Hampi

After flipping through my new friend Chris's (from Sadhana Forest) Hampi photos, I was really psyched to go there myself. He told me about watching monkeys stealing handbags from the local shopkeepers (!); I saw plenty of them on the roofs and climbing the gopuram (above), but didn't stop to take photos since I'd already gotten a good one at Mamallapuram.The Virupaksha Temple is situated at the foot of one longish street of restaurants and travel agencies--but not a single grocery store, figure that one out ('Where do you get your food?' I asked one travel agent.  'At home,' he said. Yeah, right. I didn't see any evidence of home gardening anywhere I went, and even so. They must have a top-secret no-tourists-allowed grocery store hidden someplace).Inside the Vitthala Temple.The ruins at Hampi are spread over a large area (something like 26 square km), so it's hard to see everything even if you do rent a bike.  I decided not to because my calf was still acting up, but if I could do it over again I'd take another paracetamol and suck it up.  There were a couple of ruins I really wanted to see (like the elephant stables), but gave up around 4pm after spending too much time in the heat. On the other hand, there are so many temples that, as majestic as they are, they all start to look the same after a couple hours.It was strange to me how few Western tourists I met. I heard one pair comparing Hampi to the Roman forum as I walked by (ancient empire, check. stunning monuments, check...), and marveling at how quiet it was.Goat stampede!

There was something rather Indiana Jones-like about wandering through these ruins. Minus the Nazis, of course.Lakshmi, the temple elephant. Chris said I'd get to see her if I went to the temple around 8am, and sure enough, there she was. After giving blessings to the locals, her trainer rode her down to the river, where he sudsed her up.Beautiful, but you couldn't pay me any amount of money to bathe in it.And a couple photos from the Mango Tree, the fanciest restaurant in Hampi. The food is good (and not as expensive as everyone says) and the views over the river are really lovely. Here's a photo of my thali meal (mentioned in my Madurai post). Not a 'proper' thali, where the waiters keep coming by until you're all rice-and-chutneyed out, but you get the idea.On my way out, I spotted these kitties under a bench. Too cute.After Hampi I took an overnight train (from nearby Hospet—Hampi is a half-hour rickshaw ride from the train station) to Hyderabad en route to Aurangabad (where I'd base myself to see the amazing caves at Ellora and Ajanta). Hilariously skanky "hotel" room, awesome medieval fortress at Golconda. Looking forward to showing you those pics!

Harmony Homestead Dispatch #12

A piece of an old syrup bottle I found when I was digging in the garden.Gail with her pups (Maddy, Ophelia, and Grace).A monarch (?) caterpillar I found in the garden and moved to a milkweed plant by the greenhouse.Back to our favorite swimming-hole on the Poultney River.Greg Marley teaches us about sustainable foraging for wild mushrooms at SolarFest.Shrooms!Naturally, I can't show you pictures from the very best part of my Vermont trip because I forgot to bring my camera. I went to see As You Like It with my friend Sierra—so much fun to see Shakespeare performed on the lawn of a stately old home, and it was such a treat to see my friend Tom playing Jaques—and then we stayed up late watching for shooting stars. We crammed a lot of fun (creek swimming, sloegin fizzes with dinner, Dorset farmer's market) into my last twenty-four hours.I'm home again now. Need to finish up my India blogging before we head off for Turkey in a couple weeks!

Harmony Homestead Dispatch #11

Above: the view from my tent, 6am; nasturtiums from the garden.Below: SALAMANDER!; Shannon spending some QT with Queenie; Michael, Shannon, and Jim hanging out by the campfire before Gail's birthday dinner; another piece of pottery we found in the garden (from homesteaders who worked this land in the early 20th century).It's really good to be back!

Back to London

Through the shop window at Hope & Greenwood. Diarmuid likes to think of it as the magical sweet shop that only appears once a century--which, fortunately for all us sweet-toothed non-fairy folk, is only a fancy.And speaking of Diarmuid and fairy creatures (the author, that is), I was delighted to find this marvelous book on display in the side window at Foyle's:Kate and I arrived around lunchtime (on March 19th), so we met up with Seanan on his break at Foyle's and then went to the National Gallery for the afternoon. The next morning (our only full day in London) we had a big yummy breakfast in view of Tower Bridge, and then did the tour at the Tower of London.Stealth shot! Seanan hates having his picture taken, but Kate managed to capture him on film (hmm, I guess that's a figure of speech now).Then we met up with our cousin, Kate Scherer, for dinner. Kate S.'s grandmother Mary was our grandmother Dorothy's sister (you can see a portrait of all five sisters here). We had never met in person before, and as I explained the relationship to my Kate, 'This is like your granddaughter and my granddaughter getting together for dinner.' Once I'd put it that way we were even more excited to meet her.It was a really nice way to end the trip!

Twelve Hours in Bangalore

10 May.At a shrine to Hanuman (the monkey-god) in the Bull Temple complex a priest and his boy assistant (who was maybe ten) were attending to an idol (maybe three feet tall, on a slanted platform), made of candy and adorned with garlands. They gave me a coconut sweet, but didn't let me take a picture.

I took an overnight bus from Madurai to Bangalore, made my train reservation for Hampi, and then had a whole day to kill, so I went on a city tour. Above: Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace, built around 1790.And just a few silly photos from the botanical gardens:It's Disney time! (That's a working clock behind all the Seven Dwarves statues.)CLASS-AYYYYYYY.I'm turning Japanees, I think I'm turning Japanees, I really think so!I know, I know, that was pretty terrible. I couldn't resist.

Vegan rice pudding

Cardamom growing on one of the spice plantations in Munnar.Remember that article about preserving family recipes my friend Cheryl Tan wrote for the WaPo a few months ago?

For years, Camille DeAngelis, author of "Petty Magic," resisted asking her grandmother and mother for their recipes for meatloaf, apple pie or pumpkin soup, for example, because of "the simple fact that no dish I put together will taste as good as my grandmother's version." Then, earlier this year, she got her grandmother's zucchini souffle recipe and tried it out in her kitchen. "Apparently my grandmother has a great deal more patience than I do. The recipe calls for grated zucchini and onion, but after only a few strokes I gave up and took out the food processor," DeAngelis says.

"The importance, for me," she adds, "lies not so much in the preservation of the recipes themselves as in the memories of family dinners they evoke. Someday I want my children to know their great-grandmothers through the dishes they made."

Since then I've been wanting to share Grandmom Kass's rice pudding recipe, but I'm only now getting around to testing it. This dessert will end up tasting even less like the original now that I'm vegan, but maybe when I make this it can remind me of my grandparents and that beyond-delicious thimbleful of cardamom rice pudding I had in Madurai.

So here's my vegan version. It's easy-peasy and excellent comfort food—the way the cardamom mingles with the vanilla is totally magical.

2/3 cup uncooked white rice (I used 'jasmati')1/3 cup raw sugar1/3 cup raisins4½ cups coconut milk1 teaspoon vanilla6 cardamom pods

Preheat oven to 325º. Mix all ingredients in a large casserole dish. Bake for an hour and fifteen minutes, stirring regularly and taste-testing for sweetness once the rice has softened. Remove cardamom pods and serve hot or cold. Yields 6-8 servings.Some notes:

• You can add more raisins, but it might be a good idea to add more milk too, since they really suck it up while they're cooking.
• Of course you can skip the cardamom pods, or use ground cardamom, but it really does make the dish. (I can't emphasize this enough, actually. Magical. For reals.)
• There's no need to cover the dish with foil (I wasn't sure, so I called my grandmother to check).

Now if only that zucchini soufflé were so easy to veganize! (I picked up a box of egg replacer but I haven't used it yet, so I'm still skeptical.)

Madurai

Detail from one of the gopurams (monumental towers) at the Meenakshi-Sundareswarar temple.Thanks to layovers, I got to see much more than I had originally planned on. I got to Munnar via Madurai, so on the way back I visited the temple there. I must have arrived too late in the day (10 or 10:30, maybe?), because the temple elephant was nowhere to be seen. (I went back and asked the guy who sold my ticket and he pointed out where I might find her, but I never did.) I wasn't too disappointed because (thanks to tips from my new friend Chris at Sadhana) I knew I'd get to see Lakshmi at Hampi.I had the best thali meal of my trip in Madurai, at a place called Sree Sabarees. Forty-five rupees (ONE DOLLAR!) for a huge amount of food, including a little cup of the most delicious cardamom rice pudding! (I didn't take a photo in the restaurant because I already felt like a silly tourist as it was, but I did take a photo of another thali plate in Hampi, so I'll show you that later. In real thali restaurants they give you a banana leaf and come by frequently to refill your 'plate' with rice, curries, chutneys, and pappadam or chapathi, but in other restaurants they just bring you the plate and that's that.)Anyway, back to the temple: it was marvelous, of course, a riot of color and texture and sound (there were loads of market stalls in shopping arcades offering mostly junk, apart from the flower sellers selling their fuchsia and white garlands). You walk into a place like this and realize just how limited and Eurocentric is your grade-school history education. (I felt this times a hundred while I was walking through the ruins at Hampi; but that's for another post.) I really enjoyed walking around (even if going barefoot still squicks me out a bit) and watching people at their devotions.The two statues above are inside the temple art museum.From Madurai, I took an overnight bus to Bangalore for another layover en route to Hampi. I did a city tour that day, though, so I still have plenty of good pics!

24 Hours in Oxford

(Day 1; day 2; day 3; day 4 of our Wiltshire walking trip.)From Bishopstone, we caught a local bus to Swindon and then a double-decker to Oxford, where (first things first!) we had a buffet lunch at an Indian restaurant called 4500 miles from Delhi--which was kind of funny seeing as I was going to make that trip (albeit not to Delhi) just a few weeks later. It was a drizzly day and Kate's foot was kind of bothering her, but we really wanted to do a walking tour around some of the different colleges, and we were really glad we did. There was so much to see: the ornate chapels at each college, stained glass and tapestries and royal portraits, the perfectly manicured greens, stunning architecture and sculpture everywhere you looked. And the gargoyles!The cloisters at New College, which appears in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.Our guide told us the Harry Potter dining hall scenes were filmed here at Christ Church (and then CGI'd up the wazoo; my words, not his), but according to one student's blog the movie people only modeled the set after this room, which makes more sense I suppose.Hertford Bridge. The sun came out right after we finished the tour.University Church of St. Mary the Virgin.We'd heard from several people that we had to check out the Turf Tavern, so we went there for dinner. It was so crowded we couldn't find a table inside, but it was a mild night so we were perfectly happy eating in the beer garden. Gosh, I love these creaky old English pubs!The next morning we took a bus back to London, where we met up with Seanan at Foyle's at lunchtime and passed the rest of the afternoon at the National Gallery. We had one full day in London before we had to go home, which we spent at the Tower of London. Those pics coming soon.

Munnar, part 2

(Munnar, part 1.) Photos from the plantation trek, continued:We passed several groups of plantation workers, some on their lunch break, but our guide asked us not to take photos of them, not that I would have anyway. Soon after we passed them, we came upon a bunch of porcupine quills strewn along the path. Guess the little dude grew new ones.(And yes, it was sharp enough to kill.)At one point the scenery got pretty jungly...Later on in the afternoon it started to pour, and we sheltered on the front porch of a wonderfully friendly family. Candice tried her hand at cat's cradle with one of the daughters while we waited for the rain to stop.The day Sophie and Candice left town (sad!) I went on a day tour arranged through the local tourist office. It wasn't anywhere near as awesome as the plantation trek, although I did enjoy some nice views of Mattupetty Lake and Dam:I think I'll blog about Oxford and London before I continue with India...

Munnar

At Sadhana, on the taxi ride to dinner one night, I overheard Diva telling someone that a certain place was her favorite in all of India. Right away I wanted to know more about the place she was speaking of, because if Diva loved it then I knew I would too. And Munnar did not disappoint!Tea leaves. I expected they'd smell like a cuppa, but there's no scent until they're processed.I did have a bit of a rough time getting there, but I'll skip most of the details and just tell you a cool little story. My calf was hurting so it was difficult to walk, and I was contemplating taking a taxi the rest of the way there (instead of standing for who knows how long at a crowded bus station, which I knew I couldn't really handle at the moment), but I balked at the price. I was having lunch at a hotel restaurant and trying to decide what to do (it was the hotel manager who was arranging the ride for me) when suddenly I heard my grandpa Ted's voice in my head. His voice would strain in a certain way when he got exasperated (which was anytime we were talking politics, of course), and I heard him in that tone of voice I remember so well: "For Chrissakes, honey, order the taxi!"It doesn't matter if it was really him or not. That taxi ride was worth every rupee, and I felt much better in the morning.These photos are from a glorious day trek through tea and spice plantations (established by the British in the 19th century), which we finished off with an utterly delicious vegan-apart-from-the-raita lunch prepared by one of the guys from Green View. Highly, highly recommended.No matter how beautiful or enjoyable you can find a place on its own, it's even better when you can experience it with new friends. I tagged along with Candice and Sophie, both from England, on the plantation trek, and we got to hang out for a couple days afterward. Sophie shared her knowledge of vegan baking, and Candice gave me loads of travel tips for Turkey (August 8th!!) and elsewhere. We sat on the roof patio at Green View drinking the local teas, eating takeaway samosas and talking for hours. They made me miss Sadhana less.(As my friend Rich reminded me last night, life is a series of calculated risks, and this one was so worth it. You can get a better sense of the drop in this photo.)Coming upon a bunch of guys building treehouses was another highlight. I want to live there SO BAD.More Munnar photos soon--too many good ones to fit in one post!

Wiltshire Adventure, day 4

(Day 1; day 2; day 3.)I've been so intent on blogging about India that I almost forgot I hadn't finished our England trip! We had another excellent breakfast (more veggie sausages!) at The Old Forge before setting out from East Kennett for Bishopstone, hopefully by way of Ogbourne St. George (isn't that a great name?) I knew this was going to be a long day of walking, but it turned out to be a really long day of walking.That was later, though. In the morning we just enjoyed the foggy landscape.We saw another white horse, this one at Winterbourne Bassett. From a Wiltshire tourism website:

Hackpen Hill lies below The Ridgeway on the edge of the Marlborough Downs and affords wonderful views of the Wiltshire countryside. Its Horse is known as the Hackpen, Broad Hinton or Winterbourne Bassett Horse and was cut in 1838, probably to commemorate Queen Victoria's coronation. Measuring 27½ by 27½ metres, it can sometimes be seen from as far as the downs near the Cherhill horse but only when newly scoured.

Barbury Castle Country Park.Like I said, the original plan was to stop in Ogbourne St. George (since the NYT article makes The Inn with the Well sound awfully atmospheric, and you know I like atmospheric) for lunch or at least tea, but that turned out to be completely unrealistic. Even with bypassing the town and shaving off two (?) miles using the Gypsy Lane track, we still arrived in Bishopstone after the sun had set, tired and cranky and stressed from having to walk on the main road. What's that, you say? Why would you have to walk on a busy road when this is meant to be a national trail?See that black part between the light blue and the brown? Dear National Trail people: IF I'D WANTED TO WALK ALONG A HIGHWAY I COULD HAVE DONE IT AT HOME. (We were on the road along the brown part too. No pedestrian path to be seen.) We kept asking each other, "Do you remember that Times writer mentioning this part?" Guess what: he didn't. Darn you, Henry Shukman!(While we're on the subject of feeling misled, we realized as we studied the map that the Ridgeway Trail actually incorporates only a portion of the original neolithic road. The rest of it is formed by ordinary public footpaths and such. The original route is marked "Old Ridgeway.")We had a reservation at the Royal Oak, a very pleasant bar with a couple of rooms off the parking lot out back. This place is known for their organic local produce and beers. The food was great (we asked for something off the menu since the mushroom fettuccini wasn't going to hack it, and wound up with a really wonderful meal--colcannon and chickpeas and tahini with kale and beets; creme brulee and pears poached in mulled wine for dessert!), but the room itself wasn't so amazing. Margot and Sheryll (our B&B hostesses on the first two nights) had totally spoiled us; when you stay at a pub you probably won't find it so homely (or clean). Oh well, it was clean enough.(Okay, I'm done complaining now!)

Kate: I get a point and a half. I asked for directions.

Me: Not that this is a competition or anything.

Kate: But I'm still winning.

(This is from day 1, on our way to Stonehenge, but I forgot to include it.)Enjoying the sunny afternoon, maybe an hour or so before we hit the highway.(In the morning we took a local bus to Swindon, where we caught a double-decker to Oxford and had a great time wandering around. So Oxford is next.)

Sadhana Forest, part 3

(Part 1; part 2.)A passionflower growing outside the kitchen.April 9th.'Rode back to Sadhana Forest in a red truck on top of 350 coconuts, all the men in trucks and tractors staring down at my bare legs, and I just kept thinking 'I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts...'Another view from my pillow, late afternoon.Diva, Franzi, and Remy performing at open stage Wednesday night. (Diva is using her new aforementioned singing bowl.)Jaspreet henna'ed Annika's hands. Gorgeous.Chloe and Remy. Such an adorable couple, and so much fun to be around. April 28th.One of the dogs left a GIGANTIC rat right outside the kitchen last night. Steph told Sen (the appointed "rodent relocator" this week) to move it into the forest to let nature do its thing, and Sen reluctantly applied himself to the task with a rice sack.

Me (sympathetically): Thanks for doing that, Sen.

Sen: My pleasure!

Just the way he said it cracked me up.Elisa, Christian, Annika, and Judith making dinner.Part of why I love Sadhana Forest is that you can feel like you're doing something useful every single day. I've tried volunteering plenty of times before, and each time I wound up frustrated, oftentimes because it seemed like resources (particularly of the human kind) were going to waste through inefficient (or downright ineffective) planning. For instance, I signed up for an afterschool mentoring program and got linked up with a sixth-grader just because my birthday is in November and his is in December. This was meant to be something we had in common, I kid you not. He gave me monosyllabic answers to open-ended questions and stopped coming after the third week. I've also tried volunteering for the elderly and housebound a couple different times, which is hard because when people are lonely they can expect a little too much of you; and in another instance I asked a volunteer coordinator repeatedly to hook me up with someone who wasn't already getting a few visitors a week, someone who might really need a visitor, and he never got back to me. It kinda feels like I'm saying 'I can't deal with people, I prefer seeds', but when it's just you and the earth and a packet of cosmic purple, or you and a vat of daal and a crew of hungry gardeners, swale waterers, and woodchoppers, there's none of the nonsense involved when somebody's dropping a ball or giving you a guilt trip because you've been visiting them for only two hours. Does that make sense?Anyway, suffice it to say I left Sadhana feeling changed in the best possible way, and I can definitely see myself going back there someday.Next post: a trek through the tea and spice plantations of Munnar!

Mamallapuram

Capucine and Diva at a 6th-century temple on the outskirts of town.The day after Pondicherry, fifteen or so of us piled into a rickety old bus headed for Mamallapuram (Mahabalipuram), an excursion Tobias had very kindly organized. It was darn hot, so we took a stroll through the surf and ended up at a beachside restaurant for cool drinks before visiting the Shore Temple, a UNESCO World Heritage site dating to the early 8th century. (It's itty bitty in the beach photo below.)A few shots of the Shore Temple:

Catherine and Tobias.Later on we visited the other thing Mamallapuram is known for, a series of 'caves'--rock cut temples, with intricate bas reliefs--inside a public park. They were carved mostly in the 7th and 8th centuries.And of course, some of us had to go and feed the monkeys:These elephants are probably the most photographed thing in Mamallapuram. They are awesome.Then we went back to a friend's house for a snack before the bumpy two (or was it three?)-hour ride back to Sadhana Forest. I've got one more batch of photos to share from Sadhana, so I'll post that next.

Squam!

Welcome to Nirvana! (I never get tired of that joke.)This past week I was in New Hampshire for an incredibly fun and relaxing fiber arts/needlework retreat, Squam Art Workshop. Home again, I'm a little sad it's over (missing my new friends!) and crossing my fingers I can go back next year, but I'm also feeling really inspired by all the lovely things everyone was making.Mary Jane makes beautiful swatches. 'I could knit worms all day!'It was a delight to be able to sit and knit and chat with other people who are just as obsessed with their knitting as I am, but more importantly, I realized just how few creative risks I've been taking lately. I need to figure out how to snap out of my routine (writing-wise and creative-wise in general) and find new ways of looking at the world. Last week I like to think I made some headway.I took a class called Inventing Stitch Patterns with Cat Bordhi. By no means the prettiest stitch pattern in the world, but you've got to start somewhere!It was really magical to be able to fall asleep (on the first night, anyway; after that it got too cold to keep the windows open) to the sound of the lake-waves lapping on the shore, and the loons making their eerie night-calls. I dunked my feet in every day and tried to swim once, but I couldn't feel my skin and so decided a thirty-second dip was plenty long enough.Mary Jane's class, in which I finally got the handle of proper colorwork technique.Here's a (totally crappy, sorry) photo of Jonatha Brooke performing at the Playhouse on Wednesday night. I've been a huge fan of hers since I was in my early teens, so it was pretty amazing to be able to chat with her over dinner. She's a lovely person and an absolutely incredible songwriter. (Check her out on Youtube. And then on iTunes!)(I also got to meet Barbara Delinsky, who was very nice and interested in hearing more about my books! A bunch of us had a knitting circle-slash-chat-about-publishing on Saturday afternoon.)How gorgeous is this quilt? My awesomely talented roomie Lizzy House designed it. I picked up the pattern at the Squam Art Fair even though (realistically) it'll be years before I get around to making it. In the meantime, though, it's nice to dream about.Amy, Anne, and Lizzy at Lizzy's table. I also got to see Cal Patch, with whom I took a patternmaking workshop a year and a half or so ago (blogged about it here). Every day in the dining hall was basically a Cal Patch fashion show!Noel and Elizabeth, who organizes the whole workshop. She is awesome.And of course, even though I said I was NOT going to acquire any more yarn, ahem, I did.Merino-cashmere sock yarn hand-dyed by the marvelous Jill Draper.I didn't have to leave too early on Sunday, so I got to hang out on one of the docks with Amy and Noel for awhile. We had a great old chat about books (among other things).So what is it, 360 days until the next spring session? Haha!(Oh, and there are more photos on the Squam June 2011 Flickr group.)

Great Book #38: A Passage to India

Noise, noise, the Europeanized band louder, incense on the altar, sweat, the blaze of lights, wind in the bananas, noise, thunder, eleven-fifty by his wrist-watch, seen as he threw up his hands and detached the tiny reverberation that was his soul. Louder shouts in the crowd. He danced on.India has a way of changing you. Every place you go is, as they say, 'an assault on the senses,' and every new experience has within it the potential for either sublimity or profound unpleasantness. It overwhelms you, you can't get a handle on it; and while you're questioning your surroundings you also begin to question yourself, and your reasons for coming here in the first place. You don't need to spend a month in an ashram to come to this point. You need only board a rickety old public bus on which every passenger is staring at you like they just saw you tumble out of a rocketship.[She] had learnt that Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate. Adventures do occur, but not punctually.In my case, questioning myself and my motives led to a marvelous eye-opening experience of India. But I also live in a society that values cultural exchange, a society that, in theory anyway, that has long since washed its hands of colonialism and its attendant evils. I felt a little sheepish choosing A Passage to India for my trip reading (E.M. Forster being on the list and all), and then I figured that it's probably not a cliché unless you're as nerdy as I am. This novel made me squirm on every page, as it was written to; Forster obviously spent a lot of time among the ruling classes during his time in India, and in writing this book was reacting with a degree of sensitivity and insight that was forty years ahead of its time. (He visited India for the first time in 1912, and finished the novel in 1924.)At the beginning of the story plain, sensible young Adele Quested and her potential mother-in-law Mrs. Moore arrive in Chandrapore to meet the latter's son, Ronny Heaslop, the city magistrate. Eager for a glimpse of the "real" India, both English ladies chafe against the snobbery and hypocrisy so rampant at "the club," where officials' wives hide themselves to avoid dealing with the natives. After a chance meeting in the local mosque one night, Mrs. Moore makes friends with the bright, arrogant, capricious young Dr. Aziz, who in turn cultivates the friendship of English school principal (and social misfit) Cyril Fielding. These tender new connections lead to an excursion to the Marabar Caves; there an unfortunate misunderstanding culminates in Aziz's arrest and a farce of a trial, in which his fate has already been decided through his skin color. To put it succinctly in the thoughts of Hamidullah, a leading member of Muslim society in Chandrapore: "Here all was wire-pulling and fear."On every page Forster's prose snatched my breath from me. Each description is shot through with ruthless insight, whether he's describing a city or landscape (Houses do fall, people are drowned and left rotting, but the general outline of the town persists, swelling here, shrinking there, like some low but indestructible form of life), a national character (He was even tender to the English; he knew at the bottom of his heart that they could not help being so cold and odd and circulating like an ice stream through his land), or human nature by way of one pill in particular:

India had developed sides of [Ronny's] character that [Adela] had never admired. His self-complacency, his censoriousness, his lack of subtlety, all grew vivid beneath a tropic sky; he seemed more indifferent than of old to what was passing in the minds of his fellows, more certain that he was right about them or that if he was wrong it didn't matter.

This is the universal attitude of British officialdom in Chandrapore, and Forster shows a very different 'lack of subtlety' in revealing one by one the appalling racism and ignorance of virtually every soul in the club. Why, the kindest thing one can do to a native is to let him die--one of the "ladies" actually says that. To find such disgusting sentiments expressed without censure, and everyone constantly manipulating each other under the guise of polite society and colonial order, all the snubs and missteps between people who only pretend they can stand each other--like I said, this is an exhausting book. Forster will show you a lovely moment of kinship, and in the next paragraph snuff it out in a twist of pettiness. A soldier with whom Dr. Aziz has passed a silent but very satisfying evening of polo on an empty playing ground later mentions the episode when the doctor is in prison--to the effect that the sportsman is the rare decent native, the prisoner a common monster--unaware, of course, that they're one and the same man; or when Aziz offers his own collar stud to Fielding, pretending it's a spare, and later Heaslop notices with snooty satisfaction that Aziz's collar is turning up.The novel ends on an odd note, with Aziz and Fielding coming to the conclusion that they greatly value each other's friendship and yet they can't remain friends. Allegory over character, but it's only a quibble. So, yeah...not exactly what most people would consider holiday reading, but then again, like most trips I take, this wasn't really a vacation as such. More trip photos coming soon.

Pondicherry

When I first landed in Auroville, I borrowed a bike from my guesthouse and cycled into Pondicherry, the nearest city, to pick up  mosquito net and an adapter for my laptop before arriving at Sadhana Forest the next day. (Pondicherry's official name reverted to the de-anglicized Puducherry a few years ago, but everyone, Indians included, was still calling it Pondicherry, or Pondy for short.) You have no idea how crazy Indian traffic is until you're in it; I kept thinking as I dodged motorbikes driving on the wrong side of the highway, 'if Mumsy could see me right now she would be horrified.'Anyway, I went back one afternoon with my lovely new friends and explored the city in a much more relaxed way.First we had a proper Indian breakfast on Koot Road before hopping the bus (four rupees!) Diva snapped this photo of Jaspreet, Kate, Capucine (who can't ever seem to resist sticking her tongue out), me, and Danielle.If there was a contest for bloodthirstiest deity, d'you think this gal would take it?I spotted this rooster hangin' out just beside the Kali shrine (above).An elaborate gopuram at one of the Hindu temples (I can't recall which one).(Yeah, right!) Capucine and Diva.Pondicherry was once a French colony, so it has a quieter, vaguely European-feeling section we walked through later on in the afternoon.Of course, we spent the afternoon either eating or shopping. We had cucumber mint and pineapple juices and picked up healthy snacks (sweets made of dates and ginger, that sort of thing) at the local health food store, paid a visit to a French bakery (where after eating a few petits fours Danielle whipped out her toothbrush; 'there is no one in all the world like you,' I said), and shopped for journals, cards, and stationery at the excellent Sri Aurobindo Paper Factory. And Diva finally purchased the beautiful singing bowl she'd been thinking about since she first saw it at a Tibetan imports shop. It was such a nice day!Next post: a day trip to Mamallapuram.

Sadhana Forest, part 2

Tobias pulling a Rohit (i.e., making a jungle gym out of the rafters in the main hut!)There were certain things I wanted to take photos of--the handwashing and dishwashing stations, the herbal tooth powder (which doesn't taste as yucky as it looks), the bathroom stalls and so on, to give you a sense of how responsibly the community uses its resources. (I didn't take too many photos at Sadhana Forest because I was too busy doing; and by the time I was getting ready to leave, I was too busy packing and saying my goodbyes to remember to take those pics.)In 'showering' (i.e., filling a bucket at the pump and using a cup to dip in and pour over yourself in a shower stall) or washing your hands, you realize just how little water you actually need to get clean. I was able to wash my hair and shave my legs with less than half a bucket of water (just a couple gallons). A 'proper shower' is actually really wasteful, and I want to remember that whenever I shower at home.Also, there is zero shame attached to bodily functions at Sadhana Forest, which is really (for want of a better word) refreshing (I mean, c'mon, everybody does it, so what's the sense pretending you don't?) There's even a demonstration of how to use the toilets at the Sunday meeting. The thing that sometimes squicks out new volunteers is the lack of toilet paper. Yup. You use your fingers, and then you wash 'em two or three times. No problem. (If you're really curious about the toilets, check out Danielle's blog. She took photos.)Baby cacti!Life at Sadhana Forest is always fun, even when you're out working in the heat. One of the many things I love about the community is how we're encouraged to share what we know; so one afternoon I did a knitting workshop. I don't often get to hang out with other knitters, let alone teach new ones, so this was a huge treat for me!New knitters Beth, Sharri, Annika, and T.And a couple more fun moments:Impromptu back and headrubs (with Capucine, Rohit, and Beth), every day of the week.The Sunday evening meeting is always themed; this week it was 'famous couples,' so Sam and Charles came as 'Adam and Steve.' Brilliant and hilarious.Next post: an afternoon in Pondicherry.

Sadhana Forest

You'll never find a warmer welcome (and I'm not just talking about the signage).Why India? Why not? I learned and grew so much through my time in Vermont last summer that I wanted to volunteer farther afield. I was perusing the WWOOF* India boards, read glowing reports about a reforestation project-slash-eco-community in southern India called Sadhana Forest, filled out the volunteer form, got a wonderfully friendly reply from Sadhana founders Aviram and Yorit, and suddenly I was all set.(*WWOOF stands for Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms. It's a program through which you trade your labor for room and board. I've heard some people have had less positive experiences, but my time at Harmony Homestead Farm was truly life-changing. Also, I should note that Sadhana Forest isn't actually affiliated with WWOOF--accommodation is always free, but since they have no income they aren't able to pay for volunteers' food, so you contribute about $4 a day for your upkeep.)Baby forest.Short-term volunteers are coming and going on a daily basis, but Sadhana Forest is a happy and loving place at any given time, the kind of place that will change you if you want it to--and I did. Through several conversations with my new friend Jamey (who is also from Jersey--funny how you travel so far to meet people who only live an hour away) and reading The China Study, I decided to cut all animal products from my diet. Sadhana Forest is 100% vegan, so the transition couldn't have been easier (even when I left the Forest, I didn't have any trouble finding ghee-free meals. Yay for Hindu cooking!) So yeah, that's the biggest change, and I'm hoping to blog regularly about veganism from now on (yummy recipes, clearing up misconceptions, all that sor of thing). I've also given up my morning coffee--having to get up at 5:30 every weekday morning and be productive without any caffeine whatsoever, well, that'll do it!(As for the work schedule, they do two two-hour shifts in the morning, with breakfast in between, and then you typically pick up a couple more shifts during the afternoons and weekends. Somebody's got to work during down time--otherwise nobody eats! I arrived during the dry season, which means there was no tree-planting going on, but I did get to do plenty of watering.)Tobias, my swale-watering and kitchen buddy, zonked after first work.Jamey giving an introductory talk about the history and mission of Sadhana Forest to visitors before Eco Film Club and free vegan dinner for all.On our excursions through nearby villages I saw plenty of scenes of everyday life. It isn't really possible to snap photos when you're riding your bike down a concrete lane all a-buzz with children playing (and jubilantly shouting hello, and wanting to shake your hand), women pumping water or hanging up laundry, chickens and dogs and cattle and lambs wandering about, so I can't show you all that I would typically see on a bike ride. I can tell you, though, that much of what I saw you would have categorized as abject poverty--and yet everyone I passed seemed perfectly content. So strange, at first, to see women looking like queens in exquisite saris passing in and out of mud-floor huts. Goes to show you how little a person actually needs to be well and happy, right? Turns out all I needed was a good cup of tea and a new dear friend; some of my very favorite Sadhana memories are going with Diva to the nearest chai shop, where the hard-working owner bears an uncanny resemblance to Clark Gable (it's just the moustache, but it still makes me giggle). We sat on wooden boxes behind a blue tarp, with a view of the local temple if we pulled back the plastic, savoring our chai (mine sans milk) and talking about wanting to be better people and how we proposed to go about it.We always leave our shoes at the door.The view from my pillow.More photos and stories in my next post. (Please feel free to ask me questions too--sometimes I'm not sure which aspects of life at Sadhana Forest are most interesting to people who haven't been there yet.)

Snapshots from India

Above: a loofah Stephanie picked for me. Below: Danielle, Diva, Jaspreet, Kate, and Capucine, out for Saturday breakfast on Koot Road.Above: Candice and Sophie on our Munnar plantation trek, coming upon a man preparing wood for treehouse-building. Below: one of the intricate floor paintings at the Madurai temple.Above: one of the mosques inside the fort of Golconda. Below: the Kailasanatha Temple at the Ellora caves.Proper entry coming soon!

Wish You Were Here

On a trek around the tea and spice plantations of Munnar.Blogging while I'm away is proving pretty much impossible. I'll be back May 18th!