I arrived home from my break to Delhi right on time, eabout 8:00 on Wednesday morning. I had Hindi class as per usual, then in the afternoon we had a group tour of one of the most famous parts of Varanasi, ie, the Ramnagar Fort complex. Our guide, an historian who seemed quite ancient himself, described how the Fort is actually more of a fortified palace.
Inside the grouds were dilapidated collections of clothing, weapons, household items, and animals. We got to grimace at the result of taxidermy gone wrong– a crocodile killed by one of the old Maharajahs, stuffed but disintegrating rapidly. Its legs weren’t even attached to his torso anymore, he looked like one breath could make the dust that was holding him together evaporate.
There were pictures from early 20th century when the Belgian royal family visited the royal family of Benares. Like Europe, the royal families are still around in India but hold no political power.
Health update: I’m actually doing pretty good these days. The usual, ie Delhi-belly, but otherwise I’m fine. Amen to that.
Seven weeks to go until I fly home from New Delhi via Istanbul to Copenhagen (from where I’ll take the train to our home in southern Sweden). Hard to believe how much will happen during these weeks. I’ll finish my giant research project, perform kathak, and take all sorts of Hindi finals in late April. We have a spring break coming up, right around my birthday, over which I am planning to take a train up to Uttaranchal, a little Himalayan state which was carved out of Uttar Pradesh a few years ago. I want to check out Haridwar and perhaps Dehra Dun or the Corbett Tiger Reserve. Rahr.
My advisor and I will meet this week to discuss my thesis thus far. Hopefully he’ll have some good advice for editing. I’ve been reading since I gave the first draft to him, and have more to add myself.
Weather-wise, Varanasi has been normal (sunny and HOT), except for a huge deluge, monsoon-like, of last Thursday or so. Gucci, our street dog, had three pups when I was in Delhi and they were saved from their muddy nest by two guys from the Wisconsin program. They are now safely on our porch, looking like fat brown guinea pigs. I feed Gucci extra chapati every day.
Namaste!