First week in India...oh boy.

Our border crossing from Nepal was shockingly simple. Checked our passports out with Nepal customs, then just walked right across the border and into the India customs...total time: 15 minutes. Didn't check our bags, didn't need any info other than name, visa number, and length of stay. The immigration office was decorated in rust stained walls and mud floors. Eric was feeling little overwhelmed by the transition to India...and maybe the noisy crowded streets. haha.

We took a jeep to Gorakhpur, then boarded a night train to Varanasi. In our little cubicle-like section of the train, the bunks were three high on either side of a narrow aisle. across the walkway there were another 2 bunks. Our bags were on the beds with us, so we were unable to sleep unless curled in a fetal position. Even with the cramped conditions and the loud snoring of our Indian train neighbors, the hum of the train lulled us all to sleep for our  7 hour ride.

Unfortunately, Varanasi was no respite for the stress of life in India and barrage of the senses. The streets are more polluted than any I have ever seen and hope to ever see again. Cows, goats, pigs, and chickens, and wild dogs run loose, owner-less and often starving. Garbage can be seen covering almost every square inch of  the muddy streets, along with human waste and other unrecognizable refuse. Men squatted in corners and peed next to shops without shame. The constant honking from rickshaws, taxis, and motorcycles adds to the feel of disaster that hangs in the air.

Varanasi is the oldest continuously habitated city in the world, over 5,000 years old, and the holiest city in India. The Ganges river flows along the Eastern side of the city and is lined with temples and ghats (stairs leading down to the water). We hired a boatman to take us out on a sunrise paddle along the shore. It was foggy, quiet, and dark, and as the sun slowly rose we were able to view the city come alive with people bathing, washing clothes, and worshiping along the river. We were also afforded the opportunity to observe the funeral pyres. Over 300 bodies a day are burned there along the river banks. Family members come to celebrate the life of their loved one, and deposit their remains in the river. No crying is allowed. It was a humbling experience to walk amongst the smoking remains of the recently deceased, and feel the heat rising from the ground as we walked past the fragments of what was once living, breathing, people.

 

Lucknow was the next city we visited, and the morning we arrived was one of the most frustrating, stressful, and demoralizing yet. As we walked through the streets trying to find a place to stay, we were repeatedly rejected and told with a quick shake of the head "you no allowed here." In other words "no whites allowed." We are truly strangers in a strange land. After nearly 20 different rejections we finally decided to stop in at an internet cafe and either buy a ticket to another city, or find a place to stay online. We had heard that the Lucknow Homestay was a good one, so we looked up their address and were delivered there after a few wrong turns by our rickshaw driver. Finally a place we were allowed. The rest of our day we spend exploring the neat historic district of the city. Incredible mosques, archways, bridges, and dilapidated mughal-style buildings.


Checked out the Lucknow zoo as well, but it turned out that we were more of an attraction than the animals. Although not a new experience for us, the unabated staring is starting to wear on me. Men will stare unblinking and unwavering for as long as they are able. You will notice someone in your peripheral vision and be unpleasantly surprised to find someone inches from your face staring silently. Even when you catch them staring, they will continue, unphased. A train ride gives every man in your car the ability to stare for the entire 7 hour duration of your journey, while not a single one says a word. Not-so-sneakily they will hang their camera phones over the back of their seat to snap a picture...each time given away by the shutter noise that many phones make. Some, more polite Indians, will just come right up to us, say hello, and ask to take a picture with us. Or of us. Or just of me. We are celebrities here, but the attention is tiring and uncomfortable.

Nepal and India are so vastly different that it will take some time to get used to this new country. I am excited for the month that lies ahead, but I do dearly miss home. I hope all is well, and Merry Christmas to everyone!!!

Filters for Familes and Arsenic mitigation

On December 12th we arrived in a small town called Parasi, west of Chitwan National Park and Just north of the border with India. Getting there required some work, and we found ourselves quickly lost in a maze of unmarked streets and non-english speakers. Throughout our trip 90% of people have spoken fairly fluent English, but here, off the tourist circuit, there is no need for it. Luckily, we ran into a group of students who turned out to be a handful of the high-schoolers that we were coming to teach! They lead us to Filters for Families and we got settled in.

Over the course of the next week we taught crafts to kids ages 5-10 each morning, and in the afternoon the high-schoolers arrived and Eric and I taught science while Ian taught photography. Science lessons included plate tectonics, watersheds, soil and sediment erosion, GPS and map reading, and Arsenic removal. The kids spoke English very well, so very little of our talks needed to be translated to Nepali. They were so enthusiastic and excited to learn!! They also were very excited to get to know us. The girls were teaching me Nepali and wanted to know all about things back home. A couple of the girls even brought me flowers and henna on the last day of classes and decorated my hand! Talking with some of the kids, the education system in Nepal is severely lacking good teachers and funding. Most teachers only enter the profession for the money, and don't make education interactive or hands on at all. It was so rewarding to get to know the kids and I was sad to say goodbye.

In our free time from teaching we were able to tag along with Linda Smith, the director and founder of Filters for Families to go see the Arsenic removal techniques, educational methods, and difficulties she faces in working alongside an apathetic government.

Arsenic poisoning (Arsenicosis) in Nepal is a huge problem and although most Nepalis are aware of it, they can't afford to do anything about it. The specific geology of a region called the Terai has supplied the soil and groundwater with a huge supply of Arsenic. Sometimes digging a deep well (over 150meters) can provide drinking water, but these are very expensive and don't always solve the problem. The healthy standard for Arsenic consumption is only 10 ppb (parts per billion) maximum in a day. The water that many of these people are drinking is upwards of 600 ppb. In addition, when they cook their food with Arsenic contaminated water it concentrates the toxin as well as in their local alcohol. So, along with getting a dose from their drinking water, they also are consuming Arsenic in their food and other drink. A particular individual can be intaking over 3000% the recommended maximum daily dose of Arsenic per day!!!! The poorer the nutrition of the individual, the more their body clings to whater it can get, including Arsenic.

Arsenicosis results in skin splotches, painful skin lesions, wart-like growths on the palms of the hands and bottoms of the feet, and finally cancer if exposure continues. 5 out of 40 pregnancies will result in neo-natal death if the mother is exposed to high levels of Arsenic. One town, Manari that we visited had just had two brothers die of cancer within 5 months of one another, each only in their mid-thirties. They were given a filter awhile back, but their symptoms had already progressed too far for the change to help. Unfortunately this is a common story among small villages in the region. Filters for Families is an organization which educates and distributes filters to families throughout Nepal. They use the SONO-filter which is highly effective, easy to maintain, and lasts up to 12 years. With each filter installation they also educate and teach the family how to care for the filter and keep it maintained. The filters are assembled in Parasi, and one filter generally covers one to two entire families. It works using a series of layers (screens, carbon, brick fragments, sand, etc) which filter out the Arsenic along with 23 other toxic heavy metals. Each filter costs $70 dollars total.

Seeing the conditions people were living in and how sick they were really made me feel inspired to help. They barely have money for food, so the prospects of purchasing a $70 filter for themselves is grim. If anyone is able and interested in helping out, please consider donating... the website is http://filtersforfamilies.org/. It's a great organization, and what they are doing down here is really amazing. I hope to volunteer with them again in the future.



Although our time with Filters for Families was short, it really felt like a home and we were all sad to leave!! A really rewarding experience.

Chitwan National Park

Our adventures in Chitwan National Park started the moment we arrived in Sauraha and were swarmed by jeep drivers attempting to convince us that their guest house was the best. It was overwhelming, and were told by out two new friends Emily and James that it was a small preview of India. Yikes. Found a great guest house though with a hammock and badminton net. The next morning we were walking around town when we saw a group of elephants bathing in the river. The elephants owners offered to let us ride on them in the river and "bathe" them for a mere 100 rupees ($1.25 USD). Even though we were all wearing non-swimming clothes, we couldn't pass up the chance. Each of us got to climb on the back of the elephant while it delighted in spraying us with water from its trunk and trying to dunk us underwater. (In the picture you can see me on the back of the nearest elephant and thats Eric on the elephant in the back).It succeeded everytime. haha. It was only afterwards that we were told that there were crocodiles in the river...but they wouldn't mess with an elephant, right??

Afterwards we rented bikes and rode to nearby 20,000 lake to check out birds and we saw a group of wild boars with cute little spotted babies. The next day the five of us (Ian, Eric, Emily, James, and I) embarked on our 2 day jungle safari. We started the morning off with a canoe ride down the river to get us deeper into the jungle. The canoes are carved out of huge logs and although they look unstable, we were able to fit 7 people in one with no mishaps. We saw crocodiles, peacocks, and egrets. Then we started hiking. Hiking though 15 foot fall elephant grass was a trip and felt like a whole other world. If we didn't have a guide we would have been lost in seconds!  We soon came across monkeys and lots of really interesting insects. Then we heard some rustling in the bushes and saw 2 HUGE sloth bears only 50 feet from us. In my imagination they were the size of a black bear, but in reality they are probably twice that size. They watched us for a minute before loosing interest and ambling off in the other direction. In the meantime though we were all grouped together just incase they decided to charge us. No weapons are allowed in the park, so the only defense we had was sticks and wits. Later on in the same day we saw more wild boar and spotted deer.

The next day we had high hopes of seeing a tiger, but alas, we were there at the wrong season and struck out. At one point out guide Kamal thought he heard one sleeping near the lake so we tried to get it to move, but whether it was a tiger or not, we never found out for sure. The jungle was beautiful though and so much fun to hike around. The vines were amazing and grew in beautiful formations up the trees. There were colorful butterflies, and lots of bright blue kingfishers. Our third night in the park we stayed in a watchtower. It was a full moon and we could see deer in the prairie below us at night. In the morning there was an adult and baby rhino just a few hundred feet from the tower! After the safari, our bus back to town was full inside so we climbed on top and rode on the roof. The roof was packed with gear, bags of rice, and bales of wool. We clung to the top while watching for low hanging branches and power lines. At first scary, but after you found a perfect place to wedge your bottom in, it felt pretty secure. What an experience! Hopefully I'll be able to go on another wildlife safari again someday!

 

Pokhara: the adventure capital of Nepal

So, probably the "normal" thing to do after trekking in the Himalayas for 20 days would be to come back to civilization and relax for a few days...but there was just too many cool things to do here in Pokhara!! Eric was on his way back from the Annapurna Basecamp, and Ian was exploring and hiking through the jungles of Bardia National Park, so I decided to go on an adventure of my own and go on an 2-day overnight whitewater rafting trip. The river was a class 2/3/4 so some parts were calm and easy-going, while others were exciting with huge rapids and us frantically paddling away from whirlpools and other more dangerous river features which I don't know the technical names for. We were rafting the Seti River and he water was warm and I was with a fun group...3 guys from Amsterdam and another from Germany...and 3 Nepali guides too of course. We kept singing the Indiana Jones theme song, just seemed fitting for the environment and situation. haha. That night we pulled our raft up to a sandy river bar and made camp. We used our whitewater raft as a shelter, had a campfires and drank some semi-tasty local beer (Everest Beer). The moon was out and the stars were bright and it was so awesome to be sleeping right next to the river. The next morning we had tea and breakfast and then just put our wetsuits on and hopped back in our raft to get on our way down the river. Such a fun trip!

Today was another day packed with adventurous things...this morning Ian, Eric, and I signed up to go paragliding! We had been holding out because the weather here has been smoggy, but this morning we decided to just go for it! We took a jeep up to a viewpoint over the city called Sangrakot. On a non-hazy day we would have had some awesome views of the mountain from there, but even so it was the experience more than the view we were excited for. They were quick about suiting us up and connecting each of us to an instructor and soon we were running full speed down the hill, letting air fill the "wing" (parachute), and leaping into thin air! What a feeling! There were eagles soaring around the thermals up there with us and a few times they came within 20 feet of me. We stayed up in the air circling on a good thermal for about 30 minutes before we started heading back towards the lake where our landing site was. The guide even let me fly for a few minutes and steer myself which was pretty cool. Unfortunatly for my sensitive motion-sickness prone stomach, the ups and downs and spinning on the thermals proved to be too much, and I was feeling quite sick by the time I landed. It really was awesome though and I would love to go again sometime when I get back to Washington (I know there is a good hill right around North Bend). The three of us were talking about how cool it would be to get certified to fly by yourself someday!

After paragliding we went and checked out Devi falls. Its unique because the waterfalls fall straight down into a hole in the ground where they disappear into the largest cave system in Asia. So of course we checked out the caves too. The end of the tunnel we followed brought us to a view of waterfall from underground. While exploring the caves it was weird to imagine that we were actually underneath the city streets somewhere!

Tomorrow we head to Chitwan National Park to go on a safari...we haven't decided what we'll do for sure yet, but most likely the safari will be on the backs of elephants. Should be pretty neat and a nice change again from the city. Pokhara is a fun city and I would love to come back here someday and explore more, but I am also ready to get back out into the jungles and see some neat wildlife!!