All Good Things Must End

Over the past two weeks we have had a seriously fantastic trip in The Philippines with Jenevieve Francisco and Paolo Posadas and though we can hardly believe it, today is our last day. Alisa will be back in Eugene on Tuesday and Tessa will be in Eugene on Friday (after a stop in Hawaii!).

Though our trip is ending, we still have a lot of photos, stories, and facts that we plan on posting. So, if you are interested, keep checking the blog because we will probably be posting a lot over the next two weeks or so. The blog lives on!

Though we are very sad about this year coming to an end, we are really excited to see friends and family. We hope that you are having a lovely holiday season thus far, and maybe we will be seeing some of you soon!

Calcutta and Pondicherry

Upon arrival in Calcutta, we decided to slow it down and relax a little. While the Western world often holds images of an extremely impoverished city, among Indians, Calcutta is also heralded as a center of arts and culture, thus we made sure to visit the downtown and explore the night life. We spent our days wandering amongst the downtown streets, through colonial tree-laden cemeteries, around the parks, and into a colonial art museum. We were also quite fortunate to have a connection with a man who worked for a micro-financing NGO. We spent a day with him, learning about the current issues facing Calcutta and the West Bengal province in general. We walked with him into a slum community where we were able to meet women who had received micro-finance loans and were able to start small ice-chopping, clothing, and food vending businesses. On our way home, we decided visited the Sisters of Charity, where we were able to walk through a little exhibit detailing the life and vision of Mother Theresa. In the adjoining room, the Sisters were singing their daily prayers, aware that Mother Theresa's flower-covered tomb was sitting right beside them.

We didn't take too many photos while in Calcutta, but we did manage to a get a few photos of our favorite restaurant and a little Sikh boy down the corner from us...


Cheap and best. This Indian slogan, which you hear on every street corner virtually everyday, adequately captures the essence of this restaurant. For under 75 cents, we could get 2 chai teas, 3 aloo parathas (an oily, flaky bread that is a close relative to naan), and a vegetable curry.


The man in the center was our waiter (one of our favorite waiters that we have had this whole year). He kind of reminds me of an elf.


Inside a tiny travel agency that you could barely stand up in, we asked this kid's cousin (a guy about our age) about flights to Thailand, and he answered us with all his opinions on the current state of India and the world. He told us that his young cousin was the embodiment of India's doomed future - all he does is play computer games, he doesn't care about school, and he already has a few girlfriends. Kids these days. He also joked that his computer-savvy little cousin is the world's future terrorist. We thought this joke was funny, mainly because it would be so unfunny to the majority of Americans who don't understand the wide variety of reasons for wearing the many styles of turbans and might take one look at this photo and actually think this little kid could be a terrorist.

Lamenting over the corruption in India, the travel agent told us that the only person people listen to in India is Mahatma Gandhi. Wow, we thought, this relentlessly cynical comedian has a heart. And then he held up a 10 rupee note with Gandhi's face on it. "Get it?" he asked.



In the little French colonial town of Pondicherry lies Sri Aurobindo's ashram. People from all around the world flock to this ashram so that they can learn more about the vision of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, his French co-worker who has developed a serious following of her own. Sri Aurobindo's work is fairly complex and a few of the people we met at the ashram have decided to dedicate their lives to understanding his philosophies. The Mother is the creative inspiration and founder of Auroville, an experimental town that seeks to have people of all countries come together and live in progressive harmony while researching practical and innovative ways to spread peace. Auroville, at its essence, is a community of people seeking human unity.

The guesthouse we stayed at belonged to the ashram and so photos and sayings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were everywhere: in the bathrooms, the cafeteria, throughout the garden, on the walls of each individual room, directly above every single bed . . . We were lucky enough to have this photo staring down at us all night.



The Matrimandir. This is Auroville's pride and joy and is considered to be a symbol of the Divine. The Matrimandir itself is situated within 12 lotus shaped gardens, an ampitheatre, and an awe-inspiring banyan tree. Inside the Matrimandir lies a 70 cm crystal ball (apparently one of the largest in the world) with a single ray of sunshine concentrating at its center. This crystal ball, according to the Mother, is supposed to be a perfect symbol of human realization. We, unfortunately, were not able to go inside.


On our ride back from Auroville, we were invited to visit our rickshaw driver's home. The house was an impossibly tiny single room for a family of four to eat, sleep, and live in. The driver ran out to buy milk and then made us creamy, sweet tea on the small kerosene stove that sat on the floor in the corner of the room that functioned as a kitchen. The driver's wife, who works from her home creating flower garlands, gifted us with her personal creations.

Sarnath and Bodh Gaya

This is the Jains, the amazing Servas family that we stayed with in Sarnath, India. They run an impressive educational project for the rural children in the villages surrounding their town. Gini, the lady standing in the middle, is from France and was helping with the project while we were there.





Sarnath is the place where the Buddha spun the Wheel of Dhamma by giving his first sermon, and therefore why there is a Vipassana center just outside the town. This is the beautiful countryside that surrounded the center where we did our Vipassana meditation retreat.

We, of course, never saw the countryside because we were not allowed to leave the compound. In our retreat there were us four women and maybe ten or so men. The men and women slept in separate buildings and even had separate paths for walking from the meditation hall to the dining hall (where the men and women ate in separate rooms). There truly was no talking. This picture is from the last day when we talked to the other girls for the first time.

The two of us had really different experiences in the retreat, but it was incredibly intense for both of us and we would both say it was the most physically painful experience of our lives. Being silent and avoiding eye contact was actually quite nice and relaxing. The actual meditation -- sitting cross-legged and trying to maintain continuous concentration for 10 days straight -- is what was really difficult. It was a weird experience, as well, in that you had no idea how what you were feeling compared to what others were feeling. You could tell that other people were in pain though because everyone would stretch like they were about to run a marathon before sitting down. I think we all still thought that no one else could possibly be feeling as much pain as we were.

The object of Vipassana is not to calm the mind, but to concentrate the mind. At the beginning of every session we would listen to a recording from a cassette tape to learn how we ought to do this. In the beginning, it was really funny (read: really hard and confusing) because the quality of the tape was so poor that we couldn't actually understand any of the directions. Luckily the quality improved a little during Day 2 and so we were able to gather that we were supposed to be focusing on our breath (for the first day Alisa thought we were supposed to be focusing on "bread"). More specifically, we were supposed to focus all of our attention on the triangular area between the upper lip and the tip of the nose and try to notice all of the sensations in that area. Of course, the overwhelming sensation in that area was sweat because it was incredibly hot and the electricity kept going out.

As the days went by, we began spreading our area of concentration to the rest of the body, trying to notice as many obvious and subtle sensations as possible. The object is to observe these sensations and have neither a positive nor a negative reaction to them. One is making progress when one is so focused and attentive that the obvious and painful sensations transform into subtle sensations.

This probably sounds confusing, and we're not even sure we understand it ourselves, but we'd love to talk with you about it if we see you in person. There's lots of Vipassana centers all over the world, so if you're interested in trying it out for yourself, there's probably a center nearby your home.

When Day 10 came and we knew that we would be able to talk to each other in a few hours, we both began falling apart. As soon as we we're allowed to speak, we immediately began laughing and crying at the same time. Neither of us have eve experienced such a feeling a pure relief and release.

After the retreat, we discussed our experience with an Israeli-Australian monk who had also been on the retreat. He took us to the Tibetan monastery to meet these wonderful Tibetan novices who are receiving their monastic schooling in Sarnath.

On our last day in Sarnath, we went with Dr. Jain to visit his education projects. This is one of many preschools Dr. Jain has started to prepare children under 5 years old for school. He hires local woman to teach in the preschools. The women only need a 5th grade education to teach and so it is also a great way to give opportunities to women who might not have many otherwise.

Some of the children from the preschools get to attend a primary school that Dr. Jain and his oganization have just built themselves. The primary school uses an alternative education model. Children in the surrounding villages who are not able to attend the alternative school, or who are too old, can be sponsored through the organization to attend private schools in the area. It pretty much goes without saying that the children's other option of going to a government school is not a very good one. Dr. Jain said that some parents feel that a government school education is so worthless that they choose to keep their child at home rather than send them.

This child is hard at work in his preschool class.

Preschool's over for the day! The kids do lots of singing in their classes and so Alisa and I had to teach them our standby: the chicken dance.

Also, if anyone is interested in sponsoring a child for a year of private school education, or simply interested in donating to the organization, let us know. We have more information about the organization and more information about how to donate.

After Sarnath, we took the train to Bodh Gaya where we stayed in a Burmese monastery with Julie Arcaro. Julie had just arrived with a study abroad program to learn about and practice Buddhist meditation. Alisa and I were graciously invited to participate in a number of the program's activities. We sat in on meditation, philosophy, and yoga classes and we ate meals with the group. It seems our camera was out of batteries or something at the time because we have hardly any photos to capture what a great stay we had. This is a photo of us with Julie outside the Mahabodhi Temple where it is believed that the Buddha sat under a Bodhi tree and attained enlightenment over 2500 years ago. The temple was beautiful and it was really nice to see the large groups of pilgrims that come from all over the world to pay their respects to The Enlightened One.

Back to India

We spent a total of 2 1/2 months in India and posted very little while we were there. Part of the reason is that in the weeks prior to India we had been moving very fast, always thinking about our next move. When we got to India, we tried to let the time open up a little. We didn't want to be planning too far ahead or feel beholden to deadlines. Hence, a lack of blogging. Of course, keeping up the blog is a chore that sucks up time and money wherever we are (we still love doing it, though!), and right now (as in 1:02 am our time) we finally happen to have a few hours to do some India photos before our eyes start blurring from staring at the screen for too long.

I'm sure most of you haven't really had a clue as to where we are from day to day over these last 10 1/2 months, so posting about India makes as much since as anything else, even though we left there on October 11th and have since touched foot in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. But for those of you who like a little certainty, we are currently in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. While in Laos, we realized (with the help of our new travel consultant, Ellis Ballard) that the cheapest way to get from Cambodia to The Philippines would be to fly through Kuala Lumpur. According to Ellis, KL is the new BKK when it comes to cheap flights. We decided we might as well see the city so we are staying three nights with Polly, a Servas host, and then one night in the airport before flying to The Philippines on Thursday. Polly has graciously shared with us her spare bed and her wonderfully speedy mac.

So far, Kuala Lumpur is absolutely unlike anywhere else we have been in Asia. It is almost aggressively modern, the streets are clean with wide sidewalks and street signs, the population is diverse ethnically and religiously, and there is a rich variety of delicious foods ("they call Malaysia 'The Palace of Foods,'" said our ridiculously positive taxi driver). Frankly, the city reminds me more of San Francisco and Silicon Valley than it does of other Asian cities we've seen. Plus it sits amidst lovely green hills.

Before I go further, I'll just say that the posts from now on have little to do with linear time. The photos you are about to see were taken sometime between today and August 28th.

Back to India. Another reason why it has been difficult to blog about India is that it is simply a very intense country. We contend that every day in India you will see something that you not only have never seen before, but could not even have imagined possible. It is one of those countries in which you really have to go there to get what we mean. The barrage of sights, smells, and sounds can be super invigorating and also really overwhelming. The landscape changes dramatically from state to state, as does the clothing, the religion, and the language. Sometimes it feels like wonderful surprises await you at every turn, like a stream of yellow-clad Hindu devotees stopping traffic as they carry sacred Ganges river water to their homes, or the Dalai Lama waving at you from the passing car. Yet other times the things you've never seen before are also the things you prayed you would never see, like a family of six sleeping on the meridian of the highway . . . in between countless other families of two to ten. 

For this last reason, India was also our most difficult country for us emotionally. There were always endless things to write down and frustratingly inadequate time and words and emotional stamina to actually write. Perhaps this is another reason why we actually took relatively few photos and posted little. So although we won't delve much here into the complexity of our experience, the next few posts will hopefully give you a sense of some of the incredible that makes India the Incredible India that it is ("Incredible India" is India's big tourism campaign slogan, of which locals often, and endearingly, like to remind you).  Also, we would seriously recommend you read A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry.  We both read it while in India, admittedly compounding the intensity of our time there, and we are still trying to process the truth to which it bears witness.  

Our favorite hole-in-wall breakfast place in the old city of Varanasi.  Lacking just the right standards of cleanliness it takes to make food taste really good.  The old city of Varanasi is an incredible maze of tiny alleyways in which you never know what you will encounter around the next bend.  Will it be a gigantic bull with colored horns, a hoard of children selling bindis, an orange-robed sadu doing puja at his tiny shrine, or simply a wall?  This chef's kitchen is actually in the alleyway, leaving the 6 ft by 6 ft room of a counter and stools to be crowded by his customers.

We met this boy on our first day who I (Tessa) actually remember meeting three years ago when I was last in the city.  Three years ago he was selling postcards.  Now he is a "tour guide."  His first question was "Do you know Goldie Hawn?" and at the time we didn't know that this was code for "I won't give up until I earn commission for the scarves you don't even know you will most certainly buy."  By some miraculous event that Goldie may or may not know she participated in, every single child wandering the streets of the old Varanasi has an "uncle" who is Goldie Hawn's best friend.  Apparently she did buy some scarves here, because this kid did take us to a man named Pappu who had photos of Ms. Hawn in his shop buying scarves as well as a typed (but signed) letter from her expressing her undying commitment to their friendship.

Since Alisa and I can't seem to resist trying on scarves, even ones involved in a scam, and even though we try not to support child workers, we ended up buying a couple.  Honestly, once you've been cornered into the back room of a shop, the effort it takes to make it out of there alive without buying something sometimes does not even feel worth the energy.

The boat crew that took us on a Ganges River cruise.  The boy on the left is also a "tour guide," and he recruited us for the ride.  The thread he wears across his chest denotes that he is a Brahmin, a member of Hinduism's priestly caste group.  Brahmins, who are traditionally entrusted with the duty of knowing and preserving all the sacred rites and rituals, are supposed to wear this thread at all times, changing it in a special ceremony annually.

For Hindus, the Ganges is incredibly sacred.  Hindus believe in samsara, or the cycle of birth and death.  Dying in Varanasi is one way in which Hindus can finally break free of this cycle and achieve moksha, or liberation.  Hence, Indians come from all over the country to die here and have there bodies ritually burned on the banks.  Some people, however, cannot be burned and their bodies are simply wrapped and placed into the river.  These people include children under age 5 and those with leprosy.  A dead body floats in the foreground and a boat presumably carrying some of the thousands of daily pilgrims is in the background.

Into this river, people give their deceased relatives, but in it they also bathe, do their laundry, drink out of thirst, and empty their household trash.  Life goes on, from every angle, all at once.

The Ganges.

One morning we sat watching people perform their morning rituals in the river and we befriended these girls.  They also all have uncles who know Goldie Hawn.  They sell bindies and every day seems to be a school holiday.  We decided to bring them along to breakfast with us because they were fun company.  We had just started eating in the upstairs section of the restaurant when one of the girls accidentally jerked her elbow knocking a glass of water of the table.  We were essentially sitting on a deck, so rather than hitting the floor, the water fell directly onto the head of the lady sitting below us.  Let's just say she was less than thrilled.  Oops :)

This man is hand-painting one of the million hand-painted signs that cover the alley walls.

Unfortunately he's already made a spelling error.  We see the hand-written piece of paper that the man is working off of, and we realize why almost every sign has errors.  How many of you could accurately paint a Hindi sign onto a wall?

We went to a puja at a goddess Durga temple that had live classical music playing all night.  We sat on the roof and watched the throngs of people slowly make their way around the temple and eventually into the holiest of holies just to glimpse an image of the divine and receive a blessing from the priest.  We waited our turn as well, and we can assure you that the stone goddess' glittery purple robes were so stunning that even RuPaul would have been envious.

I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar

These last few weeks have been flying by; we can hardly believe that we will only be visiting two more countries before we reach the States (Malaysia and the Philippines)! That being said, we are packing our days full: waking up before sunrise and not hitting the beds until the wee hours of dawn (okay, that might be a little exaggeration but it does feel like we are on the run all day and all night).

Yesterday we decided to celebrate Thanksgiving. We dressed in our finest holiday attire, drafted a little sign, "ARE YOU AN AMERICAN LOOKING TO CELEBRATE THANKSGIVING...if so, come talk to us!) and hit the Russian market in downtown Phnom Penh. We held the sign for hours, but to our dismay, we discovered that there were not too many (or any) Americans frequenting that market. We then got back into a little tuk tuk and drove to the US Embassy, hoping to catch a few Americans who were looking to celebrate their home-cooked turkey dinner with a few travelers holding a sign on the street corner. Unfortunately, the embassy was closed. Luckily, however, our sign got the attention of two americans in another tuk tuk. They shouted the name of a restaurant on the riverside and we told them we might meet them there later.

We then took a brisk walk through the neighboring park and visited the temple on the top of the hill. As we were walking, we bumped into a man visiting from San Diego (and his young daughter who had just been bit by a vicious, wild city monkey). He ended up giving us a Christian missionary's phone number. So we walked to the nearby hotel and tried to call. No answer. No worries. We decided to sit down and enjoy the happy hour specials.

An hour or so later, we picked up and went down to the riverfront to meet the Americans from the tuk tuk. As we walked through the bustling riverside area, we spotted a bar with no one inside. It turned out to be a Vietnamese karaoke bar that was simply waiting for its regulars to arrive. We figured we could do no harm and quickly put in our requests, hoping to have the karaoke bar to ourselves. The second we hit the stage (with "Stop" by the Spice Girls), however, the Vietnamese karaoke bar went into full swing. They gave us the VIP treatment of free songs and after every performance, various other customers gave us things like napkin roses, grapes, and dried shrimp. Everyone else in the bar was singing very serious Vietnamese love ballads so we thought it was important to spice up the evening with Shania Twain's "Man, I Feel Like A Woman" and TLC's "Waterfalls." We finally finished our night with none other than Helen Reddy's classic, "I Am Woman." The crowd probably couldn't understand any of the lyrics but they still went wild. Who would have known that the American feminist movement would be so popular with the Vietnamese? Maybe they were just feeling the Thanksgiving Day spirit. You know we were.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Luang Prabang

Happy Halloween! We arrived in Luang Prabang on the evening of Halloween. Upon Alisa's insistence to incorporate balloons into a costume, we began a desperate, last minute search for the must-have costume component. We were hoping for green and purple balloons so we could be grapes, but we only found red and blue - a little accidental patriotism and a bit of a confusing costume, but people were amused all the same.

Leaving the disco with our new Laos friends and Rich, a friend from the Isle of Man (ten points if you've ever heard of this place). Young Laos people take the disco very seriously. They even do synchronized dancing that they've learned from how-to-dance videos.

The next day our friends took us to a waterfall and on our way home we were invited to a village party. They were celebrating their victory in a women's kayak race and we have never seen such ecstatic winners. Karaoke, dancing, and booze a plenty. This man was one of the evening's all-star dancers.

Alisa letting a bird go free at a temple on the top of the Phousi Mountain in Luang Prabang.

We crossed the Mekong River to take a walk through the villages. We gave the kids the balloons left over from our Halloween costumes.


Novice monks collecting their morning alms.

Laos has really beautiful waterfalls.

Elephant Crossing!

The world already feels like a different place

We woke up at 6am to watch the election returns with other Americans at an American-owned bar. Cheers, tears, champagne - we just wish we could have been in the United States to experience this momentous event with all of you.

The owner of the bar later that night.

Still celebrating late into the night. Yay, Obama.

Since bars in Luang Prabang close at 11:30pm, we spent the rest of the evening jumping for joy in our hotel room (notice the cool wall art) and taking photos of ourselves.

5 days later and we are still devoting every drink to Obama. We really do feel like we can be less ashamed of being Americans. In nearly 10 months of travel we have not met a single person, be it Thai villager, Indian rickshaw driver, or fellow traveler who was not rooting for Obama. Here's to continued American hope and mobilization toward change!

Laos: Untitled.

In eastern Laos we visited the mysterious Plain of Jars where there are fields and fields full of huge . . . jars. Why are they there? No one knows . . .

This area is also one of the most heavily bombed areas in the world. To see the jars, we had to walk along specific paths that had been cleared of unexploded ordnance. The unexploded bombs are left over from continuous US bombing between 1964 and 1973. Apparently the US dropped an average of one bomb every 8 minutes during these years. This is half a metric ton of bombs for every person living in the country at the time.

Laos people continue to be killed and injured by the bombs every year. In an already impoverished area that survives off of farming, the people's livelihoods are seriously inhibited by the bombs that lie hidden in much of the farmland.

In the local villages, military shrapnel is used for fencing, housing material, and flower beds. The villagers also sell the shrapnel and it is converted into all kinds of things such as forks and spoons. Recently, an increasing number of people are dying in the process of trying to salvage shrapnel to sell. To give you a sense of how little they make off the shrapnel, one side of a cluster bomb (what you see forming the fence) earns US $15. This is a lot of money for subsistence farmers.

Our tour guide, whose two cousins were killed by an unexploded bomb just last year, invited us into his home and shared with us some traditional Laos whiskey - poured out of his grandfather's military canteen. One side of our tour guide's family worked for the CIA during the war and the other side worked for Pathet Lao, the communist resistance group that eventually succeeded in gaining control of their country.

We were lucky enough to arrive in Vientiane during a big festival. The area surrounding the national monument was jam-packed with carnival rides, souvenir shops, food stalls, and lots of stages with singing and dancing performers. This wonderfully inventive man was selling special pancakes for kids. He first used colored pancake batter to draw cartoon characters in the pancake. Then he would write the kids' names in sweet chili sauce, add fried fish sticks, and lots of sweetened condensed milk. We know this combination of sweet, savory, and seafood sounds too good to be true, but the kids loved it. And so did we. So much we nearly vomited.

We visited "Buddha Park" outside of Vientiane. Basically a park full of all kinds of beautiful and strange statues of the Buddha and an assortment of various other gods and creatures. Here two novice monks are posing inside a statue. The park was full of novice monks looking for fun on a Sunday afternoon. This was a photo they were taking of themselves and we just asked if we could take a snap, too.

Novice monks trying to take a photo of us on their cell phone. Even monks have camera phones.

Come On, Drink for the Children

By posting this, we have automatically offset 350 pounds of carbon!

And this isn't the only thing we've been doing to make the world a better place . . .

We have now made it to Laos. The mountains are really beautiful and the children are refreshingly unjaded. We are staying in a city called Vang Vieng that sits next to the Namsong river. We spent a few days helping out at an organic farm. You would be surprised to know that what they really needed help with was selling mojitos! Of course, we happily rose to the challenge. It seems that the city's main attraction is a wild inner-tubing drink-a-thon designed especially for foreigners (imagine rope swings, zip lines, mud pits, slides, and free shots). The organic farm is situation at the inner-tubing starting point so they wisely set up a bar to raise money for their local education projects. They specialize in organic mulberry mojitos (they're good, trust us) and all the proceeds go towards education. One of their main projects is a bus to get rural children to school. Since no one can resist a slogan like "Drink for the Children," we spent two days convincing passing foreigners into getting drunk for the sake of making the world a better place. Apparently the farm can raise as much as 5 times the profit when a foreigner works the bar. We are proud to say that on our first day we raised 1.5 million kip for the farm (never mind the conversion rates, just think about how big the number 1.5 million is! It's huge!).

While on the farm we also sat in on a Lao children's hip hop class, helped milk goats, learned how to make goat cheese, and ate mulberry pancakes, mulberry fruitshakes, mulberry tea, deep-fried mulberry leaves, and, of course, mulberry mojitos. So far Laos is treating us pretty well.

Look below Amritsar

We just posted about our time in McLeod Ganj, India and our posting will appear below our Amritsar posting...

Amritsar: Home of the Sikhs

We arrived into Bangkok yesterday and we are now in northern Thailand in a city called Chiang Mai. We are already loving the amazing Thai street food: mango sticky rice, pad thai, fresh fruits, thai iced tea, and crepes!

We still have a lot to share about India. Here are some photos from a city called Amritsar that we visited in August.

Note the "Horn Please." It does not seem that anyone here needs a reminder. This photo was taken on our way to Amritsar - another overnight bus ride in a bus with one of the world's worst horn systems.

The Golden Temple. This is the holiest place in the world for the Sikh religion, and after visiting numerous holy sites in various countries, Alisa and I will be so bold to say that this is our favorite. It seems to us that it is hard to find the fine line between serenity and earthliness. Some places are so serene they feel sterile - the police men and soldiers make the serenity seem so forced that it is no longer human. Then other places are so "human" they can be suffocating - when people can sell merchandise, pee, or take photos on temple grounds in can be harder to find the serenity. For us, the Golden Temple, which receives tens of thousands of visitors a day, still maintained a satisfying balance of the sacred and the profane.

The community kitchen, or langar, is a good example of this balance. Every Sikh temple has a kitchen which serves all who enter, regardless of caste, class, or creed, 24 hours a day.

There were lots of volunteers hard at work to keep everything running very smoothly.

Everyone sits on the floor to eat, partly as a symbol of all people's equality. Even the prime minister of India has eaten on this floor.

Anyone is allowed to sleep inside the temple.

They have rooms with beds for a small fee, but also free accommodation on the floor. The temple also has free accommodation for foreign visitors, like us, in a special dorm room. In this room, we met people from all over, including Mexico, Spain, Malaysia, Korea, China, Ireland, and Argentina. We even randomly ran into Sean Andrew, who goes to Santa Clara University, but we had never met before!

A shoe salesman getting his beard curled.


Hindu gods, Sikh gurus, Indian movie stars, and white babies. This man has it all.

We had the following conversation with this man:

Man: To which country do you belong?
Us: Amerrrica.
Man: Ah, I'm going to Germany next week.
Us: Uh . . . wow, sounds great!

A similar type conversation with a young Indian woman we met 3 weeks ago:

Girl: To which country do you belong?
Us: Amerrrica.
Girl: Ah, my uncle lives in Australia.
Us: Uh . . . wow. We hear Australia's really nice . . .

Usually, though, the conversations are pretty much always like this:

Indian person: To which country do you belong?
Us: Amerrrica.
Indian person: Ah! Amerrrica! Good country! Very rich. My uncle (or aunt or cousin brother or friend) lives in Texas (or Washington DC or California or New Jersey or Chicago).

Until last week, when the conversations suddenly took a sharp turn:

Indian person: To which country do you belong?
Us: Amerrrica.
Indian person: Ah! Amerrrica.! Very bad economy. Very big problems.
Us: Oh . . . uh, yeah.

A man giving tattoos on the street corner next to a man making dentures.

Who wouldn't trust this face with their permanent tattoo?

We went with our new Malaysian friend to watch the nightly showdown at the Indian-Pakistani border. The Indian soldiers were looking pretty sharp.
Hundreds of Indians gather every evening at sundown to watch their soldiers have a dance-off with the Pakistani soldiers. The soldiers shout, high-step, and stomp and the crowd goes wild.

One last shot of the beautiful golden temple at night.