TravelStream™ news feed for member jasonfults on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/jasonfults en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Sat, 19 Apr 2008 11:55:49 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasonfults/asia_2006/1176448080/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasonfults/asia_2006/1176448080/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasonfults/asia_2006/1176448080/tpod.html Sat, 19 Apr 2008 11:55:49 -0400 Saturn in Leo

Jump to the full
entry & travel map

New Delhi, India

My love affair with Delhi was unfortunately rather short-lived. Likely one of the oldest continually-habitated spots on Earth, the city is certainly many-layered, and the deeper I dug the more I appreciated all that Delhi has to offer culturally and historically. Sadly, the day-to-day drudgery of just surviving and getting around there makes it difficult to appreciate the city's finer points. Especially after spending some time in India's more tranquil rural environs, I began to view its cities as what one friend calls "a case study in urbanization gone awry." I can't speak authoritatively on this subject, but it seems to me that many of Delhi's problems stem from a relatively low population density (as compared with other major metropolitan areas around the world) and seemingly endless sprawl coupled with lack of funds and inadequate municipal infrastructure.

The tremendous surface area that the city occupies has all sorts of negative ramifications, for delivery of basic services like energy and water, for waste management, and especially for transportation. And all of these inadequacies pile up atop one another, leaving we, its hapless residents, with "Delhi lung" from constantly breathing poisoned air, and about as bad a case of road rage as I've ever seen anywhere. As another friend often says, "I don't like the person that Delhi makes me."

But still, all that being said, there are some nice parks scattered around the city if you can get there in one piece, and many of them are dotted with spectacular Mughal-era ruins. There also remain traces of the wild and beautiful still poking up through cracks in the pavement. For Delhi's sake, and my own, I attempt to document a few of those here...
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasonfults/asia_2006/1173808620/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasonfults/asia_2006/1173808620/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasonfults/asia_2006/1173808620/tpod.html Mon, 14 Apr 2008 21:03:21 -0400 Saturn in Leo

Jump to the full
entry & travel map

New Delhi, India

[mid-May, 2007: It's already been two months since I arrived in Delhi and so much has transpired that I've scant had an opportunity to write about any of it. Finally, after a few weeks of (surprisingly) only mild stomach discomfort, an alien life form has found its way into my gut and is slowly, painfully liquefying my insides. My immune system is putting up a good fight, and I'm doing my best to starve the bugger. Yet while the battle rages on I am able to do little more than lay in bed, a few feet from the toilet; so it seemed like an ideal time to finally jot down a few words.]

I arrived in Delhi via train from Mumbai early one March morning. A rain had refreshed the city only hours before, and the temperature was near-perfect; such rare climatic conditions, combined with an uncharacteristic stillness about the place, had me questioning for a moment if perhaps I'd gotten off at the wrong station. As my taxi wound its way south however I was reunited with familiar sights-the hectic disarray of Paharganj, the consumerist cornucopia of Connaught Place, the grandiosity of India Gate, a smogged-out Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in the distance, then finally the posh parks and markets of Greater Kailash Part 1, which had been my brief but much-reminisced upon stomping grounds seven months prior.

At the ground floor of house #C-96 I found some familiar faces: a somewhat more filled-out Vishnu, in the midst of preparing breakfast for one Mr. SC Gupta, who perhaps had also filled out a bit more in my absence. After exchanging some pleasantries with Mr. Gupta and learning that I would have yet another housemate, a Libyan computer programmer named Mohamed who is here studying English, I eagerly unpacked my bags for what I hoped would be the second to last time.

As might be expected, the Indian authorities in Kuala Lumpur had made some mistakes processing my visa, so my second order of business was to get that taken care of. I contacted the U.S. Fulbright office here in Delhi right away, and together we spent the next several days haunting the corridors of countless self-important bureaucrats and battling the hordes of other misplaced expats; a fascinating, infinitely-frustrating, and in retrospect pretty essential experience in getting to know India's innards. There was some concern for a moment that I might have to make a visa run across the border to Kathmandu, but I could hardly complain. Especially as I watched so many desperate, angry, and often pained faces all around me, from seemingly every corner of the globe, jockey for their own legal status, I was reminded yet again of just how privileged my own position here is.

In the afternoons and early evenings, once the rajas of the bureaucracy had retired to their desks and ceased entertaining the pleas of the masses, I would take strolls around central Delhi, trying to soak in as much of the gorgeous weather as possible. On the occasion of my first social outing with one of the other Fulbrighters and a group of her friends, I asked someone just how long we could expect such pleasant weather; in response she simply smiled and looked down at her watch. Indeed, I appear to have arrived at the tail end of Delhi's own "fifth season," a much-too-brief interval that falls fleetingly between "the hot, the wet, and the cold." In no time at all, the sun has awoken from its respite and gotten back to work on kicking our asses, with daily temperatures routinely reaching 110 degrees. I hear the worst is yet to come...
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasonfults/asia_2006/1206193080/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasonfults/asia_2006/1206193080/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasonfults/asia_2006/1206193080/tpod.html Thu, 03 Apr 2008 13:38:32 -0400 Saturn in Leo

Jump to the full
entry & travel map

New Delhi, India

Those zany folks at the Fulbright office scheduled me to give a public lecture on my last full day in India ("Tracking Sustainability: New Development Paradigms Require New Systems of Accounting"), so much of my last few days were spent preparing for that. One week in advance of the Fulbright lecture, I scheduled a separate talk at the NGO where I'd been volunteering for the past year, the Centre for Science & Environment (CSE), so that I could share my thoughts with folks there and get their feedback. It turned out that the night before my CSE talk was the Vernal Equinox, and as my Indian colleagues reminded me (I wasn't aware of it, myself) my talk fell on Good Friday. Throw in Mawlid--the Muslim observation of the Prophet Mohammed's birthday, Purim for the Jews, the Baha'i new year, and Magha Puja for the Buddhists, and you've got one helluva auspicious day to be giving a lecture. I reckon it went pretty well. Immediately after my talk I was summoned up to CSE's rooftop canteen, where things began to get a little psychedelic. And that was only the beginning...

In addition to all the other religious festivities, Friday was also the official opening of Holi, probably one of the most important Hindu holidays and a major reason I'd decided to stick around Delhi for a few extra months. As with other Hindu celebrations I'd witnessed over the past year (though none quite so raucous!) Holi celebrates the victory of good over evil, with Lord Krishna as the central figure in this instance. Honestly, it is probably the wildest holiday I've ever celebrated. You take all the revelrous mayhem of Carnival or Mardi Gras, minus the sexual flamboyance, of course (this is India, after all); mix in the prankster spirit of Halloween (on steroids); then inject the entire populace with a "heroic dose" of Bhang (highly concentrated, liquid derivative of cannabis), and you can perhaps begin to imagine the ensuing chaos. Thank Krishna there were no fireworks involved this time around!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasonfults/asia_2006/1205155920/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasonfults/asia_2006/1205155920/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasonfults/asia_2006/1205155920/tpod.html Thu, 03 Apr 2008 09:34:57 -0400 Saturn in Leo

Jump to the full
entry & travel map

New Delhi, India

"Kya hoa?!?" on the train...
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasonfults/asia_2006/1204136640/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasonfults/asia_2006/1204136640/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasonfults/asia_2006/1204136640/tpod.html Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:28:40 -0500 Saturn in Leo

Jump to the full
entry & travel map

Agra, India

Arrived at 5 am in the morning (train from jhansi-->agra; amelia continued on to delhi), sightseeing till late, then back out the door less than 24hrs later
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasonfults/asia_2006/1203963600/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasonfults/asia_2006/1203963600/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasonfults/asia_2006/1203963600/tpod.html Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:23:34 -0500 Saturn in Leo

Jump to the full
entry & travel map

Khajuraho, India

Khajuraho Festival of Dances 2008
Aruna Mohanty
(Bhuvaneshwar--Odissi)
Sumeeta Sharma
(New Delhi--Kathak)
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasonfults/asia_2006/1203789240/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasonfults/asia_2006/1203789240/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasonfults/asia_2006/1203789240/tpod.html Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:00:21 -0500 Saturn in Leo

Jump to the full
entry & travel map

Orchha, India

Reached Jhansi by train (from Jalgaon) early in the a.m., then caught a rickshaw to Orchha. Spent a few hours there, then got on the road, slept for a few hours in Khajuraho, then up again early in the a.m. headed for Panna.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasonfults/asia_2006/1203442620/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasonfults/asia_2006/1203442620/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasonfults/asia_2006/1203442620/tpod.html Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:47:23 -0500 Saturn in Leo

Jump to the full
entry & travel map

Pune, India

...the Garden City (is this correct?)
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasonfults/asia_2006/1203183180/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasonfults/asia_2006/1203183180/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasonfults/asia_2006/1203183180/tpod.html Tue, 04 Mar 2008 12:36:23 -0500 Saturn in Leo

Jump to the full
entry & travel map

Murud, India

By boat, then bus, then rickshaw
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasonfults/asia_2006/1203094560/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasonfults/asia_2006/1203094560/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jasonfults/asia_2006/1203094560/tpod.html Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:59:00 -0500 Saturn in Leo

Jump to the full
entry & travel map

Mumbai (Bombay), India

Elephanta Festival 2008
Dr. Ananda Shankar Jayant (Kuchipudi)
Ustad Zakir Hussain (Tabla)
]]>