Catch-up Time!

     Well, it’s been a very long and packed couple of days, so there’s tons to catch up on. I’ll start with food… we’ve been going a bit crazy getting lots of different things. A few days ago we were craving whole wheat bread (all they have at the hotel and in the grocery stores is white), so our driver pulled up outside a bakery called FoodEx. We were skeptical based on the name, but quite excited when we walked inside. Wheat bread was of course wonderful to get, but given that we went there when we were hungry, we were also hugely tempted by everything else and got a paneer dish, veggie puffs (kind of like spanikopita but with potatoes, peas, cauliflower, and spices inside), a palak paneer bun, and an Indian veggie burrito sort of thing. Topped that off with a slice of pineapple cake for dessert later, and then went next door to get a butterscotch milkshake, which like many sweets here, was way too sweet but tasty in small doses. Then on to the fruit market where we loaded up on guavas, mangos, seedless pomegranate, and melon. And because we hadn’t gotten enough food yet, we stopped at a fried food stand and got these fried lentil dough rings and chilis stuffed with tamarind and caraway seeds and fried in a garbanzo dough. Moral of the story: don’t go near food stores when hungry. I’ve continued my trials of Indian fruits in the last couple days. We got a bag of sapotas, which I initially thought were little round Russett-colored potatoes. You split them in half and inside is a jelly-textured fruit with a flavor I can most closely describe as honey-like. I ate some tamarind leaves off a tree; the actual fruit isn’t in season. Got some palm fruit on the train – also jelly-like with some juice inside, and tastes like you would think a palm tree would. Jackfruit was quite delicious but is a crazy task to extract from the big pokey green fruit; I’m not sure how to describe its flavor – wiki claims it tastes like a mix of apple, pineapple, and banana. We got some dried mango, which is juicy and so much more flavorful than what you’d get in the US, made specially in the region that we are staying. And then of course we sometimes get coconuts from the side of the road, where they machete off the top give us straws to drink the water. My last coconut had a bit of coconut meat inside, so they chopped it open afterwards so that I could eat it using a part of the shell as a spoon. Okay, that’s probably enough about food for now. 

      We took Friday off from working at the shelter and went to visit Kindness Farm, which is the shelter’s newer facility. It took us an hour and a half to get there, through the trafficky parts of the city, past countless small towns, down bumpy winding roads, out into the middle of nowhere. We toured around the facility, visiting the calves and cows, the water buffalo (their tongues are strangely dotted), and some horses. It’s still under construction, but it’s a gorgeous environment, with flowers planted around and fruit trees growing so that they can use the land well and provide shade. It’s lots cooler there, away from the concrete of the city and near the hills. We are going to spend our last week based out of Kindness Farm to do a week of rabies work, going into the surrounding villages to vaccinate dogs and educate the community. Super excited that this part of our project is actually going to work out. It’s way too long a drive from the city, so rural living it will be. The shelter has a little room that we’ll put a mattress into, electricity (very intermittent, but it’s something), and a fan, so we should be good. We walked a few minutes from the shelter and soon arrived at a tiny village. Some houses were simply thatch-roofed huts, others were more solid structures, and they circled around a grassy green field, the center of the village. We spoke to the local veterinarian – we certainly didn’t expect there would be a vet in the region. She is newly appointed and does large animal work for the surrounding 15 regions. She and the shelter director were really helpful with our project and are going to help call a meeting of all the village leaders (where I won’t understand a word besides dog and rabies) to explain what we are doing and set up a schedule for going from village to village. It’ll be a very different experience to live in such a rural area, but we will hopefully befriend the villagers (bringing candy for the kids usually does the trick) and be able to make an impact there as well as enjoy being away from the bustle of the city. No pictures yet, I’ll take them when I’m there for longer, but it was absolutely gorgeous.

     Then it was on to the railway ticket station to purchase tickets for the following day. It’s quite the hectic place, people everywhere, constant announcements overhead in a robotic voice. We had to fill out a form, get a number, and then wait and wait. Two numbers before our turn, all of the lights at the ticket counters went out and the announcement that was to plague us came on: “Shift change. Counters closed for fifteen minutes Shift change. Counters closed for fifteen minutes.” Repeated over and over in a mechanical, rhythmic tone until it got stuck in my head. Eight minutes in, it started up again, still saying fifteen minutes, but thankfully they stuck fairly closely to the original estimate and we eventually bought out tickets and went on our way. As we walked out of the station, we passed a dog with a really nasty leg wound open to the bone. She wouldn’t let us approach her, but some of the workers said that she lived there, so we called the shelter and they said they would send someone to pick her up the next day. We’ll hopefully see her tomorrow morning and see what can be done for her, it wasn’t pretty…

     In the evening, we headed out to Simhachalam Temple way up on a hill and met the family of one of Viru’s friends there. The nine-year-old daughter quickly took an interest in us and was chatting away, telling me of her goals to move to the US and become a singer, actress, and fashion designer. We walked through the temple, looking at all of the carvings of animals and gods on the pillars and walls, so expertly carved out so many years ago just using hammers and chisels. The family had some inside connections so instead of just passing by the main altar at a distance like most temple visitors did, we were allowed to approach and circle around it. There we participated in a puja, which is a Hindu religious ritual. It was a Vishnuite temple, so the altar had a big statue of Vishnu with his wife next to him. The priest chanted in Sanskrit and made offerings of fruits and plants. He lit some plant material on a plate on fire and walked around to the group – maybe fifteen of us – which people waved into their faces. He asked each of our names and blessed us, and at the end, gave us personalized blessings. Mine was apparently to get married soon, and Viru’s was that she would have kids. Drank some water flavored with camphor and ate some holy basil, and had a crown tapped on my head several times as well as a bhindi applied using a red powder. I didn’t understand most of what was happening, but it was still a really interesting and p owerful experience. Cameras weren’t allowed, so I didn’t get any pictures of the inside of the temple, but we had one taken of the group outside. As we drove away from the temple, the sun was setting between the hills in the distance and the towns lay sprawled beneath it. As we got lower down, the sun disappeared behind the hills. There were no turnouts on the windy road, so it’s just an image I’ll have to hold to memory. 

      We then headed to their house, the nine year old riding along with us happily in our car and chatting away. The architecture was very interesting with the covered semi-outdoor entry area with a large wooden swing, the high ceilings and large rooms, the balconies and terrace overlooking the sea. After lounging around a bit (and seeing how inundudated with technology kids here are), we headed to a nearby hotel restaurant for dinner. It was on the top floor, so we ate inside because of the weather but went to stand out on the roof overlooking the water while we waited for our food. Very tasty and got a break from spicy food with polenta and mushroom ragout, but extremely slow service and I silently agreed with the whining of the kids. 

     Saturday morning, we left the hotel at 6:15 and headed to the nearby railway station. We had booked first class to avoid the crowds, so were in a compartment with two other people. They unfortunately had the window seats, so we just looking out from a distance at first. The woman lay down, taking up 75% plus of the row that was intended for two people, and they did not respond to us when we asked for the window if she was just going to sleep. As the ride went on, it was clear that they were quite unhappy about something, and we spent the bulk of our time outside of the compartment. We walked down the corridor to the end of the car, where there was a door on either end. With the door held open, we could hang on to the bar and stick our heads out. The train is electric, so the fresh air and breeze was a wonderful and refreshing change. We climbed up into the mountainside, watching astounding views pass us by. There was no way to capture the depth of the hills on camera, grooves in each set of hills and then countless layers in the distance. Hills of this type are apparently unique to this region of India. We watched as the foliage changed as we climbed higher from sea level into the Eastern Ghats, moving away from cities and towns into farmlands and untouched land. It drizzling on and off, bringing in the fresh smell of wet red earth. We found this quite amusing given that the night before, we were informed by our little friend that older sisters (which all three of us are) could wish or dream for anything and get it, and she had wished for drizzle for us for our journey to cool things down. The train went through countless tunnels, during which many of the passengers screamed as if they were on a rollercoaster, again and again, never seeming to get tired of their thrill. The train grew dark except for the light from the corridors, and it was fun to stand at the door and look into the blackness as it rushed by. Looking out the door, you could see people’s heads and arms and legs sticking out of the doors in all of the cars in the distance, as well as the front of the train as it rounded the curves. As the train ride progressed, more and more people came out to stand at the doors and take in the views. One woman with her family decided that since I was only here once, I should get to stand from the door (though she was very protective and made sure that I was holding on properly and only got off very briefly when the train stopped for a while). I couldn’t really talk to her because she only knew a few words of English, but she was extremely nice. Like many others, she wanted to take a picture with me, after which a random guy on the train asked for the same. Definitely not in a region where tourists are a common sighting. After three and a half hours of buying goodies from vendors and taking in the views as we stuck our heads out the door, we arrived at the Borra Caves station.

     Our car there was trapped between quite a few jeeps, so it took a long time to track down who owned the jeeps blocking us in – it didn’t really seem to bug them at all that they were blocking us, so they took their time loading up passengers. Eventually we were on our way, driving down the hill with all the other new arrivals to the entrance of the caves. There were countless people at the entrance so we were relieved when we walked through to a much more serene environment. After a short walk, we entered the biggest cave that I have ever seen. It was lit inside with orange-tinted overhead lights which definitely made it less natural, but it was still an amazing site. Many stalagmites and stalagites on the walls, bats flying above, water dripping from the high ceilings. The wialls were covered in shapes that had been interpreted as various animals and religious figures, and there was a temple area up some stairs near the top of the cave. We walked through for its full excavated length, about 1km. Unfortunately the flood of people did soon show up, most of them obnoxious guys who greatly enjoyed shouting, hollering, and clapping their entire time in the cave, the noise spreading all throughout and greatly dampening the experience. We were ready to get out of their and away from their noise by the time we had walked through; I wish I had been able to enjoy it for longer but their antics took away from it hugely. 

     Back in the car, we soon were away from the shouting and driving round and round the mountain up into Araku Valley. The road was narrow and endlessly curvy, the driver honking almost constantly as he announced his presence to anyone who might be on the other end of the curve. We passed by many different trees – cashew, banana, coffee, white oak, guava, mango, jackfruit, black pepper vines crawling up trees, and many others. Animals were often strolling alongside or in the middle of the road, from cows to monkeys to pigs to dogs, many of them with their babies. We stopped at one point to give throw our remaining fruit to a bunch of monkeys and cows hanging out on the side of the road. There were four or five mother monkeys with adorable tiny babies hanging out their stomachs or backs. They were smart and mostly stayed out of the road, quickly scampering to the sides when cars went by, but the cows followed after us as we drove away, wanting to lick our hands and beg for more treats. 

     The valley is a huge local tourist destination, so we were surprised when there were not many attractions or activities there. After lunch, we headed to the tribal museum, which was quite interesting. The mountains that we were driving through are mostly tribal land with lots of tiny communities who live off the land and have a very different culture and language than people in the cities and towns below. It seems that most people just vacation in Araku for the weather, which is wonderfully cool with a breeze and not a hint of humidity. We wanted to hike, but that’s not something that’s typically done as an activity here, partly because it’s just not part of the culture and partly because of all of the poisonous snakes. On our way back down, our driver stopped at one point where we saw a path, which we walked a bit down to where it connected to a village road. While we were gone, he saw a village woman walking up another path and pointed it out to us. We walked up the hill and followed that path a bit, looking down on the village at the bottom of the hill. I’m impressed by how all the local people manage to walk up and down these hills carrying baskets of food, buckets of water, bundles of firewood neatly balanced on their heads. On the drive home, we stopped on the side of the road a few times to get out into the fresh air which is a huge change from the city (we could even drive with the windows down instead of blasting the AC). Of course every car and motorcycle that drove by would honk at us and turn to stare as they passed us – a foreigner in this region, and people sitting on the side of the road. Back at the hotel after 12 hours out (going between places is always surprisingly exhausted), we stuffed ourselves with the hotel buffet dinner, which was surprisingly not killer spicy, and topped it off with some delicious pumpkin halwa and other desserts. This was ridiculously long, sorry for sticking so much in one post!

The Oddities of Being a Tourist

    As one of the only foreigners in Vizag, it's hard to go anywhere without getting strange looks and reactions. At the crafts fair the other day, a woman about my age approached us and wanted to take her picture with us. Another woman at the market asked 'what country?' but didn't understand when I answered United States and asked a second time, after which she just stared at me quizzically. We were in the elevator the other day with two Russians who made a triangle symbol above their heads and said Moscow and then pointed at us, also wanting to know where we were from. At the vegetable market today, a woman at one of the booths grabbed my arm and said that despite being a tourist, I looked very proper. She described Viru as a devil with her hair all loose. This was on our way home from work, both still in scrubs covered in cow poo. I apparently was described as proper simply because my hair was tied back, which is the appropriate and traditional way for Indian women to wear their hair. When I got back to the hotel and found that it was all over the place from a long day working in the sun, I was very surprised that I got this reaction from her! We also met a veterinarian who works at the government vet hospital at the market - he saw that we were wearing our scrubs with vet school logos on them and stopped to talk to us; we may go shadow him for a day at his clinic.

    We went to a few beaches and parks overlooking the water yesterday after work. Gorgeous views with the water and the hills in the distance contrasting with garbage all over the shore. A woman who sold us corn roasted in coals and coated in lemon juice (and chili powder for most) told us that the trash was cleaned up daily and was all from what people dropped there. But used tubes of toothpaste, wrappers from instant noodles, much of the trash wasn't exactly what one would think people would toss when walking along the beach, so we think a lot of it probably washed up from elsewhere. There were street dogs running about playing on the beach, most well-fed and most already spayed/neutered. Lots of rocks to climb on, and tons of people wandering about everywhere, many of them staring after us as we passed.

    We are getting into a routine with our work at the shelter. When we drive up, we get greeted by a few dogs who hang out outside the gate, our favorites being TanTan and Mangey-Face. We start off with rounds in the cat wards. Start with the social ward where many of the cats are very happy to see us. It was sunny this morning so they were all lying outside much of the day (their enclosure has indoor and outdoor sections to it), but all came meowing to meet us at the door. We've named some of them with not-so-creative names based on their looks or behavior, but it's impossible to keep track of them all. Scrapper, Little Scrapper, Ms. Mustache, Tripper, Lemur, Leo... After checking how everyone is doing and treating some of the kitties (a few suspect kidney failure cats in the last couple days, and some URI cats last week who are doing better), then it's off to the less social wards. Rubber and Orange Guy are happy to see us in one of the wards, but all of the others there are absolutely terrified and hide in their little boxes, darting away when we approach - especially Scaredy, whose eyes always seem to be hugely dilated. There's a room dominated by torties and calicos, and there's only one cat in that room who I've been able to touch, but she's definitely starting to warm up to me. Upstairs is the orange cat room, where they weren't so sure about us at first but now we have lots of friends there. It's funny how much the colors here correlate to behavior. Almost all of the black and whites who are brave enough to approach us love to lick our shoes. None of the black cats will get anywhere near us, though that's more understandable based on how they are treated out in the world. Most of the calicos and torties are also terribly afraid, and most of the orange cats are fairly social and like to rub against us.

     After the cats, it's on to working with the dogs, either helping with surgery prep or the new project that we've started up, which is examining and treating the shelter dogs. Many of the dogs are really fearful and certainly not leash-trained, so it's a very different experience to handle them than dogs in the US and we have one of the shelter staff helping us. After lunch, it's on to the calves. There are about fifty of them in the sick area, though many of them are getting a lot better. We get an assembly line of sorts going to treat their eyes and feet, giving injections of various drugs as needed. I had never really worked with cows before this trip, but I'm getting pretty comfortable with how to handle them and love all the babies here; they are much cuter than calves in the US. We also hang out with the monkeys and feed them bananas (which the cows also love), though some of the monkeys grab the bananas quite rudely from our hands and get really angry when we don't offer them more.

Subway Sandwiches and Buddhist Ruins

     We left the shelter a few hours early yesterday and decided on the way home that we wanted Subway for lunch. We had seen a Subway several days prior when driving around the city, but we weren’t exactly sure where it was. Viru thought she knew which neighborhood it had been in, so we drove around in circles for quite a while but it was nowhere to be found. No 3G signal, and people on the street weren’t sure where it was. Of course as we drove along, we craved a nice big sandwich more and more, but eventually gave up, disappointed, and headed back towards the hotel. Suddenly, voila, there was the nice friendly Subway sign sticking out at us! It was quite an ordeal and our driver will now forever know where Subway is, but it was worth it. The menu here is a lot more veggie friendly, with a paneer sandwich, a potato patty, a soy patty, and a couple of others. Plus I got Lays ‘American style cream and onion’ chips, which was really nice after missing snacks in a country where more savory things are too spicy for me to bear – though my spice tolerance is definitely improving!

     After washing all the cow muck off ourselves (which we subjected the people at Subway to), we headed down to the crafts bazaar by the beach. There were countless booths of people selling items from all over India. We spent two hours wandering the market, enthralled by all of the jewelry and craftwork and going on quite the shopping spree. We were the only tourists there, so got lots of looks but not the typical heckling that one often gets at a more touristy market. We wanted to go back today for more, but the beach road is closed because of a marathon, so we’ll have to head back another day; the market will be here for another week. We then headed across the street to the beach. My first encounter with the Bay of Bengal involved me turning away from it and baam, suddenly a huge wave decided to come crashing ashore. Luckily I was wearing a skirt so only got half drenched, but the bay is much saltier than the Pacific and I ended up tracking plenty of sand into the car. Our poor driver, we make such a mess of the car every day as it is with our dirty scrubs.

     In an attempt to avoid the heat, we got picked up this morning a little after 7 and drove 40 km to the Buddhist ruins at Sankaram. It was really a hidden gem – almost no one around here knew about it, but our driver has some friends in a nearby village who knew the ruins and walked around with us. There are two big hills, Bojannakonda and Lingalakonda, each with intricate formations that were excavated in 1907.

     We started off with Bojannakonda, walking up the staircase to reach engravings of Buddha and various gods carved in the mountainside. Orange and white butterflies flying everywhere, wild jasmine scenting the air. The only noises around us were the songs of the birds and music from the village below. We were alone on the hill with our guides at first, but soon a Buddhist meditation group of men, women, and a few children arrived, all dressed in white. They lit incense in some of the caves and we listened as they chanted in Sanskrit. It was a very peaceful environment; words and pictures don’t do it justice. We explored the hill, which was covered in stupas, some worn away but others with engravings that were still visible. There were a few caves that we could walk inside, where we used our phones to illuminate the intricacies on the walls as well as to spot a few bats. The caves were boiling hot so we could only stay inside them so long, but the level of detail that had been carved into the mountain was amazing. Looking down below, the farmlands sprawled out beneath us and the rolling hills lay out hazy in the distance with contrasts of greens and reds and browns. 

     After a snack of gooseberries soaked in honey, we climbed up Lingalakonda, where we definitely felt the morning’s heat as it reflected from the rocks. The engravings had all worn away, but there were stupas of all different sizes filling the top of the hill. We also looked over at Bojannakonda in the distance, where we could see the people in white illuminated against the hillside. There was a wonderful breeze as we looked down at the valley below and climbed around on the various levels of the ruins. We could have stayed there for a lot longer had the heat not been so intense, but it was still a really amazing two hours.

Monster Stories and Other Tales

    Meet Monster. He was certainly our hilarity for the day yesterday. He liked us our first day, but yesterday he was glued from the moment we walked through the gates. He bounded after us as we did our rounds in the cat wards and tried to poke open the wooden doors when we were inside, setting the cats on a round of hissing. Whenever we went to get anything from our bags, which were in a room where a cat lived alone, he followed after us, but decided that the cat could use attacking, so that was always a problem - sometimes he would follow us out when we left, but other times, a bit more needed to be done for him to leave the poor cat alone and he got sent to a kennel to keep him out of trouble for a bit (he certainly wasn't happy with that!). As we walked around the shelter grounds, he was very often running ahead of us, looking back to make sure we were following. When we passed other dogs, he sometimes growled at them, needing to be certain that they would leave us alone. There were certain dogs who were allowed to join his herd and come along with us, but he definitely made sure that the path ahead was clear and intervened when he thought there was a problem. When we went to work with the calves, we closed the gates, but he found another way around and soon happily bounded up to us. I was afraid at one point he was going to get kicked as he stood right behind an unhappy cow whose feet were being manipulated, but he did just fine. One of the most entertaining things to watch was his game with Chitti the monkey. Chitti was probably the one animal who outsmarted our little Monster. Monster ran after her barking and trying to catch her as she jumped from tree to tree, dangling her tail, getting close to him but not quite close enough to be caught. He's a little guy and as much as he tried, could only stand up so tall. He thought that he could win this game like all his others, but Chitti was having the time of her life taunting him and Monster had no such luck.

     At the end of the day, we gathered our things and walked out, shutting the gate behind us. Most of the dogs run free and there are a lot of ways out besides the gate, so the moment that I opened the car door, Monster was beside me and jumped right on in, surprising the driver a great deal, but it was no great surprise to us that our little shadow had found a way to try to come home with us. I picked him up and put him outside of the car, but the driver's door was open so half a second later, he was back in the back seat. We booted him back out and tried to drive away, but he ran with the car, eventually running a ways ahead of us so that he could keep up. We had to get out and walk with him back to the shelter and get someone to keep hold of him so that he didn't follow us all the way home. This morning, Monster came bounding up to us the moment that we walked through the gates. We were really happy to see him as well - it was ridiculous how bonded we had become to this dog in just a day. He followed us through the beginning of our morning routine, torturing the cat mildly but coming with us when we left the room. A sweet little black and white dog wanted to join our shadowing crew and she was permitted to, but he firmly asserted that he was in charge. He stood waiting for us outside of the first cat ward, but after that he disappeared. As the day went on, we still didn't see him and had no idea where he had gone. Eventually found out that he had only been staying at the shelter temporarily - he had been brought in for the animal birth control (ABC) program. Sometimes animals are kept at the shelter after being neutered and we had assumed that was the case for him, as they are usually returned to the streets after a couple of days. It turns out that Monster was from a steel plant that was a ways away and they simply just hadn't been able to return him there until today. He's a really smart little guy and will do perfectly well on the streets, but we are missing him terribly and wish that we had at least been able to say goodbye!


    My other little friend from yesterday was an adorable three-month-old calf whose mother had died on site so she's been raised by the shelter staff. We fed her milk from a syringe, which needed to be refilled repeatedly, but she never wanted to let go of the syringe. Once her belly was full, she still wanted to eat and decided that our hands were very good for suckling. It's a very strange feeling to have half of your hand in a calf's mouth.

    And my favorite creature who I got to know today was Chitti the monkey. She was rescued from being a show monkey on the streets, where she was found wearing a harness far too tight that it had grown into her and gotten infected. She now has free reign on the shelter, though mostly hangs out in the area with the other monkeys. She had a lot of fun taunting a male rhesus through the bars of her cage, they had quite the wrestling match going, though she's less than half his size. Once I found out that she was social with people, I went over to her and she climbed onto my head. Her favorite thing to do was squeeze my nose with her hands, but like all monkeys, hair and hair bands are wonderfully fun to play with. I always have been one for monkeys, both watching their many expressions and behavior and letting them climb on me.

     We spend a lot of time in the cat wards, observing them for any medical problems, treating them, and socializing them. There are four different cat rooms, each filled with a ton of cats, probably 30some in the bigger rooms and 20some in the smaller rooms. They actually have really awesome places to hang out, tons of stairs to climb and beds and boxes on multiple levels, beams to walk across, plenty of places to hide. The cats in the biggest room are the most social and are always very happy to see us, even the ones with medical issues who we are constantly tormenting. This is the only room with cat bite wounds because there's one tough guy who beats up on everyone else - we are working on convincing the staff to get him a private room somewhere so that he stops wreaking havoc on everyone else.  It's definitely fun to sit with what seems like swarms of cats, especially as they warm up to us. Though some of them are absolutely terrified and that may never change..

     We luckily bought separate shoes for our shelter work that we leave there so we don't track cow poop all over the place.We come home each day stinking of cows, it's a really hard smell to wash away. At least they are adorable, I love all the tiny calves especially. I'm sure we get some strange looks, but we get those anyway for wearing scrubs and being almost the only females staying at the hotel. People certainly know who we are here.

     The weather continues to be boiling hot with the added humidity making it extra challenging. Yesterday the monsoons threatened but unfortunately did not come. It did give us some much needed relief, though, with wonderful winds to cool us down, nearly blowing over my bowl full of (liquid) vitamin for the cows. There were thunder and lightning in the distance and we were hoping for a nice big storm, but unfortunately it blew the other way. Today it did start raining while we were at the vegetable market, but only a tiny bit. Hoping for a nice big storm sometime soon to cool things down plus to experience the craziness of rain in India (but avoiding any flooding of course).

Our Time in Vizag Begins

     We flew last night from Hyderabad to Visakhapatnam. Like all of our other flights, this flight was delayed by an hour, but we eventually got on. I had the world’s strangest window seat – not an emergency exit row or anything special that I could tell, just no window at all, a big blank wall. Compared to our 13 and 6 hour flights that we had taken on the way here, 45 minutes flew by and soon we had arrived in our sticky new home. The temperature difference here is huge – it was in the 70s and 80s there, and here, it’s been in the high 90s and low 100s with tons of humidity added in. It supposedly is 2 degrees C hotter by the water than just slightly inland because of the heat from the sea. This is going to be an interesting adjustment to make! We apparently got lucky, though, it was 108+ last week, and it is supposed to cool down even more after this week.

     I’ve been waking up before 6 most days here (and I think/hope I’m done with jetlag), which is completely abnormal for me normally. That’ll give us time to get things done in the morning since we will probably collapse after dinner when we work long days, starting tomorrow. The heat definitely doesn’t help keep us upright, though with the help of tons of water, I’m managing fairly well.

     Our hotel is much nicer than anywhere I typically stay when I travel. Someone dressed in a semi-ridiculous outfit to open the car door when we arrive, porters carrying our bags up to the room. We aren’t facing seaside, but from the fourth floor, we have a nice view in the distance of the hillsides and the buildings in the city below us. Directly below our window is the swimming pool, which (maybe in the delirium after a long day in the heat?), we found a great deal of amusement in. There was a kids swimming class going on the pool. Usually one watches kids in a pool at ground level, face on, and there’s lots of splashing and flailing. But from four stories above, it somehow was better than television. There was a nice head-on collision from a few girls swimming perpendicular to each other, and lots of funny moments as the kids, especially the beginners, attempted to make their ways across the pool. Anyway, the hotel is nice and super air conditioned and well-insulated, so much so that we had to turn off the AC last night, but it is a very welcome relief from being outside.

    We started today off with the buffet breakfast (included) downstairs, which was a nice mix of Indian food and basic continental stuff. I’m still getting used to eating spicy food first thing in the morning, so this will be a good gradual transition. I also was just eating food that Viru’s mom cooked before, which was hugely toned down in spiciness, so now it’s time to get more used to super intense spiciness drowned with yogurt. As always, I love the fruits abroad - mango, papaya, and pineapple, and a few glasses of guava juice.

      Our driver picked us up later and showed us around the city a bit before we got dropped off at the VSCPA (Visakha Society for the Protection and Care of Animals) office to talk to the director. It’s much greener here than in Hyderabad, a lot more trees lining the roads and green everywhere in the distance when you get even slightly out of the city. The roads are equally as crazy, and we haven’t seen a single red light here, so it’s a free for all at intersections. Luckily most areas, at least the really busy ones, have some sort of barrier between the two sides of the road, but the smaller roads are narrow and people will happily drive on either side of the road to get where they are going as fast as they can. The little autos and motorcyles are good at squeezing, so there are often quite a few vehicles together in a lane. We waited at the office for a while because he was out on urgent business, and eventually he arrived and we got to talk to him. Apparently the shelter had four vets until recently, but are now down to one because the other three moved to government hospitals which have a much less demanding way of life. To add to that, in the last month or so, the shelter has had to take in about 500 cows and bull calves (background on that later), so the vet is just a little bit overburdened. So, that changed our plans a bit – they definitely will need our help on site. We will still do some rabies awareness work when they hold mobile clinics and will get to go out into the community at times, but it seems like most of our work will be focused at the shelter. We’ll find out tomorrow more about what we are doing, but there will likely be some element or surgery or surgical assisting (they usually have two dozen dogs brought in from rural areas for ABC – animal birth control, aka spay/neuter and vaccinations), treatments, and learning a ton about working with cows. 8:30-5:30 six days a week with a 30 minute commute each day, so we will definitely be exhausted.

     Then it was supermarket shopping spree time. We’ll have our breakfasts covered at the hotel, but need to bring lunches with us and definitely don’t want to collapse in this heat, so we bought tons of snacks and lunch supplies and Tupperware. We brought a rice cooker and some spices with us, so we have a little mini kitchen hidden in our hotel room which is absolutely not intended to be a kitchen. We’ve filled the mini fridge with our juices and yogurts and cheeses. The closet shelf is devoted to all of our snacks (which we currently have more of than real food) and grains and big bottles of water. For now we are being lazy, but it’ll definitely be useful and cheaper to be able to just crash in our room after a long day and be fairly self-sufficient with our food.

     After lunch, we headed out to the shelter. It’s a bit out of town, so we drove through some really pretty areas on the way there, lush greenness with deep reds from the hills. When we pulled up to the shelter, we were greeted by countless dogs mulling about. Some were very happy to see us, a favorite being a sweet tan dog who absolutely loved attention and kept right at my side. Others felt the need to announce our presence and were very nervous to approach but eventually settled down and went back to sleep in the shade. We got taken around the grounds of the shelter, dogs wandering everywhere. Some had serious skin conditions and hair loss but most were very well fed and happy. The cows, on the other hand, were not in such good shape. The shelter wasn’t exactly equipped for 500 cows when they started arriving about a month ago. I’m fuzzy on the details, but a bunch of bull calves have been abandoned at a nearby temple because people don’t have a use for them. Calves are sacred here and not euthanized, but these were in awful shape to the point where you could see every rib on many of them, and they of course have various ailments. There are also a bunch of cows that were rescued from being taken to a slaughterhouse. The shelter is trying to re-home many of these animals, but will first bring them back to health. Until then, they are living in pretty cramped quarters and require a lot of medical attention. We also walked around to the monkey area, which includes an adorable rhesus who loves to grab people’s hands, I’m very excited to get to know him. Yes, I absolutely love hanging out with monkeys. There are the tortoises, ducks, a single rabbit, and birds, all of whom have come from various bad situations. There are also several communal cat housing areas. The cats here look different from back home, much smaller, big wide eyes, some of them almost like a Sphinx cat with hair. Many were very happy to see us, purring and meowing as we pet them from outside their enclosures. The whole shelter was pretty much animal heaven to experience, especially after being away from a constant animal presence for almost a week (a long time in my world)! I’m excited to find out tomorrow what the next month holds for us and be able to help out hopefully both at the shelter and in the community. And, that’s enough of a novel for now, more later, and of course tons of animal pictures to come eventually.

P.S. I have no clue how many people are reading this, but please let me know if I should post on facebook when I update it or just leave it as is and you can read it when you feel like it - there's some sort of follow button where I think it can email you when I post. If I start to ramble on too much and no one wants to read it, it's still a good way for me to keep track of and remember what I'm doing here!

Tourist Time!

    Thankfully the city wasn’t as shut down yesterday as we expected, so we did get to go out a bit – not to another local shelter like we had initially wanted to, but got to explore some markets. The markets here are definitely more sparkly than those in any country I’ve been to before! We’ve been to a couple different markets now and there’s definitely a difference in the feel of them. One you could wander around without getting hassled at all, one they constantly tried to drag you into their stall with the line ‘something different for you!” and another, they were begging, ‘please, madam.” All of the textiles here are gorgeous, so many different colors, everything so different from what you’d see in the US.  There are pretty saris everywhere, nothing I would ever wear, but all nice to look at. Much of the jewelry is really bright and shiny, sparkles everywhere that you can see from quite a distance - stores filled entirely with bengles, or intricate earrings and necklaces filled with countless stones. If anyone has any requests for anything from India, let me know!

      We went to the Old City this morning, which is a Muslim part of Hyderabad. We started off going by going to my first super tourist thing (tourist price between 20x that of a local, still less than 2 bucks but definitely a big difference). The Charminar was a very intricate monument in the center of the area. We walked up the dark spiral staircase, round and round, some of the steps really steep  I took a picture out of one of the windows and was surprised to find a pair of strappy red shoes sitting in the windowsill looking out over the city. From the top was a really cool view looking down on all the autos moving around the hectic street below.  Really interesting architecture throughout as we circled the building, and of course views in every direction looking out at mosques in the distance and the market below. After descending the staircase, it was time to wander the market a bit. Lots of little stalls along a narrow puddle-filled road filled with no sidewalks, so we were walking alongside the honking motorcycles and autos. The little yellow autos are adorable, I want to ride in one at some point, but maybe when we are in Vizag, a much less diesel-infused city – they don’t have doors or windows, so are apparently not so fun to ride around in here. Little shops filled with shoes in every color and pattern (I wish I could wear flats!), tons more jewelry and saris. We got there not long after they opened – 11am – so it wasn’t too crazy crowded, but often those markets are apparently so swarming with people that you can barely move. 

      Then headed over to an old fort. We didn’t walk all the way to the top, but walked around the grounds quite a bit, past the mosque, through the stables and the queens quarters. It was a very different feel to the ruins than those I am used to in Latin America, such a different appearance than Incan and Mayan ruins, but of course amazing to wander around and not what I was expecting. There was a definite Muslim style to them with the shape of the doorways and the impressions on the walls. I don’t have enough creativity or brain power at the moment to describe it well, but photos should help. It was a really big area and we didn’t make it all the way up to the tower but could just see it from a distance, surrounded by big rock boulders that were part of the wall and lots of greenery. Apparently if you clap at the bottom, people can hear the clap at the tower at the very top of the fort but nowhere in between, so it used to be to signal danger to the guard at the top. With the wind blowing like crazy to keep it cool enough, it was a really nice place to walk around, and I could have spent a lot longer there, but we hadn’t planned for a full day outing and eventually headed home for a late lunch. It seemed to be the place to be, as there were a lot of families walking around, including women somehow managing to agilely make their way up the stairs in their long saris.  On the drive back, we stopped at a roadside stand and got some coconuts, which they slashed off the tops and stuck a straw into. These weren’t the kind that you eat the flesh from since they only have a very thin fleshy component, but they were filled with really refreshing coconut water and were fun to drink from.

       We’ve been driving around the city quite a bit in the last couple days. I still have absolutely no sense of direction here since I’m just getting taken everywhere. I’m not at all used to having a driver, to getting cleaned up after – we just left our coconuts in the car, to being so catered to. I keep trying to put on a seatbelt every time I get into the car, I can’t seem to kick the habit, way too automatic… though I guess that’s a good thing. A seatbelt would probably be much more needed here than in the US, but that’s just how things go! Probably the most interesting thing to see as we are driving through the city is the stark contrast between the rich and poor areas which are pretty much right on top of each other. There aren’t really slums in Hyderabad, but there are definitely worn down areas with rugged buildings, dust, and tons of trash. In the same area you can find tall shiny buildings with clean windows and gated driveways. Apparently it is much more dramatic in Mombai where you look out the windows of the skyscrapers down into the slums, but it still is interesting to see how closely the two very different socioeconomic components of the country overlap in one place. 

A jetlagged first day

   I have no idea how much I will keep this up once we start volunteering and are busier, but it’s always nice to have a blog of my travel experiences, so I’ll give it a go. It was a long journey to India – 13 hours from SF to Hong Kong, then what turned into a four-hour layover in HK, and a 6 hour flight to Hyderabad, where Viru’s dad picked us up and we drove an hour to her house. The first flight wasn’t the most pleasant, but we got lucky on the second and accidentally managed to get ourselves upgraded to premium economy – reclining seats, lots of leg room, and noise cancelling headphones were a nice addition. It’s a 12.5 hour time difference here and with almost no sleep on the plane, I was of course exhausted and disoriented when we arrived. Viru’s mom made us a nice 4am breakfast of idli (a steamed patty made from fermented lentils), peanut chutney, lentil donuts with yogurt sauce (that there’s no way I can remember or spell the name of), and a lentil soup – I’m going to be very spoileda here with food! Breakfasts here tend to be savory. Crashed for a couple hours, but with the constant honking outside the window, that didn’t last long, so soon it was time to start the day, feeling jetlagged all the while. After some really good ginger chai from the tea stand outside, we wandered around the neighborhood for a bit. The smells alternated between diesel and incense. There were lots of people wandering about, but most of the stores and markets don’t open until 10am, so everything was closed. I haven’t seen a single other tourist yet in my time here, Hyderabad certainly isn’t a tourism city, so I’m getting a lot of odd looks as I walk around. Pretty used to it, though, from when I’ve gone to tiny little towns in Latin America.

   We’ve been really lucky with the weather so far – in the 70s with a nice breeze (and on and off rain), so nowhere as painfully hot and sticky as I had been anticipating. Though that may change in a few days when we relocate to Visakhapatnam (Vizag) for a month, which is a coastal city known to be extremely humid.

   Yes, a theme of life here so far is definitely food. Lots of homemade authentic Indian food. Lunch was rice with three different curries (a leafy green, plantain, and green bean) and a homemade yogurt, which I definitely needed even though the spice was already toned down hugely from what it normally is. Also had a glass of buttermilk, which I at first was skeptical of because I thought it would be like buttermilk in the US, but it was actually like a salty lassi, made from diluted beaten yogurt and some salt.

   We went out in the afternoon to visit a local shelter, which ended up being an hour and a half drive thanks to traffic. The driving here is as expected, all over the place with constant honking, no one following lane rules, tons of swerving, huge traffic jams. Luckily people observe the traffic lights and the drivers wear seatbelts, but other than that, rules pretty much aren’t followed. The roads are a combination of cute little yellow auto rickshaws, motorcycles and scooters, buses, trucks, and cars, all driving at crazy angles and somehow managing not to crash into each other. It’s weird to get used to the fact that it’s very common to have drivers here, to get shuttled around wherever we want to go, where the driver waits until we are ready to go to our next destination. We’ll probably take an auto at some point for the experience, but mostly I’ll continue to feel very spoiled and weird going around with our driver in an air conditioned car protected from the diesel-infused roads. It is nice, though, that so many middle class people do help out the lower classes with hired help who are decently paid and well-treated.

   We eventually arrived at the shelter, which is a tiny little place that is still being developed. It was a very controversial experience. The shelter is run by two women who have very good hearts and ideas but no experience and very little direction. They have begun an NGO and rent a property, but talked constantly about their financial issues and did not seem very willing to move forward with networking, making their website appealing, setting up an online account for donations, etc. One of their goals was to take in the purebred dogs who are abandoned as well as strays with disabilities – most stray dogs here are used to surviving on the streets, but purebreds wouldn’t survive that way, so in theory, a very important thing to do. They had ten-ish dogs at the shelter when we visited (and a couple more arriving soon), some of whom they were trying to adopt out and others who would probably live there for life. It was frustrating that they didn’t spay/neuter all of them, or focus on doing that in the community, but it is a very complicated situation financially. They have a vet that they take the animals to at times, but have to be very selective. There was also cages with bunnies, guinea pigs, and birds, all next to each other together with the dogs – we talked to them about he importance of separating species, which hopefully they will take into account as they continue to grow. A potentially disturbing statements to follow, so non-vet people may want to skip the rest of this paragraph. One of the founders of the shelter rescued the bunnies from a company that raised them to use their skin for leather, but skinned them while they were still alive. She paid the company to take these bunnies, but it’s of course a really controversial situation, as this really doesn’t solve the problem and the skinning will continue with others despite spending a bunch of money to save and care for these couple of bunnies. They just had so many things going on and were not working in a solid direction to meet goals – hopefully they will be able to find volunteers to help them learn to obtain and use their money more effectively and set themselves towards manageable specific goals. Because of the politics of everything, unfortunately well-established shelters don’t help those that are up and coming. We’ll visit a few other shelters here in addition to the one where we will be spending the bulk of our time, so that will be interesting to compare.

    The weirdest thing for me here so far is being unable to speak the language. I’m so used to traveling in places here I can easily get around on my own, communicate with everyone, somewhat integrate myself into the community. Some people speak some English and a lot of the signs, at least in the city here, are in English, but I have no idea what is going on much of the time and have to rely on Viru for a lot because I can’t understand Telugu. The words are so different than anything that I am used to that it’s really hard to remember the basic words I’ve been taught. Hopefully I’ll pick up some extreme basics during my six weeks here, but I doubt I’ll be able to carry out any sort of conversation. It’s such a different experience than anything I’ve done in a long time (the exception being my trip to Tanzania six years ago); it will definitely take some getting used to.

    Tomorrow the city is shut down because of a political protest, so we will be stuck inside all day. May need to wander a tiny bit right near the house if we go stir crazy, but definitely staying away from the university and political centers! Okay, I’ve rambled long enough!