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!
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!
No comments:
Post a Comment