Thursday, August 16, 2012

The littlest birds...


Today was my last day in the office with SLC-IT.  I wish I could say I was sad but, unfortunately, today couldn’t have come soon enough!  I am at the ending stages of my final report for them, now at 54 pages and still a few more to go!  I’ve been dragging my feet at finishing – very unlike me, I’ve never been much of a procrastinator but it seems India has made one out of me.  I will finish the report up and then wash my hands of it all!  And I am particularly excited because my brother and Ryan are currently en route to Leh and arrive tomorrow morning to start two weeks of pure adventure... finally the holiday I have needed!

I suppose its natural, when experiences are ending, to reflect back on what I’ve learned here and what I will take away with me when I go back.  It’s been no secret that this internship has gone much differently than hoped.  If there is anything that has been further enforced in me, it’s adaptability.  Luckily, I began as a pretty malleable person but this project and internship has further shown me the concept of ‘making plans and having them go your way’ is not based in reality - despite efforts for it to be.  To say the least, it has been a self-made summer.  Maybe I came with unrealistic expectations of being taken under the wing by SLC-IT and that this project would be a collaborative effort.  I wasn’t and it hasn’t.  There have been moments where I have felt a victim of circumstance.  I know people who live their lives as victims, and it’s very unattractive and exhausting to be around.  I refuse the victim mentality!

I told a friend once that I believed life could be boiled down to definitions.  The question ‘what am I defined by?’ haunts me.  At times, I have felt insignificant and a failure.  But I have been defining significance and success by my relations with this organization and with the outcome of a project (and, lets just be honest, who is really going to ever read my 60-something page report, so what does it matter anyway!).  It’s not a circumstance problem or an organization problem; it’s a definition problem.  And it’s mine to fix.

So, I reject society’s definition of success and significance.  Time to re-define.  I expect that this will be difficult upon my return to the competitive culture that revolves around Duke.  But it’s no measure of health to be well adjusted in a profoundly sick society anyways…

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Things to worry about...

I came across this letter today while procrastinating the last few paragraphs of my final report for SLC-IT.  It just so happens I found myself alone in the office today with internet - shocker! - and finding this nice little blog with lots of old letters from famous literary heroes was the highlight (and distraction...) of the day (www.lettersofnote.com).

Anywho... this letter was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald to his 11-year old daughter who was away at camp.

La Paix, Rodgers' Forge
Towson, Maryland

August 8, 1933

Dear Pie:

I feel very strongly about you doing duty. Would you give me a little more documentation about your reading in French? I am glad you are happy — but I never believe much in happiness. I never believe in misery either. Those are things you see on the stage or the screen or the printed pages, they never really happen to you in life.

All I believe in in life is the rewards for virtue (according to your talents) and the punishments for not fulfilling your duties, which are doubly costly. If there is such a volume in the camp library, will you ask Mrs. Tyson to let you look up a sonnet of Shakespeare's in which the line occurs "Lillies that fester smell far worse than weeds."

Have had no thoughts today, life seems composed of getting up aSaturday Evening Post story. I think of you, and always pleasantly; but if you call me "Pappy" again I am going to take the White Cat out and beat his bottom hard, six times for every time you are impertinent. Do you react to that?

I will arrange the camp bill.

Halfwit, I will conclude.

Things to worry about:

Worry about courage
Worry about Cleanliness
Worry about efficiency
Worry about horsemanship
Worry about. . .

Things not to worry about:

Don't worry about popular opinion
Don't worry about dolls
Don't worry about the past
Don't worry about the future
Don't worry about growing up
Don't worry about anybody getting ahead of you
Don't worry about triumph
Don't worry about failure unless it comes through your own fault
Don't worry about mosquitoes
Don't worry about flies
Don't worry about insects in general
Don't worry about parents
Don't worry about boys
Don't worry about disappointments
Don't worry about pleasures
Don't worry about satisfactions

Things to think about:

What am I really aiming at?
How good am I really in comparison to my contemporaries in regard to:

(a) Scholarship
(b) Do I really understand about people and am I able to get along with them?
(c) Am I trying to make my body a useful instrument or am I neglecting it?

With dearest love,

Daddy

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Food, motorbikes, and the Dalai Lama...


Over the past week or so, I have developed a few routines that get me through my days at the office.  To start, about a week or so ago, I moved from my guesthouse to a vacant room in the office.  This was both a good and bad decision.  The good reasons for moving were mainly that it’s free, more space, and I can use the kitchen.  Using the kitchen has been key as now I can make a nice breakfast with coffee.  I was tiring of toasted white bread and jam at my guesthouse, so now I make a lovely wheat porridge with a cup of Nescafé.  Just delightful!  Despite my new amenities, I now have to ability to spend way too many hours in the office – already a place of tension – and I have lost some of the companionship of other people in the guesthouse.  But I suppose the last part is just life here now, as almost all of the good friends I have made here, have now left for home.  Life seems a bit quieter now.

My first attempt at cooking Indian food from scratch: Paneer butter masala, mixed veg raita, and homemade chapati!  SUCCESS!
Ahh, but my routines!  They have helped in breaking up the day and my time in the office.  Every morning I wake up early to make breakfast and coffee.  After that I go on a nice long walk up to the Shanti Stupa, which sits high above the town of Leh and gives a great view of the mountains.  You climb 500 steep stairs before you reach the overlook and in the mornings there are hardly any tourists making the climb.  So peace ensues and so does my daily morning meditations.  Then after my nice long walk, I return to the office to either begin working on my report for SLC-IT or read some of Ghandi’s autobiography ‘My Experiments of Truth.’  To say the least, I LOVE my slow mornings. 

Then at some point, the rest of the staff trickles in.  My days in the office now consist of tons of writing and organizing the data I collected from the surveys.  This is all made bearable by dried apricots and cashews (I’m truly addicted by both) and Star Trek.  The completion of my report will be in thanks to Captain Kirk and his brave crew on the U.S.S. Enterprise.    

After work, I go on another walk, visit my friend Stanzin at his office, and then head home to cook dinner.  Not the most exciting life I suppose, but this is what happens when you live somewhere for a while.  And, luckily, only eight more days until J.B. and Ryan come to visit and we begin our adventures.  So maybe a little quiet is needed.

But despite the ample time in the office and some quiet days, the last few weeks have been filled with new fun.  I took a motorbike trip with Stanzin and Anya (a woman from Switzerland) to Pangong Lake, which is just beautiful (and rumor that there is a Chinese submarine somewhere in the lake!).  This was the longest motorbike trip I have been on yet, about 6.5 hours each way over the 5th highest motorable road in the world.  The ride there was amazing with incredible blue skies and perfect temperatures.  However, the way back was rainy and cold and snowing at the top of the pass.  All this would have been fine had we all come prepared for rain.  However, Anya and I only had chacos and socks, which were soaked from all the streams and rivers we had to cross on our way!  Luckily, I had mittens but Anya was gloveless and the driver. SO COLD.  I would imagine the picture of the two of us on the bike was similar to Harry and Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber entering Aspen minus the icicles, I suppose.  Regardless, a great trip and a needed break from Leh.

When we arrived back in Leh, the Dalai Lama had already begun his teachings.  So the next two mornings, I spent sitting in His Holiness’ joyous presence.  I admit, I have no clue what exactly he spoke on.  The translating was difficult to hear and understand but just sitting with the hundreds of Ladakhi’s and listening to his voice and, most especially, his laugh, was worth every moment.  I’m not Buddhist but there is no doubt in my mind that the Dalai Lama is a special and incredibly spiritual man.  And you can have nothing but reverence and respect for him. 


Whelp, nine days left on my lonesome and with SLC-IT.  Who knows what will be in store.  Certainly more apricots and cashews…

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Sham


Last week marked my second and final visit to the field to conduct my surveys.  Sham Valley sits just west of Hemis National Park.  Not only is it beautiful, it is also one of the places in Ladakh where you are most likely to spot a snow leopard.  Well, FAIL.  Still no sightings though I have seen ample sign.
Jigmet, Gyalson, Angmo, and I headed out of Leh in the open-backed gypsy with all of our gear towards Saspochey.  Traveling in the back of the Gypsy has become one of my favorite ways to travel.  Its typically bumpy, dusty, and – at times – a little frightening but, as you are holding on to the seat as best you can, the fresh air while driving windy roads through the mountains offers strange peace and refreshment.  Our first stop on this trip is a small town about 2 hours from Leh called Saspochey.  Here we stay at a school house and prepare for the nature trek we will take 8 children and 6 teachers on the next day.  

We wake up at 5 to begin the slow – very slow – hike, riddled with tea breaks and photo opportunities, to the towns summer pasture located at 4,550 meters.  The hope is to share some identification skills and wildlife knowledge in a hands-on way with this small crew.  We also hope to see abundant wildlife in the valley – again, FAIL.  Though it was an incredibly beautiful trek, over the 9 hours we saw little other than a few bird species, wildflowers, and one ibex.  Jigmet was not entirely pleased but the rest of us had a great time enjoying a nice sunny day in the mountains.  When we finally returned to the village, we find out one of the local woman saw a snow leopard near the village earlier that day.  Naturally.  Good for her, bad for us. 

The next day we began our real work – Angmo and I surveying the households of 5 different villages and Jigmet and Gyalson collecting motion-triggered cameras from 9 locations.  Both proved to be exhausting work.  Angmo and I ended up surveying 26 households with much more success than in Zanskar…and I did not get sick this time – wahoo!  One of my favorite things about this survey work, though it has not turned out the way it was supposed to, is getting to experience genuine, sweet hospitality.  Each household we approached, whether they were in the middle of doing something, hosting other people, or taking a rest; they stopped, invited us in, and fed us tea and food until I about burst.  Out of the 26 households, nobody was bothered that we were there asking questions or bothered that we interrupted their work.  One of the things I know I will bring back with me to my little house in Durham is this sweet sense of hospitality towards strangers.  It’s not something we see much in the U.S.  Time is too precious it seems and life is too busy to stop and show kindness.  I know this because I’m guilty of it.  But one of my favorite things about the human mind and soul is its profound ability to change.  So here’s to renewed priorities – people.

So as Angmo and I moved between towns, sometimes trekking or driving, we met person after person who had stories, opinions, and suggestions for SLC-IT.  We started each day early and ended late, completely exhausted and counting down the number of households left to go.  As tiring as talking and translating all day was for Angmo, I found that listening to a language I don’t understand and conversations I cannot be an active participant in equally exhausting.  I miss the art of conversation – I fear I may be loosing it.  Though by the end of our surveying, I was able to understand what some people were saying through certain words and body language.  In addition to our own work, we got a chance to share in the Christmas morning like feeling that comes with camera trap work.  I’ve missed that feeling that Paige and I used to get after we collected our 40 camera traps back in my Rocky Mountain Wild days.  All huddled around the computer Jigmet, Gyalson, Angmo and I would see what the last two months produced for the ongoing population assessment that SLC-IT is working on.  They got some great photos of a snow leopard marking its territory through rock scent and some great nighttime shots of a Pallas cat, which apparently is very rarely documented in Ladakh. 

And thus ended my surveying.  As much as I loved being in Sham Valley, there was something nice about coming back to my little room I call home that I may or may not be currently sharing with bed bugs.  So now its back to the office where I will spend the next few weeks entering data into spreadsheets, figuring out how to make sense of it, analyzing it, and then writing up a nice report for SLC-IT to add to the 10 year program evaluation they will be conducting next year.  To say the least, this is the part of the project I am less than thrilled about but luckily I have two visitors –J.B. and Ryan – to look forward to in mid-August!  Then the real fun begins…

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

oh me oh my


I’ve become lackadaisical about updating this blog; maybe I’m just not cut out for the blogging world.  Jury’s still out. 

The past few weeks have marked a lot of firsts.  I had my first motorbike ride in India and then my first motorbike accident (very small, not even a scratch).  My first attempt at acrobatic yoga – Google it, it’s awesome - and Thai massage.  My first trip to Tso Morirri, which resulted in my first time pushing the broken down truck up a mountain road, my first ride in the back of a cargo truck driven madly by monks, my first taste of salty high alpine Ladakhi lake water, my first time sitting on a beach this summer, and the origins of a mysterious cough I cannot seem to get ride of.  Last week also marked the beginnings of my data entry and report writing – thrilling stuff.  I had my first facial, tried many different traditional Ladakhi foods for the first time, and saw my first herd of Ladakhi Urial.  So many, many firsts as of late.  These new experiences have been refreshing as the weight of the failure and difficulties of this project and organization have, at moments, been grim to bear. 

Oh and one unfortunate second – bed bugs!  While visiting villages in Sham Valley, Angmo and I had some unexpected visitors.  Caitlin – if you’re reading this – THEY’RE BACK and in India!  The middle of the night paranoia has returned, damn.  So far in the last two months I have shared my bed with rats and bed bugs.  Definitely not welcome guests.

Despite multiple set backs, I’m still enjoying my little home here in Ladakh.  I have a feeling I will dearly miss things here once I return.  In the mornings, I have developed a routine of hiking up to a place where you have an amazing view of the peaks and the town of Leh.  Its incredibly peaceful and I enjoy my meditations with Oswald, Kahlil, or St. John of the Cross.  Different spiritual guides for different days.  I have also taken to collecting fallen Tibetan prayer flags on my daily meditative hikes.  Prayer flags are hung everywhere in Ladakh and its beautiful to see them strung about the mountains signifying important Buddhist spiritual places.  While I love seeing them soaring as flags are meant to soar, for whatever reason I find the fallen, broken ones more beautiful.  I suppose I have some proclivity towards fallen, broken things.  But there is something bittersweet – redemptive, maybe? - about collecting fallen prayers.

It’s amazing how time has moved here – already near the end of July!  But so many friends, emotions, and experiences have come and gone.  I can only hope to be a changed woman from all of it.  In fact that’s become a constant prayer in my meditations.  Oh! I love ch-ch-ch-changes, who would ever want to stay exactly the same?  That’s the gift of time, I suppose.  Just like Bowie says ‘turn and face the strange.’

I do believe my thoughts here are more than scattered – I apologize for the current state of my mental environment!

Kirk out.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

And we're back!


I arrived about 3 days ago to Leh and am still regrouping from my ~1 ½ weeks in Zanskar.  Zanskar Valley is an amazingly beautiful place situated between the Himalayan and Zanskar mountain ranges.  To say the least the 1 ½ weeks provided an anything but relaxing and expected field excursion.  But as Yvon Chouinard says ‘its not an adventure until something goes wrong.’  So let me regale you with the details of my BIG adventure… 

Zanskar Valley - our road to Padum
The trip began at 4am on a packed tight Ladakhi bus with blasting Ladakhi music (not a huge fan).  The first bus trip lasted 10 hours to Kargil.  The road was bumpy, windy, and - when I dared to look out the window – slightly terrifying; some how though, I managed to sleep through a majority of it.  The second day of the trip lasted 16 hours and began at 2am, which meant that somehow despite the bumpy, dirt roads – I slept, though I do remember hitting my head against the window several times.  The second day took us through some amazing passes, beautiful mountain views, narrow switchbacks, harrowing heights, and finally to Padum.  From Padum, K.C. (SLC-IT field officer and also the prince of Zangla), Monica (a very nice Hungarian woman), Galyson (trekking guide and friend of K.C.), Lobby (quiet Zanskari man and also friend of K.C.’s), and I took an hour long taxi to our semi-final destination, Zangla.  Here, Monica and I stayed with K.C. and his family – wonderful people!  K.C. lives with his wife, mother, father and 3 children; and it was such a gift to stay with them.  Communication was difficult but luckily, I have learned a few Ladakhi words and phrases that bode me well on this trip.  The most important being dik-dik, which means 'enough, enough.'  You use this forcefully in response to don-don, which means 'have, have.'  So as they are trying to force feed you more food by saying 'don-don', you respond stubbornly with 'dik-dik.'  This was a very constant and important interaction throughout the entire trip with about everyone I met.

Phugtal Monastery stupa
After a day of rest, K.C. and I headed out of Zangla with our small backpacks to begin surveying the different villages in Zanskar.  While I loved being in a new place, I struggled with my loss of control in how anything went.  K.C. kept me as informed as he thought I needed to be, which usually meant he would just tell me which taxi to get into and sometimes he would let me know where we were going – not always though.  I felt a bit like a child but I suppose as a usually fiercely independent person, its good to be humbled. 

The plan for our Zanskar trip was to survey 8 villages and 140 households – fat chance.  I kept telling SLC-IT it would be impossible in a weeks time to do that but they seemed convinced that because I was with K.C. we would accomplish it all.  Well, we didn’t, oh well.  One of our first obstacles to overcome in Zanskar was the fact that I am a foreigner and everyone in Zanskar (and Leh too) thinks all white people are insanely rich.  So K.C. and I had a hard time finding a taxi that would take us to our first village cheaply– they wanted us to rent a jeep for Rs. 3,000 instead of Rs.50 for a taxi.  Well, finally, K.C. succeeded in convincing a taxi to take us.  All we had to do was hike about 30 minutes down the road and they would pick us up.  Once on our way, our plan was to stay in Anmu that night, a village with two households.  To get there we took a 3 hour taxi to the end of the seemingly never ending winding road, where we hiked about 45 minutes with a monk and another man to Anmu.  We stayed the night in Anmu and pre-tested the survey, which ended up being a disaster.  Throughout my trip to Zanskar and interacting with some of the villagers, I learned quite a bit about SLC-IT and their programs.  Turns out, it was very different from what I had previously understood.  I won’t go into details but to say the least it caused me to have a mini-15 minute breakdown and completely scrap the survey I had spent so much time over the last 4 months working on.  Luckily, I have always had a pretty resilient attitude – something I probably owe my parents too – and I was able to get over the normal feelings of failure that come with projects falling through. 

In everything in my life, I have always wanted to hold things loosely enough for them to have room to change.  My expectations, hopes, and visions for how life should go, rarely match up with reality.  Sometimes there is disappointment but, more often than not, I have learned to let the questions I am asking change and my ideas to shape shift.  This instance was no different than many things in my life, so I let my project change into what would benefit SLC-IT and allow for the villagers to express what was necessary.  I also kept a nice little reminder verse in my head: Genesis 4:7’…sin is crouching at your door.  It’s desire is for you, but you may rule over it.’  The permission and choice implied helped as I pulled myself back up by my bootstraps and warded off feelings of frustration, inadequacy, and failure.

You probably can't see the trail but this was our path.
So from Anmu, we hiked 2 hours to Chas to find that everyone was tending their fields.  So while we waited for our interviewees, we hiked to an incredible monastery called the Phugtal Monastery, which was built thousands of years ago on the face of mountain in caves.  It took two hours to hike to and there were times when I was a bit scared of how high we were, how steep the sides of the trail were, and how easy it would seem to just fall off to impending doom.  Luckily, I made it and the moments of terror were worth it.  On the way, we saw fresh snow leopard sign in the form of tracks, scat, and rock scent with hair.  I have not seen a snow leopard yet but I’m getting close, so I am hopeful that before I leave Ladakh this summer I will have had a glimpse.  We’ll see. 

Phugtal Monastery
After interviews in Chas, we hiked the 2 hours back to Anmu – had breakfast – did a few interviews and then headed to Icher, which would entail a 3 hour hike where K.C. almost got knocked out by a falling rock - disaster averted.  When we arrived in Icher, a beautiful town with about 40 or so households, we rested for a bit before starting any interviews.  During our rest, however, the universe had different plans for us – unfortunately.  When I awoke, I had wrenching pains in my stomach and a high fever.  The best we can figure out is that I got food poisoning from our breakfast in Anmu (I ate veg, everyone else ate non-veg breakfast...).  So for the next few days, I was completely incapacitated.  The next day we headed out early from Icher to Padum (not in our original itinerary…) where I met a doctor in a field and was prescribed 4 different pills - who knows what they were, I took them anyways.  Needless to say, we didn’t get much more surveying in and we had to skip 4 of the intended villages.  I’ve never had food poisoning before and I hope to never have it again, I was a pretty miserable little mess. 


With my past experience with field work, I should have known better to expect everything to go smoothly but I suppose I cant shake my idealist self.  So, after a few more days with very little surveying and a lot of rest, K.C. and I headed back to Leh – on what felt like the most miserably long jeep trip ever.  Instead of taking two days to travel from Padum to Leh, we opted for a 4am – 1am trip packed tight with other Ladakis (one of which had car sickness the WHOLE trip…).  But it was nice to return to my little makeshift home in Leh after such an eventful field excursion. I still am struggling with eating now, as every meal seems to look exactly the same as the meal that made me sick – rice, dahl, and vegetable, ugh!  And I’m still in the process of figuring out exactly what my project for SLC-IT will look like over the next month and a half.  Struggles.

Monday, June 25, 2012

Off to the field...



Finally, after almost four weeks, I am heading out on Wednesday at 5am for Zanskar Valley to start the field component of my research.  It will take us 2 days of travel to reach Padum, the main town in Zanskar.  I will be travelling and working with K.C., the field manager for that region.  He will be my interviewer and translator at the 8 different villages where we will survey.  I am very excited to finally be making headway on my project but also a tidbit nervous that it could go horribly awry, especially since this is my first go at research of this kind and the pre-field time here has looked completely different than what I was hoping for.  Oh dear! 

I will be staying with K.C. and his family for the 2 weeks I will be there and then we will both head back on July 9th.  From what I hear, Internet access is sparse but I will document as much as possible and update the blog when I can.

What Zanskar may look like...
Prayers and good thoughts would be greatly welcome and appreciated!

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Puga...


Road to Puga.
After the craziness of the film festival – borderline bust of an event – the office took a trip to a place called Puga, about 7-8 hours away from Leh through beautiful and diverse country.  Of course we were to leave at 6:30 but in Ladakhi time it was more like 9:30 and then we had to stop for breakfast… I am still perplexed as to what time I should actually arrive anywhere here.

Black-necked cranes



We took three cars and about 11 people and were to return the same day we went – we ended up spending the night, shocker.  Another lesson learned in India – don’t count on things ever going as planned no matter how much everyone says it will.  The road to Puga was awe-inspiring, driving over small mountain passes, through deserts, rickety bridges, small towns, and always following the Indus River. The purpose of the trip was to drop off clothes, blankets, games, etc. to a school for nomadic children.  During the beginning of the summer, Puga is home to a nomadic tribe of people called the Changspa.  Throughout the year, these people move from pasture to pasture with goats and sheep.  They sell pashmina, meat, cheese, etc. as they move.  In 2004, some teachers were brought to Puga to set up a school for the children of these nomads.  So for 9 months of the year, about 50 children leave their parents and go to school.  It was very interesting speaking with the head teacher and meeting the children.  However, with most things like this, it brings up an interesting tension between traditional livelihoods and modern development.  Nomadic peoples are typically illiterate and non-educated in this area but it has not been necessary to have schooling.  So, it brings up questions of what is truly beneficial.  Hmm, just thoughts.
Chanspa man using a fork to pull out pashmina very very forcefully.

Very happy boy with pink socks.
Despite my internal tension, the trip to Puga was a breath of fresh air after the film festival.  It consisted of...
having to hide in the car at military checkpoints because foreigners are not allowed in restricted areas without special permits of which I did not have – shocker, dancing to loud Indian hiphop both inside and outside the car, windy mountain roads following an incredible sea green Indus River, adorable nomadic children calling 

Dancing
me madam, conversations with the Changspa as they use a fork to pull pashmina from their goats, a rock scramble adventure with Pankhuri, having chai with some random strangers camping, visiting a hot spring at night, seeing a shooting star in an unreal night sky, almost getting run down by a very large scary herd dog, Pankhuri and I getting a harsh scolding from SLC staff for the last 6 items in the list, seeing two nesting black-necked cranes, blue sheep and a pika, and riding in the back of an open truck back to Leh.  What a success of a trip…

Pankhuri sitting in our rock cove.




Kardun-la Pass, ~ 18,000 ft.