temples and scrabble

It's been a pretty cool weekend. We're starting to settle in and feel more and more comfortable here, and are exploring further and further each day. Saturday morning Andria and i caught a cycle rickshaw to BHU (Benares Hindu University), which has a huge, beautiful, lush green campus which was a delight after the dust and haze and smoke of the city. We visited the huge hindu temple there, which is a magnificent buildling with marble columns and marble floors, people doing devotions at the central shiva shrine and other smaller ones to ganesh, hanuman, and various other deities, and students studying in various nooks and archways. Andria and i found a stone gazebo in the gardens next to the temple, with cool marble benches, pulled out the all-important game of travel scrabble she brought, and played scrabble and talked in the shade. This is our new way of exploring the city -- searching for bearably cool places to play scrabble.

On sunday morning, while out on our hunt for breakfast, Andria decided she was craving cucumber and bought one. at least she thought she did. While we were sitting having our yogurt at the yogurt and sweet shop, she cut into it and discovered it was some other kind of spongy long dark-green vegetable that may have been vaguely akin to a zucchini. We didn't know what to do with it -- we used a piece of the spongy end she'd cut off to mop up the yogurt i spilled on the table, but then we ran out of uses for it, and Andria was stuck carrying around a mystery vegetable and feeling a bit silly, especially when a rickshaw-wallah called out to us "madam! madam!" as they always do, and then paused in confusion and said questioningly "sabji?" ("vegetable?"). Shortly thereafter, Andria gave it to a little beggar girl, who seemed reasonably happy to take it off our hands, and may actually have some idea of what to do with it. We think that we've since figured out what an actual cucumber looks like here.

By 9 on Sunday the two of us set out on a day trip to Sarnath, the town just outside Varanasi where the Buddha preached his first sermon. Because of its importance to Buddhism, most of the major buddhist countries have set up temples there, including India, Japan, China, Korea, Burma, 2 from Tibet, and probably some more. It was pretty interesting to visit a bunch of the different temples -- we went to the Chinese, Japanese, Indian and both Tibetan temples -- and see the differences between them. Some were huge and ornate, and others were really quite simple, but all carried a similar feeling of reverence and holiness. There are quite a lot of east asian tourists around Sarnath, and buddhist monks (who also mostly seem east or south east asian)everywhere. Another one of the major attractions in Sarnath are a deer park (big open grassy park. with deer.) which is there because buddha preached his first sermon in a deer park, so at some point it was recreated to mark the spot. We saw some deer and lay in the grass there for a bit, but it was kind of itchy and not as exciting as we thought it might be. Sarnath also has a museum, with various ancient buddhist stone carvings excavated there. Many of the carvings were very beautiful, but most importantly the museum was air conditioned! we definitely basked in that for a little longer than we absolutely needed to. it is hot as hell here.

We had yummy tibetan food for lunch at a tiny little hole in the wall restaurant -- tasty dumplings and noodles and vegetables and things, and played scrabble over lunch as we hid from the noonday sun. In the early afternoon we caught another auto-rickshaw (tiny little three-wheeled car thing, open on the sides and not so different from a motorcycle) back through the heat and pollution and crazy crazy traffic and random cows and buffalo, lazed about in the afternoon, and were asleep by 9.

This morning i've been up since 5. it's almost 7 now, and i'm going to head out to the Ghat soon to get some chai from our favourite chai wallah, and sit on the steps and watch the life on the riverbank for a while. Today is our first work day, but I think this week will mostly be spent in visiting project sites for orientation purposes before any real work starts. i still have over two and a half hours until the office day begins, though. I'm really enjoying this new rhythm of early mornings and early bed times, though i doubt i'll keep it up in Toronto!
Emily