Last week, our group took our final long bus ride of the program to the city of Bodhgaya. Bodhgaya is about 6 hours via bus from Varanasi, and it seemed to take forever to get out of the city traffic that morning. We finally arrived in late afternoon, and were bussed through the touristy streets […]
Varanasi
I’ve been thinking about culture shock lately. Before we left for India I asked a lot of people what culture shock was like, and it didn’t ever seem like anyone was able to give me a straightforward answer. The response was always different, and vague. There wasn’t any concrete sign of it, it seemed, that […]
Diwali Mubarak!
Diwali Mubarak! Happy Diwali! Though this post is a bit belated, “crackers” (fireworks) still continue occasionally during the days, making me think that this post is not so late after all. Diwali is a celebration of light (not unlike other autumn/winter holidays), a homecoming for Lakshmi, and a week (or two) of fireworks. Diwali is […]
Host Family
For my first week in Banaras, I stayed with a host family in the neighborhood of Lanka. They were a family of four who welcomed me kindly into their home. Ruchika and Sandeep were my host parents and Pari and Khushi, my host sisters. It was my first time having a host family so I […]
Life, Interrupted
“Because I was alone, however, the mundane seemed charged with meaning.” The following phrase was taken from Jon Krakauer’s non-fiction piece Into the Wild, a book highly recommended to me by multiple friends, and that I had told myself over and over again to read but the suggestion would always slip my mind. On some mild […]