was a nice story, to which they insisted that it was a fact, and well she got called skeptical again.  They invited us back the next day for pasta, but we didn't show up.

Another curiosity in Rishikesh was a shopowner who would declare, "Everything is possible!  Fantastic! Bombastic!" everytime someone would walk by.  He is well-known for this.  On our last night, I tried to catch a video of him doing this.  I didn't quite get the timing right, and so you can see him singing a song about being "Mr. Lover" and flirting with Courtney.  Enjoy.

That's about it for Rishikesh.  Next I'll tell you about our notorious train ride back to Delhi.

आगरा

I shouldn't have pigged out on the hotel restaurant food in Jaipur.  When dinner was hot it had a weird interesting taste, which became a gross taste as it cooled.  It was a bad idea to conclude that I should eat it quickly.

On the way to Agra, I got nauseous.  It didn't help that I ordered a greasy paratha for breakfast on the road.  Hari was doing his best to find us good eateries:  he took it upon himself to test the chai whenever we stopped somewhere dubious, and would send us away if it wasn't up to snuff.  We were having fun with Hari at this point.  He taught us some simple Hindi expressions; my companions would continually say things like, "Good job Hari!  Bahut bahut accha!", or "Challo!", and he was visibly amused.

Cruisin'

Agra is the state in Uttar Pradesh which houses the famous Taj Mahal.  As many had warned us, it's not a nice city to be in otherwise, being both dirty and expensive.  The restaurants weren't so good:  the "neapolitan spaghetti" I ordered was pricey but tasted like Chinese noodles.  Hari drove us to a spot across the street from the entrance to the Taj, and parked, telling us that he would wait.  I hope he had something entertaining to do in the meanwhile.

There are lots of rules about what you can bring with you to the Taj, we came to understand.  We had to take a long walk to a locker area where we could stash our belongings.  Along that walk there are lots of aggressive rickshaw drivers, tour guides, and young kids hawking souvenirs rather than going to school.  Courtney sublimated our annoyance at being harassed by the locals into causing more mischief.

Antic #3:  She drives the rickshaw-wallah's rickshaw.

Okay, so she asked if she could drive him in a rickshaw.  He awkwardly agreed, and so got to take some fun photos.

The Great Escape

It was a fun lark.  Unfortunately afterwards, the guy insisted on more and more money, even though nothing had been agreed upon beforehand.  Boo!

On our way from the lockers, this guy Sebastian approached us.  Sebastian was a handsome young Argentinian tourist who was delighted to find other westerners.  He told us how much he was hating his visit to India, because of how everyone was trying to get money from him.  I guess touring by yourself is no fun.  He and Courtney started chatting it up which means...you guessed it...we were doing Spatilloman theatre again.  Incidentally, I'm sure that Hari eventually figured out that we weren't really a family, even though Mehar told him otherwise...

As you would imagine, there are very long lines to see the Taj.  Actually, aside from gender divisions, there were two lines for everything:  a long line and a short line.  The short lines were only possible if you purchased the "High Value Ticket", which is ७५० rupees and 10 minutes, as opposed to the normal one which is 10 rupees and a couple hours.  Actually we didn't have a choice because foreigners can only buy the High Value Tickets.  (Although I suspect I could get the cheaper one with my TIFR ID card.)  Whatever the morality, we basically whisked past everyone.

Okay so here are the Spatillomans at the Taj Mahal:

It's a small world after all.

It's pretty cool; something to do once in your life, wonder of the world and all.  Foreigners who don't like to take their shoes off get little booties gratis with their HV Tickets.

Stylin'

There's another line to enter the Taj itself, that HV Ticket holders whisk through.  Probably there's not much more I can say here without doing internet research that you can do yourself.  It's a really big tomb.

Afterwards I took some nausea pills and crashed at the hotel while my cohort milled around Agra.

Next: Rishikesh

जयपुर

So really, there were no strings attached with our free stay at Sonu's.  She really just likes the vibe of helping international travelers.  When we got chatty about our travels, they suggested using nextdoor's  "Wahoe India Travel", run by Mehar, a young friend of Sonu's.  They had similarly offered to sell us A/C rides around Delhi to see the monuments, which we declined.  But we really wanted to see Jaipur, the Taj Mahal, and Rishikesh without much hassle, so availed ourselves of their travel services.  We paid in advance for four days of travel, which was in total ४x५०००= २०००० rupees. This covered everything, including hotel, travel, and  "hidden expenses".

A few minutes after I made my "Wahoe Cottage" video, we carried our stuff a few blocks to meet our stolid driver.   I asked Mehar whether he knew English.  Not too much, but Mehar didn't seem worried about it.  The five of us took off.  The language barrier was perplexing at first.  Early on, we had asked him to stop at a certain store to get a box of water; he wagged his head in response, but I don't think he understood.  Driving out of Delhi involved going around some cloverleaves; we passed by a huge statue of Hanuman three times.

This pic is off the internet.

We visited a rest stop for breakfast on the highway, the first of many "Cafe Coffee Day"s.  While waiting around I asked the driver, "Apka nam kya hai?", which means "What is your name?".  His name was Hari.  This broke the ice, and the girls jumped in and introduced themselves as well.  It was the beginning of an awesome trip

Getting there was half the fun.  People rode all manner of vehicles and animals.  Autorickshaws drove past us, precariously overflowing with passengers, some small children.  It looked like Hari was constantly playing chicken with oncoming traffic, which doesn't always stay on its side of the street.   My companions were constantly chugging from water bottles many times the size of their bladders, resigned to the fact that we'd need to make lots of rest stops to accommodate this.

We then arrived in Jaipur, the capital of the desert state of Rajasthan.  Two of its inhabitants confronted us as Hari snailed us through the busy streets.
First, a cop pulled us over because Stacy wasn't wearing her seatbelt, fining us  Rs. 100.  By the way, seatbelt regulations are weird here: in the back of a car, the seats always just have half a seatbelt.  Which I guess is for show?...
Our second greeter was a painted elephant's trunk, that came into my window when I wasn't looking.  A calmer Steven would have petted it I guess, but instead I rolled my window up in a panic.

It's still after me.

Hari didn't know exactly where our destination, the "Moonlight Hotel" was, so he started to ask for directions.  He would do this many times over the course of our travels.  It was very straightforward; he would pull the car up to a group of locals and bark out the name of our destination.  Someone would come up to the car and give him directions, and then he would drive off.  No "thank you"s required.

The hotel itself was very nice, with a great view and western-style lodgings.  Hari stayed elsewhere; we arranged to meet in the morning. The next day we saw the Amber Fort, another tourist hotspot, and I took this video:

Courtney wasn't up for paying the "Foreigner Price", so she sat for awhile.  This led to dozens of Indian tourists taking pictures with her.  We've gotten into the habit of getting shots for ourselves.  Here is one of many examples.

Shall we call this an antic?

Jennifer and Stacy really wanted to ride a camel, so Hari stopped to hook us up.

That's Hari in the striped shirt.

Here's a little documentary of the ride.  Would you trust a small boy to lead you on a camel through Indian traffic?

Elsewhere we encountered a snake-handler, and tested our courage.  Would you sit next to this scary-looking snake?

We also visited Jantar Mantar, which had astrological monuments, including one for each sign.  The Spatilloman Leos posed in front of theirs:

Pics like this are why you're a DAI fan.

What fun!

Next:  Taj Mahal

दिल्ली

For the next couple days we set out to explore New Delhi.  We grabbed breakfast in the marketplace, eschewing the deep fried potato sandwich in favor of a freshly baked parantha meal.  The uniformed schoolchildren who flooded the streets waved and smiled at my companions.

Comin' through!

We took the Metro to visit as many famous monuments  as we could handle in three days, which turned out to be two:  Hamayun's Tomb and the Red Fort.  We also milled around the marketplaces and Rajiv Chowk.

No yawning:  monuments are important!

The Metro takes some effort.  I tended to get separated from the ladies, which was a nuisance.  Each time we used the Metro I had to get in the security lines, walk through the metal detectors, and enduring the men with the hands.  We couldn't all use the "Ladies Only" cars for the obvious reason, so we had to squeeze onto the much more crowded mixed ones.  I learned that if you're on a crowded train, then when it stops, you're supposed to push as hard as you can against people trying to board!  Then when the doors close, people relax and more room is found.  So the big guys hang out near the entrance for this job and disinterested guys like me are herded further in.  When the train shakes you hang onto people near you.  You get used to that kind of thing, and keep your hand on your wallet.  Evidently, it is illegal to take photos on the Metro.  So we were bad when we took this:

Jennifer had visited the Beard-Wallah.

The monuments were alright.  I'm no architect, but I can appreciate walking around a well-preserved ancient site and trying to visualize old times.  We found a large group of visitors sitting in a row of benches at the Red Fort, with a large lawn before them.  My companions thought it was a good opportunity for an impromptu acroyoga/juggling show.  Here is a video of our performance:

Notice that most of the audience just stares stoically... We wondered why: is it because according to Victorian England, women are not meant to show off their yoga flexibilities in public?  Who knows? Another notable incident at Red Fort: with no warning, a couple handed Jennifer their baby and took pictures.

Neither of them is comfortable with this arrangement.

It turns out that in India, parents trust and half-expect you to play with their children.  There is no fear of weirdos like in the States.  My friend Viji says that once when he was in an American restaurant he went to play with a child, like he would in India, and folks were horrified.  Anyway Jennifer was shocked.
Do you wish people were friendlier with children in the West?

Rajiv Chowk was a nice little outdoor mall area in a huge circle, nicely organized with lots of western-friendly stores.  We were looking for Hindi alphabet books for toddlers, internet cafes for blogging, and food.  Yeah, we went to a McDonalds.  I'm sorry.  But we wanted to tell you about it.  So the McDonalds in India don't have beef or pork.  They do have chicken, potato, and cheese sandwiches.  I got a McSpicy Paneer and a McAloo Tikka, which were both pretty good.  Above on the TV screens run horoscopes.  There is a big glass box with ketchup and mustard packets in it, labeled, "Please drop the unused condiments in the box."

We go way back.

 Back in Baljeet Nagar I witnessed Courtney's...
Antic #2:  Carrying a large box of water bottles on her head like a local.

When in Delhi...

This was pretty cute and got her (more) attention, but her neck kind of hurt afterwards.  One really impressive thing about India is how much stuff people can carry, either on their heads, or pulled by a wagon through the busy streets.

After just a couple days we were exhausted. Partly because of the effort it took to move through Delhi, and partly because the pollution there is awful.  If you blow your nose, it comes out black.  I'm told that this is much better than twenty years ago, when you wiped sweat off your brow and it came off black.  Wahoe Cottage certainly isn't insulated or climate-controlled, and I feel bad for Jolly.

The next day we left Sonu and her family.  They were good to us.

Bye Sonu!

Next:  Wahoe Travel