and here come the rest of the pictures...of the temples we visited in Belur and Halebidu, as well as our time in Pondicherry and around Bangalore. yay!! =) [View Full Entry]

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pictures from my time in the south..this is only part 1 though, covering my arrival in Bangalore, a journey to the zoo with some friends, the trip out to the village we visited, the trip to Nandi Hills, and then also the Golden Temple in Kushalnagar.. stay tuned for the next round, coming soon... =) [View Full Entry]

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It's been a while but I'm finally back in the states where i can upload photos...these are some of the photos of my experience in Northern India. I visited the cities of Delhi, Jaipur, Agra, Varanasi, Haridwar, and Rishikesh.......enjoy! [View Full Entry]

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After the weekend in Pondicherry began our last week of school. A large part of it we just spent going to class and preparing for the final exams we would have, but we still tried to get as much done in Bangalore as we could before leaving. we shopped for last-minute items during the days, ate as much indian food as we could in the evenings, and then went out every single night to a different club to dance the night away. it was a lot of fun, despite the knowledge that we would soon be split up...it was a reality [View Full Entry]

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The weekend after our trip around Shravanabelagola, Belur, Halebidu, and Mysore, I attended three days of class and then left again with Nia and Renee to go to Pondicherry, a city on the eastern Indian coast in the state of Tamilnadu. It was initially a French colony and the French influence there is absolutely noticeable...there are french restaurants everywhere, the streets have french names, and the people greet you in french as you walk down the streets. i cannot relay the surprise i felt the first time i heard indians speaking french so perfectly...it seemed like such a foreign thing, bu [View Full Entry]

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The weekend after going to Nandi hills we took another trip around the south of india. part of it was USAC organized, but a group of 15 of us left a day early so we could see a couple other areas as well. We left Thursday night on an overnight bus that was supposed to bring us to Coorg at about 6 or 7am. instead what we found was that at 4:30 in the morning there were 15 of us standing in the middle of a foreign, sleeping town with no idea of where we were or what to do. we [View Full Entry]

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so the weeks have been passing, on and on like they always do. i realized that i have only about 2 more weeks here before i go back to the states for the first time in 8 months! i'm not sure how i feel about that...in one way i am excited to be able to unpack my clothes and my bags for a while and just be around people who i can understand in familiar surroundings..but at the same time the world is so big, the thrill of traveling is so provocative, and i have been doing it for so long [View Full Entry]

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So i figured it might be time to write something about Bangalore, since this is now my new home.. Bangalore is a city in the southern indian state of Karnataka. the population is reported to be about 10 million, though i really can't even imagine how they estimate the population of any city in india...so i'm not quite sure about that. but there ARE a lot of people. the first thing I noticed as the plane was landing was how RED the earth is here. while the north was very dry and beige-colored all the time, the south has red earth [View Full Entry]

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this blog is coming somewhat late because i am currently in Bangalore, but it refers to the time corey and i spent in Haridwar in the north. Haridwar is our favorite place we visited in north india, even more than varanasi i think, though the two are close.. Haridwar is one of the holiest cities in India, one of the seven holiest places for the Hindus apparently. The name can be split into two - 'hari' means 'god' and 'dwar' means 'gate'...together 'Haridwar' means to say 'gateway to God'. According to Hindu scriptures, Haridwar is one among the four sites where [View Full Entry]

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The monsoon must be moving north because I just had the joy of running and dancing in the rain in Delhi. Yesterday I also woke up from the sound of rain and went outside at 6:30 in the morning to run on the streets of Haridwar, indulging in the wetness that was. And the best part is that it's warm rain...not cold rain like you find in Reno or in the Italian wintertime. Oh joyous joyous world, what a beautiful time of year monsoon season in India is =) bless. [View Full Entry]

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