#5 - Sites

(#5 is the sites… my words cannot do justice to describe the sheer beauty and power of these places…)

Hello, my name is Kristen, and I’m a site-seeing addict.

Really, it is the ancient and cultural sites that I crave to see, and I will pay whatever, go wherever, and do whatever to see them.  Get up at 5:00 AM and stand in two lines to see the Taj Mahal?  No problem.  Drag Ayla around for three days to see the Angkor Wat temples?  Done.  Climb a mountain to see a Buddhist peace pagoda even though I’m sick as a dog?  Pffft.  Get into a car with a man I barely know to see a significant Islamic complex?  Hahaha… of course.

I don’t know where this craving comes from.  I view it as part of my worldly education – to learn more and understand more the foreign cultures that I keep stepping into, and also to understand where we’ve come from as human beings.  It’s amazing to see all of this art and architecture and realize that real humans made all of this, without modern technology.  Seriously, we’re capable of amazing things.

I also hope that the money I spend getting there, staying there, and touring goes to benefit the preservation of these sites and the livelihood of the local people.  I do not want to lose these cultural icons.  And we’re in danger of losing some of them, through bad preservation, mismanagement of funds, and encroaching urbanism.

Each place probably merits its own blog post, but I will have to crunch them into one.  I’ve included a sample of the sites I’ve seen – beware, there are a lot of pictures – and I hope that others are as lucky and privileged as I am and can visit them one day.

Shrine of Shah Jalal in Sylhet, Bangladesh - a mosque and complex dedicated to a significant Muslim missionary from the 1300s.

The National Monument in Dhaka and the martyrs monument in Chittagong, Bangladesh - both places dedicated to the fight for independence from Pakistan, and the mother language of Bangla.

The funerary ghats in Varanasi, India - a very holy Hindu place on the Ganges river where people go to die.

Khajuraho Temple Complexes in Khajuraho, India - a collection of medieval Hindu (and some Jain) temples, one famous for its erotic sculptures.

Taj Mahal in Agra, India - a mausoleum built by Shah Jahan in memory of his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal; it is one of the finest examples of Mughal architecture.

Jaisalmer Fort in Jaisalmer and the Bada Bagh Cenotaphs outside of Jaisalmer, India - a modern living fort and a cemetery, both examples of fine sandstone architecture in the Thar Desert.

Swayambhu and Boudhanath stupas in Kathmandu, Nepal - two large Buddhist stupas that serve as religious focal points and tourist sites in the Nepali capital.

Patan Durbar Square in Kathmandu and the World Peace Pagoda in Pokhara, Nepal - a sprawling urban complex of temples and palaces in the capital, and a modern Buddhist pagoda.

Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, and Banteay Srei, near Siem Reap, Cambodia - all fine examples of carving and architecture from the ancient Angkor kingdom.

*Again, so many thanks for the photos courtesy of Jessi Hinz!

#6 - Clothes

(#6 is clothes... and yes, I will admit that I had just the teeniest, tiniest - read: gigantic - obsession with the clothes in southern Asia.)

I warn you, this post will hold plenty of gratuitous narcissism.

It was a long-running joke among some of the volunteers that I was a shopaholic, which may come as a surprise to my friends and family in the States. I'm usually a horrible penny pincher, but jee, something sure snapped in me.

I was absolutely fascinated by the clothing in Bangladesh - the meters and meters of luxurious fabrics, the stunning embroidery, the multitudes of ribbons and mirrors and beads. The magpie inside of me went "oooh, shiny!!!" at every turn.

It was hard to resist. Part of me reasoned it all by saying hey, this top or piece of fabric would cost x amount more in the States, so it won't hurt to buy it... or hey, I didn't have an outfit in that color quite yet... or man, this was a very unique design/texture/whatever. Safe to say, I probably amassed a good $1000, give or take, in clothing alone. Oops.

Sadly, what follows is barely even half of what I bought and owned over the course of my time in Bangladesh. Looking back, a part of me is ashamed that I spent all this money on clothing... but I can't help but adore all the pretty things I now own.

In Khajuraho, India, Jessi and I happened upon a shop owned by a Kashmiri man who went by the name of "Super Mario."  He was quite the character, and a very good salesman, I might add.  We were bloated on delicious Kashmiri tea, draped in sumptuous Pashmina scarves, and slowly swindled out of a couple thousand rupees.  Wherever you went, you had to bargain hard, or otherwise people would take advantage of your foreign-ness (which we found especially true in India and Thailand). 

Hands down, my favorite store in Bangladesh was Aarong, which was owned and operated by BRAC, the world's largest NGO.  Remember how when you were little, your mom would promise you a trip to the toy store if you were good?  Yeah, that's what going to Aarong was like for me.  I invested plenty in tunic tops - just a shirt, sometimes simple, sometimes elaborately stitched.

I also bought several shalwar kameez at Aarong.  The shalwar kameez was the full outfit set that included the scarf (dupatta), tunic (kameez), and pants (shalwar).  When you went into the store, they were just lined up on the walls, arranged by color and price.  Sadly, the majority of employees recognized me by the end of the year... haha.

Another favorite place to shop was Deshal, affectionately dubbed the "newspaper store" because the walls were papered with a newspaper print.  They had cheaper, basic cotton shalwar kameez and tunics for sale.  They were so comfortable that one became my standard travel outfit for whenever I took a bus or plane.

 

You could also buy fabrics, either one at a time or as a three piece set.  Then you took them to a tailor, got measured, and usually had them finished in a week.  I bought several of them in different corners of Bangladesh, Nepal, and India.  They remain some of my favorites.

Above, you can see how a standard three-piece might look like: usually plainer fabric for the pants, a large stretch of material for the top, and either a finished or unfinished scarf.  On the right, I'm accompanied by two of my lovely Nepali students, Archana and Dipa, during the university conference in Dhaka.  The students owned clothes that were easily equally or even more stunning than what I could find. 

I only purchased a couple saris, but they were fantastic investments.  The red and white one was a heavy Indian silk from downtown Chittagong, and the orange and green hand-embroidered one was from a random shop in Udaipur, India.  It took quite a long time to get the hang of putting on a sari, but it was well worth it.  I miss wearing them.

 I also bought quite a few clothes in Thailand.  Their dress is definitely not as conservative there, and we could get away with baring quite a bit of skin.  I even broke one of my personal rules and lent/borrowed clothing from Ayla, such as the green dress above.

 And all those clothes required a lot of upkeep.  I handwashed almost every single kameez and tunic, to make sure our beast of a washer didn't destroy the delicate stitching.  Everything usually hung to dry in our living room, or from the ties of my mosquito net.  Handy, eh?  I also was able to mix and match various purchases with some of my American clothes, such as my favorite yellow shirt from Banana Republic.

So, call me a greedy glutton of fabric, but damn did I love all the clothing in southern Asia.  If only people wouldn't stare at me funny when I wore it here in the States.  It's so odd to be used to one manner of dress, and then have to revert back to my old manner.  When I returned to the States, I was shocked and definitely found my old clothing to be restrictive and revealing.  What I wouldn't give to be back in the breezy, cottony freedom of a shalwar kameez.

*A lot of these pictures are courtesy of the awesome Jessi Hinz!

#7 - Risks

(#7 is a laundry list of crazy awesome risks that I took in southern Asia.  Never say never…)

I’ve been reading the Matador online travel magazine lately and I stumbled across these two articles: ”10 Travel Risks Worth Taking” and ”Are Risk-Takers a Dying Breed?”  They made me think about how my personality has changed over the past couple years, and the various risks I took while abroad in southern Asia.

Now, as people get older, they tend to get more risk-aversive, meaning they take fewer and fewer risks.  I’ve found that as I’ve grown older, I have lost my risk-aversion.  Maybe it doesn’t apply because I am still young, but I am light years away from the little girl that couldn’t climb a tree or scramble up a pile of rocks.  Now, not only am I a bungee jumping, elephant riding, crazy food eating fiend, but I am regularly taking a huge risk by moving halfway around the world to places where I don’t know anyone, I don’t speak the language, and I basically know nothing about the area.

Fun, right?

I think it’s harder for people to take risks these days.  I often have people telling me that while what I do is admirable, when am I going to settle down (read: live a “normal American life”)?  What about things like building a good credit score, paying off my student debt, finding someone to marry and buy a house with and have kids with?  It’s easy to tell people I will do this while I can, while I have no big attachments, but what if this continues to be my life… forever?

I’m okay without having a credit card.  I’m okay with having a little student debt.  I’m okay with making very little money.  I’m okay without having good insurance.  I’m okay with doing things outside the norm.  I love my life, and I love what I’m doing.

So, what are some of things I did while I was away?  What were the travel risks I took?

Putting my trust in ropes…  I kicked off my winter break in Nepal in style.  At the Last Resort, I went bungee jumping for the first time ever.  It was a 160 meter (over 500 feet) free-fall off a suspension bridge into a gorge over the Bhote Kosi river.  Hellooo beautiful!

The bungee was seriously a religious experience.  I remember being terrified all morning long – during the four hour bus ride, the safety talk, watching other people do it… but as soon as I stepped on the bridge to wait my turn, all my fear left me.  I became numb, and barely spoke while they harnessed me.  I wordlessly followed their expressions, stepped up to the ledge, put my feet half-way over the edge, and… fell forward, arms spread, eyes wide open.  At the bottom of the bungee my numbness finally snapped, and I shouted out my adrenaline rush and gladly rode out the bungee bounces.  Loved.  It.

Jumping off the platform, a view up the beautiful gorge and Bhote Kosi river, and looking down from the ledge itself.

My friends, a Frenchman, and I also went canyoning the next day.  Canyoning is basically repelling down waterfalls: you’re harnessed to a rope that is attached to something at the top of the falls, and you scale down the slick rock walls till you reach the bottom.  Canyoning actually shook me up more because it not only requires guts, but some technical expertise.  I am totally looking forward to doing it again one day.

Going solo down the waterfall, and our great group at the bottom (photos courtesy of Michel - check his travel blog!).

On the backs of the beasts…Winter break also provided opportunities to do a little more than just horseback riding.  In southern Nepal, in the Royal Chitwan National Park, fellow volunteer Sara and I got to ride on an elephant through the jungle.  Elephants are surprisingly silent!  While I do not approve 100% of how the elephants were treated, I do understand their reasoning and also like that they use these elephants to patrol for poachers.

 

 My little friend (he eats cotton!), and train of elephants through the jungle.

 

In the Thar Desert outside of Jaisalmer in Rajasthan, India, fellow volunteer Jessi and I took a one-night camel safari.  That safari dispelled many myths I had about camels and deserts… all camels are nasty bitches that bite and spit, deserts are hot, and if you have a padded saddle, it won’t hurt the next day.  My camel was perfectly nice, I was freezing cold, and my butt/thighs have never hurt that much in my life!

Feeling great at the beginning, and our caravan headed towards the dunes (photos courtesy of Jessi Hinz).

 

Gobble gobble…  The university ordered a turkey for our Thanksgiving dinner, and I was stupid enough to volunteer to cook it.  I had never done it by myself before, but I had seen my mom do it plenty of times – really, how hard could it be to cook an over-sized chicken?  Hahaha… oh yeah, right, it could be.  I was handed a frozen solid turkey in a box that morning, and somehow, some way, using not-so-familiar vegetables and a gas oven, I produced a delicious turkey for a dinner party of 40 or so people.  Wahoo!

My tasty turkey cooked from frozen, and in the kitchen of a Bangladeshi staff member.

While those were my main risks and firsts, I did several other things from that list.  Ayla and I traveled through Thailand and Cambodia for four weeks without a single plan; I trusted many strangers along the way; I stopped taking my anti-malaria medicine; brushed my teeth with tap water; tried a bunch of new foods; and I had a romance in Nepal.

Now… what will I do next?