Udaipur Chantalagadungi

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Namaste!

It is surely time for me to post another blog before I head out into the field for a few days.

I arrived in Delhi after a 14.5 hour train ride.<span> A driver picked us up from the station and took us to our NGO, Seva Mandir.<span> Seva Mandir is located in Old Fatehpura, a district of Udaipur.<span> The campus has a library, canteen, dorms and the offices are across the street.<span> The library is open to the public, although the second and third floors are reserved for volunteers and employees only.

Our dorms are located in the same building as the education department.<span> We share a kitchen with the boys dorm.<span> We have a fridge but Emilie and I don’t think it is at 4 degrees like it says on the fridge itself.<span> I share a room with 5 other girls. Georgina is from England, she is graduating from Medical school in July.<span> She will be leaving Seva Mandir to travel around India in about a week.<span> Georgina works in the health department.<span> Marion, is from France. She works in the Education department.<span> She will be leaving at the end of June.<span> Smruti is from India; she is absolutely hilarious.<span> I am not sure when but I have a feeling she is leaving Seva Mandir soon.<span> Emilie, from Ottawa, is my other room mate.<span> We are also good friends with Josh, from England, Nitesh, from Rajasthan, Alice and about three other girls from India.<span> I want to be sure I am spelling their names right before I include them in the blog.

My first day was very good.<span> Josh showed us around, we can get all the necessities just down the street from the<span> NGO.<span> That night Nitesh cooked Egg curry and it was so so good.<span> We had this amazing desert, which was this ball of pastry dipped in syrup.<span> It reminds me of a timbit dipped in a very sweet syrup.<span> Combine the pastry with vanilla ice cream and it tastes just heavenly.

We went up on the roof and had a party; drank beers, danced under the stars and laughed.<span> From the roof you can see the house of our neighbor- it is a giant mansion (R.K House)! Apparently he built the house but then his astrologist said that he should not live in the house full time, so it is usually empty save for the odd night when he hosts dinner.<span> The security guards who man the gate are always waving and smiling when the volunteers walk by.

I got a new Sim card the next day because my Delhi sim did not allow outgoing calls and every time I made a call I would have roaming charges.<span> In Canada, you have a plan, which usually entails that once you leave your city you will be charged long distance for phone calls.<span> In India, as long as you are in the state everything is local prices and pay as you go, however, the moment you leave the state you will be charged extra for roaming.<span> It took TWO DAYS of harassing the guys at the phone shop to have my sim card activated. <span> I have unlimited incoming calls and I bought a calling card which gives me unlimited local texting. <span> A week and a half down the road from when I started this post, I am getting daily messages from Airtel (the phone company) asking me to submit my enrollment documents… I have been to see the people at the shop about four times but they still have not submitted it.

How to describe Udaipur?<span> It is a city with many man made lakes, surrounded by mountains and hills.<span> It is breath taking and, while still chaotic, much less crazy than Delhi.<span> The first Sunday I spent in Udaipur, after the night of the rooftop party, about 7 volunteers took the cable car to the top of a mountain just after sunset.<span> It was beautiful.<span> The cable car is a gondola, however, to catch the gondola it is about a twenty minute wait in line.<span> Once we got to the top we could see all the major sights: Lake Palace (palace built to look as though it is floating on the lake but has been converted into a very swanky hotel), Udai Villas (7 star hotel in Udaipur, they were filming a Bollywood movie there when I arrived and Georgina was lucky enough to be an extra in a scene), City Palace (another palace).<span> While at the top we visited the temple of rats… Basically it had a shrine and a cage that had hundreds of white rats with red eyes.<span> I am sure there is some symbolism behind it or a good omen of some sort…but frankly it smelled like shit.

Monday, May 14 Emilie and I had our orientation.<span> We confirmed our projects.<span> I spent the next day and a half creating my questionnaire and by Thursday I was sent to Kotra block, to stay at the Seva Mandir guesthouse/office.<span> Smruti was there finishing up her survey.<span> Stay tuned for my next blog post: Kotra diaries part 1.

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