Jon's Birthday Surprise! Kabini River and Nagarhole National Park.

For Jon's Birthday, we went to the Kabini River and Nagarhole National Park.  We stayed at the Cicada Resorts where they greeted us on arrival with a tasty coconut water!

We spent a lot of time relaxing and enjoying the view from our deck! We were right on the river!
We went on a jeep safari where we saw all kinds of animals! Here is a langer monkey just hanging out.
We also saw a wild boar, and Jon took this time to comment on the delicious wild boar sandwich he had eaten back in Seattle.
What kind of animal is this??? Oh, it is just Jon, on safari!

Here is our awesome jeep for the safari! We were the only two on it, so we had great views!
And here Mandi is doing some ultimate relaxing! We definitely fell in love with the hammock after this weekend!
Jon and palm tress and the Kabini River.
We also took an fun boat safari as well.  This, however, is not us.  It is a coracle being used as a taxi to get people across the river.
On our boat safari, we were able to get right up to the edge of the forrest and see elephants up close!
Just coasting through the waterways along the banks of the river.
We are on a Safari!!!
And then we saw the best thing of all, a Tiger, just hanging out on the banks of the river!! Well, here you can see it darting off as our boat approaches it.  It is a very rare thing to actually see a Tiger while on safari, so we consider ourselves very lucky!!!
This little critter was not on our safari, he was in our shower!!  Mandi kindly asked Jon to please remove the frog from the shower!  

Mandi's Observations - The Struggle

After spending nearly 8 months in India, the world of being a woman in India has opened itself up further to me as I meet more people and have more interactions with different types of women. All in all, I have come to the conclusion that being a woman in Indian society is extremely difficult. Regardless of the caste that a woman occupies, she is still subjugated in a society that values maleness above all else. As time continues to pass by here, more and more of my questions and uncertainties about this place seem to slowly find answers. When I first started volunteering at Vimochana, I was bombarded with images, stories, and first hand accounts of the egregious acts of violence and inequality women here face. My senses were overwhelmed with these atrocities; things were happening in their lives that I had no framework of even beginning to understand. Being relegated to second class citizens and often experiencing abuse because of their status as women, along with the complexity of the interconnectedness between gender, class, caste, and all the other forms of oppression started to overwhelm any ideas I could foresee for change towards equality on all fronts.

The biggest problem that I keep noticing about the movement for women in India is that there does not seem to be a cohesive one. Everything feels fragmented and separatist because even though women can share the common bond of being female, the lives of women in different castes are completely different, making it hard to find a common bond overall. All of these issues compounding started to bring questions of uncertainty to my mind of how any of this was going to be improved. India as a system is extremely complex and the workings of it are deeply embedded in the system in which it operates. I started to feel hopeless without any answers of how the society was going to change for the better.

Lately, it has become apparent to me that the movements toward equality will eventually prevail and India will come together as a whole. I know this will take time, but I believe that it will happen. At a protest for peace, I watched Vimochana women as activists hold strong and firmly to their convictions to ending violence. I saw in all of them the inner strength that pushes this movement forward. I watched as one woman's teenage son helped light the candles for the protest and realized that this is the way India will eventually change. Mother's will teach their sons to respect women as equals, and these men will together with women change the status of women in the society. Both men and women here need to be taught that it is not acceptable for women to be victims of abuse. When India can become a society that does not allow violence to be perpetrated on half of it's population, and the cycles of oppression begin to break down, harmony can ensue and the wonderful qualities of kindness, hospitality, and familial bonds can come to the forefront of this nation, thus showcasing the great ideals that already exist here. Until that day, the struggle for peace and equality will continue, and the Vimochana women will continue to dedicate their lives to ending the violence in their society.

Interesting Minutiae by Jon- Westernization

Nothing says "India" like a Chicken Maharaja Mac^TM.

Ganesha Festival!

The whole month of September is taken up by the Ganesha Festival.  For weeks beforehand, roadside stands sell various painted statues of Ganesha (the elephant god - remover of obstacles).

Gouri invited us over to her house for some special Ganesha hospitality!  Again, here we use the word "hospitality" to mean "way too much food".  It was served on a banana leaf and was mighty tasty!

We brought the boys a couple of Ganesha presents - Connect Four and Jenga.  Here they are enjoying the game.

Outside of Gouri's house, the festivities were kicking off with some drumming and dancing.  They live on a very small street and on these kinds of streets all over Bangalore, similar lively celebration was taking place.

Speaking of lively celebrations - check out these guys in the back of a tiny 3-wheeled truck.  They are carrying one of the painted Ganesha statues to the lake where they will throw it in the water.

When we got to the lake, there was a very long line of people with their Ganesha statues.  We were just looking at all of the action (masses of people circling the lake in a clockwise fashion and immersing their statues in the lake) when one of the Police who was working crowd control flagged us down and told us we could cut in front of the line via the special "Police Only" entrance.  Apparently this is one of the perks of being a foreigner here.  We circled the lake with the throngs of devotees.  Every now and then, a large group would push quickly through the crowd with a giant Ganesha statue - bigger than a person.  Excitement would roar through the crowd as they made way for the giant Ganeshas.

At first, this may seem like an unusual ritual, but is it really any weirder than taking your small child to sit on a strange man's lap and then leaving out cookies and milk by the fireplace?

As an interesting side-note, there was a lot of press this year about the Ganesha festival and its impact on the environment.  A number of people brought earthen statues that were not painted or brought statues that were dyed instead of painted in order to lessen the impact on the environment.

More monkey yoga

Apparently even wild Langur monkeys like the yoga too!

Yoga - not just for humans anymore

As you may know from an earlier post, monkeys can ride motorcycles.  However, did you know that monkeys can do yoga as well?  We call this pose, "sitting monkey".  It gets you a good hamstring stretch and a sense of peace, well being, and furriness.

Dunna nunna nunna nunna Bat Cave!

While at Shivaganga with Adina, Prakash took us to a temple that we had not been to before.  The temple entrance is sandwiched between to giant boulders and opens to a very narrow cave with steep slippery steps downward in a passageway wide enough for only one person at a time.

The passageway leads to an underground lake of holy water of which you are supposed to drink some and splash some on your head.  I decided to forgo the drinking of subterranean holy water and opted instead for just a quick splash on the head.  The most interesting feature of the cave however was not the underground lake, but the plethora of bats that kept detaching from the cave walls, flying right up to the cave entrance, turning around, and flying back.  After seeing the bats at the cave entrance, Mandi decided that going into the cave for the holy water really wasn't worth the creepiness.  Though we got rabies shots before leaving for India, luckily we did not have to take advantage of this fact.

Savanadurga

In an effort to get ready for our upcoming Nepal trek, we asked Prakash to take us to some places where we could hike. This is the first place he took us!

Yes, this is a giant rock called Savanadurga.  There is a temple on the top of it, if you make it that far.  Oh, and since it is a sacred Hindu place, you must do the climbing without any shoes.
Wait, you want me to go where??? This looks more like rock climbing then hiking...
Whoa, this is steep!
Well, it started pouring rain on us, causing the rocks to be slippery, and this is Mandi at the bottom grateful that we made it down!

Adina Visits Bangalore!

Well, it's been almost two months now since we've posted to the blog.  All apologies to all of you who check the blog daily and are now very bored from reading the same posts over and over, but we probably saw you when we were back in the US so get over it!  Anyways - on to the exciting stuff - our first visitor!

Somehow - out of all cities in the world - Adina and a few other students from Purdue were randomly in Bangalore for a week to attend a conference.  When we got back from our August US trip, we had a few days to hang out with Adina.

We had dinner with Sitaram and Annu who had not seen Adina since the last time they were in Seattle around 15 years ago

Upon visiting Prakash's village, we were given the usual copious hospitality.  Here, Prakash's mom is applying traditional powder bindis to Mandi and Adina before we leave.

Adina on the steps of Shivaganga

The beautiful view from Shivaganga

Gouri has two sons and no daughters - and it shows.  She has enjoyed dressed Mandi up in saris multiple times before and hearing that my sister would be visiting, she brought over a number of saris with which to dress up Adina and Mandi.  Here, she's braiding Adina's hair.

And here is the end result of Gouri's fun-time!