Hello, and this time from our home near Bangalore! Lindsey Reimnitz We just arrived home a few days ago after our 3-week field visit to the North. This past week was spent in Udaipur. We finally arrived at Udaipur after our delay in the Jaipur and Jodhpur airports (we’ve had the worst luck in airports this trip!). Our current module is Ecology and Livelihood, so we have been learning about the causes of the environmental shift here. The hilly region in Rajasthan used to be covered by forests and lakes and received high amounts of rainfall, but due to littering, sewage, backwash from filtering water, hospital waste, industrial waste, and remnants of idols which are immersed in the lake during festivals, the land has become very poor, forests are dying, and they are experiencing a drought.
While in Udaipur, we rode camels. Camels!!!! They are much taller than I had imagined, and less stinky, too. Chris and I rode on the same one, he in front of me, and we sauntered along the dusty road back to our NGO, Astha, as the sun climbed to it’s place in the sky over the dry, rocky hills. Chris’s favorite movie is Aladdin, so inevitably we sang “Arabian Nights” as we imagined ourselves “coming from a land from a faraway place where the caravan camels roam” (a verse from the Disney song). We just learned a few days ago that the US Consulate in Bombay was closed due to terrorist threats, apparently stemming from the re-election of George W. Bush as president. Yet it hasn’t been a big deal. We received an email from our NGO, Visthar, detailing the closing, but there is no real threat to us, so we’ve been carrying on as usual. Thanksgiving in Udaipur was rather anticlimactic. We celebrated by going to Cafe Coffee Day for some drinks and Chocolate Fantasy. But today, we celebrated with the whole staff at Visthar by having a potluck-style picnic and games. Our group attempted to make sweet potatoes and apple crisp. The apple crisp was quite tasty; the sweet potatoes were okay, but nothing like they would be at home. We also had a scavenger hunt and played cricket with all the staff. Tomorrow we leave for our last field visit in Andhra Pradesh. It’s hard to believe that we only have 3 weeks left of our semester!!! But for now, dinner awaits, so we’re off to the dining hall for a pleasant evening of dining.