Adam Barkl's Indialog

Heading North

Hey everybody. Long time, no speak. Lila and I got back from travels yesterday. Classes finish up here anytime from early April through early May. Fortunately, mine had a nice break of some two weeks, so we visited Kolkata, Darjeeling, and Sikkim. Sikkim is a northern, mountainous state sandwiched between northern India, Bhutan, Nepal, and Tibet. It was quite an amazing trip. It had some pretty lasting effects on me, and showed me two completely different sides of India. // Kolkata was comparable to nothing I've ever seen. I've lived in India for almost four months, and have seen many, many shocking things, but still found Kolkata entirely unexpected and very shocking. The city was an explosion of life, filled with chaos. It has just rained when we arrived, and the streets were filled with water. The streets were covered in people, cars, shops, garbage, animals... basically every square inch. The noises were overwhelming, and the smells were intense. Like I said, being in India for four months, this shouldn't have had such an impact, but it really did. It reminded all over again that I was in India; that this country has more motion and life tied up in it than few other places in the world. At the same time, it was the most humbling experience I've had here. Seeing the poverty of the city, and its incomprehensible mix of everything you can imagine, really reminded me of something. It reminded me that coming from the United States, I can probably never be able to understand what it's like to live the lives some people do. It's hard to grasp how fortunate we are in the US, without ever seeing something like this. You can try to remember to be grateful and appreciate what you have, but it takes an experience like this to really put it into your head how damn lucky we are to have our lives. You come out of the experience understanding that the things that takes up so much of our time, and brings us so much stress, really aren't that important. // After Kolkata, we headed north to Darjeeling. Darjeeling is very close to Nepal, just south of Sikkim, and not far from Tibet. It was a gorgeous city just below the Himalayas. The people are more like Nepalese or Tibetan people than they are northern or southern India. So there we were, a day after Kolkata, in an entirely different world yet again. The people were warm and welcoming, and the scenery was breathtaking. It was again a humbling experience for me. Yet this time, it wasn't for the same reasons. Instead, I was seeing some the most beautiful, untouched landscapes on the planet. You get a calm, reassuring feeling finding yourself in such a place; it's puts you totally at peace. I don't really know how to describe the feeling-I'm not sure what it was actually-so I'm stop going to try. // One of the coolest parts of being in Darjeeling was seeing a procession for Tibet which was going through the city. We came out of a shop and found the beginning of the march. It went on for about 20 minutes. There were hundreds of people carrying candles and chanting. Most of it was made up of women; they led and sand louder and clearer. The whole thing was moving. Here we were seeing a parade of people calling for a free Tibet, just hours from Tibet's southern border. It was remarkable. We also found towns and cities on our way back filled with walls and buildings that had been spray painted with "Free Tibet" and "Tibet is Bleeding". Seeing the importance that Tibet has to people outside its borders is an emotional display. You feel much more connected to everything; the problem seems much more real.

Posted at 09:52AM Apr 14, 2008 by Adam L Barkl in General  |  Comments[0]