Massages, Cobras, etc.

There were so many things that happened in the last week, so I'll just do a short summary of a few of the more memorable events.

Last Tuesday I was the brave volunteer for my ayurveda practical class. I received a treatment called udwarthana which is basically a full body dry herbal powder massage. It's supposed to improve your complexion and reduce fat cells. The ayurvedic texts say that if you get this massage once a day for seven days you will loose 1 to 2 kg. It was quite the experience. I had to take off all my clothes and put on a gown, then lay down on a wooden table with everyone surrounding and watching me receive the massage. The professor then said that he would be leaving because men are not supposed to be present when women are receiving the massage. I soon realized why. It was awkward enough having seven girls watching (one of which was our program director and Indian Studies professor who was taking pictures). After a few minutes though, I stopped caring because the massage felt so amazing. I don't think I lost any weight but I definitely slept well that night.

One of the pictures of me during the massage

Last weekend me and some friends went to Kaup beach. It's about a 35 minute bus ride from Manipal. We weren't really sure how to get there because we had only heard people talking about it before. When we got off the bus we asked a vendor where the beach was and he pointed us down a small village road. It was actually one of the more beautiful walks I've gone on in India. The road winded through fields of rice and palm trees with very brightly colored houses scattered around and friendly puppies and cows peacefully resting in the shade. After 20 minutes of walking we found the beach without much trouble. It was basically my ideal kind of day. We walked down the beach a little with our feet in the perfect water and lied on the sand, soaking up the sun for awhile. The only thing that wasn't so ideal was the group of fat white men in speedos playing in the waves. Other than that it was a pretty peaceful beach scene. Kaup is also famous for its lighthouse on the beach. I decided to climb up the tall spiral staircase and ladder to the top for 10 rupees. It was worth it. The view was amazing, even if I was standing on a 3 foot wide ledge with just a thin railing.

Kaup Lighthouse

View of Kaup from the top of the lighthouse

Kaup beach. Perfect day-no rain!

This weekend we visited a king cobra refuge at the top of the western ghats. It's one of the world's biodiversity hotspots as well as the wettest place in India. It's mainly a research station where they rescue and track king cobras. No, we didn't see any cobras, but we did learn how to track them using radio telemetry. We were told they are pretty secretive snakes and it is very rare that someone will see a cobra in the wild. It was an amazingly peaceful and beautiful area. It was great just to listen to the sounds of nature and not be surrounded by cars honking and trash everywhere. We did see a big black scorpion by a small river while we were there but our guide informed us that it wasn't as dangerous as the kind you would see in the desert and it wouldn't necessarily kill you which was semi comforting.

A field and the forest in the background at the Agumbe cobra refuge

The scorpion we found

A stream in the rainforest that we waded across

The monsoons seem to be over at last. We've had sunny and mostly cloudless skies for the last few days which is such a great change from the constant rain. I don't even have to carry my umbrella with me everywhere anymore.

Also, remember the picture of the puppies living in the gravel pile I posted a few weeks back? Well they disappeared for a while but then they reappeared for the first time last week. I was so glad to see they were alive. Their new home is a moldy furniture shed behind the hostel next to mine. Even though it is moldy with a bunch of falling apart furniture I think they are fairly safe there from the dangers of the streets. My friend and I have named them Felipe and Panchita and we say hi to them every time we walk past. They're growing up so quickly.

Felipe and Panchita outside of their moldy furniture shed

This Friday evening we leave for our one week trip around southern India, so I have a lot to do in the next few days to prepare for it. Our basic itinerary is Bangalore, Hampi, Mysore, Kabini River Lodge, Ooty and Nilgiri Tribal Village. I'm so excited to see more of India and get out of Manipal for a while. I'll be sure to post about it once I return.

-Mia

Illness in India

It's been such a long time since my last post!
I really did mean to do a post last weekend, but then I got sick and time just slipped away from me.

And yes, I did get sick. But no, it was fortunately not malaria.
It started last week amidst my public health readings about all of the communicable diseases such as TB, malaria, etc. I woke up with a horribly sore throat on Wednesday morning and it got worse throughout the day as my classes went on. On Thursday it was no better and I started to feel very achy so I decided not to go to my maternal and child health weekly field visit in the morning. After sleeping it off for the whole morning, I decided to give classes a try in the afternoon. By my last class I was in terrible shape. I felt like I had a fever and I was dizzy. I ended up going to bed at about 7 pm. but I woke up innumerable times during the night shivering and feeling very feverish. I suddenly started to come to the realization that I may have malaria. After all, about 300,000 world travelers per year get malaria (This is what all public health classes do to you). So I didn't go to my classes on Friday either and instead ventured alone into the fascinating world of Indian healthcare. (Actually, Manipal has a very well-known hospital right here on campus so it wasn't as dangerous as it sounds). I was vaguely told which entrance I should go in and which desk to go to first, so at least that part was semi-clear. So I get in the hospital, (keep in mind this is a huge hospital with tons of people coming in everyday from all different parts of the state) and go to the help desk. They tell me I have to first fill out a card with all my information on it and then go to the "registration desk" to give it to them. When I give a lady at the desk my info card and Indian insurance card she did not know what SAP (study abroad program) meant so she had to ask about 6 different workers if they knew and, after much confusion and many words lost in translation, she prints me a "ticket" which everyone apparently needs to get any kind of care. She tells me to go up one floor to room 17 and wait. Luckily, I found room 17 okay but the problem was that the room was padlocked. I waited outside for about 30 minutes and finally the door was opened only for me to realize that there was another waiting room inside room 17. After waiting in that room for another 45 minutes I went up to one of the desks to ask where I was on the patient list. They told me I wasn't on it yet because my file still had to be sent up to them from downstairs, and told me "it takes much time" so I waited a little more. After another 30 minutes I went up again to ask if they had my file. The lady looks at my ticket and says I have been waiting in the wrong place the whole time and points across the hall at room 15. So I go into room 15 and ask the lady there if they have my file and she says "it takes time" and then "I'll call your name when ready". After only 20 minutes of waiting this time ( I was getting impatient ) I went up to the same lady and asked her if she could just see if my file is there because I had already been waiting for about 2 hours total. After quickly running through the stack of papers and folders, she finds my file and gives me a slip of paper. She tells me to bring it to the "cash counter" to pay. So I have to walk down the hall and give them the paper and my insurance card and they stamp it. When I get back to the lady at the desk she tells me to get on this huge scale that's literally in the middle of the waiting room and weigh myself. After I get on she asks what my weight is from her place at the desk, at which point I basically yell to her my weight. I just think it's so interesting because in the U.S. there is this obsession with privacy and personal space whereas in India, there is no such notion.

Anyway, after recording my weight, the lady goes into one of the rooms and hands off my file. After 10 minutes when the lady realizes I'm still waiting, she takes my file out of that room and summons me to a different room to, yet again, wait near. Luckily, I only waited about 10 minutes before the doctor called me into his refreshingly air-conditioned office. He basically asked me what was wrong, listened to my heartbeat and breathing. He immediately (somehow) concluded that I had a bad sinus infection and told me that if the fever didn't go away in two days it was more or less safe to assume that I had malaria (and also to come back for blood tests if that were the case). He wrote me some prescriptions and sent me on my way. So after a total of maybe three hours of waiting in a crowded hospital while feeling very sick and dizzy and a two minute doctor visit it would not be an exaggeration to say that I was severely exhausted and semi confused about what had just happened.

Thankfully, I started to get much better after taking the antibiotics and my fever did go away which means that it was definitely NOT malaria! So exciting.

Somehow, in a severely medicated state, I was able to go on the small day trip that was planned for Saturday. We went to two small towns called Karkala and Moodabidri. They are both famous Jain pilgrimage sites. Karkala has a tall, 42 ft. statue of the Jain lord Bahubali. It is in a very serene setting on the top of a hill which overlooks the surrounding countryside and rivers. There is also a Jain temple in Karkala called chaturmukha basadi which we visited. In Moodabidri we went to the well-known Savirakambada Basadi, or thousand pillar Jain temple. The Basadi in Moodabidri had amazing, intricate carvings on the pillars and all throughout the temple. The guy at the basadi who was collecting donations and who gave us our tour turned out to be a very hard bargainer. Ginny, our resident director who went with us, pretty much got into a fight with him about the price of the tour and the price of taking pictures (she's been there for the same tour before). Classicaly, when he named a price about four times what it normally is, she told him a lower price but to no avail. As we were leaving the basadi Ginny told him, in Hindi, "we paid the foreigner price, right?", to which he responded with a smile on his face, "OK". 

Lord Bahubali statue in Karkala

Stonework on a pillar at the thousand pillar temple in Moodabidri

Me and an elephant in the front of the thousand pillar temple

I am currently in the process of planning a last-minute weekend trip to Kerala after finding out today that we have no scheduled activities this weekend. If it all works out, I'll be leaving tomorrow after our public health field visit!
I'll let you know what becomes of it. 

Here's a quote which was given to us by our professor in Ayurveda today. I thought it was kind of cute.

"Yesterday is history

tomorrow is a mystery

today is a gift

that's why they call it the 'present'"

-Mia  

Holiday Week

This week has been pretty laid back due to the two days of holiday we got in the middle of the week. Wednesday was eid-ul-fitr (end of Ramadan) and Thursday was Ganesh Chaturthi (a hindu holiday celebrating Ganesh). It was so nice to have two days of doing nothing especially since the assignments and readings have been picking up for all my classes. On Wednesday my American friends and I had a beauty day at the local beauty salon where I got my hair cut and a pedicure. The lady who was cutting my hair seemed very concerned and asked us why Americans don’t take good care of their hair but that may be due to the fact that the only two Americans who came into her salon to get a haircut hadn’t had a haircut in two years...oops. Anyway, I’d say it was a great use of my  day off.

On the second day of our midweek break I went to see a bollywood movie called Aarakshan in Mangalore with some of the other study abroad students. It was an interesting experience as the movie was completely in Hindi and with no subtitles. I could sort of get the gist of what was happening, and during the intermission (bollywood movies are really long) a professor who came along with us explained the basic story line to me. I found out that it was about a professor who was teaching classes to kids from lower castes so that they could pass the exams to get into college, but the higher caste college students started to get angry that they were admitting people from lower castes. Eventually, the professor overcomes all the obstacles and his classes become a huge success. I was told it’s based on true events which have been happening around India.

One thing I’ve found that I still really miss from the states is my morning cup of coffee. In India, there is no such thing as strong brewed coffee. At the breakfasts in the mess hall they serve nescafe instant coffee with tons of sugar and milk, which can be okay but it’s so sweet and doesn’t really have that caffeine kick to it. There is one coffee shop outside of the main library witch has espresso drinks and so on, but if you want just a black coffee, they give you an americano. After a week of buying cappuccinos every day, I’ve realized it’s not such an economically sustainable habit so I think I’ve decided to break down and buy a water boiler for my room and some instant coffee so I can at least control how much sugar and cream goes into it.


Other than coffee, I really don’t miss anything from the U.S. and I’m quickly appreciating the way many things are done here ( eating with my hands, taking bucket baths, and rickshaws ).

Yesterday I got really bored and decided to go on a small adventure to try to find Manipal Lake, which I’ve heard people talking about. I pretty much just looked at google maps and remembered the different landmarks along the way because India doesn’t have street names. I managed to get there without getting lost and it was surprisingly pretty nice and the water was semi-clear. It’s just a really small lake in a more rural area so there’s not much to it but it was nice to at least sit there and put my feet in. There was also a small temple on the lake but it seemed rather run down (or maybe a dog had gotten in and made a mess).

The lake was sort of overflowing onto the road on the way there

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Lake Manipal. I think there's supposed to be an island but it's monsoon season so the lake is really full

The little temple I found by the lake

Today I went to a park in Manipal with my roommate and some of her friends called endpoint. It’s a really popular place with families and students to go for walks and just sit and enjoy nature. Manipal is on top of a really tall, rocky hill and endpoint sits right on the edge of it. There’s great views and apparently it’s THE place to take your date to, especially at sunset. It has almost a 360 view of the surrounding countryside and you can sort of sea the Arabian Sea which is just 5 kms away.

Me, my roommate to the right of me and her two friends

One of the look out points

 End Point

 

I’m hoping to go to the beach sometime next weekend but everyone keeps warning me not to get in the water because it’s really dangerous so I guess I’ll just walk around and take in the scenery. There’s not really much of a western beach culture here anyway.

I’ll try to update more regularly in the future so my posts aren’t quite so long every time.

Happy labor day weekend!