After the last post about some of the difficulties of living in Lucknow, I'm glad to share my experience this summer volunteering for Hum Safar, an NGO based in Lucknow but works throughout the state of Uttar Pradesh. 'Hum Safar' means 'Our Journey', and in 2003 began providing legal advocacy and medical advice to victims of domestic violence free of charge. Another important part of their work consists of public outreach activities to promote education about the ills of domestic violence and gender discrimination. On average in a year they deal with 60 individual female victims and conduc [View Full Entry]

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Finally I can say that I have seen the Taj Mahal.....but not without going through some tough situations. I guess one can say that this is the way these things happen in India, so I should have been more prepared! I had booked my train reservations separately from my friends so I was traveling alone, although they were on the same train. We were to depart around midnight and before this I was living it up at a restaurant / bar watching the opening ceremonies of the Olympic games. I ran home and packed my bag, knowing that I was cutting [View Full Entry]

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Our school's midterm break arrived and a group of us decided to go to the Himalayan hill station of Ranikhet, in Uttaranchal state. To get there, we took a seven hour train and then it was a two hour drive up the mountain, which was basically a 60 km series of switchbacks. Our trains going to and returning from were both overnight sleeper style. However, while sleeping on the train going to Ranikhet I had the uppermost bunk and was rained on when the roof started leaking rainwater. Because the train was full, I had no where else to go and [View Full Entry]

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Last Thursday after class our school organized a trip to explore two of Lucknow’s most famous structures—the Bara Imambarah and the Chota Imambarah. First though, our group was driven to the house of a descendant of one of the Nawabs of Awadh, Mr. Abdullah, for tea and a short lecture about his family and the old Nawabi culture of Lucknow. ‘Nawab’ is a courtly and administrative title that is akin to a governor, and ‘Awadh’ was the name of the regional area with Lucknow as its capital that became the center of official Muslim culture and influence after th [View Full Entry]

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Hello everyone. Things are starting to get settled here in Lucknow. I apologize for the lateness of this message, I had no idea it would take this long to set into any sort of regular routine. But anyway, what should I say…(I promise the rest of my posts will not be as long as this) The journey to arrive first in Delhi then in Lucknow was long (30 hours total spent sitting on planes within a four day period) as I went from Chicago to Boston to DC to Chicago again then to Delhi and finally Lucknow. My two days in [View Full Entry]

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While for about four months now I have often complained about India, for example the noise, the smells, or stepping in cow dung on my way to the bus everyday--now that I'm leaving I know I am going to miss being here. The last couple of weeks I have tried to see as much of Hyderabad as I could, and I toured Golconda Fort, the Birla Mandir Temple, the numerous palaces of the Old City, attended my first Hindu wedding, and much more. So, instead of me rambling on I will simply leave you with some cool photos. [View Full Entry]

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The southeastern coastal state of Kerala is known for its tropical landscape and laidback atmosphere, so when the opportunity came to spend a week there with my friend Emma, I didn’t hesitate to join her. Our itinerary was seven days long: traveling by train, we would reach the village of our friend Mini in time for the Keralan New Year, Veeshu. After spending a few days in the village, we were to visit some Americans volunteering around the city of Cochin. The train journey, one way, was a long and tiresome 26 hours. Being the cheap ladies Emma and I are, [View Full Entry]

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The landscape of South India, especially the Deccan plateau, is rife with ancient large rock formations that are dated to be millions of years old. Driving around Hyderabad, it is surprising how many of these large clusters of brick-red freestanding rocks stand, some almost teetering, amidst their neighboring buildings and hills. Interestingly enough, there is a non-profit organization in Hyderabad whose mission it is to foster public awareness of these natural wonders and to help preserve them from destruction and vandalism. This group, started by a few nature-lovers of Hyderabad, is cal [View Full Entry]

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Recently I went with some friends to Hyderabad’s Zoo, called ‘Nehru Zoo Park”. The Zoo is the closest well-known landmark to where I stay in Hyderabad—often we just tell the auto rickshaw driver to take us to ‘Zoo Park’ when they haven’t heard of our far-away part of town. My trip to the Zoo was another exercise in comparing India to home, because going to the Zoo was such a notable event for me growing up. I was eager to see how this Zoo would compare to those I’ve been to in the States. First, the sign at the Zoo’s entrance [View Full Entry]

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Last weekend, I traveled with a group of HMI staff and students to the medieval Islamic city of Bidar. Bidar is located about 150 km east of Hyderabad in the neighboring state of Karnataka, and was the capital of two Deccan Muslim dynasties, the Bahmanis and the Barid Shahis, from about 1400 to the 1600’s. Bidar is famous for its fort and for the many tombs in the city that house many of the Bahmani and Barid rulers, their families, as well as an Iranian Sufi whose tomb is still venerated today, Khalil Allah. The city nowadays is a backwater town, [View Full Entry]

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