Rickshaws and traffic

Photo: N. Darre, 2007

Photo; N. Darre, 2007

The days pass. And somehow it is a bit difficult to get seated in front of a computer and write about them. But it is important to do. I have to say that as I listen to more lectures from different professors the perspective starts to broaden and connections to form. It is a lot of fun, and of course very interesting.

The food at the Institude is absolutely fantastic. The most famous resturants we have been to have not topped it and we get cooked meals three times a day, breakfast, lunch and dinner. For breakfast there is always some toast and cornflakes for those that find it to much with spicy Indian food for all three meals and for lunch there is normally som Europian dish as well, but always at least two other indian dishes that we can choose from, both vegetarian and meat/fish. I stay on the safe side and am a vegetarian while I am here.

No one in the group has fallen ill yet. We are 18 students and we have been here for 1 1/2 week so that is quite good. But many of us have had problems finding mosquito nets for our beds so prof. Ninan (one of the coordinators of this course, together with prof. Sastry) is going to look into it and order some for us. It is better to be on the safe side as Bangalore is not completely malaria free. Anyway we don't get many bites during the night as we can turn the fan on, it is the sitting outside in the evening that is worst. Then it would be best to wear a mosquito suit from top to toe.

Yesterday we had a great frisby game with some of the Indian PhD students that stay here also in the student rooms. Thanks to our Finish friend who brough this soft aero-thing with him from Germany :) The game was really good but the mosquitos in the field were fierce.

Today, four of us, from Finnland, Iceland, Denmark and Peru took rikshaws down to Commercial street, specifically to check out the FabIndia shop wich was supposed to sell organically grown cotton garments. But as we found, the clothes were not made from organic cotton but they said they were in a transition stage to make the cotton farmning organic. Well, hope that is true. Anyway we all bought something and were really happy with our purchases. Everyone in the group is slowly starting to look more native Indian, I even have a fancy drop-shaped dot between my eyebrowes right now.
Well, when it looked like it would start raining, we ran to get a Rickshaw back home, as they are really hard to find and much more expensive when it rains. The drops started falling and we all mooshed into one Rikshaw, two girls and two guys. It started well, the driver said he knew where he was going and we agreed on 200 Rupees. Shortly after we started driving we almost hit a big car right in the face as somehow we seemed suddenly to be on the wrong side of the road! The rest of the trip was equally exciting as the driver didn't speak English, his driving was crazy, he didn't know where he was going, it was raining and the he kept trying to make us laugh and communicate be giving us a thumb up or making faces as he kept looking back. The traffick was extremely heavy, but finally, we reached ISEC and had a good dinner with a little trouble because of the big laughs.

Here is a little insight to the trip:



The Hare Krishna temple we visited on Saturday must not be forgotten. Hundreds of meters of people standing in rows to get inside. As spoiled rich brats we got to pay our way past the 2 hour long rows (this was the custom), took our shoes of and put them together in big bags. Then we went for the 1 1/2 hour journy in to the Krishna temple, always in the long cue. First there was a small room with a fancy statue welcoming us and after that there was the main temple, kind of hard to describe but after watching a ceremony the cue went on, past different kind of shops, a book store, pastry shop, dining rooms, gift shops with all kinds of godish statues, candles and so on. Actually this day we had arranged for a bus trip, taylored for us around the city and saw also other interesting plases like the Tipu Sultan's Palace and the Bull temple, but the Krishna temple was the hit. In the evening we dined at the Coconut Grove in Church street and ended up on a rock bar as the club we wanted to go to was closed because of renovation.
Luckily our Kashmiran friend from ISEC came with us on the tour this day and totally saved the day as he was able to talk to the driver in a mixture of Hindi, English and Kannada. Kannada is the language spoken in Karnataka state but his native language is Kashmiri or Kashmiran, I don't remember what it is called and he has only been studying here for a year.) He is very nice and now I know a lot about Kashmir wool :-)

Exciting start

Photo: S.Strand, 2007

I am sitting now in the computer room at ISEC (Institude for Social and Economic Change). It is the 23d so the course is starting in a few minutes. What I found out already is that Indian people have a great sense of humor, they are frank and really nice. The campus here at ISEC is neet and nice, some students share rooms (with other students) and all of us share rooms withs a few ants, occational spiders, mosquitos, sometimes cockroaches and some of us are so lucky to have a small lizard witch is very good as it feeds on the mosquitos. Outside we have allready seen a scorpion and lots of colorfull big butterflies. Around the city are a lot of strey dogs and it seems that at night, some monkeys from the forest besides the university like to come into the campus and argue. We haven't seen them yet but we hear them.
The students attending the course are all very interesting people, from Iceland, Finland, Denmark and Sweden. We all have different backgrounds, most of us are doing our masters programs but in political science, environmetal politics, international communication, education, anthropology, forestry, biology etc.

In to the future

My trip started early thursday morning in Iceland, on the 19th of July. With Icelandair to London went well but at the check in with British Airways I learnd that the flight was overbooked and I might not get on it. So I had to wait along with 20 or 30 other people in the same position. After a while I got called forward and they had decided to let me go through and have a seat on buisniss class!! In my mind I had cind of been prepearing myself to simple living in India so this came as veeery big treat, especially as it was a 9 hour flight over night. And what a buisniss class. Never seen anything like it. A privat screen, a seat that could turn into a bed, no one beside me (like a wall between), and servise all the time, starter, dinner, desert, breakfast, coffee, drinks, hot towels to wash hands and face before meels, and even a bag for everyone with things we needed for the night like toothbrush, extra socks, lotions, eyescreen and stuff.
Well, eneugh of buisniss class descriptions. We flew in great weather and with good view, in a Boeng 777, in 10-11 km hight, on 900 km speed in -40 degrees Celcius, away from the sun and 4 1/2 hours in to the future (5 1/2 from Icelandic time). We landed in Bangalore at 5 aclock in the morning Indian time. I met up with Elin from Sweden, also heading to the same course at ISEC and we took a taxi to the Institude.